"What we require is no new Revelation,
but simply an adequate conception of the true essence of Christianity.
And I believe that, as time goes on, the work of the Holy Spirit will be
continuously shown in the gradual insight which the human race will attain
into the true essence of the Christian religion. I am thus of opinion that
a standing miracle exists, and that it has ever existed--a direct
and continued influence exerted by the supernatural on the natural."
PARADOXICAL PHILOSOPHY.
"He that hath the Son hath Life, and
he that hath not the Son of God hath not Life."--John.
"Omne vivum ex vivo."--Harvey.
FOR two hundred years the scientific world
has been rent with discussions upon the Origin of Life. Two great schools
have defended exactly opposite views --one that matter can spontaneously
generate life, the other that life can only come from pre-existing life.
The doctrine of Spontaneous Generation, as the first is called, has been
revived within recent years by Dr. Bastian, after a series of elaborate
experiments on the Beginnings of Life. Stated in his own words, his conclusion
is this: "Both observation and experiment unmistakeably testify to
the fact that living matter is constantly being formed de novo,
in obedience to the same laws and tendencies which determine all the
more simple chemical combinations. Life, that is to say, is not the Gift
of Life. It is capable of springing into being of itself. It can be Spontaneously
Generated.
This announcement called into the field a
phalanx of observers, and the highest authorities in biological science
engaged themselves afresh upon the problem. The experiments necessary to
test the matter can be followed or repeated by any one possessing the slightest
manipulative skill. Glass vessels are three-parts filled with infusions
of hay or any organic matter. They are boiled to kill all germs of life,
and hermetically sealed to exclude the outer air. The air inside, having
been exposed to the boiling temperature for many hours, is supposed to
be likewise dead; so that any life which may subsequently appear in the
closed flasks must have sprung into being of itself. In Bastian's experiments,
after every expedient to secure sterility, life did appear inside in myriad
quantity. Therefore, he argued, it was spontaneously generated.
But the phalanx of observers found two errors
in this calculation. Professor Tyndall repeated the same experiment, only
with a precaution to ensure absolute sterility suggested by the most recent
science--a discovery of his own. After every care, he conceived there might
still be undestroyed germs in the air inside the flasks. If the air were
absolutely germless and pure, would the myriad-life appear? He manipulated
his experimental vessels in an atmosphere which under the high test of
optical purity--the most delicate known test--was absolutely germless.
Here not a vestige of life appeared. He varied the experiment in every
direction, but matter in the germless air never yielded life.
The other error was detected by Mr. Dallinger.
He found among the lower forms of life the most surprising and indestructible
vitality. Many animals could survive much higher temperatures than Dr.
Bastian had applied to annihilate them. Some germs almost refused to be
annihilated--they were all but fire-proof.
These experiments have practically closed
the question. A decided and authoritative conclusion has now taken its
place in science. So far as science can settle anything, this question
is settled. The attempt to get the living out of the dead has failed. Spontaneous
Generation has had to be given up. And it is now recognised on every hand
that Life can only come from the touch of Life. Huxley categorically announces
that the doctrine of Biogenesis, or life only from life, is "victorious
along the whole line at the present day. And even whilst confessing that
he wishes the evidence were the other way, Tyndall is compelled to say,
"I affirm that no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony
exists to prove that life in our day has ever appeared independently of
antecedent life.
For much more than two hundred years a similar
discussion has dragged its length through the religious world. Two great
schools here also have defended exactly opposite views--one that the Spiritual
Life in man can only come from pre-existing Life, the other that it can
Spontaneously Generate itself. Taking its stand upon the initial statement
of the Author of the Spiritual Life, one small school, in the face of derision
and opposition, has persistently maintained the doctrine of Biogenesis.
Another, larger and with greater pretension to philosophic form, has defended
Spontaneous Generation. The weakness of the former school consists--though
this has been much exaggerated--in its more or less general adherence to
the extreme view that religion had nothing to do with the natural life;
the weakness of the latter lay in yielding to the more fatal extreme that
it had nothing to do with anything else. That man, being a worshipping
animal by nature, ought to maintain certain relations to the Supreme Being,
was indeed to some extent conceded by the naturalistic school, but
religion itself was looked upon as a thing to be spontaneously generated
by the evolution of character in the laboratory of common life.
The difference between the two positions
is radical. Translating from the language of Science into that of Religion,
the theory of Spontaneous Generation is simply that a man may become gradually
better and better until in course of the process he reaches that quality
of religious nature known as Spiritual Life. This Life is not something
added ab extra to the natural man; it is the normal and appropriate
development of the natural man. Biogenesis opposes to this the whole doctrine
of Regeneration. The Spiritual Life is the gift of the Living Spirit. The
spiritual man is no mere development of the natural man. He is a New Creation
born from Above. As well expect a hay infusion to become gradually more
and more living until in course of the process it reached Vitality, as
expect a man by becoming better and better to attain the Eternal Life.
The advocates of Biogenesis in Religion have
founded their argument hitherto all but exclusively on Scripture. The relation
of the doctrine to the constitution and course of Nature was not disclosed.
Its importance, therefore, was solely as a dogma; and being directly concerned
with the Supernatural, it was valid for those alone who chose to accept
the Supernatural.
Yet it has been keenly felt by those who
attempt to defend this doctrine of the origin of the Spiritual Life, that
they have nothing more to oppose to the rationalistic view than the ipse
dixit of Revelation. The argument from experience, in the nature of
the case, is seldom easy to apply, and Christianity has always found at
this point a genuine difficulty in meeting the challenge of Natural Religions.
The direct authority of Nature, using Nature in its limited sense, was
not here to be sought for, On such a question its voice was necessarily
silent; and all that the apologist could look for lower down was a distant
echo or analogy. All that is really possible, indeed, is such an analogy;
and if that can now be found in Biogenesis, Christianity in its most central
position secures at length a support and basis in the Laws of Nature.
Up to the present time the analogy required
has not been forthcoming. There was no known parallel in Nature for the
spiritual phenomena in question. But now the case is altered. With the
elevation of Biogenesis to the rank of a scientific fact, all problems
concerning the Origin of Life are placed on a different footing. And it
remains to be seen whether Religion cannot at once re-affirm and re-shape
its argument in the light of this modern truth.
If the doctrine of the Spontaneous Generation
of Spiritual Life can be met on scientific grounds, it will smear the removal
of the most serious enemy Christianity has to deal with, and especially
within its own borders, at the present day. The religion of Jesus has probably
always suffered more from those who have misunderstood than from those
who have opposed it. Of the multitudes who confess Christianity at this
hour how many have clear in their minds the cardinal distinction established
by its Founder between "born of the flesh" and "born of
the Spirit"? By how many teachers of Christianity even is not this
fundamental postulate persistently ignored? A thousand modern pulpits every
seventh day are preaching the doctrine of Spontaneous Generation. The finest
and best of recent poetry is coloured with this same error. Spontaneous
Generation is the leading theology of the modern religious or irreligious
novel; and much of the most serious and cultured writing of the day devotes
itself to earnest preaching of this impossible gospel. The current conception
of the Christian religion in short--the conception which is held not only
popularly but by men of culture--is founded upon a view of its origin which,
if it were true, would render the whole scheme abortive.
Let us first place vividly in our imagination
the picture of the two great Kingdoms of Nature, the inorganic and organic,
as these now stand in the light of the Law of Biogenesis. What essentially
is involved in saying that there is no Spontaneous Generation of Life?
It is meant that the passage from the mineral world to the plant or animal
world is hermetically sealed on the mineral side. This inorganic world
is staked off from the living world by barriers which have never yet been
crossed from within. No change of substance, no modification of environment,
no chemistry, no electricity, nor any form of energy, nor any evolution
can endow any single atom of the mineral world with the attribute of Life.
Only by the bending down into this dead world of some living form can these
dead atoms be gifted with the properties of vitality, without this preliminary
contact with Life they remain fixed in the inorganic sphere for ever. It
is a very mysterious Law which guards in this way the portals of the living
world. And if there is one thing in Nature more worth pondering for its
strangeness it is the spectacle of this vast helpless world of the dead
cut off from the living by the Law of Biogenesis and denied for ever the
possibility of resurrection within itself. So very strange a thing, indeed,
is this broad line in Nature, that Science has long and urgently sought
to obliterate it. Biogenesis stands in the way of some forms of Evolution
with such stern persistency that the assaults upon this Law for number
and thoroughness have been unparalleled. But, as we have seen, it has stood
the test. Nature, to the modern eye, stands broken in two. The physical
Laws may explain the inorganic world; the biological Laws may account for
the development of the organic. But of the point where they meet, of that
strange borderland between the dead and the living, Science is silent.
It is as if God had placed everything in earth and heaven in the hands
of Nature, but reserved a point at the genesis of Life for His direct appearing.
The power of the analogy, for which we are
laying the foundations, to seize and impress the mind, will largely depend
on the vividness with which one realizes the gulf which Nature places between
the living and the dead. But those who, in contemplating Nature, have found
their attention arrested by his extraordinary dividing-line severing the
visible universe eternally into two; those who in watching the progress
of science have seen barrier after barrier disappear--barrier between plant
and plant, between animal and animal, and even between animal and plant--but
this gulf yawn more hopelessly wide with every advance of knowledge, will
be prepared to attach a significance to the Law of Biogenesis and its analogies
more profound perhaps than to any other fact or law in Nature. If, as Pascal
says, Nature is an image of grace; if the things that are seen are in any
sense the images of the unseen, there must lie in this great gulf fixed,
this most unique and startling of all natural phenomena, a meaning of peculiar
moment.
Where now in the Spiritual spheres shall
we meet a companion phenomenon to this? What in the Unseen shall be likened
to this deep dividing-line, or where in human experience is another barrier
which never can be crossed?
There is such a barrier. In the dim but not
inadequate vision of the Spiritual World presented in the Word of God,
the first thing that strikes the eye is a great gulf fixed. The passage
from the Natural World to the Spiritual World is hermetically sealed on
the natural side. The door from the inorganic to the organic is shut; no
mineral can open it; so the door from the natural to the spiritual is shut,
and no man can open it. This world of natural men is staked off from the
Spiritual World by barriers which have never yet been crossed from within.
No organic change, no modification of environment, no mental energy, no
moral effort, no evolution of character, no progress of civilization can
endow any single human soul with the attribute of Spiritual Life. The Spiritual
World is guarded from the world next in order beneath it by a law of Biogenesis--except
a man be born again . . . except a man be born of water and of the Spirit,
he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
It is not said, in this enunciation of
the law, that if the condition be not fulfilled the natural man will
not enter the Kingdom of God. The word is cannot. For the exclusion
of the spiritually inorganic from the Kingdom of the spiritually organic
is not arbitrary. Nor is the natural man refused admission on unexplained
grounds. His admission is a scientific impossibility. Except a mineral
be born "from above"--from the Kingdom just above it--it
cannot enter the Kingdom just above it. And except a man be born "from
above," by the same law, he cannot enter the Kingdom just above him.
There being no passage from one Kingdom to another, whether from inorganic
to organic, or from organic to spiritual, the intervention of Life is a
scientific necessity if a stone or a plant or an animal or a man is to
pass from a lower to a higher sphere. The plant stretches down to the dead
world beneath it, touches its minerals and gases with its mystery of Life,
and brings them up ennobled and transformed to the living sphere. The breath
of God, blowing where it listeth, touches with its mystery of Life the
dead souls of men, bears them across the bridgeless gulf between the natural
and the spiritual, between the spiritually inorganic and the spiritually
organic, endows them with its own high qualities, and develops within them
these new and secret faculties, by which those who are born again are said
to see the Kingdom of God.
What is the evidence for this great gulf
fixed at the portals of the Spiritual World? Does Science close this gate,
or Reason, or Experience, or Revelation? We reply, all four. The initial
statement, it is not to be denied, reaches us from Revelation. But is not
this evidence here in court? Or shall it be said that any argument deduced
from this is a transparent circle--that after all we simply come back to
the unsubstantiality of the ipse dixit? Not altogether, for the
analogy lends an altogether new authority to the ipse dixit. How
substantial that argument really is, is seldom realized. We yield the point
here much too easily. The right of the Spiritual World to speak of its
own phenomena is as secure as the right of the Natural World to speak of
itself. What is Science but what the Natural World has said to natural
men? What is Revelation but what the Spiritual World has said to Spiritual
men? Let us at least ask what Revelation has announced with reference to
this Spiritual Law of Biogenesis; afterwards we shall inquire whether Science,
while endorsing the verdict, may not also have some further vindication
of its title to be heard.
The words of Scripture which preface this
inquiry contain an explicit and original statement of the Law of Biogenesis
for the Spiritual Life. "He What hath the Son hath Life, and he that
hath not the Son of God hath not Life." Life, that is to say, depends
upon contact with Life. It cannot spring up of itself. It cannot develop
out of anything that is not Life. There is no Spontaneous Generation in
religion any more than in Nature. Christ is the source of Life in the Spiritual
World; and he that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son,
whatever else he may have, hath not Life. Here, in short, is the categorical
denial of Abiogenesis and the establishment in this high field of the classical
formula 0mne vivum ex vivo-- no Life without antecedent Life. In
this mystical theory of the Origin of Life the whole of the New Testament
writers are agreed. And, as we have already seen, Christ Himself founds
Christianity upon Biogenesis stated in its most literal form. "Except
a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom
of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born
of the Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that I said unto you, ye must be born
again. Why did He add Marvel not? Did He seek to allay the fear
in the bewildered ruler's mind that there was more in this novel doctrine
than a simple analogy from the first to the second birth?
The attitude of the natural man, again, with
reference to the Spiritual, is a subject on which the New Testament is
equally pronounced. Not only in his relation to the spiritual man, but
to the whole Spiritual World, the natural man is regarded as dead. He
is as a crystal to an organism. The natural world is to the Spiritual as
the inorganic to the organic. "To be carnally minded is Death."
"Thou hast a name to live, but art Dead." " She
that liveth in pleasure is Dead while she liveth." "To
you hath He given Life which were Dead in trespasses and sins."
It is clear that a remarkable harmony
exists here between the Organic World as arranged by Science and the Spiritual
World as arranged by Scripture. We find one great Law guarding the thresholds
of both worlds, securing that entrance from a lower sphere shall only take
place by a direct regenerating act, and that emanating from the world next
in order above. There are not two laws of Biogenesis, one for the natural,
the other for the Spiritual; one law is for both. Wherever there is Life,
Life of any kind, this same law holds. The analogy, therefore, is only
among the phenomena; between laws there is no analogy--there is Continuity.
In either case, the first step in peopling these worlds with the appropriate
living forms is virtually miracle. Nor in one case is there less of mystery
in the act than in the other. The second birth is scarcely less perplexing
to the theologian than the first to the embryologist.
A moment's reflection ought now to make it
clear why in the Spiritual World there had to be added to this mystery
the further mystery of its proclamation through the medium of Revelation.
This is the point at which the scientific man is apt to part company with
the theologian. He insists on having all things materialised before his
eyes in Nature. If Nature cannot discuss this with him, there is nothing
to discuss. But Nature can discuss this with him--only she cannot open
the discussion or supply all the material to begin with. If Science averred
that she could do this, the theologian this time must part company with
such Science. For any Science which makes such a demand is false to the
doctrines of Biogenesis. What is this but the demand that a lower world,
hermetically sealed against all communication with a world above it, should
have a mature and intelligent acquaintance with its phenomena and laws?
Can the mineral discourse to me of animal Life? Can it tell me what lies
beyond the narrow boundary of its inert being? Knowing nothing of other
than the chemical and physical laws, what is its criticism worth of the
principles of Biology? And even when some visitor from the upper world,
for example some root from a living tree, penetrating its dark recess,
honours it with a touch, will it presume to define the form and purpose
of its patron, or until the bioplasm has done its gracious work can it
even know that it is being touched? The barrier which separates Kingdoms
from one another restricts mind not less than matter. Any information of
the Kingdoms above it that could come to the mineral world could only come
by a communication from above. An analogy from the lower world might make
such communication intelligible as well as credible, but the information
in the first instance must be vouchsafed as a revelation. Similarly
if those in the Organic Kingdom are to know anything of the Spiritual World,
that knowledge must at least begin as Revelation. Men who reject this source
of information, by the Law of Biogenesis, can have no other. It is no spell
of ignorance arbitrarily laid upon certain members of the Organic Kingdom
that prevents them reading the secrets of the Spiritual World. It is a
scientific necessity. No exposition of the case could be more truly
scientific than this: "The natural man receiveth not the things of
the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he
know them, because they are spiritually discerned. The verb here, it
will be again observed, is potential. This is not a dogma of theology,
but a necessity of Science. And Science, for the most part, has consistently
accepted the situation. It has always proclaimed its ignorance of the Spiritual
World. When Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms, "Regarding Science as a gradually
increasing sphere we may say that every addition to its surface does but
bring it into wider contact with surrounding nescience, from his standpoint
he is quite correct. The endeavours of well-meaning persons to show that
the Agnostic's position, when he asserts his ignorance of the Spiritual
World, is only a pretence; the attempts to prove that he really knows a
great deal about it if he would only admit it, are quite misplaced. He
really does not know. The verdict that the natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God, that they are foolishness unto him, that neither
can he know them, is final as a statement of scientific truth--a statement
on which the entire Agnostic literature is simply one long commentary.
We are now in a better position to follow
out the more practical bearings of Biogenesis. There is an immense region
surrounding Regeneration, a dark and perplexing region where men would
be thankful for any light. It may well be that Biogenesis in its many ramifications
may yet reach down to some of the deeper mysteries of the Spiritual Life.
But meantime there is much to define even on the surface. And for the present
we shall content ourselves by turning its light upon one or two points
of current interest.
It must long ago have appeared how decisive
is the answer of Science to the practical question with which we set out
as to the possibility of a Spontaneous Development of Spiritual Life in
the individual soul. The inquiry into the Origin of Life is the fundamental
question alike of Biology and Christianity. We can afford to enlarge upon
it, therefore, even at the risk of repetition. When men are offering us
a Christianity without a living Spirit, and a personal religion without
conversion, no emphasis or reiteration can be extreme. Besides,
the clearness as well as the definiteness of the Testimony of Nature to
any Spiritual truth is of immense importance. Regeneration has not merely
been an outstanding difficulty, but an overwhelming obscurity. Even to
earnest minds the difficulty of grasping the truth at all has always proved
extreme. Philosophically one scarcely sees either the necessity or the
possibility of being born again. Why a virtuous man should not simply grow
better and better until in his own right he enter the Kingdom of God is
what thousands honestly and seriously fail to understand. Now Philosophy
cannot help us here. Her arguments are, if anything, against us. But Science
answers to the appeal at once. If it be simply pointed out that this is
the same absurdity as to ask why a stone should not grow more and more
living till it enters the Organic World, the point is clear in an instant.
What now, let us ask specifically, distinguishes
a Christian man from a non-Christian man? Is it that he has certain mental
characteristics not possessed by the other? Is it that certain faculties
have been trained in him, that morality assumes special and higher manifestations,
and character a nobler form? Is the Christian merely an ordinary man who
happens from birth to have been surrounded with a peculiar set of ideas?
Is his religion merely that peculiar quality of the moral life defined
by Mr. Matthew Arnold as "morality touched by emotion"? And does
the possession of a high ideal, benevolent sympathies, a reverent spirit,
and a favourable environment account for what men call his Spiritual Life?
The distinction between them is the same
as that between the Organic and the Inorganic, the living and the dead.
What is the difference between a crystal and an organism, a stone and a
plant? They have much in common. Both are made of the same atoms. Both
display the same properties of matter. Both are subject to the Physical
Laws. Both may be very beautiful. But besides possessing all that the crystal
has, the plant possesses something more--a mysterious something called
Life. This Life is not something which existed in the crystal only in a
less developed form. There is nothing at all like it in the crystal. There
is nothing like the first beginning of it in the crystal, not a trace or
symptom of it. This plant is tenanted by something new, an original and
unique possession added over and above all the properties common to both.
When from vegetable Life we rise to animal Life, here again we find something
original and unique-- unique at least as compared with the mineral. From
animal Life we ascend again to Spiritual Life. And here also is something
new, something still more unique. He who lives the Spiritual Life has a
distinct kind of Life added to all the other phases of Life which he manifests--a
kind of Life infinitely more distinct than is the active Life of a plant
from the inertia of a stone. The Spiritual man is more distinct in point
of fact than is the plant from the stone. This is the one possible comparison
in Nature, for it is the widest distinction in Nature, but compared
with the difference between the Natural and the Spiritual the gulf which
divides the organic from the inorganic is a hair's-breadth. The natural
man belongs essentially to this present order of things. He is endowed
simply with a high quality of the natural animal Life. But it is Life of
so poor a quality that it is not Life at all. He that hath not the Son
hath not Life; but he that hath the Son hath Life--a new and distinct
and supernatural endowment. He is not of this world. He is of the timeless
state, of Eternity. It doth not yet appear what he shall be.
The difference then between the Spiritual
man and the Natural man is not a difference of development, but of generation.
It is a distinction of quality not of quantity. A man cannot rise by any
natural development from "morality touched by emotion," to "morality
touched by Life." Were we to construct a scientific classification,
Science would compel us to arrange all natural men, moral or immoral, educated
or vulgar, as one family. One might be high in the family group, another
low; yet, practically, they are marked by the same set of characteristics--they
eat, sleep, work, think, live, die. But the Spiritual man is removed from
this family so utterly by the possession of an additional characteristic
that a biologist, fully informed of the whole circumstances, would
not hesitate a moment to classify him elsewhere. And if he really entered
into these circumstances it would not be in another family but in another
Kingdom. It is an old-fashioned theology which divides the world in this
way--which speaks of men as Living and Dead, Lost and Saved--a stern theology
all but fallen into disuse. This difference between the Living and the
Dead in souls is so unproved by casual observation, so impalpable in itself,
so startling as a doctrine, that schools of culture have ridiculed or denied
the grim distinction. Nevertheless the grim distinction must be retained.
It is a scientific distinction. "He that hath not the Son hath not
Life."
Now it is this great Law which finally distinguishes
Christianity from all other religions. It places the religion of Christ
upon a footing altogether unique. There is no analogy between the Christian
religion and, say, Buddhism or the Mohammedan religion. There is no true
sense in which a man can say, He that hath Buddha hath Life. Buddha has
nothing to do with Life. He may have something to do with morality. He
may stimulate, impress, teach, guide, but there is no distinct new thing
added to the souls of those who profess Buddhism. These religions may
be developments of the natural, mental, or moral man. But Christianity
professes to be more. It is the mental or moral man plus something
else or some One else. It is the infusion into the Spiritual man of a New
Life, of a quality unlike anything else in Nature. This constitutes the
separate Kingdom of Christ, and gives to Christianity alone of all the
religions of mankind the strange mark of Divinity.
Shall we next inquire more precisely what
is this something extra which constitutes Spiritual Life? What is this
strange and new endowment in its nature and vital essence? And the answer
is brief-- it is Christ. He that hath the Son hath Life.
Are we forsaking the lines of Science in
saying so? Yes and No. Science has drawn for us the distinction. It has
no voice as to the nature of the distinction except this--that the new
endowment is a something different from anything else with which it deals.
It is not ordinary Vitality, it is not intellectual, it is not moral, but
something beyond. And Revelation steps in and names what it is--it is Christ.
Out of the multitude of sentences where this announcement is made, these
few may be selected: "Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus
Christ is in you?"44 "Your bodies are the members
of Christ." "At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father,
and ye in Me, and I in you." "We will come unto him and make
our abode with him." "I am the Vine, ye are the branches."
"I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ
liveth in me."
Three things are clear from these statements:
First, They are not mere figures of rhetoric. They are explicit declarations.
If language means any. thing these words announce a literal fact In some
of Christ's own statements the literalism is if possible still more impressive.
For instance, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink
His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My
blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For My
flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh
and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me and I in him."
In the second place, Spiritual Life is not
something outside ourselves. The idea is not that Christ is in heaven and
that we can stretch out some mysterious faculty and deal with Him there.
This is the vague form in which many conceive the truth, but it is contrary
to Christ's teaching and to the analogy of nature. Vegetable Life is not
contained in a reservoir somewhere in the skies, and measured out spasmodically
at certain seasons. The Life is in every plant and tree, inside
its own substance and tissue, and continues there until it dies. This localisation
of Life in the individual is precisely the point where Vitality differs
from the other forces of nature, such as magnetism and electricity. Vitality
has much in common with such forces as magnetism and electricity, but there
is one inviolable distinction between them--that Life is permanently fixed
and rooted in the organism. The doctrines of conservation and transformation
of energy, that is to say, do not hold for Vitality. The electrician can
demagnetise a bar of iron, that is, he can transform its energy of magnetism
into something else--heat, or motion, or light--and then re-form these
back into magnetism. For magnetism has no root, no individuality, no fixed
indwelling. But the biologist cannot devitalise a plant or an animal and
revivify it again. Life is not one of the homeless forces which promiscuously
inhabit space, or which can be gathered like electricity from the clouds
and dissipated back again into space. Life is definite and resident; and
Spiritual Life is not a visit from a force, but a resident tenant in the
soul.
This is, however, to formulate the statement
of the third point, that spiritual Life is not an ordinary form of energy
or force. The analogy from Nature endorses this, but here Nature stops.
It cannot say what Spiritual Life is. Indeed what natural Life is remains
unknown, and the word Life still wanders through Science without a definition.
Nature is silent, therefore, and must be as to Spiritual Life. But in the
absence of natural light we fall back upon that complementary revelation
which always shines when truth is necessary and where Nature fails. We
ask with Paul when this Life first visited him on the Damascus road, What
is this? "Who art Thou Lord? " And we hear, " I am Jesus."
We must expect to find this denied. Besides
a proof from Revelation, this is an argument from experience. And yet we
shall still be told that this Spiritual Life is a force. But let it be
remembered what this means in Science, it means the heresy of confounding
Force with Vitality. We must also expect to be told that this Spiritual
Life is simply a development of ordinary Life--just as Dr. Bastian tells
us that natural Life is formed according to the same laws which determine
the more simple chemical combinations. But remember what this means in
Science. It is the heresy of Spontaneous Generation, a heresy so thoroughly
discredited now that scarcely an authority in Europe will lend his name
to it. Who art Thou, Lord? Unless we are to be allowed to hold Spontaneous
Generation there is no alternative: Life can only come from Life: "I
am Jesus."
A hundred other questions now rush into the
mind about this Life: How does it come? Why does it come? How is it manifested?
What faculty does it employ? Where does it reside? Is it communicable?
What are its conditions? One or two of these questions may be vaguely answered,
the rest bring us face to face with mystery. Let it not be thought that
the scientific treatment of a Spiritual subject has reduced religion to
a problem of physics, or demonstrated God by the laws of biology. A religion
without mystery is an absurdity. Even Science has its mysteries, none more
inscrutable than around this Science of Life. It taught us sooner or later
to expect mystery, and now we enter its domain. Let It be carefully marked,
however, that the cloud does not fall and cover us till we have ascertained
the most momentous truth of Religion--that Christ is in the Christian.
Not that there is anything new in this. The
Churches have always held that Christ was the source of Life. No spiritual
man ever claims that his spirituality is his own. "I live," he
will tell you; "nevertheless it is not I, but Christ liveth in me."
Christ our Life has indeed been the only doctrine in the Christian Church
from Paul to Augustine, from Calvin to Newman. Yet, when the Spiritual
man is cross-examined upon this confession it is astonishing to find what
uncertain hold it has upon his mind. Doctrinally he states it adequately
and holds it unhesitatingly. But when pressed with the literal question
he shrinks from the answer. We do not really believe that the Living Christ
has touched us, that He makes His abode in us. Spiritual Life is not as
real to us as natural Life. And we cover our retreat into unbelieving vagueness
with a plea of reverence, justified, as we think, by the "Thus far
and no farther" of ancient Scriptures. There is often a great deal
of intellectual sin concealed under this old aphorism. When men do not
really wish to go farther they find it an honourable convenience sometimes
to sit down on the outermost edge of the Holy Ground on the pretext of
taking off their shoes. Yet we must be certain that, making a virtue of
reverence, we are not merely excusing ignorance; or, under the plea of
mystery, evading a truth which has been stated in the New Testament a hundred
times, in the most literal form, and with all but monotonous repetition.
The greatest truths are always the most loosely held. And not the least
of the advantages of taking up this question from the present standpoint
is that we may see how a confused doctrine can really bear the luminous
definition of Science and force itself upon us with all the weight of Natural
Law.
What is mystery to many men, what feeds their
worship, and at the same time spoils it, is that area round all great truth
which is really capable of illumination, and into which every earnest mind
permitted and commanded to go with a light. We cry mystery long before
the region of mystery comes. True mystery casts no shadows around. It is
a sudden and awful gulf yawning across the field of knowledge; its form
is irregular, but its lips are clean cut and sharp, and the mind can go
to the very verge and look down the precipice into the dim abyss,
"Where
writhing clouds unroll,
Striving to utter themselves in shapes."
We have gone with a light to the very verge
of this truth. We have seen that the Spiritual Life is an endowment from
the Spiritual World, and that the Living Spirit of Christ dwells in the
Christian. But now the gulf yawns black before us. What more does Science
know of Life? Nothing. It knows nothing further about its origin in detail.
It knows nothing about its ultimate nature. It cannot even define it. There
is a helplessness in scientific books here, and a continual confession
of it which to thoughtful minds is almost touching. Science, therefore,
has not eliminated the true mysteries from our faith, but only the false.
And it has done more. It has made true mystery scientific. Religion in
having mystery is in analogy with all around it. Where there is exceptional
mystery in the Spiritual world it will generally be found that there is
a corresponding mystery in the natural world. And, as Origen centuries
ago insisted, the difficulties of Religion are simply the difficulties
of Nature.
One question more we may look at for a moment.
What can be gathered on the surface as to the process of Regeneration in
the individual soul? From the analogies of Biology we should expect three
things: First, that the New Life should dawn suddenly; Second, that it
should come "without observation"; Third, that it should develop
gradually. On two of these points there can be little controversy The gradualness
of growth is a characteristic which strikes the simplest observer. Long
before the word Evolution was coined Christ applied it in this very connection--"First
the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." It is well
known also to those who study the parables of Nature that there is an ascending
scale of slowness as we rise in the scale of Life. Growth is most gradual
in the highest forms. Man attains his maturity after a score of years;
the monad completes its humble cycle in a day. What wonder if development
be tardy in the Creature of Eternity? A Christian's sun has sometimes set,
and a critical world has seen as yet no corn in the ear. As yet? "As
yet," in this long Life, has not begun. Grant him the years proportionate
to his place in the scale of Life "The time of harvest is not yet."
Again, in addition to being slow, the
phenomena of growth are secret. Life is invisible. When the New Life manifests
itself it is a surprise. Thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither
it goeth. When the plant lives whence has the Life come? When it dies
whither has it gone? Thou canst not tell . . so is every one that is
born of the Spirit. For the kingdom of God cometh without observation.
Yet once more,--and this is a point of
strange and frivolous dispute,--this Life comes suddenly. This is the only
way in which Life can come. Life cannot come gradually--health can, structure
can, but not Life. A new theology has laughed at the Doctrine of Conversion.
Sudden Conversion especially has been ridiculed as untrue to philosophy
and impossible to human nature. We may not be concerned in buttressing
any theology because it is old. But we find that this old theology is scientific.
There may be cases--they are probably in the majority--where the moment
of contact with the Living Spirit though sudden has been obscure. But the
real moment and the conscious moment are two different things. Science
pronounces nothing as to the conscious moment. If it did it would probably
say that that was seldom the real moment--just as in the natural Life the
conscious moment is not the real moment. The moment of birth in the natural
world is not a conscious moment--we do not know we are born till long afterward.
Yet there are men to whom the Origin of the New Life in time has been no
difficulty. To Paul, for instance, Christ seems to have come at a definite
period of time, the exact moment and second of which could have been known.
And this is certainly, in theory at least, the normal Origin of Life, according
to the principles of Biology. The line between the living and the dead
is a sharp line. When the dead atoms of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen,
are seized upon by Life, the organism at first is very lowly. It possesses
few functions. It has little beauty. Growth is the work of time. But Life
is not. That comes in a moment. At one moment it was dead; the next it
lived. This is conversion, the "passing," as the Bible
calls it, "from Death unto Life." Those who have stood by another's
side at the solemn hour of this dread possession have been conscious sometimes
of an experience which words are not allowed to utter--a something like
the sudden snapping of a chain, the waking from a dream.
This being the crucial point it may not be inappropriate to supplement the quotations already given in the text with the following:--
"We are in the presence of the one incommunicable gulf--the gulf of all gulfs--that gulf which Mr. Huxley's protoplasm is as powerless to efface as any other material expedient that has ever been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into it--the mighty gulf between death and life."--"As Regards Protoplasm." By J. Hutchinson Stirling, LL.D., p. 42.
"The present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living."--Huxley, "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (new Ed.). Art. "Biology."
"Whoever recalls to mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts made very recently to discover a decided support for the generatio aquivoca in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world, will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any way accepted as the basis of all our views of life."--Virchow: "The Freedom of Science in the Modern State."
"All really scientific experience tells us that life can be produced from a living antecedent only."--"The Unseen Universe." 6th Ed. p. 229.