"Supposing that man, in some form,
is permitted to remain on the earth for a long series of years, we merely
lengthen out the period, but we cannot escape the final catastrophe. The
earth will gradually lose its energy of rotation, as well as that of revolution
around the sun. The sun himself will wax dim and become useless as a source
of energy, until at last the favourable conditions of the present solar
system will have quite disappeared.
"But what happens to our system
will happen likewise to the whole visible universe, which will, if finite,
become a lifeless mass, if indeed it be not doomed to utter dissolution.
In fine, it will become old and effete, no less truly than the individual.
It is a glorious garment, this visible universe, but not an immortal one.
We must look elsewhere if we are to be clothed with immortality as with
a garment."
THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE.
" This is Life Eternal--that they might
know Thee, the True God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."--Jesus
Christ.
" Perfect correspondence would be perfect
life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism
had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency
with which it met them, there would be eternal existence and eternal knowledge."--Herbert
Spencer.
ONE of the most startling achievements of
recent science is a definition of Eternal Life. To the religious mind this
is a contribution of immense moment. For eighteen hundred years only one
definition of Life Eternal was before the world. Now there are two.
Through all these centuries revealed religion
had this doctrine to itself. Ethics had a voice, as well as Christianity,
on the question of the summum bonum; Philosophy ventured to speculate
on the Being of a God. But no source outside Christianity contributed anything
to the doctrine of Eternal Life. Apart from Revelation, this great truth
was unguaranteed. It was the one thing in the Christian system that most
needed verification from without, yet none was forthcoming. And never has
any further light been thrown upon the question why in its very nature
the Christian Life should be Eternal. Christianity itself even upon this
point has been obscure. Its decision upon the bare fact is authoritative
and specific. But as to what there is in the Spiritual Life necessarily
endowing it with the element of Eternity, the maturest theology is all
but silent.
It has been reserved for modern biology at
once to defend and illuminate this central truth of the Christian faith.
And hence in the interests of religion, practical and evidential, this
second and scientific definition of Eternal Life is to be hailed as an
announcement of commanding interest. Why it should not yet have received
the recognition of religious thinkers--for already it has lain some years
unnoticed--is not difficult to understand. The belief in Science as an
aid to faith is not yet ripe enough to warrant men in searching there for
witnesses to the highest Christian truths. The inspiration of Nature, it
is thought, extends to the humbler doctrines alone. And yet the reverent
inquirer who guides his steps in the right direction may find even now
in the still dim twilight of the scientific world much that will illuminate
and intensify his sublimest faith. Here, at least, comes, and comes unbidden
the opportunity of testing the most vital point of the Christian system.
Hitherto the Christian philosopher has remained content with the scientific
evidence against Annihilation. Or, with Butler, he has reasoned from the
Metamorphoses of Insects to a future life. Or again, with the authors of
" The Unseen Universe," the apologist has constructed elaborate,
and certainly impressive, arguments upon the Law of Continuity. But now
we may draw nearer. For the first time Science touches Christianity positively
on the doctrine of Immortality. It confronts us with an actual definition
of an Eternal Life, based on a full and rigidly accurate examination of
the necessary conditions. Science does not pretend that it can fulfil these
conditions. Its votaries make no claim to possess the Eternal Life. It
simply postulates the requisite conditions without concerning itself whether
any organism should ever appear, or does now exist, which might fulfil
them. The claim of religion, on the other hand, is that there are organisms
which possess Eternal Life. And the problem for us to solve is this: Do
those who profess to possess Eternal Life fulfil the conditions required
by Science, or are they different conditions? In a word, Is the Christian
conception of Eternal Life scientific?
It may be unnecessary to notice at the outset
that the definition of Eternal Life drawn up by Science was framed without
reference to religion. It must indeed have been the last thought with the
thinker to whom we chiefly owe it, that in unfolding the conception of
a Life in its very nature necessarily eternal, he was contributing to Theology.
Mr. Herbert Spencer--for it is to him we
owe it-- would be the first to admit the impartiality of his definition;
and from the connection in which it occurs in his writings, it is obvious
that religion was not even present to his mind. He is analysing with minute
care the relations between Environment and Life. He unfolds the principle
according to which Life is high or low, long or short. He shows why organisms
live and why they die. And finally he defines a condition of things in
which an organism would never die--in which it would enjoy a perpetual
and perfect Life. This to him is, of course, but a speculation. Life Eternal
is a biological conceit. The conditions necessary to an Eternal Life do
not exist in the natural world. So that the definition is altogether impartial
and independent. A Perfect Life, to Science, is simply a thing which is
theoretically possible--like a Perfect Vacuum.
Before giving, in so many words, the definition
of Mr. Herbert Spencer, it will render it fully intelligible if we gradually
lead up to it by a brief rehearsal of the few and simple biological facts
on which it is based. In considering the subject of Death, we have formerly
seen that there are degrees of Life. By this is meant that some lives have
more and fuller correspondence with Environment than others. The amount
of correspondence, again, is determined by the greater or less complexity
of the organism. Thus a simple organism like the Amoeba is possessed of
very few correspondences. It is a mere sac of transparent structureless
jelly for which organization has done almost nothing, and hence it can
only communicate with the smallest possible area of Environment. An insect,
in virtue of its more complex structure, corresponds with a wider area.
Nature has endowed it with special faculties for reaching out to the Environment
on many sides; it has more life than the Amoeba. In other words, it is
a higher animal. Man again, whose body is still further differentiated,
or broken up into different correspondences, finds himself en rapport
with his surroundings to a further extent. And therefore he is higher
still, more living still. And this law, that the degree of Life varies
with the degree of correspondence, holds to the minutest detail throughout
the entire range of living things. Life becomes fuller and fuller, richer
and richer, more and more sensitive and responsive to an ever-widening
Environment as we rise in the chain of being.
Now it will speedily appear that a distinct
relation exists, and must exist, between complexity and longevity. Death
being brought about by the failure of an organism to adjust itself to some
change in the Environment, it follows that those organisms which are able
to adjust themselves most readily and successfully will live the longest.
They will continue time after time to effect the appropriate adjustment,
and their power of doing so will be exactly proportionate to their complexity--that
is, to the amount of Environment they can control with their correspondences.
There are, for example, in the Environment of every animal certain things
which are directly or indirectly dangerous to Life. If its equipment of
correspondences is not complete enough to enable it to avoid these dangers
in all possible circumstances, it must sooner or later succumb. The organism
then with the most perfect set of correspondences, that is, the highest
and most complex organism, has an obvious advantage over less complex forms.
It can adjust itself more perfectly and frequently. But this is just the
biological way of saying that it can live the longest. And hence the relation
between complexity and longevity may be expressed thus--the most complex
organisms are the longest lived.
To state and illustrate the proposition conversely
may make the point still further clear. The less highly organized an animal
is, the less will be its chance of remaining in lengthened correspondence
with its Environment. At some time or other in its career circumstances
are sure to occur to which the comparatively immobile organism finds itself
structurally unable to respond. Thus a Medusa tossed ashore by a
wave, finds itself so out of correspondence with its new surroundings that
its life must pay the forfeit. Had it been able by internal change to adapt
itself to external change--to correspond sufficiently with the new environment,
as for example to crawl, as an eel would have done, back into that environment
with which it had completer correspondence--its life might have been spared.
But had this happened it would continue to live henceforth only so long
as it could continue in correspondence with all the circumstances in which
it might find itself. Even if, however, it became complex enough to resist
the ordinary and direct dangers of its environment, it might still be out
of correspondence with others A naturalist for instance, might take advantage
of its want of correspondence with particular sights and sounds to capture
it for his cabinet, or the sudden dropping of a yacht's anchor or the turn
of a screw might cause its untimely death.
Again, in the case of a bird, in virtue of
its more complex organization, there is command over a much larger area
of environment. It can take precautions such as the Medasa could
not; it has increased facilities for securing food; its adjustments all
round are more complex; and therefore it ought to be able to maintain its
Life for a longer period. There is still a large area, however, over which
it has no control. Its power of internal change is not complete enough
to afford it perfect correspondence with all external changes, and its
tenure of Life is to that extent insecure. Its correspondence, moreover,
is limited even with regard to those external conditions with which it
has been partially established. Thus a bird in ordinary circumstances has
no difficulty in adapting itself to changes of temperature, but if these
are varied beyond the point at which its capacity of adjustment begins
to fail--for example, during an extreme winter--the organism being unable
to meet the condition must perish. The human organism, on the other hand,
can respond to this external condition, as well as to countless other vicissitudes
under which lower forms would inevitably succumb. Man's adjustments are
to the largest known area of Environment, and hence he ought to be able
furthest to prolong his Life.
It becomes evident, then, that as we ascend
in the scale of Life we rise also in the scale of longevity. The lowest
organisms are, as a rule, short-lived, and the rate of mortality diminishes
more or less regularly as we ascend in the animal scale. So extraordinary
indeed is the mortality among lowly-organized forms that in most cases
a compensation is actually provided, nature endowing them with a marvellously
increased fertility in order to guard against absolute extinction. Almost
all lower forms are furnished not only with great reproductive powers,
but with different methods of propagation, by which, in various circumstances,
and in an incredibly short time, the species can be indefinitely multiplied.
Ehrenberg found that by the repeated subdivisions of a single Paramecium,
no fewer than 268,000,000 similar organisms might be produced in one
month. This power steadily decreases as we rise higher in the scale, until
forms are reached in which one, two, or at most three, Come into being
at a birth. It decreases, however, because it is no longer needed. These
forms have a much longer lease of Life. And it may be taken as a rule,
although it has exceptions, that complexity in animal organisms is always
associated with longevity.
It may be objected that these illustrations
are taken merely from morbid conditions. But whether the Life be cut short
by accident or by disease the principle is the same. All dissolution is
brought about practically in the same way. A certain condition in the Environment
fails to be met by a corresponding condition in the organism, and this
is death. And conversely the more an organism in virtue of its complexity
can adapt itself to all the parts of its Environment, the longer it will
live. " It is manifest a priori," says Mr. Herbert Spencer,
" that since changes in the physical state of the environment, as
also those mechanical actions and those variations of available food which
occur in it, are liable to stop the processes going on in the organism;
and since the adaptive changes in the organism have the effects of directly
or indirectly counterbalancing these changes in the environment, it follows
that the life of the organism will be short or long, low or high, according
to the extent to which changes in the environment are met by corresponding
changes in the organism. Allowing a margin for perturbations, the life
will continue only while the correspondence continues; the completeness
of the life will be proportionate to the completeness of the correspondence;
and the life will be perfect only when the correspondence is perfect.
We are now all but in sight of our scientific
definition of Eternal Life. The desideratum is an organism with a correspondence
of a very exceptional kind. It must lie beyond the reach of those "mechanical
actions "and those "variations of available food," which
are "liable to stop the processes going on in the organism."
Before we reach an Eternal Life we must pass beyond that point at which
all ordinary correspondences inevitably cease. We must find an organism
so high and complex, that at some point in its development it shall have
added a correspondence which organic death is powerless to arrest. We must
in short pass beyond that finite region where the correspondences depend
on evanescent and material media, and enter a further region where the
Environment corresponded with is itself Eternal. Such an Environment exists.
The Environment of the Spiritual world is outside the influence of these
"mechanical actions," which sooner or later interrupt the processes
going on in all finite organisms. If then we can find an organism which
has established a correspondence with the spiritual world, that correspondence
will possess the elements of eternity--provided only one other condition
be fulfilled.
That condition is that the Environment be
perfect. If it is not perfect, if it is not the highest, if it is endowed
with the finite quality of change, there can be no guarantee that the Life
of its correspondents will be eternal, Some change might occur in it which
the correspondents had no adaptive changes to meet, and Life would cease.
But grant a spiritual organism in perfect correspondence with a perfect
spiritual Environment, and the conditions necessary to Eternal Life are
satisfied.
The exact terms of Mr. Herbert Spencer's
definition of Eternal Life may now be given. And it will be seen that they
include essentially the conditions here laid down. "Perfect correspondence
would be perfect life. Were there no changes in the environment but such
as the organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail
in the efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal existence
and eternal knowledge. Reserving the question as to the possible fulfilment
of these conditions, let us turn for a moment to the definition of Eternal
Life laid down by Christ. Let us place it alongside the definition of Science,
and mark the points of contact. Uninterrupted correspondence with a perfect
Environment is Eternal Life according to Science. "This is Life Eternal,"
said Christ, "that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom Thou hast sent." Life Eternal is to know God. To know
God is to "correspond" with God. To correspond with God is to
correspond with a Perfect Environment. And the organism which attains to
this, in the nature of things must Live for ever. Here is "eternal
existence and eternal knowledge."
The main point of agreement between the scientific
and the religious definition is that Life consists in a peculiar and personal
relation defined as a "correspondence." This conception, that
Life consists in correspondences, has been so abundantly illustrated already
that it is now unnecessary to discuss it further. All Life indeed consists
essentially in correspondences with various Environments. The artist's
life is a correspondence with art; the musician's with music. To cut them
off from these Environments is in that relation to cut off their Life.
To be cut off from all Environment is death. To find a new Environment
again and cultivate relation with it is to find a new Life. To live is
to correspond, and to correspond is to live. So much is true in Science.
But it is also true in Religion. And it is of great importance to observe
that to Religion also the conception of Life is a correspondence. No truth
of Christianity has been more ignorantly or wilfully travestied than the
doctrine of Immortality. The popular idea, in spite of a hundred protests,
is that Eternal Life is to live for ever. A single glance at the locus
classicus, might have made this error impossible. There we are told
that Life Eternal is not to live. This is Life Eternal--to know. And
yet --and it is a notorious instance of the fact that men who are opposed
to Religion will take their conceptions of its profoundest truths from
mere vulgar perversions--this view still represents to many cultivated
men the Scriptural doctrine of Eternal Life. From time to time the taunt
is thrown at Religion, not unseldom from lips which Science ought to have
taught more caution, that the Future Life of Christianity is simply a prolonged
existence, an eternal monotony, a blind and indefinite continuance of being.
The Bible never could commit itself to any such empty platitude; nor could
Christianity ever offer to the world a hope so colourless. Not that Eternal
Life has nothing to do with everlastingness. That is part of the
conception. And it is this aspect of the question that first arrests us
in the field of Science. But even Science has more in its definition than
longevity. It has a correspondence and an Environment; and although it
cannot fill up these terms for Religion, it can indicate at least the nature
of the relation, the kind of thing that is meant by Life. Science speaks
to us indeed of much more than numbers of years. It defines degrees of
Life. It explains a widening Environment. It unfolds the relation between
a widening Environment and increasing complexity in organisms. And if it
has no absolute contribution to the content of Religion, its analogies
are not limited to a point. It yields to Immortality, and this is the most
that Science can do in any case, the broad framework for a doctrine.
The further definition, moreover, of this
correspondence as knowing is in the highest degree significant.
Is not this the precise quality in an Eternal correspondence which the
analogies of Science would prepare us to look for? Longevity is associated
with complexity. And complexity in organisms is manifested by the successive
addition of correspondences, each richer and larger than those which have
gone before. The differentiation, therefore, of the spiritual organism
ought to be signalized by the addition of the highest possible correspondence.
It is not essential to the idea that the correspondence should be altogether
novel; it is necessary rather that it should not. An altogether new correspondence
appearing suddenly without shadow or prophecy would be a violation of continuity.
What we should expect would be something new, and yet something that we
were already prepared for. We should look for a further development in
harmony with current developments; the extension of the last and highest
correspondence in a new and higher direction. And this is exactly what
we have. In the world with which biology deals, Evolution culminates in
Knowledge.
At whatever point in the zoological scale
this correspondence, or set of correspondences, begins, it is certain there
is nothing higher. In its stunted infancy merely, when we meet with its
rudest beginnings in animal intelligence, it is a thing so wonderful, as
to strike every thoughtful and reverent observer with awe. Even among the
invertebrates so marvellously are these or kindred powers displayed, that
naturalists do not hesitate now, on the ground of intelligence at least,
to classify some of the humblest creatures next to man himself. Nothing
in nature, indeed, is so unlike the rest of nature, so prophetic of what
is beyond it, so supernatural. And as manifested in Man who crowns creation
with his all-embracing consciousness, there is but one word to describe
his knowledge: it is Divine. If then from this point there is to be any
further Evolution, this surely must be the correspondence in which it shall
take place? This correspondence is great enough to demand development;
and yet it is little enough to need it. The magnificence of what it has
achieved relatively, is the pledge of the possibility of more; the insignificance
of its conquest absolutely involves the probability of still richer triumphs.
If anything, in short, in humanity is to go on it must be this. Other correspondences
may continue likewise; others, again, we can well afford to leave behind.
But this cannot cease. This correspondence--or this set of correspondences,
for it is very complex--is it not that to which men with one consent would
attach Eternal Life? Is there anything else to which they would attach
it? Is anything better conceivable, anything worthier, fuller, nobler,
anything which would represent a higher form of Evolution or offer a more
perfect ideal for an Eternal Life?
But these are questions of quality; and the
moment we pass from quantity to quality we leave Science behind. In the
vocabulary of Science Eternity is only the fraction of a word. It means
mere everlastingness. To Religion, on the other hand, Eternity has little
to do with time. To correspond with the God of Science, the Eternal Unknowable,
would be everlasting existence; to correspond with "the true God and
Jesus Christ," is Eternal Life. The quality of the Eternal Life alone
makes the heaven; mere everlastingness might be no boon. Even the brief
span of the temporal life is too long for those who spend its years in
sorrow. Time itself, let alone Eternity, is all but excruciating to Doubt.
And many besides Schopenhauer have secretly regarded consciousness as the
hideous mistake and malady of Nature. Therefore we must not only have quantity
of years, to speak in the language of the present, but quality of correspondence.
When we leave Science behind, this correspondence also receives a higher
name. It becomes communion. Other names there are for it, religious and
theological. It may be included in a general expression, Faith; or we may
call it by a personal and specific term, Love. For the knowing of a Whole
so great involves the co-operation of many parts.
Communion with God--can it be demonstrated
in terms of Science that this is a correspondence which will never break?
We do not appeal to Science for such a testimony. We have asked for its
conception of an Eternal Life; and we have received for answer that Eternal
Life would consist in a correspondence which should never cease, with an
Environment which should never pass away. And yet what would Science demand
of a perfect correspondence that is not met by this, the knowing of
God? There is no other correspondence which could satisfy one at least
of the conditions. Not one could be named which would not bear on the face
of it the mark and pledge of its mortality. But this, to know God, stands
alone. To know God, to be linked with God, to be linked with Eternity--if
this is not the "eternal existence" of zoology, what can more
nearly approach it? And yet we are still a great way off--to establish
a communication with the Eternal is not to secure Eternal Life. It must
be assumed that the communication could be sustained. And to assume this
would be to beg the question. So that we have still to prove Eternal Life.
But let it be again repeated, we are not here seeking proofs. We are seeking
light. We are merely reconnoitring from the furthest promontory of Science
if so be that through the haze we may discern the outline of a distant
coast and come to some conclusion as to the possibility of landing.
But, it may be replied, it is not open to
any one handling the question of Immortality from the side of Science to
remain neutral as to the question of fact. It is not enough to announce
that he has no addition to make to the positive argument. This may be permitted
with reference to other points of contact between Science and Religion,
but not with this. We are told this question is settled--that there is
no positive side. Science meets the entire conception of Immortality with
a direct negative. In the face of a powerful consensus against even the
possibility of a Future Life, to content oneself with saying that Science
pretended to no argument in favour of it would be at once impertinent and
dishonest. We must therefore devote ourselves for a moment to the question
of possibility.
The problem is, with a material body and
a mental organization inseparably connected with it, to bridge the grave.
Emotion, volition, thought itself, are functions of the brain. When the
brain is impaired, they are impaired. When the brain is not, they are not.
Everything ceases with the dissolution of the material fabric; muscular
activity and mental activity perish alike. With the pronounced positive
statements on this point from many departments of modern Science we are
all familiar. The fatal verdict is recorded by a hundred hands and with
scarcely a shadow of qualification. "Unprejudiced philosophy is compelled
to reject the idea of an individual immortality and of a personal continuance
after death. With the decay and dissolution of its material substratum,
through which alone it has acquired a conscious existence and become a
person, and upon which it was dependent, the spirit must cease to exist.
To the same effect Vogt: "Physiology decides definitely and categorically
against individual immortality, as against any special existence of the
soul. The soul does not enter the foetus like the evil spirit into persons
possessed, but is a product of the development of the brain, just as muscular
activity is a product of muscular development, and secretion a product
of glandular development." After a careful review of the position
of recent Science with regard to the whole doctrine, Mr. Graham sums up
thus: "Such is the argument of Science, seemingly decisive against
a future life. As we listen to her array of syllogisms, our hearts die
within us. The hopes of men, placed in one scale to be weighed, seem to
fly up against the massive weight of her evidence, placed in the other.
It seems as if all our arguments were vain and unsubstantial, as if our
future expectations were the foolish dreams of children, as if there could
not be any other possible verdict arrived at upon the evidence brought
forward.
Can we go on in the teeth of so real an obstruction?
Has not our own weapon turned against us, Science abolishing with authoritative
hand the very truth we are asking it to define?
What the philosopher has to throw into the
other scale can be easily indicated. Generally speaking, he demurs to the
dogmatism of the conclusion. That mind and brain react, that the mental
and the physiological processes are related, and very intimately related,
is beyond controversy. But how they are related, he submits, it still altogether
unknown. The correlation of mind and brain do not involve their identity.
And not a few authorities accordingly have consistently hesitated to draw
any conclusion at all. Even Buchner's statement turns out, on close examination,
to be tentative in the extreme. In prefacing his chapter on Personal Continuance,
after a single sentence on the dependence of the soul and its manifestations
upon a material substratum, he remarks, "Though we are unable to form
a definite idea as to the how of this connection, we are still by
these facts justified in asserting, that the mode of this connection renders
it apparently impossible that they should continue to exist separately.
There is, therefore, a flaw at his point in the argument for materialism.
It may not help the spiritualist in the least degree positively. He may
be as far as ever from a theory of how consciousness could continue without
the material tissue. But his contention secures for him the right of speculation.
The path beyond may lie in hopeless gloom; but it is not barred. He may
bring forward his theory if he will. And this is something. For a permission
to go on is often the most that Science can grant to Religion.
Men have taken advantage of this loophole
in various ways. And though it cannot be said that these speculations offer
us more than a probability, this is still enough to combine with the deep-seated
expectation in the bosom of mankind and give fresh lustre to the hope of
a future life. Whether we find relief in the theory of a simple dualism;
whether with Ulrici we further define the soul as an invisible enswathement
of the body, material yet non-atomic; whether, with the "Unseen Universe,"
we are helped by the spectacle of known forms of matter shading off into
an ever-growing subtilty, mobility, and immateriality; or whether, with
Wundt, we regard the soul as "the ordered unity of many elements,"
it is certain that shapes can be given to the conception of a correspondence
which shall bridge the grave such as to satisfy minds too much accustomed
to weigh evidence to put themselves off with fancies.
But whether the possibilities of physiology
or the theories of philosophy do or do not substantially assist us in realizing
Immortality, is to Religion, to Religion at least regarded from the present
point of view, of inferior moment. The fact of Immortality rests for us
on a different basis. Probably, indeed, after all the Christian philosopher
never engaged himself in a more superfluous task than in seeking along
physiological lines to find room for a soul. The theory of Christianity
has only to be fairly stated to make manifest its thorough independence
of all the usual speculations on Immortality. The theory is not that thought,
volition, or emotion, as such are to survive the grave. The difficulty
of holding a doctrine in this form, in spite of what has been advanced
to the contrary, in spite of the hopes and wishes of mankind, in spite
of all the scientific and philosophical attempts to make it tenable, is
still profound. No secular theory of personal continuance, as even Butler
acknowledged, does not equally demand the eternity of the brute. No secular
theory defines the point in the chain of Evolution at which organisms became
endowed with Immortality. No secular theory explains the condition of the
endowment, nor indicates its goal. And if we have nothing more to fan hope
than the unexplored mystery of the whole region, or the unknown remainders
among the potencies of Life, then, as those who have "hope only in
this world," we are "of all men the most miserable."
When we turn, on the other hand, to the doctrine
as it came from the lips of Christ, we find ourselves in an entirely different
region. He makes no attempt to project the material into the immaterial.
The old elements, however refined and subtil as to their matter, are not
in themselves to inherit the Kingdom of God. That which is flesh is flesh.
Instead of attaching Immortality to the natural organism, He introduces
a new and original factor which none of the secular, and few even of the
theological theories, seem to take sufficiently into account. To Christianity,
"he that hath the Son of God hath Life, and he that hath not the Son
hath not Life." This, as we take it, defines the correspondence which
is to bridge the grave. This is the clue to the nature of the Life that
lies at the back of the spiritual organism. And this is the true solution
of the mystery of Eternal Life.
There lies a something at the back of the
correspondences of the spiritual organism--just as there lies a something
at the back of the natural correspondences. To say that Life is a correspondence
is only to express the partial truth. There is something behind. Life manifests
itself in correspondences. But what determines them? The organism exhibits
a variety of correspondences. What organizes them? As in the natural, so
in the spiritual, there is a Principle of Life. We cannot get rid of that
term. However clumsy, however provisional, however much a mere cloak for
ignorance, Science as yet is unable to dispense with the idea of a Principle
of Life. We must work with the word till we get a better. Now that which
determines the correspondence of the spiritual organism is a Principle
of Spiritual Life. It is a new and Divine Possession. He that hath the
Son hath Life; conversely, he that hath Life hath the Son. And this indicates
at once the quality and the quantity of the correspondence which is to
bridge the grave. He that hath Life hath the Son. He possesses the
Spirit of a Son. That spirit is, so to speak, organized within him by the
Son. It is the manifestation of the new nature--of which more anon. The
fact to note at present is that this is not an organic correspondence,
but a spiritual correspondence. It comes not from generation, but from
regeneration. The relation between the spiritual man and his Environment
is, in theological language, a filial relation. With the new Spirit, the
filial correspondence, he knows the Father--and this is Life Eternal. This
is not only the real relation, but the only possible relation: "Neither
knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will
reveal Him." And this on purely natural grounds. It takes the Divine
to know the Divine--but in no more mysterious sense than it takes the human
to understand the human. The analogy, indeed, for the whole field here
has been finely expressed already by Paul: "What man," he asks,
"knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?
even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we
have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of
God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
It were idle, such being the quality of the
new relation, to add that this also contains the guarantee of its eternity.
Here at last is a correspondence which will never cease. Its powers in
bridging the grave have been tried. The correspondence of the spiritual
man possesses the supernatural virtues of the Resurrection and the Life.
It is known by former experiment to have survived the "changes in
the physical state of the environment," and those "mechanical
actions" and "variations of available food," which Mr. Herbert
Spencer tells us are "liable to stop the processes going on in the
organism." In short, this is a correspondence which at once satisfies
the demands of Science and Religion. In mere quantity it is different from
every other correspondence known. Setting aside everything else in Religion,
everything adventitious, local, and provisional; dissecting in to the bone
and marrow we find this--a correspondence which can never break with an
Environment which can never change. Here is a relation established with
Eternity. The passing years lay no limiting hand on it. Corruption injures
it not. It survives Death. It, and it only, will stretch beyond the grave
and be found inviolate--
"When
the moon is old,
And the stars are cold,
And the books of the Judgment-day unfold."
The misgiving which will creep sometimes
over the brightest faith has already received its expression and its rebuke:
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation,
or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?"
Shall these "changes in the physical state of the environment"
which threaten death to the natural man destroy the spiritual? Shall death,
or life, or angels, or principalities, or powers, arrest or tamper with
his eternal correspondences?" Nay, in all these things we are more
than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus
our Lord."
It may seem an objection to some that the
"perfect correspondence" should come to man in so extraordinary
a way. The earlier stages in the doctrine are promising enough; they are
entirely in line with Nature. And if Nature had also furnished the "perfect
correspondence" demanded for an Eternal Life the position might be
unassailable. But this sudden reference to a something outside the natural
Environment destroys the continuity, and discovers a permanent weakness
in the whole theory? To which there is a twofold reply. In the first place,
to go outside what we call Nature is not to go outside Environment. Nature,
the natural Environment, is only a part of Environment. There is another
large part which, though some profess to have no correspondence with it,
is not on that account unreal, or even unnatural. The mental and moral
world is unknown to the plant. But it is real. It cannot be affirmed either
that it is unnatural to the plant; although it might be said that from
the point of view of the Vegetable Kingdom it was supernatural. Things
are natural or supernatural simply according to where one stands. Man is
supernatural to the mineral; God is supernatural to the man. When a mineral
is seized upon by the living plant and elevated to the organic kingdom,
no trespass against Nature is committed. It merely enters a larger Environment,
which before was supernatural to it, but which now is entirely natural.
When the heart of a man, again, is seized upon by the quickening Spirit
of God, no further violence is done to natural law. It is another case
of the inorganic, so to speak, passing into the organic.
But, in the second place, it is complained
as if it were an enormity in itself that the spiritual correspondence should
be furnished from the spiritual world. And to this the answer lies in the
same direction. Correspondence in any case is the gift of Environment.
The natural Environment gives men their natural faculties; the spiritual
affords them their spiritual faculties. It is natural for the spiritual
Environment to supply the spiritual faculties; it would be quite unnatural
for the natural Environment to do it. The natural law of Biogenesis forbids
it; the moral fact that the finite cannot comprehend the Infinite is against
it; the spiritual principle that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom
of God renders it absurd. Not, however, that the spiritual faculties are,
as it were, manufactured in the spiritual world and supplied ready-made
to the spiritual organism--forced upon it as an external equipment. This
certainly is not involved in saying that the spiritual faculties are furnished
by the spiritual world. Organisms are not added to by accretion, as in
the case of minerals, but by growth. And the spiritual faculties are organized
in the spiritual protoplasm of the soul, just as other faculties are organized
in the protoplasm of the body. The plant is made of materials which have
once been inorganic. An organizing principle not belonging to their kingdom
lays hold of them and elaborates them until they have correspondences with
the kingdom to which the organizing principle belonged. Their original
organizing principle, if it can be called by this name, was Crystallisation;
so that we have now a distinctly foreign power organizing in totally new
and higher directions. In the spiritual world, similarly, we find an organizing
principle at work among the materials of the organic kingdom, performing
a further miracle, but not a different kind of miracle, producing organizations
of a novel kind, but not by a novel method. The second process, in fact,
is simply what an enlightened evolutionist would have expected from the
first. It marks the natural and legitimate progress of the development.
And this in the line of the true Evolution--not the linear Evolution,
which would look for the development of the natural man through powers
already inherent, as if one were to look to Crystallisation to accomplish
the development of the mineral into the plant,--but that larger form of
Evolution which includes among its factors the double Law of Biogenesis
and the immense further truth that this involves.
What is further included in this complex
correspondence we shall have opportunity to illustrate afterwards. Meantime
let it be noted on what the Christian argument for Immortality really rests.
It stands upon the pedestal on which the theologian rests the whole of
historical Christianity--the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It ought to be placed in the forefront of
all Christian teaching that Christ's mission on earth was to give men Life.
"I am come," He said, "that ye might have Life, and that
ye might have it more abundantly." And that He meant literal Life,
literal spiritual and Eternal Life, is clear from the whole course of His
teaching and acting. To impose a metaphorical meaning on the commonest
word of the New Testament is to violate every canon of interpretation,
and at the same time to charge the greatest of teachers with persistently
mystifying His hearers by an unusual use of so exact a vehicle for expressing
definite thought as the Greek language, and that on the most momentous
subject of which He ever spoke to men. It is a canon of interpretation,
according to Alford, that "a figurative sense of words is never admissible
except when required by the context." The context, in most cases,
is not only directly unfavourable to a figurative meaning, but in innumerable
instances in Christ's teaching Life is broadly contrasted with Death. In
the teaching of the apostles, again, we find that, without exception, they
accepted the term in its simple literal sense. Reuss defines the apostolic
belief with his usual impartiality when--and the quotation is doubly pertinent
here--he discovers in the apostle's conception of Life, first, "the
idea of a real existence, an existence such as is proper to God and to
the Word; an imperishable existence--that is to say, not subject to the
vicissitudes and imperfections of the finite world. This primary idea is
repeatedly expressed, at least in a negative form; it leads to a doctrine
of immortality, or, to speak more correctly, of life, far surpassing any
that had been expressed in the formulas of the current philosophy or theology,
and resting upon premises and conceptions altogether different. In fact,
it can dispense both with the philosophical thesis of the immateriality
or indestructibility of the human soul, and with the theological thesis
of a miraculous corporeal reconstruction of our person; theses, the first
of which is altogether foreign to the religion of the Bible, and the second
absolutely opposed to reason." Second, " the idea of life, as
it is conceived in this system, implies the idea of a power, an operation,
a communication, since this life no longer remains, so to speak, latent
or passive in God and in the Word, but through them reaches the believer.
It is not a mental somnolent thing; it is not a plant without fruit; it
is a germ which is to find fullest development.
If we are asked to define more clearly what
is meant by this mysterious endowment of Life, we again hand over the difficulty
to Science. When Science can define the Natural Life and the Physical Force
we may hope for further clearness on the nature and action of the Spiritual
Powers. The effort to detect the living Spirit must be at least as idle
as the attempt to subject protoplasm to microscopic examination in the
hope of discovering Life. We are warned, also, not to expect too much.
"Thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." This
being its quality, when the Spiritual Life is discovered in the laboratory
it will possibly be time to give it up altogether. It may say, as Socrates
of his soul, "You may bury me--if you can catch me."
Science never corroborates a spiritual truth
without illuminating it. The threshold of Eternity is a place where many
shadows meet. And the light of Science here, where everything is so dark,
is welcome a thousand times. Many men would be religious if they knew where
to begin; many would be more religious if they were sure where it would
end. It is not indifference that keeps some men from God, but ignorance.
"Good Master, what must I do to inherit Eternal Life?" is still
the deepest question of the age. What is Religion? What am I to believe?
What seek with all my heart and soul and mind?--this is the imperious question
sent up to consciousness from the depths of being in all earnest hours;
sent down again, alas, with many of us, time after time, unanswered. Into
all our thought and work and reading this question pursues us. But the
theories are rejected one by one; the great books are returned sadly to
their shelves, the years pass, and the problem remains unsolved. The confusion
of tongues here is terrible. Every day a new authority announces himself.
Poets, philosophers, preachers try their hand on us in turn. New prophets
arise, and beseech us for our soul's sake to give ear to them--at last
in an hour of inspiration they have discovered the final truth. Yet the
doctrine of yesterday is challenged by a fresh philosophy to-day; and the
creed of to-day will fall in turn before the criticism of tomorrow. Increase
of knowledge increaseth sorrow. And at length the conflicting truths, like
the beams of light in the laboratory experiment, combine in the mind to
make total darkness.
But here are two outstanding authorities
agreed-- not men, not philosophers, not creeds. Here is the voice of God
and the voice of Nature. I cannot be wrong if I listen to them. Sometimes
when uncertain of a voice from its very loudness, we catch the missing
syllable in the echo. In God and Nature we have Voice and Echo. When I
hear both, I am assured. My sense of hearing does not betray me twice.
I recognise the Voice in the Echo, the Echo makes me certain of the Voice;
I listen and I know. The question of a Future Life is a biological question.
Nature may be silent on other problems of Religion; but here she has a
right to speak. The whole confusion around the doctrine of Eternal Life
has arisen from making it a question of Philosophy. We shall do ill to
refuse a hearing to any speculation of Philosophy; the ethical relations
here especially are intimate and real. But in the first instance Eternal
Life, as a question of Life, is a problem for Biology. The soul
is a living organism. And for any question as to the soul's Life we must
appeal to Life-science. And what does the Life-science teach? That if I
am to inherit Eternal Life, I must cultivate a correspondence with the
Eternal. This is a simple proposition, for Nature is always simple. I take
this proposition, and, leaving Nature, proceed to fill it in. I search
everywhere for a clue to the Eternal. I ransack literature for a definition
of a correspondence between man and God. Obviously that can only come from
one source. And the analogies of Science permit us to apply to it. All
knowledge lies in Environment. When I want to know about minerals I go
to minerals. When I want to know about flowers I go to flowers. And they
tell me. In their own way they speak to me, each in its own way, and each
for itself--not the mineral for the flower, which is impossible, nor the
flower for the mineral, which is also impossible. So if I want to know
about Man, I go to his part of the Environment. And he tells me about himself,
not as the plant or the mineral, for he is neither, but in his own way.
And if I want to know about God, I go to His part of the Environment. And
He tells me about Himself, not as a Man, for He is not Man, but in His
own way. And just as naturally as the flower and the mineral and the Man,
each in their own way, tell me about themselves, He tells me about Himself.
He very strangely condescends indeed in making things plain to me, actually
assuming for a time the Form of a Man that I at my poor level may better
see Him. This is my opportunity to know Him. This incarnation is God making
Himself accessible to human thought--God opening to man the possibility
of correspondence through Jesus Christ. And this correspondence and this
Environment are those I seek. He Himself assures me, "This is Life
Eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom Thou hast sent." Do I not now discern the deeper meaning in "Jesus
Christ whom Thou hast sent"? Do I not better understand with what
vision and rapture the profoundest of the disciples exclaims, "The
Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we might know
Him that is True"?
Having opened correspondence with the Eternal
Environment, the subsequent stages are in the line of all other normal
development. We have but to continue, to deepen, to extend, and to enrich
the correspondence that has been begun. And we shall soon find to our surprise
that this is accompanied by another and parallel process. The action is
not all upon our side. The Environment also will be found to correspond.
The influence of Environment is one of the greatest and most substantial
of modern biological doctrines. Of the power of Environment to form or
transform organisms, of its ability to develop or suppress function, of
its potency in determining growth, and generally of its immense influence
in Evolution, there is no need now to speak. But Environment is now acknowledged
to be one of the most potent factors in the Evolution of Life. The influence
of Environment too seems to increase rather than diminish as we approach
the higher forms of being. The highest forms are the most mobile; their
capacity of change is the greatest; they are, in short, most easily acted
on by Environment. And not only are the highest organisms the most mobile,
but the highest parts of the highest organisms are more mobile than the
lower. Environment can do little, comparatively, in the direction of inducing
variation in the body of a child; but how plastic is its mind! How infinitely
sensitive is its soul! How infallibly can it be tuned to music or to dissonance
by the moral harmony or discord of its outward lot! How decisively indeed
are we not all formed and moulded, made or unmade, by external circumstance!
Might we not all confess with Ulysses,--
" I am
a part of all that I have met "?
Much more, then, shall we look for the influence
of Environment on the spiritual nature of him who has opened correspondence
with God. Reaching out his eager and quickened faculties to the spiritual
world around him, shall he not become spiritual? In vital contact with
Holiness, shall he not become holy? Breathing now an atmosphere of ineffable
Purity, shall he miss becoming pure? Walking with God from day to day,
shall he fail to be taught of God?
Growth in grace is sometimes described as
a strange, mystical, and unintelligible process. It is mystical, but neither
strange nor unintelligible. It proceeds according to Natural Law, and the
leading actor in sanctification is Influence of Environment. The possibility
of it depends upon the mobility of the organism; the result, on the extent
and frequency of certain correspondences. These facts insensibly lead on
to a further suggestion. Is it not possible that these biological truths
may carry with them the clue to a still profounder philosophy--even that
of Regeneration?
Evolutionists tell us that by the influence
of environment certain aquatic animals have become adapted to a terrestrial
mode of life. Breathing normally by gills, as the result and reward of
a continued effort carried on from generation to generation to inspire
the air of heaven direct, they have slowly acquired the lung-function.
In the young organism, true to the ancestral type, the gill still persists--as
in the tadpole of the common frog. But as maturity approaches the true
lung appears; the gill gradually transfers its task to the higher organ.
It then becomes atrophied and disappears, and finally respiration in the
adult is conducted by lungs alone. We may be far, in the meantime, from
saying that this is proved. It is for those who accept it to deny the justice
of the spiritual analogy. Is religion to them unscientific in its doctrine
of Regeneration? Will the evolutionist who admits the regeneration of the
frog under the modifying influence of a continued correspondence with a
new environment, care to question the possibility of the soul acquiring
such a faculty as that of Prayer, the marvellous breathing-function of
the new creature, when in contact with the atmosphere of a besetting God?
Is the change from the earthly to the heavenly more mysterious than the
change from the aquatic to the terrestrial mode of life? Is Evolution to
stop with the organic? If it be objected that it has taken ages to perfect
the function in the batrachian, the reply is, that it will take ages to
perfect the function in the Christian. For every thousand years the natural
evolution will allow for the development of its organism, the Higher
Biology will grant its product millions. We have indeed spoken of the spiritual
correspondence as already perfect--but it is perfect only as the bud is
perfect. " It doth not yet appear what it shall be," any more
than it appeared a million years ago what the evolving batrachian would
be.
But to return. We have been dealing with
the scientific aspects of communion with God. Insensibly, from quantity
we have been led to speak of quality. And enough has now been advanced
to indicate generally the nature of that correspondence with which is necessarily
associated Eternal Life. There remain but one or two details to which we
must lastly, and very briefly, address ourselves.
The quality of everlastingness belongs, as
we have seen, to a single correspondence, or rather to a single set of
correspondences. But it is apparent that before this correspondence can
take full and final effect a further process is necessary. By some means
it must be separated from all the other correspondences of the organism
which do not share its peculiar quality. In this life it is restrained
by these other correspondences. They may contribute to it or hinder it;
but they are essentially of a different order. They belong not to Eternity
but to Time, and to this present world; and, unless some provision is made
for dealing with them, they will detain the aspiring organism in this present
world till Time is ended. Of course, in a sense, all that belongs to Time
belongs also to Eternity; but these lower correspondences are in their
nature unfitted for an Eternal Life. Even if they were perfect in their
relation to their Environment, they would still not be Eternal. However
opposed, apparently, to the scientific definition of Eternal Life, it is
yet true that perfect correspondence with Environment is not Eternal Life.
A very important word in the complete definition is, in this sentence,
omitted. On that word it has not been necessary hitherto, and for obvious
reasons, to place any emphasis, but when we come to deal with false pretenders
to Immortality we must return to it. Were the definition complete as it
stands, it might, with the permission of the psycho-physiologist, guarantee
the Immortality of every living thing. In the dog, for instance, the material
framework giving way at death might leave the released canine spirit still
free to inhabit the old Environment. And so with every creature which had
ever established a conscious relation with surrounding things. Now the
difficulty in framing a theory of Eternal Life has been to construct one
which will exclude the brute creation, drawing the line rigidly at man,
or at least somewhere within the human race. Not that we need object to
the Immortality of the dog, or of the whole inferior creation. Nor that
we need refuse a place to any intelligible speculation which would people
the earth to-day with the invisible forms of all things that have ever
lived. Only we still insist that this is not Eternal Life. And why? Because
their Environment is not Eternal. Their correspondence, however firmly
established, is established with that which shall pass away. An Eternal
Life demands an Eternal Environment.
The demand for a perfect Environment as well
as for a perfect correspondence is less clear in Mr. Herbert Spencer's
definition than it might be. But it is an essential factor. An organism
might remain true to its Environment, but what if the Environment played
it false? If the organism possessed the power to change, it could adapt
itself to successive changes in the Environment. And if this were guaranteed
we should also have the conditions for Eternal Life fulfilled. But what
if the Environment passed away altogether? What if the earth swept suddenly
into the sun? This is a change of environment against which there could
be no precaution and for which there could be as little provision. With
a changing Environment even, there must always remain the dread and possibility
of a falling out of correspondence. At the best, Life would be uncertain.
But with a changeless Environment--such as that possessed by the spiritual
organism--the perpetuity of the correspondence, so far as the external
relation is concerned, is guaranteed. This quality of permanence in the
Environment distinguishes the religious relation from every other. Why
should not the musician's life be an Eternal Life? Because, for one thing,
the musical world, the Environment with which he corresponds, is not eternal.
Even if his correspondence in itself could last eternally, the environing
material things with which he corresponds must pass away. His soul might
last for ever--but not his violin. So the man of the world might last for
ever--but not the world. His Environment is not eternal; nor are even his
correspondences--the world passeth away and the lust thereof.
We find then that man, or the spiritual man,
is equipped with two sets of correspondences. One set possesses the quality
of everlastingness, the other is temporal. But unless these are separated
by some means the temporal will continue to impair and hinder the eternal.
The final preparation, therefore, for the inheriting of Eternal Life must
consist in the abandonment of the non-eternal elements. These must be unloosed
and dissociated from the higher elements. And this is effected by a closing
catastrophe--Death.
Death ensues because certain relations in
the organism are not adjusted to certain relations in the Environment.
There will come a time in each history when the imperfect correspondences
of the organism will betray themselves by a failure to compass some necessary
adjustment. This is why Death is associated with Imperfection. Death is
the necessary result of Imperfection, and the necessary end of it. Imperfect
correspondence gives imperfect and uncertain Life. "Perfect correspondence,"
on he other hand, according to Mr. Herbert Spencer, would be "perfect
Life." To abolish Death, therefore, all that would be necessary would
be to abolish Imperfection. But it is the claim of Christianity that it
can abolish Death. And it is significant to notice that it does so by meeting
this very demand of Science--it abolishes Imperfection.
The part of the organism which begins to
get out of correspondence with the Organic Environment is the only part
which is in vital correspondence with it. Though a fatal disadvantage to
the natural man to be thrown out of correspondence with this Environment,
it is of inestimable importance to the spiritual man. For so long as it
is maintained the way is barred for a further Evolution. And hence the
condition necessary for the further Evolution is that the spiritual be
released from the natural. That is to say, the condition of the further
Evolution is Death. Mors janua Vitae, therefore, becomes a scientific
formula. Death being the final sifting of all the correspondences, is the
indispensable factor of the higher Life. In the language of Science, not
less than of Scripture, "To die is gain."
The sifting of the correspondences is done
by Nature. This is its last and greatest contribution to mankind. Over
the mouth of the grave the perfect and the imperfect submit to their final
separation. Each goes to its own--earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust
to dust, Spirit to Spirit. "The dust shall return to the earth as
it was; and the Spirit shall return unto God who gave it."