YALE
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

THE GREEK GOSPEL

An interpretation of the coming faith

BY
EDWARD P. USHER, A.M., LL.B.

' Henceforth I am an old Greek "
Bishop Phillips Brooks
Life, Vol. n, 344

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
Grafton, Mass., U. S. A.
1909

Copyright, 1909,
by Edward P. Usher

boston
nathan sawyer & son, printers
41 pearl st., cor. franklin

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to tire greater glory of ®oo
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to tits memory of
giishop Of J^tassacljusett*
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CONTENTS.

FOREWORD.

BOOK FIRST.

FATHER

— SON — HOLY SPIRIT.

I.

Cosmic Force.

II.

Life.

III.

Animal — Man — Human.

IV.

Spirit.

V.

Christus.

VI.

Christian Symbolism.

VII.

The Trinity.

VIII.

Jesus as Christus.

BOOK SECOND.
MAN AND HIS PROBLEMS.
I. The Nature of Man.
II. Knowledge — Wisdom — Truth.
III. Education.
IV. Sacrifice and Renunciation.
V. Self-Reliance.
VI. Sanity.
VII. Evil.
BOOK THIRD.
RELEASE FROM BURDENS.
I. Nirvana.
II. Beauty and Art.
III. Immortality.
BOOK FOURTH.
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE.
I. The Riddle of Existence.
II. The Mission of Humanity.

FOREWORD.

In the North American Review for October, 1907,
there appeared an essay, written on his death-bed
by a distinguished man of high and pure character,
seventy-two years of age and dying of a cancer. He
told clearly and frankly his opinion of the Christian
religion as commonly and popularly apprehended. He
entirely repudiated it, declared it incredible that any
sane, intelligent man could for one moment believe it,
and wrote with such force that, under all the circum
stances, his must be regarded as a very significant
utterance. It seems never to have occurred to him
that Christianity might really be something far dif
ferent from this conventional system of thought. In
rejecting that, he seemed to himself to be rejecting
the entire message of the churches; but in the interest
of the truth he felt compelled to do it as the result of
all his reading and meditation.
Herein there was a singular revelation of his high
character. In his persistent devotion to every move
ment aimed at social progress and the uplifting of the
race; in his loyalty to truth; in his kindness, forbear-

8 FOREWORD.
ance and regard for the welfare of others; in earnest
seeking after truth and steadfast faith in the verdict
of his developed consciousness, he disclosed his very
self and it was a Christian self. He had tried to lead
a sane and rational life, had been loyal to the very
best that he knew and had constantly tried to make the
world better because of his presence in it. Although
he rejected what he heard called Christianity he revealed
in all that he wrote the fact that he had unconsciously
lived the true Christian life and was indeed a true
type of Christian character. He had, however, never
known words to be used in any other than the common
and popular sense and as thus interpreted he could
not accept them.
Now, as a young man, I faced the same dilemma.
As soon as my consciousness developed to a point
where it could pass on the subject, I felt that I could
not accept the conventional propositions and I have
never altered that opinion. In the forty years that
have passed, I have constantly meditated about this
religious problem as being the great enigma. I have
sought the truth without any desire except to get at
reality. To do this, I studied my own consciousness
and my own experiences. I sought to discover a pro-
founder meaning in certain words, believing that, if

FOREWORD. 9
I could clearly reach the true significance of these
key-words, it would lead me towards the explanation
of the life by which I was surrounded and part of
which I was.
I observed and studied man as he has been and now
is, seeking in history and literature the reflected light
which might illumine the dark places in my own con
sciousness. Everything became stimulating, sugges
tive and interesting. Having willed to know, I found
that I had certain feelings and experiences rising from
the things I consciously did. About these I thought,
seeking the explanation of the mysterious fact that
I could thus will, feel, think and consciously act. I
came to accept the conception of an immanent God,
and then working along, step by step, relying always
on experience and observation, I have reached a solu
tion which at least satisfies me. I have reached a
most intimate sense of the constant presence of God
as an indwelling force or influence. I am clearly con
scious of the presence as power and light of this subtle
force, which I call spirit. I do not mean to suggest
or imply any trace of what is commonly called mys
ticism, for I do not move towards the disparagement
but towards the exaltation of the human intellect and
the human self. I do not discover any ecstatic states,

10 FOREWORD.
any incommunicable visions, any overwhelming and
self-paralyzing conceptions of God. My personality
is not extinguished, but is expanded and developed.
I do not give up reason but use it more and more, get
more and more out of it as a spiritual force that links
me with God and makes me all that I am. While I
doubtless realize the same essential experiences as the
veriest mystic, I give them a different interpretation, —
see them as a result for which my life has long been a
preparation; as in part an intuition, in the true mystic
sense, but as in a greater degree the product of conscious
mental life. God is indeed immediately present through
intuition, but this very intuition is essentially intellec
tual, that is to say, it involves insight, use of developed
faculties, and comes as the culmination of many ex
periences and reflections. All intellectual insight is
spiritual, and it leads one to see more and more that
is divine in the ordinary life functions, to discover
God and the divine presence in much of the life that
before had been deemed commonplace. I did not secure
any positively new life, but I awoke to the divine
significance that had always been in my life while I
had been blind to its presence. I awoke to a realizing
sense of what had always been surrounding me with
out recognition from me. I saw how I had been

FOREWORD. 11
using divine forces and had been under divine influences
without knowing it. I merely woke up to the truth
which had indeed been implicit in all my daily life
during all the years. In a word, all has become alive
and real, so that everything that has any value or
interest is spiritual. Religion seems, indeed, to be
the secret of the highest form of happy and contented
living. I am troubled by no doubts or fears, but I
am intensely interested in trying to apprehend more
clearly and feel more deeply the spiritual forces that
environ me, for these seem to be the only realities of
life. All that makes life most desirable has come to
center around the words, "God," "Spirit," "Christus,"
and these are all symbolized and connoted by the term
" Trinity." In the popular meaning of these words I
do not believe and never have believed since I was
able to comprehend the matter. If there were no
other meanings than those so long common and popular,
I should repudiate them just as our essayist did; but
instead of stopping at rejection I have labored to
construct, and this book fs the result of my forty years
in the wilderness.
I found that there was a group of words each of
which has not only a conventional and popular mean-

12 FOREWORD.
ing, but also a rational significance; that these variant
meanings constitute two seemingly different interpre
tations, two antagonistic systems of thought. The
rational seems destructive of the common and popular,
and it truly is, for no one who has ever clearly appre
hended the idea on its rational side can ever again use
the conventional idea as formally true or adequate.
Yet the two are not essentially antagonistic, for the
one is the profound explanation of the truth that
underlies the other. Each is referring to the same
realities, each derives its practical advantage from
the same eternal facts, but the rational interpretation
is so superior that no one who has grasped it can ever
again rest in the old symbolism and be satisfied with
the old mysticism. Therefore, whenever a man comes
to really see the rational truth, he is lost as a champion
of the old conventional statement of it, and so it is
said that his old faith has been destroyed. Now it
truly has, and there is no occasion to deny it, but it all
means that the old has given way to the new because
that new is better. The less effective has yielded to
the more effective, the blind faith has been replaced
by a clear-eyed faith, superstition has been conquered
by reason. It is as if impoverished land had been
enriched so as to yield larger and better results. When

FOREWORD. 13
it occurs it is merely a psychical growth or evolution.
He who has not progressed is unable to discern the
reasons which have come to the others as a flood of
light. It is, indeed, all a matter of psychical insight.
He that hath eyes to see may see, and not otherwise.
The higher can understand the lower and sympathize
with all its perplexities, but the lower cannot under
stand the higher and so is utterly unable to sympathize
with it. This is the reason why all genuine progress,
all true reform and all psychical enlightenment move
so very slowly. The men who do see can understand
the plight of those who do not see and so are tolerant
and sympathetic towards them and their institutions.
They even help to support institutions, as venerable
and at the time socially useful, with whose tenets they
do not and cannot agree. They never ridicule or act
against any form of religion or any stage of religious
development and, while they decline many dogmas and
superstitions, they do so without assailing or denoun
cing them in a way to give pain to sincere believers
in them. They seek to avoid all needless clashing of
opinion, all futile collision of feeling. Differ as they
must from others, they seek to be peacemakers, avoiding
unseasonable allusions and topics which may irritate.
Far different is the case with those undeveloped

14 FOREWORD.
men who do not and cannot see. Unable to under
stand the psychical movement, they do not at all per
ceive the spiritual significance of what is going on
before them, and so are intolerant, suspicious and
inclined to harsh judgments. Gentle and peaceful
as are the men who see, they become the object of
deep and unreasonable resentment and often are cruelly
repressed and persecuted by the men who do not see.
Thus the men who have the vision are crucified by
those who are blind. This is the tragedy of man,
the austere, bitter and mysterious law of his social
life. The brave souls of each generation suffer for
the salvation of the multitude. While men are cor
rupted and ruined by the selfish machinations of other
men, they are also saved and lifted up to the higher
plane of life by the action of their fellows. Thus
men find in each other both the Devil and the Christus.
"Perdition and redemption in and through each other
is the destiny of man."
Man always has been, is now and ever will be, in a
process of psychic evolution. This he cannot avoid
or escape, for it is the law under which his race lives.
Life is movement, growth, progress, so that the idea
of final truth acquired once for all is delusion. There
are individuals in all stages of this evolution and this

FOREWORD. 15
renders the situation at all times extremely complex,
since, despite these differences, they all meet as members
of one social body.
Living in a world in which all ideas conflicting with
popular systems have been persistently kept out of
sight, it was many long years before I even came to
know that these words had or could have another
meaning than that commonly assigned to them. I
now see that it is a fact that, side by side, there are
two great systems of thought, two ways of looking
at the universe, in which the same word symbols may
be used because the same essential verities are referred
to in each case. Each system may properly be called
Christian, the one in a popular sense, the other in an
esoteric sense, being variant interpretations resting on
essential similarity of belief in certain great truths
which are really universal laws. In all popular usage
these words must necessarily have their common
meaning, but the individual may use them in their
higher sense without regard to how many men agree
with him.
In the sense in which I have now come to use the
term, religion is the single factor that makes this present
life at all worth while. The irreligious man simply

16 FOREWORD.
throws his life away, so that, as far as he is concerned,
it would have been as well if he had never been born.
Religion is not a graceful adjunct of life, a social
decency, something that may be left to await considera
tion in convenient times of leisure, that may be taken
up occasionally in a patronizing way, but, in this high
sense, it is life itself, for outside the field of animal
existence there is from this point of view no life that
is not religious. A being entirely destitute of religion
would not properly be classified as a man.
When truly apprehended, Christianity seems to me
to be the one great achievement of the entire race.
For its unfolding and development, it has taken all
history and will take all the future. To understand
it requires the perception of all man's history as the
record of a development due to the operation of a
force that is immanent in himself. This force may
be delayed and obstructed, but it is essentially invin
cible. It is an evolutionary process that links together
all centuries and connects together all men as parts of
one great psychical movement, the final achievement
of which seems to be the one object of all living.
Aside from this the world would have existed without
aim, purpose or motive. If the incessant activity
of man is not finally to create a perfected humanity,

FOREWORD. 17
then no reason can be given why all that is should not
now be blotted out, for all man's activity, outside the
mere animal plane, is aimed at this, if it is aimed at
anything. The best of the past is the prophetic disclosure of
all future development. What was said in secret
shall be proclaimed from the housetop. The ideas
of the persecuted minority will in time dominate and
uplift the majority. What is impracticable to-day will
become practicable in some to-morrow. The vision
of the seer to-day will be the vital creed of the states
man to-morrow. But in all this we go back not to
the common and popular life of the past, not to the
ideas that in those early days were widespread and
apprehended by the masses, but back to the ideas of
the isolated few, of the serious thinkers, and of the
reflecting observers despised and rejected by the multi
tude. It is back to the frustrated ideals of the race,
back to the unrealized aspirations, back to those ideas
that failed in their own day and that still await recog
nition. In this way, all the future is locked up in the
past, is tied to that past, and will merely realize the
dreams of that past. The so-called reactionaries are
in error, for they are seeking to return to the common
ideas of the past while the world has moved beyond

18 FOREWORD.
this and is ever realizing more and more of the hitherto
frustrated ideals. To go back to the common life of
the past is unwise and is indeed impossible. We only
need draw upon the past as if it were a storehouse of
ideas and aspirations held mostly by men who played
but a small part in the successful activities of that
past. They are ideas that seem to have come forth
before the world was ripe for them and wait to be
utilized by subsequent generations. They have an
endless life, for all the future is theirs. So, if we seek
to discover what will be the great achievements of the
future in the field of the spirit, we must go back to
the past and see what have been the ideals of the most
gifted men. These despised, neglected and rejected
ideals of the past are to be the realized achievements
of the future. It is only in this way that we can dis
cern what is to come, for it is the dream or vision of
to-day that becomes the fact of to-morrow. In this
spirit I have worked for a solution of the great enigma.
I have tried to discover the best ideas in the long past
of the race, regardless of the number of men who
held such ideas, believing that whatever is the best
will certainly some day come to its realization.
Even the most favored portion of the world is now
hardly beyond the stage of psychical adolescence.

FOREWORD. 19
The world, indeed, has always been and is now, in
many ways, a very terrible place. There have been
times when it has seemed like an ill-regulated insane
asylum. All is crude and immature and, while there
are indications of great possibilities lying ahead, it is
only in a very moderate degree that to-day any true
psychical living is realized, except by a small fraction
of the most favored communities. The length of the
historic period needed to reach even this stage may
well lead us to realize the many generations that must
come and go before the world can reach any stage
corresponding to early manhood; but the entire record
of the race does, when studied as a whole, justify the
opinion that the greater development will some day
be reached, whatever chaos and terrible retrogression
may meanwhile occur.
Clearly to see all this, to read all that is awful in the
records of the past, to realize the almost inconceivable
cruelty, corruption and fraud that is and has been
everywhere present and then, in the face of it all and
with a clear consciousness of it all, to stand serene,
declaring and believing that there is a psychical force
steadily and persistently working out a great purpose
which is the evolution of a perfected humanity, — this

20 FOREWORD.
is the Christian idea in all its simplicity. This is the
largest and broadest statement of the Christian faith.
The true Christian is not aiming primarily at the selfish
purpose of saving his own soul for another sphere of
existence, but he is seeking to live so as in some measure
to cooperate, now and here, with the cosmic purpose,
which is the uplifting of the race. If this faith has
any intellectual basis, it is found in the careful study
of the whole history of man, and of this study the
results seem to me adequate and conclusive.
The world has as a whole steadily moved on an
ascending plane. This is an established fact, for
history is the record of one great evolution. Super
stition must some day lose its hold, even on the masses,
and the rational ideas must finally triumph. Not in
our day and not in any time within our ken, but some
day it must and will come. There is probably no
single mind now existent greater or more remarkable
in any way than many minds that gave their message
and flashed out their light thousands of years ago;
there is probably no psychical sensitivity or receptivity
anywhere to-day deeper or finer than that always
present in every preceding century; but the great
world mind is, as a whole, broader and better, the
great world consciousness is somewhat deeper, the great

FOREWORD. 21
world sensitivity is somewhat finer than in any pre
ceding period. The multitude is still, in a very dis
couraging degree, just what it always has been, but a
close study of the past will convince any one that even
this has moved, and is ever slowly moving, and the
movement is clearly upward. There has been a constant
broadening of the common racial mind, a constant
deepening of the common racial consciousness. Dis-
couragingly slow as it is, we may feel absolutely certain
as to its trend, for it is a faith based on a racial experi
ence covering a hundred generations. There is about
it a sort of cosmic slowness, but also a sort of cosmic
certainty. In all the universe, so far as we know, man is the
only creature that asks a question or seeks to under
stand and interpret a fact. He thus stands as the
sole interpreter of the universe and in seeking, as
such, to understand himself, he is obliged to turn his
faculties back upon themselves and try to interpret the
interpreter. So far as we know, man alone answers
the questions he himself has asked. He cannot avoid
this psychical problem or escape from its consideration,
for it is a series of questions, all of which are connected
and which really form but one great question that in

22 FOREWORD.
some form or other is always appearing and demanding
attention. It may be framed thus: What do you
think of yourself; of the race of which you are a mem
ber; of the world which is the dwelling-place of your
race; of the universe of which that world is a part; of
the Power which is behind that universe? To all this
man feels that he must find some adequate reply, and
under a sort of compulsion he has tried through all
the ages to secure an answer that would leave him in
peace, freed from the haunting consciousness of failure.
All the answers he has found seem to arrange them
selves in classes or groups, each of which is dominated
by some central thought, as a sort of key-note, to
which all the rest of the answer is attuned. In our
Western civilization there have been two great streams
of ideas, one of which crystallized, as if frozen, into
the Latin Theology, while the other is an ever-expand
ing system running back to Greek sources. Most men
find themselves in substantial harmony with the ex
planation given by the Latin Church and rest content
therein, considering the matter as a closed question.
The reply they thus accept is, they say, final and con
clusive. They rest on the common traditions current
in their special environment, ignoring and ostracising
all who differ from them.

FOREWORD. 23
In a community thus saturated with the Latin ideas
and traditions, accepting these as final, this volume
will, for most men, be caviar, for it seeks to express
the reply to the great enigma given by that type
of mind which must ever be considered as having
first appeared in Greece and as having for all these
centuries derived inspiration from that manifestation
of the human spirit which characterized the highest
and best life of the Greeks. The Renaissance was the
rise of this Greek spirit after nearly a thousand years
of oblivion. The Reformation was an active protest
and revolt against further submission to the Latin type
of mind. All subsequent history describes the march
of this spirit towards its ultimate ascendancy.
If we seek to discover exactly what it is that we
refer to when we use this term "Greek spirit," we
shall find that essentially it is the spirit of man as it
develops under the most favorable social environment.
It is an historical fact that the disclosure of what the
spirit in man may become under such conditions was
first made in Greece. Whenever those conditions have
again appeared there has been another manifestation
similar to that which characterized the noblest days
of Athens. We may therefore designate all this as
Greek, using that term as a convenient symbol. It is

24 FOREWORD.
all due to similarity of environment, for the human
spirit under like conditions develops in essentially the
same way always and everywhere.
The most marked feature of that classic environment
was a certain intellectual freedom, resulting in complete
independence of individual thought, the absence of
coercion and artificial restraint upon the natural working
of the mind. These conditions did not long endure,
but before they passed away there had been such a
flaming forth of the higher forces hidden in man's
nature that the race knew its possibilities as never
before. The inspiration of that marvelous display of
human genius has never been lost. In some clearly
traceable way, all subsequent manifestations of the
same sort have been connected with that classic period
through its splendid literature and art, which have
been a source of inspiration urging men on in the
same path of joyous achievement.
Hence, to put to a man the query, "Are you a
Greek?" would mean: "Are you an independent
thinker, free from the coercive power of traditions
and superstitions, looking at life and its problems with
the clear, unclouded vision of a free man?" If you
are such a thinker, you owe it to your environment,
which has given your nature a free and unimpeded

FOREWORD. 25
development, has fed and stimulated your nascent
powers, has called into activity your potential capacity.
This environment you owe to your race and to your
social connection with it, for you have merely let the
social forces play upon you and, reacting on them
in a natural and normal way, you have become what
you are.
In some degree the Greek thought and spirit secretly
survived in all the great historic churches. While it
was entirely lost for most men, it was alive in the minds
of a small minority, being a part of the esoteric thought
of these churches. This minority was the best developed
and most favorably environed element, the men of
broadest and clearest vision. Some were discovered
and punished, being martyrs to the cause. Most of
them escaped by silence and by outward conformity,
which was in itself a type of martyrdom. Thus it
was for ages secret, concealed, hunted and proscribed,
and he who held it did so in silence at the risk of his
life in a so-called Christian church. The revival of
freedom of thought has gradually relaxed this pressure
till, ' to-day, while still esoteric, it is no longer so con
cealed, but each generation it creeps a little further
into the common and popular arena. As freedom of

26 FOREWORD.
expression increases, it must in time altogether lose its
esoteric character. Its undoubted existence in our
churches to-day is not openly or formally recognized,
or in terms conceded to exist at all, since it is felt that
to confess in set phrases the esoteric is to shatter and
destroy the exoteric, which it is said would at this time
be unwise. The truth will, it is claimed, reach him
who earnestly seeks after it, and no other, it is said,
is worthy of it or can attain unto it. It is not, how
ever, at all probable that any man will clearly grasp
the higher interpretation without at once instinctively
realizing the value, at this time, to certain minds of
the conventional statements which continue to exist
because they really are fitted to such minds. He will
feel that the exoteric, traditional and popular doctrine
is in some degree a bulwark of the public peace, and he
will see to it that the ideas be not ruthlessly destroyed,
but wisely conserved. Thus the esoteric will safeguard
the exoteric.
The number of men interested in this higher inter
pretation has always been very small. When we
consider how scattered and isolated these thinkers
have been, how unpopular and unremunerative their
ideas have appeared to be, how bitter the prejudice

FOREWORD. 27
against them, growing out of the fear by powerful
leaders lest the esoteric, weak as it was, should in some
way imperil the exoteric, strong as it seemed to be, we
are surprised to find that these ideas have had any
vitality whatever, that they have not altogether dis
appeared. The only explanation is, that to those who
feel the appeal at all, it comes with an invincible power,
an irresistible charm. As social conditions become
easier and education is more widely diffused, this class
steadily grows and the sense of isolation becomes less
marked, making the situation of the reflecting man
less painful. He is constantly finding that it costs
him less of sacrifice and unpopularity to differ from
the conventional thought, and this means in time a
full and frank social recognition. If, indeed, these
so-called esoteric ideas ever secure a popular hearing,
their advance will be rapid and their influence upon
life will be very impressive in the way of social regenera
tion. It involves and means no more nor less than the
entire problem of social progress, for that comes in the
exact degree that these ideas become prevalent and
characteristic of the social group.
That a man has reached this perception is, however,
no evidence that he can induce his nearest friend to
give it a moment's consideration, for his friend may

28 FOREWORD.
not be sufficiently interested in the general field of
inquiry, and, indeed, may not be psychically developed
so as to be able to respond. Or his friend may be so
encased in prejudice as persistently to repel every
effort to present the matter. Truth is necessarily self-
revealing and carries with it when simply and clearly
stated its own sanctions and convictions. If any
person is seriously repelled by these pages, it is clear
that for him they are not valuable and he may disregard
them as being for him a dead hypothesis. The mind
takes unto itself only that for which it has an affinity.
It is not a matter of will but of instant conviction. If
a person is ready to hear the statement, if his previous
thinking has led up to it or in its direction, then when
he meets it he will need no seal of institutional authority
upon it, for it will come to him with an authority of its
own. Whatever does not come to a man with this
force, when by effort he has succeeded in really under
standing it, cannot be for that man at that time of any
true value. To try to grasp it needs an exercise of the
will, but when it is apprehended, the mind works in its
own way. It is idle to abuse the ideas of others or to
try to force any idea upon a man who is not ready for
it. Discussion is only good so far as it serves more
perfectly to define and explain what the idea is.

FOREWORD. 29
Man's highest conception of life constitutes his re
ligion and so there are as many religions as there are
different theories and conceptions of life and its sur
roundings. If it be genuine and vital, religion contains,
and indeed is, the very quintessence of man's whole life,
and herein lies its peculiar significance and importance.
His philosophy or theology is merely his interpretation
of the universe, and, above all, it involves his conception
of his own human nature. If the highest ideas any
individual has actually attained constitute of necessity
his present religion, then it must remain such until he
discerns something really nobler. He who is earnestly
thinking and developing will thus ever be progressing
towards a truer religion, for he will always be gaining
power to see what was before concealed from him. He
will ever be growing in spiritual capacity so that life
will be a progressive revelation. To accept any theory
on mere authority as being final is to check his progress
and arrest his development. It is equivalent to spiritual
paralysis. His true attitude is always to believe that
there is something greater and better than he has yet
attained, and to work to reach this higher vision. The
highest religion attainable must be capable of statement
as universally true, regardless of all time and place. It
must derive its sanction from its inherent excellence

30 FOREWORD.
and must never depend on any historical evidence as
to when or where or by whom it was first stated. Its
credentials must be found in man's deepest conscious
ness. It must be utterly free from superstition and
involve no magic or miracle. It will necessarily tran
scend all man's knowledge and leave him face to face
with inscrutable mystery, but it will always be in entire
harmony with all the verified knowledge he really does
possess. It will make him realize clearly his limitations,
but within those limits it will never be repugnant to
any of the facts disclosed by the use of his highest
faculties, including his deepest consciousness.
The day that a man sees clearly the inward value of
ideas, the day that he sees how rooted they are in the
very nature of things, he sees how gratuitous it is to
offer any merely historical foundation as their necessary
support. Such is the force and vitality of the inward
thought that to claim that it rests on any proof of
historical events, except in the largest and broadest
way, seems an impertinence and, if taken seriously, a
great peril. No foundation in external events is needed
for an idea which is sufficiently justified by its intrinsic
moral value. The failure to see this leads men to
attribute an entirely false value to institutions and

FOREWORD. 31
organizations, to documents certified by mere outward
authority and to an ecclesiastical discipline which has
had to be established and maintained by political force.
Religion rests essentially and ultimately on the con
sciousness of man and can never be obliterated so long
as he survives. All existing institutions may pass
away, all venerable documents may be discredited and
cast aside, all special forms of discipline and ritual,
however consecrated by long usage, may be abandoned,
and yet religion will survive, because it is essentially
inherent in the psychical nature of man. Man has
looked here, has looked there, has clung to every form
of external support, has obeyed every sort of external
authority, but has yet to come to a realizing sense of
the truth, which is that the ultimate basis of religion is
in his own nature, that the possible Kingdom of God is
really within himself. He was told this centuries ago,
but he has never believed it.
This volume is frankly and unreservedly a presenta
tion of esoteric truth. These are the ideas that have
been privately held by many leaders in all the great
historic churches. I have only unrolled the record
and translated the message which gives us Christianity
as it has been and is held by very many men who live

32 FOREWORD.
in the Church on the intellectual plane. It is the reality
underlying all symbolism and when it is clearly grasped
it discloses the deep significance of much in our popular
religion that before had been meaningless if not absurd.
The moment a man clearly perceives that it is true, he
sees that it must always have been true and that it can
never cease to be true; that it is merely the universal
law of development that always has operated and
always will operate.
The ideas in this volume are not mine except by
direct appropriation and by absorption. I have found
them scattered through the literature of all races and
all ages, but most conspicuously in that literature
which runs back to its sources in Greek philosophy
and the so-called Greek Theology of the early Christian
Church. Instead of treating the matter historically, I
have sought to make a clear and simple exposition or
interpretation of life from this point of view. I have
not tried slavishly to reproduce any system of past
thought or been concerned as to my adherence to its
form or its details, but have sought to set forth certain
ideas of a remote past as modified, expanded and
illumined by the light of all the intervening centuries
as well as of our own day. I cite no special authority
for any statement herein made. I use but few quota-

FOREWORD. 33
tion marks and do not attempt to give credit, as is
customary, for ideas as being the peculiar thought of
the person cited, for I believe that all mmd is but one
mind and that each writer has but expressed this mind
in his imperfect way. I could properly place a quota
tion mark at the beginning and at the end of this book
to show that it contains no new ideas but that it is one
long quotation from the literature of humanity. It is
what I have found that has appealed irresistibly to my
spiritual consciousness and so is the message of the
Christus as it has come to me. Does any one call these
ideas new? It is well. Does any one call them old?
It is better. The real question is, Are they sound and
valuable? — and the only appeal to settle this is and
must ever be to the human consciousness. Nor do I try
to show by any argument that this line of thought is true,
but merely seek to show, so far as it is in my power,
what it really is. I have tried to be purely constructive
and affirmative, only taking common facts with which
every man is or may be perfectly familiar and seeking
to explain and interpret them so as to show that the
universe is a living manifestation of spiritual force.
In fact, it seems to me that all I have done is to give
a very free translation or even paraphrase of certain
ancient ideas so as to express them in modern form.

34 FOREWORD.
That this thought harmonizes with the ideas suggested
by modern science may be considered as very remarkable.
Science has, however, brought us no philosophy that
is essentially new. It has merely given us a vast
amount of clear and convincing evidence to prove the
validity of certain very ancient ideas. These have
been held by reflecting men in all the centuries, but it
is only in our own day that the abundant proof has
begun to come in. There is probably not a single so-
called modern idea that cannot be found in the literature
of the remote past. It is not the thought of the intel
lectual man that has changed or is changing, for that
has been confirmed and vindicated. It is the popular
thought, the vague, crude, superstitious notions that
are beginning to yield to all this evidence so laboriously
gathered during these recent years. What was felt to
be true, what reason seemed to say was true, the vision
of the seer, the conclusions of sensible and reflecting
men, — all this is merely being illumined by recent inves
tigations. Science did not give us the ideas, but it has
given us the proof and vindication of them. It did not
reveal the truth, but it is revealing the evidence of the
truth.

BOOK FIRST.

FATHER — SON — HOLY SPIRIT.

I. Cosmic Force.
II. Life.
III. Animal — Man — Human.
IV. Spirit.
V. Christus.
VI. Christian Symbolism.
VII. The Trinity.
VIII. Jesus as Christus.

THE GREEK GOSPEL.

BOOK FIRST.

COSMIC FORCE.
Through limitless time, through ages that cannot be
ntunbered, was the ETERNAL REASON, the Cosmic Force
which was GOD, never beginning to be but always
being, of which the Cosmos has been and is the con
tinuous and unbroken manifestation, an eternal going
forth of the Cosmic Reason into self-expression as
universal, regulative Law forever fulfilling itself.
There is one mystery, and only one, which we con
cede to be forever beyond our adequate comprehension.
All that is mysterious in a true sense is connected with
it and is a part of it. This single mystery we refer to
by many terms, all having essentially the same meaning
but involving many different angles of vision. They
are terms that have regard to the vagueness and sup
posed duration, universality and uniqueness of the
mystery and, except as we desire to emphasize some
special point of view, they may be used interchangeably.

38 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Man is always face to face with this mystery, for the
most impressive fact that confronts him is the Force,
Energy or Power that is manifested everywhere about
him and even in him. If he have any capacity for
perception and reflection he must recognize this as the
fact that, above all others, imperatively demands to
be interpreted, — that which he sees everywhere mani
fested, that with which he is in constant and unavoidable
contact, that he himself is. All that has been, all that
now is and every atom going to make up that all, is
and ever has been a manifestation of this cosmic force.
The tiny insect and the entire planetary system are
alike in this respect. This, with its myriad manifesta
tions, is therefore the central fact from whose presence
man may not go, for it is the environment into which
he is born and of which, living or dead, he forms a part.
It is mysterious and inscrutable. We may study
its observable manifestations, but that marks our
limitation, for it is too subtle and elusive to be appre
hended, in its essence, by our mind, which is itself but
one of its innumerable manifestations. Man's mind,
which is fragmentary, partial and imperfect, cannot
grasp the totality or absolute nature of such a stupen
dous force. We therefore define cosmic reason as the
force which lies behind all phenomena and concede
that it transcends all our capacity of true knowledge.
Despite this, by observing and reflecting during all the
centuries, man has gathered certain ideas or thoughts

COSMIC FORCE. 39
concerning it which seem to aid him to understand, in
some degree, himself and the universe which lies about
him. Confessedly imperfect and inadequate, he feels
that it is better than no interpretation at all.
We feel that force must be uncreated and self-
existent, for, if it were at any time created, that would
necessitate a preceding creative power, and for such a
supposition we have absolutely no basis. We cannot
conceive a time when force was not what it is now.
We believe that it is constant, indestructible and per
sistent in essence, but infinitely varied in mode of
manifestation. While ever changing in form, it never
ceases to be capable of further change, in which respect
it knows no rest, existing as a continuity which knows
no break. It is that which is needed as, at least, an
hypothesis which explains all things but which nothing
can explain. It is that germinative principle which
manifests itself throughout the universe, but most
clearly of all in the psychical nature of man. It is
the principle of unity underlying all differences. In
inorganic things it appears as a dominating quality,
in plants as a principle of organization, in animals as
a principle of sensation and appetite, and in man as a
rational principle which we believe to be a pure reflex
of the cosmic reason itself. It is the hidden cause of
all changes, that which inspires, animates and endows
all things whatsoever with their respective qualities

40 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
and properties, the stream of tendency by which all
things have a law of their being and are enabled to
fulfil it.
As we contemplate cosmic force, we find that while,
indeed, it is essentially and truly a unit, it is neverthe
less peculiar in that its action involves a trinity. It
is not one solitary fact, but it involves three correlative
facts, which, taken all together, appear in action as one
fact, although we can conceive the three facts as inde
pendent of each other. Practically we see and realize
only one fact, but a true interpretation of this reveals
three elements which are necessarily involved, so that
really to understand force we must conceive this trinity
as involved in its unity.
Force itself is the first and chief fact. Now we
have never known this except in connection with what
we call matter, which seems to be the vehicle or medium
of its manifestation. It can apparently only manifest
itself by thus energizing matter, which is the second
fact. What matter is in its essence we do not know;
but it seems clear that there is a something which is
essentially necessary to the expression or manifestation
of force, and this elemental something we call matter.
That there is a reality corresponding to our idea of
matter and a different reality corresponding to our
idea of force seems to be directly certified by our con
sciousness, and nothing can destroy our feeling that

COSMIC FORCE. 41
this is so. The cleverest skepticism beats in vain
against this, which comes to us immediately from
consciousness. We can conceive the possibility of force as apart
from matter or independent of all relation to it; but
this is merely an intellectual conception, for no man
ever knew the presence of force except by what it did
or was doing, and this always involves the presence
of matter. Always and everywhere matter is being
energized by force in some of its countless forms or
manifestations. It appears as motion, activity and
life acting incessantly and universally in an infinite
field of ether, which is the third fact.
These are the three eternal facts, — force, matter and
ether. The eternal play of force on matter in the ether
is the universe. We believe that there never was any
more or less matter than now, never any more or less
force, never any more or less ether. These three
changeless and unchangeable elements have been from
all eternity uncreated, self-existent, indestructible, self-
governed. This is the elemental trinity — force acting
on matter and thus constantly revealing and manifest
ing itself and all this occurring in the ether and neces
sarily dependent on the ether. Neither alone is anything
but, combined and correlating, the three constitute the
universe. We may not separate nor divide this trinity.
Force did not call matter or ether into existence nor
can it create or destroy a particle of matter nor increase

42 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
or diminish the ether. Neither preceded the other but
the three inseparably coexist from eternity to eternity
without change or variation, as essentially required for
the existence of all that ever was, is now or ever will be.
We have never seen and never shall see anything
that does not involve and necessitate the simultaneous
presence of these three elements, and yet to us the
actual impression is unitary. We really perceive the
force manifestation, and that this depends on matter
and ether we forget or disregard. It is the force that
arrests our attention, though to do this it must ener
gize matter and must do this in the ether. As a
trinity it is absolutely complete and yet the various ele
ments taken singly would be nugatory and vain. No
two together would be effective. Force as such, with
nothing to be energized, would be no more than a
cipher. So too, matter not acted on by force would
be inert, dead and useless. The ether alone would be a
mere vacuum, for, while we may conceive of the ether as
being all that it is without any force or matter to accom
pany it, that is merely because we think of the ether
as the element in which all else rests and on which all
transmission of power necessarily depends. To con
ceive of the ether as the only element in the universe
is simply to think such an idea as no universe at all.
This, then, is what man finds in his study of the
Eternal Reason, and he calls it God, a unity necessarily
involving a trinity, self-existent and unfathomable,

COSMIC FORCE. 43
that which is behind all phenomena as the adequate and
efficient cause thereof. In a word, God is the term
by which we designate that exhaustless, universal force
that eternally goes forth into manifestation of itself
according to its own fixed and immutable laws, the
universe being the sum of these diverse manifestations.
We cannot conceive of such a force as having body,
parts or passions. Nor can we think of it as in any
way or degree limited to what we popularly call per
sonality. Of it we can form no mental image at all.
When we try to do so we at once begin to anthropomor
phize in a way that tends to destroy the very idea itself.
We are baffled in our attempt to find language that
shall fit the conception that lies clearly enough in our
mind. We can only regard it as a mystery too deep
for us to touch more than its outer edges. It is truly
beyond our capacity, for there is nothing of which we
have true knowledge that is like unto it. It exists
alone of its kind. But if personality essentially means
power to manifest certain qualities, God is then all
personal, for the term designates that force which
alone is capable of universal and continuous manifes
tation. God is the personality whose expression is the
whole universe, which is therefore not a machine, but
an organism with an indwelling principle of life which
we call God.
Each man has in himself that which illustrates this
idea. He is conscious that he is an indivisible, living

44 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
unit. It is not his eye that sees, his foot that walks,
his limb that feels pain, his mind that thinks, but it is
he that sees, he that is conscious of pain, he that thinks.
Now this subtle force that pervades and dominates his
body, whereby he has self-consciousness, is no part of
his body. When he is dead every particle of matter
that has constituted his living body is still there and
still continues to be acted on by multitudinous forces,
yet the peculiar capacity that made him what he was
is gone. The master has left the house, the engineer
has left the throttle, the matter that has been ruled
has lost its ruler and lies inert. But while it loses
this it remains the seat of certain other active forces,
which proceed to transform and destroy its organic
unity and obliterate its identity until it goes back to
elemental gases and characterless dust. Thus he knows
that, whether he be living or dead, his body is the seat
of ceaseless activity. There is something at work all
the time, and to this he knows that he owes his very
existence and growth. All these forces he calls mani
festations of God, and because of them he lives and
develops into a conscious individual. He applies this
same idea to the universe and says that what is true of
him is in some sense true of all things. Now, action
is a mode of being, and so a man is wherever he feels
or acts. This must be true; for to say that one could
feel or act where one is not is to say that one can be
where he is not, which is a contradiction. The ego is,

COSMIC FORCE. 45
therefore, no one part of the body, and yet it is in
every part which acts or is sentient. I cannot com
prehend how this is so, but I know from my conscious
ness that it is so, and I know that this ego is not any
particle of my body. This ego which thinks, wills
and acts is essentially an invisible and unfathomable
force, but it is to me a fact beyond all other facts, a
reality of the highest and truest type. This relation
which a man knows to exist between his body and
that force constituting his individual self he may con
ceive as existing between God and the whole universe,
and all this we express when we say that God is immanent
in the universe as the adequate explanation of its
existence and maintenance.
What does a man really know about the nature of
that which constitutes his own will or personality ? —
and yet of its existence as a fact he is immediately and
distinctly conscious. Limited in range as is his power
of self-manifestation, he cannot in the least fathom or
analyze that which is at the root of it. How can he
then expect ever to comprehend the nature of such a
stupendous fact as a personality that has universal
power of manifestation with an infinite and eternal
field of operation?
However difficult it may be to comprehend such an
idea, or even to conceive how it can possibly be true,
it would seem that we are forced to conceive what we
call Being, or something analogous to what we vaguely

46 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
designate by that term, as back of all the phenomena
of intelligence. Mind or intelligence we define as a
force that makes possible the selection, guidance and
control of means for the accomplishment of a certain
end, necessarily implying knowledge of the end sought,
perception of what means are adapted to reach that
end, and power to guide and control those means.
Now it is idle to speak of selection if no one selects,
or of guidance and control if no one exercises those
functions. If we find intelligence manifested univer
sally, then certainly there is back of all this intelligent
action an intelligence as extensive as the action and
as perfect as the results everywhere disclosed. Back
of universal intelligence must be universal Being, and
this must have consciousness fully and perfectly where
we have it partially and under limitations. It must
have power in every way that we have it, only it must
be in perfect manner and degree. While we seem to
be necessarily dependent upon a physical organism and
cannot comprehend how these powers can exist apart
from such connection with matter, we seem to be forced
to conceive as possible an independent and absolute
existence that is purely psychical, eternally using
matter, but not in any way dependent on it for con
tinued existence. It is to be vaguely conceived as a
universal force revealing itself as intelligence, and it
is this that is manifested whenever intelligent action
is anywhere disclosed in any form or any degree

COSMIC FORCE. 47
whatsoever. The cosmos is, therefore, a self-exis
tent organism, animated by indwelling reason — the
eternal expression of a thinking faculty essentially the
same as our own. The universe was not made or
created, but has always existed and always will exist,
flowing necessarily from the three eternal facts of
force, matter and the ether. Nothing was ever
created or made in the popular sense of those words,
for what we call creation is not an historical event,
but it is a perpetual process, an endless chain of events,
an eternal evolutionary process in which all present
things are connected with things immediately past
and those with things remotely past, so continuing
without ever reaching any beginning, for always there
was the eternal, elemental trinity. Always there was
God, and this is the stupendous mystery that comes
before the mind of man when he seeks to understand
the force that surrounds him. He finds that he him
self, on his psychical side, is a part of that cosmic
force which never began and will never end, and he
says that this is God, eternally going forth into self-
expression as universal, regulative law forever ful
filling itself.

II.
LIFE.
God, regarded as eternal and universal activity,
energy or power, constitutes what we must call Life,
pervading all creatures and things. The universe thus
becomes alive in all its myriad parts. Life is multi
farious and appears in endless varieties, for, in every
case, its presence is that which makes and keeps the
thing or creature what it is. Its presence energizes
and individualizes matter, giving to it whatever charac
ter or quality it possesses. All individuation, therefore,
presupposes life, or the presence of force, the loss of
which causes death, which is merely due to the absence
of such force.
The term " life " is susceptible of a great deal more of
meaning than is ordinarily assigned to it. Its use in
the common, restricted sense leads to a very inadequate,
if not false, interpretation of natural phenomena, for
we then regard as dead what is truly alive. We must
begin by taking the broadest sense and considering life
in its widest and profoundest meaning. We then come
to realize that it is the presence of force, working under
definite laws, causing a certain portion of matter to
have a character or quality of its own. Everything
having distinctive qualities has therefore life, whose
presence is the cause of those qualities, which persist

LIFE. 49
so long only as life continues to be present. Life is
therefore present wherever cosmic force is active, and
the forms or modes of life are as varied and numerous
as are the manifestations of the force. Every quality
of matter being a manifestation of force, it follows
that any substance involves as many manifestations as
it possesses qualities. The stream of tendency, which
causes a thing to be what it is, is thus the stream
called the life of that thing. Life is therefore the
presence of God.
We must not, however, conceive this force as a sort
of special entity, existing in the thing but separate
from it, and able to effect changes beyond what are
caused by what we call physical, chemical and psychical
forces, for all phenomena can be accounted for without
going beyond those bounds. It is rather for us to see
that these forces are the life, and that the so-called
qualities are really modes of being, so that every sub
stance is as many modes of being as it has distinct
qualities, all of which form an harmonious unit, which
is the substance or thing as known to us.
If we seek to classify these diverse forms of life or
modes of being, we find the broadest field to be what
we call inorganic life. We next find a field which we
call organic, subdivided into the two fields of plants
and animals. The animal field subdivides into the
physical and the psychical.

50 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Life in the inorganic field is elementary, fundamen
tal, uniform, most simple and relatively stable, while
organic life is complex, manifold, highly complicated
and unstable. The totality of life in all these forms
we call the universal life, of which the spiritual life in
the human being is the highest and culminating form.
The organic life evolved from the preceding inorganic
life of the universe, all taken together forming one
great and uninterrupted continuity.
To understand the true significance of the term, we
must therefore absolutely rid ourselves of the idea that
it necessarily implies that the thing said to have life
is animated as we are. Our consciousness pertains to
our type of life and that is all. In popular speech we
use the terms " dead " and " alive " with reference to all
sorts of inorganic substances as well as of forms of or
ganic life which lack consciousness. How often we hear
it said that a man killed a tree, that it died at its roots,
that it bled to death from cutting off the branches at
the wrong time! When we say that the air of a room
is dead, we merely mean that it lacks those qualities
which should properly belong to it so that a quickening
impulse might be got by breathing it. So, too, we say
that stagnant water is dead and we speak of a body of
water as the Dead Sea, when we mean that the water
has ceased to have those quahties which normally
belong to it.

LIFE. 51
Consider what a revelation of life is made in the
field of metals — what a clear individuality is disclosed
in gold, silver, copper, iron and tin. All are manifesta
tions of cohesion and other general properties, but how
peculiar is each, how distinctly the individuality of
each stands out! Metals disclose diseases in a very
varied manner, knowledge of which has of late pro
gressed rapidly. Many show symptoms of poisoning,
rendering them unfit for use. These diseases may be
cured by proper treatment and in some cases cure
themselves in time without expert assistance. In fact,
a microscopic pathology of metals has been developed
similar to that existing for the diseases of men. Both
branches of science resort to the same means in attain
ing their ends. The crystalline structure of metals
observed by the microscope reminds us of the tiny
cells which make up the texture of plants. This struc
ture is by no means rigid and unchangeable, but, on
the contrary, it is astonishing how much life is under
certain circumstances displayed in a piece of copper
or iron. Under the microscope, multifarious changes
appear, disclosing genuine life processes.
Then, again, what a disclosure of life is made in the
field of rocks and minerals, and how clearly the dis
integrating, crumbling rock proclaims its death, the
departure of the force that made and kept it what it
was! What a disclosure of life is made in the field of
crystals, how varied and yet how unique, how beau-

52 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
tiful and how distinct, the multitudinous individualities
that are revealed! A crystal will replace a corner or
side or any defacement so as to complete its symmetry
before it will begin to grow elsewhere, and this will
happen when the crystal has been incomplete for mil
lions of years, as has sometimes been found in the case
of geological specimens. Study the plume-like forms
assumed by water when crystallized. The similarity
it presents to vegetable forms is very striking. One
may often see on frosty window-panes fantastic imi
tations of organic things which forcibly suggest vital
power. Consider ductility, malleability, flexibility, elasticity
and brittleness. How commonplace we regard these
qualities, and yet who can fathom that law which
enables them to be present or absent in a substance?
Consider the so-called forces of attraction, — gravity,
cohesion and chemical affinity. Who pretends to under
stand them, and yet who fails to perceive their universal
and continuous presence? Cohesive attraction is, indeed,
the organizing or structure-making principle in organic
life, disclosing the law of symmetry. It operates as if
it were a true living force.
Each form of life depends for its existence and its
continuance upon the maintenance of all the forms
that are below it in the scale. Thus the animal is only
possible when he can feed upon the less complex forms

LIFE. 53
called vegetables or plants. The herbivorous animals
feed upon vegetable fiber and transform this into a
more highly nitrogenous product, which is necessary
for the sustenance of the carnivorous animals. The
plant, as its life work, decomposes the carbonic acid
of the air, assimilates the carbon and hydrogen, decom
poses the water which trickles about its roots through
the soil, and does this by energy which it receives from
the sunbeams. A successful plant or vegetable neces
sarily presupposes the whole solar system as a condition
precedent to its being what it is. Its life presupposes
every link that precedes it in the chain of life. There
is also a very remarkable adjustment tending to
maintain atmospheric conditions seen in the recip
rocal action of the two branches of organic life, since
animals consume oxygen and give off carbonic acid,
while plants consume carbonic acid and set oxygen
free. Thus all tends to show unity and harmony of idea.
Inorganic life leads up to and furnishes food for the
plants, the lowest form of organic life, which again
furnish food for a higher form of organic life in the
herbivorous animals, who again furnish food for the
carnivorous animals, and all the time plants and animals
reciprocally work towards atmospheric conditions favor
able to each. Then the animal, having been fed and
sustained by plant product, dies, separates into his
constituent chemical elements and goes back to nourish

54 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
and promote plant life, thus completing the cycle,—
from dust back to dust, or from the inorganic back
to the same.
It is impossible not to feel that these apparently
diverse forces are all one force when they thus knit
together as necessary elements in one great progressive
development. Now if we call this force life at any
stage, then we must call it life at every stage, for we
are as sure that all life came from preceding life as we
are that not anything was ever created or evolved out
of nothing.
There certainly must have been a time when there
was no organic life upon this globe. When the condi
tions became proper therefor, the most complex forms
of inorganic life developed into the least specialized
forms of organic life and that evolution began which
has given us our present status. The more complex
plants and animals are the slowly modified descendants
of less complex plants and animals under agencies
which are daily seen in operation about us. The entire
development has steadily moved from simplicity to
complexity, from uniformity to variety, evolving from
masses of uniform and simple jelly-like substance more
than two million species of plants and animals such
as naturalists classify.
Organic life began with what we call protoplasm,
out of which all plants and animals are formed. It
consists of many atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen

LIFE. 55
and nitrogen with a small number of atoms of sulphur
and phosphorus. It is as structureless as jelly or as
the albumen of an egg, and yet every minute portion
of this possesses all the distinctive and fundamental
properties that are to be seen in the most complicated
living structures. It has power to assimilate food and
so to grow. It has power of motion, power to multiply
itself, and sensitivity.
Now, it is said, how can this protoplasm disclose
this form of life, which was not manifested in even the
slightest degree by any of its constituent substances?
We do not know and it is not probable that man ever
will know, but we believe that the qualities and proper
ties of protoplasm are expressions of various move
ments, chemical and physical, and belong to it simply
as a chemical substance. We do not doubt but that
chemists will in time be able to form the substance, and
that it will when formed possess all the usual properties,
including what is called its life. That we do not see
how or why all this does or can happen is not at all
strange, for we do not know, in any case whatever,
why a chemical synthesis results in such a display of
quahties not manifested by the constituent elements
until properly combined.
Thus take sugar, starch and alcohol. Each is made
up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and yet with what
entirely different results! All this, so far as analysis
discloses, is apparently due merely to the different

56 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
proportions of the different elements. Each, however,
manifests a law of combination which may be both
physical and chemical and discloses three forms of life,
or modes of being, which come to us as these three sub
stances. Or consider this case: We have a gas called
chlorin which is excessively irritating and suffocating;
so that any attempt to breathe the undiluted gas would
undoubtedly prove fatal. We also have an element
called sodium which, when freshly cut, has the brilliant
metallic luster of silver. This sodium takes fire when
thrown into warm water and, to be kept, it must be
under naphtha in a tightly closed bottle, for it cannot
exist in contact with either air or water. The union
of this gas and this silvery metal becomes table salt.
Here is the union of two destructive and poisonous
substances to create one of the most necessary articles
of our daily life.
Take common sand from the seaside beach, add to
it chalk, ordinary wood-ashes or ashes of sea plants
and by the application of heat secure glass. Was
there anything at all hke the product in any of its
constituent elements? Could you have foretold this
result prior to its realization as a fact?
If there is one fact of which we are all certain, it is
that water is a result of the union of two gases, hydro
gen and oxygen. Is it possible to conceive of a product
more completely different from the elements of which
it is composed than we find in this case? Can we explain

LIFE. 57
in any way this chemical synthesis? This water is the
great and natural antagonist of fire, and yet it consists
of nothing but two gases, one of which is the most
inflammable of all substances, while the other is the
great cause and agent of all combustion. This is a
fact which may well give us a high estimate of the
mystery involved in the transforming power of chemical
combination. That the complex protoplasm has its
peculiar properties is no stranger than these cases
cited. Every chemical synthesis manifests a new
set of properties, and to this protoplasm forms no
exception. We find certain organisms which are mere shreds of
protoplasm, not definable as either vegetable or animal,
but constituting a sort of indefinite borderland between
inorganic and organic life. Organic life from the begin
ning is an evolution towards the development of con
sciousness. In the vegetable realm all the energy or
life is devoted to the mere conversion of inorganic
matter into organic forms which become food, permit
ting the rise of animal life. The animal type finds
thus its food prepared and ready made by the processes
of vegetation, and hence is able to apply itself to the
development of a nervous system and a brain as organs
of a conscious mind. What vegetable life produces,
animal life consumes, and from the lowest animal up
to man we witness a constantly rising development
of nervous structure and consciousness.

58 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
"All this involves a vast cycle of operations, as to
the unity of which we cannot be mistaken, for it is a
cycle obviously depending on adjustments among all
the forces both of solar and terrestrial physics, and
every part of this vast series of adjustments must be
in continuous and unbroken correlation with all the
rest. A very few elementary substances enter into
untold variety of combinations, producing an harmo
nious network of results which can only be attained
by a system of mutual adjustments as immense as the
variety it produces, as minute as the differences on
which it depends, and as centralized in direction as
the order and harmony that it all produces. In the
process of crystallization we may see the particles of
matter rushing under the impulses of invisible forces to
take their appointed places in the form which to them is
a law. These particles pass from one molecular condition
to another until a structure is built by an unseen con
structive agency, and many of these structures are
singularly complex, beautiful and individual. In the
development of seeds and eggs the particles may be
traced, moving from conditions of almost complete
simplicity to other conditions of inconceivable com
plexity. In the mysterious nucleated cell the work
may be seen in actual operation. From elements,
which under all our means of investigation appear to
be absolutely the same, molecules of protoplasm are
built up into seaweed, a tree, an insect, a fish, a reptile,

LIFE. 59
a bird or a man. The molecules seem to obey, but it
cannot be any mere wayward or capricious order, for
the formative energy seems to be as much under com
mand as the molecules themselves."
It is all a spectacle of law appearing as life, seeming
to subordinate all molecules to similar aims and similar
principles of action, producing by reciprocal adjustment
one harmonious whole. Thus life is not a result or
consequence, flowing as a sort of necessary quality or
attribute from certain molecular arrangements of matter,
but it is that present energy or force which causes the
special molecular arrangements to appear. It is the
presence of this life force that enables everything to
come into existence, to continue in existence, to grow
and develop. It thus precedes, fashions, builds up,
maintains and carries to a climax each special molecular
aggregate. This appears as a steady, continuous growth,
as the unfolding or evolution of a mysterious potency.
When life has expended itself to the maximum per
mitted by the special molecular combinations, it seems
to depart as from an exhausted field, and its with
drawal we designate as death. Accident, abuse or
disease may destroy the field of activity long before
life has made the full use of the organism which might
have been possible under normal conditions. Life then
seems to have been defeated, as it were, in its effort
to reach in that instance fulness of expression, and
this defeat it seems to have no power to prevent. It

60 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
seems to be an endless seeking for opportunity to express
itself, being constantly defeated and thwarted, but
being always persistent, inexhaustible and essentially
invincible. The world about us presents the spectacle of limit
less energy going forth into expression. The force
seems to seize every possible opportunity and to utilize
it to the maximum degree. Everything whatsoever
is essentially a group or combination of conditions
adapted to give rise to or render possible this expres
sion of the force we call life. One combination, when
utilized, seems to give rise to a new combination and
sometimes to several, into which the force seems to
rush as an unbroken and uninterrupted stream or flood,
pouring through every possible outlet. When all con
ditions are right in the spring, the stream flows into
the tree that has stood for many months as if it were
dead, and at once it becomes the seat of a marvelous
activity. Every available chance for a leaf, a blossom
or a bud is seized and we have before us a mass of
beauty created with the utmost profusion.
It seems not to matter at all whether these blossoms
ever prove effective and go on to fruitage. The maxi
mum capacity to blossom is used and later on the
maximum power to bear fruit, but the leaves and
the blossoms come, so far as conditions permit, regard
less of all subsequent circumstances, that may render

LIFE. 61
every leaf and blossom nugatory and vain. It seems
as if instantaneously every chance were used, as if the
force were incessantly seeking expression. Upon this
fact we constantly rely, and we are never disappointed.
It seems, indeed, as if there were a vast reservoir of
force, and all we have to do, or can do, is to use our
intelligence to give it such outlet as may render it most
useful for all our varied purposes. The force is inex
haustible. If we can raise one ton of corn we know
that we can raise a billion tons if we will but multiply
those conditions which we found successful in producing
the single ton. But except as these suitable conditions
exist, force seems powerless to express itself, and so,
from our point of view, it seems in countless ways to
be thwarted, baffled, limited and even defeated. We
cut down the tree, tear up the roots, destroy whole
forests, denuding vast sections of country but, if any
where there are left any vital conditions, up comes the
green shoot and receives the maximum development
that circumstances permit.
We find trees in every conceivable state from the
stunted, aborted dwarf to the most majestic and tower
ing giants, from the tree that has a few worthless and
shriveled indications of what might have been fruit
to the tree whose branches are almost breaking with
luscious fruitage that delights both eye and taste. The
tree that represents years of development we find
attacked by insects, slugs, worms and countless para-

62 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
sites which sometimes destroy it, sometimes merely
impair its beauty and at times infect and spoil all the
fruit that had given brilliant promise of success. This
indicates the law which characterizes all force, so that
we might expect that the force which we find in man
as his distinctive possession and which we call psychical,
would reveal the same salient features.
In the case of a tree, what we have is essentially a
structure which furnishes certain conditions which,
when set in a proper environment, react thereon and
yield certain results. A change in structure or in the
environment is enough to vary all the results. The
more we study man and discern the problems of his
life, the more clearly we seem to see that his mentality
and spirituality primarily rest on his possession of a
suitable organic structure which may become a medium
for the expression of spirit. He has a sensitivity which
enables him to react on his environment, and a change
in either of these elements will produce the most
marked difference in his character, his capacity and
mental attributes.
Man is merely a group of multitudinous conditions
which render possible certain peculiar force manifesta
tions. Between all these conditions there may be
harmonious adjustment or not, and there are seemingly
countless degrees in which this harmony may or may
not exist, but the status of the organism determines
all the possibilities of expression. Organic life has

LIFE. 63
always evolved towards greater complexity, and this
leads to unstable conditions. The number of possible
combinations, in the case of man, seem to be beyond
calculation, for he involves so many conditions which
require coordination and adjustment that the slightest
disarrangement may throw all into confusion. At so
many points he may either be normal or deficient or
excessive that no two men are exactly alike, and the
difference between them may be as great as is repre
sented by idiocy on the one hand and brilliant genius
on the other. The play of forces in the psychical field
is the same as it is in every other field, but with the
added element that man has power to complicate the
problem and to alter conditions, modifying the original
organism in countless ways. The organic structure, in
any individual case, has become what it is as the result
of absolutely innumerable factors stretching over a
long period, and possibly involving individual activity
as a finally controlling factor; and this influence of the
individual may reach ahead into subsequent genera
tions so as to diminish or increase the effective capacity
of many others besides himself.
But to whatever special causes organic qualities may
be due, force can only use that organism which is
adapted to its purposes, and whether it is so adapted
or not is always a matter of fact which is unalterable.
If a man is born with so defective an organism that
no knowledge or thought is possible, we call him a fool

64 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
or an idiot. Something is wrong and the force called
spirit cannot use the structure. The subtle telephonic
messages cannot be transmitted, for there is no sen
sitivity, no receptivity, no response. He is out of the
circuit and has no relation whatever to things psychical.
If by accident or misadventure the structure, which
was originally adapted for service, is injured so as to
be no longer an effective medium, it is then merely a
case of the man's being practically reduced to what
we have called idiocy, which essentially is absence of
mental capacity. The idiot may have all the external
semblance of man, but he is like the tree that, while
it may be alive and may have a certain sort of growth,
yet is sterile, barren and worthless because the vital
energy for some reason cannot effectively use its defec
tive structure, and possibly this may be because of
trouble out of sight at the roots. From the idiot who
cannot be used at all in a psychical way we trace, step
by step through all conceivable gradations, up to genius,
which furnishes the maximum opportunity for such
expression. We do not, however, need to reach man or even the
higher animals to find the most amazing evidence of
what is possible as a manifestation of the cosmic force
called life. Certain fishes, notably the Gymnotus and
the Torpedo, demonstrate the fact that somewhere there
was knowledge of the theory and working of the voltaic

LIFE. 65
pile as constituting an electric battery ages before any
man ever knew the very slightest fact about electricity.
The fish is provided with a battery closely resembling
what man now produces. In this battery there are
nearly a thousand hexagonal columns, and each of these
is subdivided by a series of horizontal plates which
appear to be analogous to the plates of a voltaic pile.
There is a large supply of nervous matter which
spreads out in a multitude of thread-like filaments round
the columns so as finally to reach and pass into every
one of the cells. This structure discloses a complete
knowledge of certain mysteries which, in these later
days, have been discovered and utilized by men.
If one of the Annelida is cut in two by a cross-section,
each of the severed parts grows into a perfect animal
again, reconstructing a head with its proper appendages
for the lower half, and a tail with its proper adjuncts
for the upper one. From each of the cut ends a tiny
drop of protoplasm exudes, which is quickly and deftly
molded in each case into such prolongations of the
alimentary canal, the blood-vessels and nerves as are
needed respectively, several organs in one of the recon
structed moieties having nothing analogous to them in
the other. Similarly, a spider or lobster o lizard will
grow a new leg or tail or claw to replace one lost in any
way. A snail will reproduce an amputated "horn" or
tentacle many times in succession, securing in each
case the eye with its lens and retina.

66 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
The bee constructs its marvelous geometric cell, the
spider invents and spins from its own bowels its ingen
ious trap for flies, the oriole weaves its curious pendent
nest without any instruction, with no guiding pattern
or example, and before any possible opportunity for
observation and experiment. The creature never hesi
tates or wavers, takes no time for deliberation, but
effects instantly the necessary combination of numerous
and far-reaching means, and it makes no mistakes. If
you carry away blindfold certain pigeons, the honey
bee or even certain animals, to a distance of many
miles by a route they have never traversed, instantly,
on being set free, they are able to return to their old
homes. A species of wasp stores up food of a kind
which it never uses for itself, and carefully deposits it
in a proper receptacle, which is not its own abode, for
the use of its young whose birth it will not live to wit
ness. There are birds that, from the moment they are
hatched, feed and care for themselves, running, flying
and roosting on trees as if the world, on which they
have just opened their eyes, had been long famihar to
them. There is a certain insect which deposits its eggs
in the tissue of a young bud. She first carefully ex
amines the bud on all sides, feeling it with her legs and
antennae. Then she slowly inserts her long ovipositor
between the closely rolled leaves of the bud; but, if it
does not reach exactly the right spot, she will withdraw
and reinsert it many times until at length, when the

LIFE. 67
proper place has been found, she will slowly bore deep
into the very center of the bud, so that the eggs will
reach the exact spot where alone the necessary condi
tions for development exist. The insect acts as if it
had foresight involving precise knowledge of what the
eggs needed, and yet it could have had no experience
in such matters, could have gained no knowledge by
observation, and certainly could have had no material
as a basis for reflection even if it had the power to
observe and reflect.
A plant, called the Flytrap of Venus, is worthy of
careful consideration. The edge of the leaf is over
grown with strong bristles, while its surface is covered
with small glands, at either side of which are three
long hairs. If a fly approaches, carelessly settles on
the leaf and touches one of the six long hairs, the leaf
suddenly folds, the bristles interlace and the insect is
caught. The sensitive hairs have done their duty, and
now begins the work of the glands. These discharge
a large quantity of a colorless acid, which is a digestive
fluid, and the closed leaf thus becomes a stomach.
After the lapse of nine days or so the leaf reopens and
the insect is found to have disappeared. Now if a
non-edible object, as, for instance, a stone or piece of
wood, irritates the hairs the leaf closes as before, but
soon discovers its mistake and does not discharge the
digestive juice; but after one day it again unfolds and
is ready for another capture.

68 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
We find definite evidence of the power of discrimi
native selection even lower down in the scale of life
than the cellular plants, for we find it even among the
protoplasmic organisms. Certain minute particles of
living jelly, having no visible differentiation of organs,
build up shells or casings of the most regular geometri
cal symmetry of form and of the most artificial con
struction. From the same sandy bottom one species
picks up the coarser quartz grains, cements them
together with a cement which must be secreted from
its own substance, and thus constructs a flask-shaped
shell having a short neck and a single large orifice.
Another species picks up the finer grains and puts
them together with the same cement into perfectly
spherical shells of the most extraordinary finish, per
forated with numerous small tubes disposed at rather
regular intervals. Another species selects the minutest
sand-grains and the terminal points of sponge-spicules
and works these up, apparently with no cement at all
but by the mere "laying" of the spicules, into perfect
spheres like homeopathic globules, each having a
single fissured orifice. The larva of the caddis-fly
lives in water and constructs for itself a tubular case
made of various particles glued together. If, during
its construction, this case is found to be getting too
heavy, a piece of leaf or straw is selected to be added
to the structure; and conversely, if the latter is found
to be getting too light so as to show a tendency to float,
a small stone is morticed in to serve as ballast.

LIFE. 69
Consider the metamorphosis of insects. A creature
which to all appearance is fully formed and which has
led a separate and independent existence suddenly lays
itself to sleep. In that condition, without food, without
any contact with any directing physical agency external
to itself, the organization is wholly altered. Its whole
body is rearranged, its old members dissolve and dis
appear, while new members emerge and in a few days
or weeks are perfected in form and power. Moreover,
that form and that power are both for uses which, so
far as the creature's previous experience is concerned,
are absolutely new.
In the white of an egg there is no structure that can
be detected by any human method of examination,
and yet out of that material, by the application of
nothing beyond a little heat, a most elaborate structure
is developed along lines of growth which are rigorously
predetermined. How this can be so is in the highest
degree inconceivable, and it is only familiarity and
thoughtlessness that prevent our realizing how myste
rious it all is.
We say that the spiritual life in man is a great mys
tery, and it truly is, but then all life is a great mystery.
The manifestation of force as cohesion, gravity and
chemical affinity is just as great a mystery, since it is
insoluble. If we cannot in the least degree understand
any of the forms of life, we cannot properly say that
one is more mysterious, for each reaches the maximum

70 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
so far as we are concerned; all we can say is that they
are alike mysterious and beyond our powers of compre
hension. Man is not essentially more mysterious than
a diamond, but the qualities manifested by a diamond
are few in number and very limited in range, while man
exhibits more qualities or sorts of force than any other
thing or creature. It is, indeed, strictly true that no
thing and no creature manifests all the qualities that
man does, for he displays all the fundamental qualities
seen in other things and creatures, and also those peculiar
to himself. This is the solid basis of his preeminence.
To summarize our thought, we may say that God is
that constitutive, sustaining, animating force which
enables everything whatsoever to be what it is. If
there were in the universe only inorganic forms of hfe,
all that would be manifested would be such forms of
energy as gravity, cohesion, chemical affinity, heat,
electricity and magnetism. In the graduated orders
of organic life a great development is disclosed, for
force appears in myriad vegetables, fishes, insects and
animals, and thus life takes on a surprisingly new sig
nificance. In man the force is still further disclosed
as conscious reflection, thought and self-determining
character. From first to last, from the base of the
pyramid to its apex, from the lowest to the highest
forms, it is all one great harmonious, interacting unity,
reflecting Life as a universal fact.

III.
ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN.
Having considered life in its broader meaning,
we now come to that type which man represents. If
analyzed as purely physical, he consists of a few of the
elementary substances common in the atmosphere and
soil, and of nothing else so far as we know. These,
in different combinations, furnish the physical basis for
all that he is or may be. The same general composi
tion, with here and there an ingredient less or more,
prevails throughout the whole animal and vegetable
world. All these exhibit the wonder and mystery of
that power which we have called Life, by virtue of
which those inorganic elements are held together in
countless complex combinations.'
On his purely physical side man therefore presents
no problem for interpretation beyond what is presented
by all plants and animals. In many respects he is
decidedly inferior to other animals, and most assuredly
could not claim any preeminence. It is not what he
is physically but what he becomes psychically that
renders him important and interesting. He is thus
confronted with himself as a psychical fact to be inter
preted, and this necessarily involves the consideration
of man as he has disclosed himself through all the

72 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
ages. It is clear to the most careless observer that
the term applies to a most heterogeneous mass of
beings. This is so true that to hear that a certain
living creature was a man would hardly tell us any
thing beyond the bare fact that he had the external
appearance common to men. He might be coarse and
repulsive, crude and immature, stupid and incapable,
brutal and sensual, or he might be refined and culti
vated, keen and capable, gentle and even ascetic. He
might be these in varying degrees, and he might be a
blending of these contradictory characteristics. The
term " man " may therefore designate the greatest and
noblest of all living creatures, or it may apply to the
meanest and most despicable type of life. Taken
alone, it lacks all precise significance.
To comprehend so complex a creature, we need some
terminology that shall in some way recognize these
variances as facts. We must see that it is all incidental
to a process of evolution, and that different individuals
are merely in different stages of this evolution. The
very simplest grouping leads us to see (1) man in his
earliest stage, when he is nearest to pure animal condi
tions, prior to awakening to a sense of his high capacity,
and we may call this the animal-man stage; (2) man
conscious of strange powers and capacities which he
is trying to use so as to get more satisfaction out of life.
There is, then, a consciousness of imperfection, a dim
yearning after development, a struggle to become more

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 73
than he now is without quite discerning his goal, and
this, characterized by discontent, we may call the true
and typical man stage; (3) man in the stage of achieved
development, resulting in culture and high character,
from which comes all that is great and commanding
in history, and this we may call the human stage. It
is man developed into the human that has his arts,
his music, his literatures, his empires, his intellectual
achievements, his ethical ideals, his laws and his
religions. These are the works of developed man, and to
him as thus seen let us appropriate the term " human."
To interpret himself, man is compelled to consider
the whole field of organic life, and especially that part
of it called animal, and he must also consider himself
as he appears in his lowest as well as in his highest
estate. We say that there has been an evolution in
the field of organic life because we find that there lies
plainly before us evidence of an ascending scale or
series of graduated existences, each of which neces
sarily depends on all below it in the scale, and as the
grades rise each seems to give the force called life a
larger and wider field for its activity. However im
perfectly we may be able to see how all this has come
about, it seems reasonable to believe that in some way
all is hnked together as one systematic development
or evolution, as the harmonious working out of one
idea, which seems to be the ceaseless effort of life to
develop organic structures more and more perfectly

74 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
adapted to serve as its medium of expression or mani
festation. We find as facts these graduated existences,
and when we consider the infinite reciprocal adjust
ments that are necessarily implied by all those facts,
to bring them into and maintain them in harmonious
working relations, it seems to be an inevitable conclu
sion that each, in some way, developed out of the next
lower and so preceding grade, and that each was alone
rendered possible by all that had preceded it in the
great chain of hfe.
It is necessary to define the terms " animal," " man "
and " human " as clearly as possible, and in all our
thinking to keep ever in mind their true significance.
They have been used very inexactly and it has been
the source of a vast amount of error and confusion.
Man and animal are as a rule very sharply separated,
while no distinction is made between man and human.
The trouble in the whole matter is the impossibility
of drawing accurate and sharp lines of demarcation.
When, therefore, we do this in the case of man and
animal, we introduce an element that is sure to lead
to error. When in the case of man and human we
draw no line at all, we likewise fall into error. We
must face all the facts and, taking things as they really
are, must separate the great multitude of beings into
such groups or classes as seem to be demanded. If
we do this we shall find that we must recognize these

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 75
groups as constituting the evolution, viz.: (1) Her
bivorous animals; (2) carnivorous animals; (3) ani
mal-men; (4) typical men; (5) humans. We must
get a fairly definite idea of what we mean by animal,
and that must be our starting point.
Some animals appear to have nearly all the qualities
of man in a rudimentary form or low degree, so that
we seem forced to believe that the difference in mind
between man and the higher animals is one of degree
and not of kind. We must discover what is the essence
of animal life at its best, what it is that is truly dis
tinctive of it and then, whenever we meet this, we
shall know that we have to do with animal, whatever
may be the external form or appearance of the being.
We must seek the inward quality and disregard the
mere outward appearance.
The true type of animal is governed or guided by
what we call instinct. He has no power of abstract
thought, no clear perception of relationships as such,
although he may be dimly aware that they exist. He
has no conception of right and wrong, but unconsciously
lives conformably to the law of his being. He has no
problems, no need to study to discover a better way,
for he instinctively pursues it, has no consciousness of
self as a personality, and so has no sense of relation
ship to the world which involves duties and obligations.
He does not trouble himself about his condition, does
not lie awake and weep over his sins, feels no anxiety

76 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
about his good name and reputation, for he is a creature
in whom the sense of personal deficiency plays no part.
Hence he finds existence an end unto itself and seeks
no reason to justify its continuance. He has no pur
pose in living, no end in view, except the doing of those
things which are necessary to such continuance of
existence, and all these he does instinctively and, except
so far as thwarted by circumstances, he does them
correctly and well. Thus to keep alive is his sole con
cern, his summum bonum. There is no need of his
concerning himself about anything else. He has no
fret, worry, anxiety, ambition or expectation as to the
future. Animal life is thus capable of being in an
ideal degree a state of placid contentment, a serene,
untroubled sequence of days, every wish and longing
satisfied, with no regrets for the past, no complaints
for the present and no expectations for the future.
Merely to live this present moment; to do only that
which seems now most desirable; to seek that which
now seems most attractive and take no thought for the
morrow; to borrow no trouble as to failure of food at
any future time; to look forward to no possibilities of
disaster; to fear no harm except that which is now
present, and to forget that as soon as it has passed, —
this is the real type or essence of animal life when
taken at its best. About this there is a certain charm.
There can be no greater error than to conceive of animal
life as necessarily low and degraded, for, taken at its

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 77
best, it is idyllic and is characterized by a profound
sense of contentment. It gives glimpses of many fine
qualities. Recall the love of the doe for her fawn or
the dove for her nestlings; the reckless bravery of the
bear in defence of her cubs or the partridge in pro
tecting her young; the fidelity of the lory to his mate
or the dog to his master. Is not this the germ of all
the affectional side of man's nature?
Now in its rise out of mere animal conditions the
race must have passed through a stage in which man's
living was of this type. If this had been permanent
and fixed, if it had been the climax of the evolution,
there would have been no history, no civilization with
its painful struggle for development. There would
have been no sense of sin, no consciousness of failure,
no discontent, no puzzling over the complex problems
of life and death. In a word, all that is now distinc
tive of man's life would have been absent. Seeking
to do nothing that was high and noble he would have
been spared the tragedy of failure. Life from our
present point of view would have been empty and
worthless, but it would have been in a way placid and
free from care, worry and discontent. Man would
have been destitute of knowledge, would have had no
idea of those things which we deem so valuable and
necessary, but he would not have been aware of any
loss, nor would he have suffered one pang of regret,
any more than does the mere animal now. This early

78 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
stage leaves no written history, for it does not reach
the art of writing and sees no need of any record of
existence. In the historical period little is recorded
except the struggle of man to rise, so that it is the
painful story of his experiences after leaving this early
stage. Except in individual cases and sometimes in
the discovery of small, isolated communities, that
stage is to-day rarely seen. We may certainly every
where find men living in this status, but they are not
characteristic of any large social group. History is
really the story of development and, as soon as this
truly begins, coUective man has passed out of the simple
existence of the animal and is on the road to humanity.
Until this development begins and makes some written
record, we do not in any real sense have to deal with
the true type of man at all. If we do not clearly see
this stage of transition — this stage which is really the
emergence of man out of animal, in which he is mainly
animal but is taking his first steps as man; this stage
of psychical infancy or childhood in which he is creepmg
preparatory to walking — we shaU entirely lose the
salient point of his evolution. Development has been
a painful process, but the pains have been those inci
dental and necessary to all birth. If we could go back
to that remote period when collective man had not as
yet risen above the animal plane, we should find abso
lutely nothing which we count distinctive of humanity.
That stage was, as it were, the chrysalis of humanity,

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 79
and the day when man emerged therefrom, — the time
of his psychical awakening, when his mind entered
its distinctive realm, — was the first of a series of mar
velous changes which have seemed truly to be trans
formations of his very nature itself. He is, indeed, a
creature with a progressively complex consciousness.
This is the fact at the bottom of all myths as to a
Golden Age and a primitive Paradise. It is the passage
from this status into the early stages of discontent and
struggle that have been figuratively designated as the
Fall of Man. From a figurative Paradise the being
passed into a figurative Purgatory, the stage of struggle,
failure, testing and trial, which is the distinctive charac
teristic of the life of typical man.
It is clear that the pure animal type passes over into
the pure man type, not by a leap or a bound, but by
almost countless gradations. Then, again, man is not
one well-defined thing, always the same or even sub
stantially the same, but he exists in endless varying
grades. If, now, we think of everything that has a
certain external appearance as being man and assume
that, in each one of these, there are the same qualities
and capacities, we make a mistake that will vitiate all
our conclusions. It is certainly true that there is a
vast mass of beings, having all the appearance of men,
who essentially live on exactly the plane which we have
found to be characteristic of the animal. And yet it is

80 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
equally clear that they are more than mere animal, for
they possess that degree of psychical capacity which
discloses the earliest phase of what is to culminate in
humanity. These men arrive at some use of language
and in every way find a wider field of action than any
mere animal, without, however, losing the benefits
flowing from dependence on the inerrancy of instinct.
These we have called animal-men, as constituting a
sort of border-land between animals and men, having
all the benefits of animal existence and some of the
benefits of man's existence, without feeling those dis
advantages so conspicuously realized by the true type
of man. They enjoy life after the manner of animals,
having no anxieties or aspirations except as other
animals have. They are indifferent to future perils
because unconscious of them, shrinking from no con
sequences because perceiving none. Some mentality
there must have been from the start, but no suggestion
of conscience or moral sense. They use such means
as they have for their preservation, feeling no pride or
emotion beyond mere animal content with the end
achieved. There is no love, but then there is no con
scious hatred. There is at times ferocity, but every
one expects it, for it is as natural as breathing. There
is no individual right or even sense of property. He
who can may get and keep. There is no sympathy
with suffering, no remorse for wrong-doing, for there is
no perception of right and wrong. Loss of life is an

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 81
ordinary event to which no one pays any attention,
except instinctively to prevent it in his own case if he
can. They admire nothing, for there is nothing to
admire. They have little or no sense of wonder, and
their courage is not different from that of all other
animals. All conduct seems to be determined by the
rigorous necessity of the present moment.
If, however, they are placed under conditions favor
able to healthy and normal animal life, these animal-
men develop in a way that has nothing repulsive or evil
about it, though they may show no sort of intellectual
or spiritual capacity. They may disclose what is even
pleasant and attractive and at times may show a charm
ing simplicity and naivete. Such living has its own
peculiar status and must not be confused with types
that are essentially different, for animal-men seem to
obey unconsciously the laws of their own being in
such a way or degree as to be at least healthy and
normal in their own animal way. They are living in
a childish stage, physically full grown but with the
mental capacity of a little child. They see with the
eyes of children and enjoy the irresponsible content
ment of childhood. They speak, but do not analyze
their speech. They use symbols to express ideas, but
they do not know what a symbol is, nor do they know
what an idea is. They think, but do not know that
they do so. They have an organism which is capable of
great development, have an innate potential capacity,

82 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
but they are not at all conscious of it. They have the
initial stage of a keen sensitivity, but are not as yet sen
sitive to a point that has any real value or significance.
It is the limitation of consciousness to its lowest terms.
In the evolution of this animal-man there may come
a time when the instinct develops or rises into some
degree of true consciousness and passes over into some
degree of what we call reason. The rise of even a
slight degree of conscious intelligence or reason neces
sarily checks the operation of the same force in its
unconscious manner. While reason has a boundless
field for development and opens the way to extraor
dinary fulness and richness of living, the animal has
lost, so far as purely animal living is concerned, his
most valuable possession. To enter the larger field as
man, he has become less perfect as animal and, unless
the conscious exercise of reason shall make him vastly
better than the animal, he is certainly put at a disad
vantage by the rise and partial development of reason.
He is lured on in the quest for reason by an instinctive
love of power, and he has an instinctive sense that
reason is the true source of power. Having secured
it in some degree he is compelled to develop it to save
himself from its otherwise destructive consequences.
In the ancient symbolism the apple or forbidden fruit
typified reason, having eaten which man could never
thereafter escape the inevitable consequences.

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 83
Thus the rise of reason marks the advent of typical
man, who has emerged from the status of animal so
completely as to lose the peculiar charm and content
ment of that sphere. Men have intelligence enough
to make them discontented with mere animal condi
tions, so that they are worse off than the true type of
animal unless they rise high enough to reach a new
sphere of life having its own satisfactions and rewards.
That sphere is humanity. These men suffer the most
and compel the most sympathy, for they have the
burden of reason without its real advantages. They
know enough to be keenly conscious of their miseries
without knowing enough to rise above them. In their
case hfe is a burden, a tragedy and at times a curse.
They are truly the unfortunates of the world. Be
tween animal contentment and true human content
ment lie these millions of men without contentment
of any sort whatever. It seems to be true that if being
cannot rise into the true human sphere it had better, so
far as the individual is concerned, stay in the true ani
mal sphere. There is happiness in the two extremes, but
there is misery in the region between. Man always looks
back to the true animal life with longing. Strenuous
and hard is the road towards humanity, and he would
fain throw off the burden and revert to animal condi
tions. The popular idea of heaven is really a dream
of such a return at the end of life. There is to be a
time when the burden of existence will roll off, when

84 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
there will be nothing to do, nothing to fear, nothing to
suffer and no duties. It will be mere placid, idle exis
tence, endless enjoyment, all singing, sight-seeing and
gratification, untroubled by the need of thought, — a
return to instinct and a riddance of reason. This is
essentially an animal ideal.
The same feeling appears in the myth of the Garden
of Eden, which symbolizes the true animal contentment
and peace of life. The desire for knowledge, the ambi
tion to reach humanity, to be as God, knowing right
and wrong, leads man out of the garden, to which he
looks back with longing. He can never return, for
reason once become conscious does not permit a return
to instinct, the unconscious reason. He must go for
ward or he must die. If he has not the capacity to
rise higher he may sink so as to be lower than the
animal, may be more wretched, miserable and degraded,
until he may end in wickedness of which the animal
cannot be guilty. He must at least work towards
humanity or he is lost. That is the true prize of his
high calling. It thus becomes entirely a question of
development. Reason, that is finally to be man's
crowning glory, begins by degrading his hfe. It is truly
his fall from the innocence of animal life. It is
essentially a fall upward, for while at the time it is
truly a fall to a lower point of happiness, it is a neces
sary step towards a status which, when reached, is
immeasurably higher than that from which he fell.

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 85
This may sound like a paradox, but it is plain fact.
As the beginning of reason may be his fall, so the end
of reason will be his salvation. As partial development
may be his curse, so full development will be his blessing.
In any case, if he is to go on into higher stages of life,
he must be attended by reason, for, under complexity
of conditions, the simple instinct seems to run the risk
of actual perversion. Reason is needed to keep the
man adjusted to the new conditions, to keep sane and
wholesome under complexity of status what was so
without reflection under simplicity of status. Reason
when thus developed is, therefore, illuminated and
expanded instinct.
The simple, tranquil, unaffected, contented life that
we often see in a peasant, who has no education and
no apparent development, is purely instinctive and is
right, true and genuine so far as it goes. But there is no
depth to it, no scope, no breadth of vision. Now, to be
thus simple, thus unaffected, to be essentially as tranquil
and contented as this peasant and yet combine it with
the higher intelligence, the higher purpose, the clearer,
broader vision, — this is to rise to the human level.
Man differs from other animals in the degree of
consciousness he is capable of developing. His one
peculiarity is to be possessed of this power, in this
degree, and it constitutes his psychical nature. He
is, so to speak, rooted in consciousness, which alone

86 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
renders Self possible. As self is the mind or thinking
principle, the status of self is an intellectual status, and
so men must be graded along the fines of self-develop
ment, which means intellectual development. Thus the
terms "animal-men," "men" and "humans," which
designate such gradations, are terms that imply degrees
of such development, that is to say, degrees of conscious
intelligence. This development is in certain directions
which we call rational, psychical or spiritual. The
capacity so to develop is all that makes him man and
he must, therefore, be regarded chiefly as a psychical
being. The earliest result of this innate capacity is
that he becomes possessed of knowledge, and then
gains an interpretative faculty leading to wisdom,
whereby he consciously seeks truth. He is the only
living being that does this or can do it. As necessary
for this and as preliminary to it, he creates language
and uses arbitrary symbols to represent his ideas and
thoughts, whereby he can record his progress and
transmit to his children the results of his psychical
activity, making each generation the heir of all the
preceding and creating a continuity of life which per
mits racial development as if the race were one indi
vidual that did not die. This, then, is man, the sole
possessor of knowledge and wisdom, the sole seeker
after truth, the sole being capable of communicating
this by speech to his fellows and of writing it so as to
pass it along to his successors. What he gains need

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 87
not die with him, but may become a permanent pos
session of his race. The thought which came to him
individually need not remain merely his, but may
become the thought of millions because of his power
to speak and write. All that he ever becomes grows
out of this innate spiritual capacity and he knows by
experience that this, in its degree, is his peculiar heritage
not shared with other animals. It follows then neces
sarily that it is only as he does these things that other
animals cannot do, only as he uses his peculiar capacity,
only as he speaks, writes, reflects, studies and develops
his psychical, spiritual or rational nature that he is
truly man.
By observation and reflection a developed man be
comes conscious that the mysterious force acts in him
and manifests itself to him in three modes or ways.
He knows that he does innumerable things unconsciously
and that if he did not do these things he would not
continue to live. These acts are always purposive and
seem to imply foresight and knowledge, and yet he is
aware that they were done by him without conscious
effort, without any knowledge or foresight. He knows
that for a long period he was not capable of any con
scious effort, was not even aware of his own existence,
had absolutely no knowledge or foresight, and yet he
did all these acts which implied such power. He was
then resting merely in those conditions in which all

88 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
other animals and animal-men continue solely to rest
throughout their entire existence, for his actions were
what we call instinctive. Incapable of self-action, he
was guided and controlled as if he were capable and,
in a large measure, such action remains true throughout
the whole course of every man's life. Most of our
purely animal functions are always thus performed so
that in that field we are, as it were, automatic, acting
without conscious effort, and yet in such cases always
doing the right thing.
If he develops he becomes at last conscious of self,
conscious that he has certain powers which he instinc
tively seeks to exercise. This is the rise into conscious
ness of the psychical element in his nature, the dawn of
reason, the beginning of the spiritual. He has entered
the realm of the ordinary conscious mind and is a
candidate for humanity.
If he develops still further, he at last becomes
aware, in a subtle way, that back of this conscious
mind, which he seems to control, lies what he calls
subconscious mind, which he does not control, and
it is to this that he owes all that in him is truly com
manding and great. He does not know how this
operates nor when it operates. He only knows that
suddenly he becomes aware that it has operated and,
by a flash of illumination, he knows what a moment
before he did not know. This he feels to be an inspira
tion or revelation. All his profoundest thoughts thus

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 89
come to him from this mind which is, as it were, lurking
behind the usual conscious mind. He seems to reach
it and come into relation to it only by and after develop
ing his ordinary conscious mind. Resting at first in
instinct, he rises into conscious mind, and by developing
this he reaches a relation to subconscious mind, which
is the ultimate limit of his power to reach and realize
that universal mind which he instinctively apprehends
as the source of his capacity. It all occurs and can
only occur in the field of personal experience and per
sonal consciousness. Aside from this no man can have
any real evidence of it, and so no man ever truly under
stands it in others except in the degree in which he has
personally realized it in his own life. Up to that point
he really knows, but beyond that he can only believe
on the testimony of others. He cannot have true
knowledge beyond the bounds of his own developed
consciousness. The human class, as highly developed, has these
three relations to spirit. Typical man has but two of
them, for he rests in instinct and ordinary conscious
mind, not reaching any noticeable functioning of spirit
as a subconscious force. Animal-man has but one such
relation, for he is essentially a mere creature of instinct,
not disclosing any valuable functioning of spirit as
even conscious mind.
It is, therefore, by developing his latent, inherent
powers that man grows into what, in the high sense of

90 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
that term, we have called the human. Not to see
clearly this distinction between the words " man " and
" human " is entirely to lose the point and significance
of this evolution. Humanity is not a term that, in its
strict and high sense, should be used to refer to all men.
Man and human should not be used interchangeably,
but ought clearly to point to different stages of develop
ment. All men may become human, but only a small
part of all men ever do actually become such, which
merely means that they do not in fact reach that
development of which they are theoretically capable.
Man evolves from animal-man and human evolves
from man. There are now in existence beings in almost
every stage of this psychical evolution, which is not
merely a process of the past, but is ever present, now
and always going on, in which evolution the world
groans and travails. The human type is, so far as we
know, the culmination of all life, its highest form, the
crowning glory of the universe. We find all gradations
of this human type from its lowest and weakest form
up to those characters that shine like stars in the history
of the race, whose names die not though ages pass
away, whose thoughts and examples are the most
precious possession of the world.
We have now considered animal-men, men and
humans. Animal-men live mainly by instinct but
disclose the initial stages of rising reason. Typical

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 91
men lose instinct except as an incident, and are charac
terized by reason, but only in a rather undeveloped
condition. Humanity is characterized by a cultivated
and trained reason, which yields fruitage hardly to be
suspected from seeing it in its crude state. Neither
class, however, is sharply defined, but each melts into
the others by countless gradations. To take this mass
of beings thus essentially different and refer to them
by one term, obliterating and forgetting these differ
ences and assuming equality of capacity and develop
ment, is to make a mistake of the most serious character.
Man thus looked at is indeed an enigma, a riddle, a
paradox, a bundle of contradictions and inconsistencies,
a hopeless puzzle, an unanswerable conundrum. The
phrase " collective humanity" has nothing to do with the
great mass of men who are essentially animals, or with
men who are indeed truly men but not yet truly human.
The term " humanity " should only refer to the flower of
the race, to those men only who have reached such
development as makes them in some degree true types
of high character, to those who are in some degree
incarnations of high ideals, to those who as living
organisms show the moral, intellectual and spiritual
life as an existent fact. This humanity has always
been a tiny minority of the race; has always been a
sort of advance guard, a band of pioneers, the pro
gressive element; has always been misunderstood, iso
lated, unpopular, crucified by the great mass of men.

92 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
It is the sane element in an insane world. It is the
leaven whose presence is necessary to produce moral
and spiritual fermentation and life in the intellectually
inert mass.
As an animal, man could have lived without knowing
either heaven or hell. As a typical man he must at
least be moving towards the heaven of humanity or
run the risk of sinking into a hell below all animalism.
It is an awful dilemma, and before it stands the great
mass of men. Each must work out his own salvation
aided by the kind ministrations of that humanity
towards which he aspires. He must find salvation by
rising until he can live above his animal self, so as to
dominate and control it to higher and nobler ends.
This applies to every man born into the world, however
favorable his environment may appear to be. Every
man begins by being mere animal. He then, as a boy,
becomes animal-man and has the happy irresponsibility
of the animal along with traits which are clearly supe
rior to any that mere animals ever have. He has the
free and full pleasure of existence without regard to
anything else. To develop out of this is merely to
awaken to consciousness of power and capacity, which
brings with it a sense of duty and responsibility, causing
life to become a serious matter. Childish things pass
away and this is the critical stage of his career, for he
is now typical man. Will he remain that or will he go
on and so develop as to reach the human stage? He

ANIMAL  MAN — HUMAN. 93
is confronted by the intellectual and spiritual field of
activity, and in this each man must achieve his own
victories. To reach the excellence of the true human
hfe demands personal search after wisdom, the exercise
of self-control and the constant denial of the appeal
made by the lower self.
If we use symbolic phrase, we may say that animal-
men live in a sort of Paradise, while typical men live
in a sort of Purgatory, from which some rise to the
Heaven of humanity, which is the Kingdom of God,
while some descend to that degraded life, which is Hell,
while ineffective mediocrity finds no room in either of
those places, but to the end remains in Purgatory as its
only fit abode.

rv.

SPIRIT.

Life, appearing in multifarious forms, culminates in
man with his power to develop into the human. We
say that this power, peculiar to man, is due to the fact
that he reveals more perfectly than any other creature
or thing the essential nature of the universal force, to
which as thus revealed we give the distinctive name of
Spirit. This must be clearly understood not to involve
any idea that the term " spirit " refers to some peculiar
force, but merely that it is the one manifestation which
seems in a peculiar degree to disclose the nature of
the one force and, as such, seems to be a unique and
supremely important manifestation. If there is any
where a clue the following of which may lead us to some
idea as to the nature of God, we feel that it is here.
Therefore, when we seek to interpret the mysterious
realities that exist outside of us, we are forced to do it
by using what we find within us as such a clue or key.
If we have any idea of force or energy, it rests on the
discovery of this in our own nature. If we have an
idea of causation it is because we ourselves are causes.
If we have an idea of intelligence it is because we pos
sess it. In every case our own power is our only basis

SPIRIT. 95
for conceiving any such power outside ourselves. We
therefore interpret, and can only interpret, the universe
in terms of our own nature. If the result secured is
erroneous we cannot help it, for if this key will not
serve us we have no other. It is also true that when
we seek adequately to interpret our own nature, we
never realize its dignity and significance until we have
translated the individual terms into the universal, until
we have seen that the one is in a measure a reflection
of the other. There must be some underlying unity,
since each serves to interpret the other.
When we study man, we are always forced back to
one single word as the root of all his distinctive life,
and that word is " consciousness." It is the condition
precedent to all his development, the root out of which
has come all that he is. It is to be conceived not as
an active force or faculty but as a sensitivity or recep
tivity which is the very essential element of his inmost
being, if it is not that being itself. It is an innate
capacity for development under stimulating environ
ment. Differences in men are entirely due to differing
degrees of consciousness. One is able to perceive and
feel what is entirely hidden from another. Having
apparently similar organisms, yet, in the psychical
field, one sees while the other is blind. The richness
and fulness of life are therefore entirely due to this
power to see and feel, this power to realize the signifi
cance of what is spread before him and be interested

96 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
in it, and all this flows from capacity for consciousness.
These differences cannot be explained. They are
merely facts. One man has an exquisite sensitivity
involving the power to respond to science and litera
ture, to music and art, so that, however he is placed,
he is able to find something which interests him
and awakens his enthusiasm. Another is stolid, sees
little or nothing, cannot be stimulated into any sort
of mental activity. One develops and is ever able
to see and feel and know more than he had before,
while the other remains seemingly incapable of any
growth except in a physical way. This applies to the
whole field of life, to the craftsmen and all skilled
workmen as much as to the poet, artist and student;
to the higher industrial sphere as well as to the domain
of estheticism, for all enthusiasm rests on seeing and
feeling the attractiveness of some appeal to this con
sciousness coupled with the ability to respond in some
effective degree, wherein lies all true happiness. The
power to perceive the appeal and to respond to it is
dependent on being conscious of it, and this conscious
ness is the presence of spirit. Power to develop is,
therefore, direct evidence that spirit is present, and
this applies to the entire life of man outside of his
purely animal functions. It connotes capacity to
conceive and hold an ideal of some sort of excellence
and to feel impelled to rise to the higher standard of
the ideal.

SPIRIT. 97
If spirit as consciousness were entirely withdrawn
from a man, then, though his physical organism
persisted, he would have ceased to exist as man, for
the essential element would be lacking and none of the
development characteristic of normal man would be
possible. So far as he is man, and so long as he
continues to be man, it is due to the presence in some
degree of consciousness as spirit. He cannot deny or
doubt the testimony of this consciousness without
denying or doubting his own existence. Whatever this
tells him is true and real must appear valid to him.
Indeed, the conclusion is for him irresistible. He must
accept it as authoritative, and its evidence must be
regarded as authentic if there is to be for him anything
in the way of truth. If he cannot trust his conscious
ness he can trust nothing whatever, for all phenomena
are to him real only so far as he is conscious of them.
The conscious self is the same as conscious mind.
I am conscious because I am mind, of which conscious
ness is an inevitable and necessary incident. I am
not merely affected by mind but I am mind itself, in
my own degree, and this degree is indicated by the
quality and degree of my consciousness. I consider,
weigh, balance and discriminate, and this is mind in
the status of reflection. I approve or disapprove,
judge and determine the propriety of the action in the
light of my reflection, and this is mind in the status of

98 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
conscience. Having reflected and decided I go forth
to act, to carry into effect the decision based on reflec
tion and sanctioned by conscience, and this is mind in
the status of will. Now there are not three forces but
one force, and that is spirit appearing as conscious
mind, that is to say, spirit enabling me to appear as I
myself. Reason, conscience and will are, therefore,
terms that designate the coordinating elements that
constitute what is really a unit, which, as thus existent,
with these elements indissolubly united and interacting,
we call the psychical self, meaning mind conscious of
its identity as an existing and operative force. The
sense of self-existence is an inevitable and necessary
concomitant of conscious mind, but there is nothing
corresponding to the concept except the mind in which
it inheres.
Spirit, as it appears in man, is a potential capacity
analogous to the germinal power in an egg or a seed,
which may in time be developed or it may be lost and
so never ripen into anything whatever. A tiny lettuce
seed must contain potentially in itself all that subse
quently follows as a result of its being planted, and
yet we cannot comprehend how this is possible. The
seed is apparently as inert as any bit of inorganic
matter, and until it has the proper environment no
sign of its life appears. Its germinal capacity would
not even be suspected, or be discoverable by any micro-

SPIRIT. 99
scope, but when the proper group of physical and
chemical conditions is supplied, then it is fully demon
strated and stands thereafter as a proven fact. There
must be something in the lettuce seed which reacts on
these elements by which it is surrounded when properly
planted, but there certainly can be no greater mystery
than its capacity thus to react and proceed to grow
into the beautiful product that it does. A dozen lettuce
seeds, exactly alike to all appearance and of the tiniest
size, may, as we know, lock up a dozen different kinds
of lettuce, each of which has its own peculiar appear
ance and characteristics when fully grown. If we
were seeking for mystery it would seem as if we could
find enough of it in all this.
Now spirit in man is merely the same sort of poten
tial capacity, entirely hidden, unsuspected and undis-
coverable until under the proper environment it ripens
into the human or spiritual life as a demonstrated fact.
It is always the same in kind in all men in whom it
appears at all, but it may and does differ in degree.
Moreover, these differences may be so great as to make
it appear as if there were a difference in kind, which
for all practical purposes there is. The potential
power contains in itself no guarantee of any develop
ment except under favorable conditions and these
involve what may be called, in a word, stimulating
environment, surroundings which furnish fruitful
experiences leading to observation and reflection. All

100 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
man's special, distinctive faculties are, therefore, only
developments. He is not born with conscience but
merely with a power to develop conscience under the
proper conditions. He is not born with reason but is
capable of developing it. He has at birth no person
ality but must work to achieve it. These faculties
are like branches of a tree of which the innate capacity
is the seed or root. At first there is but the tiny seed,
the germinal principle, like an acorn which holds in
itself potentially the future oak tree. If the acorn
never finds its suitable environment there will never
be a tree, but it is still true that in the acorn was con
cealed the possibility of a tree. The acorn may sprout
and roots may form and even some trunk may appear
with tiny branches and then, because the conditions
of nourishment fail, there will be no more growth and,
at last, it may die without any effective realization of
the potential tree.
Of this capacity we are never directly conscious,
for our consciousness only begins with the reaction of
experience upon the psychical sensitivity, and therefore
we know nothing except what we learn by observation
and reflection. The mind comes to the perception of
itself as an immanent force only after such degree of
development as enables it to use its own powers to
study its own operations and seek an explanation
therefor. The mind then turns its own powers on this
study, which is an interpretation of itself, and this

SPIRIT. 101
action, reflex in its nature, is what we call reflection.
It is thus that we secure certain ideas indirectly by
inference, deduction and reflex action, as to that force,
of whose presence we are never directly conscious.
All this, however, implies conscious effort and the use
of mind, by itself as subject upon itself as object,
and this is only possible when mind has reached some
considerable measure of development. It implies a
status of developed consciousness in which we become
aware of powers and capacities not hitherto suspected
to be resident in us. If the development is continued
there is a constant and growing sense of freshly acquired
power, so that there comes to be a true consciousness
of growth and progress. We ask what it is that is
thus growing, and this compels us to interpret the
phenomenon. We see before we know that we have
eyes and before we know that it is by using the eyes
that we are able to see. In the same way we think
and use mind instinctively before we consciously know
that we have any mind at all, and we are led to do this
by power inherent in mind itself. The force operates,
and after it has done so we may by reflection reach
the idea of its necessary preexistence as an explanation
or cause of the action.
What we call life is power to react on environment.
The beginning of life is the rise of an organism, in an
initial stage of sensitivity, which enables an evolution

102 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
to begin and to proceed continuously, as a series of
numberless reactions rendered possible by environing
circumstances. Force, when thus acting in or through
such an organism, appears as the directing, guiding,
controlling principle which builds up and perfects the
organism and causes it to unfold what we call its nature.
The force is therefore not the result of the organism,
but, on the contrary, the organism is the result of the
force. This force in and through which all things
live, move and have their being, which appears in man
as an innate capacity, manifesting itself as mind,
intelligence, sensitivity, consciousness, which, as it
develops, gives rise to reason, conscience, will, character
and personality, we designate and define as spirit.
When the living being is capable of consciousness of
the presence of the force, and seems to be able to exer
cise it consciously, as if it were a personal possession,
we call it the highest form in which, so far as we know,
spirit ever expresses itself and we define that hfe as
psychical, rational or spiritual, as contrasted with those
types of life in which the subject is unconscious of
such a presence and does not consciously use the force.
To interpret spirit we must study its manifestations
and, so far as possible, must observe its mode of action.
This each man must do by looking into his own inner
consciousness and by studying his own acts and those
of his fellows, assuming that they are animated by
the same force that he is conscious of possessing in

SPIRIT. 103
himself. Thus all that we can know of spirit is really
a knowledge of man and human, for this is the only
manifestation of which we have any immediate per
ception. We cannot fathom its essence, but we may
nevertheless have some definite ideas about it, since
each man gets these from his personal self -consciousness.
He knows spirit as an undoubted fact, to which all
that is in him certifies and bears witness. He knows
that it is at the very root of his personality; that it
is, indeed, this immanent presence that renders him a
mystery to himself.
What, then, is this spiritual capacity peculiar to man?
It includes, and is, all his power to know, think, form
discriminating judgments, perceive relationships and
have a sense of right and wrong. Because of it, he
becomes able consciously to have and to exercise intel
ligence; to conceive and be influenced by ideals; to
recognize and yield obedience to his sense of obligation,
duty and responsibility; to penetrate the secret of the
universe, to learn its laws and cause them to obey him
and serve his purposes; to study the planets and stars,
naming them, measuring their distances, discovering
their orbits and explaining the laws of their motion;
to create systems of science and law, literatures and
social institutions; to have a sense of the beautiful,
leading him to conceive, create and enjoy art and
weave the intricate harmony of music. In a word, it
is that capacity which enables him to study, reflect,

104 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
and find out God. It causes the law of man's being
to involve constant development, enables him to move
ever towards wider spheres of action and ever to
become more than he has been.
Every man experiences in some degree a tendency
towards the growth or unfolding of a potency that
seems to be within him. He feels as if he ought to
resist and overcome his faults and imperfections and
develop into what is right, real and true in spite of all
his frailty, incapacity and sin. He feels that he has
unused capacities pressing for their natural develop
ment, and when this growth is prevented he feels that
he is less than he ought to be and less than he might
have been if he had done otherwise. He feels that
beneath the ugliness of his actual life there is a forma
tive power ever urging him towards a truer life which
is beautiful. He feels that, in place of chaos and
disorder in his life there should be harmony; in place
of ignorance there should be sound and clear under
standing; in place of impurity and evil there should
be virtue and clean-handed integrity. If he does not in
any degree feel this he has not reached the spiritual
status but is merely animal-man, for in every being
who ranks as truly man there is at least a tendency
towards harmonious growth, a tendency to unfold
certain concealed powers and to proceed, as it were,
from the germ to the full fruit. His mind is filled
with longing, however famt, after something he might

SPIRIT. 105
be and is not; a yearning after a destiny that he seems
to feel that he can attain and which it seems that he
ought to attain, which attracts and fascinates him in
a way he cannot explain and forces on him a haunting
consciousness of imperfection which he would throw
off if he could. He seems to be animated by a prin
ciple or force that will grow by its own might if only
he will not smother it, if only he will restrain his lower
self. Reason pleads with him and would lead him
from the symbol to the thing really signified, from the
rule to the principle, from the principle to the purpose,
from the purpose to the living force or character in
which all purpose originates. If he obeys this reason,
if he but yields himself to it and trusts it, he discovers
and comes to possess regulative truth, gets knowledge
of realities and rests in peace. Whoever you may be,
however distinguished, famous and capable, or however
commonplace, you still feel that you ought to have
been more capable than you have been, and are now,
in your special field. Despite all apparent success you
realize your failure to reach the ideal that you had,
and you feel that it has been due to indolence and love
of paltry and foolish pleasures. You are always con
scious that you might have been more than you are,
that you had great possibilities which in your actual
life you have not grasped and reached. You cannot
escape this consciousness, for you are by nature a
spiritual being and as such you worship the ideal and

106 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
regret your failure to attain it. This consciousness is
the pervading presence of spirit. You are a creature
whose peculiar characteristic it is to be inescapably
aware that you ought to be developing a subtle power
within you which is spirit appearing as your very self.
Let a man but once reach a degree of sensitivity which
permits this appeal to be felt and never again, except
by spirituaUy dying, shall he go from its presence or
escape its constant solicitation and reproach. Feeble
as it may seem to be, it will persist and grow unless
there is such abuse of the organism that the sensitivity,
on which all such individual consciousness seems to
depend, is utterly destroyed. The original, native,
initial sensitivity is spirit potentially present in a sort
of germinal way. If it be once truly extinguished, it
never reappears in that individual. So far as he is
concerned it is gone forever, for he is spiritually dead
and lives on as mere animal. He has quenched the
spirit. Such cases are, however, extremely rare, for
nothing is more wonderful than the persistence of this
sensitivity after such abuse as appears to have extin
guished it. For all practical purposes we may, and
we always do, assume that, once it is there, it is always
there, so that it ever yields the possibility of a success
ful appeal even under circumstances and conditions
that are repellent and discouraging, for nothing is more
remarkable than such survival of spirit when every
visible trace of its active presence has disappeared.

SPIRIT. 107
But while for the sake of securing some degree of
precision and some basis resting in ascertainable fact,
we have defined spirit as this peculiar psychical capacity
which is distinctive of man, we do not imply that the
force does not operate outside of man. If it were not
resident in us we could have no idea whatever of its
existence. We must secure a safe and proper definition
by referring only to those qualities which every man
consciously possesses and which each man can readily
study as they are in himself. Such definition stands
for a reality, and careful investigation in this limited
field must yield a degree of truth. We may thus get
some idea of what spirit is and what are its modes of
operation. We must always remember, however, that
it is solely because we are possessed of spirit that we
are able to study it and even to raise a question as to
its operation elsewhere than in that field from whose
study we secure the conception itself.
Now it seems to be a fact that the more clearly a
man comes to understand the nature of spirit as it
exists in himself, the more he comes to feel that it is
a force whose presence and activity cannot be limited
to such a narrow field. He seems to be compelled to
believe that wherever he sees evidence of intelligence,
will and purpose anywhere operative, in any form
whatever, it is necessarily that same force which rises
consciously in him. We therefore conceive spirit to
be the very essence of intelligence and to be charac-

108 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
terized by will, motive, consciousness and universality.
All instincts and all impulsions, whether physical or
chemical, presuppose and necessitate an antecedent
force as the cause thereof and, as all the manifestations
of this force disclose intelligence, the force must itself
be regarded as in some way similar to what characterizes
these multitudinous manifestations. It must be in the
general what all these are in the particular.
We see that it may operate without any conscious
cooperation on the part of the creature or thing in
which it operates and that this seems to cover every
field except the rational life as seen in man. The rise
of man, as a being capable of consciously possessing
and using intelligence, is therefore the rise of an incar
nation or physical embodiment of spirit itself. So far
as man does become thus conscious, he becomes a
spiritual creature. In the earliest stages of development
he is, however, merely capable of consciously reacting
on experience, whereby he becomes the conscious pos
sessor of knowledge as the product resulting from the
exercise of mind in a series of such reactions. This
is, however, but the beginning of a development which,
if continued far enough, results in such clearness of
perception and such nicety of discrimination as to
permit inferences, deductions and judgments which are
a basis for argument and this we call the status of
reason, which is therefore not innate in man but results
from the capacity which is innate. The throng and

SPIRIT. 109
succession of experiences, observations and reflections
develops the awakened mind and brings into existence
personality, involving character, which in turn mani
fests itself as active will, whose multitudinous volitions
disclose and are controlled by that function of the mind
which we call conscience.
Spirit seems to operate in relation to man in three
ways. Thus it operates when he is unconscious of it;
when he is or seems to be fully conscious of it; and
when he is only dimly conscious of it, when he feels
that he must presuppose some peculiar relation to the
force to explain certain unusual and occasional powers
which he cannot otherwise account for.
First. It surely operates entirely without his con
scious cooperation, independent of any thought on his
part, and this we call his instinctive action. Unless
spirit operated in this way, man would not live at all,
for he is continuously and incessantly protected and
preserved by those things he does without any reflec
tion whatever. This operation is common to all animals,
animal-men, men and humans, since they all alike have
a physical organism and nature.
Second. It operates when he seems consciously to
cooperate. The end seems to be consciously sought
and consciously effected by him. This involves the
conscious and independent possession of mind accom
panied by some sense of responsibility and duty, which

110 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
is the status of reason. This characterizes the life of
typical men. Instinct involves merely a sort of me
chanical reaction to immediate sensory impressions and
the reaction is always correct and sure because the
satisfaction sought is essentially simple and capable of
direct and adequate attainment. The impulse seems
literally to satisfy itself. As soon as he reaches the
status of reason man is thereafter confronted by a
dilemma. He ceases to live as an animal, merely in
the present, but he remembers the past and anticipates
the future. He tries to foresee consequences, seeks to
form discriminating judgments so as to secure or avoid
future results by the use of past experiences. He
seems to be thrown upon himself, must guide his own
course and achieve his own success or failure. Hence
uncertainty, doubt and fear. Does he accurately recall
the past; does he interpret it correctly and adequately;
need he fear for the future; must he give up the present
pleasure to escape future pain; will his gain hereafter
pay for his present loss; can he plan more perfectly
than he now does? This is the field of constant
dilemma and too often of tragedy, from which man
escapes only as he reaches a higher and subtler form
in which spirit operates in him subconsciously, which
is the status of the developed reason. This subcon
scious action only reaches effectiveness as it rises into
the field of the ordinary and normal consciousness. It
supplements and reinforces the ordinary mind and to

SPIRIT. Ill
it is due all our mental power that is extraordinary
and otherwise unaccountable.
Third. There in this way develops in some men
such acute sensitivity, such delicacy of perception,
such fulness of reflection, that we say they are possessed
of a genius truly divine. In men of this type there
seems to come at times a rush of elemental power which
flows in its own way and to its own ends apparently
independent of the man's conscious cooperation. It
would seem as if he must indeed cooperate but it also
seems as if he did so almost instinctively. This is
spirit appearing as subconsciousness, as the secondary
or exalted consciousness, which is the profoundest and
most mysterious phase of man's existence, the most
remarkable development which his physical organism
permits. In some degree this comes to every man
who earnestly and persistently seeks it. We call it
the subconscious mind, for of it we are at the best but
dimly conscious. We know nothing about it except
that we are constantly aware of it as a power which
somehow acts in us or through us. We only know it
as a source of strength, a power that does really answer
our queries, that does inspire us, does guide us and
console us, and while we call the acts that we do our
own we are well aware that all that is notable is not
so much our own conscious act as it is due to this power
that seems to be behind us and at times to be within
us. We puzzle over some question, try to discover

112 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
what is the real, essential significance of some word or
phrase and we seem to compass nothing. We give it
up and, so far as we know, forget it and cease to think
about it at all. Suddenly, at the least expected
moment, we see clearly and distinctly the reply to our
query. We write it down as rapidly as the pen will
move and, when it is done, we cannot understand how
it was accomphshed, for we are certain that, a few
moments before, we did not know what we have just
written. There are times when we cannot afterwards
see how to change or improve what has been so written,
times when it does not seem susceptible of modification.
We know that we did not consciously think it out or
discover it. It was certainly imparted to us by another
mind or by a power akin to what we call our mind, a
power which is in such relation to us and our mind
that it can influence us, can use us and our mind directly
and can do this without our conscious cooperation at
the time. It also seems as if this power cannot act
unless we, so to speak, pave the way for it. We must
consciously gather the materials, must reach a status
where we consciously see the problem and must con
sciously and earnestly desire a solution. Then in time
the answer comes in a natural and normal way.
The conditions under which spirit is thus manifested
seem to involve three elements which must coexist.
They are: (1) Behef or faith; (2) prayer; and (3) fast
ing. The seeker must beheve that there is a problem

SPIRIT. 113
demanding consideration; that there is an answer or
solution; that it is important and valuable and that
he can probably secure it. He must believe that he
has the power, or is in touch with power, that is ade
quate and he must so believe this as to continue to
seek under great discouragement, without apparent
success or even any immediate chance of it. He must
have a vital belief, a living faith, and this is a funda
mental necessity, for without it man would make no
effort at all.
The second element is prayer, which is the persistent
desire, the profound craving for the answer which shall
enlighten. This at times so possesses the man's mind
that he desires without ceasing, becomes so absorbed
that his interest in the quest is almost a passion.
This is the true meaning of the word "prayer" and
this is the true field within which it operates. It is
the earnest desire to know which becomes an incessant
quest, seeking within the limits of man's own conscious
powers all available materials that seem to be perti
nent and then waiting for the finishing touch to be
given by the subconscious mind, for a result to be
certified out of the subconscious into the realm of the
common consciousness. Prayer is thus altogether a
psychical affair. It rests wholly in the mind and
spirit and has nothing to do with the material universe
or with its operations. Prayer thus conceived is the
condition precedent to enlightenment.

114 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
The third element is fasting, or sacrifice, which is
the giving up or abstaining from all those things and
ways of living which are inconsistent with the quest,
leaving the man free from entanglements and diver
sions, free to devote such energy as he does possess
to the end he desires to reach. It is thus that all
notable work has been done in the intellectual and
spiritual field. In science all genuine progress has
been due to this. In art, music and literature it is
the same. In all the higher phases of the industrial
world as clearly as in philosophy and in all serious
study of every sort distinguished success is due to the
subconscious mind rendered available by genuine faith,
incessant prayer and persistent fasting or sacrifice.
"What is thus done is done nobly and wonderfully and
it is as inexplicable to the doer as it is to every one
else. All great work is done essentially in that way,
without hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting.
In the doers of the best there is an inner and involun
tary power which, in kind, approximates literally to
the instincts of the animals; nay, it is certain that, in
the most perfect human doers, their power is essentially
an instinct much more remarkable than that of the
animals — that a great singer sings not with less instinct
than the nightingale but with more; and then it is
more various, applicable and governable — that a great
architect does not build with less instinct than the
beaver or the bee but with more, with an innate

SPIRIT. 115
cunning of proportion that embraces all beauty and &
marvelous ingenuity that improvises all construction.
All great human work is dependent on this subcon
scious mind which is so analogous to instinct; and
then it also rests on an amount of practice, of science
and of imagination, disciplined by reflection, which
the possessor knows to be incommunicable and the
true critic to be inexplicable."
It seems clear that the variation in the capacity of
different men results from the varying degree in which
spirit is present as consciousness, for all possibility of
development is due to this. It is the added element
of consciousness that differentiates reason from instinct,
and so the effectiveness of reason depends on the degree
and quality of the consciousness. Development always
means increased sensitivity, profounder insight, power
to discover what had hitherto been hidden from view.
Failing to develop the awakened spiritual side of his
nature, man is exposed to a disaster which the mere
animal need not fear. He becomes the victim of his
emotions. Now, the emotions are not distinctive of
man but are shared by him with all animals. They
are reactions on experience, which come without volition
on his part and they generally come with great force
and intensity. Unchecked they will govern his action
and color his entire life. Man's peculiar problem is to
control and utilize these emotions and impulses in the

116 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
light of reason. Have them he must, for he is, on his
animal side, a creature of impulse, emotion and instinct.
To have them and to restrain, discipline and at times
coerce them is his spiritual task. Under given condi
tions he feels and cannot help feeling hatred and has
an impulse to hurt, and even to kill, the cause of it.
Reason, which is the spirit, says that he must, as a
rule, overlook and forgive and, if he must needs resist
and punish the offender, he must do it without any
feeling of hatred or revenge, although, in such case
of necessity, he must exert all his force, must strike
hard and be effective. Again sympathy and love
urge him to gratify some desire of a child or friend,
but reason says that he must refuse because the grati
fication would work lasting injury and be not a kind
ness but a source of grief and trouble. Thus man's
great struggle is with his impulses and emotions, and
religion comes to demand that he scrutinize and study
them in the light of reason. The emotional is there
fore on the animal side of man's nature, for the emo
tions are instinctive reactions of the natural man to
be taken in hand and disciplined by the developed
man. In the simple animal life, these emotions and
impulses would be entirely right and normal, but in
the complex life of man, they necessitate reflection
and, if not regulated, lead to disaster in innumerable
cases. So far as he is an animal man is emotional
and acts on impulse. So far as he becomes human

SPIRIT. 117
he pauses to reflect and often gives up his emotional
impulse because it conflicts with his higher human
purpose. Life is made up of a long series of emotions
which are appeals naturally leading to impulsive
action. This is the very stuff of which life consists
and it is inevitable and unavoidable. A man's atti
tude towards this endless emotional chain determines
his character and fixes his destiny. Religion cannot
rest upon an emotional basis and be truly religious,
but it is the very function of religion to regulate and
discipline the emotions so as to lead to sane, righteous,
human living.
Every man seems to depend necessarily in some
degree on the instinctive element in his nature and to
require serious effort to develop reason to any valuable
and effective degree. As soon as he reaches the
stage of conscious intelligence there stretches ahead
of him an apparently illimitable field for its exercise.
The use of the faculty always creates an increased
sensitivity or receptivity, a profounder consciousness
than he had before possessed. Psychical growth
means reaching higher and higher degrees of intelligence,
higher and higher degrees of sensitivity or capacity to
receive and absorb knowledge. It is here and thus that
what we call the subconscious mind operates.
We conceive self as the result of the effort of spirit
to incarnate itself in a living organism. At first there

118 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
is no more than potential capacity, a mere chance of
success hampered and likely to be defeated by the
limitations of the flesh. It seems as if spirit always
manifests itself up to the limit of the existing oppor
tunity, which alone fixes and determines the degree
in each case. Development means increased capacity
to receive what is always at hand ready to be im
parted. If an individual becomes sensitive and recep
tive enough to go beyond the ordinary ranges of
consciousness we say that he has thus developed,
that he has reached a secondary or exalted conscious
ness, but what we really mean is that in him spirit
has found a more complete expression of itself. Those
who disclose this in an exceptional degree, whose
powers seem at times to border on the marvelous,
seem to have access to certain mysterious depths of
man's psychical nature where lie powers hidden
entirely from most men. Genius is the highest degree
in which the elemental spirit can be incarnated in
man. It borders on what seems miraculous and is
regarded as if its utterances were inspired from an
external source. When it occurs the individual feels
that he truly acts as if by inspiration, for he seems
to see with eyes that are not his own and to speak
with the voice of another. Man's highest and truest
utterances have all been of this sort. He then seems
to be for the moment in touch with pure intelligence.
The idea seems to come to the man, who seems to be

SPIRIT. 119
passive. In a moment he becomes conscious that he
sees and knows what a moment before he did not see
or know, and he is certain that in the interval he has
done nothing consciously to promote the result. He
secures credit for insight, penetration and acuteness
and while ordinarily he takes the credit, he knows
that he did nothing to justify those terms of praise,
and he also knows that it was not, so far as he can
see, in his power to have consciously so acted. Now
the ordinary conscious self we may conceive as no
more than a fragment of a larger and possible self.
All psychical effort seeks more and more to realize
this larger self, more and more to call into conscious
ness the powers that are not ordinarily realized. As
the ordinary self is essentially a manifestation of spirit
seeking adequate expression, and as what we call sub
conscious mind is regarded as ever stimulating the
ordinary mind to more successful expression we may
conceive the subconscious to be a mode of relation to
the whole of the universal spirit, and then the larger
self we speak of is merely the universal self. It is
clear that the most astonishing results may become
possible in the psychical field as we more effectively
reach this subconscious mind. The so-called mind
cures, hypnotism and psychotherapeutics may all, in a
crude and imperfect way, point towards disclosures of
power which may hereafter be resolved into expres
sions of psychic laws and be effectively utilized by

120 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
men. If so it will all be due to this subconscious
mind, which in such cases supersedes, for the time,
that relatively slight manifestation which is ordinary
and normal. To one who has never personally real
ized the inspired effectiveness growing out of relations
to the subconscious, it probably can never be proven
to exist at all. For such men it must be and remain
sheer mysticism, while nevertheless it is without doubt
the greatest and most significant fact in human his
tory. In the lives of all the most gifted men there
have always been moments and hours when they
have felt the access of this unusual degree of force
and these they have called their inspired moments and
hours. The three terms " instinct," " reason " and " subcon
sciousness " refer, therefore, to different degrees of the
same force manifestations. Differences in the medium
through which the force finds expression give the
appearance of a difference in kind, but in reahty the
force which enables the little bee to do its work is
the same in its essence as that which lies behind the
mightiest creations of human genius. In the case of
instinct the medium of expression cannot contribute
to the result by any sort of conscious cooperation,
and here we find that the force acts unerringly within
its very limited field. While the field is small it is
open, and while the agent does not help he does not

SPIRIT. 121
interfere and obstruct. As we reach the field of reason,
where the agent is able to cooperate and seems to have
some control of the force, there comes a possibility of
interference and obstruction, which makes constant
error inevitable. It seems as if the evolution towards
a more perfect medium had reached a stage where the
difficulties almost destroyed the effectiveness of the
force or at least so impaired it as to allow a vast number
of mistakes. Then, as the agent develops his faculties,
he seems to give the force a more perfect field of action
and to that degree the errors become less until they,
at times, disappear and the force operates with what
approximates the accuracy of instinct without the
usual limitation characteristic of that field. To secure
the accuracy of instinctive action in a wide and limit
less field seems, indeed, to be the goal, the end aimed
at in this evolution. Now the field of reason becomes
effective in its highest degree only by reaching that
measure of development which brings into play what
we have called the subconscious mind. From the slight
est manifestation to the highest, it is all one force
struggling for expression and, in each case, reaching
such a degree as is permitted by the medium through
which it necessarily acts. In this extremes meet.
Instinct and the subconsciousness meet as alike using
the actor as the passive medium for the expression
of intelligence, the one in the limited and narrow field,
the other in the spiritual and illimitable field.

122 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
We say that when man discloses his characteristic
powers it is due to the operation of spirit in and through
him, but we do not mean that this occurs in such a way
as to leave him a mere automaton. Herein lies the
mysterious and fascinating problem of human per
sonality. As each man's sense of reality rests on his
consciousness, and as that sense of reality is necessarily
affected and indeed controlled by the degree and quality
of his consciousness, it is not to be expected that all
men would see alike. He who has had certain per
sonal experiences, who has power clearly to observe
facts and an insight that opens up to him the signifi
cance of such facts, will inevitably regard the problem
in a way that is simply impossible for another man
who lacks these experiences and has less power of
insight and analytic skill. Agreement between such
differently equipped men is not to be expected and
a failure to reach it should cause no surprise. There
are many men whose life consists of what are essen
tially reactions on external stimuli, which are in a
very slight degree affected by any conscious action
on their part, so that they are mainly the result of
their instinctive impulses. Spirit does not operate in
them in any other sense than it does in the case of
plants and animals, and this is because it cannot. To
give it effective access and permit it to render active
and useful assistance, which makes the individual
appear to be its vehicle or medium, demands the

SPIRIT. 123
cooperation of the individual, and this he renders by
patiently developing his nascent powers so as to reach
and permit relations with spirit as a subconscious
force. Without your cooperation spirit seems power
less to create that precise incarnation or developed
individuality which should be the best result of your
living under the exact conditions of your own personal
environment. A new type or novel expression of force
comes into being in the universe by your faithful co
operation and it is possible that this in some inscrutable
way has a cosmic importance or value not suspected
or discoverable by us. The personal element which
is essentially the differentiating element is your con
tribution and can come alone from you. Your work
is not achieved by your own self alone, nor is it the
operation of spirit alone, but it involves a subtle and
mysterious cooperation between these two elements —
the universal and the individual — whereby they work
as a unit, not only without ever destroying the indi
viduality of the man but even adding to it and causing
a more profoundly differentiated product proportioned
to the perfection of the cooperation. The more success
fully spirit flows into man, the more conspicuously it
seems to inspire and use him, the more and not less
individual he becomes, for to create just such new types
and to rise into such novel expressions of itself seems
to be the cosmic purpose. Not to crush or obliterate
individuality but to evoke it; not to starve but to

124 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
feed, nourish and develop it, is the very end sought
by spirit. Man is called not to grow less but con
stantly to become more; not to be abashed and stand
dumb but to rise to his true stature and speak; to feel
the dignity of his own mission as a new and fresh expo
nent of the spirit and to realize that the more he is
truly himself, the more he is serving the cosmic purpose.
The more that spirit uses him, the more distinct and
individual he will become. Self-surrender to spirit is
thus the only road to spiritual greatness, for that alone
results from the perfect and harmonious interplay
between the two elements, whereby the individual ever
takes on new power and grows towards the universal,
and it is only as he does this that he becomes com
manding and great. Spirit seeks not conformity and
sameness but the richness of multiplicity and diversity,
of which it supplies the underlying bond of unity.
Each individual who becomes a great personality em
bodies some creative and causal idea, precipitates the
decisive movements and critical moments in history
and is needful to the completeness and fulness of cosmic
order. All true human dignity and enduring fame
spring from this relation of the individual to the
universal, towards which he constantly moves but mto
which he is never absorbed; by which he is inspired
and exalted but never effaced or obliterated. Ele
mental spirit rising thus into differentiated individual
expression continues by an infinite upward progression

SPIRIT. 125
without need of ever returning to or again being merged
in the former elemental force of whose activity it is the
result. In studying spirit man trusts his inferences and
deductions because he comes to believe that the force
which alone enables him to infer and deduce is that
very force whose mystery he seeks to unravel and that,
so to speak, it is merely guiding him to itself. His
effort to understand it seems to be purely instinctive
and the degree of success he attains seems to spring
from the development in him of the deeper subcon
sciousness through which the force seems to reveal
itself. Thus he sees that knowledge of spirit rests,
like all other knowledge, on experience, is certified by
consciousness, the same as everything else, and so no
man can have any such knowledge who has not had
the experience and does not have the consciousness.
To men who should entirely lack this, spirit would be
absolutely incomprehensible.
Now to those men who discern spirit most clearly,
the universe seems to be essentially psychical, because
they cannot explain it without assuming intelligent,
directive purpose, leading to the multitudinous recip
rocal adjustments which are absolutely necessary for
the existence and maintenance of that harmonious
whole which is called nature. Something analogous
to man's psychical capacity must be presupposed as

126 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
necessary for any adequate explanation, that is to
say, something like the fundamental attributes of his
intelligence, and to a wonderful and mysterious degree
similar to his methods of operation.
As the only men who can understand spirit are
necessarily those who possess it in some degree, so the
curiosity and interest felt in its problems and the
effort to understand its nature and penetrate its secrets
are inevitable incidents of its presence, while the absence
of interest quite as certainly denotes the absence or
weakness of spirit. Now it is a plain historical fact
that this curiosity and interest is, and ever has been,
almost universally present, in some degree, in nearly all
men. Even the crude and primitive men have their
ideas, which generally result in a state of abject fear,
peopling the world with goblins, ghosts and most fan
tastic visions; leading to charms, amulets and sorcery.
It is a very curious fact that the presence of spirit
almost always inspires fear in those in whom it
is but slightly or abnormally developed, yielding a
mass of superstition of countless degrees and endless
variations. There seems, also, to be a class of men who develop
to a point where they throw off this fear and escape
from any burden of superstition and yet do not develop
enough to reach any adequate explanation or compre
hension of the matter, and these men, by their indiffer
ence and lack of responsiveness, seem to have really

SPIRIT. 127
quenched the spirit in their effort to escape from the
field of superstitious fear. They escape from error
without reaching truth. From a childish interpreta
tion they fly to no interpretation whatever, giving up
all effort to grapple with the problem in its higher
phases. Those who persevere and effectively develop
their faculties seem to reach a status where the sense
of fear has entirely disappeared, while there comes a
perception of the identity between the force personally
held in consciousness and a universal consciousness
which, however dimly realized, is nevertheless so certi
fied to the individual that, to him, it becomes an ulti
mate reality, becomes a part of his knowledge, resting
on his own experience and aided by all his observation
and reflection.
The life of man thus regarded is constant development
of spirit as his innate capacity, involving ever-widen
ing knowledge, ever-growing wisdom, ever-deepening
consciousness of the relation sustained personally
to the mysterious universal force. Such is the true
spiritual life, namely, development, increased power,
deepened consciousness. From first to last it lies in
the field of personal experience, personal reflection,
personal consciousness. Nothing is essential except
what a man can test by experience, realize in conscious
ness and adequately grasp by reflection. Whatever
lies beyond or outside this field is truly non-essential
to his spiritual life.

128 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Man as an animal having a physical organization
is subject to sensual propensities and various cravings
and needs. Regulated and controlled, all these are
necessary and wholesome, but so far as they dominate
and control him he is not truly man but truly animal,
for he is then the slave of those cravings and propen
sities which he instinctively follows and obeys, as does
any other animal. If, however, he develops psychi
cally he becomes aware of an element in himself which
claims ascendancy over these physical cravings, which
urges him to believe, and to go on and prove, that he
has within himself a force higher in kind than the phys
ical forces by which he seems to be solely environed.
He becomes conscious of faculties and powers which
cause him to become aware of principles of action
which appeal to him as absolute and universal, which
call upon him to regulate and control his physical
nature. He becomes conscious of a sort of existence
absolutely in contrast with the physical, and he realizes
that it is a higher sort of existence. He does truly
know that it is so. He may reach a point where he
becomes possessed by ideals, the realization of which
seems to compel him to secure entire ascendancy over
his physical nature. He becomes conscious of person
ality, sees himself not merely as an animated body but
as an independent, intelligent principle, using his body
and all his physical powers to secure ends and reach
results which are not physical. From the beginning

SPIRIT. 129
to the end, this is merely the development of immanent
spirit. Born with potential capacity, his entire life
record is no more than the history of what becomes of
this. If it is extinguished at an early stage he remains
mere animal. If he develops slightly he reaches the
status of animal-man, while a higher stage discloses
him as typical man and the highest and completest
development raises him to the human class. The
entire process is a constant growing or becoming along
psychical lines.
Man is at first appalled by his conception of infinite
space, by the idea of immensity, by the thought of vast
planets whirling through silent and immeasurable space.
In its presence he at first regards himself as a mere
atom of no sort of value or dignity, but on reflection he
becomes aware that this feeling is the result of his own
powers of imagination, his capacity to project himself
out into the vast universe, and that such a power is
greater than all that it contemplates. It is indeed
absolutely different in kind. The day that a man can
conceive of such things he is greater than the things,
however great and impressive they may be. Greater
than the most marvelous cathedral is the mind of man
that can conceive and create the marvel and that, not
content with the greatest achievements of the past,
can dream and plan still greater marvels. Greater
than the planet on which he lives is man, who, by think-

130 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
ing, discovers the law of its motion, measures its size,
gets its relative position as to sun, moon and other
planets. Great as they are, these move obedient to
that force which rises to consciousness in man. They
are mere unconscious matter, absolutely outranked by
intelligent, conscious mind. Spiritual man need never
be abashed or astounded by the vastness of the
material universe, or by the dynamic intensity of
physical forces, for he has that within him which is
greater, — spirit. He may calmly and serenely behold
all the impressive manifestations of force, for he is
himself the climax of those very manifestations.
Until, however, the potential capacity develops, so
that in his human estate he becomes an effective
incarnation of spirit, he truly is no more than a bit of
animated dust, no more than an insect, resting on the
globe as it flies through illimitable space. Until such
development he is conscious of nothing, knows nothing
and ranks in no way above other forms of matter. It
is in spiritual manifestations — in intelligence, reason,
consciousness — that he finds the solution of the riddle,
of which indeed he knows nothing till he has the means
of mastering it. In the use of his psychic force, in the
study of this same force as it is, and has been for ages,
manifested by the men of his race, he finds the only
solution of the enigma of life. In the universe there
is nothing greater than mind, nothing else indeed that
is in the same class. The scientific method, the rational

SPIRIT. 131
use of experience, of inference from careful observa
tions, of hypothesis and verification — all is but the
operation of spirit on its march towards the intellec
tual conquest of the world, never to be permanently
checked so long as the human race survives. Spirit
created civilization, has maintained it, has caused it to
progress and develop and will carry it on to its trium
phant conclusion. To have a firm belief that there
will be progress along all the higher lines; that with
this, and preparatory to it, the masses of men are
steadily to receive more and more of the good things of
life; to believe in the certainty of scientific development;
in the growth of undogmatic religion; in a steady
movement towards ordered and regulated freedom —
is to believe in spirit as a real and vital force.
As to its essential nature spirit is, and has ever been,
the great enigma, which all philosophies and all theolo
gies have sought to comprehend and explain. In all
the ages the men who have secured the most effective
development have conceded as a self-evident fact the
superiority of the psychical and have called it divine.
It is thus that all ideas of divinity have come to man.
The spiritual, rational or psychical side of life is the
divine, for, when we penetrate to their essential sig
nificance, all these terms become interchangeable.
Man will never, by any searching, find out what
spirit essentially is, for it is the ultimate mystery. To

132 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
penetrate to the secret of physical life would not touch
the matter in the least degree, for it is not a question
of physical life but of the pecuhar force resident in a
peculiar form of that life. It is not merely how a
certain quantity of matter can be alive but how that
living thing can have such a transcendent capacity as
is displayed by man in his highest estate. Physical
life is one manifestation of force and it is probable that
aU the laws of its genesis may be discovered by man,
but spirit is another and essentiaUy greater mani
festation, the presence of which may enable man to
reach the secret of physical life, but his capacity to
investigate is a vastly greater thing than the physical
life itself. Spirit in man is the climax of force mani
festations.

CHRISTUS.
Spirit appears in man as potential capacity that may
be developed under a fitting environment. This capacity
is merely power to develop and grow, and always, in
order to stimulate and nourish it, there is need of
suitable conditions. If these are never supplied, then
spirit can never disclose its presence, in any noticeable
degree, any more than could a seed, which was never
planted, reveal its peculiar and innate power. This
law is uniform, constant and universal.
We thus readily perceive that spirit, although im
manent in a child, is not sufficient to enable the child,
living alone by itself, to progress and grow into the
true human. Any other animal that we know would
not be essentiaUy different in its nature if it were brought
up from its birth apart from aU of its kind, but a child
thus situated would become not a human type nor
even a true man type, but rather a beast with human
faculties no doubt hidden beneath but with no hope of
ever developing those faculties into true humanity.
We see, indeed, as a plain fact that development is
entirely under the control of the influences exerted by
the society in which the child may chance to live. These

134 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
constitute the environment or conditions necessary
for effective development. Were you to ask me to
describe how to make an ear of corn, I could only direct
you to get a kernel of corn as absolutely the first and
most necessary step, then to plant it in proper soil and
care for it sedulously, which would be merely placing
in its true environment a kernel which potentiaUy
had in itself the whole secret and which was waiting
for its opportunity to develop. Not otherwise, in the
slightest degree, is the creation of an intelligent, reflect
ing man. You must have a child with the proper
potential capacity, and as to the possession of such
power by him you have, and can have, nothing to do
any more than you can have anything to do with the
kernel of corn and its possession of peculiar properties.
In each case, if we assume this initial potential capacity,
a stimulating environment must do aU the rest for the
child as for the corn.
But, it is asked, how did this environment ever come
into existence? If a group of children, isolated strictly
from all influences external to themselves, become mere
savages, how did it ever happen that there were in
this world anything but savages? If such children
cannot to-day elevate themselves in any appreciable
degree, how was it ever done by other simUar chfldren?
How can the race have a power which no individual
member possesses? The explanation is that the child
has merely a potential capacity which at first develops

CHRISTUS. 135
very slowly, so that no group of children, if unaided,
could advance very far in a single or even in a dozen
generations. It may all be illustrated by the matter
of language. Children, being isolated and never hearing
a word spoken, certainly would not be able to develop
a language of even the most rudimentary character.
The sounds they would make would be mere gibberish.
Yet the same children, placed in a proper social en
vironment, learn in a few years to speak the language
that surrounds them and they learn by mere imitation.
The child can thus gather in a brief period what it
took the race ages to create and evolve. It enters
into the fruitage of all the past labors of the race,
acquiring easily what the race acquired slowly and pain-
fuUy. The original progenitors of the child had no
more capacity than the chUd has now, if as much, but
they had that which enabled the evolution to begin
and continue until it reached its present development.
A chUd cannot create a language, yet his race can and
has done so, but it may have taken ten thousand years
to do it. What we have as language is therefore a
racial product and is of inestimable value. To explain
it we are forced to recognize the presence in man of
a unique force possessed by him alone. The pure
animal type never evolves anything of the sort in the
same way or degree. All that constitutes our social
and psychical environment has been laboriously evolved
by the race in the same way that language was.

136 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Hence, in order to secure any result in the lifetime
of a single child, some external influence must cooperate
to enable the child to use and develop its immanent
capacity. This influence is exerted by society, that is
to say, by coUective humanity acting through parents,
preachers, teachers and friends; through churches,
schools, courts of law, books and all the multifarious
agencies of society for reaching and affecting the in
dividual, who may now readily cover in the course of
some hours' reading an extent of knowledge which it
has taken the race long centuries to acquire.
Thus collective humanity is the real and effective
cooperator with spirit in countless ways, and this
agency is symbolized as Christus. A person, who
develops into true human, becomes an incarnation of
certain qualities, becomes an example disclosing those
qualities in a living organism which serves as a guide
to those who have the capacity to appreciate it. Such
a person has power to stimulate, to inspire, to quicken
the ambition and impulses of another less developed
person of his own type. Each individual is potentiaUy
human by reason of the presence of spirit. If this
develops and he becomes human in the high sense of
that term, then he becomes a part of the Christus,
that is, he becomes an example to others, a visible
incarnation of that character or type of living which
is caUed Christian. God immanent becomes at last
God individualized or incarnated and the sum of aU

CHRISTUS. 137
these individuations is caUed the Christus. The true
human is thus God incarnated, each individual being
partial, incomplete and fragmentary, but the sum of
aU is the degree of fulness in which at the time God
has found visible spiritual expression. Relatively to
you, Christus is God as manifested in all humanity
outside of yourself, that is to say, God as external,
whfle spirit is that manifestation of God of which you
are conscious within yourself, that is to say, God inti
mate and personal to you. In a proper relation to
Christus lies aU your chance or hope of growth into the
truly human life, which is figuratively spoken of as
the hope of glory. It is only as the spirit rises to con
sciousness in a man that he can respond to the Christus,
or the spirit as it is in others. This affords the only
basis for reaching and influencing him. All such men,
who mutuaUy influence each other, are brothers in the
unity of this common spirit. Every true human life
is thus a visible, concrete expression of a spiritual
idea, and Christus becomes a term denoting the eternal
force as manifested in all true human character,
embracing every man who has been or is good, noble,
pure and true from the beginning of history to this
very day. It sweeps in every sublime and glorious
human character in every age and every race.
The influence of social environment operates as a
pressure tending to force a man out of himself into the

138 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
larger hfe of the whole society in which he lives, whereby
he insensibly obeys its dictates and becomes what it
makes of him. Its ideals, maxims and aspirations
become his by mere absorption. In a developed society
there are countless environments existing side by side,
aU colored in a degree by the dominant note of the
total environment and yet all essentially distinct.
In one of these each man lives and that environment
he reflects in his main ideal and character, while he
is necessarily affected, in a measure, by that greater
and more complex environment which is the product
of aU forces as they clash together. Each man is thus
the reflection of his special and general environment.
His individual innate capacity to be acted on, his
sensitivity, his power to absorb and take as his own
possession, determines the degree in which he represents
and incarnates all this.
The highest spiritual environment, which is the most
distinct and apart from all the others, lies essentiaUy
in all the noblest literature of all the past and present.
It is kept alive, increased and transmitted from age
to age, by all those institutions which by its own in
herent energy have been called into existence for its
service. It is always held and guarded as a sacred
depositum by those living men who have been nourished
by it and have become visible incarnations of it. The
total spiritual environment, which regards not time
nor place nor individuals, but is the product of

CHRISTUS. 139
aU times, aU places and all men who in the past or
present have incarnated and expressed it, is the essential
Christus, while the men, who now incarnate and express
it, are coUectively the living Christus. This essential
Christus, the total expression of the human soul in
aU history, is a vital force molding and fashioning the
present. It is the priceless heritage of every successive
generation and to this each new age adds its con
tribution of psychical expression and passes on.
The one controlling mission and work of all the ages
has been the creation and development of the essential
Christus. AU else is subsidiary and ephemeral, im
portant only as it helps or hinders this, for the end
of aU social living, the essential purpose for which
all institutions are created, is to render possible the
individual whose inteUigence has been aroused, whose
wiU has been disciplined, whose conscience has been
enlightened. Such a man, strong and sane, positive
and aggressive, free to initiate and to carry to com
pletion, constantly developing power to act wisely,
as he ever grows in self-control and in the more perfect
use of his faculties to psychical ends, — this is the truly
religious man, the ripe fruit of all the past and present.
He it is that is saved, redeemed, regenerated and fiUed
with grace, for he is child of the eternal spirit. This
it is that he manifests and incarnates. The rise of
these men is the rise of the Christus and so far as they
influence and control society it is human and Christian.

140 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Man owes his development to the pressure of this
universal or coUective humanity on his individual
nature. He is no sooner born than the world around
him begins to act upon him. Its action lasts to the
end of his life and enters into everything. AU that
he can truly call his own is his energy, his vigor and
his wiU. AU his knowledge or wisdom is simply that
portion of the world's accumulation which he has been
able to absorb and make his individual possession.
To him at birth is offered this wisdom of the ages.
It is offered freely, without money and without price.
All he has to do is to accept it and by persistent effort
make it his own, without other limit than that fixed
by his capacity. InteUectuaUy and spiritually he is
heir to aU the preceding races of men. He inherits
the ideas of aU men and of aU centuries. They are his
as truly as if he were sole heir. He may enter into and
absorb as his own the result of all their strivings, their
questionings, observations, experiences and reflections
made for ages before he was born.
This is the noble heritage of the individual man, and
the entire value of life to him is determined by the
manner in which he accepts it, the extent to which he
works to appropriate it. Of himself, standing isolated
and alone, he can compass nothing. He must reach
out and come in touch with this mind of collective
humanity which is to him none other than the mind
universal — Christus — the revealed mind of God. He

CHRISTUS. 141
compasses this by studying all that has been said and
done by the human race. As by study and reflection
he comes into harmony with this, absorbing and making
it a part of himself, he takes on power and becomes
great, noble, worthy, commanding. This is his only
source of psychical food, inspiration and stimulus.
Without this he starves and dies intellectually and
spirituaUy. He enters into harmonious relation with
God by coming into such relation with Christus, the
collective mind of the race. So far as the individual
is concerned aU that he knows of God is acquired in
this way. If he but opens his mind to the literature
of the great past he is touched by countless invisible
and immortal influences. Into him flows the stream
that had its rising in a thousand different springs all
coming from one common source. He thus enters into
relations with all those who have gone before him.
Across intervening centuries they touch and inspire
him, rousing him to zeal and activity, quickening his
mind by countless suggestions.
Man, pervaded by spirit, may be compared to a
magnetized bar of iron. If that be thrust into a heap
of sand which contains iron filings scattered through
it, though they are hardly discernible to the eye, they
are attracted and held together. The mere iron bar
in its natural state would have no such power, but,
when permeated by that subtle force that renders it

142 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
a magnet, the isolated atoms are gathered together
until it is encrusted and hidden thereby. So a man,
crude and undeveloped, selects and appropriates nothing,
whatever wealth of ideas may be within his reach;
but, spiritualized and thrust into the literature of
humanity and into touch with its living exponents,
he absorbs and draws unto himself the scattered bits
of truth until his whole thought is energized and trans
formed by what it has attracted. It is aU due to the
subtle force which is the cause and the explanation
of the attraction and coherence. Without this force,
which is spirit, and this environment into which he
is thrust, which is the Christus, the man is powerless
and dead as is the bar of iron in its natural condition.
Man becomes dynamic as he is fiUed by spirit, and not
otherwise, and in proportion as he becomes thus ener
gized and filled with power he becomes and is a part of
the living Christus.
As the magnet, however powerful, can only attract
to itself its own kind, so the Christus can only operate
on individuals who are already sufficiently developed
to be at least conscious of its appeal, and this adequate,
though minimum development, is always the result
of education and training, using those terms in their
broadest and most inclusive meaning. With reference
to a multitude of wooden objects the magnet is not
effectively present, as such, but, relatively to them,
it is merely an inert piece of metal. It is present as

CHRISTUS. 143
a magnet, as the center of a field of electrical force,
only to those bodies which are capable of receiving the
reaction of that force, which means power to respond to
its magnetic appeal. It is ready to operate, and it will,
and indeed it must, operate whenever it comes within
range of what has a true affinity for it and never other
wise. Until such objects come within the field of its
influence the power of the magnet cannot in any degree
be demonstrated. Nor can the iron filings, although in
every way fitted by nature to respond, prove this as
a fact until they come into proper relation to a present
magnet. Therefore the constant aim of the Christus
is to train, educate and develop men so as to bring
more and more of them within the radius of its effective
influence, which means more and better civilization
as the masses of men are uplifted and in any degree
spiritualized. Such extension of itself, implying growth
of its power by wider diffusion, is the divine mission of
the Christus.
By the term " Christus " we have designated that frac
tion or minority of mankind which represents all that
is noblest and best, the flower, the crowning glory of
the race. We say that wherever there is a true, good
and pure character; wherever there is a high and noble
ideal; wherever there is compassion, justice and
equity; wherever, finally, there is a human influence
that uplifts and redeems — there is a disclosure of the

144 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Christus, who thus is not an isolated historical character
but a racial possession from the beginning of history
until this day.
The individuals who, taken coUectively, constitute
the figurative body of this Christus and render it a
present and vital force are therefore caUed Christians,
a term which indicates the possession of true human
qualities and characteristics. When inteUigently used the
words " Christian " and " human " are interchangeable,
and of late years there has been a tendency towards
the perception of this by multitudes of men.
Whatever may be the creeds and formulas of men,
whatever may be their theories and dogmas, there is
something in the man who has become human which
compels him to see and feel his essential kinship with other
humans despite all social, racial or ecclesiastical badges
and barriers of separation. He instinctively feels
that these are artificial and recognizes the community
of spirit as alone real and true. Thus it comes to pass
that those, who formaUy exclude each other by their
public declaration of faith, privately fraternize on
terms of the freest mutual recognition of the essential
unity of the spirit in each. Thus, as the human element
in the character of individuals becomes more real and
true, this tendency operates with more and more force
and breaks down more and more the artificial barriers
ignorantly created between good and true men. Thus
the increase of the genuine spirit of humanity wiU

CHRISTUS. 145
in the end prove destructive of aU institutions based
on formulas which seek to separate and divide those
who are truly members of one family, particles of one
body. This meaning of the term " Christian " has universal
apphcation reaching all ages and all countries, and
always essentiaUy designating one quality of living,
which is not tested by cleverly drawn creeds or by any
artificial or arbitrary rules whatever, but is felt and
recognized in that subtle and mysterious way in which
always and everywhere spirit responds to spirit by the
law of its own peculiar nature. He who is human knows
when he meets a disclosure of the human spirit and he
does not need any certificate from any one to teU him
that it is so. Nor can any declaration by any authority,
however imposing, prevent or control his inner con
sciousness of the fact, however much, in his public
behavior, he may feel compelled to bow to the dictates
of such authority. It is a sign of our imperfect humanity
that so many deny in public what they so freely concede
in private.

VI.
CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM.
We have considered Christus as an essential element
in the development of the race, operating always,
whether recognized by man or not, as the cause of
progress towards human conditions. Christus is in fact
ever present as a subtle, psychical activity and tends
to lead the individual to a degree of development where
he may see the true law of that development and so be
able consciously to cooperate with it for his own good.
When man reaches some perception of the truth
and begins to discern the law of his life he uses symbols
that may serve to represent it and bring to the mind
its salient features. He creates an ideal, typical person
and develops figures of speech to symbolize and typify
the underlying truth, expressing abstract thoughts
in living personal terms, gathering whole volumes of
utterance into a word or phrase which shaU connote
and imply the entire system of thought.
As convenient and even necessary as symbols, types
and figures have been, their use has always been attended
by great danger. They have usuaUy been perverted,
have often led to a worship of the symbol instead of
an intelligent perception of the idea symbolized. They

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 147
have often become so invested with a halo of super
stition that the original idea has been lost from sight.
There would, however, seem to be no reason why this
should always be so. Man ought certainly to be able
to personalize his ideals without losing the substance
and underlying reality. He ought to be able to use all
the resources of art, so as to bring the truth more
forcibly to the mind without ever forgetting what that
truth reaUy is. These resources ought to aid him to
feel the truth in a way that mere prosaic utterance
can never do and yet they should never substitute
imagination and fancy for the truth itself. So far as
it does this, aU symbolism is an evil.
The constant observation by man of the great spectacle
of human hfe, forcing him to think of all that it mani
fests in the way of powers and qualities, leads him
inevitably to see in aU this the presence of certain
very remarkable fixed and permanent elements, and
these in time fashion themselves into an ideal person
ality, which stands as the embodiment of these remark
able racial powers and qualities. All human life thus
tends to fuse itself into one ideal person, who exemplifies
or typifies aU that has been manifested by countless
individuals living in all countries and all centuries.
The steady persistence of the type, despite the constant
shifting of the individuals who give it visible expression,
seems to constitute a reality to which we may give a

148 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
name which shaU connote and imply, in the way that
aU symbols do, these permanent racial qualities and
powers. The Christus becomes thus typical of all
that has been represented by the human minority
throughout the ages. It connotes all its aspirations;
its heroic devotion to duty; its countless sacrifices
made to further worthy and noble purposes; its sorrow
over the evil and sin in the world and its effort for
the amelioration of conditions. We see human beings
going into plague-stricken regions, facing death in its
most repulsive forms, seeking to relieve the misery and
woe of degraded men. We see them enduring ostracism,
persecution, and laying down life itself in countless
cases through fidelity to ideals. We see them thrown
into dungeons, burnt at the stake, hunted down like
wild beasts by cruel, passionate, vindictive men, acting
in the name of religion, and aU because this minority
represented the craving of humanity for freedom to
develop its inherent capacity and work out its divine
mission. We see that it is this human minority that
in all ages has counseled, admonished, rebuked and
consoled the world. It has been the mouthpiece of
wisdom and truth, the angel of mercy, the herald of
righteousness, the beacon light amidst the angry and
dangerous waves of passion and appetite.
Read the record of humanity and see how steadily,
everywhere and in aU ages, this pathetic element appears;
how persistent and continuous in its manifestation,

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 149
despite aU its defeats and sufferings, and we finally
create an ideal character which sums this aU up and
typifies the maximum of all human endeavor, — an ideal
impossible of fuU realization by any single individual
but lofty and sublime, a racial creation, a racial ideal,
a racial reality.
MiUions of true humans have contributed by their
heroic exertions, by their patient development of the
capacity immanent in them, by their pathetic endurance
of the contumely and scorn of men, and it is to them that
we are indebted for that ideal which we caU the Christus.
Countless lives sacrificed voluntarily on the altar of
high ideals give to this name its profound reality.
It connotes aU that is most valuable and precious in
the world, aU civilization, law, literature, science and
religion; aU that is refined, kindly, generous and sympa
thetic. It has more meaning than any other single
word in the language of man. To see its fuU significance
and feel its implications would adequately reward
years of study and thought.
The birth and growth of the Christus is reaUy the
rise of the human spirit shown in the first dim disclosures
and in the slow development of the spiritual element
in the life of man. Of aU this, history is the partial
and incomplete record whereby, however, we clearly
see that spirit is not a power exercised over man but
in man and through man. Spirit slowly evolved its
own cooperative agency, so that Christus may be figura-

150 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
tively said to be "bom of the spirit" in a way which
is hid in those dim regions before history existed. Nor
did Christus spring from any other element than spirit,
and so it is true, figuratively, that he had no father,
for our present human status is purely the result of
psychical activity without need of any extraneous
aid to explain the facts. Starting with the tiniest and
slightest sort of manifestation it has aU unfolded in
one unbroken continuity of psychical activity to this
very day, containing in itself the law of its own
progress. Mankind may be regarded as a colossal unit, growing
out of the unquestioned power of the race to gather
and absorb into its present life the results of the past,
which are thus perpetuated. This is no mere figure of
speech but a brief statement of a very comprehensive
fact. Mankind is a single continuous stream of con
scious being. The successive generations of men are
days in the life of this colossal racial man. As the
particles of the individual man's body are constantly
changing, without disturbing or breaking the con
tinuity of the individual existence, so individuals
are bom into this racial body, form a part of it for a
few years and, dying, pass out of it, while aU the time
the race maintains its organic unity and solidarity.
The individual contributes the result of his life work;
the race absorbs it and is in some degree affected by it.

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 151
The man dies but his work lives on, for the heir of all
his intellectual and spiritual wealth is the race.
The discoveries, inventions and enterprises of every
sort in the different epochs of history are the work of
this colossal man. The philosophic speculations, the
scientific theories, the ethical and religious analyses of
the problems of experience, are his thoughts. History is
his autobiography. The state of society discloses his
manners, his temperament and character. He grows
in knowledge and in visible size just as the indi
vidual man does. He had his days of infancy when
he had no thoughts, no works, no capacity and no
character. He grew slowly and improved just as any
child does and for the same reason, because, like the
chUd, he could to-day keep the results attained yester
day and thus had always a consciousness of racial
unity hnking aU ages and centuries with the latest.
He has made and continues to make his mistakes
and blunders, suffers because of them, tries to find out
the causes and hereafter to avoid a repetition. He
has had his haUucinations, his mad and erratic fancies,
his outbursts of chivalry, his illnesses and diseases,
sometimes serious, acute and dangerous; and at all
times he is suffering from some indiscretion and lack
of judgment. After aU these centuries he has only
reached the early stage of adolescence. He is now
vigorous, keen, headstrong, impulsive, enterprising
and at times shows a reaUy sane and inteUigent spirit.

152 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
What he has done promises glorious things for the
future when he shaU have reached the stage of racial
manhood. As a child has for many years no appreciable intellect
or spiritual force, so it was with this colossal racial
child. He had, however, the germ which would develop
under the right conditions, at the right time and in a
normal way. The rise of aU this in the colossal racial
man is the rise of Christus, who typifies the soul and
spirit, the head and the heart of the race, connoting
aU the visible manifestations of its psychical capacity.
"To some this colossal man, this aggregate person
ality, may seem to be merely a figure of speech, and
yet that alone is the personahty which, in any tme
sense, may be said to exist in the image of God. Not
this or that individual man but the universal manhood
with its unity in its multitudinousness, its unbroken
continuity, its self-related and various internal life,
its incessant movement and ever-expanding vitality,
its unity and yet its manifold diversity, its complexity
within its simplicity — that is the man existent as God's
image, the study of which may open upon the mind
of the individual some conception of the divine."
The spiritual part of the race is humanity. AU
else passes away leaving no record. History is made on
its nobler side by a smaU cluster of men. The rest
only live and die mere pawns on the world's chess
board. In each generation a few men write the liter a-

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 153
ture, do the great deeds, utter the inspiring thoughts,
sound the key-note of the day and stand in aU sub
sequent ages as its representative men. They enrich,
expand and make more vivid the world's vision of
the Christus. They are the soul of their generation,
the vital and spiritual element without which the man,
colossal as he is, would be merely animated flesh.
Christus also stands for another idea, which for ages
has been referred to as the Messiah. This is not a
mere fancy, a bit of poetry or imagination, but a reality
which underlies all our life and without which man's
days would be almost unbearable. It is not a dream or
a vision, but is an element of our daily life, ever present
even with those who do not clearly analyze their environ
ment so as to discern its tme significance and contents.
Always the individual in his hours of perplexity and
danger looks for the fellow-man who shall deliver him,
who shaU say the right and the wise word, shaU give
the sage counsel, shaU evolve the clever plan whereby
the present evU shaU be removed. Realizing his own
personal weakness, he stiU feels that somewhere there
is the man who is strong, the man who understands,
who can explain, who can so act as to save him and
his. He believes that somewhere, among aU his feUows,
this man is concealed. If he could only find him all
would be well, and so he seeks the priest or doctor or
lawyer or noted expert or wise and judicious friend

154 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
and, despite his failure to realize all his hopes and
secure aU that he desires, he stiU gets enough to keep
alive his faith and make him just as expectant the next
time he is in trouble. As the years roU by, men see
that this caU upon their feUows yields more and more
results and more and more justifies this faith.
This feeling in each man that in his feUows he has an
unfailing refuge and an inexhaustible store of strength
which shaU somehow be equal to aU his emergencies
results, in the race as a whole, in the idealization of
this faith, in a sort of instinctive belief, which becomes
a steady expectation of some one who shaU do great
things for man in his wretchedness. Every problem
seems to be merely waiting for the man who shaU
come and solve it. Every fact seems to be merely
waiting for its interpreter. Every disease seems only
to await the patient investigator who shaU penetrate
its secret, conquer it and destroy one more enemy of
man. Everywhere government is merely waiting for
the men who shaU place it on an ideal and final basis
for the common good of aU. Men feel that in some way
evil is to be overcome and aU look eagerly for those
who, it is felt, are certainly coming with ability enough
to compass it. Such is the common attitude of men
in daily life. AU, however depressed, are looking for
great results in the future from men more capable than
themselves, upon whose efforts they blindly pin their
faith. They do not know even the names of these men,

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 155
but they are sure that somewhere they are working
and that some day conditions wiU be made better
because of it. In aU this really lies the light, the hope
and the solace of man in his misery.
This popular feeling inevitably gives rise to the
racial ideal corresponding to it, which is all summed
up in the words, "the coming of the Messiah, who is
the Christus." This connotes a great reality and rightly
it is ineradicable from the minds of men, for it is reaUy
a faith in humanity and rests on an instinctive per
ception of the as yet absolutely unfulfilled powers
that lie in human kind. The expectation is of those
great things yet to come from man's inteUigent use of
his mysterious capacity. The commonest man feels
this and blindly pins his hope on it. However he
distrusts his own powers, he still believes in the illimit
able resources of his race.
The Messiah has thus always been coming, is now
coming and ever wiU be coming, more and more justi
fying the faith and expectancy of men. This coming
is an age-long process. The Messiah is as much an
idea of to-day as it was thousands of years ago, and so
it wiU ever remain. However far we progress there
wiU always be the Ulimitable beyond. However good
we become there is always the better ahead of us.
Whatever man compasses there will always remain the
greater thing yet to be expected, the clearer thought,
the saner philosophy, the more acute analysis, the more

156 THE GREEK GOSPEL
profound interpretation. That humanity wiU move
steadUy in this direction, and more and more manifest
itself as the light and glory of the world, is wrapped up
in the symbolic language " the coming of the Messiah,"
which connotes a permanent factor in our life, the factor
of hope and faith in the as yet undeveloped possi
bilities of humanity.
Christus is the tme and only Judge of the world,
connoting and typifying the highest ethical standard
existent in the sensitive, educated and spirituaUy
developed portion of the race. The approval of our
conduct by Christus is merely the verdict of those
who represent to us the noblest human qualities, the
verdict of the virtuous minority, inteUigent, earnest,
discriminating and judicial. This we seek, while we dis
regard the clamor of the uninstructed and passionate mul
titude. Every court of law is in theory the judgment bar
of the human conscience, where Christus should preside.
The term also typifies that ceaseless human effort
through aU the ages to instruct the ignorant, to dis
cipline and develop the powers of the child, to quicken
into life the dormant spirit, to transmit to the future
the intellectual heritage of the past. Every school and
place of learning is a nursery of the spirit conceived and
maintained by Christus as the Teacher of the race.
He also typifies that human sympathy and com
passion which ever seeks to reclaim the erring; which

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 157
in the midst of brutal degradation ever pleads for
chastity, purity and temperance; which ever seeks
to relieve suffering and distress even when caused
by foUy, perversity and the clearest disobedience of
advice kindly and inteUigently given. Every hospital
and home of refuge stands in the name of Christus,
the Healer and Consoler, who connotes aU the
philanthropists, aU the medical and hygienic investi
gators and teachers, aU the noble and devoted army
of doctors and nurses.
Christus also typifies the entire intellectual life of the
race on its nobler side, appearing as man's Guide to aU
wisdom and truth, being the glorious company of the
phflosophers, the patient truth seekers in the fields of
science, the conscientious historians, the students seek
ing after the laws of social, political and industrial life,
aiming at the amelioration of man's condition. They
are aU manifestations of one spirit. Each, by foUowing
the bent of his genius, is causing the world to have
more knowledge, deeper convictions, profounder ideas.
AU this becomes possible because man has, so to
speak, spiritual eyes which enable him to discern moral
and spiritual things. These eyes need the light whereby
they may become able to exercise their proper and
normal functions. Christus is the spiritual Light of
the World. Each true human being is thus a part
of the light, a candle of God, being the only agency by
which the divine radiance is spread abroad.

158 the greek gospel.
The man who from his birth should be secluded
from aU his kind might indeed have a spiritual eye,
but he would sit in darkness until he were led out into
contact with his race, that is, until he were brought
to Christus. To him this would be salvation. He that
had sat in darkness would have seen a great Ught, and
this hght would necessarily be education, moral training
and discipline coming to him at the hands of his own
feUow-men, from whom until then he had been sepa
rated. Salvation would be union with the human part
of his race, separation from which meant for him in-
teUectual, spiritual and social death. Whatever feUow-
man rescued him from his seclusion and educated him
would truly be his savior and redeemer.
Every child at birth is helpless and depends on
others for all his early guidance and training. If he
falls into the hands of those who are depraved, vicious
and ignorant, who selfishly abuse him for their own pur
poses, he is figuratively in the hands of the Devil and
may grow into conditions of life which constitute HeU.
The chUd who is carefully trained, who is brought into
touch with the noblest social influences, who is educated
so as to be able to absorb the world's best thought, who
is confronted with the highest ideals of his race, is tmly
in the hands of Christus, as his Savior, and may grow
into those conditions of life which constitute Heaven.
Christus thus symbolizes Opportunity for escape
from animalism into the human or heavenly conditions,

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 159
the chance to develop and grow from crudeness to
the full fruitage of high character. The three con
ditions of such development are these: That the child
shaU have an innate capacity to cooperate, a certain
receptivity or sensitivity due to the presence of spirit;
that he shaU then have the opportunity to cooperate
by having a suitable environment; and then that he
shall actuahy cooperate. If any one of these three
elements be entirely absent there wiU and can be no
development. Humanity assumes that each child
has the capacity, seeks to lead him to Christus or to
present to him the opportunity and then is forced to
let him work out his own salvation.
We may offer to a man aU wisdom, but if by his
personal endeavor he will not or cannot appropriate
and absorb it or a part of it, then for him it is reaUy
non-existent. He shall sit in darkness though he be
surrounded by a great light, for none can save him.
He must arise and by his own effort secure the prize.
He must at least be able to accept what is offered. He
must be able to assimilate and digest, for none other
may do this for him. Children, however, as a class are
indisposed to aU such exertion, so that it is almost
universaUy tme that a chUd starts on the path of de
velopment and pursues it for some time solely because
of the pressure, stimulus and inspiration furnished by
its immediate environment. Except, then, as Christus
in the guise of parent, teacher and friend takes the

160 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
child and leads it, there is, as a rule, little use made
of innate capacity and little benefit received from an
environment, however rich and admirable it may be.
One of the permanent elements in all social life in
aU ages is the struggle of the ideal to assert itself and
live in the presence of an arrogant ecclesiasticism,
a selfish commercialism and a coarse materialism.
Everywhere the best seems to have been persecuted
because it was the best, because it rebuked this arro
gance, selfishness and coarseness of man. This shows
us Christus as suffering, as persecuted, as dying igno-
miniously by the hands of men who could not see the
beauty of the ideal. Countless times has this occurred.
Countless human lives have paid the price of human
progress. This has been one of the most distinctive
characteristics of true human experience and so
Christus Dolorosus, suffering, lonely and isolated, is
a most pathetic figure, truly symbolizing so many men
who always and everywhere have faced the penalty of
their exceUence.
There are times when every man who has devoted
himself to the higher interests of life feels ashamed
in the presence of triumphant and arrogant worldli
ness, feels that his culture and his love of the good and
beautiful is less effective and less productive than the
more common-place striving for political, social and
ecclesiastical honors. In aU this it is the Christus of
whom he is ashamed, and, when he is taunted by those

CHRISTIAN symbolism. 161
who are really flippant and superficial, he is often
inclined to forget this and to deny his allegiance to
the ideal which has been in very truth his Lord and
Master. Every man has at times felt this shame and
has thus denied his Lord — a pitiable surrender to
the vulgar crowd, but he cannot on occasion help it
because he is so conscious of his isolation, so impressed
by a sense of his weakness as he stands alone against
such an aggressive mass of men, united by appetite
and passion, by current ambitions and the prevalent
spirit of greed. Popular success, and the consequent
applause of one's feUows, is, and ever wiU be, dear
to every man and the loss of it wiU not be met without
pain. It is this very pain that is symbohzed by the
Cross and it is necessarily felt by every man in pro
portion as he is a part of the Christus. It is indeed the
sight of this Cross that makes cowards of us aU. It is
no dream but it is one of the great facts in the history
of the world.
Not in one place alone but everywhere, not only in
aU the past but in the present, we may see tme human
heroes who have been despised and rejected of men.
They are the martyrs of philanthropy, the martyrs of
science, the martyrs of literature, the martyrs, indeed,
of progress in all the higher walks of life, for, by being
loyal to the very best that is in him, a man is forced
to antagonize certain ideas which are dominant in his
day and, for this, he must in some way suffer. This,

162 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
then, is his cross which he must bear as the result of
his ideals. If he is not actively persecuted he at least
stands as an alien, isolated because he is out of sympathy
with his immediate environment. Progress has been
marked by a series of men who have been, so to speak,
crucified by their feUows but reverenced and followed by
the generations that came after. The light had shone in
the darkness and the darkness had comprehended it not.
Christus is entitled to the Kingship of the world and
this primacy or headship flows from the very nature
and constitution of the race. The only righteous rule
is that of the human element and this alone tmly
makes for man's happiness, so that the hope of all
men, if they could but see this, would be for the ultimate
victory of the human spirit which shaU conquer the
passions of men and establish justice, reason and peace.
All history shows a very slow but a very steady and
persistent tendency in this direction. Social progress
has been marked by constantly broadening rules of
conduct. Ethical ideals steadily become more exalted,
are more and more valued for their own sake and tend
to become more and more a definite and powerful social
impulse. The regeneration of the race lies entirely
in the final recognition of Christus as Rex et Impera-
tor. Man ignorant, prejudiced and selfish, so far as
he now sits on the throne, is merely a usurper of pre
rogatives not truly his and so his reign has been, is
now and always will be marked by corruption, turbu-

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 163
lence and disaster. Thus far the true King has in a
large degree been an exile from the seats of power.
Deposed by the passions of men the tme human is
forced to behold a carnival of selfishness which he is
powerless to prevent.
Misunderstood, unappreciated, jeered at, as he may
be by the vulgar mob, crowned many times with thorns
and pierced by spears, yet, despite it all, ultimate
victory wiU be his, for the history of a hundred genera
tions of men reveals tendency in this direction. How
ever slowly the human manifests its power it wiU finally
vindicate its title to supremacy. Until it controls the
world the old status of chaos and suffering must and
wiU continue, for there is no real, permanent solution
of social, political and industrial problems except the
placing of power where it belongs in the hands of the
best, purest and noblest men of the race who consti
tute and are the human element — the Christus.
Man has in the past thought that he could destroy
the human, but it has always come to a resurrection.
It has always survived, risen from its ashes, vindicated
its title and asserted its dignity and worth. Man may
cmcify humanity, but it will rise again. If streets
were red with the blood of citizens, if homes were
destroyed by law-defying mobs over a large area, re
ducing society to seeming chaos, the student of history
would know that this was merely a temporary break
and that, however disastrous it might then be for famUies

164 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
and individuals, law and order would in time resume
control and that the lesson would in the end make
society wiser, purer and stronger. Slay a bearer of
the human message and in three days another wiU
deliver the message, for grim and undaunted the human
spirit, son of God, goes forth to war with all that is
low or vicious in man. It is essentiaUy invincible.
The end of all is to be, at some very remote period
in the future, Christus Triumphans, for as civiliza
tion advances, the work of the human element accumu
lates and becomes more and more impressive; the
spirit in which it was done graduaUy reaches even the
mind of coarse man; the greatness and value of the
service rendered tends to be more and more realized,
so that the empire of the human dead over aU the living
increases from age to age.
This is the empire of the immortals which embraces
aU the mighty manifestations of the spirit in the great
past. These remain as the precious heritage of the
present and grow in power. The experience of each
generation adds an item to the environment of the
next succeeding generation, to which that has of neces
sity to adjust itself. Thus society by the inevitable
results of its own psychical activity is continuaUy
being forced to modify and improve its environment,
and this constitutes our law of social progress.

VII.
THE TRINITY.
If now we seek for a term which, as a symbol, may
connote and designate this entire conception of cosmic
force, spirit and coUective humanity as Christus, we
find it in the term " Trinity," which may properly imply
all that thus far has been written in the pages of this
book. It does not refer to anything in the nature of
God, but it is merely a term or word invented to
designate the summary of aU our thought about God.
It indicates a systematic and logical arrangement of
such thought, and its value rises from the convenience
of having a symbol which shall thus briefly charac
terize, by a single word, an entire interpretation of
the universe. It merely refers to a clear sense of the
relation that seems truly to exist between the three
ideas of cosmic force, spirit and humanity, and these
ideas aU come to men as the result of observation and
experience. It rests upon what seems to be a reasonable
interpretation of certain unquestionable facts, with
which every man is, or may be, entirely familiar. It
does not involve an attempt to explain things that
are beyond the ken of ordinary men, but deals with
things which a man must see, if he consciously sees

166 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
anything at aU, and it seeks to explain what he is eager
and curious to have explained, if he rises to the level of
reflection about anything beyond mere physical existence.
We do not, therefore, absolutely need to add any
thing to what has been said already, and so, by refer
ence, we include in this chapter aU that precedes it.
We only seek to summarize or restate the matter
so as to bring out more clearly the essential relation
which necessarily subsists between the three ideas
and to show that one symbol may connote and imply
aU of them and at the same time may emphasize this
relationship. It is a trinity of related ideas involving
a relation so essential and necessary that neither idea
can be adequately grasped apart from the others.
SpirituaUy interpreted it is the great and final symbol
of the Christian faith.
The idea or thought of God as cosmic force is the
first of the three ideas which constitute the Trinity
and it is itself complete and final. Nothing can reaUy
be added to it except by way of further explanation
of what is already implicit in this first idea. The two
other ideas simply unfold and develop this, being,
as it were, coroUaries to the main proposition. The
first idea is, then, cosmic force conceived as the tran
scendent, unfathomable source of all things, the
efficient cause of aU life, that which underlies all
phenomena whatsoever. We marvel at the force that

THE TRINITY. 167
is disclosed by a single human genius, for we cannot
fathom it or comprehend it. Try to conceive a force
that equals all human genius, not only as it is now
but as it has been during aU the centuries; not merely
in one department but in aU. Add to this the ceaseless
operation of this force, not only in man but as it is
in animals, insects, birds and fishes; not only as it is
in aU organic life but in aU inorganic forms; not only
in one planet but in aU planets. Tiy to conceive a
force that never fails to operate for a moment of time
in millions of years; that operates with the same exact
ness in planets that are millions of miles apart; that
not only now operates but that always has operated
and that always wiU so operate, absolutely without
any break, suspension or change. Conceive this stu
pendous whole, with its infinite adaptations, its cease
less flow of life in countless forms, aU moving with the
utmost precision, obedient to the same law always and
everywhere throughout aU space and aU time, and this
is the cosmic force or God.
This conception leads man to see that he himself
is a manifestation of this cosmic force, and then it
is altogether from his observation of himself and his
race, from his experience and theirs, that he secures
the two ideas which, added to the first basic idea,
give the trinity of ideas concerning God.
We study cosmic force as it is disclosed in inorganic
life and then as it is in the organic life. In this latter

168 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
we trace out a wonderful expansion until it culminates
in man as having the power of conscious reflection
with aU its consequences. This last disclosure seems
to be unique. An otherwise dumb universe seems to
rise to consciousness in man. This must be due to
the operation of cosmic force in and through man and
so we come to feel that man discloses the force in a
subtle and peculiar phase, which, so far as we can see,
is restricted to the field of human life. We caU this
spirit, but we must always remember that this is not
to imply that it is different from cosmic force but that
it merely connotes that force as it appears operative
in the field of man. Spirit, then, is a term that we use
to designate God as manifested in each man as the source
of aU his enlightenment and psychical capacity, as
the power whereby he is able to understand and appro
priate to himself the example set before him by others
and in his turn to become an example to others. It
is the entire operative force that is and always has been
present in human beings as the cause and explanation of
their humanity. This is the second idea in the Trinity.
Man then perceives that this activity of spirit ap
pears as a process that has always been going on since
the history of man began, for that history is reaUy
but little more than the record of the ceaseless effort
of spirit to reach visible incarnation of itself. This,
indeed, seems to be its necessary mode of expression.
Man in the great aggregate, humanity regarded as one

THE TRINITY. 169
collective whole, represents the degree in which this
incarnation has taken place. The very quality that
constitutes our humanity is our susceptibility to spiri
tual influences. Our sensitivity, our capacity to be
inspired, is what determines our status as human, for
this is the cause of every great and noble thought,
ideal or deed.
In comparison with the whole idea of cosmic force
how small and frail a thing is man, how brief his span,
how puny his powers, and yet in his human estate
he is the highest and crowning manifestation of the
great force itself! That the high type of man as human
is essentiaUy an incarnation of God, through the in
dwelling spirit, gives us our third idea of the Trinity.
Therefore we have: First. God conceived as cosmic
force immanent as law throughout aU nature. To this,
the broadest and most comprehensive idea, men have
given the symbolic name of Father, looking at the uni
versal force as supreme in might, authority and power;
as the source of aU life; as that which protects, nour
ishes and maintains aU that was or is or is to be. The
word " father " came from a root which meant to protect
or preserve, and its ancient meaning was this rather
than actual parentage. The other early ideas connoted
by the term were those of power and authority. In
late Roman law it referred not so much to actual paren
tage as to the legal position as titular head of the famny.

170 the greek gospel.
Indeed it did not necessarily imply parentage at all
nor connote affection or sympathy. The fundamental
idea was that the father was invested with full power
over the family and that this was inherent in the very
nature of things. What he did was necessarily legal
and right. The senators were called Patres, meaning
those who had hereditary right to authority over the
community. A clear iUustration of the ancient mean
ing is still found in the use of the term as applicable to
a priest, for then it merely means rightful authority
and legitimate supremacy over his flock. As a symbol
applied to God it therefore designates the undeniable
power, absolute authority and rightful supremacy of
that mysterious force which in its operation appears to
us as the law of the universe.
Second. God conceived as a force immanent in man
as the potential source of aU psychical capacity. There
is this one universal force to which every man has
potentiaUy free access, whereby each individual man
may become one more of its incarnations, which means
that he may become one more manifestation of the
heroism and grandeur of which human life is capable.
This universal force is within or behind the individual
force and it is this that explains the sanity, poise, self-
control, self-reliance and nobility of character that we
find manifested in individual men. They rest upon
this universal force immanent within them, a source
of inexhaustible, reserved power with which they

THE trinity. 171
are in direct and immediate touch. Of this man is
at first but dimly and obscurely conscious. To develop
this consciousness is his individual life work. To be
come truly and visibly what he is at first only poten
tiaUy is his spiritual task whereby he vindicates once
more the tmth that the divine force can be thus
incarnated in man, and this, in a metaphorical sense, is
to lead his life ad majorem Dei gloriam. To this idea
men have given the symbolic name of Holy Spirit.
Third. God conceived as incarnated in human
beings. The visible result of this is coUective humanity,
which received the symbolic name of the Son. This
again was specifically idealized as Christus, the ideal
or perfect man. In antiquity the term " son," besides
its commonest meaning, also expressed essential affinity,
intimate connection, whether material or spiritual.
Thus sons of the prophets were their disciples, sons of
death were those appointed to die, while sparks were
sons of flame. The term, therefore, connoted some
essential affinity, some intimate connection between
humanity and God. The term " Christus " concentrates
the whole conception in that of the ideal man, the
highest and finest type of human character, which
rests upon aU that has been disclosed as possible by
the actual life of human beings. Thus by using the
term "Trinity" we may refer to Father, Son and Holy
Ghost and so, by a single word, refer to aU that we have
tried to set forth in aU the preceding chapters.

172 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
The Son is not God but is, in some measure, a true
manifestation of God along psychical lines, is therefore
God under human limitations, God so far as that
stupendous force can be incarnated in man. Christus
is not any single individual but is an ideal resulting
from a contemplation of the whole field of human
existence. It is not the less real because of this but the
more real. The term "incarnation" refers not to an
isolated and abnormal fact, not to one single, detached
event in history, but to an age-long process, whereby
every human life is, in a measure, an incarnation of
God. The process is continuous and progressive. Every
age sees more and more human lives that effectively
incarnate the divine force.
All of our civilized life as we now have it is due not
to one incarnation of God but to millions of such in
carnations, to the fact that the universal force can
and does seek to express itself in myriad forms through
the agency of man. Upon this single fact rests aU
that we deem precious, aU that lifts our life above
the level of the insect and animal. AU human living
is the result of this. The only reason why you even
think about this mystery at all is because there is in
you a measure or degree of the subtle force which
is God, which has evolved aU that ever has been or
is, maintains aU that now is, and wiU continue so to
evolve and maintain forever. In this stupendous
evolution you have been evolved and of it you are a

THE TRINITY. 173
part whether you are conscious of it or not. Upon
you plays this force whether you recognize it or not.
If a man rejects it and lives on the animal plane then
spirit has failed to incarnate itself in him in any
effective way and he ranks as the grass of the field,
because, hke that, he has in him no developed psychical
capacity. AU tme and enduring fame won by individual men
rests on the fact that they have in an exceptional
degree manifested the singular potency of spirit, have
disclosed to the race the splendid possibilities of the
humanized life, have shown man's nature, redeemed
from animahsm, as a life glorified, radiant and preg
nant with aU sorts of divine possibilities waiting to
be born.
We never know anything whatever about any ab
stract quality except as we have seen it incarnated
in a human being. Of love, justice, equity, mercy
and sympathy, literaUy every conception we have
rests on these quahties as manifested in some indi
vidual man. Our whole idea of the meaning of the word
"divine" is secured by contemplating the best we have
seen in human life, for all that is best in life is essen
tiaUy spiritual. The possession of genius, as we call
it, renders one man a veritable incarnation of the spirit
of music and we then, for the first time, realize its
possibilities. The orator seems to be an incarnation

174 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
of speech. We marvel at his fluency, wit and pathos
and call it eloquence, but of this no man had so much
as an idea until it had visibly appeared and been demon
strated as a fact. So, too, of the gifted sculptor, painter
and architect. What idea would we have of the possi
bilities in that direction if genius had never created
a cathedral? If it were not for the long procession
of suffering martyrs what would we know of heroic
devotion to an ideal, of the possible abnegation of the
lower self, of unbending consecration of life to the
furtherance of a high purpose? It is not one saint that
has taught us the lesson as an isolated instance, but it
is a steady and unbroken line of them that has dis
closed what is possible for human nature always and
everywhere. The Trinity creates its own evidence and this we
caU the Scriptures, in which is disclosed the mind uni
versal. These are aU the literature made by humanity,
not merely that created by a single race in one definite
historical period but the literature made by the human
element in all races and aU ages. This contains the
tmth so far as man has been able to secure it, and to
this the individual must go as the source of his strength
and the means of his development. Through liter
ature coUective humanity is constantly speaking to
men, conveying its divine message in countless ways.
It operates incessantly as a force to which the human
element of all races and all ages has contributed.

THE TRINITY. 175
As this potential force called spirit develops it gives
rise to reason, which, therefore, in some degree, is man's
distinctive badge, while, in its highly developed and
effective form, it is the marked characteristic of the
human. By careful nurture of this, man secures spiri
tual growth while, in its absence, he does not and
cannot so develop. His sole duty is therefore to
develop reason and to live conformably to it, which
means conformably to the spirit immanent within him,
and, as this spirit is cosmic force or God, it means
living conformably to the will of God, conformably
to the law of the universe. To recognize this law
as existent, as of paramount authority and to obey it
is to be religious, which means the same as being in
a high sense inteUigent and reasonable. The religious
man is therefore one who leads his life sanely, intel
ligently and reasonably. Nothing is more difficult
than this and nothing commands more respect and
admiration. To compass it man needs assistance and this can only
be secured through Christus, for every man who be
comes human owes it to his environment, to the pres
sure upon his individual life of the collective humanity
into which he is born and of which he comes to form
a part. As an isolated individual he would never reach
a conception of God. He is led to it by the Christus
and so, relatively to his personal life, the seemingly
most important element in the Trinity is not the Father

176 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
or the Spirit but the Son, who leads up to the others.
Having done this the Son declares that the Father
and the Spirit are greater than he is, that while he
guides and saves he is but a manifestation of that
towards which he guides and that he does this not by
his own power but because he is the agent through
whom the cosmic force works to lead the individual
to the knowledge of itself as the universal law. Be
cause spirit as reason is immanent in the Son he
summons aU men to obey reason and seeks to guide
them into the reasonable life and is a necessary element
therein, but a part of his mission is finaUy to declare
his own true subordination to the universal reason of
which he is but a partial manifestation.
Thus Christus, while properly and truly exalted
to the highest point of intellectual importance, is
essentiaUy subordinated and claims only to manifest
that ideal character which aU men ought to, attain
and which potentiaUy they are fitted to attain by
obedience to reason. The idea of the Son must be
subordinated to the other ideas. They are eternal
verities while the Son rises in time, is metaphoricaUy
bom of spirit, and may come to an end, for if the race
of men should entirely cease to exist then the Son
would necessarily come to an end, for God would cease
to be manifested in man, and the incarnation would
no longer be an existing fact. Christus is therefore
not God, for humanity is not cosmic force itself, but

THE TRINITY. 177
merely a manifestation of it in time and in the world;
but, in any particular time and in this specific world,
Christus is the climax of all manifestations of cosmic
force and so is the crowning glory of the universe so
far as that is open to men's finite comprehension.
These three ideas, involving a spiritual interpreta
tion of the universe, are the greatest conceptions man
has yet had. As they are aU contained in the single
term " Trinity," that becomes the greatest of all
religious symbols and connotes the highest thought of
the truly human element in all ages. Properly inter
preted it marks the end of false ideas about God.

VIII.
JESUS AS CHRISTUS.
Every race and nation and age has its own peculiar
and characteristic conception of the Christus and so,
in a measure, does each individual man. In every
case it is the result of the special environment, of which
it is the distinct and even unique product. Certain
names come to stand for the type of ideal character
for certain periods and peoples and, as such, become
concrete objects of worship. They then tend to obscure
the larger and nobler conception until it is almost lost
from sight, until its true significance and the law it
represents are utterly forgotten. Thus Abraham, Moses,
Brahma, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Mohammed
and Jesus come to take in the popular mind the place
of the universal Christus, who reaUy is not only aU these
welded together but is a thousand times more.
For the sake of securing, in the clearest and most
impressive manner, this universal conception, I have
deliberately excluded every concrete and restricted
form which it has from time to time tended to take.
All such local conceptions have been and are partial
and imperfect and tend to become mere superstitions.
I have therefore tried to secure a point of view that

JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 179
should allow me to conceive the tmth as universal,
all-inclusive and independent of time and place, seeking
ever to present essential and ultimate Christianity as
it exists and always has existed regardless of any of
its peculiar historic forms. What I have written was
true three thousand years ago or it is not true now.
It did not then, nor does it now, depend on any recog
nition by man, for it was operative and effective ages
before man became aware of it as the universal law.
It is a plain fact that always and everywhere men are
being taught, modified and developed by their en
vironment whether they know it or not and whether
they wiU it or not, and this present spiritual environ
ment, which is the essential Christus, is the total product
of the long human past.
If there is any historic character that cannot readily
be placed in his true relation to the universal law of
development which I have presented, it does not seem
as if any words of mine could be of any avail. If these
pages reflect the history of collective man, many indi
vidual lives must typify and symbolize the racial life
as here analyzed and interpreted.
Christianity, indeed, exists independent of any
individual life, for it rests on the entire life of coUec
tive man. It has been necessary, and it may still be,
to have recourse to the concrete, personal life, the
idealized historical person, as embodying the Christus
idea for the popular mind. This may still be the only

180 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
way in which it is possible to give the idea any potency
with and over masses of men, but beneath all and
behind aU there still remains, and wiU remain forever,
the great catholic ideal whereby the Christus "is not
merely Jesus but is at the same time aU the highest
and divinest men who have had, or now have, his
spirit and who have repeated, or do now repeat, the
essential words of his life. The tmth which alone is
finaUy and absolutely tme is that the Christus has
always been with every soul and with aU the world
from the beginning of man's history. Jesus was
humanity at its best. Everywhere and always there
have been men who could not be satisfied except in
finding out and claiming God, men whose souls told
them that they belonged to God. All these are wit
nesses of that without which Jesus could not have
been, — the oneness, the essential oneness of man's life
with God.
"The highest and divinest men are the most truly
men. They are the men whom we have a right to take
as the true revelation of what man in his essential nature
reaUy is. The higher life to which man comes is in
the tme line of his humanity. It is merely the quicken
ing and fulfiUing of what man by the very essence
of his nature is. The more he becomes irradiated with
divinity the more, not the less, truly he is man. The
fullest Christian experience is simply the fullest life.
Whatever man does in his tme human nature, undis-

JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 181
torted, unperverted, is divinely done. Christian char
acter is nothing but the completed human character.
The Christian is nothing but the tme man. Thus
it is humanity that becomes and is our teacher of
religion, the manifold interpreter of God. The pres
sure of the universal humanity on the individual human
nature is the greatest and broadest approach of God
to man. Jesus is the consummation and fulfilment of
that presentation which God is ever making through
humanity to man. But it is still true that the whole
truth can and must come not to or through one man
but to and through the whole of humanity. Religion
is a quality of the total, undivided human life and
through that alone can it utter itself. God bestows
himself by the great, universal personality of man."
"Now, when we come to the ideas represented by
Jesus in the churches to-day, it is all hopelessly blurred
and indistinct. Underlying it aU there must be a real
personality but it weU nigh passes recognition. At
one time we see a poor Pilgrim, weary, dust-covered,
ready to faint, knocking at a closed and inhospitable
door. In another light we see a wan, pallid, bloodless
figure hanging on a Cross. In another we see a stem
Justice upon a judgment seat surrounded by all the
pomp and circumstance of a great assize. In another
we discover a gracious Shepherd, like Apollo with his
lute, leading and guiding his flock. In yet another

182 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
we behold a divine Majesty sitting at the right hand
of a great King. Which of these is the real Jesus?
There are in the world several hundred miUions of
people who caU themselves followers of Jesus. It
would naturaUy be supposed that they held some
single and well-defined conception of his person, his
purpose and the methods by which he proposed to
accomplish it, and that they would move, act and
think harmoniously towards a common goal. Nothing
could be farther from the fact of the case. About
the only fixed and hearty conviction entertained by
any fragment of this multitude is that the other por
tions are wrong. They fancy that because they all
caU the person whom they adore by the same name
they aU mean the same thing, but they do not. The
Jesus of the Eastern church is not the Jesus of the
West. The Jesus of the Roman mass is not that of
the Salvation Army. The Jesus of theology is not
that of the average pulpit, and neither of these is the
Jesus of poetry, of art or of popular thought." There
is the Jesus of the synoptic gospels and the Jesus of
the fourth gospel, and they are so different that it is
hard to consider the one as identical with the other.
While stiU kept in his historical environment Jesus
was, in the later gospel, transfigured into a transcendent
personality and placed out of aU relation to the plain
facts recorded in the synoptics. This, however, was
but a part of the process of idealization, for there is

JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 183
the Pauline Jesus; the Nicene, ante-Nicene and post-
Nicene Jesus; the medieval Jesus, who is the magician
and wonder-worker; and, finaUy, the Jesus of a score
of the most divergent theologies, each represented by
a powerful institution. There is also "the Jesus of
Criticism, who is even less historical and less conceivable
than the Jesus of Dogma. Without coherence, with
out reality, too shadowy to be grasped, too subjective
to be a real person in history, he becomes a detached,
isolated being living in an abstract or ideal state. The
result is that the world is lost in a wilderness of
definitions, bewildered amid the confused voices of a
multitude of messengers, all speaking at once and all
speaking variant messages."
The plain truth is that Jesus has, for the people,
become a symbol, has become the type of the ideal
and perfect man without regard to historical records.
Herein lies his strength and his vitality. Each in
dividual conceives his ideal man and calls it Jesus, and
he often does this in defiance of all history. Severed
thus from aU relation to historic fact the symbol is
destined to have that hold on mankind which all pure
ideals have and ought to have. It is difficult to create
them and when once existent they are precious in the
eyes of men. If there is a method peculiarly wise
and requiring the very highest qualities of character
to pursue it, men call it Jesus' method. If there is a

184 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
sane, intelligent and searching criticism, going deep
into the motives of men and kindly but remorselessly
exposing the weak points, men say that it is spoken
as Jesus would have spoken. If anything whatever
is best, noblest, purest and most difficult of attainment
it is all designated as peculiarly the action that Jesus
calls for. What we mean to say is that the net result
of aU the diverse interpretations of Jesus has been that
he has become the world's Hero and by means of his
worship men fortify and stimulate the creative energy
and tendency to idealism that is an essential part of
each man's nature. Jesus stands for universal idealism,
for a spirit of universal beneficence.
The value to the world of such an ideal, and such
a symbol, and such a hero, is incalculable, but it leads
at times to exaggerations that are painful and sociaUy
injurious. An ideal is a great and valuable possession
but it often needs to be checked and modified by reason
to save it at times from actual perversion leading to
destmctive consequences. When a strong personality
makes the ideal only an extension of his own self and
feels that what he thinks ought to be done is exactly
what Jesus approves, it may have serious results for
those who happen to be in his power. Much greater
is the evil when a commanding and resourceful cor
poration comes to conceive that its corporate wiU is
identical with the will of Jesus and that all its action
is therefore in harmony with the ideal. Such a power

JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 185
may, in the very name of Jesus, check and even pre
vent the spread of his spirit.
The one great corrective of all the aberrations and
idiosyncrasies of individuals and institutions, in this
respect, is a study of the larger, catholic Christus, which
steadies and gives poise and balance to aU our thinking.
It comes to explain the real place held by Jesus and
by aU who in any degree are like him and it does this
regardless of the special views any individual may hold
as to Jesus, because the idea is great and broad enough
to include them aU.
The exclusive devotion of the churches to the medi
eval conception of Jesus has led to their almost entire
forgetfulness of the essential Christus and of the Spirit
and of God himself, who has in them been displaced
by Jesus. In a word, the undue exaltation of Jesus has
banished the true idea of the Trinity and substituted for
it a conception of which no man now desires to speak
and which no one knows how to explain or defend.
The necessary thing in aU the churches to-day is to
subordinate Jesus, as he himself requested, to the
larger and more catholic ideals and thereby save for
him that reverence which is really his due, by no
longer claiming for him what he himself repudiated.
Through all these long centuries, at the end of them
as weU as at the beginning, despite endless discussion,

186 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
attended by every form of passion and prejudice;
despite aU the fraud, intrigue and selfishness connected
with institutions nominaUy created to advance and
exalt his fame and power; despite aU the cruelty
practiced in his name, the world has been agreed, and
is now agreed, that this much at least is true, namely,
that Jesus loved his feUow-men and all of them; that
he wiUed to spend his life, and aU of it, in their service ;
that his character was high and unquestioned; that
he displayed unflinching devotion to duty; that he
had always the tenderest regard for the weak and
suffering; that his mind was of uncorrupted purity;
that the quality of his love was entirely self-sacrificing
and went out not only towards his friends but also
towards his enemies; that he did what was just, merci
ful and kind; that he spoke what he believed to be
true and all of it; that he was free from pride, envy
and jealousy; that he was a supreme example of
patience, humility and courtesy and was entirely free
from guile; that he accepted his own burdens calmly,
bore them with courage and fortitude and helped
others to bear their burdens; that he was no respecter
of persons but recognized every man as equaUy his
brother and neighbor; that he sought always to know
the truth and all the tmth; that he did exactly what
he believed to be right without regard to expediency
or the consequences to himself personally; that his
one comprehensive message was that it is our chief

JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 187
duty to make the world better and happier by our
presence in it; that aU sin is at bottom selfishness,
as all righteousness is, in its essence, love; that we
must seek the welfare of all who are or may be affected
by our actions and must never seek to secure an ad
vantage for self at the expense or loss of others; that
he was free from this sin of selfishness and was actively
filled by the spirit of universal beneficence and dis
interested love; that he manifested all this in such
a unique manner and degree as to fix and hold the
attention of his own and all succeeding centuries. On
this aU men have agreed and it is this that the name
really connotes in the world to-day. This ideal is now
burned so deeply into the racial consciousness and has
been for so many centuries the recognized verdict of
mankind that the name of Jesus will never cease to
be a religious symbol typifying the ideal and perfect
character. It has come to be all this, independent
of and in despite of theological definitions and formu
lated systems of thought, and as such will survive the
wreck of aU theologies and all formal systems. Men
may discuss as they please but the world knows what
it means by the name of Jesus and knows very little
about the metaphysical discussions concerning his
person and nature. Jesus stands for the ideal man
and whoever, in any degree, measures up to what the
world conceives to have been his life and his ideas,
wiU forever have the respect, affection and honor of

188 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
men despite all ecclesiastical and sacerdotal cries of
heresy. Because of this Jesus stands in aU popular
thinking as and for the Christus. Men may not dis
cern its larger and profounder aspects, may not feel
at all its phflosophic force nor see it as the explanation
of life, but in Jesus it becomes for them concrete, effec
tive and real.
The admiration felt by masses of men wiU always
idealize a great man and the process is successful by
the gradual elimination of facts. Now, in very truth,
there was in the case of the historical Jesus no real
break with natural laws, nothing abnormal or anoma
lous. "His life was the natural result of aU the previous
growth of humanity and simply realized in a concrete
form the noblest ethical ideals that had been held for
ages by the best men of the race. This goes beneath,
and outside of, aU disputable matters and rests the
divinity of Jesus upon his tme and exalted humanity.
It is the verdict of the universal religious conscious
ness. Theologians and ecclesiastics have tended actuaUy
to conceal and hide the real Jesus in a mist of super
stitious wonder, whereas he was the fruit of an age
long reaching up of reason, conscience and wiU towards
a nobler ideal of human life; the result of an educative,
disciplinary experience of many successive generations;
a natural, rational, easily conceivable development
that has indeed been continuous to this very day and

JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 189
that wiU run on indefinitely into the future. In this
age-long evolutionary process, this incessant racial
development, this racial yearning upwards towards
the human ideal, Jesus wiU ultimately find his true
place, freed from the myths and legends which have
so long prevented a true perception of his real char
acter by the multitude of believers. It will lead men
to see Jesus as a natural part of the world's history,
the manifestation of human forces working in his race,
and in the larger life of man, towards one ideal of
character. We can trace the plain growth of this ideal,
the patient travail of the world towards the light.
We can see the same forces and laws working every
where, under the modification of the varying external
conditions; the same appetites, passions, aspirations,
hopes and faiths emerging in every people in the parallel
stages of development. They reproduce the same forms
and contents in the same order in widely severed
peoples. These are a voicing of the human spirit in
every tongue, disclosing the same course of ascending
life, the same trend of thought, proving that, while
there are many forms of religion, there is only one re
ligion, of which these are various stages of development.
One divine reality everywhere shadows itself in the one
human ideal, visioned by the soul of man. The flower
of every race exhales one aroma, the breath of one
spirit. One face grows upon the manhood of every
people, the mask of one life is back of all. The light

190 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
of life everywhere resolves itself into one light, ever
moving on towards the day. The progress of every
people is towards one human ideal, imaging God.
Everywhere a new and more glorious order is stmggling
to emerge from the ethical chaos we call civilization,
awaiting only some regenerative enthusiasm for human
rights to thrill through the seething mass. Humanity
is becoming conscious of its great possibilities. Every
where humanitarian activities are multiplying, fore
shadowing the rise into the racial consciousness of the
noble, catholic ideal of the universal Christus, the
real core and heart of religion. The world is ever
coming more and more to recognize the reflection of
the universal mind in the reason, the conscience and
the affections of humanity." It means in time a warmer
flow of social sympathy, drawing classes and nations
into the bonds of brotherhood. It means the recogni
tion of the regeneration of earthly society as the tme
aim of man. It will stimulate a more generous enthu
siasm in the service of mankind, the sacrifice of more
and more by the individual to lift the race to a higher
plane of actual living now and here.
It is because, whether rightly or wrongly, men do
vitaUy believe that Jesus stands for aU this, that he is
the ideal of men now and forever, and when they speak
his name they connote thereby every heroic, beneficent
and saintly life whether past, present or future, aU of
whom are thus typified and symbolized. Thus Jesus

JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 191
has come to represent the universal Christus and the
influence of his name is leading to the broader fields,
more glorious because more fruitful than those in which
men have so long been contented to live.
The prevalent and historic doctrine of the divinity
of Jesus has but prefigured the ultimate divinization
of humanity itself, which is capable of rising by con
tinuous stages of moral progress upwards to God, as
the end of that progress. The heated discussion as
to the divmity of Jesus has, after all, been only a query
as to whether divinity does not in some way reside
in us aU. Unconsciously men have linked their natures
with that of Jesus and have fought the battle of their
own destiny in arguing his exaltation. Thus the great
battle for the dignity of our human nature has been
fought around the standard that bore his name and
through it aU he has typified the whole race on its
nobler side and has always been identified with its
highest aspirations. The creation and development
of the Jesus ideal has been a great and unique feature
in the growth of humanity. It has indicated the pres
ence of spirit, which alone rendered it possible. Its
future correction and modification, which is inevitable,
wiU equaUy be the operation of the same spirit. The
Jesus ideal has indeed led the way towards the greater
ideals which are to come and has perhaps been an
indispensable element therein. The exaggeration and
false emphasis wiU pass away but the splendor and

192 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
nobility of the real human Jesus will forever remain.
Complex, diverse and clashing as have been the ideals
clustered around his name, it has aU indicated, and has
resulted from, the racial yearning and individual aspira
tions after God. Under the influence of spirit there has
been a steady movement towards the unification and
purification of these ideals, leading towards the final
conscious perception by men of the Christus as uni
versal. The church has maintained with the utmost
vehemence that there was one incarnation of God,
and has clung to this idea with great tenacity, but it
has had no clear perception of the profounder idea
which was the legitimate conclusion and inevitable
consequence of the doctrine as to Jesus. Its ideal
incarnation was but a specific instance of a universal
fact, leading up to the conception that the human is,
in its very essence, the medium of the divine; that
aU men, in proportion to the development of their
humanity, are capable of incarnating the life of God.
The traditional theology has therefore been spiritually
defective in its insistent limitation of the tmth, whereby
it has concealed the greatness of its own thought and
come very close to a denial of the higher tmth by its
devotion to the symbol or ideal prefigurement of that
very tmth. The future need take away nothing from
the tmth as it has been supposed to be found in Jesus,
but it will merely open out that truth into its broader
and more fruitful significance.

JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 193
I beheve that this book is in essential harmony with
the tmth as I believe that it really was in the mind of
Jesus, and that the conventional thought that now
characterizes great institutions that bear his name
is entirely out of harmony with such truth both as to
form and contents. Our task is to disentangle the
rehgion which Jesus really professed from those forms
of religion which have fabricated out of Jesus their
central and exclusive object, which have taken a dis
torted description of his life as their philosophic basis
for theory and dogma. After worshiping Jesus as
God the world is to reach a living faith in the God
whom Jesus truly worshiped. Instead of an oriental
worship and adoration of Jesus as a fetish or idol the
world is going to try to realize the ideals truly held
by Jesus in our social living here on this earth. Worship
of an individual is to give way to obedient service to
the idea which underlies that entire individual life
and has given it such peculiar potency.
That Jesus was in a real and intimate relation to
God; that he was a genuine and visible incarnation
will forever be true, but it is also true that all men stand
potentially in that same relation, that they all partake
of the divine nature, work out the divine purposes
and seek to realize the divine ideal. The divinity of
Jesus is therefore the key whereby we are to interpret
the lives of all men. In clinging to the ideal Jesus,
the church has by its fidelity unconsciously served aU

194 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
subsequent ages, but the day is near at hand when
the traditional limitations of the ideal will for aU re
flecting men be seen to involve a profound and socially
injurious error. The prevalent loosening of grip on
this doctrine is really only an incident in the taking
a firmer hold on the larger truth which has aU the time
been implicit in the lesser, conventional statements,
so that the future will see not the destruction but the
fulfilment and realization of the age-long faith of the
church.

BOOK SECOND.

MAN AND HIS PROBLEMS.

I. The Nature of Man.
II. Knowledge — Wisdom — Truth.
III. Education.
IV. Sacrifice and Renunciation.
V. Self-Reliance.
VI. Sanity.
VII. Evil.

BOOK SECOND.

THE NATURE OF MAN.
From typical man comes by evolution the best that
we know of life, and yet he is capable of being the
worst of aU living creatures and stands as the paradox
of the universe. He is the easy prey of those who
seek to exploit him and too often the despair of all
who seek to help him. He is capable of exaltation
and equaUy susceptible to those influences that de
grade him. His presence may be a productive blessing
and yet it may be a most destructive curse. He is
certainly a riddle and a paradox, the unsolved conun
drum of the Sphinx.
It is common usage to refer to the lower and higher
nature of man. It is certainly convenient to do so,
and it is so interpretative of what seem to be facts
that it is likely to continue for a long time. It is, how
ever, reaUy incorrect, for man has but one nature.
When this develops in harmony with its tme laws he
discloses what we call his higher nature, but when he
lives in antagonism to those laws, or in forgetfulness

198 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
or ignorance of them, he discloses what we caU his
lower nature, and yet all the time it is one nature.
The tmth is that in the one case he has grown in a
normal, healthy way and is a manifestation of the
highest life of which we have knowledge. In the other
case he has failed to grow and develop and so, rela
tively to what he might have become, he seems stunted,
abortive and dwarfed.
The so-caUed lower nature may therefore be more
properly designated as man's nature existing under
conditions that furnish nothing to stimulate and pro
duce a healthy development of its potential capacity.
The natural man is man undeveloped, man in the
rough, so to speak — like a log which may be made into
something beautiful, but which, at this moment, is a
rough log and nothing more. The log may be cut into
diverse shapes and may then be skilfully treated so as
finally to receive a high finish and become reaUy artistic,
disclosing a marvelous complexity of waving, outlined
circles of many hues and shades. To see aU this possibility
in the rough bark-covered log, lying in the mud, may
be difficult, but it is aU there to the eye of inteUigence.
The higher nature is merely the innate capacity of man
cultivated and developed, while the lower nature is this
same capacity lying dormant or perverted and spoiled.
There are countless variations or gradations, so that
only in the most general way can men be classified.

THE NATURE OF MAN. 199
Broadly speaking there are, however, three great
classes :
First. There are those men who are worse than any
animals, more vicious, more degraded, sensual and
repulsive. Second. There are those who seem always struggling
between what is good and what is bad; who seem to
aspire towards the good but generally in practice to
move toward the bad. These seem to have more desire
for virtue than capacity to acquire it, more power to
see what is right than they have ability to do it. They
have lost the contentment of the animal without ob
taining any real equivalent therefor. They seem to be
conscious that they are under a law without having
capacity to obey it and secure- its benefits. They have
an ever-present consciousness that life is a failure, that
what they do is a mistake, and yet they seem to have
no ability to do more or otherwise. They obey the
law of their being in a degree, but not in such a degree
as to realize those blessings which result from a full
obedience. All is imperfect, incomplete, inadequate,
and it makes mortal Ufe a tragedy whose dominant
key-note is failure. They oscillate between the allure
ments of the flesh and those of the spirit, generally
yielding to the former and so losing all rewards of the
spirit. They may have great acumen but they lack
any tme spiritual force. With occasional visions of
the higher realms of life they, on the whole, live in

200 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
the lower. Their distinctive hall-mark is of the lower
plane. Third. It is probably true that no mortal ever es
caped belonging in some degree to this last class, and
so the best of lives have always a tinge of imperfection
and incompleteness; and yet in a very substantial
degree some do struggle up into such compliance with
the laws of their being as in a large measure to reap
the harvest of real happiness and satisfaction flowing
therefrom. This we call the human class. It has
always been a small minority, but it proves what the
nature of man is when once it is realized, when once
there is obedience to the laws governing its develop
ment. Humanity is, therefore, that life which is natural
and normal for all men but which the great majority
lose by disobedience of those laws. It has taken ages
for man to discover them, see the results of obedience
and come to a true apprehension of the dignity and
majesty of the law. Blinded by false theories, deceived
by vain delusions and sophistries, hoping in some way
to cheat the law, to secure the blessing without paying
the price, men have stumbled on towards disaster,
but they have always found the law stem and inex
orable, enforcing its decrees without mercy.
The true law of being for a man or a plant or for
anything whatever is such as wiU develop the plant
or man or thing to its best estate, such as will most

THE NATURE OF MAN. 201
thoroughly bring out its hidden capacities and qualities.
This is the rule we always apply in forming our judg
ments. A plant kept in darkness or under other
unfavorable conditions may, indeed, live, but it will be
stunted and imperfect. Its normal type is what we
find when it has had sunshine, proper soil and all the
most favorable conditions. We never take the worst
rose as the true type of the flower, but we seek for the
best and say that this is what we produce when all is
favorable for its culture. So if a tree has grown in a
rocky defile where the lack of space for its branches
has forced them into a dense tangled mass without
beauty, we do not say that this is a true type of tree,
but we look for one that stands in the free, open space,
whose symmetry and beauty tell us what a tree really
is when it has a chance to develop naturally and nor-
maUy. We properly judge everything by its best and
not by its worst specimens. We judge by those who
have had every opportunity to show what is in them
and not by those that have been repressed and denied
proper care and sustenance. As we judge the inani
mate so we must judge man. The true type is there
fore man at his best, man developed into human. That
which enables him so to develop must be the tme law
of his being, for everything becomes better by obeying
the law of its being. Such is the general and even
universal law governing everything, and it could not
well be otherwise.

202 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Undeveloped life is crude and worthless like every
thing else in that condition. Its only possible value
is as a basis for reaching good results by proper treat
ment. It is only because it has the possibility of ripen
ing into full fruitage that the cmde is worthy of any
consideration whatever. The lower plane of living is,
therefore, a plane of immaturity and arrested develop
ment, in which life is seen as stunted, dwarfed and
repulsive. It is the plane of spiritual failure and
disaster. It is, when thus perverted, characterized by
ignorance, prejudice and selfishness; by hatred and
cruelty; by drunkenness, licentiousness and sensuality;
by falsehood, slander and malice; by fraud, treachery
and intrigue; by envy, covetousness and jealousy;
by gluttony, cupidity, avarice, vanity, greed and dis
simulation; by vulgarity, obscenity and ugliness; by
filth and nastiness of body and of mind; by the law
less, anarchistic spirit; by a rebellious and discontented
mind. These personalized constitute what is caUed
the Devil — the relentless foe of mortal man; the
cause of his misery; a foe that is of his own household,
for, outside of man, these elements do not exist else
where throughout the whole universe so far as we know.
This is the great dragon on which Saint George, sym
bolizing humanity, strives to place his foot in token of
victory. Against these we have, as characterizing the higher
plane of life, developed into its best human estate,

THE NATURE OF MAN. 203
enlightenment and open-mindedness seeking wisdom
and tmth; love, mercy, compassion and sympathy;
justice and equity; courtesy, patience, sincerity and
generosity; self-restraint, fortitude and temperance;
benevolence, gentleness and kindness; chastity, clean
liness and purity; candor, tmthfulness and fidelity;
the forgiving spirit, tolerant and charitable towards
all; the thirst for knowledge; the love of all that is
beautiful; the ceaseless search to discover the laws
of the universe and a desire to obey them. These
personified constitute what we call the Christus. They
are the source of man's true happiness and are in har
mony with the normal laws of his being. To live truly
he must obey these. Every evasion carries its penalty,
and utter disobedience leads to spiritual death.
Life on this higher plane, when considered in the
sum of all its individual manifestations, is truly called
the Kingdom of God, in which humanity has its life,
to whose laws it is obedient, whose pleasures are wholly
intellectual and spiritual. It is thus not a kingdom
far away, in a remote future existence, but it is to be
realized and entered here and now. If for you it is
existent at all, it is within you. If you find its laws
anywhere you find their sanction and interpretation
within yourself, and it is only as this capacity to dis
cover its laws is personal to you that you can realize
the ideas of this realm and become a citizen thereof.

204 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
When a man rises to definite consciousness of these
ideals and wiUs to choose and follow them, this is the
turning point of his life and is what is called conver
sion. If it be a reality and he actually succeeds in
entering this higher plane, it is called his new birth,
for it is his entrance into humanity. His first birth
is as man, but his second birth is as human. Many
there be that seek this kingdom but few there be that
find it, for the way to it is straight and narrow.
In every city the mob dwells side by side with those
who are learned and noble, and so, too, in every man,
however cultivated he may be, there is in the depth of
his nature a mob of low and vulgar desires which are
the still unsubdued remnants of animalism. If this
mob be not rigorously repressed and forced to keep
in its hiding places, it may do more damage by a day
of revolt than can be repaired in a long series of years.
The great multitude sweeps along on the broad
highway, crowded, noisy and turbulent. It is a great
mass of stmggling, quarreling men, each fighting for
his place in deadly competition with those about him;
stealing from each other, now openly, now stealthily;
pushing each other over precipices to make more room;
waging deadly and destructive war for the securing of
those things that may gratify and satiate passion and
appetite. This is the hell of the lower nature of man,
the broad way that leadeth to death, and many there

THE NATURE OF MAN. 205
be that find it. This is what is called the world, a
carnival presided over by the devil of ignorance, preju
dice and selfishness. Humanity seeks to overcome and
conquer this terrible world. The human renounces
the world, the flesh and the devil, and seeks to live
in the Kingdom of God. He renounces the evil to
live in the good. He leaves the coarse and vulgar
distractions and excitements to live in the tranquil
peace of the mental and spiritual realm in company
with the humanity of his age and in communion with
aU the immortal spirits of the great past manifested
in history and the noblest hterature. He seeks happi
ness in art, music and hterature; in the development
and refinement of his taste; in the creation of more
art, more music, more hterature. Thus he lives apart
from the great crowd, and possibly in isolation and
retirement, but happy and contented, for he is living
in the Kingdom of God. He is living conformably to
the laws of his own being.

II.
KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH.
Knowledge in a strict and tme sense is the charac
teristic prerogative of man. Of aU living creatures
he alone seeks, acquires and imparts it to others. It
is the conscious perception of facts and is always the
result of experience and observation rendered possible
by a certain sensitivity which is itself a capacity or
power to react on such experience and which develops
into the power to reflect, perceive relationships and
form judgments. This sensitivity we have said is due
to the presence of spirit as a part of man's very nature.
It seems to be a plain fact that, in some subtle way,
man is sensitive to experience as the plate in photog
raphy is sensitive to light. The plate, however sensi
tive, would never receive a picture until properly
exposed, and would not then fix and retain it without
proper treatment. As it exists prior to use it has a
power that is entirely potential, but it is there and
must be there, or no picture could be secured.
Man has an eye which gives him capacity to see,
but he cannot actually see until there is light which
reacts on the eye. If he were kept in utter darkness
he would never have any more idea of vision than a

KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 207
blind man. There is every grade of delicacy in the
eyes of different men, from the artist, sensitive to
every shade, perceiving differences where others see
only sameness, to the man who is color-blind, and so
on to those who are absolutely blind, possessing no
capacity at aU. This capacity may be said to be
innate, but the actual realization of vision depends on
the cooperation of hght. Man's ear gives him capacity
to hear, but he can actuahy hear only when there are
vibrations or waves arising apart from the ear and react
ing on it. It is the capacity plus the external factor
that gives him the idea of sound. In this respect there
are countless gradations of dehcacy, from the musician's
ear that can detect each separate instrument in the
orchestra and teU whether or not it be weU played to
the ear of the deaf man who has no capacity at all.
The same is tme of taste, smell and touch. Now in
sight it is not the eye that really sees, but a something
behind the eye which is behind aU the other senses in
the same way. It is this which receives the telephonic
report, so to speak, from these senses and interprets
or converts it into knowledge. This something is the
spiritual capacity innate in man, which until acted on
by experience leaves him as devoid of knowledge as
the unexposed plate is of a picture.
We are tempted to speak of some of our ideas as
innate or intuitive, but they are really not such at all,

208 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
but are data of experience. However clearly we may
seem to see them, however early they may come to
us, however irresistible may be our conviction of their
truth, however necessary and inevitable they may
seem to be, they do not appear until there has been
adequate experience, observation and reflection, on
which they rest in the same way that all other knowl
edge does.
Our field of knowledge has to do with external objects
and with the internal operations of our minds, but the
extent to which such material can actually be used
by any individual depends entirely on the degree of
his capacity. Some men can only react on the clearest
external objects and then to a degree only slightly
above the capacity of animals. Such men have and
can have knowledge only in its lowest and crudest
forms. The possession of this capacity is not due to
any effort on the part of the individual, and in its
absence he is unable to understand its presence in
others, just as an animal can never comprehend the
difference between himself and his master. Man has
the innate capacity or he has it not. If it is not in
him, neither he nor any one else can cause it to appear.
The capacity to acquire knowledge is, therefore, the
first test and measure of personality. Lacking this,
he who is man in outward form is essentiaUy animal,
for it is only in the degree that he can acquire knowl-

KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 209
edge that he can rise into the higher plane of life and
can confront the possibilities of development into the
human. Of all that may afterwards follow in his
career, this is the necessary and first step. Without
that he is not even the true type of man, and for him
the path to humanity is closed as it is to the animals.
It has often been asked whether man can know the
reality supposed or assumed to underlie the thing
observed. If by real we mean any condition or state
or quality of the thing that* cannot appeal to or react
on the innate sensitivity of man then he cannot know
it, for only in this way may he know anything whatever.
By real we properly refer merely to what seems real to
our consciousness, and when it is so certified to us we
cannot escape conviction of its tmth, even if we try to
do so. It is not necessary that we should have power to
grasp the metaphysical reality if such there be. The
phenomenal manifestation as apprehended by his con
sciousness is man's limit and he cannot go, and does not
need to go, beyond this, so that, in each man, knowledge
seems real to the extent of his power to apprehend it
clearly and this depends on his power to reflect. Ultimate
reality to him is this consciousness of reality, and in the
nature of things as they are it cannot be any more.
All knowledge comes to man in the first instance as
a discovery of something of which he had not previ-

210 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
ously been aware, and this in each case seems to be a
sort of revelation. Suddenly there is certified to him
something new and he says that he has made a dis
covery. If this capacity be recognized as essentially
a manifestation of the cosmic force called God, then
what he has discovered is a revelation to him by God,
and so the phrases "man discovers" and "God reveals"
mean the same thing and may be used interchangeably.
This defines the limits of revelation, for nothing can
be revealed beyond what man may discover by means
of the force resident in him, for this is the cosmic force
or God operating under the limitations of man's nature.
All knowledge in its origin bears this stamp of reve
lation. Facts which we have long known become
commonplace, but there was a day when each fact
came as a sort of revelation. How little attention we
now pay to the telescope, the compass, photography,
dynamite, the telegraph and telephone, the steam
engine and a thousand similar things, and yet there
was a day when, in each of these cases, the world was
startled as by a revelation of things not hitherto even
imagined. What one man discovers may become in
time a revelation to all other men capable of appre
hending it. From personal possession it may become
the common property of the race, making aU history
the record of a continuous and progressive revelation
of knowledge, for a remarkably sensitive and gifted
man may discover and so reveal to others ideas which

KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 211
those other men never could have discovered for them
selves. Most men have capacity to apprehend and
appropriate far in excess of their capacity to discover,
whereby they enter into the labor of others and reap
where they have not sown. To a man who has the
capacity to acquire knowledge, this revelation to him
personaUy is the great feature of his daily life, for the
entire field of racial attainment in the great past is
open to his individual exploration and, every year, the
gifted men of the race bring to him the results of their
efforts. This, indeed, constitutes the richness and
value of the human life, namely, to be the constant
recipient of knowledge as it were by revelation from
God daily.
Man begins by accepting as tme aU facts apparently
certified by his consciousness. Then comes, as he
gains in power, the stage of scrutiny and criticism,
which teaches him to regard as knowledge only such
facts as are upon reflection and examination found to
be demonstrably correct. He demands adequate proof
and gives up many of his hitherto cherished facts
because they cannot stand the test of critical inquiry.
But the acquisition of accurate knowledge, all-essen
tial as it is for the first step towards human conditions,
is, nevertheless, only the first step. Knowledge of iso
lated facts is almost useless, for the fact obtains value
only when it is defined and explained by a theory and

212 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
combined with other observations into a law. What
ever be the fact, man must seek to discover just what
it means, must endeavor, as we say, to interpret the
fact. This interpretation whereby we discern the tme
and valuable nature of the fact is Wisdom.
The mass of men have knowledge while a few have
this wisdom. Correct interpretation is, however, the
basis of all certainty in deahng with facts, and hence
is of the highest value. It is a smaU matter to know
a fact, but it is a great matter to be able to interpret
that fact, to get at its real significance, to ascertain
the law which it exemplifies. What men need is not
more knowledge of facts but more capacity to under
stand the facts they already know. The quest of the
world has been for an interpreter, one who could explain
to man the meaning of his daily experiences. What
does it aU mean? — is his ceaseless query. Always it is
a fact to be interpreted, and the sole doubt is as to the
soundness of the interpretation. Every such effort
involves some degree of wisdom, while truth is wisdom
carried to its highest point. That is to say, every
interpretation implies some degree of wisdom, for even
an unsuccessful attempt to interpret must be a degree
above the mere apprehension of the bare fact. Now
when we believe that wisdom reaches its highest degree
and becomes reaUy correct interpretation we call it Tmth.
Knowledge is, then, the mere conscious perception
of facts. Wisdom is the interpretation of these facts,

KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 213
varying in degree of success. Truth is the final, suc
cessful, correct interpretation of these facts. Tmth is
therefore the pearl of great price. It is the only final
thing. There are no degrees of truth, for there is
nothing beyond the final and correct interpretation.
What man seeks is this truth, the correct answer to
his ceaseless query, the final interpretation of his
ascertained facts. Philosophy is the love of wisdom,
hence the love of interpretation, and so every man,
who seeks to delve below the surface of things and
penetrate to the hidden meaning, is a philosopher. As
tmth is the highest point of wisdom, the final word
that can be said, it is clearly seen to be, in any strict
sense, unattainable. It is an ideal towards which men
work, which they always hope to reach, but which
they never can be sure they have reached. There is
and always wiU be an uncertainty as to what further
hght may be thrown upon the subject, and so the quest
for tmth wiU always remain open for ages to come,
wiU furnish inspiration and employment for human
faculties so long as human life continues. The real
satisfaction comes not from the possession of absolute
tmth but from the development of our faculties by the
search after it. If final tmth could be disclosed at
once and leave man no more uncertainty, no more need
of reflection and study to gain it, there is no doubt but
that it would be a colossal misfortune and not a blessing.
This is a paradox and a riddle but it is clearly true.

214 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Man finds his advantage in having this field for inves
tigation, research and study, for it is the only method
by which he can secure intellectual and spiritual growth.
To seek to discover what is now unknown, to study for
a better interpretation of what is known, to confront
mysteries and delve for the secret that lies beyond
phenomena, — aU this gives man his one great field of
opportunity and yields him his highest satisfaction.
It is the persistent effort to discover what is hidden,
the ever-present consciousness of mystery and an invin
cible determination to replace it by knowledge, that
has made possible the intellectual life.
The true type of the human cannot remain inactive
before the mysterious forces which surround him, nor
be content with ignorance, nor acquiesce in the idea
that any riddle is insoluble, or that any such task is
too great for him to undertake. If he be truly human
he must seek knowledge, wisdom and tmth as the
natural fulfilment of the law of his being. To him
mystery is never a mere object for worship or adoration,
but it involves a chaUenge caUing all his powers to its
study. Instead of being awed or abashed, he is stimu
lated into activity and feels the keenest interest and
delight in his quest. He does not shrink from it, but
goes forth as if to visit his native heath. He craves
and must have some explanation, and it is only as he
feels that he has secured it that he finds satisfaction
and peace. Seeking it is purely a rational act, and

KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 215
each man does it in the best way that he can. The
differences in men in innate capacity and development
lead them to very different results, whose diversity is
nevertheless consistent with the fact that each man is
conscientious and as rational as he can be. All aim
at rational action, and it is only as a man feels that
his act is such that he has any sense of certainty
and confidence. What, however, seems to one man a
rational explanation, so satisfactory as to cause entire
cessation of effort for anything better, seems to an
other man to be even irrational and unworthy of a
moment's consideration. The two men are at entirely
different stages of intellectual development and they
cannot help seeing the same thing in different ways.
Each is simply foUowing the light that he has. They
have the same general aim and purpose, and, if they
are equaUy sincere, they are alike entitled to respect
and sympathy, irrespective of the results they attain.
Any man, who thinks that he has possession of final
wisdom or tmth, is merely deceived. Always there is
the chance of a new vision more glorious than the old.
Always there is the chance of a new and profounder
perception of relationships, of a new and deeper sense
of reahty. The treasure house on its inteUectual and
spiritual side is inexhaustible. Standing on what man
has achieved in the past the race moves on and ever
will advance to greater knowledge and higher wisdom.

216 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
No man can ever say the final word on any subject.
Humanity itself will never reach the end of the search
after wisdom, since, as the individual gains power to
see, the field of vision extends and yields him the same
stimulus, thirst and inspiration as of old. Whatever
they may hold as theory, all inteUigent men are con
stantly seeking after more light, or, in other words,
seeking after a better interpretation than they now
have of the facts of life. This, indeed, is the primary
condition of all inteUectual life. The indolent and
undeveloped man may and will cherish the idea of
having final wisdom which relieves him of what he
feels is the burden and trouble of further search, but
this leads to inteUectual paralysis.

III.
EDUCATION.
The development of the natural man is brought
about by what we call education, which may therefore
be defined as the method by which man makes his
way to the higher plane of human living. It draws
out his potential capacity and makes him into what
seems like a new being. Education, in this its broadest
meaning, includes everything that comes to the in
dividual from contact with his race. It is, therefore,
inevitable that he, who lives in any sort of contact
with society, should possess some education and dis
close a corresponding development of his nature.
The transformation of man is whoUy the result of
his development under the play of educational forces
which have been caUed into existence, slowly and pain
fully, by the race in its long evolution, stretching back
into the remotest past. The race has itself created
the environment favorable to its own development,
having at the outset merely the immanent spirit or
indwelling force as the germ of all this marvelous
growth. How slowly aU this creation of favorable
environment proceeded is known only to the student
of the earliest history of the race, and it is only by such

218 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
study that we can adequately realize the value and
significance of man's achievement in this direction.
Created by human exertion, it is sustained and advanced
by that alone. Let the race for one half-century relax
its efforts to maintain and improve these conditions
and the work of ages would be undone.
We, however, generally use the term " education " in
a restricted sense, confining it to the individual study
of the racial results as disclosed in history, science and
literature, but we never ought to forget that merely
living in a civilized community, in contact with all
that is thus implied, does truly educate and develop
and that this may at times have very striking results
where the individual power of absorption is remarkable.
Education ordinarily implies book study, but such is
reaUy a smaU part of the forces that reach and affect
individuals in an educational way. It is important to
recognize this, for education by contact is the only
sort that the great mass of the race ever receives.
Among those nations that are caUed civiUzed, the
great majority of men acquire aU the ideas they
have by absorption from their environment. The
foundation of every man's education is laid also in
this, for it always naturaUy precedes book study and
it is always operative, in addition to such studies,
as long, as a man lives. No one can realize or
measure how much he owes to what he receives and
absorbs almost unconsciously.

EDUCATION. 219
But the tone or dominant note of every society is
due to that small minority who are educated in the
restricted sense. It is this minority that inspires and
stimulates the whole mass. A man who cannot read
absorbs a good deal from mere contact with those who
do read. Those who read but little absorb from those
who read much until the final source of the high ideals
touches at last those great literary records of the race
which are the fountain spring of power and illumination.
Education is thus the chief duty of man, for it is a
duty whose full performance will lead to his doing all
other duties. If he will not do these when he is truly
educated, it is probable that he would not have done
them under any circumstances whatever.
Education in its high sense implies clearness of
vision, power to interpret facts and see their true sig
nificance and value. To educate is to open the eyes
of those that are blind, to bring the light to those who
sit in darkness, to enable those to see clearly who had
seen but as through a glass, darkly. Many are born
with eyes that are very near-sighted and live for years
not knowing that other people have a more extended
vision. On discovering the fact it is easy to call on
the optician, secure proper glasses and at once live
in a new world, so far as vision is concerned. Intel
lectually all persons are by nature in this condition
of near-sightedness. Training and discipline supply

220 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
the glasses, so to speak, which overcome our imperfect
and weak intellectual eyes, and enable us to see what
would otherwise be beyond our vision. For him whose
ordinary eyes are defective others may make and
adjust the remedy, but the intellectual glasses each
must make for himself. Parents, friends and teachers
may guide and aid but that is as far as they may go.
Securing these glasses must rest on personal effort.
The glasses do not constitute education but are mere
training leading up to it. They merely enable man to
go out and look for himself and thus learn. School
and college may help a man to make the glasses but it
is the use of them afterwards that creates the educated
man. This training simply extends and develops a
man's natural powers and so opens up to him the
possibilities of a new world. Thus all true education
is self-produced, is a purely personal creation, the
roots of which are reflection and persistent thought.
We may guide another into the habit of reflection, but
the pupil must then reflect and think for himself and
the result of this is education.
The trained man is one who is merely ready to educate
himself by means of this acquired training. That a man
is a graduate of a certain coUege only proves that he
secured the minimum training demanded for his degree.
It not only does not prove that he has any true educa
tion but it does not even prove the amount or quality
of the training he has received. A man without a college

EDUCATION. 221
degree may be an educated man, while the possessor of
the degree may be only a man of a certain minimum
training which has never ripened into education.
Education, indeed, in its highest sense, is a life process,
growing ever towards more perfect conditions, towards
a more extended vision. Man must always be train
ing and disciplining himself so that constantly he may
be gaining greater power. The world will then be to
him ever new and fresh, for he will be ever reaching
out further and seeing what had hitherto been con
cealed. Such education implies constant growth. It
is an onward movement that has all the freshness of
exploring new countries.
The ideal education involves not merely profound
knowledge of facts but insight into the true meaning
and real significance of those facts, which we have
already defined as wisdom. Such an educated man is,
then, one who has already attained to some marked
degree of wisdom and who is an earnest seeker after
tmth or the highest stage of wisdom, whose faculties
have become interpretative in their functions. All
the main facts of life may be known by one man in
much the same way that they are known by another.
Indeed, the salient facts are known to men of very
ordinary capacity quite as weU as to the most highly
educated. Education, then, is not the mere acquiring
of facts, although at times this is a very important
function of the educated man and may for a while

222 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
require the exercise of his highest powers. When,
however, he has acquired accurate knowledge of cer
tain facts, this may soon become the common property
of a multitude of very ordinary men. Not so his
interpretation of these facts, his perception of what they
mean, of what they really connote and imply. The
knowledge of the facts is not his as an educated man,
but his interpretation of them is his purely and solely
as such a man and constitutes his vision, which is the
one peculiar characteristic of the truly educated man.
This type is a very rare product, but it is the mark to
be aimed at by aU, for the interpretative faculty is
the cause of man's progress and a single interpreter
has opened up to thousands of men glimpses of a vision
they could never otherwise have seen. Such men are
indeed the true prophets of the race. Few men ever
do or can fill the tme prophetic function of education
or reach anywhere near its ideal standard, but even
a little progress in the path adds enormously to the
satisfaction and happiness of life and extends the area
of personal influence. All men seek light. It is tme
education that supplies it. A ray of light is better than
darkness. One fact interpreted leads to another. One
exercise of the faculty gives development and added
strength for another.
Near to every man lies the greatest fact of aU, for
it is tme that to each man the first fact demanding

EDUCATION. 223
his attention is that implied by his own existence,
which certifies directly, through his consciousness, the
presence and existence of the mysterious force called
spirit. To know himself; to be able somehow to
interpret himself as a fact ; to see the significance and
value of his own life in the light of all other facts;
to correlate and coordinate himself into his true place
in the universe — to do aU this well involves aU doing
of which he is capable and leads to the exertion of all
his powers. To know the laws of health and private
well-being which enable him to develop and use his
body in a sane and effective way; to know the intel
lectual laws which enable him to develop and use
his reason, reach mental vision and see the reality
underlying superficial appearances ; to know the
economic laws and conditions which secure peace and
prosperity for the social organism of which he is neces
sarily a member — all this is wrapped up in the dictum
"know thyself" and it leads a man to act conformably
to the highest principles of conduct throughout the
whole range of life. To know the laws of his own being,
laws physical, mental and spiritual, — this is to know
himself and it is thus the highest point of human
attainment. Man's first and chief duty is, therefore, to
know himself. If he ever fulfils it, there will be the
goal of aU his racial effort. In the degree that any
man knows himself he is educated or developed in the
tme and high sense of those terms.

IV.
SACRIFICE AND RENUNCIATION.
Sacrifice and renunciation are the price by which
alone any high standard can be attained. It is a fact
resting on long observation and experience and it has
all the dignity of a natural law. There are certain
terms on which a certain result may be secured. Man
must comply with these terms to succeed in his quest.
This as a law always and everywhere confronts him
and he has found it to be rigid and inexorable.
To secure the higher we must renounce the lower.
To have what is of real value we must be content to
sacrifice what in comparison is cheap and paltry. The
law does not require any other sacrifice or renuncia
tion. It does not demand that a man give up what has
real and true value but only asks him to forsake that
which he would consider as essentiaUy worthless if
he could but see rightly. The difficulty lies in this,
that, constituted as he is, these things are attractive
and seductive and seem vastly important. Truly
worthless, they seem to be valuable. As a man is, at
the time when he is caUed on to choose, immature and
led by the iUusions of egotism, he is deceived as to
what constitutes value, is blinded by desire, passion

SACRIFICE AND RENUNCIATION. 225
and appetite, which throw a veil, as it were, over his
eyes so that he does not see things in their right pro
portions but as distorted. What he is called on to give
up may thus seem to possess the greatest charm. There
is the siren of pleasure standing in his way whose gaudy
tinsel seems to him to be far other than it really is.
He actuahy has a false sense of value, for otherwise
he would even then see that the supposed sacrifice is
really a renunciation of nothing that has any intrinsic
value. He is merely asked to give up dross that he
may acquire gold, but the dross is attractive and is at
hand while the gold is far away and seems uncertain.
Here he needs faith in the ultimate reality and value
of the gold which he is asked to seek and, without
this faith, he rarely makes what to him then seems
a tme sacrifice of what is good and attractive. Left
alone and unaided he would remain in illusion and
never have power to escape from it. Here the human
voice comes to urge him on, to stimulate and inspire
him so as to create the necessary faith. Christus comes
and says, through aU the man's best friends and ad
visers, "Follow me; renounce the vanity of the world;
renounce its illusions and follies; seek wisdom, for
only thus can you find your own true self and reach
peace and tme happiness. Have faith; obey me;
follow me. All that I ask you to sacrifice is the dross
of life. I urge you to give up no single thing that is
really good in a high sense. Lose your lower self that

226 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
you may find your higher self. Act conformably to
the laws of your being and you will some day see as
the best of men now see and you wiU be at one with
them. The veil will pass from your eyes and you will
discern things in their tme relations and know that
what you have renounced was really worthless."
All things in the world, outside of the purely human
influences, seem to join against the man as he thus
stands. All that seems to him to be his own nature,
his own deepest impulses, seems to urge him towards
ease and gratification and away from the thought
of sacrifice or renunciation. He is so impatient, so
desirous of immediate results, that he finds it hard
to plow the rugged soil, to drop in his tiny seed,
to do all the work of caring for the growing crops and
then to wait so long for the harvest. To do all this
he must renounce his ease, must devote his time to
the work steadily, patiently and persistently, thus
sacrificing all chance to engage in those sports and
pastimes which are so alluring but whose renunciation
is the price of the final harvest.
The law is that he who would reap must sow and
that only as he sows shall he reap. What he sows,
that in kind shall he reap. If he sow the seed of sport
and pleasure, he will gather the harvest of ennui and
boredom, mere weeds and thistles, fit only to be con
sumed off the face of the good earth. What he is asked
to sacrifice he ought, as an inteUigent and sensible

SACRIFICE AND RENUNCIATION. 227
man, to sacrifice for his own good, not, perhaps, for his
good at the time but for his ultimate good. For the
nonce it seems a true loss and, as he is then placed,
it truly is such. It is a disappointment and a sorrow
and, however puerile it may reaUy be, it is at the time
genuine and profound. Yet his welfare in the future
wiU rest on his decision, for the sports and pleasure
of the spring and summer may be followed by the
disappointment of autumn and the starvation of winter,
when all sense of sport will have disappeared. Apply
this in mind to the spring of youth, the summer of
early manhood, the autumn of mature life and the
winter of age, and it is clear that on the decision of
the youth aU the fate of a life may rest. At the critical
moment it is always a question of sacrifice and renun
ciation. Such is the tme meaning of these words. A man
should only renounce the lower, which necessarily con
flicts with his development towards the higher. This
also sets by implication the true limits of sacrifice.
There can be no rule to apply to all men. Wealth to
some men speUs dissipation, folly and min. Here
there is need of renunciation. To others it means
opportunity for tme, high development and service.
Then renunciation would be folly which would not
only cripple the individual but would impede the very
cause of humanity, and would hence in every way be
wrong.

228 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Sacrifice, in and of itself, is bad and is to be avoided.
There is and can be no merit in the mere act itself.
Merit flows from the motive or purpose which leads
up to such act. It needs justification and is only sane
and wholesome when it is the sacrifice of something
that would have checked progress and development.
A man is, in tmth, also bound to sacrifice anything
whatever that would prevent the discharge of what
he feels to be an important duty to his family or to
some person or organization that is peculiarly depen
dent upon him. When made intelligently within these
limits, such sacrifices, however serious they may at
the time seem to be, rarely prove in the end disastrous
to the high development of the man, while a deliberate
and conscious refusal to recognize such duty often
leads to a loss of character, which finally does degrade
and injure him. Duties of that type appeal to the
well-developed man with such a compulsive force that
he simply cannot disregard them. His ideal is too
strong. It is only the partially developed man that
has any serious struggle and then the outcome and
decision constitute a crisis in his psychic life. Serious
sacrifices for what to most men are vague abstractions,
such as society or the cause of humanity, are as a mle
unwise. It is probably a fact that most men who develop
so as to feel the compulsive force of a true personal
duty are those who do not share the conventional

SACRIFICE AND RENUNCIATION. 229
and popular conception of duty in relation to these
abstractions. Many a man talks loudly of his sacri
fices for the church or native land who is intensely
selfish in all his relations with family and friends. The
alleged sacrifice is often the result of pure self-seeking,
where in some cases the man is afraid of God and seeks
to secure his personal salvation by doing things which
he is reaUy afraid not to do. He has no such fear of
his family or friends, who are supposed to be more
indulgent and merciful than God, and so his true nature
appears in his relations with them. It is unquestion
ably true that many of the sacrifices for native land
have been inspired by intense political ambition or by
thirst for fame, glory or personal advancement, and
this has too often involved the ruthless disregard of
aU personal duties whatever without any real and com
pensating advantage to the country. Too often this
has been a gamble for high stakes. Then, again, there
is the ostentatious sacrifice, which is merely self-
regarding vanity when the man poses for applause.
There is also the sacrifice which springs from super
stition and sentiment based on false conceptions of
life. Much of the so-caUed sacrifice is really self-destruc
tive and essentiaUy involves a degree of insanity. It
not only does not help him who renounces but it often
injures the very person for whose sake it is ostensibly
made. Sacrifice must never rest on mere sentimen-

230 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
tality, for it is then mischievous and pernicious. If
any man reaUy sacrifices what is truly necessary for
his normal growth and his personal duty, he wiU be
put to aU the test he can be expected to stand. Let
him avoid aU he can, for there will be enough.
There is one thing always to be remembered, — to
be effective the renunciation must not be partial.
Compromises are as a rule fatal in cases of this sort.
This is so tme that in many cases a sacrifice had better
not be made at aU than to be made in a half-hearted,
imperfect way. Serious and fuU surrender of the
obstacle is what is demanded. It is not always some
thing bad that is to be renounced, but often it is a
thing good and even refined in itself, which is, however,
time-consuming and therefore inconsistent with secur
ing enough consideration for the more important,
serious and reaUy higher purpose. Here it is duty to
renounce one good thing for a better; one that makes,
perhaps, for culture and refinement for one that makes
for solid character; one that makes now for a per
fectly proper form of pleasure for one that conduces
to higher attainments in the future.

V.
SELF-RELIANCE.
Rome begs the individual man never to trust him
self, but to rely on his superiors for advice and to
foUow strictly the mles they prescribe. For the masses
of men this is a valuable and very practical suggestion
so long as there is some honesty and virtue in the
adviser, who is assumed to be thus intellectuaUy and
spirituaUy superior. Greece urges the man to rely
on himself, believing that through many a mistake
and stumble he will acquire some common-sense and
secure a development which mere reliance on others
could never beget.
Neither suggestion is adapted for all men. Some
ought to rely on others just as a blind person ought
to rejoice in any guidance, which, however imperfect,
is better than none at all. For a man possessed of
fuU eyesight to be led about as one blind, by a person
who sees no more clearly than he does himself, would
seem to proclaim that both parties to the act were
either very foolish or were playing a part for the
deception of others. The tmth is that the extent to
which a man properly relies on the use of his own
intelligence is the measure of his personality.

232 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
"What is within a man's skin is all that, strictly
speaking, is his." If he finds there nothing that may
be developed into a capacity on which he may safely
rely, he wiU rarely find it anywhere else. He lives
in a world full of the most wonderful resources, aU of
which, however, become available to him only on the
condition that he shall have individual capacity to
use them. He may seize the opportunities of life to
the degree of his capacity and no more. This capacity
no man ever possesses in the beginning of his life,
except as germinal or potential, and so individual
power on which, later in his life, he may rely as being
in a sense his own, always rests on the fact that he has
himself developed that power. In a true sense he is
reaping the harvest of his own endeavors. Power
to rely on self is, therefore, as has been said, the great
test and measure of personality. Self-reliance is thus
an ethical ideal.
Man, however, is lazy. Self -development is hard
and stretches over many years of persistent effort.
To follow a guide is easier than to study your own
course and be your own pilot. In a word, to be helped
is easy, while to help yourself is hard. It is so aUuring
to hear that others can carry your burdens, solve
your problems, take aU the responsibility for the
decision, and it is so hard and perplexing to do all this
for yourself. This is another root of man's troubles,

SELF-RELIANCE. 233
his laziness, resulting in acquiescence in whatever
promises to dispense with effort on his own part. He
who holds out great expectations as the result of mere
lazy obedience, he who declares that all can and will
be done for the individual by some one else, that he
will be saved by mere lazy compliance with ritual and
payment of fees, — he who does this is crushing out the
germs that might ripen into a self-reliant character.
We are aU aware that a vast number of men are
at this time so constituted that self-reliance is utterly
out of the question, and this may justify, as a tempo
rary expedient, any scheme which fits the exigencies
of the case. But it does not justify the erection of
this into a final ideal. Granted that many men are now
lazy and need a stern external and parental author
ity, need, in fact, to be coerced for their own good, it
is not true that we are to treat this as a permanent
condition for man. That these men are now necessarily
dependent and need guidance is tme and there can be
no doubt about it. So far as this duty of superin
tendence and guidance is done in the right spirit, it
is the discharge of one of the highest functions of
humanity, but, whatever be the present necessity,
self-reliance is the tme and normal state of man. Arise,
stand on thine own feet and be a man! This connotes
the tme idea. Man may be weak, but weakness is
not his tme ideal. Man may be ignorant, but knowl
edge is his ideal. He may be corrupt and insane, but

234 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
purity and sanity are his normal estate. So he may
now be dependent, but self-reliance is his tme state.
Whatever man is at the time, this we must face and
we must admit it to be a fact but we must not lower
our ideal by reason of it. Because so many men sin,
we are not to say that virtue is no longer the ideal,
but, on the contrary, so much the more need is there
to assert the ideal and vindicate its real excellence.
We need not deny palpable facts but we may declare
that we will not be satisfied that such should always
be facts and that, if we cannot raise a multitude to
virtue, we will not any the less try to raise up a few
to carry the banner and fight for the cause.
In this world a thousand influences help him who
tries to help himself. The root of it all is that a man
shall at least try to be self-reliant, try not to be the
shadow of some one else, try not to wait for another
to speak before he shall know what he himself thinks.
Arise, stand on thine own feet and be a man! This is
the cry of the Christus. It is better and nobler to think,
though with a mixture of error, than to repeat, parrot
like, the wisdom of another.
Whatever may be rhetorically said against reliance
on self, most men do have a feeling that this is their
duty, and, whatever they may say and however they
may pray, they do hold this as their practical ideal.
They speak by one system but they live by the other,

SELF-RELIANCE. 235
and this is due to saving common-sense. They may
pray but they also work; they may ask for guidance
but they sedulously study the chart and plot out their
own course, and herein they show the tme Occidental
spirit. The root of an ethical existence is that a man shall
not be a burden to others but that he shaU be self-
reliant and self-maintained. If it is true that we ought
to bear our brother's burdens, it is also tme that he
ought not to aUow us to bear them if he can help it.
Necessarily we depend on each other in countless ways
and our interests are intertwined into a living web
which is a social unity, which implies that each shall
bring to this common web his own independent life
and spirit, and to this individual independency and
self-reliance the value of the social web is due.
To sit and wait for aid from an external source is
the trait of a lazy man. To ask and pray that aid
may be given, that bread may be provided, that all
the good things of life may come to him who simply
waits in idleness to receive them as a gift from his
father,— all this is mere folly. The true man will arise,
gird his loins and go forth to get these things as the
reward of his own thrift, skill and labor. Whatever
the people of the Occident have said, this is the way
they have, in the main, lived and this is the reason
why they stand where they do in the scale of civiliza
tion. All men, whatever their creed, admire the self-

236 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
reliant man, for they are really conscious that he is
the type of what normal, rational and healthy men
should be.
The extent of social disease is indicated by the ab
sence of self-reliance in the community at large. The
remedy is not to flatter the diseased by proclaiming
their condition normal but to deplore the disease and
determine to cure it. Man has always had a tendency
to believe that aid was to be secured by magic, by
repetition of formulas, rituals, prayers and incanta
tions. This method is so easy that, if it could be shown
to be reaUy operative, it would certainly be the death
kneU of all manly self-reliance. Man wiU not toU for
what is to be had for the mere asking. He will not
pay for a thing he can get for nothing. If there were
truly a Being who would provide aU things, man would
surely roU all the responsibility from his own shoulders.
Now man has in himself a part of that force which
causes the universe to exist. On this, as a divine power
within himself, it is man's duty to rely. By the aid
of this the race must gain for itself those things whose
free gift, without man's exertion, would sap the very
roots of aU character. The greatest evil that could
happen to man would be to induce him really to be
lieve that supernatural aid could and would be granted
whenever he had by negligence, ignorance or wilful
ness involved himself in difficulties, for it would teach

SELF-RELIANCE. 237
him to depend on external help; it would take from
him the desire to improve his own faculties, to trust
his own intelligence, to obey the law of his own reason,
to amend by effort his own life and the lives of others.
"If we could relieve the improvident so as to make
him as well off as the provident; if we could protect
the thoughtless so that he would suffer no more than
the thoughtful; if we could fill the squanderer's hand
whenever he had emptied it so that he would know
want and destitution no more than the industrious,
prudent and careful, we should set a premium on the
shiftless and retrogressive qualities of men and finaUy
destroy aU thought, aU foresight, aU labor and thrift."
So far as a pious sentimentality has taught or practiced
this, it has been an evil and a source of disaster to
the race.
Arise, stand on thine own feet and be a man! This
is the human motto. ReaUze thyself and thy powers.
Learn what they are by relying on them and trusting
them. Thus leam that in thyself resides divine force.
Conquer indolence and expect to have only what you
have earned. Beheve that what you ought to do,
that you can do; that what you ought to have,
that you can win by putting forth the force immanent
within you. Rely on yourself and you will discover
that you are not walking alone and unattended.

VI.
SANITY.
In a survey of human life we discern certain types
that disclose results which make life seem to be reaUy
worth living. These connote and lead up to what
we caU sanity, which necessarily implies normal, well-
balanced and rational development. It enables the
individual to disclose his characteristic human power
and capacity in such a way as to secure personal happi
ness therefrom. It implies the fulness and richness
of human living, for sane conditions are human con
ditions, which are aU in the sphere of the developed
reason. Sanity, then, signifies the mental control and
regulation of hfe, presupposing insight, perception,
judgment, power to discern inteUigently what ought
to be sought and what ought to be avoided. It aims
at a rational happiness and means self-poise, self-
control and the consciousness of personal power and
capacity. It implies and necessitates harmony, equi
librium and due proportions, so that, in the group of
conditions which constitutes the man no one element
shaU have undisputed and unchecked ascendancy.
What we have thus far caUed sanity is exactly what
we mean by the term "righteousness." It is the most

SANITY. 239
nearly ideal status and is therefore seldom seen or
realized in a high degree. The mass of men possess
sensitivity only in shght measure, so that in their case
the physical is constantly securing complete ascendancy
and crashing the psychical. No sanity or righteous
ness is possible under such conditions. Against the
continuance of this status, spirit seems always strug
gling to create more perfect media for its use, in which
purpose it is thwarted and defeated by countless
obstacles which it seems to have no power to avoid. It
seems to need cooperation and to call, at times, for
some resistance, so that the man may avoid even its
own entire ascendancy. The ideal seems to involve a
certain equilibrium, which is the very essence of sanity.
The object seems to be not to have spirit supersede
the individual and to use him independent of his own
cooperation, but to have him so develop as, in a sense,
to give rise to a new and definite product of person
ality, rendering possible a genuine differentiation of
spirit itself. Union with the physical furnishes the
basis and opportunity for this. Spirit exists, in the
case of each and every man, under new and untried
conditions. To have him develop all his powers har
moniously, in due proportion and balance, is to secure
the ideal status, which is righteousness or sanity. While
genius is perhaps always a more perfect manifestation
of elemental spirit, it is not necessarily as near to the
human or spiritual ideal as the righteous man who,

240 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
although less briUiant, may be the finer product. The
absolute human ideal would seem to be an individual
capable of manifesting the very highest genius without
in the least losing this equilibrium of powers which is
characteristic of the righteous man. To secure fulness
of expression at the cost of wrecking the individual
organism could not be deemed an ideal procedure,
but to have the man so develop as to become sensitive
in the highest degree and ready to be thus freely and
unimpededly used, leaving him still normal, sane and
righteous — this must be the true ideal.
If we carefuUy consider this matter and realize all
that is involved in lifting a purely animal organism
to those conditions of psychical activity which we
know to have already many times existed as facts
in our racial history, we shaU not be surprised at the
number of failures but must wonder that, even in one
case, success was secured. We shall come to realize
that the normal, sane, righteous man stands as the
greatest product of the cosmic force, that he has been
evolved under an inconceivable complexity of clashing
conditions which render his existence the greatest
triumph of spirit, and that it has taken ages to accom
plish this.
Genius may be normal and sane, in which case the
sensitivity is not out of proportion to the other con
stituent elements of the personality; there is due

SANITY. 241
harmony and equilibrium, which gives poise and con
trol, seeming to hold the psychical force in check.
Genius may be abnormal and, in a strict sense, not
sane, when the sensitivity, in some single direction,
is so great that aU else in the personality seems sub
ordinated to it; when the force causes an intensity of
reaction which is almost destructive of the organism
itself. Genius is often like a tree whose branches
almost break by reason of the load of fruit. At times
they do break and ruin the tree. Where there is
extreme sensitivity, peculiar power to receive and absorb
subtle influences, power to see visions and fantasies
and vividly realize ideals, and where this is used by
spirit to its maximum degree, the delicate structure
snaps and breaks. The sensitive organism is, as it
were, torn and wrecked in the effort to exact the last
degree of opportunity for expression.
Just before reaching genius we find what we may
call the "great man," who towers above the ordinary
pigmy men and secures remarkable ascendancy over
his feUows. He is in such exact harmony with his
environment that he seems to incarnate the ephemeral
national mind and temperament and to stand in the
eyes of the men of his day as a concrete and visible
ideal. He falls short of genius, which ordinarily is
out of touch with the immediate environment, but
he is more useful in his day and his influence shapes
the course of affairs more than is directly affected

242 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
by genius itself. The great men of one generation
are those who, without themselves possessing genius,
are nourished by the genius of preceding generations
and seem to be necessary agents for translating the
thought of genius into the common vernacular and
giving it popular force and effectiveness. These great
men are the practical heroes who are understood by
the people, who interpret the message of genius and
give it social potency. They turn thought into deeds,
carry out theory and speculation into practice, in a
way that is not possible for genius itself. By being
one remove from genius, they seem to possess a degree
of sanity and common-sense not often shared by pure
genius. Genius furnishes the permanent classic ele
ment, the acute, penetrating interpretation which is
wisdom, while the great men furnish the temporary,
practical element which disseminates this wisdom and
appUes it to the affairs of social and national life. The
great man is essentiaUy the man of action, who, being
close kin with genius, is stiU adapted to the crowded,
bustling life of the camp, the senate and the court.
He has a pecuhar sensitivity which wiU, so to speak,
stand the wear and tear of such life and this imphes
remarkable physical qualities. Thus unusual sensi
tivity coupled with unusual physical conditions results
in the great man, who is capable of bearing serious
strain and pressure without injury. He seems to have
a sort of genius of a coarser fiber, less delicate but more

SANITY. 243
effective and useful. Such unusual sensitivity, coupled
with ordinary physique, which is, however, sufficient to
maintain equilibrium and poise, results in the normal
and sane genius, in whom the psychical always main
tains a rather marked but somewhat restrained ascen
dancy. A very remarkable sensitivity, coupled with
an imperfect physical organism, results in abnormal
genius, when the psychical secures at times complete
ascendancy. Thus at one end we have the dull and stupid in
action of the idiot, with whom spirit can have nothing
to do, and at the other end the feverish, frenzied
exaltation of the exceptional genius, who may fairly
be caUed the victim of spirit, to whose lust of expres
sion he is sacrificed. The music he creates, the art,
the literature, the scientific discovery, which result
from the exaltation, come as a revelation to the race,
for which he pays the price. He is as one possessed,
for he works at his task with more zeal than any slave
ever worked under the most cruel taskmaster and,
at its close, sinks exhausted, but with his name on the
world's roll of honor exalted as a mouthpiece of the
spirit force.
Between the two extremes of idiocy and genius lie
the masses of men and humans. No one ever wishes
to become an idiot, for it means the loss of all person
ality and is a living death. It is probably tme that
no one ought ever to wish to be or become an abnormal

244 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
or exceptional genius, for that also in a sense involves
a loss of personality, in the extreme ascendancy of
the one dominant, passionate ideal which blots out
aU else and destroys the harmony and equilibrium of
being. In such cases happiness and contentment are
absent in a marked degree, for they sacrifice aU ease
and comfort in obeying the imperious mandates of
spirit. We may therefore say that whatever tends to save
life, to develop capacity coupled with self-poise and
self-control, to make life healthy, sound, happy and
good, makes for sanity, and all this is summed up in
one word, which is " righteousness." This term means
aU those things and conditions whose presence is nor
mal and right and which render life worth having now
and here. The righteous man is the sane man, the
human. Whatever tends to destroy life physicaUy, mentaUy
or spiritually, to make it weak, sickly, miserable and
wretched, to retard or prevent development, makes
against sanity, and all this is summed up in the word
" sin," the violation of the laws of man's being. Self-
preservation is sanity. Let a man remember that his
true self is not his body but his mind, his power to
think and reason, his sense of beauty, his craving for
the ideal, his thirst for knowledge and wisdom, his
aspiration for what is noble and good. Whatever
lessens or destroys these is a blow aimed at his very self.

SANITY. 245
Humanity is a sane minority surrounded by an
insane majority. There can be no doubt that, spiri
tually considered, and taken as a whole, the world
must be regarded as a great lunatic asylum. If we
reflect upon all that goes on in this world, considering
its horrors, cruelties and atrocities, its wrangling and
fighting, its social follies and excesses, its vain and
puerile pomp and ostentation, its industrial and
political fraud, its ecclesiastical trivialities and banali
ties, its general self-destructiveness, we can find no
other way to explain it. We must never be influenced
by mere numbers. If the whole population of the world
were so corrupt that, out of a million of men, only
ten were healthy and developed intellectually and
spirituaUy so as to stand for sanity, these ten righteous
men would be the true and normal type of man and
what was disclosed by them would be the hope and
glory of the race. We must see that the fact that there
are a million drunkards does not dignify the individual
sot; the fact that there are a million prostitutes does
not make chaste maternity any the less ideal; the
fact that there are countless diseased men does not
make health and vigor any the less a triumphant
success. In aU matters intellectual and spiritual there
is, and ever must be, a standard or ideal and this must
be independent of all mere counting of heads.
In the great struggling mass which constitutes the
world the individual may lead his life of righteous-

246 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
ness and sanity. By renouncing its so-called popular
rewards, by standing aside from its tumultuous crowds,
by being in the world but not swaUowed up by it, he
may find for himself the tranquil peace of a contented
spirit, to which the sane men of the great past shaU
come and minister. He is independent of this mad
world if he but wiUs to be so. Isolated from the noisy
multitude but in touch with collective humanity, he
may realize in art, music, hterature and the higher
service of mankind the conditions of sane living and
thinking. Because aU this is and has been tme for
ages, spirit has been able to keep alive and graduaUy
to increase the human minority, so that it is possible
that, in the very remote future, sanity shaU be the rule
and not the exception. It must, indeed, be the final
goal of the race, so that some day sanity must come
to be the condition of the then majority, and this will
be the millennium, which thus connotes the ascendancy
of sanity.

VII.

EVIL.

Men have generally said that one of the most diffi
cult problems to solve, one of the hardest terms to
interpret, is the element in life which we caU Evil.
It is everywhere present and confronts us constantly
in a way to arrest our attention and compel us to
think about it. When we consider the pain, the agony,
the misery that is woven all through the web of life
we are aghast. Millions of men have cried for ages,
Why is it so? Why cannot we escape aU this? Why
must there be so much that is repellent and awful?
The difficulty, however, arises from man's attempt
to interpret evil so that it may be consistent with
certain of his theories and prepossessions. Clear as
it has long been that what he caUs evil is absolutely
inconsistent with these theories and demonstrates
them to be false, he stiU stubbornly clings to them
and caUs evil a mystery which, for some inscmtable
disciplinary reason, is inflicted on him by a Potentate
of the universe, who at the same time is omnipotent,
benign, compassionate and omniscient. The Potentate
knows every twinge of pain, every disaster, every
calamity, and knows this in advance of its occurrence.

248 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
He is able to prevent all of it by mere exercise of om
nipotent wiU power. He is full of tenderest compassion,
and yet he permits this awful burden of sorrow and
pain to rest on men for all the ages. If it were tme
this, indeed, would be a mystery and it would certainly
be insoluble.
If man wiU, however, remove from his eyes the bandage
placed over them by false theories and prepossessions,
he wiU see that, appalling and discouraging as the fact
of evil may be, it is not one of those facts which involve
any mystery whatever. Whether evil can ever in any
very substantial degree be removed or overcome as an
element in life is a question which it is quite impossible
to answer in some of its aspects and extremely easy
to answer in some of its other aspects. The proper
interpretation of the fact is, in any event, the first
and most necessary step towards any solution of the
matter, if any such there be.
The main reason or cause of man's prepossessions
lies in his vanity, conceit and indolence. He does not
want to acknowledge his own responsibility for he
does not want to assume any such burden. He feels,
in fact, humiliated if forced to see that the evil flows
from his own failure to act wisely, and as this failure
rises out of the fact that he is ignorant, prejudiced
and selfish, to acknowledge the fact is to convict him
self of a crime against himself for which he can rightly

evil. 249
blame no one else. He is, therefore, gratified and
flattered by a theory that takes responsibility from
his own shoulders and makes him the creature of
circumstances. If, from the final consequences of all his
ignorance, prejudice and selfishness, he finds that he
can be saved by certain artificial and technical methods,
with which he can comply without too much inter
ference with the way of living he wishes to adopt, he
feels that this is a good solution of the problem, for he
is not obUged to condemn himself except in a theo
retical sense, as technicaUy demanded by the method.
If there is a God whose will it is that aU these things
should be as they are, then it is idle for him to struggle
against it, and he may properly enough sit in indolent
ease and let it aU continue, since he himself is saved
by the magic ritual he is careful to observe. This is
reaUy a terrible delusion, and evil will never be removed
so long as it continues to retain its place in man's
mind. To destroy the false theory is the first step
in the conquest of evil.
So far as our intelligence shows evil to be a necessary
fact, man must accept it and bear it with stoical resig
nation, making no useless complaints and finding no
fault with what is inevitable. So far as it is seen to be
remediable he must either gird his loins and attack the
problem or else go on suffering the penalty of his own
foUy, his own laziness, vice, selfishness and ignorance.

250 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Evils may be divided into three classes. The first
includes all those which could not have been avoided by
any inteUigence or foresight on the part of any person
either in the present or in the past. Evil of this class
is due to the coUision of man with the great elemental
forces which act under fixed laws utterly regardless
of consequences so far as he is concerned. These are
due to the destmctive and terrific force of the elements
and are represented by the storm which brings ship
wrecks; the tempest with its lightning that smites
man and his proudest structures; by the hurricane,
the cyclone, the tornado, the volcano and the earth
quake. These, indeed, are forces that at times
work appalhng disaster. They come with irresistible
might and must be calmly accepted as inevitable and
unescapable. Here comes the caU for stoicism and
resignation. It is as if one were face to face with Fate.
These elemental powers, whose operation results in
disaster to some individual men, are beneficial, help
ful and necessary to man in his collective capacity.
They cause loss to a few but bring safety, health and
happiness to miUions. If they did not act as they do,
no life could exist on the planet at all. While, relatively
to some individuals, these collisions with elemental
forces are tme disasters, no one is to blame for them
and no power exists anywhere that can prevent them.
The individual who is crushed is indeed doomed, as
if by Fate, but in aU this there is no mystery, for it is

EVIL. 251
inevitable that such events should occur. They, how
ever, constitute but the very least part of man's
evils. The second class includes those which are indeed
due to man's agency where, however, this has operated
over a long period and covers aU the vices of his racial
predecessors, which have been, so to speak, seeds from
which the present noxious plants have grown. This
now gives him what we caU inherited vices and
tendencies towards vice, weakness of constitution,
sluggishness of mind, insanity, deformities, monstrous
growths, deafness, idiocy, blindness, and so on through
the whole hideous catalogue. These roots, running
deep into the soil of the remote past, cannot be torn up
but can only be finally killed, if ever, by persistently
lopping off the growth above ground until the roots
die. In aU this class of evils man, the individual, seems
face to face with Fate. The responsibility cannot be
definitely placed. No one now living is to blame.
The immediate predecessors in the chain of life may
not be in fault, but, for the individual so afflicted,
there is no escape. While the evil may be mitigated
and its severity modified and relieved, it comes with
all the finality of a decree of Fate. All that can be
done is to stop, in every way possible, and in every
degree possible, further transmission and longer per
petuation of the curse. Awful as it aU is, man can
blame no one but his own race for this which may be

252 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
caUed the Curse of Adam, his own typical, sinning
ancestor, while its relief, mitigation and extinction
he wholly in the hands of man. No power external
to the race ever can or will check or terminate this
evil, this curse bequeathed by man's wicked past.
The third class includes aU evils that might have
been prevented by the agency of men now living.
This embraces by far the greater part of the real evils
of social, political and industrial life. More than four-
fifths of all the evils that appal man are of this class.
They are all due to the presence of ignorance, preju
dice and selfishness in man himself. Man, the sufferer,
is thus the cause of his own woes. They come because
he violates natural laws; because he does not live
conformably to reason; because he is lazy, vicious
and licentious.
So far as there is any assignable explanation of aU
this it seems to be found in the fact that in the evo
lution from animal to human, man is necessarily vested
with a responsibility for which vast multitudes of men
seem entirely unfitted. These seem to be the victims
of their cmde and undeveloped reason, from which,
we have said, there seems to be but one escape and that
is in the cultivation of the spiritual side of man's nature.
The enormous difficulties attendant upon any attempt
to elevate masses of men have led to a very general
feeling that it is well nigh impossible to do any such

evil. 253
work rapidly or on a large scale. This feeling is
certainly justifiable and rests on a vast amount of
experience in the past.
It is almost a paradox that reason, which is certainly
man's highest attribute and under some conditions his
greatest blessing, is also the cause of his misery and
distress. But it seems to be true that man's peculiar
capacity is as great for evil as it is for good and that
it turns in the one direction or in the other according
as it is regulated, controlled and cultivated or as
it is left crude and imperfect. This, however, should
not be thought strange or unusual, for the same thing
is true of almost aU forces, which are only safe and
valuable when inteUigently directed and wisely con
trolled. Dynamite has assuredly aided man to achieve
some of his greatest and most useful enterprises, but
in the hands of bad and incompetent men it is and
can only be destructive. Fire and water, which are
absolutely essential for aU living, may become terribly
destructive and for a time work havoc, for fire, igno-
rantly handled by one person, may lay waste a whole
city and cause appaUing disaster. Certain deadly
poisons which, wisely and cleverly used, are most
helpful in overcoming disease, may be so used as
to cause nothing but evil. The appetite for food
unchecked may lead to gluttony and a deadening of
aU the nobler faculties while, if properly subordinated
and controlled, it is the only way for man to keep

254 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
himself in the best condition for his highest work. The
sexual passion is certainly necessary and is not in itself
evil, but it may become the source of degradation,
disease and utter ruin.
Indeed the main cause of the terrible disparity of
condition that exists in all communities is the different
manner in which the sexual passion operates in different
classes. To illustrate this: "Let us imagine a country
occupied at one time by a thousand families. Let
one-half, constituting class A, consist of those who
are fmgal, prudent, self-respecting, sternly moral and
ambitious for the higher things of life. Let one-half,
constituting class B, consist of those who are careless,
ignorant, reckless of consequences and degraded by
vice. In a dozen generations the progeny of class B,
which multiplies like rabbits, wiU be five-sixths of the
population, while five-sixths of the property, power,
inteUect and spirituality will be vested in the progeny
of class A." If it were not for the manifest superiority
of brains over mere muscle; for the fact that a minority,
capable because of its virtue, can restrain and even
dominate an immoral and vicious majority; if it were
not also true that the intemperate and extremely
profligate disclose a high rate of mortality; if, in fact,
the death rate in the crowded and squalid parts of
great cities were not abnormal; if vice did not weaken
its victims and render them more liable to disease
and death; if infanticide were not very prevalent — it

evil. 255
is probable that class B would, in the case supposed,
have entirely submerged and destroyed class A.
The greatest evil that confronts man is here dis
closed, and it forces the human element in every nation
to keep up a continual struggle to maintain its standard
and save its higher hfe from being extinguished. There
can be no solution of the problem of evil that does not
include the control of the sexual passion as its first and
most important step. Sexuality degraded and per
verted is man's greatest curse. Whatever wiU cure
or restrain this wiU necessarily bring about sanity
in all other directions.
The training of a child so as to make him a truly
educated and symmetrically developed human being
is probably the most difficult task to which we ever
apply ourselves. So long as children are thoughtlessly
and recklessly begotten without any regard to these
difficulties and even without so much as a thought
as to whether there are any resources to enable these
children to be properly reared, so long the race must
face a continuance of those conditions which result
from the presence of the crude and undisciplined masses
of men who themselves sin and suffer and infect the
entire social body with evil as a sort of disease.
The most impressive fact in social life everywhere
is the vast number of people who are ignorant of the
plainest laws of health and weU-being; who fail to
learn anything by repeated experiences; who seem to

256 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
have no capacity to grapple with even the simplest
problems of daily life; who drift along like animals
without the controlling instinct which saves the animal
from error; who rebel against aU personal discipline
and seem weU nigh incapable of self-education. Their
whole idea of progress is an increase of sensual enjoy
ment. Anything that promises more chance for glut
tony and the gratification of the sexual desire has thus
far always and everywhere been popular.
If all animals and animal-men were as corrupt and
diseased, as incompetent and impmdent, as foolish
and disobedient to the laws of their nature as is a vast
part of the typical men, there would be no living on
the face of the globe that would be worthy of a moment's
consideration. Humanity ought to take some con
solation from the fact that at least the animals and
animal-men are as a rule healthy, and, within their
sphere, intelligent and even wise.
Each individual suffers in part for his own sins, but
he also suffers in a large degree because of the sins of
others. Some pay in a marked way the penalty of
their own individual qualities, but many bear a burden
for sins that are almost entirely another's, for such
is the solidarity or social unity of the race that each
man suffers because of aU, and all suffer because of
each. This necessarily flows from the fact that men
together constitute an organism the whole of which

evil. 257
is affected by the disease of any part. Now this class
of evils is tmly a disease or sickness in the different
members of the social body due to social sins. There
is no evil of which man has any right to complain
that can be ascribed to any other cause than his own
conduct or that of his race in the present or in the past.
This explanation is not of a sort to give any satis
faction to men who are in the grip of these evil-causing
qualities, but it seems to be the plain tmth. Such
men call loudly for some great external power to save
them, but there is no power that can do it except the
men of their own race. They may call and pray and
beg to a far-off Potentate, outside the world, but it will
avail nothing. The very first step towards mitigating
the evils of this world is to come to a realizing sense
that aU responsibility rests on man himself and that it
is by his efforts alone that the problem must be solved.
What is called the Devil is really ignorance, preju
dice and selfishness in man himself. The only seat
of authority for the Devil — the personification of
evil — is thus in the breast of man. The three ele
ments are ordinarily found acting together, consti
tuting a sort of trinity which is the real source of the
awful misery of the world. Consider the race preju
dices, the national and class prejudices, the religious
prejudices, and the animosity, bitterness and strife
growing out of all these. Consider the unfair monopoly
of trade, the various industrial associations that are

258 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
mere organized selfishness, the abuse of legislative
power in the interest of privileged classes, the adminis
trative cormption of nations, states and cities, the
frenzied competition along the whole line of industrial
life — is it not a terrible picture of greed, cruelty and
oppression? All of this comes from the ignorance,
prejudices and selfishness of the men who make up
society. Whenever we see these qualities at work
doing social mischief, creating evil conditions, leading
to wretched misery, let us say in a word that it is
the work of the Devil. When the political orator is
appealing to those qualities in his audience, we know
what he is invoking and we know that, to the extent
that he succeeds, the Devil wiU rule the community.
To overcome the Devil we must overcome these quali
ties in men, remembering that it is much easier to call
the Devil in than it is to drive him out.
The passions and appetites are not bad in and of
themselves but are indeed very good, valuable and
necessary. Without them we cannot see how there
would be any real satisfaction in our life; without
them we can hardly conceive our life as having the
possibility of a moral and spiritual side to it. It is
only as they run away with us, are ill-regulated, un-
governed and uncontrolled, that they have any sinister
aspect whatever. Their control is the very source
and occasion of all development and virtue. They

evil. 259
furnish the opportunity, the test, the measure, so that
we cannot see how a man who did not feel what passion
and appetite were could by any possibility know
what virtue was. He could not even inteUectually
conceive the latter except as he succeeded in intel-
lectuaUy conceiving the former. Thus it becomes tme
that " the world is aU the richer for having a Devil in it,
so long as we keep our feet on his neck, but only so long."
Now in aU this there is nothing of what is properly
caUed mystery. It would indeed be strange if, under
aU the conditions, things were otherwise. Mystery
is always connected with some manifestation of the
eternal force, always with an affirmative fact. Now
evU is not a force of any sort and has no sort of con
nection with God. It exists in the absence of divine
forces. Thus, to illustrate, darkness is not a force
manifestation but is entirely due to the absence of
hght, which is a force manifestation. Cold is not a
force manifestation but is caused by the absence of
heat, which is a force manifestation. There is no mys
tery about cold and darkness, for aU the mystery is
connected with light and heat. Darkness and cold
may be said to kiU plant and animal life, but death
is due, not to any force in them, but to the absence of
light and heat, which are necessary to sustain such
life. Life demands active, affirmative force. In nega
tion of such force it dies. Evil is the negation of right
eousness and no social state can be otherwise than
miserable which is destitute of righteousness.

BOOK THIRD.

RELEASE FROM BURDENS.

I. Nirvana.
II. Beauty and. Art.
ILL Immortality.

BOOK THIRD.

I.
NIRVANA.

Nirvana is a much-abused because a much-mis
understood term. It has very generaUy been taken
to mean absolute annihilation, a revolt against self-
existence, and as such is a morbid, pessimistic and
insane idea, not true to the facts universally disclosed
by the hfe and nature of man. The love of existence,
and desire for immortality as being endless existence,
is natural and characteristic of man. And yet there
is a sense in which the word is profoundly true and is
apphcable to the daily life of millions of men. Its
rational meaning rests upon a keen and searching
analysis of our own experiences, without involving
any undue subtlety, and when rightly understood is
the explanation of phenomena which every man will
find in his own daily life as a constant and unescapable
element thereof. There is indeed hardly one other
word that is so interpretative of our daily hfe and
common experiences, so that, until it is clearly per
ceived, a man can hardly understand himself. While

264 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
he incessantly seeks it, craves it and yearns after it,
he does this instinctively and almost without percep
tion of what he is really doing. He apparently cannot
refrain from such seeking and in proportion to his
success seems to be the degree of his happiness.
Used in a rational sense, Nirvana refers to a state
of mind in which, while retaining all our powers and
faculties, we seem to lose consciousness of personal
existence and to be living on a different plane in utter
forgetfulness of the body. It is, therefore, for the time
being, an extinction of such individual life, a suspen
sion, obliteration or loss of such ordinary consciousness.
It is a sort of self-oblivion due to rising for the time
into the impersonal and universal. It is a forgetfulness
of self, which self is there aU the time but is no longer
assertive and dominant. It is essentially a leaving
of self, a stepping out of one's self, and this every
body is constantly doing if his life is interesting and
happy. AU the moral and intellectual forces appear
strongest and best in men who most perfectly forget
self. Every inteUectual man must, in aU his highest
work, do this in an exceptional degree — the lawyer
in his case, the author in his book, the preacher in his
sermon, the physician in his patient, the scientist in
his laboratory. It is indeed tme that the moment we
plunge into any real, serious occupation we necessarily
forget self and in a proper sense happmess rests upon
and demands this self-oblivion, which is Nirvana.

NIRVANA. 265
Many words indicating happiness of an unusual
character indicate this idea of temporary self-extinc
tion. Thus ecstasy is defined as the state of being taken
out of self, becoming unconscious of ordinary objects
and impressions. Rapture is being carried away from
one's self by agreeable excitement. To charm, to
entrance, to fascinate, to enchant, to bewitch, to cap
tivate, all imply that the person is under a magic spell
overcoming ordinary consciousness and for the moment
extinguishing self. To be transported by joy is to be
carried away from self by that emotion. A revery
is a waking dream in which the person is unconscious
of self. To muse is to be absent of mind, to be so
engaged in contemplation as not to be aware of
passing scenes, that is, to be out of and away from self.
Enthusiasm, in its early meaning, is an inspiration as
if by a divine power, whereby you rise out of and
above your ordinary self.
Physical life is man's necessary basis and yet it is
in a true sense his cross. He seeks to forget for a while
its weight and burden. Now this escape may be for an
hour or a day, or it may become a reasonably perma
nent and normal state of mind that he has reached by
reason of having risen into another plane where he is
free from the haunting consciousness. This involves the
practical extinction of the lower self, escape from
the slavery of the lower nature into the freedom of

266 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
the higher nature. It is a sort of happiness, a sense
of freedom, a perception of life values and the posses
sion of resources that make life worth while, which only
exist on the tme plane of human living, using that
term in its high sense.
As soon as man has passed beyond that stage where
he is essentially mere animal, he instinctively craves
this Nirvana, feels the need of rising into humanity
as an escape from the burden of existence on the lower
plane. He has a vague, instinctive, semi-conscious
feeling which causes an incessant effort to escape from
this cmde lower self, to extinguish it and forget it.
Man lives in a state of perpetual restlessness. He
seeks nothing except for himself and yet he flies from
nothing so eagerly as from himself. Whenever he has
leisure time he studies only how to throw it away.
His happiness seems to consist in oblivion, in some
amusement that shall hide him from himself. Increased
leisure means increased necessity for diversion, seeking
by devotion to external things to drown the conscious
ness of being alive. To have life all leisure would thus
be insupportable and would make men most miserable
since it would be impossible to devise enough forms
of amusement completely to fill such a void. They
must perpetually be kept from thinking of themselves.
The rich man going to his country seat, with abundance
of money and servants to supply all his wants, may be
and often is very wretched because he has leisure to

NIRVANA. 267
think of self without hindrance. Hence men love so
ardently the whirl and tumult of the world. Hence
imprisonment is so much dreaded. Hence so few
persons can endure solitude. Hence the multitude
prefer the crowded city with its manifold distractions
and vulgar diversions to the serenity of mral life.
Hence a man will pass his days without weariness in
daily play for a trifling stake whom you would make
wretched by giving to him each day the winnings of
the day on condition of his not playing.
The rich man could easily buy fish or game in the
market but this would not call him off from himself,
while the chase after it will do so. Thus men will hunt
for whole days, with great exposure and even hard
ships, for what they would hardly take as a gift. As
soon as it is secured they have no further interest in
it, but are off seeking for more excitement and amuse
ment elsewhere. The hunting trip is thus reaUy a hunt
for Nirvana. With most men life is thus a game the
object of which is to throw away their life, seeking
conditions that prevent their ever having to think and
reflect upon themselves — avoiding all self-inspection.
No animal or animal-man ever has this feeling. It is
characteristic of the tme man type and is essentially
a desire for that tranquil, contented state of mind
which for man cannot exist except on the human plane,
which is inteUectual and spiritual. Now, if the human
status always meant one and the same thing, then,

268 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
as soon as he became human, man would have Nirvana,
but, as elsewhere, there are aU gradations from those
who are just barely human to the most highly developed.
Therefore this yearning and craving clings to aU humans
except the small class of the highest, and so it is prac-
ticaUy distinctive of aU men and of very nearly aU
humans. It manifests itself acutely as discontent with
existence and results in ennui, boredom and weariness
of spirit. It implies inteUect enough to be disgusted
with what you have but not enough to know how to
create different conditions; intellect enough to be dimly
aware that there is a problem but not enough to be
able to solve it. It means lack of development; lack
of resources and vital interest; lack of power to
entertain one's self; lack of affirmative force; weakness,
indifference, Ustlessness.
The coarsest men find Nirvana in drink and rough
sports, in the excitement of gambling and aU those
forms of diversion which make no demand for any
special degree of ability. When a day comes for rest
or recreation the man must go somewhere. He must
go where what he sees will take up his thoughts and
save him from faffing back on himself. If he be unable
thus to go, he says that it has been a very long, dull
day, nothing going on, nothing to do. He says that
he hates hohdays. He has been alone with himself
and he finds himself very stupid company. He does
not so phrase it in words, but the real fact is that he

NIRVANA. 269
is tired of himself, wants to get away from his own
uninteresting, undeveloped self. So it mns through
aU the gamut of life.
The one real escape for aU men and most humans
is work, some occupation that absorbs the attention
and leads to self-forgetfulness, which is temporarily
self-extinction. Employment is thus the great social
necessity. Good, steady work is called a great blessing
and it is tmly such, for it produces a good and steady
period of self -extinction. The criminals in the prison
must have something to do or they wiU become luna
tics merely from confronting their own wretched selves.
Work will often lift them out of themselves and aUow
them to get rid of the evils of existence, for a while
at least, and then, being physicaUy tired, they may
sleep and so for many hours entirely forget themselves,
be entirely rid of the evil of existence, for sleep is the
only perfect Nirvana for such men. It is indeed quite
universal. Men go to the play, the games, the opera,
the concert haU and the lecture room to be helped to
forget themselves for a while. A novel receives its
highest encomium when the reader says that it made
him forget himself. The orator and the preacher are
popular when they do the same thing for men.
Man's higher development is closely connected with
this yearning for Nirvana, which, leading to discontent
with existence as it is and causing an imperious demand
for something that shall occupy his time, impels him

270 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
to use all his powers to ameliorate his condition and
secure happiness. By experience and observation he
finds that no abiding pleasure comes from anything
but the development of his faculties. Rising into the
inteUectual life he becomes absorbed by his investi
gation and thought. Study becomes the pleasure which
satisfies his cravings and saves him from ennui. Keep
men in the atmosphere of high thought and it matters
not what their doctrines or philosophy may be, we
know pretty well what their lives must be. Men thus
absorbed, and filled with a noble enthusiasm for truth,
have that which, more perfectly than anything else,
will save them from feeling that existence is a burden.
To know and judge a man's real character we must
know what he does with his leisure time, that is to
say, how does he seek his Nirvana? When a man loses
his place in the business world, it is not merely the
loss of wages, serious as that may be, but it is the loss
of Nirvana. So, too, a man, having become wealthy,
retires from business to enjoy his leisure, as he thinks,
but he misses his only Nirvana and so must return to
the treadmiU, as he cannot, with his undeveloped men
tality, be happy without it.
The tme and developed human has so escaped the
trammels of his lower nature as to live as if he did not
possess it. He is in a higher sphere of existence which
has its own pleasures, to secure which he only asks
to have leisure, freedom from those very things which

NIRVANA. 271
to the mass of men are true and necessary anodynes.
He is in a world so full of interest on its intellectual
side that, while he indeed rests on a physical basis,
he really lives above it. He lives in the spirit and, in
the old phrase, walks with God. He does not yearn
for Nirvana, for he possesses it. He has so subordinated
his lower impulses, passions, appetites and coarse pro
pensities that they seem to be extinguished. Dying
to this lower nature, as it were, he rises by a new birth
into another life, which is richer, truer and more abun
dant. He has put off the old Adam, the crude, natural
man and entered into the new man, which is Christus.
The restless craving disappears. He rests in content
ment and peace rising out of the joy of possession.
Toilsome effort has ended in joyful achievement. The
triumph came through long and weary days of struggle
and involved many a stumble, but the victory is
decisive. He has won the crown of life which for him
shall ever grow towards greater satisfaction, for he has
truly reached Nirvana. In all that he does or can do
that is great and good and beautiful, he feels that he
is but the medium of a force that is higher than him
self. The feeling that this is true springs from the
consciousness of the presence of immanent spirit
whereby one perceives that he is only the user of the
force but not its source. He lends voice and hand,
but he feels that all his work, so far as it is worthy
and remarkable, rests essentially on spirit, which

272 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
alone renders it possible. Such a belief extinguishes aU
self-regarding vanity, for this must needs yield when
the spiritual side of life is discerned. Contentment
of the tmest and deepest sort flows from self-surrender
to this force which we feel has the absolute right to
receive our services. In this way alone is man set free
from the haunting consciousness of self as a burden
borne without purpose or result.

II.
BEAUTY AND ART.
No man may define wherein beauty consists, what
it is or how it is that we are able to have any sense or
appreciation of the beautiful. So far as we have the
feeling at aU, it is due to that singular capacity im
manent in us which we have called spirit. Like every
form of force manifestation it must forever be inex
plicable and mysterious. All that we know is the fact
that there is in most men this power to discern what
we caU beauty and that in a few men there is power
to create what we feel to be beautiful.
If a man has not this capacity no one can make him
realize what it is. If he has it in some degree, it may
perhaps be developed by the aid of others, but the
germinal seed must be in the man as one of the conse
quences flowing from the immanence of spirit, or it is
not in him at all and cannot then be evoked by any
means whatsoever. Like all his other capacities he
has it or he has it not and that is all we know about it.
Why some have it and why others do not we may not
understand. Like aU the rest it also exists in endless
variations of degree from the very slightest to the very
highest. All human capacity is mystery beyond all
analysis.

274 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
This power to perceive beauty finds its natural and
first field of exercise in the contemplation of the world
itself. To the normal man the world is in itself a
beautiful place, exciting his admiration at every step
he takes. It is not a dreary wilderness through
which he is to make a pilgrimage towards a world
that will be worthy of his admiration, but it is now
and here the maximum of all that is beautiful, glorious
and sublime. It is the marvelous manifestation of
universal force.
Man, then, lives surrounded by the beautiful. The
dimly lighted forest with its noble trees shadowing
forth the cathedral idea, the falling cataract, the beach
with its white breaking surf, the sky at night filled
with its myriad stars like eternal eyes looking out of
space, the glory of sunrise and sunset, the countless
varieties of landscape, orchards in blossom, the blue
sky with its fleecy clouds, — all these appeal to man's
sense of the beautiful. Not only to man's eye comes
the appeal, but the ear has its sense of what is beauti
ful and hears countless sounds in nature which suggest
music and its infinite harmonies. So, too, the mind
has its perception of beauty — thoughts and ideas
resulting in visions, dreams, poetic fancies and ethical
meditations, and this is felt to be akin to beauty in
its other phases. To all the senses and to the mind
comes this appeal summoning man to the shrine of
the beautiful.

BEAUTY AND ART. 275
Deriving his standards and earliest conceptions from
the contemplation of nature, man's noblest work is
to create new types of beauty, and this whole field of
his creative effort is called art, which is merely his
endeavor to give expression to his sense of beauty.
It is individualized force seeking to imitate the uni
versal force. Those who exercise this creative power
in the highest degree we caU men of genius. Many
may enjoy but few may create this highest beauty of
art, for this degree of capacity is rarely found, but it
does exist and has existed for ages, showing to man
the possibilities of his nature. What he individually
is in his little degree becomes genius when its high
development is reached and thus genius discloses to man
the beauty of his own nature, shows him the dignity
and greatness of that force which is immanent in him.
The field of art is very wide and varied. Within its
boundaries comes all of man's work in which he takes
pride and satisfaction. We generally speak of art in
a very restricted sense and, for precision in thinking,
we must always do so, but we must not forget that the
artistic force is an element very common and indeed
universal in the life of man. The precision and uniform
action of a machine gives to the inteUigent beholder
the feeling that all this is beautiful. The delicacy of
adjustment, the wonderful adaptation of all the parts
to secure the result, all this he feels is one form of art,
and it truly is, for it expresses the sense of beauty in
the field of mechanics.

276 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
Led on by his desire to express this love and sense of
beauty, man has enriched in countless ways the world
he lives in. He has filled it with pictures and sculpture;
with cathedrals and the innumerable creations of
architecture; with noble literatures and sciences and
industries; with symphonies and all the works of the
great masters of music. In these humanity finds its
expression. They are its additions to the means where
by the individual may be inspired, stimulated and
consoled. All beauty is resultant from the operation
of cosmic force, so that art merely denotes that part
of the beautiful which results from this force as it is
incarnated in man. AU beauty and therefore aU art
must be attributed to God.
What then is the true office and function of art and
beauty? It is this. The beautiful in nature and in
art, using that term in its broadest sense, furnishes to
those who are qualified to receive it the most refined
and highest type of Nirvana, and this is the reason
why men seek and ever wiU seek to realize the beauti
ful. It is the best, purest and noblest of aU the means
of forgetting self, for losing consciousness of the burden
of existence. To be qualified to be affected by the
beautiful a man must have in himself some of the very
essence or cardinal quality of beauty. For those only
is it Nirvana in a high sense. Beauty does indeed
speak in the one language that is well-nigh universal
but it speaks clearly only to those who already know
the language.

BEAUTY AND ART. 277
The true artist, in his happier moments, is capable
of losing his own individuality in ecstatic contempla
tion of the idea embodied in genuine art or in the
beauty of nature itself. He becomes absorbed into
it and identified with its essence. He forgets himself,
is no longer conscious of his separate existence. In
this mental absorption caused by the contemplation
of beauty the individual life is for the moment at an
end. It is that extinction which constitutes Nirvana.
What is true in a high sense of the artist is tme in a
lesser degree of many. They, too, forget themselves
when music entrances or poetry rouses their nobler
feeling or art introduces them to a new world. They
become mere eye or ear, that is, pure intellect, free
from aU disturbance of passion or desire. All esthetic
perception and emotion implies this entire forgetful
ness of self, this mental absorption.
Beauty and art come thus as a very tme and perfect
source of Nirvana. For the time we are released from
the ignoble pressure of life. We merely behold, and
contemplation is its own sufficient reward. We are
lifted out of self and live for a while as an impersonal
force in the atmosphere of pure thought. We escape
from the body and forget that we have it. Such is
the beneficent power and secret charm of beauty and
art as felt by those who are able to perceive and
appreciate it. Before these man stands as if at a
shrine of the mysterious and universal.

III.
IMMORTALITY.
During aU the ages reflecting man has contemplated
death and has asked if it is the end. Does he live for
a few years and then pass utterly away or is there a
survival and continuance of that which he feels to be
his own distinctive self? We know that the body is
to be entirely disintegrated and resolved back into its
elemental atoms. With these physical substances, the
reflecting man feels no necessary association, although
now clearly dependent upon them for his continued
existence. He loses a limb, or aU his limbs, and
does not feel that any diminution of the real and true
self has occurred. He is poorer, indeed, by the loss
of tools which might have been used, but he remains
unchanged, for he is an indivisible unit, dependent
in certain ways upon his body but not a part of it.
He finds in his very inmost nature a psychical essence
which renders him capable of extraordinary and con
tinuous development. After reflection, based on ob
servation and experience, he is forced to believe that
this is no part of his body, is not localized in any part
thereof, and yet it may maintain itself in apparent
ascendancy over his body, may control, coordinate and

IMMORTALITY. 279
adjust all his individual powers to secure certain results
which he has planned. Through it he may conceive
ideals and seek to realize them even at the cost of
his bodfly ease, and even in direct antagonism to his
physical cravings, appetites and passions. Through
aU this there seems slowly to come into existence a
self, of whose growth he is conscious, for he looks back
and discerns its earlier stages and knows that it has
steadily been developing into what it is to-day. Through
it he has his ambitions for the future, to realize which
he becomes more and more willing to sacrifice the claims
of the body. More and more complete may become
the ascendancy of the psychical self, until the body
is virtually its servant, until the contest with appetite
and passion is ended and the ethical plane of life is
natural and normal. This is the psychical self developed
from the potency present at birth. This, if anything,
survives at death, and so the question of survival per
tains only to those who have developed such a self.
Each man at birth is, in every essential sense, purely
animal, except that he has a potential spirit capacity
which, like a seed, depends upon various subsequent
conditions for its development into anything that shall
have any value or significance. It is as if there were
in the child, wrapped up and concealed, a germ, charac
terless at the time and not discoverable by any means
whatsoever. The years of man's life are the period
during which this germ is developed or is quenched

280 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
and lost. He necessarily begins as animal, passes on
to the status of animal-man, enjoying the irresponsible
and so-called happy days of childhood. He then reaches
the status of man and is at once confronted by the real
problems of life. He either remains in this condition,
constantly perplexed by problems which he never
adequately meets and solves, or he passes on to the
human status characterized by successful development.
In all this he obeys or disobeys the law carried within
his own nature. He has a possible self at the start, of
which he is dimly conscious; a sort of potential per
sonality which he may or may not bring to fruition.
Progress for him is self-realization. If he reaches this,
he does it by constantly striving after and in a measur
able degree securing higher ethical conditions which give
rise in him to will and character as a psychical force.
These are peculiar and personal to him and, in a sense,
are created by his own persistent effort, using the ever-
increasing and expanding spirit immanent within him.
If there be anything that survives at his physical death
it must be this developed psychical force which repre
sents his life work and is the result of all his days. It
appears as conscience, will, character and reason and
upon the quality of these rests the verdict passed on the
life at its conclusion. Now, whatever happens at death
is neither a punishment nor reward. That which sur
vives does so because it is, in its nature, fitted therefor,
because, under the law, it must survive. Whatever

IMMORTALITY. 281
perishes does so because there is nothing that can sur
vive, because there is no spiritual vitality. Animals,
animal-men and men are terms that describe beings
who are destitute of any developed psychic force and
so they pass away. The human class, which consists
of aU those who have developed true personality, in
volving high character, who are essentially incarnations
of spirit, may survive.
Immortality lies in a field beyond all observation and
experience and so it is necessarily outside the field of
true knowledge. Because we are in some degree pos
sessed by spirit we become dimly conscious of its pres
ence and, from this adumbration, may arise a belief
in survival, resting on these suggestions or intimations.
It is a dim consciousness of kinship with the universal
force itself and, so far as it goes, may be a true pre
monition of a fact. It is purely the result of reflection,
based on this vague, instinctive feeling flowing from
immanent spirit and it is of necessity tentative and
speculative. It is, however, possible, and even probable,
that elemental spirit may become so individualized
as to be strong enough, as such, to survive the destruc
tion of the body. Dependent absolutely for its indi
viduality, in aU its earlier stages, on the physical, it
may reach a point of growth when it ceases to be so
dependent and when it is literally bom again into a new
realm of life, in which the psychical is capable of exist
ing independently and absolutely.

282 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
We may never be able accurately to perceive just
when this point is reached in any given case but it
would seem that it should coincide with that vague
point which we say designates the rise of the individual
into the true human life. In other words, using our
symbolic phrases, man survives when and as he becomes
and is part of the Christus. The secret cosmic purpose
may be this very individualization of elemental spirit,
this effort to segregate spirit, as a universal force, into
new and definite forms not otherwise producible, and
serving some end in the cosmic scheme not now to be
comprehended by us.
It would seem that there is but one line of actual
experience which is suggestive and interpretative of the
mystery of a possible future existence, and that is the
constant craving and search for what we have called
Nirvana. If any person will read carefully the two
preceding chapters, he will find that, the more he re
flects on the facts there presented, the more remarkable
he will be forced to consider them. In the status called
Nirvana, we seem to become impersonal. While we
retain and exercise all of our developed powers and
instinctively use all other capacities and faculties, we
for the time give no thought at all to the fact that we
personally exist. We seem to forget our identity and
simply live in the ideas that absorb us and in this im
personal status we find our completest happiness. We
seem to be mere mind detached from the body, and

IMMORTALITY. 283
the more perfect the detachment, the more perfect seems
to be the satisfaction we afterwards feel that we have
derived from the experience. At the time we may
give no thought to the fact that we are happy, and
this is always true of the highest forms of such happi
ness. We, in a sense, lose our life to find it in this im
personal way, in a realm apart from and different from
the physical. The capacity to do this is always a
developed psychical capacity, which, therefore, implies
and means an impersonal existence, which does, it is
tme, rest upon personality but entirely forgets , it in
the intensity of occupation with the ideal which seizes
us and submerges the lesser and commonplace sense
of personality. If there is any clue to the nature of
existence after death, it would seem to be found in
this status of impersonal happiness, growing out of,
and only rendered possible by, developed personality.
It may be that in this way what men have called
heavenly happiness is foreshadowed in the psychical
happiness of this life. He who has no such capacity
in this world cannot expect to have it anywhere else,
and the degree in which he develops it here must in
dicate aU future possibilities. AU culture and develop
ment lead a man away from the intense sense of his
own restricted personality to a higher and higher
degree of impersonal thought, to a status in which man
the individual loses his keen sense of animal existence
and enters into the contemplation of the universal,

284 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
with an almost entire indifference to the loss of his
ordinary personality. He could only reach this status
of impersonal culture by and through the development
of personality, but, when he has reached it, he is ready
and wiUing to throw away the ladder by which he has
climbed up. What we call personality, in the popular
sense, is like the scaffolding we put up to enable us to
construct a building. We could not create the new
buUding without this temporary structure outside of
and surrounding it, but, when the building stands
completed, we take down the scaffolding as no longer
necessary and useful. Nor do we ever regret its dis
appearance, for we know that it has served its purpose
and ought to vanish to permit the building to be seen
in its own beauty of design. We live in the finished
building and in time forget that any scaffolding was
ever needed.
The presence of psychic force seems always to render
this impersonal status possible in some degree and we
have called it Nirvana. Now if we conceive this as a
permanent, continuous status, unbroken by returns
to the status of ordinary, conscious personality, it
may be that herein we may find our only way of con
ceiving the conditions characteristic of survival after
death. The temporary disappearance of the ordinary
personality foUowed by its return, which imphes the
presence of the body as reasserting itself, may fore
shadow the entire disappearance of what we caU our

IMMORTALITY. 285
sense of individuality, which does not return because
the body which previously has caused such return is
then gone, leaving the psychical product of the de
veloped personality in this impersonal status of pure
psychical existence. In Nirvana we are certainly
acutely conscious and perhaps are so in an unusual or
even maximum degree. The only element that is
lacking is our consciousness of the body, which is the
personality of sensations and physical reactions. In
our happiest moments, face to face with art, entranced
by music or rapt in contemplation, we never complain
of this loss of our common personality, and if we can
gladly dispense with it for an hour why cannot we
give it up forever? Why should we look forward and
complain if we are to lose or be deprived of that which
we are constantly trying to lose, especially when we
have repeatedly found our greatest happiness in those
very hours in which for the time being we have lost it?
It seems to be a fact that the highest impersonal
status must necessarily rest upon the profoundest sort
of personality which, because it is profound, transcends
the ordinary limitations and rises into the universal.
We always rate a man's work in the inteUectual and
spiritual field by the degree in which it reveals this
universal and impersonal characteristic. The great
genius gives us a work of art and beauty and we caU
it classic because it is eternal. It appeals to men in
all times and all places because it is free from the petty

286 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
and personal note and carries us out of ourselves into
a nobler realm of idealism in which we see all things
in a clearer and purer light. Such work we say is
greater than the man who did it because it seems to
transcend his ordinary personality and is as if made by
one who, being out of the flesh, had beheld a vision of
aU things as they really are. A perfect personality
would realize the impersonal status in a perfect and
absolute degree and so we have the apparent paradox
of the highest personality resulting in entire imperson
ality or universality of thought and purpose. To see
this clearly and adequately is, it seems to me, to come,
as near as it is possible, to a tme conception of a future
psychical existence. The sense of personality is very
largely a sense of limitations and imperfections con
stantly forced upon the attention of a being who aspires
to get beyond them and escape from them. Growth
and development ought, then, to diminish this sense,
and so, in theory, should, if carried far enough, cause
its disappearance when being has reached the stage of
the impersonal and universal. Is not this exactly what
does happen whenever we reach any high degree of
Nirvana in our daily life? When we listen to the most
inspiring and absorbing music do we not lose all sense
of limitation and forget all ideas of imperfection? Are
we not for a moment lifted out of the personal and put
in touch with the infinite? Conceive this as a perma
nent and continuous status and try to realize its full

IMMORTALITY. 287
significance. You may not compass much for it is cer
tainly a great mystery, but do you not dimly see that
here may be the clue to an idea that has enormous
possibilities and do you not in a way perceive that the
loss of our ordinary personality may be no loss at all
but a great gain?
As to the specific mode or manner or duration of such
survival it is useless even to speculate, for if spirit gives
a dim intimation of the fact, and if this is reliable and
tmstworthy as instincts generaUy are, it is clear that
spirit gives no further disclosure than this and in the
nature of things cannot be expected to do so.
Without actual observation and experience it would
be absolutely impossible for any man, even the most
gifted, to foresee or even imagine such a phenomenon
as occurs when a worm wraps itself in its cocoon or
chrysalis and seems to die. We know, as a fact, that
it comes out as a beautiful butterfly, that where before
it crept now it flies and that in every way there is a
most wonderful development. If we did not know it
as a fact it would be inconceivable and unbelievable
in every one of its phases. By analogy spirit survival
may involve changes so great as to be at present beyond
aU possible comprehension by us. It seems clear,
however, that the physical does not survive; that,
when spirit is through with the body, it is through
with it forever; that what may survive is the invisible,
intangible, intellectual and spiritual element; that

288 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
when there is no effective development of this there
is nothing that can survive.
What spirit is, as we possess it or are possessed by it,
we do not in the least degree know nor can we fathom
the mode or manner of its presence in us, even when we
feel conscious of such presence, even when we feel that
it is our very life. Why, then, should we expect to com
prehend how this subtle force survives, even if we feel
instinctively that it does, and feel that a vague behef,
based on the instinct, is truly rational? If it is tme
that man is a part of the whole previous order of
development, it is also true that he stands in a relation
to it that forbids his being merged in it and excepts
him from the full operation of its laws, and therefore
presumably from its destinies. He is the apparent
end or product of a process, and for that very reason
he is severed from the process. He is the fulfilment
of one set of laws, the crowning glory of one sort of
manifestations and, by analogy, it may be but the
very beginning of another sort. Highest in his present
environment he may be the lowest in another and
future stage and these stages may run on in a long
series. Man tmly seems to be the climax of an evolution.
At any prior stage of this an observer, who knew only
what had happened up to that point, could never by
any possibility have divined the next stage. No con
templation of aU inorganic forms could have led to an

IMMORTALITY. 289
idea of plant life. No study of that could have given an
idea of even the lowest animal life and no observation
of that could have opened a vision of the higher ani
mals. So, again, no study of all evolution up to this
point could have disclosed the faintest conception of
man as seen in his present highest human development.
Each stage has its peculiar characteristic, and this is
reaUy new, and though it grows out of what precedes
there is nothing in all that precedes to show what the
next new development is to be. Now if aU life is an
evolution, as it certainly is, and if man is at present
the climax, it is reasonable to suppose that another
great step remains, that what we have begun to know
as inteUect and spirit goes on to a new and inconceivable
phase, as much greater than what we know as our
present stage transcends the purely animal stage. At
no stage is the knowledge of the next a possibility,
and it is only in the case of man that there is even a
premonition of it. For absolutely the first time in the
long duration of this evolution man begins to query
and speculate with a dim consciousness of another
stage. At no prior point has there been even a glimmer
of such an idea, for never was there any capacity to
study the past, to reflect on the present or to speculate
on the future. It is more rational to believe that the
evolution goes on than that it ceases with the produc
tion of such an imperfect result as man. It is more in
harmony with the stupendous scheme of the universe

290 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
as even we have come to conceive it. There is appar
ently no limit to what it is possible for cosmic force
to achieve, and for man to say that, while he is clearly
the highest form of life on this globe, there is assuredly
nothing higher — that, whfle he is the climax of an
evolutionary process, that process stops with him
as he now is — cannot be caUed rational. We cannot
indeed know it as a fact but it seems to be legitimate
speculation. If the highest human conditions could
have been reached along instinctive lines, the whole
history of man would have to be regarded as one pro
longed and terrible tragedy, as unjustifiable as it would
then have been needless. If the end could have been
reached without the hideous blunders and cruel suffer
ing attendant upon the evolution of the human, then
the conscious adoption of the plan we see disclosed
in that history was the most stupendous crime that
can even be conceived, and from such an idea we
instinctively recoil. We cannot believe any such thing,
for it is simply impossible that it should be true. We
are then compeUed to believe that the cosmic force
manifests itself as it does through some inherent neces
sity in its own nature. The development of man's
psychical powers, the rise of his consciousness, serves
or is to serve finally some end so transcendental that
at present we cannot grasp it at aU. It is, however,
inconceivable that this protracted struggle to rise
towards and into a field of rational life is to go for

IMMORTALITY. 291
nothing, is to serve no ulterior and undisclosed purpose.
If such be the case, then the fight made by man for
spiritual development would be a cosmic tragedy, in
comparison with which all the tragedies composed
by men are but comedies. We feel instinctively that
this is not so. We cannot accept such an idea and this
feeling is universal and necessary. It is a genuine
instinct and so we may trust it.
The entire evolutionary process is but the play of
forces, a quickening into life, a taking on of higher
and more complex forms until man is reached, who, as
compared with all that precedes, has new conditions,
new laws, new methods and new ends of his own. He
creates his mental environment, controls natural laws
to his own ends and purposes, but he does all this
under serious Umitations. He realizes aU these keenly
and aspires to greater power and higher knowledge.
His ambition is boundless, while his capacity to
achieve is limited. Why should there not be a stage
beyond, moving towards the more perfect development
of those powers which even now seem to be so mar
velous? ShaU we believe that we have seen all because
what we have seen is so transcendently great? Is it
not rational to believe that, for those who are ade
quately developed, there lies beyond a much more
remarkable existence than any now possible of con
ception? May it not be tme that, having then ceased
the stmggle for physical existence, there are conditions

292 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
that aU make for intellectual and spiritual growth
such as to cause aU our present opportunities to seem
insignificant and childish? We do not know in the
least what is possible in such directions, so hemmed
in are we by the coarseness of the flesh. The very
things that have been may be those that shall not be.
We may very properly assume, frankly and even boldly,
the possibility of a state of existence entirely psychical
in constitution, in which material conditions have
neither place nor meaning. We may predicate purely
psychical relations, declaring that the distinction
between physical and psychical phenomena is one of a
different order from aU other known distinctions and
that it transcends aU others. We may foresee the
survival of present psychical phenomena, utterly freed
from aU material conditions, and of this we cannot
now form even the faintest conception. Exact evi
dence under our present conditions must always remain
inaccessible, but this does not necessarily destroy the
rationality of the belief. It must always remain with
out that sort of support and must be regarded as not
needing it, as beyond the range of aU scientific criti
cism. To hold it need not affect in the least our scien
tific habit of mind or influence our scientific conclusions,
all of which rest in another realm entirely distinct
and apart. Scientific habits and methods may in the
future aid and strengthen our belief but assuredly
they never can destroy it.

BOOK FOURTH.

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE.

I. The Riddle of Existence.
II. The Mission of Humanity.

BOOK FOURTH.

I.
THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE.
From the earliest days man has been asking of the
universe the question why, seeking to solve what he
has felt to be the riddle of existence. Not only has
he never solved it, but he has never got any answer
at aU, and it is reasonably certain that he never will.
To man's everlasting query as to any purpose in its
existence the universe gives absolutely no reply. It
is dumb. It has no reply, for it exists because it does.
It was, it is, it will be. That is aU. I am that I am.
Seek no further.
It is not strange that man cannot answer so stu
pendous a question. The marvel is that such a tiny
speck as man should ever ask it. That a mere atom
should seek to divine the mystery of a universe that
is infinite and eternal is indeed a marvel. Man who
does not know what anything really is, but only sees
and knows it as a manifestation of an inscmtable
power, ought not to expect to understand the universal
purpose even if such there be.

296 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
An otherwise dumb universe seems to rise to con
sciousness only in man. Human mind, the crowning
manifestation of the eternal force, surveys the entire
field of creative energy and, itself being but a fragment
or spark of that force, seeks to question and to analyze
the whole, of which it is but a part. It cannot do it,
but the mere attempt shows the origin of mind and
its kinship with the eternal cosmic power. It is thus
a great proof of the dignity of man's nature that he
ever attempted the puzzle at aU, that he ever felt the
desire for a solution or even raised the query.
In the end it comes to the question, Why should any
thing exist? Why should there be any earth, any sky,
sun or moon? We do not know. We can see no reason
for the existence of even elemental force. It is as it is,
but the real purpose of it no man can even conjecture.
If all that now is throughout the universe were to pass
away and leave mere vacuity — no matter, no force, no
ether — what would be the harm? There being then
nothing to be affected there could be no consequential
results. Now if we can see no reason inteUigible to
our minds for the existence of anything at aU, no
reason why all that exists should not be blotted out
and disappear, it is not strange that we cannot under
stand why any certain part of the whole is as it is,
for we have then no knowledge of the true relation of
that part to the whole, and without such knowledge
it would be impossible clearly to see the reason for the
peculiar character of the part.

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 297
Man is therefore forced to admit that he cannot
discover why anything should exist at all or why, if
it must exist, it should have one mode of existence
rather than another. He can only observe what is
within the range of his physical, mental and spiritual
vision and try to interpret it all into an harmonious
and orderly system, but this much he apparently must
do, for in aU ages he has been trying to do it.
If, however, there be any purpose, it must be in
line with all observed facts. In physics and chemistry
we observe and study the facts and at last we see what
we call the law of certain things. Whatever always
happens under given conditions we say is the disclosure
of a law and this is aU man ever knows about such a
law. That it is so he knows as a fact, but why it is
so, or how it is so, he does not know nor ever will.
Nature has its own way of compelling attention. A
man needs to eat food and he becomes hungry and
loses interest in aU else except in what we say figura
tively that nature then wants him to do. He needs
water and becomes thirsty, all else being subordinated
to that imperious need. That aU life should maintain
itself is taken care of so elaborately by nature that we
may safely say that it is one of the primal laws of the
universe. Whenever we discover what we thus call a law of
the universe we may say that it discloses the divine
will and purpose, assuming that there is one. Now

298 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
we can hardly conceive the universe as without pur
pose or that it is not dominated by a will and so we
look at the facts and, when we see how certain things
always do operate, we may say that such is intended
and that it signifies the divine purpose. We do not,
in a strict sense, know that there is any purpose, but
we can hardly help using the language, for it is quite
impossible to feel that agencies so cleverly calculated
to produce a result were not intended to do it. We
feel that somehow, in a way not comprehensible, nature
is sentient with purpose and will, that such is a part
of the very essence of all cosmic force. How it operates
or can in any way operate, it will be always impossible
to see or to say. The plain fact is that we do not know
and cannot know the mode of such being or the way
in which such universal force operates and exists. It
is best to be honest and say so. Man is safest when
he clings to the facts within his capacity, not, of course,
rejecting the visions of his deeper inner consciousness,
but being very cautious how he argues from such
premises. He may feel something that he knows he
cannot explain or express. He will not, however, do
violence to truth and call it knowledge, but he will
recognize that it may point towards facts which tran
scend aU his capacity for knowledge.
He may rest secure in the idea that what he needs
to know is certainly within his capacity; that nature
does not leave any work unfinished or incomplete.

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 299
What always has been always will be. It is a moral
universe under the strict dominion of law from first
to last. Man must learn this law, which means that
he must study and interpret the facts honestly and
fearlessly. In this quest the ultimate degree of honesty
is demanded, and it will result in the highest possible
degree of light.
The tme riddle of existence is wholly connected
with man's existence and largely rests on the enormous
disparity Of social conditions that has always and
everywhere been apparent. It is because we see the
poverty and misery of the masses of men ; the blindness
and perversity, the ignorance and seemingly incurable
selfishness; the ascendancy of the animal nature in
a being capable of such spiritual exaltation. The two
extremes are apparently irreconcilable. It is difficult
to regard men as having unity of nature, some of whom
are coarse, contemptible, degraded and repulsive, while
others are refined, gloriously intelligent, heroically
unselfish and invincibly attractive. We could under
stand man as purely animal — as low, brutal and sen
sual — if only all were such. We could understand
man as intellectual, refined, capable and happy, if all
men were such. The riddle lies in the fact that men
are seen in both phases, and this has persisted so long
and been so universally tme that many have said that
it was inescapable, being rooted in the very nature
of things. The Christian spirit denies this and asserts

300 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
that the bmte in man can be entirely conquered by
suitable environment, by proper education, by rational
development. Thus Christianity, when truly appre
hended, comes as the solution of the riddle and summons
all men to cooperate and demonstrate its validity.
The wonderful growth of knowledge; the discovery
of man's power to control and utilize natural forces,
to press into his service the very elementary laws of
the universe; the consequent improvement in methods
of production and distribution; the lessened appre
hension and dread of so-called supernatural powers
as capricious and incalculable; the obvious and wide
spread stimulus reaching all classes; the undaunted
courage leading society to attack problems hitherto
deemed insoluble; the deepened faith in our abflity to
solve these problems — all this has led and is leading
us to believe it reasonable to predict a coming day when
life, even for the masses, wiU be more than a struggle
for existence, more than a contest for food. As this
comes to be more and more appreciably compassed
by the unfolding of modem life, men come more and
more to believe that the world as it is at present is
good; that the future is to be better; that progress
is the tme order of the world and that it is reaUy a
privilege to have a part in the great movement. This
diminishes the feeling that life is a riddle in proportion
as it comes to be regarded as having some tme value
for all grades of men.

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 301
Here Christianity should come with its inspiring
and hopeful explication of the problem; with its message
of encouragement; with its assertion that the source
of all that is seriously worth while is God; that the
expanding social consciousness, the aspiring human
soul, the intellectual activity, the yearning for the
uplifting of aU men and the amelioration of all social
conditions, is a tme revelation of God and indicates
the divine purpose; that the extraordinary impulses,
throbbing through all human living, do but reveal
the divine force within us causing and urging on the
development we behold.
Nature, as we regard it at any one time, is but a
temporary phase of a process marked by incessant
changes, for the cosmos is not a permanent and
unalterable entity but rather a shifting, ever-changing
process of becoming. AU is ceaselessly swept forward
under an impulse that causes never-ending changes.
But, however it appears to the casual onlooker, to
the eye of intelligence and reflection the changes are
not blind and aimless but rational and orderly. It
is not a purposeless drifting but a rational evolution.
We may dimly discern evidence of this within the limited
field of our conscious observation and this is the basis
for our faith in the validity of a belief in universal
progress towards some rational end. But, while we
may discern evolution as the essential law of the cosmos,
we cannot penetrate behind or beyond this. We feel,

302 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
indeed, that we are compelled to recognize identity
accompanied by change as characteristic of the whole
natural world. Now the only form of identity that
is thus accompanied, of which we have any direct and
tme knowledge, is personality. I constantly change
and yet I am conscious of my identity. Therefore the
essential principle of the cosmos can, by me, only be
apprehended as analogous to what I caU personality —
as an immanent, self-revealing, self-manifesting, self-
realizing God. Without such a supposition aU phe
nomena remain inexplicable while, if that be accepted,
all nature is seen to be the working out of a psychical
principle which is forever realizing itself in countless
diverse forms — a psychical progress ever seeking as
its end the more perfect self-realization of the cosmic
force. The historical student sees evidence enough to justify
his belief that "through the ages an increasing purpose
runs." Each lower stage seems to lead to a higher
which could not have existed without it. Ever the old
order seems to be yielding place to the new, but always,
underneath the evanescent, restless movement there
seems to be purpose; underneath all the changes,
diversity and variety there seems to be a harmony and
underlying bond of unity. In man's life continual
pressing forward seems to be the law of his being. As
conscious personalities we feel that progressive devel
opment is our highest duty, the fulfilment in us of

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 303
the divine purpose. We are ever to seek to surpass
the best that is behind us and to press on in hope and
confident assurance that there are greater and better
possibilities before us and it is thus that we cooperate
with God. We must abandon that which is outworn,
must throw off the shell we have outgrown and con
stantly stmggle onward and upward.
Though the history of the world be so fuU of evil,
misery and oppression, attended by so much lamenta
tion, mourning and woe; though man's life be largely
disappointment and defeat; though pain be suffered
to the point of anguish; though dreary superstition
be so persistent as to seem ineradicable from the
minds of our feUow-men; though, in a word, the world,
as we see it in our limited way, seem to contravene
any idea of an underlying rational purpose — despite
aU this we must stiU believe that there is a divine
purpose and that it is rational. We must love and try
to reach what seems to us to be highest and best; must
let our whole life rest on faith that what our conscious
ness certifies as best is really so; must act as if what
we did counted for something; as if our earnest effort
at self-expression were not wasted and would not be
"cast as mbbish to the void." We must be loyal
and steadfast in this faith despite the absence of strict
and logical proof; must treat it as if it were a reality;
as if our own personality were in some way needed
for the completeness of the cosmic scheme. Then,

304 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
even if we utterly perish, we shall do so with serenity
and dignity. We must at least believe that to develop
our faculties, to lead a life that is pure and sane, to
secure and realize in a sensible way the fulness and
richness of our present environment, is to prepare
effectively for all other worlds and is a wise course to
pursue whether there are such other worlds or not.
We must see that if at the end of this life we utterly
pass away as individuals, it is because we ought to
do so since it serves the divine purpose. The question
of purpose or no purpose in the universe does not hinge
on the question of man's survival as an individual
after death. We may serve the cosmic purpose even
if we perish and our highest joy may still flow from
such service despite failure to survive. We must
believe that the power that has brought us thus far
can be forever trusted and, feeling this, we may roll
all thought and responsibility for the future from our
own selves, realizing that our present duty to seize
present opportunities is enough to employ all our
capacity and that we may have the joy of present
development whatever is to happen. It seems clear
that a man who does not develop himself because
he fears that he will not survive does not deserve to
survive. He is a weakling, without faith in the divine
purpose unless it coincides with his personal preferences.
He is not willing to serve God because of the ends
gained by the present service, but demands a so-caUed

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 305
reward, the propriety and possibility of which he is
not fitted to judge or even to understand. In very
tmth the work of the developed man, with his splendid
capacity, his profound insight, his unwearied industry
in working out the serious purpose of his life, discloses
and manifests the Real Presence, the divine energy
immanent within him. He begins in mystery; he
lives surrounded by mystery and mysteriously he con
cludes his work and passes on. In it all he symbolizes
the vaster life of the whole. In his feeble way he
incarnates the Eternal Reason, in which he has lived,
by whose pressure he has moved, to which has been
due aU the mystery of his being. Living or dead he
is under the same divine law, and this law is right and
wise whatever be his personal destiny under it.
But, whatever may be our true and final relation
to the universe, it is certainly a great privilege to have
witnessed, for even a brief lifetime, the majestic spec
tacle of nature; to have even pondered the riddle of
existence and, in our effort to solve it, to have reached
and grasped a conception of the progressive develop
ment of the human race; to have studied the succes
sive generations through the long, historic past, each
fuller of true humanity than the one that went before;
to have beheld the motley throng of mortal beings,
each with spiritual possibilities hidden within him,
each realizing himself under the varying conditions

306 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
of his individual environment and aU cooperating to
produce the mysterious life called the history of man,
— a mighty, seemingly endless procession of mortals
moving, with ever-shifting, ever-fluctuating fortunes,
through time towards a possible immortality; now
rising, now faUing; now exalted, now abased; now
triumphant, now cmshed; ever struggling to live,
yet ever succumbing to death; ever standing as a part
of nature, yet ever striving to rise above it; with the
eternal law written on the heart, yet with passions and
appetites that antagonize it, — an organism through
which God does indeed speak, yet constantly denying
God. It is truly a riddle but it is fascinating, overpower
ing and when seen in its broader and higher aspects,
wonderful and even glorious in its impressiveness.

II.
THE MISSION OF HUMANITY.
Assuming that there is a divine purpose, it is clear
that, so far as man is concerned, it means that he shall
find purpose enough in his own growth and development
within his own sphere. Man is to give his limited
capacity to a limited task, which is merely to live con
formably to the laws of his own being. This by analogy
is the divine purpose, for it is due to this principle that
the whole universe, outside of man, swings on its eternal
course in exact obedience in all its parts to law. Man,
so far as we can see, alone violates this principle and,
as a consequence, his life is the only part of the
universe marked by what we call evil, the only status
in which there is misery, sorrow and degradation.
Until man obeys the law he must and will suffer.
If we observe and study the history of the human
element of the race, we always find it marked by one
dominant desire and purpose, and that is the uplifting
of all the rest of the race. In countless ways humanity
devotes itself to the service of man and this has always
aimed at his regeneration, redemption, salvation from
what is low and bad. To plead, to argue, to explain;

308 THE GREEK GOSPEL
to show that the true, the beautiful and the virtuous
is the best; to inspire, stimulate and console; to go
out to the unfortunate men in pity and sympathy —
all this has always and everywhere been the expression
of the human spirit, and this is therefore the law and
indicates the divine will and purpose.
To lead man into obedience to the law of his being
is the mission of humanity. It is a unique duty, for
no living being outside of humanity has such a peculiar
task. In the hands of a minority rests the regenera
tion of the majority. Why it is so, no man can say
or ever will say, but the divine purpose, reflected in
the consciousness of all the best men of all the ages,
is that humanity must try to save the rest of the race.
Why a mere pitiful minority should have such a
stupendous task on its shoulders as is involved in the
redemption of such an overwhelming majority is simply
inconceivable, but we cannot help seeing as a fact that
humanity is and always has been, so to speak, instinc
tively conscious of such a task and has applied to it
a marvelous degree of patient, persistent and heroic
effort. All the best and most capable men of the race
are working at some part of this problem, some con
sciously and some unconsciously, some blindly and
some intelligently, but all are in some way devoting
their time, thought and energy to some detail of this
stupendous task. Never at any preceding period was
so much done or attempted as at the present day.

THE MISSION OF HUMANITY. 309
So far as there is any explanation it seems to be
this. Humanity acts, and always has acted, under
pressure of the simple instinct of self-preservation.
This instinct seems to operate universally in all things
from the least to the greatest. The human minority
has always found itself imperiled by an hostile and
aggressive majority. To save itself it had to meet
and conquer or at least hold in check this, its natural
enemy. It could not rely on mere physical force, for
it did not possess as much of this as did its foe. It
could only rule by causing divisions in its enemy
and securing an alliance with at least a part. After
centuries and even ages of experience the conclusion
was forced on the human minority that in order to reach
any permanent results it must conquer by the applica
tion of its own principles, by the wider diffusion of the
human element itself, by raising in some way or in
some degree this great alien mass up to the distinc
tively human plane.
This meant no less than the moral renovation of
the world. Ignorance imperils intelligence; filth and
disease in the slums endanger life in the palace and
cloisters; the mob in the street destroys all the peace
and tranquillity of domestic life. Let things alone and
it is clear that humanity would be submerged and the
work of ages be undone. One series of centuries like
the "dark ages" was enough. One French Revolu
tion was sufficient. Hence the ceaseless effort to edu-

310 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
cate, to rouse any dormant germ of thought in this
great mass into tme activity, to guide it aright, to
mitigate man's burdens and bring about a better popu
lar environment fit to be the basis of a higher life.
The human element stands, indeed, and must ever
increasingly do so, for three ideas, upon the acceptance
and realization of which on a large scale depends the
final success of the movement for the regeneration of
the world. All past history discloses the steady and
persistent diffusion and acceptance of these ideas. They
are: First. The placing of a high valuation upon each
individual, the exaltation of the significance of the
social unit, the perception of his absolute right to
fair, just and considerate treatment by the collective
whole. It is essential that all this should be asserted
and held in a sane and sensible way, avoiding all
sentimentality and mere emotionalism, which are mis
chievous and dangerous. It is also essential that we
should never idealize or exalt individual independence
as such but rather emphasize and have as our ideal
the reciprocal interdependence of man upon man, craft
upon craft, class upon class, nation upon nation, blend
ing or fusing the old collectivism and cmde individu
alism into a new and helpful solidarity free from the
defects of both extremes. If society owes a duty to
the individual, so he owes a similar and coextensive
duty to society. These duties are correlative and

THE MISSION OF HUMANITY. 311
cannot effectively exist apart. Upon entire sanity
in regard to this conception rests all tme and perma
nent success.
Second. That the standard of living must be com
patible with this valuation of the individual and that
this is the crux of the whole problem. Seeing the ideal
of what the man's life can be and ought to be must
inevitably create discontent with anything less or
lower and ought to lead men to combine for such
improvement of conditions as may make the realization
of the ideal at least possible in some appreciable de
gree. It is certain that this is a problem of the utmost
complexity and difficulty; that it must take time
grievously long; must involve countless sacrifices,
the most heroic exertions, the utmost wisdom and
tact, and then it must be attended by every form and
degree of discouragement and sense of defeat.
Third. That men, who already enjoy a scale of living
fitted for their development, must so use their advan
tages as ever to aim at rendering the same possible
for those who are now not so favored; that the general
welfare and safety requires this and that it must be
regarded as an imperative duty. The spread of the
human ideal inevitably causes discontent with all
that is low and unworthy. This discontent must
naturally flow from the revelation of the ideal and upon
appeasing and overcoming it, upon arousing hope
and faith in and for a possible realization of the ideal

312 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
thus created, rests the future progress, if not the future
safety, of society. Humanity cannot arouse ambitions
and aspirations without being obliged, for its own
safety, to realize and satisfy them.
It cannot forever maintain its ideal as reahzable
by a mere minority, for it will then be crushed by
the ever-awakening mind of the multitude. The very
instinct of self-preservation must always appeal to
the human element as a tme and adequate reason
why it must recognize its divine mission. In this way
humanity is and ever wiU be subtly urged and forced
into the discharge of its high functions. Progressive
social amelioration becomes a stem necessity which,
if disregarded, precipitates a cataclysm or flooding
disaster and this teaches and enforces the lesson and
administers a rebuke not to be forgotten for a century.
It follows, therefore, that, whatever may be the freedom
of the individual from responsibility as to his equals
or superiors, he owes a positive duty to all below him
in the social scale, and his discharge of this duty is
the evidence of his worth and value as a citizen. To
sympathize with the afflicted; to relieve the distressed;
to modify and soften the existing inequahties, even
though he is in no way or degree the cause of them;
to encourage the hopeless; to overcome by kindness
the social discontent, however unreasonable it may be,
and however it may be due to personal faults and even
sins of the discontented ; to be patient and long-suffering

THE MISSION OF HUMANITY. 313
with these defective social units and ever to seek to
remedy the deficiencies — all this is the absolute duty
of the true human.
We are coming to see more and more clearly that
the class having wealth must take care of the poor and
lift them up as a condition of permanently enjoying
its own wealth; that the class with capacity must help
the incapables to carry their burdens as a condition
necessary to enjoying the f raits of capacity at all;
that the bright must think for the stupid; that the
clean must wash the feet of the dirty; that the sane
must guard and care for the insane; that love must go
forth and encounter hate; that kindness, mercy and
compassion must receive the ill reward of cruelty and
sheer bmtality. AU this paradox has been forced on
humanity by the mere instinct of self-preservation,
but the persistent effort growing out of it has neces
sarily developed humanity itself. The constant sense
of peril, the need of securing allies, — this has led to the
wider diffusion of the human type.
Even vulgar men are coming to see and realize as
never before the superiority of the human type. The
gifts of science, the advance in medicine and surgery,
the relief of pain, the mitigation of the burden of all
life comes so clearly from what is best and truest that
few can fail to appreciate it. Further, we begin to
perceive that what we need is not so much medieval
saints as good sterling men of capacity, ready to deal

314 THE GREEK GOSPEL.
with these great problems in the light of a sanctified
common sense. Man really wants to be better and
first he wants better surroundings in which to make
his home, better food and clothes, more leisure and
then such training as wiU render the leisure a blessing
and not, as it too often has been, a curse. Whoever
will bring man to this state, or wiU show that he is
sincerely working for such result, wiU at last conquer
the brute in his nature and lead him to at least some
degree of sanity and inteUigence.
This is the true meaning of regeneration and salva
tion and this is the way it wiU come, if indeed it ever
does. This is the mission of humanity. Whoever is
doing any part of this noble work is, whether he realizes
it or not, a part of the divine Christus. He is truly
Son of Man, for he is human that has evolved from
man; and he is also Son of God, for in him there is a
portion of the cosmic force called spirit. He is truly
in kinship with the Eternal Reason, with the God
who is forever immanent and forever transcendent.