" What could be easier than to form
a catena of the most philosophical defenders of Christianity, who have
exhausted language in declaring the impotence of the unassisted intellect?
Comte has not more explicitly enounced the incapacity of man to deal
with the Absolute and the Infinite than the whole series of orthodox writers.
Trust your reason, we have been told till we are tired of the phrase, and
you will become Atheists or Agnostics. We take you at your word; we become
Agnostics."
LESLIE STEPHEN.
"To be carnally minded is Death."--Paul.
"I do not wonder at what men suffer,
but I wonder often at what they lose."--Ruskin.
"DEATH," wrote Paber, "is
an unsurveyed land, an unarranged Science." Poetry draws near Death
only to hover over it for a moment and withdraw in terror. History knows
it simply as a universal fact. Philosophy finds it among the mysteries
of being, the one great mystery of being not. All contributions to this
dread theme are marked by an essential vagueness, and every avenue of approach
seems darkened by impenetrable shadow.
But modern Biology has found it part of its
work to push its way into this silent land, and at last the world is confronted
with a scientific treatment of Death. Not that much is added to the old
conception, or much taken from it. What it is, this certain Death with
its uncertain issues, we know as little as before. But we can define more
clearly and attach a narrower meaning to the momentous symbol.
The interest of the investigation here lies
in the fact that Death is one of the outstanding things in Nature which
has an acknowledged spiritual equivalent. The prominence of the word in
the vocabulary of Revelation cannot be exaggerated. Next to Life the most
pregnant symbol in religion is its antithesis, Death. And from the time
that "If thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" was heard
in Paradise, this solemn word has been linked with human interests of eternal
moment.
Notwithstanding the unparalleled emphasis
upon this term in the Christian system, there is none more feebly expressive
to the ordinary mind. That mystery which surrounds the word in the natural
world shrouds only too completely its spiritual import. The reluctance
which prevents men from investigating the secrets of the King of Terrors
is for a certain length entitled to respect. But it has left theology with
only the vaguest materials to construct a doctrine which, intelligently
enforced, ought to appeal to all men with convincing power and lend the
most effective argument to Christianity. Whatever may have been its influence
in the past, its threat is gone for the modern world. The word has grown
weak. Ignorance has robbed the Grave of all its terror, and platitude despoilt
Death of its sting. Death itself is ethically dead. Which of us, for example,
enters fully into the meaning of words like these: "She that liveth
in pleasure is dead while she liveth"? Who allows adequate
weight to the metaphor in the Pauline phrase, "To be carnally minded
is Death;" or in this, "The wages of sin is Death"?
Or what theology has translated into the language of human life the
terrific practical import of "Dead in trespasses and sins"? To
seek to make these phrases once more real and burning; to clothe time-worn
formulae with living truth; to put the deepest ethical meaning into the
gravest symbol of Nature, and fill up with its full consequence the darkest
threat of Revelation--these are the objects before us now.
What, then, is Death? Is it possible to define
it and embody its essential meaning in an intelligible proposition?
The most recent and the most scientific attempt
to investigate Death we owe to the biological studies of Mr. Herbert Spencer.
In his search for the meaning of Life the word Death crosses his path,
and he turns aside for a moment to define it. Of course what Death is depends
upon what Life is. Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of Life, it is well
known, has been subjected to serious criticism. While it has shed much
light on many of the phenomena of Life, it cannot be affirmed that it has
taken its place in science as the final solution of the fundamental problem
of biology. No definition of Life, indeed, that has yet appeared can be
said to be even approximately correct. Its mysterious quality evades us;
and we have to be content with outward characteristics and accompaniments,
leaving the thing itself an unsolved riddle. At the same time Mr. Herbert
Spencer's masterly elucidation of the chief phenomena of Life has placed
philosophy and science under many obligations, and in the paragraphs which
follow we shall have to incur a further debt on behalf of religion.
The meaning of Death depending, as has been
said, on the meaning of life, we must first set ourselves to grasp the
leading characteristics which distinguish living things. To a physiologist
the living organism is distinguished from the not-living by the performance
of certain functions. These functions are four in number--Assimilation,
Waste, Reproduction, and Growth. Nothing could be a more interesting task
than to point out the co-relatives of these in the spiritual sphere, to
show in what ways the discharge of these functions represent the true manifestations
of spiritual life, and how the failure to perform them constitutes spiritual
Death. But it will bring us more directly to the specific subject before
us if we follow rather the newer biological lines of Mr. Herbert Spencer.
According to his definition, Life is "The definite combination of
heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence
with external co-existences and sequences, or more shortly "The continuous
adjustment of internal relations to external relations. An example or two
will render these important statements at once intelligible.
The essential characteristic of a living
organism, according to these definitions, is that it is in vital connection
with its general surroundings. A human being, for instance, is in direct
contact with the earth and air, with all surrounding things, with the warmth
of the sun, with the music of birds, with the countless influences and
activities of nature and of his fellow-men. In biological language he is
said thus to be "in correspondence with his environment." He
is, that is to say, in active and vital connection with them, influencing
them possibly, but especially being influenced by them. Now it is in virtue
of this correspondence that he is entitled to be called alive. So long
as he is in correspondence with any given point of his environment, he
lives. To keep up this correspondence is to keep up life. If his environment
changes he must instantly adjust himself to the change. And he continues
living only as long as he succeeds in adjusting himself to the " simultaneous
and successive changes in his environment" as these occur. What is
meant by a change in his environment may be understood from an example,
which will at the same time define more clearly the intimacy of the relation
between environment and organism. Let us take the case of a civil-servant
whose environment is a district in India. It is a region subject to occasional
and prolonged droughts resulting in periodical famines. When such a period
of scarcity arises, he proceeds immediately to adjust himself to this external
change. Having the power of locomotion, he may remove himself to a more
fertile district, or, possessing the means of purchase, he may add to his
old environment by importation the "external relations" necessary
to continued life. But if from any cause he fails to adjust himself to
the altered circumstances, his body is thrown out of correspondence with
his environment, his "internal relations" are no longer adjusted
to his "external relations," and his life must cease.
In ordinary circumstances, and in health,
the human organism is in thorough correspondence with its surroundings;
but when any part of the organism by disease or accident is thrown out
of correspondence, it is in that relation dead.
This Death, this want of correspondence,
may be either partial or complete. Part of the organism may be dead to
a part of the environment, or the whole to the whole. Thus the victim of
famine may have a certain number of his correspondences arrested by the
change in his environment, but not all. Luxuries which he once enjoyed
no longer enter the country; animals which once furnished his table are
driven from it. These still exist, but they are beyond the limit of his
correspondence. In relation to these things therefore he is dead. In one
sense it might be said that it was the environment which played him false;
in another, that it was his own organization--that he was unable to adjust
himself, or did not. But, however caused, he pays the penalty with partial
Death.
Suppose next the case of a man who is thrown
out of correspondence with a part of his environment by some physical infirmity.
Let it be that by disease or accident he has been deprived of the use of
his ears. The deaf man, in virtue of this imperfection, is thrown out of
rapport with a large and well-defined part of the environment, namely,
its sounds. With regard to that "external relation," therefore,
he is no longer living. Part of him may truly be held to be insensible
or "Dead." A man who is also blind is thrown out of correspondence
with another large part of his environment. The beauty of sea and sky,
the forms of cloud and mountain, the features and gestures of friends,
are to him as if they were not. They are there, solid and real, but not
to him; he is still further "Dead." Next, let it be conceived,
the subtle finger of cerebral disease lays hold of him. His whole brain
is affected, and the sensory nerves, the medium of communication with the
environment, cease altogether to acquaint him with what is doing in the
outside world. The outside world is still there, but not to him; he is
still further "Dead." And so the death of parts goes on. He becomes
less and less alive. "Were the animal frame not the complicated machine
we have seen it to be, death might come as a simple and gradual dissolution,
the `sans everything' being the last stage of the successive loss of fundamental
powers." But finally some important part of the mere animal framework
that remains breaks down. The correlation with the other parts is very
intimate, and the stoppage of correspondence with one means an interference
with the work of the rest. Something central has snapped, and all are thrown
out of work. The lungs refuse to correspond with the air, the heart with
the blood. There is now no correspondence whatever with environment--the
thing, for it is now a thing, is Dead.
This then is Death; "part of the framework
breaks down," "something has snapped"--these phrases by
which we describe the phases of death yield their full meaning. They are
different ways of saying that "correspondence" has ceased. And
the scientific meaning of Death now becomes clearly intelligible. Dying
is that breakdown in an organism which throws it out of correspondence
with some necessary part of the environment. Death is the result produced,
the want of correspondence. We do not say that this is all that
is involved. But this is the root idea of Death--Failure to adjust internal
relations to external relations, failure to repair the broken inward connection
sufficiently to enable it to correspond again with the old surroundings.
These preliminary statements may be fitly closed with the words of Mr.
Herbert Spencer: "Death by natural decay occurs because in old age
the relations between assimilation, oxidation, and genesis of force going
on in the organism gradually fall out of correspondence with the relations
between oxygen and food and absorption of heat by the environment. Death
from disease arises either when the organism is congenitally defective
in its power to balance the ordinary external actions by the ordinary internal
actions, or when there has taken place some unusual external action to
which there was no answering internal action. Death by accident implies
some neighbouring mechanical changes of which the causes are either unnoticed
from inattention, or are so intricate that their results cannot be foreseen,
and consequently certain relations in the organism are not adjusted to
the relations in the environment.
With the help of these plain biological terms
we may now proceed to examine the parallel phenomenon of Death in the spiritual
world. The factors with which we have to deal are two in number as before--Organism
and Environment. The relation between them may once more be denominated
by "correspondence." And the truth to be emphasised resolves
itself into this, that Spiritual Death is a want of correspondence between
the organism and the spiritual environment.
What is the spiritual environment? This term
obviously demands some further definition. For Death is a relative term.
And before we can define Death in the spiritual world we must first apprehend
the particular relation with reference to which the expression is to be
employed. we shall best reach the nature of this relation by considering
for a moment the subject of environment generally. By the natural environment
we mean the entire surroundings of the natural man, the entire external
world in which he lives and moves and has his being. It is not involved
in the idea that either with all or part of this environment he is in immediate
correspondence. Whether he correspond with it or not, it is there. There
is in fact a conscious environment and an environment of which he is not
conscious; and it must be borne in mind that the conscious environment
is not all the environment that is. All that surrounds him, all that environs
him, conscious or unconscious, is environment. The moon and stars are part
of it, though in the daytime he may not see them. The polar regions are
parts of it, though he is seldom aware of their influence. In its widest
sense environment simply means all else that is.
Now it will next be manifest that different
organisms correspond with this environment in varying degrees of completeness
or incompleteness. At the bottom of the biological scale we find organisms
which have only the most limited correspondence with their surroundings.
A tree, for example, corresponds with the soil about its stem, with the
sunlight, and with the air in contact with its leaves. But it is shut off
by its comparatively low development from a whole world to which higher
forms of life have additional access. The want of locomotion alone circumscribes
most seriously its area of correspondence, so that to a large part of surrounding
nature it may truly be said to be dead. So far as consciousness is concerned,
we should be justified indeed in saying that it was not alive at all. The
murmur of the stream which bathes its roots affects it not. The marvellous
insect-life beneath its shadow excites in it no wonder. The tender maternity
of the bird which has its nest among its leaves stirs no responsive sympathy.
It cannot correspond with those things. To stream and insect and bird it
is insensible, torpid, dead. For this is Death, this irresponsiveness.
The bird, again, which is higher in the scale
of life, corresponds with a wider environment. The stream is real to it,
and the insect. It knows what lies behind the hill; it listens to the love-song
of its mate. And to much besides beyond the simple world of the tree this
higher organism is alive. The bird we should say is more living than the
tree; it has a correspondence with a larger area of environment. But this
bird-life is not yet the highest life. Even within the immediate bird-environment
there is much to which the bird must still be held to be dead. Introduce
a higher organism, place man himself within this same environment, and
see how much more living he is. A hundred things which the bird never saw
in insect, stream, and tree appeal to him. Each single sense has something
to correspond with. Each faculty finds an appropriate exercise. Man is
a mass of correspondences, and because of these, because he is alive to
countless objects and influences to which lower organisms are dead, he
is the most living of all creatures.
The relativity of Death will now have become
sufficiently obvious. Man being left out of account, all organisms are
seen as it were to be partly living and partly dead. The tree, in correspondence
with a narrow area of environment, is to that extent alive; to all beyond,
to the all but infinite area beyond, it is dead. A still wider portion
of this vast area is the possession of the insect and the bird. Their's
also, nevertheless, is but a little world, and to an immense further area
insect and bird are dead. All organisms likewise are living and dead--living
to all within the circumference of their correspondences, dead to all beyond.
As we rise in the scale of life, however, it will be observed that the
sway of Death is gradually weakened. More and more of the environment becomes
accessible as we ascend, and the domain of life in this way slowly extends
in ever-widening circles. But until man appears there is no organism to
correspond with the whole environment. Till then the outermost circles
have no correspondents. To the inhabitants of the innermost spheres they
are as if they were not.
Now follows a momentous question. Is man
in correspondence with the whole environment? When we reach the highest
living organism, is the final blow dealt to the kingdom of Death? Has the
last acre of the infinite area been taken in by his finite faculties?.
Is his conscious environment the whole environment? Or is there, among
these outermost circles, one which with his multitudinous correspondences
he fails to reach? If so, this is Death. The question of Life or Death
to him is the question of the amount of remaining environment he is able
to compass. If there be one circle or one segment of a circle which he
yet fails to reach, to correspond with, to know, to be influenced by, he
is, with regard to that circle or segment, dead.
What then, practically, is the state of the
case? Is man in correspondence with the whole environment or is he not?
There is but one answer. He is not. Of men generally it cannot be said
that they are in living contact with that part of the environment which
is called the spiritual world. In introducing this new term spiritual world,
observe, we are not interpolating a new factor. This is an essential part
of the old idea. We have been following out an ever-widening environment
from point to point, and now we reach the outermost zones. The spiritual
world is simply the outermost segment, circle, or circles, of the natural
world. for purposes of convenience we separate the two just as we separate
the animal world from the plant. But the animal world and the plant world
are the same world. They are different parts of one environment. And the
natural and spiritual are likewise one. The inner circles are called the
natural, the outer the spiritual. And we call them spiritual simply because
they are beyond us or beyond a part of us. What we have correspondence
with, that we call natural; what we have little or no correspondence with,
that we call spiritual. But when the appropriate corresponding organism
appears, the organism, that is, which can freely communicate with these
outer circles, the distinction necessarily disappears. The spiritual to
it becomes the outer circle of the natural.
Now of the great mass of living organisms,
of the great mass of men, is it not to be affirmed that they are out of
correspondence with this outer circle? Suppose, to make the final issue
more real, we give this outermost circle of environment a name. Suppose
we call it God. Suppose also we substitute a word for "correspondence"
to express more intimately the personal relation. Let us call it Communion.
We can now determine accurately the spiritual relation of different sections
of mankind. Those who are in communion with God live, those who are not
are dead.
The extent or depth of this communion, the
varying degrees of correspondence in different individuals, and the less
or more abundant life which these result in, need not concern us for the
present. The task we have set ourselves is to investigate the essential
nature of Spiritual Death. And we have found it to consist in a want of
communion with God. The unspiritual man is he who lives in the circumscribed
environment of this present world. "She that liveth in pleasure is
Dead while she liveth." "To be carnally minded is Death."
To be carnally minded, translated into the language of science, is to be
limited in one's correspondences to the environment of the natural man.
It is no necessary part of the conception that the mind should be either
purposely irreligious, or directly vicious. The mind of the flesh, ,
by its very nature, limited capacity, and time-ward tendency, is Death.
This earthly mind may be of noble calibre, enriched by culture, high toned,
virtuous and pure. But if it know not God? What though its correspondences
reach to the stars of heaven or grasp the magnitudes of Time and Space?
The stars of heaven are not heaven. Space is not God. This mind, certainly,
has life, life up to its level. There is no trace of Death. Possibly too,
it carries its deprivation lightly, and, up to its level, lives content.
We do not picture the possessor of this carnal mind as in any sense a monster.
We have said he may be high-toned, virtuous, and pure. The plant is not
a monster because it is dead to the voice of the bird; nor is he a monster
who is dead to the voice of God. The contention at present simply is that
he is Dead.
We do not need to go to Revelation for
the proof of this. That has been rendered unnecessary by the testimony
of the Dead themselves. Thousands have uttered themselves upon their relation
to the Spiritual World, and from their own lips we have the proclamation
of their Death. The language of theology in describing the state of the
natural man is often regarded as severe. The Pauline anthropology has been
challenged as an insult to human nature. Culture has opposed the doctrine
that "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." And even some modern theologies have refused
to accept the most plain of the aphorisms of Jesus, that "Except
a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God." But this stern
doctrine of the spiritual deadness of humanity is no mere dogma of a past
theology. The history of thought during the present century proves that
the world has come round spontaneously to the position of the first. One
of the ablest philosophical schools of the day erects a whole antichristian
system on this very doctrine. Seeking by means of it to sap the foundation
of spiritual religion, it stands unconsciously as the most significant
witness for its truth. What is the creed of the Agnostic, but the confession
of the spiritual numbness of humanity? The negative doctrine which it reiterates
with such sad persistency, what is it but the echo of the oldest of scientific
and religious truths? And what are all these gloomy and rebellious infidelities,
these touching, and too sincere confessions of universal nescience, but
a protest against this ancient law of Death?
The Christian apologist never further misses
the mark than when he refuses the testimony of the Agnostic to himself.
When the Agnostic tells me he is blind and deaf, dumb, torpid and dead
to the spiritual world, I must believe him. Jesus tells me that. Paul tells
me that. Science tells me that. He knows nothing of this outermost circle;
and we are compelled to trust his sincerity as readily when he deplores
it as if, being a man without an ear, he professed to know nothing of a
musical world, or being without taste, of a world of art. The nescience
of the Agnostic philosophy is the proof from experience that to be carnally
minded is Death. Let the theological value of the concession be duly recognised.
It brings no solace to the unspiritual man to be told he is mistaken. To
say he is self-deceived is neither to compliment him nor Christianity.
He builds in all sincerity who raises his altar to the Unknown God.
He does not know God. With all his marvellous and complex correspondences,
he is still one correspondence short.
It is a point worthy of special note that
the proclamation of this truth has always come from science rather than
from religion. Its general acceptance by thinkers is based upon the universal
failure of a universal experiment. The statement, therefore, that the natural
man discerneth not the things of the spirit, is never to be charged against
the intolerance of theology. There is no point at which theology has been
more modest than here. It has left the preaching of a great fundamental
truth almost entirely to philosophy and science. And so very moderate has
been its tone, so slight has been the emphasis placed upon the paralysis
of the natural with regard to the spiritual, that it may seem to some to
have been intolerantly tolerant. No harm certainly could come now, no offence
could be given to science, if religion asserted more clearly its right
to the spiritual world. Science has paved the way for the reception of
one of the most revolutionary doctrines of Christianity; and if Christianity
refuses to take advantage of the opening it will manifest a culpable want
of confidence in itself. There never was a time when its fundamental doctrines
could more boldly be proclaimed, or when they could better secure the respect
and arrest the interest of Science.
To all this, and apparently with force, it
may, however, be objected that to every man who truly studies Nature there
is a God. Call Him by whatever name--a Creator, a Supreme Being, a Great
First Cause, a Power that makes for Righteousness--Science has a God; and
he who believes in this, in spite of all protest, possesses a theology.
"If we will look at things, and not merely at words, we shall soon
see that the scientific man has a theology and a God, a most impressive
theology, a most awful and glorious God. I say that man believes in a God,
who feels himself in the presence of a Power which is not himself, and
is immeasurably above himself, a Power in the contemplation of which he
is absorbed, in the knowledge of which he finds safety and happiness. And
such now is Nature to the scientific man. Such now, we humbly submit, is
Nature to very few. Their own confession is against it. That they are "absorbed"
in the contemplation we can well believe. That they might "find safety
and happiness" in the knowledge of Him is also possible--if they had
it. But this is just what they tell us they have not. What they deny is
not a God. It is the correspondence. The very confession of the Unknowable
is itself the dull recognition of an Environment beyond themselves, and
for which they feel they lack the correspondence. It is this want that
makes their God the Unknown God. And it is this that makes them dead.
We have not said, or implied, that there
is not a God of Nature. We have not affirmed that there is no Natural Religion.
We are assured there is. We are even assured that without a Religion of
Nature Religion is only half complete; that without a God of Nature the
God of Revelation is only half intelligible and only partially known. God
is not confined to the outermost circle of environment, He lives and moves
and has His being in the whole. Those who only seek Him in the further
zone can only find a part. The Christian who knows not God in Nature, who
does not, that is to say, correspond with the whole environment, most certainly
is partially dead. The author of "Ecce Homo" may be partially
right when he says: "I think a bystander would say that though Christianity
had in it something far higher and deeper and more ennobling, yet the average
scientific man worships just at present a more awful, and, as it were,
a greater Deity than the average Christian. In so many Christians the idea
of God has been degraded by childish and little-minded teaching; the Eternal
and the Infinite and the All-embracing has been represented as the head
of the clerical interest, as a sort of clergyman, as a sort of schoolmaster,
as a sort of philanthropist. But the scientific man knows Him to be eternal;
in astronomy, in geology, he becomes familiar with the countless millenniums
of His lifetime. The scientific man strains his mind actually to realize
God's infinity. As far off as the fixed stars he traces Him, `distance
inexpressible by numbers that have name.' Meanwhile, to the theologian,
infinity and eternity are very much of empty words when applied to the
Object of his worship. He does not realize them in actual facts and definite
computations. Let us accept this rebuke. The principle that want of correspondence
is Death applies all round. He who knows not God in Nature only partially
lives. The converse of this, however is not true; and that is the point
we are insisting on. He who knows God only in Nature lives not. There is
no "correspondence" with an Unknown God, no "continuous
adjustment" to a fixed First Cause. There is no "assimilation"
of Natural Law; no growth in the Image of "the All-embracing."
To correspond with the God of Science assuredly is not to live. "This
is Life Eternal, to know Thee, the true God, and Jesus
Christ Whom Thou hast sent."
From the service we have tried to make natural
science render to our religion, we might be expected possibly to take up
the position that the absolute contribution of Science to Revelation was
very great. On the contrary, it is very small. The absolute contribution,
that is, is very small. The contribution on the whole is immense, vaster
than we have yet any idea of. But without the aid of the higher Revelation
this many-toned and far-reaching voice had been for ever dumb. The light
of Nature, say the most for it, is dim--how dim we ourselves, with the
glare of other Light upon the modern world, can only realize when we seek
among the pagan records of the past for the gropings after truth of those
whose only light was this. Powerfully significant and touching as these
efforts were in their success, they are far more significant and touching
in their failure. For they did fail. It requires no philosophy now to speculate
on the adequacy or inadequacy of the Religion of Nature. For us who could
never weigh it rightly in the scales of Truth it has been tried in the
balance of experience and found wanting. Theism is the easiest of all religions
to get, but the most difficult to keep. Individuals have kept it, but nations
never. Socrates and Aristotle, Cicero and Epictetus had a theistic religion;
Greece and Rome had none. And even after getting what seems like a firm
place in the minds of men, its unstable equilibrium sooner or later betrays
itself. On the one hand theism has always fallen into the wildest polytheism,
or on the other into the blankest atheism. "It is an indubitable historical
fact that, outside of the sphere of special revelation, man has never obtained
such a knowledge of God as a responsible and religious being plainly requires.
The wisdom of the heathen world, at its very best, was utterly inadequate
to the accomplishment of such a task as creating a due abhorrence of sin,
controlling the passions, purifying the heart, and ennobling the conduct.
What is the inference? That this poor rush-light
itself was never meant to lend the ray by which man should read the riddle
of the universe. The mystery is too impenetrable and remote for its uncertain
flicker to more than make the darkness deeper. What indeed if this were
not a light at all, but only part of a light--the carbon point, the fragment
of calcium, the reflector in the great Lantern which contains the Light
of the World?
This is one inference. But the most important
is that the absence of the true Light means moral Death. The darkness of
the natural world to the intellect is not all. What history testifies to
is, first the partial, and then the total eclipse of virtue that always
follows the abandonment of belief in a personal God. It is not, as has
been pointed out a hundred times, that morality in the abstract disappears,
but the motive and sanction are gone. There is nothing to raise it from
the dead. Man's attitude to it is left to himself. Grant that morals have
their own base in human life; grant that Nature has a Religion whose creed
is Science; there is yet nothing apart from God to save the world from
moral Death. Morality has the power to dictate but none to move. Nature
directs but cannot control. As was wisely expressed in one of many pregnant
utterances during a recent Symposium, "Though the decay of
religion may leave the institutes of morality intact, it drains off their
inward power. The devout faith of men expresses and measures the intensity
of their moral nature, and it cannot be lost without a remission of enthusiasm,
and under this low pressure, the successful re-entrance of importunate
desires and clamorous passions which had been driven back. To believe in
an ever-living and perfect Mind, supreme over the universe, is to invest
moral distinctions with immensity and eternity, and lift them from the
provincial stage of human society to the imperishable theatre of all being.
When planted thus in the very substance of things, they justify and support
the ideal estimates of the conscience; they deepen every guilty shame;
they guarantee every righteous hope; and they help the will with a Divine
casting-vote in every balance of temptation. That morality has a basis
in human society, that Nature has a Religion, surely makes the Death of
the soul when left to itself all the more appalling. It means that, between
them, Nature and morality provide all for virtue--except the Life to live
it
It is at this point accordingly that our
subject comes into intimate contact with Religion. The proposition that
"to be carnally minded is Death" even the moralist will assent
to. But when it is further announced that "the carnal mind is enmity
against God" we find ourselves in a different region. And when
we find it also stated that "the wages of sin is Death,"
we are in the heart of the profoundest questions of theology. What before
was merely "enmity against society" becomes "enmity against
God;" and what was "vice" is "sin." The conception
of a God gives an altogether new colour to worldliness and vice. Worldliness
it changes into heathenism, vice into blasphemy. The carnal mind, the mind
which is turned away from God, which will not correspond with God--this
is not moral only but spiritual Death. And Sin, that which separates from
God, which disobeys God, which can not in that state correspond
with God--this is hell.
To the estrangement of the soul from God
the best of theology traces the ultimate cause of sin. Sin is simply apostasy
from God, unbelief in God. "Sin is manifest in its true character
when the demand of holiness in the conscience, presenting itself to the
man as one of loving submission to God, is put from him with aversion.
Here sin appears as it really is, a turning away from God; and while the
man's guilt is enhanced, there ensues a benumbing of the heart resulting
from the crushing of those higher impulses. This is what is meant by the
reprobate state of those who reject Christ and will not believe the Gospel,
so often spoken of in the New Testament; this unbelief is just the closing
of the heart against the highest love. The other view of sin, probably
the more popular at present, that sin consists in selfishness, is merely
this from another aspect. Obviously if the mind turns away from one part
of the environment it will only do so under some temptation to correspond
with another. This temptation, at bottom, can only come from one source--the
love of self. The irreligious man's correspondences are concentrated upon
himself. He worships himself. Self-gratification rather than self-denial;
independence rather than submission--these are the rules of life. And this
is at once the poorest and the commonest form of idolatry.
But whichever of these views of sin we emphasize,
we find both equally connected with Death. If sin is estrangement from
God, this very estrangement is Death. It is a want of correspondence. If
sin is selfishness, it is conducted at the expense of life. Its wages are
Death--"he that loveth his life," said Christ, "shall lose
it."
Yet the paralysis of the moral nature apart
from God does not only depend for its evidence upon theology or even upon
history. From the analogies of Nature one would expect this result as a
necessary consequence. The development of any organism in my direction
is dependent on its environment. A living cell cut off from air will die.
A seed-germ apart from moisture and an appropriate temperature will make
the ground its grave for centuries. Human nature, likewise, is subject
to similar conditions. It can only develop in presence of its environment.
No matter what its possibilities may be, no matter what seeds of thought
or virtue, what germs of genius or of art, lie latent in its breast, until
the appropriate environment present itself the correspondence is denied,
the development discouraged, the most splendid possibilities of life remain
unrealized, and thought and virtue, genius and art, are dead. The true
environment of the moral life is God. Here conscience wakes. Here kindles
love. Duty here becomes heroic; and that righteousness begins to Live which
alone is to live for ever. But if this Atmosphere is not, the dwarfed soul
must perish for mere want of its native air. And its Death is a strictly
natural Death. It is not an exceptional judgment upon Atheism. In the same
circumstances, in the same averted relation to their environment, the poet,
the musician, the artist, would alike perish to poetry, to music, and to
art. Every environment is a cause. Its effect upon me is exactly proportionate
to my correspondence with it. If I correspond with part of it, part of
myself is influenced. If I correspond with more, more of myself is influenced;
if with all, all is influenced. If I correspond with the world, I become
worldly; if with God, I become Divine. As without correspondence of the
scientific man with the natural environment there could be no Science and
no action founded on the knowledge of Nature, so without communion with
the spiritual Environment there can be no Religion. To refuse to cultivate
the religious relation is to deny to the soul its highest right--the right
to a further evolution.
We have already admitted that he who knows
not God may not be a monster; we cannot say he will not be a dwarf. This
precisely, and on perfectly natural principles, is what he must be. You
can dwarf a soul just as you can dwarf a plant, by depriving it of a full
environment. Such a soul for a time may have "a name to live."
Its character may betray no sign of atrophy. But its very virtue somehow
has the pallor of a flower that is grown in darkness, or as the herb which
has never seen the sun, no fragrance breathes from its spirit. To morality,
possibly, this organism offers the example of an irreproachable life; but
to science it is an instance of arrested development; and to religion it
presents the spectacle of a corpse--a living Death. With Ruskin, "I
do not wonder at what men suffer, but I wonder often at what they lose."
It would not be difficult to show, were this
the immediate subject, that it is not only a right but a duty to exercise
the spiritual faculties, a duty demanded not by religion merely, but by
science. Upon biological principles man owes his full development to himself,
to nature, and to his fellow-men. Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms, "The
performance of every function is, in a sense, a moral obligation. It is
usually thought that morality requires us only to restrain such vital activities
as, in our present state, are often pushed to excess, or such as conflict
with average welfares special or general; but it also requires us to carry
on these vital activities up to their normal limits. All the animal functions,
in common with all the higher functions, have, as thus understood, their
imperativeness"-- "The Data of Ethics," 2nd Ed., p. 76