YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
FRANKLIN BOWDITCH DEXTER, YALE '6i
The gift of his daughter
MRS. HENRY LAURENS

THE LIGHT WITHIN

BY CHARLES LEWIS SLATTERY
I
The Master of the World: A Study of
Christ. Crown octavo.
Lite Beyond Lite: A Study of Immortality.
Crown octavo.
The Historic Ministry and the Present
Christ: An Appeal for Unity. Crown
octavo.
Present-Day Preaching. Crown octavo.
The Authority of Religious Experience.
Crown octavo.
The Light Within: A Study of the Holy
Spirit. Crown octavo. II
Felix Reville Brunot (1820-1808) : A
Civilian in the War for the Union; Pres
ident of the First Board of Indian Com
missioners. With Portraits, Illustrations,
and a Map. Crown octavo.
Edward Lincoln Atkinson (1865-1902).
With Illustrations. Crown octavo.
Alexander Viets Griswold Allen (1841-
1908). With Portrait and Illustrations.
Small octavo.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
NEW YORK, LONDON, BOMBAY, CAICUTTA, AND MADRAS

THE LIGHT WITHIN
a §tuDp of t&e iDolp Spirit

BY
CHARLES LEWIS SLATTERY, D.D.
RECTOR OF GRACE CHURCH IN NEW YORK

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1915

copyright, 1915
by longmans, green, and co.

PREFACE
A BOOK is like a placid river which reflects the
scenes through which it flows. This book is
therefore only in part the result of a good many years
of meditation and reading; for I hope that it has taken
into itself something of the life through which it has
passed. It has been forming during strenuous winters in the
centre of great throngs of humanity and during quiet
summers among the hills. I crave for the book that
it reveal some of the sympathy which is given a life
close to the people and some of the peace which comes
from days spent beside still waters.
During the writing of the last portion of the book,
and during the revision of all of it, the news of a furi
ous European war has been daily finding its way into
this tranquil mountain village. It seemed sometimes
as if the world of the silent valley, with its warm
sunlight and its gentle rain, could not be part of the
world where men were being mowed down by merci
less guns, where towns were in flames, and where
frightened peasants were homeless and starving. The
very contrast cried out for God's assurance of His own
power in the world of men. So again and again I
have referred to this war; and it would be high re
ward for the toil spent upon the book if, through it,
the thought of the eternal presence of the Holy Spirit
might bring solace to any one who is cast down, and

vi PREFACE
if, to such a person, every hard problem might seem
to have its only solution in a surrender to the pro
tection of God. We forget that God knows all our
trouble and will yet bring humanity through.
Then, too, these pages reflect a sacred relationship.
They would be much less confident did they not have
the background of the parishes which I have served.
A pastor, because he cares and because people are
willing to tell him, learns from many who are in the
depths how ready and how marvellous is the help of
God. This book, belongs first of all to my parish
ioners past and present; and if they will have it, the
book is theirs.
C. L. S.
Intervale,
14 September, 1914.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Athtrst for the Living God  i
H The Holy Spirit before Christ .... 16
in Christ's Revelation of the Spiritual . . 34
IV The Day of Pentecost  43
V The Holy Spirit in the Days of St. Paul 63
VI The Holy Spirit in the Synoptic Gospels . 80
VH The Witness of the Fourth Gospel . . 92
VDI A Thousand Christian Years . . . 113
K Six Centurtes of Increasing Freedom . . 156
X Three Centuries of Increasing Loyalty . 204
XI "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the
Coming of the Lord"  252
INDEX  319

THE LIGHT WITHIN
i
ATH1RST FOR THE LIVING GOD

IN a treatise published in the year 1913, a phi
losopher thus challenges the Church of our time:
"The traditional doctrine of the Holy Spirit, neglected
by the early theologians of the Church, even when the
creeds were still in the formative period of their exist
ence, has remained unto this day in the background of
inquiry, both for the theologians and for the philoso
phers. . . . The article of the creed regarding the
Holy Spirit is, I believe, the one matter about which
most who discuss the problem of Christianity have
least to say in the way of definite theory. . . . This
article, then, should be understood, if the spirit of
Christianity, in its most human and vital of features,
is to be understood at all."1
Of the importance of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit
there can be no question, and there is no doubt that,
in spite of important utterances, the Church has not
given the first place to the study of the Holy Spirit.
It is true that "when the creeds were still in the for
mative period of their existence," important sections of
the creeds were devoted to the Spirit; and as any one
may see from Dr. Swete's impressive volume, The
1 Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity, vol. ii, p. 14.

2 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church,1 the Fathers had a
good deal to say about the doctrines so included. Dr.
Swete, in preparation for his book, read again all the
more important Greek and Latin patristic authorities
of the first five centuries, and a few belonging to the
sixth, seventh, and eighth, with this one theme in view.
The main literary output during all these centuries was,
however, upon the Christological controversy; not
wholly perhaps because it seemed more important, but
because it was more difficult to adjust. It is not
always true that men talk and write most about what
they feel most deeply. But with all these qualifica
tions in mind, we must admit that seemingly the doc
trine of the Holy Spirit, after the Apostolic period,
did not engage the attention of the Early Church to
the degree that one might expect.
Turning quickly to our own day, we find theology
still absorbed with the Christological problem. Crit
ical scholarship has been concerned with the sources
for our knowledge of the historic Jesus. The problem
has become historical rather than theological. Radical
and conservative students have discussed the mirac
ulous and the eschatological elements as the early
Fathers discussed the two Natures and the two Wills.
Even when one has passed to the simple and the un
learned, one hears the devout cry, "Back to Christ!"
Between the remote past and the present, the emphasis
has been relatively about the same. Even St. Francis,
most spiritual of saints, thought upon our Lord's out
ward body so persistently that his hands and his feet
were said to have been marked as with the nails of
crucifixion. When individuals or groups of individuals
arose to claim for themselves a special endowment of
1 1912.

ATHIRST FOR GOD 3
the Holy Spirit, the Church officially looked askance.
"To pretend, sir," said Bishop Butler to George
Whitefield, "to extraordinary gifts of the Spirit is a
horrid thing, a very horrid thing." The movements
which talked much of the Holy Spirit gave the Church
an uneasy feeling: the bishops and the doctors pre
ferred to abide by definite records and doctrines, and
suspected a too enthusiastic reliance upon the Inner
Voice. We may not forget, however, that when
empires were crashing, the Church dared to believe
that one man, the Pope, could be so dowered by the
Spirit that his word could have divine authority. The
later papacy became anything but spiritual, but in its
inception the papacy may be reckoned as an example
of trust in the Holy Spirit. Nor may we forget that
at the Reformation, when the Bible was restored to the
people, it was recognized by large sections of Chris
tendom that not only the Church as a whole, but the
individual Christian could, through the Holy Spirit,
know the very words of God. n
As Emerson could sing,
"One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost,"
so it is wise to look for the evidence of the hold which
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has upon the minds of
men, not so much in formal theological or philosoph
ical accounts, as in, the aspirations and manifestations
of our day. These may not seem theological or even
religious. I believe that they indicate such a readi
ness to study the nature and work of the Holy Spirit as
the world has not before known.
(1) First, there is a tendency to suggest that even

4 THE LIGHT WITHIN
matter is spiritual rather than material. The scien
tific man is daily more in awe before the world which
he tries to understand. Once matter was, by hypothe
sis, divided into atoms; in the seventeenth century, men
spoke also of molecules; now the scientific man speaks
of electrons as the smallest subdivisions, which seem
to be not matter at all, but only charges of electricity.
For those who are less erudite the news of ether in
which light is transmitted, the news of wireless elec
tricity, the news of radium, make ready some tentative
explanation in which physical terms will be alto
gether inadequate.
(2) When we turn to humanity we find the estimate
of a man's worth higher today than at any time in
history. On the surface, New York, for example,
seems a selfish and worldly city; yet I venture to think
that there has never been a city in the history of the
world wherein the fortunate and the happy have
planned so incessantly as there to do good to the less
favoured. It is a superficial judgment which believes
the prosperous man seeks to get all he can out of
humanity and then cast it aside as dregs. The man in
the enormous modern city has a haunting fear lest he
shall do less than his duty towards his fellows who
need help. The hospital, the social settlement, the
vacation house, the asylums for defectives, all pro
claim the worth which today is put upon man simply
as man, apart from his use to the community. With
out formulating it for himself, the watchful citizen
probably would bow his head in the presence of the
maimed life before him, and permit the words to be
said, "His body is the temple of the Holy Ghost."
In any case, his attitude makes him seem prepared
for such a declaration.

ATHIRST FOR GOD 5
Should there come a fierce struggle between capital
and labour, somewhat after the fashion of the French
Revolution, I am quite sure that, now as then, many
a prosperous man would refuse to raise his hand against
his brother; and the sympathy for the poor would be
greater from the rich in very many cases than from
their fellow poor. This cannot seem a fanciful suppo
sition, for one sees it in the faces of good and noble
men; and one has, too, the proved records from his
tory, for example, not only in such a crisis as the
French Revolution, but in the days when the English
Corn Laws were being repealed.1 Only I seem to see
in the great modern city this tendency magnified
beyond all precedent. It is not so much the wish
to be charitable, as to be just: there is less and less
of what might be called patronizing condescension.
There is the recognition of an inner worth in all men
which demands homage.
(3) Further, there is today an unparalleled effort to
attain human unity. This effort is manifested in the
peace movements in their different forms. Already
we have seen arbitration settle international disputes
that a few years ago could have been settled only by
war. Even the European War of 1914 may be the
last tragic link in establishing another way of adjust
ing international wrongs. There is beginning to be
argument that the time for independent nations is
past and that the nations are to be fused into some
larger administration which shall include the world;
we are, that is, to become citizens of the world. What
ever the end of the tendency may be, there is a
1 A fine instance of this trait in modern life is illustrated in the attitude
of Lady Conant to her neighbours and tenants, in Rudyard Kipling's
An Habitation Enforced.

6 THE LIGHT WITHIN
tendency; and already the theory is passing into
substantial deeds. In the year 1914, when the American
Government seemed hopelessly at odds with Mexico,
war was avoided by a patience and a hope that seemed
to the world at first ridiculous, and then marvellous.
The philosopher and the theologian have the right to
ask whether in yielding to the reasonable voice of unity,
the nations are not yielding to the uniting power of the
Divine Spirit. Once more our time may be thought
to be making itself ready to study the doctrine of the
Holy Ghost.
• Approaching the more distinctly rehgious aspects of
this present tendency to unity, we witness the various
attempts towards the organic unity of the Church.
While some men are explaining that different ecclesi
astical temperaments never can be persuaded to live
in the same house, other men, with the most varied
inheritance and taste, are sitting down to confer.
These men, moreover, are constantly amazed at their
sense of unity in the possession of a common Lord.
In almost any report which one may read, one finds
phrases like these: "I have the same feehng all of you
have, that God Himself has prepared the way for a
conference;" 1 "I am led to feel that this whole matter
has been in the providence of God, . . . that we were
led by His Spirit in doing just the things that we
tried to do;"2 "It is a matter of much satisfaction
... to come back to this meeting feehng a reassurance
... in the providence and presence and power of God
and His Spirit."3 The wise have seen the need of
Church unity in the mission field and in the little
1 Bishop of Fond du Lac, The World Conference, Publication 27: p. 28.
2 Rev. Peter Ainslee: ibid., p. 25.
* Rev. Newman Smyth: ibid., p. 11.

ATHIRST FOR GOD 7
hamlet at home; the loving have dared to put their
prejudices aside and to long for it; now the wise and
the loving, as they dare to confer, find themselves
assured that it is possible, and they attribute the power
to the irresistible strength of the Holy Spirit. Really
to beheve in the possibility of Church unity is a new
thing in the world. The time of such a behef is a
hopeful season to study the doctrine of the Holy
Ghost. One of the rehgious phenomena of our time is the
rise in Southwestern Asia of Babism or Bahaism. It
is described as not so much an organization as a spir
itual attitude. As it touches various historic religions
it tends to renew them, giving them spiritual con
tent, rather than to change them.1 In half a century,
in spite of persecution, this movement counts its fol
lowers by the millions. Its appeal is purely spiritual,
not only for the individual, but for the community.
These people are confident that they are borne up in
the Spirit of God; they suffer one for another because
they recognize that they are more than kin through
the same Spirit. On almost every page of their writ
ings is the word unity: they long to bring all men to
"the Tent of Unity," "the ocean of oneness." This
they interpret as meaning that God alone is the One
Power animating all things: men of all races and classes
are "drops of one sea and leaves of one tree." "Why,"
Abdul Baha was asked, "do your guests leave you with
their faces shining?" "I cannot tell you," he said;
"but this I know: in all upon whom I look I see only
my Father's face." In Persia, where one in three
has been renewed by the teachings of Bahaism, there
1 See Bahaism — A Study of a Contemporary Movement, by Albert R.
Vail: Harvard Theological Review, July, 1914; pp. 339 ff.

8 THE LIGHT WITHIN
is said to be a remarkable change for the better in
morals and in all social relationships. The unity and
character thus attained are simply the evidence of
what the Holy Spirit will do for men who open their
fives to receive Him.
(4) The mysticism that has come to the East with
Bahaism has also come to the West, through a variety
of popular movements, and through a band of exceed
ingly influential younger scholars. Dean Inge has de
fined mysticism as "an immediate communion, real or
supposed, between the human soul and the Soul of the
World or the Divine Spirit. The hypothesis on which
it rests is that there is a real affinity between the indi
vidual soul and the great immanent Spirit."1 While
one band of apologetic scholars are saying that we must
dig out the facts from the first days of Christianity
before we can be sure of the truth of Christianity, an
other band, daily of greater influence, are saying that it
is proved by experience in our own time that "the pure
in heart shall see God," and they that do the will of
God (as revealed, for example, in the New Testament)
know the Truth. In his own hfe he has the vivid proof
that Christianity is real. A present experience is the
most valid test of the recorded experiences of the past.
It is (to use formal language) the Holy Spirit in us who
gives us to discern the true as well as the right.
Mysticism finds modern expression in "Christian
Science," the real force of which, despite many fallacies
and self-righteous assumptions, is derived from the dis
covery by its members, as for the first time, of the
power of prayer. It is more plainly and consistently
taught in psychotherapy, wherein the rehgious guide
to health insists that the patient shall relax his body
1 Institutionalism and Mysticism: Hibbert Journal, July, 1914; p. 766.

ATHIRST FOR GOD 9
and his will, leaving the door open for the Spirit of
God to enter and heal. Dr. Elwood Worcester re
counts this eloquent testimony: "Several years ago a
man of force and education came to me to pour into
my ears the story of his complete ruin and downfall.
I sat in silence for two hours hstening to his terrible
revelations, and as I listened I kept wondering: 'Is
there any sound thing in you? Is there any relation
of hfe you have not betrayed and ruined?' Then some
new statement would sweep away my half-formed hope.
At last he paused and asked me, 'What can you make
of that?' I replied, 'I see two things. The first, of
course, is suicide. You must often have thought of
it. You cannot bear this burden much longer. You
have been throwing hfe away with both hands, and now
hfe itself is casting you off. You may go on for a
month or six weeks, but I do not think you can bear
it much longer.' He sighed and said, 'What else do
you see?' I said, 'I see God. Did it ever occur to
you that He might save you?' His face took on that
stony, expressionless appearance which many men
assume when one mentions the Name of God, and he
said: 'I can't follow you; I don't know what you are
talking about.' I said, 'That is not true; you know
what I mean.' He said, 'Once or twice in my life it
has come to me as in a dream that God might save
me.' I said, 'Would you accept God's help if He of
fered it to you?' And he rephed, 'I would.' I said,
'Will you ask for it?' and, throwing himself on his
knees, he sobbed out a few broken-hearted words of
prayer, and, covering his face with his hands, he
knelt in silence for perhaps five minutes. When he
rose he looked at me and I saw something in his face
which was not there before. He said, very quietly,

io THE LIGHT WITHIN
'God has heard my prayer, and I am saved.' If the
Lord Christ had entered the room visibly and, laying
his hand on that man's head, had said, 'I will; be
thou clean,' I do not believe that the change would
have been profounder or more immediate. The vice
and evil which had desolated his hfe simply ceased,
and in their place a character of such purity, sweetness,
and unselfishness was born that I cannot speak of it
without shame for myself." 1
A practical observer hke Dr. Worcester brings us
into the scientific bounds of psychology. But we
may find other scientific basis for mysticism in present-
day experience. This comes in the proved examples
of telepathy. As there is an ether through which hght
can travel, so there is a spiritual medium through which
the thoughts of man can annihilate space. Through
love, experiment shows, men may be joined to those
who are far away, and may help them. We are only
in the borderland in the understanding of this
phenomenon, but there is a reahty there which is as
important as it is baffling. It looks as if patient obser
vation had, as by accident, found a way to peer into
some of the mystery of the Holy Spirit. The scien
tific person would say that it is only an hypothesis
to account for telepathy in such a religious way, but
even he would confess that it is a perfectly possible
hypothesis. A good many people would suspect
that it was an hypothesis that would ultimately be
demonstrated. The kind of more serious reading which attracts
many people always means a great deal. It therefore
is important to notice the earnestness with which the
books of Professor Bergson and Professor Eucken are
1 Religion and Life, pp. 179 ff.

ATHIRST FOR GOD n
read today throughout Europe and America, for they
are carrying philosophy more and more into the realm
of the spiritual. And the wide popularity of the
essays and poems of Rabindranath Tagore, with their
deep rehgious feeling and their Oriental quietism,
shows how eager men are for the mystical interpreta
tion of hfe, hardly less in London and New York than
in India.
(5) There is one more manifestation today which
arouses a new desire to know more of the Holy Spirit.
This is an enthusiasm for the Church Idea in unex
pected places. One of these places is certainly Pro
fessor Royce's Problem of Christianity. To one who
is devoted to the outward institution of the Church,
it seems at first as if Dr. Royce were, from the realm
of philosophy, justifying aU the fervour of conventional
churchmanship. Very moving are the passages where
he incites his readers to be loyal to the Beloved Com
munity. There is language close to the language of
the Church which makes the Beloved Community the
Body of Christ: to be loyal to the Beloved Commu
nity is to be loyal to the divine. But it appears at
length that this Church is no organization that has
existed; it is what we ordinarily call the Invisible
Church, the community of faithful people gathered
out of all times and races and creeds. We catch an
echo of this in the words of Professor Eucken, "The
main thing in Christianity is the creation of a purely
inward world formed out of the relation of spirit to
spirit, of personality to personality." 2
Another recent book gives one a surprise. It is not
surprising in its enthusiasm for the Church Idea, but
in its interpretation of the Church Idea; for this in-
1 Can We Still be Christians? tr. Miss Gibson, p. 18.

12 THE LIGHT WITHIN
terpretation is not unhke Dr. Royce's, though the
author was for many years a Jesuit priest. In Tyrrell's
Essays on Faith and Immortality there is the conten
tion that Christianity used the forms and organization
of rehgious fife as it found them, now Judaism, now
Roman paganism, fusing them with its spirit till, like
leaven in the meal, it tended to make them over,
and so far as it spiritually triumphed did make them
over. Though Tyrrell beheved in an outward Church,
he was not quite sure where it could be found. He
asked if it might not be that one's union with the vis
ible Church did not often need, like an ill-set bone,
to be broken and reset. "As, one by one," he wrote,
"the claims of the hierarchic Church dissolve under
criticism, ... we are driven more and more to con
tent ourselves with a sense of spiritual communion with
all lovers and martyrs of truth and conscience through
out the world in all ages, . . . and at last come to
find, in this communion with the invisible Church, a
far deeper source of strength and solace than that
from which the duties of inward sincerity have in some
measure shut us off." x The reader becomes aware
that Tyrrell, cast out of the Roman Church, and re
fusing to enter any other organization, is writing of his
own experience in the Invisible Church. "The Christ-
like alone," he continued, "are genuine successors of
the Apostles; to such only is it said (in no mere
legal, official, fictional sense), 'He that heareth you
heareth me.' . . . Could all these, and only these,
be united in (Ecumenical Council, there would Christ
be in the midst of them; their utterances and teach
ings would be, purely and only, the product of spir
itual experience, undistorted and unalloyed by the
1 Op. cit., p. 115.

ATHIRST FOR GOD 13
influence of intellectual curiosity, or of sacerdotal
ambition . . .; their authority would be that of the
collective conscience of humanity."1 He feared that
many were trapped with the externals even in our
Lord's hfetime and never attained the spiritual verity:
"As fleshly and unintelligent in other ways was the
love of many of His followers, both men and women,
during His hfe on earth. Is it, we may ask, a love of
Christ, as Christ, as manifesting the Father? is it a
love of Christianity? or is it merely a love of the sacred
flesh and blood, to which is linked a truth divine?"2
There is, we see, a new kind of enthusiasm for the
Church from widely different sources, a demand that
it be the medium and expression of the Holy Spirit.
Remembering the quotation with which this chapter
began, we may question whether the doctrine of the
Holy Spirit has been quite so much neglected as Pro
fessor Royce implies. Certainly the subconscious
world, to say the least, has been studiously attentive
to what might be called "accents of the Holy Ghost."
To look into our own experience, whether as individ
uals or as corporate humanity, we must see that we
have been gathering material for belief: and the mys
tery surrounding what our experience teaches us
compels us to ask, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine
unbelief." We know enough to long to know much more.

in
The doctrines of theology are founded upon ex
perience and upon the necessary ideas deduced from
experience. Experience is not upon a dead level in
humanity: some men are upon the mountain tops and
1 Ibid., p. 116. 'Ibid., p. 61.

14 THE LIGHT WITHIN
see wonderful things; others are in the deep valleys
and see httle. But the foundation of theology is the
experience in which many share, not only in one age,
but throughout all ages. The emphasis changes from
century to century. Sometimes certain doctrines are
so far obscured that the proportion of truth seems
endangered; but no truth is lost. Whenever a truth is
seemingly evicted, another generation demands its
rehabihtation. Theology often seems to the layman the ingenious
invention of ecclesiastics and scholars. That it should
seem so is the fault of the words with which it is
clothed, — words that may have been clear and real
to a past age but to ours appear archaic or artificial,
or words that can have a meaning only for the tech
nical student. The ideas that . stand behind all valid
theology are so vital that if some one did not give them
utterance the stones would cry them out.
Those whose names are eminent as theologians are
surprisingly modest, almost timid, in their conclusions.
They assign weight to personal convictions for which
they can find testimony in their predecessors, most of
all in the authority of the Bible. Great doctrines
like the Incarnation, the Atonement, or the Trinity
have grown in the development of theology; and
noble names mark the stages of this growth, — names
such as St. Paul, Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, or
Calvin; but these names represent witnesses of
truth, not discoverers, least of all inventors.
Nowhere do these general reflections apply with
greater force than in that region of Christian doctrine
which attempts to formulate a conception of the Holy
Spirit. It is for this reason that we should turn to
the Bible and devote ourselves to its message upon the

ATHIRST FOR GOD 15
Holy Spirit. The wisdom of such a course is first of
all because the Bible, revealing as it does a long his
tory of God's manifestation to men, includes in this
history the highest moments of the revelation of the
Spirit. Further, constantly as the Church has re
flected upon these highest moments, there never ceases
to be the need for each generation to read its own
experience in the hght of such experiences as came to
good men in the first century. We cannot otherwise
understand what that ancient record means, for it is
part of all hfe; and unless we read it in the light of
what now happens to us, the primitive age must remain
cold and barren to us. On the other hand, we cannot
make a sane estimate of our own reasonings and in
tuitions unless we compare them studiously with the
reasonings and intuitions of earnest and righteous
men in the past, so far as the past is known to us.
Most of all we need to know supreme moments in the
world's experience, that we may properly test the
supreme moments of our individual experience. So
we may cut away the vagaries and rashnesses of our
surmises; so, too, we may confirm and establish our
suspicions of glory, our trembling hopes, our wonder, and
our joy. Therefore the chapters which follow will at
tempt to learn from the Bible what news it can give
us about this subject which besieges more and more our
modern thought, — the sacred subject of the Holy
Spirit.

II
THE HOLY SPIRIT BEFORE CHRIST

IN using the Bible as a text-book for knowledge of
the Holy Spirit, we have not the same difficulties
that meet the historical scholar. We are concerned not
so much with the outward as with the inward. The
exact course of events, their order and their impor
tance, do not necessarily affect us. What we desire
to know is what inner experiences are recorded. The
test of these experiences lies not in the authority of an
outward witness to them, but in the response which
they kindle in our own hearts. This is a less tangible
corroboration than is sought by the scholar who is
studying the events in the earthly hfe of Jesus Christ,
but it is quite as real, and is even more susceptible
of exact proof. For the historical scholar must de
pend on witnesses in a dim past; the student of re
ligious experience has the test at hand in the various
hves of his own generation.
It ought to be said more often than it is said that
though the Bible must be subjected to the same tests
to which every ancient hterature is now subjected, there
is one outstanding element which differentiates it from
all other books, even by such a test; namely, that it
awakes in men of religious nature a response which is
without parallel. The Psalms and the Gospels are not
only mountain peaks in the Bible; they are the sum-

BEFORE CHRIST 17
mits of all spiritual records. This is a truth confirmed
not only by wide readers like Coleridge in the West,
but by Buddhists in Japan1 and by the Bahaists in
Southwestern Asia.2 This is a fact about the Bible
which ought to be remembered by historical scholars.
For students of the spiritual life it is paramount.
The Bible is, not only by faith but by experience,
the Word of God. It speaks to all who have ears to
hear as no other book speaks. To a man who does not
believe in God, — if there is such a man, — it might
seem that to assert so much as this is to prejudge the
case. But when we do beheve in God, when, moreover,
we trust in His care for us, we must, — by the test of
experience again, — beheve that He has in some way
made it especially His. This does not mean that we
dare use it as we should use a geometry, a hard and
cold text-book to save us from thought and from expe
rience. It means that we must open it with humility
and frankness, to discover how God speaks to us.
Our preconceived notions of what would be a fitting
method for Him to do so must be laid aside. We shall
find surely that He deigns to use humanity as the
medium of His speech. Whatever limitations such a hu
man medium may involve, the divine authority must
transcend; and the only way to discover this supreme
message is by the test of our own lives. The word of
Christ that the pure in heart see God apphes to the
experience which men may attain in the Bible, as it
apphes to all other heavenly vision. If the Word of
God were superficial we might be robbed of the priv
ilege of testing it by our living. The end of our
search is not any outward rule or precept, not any
1 See C. L. Slattery, The Authority of Religious Experience, pp. 197 f .
2 Harvard Theological Review, July, 1914; pp. 339 ff.

18 THE LIGHT WITHIN
warning or promise; but it is a life hid in God
Himself. The experience which comes to every man assures
him that there is a Voice within him. The vital
question is, Whose is this Voice? The psychologist
might have three hypotheses. The Voice, he might
assert, is only the voice of a man's subconscious self
speaking through what we call conscience: it seems
a voice distinct from himself; it is really only the
voice of his profounder self. If this hypothesis seem
inadequate, the psychologist might say that the Voice
was the voice of the world-self, the collective human
consciousness, the sum of human experience, asserting
itself in the individual; just as the sanction of public
opinion restrains or incites the individual in the out
ward circles of life. This might be thought to be only
a fuller expression of the voice of the subconscious
self; for it may be that through our subconscious selves
we are joined at the base, as it were, with ah other
lives on the earth; so that the voices of the subcon
scious selves mingle and become a composite voice,
thereby explaining why the voice seems apart from the
individual in spite of its strange intimacy. The third
hypothesis is the hypothesis of the rehgious psycholo
gist. It is that the Voice is the Voice of God Him
self, speaking through conscience to the individual
soul. The previous hypotheses might both be con
sidered parts of this final explanation. It has been
sometimes said that the decision between these pos
sible explanations of the Inner Voice will be the final
battlefield of theology. It is the search for the proof
that there really is a Holy Ghost.
For all these reasons we turn to the Bible as the
chief authority and as an authority upon which next

BEFORE CHRIST 19
to our own hearts, we may most surely depend. If
the Bible and our own hearts condemn us not, then
we may have confidence towards God.

11
In the Old Testament the word which has been
translated Spirit 1 had at first a material meaning
rather than a spiritual. It was the breath that issued
from a man's mouth. It was also apphed to the blow
ing of wind. But the hving breath, rather than the
lifeless wind, was the dominant idea. It was the least
material manifestation of a living soul which men
could appreciate with the senses. Then it came to
represent the inner hfe of man, the inner reality; and
also, by an evident anthropomorphism, the invisible
influence of God. There is significance in the fact
that the writers of the Old Testament spoke more
frequently of the Spirit of God than of the spirit of
man. The primary thought is that God is operative
through His Spirit. "The Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters," and chaos became the orderly
world.2 The Spirit was the source of the natural life
of humanity also.3 Thus it was the Spirit of the Lord
that made Samson strong.4 God is not absorbed (as
in pantheism) in such a cosmical and human relation
ship. He is always with and in His Spirit, yet is
always transcendent. The Spirit is the medium of
His creative and sustaining operation.
Then it was discovered that the Spirit was the source
of higher human endowments. To speak of only a
1 rfn 2 Gen. i, 2; Ps. xxxiii, 6; Ps. civ, 30.
> Judges xiv, 6. * Gen. vi, 3.

so THE LIGHT WITHIN
few, Joseph,1 Balaam,2 David,3 and Micah4 were ob
viously moved to authoritative or prophetic utterance
by the Spirit of the Lord. The whole chosen people
had the privilege of the guidance of God's Spirit.6 The
individual soul, crying from the depths, pleaded,
"Take not thy holy spirit from me."6 Another was
so conscious of the unseen presence that he sang,
"Whither shah I go from thy spirit? ... If I chmb
up into heaven, thou art there: if I go down to hell
thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morn
ing, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there also shall thy hand lead me: and thy right
hand shall hold me."7 The ethical idea was gradually
appreciated in the Psalms and in prophecy, but there
was not the same sense of the hohness of the Spirit
as we find always in the New Testament.8 For a long
time the thought was wrapped up in the spiritual sus
tenance of what we call natural hfe and endowments.
This mingling of the seen with the unseen is not to
be passed by as merely an early stage in spiritual
progress. We may find it ah through the history of
man's highest efforts at self-interpretation. It marks
the unconscious struggle to secure an inner meaning
for physical experience. Even in our own time we are
quickly passing from an age bordering upon material
ism, because we feel bound to give every spiritual
emotion some physical manifestation, and because we
demand a spiritual foundation for every physical
wonder. The Apostle said, "First, that which is
1 Gen. xii, 38. 2 Num. xxiv, 2.
8 2 Sam. xxiii, 2. * Mic. iii, 8.
B Ex. xxviii, 3; Neh. ix, 20; Isa. briii, 14; etc.
8 Ps. li, 11. This may possibly refer to physical life.
7 Ps. cxxxix, 7 ff.
8 The title Holy Spirit is found only in Ps. li, n; Isa. lxiii, 10, 11.

BEFORE CHRIST 21
natural; afterward, that which is spiritual." We are
more and more inchned to say, the natural and the
spiritual must go together. To stop with the natural
is fatal; having won the spiritual, to despise its natural
manifestation is perilous. We must still read the
beginnings of Revelation to men with reverence.

in
Probably the most thorough revelation of the work
of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is shown in
passages where no name or title guides the reader.
We have reason to beheve that when Elijah failed to
hear the divine message in the great and strong wind,
in the earthquake, or in the fire, and recognized the
hohest in the still small voice, then the Holy Spirit
spoke to him.1 When the prophets said, "Thus saith
the Lord," it seems to us, as it seemed to the Early
Church, that they felt the authority of the Holy
Spirit. When David was convicted of his sin by
Nathan's parable,2 we say that David recognized the
Spirit of God in Nathan's verdict, "Thou art the man."
So we must beware of any study of the Holy Spirit
in the Old Testament which confines itself to definite
terms. Our own experience teaches us that deep
rehgion often hves abundantly in men who dare not at
tempt definition. The Bible is full of experience which
cannot readily be classified, but which stirs our hearts
and makes us know that the Holy Spirit is near.
Moreover, we think that the people themselves rec
ognized Him though they had no power to describe
their convictions of this authoritative unseen Presence.
The various stages of the Messianic hope beginning
ix, 12. 2 2 Sam. xii.

22 THE LIGHT WITHIN
very early and continuing through the first years of
Christianity are an instructive instance of the guidance
of the Holy Spirit. In the time of Amos, who hved
in the eighth century before our era, the idea of a
Day of the Lord was obviously well established. Be
cause Israel was a chosen people, therefore God would
hold them to strict account and visit upon them their
sins.1 Apparently the people had looked upon the
Day of the Lord as "the good time coining"; Amos
pointed out that it would be a day of judgment: be
cause, as we should now say, God's cleansing Spirit
was to refine it as by fire. As time went on the past
was more and more ideahzed, especially as the enemies
of Jerusalem closed in upon it. Isaiah, loving his
country, saw with despair the approaching wreck, a
judgment for the sins of the people. But the God who
was judging Jerusalem would also judge the enemies
of Jerusalem.2 And there would be among the people
of Jerusalem a small remnant, which would be the
cornerstone of the renovated Jerusalem; 3 and he saw
in vision a Ruler of the house of David, anointed of
God, to guide the new and happy order of things.4
So, through the fall of Jerusalem, through the exile,
through the return, through the feeble efforts to re
store Jerusalem, through the bufferings received from
strong neighbouring nations and world empires, the
prophets continued to hold out the God-inspired hope.
Who but the Holy Spirit could have breathed into
rehgious leaders this undaunted confidence in the
divine protection of a people who had received from
the Lord's hand double for all their sins? The hope
is recorded in the Old Testament, in the Old Testa-
1 Amos iii, 2. 2 Isaiah x, 5-16.
8 Ibid., xxviii, 16. « Ibid., xi, 1-5; xxxii, 1.

BEFORE CHRIST 23
ment Apocrypha, in the Apocalyptic hterature out
side both, and in the allusions of the New Testament.
The hope was deferred; the heart grew sick; and yet
men hoped. The dream centred largely, and increas
ingly, in a visible leadership. The people, whatever
the leaders might say, dreamed of generals and kings
and bloody battles and savage triumphs over all their
enemies. They looked for a leadership which should
out-top the proudest achievements of those who had
conquered the world in the past. But the finer sort
expected in a new energy the power that is invisible.
They proclaimed the promise that God would pour
out His Spirit upon all flesh, so that the sons and
daughters of Israel should prophesy, the old men
should dream dreams, the young men see visions,
and even the servants and handmaidens should be
included in this inspiration.1 Moreover, the grandeur
of the Anointed Leader was to be that the Spirit of
the Lord should rest upon him,2 therefore the highest
hope of Israel was in the power of the Spirit.
The experience in the Old Testament which led the
Chosen People to their most noble advance in the
knowledge and power of the Holy Spirit was the
Babylonian Captivity. Hitherto they had associated
God's presence with their own sacred country, especially
with the Temple. Besides, they had found difficulty
in assuring themselves that the gods of surround
ing nations might not possibly be superior to their
own Jahveh; consequently they had often lapsed into
experiments with the worship of other gods. Now
they were not only far from their sacred places, but
the Temple itself was in ruins. They had a chance
to live among people whose god had led them to
1 Joel ii, 28, 29. * Isaiah xi, 2.

24 THE LIGHT WITHIN
triumph over the people of Jahveh: they could see
what this foreign god could do for men. Did their
old allegiance waver? No: it grew daily stronger.
Their conquerors asked them to sing one of the old
Temple songs: but their tears choked them.1 The
outward symbols which had seemed necessary for
Jahveh's presence were gone: His people were desolate
and forsaken. Yet they could not turn to a god who
did so httle for the characters of men as the god of
their captors. They were convinced, by experience, that
there is but one God: Jahveh is the God of all men,
He only can save. It was not only by contrast but
by their inner light that they knew this. They knew
that the Temple and Jerusalem were not necessary.
They were aware that God's unseen presence, — that
is, the Spirit of God, — was with them to comfort,
to guide, to stay them. The greatest of the prophets,
the Great Unknown, brought from this experience the
most spiritual message of Israel,2 and the hope of the
future lost many of its material elements, and began
to be the foreshadowing of a spiritual kingdom. It is
in the gradual unfolding of this Messianic Hope that
we feel the power of the Holy Spirit most in the Old
Testament. It was in the most disheartening periods
of national history that a hfe within the leaders bade
1 Ps. cxxxvii.
2 Isaiah xl ff . There may be a suggestion of the ways of the Holy
Spirit in the fact revealed by modern scholarship, that the summit of
the Old Testament, namely, Isaiah xl-lxvi, cannot be ascribed to any
human name. It is not astonishing that other parts of the Old Testa
ment cannot be ascribed to a definite author; this is a section that must
have come through a commanding genius. But there is no name sur
viving. The author is as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, only
a voice; but the authority of the Spirit is self-evident. If it ever
should be proved that John the Apostle had no connection with the
authorship of the Fourth Gospel (a most unlikely event, I believe), this

BEFORE CHRIST 25
the people hope divinely. There was a kingdom
coming, no longer simply the kingdom of an anointed
Davidic king. It was to be the Kingdom of God
Himself. For God who had seemed to dwell apart,
was coming as by stealth even into the harsh expe
riences of life. It was not only the royal Victor who
should reveal Him; it was to be the Suffering Servant,
first Israel itself in exile as conceived by the Great
Unknown, then One who could by divine sympathy
absorb and spirituahze human affliction, and be Israel
in himself. Thought was turned more and more
from a sovereign of earth: God Himself was to be the
King of His people. The various apocalypses were
coloured by vivid details, but their writers were groping
with language to embody a hope beyond words. They
were hoping for a way in which God could help men
directly. As we look back we see that they were, by
divine intuition, vaguely hoping for what man actually
found in Jesus Christ and in the gift of the Holy Spirit,
consciously received, at Pentecost and after.
The spiritualizing of a people through the sorrow and
failure typified by the Captivity is daily repeated in
the hfe of the individual. As we often see in the
nation or the race only the magnified individual, so
in the individual we see only the compressed experience
compensation might be remembered: the most God-breathing portion
of the New Testament would then have no name attached to it but the
Spirit of God, who, whatever the human medium, had certainly most to
do with it. Assuredly, the finding of a human author's name to attach
to the Epistle to the Hebrews is most unlikely. In all these cases, the
great writers "who did their deed and scorned to blot it with a name"
seem the greater because they have left no certain trace of their identity.
It is never a scandal if critics are able to prove that the authors' names
attached by tradition to certain books do not belong there: it may but
show how profoundly the writers felt that they were instruments of the
Spirit.

26 THE LIGHT WITHIN
of the multitude or of the age. It is when a single
man passes through the deep waters which seem about
to overwhelm his soul that we find him casting out
from the firm earth, spreading his wings, and daring
to mount up in the open sky to reach God's heavenly
consolation. He who before had looked for no sup
port which did not consist in the material and the
outward, gropes pitifully, yet grandly, for the unseen
power behind and above the universe. The man who
depends on the material and the outward may be,
according to his own and his friends' estimate, quite
rehgious. He may go to Church, read his Bible, say
his prayers, show kindness to little children and the
poor. And yet when the awful storm bows his head
he will tell you that then first he seems to have under
stood the Spirit of God. A modern philosopher has
told the story in memorable words. He describes a
man pierced and stunned by grief. This man, says
the philosopher, may accuse God of forsaking him,
but if he is really religious, he will know that "part
of the predousness of his very idea of God depends
upon the fact that there are depths, and that out of
them one can cry, and that God is precisely a being
who somehow hears the cry from the depths. God
... is thus often defined for the plain man's rehgious
experience as a helper in trouble. Were there no
trouble, there would be, then, it would seem, no cry
of the soul for such a being, and very possibly no such
being conceived by the soul that now cries."1
1 Dr. J. Royce, Sources of Religious Insight, pp. 228 i.

BEFORE CHRIST 27
IV
One of the preparations for Christianity was the
tying of the world together, not only in the succession
of world empires that culminated in the dominion of
Rome, but in the eclectic schools of thought that craved
the wisdom of all nations. We may beheve that as
Christianity has been inclusive rather than exclusive
in its history, so, at its start, it caught up the highest
notes in aU the rehgious hfe that had hitherto found
expression in the hfe of man. Apart from its singularly
authoritative source, Christianity is not a rehgion
among rehgions, but is the summary and crown of the
rehgions of the world.
We have long known that the Jews carried their
rehgion with them to all the cities of the Roman
Empire. We are beginning to learn by modern re
search that the adherents of other religions, especially
of the Oriental Mystery Rehgions, were teaching the
truths of hfe as they understood them in all the great
centres. The foUowers of the old Greek philosophers
were trying to reason out the riddles of existence;
and so to the rehgions of feeling and worship were
added the rehgions of thought. It was a time of dis
satisfaction with the past. Because men of different
trainings were facing one another, there was a shrewd
and plaintive examination into the faith of one's
neighbour. The very best men were ready for a mes
sage. And because, when Christianity came, they were
ready to give attention to its preachers, they came into
it; but they came with all the varied accumulation
of their past. They found in it what was new, and
they found in it the confirmation of the old. It is
often pointed out by the hostile critics of Christianity

28 THE LIGHT WITHIN
that it shares much with Greek Philosophy in its
doctrine of the Logos, with Oriental Mystery Reh
gions in its use of Sacraments, and so on indefinitely.
But this is the glory of Christianity. It crowned not
only the Jewish prophets, but it gathered into itself
the knowledge and aspiration of aU the rehgious leaders
whom the genius of Rome had brought into its vast
melting-pot, ready for the manifestation of the Christ
who belonged to them all. Thus it was through the
important cities of the Roman Empire, as through the
neck of an hour-glass, that all the sands of rehgious
thought seemed to pass just before the Christian era.
Each phase of rehgion had its loyal Diaspora in these
cities, and every one found eager investigators from the
cosmopohtan population.
The Hebrews began this absorbing process in the
Babylonian Captivity. One of the means by which
they recovered their sense of the divine protection, in
a land far from their ruined Temple, was by reflection
upon the doctrine of angels, which they found in their
strange home. Not only did they have the news of
the doctrine; but they heard descriptions of the mag
nificent Oriental court. They saw that the great king
did not have immediate contact with his subjects,
hke the pastoral kings of their early history; the
commands of the great king filtered down to the people
through a vast array of intermediaries. And so it
was, it is commonly thought, that at this time the
Jews began to place emphasis upon angels. It seemed
to them that the King of all the universe must have
a state at least equal to the pomp of an Oriental
court. So God seemed farther and farther away, as
they conceived that His glory was magnified. It was
their exact thought which Milton caught:

BEFORE CHRIST 29
"His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest."
And yet these messengers, while they, in one sense, made
God seem far away, in another made him perpetually
near. Thus they accounted for their new sense of His
nearness. Dr. Sanday interprets the idea of angels
as the effort to express the conviction "that the space
around us and a"bove us is not merely blank or vacant,
but full of God's presence. His watchful care reaches
to us and sustains and protects us every one." 1 It
may be said that this idea is not so high as the con
viction that made an earher age believe that God
walked in the garden in the cool of the day: God
seems less immediate. But it is something that in
an age of less simple faith men found a way to believe
that God's strength and peace protected them. In
a similar way the Church of the Middle Ages lost the
conviction of the Early Church that the divine is
eternally near to the waiting heart, but saved its faith
by finding in the Sacraments the thin places in the
thick waU which hid them from the divine, and through
which they could hold converse with the unseen.
These are perplexing considerations, but we must at
least imagine what they may have contributed to the
fuller knowledge which was to come.
This idea of angels learned in Babylon, may later
have been confirmed by a kindred idea of the Greeks.
The Greeks thought of the divine as spht up into
infinite spirits, so that there was a spirit in the stream,
a spirit in the tree, and so on without end. These
spirits were sometimes malevolent, sometimes kind.
But in any case they declared a spiritual reahty be-
1 Life of Christ in Recent Research, p. 323.

30 THE LIGHT WITHIN
hind the material order. Socrates in speaking of his
ba.iixbvi.ov may have been reaching out for an explana
tion of the Voice of the Holy Spirit in his heart. Ah
these expressions of confidence in the spiritual must
have helped to give men courage to beheve that God
sends out His Spirit to hve everywhere, and to be the
hfe of every living being and thing.
The Old Testament Apocrypha suggests this period
of transition from the deep conviction of a national
rehgious experience to the wider and more perplexing
conviction of an experience which sought contributions
from the whole world. The atmosphere of specula
tion is over almost every page. The attempt to
guard God's transcendence was side by side with the
attempt to make heaven touch the earth. Thus the
highest note of the Apocryphal Books was sounded in
the sonorous praise of Wisdom. But Wisdom was
abstract, a theory rather than a life. The Hebrew
idea of Spirit was joined to the Greek idea of Wisdom,
but the aims of Greek philosophy largely overlaid
the concreteness of Hebrew insight. If one may use
a modern instance, it. is as if a man in our time had
left the warm heart of the Christian Church with its
frank devotion to a personal Christ, and had taken
up his abode with the Society for Ethical Culture,
exchanging enthusiasm and personal loyalty for hard*-
headed obedience to an ethical system which on the
whole had been found to make for righteousness and
human order and happiness. Like all comparisons
in history, this is not exact. There were gains with
the losses. In its divinely governed way, humanity
in this age between the Old and the New Testaments
was making ready for a new advance in the knowl
edge of the Holy Spirit. Less intense, so far as

BEFORE CHRIST 3I
Judaism was concerned, it was more comprehensive.
There was loss that there might be new gain. But
no evolution of humanity unaided could bring the
knowledge. It could only make itself ready.
^ It was particularly in Alexandria that the specula
tion and faith of the world met just before the Chris
tian age. The influence that fell upon Christianity
from Alexandria was more evident after the days of
Clement, Origen, and Athanasius;1 but St. Paul's
Epistles and the Fourth Gospel show the traces of
Alexandria, especially in their thought about Christ.
In spite of the Messianic Hope, the strictest Hebrew
thought was clouded by despair, owing to the appar
ent impossibility of keeping the Law and so being
acceptable to God. The supreme contribution of
Hebrew theology, unaffected by extraneous influence,
was that it permitted nothing to detract from the
awful purity of Jahveh's perfect righteousness.
Philo's is the leading name of religious thought in
Alexandria at the opening of the Christian era. In
him we see Hebrew theology mellowing under the
sunnier, less rugged intuitions of Greece. He per
ceived in the Spirit "the wise, the divine, the indi
visible, the undistributable, the good Spirit, the
Spirit which is everywhere diffused, so as to fill the
1 For an example of the roundabout way in which extra-Biblical
thought has influenced Christianity, note how Aristotle's philosophy was
carried into Italy. Eastern disciples of Aristotle had expounded him to
Mohammedan students, first in the East, then in southern Spain. A
famous traveller, Albertus Magnus, was the link that brought their
enthusiasm to Thomas Aquinas, who, in consequence, translated Aristotle,
as well as made his teaching a controlling influence in his Summa. When
Dante had caught the system in his Divine Comedy, the story was
complete. See P. H. Wickstead, Dante and Aquinas (Jowett Lectures,
1911).

32 THE LIGHT WITHIN
universe." x The spark of goodness found in even
the worst men is from the fire of the Spirit. Philo felt
that any writer might be inspired by the Spirit.
"Sometimes," he wrote, "when I have come to my
work empty I have suddenly become full, ideas being,
in an invisible manner, showered upon me, and im
planted in me from on high; so that, through the
influence of divine inspiration, I have become greatly
excited, and have known neither the place in which
I was nor those who were present, nor myself, nor
what I was saying, nor what I was writing: for then
I have been conscious of a richness of interpretation,
an enjoyment of hght."2 There is, in Philo, the daring
to be familiar with the divine, after the Greek fashion;
but there has been a loss of reverence, a toning down
of the moral ideal. One knows, in reading him, that
one has escaped from the bracing air of the Old
Testament, in spite of a certain contribution.
The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is first the
life-giving source of the external world, inanimate and
human; then the guiding power of the nation, its soul,
its hope; and, finally, the consolation and refuge of
the individual. In general the Spirit in the Old
Testament is God at work. There was still, for the
most part, the tendency to look for God in the out
ward and the distant, but men were growing towards
the knowledge that the unseen power of God is at
work in the silence of their inmost hearts.
When all is told, however, it is safe to say that,
had it not been for the experience of New Testament
times, the intimations of the Holy Spirit would not
1 On the Giants, § vi, tr. C. D. Yonge.
* On the Migration of Abraham, § vii, tr. C. D. Yonge.

BEFORE CHRIST 33
have been sufficient to make men conscious of the
source of the help which came to them individually
and together. Their moments of highest emotion
would still have been without a name, so far as they
themselves could tell it. Men might still be saying,
as good men often said in the days of the Apostles,
"We have not so much as heard whether there be
any Holy Ghost."

Ill
CHRIST'S REVELATION OF THE SPIRITUAL

ONE of the most significant clues to an under
standing of the New Testament is the sentence,
"These things understood not his disciples at the
first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered
they that these things were written of him." x There
are two ways to study the chronology of the New
Testament: one is to fix the approximate date when
an idea found utterance; the other is to fix the ap
proximate date when an idea, uttered perhaps long
before, became generally understood and appropriated.
There may easily be much discussion and doubt about
the fixing of the original pronouncement leading to a
new point of view; it is comparatively easy to know
when men came to admit the principle. Thus we
may find it difficult to say whether St. Paul's Epistles,
certainly written first, should be placed before the
date of the Synoptic gospels; because the Synoptic
Gospels represent an earlier tradition, whether oral
or written, and St. Paul gave only his own words for
the immediate need. But, on the other hand, it is safe
to say that we know fairly well, through St. Paul's
Epistles, what people in the fifties (of the first cen
tury) were thinking about certain important aspects
of Christianity; and through the Synoptic Gospels, we
1 St. John xii, 16; cf. Mk. ix, 32; Lk. xviii, 34; Jn. x, 6; etc.

CHRIST'S REVELATION 35
know what people in the sixties and seventies were
thinking of other aspects of Christian thought. Further
more, whether the author of the Fourth Gospel was
St. John or not, we know certain other truths that
had come home to the minds of the Christian com
munity at the turn of the first century into the
second, through the testimony of the Fourth Gospel.
Of course there is a very solid substructure in all
these writings which makes the foundation of all alike.
It is when the point of view changes that we perceive
the growth of the acceptance of certain truths. The
New Testament is first of all a revelation of God to
man; it is also a revelation of the process by which
man received this revelation.
Remembering this, we may glance at certain out
ward facts. n
Scholars today feel that they know measurably well
the oldest source of the Synoptic Gospels which they
call Q. Something like this must have been in circu
lation, both in oral tradition and in written form,
when St. Paul was writing his first epistles. It gives
us (with the help of later writings) a picture of the
way our Lord affected His own generation.
Most scholars would agree, I think, that our Lord
used the Messianic Hope only as a basis for the
beginning of His message. He was to outrun its
most ardent dream. In some ways it was to obscure
His intrinsic mission. But He was incarnate, and His
mission was to hve God into men, not simply to dis
play God before men. So there must be a point of
contact, and that must be the best that men had
hitherto dreamed. The hope of Israel was the highest

36 THE LIGHT WITHIN
point; so on it, as on a mountain top, Jesus stood
with His friends and looked out over hfe.
It is easy to discover how the disciples first looked
upon their Master. They loved Him more and more;
they lost their lives more and more in His will; more
and more they tried to see with His eyes. But their
preconceived idea of the Messiah, even when they
began to identify the Messiah with our Saviour, was
of a general, a ruler, a man successful in this world in
the sense of this world. It is useless to say that
they had the words about "the Suffering Servant"
in the latter part of the prophecy of Isaiah to guide
them to another conclusion. As the Great Unknown
Prophet had the experience of the Captivity to teach him
the deep and hard lesson, so it was only by experi
ence that the disciples were to learn that the Ruler
of all was to be "a man of sorrows, and acquainted
with grief."1
The fact that it was Christ's words, not his deeds,
which were set down first, at least chiefly, has large
significance. The deeds, even though they were mir
acles and quite astonishing, were all the result of
compassion for a weary and tempted humanity. Had
He done a miracle for His own glory or power, it
would have been different. Even John Baptist from
his prison doubted whether so mild a leader could
be the promised Messiah; and our Lord sent back
only the news which John must already have well
known: "Go and show John again those things which
ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf
hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the
gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whoso-
1Isa. Iiii. 3.

CHRIST'S REVELATION 37
ever shall not be offended in me."1 Therefore, the
words seemed more hke a Messiah's than the deeds.
"He speaks as one having authority, and not as the
Scribes," they said.2 Or again, "Never man spake
like this man."3 So the words, especially the lashings
of the Pharisees, and the passages wherein He set
His "But / say unto you," against the words of
Moses, seemed more regal. To the very end the
disciples looked for the moment when He who had
never used force would begin to use it. Instead, at
each turn, the Man whom they trusted to be the
Messiah yielded to the force excited against Him,
and raised not a finger, nor allowed a finger to be
raised, in His own defence. So He died between two
thieves, and answered with death the hideous cry to
save Himself and come down from the cross.
Meantime it is evident that these disciples were
graduaUy learning a new lesson. They were being
taught that real power is unseen. The influence of
one poor man's love was stronger than Caesar's legions.
They wanted Him when He was absent, even in such
trivial need as that of a hard rowing across the lake.4
He had an influence on people who were beyond the
reach of His voice or His glance.6 In a word, they
were discovering, however slowly, that our Lord's
power was spiritual.
As it showed itself apart from physical force, so
this power of Christ was derived or reinforced apart
from outward symbols. The Temple and the syna
gogue were used whenever available, but it was no
uncommon thing (indeed it must have been common)
1 St. Matthew xi, 4-6- * St- Mark ^ 48.
2 St. Matthew vii. 29; St. Mark i, 22. 6 St. Luke vii, 2 ff.
8 St. John vii, 46.

38 THE LIGHT WITHIN
for Him to spend large parts of the night, — if not
all night, — in prayer, wherever He might be, espe
ciaUy in the open air, on the mountain or hill, under
the shadow of darkness. And it was in a garden,
quite bare of any outward help or inspiration, that
He braced Himself by prayer to meet the final scene.
What the disciples would have said ultimately about
the spiritual hfe of Christ, influencing and controlling
men wholly apart from force, it is difficult to con
jecture. But it seems quite clear that, in spite of ah
the experience which their months with Jesus had
brought to them, they all felt that Good Friday was
the end. "We hoped," they confided to the Stranger
on the walk to Emmaus, "that it was he which should
redeem Israel." 1 Their hope was shattered by the
success of the Cross. They had learned transcendent
lessons about the spiritual quahty of the life of Jesus
Christ, but the schoohng was only begun. They could
not as yet imagine that they could have the joy and
peace, which during their discipleship they had known,
without the physical presence of the Saviour.

in
Then came the assurance of Easter. We do 'not
need to piece together the reports, as they have come
down to us, of our Lord's appearances to His disciples
after His resurrection. We need only to take Chris
tian history as it is plainly recorded in the New
Testament and afterwards. There is one fact too
evident to be escaped; namely, that in an incredibly
short time the disheartened disciples more than re
covered their rehance upon the leadership of Jesus
1 St. Luke xxiv, 21.

CHRIST'S REVELATION 39
Christ. They had evidence that He who had died
on Calvary was ahve. They beheved that He lived,
as they had beheved in the after-death hfe of no one
else. It is perhaps impossible to reconstruct from the
records of a unique event the exact details of the
way in which our Lord demonstrated to His followers
that He was ahve after His death on Calvary. It is
not difficult, however, to gather what impression He
made upon them.
First of aU, the hope, dashed on Good Friday, was
renewed. This was, after all, "he which should
redeem Israel." And in the hope renewed came the
confirmation of His method: He who used spiritual
means to win was justified. There was still more.
Whatever of substantial accidents there might be
in the appearances of the risen Christ, His presence
was not in the ordinary sense a physical presence.
There were outward assurances; the disciples were
not looking upon 0. ghost, a wraith; but the presence
was in some indefinable way spirituahzed. His pres
ence before them was not as their presences one to
another. If anything, it was more real and intense
than in the past. Their hearts burned within them,
as they communed with Him.1 The disciples had
learned their second lesson in the power of the Spirit.
rv
The visible manifestations of the risen Christ ceased.
But the disciples were not dismayed. They had
discovered how marvellously their Master and His
message were vindicated after His submission to death;
1 St. Luke xxiv, 32.

40 THE LIGHT WITHIN
and they were expecting some new development which
would be better than aU the past.
It is necessary to reflect upon the experience of these
men. They who had felt that the divine was far
away, that nothing less than the formidable grand
eur of the Temple could welcome Him, had in some
mysterious way felt the infinite nearness of God in
the friendship and love of Jesus of Nazareth. In
the days before Christ was their master, God was to
be served, obeyed, feared: they had many rules.
Now the barriers between them and God were sud
denly stripped away, and God in the face of Jesus
appealed to them for love. Their fives were the least
hard among their countrymen, therefore Christ chose
them. But at the beginning, even their hves were
hard. It was the period of association with Him that
opened their hves, just as, after the cold of winter,
the successive days of a warm sunhght open the
shivering buds of nature. They were, by their ex
perience, capable of receiving what no men in history
had ever received in the same measure. The Spirit
of God, we feel quite sure, had guided men in all ages;
but men had not known the high source of their guid
ance. They lacked the joy of this highest assurance
though they went forth to their God-filled work.
As we watch the insect weaving by instinct a web
which the weh-driUed mathematician and the skilled
artisan might envy, so we know that much of man's
noblest achievement, in spite of all his boasting, is
done in the realm of instinct. But there come turns
in the road where man emerges from instinct into
knowledge or reason or consciousness. To some
extent, at least, he knows how and why. In the
topmost moments he knows the source of his sue-

CHRIST'S REVELATION 41
cess: he bows down and thanks the loving Spirit
of God.
To such a turning point in the history of humanity
the disciples had come through the ineffable experience
with the visible Christ, both before and after His
resurrection. They had gone to depths they never
suspected: they had whispered, with wide eyes, when
told that some one was to betray the most unselfish
of masters, "Lord, is it I?" They dared not put
any limit to their depravity. And, on the other hand,
they had risen to heights altogether beyond their
former vision or hope: they had tasted love from the
centre of its life, and the high walls of heaven gleamed
before them. After the resurrection nothing daunted
them. Even when they were conscious that they
had looked upon His presence for the last time, St.
Luke teUs us, they returned to Jerusalem with great
joy.1 They were ready for the best. Even had we
no record of it, we should know that they were filled
with expectancy. Now they should have the best
that could be.

Thus the disciples reached the day when the Holy
Ghost was to be given to them in a manner so exultant
and unmistakable that they seemed never before to
have known the Spirit of God. It was to be a day of the
human recognition of the invisible and constant near
ness of God. Whether God was to do more to make His
presence felt, we need not ask. It is enough to know
that, in the disciples, humanity was made thoroughly
ready and prepared to be conscious of the divine pres
ence. And so the Holy Ghost was to be given, because
1 St. Luke xxiv, 52.

42 THE LIGHT WITHIN
on that day the Holy Ghost was to be received. A
gift includes reception as well as the generous offering.
Man must receive what God gives; else there is no
gift. Whenever in the remote past men have been con
scious of God's inspiration, they have received the gift of
the Holy Spirit. But it was only when men had been
prepared, as the Incarnation did prepare them, that
their consciousness of the Invisible God could so far
possess them that they were to be made irrevocably
sure of their union with the love and power of the
Holy Spirit.

IV
THE DAY OF PENTECOST

NOW we come to the Day of Pentecost. Chris
tian scholars have too often seemed to speak
of the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost as an
arbitrary bestowal of God's Power; as if God had in
some way changed in His attitude towards men, and
had then done a new thing. The event has seemed
too much separated from previous history and from
the experience of our own time. For this reason, it
may be, there has come to be a tendency to pass the
occasion over, as if nothing had happened beyond the
rehgious excitement of a group of enthusiasts under
the influence of the memory of the Lord Jesus.
Whether or not we class the event of Pentecost as
a miracle, in the ordinary sense, is of shght moment.
Something of extraordinary significance and impor
tance for humanity happened then. If we can find
ground in the meagre account of the day to attach
any of the incidents to details of our own experience
we shaU be wise. Thus we may feel the reality of
the occurrence. We must recaU that St. Luke wrote
his record as he received it from others, with the
necessary condensation to fit it into his narrative of
the Apostohc Church. It is a mere skeleton: our
own intimations must fiU it out and make it hve.

44 THE LIGHT WITHIN
n
The first detail to bear in mind is that the disciples
were conscious that they had seen the Lord Jesus in
the last of the resurrection appearances. Now every
mourner would probably give evidence that the van
ishing of his beloved through the curtain of death
inevitably brings to his mind and heart certain as
pects of the life and character of his beloved which
had quite escaped him in the visible presence. The
separation of death has in it perhaps this divine
compensation for its desolating loneliness, that it
teaches the survivor a knowledge and a love which
unbroken companionship cannot reveal. The soul,
separated from the accidents of the body, is a reality
in an entirely new way.
It is impossible not to believe that, quite apart
from the growth of their spiritual perceptions, the
disciples were approaching the Day of Pentecost with
an ever-deepening sense of who their Master was.
They must have felt His love, His protection, His
wish to have them hke Him, as never before. They
said over to one another words that He had spoken
to them in Jerusalem or in Galilee, and these words
suddenly glowed with a meaning that they did not
before suspect. Because He was gone from their
sight all who had loved Him had a new and tighter
bond of love with one another. As they remembered
how He had turned aside on their walks through
town or countryside to help any forlorn or troubled
representative of humanity, so their love, intensified
with every common meeting together, went out be
yond their own immediate circle. As people say in
gratitude after a death, so they must have said,

PENTECOST 4S
"Now that we cannot minister to Him, we must do
for others, everywhere, what He has done for us."
We cannot help imagining the conversations in the
upper room, — where perhaps He had eaten with
them the Last Supper, and where perhaps He had
appeared to them in His risen body. They must
have gone over aU the days when they had been
with Him, especiaUy the days of the last earthly
week. How their faces must have glowed, how their
eyes must have shone, how their voices must have
broken with subdued and beatific emotion, as they
recalled His patience, His courage, His strength to
endure, His never-forgetting love. Each meeting to
gether at the appointed times must have been more
and more exciting and intense. The words of simple
testimony could not have been more thrilling than
the eager faces straining forward to Hsten, to catch
every word, to confirm, by the escaping interjection
or by the quick movement of the hand, the glory of
that beautiful past.
So the days of expectation passed to the Day of
Pentecost. in
On the Day of Pentecost Jerusalem was full of
pilgrims. From St. Luke's account in the Acts we
perceive that he intends the reader to see that the
Jews who came up to the feast were largely Jews of
the Dispersion,1 the Hellenistic Jews. We now know 2
that every Eastern nation had its "Dispersion" in
the Mediterranean world. There was a general char
acteristic attaching to aU these devoutly rehgious
1 Acts ii, 9-11.
2 Cf. Kirsopp Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, p. 42.

46 THE LIGHT WITHIN
people who carried the traditions of their ancestral
religions into a new environment. That character
istic was rehgious unrest, with its corresponding
quality of keen rehgious expectation. There was a
tendency among earnest people to be eclectic in their
religious thinking. As people flowed together in the
unity of the civilized world, created by the genius of
Rome, each man began to look into the face of his
neighbour to discern what might be there to be desired
and if possible to be won. It was a condition not un
like our own; for a world-spirit is again pervading the
nations, and cosmopohtanism may succeed to patriot
ism. There are losses now; there were losses then.
But the whole attitude made for the open mind, the
eagerness to expect some new and better way of hfe.
In the last day or two before the Feast, the disciples
had seen pouring into the city these loyal pilgrims,
still Jews in a sense, but more, citizens of the world,
— men from Media, Cappadocia, Pamphyha, Rome,
Crete, Arabia. Different as these pilgrims were in
outward manners and dress, there was the same
upward, waiting look upon aU the faces. Any one
who has journeyed to a great rehgious convention
knows the subdued excitement that attends the gath
ering of the delegates. There is the atmosphere of
expectancy. From these conventions men often gain
new visions, find incentive to struggle for a hard end,
and are aroused to break the bonds of some ancient
temptation. The scoffer and the cold rehgionist
smile, and call the power gained by these periodical
meetings "convention rehgion." It is true that it
does not always wear well, and the enthusiasm not
infrequently issues in neither permanent character nor
definite action. But no one who cares deeply for

PENTECOST 47
rehgion can watch the modern railway train bearing
its last groups of restless passengers to a convention
in the interests of the rehgious hfe without being
moved. One wonders if something new and great
may not happen. One dares to hope so, in any case.
Now, even if we were not learning more and more
of the rehgious outreaching of the first century, our
own experience must teach us that the disciples of the
recently vanished Lord Jesus could not have seen the
gates of Jerusalem crowded with the incoming throngs
of pilgrims without being profoundly stirred. This day
of Pentecost was a day when expectancy was in the
air. The expectancy of the upper room where the
friends of Jesus gathered early on the morning of
the Feast was brought close to the expectancy of the
city, which on that day had become a world in itself.
It was as if two highly charged bodies had been
brought together. There must have been the flash
of fire as they touched. That flash was love. On
this first day in the week they could not fail to live
again with especial vividness the resurrection morn
ing. As the love and power of Christ possessed their
minds they felt that the room was too smaU for them.
They must have the freedom of the city, of the world.
Their hves were open, — may we not beheve it? —
as hves never yet had been open. Christ within, the
world without, had made a broad highway on which
the Spirit of the Living God might enter. It was
the fulness of time for the supreme manifestation of
God's Unseen Holiness.

rv

Dr. Swete beheves that St. Luke, in his account in
the second chapter of the Acts, means to imply that

48 THE LIGHT WITHIN
the physical accompaniments of the descent of the
Holy Spirit were only a vision, albeit a vision corre
sponding to "a great spiritual fact which at the same
moment accomplished itself in the experience of all
who were present." 1 Dr. Swete's caution and rever
ence make one hesitate to see more of hteralism in a
passage than he would ascribe to it; but I beheve the
rushing, wind-like sound, and the appearance of fire
upon the heads of the assembled brethren, had a basis
in physical phenomena. The tradition of the event
which St. Luke had received and reported meant more
than a subjective vision. By some outward mani
festation the disciples were aware that they had re
ceived a Presence, identified with the hfe of the Lord
Jesus, and so identified with the Father Himself, —
the Presence of the Holy Spirit.
Professor Bergson2 has pointed out that the inten
sity of our inner emotions, which seem at first wholly
spiritual, can be measured only by the effect which
these emotions cause upon the organs of the body.
He shows that it is nonsense to speak of restrained
emotions which are all the more intense because giving
no sign of organic disturbance. Should we eliminate
aU tendency towards muscular contraction in anger,
for example, we should find that there had been no
real rage, only the imagination or idea of it.
So much we may take from psychological testimony.
Now let us think of any roomful of people swayed
by the reception of a great enthusiasm. When the
ruler of a nation enters an assembly, when by com
bination of his presence and his words he stirs the
people to a love for their country, one of the very
1 Dr. H. B. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, p. 71.
1 Time and Free WUl, tr. Pogson, pp. 29 ff.

PENTECOST 49
deepest emotions known to man takes possession of
the whole mass. In almost the highest moment there
is silence: the voice of the speaker seems to go out
into vacancy, because the listeners apparently have
stopped breathing. The very highest moment is
marked by a feeling so intense that the whole body
quivers. It is as if a mighty wind swept the whole
crowd of people: they are literally stirred and swayed,
though the sensation is caused by a spiritual concep
tion, and not by an outward physical phenomenon.
The same evidence of emotion, in its utmost pitch,
may come in the presence of a hero of any cause,
surrounded by 'those who revere and love him, at the
moment when, by word or other symbol, the affection,
the hope, the aspiration of the whole group flow to
gether, tears are in the eyes, the throat fills, each man
is supremely moved. It was so, for example, when
John Bright in his later years appeared before his
old constituents in Manchester or Birmingham. The
crowd that packed the large hall so closely that all
seats were removed and each man stood tightly wedged
against his neighbours, would sometimes, in the most
exultant instant of enthusiasm, sway in such fashion
that wide spaces would be marked in a hall where it
seemed impossible to admit another man.1 The sound
of such a movement is not noise. It is like the sudden
gust of wind, the symbol of the spiritual influence.
It is possible, of course, to say that the wind was
the ordinary breeze of nature. One might say that it
was a mere chance that it came at this time to rein
force the inner influences of a psychological moment.
Or, one who finds nothing accidental in a world dom
inated always by an Indwelling God of Love, might
1 The Life of John Bright, by G. M. Trevelyan, p. 269.

5o THE LIGHT WITHIN
say that the wind was sent to help the disciples on
towards the summit of their experience. Had there
been this sudden gust from the outer world, the
disciples would certainly have remembered it. For,
though they could not have identified the Spirit with
the wind, any more than Ehjah on the mountain
identified the strong wind with God, yet in such crises
of hfe, every surrounding circumstance is printed on
the memory. The experience, like a flashlight, brings
out every detafi with a startling, never-to-be-forgotten
vividness. This is all possible; but it does not appeal
to the highest of our own experiences. "The sound as
of the rushing of a mighty wind" was, may we not say,
the result of the reception of the Spirit, not a contrib
uting cause. It was from within outward; it was the
answer of the heart of man to the whisper of God.
What immediately aroused the disciples in their
upper room on the morning of Pentecost cannot be
difficult to surmise. First, they were all together in
the most intimate feUowship, united by the remem
brance of a common Master. They were in a city
throbbing with expectant rehgious enthusiasm. In
a short time Peter was to be their spokesman to the
outer world; is it not probable that the substance
of that very speech had been spoken in the privacy
of the upper room? He who had most sinned, who
had been most forgiven, and who therefore was most
full of love, had, I think, in the prayers x and other
devotions of that morning taken the lead. He ex
pressed the emotions struggling in all their hearts. The
tiny door between man and God which men had not
dared to open, was flung wide, and the Spirit of the
Living God entered in. Then there was the sound as
1 See Acts i, 14; ii, 42.

PENTECOST 51
of the rushing of a mighty wind. It was the human
thrill majesticaUy answering to the divine immanence.

Once convinced that the sound of the wind may
possibly be interpreted as a result of the reception of
the Holy Spirit, we are forced to apply the same test
to the other detafis of St. Luke's narrative. Is it
possible to see in our own present-day experience any
clue to the appearance of the tongues of fire, this fire
sitting upon each of them?
There are two Bibhcal narratives which seem to be
simUar. One is the story of Moses as he came down
from the Mount. Though Moses was quite uncon
scious of it, Aaron and aU the children of Israel saw
the skin of the face of Moses shining as with the glory
of fire, and they were afraid to come near him.1 The
other example is of St. Stephen, whose face at the trial
held aU who were present speUbound, for they "saw
his face as it had been the face of an angel." 2 In each
instance the glory of the face was the outer manifesta
tion of an inward response to a divine quickening. The
important difference in these instances as compared
with the experience of the disciples of Pentecost, is
that Moses and Stephen were not aware of the glory.
In the Pentecostal glory each man saw aU the rest
bathed with the heavenly fire. It was the gift of the
Holy Spirit received, not by individuals, as by the
prophets of old, but by the community. There is a
very important difference.
But we need not rely upon past records exclusively
for an example of the glory of the divine fire in
1 Exodus xxxiv, 29 f. 2 Acts vi, 15.

52 THE LIGHT WITHIN
the human face. People who heard Philhps Brooks
preach at the Sunday afternoon services of Trinity
Church in Boston have often told a similar story.
In the gathering darkness the people watched the
glowing face of the preacher in the hght of the httle
pulpit lamp. As he became more and more lost in
the truth he was striving to present, as he felt the
sympathy and understanding of the people, as he
seemed to be conscious that he and they were standing
before God, then they saw upon his face the ineffable
glory which comes from God only, marking the human
response to the indwelling spirit. Too many people
have noted this "appearance" in the face of the great
preacher to allow one to record it as a mere imagina
tion of attentive and sympathetic listeners. There
was an objective reahty there.1
An even more striking confirmation I may be per
mitted, I trust, to give from the life of one who has
more recently passed to his reward. Henry Sylvester
Nash was a remarkable teacher of the New Testament.
His face was irregular to the utmost plainness. A
man who had met him on the street would have been
sure to think his face one of the most unusual faces
he had ever seen, and if you had told the stranger
that this teacher's face could ever seem beautiful,
the stranger would, have laughed you to scorn. But
Dr. Nash's pupils would all bear witness that in the
small bare room where he was wont to give his lectures
on St. Paul and on the Fourth Gospel they had lis
tened to inspiring interpretations, brought up from
his own serene rehgious life, and had looked up, more
than once, to see the uncomely features of the lecturer
1 For one description of this, see Allen's Life of Phillips Brooks, vol. ii,
pp. 814 f. First edition.

PENTECOST S3
quite transfigured. His face shone as the face of Moses
shone, as the faces of the disciples shone on Pentecost,
as the face of Stephen shone when he answered his
accusers. The light of the Holy Spirit was on him, the
fire from on high, the divine beauty.
From such experience one may go back to the New
Testament, and be sure that it was no mere vision
that feU upon the minds of the disciples on the Pente
costal morning. It was the objective reality. They
knew not how to describe it. Nor do we in our time
know. The words St. Luke used are as accurate as
any we are likely to find; and our own eyes have
taught us how wonderful the glory was.

vi
The most bewildering result of the Pentecostal
baptism by the Spirit was the "speaking with other
tongues." x St. Luke's account in the Acts is not quite
clear. Apparently the disciples spoke different lan
guages; 2 yet they were accused of being drunken.3
Every one would exclaim, Drunkenness has never
been associated with ability to speak accurately a
variety of languages. Dr. Swete points out4 that
though these Jews or proselytes were from various
parts of the civilized world they must aU have been
able to understand either a dialect of Aramaic or the
coUoquial Greek which was freely spoken throughout
the Mediterranean world. Dr. Swete keenly criticises
the Fathers who declare that the gift of speaking
foreign languages was the way the Apostles were fitted
to be missionaries. "It is," he says, "one of the
1 Ads ii, 4. 3 Acts ii, 13.
2 Acts ii, 8. * The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, p. 73.

54 THE LIGHT WITHIN
clearest signs of a divine preparation of the world
for the Gospel that the command to preach it every
where came at a time when one language gave access
to almost every nation in the Roman world. The
various peoples to whom the missionaries of the Cross
were sent were scarcely more polyglot than the crowds
present at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, nor is
there any evidence that the gift of tongues, so far as
it continued in exercise, was actually used for the
purpose of preaching to the heathen."1 In spite of all
this, — which cannot fail to make its appeal, — St.
Luke implies that the "speaking" was intelligible.
The whole subject must be studied, first, in con
nection with the survival of the "gift of tongues"
in the Apostohc Church, as we learn of it in St. Paul's
Epistles. Then modern scholarship is beginning to
find that something akin to the "speaking with
tongues" has accompanied every profound revival of
rehgion. Last of all, psychology is coming to our
aid, and we are seeing some of the underlying prin
ciples in such a phenomenon. Remembering these
various sources of help, we may examine St. Luke's
account from various points of view.
(i) There was, we now know from ancient papyri,
a dehberate use of strange words, sometimes taken
from different languages, more often invented for the
mere sound, and then roUed out with a mystifying
intention. The incantation of the witches in Macbeth
or the nonsense of any child might give us a notion
of the effect of such combinations. For an effect
they do have, giving one a sensation of ideas, without
an understanding. Whether the disciples knew of such
use of sounds or not, whether or not they could have
1 Ibid., pp. 73 f.

PENTECOST 55
felt that religion might validly employ such a medium
of expression, I am sure that we have something more
real in the words of Pentecost. I am not sure that the
Corinthians whom St. Paul rebuked were not adopt
ing some such magical and mystifying utterance;
indeed St. Paul's criticism almost imphes it. But the
Corinthians, emerging from heathenism and super
stition, were quite different from the people in the
upper room, who had been spending weeks and months,
perhaps years, with the Lord Jesus. They had been
driUed in simplicity and truth.
(2) Now let us think of the inference that the dis
ciples were enabled to speak languages foreign to them.
Have we anything in history . or experience to make
us beheve that this might have been so? Dr. Swete's
strictures already quoted1 show plainly that such
fleeting abihty to speak another language had no
practical use in the Early Church. Both theory and
history are against such a use. It may nevertheless
have been a fact. In the early eighteenth century
some French Protestants resisted persecution with
ecstasy; and it is reported that people, — sometimes
chUdren, — became unconscious in their wild zeal and
uttered pleas in classic French though in normal con
dition able only to speak their shabby provincial
dialect.2 Here the psychologist steps in to tell us
that any deep emotion stimulates speech. The usually
dumb labourer, when aroused to intense anger, sends
forth a flow of Billingsgate which is marvellous. The
exhorter who has difficulty in choosing or even finding
words in conversation, is amazingly fluent under the
excitement of the experience meeting. Psychology
1 See above, p. 53.
2 Bruey's Histoire du Fanaticisme, vol. i, pp. 148 f.

56 THE LIGHT WITHIN
says that emotion affects the speech centre: sometimes
by confused utterance, sometimes by utterance more
intelligent than the normal speaker could express.
How then would psychology attempt to explain the
French peasant's abihty to speak classic French? By
the hypothesis of the subliminal consciousness. This
subliminal consciousness absorbs and retains experience
which the waking self either never gets or, getting,
loses. These people therefore who spoke good French
had it, through their subconscious selves, from their
Huguenot Bibles, or perhaps they had, in chUdhood,
served a nobleman and heard him speak constantly,
though never able to imitate him in conscious moments.
There are rare, but weU-confirmed, cases where people
have spoken languages which in normal condition
they could not speak; but psychology believes that,
in childhood, by some means, their subconscious
selves have acquired and held them.
It is then quite possible to imagine that the disciples,
on Pentecost, did speak foreign languages, and did
appear to be beside themselves. Perhaps one as a
boy had hstened, all astare, to merchants who halted
their caravan in his httle town, and talked in their
strange language, visit after visit, tUl the boy began
to understand them. Perhaps another had, in very
early years, spent a period in some far-away place
and had learned to speak its language, though the
memory of the whole experience had passed from his
conscious thought. Such a phenomenon could occur
only in exalted moments. It could serve no practical
purpose, for, in preaching and teaching, the exaltation
could not be sustained. So it might be that in such a
transcendent hour as the morning of Pentecost, the
disciples, one here, one there, spoke with tongues in

PENTECOST 57
the sense of speaking foreign languages; in which case,
the importance of the incident would not have con
sisted in the language but in the depth of the emotion
which would be sufficient to call such a phenomenon
of the human mind into play. We may beheve that
it was the answer of the very depths of humanity to
the consciousness of God's Holy Spirit given to be
man's Eternal Guest.
(3) There is a still more complete explanation of
the Voice of Pentecost. In the greatest moments of
hfe we tend to be elemental. Civilization in its
elaboration makes us think that the artificial, the
manufactured, is the end we crave. But after each
epoch of the elaborate, the wise of the earth flee to
the natural and the simple. It is the air, the water,
the earth that we love after all. The wayside flower
is better than the astonishing product of the skilled
gardener. The open sky is better than the roof of
St. Peter's. The grass of the field is better than the
most gorgeous carpet of the East. In our best state,
we grow sick of things; we wonder if, like St. Francis,
we cannot give them all up, and be unfettered and
free. It is the return not to the wild, but to the
elemental. So I think the language of Pentecost was like the
language of the primitive man, — sounds that con
veyed a meaning without what we now call language.
We have the suggestion of it in the way we commu
nicate with our domestic pets. A dog's bark — if we
love the dog — tells us, in its various tones, whole
volumes of meaning. We know his joy, and the degree
of his joy; we know his pain, his rage, his fear. It is so
of all animals as we come to intimate terms with them.
Besides this, we have the language of music to guide

58 THE LIGHT WITHIN
us. The major and the minor keys make in all men
approximately the same emotions. Then there are
various grades of understanding, as we are trained,
or as our emotions are alert or dull. It is a symbol
of elemental language, surviving in one of the highest
forms of art; and because the elemental does survive,
therefore the art has its universal appeal. In the
records of "speaking with tongues" in modern times,
music has had its part.1 What has seemed jargon to
the intelligence has had a sense of rhythm and of
song which, though appeahng not at aU to the intelli
gence, has often given a weird and exhilarating impres
sion. Sometimes this "impression" has conveyed
power. The story is told that in the persecution of
the Jews in Galicia a little synagogue was filled with
the friends of a refugee seeking sanctuary. Soldiers
surrounded the building. The angry Mandator en
tered and demanded his prisoner; the cowering Jews
expected at any moment to be overwhelmed and pun
ished. Then the insignificant leader of the synagogue
arose and stood before his people. With glowing eyes
he began to sing the Kol-Nidra; at first his voice
quavered, then steadily grew in strength and volume
till it so inspired and inflamed the hsteners that from
fear they turned to boldness. The Mandator became
pale, and his knees shook. With trembhng steps and
bowed head, he slowly passed the leader, who had
fainted, and left the synagogue, giving his soldiers
the sign to follow.2
If I may be permitted to speak, from personal ex
perience, I should hke to record the memory of a
1 See George Greville, Memoirs, vol. iii, ch. xxii, for a description of
"Speaking with Tongues" in Edward Irving's Chapel in 1833.
2 K. E. Franzos, Die Juden von Barnow, pp. 130 ff .

PENTECOST 59
revival meeting to which I went in Cambridge, as an
undergraduate. Among those who bore testimony
was a negress with intelligent face. She began in even,
clear tones, in simple, plain language, to tell how
she had been given grace to overcome temptation.
As she went on, her voice rose, various notes were
played upon, and the intelligent description melted
into a confused medley of syllables, which held the
whole crowd of people attentive and respectful. Very
distinct impressions were given, but no exact ideas.
In an Enghsh classic there is the description of the
turn in the fortunes of a suspected man. Disgraced,
about to be tried, certain of condemnation, he seemed
powerless. Then a discovery was made revealing his
complete innocence. A friend came to tell the news
to the wife of the miserable man. The messenger
was to be the husband of her daughter; so that the
woman's emotions were stirred not only by the mes
sage but by the messenger. The sense of escape,
as from heU, took her spirit, at one flash, from the
lowest depth to the bluest height. It was a moment
when, we should say, all the barriers of earth were
down, and heaven flooded the soul. This is the de
scription: "The major sat himself by her side, and put
his hand upon hers, and whispered some word to her
about her daughter. Upon this she threw her arms
around him, and kissed his face, and then his hands,
and then looked up into his face through her tears.
She murmured some few words, or attempted to do so.
I doubt whether the major understood their meaning,
but he knew very well what was in her heart."1 This
we can accept as a true account of (i) the effect of
certain experiences upon the power of speech, and (2)
1 A. Trollope, Last Chronicle of Barset, vol. iii, p. 284.

60 THE LIGHT WITHIN
the possibihty of conveying impressions and ideas
through sounds that ordinarily would be caUed unin
telligible. "The major," one may venture to say,
received ideas from the incoherent speech which
no ordinary language could have equalled. He knew
that he was in the presence of a blessed joy; and, how
ever difficult he might have found a description, he
knew much of its depth and devotion.
We know that poetry, as well as music, makes its
appeal from the elemental to the elemental. And we
say that poetry, as well as music, often expresses
what no prose or level sounds can express. So reh
gion needs, and must have, its moments of elemental
language. Every real form of worship leaves scope
for this appeal beyond the capacity of intelligible in
terpretation, in the place given to music, to poetry,
to the mystic sense in general.
But greatest of all the proofs of the place of the
elemental in rehgion is the revelation of Christ Him
self. While East and West were trying to define the
centre and circumference of religion in descriptive
exactness, He told men that God is their Father, and
that to please Him they must become as httle children,
trusting Him, and treating one another as brothers.
It was a striking through all the philosophies and
legal codes and a coming to the basal elements
of hfe.
Thus, for every reason, it seems safe to say that when
the disciples in their highest joy spoke with tongues,
they spoke the elemental notes of language, the evi
dent and convincing symbols which all men, respond
ing as with the strains of some mystic music, could
feel to be clear to the primitive sense within them.
It was language such as St. Francis used when he

PENTECOST 61
preached to the birds and the wolf. It is the language
at the bottom of hfe. vn
These, then, were the outward manifestations
assuring the disciples on the day of Pentecost that
they had received a heavenly gift. The exact nature
of that gift they and a succeeding humanity were to
discover only by experience. It is quite evident
from the earhest New Testament writings that, though
there was httle attempt to fix boundaries of the great
truths the disciples were hving by their openness of
heart, the main conviction was that on Pentecost they
had recovered, in a spiritual presence, the Master
whom they had known face to face, and whom they
had last seen, as in any sense a bodily presence, at
what we call the Ascension. The whole Bible is con
crete. The theology was to come later; but the ex
perience now was too vivid for introspective reflection.
They felt that the dear Master was again with them;
they knew it. St. Paul made it quite clear: "When
the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his
Son. . . . And because ye are sons, God hath sent
forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts." x They
had been prepared to recognize that there could be a
spiritual presence. Their hves had been opened by the
love of God Incarnate. Then came the day when
they were sure of the Invisible Christ guiding them,
guarding them, loving them. Nothing could separate
them from Him. They could dare everything, en
dure everything, venture everything. It was a moun
tain peak in aU human hfe on which they stood. Is
it wonderful that the signs of their joy transcended
1 Gal. iv, 4, 6.

62 THE LIGHT WITHIN
all ordinary levels: is it wonderful that a sound as
of a mighty rushing wind from heaven filled all the
house, that glory as of fire shone upon them, that
they spoke their thanksgiving in a language strange
but capable of being understood? For Jesus their
Master was come, and they knew Him.

V
THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE DAYS OF ST. PAUL

THE fuU test that the Spirit given on Pentecost
was the Spirit of Jesus Christ appears in the
fact that the disciples could not stay in the upper
room after they became sure of their happiness, but
immediately rushed forth into the crowds of the feast-
day and shared their joy with all who would receive
it. One thinks of the glorious moment of Christ's
Transfiguration, which was immediately succeeded by
His sohcitude for the poor boy at the foot of the
mountain. It is the essential characteristic of the
Incarnate Lord that no benefit can be selfishly en
joyed: it is always shared in the widest effort of love.
It is perilous to generalize, but one may ask if this
instinct of a man or a movement possessed by the
Spirit of Christ to share the highest spiritual privileges
is not uniformly Christian in rehgious expression.
The Oriental enthusiast, in his exalted seasons, de
mands isolation, with time for meditation. Even
Socrates, who was the rehgious model of the best
Western thought, was exclusive in his choice of com
panions. He had no desire to share his philosophy
with the crowds; he was not, we imagine, a good
husband or a good father; he devoted himself, day
after day, to a few receptive youths, who helped him

64 THE LIGHT WITHIN
by their spontaneity and vivacity as much as he helped
them by his clear thinking.
Perhaps it would not be unfair to apply this test
to modern movements which contend that they repre
sent Christ more than His organic and historic repre
sentatives in the Church. While they are talking of
doctrine, or are being criticised for distortions of truth,
it might be wise to ask how far they are ready to
share the prize which they feel God has given them.
If they say that they must be only among such people
as are congenial, lest they lose the calm and sympathy
which best bear up their state of spiritual-mindedness,
then it is safe to be suspicious. As Christ pleased
not Himself, but identified His interests with the
noise and dust of the distracting world, so those who
have Christ's Spirit go forth from their most radiant
experiences to share those blessed feehngs with the
world. It is the reason why the disciples rushed from
the inspiration of Pentecost to the unselfish task of
giving to others what God had given to them.
n
One of the plainest evidences of the power of the
Holy Ghost was the transformation of the Apostles
from timidity to boldness. It was the man who could
not face a maidservant's taunt without denying his
friendship for Christ, — it was he who, a few weeks
later, stood forth among the crowds of Jerusalem and
preached this same Christ to all the city. And when
the Apostles were brought before the officers for dis
order and were commanded to hold their peace, Peter
and John refused to obey, because they knew that the
unseen God had given them a message and a com
mission. "Whether it be right in the sight of God,"

THE DAYS OF ST. PAUL 65
cried Peter and John, "to hearken unto you more
than unto God, judge ye."1 That was the spirit in
which the humble followers of Christ were to face
generals and kings, without the least tremour of fear.
And the chronicler's explanation of the change is
simple. It is all in the words, "Then Peter, filled
with the Holy Ghost."2 It is one of the miracles of
the New Testament, the sort of miracle that was
repeated centuries later when a poor German peasant
stood before the glory of the State and of the Church
and refused to recant the truth which God had shown
to him, saying, "Ich kann nickt anders."
Nor was the boldness only physical or moral. It
was the same boldness that made Christ say, "Ye
have heard of old time, . . . but I say unto you — "
For when the Apostles sat in Council at Jerusalem, a
few God-fiUed Jews in the midst of Judaism, they
dared to abrogate the Levitical Law about meats;
and their sufficient warrant is clear from the words
with which they introduced their judgment: "It
seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." It is
probably impossible for us to understand fully what
it meant to these men to set aside a divine law de
livered to their nation. They were not acting under
any national or high-priestly authority. They had no
visible presence, as that of our Lord, to assure them.
The authority was unseen, intangible, wholly spiritual.
Yet they did not hesitate. They had the boldness
of a great genius who knows the one word needed to
complete his verse, the one colour to complete his
picture. It was the immediate contact with the
source of authority. It was the boldness which only
God can give.
1 Acts iv, 19. 2 Acts iv, 8.

66 THE LIGHT WITHIN
There is one other test that can be given, — willing
ness to die for the truth. The Apostles had cared
very much for their lives when their Master was
snared and tried and crucified. A few days later,
when the Holy Ghost had taken possession of them,
they seem to have cared as little for death as for the
daily twihght. And they were steadfast in this
courage; till, one by one, with hardly an exception,
they had died for the truth's sake. This was a form
of spiritual boldness that survived in such a way that
men even sought the martyr's crown. Polycarp was
one of many who determined to die for Christ. And
in every persecution it was the marvel, even of stoical
Romans, with what fierce joy delicate women as well
as strong men could meet death in the arena. The
boldness of the Spirit was a mark of the Early Church.

rn
There is one more immediate result of the coming
of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost which must be re
corded. "Neither," said St. Luke in the Book of the
Acts,1 "was there any among them that lacked: for
as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold
them, and brought the prices of the things that were
sold, and laid them down at the Apostles' feet: and
distribution was made to every man according to his
need." It might be possible to explain this as part
of the result of an expectation of the quick return of
the visible Christ in the Parousia. Certain move
ments in the nineteenth century, looking forward to
the millennium, led to a similar disposal of property
just before the day fixed for the Day of the Lord.
( ' iv, 34 f-

THE DAYS OF ST. PAUL 67
But the reason after Pentecost seems to have been
an overflowing of love. It has been suggested that
just as the early disciples left all to follow the Lord
Jesus in the days of His flesh, so these new disciples,
the disciples of the Spirit, left all, gave all, to be lost
in the fire of His love.
The fact that the custom of dividing one's goods
among the community did not continue in the Church
may teach us that it was not a practical way of
caring for the unfortunate or the shiftless; or it may
tell that the love was chilled as the Church grew
older. In any case, we know that this apparently
spontaneous act of communal hfe sprang from an
enthusiasm which longed to spend and be spent for
love of the brethren. It gives us a vivid picture of
the love kindled by the Holy Spirit, consciously and
gratefuUy received. rv
In attempting to trace the history of the first cen
tury, it is difficult to tell how far the Book of the
Acts, how far St. Paul's Epistles, should be counted
the primary basis for a true account of events. Since
it is increasingly beheved that St. Paul's companion,
St. Luke, wrote the Acts, it is steadily becoming more
common for critical scholars to find that we have in
the Acts a plain history (according to the style of
the first century) of the events to which St. Paul
alludes or refers in his letters. It is becoming a criti
cal habit to attempt to harmonize the Epistles and
the Acts.
In spite of this, scholars feel quite sure that in St.
Paul's Epistles they are reading documents which re
flect exactly the thought of the Church in the decade

68 THE LIGHT WITHIN
just after the middle of the century. The Synoptic
Gospels and the Acts in their present form, being
written down somewhat later, may reflect attitudes
in the Church which belong from ten to twenty years
after St. Paul's Epistles. This is not in any way to
pass upon the historic accuracy of the Gospels and
the Acts: it is simply to point out what detail seemed
most important to writers a httle beyond St. Paul's
time. The selection of material is of itself significant.
I have related the account from the Acts of the
way in which, on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was
received and also the report of three results, — the
sharing of the spiritual gift, the boldness of the Apos
tles, and the sharing of worldly goods in an overflow
of love. Certainly St. Paul's Epistles imply such a
history, and we may feel that we are depending upon
the earhest extant record of the Church. But now I
wish to leave the Acts and study one or two details
revealed by St. Paul's letters. We shaU thus discover
the effect of the Holy Spirit upon the Church in the
earhest records.
Before doing this, I wish to point out an assured
reflection of modern scholarship upon St. Paul's writ
ing. Because his letters have formed the basis for
much theological debate it is often assumed that St.
Paul was a speculative theologian drawing up a sys
tem. It is now evident that St. Paul was something
much more than a theologian. He was a consummate
rehgious genius carefully and sympathetically observ
ing a unique rehgious experience in the hves of his
fervent colleagues and disciples, most of all in his
own hfe. It is now seen, by an increasing knowledge
of the various contemporary religious movements,
how these movements were reflected in St. Paul's

THE -DAYS OF ST. PAUL 69
arguments. He was meeting disciples and their diffi
culties. These disciples may have been imbued with
the Mystery rehgions of the East, with Greek philos
ophy, or with Pharisaical Judaism. We see, as our
fathers did not see, how careful St. Paul was not to
deny any truth which might lie within what, to his
Christian consciousness, seemed a partial and im
perfect revelation. The only aspect which he would
not tolerate was a narrow self-complacency which
insisted on its own way as the only way. So he
resisted the Judaizers who would not admit the Gen
tiles to Christianity unless they submitted to Jewish
rites. Otherwise we find him giving advice with a
patient criticism, now to the Jewish legahsts, now to
the Greek inspirationists. His thinking is magnifi
cent because it reached out in many directions, not
through theory, but through life. He held, for in
stance, to the Jewish teaching of a resurrection of the
body, but he grasped the truth of the Greek that the
body should be a spiritual body. His thinking is not
easy to systematize and hem in; for that reason it is
the greater, the more clearly the reflection of life.

St. Paul shared with aU others in the Early Church
the expectation that within the hfetime of that gen
eration Christ would reappear in bodily form. This
is evident from the earhest of the extant Epistles, those
to the Thessalonians. Yet St. Paul spoke constantly
of the Spirit of Christ as present. He felt that Christ
lived in him. How can we explain this?
In the first place there was the insistent interpre
tation of certain of our Lord's words, which were felt

70 THE LIGHT WITHIN
to imply that he would soon inaugurate His Kingdom.
The Hebrew Christians, being saturated with the
Messianic ideal, dwelt upon this expectation much
more than the Gentile Christians. But all felt that
Christ would reappear.
Besides this reliance upon our Lord's words, there
was the natural, longing for sight of the dear face,
for the sound of the gentle voice, for the touch of the
vanished hand. That the Early Church longed for
the visible Master possibly loosened its grasp upon
the full presence of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul assured
His friends that the Spirit of the Son of God was in
their hearts. But one may think of this presence
kindling such love that their hearts longed for a
complete outward manifestation. The theorist would
say that these disciples should have been satisfied
with the spiritual reality of Christ. The man of great
faith who has lost his noble friend through the gate
of death is quite sure that his friend lives, — but he
longs to hear the tone of his voice, to see the sparkle
of his eye. So the practical every-day Christian
understands why the disciples who were filled with
the Holy Ghost looked for something which they
thought would be even more satisfying.
They were mistaken. The Lord did not come in
bodily form. Generation after generation the Chris
tian world has known Christ through the Holy
Spirit. And he has not yet come in bodily form.

VI
The First Epistle to the Corinthians is rich in its
revelations of St. Paul's experience with the Holy
Spirit in the hves of men. Though the sentences

THE DAYS OF ST. PAUL 71
foUow one another in the confusion of an informal
letter, there is the record of the growth in doctrine
over the thought expressed in the Epistles to the
Thessalonians. The first thought upon which St. Paul insists is
that the Spirit is holy; and because holy, therefore
the Spirit can enter only the body that is clean and
prepared. "Your body," he says, "is the temple of
the Holy Spirit."1 It was necessary to emphasize the
ethical, because outside of Judaism the ethical and
the divine were not always inseparable. Moreover,
everywhere in the first century there was the con
viction that the world was full of spirits, many of
them bad and spiteful. A good deal of the religion of
the day, — apparently most of it, — was devoted to
the exorcising of the bad spirits, with the prayer to the
good spirits to come in and replace them. Some one
has said that men suspected that evil spirits lurked in
aU sorts of places just as in our time we suspect the
presence of bacUli; and there was exactly the same care
to sterilize their harmful energy.
When St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians he did not
need to convince them that God's Spirit was in them;
but he did need to make them understand that God's
Spirit is always benevolent, good, holy.
We see again how St. Paul's teaching was guided
by the practical exigencies of the hour. While he
longed to comfort these superstitious Corinthians with
the remembrance of the loving nature of the Spirit of
God, as revealed in Christ, especially in the death on
the Cross, he was obhged to guard against their care
less acceptance of the truth. The Spirit of the Most
Loving is also the Spirit of the Most Holy.
1 1 Cor. vi, 19.

72 THE LIGHT WITHIN
VII
Another Corinthian experience to teach St. Paul
was the dissension in the Church. There were differ
ent parties attached, one to him, one to St. Peter, one
to Apollos, and one bearing the name of Christ Him
self. Instantly St. Paul felt the scandal of such
pulling apart as this, with its bickering and strife.
So he instructed the Corinthians in the nature of the
corporate spiritual hfe of the Church. He admitted
that there were diversities of gifts in the Church,
diversities of administration, a varied scale of honour.
But something had happened to each individual in the
Church, that made it impossible for him to be sepa
rated from his brethren: he had been bap'tized into
one body by one Spirit.1 The body has many mem
bers, but it is one. So the Spiritual Body is Christ;
and every one who receives His Spirit is incorporated
into Him; so that henceforth schisms and divisions are
against nature.
In what sense baptism was identified with the gift
of the Holy Spirit is not always quite clear. As St.
Paul was keeping close to hfe, it is safe for us who
try to interpret him to keep close to the hfe of our
own experience. The Spirit of the Lord was evidently
imparted not only in connection with baptism, but in
connection with the "laying on of the Apostles' hands,"
with the sending forth of missionaries, and with the
Lord's Supper. Sometimes the Spirit seems to have
been given apart from outward symbols, and baptism
followed.2 No doubt, then as now, there was super
stition, suggestion of magic, in the Sacraments; but
to one who saw as clearly as St. Paul saw, they were
1 1 Cor. xii, 13. 2 Acts x, 47.

THE DAYS OF ST. PAUL 73
the signs of the opening of a life towards the revela
tion of Christ's Love. When a man, by obedient
submission to an outward act, had signified his will
to receive God's gift, he did something in his soul as
well as in his body. He opened a secret door which
possibly may have been cldsed all his life, and the
Holy Spirit entered to be his perpetual guest. If
the door was opened as he listened to some fervent
plea, if the Holy Spirit was given without the out
ward act, then the submission to baptism could not
mean the beginning. But no submission to what is
conceived to be God's will for us can ever be without
its admitting us to a larger baptism of His Spirit.
Those to whom baptism meant most understood that
the Spirit in them was the same Spirit as had entered
all their fellow members in the Church: it was the
Spirit of the Christ, and in Him they were one
body. St. Paul makes the relationship of the individual
to the community strikingly clear in his chapter on
the Resurrection. He points out that each individ
ual shaU have his own spiritual body; so far there
is individualism. But all shall be raised from the
dead together. The triumph is not a triumph of a
man here and there; it is the victory of the parts of
the body of Christ, swept away in a common death,
reunited in everlasting life, into one risen whole. Thus
in every experience the Spirit gives us hfe, and because
the Spirit is one, we are one in the Spirit. Again
St. Paul teaches us that the voice of the Spirit is the
voice of Love.
Most appropriately the last words of these Epistles
to the contentious Corinthian Christians is a blessing
in which St. Paul prays that the fellowship of the Holy

74 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Spirit may be with them all. We are so accustomed
to hear this as part of a benediction, and to associate
it with the doctrine of the Trinity, that we forget
that St. Paul was not attempting any systematizing
of theology: he was merely making one final prayer
that those who were his followers in Christ might be
one in the uniting power of the Holy Spirit.

vni
The Corinthians were having difficulty with those
in the Church who tried to "speak in an unknown
tongue." Evidently St. Paul was careful not to
quench any enthusiasm, any sincere belief of his con
verts in such a remarkable gift; but he patiently
discouraged the attempt to exercise this gift of the
Spirit. We see by his criticism that nothing was
understood directly, and, if the speaking with tongues
was to be in any degree edifying, it must be accom
panied with interpretation. He therefore encouraged
prophesying or preaching, rather than the exercise of
what seemed only a vague religious excitement.
We may imagine that these Corinthians were at
tempting to institutionalize what could only come at
rare times with very unusual combinations of circum
stances. Because the disciples at Pentecost could
rise to the dignity of a real spiritual frenzy, with aU
the dignity that simple reahty and necessity can give,
because now and then afterwards a similar experience
might burst through the ordinary course of Chris
tian life, there was no reason to expect that men could
often "speak with tongues." As a matter of history,
the attempt to preserve the phenomenon as an insti
tution was so quickly abandoned that John Chrysostom

THE DAYS OF ST. PAUL 75
in his day did not know what the speaking with
tongues could have been.
Accordingly St. Paul discouraged the attempt of the
Corinthians to gain the power of the Spirit of Christ
in this way. And it is of the utmost significance that
he prefaced his exhortation on the subject with his
matchless ode on Love.1 "Though I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels," he exclaimed, "and
have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a
tinkling cymbal." St. Paul therefore anticipated the
teaching of the First Epistle of St. John, written years
later, by making love the essential preparation for the
fuUest possession of the Spirit. The atmosphere in
which the voice of love can be heard is itself love.
No miracles, no mysterious ecstasies, are of much
importance. The heart that submits to a Sacrament,
that opens itself towards God, must also open itself
towards men. The more widely a man can love his
brethren in the world, the more fully will the Spirit
of high heaven penetrate into all the recesses of his
life and character. Love is received by love.

IX
In all this development of St. Paul's thought it is
hard to see that he was consciously trying to define
in any way the exact relationship of the Holy Spirit
to the Father and to Christ. But in the two closely
related Epistles to the Galatians and to the Romans
there are two passages which demonstrate that experience
was leading him towards such a definition. Both are
profoundly moving.
The first passage is St. Paul's effort to describe to
1 1 Cor. xiii.

76 THE LIGHT WITHIN
the Galatians the means by which we have the con
sciousness that we are God's children. "When the
fulness of the time was come," he said,1 "God sent
forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the
law, to redeem them that were under the law, that
we might receive the adoption of sons. And because
ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son
into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Christ, by
becoming one with us, adopting as His own our
humanity, and being always God's Son, has given us
the right to be sons with Him of the one Father.
Then when the Holy Spirit was given, Christ's Spirit
came into our inmost hves; that is, our hearts; and
His voice, the Son's voice, which is also ours by His
indwelhng, cries out to God, "Father." We are not
only treated as sons, but we stand before God with
the self-respect of the Only Son and Heir of all things
to treat God as our Father.
It is significant that in this passage St. Paul
used the address, 'Afifid 6 trarqp, the Aramaic and the
Greek words joined; so suggesting the brotherhood
of Jew and Gentile in the sonship of both to the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, through the inspi
ration of both with the Holy Spirit. All who are
willing to receive the Spirit are thereby bound to
express not only their filial love for the Father, but
their fraternal love for one another.
The second passage pointing to a definition of the
relationship of this Spirit to the Father is in the
Epistle to the Romans. It is in some ways the most
illuminating passage which St. Paul ever wrote. "The
Spirit," he said,2 "helpeth our infirmities: for we
know not what we should pray for as we ought; but
1 Gal. iv, 4 ff. 2 Rom, viii, 26 f.

THE DAYS OF ST. PAUL 77
the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groan-
ings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth
the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit,
because he maketh intercession for the saints accord
ing to the will of God." As with all supreme words
in hfe, so with these, it is not safe to attempt to harden
the poetic into prose. We stand before an open
window and look far off over meadows and valleys
to distant hiUs and the limitless sky. These are among
the words which open a window out towards God's
yearning love for us. He loves us so much that He
desires to be loved by us. He not only speaks to us,
He also desires our speech in reply; he even wishes
us to speak first that He may reply to us. We feel
the instinctive longing to speak, to pray; but we
doubt our power, our right. Then into our hearts
comes the Holy Spirit, with a tenderness passing the
tenderness of the mother to the child kneehng at her
knee: the Holy Spirit says the words which we catch
up and make our own. As there are songs without
words, so there are prayers without words: our vague,
dim aspirations the Holy Spirit fills, and though we
cannot translate them into intelligible terms, it is
because they are beyond words.
In one of St. Paul's later Epistles, there is what
we may call an aUusion to this thought. "Grieve
not the holy Spirit of God," he wrote to the Ephe
sians.1 Once more there is the appeal to the love
which the Spirit bestows and is. The highest incen
tive in life is to give joy to love. And the bitterest
tragedy is to wound love. St. Paul caUs upon the
Church to meet love with love.
1 Eph. iv, 30.

78 THE LIGHT WITHIN

It is through St. Paul, then, that we have a picture
of Christian experience in the middle of the first
century. What he reveals to us of the Holy Spirit
is not his philosophy or reflection, but his own obser
vation of an experience which he was sharing with
men who were dear to him, an experience of ways in
which the Holy Spirit spoke to men who had become
members of the body of Christ. It was not always
through words in which St. Paul directly spoke of
the Spirit that he revealed this experience. We have
it concretely in his affection for his Phihppian followers,
the bond of the Spirit making them more than kin,
so that the proud independence of the Apostle was
wiUing to receive from them financial help. We have
it in the brief letter to Philemon by which he shows
that in the sharing of the same Spirit slave and mas
ter are brothers. We have it most of all in his op
timistic thanksgiving for his Corinthian friends, whose
faults he saw plainly, yet whose grace from God
redeemed all. It is such general impressions that
serve to give us the most rational conception of a
man's experience. The mere text, with its direct
reference, is often hard and unreal.
If St. Paul weighed at all the questions of later
theology about the Spirit, he attempted no philosophy
of them. He did not tell whether the Spirit is only
from the Father, only from the Son, from the Father
through the Son, or from both equally. Nor did he
show whether the Spirit is to be counted on as God in
action, an impersonal outgoing from the divine, or in
some way a personal entity, — in God, of God, God
Himself. The theologians of the later Church in their

THE DAYS OF ST. PAUL 79
efforts to reach a conclusion could all find in St. Paul
support for their various interpretations of the Holy
Spirit. But St. Paul himself, hving in the blazing
hght of a great period of spiritual awakening, was
content to give only the indications of what he saw
and felt. Doubtless the Gamahels, — that is, the
theologians of his time, — felt that St. Paul's ideas
were fragmentary, more or less conflicting one with
another, and quite out of harmony with the theology
of the past. This would be natural; for St. Paul was
attentive to the hving voice in men of all sorts, pro
claiming a power which was being so openly received
as to seem new in the world, — the power, the light,
the love of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

VI
THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE SYNOPTIC
GOSPELS

IN the seventh and eighth decades of the first century
the Synoptic Gospels were, so far as chronologists
can determine, being given to the world. It is certain
that the words of our Lord and the facts of His hfe
had been repeated long before this both in oral tradi
tions and in some form of written documents. We
may not take the Synoptic Gospels to be a sudden
creation of the sixties and the seventies; they were the
end of an evolutionary process. Because events are
recorded in these Gospels which St. Paul did not re
cord, we have no right to make St. Paul's silence a
reason for questioning the facts. St. Paul was writing
letters, whether to the Church in general or to par
ticular congregations, which treated only of the sub
jects about which there had been debate, or upon which
practical advice was needed, or upon which he laid
especial emphasis in his teaching. We are sure, both
by the results of modern criticism, and by our knowl
edge of human nature, that St. Paul took for granted
many facts and principles which he would not have
thought it necessary to mention in crowded letters
written to people who, in the main or whoUy, agreed
with his Christian creed.

THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 81
We find in St. Paul no reference to our Lord's mirac
ulous birth or to His baptism. We may not be sure
that there are not in his letters allusions to both.
But, even if we granted that there were not even allu
sions to them, we should have no right to say that it
was not entirely possible for St. Paul to have taught
both facts to his congregations as he gathered them
for their first instructions. It is possible that St.
Paul, in his oral instructions, went over the ground
of the Gospel story in much the same way as we find
it in the record of St. Mark and St. Luke, both of
whom he knew. Silence can give us no right to deny.
What we do have the right to say, in examining
documents emanating from different decades of a
century, is that the silences may tell a true story of
the degrees of emphasis with which this or that fact
was regarded, as the years passed.
If then we find in the Synoptic Gospels the records
of events which St. Paul passed over, and if we find
an evident importance attached to them, then we may
assume that the force of those events was coming
home to people in the sixties and the seventies as they
had not appealed to the leaders in the fifties. For
our present purpose what we wish to discover is how
in this period Christian men were learning the power
of the Holy Spirit. n
The expectation of the return of our Lord in visible
form to inaugurate the Messianic Kingdom is in
timately associated with the disciples' thought of the
Holy Spirit. We may surmise that in the first enthu
siasm of Pentecost the spiritual presence of Christ
seemed so overwhelmingly satisfying that the disciples

82 THE LIGHT WITHIN
did not crave any physical symbols of the Lord's pres
ence among them. It could not have been long, how
ever, before the natural human desire to see the loved
face asserted itself. Words of our Saviour intimating
His bodily return were recalled. AU this is what we
should expect. When we reach St. Paul's Epistles
we find that the Christian disciples were all filled
with the definite expectation of the Parousia in their
hfetime. But they were beginning to be confused
by the questions connected with the death of those
who died before the Lord's appearing. St. Paul
explained to them that there was to be no disadvantage
for those who died thus early; they and the survivors
should alike be caught up in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air upon His glorious return.1 These
comforting words to bereaved friends were written
not far from the middle of the century. The very
explanation shows that St. Paul felt that normally
the individuals of the Christian community would
be still hving when Christ came.
Ten, twenty, twenty-five years passed. The first
generation of Christians was rapidly passing. Forty
years, more or less, had gone since Christ vanished.
The inevitable question was whether His coming would
not be indefinitely postponed. Therefore there is a
distinct reason why the oral and written records of
the earthly hfe of Jesus should take a permanent form.
The hypothesis that only at this time did the earthly
life of Jesus seem important is altogether unnecessary.
Another hypothesis is quite sufficient to cover the
ground, and dovetails exactly with the facts which are
beyond dispute. For besides the fact that the contem
poraries of Jesus of Nazareth were almost aU dead,
1 1 Thessalonians iv, 15 ff.

THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 83
the outstanding fact of this period was the destruction
of Jerusalem. This meant a scattering of the disciples
and a sense of insecurity for all traditions. The hy
pothesis that the Synoptic Gospels reached their
present form, or approximately their present form,
at a time when men had ceased to beheve that Christ
would immediately return, and, by the exigencies
of the moment, for people who could not appeal to
the older generations, is natural, reasonable, quite
sufficient. Bearing witness then to the fact that the disciples
did not any longer expect Christ necessarily within
the hfetime of the first generation, they still expected
Him. The words which record His promise to return
are recorded in such a way that it is clear that the
Synoptic editors or writers interpreted them to mean a
bodUy return. They were not, I think, wholly satis
fied with the presence of Christ through the Holy
Spirit. They still longed to see the glorious Messiah;
but I beheve that there was a subtle difference. As
they dwelt upon the precious traditions of His earthly
ministry, was there not the desire that they might see,
not so much the transfigured and regal Christ, as the
plain, sympathetic, pitying, helping Jesus of Galilee?
In so far, had the Evangelists not gone beyond the
mystical grandeur of St. Paul? There is no doubt
that they stUl looked for the outward glory, but there
was, I feel sure, a growing sense of the glory that
breathed through the poverty and the seeming failure
of the Palestinian career. A readjustment in the con
ception of the time of the return necessarily modified
other details, especiaUy in the manner of the return.
My full reason for dwelling upon this evidence in
the Synoptic Gospels of a change in the expectation

84 THE LIGHT WITHIN
of the Parousia, while the expectation itself still con
tinued, will appear later.1 Meantime it will be enough
in this place to note the probable circumstances under
which the Synoptic Gospels were composed. There
was, with the remembrance of the earthly hfe of Jesus
and the conviction that His Parousia was deferred,
a growing dependence upon the highest spiritual
presence. In spite of all the tragedy associated with
the fall of Jerusalem, these were not dry years. The
Spirit was with the disciples to sustain them, giving
to them the assurance of stabihty amid the crash of
the temporal. in
St. Mark's Gospel takes for its starting point the
baptism of Jesus Christ, accompanied as it was by
the conviction on our Lord's part that the Holy Spirit
descended upon Him. The other Synoptic Gospels
repeat St. Mark's account; and all alike say that after
the baptism the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness.
A group of Gnostics in the next century taught that
the Holy Spirit took possession of Jesus at His bap
tism and deserted Him at the crucifixion. This heresy
had a short life, but it represents a tendency; it is
the overemphasis of a fact which the earhest extant
Gospel dignified with a primary importance.
St. Paul had written of the power of Christ's resur
rection, whereby the Spirit of the Living Christ was
controlhng the destinies of men. He was deahng
with the results of Christ's life, rather than with its
causes. Possibly in his oral teaching, as I said before,
he may have dwelt upon our Lord's testimony to the
witness which He received at His baptism; but it
1 See below, pp. 97 ff.

THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 85
clearly was not much in St. Paul's mind. To St. Paul,
Christ was as much a present power as Abraham
Lincoln was to John Bright. John Bright felt that the
cause which Lincoln was leading was the most sig
nificant of the nineteenth century. He beheved that
Lincoln was a very great man, divinely appointed to
a stupendous task. But in the dark days when Bright
was watching the contest between brothers in the
young repubhc, I cannot find that Bright was examin
ing the sources of Lincoln's power. He was not analyz
ing the books Lincoln read as a youth, or his early
career as an Illinois lawyer. The power of his present
was too evident to need any explanation from the past.
So St. Paul, I think, found the Christ, who was his
life, too immediate to need any groping among origins.
It is when the time comes for history that men dwell
upon the facts that explain, or tend to explain, a
career. So St. Mark, beginning his Gospel abruptly
with the pubhc hfe of Christ, shows that He by whose
hfe the Spirit was given to men, was Himself baptized
with the Spirit. It was a seal of the divine authority
with which He was to act and to speak.
The Ebionites beheved that this baptism of the
Spirit endowed our Lord with His Messiahship. This
was straightway designated a heresy. As speculation
about our Lord's life increased it is clear that the
historian would be forced to go still farther into the
study of origins. rv
Thus we come to the accounts of our Lord's birth,
as recorded in St. Luke and St. Matthew. We cannot
be sure just how much later these gospels are than
St. Mark, probably only a few years; but there is a

86 THE LIGHT WITHIN
difference in the emphasis. St. Mark was content
to begin with the pubhc ministry. The other Synop-
tists had found the need, by questions which were
doubtless being put, to go back to childhood and birth
and ancestry.
This is a perfectly natural evolution. I have men
tioned Abraham Lincoln. When men began to in
vestigate his greatness, they were content with an
account of his education and early experience as a
rough pioneer, a diligent reader of a few books, a
shrewd lawyer. But later there was the painstaking
effort to trace his ancestry through the rough back
woodsmen to colonial stock and thence to England.
One who had felt the power of Lincoln's personahty,
even one who had read his Gettysburg Address or his
second Inaugural Speech, needed no such explanation.
But the quest helped some people to comprehend the
man; and in any event it was a quest that was in
evitable. In a way not less natural it was certain
that those who recorded our Saviour's hfe would soon
be obhged to chronicle whatever they could discover
of His birth and ancestry. The additions therefore
to the accounts of St. Mark were not artificial, or
forced: they were inevitable.
The whole problem has been distorted of late years
by focussing the attention upon the unique nature of
our Lord's birth, in that He was virgin-born. Whether
the Evangehsts acquired their material for the account
from older records, or, according to the tradition, St.
Matthew from Joseph, and St. Luke from the Virgin
herself, we know that the narrative is evidently strug
gling with a problem too difficult for human speech.
The Man unique in character and power was discovered
by these Evangelists to be unique by nature, so far as

THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 87
they could gather the reports of His origin. But the
important detail on which to fix is not what some
critics have called the unnaturalness of the event, the
exceptional aspect of its physical nature, but the con
fidence that the Holy Spirit of God had to do with
the very inception of Christ's life. He who bestowed
the Spirit, — His Spirit, God's Spirit, — upon those who
were receptive, was endowed with the authority t not
merely at His baptism but at the beginning. He was
the Son of God, born into the world by the influence
and power of the Spirit. He was not an individual
man whom the Spirit of God used for a tabernacle
during a unique ministry to men. From the start the
Spirit of God was the means by which Jesus Christ
had authority to give the Spirit to men; still more,
through the Spirit to give Himself to men for time and
eternity. One must be constantly on guard not to introduce
into the first century the theology of succeeding cen
turies. The Synoptic Evangelists were not writing
theology, though they were putting down words and
events from which theology was to be evolved. They
were not, we must beheve, producing a theory of
Christ's hfe, but they were chronicling such words
and events as they could discover in records or hving
memories, and out of these making a selection when
necessary of those words and events which best ex
plained the questions of the time in which they wrote.
In the accounts of the Birth of Christ we have, first
of all, the indication that they had found the authority
for Christ's authority. As the Spirit had moved upon
the face of the waters in the first creation, so in this
new creation the Spirit was the power which brought
God and man together in Jesus Christ. St. Paul,

88 THE LIGHT WITHIN
by his rich experience in his own soul and among
men, had disclosed in his Epistles much about the hfe
and work of the Holy Spirit. But the Evangelists
touched a note of authority which not even St. Paul
made clear.

The Synoptic Gospels record only a few sayings of
our Saviour about the Holy Spirit. These have to
do with the assertion of authority. It was distinctive
of Christ that He did not look to any beyond Himself
for authority. Thereby we know that we cannot class
Him with the prophets: they always looked forward
to a dehverer who should come. He spoke of the Old
Testament Law and then carried it up into a new com
mandment with no other vindication than the majestic
"But I say unto you."1 In Him the anticipations
of the prophets reached their goal. His authority was
in Himself. Yet there are these few passages in which
He traces His authority to the Holy Spirit. At
Nazareth 2 he quoted Isaiah, taking as His own the
words, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor."
So too when scribes were sent down from Jerusalem
to investigate His rapid fame, and when these scribes
flippantly explained that though He certainly did cast
out devils, He cast them out by the prince of the
demons, then our Lord uttered this condemnation, —
"All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men,
and their blasphemies wherewith soever they shall
blaspheme: but whosoever shall blaspheme against
1 St. Matthew v, 21 ff. » St. Luke iv, 16 ff.

THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 89
the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty
of an eternal sin."1 It is sufficient here to notice that
Christ identified His power with the power of the Spirit
of God. In the expansion of the passage in St. Mat
thew2 Christ explains that blasphemy against the Son
of Man shall be forgiven, but not blasphemy against
the Holy Spirit. Must this not mean, — in connec
tion with the context and the briefer account of St.
Mark, — that one who recognizes Jesus to be the
Anointed of God, identified with God's Spirit, can
not treat Him as a wicked demon without eternally
injuring his own soul, not by some arbitrary outside
judgment, but by an instantaneous and inevitable
internal reaction. A faint picture of our Lord's mean
ing might be found in a patriot who felt that his coun
try was symbohzed in the king, yet who, meeting the
king incognito, treated him with scant respect. That
patriot would regret his act, but he would not accuse
himself endlessly: he did not know what he did.
The man who dehberately insults his country, whatever
the symbol of it may be, is a traitor; and when love
for country returns to him, he never can forget his sin
nor forgive himself. So one who recognizes our Lord
as the embodiment of the Holy Spirit cannot, upon
coming to himself, escape endless remorse.3
There are other passages in the Synoptic Gospels
1 St. Mark iii 28 ff.
2 xii, 31 ff.
8 Cf. Origen, Commentary on St. John, bk. ii, ch. vi: "Is it because the
Holy Spirit is of more value than Christ that the sin agamst Him cannot
be forgiven? May it not be that all rational beings have part in Christ,
and that forgiveness is extended to them when they repent of their sins,
while only those have part in the Holy Spirit who have been found worthy
of it, and that there cannot well be any forgiveness for those who fall
away to evil in spite of such great and powerful cooperation, and who
defeat the counsels of the Spirit who is in them."

90 THE LIGHT WITHIN
where the Holy Spirit is spoken of as a possible gift
to aU. "If ye, being evil," said our Lord one day,
in showing how the Father answers prayer, "know how
to give good gifts unto your children, how much more
shaU your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them
that ask him? " 1 Again, on the Tuesday of the last week
when our Lord was preparing His disciples for the trials
that were before them, St. Mark records that Christ
urged them not to be anxious how they should defend
themselves, for the Holy Ghost would speak for them
and in them and through them.2 It is impressive
that St. Luke, who certainly bases his account on St.
Mark, does not mention the Holy Spirit, but makes
our Lord say, "I will give you a mouth and wisdom,
which all your adversaries shall not be able to with
stand or gainsay;"3 thus identifying Christ with the
Holy Spirit.
There is serious discussion whether the formula for
baptism ("into the Name of the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit") is really a part of the original
text of St. Matthew.4 Even if it is admitted, as some
very candid critical scholars think it must be, it is
most difficult to tell what it meant to the people hving
in the time of the Synoptic Gospels. As we look
back upon the Gospel Story, the formula is a satisfying
summary of the teaching of Christ about the Father,
Himself, and the Holy Spirit. The disciples we know,
by their own testimony, came gradually to a sense of
our Lord's meanings, and it is wrong, historically, to
read into great phrases and sentences for an early
time all that later experience revealed to be harboured
within them.
1 St. Luke xi, 13. * St. Luke xxi, 15.
1 St. Mark xiii, n. * St. Matthew xxviii, 19.

THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 91
There is one other Synoptic sentence which brings us
close to the Fourth Gospel. St. Luke, in recording the
last scene before the Ascension, records that our Lord
said, "Behold I send forth the promise of my Father
upon you: but tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed
with power from on high." x This must be taken in
connection with the same author's words in the first
chapter of the Acts: "Ye shall receive power," Christ
is recorded here as saying, "after that the Holy Ghost
is come upon you." 2 The authority with which God
had endowed Him, He was to bestow upon His dis
ciples. That great gift must have seemed to the
Synoptic writers sometimes to be Himself, sometimes
to be distinct. But the Gift was never separated from
Him. It was associated with all His earthly hfe. It
was His source of authority at His birth, at His bap
tism, in His preaching, in His teaching; and what was
His to receive was His to give. He bestowed it with
authority. It was His by an inward nature, an
inherent right.
Theology in the Synoptic Gospels can hardly be
said to exist. They, hke St. Paul's Epistles, are ab
sorbed in the relation of a transcendent experience.
But there is new material for theology to reflect upon
when it does come. The power of the Holy Spirit
which St. Paul felt to be issuing from Christ, the
Evangehsts of the immediately succeeding decades
felt to be the authority of Christ. There was the
mystery of a wonderful relationship unfolding before
the primitive Church.
1 St. Luke xxiv, 49. 2 Acts i, 8.

VII
THE WITNESS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL
i
THE Fourth Gospel is beset with difficult prob
lems. Scholars are debating earnestly its author
ship, the date of its writing, its purpose. The wisest
scholars speak cautiously; for, on the one hand, they
see the marked differences in the ways the Synoptists
and the author of this book present the life of Christ;
on the other hand, they are aware how the Personality
revealed in the book grips them with a convincing
reality. However this Personality may be overlaid
with the author's interpretations, the Personality is
too vivid to be a creation of the author in any degree.
The book is a noble portrait, not a photograph, not
an imaginary sketch. Literalism is not bound up with
truth. The free hnes which give an impression are
justified if the impression corresponds with the truth.
Only the great poet, the great painter, the great
biographer can dare to use freedom of interpretation
as they work among what men call facts. To com
pare the Christ of the Fourth Gospel with the Christ
of the Synoptic Gospels is a delicate task for both the
conservative and the radical scholar. Imagination,
perspective, and patience are needed on both sides.
Thus far we may well fear the verdict of the scholar
who thinks that he completely understands the prob
lems of the Fourth Gospel.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL 93
Some things, however, are becoming clear in the
discussion. One point is the date of the book. I
suppose that hardly any scholar would now hesitate
to fix the date of the Fourth Gospel in the years on
either side of the turn of the first century into the
second. The tendency has been to give it a somewhat
earher date than this. Whoever the author may
have been, whatever the fidelity of his composition,
his book teUs us the attitude of at least one man,
about seventy years after our Saviour's ministry,
towards the questions that immediately concern this
study. We have a wide view of a tendency in the
Church; and without attempting to decide hard
problems of authorship we may pursue our task.
Another detail in the discussion of the Fourth Gos
pel is becoming clearer. The purpose of the author
has been one of the main elements in dispute. It
was thought at one time that the writer was trying
to combat the Gnostic heresy, as a development of
Christianity. It is now thoroughly proved that
Gnostic ideas preceded rather than followed Chris
tianity, so that the date of the book can have nothing
to do with such a heresy in the Church. Moreover,
the Christian Gnostics used the Fourth Gospel in their
defence.1 So, from all sides, that hypothesis has
broken down. A very common explanation of the
author's purpose has been that he was transforming
the human Messiah of the Synoptic Gospels into
the Son of God. Thus the lesser miracles of the
Synoptic records are omitted, and seven astonishing
miracles are selected, showing the amazing power of
Christ. Parables, as a medium of teaching, are
1 See Hippolytus, phil. v, 9; Heracleon, in Texts and Studies, ed.
Brooke, i, 4.

94 THE LIGHT WITHIN
hardly used; and the discourses of Christ are direct
expositions of His own nature. We do feel the di
vinity of our Lord in the Fourth Gospel; but the
Early Church, quite as the ordinary Christian today,
finds the Synoptic Christ divine. If the Early
Church, loyal to the Son of God, had felt a lack in
the Synoptic Gospels, it would have made greater
use of the Fourth Gospel. As a matter of fact the
favourite Gospel was what we call the first, because in
St. Matthew there was the fitting of prophecy to
fulfilment; the Fourth Gospel apparently was httle
quoted for many years after it was given to the
world. n
What, then, was the purpose of the Fourth Gospel?
We see the beginnings of an answer in the date which
the author assigns to the Passover in the week of the
Crucifixion. The Synoptic Gospels make it clear that
our Saviour ate the Passover with His disciples on the
fourteenth of the Jewish month Nisan, the Crucifix
ion therefore being on the fifteenth. The author of
the Fourth Gospel makes it equally clear that the
meal of Thursday night was not the Passover, for on
Good Friday, he says, the Jews "went not into the
judgment hall, lest they should be defiled, but that
they might eat the Passover";1 that is, our Lord
died on the fourteenth of Nisan. There seems no
doubt that this is intended to be a correction. Per
haps the word correction is too strong a word. If it
is such, and if the author was an eye-witness over
looking the chronicles of those who wrote from others'
documents and from oral traditions, and not from
1 St. John xviii, 28.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL 95
immediate knowledge, then his general confirmation
of their story is the highest possible testimony to the
trustworthiness of their accounts. It is evident none
of the Evangehsts held chronology to be important,
however we may interpret the prologue to St. Luke's
Gospel. Perhaps it would therefore be better to say
that the author of the Fourth Gospel was not so
much making a correction, as filhng in a detail, which
was not clear in the earher narratives.
Are there other such additional details to bear out
this theory of a more intimate knowledge? There
are. According to the First and Second Gospels our
Saviour began His pubhc ministry after John Bap
tist's imprisonment;1 according to the Fourth Gospel
He began His work while John Baptist was distinctly
affirmed to be stUl free.2 This seems to be an inten
tional emendation. Further, the Synoptic Gospels in
dicate that the pubhc ministry of Christ was confined
almost whoUy to Gahlee; the Fourth Gospel accounts
for four times when Christ was in Jerusalem between
His baptism and His passion. And the lament over
Jerusalem recorded in St. Matthew3 and St. Luke4
indicates that the addition of the Fourth Evangelist is
justified. There are other divergencies where it seems hkely
that the Synoptic Gospels give a more just impression;
as, for example, the gradual recognition of the Messiah
in Christ culminating in St. Peter's confession at
Caesarea, rather than the immediate understanding
from the introduction of John Baptist. But even such
a variation might be harmonized. It was one thing to
speak of the Messiah in the abstract, and then come
1 St. Matthew iv, 12; St. Mark i, 14. ' xxiii, 37.
1 St. John iii, 24. 4 xiii, 24.

96 THE LIGHT WITHIN
to the idea afresh after a period of personal experience
with Jesus of Nazareth, finding the old conception so
overfiUed as to be quite forgotten.
If we take the clue that the author of the Fourth
Gospel was writing in the spirit of clarifying what he
though might be misunderstood in the Synoptic Gos
pels, — leaving on one side aU wish to determine whether
he were right or not, — we must ask if we may find
a commanding idea of the Synoptic period which the
author of this Gospel lays aside. We shaU find in
the answer to that question the only valid explanation
of his purpose in writing. His purpose could not have
been to upbraid the Synoptists for not dwelling on
our Lord's divinity nor to charge them with not
beheving in His miraculous power. The Church
needed no urging on either of these subjects. But
there is one unmistakable difference in the Fourth
Gospel as contrasted with both the Synoptists and
St. Paul. They are fused with the expectation of
our Saviour's bodily return. The Fourth Gospel has
not a word of it. That is a noteworthy fact. One
imagines that it was almost revolutionary, and may
perhaps explain why this Gospel was for so long a
time neglected in the Primitive Church, in spite of
its strong appeal. We may beheve that the early
Christian teaching was so saturated with the Mes
sianic expectation of our Lord's second coming in the
flesh, that any document which ignored it could not
easUy find admission to the interest of Christians.
Nor is the purpose only one of omission. The
author, in the Prologue, touched upon the fact that
our Lord is the Word, but there is httle of the Greek
speculation in the book. The main part of the book
is taken up with the Holy Spirit. And it is clear that

THE FOURTH GOSPEL 97
our Lord is made to identify His Parousia with the
coming of the Holy Spirit. I shall presently look
into some of the details of this identification. For
the moment I ask only that the Gospel be thought of
as written with this end in view, presenting the dis
courses of our Saviour the night before His crucifixion,
not with the conception of bodily return as the Synop
tists imply, but with the conception of a spiritual
return through the Holy Spirit "in a httle while."
If we assume such an hypothesis, we may pause to
ask how it might fit in with the assumption of the
traditional authorship. I beheve every year more
strongly in the traditional authorship, but I do not
mean this digression to make a necessary link in
my argument. Whoever the author may have been,
the document reveals a genius contending that the
Parousia has come, not in a carnal, but a spiritual
and most real way. It will, however, be useful to
imagine how St. John, a young and enthusiastic
disciple of Jesus, could have written this book in
(let us say) his ninetieth year. Remember him as
one who, according to the Synoptic account,1 had
begged the Master for a seat immediately next him
in the Messianic Kingdom. Imagine that through
most of the years since then he had, with his loving
heart, looked forward to seeing the physical presence
of the loved Saviour. The Saviour had promised to
return during the hfetime of his friends. Those who
had seen Jesus were aU gone now but himself. He
had heard Jesus say that He would return quickly.
He could not be mistaken. His Master could not
have spoken so, without keeping His promise. Then
imagine a bright morning when it flashed into the
1 St. Mark x, 37.

98 THE LIGHT WITHIN
mind of the aged man that his Master had returned.
The Gospel must be rewritten. The blessed Spirit
who had comforted them all the years since Pente
cost had revealed the living Christ. Christ had re
turned. Then back went the old man's memory over
the counsels of Jesus to His disciples. Must we not
imagine that the new point of view, the new reason
for remembering, brought to his conscious memory
facts and words that had for sixty years slumbered
in his subconscious memory? As I write these words
I have just been reading Mr. Henry James's effort to
recall his own childhood and the childhood of his great
brother Wilham James.1 Mr. James is constantly
bewildered with the flood of detailed remembrance that
swept over his mind after sixty years of apparently
forgotten experience. It was theA death of his brother,
the demand for biographical material, that opened
the gates; and the flood of the past poured in. Here
then is a human document, immediately out of our
own time, to make us see how St. John might write
with a fulness, a vividness, and occasionaUy an accu
racy that the earher Evangehsts could not command.
A further help comes from this modern instance, in
that Mr. James gains his vivid effect of sixty years
ago and more, not so much by the facts and exact
words of the past, as by the impressions and inner
spirit of his childhood. It is something more than
words and deeds which he seems to see in the inrush
into an opened memory. Such is the power of an
insistent demand upon the memory to arouse it to
unwonted clearness and profusion. Such a demand
in his old age had St. John, the last survivor of the
friends of Jesus, to vindicate the promise of his Lord.
1 A Small Boy and Others, 1913.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL 99
As I have intimated, even should it be proved that
St. John or other eye-witnesses did not write the
Fourth Gospel, the fact would still remain that some
one, towards the end of the first century, wrote the
book. And though it may always be difficult to ex
plain much of the difference between this document
and the Synoptic records, it will always be easier to
beheve that its author was an interpreter of actual
words and deeds than to credit him with the genius
of inventing them. For our Lord's personality had
already enslaved the haughty and great St. Paul.
The simplicity of the Synoptic Parables is filled
with the transcendent power of the Christ of whom
St. Paul taught. And to no less a personahty than
Christ may the greatness revealed in the Fourth
Gospel be attributed. The author, — disciple or not,
eye-witness or not, — clearly put his interpretation
upon discourses and events. But that is all. There
is in the book a sohd foundation of fact and truth,
deep laid in the hfe of Christ Himself.

111
The first note which the author struck was that
the earthly hfe of Jesus of Nazareth was glorious:
"We beheld his glory,"1 he said. It is quite futile
to confine these words to a reference to the Trans
figuration. The whole Gospel is a reflection of them.
If the miracles of Jesus are made to seem grander
than the miracles of the Synoptic Gospels, it is to
show what a powerful reign it was when Jesus was a
visible King among men. We may ask whether in
the middle of the century the miracles had not seemed
1 St. John i, 14.

100 THE LIGHT WITHIN
insignificant compared with the Oriental splendour
which the followers of Christ expected in the kingdom
to be inaugurated at the Second Advent. The very
best that a visible Messiah could do, Jesus of Naz
areth did. Yet with the reahty which old age brings
(if we may for a moment assume the traditional
authorship) there was no attempt to deck our Lord
in any outward display. The miracles selected are
magnified: Jesus gave sight not only to the bhnd,
but to one born bhnd; He raised not only the dead,
but one dead four days. Insuperable difficulties may
still remain in any attempt to explain, for example,
why the Synoptists failed to record so notable a
miracle as the raising of Lazarus. But however we
account for the more elaborate miracles of the Fourth
Gospel, of one thing we may be sure: the author
wished to impress upon his readers what a glorious
hfe was the life of Jesus on earth.
This Gospel has sometimes been called the Gospel
of the present tense. The best that could happen
was then happening. "Greater love hath no man
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,"1
— and His friends saw Christ laying His hfe down
for them. "He that hath seen me," He said to
Philip, "hath seen the Father."2 What glory could
exceed those two revelations?
Most wonderful of all in the Fourth Gospel are the
words of our Saviour there recorded. Whether they
are literally His or not, they have the ring of the
highest. If a man would test them let him quote
words from many sources to varied assemblies of men
who have in them any reverence for the things of
God. I think that without fail the speaker who is
1 St. John xv, 13. ! St. John xiv, 9.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL 101
alert wiU recognize that words attributed to Christ
in the Gospel of St. John meet a hushed attention
granted to no other words, even Christ's, from any
other source. "I am the vine, ye are the branches"
. . .; "I am the Good Shepherd" . . .; "Let not
your heart be troubled." It is, I am more and more
convinced, a sense of authority that sweeps over a
group of people when these passages are read, which
is quite unique in hterature. How far the words are
Christ's exactly, how far interpretation, no one knows;
but every one may know that the author who strove
to make our Lord's earthly career one of supreme
majesty and glory succeeded in his task. They are
mere words, you may say; but every reader feels
that the grandeur of the portrait is in the words
rather than the deeds. One may question the deeds;
but the words no man may question. There they are.
They are either Christ's, or the author's, or Christ's
fused with the author's selective interpretation. No
Messianic King could utter more weighty, more appeal
ing syUables. Whether we have one theory about
them or another, of one thing there can be no least
doubt: the author of the Fourth Gospel meant the
words, as well as the deeds, of the earthly Christ to
be as subhme as human thought could conceive. One
seems to hear the refrain at the end of every para
graph, "We beheld his glory." IV
It has been often said that the Fourth Gospel is
preeminently the spiritual Gospel. I have already
spoken of the way in which the author points out our
Lord's Parousia through the Pentecostal gift of the
Holy Spirit. The whole Gospel is a preparation for

102 THE LIGHT WITHIN
this outcome. The early part of the Gospel is iUu
mined by the two deeply spiritual conversations to
Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. The central
note of the discourse to Nicodemus is that unless a
man is born from above he cannot see the kingdom
of God.1 Our Lord explained to the dazed Nico
demus that by this he meant a spiritual birth. The
central note of the discourse to the Samaritan woman
is the assurance that worship is a spiritual exercise
and is not limited to sacred sites: "God is a Spirit: and
they that worship him must worship in spirit and
truth."2 In the discourse on the giving of His flesh
and blood to be nourishment towards the eternal hfe
of those who partake, He insisted, to the scandalized
hearers, that it is the Spirit that gives life.3 The
food, being spiritual, must be spirituaUy received. He
was thereby proclaiming that in His essential nature He
is a Spirit.
The discourse at the Feast of Tabernacles comes
stiU nearer to the announcement of the Great Return.
In this He said, "If any man thirst, let him come
unto me and drink." Then the Evangehst adds,
"This spake he of the Spirit, which they that beheved
on him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet
given; because Jesus was not yet glorified."4 The
author of the Gospel sees in these words a warning
of what he had found in his experience: namely, that
the power of Christ came to men in abundance after
His spiritualization. As long as men depended on
His physical presence, He was external to them.
When they came to depend upon His spiritual pres
ence, He was in them and they in Him.
1 St. John iii, 3. 8 St. John iv, 63.
2 St. John iv, 24. < St. John vii, 39.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL 103

So we come to the discourses of the last night
before the Crucifixion. There is hope shining through
the dismay. "I will not leave you orphans: I am
coming unto you: "* This assurance, in various
forms, was repeated again and again. One of the forms
is, "It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I
go not away, the ConiIorter win not come unto you;
but if I go, I wiU send him unto you." Later theology
explained that Christ was to return through the
Holy Spirit; but in these fareweU discourses we have
three implications: Christ would return; the Holy
Spirit would come through His departure; the Holy
Spirit and Christ were some way identified, some way
distinct. The Holy Spirit was to reveal Christ's
teaching and continue it. Through Him men in the
dispensation of the Spirit were to do greater works
than they had seen in Christ's earthly ministry. The
Spirit would glorify Christ, by making men see Him
in His real glory, the glory of the intensely spiritual
hfe. "A httle while," said Jesus,2 "and ye shall not
behold me; and again, a httle while, and ye shall see
me." They had only beheld Him then in the earthly
ministry; they had not truly seen Him. The super
ficial glance was, through the Spirit, to be exchanged
for the profound spiritual vision. This is the way
that the disciple writing at the close of the century
interpreted the Synoptic saying that Christ should
come on the clouds of heaven. This was His return
to reign. This was the coming of the Kingdom for
which He had taught His disciples to pray.
The discourse recorded after the Resurrection con-
1 St. John xiv, 18. 2 St. John xvi, 16.

104 THE LIGHT WITHIN
tinues this same high theme. "Peace be unto you,"
He said; "as the Father hath sent me, even so send
I you." And when He had said this, He breathed on
them, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose
soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them;
whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." 2
Here we have the authoritative commission, of which
the discourses before the Passion had given the prom
ise, and of which the hfe of the disciples after Pente
cost was to be the fulfilment. Once more He seems
separate from the Holy Spirit, yet strangely identi
fied with the Holy Spirit. He had begun to return.
He was only fully and most gloriously to return when
aU that was earthly had vanished, even the resur
rection body, and they were to know Him in their
hearts, invisible, yet radiant with power.

VI
So we come face to face with the most exalted word
about the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, and
perhaps for all time. There seems to have been in
the first enthusiasm of Pentecost a consciousness that
Christ was again present, though unseen. Then men
groped in His sayings and in their own earthly ideals
for the promise of something more tangible: they
dreamed of a kingdom that would make the statehness
of Rome seem tinsel in comparison. Every one who
was a Christian disciple, from St. Paul to the most
ilhterate, expected an Oriental monarch. But the
people who had known Christ after the flesh were
almost gone. What of His promise that He would
return while His disciples still hved? That promise
1 St. John xx, 21 ff.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL 105
He did give; and scholars have practically with one
consent, given up all effort to explain it away. Was
He mistaken? Are the words an impossible riddle?
"No," says the writer of the Fourth Gospel, "now I
see! He did promise, and He did come. He is with
the Spirit He sent to us. We beheld His glory in the
days of His flesh, — we know that He was even then
the summit of all majesty in word and deed. But
we only beheld His glory; we did not truly see it.
Now that we have Him in the Spirit; now that we
depend on no earthly sign or symbol, but look for
the inmost stirring of His hfe within our hves, — now
we see Him." Whoever the author of this Gospel may
have been, he stands for a consummate revelation of
the history of the Holy Spirit in the consciousness
of men. It is not right to deduce too much the
ology. It is not right to measure the sort of history
the book contains. The one fact to grasp tightly
is that we have the record of an overwhelming
experience. A man who had Christ in him was sure
that the best that could be had been given. The
Messianic Kingdom was a spiritual kingdom, and
the Holy Spirit had revealed the eternal glory of
the Unseen King reigning in the heart of humanity.

vn
Now we must inevitably ask whether this coming
through the Holy Spirit satisfies all the words of
Christ about His second coming to judge the world.
Does it justify the words which Christians have been
saying for centuries in the creed? A good many
people would feel that, inspiring as the thought is, it
is incomplete.

106 THE LIGHT WITHIN
In considering an answer to this question we
should remember that the Evangehsts as weU as all
other early Christians repeated words of our Lord
which they did not thoroughly understand. The fact
that the Gospel records cannot be altogether har
monized is a tribute to the effort of the writers to
put down the words of Christ as they beheved them,
whether or not they could make other records of
undoubted veracity dovetail with them. As, in the
days of our Saviour's earthly hfe, the disciples treas
ured dark sayings in their hearts and found them
clarified by later events, so the disciples of these dis
ciples must have treasured sayings which were obscure
to them in the expectation that Christian experience
would give them meaning. The surprises of the first
century freed men from narrow views: men were not
surprised to receive more than they dared to hope,
much more than they could intelligently conceive.
One other prehminary consideration confronts us.
In speaking of His future coming Christ said distinctly
that He did not know the day: only His Father knew.
This suggests two thoughts: first, our Lord's knowl
edge was confessedly hmited; and secondly, He knew
the places where it was hmited. Inferior character
mingles with what it knows to be facts many asser
tions which are only guesses or assumptions. As
character advances towards perfection it discriminates
between what it knows to be true and what it thinks
might be true or ought to be true. Looking upon
our Saviour only as a perfect human character we
should be obhged to beheve that He scrupulously
defined the boundary between the things He knew
and the things He did not know. This is implied in
His confession that He knew not the day nor the hour

THE FOURTH GOSPEL 107
of His coming, — an implication which many who
see clearly the confession of hmited knowledge are
prone to overlook. Very clever people often, in the
exaltation of narrative, say more than they know;
only very great people stop short when they have
reached the hmits of their knowledge.1 The Man
greatest of aU must have had this human discernment
of the boundaries of knowledge in its supreme form.
Now we have the point of view from which to ex
amine the apocalyptic utterances of the Gospels from
which the article in the Creeds is taken. They have
for their setting the apocalyptic behefs current in
our Lord's day. As He was obhged to use the Mes
sianic idea, inadequate as it was, to explain His own
mission, so He was obhged to use the apocalyptic lan
guage with which much of that idea was clothed. It
was the language which expressed the deepest aspiration
of the time. Of course the Evangelists were steeped
in it. But it is unnecessary to think that they im
ported it into the body of Christ's sayings. There
is no reason to doubt that He freely used the lan
guage, not because it is the clearest for all time, but
because it was the clearest for devout Jews in the
first century. In judging what the words mean we
may notice subsequent history. But we may still
assume that, in view of the thousands upon thou
sands of years during which Christianity may flourish
1 William James was once demonstrating to a class a certain psycho
logical problem. With the help of a diagram, which he drew with chalk,
he was holding the men spell-bound by the amazing clearness of his
explanation. The end was near: only a word or two more seemed neces
sary. Then he stopped, and sat down. "That," he said, "is as far as I
can see." An ordinary teacher would have closed his demonstration with
a few vague sentences, perhaps deceiving himself, and in any case allowing
the class to suppose that he understood though they did not understand.

108 THE LIGHT WITHIN
on this earth, we are hving in what will seem to the
future the primitive Church. These words of Christ
about the future may be only partially tested, there
fore, by the history that is now past. The necessary
consequences of what He saw in humanity, and the
necessary consequences of what His inner power and
love were to mean for humanity, must to His knowl
edge have extended far into what for other men would
be the mists of the future. So we must examine the
words and subsequent events with the modest assump
tion that our time is too primitive to tell more than
the beginning of the fulfilment.
Returning then to the apocalyptic passages of the
Gospels, we find our Lord using words current in His
time to warn and encourage His disciples concerning
the days to come. If there were hmits to His own
knowledge, we may be sure that even with the help
of His explanations they could not see what He saw.
The words would naturally be confused in their minds,
and the records bear witness to that confusion; but
equally do they bear witness to the painstaking effort
of the disciples to tell just what they heard Him say.
The task of weighing the words is not easy, but it is
possible to attain an interpretation which cannot be
far from what our Lord meant the words to convey.
There is every reason to believe that He used apoc
alyptic language to describe the fall of Jerusalem, which
was to His insight inevitable, and that very soon.
And there is no reason now to hesitate to say that
He announced that He would quickly come in power
and glory: this was fulfilled in the coming of the Holy
Spirit. The faU of Jerusalem and the coming of the
Holy Spirit were not separated events, but part of an
inconceivably great event. We never can adequately

THE FOURTH GOSPEL 109
gauge what the fall of Jerusalem meant to a Jew. The
shattering of the whole earthly frame could not have
been to him more dreadful. It was as the end of the
world. Every hope was gone. There might be a new
earth; the old earth never could be again. As the
Babylonian Captivity was a God-given opportunity
to find the God of the depths, to learn to lean on the
support of the unseen and the eternal, so the destruc
tion of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. was the God-given oppor
tunity to rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to
be fiUed with the Holy Spirit, to allow the Holy
Spirit to lead the disciples to the conquest of the world.
Before this there was the orientation towards the
earthly Jerusalem. Now the Jerusalem in the clouds
of heaven beckoned them. Filled with the Holy Ghost
they saw it shining above the wilderness of Britain,
above the corruption of Corinth, above the worldliness
of Rome. The Holy Spirit, always eager to comfort
them, found them bereft of their dear home, Jerusalem.
In their utter misery and desolation, they flung wide
the doors of their hearts, and the Holy Ghost came
in anew to be to them what Jerusalem could never be.
Is this then all? It certainly is not all. The early
Church longed for the vision of the Face of Jesus:
and for this vision the saints stiU long. They know
the comfort of the Holy Spirit; they know that through
the Spirit the Lord Christ is with them. But they
desire the privilege which was shared by Mary and
Peter and Martha and John: they would hear His
voice, they would look into the love of His eyes, they
would feel His hand on their bowed heads. Even if
we think this less than the invisible presence, we know
that the wish for it is part of a rational hope. And it
is certainly part of our Saviour's promise. However

no THE LIGHT WITHIN
we may translate the apocalyptic utterance, we dis
cern in it this assurance of a recognizable presence.
Exactly where we shall thus meet Him is not defined.
It is a renovated hfe rather than a renovated earth
that looms before us in the vision. It seems quite
immaterial where it is to be hved. "Upon the clouds
of heaven," is the phrase which our Saviour used,
and it is a phrase which opens the imagination. As we
learn the infinite reaches of the space about us filled
with worlds, we dare not confine aU the scenes of hfe
to our small planet. It is a coming to us, not to our
earth, which is promised. He shall judge things, but
He judges souls first of all.
For most people it is a heavenly, rather than an
earthly, dream which enthrals them. The Advent
hymns cling to the narrower interpretation of apoc
alyptic pictures, but the most popular hymns see the
fulfilment in a somewhat different way. For instance,
a well-known children's hymn, popular in spite of its
lack of poetry, bears witness:
"I wish that His hands had been placed on my head,
That His arm had been thrown around me,
And that I might have seen His kind look when He said,
'Let the little ones come unto Me.'
"Yet still to His footstool in prayer I may go,
And ask for a share in His love;
And if I thus earnestly seek Him below,
I shall see Him and hear Him above,
"In that beautiful place He has gone to prepare
For all who are washed and forgiven;
And many dear children shall be with Him there,
For 'of such is the kingdom of heaven.'"
Nor it is only the emotional Christian who has
identified the Second Coming with the departing of the

THE FOURTH GOSPEL m
individual Christian, through the gate of death, "to
be with the Lord." One could hardly expect to find
a more dogmatic Christian than Calvin, so that his
testimony is impressive. When Calvin knew that
death was near, he persisted in continual work. Urged
to rest, he explained, "Would you that the Lord
should find me idle when He comes?" Even for
Calvin, the coming of the Lord was timed for Calvin's
own death.
The highest and the essential conception hid within
the apocalyptic words of our Lord is the firm announce
ment that God's cause is ultimately to triumph. The
whole universe is His, and He shall bring it all to His
goal. The coming of Christ again is essential to the
attainment of this goal: for He is not only the love
of the Father; He is also the victory of mankind.
He came "in a little while," through the Holy Spirit.
He not only leads humanity by the conquest of His
earthly hfe, but is in humanity, — spiritually, most
really, — to bring with Himself the whole mass of
humanity to the goal, to the judgment-seat of His
own ideal for it, to the Great Day of God's Complete
Victory. That is what we mean first of all when we
declare our belief in the closing clause of the second
paragraph of the Creed. The other thoughts of which
I have spoken are included, but this is the inspiration
of them aU, the thought which brings the history of
Christ to its chmax.
The interpretation which the Fourth Gospel puts
upon the coming of the Holy Spirit is then not a dim
inution of the Christian expectation of the ages. No
Christian hope which has in it any vitality can ever
become less with the multiplying of experience and
knowledge. The erudition which can seem to reduce

112 THE LIGHT WITHIN
the content of behef is not founded upon truth. For
the best of the past must always, with the richness of
life, merge itself into an increasingly glorious future
of faith. The best is always yet to be. The kingdom
comes not with observation. Its ascendency consists in
its perpetual growth. The coming of our Lord is an
eternal coming; now through the Holy Spirit, and at
last through a revelation of God completely to an ever
lasting triumph.
AU these anticipations must have their proper place.
Nevertheless the last word of the New Testament as
shown in the Fourth Gospel is that Christ's weU-
understood promise was literally fulfiUed. He did come
again in the lifetime of His apostles as He said. He
came in glory and in power through the Holy Spirit
of God.

VIII
A THOUSAND CHRISTIAN YEARS

CHRISTIAN history is part of the New Testa
ment, for it is the best commentary on the New
Testament. There is in the Bible the beginning of
reflection on the unique revelations of the first century,
but it is only the beginning. There were profound
facts of Christian experience which the later years
were bound to systematize if they could. And the
meaning which a growing theology and tradition
ascribed to the Gospel facts must be reverently in
spected. For this meaning was obhged to meet the
requirements of experience; and we cannot safely
judge the New Testament without learning what good
Christians in succeeding centuries made of it. The
modern tendency to read the New Testament as if
no people had hved and reflected from the time of its
writing until now is not sane.
The Johannine saying of Christ about the Holy
Spirit, "He shall guide you into all truth," x makes
the Spirit the Revealer continuing the revelation of
the Son. There are events in the human life of the
Holy Spirit as truly as there are events in the human
hfe of the Son of God. These events are partly in
the realm of what for convenience we call doctrine,
partly in the realm of action. It is my purpose in
this chapter to glance at the course of the first thou-
1 St. John xvi, 13.

ii4 THE LIGHT WITHIN
sand years of history after the days of St. John to dis
cover, first, what the Holy Spirit revealed in them of
Himself; and, secondly, to see, so far as we can,
what in this time He did for the world.

n
The doctrine of the Church is based on the im
mediate experience of Christian people at the times
when the various doctrines were enunciated, this ex
perience being both tested and stimulated by reflection
upon the experience recorded in the Bible, and by
what seemed to men the inevitable inferences from this
past authoritative experience. In most cases doc
trines were set forth as the result of controversy.
When scholars and saints, and certain folk who were
neither, disagreed about the significance of vital Biblical
experience, decision was forced upon the Church.
Whether it is better to go on living from day to day,
using the Gospel facts as we can apply them practi
cally, or to build up a philosophy to govern our acts,
was not an alternative within the power of the Church
of the early Christian centuries. The Church could
not choose. The necessity of making doctrines was
thrust upon it. We make disparaging remarks about
the bickering and hate which these discussions, and the
Councils resulting, engendered. We may not excuse
the bad feeling; but we may explain that the dis
putants were in deadly earnest. And there is a higher,
even a heavenly, side to the whole doctrinal process:
we may venture to beheve that the Holy Spirit was
demanding that the world, helped by His gracious
power all through the ages, should at length come to
know Him, to understand Him.

A THOUSAND YEARS 115
We now know that before the middle of the second
century, in the Baptismal Creed of Rome (which is
the foundation of what we call the Apostles' Creed),
Christians were declaring their belief in the Holy
Spirit, just as they declared their behef in the Father
and in the Son. Early hymns bear the same witness.
But until the third century no creed or hymn went
so far as to assert the relationship of the Spirit to the
Father and to the Son. In the fragments of surviving
hterature there was a similar reserve, though there
were various tendencies appearing; giving Him a
third and subordinate place in a Sacred Trinity,1 or
calling Him the Servant of the Son,2 or identifying
Him with the Son,3 or saying that He prepares man
for the Son.4 When the Arian controversy began,
attention was centred upon the relation of the Son to
the Father, and the creed set forth at Nicaea (325)
stopped abruptly after the words, "And in the Holy
Spirit." Athanasius, who had been the champion of
what we now caU the Nicene doctrine of the Son, was
again the chief antagonist of the Arians when they
maintained (in 359) that the Holy Spirit is a crea
ture. The creed set forth at the Council of Constan
tinople (381), and afterwards confirmed at the Council
of Chalcedon (451), added to the words "Holy Spirit,"
this phrase: "the Lord, the hfegiver, that proceedeth
from the Father, that with the Father and the Son
is together worshipped and together glorified; Who
1 Justin Martyr, Dialogue ivith Trypho, ch. cxvi: "the angel of God, i.e.,
the Power of God sent to us through Jesus Christ."
2 Tatian, To the Greeks, ch. xiii: " the minister of the suffering God."
3 Aristides, Apology, 15: "the Son of God . . . having come down from
heaven in the Holy Spirit."
4 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, bk. iv, ch. xx, §5: "Spirit truly pre
paring man in the Son of God, and the Son leading him to the Father."

n6 THE LIGHT WITHIN
spake by the Prophets." Scholars note the care of
the framers of this clause not to go beyond the
words of the New Testament. But the interpretation
placed upon the words was unequivocal. The supple
mentary council which met at Constantinople in 382
sent out a letter to certain Western bishops assembled
in Rome; in this letter are these words: "This is
the faith which ought to be sufficient for you, for us,
for all who wrest not the word of the true faith . . .
that teaches us to believe in the Name of the Father,
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. According to this
faith there is one Godhead, Power, and Substance of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;
the dignity being equal, and the majesty being equal
in three perfect Essences and three perfect Persons.
Thus there is neither room for the heresy of Sabelhus
by the confusion of the Essences or destruction of the
Individualities . . . which divides the substance, the
nature, and the Godhead, and superinduces on the un
created, consubstantial, and coeternal Trinity a nature
posterior, created, and of different substance." x All
orthodox theologians of this period are fixed in their
belief that the Spirit is not a temporary expression of
God's hfe, but "a timeless interior relation in God."
By the end of the fourth century the Church, as
governed by its councils and by its greatest thinkers,
was sure of two deductions from the words of the
New Testament, especially in the Pauhne Epistles and
the Fourth Gospel: first, that the Holy Spirit is divine;
and, secondly, that the Holy Spirit is equal to the
Father and also to the Son in the Perfect Unity of
God. The only other doctrine to which I shall refer is
1 Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, bk. v, ch. ix, ed. Schaff.

A THOUSAND YEARS 117
that which is indicated by the word "procession."
CarefuUy basing their words on Scripture the Fathers
said that the divine Essence in the Son and in the
Spirit is eternaUy derived from the Father. In the
creed constructed at Nicaea and Constantinople it is
declared that the Son is begotten of the Father, and
that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. In
theological language it was said that the Son is de
rived from the Father by generation; the Spirit, by
procession. More and more, thinkers said that though
the Son was derived from the Father only, the Spirit
was derived from the Father through the Son; though
some beheved that, in spite of authority for this in
the Fourth Gospel, they must guard the unity of
God by making the Father only the sender of the
Spirit. Upon this problem the great Augustine gave
many years of thought, and his conclusion was that
the Father and the Son are the common Source of the
Spirit. "He is Their common life," he preached; "by
That then which is the bond of communion between
the Father and the Son, it is Their pleasure that we
should have communion both among ourselves and with
Them, and to gather us together in one by that same
Gift, which One they both have, that is, by the Holy
Spirit, at once God and the Gift of God. ... So then
the Father is Himself the True Origin to the Son,
who is the Truth, and the Son is the Truth, originat
ing from the True Father, and the Holy Spirit is
Goodness, shed abroad from the Good Father and the
Good Son."1 Of course the Scriptural strength of his
argument rested on the Fourth' Gospel, in which our
Lord sometimes said that He would pray the Father,
and the Father would send to the disciples another
1 Sermon xxi [}xx. Ben.], § 18., ed. Schaff.

118 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Comforter,1 and sometimes said that He himself would
send the Comforter.2 Augustine appreciated the necess
ity felt by other theologians, both earher and later, to
guard the central source of hfe in the Godhead, and he
explained that he did this by reminding the Church
that the Father and the Son are one in substance. The
Eastern thinkers, though willing to say that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, were
not wiUing to say that He proceeds from the Father
and the Son. When therefore Western thought became
so saturated with Augustine's reasoning that it added
Filioque to the clause in the Creed of Nicaea and Con
stantinople, the change seemed to the Church of the
East so vital that the Church of the West and the
Church of the East feU apart. It is the general
opinion of historians that, if per filium had been added
instead of filioque, Greeks and Latins would have alike
subscribed to it.8 in
Let us now try to see how these far-away doctrines
touch our own experience or our own conception of
necessary ideas. How do these explanations of the
Fathers and the CouncUs satisfy our intuitions of what
the Holy Ghost is to us, and of what we conceive the
Holy Spirit is in the life of God?
(i) What we seek in our highest moments is a real
and direct companionship with God. We desire know-
1 St. John xiv, 16, 26.
2 St. John xvi, 7.
s This is borne out by a reference to John of Damascus, the last great
theologian of the Eastern Church (at the beginning of the eighth century).
He declared that though the Holy Spirit is of the Son, He is not from the
Son. Further, being from the Father, He rests in the Son, and therefore
proceeds to man through the Son. See De Fide Orth. i, 8, 12, 13.

A THOUSAND YEARS 119
ledge of His character, and therefore it is vitally im
portant for us to be sure that we may rely wholly
upon the revelation of God's character in Jesus Christ.
We wish to know in our discouragement and panic if
God forgives and helps and strengthens as Jesus for
gave and helped and made men strong. We ask if
God's attitude towards us is exactly the attitude of
Jesus towards the men of His day. His authority was
obviously beyond that of scribes, or even of prophets:
was it a completely divine authority? Could one
rest in it? The question of Nicaea was not a far-away
theological theory; it was an exceedingly practical
problem. So when men were assured through the
CouncU that the Son is not merely of like nature,
but of the same nature, with the Father, they
felt secure in the words, "Come unto me, . . . and
I will give you rest." They were secure in the
love of the Father. The Christian world as a whole
is today confident in God's love: we forget, ungrate
fully, by what arduous steps that confidence was
attained. But even this did not satisfy men at that time, nor
does it satisfy us. We long for direct relationship.
We demand some way by which we may speak to the
God of Love, and be assured that He hears us. There
is a Voice within us. The Church then as now had
various confident intimations that there is within in
dividuals and the whole community a Spirit, guiding,
guarding, warning, comforting, urging it on to holi
ness and attainment. Who is this Spirit? — a creature
used as God's messenger? — a mere breath from God,
an emanation? Or is this Spirit the Personality — God
Himself? If this Spirit is God Himself, then we can
be in an even more intimate contact with God than

120 THE LIGHT WITHIN
those fortunate men who knew Jesus Christ face to
face. There is no separation of time or place that
can part us from the most loving God. When the
Arians attributed to the Holy Spirit a personahty sep
arate from the personal life of God, they were striking
at the deepest experience of the saints; namely, the
experience that in their contact with the Holy Spirit
they were in contact with the One Only God "think
ing, wiUing, acting, in one of His three eternal spheres
of thought, volition, and activity."
Just here we might find Sabellianism attractive:
we might wonder if God were not sometimes Father,
sometimes Son, sometimes Holy Spirit. A httle later
I shaU speak of this more fully, but now I wish to
speak of that aspect of Sabellianism which attempts
to describe an inner experience. The description is
too poor for the facts. For from Bible times tUl now
devout men have felt that in the Holy Spirit they are
in contact with the Father; and therefore men pray to
the Father. In the same way, from St. Paul's day,
men have spoken of the presence of Christ and the
presence of the Spirit in such a way that it is hard
to teU which thought is uppermost in their minds.
"We, apart from the Spirit," said Athanasius, "are
strange and distant from God, and by the participation
of the Spirit we are knit into the Godhead; so that our
being in the Father is not ours, but is the Spirit's
which is in us and abides in us, while by the true
confession we preserve It in us, John again saying,
'Whosoever shaU confess that Jesus is the Son of God,
God dwelleth in him and he in God'. . . . Since the
Word is in the Father, and the Spirit is given from the
Word, He wills that we should receive the Spirit, that,
when we receive It, thus having the Spirit of the Word

A THOUSAND YEARS 121
which is in the Father, we too may be found on ac
count of the Spirit to become One in the Word, and
through Him in the Father." x
So again Basil of Caesarea, in one of his letters, wrote:
"Since the Spirit is Christ's and of God, as says Paul,
then just as he who lays hold on one end of the chain
pulls the other to him, so he who 'draws the Spirit,'
as says the prophet, by His means draws to him at the
same time both the Son and the Father. And if any
one verily receives the Son, he will hold Him on both
sides, the Son drawing towards him on the one His own
Father, and on the other His own Spirit. For He who
eternally exists in the Father can never be cut off
from the Father, nor can He who worketh all things
by the Spirit ever be disjoined from His own Spirit.
Likewise, moreover, he who receives the Father virtually
receives at the same time both the Son and the Spirit;
for it is in no wise possible to entertain the idea of
severance or division, in such a way as that the Son
should be thought of apart from the Father, or the
Spirit be disjoined from the Son. But the communion
and the distinction apprehended in them are, in a
certain sense, ineffable and inconceivable, the contin
uity of nature being never rent asunder by the dis
tinction of the hypostases, nor the notes of proper
distinction confounded in the community of essence."2
Chrysostom was not a theologian, but he had much to
do with human experience, and his testimony is there
fore valuable. Commenting on two verses in Romans,
in which are the clauses, "If Christ is in you, ... if
the Spirit . . . dwelleth in you," Chrysostom explains:
"Now this the Apostle says, not as affirming that the
1 Third Discourse agamst the Arians, ch. xxv, ed. Schaff.
2 Epistle xxxviii, § 4.

122 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Spirit is Christ, — far from it, — but to show that he
who hath the Spirit not only is caUed Christ's, but
even hath Christ Himself. For it cannot but be that
where the Spirit is, there Christ is also. For where
soever one Person of the Trinity is, there the whole
Trinity is present. For it is undivided in Itself, and
hath a most entire Oneness." x
Sometimes the Fathers came to the very edge of
Sabelhanism, as, for instance, in these words of Marius
Victorinus: "The Holy Ghost is in a certain other
sense Jesus Christ Himself; that is, a hidden Christ,
a Christ within, conversing with souls, teaching these
things, giving understanding, and being generated by
the Father through Christ, and in Christ. . . . Never
theless Christ has His own personal existence, and the
Holy Spirit His, but both are one substance." 2
These sentences of the distant past could be dupli
cated by men of Christian experience in our own age,
notably by Dr. Moberly.3 They are the careful theolog
ical explanation of what the so-called "simple Christian"
has reached by his hfe in the Holy Spirit. He knows
that through the Spirit, He has Christ in his heart;
and he knows also that by the same Spirit he can
cry, "Father." The Holy Spirit is not to him an
individual, as by some tritheistic formula, but He is
"the indivisible Godhead subsisting and operating in
one of the essential relations of His Tripersonal Life." 4
To the ordinary man the most comforting thought is
that through the Holy Spirit he has in himself the
1 On the Epistle to the Romans, Homily xiii, Rom. viii, io f., ed. Schaff .
'Fourth Discourse against the Arians: "Jesum Christum occultum,
interiorem, cum animis fabulantem, docentem ista, intelligentiasque
tribuentem. . . "
3 Atonement and Personality, pp. 154 ff.
1 Professor Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 376.

A THOUSAND YEARS 123
presence of the Incarnate Christ, God made concrete
and thoroughly translated into human terms, — "the
only mode of presence which could be quite absolutely
direct, and primary, and real." x Thus old words fit
the craving of our constant human experience.

IV
This period of constructive theology based upon
personal experience and the experience of the New
Testament did not exhaust its adventure upon ex
planations of our own hves; it boldly, and at the same
time reverently and humbly, tried to tell, so far as
human knowledge and speech can tell, what must be
in the hfe of God. And in the Tripersonal Life of
God it found place for the eternal Personality of the
Holy Spirit.
The Ancient Church built up its idea of God from
the revelation of the Bible and from what it trusted
that God had revealed to the Church itself, both indi-
viduaUy and collectively. The sufficient assumption
to make men dare to describe God is that God desires
His human children to know Him, as a means to
loving Him. Another conviction, clearly announced
in the Bible, is that God made man in His own image;
and again there is an assumption in the feehng that
thus God could make men His companions, His
friends. Then the Ancient Church, both from revela
tion and from experience, made God the perfect
original of what we see copied not only in individual
man, but in humanity. The mysterious doctrine of
the Trinity stands for this idea of relationship in
God, whereby God can be the unselfish lover, even
1 R. C. Moberly, op. cit., p. 169.

124 THE LIGHT WITHIN
before the world was. The Father loves the Son and
the Son loves the Father, and the Love of both is the
Holy Spirit. As we think the family the unit of
the state rather than the individual, so we see that
the primal unity of the Uncaused Cause of all things
is the perfection of relationship in which Love can have
its complete expression.
A useful method of examining the doctrines of the
past is to test them by the heresies that were in a
sense their foundation; that is, a heresy is most
commonly a half-truth stated without its complement.
Thus it is always best to see if a heresy cannot be
included in some larger doctrine, where the truth in
the heresy will be conserved and only its partialness
and negation will be denied. The two heresies which
throw most light upon the Life of God are Sabellian
ism and Tritheism. This is true, first of all, because
they are the heresies which have most persistently
struggled to the surface, in one form or another, all
through Christian history. Sabellianism makes the
Trinity to vanish in unity, there being only one Per
son who appears to the world now as Father, now
as Son, now as Spirit. And Tritheism is the heresy
which is set far in the other extreme, making the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit three distmct and separate
individuals; so that it might be conceived that the
Father was angry and the loving Son set Himself the
task of appeasing this angry Father.
The strongest way to meet these two heresies is
to hold the two fast together and to let them correct
one another by the light which the truth in one
throws upon the truth in the other. Beginning with
the second, I beheve that we are receding from the
recent tendency to explain that our modern word

A THOUSAND YEARS 125
"person" is too strong a word to translate the cor
responding term in the ancient doctrine. We are de
fining person, more and more, not as an end in itself,
but as an opportunity for relationship, for a larger
end whose hmits we do not yet see, an element in
that World-man, the Church Ideal made real, the
composite and present friend of God. The word "per
son " stands less and less for individuahty, as we reach
up through families to kingdoms and republics, to the
Bride of Christ, which is humanity chosen in the
boundless Church to be henceforth the accepted and
accepting friend of God. A httle while ago we thought
that personality might be the inclusive term of both
humanity and the Godhead. Now we know that
there is some elusive and majestic term to be revealed
to men, — perhaps not in this dispensation, — which
shaU tell of the unity that is an end itself, a perfect
and organic whole.
Sabellianism is the crude and unbalanced, but still
justifiable, effort to show that the unity of God is
without distraction. It is, or ought to be, satisfied,
by the theological explanation that in each Person of
the Trinity the other Persons are by Love imphcitly
present. Thus our Saviour declared of the Holy
Spirit, "He shah glorify me: for He shall take of
mine, and shaU shew it unto you."1 The Son had
sought to reveal the Father; the Father glorified the
Son; the Son drew out the affections of the disciples
towards the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit was to
receive from Him who had received all that the Father
had, and was to give it to men. AU human analogies
are confessedly inadequate and therefore may easily
mislead; but I cannot help drawing attention to a
1 St. John xvi, 14.

126 THE LIGHT WITHIN
very fine family relationship where the husband is
always telhng his friends the nobihty of his wife and
his son, that these friends may love them in him, and
not himself alone; where the wife is always telhng her
friends of the nobihty of her husband and her son,
that her friends too may never separate her hfe from
those who are bone of her bone, soul of her soul; and
where the son is telhng those who are his chosen, what
is the nobihty of his parents, that his friends too may
see his hfe and his parents' lives as one in him. Or,
again, we may think of the lover who was not admitted
to his beloved, till, when asked who was at the door,
he could answer, "I am thou." Now if we return to
the hypothesis that God made the world that He
might love man, and man might love Him, then we
may, in this rough fashion, ask if it may not be as if
the "Persons" in God's Unity each longed that man
should love the Others rather than Himself al<me.
What we find dimly reflected in the most nearly per
fect human relationship seems to have its originating
cause in that relationship which is symbolized by the
words: "This is my beloved Son: hear him;"1 "My
Father is greater than I;"2 "It is expedient that I
go away; for if I depart, I will send the Comforter
unto you." 3 And we know by history and our own ex
perience that the Spirit, even as the Father and the Son,
has been turning the love of men not first to Himself.
How, through Him, has humanity's love been turned
to the Incarnate Christ! And it was St. Paul who,
out of his experience, said that the Holy Spirit strives
with our spirits, making us say, "Father."4 It is
hke the story of a beautiful mother teaching her child
1 5/. Mark ix, 9. » St. John xvi, 7.
2 St. John xiv, 28. * Gal. iv, 6; Rom. viii, 26.

A THOUSAND YEARS 127
to pray to the Father in heaven; or it is like the
same mother urging her child to ask the earthly
father for some earthly favour, because, to ask and to
receive it, will bind the love of her child more strongly
to the father than to herself.
And thus we come to the reason (which is both
human and divine), why the Persons of the Trinity
cannot be separated. Because Each is perfect love,
Each is filled with the hfe of the Others. The Tran
scendent Father and He who is at once the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world and the Christ
of a few years in Palestine are both completely present
in the Spirit as He besieges our hearts. This gives us
aU for which Sabellianism was striving; there is no
word of a tender Son turning away the anger of a
hard Father; there is only the music of an ineffable
Love passing aU imagining. It is a unity not bare
and sUent, but rich and vocal. It is the unity and
the love of a Being more than personal, in which
personality is only part, however great in itself; and
when the Name is found it will be a name to which
humanity in its unity may aspire to climb in its solid,
aU-inclusive effort to be the friend of God.

WhUe this contemplation of the Person and in
fluence of the Holy Spirit was going on in the first
thousand years of Christian history, at least in the
earher part of this period, there were outward events
in the hfe of the Spirit. These were chiefly manifest
in the lives of individuals and in the corporate life
of the Church.
A. The acknowledged power of the Holy Spirit in

128 THE LIGHT WITHIN
the individual life can be followed only faintly. For
the very highest order of sainthood, normal and thorough
and modest, is apt to have no chronicler. One re
members the picturesque story of Leonides, the devout
father in Alexandria, who went each night to the
bedside of his little sleeping son and kissed his breast,
because he knew it to be the temple of the Holy
Ghost: this child was Origen, through whom came at
length some of the most spiritual of theological teach
ing. The other example that instantly comes to mind
is that of Augustine. His submission to the Holy
Spirit was not through the gradual obedience of
childhood, but by a sudden conversion in the ma
turity of a shameful manhood. In his later exposi
tions of doctrine and experience he allowed practically
no place for the individual human will; if a man
was good, Augustine attributed the whole goodness
to the grace of God conveyed through the Holy
Spirit. This was not due to his fiery hostility to
Pelagianism, it was but due to his own rescue from
a life of sin. When a man is as old as Augustine was,
it is only as by a miracle that firmly-fixed habits can
be rooted up and others planted in their place. The
power of the Holy Spirit to change men utterly is
illustrated by the twice-born men all through Christian
history; but Augustine is the most satisfactory type
of this whole array of saints won from vicious living.
And the interest in Augustine is intensified by the
fact that he was mentally equipped to describe the
process of the great change in his heart. "The love
of God," he quoted in his Confessions, "is shed abroad
in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto
us."1 Again he said in one of his sermons, "We
1 Op. cit., § xiii, 31 : Rom. v, 5.

A THOUSAND YEARS 129
must believe that the first blessing of God's goodness
in the Holy Ghost is the remission of sins in regenera
tion." J Still again, speaking of holiness, he said:
"Perfect love is perfect holiness. ... It is certainly
not 'shed abroad in our hearts' by any energies . . .
within us, but 'by the Holy Ghost which is given
unto us,' and which both helps our infirmity and
cooperates with our strength." 2
It would be possible to give a long list of saints
who would follow Augustine in ascribing their wonder
ful turning from sin towards hohness and strength
to the Holy Spirit received in their inmost hves. But
Origen, as an example of normal growth, and Augus
tine, as an example of violent conversion, must suffice
as types of the most astonishing events in the life of
the Spirit, — the power to do for men what the Incar
nate Christ in the days of His flesh did for Zacchasus
and the Magdalen.
The saints of this period did not attempt to say
that this power of the Holy Spirit was new in the
Christian dispensation. Many of the Fathers bear
their testimony to the conviction of the Church that
the One Holy Spirit guided the great men of the Old
Testament as He guided the great men of the New
Testament. "The Spirit who inspired the Prophets,"
said Ambrose, "is the same Comforter who descended
upon the Apostles." 3 It was the revelation of Jesus
Christ which caused men to open their hves to the
influence of the Holy Spirit to a degree never known
before.4
1 Sermon xxi [lxx. Ben.], § 19, ed. Schaff.
2 On Nature and Grace, ch. Ixxxiv, ed. Schaff.
8 On the Holy Spirit, I, iv, 55. Cf. 61.
'E.g., Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. iv, 16: "It is the Holy Spirit that
knows the mysteries, searching all things, even the depths of God; that

I3o THE LIGHT WITHIN
B. From individuals I turn to the corporate life
of the Church, and ask in what ways the power of
the Holy Spirit was manifest. Without attempting
to be in any sense exhaustive, I select these five mani
festations: (i) the growth of the ministry; (2) the
gradual growth of the Christian Year as a means of
keeping the Church mindful of the earthly life of
Jesus Christ; (3) making the Sacraments the medium
of divine strength; (4) the General CouncUs; (5) the
inclusion and absorption of the pagan rehgious life of
the empire into Christianity.
(1) The time is past when attempts were made to
show that, in the forty days during which our Lord
was appearing to His disciples after His resurrection,
He defined for them a system of Church pohty. We
are aU inclined now to beheve that He did something
much more comprehensive: He breathed on them,
and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." The con
clusive reason for beheving that Christ left these
matters of organization to the Holy Spirit and His
disciples is that we know that the Apostles had no
previous information how they should meet the inevi
table question of the relation of the Gentiles to Juda
ism within Christianity. It is not a scandal but a
sign of the divine Presence that the Christian minis
try developed in the early Church, as the Church
grew and as new needs arose. It is not the less
authoritative because the plan for it was not given
at the beginning. Christ, through the Holy Spirit,
was to be in the Church more effectively than when
He was seen in Gahlee and Jerusalem, and the minis-
descended on the Lord Jesus Christ in the form of a dove; that wrought
in the Law and Prophets; that even now seals thy soul at the time of
Baptism. . . ."

A THOUSAND YEARS 131
try that grew within a few years into the institution,
which is essentially as we now know it, is as truly
His as if we had its announcement in the Gospel
passages which could be indubitably assigned to the
document called Q by scholars. The apostles, proph
ets, evangehsts, pastors, and teachers, mentioned by
St. Paul, "for the work of the ministry," J were de
veloped, as itinerant missionaries were less in demand,
and as need for firmer organization appeared, into
local church officers, presbyter-bishops, and deacons,
clearly defined in the Pastoral Epistles.2 When we
reach Ignatius (about 115) we find the plea for order
given in the words, "Give heed to the bishop, and
to the presbytery and deacons." 3 Ignatius beheved
himself a prophet, and it is clear from the Didache
(about 140) that "apostles" and "prophets" were
the names of certain officers in the Church. If the
prophets settled down in a community to preside over
the Church there they were caUed "high priests."4
AU these terms show an organization in its gradual
formation. Out of the various officers those were to
survive who could best serve the spiritual hfe of the
Church; or, putting the matter in another way, the
Holy Spirit was to choose those officers who could
best guide the hfe of the Church. And so the tem
perate words of the Enghsh Ordinal are justified, "It is
evident unto all men dihgently reading holy Scripture
and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time
there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's
Church; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons."
The function of a bishop was graduaUy enlarged.
He became the chief clergyman in the local com-
1 Ephesians iv, ii, 12. 'To the PhUadelphicms, vii.
' 1 Timothy iii, v, etc. ' Didache xiii, 3.

132 THE LIGHT WITHIN
munity, and then the head of what we now caU a
diocese. So we reach what is caUed the monarchical
episcopate. When conventions could not conveniently
be assembled from the whole area of the Church,
bishops were selected to be metropolitans or popes
of districts; and when, owing to the Mohammedan
invasions in the East and the barbarian invasions in
the West, the Church seemed to be in perU of being
submerged with a drowning civilization, then one
metropohtan or pope, the Bishop of Rome, came to
have increased power, whereby, on Christmas-day,
800, he crowned the barbarian Emperor, Charle
magne, in St. Peter's, Rome. It was a power, both
temporal and spiritual, far removed from the simple
jurisdiction exercised by the Apostle Peter. But it
was, one is obhged to say, a development which, so
far as human knowledge can see, saved the Church
when times were troubled; and the development must
have been the act of the Holy Spirit. The only con
dition to such an interpretation to the rise of the
papacy is the frank admission that, when the need
for such centralized authority was past, and when,
moreover, it had been notoriously abused by people
who sought and gained the office for ambition and
not for service, then it was the compulsion of the
same Holy Spirit which shattered Western Christen
dom and left this magnificent Bishop of Rome with
only the shell of his mediaeval office: the real power
had been given to other agencies.
In aU the ancient forms of ordination which have
come down to us the laying on of hands was accom
panied with prayer for the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit upon the person who was being ordained. The
laying on of hands was not thought important, being

A THOUSAND YEARS 133
only the Apostohc outward accompaniment of the
prayer: it was the prayer of faith which was essential.1
And it was the confidence that the Holy Spirit was
given which made the clergy and people beheve that
the man was truly ordained. "We stretch forth the
hand, O Lord God of the heavens, . . . upon this
man," is the form prescribed in the Sacramentary
of Serapion for the ordination of a presbyter, "and
beseech thee that the Spirit of truth may dwell (or
settle) upon him. Give him the grace of pru'dence
and knowledge and a good heart. Let a divine Spirit
come to be in him that he may be able to be a steward
of thy people and an ambassador of thy divine oracles.
. . . " 2 The same Sacramentary gives similar words
for the ordering of a deacon and the consecration of a
bishop. Another collection of liturgical forms, The
Testament of our Lord (about 350), prescribes these
words for the ordination of a presbyter, "Make him
worthy, being filled with thy wisdom and thy hidden
mysteries, to feed thy people in holiness of heart, pure
and true; praising, lauding, giving thanks; . . . labour
ing with cheerfulness and patience to be a vessel of
thy Holy Spirit; having and bearing always the Cross
of thy Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ." 3
It is safe to say that the ministry of the Church is
the creation of the Holy Spirit, adapted to varying
conditions as need arises, informed by a present
power and not merely by a past authority, and find
ing its title to continuity, not by exactness of out-
1 See Augustine, Against the Donatists, Book III, Chap. XVI (21).
2 Bishop Serapion's Prayer Book, tr. John Wordsworth, S.P.C.K. ed.,
p. 73. This is an Egyptian Pontifical, dating about the middle of the
fourth century. Serapion was a friend of Athanasius.
3 The Testament of our Lord, tr. from the Syriac, J. Cooper, p. 91.

134 THE LIGHT WITHIN
ward form, but by its abihty to subserve the purpose
of the Eternal Spirit of God.
(2) One of the ways in which the Holy Spirit has
taken the things of the Son and has shown them to
the world has been by creating in the Church, by a
gradual process, the Christian Year. It began by the
keeping of Sunday as the Lord's Day, the weekly
commemoration of Christ's resurrection. The first
annual commemoration of which we have any record
was the Pascha, signifying at first only the day of the
Crucifixion, then this day and the two days foUowing,
and only later, Easter.1 The fact that the first disciples
were Hebrews made it natural that the Passover should
instantly have a new content. How early the custom
began we do not know> but by the middle of the
second century, the Christian Pascha was everywhere
a recognized institution of the Church. Asia and
Rome differed on the day to be kept, and a mighty
controversy surged over the Church. The Asiatics
kept the day of the month, the Roman Church kept
Friday, that Easter might always be on the Lord's
Day. Those who kept the fourteenth day of the
moon, whatever day it might be in the week, were
called "Quartodecimans." Even when Sunday was
agreed upon, the Churches, — in Alexandria and
Rome, for instance, — could not agree upon which
Sunday, owing to different methods of calculating
Easter, the festival should be. These controversies were
not always edifying, but they show how much men
cared about remembering our Lord's life. Early in
the fourth century we know that December 25 was
being kept in the West as our Saviour's Birthday;
while the East kept January 6 as the day both of
1 J. Dowden, The Church Year and Kalendar, pp. 104 ff.

A THOUSAND YEARS 135
His birth and of His baptism. When the customs of
the East and the West came more closely together,
the West, without forgetting the baptism, kept Jan
uary 6 especially in memory of the visit of the Magi.
Holy Week, — or the Great Week, as it is called in
the East, — from Palm Sunday to the Great Sabbath,
was developed from the third to the fifth century.
It was widely customary to receive the Holy Com
munion on the evening of Thursday in the Great
Week in memory of its institution, as we know from
the synodal declaration of Carthage in 397,1 and from
St. Augustine.2 The forty days of fasting, called
Quadragesima, were already being observed in the
fourth century. The Ascension was also being kept
in the fourth century, the festival being celebrated
outside the cities in accordance with St. Luke xxiv, 50.
Towards the close of the fourth century a record from
Jerusalem testifies that February 14 (the fortieth day
after January 6) was set apart to commemorate the
Presentation of Christ in the Temple.3 It was later
kept on February 2 and called the Purification, thus
connecting it with the hfe of the Virgin. But for
many years it was caUed Hypapante (the "Meeting"
of Simeon and the Infant Saviour) and the emphasis
was wholly upon an event in our Lord's hfe. (Even
the Church of Rome seemingly had no festival of the
Virgin before the seventh century.4) The Transfig
uration was marked in the East during the eighth
century, and was assigned to August 6. Pentecost
was at first an inclusive term for the fifty days after
1 Concil. Carthag. iii, c. 29.
2 Ep. liv, To Januarius, ch. vii.
8 J. Dowden, op. cit., pp. 47 f.
4 Mgr. L. Duchesne, Origines du Culte Chritien, Eng. tr. McClure, p. 270.

i36 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Easter, but in the latter part of the fourth century
it was identified with the day of the gift of the Holy
Spirit in Jerusalem. Thus by a definite institution of
the Church the lessons gained in the former part of
the Christian Year were spirituahzed, and men were
made to feel that it is the present Christ revealed
and made near by the Holy Spirit whom men must
seek, and not merely a Christ of the past, however
devoutly and thankfuUy remembered.
The observance of the Christian Year seems a minor
device in keeping Christ before men's minds; but from
a knowledge of the past, as one derives it in sermons,
and from a present experience, it may be quite defi
nitely asserted that, through this constant reminder,
the Holy Spirit has guided the minds of those who
are set to teach, and also the minds of those who are
taught, to give a just proportion to the varied acts
and words of Jesus Christ. The Christian Year may
be cahed a creative event in the hfe of the Holy
Spirit. (3) The Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's
Supper are also vivid reminders of the Lord Jesus.
Though He himself founded them, the Ancient Church
taught insistently that it was by the Holy Spirit that
they became means of grace. One of the acts of the
Holy Spirit has been to keep the Church obedient
to these outward forms of loyalty to Christ, making
the Church beheve, in spite of all that scholars may
say from time to time, that our Saviour certainly
intended these institutions to be gratefuUy kept by
those who foUowed Him.
In the Book of the Acts there are three records
which are important in judging the relation of the
gift of the Holy Spirit to the Sacrament of Baptism:

A THOUSAND YEARS 137
first, the baptism of converts in Samaria, who did not
receive the gift of the Spirit at their baptism;1 sec
ondly, the baptism of the household of Cornehus, who
received the Holy Spirit before they were baptized
with water; 2 and, thirdly, the baptisms on Pentecost3
and the baptism of Saul of Tarsus,4 who received
baptism and the gift of the Spirit simultaneously.
The thinkers of the Early Church reflected on these
Scriptural instances, and they also -watched the lives
of people whom they knew in their own day.
The Orders of Service contained prayers invoking
the presence of the Holy Spirit; for example, this
prayer, "King and Lord of aU things, ... see now
from heaven and look upon these waters and fill them
with Holy Spirit." 5 There was the expected inclina
tion among the unlearned to make Baptism a magical
rite, but the leaders protested. "There are many,"
said Ambrose, "who because we are baptized with
water and the Spirit, think that there is no difference
in the offices of water and the Spirit, and therefore
think that they do not differ in nature. Nor do they
observe that we are buried in the element of water
that we may rise again renewed by the Spirit. For
in the water is the representation of death, in the
Spirit is the pledge of hfe, that the body of sin may
die through the water, which encloses the body as it
were in a kind of tomb, that we, by the power of
the Spirit, may be renewed from the death of sin,
being born again in God." 6 What is now called Con
firmation was also associated with Baptism, and was
1 Acts viii, 14, 16. 3 Acts ii, 38.
2 Acts x, 47. 4 Acts ix, 17.
6 Bishop Serapion's Prayer Book, Baptismal Prayers, S.P.C.K. ed.,
p. 68. 6 On the Holy Spirit, I, vi, ed. Schaff.

138 THE LIGHT WITHIN
apparently part of Baptism itself. In the East
Confirmation followed (and stiU foUows) Baptism im
mediately, being administered by the presbyter. In
the West, Confirmation was administered by the
bishop, and was administered immediately after Bap
tism if the candidate was an adult. And there was
one other thought, especiaUy impressed by CyrU of
Jerusalem, showing that no merely outward act could
suffice: "When thou art come before the bishops or
presbyters or deacons," he taught, "approach the
minister of Baptism, but approaching, think not of
the face of him thou seest, but remember this Holy
Spirit of whom we are now speaking. For He is
present in readiness to seal thy soul. ... If thou
play the hypocrite, though men baptize thee now,
the Holy Spirit wiU not baptize thee. But if thou
approach with faith, though men minister in what is
seen, the Holy Spirit bestows that which is unseen. . . .
If thou beheve, thou shalt not only receive remission
of sins, but also do things which pass man's power."1
In the same way one who received the Holy Spirit at
the time of Baptism might not retain His presence,
unless the temple of a man's hfe be kept meet for the
home of the Spirit. Origen, commenting on Genesis
vi, 3, wrote, "The Spirit of God is taken away from
all who are unworthy." 2
Normally the Church expected a man who submitted,
loyally and enthusiastically, to a command of Christ,
to receive the gift of the Spirit; for the obvious and
natural reason that if a man opens his heart wide in
loving response to the wish of any one, that person's
spirit inevitably enters. We see this sacramental
1 Catechetical Lectures, XXVI, 35 ff.
2 De Principiis, bk. I, ch. iii, § 7.

A THOUSAND YEARS 139
act of receiving the spirit of another in every child
who obeys, from a glad love, his father or his mother;
in every student who tries hard to fulfil his great
master's will for him; in every friend who from love
tries to please his friend. Baptism is a definite re
sponse to a definite wish of the Supreme Master and
Friend. And it is as natural for us as for the Early
Church to expect a definite result in the admission of
the divine Presence in a new and exultant certainty.
What this meant in an individual case may best be
shown by a page from Christian experience. Let it
be the testimony of Cyprian, who became Bishop of
Carthage in 248. "I was," he wrote, "held in bonds
by innumerable errors of my previous life and was
so snared by them that I beheved I could not get
free. I yielded to the vices which clung to me, and,
despairing of better things, I hugged my sins as if they
had been household possessions, and stood watch over
them. But after the grime of my past had been
washed off by the water of new birth, and a heavenly
hght, serene and pure, had shone through my recon-
cUed and purified breast, — after I had drunk of the
Holy Spirit, and a second birth had revived and made
me new, — suddenly and marvellously my doubts
began to go, doors once tightly shut began to open,
darkness grew to be hght, the hard became easy,
even what I had thought impossible I found that I
could do. I then saw that what was born of the flesh
and hved in sin was of the earth, and that what the
Holy Spirit had brought to life in me was of God." J
The Baptism of infants shows a somewhat different
experience. Doubtless for a considerable time after
our Lord's earthly hfe, adults only were baptized.
1 Epistle I, To Donatus, 4.

140 THE LIGHT WITHIN
There is no warrant for beheving that He explicitly
told His disciples to baptize httle children. So, here
again, we may find a definite act of the Holy Spirit
in taking up the Saviour's gentle welcome, "Suffer the
httle children to come unto me, and forbid them not:
for of such is the kingdom of God,"1 as the reason why,
when there came to be Christian households and not
simply Christian individuals, infants in those house
holds should be received into the outward and visible
kingdom of God, with full assurance that they too,
through their corporate relationship, received the Holy
Spirit. In one of his letters, Augustine wrote (408):
"The possibihty of regeneration through the office
rendered by the wiU of another, when the child is pre
sented to receive the sacred rite [of Baptism], is the
work exclusively of the Spirit by whom the child
thus presented is regenerated. . . . The regenerating
Spirit is possessed in common both by the parents who
present the child, and by the infant that is presented
. . . ; the will of those who present is useful to the
child." 2 This is an example of what modern thinkers
are showing us daily; namely, the power of environ
ment and heredity to take part in shaping the individ
ual's hfe, so that when we attempt to describe an
individual personality, we are forced to describe his
relationships, the influences seen and unseen which
bear down upon him, enter into him, and are an inte
gral part of him. However we explain or justify infant
Baptism we must in the light of Church experience
ascribe its institution to the guidance of the Holy
Spirit. When we turn to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper
1 St. Mark x, 14.
2 Epistle xcviii, § 2: To Boniface: tr. Cunningham.

A THOUSAND YEARS 141
we find a slightly different history. In the New Testa
ment the Holy Spirit is not once mentioned in con
nection with the Lord's Supper. Nor is there any
distinct evidence during the first three centuries that
the Holy Spirit was ever invoked in the consecration
of the sacred elements.1 In the Sacramentary of Sera
pion the only reference to the Holy Spirit in the
Communion Service is directed to the clergy and
people: "Make us hving men. Give us a Spirit of
hght; . . . give us Holy Spirit, that we may be able
to teU forth and to enunciate thy unspeakable mysteries;
may the Lord Jesus speak in us, and Holy Spirit, and
hymn thee through us."2 The first indication that the
Holy Spirit was invoked upon the elements is shown in
Cyril's Catechetical and Mystagogic Lectures. (Cyril be
came Bishop of Jerusalem in 350, and died, after a
troubled episcopate, in 386.) "We beseech the merci
ful God," he said, "to send forth His Holy Spirit
upon the gifts lying before Him; that He may make
the bread the Body of Christ and the wine the Blood
of Christ; for whatsoever the Holy Spirit has touched,
is surely sanctified and changed." 3 The Eastern
liturgies from this time generally associated the Holy
Spirit with the Holy Communion, until later there was
no exception. In the West there was simply the in
vocation of God.
It is interesting to note here that when Samuel
Seabury was consecrated in Scotland the first Bishop
for America, his Scotch consecrators insisted, as a
condition of his consecration, that he should see that
1 This is the conclusion of one so familiar with early Christian litera
ture as Dr. Swete. See The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 291.
*Op. Cit., p. 61.
3 Catechetical Lectures, xxiii (On the Mysteries v), ed. Schaff.

142 THE LIGHT WITHIN
in the American Communion Office there should be
inserted the Invocation; and it is found today in
the American Book of Common Prayer. The people
pray to the Father, "Vouchsafe to bless and sanctify,
with thy Word and Holy Spirit, these thy gifts and
creatures of bread and wine; that we, receiving them
according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy
institution, in remembrance of his death and passion,
may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood."1
This can hardly be called a "primitive tradition,"
for neither the New Testament nor the Church of the
first three centuries knew it; but it is in harmony with
our Lord's words of institution. Moreover, it is the
safeguard against a material interpretation of the
Sacrament. The life to be communicated is the most
real of all presences, a spiritual presence, not a carnal.
We are asking that as our bodies are fed by the bread
and wine, so our souls may, through the gift of the
Spirit, be fed with the very Life of Christ.2 The
Eastern Church by its liturgy still assumes that Christ
1 Book of Common Prayer, American edition, p. 236.
2 W. R. Huntington, A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer,
p. 54: "The two most noteworthy differences, however, are the omission
from our [American] Prayer Book of the so-called Athanasian Creed, and
the insertion in it of that part of the Consecration Prayer in the Com
munion Office known as the Invocation. The engrafting of this latter
feature we owe to the influence of Bishop Seabury, who by this addition
not only assimilated the language of our liturgy more closely to that of
the ancient formularies of the Oriental Church, but also insured our being
kept reminded of the truly spiritual character of Holy Communion. 'It
is the spirit that quickeneth,' this Invocation seems to say: 'the flesh
profiteth nothing.' Quite in line with this was the alteration made at
the same time in the language of the Catechism. 'The Body and Blood
of Christ,' says the English Book, 'which are verily and indeed taken and
received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper.' 'The Body and Blood of
Christ,' says the American Book, 'which are spiritually taken and received
by the faithful in the Lord's Supper.'"

A THOUSAND YEARS 143
is whoUy present from the beginning of the Service;
the Latin Church came, in time, to teach that Christ
was present physically, by transubstantiation, at a
definite point in the Service.1 The praying for the
gift of the Spirit elevates the whole Service beyond the
reach of a mere carnal and lower interpretation.
The Lord's Supper is in another sense the perpetual
reminder and realization of the work of the Holy Spirit
in the Church, which is the Body of Christ. It is the
bond of love, the visible binding together of the dis
ciples in the one Lord. For the Lord's Supper is not
only a Holy Communion with the Head of the Church,
it is also a Holy Communion of the members of the
1 Cf. Dr. A. V. G. Allen, Christian Institutions, pp. 573 f.: "In this
respect the Greek mystery and the Latin sacrament agree, that they
make the oblation of the consecrated elements the climax of the divine
office. But at this point, also, of their closest resemblance the widest
possible divergence in practice occurs, indicating a radical difference in
the manner of contemplating the eucharistic solemnity. In the Latin
Mass, the priest elevates the elements after their consecration as a symbol
of the sacrifice, an indication of the transubstantiation of the bread and
wine into the body and blood of Christ; this is the moment when the
congregation kneels and worships. In the Eastern Church the most
imposing moment in the service is not that which follows the consecration
of the elements, but is connected with the Great Entrance, when the
congregation fall down in the very path of the priests and worship while
the elements are still unconsecrated and have not yet been placed upon
the altar. The difference is profoundly suggestive. It can only be
explained upon the ground that the real transformation takes place in the
mind of the worshipper, who recognizes in the purpose to consecrate in
formal manner the bread and the wine an antecedent divine action by
which the material gifts of God, the food and drink, reveal the divine
goodness and the divine life in the natural order. Out of this conviction
had grown the sense of the value, the mystic importance of the Lord's
Supper. In this popular reverence paid toward the elements of bread
and wine, while as yet common food, there may be a trace of the earlier
worship which associated them with the body of Christ, before the im
pressive ceremonial had been introduced, transforming the agape into the
mystery of the altar."

144 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Church one with another. Through the ages the
Sacred Feast has been cumbered with discussion and
clouded with definitions. We often reach the greatest
truths by insisting on the simplest interpretation.
However we may explain that the bread and the wine
are sacramental of Christ's presence, we must see that
the act which our Lord commanded is an extremely
simple act. We are not asked to come with wisdom
and understanding; we are asked to come with peni
tence, love, and faith, — quahties from which the
humblest and most ignorant and pitiful are not barred.
"Do this in remembrance of me," is the pathetic and
solemn word of Christ which rings in every ear. It
is loyalty, obedience, love; it is trying to do what we
believe He wished us to do. So we come, high and low,
fairly good and miserably wont to stray, learned and
ignorant, happy and sad; we come as members one
of another; we come asking the Holy Spirit to make
us worthy; we come to be lost in the dear Christ that
we may truly be found in Him. That the Holy Spirit
has kept men in the Church true to this Holy Sacra
ment, through all explanations and no explanations,
is one of the high acts of the Holy Spirit in human
history.1
1 Many readers of the patristic literature of the first seven or eight
centuries have been perplexed by the words spoken of the Sacraments.
They seem out of harmony with the New Testament, and they seem to
contribute all too easily to the materialistic interpretation which was to
be systematized in the Mediaeval Church. For these reasons serious
weight may be given the following words of Dr. Swete, a scholar not only
competent because of his intimate acquaintance with this literature, but
competent also because of the sanity of his judgment: "The whole Sacra
mental life of the Church was seen to proceed from the Spirit of grace.
It was recognized that while visible elements and ministerial actions are
used by Him as effectual signs of His grace, they derive their efficacy from
Him alone, and that it is neither to the minister of the Sacrament nor to

A THOUSAND YEARS 145
(4) Christianity exists both for the individual and
for humanity in its corporate aspect, both for the soul
and for the Kingdom of God. Every man, through
conscience, through prayer, and through sacraments,
has the privilege of immediate approach to God in the
Holy Spirit. The source of authority is immediately
within him, to guide his steps. The Church, through
its early history, was endeavouring to find the ade
quate means of securing the authority of the Holy
Spirit for its corporate problems. For many centuries
the ultimate authority of the Spirit was felt to be
vested in the assembhng of the leaders of the Church
in what were called (Ecumenical Councils. This was
a natural deduction from the New Testament. For
when the Apostohc Church was brought face to face
with its first difficult question there was no attempt to
ask one man to decide it, but "the apostles and pres
byters came together to consider of this matter." 1
And when they had deliberated, they came to a
decision; and this decision they announced with the
introductory words, "It seemed good to the Holy
Ghost and to us." 2 The authority of the Holy Spirit,
the outward visible sign that its great effects are to be ascribed, but to
the Holy Spirit Himself. It is He who sanctifies and seals the soul in
Baptism; who makes the Bread and Cup of the Eucharist to be to the
faithful the Body and Blood of Christ; who endues the ministers of the
Church with the grace of Orders; who through their acts and words blesses
and absolves. The Sacramental teaching of the ancient Church-writers
loses the appearance of exaggeration which attaches to it in the judgment
of many modern believers, when it is viewed in the light of the ancient
doctrine of the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. Men who held that
the Creator Spirit, who is the living Energy of God, dwells in the Holy
Catholic Church and is operative in her ministerial acts, could find no
words adequate to express their sense of the greatness of His work in the
Sacraments. To magnify the Sacraments was to magnify the Divine
Spirit, who lived and wrought in the Body of Christ."
1 Ads xv, 6. 2 Ibid. 28.

146 THE LIGHT WITHIN
so learned and so announced, evidently satisfied the
Church. Synods or councils had been convened before the
fourth century in dioceses and in provinces, but it
was only when the Emperor embraced Christianity
that there was what might be called a Universal
Council. These earlier councils, diocesan or provincial,
were often composed, hke the Apostohc Council, of
others with the bishops. But when the Emperors began
to summon councils they asked only bishops. During
the first thousand years of Christian history there were
eight of these Councils: the first in 325 at Nicasa,
called by Constantine, to unify the Church on the
Nature of the Son; the Second in 381 at Constan
tinople, called by Theodosius to determine the doc
trine of the Holy Spirit; the third in 431 called by
Theodosius the Younger to condemn the Nestorians;
the fourth in 451 at Chalcedon under Marcian, which
asserted the union of the divine and human natures
in Christ; the fifth in 553 at Constantinople under
Justinian, which condemned the doctrines of Origen and
others; the sixth in 681 under Constantine V, to
condemn the Monothelite heresy; the seventh in 787
at Nicaea, in the reign of Irene and her son Constan
tine, to establish the worship of images; and the eighth
in 869 in Constantinople under Basilius and Adrian,
to settle if possible the disputes of the Eastern and
Western Churches, and to expel an intruding patriarch
in Constantinople and restore his rival. From this
outhne it will be seen that the chief business of the
Councils was, so far as the doctrine was concerned,
to decide questions connected with the Person of our
Saviour. The Bible was the chief source to which
appeal was made: but ecclesiastical traditions had a

A THOUSAND YEARS 147
growing authority. When a majority had cast its
vote, that vote was, in matters of faith, held to be the
Voice of the Holy Spirit and was therefore held to be
infallible. In matters of discipUne the action of one
council need not embarrass its successors, — and did
not. The Council held at Constantinople in 381 was
not recognized by the West tiU the sixth century.
The whole Greek Church recognized only seven of
these Councils; and the English Church after the
Reformation recognized only five as having any real
authority. Hooker recognized only four.
To read of these Councils in detail is not wholly
edifying. The Emperors, finding the Empire unwieldy
and prone to faU apart, saw in the Christian Church
the only force strong enough to hold the Empire to
gether. Their object in calling Councils, therefore,
was to force the Church to be at unity in itself that it
might thereby in turn unify the Empire. Sometimes
the Emperor, as Theodosius after the Council at Con
stantinople in 381, used force, and ejected the heretics.
But it was not infrequently an obscure person, like
Athanasius at Nicaea, whose influence outweighed the
power of the Emperor and his favourite bishops. The
Ecumenical Councils have been caUed "the pitched
battles of Church history"; and it was by no means
a foregone conclusion which side would win. An in
teresting test is that in the long war with Arianism,
the faith of Nicaea proved a hving faith; for it throve
under persecution and external failure; whereas, when
the decisive battle was fought at Constantinople, the
Arian forces melted away. Crowds of the Arians
submitted to the orthodox doctrine, and the move
ment was repeated among new converts in the West,
where it finally succumbed. The doctrinal definitions

148 THE LIGHT WITHIN
of the first four Councils became the common property
of even the Churches of the Reformation; and this
general acceptance leads the Church to believe that,
in spite of aU the hard words that justly may be said
about the extremely human elements manifesting
themselves in the Councils, they did indeed become the
medium of the Voice of the Holy Spirit, as the Church
of their day interpreted them.
Men hke Athanasius and Augustine exercised an
influence which the thought of the Church has shown
at every stage, and the influence is not yet exhausted.
But the Councils have also exercised an influence
which cannot be measured. We know that the Holy
Spirit does speak through great geniuses; but we know
< also that He speaks through the earnest consultation
of many minds, in so far as they come together with an
openness of heart and a wish to be led by the highest.
It was a majority vote that decided. Imperial force
seemed often to brood over the dehberations. There
were jealousies and partisanship and ecclesiastical
prejudice; but there were many, we may be sure, who
were first of all Christlike men, men who longed to do
and say what was right, men who prayed for hght
and were wilhng to follow the hght wherever it might
shine, and these men neither Emperors nor scheming
ecclesiastics could influence. Like a third party in the
State they held, one thinks, the balance of power.
While the factions pleaded and threatened, they prayed.
Their minds were not made up beforehand. With
responsibihty they listened to debates, they sifted,
they thought; but, above all, they knocked at the door
of the Divine Spirit, and in accordance with the prom
ise it was opened unto them. We do not need to look
on these ancient Councils as a mechanical means of

A THOUSAND YEARS 149
securing the judgment of the Holy Spirit. By medi
tating upon the Church as we see it today, we can
know what the silent voting of the saints might mean
in the early centuries; we may beheve that by them
the grosser elements, evident to every reader of the
history, were transcended; we may see how the Coun
cils were means of revealing the wisdom of the Holy
Spirit. George TyrreU once said that the Christlike alone
are genuine successors of the Apostles.1 "Could all
these," he went on, "and only these, be united in
(Ecumenical CouncU, there would Christ be in the
midst of them; their utterances and teachings would
be, purely and only, the product of spiritual experience,
undisturbed and unalloyed by the influence of intel
lectual curiosity, or of sacerdotal ambition, or of other
unworthy determinants of doctrinal variation; their
authority would be that of the collective conscience
of humanity . ... In theory, her (Ecumenical Councils
are assemblies of the Saints; in fact, as history shows,
they are nothing of the kind."2 All this is illuminat-
ingly true; but there were some saints in Nicaea, and
Constantinople, and Ephesus, and Chalcedon. There
were old men who had been maimed in persecution,
and their bruises and scars and mutilation were evident
to all. They had suffered for what they beheved the
truth. They were not far from the end. Ecclesias
tical politics and an Emperor's machinations could have
meant nothing to them. They were looking with
far and unworldly gaze, as men strove, and when they
voted, they voted not as bishops, but as humble
servants of Jesus, who sought only to be informed by
1 1 have quoted some of these words in another connection. See p. 12.
2 Essays on Faith and Immortality, pp. 116 f.

150 THE LIGHT WITHIN
His Spirit. Tyrrell's judgment of the conspicuous
people in the Councils is the judgment of all honest
historians, and it cannot safely be challenged. But
the saving minority who were apart from parties on
either side were the real Council. They were two or
three gathered together in Christ's Name, and He was
in the midst of them: through the Holy Spirit they
spoke for Him.
It is important to notice that these Councils which
succeeded in commanding practically universal con
sent from the later Church, were concerned almost
exclusively with the attempt to know the Lord Jesus
Christ. If we may believe with the Early Church
that the Councils were truly guided by the Holy Spirit,
then we have the beautiful fulfilment of the Saviour's
promise to His disciples, "He shall take of mine, and
shall shew it unto you."
(5) One of the phenomena of the early centuries
of the Christian Church was the influence of the pagan
rehgions of the Roman Empire upon the Christianity
which was in the process of conquering them. This
phenomenon has been the jest of the profane historian,
and the perplexity and the grief of the rehgious writer.
While Christianity was either despised or persecuted
it was absorbing from both Jew and Gentile the varied
rehgious hfe of the past. But the process was mag
nified when Christianity was recognized as the court
rehgion. Whether we look upon Constantine as a
Christian or as an indifferent pagan using Christianity
as the only vital rehgious force surviving in his time,
we must see that his leniency towards the Faith
brought many into the Church who were still pagan
with the very thinnest Christian veneer. The story of
Clovis, king of the Sahan Franks, is also instructive.

A THOUSAND ^YEARS 151
Clovis had married a Christian wife, who earnestly
desired his conversion. Hard pressed by his enemy
in a battle near Cologne, Clovis, as a last resource,
prayed to his wife's God, with the promise that if
victory ensued he would become a Christian. To his
amazement Clovis won the victory, and he kept his
promise. On the following Christmas-day Clovis and
several thousand of his army were baptized by Remig-
ius, Bishop of Rheims. It is easy to imagine what a
huge section of Frankish heathenism entered the
Church with these iU-instructed converts.
Even when the admission to the Church was by
persuasion and conviction and not by force or super
stition, the converts, so far as they had any past
religious hfe, must have brought to Christianity nearly
as much of their paganism as the earliest followers of
Jesus brought of their Judaism. Therefore the vocab
ulary and the institutions of the Church savour not
only of the Old Testament and its ceremonies, but of
aU other rehgious teachings and rites which had helped
men to find God, however remotely, with whatever
admixture of error. Beloved feasts and processions of
the heathen world became part of Christianity and
enclosed at last a Christian meaning. Rites and mys
teries from the worn-out East, and from the West
and North, struggling to the birth, brought their colour
into the stern outhnes of the primitive Christian
Sacraments. The old Pontifex Maximus of pagan
Rome asserted his vigour in the Christian Bishop who
was at last to call himself Pope and more than King.
One may begin with Christianity, and say that
Christianity absorbed all this varied rehgious expres
sion of the great Roman world; or one may begin
with Roman imperialism and say that it adopted the

152 THE LIGHT WITHIN
high meanmg of Christianity and so breathed into the
perishing forms an energy that was to make them
live again. But the most satisfactory hypothesis is
to say that the Holy Spirit is the communicating hfe
of every rehgious hope and desire, not only in Judaism
and Christianity, but in all the so-called pagan and
heathen types of religion. We do not by any means
need to beheve that aU these forms of religious hfe
were even approximately on the same level. Not
only as Christians, but as observers of the human story,
we must beheve that Christianity is the crowning
revelation to men. But God had not left Himself
without witnesses in any race or nation of the world.
Every man, we as Christians believe, was dear to Him,
and potentiaUy His friend in return. The Hebrews,
with a genius for religion, were often stiff-necked; how
much more, the peoples with fainter intuitions. In
spite of this, all hfe that could call itself in any sense
religious, whether it recognized the source of its in
spiration or not, had within it the love and the yearning
of the Holy Spirit of God. When therefore the fulness
of the times had come, when the visible Christ had
lived and the Holy Spirit was given with a power of
being received in a unique way, then Christianity began
its triumphant course through the rehgious world,
absorbing the thought of Greece, the mystery of the
East, the order and stateliness of Rome, the barbaric
grandeur of Northern Europe, and all the hopes and
fears scattered abroad; or, to give what I must beheve
the ultimate explanation, the Holy Spirit came like the
wind that bloweth where it listeth and gathered up in
one, all who had felt, however slightly, the breath of
His strength and His love, in the various aspects of
rehgion throughout the world.

A THOUSAND YEARS 153
We may lament that a great deal of what we caU
paganism still clings to certain divisions of the Church.
We may rightly think that surviving pagan forms
obscure the bright simphcity known to the immediate
followers of Christ. We may, in a lofty Church, in
the presence of an august ceremonial, with its intricate
music and distracting movement, long for the remote
day when Jesus gathered His congregation on the
hiUside and in the sight of the open sky and the gar
ments of poor country-folk caused men to lift up their
hearts. But we do not, if we are normal, long for the
bareness of a Jewish synagogue because it was the
prevailing type of rehgious expression in Nazareth.
We are grateful that the loving Christ, through His
generous Holy Spirit, has brought to His Church the
appeals of many races and of many times, even if we
must meet here and there the survival of some thought
or form which we cannot honestly call Christian.
In the heroic missionary work of the last hundred
years the Church has slowly come to the conclusion
that every nation has some knowledge of God. The
study of comparative rehgions has not been wholly
an academic pastime; it has been the indispensable
equipment of the man destined to teach Christ to
heathen countries. The missionary of our time as
sumes and frankly teaches that the Christianity of
one nation must differ from the Christianity of another
nation. There is a sacred inheritance, through which
the Holy Spirit has spoken, and that inheritance must
be respected not from any mere sense of tact and good
manners, but from the awe-inspiring dread lest a man
sent to teach the Truth be found to speak even against
God in one of His self-revealing processes. Ancestor
worship in China, for example, is no longer condemned;

154 THE LIGHT WITHIN
but is purified and enlarged in the ancient Christian
doctrine of the Communion of Saints. Forms of a
people, either once religious or still rehgious, are fiUed
with Christianity, not discarded. In other words, we
in the expanding Church of today are doing consciously
what was done, apparently unconsciously, in the ex
panding Church within the bounds of the crumbhng
Roman Empire.
Thus we see in the first thousand years of Christian
history the signs of the guiding presence of the Holy
Spirit. The Lord Christ who promised to be with His
disciples to the end of the world was, through His
Spirit, intimately living within the Church, as He
was also living within the individual. The vicissitudes
of the Church, its weakness and disappointment,
are conspicuous in history. In the real hfe of the
Church of the first millennium, we who know a single
parish in our own time may be sure that the ordinary
day was a day of which small record could be made.
For it was a day in which, in spite of a good deal of
failure and sin, there was many a conquest of tempta
tion, many a courageous transcending of bitter circum
stances, many a hard, fine deed, done in the Name of
Christ, many a discovery of what it was to rest in the
confidence of the Holy Spirit of God. It is the un
written history which is always most important. It
is the unrecorded sainthood which has been made in
the Church of the ages which is the most eloquent
proof of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the world.
We know only a few of the vast army of saints who
have marched in silent triumph through the Christian
years. But they are nevertheless
" In God's still memory folded deep."

A THOUSAND YEARS 155
The Holy Spirit has made the Church holy, worthy
to be called the Church of Jesus Christ. That the
consciousness of the Source of life did not fade even
in the later centuries of this period we know from
the words ascribed to Rabanus Maurus in the ninth
century:1 "Veni, Creator Spiritus, mentes tuorum visita,
Imple superna gratia, quae tu creasti, pectora.
"Qui diceris Parachtus, altissimi donum Dei,
Fons vivus, ignis, caritas, et spiritualis unctio.
"Tu septiformis munere, digitus paternae dexterae,
Tu rite promissum Patris sermone ditans guttura.
"Accende lumen sensibus, infunde amorem cordibus,
In firma nostri corporis virtute firmans perpeti.
"Hostem repellas longius, pacemque dones protinus;
Ductore sic te praevio, vitemus omne noxium.
"Per te sciamus da Patrem, noscamus atque Filium,
Teque utrius que Spiritum credamus omni tempore.
"Deo Patri sit gloria, et Fiho qui a mortuis
Surrexit, ac Parachto, in saeculorum saecula." 2
1 Cf. Dr. Frere, Introduction to Hymns Ancient and Modern, p. 22:
"Till recently there was no certainty with regard to this most famous of
hymns. It had been ascribed to various writers, including Charlemagne,
on entirely insufficient grounds. It may now with some confidence be
ascribed to Rabanus Maurus (856). It has been thought to be older,
but in fact it has had no earlier attestation than the end of the ninth
century: on independent grounds that date is the earliest one which it is
possible to assign either for its incorporation into the series of Whitsuntide
hymns, or for its adoption into any Pontifical for the ordination of a
priest. Indeed the latter is probably of more recent origin."
2 The translation in the Ordination services of the Book of Common
Prayer was made by Bishop John Cosin in 1627, and first introduced in
the English Prayer Book in 1662.

IX
SIX CENTURIES OF INCREASING FREEDOM
IN the seventeenth century a tradition was launched
that in the year iooo the people of Christendom
so far expected the end of the world that they ne
glected their crops, churches fell into decay, and
everything temporal was abhorred in view of the
universal expectation of its immediate destruction.1
Historians, taking up this fabrication, enlarged upon
it, and explained that the era of church building which
began in the eleventh century was due to the rehef
of humanity, when the alarm was over, to find itself
still hving on this pleasant earth: the stately churches
built from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries were
symbols of thanksgiving. We now know that there
is no contemporary record of any expectation of an
impending catastrophe in the year iooo;2 if there was
any such expectation it must have been confined to
obscure people, like the Millerites in nineteenth-cen
tury America, whose hopes and fears found no chron
icler. But it is certainly true that the eleventh
century was the beginning of a remarkable era of
1 The fact that this legend cannot be traced beyond the seventeenth
century, is illustrated by the various editions of the Hirsaugian Chronicle,
which was written at the end of the fifteenth century. No edition of this
book said anything of this panic until the great edition of 1690. Here we
read that a terrifying comet appeared in iooo which made men expect
the end of the world.
2 La Legende de Van Mil, Rosieres, Revue politique, 30 March 1878.

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 157
church building. And this building of churches may
be taken as a parable of the new age. It is always
perilous to generahze. To characterize an age by
definite tendencies always leaves room for wide ex
ceptions. Admitting this, one may find good reason
for saying that the centuries following the year iooo
have been centuries when the Holy Spirit has been
contending against the effort to make the temporal
order too stable; against the effort to harden spiritual
rites and ordinances into institutions pretending to a
value and efficacy apart from the Holy Spirit, who
might or might not dwell within them; and against
the effort to magnify works at the expense of faith.
Of several of these tendencies and the reaction
against them I wish to speak in this chapter. Thus
we shaU see the further influence of the Holy Spirit
upon human history.

It is recorded that Christ said in Samaria, "Neither
in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall ye wor
ship the Father. . . . The true worshippers shall
worship the Father in Spirit and in truth." x Despite
this warning, pilgrims began very early to make their
way to the sacred sites of Palestine, not however
without the protest of Augustine, who said that a
voyage to the Holy Land was a useless task for men
whose faith placed them in the immediate presence
of their Lord, and even of Jerome, who crustily said
that heaven was no more easily reached by way of
Palestine than by way of Britain, — and then went
on hving in his cave at Bethlehem. Already imperial
gifts had caused a church to be built over the supposed
1 St. John iv, 21, 23.

I58 THE LIGHT WITHIN
site of the Holy Sepulchre; and the increasing bands
of pilgrims came to feel that there was treasure laid
up for them in heaven if they trod in the hteral
footsteps of the Saviour. The shirt a pilgrim wore
when he entered Jerusalem was, if used as a winding-
sheet, thought to carry its possessor straight to heav
enly bhss. In the seventh century Mohammedans
became lords of Jerusalem, but they exacted only a
tax from the visitors; and when the year iooo was
reached the volume of pilgrims was greater than ever.
In the year 1076 Jerusalem opened its gates to
Seljukian Turks, and henceforth Christians were
subject to extortion, insult, sometimes massacre.
The Christian churches were profaned, and patriarchs
were cast into dungeons. The pilgrims who succeeded
in returning to Europe told harrowing tales. Mer
chants who had profited by the great Eastern fair
each year, no longer set sail from Genoa and other
ports; they also mourned. The heart of the great
Hildebrand, then Gregory VII, was stirred, but alone
he could do nothing. It was the people who must
be stirred, and this task fell to the lot of an insignifi
cant person, Peter the Hermit, who went over Europe
preaching the first crusade. The sad stories of return
ing pilgrims lost nothing in his picturesque telling,
and when he had aroused the indignation of the
people, Peter deftly insinuated that their darkest sins
would be washed away by the waters of the Jordan.
So it came to pass that Pope Urban gave his blessing
to the enthusiastic crowds; and about the year noo
the first crusade made its magnificent start — and its
dreary failure.
Crusade followed Crusade. The object at first was
to protect the pilgrims who wished to visit the Holy

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 159
Land. Then it was to acquire the whole region as
Christian territory. There was, now and again, a
hope of success. Great leaders hke Richard, King of
England, and St. Louis, King of France, gave them
selves to the mission. Cities were taken, governments
were inaugurated. But, judged by their ostensible
purpose, the Crusades were a failure. In 1274, at the
Council of Lyons, Gregory X tried in vain to start
a new Crusade; the efficient desire to possess the
Holy Land had passed. The Crusades were over,
and by 1300 Palestine was in the undisturbed posses
sion of the Saracens.
It is legitimate to find in the Crusades a number
of significant results. Europe, from its provincialism,
came again in contact with the East; and the Cru
saders brought back traces of an older civilization.
Chief laymen of the West were intimately associated,
and the centralized ecclesiastical authority at Rome
began to come under a scrutiny more searching and
powerful than it had ever known. Commerce sprang
up between the West and the East: cities that sent
their ships afar began to be mighty. The Crusades
also helped to prepare Europe for a vigorous reforma
tion of the Church, by the opening of the lay mind
to all these various influences. Most of all, they
show the affectionate interest of the laity in our
Lord's earthly hfe, and their loyalty to Him. But
there is only one outcome of the Crusades which I
wish here to declare; and that has to do with what
men would ordinarily caU their failure. The chief
object in the minds of the thousands upon thousands
of Crusaders was the recovery of the Holy Land by
the Christians. For two hundred years the effort
was made, and then Europe apparently decided that

160 THE LIGHT WITHIN
the quest was not worth the sacrifice. For if Europe
had really thought it important to recover Palestine,
Palestine would have been won. Here I believe there
spoke the same Spirit who spoke in the words, "Neither
in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem shaU ye wor
ship the Father." Whatever the Crusades accom
phshed, they did not accomphsh what their earthly
leaders intended or expected or hoped. The purpose
of the seeming leaders was thwarted by the real
Leader of humanity, the Spirit of God. Not even
yet is the Holy Land in Christian care. Hardly a
spot associated with the presence of the Lord Jesus
can be identified. We seem even farther from pos
session of the sacred sites than the weary Crusaders
who returned to Europe in the last years of the thir
teenth century; for we have not their confidence that
they can be found.
Why is this? What reason can be given but that
our association with the Master of Life is intended to
be universal, and therefore spiritual? Every httle
way-side cottage is the blessed home at Nazareth; the
shop of every honourable workman is the carpenter-
shop of Joseph; every friendly fireside is the home of
Mary and Martha and Lazarus at Bethany; every
grave is the Holy Sepulchre. It was not Palestine
only to which Christ came, it was every inch of this
sad and happy world. His feet seem to have touched
it all. He came to identify His sympathy and His
victory not with a narrow province of the Empire in
the days of the Caesars, but with the round world of
all time. The privilege of walking in the literal foot
steps of Jesus is denied the favourite few that even the
humblest and most cramped may walk with Him in a
world of which every particle is hallowed by His spirit-

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 161
ual and most real presence. The seeming failure of
the Crusades is therefore one more triumph of the
Lord Christ. Once again the Holy Spirit had taken
of the things of Jesus and had shown them unto His
disciples. n
The influence of the Holy Spirit was markedly
present in the Mysticism of the early centuries of the
second millennium of Christian history; especially in
the fourteenth century, which is sometimes called the
Augustan Age of Mysticism. Mysticism is an in
evitable reaction, in all ages of religious life which
are characterized by the hardening of religion into a
system of formulas and ceremonies; it speaks for the
heart, and strives not only to commune directly with
God, but, by ecstatic transfusion, to be identified with
God. It may be the highest expression of religious
aspiration; or it may be perilously near pantheism,
and may even degenerate into gross hcense and sin.
It had long been known in the East and in phases of
Neoplatonism. It had been eminently shown in the
pages of the unknown writer, probably an Alexan
drian, who hved at some time between the fourth and
sixth centuries1 and called himself Dionysius the
Areopagite. The groundwork of this man's theology
was an absolute transcendence of God which he tried
to connect with Pantheism by declaring God as abso
lute causality and as multiplying Himself through
His indwelling love in all things. From the sixth
century his writings, supposed by their name to be
those of St. Paul's Athenian convert, had enormous
1 Professor Harnack assigns his writing to the latter half of the fourth
century, with a final recension about 500.

162 THE LIGHT WITHIN
influence upon the development of theology. He may
be called one of the great mystics, but not tiU we
reach the middle ages do we find Mysticism at the
height of its glory and power.
The tendency against which Mysticism was strug
gling in the centuries from the eleventh to the six
teenth was the predominance of the dialectical method,
which finally crystallized, towards the end of the thir
teenth century, in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas
Aquinas. Of the three parts of this book (I, God;
II, Man; III, God-Man) Thomas was able to com
plete only the first and second, with the first ninety
questions of the third. Another hand completed the
book according to his plan. It is necessary here
merely to say that with Thomas Aquinas faith was
always behef in a proposition, not trust in a personal
Being; revelation was a new knowledge rather than a
new hfe. Scholasticism and other tendencies of the
middle ages made God seem to be far away. If He
had hved with men it was long ago. Mysticism
brought back to men the assurance that through the
Holy Spirit they could know God face to face.
So it was that in the twelfth century Bernard of
Clairvaux wrote: "As the little water-drop poured
into a large measure of wine seems to lose its own
nature entirely and to take on both the taste and the
colour of the wine; or as iron, heated red-hot, loses its
own appearance and glows hke fire; or as air, filled
with sunlight, is transformed into the same brightness
so that it does not so much appear to be illuminated
as to be itself hght — so must aU human feeling
towards the Holy One be self-dissolved in unspeak
able wise, and wholly transfused into the will of God.
For how shall God be aU in aU if anything of man

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 163
remains in man? The substance will indeed remain,
but in another form, another glory, another power."1
After Bernard's time the reaction against formalism
grew apace, because spiritually-minded men noted
the increasing worldiness of the Church and the
scandalous living of many of its officers. Every day
good men longed for a theology of the heart, for
unworldhness and simphcity of hfe. Joachim of Floris
began to teach that there were three ages of the
world, — the first, of the Father; the second, of the
Son; the third, of the Holy Spirit. He announced
definitely that the reign of the Spirit was to begin
in 1260 when the evils of ecclesiasticism would be
cured by a monastic life of contemplation. Then one,
Amalric, arose to declare that as the Mosaic dis
pensation ended with Christ's coming, so the Sacra
ments had lost their meaning with the incarnation of
God as Holy Spirit in the Amalricans. Because all
human desires were identified with the impulses of
the Holy Spirit, the sect of the New Spirit or of the
Free Spirit was popular through the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, in France, Switzerland, and
Germany; it was condemned by the Church; it be
came miserably immoral. Thus it ran its course.
Meantime, there were finer exponents of Mysti
cism, such as Eckhart. Tried for heresy, he protested
that he was not a pantheist. His was a sort of scho
lastic mysticism, tinged with the active and the
psychological. Facts fared ill at his hands, for he
adapted everything to his end, which was to provide
a devotional medium for present union with God.
Then came the great Tauler, a Dominican monk, the
most winning preacher of the middle ages. With
1 De diligendo Deo, c. 10.

1 64 THE LIGHT WITHIN
him Mysticism ceased to be passive: it was an aid
whereby one could transcend the sad conditions of
the time. And the first half of the fourteenth cen
tury, when Tauler was preaching, presented woefully
sad conditions. Germany was ravaged by war, by
famines, and by floods. In 1348 the Black Death
swept over Europe. Religion was driven to the heart.
The Mystics preached hvely sermons, and crowds
flocked to their preaching. They wrote short treatises
in the mother tongue, in the strength of which a
people, faint and weary, could go many days. Men
longed to be closer to one another; so the society of
Gottesfreunde spread through Germany, Switzerland,
and the Netherlands. These Friends of God tried to
strengthen one another in hving intercourse with the
Spirit of God. They cut off the pantheistic excre
scences which sometimes attached to Mysticism, and
became practical. Tauler was a Friend of God;
and great preacher as he was, he was an even greater
pastor. Another Friend of God was the author of
the book which Luther put next to the Bible and St.
Augustine, the Theologia Germanica. StiU another
was Ruysbroeck, who towards the end of the four
teenth century dwelt on the means of union with
God, and out of whose teaching sprang a brotherhood
hmited by no monastic vows, but with simplicity and
piety sharing things in common. This brotherhood
was called the Brethren of the Common Life, among
whom was numbered at -length Thomas a Kempis.
How practical Mysticism had become in this, its
golden age, one feels at once upon reading the Theolo
gia Germanica. "Now be assured," says the author,
"that no one can be enlightened unless he be first
cleansed and purified and stripped. So also, no one

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 165
can be united with God unless he be first enlightened.
Thus there are three stages: first, the purification;
secondly, the enlightening; thirdly, the union."1
There was no doubt that a man who would speak
with God must have clean hands and a pure heart.
And he also insisted that love is essential to this
communion. "Here is an honest question," he wrote;
"namely, it hath been said that he who knoweth
God and loveth Him not, will never be saved by His
knowledge; the which sounds as if we might know
God and not love Him. . . . True Love is guided
by the true Light and Reason, and this true, eternal,
and divine light teacheth Love to love nothing but
the One True and Perfect Good, and that simply for
its own sake, and not for the sake of a reward, or in
the hope of obtaining anything, but simply for the
Love of Goodness. . . . Now that Perfect Good,
which we caU God, cannot be perceived but by the
True Light; therefore He must be loved wherever
He is seen or made known."2
The words of the Mystics which have come down to
us give us the glowing certainty that their authors did
have the consciousness that the Spirit of God spoke
to them. Thus in his Prayer of Quiet, Thomas a,
Kempis said, "Let not Moses speak to me nor any
of the prophets, but rather thou, O Lord my God,
who dost inspire and enhghten the prophets; for thou
alone, without them, canst teach me perfectly, and
they without thee can do nothing at all." To such
a man we say that God ceases to be an object and
becomes an experience. The union with God was ecstatic,
an absorption in the divine contemplation.
The risk within Mysticism is close to the surface.
1 Op. cit., c. xiv. 2 Op. cit., c. xiii.

166 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Though, by its escape from stereotyped formulas, it
made way for the final break with the mechanical
traditional system, it also at times escaped into a
wild riot of phrases and of hving. Luther, through
the Theologia Germanica, was the inheritor of its free
spirit, but when he saw Mysticism showing its over
ripe fruits in Miinzer and the Zwickau prophets, he
did his best to check what he thought its dangerous
disintegrating quahties. But all this only warns
us that the highest opportunities always he closest
to the most disastrous fall. When we remember
that two of the greatest books of the Christian world,
the Theologia Germanica and the De Imitatione Christi,
are the result of the Mysticism of the middle ages
we cannot fail to beheve that this Mysticism was a
means which the Holy Spirit employed to draw men
to Himself. When forms grew hard, when mind and
heart were separated, when conditions were cruel,
then men felt once more that God cared. He was
not far away in some distant heaven; He was not
far away in some remote age in history; He was,
through His Holy Spirit, with them at the very mo
ment. They looked forward to the experience in this
life by which they should reahze the ecstatic union
with the Spirit of God. It seems hke a fresh baptism
of the Holy Spirit. in
In the centuries of which we are now thinking,
architecture and other forms of art played an impor
tant part in the revelation of the Holy Spirit. As
we grow to understand that there is no secular in
life, that all life belongs to God, so we must look for
the manifestation of God's Holy Spirit in that which

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 167
is not commonly associated with rehgion. It is not
possible to give complete witness to this fact, but a
few suggestions will indicate its truth.
(1) Gothic architecture had its birth and its dis
tinctive development in France in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Professor Moore has defined
Gothic architecture as "a system of construction in
which vaulting on an independent system of ribs is
sustained by piers and buttresses whose equihbrium
is maintained by the opposing action of thrust and
counterthrust." 1 Though "the product of secular
craftsmen working under the stimulus of rational and
municipal aspiration," it is certainly also the product
of rehgious faith. It was a new method of construc
tion, and while the structural principle was never
sacrificed, the artistic principle was never forgotten;
the two principles always went hand in hand, artistic
harmony and mechanical efficiency. The need in
these lofty churches was to support the vaulted stone
roofs (made necessary to avoid fire) without merely
massing masonry. By a series of experiments, which
can be only partly discovered in the structure of
surviving buUdings, the walls were made thinner, and
flying buttresses were made to do work which archi
tects in a former age would have said could be done
only by excessively thick walls. By these slender
and graceful supports the inert principle was aban
doned, and the maximum of internal space, both for
air and hght, was gained. They are so strong, more
over, that flying buttresses of seven hundred years
ago are still supporting heavy, groined roofs, and,
barring accidents, are hkely to support them for
centuries to come.
1 Gothic Architecture, p. 30.

1.68 THE LIGHT WITHIN
This then is the first note of the influence of the
Spirit upon architecture, and it cannot be overesti
mated; mass is supported by something superior to
mass. The flying buttress is force, but not mere
force; it is force fused with the spiritual element.
To some architects the flying buttress seems ugly,
a mere engineering feat, awkward scaffolding made
permanent; and, though I beheve most critics would
not think them anything less than graceful, it is
quite evident that to their builders they were not an
ornament, but merely a necessary device to make the
inside of the church beautiful. Long before Gothic
architecture was born Christian Churches had been,
as one can still see in the city of Rome, bare on
the outside, and contrastingly rich within. This was
quite the reverse of pagan temples. And here too we
see another note of the spiritual in architecture. This
principle was part of the theory of Gothic builders.
Though we find the exteriors of the great Gothic
cathedrals beautiful, we can see that where sacrifice
was necessary, the outside was ruthlessly sacrificed for
the space within. The hghtness of the interior, the
height, the seeming impossibility that slender shafts
could support the lofty vaults of the roof, the wide
open spaces for glass with its glory of colour, all hfted
the soul to the sense of the spiritual. The flying
buttresses were not made hght that there might be
a maze of stone, hke lace, thrown about the huge
structure, but they were thus attenuated, and upon
the outstanding buttress stood the strengthening
pinnacle, merely that the aisles within might cast
their mysterious shadows, and that the clerestory
windows might catch all the sunlight. It is doubtful
if even the carving on the western facades was at first

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 169
for adornment. "The modern romantic," says an un
known writer, "shuts his eyes to what he hates.
The Gothic artist made fun of it. If he disliked rich
Phihstines after the manner of artists in all ages, he
carved them tormented by devils in his Last Judg
ment. .Nowadays the pecuhar Gothic ferocity is
confined to the comic papers; but in the thirteenth
century, the Jean Vebers and Forains of the time
carved their lampoons on the west front of a cathe
dral. Inside it there was room for the vastest dreams
of the ideahst; outside for the invective of the man
who hated and was not afraid." J
There is one other note of the spiritual in the
Gothic. It tended more and more not to confine the
beauty of the interior to the sanctuary and the choir,
or that part of the church especiaUy appropriated by
the clergy, but spread it through the whole structure.
The marvellous Gothic ornamentation, which is an
art in itself, made the nave and the aisles a joyful
place: the beauty of hohness was for the laity as
weU as for the clergy. The Holy Spirit was seen to
be for every man. The iconoclasts of the Reforma
tion were to break down the images in altar screens
and to make the people look to a pulpit in the nave
rather than to an altar in the eastern apse, but archi
tects had long before taught by a positive lesson in
stone that the Spirit of God is not confined to one
part of a church, but is equally present in aU parts
of it by the perfection of colour and form which His
love has created through men for every worshipper
to look upon.
(2) Painting in the years before and after Raphael
1 Anonymous article on French Cathedrals, London Times, August 16,
1912.

i7o THE LIGHT WITHIN
brought a compelling message from the Holy Spirit.
One sees in any great gallery why the Crusades lost
their appeal. It would have been easy, I suppose,
for Raphael to have some Jewish mother, with her
baby, pose for his Madonnas. I suppose he could
have sailed to Palestine and could have painted
a Judaean background. But he preferred to paint
the face of an Italian maiden and the helpless form
of an Itahan baby; and back of both was the country
which he knew best, his own Italy. So Rembrandt
painted the child Jesus and His mother in a httle
Dutch kitchen, the hght from the fire of a Dutch
hearth shining up into their faces, and the last rays
of the evening sun coming through a Dutch window.
And Durer in his turn found the infant Messiah in a
httle German child, and it was a German mother that
crooned over Him. The strange fact is that no one
complained of a lack of hteralism. AU races learned
through painting that the Lord Jesus was not a man
of one race, but of all races, not a man, but man,
even the Son of all Mankind as He was the Son of
God. Another spiritual lesson taUght by painting was
the preservation of the sacramental character of the
Lord's Supper at a time when a formalized ecclesias-
ticism had hardened the spiritual feast into a physical
sacrifice, and was making ready to declare more
stiffly the doctrine of transubstantiation.1 This the
painters did quietly by painting in all its simphcity
1 Transubstantiation was formally declared a doctrine of the Church
at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The Council of Trent (Session
xiii, Can. 2) decreed, "The whole substance of the bread is changed into
the body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine into His blood,
the species alone remaining."

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 171
and pathos the Last Supper of our Lord. Da Vinci's
was only the most notable of a large number of "Last
Suppers." No one could look upon these pictures
without recognizing that the Church had far removed
itself, in its elaborate and artificial ceremonial, from
the bold reahty of the first Holy Week. No one
can fuUy estimate the effect of these pictures upon
the spiritualizing of the Lord's Sacrament which was
to come through the culmination of the Reformation.
This vivid showing of the contrast between the
simphcity of Christ and the ornate splendour of the
Mediaeval Church was to be used by Luther with
amazing effect. When Luther went to Worms he left
with Melanchthon what he said would be "a good
book for the laity." This was a series of illustrations
by Cranach, contrasting the Pope in his tiara with
our Lord in His crown of thorns; the Pope on his
magnificent throne, with Christ beaten and mocked;
the Pope holding out his sacred toe to be kissed, with
Christ kneeling to wash His disciples' feet; the Pope
borne in state on men's shoulders, with Christ bearing
His cross; the Pope selling dispensations, with Christ
driving out the money-changers; and so on. Dtirer
helped Luther in a higher way, and may be called
the great painter of the Reformation. But the con
summate work of spiritualizing events which the
officials of the Church had allowed to grow external
and rigid had already been accomphshed by greater
artists than Durer, and far greater than Cranach.
(3) Painting achieved its highest revelation of the
spiritual in the interpretation of character and hfe in
the human face. Some of the faces are of unknown
people on crowded canvases, as the faces of Peter and
John in the lower detail of Raphael's Transfiguration;

i72 THE LIGHT WITHIN
but once seen they never can be forgotten. Then
there are Giotto's Dante, Da Vinci's Mona Lisa,
Giorgione's Knight of Malta, Raphael's Leo X and
Baldassare Castiglione, Giovanni Bellini's Doge Leo
nardo Loredano, Titian's Man with a Glove, Durer's
Holzschuher and Hans Imhof the Elder, Palma Vecchio's
Violante, Holbein's Erasmus, and very many others
almost as great, — aU within this period. It is the
depth of the mystery of hfe which one reads in these
portraits which gives one the assurance that man is
not of the earth earthy. The painter watched the face
before him day after day, and has caught upon its
smiles and frowns and sudden glances the story of a
human spirit; goodness and badness, and infinite pos
sibilities in both directions, are all there. The bitter
ness and gladness of experience speak to you out of
the eyes. In the very greatest of the portraits of this
period the face seems to fade and only the soul remains.
It is the image of the Holy Spirit brooding over life.
This same revelation is made also through sculpture.
Donatello's and Della Robbia's children are the spirit
of childhood. Both their faces and their eager bodies
speak of the Spirit of the Lord who hves in them and
makes them glad. Sculpture teaches profounder les
sons stUl in Michelangelo. By his knowledge of
anatomy he was enabled to bring into the human
form a dignity and a power that even the Greeks did
not equal. The unreahty of recurring waves of asceti
cism which announced that the body was evil and un-
spiritual had its rebuke in Michelangelo's David. AU
who looked knew that the body is redeemed as well as
the soul and that it is a fit temple for the Holy Ghost.
So architecture and painting and sculpture in this
period showed forth spiritual lessons which no power

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 173
less than the Holy Spirit could have inspired them to
teach. They taught the holiness of the individual
life out of the conglomerate mass of humanity.

iv
In Mysticism the Holy Spirit appealed to the age
through the heart; in architecture and painting,
through the eye. We must now ask in what way the
Holy Spirit appealed to the human mind. In general
we may say that it was through the New Learning,
by which human knowledge was enormously enlarged,
and what had been the exclusive possession of the
clergy tended to become the possession of aU men.
Scholasticism looked upon everything with ecclesias
tical eyes: knowledge was systematized according to
formal inteUectual rules, with scant respect for the
heart and its immediate and intuitive experiences.
The New Learning was as a breath from heaven,
fresh, invigorating, inspiring.' It did not whoUy
emancipate the human mind: at the end of the six
teenth century men were stUl timid in the presence of
what they thought witchcraft; and so keen a scholar
as Melanchthon was careful to study the signs taught
by astrology. But, through the New Learning, the
Holy Spirit did speak, in the might of freedom and
truth, guiding the Church and the individual Christian
to more fertile pastures.
There were, during this period, more than thirty
universities scattered over Europe. The greater uni
versities were in close relation to one another: a dis
tinguished teacher in one was apt to draw crowds of
students from other seats of learning. Moreover, if
one of these teachers wrote important books they

174

THE LIGHT WITHIN

were quickly copied and sent abroad; when printing
was invented, the process was intensified. Thus Wyc-
hf's books were read in Bohemia as generally as in
England; and John Huss took up Wychf 's work, and
carried it forward. Oxford and Prague exchanged
students, and the people in cottages were hearing news
of what went on in college halls. Later, when the zeal
for knowledge blossomed in the Florentine revival,
students from Florence carried the movement to
Oxford, whither at length came a poor student from
the University of Paris, Erasmus, to learn Greek and
to become the intimate of Colet and Thomas More.
When Luther began to teach in the youngest of Euro
pean universities, at Wittenberg, he was able to speak
to all the universities of the civilized world. The Ox
ford scholars were pleading for a freedom from Au
gustinian doctrines, and Luther was trying to make
them firmer, but aU were pleading that religion must be
from the heart. Thus the very method of the New
Learning was such as to unite thinking men that they
might manifest the unity of the Spirit.
The strange ways in which God fulfils His purposes
is illustrated by one effect of the taking of Constan
tinople by the Turks. Until this time the Western
Church had been dominated by the more empirical
philosophy of Aristotle, popularized by the Summa
of Thomas Aquinas. With the capture of Constan
tinople Greek scholars were driven to Italy, and there,
especially in Florence, they began to teach Plato,.
whose philosophy is ideahstic, and therefore more
nearly spiritual. Around these scholars grew up what
were called the Humanists, who rescued from oblivion
the works of the classical Greek and Latin authors,
thereby deahng a blow to the shabby ecclesiastical

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 175
Latin which was the medium of Scholasticism; for,
by contrast with the elegant classical idioms, the
monkish Latin lost its sanctity. Besides, these Human
ists began to comment frankly on the superiority of
Plato's ethics over the profligate manners of the papal
palace; accordingly, Christianity was forced by the
test of the spiritual to revive or die.
The great gift of the New Learning was the New
Testament in the original Greek. One of the reforms
of Savonarola was the rule that the monks must study
the Bible in the original languages. Savonarola also
exerted an influence on secular scholars, for while
the contrast between Plato and the papal court was
making them ask whether Christianity were true,
Savonarola's obvious relationship with a present and
hving Spirit won many of them to a devout disciple-
ship, notably Pico della Mirandola, perhaps the most
precocious hnguist and genius of the period. With
Savonarola's tragic death the cherishing of the Greek
New Testament passed from Florence to Oxford and
Cambridge. It was while he was a professor at Cam
bridge (15 16) that Erasmus pubhshed, with the aid
of his friend Colet, his edition of the New Testament,
having the original Greek side by side with a new
Latin translation of his own. Thus every ordinary
scholar could come for himself to a picture of the
age of Christ in aU its pristine colouring. Erasmus
was not thinking only of scholars, for he wrote in the
preface to his book: "I wish that even the weakest
woman should read the Gospels and the Pauline
Epistles; and I wish that they were translated into
aU languages, so that they might be read and under
stood not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by
Turks and Saracens. I long that the husbandman

176 THE LIGHT WITHIN
should sing portions of them to himself as he foUows
the plough, and the weaver should hum them to the
tune of his shuttle, that the traveller should beguile
with their stories the tedium of his journey."1
This wish was to be quickly fulfilled. While the
monks were explaining that the Latin Vulgate Version
was sacrosanct, and that Greek was an heretical lan
guage and therefore "unsafe," men by thousands were
studying the Greek Testament of Erasmus, and were
discovering, to quote Froude, that "the words had a
real sense, and were not mere sounds hke the dronings
of a barrel-organ."2 Then came the translations into the
languages of the people. To the brave Tyndale, stirred
by Erasmus's work, fell the honour of giving England
the first printed translation of the New Testament
in English: even Thomas More was among his perse
cutors because of this heroic venture; but, in 1536,
this Enghsh translation, revised and completed by
Coverdale, was placed in the churches, and the clergy
were commanded to exhort the laity to read it.
Luther, a prisoner in the Wartburg, gave himself up
to the task of translating the Bible into German, —
an achievement which no other German has ever
equalled: in 1535 it was published under the privilege
of the great Elector, and straightway every man in
Germany could judge for himself the Word of God.
Calvin, under the name of Olivetan, in this same year
(1535) brought out the Bible in French. How far these
translations of the Scriptures went home to the hearts
of the people is seen to this very day, for the fixed
classical style of aU Enghsh, German, and French
countries is the style of the versions of Holy Scripture
1Op. cit, Paraclesis, pp. 6 f.: ed. 1523.
2 Life and Letters of Erasmus, p. 119.

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 177
made in the sixteenth century.1 Through the words
of the Bible in their own tongues, the people were
hearing the Voice of the Holy Spirit speak with an
authority which they could not mistake. Not by any
hard theory of inspiration did they know this, but by
the instinctive response of their hearts.
A natural coroUary of this enthusiasm for the New
Testament was the vital interest in the primitive age
of Christianity which ensued. Luther scattered far
and wide Cranach's pictures contrasting the official
Christianity of the first and the sixteenth centuries.
Cranmer and others in England were trying, in the
reformation of the Church of England, to cut away the
excrescences of the middle ages and to restore the sim
phcity of the Early Church: "Holy Scripture and
Ancient Authors," not Thomas Aquinas and the Papal
Court, were the ground of their appeal. Calvin too
was striving to reproduce a New Testament Church.
This appeal to the primitive age is significant in that,
whUe some of the excited souls, influenced by the revolt
from mediaeval ecclesiasticism, were thinking to find
in their own individual insight the whole authority for
God's command, the leaders, and the vast majority
of those who foUowed them, were intent upon making
the Voice of the Holy Spirit which they heard in their
hearts agree completely with the record which they
found in the New Testament and in the earliest period
of the Church. They did not intend to repeat the
mistake of the Corinthian Christians whom St. Paul
was obhged to rebuke. But the last word of the New
Learning was that an intelligent and rational man
1 Though the King James English Version was not put forth till 1611,
it is founded upon the version of William Tyndale, with the revisions and
additions of the sixteenth century.

178 THE LIGHT WITHIN
could expect to hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit in
his own heart.

A conspicuous witness to the guiding of the Holy
Spirit in these six centuries is the opening of the eyes
and imaginations of men to the beauty and extent of
the physical universe. There were certain discoveries
f oho wing upon the invention of the mariner's compass;
but there was, besides, a new appreciation of the com
mon things of nature, upon which men had been look
ing aU through the years. Some of this appreciation
was a recovery after the lapse of the dark ages, with
their ascetic and monastic ideals; some of it was
quite new. Monks had gone over the Alps with no
wish to lift their eyes from the neck of the beast that
carried them; they had hved on sunny hiUsides with
no other thought than that these hillsides were good
for grapes. They had sung of a New Jerusalem, and
their hearts fainted to be done with what they saw, or
failed to see, in this present world. And to think of
love and womanhood was to lay oneseh open to sin,
unless one were to pray to the beautiful Virgin Mother
of our Lord. To generalize, one must say again and
again, is dangerous; but it seems that the truly re
ligious part of the world had, in the dark ages, ceased
to value the physical in hfe.
Now in these six centuries we see the Holy Spirit
graduaUy freeing men from this vicious dualism. It
is almost as if God had restored man to the Garden
of Eden: "And God saw everything that He had
made, and, behold, it was very good;" His children
looked about them with wondering eyes, and at last
they understood, — the natural world was good.

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 179
When the spell of the Latin tongue was broken,
when men dared to write in their own native provin
cial languages, then the ideals of the monks faded into
the ideals of normal men and women. The poets
began to sing, and their song was of love. Woman,
who through asceticism had been looked on as "the
door of hell,"1 became the ideal of knights as well as of
poets. Woman received reverence, and man tried to
make himself noble and true that he might be worthy
of a woman's love. This spiritualizing of man's love
for woman reached its height in Florence in Dante.
"It presents to us the ideal woman," writes Bishop
Boyd Carpenter: "but its origin is the influence of
some dear, pure, gentle creature whose presence and
smile awoke to consciousness the slumbering powers of
the heart. . . . The likeness is idealized, but it is not
a fiction; there is flesh and blood behind it. . . . Thus
love which began with a -vision of simple girlish beauty
could grow into a noble worship of something greater
and fairer than earth could claim." 2 Beatrice stands
for more than the inspiration of Dante: she is the
vision of womanhood discovered by an awakening
world. Romantic love was sanctified by the Holy
Spirit of God. In the Florentine poets, in Dante
preeminently, we see rehgion at its finest disowning the
pagan and -the monastic separation between earthly
love and heavenly; Beatrice was not the recovery
of an ideal which the world had known before. She
was a discovery.
In Dante we notice also the sharp observation of
the natural world in all its departments. Thus he is
an illustration of the recovery of joy in the birds of the
1 Lecky, European Morals, vol. ii, p. 338.
2 The Spiritual Message of Dante, pp. 52 f.

180 THE LIGHT WITHIN
air, in the insects, in the fluttering leaves, in the
dashing waves, in the frost, in the fire. Mountains
and valleys affected him. Though he was interested
in the theology of the Schoolmen, he saw it in a pic
turesque natural setting. In him, and in men like him,
there was a revival of the appreciation of natural
beauty. This appreciation was not confined to poets.
Preachers caught it: St. Francis preached to the birds;
St. Anthony preached to the fishes. Painters caught it:
in the backgrounds of sacred pictures the exquisite
scenes tell what artists saw in nature, and one of
Raphael's most beautiful pictures is well named the
Madonna of the Goldfinch. The builders of the vast
Gothic cathedrals caught it: the teeming hfe of forest
and field was translated into architectural stone.
Leaves and buds, says an authority, "spring from grow
ing stems, fruits depend naturally from their branches,
animals live and leap. . . . More hfe and abstract
natural beauty it is hardly conceivable that human
art could express." x Here too the architects did not
repeat or recover the past. They made a new discov
ery of the beauty of nature; for the classic architects
and their imitators treated natural objects inorgan
ically, with fruits and flowers tied in bunches or hung
in formal festoons: these natural objects were never
growing. The Gothic carvers showed a new interest
in the natural world, and therefore were of the increas
ing company of poets and painters and preachers
who saw in Nature an outward manifestation of the
Holy Spirit.
A yet more astonishing revelation of the unexpected
in the physical surroundings of men came within the
years from 1492, when Columbus discovered America,
1 C. H. Moore, Development and Character of Gothic Architecture, p. 24.

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 181
to 1522, when MageUan completed his voyage around
the world. Thus men's ideas of the earth were sud
denly, startlingly enlarged; and, because the sailors
rounding the Cape of Good Hope had seen the south
pole-star and the Southern Cross, men's ideas of the
universe were also changed. There was a great man
named Copernicus, a loyal Churchman, an eager
astronomer, who pubhshed as he was dying, in 1543,
a book on which he had been working for thirty-six
years, and which he had hitherto feared to pubhsh
lest the truth which he announced in it be branded
by the Church as heresy. Though men had been
forced to beheve that the earth which but yesterday
seemed smaU and flat, was really large and round,
they stiU beheved it the centre of the universe, re
maining stationary, while the heavenly bodies revolved
about it. Copernicus timidly announced the hy
pothesis that the sun is the centre of the solar system,
the moon a satellite of the earth, and the fixed stars
infinitely far away. A long time was to pass before
this hypothesis was to be accepted. Even when in the
seventeenth century Gahleo, by means of his refracting
telescope, had confirmed it, the Roman Inquisition,
with Pope Urban's approval, condemned Gahleo to
adjure by oath on his knees this astronomical heresy.
The great scientific age was postponed. But with
the opening of the globe to sailors and colonists, and
with the opening of the skies to astronomers, there
was already a vigorous tearing away of the old hmits
of the imagination. Every ambitious nation sent its
adventurers arid discoverers into the new world. The
future began to seem more important than the past.
The old books could not teach all that the universe
contained. It was the age of bewildering discovery.

182 THE LIGHT WITHIN
If men could not go over the sea in ships, if they
could not intelligently gaze at the sky, yet they learned
to wait for news from their own generation about
the things of God in this present world. Once more,
the Holy Spirit was teaching men that they must
through a present experience enter into the knowledge
of the truth. Scholars and the simple were alike in
their New Testaments reading of Christ, "All things
were made through Him; and without Him was not
anything made." x And now in the brilliant discov
eries and adventures in land and sea and sky, the Holy
Ghost was taking of the things of the Son and was
showing them unto His friends. There was a long
path yet to be trod before the scientific revelations of
our time were to be attained; but the bands which
held the imagination captive had been snapped. The
reverent and thoughtful observers of the sixteenth
century were watching for news of the Spirit in
God's physical universe. VI
There has been a struggle through many years of
Christian history to fix the authority by which the
Holy Spirit speaks to men in an institution or in
outward office. During this period which we are now
studying, it became evident that it was futile to expect
the authority of the Holy Spirit in General Councils
(so far as they could be made general) or in the
Papacy. (i) The General Council stands for an inspiring
ideal. This ideal is that men honestly representing
the whole body of Christian people should come to
gether with the devout purpose of learning what the
1 St. John i, 3.

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 183
Holy Spirit should say to the whole assembly. This
ideal was never quite realized, even during the five
or six early Councils. The faithful bishops were not
always called from all sections of the Church; and
when some were called, they could not always come.
After the Emperor ceased to convene the bishops,
and the Bishop of Rome maintained the convening
as his right, the representation was still further lim
ited. But this was not the most damaging feature
of the Councils. The worst that can be said of them
is that, less and less, did men come together to hsten
humbly for the directing Voice of the Holy Ghost;
more and more a majority came with their minds
firmly and fiercely made up what they would do.
The part of the Church in union with the Bishop of
Rome became constantly smaller. After the separation
of East and West, the Protestant Reformation split
the Western Church in two. In 1545 the Council of
Trent began its sessions, gathering what was left of
the Church still obedient to Rome. A few open-
minded bishops urged a recognition of the great truth
of the doctrine of justification by faith as reaffirmed
by the reformers, but the Jesuits had quickly become
mighty under Loyola's iron rule. To Loyola, not to
the Holy Spirit, these Jesuits looked, and their con
tention was so far from spiritual that they literally
fought, one snatching at another's beard. When the
Pope and the Emperor disagreed the Council ad
journed, and not until 1555 could it again assemble.
Meantime, by the Peace of Augsburg, the right of
Protestant princes to revolt from Rome was recognized;
so that the last hope of regaining Protestants through
spiritual means, as by a Council, had melted away. The
Jesuits were now firmly in the saddle. They used the

184 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Council to say what they had decided it should say.
All thought of the Holy Spirit had quite vanished.
They sternly corrected moral abuses, but in doctrine
they were reactionary; and by confirming the author
ity of the Pope as divine, they virtually declared that
the function of Councils was past: the Voice of the
Spirit was to be heard through the Pope.1
There may again be real Councils of the Christian
Church. Representatives of the whole body of Chris
tians may assemble in love and hope and humility
to hear what the Holy Spirit will say to their united
prayer; but it is safe to say, the friends of Councils
being witness, that the Holy Spirit did not seem to use
the Councils of these centuries as a means of giving
His message to men. It may further be said that
whatever breath was left in the Councils was stifled by
the Jesuits in the Council of Trent. Or, to change
the figure, so far as Councils were concerned, the
Jesuits locked the door and threw away the key; and
not even the Holy Spirit could come in.
(2) The breaking down of the authority of the
papacy was as gradual as its original growth. The
Pope of Rome never had an easy relationship with
the Eastern Church. Misunderstandings between the
Greek and the Latin Churches had been incessant.
The addition of Filioque to the Creed, clerical celibacy,
the denial of the Presbyters' right to confirm, the use
of unleavened bread in the Sacrament, all made the
Roman Church seem heretical to the Greek Church.
Since the eleventh century the schism between the two
Churches has been cordially maintained. With a
large part of the Christian world ahenated from him,
'This was still further confirmed by the Vatican Council of 1870,
which pronounced the Pope's ex cathedra utterances infallible.

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 185
the Pope was soon to forfeit the respect of the more
intelligent and aggressive part of Europe which re
mained in communion with him. It was the Popes
themselves who renounced the spiritual character of
their office. Coveting political power and wealth,
they passed from worldliness to wickedness. Alexander
VI was the most notorious of the wicked Popes; but,
two hundred years before, that most loyal Churchman,
Dante, had recorded that the avarice of the Popes
had o'ercast the world with mourning, treading the
good underfoot and raising up the bad, they themselves
being filthy.1 Alexander, with his lust and murders,
was only the culmination of a tendency in the papacy.
Many a good Italian became a pagan, because he
identified the papacy with Christianity. And when
men from distant places came to Rome, they too were
scandalized: such was the experience of Colet, Eras
mus, and Luther.
Having appealed to the sword, the papacy was
judged by the sword. It had once been in exile at
Avignon; and in 1527, while Luther was defying it,
the supposedly loyal Emperor, Charles V, was sacking
the city of Rome. His soldiers turned St. Peter's
into a stable, and the Pope was made a prisoner in the
castle of St. Angelo, obhged to do exactly what his
imperial master told him to do. The year before, the
Emperor had issued an edict at the Diet of Spires
leaving the German states free to elect whether they
would acknowledge the Pope's jurisdiction or not.
From this time there never has been a Pope in Rome
in the mediaeval sense. The old officer who maintained
his right to rule Christendom had passed for ever. The
official who took his place was destined to be the head
1 Inferno, Canto xix, 104 ff.

186 THE LIGHT WITHIN
of a communion within Christendom, and his author
ity was hmited to those who freely chose to accept it.
Even so, in this weakened state, the Pope refused to
be an officer of the Holy Spirit. Strengthened by the
Council of Trent, Paul IV introduced into Rome the
Inquisition, with its well-known history in Spain;
from Rome, with papal sanction, it spread to other
countries. The Pope confessedly gave up the effort
to persuade by spiritual means; means more cruel
than the sword were resorted to. But it was only a
small part of Christendom in which, for a time, such
methods were to be tolerated. Judged by the out
ward and the inward verdict, no sane and unpreju
diced man at the end of the sixteenth century could
believe that, whatever else it might be, the papacy was
a medium for the hght of the Holy Ghost.

vn
There were two other sources of authority which
were being tested in these centuries: one was the
authority of the clergy as a separate caste distinct
from the laity; the other was the divine right of
kings. (i) The young Luther was haunted by an altar-piece
in Magdeburg, which represented a ship sailing to
heaven. The terrifying memory of this picture to a
young man expecting to be a lawyer was that not a
single layman was on board the ship. There were
plagues devastating towns in those days, and the fear
of the Turks was always present: a picture hke that
made the youth think. There was the feehng that
the clergy had a larger share of the Holy Spirit than
other men; or perhaps they were exclusive possessors

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 187
of the Spirit, and others could have only what the
clergy chose to give.
The right of the clergy to claim for themselves any
monopoly of spiritual power, broke down in much the
same way that the spiritual power of the papacy broke
down. Even with the vow of poverty the religious
orders could not remain poor. By gifts and bequests
the conscience-stricken laity tried to make up for their
sins by endowing monasteries and convents. At last
it is said that a third of the land of Europe came into
possession of the clergy. Kings were not so rich as
they. The clergy, being practically the only educated
men in Europe, became the statesmen of Europe.
Thus try, as the good men among them would, to be
simple and poor, the clergy became haughty, powerful,
rich. The Thomas Beckets and the Wolseys were
quite the temporal and worldly equals of kings.
One result of this condition was that the people who
were oppressed by the temporal lords grew to hate the
clergy. Not only did the clergy have a large share of
the land, but the people were required to pay tithes to
them. And besides these, there were the fees for
almost every ministration. The man who should have
been a good shepherd comforting his flock was often
only a thief and a robber, lording it over God's her
itage. "I see," wrote a contemporary of Charles V,
"that from the majority of Christ's ministers we can
obtain nothing without money. At baptism, money!
at confirmation, money! at marriage, money! for holy
orders, money! at confession, money! at the sacrament,
money. They wiU not give extreme unction, unless
for money! they wiU not toll the bells, except for
money! they will not bury you within the church
except for money! you shall not hear mass during

188 THE LIGHT WITHIN
interdict, except for money! so that Paradise appears
be closed to those who have no money." x It is said
that in England if a housewife did not faithfuUy give
to the priest every tenth egg, she was deprived of
her Easter communion and taken as a heretic.
But there was worse to tell. The forced cehbacy
of the clergy, condemned by the Greek Church,
brought the Western clergy into constant peril. Had
there been no worldly temptation to enter the minis
try, there might have been more deacons hke St. Fran
cis; but with wealth and power ghttering before them,
with an assured hving guaranteed in a hard age, with
safety and privileges, many men became priests for
less than the right motives. We cannot wonder at
the scandals which the Reformation and the Counter-
Reformation unearthed. There were certainly in the
ranks of the sacred ministry, in parish churches and
in monastic cells, true saints, through whose faces
the Spirit of God shone. But these saints had not
become the characteristic priests of formal ordinations.
The clergy as clergy had obviously no inherent
authority necessarily attaching to their office to make
them the medium of the Holy Spirit. They might
or they might not have this high authority. It
certainly did not depend upon their office, but upon
a profounder endowment, which I shall presently
examine. (2) Then there were emperors, kings, princes, nobles,
who set themselves up to be different from ordinary
men. Throughout this period the peasants had been
climbing up and out of their serfdom. The feudal
system of the middle ages made the dependants of a
great landowner little better than slaves. Not even
1 Life and Writings of Juan de Vald&s (Wiffen), p. 68.

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 189
the wild game of the forest or the fish in the rivers
belonged to any but the lord of the castle. These
peasants worked hard, but nearly aU they produced
must go to the master of the land. For him they
must fight at his caU. In some countries conditions
grew better: money was paid for the land instead of
crops; a good many people went to the cities, and
these cities sometimes became strong enough to de
mand a degree of independence. But conditions were
hard enough for the peasants at the very best, and it
was only a beginning that this period was to see in
the gaining of their rights, in establishing them as
true chfidren of our Father, brethren of the King of
Kings and therefore the moral equals of earthly
princes. The idea of a universal dominion was used by the
Holy Spirit when Rome in the first century was per
mitted to unify the world, that the news of Christ
might quickly spread to the ends of the known world.
Long afterwards the Pope and the Emperor of Ger
many, the head of the Holy Roman Empire, trying
to perpetuate this idea of universal dominion, met
the invincible opposition of the Holy Spirit. The
hour of universal dominion had struck. Nations were
being born. There were kings of these nations who
tried in their way to be absolute; but the nations
with that sort of kings were dying; Spain for instance.
A new kind of king was coming in, the constitutional
ruler, who though caUed a king was sharing the gov
ernment with aU classes of his subjects. The Pope's
sway over Christendom was ended when Luther, a
peasant, stood in the Diet of Worms and defied the
papacy, and when the Emperor, who had heard Luther's
defiance and had tried to annihilate him, had put a

190 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Pope in prison. The Emperor's sway over Christen
dom ended when this same Charles gave up his task
of putting down what he called heresy, and shut him
self up in a cloister. And, though we still have the
shreds of absolute monarchy with us, the knell for
absolutism in the nation was sounded when Phihp
sent his huge Armada to crush the rising democracy
of England, and when God blew this fleet to bits
with the courage of Englishmen, with the winds of
His heaven and the waves of His sea.
This was towards the end of the sixteenth century;
now, at the beginning of the twentieth, we have stiU
much to do, before the Voice of the Holy Spirit is
obeyed; but His Voice was then clear. Erasmus in
his Christian Prince argued that governments exist
for the well-being of the whole people, so that the
necessaries of the lower classes should not be taxed,
only the luxuries of the upper classes; so that no
war be fought except one in which the good of the
whole people was involved. How far Erasmus felt
his own time was from these ideals, we see in his
bitter arraignment: "Ecclesiastical hypocrites reign
in the courts of princes. . . . The Pope and the
Princes treat the people as cattle in the market."
More's Utopia, in its picture of a model state, held
up the same ideals. Kings, magistrates, and priests
held office by the will of the people. Every one had
right to an education and a share of the national
wealth. On a higher plane, Luther, in his pamphlet
To the Nobility of the German Nation, controverted
the theory that the spiritual power is above the
secular, for, he said, all Christians are spiritual, and
all are equal. That the reformers gave the people
rehgious services in their own languages and not in a

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 191
language understood only by scholars, that they put
before them the Bible in their every-day speech, and
that they encouraged each man to come not to a priest
but to God for confession of his sins, — all this brought
home to men of all classes the reality of the dignity
and responsibihty of any Christian man. These ideals
were ignored by many of the reformers themselves.
Luther, for example, showed himself violently un
sympathetic with the poor peasants contending for
their rights; and Calvin was a tyrant in his Genevan
theocracy, putting Servetus to death for an intellectual
error in doctrine. And we too are prone to be both
selfish and bigoted. But in its best moments the
sixteenth century knew as well as our own time that
every man, be he prince or slave, saint or sinner,
sage or untaught, orthodox or heretical, is infinitely
precious in the love of the Holy Spirit.

VIII
It is then in the individual man, — - not as pope or
priest or emperor or king, but as man, — that the
Holy Spirit was known in this period to put His
ultimate authority. That is the increasingly plain
story of these six hundred years. And we see it now
most clearly by the way in which individual men
stood forth to be the guides of the race in their time,
and in the larger time which reaches to our own day.
By singling out two or three outstanding examples,
we may see in what ways the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit was being confirmed and enriched.
(1) As the thirteenth century was opening there
was a gay young Itahan who was known chiefly for
his ostentatious prodigahty, his kindness, and his

192 THE LIGHT WITHIN
skill in arms. In all this worldhness he was twice
smitten with a serious illness. After the second ill
ness he decided to give up his old hfe and, with as
much hterahsm as possible, to follow Christ. This,
to him, meant absolute poverty and never refusing
alms to a beggar. He went to Rome to register his
vow, and upon his return to his home at Assisi, he
exchanged clothes with a miserable beggar. He tried
to give away everything he had. His father's anger
and command had no weight with him. His father
imprisoned him, brought him to the civil authority,
then to the bishop. The young man with confidence
set aside all these aspects of authority, — parental,
civic, ecclesiastical, — and yielded himself to an au
thority that spoke in his heart. He straightway
abandoned everything, even the clothes on his back:
"Till now," he said, "I have been the son of Bernar
done; henceforth I have but one Father — in heaven."
So the career of St. Francis began. In an age of
authority the man who came most to fill the popular
imagination was a man who rejected all the authority
on which men were wont to rely, and looked straight
to a direct command speaking through his inner hfe,
the Voice of the Holy Spirit. We cannot too highly
value the force of this example. It was to work, we
may not doubt, in the imaginations of good men,
as no abstract teaching could work. While men were
trying to harden and formahze the principle of au
thority in ordinances and in institutions, the free,
poetical story of St. Francis was to proclaim that a
man must obey first of all the silent messenger that
spoke directly to his own soul.
(2) Another of the commanding figures of this period
was Dante, nearly a century later, who has held the

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 193
imagination of the world captive by his immortal
book. There we read, in a deeper way than by a
formal biography, the inner life of the man who wrote
it. I have already mentioned his influence on the awak
ening interest in natural things; I speak of him now as
a man. We see him a loyal son of the Church, an
admiring student of the theology of Thomas Aquinas,
a staunch behever in the Imperial power: he had
profound respect for the constituted authorities. He
was a man who constantly had sorrow and misfortune;
but he was confident with sublime assurance and hope:
his spirit could not be conquered. The key to the
hfe is Beatrice, a child of eight whom he had seen as
a boy of nine. Every commentator has right to his
interpretation. She was a real person, but, being
dead, she could be to Dante only a spiritual guide.
Under her guidance, thus transfigured, Dante looked
upon the things which were, and the things which
are, and the things which are to come. She was
God's gift of love. Without being too hteral, we
may say that she was for Dante the incarnation of
the Holy Spirit: she was an authority that spoke to
him above the other sources of authority which he
reverenced. He would not follow Thomas Aquinas
as he dogmatized about confession and the papal
power. There is a wonderful freedom about the Divine
Comedy which lifts it above its age. We see this in
two incidents of the drama, — to speak of no more.
One is the presence of Paolo and Francesca in hell.
More sinned against than sinning, they appealed to
Dante's pity and love. But there they are, in hell.
The other incident is the presence of two notoriously
abandoned women in paradise. In the context, when

194 THE LIGHT WITHIN
their presence is described, Dante is showing the
rottenness of conventional Church dignitaries. He is
therefore showing that penitence and love can attain
what a correct and pharisaical and unrepentant ex
terior cannot attain. Now what is the explanation
of these two passages? The first is that Dante was
evidently appealing to the Bible above the current
Church sanctions of his age. He knew the inexorable
demand of righteousness. He knew the God of the
Hebrews, who is a consuming fire. Dispensations and
excuses might be ever so plentiful in Peter's Palace;
only a humble and a contrite heart was acceptable
with God. That was the reason why Paolo and Fran
cesca were where they were. And so it was with
the once soiled spirits who found themselves in para
dise, to the shocking of conventional saints. Dante
knew well the New Testament. He knew the Lord
Christ and His words, "Neither do I condemn thee."
He knew about the woman who washed Christ's feet
with her tears. He knew about the conversation at
the weU-curb in Samaria. The freedom of the Bible
asserts itself in Dante over the ossifying standards in
the theology and Church rules of his day.
Through the greatness of human love ideahzed and
spirituahzed, and through the Scriptures, Dante, re
spectful to constituted authorities, was reveahng that
in his own soul he obeyed first of all an inner Voice.
He had direct communion with the unseen. So we are
not surprised to hear him singing in paradise:
"And lo! all round about of equal brightness
Arose a lustre over what was there,
Like an horizon that is clearing up.
And as at rise of early eve begin
Along the welkin new appearances,
So that the sight seems real and unreal,

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 195
It seemed to me that new subsistences
Began there to be seen, and make a circle
Outside the other two circumferences.
O very sparkling of the Holy Spirit,
How sudden and incandescent it became
Unto mine eyes, that vanquished bore it not." *
Dante, by his self-revelation, shows how the Holy
Spirit takes up a soul obedient and heroic, and makes
it servant and friend.
(3) One more Italian I must mention. In the last
years of the fifteenth century, while Lorenzo de'
Medici was dominating Florence with his magnificent
tyranny, Savonarola, versed in the Old Testament,
took upon himself the r61e of an old Hebrew prophet.
He caUed upon ecclesiastics, princes, and people to
repent. The shops of Florence were closed when he
preached. Lorenzo with all his power could not
compete with this man's spiritual force. Lorenzo
was patron of the convent of St. Mark, but Savona
rola, when he became Prior, refused to do homage:
"I owe it to God," cried the new Prior; "not to
Lorenzo de' Medici." He foretold the French in
vasion under Charles VIII, and when the prophecy
was fulfiUed, both Savonarola and the people felt
anew that the Spirit of God was upon Savonarola.
By the aid of the French, the Medici were expelled,
and though Savonarola refused any office, Florence
became for the time being a theocracy, and Savonarola
controlled it. The city was wholly changed by the
spiritual fervour of this man. Savonarola looked across
the valleys to Rome, where the worst Pope in history
was enthroned; wherefore Savonarola redoubled his
denunciation of the sins of the Church. Alexander
VI threatened and attempted bribes, as of a cardinal's
1 Paradiso, xiv.

196 THE LIGHT WITHIN
hat; but Savonarola was not afraid, and he cared
nothing for the world. Then he became extravagant,
wild, fanatical; and his martyrdom, though glorious,
was not whoUy so. But he was one of the represen
tative leaders of this period: he seized upon men's imagi
nation; and he is one of the great men of aU time.
Though Savonarola was at last made dizzy by the
discovery which he had made, the discovery must
never be forgotten. He had seen the preeminent
authority of the human conscience, guided by the
study of the Bible. He knew that a man filled with
the Spirit of God is the governor of Pope or Prince;
all other authority, however formidable, is subordinate
to his.
The picturesqueness of Savonarola's story is part
of its importance. He wrote many books, and they
were translated into the languages of Europe; but the
most influential document was the unwritten tale of
his own life which became one of the traditions of the
advancing years. Men who heard the story of Sa
vonarola knew that God is not far away; they knew
that He speaks directly through the human heart;
and they knew that the surest way to open the heart
to this divine messenger is the reading of the Word
of God; for they had been told that Savonarola
required the monks under him to study the Bible in
the original languages. Thus the Holy Spirit spoke
to the age through His servant Savonarola.
(4) Never has a period expressed itself so vividly
as the Reformation period expressed itself in Luther.
A child of the people whose rights he was to cham
pion, he had much of the roughness and crudeness of
a German peasant to the end; but these defects
must not bhnd us to his place in the divine order.

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 197
Luther taught himself by reading not only the Bible,
but the writings of men who had convinced him
of their direct communion with God. For this reason
he was intimate with the "experimental" portions of
Augustine, Bernard, and Gerson, and we know that
he placed the Theologia Germanica next to the Bible
and Augustine. Naturally Luther's teaching was
based on experience from the start. He broke with
Scholasticism the moment he discovered that it was
essentially Pelagian, that it neglected Augustine's doc
trine of grace, and that it had no knowledge of the faith
which throws itself directly upon God. When he at
tacked the sale of indulgences in his theses, he said, "The
true Treasure-house of merits is the Holy Ghost of
the grace and glory of God." The first fact to grasp
about this doughty, rough-and-tumble reformer, is
that he was an intensely spiritual man.
The posting of the theses was followed by the
burning of the Pope's bull. The die was cast. A
plain representative of German obscurity was pitted
against the Pope, and people instantly began to take
sides. A fluent person, named Eck, attempted to
meet Luther's salhes with controversy. During this
controversy Luther began to stand for the spirit
ual priesthood of all behevers. He interpreted the
current ecclesiasticism to mean that a man could
not approach God without a priestly mediator, —
which was false. The simple people and the Human
ists rallied about Luther. It was this same Eck who
at a much later time, when he chanced to be off his
guard, delighted Luther by letting fall the remark
that with the Church Fathers he would venture to
oppose the Augsburg Confession, but not with the
Scriptures.

198 THE LIGHT WITHIN
The supreme moment in the life of Luther, and
one of the supreme moments in human history, was
the moment when he stood before the august assem
bly at the Diet of Worms, made up of the Emperor,
six Electors, and a host of archbishops, bishops,
and nobles, — aU the outward authority which the
world and the Church could command. Luther's
preparation for this moment was prayer before an
open Bible. When he had made his defense both in
German and in Latin, when all had understood, when
the anger of the papal party was kindled, then it was
demanded of him whether or not he would recant.
Thus he answered: "I am bound by the Scriptures
which I have quoted; my conscience is submissive
to the Word of God; therefore I may not, and wiU
not, recant, because to act against conscience is un
holy and unsafe. There I take my stand. I can do
no otherwise. So help me God. Amen." Luther's
Ich kann nicht anders is one of the battle cries which
humanity can never hear unmoved. It is the cry
of one poor rustic, standing before the full array of
Church and State, declaring that he must disobey all
human authority, when the Holy Spirit speaks in his
heart and demands an obedience which is highest of aU.
After this, until he left Worms, every conceivable
thing was done to shake Luther's resolve. But noth
ing moved him. Whatever the Pope and the Em
peror might do, he would be true to the Scriptures
and his conscience. The story of David and Goliath
had been repeated. Luther's battle was not for him
self or his nation; it was for all time and all places.
It was a victory for the Holy Spirit in the conscience
of a defenceless man.
How clearly Luther understood that it was the

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 199
Holy Spirit whom he was obeying we see by an almost
random reference to his writings. In his Catechism
he said, "The Holy Ghost through the Gospel hath
called me and enhghtened me with His gifts, sancti
fied me by a true faith, and has preserved me; even
as He is wont to call, to assemble, to lighten, and to
sanctify the whole Church throughout the world."1
And again he wrote: "The Holy Ghost goes first and
before in what pertains to teaching; but in what
concerns hearing, the Word goes first and before, and
then the Holy Ghost follows after. For we must
first hear the Word, and then afterwards the Holy
Ghost ^works in our hearts; He works in the hearts
of whom He wiU, and how He will, but never with
out the Word." 2 By placing the Bible as the test
of the Voice within our hearts, Luther was guarding
himself and his followers against the failure of many
who have depended on the Inner Light. The right
of private judgment was not circumscribed by any
human medium or mediator; for the meaning of the
Scripture was left to the individual. Luther and the
others who translated the Bible into the languages of
Europe were laying upon the common people the task
and the responsibihty of knowing the Word of God
for themselves, and nothing whatever could stand
between them and the Voice of the Holy Spirit to
their consciences. The Bible was no longer an eccle
siastical law book; 3 it was a book for the individual
1 The Apostles' Creed, The Third Article.
2 Table Talk, ccxli.
3 Cf. Creed of Pius V: "I also admit the Holy Scriptures, according
to that sense which our holy mother the Church hath held and doth hold;
to whom it belongeth to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the
Scriptures; neither will I ever take and interpret them otherwise than
according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers."

200 THE LIGHT WITHIN
heart seeking to know the Living God. Luther as a
boy had been awed and frightened by the figure of
Christ in the window of the Mansfeldt church: the
Christ in the window was stern of face, a sword was
in His hand, and He was seated upon a rainbow. It
was an unapproachable Christ. At length through
the Holy Spirit and the New Testament, Luther
found the Christ of pity and love. "The Holy Ghost,"
he said one day, "preaches and witnesses of none but
Christ, therewith to strengthen and comfort all sad
and sorrowful hearts. Thereon will I also remain,
depending upon none other for comfort." x
As we look back upon Luther's time it seems as if
the main spiritual gift through Luther to the German
people was his German Bible and his German hymns.
Of the Bible I have already spoken: it became so
much a part of the life of the people, that its language
is still the language of Germany. It has been the
spiritual medium of the Word of God to the whole
nation. ^Luther's hymns were scarcely less momen
tous. They sang themselves, in the sonorous chorals
to which they were set, into the hearts of all earnest
Germans; Heine called Ein' feste Burg the MarseU-
laise of the Reformation. "Music," said Luther,
"is the best solace for a sad and sorrowful mind;
by it the heart is refreshed and settled again in peace." 2
His own hymns were to bring to men, much buffeted
and distressed, the good cheer of God's Holy Spirit.
(5) John Calvin was not attractive, but he had a
bold spirit and a keenly logical mind; and he stands
among the great men, wielding an influence that has
affected a large part of the world. He succeeded in
doing for Geneva what Savonarola tried to do for
1 Table Talk, ccxliii. a Table Talk, dcccxl.

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 201
Florence. He preached vehemently against aU loose
ness in morals and manners, and he became, by his
sheer strength, the choice of the people for their dic
tator in all matters both ecclesiastical and civil. He
was a despot, more intolerant than the Pope and
quite as merciless in his punishment of heretics.
Those who know little of Calvin's personal history
have felt his influence. For the French Huguenots,
the Scotch Covenanters, and the Puritans of England
and New England have carried his cold and rigid
system around the world. With our sunnier manners
we do not look upon Calvinists with favour, but they
introduced a strain of Spartan strictness and justice
into modern civihzation which we could ill spare. It
is therefore necessary to see what Calvin contributed
by his hfe and writings to the freedom of the modern
world by the Holy Spirit.
The doctrine of Calvin with which his name is
most associated is probably the doctrine of Predesti
nation. Harsh as this seems, it is nevertheless bound
up with the emphasis upon the Sovereignty of God.
Calvin stood in such reasonable awe of the righteous
ideals of God that he pictured man as utterly helpless
without God. Exactly here he brought in his doctrine
of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit man
could do nothing; with the strength of the Holy
Spirit man could do everything. Faith in Christ
brought the Holy Spirit, whom He promised to send
instantly to the aid of the man otherwise powerless.
Calvin showed that a man must be united to Christ
in order to attain His benefits; and only by the
secret and special operation of the Holy Spirit could
one be united to Christ and be made a member of
His body. Thus the Spirit witnesses to man that he

202 THE LIGHT WITHIN
is a child of God, and assures him that he is safe in
God's keeping.1 So, for the individual, the horror of
Predestination passes, and the soul is at peace.
Calvin put high value upon the Sacraments, though
he made their value dependent upon the sincere
preaching of the Word of God.2 Christ's aid is given,
he said, in the Holy Communion not through a cir
cumscribed presence in the elements, but by His
Spirit transfusing into the faithful recipients of the
elements His own life, even as if it penetrated into
the bones and marrow of the people. The elements
are not vain or empty signs, but through them Christ
puts forth ' the efficacy of His Holy Spirit to fulfil
His promises.3
Calvin's interest, it will be seen, was primarily with
the individual believer. It is often said that no one
has ever so effectively dwelt upon the Holy Spirit's
work accomplished for us, one by one, as Calvin. For
this reason adherents of Calvinism have sometimes
been unduly selfish: assured of their own salvation
by the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they have been
somewhat callous concerning their neighbours, who
were shut out from God's favour by the tragic side of
Predestination. And this suggests the hmitations of this whole
period which in this chapter we have been study
ing. In gaining his freedom, through the gift of the
Holy Spirit, the individual was often contemptuous
of the whole people of God. As we close the book
of the sixteenth century, we feel that the sons of
God had regained their spiritual freedom; but we
1 Institutes, iii, ch. 33 ff.
2 Institutes, iv, ch. r.
3 Institutes, iv, ch. 15, 17.

SIX CENTURIES OF FREEDOM 203
find a strange tendency in those who had recently
been set free to bind heavy burdens upon their
kinsfolk and acquaintance who had heard the Spirit's
commands in another form from the way in which
the Voice had spoken to them.
In these six centuries the Holy Spirit had won much
for the children of men; but men were not able to
receive all that He would give them. We see again
an instance of the wonderful patience of God.

X
THREE CENTURIES OF INCREASING
LOYALTY
THE nearer we stand to a man or an epoch the
more difficult it is to pass upon either a sound
judgment. The three hundred years that have just
passed represent too short a time to discover an
accurate generalization of their character as a whole.
They are doubtless part of a greater period whose
main current cannot yet be surmised. But it will
do no harm to venture an hypothesis. It seems to
me that as the stupendous period which culminated
in the Protestant Reformation was an age when the
Holy Spirit was teaching the world the value of the
individual soul, so we are now in an age (which per
haps is far from its culmination) wherein the Holy
Spirit is teaching the individual the value of the
world. As the Spirit then whispered Freedom, so
now, I beheve, He is whispering, to all who have
been made free, Loyalty. To illustrate this hypothe
sis, I shall select a number of characteristics of these
last three centuries which we may safely trust to
have had the inspiration and guidance of the Spirit of
God.

A cardinal influence of the Holy Spirit in the last
three centuries has been the use of sacred music in

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 205
hymns and oratorios. Every one who has been part
of a large congregation knows the power of a really
fine hymn to weld hearts together and to offer them,
as it were, a living sacrifice to the Giver of all that is
harmonious and strong in life. In hke manner, no one
who has been part of a great throng listening to The
Messiah at Christmas-tide can fail to know how the
music, with its dramatic appeal, brings those who sing
and those who hear into one mighty company to wor
ship the new-born Christ.
(1) In the seventeenth century Martin Rinkart wrote
Nun danket alle Gott, which is often caUed the German
Te Deum. It is supposed to have been composed when
peace was declared at the close of the Thirty Years'
War; and it is sung in Germany on all great national
occasions. Enghsh-speaking people feel its stately
joy in Miss Winkworth's noble translation. A cen
tury later (1729), Tersteegen wrote Du verborgene
Gottesliebe, which was translated into English nine
years later by John Wesley, Thou Hidden Love of
God. So good a judge of sacred poetry as Oliver
WendeU Holmes was wont to say that Wesley's
translation was the most beautiful hymn in Enghsh.
German hterature began with rehgious poetry and
many great hymns have been written. They have
been, in an incalculable measure, the means of binding
Germany together: they inspire to loyalty. The
solemn Latin Hymn Adeste Fideles, written in the
seventeenth century, probably may be assigned to
German authorship.
I might go on to speak of other nations, notably
Russia, with the National Anthem, God Protect the
Czar, by Zhukovsky (1830), set to music by Alexis
Lwoff (1833); this music arouses us as we sing Alex-

206 THE LIGHT WITHIN
ander Pope's Rise Crowned with Light. But it will serve
my purpose better if I point out the wealth of English
hymns which have been given to the world in these
three centuries.
After the passing of the Puritan domination, during
which the Hebrew psalms were battle cries for Crom
well's armies, firing the Roundheads with rehgious
zeal, the various successive movements in Enghsh
Christian hfe sent forth their hymns. In 1674, Ken,
one of the seven bishops who refused to swear aUe-
giance to King William, wrote his immortal morning
and evening hymns. In 171 2 Addison wrote The
Spacious Firmament on High. The nonconformist,
Isaac Watts, wrote, in 1707, When I Survey the Won
drous Cross (which Matthew Arnold thought to be the
finest of English hymns) and in 17 19, his paraphrase of
Psalm XC, O God our Help in Ages Past. Then the
Wesleyan Movement with its contagious fervour brought
out the poetic genius of Charles Wesley, who is said to
have written more than six thousand hymns, several
of which must last as long as the English language is
spoken. In 1738, a bird, pursued by a hawk, flew in
at his open window, thus finding safety: deeply moved,
Charles Wesley wrote Jesu, Lover of My Soul. In
1749, persecuted with his co-religionists, he wrote,
Soldiers of Christ, Arise: henceforth it was to give
courage to quiet religious people as Psalm LXVIII had
given new heart to Cromwell's soldiers. In the Evan
gelical Movement in the Church of England, Cowper
bound men together by such hymns as O for a Closer
Walk with God (1769), and Toplady, with Rock of Ages
(1775). When the Evangehcal Movement issued in
a new birth of missions, Bishop Heber wrote From
Greenland's Icy Mountains (1819), The Son of God

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 207
Goes Forth to War (1827), and Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord
God Almighty (1827). This last hymn Tennyson
thought the foremost hymn in any language. The
Oxford Movement, as it resulted in both the Enghsh
and the Roman Churches, produced Keble's Sun of
My Soul (1820), Newman's Lead, Kindly Light (1833),
and Faber's Hark, Hark, My Soul (1854). The So
ciety of Friends is represented by Whittier, some of
whose excellent hymns are certain to find a permanent
place, especially stanzas from his poem Our Master
(1856). Kipling's Recessional (1897) is an admirable
instance of the way in which a hymn can gather up
and express the emotions of a national responsibility:
it wiU certainly hve.
We are beginning to have hymns expressing the
social yearning of our time, and though we cannot
be sure as yet which of these may survive, some will
survive, and they wiU help to bring men to a sense of
their brotherhood, their common feUowship in the Holy
Spirit. Ebenezer Elhott's When Wilt Thou Save the
People (1850), called "The People's Anthem," was a
contributing factor in the solution of the industrial
difficulties of the middle of the nineteenth century
in England. In Socialist Songs1 one finds Samuel
LongfeUow's Out of the Dark, Dr. Johnson's Life of
Ages, and Charles Kingsley's Day of the Lord. A
stirring hymn from one who has deep sympathy for
the toUers is Dr. Washington Gladden's 0 Master,
Let Me Walk with Thee.
There is one weU-proved hymn, by Harriet Auber
(1829), which concerns the theme of these pages:
1 Published by C. H. Kerr & Co., Chicago, 1901.

208 THE LIGHT WITHIN
"Our blest Redeemer, ere He breathed
His tender, last farewell,
A Guide, a Comforter, bequeathed
With us to dwell.
"He came sweet influence to impart,
A gracious willing guest,
While He can find one humble heart
Wherein to rest
"And His that gentle voice we hear,
Soft as the breath of even,
That checks each thought, that calms each fear,
And speaks of heaven.
"And every virtue we possess,
And every victory won,
And every thought of holiness,
Are His alone.
"Spirit of purity and grace,
Our weakness, pitying, see:
Oh, make our hearts Thy dwelling-place,
And worthier Thee."
Some people contend that a real hymn should be
objective, magnifying God's glory, and forgetting our
troubles and joys and needs. Both objective and
subjective hymns have their place, but in binding
people together, in hfting the hearts of an assembly to
God, subjective hymns are quite as compelling as the
objective. Jesu, Lover of My Soul, with its constant
use of the first person singular, brings men shoulder
to shoulder more surely than the chiefest of objective
hymns, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.
To the music to which hymns are sung is often
ascribed the whole power of the words, in the uniting
sense of which I am now speaking. This is not true;
for many hymns, hke Abide with Me, All Hail the
Power of Jesus' Name, and Nearer, My God, to Thee

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 209
may be sung to different tunes and still retain their
influence. Nevertheless, the music of hymns shares
with the words whatever effect may be imparted.
We still derive inspiration from tunes written before
this period, notably Louis Bourgeois's Old Hundredth
in the Genevan Psalter (1551), and the Ancient Plain
Songs, O Quanta Qualia and Veni Emmanuel. But
most of the hymn music that stirs us is the composition
of men who have hved within the last two centuries.
Without attempting a catalogue, we may recall such
tunes as WUham Croft's St. Anne (1708), Oliver
Holden's Coronation (1793), Shrubsole's MUSs Lane
(1779), Monk's Eventide (1861), Dykes's Nicaea (1861)
and Lux Benigna (1868), Barnby's Sarum (1868), and
Horatio Parker's Mt. Sion (1888). Through words
and music together, modern hymns have kindled in
receptive people a mutual loyalty to one another, and
a common loyalty to the Highest. This we may
beheve a gift bestowed by the Holy Spirit.
(2) The Oratorio cannot make an appeal quite so
nearly universal as the popular hymn, but it never
theless can make a very wide appeal. Making use
of both the dramatic and the epic elements in music,
it stirs the rehgious emotions of great congregations
or audiences, and unites them in a common enthusiasm
for some overruling spiritual conception.
Though the Oratorio originated in the sixteenth cen
tury and the names of St. Fihppo Neri, Stradella,
and Bach (through his Passions-Musik) are associated
with it, the greatness of the Oratorio was not revealed
tiU the eighteenth century, when Handel proved his
mastery in this department of sacred art. When he
was only twenty he produced at Rome his Oratorio,
La Resurrezione. He wrote Esther in England in

210 THE LIGHT WITHIN
1720, but it was not publicly produced until 1732.
Even then the fear of prejudice was so evident that it
was announced that there was to be no acting, only
there would be a large number of voices and instru
ments. After writing Esther, Handel devoted himself
to secular music, and not tiU he was fifty-three did
he again write an Oratorio. Some of his Oratorios
were written after his blindness set in; possibly some
of their pathos and consolation may be derived from
this personal experience of the composer. AU the
subjects show that he was interpreting the Bible with
the spiritual aid of music: Deborah, Athaliah, Israel
in Egypt, The Messiah, Samson, Judas Maccabceus,
Joshua, Solomon, Jephtha. His crowning work was
Israel in Egypt, but The Messiah, which he called
"the Sacred Oratorio," is the work for which most
people will remember him, and its musical merit is
exceedingly high. Later Mozart's additional orches
tral accompaniments made these Oratorios still more
inspiring. Haydn's The Return of Tobias, The Seven
Last Words, and The Creation followed. Beethoven
added The Mount of Olives; and Spohr, The Last
Judgment. Then came the greatest name in the
writings of the Oratorio since Handel, Mendelssohn,
who composed St. Paul and Elijah. More recently,
one thinks of Gounod's Redemption (1882), and Mors
et Vita (1885), two portions of a trilogy, of which the
third portion was never finished. And some record
must be made here of the influence upon congrega
tions by the singing of Gounod's setting for the Sanc-
tus, from the St. Cecilia: it has meant a spiritual
awakening for many a kneeling group of people.
Gounod perhaps cannot be called really great, but his
music has touched many hearts. The popular modern

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 211
passion music, such as Stainer's sacred cantata, The
Crucifixion, has been a spiritual boon to all classes of
people. This barest of outhnes will indicate roughly how
much the Church music of today owes to the last
three hundred years. In great parish church or in
cathedral, as we hear this music, we lift up our hearts,
and we know again that the outward and the seen
are the least of realities. Since most of this music
which is so sung has for its central theme devotion to
Christ, we may wonder if in this way the Holy Spirit
is not once more taking of the things of our Saviour
and showing them unto His disciples. He uses musi
cians as he uses the theologians and the preachers
to make clear the pity and the love of Jesus. The
story of the Holy Spirit in time cannot be told with
out this grateful recognition.

n
An outstanding distinction of the last three cen
turies is the contribution of the natural sciences.1
1 Cf. William James, Some Problems of PhUosophy, p. 20: "Few of us
realize how short the career of what we know as 'Science' has been.
Three hundred and fifty years ago hardly any one believed in the Coper-
nican planetary system. Optical combinations were not discovered. The
circulation of the blood, the weight of air, the conduction of heat, the
laws of motion were unknown; the common pump was inexplicable;
there were no clocks; no thermometers; no general gravitation; the
world was five thousand years old; spirits moved the planets; alchemy,
magic, astrology, imposed on every one's belief. Modern science began
only after 1600, with Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Torricelli, Pascal, Harvey,
Newton, Huygens, and Boyle. Five men telling one another in succes
sion the discoveries which their lives had witnessed, could deliver the whole
of it into our hands: Harvey might have told Newton, who might have
told Voltaire; Voltaire might have told Dalton, who might have told
Huxley, who might have told the readers of this book."

212 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Noble names, such as Gahleo, Isaac Newton, Darwin,
Pasteur, illumine the role of the elect. The world
has sometimes thought science haughty and negative,
opposed to aU that is spiritual. But a contemplation
of the humihty and awe of the greatest scientists
might at any time have dispelled such a judgment;
and in our own day we are convinced that spiritual
rehgion has no stronger ally than the exact scientific
knowledge which able investigators have given to the
world. The field is vast, and the only generahzation
which is possible must be confined to a few obvious
results. (i) Modern Science, in the first place, has given
the world a new respect for law. When Gahleo and
Sir Isaac so improved the telescope that astronomers
could really observe the heavens, when Sir Isaac, sit
ting in his garden at Woolsthorpe, began to meditate
upon the falling apple, there began to be a knowledge
of the serene laws which govern our days and our
nights, our months and our years. It is true that a
naturahst hke Haeckel may be so overwhelmed with
the grim machinery of the universe that he almost
viciously denies aU spiritual control or meaning. But
most observers see with laws the limits of laws. There
is mystery in law, for the discoveries come in year by
year, and what may be known of the workings of
this marvellously arranged universe stretches out into
infinity. Law, therefore, so far from being something
hard and mechanical, is one of the mysteries of hfe.
The eminent scientist is cautious in discounting the
miraculous tale of some past age: there may be a
record here which to some future science will be quite
intelligible. Laws, moreover, while they grind us
sometimes to powder, are being called in by the phy-

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 213
sicians and surgeons, the bacteriologists and the elec
tricians, to be the reconstructing forces of diseased
tissues. Laws, in other words, have all the austerity
and all the benevolence which the ordinary layman
sees in nature generally, as in the quiet sunshine
fighting up a June meadow and in the relentless sweep
of a tornado.
Now if we beheve in the Holy Spirit and His in
fluence at all, we must believe that such a demonstra
tion of law as we have seen in the science of the last
three centuries means something. Whether the scien
tists feel themselves creatures of a Supreme Will or
only creatures of their own might, we have a perfect
right to see in them instruments of the Holy Spirit
educating the world. A man in the first century said,
"We are members one of another." But the world
never understood the words as it understands them
today. The God in and above and under and around
the world is a God of Law. We know His love in
other ways; in natural laws we see the exactness of
His justice. Whether consciously or bhndly, the mod
ern scientist has been the medium of a stupendous
spiritual lesson to men.
(2) Another lesson which science has taught is the
exceedingly probable hypothesis of Evolution. When
Darwin and WaUace first gave the convincing data
of their observation to the people, representatives of
organized Christianity felt that if the hypothesis of
evolution could be proved, the authority of revealed
rehgion would be discredited. The opposition to the
doctrine of Evolution was apt to be ill-informed and
prejudiced. But as devout men, who thought rather
than talked, considered the whole subject, they saw
in Evolution a confirmation of the doctrine of design

2i4 THE LIGHT WITHIN
in nature. Instead of thinking of a God who started
the world and then simply watched His work from
above, they now thought of a God who not only started
the world into being, but lived in it and, instant by
instant, developed and changed and glorified it. The
doctrine of Evolution, therefore, teaches men that the
Divine Life is an immanent Power, and as all that
He has made is subject to law, so too it is destined to
grow. And this is to teach men not only a fact of
development in nature, but it is to reinforce the
spark of hope which is planted in every human breast.
This, again, we may say with confidence, is the work
of the Holy Spirit. The spirit of loyalty is again
aroused in us. For the individual is part of a great
whole. The integrity and growth of the individual
makes its influence, slight but real, felt upon the whole
mass. Science tells us what we can do to forward
the far-off divine event.
(3) The patience of naturahsts has revealed to us
the practically unlimited field of instinct in the animal
world, both vertebrate and i invertebrate. This makes
a further contribution to our knowledge of hfe. A
baby who has never seen another chUd creep, begins
the process of creeping instinctively. Every domestic
pet teaches us the force of instinct. Any intelligent
observer could have made a summary of these instances
of instinct among the vertebrates; but modern natural
ists have taught us the amazing intricacy of instinct
throughout the almost invisible insect realm. The
French naturahst Fabre, in his poetic fashion, tells of
the elephant beetle, which always bores its way into
the acorn so that the bore will be as long as possible,
and the end of the bore will be in the cup of the acorn.
In this cup the egg is laid, and the young larva hves

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 215
first upon its tender food; when this food is exhausted,
it makes its way through the bore, eating the fihngs
left by its parent. It is by this time strong enough
to feed upon the hard meat of the nut, and when the
acorn falls to the ground, the httle being crawls out
and goes into the earth.1 Generation after generation
this process is repeated. Or we are told that a wasp
will find a caterpillar of a particular species, will sting
it in a special way, will lay an egg upon it, and carry
it to a nest and there wall it in with unhesitating pre
cision. This she will do only once; and the wasp in
the egg hatched after her death will, in time, do ex
actly the same thing.2 There is no possible way of
instruction in either of these cases. We cannot con
ceive anything more cunningly devised than these
expedients for the preservation and care of the young.
But we can ascribe it all only to instinct.
Now there must be, one would think, some immanent
inteUigence within organic hfe from which such instinct
could be fed. Is it not fair to posit the hypothesis
that this interpenetrating intelligence, reaching up and
down through hfe, and instinctively appropriated by
the highest human genius as well as by the merest
atom of an insect, is no less than the Holy Spirit of
God, finding and shepherding the world? And if so,
may we not think that, in aUowing this fact to be
known through the Science of these last centuries, the
Holy Spirit has aUowed to be made known to us one
more touch of nature which makes the whole world
kin? Is not the world once more bound together by
a common loyalty to the Protector of its universal
hfe? 1 Social Life in the Insect World, tr. Miall, pp. 240 ff.
2 Graham Wallas, The Great Society, p. 34.

216 THE LIGHT WITHIN
(4) A feature of modern Science almost too plain
to need recording is its power to stimulate one's imagi
nation. Those closest to it may be somewhat hardened
to its divine wonder, just as improperly guided choris
ters may, by constant association with holy things,
become insensible to the mystical. But the layman
who beholds the discoveries of Science from afar, feels
that the ground is holy, the mystery of the burning
bush is always before him, and he gazes, awed, into
the possibilities of future wonder. Steam was the
marvel of yesterday; electricity is the marvel of to
day; radium and the ether are the marvels looming
before us for tomorrow. We cannot help being hushed
in reverence. Strange, beautiful, and difficult, as God's
universe is already, we suspect that He has hidden
within it an infinite array of bewildering dehghts to
be enjoyed and an equal array of horrors to be
transcended. To one who imagines what, through
Science, the Holy Spirit may reveal to men of the
latent interest within the universe, we can think of
no monotonous moments in hfe, though we hve on in
our present order for ever.
(5) The last aspect of Science which I may mention
is its adventure and heroism. From the days of the
courageous Gahleo, shut up in prison, the Science of
the last three centuries has known how to suffer, if
need be, for the truth's sake. Professor Osborn con
vincingly argues that Pasteur should be counted among
the saints, because "he played the original and crea
tive part in the movement for the prevention and rehef
of human suffering,"1 and that we should see his me
morial in cathedrals. Pasteur and many others have
given themselves in rapt devotion for the saving of
1 The New Order of Sainthood, pp. 2 ff.

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 217
humanity. From time to time we read that a phy
sician, hoping to discover some new heahng for a
dangerous malady, submits to some doubtful experi
ment, not knowing whether he may prove his theory
or die in its failure. The men who have died in their
endeavour to reach the North or the South Pole may
be caUed foolish or reckless; or it may be said that
they were seeking only an heroic reputation; but, aU
in all, we know that they were men of high adventure,
wUling to make the supreme sacrifice for a scientific end.
Thus, whether these heroes of all the departments of
Science know it or not, we canonize them; we place
them in the company of Him of whom, on the eve of
His adventurous career, it was said, "The Spirit
driveth Him into the wilderness." The Holy Spirit
of God is driving many a man of Science into the
wilderness, and because many a man is not afraid of
the sacrifice, sometimes not even conscious of it, there
fore we link his name with the Highest.

m
As modern Science advanced, its confidence some
times became so great as to assume that it could
ultimately compass the explanation of man. It was
thought by some that what we call the spirit of man
was only a function of the body, so that when the
body perished the spirit was snuffed out with it. In
any case the study of what we call psychology shows
us that the relation of the spiritual part of man to
the physical is very intimate. In untechnical lan
guage we may say that one theory would affirm that
the mind and the soul used a body temporarily, being
no more indissolubly identified with it than is a

218 THE LIGHT WITHIN
hand with the tightly fitting glove which covers it;
whereas the other theory would declare that the body
had a mind and a soul to be counted among its varied
functions of digestion, hearing, smell, etc. We have
a department of psychology known as physiological
psychology; but it is doubtful whether we can think of
any other kind of psychology under our present con
ditions, since the only kind of souls that Science can
study now are souls linked with human bodies, and
therein and thereby expressing themselves.
Like every other phase of research, psychology sends
its roots down into the past, but as now formulated,
we may think of psychology as a modern development.
And if one may judge from the trend of such popular
leaders as Wilham James and Professor Bergson, we
may beheve that the ultimate verdict of psychology
is to be not on the material side but on the spiritual.
The psychologist has made observations of personality
exerting its influence across broad intervals of space
in what for convenience we call telepathy; he thinks
that possibly intelhgence has been sent from spirits
recently separated from their bodies in death. The
strange phenomena, once exploited by the charlatan,
are now cautiously sifted by the scientific explorer,
and we have a Society for Psychic Research, with
respected names enrolled from both Europe and Amer
ica. There is now on the part of Science a readiness
to expect a spiritual interpretation of humanity which
would have been, it seems, impossible thirty years ago.
We are seeing that the body can affect the spirit
of man. William James's chapter on Habit in his
Psychology has been more influential than any sermon.
There we see how the will can send out a deed through
the matter of the body, and faintly begin a groove,

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 219
along which, by repeated acts, the same kind of deed
may more and more easily move, till a habit is formed,
as a stream is formed on the side of a mountain: only
a superhuman effort can change its course. And we
are seeing, on the other hand, that the spirit affects
the body. I have already mentioned in this book1
M. Bergson's demonstration that there is no such
thing as a suppressed emotion. Every emotion in
stantly registers its strength in the human body and
we know its intensity by the physical disturbance it
causes. From all this I deduce the principle that
modern Science shows us that the spirit of man has
in the human body the most intricate and sensitive
medium for its expression, acting and reacting with
marveUous precision.
Another doctrine of modern psychology is that
there is a region of the subconscious in every hfe.
The memories of chUdhood are here, the languages
and the histories we learn and forget are here. Old
age seems to have access to this reservoir, but all
through hfe a sharp emergency is apt to reveal to us
our subconscious selfhood. Then, having gone so far,
we are forced to open the windows of our imagination.
If the spirits which now occupy certain bodies had a
life before their present tabernacles were formed, is the
record of this earlier time stored in the subconscious
region of a man's hfe? A good many flashes, as from
a larger experience than the longest human term can
account for, seem to be in harmony with such a con
jecture as this.
But there is even more. Is there not through this
subconscious or subliminal selfhood more than an
individual possession? Are we not there joined in a
1 See above, p. 48.

220 THE LIGHT WITHIN
great community of selfhood? This is a fruitful
hypothesis for those who try to explain the vagaries
of telepathy and thought transference and many
another manifestation of wide-flung communication.
It makes one think of Hegel with his theory of a
World Soul. It makes one go much farther, arousing
thoughts of St. Paul who said, "There are diversities
of gifts, but the same Spirit." 2 May it not be that
modern psychology is bringing us, by a new path, to
a knowledge of our union one with another through
the Holy Spirit of God? There can be, and there
often is, another interpretation; namely, that the
subhminal reservoir belonging to a common humanity
is of humanity purely and solely, having no connection
with any influence or power above or even outside
humanity. The theory of the World Soul, august as
it is, may exclude if it will all thought of the divine.
But when one, for other reasons, is assured that God
is, and that He loves man, then one is entitled to see
in the tentative and groping suggestions of psychology
about a community of subliminal selfhood an inspir
ing hypothesis of one way, at least, in which we hve
and move and have our being in the fellowship of the
Holy Ghost. Hither we may look for fresh announce
ments that may profoundly help the theologian; and
it may be that theology will attempt its use of the
subhminal, just as Dr. Sanday has suggested that the
subconscious self of our Lord may perhaps have been
the means by which His divine and human natures
were, according to orthodox doctrine, fused, yet kept
distinct.2 To one who thinks much of the Holy Spirit all
1 1 Corinthians xii, 4.
2 Christologies Ancient and Modern, pp. 163 ff.

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 221
Science must seem one of the means which He is using
in modern days to illumine mankind; but to psy
chology especially we who rest in the comfort of the
Spirit must turn for confirmation of many an intuition
and for many a ray of new hght which we perhaps
had not dared to expect. IV
When the Protestant Reformation proved to itself
the folly of trusting to what assumed to be an infalli
ble Church, it set up by the side of private judgment
(or the right of the individual conscience to know the
wUl of God) the authority of the Bible. It can hardly
be said that the Bible was set up as an infallible stand
ard, in and by itself, for Luther quite unblushingly
cast the instructive Epistle of St. James out of the
Canon, and all the reformers insisted that it was
necessary to have the immediate hght of the Holy
Spirit to aid the individual rightly to divide the Word
of God in the pages of the Bible. To the scoffer it
seemed as if the reformers exchanged ecclesiasticism
for bibholatry; but when one glances at the groups of
people who insisted on following their own private
hght without any reference to the consensus of history
or humanity, one knows that any reformer who was
to be a sound leader must have upheld the double
witness, the witness of the individual heart and the
witness of the larger humanity. This larger humanity
was authoritatively expressed for him in the Bible.
In the Storm and Stress Period of German Thought,
towards the end of the eighteenth century, the modern
historical school was born. Through the nineteenth
century, in all progressive nations, this school pursued
its investigations. It looked into the history of

222 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Roinulus and Remus. It shook the myths and the
facts of history apart, and attempted to write history
anew. The story was severe and halting, and there
were more footnotes than text; but it was honest, and,
whatever mistakes there were, the whole undertaking
was in the interest of truth. Back of it all, we may
confidently say, was the Holy Spirit, who was promised
to guide us into all truth.
Then these critical scholars fell to work upon the
Bible. Some were iconoclastic, destructive, altogether
eager to shock pious people; but the really great
scholars felt their commission from on high and
touched the sacred pages with the utmost reverence.
Men hke Tischendorf, Westcott, and Hort worked
upon the text, using the more ancient documentary
authorities, which had become known only within the
last two centuries: thus passages dear to the people
were sometimes judged later additions, and retained
only within brackets, or else quite rejected.1 But
this lower criticism as it was called did not agitate
the sensitive: it was only when the so-called higher
critics began their work that people were alarmed.
Higher criticism maintains its right to judge by thought
and vocabulary and style whether the parts of a book
belong together representing one time, or, because of
a final editorship, they must be separated into original
documents and assigned to separated periods. The re
sults of criticism may be conservative or radical. No
sane man could be expected to assent to aU the con
clusions which various clever scholars announce, for
they would make a medley of confusion and contradic
tion. But the critical method must have full approval,
because it stands for "the process," to quote an able
1E.g., St. John viii, i-ii; St. Mark xvi, 9-20; 1 John v, 7.

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 223
scholar,1 "whereby the Word of God has won the
right to be understood." So devout and conservative
a scholar as Bishop Westcott charged the youth under
him to "retain a firm faith in Criticism and a firm faith
in God."2 Our trust in God is shown when we do
not shrink from the fuUest hght which men can throw
upon His Book.
WhUe critical scholars worked upon the documents
of the Pentateuch or the Book of Isaiah, there was
protest here and there, but men were reasonably calm.
When scholars began to apply the same method to
the Gospels and the Epistles there has been often
consternation. Even Bishop Gore, himself a critical
scholar, so lately as 19 14 wrote that while he felt that
the critical reconstruction of the idea of the Old
Testament had made it "incomparably better suited
for spiritual edification," 3 he seemed to himself to see
quite clearly "the broad difference between the Old
Testament as prophecy and the New Testament as
fulfilment in fact." 4 Long before, John Henry New
man had warned Stanley that the Biblical critics must
stop with the Old Testament, and he begged Stanley
to use his influence to keep the critical method out of
New Testament investigation.5 But King Knut can
not keep the tide from coming in. Whether scholars
and unlearned saints shrink from the process or bravely
meet it, the process has begun and wiU go on till the
end. What can we say about it, if we are to recognize
the scholarship of free and earnest men to be part of
the guidance of the Holy Spirit?
1 Professor H. S. Nash, The History of the Higher Criticism, sub-title.
2 G. W. E. Russell, The Household of Faith, p. 199.
3 The Basis of Anglican Fellowship, p. 22.
'Ibid., 18.
6 Prothero, Life of Stanley, vol. ii, pp. 340 ff.

224 THE LIGHT WITHIN
(i) First, men are compeUed to study the earthly
Life of our Lord as they never have studied it before.
Christology in one form or another is the theme of
nearly aU the theology of the last fifty years. It is
not a mere devotional study; it is not a mere pictur
esque narrative with geographical and archaeological
illustration; it is the most ardent effort to understand
the facts of the historical Jesus and the substance
of His teaching. Men long to know about Him, to
reconstruct in their own minds as accurately as one
can the Man His contemporaries saw. The task is
difficult, and for that reason the impression made is
deep. As long as Christ is taken for granted, He is
scarcely known. When knowledge about Him must,
as it were, be fought for, He is won as soldiers attain
a great victory, He is possessed, and He is an in
alienable and dominating Presence in human experience.
It may be too soon to teU just what this criticism of
the documents of Christ's biography will contribute
to the world's knowledge of Him, but I am confident
that the outcome will show that the world is to know
more than it has yet known. The very tragedy of
the fear that we may lose something which we have
treasured will make us the more alert to discern
what has escaped humanity in all the centuries before.
We crave the easy and the happy methods. God
gives us, in His love, the hard and the perplexing
methods; and thereby He grants us to find the most
precious ore. Once more in this day I seem to dis
cover that the Holy Spirit is taking of the things
of Christ and is showing them unto His disciples. If
men wonder why there are hundreds of books on Christ
and only a few on the Holy Spirit, they may beheve
at last that this very fact shows how actively the

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 225
Holy Spirit is received in our generation. It is
His doing.
(2) I cannot think that in the end any painstaking
student shall find his knowledge of Christ reduced
by the age of free criticism, but I am quite convinced
that nearly every man who comes in contact with much
of the exposition of present-day Christology will stare
before him somewhat fearfully at times, and ask if
then he must lose his hold upon His Master. That
very question is wholesome for a man. He must turn
upon himself and ask savagely if the Christ upon whom
he has been depending is only a Christ who hved in
Palestine nineteen hundred years ago. If the New
Testament were to lead only to an historic Christ it
would fail in its unique purpose; it would be nothing
but common history, or whatever other common lit
erature one might decide to call it. There have been
long sections of time when good readers of the Bible
seem to have contented themselves with learning to
believe in an accurate and orthodox past: if they
had uttered their thoughts, they would have said,
"Moses is dead, and the prophets are dead, — and
Jesus Christ is dead!" It is out of such a formalized,
mummified Christianity that we may safely think
that the Holy Spirit has rescued us, with the agonizing
sharpness of a divine love.
When the documents are being so rudely handled
that we close our eyes, when the comments made by
radical scholars are so irreverent that we stop our
ears, then the whisper sounds in our hearts, "Are you
depending only on the past, have you no direct ex
perience which makes you sure of Christ? Have you
never heard Him speak, felt His presence, acknowledged
His restraining, His encouraging, hand?" If a man

226 THE LIGHT WITHIN
can answer Yes to such questions of the heart, then he
must hold his head high; for he knows that no critics
can henceforth daunt him. He has in himself the
hght which may show what is husk and what is kernel.
It is not a bare historic Christ whom he finds again in
the New Testament, for he knows how Christ hved as
well as that he hved; he knows the traits there exem
plified; the words Christ spoke are like the words
Christ speaks, — through whatever vicissitudes they
may have passed, they are his words still. What the
critics will finaUy decide, when they have weighed all
the evidence, is clear to the man who, through his
predicament, has found within his own life the present
and infaUible Christ.
Criticism sometimes does a man such a merciful
favour as to bring him, either anew or for the first
time, to the feet of a hving Saviour. If honestly
faced, criticism does it for every man. Thus endowed,
a man goes back to the Bible with an expectation he
never had before, because it is bristhng with news
about this Leader who is now his real Companion.
He is in no danger of depending whoUy on his private
and isolated experience: his own certainty must be
glorified by the witness of men and the witness of the
Book. Because he has found Christ through tribu
lation, the fires of loyalty burn bright in his soul.
He is loyal to all who are loyal to Christ, and therefore
He is loyal to the Book which is overwhelmingly His.
Once more the Holy Spirit has taken of the things of
the Son of God, and has revealed them unto men.

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 227
v
A series of movements through these three centuries
has been consciously concerned with the revival of the
spiritual in rehgion. Though not always opposed to
scholarship these movements have doubted the power
of scholarship to assist spiritual religion even if scholar
ship did not retard its growth. If existing expressions
of ecclesiastical hfe had fulfilled their mission, unques
tionably these protests would not have arisen. Pos
sibly all of them will at length have melted into larger
processes; but they have each, in its time, accom
phshed something valuable to men. Therefore we
may beheve that the Holy Spirit, brooding over the
hearts of God's children, caused these various move
ments to wean complacent Christian organizations
from their formahsm and unreality. Nor were the
organizations for which an antidote was needed always
Christian: various elaborate systems arose in Europe
attempting to banish God or quite to explain Him
away. Such was Deism in England, the Infidelity
of France led by Voltaire, and at length German
Rationalism. The dry Scholasticism of the middle
ages against which Mysticism arose was repeated in
new and varied forms after the Reformation. And
once more the Spirit made the world know that the
Divine is near.
(1) Towards the middle of the seventeenth century
George Fox initiated a movement which issued in the
Society of Friends, nicknamed Quakers. Later Robert
Barclay gave to the Society a system of theology,
and the whole history of the Friends shows an influence
quite out of proportion to their small numbers. Their
main doctrine was "the Light of Christ in man,"

228 THE LIGHT WITHIN
which was clearly to them the Holy Spirit. "And
I saw," said Fox, "that there was an Ocean of Dark
ness and Death: but an infinite Ocean of Light and
Love flowed over the Ocean of Darkness. In that
also I saw the infinite Love of God, and I had great
openings." x Barclay taught that even the heathen had
this hght. The Inner Light was apparently either
independent of the Scriptures, or at least superior to
them. "Because," said Barclay, "they are only a
declaration of the fountain and not the fountain itself,
therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal
ground of all truth and knowledge, nor yet the ade
quate primary rule of faith and manners. Yet because
they give a true and faithful testimony of the first
foundation, they are and may be esteemed a secondary
rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have
all their excellency and certainty." 2 The Sacraments
were rejected; the taking of oaths, war, slavery, the
education of the clergy, the payment of tithes to sup
port a "hireling ministry," music in secular or sacred
places, all were denounced as wrong. There is no need
to point out the exaggerations and one-sidedness of
Quakerism: they are plain enough. One must, however,
note the positive influence which it exerted. It was
the beginning of the agitation which ended human
slavery; it has perceptibly influenced men to see that
war is unnatural and wrong; it has won respect for
its simphcity and kindness; and, most of all, it has
made many outside its ranks test the presence of the
Holy Spirit in their hearts. Thus Sir Thomas Browne,
a contemporary of the early Quakers, wrote: "I am
sure there is a common spirit that plays within us,
1 Journal, p. 17.
2 An Apology for True Christian Divinity, p. 67.

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 229
yet makes no part of us; and that is the Spirit of
God. . . . Whosoever feels not the warm gale and
gentle ventilation of this Spirit, though I feel his pulse,
I dare not say he hves: for truely, without this, to
me there is not heat under the Tropick; nor any hght,
though I dwelt in the body of the Sun." 2 And the
great Frederick Denison Maurice two centuries later
was so much in debt to the Quaker message that he
wrote one of his best books to invite the Friends to
look on the other side of the shield. 2
(2) Another form of Mysticism in this age was
Pietism, which flourished in Germany from the end
of the seventeenth century. It did not become a
separate sect, but was a movement influencing many
Christians. It exalted rehgious feeling. The promi
nent name at the beginning was Spener; and in later
days its chief distinction was that it trained Schleier-
macher. Heterodox as he was in parts of his system,
Schleiermacher defined the Holy Spirit as "the union
of the divine being with human nature in the form of
the coUective spirit which animates the collective hfe
of believers." 3 This is not satisfactory as a definition,
but it was of practical service because it induced many
people who, out of Rationalism, came under Schleier-
macher's sway, to open their spirits to the Divine
Spirit, and thereby in Him to hve. Thirty years after
his death, his Leben Jesu was first printed: in this he
conceived of our Lord as a man in whom the Holy
Spirit works as perfectly as it can work in humanity.
Some of the greatest of the German theologians of
the nineteenth century received their inspiration from
Schleiermacher. 1 Religio Medici, Part I, § xxxii.
2 The Kingdom of Christ, or Hints to a Quaker.
3 Der christliche Glaube, vol. iii, p. 333.

230 THE LIGHT WITHIN
(3) Incomparably the most telhng reaction against
the dryness of these three hundred years was the rise
of Methodism under John Wesley's leadership in the
eighteenth century. Beginning among a group of
rehgious students at Oxford it became a movement
among the plain people of England and America. It
was a protest against the coldness of the Church of
England, and against the Predeterminism of Calvinism.
It spoke of the universality and freedom of the Atone
ment. Wesley preached to throngs of people, often
in the open fields, that they must look for and expect
the witness of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, thus
attaining the confidence that they are "accepted in the
Beloved." The unconventional methods of the Wes-
leyans, together with their rigid and ascetic rules,
were not congenial to the stiff, uncompromising, and
rather worldly but good leaders of the Church of
England of the eighteenth century; with more patience
and sympathy on both sides, there is no reason why
the vigorous spirituahty of the Wesleyans should not
have been directly incorporated into the Established
Church. As it was, Methodism had much to do
with the Evangelical Movement within the Church of
England. This Evangelical Movement in the English Church
represented an effort to put first of all in life a per
sonal relationship to Jesus Christ through the Holy
Spirit. It did not dispense with Church Orders and
the Sacraments, nor did it minimize in the least the
value of common worship; but it dwelt upon the con
version of the soul to Christ and an immediate re
lationship to Him which required no mediation of
priest or sacrament. How far this movement kindled
loyalty is seen by the zeal which it showed in sending

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 231
out missionaries to the ends of the earth. It had
what it called a love for souls. John Wesley had once
said, "I look upon the whole world as my parish."
The Holy Spirit in the hearts of both the Methodists
and the Evangehcal Churchmen drove many into the
wildernesses of the earth, that there they might tell
strangers and foreigners Who it is that speaks through
conscience, and thus bring them all to a knowledge of
the Saviour.
In all these movements the Holy Spirit corrected
the inevitable tendency to institutionalism and formal
ism which appears from time to time throughout
Christian history. Some of the people reacted so far
as to depend whoUy upon their own unaided intuitions
and so lost the balancing and enlarging knowledge
that comes through the whole community. But for
the most part institutional Christianity has inherited
all that is finest in Quakerism, Pietism, and Meth
odism. It has learned that outward institutions are
a help to hfe just in so far as they are kept wide open
to the Spirit of God, that through them, or in any other
way pleasing to Him, He may bring to the heart of
man the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of
God, and the feUowship of the Holy Spirit.

VI
In these revivals of the spiritual hfe the emphasis
was nearly always upon the individual, sometimes
upon the individual only. There have been other
movements in recent times which indicate that the
divine influence has been exerted upon men to make
them see that spiritual hfe must increase not only in
the individual, but in the larger groups of humanity,

232 THE LIGHT WITHIN
even in aU humanity gathered, as it were, into one
universal personality. The rise of this tendency in
modern hfe can be traced through tiny courses to a
time long before the nineteenth century, but it wiU
be clearer if I select a few of the larger contributions
to the movement since the year 1800.
(1) One indication of the larger spiritual outlook
was the enormous popularity of the novels of Walter
Scott. The historical scholar now thinks them httle
short of criminal because they are full of bad history;
but the impression which they made upon the early
nineteenth century was that it would have been alto
gether delightful to live in the days of Ivanhoe and
Quentin Durward. People began to have the passion
of the antiquarian: old things made a greater appeal
than new. The same attitude was shown when the
readers of Scott discovered that the Gothic cathedrals
were beautiful. They had been neglected along with
Shakespeare and some other things. Christopher
Wren's churches, Pope's poetry, and formal Itahan
gardens had been preferred. But now the Gothic
began to take hold of people's imaginations. They
studied it, they restored it, they found in it the very
atmosphere of devotion and worship.
This may seem a slight phenomenon, but it was to
mean much before it had worked itself far into the hfe
of the people. Individualism and provinciahsm were
shpping away; there was entering a disposition to con
sult other ages before deciding what was interesting or
lovely. Something more than private judgment was
good for a man. He might test his own standards by
the standards of the ages.
(2) Then came a revival of the Church Idea. A
good illustration of it was the Tractarian Movement in

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 233
England with its picturesque episodes and its engaging
leaders. The doctrine of Apostolic Succession was
explained: not only was an officer of the Church
immediately called by the Holy Spirit and by Him
commissioned, but to be vahdly recognized by the
Church an officer must also be commissioned by those
who could trace their commissions in turn, step by
step, back to the Apostles, who were commissioned by
Christ. The Tractarians set about making a new
translation of the early Fathers. They were not
satisfied with only the thought and the customs
which had prevaUed since Cranmer 's day: they were
especiaUy interested in the fourth century, and wished
to be assured that they had its ecclesiastical aroma.
They did not attempt a reconstruction of an earher
Christianity, largely because they were not capable
of attacking a problem quite so difficult as this, — a
task at length to be undertaken by such men as
Lightfoot and Professor Gwatkin in England, Professor
Harnack in Germany, and Monseigneur Duchesne in
France. Meanwhile the successors of the Tractarians
(if they may be said to have had successors) became
almost exclusively interested in the Mediaeval Church.
The exact age to which the appeal was made is not
so important as the fact that a certain time remote
from their own was chosen. This meant that though
they used their private judgment, they used it only in
relation to a more nearly universal judgment in the
long history of the Church. They appealed to the
Bible as the Reformers appealed to it, but they added
that no man might frame his own interpretation of
its meaning: the Church must give the authoritative
interpretation. This was primarily accomphshed in
the creeds; but the early General Councils and the

234 THE LIGHT WITHIN
consensus of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers came
close to the authority of the creeds. It was a great
issue for which the Tractarians were contending:
it was the Church Idea.
When Newman left the Tractarian Movement it
never quite recovered its old enthusiasm. The growth
of the Church Idea largely passed into others' hands.
Maurice enriched it by adding spiritual conceptions:
being famihar not only with Christian theology but
also with an extended range of philosophy, he brought
to bear upon the subject a well-furnished and broadly
sympathetic mind. His admiration for the Quakers
prophesied that he must include in the Kingdom of
God aU temperaments, aU races, all ages. His lan
guage by its very fulness is difficult; but for those
who have patience it is illuminating.1 To him the
Church was both visible and invisible. Robertson of
Brighton, with a genius for harmonizing paradoxes,
found room for the institutional and the mystical in his
idea of the Church. And an American pupil of Mau
rice, A. V. G. Allen, in his Continuity of Christian
Thought suggested the double inheritance of every
modern Christian, in the sohdifying law of the Latins
and in the free spirit of the Greeks.
The Church Idea has received in these last years
emphasis from many and diverse quarters. One feels
it in the Church of Scotland; one sees it in newer
divisions of Christians hke the "Disciples";2 one finds
it in those who have never definitely associated them
selves with organic Christianity, but who are impelled
1 For an instance of Maurice's influence upon his own immediate circle
see The Life of Octavia Hill.
2 Dr. Peter Ainslie, The Message of the Disciples for the Union of the
Church.

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 235
to study its appeal.1 The hmits of the Church are
variously defined. Submission to the Roman See
defines Church membership for the Roman Catholic.
The High Anglican, though scorned by the Roman and
only patronized by the Greek Church, includes in the
Church three divisions, — Anghcan, Roman, and Greek.
Most Anghcan Churchmen would be less rigid, assert
ing that the Church includes all who are baptized
in the Name of the Trinity, only some are living in
divisions of the Church which are irregular in ministry
and ordinances: they do not dare to say that these
ministries and ordinances are invalid, because their
fruits are too evident, frequently outstripping the
more regular forms of Church government and usage.
Then there are people who think more vaguely of
the Church, making it the imaginary union of aU
the disconnected organizations and individuals who
love our Saviour in sincerity; thus they are content to
have no closer articulation than we now have. But,
however men define the Church, they are less and less
inchned to speak of Churches. They are looking
towards the great all-inclusive Church. They are
gaining the vision of organic unity, — not a unity
of the legahst which wiU cramp and stifle, but a unity
of the Free Spirit of God which will bring men the
love and strength of one another, with a tolerance of
all human sainthness whatever its form, and a con
centration upon the essentials.
While we value and shall value the outward assembly
of the saints (that is, all those who are baptized in the
Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost),
and while we give our loyalty to one pohty as
"regular" or "valid" in distinction from others which
1 E.g., Professor Royce, in his Problems of Christianity.

236 THE LIGHT WITHIN
may seem to us "irregular" or "invalid," an increas
ing number of us, from Roman Cathohc to Puritan,
are wondering if there may not be within the outward
Church a Church Invisible, bound together by the
fellowship of the unseen Spirit of the Living God,
which, so far from discounting the visible Church,
is rather its hfe and its glory. In congregations and in
councils these are the men through whom the Spirit
works: these are the elect. The Holy Cathohc Church
of the Creed in which we express our behef beckons us
to the heights of imagination and achievement.
In whatever form the Church Idea may come,
whether it be the severe concept of the Ultramontane,
the happier concept of the Churchman, or the less
definite concept of the man who is ever saying to him
self, "The things that are not seen are eternal," it
is hke a new gift of the Holy Spirit for our time. The
Voice which comes to the individual must be heard
and obeyed by the individual; but the individual,
having merged his individualism in the great body of
Christian men everywhere and always, must, as part
of that universal organism, listen to the Voice that
speaks to the whole body of believers. Then he
will be glad to obey commands of fuller and richer
content than the individual man can hear. What
some of these commands are I shall describe in the
last section of this chapter : 1 I beheve the obedience
to them is due to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
who is in our day planting in the hearts of men a
larger Idea of the Church, which demands and receives
an unparalleled loyalty.
(3) Abstract thought does not lag behind aestheti-
cism and religion in its recognition of the historical
1 See below, § VII., pp. 241 ff.

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 237
principle. The philosopher is no longer satisfied to
rely on his private judgment of the truth. He re
verts to the past, he faces the East and the West, and
with outstretched arms asks confirmation of the idea
which seems to him true. The lust for new truth is
lost in the desire to unearth eternal truth. Therefore
the shelves of hbraries are crowded with the histories
of phUosophy. The myths and the legends, which
show the almost unconscious thought of primitive ages,
are reverently assembled and explained. The ponderous
volumes of Professor Frazer's Golden Bough are a
brilliant sign of the times. It irritates Christian
people to see quite so many unqualified seekers for
truth, neglecting the truth of their own inheritance for
a desultory wandering through the theologies and phi
losophies of Asia; but this too is characteristic of the
last hundred years. When men think, or try to think,
they wish to be immersed in the thought of the ages.
Nor are histories of philosophy with numerous
readers the only outward evidence of this mood in
modern hfe. The original production of the philo
sophical scholar is now almost always prefaced by an
historical survey, leading up to his own adventure;
quite often half of the book, or more, is devoted to
the tracing of the idea through the past. The modesty
and reverence of the great modern thinkers is an im
pressive note. The assumption and cocksureness of
the occasional leader of thought immediately reduce his
influence among his brethren. There is a great deal
in phUosophy which owns no conscious allegiance to
orthodox theology; but there is very much which
subconsciously appears to be built upon the doctrine
of the Holy Ghost. The seeker for truth is no longer
an individual; he gladly loses himself in a mighty

238 THE LIGHT WITHIN
company; and so he enters through the world-self
who is also the world-seeker into the universal element
of Truth, — the Source, personal and concrete, loving
and beloved, — the Truth Himself, the Holy Spirit.
Once more we beheve that we see His work, and it
is marvellous in our eyes.
(4) The idea of a universal Church definitely em
bracing all who obey the Spirit of God has its counter
part in what, for convenience, we call the secular
world. The unifying of the people in modern nations,
which had its most signal impetus during the period
of the Reformation, has proceeded steadily within
the last three centuries. The nations which are most
advanced in civilization are the nations where democ
racy has conquered. Feudahsm and absolutism have
been exchanged for the general distribution of privilege
and responsibihty. This change has sometimes come
suddenly as in the French Revolution, or gradually
as in the series of English Reform Laws. The nation
has become a sacred enthusiasm second only to loyalty
to God, because all the people have recognized that
the nation is of them, for them, and by them. It is
not the property of rulers or of a class, however
noble. Every man in a nation ought to be a patriot;
and a patriot is only the nation-in-the-smaU. He is
the essential factor which makes the nation what it is.
When Abraham Lincoln was given his task he saw
that he was not appointed, first of all, to set free the
slaves; his paramount duty was to to keep his nation
one. A host of Americans thought that it made httle
difference whether the North and the South remained
together, or set up separate governments. It was
Lincoln's greatness that he expressed the genuis of
the age for nationahty. Had Lincoln been another

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 239
Napoleon, deliberating upon a personal empire, the
case would have been different. He was not a con
queror; he was an officer of the people, temporarily
serving them, and it was his lot to hold all together
who were bound by a common inheritance under a
common flag, that in the end there should not be
some ruling aU, but the people of both North and
South should rule together over the assembled rights
of the whole people. Lincoln has often been called
the typical American; he was much more, he was
the typical citizen of the world in his generation.
He stood for the integrity of the nation.
The Prussian victory over the divisions of Germany
completely effected through the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870 was only partly national. A cruel military
despotism, controUed by a few, and not the whole
people, was the ideal that was fostered and has been
fostered till the European War of 19 14 broke out.
Every patriotic American must hope that when the
war is ended, Germany will become a real nation
with a government of the people, by the people, and
for the people.
But we are clearly passing through nationalism to
a higher unity. The attempts to secure universal
peace through arbitration seem to be mocked by the
horrors of a barbaric European war, of which even
the dark ages might have been ashamed. The hope
of the Christian is that the Holy Spirit may over
rule the miseries of this War to bring in a new world,
in which nations shaU not cease to be, but in which
nations shall become conscious parts of some larger
whole, a federation of nations, perhaps, as the United
States is a federation of Commonwealths and States.
As Christians we know that it is contrary to our com-

240 THE LIGHT WITHIN
mission to talk of the peril of the Slav or of the Japa
nese, lest swarms of Eastern people overwhelm our
boasted civihzation. We are not ahens one to another.
We are all children of the same Father, brethren of
the same Christ, sanctified by the same Spirit. Not
by force, not by might, but by God's Spirit is the
real conquest. Rome, by armies, made slaves of the
Greeks; and these Greek slaves thereupon taught
the Roman lads the sparkhng lessons of Greece; and
thereby, in a far higher sense, Greece made slaves of
the Romans. There is no peril which hordes of lesser
peoples can bring to us if we have in our souls the
quality of true, Christ-filled, and therefore great,
men. Whatever armies and guns can do, the soul,
by the majesty of its strength, will conquer at last.
And the Holy Spirit, having put His power to the
work, will not be turned back. Despots, benevolent
or mihtary, smiling or frowning, bestowing favours
not theirs to give or destroying property and hfe not
theirs to take, are steadily being doomed by the God
of long-suffering and patience. They will pass, and
the true democracy will as steadily increase its bounds.
Demagogues and thieves will prey upon its edges,
but they too will pass. Nations will try to hate
nations, upon pretexts sahent or trifling, but that
hate will pass also. For the Spirit of God will over
flow all obstacles. He will govern in the hearts of
those who are His; and these men of the power which
cannot be seen, banded together out of all nations
and races and languages, will rule. And the Prince
of Peace shaU be crowned at last by the nations as
well as by the individual saints.
The question will surely be asked if this is not the
ideal of the papacy. Yes, one may answer, but with

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 241
a strategic difference. The papacy tried to unite
the world under a tyrannical dictatorship. When
the new unity comes it wUl be such a unity as Abra
ham Lincoln would have approved: there will be a
world of the people governed by the people and for
the people. And the Spirit of God and of His Christ
shall rule in the hearts of these people, and therefore
in the heart of the world, for ever and ever.

vn
AU these reflections may seem to depend a good
deal on theory. We have been examining tendencies
which need the future as well as the past to round
out their perfect story. There are, however, fruits
of this unifying process, through which the Holy
Spirit has been leading the world; and these fruits
can be seen by any man, and minutely described.
These fruits are the result of a new emphasis in the
hves of the best men. Once the best men, or those
who seemed best to their generation, dropped aU
obhgations, to save their own souls. Charles V put
aside his responsibility to his kingdom and his empire,
and went into a monastery. The Calvinist almost
gloated over his confidence in his own election, though
he was assured that nearly aU his friends were eternally
damned: no one thought him selfish; only very
rehgious and praiseworthy did he seem. John Henry
Newman said that the only facts luminously clear to
him were God and his own soul. Now this is all
changed. We call Charles V in his snug cloister a
coward; we caU the complacent Calvinist a Pharisee;
and we turn Newman's maxim about and say, The
only facts luminously clear to us are God and our

242 THE LIGHT WITHIN
neighbours. Some theologians are worried because
good men no longer seem anxious about their indi
vidual salvation: they either take it too easily for
granted, or do not think about it at all. Without
being too optimistic, one may ask whether possibly
the good men of these last years have not been taking
to heart the words of the Saviour, "Whosoever wiU
save his fife shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his
hfe for my sake shaU find it." J
(i) The world has a new Social Conscience. We
must not be dismayed because this conscience is
partly, or even largely, subliminal, showing its re
sults in individual enterprise and in hmited groups,
and apparently only forcing the world into its sanc
tions. For the subliminal part of the world is, as
in the case of the individual, the most important
part. A few illustrations will demonstrate what I
mean. The French court of the eighteenth century
seemed to satisfy the elite of France: only the down
trodden peasants seemed to groan. But as we, from
a distance, survey the French Revolution and its
attending events, we now know that subconscious
France, the real France which made its great past
and shall make its great future, was aghast at the
selfishness, waste, and wickedness of gay Paris and
Versailles. The coarse and cruel buffoonery of the
Revolution was an exact reaction from the coarse
and cruel buffoonery of the regal court. Thinly dis
guised by poverty on one side and by extravagance on
the other, both were quite ahke, one may think, in
the sight of the Eternal. Those who were conscious
of eternal values no doubt shuddered at the guillotine
and other excrescences of the popular wrath, but
1 St. Matthew xvi, 25.

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 243
deep down in their hearts they knew that they, the
wise and the good, could not dare to defend the old
r6gime, lest they defend that which the Will of God
had doomed.
The American Colonies in their weakness wrenched
themselves free from the strength of Great Britain,
because the heart and soul of England sympathized
with the contention of the Colonists. The Enghsh
Reformed Corn Laws were supported by men who
in a worldly way were pinched by them, because the
Enghsh conscience recognized that they were right.
Again, the time seems to be passing when Europe
will aUow the unspeakable Turk, for alleviating poUt
ical reasons, to murder Armenian Christians in cold
blood. The European conscience is becoming more
sensitive. When Germany, resting in its huge arma
ments, entered into the War of 19 14, the Emperor
took pains to tell the world the reasons why war
seemed to Germany a necessary result of a certain
tense situation. The world was incredulous, not
trusting either the sincerity or the judgment of the
Emperor's reasons; but it was significant that a
power which rehed on force should attempt to dis
play its conscience. The war-lords of the past never
explained: might to them was right. The world today
can and wiU visit upon a bad and selfish policy more
than physical conquest: the world will visit upon
the ruler or the nation which offends the conscience
of the world a scorn and a contempt which wiU
be more withering than the worst fire of lead and
powder. Battles in God's world, as the Holy Spirit
fiUs its conscience more and more, will be won less
and less by the merely physically strong: the cry of
one httle child who is on God's side will do more to

244 THE LIGHT WITHIN
turn the critical moment than the armed millions who
dare to thwart Him. Men are increasingly aware of
the unseen armaments, created by human consciences,
which go out to every battle for righteousness.
Most civilized countries are facing a radical propa
ganda of Sociahsm. In democratic countries like Amer
ica and England little harm is apt to be done by
Sociahsm, because the mass of the people are sensi
tive to any appeal to right, and though the process
of reform may be slow, the inteUigence of democracy
will gradually attain the reforms of which a national
conscience approves. But in countries where a few
men bear sway and where consequently democracy is
weak, the Socialists are sure to come to rough blows
with the authorities; and because men with vested
interests, traditionally opposed to any degree of Social
ism, will be conscience-stricken over the inequahties of
life, there will therefore be strange alhes in the battle.
One sees the same thing in a smaU way in any parish:
the people who most resent slighting words or acts
concerning the less prosperous members of the parish
are not the poor themselves: the indignation wiU be
most heavily from the most prosperous, the people
whom an outsider would think would care least.
In ways like these we discover in the modern world
a new Social Conscience. It seems often to be far
removed from any rehgious impulse. But to one who
looks narrowly at history it seems to be part of a
long process. In the world as in the individual the
sense of right and wrong has been planted. What is
new in the world-conscience of these later years is
that men and classes of men are steadily looking
away from their own prerogatives and are contem
plating the rights and the happiness of others. One

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 245
might say that it is only an example of bhnd human
evolution; but it is more rationally understood if we
conceive that it is due to the fostering care of the
Holy Spirit.
(2) Charity and the giving of alms are as old as
human need, but there has been a new form of charity
in modern times. Lowell's Sir Launfal began his
search for the Holy Grail by flinging a bit of gold to
a beggar outside his castle gate. That was the old
charity. When Sir Launfal came back, worn and
poor, he shared his last crust with this beggar: he
became a beggar, as it were, that he might help.
That is modern charity. The reader may say that
this, being the shadow of the Incarnation, cannot be
modern; but one may answer that the world dis
covers with strange reluctance the applications of the
Life of the Perfect Man.
The phenomenal growth of the modern city has
made the contrasts between rich and poor more
startling than ever before. Palaces hne one street;
a few blocks away men hve in herds hke cattle. There
was the same contrast, perhaps, in the castles of the
old world, with the crowded village just outside the
gates of the park. But both had fresh air and
the peace and beauty of the open country. Good men
are not so wilUng, as once they were, to say, "Thank
God for poverty!" They are not quite satisfied to
have some men starving while they are feasting.
The constant sight of strained faces telhng of hunger
and worry makes the man of the city think about
his obhgations. Misery is not a theory to him; he
sees it.
Social settlements, religious and secular, are the
symbol of the new charity. Toynbee Hall in London,

246 THE LIGHT WITHIN
HuU House in Chicago, the East Side settlements
of great parishes in New York, and the Salvation
Army everywhere, show that good men with abihty
to help do not intend to give money so much as
themselves. There is much testing of methods, there
is experiment, there is courageous failure, and there
is abundant hope. Statistics can tell httle in such a
crusade. The man who reaUy cares can tell by the
changed faces of a neighbourhood what a social settle
ment is accomphshing. Diligent observation would
bring to one's notice the new acts of heroism, chivalry,
and unselfishness in the people of these jostling throngs.
The friend of the street could discover a new forti
tude in trouble, a new ideal in struggle. And then
the loving critic would ask where all these changes
arose. No fine houses for settlements or clubs or
churches could account for them; no paraphernalia
of equipment; no picnics and excursions and enter
tainments; no paying of house-rent or doles of charity.
No, the real solution is deeper. There have been
people of the finest grade, in character and in culti
vation, giving not their money only but themselves
to these people of less fortunate inheritance and
environment. They have hved in these settlement
houses, not as visitors, but as feUow citizens of the
street, friends, neighbours. If they have not been
able to spend all their time, they have spent as much
of their time as they could just there. And they
have not been pompous examples or patronizing
advisers; they have been as much part of the district
as the lamp-posts and the pavements. People knew
that they belonged there.
A recent book on pastoral care calls this, "conver
sion by contagion." Describing a clergyman with

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 247
this ideal, the author says, "If you came too near
him, you got religion, as from another sort you may
get the measles. When one thinks of it, that is how
we get most things, hke good manners or a panic;
we catch them from some one. Now I believe this
is how we clergy are to convert people: we must
have Christianity in ourselves, then come near people
and give it them. Conversion by contagion is the
best name I can find for it." x A good deal of this
help by contact has had religion for its motive; a
good deal has been rehgious in only a subliminal way.
Good men with httle conscious religious feehng have
longed to be practical in their benevolence; and this
seemed the way of reahty. Even religious settle
ments have sometimes made httle of rehgious ex
pression, lest they drive away people of the utmost
need who would be repeUed by a rehgious expression
different from their inherited prepossession. The
ruling idea of every vital social settlement is the
fulfilment of the divine commandment, "Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself:" it demonstrates that
rich men can be neighbours to the poor.
It would be a mistake to think that this quality
is shown only in social settlements. The spirit of it
is in aU sorts of homes. A considerable number of
people have no other vocation than to give them
selves to others, and the beauty of this service is that
it is done so simply that no one pauses to speak of
it. The poor man takes into his home the child of a
dying neighbour and thenceforth feeds and clothes this
child as if it were his own. The prosperous woman
puts first in her engagements the direction of a day
nursery, by which not only a few mothers are taught
1 J. H. Skrine, Pastor Futurus, pp. in f.

248 THE LIGHT WITHIN
to care properly for their babies, but through the
"contagion" of these nursery mothers the mothers
of a whole section are learning the same high art.
An instructive instance of this neighbourliness is
seen in the eagerness of English bishops today to be
rid of their palaces and parks. It is not a mere
concession to democratic and sociahstic suggestions.
These men desire to be among the people as no fif
teenth or seventeenth century bishop ever dreamed
that a bishop could wish. And the desire does not
end in the vapour of talk. Episcopal palaces are being
sold, their owners are gladly moving into smaller
houses among other houses, and the money gained
by the sale is turned over to endow new bishoprics,
thereby increasing the human equipment. In France,
even the Louvre, Versailles, and Fontainebleau have
become the playgrounds of the whole people, while
the ruler of France lives modestly in dignified sim
phcity; but the ruler was not the first to think of
the change. The impressive contrast is that the
Enghsh bishops themselves for their own happiness
reduced their state. Archbishop Temple sold Adding-
ton and with the result of the sale rebuilt the Arch
bishop's Palace in Canterbury, snugly among the
people. When asked if he thought his successors
would like to live there, he said, "No: but I mean
to make them." The old Archbishop was modern,
and in so far as his successors are modern men they
will thank him for his deed. The story is told of an
Enghsh bishop who, upon his election, went back to
his old parishioners in East London to receive their
congratulations. His happiness had been his simple
life at their doors, and he dreaded the pomp attaching
to a bishop who is also an important officer of the

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 249
state. "I tried to avoid riding in a carriage: I should
prefer to ride in a 'bus. But they told me that I
must ride in a carriage. So I know only one way
out of it: when you see me riding in my carriage,
if you will hold up your hand, I'll stop and give you
a 'lift.' " That is a new note: the note of a new
kind of responsibility for the less fortunate.
The rehgious man says that all this is a new out
pouring of the Holy Spirit. And it is certainly a
rehgious emotion that catches at one's heartstrings
when one reads of the crowds of people who followed
the dead body of General Booth or the dead body
of Father Dolling. Humanity can praise only God
for such neighbours of the people as these. They are
a manifestation of the brooding Spirit in modern hfe.
And a similar emotion touched all men as they read
that among his last words the late Pope, Pius X,
said, "I was born poor; I hved poor; and I want to
die poor." He was asking for simphcity in his burial.
It was a strange sound in his gorgeous surroundings,
in the magnificence of the Vatican. They were words
of a rehgious and simple old man, unspoiled by riches
and honour; but they were also the word of a new
age. The man whose heart broke the sooner because
he heard daily of the death of poor soldiers, wished
to be identified with his poorest friends in the symbols
of his fareweU to the world. Perhaps he would have
been even happier had it been his lot to live in some
httle Itahan viUage, the poor priest of a few of God's
dear poor.
(3) The last note of the new responsibility for others
is Missions. The discovery of America had brought
the Jesuit missionaries to New France, and the So
ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel was formed

250 THE LIGHT WITHIN
to send missionaries to the Enghsh colonies; but with
the nineteenth century a missionary movement was
started which brought practically all Christian com
munities into its enthusiasm. It began with the
thought of rescuing those who might perish ever
lastingly if the Gospel were not preached to them.
With a larger trust in God's love for all His children,
His pity for their ignorance, and His perpetual care
for them everywhere, the motive somewhat changed.
The missionary longs to do good to men in this hfe,
that for this world as well as the next, for their chil
dren as well as for themselves, there may come sal
vation. So there are hospitals and schools as well
as churches; and above all there are men and women
of character and abihty who give themselves to be
friends, unconscious centres of loving help. Whereas
the movement was once rather frantic and visionary,
it is now thoroughly sane with all its heroic sacrifice
and hope. The men who work hardest in this effort
have the dream that within a very short time every
man in the world will have had a real chance to
understand the glory and the joy of being a disciple
of Christ. He may decide that he will not be a dis
ciple, but he can have the materials for a personal
decision. There is here not only the picture of men going
out to be neighbours, but the picture of men daring
to set no hmit to the neighbourhood. You can see
with your eyes the need of the people who brush by
you on the street; but it requires imagination to
perceive the need of the Chinaman and the African.
The whole man is interested in the depressed people
of his city and also in the discouraged people in
central Africa. The illuminating feature of Missions

THREE CENTURIES OF LOYALTY 251
is that it arouses men to be loyal to the round world.
Nothing ought to give such a blow to the isolation
of individualism as the desire to make every man
really a member of every other man till the whole
world is consciously the body of Christ. It is the
door through which Church unity will come, for the
world will be one in Him. Missions is the Church
in love with the whole world. When all the weary
men learn to come to Him who will give them rest,
the gratitude of a responsive love will kindle the love
of the suspicious and the hard and the official; the
barriers wiU fall; and there will be one Church of
God everywhere. Just when this will be, we cannot
venture to think. But as we trust in the Holy Spirit
guiding the whole Church, we know that He who has
guided the Church hitherto, wiU guide it unto the
end. He being in all the members of the Church
wiU in Himself make the unity.

XI
"MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF
THE COMING OF THE LORD"
HAVING attempted the bold outhnes of the
manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the more
familiar aspects of history, we may now attempt to
select the sahent features of that manifestation, as
they apply, or ought to apply, to our own hving.
For I have written these pages with a purpose wholly
practical.

First, we may lay hold of a definition to describe
our ordinary thinking. We discover that we speak
of the presence of the Divine sometimes as the Father,
sometimes as the Word or Christ, sometimes as the
Holy Spirit. We are perplexed and often worried
because we cannot more sharply distinguish between
them. The reassuring message of theology through
the ages is that we ought not, in our approach to
God, to make the distinctions absolute; not because we
may not think of the existing distinctions in the
Godhead, but because to us the love of the Persons
for one another is conceived to be such that in Each,
visiting us, the other Persons are always present.
Or we may seize upon more exact words, and say
that only through the Holy Spirit do we have the
Father and the Son; and that, moreover, in the Holy

THE COMING OF THE LORD 253
Spirit we always have the Father and the Son. The
Holy Spirit is not a mere breath from God, an angelic
messenger, a substitute for God; but the Holy Spirit
is God bringing to us the wholeness and perfection
of the Divine Friendship. Our life is "from and
unto the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit."
As I have before pointed out,1 we reach often the
soundest definitions by reflecting upon the recurring
heresies of the Church. For a recurring heresy stands
for a truth so insistent that it survives in spite of its
one-sidedness and partial error. Such tenacious here
sies are, for instance, Pantheism or Polytheism on
one side and Deism on the other. Instead of declar
ing these aU false, we may say that taken together
and harmonized, — the truth of one correcting the
error in the other, — they are all true. So orthodox
theology speaks of the Divine Transcendence and the
Divine Immanence, of the Unity of God and the Trin
ity of God. In these fundamental doctrines, which are
extremely practical for our every-day hving, we find
that the personahty of the Holy Spirit is a vital
article of our faith. The Holy Spirit is the Uniting
Love of the Transcendent God, making the Perfect
Social Consciousness which is eternal in the heavens,
the mutual and complete love before the world was.
From this Perfect Social Consciousness humanity
has its source and thither tends, since humanity is
made in the Divine Image, and cannot rest till it is
found in God. As the Holy Spirit is the uniting per
sonahty of the Transcendent God, so the Spirit is
also the uniting personahty in humanity; for hving in
each man born into the world, — from man's point
of view, either subconsciously or consciously, — and
1 See above, p. 124.

254 THE LIGHT WITHIN
being the very bond of love, He must bring the deep
est in one man into union with the deepest in every
other man. It is the Divine Immanence of which we
think chiefly when we speak of the Holy Spirit, for
by His perpetual indwelhng in humanity, the world
is fuU of God. But we ought to think of the Holy
Spirit equally in our visions of the Divine Transcen
dence, for both by human logic and by our intuitions,
we are sure that He is the joy of the Father and the
Son in the Divine Unity.
Whether we think of the Holy Spirit as proceeding
from the Father through the Son, or from the Father
and the Son equally, whether, with the Greek Church,
we emphasize the fact that the Father is the only
Source of Life, or, with the West, we emphasize the
fact that the Spirit of God in humanity, in the In
carnate Son, is altogether the Spirit of God, we must '
in any case feel that the Holy Spirit brings to us the
love of the Father and the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ. The Spirit of the Father is the Holy Spirit,
and the Spirit of Christ is the Holy Spirit, and there
is one only Spirit; by whom we are bound to one
another, in whom we are united to the whole Life of
God. n
Man's constant search for infallibility outside the
Life of God is full of instruction, because a glance at
history shows how, at every step, this search has
been thwarted. The decision of a General Council
was once looked upon as a means of conveniently
discovering the absolute truth. When some men
were doubtful of the vahdity of General Councils, an
infallible Pope was deemed a suitable organ of final

THE COMING OF THE LORD 255
truth, that men might turn to him and know. When
other men distrusted both Council and Pope there
was a turning towards the Bible, and that was made
the infallible guide. Here, however, there was a di
vision. Part of those who were dissatisfied with the
authority of Council and Pope maintained that through
the Holy Spirit each man could interpret the Bible
for himself, while others said that only when the
Church interpreted the Bible could it give an infalli
ble assurance. In these last years, through modern
criticism, a great many intelligent people say that
the Bible, though never more authoritative than
today, cannot be called infallible in any outward or
mechanical way. Whether these people are right or
not, they do not find infallibility in Institution or in
Book. We may look at these various overturnings of
man's attempt to find in some outward institution
an infallible guide, either as the result of a malign
force, or as the beneficent work of the Holy Spirit.
If we see the dehberate process working out through
Christian history, and if we believe that Christian
history is God's, then we have no alternative: we
know by the constant breakdown of the supposed
infallibility of these institutions that God does not
mean man to depend on any infallible outward thing.
The reason for this, we may think, is twofold.
First, God abundantly shows us by His dealings
with us that He does not intend hfe to be easy. It
is full of difficulties to be overcome or transcended.
Every one of us has hardship, pain, sorrow; and some
of us, not infrequently the best of us, have these
burdens in crushing abundance. It is difficult both
to do right and to think right. We do not under-

256 THE LIGHT WITHIN
stand why our course has been as it is; we cannot
explain God or ourselves. These are facts, and since
they attach to every man's circumstances, we are
forced to believe that God meant them to be just
what they are. The second reason why it might be
said that God does not allow us any convenient
outward infallible guide, which we could consult, as a
traveller consults his time-card, is that, if we had such
an outward infallible guide, we should have less than
the best. By refusing us all infallible standards in
institutions and men, God drives us to the highest:
we are bidden, by the cruel facts, to go directly to
the Spirit of the Living God, when we are in the
darkness and desire the infallible light upon our path.
Instead of infallibility the Holy Spirit gives us each
moment, if we will have it, the guidance of His pres
ence and of His love. He is the only way to the
Truth. This is not to say that the Councils are not im
portant guides: in so far as the members of Councils
assembled with the dehberate casting aside of their
own preconceived notions and prayed to be guided
by the Holy Spirit, they were filled with the Holy
Spirit, and the united Council was so fiUed. Conse
quently the Voice of the Council was the Voice of
the Holy Spirit, though mediated through the neces
sarily imperfect human elements; and the Church
and individuals were reassured and comforted. In the
same way, an officer of the Church — whether Pope
of Christendom or pastor of a little wayside flock —
may, if he be humble enough and simple enough and
good enough, cast aside his own ideas and prejudices,
and, praying earnestly, may receive for those over
whom he is set in the Lord a message from the Holy

THE COMING OF THE LORD 257
Spirit. So the Bible, being the inspired record through
human instrumentalities of God's message to peoples
and to individuals of the past, is more and more the
medium of the Voice of the Holy Spirit to the Church
and to Nations and to individuals; provided all these
make their hearts attentive and seek to know what
the Holy Spirit shall now speak to them through the
words of the ancient record. We must hold the
Church and the Bible in the most reverent honour.
They are God's gifts for our help. They are wonder
ful vehicles of grace. But when they are made to
seem outwardly and mechanicaUy infallible, when
they are made in themselves the last resort, then
they block the way to the highest. Then God will
lower them, that He may surely give us what is
highest of all — the Voice of the Holy Spirit to the
Church and to the individuals of our own day. And
this is not to be in any formal, merely institutional
way. It is to be no mere repetition of an old utter
ance or an old record, however nearly infallible in
and for its day. It is to be directly and afresh; every
thing, though old, will quiver with the present divine
energy. We forget the means of our knowledge.
We know only that God, in and by His Holy Spirit,
has spoken; and we hve in the joy of His companion
ship and leadership.
People are often confused by the proved marks of
falhbihty in sacred institutions. Discovering the falli
bility they are prone to discard the institution, what
ever it may be, as worthless, as lacking the divine
sanction which it assumed to have. All this is folly.
The sacred institutions of the Christian past are
never so much God's as when men discover that
they cannot stand of themselves. Every one of them

258 THE LIGHT WITHIN
needs God, who through the Holy Spirit wiUs to
be present always with His children. The holiest
word of Christ, assuredly most accurately transmitted
to us through the years, is not complete till we have
shut our eyes, and with all our hearts and minds
have hstened; whereupon, we hear the old sentence
which was uttered centuries ago, said anew and di
rectly to us by the Spirit of the present Christ, —
the Christ who never ceases to be a yearning brother
to humanity. Thus even when to scholars the history
of the Christ of Palestine seems difficult to under
stand, when He seems to be clothed with shadows
so that they despair of knowing exactly how to dis
tinguish His beloved face, then, if they are rehgious
men, these scholars are driven to seek the hving
Christ, and through His inestimable and direct gift
they return to the records, and, by a sense higher
than the historical and the critical, they know that
the New Testament is a book on which they may
rely. Timid Christians wring their hands foras
much as succeeding ages must pass through these
vicissitudes: they think faith is shpping out of the
world. But it is not. God is simply arousing men
who have grown satisfied with a formal faith. He
gives them instead a hving faith, — a faith consciously
received from the Holy Spirit. Thenceforth men
long, not for infallibility, but for God.

in
One learns from history that there is a constant
swaying from individuahsm to solidarity, and from
solidarity back to individualism. St. Paul, being
commissioned by the immediate Christ on the Da-

THE COMING OF THE LORD 259
mascus road, knew that his authority to be an Apostle
was complete; : nevertheless later he took counsel
with the other Apostles.2 Again, when Peter, the
leader and representative of the Apostles, pursued a
narrow pohcy with regard to Gentile Christians, Paul
withstood him to the face;3 but even with the assur
ance of his individual conscience, Paul was willing to
submit his contention to the Council at Jerusalem,
and there his individual conviction was confirmed by
the Church.4 So in the middle ages Scholasticism
and Mysticism were set off against one another; so
in the sixteenth century the conscience of one man
faced the conscience of imperial ecclesiasticism; so,
later stiU, the Quaker faced the Churchman. All
these are phases of a perpetual movement, proclaim
ing two necessary ideas. One is that the Holy Spirit,
speaking to the individual conscience, demands that
the individual shall confirm his individual message
by a reference to the message which comes to the
whole Church. The other necessary idea is that the
Holy Ghost, speaking to the conscience of the cor
porate Church, demands that the Church shall con
firm, and if necessary cleanse, its corporate message
by a reference to the message which comes to the
individual soul. It may be too much to expect the
world to keep this balance exact; the weight of em
phasis will be now oxi this side, now on that. But
God will not allow the scales to be long tipped on
either side. The necessary idea on one side will
presently outweigh the necessary idea that attempts
to survive without its complement. The Holy Spirit
speaks both to the individual and to humanity; and
1 Galatians i, 12, 16, 17. 3 Ibid., ii, n.
2 Ibid., ii, 1, 9. l Acts xv, 4, 28.

260 THE LIGHT WITHIN
history shows that it is the Divine WiU that each
should find the whole message in the words spoken
to both.
The individual is apt to dweU on his rights. It is
vastly more important that he dwell on his respon
sibility. He can never lose his right to hear the
Inner Voice; he may easily neglect his privilege to
hsten. Having chosen an authority outside himself,
he may become complacent in its convenience, cease
to take trouble to know for himself the best course
or even the just course, and aUow the general witness
to nullify the witness that he may at any moment
find in his own heart. Thus we may imagine that
the Spanish inquisitors, obeying what they thought
a message to the Church, crushed every impulse
which told them individuaUy to remember the gentle
ness and forbearance of Christ. A man in our own
time may give his assent to a creed without any
attempt to love God with his individual mind. Such
a man has no right to cast vitriolic speeches at a neigh
bour who doubts or even denies an article of that
creed: his neighbour may be quite mistaken and fool
ish, but he has more faith than the man who never
trusts himself to think about his creed in any way.
On the other hand, history tells us plainly what
happens to the man who beheves that he is suffi
cient of himself to know all truth. The mystics of
the mediaeval period, assuming to know individually the
wiU of God, without regard to His message to the
Christian community, lapsed at times into gross
hcense in the Name of the Lord. Claus Storch and
the other Zwickau prophets, intoxicated by what
they beheved divine inspiration, refused to hear the
officers of the Church or to be guided by the Bible.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 261
Even Luther could not hold them in reason. In their
madness they appealed to the sword, and thousands
of German peasants perished. The line between a
fanatic and a hero is often difficult to draw; but it
is safe to say that a hero stands for the truth as he
sees it, after he has consulted both his own heart
and the larger Christian conscience which surrounds
him. He may find that these two consciences do
not agree. Thereupon he must decide which is right,
the community or the individual. Generally he will
find that if his own conscience is clear and unselfish,
there wiU be at least a larger conscience than his own
agreeing with him, even if it be not the conscience of
the whole people. Luther at Worms was not quite
alone: as he stood before emperor and princes and
bishops, and felt them against him, he must have
remembered the strained and loving faces that looked
up into his as he made his way to the city. He
prayed before his open Bible, and God spoke to him
directly; — he remembered these faces, and God spoke
to him out of the conscience of the common people
of Germany. The appeal outside one's own life, as
well as within it, is essential to a sane judgment of
the right. The smaller the community to whom the
appeal is made, the sterner is the heroism of the lonely
soul. Although one must have one's own ideas about
the quahty and extent of the community to whose
conscience appeal is made, the first principle to
grasp is that there shall be an appeal to the con
science of some group outside one's self. While
Christendom is divided, and while a large part of
the world is less than Christian, the appeal cannot
easily be to the conscience of aU humanity; though

262 THE LIGHT WITHIN
sometimes it may be so, in imagination at least. For
in a moment of rage a man may think that his con
science tells him to be a brute, till his instinct warns
him that the contemplated deed is inhuman. In
that moment his private conscience is corrected by
the conscience of humanity. In so far as a man
thinks of himself as citizen, patriot, Churchman,
Christian, or man, he is forced, by the very thinking,
to appeal to the widening circles for which each of
these loyalties stands.
We think of the Holy Spirit as hving in the Church.
In the Holy Spirit we are members one of another.
In every great service of the Church, — Baptism,
Confirmation, Holy Communion, Ordination, — the
Holy Spirit is invoked. By Him we are incorporated,
through Baptism, into the spiritual body of Christ.
By Him, the officers of the Church ^.re, through
Ordination, endowed with the power to serve men,
somewhat as Christ served them; or, by faith in
Him and by complete surrender to Him, they are
able to let Christ continue, through them, His minis
try of sacrifice and love. But the Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper most clearly suggests the immanence
of the Holy Spirit in all things animate and inani
mate. We must assume that our Lord said the words
of institution in Aramaic. We know that the Aramaic
has no copula, so that His words would have been
the same ("This my body"), whether His meaning
was, "This is identified with my body," or, "This
signifies my body." To the Oriental mind there is
no difference, for the symbols are, in any case, pledges
of Christ's perpetual presence; and that is what
devout men have always craved. Professor Ramsay
has pointed out that the Oriental view is the view of

THE COMING OF THE LORD 263
a child who, taking a few stones, builds them up, and
says, "This is a castle, and this is a knight riding to
attack it." The child does not treat the stones as
mere symbols, nor does he think that they are trans
muted into a castle and a knight. "To the child they
are what the child makes them," continues Dr. Ramsay.
"As the chUd hves his ideal hfe, which we caU 'play,'
these material objects become part of his higher hfe, and
are what the things of that life are. The idea is aU pow
erful: the material fact is of no consequence. The child
is right, and the Oriental is right. The idea is the impor
tant thing: the material is nought." x The Oriental pro
longs his childhood,2 the European and his connections
cut it off and make all hteral and hard, — and unreal.
Bearing this in mind, we see that in the eternal child-
likeness of Jesus He would make the whole world sacra
mental. The Spirit can make everything into Christ
for those who have the will to receive Him.
Thus through the thought of the Church and the
Sacraments we attain to the thought of the World
Spirit, the Invisible Church, the conscience of hu
manity. This seems to me the union of aU the bases
of the subhminal consciousnesses of individuals. We
must caU this explanation only an hypothesis; and
yet it explains so much in our experience that we are
forced to yield to it a large measure of probabihty.
In exalted moments when we are joined with Christ
and aU the saints in the Holy Communion, or when
we stand in a placid scene and gaze off towards the
distant mountains bathed in the glory of evening,
or when we feel the thriU of a sacred friendship, then
1 Expository Times, vol. xxi, p. 516. Cf. Comment by Dr. W. M.
Groton, The Christian Eucharist and the Pagan Cults, pp. 142 ff.
2 For a vivid example, cf. Tagore's Poems.

264 THE LIGHT WITHIN
we depend not only on the conscience which is in our
waking individual selves, but we reach down through
the subconscious into that great reservoir of con
science, — the conscience of the Church, of humanity,
of the world. The Holy Spirit is the Life Giver in
the conscience which is ours, one by one, and He is
the Life Giver in the conscience which we share with
humanity and the ages, perhaps with the flowers and
the everlasting hiUs. We recognize the feUowship
of the Holy Ghost, and our individual selves are lost
in it to be found reaUy ahve. We obey our own
consciences and the conscience that belongs to us aU.
So we obey the fuU and rounded message of the Spirit
of God.
The best way to meet Pantheism is not to cut
the world away from God too sharply. Orthodox
zeal, in its flight from Pantheism, is constantly falling
into the pit of dualism. Christ's way of meeting
Pantheism is to make aU the world a sacrament.
When He took out of the world a few crumbs of bread
and a few drops of wine, and claimed it as part
of Himself, He did make aU creation a sacrament.
Thenceforth every common meal was sacramental.
Every natural law became a spiritual law also. When
ever we touch any material thing we touch the spirit
ual within it. This is not Pantheism. This is the
Holy Ghost informing and inspiring every particle of
the world which God has made, and using it, in God,
and for God.
As Christians, our duty is to identify Christianity
with the world. This is not to be done by forcing
people into the Church, after the manner of Constan
tine or Clovis. Nor is it by a soft assumption that
every one is at heart a Christian whether he know it

THE COMING OF THE LORD 265
or not. Our outstanding vision in the Church today,
so far as we grasp the significance of the Church's
function, is the holding Christ before the world in
such a way that every man will long to accept Him,
joyfully surrendering to the love of His Spirit. For
to have the universal conscience at its maximum we
must think of every man's contributing to it the best
of which his nature is capable. If we are to imagine
what would be a complete world-conscience, we must
think of a conscience which would have every man's
knowledge of Christ within it. The two worlds are
not separate. As the love of Christ-filled men goes
out in missionary zeal in this hfe, so it will have gone
out in a quite equal zeal in the hfe beyond earthly
existence. Those everywhere who possess Christ must
be convincing, each his neighbour, what such posses
sion means. And so, at length, we trust that there
wiU be a Christian conscience which includes all men
who have hved. This conscience, even in its forma
tive stage, is the necessary complement of every
appeal to the individual conscience. In appealing to
this world conscience, either in posse or in esse, we
appeal to all human experience. Every race, every
nation, every man, has a distinct and valuable con
tribution to make.
A national spirit may foster loyalty and spur men
on to sacrifice and honour. It may bind the different
classes and ranks together in a common ideal. But
the national spirit may also be narrow and selfish.
Mandell Creighton once said that though Christianity
beautified many an individual life, glorified many
a family, helped somewhat the honour of business,
touched a httle the relations of society and pohtics,
it could scarcely be said to exist in international

266 THE LIGHT WITHIN
obhgations.1 We need to look no farther than the
present European War to see instances in which the
most solemn international promises are flippantly
disregarded, because they interfere with the safety
or convenience of a nation in a trying situation. But
a sign stiU worse is the appeal to race prejudice.
Where races press hard against one another, and the
expansion of either seems possible only at the ex
pense of the other, there is a problem demanding
one's sympathy; but hate and vengeance are no
part of a Christian solution. Any nation which incites
its people to war against another nation by inflaming
social hatred cuts itself off from the rehgion of Jesus
Christ, who came to be the brother not of one race,
but of every race. When from so-called civilization
we hear the cry to rise up against the peril of the
Slav or against the Yellow peril, then we wonder if
the God of the ' whole earth will not take dominion
from His selfish and pampered children and give it
to those who but now crouched in the by-ways and
hedges of the world. Every Anglo-Saxon who has
really known a great-hearted Japanese or Chinaman
knows how noble and true Japan or China can be
come, if this high Christian character so exemplified
becomes contagious. And when this same Anglo-
Saxon sees the decay of morals and ideals in Berhn
and Paris and London and New York, he wonders if
he might not be glad to think of his descendants
three hundred years hence living in a world where
Asiatic ideals and not European were dominant.
There is more to be said. I am quite convinced
that nations as we now know them are to lose their
armoured edges and wiU be in some way fused into a
1 The Heritage of the Spirit, p. 181.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 267
federation of nations. As Christianity really gets
hold of men, it will seem more important to be the
brother of all men than to be the brother of Ameri
cans only, or of Englishmen only, or of Germans only.
The nation has too often appealed only to its own
conscience; it needs to be sensitive to the world-
conscience on the one extreme, and the conscience of
the individual man on the other extreme. As often,
so here, extremes meet. The rights and responsi
bilities of the individual man are on the conscience
of the individual and also on the conscience of the
most inclusive circumference one can imagine in the
world. A nation, for what it calls self-preservation,
will go to war; in that war it is regardless of the
hves and the homes of individuals and of families
if only by fire and blood it can save a throne or a
capital, the symbol of a national entity. This national
entity has its sacred place in human affairs. We owe
too much to the growth of loyalty to a national ideal
to allow the nation to fade away. But nations thus
far have not learned to be Christian. We are still
in the primitive age of Christianity and there is far
to go. Nations must learn what Christ meant when
he said, "Whosoever will save his hfe shall lose it:
and whosoever will lose his hfe for my sake shall
find it." 1 That means nations as weU as individuals.
When a nation goes to war to save itself as a nation,
or to make its boast of wider bounds, it is not Chris
tian. The only Christian battle cry must be after
the pattern of Juha Ward Howe's Battle Hymn:
"He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
1 St. Matthew xvi, 25.

268 THE LIGHT WITHIN
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on."
Any nation that will call upon its citizens to die for
the sake of making individual men free, within its
own hmits and beyond, is heroic and Christian; and
the world and God will give grateful praise. Through
this widening of the national conscience into an in
ternational conscience we discover one more avenue
towards the world-conscience which is constantly
being reinforced.
We think a child fortunate who is brought up in a
large family of children. He is ordinarily unselfish,
companionable, gay, and sympathetic. Why? Be
cause he has never done exactly what he alone would
have preferred, and has constantly been obhged to
submit his preferences to the preferences of the
others. In the confined sphere in which he has moved
he has submitted his life to his own conscience and
to the conscience of his home in all its variety. And
in the harmony of the httle conscience with the larger
he has found his peace, not only in childhood, but
through hfe. He has been disciphned by it, softened,
enriched. That is a figure of what every nation and
every man may do. Every individual who is whole
and sane must learn obedience to the Holy Spirit in
his own heart, and to the same Holy Spirit speaking
and pleading in the larger self. Thus, day by day,
in quietness and in confidence man goes forward to
meet his destiny, relying always on the full leader
ship of the Holy Spirit.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 269
IV
When we have fixed in our minds that in the Holy
Spirit God not only created the world, but each
moment is reaching out to it His interest and pro
tection, we must ruthlessly tear from our minds
every remaining thought of dualism. It is our duty
as well as our privilege to see the Holy Spirit in every
thing. This will not always be easy, but we have
but one alternative: either God is not absolute, or
the Holy Spirit, with power and love, pervades every
electron of the universe. This does not mean identity:
we may still think of the Creator apart from His
creation. But it does mean the most unyielding con
trol: we may not think of creation apart from the
Creator. We may see that in granting man free-will, God,
for the sake of a higher good, has permitted many
things to be which He did not create and would not
create. As He wiUed men to be His friends, He be
stowed upon them as His highest gift the choice of
freely accepting Him or freely denying Him in any
degree. Our own instinct tells us that we should
prefer failure to slavery: we should prefer to be im
perfect persons rather than accurate machines. Love
and gratitude and remorse can be, only because there
is a real alternative of hate and sin and hardness of
heart. To love God only once, to be eager only once
to please Him, to perceive, only for one flash of an
instant, how much He cares when we do less than our
best, to have such personal and responsible relation
ship with Him only once in aU the miUenniums, is
worth aU the risk of failure and eternal darkness.
God on Calvary bought us with a price; and it is

27o THE LIGHT WITHIN
only with a price that we may possess Him. This
price is our liability to sin, evil, sorrow, pain, and ten
thousand other names for the same thing; namely,
rejection of the best, rejection for any length of time,
however long, however short, of the love of God.
Evil is in the world. It is evil; it is no shadow, no
picturesque antithesis, no imagination. The possi
bihty of it had to be, if God's creatures were to grow
to be men. He did not create it. Evil is man's
handiwork. Though it is hard to see how, with his
bhndness and moral frailty, man could have escaped
falhng into the creation of it, evil is not God's. And
yet, the astounding revelation of the Gospel is that
God is wilhng to be held responsible even for evil.
Man cannot go down to the lowest hell without find
ing that the pitying, loving Spirit of God has been
there before him. God does not condone evil, He
does not allow His saints to explain it away, — for
the saints are of all people most sensitive to evil.
The man filled with the Holy Spirit does not make
hght of it; thereby we know that the Holy Spirit
grieves over the evil in the world. But since Christ
died on Calvary we know that the Holy Spirit wiU
not depart from man, though man, trying to depart
from Him, hve in the mire.
We may go a step farther. As we discover through
modern science the intricate marvels of inanimate
nature, we begin to put increasingly less emphasis on
"inanimate." We speculate tremulously and daringly
whether God may not have given some measure of
free-will to all the world, to nature as well as to
humanity. We become aware that we cannot draw
hnes of division in God's universe quite so sharply as
our fathers drew them. It is not only the doctrine

THE COMING OF THE LORD 271
of evolution which has taught us this: it is our own
sense of our community with the beasts and the trees.
It is not merely the atmosphere of a chilhng science
which closes about us; it is the warm atmosphere of a
rehgious poesy, as of St. Francis: we too talk to the
birds and we know our kinship in the common hfe
which both they and we receive from the Holy Spirit.
God has made everybody, everything, free.
The difficulties of any such theory are innumerable,
but they are not shghter in any other hypothesis. The
cruelty in nature staggers us.- The great world teems
with httle hfe; and, because some forms of life are
stronger than others, the great world is a field of grim
warfare, selfish piUage, cruel death. The plants which
we caU weeds are torn up to make more hfe for the
vegetable. The httle fish are greedily swallowed by
the big fishes. The sheep are killed by the wolves.
And even man piously eats the beasts and the fowls,
and sees no harm. The terror and heroism of the
forgotten world may be revealed to some of us by
Mr. Thompson-Seton's and Mr. Kipling's stories. Or
the tears of a child when a pet chicken is killed for
supper, and the child's utter inabihty to eat a single
morsel, teU us how narrowly we escape being canni
bals. The maddening question in all this slaughter
and strife is, Where is the Holy Spirit: does He know;
does He care? Or is it only nature, the other and
forgotten side of a relentless duahsm? There comes
by way of answer the thoroughness of our faith in
the omnipotence of God. No, we cry: God is in all
things; He does rule; He does care.
A recent theologian has trenchantly suggested how
the Spirit of God may sympathize with an order so
complex as this. "Indifference!" he exclaims, "that

272 THE LIGHT WITHIN
is the problem. Nature, or God, is so evidently care
ful, so evidently careless, about one and the same
interest. Duahsm offers a tempting solution for an
apparent conflict between two principles — one con
structive, the other destructive. But no! Construc
tion and destruction are two plainly dependent factors
in one system. Nature destroys in creating and
creates in destroying. Death is but an economy of hfe
in its higher forms; by no means necessary in the
lower. The fly and the mouse perish that the spider
and the cat may live. Yet nature is on both sides at
once. She pounces with the cat and she runs with the
mouse; she rejoices with the conqueror, she mourns
and struggles with the conquered. ... On this hy
pothesis God cares, and cares supremely for each indi
vidual thing as though it were a world apart. He equips
it for the struggle; hves, fights, feels, devises, plans
with it. He cannot do otherwise. If He fights with it,
on behalf of its fellow combatants, this, again, is a neces
sity of His nature, which utters itself to its utmost in
every possible way. ... It is, therefore, a hbel to say
that He is careless of individuals. He cares for them
as for nothing else." 1
Our age is inclined to pass over our Saviour's na
ture miracles either with a denial or with a shrug and
a note of apology. There is in them, I believe, some
thing much more important than we have yet grasped.
As He must have recognized as no one else the Holy
Spirit in nature, so nature must have recognized in
Him such mastership as no one else could possess.
There must have been response, hke versicle and
antiphon, between them. Men cried, "Even the winds
1 George Tyrrell, Essays on Faith and Immortality, pp. 250, 251,
266.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 273
and the sea obey Him."1 And He said, "The wind
bloweth where it hsteth, and thou hearest the sound
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and
whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the
Spirit." 2 Everything was His. He worked in natural
laws, and He worked in laws which we may some day
caU natural, but which as yet we do not understand
and cannot classify. The essential result of any study
of the nature miracles is to see that Christ treated
nature not as a foreign element to be endured or
thwarted, but as a hmpid medium for His own self-
expression. He loved the lUy and the mountain, and
in their mute way they loved Him. He gave the storm
its freedom, but the storm relented at His word.
And now let us turn to human history. The divine
message of the Bible is that God is not only in what
we caU sacred history, but in all history. As this
message goes deeper into human thought we are aware
that there is no profane history, it is all sacred. In
the same way, the inspiration of the Bible does not
stop with the Bible. The Bible is a supreme pledge
to assure us that the Holy Spirit has used and will
use human minds and human fingers to transmit a
message from God to men. When Christ became
incarnate, the very majesty and fulness of the mystery
compeUed men to look for Christ in aU subsequent
goodness; so when the Holy Ghost is found, as it were,
materialized within the words and sentences of Holy
Scripture, we cannot carelessly open any book that
helps the soul in its upward struggle. Inspiration, as
weU as incarnation, is more easily defined than hmited.
Other holy books must be reverently read. It means
much that theological colleges are now including in
1 St. Matthew viii, 27. a St. John iii, 8.

274 THE LIGHT WITHIN
their curricula courses on comparative rehgion; it
means more that every foreign missionary is now
taught to recognize and cherish the record of the Holy
Spirit in the past rehgious traditions of his parish
ioners. These traditions he is expected to clarify,
and then to lift into the complete message of God's
love in Christ. He is always saying to himself, "The
Holy Ghost spake in time past." He dare not patron
ize his parishioners and their former receptivity; for
he too is learning from them. He feels that his Bible
is still unique in its revelation; he is not inchned to
lose his judgment, or his perspective. But he does
see that the Holy Ghost has not in any nation left
Himself without witness. The Holy Ghost in aU
sacred books, most of all in the Bible, makes us know
that He is inextricably bound up with human history.
There is no history without Him.
History presents the same difficulties as the natural
world. It requires both courage and faith to believe
that there is a divine purpose working out in the con
fused medley of human events. When the saints are
leading it is reasonably easy; when one sees the
dominance of Alexander VI, Catherine de' Medici,
and Tammany HaU, the task is unreasonably hard.
But there is a divine message to be read in every day's
news. If we securely knew our Bibles we should be
able to interpret to ourselves, if not to others, the
meaning of the day's events. A reverent scholar was
wont to say that though the layman did not now read
the Bible as his fathers read it, he did read the news
paper, and that might become to him God's Word.1
This surely is worth meditation; for God is in the day;
and the record of the day, if it is a true record, is a
1 Life of A. V. G. Allen, p. 266.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 275
record of God. Only he, however, who has been wont
to study the Bible is apt to see the divine in what is
immediate. The fact that we are forced to bring
God into the history of which we know most, — the
history that is making as we look on, — increases our
difficulty in thinking that God could condescend to
guide a history in which the free-will of man has con
trived to introduce much that is abominable.
What reasons then have we for beheving that the
Holy Spirit deigns to control human history? In the
excitement of the August of 1914, when Europe was
ablaze with war, a certain preacher was reported to
have said that God is on the side of the heaviest
guns. This is only another way of saying that man
rules God, God .does not rule man. For though we
might explain that God indirectly allowed the guns to
be built, we should be conceding so much to the
power of man's free-will, that we should practically
be imagining that God, in giving free-will to man,
abdicated the throne of the universe. But it is not
necessary to rely upon our theoretical sense of what
is fitting. History abounds in illustrations of the
shortsightedness of the soldier or the king who relies
on mere force to bring the victory. Marathon and
Salamis were won by character; and the force of the
East was too weak to meet it. In an earher day
Hezekiah trembled in Jerusalem under the assault of
Sennacherib and his hitherto unbeaten army. Isaiah
told Hezekiah to be of good courage, since the Lord
would fight for Jerusalem. That night one hundred
and forty-five thousand soldiers died in the Assyrian
camp. And Sennacherib returned to Nineveh to die
at the hand of an assassin. The Hebrew historian
interpreted the incident, — which is recorded outside

276 THE LIGHT WITHIN
the Bible as well as in it, — by saying that an angel
of the Lord smote the thousands in the camp of the
Assyrians.1 A modern historian would doubtless ex
plain that, owing to careless sanitation in the camp,
a pestilence did its deadly work in an incredibly short
time: this does not bar out the Biblical interpretation,
it but adds a detail to the process. Scarcely more than
yesterday Phihp II, with the armies and navies of
the most powerful nation of Europe behind him, at
tempted to enslave England and the Netherlands.
The winds blew his huge ships to destruction, and the
Spanish Armada became a proverb in England for the
futihty of trying to enslave that which God had made
free. In the* Netherlands the favourite of Charles V,
WUham of Orange, espoused the cause of the Reformers,
and all the strength of Alva, Philip's general, was vain.
One cannot read the story in Motley's Dutch Republic
without feeling that God raised up Wilham of Orange
to champion the cause of the Weak and oppressed, and
by something stronger than physical strength to give
him the victory over guns and armies.
StiU chnging to the vocabulary of our time we say
that physical laws work themselves out relentlessly;
then, if we are rehgious, we add that of course these
laws are part of the machinery which God uses, and
that, in submitting to the supremacy of these physical
laws, we are submitting to God. There is a large
measure of truth in this; but we need modesty in
limiting the scope of laws. There are, we beheve,
other laws than physical. Indeed it is safe to say that
physical laws are only a part of the dense net-work of
laws which radiate from the energy proceeding out of
the hfe of God; that is, from the Holy Spirit. The
gs xix, 3S.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 277
Holy Spirit knits these laws into the farthest horizons
of the universe. Imagine some of these laws. When
Elisha was surrounded by a host which terrified his
servant, Ehsha prayed that this servant might have
his eyes opened to the heavenly forces which defended
Ehsha from the earthly weapons; straightway the
young man saw the mountain crowded with horses
and chariots of fire round about Ehsha.1 Christ,
surrounded by Roman soldiers in the garden, said
quietly that twelve legions of angels were at his com
mand:2 the Romans were not taking a defenceless
prisoner. The prosaic person may say that such words
are only flights of beautiful poetry; but as we advance
into the mysteries of modern life we are less and less
prone to pare down the significance of such records.
The forces used by God in His orderly universe are,
we muse, both seen and unseen. Those who once
helped us in the visible world, having seemed to die,
may now be hving closely enough to us to help ^s in
our struggle. And we men are quite unlikely to be
the only beings of intelligence whom God has made.
The air may be fuU of ministering spirits, under God's
laws even as we. We need reverent imagination to
think how God may use the strength of His creatures,
seen and unseen, mortal and immortal, to thwart the
strength of those who, relying only on physical power,
are bhnd to the horses and chariots of fire which fiU
the mountain. It is quite right that we should rev
erence the laws of God which we can, to some degree,
formulate. It is altogether wrong that we should
presume to hmit the range of ther divine order. In
the innumerable armies which we may beheve the
Holy Spirit employs there is a law and a power extend-
1 2 Kings vi, 17. 2 St. Matthew xxvi, S3-

278 THE LIGHT WITHIN
ing beyond our most ambitious dreaming. And as
we believe in Him we must be sure that the general
ship never for one second escapes His grasp. A
nation's only security is not an unconquerable army,
but invincible righteousness which may be sure of
God's cooperation and His victory.
There is no question but that people obviously
chosen of God have met overwhelming reverses. Is
there place for such an outcome in the thought of
God's supremacy? The position was frankly faced by
the ancient Hebrew prophets. When Jerusalem feU,
and the darkness of captivity engulfed the people, two
laws were declared, not at once, but by prolonged
experience and insight. One of these laws was that
Jerusalem was to learn something by its misery which
it could not have learned by uninterrupted prosperity.
It was to learn and to teach spiritual rehgion; it was
to be made ready for a suffering Redeemer who was
to conquer by obedience and by love. A nation which
has not passed through that period of suffering, to
find its higher self, has not yet become a nation.
There is defeat which is a stage in an ultimate vic
tory. Defeated Greece, by its language and thought
and spirit of receptiveness, did more than victorious
Rome, in the first century, to make ready the way of
Christ. The agony of the American Civil War brought
to a whole people the sense of national greatness and
national mission. One who loved Germany might, in
these days, be reconciled to its defeat, because in its
present form it is still a young nation boasting
uninterrupted success, and because its humihation
for a httle time might drive it from a faith in
armaments, to a mighty faith in God only, who is a
Spirit.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 279
The other law of a defeated nation which may
justly feel itself dear to God, is that God is no respecter
of persons. The Hebrew prophets preached that mes
sage to the chosen people with unfaltering earnestness.
The only way by which they could hold their exalted
place in Jahveh's favour was by being more true to the
laws of Jahveh than any other nation. The proud
empires have succeeded one another in what seems to
us, as we look back, rapid succession. Our philosophy
of history goes far enough to tell us that the rotted
Roman civilization deserved to crumble before the
hordes of crude peoples from the northern forests. It
offends one's sense of propriety to think of the rough
manners and guttural speech of the invaders, supersed
ing the elegance of Roman patricians. But the Roman
patricians were as a class whited sepulchres, with
nothing left but the traditions of distant ancestors.
So too the potency of the Mediaeval Church, which
felt itseh as strongly intrenched in God's love as the
ancient Hebrews felt Jerusalem to be, passed almost
in a night, and the intellectual and spiritual strength
and leadership of Christendom were given to scattered
groups of Christians who turned their faces away from
the sins of Rome to the ideals of a New Jerusalem
eternal in the heavens. In every great war, when
men's selfish ambitions mingle with their unselfish
aspirations, we may wisely look not to the immediate
issues which the warriors have declared to themselves
and to the world. We may much more wisely ask
what will God do about it when the thunder of guns
is stUl and the smoke blows away into His sky. Will
He take the strength of all the greatest contestants
quite away from them, and will He give the kingship
of the world to some tiny power, of which, till yester-

280 THE LIGHT WITHIN
day, no one took thought? Or will He break up nation
ality altogether, as a device which has served its day,
and will He devise some world repubhc in which He
deems the ordinary man able to bear his share of the
government? The Holy Spirit is the one invincible
leader of revolutions; and nothing is safe in His path
but righteousness and love. History is one grand
Magnificat:
"He hath shewed strength with His arm;
He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats,
And exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things;
And the rich He hath sent empty away."
The question is constantly being asked whether we
can say that there is progress in the world. When he
compares ancient Greece with modern Europe, the
honest historian finds it hard to tell whether there has
been progress or not. The hne wavers: here there is
advantage, there disadvantage, in the comparison. One
form of slavery vanishes, and another seems to take
its place. Art reluctantly admits that probably no
modern city is as beautiful as Athens in the days of
Pericles. The success of modern invention, by which we
are able to hve at a pace so fast as to lose our nerves,
may or may not be an advantage for us. But when
we go beyond all these superficial elements in hfe we
may hope that there are signs by which we may judge
the progress of man. We are forced to remember
that the time of which we know anything is but the
twinkhng of an eye in the thousands of years during
which the Holy Spirit will have guided human history.
As it takes more than a day to discover the trend of
any human enterprise, so it will surely take more than

THE COMING OF THE LORD 281
a few thousand years to make plain what a divinely
led humanity will do. We no sooner think that we
have escaped the filth of ancient empires than a
speciahst writes a book telling us exactly the condi
tions at our doors, of which we had only the barest
inkhng. We no sooner think that we have escaped the
barbarism of the Goths and Huns than our morning
newspapers teU of atrocities of a savage war done but
yesterday in the supposedly civilized places which
were the homes, ages ago, of these very barbarians.
The battle of progress advances, retreats, again ad
vances. I suspect that the greatest encouragement
comes from unexpected and comparatively trivial
incidents. On August 1 and 2, 1914, a number of
Enghsh and Americans, driven by the German declara
tion of war, made their way from Wiesbaden to Dover.
They suffered not only inconvenience and loss of
possessions, but, by rough usage and hunger, were in
actual danger. A woman made some important dis
coveries during this journey as she passed through
crowds of people, who were in absolute panic; for
war was already showing its ugly face. "The most
important experience," she wrote, "is this: that men
and women engaged in a primitive struggle for food,
drink, and the attainment of safety were yet kind and
seU-sacrificing to ah and sundry, and, for themselves,
curiously uncomplaining. Such food as we had was
simply common property, and so were cushions and
restoratives. Each person developed special capabili
ties, which were exercised for the common weal. . . .
An American became medical, and in addition to his own
large female family, took charge of two terrible heart
cases from Nauheim. This man had nothing whatever
to eat for twenty-four hours, but did not seem to

282 THE LIGHT WITHIN
mind." 1 A sterner test as finely met was the be
haviour of modern men on the sinking Titanic in the
spring of 1912. The whole world not only admired,
but was frankly amazed at the quiet and unselfish
heroism of men and women. Amid much that is
disheartening in our time, in individual relationships
and in national and international crookedness, these
sudden tests superbly met are inspiring testimony for
the more hopeful interpretation of human develop
ment. They cannot be turned into an argument;
but they give inspiring ghmpses of what the Holy
Spirit is doing.
We need something more than observation; our
longest vision is inadequate. We need faith. We
must trust the Holy Spirit, who is our Leader. He
will lead humanity forward. And the only test is the
test I have already given; namely, the willingness
and ability of the individual to look to his own con
science and to the conscience of the largest whole
which he can understand or imagine, and by this
thorough witness hear and obey the Voice of the
Holy Spirit. When the individual soul and the world
soul shall alike obey this Voice, revealed to each and
to both, then we shall have the world transfigured
into the Kingdom of God. The government of this
world shall represent the highest of which a whole
people is capable, because this whole people, from
the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, will
depend with clear sincerity upon the conscience which
is collective and the conscience which is individual.
It shall be neither fanatical nor dull. In the night
as in the day it shall obey the Light of the Universe,
1 Miss Nina Butler, A Journey from Wiesbaden, London Spectator
August 8, 1914.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 283
the Holy Spirit of God and of His Christ. If we
could see straight enough, if we had knowledge enough,
I am sure that we could see this progress. But I do
not base my assurance on what human eyes can see or
know; I base it on faith in the Holy Spirit. He that
filleth aU things is God. Consequently, we must see
Him in everything; and in everything therefore we
may discern the promise of victory.

Evolution has been defined as "the working out of
a problem in organization and education by a Mind of
immeasurable resources, through and by means of a
resisting medium." x We may turn this sentence about,
and say that the Holy Spirit, with immeasurable re
sources, through and by means of a resisting medium
(which is the free will granted to the world), is working
out a problem in organization and education, which,
both by the materially minded and by the spiritually
minded, must be interpreted as progress. By a divine
decree we are co-workers2 with the Holy Spirit, and
so too is nature, which groaneth and travaUeth in
pain, to attain the final adoption by Him.3 It is an
individual good which hes before us, and it is a uni
versal good to which, by the divine grace, we may
contribute. The exhortation, therefore, which comes
to each one of us, is, Lay hold of the power of the Holy
Spirit. (1) To this end we must, first of aU, recognize the
futihty of setting bounds. We must be rid of the
1 F. H. Johnson, The Higher Anthropology.
2 2 Corinthians vi, i.
3 Romans viii, 22, 23.

284 THE LIGHT WITHIN
habit of announcing even to ourselves what we shall
do or shall not do. Least of all may we arrogantly
assert what God cannot do, which assertion is the
crime of many logical theologians. Christ made the
righteous rule distinct for His disciples when He sent
them forth to preach. "When they dehver you up,"
He said, "be not anxious how or what ye shaU speak:
for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall
speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of
your Father that speaketh in you." 1 The theological
student bhthely tells his friends that he does not know
where his ministry shall be spent; but of two things
he is sure: he never shall teach school and he never
shall work west of a certain line. Ordained, he be
comes a school-master, and then, after a space, works
many years in the distant West. Thenceforth he goes
where he is sent, and has no plans of his own making.
His effort is to understand the larger plan into which
all his tasks and preferences must be merged. The
idea of obedience inculcated by the Jesuits is an in
spiring idea; its fatal defect is that the complete
obedience of the Jesuit is rendered to one less than
the Supreme Lord of Life. The individual in his own
hfe, dares not say what he shall not, or cannot do.
If his life is to attain, even approximately, its divinely
destined goal, it must be wrought according to the
plan revealed by the Holy Spirit as the days pass.
In the same way, no group of men and no institu
tion may decide the hmits of its work. It is reported
that an organization within a certain Christian Com
munion, striving for Church unity, has declared that
the Communion which it represents shall consider no
plan for union with any other Christians until aU
1 St. Matthew x, 19, 20.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 285
Communions, including the Roman Church, shall give
their assent to unity. This is usurpation of the pre
rogatives of the Holy Spirit. No body of men, however
numerous, however wise, however good, has right to
dictate the process by which Church unity shall be
achieved. It might come in the way these zealous
men wish it to come; it might, with more probabfiity,
come by the same gradual reintegration as would
correspond with the gradual disintegration which took
place through Christian history. It might be the
duty of various Communions to unite ' each with its
nearest of sympathy and of tradition, in the expecta
tion that out of the process should come at length the
perfected unity of all Christians in one body. There
is danger that good men may be found even to fight
against God.1
The very worst form of this setting of bounds is
the vainglorious attempt of human logic to hmit the
field of God's wiU and power. Orthodoxy and heresy
have been equally culpable in foisting upon the atten
tion of the Church their insistence that the Almighty
cannot do this or that. Orthodoxy has again and again
set Unfits to His mercy and His forgiveness: instead
of starting from the love revealed in Christ, it has
started from the tornado and the pestilence, and has
made everything subordinate to what it conceived to
be God's loyalty to law and justice. And the flint
and steel of its inexorable logic has driven many a
saint to despair, because the saint was fiercely per
suaded that God could not love his poor, dead, erring
son as much as he, a mere human father, loved him.
Heresy may scoff at such a spectacle, and then, with
utter unconsciousness of the irony, rush forward to
1 Ads v, 39.

286 THE LIGHT WITHIN
explain in what ways the Incarnation of the Son of
God could not have taken place, and which of the
miracles ascribed to Him the Son of God could not
have done. Both orthodoxy and heresy have in their
time built fences about inspiration; one in htera
ture in general, the other in the Bible. So no doubt
each has failed to receive a message from on high
which might have been for comfort or for incitement
to high accomphshment. Thought about God, to be
reverent, must be expectant. We may say what God
has done for us. It is scarcely less than blasphemy
to say what He cannot do for us.
(2) Then we must look to our wills. Psychology
speaks impressively of the flimsiness of human wills.1
It beseeches men to cultivate and exercise their wills,
that they may be able to withstand lowering tendencies
in hfe, which make for disintegration and death, and
that they may be able, when the chance presents itself,
to incorporate all the tendencies which make for
strength and efficiency. The pleasant men and women
who never do anything aggressively wrong, but who,
1 Cf. William James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 547: "The
moral tragedy of human life comes almost wholly from the fact that the
link is ruptured which normally should hold between vision of the truth
and action, and that this pungent sense of effective reality will not attach
to certain ideas. . . . No class of men have better sentiments or feel
more constantly the difference between the higher and the lower path
in life than the hopeless failures, the sentimentalists, the drunkards, the
schemers, the 'dead-beats,' whose life is one long contradiction between
knowledge and action, and who, with full command of theory, never get
to holding their limp characters erect. . . . And yet their moral knowl
edge, always there, grumbling and rumbling in the background, — dis
cerning, commenting, protesting, longing, half resolving, — never wholly
resolves, never gets its voice out of the minor into the major key, or its
speech out of the subjunctive into the imperative mood, never breaks the
spell, never takes the helm into its hands." This whole chapter on the
Will (XXVI) deserves study in this connection.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 287
by their weakness, flow amiably with every current of
worldhness, are responsible for most of the defeats of
the righteous. They have no wills worth mentioning.
The most starthng example of a man without a wiU
is Kipling's Tomlinson: he decided nothing. One may
see the weak smile of acquiescence before the varying
circumstances of hfe in innumerable Tomlinsons throng
ing any highway. The men with practically no wills
are legion.
WiUiam James gave to the thinking world a phrase
which it is not likely to forget, — "the will to beheve."
Faith and open-mindedness towards the aspirations
and confidences of the ages are, he taught, the result
not so much of argument and marshalling of evidence
as of a determination to be on friendly terms with
men's highest hopes, eager to look into their merits,
and ready to yield to their appeal if they do appeal.
He himself illustrated his own doctrine; for, though he
did not find himself quite at home in any orthodox
theological statement, he was widely and deeply at
tentive to every honest message that reached his
neighbourhood. He read the venturesome books of
the young with what his friends often thought too great
patience: he found something to admire in them all.
Perhaps the greatness of his power as a teacher was
due to his eagerness to learn from his pupils. In his
tender and rehgious nature he exemplified the will to
believe; this was not a whim, not good-nature, but
the staunch resolve to understand, so far as he might,
every man's best conviction.
On the other extreme, we have in these last days
observed the value which the masters of a great war
have set upon that quality in their soldiers which we
may define as the will to conquer. First, there was

288 THE LIGHT WITHIN
in each nation the elaborate justification for that
nation's going to war. Inevitability, national honour,
fidelity to national pledges, self-defence, freedom, de
fence of weaker peoples, were some of the words that
were repeated again and again. They rang out as
challenges to the people, high and low, to give them
selves to the sacrifice and the glory of the war. The
natural instincts of safety, peace, and brotherhood had
to be overcome. The will of the people was being
trained to desire war. Then on this foundation was
built the will to conquer at any price. We shall con
quer, was the cry, because we as no other nation shall
fight till our treasure is dissipated, till aU our men and
boys are dead on the battlefield. No one, each na
tion was thinking, can withstand a national will like
that. And when the battle raged, day after day, we
may be sure that the generals did not look so much
to their huge guns as they did to the eyes of their
men, to see that there flashed in these eyes the un-
dimmed fire of a will to gain the victory.
So far we may go in our modern appreciation of the
value of the developed human will. While philosophy
and common experience have been speaking of the will
of man, theology has been putting emphasis upon the
Will of God.1 Ancient theology said much about the
Substance in the divine nature. As we dwell more and
more on the words ascribed to our Saviour, "God is a
Spirit,"2 we think of the indwelling and outgoing Will,
rather than of the Substance. The Will seems to us
to he back of His love and His justice and His power.
Now, are we not compelled to believe that he who
1 See, e.g., Professor E. S. Drown, Does Christian Belief Require Meta
physics? Hibbert Journal, April, 1906, p. 527.
2 St. John iv, 24.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 289
would strengthen his individual will cannot go far by
simply fortifying the tiny centre of will which he finds
in his own individual hfe? By such an isolated process
a man may become opinionated, headstrong, self-
sufficient, bumptious, an intolerable obstacle to all
his neighbours, not only to their foibles and sins, but
to aU their hopes and ideals. There seems to be a
certain strength in the man's obstinacy, but an in
vestigation leads to the verdict of a wasted life.
Should this seem too savage a picture of will cultivated
in isolation, we might reduce the verdict to provin
cialism. But the history of provinciahsm, in both
Church and State, is that it absorbs its energy in side
issues and has nothing left for supreme problems,
even if they are discovered, — ordinarily they are not
even glanced at. The keenness of the Pharisees to
keep their infinitesimal rules, and their seeing nothing
particular about Jesus of Nazareth, combine to make
exactly a case in point. Or one may think of Leo X
resolving to build St. Peter's as a way to set forward
the life of the Church, and paying- slight heed to an
Augustinian Friar in Wittenberg who uttered sharp
words about the means employed for building St.
Peter's, and then about an older and better way of
setting forward the hfe of the Church, — namely,
justification by faith. Obstinacy, hardness, fixity do
not make wiU.
If a man's sincere purpose is to make his will not
merely blustering, but strong, he must lay hold of the
Invincible Will which is, by divine love, at his com
mand. He must shut his eyes and run, as for his
life, past selfishness, individualism, provinciahsm, and
every other subordinate fortress. His only hope is
the Will of God, the beginning and the end of strength.

290 THE LIGHT WITHIN
When a man has so frittered his will away by intem
perance that every temptation means a fall, those
who long for his redemption ask only if he has enough
will left to make one decision. Has he, they say, will
enough to open his life to God? Can he push back the
door of his self-sufficiency and, with what personahty
he has left, genuinely desire God's power? If he can
do this, he can acquire a will which shall enable him
to resist every temptation. We are not now in the
realm of theory. The Christian years are thronged
with saints who have found- strength of wUl in just
this way. Augustine of Hippo told his disgraceful
story, then the sequel: there we see what the WiU of
God can do for a shattered human will. We have but
to walk a few steps to the house of some clergyman,
physician, Salvation Army captain, or worker in a
rescue mission, to learn stories quite as remarkable
and thorough as the story of St. Augustine. "There
but for the grace of God goes John Newton," said
John Newton as he watched a poor drunkard reel
down an Enghsh lane. If you desire a will that can
resist and can positively achieve, you must be done
with tinkering and patching; you must acknowledge
that of yourself you cannot help yourself. Alone, a
man's wUl is blown hither and yon like a scrap of
paper; it is at the mercy not merely of tornadoes but
of the lightest zephyrs. It is neither strong nor free.
The most that can be said of it, is that it is capricious.
Just as the army loses its power to fight when it is
cut off from its base of supphes, just as the electric
lamp is dark the moment its connection with the dy
namo is cut off, so the human will depends whoUy,
for whatever initiative and resistance it may have,
upon its connection with the Will of the universe.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 291
This is not the dictum merely of theology. Professor
Bergson, most eloquent and popular of living philoso
phers, defines the issue squarely. "When we make
ourselves self-conscious in the highest possible degree,"
he writes, "and then let ourselves fall back Uttle by
little, we get the feehng of extension: we have an
extension of the self into recollections that are fixed
and external to one another, in place of the tension it
possessed as an indivisible act of will. But this is
only a beginning. Our consciousness, sketching the
movement, shows us its direction and reveals to us the
possibihty of continuing it to the end; but conscious
ness itself does not go so far. . . . Physics under
stands its r61e when it pushes matter in the direction
of spatiahty; but has metaphysics understood its r61e
when it has simply trodden in the steps of physics,
in the chimerical hope of going further in the same
direction? Should not its own task be, on the con
trary, to remount the inchne that physics descends,
to bring back matter to its origins, and to build up
progressively a cosmology which would be, so to speak,
a reversed psychology?" 1 In quite another connection
Professor Bergson bears witness to a significant ex
perience: "At the very minute," he says, "when the
act is going to be performed, something may revolt
against it. It is the deep-seated self rushing up to
the surface. It is the outer crust bursting, suddenly
giving way to an irresistible thrust." 2
These two passages are not phrased in theological
language, but they confirm the religious experience
crystallized in theology. They might be taken as an
echo of the Saviour's words, "The servant abideth not
1 Creative Evolution, tr. Mitchell, pp. 207 f.
2 Time and Free WiU, tr. Pogson, p. 169.

292 THE LIGHT WITHIN
in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If
the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shaU be free
indeed."1 St. Paul discovered that this divine task
of making men free was continued through the Holy
Spirit. "The Spirit," he said, "helpeth our infirm
ities; ... the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us
with groanings which cannot be uttered." 2 Men,
in other words, have good reason to believe that the
Spirit of God is waiting instantly to join the wiU of
man to the WiU of God, else how can we explain the
response and power which comes to every man who,
as it were, lets himself go, and thereby finds himself
endowed with a new courage and a new hope? He is
made free through God and in God.
The process by which this freedom is accomphshed
is variously described. We may see it come in a form
of receptivity which expects to find God everywhere,
not more in rest than in work, not more in man than
in the wilderness. The Indian poet who has cap
tivated not only his own people but our Western
world as weU, shows, by his essays and poems, how
a reverent regard for the work of God can bring us
to God himself. He describes himself in a boat on
the Ganges on a radiant evening. He tells of the
silence of the sky; the peace of the wide river, re
flecting the changing sunset colouring; the desolate
sandbank; the nest-holes of a colony of birds. "Sud
denly," he goes on, "a big fish leapt up to the surface
of the water and then disappeared, displaying on its
vanishing figure all the colours of the evening sky.
It drew aside for a moment the many-coloured screen
behind which there was a silent world full of the joy
of hfe. It came up from the depths of its mysterious
1 St. John viii, 35, 36. 2 Romans viii, 26.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 293
dwelling with a beautiful dancing motion and added
its own music to the silent symphony of the dying day.
I felt as if I had had a friendly greeting from an alien
world in its own language, and it touched my heart
with a flash of gladness." J Or we catch the message
more fully from the poet's prayer: "O worker of the
universe! We would pray to thee to let the irresist
ible current of thy universal energy come like the im
petuous South wind of spring, let it come rushing over
the vast field of the hfe of man, let it bring the scent
of many flowers, the murmurings of many woodlands,
let it make sweet and vocal the lifelessness of our
dried-up soul-life. Let our newly awakened powers
cry out for unlimited fulfilment in leaf and flower and
fruit." 2 This is the power of meditation which does
not end in meditation, but in the abihty to meet hfe.
It is % deeply worn path by which men in all ages
have carried their individual wills into the Will of God.
It is one of the methods employed by the love of the
Holy Spirit.
Another way by which the Spirit brings the current
of God's energy into our wills is by prayer. As we
hve we learn to depend on prayer. In our reticent
modern life we do not suspect how nearly universal
prayer is. The Holy Spirit, brooding over our hfe,
yearns to give aU men the desire to pray; and all men,
as the heights loom above them, as the depths yawn
beneath them, try to pray. The prayers may be so
unconventional that only God caUs them prayers;
but they are prayers, because those who pray feel
that they make a difference in their hves. This dif
ference is not found in a list of benefits received,
corresponding to a hst of demands. The difference
1 R. Tagore, Sadhana, p. no. 2 Ibid., p. 134.

294 THE LIGHT WITHIN
lies in a new human wiU. Prayer is as the tiny wire,
or the waves of ether, bringing the force of God's
Will, with electric swiftness, into the will of the man
who prays. Or prayer may be thought of as the
opening of the door of the heart, and asking God to
enter. If He share the burden, it is light; if He
share the joy, it cannot be stained with selfishness.
We are obliged to remind ourselves again and again
that we are free; even God will not force the door
open. He only stands at the door and knocks; but
He never goes from the door. Never can we open the
door with the key of prayer or any other key, that He
will not be patiently, lovingly waiting. For He loves;
and always desires another friend, and another, and
another, till all have chosen Him.
Psychology points out to us that we cannot will to
do an act which we have not ourselves done, or which
we have not seen another do, or of which in no other
way have we had knowledge; that is, we cannot do
an act for the first time voluntarily.1 If we reaUy
believe in prayer and the immanent power of the Holy
Spirit, this limitation is transcended. For the highest
act of vohtion is to pray that through the divine power
resident in us we may do the Will of God, whether
it be a familiar act or an act never before done in all
history, and as we pray, we are given a vision of the
deed to be done, indistinct in the mystery of divine
hght. This, we may think, was the essence of Christ's
prayer in Gethsemane: He was yielding Himself to
do the Father's Will for Him. He was to do an act
unique in all time: He was to save a world by dying
for it; He was to conquer the strongest by surrender
to the weakest. When He said, "Thy Will be done,"
1 See William James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 438.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 295
He was therefore sending out His will to do the deed
that no man hitherto had even dreamed of, and it was
only by His complete surrender to God's WiU that He
stepped forth into its mystery and pain and ultimate
joy. Such an example we can foUow only from afar;
but each man who prays foUows it to the extent of
his obedience to the heavenly Voice. Thus men may
wiU in the most vigorous way to do deeds for the first
time, when they feel that they are standing on the
borders of experience, and God is driving them out into
the unknown.
Another measure employed by the Holy Spirit to
bring our wiUs into contact with the power of God's
WiU is through the love of the lovers of mankind. As
the most evident function of the Holy Spirit is love,
so those who make it their duty to use their hves
in loving service for mankind are as angels of the
Holy Ghost: He inspires them, He sends them far
and wide on their gracious errands of mercy. Who
are they? It gives one hope for the world when one
sees that they are a mighty army, with names which
cannot be numbered. They are friends, teachers,
physicians, pastors, settlement workers, fathers and
mothers of httle chfldren, nurses, reformers. As the
Holy Spirit creates unity in hfe, so these men are
instruments of His unity. A man, by reason of rough
experience of what he thinks the injustice and mockery
of fate, may have cut himself from both God and
humanity. He feels his heart becoming numb and
cold. He knows that he is on the brink of spiritual
death. Then out of the mystery of hfe, some one who
cares for the troubles of men comes in contact with
him. The frozen soul tries to repel this friendly per
son, he thinks that he has offended him, and almost

296 THE LIGHT WITHIN
hopes so; but the friendly hand stiU touches the hand
that is cold. And through the patience and persistence
of that touch, there is a thriU of new life in the frigid
will. It awakes to the warmth of love, as the seed
in the earth touched by the warmth of spring awakes
to the sun. The title by which this friendly person
is known does not matter: it may be doctor, pubhc
school-teacher, minister, or simply a companion in
work. The vital description of such a person is the
man who cares. He is more than priest and more than
king. He is the chosen messenger of the Holy Spirit,
and he carries the Love and Power of God into the
hard places of humanity. Many a wUl, shrivelling in
darkness, is thus filled with the glory and the joy of
the WiU of God.1
There are other means which the Holy Spirit uses
which cannot yet be described. They are often mis
used; so that men have at times suspected that evil
spirits, and not the Good Spirit, control them. They
verge upon the occult, and it is difficult even to name
them. One name we may give is telepathy. The
range of telepathy is beyond the influence of the five
senses; how much farther it may extend we cannot
tell. A number of candid investigators think that
possibly it may extend beyond souls whose hfe is hm
ited to our conditions, — souls whose bodies are dead.
However this may be, there is ample proof to show
1 Cf. Matthew Arnold, Rugby Chapel: "Servants of God! ..." Also
William James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 379: "Our religious
life lies more . . . than it used to, on the perilous edge. But just as
our courage is so often a reflex of another's courage, so our faith is apt
to be, as Max Muller somewhere says, a faith in some one else's faith.
We draw new life from the heroic example. The prophet has drunk
more deeply than any one of the cup of bitterness, but his countenance
is so unshaken and he speaks such mighty words of cheer that his will
becomes our will, and our life is kindled as his own."

THE COMING OF THE LORD 297
that men can be helped by the outgoing influences,
conscious or unconscious, of their distant friends. We
may not profitably dwell on this subject at length;
but we may imagine, at least, how unweariedly the
Holy Spirit throws about our feeble wills all manner
of reinforcement. If we think of the influence of the
so-called dead upon us, we are driven to ask if the
evil spirits may not hinder us as much as the good
spirits aid us. Two pious speculations might be set
down: first, as evil disintegrates of its own negative
quality in this hfe, it must become, we trust, increas
ingly harmless everywhere, while good, in spite of the
pessimists, has an inherent tendency to build up;
and, secondly, the Holy Spirit in whom we beheve
must in His love guard us from the foe that walketh
in darkness, and is invisible in the noontide. We
have right to imagine angels, if we will, guarding us
from the foe no human hand could touch. And so
we have right to think that those who have loved us
and have vanished may in their acts of love have no
rivals. The most excruciating torture man can experience
is this fear that the forces of evil, seen or unseen,
have any chance of victory in the world. Telepathy
opens two vistas: through one a man looks up to
heaven; through the other, down to the lowest hell.
If free-will is really free-will, how much harm may not
be done? We know what evil souls can do to mar the
beauty of earth, and even for the time being destroy
it; what may hosts of evil spirits be able to accom
phsh even against the glory of heaven? If we depend
on arithmetic and logic we may go from bog to swamp
till we sink from sight in the Slough of Despond. We
must consult the Voice of God within us, as the child

298 THE LIGHT WITHIN
in panic turns to its mother for reassurance. It is
the searching of our own experience that, in such a
case, becomes the most valid evidence of what is to be
the ultimate outcome. A man who had received the
double blow of disaster to his work and of personal
bereavement, recently said that he was able to bear
up against bis fate, because he was sure that everything
had a meaning and that God, having given him his
lot, would see him through. That is a rational trust
founded on faith in the indwelling Spirit. Though
a man is the victim of the free-wiU in the world, the
best men have always felt that God, through His
infinite messengers and His direct aid, wUl never suffer
any brave man to be overwhelmed by the evfi dis
positions of those who misuse their freedom. We
turn back once more to the rich testimony of the
experience of St. Paul, when he told his Corinthian
parishioners, "God is faithful, who wiU not suffer you
to be tempted above that ye are able; but wiU with
the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye
may be able to endure it." 1
There is one other extremely mysterious force em
ployed to strengthen the flagging energy of a human
wiU, called hypnotism. Hypnotic suggestion has been
largely used in curing the drunkard of his bestiality.
There are an indefinite number of cases where by hyp
notism a man, whose wiU was once so weak that he
could not resist the shghtest temptation, now loathes
that for which formerly he would have sold all that he
had. This loathing has been induced by a stronger
personahty, whUe the patient was in a state of hyp
nosis; henceforth the wiU of the stronger man has
been to a certain extent his wiU. He not only resists
1 i Corinthians x, 13.

THE COMING OF THE LORD 299
his old temptation, but, in many instances, he is a
changed man. There are two serious objections to
this method of reinforcing the wiU. One is that a
man so letting down the barriers of his personahty as
to allow himself to be hypnotized, is apt to weaken
those barriers before aU comers, bad as weU as good.
If in a state of hypnosis a man readUy takes good
suggestions, he wiU quite as readily take bad sugges
tions. Optimistic as one may be about certain people,
there are few who could be trusted always to have
their minds so nobly stored that one would covet the
risk of having aU their contents dumped into the
soul of the hypnotized victim. With a controlling
major idea, such as a resolve not to drink, there might
be some minor ideas and impulses, which would in
the end hurt more than the drunkenness. And the
second objection to hypnotism is the obvious one that
no man has right to surrender his personahty to an
other human personahty. Many a man has wisely
turned himself from hypnotic rehef with the protest,
"No: not that way shah I seek a new wiU. Poor as
my soul is, it is my own; and this shabby thing, ragged
and torn, I shaU keep tiU — " The end of that sen
tence is very important, and we may make a some
what daring venture to finish it. The difficulty with
hypnosis is the imperfect personahty which influences,
and the loss of independence in the personahty which
is helped. Now there is a Personahty which is per
fect and which never enslaves. We may think that
the Holy Spirit uses aU the beauty and the cruelty
of nature, aU the varying aspects of humanity, aU the
impulses and thoughts and desires of the human soul,
to do exactly one thing, — to draw the wiU of man into
the WiU of God. The httle wiU faUs asleep, that it

3oo THE LIGHT WITHIN
may awake in the light of the infinite Will of God.
In the Oratorio of Elijah, after the turbulence and
the desolation, after the mournful discouragement of
Elijah, there comes the culmination of the mystery
and meaning of it aU in the notes of a single voice,
singing, "O rest in the Lord," and in the great chorus
ending with the words, "Onward came the Lord."
This may be the illustration of a gigantic method of
the Holy Spirit; some way out of all hard experiences
courageously borne we yield to the help that is at the
centre of existence, — we rest in the Lord and onward
He comes in the silence of his resistless might. The
dismay and the languor are gone; our wiUs, tossed to
and fro by hopes and fears, are now established in the
strength and peace of the Will of God. We face the
future unafraid.
(3) Does this mean resignation? It means precisely
what "Thy Will be done" means in the Lord's Prayer.
It does mean giving up some plan devised by our
narrow anticipations and dreams; but there is no
descent. We climb, we fly, we rise in heart and mind
to highest heaven, and in the Holy Spirit we see what
God sees, a vision and a plan created by Him, and
in this vision and plan — wonder of wonders ! — is a
place for us. Therefore we cry, "Thy Will be done."
The earthly resignation is transfigured into godlike
ambition. There is no cringing, no abasement. It is
exaltation. The Holy Spirit carries us, in a moment,
from grief and despair to an expectation and a trust
which surpass any former emotion. It is not knowl
edge that we have, for we could not explain why we
trust; we could not describe the plan in which we shall
strive to share. We do not expect ease or freedom
from pain. The grief is changed, not gone: the tears

THE COMING OF THE LORD 301
still fall. What we have is a new will: in honestly
praying, "Thy Will be done," we have opened our
tiny wiUs to receive, through the Spirit, the omnipotent
WUl of God. It is resignation; but resignation is so
smaU a part of the change that we must find a larger
term. Perhaps we may call it the Divine Acceptance.
We must make a distinction between the class of
events which, so far as we can see, happen entirely
according to God's Will, and the class of events which,
by reason of the wrong exercise of human freedom,
seem to us to happen in opposition to God's Will.
Yet the distinction is in a measure an imaginary
distinction. For all the manifestations of God's Will
which we can comprehend are worked out through the
medium of a creation in which God's gift of freedom
tinges everything. It is only approximately that we
can think of God's Will completely shown to us, except
as we may say that it is His Will to be hmited by the
finite wills of men and perhaps of the whole creation.
On the other hand, however the ingenuity and per
fidy of human and other finite wills may mass them
selves against His perfect Will, He is always and every
where the absolute Master of the universe. It is His
WiU, not that finite wiUs thwart His Will, but that they
have the opportunity to thwart it. Accordingly it is
necessary to say that aU that happens is by God's
permission, and, to that extent, is His Will. Never
theless, roughly and for convenience, we may speak of
events which happen in accordance with God's Will,
and other events which happen in opposition to it.
(a) Though we cannot wholly banish free-will from
what we caU nature, we may think of events expressed
through nature as essentially direct from God's WiU.
It is easy to think of the beneficent aspects of nature,

302 THE LIGHT WITHIN
hke the sun and the rain, seed-time and harvest, as
His WiU; but the earthquake, the tidal wave, and the
tornado seem nothing but brute force gone mad. How
can they be reconciled with the love revealed by
Christ? The only possible answer is that it is God's
WiU that this world be dangerous as well as beautiful,
both hard and easy. Augustine told the divine reason,
when he cried, "O sweet bitter world! Hadst thou
been less sweet how had I borne thee; hadst thou been
less bitter I had loved thee too weU." This is not
rhapsody, but a flash from the depths of experience.
Lot and Abraham from a height surveyed the land:
Lot took the fertile, easy country; Abraham, the
stony, hard country. The race which inherited the
hard conditions produced David and Isaiah; the chU-
dren of Lot were suffocated by their ease. In the New
World of America the Spaniards chose the gayety of
the South, the Enghsh the barren soil and the harsh
winters of New England: and the result has been sim
ilar. And we know that the genius and efficiency of
each new generation is recruited for the most part
not from houses of indulgence and ease, but from
homes where the wolf is never far from the door.
Earthquakes, tornadoes, and tidal waves are only
extreme forms of the dangers which God's WUl places
near each hfe, that it may develop a character self-
reliant, firm, unconquerable.
There is one phase of nature which is for most men
the hardest. That is the separation of love in what we
call death. Is it possible to see in the taking away of
the visible presence of those we love any sufficient
compensation for the agony and desolation? What,
we venture to ask, is the Will of God about death?
I pass by the firing of human character in the furnace

THE COMING OF THE LORD 303
of affliction, whereby the dross is destroyed and the
pure gold comes forth; deeply convinced though I
am that sorrow rightly met always has that result.
I dwell only on two profound facts which arise out of
the ashes of what seems a burned-out love. The first fact
is that when a person is no longer seen, and can no
longer be seen in this hfe, we learn to know that person
in a new way. We may say that we are now depend
ing on spiritual realities, not on the accidents attach
ing to an earthly symbol: we know, then, the loved
one's spiritual and most vital self. This is true: we
dweU on graces and merits that we hardly suspected
when we could touch the hand and see, eye to eye.
We may go into deeper mystery, and say that we are
now approaching the vanished soul through the Holy
Spirit, who is the hght of both of us; whereas, in
former times, we depended on what we thought only
our own individual hves to make the bond between
us: we see, therefore, in our beloved what the Holy
Spirit sees, — we see God's exultant beUef in one who
is dearer to us than hfe. The other fact exposed by
the separation through death is that many a man has,
out of his utter loneliness, groped madly through what
he beheved impenetrable night for help. In the
blackness he stumbled against something; he pushed,
as by accident, something open, — the door of his own
heart; and out over the darkness burst the Great
Light, — the hght of God's presence and friendship.1
1 For a suggestion of the revelation through death see Blanco White's
Sonnd on Night:
"Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, —
This glorious canopy of light and blue?

304 THE LIGHT WITHIN
The beloved, lost, is found in God; and while the be
loved seemed to be lost, God was found. Human
sorrow is unutterably hard; while we hve, we cannot
explain it away; we cannot be the same after it has
smitten us. But men do transcend it. Age after age
they have transcended it. The life eternal is to be
richer because death throws man after man upon the
depths, that he may rise to the heights. And the love
that is to be, will be intenser for the lessons learned
in separation. Under such circumstances a man must
learn to say "Thy Will be done" with the expecta
tion of an unlimited hope. The Holy Spirit pervades
the natural order: if nature, hke a skilful surgeon,
cuts sharp and deep, the Holy Spirit heals the wound
with His omnipresent love; and the man is strength
ened in God. This is God's Will.
(b) Then we turn to the events which, barring God's
WiU that we be free, happen in opposition to His
WiU. When a pleasure boat, laden with poor city
children, is destroyed; when it is discovered that the
boat was unseaworthy, never should have been used for
a single person; when it is discovered further that the
owner cared more for a few dollars than for the safety
of httle children, and that the proper officials were too
careless to condemn the rotted craft; then we cannot
Yet, 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven came,
And lo! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life? "

THE COMING OF THE LORD 305
fold our hands solemnly over the children's lifeless
bodies and say, "Thy Will be done." It was not God's
WiU; it was the will of a selfish shipowner, it was the
will of men's carelessness and inefficiency. The only
sense in which we may say, "Thy Will be done," in
such circumstances, is by going forth straightway to
see that similar murder is not committed again; to
make these httle children martyrs indeed, if not in
will, by holding their death before the criminally
greedy and the criminally neglectful tiU they are com-
peUed to protect the children of the poor at whatever
sacrifice to themselves. So these children shall not
have died in vain. Generations of children may be
happier because of their unconscious sacrifice. It
is not God's WiU that such fiendish sacrifices occur,
but it is His WiU that man be bound so close to his
neighbours that no sin can be committed without to
some extent affecting the whole world with its sorrow,
and no heroism, however unconscious, can fail to lift
the whole mass of humanity to a larger happiness.
The one untoward event which will be in our minds
for years, even though it end tomorrow, is the Euro
pean War of 1914. Only God knows who is to blame
for it. It would be blasphemous to say that it was
His WiU. Its cause hes somewhere within the freedom
given to humanity. It seems as if its cause might be
laid at the door of a few passionate, ambitious, love-
defying men; but we may not judge. The fires sud
denly blown to a blaze have been smouldering long,
and what men vaguely call a "system" may deserve
the awful credit. Whoever, whatever caused it, the
war has come. Men who believe in the Holy Spirit,
who feel that through Him they have access to the
strength of God, must know that their power is in-

306 THE LIGHT WITHIN
finitely greater than the strength of those who depend
on brute force to control the future. Men who hate
this war cannot sit aside and calmly watch its mur
derous holocaust. Theirs it is to know God's WUl.
How shall the war be used, now that history is stained
with it? What does the Holy Spirit say to the saints?
What will they do to bring together a verdict? How
shaU they marshal the wiUs of humanity so that
humanity shaU receive the Will of God and by His
grace make this Will dominant? Christian men, over
all the carnage and the grief, need to pray, "Thy
WUl be done"; thereby not submitting for one instant
to what is, but crying out that even yet man's fafiure
and sin may be transcended, and that the poured-out
blood and the torture of millions of homes may not
be without some eternal reward.
Men have been given inteUigence. Men above all
have been given the power to receive God. We are
not then expected to wait for God to act without us.
We know that it is His WiU to act through us. Day
by day we should become an intelligent human will,
informed by the divine WiU, knowing what to do and
how to do it. Already some things are clear. The
world is setting its determination against the arma
ments of the world, the fostering of enmity nation for
nation. Arbitration has been discussed, resorted to,
proved. It may be necessary to have an international
pohce force to impose the will of any international
court of decision, till Christianity and civilization are
farther advanced. What has been done in the Hague
and in other meetings to work for peace has been
mocked by this war, but not destroyed. If all Chris
tian men everywhere shall set themselves against the
brutality of war and the insanity of it, no government

THE COMING OF THE LORD 307
though armed to the teeth and supposedly world-
powerful can withstand them. For the real power of
this world is spiritual. Guns and armies would be
as mist, if the Holy Spirit in the might of His love
were permitted to shine through men. If one asks
for possible details, one need only imagine the at
tempted war-lord of tomorrow, intrenched with his
guns, but facing the contempt and the scorn of de
fenceless old men, broken-hearted women, and weeping
httle children. Ostracized from the hearts of decent
Christians, the blasphemy of "God is helping us to
kill" would burn his hps; he would read the minatory
psalms with a meaning staring at him, at him alone:
"Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered," J
. . . "Blessed shaU he be that taketh thy children and
dasheth them against the stones." 2 There is a more
withering fire than the fire of Krupp guns. To it the
invulnerable, steel-clad autocrat, wherever he is, must
succumb. This war, by God's grace, will gather up
the latent power of God-inspired wills, and hurl it
at the heads of men drunk with blood, till even they
see the doom of their reckless sinning. We may wish
that aU this could have been done quietly by talk;
but great advances have most often come out of the
disastrous and mammoth failure of human freedom
run to hcense. Our task is not to wail, but to arise,
and to quit us hke men filled with the Holy Ghost.
The hope of this war is that an astonishing number
of people cannot be reconciled to it. Hitherto wars
have been taken more or less as matter of course.
We see in this rising energy of pubhc opinion a sign
of the progress of the world. God's Will is making
way with unprecedented celerity.
1 Psalm Ixviii. * Psalm cxxxvii.

308 THE LIGHT WITHIN
There is one note of this war which is more solemn
than all the rest. To our ease-loving, luxury-loving
age it comes as a stupendous warning, that if war is
taken out of the world with its sternness and discipline,
we must be stern with ourselves in other ways. Wil
ham James once attempted a plan by which what he
called our gilded youth could be hardened if war were
taken out of men's characters: his plan was compul
sory manual labor of the most exacting and disagree
able sort for a term of years.1 War, in spite of its
pain and injustice to the weak, has toughened the fibre
of the suffering nation. God is often discovered out
of the depths of the misery of war. Poets, long dumb,
break forth into immortal song. The wasting of
material things thrusts men back upon the eternal
and the spiritual. So now, out of the world-misery
of the present war, men may gather something better
than gold and comfort and friends and earthly hfe:
they may find God.
And finding God men may search their hearts more
shrewdly for the causes of the war. In England today
the most dignified journals are placing the blame
upon the German Emperor. The special prayers for
the time of war set forth by the Church of England
strike an entirely different note. When England
assembles to face God, the sense of sin abounds: God
is asked to forgive His people and to grant peace.
So, before the war and its results are ended, all thought
ful men will be beating their breasts, and asking to
know what in them caused this insult to humanity.2
1 "The Moral Equivalent of War," in Memories and Studies, pp. 267 ff.
2 In the London Guardian of October 1, 1914, this letter appeared,
being an Englishman's effort to discover God's hand in the destruction
of Rheims Cathedral: "In view of the Bishop of London's impressive
sermon in St. Paul's at the commencement of the war, the following

THE COMING OF THE LORD 309
For the future, every man will know that if the world
is^to free itself from war, that freedom must be bought
with a price. Each individual man must resolutely
discipUne himself; he must trim away the self-indul
gence of his wUl, he must graft his will into the Will
of God. There must be more worship, private and
pubhc, more sacrifice for neighbours and for the world,
a more pitUess flagellation of aU selfishness and world
hness in our own souls. We must, by the ideals of
citizenship, buUd up our own nation to be a saint
among the nations of the world: the national honour
as sensitive as the individual's honour; the nation's
brotherliness as tender as the brotherliness of St.
Francis; the nation's love for men, a shadow of the
sacrifice of Christ.
And what is the sacrifice of Christ? He too prayed,
"Thy Will be done." He had prayed a little while
personal experience may perhaps be of interest. Quite recently I took
an intimate friend of mine to see the Cathedral of Rheims and renew
my recollection of the city. We arrived in the evening and found the
Cathedral closed. Wandering around its noble exterior, we came upon
the Bishop's Palace. It also was closed and deserted, and disfigured by
the words ' Propria t€ de PEtat' painted across its front, for the Bishop
had been turned out by the anti-religious Government of France. Later
in the evening, after having revived some of our historical associations, as
we had nothing better to do, we went to the theatre. What we saw and
heard there I could not sully your pages by attempting to describe.
Suffice it to say that it would be difficult to conceive anything more
revoltingly indecent, immoral, and blasphemous. At every fresh innuendo
or touch of animalism the whole audience applauded, and many of the
women looked round and the men laughed. We sat out the performance
as long as we could in order to be able to express an opinion afterwards.
I think, Sir, in our just condemnation of vandalism and outrages we are
apt to forget the mysterious way in which God makes use of secondary
causes in His chastisement of peoples and nations, as was so well sug
gested in the fine sermon to which I have referred. Let us beware of the
self-righteous prayer of the Pharisee or we also may bring the wrath of
God upon ourselves. — A. W. R."

3io THE LIGHT WITHIN
before that the cup might pass. We are apt to picture
the victory in Gethsemane as a prostrate submission,
a bhnd resignation. Is it not more hkely that in the
perfect prayer of submission to the Will of God, Jesus
Christ received for answer the sublime confidence that
He was to gather up in His conquest all the httle suf
ferings of humanity scattered abroad and seemingly
wasted, He was to carry them up into His triumph?
And is it not certain that He did not walk as a crushed
malefactor among the Roman soldiers, but strode down
the hill towards the city with His head high and with
His eyes shining? For He was not only the Son of
God, He was also the head of humanity gathering
into Himself all the mistakes and sins of men, and,
by carrying them up into God's Will, was to blot
them out and to win, not only for Himself, but for
all men of all time, the summit of all victory. It is
through the Holy Spirit that men, sharing in this victory,
may mount to the same height, through penitence,
through discipline, through sacrifice, through love,
through surrender, till the Will of God is the will of
men, the wiU of nations, the will of the world.

VI
Now, since the Holy Spirit has to do with all our
life to the last eternity, what shall we say of the
future? We have no right to separate the world vis
ible and the world invisible; for in the Holy Spirit
they are one world.
We wonder why the Holy Spirit does not tell us
plainly of the future, especially the ranges of it beyond
the mountains called death. The suspense of not know
ing makes us doubt. This is not reasonable doubt, for

THE COMING OF THE LORD 31 1
suspense marks hfe on this side the great mountains.
We are constantly fretting because we do not know.
We cannot even make a considerable journey without
worry. We speculate whether the luggage sent forward
will be safe. Will the next inn be quiet? Will the
altitude of the mountain town chosen for the next
month be too high for one who is with us? Will
there be enough money for all the days before the
boat takes us home? Will the homeward voyage be
secure? AU these are suspenses of hfe, made up
shortly by the actual conditions, which show the
worries for the most part groundless; and however
bad the event, it is some way transcended and we go
on beheving in the reahty and stability of the present
life. So we ought to think of the future. We fret
about its manners and customs, its length and quahty;
but aU the time it is there in God's keeping, awaiting
our coming to it. We must trust Him for immortality
as we trust Him for tomorrow.
Moreover, we must not dwell too much on the clouds
and darkness of life, fearing their prophecy of what
is to be. Darkness means a possible growth. One
remembers days cold and wet among the high peaks
of the world. We count these days lost in our holi
day; for the green pines, the masses of rock, the gleam
ing white of the summits are all hid from us. But
we stay on, and at length the sun brings the fine dry
days. Behind all the darkness, we then find, the forces
of God's mystery have been at work. The new snow
has fallen on the peaks; the cascades and brooks are
filled to the utmost hmit and glisten and sing their
loud song as no one hving in the mountains recalls
for a generation. The time of especial gloom is a fact;
it has gone deep into the experience of the summer.

312 THE LIGHT WITHIN
But it has been made up to us, not merely by a sense
of contrast, but by a new beauty and a new glory
which could not have been but for the forces which
went forward to make the beauty and the glory even
while they were casting gloom upon us.
As God does not give us infalhbihty in institutions
or men for our guide, so God does not give us know
ledge of the future. Instead of either or both He gives
us the perpetual companionship of His Holy Spirit.
As we hve and rest in Him, we acquire the confidence
which is beyond knowledge. AU these overturnings
of what we in our narrow vision think would be
helps, drive us in upon the Source of our peace. It
is not profitable, therefore, to attempt details even in
imagination. But there are two main suggestions
about the future which we may safely deduce from our
knowledge of the way in which the Holy Spirit has led
us hitherto.
(i) The first of these suggestions is that as we have
discovered that the Holy Spirit binds us together in
this dispensation, as He makes us tend at least to hve
together as brethren, so this process of unity must
increase and move towards perfection. Our joy as
individuals will be heightened by the fusion of our
individuality into a constantly larger community of
interest and of joy. The Church and the Nation
both stand for prophecies of what is to be. The
individual is not annihilated, but found, when it is
merged into some vaster whole. For while it is in the
whole, the whole is also in it. The saints lost in
God have been sure that they could do all things in
Him: this is the explanation of the boasting and
humihty of St. Paul, and of every other meek and con
fident saint in history. As Holland can save itself

THE COMING OF THE LORD 313
at any moment by cutting its dykes and letting the
sea flood its land; so every man can save himself
from his worst foes by tearing down the barriers and
letting the Holy Spirit flood his soul. Such an act
as that takes away one's isolation, but not one's in
dependence. We are joined to all others who have the
Holy Spirit in them, consciously and gladly. We are
as near to them as to ourselves. The love of the Spirit
bestows upon us the gladness of the lover, and we turn,
each to his neighbour, saying, "I am thou."
The dream of the sociahst and reformer may have
in it much that is unworthy and vindictive. But a
premonition of the future shows itself in the cry for
cooperation rather than rivalry and competition, in
union rather than in selfishness, in sharing rather than
in keeping. The things we try to do and bungle over,
making a sad mess of our hopes, are quite surely very
often the promptings of the Holy Spirit, trying to
teach us the celestial lessons which He shall complete
in another stage in hfe. So we fumble among the
efforts at Church unity, and international peace, and
a federation of the peoples of the earth. We yearn
for unity. The future will in some nobler way than we
can conceive give us this loving and radiant unity in
the Holy Spirit of God.
(2) The only other suggestion is that the inspira
tion of the Holy Spirit is giving to us, as to the ancient
Hebrews and the early Christians, something akin to
the Messianic Hope and the speedy expectation of
the Parousia. We too pray, "Thy kingdom come."
We too, amid all the wreckage and weeping of the
world, are optimists. It is the lesson of Christian
history that God has had hold of it at every turn.
Through the Holy Spirit, men have known that far

314 THE LIGHT WITHIN
as they might wander, they never could be outside the
range of His care. This knowledge gives the man who
beheves in the Holy Spirit a sense of security that is
to the world absurd. Before Christianity the Baby
lonians doubtless made themselves merry over the
Hebrew captives who were heard to sing of a recovered
Jerusalem and a mighty king who should lead his
people to conquest. But the hope which upheld the
early Christians was more buoyant still. The caUous
Romans could not comprehend a form of what they
caUed Stoicism which could send men and women into
the arena of death with smiles and spiritual songs.
They admired as they ridiculed the hope of these
martyrs that the future held for each of them a crown
of hfe. In so far as we are the descendants of the
early saints we too pierce the discouragements and
evils of our time. We know that the future of the
world both visible and invisible is ever tending upward
towards perfection. This is not because we can argue
a case for the tendencies that we can see and touch;
it is not because we have any infallible testimony;
it is simply because we believe in the Holy Spirit.
We see our beloved pass to the invisible future, and
our hope for them does not depend on their merits,
but on their willingness to receive the best. Even
for the young who pass before their earthly work is
begun, we know that a heavenly work awaits, which
shall exceed all accomphshment of which we know.
"Our God, to Thee sweet praises rise
From youthful lips in Paradise;
From boys fair robed in spotless white
And nourished in the courts of light.
In arbours they, where soft and low
The blessed streams of light do flow:

THE COMING OF THE LORD 315
And Gabriel, a shepherd strong,
Doth gently guide their flocks along.
God's sons are they on that far coast,
And nurslings of the Holy Ghost."
That is the assurance. The Holy Ghost, who brings
us close to God and close to our brother men, will
surely lead the vanished ones into the friendship of
the saints and heroes, into the fulfilment of God's
supreme plan, into the love of God Himself.
And the songs of victory shall also ring over the
hiUs and vaUeys of earth. The Kingdom of Christ
is coming to the visible world. Little by little, the
WiU of God is revealed to us, and we struggle to fulfil
it in ourselves and in those whom we can persuade to
help. We look for the appearing of Christ in some
new glory, which we dare not even imagine. We
cannot teU when or how this shall be. But our God
is the God of hope, and it is our Christian nature to
beheve aU things, to hope ah things. We beheve that
when the Great Day shall come, the visible world and
the world invisible shaU flow together. Then the Holy
Spirit, who unites men to one another and to God,
shaU bring aU men from every age, from every planet
into the fulness and unity of the beatific vision of God.

vn
What do we most chiefly learn, from history and
our own experience, concerning the Holy Spirit?
First, the Holy Spirit is patient. He waits long.
He endures aU things.
Secondly, His only force is love. Otherwise He is
defenceless. Thirdly, He is, by His unresting care, drawing all

316 THE LIGHT WITHIN
men, if they will but let Him, to the Father, that at
the last the will of the world shaU be brought into
the WiU of God.
Finally, He holds before the world the Perfect Love
of Christ, that every man, being made glad by His
friendship both human and divine, may share with
Christ His everlasting victory.

INDEX

INDEX

ADDISON, J., 206.
Adventure in Science, 216.
Ainslee, P., 6, 234.
Albertus Magnus, 3 m.
Alexander VI, 185, 195, 274.
Alexandria, 31.
Allen, A. V. G., 143 n., 234, 274.
Alva, Duke of, 276.
Almalric, 163.
Ambrose, 129, 137.
American Civil War, 278.
American Revolution, 243.
Amos, 22.
Angels, Relation of, to the Doctrine
of the Holy Spirit, 28 ff.
Ancestor Worship, 153 f.
Anselm, 14.
Antony of Padua, 180.
Apocalyptic language of Christ,
108 ff.
Apocrypha, of the Old Testament,
3°-
Apostles, Successors of, 12, 130 ff.,
233-
Aquinas, Thomas, 31 «., 162, 174,
177, 193-
Arbitration, 5 f.
Arianism, 115, 120, 147.
Aristides, 115 ».
Aristotle, 31 re., 174.
Armada, Spanish, 190.
Armenian Christians, 243.
Arnold, M., 206, 296 ».
Athanasius, 14, 31, 115, 120, 148.
Athens in the days of Pericles, 280.
Auber, Harriet, 207.
Augsburg Confession, 197.
Augsburg, Peace of, 183.
Augustine of Hippo, 14, 118, 128 I.,
*33, 135. 14°, 157. 164, 197, 290,
302.
Avignon, 185.

BABYLONIAN Captivity, 23 f.,
28 ff., 36, 109, 314.
Bach, J. S., 209.
Baha, Abdul, 7.
Bahaism, 7 f., 17.
Balaam, 20.
Baptism, Sacrament of, 136 ff.,
I3Q »•, 23S, 262.
Baptism of Infants, 139 f.
Barclay, R., 227, 228.
Barnby, J., 209.
Basil of Caesarea, 121.
Beatrice, Dante's reverence for,
179 ff-
Bellini, G., 172.
Bergson, H., lof., 48, 218 f., 291.
Bernard of Clairvaux, 162, 197.
Bible, The, 3, 14 f., 16 ff., 61, 113,
146, 176 f., 191, 194, 196, 199,
200, 221, 222 ff., 233, 255, 261,
273, 274, 286 ff.
Birth of Christ, 86 ff.
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,
88 f.
Boldness of the Apostles after Pen
tecost, 64.
Booth, W., 289.
Bourgeois, L., 209.
Brethren of the Common Life, 164.
Bright, John, 49, 85.
Brooks, Phillips, 52.
Browne, T., 228.
Bruey, 55 n.
Buddhism, 17.
Butler, Joseph, 3.
Butler, N., 282.
Buttresses, Flying, 167.
CALVIN, John, 14, in, 176, 177,
191, 200 ff.
Carpenter, W. Boyd, 179.
Celibacy of the Clergy, 188.

320

INDEX

Chalcedon, Council of, 115, 146.
Charles V, 185, 187, 198, 241,
276.
Charles VIII, 195.
Christ's Knowledge, 107 f.
Christ's Revelation of tie Spiritual,
34 ff-
Christian Optimism, 313 f.
Christian Science, 8.
Christian Year, 134 ff.
Christlike, The, alone Successors of
the Apostles, 12.
Christmas, Keeping of, 134 f.
Christology, 2, 224.
Chronology, Attitude of Evange
lists towards, 95.
Chrysostom, John, 121 f.
Church Idea, 11, 232 ff.
Church Unity, 6, 284 ff.
Churchmanship, Definitions of, 235.
Clement of Alexandria, 31.
Clovis, 150 f., 264.
Coleridge, S. T., 17.
Colet, John, 174, 175, 185.
Columbus, C, 180.
Common Prayer, Book of, 142.
Communion of Saints, 154.
Commumty of Goods in Apostolic
Church, 65 f .
Concreteness of the Bible, 61.
Confirmation, Rite of, 137 f., 184,
262.
Constantine, 146, 150, 183, 264.
Constantinople, Council of, 115,
146, 147.
Conversion by Contagion, 246 f .
Copernicus, 181.
Cosin, J., 155 n.
Councils, The, 63, 115, 118, 145 ff.,
182 ff ., 184, 254 ff.
Coverdale, M., 176.
Cowper, W., 206.
Cranach, L., 177.
Creeds, The, 113, 260.
Creighton, M., 263 f.
Croft, W., 209.
Cromwell, O., 206.
Crusades, The, 157 ff.
Cyril of Jerusalem, 129 i.n., 138, 141.

DANTE, 179 ff., 192 ff.
Darwin, C., 213.
David, 20, 21.
Da Vinci, L., 172.
Death, 302 ff .
Deism, 227, 253.
Democrary, Triumph of, 240.
De ValdSs, J., 188.
Diaspora, 28, 45 f.
Didache, 131.
Dionysius the Areopagite, 161.
Discovery, Age of, 180 ff.
Divine Acceptance, The, 301 ff.
Dolling, R. W. R., 249.
Donateilo, 172.
Dowden, J., 134 f.
Drown, E. S., 288.
Dualism, 269, 272.
Duchesne, L., 135, 233.
Diirer, A., 170, 172.
EASTER, Keeping of, 134.
Ebionites, The, 83.
Eck, J. M., 197.
Eckhart, J., 163.
Elijah, 21, 30.
Elijah, Oratorio of, 210, 300.
Elisha and the chariots of fire, 277.
Elliot, E., 207.
Emerson, R. W., 3.
Epiphany, Feast of the, 134 f .
Episcopate, Growth of the, 131 f.
Erasmus, D., 174, 175, 183, 190.
Ethical Culture, Society of, 30.
Eucken, R., 10, 11.
Evangelical Movement, 206, 230!.
Evil, The Problem of, 269 ff.
Evil Spirits, 296 f .
Evolution, The Doctrine of, 213,
283.
Experience in religion, 17 f., 26, 78,
114, 127 ff.
FABER, F. W., 207.
Fabre,J.H, 214 f.
Federation among nations, 239 f .
Filioque, 118, 184.
Fourth Gospel, The, 14, 35, 91 ff.,
120.

INDEX

321

Fox, George, 227, 228.
Francis, St., 2, 57, 180, 191 f.,
271.
Franzos, K. E., 58.
Frazer, J. G., 237.
Freedom, Human, 269 . ff.
French Revolution, The, 5, 242.
Frere, W. H., 133.
Friends, Society of, 227 ff.
Froude, J. A., 176.
Future, The, 310 ff.
GALILEO, 181, 212.
Gerson, 197.
Giorgione, 172.
Giotto, 172.
Gladden, W., 207.
Glory of the life of the historic Jesus,
99 ff.
Gnosticism, 93.
Good Friday, 38, 39, 134.
Gore, C, 223.
Gothic Architecture an expression
of the Spiritual, 167 ff., 180, 232.
Gottesfreunde, 164 f.
Gounod, C, 210.
Greece, victorious spiritually in
physical defeat, 278.
Greek Church, The, 184, 188, 234.
Greek Testament, The, 173 ff.
Greek Thought, 29 f.
Gregory Vn, 138.
Gregory X, 159.
Greville, G., 58 n.
Grieving the Holy Spirit, 77.
Groton, W. M., 263 ».
Gwatkin, H. M., 233.
HABIT, W. James on, 218.
Haeckel, E., 212.
Handel, G. F., 210.
Harnack, A., 233.
Haydn, F. J., 210.
Heber, R., 206.
Heine, H., 200.
Higher Criticism, 222 f.
Hildebrand, 138.
Hill, Octavia, 234 n.
Hirsaugian Chronicle, 136 n.

Historical method in Philosophy,
237-
Historical School, Modern, 221 ff.
Holbein, H., 172.
Holden, O., 209.
Holmes, O. W., 203.
Holy Roman Empire, 189.
Holy Spirit, The: the wish to know
more of, 1 ff.; in the Old Testa
ment, 16 ff.; Christ's Revelation
of, 34 ft.; on Pentecost, 43 ff.; in
St. Paul's Epistles, 63 ff.; Holi
ness of, 71; in the Synoptic Gos
pels, 80 ff.; Sin against, 88 f.; in
the Fourth Gospel, 92 ff.; in
Early Christian Theology, 113 ff.;
in the Mediaeval Church, 1366.;
in the last three centuries, 204 ff.;
the summary of the doctrine
of, 232 ff.; the direct dependence
upon, 234 ff.; the double test of
the authority of, 238 f.; the om
nipresence of, 269 ff.; the omni
potence of, 283 ff.; confidence
in, 310 ff.; what we chiefly learn
in history and experience about,
3i5i-
Hooker, R., 147.
Hort, F. J. A., 222.
Howe, Julia Ward, 267 f.
Huguenots, The, 201.
Hull House, 246.
Humanists, The, 174 ff.
Huntington, W. R., 142 «.
Huss, J., 174.
Hymns as an Expression of the
Holy Spirit, 113, 200, 203, 267 f.,
214.
Hypapante, Festival of the, 133.
Hypnotism, 298 ff .
IGNATIUS, 131.
Individualism and Solidarity,
_ 238 ff.
Imagination in Science, 216.
Infallibility, Search for, 234 ff.
Inge, W. R., 8.
Ingram, A. F. W., 248 f.
Inquisition, The, 181, 186.

322

INDEX

Inspiration, 273 f., 286; also see
under Bible.
Institution of the Lord's Supper,
Words used at, 262 ff.
Instinct, 214 f.
International relations not Chris
tian, 266.
Invisible Church, The, 12, 236.
Irenaeus, 115 n.
Isaiah, 22, 88, 273.
JAMES, ST., Epistle of, 221.
James, H, 98.
James, W., 98, 107 »., 211, 218,
286 n., 287, 296 n., 308.
Japanese, The, 266.
Jerome, 137, 176.
Jerusalem, Council of, 63, 239; fall
of, 108 f.
Jesuits, 183, 184, 249, 284.
Joachim of Floris, 163.
John Baptist, 36, 93.
John the Evangelist, St., 24, 92 ff.,
120; and see under Fourth Gospel.
John Chrysostom, 121 f.
Johnson, F. H., 283.
Joseph, 20.
Justification by faith, 183.
Justin Martyr, 113.
KEMPIS, Thomas a, 163, 166.
Ken, T., 206.
Kingsley, C, 207.
Kipling, R., 3 «., 207, 271, 287.
LAKE, K., 43
Laws, Natural, 212, 276.
Lecky, W. E. H., 179.
Leonides, father of Origen, 128.
Leo X, 289.
Limiting God's Forgiveness, Heresy
of, 283 f .
Limiting God's Power, Heresy of,
2846.
Lincoln, A., 83, 86, 238, 241.
Lightfoot, J. B., 233.
Longfellow, S., 207.
Louis of France, St., 139.
Lowell, J. R., 243.
Loyola, 183.

Lord's Supper, The, 140 ff., 170 f.,
262.
Luke, St., 43, 47, 33, 66, 90, 93.
Luther, M., 63, 164, 171, 174, 176,
183 f., 189 f., 191, 196 ff., 221,
261, 289.
Lwoff, A., 203.
Lyons, Council of, 139.
MACBETH, Incantation in,'s4.
Magellan, 181
Magnificat, History one grand, 280.
Marathon, 273.
Marcian, 146.
Mark, St., 84, 86.
Martyrs, Joy of the Christian, 314.
Matthew, St., 90.
Maurice, F. D., 229, 234.
Medici, Catherine de', 274.
Medici, Lorenzo de', 195.
Mendelssohn -Bartholdy, F., 210,
300.
Messianic Idea and Hope, The, 22ff.;
35 ff-5 81, 93, 95, 97, 107, 313 f.
Methodism, 230 f.
Mexico, War in, 6.
Micah, 20.
Michelangelo, 172.
Millerites, The, 136.
Minatory Psalms, 307.
Ministry, The Christian, 130 ff .
Miracles of Christ, The, 63, 996.,
272 f.
Missions, Modern, 133, 249 ff.
Muller, Max, 296 n.
Moberiy, R. C, 122, 123.
Mohammedans, 138.
Monk, W. H., 209.
Monothelite heresy, 146.
Moore, C. H., 167, 180.
More, Sir T., 174, 176, 190.
Moses, 51.
Motley, J. L., 276.
Mozart, J. C. W. A., 210.
Miinzer, T., 166.
Music, Sacred, 204 ff .
Mystery Religions of the East, The,
27 f., 69.
Mysticism, 8, 161 ff., 229, 260.

INDEX

323

NAPOLEON, 239.
Nash, H. S., 32, 223.
Nations, Modern, 266 ff.
Nature, Appreciation of, 178.
Neighbourliness, New phases of,
246.
Neoplatonism, 161.
Nestorians, 146.
New Jerusalem, 279.
New Learning, The, 173 ff.
Newman, J. H., 207, 223.
Newton, I., 212.
Newton, J., 290.
Nicaea, Council of, 113, 146.
Nicodemus, Discourse to, 102.
Night compared to death, 303 f. n.
OLD TESTAMENT, The Holy
Spirit-in the, 16 ff.
Oratorios, 203 ff., 209.
Orders, Valid or regular, 235 f.
Ordination, 130 ff., 235L, 262.
Origen, 31, 89 »., 128, 138, 146.
Osborn, H. F., 216.
Oxford Movement, 207, 232 ff.
PAGANISM, Influence of, on
Christianity, 130 ff.
Pantheism, 161, 233, 264.
Papacy, The, 3, 132, 151, 171, 177,
184 ff., 189, 197, 234 f.
Parker, H., 209.
Parousia, The, 66, 69 f., 81 ff., 101,
103 ff., 108 ff., 313.
Passover, The, 94.
Pasteur, L., 216.
Pastoral Epistles, 131.
Paul, St., 14, 20, 31, 34, 55, 61, 63
ff., 82, 83, 87, 91, 96, 116,
120, 126, 131, 177, 239, 292,
298, 312.
Paul D7, 186.
Pelagianism, 197.
Pentecost, Day of, 43 ff ., 104, 136.
Peter, St., 63.
Peter the Hermit, 138.
Philip II, 276.
Philo, 31 f.
Pico della Mirandola, 173.

Pietism, 229.
Pius V, Creed of, 199.
Pius X, Pope, 249.
Plato, 173.
Polytheism, 23.
Pope, The, see under Papacy.
Pope, Alexander, 206, 232.
Possession, 71.
Prayer, 77 f., 293 ff., 308.
Predestination, 201, 202.
Procession of tie Holy Ghost, 117 f.,
184, 234.
Progress, Human, 280 ff.
Provincialism, 289.
Psychic Research, 218.
Psychology, 217 ff., 294.
Psychotherapy, 9.
Puritans of England and New Eng
land, 201.

Q

DOCUMENT of New Testa
ment called, 35 ff., 131.
Quakers, 227 ff., 234, 239.
Quartodecimans, 134.

RABANUS, Maurus, 133.
Ramsay, W., 262 f.
Raphael, 169 f., 171 f., 180.
Reformation, The Protestant, 3,
169, 171, 183, 188, 204, 221, 238,
276.
Reform Laws, English, 238.
Rembrandt, 170.
Remigius, of Rheims, 131.
Renaissance, The, 173 ff.
Resignation to God is acceptance of
God, 300 ff.
Resurrection of Christ, The, 38 f.,
4i, 44, 73-
Rheims Cathedral, Destruction of,
308 f. n.
Richard I, King of England, 139.
Rinkart, M., 203.
Robbia, Delia, 172.
Robertson, F. W., 234.
Rosieres, 136 n.
Royce, J., 1, n, 26, 235.
Ruysbroeck, 164.

324

INDEX

SABELLIANISM, 120, 124.
Sacraments, The 29, 72, 136 ff.,
170, 184, 202, 228, 262; see also
under Baptism and Lord's Supper.
Sacrifice of Christ, 309 f.
St. Peter's, Building of, 290.
Salamis, 273.
Salvation Army, 290.
Samaria, Woman of, 102.
Samson, 19.
Sanday, W., 29, 220.
Savonarola, G., 173, 193.
Schleiermacher, F. E. D., 229.
Scholasticism, 162, 173, 239.
Scott, W., 232.
Seabury, S., 141 f.
Sennacherib, 273.
Serapion, Sacramentary of, 133, 137,
141.
Servetus, Martyrdom of, 191.
Shrubsole, W., 209.
Sin agamst the Holy Spirit, 88 f .
Skrine, J. H., 247.
Slavs, 266.
Smyth, Newman, 6.
Social Conscience, 4, 242, 244 ff.,
263, 268.
Social Distinctions, 243.
Social Settlements, 246 f .
Socialism, Fear of, 244.
Socrates and his daimon, 30, 63.
Spener, P. J., 229.
Spires, Diet of, 183.
Stainer, J., 211.
Stanley, A. P., 223.
Stephen, St., 31.
Storch, C, 260.
Stradella, A., 209.
Subliminal, The, 13, 18, 219.
Suffering, Redemption by, 278 f.
Suffering Servant, The, 36.
Swete, H. B., 2, 47 f., 33, 55, 122,
141, 144 f.
Synoptic Gospels, 34, 80 ff., 92, 94,
99.
TAGORE, R., n, 263, 292 f.
Tammany Hall, 274.
Tatian, 113 n.

Tauler, J., 163 f.
Telepathy, 10, 297.
Temple, F., 248.
Tennyson, A., 207.
Tersteegen, G., 203.
Testament of our Lord, 133.
Theodoret, 116.
Theodosius the Great, 146.
Theodosius the Younger, 146.
Theologia Germanica, 164 f., 166,
197.
Theology of the Holy Spirit, Growth
of the, 113 ff.
Thomas Aquinas, 31 »., 162, 174,
177, 193-
Thomas a Kempis, 163, 166.
Thompson-Seton, E., 271.
Thousand, The Year One, 136.
Tischendorf, K. von, 222.
Titanic, Wreck of the, 282.
Titian, 172.
Tongues of fire on Pentecost, 31 ff.
Tongues, Speaking with, 33 ff., 74 f.
Toplady, A. M., 206.
Toynbee Hall, 243.
Tractarian Movement in England,
232 ff.
Transfiguration, Festival ofthe, 133.
Transubstantiation, 143, 170 f.
Trent, Council of, 183, 184.
Trinity, The doctrine of the, 90,
113 ff-, 122 ff-, 127, 235, 232 ff.
Tritheism, 124.
Trollope, A., 39.
Turks, The, 158 ff., 174, 243.
Tyndale, W., 176, 177.
Tyrrell, G., 12, 149 f., 271 f.
UNITY Church, 6 f .
Universities in Europe, 173 f.
Unknown, The Great, 24 f., 36.
Urban H, 158.
Urban Vin, 181.
VAIL, A. R, 7.
Vatican Council, The, 184 ».
Vecchio, P., 172.
Veni Creator Spiritus, 155.
Victorinus, Marius, 122.

INDEX

325

Virgin, Festivals in memory of, 133,
178.
Voltaire, 227.
Vulgate, The Latin, 176.
WALLACE, A. R., 213.
Wallas, G., 213.
War of 1914, The, v, 5, 239 ff., 243,
273 ff-, 287 f., 305 ff.
Watte, I., 206.
Wesley, C, 206.
Wesley, J., 205, 230.
Westcott, B. F., 222, 223.
White, Bianco, 303 f, n.
Whitefield, G., 3.
Will, Relation of Substance to, in
definition of God, 288 f .

Will of God, The, 213, 260, 290,
295 ff-
Will of Man, The, 286 ff.
Will to believe, The, 287.
Will to gain the Victory, 288.
William of Orange, 276.
Wind, Sound of the, on Pentecost,
48 ff.
Wisdom Literature, 30.
Woman, Reverence for, 179.
Worcester, E., 9 f.
Worms, Diet of, 189, 198.
Wren, G, 232.
Wyclif, J., 174-
ZHUKOVSKY, V. A., 203.
Zwickau Prophets, 166, 260.

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