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CUI BONO?
OR
"WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT?"

CUI BONO?

OR

"WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT?

A GENTLE PHILOSOPHY FOR
THOSE WHO DOUBT

BT
HARWOOD HUNTINGTON
A.B., CUM HONORE IN SCIENCE, TRINITY COLLEGE, HARTFORD
PH.D., MAJOR IN SCIENCE, MINOR IN LAW, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK
ADMITTED TO THE CONNECTICUT BAR
ORDAINED IN THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE, NEW YORK

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1912

CoPYHIGHT, 1912, BT
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

rW4-

r

f-J9Z

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co.
New York

TO
MY FATHER
THE REVEREND JOHN TAYLOR HUNTINGTON, D.D.
AND IN MEMORY OF
HIS FATHER, AND HIS GREAT-GRANDFATHER
MINISTERS OF
THE MASTER

CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword.  ix
Chapter I. What is the World For?  3
The answer to the question, "Cui Bono f" to be
judged by the counter-query, " Does the reply
or method produce pessimism or peace?"
(a) History shows that the ancient nations
trended towards pessimism.
(b) The world-religions, other than Christian
ity, did not give men peace, but pessi
mism.
(c) The histories of the different philosophies
developed pessimism.
(d) The "Seeing is believing" idea. Definition
of faith, religion, Christianity.
Chapter II. Difficulties. 29
Difficulties with the doctrines of the Atonement,
the Trinity; and miracles.
Chapter III. Christianity the Civilizer . . 63
Christianity produces civihzation in the nation,
preserves the family, gives peace to the individual.
Chapter IV. Evolution of Soul. . 79
Whence cometh evil? Its use is to awaken the soul
of man. Biology of the soul. Evolution of the
soul. Strengthening of the soul by (a) obedience;
(b) prayer; (c) consecration. vii

viii CONTENTS PAGE
Chapter V. Man Ensouled  104
(A) Soul and soul only can perceive God. (B) Soul
and soul only can hear God speak in (i) the laws
of nature; (ii) the voice of circumstance; (iii) the
voice of friends; (iv) the voice of the Master
Chapter VI. Christianity Transcendent  123
Christianity removes all fear; it answers the query,
"Does God Care?" Christianity alone gives
cheer, happiness, peace; it raises man from the
sense-plane to the soul-plane. Christianity and
Christianity alone answers rightly the riddle of
the universe, "Cui Bono?"

FOREWORD
The object of this brochure is usefulness and
service in re-stating some of the eternal verities
which condition peace — soul-peace. Whatever
there is of good in it is not original, and the one
desire and aim is to present in the clearest, sim
plest way some of the essential truths of Chris
tianity, of which the whole body of Christian
people are trustees. It does not pretend to teach
an academic theology, but the Christian religion.
Theological and academic terms are avoided as
much as possible, and common parlance is
employed. There never was a time when thoughtful men
and women sought so eagerly after truth as now.
It has been said that this was an Age of Doubt,
and others have said that it was an Age of Facts :
it is more — it is the best age yet in which to live,
because the rush for material things is abating,
a truer and saner vision of life is dawning, and
alongside of an educational-aristocracy, a soul-
aristocracy is being evolved. With the increase
of wealth there has come a conviction that after

x FOREWORD
a certain amount of money, it is better for a
family to give time to culture in science, letters,
fine arts and religion; this new aristocracy "sees
life whole"; it sees that we are only in the ante
chamber of real life; that we are in the primary
school of the life that is to be, of which this stage
is the preliminary grade. Examples of this new
educational and soul-aristocracy can be found
all over the world. It is the evolution of leisure
folk into a useful class.
No men see this more clearly than the so-
called successful class. An incident will illus
trate what is meant. A successful man, but of
the unchurched masses, came once to a rector,
saying, "I myself am unable to believe the
Church's doctrines, but I want my children in
structed, because I wish for them a peace which
I have never had." The children were taught
carefully, and when the time came for their con
firmation, the father came forward and joined
the Church with them. This incident without
doubt could be paralleled in many parishes of
the home or foreign field. "Successful" men
realize that something is wanting to complete
their lives: that mere pecuniary success is insuffi
cient in some way: they feel soul neglect. This
lack is not supplied by education, nor wealth,

FOREWORD xi
nor position alone. Our prayerless public educa
tional system has been estopped in supplying
even such an ethical training as the Ten Com
mandments; wealth only too often brings about a
metallization of the soul, and our thoughtful
men are coming to see that there is something
above and beyond all education, wealth and posi
tion. The genius of the Age is in a state of spirit
ual unrest, and each individual soul, feeling after
God, if haply it might find Him, is finding Him
within its own self. It is conscious that there
is something immortal about itself, like the
Frenchman who said, "You may not be immortal,
but I am." The preacher-prophet said, "He
hath set eternity in their hearts."
Some of the arguments of former decades are
no longer useful nor needed. We are in a new
age, and appeals even to the Bible' have not the
same cogency as of yore, for there is an appeal
now to that which existed even before that best
of books, the Bible, was collated — namely, the
call of the soul within each man, in which each
and every man can find God. The quiet reason
ableness of it all, is the last and best appeal.
It is reasonable that there should be a God: it
is reasonable that man's soul should be immortal,
unless, indeed, he refuses to become ensouled,

xii FOREWORD
and uses his free-will to remain mere mortal,
with "Discontented feet,
For sapphire floors unmeet."
At no time has there been more need than now
of simple, clear statements in our pulpits, of the
Truth entrusted to His servants, because there
are many churches that are qualifying, diluting
or even abandoning one position after another,
in the kind but soft hope of making religion
appear more attractive. A broadening which
approaches the tenuity of threadbareness will
never make a religion containing anything at
tractive to strong men. Hard theology is bad,
but soft theology is worse. Religion suffers from
diffusion; as it gains in extension it loses in inten
sity. A religion which tries to evade pain, grows
formal, cold and pallid. It is a cross which pin
nacles our churches, and it is a cross which is
enshrined in the hearts of men. The idea of
sacrifice is imbedded in all religions, but was
transfigured with peculiar glory first by Chris
tianity. In no soft and sensuous civilization can
the soul attain full growth; martyrdom, in its
right sense, that is, sacrifice of self, is fundamental
and essential. The call to high adventure, and
the crusading spirit, is synchronous with the

FOREWORD xiii
vigorous eras of the Church. Just as in mechan
ics, the formula for the momentum of a moving
body is the mass multiplied by the velocity, exact
ly so in religion, the formula for the momentum
or efficiency of a man in the social order, is moral
purpose multiplied by the ability to think straight,
that is, moral earnestness multiplied by intellec
tual clearness; conscience multiplied by brain;
sentiment multiplied by sense; head multiplied
by heart. The product is first, restraining power,
and second, motive power. But all cheapening
of religion, or apologizing for it, entails certain
and sure loss of restraining, impelling and com
pelling power. Men of thought and action
look for a firm belief with militant qualities which
will stand by them in times of trial, as when they
gather before an open grave. A religion must be
positive then, if never before. They do not
care for negations, general waivers and disclaimers
there, however pretty the substitute may be in
fair weather, or amidst academic surroundings.
These meditations have been gathered together
in the earnest desire to help others with those
thoughts which have helped the writer. The
excerpts and quotations have been collated from
such widely various sources, and for so long a
period, that it has been found impossible to

xiv FOREWORD
identify, verify and assign authority to them all.
The aim and endeavor is to bring thoughtful men
back to the religion of their birth-right, and to
re-state in simplest terms what is believed to
be a religious faith which contains not only present
peace, but future joy.
One pleasant duty still remains, namely, to
thank the kind friends who have read the manu
script and offered valuable, generous and helpful
criticism. The Reverend Professor Denslow,
D. D., the Reverend F. W. Harriman, D. D.,
the Reverend Professor Samuel Hart, D. D., the
Ven. George F. Nelson, D. D., and the Rever
end Ernest M. Stires, D. D.
H. H.
Epiphany, 1912.

CUI BONO? OR
"WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT?"

CHAPTER I
WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
"I go to prove my soul.
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
What tune, what circuit first, I ask not:
In time, in His good time I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird." — Browning.
An everyday question of the times is this —
"What's the good of it?" or "CuiBono f" Asthe
sphinx on the Cairo road was said to have asked
of all comers a riddle with immediate death as
a penalty for a faulty answer, so does our world's
riddle, "Cui Bono?" come to us, and death is the
penalty for a faulty reply. Yes, worse than
death, since existence without hope in the world
would be an existence worse than death. More
over, everyone is compelled to make an answer;
to remain dumb is tantamount to a confession
that no reply can be made. It is therefore worth
while to frame a correct answer, because if we
reply wrongly the result in our lives will be pessi
mism, while if we answer rightly, the result in
our lives will be peace.
What is the good of religion? What is the

4 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
good of Christianity? What's the world for?
These queries are not infrequent, but they are
repressed, especially in the presence of professed
or professional Christians. It is a pity, for there
by much peace is foregone.
We live in a most enquiring age; everything is
challenged to give a reason why it exists, or why
it should be longer tolerated. If a new machine
is put on the market, the question immediately
asked is, "What's the good of it?"; and unless
it will pay for itself several times over, it is not
given standing-room in a mill. Or if a new pro
cess is patented, elaborate explanations and pros
pectuses are printed showing the merits of the
new process, in anticipation of the expected ques
tions which will surely be asked as to its worth,
and how much money it will earn or save. Be
lievers in Christianity need not hope to escape
from interrogatories as to what religion is good
for in the profit and loss account of life. Indeed,
we are under deep and lasting obligations to those
critics who have asked questions fairly and frank
ly, because for every query there has arisen in time
a good reply; for every Athanasius there arises
an Arius, for every antagonist a protagonist.
Most of us have answered the question in our
own way, but all of us have friends who have not

A SEARCH FOR TRUTH 5
yet passed the Slough of Despond and Doubt,
or are even on the road which leads to Doubting
Castle where lives Giant Despair. We wish
that these dear friends would again try to find
the answer to the world's riddle. There is a good
reply, and one which results not in pessimism
but in peace. Cardinal Cusa said that "In
seeking the reason of things, we seek God." Rus-
kin wrote that "Wheresoever the search after
truth begins, there life begins; wheresoever the
search ceases, there life ceases." Every soul
must make the search for himself — it cannot be
done by proxy. Each thoughtful individual must
construct his own philosophy. The Christian
only can frame a gentle, reasonable system or
philosophy by which to live.
The inquiry should be made fearlessly, patiently,
and with entire willingness to accept the result.
Marcus Aurelius wrote that if anyone could con
vince him of error he would be very glad to change
his opinion, for "Truth is my business, and no
body was ever hurt by it, or received mischief
from it, excepting him who continued in igno
rance and mistake." We must read the record
of the past, and the signs of the times accurately.
That Cambridge tutor was right who said it was
the business of the class-room to translate Plato

6 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
correctly, and not primarily to understand him;
before we can tell what a man means we must
first have patience to find out just what he says.
In the same way, it is our business first to trans
late into the terms of the day the meaning of
God's universe in trying to make answer to the
riddle of the world. Goethe's dying words were,
"Light, more light!" We, the heirs of all the
ages, have more light; to Goethe it was denied,
to us it is vouchsafed. It is a great thing to
live in such times; in some respects it is a privi
lege, and in others a peril; for only too often
there is the false focus and wrong perspective
of the half-light and the half-truth; it was never
so difficult as now to discriminate between glit
tering falsehood and homely truth. Truth
changes its aspect continually, although its
essence is ever the same. Like a mountain,
seen from different view-points, it appears first
perhaps as a pyramid, again as square-topped or
sloping, according to the perspective.
" New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward
Who would keep abreast of Truth. "
What does history tell us to aid in our search
for the answer to our questions, "Cui Bono?"

CRITERION IS RESULT 7
"What is the world for?" As all can learn
from the mistakes of others, so we can learn
from errors that have been made by nations,
religions and philosophies in their answer to the
world's riddle. Was their reply to the great
interrogatory one that brought to them pessi
mism or peace? This shall be our criterion;
if they answered wrongly, the result was pessi
mism, but if rightly, they would have had peace.
We can know by the results.
How did ancient Egypt reply to the question?
She said the world was for material things, and
she carried her knowledge of material things to
an high degree of excellence. Even to this day
it is unknown how her engineers erected her giant
pyramids; nor do we know their secret of welding
bronze; it is for us one of the "lost arts." Greece
answered the query by saying virtually that the
world existed for the cultivation of the intellect
and the fine arts. Rome said that the world
was for the enjoyment of ease, pleasure, panem
et circenses — sensual things, in a phrase. These
three nations answered the world's riddle wrongly,
for they descended from pre-eminence into the
paralysis of pessimism. Lessing wrote that the
history of the world is the divine education of
the race. These nations refused the divine educa-

8 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
tion, and gave themselves to the lower life, thus
they denied themselves the high destiny they
might have had.
The religions of the world, with the one excep
tion of Christianity, have failed to give the right
answer that makes for peace and not for pessi
mism. Confucianism's ethical rules are of a
negative type, and a copy-book morality; and
time, trial and test all prove that a man cannot
be made good by rules and regulations, precepts
and laws. We ourselves are not altogether free
from criticism in this matter, because often and
again every state in the Union has passed statutes,
which although printed in the statute-books,
never become written on the hearts of men.
It is daily more apparent, that a morality that
tries to work from the outside inward, can never
accomplish the results which can be obtained by
a religion which works from the inside outward —
that is, from the heart. Shintoism, to use Baron
Nitobe's word, is "super-annuated". Bushido,
a dear and attractive product of old Japan of
chivalrous days, is a Japonicized Confucianism.
Its essence is eternal, but the form is moribund.
Buddhism, with its creed of isolation, and its
Nirvana in which, by the extinction of all desire,
a selfish narcotic or opiate is administered, in-

PRECEPTS OF IEYASU 9
ducing a species of hypnotic state, has no vital
power to lift the world from pure pessimism and
paresis. Visitors to the shrine of Ieyasu at
Nikko are given gratuitously a printed leaf
entitled "The Precepts of Ieyasu", translated by
a professor of the Imperial University. Natu
rally, at such a place, the very best that could
be given would be presented. What has it to
offer to us, either as a religion or a philosophy?
The page reads thus:
"Life is like unto a long journey with a heavy
load. Let thy steps be slow and steady, that
thou stumble [stumblest] not. Persuade thy
self that imperfection and inconvenience is the
natural lot of mortals, and there will be no room
for discontent, neither for despair. When am
bitious desires arise in thy heart, recall the days
of extremity thou hast passed through. For
bearance is the root of quietness and assurance
forever. Look upon wrath as thy enemy. If
thou knowest only what it is to conquer/and know
est not what it is to be defeated, woe unto thee!
It will fare ill with thee. Find fault with thyself
rather than with others. Better the less than
the more. "
Whatever this is as a creed, it has no particu
larly inspiring tone. The literature of the Orient
can be searched in vain for anything which can
be compared with the writings of the New Testa
ment in giving uplift, cheer, inspiration. Take

10 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
for another illustration, that most ancient col
lection of Chinese writings, the "Shu King."
Its unknown writer quotes with approval a bit
of poetry whose author even he had forgotten.
The fragment is entitled the "Royal Road to
Righteousness." "The Royal Road to Righteousness
Is straight without unevenness:
And private love and private hate
It leaves aside, by going straight.
On every side it gives a view,
Forever clear, forever true:
And broad and easy 'tis to know
For him who has the heart to go.
The Royal Road shall never bend,
The Royal Road shall never end."
There is nothing in all this to support or
strengthen a man in time of loss, loneliness, or the
great transition-day. One can search throughout
the entire labyrinth of Oriental literature in the
vain hope that somewhere and somehow he will
come upon something which will repay his time
and trouble. That there is something of great
beauty in the Oriental religions cannot be denied;
for instance, the Buddhist idea of pity; and the
Confucian idea of benevolence; and the reverence
and respect paid to elders and parents, from the
Turks of the Near East, to the Chinese of the
Far East. God gives His revelation as it can be

BUDDHISM 11
borne; it had its message once for those people,
and the lovable characteristics referred to made
Phillips Brooks once say, " I wish that Christian
ity could go out into the Orient, not alone for
what we could do for them, but for what they
could do for us." Upon the foundations already
made, their fundamental ideas of pity, benevo
lence, reverence, may expand and flower into
a Christianity of love, and charity, which may
cause our present attainments to lock petty,
poor and puerile. Buddhism is self-seeking, as
is made evident by recalling the story of its orit
gin, as told in any biography of Prince Buddha;
how the boy was kept from all knowledge of pain,
evil and death, until once he eluded his tutors
and met in one day first an old, then a sick
and then a dead man. Buddha conceived the
idea that to be free from all this evil, a man must
crush desire, that is, attain vacuity. A seeking
for peace by letting the mind run down to a calm
— the calm of non-desire. To him, even the
desire to live was hateful. Buddhism leadsmen
to abandon all home ties, and all social duties:
thus Nirvana is mere selfish isolation. That
there is no hope in this religion, is shown by
Arnold in his poem, "The Light of Asia," where
he relates the story of a little mother in India,

12 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
who, when widowed, started for her old home
with her two children, but lost them both in
crossing a river, by an eagle taking one and the
river drowning the other; how this little widow
sought the aid of the Buddhist priest and he told
her, "Daughter, bring me a mustard seed from
a home where death has never been, and I will
restore to you not only your children but your
husband." After long search, she finally accused
the priest of merely trying to show to her by slow
degrees, that death is universal, and he replied,
"Yes, that is all that I can do!" Now, place
over against this what Christianity can do, and
for an illustration, read the inscription upon a
marble monument in Lichfield cathedral, —
"Sacred to the memory of two only children, in
humble gratitude for the glorious assurance that
'Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven!'" Buddha
gives a sedative, Christ gives hope. It is dirge
versus symphony, it is apathy versus energy,
it is pessimism versus peace.
Brahmanism clearly and boldly states that
" existence has no purpose, and the world is wholly
evil, and that all good persons want to be taken
out of it and return to Brahm," — Brahm, the
impersonality from which the soul emanated and
to which it seeks to return. In a sermon given

BRAHMANAS 13
in the mosque of St. Sophia, and printed in the
Sirat-i-Mustakeen, a leading Moslem weekly,
and translated in "The Hibbert Journal," Eshref
Edib Bey said, "Ignorant preachers cry, 'Leave
the world!' and in proportion as we withdrew
into an isolated life, and abandoned industry and
effort, we fell into the depth of misery; in propor
tion as we worshipped the world, and preferred
earthly and selfish advantage, we became slaves!"
There was a Puritan once — John Milton — who
said: — "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered
virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never
sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks
out of the race where the immortal garland is
to be run for, not without dust and heat." Max
Muller can be quoted as an authority, and he
called the Brahmanas "Twaddle and ravings "
(p. 4, Bross Lectures, 1905). There are those
who fancy that there can be found a religion
especially adapted to their needs in some Oriental
creed. A little journey through the East, giving
a near view of the dull hopelessness and the ab
ject helplessness produced by their religions,
would soon demonstrate the futility of the thought
that the world's riddle is to be solved by the
religions of the Orient; and if travel is impossible,
then a study of their literature will convince the

14 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
open-minded seeker after truth, that the Rubai-
yat sums up the case completely in its cynical,
dismal and despairing lines,
" I evermore came out by the same door where in
I went." ******
"There was the door to which I had no key;
There was the veil through which I might not see:
Some little talk awhile there was of me and thee,
And then — no more of thee and me. "
To Eastern pantheism all life is one, and the
significance of a man is no greater than that of
the beast. Oriental religions are passive, sub
missive and fatalistic. They are literally "nat
ural " religions, as they leave man in the animal's
position relative to nature, that is, he is left to
adapt himself to the environment of nature's
conditions, and accepting the conditions, strive
to evolve a man fit to cope with adverse circum
stances, in the same way as a giraffe grows his
long neck, and the bear his fur coat. The Oriental
religions passively accept conditions, and conform,
but Christianity declines to be static and tries
to control the situation, by placing maninasuper-
or supra-natural position. Christianity was the
first religion to do this, and to give man a posi
tion of transcendence in the order of nature.
Christianity was the first religion to make reve
lation to man of his own value and worth, and in

ANSWER OF PHILOSOPHY 15
lieu of saying "Kismet!", or "It is fate!", gives
primacy to effort and human endeavor. It is
dynamic, while the other religions are static.
It is a substitution of a doctrine of consecra
tion of ourselves to others, in lieu of a doctrine
of renunciation of all obligations to our fellow
man. It is the new doctrine of being not merely
our brother's keeper, but our brother's brother.
The monastic Oriental view of life is as of a ship
about to be wrecked from which one must escape
a runaway and a coward; the Christian view is as
of a brave vessel which one must bring through
storm and stress to the home port. It is the
coward's view of life versus the militant. The
older religions of the world were of the early
dawn of the world's hope, while the Christian
religion is the beginning of a brighter day.
How did philosophy answer the query "Cui
Bono ? " and " What is the world for ? " Socrates,
"the enlightener", was of the first to indicate
that there could arise in man a soul : a supra-man
with a spiritual world above the mundane; that
the vital thing was not outward performance and
achievement, but inner harmony and soul-health.
It was through Socrates that the inner life first
attained independence, and the individual became
to be regarded as something of worth. That

16 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
Socrates had really attained the higher life is
shown by his preaching, "Take no thought for
your persons, nor your properties, but for your
souls." Also his dying words as he drank the
fatal hemlock, "You may kill me if you can catch
me", meaning his soul, the real Socrates. Upon
the foundations made by Socrates, Plato, the
"kingly thinker", carried the Greek view of life
to its philosophical zenith. Plato conceived of
entities beyond this fleeting world of sense. To
him, thought, and thought only, constituted the
core of reality. For one who can accept this
view of phenomena, the sense-world retreats
and the thought-world is the world that becomes
the one immediately present. The tremendous
advantage of this is that it breaks the power of
fate, destiny, circumstance or environment over
man; it allows him to transcend time and space.
In the thought-world, real being is simple and
constant, while in the sense-world, life is complex
and uncertain. It was a great step forward and
upward towards a proper answer to the world's
riddle; nevertheless, Socrates, Plato, and Confucius
were but the exclusive mystagogues for an en
lightened few. A Gospel for a poor, suffering
and oppressed multitude had not yet been enun
ciated.

ANSWER OF CYNICS, EPICUREANS & STOICS 17
Following Socrates and Plato came the Schools
of the Cynics, the Epicureans and the Stoics.
A brief characterization of them must needs be
given, to show how widely the world sought for
the answer to its riddle. The Cynics taught
that happiness came from excellence alone —
excellence, that is, as the world estimates it.
But this sort of excellence can be the property
only of the select few. Cynicism is essentially
a destructive and not a constructive philosophy.
It is not remote from the school of anarchy and
the red flag. There is an instructive mural
painting in the Congressional Library, where
Anarchy is represented as tearing down the arch
of civilization, while the super-structure is shown
as sure to fall and destroy Anarchy herself in
the general ruin. Cynical Voltaire frankly said
that except for a few sages and rich, the world
was a crowd of unfortunates. Aristotle wrote,
that life was not worth while for those who were
ill, nor for paupers. Again, the philosophy
of the Epicureans denied that the gods were
interested in man at all; and their philosophy
produced, not strong, helpful men, but weak and
spongy parasites; it is a philosophy which is
pleasing only to those who have health and youth
and wealth, but it has nothing to offer to the sick,

18 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
the old nor the poor. Horace, wailing over the
past, and Mimnernus, mourning over his lost
youth, are examples of this useless school of
philosophy. And still again, the school of the
Stoics, the most attractive of the philosophies,
long dead as a rule of life, although ever alive as
a virtue, is an enfeeblement virus and its key-note
is apathy, and its logical end is suicide. Brutus,
"the noblest Roman of them all", is a sample;
and Marcus Aurelius shows himself in his writings
as tossed hither and yon upon a sea of con
flicting doubts and fears. "Pleasures", says
Chesterfield, "I have enjoyed and know their
futility." Goethe spoke of himself thus, — "In
all my seventy-five years I have not had one
month of comfort — nothing but toil and care."
A French and false idea of life is found in a fre
quently quoted verse,
"La vie est br6ve;
Un peu d'espoir,
Un peu de r6ve,
Et puis — bon soir!"
Lorenzo di Medici's Carnival Song conveys
the same erroneous view of life : —
"Beauteous is life in blossom!
And it fleeteth — fleeteth ever;
Whoso would be joyful — let him!
There's no surety for the morrow, "

"SEEING IS BELIEVING" 19
"Quant' e bella giovinezza,
Che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol esser lieto sia,
Di doman non c'e certezza. "

Therefore, the conclusion of the matter is this,
that so far as the schools, Cynic, Epicurean or
Stoic, are concerned they disapprove themselves,
because of their fruits, which are seen, in the main,
to be mere apples of Sodom. They made a wrong
reply to the world's riddle, and we know it,
because their result is rank pessimism and not
peace. Another large class of men who have not as
yet come upon the right answer to the question,
"Cui Bono?", is the class who propound their
creed dogmatically thus, "Seeing is believing."
It is true that when the University student be
gins his work in the laboratory, he starts with
that dogma, and the reason of it is that our system
of education is designed to awaken his powers of
observation. It is only the primer stage of his
training, however, because sooner or later in
the laboratory he comes in contact with a live
wire, and from that moment his touch-stone of
"seeing is believing" is amended, and he begins
to be satisfied to believe in things by their effects
and results. In the chemical laboratory the same

20 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
thing happens, for he discovers that if he wishes
to prove that a certain liquid contains iron, he
does not need to isolate the iron as metal, but he
adds the reagent ammonia to the acid solution,
and if he obtains a brown flocculent precipitate,
he is quite satisfied to declare that although he
did not see the iron as metal, he is sure that the
original liquid contained iron. Any court would
allow the testimony. But what does this es
tablish ? It shows that in our University labora
tories, scientists often will believe what they do
not see, and further, they often will believe in
a proof which is founded only on effects or results.
Religion doesn't ask for more! Scientists believe
in electricity, which they cannot see, nor do they
even understand what it is; so religionists believe
in God, whom they cannot see, and concerning
Whom they often err in trying to describe His
"attributes". Scientists have implicit faith in
a given result arising from a set of given causes;
so Christians have faith in Christianity because
of the results obtainable by their religion, and
by no other means. Every inventor has the
faith faculty, and by the eye of faith he sees his
invention perfected long before the actual con
struction begins. The faith faculty is universal.
Huxley said, " The ground of our actions and the

DEFINITION OF FAITH 21
validity of our reasoning rest upon the act of
faith which leads us to take a part as a guide for
the future." Spencer wrote, "The absolute
exists, but is unknowable." To this was replied
that no one is aware that anything is a limit
or a defect until at the same time he is above and
beyond it; an ox cannot know anything of geom
etry; therefore, when Spencer said that the
absolute exists but was unknowable, he is looking
over the finite and knows the absolute as an exis
tent being.
"Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod,
And looks to see it push away the clod,
He trusts in God!"
" Whoever says, when clouds are in the sky,
Be patient, heart! Light breaketh by and by,
Trusts the Most High!"
How shall faith be defined? Thus, "Faith is
a conviction of unseen realities." Faith is a
truth revealed and made objective. The writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews said that faith was
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen. Consistency would seem to
demand either a deeper faith or a bolder un
belief. Helen Keller's idea was, that "the best and
most beautiful things in the world could not be
seen nor touched, but just felt in the heart."

22 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
Now doubt is the stepping-stone to faith. Doubt
is only too often looked upon as an evil, but it is
not, and as Tennyson sang, "There is more faith
in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the
creeds." Doubt to be of use, must be honest,
fearless, patient. St. Paul tells us plainly to
prove all things. An old Turkish proverb runs
"Who questions, learns." We should fear doubt
less than a too-easy faith.
How shall "religion" be defined? The ancient
phrase is that "religion is the divine life and moral
power of God in the soul of man." To this
might be added, "manifested by its fruits of
unselfishness, patience, service." Religion is
a body of supra-rational facts, reducible to intelli
gible propositions. Lantantius said that religion
was the attachment of man to God by the bonds
of piety. The Chinese symbol or ideogram for
religion indicates "the tie that binds." A psychol
ogist might say that religion was an appreciative
attitude towards the values of God and man
which are related and inter-react as transmitter
and receiver. Phillips Brooks held that religion
was the consecrated force by means of which all
human activities should be inspired and directed,
supplying an extra-mundane motive. Religion
is communion with God. It is the background of

DEFINITION OF CHRISTIANITY 23
life. It is the visio dei. Washington spoke of
religion with his characteristic moderation, and
his words should be cherished as a warning —
"Let us with care indulge the hope that we can
keep our Nation moral without the use of
religion." Christianity can be defined as Christ's religion.
Or the revelation of God through Christ. Chris
tianity is the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth re
incarnated in humanity. Its substance is ex
pressed in the one word "redemption" with its
postulates and its results. It brings pardon, a
sense of fellowship with God, and a sure confidence
of final victory over the world and the grave.
Christianity is nothing, unless it is the power
in the lives of men of the Holy Spirit — Christ's
witness within the heart calling us. The proph
ets, apostles, and saints have heard the Call;
and it comes to us all in time.
How do we hear this Call ? A poet has des
cribed it, saying that it comes to us, each in his
own tongue. "A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell;
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And a cave where the cave-men dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod —

24 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
Some call it 'Evolution',
But we call it God!"
"Like tides on a crescent sea-beach,
When the moon is new and thin;
Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in:
Come from that mystic ocean,
On which no foot can fall —
Some people call it 'Nature',
We call it 'The Call.'"
"A picket frozen on duty,
A mother starved for her brood,
Socrates drinking the hemlock,
Jesus on the rood:
And millions, who, humble and patient,
The straight hard pathway trod —
Some call it 'Consecration',
But we call it God!"
It is thus we are called; instinctively, and in
tuitively, there arises in our spiritual hinterland,
familiarly known as "the ground of the heart",
something which will not be gainsaid nor refused.
Some, as the Greeks, call it foolishness — we know
it's God.
The supreme concern of Christianity is not a
reorganization of society, but the disclosure of
the proper relation of the human soul to God.
Christ was not a reformer but a revealer; not an
agitator with a plan, but an idealist with a vision;
His concern was not social improvement first, but

THE MESSIAH'S ANSWER 25
spiritual redemption. It is regeneration not by
reorganization but by inspiration. He gave new
power to overcome evil, to comfort in sorrow,
to give strength to bear burdens; to take away
regret for the past, and to inspire with hope for
the future. His religion was not a theory nor a
speculation; not a doctrine nor a philosophy,
but as Coleridge said, "a life"; a life maintaining
certain personal relationships, in a spirit of love
and grateful reverence, to a Father whose nature
was shown in His goodness to His universe and
His people. It was Christ, the Messiah, the
divine Jesus of Nazareth, who first answered
the riddle of the universe rightly. He was the
first to open life to all, rich, or poor, the educated
or the untrained, those with little or no chance
in the world, or those over-blessed with oppor
tunity and worldly advantage. He did this by
taking man directly to God and at once. His
calculations are not based on this little world,
but on a scale of eternity, and this rids man once
and for all of physical limitations, poverty of
means, or paucity of opportunity. It was the
Nazarene who first made perfect adjustment
between essence and existence. According to
Greek thought, the several spheres of life touched
one another externally only; Jesus posited an all-

26 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
penetrating unity as the source of life and each
must draw his life through it; and more, if any
individual separated himself from this unity in
selfish isolation, that individual incurred at once
the penalty of vacuity. This unity or universal
life was God. Finite existence had been degraded
by both religions and philosophies until exalted
by our Christ, who was the first to teach that a
union of the human and the divine can begin in
this world here and now. Religions and phil
osophies had hitherto been ontological, and had
tried to penetrate beyond illusion and appearance
into verities; Christ unified God and man, de
manding a new world of love and mercy in this
present sphere of existence. He turned from a
mundane to a cosmic life. Thus a kingdom of
God was erected in the very midst of temporali
ties. This was what He meant when He said,
"The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you."
Phillips Brooks put it into a phrase when he wrote,
"I am a citizen of the universe." The key-words
are fellowship, fatherhood, childhood; and the
simile of the human family is both parable and
type of what Christ meant to establish upon earth
as a preparation for the world beyond, upon
whose very threshold we are standing. Not an
extinction of the individual into an absolute

CHRISTIANITY'S ANSWER 27
essence, but a life, here and hereafter, as His
children. This means a new birth, such as Nico-
demus could not comprehend; a new birth of
super- and supra-rational beings. Now it was
in this way that Christianity opened life to those
classes to whom never before had hope been
offered — to the poor, the unfortunate, the un
educated, the children. The power of external
destiny over man received its first blow when
Plato put man's inner nature supreme; but Plato
created only an aristocracy of those who had
sufficient strength of inner nature and acumen to
raise themselves above the trammels of this
world; the Nazarene did infinitely more, for He
freed man from the thrall of any and all limita
tions, either in his external surroundings or his
own innate native incapacity. The present and
the future are in this way connected, and the
whole of present striving is linked with the future,
and this gives to the struggle point, object, rea
son, glory. Christianity offers a new temper, a
spirit triumphant over pain, sorrow and the grave.
On such a basis a reasonable, holy and living hope
can be erected, a satisfactory life can be developed
and all this, cheerfully, hopefully and in peace.
Christianity, and Christianity only, contains the
possibilities of perfection.

28 WHAT IS THE WORLD FOR?
"In this broad world of ours
Amid measureless grossness and slag,
Enclosed within its central heart
Nestles the seed Perfection. "
— Whitman.

CHAPTER II
DIFFICULTIES
"Never fear but there's provision
Of the devil to quench knowledge
Lest we walk the earth in rapture!
Making those who catch God's secret
Just so much more prize their capture." — Browning.
There are many difficulties which meet the
earnest seeker after truth, and among them,
perhaps the greatest is to obtain a proper appre
hension of the doctrine of the Atonement. Why
should the Son of Man suffer ? Why should the
Son of God die for the faults of others, and that
too upon a cross? The unchurched masses fail
to see any meanmg in the events of Holy Week
which the Church commemorates each year in
her calendar. It is nothing to them whether one
man or a thousand are crucified. We of the
twentieth century have difficulty in carrying
our minds back to an age which permitted cruci
fixion; but it was a common enough sight in the
Roman colonies. It is said that there were over
two thousand crucified under one of the Roman

30 DIFFICULTIES
pro-consuls in Judea, and therefore the crucifixion
of one Jesus of Nazareth was not in itself any
thing unusual for the times in which He was
on earth. The historical fact is unquestioned.
"Crucified under Pontius Pilate" is the secular
as well as the sacred record. The Church holds
the doctrine that Christ died on the cross as an
Atonement, and the Church believes His words,
that the Son of Man "must needs suffer." The
Atonement is most woefully misunderstood and
falsely stated by many. Lafcadio Hearn in no
place shows greater ignorance than when he passes
judgment upon the doctrine, and it is small
wonder that he condemns Christianity, as he sets
up the picture of an angry and unforgiving God,
who will only be appeased by the blood of an
innocent victim; and then he condemns Chris
tianity as unethical, and ill-suited to the Japanese,
his adopted countrymen. (Unfamiliar Japan, p.
11.) Of course, the picture is not ethical, nor
is it Christianity. Sadly enough, Hearn is not
the only one who credits Christianity with so
monstrous a doctrine, and it would seem as though
its mere statement in the above form would carry
its own condemnation, so strangely is it at
variance with the genius of Christianity. The
source of the concept that there must be a blood-

THE ATONEMENT 31
offering is in Leviticus. In that ancient book the
idea of the scape-goat and a sin-offering is found.
The root of the idea may have been that Moses
wished to show the Israelites the costliness of
sin, and that sin could be removed only by blood ;
it attempted to bring home to the minds of the
people the fact and the conviction of sin, — a
conviction really understood only by those white
souls who live ' ' nearer the great white throne "than
most of us. Wheresoever the root of the idea
is to be found, this we know, that the old Mosaic
dispensation is not strictly comparable with the
new order, because the Old Testament offering
was involuntary on the part of the victim, whereas
Christ's was a voluntary sacrifice. "He stead
fastly set His face to go to Jerusalem", in spite
of the warnings and beseechings of His disciples.
All attempts fail to liken the two as quid pro quo;
nor can it be made a species of commercial
transaction, nor a bargain. Sabatier says some
where that you cannot turn moral realities into
geometrical quantities. The poetic idea of a
ransom is very beautiful unless it is pressed too
far, and when it is pushed too far it recalls the
old doctrinal battle over the query, "To whom
was the 'ransom' paid?", which Origen answered
by saying that it was paid to the devil, while

32 DIFFICULTIES
Anselm said it was paid to God; the truth is of
course that it was "paid" to neither.
There are two key-words which must be under
stood before the doctrine of the Atonement can
be comprehended, and one of these words is
"sin", and the other "vicarious."
The sin sacrifices of the Children of Israel
brought home to their minds the fact of sin. We
moderns attempt to pass sin by, and just in so
far do we err. In the classics, no phenomenon
of moral history is more striking than the cry of
conscience against guilt, and the Greek tragedies
enforce the law of retribution with the most
thorough-going consistency. Again, from our
every-day observation of men, we know that the
blush on the cheek is at once a confession of sin,
and also a promise of better things; for if the
wrong act was his act, the flush of self-condemna
tion showing remorse is his act too, and we feel
that the man has taken up sides against sin. Sin
is rebellion against God, and the one and only
unpardonable sin is a refusal to listen to the voice
of conscience, well-called God's vicar within us.
Sin is arrested development: a refusal to become
ensouled. Any discussion of sin must necessarily
open the question as to the so-called "fall of
man". In that connection we often hear the

THE ATONEMENT 33
query, "Did man begin perfect, or has he climbed
the steep ascent himself?" That is, did man
begin at the top or at the bottom? The ques
tions are somewhat unfair because they carry
the inference that there is no alternative between
Evolution and the Fall. The Bible does not say
that man was created physically perfect; it was
Milton who is largely responsible for this, and
also much more bad theology. The biblical
narrative throughout is the story of an evolution
and a development, or else a retrogression. To
say that man can raise himself by his own unaided
effort, is to be lost in the morass of Pelagianism.
The old British monk Pelagius set man an impos
sible task. The third chapter of Genesis shows a
deterioration, and the story is told in the only
way that an uneducated people could have under
stood it, and in the same way that children to-day
are instructed in fundamental truths, i. e., in a
poetic form. Clement of Alexandria said that
man was of "gradual growth"; Irenaeus frankly
stated that "initial perfection is contrary to law."
There is no reason why there could not have been
a theistic evolution, by which a body was evolved
from lower forms of animal life; and later on,
when this body had been perfected by evolution,
God breathed into this evolved body the "breath

34 DIFFICULTIES
of life", or in other words, gave it a soul. Then
and there something happened which at once
differentiated man from the ape. The skeleton
of the anthropoid ape and man are structurally
similar, and the thing that will ever differentiate
the man from the ape is that the man is ensouled
with more or less of the divine life. Anthropoid
became Anfhropos. From that high estate of
white soul Adam fell by his rebellion against the
expressed will of God; the identical thing happens
to us, for once we had whiter souls than now, but
we entered, by more or less easy stages, into
rebellion against Him; the story of Adam's fall
is a poetic form of what happens to us, for we are
to-day far from what we might have been, and
have been driven out from what was designed to
be our Garden of Eden, because we too rebelled
and sinned. The "fall of man" separates man
from God, and it is the business of true Christian
theology to show man the road away from the
slavery and exile of sin, and to place him on his
way to God. The first step towards God can
be taken only by those who have in some measure
comprehended what sin is; short-comings, negli
gences, omissions and commissions.
"It isn't the thing you do, man!
It's the thing you leave un-done

THE ATONEMENT 35
Which gives you a bit of heart-ache
At the setting of the sun!"
" The tender word forgotten,
The letter you didn't write,
The flower you might have sent, man,
Are the haunting sins at night!"
The Litany, with its refrain, "Have mercy
upon us, miserable sinners", is comprehended
fully only by those who realize their high destiny,
and also their short-comings. They understand
the word "sin."
The second key-word to unlock the meaning
of the doctrine of the Atonement, is the word,
"vicarious." In the Hall of Justice, Amsterdam,
is a picture of a king sacrificing one of his eyes
to save an eye of his son, who had been condemned
to lose both eyes unless a substitute should be
offered. This is vicarious sacrifice. Literature
has a multitude of examples: Alcestis offering
herself to save her husband; Codrus, the king,
when the oracle said that victory would come to
the nation whose king was killed in the conflict,
put himself in the front and fell among the first,
and his nation conquered; again the romantic
story of Regulus, praying, in his own great city,
Rome, as an hostage of the Carthaginians, that
"Carthage must be destroyed," although he well

36 DIFFICULTIES
knew that his life would be the first forfeit;
Curtius, springing full-armed into the earth
quake's rent, on hearing that the earth would
close up only when the best thing in Rome was
thrown into it, saying the best thing in Rome was
her true soldier; again and again in modern lit
erature there are illustrations of vicarious suffer
ing, and perhaps there is no finer, than the story
of Jim Bludso, the Mississippi pilot, who steered
his burning steamer to the shore and landed his
passengers at the cost of his own life. The Tale
of Two Cities also reveals this divine element
in man, the idea of vicarious offering of a life,
glorifying even the drunkard who gave his life
for a brother man. In real fife we come upon this
vicarious suffering; the firemen's burns are the
price for the lives of others; brave little mothers
offering in daily sacrifice their lives for their little
ones, like the pelican plucking out its heart's
blood for its young. As Drummond wrote,
"It is Creation's drama." Vicarious suffering
is the god-like quality in humanity.
"Not a worm is cloven in vain,
Or but subserves another's gain. "
Supposing that Christ had not been crucified,
what then? If He had simply ascended from the
Mount of Transfiguration, or if He had died a

THE ATONEMENT 37
natural death in the Temple as one of its priests,
or if He had removed His school from Jerusalem
to Alexandria or Rome, He would have been a
great teacher only. But He did not do this: He
said that the Son of Man "must needs suffer."
And we are most like Him when we suffer vica
riously for others, thus fulfilling the measure of
atoning for sin — sins of others and sins of our
selves. It is a doctrine full of beauty, dignity
and comfort. The Old Testament promised
deliverance and forgiveness; the New Testament
fulfills the promise in a vicarious, full, perfect and
sufficient sacrifice.
As God is God, He cannot be otherwise than
wrathful at sin. Simple justice demands that
logically. Yet, as Harnack says, "There is an
inner law which compels men to consider God as
wrathful, but when Christ descends, they see the
higher law than pure justice, — namely, Mercy."
It is the royal prerogative. The Old Covenant
is of sin and of punishment; the New Covenant
is the Gospel of Pardon. Amiel wrote, that the
Gospel is the good news of the way to attain
God's favor, and this time to retain it. St. John
stated God's affection for His children, saying
that God did not dispense with a propitiation,
but provided one. The doctrine of the atone-

38 DIFFICULTIES
ment is therefore not a needless piece of rescue
work, but an essential and vital connection
between God and man. Phillips Brooks likened
the doctrine to a bridge between heaven and earth.
It is the glory of Christianity that it builds this
bridge, and thus makes a way home for men's
souls towards heaven. In our own way and with
the co-operation of God, we too have bridges of
atonement to construct between our souls and
the peace we fain would have. And as the Son
of Man must needs suffer, we too must needs
suffer, and suffer vicariously, if we would be truly
like him. If we then more fully grasp the mean
ing of the words "sin" and "vicariousness", we
can the better apprehend the meaning of the
Atonement. Another of the difficulties of the "not-yet"
Christian are the questionings which arise con
cerning what position he can take as to the
Trinity. How can there be such a thing as three
in one and yet one in three? Trinity and yet
Unity? He who would escape mystery must cease
thinking. But to stop thinking would bring
man down to the level of the bellows of the black
smith— "it breathes indeed, but cannot be said
to live." Conscious life is always conditioned

THE CHURCH'S MYSTERIES 39
by thought, and of all God's creatures it has been
given to man alone to be in perpetual thought
and research after more knowledge. Mysteries
are met all along the line of advanced thought,
but the advance is steady. The astrologers of
old are the astronomers of to-day; alchemists have
become chemists; mesmerists of the last century
are the experimental psychologists of the present;
yet one and all of them come upon data quite
beyond the grasp of the mind. Huxley said that
"the mysteries of the Church are child's play
compared to the mysteries and antinomies of
Nature." The most important of the phenomena
over which men ponder are the mysteries of
life and death; we seek, and we seek diligently,
for an answer to the problems physical and psy
chical. In one respect the scientists have bettered
the methods of the religionists, in that they have
consistently pursued the course of offering theo
ries, and then permitting these theories to stand
the criticism of time, the great revealer. On the
other hand, religion has had a dogmatic attitude
thrust upon it, because of its unique and peculiar
growth in history. Many minds cannot accept
a theology given out authoritatively, calling it
priestly tyranny, ecclesiastical zealotry, dogmatic
formalism, officious dictation, and the like.

40 DIFFICULTIES
Christianity should be sharply distinguished from
ecclesiasticism, which one Hindu named "eccle-
siasticity" or "churchianity." Dogmas should
be to theology as theories are to science. Erro
neously writing C03 instead of C02 doesn't stop
the reaction. There are two sides to the case,
and there is much to be said about the menace
to liberty which man-made dogmas might be;
but facts so complex have a corresponding diffi
culty in expression. The mere translation from
one language to another can never be done with
precision and exactitude, since the very words
have not the identical power, length nor breadth
in different tongues. Theology can but try to
give the Gospel picture, as well as the conditions
allow, in fullness and in dignity, and then await
for higher powers, and more perfect revelation
and vision, in that higher stage of development
towards which we all are moving. Yet, here and
now, we all need to think out some workable
and working philosophy concerning our relations
to the mysteries of life, and the difficulty of
coming nearer to the centre of the mystery of the
Trinity is one of these problems. What rational
explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity can
be brought forward acceptable to the practical
man, or to a man trained in the laboratory, ex-

THE TRINITY 41
perimental and critical methods of our day?
Theology has volumes on the subject, but these
are not available for the average man, because of
lack of time in the men, and because of abstruse,
repellent or dogmatic style in the books. There
is no intent here to bring forward any "new the
ology." The sole desire is to state the matter
in simplest terms, in the conviction that it is worth
the attempt.
Assent is asked to three general propositions,
and these are so broad that Jew or Gentile can
agree with them. The first is this: "The world
reveals one great spiritual principle." As our
observing powers are developed we see a wonder
ful world around us, and we note that it all shows
fore-thought and wisdom. Whatever line of
research is followed, the real seeker after truth
finds a marvellous adaptation to environment
for which no mere chance can account. Our
mother's simple statement that God made it all
satisfies us until the independent questioning
days come upon us, or until inexplicable events
arrive with their well-nigh crushing load of
doubts and fears. In our student days we learn
from the biographies of the brainiest of our race
how the intellectual giants sought after God.
Justin said he began as Stoic, and passed through

42 DIFFICULTIES
the schools of Aristotle, Pythagoras and Plato
to the Christ. Arnold came finally to find a
"stream or tendency in the world which made for
righteousness." Thus he acknowledged our prop
osition that the world reveals a great spiritual
principle. Spencer's phrase was "There is an
infinite and eternal energy from which all things
proceed." "An inscrutable existence." Hart-
mann's word was "Absolute"; Strauss's was
"Universum"; Carlyle's "Immensities and eter
nities." Hume, after many years of trying to
live as a consistent atheist, wrote "Men without
religion are but little removed from brutes."
Shaler returned from negations after a long tour
among thsm. Romanes, the great English natu
ralist, declared, "The nature of man without God
is miserable. I know from experience the intel
lectual distractions of scientific research, philo
sophical speculation, and artistic pleasures — they
are all as high confectionery to a starving man."
Romanes was once of the multitude who made his
intellect his god, and believed the intellect to
be the only organ of evidence to man; one day
he discovered that by intellect alone he could not
prove a mother's love. Tolstoy went deeper,
for he wrote that "each man within himself is
conscious of a knowledge quite distinct from rea-

THE TRINITY 43
soned knowledge, and quite independent of the
endless chain of cause and effect." So Tolstoy
established man's certainty of God and the soul,
for it is an instinctive knowledge. The soul
has reasons that reason knows not of. But it
was left to Professor John Fiske to go deepest in
the analysis, for his position was that each man
finds the great spiritual principle within his own
self and in his own individual experience. Like
tides, an un-seen force working from within devel
ops in each man, and is finally acknowledged.
Thus men of the greatest acumen accept the
proposition that the world reveals one great
spiritual principle. They may not use our words,
but the thought is identical.
The second proposition, which could be ac
ceded to by Jew or Gentile, is this: "History con
tains one ideal character." Lecky stated it
thus, "It was reserved for Christianity to give
to the world its one ideal character." And he
further wrote, "Christianity has shown itself
capable of acting on all ages, conditions, nations;
has done more to regenerate and soften man
kind than the work of all the philosophers and
moralists." ("History of Morality," ii, 8.)
We are not now in the field of argument nor
logic, nor anything that we can find within our

44 DIFFICULTIES
own inner selves, but we are in the immediate
presence of a fact. In establishing this fact we
are immeasurably indebted to the critics. Their
attack on the writings of St. Luke is typical and
illustrative of the great value of their criticism
in bringing out the truth. In the instance of
St. Luke, the critics had taken up the word "poli-
tarch," which they said no one had used of all
the writers of that time; the critics questioned
the general accuracy of the writings of the Apostle
on the principle oifalsus in unofalsus in omnibus.
It so happened that a British consul chanced to
find this very word "politarch" carved in stone
as an inscription on a certain old triumphal arch
which was being demolished to widen the street
in the city where the consul was stationed; this
Englishman had been well educated in sacred
history so that he realized at once the value of
the evidence of the rock; he obtained the huge
stone and sent it to the British Museum, where
it now is, close to the main entrance within the
front hall. Thus St. Luke was corroborated in
the strangest and strongest way, and criticism has
been of inestimable service in strengthening the
record. We are to-day better able than ever
to answer the oft-made query, "What think ye
of Christ?" What His enemies of His own time

THE TRINITY 45
thought of Him is stronger as testimony than
what His friends said; His enemies, the men of
Nazareth, asked whence His wisdom, "that such
mighty works are wrought by His hands? " They
acknowledged that mighty works had been
wrought, and asked whence the power. Pilate
declared that He was "Just"; and to limit the
testimony to three witnesses one can add the
evidence of the centurion, " Truly, this man was
the Son of God." This is more impressive testi
mony than that of friends. In our own times a
multitude of royal thinkers have given their
voices in answer to the demand that is made on
all : "What think ye of Christ?" Pascal said that
Christ was the centre of all and the goal towards
which all tends. Goethe, who tried for many
years to dis-believe, finally wrote, "The Gospels
are throughout true, durchaus echt; let culture
advance as much as it can the human mind will
never rise beyond the grandeur and moral ele
vation of Christ; the law of perspective, which
governs time as well as space, fails to take one
cubit from His stature. The Gospels reflect a
majesty the most divine of anything ever on earth,
and Christianity is the mighty lever by which
degraded and suffering humanity has again and
again been strengthened to lift itself out of the

46 DIFFICULTIES
mire." Secular statesmanship cannot supply a
like force. Rousseau said, "Christianity is no
fiction." Renan, "The divinity of Christ is
established, and He is become the corner-stone
of humanity." Strauss declared that "He is
the being without whose presence in the mind
perfect piety is impossible; He stands alone and
unapproached in history." At a mass meeting
in Berlin, convened as a protest to some of the
advanced free-thinkers, a salutation from the
Kaiser was read, which began, "Tell the people
that the words of Jesus prove His life." For
words are things, as Carlyle put it, and in the
logic of history the words of Jesus have been
crystallized into institutions, and institutions are
facts which cannot be argued away. Harnack
phrased the matter well when he indited the
words, "Historical science has given us an his
torical Jesus in lieu of an ecclesiastical Christ."
Therefore, thanks to the critical science, our
Bible is stronger than ever before. Its felicities
linger in the ear like music that cannot be for
gotten, and its phrasings often seem rather to
be things than words. Saga, myth, legend, his
tory, biography, dialogue, anecdote, maxims,
poetry — all are used in the make-up of the
book of books — our Bible. As literature alone

THE TRINITY 47
it is slowly, though surely, coming into its
own. If Jesus of Nazareth were merely a man, and a
product, as some Easterns say, of the educational
system of an Oriental or Parsee school, then
those same academic seats of learning should be
able to bring forth another who could bear con
trast with the gentle Nazarene: the very idea
seems sacrilegious, but compels acceptance. By
no flight of fancy can any amount of education
give to man like originality in concept or audac
ity in plan. "Never man spake like this man."
His was not a borrowed message; there was no
patch-work, no amalgam. Isolation of parts of
various ethnic creeds may show similarity in
part, and parallel columns may be used to show
duplication of some isolated truths enshrined in
differing faiths, but not the whole, the basic idea.
Any real test of a system is not in the parts
but in the whole as a unit. It is not a question of
matching threads in a fabric, but of finding a
piece of fabric to equal Christianity, or bear con
trast with it — contrast not in items but in sys
tems. That there are many grains of gold in
the other religions is not to be denied. Christ's
system was in ethical continuity with the moral
conservation of history. Christianity bears close

48 DIFFICULTIES
relation to recognized moral truths. Confucius,
Buddha, Zoroaster, Plato did a work in pre
paring a way; Christ brought the religious zeal
of Judaism from the provincial up to the univer
sal ; from a legal system to a personal allegiance,
and thus gave the world a new moral idea and
a new principle for the creation of character.
Pre-Christian philosophy, as Plato's, posited as
cardinal virtues wisdom, courage, temperance,
and so exalted the intellect as proper ruler of the
commonwealth; but Christianity places charity,
i. e., the heart, as the force, which, like gravitation,
makes for cohesion and coherence. This was
original and not a matter of mere education.
Personality is shown by thought and action;
they are inter-related: a mean man cannot be
noble in action, nor can a noble man be mean in
action; there is harmony between the thought and
action, and true nobility is evidenced by the
thoughts and actions of the personality. To judge
of any personality one must know the circum
stances of race, place, family, time, education, op
portunity and lieutenants; Jesus was of a despised
race, in a vanquished province, of a laborer's
family, at a sodden age, and his own folk deemed
Him ignorant, for they asked, "How knoweth
this man letters, having never learned?" Yet

THE TRINITY 49
in three years' time, and with "unlearned and
ignorant" aids, He enunciated doctrines which,
in the language of those whose positions and
places were jeopardized, "turned the world up
side down." Of those years Lecky wrote, "The
record of those three years has done more to
regenerate mankind than all the plans of the
statesmen, and all the sayings of the philoso
phers." The more one studies the life of the
Messiah the greater the wonder becomes. It is
only a question of time as to when the student,
who is fearless and fair and faithful in his studies
concerning the Christ, will become the disciple
of the Master, whom St. Paul declared to be "the
Son of God with power." Thus the proposi
tion is proven that there is in history one ideal
character. The third proposition is this: "Human life
is now pervaded with altruism. " Altruism means
"help the other fellow." Thehistoryof sociology
is the story of a steady increase in man's caring
for his neighbor. A better reply than formerly
is now made to the cynical query, "Am I my
brother's keeper?" Starting with the condition
of the savage, where, as Esau, "his hand was
against every man, and every man's hand was
against him," we have now arrived at a stage of

50 DIFFICULTIES
achievement when hospitals are built in every
leading city, and charity, in its best sense, reaches
out her hand far and wide. Hospitals are erected
as Hebrew, Buddhist and Moslem hospitals, but
they all owe their existence to the altruistic spirit
of Christ, and they are Christian in all but name.
Some years ago, when votes were taken in France
as to who was her greatest man, Napoleon headed
the list; but now Pasteur's name leads, a savior
of life replacing the destroyer. Hardly any biog
raphies are written to-day, unless of men who
have done some great thing for humanity. The
line of cleavage between the age when "might
made right, " and the time when the rule of charity
began to obtain, is very clearly marked. The
line of demarcation has a date and this date was
Anno Domini. Altruism began with Christ. Al
truism is quite contrary to human nature; it is
human to look out for "number one" primarily.
It has been said, "You cannot change human
nature. " This dictum has been reiterated enough
to make many people believe it, but it is not truth.
Christianity's aim and object is to change human
nature, and it does change it. It began with the
rule or order, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself." Christ's own words were, "Ye must
be born again," and it is a new birth, and a new

THE TRINITY 51
point of view of life, to try to esteem one's neigh
bor as better than one's self. A current phrase
of the times is "The rights of each and the good
of all." Our rights end where our neighbor's be
gin, and the voice of conscience is altruistic, tell
ing us to help those who are over burdened, to
sympathize with the troubled, and to use a broader
charity. This is the approving and reproving
voice, described by Christ as "the light within
you." The spirit of altruism gave political suf
frage generously, perhaps too generously; the spirit
of altruism writes many statutes for the protec
tion of labor and the general good; the spirit of
altruism erects hospitals and homes for crippled
children and old people. We can easily agree
with the proposition that human life is pervaded
with altruism.
With our three propositions what have we
done? We have made a God, we have estab
lished a Christ, and outlined an Holy Spirit. We
have virtually accepted a Trinity, enunciated by
no less a One than our Master, who was the first
to state it. We have made a Father to worship,
a Son to follow, a Holy Spirit to revere. We have
a Trinity. Can this Trinity be a Unity? There
are many analogies in the material world about
us, and while the argument from analogy is not

52 DIFFICULTIES
conclusive, it is an argument by no means to be
despised. Every chemist finds a triplicity of sub
stance in an unity of element in the case of car
bon, for the element carbon has three distinct
forms — coal, graphite and diamond; these three
forms are identical chemically and as such a
unity, yet there is triplicity of substance — coal,
graphite and the diamond. Again, every physi
cist finds a trinity of phenomena in heat, light
and electricity, and these are simultaneously a
unity, in being simply modes of motion; it is a
mode of motion in every case and as such unity,
and yet there are three appearances, and there
fore a trinity. The molecule H30 known as
water can be solid, liquid or gaseous by simply
varying the temperature; a unity and yet a trinity
in manifestation. The familiar trichotomy of
man as body, mind and spirit is another illustra
tion of a unity which is a trinity; body being the
objective self, mind the subjective self and spirit
being the transcendent self. It is not safe to
dogmatize, but the question can be asked, whether
or not it is impossible to conceive of God as God,
God in Christ, and God the Holy Spirit in our
selves as one and the same unity? In all of us
is the "spark of divinity called 'conscience'";
in the persons of our household saints this spark

THE TRINITY 53
of divinity burned so brightly that we canonized
them in the sanctuary of our hearts; we believe
it to be true that to "as many as received Him, to
them gave He power to become the Sons of God";
and we have it on the best authority, that by fol
lowing the Master we shall be like Him, and
Christ said that whoso had seen Him had seen
the Father. " God made man in his own image. "
We believe that God was in Christ, and in our
saints, and will also be in our hearts to such a
degree as we will let Him come. God is necessary
to human nature, and human natures are needed
by Him in His cosmos. We are all Sons of God
potentially, while Christ was the Son of God
actually. Our earthly tabernacles drag us down,
our souls would carry us up. But we need to
remember that our bodies are not ourselves; we
are not bodies merely, we have bodies but we are
souls. And the essence of true self is divine, and
we can all in some way, and to some degree,
show forth our part of the Divine. Our real
izations are small, but our potentialities are
enormous, as children of our Father. To form
our belief humbly, to state it simply, to live
our creed charitably — this shall be our contri
bution to the religious life of our day and gen
eration.

54 DIFFICULTIES
Another difficulty which meets the earnest
seeker after truth is the difficulty and trouble
with the question, "Do you believe in miracles?"
Well, if by "miracles" is meant such things as
the sun and moon standing still, then it is safe to
say "No." Nor, if by the word "miracle" is
meant such a thing as a man's being swallowed
by a whale. But, if by "miracle" one means the
creation of a well-ordered universe out of chaos,
the coming of life where there was not and could
not have been any antecedent life, because the
world was at white heat; if by the word "miracle"
is meant the wonder of the human heart pulsating
with what we call life, or, again, if by "miracle"
is meant such a wonder as the starry worlds above
and the moral law within, then the average man
will say that he does believe in miracles. Charles
Reade said, "Once grant the miracle of the cre
ation, and it is useless to haggle further. " We are
not asked to believe that the sun and moon stood
still, nor that a whale swallowed Jonah, because
one is the poetic license of Oriental imagery, and
the other is an allegory showing God's mercy and
forgiveness, for it says, that "the hand is stretched
out still"; moreover, the word "whale" cannot
be found in the whole book of Jonah, if one clings
to mere literalism. Imagery is typical of all

MIRACLE 55
Oriental literature, and he who forgets this blurs
his judgment.
It is somewhat academic, but worth the while,
to state the fact that the word "miracle, " as it is
found in our Bibles, is an erroneous translation
of the word which should have been translated
"sign." Sameion of the original text was un
fortunately translated into the Vulgate by the
word miraculum, and this Latin word only too
easily became transliterated into the word "mir
acle," as we now have it in our King James' ver
sion. Sameion means a sign, power, or work,
and it was error to translate it as "miracle."
To translate the word "miracle" back into the
original language one would employ the word
thauma, a word from which we derive our own
word thaumaturgy. Thaumaturgy, as such, is
always condemned in the New Testament, and
Renan was never so far from the facts, perhaps,
as when he said that Jesus was a "wonder-worker."
He was not, and on many occasions refused to
perform works which would have been thauma-
turgic only.
The definition of the word "miracle" used to
be, "something contrary to the laws of nature";
" a violation of the laws of nature. " But these
definitions soon get out of date, because we are

56 DIFFICULTIES
all the time enlarging our knowledge of the laws
of nature. The telephone would be a miracle to
our grandfathers, and a "wireless" would have
been a miracle to us ten years ago. The truth is
that we never seem to be able to get the last word
concerning the laws of nature, and so what might
be called a miracle to-day may become common
enough in the course of a few years. Some others
have defined a miracle as something "outside
normal experience." But according to this, ice
would be a miracle to a Hottentot. So that def
inition fails at once. A more moderate defini
tion is this, that a miracle is the "invasion of one
sphere of knowledge by facts belonging to an
higher sphere." To this category belong such
cures as a physician effects when he inoculates a
patient with germs which kill the disease. The
word has been used too broadly ever again to be
restricted; nevertheless, however we conceive of
the word, there are few who would deny that the
creation of our solar system was something strictly
miraculous; that the coming of life to our planet,
which was once a red-hot mass, where there could
not have been antecedent life, was a miracle.
More than that, the coming of the moral law
within each human heart is miraculous. These
are immediately present facts. We can call them

MIRACLES 57
by whatever name we please, but the Wonder still
remains. That we live in the immediate presence
of miracles, using the word in the wide sense, is not
to be denied. The only real discussion is as to
the "how" these things can be; "Behold the lilies
of the field, how they grow. "
" From the mold as murk as night,
Lo, the lilies stainless white!
From the mollusc's cell obscure,
Lo, the pearl's perfection pure!
From the nest-egg, dumb so long,
Lo, a mounting flame of song!
Unto the discerning eye,
Miracles are ever nigh!"
It is easy to believe that God used evolution to
create our physical frames. There is nothing nec
essarily atheistic in evolution; there is such a thing
as a theistic evolution. The real question is,
"How did it start?" Evolution will only evolve
something when there is something upon which to
commence. Darwininthe Origin of Species" says:
"Give me a few germs, and I will show you how
the wondrous furniture of the earth has evolved;"
just as Florida moss grows and ornaments the trees
after it once has the germ plant. You cannot
make something out of nothing. Whence the ori-

58 DIFFICULTIES
gin of the moral law within each human heart?
What makes the blush on the cheek of the youth
when he practices his first deception ? Channing
said that the rejection of miracles was the rejec
tion of Christianity. Kant wrote that there were
two things before which he stood confounded, and
one was the starry world above and the other was
the moral law within — both of them miracles.
At Easter-tide we stand in the presence of the
most stupendous and momentous of miracles, the
miracle of The Resurrection. Without it, as St.
Paul wrote, his preaching would be vain and our
faith vain. Strauss said that the resurrection
was the unconditional antecedent without which
Christianity could have had no existence. Now
one of the strongest proofs of the fact of the res
urrection is this, that it cannot be denied with
out making a permanent gap in the history of the
world. It is as a stone in a solid wall, held in
place by the firm masonry of later events which
cannot in their turn be denied. We know of
Jesus as we know of Caesar, and no rational ac
count of the acknowledged certain data of the
history of the world can be given, except that
which takes into account those two characters in
history. No one rises up with a theory that
Caesar did not live, and then tries to write a his-

MIRACLES 59
tory of the world without him; no one denies that
Caesar built roads across Europe, and perhaps in
Britain; neither can anyone reasonably deny that
one Jesus of Nazareth lived, and that He made the
one and only highway for weary souls — a high
way that ever leads upwards in cheer and hope
towards peace. Renan said that to take Christ
from history would be to rend history from its
foundations. The influence of Christ can be fol
lowed through history, as a river on a map can
be traced to its source. Between the crucifixion
and the first Easter Day the disciples were scat
tered fugitives, but after that first Easter, those
same fugitives became absolutely dauntless.
Something had happened, and the only reasonable
explanation is found in what they claimed had
happened, namely, a Resurrection of their Master.
The events which immediately followed establish
the resurrection, since logically the body of the
Savior would have been produced by the viru
lent antagonists had they been able to do so; or,
if the alternative supposition is made, namely,
that the disciples "stole away the body," the im
possible assumption must be made that the apos
tles and disciples were partners in the most gigantic
fraud imaginable. That "unlearned and igno
rant men" perpetrated such a thing, and then one

60 DIFFICULTIES
and all of them became endued with such moral
courage as to face martyrdoms of the cruellest
sort is simply unthinkable ! The very logic of the
calendar establishes the fact of the resurrection,
for, had the crucifixion of their Master terminated
His career, the disciples would have naturally
settled on Friday as the day to be kept in commem
oration of Him; unless a resurrection really hap
pened on that first Easter Sunday, then nothing
at all happened, and there is no reasonable cause
assignable for taking Sunday as the day for com
memorating their Master; yet Sunday became the
sacred day, and the Christian world has followed
these early disciples. The logic of history compels
acceptation of the fact and the miracle. The
life of Christ itself is a miracle, and the more one
studies that life the more marvellous it becomes.
The wisest of the earth, even those who have tried
the hardest to disbelieve, come surely, although
slowly, towards a full acceptation of the fact and
the miracle. Someone said "that it would be a
miracle if there were no miracles." We should
never be afraid to say " I do not know how it was, "
for it is not meant that we should be able to ex
plain how miracles are wrought; we cannot tell
how a tree grows, nor can we explain how the spir
itual forces act; we cannot even formulate the law

MIRACLES 61
of gravitation without using terms quite beyond
the understanding. The resurrection body is be
yond the grasp of our minds, and it is doubtless
well for us that we do not know now those ap
proaching new conditions, since to know them
fully would either make us unhappy to stay here
longer, or else more fearful to go forward. We can
not but believe in miracles, first the primal cosmic
miracle, then the miracle of the moral law within
each soul, and the miracle of the First Easter.
We can go even a step further, for when we
recall the biographies of those whose careers have
been wholly made anew and resurrected in a
marvellous way by the power of the life of Jesus
the Christ, we can see that the day of miracles
is not entirely past. For example, the life of John
B. Gough, whose life was lifted by the resurrection
power of the life of the Master, and raised from
the lowest carnal state to be a strong witness
to prove Christ's power. A multitude of others
have had their lives transformed, transfigured and
resurrected by the power of Christianity. When
we see such lives, redeemed by His power, we can
reverently pray, as did that dear old poet of the
North, Dr. Bonar, who, when he was asked about
miracles and whether he believed in them, said,
"Yes, and, please God, grant one more miracle,

62 DIFFICULTIES
namely, that He will make of me a good
man. "
Our difficulties with doctrines only serve to
bring into prominence their beauty and their
depth, just as
"Only the prism's obstruction shows aright
The secret of the sunbeam, breaks its light
Into the jewelled bow from blankest white."
— Browning.

CHAPTER III
CHRISTIANITY THE CIVILIZER
"I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ,
Accepted by the reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it,
And has so far advanced thee to be wise." — Browning.
Christianity produces civilization in a nation,
preserves the family, and gives peace to the indi
vidual. Admiral Uriu said that, "Christianity
produces civilization," and, continuing, he de
clared, "I do not attempt to explain it, but I see
the effect, I recognize the cause, and so I covet for
Japan this power of Christianity."
Marquis Ito is sometimes quoted as a leader
of the Far 'East who said that it was unnecessary
for a nation to have a religion. But later in his
career he acknowledged that he had made a mis
take, for he wrote, that although he "at first be
lieved it quite unnecessary for a nation to have
any religion," he altered his opinion, saying that
"the only true civilization rests upon Christian
principles." (Gulick, 288.) Christianity is the
basis of all progress and the root of all the finer

64 CHRISTIANITY THE CIVILIZER
and purer civilization, bringing heaven nearer
earth and earth nearer heaven.
Count Okuma lately said, "the fatal defect in
the teaching of the great sages of Japan and China
is that, while they deal with virtue and morals,
they do not sufficiently dwell on the spiritual
nature of man, and any nation that neglects the
spiritual, though it may flourish for a time, must
eventually decay." And then the Count goes
on to add this conclusion, which seems almost
startling coming from a Japanese, "The origin of
modern civilization is to be found in the teachings
of the Sage of Judea, by whom alone the neces
sary moral dynamic is supplied. " This spiritual
side is common to all humanity. Confucius neg
lected it, and gave as religion simply a system of
morals, consequently, the Chinaman of to-day,
feeling the need of imagery and a spiritual side
of his nature, is not alone Confucian, but Taoist
and Buddhist simultaneously, for these other "re
ligions" supply his human demand for the supra-
world. President Taft, in Carnegie Hall, used the words,
"No man can study the movement of modern
civilization from an impartial stand-point, and
not realize that Christianity and the spirit of
Christianity are the only basis for the hope of

BAD CHRISTIANS AND GOOD SCEPTICS 65
modern civilization and the growth of popular
self-government. "
James Russell Lowell, one of our greatest rep
resentatives at the Court of St. James, expressed
his fine scorn for those who, having benefited from
Christian civilization, were now ready to throw
down the very ladder by which had been made the
steep ascent towards heaven. Speaking at one
of the banquets in London, he said, "When the
scoffers find a place on this planet ten miles square
where life is safe, woman honored, and old age
respected without the civilizing influence of the
religion which proclaims a crucified and risen
Lord, then and there will be the time and place
for them to ventilate their views."
He further said that the world was sustained
by an enormous mass of religious feeling and re
ligious conviction, which gives a certain moral
direction to our characters. It is this "enormous
mass of religious feeling and conviction" which
upholds many who are open sceptics. The
avowed sceptics are, consciously or unconsciously,
maintained by Christian morality, while some
professed Christians fall short of the ethics of their
fore-bears, so that not infrequently our Oriental
visitors are puzzled by the phenomenon of bad
Christians and good sceptics; nevertheless, the

66 CHRISTIANITY THE CIVILIZER
origin of the good sceptic's code of honor is Chris
tian, and the origin of the bad Christian's lapse in
ethics is simply a "reversion to type" of the ani
mal, against which lapses true Christianity alone
gives the power to fight successfully. Lowell
said that "Good sceptics condemning Christian
ity are like spies from Canaan bringing on their
shoulders good fruit." Carlyle wrote that "A
certain after-glow, or Nachschein, of Christianity
withheld me from suicide. " Bad Christians are
simply an indirect plea for the goodness of .right
Christians. The horrors of the Inquisition and
the fires of Smithfield are deeds unknown to the
Christianity of Christ. Froude wrote that "the
best advocates of Christianity are the quiet and
humble lives passed in the sunshine of Christian
ity." Sir Humphry Davy's words were, "Firm
religious belief is to be preferred to every other
blessing, for it makes life a good discipline, it
creates new hopes when earthly hopes vanish,
and it throws a most gorgeous light over our ex
istence." Christianity has results to offer, and
"by their fruits shall ye know them." In one of
his speeches Webster described Christianity as
"purifying the soul, touching the heart, improv
ing the man. " It does so in the man, the family
and in the Nation.

OUR RED, BROWN AND YELLOW PROBLEMS 67
As a Nation we have our problems to meet, and
it is Christianity alone which will solve them.
Christianity is the sole source for the "healing
of the nations. " We had, and we yet have, our
red problem, the Indian. Grievously have we
failed in it, and we have failed because most un
christian methods have been pursued. Wherever
Christian ideas were kept in view, as in the case of
William Penn, the red man was not only not a
danger, but a positive element of strength. In
Canada and in the English West Indies greater
wisdom has been shown, and the problem has
not been so acute as with us. Again we have a
black problem, and here again it is becoming in
creasingly evident that the Christian method
blesseth him that gives and him that takes. Our
brown problem in the Philippines is being met
with much more Christian spirit than any other
of our race questions, and it rejoices the heart of
those who love their country to read that several
thousand teachers are being employed in the is
lands. Lastly we have the great yellow problem,
and the yellow peril may be our golden opportu
nity, if only Christian methods are pursued. It is
to be hoped that Christianity will be well estab
lished in China before that wonderful country
reaches a stage in her rapid development which a

68 CHRISTIANITY THE CIVILIZER
successful war would produce, namely a stage
when a nation becomes inaccessible to ideas from
without, owing to sudden and exaggerated self-
respect. That China is rapidly coming to self-
consciousness is evident to any traveller who
visits that great country, and gets a few first
hand views of the military drilling of Chinese
boys in every school. Our time in China may be
short, and we need to make the most of our present
large opportunities. It is potentially a very rich
country, and will become such actually when the
Chinese people work their mines, and get above
their present fear of disturbing the dragons which
the ignorant believe live in the ground. They are
intensely patriotic, and one hears everywhere
the doctrine, " China for the Chinese. " But we
can give them Christianity, and they are now
ready to take it at our hands, for they see what
Christianity has done for other nations, and their
leaders have no hesitation in answering the ques
tion, "What is the good of Christianity?" The
Chinese give generously to the Christian schools
and hospitals. They are proud, and have a right
to be so, for they were educated in many lines
long before the Christian era, and their ancestors
wore silks at the time when the early Britons were
dressed in skins. Printing was known in China

THE GOOD OF MISSIONS 69
before Gutenberg, and long ago they knew how
to make gunpowder. The keen Chinese mind
now sees clearly that other nations of the world
have advanced while his nation remained as though
crystallization had set in; they see even more
clearly than we do the influence and the power
of Christianity. It is our duty not merely to
teach Christianity, but to practice it. Secre
tary Hay's name is highly honored in China, be
cause he took firm stand for the right and for
Christian dealings with the great Chinese nation;
the return of the excess of the indemnity fund
collected at the close of the Boxer movement of
1900 is an example of what a Christian nation
can and ought to do; by teaching and by practis
ing Christianity towards the Chinese, we can
establish a sure foundation, upon which can be
built commercial and social relations which will
redound to the benefit of both peoples. Our un
generous treatment of the Chinese at our fron
tiers will not always be tolerated by an enlight
ened public opinion, which is sure, in the long run,
to do justice. The laws as to visiting Chinese
gentlemen should be generously amended for our
own sake.
There are, and always have been, those who
question the good of missions and missionaries.

70 CHRISTIANITY THE CIVILIZER
It needs an answer by one who knows the situ
ation at first hand, and it will be allowed that
President Taft is a competent witness. He says
that before he went out to the Philippines as
Governor, he himself was greatly prejudiced
against missionaries, but after he had come into
direct contact with the work done in the Chris
tian missions, he could say, "The missionary is the
hope of civilization." "I have heard missions
criticized" (thus says the President); "I have
heard men say that they would not contribute to
foreign missions at all; that we have wicked people
enough at home, and we might just as well leave
the foreign natives and savages to pursue their
own happy lives in the forests, and look after our
own who need a great deal of ministration. I
have come to regard that as narrow minded. The
man who says it is one who does not understand
the things which God has provided for the eleva
tion of the human race. The missionaries are
the forerunners of our civilization, and without
them we would have no hope of courting the love
and the admiration and the respect of the millions
of people that we hope to bring under the influ
ence of Christian civilization. " Darwin also bore
his testimony to the good work of the mission
aries, for although he at first scorned the idea

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM 71
that any good could come from working among
the savages of Tierra del Fuego, he gave his wit
ness to their complete moral transformation and
he ultimately became a contributor to the mission.
He said, "The lesson of the missionary is that of
the enchanter's wand." It is certain that no
force other than Christianity removed the slave
market in a city of Zanzibar, and erected on its
site a church. The relation of Christianity to a
government is thus spoken of by that leader of
India, Keshub Chunder Sen: "Christianity and
not the British Government is the force with which
England can hold India. It is more powerful
than secular statesmanship in holding hereditary
heathendom." Christianity upholds the flag.
The good of Christianity in sociology can be
stated by a quotation from Max Gohre, who, in
his book, "Three Months as Factory Hand,"
says, "There is alienation among work people
from conventional religion; Social Democrats es
teem and reverence the Christ of history, but not
the Christ of theology. " This is at once a warn
ing and a prophecy, and it holds the remedy within
itself. The warning is that new wine cannot
be put into old bottles, and the prophecy is that
we are on the way back to the Master and His
way. The remedy is simply "Back to Christ,"

72 CHRISTIANITY THE CIVILIZER
and it is a plea for a simpler religion, such as the
Master enunciated, and one which the very chil
dren could accept. In time, when the co-oper
ative shall have supplanted the competitive sys
tem, we shall be nearer the City of God. Another
boon that Christianity has brought into the
science of sociology is a doctrine which is becom
ing more and more the accepted doctrine, namely,
that wealth is given to some as trustees for others.
The ever-increasing number of hospitals, and
other altruistic and benevolent institutions, show
that men of means are not forgetful of their fellow-
men. In this way the relation of class versus
mass is ameliorated, and a sociological improve
ment is effected.
Another field, and one of the greatest impor
tance, is the family. The influence of Christianity
in the family is protective and preservative be
yond all other powers. One of the princes of
India, educated in England, said that the most
wonderful thing he saw in England was the
family. There was nothing in India, he said,
that would compare with it. Nor is there any
thing like it in all the world, excepting only those
places where Christianity has gone before and
elevated woman and the man to family life It
is the coherent force against trial, temptation and

AMONG RICH AND AMONG POOR 73
the little rifts of misunderstanding which other
wise break the charmed circle. With a loss or a
weakening of Christianity in the home, brought
about by thoughtless jokes upon sacred themes
which the children take seriously, there comes a
sure disintegration in the family, and none can
tell how far the gangrene may not reach. This
loss of psychic power is needed by the rich families
even more than by those in what is called "moder
ate circumstances." It is not true that "the
poor alone shall be saved." The beatitude
about the poor in spirit is sometimes construed
to mean blessed are the poor and unblest are the
rich; but there is nothing less poor in spirit than
a poor man when proud. As Canon Gore wrote,
"Not all poor are blessed, for it is possible for a
man to be selfish, grasping and avaricious, and
yet poor." The difference between a rich poor
man and a poor rich man is that in the one case
the man possesses riches, and in the other case
the man is possessed by them. It is the old story
of the drowning man literally dragged under the
water by the gold in his pocket. The vital ques
tion is, "Is there detachment, so that the man
would still be a man with or without his money?"
It is safe for a man to have money only when he
could easily do without it. In the Master there

74 CHRISTIANITY THE CIVILIZER
was perfect detachment, for he emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant. "Woe to the rich"
means those who put their trust in riches and de
pend upon them for happiness. Dives was con
demned not because he was rich, but because,
though rich, he was indifferent to the needy poor.
The servant who hid his lord's money was con
demned because he was inefficient as to increasing
the money entrusted to him. The admonition
against laying up riches is a warning against
hoarding money, not against using it. Hoarding
of riches is to this day dangerous in parts of the
Near East. The rich fool was a fool because he
could see nothing better to do with abundant
crops than to store them up in barns. Christian
ity has much to offer 10 meet the problem of being
rich and yet Christ's. We see, near at hand, those
who choose not of the realm of the spirit, but the
things of the earth, and we can often feel how
metallic they become, as metallic as their gold and
silver. Browning thus speaks of one who chose
the lower good,
"You chose the earth — well,
Take it. Thou art now shut out of the
Heaven of Spirit.
Hads't thou learned what God accounted
happiness,
How hard may be this punishment. "

IN THE FAMILY 75
The ancient proverb runs, "They must have
strong feet who can support prosperity." Chris
tianity gives strength to those who are most
severely tempted in our free country, where the
law of entailments runs not to protect an impru
dent son. It is Christianity alone which gives
the power to resist the atmosphere, than which
none is so corrosive and mephitic as extreme
wealth and luxury. The lips which frequently
say "Lead us not into temptation" will surely
be "delivered from evil"; and the tongue that
speaks the words "Forgive us our trespasses"
will be the more ready to "forgive them that
trespass." The good of Christianity in family
life is, that it gives a strange psychic power to the
rich or the poor families, and if consistently tried
would end the heartache of divorce.
But the good of Christianity, the "Cui Bono?"
is made supremely evident by noting what it can
do for the individual. It makes men. Over and
over again, the source of power in the lives of men
is to be found in Christianity. Goethe said that
Christianity was a mighty lever, by which de
graded and suffering humanity had again and
again lifted itself from the mire. Geography pre
serves the names of many explorers and mission
aries in our land: Marquette, Joliette, LaSalle,

76 CHRISTIANITY THE CIVILIZER
Champlain, and the lives of many others whose
biographies, like that of the missionary priest
Brebeuf, read like purest romance. Livingstone,
Gordon, Patterson, and a host of others. What
impelling power, other than the desire to spread
the Gospel, has been able to send men to such
remote corners of the earth? We can, after re
calling these heroic lives, agree with the text,
"To as many as believed on Him, to them gave
He power to become Sons of God. " It is the re
deeming, transforming, transfiguring force in the
lives of men. The grave of Livingstone, in the
centre aisle of Westminster, bears in large letters
the word " Missionary. " The inscription on Gen
eral Gordon's monument in St. Paul's Cathedral is,
"Who gave his strength to the weak, his wealth
to the poor, his heart to God." Such men are
Sons of God, and made so by the same power
which gave St. Stephen the "face as of the face
of an angel." Joseph Parker said that the face
is made every day by its morning prayer, and by
its morning look out of the windows which open
upon heaven. Another wrote that it was not our
fault if we were born homely, but that it was our
fault if we did not have a face of good cheer and
hope when old. It is the miracle of the transfigu
ration, wrought by the power of Christianity.

THE WORLD'S SPIRITUAL SUNRISE 77
The Talmud gives a legend of an angel with a
flaming sword, who told Adam, when he went
away from Eden, "Bring back the face which God
gave you first, and you can re-enter." We also
have this to do, and our religion is the only power
which will help us. King Stephen, defeated by
the Turks, turned back towards the city which
his mother was guarding, but, seeing her son ap
proaching as a fugitive, she ordered the city gates
kept closed against him, and sent him the mes
sage, "You cannot enter here except as con
queror." The same message comes to us,
and like Stephen we turn again to the battle,
and, like him, we some day hope to return as
conquerors. Christianity is the basis of civilization in the
nation, the corner-stone of the family, and the
one and only power which can make of men Sons
of God, with faces as the face of an angel, return
ing home as conquerors. It saves man from every
thing he has to fear, and gives him everything for
which he has to hope: it is the world's spiritual
sunrise. "To love some one more dearly every day:
To help a wandering child to find his way:
To ponder o 'er a noble thought, and pray
And smile when evening falls.

78 CHRISTIANITY THE CIVILIZER
"To follow truth as blind men search for light:
To do my best from dawn of day till night:
To keep my heart fit for His holy sight,
And answer when he calls."
M. L. Ray.

CHAPTER IV
EVOLUTION OF SOUL
"Wounded? I know it, my brother,
Sorrow hath pierced thy heart;
Patience! In silent endurance
Play thou the hero's part.
"Brother, the road thou'rt treading
Our Captain himself hath trod;
Shrink not, if His order comes ringing,
'Forward! the City for God!'
"Pledged to follow thy Captain,
Through good report or ill;
With a cheer, take the post set thee,
Rejoice to do His will.
"Rejoice, if He think thee worthy
To front the fiercest woe;
Wrap His peace around thee,
Thy patience God doth know."
Christianity conferred one of the greatest
blessings when it gave to the world a new concept
of the source and the use of pain and evil. After
every catastrophe there arises the very natural
question, "Why does God permit it?" The query
always carries the inference that if God were a
good God, He would not have allowed it to hap
pen. Whence cometh evil? The interrogatory
is as old as man. The Greek view was that evil

80 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
has its root in matter, but Christianity declares
that evil has its origin in voluntary guilt. Greek
morals compared man with men, and held that a
man was ethically sound if he were as good as the
average. The Hindu had a deeper insight, for
one of their sagas tells us: "True superiority
consists not in being superior to some other man,
but in being superior to one's previous self."
Christian ethics advanced beyond all other con
cepts, ideas and ideals by comparing man with one
ideal, divine perfection, positing thus not a rela
tive but an absolute standard. It took for its
symbol the cross, from which divine love did not
shrink. Christ was thus the prototype of all
human suffering, embodied in an incomparable
spiritual individuality which did not admit of
being invented nor factitiously "written up" and
perfected. It will be granted as a general proposition that
man transcends nature; further it will be granted
that if man is to govern matter, there must be
forethought on man's part and regularity on
nature's part. To be beneficent nature must be
inexorable. Only in that way can man be taught
not to depend upon external helps, but to rely on
self. For example, famine teaches him to study
agricultural science; shipwrecks force him to study

"GOOD OLD TIMES" 81
navigation; sicknesses compel him to know about
the laws of sanitation. A world without pain
would be a world unguarded against poisons,
epidemics or a general conflagration. A physi
cian could not diagnose a case; a patient would
not be obliged by pain to stop and rest and recover
his strength, were it not for the kindly monition
of pain. The fact that we have improved on
"the good old times," when famine, shipwreck
and pestilence were more common than to-day,
shows that pain has been instrumental in making
the world better. It was a shrewd reply that was
given by a Floridian, after one of the hard freezes
that recently have come to that state, when he
said, "No one could make money in oranges un
less there were freezes now and then, for, without
the freezes, so many oranges would be raised that
there would be no profit in the fruit that was
grown. "
Things easily made have not the value of
things that are hard to produce. While men
may make money, God is making character.
Money would have no value unless hard to make;
the strong characters of the world are made by the
hard conditions.
"How poor were earth ... if all were satiate
smooth."

82 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
There are those who would have us believe that
they could have made a better world if their coun
sel had been asked. John Stuart Mill viewed
the world as a colossal blunder. Again, there are
those who explain the origin of evil by affecting
the Zoroastrian doctrine of the eternal evil prin
ciple; the dualism of Ormuzd and Ahriman; light
versus darkness, spirit versus matter, dove versus
devil. Isaiah had a different idea, " I make peace
and create evil: I, the Lord, do all these things. "
When God placed a curse upon the ground, and
said that it should bring forth thorns and thistles,
he said, "Cursed be the ground for thy sake."
It was designed to be a struggle in order to de
velop the character. That the temptation came
through the snake is the legend of several nations.
The Metropolitan Museum has a large relief in
stone, taken from the temple of Hibis, showing
Sutekh, the popular deity of the oasis, slaying the
serpent of Evil. Oriental religions convey the
idea that the whole struggle of fife has no definite
aim and object; we Occidentals refuse to accept
this doctrine that life has no goal, because it is
unreasonable, for, the purpose of life to us seems
to be, not the creation of jelly-like invertebrates,
but forceful and strong characters. Without
danger, temptation, pain and loss, no character

WHENCE COMETH EVIL? 83
ever could be made that was brave, pure, patient
and sweet. Canon Westcott wrote that there was
"not one of us who has not found a great sorrow,
a great disappointment, or a great trial, a verit
able avenue to unexpected joy. " We begin grad
ually to assume the mental habit that can look
upon evil as a good in disguise, sometimes too
thoroughly disguised perhaps, but not an un
mixed evil; we commence to regard evil as a sort
of schoolmaster, and realize that so soon as we
forget that the world is a schoolroom, the puzzle
of life comes back upon our hearts. Browning
knew it well, and his dictum was, "When pain ends,
gain ends too. " We sometimes complain of rain
and clouds, forgetting the Arab proverb that "All
sunshine makes a Sahara." Were there no Sa
hara, no Arctic and Antarctic zones, there could be
no trade-winds carrying their blessings. If flow
ers are withheld from the rain, they have no frag
rance; they have no choice in the matter, yet some
people do have the choice, and, sadly enough for
themselves, they elect a hot-house life, and its
product is weak faces and unformed characters.
Tacking against a head wind makes character.
Steam burns the hand, but the pain set James
Watt's mind at work, and we now have engines.
Prosperity, said Bacon, "best discovers vice,

84 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
while adversity doth best discover virtue."
Stevenson knew the awakening power of pain,
and he shows it in the lines:
"If I have faltered more or less,
In my great task of happiness:
If I have moved among my race,
And shown no cheery morning face:
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not: if morning skies,
Nature, book, food and summer rain,
Knocked at my sullen heart in vain: —
God! Thy most piercing pain do take.
And stab my spirit broad awake!"
We grow most when we bear most; and this is
not only true psychically, but physically and men
tally. In our physical life we grew most rapidly
when we worked the hardest; in our mental de
velopment our advances were most rapid when
our lessons were the most difficult; and we know
from our experience, that in our soul growth we
really gained only when trouble came. David
knew this, saying, "It is good for me that I have
been in trouble." Dr. Johnson wrote, "Of all
the virtue in the world, trouble has produced
the greatest part." Archbishop Benson says,
"I have learned that mistakes can often be set
right, that anxieties fade, that calamities have
sometimes a compensating element." And so
we learn to use pain, loss and sorrow as a means

PAIN'S BLESSING 85
for acquiring new power; and like Jacob of old,
wrestling with the angel, to say, "I will not let thee
go except thou bless me. " We learn to look over
troubles and not into them; to combat not details
but essentials; to cultivate a wise indifference to
the transient; confident of the eternal; to use
trouble as a ship uses the head winds, sailing to
windward by means of the very opposition en
countered. Browning knew the good of it and
expressed his mind, in the lines —
"Then welcome each rebuff
That turns life's smoothness rough,
That bids not stand, nor sit, but go. "
We are furthermore in our greatest dangers
when we have our greatest joys. The new psy
chology teaches that at a time of the greatest
psychical elevation, the soul is in its greatest jeop
ardy. Witnesses to this are the sad lapses which
sometimes are seen immediately after a revival.
Temporal success is not therefore a time for soul-
growth. Our Litany recognizes this in its prayer
for deliverance in "all times of our tribulation",
and then adding immediately the more important
prayer, "in all times of our prosperity." Plato
thought of the matter and said that "Poverty or
sickness, or any seeming misfortune — all will in
the end work together for good to him who de-

86 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
sires to become just and to be like the gods."
Romans, 8: 28 reads, "We know that all things
work together for good to them that love God. "
The Epicurean counts pain as an evil, and flees
before it; the Stoic bears it as best he may; but
the Christian counts pain as God's angel, and
wrestles with it, demanding a blessing. A Christ
ian, and a Christian only, can understand pain,
or has any rational explanation for it, and the
words, "Blessed are they that mourn," can be
interpreted as meaning that the mourners were
blessed because through their sorrow they might
come to strength. Pain, sorrow, loss, and the
greater and lesser ills of life are not punitive so
much as redemptive.
Much, if not most of the pain and evil in the
world come from our lower and animal natures;
the traces of the ape and tiger within us, such as
greed, selfishness, cruelty; this St. Paul recognized
in the words, "members warring against one an
other:" and finally he cries, "Who shall de
liver me from the body of this death? " Who but
Christ indeed! Fire, shipwreck, tornado — all are
under their own law, and that law must be inex
orable. We have no right to ask that fire shall
warm us when we are cold, and at the same time
shall not burn us if we fall into it; we have no

GLORY IN TRIBULATION 87
right to ask that the winds of the sea shall blow
the atmosphere clear and cool, and at the same
time shall not blow us from our course; nor have
we a right to ask that water shall do all that water
can do, and at the same time shall not drown.
Cold and suffering have made the home by driv
ing men indoors; soul-sickness and heart-weari
ness are driving men towards heaven. Thus, by
its new concept of evil, pain and sorrow, Christ
ianity has an uplifting and carrying power to aid
suffering humanity; and because of this new con
cept, you and I can take up a stronger, more
reasonable attitude towards all the ills of life
than ever before possible. We can say with
Browning, "This world's no blot for us, no blank;
it means intensely, and it means good. " Christ
ianity's idea of pain, sorrow and loss, raises man
from the rank pessimism previously offered.
Compare, for instance, the wailing words of Ovid
in his Tristia; or Cicero's lamentations during his
exile, with the heroic tones of a worn, weary and
jailed Jew, feeble in frame, fame and friends, and
a victim of perjury, who made no wail nor lamen
tation, but sings, "Rejoice, and again I say,
rejoice!" "We glory in tribulations." What
other religion but Christianity did so bring hope
into the world? It gave to the world a new and

88 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
workable theory as to why pain, evil and sorrow
are in the world, together with a power to bear
them all. That there was a wondrous dynamic
in Christianity, far above any power in the phil
osophies, is shown by recalling the fact that the
work done by the philosophers was all done with
a pervading consciousness of the emptiness and
the worthlessness of all human endeavor and ex
istence; whereas, the work done by the Fathers,
although far surpassed in matter and manner by
the philosophers, had a future to offer, a new life,
a sure peace. It was resignation as contrasted
with hope, a languid pessimism versus a virile
optimism. Christianity, in its simplest terms,
gave the first correct answer to the question,
"What is the World for?" It said that the world
was for the growing of souls; souls, delivered from
bondage into the glorious liberty of the children
of God. Browning's workable and working theory
of life was Christian, and he wrote, "Life is pro
bation, and this earth no goal, but starting-point
to try man's foot, if he will creep or climb, and
make the stumbling-block the stepping-stone."
And again Browning, "We are here to fit ourselves
for something better: now is for dogs and apes,
man has forever." Sir Oliver Lodge wrote in
his "Reason and Belief," page 27, "We are here

BIOLOGY OF SOUL 89
to become worthy of our origin; to develop char
acter and a will, and to become ripe for freedom. "
We know by our own observation and experience
that Christianity's answer to the World's Riddle,
Cui Bono, is right, because it gives soul-peace and
rest, — God's rest.
If the world is a place for growing souls, then
the question, "What is a soul?" is pertinent.
The practical man says at once that he never saw
a soul, and there is no skiagraph of one. Yet the
soul exists and it has a biology. A soul is the dif
ference between anthropoid ape and man. This
soul speaks to us in the voice of conscience. Emer
son said that conscience was as a voice just be
hind us which was gone the moment we turned
around; but this was much better said by Isaiah,
"And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee,
saying 'This is the way, walk ye in it when ye
turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the
left.'" Now the biology of the soul can be stud
ied, and we can ask at once as to whence cometh
this soul?
In the last century a "scientific" experiment
was loudly advertised announcing that one Dr.
Bastian had found the origin of life. We hear in
our own times, every now and then, of some chem
ists or physicists who likewise claim to have grown

90 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
life from nothing, and the papers tell us that the
origin of life has been revealed. It seems that Dr.
Bastian obtained some lower form of life from an
infusion which he had made; Prof. Tyndall tried
to repeat the experiment using the proper pre
cautions to avoid the chance of any extraneous
germs, and the "experiment" failed. Huxley
then emitted the dogma — for science has dogmas,
except that when made they are named theories,
and only advance to dogmas when they have been
reasonably proved — and Huxley's dogma was
there was not and never could be abiogenesis.
"No life without antecedent life." No spon
taneous generation. "Not a shred of testimony
has ever been offered to prove that life ever ap
peared independently of antecedent life." That
is to say, it is impossible to pass from the mineral
kingdom to the vegetable kingdom, or from the
vegetable to the animal, or from the animal to
homo sapiens or man en-souled. To use Prof.
Drummond's simile, one can say that the door is
locked on the upper side; the mineral of itself can
not raise itself up into the vegetable, nor can the
vegetable of itself raise itself up into animal.
But the converse is true, namely, that the vege
table can reach down into the mineral and raise
up the mineral into the higher kingdom; and again

SOUL 91
the animal can go down into the lower vegetable
and raise it up into its own higher kingdom; as
Prof. Drurnmond says, "The door is locked and
the key is on the upper side." Analogy carries
us further, for when we see that the door can be un
locked between the kingdoms, but unlocked only
on the upper side; and that vegetable can reach
down into mineral and transmute it into vege
table; when we see that animal can lift up vege
table; and that thinking, speaking man can assim
ilate and vitalize vegetable and mineral, then,
by analogy, there is one more step which can be
taken, namely that soul-stuff can come from its
higher kingdom, and reach down into man by un
locking the door on the upper side, and man then
becomes endowed with a soul. There is no better
description of all this than is given in the biblical
phraseology, "And God breathed into man's nos
trils the breath of life and man became a living
soul." Man became ensouled.
The physical world's dominant reality is motion,
while the psychical world's cardinal reality is
thought. Our physical bodies grow, and it is
perhaps years before we come to active self-con
sciousness; later on comes the day when, for the
first time, we realize that we have souls; they are
awakened, or born, and this awakening or birth

92 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
is no less a marvel, than the marvel of our first
or physical birth. This awakening of a soul is
in no place better described than by Stanley when
he tells of the awakening of his soul. When
Stanley found Livingstone in central Africa, and
heard the wonders of the Dark Continent, he
tried to influence that great missionary to return
to America, and make a fortune in lecturing;
Livingstone replied that he had no time left to
make money; that he had heard the voice of the
black man crying, "Come over and help us,"
and that he would not rest day nor night until
he had carried the Bible and the cross into the
heart of Africa. Stanley says that he left Living
stone's tent, and went out into the dark night, and
looked up at the stars, and for the first time in
his life prayed. " I entered Livingstone's tent an
avowed atheist, I left that tent a Christian."
His soul was awakened. It had not come from
a lower sphere; it was not of the mineral kingdom,
nor of the vegetable kingdom, nor of the animal
kingdom, but of the kingdom of God.
We have souls, and the world is made for
growing and developing them. We can either
strengthen them or deny them development. As
free agents, we can murder the soul. The death of
a soul is spoken of early in the book of Genesis,

SOUL SUICIDE 93
where God told our first parents that if they should
eat of the fruit of a certain tree, they would surely
die; they did eat of that tree, and although they
did not die physically then and there, neverthe
less, soul-death began for them at that time.
Living without God in the world, or living in
open rebellion against God, murders the soul, for
the soul of man cannot live its life in separation
from the all-penetrating unity which alone con
ditions soul-life. "Dust thou art and to dust
shalt thou return," refers to the physical frame
of man. Men are princes potentially, but if they
wilfully refuse to let their souls live, although they
may live physically, yet they are in exile from
their proper country.
What spiritualia exergita shall we employ in
order to best cultivate, develop and grow our
souls? We know that unused members of the
body become atrophied by disuse; the fish of
Mammoth Cave are blind because they have never
used the optic nerve. What moral gymnasium
could be better as a place to grow souls than this
world in which we now live? If you had the con
struction of a cosmos, and wished to grow souls
fit for some higher life, could you have made a
better place for the purpose? It is here that our
souls best grow in such virtues as patience, like

94 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
a garden bringing forth flowers. The story of
Gwen in the Sky Pilot" tells us, in an exquisitely
beautiful way, how the patience flower is grown.
It tells of a little girl, living as free as the wind on
a Western ranch; how her horse fell on her so that
she never again could walk; how the little minister,
the sky-pilot, showed her what it all meant; he
told her in a parable, which described how God
made the little patience flower she knew so well,
growing in the deep canon she used to visit with
her pony; how God made the earth bring forth
the flower, but how He was obliged to use earth
quakes, grinding glacial action, cold, heat and
rain — all to make a soil in which the little patience
flower would grow. Gwen understood the par
able, and accepted it, and grew her own patience
flower; and not Gwen alone but the rough men
of the ranch too, because they saw the beauty of
the patience flower which she had in her soul. In
the same way, when the earthquake, or the sor
rows of life come upon us, it means only a better
preparation for the growth of our patience flower.
One of our poets saw the good of it all when he
wrote, "Mid all my store of blessings manifold,
I count this chiefest — that my heart has bled."
How can souls be strengthened? Every pur
poseful man wants strength, and when any method

SOUL STRENGTH 95
is proposed by which strength can be acquired or
increased, it always receives more or less of an
hearing. Now physical strength is not the most
important kind of strength, for it is at most a
short-lived affair. One of the saddest sights is
that of the quondam athlete, whose health has
failed, and who recounts his story of what he used
to do. There is an higher type of strength, and
one that ever gains in power when physical force
decays. Mere mental strength is not meant, for
mentality reaches its climax, and then seems to
lose edge and acumen. The highest type of
strength, and one that all can have, whether we
be physically or mentally robust, is soul or spirit
strength. We can see for ourselves that it is not
height nor head that gave to the leaders of the
world their commanding force. Paul was short
of stature, and he had a grievous unknown illness
or "thorn in the flesh, " yet no name among men's
leaders of men is greater. The traveller, seeing
the colossal statues of the early Egyptian kings
on the Nile, is not for one moment so impressed
as he is when he stands before the smaller statu
ary of Michael Angelo or Thorwaldsen. It is not
size nor height that influences us. Nor is it
brain-power that always commands in the world,
for the Apostles themselves, according to the con-

96 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
fession of one of their own number, were "un
learned and ignorant men. " Again, what trans
formed Handel from a poor, unknown composer
before he wrote his oratories on sacred themes,
to a name that will be forever known and revered
wherever music is music? What is the secret of
the undying power of those Wagner operas which
deal with sacred motives, as Tannhauser showing
divine forgiveness? It is spirit power and spirit
strength. Sometimes we see a poor artisan strug
gling against adverse circumstances, and working
as with the strength of ten; then we are convinced
that men of force, strength and power are not
necessarily robust, nor intellectual, but we perceive
that the men of the sublime business in the world
were always and everywhere those who reached
down into and drew from spiritual forces which
gave them dynamic. Moreover, this is the new
psychology's teaching, and the glory of it is that
we can all achieve this kind of strength. How?
By the discipline of obedience, prayer, and con
secration. The essence and spirit of obedience is the merit
or the demerit of a man's education. The child
who has been brought up in a family where obe
dience is instilled, becomes the useful citizen; the
youth who has been obediently subject to his

BY OBEDIENCE 97
teachers, is sure to have influence for good on at
taining majority; an army maxim is, that no man
is able to command until he has learned to obey.
Abram was obedient and "went out into a coun
try he knew not of," and inherited it. Samuel
exemplified the spirit of obedience in the words,
"Speak, for thy servant heareth. " And Paul
wrote himself as not being "disobedient to the
voice of the heavenly vision. " Obedience is the
first step towards acquiring the greatest of world
forces, spiritual strength.
A second step in the same direction is that
which Sir Oliver Lodge calls the "forgotten secret
of the Christian life, " namely, prayer. The effi
cacy of prayer is too often mistrusted or forgotten.
Prayer is universal and elemental in human
nature. One can see it in going around the world,
starting with the cathedral towers and spires of
England and Europe, passing the muezzins pro
claiming the hour of prayer from their minarets,
the Mohammedans on their prayer rugs, and the
multitude of temples in the far East. Even the
hardiest atheists believe in prayer, for their first
words in time of disaster are substantially, "God
help us!" Tennyson witnessed the power of
prayer in Morte d'Arthur, by the line "More
things are wrought by prayer than this world

98 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
dreams of." And again Tennyson, "Speak to
Him, thou, — for He hears; and Spirit with spirit
may meet, closer is He than breathing, and nearer
than hands and feet. " And again, "For what are
men better than sheep or goats, if, knowing God,
they lift not hands in prayer?" Shakespeare
makes a king say:
"And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be fore-stalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned, being down."
A logician tersely argued, that a God who
couldn't hear would be no God, and a God who
wouldn't hear would be immoral. Cyprian gently
inquired, "If He, the Sinless, prayed, how much
more should we, the sinful, pray?" Yet not to
deflect God's will to ours, but rather to adjust
our will to His. Not a conquering of God's re
luctance, not mere mendicacy, but a taking hold
of God's willingness. A two-fold world makes
the cosmos perfect — natural, and spiritual, and he
who separates these two, "tears up the bond of
nature." Prayer preserves this bond of nature.
It is conversing with God. The root or basic
idea is man's instinctive longing for companion
ship; not so much an asking as a seeking.
"Walked with God," means that Enoch could
not bear isolation. Prayer is the "sigh of the

BY PRAYER 99
heart." It places things in proper perspective
and focus, and restores to men balance and poise.
Walter Scott gave his tribute to the help of prayer
thus: " I strive like to a vessel in the tide-way,
Which lacking favoring breeze hath not the power
To stem the powerful current. Even so,
Resolving daily to forsake my vices, —
Habits, strong circumstance, renewed tempta
tion
Sweep me to sea again. 0 Heavenly Breath !
Fill thou my sails and aid my feeble vessel
Which ne'er can reach the blessed port without
Thee."
That wise writer, Torrey, said that the reason
so many fail, is because they wait until the hour
of battle, and the reason why others succeed is
because they have gained their victory on their
knees long before the battle came. Christ con
quered in the awful battle in Pilate's judgment
hall, and on the very cross, because He had, the
night before, in prayer anticipated the battle and
gained the victory, long before the real struggle
came. He told His disciples to do the same. He
had bidden them, "Pray, that ye enter not into
temptation"; but they slept when they ought to
have prayed, and so, when the hour of tempta
tion came, they fell.
How to pray is well told by that most devotional

100 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
of souls, Bishop Andrewes. "If thou prayest for
thyself alone, thou alone will pray for thyself;
but if thou prayest for others, others will pray
for thee. " A prayer worthy of many repetitions
was given by a poet who had great spirit strength
and spiritual vision: —
"May God preserve thy going out,
May God preserve thy coming in:
God send His angels round about
To keep thee from all taint of sin.
" And when thy going out is done,
And when thy coming in is o'er,
When in death's darkness, all alone,
Thy feet can come nor go no more;
"May God preserve thy going out
From this dark world of pain and sin.
While angels standing round about
Cry, 'God preserve thy coming in!' "
But the supremest degree of psychical strength
comes from consecration. We pray in our office
of Morning Prayer, that we may show forth thy
praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by "giving up ourselves to thy service." This
means a devotion and a whole-souled consecra
tion. The highest spiritual power can come from
it. The story of Chiara holds this idea clearly
before our minds. Chiara had been obedient in
learning the laws of his art in the school for paint-

BY CONSECRATION 101
ing in Florence whither he had walked barefoot
in order to study; he had prayed indeed for skill
in his loved art, but he had not taken that last
essential step in giving himself to his work, namely
the giving of himself in utter consecration which
alone could give him the success at which he
aimed. His soul's wish was to have one of his
paintings in the Florence Art Gallery. One night
a vision spoke to him and said, " Chiara, Chiara,
I am thy soul's wife — thine Art, but thou dost
not serve me as one who would win me; and though
I love thee, yet I cannot be thine except thou
givest me all in total consecration; thou cans't
not serve me at times of inspiration, and then
revert at other times to thyself, thy selfish self.
Chiara, dost thou not know that if thou comest
to a quiet lake, thou cans't not see thyself except
thou leanest far over the edge of the water, and
givest thyself to seeing? Consecrate thyself to
me, and thy soul's wish shall be granted. " Chiara
did, and then made his last picture which now is
in the Florence Gallery.
A legend of ancient China tells the same moral.
At the Court of Pekin there was an harp named
the Harp of Lungmen, and none of the harpists
could play on it successfully; Pei Woh came one
day and asked that he might try. He played so

102 EVOLUTION OF SOUL
wondrously that the whole court was charmed,
and the Emperor asked him how it was that he
could play the harp of Lungmen, although all the
court harpists had failed. Pei Woh answered,
"I simply let the old harp sing its own song, and
did not try to make it give mine own; I forgot
myself, and consecrated my hands to the soul of
the harp, and it was not Pei Woh who made the
music, but the harp. It told its own story of the
wood from which the sounding-board was made;
how it grew year by year in the deep forest, hear
ing the birds of the summer, and the cold winds
and snows of the winter; I let the old harp sing
of the cruel axe which cut the tree, and of all the
pain which the fiber suffered when it was worked
over into the sounding-board; again, I let the harp
tell the song of the wires, and of how the ore was
mined from the deep earth, and then smelted
and refined in the hot fiery furnace; Lungmen told
of birth, growth, pain, and finally of the great joy
because the harp had become itself. The harp
told the story and gave the music — not poor Pei
Woh." It was the spirit of consecration which
gave Pei Woh the power to play the old Harp of
Lungmen. It was Watts who spoke of our bodies as "harps
of a thousand strings." By a spirit of entire

PERFECTED IN PATIENCE 103
self-forgetfulness and consecration we can give
that song which God gives each of us to sing.
Every one of us has a part to play in the world's
work, and we need strength, and the psychical
strength which we must needs have, we can get
by the obedience of Paul, the prayerful spirit of
Daniel, and the consecration of Pei Woh; then,
and then only, can we play our rightful part prop
erly, and long afterwards we shall play it not as
our own song, but as one of God's harmonies.
"Father, we lift our hands to Thee,
With deep desire one boon we ask:
Grant this — that we may patient be,
Whate'er our burden or our task."
"Give us a temper meek and strong
For all that we must do or bear,
Undaunted by outrageous wrong,
Unf retted by insistent care."
"Like Him, we would the triumph know
Of overcoming ill with good;
And drinking deep while here below,
The joy of His beatitude. "
— The Rev. Dr. Moxom.

CHAPTER V
MAN ENSOULED
"Build a little fence of trust
Around to-day.
Fill the space with loving deeds,
And therein stay;
Look not through the sheltering bars
Upon to-morrow,
God will help thee bear what comes,
If joy or sorrow."
There are those who can not yet see these
things as we see them, and who would fain call
it all mysticism. It is the fable of the little mole
over again, the fable of a mole who one day left
the burrow to which he was accustomed, and
while in the open daylight, had visions of men and
things, and the great world above him. On re
turning home he told his people that there must
be something of which the mole family was ig
norant, something to see and something with
which to see. When he attempted to relate to
them what he had " seen, " they expelled him from
their colony, saying that they would have nothing
whatever to do with transcendentalism." They
refused to develop the seeing eye. But we have

CAN SEE GOD 105
eyes to see the things of earth, the temporal things;
we also have the power to develop a spiritual
eye which can see the things unseen by mortal
eye, the things which are eternal.
With the soul's eye, the eye of Faith, we can
see God. In the art gallery of Stockholm is the
statue of the botanist Linnaeus. He holds a rose
in his hand, as though studying and admiring it;
and we recall his words, " I never could come upon
a rose bush in full bloom, but I felt that I was in
the immediate presence of God, and was awed. "
Newton, in his "Principia," wrote that "this
beautiful world could have had origin only in an
intelligent Lord and Governor." Science has
been defined or described as "thinking again the
thoughts of God." Our best scientists re-dis
cover God in searching out His thoughts. Joseph
Cook's logic was, "All the world shows thought:
thought argues a thinker; a thinker must be a
person: that Person we call God." Tolstoy, in a
recent issue of " The Hibbert Journal," wrote that
there was abroad a false conviction that religion
was faith and nothing more. "Religion," he
says, "is a sense of acknowledgment of soul and of
God. It is not true that religion is inexact and
inconstant, for nothing is more indubitable than
God and soul." Though we cannot define God

106 MAN ENSOULED
and soul, yet we feel them in a sense deeper than
knowledge; they are as axioms, and the basis of
everything. To continue from Tolstoy, "The
philosophic view of life shuts its eyes to the dif
ference between external knowledge, and knowl
edge of God and soul; it regards a chemical for
mula and man's consciousness of his own ego as
both open to verbal definition, and thus confuses
the definable with the indefinable, the knowable
with the unknowable. " It takes the eye of faith,
the spiritual eye which we all have, to see God.
These are things which can be felt, and as Tenny
son wrote:
"If e'er when Faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice 'Believe no more!',
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer 'd 'I have felt!' "
Or, another paraphrase, "The soul has reasons
that Reason knows not of." Bishop Blougram
said, "With me, faith means perpetual unbelief,
kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot,
who stands firm just because he feels it writhe. "
Such things as the walking by faith, and not by
our present sense of sight, are things which are
felt and lived, and cannot be learned; as a German
spoke of them, they are nicht gelehrnt, sondern

CAN SEE THE MASTER 107
gelebt. Thus Linnaeus, Newton, Cook, and a
host of royal thinkers came to see God. We are
to-day the sum of all the experience, trial and
sorrow through which we have travelled; and we
can live advantageously only when we have
profited by our experiences, trials and sorrows,
so as to be better and stronger in a way that is not
temporal and visible. The physical eye will not
reveal this soul-growth, only the eye of soul can
do it. Joan of Arc had this seeing eye, and it
is not altogether fantasy that caused the author
of the stage production of the Maid of Orleans
to make Joan say, at the time of battle, "Did ye
not see the Master?" "Did ye not see our
Leader?" The generals did not see, for they had
not the seeing eye of Joan; but she saw and was
inspired, and became the inspiration of others.
Our best missionaries both see Him and hear Him,
and their strange psychic power and strength is
not altogether dissimilar to the vision which was
seen and heard by the little maid of Domremy.
No minister could preach for a week without
some measure of this vision. Of course, it is a
complete shifting of the centre of gravity of life
to base action on unseen verities; and it is a rev
olution in one's soul to make life pivot on faith,
and love and trust; it is vouchsafed to but few to

108 MAN ENSOULED
comprehend fully the vision, and act upon it.
There is no better place for us to develop this
soul's eye, than in this world of ours, where pain,
sorrow and sin test and evolve it. Without this
soul's eye, adapted, fitted, adjusted, and trained
for the rarer atmosphere of Paradise, it would
mean nothing to go there, since one could not see
without an eye trained to see. An Indian legend
tells of a young Indian hunter, whose sister had
died, and he yearned to see her; in a dream he
left his body and went to the happy hunting
grounds, and saw her; but she could show him
nothing of the beauties of her new world, because
he had no soul's eye; soon his little sister saw that
it was no happy place for her brother, and then
told him that he must return again to earth, and
there grow the eye of soul and of faith; he did so,
and then by sorrow, trial and hardship gained
that which we too must gain, the seeing and hear
ing soul.
Not only can the soul develop a seeing eye, but
also an hearing ear each for its own soul. With
this ear of the soul we can hear God speaking to
us. Often and again, we wish that God would
speak to us and tell us what He would have us
do. We often feel bitterly, as did Job of old, the
great silences of God, and we repeat words simi-

CAN HEAR HIS VOICE 109
lar to his, "Oh, that I knew where to find Him."
Or we say as did Isaiah, "Verily, Thou art a God
that hidest Thyself!" Now God does speak to
us, and He speaks in many ways. The trouble
is that we have not trained ourselves to hear.
We are so busy talking to God, that we leave no
time to listen. So it happens that many can go
out into the woods and see nothing but trees; or
go far out at sea and perceive nothing but water;
whereas another, who has had his soul's eye and
ear opened can see the Almighty all about and
around him, and can hear His voice out of the
burning bushes, see His guiding star, know Him
when He comes nearer upon the water, saying,
"It is I, be not afraid!" We too can learn to
hear God's voice. How?
The animals are all led by instinct. The birds
go southward and northward again, never much
too early or too late. The salmon migrates from
its birth-place on the Columbia, seeks the ocean,
and after two years, returns to its native river,
having borne three names differing according to
age and place. The bee builds a cell of hexag
onal form, that particular shape being the larg
est and strongest that can be formed out of a given
amount of material. Throughout the animal king
dom there is no debating nor questioning as to

110 MAN ENSOULED
what shall be done, for instinct tells the animal
just what is to be done. Our own animal frames
also do certain things by instinct, such as putting
out the hands to ward off any blow, and our eye
lids shut instinctively, even before our conscious
self tells us of impending danger. As animal
creatures, then, we have instincts, but there is
much more to us than animal, we have souls and
we know we have, and these souls yearn at times
for leading.
Among the means for speaking and communi
cating with our fellows, is the alphabet. This
alphabet is easy enough to learn, but it took ages
for it to develop. The letter " M " came from the
Egyptian word for "owl," mulak, and its hiero
glyph was a little owlet; the characteristic of an
owl is the pointed ears, and the hieroglyph shows
them prominently, so that the two points of our
letter "M" can be regarded as the lineal descend
ants of the owl's ears. The letter "A" comes
from the conventional sign or hieroglyph used for
the word "eagle"; and our letter "D" from the
word meaning "hand." Such is our alphabet in
evolution, and by it we communicate with one
another. If we are gifted in drawing and paint
ing we can convey our ideas to others in these
ways, and a genius, like Michael Angelo, could

APPREHENDS DEITY 111
give his thoughts to the world in four methods —
by letters, painting, sculpture, architecture.
There are more ways than by the sense of sight
that others can communicate to us and we to
them. Sounds can talk to us in their own way,
as a school-bell, which we used to hear and obey
in the years that are gone. To hear that same
bell in after years is to be carried back to boy
hood in a moment. Another sense which can be
used to whisper to us and to influence us is the
sense that awakens at the fragrance of a flower;
perhaps a flower which was the favorite of some
loved one who governed us by love in the past;
to get that fragrance to-day, is tantamount to
coming once more under the influence of the one
we loved. The sense of touch is the first to
awaken in the child, and the newest method for
teaching children to write, is not by sense of sight,
but by touch.
Thus there are voices which speak to souls in
many ways. In this physical world in which we
live and move and have our being to-day, a world
of rock, earth, water and so forth, a world to be
seen by the eye, heard by the ear, touched by the
hand, — in such a world, a brain and an organism
are needed; but a soul does not need sensory
nerves nor a material brain. A spirit does not

112 MAN ENSOULED
require an organism. In that finer, subtler " Un
seen Universe," which transcends this world of
sense, there is a finer, rarer atmosphere, of which
the first glimpses were obtained when the Roent
gen rays were discovered. Then, for the first
time, it was perceived how there could be a medium
as much finer than our air, as our atmosphere is finer
than water; and it was for the first time seen that
a spirit might live in that finer ether in the same
way as we live in our air, and as fishes live and
breathe in their denser medium. All this is more
than merely hinted at in Prof. Crooke's "radiant
energy," and it is the fast-growing belief in scien
tific minds that "there is no fact in physics,
chemistry nor mechanics that contravenes a the
ory of an 'electro-luminous organism' for man,
and it may exist already unseen and unrecog
nized in the present physical body. " Life with
out brain or sense perception, or organism, as we
now understand brain, sense and organism, is
perfectly possible. A life as free as are our
thoughts even now, which roam far away from
our present earthy brain and sense power. Now
to such an organism, sensory nerves and brain
would be unnecessary. This spirit body has been
called the "subliminal self." Moreover, the dis
solution of the present material body would in

FREE FROM FETTERS 113
no way whatever affect this new body. A soul
does not need letters of the alphabet, nor sounds,
nor tastes, nor odors, nor contact, nor brain, as
does our present physical body. God tells the
animal what to do by instinct; He speaks to us
through our sensory nerves and brain to our
minds; but more than that, He speaks to our
souls, now, and He will speak again to them in the
hereafter, and we can hear Him if we only will.
Browning said, that the scale of man's nature is
too large for the present. In the ascent of the
mountain of knowledge, man was never satisfied.
"I cannot chain my soul: it will not rest
In its clay person.
It has strange powers, feelings, desires
Which I cannot account for nor explain: they live
Referring to some state of life unknown;
And thus I know the earth is not my sphere,
For I cannot so narrow me, but that
I still exceed it. "
Otherwise man were superfluously endowed.
Intellect is not confined to history, geology and
such, but to the stars, and on to God himself.
Man alone has ideas and ideals: he has a soul
transcending the universe, and contemplates the
perfections of beauty, happiness, goodness, as
M. Piat said in Destinee de VHomme: — "Our
thought is not enclosed and limited as the brute. "

114 MAN ENSOULED
We desire perfection and we never attain it, while
every desire of the beast can be satisfied. All
the resources of a metropolis could not satisfy
any man permanently.
Nature's desires and instincts are all matched
by satisfying realities: fishes in the tropics long
for cool water; birds in the autumn long for a
warmer atmosphere, and neither the fish nor the
bird are disappointed, but start for the change it
desires and for a place it perhaps never saw.
Shall man alone not have his instinct for eternal
life satisfied? There is the homing instinct in
every heart. "Can it be?
Matter immortal? and shall spirit die?
Above the nobler, shall less noble rise?
Shall man alone, for whom all else survives,
No resurrection know? Shall man alone,
Imperial man, be sown in barren ground,
Less privileged than grain on which he fed?
Still seems it strange that thou shouldst live
forever?
It is less strange that thou shouldst live at all!
This is a miracle, and that no more. "
The very history of development has made it sci
entific to hope, by showing that life is not merely
change perpetual but progress towards the goal.
The body is always in flux, while for faith, hope

IMMORTALITY DEMANDED 115
and love there is no process of decay; these quali
ties have neither time relations nor time boun
daries. Tennyson's vision was: —
"Yet in the dark unknown,
Perfect the circles seem,
Even as the bridge's arch
Is rounded by the stream."
Our personalities are witnesses, for the material
brain with which our ego did its thinking ten or
twenty years ago, has passed entirely away; but
memory is more than mere brain tradition; the
real ego survives, and will survive the death of the
material brain, in the same way as the ego which
manages a wireless station survives after the de
struction of the machine. Cicero, in the Tusculan
Disputations, held the doctrine that the souls of
men continue permanently in existence. Prof.
Fiske, in the Destiny of Man, page 116, wrote,
"Immortality is not demonstrable, but is an act
of faith in the reasonableness of God's work."
Again, page 110, "The materialistic assumption
that the life of the soul ends with the life of the
body, is perhaps the most colossal assumption
ever known." Bruce wrote, "The true ground
for immortality is the dignity of human nature,
for man, even at his worst, is still a child of God. "
John Stuart Mill said, "There is no scientific evi-

116 MAN ENSOULED
dence against immortality of soul. " Sir Oliver
Lodge wrote, "Immortality is the persistence of
the essential and real: it applies to things which
the universe has gained and cannot let go: it is
the conservation of value."
"Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress trees;
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away
Nor looks to see the rising day
Across the mournful marbles play.
Who has not learned in hours of faith,
That truth to flesh and blood unknown,
That life is ever Lord of Death —
That love can never lose his own."
The laws of nature are the voices of God speak
ing to us and telling us not to do certain things.
Such and such things we may freely do, but such
and such fruit " ye shall not eat. " Yet sometimes
we do not hear, and then we have pain. After
wards we remember that the voice of physiology
told us that we were not to break her laws, and
that if we did not keep them, we would suffer.
The Decalogue is the protecting power of the Al
mighty. The trouble is that we refuse to hear
His voice, and so we suffer for our own thoughtless
ness and dullness. His voice wished to warn us,
but we would not listen. The will-o'-the-wisp
tries hard to warn people away from the poison
ous swamp, and some foolish folk refuse to take

VOICES OF FRIENDS 117
the warning, while others heed and avoid the
danger. Another of God's voices to us is the voice of
circumstance. Circumstances are the guide-posts
along life's highway, and those who have eyes to
see can keep the straight though narrow way.
We find our lives surrounded by certain events
over which we have little or no control. We are
not responsible for them, and although it is said
that "Every man is the architect of his own for
tune," it is also said, more profoundly, "There's
a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them
how ye may." These circumstances in which
we find ourselves, tell us in no uncertain way what
we are to do, although they may merely seem to
tell us what we cannot do. Bishop Hunting
ton used to say, "If you come upon a door, and
that door will not open — don't try to go in."
Many times in life, the one thing that circum
stances allow us to do, is the one thing we ought
to do. Thus does the voice of circumstance and
environment speak to us, and it is vox dei.
Another voice that we can hear very plainly,
guiding us on our way, is what friends say. The
kindly counsel of those near to us, would often,
if only taken, save us from heart-ache. We
could have entertained many an angel unawares,

118 MAN ENSOULED
if we had stopped to hear the advice of these
friends of ours. This is the thought contained
in the ancient phrase, Vox populi, vox dei. Then
every one of us has a special indwelling friend —
Conscience. His voice is one to which we some
times listen, and never regret having obeyed.
The voice is referred to in the lines, "When duty
whispers low, 'Thou must', the youth replies,
'I can.' " The proof of all this is in an appeal
to the individual experience of our own lives. We
all know that had we but listened to the voices
of God, speaking through His laws, the circum
stances, and our best friends, we would often have
escaped the troubles into which we fell, simply
and solely because we refused to hearken and
obey. Were God to speak from the sky, and more
directly than now, man would be struck dumb and
lose his power of self-expression and his free-will.
There is another voice that speaks to us, and
clearly and plainly to our souls. It is the voice
of the Master. The world for nearly twenty
centuries has seen and heard and followed Him.
Napoleon, in his contemplative years at St. Hel
ena, declared that the divinity of Christ was
proven by the power which He had to lead men,
although not immediately present. Napoleon
said that this was a power which had not been

VOICE OF THE MASTER 119
given to any man, for neither Alexander the Great,
nor Caesar, nor Charlemagne, nor himself had the
ability to lead and inspire men, unless actually
present to see and be seen of them. He declared
that he could get men anywhere to rise and fol
low him, if he only could but see them, and speak
to them, and let them hear and see him. So
Napoleon gave it as his conviction that Christ
was divine, because to Him alone had it been
given to speak across the centuries, and have
countless millions rise and follow Him.
Moreover, He tells us just how we are to follow
Him — how to work. The secret of it is simply
to work as He did — that is, with a sense of divine
partnership. "His Father's business" was a
phrase early in His mind; "My Father worketh,
and I work." So He went about that business
and work, with a serene consciousness of working
in harmony with the divine currents of the cos
mos; to work, not against the currents, but with
them, as did the Arctic explorers who found that
to attempt the pole via Greenland was to work
against the ice-floes, and so they approached their
object through Siberia, and were helped by the
movement of the ice.
We can place ourselves in these divine currents
by such means as art, literature, and church-go-

120 MAN ENSOULED
ing. The inspiration to higher ideals can be se
cured by placing on the walls of our rooms, some
of the world's masterpieces which can be pur
chased now so readily; the Bible as literature will
also be of potent force in bringing us into align
ment with the diviner currents; and the some
times harder work of church-attendance will give
subtle strength which reacts on others as well as
ourselves. Nor is success, as the world measures it, essen
tial. There never was a life which seemed so
colossal a failure from the earthly stand-point as
that life which seemed to end on the cross. Suc
cess is not vital — effort is. Aldrich wrote :
"Build as thou canst, and as the light is given,
Build as thou canst, unspoiled by praise or blame,
Then, if at last, what thou hast built shall fall
Dissolve, vanish — take thyself no shame,
They fail, and they alone, who have not striven."
Lowell's lines are :
"Greatly begin whiles thou hast time,
But for a line, be that sublime,
Not failure, but low aim is crime. "
In the hall of one of the colleges in England there
hangs a frame inclosing quotations from Lincoln.
One paragraph reads, "I am not bound to win,
but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to

MAN AT PEACE 121
succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light
I have." Longfellow spoke of high aim, and how "every
arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth,"
and was all too easily lost in the jungle of the un
achieved. If we follow the Great Exemplar's
way, we can hope to say in part, "I have finished
the work which Thou gavest me to do " ; and with
the Apostle, "I can do all through Christ which
strengtheneth me."
The poem-prayer of Whittier's comes to mind:
"Drop Thy still dews of quietness
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace. "
No, Jesus has not vanished from among the ac
tivities of men, for He lives in the hearts and lives
of myriads of Christians. We cannot explain
how it is now, but it will be understood better
later in the "Unseen Universe," when the secrets
of the worlds will be revealed. This much we do
know, namely, that it is not the cold splendor
of a star which is before us, but it is a living,
vital personality, leading us, speaking to us, guid
ing us homewards. It is in some such way as
this that we can accept reasonably, and in larger

122 MAN ENSOULED
measure than heretofore, what is popularly known
as the Providential leading, and by accepting it
in the largest way, our lives can be saner, quieter,
and full of cheer.
"To the over-guiding will
My own I gladly yield.
And while my little craft outstands
I sail with orders sealed.
"Sometime, I know not when nor how
All things will be revealed,
But until then, content ami
To sail with orders sealed.
"The salt sea waves my bulwarks press,
Beneath me yawns the green abyss;
Behind my path, by night and morn
The fierce wind blows his hunter's horn.
" I am not daunted, for I feel
My Steersman's hand upon the wheel. "

CHAPTER VI
CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
"Children of yesterday,
Heirs of to-morrow,
What are you weaving.
Labor and sorrow?
Look to your loom again,
Faster and faster
Fly the great shuttles
Prepared by the Master.
Life's in the loom!
Room for it — Room!"
"Children of yesterday,
Heirs of to-morrow,
Look at your fabric
Of labor and sorrow;
Seamy and dark with
Despair and disaster;
Turn it, and lo,
The design of the Master!
The Lord's in the loom!
Room for Him — Room!"
We have souls, and the world is for their develop
ment; moreover, God speaks to us and guides us,
therefore we need not have fear. The word
"fear" occurs frequently in scripture, while the
negative form, "fear not," although less frequent
in the type, is nevertheless the real undercurrent,
the fundamental motif, the major diapason of the
whole Bible. The true biblical message is "Fear

124 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
Not!" It is only a primary, primitive idea of
Christianity that teaches fear. We have read
our Bibles wrongly if we say, "The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom, " for we ought to
read thus, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom. " To begin in fear, and then to con
tinue in fear, is to remain in the lowest grade of
spiritual training and growth; but to begin in fear,
and to ascend towards a love of God, is the right
attitude, and is the idea which ought to be con
veyed, but rarely is, by so seemingly small a
matter as the proper accentuation of one word
in the reading of the quotation. One of the Col
lects of the Church pleads that we may have "a
perpetual fear and love of His holy name," and
at first thought it seems as though there were a
contradiction involved in the wording of the
petition; yet, a deeper insight into human nature
shows the wisdom of the prayer, for there is al
ways some element of fear in true love's growth —
a great fear lest something should happen to take
away that love. As time goes on, and as we bet
ter trust the one we love, we find that fear was
but a stepping-stone to the higher degree of affec
tion, and in the end, we attain a realization of the
words, "There is no fear in love, for perfect love
casteth out fear. "

FEAR NOT! 125
Two pictures, one from the old Testament and
the other from the New, can be recalled to mind,
which were instances of the command, "Fear Not !",
given authoritatively. One where the prophet
Elisha, surrounded by the armies of Israel's
enemies, tells the young man who was with him,
"Fear Not!", and asks God that the eyes of his
companion should be opened, so that he too might
see the horses and the chariots of the host of heaven ;
and Elisha contrasts the heavenly host with the
Syrian army thus, " They that be with us are more
than they that be with them." The other pic
ture is the instance where Christ speaks to the
frightened sailors on the lake of Genessaret, and
tells them not to fear, "Peace! It is I." The
hymn of Anatolius describes this picture vividly: —
"Fierce the wild billow,
Dark was the night,
Oars labored heavily,
Foam glimmered white;
Trembled the mariners,
Danger was nigh;
Then said the God of Gods,
'Peace! It is I!'"
and the last stanza of this noble hymn, is the
prayer: — " Jesu ! Deliverer !
Come Thou to me,

126 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
Keep Thou my voyagings
O'er life's rough sea!
Thou, when the storm of Death
Roars sweeping by,
Whisper, 0 Truth of truth,
'Peace! It is I!'"
It isn't the great things in life that give us our
fears and our grinding anxieties, but the small and
petty troubles. Great leaders are sustained by the
very magnitude of their projects, and the voice
of fear is not easily heard in the din of the strife.
Led by the inspiration of their ideals, the voice
of fear was not heard by Arnold of Brescia, when
he pleaded to have the laws revived, and was
burned at the stake; nor by Dante who suffered
exile; nor Savanarola preaching against the tyr
anny of the nobles and organized greed of both
labor and capital. We have no work similar to
theirs, and we hear very distinctly the voices of
fear, apprehension and anxieties; and although
our anxieties are for the most part wholly gratui
tous, since many of our most carefully anticipated
troubles never become actual, yet, our fancied
trials and troubles are almost as poignant as though
they were quite real. We can all find the true and
deep meaning in the Collect, "Defend us from
all dangers, and the fear of them."
Now what is our way of escape? The way is

SWORD OF FAITH 127
told to perfection in Wagner's "Siegfried." A
dragon was abroad in the land and the inhabi
tants were in terror; this dragon could be killed
only by one who knew no fear, and Siegfried alone
knew none. He made ready to hunt the dragon,
and he asked the smithy to forge a sword; these
swords were admired by him as "skewers," "pretty
toys," but they were worthless in temper, for
he broke them in the first tests; then Sieg
fried forged his own sword from metal given him
by his father, and he named it "Nothung", or
"Needful"; and with this sword, he killed the
dragon. The marvellous opera tells of Bondage,
Divine Tribulation, and Peace, in its motifs;
furthermore, as we come to know the depth of
meaning in the opera, we begin to see that Sieg
fried is representative of man, for in him we see
the same story of bondage, and tribulation, sent
for soul-growth, and finally, peace, the great
peace, which comes to all those who like Siegfried
have learned how to make the battle successfully.
For we, too, have our dragons to fight, and their
names are Doubt, Fear, and Death; and we can
conquer all these dragons by forging our own
swords, from metal which our heavenly Father
gives to each and all of His children. The name
of Siegfried's sword was Nothung, the name of

128 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
ours is Faith. We each must forge our own
sword, and we can do so by the simple rule which
obtains in the scientific laboratories of our day,
the rule of "try it. " Columbus tried his faith and
found a new continent; every inventor tries the
vision of his new machine or process; every friend
which we have we know by trying and thus prov
ing the friendship; therefore, try it. Faith in
God will reveal his love, and then one can pass on
up into the higher altitude of the love of God and
away from fear. The result of it will be that we
can live our lives more serenely, for we shall feel
that we are in His keeping. "Worry is distrust"
is the phrase of a modern prophet; again, "Worry
is weakness." An older prophet wrote, "Com
mit thy way unto Him and He will bring it to
pass. " Isaiah knew the truth of it, for he said,
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose
mind is stayed on Thee." Faber's lines tell the
story thus:
"For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man's mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
"Yet we make His love too narrow
By false measures of our own;
And we magnify His strictness
With a zeal He will not own. "

CONTENTMENT 129
Thus trying out our faith, and rising as in a true
evolution, we can see, when we look backwards
over our course, that frequently the very things
we sought and prayed for once, would have
checked our soul-growth, had our prayers been
granted. Shakespeare knew this for he said:
"We, ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harm, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good; so Faith finds profit
By losing our prayers."
Some prayed for riches that they might be
happy, but were given poverty that they might
be wise. Others asked to rule that they might
be great, but were made to serve that they might
be greater. We asked for all things that we might
enjoy life, we were given a new life by Faith. Our
lives entered upon a new sphere of existence. Our
dragon of doubt and fear is slain by the sword
which we have made for ourselves, and we are
able to say, not merely, "It is going to be all
right," but "It is all right, nowl"
"Whichever way the wind doth blow,
Some heart is glad to have it so :
Then blow it East or blow it West,
The wind that blows — that wind is best.
My little bark sails not alone,
A thousand fleets from every zone
Are out upon a thousand seas,
And what for me were favoring breeze

130 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
Might dash another with the shock
Of doom upon some hidden rock.
And so I do not dare to pray
For winds to waft me on my way,
But trust it to an Higher Will
To stay or speed me, knowing well that He
Who launched my bark will sail with me,
And bring me, every peril past
Within His sheltering Home at last.
Then, whichever way the wind doth blow,
My heart is glad to have it so :
And blow it East or blow it West,
The wind that blows, — that wind is best. "
Does God care? How can so great a being
care for so small an entity? The soul aristocracy
of the world has met these queries, and has re
plied affirmatively, that God does care. Of course,
the search is tantamount to a discovery or redis
covery of God, but we need not fear the search for
any reason of the vastness of the work; all we
need is to go about it in the right way. Many try
the wrong way, and seek to find Him by following
the reason alone; reason alone will never bring
us home to God, nor give us the answer whether
God cares for us or no; reason is to be used, and
thoroughly, for Jesus himself commanded, "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."
"Mind," or reason, was not placed first in the

DOES GOD CARE? 131
series. Reason is most powerful corroborative tes
timony, after once the heart and soul have found
Him; but by the way of reason alone, God can
not be found. The biography of Carlyle shows
this, and the story of his home-coming one late
evening, and hearing his father reading the family
evening prayers, while "he stayed outside," is
one of the saddest pictures of a sad life. Carlyle
sought for God by the way of reason alone, and
he failed and was embittered. There are many
who thus "stay outside" because they use faulty
methods in the search after God. "Thou shalt
love. . . . with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul." Heart and soul are before "mind."
The way to find out whether God does really
care, is to find it out in exactly the same way that
we find out the best and the finest in every depart
ment of knowledge — namely, by placing ourselves
under the guidance, training and inspiration of
those who are expert in their several fields. For
instance, in the field of literature, the boy prefers
at first Oliver Optic, but if he is influenced rightly,
he comes in time to love Shakespeare, Browning,
Plato: he has cultivated a taste for the best,
simply by being with the best. In the field of
art the same thing happens; at first we are at
tracted by the flaming billposters, and we like

132 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
the lush coloring of Bouguereau; but if we asso
ciate with the best art, frequenting the galleries
where the best works are before us, we can grad
ually come to see the beauties of Botticelli, and
to appreciate the glories of Raphael. Again, in
the field of music, we may perhaps at first like
Sousa's marches best, and are bored almost to
extinction by what youth and unculture calls
"classical music"; yet if we follow our studies
through the melodies of harmony, and the intri
cacies of counter-point, and attain to some under
standing of the mechanics in the mastery of tech
nique, then we can ascend into the higher music,
and in some measure understand Wagner, who
makes one feel even more than one hears. In all
these ways, we can elevate ourselves to the stand
ards accepted by the world that really knows;
we trust these leaders in their own special fields,
in the expectation that wider knowledge, and a
deeper experience, will enable us also to come up
towards their higher degree of excellence. Now
it is exactly the same in the field of religious ex
perience. We know the geniuses in literature,
art, music, and it is to them, and to them only,
that we go to perfect our education in those lines.
There are also geniuses in religious thought; men
who like Enoch, "walked with God." If we re-

WALKS WITH GOD 133
fuse to train ourselves to the best in literature,
art and music, we can refuse; it will be our own
loss; and precisely so in the field of religion and
the things of God; we can refuse to find out
whether God cares, by declining to hear what the
experts say. We do not ask a poet to instruct
us in music, nor the musician to tell us of art,
and we would not ask for instruction in the things
of God of any one in the world excepting of those
who know. This is precisely what every one of
us who has some knowledge of God has done;
every one of us has what knowledge of God we
have, through some relationship and contact with
some saint who knew God; perhaps we saw father
once, praying in secret on his knees; perhaps we
felt a mother's prayers; perhaps our lives were
brought as by accident into close contact with
some saint of His who lit the divine flame in our
own hearts. Carlyle said, "Soul is kindled by
soul. " But for religion — not theology — we need
to go, not to the leaders in literature, nor art, nor
music, but to those who while yet they are in this
world, even now belong to the other and higher
world. "As well imagine a man with a sense of
sculpture," says Matthew Arnold, "not cultiva
ting it by Greek art, or a man with a sense of
poetry not cultivating it with the help of Homer

134 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
and Shakespeare, as a man with a sense of con
duct, i. e., a sense of religion, not cultivating it
with the help of the Bible. "
Accepting this principle, we can now go to the
seers, and the men who know God. There is a
book of lives of religious experts. It is that an
cient and never-out-of-date book, the Bible.
Here the biographies of seers, saints, prophets,
reflect God as a mirror. They all asked whether
God cared, and they one and all found out that
He did care. The direct path-way for us towards
a knowledge of God is to find God in man.
"No one could tell me where my soul might be,
I searched for God, but God eluded me,
I sought my brother, and I found all three. "
To learn about God, we first must find a man
who knows Him; and nowhere can we find so
many that knew and trusted Him, as in the bi
ographies of souls, saints, and seers of the Bible.
Heinrich Heine said that he owed his enlighten
ment to the reading of a book, the Book, the Bible,
adding, "He who has lost his God may find Him
again in the Bible, and he who has never known Him
will there be met by the breath of the divine word."
The Bible should be read not as history, for it is
an epic; nor as geology, for it never pretended to
be science; but it should be read to see how men

EXPERIENTIA DOCET 135
found out God, and how they, as experts, dis
covered that God did care for them. Here we
come into contact with real men, possessing our
nature, and who knew the needs, the hopes and
the fears of our common humanity; they tell us
of their struggles, and how they gained faith in
God; how He brought them out of the horrible
mire and clay and set their feet upon a rock and
ordered their goings. These biographies are the
human documents of the case. It is the story of
the gradual growth of man's spiritual nature,
revealing His power, and showing Himself to us
so that we cannot but see Him; and at last we
discover that although He has His seat so high,
yet He humbleth Himself to behold the things on
earth. In the lives of these men we can see the
power of God. They felt it themselves and they
discovered that God could care and did. Joseph
came to see that his slavery, when they hurt his
feet in the stocks, was but the prelude to his lead
ership as the first executive in Egypt, and that
although his brethren meant it for his harm, that
God turned it for good, in that he was sent be
fore them into Egypt to save life in the coming
famine. Job discovered his God even to the al
titude of faith that could say, "Though He slay
me, yet will I trust Him." Lincoln's brave de-

136 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
cision to "Do the right as God gives us the power
to see the right," shows the heart made brave
by a knowledge that somehow God did care and
would care. When we read of these noblemen
of God who lived in the absolute conviction that
God lives and does care, men of unwavering
courage, undaunted by all the ills of life, ensouled
characters facing life and death with the immedi
ate presence of God within them, we too begin
to re-discover God and we come upon faith, and
hope, and trust for ourselves. It is not simply a
theory that they invented but a power that they
felt. They knew. The Apostles, the ancient
martyrs and the modern saints have an inner
certainty and conviction, and were imbued with
a spirit making them all veritable Sons of God.
It was not an hallucination, nor an experiment,
but an experience. It can be readily put to test
by us; it is not to be proved by reason alone, but
in the lives of others, and in our own life; not by
logic, but by experiment. It is not a weak cre
dulity; it is not a believing instead of knowing,
but a believing in order to know. It is an experi
ment which becomes an experience. It is in the
words of the hymn, —
"Finding, following, keeping, struggling,
Is He sure to bless?

GOD DOES CARE 137
Saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs,
Answer, 'Yes!'"
It involves free-will in us as free agents. We
can refuse; we pay heavy premiums in sorrow and
sadness if we refuse. We can see how others
succeeded gloriously, and how their lives were
tinged throughout and imbued with the power of
His might. Their inspired lives inspire us. They
are our spiritual instructors and leaders, just
as we have our instructors and leaders in litera
ture, art and music. It is the divine scheme of
the world.
In the dome of the reading-room of the Congres
sional library are huge mural paintings; one of
them represents the Hebrews as the genius for
religion, and the others represent the work which
was done by Rome in jurisprudence and organi
zation, and Greece as instructress in art; the He
brews' Bible is for religion what the great masters
are for art. In their Bible we can learn about the
leaders of the souls of men. In this Bible we can
find God and find that He cares. At first we will .
not be able to hear the Voice nor see the Vision,
but just as surely as in literature, art and music
we became more able to hear their special voice,
and to see their vision, just so in religion, our ex
perience will deepen, our souls will strengthen, and

138 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
we shall be able to see Him because they have
seen Him, and we shall know, as they did, that
God can care and does care. This can be our
vision, our nearer vision of God, and it not only
can be increased day by day, through continual
reading of the Biblical noblemen, but can be
passed on to others, searching after God. This
is the glorious vision of God which came to the
world through His seers, saints, prophets and
priests, and most and chiefest of all through the
Messiah, our Saviour and Redeemer, of Whom,
one who knew, said that " God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son." And
then our vision of God includes the conviction
that God does care.
Among the cardinal characteristics of Christ
ianity is this, that it is, above and beyond all
other religions, the one religion of cheer. It is
the expectant religion. Very few of us realize
Christianity's power in creating happiness as a
habit of mind. There is no duty we so much
underestimate, as the duty of being happy. "By
being happy", says Stevenson, "we sow anony
mous benefits upon the world, which remain un
known even to ourselves, and when disclosed,
surprise no one more than ourselves." Chris
tianity is par excellence, the one religion of happi-

THE RELIGION OF CHEER 139
ness and cheerfulness. A Christian and only a
Christian can be glad in adversity, rich in poverty,
calm in the presence of death. Some of us, who
bear the name of Christian, have cheer most of
the time, and most of us have cheer all of the time,
but there are few indeed of us who have cheer
from our religion all of the time. This is not as
it should be, and the trouble is that we do not
use the means which are right at our hands. By
way of illustration, there might be recalled the
story of the ship-wrecked sailors on a raft, perish
ing from lack of drinking-water, and their res
cuers, on hearing their pitiful cry for "Water!"
reply, "Dip up the water over the side; you are
in the mouth of the Amazon, and all the water
is fresh." Just so, we are in the very midst of
happiness, and need only to dip over the side.
Another illustration is the story of the wrathful
king, who refused to obey the prophet and bathe
in Jordan to cure his leprosy, until he was asked,
"If the prophet bade thee do some great thing,
wouldest thou not have done it? How much rather
then, when he biddest thee do some little thing?"
By refusing the little things we deny ourselves
the happiness we might have. Emerson wrote
something about the desirability of not leaving
the sky out of one's landscape; and a wise oculist

140 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
once told a patient to rest his eyes by frequently
looking upwards. The sky is near at hand, and
it is easy to look up, and the water is just over the
side. But true happiness is not quiescence, nor
a selfish Nirvana, nor an absorption into infinity,
nor a negative status; true happiness for God's
children, busy growing souls now, is a positive,
active evolution away from the plane of sense and
into the plane of soul; lives are too apt to be spent
in the sense-plane, and never ascend into the
soul-plane. We live in the wrong spiritual lati
tude or altitude. This all comes about in the
most natural way; our minds run with our senses
from childhood, and we come to a knowledge of
ourselves by touch, sight, hearing, smelling and
tasting; on attaining maturer years, there comes a
time when we declare independence of the merely
sensuous, and we look for the realities which en
dure uninterrupted by sorrow, anger or fear; the
real man comes to know that his mind is the ally
of his soul, and that the sense-plane and the sense-
world are inimical to his highest self; he finds that
the soul is the only lasting part of himself, and so
each for himself, discovers himself. When we
have made the great revealment of our true
selves to ourselves, then we can say, as Chrysos
tom said to the Emperor, "You cannot rob me of

SOUL PLANE 141
my goods, because my treasure is in heaven;
nor can you exile me, because my fatherland is
above. " We can also attain a sane and a gra
cious outlook upon life. This soul-plane of exis
tence was clearly pointed out by Professor Fiske,
when he said that God wasn't making stars and
comets now, but souls. " The glorious consumma
tion towards which evolution is tending is the
production of the highest and most perfect psy
chical fife." "I can see no insuperable difficulty
in the notion that at some period in the evolution
of humanity, that the divine spark may not have
acquired sufficient concentration and steadiness
to survive the wreck of material forms and endure
forever." One who sadly said, "You can't
prove that we live in the hereafter," was pleased
with the reply, "No, I can't prove it, but you
can't prove that we don't." It is only by the
growing of strong souls, and by achieving the soul-
plane, in ways that are near at hand and very
simple, we can drink from our Amazon, bathe in
Jordan, and come to the cheer which our religion
offers. We can acquire a wise indifference to the
transient, we can five unworried by the present
because confident of the eternal. We can be
"happy-tempered bringers of the best out of the
worst; who bear what's past cure, and so put

142 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
a good face on't, wisely passive where action's
fruitless." We can comprehend Stevenson's
phrase, "It is better to travel hopefully, than
to arrive. " We can try to imitate the old Vene
tian sun-dial, " Horas non numero nisi serenas."
"You do not know," says Charles Kingsley,
"half — no, not the thousandth part of God's
mercy to you; so do not be afraid of being happy,
nor think that you honor God by wearing a long
face when He is heaping blessings on you, and
asking you to smile and sing." The exaltation
of the soul-plane is reached, and happiness, true
happiness is found by the little things near at
hand. "Teach us delight in simple things,
And mirth that hath no bitter springs."
Christianity was the first religion to give to
humanity the key to happiness, peace and God's
rest. It lifts man above the sense-plane and into
the soul-plane, and this is attainable by "whoso
ever will. " The winning of the higher state of
man's soul, means a hard conflict with adverse
powers. The fight begins the moment the man
feels that he is ensouled. The contest is against
his lower nature. The power to become Sons

MAKES SONS OF GOD 143
of God, was offered to as many as believed on
Him. The man is free to choose or to reject.
His will and wish is the antecedent. His final
blessedness is conditioned on his striving, and this
is recognized by oriental and occidental leaders of
thought. Kang Yo Wei and Goethe agree, and
the latter's words were, "Not all men are im
mortal, because some men will not strive. " The
soul-plane is to be attained only by the travail
of each individual soul, and this travail can be
done happily with the sure end of peace as goal.
Thus is answered the riddle "Cui Bono?"
"What profiteth it?" "What is the World for?"
Nations which answered the riddle wrongly, and
elected to live in the sense-plane, became, slowly
but surely, moribund and decadent; the world
religions, other than Christianity, failed to attain
the soul-plane of peace; the philosophies, the
schools, the inconsistent scientists, all have trended
more or less immediately towards pessimism, and
so they all prove themselves unable to give a
satisfactory answer to the world's riddle. But
Christianity produces civilization, and shows its
power in the individual, the family and the nation,
in that it makes answer to the question "Cui
Bono? " by saying that the world is for the making
of souls; and it shows man how to raise himself

144 CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDENT
above the sense-plane and into the soul-plane.
Its methods for making souls are obedience,
prayer, consecration; it trains the soul's eye to
see God and tunes the soul's ear to hear God's
voice; it tells what to do and how to do it; it gives
to men a reasonable, holy and living hope in the
world by removing all fear, and giving uplift,
cheer and hope; it shows that God cares. The
road for the non-Christian is a true via dolorosa,
but to the Christian, it is the road the Master
trod. Christians alone can comprehend a union
of the human with the divine; they can, in some
measure, unify God and man; they can reach the
high soul-plane of the Kingdom of God, the di
vine life. Of such souls, Stopford Brooke wrote
— "Who gets out of self, and into God — of him,
men and angels say, 'He is not here, he is risen.' "
For souls there are no time relations, nor boun
daries as we now understand them. For souls,
as Longfellow wrote, there is no death, "What
seems so is transition. " Death is not a departure,
but an arrival. Paul spoke of it as a time for
his unmooring. It is an "Home Coming," as
emigrants sailing to their El Dorado: and some
of the family have gone on before, and will be
waiting for the incoming ship.
This then is Christianity's answer to the

THE PEACE BRINGER 145
World's Riddle, "Cui Bono?" namely, that the
world exists for the evolution of a soul aristoc
racy: a training of souls to live on the highest
plane, the divine soul-plane, as Sons of God,
Whose children, more or less obedient, we all are.
"He led us on
By paths we did not know;
Upwards He led us, though our steps were slow,
Though oft we'd faint and falter on the way,
Though storms and darkness oft obscured the day,
Yet, when the clouds were gone,
We saw He led us on."
" He leads us on
Through all th' unquiet years,
Past all our dreamland hopes and doubts and fears
He guides our steps; through all the tangled maze
Of sin, and sorrow, and o'er-clouded days
We know His will is done
And still He leads us on."
"And He at last,
After the weary strife,
After the restless fever we call life,
After the dreariness, the aching pain,
The wayward struggles which have proved in vain,
After all our toil is past,
Will give us peace at last. "