3 1822017032541 UMIVSftSrrY OF CALIFORNIA sT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 3 1822017032541 THE LAYMAN'S LIBRARY Edited by F. C. BUEKITT, D.D., F.B.A., Norrisian Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, and the REV. G. B. NEWSOM, M.A., Professor of Pastoral Theology in King's College, London. THE CHURCH AND THE NEW KNOWLEDGE THE LAYMAN'S LIBRARY Edited by F. C. BURKITT, D.D., F.B.A., Norrisian Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, and Rev. G. E. NEWSOM, M.A., Professor of Pastoral Theology in King's College, London. Crown 8vo. zs. 6d. net each Volume. THE FAITH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By the Rev. ALEXANDER NAIRNE, D.D., Canon of Chester, Professor of Hebrew and Exegesis of the Old Testament at King's College, London. With a Preface by F. C. BURKITT, D.D., F.B.A., Norrisian Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. WHAT IS THE GOSPEL? OR REDEMPTION. A Study in the Doctrine of Atonement. By the Rev. J. G. SIMPSON, D.D., Canon and Precentor of St. Paul's. SOME ALTERNATIVES TO JESUS CHRIST. A Comparative Study of Faiths in Divine Incarnation. By JOHN LESLIE JOHNSTON, M.A., Fellow and Dean of Arts, Magdalen College, late Lecturer in Theology at New College, Oxford. THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. An Attempt to Appreciate the Main Lineaments of the Teaching of Christ in their Historical Proportion. By the Rev. EDWARD GORDON SELWYN, M.A., Warden of Radley, formerly Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of London. DISCOVERY AND REVELATION. By the Rev. HAROLD FRANCIS HAMILTON, D.D., Professor of Pastoral Theology, Bishop's College, Lennoxville, Canada, 1907-10. THE CHURCH AND THE NEW KNOWLEDGE. By Miss E. M. CAILLARD. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS THE CHURCH AND THE NEW KNOWLEDGE BY E. M. GAILLARD AUTHOR OF ' PROGRESSIVE REVELATION ' 'THE MANY-SIDED UNIVERSE,' ETC. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON FOURTH AVENUE & SOrn STREET, NEW YORK BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 1915 All rightt reserved CONTENTS CHAP. PAQB PREFACE 1 I. MAN PHYSICAL 5 II. HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT . . .15 III. THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY . 32 IV. HABITS 50 V. SUGGESTION AND THE SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 74 VI. INTIMATIONS OF AN ORDER BEYOND THAT OF NATURE ... . . .98 VII. THE RELATION BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MAN 109 VIII. THE IDEAL MAN AND THE SON OF GOD . 119 IX. THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH AND THE VOCATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL . .134 X. THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY . % 146 XI. THE LIFE OF PRAYER . . , .159 XII. SACRAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE . . . 181 XIII. THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH . . ,'194 XIV. THE DESTINY OF THE RACE AND OF THE INDIVIDUAL 210 THE CHURCH AND THE NEW KNOWLEDGE PREFACE THE object of the present little volume is to indicate the attitude which Christians, in their corporate capacity, should maintain towards the flood of new knowledge which is pouring in upon the world through every possible avenue. The field to cover is so vast that it will scarcely be possible, within the assigned space, to achieve more than illustrate a subject to which many volumes could hardly do justice. The writer proposes, therefore, to confine her observations to the region of Natural Science ; and within this to the modern knowledge bearing directly upon man, physical, psychical, and social. Even thus limited, the material is almost unmanageably profuse ; but at any rate a serious attempt can A 2 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE be made to show that ' faith in Jesus Christ is the one principle that can give unity to the chaos of knowledge which has lately been tossed into the human mind.' l No words could better express the work which the Church now has before her, but the unchangeable mission with which her Master has entrusted her, ' to preach the Gospel in all the world,' has not invariably required a deep acquaintance with secular culture. For many of the earlier cen- turies of our era, the conflict with Paganism, either under the guise of an effete and dying civilisation, or the gross ignorance and savage customs of the barbarian conquerors of the Roman Empire, absorbed all her energies. But those times are past. Past also are the ages when to keep alive any purity of life, any religious fervour, any culture of the intellect, a narrow and rigid seclusion was entailed upon many of her worthiest members. The kingdoms of this world which are to become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ are seen to be the vast regions which the superorganic evolution of man is opening out to him, and which are yet so 1 Sermon by the Rev. W. Temple, before the University of Oxford. PREFACE 3 largely regarded as having no direct bearing on his religious life. One of the great tasks of the Church in this age, by no means the only one, but hardly to be surpassed in importance, is the bringing in of the rich results of secular culture to be salted with the salt of Christian understanding, and leavened with the leaven of Christian faith. Christianity is not a hot-house plant. It is meant to take root in the ordinary life of man, and to grow and develop by means of that very discrimination and exercise of the Reason which has so often been mistakenly regarded as opposed to it. There are, indeed, other capacities than the Reason to which it is supposed to appeal far more effectually. But this the writer takes leave to doubt. The appeal of Christianity is to the whole, man, emotions, affections, and intelli- gence alike ; and it is her firm conviction, for which she trusts the ensuing pages may offer some justification, that as ' science grows from more to more,' it will be seen more and more to lead towards that same light by which the Church is guided. In order to make any practical suggestions as to the inspiration which the new knowledge may 4 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE afford to the Church, it will be necessary to review gome of the main facts of which it offers us possession within the region already defined. The first few chapters of this volume will there- fore be occupied with a brief summary of them. E. M. C. CHAPTER I MAN PHYSICAL THAT man physical is very closely related to his natural environment is a fact which modern science brings into ever greater prominence. If he does not now believe that he was formed out of the dust of the earth, he has abundant proof that the dust and himself are closely akin, and that they are akin also to the stars in their glory. That marvellous instrument of modern research, the spectroscope, has enabled astronomers to detect, not only in the sun and other members of the solar system, but in the most distant celestial bodies, the familiar constituents of earth and of the human body. But what is of yet nearer interest and import- ance to us than our relation to inorganic nature, is our intimate connection with the World of Life. There are many evolution problems not yet solved. The great Darwinian discovery and 6 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE generalisation of Natural Selection is seen not to be capable of bearing all the weight originally laid upon it. Other factors have to be taken into account, and the exact proportion to be assigned to each of them in the general process is far as yet from being decided. But of the fact of evolution itself there is no doubt. The method of its working is in many important details still obscure, but the ascent of all the higher forms of life (including man himself) from the lower, probably the lowest, is not in question. That point is decided. With regard to man's own genealogy, the long sought ' missing link ' between him and the an- thropoid apes, the nearest creatures below him in the scale of life, has not been, and probably never will be, discovered. Biologists now con- sider it most probable that the departure from the general simian stock which resulted in man took place at a period anterior to the appearance of the anthropoid apes, that they are in fact our distant cousins, not in the direct line of our progenitors. If there has been no missing link to produce, however, there have been exceedingly interesting discoveries of primitive human forms, which, MAN PHYSICAL 7 though they can according to the best authorities be thus classified, are nevertheless lower than man as we know man even in his most savage state. One of the most remarkable, though not the most recent, of these is Pithecanthropus erectus, the ape-like man who walked erect, the skull and other remains of whom were found in Java on the south flank of a low range of hills called the Kenangs. Experts adjudged, chiefly from the size of the cranial cavity, which was of sufficient capacity to contain a brain considerably larger than that of the largest of the anthropoid apes, ' that in the long ancestral series which extends upwards from apes to man, he has mounted far more than half way, and that only a few steps of the long ascent remain to separate him from Homo sapiens, essential man.' * When the latter came into existence at last, the difficulties with which he had to contend were enormous, and the main cause of his success was, without doubt, his superior brain-power. It gave him the victory over his many foes, and enabled him to master the peculiar conditions in which he found him- self, conditions which while they stimulated his 1 Science Progress, October 1908, art. ' Paleotheric Races,' pp. 345-6. 8 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE progress, at the same time rendered it specially precarious and arduous, the long and helpless infancy, the lack of natural weapons, the need of artificial clothing and shelter. But in addition to brain-power, he needed, and must have had, a physical organisation of great endurance and adaptability. He withstood extremes of tem- perature, and all other external vicissitudes, with none of the artificial aids and protection to which he is now so accustomed that they have become a second nature, and emerged victorious and strengthened from every test. The adverse conditions which the human body has already surmounted, and the power of adap- tation it has shown, are of great interest and im- portance in endeavouring to forecast the future of the race. We constantly hear it said that the conditions of modern civilised life are such that man's physical organisation will be unable to meet the demands made upon it, and that a serious and general degeneration will set in. Some pessi- mistic observers declare that it has already done so. Now it is without doubt true that the kind of endurance and adaptability required are, to a great extent, different from that demanded in earlier stages of man's development. The MAN PHYSICAL 9 nervous system, that intimate and delicate link between mind and body, is in these days sub- jected to a strain greater than it has undergone in the whole previous history of our race, and that means an urgent need for such development on its part as may enable it to meet the demand made ; but judging from what the human organ- ism has proved itself equal to surmounting in the past, there is no necessity to fear a general col- lapse now. Rather we may infer that there are latent within it further possibilities of adaptation and development ready to be called into activity. Their recognition and utilisation, however, de- pend, to a considerable degree, on the voluntary control and self -discipline of man himself, as we shall see later on. In the meanwhile we may note and give due weight to the fact that physical en- durance remains a human characteristic. There is no lack of men willing and able to undergo hardship, if actuated by a sufficiently powerful motive. Arctic and tropical explorers, big game shooters, volunteers for ' Active Service ' do not fail ; and during the present war we find young officers, whose home life is one of ease and luxury, showing themselves extraordinarily well able to withstand severe hardships and io THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE privations, as was specially noticeable in the great retreat on Paris. It is true that without the sufficiently power- ful motive, results are not the same, a fact of great significance, to which we shall recur later. For the moment a few words on that most im- portant part of man's whole physical organisa- tion, the nervous system, will not be out of place. In all animals the organic functions are regu- lated and controlled by the nervous system. The difference in this respect between man and lower animals is, that in his case, a far greater number of these functions has passed over to the control of the higher nerve -centres, the cerebral hemispheres, which is equivalent to saying that they have become voluntary. In respect of what are called reflex actions, such as swallowing, breathing, digesting, etc., all animals (including man) are like machines. There is nothing in- calculable in their activity. If the reflex mechan- ism is in order it works well and smoothly ; if out of order, it works badly, but it works as a mechan- ism works, according to fixed and ascertainable rules. This is the case in all organic processes where the lower centres are in control. Where the higher come into play, though they have the MAN PHYSICAL n same muscular apparatus to work with, a spon- taneous element is at once evident, and the result is often quite beyond calculation . This is the case even in such lowly creatures as the frog, in which the proportion of reflex actions is very large, com- pared with those of animals higher in the scale of life. As this scale is ascended, we find more and more automatic actions ceasing to be such and passing over to the control of the higher nerve-centres, until in the case of man none but those of respiration, circulation, and digestion are excluded. The advantage of this arrangement is well pointed out by James in his Principles of Psycho- logy. ' Wherever,' he says, ' a creature has to deal with complex features of the environment, prudence is a virtue. The higher animals have so to deal ; and the more complex the features, the higher we call the animals. The fewer of his acts, then, can such an animal perform without the help of the [cerebral hemispheres], . . . Take the prehension of food as an example, and suppose it to be a reflex performance of the lower centres. The animal will be fated to snap at it fatally and irresistibly whenever presented, no matter what the circumstances may be ; he can 12 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE no more resist this prompting than water can refuse to boil when fixe is kindled under the pot. His life will again and again pay the forfeit of his gluttony. . . . Appetite and the acts it prompts have consequently become in all the higher vertebrates functions of the cerebrum.' * The same is the case with another most important organic function, viz. the sexual. ' Those who have read Darwin's Descent of Man,' says James, ' know what immense importance in the amelioration of the breed in birds this author ascribes to the mere fact of sexual selec- tion. The sexual act is not performed until every condition of circumstance and sentiment is fulfilled, until time, place, and partner are all fit.' Human beings might, to their shame be it said, not infrequently regard themselves as inferior to birds in this respect. To look upon this, or any organic function, which has been handed over by nature to the supervision of the higher nerve-centres, as uncontrollable, is to take a deliberate step downwards in the scale of life. On the other hand, to occupy the higher nerve- centres with work which belongs to the lower (as hypochondriacs and neurotic persons do when 1 James, Principles of Psychology, p. 21. MAN PHYSICAL 13 they perpetually trouble themselves over their digestive and circulatory functions) is to give them work which is not theirs, and which consequently they cannot perform. On the contrary, by their ill-timed interference, they frequently inhibit the lower centres from carrying out their functions. The nervous system is, in fact, the connecting link between mind and body. The more of mind displayed in the organism, the more complicated and delicate becomes the structure of its nervous system, and the wider the control exercised over purely physical activities, until in man, as we have said, nothing is excepted save the respira- tory, digestive, and circulatory functions. That man is, in fact, primarily a mind, and his physical organisation instrumental to mind, is, or, at any rate in the present day, should be axiomatic. Yet in practice, if not in words, we very often find the proposition exactly reversed, and man is thought of and treated as if he were primarily a body and his mind instrumental to body. It is probable that we have here the key to much of that want of balance in nervous organisation which is one of the great troubles of our time, and the chief reason why pessimists ply us with such doleful prophecies concerning the future of 1 4 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO W LEDGE our race. If the evolution of man is essentially mental and only incidentally physical, or to put the matter somewhat differently, if his mental development is determining the development of his body, it is clear that nervous adaptation should be such as to subserve more and more completely mental requirements. Increasing delicacy and versatility are what we should expect, and what in civilised races we certainly find. No one com- plains in Europe and America that the nervous organisation is insensitive. On the contrary it is said to be far too susceptible, and for that reason unstable. Now sensitiveness and instability do not neces- sarily go together. The freely suspended mag- netic needle is highly sensitive, but it is not unstable. After every disturbance it returns to the same position of equilibrium. We should not make it more stable by rendering it less sensitive, but simply impair its usefulness. Mutatis mutan- dis, the same remark applies to the nervous system. Considering the services we require of it, less sensitiveness would hardly be a desidera- tum, but more stability certainly would. The way in which science teaches us we may attain to this will be indicated in the next few chapters. HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT THE light which new discoveries are beginning to throw on the part heredity may be enabled to play in bestowing on the human race better constitutional conditions, including a more stable nervous system, is of the highest evolutionary interest. In primitive times we may probably take it that man's physical organisation was as well adapted to his environment as was possible, compatibly with sufficient stimulus to progress. At any rate his survival and eventual emergence from the savage state indicate such a conclusion. The case is somewhat different now. As was pointed out in the last chapter, there are signs that the nervous system is failing adequately to adapt itself to the great environmental changes (brought about by man himself) with which it is confronted. The fact that heredity may help in this difficulty can hardly be said to 15 1 6 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO W LEDGE have been recognised. It has rather been re- garded in the light of an added burden. The vices and diseases of the fathers have been ob- served to descend to the children, and there has been thought to be no way of escape. This is not surprising, for until recently almost complete ignorance reigned as to the way in which hered- ity acts. Breeders and gardeners were the only experimentalists in this direction, and they were satisfied with such empirical knowledge as served their immediate purpose, and sought for no underlying law. Of late years, the subject has received consider- able scientific attention. The results which have followed upon experiments made to elucidate and extend the discoveries of the Abbe Mendel, who between 1822-1884 made a long course of experimental observation on the intercrossing of the edible pea, give great hope, and indeed some practical assurance, that biologists are now on the track of important and trustworthy infor- mation on this important matter. The great discovery of Mendelism is, that at any rate, some characteristics are inherited according to an invariable and well-defined law. They are separately handed on, so that with respect to any HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 17 inherited traits of which the Mendelian law holds good the individual is not a ' vague, indefinable mixture of all ancestral strains,' but ' a complex organism made up of an immense number of unit characters.' Though often reacting upon one another, the factors on which these characters are based behave as independent entities during the hereditary process. It is, therefore, possible by careful intercrossing through a succession of generations to fix the desirable characteristics when these follow the Mendelian law, and to eliminate the undesirable ones. Successful ex- periments in this direction have been made with wheat, with pigeons, and with Andalusian fowls. Though more extended investigation is required, there is so far no reason to doubt that they are active throughout the organic world, and have therefore a direct and important bearing on the problems of human inheritance, for what is true in this respect of plants and animals is true also of man. On his physical side he is closely and intimately connected with all other organic life, the greatest and most important difference being that owing to his far higher mental development he has acquired, and continues increasingly to acquire, a large measure of conscious and volun- 1 8 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE tary control over his own destiny. If the lower animals degenerate we cannot justly blame them. So far as we are aware, they have no means save those with which their instinct supplies them of counteracting inimical conditions of life. With man it is not so. Throughout his whole evolution as man, he has had the help of some amount of conscious reflection and of accumulat- ing experience and knowledge. Civilised man to-day is in possession of fully sufficient informa- tion, if it were diffused and acted on, to secure him against degeneracy. In view of this undoubted fact, how puerile and even foolishly injurious does much of his legislative action appear, how helpless his attitude towards that worst enemy of his physical and mental power, sensual vice. Evidently we cannot hope for a decided and continued improvement in his nervous organi- sation till not only the leaders of thought, but the rank and file of educated and thoughtful men realise how fully this has been given into their own hands to work out, and direct legislation and individual and social aid accordingly. Before passing on from this subject to the hardly less important one of environment, it is not possible to omit a few words on a very vital 19 aspect of it, viz. marriage. Even the little that has been said here must have made it apparent (and study and deeper thought would assuredly make it more so), that marriage can no longer be regarded as a matter of individual concern only. It is of more even than national, it is of racial importance. ' The strange facts as to the entire passing away of animal races, like the parallel facts in regard to particular human races, cannot fail to raise, and ought to raise, a question as to the endurance of our modern races. It sends a chill to patriotic hearts to think of any human race passing wholly away, and yet such things have been. So far as a race goes on accumulating organic debts (beside which national debts are trifling), and mortgaging in the direct sense future generations, so surely is it doomed to disappear, and justly "in the gathering black- ness of the frown of God." On the other hand, we may strengthen our hands in the assurance that no race is likely to be lost in which it is the loyal endeavour of each pair to leave after them not their worse, but their better selves.' l This remark brings us directly to the question of environment, for we all know that plants, 1 Professor J. A. Thomson, The Bible of Nature, pp. 149-50. 20 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE animals, and men alike may and do suffer and even perish when the environment is altogether un- suitable. In the case of human beings, however, it is very doubtful whether environmental con- ditions and their effects are at all generally under- stood at present. It is largely to these that we owe results which to the minds of some persons point to the deterioration of civilised races. The dwarfed, anaemic aspect, and overdriven nervous system of many town dwellers will illustrate what is meant. It is supposed that their life con- ditions are such that these effects are inevitable (which is true), and that their children must inherit from them a deteriorated constitution (which is false). If these children are removed from the inimical conditions which have affected their parents, overcrowding, lack of fresh air, improper food, and so on, they do not show any more lack of physical endurance or nerve power than children and young people brought up in the country, under the most favourable conditions. It is, therefore, evident that the cause of deteriora- tion in town dwellers is not racial degeneration, but faulty environment. There are, of course, only too many cases where heredity and environment unite to produce ill effects. Town children who HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 21 inherit from their parents, as country children equally may, a predisposition to physical disease or nervous trouble are, of course, terribly handi- capped in the fight nature is sure to make against it. The conditions of their life are such that her utmost efforts are likely to be frustrated ; but if the conditions are changed, and a healthy en- vironment afforded, being of town birth will not prejudicially affect possible recovery. It is of considerable importance to realise that hardships do not result in race-deterioration ; quite the contrary is true. The fact that living creatures have to surmount obstacles and adapt themselves to difficult conditions makes for a stronger vitality, and in many cases for increased intelligence. This is specially notice- able in the case of man. Those human races who have lived or are living where the conditions of the natural environment are easiest, are not the most advanced either in physical or mental characteristics. Those who have had to pit themselves, as it were, against their environment have done better and show most signs of further progress. The cause is partly that the weaker individuals do not live to maturity and reproduce their kind. It is also true that the individuals 22 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE who survive are hardened and strengthened through the discipline of conditions which ap- peared adverse, but which in the long run have made for progress ; and, most important of all, such difficulties further the social qualities, since only by mutual aid can they be satisfactorily overcome. In the case of civilised man, it is of great im- portance to remember that he has completely changed his natural environment, and conse- quently introduced a large number of difficulties which, to speak with exactitude, are not natural ; they are human, and can consequently only be humanly solved. One of these difficulties is disease, both human diseases and those of plants and animals. In his interesting work The King- dom of Man, Professor Ray Lankester points out that whatever theories may or may not be woven upon the fact that man's place is unique in Nature, the fact itself remains, and is of the utmost im- portance to recognise. Man alone of all terrestrial creatures has attempted to interfere with the ordinary course of nature to further his own ends. In some respects he has met with an extraordinary success. He has not only learned how to subdue to his control inanimate forces, but has with- HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 23 stood the weeding out process by which the sur- vival of the fittest is secured among the lower animals, and has thus ' emancipated himself from the destructive methods of natural selection,' but in so doing he has taken his destiny into his own hands, and must himself confront a ' new series of dangers and difficulties ' which he has brought into existence. The nature of these is best illustrated by a com- parison of the very different health conditions obtaining within and without his sphere of influ- ence. ' In the extra-human system of Nature,' says Professor Ray Lankester, ' there is no disease and there is no conjunction of incompatible forms of life, such as Man has brought about on the aurf ace of the globe. . . . It is a remarkable thing which possibly may be less generally true than our present knowledge seems to suggest, that the adjustment of organisms to their surroundings is so severely complete in Nature apart from Man, that diseases are unknown as constant and normal phenomena under those conditions. It .... seems to be a legitimate view that every disease to which animals (and probably plants also) are liable, excepting as a transient and very excep- tional occurrence, is due to Man's interference. 24 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE The diseases of cattle, sheep, pigs and horses are not known except in domesticated herds and those wild creatures to which man's domesticated productions have communicated them. 1 The trypanosome lives in the blood of wild goats and of rats without producing mischief. The hosts have become tolerant of the parasite. It is only when Man brings his unselected, humanly nurtured races of cattle and horses into contact with the parasite, that it is found to have deadly 1 A footnote to the above text states : This has been estab- lished in the case of the Trypanotome Brucci, a minute para- site living in the blood of big game in South-East Africa, amongst which it is disseminated by a blood-sucking fly, the Olossina morsitans or Tsetse fly. The parasite appears to do little or no harm to the native big game, but causes a deadly disease both in the horses and cattle introduced by Europeans and in the more anciently introduced native cattle (of Indian origin). ... A similar kind of difficulty, of which many might be cited, is brought about by man's importations and exportations of useful plants. He thus brought the Phylloxera to Europe, not realising beforehand that this little parasite bug, though harmless to the American vine which puts out new shoots on its roots when the insect injures the old ones, is absolutely deadly to the European vine which has not acquired this simple but all-important mode of growth by which the American vine is rendered safe. Thus, too, he took the coffee plant to Ceylon, and found his plantation suddenly devastated by a minute mould, the Himilaria Vastatrix, which had lived very innocently before that in the Cingalese forests, but was ready to burst into rapacious and destructive activity when the new unadjusted coffee-trees were imported by man and presented in carefully crowded plantations to its unre- strained infection. HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 25 properties. The various cattle-diseases which in Africa have done so much harm to native cattle, and have in some regions exterminated big game, have per contra been introduced by man through his importation of diseased animals of his own breeding from Europe. Most, if not all, animals in extra-human conditions, including the minuter things, such as insects, shell-fish, and invisible aquatic organisms, have been brought into a condition of adjustment to their parasites as well as to the other conditions in which they live. It is this most delicate and efficient balance of nature which man everywhere upsets.' l Quite obviously man must find the remedy. The author of the work from which the above quotation is made suggests that increased activity in scientific investigation will give him the weapon which he needs. After pointing out that medical science is learning more and more to seek the causes of disease in the invasion of the human organism by parasites to which it is not im- mune, but could with fuller knowledge and by appropriate treatment be rendered immune, he adds : ' Within the past few years the knowledge of 1 Ray Lankester, The Kingdom of Man, p. 34. 26 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE the causes of disease has become so far advanced that it is a matter of practical certainty that by the unstinted application of known methods of investigation and consequent controlling action, all epidemic disease could be abolished within a period so short as fifty years.' 1 Every one must agree that it is the duty of the State and of private effort to push forward such investigation to the utmost possible extent. At the same time we are bound to re- member that epidemic diseases do not constitute the whole of the ills to which man has rendered himself liable. Though (as in the case of tuber- culosis,) even non-epidemic diseases may in many cases be due to the omnipresent bacilli, there are others not referable to this cause, conspicuous amongst them being most kinds of insanity and those forms of nervous disease and disability so terribly incapacitating, and apparently so largely on the increase. They may also be referred ultimately to that human manipulation of natural processes which while it has raised man to a position so lofty among his fellow-inhabitants of the earth, has also brought him face to face with problems which, 1 Ray Lankester, The, Kingdom of Man, p. 36. HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 27 without his interference, would not have arisen, and which nature unaided by him is not in a position to solve, over-population being one of the most pressing. It does not suffice that man should be perpetually engaged in finding solutions to those problems by fighting nature with her own weapons. That ' delicate and efficient balance which he has everywhere upset' needs to be so readjusted that the problems should vanish, and the fighting be rendered unnecessary because his control of those lower conditions has become normal and unquestioned, and the pre-occupation of his mind with disease and precautions against disease may be discon- tinued. It is then that he will have come into his kingdom, in the words of the author above quoted, have ceased ' listening to the fairy-tales of his boyhood,' and have entered upon ' man- hood's task.' That task is analogous in many respects to the task of organic life when it first appeared upon our globe. Inanimate nature had so far held undisputed sway, its laws were absolute, its sequences invariable. Life could not abrogate or upset the least of these, but it could, and it did, adapt them to its own purposes. Unconsci- 28 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE ously as man counts consciousness it evolved through myriad ages form after form, which more and more completely subdued to its service the inorganic elements and forces of the universe, until the ' thinking reed ' appeared whose destiny was finally to bring them all under conscious and voluntary control, and set to work to conquer life as life had conquered non-life. In order to accomplish this, man had to penetrate further into the heart of being than life itself had done. His reason including the intuitive as well as the logical faculty furnished him with the means of seeing the significance lying beyond the mere possi- bility of gratifying physical impulses and appe- tites, in his environment organic and inorganic alike, and to strain every nerve to decipher that significance. The origin of all science and of all religion, so far as its human aspect is concerned, lies here, in man's implanted and insatiable desire to know as well as to live, to understand as well as to enjoy. The remarks so far made have had reference to man's environment generally, but not specially to his social environment, i.e. to his relation to his fellow-men. Yet this is now at any rate, though it may possibly not have been so in his HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 29 primordial condition, by far the most important factor in his evolution. It is by no means gene- rally understood, though scientific men fully recognise the fact, that ' Man did not make Society, Society made man.' This means some- thing more than merely that he is a gregarious animal. It already means something more in lower grades of life than that to which man has attained. Ants and bees do not simply live in herds, they form veritable social communities, in which division of labour, combination for de- fence, organised protection of the young, and storage of food are thoroughly and efficiently carried out. ' Among monkeys/ we are told, ' there are distinct societies. Families combine for protection, and the combination favours the development of emotional and intellectual strength ' ; l and it is remarkable that wherever the social (or other-regarding) characteristics pre- vail, great advantages are attained in the struggle for life. The creatures which possess the social characteristics have more chance of surviving the drastic methods of natural selection and rising higher in the scale of life. Man, as we have already said, has pitted himself 1 J, A. Thomson, The Bible of Nature, p. 195. 30 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE against natural selection and with great success. ' Where Nature has said Die, he has said I will live/ and he has Lived. But the fact that he has done this, and in doing it has introduced into his relations with the natural environment diffi- culties which were not originally there, and which nature without his guidance and direction cannot overcome, indicates that his continued progress, and even the maintenance of his present position of vantage, depend very largely on the strength which intelligent combination with his fellows enables him to put forth in his efforts to increase his control over environmental conditions. And in so doing he is not acting, as has sometimes been mistakenly supposed, in opposition to the methods of nature, but in accordance with them, only on a higher plane than has been possible before. ' In general terms Nature's method of organic evolution is the elimination of unfit variations, the selection of fit variations, and this as a formula remains for us perhaps the greatest lesson that Nature teaches. The modes of selection differ widely, though the logic of the process is always the same. We submit, therefore, that in social progress we have not to combat Nature's method, but to follow it, HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 31 and that we do so every time that we favour the virtuous, and thwart the vicious, every time that we reject an ugly product and choose a beautiful one, every time that we vote against militarism and make for peace. It is our prerogative to select those forms of struggle which seem most likely to favour the survival of our human ideals.' * It is our superior intelligence which enables us to take this masterful attitude, and superior intelligence is something more than a physical attribute. It is the result of a more fully developed mind. Our next chapter will there- fore treat of the mental predominance exhibited by man. 1 The Bible of Nature, p. 217. CHAPTER III THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY THE field which now offers the most striking and convincing evidence of the ascendency of mind is that in which civilised man has shown his dominance over external nature. There are certain exceptions of course, a few unexplored regions of the earth, yearly becoming fewer, and (more important and disconcerting) his inability to control weather, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. But, making full allowance for these and any other checks to his supremacy, how wide- spread and deeply -rooted has it become I He who originally appeared to be the slave and sport of nature, confined within a narrow prison of space, unable to communicate with his fellows if more than a few hundred yards separated him from them, has now practically annihilated dis- tance, girdles the earth with his signals, transmits messages with the speed of light, draws upon the THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY 33 vast and invisible resources of electricity for his most homely and familiar needs, speaks across a thousand miles to absent friends, records if he will their very speech and intonation of voice. Yet more than this, the constitution of the heavenly bodies is known to him ; he can force them to record their own existence on his photo- graphic plates, even though so far removed from the speck of ' cosmic dust,' which is his habitation, that their light has taken hundreds of years to reach the sensitive surface outspread to receive it. All this he has done, and more, but the twentieth century finds him not yet master of himself, still humbled to the dust by contra- dictory impulses within his own nature, still war- ring with his kind, victimised by diseases, shamed by vice, and half convinced that it is his destiny, though in some respects ' great lord of all things,' to remain nevertheless a ' prey to all.' The object of the present chapter is to suggest that from the scientific point of view he is mistaken in this notion, that he is fully as capable of sub- jugating and controlling the nature within as the nature without him, and that the road to be followed is broadly speaking the same. In order to rule, he must first understand and obey. c 34 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE The laws according to which the human mind acts are the subject-matter of psychology, and it may without offence be said that this, in some re- spects the most important of all the sciences, has been until very recently the most backward of all, so far at least as experiment and observation are concerned. The reason is doubtless the great difficulty of accurately investigating processes chiefly, in some cases only, to be ascertained through introspection. It is claimed that obser- vations made on hypnotised subjects have re- sulted in a much clearer insight into the complex working of the human mind than would otherwise have been attainable. One fact, and that a most important one, they have certainly helped to place on a firmer basis than ever before, viz. the bene- ficial or deleterious results which mental action produces on the physical condition. To some extent, of course, this has long been known, but in the vague, undefined manner which is never of very great practical utility. The difference between the effect of the same remedy on two patients suffering from the same physical illness, but in different states of mind, is familiar to nurses and medical men, as also is the fact that the belief that the remedy has been administered THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY 35 will sometimes act as effectually as the remedy itself ; or if the latter is erroneously supposed to have been given in order to produce a particular result, this result will follow, though from a merely physical point of view there is no reason for its doing so. Very curious and carefully authenticated instances of the physical results of mental conditions are given in an old, but still valuable book, Tuke's Influence of the Mind on the Body, and many other more recent works. The extraordinary result produced by tife settled conviction that a particular thing can, or cannot be done, is a proof of the effect of mental on physical conditions far as yet from being appreciated at its true worth. Carpenter gives in his Mental Physiology (a book to which parts of James's Principles of Psychology appar- ently owe much,) a striking account of * one of Mr. Braid's hypnotised subjects. He was a man so remarkable for the poverty of his physical develop- ment that he had not for years ventured to lift a weight of twenty pounds in his ordinary state but under hypnotism he took up a quarter of a hundredweight on his little finger and swung it round his head with the greatest apparent facility upon being assured that it was as light as a feather. 36 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE Onanother occasion he lifted a half -hundredweight on the last joint of his forefinger as high as his knee. . . . The same individual afterwards de- clared himself unable, with the greatest effort, to lift a handkerchief from the table, after having been assured that he could not possibly move it.' x At the time when Dr. Carpenter published his Mental Physiology, still in many respects a mine of wealth to students of that important subject, hypnotic experiments and treatment were in their infancy. Such effects as those above cited, which seemed then so surprising, are common- places to all modern investigators, as are others no less striking and significant to which we shall presently have occasion to refer. But first, an illustration may be given of the part unconscious inhibition may play without any hypnotic suggestion. A lady doctor recently told the writer that an acquaintance of hers, a delicate girl who had never been fit for any but the mildest physical exertion, became insane and had to be separated from her family and placed under professional care. She then de- veloped the most extraordinary fondness and capacity for physical exercise. From morning 1 Op. dt., p. 606. THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY 37 to night she never ceased walking save under constraint, and attendant after attendant was worn out with the effort to accompany her on her ceaseless rounds. Now in this and the preceding case, whence are we to suppose the strength originated which so suddenly and unexpectedly manifested itself ? Not in a changed physical condition, for the muscles of the poorly developed man did not suddenly swell into those of an athlete, nor was there any evidence that the general health of the insane girl had undergone improvement. It was a changed mental attitude towards the activities in question which rendered their accomplishment feasible by calling forth latent and unsuspected possibilities in the physical organisation. It is of course true, as Carpenter points out, ' that in our ordinary volitional contraction of any muscle, we do not employ more than a small part of it at any one time, whilst on the other hand every experienced medical practitioner knows that in convulsive contraction far more force is often put forth than the strongest exertion of the will could bring into action.' But this is merely stating in different words the very fact to which we have already 38 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE drawn attention, viz. that there do exist within us latent physical powers which only need the appropriate stimulus, or the removal of an unconscious inhibition (such as a conviction of their impossibility,) to manifest themselves. The obvious aim to set before us is to acquire such control of these powers as to have them at com- mand whenever the need for them arises, and the first step towards accomplishing this aim is to believe in its possibility. So long as we are convinced that in any respect the body is our master, so long in that respect it will justify our belief, despite our possible theoretical acquiesc- ence in the superiority of mind. The very fact that in the West such great material progress has been made, that the mar- vellous forces of nature are brought so evidently and so constantly into practical use by applied science, has tended to make dependence on, and faith in, the physical and external especially characteristic of our age and culture. To the rank and file of educated and semi -educated men, a physical fact is the ne plits ultra of reality, behind which it is neither possible nor desirable to go. But human intelligence refuses in the long run to be thus confined to one side of experience, THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY 39 and there are many signs that a reaction against over-emphasis of the physical aspect of man and nature has set in. It is an obvious fact for example that without those powers of mind which, however certainly they act through physical instrumentality, i.e. through brain and nerves, are nevertheless as certainly not themselves brain and nerves, the whole edifice of modern science would be non-existent. Modern psychology clearly indicates the inadequacy of the physical alone, not merely to sustain the whole weight of any satisfactory theory of man and nature, but to suggest or justify any humanly practical and reasonable attitude towards them. It is not necessary to labour this point. It will be conceded by almost all readers, and is referred to merely as indicating the desirability of a more fundamental recognition of our status and re- sponsibility as minds, even in our relation to external nature. In our dealings with our own nature, such a recognition is far more than desir- able ; it is a practical necessity if we would obtain that self-possession which is the key to all other possession. And here the question naturally arises as to what part the will can and should play in further- 40 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE ing mental ascendency. The preliminary steps are not exactly volitional. We cannot will to attain that in the existence of which we do not believe. In the case of the muscularly weak man above described, no amount of will-power would have enabled him to lift the weight which he eventually did lift, so long as he believed the feat impossible. Under hypnotism the suggestion was made to him that it was quite possible ; he believed this and accordingly he found it to be so and raised the weight. A firm belief that given physical results will follow upon certain antecedents is far more efficacious in bringing them about than is at all generally understood. If the antecedents, though absent, are thought to have been present, the results may equally follow. This has been repeatedly shown by experiments made on hypnotised subjects. Scalds and burns have been produced on their flesh merely by the suggestion that it is in contact with a flame or with boiling water. All the physical symptoms of extreme terror, pallor, panting breath, accelerated pulse, profuse perspiration, can be induced by the information that the sleeper is in great danger. Temporary paralysis can be brought on in the same manner. THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY 41 And conversely where the mistaken conviction exists that the subject is suffering from some organic disease, and he consequently exhibits its symptoms, these disappear if under hypnotism the assurance is given him that he has no such ailment as he supposes, and that he will awake perfectly well. In hysterical subjects, as is well known, the exact simulation of serious disease fre- quently appears, and it was for long supposed that the patients purposely reproduced the symptoms of which they complained, and which medical examination proved to be present. It is now known that no effort of the will could produce such absolutely correct copies of the actual ailments. They arise, because in the disordered state of the nervous system which is characteristic of hysteria and kindred conditions, the mere sight of bodily illness, even sometimes the description of it, is sufficient to produce its symptoms. The patient's belief that he is ill, not his will to become so, de- termines his condition. This being the case, it would be no matter of surprise if not merely the symptoms of disease, but the disease itself, should occasionally follow upon a strong conviction that it had been contracted. In severe epidemics it is probable that there are quite as many victims 42 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE of fear as of actual infection. With cholera this is known to be the case, and the precautions against panic if cholera breaks out in a regiment in India are as stringent and as carefully observed as any purely sanitary measures. The effect of fearful expectation in causing an attack of this disease is well illustrated in an instance given by Tuke : 1 - ' When some years ago the cholera was prevalent at Newlyn, a fishing village near Pen- zance, intercourse was forbidden between the two places. One day a man entered the shop of a barber in Penzance and was shaved. On leaving, some one who had recognised him asked the barber if he knew whom he had been shaving. He replied he did not. " Why, he 's a man from Newlyn ! " It was enough. The terrified barber was seized with cholera, and died within twenty- four hours.' It is well known of course that the disease cannot be contracted by mere contact in this way. Had the barber shaved a man from York and believed that he had come from Newlyn, the effect would have been the same. If, however, belief and expectation can cause 1 Influence of the Mind on the Body, p. 305. THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY 43 disease, they can also cure it, and many striking and well-authenticated instances could be brought forward as evidence. ' Scurvy, as has often been stated, was cured solely by this means at the siege of Breda in 1625. The Prince of Orange, when the city was almost obliged to capitulate, sent word to the sufferers that they should soon be relieved, and provided them with medicines pro- nounced to be very efficacious in the cure of scurvy. Three small phials were given to each physician, not enough for the cure of two patients. It was publicly given out that three or four drops were sufficient to impart a healing virtue to a gallon of liquor. ' We now displayed our wonder- working balsams/ continues the narrator, Dr. Frederic van der Mye, ' nor were even the com- manders let into the secret of the cheat put upon the soldiers. They flocked in crowds about us, every one soliciting that part might be reserved for their use. Cheerfulness again appears in every countenance, and a universal faith prevails in the sovereign virtues of the remedy. . . . The effect of the delusion was really astonishing, for many quickly and perfectly recovered. Such as had not moved their limbs for a month before were seen walking about the streets, sound, 44 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE upright and in perfect health. They boasted of their cure by the Prince's remedy. . . . Many who declared that they had been rendered worse by all former remedies, recovered in a few days, to their inexpressible joy, and to the no less general surprise, by taking (almost by their having brought to them) what we affirmed to be their Gracious Prince's cure" Before this happy experiment was tried, they were, states Van der Mye (who was present,) in a condition of absolute despair. " This, the terriblest circumstance of all, gave rise to a variety of misery ; hence pro- ceeded fluxes, dropsies, and every species of distress attended with a great mortality." ' * It is quite clear from the above account that the curative agent was solely mental, a believing and hopeful expectation. The confidence of the distressed and suffering soldiers that their ' gracious Prince's cure ' was of unparalleled efficacy enabled it to be so. It is also clear that mental states affect for good or ill other than nervous disorders, for scurvy is not a nervous ailment. The recoveries reported from Lourdes and other 1 Quoted by Tuke in Influence of the Mind on the Body, p. 367. THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY 45 shrines, as well as the great number of well- authenticated cures worked by faith-healers and also by quacks of every description, are due to the same cause. ' According to your faith be it unto you,' is a saying of profound human wisdom, the full significance of which men as yet have failed to appreciate. Belief and expectation are by no means, how- ever, the sole mental conditions which produce marked physical effects. Indeed the truth is that every mental state has its bodily correlative. Emotions of all kinds express themselves by ges- ture, by facial expression, by alteration of the bodily secretions, by functional derangements, sometimes of such severity that death itself may be caused. A somewhat remarkable instance is cited by Tuke on the authority of the Oazetta Med. di Turino, 27th January 1868, and the Medical Times and Gazette of 22nd February in the same year. ' A stationmaster of one of the Italian railways, fifty-five years of age and in robust health, was awakened one morning with the news that his station had been robbed. He felt his responsi- bility so acutely that he immediately became ill, and died within twenty-four hours, all the 46 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE assurances of his superiors and the encourage- ments of his relatives failing to reassure him. There was utter prostration, spasmodic action of the stomach with obstinate vomiting, hollow voice and failing pulse ; consciousness continuing to the last.' 1 Many other illustrations might be cited of ' the influence of the mind on the body,' notably the effect produced on an infant at the breast if the mother gives it nourishment during or after some violent outbreak of emotion. Convulsions and even death may supervene. 2 But enough has perhaps been said to call the reader's attention to facts now so familiarly known that they do not need substantiating. It is rather the conclusions to be drawn from them which demand our attention. Of these the chief in practical importance is that since con- ditions of health and disease are so intimately connected with, and in many cases so largely dependent on, states of mind, it would appear that much more scientific and consistent mental treatment of the body is, not merely desirable, but strictly necessary if mind is to play the 1 Influence, of the Mind on the Body, p. 256. 2 Of. Tuke, op. cit. pp. 306-8. THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY 47 part assigned to it by its dominant position in man's complex constitution. This has been recognised, and to some extent acted upon, by the many semi -religious, semi - philosophical sects prescribing ' mind-cure,' ' mental healing,' ' mental science,' etc., etc. The literature of these bodies, notably that of the earliest, and still perhaps the most numerous among them, the ' Christian Scientists,' has swollen to many hundreds of books, pamphlets, and leaflets ; and numbers of lectures and courses of instruction are given in the United States and our own country to all who are willing to become students of the methods recommended and practised. Those who will be at the pains to investigate the results obtained, and who are sufficiently open- minded to judge them dispassionately, will be com- pelled to recognise the value of mental thera- peutics. Despite the disadvantage of being too often practised by those who are equally ignorant of the human mind and the human body, and still more often made the subject of partisan laudation or criticism, it has fully established its claim to be a great and successful curative agent. Nothing impresses this fact upon the mind more strongly than the great change which has taken place in 48 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE the general attitude of the medical profession towards mental therapeutics and ' spiritual ' healing. Formerly any such methods were scouted as utterly unscientific and contemptible. Now, to say the least, they are regarded as worthy of serious attention. In June 1910, the Medical Journal, one of the most respected and conser- vative organs of medical opinion in England, devoted upwards of forty pages, nearly the whole of one number, to the discussion by eminent physicians and surgeons of the various aspects and possibilities of faith-healing. Differing views were of course expressed, but on the whole, and with certain strong limitations, opinion was decidedly favourable. The limitations were that physical remedies should not be discarded, and that the cases principally, some writers said solely, suitable to mental and spiritual treatment were the various forms of neurasthenia, hysteria, and nervous instability generally. But organic disease was not entirely precluded, and one memorable passage occurring in the contribution by Sir Clifford Allbutt seems to contain all which can properly be demanded in the way of recog- nition by orthodox medical science at the present moment. ' Probably no limb, no viscus, is so far THE ASCENDENCY OF MIND OVER BODY 49 a vessel of dishonour as to be outside the renewals of the spirit, and to an infinite intelligence every accession of spiritual life would be apparent in a new harmony of each and all of the confluences of the body.' * 1 The appointment of a joint medical and clerical committee to sit in Westminster and receive evidence of cures effected by faith-healing, and other so-called 'spiritual' methods, is a striking testimony to the importance attached to the subject by many members of the medical profession. The report issued by the Committee early in 1914 is in substantial agree- ment with the opinion of several of the eminent men who took part in the discussion in the medical journal above referred to, and shows a serious and responsible effort to appreciate cor- rectly a form of therapeutics formerly held in contempt. CHAPTER IV HABITS WE have already seen that one characteristic of the higher animals is the increasing number of functions which are turned over to the control of the higher nerve centres, and have become voluntary instead of reflex. In man only the circulation, digestion, and respiration are ex- cepted. All else is or may be under his conscious control ; but many activities which in the com- mencement require attention and effort to carry them out, become after a time habits, and need no further exercise of volition. Walking, talk- ing, reading, and writing fall under this category, and the two first are examples of what are called ' secondarily-automatic movements,' as are all accomplishments requiring physical dexterity, the technique of the instrumental musician, athletic exercises, games dependent on manual 60 HABITS 51 skill and so on. After a sufficient amount of training, the muscular movements required in all these become automatic. That they are not originally so is shown by the fact that if, through illness or any other cause, they are discontinued for a time, they have to be consciously re-learned, or at any rate re -practised before the former automatic ease returns. Even without any temporary cessation of these activities their non- automatic origin is easily perceived by the atten- tion they require if an unusual call is made upon them. Thus the common phrase ' a difficult bit of walking,' means that the pedestrian has had to pay attention to his steps ; even the most expert musician may have to ' practise ' a new and elaborate piece of technique. His habit of dexterity does not of itself suffice, though without it he would not have been able to attempt the feat at all. In the case of ' secondarily -automatic move- ments,' therefore, it is clear that when once automatism has been attained, the higher nerve- centres are only called into play either when the habit has for some reason been weakened, or when a new or unusual exercise of the activity is de- manded. At other times they are left under the 52 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE control of the lower nerve -centres which are re- sponsible for all reflex actions. The same remarks apply to acquired acuteness of sense-perception, under which head may doubt- less to a large extent fall the exaltation of touch exhibited by blind persons, and the extraordinary keenness of sight and hearing in many savages. So far the habits considered have been almost wholly physical, but, as every one knows, there are habits which are purely mental. These, though they perforce affect the brain and nervous system, do not result in any mere physical dex- terity, but in the acquirement or strengthening of some mental capacity. Some attention must now be directed to these. The word attention gives immediate point to our considerations. The ' habit of attention ' is one which all teachers are anxious to inculcate in their pupils. What exactly is this attention ? 'Every one,' as James says, 'knows; knows, that is, in the most convincing way possible, by experience. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalisation, concentration of con- sciousness are of its essence. It implies with- HABITS 53 drawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called " distraction" and " Zerstreutheit " in German.' 1 The state of distraction is not, or is very rarely, volitional. Every one who is subject to ' wander- ing thoughts ' is aware of this. Attention on the other hand often, though not always, implies a considerable effort of the will. The awakening of the consciousness to some one principal object upon which it is, as it were, focussed, may be entirely automatic. It is invariably so, of course, in infants and young children, being then solely determined by the attractiveness of the object ; and the diversion of attention from one object to another simply depends on the relative force of the two attractions. It is this automatic fixation of the attention on the sense impressions received from the external world which enables the infant to effect that marvellous combination of visual and tactile perceptions, which guides the whole sub- sequent interpretation of its phenomena. ' When an attractive object is presented to it, which it 1 Principles of Psychology, vol. i. pp. 103-4. 54 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNO WLEDGE grasps in its little hands, carries to its lips, and holds at different distances, earnestly gazing at it all the while, it is learning a most valuable lesson, and the judicious mother or nurse will not in- terrupt this process, but will allow the infant to go on with its examination of the object as long as it is so disposed.' * Instead of this, many mothers and nurses distract the child's attention by some ill-timed caress, by talking to it, or by giving it another plaything, and thus lay the foundation of that habit of inattention which they will later be the first to deplore. It is as great a mistake to change the objects of a young child's attention too frequently, as to attempt to con- fine it to the same thing too long. In the latter case the child's powers of concentration, very slight at that early age, become fatigued, and it cannot attend any longer to that particular thing, though it could to something else of a different nature. This principle is better understood in education than it used to be, and few young children are now obliged to linger over the same lesson or bit of work till for utter weariness they are unable to master it, and are then punished for wilful inattention. The change which their 1 Carpenter, Metital Physiology, p. 132. HABITS 55 young minds require is liberally afforded, some- times, as above stated, too liberally. Then the child's mind becomes dissipated, and it has pain- fully to acquire in later years the habit of atten- tion which it should have learned almost uncon- sciously in the nursery. As childhood merges into youth and youth into adult age, that discipline and training of the consciousness which results in its systematic focalisation and concentration on any selected object or idea passes more and more under the direct control of the Ego. External aids should no longer be necessary, and the power of con- centration should be such as to enable the fully developed individual temporarily to exclude from his attention every object save that one which he has selected at the moment for the full exercise of his mental power. The pitch to which mental concentration can attain is well exemplified by the fact that con- ditions ordinarily causing very severe pain, may be present without awakening any consciousness of pain at all, if the attention is exclusively directed elsewhere either by a volitional effort or automatically. Carpenter calls attention to the fact that ' before the introduction of chloroform, 56 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE patients sometimes went through severe opera- tions without giving any sign of pain, and after- wards declared that they felt none ; having con- centrated their thoughts by a powerful effort of abstraction on some subject which held them engaged throughout.' 'On the other hand, 'he adds, ' many a martyr has suffered at the stake with a calm serenity that he declared himself to have no difficulty in maintaining, his en- tranced attention being so engrossed by the beatific visions which presented themselves to his enraptured gaze, that the burning of his body gave him no pain whatever.' 1 Since concentration of mind is of such practical importance, the question naturally arises, Is there not a possibility of becoming able always to exercise it at will ? There is no doubt that if taught and practised from childhood upwards concentration becomes a habit. Then, when- ever a demand is made the habit comes into play. Strong interest is a powerful incentive to attention, and for this reason a teacher who can treat his subject vividly and attrac- tively will be far more successful with his pupils than one who with equal or superior 1 Mental Physiology, p. 138. HABITS 57 knowledge imparts it in a dull, monotonous manner. Again, if it be desired so to strengthen the volitional exercise of concentration that it may even render the subject impervious to pain by the absorption of his mental energy in another direc- tion, this too should be made a matter of training and exercise. Nursery failings in this respect are very great. The fuss made over a child if he falls and hurts himself, or suffers from some slight ailment, draws his attention still more powerfully towards his injury or bodily discomfort. What is necessary to relieve him should be done as quickly and with as little ostentation as possible, and then some other object of interest should be introduced to his attention, and if this is suffici- ently attractive he will soon become absorbed in it and will forget his bruise or his cold. Young children never hug their bodily ills as (all un- consciously) their elders too frequently do. They are quite ready to be distracted from them, and if this capacity were developed and encouraged by tact and wise management on the part of those who have care of them, it would grow stronger instead of weaker with increasing years. A foolish and shortsighted sympathy does in- 58 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE calculable harm to numberless young minds and bodies by lending a factitious importance to physical ailments. Sympathy, indeed, is needed ; there cannot be too much of it, so long as it is strong, helpful, and inspiring, not of the feeble, bewailing kind, which increases the sufferer's pain by dwelling on it, instead of lifting him out of its dreary atmosphere. Weak sympathy lays the foundation of that inordinate craving after consideration from others often so hamper- ing in after years. Whether the training in childhood or youth be wise or unwise, it must eventually come to an end, and the further development of mental resources be left mainly, if not wholly, to the individual himself. If it has been wise, he will only have to continue on the same lines, with the greater foothold which self-knowledge and self-reliance will give him. If it has been un- wise, he will have to undertake that ' re-making ' process which will be the less difficult the sooner it is begun, and which must be pursued per- severingly and courageously till the battle for self-control and concentrative power is won. The chief thing to keep in mind is the importance of steady advance, of adhering to the resolve HABITS 59 once made, ' looking neither to the right nor left ' till the habit of concentration aimed at is effectu- ally formed. To this end the dissipation of the attention over too many subjects and in too many directions should be avoided. One thing should be grasped and mastered by the mind, before another is attempted. After a time indeed, when concentration is becoming more easy, it will be well to treat all matters demanding attention in the same way. The aim is to have concentration of mind at command on any object or subject presented to it, not on one only. But this complete power must be attained by degrees. Steady progress, not advance by leaps and jumps, should be the aim. The subject of concentration must not be left without a few words on what is called ' re- action,' which means the condition, either physical, mental or moral, following upon a state of tension. Nearly every one has experienced the exhaustion following upon physical pain or prolonged mental effort, as well as the shame and remorse of ' giving way ' to some temptation long successfully re- sisted, and which seemed indeed to have wholly lost its power. What is the meaning of the 60 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE sudden lapse ? Ethical teachers say that a false security leading to an unwise relaxation of watchfulness is the cause. This is little more than a statement in other words that there is reaction. Incessant watchfulness against temp- tation implies a certain amount of mental tension. When the tension is relaxed, the tendency is to fall back into the condition which existed before it was set up. The remedy would be so to establish the new condition that there would be no tension ; then there could be no slackening and consequently no relapse. The aim from the outset should be not merely to resist the parti- cular evil tendency, but to acquire a habit of the opposite virtue, and when this has become automatic, no effort is needed to maintain it ; there is consequently no mental strain, and little fear of relapse. Mutatis mutandis, the same remarks apply to the ' reaction ' whereby pain, due to the deter- mined volitional direction of the consciousness elsewhere, after a temporary cessation returns in full or increased violence as soon as the atten- tion is released. If the nervous system could be so trained that concentration on any desired subject could be exercised with as little volitional HABITS 61 effort as that required to walk in a certain direction, the sub -conscious mental tension to keep the mind off the pain and on something else would be non-existent. The transition would be effected naturally and easily and the fear of reaction removed. That automatic direction of the consciousness away from pain can take place is sufficiently proved, not only by the martyrs who made no volitional effort to fix their atten- tion on the beatific visions they beheld, and which were more real to them than the stake and the fire, but by every instance (and they are legion) in which for the sake of a loved person or object, bodily fatigue and discomfort are not only wholly disregarded but unfelt. Nearly every reader of these pages must have had at any rate some slight experience of this kind. Most of us have discovered that there is a possibility of 'rising above ' the body as it is usually called. In reality the body is then for the moment, what it always might be, if we understood the sig- nificance of our familiar experiences, instru- mental to and expressive of higher powers than its own. 1 1 It must not be supposed from these remarks that the neglect of pain is advocated. Pain is a warning that some- 62 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE We have at such times proof of the possibility of attaining a state of consciousness in which pain, both mental and physical, is not merely absorbed, but becomes a condition of intenser happiness than could otherwise be experienced. Readers of that wonderful little book, Hinton's Mystery of Pain, will remember the simple yet deep treatment which he gives to this subject, and will probably agree with the present writer that though some of his statements need quali- fication, he goes nearer to a solution of the ' mystery ' than any of those pain-denying, ease- exalting cults so greatly in vogue at the present day. We shall have occasion at a later stage of our considerations to return to this subject from a different standpoint. For the moment it must suffice to point out that since mental concen- tration in some other direction can, and often does, render the consciousness impervious to thing is out of gear in the physical organisation, and should always be attended to so far as discovering the cause and applying a remedy are concerned. But it should not be dwelt on. The constant watching of symptoms painful or other is a great deterrent to recovery in illness. The patient's en- deavour should be to turn the mind into another direction, or where exhaustion is too great for this effort to lie in absolute mental repose. Needless to say that the attainment of such a condition during severe illness is wellnigh impossible, unless the habit of mental calm and control has been formed in health. HABITS 63 pain, were such concentration continuous, the imperviousness would be continuous also. Indian saints and fakirs claim that they achieve this re- sult, and repulsive as their manner of life often seems to Western ideals, it may well be that they have hold of a truth which, were it some- what differently applied, would be of immense practical value. Their mistake lies in regarding (as Christian ascetics have too often regarded) the body as an enemy to be overcome rather than as a servant to be instructed and used. The systems of Yoga, however, rightly understood, are not open to this objection. In order to secure ascendency of mind, they inculcate train- ing and discipline of the body, but not its neglect and ill-treatment. They inculcate also that concentration of mind, the cultivation of which must commence by voluntary attention with effort, and without which great results, or indeed any results comparable with evident possibilities, are not to be achieved. What this really signifies is forcibly put by Professor James in his Principles of Psychology : 1 ' Attention with effort is all that any case of volition implies. The essential achievement of 1 Vol. ii. p. 561. 6 4 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE the Will, in short, when it is most " voluntary," is to attend to a difficult object, and hold it fast before the mind. The so doing is the fiat; and it is a mere psychological accident that when the object is thus attended to, immediate motor consequences should ensue. . . . Effort of atten- tion is thus the essential phenomenon of Will. Every reader must know by his own experience that this is so, for every reader must have felt some fiery passion's grasp. What constitutes the difficulty for a man labouring under an un- wise passion of acting as if the passion were un- wise ? Certainly, there is no physical difficulty. It is as easy physically to avoid a fight as to begin one, to pocket one's money as to squander it on one's cupidities, to walk away from as towards a coquette's door. The difficulty is mental ; it is that of getting the idea of the wise action to stay before our mind at all. Whenever any strong emotional state whatever is upon us, the tendency is for no images but such as are con- gruous with it to come up. If others by chance offer themselves they are instantly smothered and crowded out. . . . The cooling advice which we get from others when the fever fit is on us is one of the most jarring and exasperating things HABITS 6$ in life. Reply we cannot, so we get angry ; for by a sort of self-preserving instinct which our passion has, it feels that these chill objects, if they but once gain a lodgment, will work and work until they have frozen the very vital spark out of all our mood, and brought our airy castles in ruin to the ground. Such is the inevitable effect of reasonable ideas over others if they can once get a quiet hearing ; and passion's cue is accordingly always and everywhere to prevent their still small voice from being heard at all. .... The strong-willed man, however, is the man who hears the still, small voice unflinchingly, and who, when the death-bringing consideration [to passion] comes, looks it in the face, consents to its presence, clings to it, affirms it and holds it fast in spite of the host of exciting mental images which rise in revolt against it and would expel it from the mind. Sustained in this way by a resolute effort of attention, the difficult object ere long begins to call up its own congeners and associates, and ends by changing the dis- position of the man's consciousness altogether. And with his consciousness his action changes, for the new object, once stably in possession of the field of his thoughts, infallibly produces its own E 66 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE motor effects. The difficulty lies in the gaining possession of that field. Though the spontaneous drift of thought is all the other way, the attention must be kept strained on that one object until at last it grows, so as to maintain itself before the mind with ease. This strain of the attention is the fundamental act of will. And the will's work in most cases is practically ended when the bare presence to our thought of the naturally un- welcome object has been secured. For the mys- terious tie between the thought and the motor- centres next comes into play ; and in a way which we cannot even guess at, the obedience of the bodily organs follows as a matter of course. In all this one sees how the immediate point of application of the volitional effort lies exclusively in the mental world. The whole drama is a mental drama. The whole difficulty is a mental difficulty, a difficulty with an object of our thought.' * Consequently the remedy to be employed is mental also, the cultivation of that power of concentration, that fixity of attention on the selected object which, as the above passage points out, is of the very essence of volition. But this, 1 Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. p. 564, HABITS 67 after all, is only one among many mental habits which we recognise as desirable. Its claim to precedence of consideration lies in the fact that without it no other can be systematically culti- vated, but it does not stand alone. Courage, self-possession, self-control, initiative are all of high importance, and with many other qualities must be made habitual if we would have our mental and moral organisation attain their highest development. Despite numerous instances of conspicuous bravery, and still more numerous acts and lives of quiet, unrecognised heroism, it must be apparent to many thoughtful persons that fear is a prevailing note of the present day, fear in all its forms, of the present, of the past, of the future, of life even more perhaps than of death. The deepest of all reasons for this disabling attitude of mind is want of confidence in the Power that brought us into being, but there are other sub- sidiary causes which make cowards of us. The first is that our education makes us afraid of, or increases our fear of many things which otherwise we should regard with far more equanimity. Conspicuous amongst these is physical disease. Infectious ailments have 68 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNO WLEDGE always (save by fatalists like devout Mohamme- dans,) been regarded with terror. The plague, the black death, the sweating sickness were night- mares to our forefathers in the Middle Ages, the more so that they were regarded as signal visita- tions of Divine wrath. A better understanding of hygiene has shown us that they were conse- quences of insanitary conditions ; and if in these days we are threatened with an epidemic of typhoid or cholera, we look to a pure water supply and good drainage as the most efficient preventives. But necessary as these material preventives are, the fact that good mental con- ditions are of at least equal importance has, as we have already pointed out, been practically recognised in the case of cholera. If an out- break occurs amongst the soldiers of a regiment in India, the officers are required by the regu- lations of the Service to visit the men in hospital daily. The fact that they do this with im- munity serves to prevent the panic which too often arises among the healthy, and is the cause of many fatal cases of the disease. Moreover, efforts are made to divert the men's minds by games, cricket matches, etc. Though the effect of fear may be more pro- HABITS 69 minently shown in the case of cholera than in that of many other of the ills that flesh is heir to, it is present and active almost everywhere. The terror of ' microbes ' has become an obsession. There are people who are literally afraid of every- thing they eat or drink, even of the air they breathe. The precautions against ' infection/ , however important and necessary to the physical health of the community, militate against the mental health of a large number of its individual members, who go about in constant dread of con- tracting in some mysterious way this, that, or the other physical ailment. Yet it is a common- place of knowledge that fear is a most depressing mental condition, reacting inevitably on the body, and predisposing it to ills which it might, and probably would, otherwise escape. The habit of fearlessness would be an unspeakable boon to many persons, who oftener than they care to acknowledge make a determined effort of will before they can face with outward courage circumstances encountered in their ordinary daily life. Nor is this habitual nervousness in regard to physical ailment the only evil an education in fear brings about. It leads to a concentration 70 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE of attention on bodily feelings which is altogether deplorable from the evolutionary point of view. The mens sana in cor pore sano is not possible where interest in and care for the body are made the centre of so much conscious thought and effort. In many ostensibly cultured homes not merely physical health, but physical ease, luxury, and adornment are quite openly given the first place in consideration. The mind is made the servant of the body, to the cruel detriment of both. A fresh set of fears is introduced, for not only is illness dreaded, but loss of comfort, of habitual gratifications, of the wherewithal to satisfy caprice, of anything which may cause even a day's or an hour's deprivation of luxuries which have been exalted into necessities. All this, and much more of the same kind, follows inevitably when men reverse the relation of the mind to the body, putting the latter in the first and the former in the second place. Such an attempt can never really succeed ; for it is against the evident trend of human evolution, and against the innate aspirations which at once promote and result from that evolution. The sooner, therefore, that modern Western civilisation re- cognises and acts upon this fact, the better it will HABITS 71 be for true progress, and the nearer will come the realisation of those social ideals which all ' men of goodwill ' have at heart. They are at present too much based upon the desire for material well- being to be wide enough and high enough for human needs. Fear in the presence or at the prospect of disease, or of material deprivations, is far from being the only fear of which we have to take account. Each heart knoweth its own dread as well as its own bitterness, but there is a dread so widespread, and so harmful in its effects, that it cannot be passed over altogether in silence. It is the dread of adverse opinion. People who are ready to face every other fear, quail before this, and it is accountable for a larger share of the extravagance, frivolity, and even the vices of Society than is generally realised. Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra 1 is a motto which would be more frequently fol- lowed were it not that we fear the hostile criti- cisms, the thinly disguised contempt, the stare of surprise that would result, or that we suppose would result, from our 'taking a line of our own.' 1 Do thy duty, come what may. 72 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE And thus another most deleterious habit is set up : lack of initiative. The rank and file of civilised men and women are like sheep ; where one leads all the rest must go. Indolence of mind is doubtless as strong a predisposing cause to this dependent attitude as dread of being thought peculiar. Together they are powerful foes to encounter, and their hurtful influence is felt in every community, large or small, and in the great majority of individual lives. Enough has perhaps been said in criticism. Our object is rather to consider the results of removing disabilities than of the disabilities them- selves. How then are we to acquire these mental habits of courage, initiative, self-posses- sion, which will set us free to face the larger, higher issues of life, to spend our energies to noble purpose, without the hindrance of being com- pelled to fresh volitional effort at every turn ? Something has already been said under this head. The gist of the whole matter lies in a pre- viously quoted passage from Professor James's Principles of Psychology : 'The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.' HABITS 73 Educational training and self -discipline have been pointed out as the obvious methods of furthering this ' effortless custody,' but there is another powerful aid on which as yet we have not touched, viz., suggestion, which forms the subject of the ensuing chapter. CHAPTER V SUGGESTION AND THE SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND THE term ' suggestion ' has its technical psycho- logical significance to which we shall presently refer, but it will be of interest to dwell for a moment on the large part suggestion, taken in its ordinary, popular significance, plays in our mental life, and the very important consequences which result from it. How often, at some moment of perplexity, does the ' suggestion ' of a friend indicate a course of action which at once commends itself to us as the right one, but of which we had not thought before. The ' sug- gestions ' to which generals, statesmen, phil- anthropists and other leaders of men have listened have been fraught with importance to the world at large. A chance sentence, a chance sight may ' suggest ' to the author or the artist the theme of a great work, to the scientist the solution of a great problem, to the ordinary 74 SUGGESTION AND SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 75 man a new outlook on life. These results are of common knowledge, and, in different degrees, of common experience, and they are enough to remind us how large a field suggestion covers, and how much is accomplished by it both for good and evil in the regions of thought and activity alike. We have but to think of the widely differing suggestions made to our minds by the mere presence of different friends, by this or that stamp of literature, of drama, of society, to appreciate to some extent how powerful a moral agent we have ready to hand and use often too wholly at random. In psychology, suggestion (as defined by Pro- fessor James) is ' only another name for the power of ideas, so far as they prove efficacious over belief and conduct.' 1 The extent of that power is vividly brought before us by the results of hyp- notic and post-hypnotic suggestion, to which some reference will presently be made. We must first note that the efficacy of such suggestions is due to the attention of the patient being directed to some one idea or object to the exclusion of all others. Provided they are not in oppo- sition to his moral sense, he does not concern 1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 112. 76 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE himself with their advisability or even possibility, and they therefore prove ' efficacious over belief and conduct ' independently of such considera- tions. If a hypnotised person is told that he is a cat, he accepts the idea without further ado and behaves accordingly. If he is told, while sitting comfortably in an armchair, that he is in imminent danger, he shows all the physical symptoms of terror. If informed that an arm or a leg is paralysed, the peculiar symptoms of para- lysis, arrested circulation, helplessness, shrunken and withered appearance, at once set in, and even after the patient is awakened his limb will not immediately recover its normal condition. 1 Not only are simulations (indeed for the time being realities,) of disease, or extraordinary hallucinations produced by hypnotic suggestion, but unguessed at, though, it must be presumed, latently present, powers manifest themselves. An instance of apparently suddenly developed 1 A medical friend of the writer who was present, described to her the effect produced upon a health}' young man who was under hypnotism, by the suggestion that his arm was paralysed. The arm and hand became cold and useless, the fingers con- tracted themselves in the claw-like fashion distinctive of the ailment. On awakening the young man, who was ignorant of the experiment which had been made on him, complained of curious numb and tingling sensations in his arm for quite ten minutes. SUGGESTION AND SUBCONSCIOUS MIND 77 muscular strength has been already given in Chapter in. The same author mentions a yet more striking example of another kind, * in the exact imitation of Mademoiselle Jenny Lind's vocal performances, given by a factory girl whose musical powers had scarcely received any culti- vation, and who could not speak her own lan- guage grammatically. According to competent witnesses, this girl, in the hypnotised state, followed the Swedish Nightingale's songs in different languages so instantaneously and cor- rectly as to both words and music, that it was difficult to distinguish between the two voices. In order to test the powers of this Somnambule to the utmost, Mile. Lind extemporised a long and elaborate chromatic exercise, which the girl imitated with no less precision, though in the waking state she durst not even attempt any- thing of the sort.' 1 In connection with the subject of sense possi- bilities alluded to in Chapter I., it is of interest to note that exaltation of the specialised senses is frequently produced by hypnotic suggestion. Carpenter states having seen ' a youth in the hypnotised state find out by the sense of smell, 1 Carpenter, Mental Physiology, p. 607, 78 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE the owner of a glove which was placed in his hand, from amongst a party of more than sixty persons ; scenting at each of them one after the other until he came to the right individual. . . . In other cases again the sense of temperature was extraordinarily exalted, very slight differences inappreciable to ordinary touch being at once detected ; and any considerable change, such as the admission of a current of cold air by the opening of a door producing the greatest distress. Some of the most remarkable examples of this kind, however, are afforded by that exaltation of the muscular sense, which seems to be an almost constant character of the somnambulistic state, replacing the sense of sight in the direction of the movements. That sleep-walkers can clamber walls and roofs, traverse narrow planks, step firmly along high parapets, and perform other feats which they would shrink from attempt- ing in their waking state, is simply because they are not distracted by the sense of danger which their vision would call up from concentrating their exclusive attention on the guidance afforded by their muscular sense.' 1 In other words, an inhibition is removed, and 1 Carpenter, Mental Physiology, pp. 603-8. SUGGESTION AND SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 79 this can be done without the aid of hypnotism or somnambulism by early and systematic train- ing, as the performances of acrobats and tight- rope walkers testify. By constant practice their difficult feats become habitual, ' they are handed over to the effortless custody of automatism,' a very distinct and important indication of what possibilities may await us when we learn to ex- ploit this resource of our nature more persistently and wisely. It should be observed, however, that in order voluntarily to acquire a habit of any kind, mental or physical, a conviction of its possibility must be present, and this may be suggested to us in various ways, either by seeing, hearing, or reading of others who have accomplished what we desire to do, or by our own confidence in our powers, or by both. If we think we cannot succeed, we shall in all probability fail ; if, like the British soldier, we are unable to accept the idea of defeat, we shall probably succeed even against appar- ently overwhelming odds. Consequently the suggestions which we make to others, or allow to be made to us by them or by ourselves, should never be of the daunting, discouraging kind which is so frequent. ' I shall never be able to 80 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE do this, or to bear so and so, or to exist under such and such circumstances.' ' You will never succeed, so you had better give up at once.' How constantly are such expressions and their equi- valents heard, and how terribly weakening and disheartening they are ! Every teacher and every student knows, or should know, the value of encouragement in education, every worker the impetus given to his efforts by the belief that a good result will follow. The faultiness of our methods is at once evi dent, if we apply these principles specifically to the acquirement of courage in the face of physical disease. We are constantly suggesting to our children and ourselves every sort of danger and disability. Instead of feeling and showing our uncertainty that health can be maintained or restored, our wisdom would lie in assuring our- selves and those dependent on us of the facts that natural processes always make for health, that the reparative powers of our physical, and in particular of our nervous organisation, are even now very great, especially during the period of growth, and might become under judicious treat- ment almost indefinitely greater. A cheerful heart and high spirit are better preservatives SUGGESTION AND SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 8r against illness than all the drugs in the pharma- copoeia, and all the precautions against infection that modern science has discovered. Con- sidering the risks they undergo, very few medical men and nurses succumb to infectious and contagious diseases, but the significance of this well-known fact is not sufficiently recog- nised. The precautions taken by no means completely account for such immunity. They are not greater than those imposed upon other persons coming in contact with infectious com- plaints, but their success is aided by personal fear- lessness. Doctors and nurses are so accustomed to what other people regard as a serious danger, that they no longer think of it as such, so far as they themselves are concerned. The pre- scribed precautions are mechanically observed, and then the care of their health is turned over to nature, for the most part with excellent results. What is true in regard to the habit of fearless- ness is equally true in regard to the habit of initiative. Too many of us actually cultivate in ourselves and others the precisely opposite habit, dependence on external opinion and guidance. There are of course great temperamental differ - F 82 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO W LEDGE ences in this respect. Some persons are naturally far more self-reliant than others, but there are very few who are not influenced more than they should be by the opinions current in their social environ- ment. It is not intended to suggest that every man and woman should insist on having his or her own way regardless of the welfare and happi- ness of their neighbours, but that each should cultivate the habit of independent thought and of decision in action. That would in no way militate against our deferring to the opinion of another where this is manifestly more instructed and experienced than our own ; but unless we are so far trained in habits of reflection and im- partiality as to be capable of forming wise judg- ments on original ideas and suggestions, we shall fail to recognise their worth when presented to us, especially if they run counter to commonly accepted notions. This consideration suggests a principle too rarely followed in education. Except in the case of children, too young to exercise reflection and judgment, habitual reliance on themselves, on their own power of overcoming a difficulty or getting the better of an obstacle, should be persistently cultivated in all young people. SUGGESTION AND SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 83 Help and guidance must of course be afforded, but in the direction of making them as soon as possible independent of both. Nor would this foster the extremely objectionable quality of 'cocksureness,' which is not usually exhibited by those who know, but by those who do not know how to form a well-balanced and trustworthy judgment. It is a fault of the young, not because the young are really more conceited than their elders, but because they are more inexperienced, and the fault would not be increased, but lessened, by their acquiring knowledge at first hand, instead of having it offered to them through the medium of teacher or parent. That which of all other things it is most neces- sary to lay to heart in education, is that every human being has an individuality of his or her own, which it is the office of the educator to bring out, or rather to assist his pupil to bring out in its full power and beauty. Opening the under- standing of the learner to his own possibilities, suggesting to him his capability of realising them, this is the best and truest way of inculcating initiative, but it is one too seldom followed with any persistence, because it requires a far more penetrating insight, and infinitely more patience 84 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE and resource, than merely lumping a number of young human beings together, and compressing them into the same conventional mould. To impart initiative, we must first possess it, and this is a qualification too often lacking. We now pass to an important and, to most persons, but little understood part of our subject. In what has already been said, it must have been apparent to the reader that the term consciousness covers a very much wider field than is allotted to it in ordinary parlance. Suggestions made to persons in the hypnotic sleep are made to those who are apparently unconscious, and in fact are so to all but certain impressions. Yet since they are aware of and respond to these, they cannot be wholly unconscious. Again, the extra- ordinary memory which can be evoked under hypnotism, and of which instances have been given in the preceding pages, points also to an extension of consciousness far beyond the limits usually assigned to it. Nor need we confine ourselves to hypnotism for illustration of these facts. Ordinarily we remember nothing of the events and interests of a vast number of days, amounting in the aggregate to years, which have gone to make part of that whole which we call SUGGESTION AND SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 85 our life. These, though leaving indelible traces of themselves in the general tendency they have helped to give to our activities, appear to be totally lost. This, however, is not the case. They may flash suddenly back into consciousness through some chance association. A word, a locality may suffice to recall them. They return to us also in dreams and delirium, and not in- frequently we voluntarily ' bring to mind ' an apparently forgotten name, place, or event by going over the train of ideas connected with it. Such experiences show us that our memory has a wider scope than at first sight appears, that ' somewhere ' it keeps records which are usually inaccessible to us, but which at any moment may be unsealed. They are stored in that large, and, till recently, little recognised mental region lying below the level of active consciousness, out of which thoughts and ideas are constantly rising to the surface and sinking below it again. This ' sub-conscious ' or ' sub-liminal ' region of mind was for long practically ignored by psychologists ; but, owing largely to the facilities afforded by hypnotism for observation and ex- periment, it is now recognised as one of the most important fields of psychological research. Many 86 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDCE distinguished men have made it their special study, and the results obtained have been so remarkable, and in some respects so sensational, that the subject has attracted a large amount of non-expert attention, and the unwary are tempted to generalisations hardly warranted by the actual position of scientific know- ledge. For our present purpose facts ad- mitted on all hands to be established will be abundantly sufficient, without having recourse to theoretical explanations, which may or may not be justifiable. The first of these facts is that all those experi- ences which appear to be ' forgotten,' those facts of our life which we suppose irrevocably lost to us, are in reality stored within this sub-conscious region, the ' under-mind ' as a recent writer calls it. 1 And not only is memory thus shown to have a far wider and deeper persistence than is ordin- arily supposed, but perception and attention also are carried on sub-consciously. Their effects are stored within this dim region, in many cases never to emerge from it, in others to appear with startling suddenness at a remote period. The following example illustrates in a peculiarly vivid 1 Percy Dearmer, Body and Soul. SUGGESTION AND SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 87 way all these possibilities of the sub-conscious mind : ' A girl aged seven years, an orphan of the lowest rank, residing in the house of a farmer, by whom she was employed in tending cattle, was accustomed to sleep in an apartment separated by a very thin partition from one frequently occupied by an itinerant fiddler, a musician of considerable skill who often spent a great part of the night in performing pieces of a refined de- scription. . . . Some years after (when she was residing in a lady's family as a household servant), the most beautiful music was often heard in the house during the night, the source of which could not be discovered. At length the sound was traced to the sleeping room of the girl, who was found fast asleep, but uttering from her lips a sound exactly resembling the sweetest tones pro- duced by a small violin. On further observation, it was found that after being about two hours in bed, she became restless and muttered to herself, she then uttered sounds precisely resembling the tuning of a violin, and at length after some pre- lude dashed off into elaborate pieces of music, which she performed in a clear and accurate manner, and with a tone exactly resembling the 88 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE most delicate modulations of that instrument. During the performance she sometimes stopped, made the sound of re -tuning her instrument and then began exactly where she had stopped, in the most correct manner. . . . After a year or two her music was not confined to the imitation of a violin ; and she also began to sing, imitating exactly the voices of several ladies of the family. In another year from this time she began to talk in her sleep. . . . She often descanted with the utmost fluency and correctness on a variety of topics showing the most wonderful discrimina- tion, often combined with sarcasm and the most wonderful powers of mimicry. Her language through the whole was fluent and correct, and her illustrations often forcible and eloquent. . . . She was once heard to speak very correctly several sentences in French, at the same time stating that she heard them from a foreign gentleman whom she had met accidentally in a shop. Being questioned when awake, she re- membered having seen the gentleman, but could not repeat a word of what he said. . . During the whole period, about ten or eleven years, of this remarkable affection, she was when awake a dull, awkward girl, very slow in receiving any kind SUGGESTION AND SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 89 of instruction, though much care was bestowed upon her, and in point of intellect very inferior to the other servants of the family. In par- ticular she showed no kind of turn for music.' 1 This curious account leaves little room for doubt that the girl's individuality had a scope of which she herself and those about her were equally ignorant. It almost seems as though her sub-conscious activity interfered with the normal use of her intellect. Could her latent powers have been reached and roused into conscious exercise, it is possible that the sad sequel to her history might have been avoided, for she fell into immoral courses, and was dismissed from the service of the family with whom she had lived for many years. The following example of sub-conscious memory has been often quoted, but is so re- markable that it will bear repetition : ' In a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a young woman, who could neither read nor write, was seized with a fever, and was said by the priests to be possessed of a devil, because she was heard talking Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Whole 1 Abercrombie, Enquiry concerning the Intellectual Powers, pp. 318-22. 90 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE sheets of her ravings were written out, and found to consist of sentences intelligible in themselves, but having slight connection with each other. Of her Hebrew sayings only a few could be traced to the Bible, and most seemed to be in the Rabbinical dialect. All trick was out of the question ; the woman was a simple creature ; there was no doubt as to the fever. It was long before any explanation save that of demoniacal possession could be obtained. At last the mystery was unveiled by a physician who de- termined to trace back the girl's history, and who after much trouble discovered that at the age of nine she had been charitably taken by an old Protestant pastor, a great Hebrew scholar, in whose house she lived till his death. On further inquiry it appeared to have been the old man's custom for years to walk up and down the passage of his house into which the kitchen opened, and to read to himself in a loud voice out of his books. The books were ransacked, and among them were found several of the Greek and Latin Fathers, together with a col- lection of Rabbinical writings. In these works so many of the passages taken down at the young woman's bedside were identified, that SUGGESTION AND SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 91 there could be no reasonable doubt as to their source.' l A remarkable phenomenon connected with this and also with the preceding example is the extra- ordinary development of articulatory capacity shown in the exact imitation of intricate musical sounds in the first, and the correct pronunciation of foreign languages in the second. It would require long and persevering practice, combined with a very correct musical ear, to achieve such a precise imitation of the notes of a violin as that above described ; and most of us know by ex- perience that correct pronunciation of a language not our own is a matter of care and patience, and that the result is by no means always commen- surate with the trouble bestowed. Occurrences of this kind illustrate in a striking manner the reality of unsuspected physical potentialities. Unless there existed a latent capacity for almost in- definite development in articulation, it would not be possible for such phenomena to be manifested. And here again we feel how large a world of achievement might be opened to us, could we 1 Quoted in Carpenter's Mental Physiology, pp. 437-8, from Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, edit. 1847, vol. v, p. 117. 92 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE learn how to bring these powers under voluntary control. The same remark applies to the possibilities of suggestion, hypnotic or other. Though students of the subject are well aware that hypnotic and post-hypnotic suggestion are ineffectual if at- tempted against the will of the subject, a wide popular delusion still exists to the effect that hypnotism ' paralyses the will/ and that its central phenomenon consists in ' subjecting ' the will of the patient to that of the operator. The only shadow of foundation for this erroneous belief is that when the hypnotic trance has once been induced in a particular subject, the same operator can very readily induce it again in the same person, so readily that his presence is not always necessary, and he has only to suggest that the trance will occur in his absence. It therefore appears to the uninstructed as though some strong ' Will-power ' were being exercised. Such is not the case. One of our greatest English authorities on hypnotic treatment writes : ' The central factor in all hypnotic treatment ought to be the development of the patient's control of his own organism. He should clearly under- stand that the operator exercises no mysterious SUGGESTION AND SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 93 power over him, but simply arouses forces which are latent in his the patient's own brain. It should be plainly pointed out to him that his disease frequently demonstrates the feebleness of his volition : he desires, for example, to resist drinking, but cannot ; he wishes to escape from an obsession, but is unable to do so. The hypnotic training which enables him to carry his wishes into effect does so by increasing, not diminishing, his voluntary control of his own organism. He should be taught to apply this increased power for himself, not only in the immediate instance for which he seeks relief, but also on other occasions for fresh troubles should these arise.' l There is a reason apart from concentration of attention why suggestions made under hypnotism succeed when those made to the subject in the waking state fail. In the hypnotic trance, as in dreams, he does not reflect whether such and such a result is ' likely to ' or ' can ' follow upon the assurance that it will. The sub-con- scious mind accepts without question what the conscious would reject as ' impossible.' An inhibition is removed, and thereupon the im- 1 J. Milne Bramwell, M.D. t Hypnotism. 94 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE possible ceases to be such and the cure is accomplished, the evil habit broken, or the obsession removed. But so much does this good result depend upon the co-operation of the patient that if (as too frequently in dipsomania or the drug-habit) the patient does not desire to be cured, hypnotic suggestion is ineffectual. Where it succeeds the patient's wish to benefit is sincere, and co-operates with the therapeutic suggestions. In the case of intelligent subjects, Dr. Brainwell observes that ' it may be advisable to tell them something about modern hypnotic theory, and to explain that possibly the phenomena of hypnosis may be due to the arousing of powers dormant in a secondary consciousness.' 1 . Without going into the difficult and still obscure phenomena of secondary and multiple consciousness or personality, it is obvious that to convince a weak-willed or desponding subject that the curative power he hopes to experience resides after all in himself, must be of enormous benefit to him. He is roused thereby to a confidence and hopefulness he could not otherwise attain, and probably if this explanation had been more fre- quently and persistently inculcated by medical 1 Hypnotism, p. 268. S UGGES TION AND S UB- CO NSC 10 US MIND 95 hypnotisers, their results from the therapeutic point of view would have been even more striking than they are. As it is, the results are amply sufficient to show that mind-healing is not only a reality, but one of which the importance and potency will assuredly become more and more recognised. All cure by hypnotic suggestion is cure by strengthening the mind of the subject to contend successfully with conditions which were proving to be beyond its control. And so long as the aim is solely to attain and confirm his self-control, no objection can be raised to the use of hypnotic methods for the cure of physical ailments, or for the still more important pur- pose of strengthening the moral powers against tendencies to, or actual dominion of vicious habits. At the same time, it should always be remembered that the need of such help shows a weakness in the patient which ought not to exist. Better early training, more consistent and persevering self-discipline, a knowledge and practical application of the simple psy- chological methods which should lead to the overcoming of ' obsessions ' and of nervous weak- nesses generally, would do away with the need for the extraneous aid of hypnotism. Not to 96 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE use it when it is needed, however, would, in the light of modern knowledge on the subject, be simply foolish. The prejudice against it has largely arisen from its having been too frequently employed for the purpose of experiment, and from inane public exhibitions when the so-called hypnotiser and hypnotised were alike clever frauds. An erroneous but common delusion with regard to hypnotism must not pass without mention, viz., that the operator obtains a moral control over his subject, which, in bad hands, may be cruelly and wickedly abused, actual incitation to crime being given and followed. Sensational episodes in novels and the halfpenny press are chiefly responsible for the wide prevalence of this erroneous supposition. The notion underlying it is that the hypnotised person becomes a mere automaton, unable to resist any suggestion made to him. That this is not true is obvious from the fact that for therapeutic purposes his co-opera- tion, or at any rate his non-resistance, is needful, if they are to be successful ; but there is stronger evidence than this. Dr. Bramwell asserts that the element of ' helpless obedience ' was in- variably absent in his own subjects, and cites SUGGESTION AND SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND 97 instances pointing to the same conclusion from the practice of other physicians. 1 He also points out that hypnotised patients themselves, when questioned as to their mental condition, do not avow or display any weakening of their powers of reasoning or resistance to suggestion. 2 1 Hypnotism, pp. 323-30. 2 They are questioned, of course, while still under hypno- tism. Hypnotised persons retain no memory on awaking of what has been said to or by them during the trance. CHAPTER VI INTIMATIONS OF AN OEDER BEYOND THAT OF NATURE THE facts adduced in the last chapter lead in- evitably to the conclusion that our mental life possesses a far more extended range than we ordinarily think it has. That which we at any moment are conscious of perceiving, reflecting upon, or remembering is only a small part of our experience. Beyond it and below it is a whole world of mental activity which is ours, which from moment to moment is affecting us, but of which we are nevertheless ignorant. Very curious instances of intellectual power, exercised in a manner not the least understood by their pos- sessors, occur in the ' calculating boys ' who from time to time astonish and perplex the learned world, but in after life seldom exhibit any unusual mathematical ability, and frequently lose that which they exhibited when young. AN ORDER BEYOND THAT OF NATURE 99 Quite apart from any abnormal phenomena, however, most of us are conscious at various periods of our life of sudden exaltations of mental power, ' inspirations ' as they are frequently called. We find ourselves ' seeing what ought to be done,' 'taking in ' the bearings of embarrass- ing and complicated circumstances, cutting the Gordian Knot of difficulty, in a way of which we had not supposed ourselves capable. And there is every reason to believe that at such moments our latent and sub -conscious possibilities become actual. We are for the time in conscious pos- session and control of so far unsuspected powers. We are more than we knew ; and though we do not remain at this high level, but allow our- selves impotently to fall back into mediocrity or inferiority, still the experience reveals heights and depths in our nature before which we stand surprised, which we can never again wholly forget. There are some indeed who do more than this, to whom the revelation of possibilities is not fitful but steadfast, an incentive to accomplish- ment beyond that which meaner souls care to attempt. To such persons high aims are native ; they brush aside obstacles which to others ioo THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE seem insuperable, or use them as rungs in the ladder by which they mount. They are the geniuses of our race, the moulders of its destiny, to whom opportunity comes not as an occasion for decision, but as an instrument ready made to their hand, of which they alone perceive the capabilities. External opportunity appears in some cases to be the torch at which genius takes fire, without which it might have smouldered un- perceived for ever. In others no such awakening is needed, they make their own opportunity. To the former class belong, broadly speaking, great statesmen, military leaders, religious and social reformers ; to the latter, philosophers, poets, prophets, artists, musicians, very fre- quently scientific discoverers. The former class must speak to their age, as well as beyond it, the latter most frequently speak beyond it. They are ' before their time,' as the saying goes. Their fellows have to grow up to them. It is, however, a remarkable and most instructive fact that true genius wins ultimate recogni- tion, whether its appeal be to the intellect, to the moral or aesthetic sense, or to spiritual insight. It has been well said that this can only be because ' the intuitions of Genius call forth AN ORDER BEYOND THAT OF NATURE 101 echoes from the depths of our own souls, awaking dormant faculties which can apprehend if they cannot create, which can respond if they cannot originate. The " Principia " of Newton, unin- telligible to the great mass of his learned con- temporaries, are now the ABC of the student of the higher Mathematics. The dramas of Shake- speare, appreciated by the theatre-goers of his day only for the pleasure to be derived from their poetry and their action, are now read and pondered by every student of Human Nature as the embodiment of the profoundest and most uni- versal Knowledge. And the Grand Symphony of Beethoven, which was laid aside as incompre- hensible by the most cultivated musicians of his day, is now the delight, not only of the select few, but of the many whom the more advanced culture of the present generation has made capable of appreciating a great work of musical art.' All the higher progress of mankind depends, and must depend, on this power of inner response, itself a witness that the scope of human nature is wider and loftier than that which at any given moment can be predicated of it. ' Man's reach 1 Carpenter, Mental Physiology, p. 506. 102 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE exceeds his grasp or what 's Heaven for ? ' says Browning. The heaven of the ideal is the great stimulus to effort, the potent alchemy by which the actual is transformed, the summit never attained towards which all climbers mount. In the race, then, lie potentialities of which it is as yet unconscious, urging it continually on an ascending path, revealed to it from time to time by those pioneers of their kind of whom ' the world ' their contemporary world is never worthy. It is the highest glory of such men that by their means the world that follows is rendered worthy, lifted to a higher level than without them it would have attained. In regard to the pioneers themselves the ques- tion arises, through what medium does their illumination come, that intuition which they never doubt and find so abundantly justified by its results ? There can be little doubt of the answer. It is through the sub-conscious mind. From this mental region so long ignored issue those sudden inspirations and transitory gleams of exaltation of which no human life is wholly bereft, and of which the supreme experi- ences of genius are but transcendent examples. There are those who would have us believe that AN ORDER BEYOND THAT OF NATURE 103 the source as well as the channel of such in- spiration lies wholly within, that if the ' meanest flower that blows ' raises in the poet's heart ' thoughts that do lie too deep for tears,' they are entirely the work of his ' imagination/ that in fact a yellow primrose is really nothing but a yellow primrose save for the factitious signifi- cance with which he clothes it. It need hardly be said that this is not the way in which the poet regards the matter. What he feels is that some- thing in the flower itself makes a strong and tender appeal to him, opens avenues of insight which, were his eyes but pure and penetrating enough, would unseal the deepest mysteries of being. Chesterton beautifully expresses this in his lovely little poem ' The Holy of Holies,' the quotation of which will need no apology even to those readers most familiar with it. Elder Father, tho' thine eyes Shine with hoary mysteries, Canst thou tell what in the heart Of a cowslip-blossom lies ? Smaller than all things that be. Deeper than the deepest sea, Stands a little house of seeds Like an elfin granary. 104 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE Speller of the stones and weeds, Versed in Nature's crafts and creeds, Canst thou tell what hidden lies In the smallest of the seeds'? God Almighty, and with Him Cherubim and Seraphim, Filling all eternity Adonai Elohim. The poet's feeling, the artist's feeling is that he responds to the mighty heart of Nature as really and as intimately as he responds to the heart of his friend. The scientist in his own way feels the same thing. The truth which he seeks is waiting for him to discover ; he does not manu- facture, he would scorn the notion, he finds. And the experience of the poet, the artist, the man of science, is the same in kind though not in degree as that of every lover of nature, every intelligent hearer of the marvels of scientific discovery, every tourist whom the grandeur of mountain scenery strikes into sudden silence, every child who turns in sobbing awe from his first sight of the sea. The time has gone by when any serious effort was made to depreciate this sense of a vaster life, surpassing and including our own. ' Cosmic emotion ' and ' cosmic consciousness ' are terms AN ORDER BEYOND THAT OF NATURE 105 with which the literature of the day makes us familiar. Indeed they commend themselves to some persons because it is thought that they carry little or no religious significance. On this point it may be permitted to express a doubt. The fundamental principle of all religion is pre- cisely the conviction, that in and beyond the visible and the tangible dwells an invisible Reality with which man is in intimate contact. It is this conviction, vague and wordless per- haps, but none the less intense, which consti- tutes cosmic consciousness, and awakens cosmic emotion. Hence whether or not the term ' religion ' be used, or the content of any definite religious creed be accepted, the principle of religion is there ; and the deep minds of every religious persuasion, or of none, feel alike that man's knowledge and his strength need to be drawn not only from the ' things which are seen ' ; they require to be fed from those high and hidden sources which respond to the deepest needs of his inner as well as his outer life. From these high sources alone can he receive that command of his own nature, its capacities and resources, indispensable to his continued spiritual progress, and consequently also to his io6 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE physical progress. The body in him should be subordinate, and if it is unduly exalted, he destroys the unity of his being and renders himself the prey, instead of the master, of conditions which without his initiative and co-operation would have been unknown in nature. That science as well as philosophy and religion recognises this fact is well shown in the following weighty words, addressed by Professor Ray Lankester to the British Association at York in 1906 :- ' It should, I think, be recognised that there is no essential antagonism between the spirit of Science and . . . the religious sentiment. " Re- ligion," said Bishop Creighton, " means the knowledge of our destiny and of the means of fulfilling it." We can say no more and no less of Science. Men of Science seek in all reverence to discover the Almighty, the Everlasting. They claim sympathy and friendship with those who, like themselves, have turned away from the more material struggles of human life, and have set their hearts and minds on the knowledge of the Eternal.' These words are a fitting introduction to the considerations upon which the reader is now AN ORDER BEYOND THAT OF NATURE 107 asked to enter. No possibilities are in the full sense human which leave out of account the spiritual and the eternal, no means of amelioration and progress effectual which treat man from the partial and temporal point of view entailed by such an omission. All Christians would unhesitatingly subscribe to the above statement, but by no means all would be willing to receive as their allies the teachers and professors of secular learning. Such allies in truth are among the most important and helpful. The truths they impart, and the facts they set in relief shed a flood of light on the Christian Revelation. Prejudice, preposses- sion, and ignorance of any aspects of knowledge save those which they have made their own may lead Churchmen as they sometimes lead men of science to declare and believe that the complementary aspect is false and misleading. Yet such a limitation of view is far rarer now than it was, and it may be permitted to hope will become rarer still with the lapse of time, till at last the Church of Christ recognises how rich a heritage is the knowledge of the Ways of God in creation, as scientific research and discovery reveal them. That knowledge is not ultimate. io8 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO W LEDGE It does not pretend to be. It does not claim even to ' explain ' (as has been erroneously sup- posed,) the simplest facts upon which it rests. But it does claim, and vindicates its claim, to give the most accurate description of all natural processes, so far attainable by man. That the description yet needs amending in many ways, that it will perpetually require extending and recasting to cover fresh discoveries and ever widening regions of research is undeniable ; and no scientist worthy of the name would ever seek to deny it, for he beyond all men is aware that no science can be final. But he is also aware that true science has the capability of an ever closer approximation to truth, and that every patient worker, every humble student, may, in his measure, forward that approximation. CHAPTER VII THE RELATION BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MAN BEFORE entering explicitly upon the most im- portant division of this little volume, that indeed to which all the previous considerations have been intended to lead up, there is need to give some attention to the subject which forms the title of the present chapter, the relation of in- dividual man to human society. It was for long supposed that the evolution of man, following what was regarded in immediately post Darwinian days as ' a law of nature ' for the whole organic world, had been ' a perpetual struggle among half -starved individuals thirsting for one another's blood.' It was under this guise that the ' struggle for life ' was mainly presented to the modern world by followers of Darwin who failed to grasp the full bearing of their great master's teaching. Consequently ' they made 109 no THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE modern literature resound with the war cry of woe to the vanquished, as if it were the last word of modern biology. They raised the pitiless "struggle" for personal advantages to the height of a biological principle which man must submit to as well, under the menace of otherwise succumbing in a world based upon mutual extermination.' 1 Even Huxley, despite his acute perception and wide scientific knowledge, supported this errone- ous conception. In a paper published in the Nineteenth Century in 1888, he says, ' From the point of view of the moralist, the animal world is on about the same level as a Gladiator's Show. The creatures are fairly well treated and set to fight ; whereby the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumb down, as no quarter is given.' Darwin himself inter- preted very differently his own theory. ' In The Descent of Man he gave some powerful pages to illustrate the proper wide sense of [the struggle for life]. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how 1 Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, p. 4. INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MAN in that substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. Those com- munities, he wrote, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of off- spring.' Biologists of the present day recognise this far more adequately than was done when the gentler aspect of the ' survival of the fittest ' was ' overshadowed by the masses of facts ' gathered to illustrate its opposite side. They perceive that ' though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst various classes of animals, there is at the same time as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amongst animals belonging to the same species, or at least to the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.' And if we ask nature through observation and study : ' Who 1 12 THE CHURCH AND NE IV KNO WLEDGE are the fittest [to survive], those who are con- stantly at war with each other, or those who support one another, we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid, are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances, the highest development of intelligence, and bodily organisation.' x If we turn to that which concerns us most nearly, human evolution, it is at once obvious that man, physically defenceless, and dependent solely on his superior brain-power for survival, must inevitably have perished if the principle of co-operation had not been brought to bear in his own case. This view is supported by the fact that ' as far back as we can go in the palaeolithic history of mankind, we find men living in societies in tribes similar to those of the highest mammals.' 2 A very long prehistoric evolution apparently had to be gone through before the appearance of the family either polygamous or monogamous as a social unit ; but in early historic times it was already playing a supremely important part, and was a direct step towards adequate recog- nition of the worth and dignity of the individual as such. 1 Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, pp. 5-6. 2 Op. cit., p. 79. INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MAN 113 From the most primitive ages, no doubt, in- dividuals of superior strength, and more especi- ally of superior intelligence, were raised to a high position among their fellows ; but when the individual became able to create a centre of life and activity about himself, when in himself he became a collective strength, his value was enor- mously enhanced. This view is corroborated by what we know of patriarchal times. The power and influence of the patriarch was in direct proportion to the number of relations over whom he held sway, very frequently, therefore, to the number of his sons. The family ambition was not to remain a family merely, but so to increase and multiply that in the course of generations it should become a nation, looking back to a single ancestor, and resting its proudest claims on the common descent from him. This aspect of patri- archal life and ambition is well illustrated by the history of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the sacred writings. Later in historic times, we see, coincidently with the continued rise and spread of ever more highly developed social institutions, individuals becoming increasingly valued for their intrinsic qualities of head or heart, as well as for their H 1 14 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE services to the community. National heroes, saints and poets held a high place in the estimation of their fellows. Genius, always an individual possession, though of far wider than individual significance, emerges into sight and honour, though frequently only after the life manifesting it has ceased. Yet the fact of its invariable recognition sooner or later, when the general mind has sufficiently ripened, indicates wherein lies the supreme value of individuality. It is the growing point of the race. It is thence that fresh impulses proceed, new departures are taken ; and it is a lesson which every parent, every teacher, statesman or philanthropist needs to lay to heart, that the repression of indi- viduality, however seemingly desirable for the moment, is always fraught with danger and certain to be unjust. Geniuses are human variations ; and variations, as has been said, not of man only, but of the whole organic world, 'are always expressions of the creature's individuality, of its creative genius ; they cor- respond to the poet's fancies and the philo- sopher's hypotheses ; they represent organic imagination.' x 1 J. A. Thomson, Bible of Nature, p. 170. INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MAN 115 In the case of the lower creation, plant and animal alike, there is not, so far as we know, any method of perpetuating a variation save that of biological selection, either natural or artificial, acting largely through heredity. With man it is different. He has the accumulated experience of countless generations consciously to fall back upon ; he can reflect and reason upon that ex- perience ; he can form ideas, and assimilate new ideas ; he can search into nature and into him- self, he can record the results he thus obtains, and correct them by subsequent thought and experiment ; he can, if he chooses, learn lessons of vital import through the study of history. To him, therefore, the advent of an individual of high originality and power in any region of knowledge or practice is of an importance only to be measured by the conscious grasp other men are able to take of the opportunity offering itself. And as we have seen, that does not terminate, in many instances it hardly even begins, during the lifetime of the contemporary generation. The individual of genius, therefore, is of a racial im- portance which may go on increasing for an almost indefinite period of time, until indeed the whole race has reached the standard which he 1 1 6 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLED GE singly attained. The attainment of the race is the end towards which his individual life serves, apart from which neither he nor it is made perfect. Nothing so strikingly illustrates the solidarity of mankind as this interdependence between the individual and the race. The chief one had well- nigh said the whole significance of each lies in the other. It is well for our present purpose to dwell on this interdependence, for we have here a very strik- ing introduction to the most important tenet of the Christian faith, viz., the relation of Christ to the race of which He was and is a member. It is in supreme degree that which every human individual, and more especially every individual of genius, in his measure also holds. From the human point of view, the whole significance of Christ lies in mankind, and in the Church whose mission it is to bring that significance home to mankind. And the whole significance of man- kind and of the Church, and of all their individual members, lies in Christ, the Ideal Man, who set the standard of attainment for the race. In the following chapter, we shall endeavour to follow out this thought in some detail ; but a INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL MAN 117 brief reference must first be made to the connec- tion between the part of our whole subject on which we are now entering and that which has been treated in preceding chapters. We have so far been following the scientific view of man, that knowledge of him which much observation and experience carefully recorded, and correlated with those sequences which we call natural laws have enabled us to attain. And for this purpose we have been speaking in the language of science. But we are about to approach man from a different and a more fundamental point of view, viz., that of the Christian Religion, and the language which we must now employ changes accordingly. It is not possible to speak in two languages at once, and if the endeavour is made it is bound to end in confusion. But that does not controvert the fact that by comparing the two we may find that each throws light on the other. It is the con- viction of this fact which has led to the writing of the present volume, the conviction, that is, that the knowledge of man which science gives us, and the knowledge which our Christian faith and experience give us, mutually aid in the inter- pretation of human destiny. To some readers the scientific, and to some the religious language ii8 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE will be that which chiefly appeals, but both classes are asked to take the two into dispas- sionate consideration, for only thus will they arrive at the thought which animates the whole of the contents of the present work. CHAPTER VIII THE IDEAL MAN AND THE SON OP GOD THE claim of Christ towards man was twofold, (1) to be the Ideal Man ; (2) to be the Divine Empowerer of Man to attain that Ideal. We will consider each of these in turn. (1) Man is an intelligent and purposeful creature. He has arrived at such a stage in his evolution as enables him to take stock of his position, to demand whither his development tends, and to consider how he may best direct it, so as to make actual the highest possibilities which he conceives himself capable of attaining. It is obvious that nothing could so powerfully assist him as some clear assurance of what those possi- bilities are, and whence derived ; and from the earliest historic times we find him endeavouring to get into conscious touch with the Source and Origin of his being. Crude and misguided as 119 120 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE many of his efforts have been, they nevertheless had their basis in a very sound and reasonable conviction, viz., that in order to come in contact with Reality it is necessary to get behind and beyond appearance. Many prophets and teachers, the spiritual geniuses of their time, arose to assist their race in the age-long quest upon which it had embarked. The greatest of these became the Founders of the world-religions, and of all of them it may be said that, however partial and in many respects defective, their message to their fellows may have been, it was never wholly erroneous. It always contained some consider- able portion of truth. All these inspired mes- sengers, for such we may truly consider them, regarded themselves as in special relation with that invisible Reality which they strove to make known to their fellows. They were Its servants, Its mouthpieces, Its chosen envoys. But there was a claim which no one of them ever made, to be in his own person the Ideal Man, the perfect exemplification of the relation of man to God. And this is the precise claim which Christ did make. He was the Son of Man. Focussed in Him was the whole of human potentiality, and focussed in Him also the whole significance of THE IDEAL MAN AND THE SON OF GOD 121 man's relation to the Divine. He was the Son of God. It is here of course that the crux lies. Divine Incarnation in the race is not averse to many thoughtful minds of the day. But Divine Incar- nation in an Individual is repulsive to some of the same minds, and to this aspect of the subject we will presently return. Let us first continue our consideration of the human side of Christ's Person and mission. From that point of view He was the most transcendent spiritual genius the world has ever seen. But He was subjected to the same limitations as those to which all geniuses, spiritual or other, are sub- ject. As a human individual, He was set in a particular historical environment with the par- ticular conditions of culture and experience which such an environment implies. Further, though He gave during His life on earth certain evident indications of powers which man as man should possess, but which actually he very rarely shows any sign of possessing, it was in two directions alone that He gave full, actual demonstration of attainment, and that was in realisation of man's relation to God and of his relation to his fellows. It is of importance that we should observe 122 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE what this implies. It signifies that His whole aspiration, purpose, and endeavour were bent upon the elucidation of that two -fold relation. Nothing could compare in importance with it. Nothing could come near it in significance and worth. It is not difficult to see why the Ideal Man needed to be thus God-possessed. Upon the relation of man to the Source and Support of his being depends ultimately the whole course of his evolution. If that is rightly apprehended and acted upon, all other relations fall into place. Thus, if we may reverently so say, all the force of Christ's human nature was directed upon the adequate manifestation of this supreme relation. No one can read the Gospels without being im- pressed with the fact that the whole life and con- sciousness of Christ were governed and regulated by His deep and intimate sense of His relation to God ; and His conception of it was of a very definite type. It was no vague ' cosmic emotion ' ; it resulted in no alienation from His fellow-men. It was the abiding conviction of ' the Father's ' unfailing presence and unremitting care through- out the life of man. It was the consciousness of a Personal relationship, closer than the closest of human ties, dearer and holier than the most THE IDEAL MAN AND THE SON OF GOD 123 sacred, a relationship far deeper than is implied by the watchfulness of a merciful Providence over His creation. It was a true Kinship, of which the only adequate expression to human understand- ing was the Fatherhood of God, and the sonship of man. The affirmation of this relationship, the unequivocal terms of its proclamation, the special responsibilities and privileges attending it, constituted the very core and pith of Christ's message to men ; and upon it He founded His whole teaching and way of life. With regard to the latter, we may briefly mention certain salient characteristics before passing on to consider the second aspect of the claim of Christ. (a) Singleness of aim. His aim was to estab- lish the Kingdom of God upon earth, not in the far future, not partially, but at once and completely. And as a matter of fact He did inaugurate the Kingdom, but instead of Himself seeing its univer- sal acceptance, He was called upon to relinquish that splendid hope, and to leave to the Church which He founded with care and pain the charge of carrying His work through to completion. In this alteration of His expectancy we most clearly see the real human limitation which was His. He was not only the Man, He was a Man, a human individual. He would not have been that, had 1 24 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE not some vision of the way in which His great work should be accomplished presented itself to His mind. It is not possible to consider many of the early utterances and episodes of His ministry without perceiving that, in accordance with the eschatological traditions of His day, some external exercise of the Father's supreme power was that for which He originally looked to initiate the establishment of the Kingdom upon earth. At the same time His conviction that the Kingdom of God is within, paved the way for His acquiescence in the apparent failure of His mission, for the acceptance by His human understanding that it was inevitable. If the Kingdom of God worked from within outwards, from the heart to the life, then no supreme mani- festation of Divine Power externally given could suffice to establish it. That must be done by a radical change in the inner consciousness of men, and so in their outlook upon the external order. We may surely say with all reverence that Christ learned this, and learned it through painful and disappointing experience. ' Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience through the things which He suffered,' through the blindness, the contumacy, the faithlessness of His brother-men. THE IDEAL MAN AND THE SON OF GOD 125 But through all this His own aim never wavered. The establishment of the Kingdom was as pas- sionately desired at last as at first. The training of His disciples, His discourses to the multitude, His works of power, may we not add also His nights of prayer, were all directed to this end. And never, perhaps, was His singleness of pur- pose more strikingly exemplified than when He yielded Himself into the hand of His enemies, while yet He was firmly persuaded that He had but to ask, and ' the Father would send twelve legions of angels ' to His deliverance. In the hour of His greatest weakness, He yet retained His realisation of the Father's presence and all- sovereignty. It was indeed to Him, and not to human foes, that Christ gave Himself up. And thus we are brought to a second great character- istic of His life : (6) Self -surrender. The language of that whole life was : ' I come not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.' And the con- viction that the Father's Will was being accom- plished in and through and by Him, gave Him the calm consciousness of power which seemed ever present with Him, and is the third charac- teristic we have to consider. 126 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE (c) Consciousness of power manifested itself in various ways, not the least remarkable of which was His persistent and unwavering assurance that the forces of nature were under His control. The prolonged controversies about the Gospel ' miracles ' (we are speaking for the moment of our Lord's works of power, not of those greater manifestations of Divine Agency which His Incar- nation and Resurrection imply) have obscured one of the chief lessons to be learned from their occurrence, viz., the ascendency of man over his natural environment. Our Lord exercised His control over nature as man^ man filled with the Divine Spirit, in direct and intimate connection with that Spirit, thus illustrating the Divine conception of the sonship of man. And we may note, as of great interest from this point of view, His occasional audible appeal to 'the Father ' before He exercised the power which, as man, He felt was derived. The raising of Lazarus is a signal instance. The whole tenor of Christ's life regarded in its relation to the Natural Order implied and indicated man's ascendency in that Order. We have seen in previous chapters the scien- tific reasons for believing that the destiny of THE IDEAL MAN AND THE SON OF GOD 127 man is to acquire that ascendency ; further that at his present stage of evolution, the attainment of it is a necessity, if he is to solve successfully the problems which he himself has brought into existence. We have here, in the language not of science but of religion, the assurance that such indeed is the course marked out for him. To the Ideal Man the Natural Order presented no hindrance and no obstruction. Of course limi- tations it did impose. No finite being, and on the human side Christ was finite, can ever trans- cend all limitations, and the nature of these must depend on the constitution of the universe, of which that being is part. In the case of man that universe is represented by the Order of Nature, but his destiny in it is to be king, not slave. If the right understanding of man's relation to his natural environment is important, yet more important is his apprehension of his true rela- tion to his fellows. Here also the Ideal Man manifested the standard of perfection. In one sense, indeed, His position was unique. No other individual could be of equal significance with Himself. He was the First to show what man could be towards God and towards his fellow-man. But that which He attained was the 128 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE goal of attainment for all and each, viz., perfect and uncalculating love of and service to His brothers. We have seen that individuality is the growing point of the race. In Christ human individuality reached its culmination. From Him it took a new departure, of which the result is very partially seen as yet. Nor need this occasion any surprise. The pre-human evolution of man occupied, it is now thought, millions of years ; his subsequent evolution down to historic times perhaps millions more. Judged by this criterion, the Christian departure is in its infancy so far. ' It is not yet made manifest what we shall be ' even on earth. But since, when it is made manifest, we know that ' we shall be like him,' the Ideal Man, we have, or we may have if we choose, a fairly clear per- ception of the goal towards which it is ' the Father's ' Will that we should direct our efforts, viz. the full realisation of our Divine Sonship. What this implies, a careful consideration of the second aspect of the claim of Christ will assist us to understand. (2) Christ claims to be the Divine Ernpowerer of men to attain the standard which He set before them. No one of dispassionate judg- THE IDEAL MAN AND THE SON OF COD 129 ment can read the Gospels, the Synoptics equally with the Fourth, and fail to see that Christ was conscious of a special and unique relation to God, closer and higher than that which He taught all men to regard as theirs, and which He shared with them. It is upon this evident consciousness of His that there rests in the last resort the claim which the Church makes in His Name. It is ' the Rock ' upon which she is founded. ' Jesus in one of His dis- courses made it specially clear why and in what sense He gave Himself this Name [the Son of God]. The saying is to be found in Matthew, and not as might perhaps have been expected in John. " No man knoweth the Son save the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son willeth to reveal him."' 1 It is special knowledge of God which evidences the Divine Sonship. ' Jesus is convinced that He knows God in a way in which no one ever knew Him before, and He knows that it is His vocation to communicate this knowledge to others by word and by act, and with it the knowledge that men are God's children. In this consciousness He knows Him- 1 Harnack, What is Christianity ? I 130 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE self to be the Son called and instituted of God, to be the Son of God; and hence He can say, My God and My Father, and into this invocation He puts something which belongs to no one but Himself. How He came to the consciousness of the unique character of His relation to God . . . to the consciousness of His power, and of the obligation and the mission which this power carries with it, is His secret and no psychology will ever fathom it. The confidence with which John makes Him address the Father, "Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the World," is undoubtedly the direct reflection of the cer- tainty with which Jesus Himself spoke. Here all research must stop. . . . We must be content with the fact that this Jesus who preached humility and knowledge of self, nevertheless named Himself, and Himself alone, as the Son of God. He is certain that He knows the Father, that He is to bring the knowledge to all men, and that thereby He is doing the Work of God, . . . and in God's strength He will accomplish it. It was out of this feeling of power and in the pro- spect of victory that He uttered the words : "The Father hath committed all things unto me." Again and again in the history of mankind, men THE IDEAL MAN AND THE SON OF GOD 131 of God have come forward in the sure conscious- ness of possessing a Divine Message, and of being compelled whether they will or not to deliver it. But the message has always happened to be imperfect ; in this spot or that defective ; bound up with political or particularistic elements ; de- signed to meet the circumstances of the moment ; and very often the prophet did not stand the test of being himself the example of his message. But in this case the message brought was of the profoundest and most comprehensive character ; it went to the very root of mankind, and although set in the environment of the Jewish nation, it addressed itself to the whole of humanity the message from God the Father. Defective it is not, and its real kernel may be readily freed from the inevitable husk of contemporary form. Anti- quated it is not, and in life and strength it still triumphs to-day over all the past. He who de- livered it has as yet yielded His place to no man, and to human life He still to-day gives a meaning and an aim He the Son of God.' 1 In our own times, it seems as though men were more ready to accept the message than the claim of Christ. Yet we may well ask ourselves how 1 Harnack, What is Christianity f pp. 127-30 132 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE such a message could be given to human beings, imperfect and unworthy as they are, except by One who could justly make this very claim. Whom save the Son of God could we believe if He told us that we are sons of God ? The hesi- tation often arises, as has been already intimated, from aversion to the idea of Incarnation in an Individual. Leaving on one side the evident anthropomorphism which consists in judging by human standards what is and is not consonant with the Divine dignity, let us ask ourselves in what way a revelation of God to man containing the element of universality, could have been made save in and through an Individual ? Lacking this qualification, it could not be universal, for individuality is an essential human character- istic. From all time men are and have been in- dividuals, and need, equally with response to the social side of their nature, an appeal to that in them which is unique. It is true, indeed, and we need from time to time to remind ourselves of it, that this revelation of the ' Father ' in the ' Son,' was suited to men, to the human apprehension which can never penetrate the ultimate mysteries of the Divine Being. God manifested of Himself what He THE IDEAL MAN AND THE SON OF GOD 133 could manifest to man, and chose for the purpose that which would come most directly home to him, a human life. Christ spoke in the language of men, and in the language of men He expressed their relationship to God, viz., sonship. In their language also He expressed His own, the supreme essential Sonship, thus indicating that man's sonship, his intimate tie to the Origin and Fount of his being, was nothing superficial, but had its root in the unfathomable recesses of the Divine Nature Itself. More than this, it is not conceiv- able that the human heart and mind could grasp. As much as this both heart and mind deeply needed. And this, if we make allowance for the antiquated metaphysical form in which they are couched, is what our creeds endeavour to set forth. The wisest theologian can go no further, the simplest Christian can go as far. CHAPTER IX THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH AND THE VOCATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN one sense the mission of the Church has never changed. It is always, under all circumstances, the evangelisation of the world. In another sense it is always changing, nay presents, even at the same date, very varied aspects, for ' the world ' covers a vast region in the multitude of its occupations, interests, and needs, in the almost infinite variety of human character which it presents, in the aims and ideals by which at different periods of time it is actuated. We will not enter into an historical retrospect of the way in which the Church has understood her mission in past ages, deeply interesting though such a retrospect would be. Our immediate concern is with the way in which she understands it, or should understand it, in our own age. In the first place it is evident that though to 134 135 make known the Gospel, the Fatherhood of God to man, the brotherhood of man in Christ, to nations as yet ignorant of it, is most undoubtedly still part of the Church's mission, it is neverthe- less only part, and perhaps under pressure of present necessity, not even the most important part of that mission. The whole outlook of the human race has changed enormously during the last hundred years. The new knowledge which science, history, comparative religion, ancient literature have brought to light, is almost over- whelming in its quantity and import. It has come with such rapidity, with such convincing- ness that the minds of most men quail before it. They are in doubt what to think, especially as it has brought in its train a totally new set of social and economic problems. Even those who might have looked with indifference on the changed aspect of thought, cannot turn their backs on the burning practical questions which the rapid rise of democratic aims and ideals has brought into vital prominence. The Church, i.e. the whole body of Christians to whatever denomina- tion they belong, has to ask herself what light and guidance she has afforded to this new world of mighty interests and teeming ideals. She is, 136 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE according to her Lord's estimation of her, ' the light of the world,' a ' city set on a hill.' What has she done, what is she doing, and what ought she to do to justify the titles thus bestowed upon her? Within the compass of one small volume, it is impossible to pursue this inquiry through the many fields into which it would lead. It will, therefore, be confined to that which occupied the first seven chapters, viz. the new knowledge of man in his physical, psychological, and social aspects which science has brought to bear upon the present age. It is not too much to say that for many years after the first great scientific discoveries and generalisations, known to most men under the term ' Darwinism,' were made public, the Church was chiefly occupied in combating them. Hardly any of her accredited teachers waited to see if there was really any need for all the outcry and anger which arose. In England the form of opposition largely took the nature of declaring that these facts were not in the Bible, that what- ever discoveries relating to the supposed origin of man and course of nature were different to the Bible narrative must be false, that those of THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 137 Darwin and his compeers were so, and that conse- quently they must be rejected. But they were not false ; incomplete of course they were, and even with all the additions and modifications which have since been made in them, they are still incomplete. Yet no one now doubts that in their main outlines they are true, and no educated churchman either in the ministry or laity would regard himself as furthering the Church's work by endeavouring to controvert them. How was it that this panic arose, that the Church laid her- self open to the accusation of shutting her eyes to truth which afterwards she had to acknow- ledge, and wasted valuable years in efforts to intrench herself in a quite impossible position ? The answer is not far to seek. She had allowed herself to place on a footing of equal importance with the central message of her Lord a body of doctrine, much of which is not even implied in the Creeds, and which she yet clung to with an almost desperate grasp. In one large division of the Church, that which specially arrogates to itself the designation Catholic, the chief dogma which conflicted with the new knowledge was the infallibility of the Church. In another, that comprised under the term Protestant, it was the 138 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE infallibility of the Bible. It was supposed by almost all Christians that the Church and the Bible were both committed to a special cosmo- gony, giving a detailed account of the origin of man not at all compatible with that which science was putting forward. Hence the opposition awakened. It is possible at the present time to look back upon the fierce conflict which ensued with some amount of dispassionate- ness, and to see how futile and unnecessary it really was. The infallibility of the Church is comparatively speaking a novel tenet. It was not claimed for centuries after the birth of Chris- tianity. The promise of the guidance of the Spirit of truth, the fulfilment of which through the ages we can trace despite many aberrations on the part of what was after all a society of human beings, did not guarantee a perfection of insight which should render all error and mis- understanding impossible. That would have been to remove the Church altogether from the sphere of human trial and human effort. Guid- ance means leading along a way which may be rendered very devious by the weakness of those who tread it, but which is nevertheless a sure way to the goal. Despite all failures and imper- THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH 139 fections, we can gratefully acknowledge that the Church has been so led. Her declaration of her infallibility was a stumbling-block which she cast in her own way, for it led her to be dogmatic where she should have allowed a large margin for new light and fresh inspiration, and to regard as de fide special decisions on questions which the wisdom of the early Fathers had led them, when drawing up the creeds, to pass over in silence. The cosmogony of Genesis is not de fide, though it contains much of spiritual import and in- struction if approached as a conception of early religious thought and insight. What has been said with reference to the in- fallibility of the Church is equally true of the infallibility of the Bible. Nowhere is this claim made in the Holy Scriptures themselves. The treasure they contain and how great that treasure is, only careful and reverent students can form any adequate idea is contained in an earthen vessel, the earthen vessel of human language and contemporary human understand- ing which dims, sometimes seems to distort, the truth they convey. Yet it is true at the present day to unnumbered Christians of all ranks and of all degrees of culture, that the sacred 140 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE writings are as they were to the Psalmist, 'a light unto their feet and a lamp unto their path.' But they cannot take the place of the Source of the light, the Holder of the lamp. We have deep need to remember that the ' impregnable rock is neither an institution nor a book, but a life of experience.' No external staff, however strong, however sacred, can take the place of that Pre- sence which is the very life of the Church, and of every one of her individual members. Not of the Society He founded, not of the Scriptures which testified to Him, but of Himself did our Lord say : ' I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.' The Church has erred in turning the eyes of her own members, and of the world to which she is to act as light, too much upon herself and her credentials, and too little upon Christ. We may well recognise that not willingly nor of forethought has she done this, but in a mistaken conception of her message. The message never grows old, or weak, or inapplicable. The Fatherhood of God, the Sonship of man, the revelation of that Sonship in and through Him who was Himself the, Son both of God and man, these are truths ever capable of expression in new thought, and new language, to meet the new demands of each THE MISSTON OF THE CHURCH 141 succeeding age ; and these are the truths which it is the sacred mission of the Church, not only to safeguard, but to express with fresh inspiration from generation to generation. In order to do this, it is essential that she should be acquainted with contemporary thought and its contemporary expression. It is not suffi- cient for instance, that she should vaguely know that science is constantly throwing new light on the fundamental problems of man and the universe by putting them in a new way. It is within the province of science not to answer these problems but to state them with clearer understanding and precision ; and of this clearer understanding and precision, the Church should be quick to take advantage. Not that she need or should commit herself to every new and startling scientific theory and generalisation, not that her ministry should leave on one side their special work in order to immerse themselves in secular culture. But this seems a case to which the words might well apply : ' These ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone.' Pastoral over- sight, missionary zeal both at home and abroad, preaching the Gospel, administering the Sacra- ments, it is not possible to overvalue these first 142 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE duties of the Christian ministry, but it is possible so one-sidedly to emphasise them as to exclude all others from sight. Then there are the ranks of the laity, many of whom are admirably fitted to give voice to the questions which are perplexing numbers amongst them. But they rarely come forward to do so, and still more rarely make any attempt towards suggesting the answers. Is not this partly at any rate because they feel that the clergy would not welcome their efforts, and would for the most part respond with theological technicalities to inquiries which go far deeper than these can reach ? It seems to be generally acknowledged that the clergy and the laity are largely ' out of touch.' This is a very deplorable fact if true, for such a severance of sympathy does not make for strength and efficiency in the Church at large. It is surely a defect which those who have vowed themselves to the service of Christ and their brothers in the most sacred of all callings should take the first steps to remedy by endeavouring to enter with deeper understanding and sympathy into needs and difficulties none the less real because intellectual and moral rather than spiritual. Above all the clergy should not be in THE VOCATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 143 ignorance, nor in the fear which ignorance breeds, of the new knowledge, but able and willing to confront it with the calm readiness of men whose faith is indeed founded on the impregnable rock of experience. All knowledge, natural as well as spiritual, is ultimately derived from the same Divine Source ; the religion of Christ offers a ready welcome to every kind of truth, but demands that it be set forth with the humility and open-mindedness which should characterise what must at best be but a partial and limited view of the ways of the Divine Wisdom in the Order of Nature. Turning to the consideration of individual vocation, one thought rises into special pro- minence. If indeed the Church believes that the kingdoms of this world, so largely repre- sented at the present day by realms of the intellect which are continually in a state of flux and development, are to become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ, she must recognise that every secular calling has to be raised to the status of a Divine Vocation. She must endeavour to bring home to all her individual members, not that they have to abandon their callings, but therein to abide with God. And 144 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE how can she do this save by means of individual effort ? It is but too true that only here and there are to be found men and women who are determined at all costs, and in defiance of the worldly maxims of expediency, to uphold the stern and exacting standard of Christian ethics. They do exist, however, in every walk of life, and it is through them that the Church will be purged of the worldly and material spirit with which she has become contaminated, and which makes her light shine so dimly. In education, in art, in politics, in trade, in every region of scientific research, there are some in- dividuals who realise, and work as realising, that they are called of God. These are the leaven through which the Church first, and the world afterwards, will be leavened. It is very needful that their zeal, their enthusiasm, their heaven- sent energy should not be looked upon coldly because it leads them, as it may do, into strong protest both of word and life against the slackness and feebleness which they see around them, and feel to be the worst enemies against which they have to contend. They need all the strengthen- ing and upholding which Christian brotherhood can bring them. There is no such fatal drag upon THE VOCATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 145 individual Christian effort as the coldness and indifference of the Church at large. And with regard to the individuals themselves, their need is to remember that to maintain a high standard of faith and effort despite all discourage- ment is their first duty to Christ and to the Church. The Church is her individual members. If they suffer from her low standard it is only by their endeavour it can be raised. And nothing so keenly brings home individual responsibility as the recognition that the very life of the com- munity depends upon individual loyalty. That is the case with all human societies, with the Church no less than with others. Only in the case of the Church there is a Divine Power of recuperation after decline which is characteristic of her alone, and which enables her time after time to rise victorious, when it had seemed that she was sick unto death. In this faith should all her individual members work. CHAPTER X THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY THE last chapter dealt generally with the mission of the Church so far as it is concerned with the new knowledge. It will be advisable now to give some detailed illustration of the way in which that knowledge affects her teaching and her practice ; and no better subject could be chosen than the redemption of the body. It is one of the greatest Christian hopes, it is one of the most urgent needs of the world to-day. Fully half the misery and suffering of mankind arises through some physical failure or disease. Fully half the temptations which beset the path of those who strive after righteousness arise either directly or indirectly through physical needs and impulses. A large amount of religious doubt is due to the consciousness of the pain and con- flict characteristic, not only of mankind, but of all animal life. How can a God of love and 146 147 goodness have constituted such a world, is the cry of many who would fain believe in a God of love if they could. On all these questions science is able to throw light, not by usurping the position of religion and giving answers to funda- mental questions, but by bringing forward facts with which it is the business of religion to deal in formulating her own answers, and through which the truths of religion appear in a new and transforming light. The first of these facts is the intimate relation of man to all other organic life, and of the latter to the whole material universe. It follows that, if man is recognised as a spiritual being, whatever matter in its ultimate essence may be, it is to him ' the alter ego of the spiritual, and any scheme that forgets this is doomed.' It is the language which the spiritual uses, or the form which it assumes to such creatures as we are ; and it is a false spirituality which endeavours to ignore this. It is recognised in the Christian scheme in the pro- foundest and yet in the simplest way possible. 'The Word,' the immanent Spirit which yet tran- scends that universe which It informs, 'became Flesh and dwelt among us.' There can be no greater tribute to the worth and dignity of the 148 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE physical than this. It was possible for the ' High and Holy One who inhabiteth Eternity ' to mani- fest Himself in that Order of Nature which men know and by which they are limited ; and that, not in a general and vague way such as Pantheism recognises, but definitely, in a definite human personality, at a definite historical epoch and in a definite social environment. We need not fear to say that the reality of our Christian faith, its power within and its effectiveness without us, are bound up with the truth of this statement. It is the one sufficient answer to all the perplexities of our relation to that spiritual reality with which we sometimes feel so closely akin, and from which at other times we seem so hopelessly divided. It is the sense of division which brings us face to face with the necessity expressed in the words ' redemption of the body,' a necessity which has often been mistakenly regarded as the need to be ' free ' from the body. It is true that as we now know it, it is a ' body of humiliation,' that it does too often seem to act as a drag upon our spiritual faculties, that too often the physical environment, the world of nature, appears to obscure instead of transmitting the heavenly light. But this only shows the body's need of THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY 149 redemption, and we must apply ourselves to consider seriously what is thus signified. In the first place, the redemption of the body is not something which is achieved merely for, but in and through man. We may regard it from one point of view as being slowly worked out in all his long ascent through more lowly forms of life up to his present stage, where it takes on a far deeper and more important meaning, because man now becomes respon- sible for its successful issue. We have seen in Chapter n. how he has modified his natural environment, how he has introduced into it difficulties and confusion which apart from his interference it does not manifest, and which he must remove if they are to be removed at all. It is evident that much can be done through science in this respect. Such researches as those into the causes of consumption, cancer, and other terrible ills with which man is afflicted, the recog- nition of the enormously important part played by the mind in the maintenance of health and the recovery from disease, are scientific instru- ments which can scarcely be overvalued so long as they are not allowed to usurp the whole field of view. It needs but little consideration, indeed, ISO THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE to see that they urgently require supplementing and re-inforcing. For instance, modern medical science has made abundantly clear : (1) that an enormous amount of malignant disease is due both directly and indirectly to sensual vice and excess ; (2) that chastity is not inimical to masculine health, but on the contrary is strongly conducive to it, especially in youth. Yet what effect is produced on the moral conduct of civil- ised men by either of these considerations ? Many of the ' lower ' animals compare to advan- tage with them in the matter of sexual relations. Nor is this to be wondered at. In animals the control of these functions has not been handed over, as in man, to the higher cerebral centres. In other words they are not consciously deliberate and volitional, but as we usually say ' instinctive.' And instinct in the lower animals does not err. But in man it is, or it should be, if he is indeed living as man, wholly subordinated to the con- scious reason. It has no restriction except what the latter imposes, and if reason imposes none, or almost none, the consequences, physical and mental, cannot fail to be deplorable, especially in the direction which at the present stage of man's evolution is most hurtful to him, viz., nervous THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY 151 balance. It is the nervous system which cruelly and inevitably suffers from sexual excess as well as from sexual vice, and it is the nervous system which, from the evolutionary point of view, man needs above all to strengthen and invigorate by every means in his power. The Church has always upheld an ideal of chastity ; but too often not as the natural human ideal compatible to the full with marriage relations, and suitable to the body no less than to the ' soul ' ; but as non-natural, to be attained through crushing and trampling down innocent and rightful physical claims, and attainable only by the few. Hence has arisen a double standard, over lax for the many, unnaturally strict for the few. In our own branch of the Church, there is without doubt a great awakening in this respect. The absolute necessity that Christians should without exception treat their own bodies and the bodies of their fellows as indeed temples of the Divine, is increasingly recognised and increas- ingly urged. But the enormity of the evil which has grown up, the wholly unnatural propensity to sexual vice and excess which is so widely pre- valent, the ignorant and injurious supposition still so largely common, even among women, as 152 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE to the 'necessity' for masculine self-indulgence in this respect, make the work of reform both in thought and practice exceedingly difficult. The Church has need of every aid by which her hands may be strengthened. And aid surely is to be found in that knowledge which proclaims that the present state of things is unnatural, that the body of man can be controlled and trained in the way it should go, that to let it run wild in youth undermines not only physical but also mental sanity. This is one aid which the Church can receive from science, but it is not the only one. It will be remembered that in Chapter n. our atten- tion was given to the subject of heredity, and the outcome of our considerations was (1) that civil- ised man to-day is in possession of fully sufficient information, if diffused and acted on, to secure him against degeneracy, and (2) that present scientific knowledge makes clear the large amount of responsibility which rests on man for the successful or unsuccessful issue of his own evolution. Here indeed is a tremendous weapon of which the Church may avail herself. Man is not to sit down and groan under the results of disease and criminality, but is to recognise that THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY 153 they are not the ' Will of God,' but the conse- quence of his own ignorance and wilfulness ; and that the Will of God is that he shall set to work in collaboration with those laws of nature, which only seem cruel because they are misunderstood, to remedy the evils which he has himself brought about. It is his duty and his privilege to set himself to build up a human body worthy of human potentiality. Science points the way, and suggests to him that this is his only hope. The Church has it in her power to declare to him that the hope is a sure and certain one, if he takes firm hold of the truth which it has been hers to proclaim from the first, the reality of the redemp- tion of the body to which the Incarnation is the supreme witness. Our physical organisation is neither to be undisciplined, nor to be neglected, stultified and denied, but to be raised, trans- formed, glorified ; and that not in the distant future, but so far as the limitations of earth allow, here and now. It and its environment are to be so transmuted and empowered that they will become the ' earthly form of the Kingdom of God,' a fitting transition to new and heavenly conditions, which no one can contend that, save exceptionally, they now are. And the means of 154 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE accomplishing this is the applied power of the Incarnation, the bringing home to every in- dividual the knowledge and the experience that there is a renovating force sufficient to overcome and to transform the worst passions, the most evil and vicious of habits, that in the name and power of Christ, a clean and strong and pure life is not only possible but happy, be- cause in accordance with the true ideal of human nature. This is one great and most urgently necessary direction for Christian effort to take, in order to make actual that ' redemption of the body ' the possibility and reality of which are one of the cardinal tenets of Christian faith. But of course it is not the only direction. Social problems beset our age. Class hatred, industrial discon- tent and unrest, national rivalry, were never more rife, and the remedy does not lie, as so many appear to think, in ever-growing armaments and incessant legislation. The latter, to some extent, is, the former claims to be, preventive, 1 but neither is remedial of the evils against which they 1 The stupendous European War, upon the first stage of which we entered while this work was going through the press, sufficiently indicates the terrible illusiveness of such an expectation. THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY 155 are directed. They are not fundamental enough for that. To do away with, even in any large measure to mitigate, class injustices and mis- understandings, international jealousies and sus- picions, such a change in human consciousness is needed as would result in a transvaluation of values and an insight into the relative values of human interests so keen and true that it would enable earthly life to assume larger and nobler proportions. Does this seem Utopian, impossible ? To men as they seem to others and to themselves, it is impossible ; but ' with God all things are possible,' and for what does the Church of Christ exist save to demonstrate that these divinely possible things are to be brought to fruition in and through human life and human society ? Here again her hands are strengthened by science, and that just where half a century ago she feared that they would be weakened. The principle of mutual aid is recognised now to be at least as much a ' natural law ' as that inter- necine war of species to which attention was for a time too exclusively directed ; and in the case of man it is known that not by isolated struggle but by social co-operation and endeavour he sur- 156 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE vived and dominated his natural environment. Many of the anomalies and apparently cruel conditions which perplex him are his own work. It is indeed not merely with, but on account of man, that a great deal of the ' groaning and travailing ' of the lower organic world takes place. It is for man to redeem those physical conditions which he has altered to the injury of other life than his own. Here again science points the way, the religion of Christ inspires the indomitable hope, the unremitting endeavour. So at least it should be. So it will be when the Church awakens to the present power of initiative, the availing promise of fulfilment that are hers if she will claim and use them. And in regard to the body social, declared by some to be reduced to a state of hopeless disease, and by others to be curable by all sorts of con- tradictory remedies, is not the true and indeed the only hope that it may be permeable to an extent hitherto thought unattainable by the Christian Ideal of the Common Good ? The Christian is the only sufficient, because the only truly comprehensive ideal. The ideals of the social class, the nation, indeed humanity itself except in its largest sense are all too narrow, THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY 157 too limited to go beyond a certain point, but there is no point at which the Christian Ideal is brought to a stand. All goods are included within it, all are brought up to the pitch at which conflict between them is not possible, because each enhances and contributes to the other. Social differences would indeed remain, because in- dividual differences must remain they are in- alienable from the fact of individuality ; but they would not be thought of as ' inequalities.' They would be looked upon as the opportunities of mutual service, the sign that each man has need of his brother, each social division of its complementary division. Inequality would be a term as inapplicable to human society as it would be to the colours in the solar spectrum. If the Church of Christ is not capable of rising to the level of this tremendous task, where or to whom can the world look for redemption from its present bondage ? It has been well said 'that it is a question if, in all its long history, Chris- tianity has had a greater task laid upon it than to-day . . . but if the task is hard, the labour is a glorious one . . . and if it be well done, the whole world of Christendom will enter upon a nobler phase of social life and a new chapter be 158 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE added to the history of Christianity, not un- worthy of its wonderful origin and past.' 1 Will it be so added ? The answer depends largely on the Church of to-day, therefore in a measure on every one of her individual members. The need is present, the power is present. Will there be faith and courage to bring the two into touch ? 1 Dr. Cairns, Christianity in the Modern World, pp. 289-91. CHAPTER XI THE LIFE OF PRAYER IN the preceding chapter we endeavoured to ascertain some part of the significance which the ' redemption of the body ' should possess to the Church of our own day. And there emerged very clearly the fact that ' the doctrine that the body is essentially a mere accident, or super- addition, or necessary defilement to the soul is profoundly untrue in its exaggeration and one- sidedness ; for if the body is the occasion of the least spiritual of our sins, it can and should become the chief servant of the spirit.' The training of this servant, though it may be slow and difficult, though it has been often mistaken and so far never adequate, is yet ' one of the most important means of development for the soul itself.' And in this connection it is of great importance to remember that ' many faults and vices are not occasioned by the body at all, whilst none are necessarily caused by it. Without the 159 160 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE body we should not have impurity, but neither should we have specially human purity of soul ; and without it, given the persistence and activity of the soul, there could be as great, and perhaps greater, pride and solipsism, the most anti- Christian of all vices.' l This reminder is given us by one of the profoundest of our modern teachers. But two thousand years ago the greatest of all teachers demonstrated the same truths both by word and act. It was not against sins of the body that our Lord directed His most scathing indignation, but against self -righteousness and spiritual pride, against the false formalism and ecclesiasticism which bound upon men burdens heavy and griev- ous to be borne, and would not touch one of them with so much as a finger of help or alleviation. It is obvious that if man is indeed a spiritual being, only through purity, elevation, and strength of spirit can his intelligence be rightly directed, or his physical organisation so ordered as to become the fitting exponent of that which seeks expression through it. Consequently the life of the spirit, the life which though it may be lived 1 Von Hiigel, The Mystical Element of Religion, vol. ii. pp. 327-81. THE LIFE OF PR A YER 161 in the natural order was not originated by it, but ' drew from out the boundless deep ' of the Divine, is the life which it is all important for man to cultivate. But here there arises in many minds a preliminary difficulty which must not be passed by without mention. If indeed our essential life drew from out the Divine Life, why does it ex- hibit such terrible anomalies and imperfections as those of which we are constantly aware ? Is the mere fact of finitude sufficient to account for them ? It hardly seems so. We touch here on questions so profound and mysterious that it is not credible human intelligence can have sufficient penetration even to formulate them correctly, far less to find the answers. There are those nevertheless who claim to have done so, and to have helped by means of the light vouch- safed to them many perplexed and suffering souls. The writer desires to say no word which would wound or offend any such, but while recognising much that is true and ennobling in ' the New Thought,' she feels that it fails to confront the actual and ever pressing problems of pain and moral evil with any approach to adequacy, and that it is wiser and better to recognise our in- competency to deal with them theoretically, than L i6a THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE to attempt a solution which does not solve. Practically these problems are not insoluble, and here the New Thought has doubtless been valuable to many, for it does insist strenuously upon the necessity of continual cultivation of the lif e of the spirit ; of the constant, hourly recognition of its Divine environment as the one means by which it can live freely and worthily. It may seem strange that teaching such as this should have appeared to any Christians as ' new.' But it is the sad fact that from one cause and another the Church has certainly to a great ex- tent failed to bring home to a vast number of her individual members the direct, practical conse- quences in ordinary, daily life of the indwelling power and environing presence of the Divine Spirit. It would be untrue and ungrateful to deny the fact that thousands of Christians at every era of the Church's existence have found and used strength to confront and overcome difficulties which they confess would have over- come them, had they been obliged to rely on their own strength alone. Yet it is nevertheless the case that Christians have acquiesced as a body, and individually, in limitations not divinely imposed, and have regarded as due to the ' inscrutable THE LIFE OF PR A YER 163 Will of God' much inefficiency, physical and other, much blundering and confusion of purpose and practice that a deeper and truer apprecia- tion of their Christian privileges would have prevented. We have touched on certain aspects of this question, those on which science was able to afford some light, but we have now to enter a region in which her help is of little or no avail, for science does not profess to offer any opinion or advice on matters purely spiritual such as prayer. The life of prayer is inculcated by the Church on all her children, but despite exceptional epochs and exceptional individuals, there has generally prevailed a very insufficient conception of what it really signifies and to what it really leads. An examination into these questions will occupy us in the present chapter. Prayer in its widest sense is communion with the unseen Spiritual Reality. It is not neces- sarily petition, though this is one form of prayer ; but petitions are offered by many of whom it would not be true to state that their life is a life of prayer. This implies before all things a con- sciousness of that Divine Environment in which 1 64 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNO WLEDGE we live and move and have our being, such a consciousness as changes our mental attitude towards the whole of our experience, co-ordin- ating, unifying, and illuminating it with a new and transcendent power. It has been said of Christians of the first period that they do not speak and write simply like men standing in the wake of a great pioneer discoverer in the realm of the soul, who has penetrated further into its great unchanging order ; they rather speak and act . . . like men awakening in a new and stupendous environment, an environment which renders a far freer and nobler life possible to them than was possible to their fathers.' 1 ' A far freer and nobler lif e ! ' is not that what men and women of the present day are ever pining and striving after ? Is not the lack of it, or of any apparent advance towards it, at the root of a vast amount of the restlessness and world-weariness by which our age is character- ised ? Yet we are Christians ; why are we not able to realise the ' new and stupendous environ- ment ' which set the early disciples at liberty to live the freer and nobler life for which we also long ? 1 Harnack, Chriitianity in the Modern World, p. 159. THE LIFE OF PRA YER 165 One answer which may be given to this inquiry is, that what sufficed for them does not suffice for us, that they turned their backs on ' this present world,' and left it as irredeemable, (as their ex- pectation of their Lord's immediate return, and the cruel persecutions which beset them rendered it inevitable that they should do,) and turned their hope and their attention exclusively ' upon the glory which should be revealed ' when the present world-order had passed away. That attitude is not possible to the Church of our own age, nor is it fitting that she should strive after it. It is, or it should be, clear to her that through her the Kingdom of God is to be established on earth, that earthly conditions are to be exalted and transmuted into the highest of which they are capable before they give place to the heavenly. But it is not recognition of this which is, or could be, the obstacle to realisation of the spiritual or ' heavenly ' environment from which the Church is to derive inspiration and strength to carry out her tremendous mission. The causes are (1) want of faith in that mission's reality and power ; (2) the low standard both of ideal and practice consequent upon the lack of faith. We will take these points in order. 1 66 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE (1) Theoretically the Church acknowledges that all things are possible to her in Him who strengthened her. Practically she presents a spectacle far indeed from such a conception of her privilege and responsibility. Torn by dissensions upon matters often undeniably tri- vial, disunited even on weighty questions, weak in moral power, doctrinally uncertain, timid of new light and clinging to ' ancient forms through which the spirit breathes no more,' such is the spectacle which as a whole she presents to friends and foes alike. These remarks are intended in no carping spirit. The writer is one who believes not only in the glorious possible future of the Church, but in the actual- ising of that future. All the more it seems in- cumbent to point out present failure. In what practically do the Church's methods of work differ from the methods of the world ? Is some beneficent undertaking to be set on foot, some rescue of the ignorant and sinful to be attempted, some fresh evangelistic effort to be made ? We have public meetings with great names to sup- port them, appeals to business men, a vast array of begging letters, begging sermons, a whole literature setting forth the claims of the particular THE LIFE OF PRA YER 167 undertaking. Like the world, the Church has faith in these things, and it is a worldly measure of success which she attains. But where in all this appears the heavenly strength which is theo- retically hers ? Where is the appeal to that consciousness of and confidence in the Divine Presence and Power which are the assurance of Christian victory ? ' Forms of prayer ' are indeed suggested and issued at times of special crisis and anxiety, exhortation to prayer sounds from pulpits of all denominations, and this is well ; but true though it may be that there is an effort to turn to Divine help in seasons of trouble and distress, both public and private, to do so is not to lead the life of prayer. That may best be described as ' the practice of the presence of God,' the habit, acquired in the first instance, and voluntarily maintained until it becomes so natural as to be inevitable, of living consciously in direct and immediate touch with the Father of our spirits, of lifting the heart and mind to Him in every daily emergency, temptation, disappoint- ment, and in every daily occasion of joy and thanksgiving. It may be said : we cannot always be thinking of God ; the necessities of life and work forbid ; i68 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE they demand our attention and our whole attention or the life will be ill-lived, the work ill-done. That is absolutely true, but it need in no way prevent such a consciousness of the environing presence of the Divine Spirit as is here intended. An analogy may be found in our physical relation to the air we breathe. We seldom give it a thought. In a normal state of health and a normal state of the atmosphere, it makes no demand on our attention whatever. Yet all the time we know it is there, and that without it we should die ; a close or over-crowded room recalls our thoughts to it at once ; to in- vigorate ourselves we throw open the window or stand at the door and inhale long breaths from the fresher, purer atmosphere without. It is a true parable of what should be our relation to the all-embracing, life-giving Spirit of God. We cannot always, and we need not always, be deliberately and reflectively conscious of that Supreme Presence. Our need is to realise that we are, in fact, never out of it, that ' God is about our bed, and about our path,' that He is in very truth ' closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet,' that a wordless uplifting of the heart, the mere recognition of THE LIFE OF PR A YER 169 His present power to uphold, to sustain, to sympathise, is enough to bring all help to the soul that needs it. ' Thou Life within my life than self more near, Thou veiled Presence infinitely clear, How shall I call Thee who art always here, is the language of the soul who has attained to the practice of the Presence of God. A Church, the great bulk of whose individual members had so attained, would be in possession of resources of faith and power which are undreamed of at the present moment, which resources would avail against all the apparently overwhelming difficulties and perplexities with which the Church of to-day is beset, and which seem so hopelessly to obscure the light which she should be holding up to the world. Can such a state of collective Christian con- sciousness be attained, and if so how ? All men and women are not religious geniuses. To some, nay to many, this mystical attitude, this consciousness of the Divine Presence both within and without, appears, and perhaps is, impossible. Are they therefore to be regarded 170 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE as outsiders in the Faith ? This query brings us to the need for and significance of collective prayer. It is in this that many individual souls should find assistance and inspiration. Those who have the social side of their nature strongly developed may well feel that reali- sation of the Divine Presence is less difficult to attain in the midst of their striving and praying fellows than alone. They may find the lifting up of their hearts in praise and adoration rendered most, or even only, possible then. In the case of others the experience is different. Solitude is to them a necessity if they would be strongly conscious of God. It is a question of temperament, but both temperaments need to remember the side of experience complementary to their own. Man is both social and individual, and the perfect life of prayer recognises and satisfies both these aspects of his nature. In our highest service of praise we draw near to the Supreme Presence with these words : ' With angels and archangels and all the com- pany of heaven, we laud and magnify Thy glorious Name.' There are moments when the thought of ' the company of heaven ' is over- whelming to us who are but denizens of earth ; THE LIFE OF PR A YER 171 but there is a company of which as Christians we are all members, and the thought of which need never be otherwise than strengthening and up- holding, the company of our brothers on earth and beyond earth, the Church militant and triumphant. We are not alone in temptation, in perplexity, in effort, in sorrow, in fear, in hope, for all the Church on earth is with us there. We are not left out from the joy, the victory, the glorious fulfilment of those who have passed from the battlefield into the Rest of God, for we also have our part and share in their triumphant peace. It is ours now in hope and faith. This is part of the significance of the Communion of Saints, which is not confined to those who wear the spot- less robes of immortal purity, but belongs equally to the travel-stained wayfarers of earth, who might often be wonderfully cheered and strength- ened on their road, did they but recognise more fully and practically the mighty fellowship into which they have entered. But such a recognition needs practice, both individual and social. With regard to individuals, all that was said in a former chapter on attention and the formation of habits applies strongly here. We cannot expect to realise the unseen if we never think of it, nor to take part 172 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE in the Communion of Saints if our minds are so preoccupied with our immediate surroundings that we never find time to consider anything beyond them. Our work is indeed with these surroundings to which our energy and endeavour are to be directed ; but the source of our power and perseverance is in the Unseen, to which we must attend if we would be in living touch with it. Failing this living touch we cannot possess the faith which removes moun- tains, nor even believe that there is such a faith ; we find ourselves instead emptying the Divine Words concerning it of any real significance. (2) Next the low standard of ideal and practice consequent upon our lack of faith. We do not realise our ' stupendous environment/ we are but slightly if at all in conscious touch with un- seen Spiritual Reality. How then can we bring to bear its irresistible power upon our daily life and its unworthy conditions ? For looking around upon the large mass of our fellows in Christian Europe and America, we cannot but acknowledge that ' unworthy ' is a mild epithet to apply to our vaunted civilisation. Very much of it, as we have seen, is base, sordid, and worse. Even among THE LIFE OF PR A YER 173 those who are not pressed upon by the hard neces- sity of winning a bare subsistence for themselves and those dependent on them ; who are removed from the vicious and debasing surroundings in which a vast number of their fellows live, what true insight do we find into the relative values of human interests, into the possibility of basing civilisation upon something other than material force and material prosperity, what endeavour that human life should assume nobler proportions? We doubt if the effort is worth while. We repeat to ourselves and to others such aphor- isms as ' Human nature never changes,' ' Men in all ages are the same,' and with these we drug our consciences and obscure our Christian vision ; in spite too of the weight which science gives to an exactly opposite conclusion. Science is impres- sing us more and more with the truth that we are not only ' in the making,' but that the making is very largely, almost entirely indeed, in our own hands. Yet having before us as Christians the standard of the Ideal Man, having the promise of power to attain this through the Divine Man, we are constantly falling back both in thought and endeavour upon some weak compromise unworthy of Christian aim. Why ? Simply 174 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE because we do not believe either in the promise or the power. Surely our Lord's Word to His Church and to the individual disciple of to-day must be the same as that to the backsliding Apostle two thousand years ago : ' Oh, thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt ? ' The remedy to this state of things both for the Church and the individual lies in the life of prayer, in the practice of the Presence of God. We could not doubt the promise if we realised that the Promisor is always with us, nor the power if we felt it possessing us. And if, indeed, the desire of our hearts, the heart of the Church and the hearts of her individual members, is set upon attaining that promise and power, we must set to work upon the practice that can alone ensure success. Nor must we in our anxiety for results despise ' the day of small things.' We cannot in adult age and with deeply rooted habits of inattention to God, of formalism in or neglect of prayer, expect to acquire without effort the way of life in which prayer is recognised as the breath of our being. But let us do what we can, what we should do in order to acquire any important habit in ordinary matters, viz., make a determined effort of will. Let us resolve, and THE LIFE OF PRA YER 175 persevere in the resolution, to give some time to that highest of all privileges, and most incumbent of all duties, communion with the Eternal, and Ever Present, the ' Hope of all comfort, Splen- dour of all aid ' ; and though by reason of our in- firmity it may be in small and slowly increasing degree, yet we shall know in our measure what that aid and comfort are. It will be of great assistance in maintaining our expectancy if we keep before us the double aspect of prayer, a point too often neglected. Its significance is after all not wholly or even chiefly human. The most important part of it is the Divine. Response. Here also there has been much obscuration from the tend- ency to regard prayers solely under the form of petition, and the Divine Response as the tangible granting of some specific request. It may cer- tainly be this ; the experience of many believers so testifies. But the Divine Response to con- scious human need is far deeper and wider than any such formal answer would imply. It is the permeating of the life by the Divine Comfort, Wisdom, Love, and Power, the bestowal of the spirit of sonship which alters the whole outlook both on the earthly and heavenly horizons. It 176 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE renders the human spirit capable of receiving those intimate divine suggestions of peace and strength, which bear the marks of a trans- cendent telepathy. We may make an excep- tion here to what was said above, that science throws no light upon the life of prayer. Telepathy is a scientific fact, and to many minds it certainly does throw light upon that life. It is the more incumbent on individuals to maintain their desire for, and expectancy of the Divine Response to the life of prayer, because upon their doing so depends the growth of the realisation of the Divine Presence and Power in the Church. The individual Christian is the growing point of the Church, the vigour of whose life depends on the vigour of her growing points. Every effort to live the life of prayer, still more every such life actually attained and lived, is an increment of power in the Church, a centre of diffusion of the Christ-life, of the efficacy of the Incarnation. It would surely help the difficult prayer and flagging attention of the individual, to remember that he is not merely an isolated spirit in the universe of God, but one in effort and desire (however vari- THE LIFE OF PR A YER 177 ously expressed) with the whole mystical body of Christ, helping forward its life by every per- severance of his own, reinforced in that per- severance by the whole weight of its upward, onward movement. And both on the Church at large and on all those individuals who have part in the training and education of youth it is incumbent to forestall and prevent, so far as is possible, the difficulties which beset the grown man and woman who would lead the life of prayer. We do not need to weight the mind of children with doctrinal matter which they cannot assimilate, and ser- vices into which, not understanding, they cannot enter ; but we do need from their earliest years to inculcate in them the practice of the Presence of God. Due recollection of the prayers of our own childhood will, in the case of many of us, suffice to emphasise the great and general de- ficiency in this respect. In most families which make any attempt to put their Christian faith into practice, children are taught ' to say their prayers,' an expression which exactly describes the unmeaning and mechanical repetition of some more or less suitable form of words. This is not teaching them to pray, to make any attempt M i;8 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE before commencing their words of petition to realise that ' veiled Presence infinitely clear,' in which it should be the aim of their educators to show them by example, and teach them by precept, that the whole of their earthly life is to be spent. Example is of course the strongest incentive. Children who see their elders putting aside a quiet time every day to be spent in the realisation of the Presence of God, and allowing nothing to interfere with it, will not be slow to imitate them, especially if they perceive that an atmosphere of peace and strength is consequent in their home. Then their own time for prayer, however short, and it should be short, should be scrupu- lously respected, guarded from all outside inter- ruption and interference. Where possible it might be well to keep apart a small room, the merest closet would suffice, for ' the children's prayers,' and this should never be used for any other purpose save in extreme urgency, (such as the presence of infectious illness) and not then if by any means its requisition can be avoided. Nursery customs would not then allow the little seeker of God's Presence to babble over a form of words with what attention can be commanded THE LIFE OF PRA YER 179 in a noisy room, amidst the play of other children and the chatter of their nurses. This is no train- ing in the practice of the Presence of God. It lays no foundation for the habit, so all-important in later life, of instant realisation of the Divine Nearness at any moment of stress or temptation. Surely there is very much that might be mended in these respects, much that might have an in- calculable effect for good on the whole life of the Church. Is it not also a point the training of the children in the Practice of the Presence of God on which, if it once were appreciated at its true value, there might be such denomi- national agreement as would enable elementary schools to take their share in this important educational work ? Would it not provide a significant and fundamental basis for Sunday school teaching ? All these points need deep consideration, and indicate a sphere of usefulness for Church workers, especially for teachers in Sunday schools, as great or greater than many which now appeal more strongly to the imagination. It is not possible to overvalue the importance of such a life of prayer as has been poorly and partially indicated in the present chapter. It is, indeed, i8o THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE true that 4 more work is wrought by prayer than this world dreams of,' not by mere petition, but by the steadfast, irresistible power drawn into the life by the constant practice of the Presence of God. CHAPTER XII SACRAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE THE Anglican Church defines a sacrament as an outward and visible sign ordained by Christ of an inward and spiritual grace, and the two Sacraments which she recognises are ' Baptism and the Supper of the Lord.' There is not any doubt regarding the ' signs ' in these Sacraments. All acknowledge that they are water, and bread and wine. With regard to the thing signified, it is different. We know how much controversy has arisen and still rages in respect to both of them, but more especially in the case of that ' Communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord,' which He intended as the close bond of union between all His disciples. It is quite beyond the province of the present volume to enter into any of these disputes. Such an endeavour would be foreign to its purpose, even were the writer 181 1 82 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE equipped with the necessary theological know- ledge, which is not the case. The subject which will occupy us in this chapter is the sacra- mental basis, that fundamental principle of sacramental significance and efficacy, which enabled our Lord to select from the most ordinary materials of daily life vehicles of Divine Grace. In following out this line of thought, it may well be that we shall find some of the diffi- culties and perplexities which beset so many minds on the subject of the Sacraments cleared away. In the first place it is evident that if the visible sign in the Sacrament is to be a true indication of the Presence of the Invisible Reality, there must be a real relation between the two ; an arbitrary sign would not suffice. The relation must be rather analogous to that causal con- nection which exists between increase of tem- perature and a rise in the thermometer than the purely conventional link between a sign-post and the road of which it indicates the goal. If water, and bread and wine, can, under appro- priate conditions, be regarded as the signs of an effectually present Divine Grace, it can only be because their nature is such as to render them SACRAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE 183 susceptible to that Grace, capable of being its vehicles. Reduced to their ultimate chemical elements, water and bread and wine are composed of the same constituents as enter into the human body, and are to be found throughout the known uni- verse. They are forms of matter, the ultimate nature of which science has not yet penetrated, possibly may never be able to penetrate. But as we have already seen, however, matter is so far amenable to and akin to spirit as to be expressive of it, to be regarded as its alter ego. 1 It is, we said, the language which the spiritual uses, the form which it assumes to such creatures as we are, and the profoundest recognition of this relation is given in the Incarnation, in the sub- mission of the Divine Word to earthly conditions and to human Limitations, and in and through these to reveal so much of God as was possible for humanity to manifest and to grasp. We may, therefore, regard the life of Christ as the supreme Sacrament. He used material con- ditions and a material form, the human body, as a * sign ' of the highest spiritual grace that could be vouchsafed, viz., the indwelling of the Divine 1 Chap. x. p. 147. 1 84 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE in the natural. By that use He consecrated in human eyes the whole Natural Order. Nothing thenceforth could be essentially common or un- clean. If it appeared so, that was either because it was misused by being put to a lower purpose than that for which it was designed, or mis- understood as being unfit for the higher service. The all-inclusive Sacrament of the Incarna- tion gives to the subordinate Sacraments their whole significance. Because the Divine Word ' was made Man,' because He used ' matter ' as a supreme ' sign ' of the intimate relation between the Creator and His creation, there- fore He could take any material elements and consecrate them to the highest uses, connect them with a special ' spiritual grace ' which they appropriately symbolised. And this is what He did in Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Christians may differ as to the precise kind and amount of grace symbolised ; but if they have in any measure grasped the profound and infinitely far-reaching significance of the fact that ' the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us,' they cannot feel any difficulty as to the reality of that grace. And it redounds with immense and all- pervading power throughout the whole circum- SACRAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE 185 stances and surroundings of daily b'fe. Every natural phenomenon, every human experience which is not lowered and defiled by abuse, becomes in its measure a sacrament, an outward and visible sign of the grace of the Divine Immanence. Nothing is too small, nothing too lowly to par- take of this high vocation. ' I come in the little things saith the Lord,' 1 the little things of our everyday natural experience, transforming them into a vision of the Eternal. And surely here is a point of contact between our Christian faith and science ; for science on her own ground and in her own way magnifies ' the little things,' showing how wide are their ramifications, how close and intimate their con- nection with the grandest phenomena of the universe. It is indeed true that c the simplicity of nature is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible ' ; 2 from our present point of view the inexhaustible sign of an inex- haustible Grace, the very Divine Presence Itself. The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the plains, Are not these, O Soul, the vision of Him who reigns 1 1 See poem by Evelyn Underbill in Immanence. " Emerson, Essay on Spiritual Laws. 1 86 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE They may well be that without any danger of Pantheism. For the soul that is most deeply and intimately conscious of the Presence of God in nature, is likely to be the soul that most vividly realises that He is infinitely more than nature, that ' the heaven, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.' Even so the most fervent believer in the reality of the Incarna- tion may most fully recognise that it never- theless only reveals what can be revealed by Incarnation, God manifest 'in the Flesh,' under a veil therefore, nay more, under the real though voluntary limitation of finite conditions. But how enormously does such a conception of natural possibilities raise our estimate of their value. ' " The wider our con- templation of nature, the grander will be our conception of God." An early Father (Cyril) said this, and in so doing struck the keynote of true sacramental insight into the truth of things ; every enlightenment of the eyes of our understanding which may be granted as the reward of faith, love, and purity of heart will make the world around us, not viler and baser, but more glorious and more Divine. It is not a proof of spirituality, but of its SACRAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE 187 opposite, if God's world seems to us a poor place. 1 ' This is true Nature Mysticism, as well as true sacramental insight, practical, definite ; not vague and dreamy, but leading us to recognise with joy and thanksgiving that ' the true sym- bolic value of natural objects [may we not add, therefore, of sacramental signs ?] is not that they remind us of something that they are not, but of something that they in part are.' 2 So far we have been regarding sacramental significance as it affects our appreciation of the whole world of nature. But we now turn to an aspect of it yet more directly practical, viz., as it affects our human outlook and our human re- lations. These, as we have seen, are twofold, the individual, and the social, so closely bound up together that neither is fully realisable without the other. It is probably largely, if not wholly, dependent on temperament whether the in- dividual, as such, is more strongly conscious of the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist than in private prayer. It is a special case of the ques- tion to which reference was made in the preceding 1 Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 309. 3 Ibid., p. 309. 1 88 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE chapter. But it is not for the individual as such, but for the individual as a member of the whole Christian Body that the Supper of the Lord is spread. It is a social institution, and it is meant to be so thought of and used. In the New Testa- ment it is almost solely dealt with under this aspect, from its initiation through all the teaching about it given by S. Paul. We cannot enter into its true significance, nor receive the benefit it is intended to convey, unless we keep its social nature before our minds ; and had this been constantly and practically enforced by the Church, it may well be that she would have been spared by far the greater part of the cruel con- tentions and disputes which have so obscured the true meaning of her Feast of love and praise. Even in our own day manuals of devotion in- tended for the use of communicants dwell almost exclusively on the relation of the individual soul to Christ, not on that of the Church to Christ, and of her members to one another as well as to Him. It is a great defect, which calls urgently for a remedy This is an age pre-eminently social in its outlook. The brotherhood of man is proclaimed aloud by voices differing widely in their sound and origin. We SACRAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE 189 have in the second great Christian Sacrament testimony to a bond strong enough to overcome all race and class hatred, all international jealousy and feud, much more all internecine dispute and misunderstanding in the Church. Instead of being thus regarded and used, it is made the chief subject of quarrel and recrimination between the different sections of the Christian Body, until its true object is obscured altogether amid a cloud of words and angry abuse. Surely there is great need for review of our position here, for careful and large-minded consideration whether it is not possible to restore the Communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord to the place He in- tended it to occupy, as the great institutional social bond between all Christians, not as now it too often is, the symbol of their doctrinal and theological variance. Here, as always, individuals have their own duty to perform, and may by their faithfulness make a radical change in the whole attitude of the Church, i.e. of Christian individuals in their collective aspect. No communicant should approach the table of the Lord with his or her personal needs and petitions in the forefront. Just because there is indeed 190 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE promised a Real Presence of Him who is the Head of the Church as well as the Lord and Master of every one of her members, the needs of the Church, repentance for collective Christian sins, collective faith in their forgiveness and in the bestowal of the inward spiritual grace of which the Church stands so deeply in need, common thanksgiving and adoration, should hold the first place. In the last especially, the honest en- deavour to realise the vast company of striving and of triumphant spirits of which the individual is part, can hardly fail to result in individual encouragement and uplifting. It is the looking too much on our own things, the regarding of ourselves too exclusively as isolated units in the Presence of the Divine Father of us all, which is the chief cause of our feeble apprehension of His gifts and enablement. It needs little imagination to realise in some degree the vast change which would be worked throughout Christendom, if this attitude of mind were changed, if the Church, through the unremitting efforts of her individual members to think of her before themselves, approximated as a whole to that ideal of the collective life of prayer, the col- lective practice of the Presence of God, which SACRAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE 191 communions such as we have been contemplating would infallibly inaugurate and foster. It may most truly be said that we have hardly yet begun to realise the tremendous redemptive power which true sacramental insight into human re- lations would put into the hands of the Church ; yet never was there deeper need that we should realise it, and that practically. The remarks that have been made have centred upon the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, because it is the one to which the thoughts of adult Christians chiefly turn ; and also because there has been on the whole, and there certainly is in the present day, much less misunderstanding with regard to Baptism. There are of course very various ways of regarding the grace bestowed in Baptism, and many different opinions as to the right age of receiving it, and the right method of performing the ceremonial part. But it has consistently been regarded as the initiation into the Christian Society, and consequently its social aspect has never been, it is hardly conceivable that it could be, overlooked as in the case of the Holy Communion. The words ' We receive this child (or this person), into the Congregation of Christ's Flock,' which form part of the rite 192 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE in the Anglican Church, truly represent the spirit of this part of the Sacrament, however un- duly narrow the conception of that Flock may be on the part of him who utters, or of those who hear the words of welcome. The sign of the Cross may be held justly dear by many, as it is in our own Church, or by others may be considered superfluous ; but there is little doubt of the significance of the sacramental sign, water, though its theological connotation may be different in different sections of the Church. Making all allowance for this, its simple symbolism reaches the heart of all, and clearly indicates the need for, and the grace of inward purification on the thres- hold of the openly avowed Christian life. At this point we must leave the brief, and necessarily incomplete, consideration of sacra- mental significance, which is all that is consonant with the form and purpose of the present little volume. Yet if any will pursue the line of thought thus opened up, it will be found to lead towards a deep and comprehensive appreciation of sacramental value, towards a goal, the attain- ment of which would enable us to see that no natural object and no human relation is devoid of its own spiritual message, its own divine SACRAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE 193 interpretation. * Open our eyes that we may see ' is the petition we most need to proffer in face of these things, for ' it is with man's soul as it was with nature, the beginning of Creation is Light.' CHAPTER XIII THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH As we look back upon the course of thought which we have followed throughout this volume, certain truths emerge very clearly. From the considera- tions which wholly occupied the first five chapters, we saw (1) that according to science, there may lie before the human race a future yet more won- derful than its past, though its history as already revealed to us is wonderful enough : (2) that the realisation of this future depends almost en- tirely on man himself, for owing to his intelligence and power of volition he is able to take, and has in civilised races already taken, the responsibility for his own development. It depends upon his direction of those natural evolutionary factors which now lie largely under his own control whether he will progress towards undreamed-of powers, or whether he will degenerate, as many 104 THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH 195 forms of organic life before him have degenerated, and eventually pass away : (3) that in his present condition there are distinct causes for alarm though by no means for despair, one of the chief of these being the lack of control he allows in himself over his own body and environment. In subsequent chapters human evolution was dealt with from the Christian point of view, and there also we saw that its future lies in the hands of the race undergoing it, but that the goal to be aimed at is revealed and the power of attainment bestowed. The goal is the realised sonship to- wards God of the human race and of every indi- vidual member of it, carrying with it developed spiritual life, and control over natural conditions. The power of attainment lies in participation in the Christ-life, germinally present in the Church, and in each of her children. We are now about to attempt a forecast of the future, presuming that the possibilities of the Christian Ideal are made actual. And in so doing we need to remember (1) that their actualization will involve that of scientific aims also, since these in common with all regions of worthy human activity are included within the Christian purview, and (2 ) 196 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE that as Christians we cannot doubt of ultimate attainment. Human wilfulness and blindness may almost indefinitely defer the Kingdom of God, but they cannot ultimately do so. In the end it will prevail ; not by compulsion, but by the change of consciousness which it is the mission of the Church to bring about, and which will result in true insight into the significance of human life and the goal which lies before it. Our considerations will be chiefly confined to the earthly future of man, but it will not be possible so to limit them entirely; and that because man's whole destiny is deeply coloured by the fact that it reaches beyond the frontiers of his natural life. Science of course, ordinary orthodox science, accepts this limitation and rightly. She is not concerned with any beyond, save that which can be included within the Natural Order and inferred from its observed sequences. The Christian Faith, founded on actual events occur- ring within but transcending the Natural Order, is not thus bound. Consequently a larger, deeper vision is possible to it, affecting man's earthly future indeed, but affecting also a future which is beyond earth and earthly conditions. It is not at all peculiar to Christianity to look THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH 197 forward to an ideal race, an ideal social com- munity in which human conditions are as perfect as the vision of the seer allows him to perceive. From Plato's Republic down to the socialist Utopia of Mr. Wells, such forecasts have been made and have failed. Both succeeding genera- tions and contemporary critics have detected radical defects in structures, which to their authors represented the utmost perfection attain- able by human imagination. Perhaps it is true to say that the failure has been due, at any rate very largely, to the fact that in most of these visionary societies, the individual has been sacrificed to the commonwealth. It has not seemed possible to realise a condition of things in which the good of the community and the freedom of the individual should mutually sub- serve one another. The effort, save in the minds of a few enthusiasts, results in the conviction to which Mr. Lowes Dickinson has given expres- sion in his Justice and Liberty : ' I do not believe there is anywhere at this moment any great body of men fit for a better Society.' But the conviction, though true of the present and actual, should not daunt our faith in the potential. Mankind, or at any rate civilised mankind, 198 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE suffers above all from helpless acquiescence in the actual, instead of believing in and en- deavouring to realise the potential. This cannot be done by a sudden social up- heaval, as the history of the French Revolution should have taught us. It was proved then, it has been proved since, that ' our history and our institutions have produced in us all the same kind of vices and defects,' the same selfish ambitions, and materialistic ideals. The working classes are not better than the more cultured and affluent classes in this respect. In the case of all alike, to be rich, to be influential, to be amused, to have the means of self-indul- gence, presents the most attractive prospect, the only one which the great mass of citizens seems to regard as worth contemplating, and pursues regardless of the cost to other sections of the community. And it has been very truly said that so long as this is the case, so long as Socialism means, to those who embrace it as an ideal, merely ' getting to the top themselves, or at least putting somebody else to the bottom, they are not likely to make a better thing of Society than has been done before.' 1 One 1 Lowes Dickinson, Justice and Liberty, p. 214. THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH 199 reason why this is so, is specially apposite to our present considerations. We have seen that the continued progress of man depends on his con- sistently furthering, in every way in his power, the ascendency of mind over body. The whole course of human evolution makes this fact abundantly clear. We have seen also that his great danger lies in reversing this order of things, in making mind a mere minister to body, instead of body being instrumental and subservient to mind. It is self-evident that the constant hanker- ing after and pursuit of material advantages must strengthen this dangerous tendency, and as a matter of fact, history shows us that the decline of civilisations and races has invariably followed upon just such a worship of material power and wealth as that which characterises our own age. We have within us the same seeds of degeneracy. Many prophets assert that we shall follow the same descending road. But if we do, it is pro- bable that the downfall will be greater and more disastrous than any that has preceded it, simply for the reason that in many respects our present civilisation is vastly superior to any of its fore- runners. Two reasons for hope that the downfall will 200 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE be arrested present themselves. The first is that our scientific knowledge, vast in comparison with that of any previous era, is all against a victorious degeneracy. Men are shown very clearly and very persistently, that to yield them- selves up to the sensuality which is an invariable attendant upon materialism is fatal both to themselves and to their descendants. They are shown also no less clearly the amazing, though as yet little understood, potentialities lying in the promotion of mind to its true place in the human constitution individual and collective. Thus the powerful motive of self-interest is en- listed on the side of those precautions, eugenic and other, to which reference has been made in former chapters. And yet the balance often shows signs of inclining the wrong way. Attention was directed in Chapter x. to the comparatively slight increase of self-control and chastity of life produced by our knowledge of the deleterious effects of sexual vice and excess upon the nervous system, and the physical organisation generally. Something more than a knowledge of effects is needed to avail against the terrible evils which a wrong way of life has brought upon the civilised nations of the world, viz., power not THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH 201 only to see, but to attain to, the right way of life. The conclusion at which we arrived was : ' With man this is impossible, but not with God ; with God all things are possible.' God working in and through human nature for the perfecting of human nature is resistless ; and this is the faith committed to the Church of Christ, in the power of which she is to work and to overcome. We saw this ; but we saw also and dwelt on the lack of grasp which so weakens this faith that the Church as a body seems to have no confidence in it at all. Exceptional individuals exercise it, but at an almost overwhelming dis- advantage because of the deplorably low standard in which the large majority acquiesce. Yet if the Church fails at this crisis whence is to come the help so sorely needed ? That it will come we cannot doubt. God is not bound by the appointed channels of His grace, and if the Church fails Him it will ultimately be to the lasting injury of the Church indeed but not the work divinely com- mitted to her. ' The movement of new spiritual advance may arise from without not within the Church ; as so many of the great restorative movements of the past generation, whose divine 202 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE origin and guidance were unrecognised by the members of the organised Christian community. . . . The Church, by neglect of its election and high calling, may prolong the misery and increase the confusion of time. But no human wilfulness or weakness can for ever delay the restitution of all things and the triumph of the end.' We shall do well to remember this. We shall do well to remember also that the Church has within her the springs of a divine vitality. They may be allowed to ebb very low, but not past the hope of renewal. She may miss much that it is in reality hers to accomplish. She has missed much in the past. But she has not missed all, and she will not miss all. Nay, may we not rather believe, that, incited to utmost effort by past and present failure, she will rise, in all her latent and invincible strength, to the height of her vocation and achieve, in spite of the derision of her foes and the faithlessness of her children, first her own redemption and then the redemp- tion of the world ? And since to be possessed by an ideal is the first step towards realising it, let us endeavour in what remains of the present chapter to forecast what the redemp- tion of the world, and the destiny of the human THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH 203 race on earth signifies to the best mind of the Church. We must commence with the Church. What is she to become in order that her vocation may be accomplished ? In the first place her faith must be increased a thousandfold, her faith in the present enabling power of the Divine Spirit. Her motto must be : ' With God nothing is im- possible,' and since God is in and with her, nothing is impossible to her that concerns the redemption and spiritual development of man- kind. This must be her confidence ; and her method must be, not the method of the world, not the attainment of wealth and power, ' the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them,' in order to arrest the attention of men and gain an influence over them, but the change of consciousness which makes men confront their whole life and status from a different point of view. She must arouse within her members that sense of ' awakening in a new and stupendous environment,' which was characteristic of the early Christians. To them its use was to enable them to stand forth from the midst of heathen surroundings and endure persecution and death, ' as seeing him who is invisible.' To Christians 204 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE of the present day, life in the consciousness of their spiritual and divine environment means practical recognition of the fact that intellectual and social development are valueless unless they are guided and inspired by the Spirit of Christ. Nothing that is human should be to the Church common or unclean, but seen to contain the germs of a divine unfolding which shall carry it beyond what the mind of man at present conceives possible. Further, the Church must be so possessed by the wisdom and inspiration of the Divine Spirit that she is able to disentangle the supreme principles of the religion of Christ from all the petty and misleading accretions which now overload them. She must have her eyes opened to the far-reaching significance of her Lord's saying : ' No man who can do powers in my name will lightly speak evil of me.' No individual member, no section of the Church doing true and faithful work in His Name and Power, can be either His enemy or the enemy of any other section of His Church. ' There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all.' But the Church does not recog- nise this now. On the contrary she, or rather 205 the different sections of which she is composed, not infrequently incur the danger of committing the ' eternal sin,' that of decrying and denying the work of the Spirit of God, because it is not done after the special fashion or under the special direction which they approve. The perfected Church on earth will have learned to distinguish unity from uniformity, Christian principle from Church order, essential truth from its accidental investiture. Finally, she will within her own society have subdued the ' flesh to the Spirit.' She will have so far renovated and transformed earthly con- ditions that the redemption of the body will be an accomplished fact. Science will have aided her ; or, to speak more accurately, she will have received through the ministry of science such knowledge as will have placed in her hands powerful instruments of reform and purification. The indwelling power of the Christ-life will have incepted and nourished the indomitable resolution to use them, the invincible faith that victory in these things is sure. And so even on earth she will be presented to the Divine Vision as ' a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any 206 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE such thing,' 1 far different indeed to that which she is now. And this consummation will have been attained, not by outward compulsion (a means which has been attempted already more than a few times and resulted in disastrous narrowness, and the piling upon human consciences of burdens too heavy to be borne), but by inward trans- figuration, by the full development of the now only germinal Christ -life which she bears within her. When that stage is reached, then the Church will be indeed that which her Lord designs her to be, ' the light of the World.' Then she will be fully capable of transmitting the life which animates her to the race at large, and the realised redemption of mankind will be at hand. 2 1 Eph. vi. 27. There does not seem any justification for the supposition that these words refer to a non-earthly condition. The context is rather against such a notion, since the analogy is between the relation of Christ to the Church, and that of husband to wife. 8 While these pages have been going through the press, the most terrible war that the world has ever known has burst upon Christian Europe, involving many other than Christian nations in its direct and still more in its indirect consequences. It is not yet that the measure of the catastrophe can be taken, or its ultimate issues foreseen. Whatever they may be, the flood of agony, of physical and moral degradation let loose upon mankind will have its way first. The question inevitably arises in every Christian mind : Could such a calamity have overtaken mankind if the Church had been true to, had been capable of rising to, the height of her vocation, if THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH 207 Does all this seem impossible, a mere dream of excited fancy ? This question only shows that we share in the prevailing lack of faith. 'Accord- ing to your faith be it unto you.' We do not believe in large possibilities, even though the power of God is pledged to bring them to pass in response to our faith ; and so they remain unrealised ; and the coming of the Kingdom of God, the time of fulfilled Redemption is in- definitely deferred. The consummation of our human evolution on earth is committed to our own responsibility. Christ initiated it, but its completion is left to us, and when we pray that the coming of the Kingdom may be hastened, we she had not become so imbued with the worldly spirit of materialism, compromise, conventionality, and self-interest that she failed to uphold in any adequate measure the standard of the Christ-life and the ethics it entails? War will never cease from among us while an environment in which prejudice, self-assertion, personal feud and animosity, class and sectarian conflicts are rife continues to exist. It is the work of the Church on earth in which each one of her individual members has an assigned part to bear, to create an environment the precise opposite of this, one in which mutual sympathy, aid, love, and the understanding and forbearance which love brings, are the active principles. Is there yet any section of the Church in which they are so? If not, how deep should be her sorrow and repentance in view of present world-conditione. Many voices have been raised, some in despair, some in exulta- tion, crying that Christianity has failed. It has not failed, for no attempt has ever been made to regulate the life of nations according to its principles. 208 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE need to remember that its hastening depends upon ourselves. God will not hasten it in spite of our unbelief but in accordance with our faith. The prayer of the whole Church, the prayer of each of her individual members needs to be : ' Lord, increase our faith.' Since all that has been said with regard to the Church is true in its measure of individual Chris- tians, there seems to be little need to treat separ- ately of their future on earth, save in one impor- tant respect. Individuals living under present con- ditions cannot attain that earthly consummation to which the Church can look forward. Human life is too short ; moreover the individual is too terribly handicapped by the unbelief and lukewarmness of the Church at large. It is true, and we may thank God for it, that, sparsely scattered among her ranks, there are individuals to whom the all -pre vailing Presence and Power of Christ are a reality, who are ready to do and dare and overcome all in His strength. But even they are trammelled and bound by the low stan- dard of faith surrounding them. It is with them as it was with their Lord before them, ' He could there do no mighty work because of their unbelief.' The atmosphere of faith is a THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH 209 Divine necessity, therefore a human necessity also. But the faith of these individual Christiana is nevertheless not a vain thing, any more than was the faith of their Lord and Master. It is the leaven which will eventually 'leaven the whole lump.' The hope of the Church is in these in- dividual children of hers, and though it is true that their full attainment of Christian manhood on earth is withheld because of her lack towards them, though apart from her they * cannot be made perfect,' yet the limitation is confined to this life only. Earthly hindrances do not reach beyond earth. CHAPTER XIV THE DESTINY OF THE EACE AND OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN the last chapter, our considerations were directed almost entirely to the future of the Church, because upon her future, upon the consummation of the Christ -life in her, depends from the Christian point of view the destiny of the race. Let us now turn our attention to that destiny, assuming that the Church attains as a whole, and therefore in each of her individual members, to the full stature of manhood in Christ. We are to remember that this is an ideal for earth, that in the first place the fulfilment of God's creative thought of man will be manifested on earth. Its realisation must therefore include the actualising of all those possibilities which are capable of demonstration under the conditions of the Natural Order. It seems inevitable to add 210 DESTINY OF RACE AND INDIVIDUAL 211 here ' ae we know it ' ; but in truth it will not be as we know it noiv, but as we shall know it then. The natural order is not to the present genera- tion what it was to those of former ages ; it becomes infinitely wider and richer with every decade that passes. Thus even from the scien- tific point of view we are abundantly justified in saying that the future, if it maintains the rate of progress of the past, holds for us pos- sibilities which are beyond the wildest dreams of the present, even as the present has seen actualised possibilities which were beyond the wildest dreams of the past. What then may we expect if those possibilities are taken hold of by the exalting, all-controlling power of the regnant Christ-life ? His own life on earth, trammelled and hindered as it was by the faithlessness and defectiveness of His human environment, never- theless gives clear indication of this. He mani- fested : (1) Perfect control of His own physical organi- sation. (2) Control of Nature. (3) Perfect insight into and sympathy with His fellow-men. (4) Perfect realisation of man's sonship to 212 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE God, and consequently perfect manifestation of love to and trust in Him. Let us consider in the first place what results followed upon these characteristics in Christ's own life on earth ; and in the second, what results would follow in the world now if the race had attained to His ' measure.' And in entering upon this consideration, let us bear in mind once more that His measure is ours. He was the Ideal Man, the standard of perfection for mankind. He was more than that as we have seen ; but what as man He manifested may be manifested also by every perfected human individual. (1) Our Lord's human body was no hindrance to Him in accomplishing His work on earth. It was the obedient instrument of His Will. It suffered indeed to a supreme degree during the awful hours of the Passion ; more than once we are told that He felt fatigue, and twice that He ' hungered.' But it never gained the upper hand, nor prevented Him from perfectly accom- plishing the work with which He knew that His Heavenly Father had entrusted Him. Anxiety for the body did not enter into His consciousness. He carried out His own precept, ' Take no thought for the body ' ; and when spiritual necessity DESTINY OF RACE AND INDIVIDUAL 213 urged Him to it, He did not hesitate to place it under a stress which might well have appeared excessive. This is apparent from the accounts of the Temptation which, in whatever way we interpret them, certainly indicate a period of intense physical, as well as mental strain. And yet, as those same accounts show, He was not presumptuous in His demands upon the body. He would not fling Himself from ' the pinnacle of the Temple ' in order to give a sign of His Messiahship. That was not part of the work He came to do. Had it been so, the tenor of His whole life shows that no physical shrinking would have withheld Him from the daring act, nor would any doubt have crossed His mind that the Divine Power would bear Him up. Material obstacles to the accomplish- ment of any act pointed out by His Father's will were non-existent to Him. (2) Of a piece with the treatment of His own body was His treatment of the Natural Order. Whenever He felt that His mission to men demanded that control over it should be exer- cised, it was so exercised. At all other times He submitted to the ordinary human limitations of His age, and to those which in all ages space 2 1 4 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE and time imply. But it is evident that He never felt them as fetters, as iron bars against which His spirit vainly beat itself. That consciousness of constraint and imprisonment, which the ' bar- riers ' of space and time impose upon men's minds and hearts, was apparently quite unknown to Him. His recorded sayings and actions are entirely free from it. (3) Our Lord's relation to His brother-men was in a sense unique. No other could be the one Ideal of men, no other could set the standard of human effort and attainment. In another sense it was simply the exemplification of what the perfect Man, He who had reached the full stature of manhood as God designed it, could be to his fellows, the very personification of unselfish, disinterested love. Our Lord's sympathy with every phase of human life was instant and com- plete. He was as ready to join in social gather- ings, to be present at the marriage feast, accept the Pharisee's invitation to his exclusive meal, and invite Himself to ' eat meat ' at the house of Zacchaeus the publican, as He was to heal the sick, to dry the mourner's tears, and to discourse to the peasant crowds who followed Him about of the things concerning the Kingdom of God. DESTINY OF RACE AND INDIVIDUAL 215 (4) And He felt also the deep human need of prayer, of communion with the invisible spiritual Reality, with the Father of His spirit. It was thence, no doubt, that the certainty of His own unique relation to the Father dawned and de- veloped in Him ; it is not for us to know how. We cannot peer into that Divine Secret, or dis- cover the manner of its inward revelation. But it was from the same Source He drew (as each one of us may draw) the conviction of His human sonship to God, and realised the splendour of His human birthright. For here, indeed, lies the key to His power of revealing human capacity for attainment, here in the deep communion of His human soul with God. This enabled Him to attain the full realisation of human sonship to the Divine, and all His human perfection was a consequence of that realisation ; His power of controlling nature equally with His power of faithfully surrendering of His life into His Father's Hands. The results of our Lord's life, or rather we may say the result (for all other consequences are gathered up in that one,) was the initiation of the Kingdom of God on earth. Christ Himself could not do more than initiate it, because of the 2 :6 THE CHURCH AND NE W KNO WLEDGE wilfulness, ignorance, and unbelief of His con- temporaries. But despite all the hindrances they threw in His way, despite the deadly rancour of His foes, the blindness and ignorance of His friends, He did initiate the Kingdom. He started on its way the most stupendous and far-reaching movement that the world has ever seen, one the issues of which are co-exten- sive with the whole race. The attainment by the race at large of that standard to which Christ attained would mean therefore : (1) Physically: perfect health ; i.e., the entire and complete responsiveness of the physical organisation to every intellectual and spiritual demand upon it. Consequently perfect balance and efficiency of the nervous system. (2) Control of nature, and the wisdom and insight to know how and when to exercise that control. (3) Individually : fearlessness, and a calm and efficient and joyful acceptance of life and all its issues, uncomplicated by selfish obsessions. (4) Socially : a free, untrammelled and sym- pathetic intercourse between man and man, class and class, nation and nation. DESTINY OF RACE AND INDIVIDUAL 217 (5) Spiritually : absolute confidence in the God and Father of all and of each ; and a glad reali- sation of that freedom of the universe implied in human sonship to God. A mere glance over these characteristics is sufficient to impress us with the conviction of the change they would make in earthly conditions, and of our unfitness until we possess them to attain some of those things after which we are most eagerly striving. As an example : Sup- pose we had reached the point, to which science is constantly bringing us nearer, of controlling external nature. If we were in our present condition of disharmony with one another, the result would be too terrible to contemplate, as is abundantly illustrated by the awful engines of suffering and destruction which modern science places at the disposal of nations at war. We should find ourselves plunged into a chaos of catastrophes ; and we may be very sure that no such power in any measure of completeness will be attained while our aims and our ambitions are so selfish and so divided ; and, it may be added, while our ideal of manhood is so low, inadequate, arid contradictory. This ideal is the first thing which needs correcting and elevating ; 2i8 THE CHURCH AND NEW KNOWLEDGE which can only be done through the permeation of the race by the Christ-life. This permeation depends, as we have seen, on the Church's accomplishing her mission, and this in turn on the faithfulness, loyalty, and singlemindedness of her individual members in following to the uttermost, and at any cost, the spirit of that way of life set before them by their Lord and Master. Let us assume that they have done this, that the goal on earth is reached at last and the Kingdom of God indeed established under her conditions. What then ? Why then for the first time the human mind ' at leisure from itself,' free from all the worries, the carking cares, and sordid anxieties, the fear of death and of life which obsess it now, would rise to the kingly attitude of mastership over itself and its environ- ment and would find its sovereignty acknow- ledged and effectual. For the first time it would be possible for mankind to perceive what might be its part in cosmic, not merely earthly, evolu- tion. At present the whole energy of the race is needed for its own development. Not till it is set free from that primary and most needful preoccupation, will it be in a position to learn DESTINY OF RACE AND INDIVIDUAL 219 what is its place and work in the Natural Order as a whole. But satisfaction of the intellect would not be sufficient alone. The human heart, open to all love, capable of responding with all love itself, penetrated by the conviction that love is the invincible power of the universe, would be de- livered from the dread of separation from its beloved, and all which that entails. It would thus become invulnerable to the weaknesses incident on attributing to space and time a dividing and destructive power which is not intrinsically theirs. Would death remain ? Some form of what we call death must remain ; some change through which ripened individuals would pass to the higher life beyond. But it would then indeed be shorn of its sting. It would never come pre- maturely, never as interruption to a divine vocation. It would evidently appear that which our Christian faith declares it to be, re-birth into new and more beautiful conditions than those of earth even when they have attained their utmost pitch of perfection ; a new advance from ' strength to strength,' of a vaster and more satisfying kind than any that had preceded it. It is to this, and to much more also, much that it is hardly possible to formulate in words, that we may look forward, to all that can be comprehended under the immense, and to our understanding, ever growing significance of the Divine Ideal of man on earth. But in the meanwhile innumerable individuals live and die and suffer, the worst sufferers being often those who merit the painful experience least, what of these ? These share the lot de- scribed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. During their earthly life they 'receive not the promise,' because the race has not reached the point which makes it possible. If they are numbered among the faithful disciples of Christ, their death is as His death was, the ' gate to a joyful resurrec- tion,' to an immediate entry on a new life with new powers lived by the same personality. If they have not yet attained to discipleship, we cannot doubt that under fresh conditions and fresh tests further opportunities will be given them. But at last the time will have arrived when earthly education for mankind is complete, when there is no longer need either for the race or for the individual that those special lirnita- DESTINY OF RACE AND INDIVIDUAL 221 tions which the term ' earthly ' denotes should be continued. They will pass therefore. And what then ? It is not possible for weak human thoughts and words to forecast the heavenly future. Of this only we may feel confident, that it will be a future for which the whole past of the race and the whole past of every individual will have been a preparation. No power, no aspira- tion the development of which is due to that past will be cast aside as worthless. Each and all will find their completion and fulfilment in the wider vision, the vaster and more splendid activity upon which race and individual alike will enter ; and experience will become a conscious widening to * the boundless perfectness ' of God. Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty *t the Edinburgh University Press, Scotland University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hllgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. HI! 1 5 M SRLF QUARTER LOAN Jf" 1 000 670 173 4