4. . extended previous enjoyment of life, which is far more than a compensation. Life is the initiative, from which all good is evolved ; and it is surely far better to have lived and died, than never to have lived at all. There- fore a supply of life which seems to us superabundant, must surely be taken to indicate a benevolent intention, and a generous operator. But we observe in the functions of reproduction, an infinitude of arrangements, all apparently so adjusted as to supply only what will, in the course of Nature, be required. When the consequences are otherwise, the cause will generally be found in some disturbance of this course by man's intervention : so that Nature of herself seems so arranged, that every animal of every kind may fully live out its life ; and that this life, of every kind, may be best adapted to fulfil its part of the great whole. Surely, too, there is a meaning in all this beauty, which is such a striking attribute of the phenomena of the external world. Corn need not be golden to be nutritious, nor water sparkling, to be refreshing ; we cannot eat the silver scales of fish, nor the pencilled feathers of birds, nor the painted shells of nuts, nor the silky coats of beasts ; there is no use in the sweet scents of flowers, or the changing tints of leaves, or the charming songs of birds ; the sky need not be blue, nor the grass green, nor the snow white ; and we can manufacture nothing out of the fairy glories of a cloud, or the scenic wonders of a sunset. Every practical purpose of existence could be served if Nature had no in The Person Without 115 colour but a dirty brown, and no sound but a mechanic whir. Yet she is so invariable with her beauty, that it marks everything she does ; and so lavish, that it is not merely bestowed as ours where eyes can see, but is flung broadcast over the whole earth. For one flower, or bird, or butterfly, or sparkling dewdrop, which is seen, there are millions, just as beautiful, upon which no eye can ever look. Yet, like a managing housewife who has always plenty because she never wastes we find that Nature has a purpose in all she does, and works with an exact adaptation of means to ends. Therefore all this beauty must have an object ; which can be none other than to declare the character of that Power which inspires all the operations of the physical world. Not only is there a " Language of Flowers," but every object about us has a tongue, which is speak- ing to us a message of love. Unless all our human analogies are false, beauty of operation implies bene- volence of intention. The fact of the invariability of the Laws of Nature, has also another aspect ; for against the occasional consequences of this invariability which seem to us evil, we have to set the constant consequences undoubtedly evil, which would follow if these laws were variable. All the arrangements of our physical life are based upon the assumption of this invariability ; and if this sometimes played us false, our confidence would be gone, and our existence would become a chaos. A child falling from a window, is killed by the same principle which keeps the planets in their places; and the 1 1 6 From Within suspension of which, for a moment, to save the child, would bring the solar system to destruction, and so involve the same consequences to the child. If harvests occasionally missed growing, we should be famished ; and if heat occasionally missed warming, we should be starved ; if water occasionally ran up hill, we should be drowned ; and if air occasionally stood still, we should be suffocated ; if the sun but for an instant lost its force, or the earth its motion, the career of mankind would come to an end. It may be said that no one denies that the results of the Laws of Nature are on the whole beneficial ; for if the odds were not in favour of mankind, human beings would long ago have ceased to exist. The difficulty is not as to the net result, but as to why there should be any minus quantities at all why these operations should, in so many cases, involve con- sequences which are not beneficial. But we must ask ourselves whether we are sure that this ever really happens. We are so very apt to judge from partial evidence ; forgetting that we may be overlooking just the one thing which would throw the verdict decisively on the other side. Before we can form any opinion of value about such occurrences, we must know what follows, as well as what precedes. Otherwise we may be judging as foolishly as an observer who, seeing the soldiers in one part of a battlefield retreating, should conclude that all was lost ; whereas the movement might have been designed to draw on the enemy, and so lead to ultimate victory in TJie Person WitJiout 1 1 7 along the whole line. We may take, as an instance, an epidemic such as cholera ; which, with all the mystery yet surrounding it, is undoubtedly closely connected with cleanliness and drainage. Neglect of these may start it in a district ; and then many may fall victims, who were not guilty of such negligence. But not to mention that those who obey proper conditions, are always stricken in a much smaller proportion ; we cannot ignore how greatly it is for the good of mankind, that the obligation of brotherhood should be strikingly impressed upon the public mind. "We have to learn and the lesson needs a great deal of teaching that it is not enough for us to attend to ourselves, but that we must also try all we can to get others to do the same. Whilst the benefits of being taught this lesson are indisputable, it is not certain that any of the consequences involved in learning it are really evil. To be sure of this, we must be able to see the whole panorama of each individual life ; for it may turn out that what looked like a disaster, was in reality a blessing. We have good reason to believe that nothing truly evil would ever happen, from the Laws of Nature, if all human beings properly obeyed the conditions of these Laws ; and whilst it is certain that the general results of these Laws are beneficial, it is not certain that any results which seem to be otherwise, really are so. When, in judging of a multitude of complex arrangements, we find that all the leading ones, and most of the others, are clearly beneficial ; but that some 1 1 8 From Within CHAP. few do not seem altogether so, it is most reasonable to conclude that either our information is deficient, or our judgment imperfect. This is the principle we act upon towards our fellow-creatures ; for we do not hesitate to accept the existence of human beneficence, as indisput- ably proved by a much smaller proportion of favourable, as compared with unfavourable, arrangements, than the Laws of Nature invariably bear witness to, even in their worst aspects. Thus the much-disputed problem of how to reconcile Omnipotence with Beneficence is chiefly a difficulty of terms. It may seem conclusive to say that the exist- ence of Evil proves a lack, of either the power, or the will, to prevent it. But we have first to be sure that there is any Evil, except such as is caused by a want of harmony between ourselves and the external world for which want we alone may be responsible. We cannot find any single Law of Nature which of itself necessarily involves any Evil. Regarded in the abstract, these Laws so exactly conform even to our ideas of perfection, that we cannot imagine any improvement of them ; any more than we can advance, even in thought, beyond the Works of Nature. Just as man cannot conceive a new animal, which is not made up of parts of actual ones ; so he cannot conceive a new law, which is not a mere modification of others already in operation. The ideal comes from the real, varied by selection or intensification. Thus we search in vain, through all literature, for any conception of Heaven which is not merely a repetition of the best we know on earth ; but in The Person Without 1 1 9 with its drawbacks removed, and its advantages in- creased in degree. We can only conceive of Eternity as the endless duration of Time ; though we know that Time itself is but an accident of our earthly condition, and that Eternity may simply be the absence of it. Thus, in every direction, we have our best witness to the perfection of the Laws of Nature, by being unable to transcend them even in thought ; for every improve- ment which it is conceivable to suggest, must merely be borrowed from some other Law. One inevitable law is that life in every form re- quires two conditions : one, the existence of both an environment, and a thing environed ; the other, the proper harmony between these two. Taking the human environment of this life by itself, we can find nothing inconsistent with either omnipotence or benevo- lence. All the phenomena suggesting any such inconsistency, only appear when this environment is brought into relationship with the human being living in it. Is it not therefore more reasonable to attribute any such inconsistency to something contributed, not by the Personality responsible for that environment, but by the human being whose appearance on the scene was coincident with the appearance of that in- consistency ? Can we find anything in human beings to account for such failures of harmony ? When we turn again to the Self Within, we at once fix upon Will ; because the power of choosing one course out of several, implies the power of choosing the wrong one. I2O From Within CHAP. Here we are face to face with the vexed problem of Free Will ; respecting which it may be said, that all "Will must imply a certain degree of freedom, or it could not be Will at all. Of course our Wills are largely formed by our antecedents, and governed by our circumstances ; but unless we possess a certain power of choice beyond such influences, Will becomes merely a mechanical resultant, and Personality falls to pieces as a separate entity. But we have accepted Personality as a fact ; and thus we have acknowledged the existence, in ourselves, of something which can sufficiently account for any such want of harmony as can be termed Evil. As to the existence of this Freedom of Will, we have to remember, that though each one of us may retain a very small portion of such freedom, yet our determining antecedents are chiefly the accumulated results of previous exercises of human will ; so that, taking humanity as a whole, its conduct is mostly the result of its Will. But it may be said that our being allowed this Freedom of Will, is a sign of imperfection ; for om- niscience would have foreseen the failures that must result from its action, and omnipotence would have guarded against them. But this idea about the possibility of failure imply- ing imperfect design, means that such imperfection is involved in every necessity to struggle ; for there can be no struggling, unless there is also a possibility of failing. But if we turn to the phenomena of the external in The Person Without 121 world, we find that this necessity to struggle marks all man's relationships to these phenomena. Man gains nothing that is worth anything without effort. Bread does not grow in loaves, but can only be got by tilling the ground, and planting seed, and guarding the grow- ing crops against weeds, and birds, and storms, and insects ; meat is not ready at hand, but has to be won by hunting wild animals or rearing tame ones ; clothing is not found in rolls, but must be laboriously manu- factured out of the hair of animals, or the produce of plants ; metals are not provided ready for use, but the earth must be pierced, and rocks crushed, and ore melted ; fuel does not drop from the skies, but has to be dug out of mines or gathered in forests. Every good thing that we need, has to fight its way up against hosts of foes; and without man's incessant help, scarcely anything would come to maturity. Even the arrange- ments which seem specially designed for our con- venience, have all their drawbacks ; for though the sea is our natural highway, it abounds in rocks and banks ; though rivers admit our ships inland, they can only be kept navigable by continued dredging ; stones have to be broken to make roads, engines have to be con- structed to utilise steam, wires have to be manufactured to convey electricity. Nature makes long approaches towards man, but she never comes all the way ; so that no meeting can ever take place, unless he makes the effort of going towards her. But Civilisation is the product of the partnership between Nature and Man, as Saturn sprang from the marriage of Heaven with 122 From Within CHAP. Earth. With all her bounty, Nature is so far a niggard, that man must add something to every gift of hers, before he can make it his own ; and that which he adds, must in every case cost him an effort ; whilst every case in which he fails to make the requisite addition, must constitute a failure. Before we accept such failures as proofs of deficient omnipotence or omniscience, we must call to mind that the supreme joy of existence is growth ; and that the merit of this joy is to be found in that struggle which is the condition of all growth, and which necessarily involves the possibility of failure. We feel the strongest pleasure physically, from rising superior to natural obstacles ; and mentally, from gaining wider views, by climbing higher and higher the hill of know- ledge ; and morally, from conquering temptation, and increasing self-discipline. Conquest and Change are the two strongest fascinations of humanity ; and the chief spell of Change lies in its association with Conquest. Whether man be chasing the golden apple, or seeking the golden fleece, he must always be struggling after something, if he would taste even of that dashed happiness which is the best thing here : and though he knows that he will gain little that he is striving for, he also knows that without such striving he can win nothing at all of worth. Wherever there is anything to be gained, there is resistance to be met ; and the exhilarating joy of struggle, as well as the calmer joy of possession, are reserved only for him who meets and overcomes. ni The Person Without 123 In the physical world, we soon learn that this law, which compels man's activity, is for his own benefit ; for the most unobservant acknowledge the truth of the words of the song, which reminds us that, however hard may be our work in life, it is harder still " to have no work to do." The deliciousness of idleness is reserved for those to whom it is only a change : for nothing is more wearying than incessant lotus-eating ; nothing more stale than the life of the dwellers in the Castle of Indolence. Ought we not, then, to presume that the same must hold true in the moral world ; so that what we call Evil is most likely only the necessary stimulus to Good ? Of course it is conceivable that everything might have been planned otherwise, so that Good would not have needed such a stimulus : but we cannot conceive of ourselves as permanently enjoying any state in which there was no activity, and no effort. At any rate, we have every reason to suppose that a principle which undoubtedly works for our good in the physical world, is also working for our good in the moral world ; and so is in both worlds a proof of benevolent arrangement. " But what of those who fail ? " In reply we must ask, "Who are these?" As to failure and success, we cannot at all accept the common standard, which is so vulgar, as well as so untrue. We know that true success often lies in apparent failure ; and that the completest failure is often to be found in what most looks like success. Those who watch the career of the Self Within, generally have to acknowledge, that not 124 From Within only have they failed in most of their plans, but also that these outward failures have proved their greatest inward successes. Nothing is so demoralising as getting all our own way ; and the man who has prospered in everything to which he has put his hand, generally has had to pay for that prosperity the terrible price of loss of modesty, and tenderness, and sympathy. Job was not so great when surrounded by family and flocks, as when sitting patient, whilst his friends were exasperating his misfortunes by their mistaken counsel ; and David was much more of a hero when bearing in retreat the taunts of Shimei than when listening to his first intoxicating triumph-song. The world does not know its heroes, because it does not understand the true difference between good and evil. It may not like Milton's Satan consciously bid Evil be henceforth its Good ; but it constantly comes to the same end, of putting Evil in the place of Good. It has yet to learn that he who has been disappointed, and baffled, and perhaps disgraced, may have been really far more successful than the man who in story-books is set up as a model. But we are not limited to this highest criterion of inward effects ; and need not shrink from the test of mere pleasure, provided the term retains its correctly wide meaning. What we call " pleasures " include three different sets of objects : namely, those which are merely preventives of unpleasantness ; those which may be made means of producing pleasure ; and those which are certainly pleasures in themselves. But the in The Person Without 125 two first, which include nearly all of what are con- sidered " the good things of life," must not be accepted as necessarily pleasures. Freedom from unpleasantness at best gives but very short and savourless sensations : whilst means of pleasure may not succeed in furnishing that of which they can be only the instruments ; as pictures are nothing without the seeing eye, and music is nothing without the hearing ear, and travel is nothing without the appreciating mind. Our ex- perience is continually justifying the wisdom of the Horatian question concerning the use of pictures to a bleared eye, or of music to an ulcered ear. Only the pleasures which are certainly pleasures in themselves, deserve the name, or are worth much caring for; and the benevolent arrangement of life is shown in the fact that these are the property of no class. The Ruling Personality is a thorough Democrat ; flinging freely, to all, everything in life which is needful to make it happy. We have only to take care of the faculty for pleasure, and the means will take care of themselves. The artistic eye has always open to it the delights of sky, and cloud, and grass, and flowers ; the sensitive ear has continually poured into it the music of birds, and winds, and running waters ; the intelligent mind can always find something to employ its thought, or stir its fancy; the tender heart need never be in want of something to excite its pity, or exercise its love: and sorrow, and trial, and disappoint- ment do not, if rightly taken, spoil this faculty of joy, but only add to it a new and chastened charm. 126 From Within Does this just feeling of hope displace that sense of melancholy, which first came over us as we watched from above the general course of human events ? We saw that darkness kept swallowing up the struggling light, and that the thread of national destiny seemed held in the fingers of mere physical force. So we asked ourselves, almost in despair, whether there is any hope of progress any advantage in virtue. As we watch again, we see signs suggesting to us a more cheerful faith. Light may be quenched in some places, but it breaks out more strongly in others, so that the glow of the whole plainly keeps increasing. Progress comes on like the advancing tide; each wave of which falls back, only to be replaced by another reach- ing a higher mark. Mankind moves slowly, yet it does move ; there is more of good in the world now, and this is of a better quality, than ever before. Each new ruling form of civilisation reaches a higher level, and remains there longer, and has a wider influence. England, with all its faults, is a long advance upon Babylon, or Athens, or Eome ; it has had greater per- manence, and is now exercising greater power. The longer we watch, the more surely do we feel that " through the ages one unceasing purpose runs " ; and that this purpose is directed towards the improve- ment of the world, and the progress of mankind. So we come to believe, that all these seeming calamities, and reverses, are but the shocks necessary to shake mankind free from the vices which grow about it, and the weaknesses which hold it back. in The Person Without 127 Nor does the supremacy of physical force turn out as complete as it appeared. The sling and stone, again and again, lay low the sword and spear ; again and again we see that strength is not with the many, nor victory with the mighty. Every new nation proves by its rise, that there is something stronger than numbers ; and by its fall, that mere numbers cannot save. Throughout History, bigness has never necessarily meant greatness ; on the contrary, the halo of suprem- acy has generally hung over what has seemed physically weak : at one time a puny state, no larger than a suburb ; at another a single city, covering seven small hills ; at another a second-rate island in the northern sea. We see that great nations are not made out of land, or coal, or cotton, or iron, but only out of men ; and that the strength of men lies in their virtues, and not in their circumstances, lleverses brace heroes, and do not crush them ; Thermopylae did not keep back Greece, nor Cannes, Home ; and the end only came when hirelings had to be bought to fight, and barbarians had to be bribed to go away. The vicissitudes of nations have not been in vain, if they have only taught that it is righteousness which exalts nations, and the decay of it which brings them down. Hence we learn that the course of the world is ordered to encourage the goodness, and thus to increase the happiness, of the human race. Thus we are led to the conclusion that if we would rightly measure the phenomena of the external world, we must discard the standards of outward appearance ; 128 From Within and use only those of inward effect, judging every- thing, not by how it makes us look, but only by how it makes us feel. Then this distinction between Good and Evil melts into nothing ; that which is called Evil not only often bearing " a precious jewel in its head," but sometimes one far more precious than any borne by so-called Good. So we come at last to find, with Socrates, that the only thing worth fearing is doing wrong, and that this is in reality the one evil of life. All this means that the arrangement of this world is good, and is therefore a manifestation of Love. Hence Love must be one of the attributes of that Power of which this arrangement is the manifestation. But Love is the proof of Soul ; therefore this Power must possess Soul. We have already come to the conclusion that it also possesses Force, Memory, Will, and Intellect. But these five properties constitute what we call a Personality, for they make up what we mean by the Self Within. Therefore we must come to the conclusion, that we have the same reasons for believing that there is a Person behind the phenomena of the external world, as we have for believing that there is a Person behind the phenomena of our own internal world. Hence there is no reasonable standing- ground between belief in the existence of this other Person, and disbelief in our own existence. CHAPTER IV MEANS OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE PEESON WITHOUT AND THE PEKSON WITHIN WE have found ourselves compelled to choose between believing that there is a Person behind the phenomena of the " Not I," or that there is no Person behind the phenomena of the " I." But as a scepticism which in- volves disbelief in our own existence is impossible, we have no choice but to believe that there is outside our- selves some Person, possessing those attributes of Force, Memory, Will, Intellect, and Soul, which we have recognised to be the chief qualities of that Person within us which we call " I." But those who acknowledge that the phenomena of the external world bear witness to the existence of these attributes, may yet deny that these are the attributes of One Person ; and of One Person only. The different attributes may come from separate persons, or there may be a number of persons in whom they are all combined. Thus one person may supply ' the Will of the world ; another, its Intellect ; another, its Soul ; and so on : or there may be behind the phenomena of the external world, a multitude of persons K 130 From Within possessing similar qualities, but acting in different spheres. The mythology of Greece included both these ideas ; for it had deities of abstract qualities, as well as deities of particular localities : it had its Athena and Aphrodite, as well as its Poseidon and Pluto ; it had its Muses, and Graces, and Fates, and Furies, as well as its fauns in certain woods, and nymphs in certain streams. Are we right in rejecting both these ideas ; and in replacing them with the idea of One Person, behind all external phenomena ? The answer must be sought in the phenomena themselves. That quality of these phenomena which strikes us v first, and most strongly, is their harmony. The Will manifest in the world, is working in unison with the Intellect which is there, as well as with the Memory and Soul. If, for example, Will and Intellect were the attributes of separate persons, acting independently of each other, we should constantly have senseless manifestations of Force; whilst there would be numerous indications of Intellect, without any Force to carry them into effect. If Soul, too, belonged to another person, we should have feelings roused without reason ; and circumstances which ought to rouse feelings, failing to do so. Thus if the leading attributes belonged to independent persons, we should have disorder far greater even than that which constantly disturbed the deities on Olympus ; with consequences far more serious than those which befell the Greeks and Tro- jans. But if the persons were not independent, being iv Communication between the Persons 131 subject to some Supreme Will, then this Will must possess the other attributes also, or it could not direct them ; for no amount of mere Will could make Brainlessness rule Intellect, or Heartlessness rule Feeling. Hence we should be driven to that belief in the existence of One Supreme Person at which we arrived before. The same conclusion follows from the supposition of a multitude of independent persons, each possessing similar attributes, but acting in different spheres. The first fact requisite to give plausibility to this supposi- tion, would be that the modes of action going on in these different spheres, should bear no relation to each other ; that, for example, the laws ruling in one glade, or on one hill, should differ from those ruling in another glade, or on another hill. But if we find, on the contrary, that the phenomena in these different spheres obey one set of general laws ; we are driven to the conclusion, that these laws must have their origin in something larger than the ruling personality of a single sphere. Now this is exactly what we do find throughout all the phenomena of the external world : not only is every glade, and stream, and rock, and hill, subject to the same laws, as every other glade, stream, rock, and hill ; but also these same laws prevail throughout all the other spheres into which the pheno- mena of the external world can be supposed to be divided. These laws must therefore have an origin larger than any separate locality, and must bespeak a Person larger than the ruling personality of a single 132 From Within sphere. This Person cannot be less than One Supreme Person behind all phenomena. Here we must recognise how the development of this idea of One Supreme Person, has been assisted by the progress of Science. For in the earlier stages of humanity, almost every phenomenon is regarded as a fact by itself, and is attributed to a separate cause. Hence the deities of primitive races are almost as numerous as the phenomena those races are able to observe. But Science which is, of course, as its name implies, only Knowledge ; that is, the perception of the real under the apparent has gradually shown that different external phenomena are connected to- gether by being related to the same cause. Increasing knowledge has kept enlarging the extent of this con- nection : linking, for example, the rising of steam from a kettle, with the forming of clouds ; and the falling of apples, with the revolving of planets ; until now, thanks to Science, we have learnt that all the phenomena of the external world " are but parts of one stupendous whole ;" and so we have come to understand how the Force, and Will, and Memory, and Intellect which are behind this whole, must themselves be parts of One Person. But even if we grant that there must be One Supreme Person, we may still ask whether it is necessary to know Him. There are millions of persons in the world of whose existence we have no doubt, yet of whom we do not feel called upon to seek any knowledge. There are three kinds of knowledge : iv Communication between the Persons 133 that which is undesirable, that which is desirable, and that which is necessary. To say nothing of the first, the second is by far the largest kind ; and happily so, for necessary knowledge could not, without cruelty, be extensive. Some may say that there is no necessary know- ledge ; since all to be expected is, that we shall act up to what we know. Let us see whether our material experience bears out this idea ; remembering that the question is not whether there are any things about which every race and generation must attain to exactly the same knowledge for that would be impossible but whether there are any things, about which it is necessary for every man to obtain a certain amount of such knowledge as is possible to him. The necessity refers to the nature of the subject, and not to the quality of the knowledge. What does material experience tell us ? Plainly this ; that if we would continue to live in this world, we must learn and obey certain fundamental rules of life. We are not all required to gain much knowledge, for few of us can penetrate far into the secrets of Nature, or learn much of her laws ; still there are certain things which each one of us must know, or perish. We may not have to find these out for our- selves, for we here speak of man as a collective unity ; and in these as in most matters the few labour, and the many enter into their labours. The question is not as to how we must come by this knowledge, but as to whether we must have it at all ; and whether 134 From Within CHAP. there is any knowledge, the not having of which, carries with it the penalty of death that ultimate test of necessity. And first we find, that to be physically alive is not the normal condition of matter, but is entirely ab- normal ; for though matter in decay may show an increased vitality, this is but the hastening of disintegra- tion. Physical life is also so far as we understand its causes quite miraculous ; and the miracle is none the less in each case because it is so incessantly repeated. Our life is a gift from others, which we cannot preserve without our own continuous effort. We can scarcely remain alive an hour, without effort of some sort being exerted by some one. These bodies of ours are con- stantly clamouring for something, now food, now clothing, now shelter, now medicine ; now for guidance towards what is good, now for protection against what is evil ; and always for a multitude of attentions which constant use has made us cease to notice, yet each one of which implies accurate knowledge of external conditions, and skilful adaptation to them. "We are all like soldiers whose battle is renewed every morning, and waged until night ; for sleep is at best but a short armistice : not a moment must we be off our guard, or the fatal arrow may strike us ; not a moment must we relax our watch, or the enemy may be in upon us. And our struggle has that highest attribute of heroism, that we are sure to lose ; for we can at most only defer a defeat which must be the certain fate, at last, of all. Some time or other, our efforts will fall iv Communication between the Persons 135 below what is required to retain this temporary gift of life ; and then the matter constituting our bodies will slip away from us, back into that reservoir from which it was drawn. This Fight for Life resembles all other fights in that such victory as is possible to us does not rest with mere bravery. Bravery is a horse whose value depends upon its rider ; for if Ignorance gets across it, it may turn to injure its friends, as elephants have often done in battle. Prince Eupert at Marston Moor is a type of the mischief that right-intentioned wrong- headedness is constantly working in all spheres of life ; for most of the mischief of this world is done by mistaken people who mean well. Those who fancy that our opinions do not matter, so long as our motives are right, must be puzzled as they observe how, again and again, the sublimest bravery cannot cope with superior skill ; and how the loftiest feelings have no chance against superior knowledge. We soon find that we must conform to the political conditions of a State, if we would comfortably continue a member of it ; and so we must know, and obey, the necessities of physical life, if we would retain our hold of it. Nature cares nothing for our opinions, and spares nothing for our mistakes ; all that she requires is our obedience, and this implies knowledge of what has to be obeyed. Fire goes on burning, and cold starving, and contagion killing, whatever we may think about it ; and we have to pay the full penalty for our blunders, however well-intentioned they may have been. 136 From Within We may believe that fire will not burn ; but our finger, if we put it in the flame, will feel its force none the less because we were acting according to our conviction ; which happened to be a mistaken one. Nature is always telling us, in every department of physical life, that we must keep clear of mistaken convictions ; and that nothing is so important as what we believe, because that is the key to what we do. Does not this hold true in spiritual life as well ? The analogy running through all things, would of itself lead us to expect this ; and hence to believe that, as there is a certain portion of knowledge without which we cannot continue in physical life, so there is a certain portion of knowledge without which we cannot continue in spiritual life. These requisite portions of know- ledge, too, must not be quite separated from each other : for the knowledge necessary to physical life, refers to one portion of the Will of the Supreme Person ; and the knowledge necessary to spiritual life, refers to another portion of the same Will. As the want of the requisite physical knowledge implies physical death ; so we may expect that the want of the requisite spiritual knowledge will imply spiritual death. Thus we come to the conclusion that, since the two ultimate factors are the Person Within and the Person Without; and since the Person Without rules everything upon which depends the life of the Person Within ; it follows that the ultimate problem of life must be, to bring the Person Within into that right relationship towards the Person Without, which is the essential of iv Communication between the Persons 137 continued existence, either physical or spiritual. This is the primary law of life of every kind. Now the two first requisites of such a relationship are knowledge and obedience, knowledge of what it is necessary to do, and obedience to do it. Both in the physical and spiritual worlds, the absence of such knowledge and obedience means Death. In the physical world we never complain of this law; but we accept its consequences, however unpleasant to ourselves, without dreaming that we are being un- fairly dealt with. Yet we are left to find out for our- selves the conditions necessary to physical well-being ; nowhere have these been plainly revealed, and their discovery has been the slow work of ages. Every simple sanitary axiom has cost more tears every common rule of food more deaths than all the battles which have ever been fought upon the earth. Should we wonder, then, if we have been placed under the same law in the spiritual world; being left to our own resources, and having to bear the consequences of our own mistakes ? These resources are the same : for as in the physical world, the Will of the Supreme Person is made known through physical phenomena ; so in the spiritual world, this Will is made known through spiritual phenomena. Now we have seen that the problem of life is to bring the two Persons Within and Without into a right relationship towards each other. It is conceivable that this could only be effected through approaches made by the Person Within ; the Person Without remaining 138 From Within CHAP. motionless, simply waiting until there is the requisite contact. But we see that physically the Person With- out is always trying to approach the Person Within, using the phenomena of the external world as language by which to make Himself known. We may therefore expect that the same holda true spiritually ; and that the Person Without is trying to make Himself known to the Person Within through the phenomena of the spiritual world. But we must see whether this expectation is borne out by facts. Let us assume that the Person Without is trying to come into right relationship towards the Person Within ; as the Person Within must try to come into right relationship towards the Person Without. A communication has to be established between these two ; and the next question is, as to what are the possible means of such communication. How can a Person such as the one Without us who rules all matter except that of our own bodies bring Himself into communication with the Person Within us ? The means conceivable for such a communication divide themselves into direct and indirect. There are two kinds of indirect means ; one through other matter, and one through other persons : whilst there is only one kind of direct means, namely, that which is straight to ourselves. Firstly, as to the indirect means : we have already spoken of that through matter in general; for we have seen that by means of the phenomena of the external world, the existence and character of the Person Without iv Communication between the Persons 1 39 us are made known. So far it has been by these means alone, that we have come to the conclusion that there is a Person Without us. But are we limited to these means ? We have to bear in mind that this Person Without us is striving to bring Himself into communication, not merely with the Person contained in our own individual body, but also with all the Persons contained in all the individual bodies existing upon the face of the earth. For these Persons all naturally stand in the same relationship to Him that we do : He encompasses them on every side, ruling all the matter by which their own bodies are ruled ; so that it is just as necessary for them as it is for us, that the right means of communication with Him should be established. We cannot therefore help believing that He is doing His part equally towards all ; and that He is striving, just as much with them as with us, to establish the necessary means of communica- tion. We cannot help also believing that all other Persons have set before them the same primary problem which is set before us, of how to find the right means of communication with the Supreme Person Without. This likewise holds true of all the persons who have ever lived upon the earth. No matter where or when, the chief study of mankind has not been man, but rather that Person outside man who controls his destiny. However far we go back, and to whatever nation we turn, this fact stares us in the face, that the one thing which men care most to know about is The Infinite, for such is the name we may give to this 140 From Within CHAP. Person Without us, since there is no conceivable limit to His power. Every civilisation culminates in this, as its principal characteristic ; every literature leads up to this, as its supreme subject ; no nation is so rude as to fall below this, and none is so cultivated as to get above it. Culture may sometimes rouse, in its transi- tion stages, a scepticism about the generally-accepted religion for what is generally accepted is, as a rule, so stupidly understood as to provoke denial but such a scepticism has its root in a stronger desire for religion, and not in an indifference to it. Scepticism and indifference may use the same language about religion, but they often have their bases at opposite poles of thought, one resting upon an interest in religion which is more than common, and the other on one which is less. Even in our own day which is so full of varied interests and in our own nation which is so occupied with material concerns nothing rouses men of all classes like any attempt to establish some new con- nection with this Supreme Person Without us. Science may give itself superior airs, but its chief fascination is due to its possible bearing upon Theology ; for without this, it would fall into the humble position of merely utilitarian knowledge. Had Science not claimed to throw light upon the nature of the Infinite, or to throw discredit upon what have been accepted as com- munications from that Infinite, it would have received far less attention than has been given to it recently. Not that this attention has been misdirected, or that iv Communication between the Persons 141 Science should not give us all the guidance it can upon this road ; but it should not forget that both the road and the guidance are chiefly interesting to us because of the destination we are making for. Scientific men testify to the dominating power of this interest, by their excessive proneness to jump at inferences bearing upon theology; and all sorts of men, if we only try them, have to yield to this supremacy. Even the modern interest in Spiritualism an interest which has had its recurring revivals, from the earliest times down to the days of Dr. Johnson, and forward to our own bears witness to the same fact. Why do men heed such flimsy, and grotesque, pretences of supernatural mani- festation ; and why, even after the evidence has quite broken down before the simplest tests, do they retain a lurking idea that after all there may yet be some- thing in it ; except because we all feel that the Invisible may be nearer to us than we think, and that we all long to communicate with Him ? No material jeers, no scientific proofs, can drive out of us the in- stinctive feeling, not only that " Heaven lies about us in our infancy," but also that it lies about us always ; and that we do not see it simply because we look in the wrong places, and with the wrong senses. It has always been so : Eeligion has never once been put off her throne, though rivals may sometimes have jumped on the steps, and hidden her from view. Men may have chosen mistaken means of communica- tion as they have often chosen wrong roads of all sorts but they have never lost interest in the com- 142 From Within CHAP. munication itself. In every form of civilisation, Religion has always been like the current in electro- plating, which causes the matter held in solution to take form. Man has always been trying to connect himself with this Person Outside, and has always been feeling that to establish such a connection must be the primary problem of life ; that is, of this life, without regard to any other ; for it is over this life firstly that this Person is supreme. It must be borne in mind, that it does not follow that this connection can only be estab- lished by one means ; so that every other means in which men have, at one time or other, believed, have really been delusions. It is conceivable that what may have been and may be now a true connection to men in one state of civilisation, may be no connection at all if adopted by men in another state of civilisation; just as things rouse our feelings at one age, which are quite powerless over them at another. The scenes which stirred our poetry, the books which touched our minds, the persons who roused our romance, in youth, do so no longer ; not because poetry, and mind, and romance, are now dead in us, but because they have found other incentives. The idol which moves the worship of one man, moves only the disgust of another ; because the sense of worship in that other has learned to connect itself with different associations. Thus all men are not bound to have the same means of com- munication with the Infinite ; but all are bound to seek that which is right for their own time and circum- iv Communication between the Persons 143 stances. We must all seek the best which is open to us ; and if we rest content with anything less, we may find ourselves without communication at all, as if trying to telegraph through a broken wire. For it may have happened that a new development of circumstances has destroyed the faculties necessary to our old means of communication ; as we have lost that fineness of hearing by which a Eed Indian can count the numbers of a troop miles away. Thus man is always seeking to connect himself with the Supreme Person Outside him. But for all his seeking, such a connection might not be established, unless this Person was also seeking to connect Himself with man ; since it might be like a fruitless search for some animal hidden in the woods, or a chase after one too swift to be caught. Have we reason to believe that this Person Outside is seeking to communicate with us ? Nature, and History, and Experience, all answer " Yes." And it is to these that our questions must chiefly be addressed ; for the three principal means of communication which are possible between the Person Outside and Man, are Matter, Other Men, and Ourselves. Let us consider separately the answers which these give to our questions. And first as to Matter ; we have seen that the phenomena of the external world bear witness to the existence of this Person behind themselves, and outside ourselves. Indeed, so far we have used no other means of knowledge ; and this has been sufficient to convince us, as it has always been sufficient to con- 144 From Within vince most men, all the world over. This sufficiency is in itself a proof that these phenomena were intended to possess this power ; and such an intention can only have emanated from the Will of the Person Without, as such a power can only have been conferred by Him. But such a state of Will resulting in such an act of bestowal is a proof of the desire of this Person to make Himself known through these phenomena. But the desire to use these phenomena for this object, implies the desire of the object for its own sake ; that is, the desire to establish a means of communication between the Person Without and the Person Within. And this desire has not been ineffectual : for not only has man been always seeking to know the Infinite, but he has also never entirely failed in his search, because the Infinite has always been seeking to make Himself known to him. This Supreme Person has never been quite without witness amongst men; even amongst those to whom no other evidence seems to have been given, save that offered by the phenomena of the material world. We may marvel at many of the faiths in which men have trusted we may even smile at some of them but we cannot think that any have not in some degree been broken lights ; we cannot believe that the windows of men's minds have ever been so thoroughly darkened that no rays could get through. All connections are not the same in degree ; for a man working his way out of a hole, has connected himself with the light, as soon as he catches sight of its first faint streaks, though he is yet far from iv Communication between the Persons 145 understanding the delights of being in the open sun- shine. Thus men's connections with the Infinite have often been like those between two foreigners wishing to understand each other, but having no common lan- guage ; not much communication can pass, but if no words can be found which both understand, resort will be had to pantomime. If two people are seeking each other, they are likely to come together in some way even though one of them is blind if the other is suf- ficiently wishful to meet him. And the Person Without has never ceased striving to speak to man ; sometimes by special voices, and always by the myriad tongues of Nature. Never has there been a time when the heavens did not declare the glory of the Almighty, and the firmament did not show His handywork ; when one day did not tell another, and one night did not certify another ; when, though there might be neither speech nor language, yet their voices were not heard among them, and their sound did not go out into all lands, and their words unto the ends of the world. But we are not merely isolated units ; we are consti- tuents of the great unity called " Mankind," and as such we are sharers in the experience of other men. The Infinite is not only trying to connect Himself with us; He is also trying and has always been trying to connect Himself with all human personalities ; and these connections must have kindred with our own, as our own personality has kindred with every other human personality. Hence every such connection must have an interest for us, and must serve as a sort L 146 From Within of indirect connection between ourselves and the Infinite. Thus the experience of mankind in general is another of the means by which a communication is established between ourselves, and the Person Outside us. This indirect means of communication is useful, because the character of the Supreme Person is made known to us by the character of His dealings with other men ; and by watching how He treats others, we may learn how He likewise treats us, and what He expects from mankind in general. This process of watching requires that we shall observe what is going on as resulting from this connection amongst mankind in the present ; and also what has gone on in the past : for Mankind is not divided into generations, but continues from age to age. And since the Person Outside us is supreme over the matter affecting us ; and since this matter exercises a great power over our lives ; it must follow that these lives largely reflect the influence of this Person, and therefore largely display His character. We should therefore find in these lives, both in the present and in the past, a key to this Person. And first let us look at the present. To begin with life seems a surging mass, without form or purpose ; good and evil, wisdom and folly, light and darkness, mixed in helpless confusion ; now one at the top, and now another, and all in turn quickly disappearing, and scarcely leaving a trace behind. Evil seems to over- iv Communication between the Persons 147 come good, as often as good overcomes evil ; folly seems to succeed wisdom, as often as wisdom succeeds folly ; darkness swallows up light, as often as light breaks through darkness ; vice prospers whilst virtue fails ; and the good disappear whilst the bad continue to flourish. Great Causes make rapid progress, and then break down ; so that Civilisation seems unable to win for itself any abiding dwelling-place the wilderness blossoming for awhile, and then becoming wilderness again. Hope, as she watches the river of life flowing rapidly past her feet, shows a countenance like an April sky, sunny joy and shadowy disappointment alternating in ceaseless succession. It is only when Wisdom comes to stand at her side, that the two can together draw any moral from the scene. For when the seeing eye looks with the spirit of the believing heart, the seeming chaos begins to take form : certain lines of order begin to show themselves ; and soon the movements of the whole are seen to be following certain laws, and fulfilling certain purposes. These laws are the manifestations of the will of the con- trolling Personality, and these purposes are the develop- ments of the progress of mankind. Hence from watching the courses of the men in the present we gain some knowledge of the character and objects of that Power by which these courses are directed. This knowledge is greatly increased, when our view takes in the courses of men in the past ; for we cannot see the true proportions of anything great unless we stand sufficiently far from it ; and the distance of 148 From Within History like the prospect of a mountain range re- veals the general outlines, free from the distractions of details. Thus as the motions of planets seem erratic when watched only for a night or two, but are found to follow strict laws if the eye is kept on them for years ; so the motions of men, if followed through long periods, are found to be obeying certain principles, and making to certain ends. Thus nations rise and fall, civilisations appear and disappear ; but through all these alternations the whole creation is seen to be obeying one law, and moving towards one event. That law is the Omnipotence of Eighteousness ; that event is the revelation of Him by whom this Eighteous- ness has been ordained. It is thus evident that this Supreme Person Without us means us to learn His character and will from the ends to which the movements of men, in the present and the past, have been directed by Him ; and from the connections which in various countries, and times, have been established between Himself and men. For men have been always seeking to establish such connections ; and we may learn much of the nature of the right connection for ourselves, by considering the character of those connections which have previously served, and of those which now serve, for others. Thus every religion may teach us something, though none may quite serve our own purpose. Methods which have served one age may be useless for another ; because the conditions and faculties have been changed ; as other means of communication have made us lose much of iv Communication between the Persons 149 man's earlier keenness of sight and hearing. But every true connection between man and the Supreme can teach us certain characteristics of all such connections ; and can reveal to us something of the nature of that Supreme. But when we consider that this Supreme has always been desiring to make Himself fully known to man, we cannot help believing that He would not be content to leave such knowledge merely to the uncertain chance of inferences from His dealings with men in the present and past and from their seekings after Him. For though these seekings indicate a development which is evidently a characteristic of His method of adapting the revelation of Himself to the increasing capacities of mankind the stages of this development cannot be traced, except by the comparison of many experiences and records. But such a comparison can only be possible to few, and must always be uncertain and variable in its conclusions : therefore since this Supreme wishes to make Himself known to all with certainty ; it is most natural to expect Him to choose some one people in whose history, specially recorded, may be epitomised all the stages of this development. The career of this people would therefore specially display the relationship of man to the Supreme ; and the record of this career would specially serve for all ages and nations, as a revelation of the character and will of that Supreme. Such a people might be called "chosen," not because of being more greatly favoured than others, but simply 150 From Within because of having been thought fit to serve as an example of the principles by which the Supreme Person rules all peoples ; like the details of a sum, which are only introduced to illustrate some principle of arith- metic. The expectation of such an experiment is therefore in harmony with all our experience of life ; for as the principles of pure mathematics are embodied in the instances of applied mathematics, so the principles of pure theology may be embodied in some special set of instances of applied theology. Truth can no more be brought home to us without application, than spirit can be manifested to us without body. Nor need it be supposed that the Supreme Person must have made special approaches to this people ; for we cannot help believing that He makes the best approaches He can to all people ; but it may have happened that these approaches have been met in such a special way, as to make this a typical case of the proper method for establishing the best connection. The record of such a typical case would constitute a Revelation ; inasmuch as it would reveal the will and character of the Supreme, not merely as these show them- selves by the general course of events, but also as they have been purposely made known, through the relation- ship of the Supreme to a people selected for the purpose of communicating this knowledge. That the Supreme must have made at least one such special revelation of Himself, we cannot help believing ; especially when we bear in mind that He is always wishing to be fully known ; and that man, un- iv Communication between the Persons 151 aided, would be as unlikely to reach such full know- ledge from ordinary events, as to piece together a mosaic picture of which the atoms had been scattered over the whole earth. But such a revelation could not serve its purpose unless it was adequately recorded ; since it could then be useful only to few people, and for a short time. Thus we are led to expect that somewhere there must be the records of a Eevelation by which the Supreme Person Without us has made known His character and will, by means of His dealings with a particular people. Therefore our next task must be to inquire whether any records exist which seem to answer the necessary conditions. But what are these conditions ? They may be divided into those relating to the character of the records themselves, and those relating to the character of what they record. As to the records themselves, since it is supposed that the revelation has been developed through the whole dealings of the Supreme with this chosen people, we must expect these records to embrace the whole career of that people, from its opening to its close. These records must also be truthful ; not merely with that spurious truthfulness which simply abstains from telling lies, but with that real truthfulness which tells everything of importance bearing upon the subject, regardless of what the effect may be. In these days History is mostly treacherous romance, and Biography is mostly delusive panegyric. If we turn to the records 152 From Within of any nation, we find only those events related which redound to its honour ; so that, for example, the national history of Persia has no mention of Marathon or Salamis : and if we turn to the life of any hero, we find no mention of those failings which are common to humanity, and the absence of which robs us of all sense of reality. Only one nation offers us a record of itself which ruthlessly shows up all its own back- slidings, and meannesses, and cowardices, and failures ; only one History paints its heroes as Cromwell would have his portrait painted with all the warts and blemishes plainly marked. Wherever these records touch other histories, we must expect them to harmonise with what we know to be true : and we must also expect them to be written by various persons, at various times ; for otherwise we should only have some one man's idea of what had been the course of events, instead of contemporaneous accounts of the events themselves. Also these records must give us, not merely various accounts of what happened to this people, but also various views of its character ; we must see its poetry, and philosophy, and piety, and politics, as well as its vicissitudes in war, and developments in peace. Also these records must have been written by men who were not considering their own glory or profit ; and were not wishing to make everything square with some theory or purpose ; but were simply telling what was happening to them- selves, without caring for any inferences which might afterwards be drawn. To guard against error in a iv Communication between the Persons 153 matter so vitally important, we should also expect these records, while passing lightly over periods of slight revelation, to become more detailed in character, and also more numerous, when relating important events ; so that we ought to find several accounts of the same circumstances, when the most important events of all were occurring. We should likewise expect these records to be the natural outcome of circumstances ; their writers knowing little more about the drift of the whole, than private soldiers in a battle know about the lines on which it is being fought. Yet when these records are put together, we should expect that, whilst showing the variations natural to different accounts of the same matter, they will also show the unity essential to the development of one character. And when we come to the culminating revelation of that character, though we shall expect the records multiplied so as to secure fulness and accuracy, we shall also expect each one of these records to give us, separately, the same general idea of that character as we receive when all are put together. Finally, these records must be written in a language which makes them open to the present, and yet carries them far back into the past. As to the character of what is recorded, we shall know better what we ought to expect, if we have a clear idea of the problem to be solved. This problem may be compared to a drama which is to show, not like the Greek dramas, the workings of a single passion ; nor like modern ones, the features of a single phase of life ; but the whole development of the nature of the 154 From Within CHAP. Supreme Person ; of the right relationship of man to this Person ; and of the means by which such a right relationship may be established. This drama must be so played that all the world, and all the ages, can watch it. All dramatic conditions may be divided into those of Time, Place, and People. When should such a drama be played ? On what stage ? By what actors ? Of course the drama could not commence until the conditions of the world were ready for it ; and we should expect the Time to be at some point between the Present and the Past, which would be open to both ; not too near the Present to be useless to the Past, nor too far in the Past to be useless to the Present. We should therefore look to some period between what we call Ancient and Modern times, which would come within the ken of- both. Since such a drama must take a long time to work out, we must expect its opening to be connected with the early stages of the world, whilst its close should bring us at least to the beginnings of what we call modern civilisation. The principles to be revealed are those which underlie all life ; and therefore we should see them at work, both when man is in his primitive nomadic condition, and when he has become a dweller in cities, and a member of large communities. As to Place, we should expect this to be not far from the centre of the inhabited world, at the time the drama was being played. The stage must, as far as possible, be within sight of all ; and since this drama is iv Communication between the Persons 155 not supposed to have been played in modern times, the auditorium must have been limited when the drama was possible to the Eastern Hemisphere. The natural stage for this Hemisphere must be found on some part of the shores of the Mediterranean ; and since civilisation came from the East, and so long had its home there, we should fix on the eastern shores of this sea as the likeliest scene for events which were to interest all time. Such a spot would be the natural meeting-place for the civilisations which were passing away, and those which were flourishing, and those which were coming forward. There is one land which, far better than any other, seems to answer the necessary conditions. On the east it was within reach of Assyria, and Persia, and India ; on the south it touched Egypt ; on the north it was connected with the territories which were under the influence of the Greeks ; and on the west, Eome was only a short sail away; whilst Phoenicia, the mother of Carthage and the carrier of the world, was almost a part of itself. As to who should be the Actors in this drama, we naturally form certain expectations concerning both their fortunes and features. They should constitute a nation : for there has to be displayed the relationship of the Supreme Person to man ; not merely individually but also collectively, as forming that organisation which must everywhere, and always, be the basis of civilisation. For a nation is more than a mere congeries of individuals; it is a unity in itself, deserving of our enthusiasm and devotion, if only because we 156 From Within receive through it most that makes life dignified and happy. The power which rules us has evidently decreed that our nationality shall minister to us in our highest concerns ; and so we reasonably expect that it should minister to us in our religion also. Indeed this religion, if it is itself real, cannot be separated from these concerns ; but must be their inspiring motive, and guiding principle. Hence we conclude that the will of the Supreme Person must largely manifest itself in connection with our nationality ; and such manifestations must display in capital letters, to be read of all men, those general principles which to individuals are given in small type, for their own use. Besides, such a manifestation requires the continuity of a nation ; for the life of any single individual is too short, and unvaried, to display the full workings of the Supreme Will, and the full development of the Supreme Character. As the Divine Drama is for the whole world, and for all time, so it can be worked out with no organisation less than the greatest which the world and time can give ; and this is that of the nation. As this nation is set apart for this purpose, so we should expect its career to be marked by certain characteristics. At the beginning of the drama it should be cut off from its own past, so that the new influences may ' have free play ; it should be taken through the trying discipline best calculated to fit it for its work ; and then it should be brought to the scene of that work. When there, it should be kept pretty strictly to itself; for if the drama is to be iv Communication between the Persons 157 followed, the stage must not be crowded by other figures. The fortunes of the nation must vary with its fidelity to the principles of the Supreme Will ; rising as it conforms to these principles, and falling as it violates them. And when the drama is complete, and the curtain falls, this nation should be removed from that stage ; so that the effect may be marked, and the lesson distinct. The chief feature necessary for the nation which has to play such a part must be endurance, if only because of the length of time required for the working out of such a drama. Nations, like individuals, have limits to their lives : they rise quickly to importance, and multiply so rapidly that it seems as if there could never be an end of them ; when just as quickly they vanish from sight ; and not only do the places which they have made famous know them no more, but even the physical features with which they have been associated are no longer to be found. Not only are there now no Chaldeans in Assyria, no Egyptians in Egypt, no Greeks in Greece, no Eomans in Eome ; but even the types of face which we find so general in Ninevite temples, and Egyptian tombs, and Greek friezes, and Roman busts, can now no longer be met with anywhere on the face of the earth. These types have vanished, with the races which bore them ; and so rapid is this process, that even now in England we scarcely ever come across those types of feature, which were evidently so general in the times of the Tudors or Stuarts. Hence not only is man placed in an ever- 158 From Within changing scene, but he is also constantly changing himself. One race and one race only seems to stand out as an exception to this rule. Wherever we meet members of this race, and under whatever circumstances whether in hot countries or in cold, in poor circumstances or in rich, in honour or dishonour we recognise that same type of face which, as far as we know, has been general amongst them at least since the days of Solomon, and probably from a much earlier time; for the very monuments of antiquity which testify to the transitoriness of all other types, testify also to the permanence of this one. Here, then, seem the people physically marked out as the actors in this drama. And they are also mentally so marked ; for a race is required with a character as tough as its physique. A weak race might show the mind of the Supreme, as clay shows the mind of the potter, but it could not show His power it could not manifest the principles by which that power works, when operating upon the most difficult forms of human nature. The religion we require must not only influence weaklings, but it must also prove itself able to make strong saints out of strong sinners, and great heroes out of perverse men. Hence it must be seen at work upon material least promising for its purpose upon a race obstinate, and narrow, and worldly even in an unusual degree. There is one race which so far answers these require- ments, that it still obstinately refuses to recognise the truth, or to receive the benefits of that which it was itself the chosen means for making known. iv Communication between the Persons 159 Thus if it is reasonable to expect the Supreme Person Without us to make Himself known to man not merely by His dealings with all men in the ordinary course of events, but also by His dealings with a typical race of men in a series of special events these are some of the features which would be likely to mark such a special manifestation. But is it not possible that this Supreme Person may be able to communicate with men directly, as well as indirectly, through matter or through other men whether in a general or special manner ? To answer this question, we must turn to our own Consciousness ; and seek amongst our thoughts and feelings ; for there only can such a phenomenon be manifested. And in this search we must be guided by the principle of cause and effect. Every phenomenon of Consciousness must have its cause either in our inward personality, or in some outward influence, or in some combination of these two. If we can find any such phenomena which have not their cause in our personality, nor yet in any outward influence communicated to us through matter or through other men, we shall then be compelled to assume some direct means of communication. Let us first examine our Thoughts. Can we account for all our thoughts by anything which has gone before ; either in ourselves, or in our physical surroundings including in this term not only matter, but also all other men ? Of course this is a difficult problem ; for both our personality, and our surroundings, are each 160 From Within CHAP. very complex, so that the complexity of all the possible combinations of these two seems infinite. The poten- tialities of our personality are inexhaustible, for we never know how much is in us ; new circumstances continue to disclose unknown qualities, so that each one of us is, to himself, like the physical world o man- kind. Ingenuity keeps discovering powers which, though seemingly new, have always been there ; as electricity, for example. It is only quite recently that men have become aware even of its existence ; yet it must from the first have dwelt in every thunder-cloud, and in every substance from which it can now be obtained like a sleeper, waiting only the rousing of the needed knock. And so new experiences are often in us like the lifting of clouds from a landscape, reveal- ing unsuspected stretches of country, and ranges of hills : difficulty making the weak heroic ; disappoint- ment turning the melancholy to cheerfulness ; and disaster converting the selfish to saintliness. Greatness is often only another name for more completed evolu- tion ; it is the one egg out of the nest which has been properly hatched. If we take a handful of stones, and .pelt the first men we meet, we shall most probably hit several possessing quite as much natural power as any of those whose names are in every one's mouth. It is the " village Hampdens," the " mute inglorious Miltons," the " guiltless Cromwells," who make a nation great ; for they are the material with which the heroes known to History have to work. And not only must we make large allowances for iv Communication between the Persons 161 the yet undeveloped resources of each man's personality, but also for the yet undisplayed results of the possible combinations between this personality and its surround- ings. For two things which are not new in themselves may, by their conjunction, produce something which is new ; as green comes from the mixture of yellow and blue, and the electric spark from the contiguity of two points, differently, though properly, conditioned. So the forces of our personality may meet the forces of our environment, under such conditions as to produce phenomena which are quite new to our experience. But even after we have taken into consideration all that may arise from these two causes undeveloped personality, and untested combinations of this person- ality with external circumstances we are left with much that we seem unable to account for by anything in ourselves, or in our physical surroundings. For instance, we all know that at some moments in our lives there flash into our minds thoughts which are not only quite new to us, but which we feel lift us into a higher plane of being. If we rightly understood our intellectual autobiography, we should see that these master-moments are the only ones worth marking, all the rest being merely mechanical. Whence come these thoughts which so mould us ? Not from our circum- stances ; for their advent is generally when those cir- cumstances are least changed, and least eventful : nor from our internal self; for that is the thing affected, and not the affecting cause. The still unopened recesses of personality may contain gems brighter than M 1 62 From Within CHAP. any which have yet seen the light, but not of a differ- ent kind ; there cannot, at any rate, be brought forth from them anything which shall alter the whole character of personality itself. Yet this is what is done by these new thoughts : the mind into which they have entered can never be again like it was before, as he who had been initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries became a changed man. Personality can no more thus raise itself bodily above its own level, than a man can lift himself by his own braces. Can these new thoughts be accounted for by any- thing in our surroundings ? Of course matter may and indeed generally must -be the medium of convey- ance, but it is not on that account the source of in- fluence. We find that matter may thus convey to us these new thoughts, whilst it remains itself unchanged. We may have looked for years upon the same hill or stream, and have seen it under all possible physical conditions ; but suddenly, when these conditions were perhaps those to which we had been most of all accus- tomed, that hill or stream has filled us with the rapture of a new thought the slopes have worn a colour unseen before ; the waters have sung a song unheard before. Even a single flower of the most common kind may do this for us ; filling us with that which is too deep for speech or tears. That which is our individual experience, has been the experience of mankind as a whole. With all the long lapses and large losses, with all the destruction of writings and forgetfulness of sayings, the world's stock iv Communication between the Persons 163 of thought has been constantly increasing, and is now greater than it has ever been before. Hence we are all born heirs to much that no poet of old days ever dreamt of, and no seer of old days ever saw. Whence have come these incessant increments of new thought ? The heights say "Not from us," and the depths echo " Not from us," whilst the mind of man itself sends back the same answer. We can no more account for new thoughts by antecedent circumstances, than we can find in such circumstances the explanation of a Homer or a Shakspeare. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and bears with it odours from unearthly fields perfumes exhaled from flowers rooted in other soil, and tended by other hands. We notice, too, that these new thoughts are not merely disconnected flashes of light, darting out now here and now there ; for if we look steadily over the past, we see that such light comes forth like the gradual unfolding of day. Homer is the red morning -glow of which Shakspeare seems the noon -tide splendour. How has such daylight been evolved from man's primal darkness ? Certainly not by the darkness itself. Only some sun above could have chased such gloom away. When we turn from our Thoughts to our Feelings, we meet the same necessity to postulate an influence whose source must be outside both ourselves and our surroundings. These Feelings may be divided into two sorts ; namely, those which are aroused by material causes, and those which are aroused by moral causes : and this necessity prevails in both sorts. 164 From Within CHAP. Material objects rouse in us not only thoughts, but also feelings which " do often lie too deep for tears." And the objects which thus move us are generally of the sort with which we are most familiar. For instance, we may for years, without emotion, have watched at times the sun setting over some stretch of moor or sea ; when suddenly, without any apparent reason, the whole scene fills us with a new and mastering feeling ; the fantastic forms of the clouds shape themselves to a tender message, and the bars of light and shade stir our inmost depths. It may be the sight of the stars on a frosty night, or of the moonlight through the trees ; it may be the sound of a familiar stream, or the song of a familiar bird, that thus breaks up new fountains in our being : but what- ever it is, we cannot account for the unique effect by any cause in ourselves, or in the objects thus associated with it. It is we who feel the change, not produce it; and the objects have been the same hundreds of times before. Whence, then, the power which has made these old things so completely new ? Whence this wonderful light " that never was on land or sea " ? Still more does such a question press us when we try to account for those feelings which so often rise in our hearts without any external bidding. Take, for example, the common experience of temptation to sin. We all know, not only that the real power of tempta- tion lies in ourselves rather than in our circumstances, but also that this power like a wild beast strengthen- ing itself by the blood of its victims increases im- iv Communication between the Persons 165 mensely with every victory of evil, whilst the power of resistance proportionately diminishes. Yet when we have so often yielded to a besetting temptation that, according to all the mathematics of morality, we must certainly go down before any strong attack ; and when we have also become so demoralised by defeat that we no longer even care to struggle, but almost wish to yield ; we suddenly find ourselves endowed even against our own desire with a power which so alters the temptation that we wonder it could ever have beaten, or even troubled, us. Like helpless An- dromeda, we had only the prospect of the destroying monster, when Perseus unexpectedly appeared to deliver us. We are thus helped, not only in resisting sin, but also in rising from sorrow. Our dearest hope fails, our dearest friend dies, and the whole aspect of the world at once is changed : its light and colour have vanished, and we feel as if nothing is left in it for which we can care any more. We are in a valley darkened by a shadow from whose gloom it seems that we shall never emerge ; but after a tune we find ourselves not rising for there is no effort of our own but gradually being lifted up the slopes, until at length we reach the sunshine, and see the fair world once more. An invisible hand has led us ; an unknown spirit has strengthened us. But there is a worse despair than any which death can cause. Poets sing of the happy time of youth, and painters keep their brightest colours for this season of 1 66 From Within life ; but this happiness and brightness, if true at all, are only true of that very early time which is rather boyhood than youth. For no sooner does our intellect begin to develop, and our experience of life to extend, than " the vision splendid " rapidly begins to fade into the disheartening light of common day. Then arrives the most trying time of all : for there is no pain so acute as that which follows broken ideals ; no mood so dangerous as that which comes when we find that our best longings will never be satisfied, and our best hopes will never be realised. The strongest nations of the earth have never been able to stand this ordeal ; for they have all gone to decay with the collapse of their religion, unless a better one has been taking its place. And this collapse has its counterpart for in- dividuals when first they realise that life is not what they believed ; that " the Happy Valley " which they have been striving to reach, is no valley at all, but a desert ; -and that happiness seems to be discoverable neither there, nor anywhere in the wide world. When first we find, not only that others are not what they seem, but also that we ourselves are no better ; and that circumstances are so hard that, though feeling within us the capacity to produce rich and varied music, we are doomed through life to scrape perhaps but one note upon one string ; then indeed our heart and our strength fail us, and we cry out in our despair that surely goodness is but a name, and happiness a dream. Then either we lower our pitch until it seems to harmonise with what sounds the world's low note, or iv Communication between the Persons 167 else, like the saint of old, we turn our faces to the wall. Just then a finger touches us, and a voice bids us turn round again : when lo ! the world, which seemed so dark, is bathed in a new light ; and our hearts, which were so sad, are filled with a new hope. "We rise and go forth again with a sobered, but firmer, gladness : life has now for us a new meaning, and a new aim ; and like the farmer's sons in the fable, we find in it other, and far better, riches than those we sought at first. The secret of true human existence has become ours ; for we have learned, not only that he who will save his life shall lose it, but also that he who is ready to lose his life, for what is good, shall alone find it. Whence comes "this faith that looks through death " ? Whence come those " Truths that wake, To perish never ; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy"? Not from matter itself; for when manhood is turned, its music grows less and less clear, until it is scarcely heard at all, or changes to discord : not from other men, for as life advances these influence us less and less, until soon they scarcely move us at all. This faith, which braces us with increasing strength as the influences of matter and man grow weaker and weaker, must have some other From Within CHAP, iv source, and must reach us through some other channel. That source can only be The Great Person without ; and that channel can only be ourselves. Hence this Person must be able to communicate with us, not only indirectly through matter and through other men, but also directly to the Self which is within each one of us. CHAPTEE V NATURE OF THE PERSON WITHOUT AS MADE KNOWN TO THE PERSON WITHIN BY THESE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION. WE have come to the conclusion, not only that there must be a Person Without if there is a Person Within, but also that the first necessity of this Person Within must be to stand in a right relationship to this Person Without. For this external Person is more than merely one person amongst many. Every human form con- tains a person, and each such is of course, to every other, a person without ; but in addition to all these external persons, we have seen that there must be One Person who is embodied in all matter, as each human person is embodied in the matter of his own form. We have also seen that this One Person is supreme over all matter ; and is therefore supreme over us, in so far as we are affected by matter. We know, too, that we are affected by matter in every portion of our being ; that it is, in fact, our only means of communication with the outward world, so that by it alone do we retain our hold upon existence itself. Hence our existence can only be carried on by our adjusting ourselves to the 170 from Within CHAP. forces acting upon us through matter ; which forces are expressions of the mind and will of the Supreme Person. It therefore follows that such adjustment requires us to learn as much as possible of that mind and will ; and to place ourselves as much as possible in right relationship to them, that is, to the Supreme Person. For Nature universally teaches that right relation- ship is always one of the first conditions of right influence. Nothing can be at all acted upon by any- thing else, unless it stands in some relationship to that other thing ; and it can only be rightly acted upon, in so far as it stands in the right relationship. The sun cannot light a planet, or warm a plant, which is out of its reach ; and gravitation can only operate within its own range. The law of inverse proportion to the square of distance holds morally as well as materially, for the effect of every influence depends largely upon its nearness. It is the people amongst whom we live, that mould our characters ; it is the books we read, that form our minds ; the voices we hear, that stir our hearts ; the sights we see, that shape our thoughts and fancies. Other people, other books, other voices, other sights, would have made us, if not quite other men, yet so different that we could not have understood our present selves. We realise this dependence upon relationship, when we try to put ourselves in the position of other men ; and find, as we always must, that the effort is vain. Yet man, with his inborn passion for omniscience, cannot help sometimes longing that it might be v Natitre of the Person Without 1 7 1 possible to realise the Pythagorean dream of metempsy- chosis. Having seen life from his own point of view, he would look at it from some other ; he would be a Chinaman, that he might learn the cause of that en- during calm ; a Buddhist, that he might feel the charm of that enticing rest ; an Arab, that he might catch the secret of that fiery zeal. Who does not often, even as he thinks of his own fellows, wish that he might, just for once, be able to see life as it looks to them ? The student would be a sailor ; the shopman, a soldier ; the artist, a labourer ; the preacher, an unbelieving listener. But for each one of us the possibilities of existence are strictly limited : no power can give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us ; or even to see the things about us as others see them. This is impossible because we cannot be placed in the requisite communication ; and we should be equally shut off from the Supreme Person if there were no avenues open between Him and ourselves. But we have seen that this is not so, for every sense is a way by which He can reach us ; every thought is a way by which we can reach Him. We have also seen that all these means of communication must come under one of three heads ; for they must be either indirect through matter or other men or direct to ourselves. These are like three names of the same thing ; or rather, like three roads leading to the same city, the prospects from which vary because the positions are different, and agree because the objects are the sama Variations of impression may arise, however, not 172 From Within CHAP. only from variations in the means of communication, but also from differences in ourselves. The same ray of light will produce different colours according to the medium through which it passes ; and the same Person may produce different impressions according to the character of those who are reached by his means of communication. Vision is made up of what the eye " half creates," as well as of what it perceives ; and in the same way do our senses contribute much to their own impressions. Hence this Person Without may be Himself the same, and may use the same means of communication, yet different men may form very different ideas of Him, determined by their own condi- tion and character. Thus, though this Person has been, and is, always the same, various ages have formed the most diverse conceptions of Him ; and now in the same age, and even with the same means of communi- cation, the beliefs of men about His leading attributes are commonly different, and often irreconcilable. But this is only what is frequently happening in our everyday life : for each one of us is often conscious V V of producing very different impressions upon others who have the same means of communication with him, and the same desire to judge him fairly. Not only does this hold true of what are called " well- known " men whom everybody constantly hears of, and nobody ever knows but even the most obscure people find the same. Personal intercourse is no remedy, for those who see most of us often know us least ; it is not that they do not think highly enough v Nature of the Person Without 173 of us, but that they do not think rightly ; they simply do not know us, and so their excessive laudation is more painful than their excessive blame. Each one of us often comes across people whom he feels that he will never know, and who will never know him, however much they may see of each other ; and it not unfre- quently happens that this extends to a whole company at once, so that when ushered amongst them, we are made instantaneously certain that to all we seem very different from what we are. And the worst of this position is that we are very apt to lose hold of our own personality, trying to be what we are thought, instead of what we are. Then we go through the degradation of seeing ourselves doing what we do not wish, and saying what we do not mean, until we soon make it impossible for others to think of us otherwise than they are doing, and which we know to be wrong. Stone walls cannot make a prison, but wrong concep- tions may ; iron bars cannot make a cage, but we may be fast bound in by unsympathetic feelings. We need not wonder, therefore, if very different opinions are formed of the Supreme Person Without ; but we may be most thankful that He is- not, like our- selves, weak enough to be affected by what is thought of Him, or it would often go hardly with us. If no human being ever knows any other properly ; if parents do not quite know their children, nor husbands their wives, nor friends each other, we surely cannot hope to fully know a Person so far removed from us so much larger, and richer, and more varied, than ourselves. 174 From Within Yet we do know each other in some degree, and we certainly lose no opportunity of getting as much infor- mation of this sort as possible, even about those whom it is no concern of ours to know. "We should, there- fore, be much more eager in doing what we can to know Him, the knowledge of whom must be of the first importance to us. And much of this knowledge is open to us ; for though we can only know Him in part, this part may serve our needs here, and even suggest what will ulti- mately be made known of the whole. We cannot by searching find out the Almighty to perfection, but we can find Him out to a certain degree, for otherwise it would have been in vain that He had expressed Him- self in all His works. Like those Eastern monarchs whose faces are never seen by their subjects, but whose influence is felt in every part of their dominions, we may infer His character from His rule ; some may be admitted to His palace, and even a favoured few may be allowed to enter, though with averted face, His audience-chamber ; but all can learn what manner of person He is from the laws which He decrees, and the deeds which He performs. He may choose to make, in addition, some special revelations of Himself, as royal personages may, under certain circumstances, specially show themselves to their subjects ; but in- dependently of these, we have abundant evidence from which to recognise His existence and infer His character. Common-sense even the commonest self-interest must surely teach us the wisdom of gaining as much v Nature of the Person Without 175 of this sort of knowledge as we can. For if we move into any country, we make it our business to learn what we can of its laws and customs ; and much more so if it is ruled by a despot, whether of the benevolent sort or not ; but most of all if the influence of that ruler penetrates through every detail of our own lives. For the neglect of such a duty we are rightly punished, both by the decrees of the law, and by the natural conse- quences of such neglect. Not that all must have the same knowledge, or receive the same punishment for not having it ; for even human laws make allowance for those who could not be expected to know of their existence. But all must have as much knowledge as they can be reasonably expected to get, and will be proportionately punished for not getting it. The getting of such knowledge only requires the same faculties that we use for all other knowledge, and must depend upon these. For all knowledge, whether it be of the Supreme Person or of any other subject, must have the same basis, and must reach us through the same senses. We depend upon these senses for everything, and cannot liberate ourselves from this dependence even in regard to knowledge about that which is above sense. Every special revela- tion must reach us through our senses ; for even if the fact of the existence of God was spelt by the stars, or sounded by the winds, we could only be aware of it through our eyes or ears ; and if it is written in a book, it is useless to us unless we can read and understand. Thus, all knowledge must be relative to ourselves. 1 76 From Within No opinions worth the name can be formed of painting by those who have no sense of colour, or of music by those who have no sense of sound, or of architecture by those who have no sense of form ; the sensual cannot judge virtue, nor the worldly, piety, nor the base, heroism; the hard-hearted cannot understand tenderness, nor the coarse -minded, gentleness; and so it holds of every quality, that we can only see in others that of which we possess some portion ourselves. There may be differences of degree, but not of kind ; for every quality outside us to which we give the name of some quality within us, must be of the same character as that quality. For example, "Justice," wherever found, must be the same sort of thing as Justice within us, for otherwise language would cease to have any meaning, or to be of any use. That this principle applies to all knowledge of the Supreme Person is proved by the conceptions which have been formed of Him amongst different nations and at different times. Men, if left to themselves, have never attributed to the Almighty any quality which they had not already found in each other ; for the same reason that they have never been able to imagine any heaven which was not simply earth, with its evil removed and its good magnified. This is probably the reason why no revelation has ever been made to us of that state : because it must have been based upon conceptions of which we could have had no experience ; and expressed in language to which we could have attached no meaning. v Nature of the Person Without \ 7 7 Hence anthropomorphism dominates all theological conceptions; for the utmost men seem able of themselves to do, is to raise the powers of the factors furnished by humanity. Thus the deities of each nation have been little more than its humanity written large. Savages, whose chief religious emotion is fear, worship monsters made by exaggerating the terrifying features of men ; the Gothic races, who placed force foremost, had gods chiefly remarkable for strength ; whilst the Greeks, to whom humanity as a whole was the highest ideal, peopled Olympus with beings who shared with them- selves every quality except mortality. And the Greek gods of the reigning dynasty had this further bond with humanity, that they had all been born in time : as Delos claimed Apollo ; Arcadia, Hermes ; whilst Argos and Samos disputed for the Queen of Heaven ; and the father of Zeus himself had Time for his name. Thus we have to bear in mind that all our attempts to represent the Supreme Person must be conditioned by the twofold limitation, of our not being able to conceive of anything of which we have not had experience in some degree ; and of our not being able to express our conceptions, except in language which has previously had a human application. He whose conceptions transcended all experience, would be more than a seer ; he whose words rose above all association, would be more than a poet. Of course these limita- tions do not apply to every individual taken separately, but only to humanity as a whole ; for each of us is heir to all the ages, and inherits many conceptions and N 178 From Within CHAP. words not directly associated with his own experience. It is with thoughts and words as it is with money : for the earnings of one generation become the capital of the next ; and as the riches of England consist, not so much in accumulated treasure as in increased power of producing wealth, so the culture of one age excels that of its predecessor, not so much in larger stores of thoughts and words, as in larger capacities for using these to reach further truth. Thus each age should gain a fuller conception of the Supreme Person, and a better means of expressing that conception. But a perfect conception, perfectly expressed, can never be attained ; it is like the point of infinity to which lines may be always converging, but which they can never reach. Hence man is here for ever doomed to see through a glass darkly ; and therefore in judging of what others see, he should never forget the necessary imperfections of his own vision. 2 Having recognised these drawbacks, we must continue recognising the facts towering above them that the Supreme Person can be seen, and must be looked at. The mountain may be veiled in mist, but still its form can be discerned, and that form is all we need to know. That we cannot detect every mark, and recognise every shade, is no reason for turning away altogether. Perfect knowledge of anything is impossible. For example, to speak the truth is probably the highest achievement of genius so high, indeed, as to be unattainable yet it should always be aimed at. The salt of life consists of such constant efforts after the unattainable. v Nature of the Person Without 1 79 Hence we are bound to make all the use we can of the means of communication which are open between ourselves and the Supreme. This duty is implied in the fact that there are such means ; for moral, like material, highways are not made except to be travelled upon. And each man must make. the journey for him- self, and get as far as he can. This is a task which cannot be done by deputy ; we cannot learn much of any country by merely reading books of travel, nor can we profit from a change of air by sending some one else to breathe it ; and if we leave it to spies to report about the Promised Land, we shall most likely be misled. These are days of predominance for the collective ideal : in politics individuals count for little, as only masses and communities are much considered ; and in religion the chief object is not to be in the right condition, but to belong to the right church. Experience teaches us, however, that individuality is the basis of our existence, and community only one of its necessary conditions. Each man can only live physically, by being personally connected with the source of physical life ; and can only live spiritually, by being personally connected with the source of spiritual life. We have seen that both these sources are to be found in the Supreme Person ; we have also seen that our chief means of communication with this Person are three. The first use we make of these means must be to learn what we can of the nature of this Person, for we cannot profit much by any relationship until we know the sort of person to whom we are related ; 180 From Within CHAP. particularly if the influence of this relationship depends upon the character of that person. But such know- ledge is only the necessary preliminary ; and therefore the second use we make of these means of communica- tion must be to receive through them the proper influence. In this chapter we shall be concerned only with the first use ; namely, the learning as much as we can of the nature of the Supreme Person, from the means of communication with Him which are open to us. We have seen that the first of these means is through matter. This means is open to all ; but all cannot receive the same communications through it, because all are not in the same receptive condition. The meaning of a communication depends upon our power to understand its form of expression ; as that portion of a letter is lost to us which is written in unknown words. Hence many men cannot interpret the message of matter will not even believe that there is such a message because it comes in sounds which they have never trained their ears to catch, and in words which they have never taught their minds to understand. They have eyes but they see not, and ears but they hear not : or rather, they see but what they see, and hear but what they hear ; unwitting that the important realities are other than these. Thus they judge of this world as they judge of their fellow-creatures in it, simply by the matter itself ; and as they do not know their friends, but only their bodies, and clothes, and houses, so they do not know the world, but only the forms its matter takes. Sooner or later, unless they will not waken, they v Nature of the Person Without 1 8 1 are roused to find that all these forms are but "such stuff as dreams are made of " ; for the blow of some staggering grief, or shattering loss, recalls them like the knocking in Macbeth from the feelings of their own minds to the realities of the whole universe. The first lesson taught them by these realities is, as we have seen, that they themselves are not the matter of their own bodies ; but are something of which that matter is little more than the garment. They learn, too, that the fact of their own existence is but an inference ; that they only know there is a person within themselves by certain phenomena in the matter of their bodies ; and that they only know there are persons in other bodies by the same phenomena in the matter of those bodies. They observe, also, that the same phenomena which, when seen in the matter of their own, or other, bodies, lead them to conclude that they contain persons, are also to be seen in unity in the matter of the whole universe. Hence they conclude that this matter must also contain one person. Our object now is to consider what are the chief attributes of this Person, in so far as his existence is made known to us by these phenomena of matter, and by necessary inferences from them. Beginning with matter itself, we are necessarily disposed to examine its nature closely, for it has already given us several surprises. We have found that, instead of being the simple thing it looks, it contains other things, and is influenced greatly by them. Three such have been found in it already, 1 82 From Within namely, ourselves, other men, and the Supreme Person ; and so we begin to suspect that matter is not a being in itself, but only at most an instrument. Further search justifies this suspicion : for it dis- closes that nothing exists for us, except that of which we can have some knowledge ; and that all knowledge must come to us through our senses, and must be as our senses report. Hence all our knowledge is simply knowledge of our own sensations, and inferences from that knowledge ; so that matter becomes to us merely a certain collection of sensations, and inferences from them. But we find that sensations are only caused by exercises of force ; as sight, and sound, and warmth, by the vibrations of ether in contact with the sensory organs ; so that every sensation should probably be resolved into such a vibration, and is certainly de- pendent upon force. If sensations are the results of vibrations, and vibrations are the results of force, it must follow that matter, being to us simply a collection of sensations, must also be to us simply a collection of forces ; and must therefore be known to us simply as force. Thus it is found that that which seemed at first so real indeed, the only reality cannot be known as real at all. And its own conduct justifies this con- clusion ; for it is constantly changing, not only its own forms, but also what seem the fundamental conditions of its existence ; the same matter being at one time solid, at another liquid, at another gaseous ; now hard, now intangible ; now visible, now invisible. We find the same when we turn to the matter of v Nature of the Person Without 183 our own bodies, for that has no abiding reality, but is constantly vanishing, whilst other matter keeps appear- ing to take its place. In a few years not an original particle is left behind ; so that our bodies, instead of being, as we are apt to suppose, machines given us at birth to wear until death, are merely transient com- binations of complex mechanism, each atom of which is constantly changing. And these bodies are the causes of constant change in other matter ; not only shuffling that by which they are fed, but also trans- forming it ; making that visible which was invisible, and vice versd ; and being thus themselves only the residuum, at any moment, of an infinitude of processes. For each man is all Nature's epitome ; being both simple matter, and a vegetable and an animal and a man and a spirit thus showing in himself all forms of existence. And if we watch the atoms composing his body, we find that in their mutations, they keep reappearing in different forms of existence ; like actors taking several parts in a play : at one time showing themselves as simple matter, at another in vegetable relationships, and at another in animal ones. Like actors, too, they are invisible behind the scenes unless called upon to appear in some particular form. Hence we see that for us the reality of these atoms lies not in any innate quality of their own, but only in the form in which they appear to us. What determines this form ? The Self Within ; for that it is which evolves the matter by which it is clothed. Take that Self out of the body, and the body loses at once that 184 From Within CHAP. power of continual self-replacement which alone pre- vents its disappearance. A child is only a potentiality for making matter take certain forms : its existence begins withagerm, whichmakes foritself a mechanism; and then it continues to repair and reproduce that mechanism. The same holds true of all the other persons in the world : their bodies are simply collections of atoms, made real for a time by the relationships into which they have been brought by the personality within. Thus it is the invisible person who makes the visible person ; and spirit, not matter, is the first cause. If this be true of the matter of our own persons, we cannot help believing that it must be also true of all that matter which is the body of the Supreme Person ; and this means that that Supreme Person must be the cause of all matter. But it may be said that all this only applies to combinations of matter, and not to matter itself; so that though the Supreme Person may be the final cause of the first, it need not follow that He is also the Creator of the second. But we have to ask what matter is in itself. To this question no one can give an answer. We may, for the purpose of explaining combinations, assume that it consists of certain atoms, which cannot be perceived by any of our senses : but we must always remain ignorant of the real nature of matter ; we must always remain uncertain even whether it has any real nature at all. All that we can have any knowledge of, are certain effects upon our sensations ; and matter can never be anything more to us than v Nature of the Person Without 185 their assumed substratum. The existence of such a substratum is an inference a mere working hypothesis : and our only grounds for making this inference are to be found in our sensations. But our sensations can only be affected by exertions of force ; so that all our knowledge of matter can only be knowledge of certain forms of force. Hence matter can only be known to us as force ; and all matter must be traced to that which is the source of all force. This, as we have seen, is the Supreme Person, who must thus be the Creator of all matter. Here we again find the two ultimate realities which can alone hold the field confronting each other; namely, Ourselves and the Supreme Person ; and to these two all matter must be traced. But we have seen that the matter utilised by our own bodies, is not created by them ; but is simply taken out of the store lying around them, and is returned to it again. So far as matter is concerned, each one of us is simply a manipulator, and is not in any degree a manufacturer. Therefore this Supreme Person, as He is the Creator of all matter, must be Our Creator, too, in so far as we are associated with matter. But His Creatorship would seem to extend even further than this, and to embrace completely the Personality Within. For each personality has come from some previous one, so that all can ultimately be traced to one Originating Personality ; and this must have come into being by a distinct exercise of force, which must have had an external origin. And though 1 86 From Within CHAP. these successive personalities have been changed by changed circumstances, they must all have inherited from the original personality the capacity to be so changed. Hence this original personality must have contained the potentiality of all the personalities derived from it; and it must have obtained this potentiality from that external source of force which can only be found in the Supreme Person. Now the power to make such a double creation that is, of the physical body, and of the personality within is what we mean by Fatherhood ; hence we are com- pelled to think of the Supreme Person as our Father in a creative sense. But we are also compelled to think of Him as our Father in more than a merely creative sense ; for a father as occurs with parents amongst some sorts of animals may pay no attention to his offspring after they have come into existence. Are we thus treated by the Supreme Person ? Physically, at any rate, we find that we are not so treated. We have seen that the maintenance of our physical life requires at least two conditions : one of which is that the external forces shall be favourable ; and the other is that there shall be a suitable supply of fresh matter to replace the constant waste, as well as to build up the necessary organs. The human body is the most sensitive and complex piece of mechanism upon the face of the earth, which is only kept going by the most delicate adjustment of forces. Let the temperature in any area rise above, or fall below, a v Nature of the Person Without 187 certain point, and all the human beings die off like flies ; let a noxious wind blow, or vapour rise, and they are stricken ; thirst kills them if there is too little rain, and drowning if there is too much ; and life cannot remain in them at all unless they are con- tinually provided with food and shelter. It is probable that we are aware of the existence of only a very small proportion of the forces of Nature, and it is certain that we understand very imperfectly the operations even of these ; yet we know enough to teach us upon how many nice adjustments human existence depends. Did we know all, and could we accurately state in an equation the proportion of the forces quite beyond our own control which are favourable, to those which are unfavourable, we should see how large a quantity must be put down to the good disposition of the ruling influence. Indeed it is not clear that we could find any forces which should with certainty be put down as unfavourable ; for science has not yet discovered in the whole range of Nature any force which, without doubt, is purposely and ultimately what we can call bad. No part of any organism is calculated to produce pain or disease : in the human frame there are no bones designed simply to be in the way ; no nerves to cause torture ; no muscles to impede action ; no glands to secrete, no ducts to distribute, ill humours ; and if we come across anything whose use we do not understand, we have never any reason to suppose that it was put there to incommode or annoy. Every part may, by some violation of Nature's laws, become a cause of 1 88 From Within CHAP. trouble, but this is only what happens politically in every well-ordered state ; and can no more be regarded as indicating malevolence than can spiked railings which keep us from being run over by trains, or prickly hedges which prevent us from falling over rocks, or into ditches. Spiritually, too, the same holds good : for the per- sonality of each one of us is formed, partly by the results of past forces transmitted from previous personalities, and partly by the operation of present forces acting upon our own personality. These forces, whether past or present, are never designedly evil : none of them are meant simply to make us vicious or unhappy ; but, as Socrates pointed out, vice is a disease arising from our disobedience to these forces ; and as our own experi- ence testifies, unhappiness is a symptom of that disease. " Evil " is our name for what we dislike, not for what is really bad for us ; and our improper use of the term is often proved by the fact that the feelings which we associate with evil, not unfrequently corne from an excess of that which we generally consider good ; as great riches may bring with them that same despair of life which often attends great poverty. It was when the Itoman people were richest in what are considered the good things of life, and it was amongst those who had most of them, that it was found impossible to prevent suicide from becoming almost a general prac- tice ; and our own experience often shows that Dives and Lazarus are troubled with the same feelings in their hearts. This experience also shows that without v Nature of the Person Without \ 89 our own co-operation, no influence from without will bring in anything which, when fairly looked at, should not be pronounced good. But it may be said that this only refers to the course of things as a whole, and does not cover the case of each individual taken separately ; for even in the best-ordered states some individuals undoubtedly suffer wrong : there are those in prison who ought to be out, and those out who ought to be in ; there are those honoured who ought to be despised, and those neglected who ought to be honoured. Undoubtedly if we judge only by external standards, whilst we may acknowledge that the Supreme is the Father of mankind as a whole, we cannot conclude that He is equally the Father of each personality considered separately. But on closer examination we find that this individual fatherhood is proved by the existence of internal arrangements, which rectify the apparent unkindness of external circumstances. If we look at visible rewards and punishments, the course of the world is very far from fair; but the result is very different if we add those invisible feelings which should really count infinitely the most heavily. It seemed hard that Socrates should be condemned to death for doing good; but, as he reminded his judges, they could not be sure whether. after all, he had not the best of the situation. And so doing good, oftener than not, means suffering means all sorts of things that men call evil; punishment, and contumely, and oppression ; the prison, the stake, the cross ; so that if the Supreme is to be judged 190 From Within CHAP, merely by these, He certainly is not a Father, or at least not a good one. But His Fatherhood is proved by the power He has given to turn all these to good. Man has within him the true philosopher's stone which can transmute all that it touches to gold ; and the gift of this is to each one of us the certain proof of love. One other proof of individual love is to be found in that power by which general circumstances work separate good to each person affected by them. Thus a shipwreck, or a fire, or a plague does not influence in the same way all who are affected by it; and it may be made to produce in each personality the particular effect most needed. Physical causes must follow their order : the same heat warming all things equally ; the same cold chilling them ; the same weight crushing them ; the same fire burning them, and so all through ; but moral causes are not subject to this law, often producing in different persons effects which are quite contrary to each other. Thus the same prosperity may soften one man and harden another ; the same adversity may beget in one man trust, and in another defiance. Each personality has within itself the power to determine what effect it shall receive, so that ulti- mate good and evil lie within our own choice. Thus Life is like a feast to which we all sit down ; and in which each guest may find some dishes that are good for him, and some that will disagree with him. Indeed, each event of life, whether seemingly adverse or favour- able, is in itself such a feast ; since it contains good and evil, of which we may choose either, rejecting the v Nature of the Person Without 191 other. That we possess such a power of choice ; and that this power, which must have been received from the Supreme, always works for our individual good, when exercised in harmony with the manifested will of that Supreme ; are the clearest proofs that the Supreme individually loves us, and is indeed Our Father. True fathers, however, do more than generally rule for the good of their families, and individually encourage what is right and discourage what is wrong : for they also testify their love to their children even when they are doing wrong ; and it is then that the love of the best fathers most shows itself. But such showing consists, not in remitting the proper consequences of this wrong-doing, but in causing these consequences, when rightly accepted, to work out the ultimate good of the offending child. Is not this the way in which we are treated by the Supreme ? Does not our ex- perience bear out the truth of the saying in the (Edipus Coloneux " For Mercy sits with Jove upon the throne In every doom." Do we not find that our best wisdom comes from our mistakes, and that even our wrong-doings often are made to further our highest gain ? Do we not feel, again and again, that when our own personality has taken itself furthest away, that of the Supreme draws the nearest to us ; appealing to us most strongly, and encouraging us most earnestly to return ? If we attend, we find that we are offered the strongest assurances of 192 Front Within CHAP. the love of the Supreme just when we least deserve them ; and so we are taught that, in the very highest sense of all, this Supreme is Our Father. Thus what we receive by the means of communica- tion through matter leads us to the conclusion, not only that there is behind all matter One Supreme Person, but also that this person is Our Father ; because, besides creating us, and ordering matters generally for the benefit of His creatures, He likewise makes all things work together for the good of each individual being, so far as the concurrence of that being will allow. We have next to consider what light is thrown upon the nature of this Supreme Person by our means of communication with Him through Other Men. These means of communication consist of two sorts ; namely, what we see and hear of the men about us ; and what we read of other men, both in other times and in our own. As to what we can see and hear, the experience of other individual men is the same as our own ; bearing witness, not only to the existence, but also to the power and goodness, of the Supreme Person. And when we take men in groups, this witness becomes more marked, being written in larger and clearer type for single lives often have not scope enough to display the tendencies governing mankind. The minor details stand out in our eyes so disproportionately prominent, and our feelings are so vacillating, that it is very difficult for any one of us to understand the drift of v Nature of the Person Without 193 his own life, or of the life of any other single person. We must take a number of lives together, and must also look at these from a sufficient distance, before we can have the evidence necessary to justify any general inference. Watching individuals is often like trying to judge of the direction of a river from a small portion of its course, for the windings may completely deceive us. We must take long sections at different places ; and when we thus watch the river of human life, we see that it springs from Almighty Power and flows to Almighty Love. The course of humanity, when thus looked at, bears witness to the Fatherhood of the Supreme, for it is seen to be, on the whole, towards good ; and men's own experience confirms this fact, for they find good in proportion as they are faithful to the ideal of their sonship, and evil in proportion as they depart from it. But since the knowledge of this ideal is so important, it is reasonable to expect that every facility will be given for the attainment of this knowledge. And since it is so difficult to judge by limited experience, and yet so difficult to obtain experience which is not thus limited, it seems reasonable also to expect that some typical example will be given from which this ideal may be more easily inferred. When we turn to what we read of other men, we find many reasons for believing that the Jewish People were chosen to serve as such a typical example. Their origin, geographical position, character, and career, as well as the period in which they flourished and the o 194 From Within languages and method in which their records have been handed down to us, all seem to mark them out as answering the requirements which we should naturally associate with a people chosen for this function. And this feeling is greatly strengthened, not only by the fact that no other nation of which we have any knowledge seems to answer, in anything like the same degree, the requirements which our reason dictates; but also by the unique series of events in which the history of the Jewish People culminated. For when we turn to the Self within, it whispers to us yet another want, which at first sounds startling, but which reflection soon pronounces to be natural and reasonable. For this Self says that if there is behind all surrounding matter a Person who is all-powerful, and the knowledge of whom is all -important to us ; and who is all-loving as well ; surely this Person will take every possible means of making Himself known to us. Of course He cannot be expected to try all possible means at once, or at the beginning ; for every means requires man's co-operation, and every attempt must fail which is beyond the possibility of that co- operation ; as it is useless to send a letter, or a book, to those who have not yet learned to read. But if a friend very much wishes us to know him, though for a long time it may not be wise for him to visit us since we cannot be ready for him yet we feel certain that he is longing to come ; and that, if nothing can hinder him, he will come at last, after having sent us repeated messages, and repeated proofs of his love. Surely we v Nature of the Person Without 195 may expect this to hold true in a still greater degree of that Person who loves us better than any friend can ; who is almighty, and who longs for us to know and love Him. In what form should we, then, expect this Person to visit us ? In what form can He do so, so that we may know Him as far as is possible to us ? We have considered this Person as primarily a force, because all knowledge comes to us through the avenue of force ; therefore we are thrown back to con- sider the conditions under which all force manifests itself. The first of these is, that no force can make itself known to any one of our senses, except it em- bodies itself in something which has affinity with the organs of that sense. Thus a warm-scented breeze may blow upon us, but we cannot perceive all its properties unless we possess all the necessary senses. We must not only have the sense of smell, but also those of touch and temperature : for if we are without the first, to us the breeze is not scented ; and if we are without one of the others, to us it is either no breeze, or not a warm one. Hence there may be and undoubtedly are myriads of potential sensations which never become actual ones, because they cannot find a way to any human sensibility ; and so they wander about, and no one knows of their existence. What they require is an introduction, and this they can only receive by being able to present themselves. Such a presentation requires them to be embodied, as is that to which they are to be made known. We cannot 196 From Within shake hands with those who have no flesh, or speak with those who have no voice, or exchange glances with those who have no eyes. Thus those who would be known by us, must place themselves under conditions by which alone knowledge is possible to us. To know about a man, perhaps only one sense is necessary : hearing may give us an idea of his character ; seeing may make known to us his writings or paintings ; feeling may reveal his kindli- ness ; but if we would know the man himself, we must come into personal contact with him, and this contact must be of the most direct kind, that is, body to body. And even by such contact another man cannot make himself known to us, unless he can use the requisite senses in association with our own. Thus a man grasping our hands, and looking into our eyes, may be brimful of poetry, but we shall know nothing of it if he happens to be dumb, or only able to speak in a language which we cannot understand. Hence every force is only known to us in so far as it can embody itself in something having affinity with that sense by which we perceive such a force. Thus smells are only perceived if embodied in something which can affect our olfactory nerves ; so with sounds and our auditory nerves ; and so, too, with every other sensation. A single force may require only to affect a single set of nerves, and therefore only to be embodied in a single kind of matter : but a Person is more than a single force ; he is, indeed, the unified combination of v Nature of the Person Without 197 all the forces necessitating all the organs of the human body. And we have seen that this Supreme Person Without must possess all the attributes which are necessary to constitute a Person Within, and therefore He must require for His full manifestation the same organs as are required by that Person Within ; that is, He must require all the organs of a human body. For if there is any organ possessed by man which is not needed by the Supreme for such a full manifesta- tion of Himself, it must mean that man possesses a function which does not require to be associated with the Supreme, and therefore cannot have been derived from Him ; and this is contrary to the very meaning of the term " Supreme." And if the Supreme has powers for which no corresponding human organs are needed, it must mean that there are parts of His nature which have no relationship to man. This is quite conceivable ; for we have no reason to flatter ourselves that we do know, or can know, the whole nature of the Supreme ; as workmen may know their master quite well in his relationship as master, yet have no idea of what he is like at home as husband, or father, or friend. So the Supreme may show to the inhabitants of other planets if there be any who are in a different condition from ourselves, qualities of which we have no cognis- ance, because no faculties to perceive them ; and He may, in the same way, show to us qualities which are not perceived by any other of His creatures. What is not conceivable is that any of the qualities manifested to any of His creatures, shall prove to be inconsistent 198 From Within with any other qualities manifested to any other of His creatures. Because we do not know every quality a person possesses, we do not therefore say that we do not know that person ; as in this way it would be im- possible for any person to know any other. We can know enough to infer the character of a person, and to feel sure that nothing which we do not know will prove to be inconsistent with that character. All that concerns us now is that the Supreme is at any rate as large as man ; that is, man has no powers not possessed by, or related to, the Supreme ; therefore man can have no organs which will not be required by the Supreme if he wishes to manifest Himself fully to man. Thus we come to the conclusion that if the Supreme wishes to make Himself as fully known as possible to man, He must sooner or later embody Himself in an organism possessing the same powers and properties as man's organism ; that is, He must humanly incarnate Himself. And we should naturally expect this in- carnation to occur amongst the people chosen to ex- emplify His character ; for we cannot believe that He would choose this people for all the other stages of this exemplification, and leave them at the last stage, for which all the others must have been preparatory. Therefore we must expect that either there has appeared, or will appear, amongst the Jewish people, a Being incarnating the Supreme Personality in a human organism. This expectation necessarily has a great influence upon our conception of the Supreme Person ; for a v Nature of the Person Without 199 person who must incarnate himself, must possess attributes not necessarily belonging to a person whose existence is only made known by his influence. For when we go back upon ourselves, we find that our bodies are more than the mere garments or appendages of the person within. The relationship between a body and its person is one not so much of action as of interaction ; for the body acts upon the person, as well as the person upon the body. Man is not simply like a soldier in a fort, or an ancient actor speaking behind a mask ; his body is not only an instrument played upon by the internal will, but it is also an ^Eolian harp whose music is determined by the external winds. And this music, coming from without, is heard by, and affects, the Person Within. Of course all recognise that the Person Within is greatly affected by external influences, conveyed through the body ; indeed it is such influences that constitute the development and training of that Person. But the body also affects the Person by influences arising from itself, as well as by those which it transmits. Who can measure the effects upon the mind of a disordered liver, or a diseased nerve ? Not merely are our feelings temporarily altered by such causes ; but the whole character of our minds, and disposition of our hearts, may be permanently affected. A vigorous physique multiplies, by its activity, the influences which are able to act upon us ; and a healthy physique transmits those influences fully and truthfully. Although the sun is shining brightly outside, a room 2OO From Within CHAP. may be dim if its windows are dirty ; and hence many men never know how beautiful the world is because, though they may have travelled from end to end of it, their bodies have never been in a proper state to transmit its influences. And generally the impediment to such transmission is to be found in something originating in the body itself; as dirt gets on to the windows from the inside as well as from the outside. Indeed, quite a large proportion of the total of our sensations arises from the body itself. The pains hardest to bear and most wearing to the mind are those which start in the body itself ; and these are also the most difficult to cure, because we cannot get away from their cause. The same holds true of our pleasures ; and probably the most satisfactory physical pleasure of life is that sense of jubilant vitality which attends the simple consciousness of being thoroughly well. We watch young animals chasing round the fields ; or birds careering in the air ; or fish darting about in the water, and we see that to them mere living is a joy, quite apart from anything that life can give : and sometimes we find ourselves moved, by the same cause, to dance or sing in the most adverse circumstances. But every sensation has its influence upon character : character is, indeed, largely made by such influences, as Giotto's beautiful gates were shaped by repeated strokes of a hammer. Everything must reach us as a sensa- tion ; and it makes no difference to our minds whether that sensation has had its origin in the organ itself, or in some external force acting upon that organ. The v Natiire of the Person Without 201 pains of inflammation are as great as those of concus- sion ; an ailing tooth is at least as hard to bear as a crushed finger. We can easily trace in the body the influence upon it of the mind ; the face is, indeed, the epitome of the life within, every thought and feeling adding a new chisel-stroke, which deepens some line or alters some feature. Had we perfect penetration, we could read a man's inner life in his face, as a nation's history may be read in its language. So it seems probable that the same holds true if we start at the other end, seeking in character the effects of sensation, as we have found in face the effects of character. Could the character within be seen like the face without, we should read there the record of every sensation ; and we should see that this character has been chiefly formed by these sensations. This is a law of all humanity, and therefore must apply to the Supreme Person when incarnated. So great is the power of this law, and so complete is its universality, that in the case of every individual it knits personality and body inseparably together. Hence the idea of personality which we adopted for a special purpose at first, has to be extended so that the body may be taken into some sort of partnership ; for we find that it is impossible to get rid of it. Without the body, the Person would be more helpless than blind Belisarius : it would be as isolated as if alone in the cosmos ; nay, rather, as if alone without a cosmos ; for all communication must come through the body, 2O2 From Within CHAP. and all force must use it. On the other hand, the body depends upon the Person for all its activities, and even for existence itself. So these two are more to each other than two people who have always lived together ; and who, in thus living, have grown to look alike, and so to depend upon each other, that if one dies, the other must soon follow. Hence the impossibility of thinking of others after death except as associated with bodily forms, lies not in the mere weakness of human imagination, but in the essential nature of things ; and is an indication that such forms have become inseparable. The spirits restlessly moving about in gloomy Hades had, to the Greeks, human forms ; and Dante not merely retained such forms, but also regarded their organs as the chief avenues of the divinely ordained punishments in the after life. And so we cannot help feeling that the marriage between Person and Body is one which can never be annulled : like husband and wife, these two may be separated for a time, but must come together again at last. At any rate, such a union is to us one of the necessary conditions of thought Nor can we free ourselves from this condition in connection with the Incarnation of the Supreme Person ; and so we are bound to think of that Person as subject to the double necessity of being affected by His body, and of retaining some association with that body. For if this Person were not so subject, His incarnation could not be real, since it must mean more v Nature of ttie Person Without 203 than merely using a body as another means of com- munication. Indeed, the body could not even be used as such a means, unless it was so united to the Person as to bring the whole being within the compass of this double necessity. It also seems reasonable to believe that our in- carnated personality must be affected, not only by the conditions, but also by the objects, of this incarnation. For such an incarnation must be regarded as a final development, which would not have been necessary had man made full use of all the other manifestations of this Person ; and which therefore may be expected to be directed chiefly towards the remedying of such special human deficiencies. Thus a man wishing his whole nature to be understood by his friend, and finding that, whatever .he does, there is some part which that friend will not observe, may not im- probably make some special effort to call attention to this part. In the same way the Almighty, finding men ready enough to appreciate His power, but persistently blind to His love, may be thought likely to choose some form of manifestation especially cal- culated to reveal this love. Such a balancing of human weakness by divine specialties seems necessary if man is ever to reach full knowledge ; for men are all prone to fix their attention too much upon particular parts, determined by their particular feelings. A survey of the religions of the world teaches us that fear is a predominant human feeling, and is much more powerful than affection ; so that every religion re- 204 From Within CHAP. cognises the power of the Almighty, whilst many quite ignore His love, and none fully appreciate it. We should therefore expect that such an effort as the Incarnation would be chiefly directed towards the special manifestation of this neglected attribute. We should also expect that the character of the Incarnated Personality would be affected by the character of this special object ; for that which is chiefly to make known His terrible power, or His inexorable justice, must have a different tone from that which is chiefly to reveal His tender love. Besides, it is conceivable that there are rational in- habitants on other planets besides the earth ; and that for them also there is needed and will therefore be given an Incarnation of that Supreme upon whom they must be just as dependent as we are. But their special conditions of life may make their character so different from ours that they may be strong just where we are weak, and weak where we are strong ; so that they may accentuate disproportionately the love of the Almighty, and realise too little His power. To such a people the incarnation, if granted, would be chiefly directed towards developing the realisation of this power. We cannot help believing that the special drift of the incarnation, whatever it may be, must have a certain effect upon the person so incarnated. For this reason, as well as for the effects of the body, and the association with that body, our conception of the Incarnated Person must be different from our conception of the same Person not incarnated. v Natiire of the Person Without 205 Thus we find ourselves compelled to think of the Supreme Person as two persons who are yet the same person. The primary attributes of both are identical ; and the sum total of these attributes, constituting the personality, is in both cases the same ; so that there is between these persons a unity at least as great as that between the water in a tumbler and the water in the well from which it has been taken. There are two persons, but one personality ; this personality being in the one person absolute, and in the other conditioned by humanity. As we have seen that the first of these two persons stands to us in the relationship of a Father, and should therefore be thus named, so we must conclude that this second Person stands to the first in the relation- ship of a Son, and should likewise be thus named. For this relationship must be His primary characteristic indeed we can only know Him through it. In the process of this knowledge, He is at first presented to us simply as the Supreme Person Himself; then as that Person so conditioned by humanity as to be, not merely another manifestation of the same Person as lightning and telegraphy are merely different forms of the same force but a distinct Person, who must always remain so. But this distinctness does not relieve us from the necessity of always thinking primarily of Him in His relationship to that first Person. And what is this relationship ? One of derivation ; for in so far as the second Person is not the first, He 206 From Within CHAP. is derived from Him. His body shares in the de- rivative nature of all matter ; and His character, when it is distinguishable, owes its peculiarities to the inter- action of the original personality and the embodying matter ; both of which are derived from the Supreme. Thus so far as origin is concerned, the second Person must stand to the first in the relationship of a Son. And this relationship also holds through its whole range, since complete union must be continued between the first and second Person; union of object and effort, as well as of feeling and thought. For the ground of being of the second Person is to manifest more fully to mankind the character of the first Person ; and such a manifestation implies the closest union of every kind. It is difficult to illustrate from human affairs truths which are not generally associated with them, even though these are really always involved in them ; but we have abundant experience on every hand of this principle that a father and son may be two persons, and yet only one. The two Pitts will serve as an example, though the associated ideas may be very different. The son largely possessed the character of the father, and in that degree incarnated him for those to whom he was invisible : the two pursued much the same objects, in much the same spirit ; and though they differed from each other sufficiently to give each a distinct individuality such differences being largely due to different circumstances yet they agreed in so much more as to constitute the two a unity. In this instance, we know that both the persons were incarnated ; v Nature of the Person Without 207 but that does not affect the principle, which is none the less true because of our inability to conceive of personality apart from human form. We can think of certain types- of character which were originally associated with some person, and which reappear in some other person ; as that of Chatham in Pitt, and that of Henry VIII. in Elizabeth. Thus, as the result of the communications received by us through matter was to convince us that there is a Supreme Person outside us, so the result of the communications received by us through other men is to convince us that this Supreme Person must be thought of as two Persons, the one being the Father and the other the Son, who are yet but one Person. But we have already seen that there is another means of communication, namely, that which is direct to ourselves ; and we have now to ask whether we receive anything by this means which throws any light upon the nature of the Supreme Person. For the answer we must of course turn inwards, and Reason is the first faculty to be questioned. What would this lead us to expect from our experience of other things ? We have been considering the Supreme primarily as a force, and must therefore examine the conditions of force in general. When we do so we find that every force has three forms in which we must think of it : namely, as existing in itself ; as specially manifested ; and as operating whether continually or not, according to its nature. As an instance, the force of steam presents itself to us in this threefold aspect : 208 From Within CHAP. for steam as a potentiality must have existed from the moment that the first rays of sunlight fell upon the primeval waters ; but it was only when the eye of genius caught the meaning of its lifting the kettle lid, that it was seen to be a manifested force ; and now we have come to think of it as the chief motive-power used by mankind. Steam thus presents itself to each of us as a Trinity, for we think of it as an abstract force ; or as incarnated in some particular engine ; or as performing so much work in the world. The same holds true universally, for there is no force which has not to be looked at in this threefold aspect; as force itself, force embodied, and force operating. But it may be said that there is a great difference between three aspects of the same tiling, and a three- foldness implying three different things ; and un- doubtedly this is true : though the steam just referred to cannot strictly be considered the same thing ; for potential steam is not actual steam, and the actual steam in one engine is not that in another. But the steam in all these cases has the same properties, and it is by virtue of this sameness that it is all steam. Does this threefoldness hold good where there is not this sameness ? Can the same person have such a threefoldness as to be three different persons ? He can in idea, at any rate ; indeed, there is such a possibility belonging to every person. Every man is a trinity from almost every point of view : for not only is he made up of body, physical life, and spiritual life ; v Nature of the Person Wit /tout 209 but these three are one though separate whilst each is seen in the other. Also considered in relation to ourselves, every man may be such a trinity ; as we see if we take the case of any one who has influenced us, of whom we have first heard, and whose acquaintance we have afterwards made. We cannot hear of any one in a positive way without forming an idea of him ; and so he becomes to us a personality which is quite real ana definite, though many of its attributes may be chiefly due to the action of our own imagination upon report received from without. But, so far as it goes, the picture formed in our mind is complete, complete enough at any rate to make up a personality ; for it is more than a broken outline, the gaps being filled in by our own fancy. So far does this process go that we continually find ourselves adding details for which we have not even received a suggestion ; as, if we have heard about a man's temper, we imagine the colour of his hair, or the tone of his Voice. Hence we frequently hear surprise expressed at a man's actual appearance, about which nothing had previously been said, some wondering to find him short whom they had thought tall, or dark whom they had thought light ; yet no one being able to give any reason for such thoughts, except his own inferences from quite different attri- butes. The real reason is to be found in that uni- versal passion of humanity for personification ; which makes us unable to endure half a character, and always eager to make it into a complete personality. Proofs of this passion are always coming upon us, P 2io From Within CHAP. particularly from the more impulsive sort of people ; who continually form complete notions of those about whom they can have received only the most fragmentary knowledge, if any at all. Most of the ideals currently accepted of well-known men are of this sort ; the public can know very little of what such men are in reality, and so as it cannot have an authentic person- ality, and will have one of some sort it has recourse to its own imagination. All men share this tendency more or less ; thus indicating how natural it is to human nature to create persons without seeing them, and how real such persons become. Of such a character is that first person of the trinity associated with the man whom we hear about before we see him. When we see this man, another personality is pre- sented to our minds, for we find that our picture has to be considerably altered ; many of the details, and perhaps some of the chief features, proving to be wrong. "We are like an artist who has painted a portrait simply from report, and who is afterwards brought face to face with the original. Probably he will then find that his portrait is not worth much, strictly as such ; but unless he has been deceived, the general impression produced will probably not be very far wide of the mark. He will have made one person, and another will stand before him ; and these two will be different persons, yet practically the same. So we constantly find in our everyday experience, that acquaintance causes us to think of a man of whom we had heard, with difference enough to make a distinct personality, v Nature of the Person Without 2 1 1 yet a personality which is, in its chief characteristics, the same as the one previously in our minds. Time afterwards develops in our minds another personality of this man ; for partings may be spoken, but they can never be wholly made. No one who has acted upon us can ever leave us ; the man who has refreshed us with a new thought, or roused us with a new feeling, may be withdrawn from our sight, but his memory and influence must remain ; and out of these we must reconstitute another personality. At our life's banquet, no two guests can successively occupy the same seat ; and our brain repeoples the vacant places : as Macbeth saw the vanished Banquo at his table, or as the chair of some dear departed one is kept empty for loving fancy to fill. So all who have come across us, are still known to us ; not as we thought them at first, nor as we found them, but as they have been recreated by our minds. Fancy, Sight, and Memory, each makes a person of its own out of one ; and all these three are different, though all the same. Thus every man may be to every other man a trinity. It may be said, however, that plainly there is only one person after all ; these being only different ideas of that one person, which need not be limited to three. But these three are more than merely selected possibilities ; for all of them potentially belong to every person, and they are all which do so belong. Amidst all the changing ideals which can be enter- tained of any man these three stand out as the only 212 From Within CHAP. necessary and final ones. And though they are only ideals, and not persons of themselves, their existence suggests that every person may be of necessity three- fold ideally. There is therefore nothing repugnant to reason in the thought of this threefoldness ; and we have now to consider whether in the case of the Supreme Person, this thought does not correspond with the fact of there being Three Persons. For it has to be remembered that the Supreme Person must differ from every other person, or He would not be supreme ; and He is likely to differ in constitution, as He differs in power. We are endeavouring to see what light can be thrown upon that constitution by our knowledge of men ; and in this process it seems reason- able to believe that that which is a possible ideal with men, may be an actual fact with the Supreme. We have already come to the conclusion that this Supreme Person must be Two Persons, who are yet one ; and one reason has been that the addition of certain attributes to a personality, or the subtraction of certain attributes from it, constitutes a new person- ality, although the retention of the principal attributes may keep the two the same. We have now to con- sider whether, according to this principle, the Supreme Person consists of more than two personalities. We started with the illustration of force, and we associated the First Person with the idea of force absolute force existing simply in itself. From this we proceeded to manifestation ; and we associated the Second Person with the idea of force embodied. But v Nature of the Person Without 213 we have also seen that there is another fundamental idea required to complete the illustration, and that is, of force operative. It has appeared that when a force is embodied, it necessarily receives certain new attributes ; for the object of such an embodiment must be to bring this force into relationship with something that differs from it ; and this cannot be done unless the force allies itself with something possessing some of the qualities of that which so differs. We have also seen that in connection with the Supreme, this reception of new attributes constitutes a Second Person. But since this Second Person could only be mani- fested to men by being incarnated in a human body ; and since no body could be human unless it was also mortal ; it is evident that such a manifestation could only last for a short time, and must be locally limited. We have therefore concluded that it would, in all probability, be recorded : and we have also considered what we might expect to be the chief characteristics of such recording; as well as the most probable time, place, and circumstances of such a manifestation. But we are prompted to repeat to ourselves the earlier question, "Why should such a recording be expected ?" And the answer suggests to us further necessities. For if we reply that without such a record, the benefits of this manifestation would be as transient as its existence, the further question rises up, "What about the necessity of this manifestation?" The point of this necessity lies, not in the fact of such 214 From Within CHAP. a manifestation, but in its influence; and humanity needs this influence in all ages. For although such a manifestation could not be understood until mankind was ready for it ; the continuance of its influence must be a necessity after that time, unless we are to believe that at this point humanity reached its zenith, and was afterwards to decline. Such an alternative is contradicted by all the facts of History, and is quite inadmissible ; therefore we are compelled to believe that some arrangement must have been made to con- tinue the influence of this manifestation, in another way than by merely preserving the record of it. The only possible way of doing this must be to continue the operation upon mankind of that force which was embodied in this manifestation. That is to say, the force itself must remain in the world. What would be the condition of this force when so remaining ? Whilst losing the embodiment, it must necessarily preserve the other characteristics which were required to bring it into contact with men, for it has to continue to operate upon them. Therefore this force now presents itself to us in a third form ; for whilst retaining the fundamental characteristics of the other two forms, it has added to the First the human- influencing attributes of the Second, and yet has subtracted from the Second the attributes belonging to its incarnation. It must also possess in itself the attributes belonging to its own special function, which is that of continually bringing to bear upon men the influence manifested by the incarnation. Possessing no v Nature of the Person Without 2 1 5 physical embodiment, it can only act upon the spiritual part of human nature ; therefore the three forms of this force appear to us in a sort of descending scale, the first being that of the whole force in its relation to everything ; the second, that of this force only in its relation to the whole of humanity ; and the third, that of this force only in its relation to the spiritual part of humanity. This third form seems to blend duality into unity, by uniting the First Person again to Himself. But is this third form also a Person, as we have concluded that the other two are ? It may be said that we cannot have the same reason for believing in its personality, as we have for believing in that of the Second Person ; since, by the incarnation, this must have been manifested in a bodily form. But we have seen that bodily form does not constitute personality, and is not even a necessary constituent of it ; for then our own person- alities must be constantly changing, and must cease to exist with their bodies. Also, we have no reason to suppose that the bodily form of such a Second Person would differ from that of any other human being ; but the personality must differ, and therefore must be something else than the body. The objection that this Third Person is invisible, holds against the First Person as much as against the Second. The records of which we have spoken persistently emphasise the invisibility of the Supreme. From the beginning to the end there was one long 216 From Within CHAP. struggle with the Jews to keep them from that associa- tion of any particular shape with the Almighty, which has always been the radical weakness of heathenism. Not only did He refuse to show Himself, but He would not even apply to Himself any word conveying any idea of form. In most cases we are simply told that He appeared, without a hint as to the form. Sometimes His appearances were in visions of the night, or in a sound, or in a cloud ; and in the one instance when He promised any revelation of His form, it was only His back that was to be visible. And if Moses saw that, he said nothing about it ; but it is most probable that it was invisible to him, and that he could not help falling on his face, as Abraham had done before in similar circumstances. As to His face, we are told that no man could look on it and live ; and the nearest description even of His voice is, that it was as the sound of many waters. Thus the objection of invisibility holds against the Supreme in every form : it holds also against every human personality ; for, as we have already acknow- ledged, no person can ever be seen by any other. Hence visibility is no requisite of personality, whether human or divine ; and we must seek elsewhere for the proofs of personal existence. In ourselves we have found these in that com- bination of Force, Memory, Intellect, Will, and Feeling, which constitutes a conscious unity. We have found in the Supreme the same proofs of personality ; and we have also found them in that Second Person, con- v Nature of the Person Without 217 stituting Him a personality distinct from the First, while continuing the same. By the same proofs we also find that this Spirit is likewise a Person, distinct from the other Two, though one with them. One test, in addition, may be applied to support this conclusion ; and that is the only test by which the existence of personality can properly be proved. For though personality cannot be seen or touched, it can be felt ; and only thus can its presence be realised. It is thus that we realise all human personalities, the force of which can only be measured by the degrees in which they make themselves felt by others. An Alexander, or a Caesar, or a Cromwell, or a Napoleon, could do this in the highest degree ; but all persons must do it in some degree, or they cannot be recognised as personalities at all. This is the line dividing life from that which is not living ; and hence we feel the crossing of that line so momentous, that we shrink more from the loss of a single human being, than from the fall of a mountain or the upheaval of an earthquake. We recognise the immensity of this distinction when we compare the effects upon us of inanimate Nature with those of humanity. We know that there were no fauns in the groves, or naiads in the streams ; no fairies in the glens, or satyrs in the forests ; except such as were put there by the imagination of man : and though poets may now sing to us of the whispering of the winds, and the expression of the clouds, and the language of the flowers, we know quite well that neither winds, nor 218 From Within CHAP. clouds, nor flowers, nor any other object in Nature, can do more than rouse the voice within us, and echo what it says. The hills, and streams, and woods, and skies, and stars, may in certain of our moods seem endowed with some of the attributes of personality, and even a few mute trees may give us the sense of a mysterious presence ; but we know that this endowment is our own gift, and that this presence comes only from ourselves. All the objects of Nature may be eloquent to us, but we cannot flatter ourselves that we are ever eloquent to them ; all of them may rouse our feelings, but we should in vain try to rouse in them any feeling in return ; as with King David and his dead boy, we may go to them, but they cannot come to us. Hence Nature does not always give us pleasure ; or, at any rate, the pleasure is of that kind which is based upon pain. Alpine snows sometimes fill us with a sense of loneliness that is well-nigh unbearable : there are times when we are almost terrified by mountain passes, or sombre moors, or rolling clouds ; and in certain moods even the sight of a vacant expanse of sea, or of a solitary hillside, or of an unbroken lake, may give us such a hungering for sympathy, such a longing for the "touch of some vanished hand, or the sound of some voice that is still," that we gladly turn from the impassive face of Nature to look at the responsive one of man. But we are not obliged to go to others to gain companionship, for we can find it in ourselves. And this in quite another sense from that in which every v Nature of the Person Without 2 1 9 man can be company to himself, and seeks to make that company the best, because it is that which he has to keep the most. Our own thoughts may give us better guidance, and our own feelings may give us higher joy, than any other human being can afford us ; but we can have within us a still better guidance, and a still higher joy, even than any which can come from ourselves. Probably some new emotion the despair of some disappointment, or the desolation of some grief, or the anguish of some remorse wakens us up to the consciousness of this Presence within us, which reveals itself like some figure emerging from the mist ; for first we hear the footsteps, then the voice, and at last we behold the outlines of the form. Then if we are friendly, and take heed, that which has so revealed itself becomes our constant companion and counsellor; not only, like the daemon of Socrates, warning us against mistakes, but also cheering us in trials and comforting us in sorrows. Then we find that it is more than some spirit, for it has all the characteristic attributes of a person ; and chiefly that primary attribute of being able to adapt itself constantly to our own individual needs. It is not merely some general influence which is able to act upon all men, but it can take just the form which is most needed by each. It is more than the good angel whispering in our ears, for it is the presence always working in our hearts ; renovating our nature, raising our thoughts, and guiding us in the way of all truth. And we find more and more that it is in com- 220 From Within CHAP. plete accord with the Supreme ; so that the voice of that Supreme coming to us from the whole universe, and His voice speaking to us from the Incarnated Form, are in full harmony, not only with each other, but also with the voice of this Presence within us. Hence we come to realise that this Presence is not only a Person in itself, but is also one with that which we have realised as The Father, and with that which has been manifested to us as The Son. Thus the Supreme Person becomes revealed to us as a Trinity, and we find ourselves bound to think of Him as such. This is no refinement of philosophy, but is the outcome of simple human nature. It may be that few realise the necessity, or even the meaning, of the truth involved; but none the less is this necessity actual, and this meaning correct This is the way with all truth which is of general application ; only the few see it, and the rest take their word, benefiting by that which they do not try to understand. Only one man was needed to bring down the Law to the people ; and multitudes may be enlightened if only a few feet clamber the mountain-side of truth if only a few eyes are gladdened with its views. Such eyes have in all ages and lands caught glimpses of this truth; and no such eyes have quite missed seeing something of it. This conception of the Supreme as a Trinity is found, more or less, in all religions worth considering ; and it is found most in those best worth considering. In the earliest religions of which any records have been preserved to us, we trace its em- v Nature of the Person W^tho^it 221 bryonic forms ; and we watch these developing, slowly but surely, until we find ourselves in the presence of a living doctrine. This doctrine reaches over all the world, from China and India, through Persia and Egypt, to the farthest west ; it reaches, also, through all time, from far beyond Plato, to whom it was one of the axioms of thought, down to that famous philosopher of these days who termed it " the pole of the world." And this because it has its root in human nature, and its growth in human needs. CHAPTER VI PROPER RELATIONSHIP OF THE PERSON WITHIN TO THE PERSON WITHOUT IT may be well to rest awhile at the point we have now reached, so that we may look back over the road we have travelled, and recall its chief features. "We may also note how far we have come, and cast our eyes forward along the road still lying before us. Self was our starting-point ; and we found that this Self is quite invisible and intangible : no eye has ever seen it, no hand has ever grasped it ; no ear has ever heard its voice, no nerve has ever felt its touch ; experience has no records of its appearance, science has no tests of its presence, and even logic is, if left to itself, quite unable to prove its existence. Yet that it does exist is the master-fact of all our being; the one foundation upon which the whole of life is built. To be moved from this foundation is to become insane ; for the surest sign of insanity is for a man to think he is some one else, or no one at all. Whatever theories they may hold about Necessity as opposed to Free Will, all men are greatly offended if we do not treat them as responsible beings ; for there is no man, CHAP, vi Relationship of the Persons 223 with full title to the name, who does not conduct his life upon the assumption " that I am I With power o'er mine own act and o'er the world." Whence this belief in the existence of this " I " to say nothing of its influence ? Of course a belief may be strong without there being any fact corresponding to it. Many of our beliefs are simply born of our hopes, and nurtured by our illusions ; so that the strength of a belief is no reason for its acceptance. Mankind has always held, very strongly, multitudes of beliefs which were un- warranted by facts ; and no doubt it holds a good many such now. Therefore we must look beyond the strength of a belief, to the ground of it. The chief ground for this belief in the existence of the " I " is its necessity ; for we cannot carry on any mental process at all without it. Without this fact to begin with, there can be no fact of any sort for us in this world ; any more than there can be writing with- out something to write upon, or sensation without something to feel. If a man believes in the existence of anything at all, he must believe in the existence of himself, for it is this Self which performs the process of belief. It may therefore be said that the existence of the " I " is only an assumption ; but even then there must be ground for this assumption, and such ground may hold equally well for other assumptions. But it is more than an assumption ; for an assumption implies a 224 From Within suggestion of being otherwise, and no such suggestion can be associated with the existence of the " I " on the contrary, there is no belief which is accepted with such certainty and unanimity. When we examine the grounds of this acceptance, we are compelled to acknowledge that they rest entirely upon inferences, as the stately palaces of Venice are built upon piles. And as these palaces would tumble into the water, if these piles were to give way, so this belief must eventually disappear unless the inferences which bear it up are true. Therefore our first concern must be to satisfy ourselves as to these inferences. In this process we found that our belief in the existence of a Person Within, depends upon the con- currence of certain phenomena in the matter of our bodies. We also found that as our bodies do not contain all the matter of the universe, so we cannot help proceeding to inquire whether this external matter contains any personality similar to that which we have found within the matter of our own bodies. We are driven to this step by a natural instinct which is universal : an instinct the validity of which is the first assumption of Science, and the first foundation of knowledge. For having found the first fire hot, or the first rose scented, or the first apple sweet, we cannot help expecting the next to be so. In this expectation we are sometimes right, and sometimes wrong ; but the expectation itself is in all cases inevitable, and every contrary opinion is gained in opposition to it. When we have found that the first casket of a certain sort vi Relationship of the Persons 225 contains a jewel, we cannot help believing that there must likewise be a jewel in the next casket of the same sort ; so when we have found that the matter of our own bodies contains a person, we cannot help believing that the same must be true of other matter. Indeed, no one doubts this so far as the matter forming other human bodies is concerned. We all take it as a thing of course that every other living human form contains a person, just as our own does. But we cannot stop here : for we cannot help looking at all matter from the same point of view. And when we do this, we are compelled first to ask ourselves why we treat the matter of our own bodies as a unity. That matter is of itself very various, consisting of flesh, and bones, and hair, and nerves, and other forms of matter ; and the fact that it is bound together in a continuous mass, cannot of itself constitute unity, any more than it does with lumps of rock or earth. But it is because this body is the special instrument of phenomena which we cannot help ascribing to a single cause, that we regard it as itself single ; and it is for the same reason that we regard all other bodies as units. Therefore if the whole matter of the universe, taken together, is seen to be the special instrument of similar phenomena, this matter must likewise be regarded as, from this point of view, a unit ; and as containing a person just as much as the other similar units of matter contain persons. It must be acknowledged that first appearances Q 226 From Within CHAP. seem opposed to such a unity of the whole matter of the universe ; but in this, as in most other cases, first appearances are not to be trusted. For the whole history of Science is one continuous record of the evolution of actual uniformity from apparent diversity. The circle of order at first a small ring on the surface of the waters of being has spread and spread, until it must soon touch the farthest shores, jand encompass the whole. Every newly-established theory, every newly- discovered fact, emphasises the same truth with steadily-increasing force. We soon learn that every particle of matter is connected with some other particle ; so that all are bound together, and nowhere is there the least room for vacuum. We also find that every particle of matter is so constantly affecting every other particle, that no change can be made anywhere with- out its influence being felt everywhere. A load of coal cannot be taken from a Lancashire mine, without some influence being exerted upon every iceberg round the South Pole; a single person cannot even move from one place to another, without influencing in some degree every other person on the globe. We have also seen that this unity extends far beyond merely material forces. For even the phenomena of matter have more than a material meaning : they are like instruments in an orchestra, which not merely give forth such coarser concords as the laws of gravita- tion, light, and heat, and the rest, but which also utter the finer moral and spiritual harmonies. And these concords blend with these harmonies in one great vi Relationship of the Persons 227 chorus which proclaims the great unity of the universe ; a unity of Thought and Feeling, as well as of Will and Force. This proclamation is the same in character as that made by the phenomena of the living bodies of each one of us ; and as we unhesitatingly believe that each of those bodies contains a single person, we must likewise believe that this great body of the universe also contains a single person. In both cases the persons are invisible, and in both the evidence of exist- ence is the same. We must therefore either believe or disbelieve in both. And as we cannot help inquiring what is the nature of the person within our own body for whether or not it be the " proper " one, certainly the most interest- ing " study of mankind is man " so we cannot help inquiring what is the nature of the person within the matter of the universe. Our self-interest alone would force us to this inquiry : for the matter of our own bodies also forms part of the matter of the universe, and is therefore subject to the influences governing that matter ; that is to the Person of whose Will and Power those influences are the expression. We are also spurred by that natural curiosity which is the highest intellectual endowment of humanity ; and the activity of which is the surest test of any man's quality. We cannot help feeling about, and wondering, and questioning ; and most of all are we curious about that supreme mystery whose fingers, though we cannot see them, are for ever touching us. We are drawn to the invisible by a fascination far stronger than that which 228 From Within pulls the moth to the flame : we must get as near as we can, by whatever way we can find. We found that there are three such chief ways of communication between the person within the matter of each one of us, and the person within the matter of the universe : namely, one through matter generally ; one through other persons ; and one direct to ourselves. We have seen that each of these three ways makes known to us a different aspect of that Person : as a building may present a different view when approached by different roads. Thus through matter generally, He presents Himself as The Father ; through other persons, He presents Himself as The Son ; and He is made known directly to ourselves as The Holy Spirit. We have also seen that these are more than different aspects : that their distinctions are indeed so great as to constitute them different persons, though they all form part of one personality. We have also seen that this constitution, though at first sight complex, is really most in accordance with our truest experience ; for each one of us is such a trinity, and every force has ultimately to be thought of under such conditions. This was the point at which we had arrived ; and before proceeding further, it may be well to consider a few of the chief objections which may be urged against some of these conclusions. The first refers to the existence itself of such a Supreme Person ; for it is said that there is now no call to assume any such Person at all. It may be true that we must assume the existence of a person within vi Relationship of the Persons 229 us, because we cannot otherwise account for the phenomena ; but it is not true, we are told, that we must therefore assume the existence of a person without us, because all the phenomena connected with that assumption can be accounted for without the assump- tion itself. Science has been steadily elbowing -out this assumption, until now there is no room for it anywhere. " God " was only another name for what men did not understand ; and now that they under- stand, if not everything, at least sufficient to make known the principles according to which all things are governed, they find that these principles make the assumption of a Person unnecessary. It was well for mankind to have a " pool " into which could be put everything for which no other place could be found ; but this " pool " should be given up when all things have been properly distributed. A working-hypothesis, however useful it may have been, must be abandoned when the real cause has been found : and a God who only did what men did not understand who in a world of order and law, was wayward and wilful would not be worth keeping as a God at all. Indeed, the question is not one of the character of God, but of whether there is any God of any sort ; of whether there is any person whatever behind the matter of the world without us. And it must be confessed that if this person is to be sought only in the region of the supernatural, the prospect of finding him is very uncertain. For that region, once so extensive, has been narrowed and 230 From Within CHAP. narrowed, until it seems likely to disappear altogether ; like those plots of bog land which have gradually been entirely won over to cultivation. Eed deer can now only be found in one or two places in England ; and wolves have long since disappeared, because their haunts have been too much encroached upon. So nimble mystery vanishes before the hard footfalls of fact. Hence a God who is only to be found in the history of the past or in the ignorance of the present, cannot be long expected to keep His ground ; the world is in no mood to care for one who is holding himself aloof, or " perchance sleepeth." A God must be felt, to be believed in : He must be found in the natural, or nowhere. Of course there must be much in the natural which transcends our knowledge ; but there is a radical differ- ence between transcending and violating. That know- ledge must necessarily be very defective ; and often so partial as to be almost untrue. There may also be higher laws which, until we understand them, seem to violate other laws of whose truth we have ample evidence. The familiar phenomenon of water, after contracting as it cools, beginning to expand when it gets below a certain point, is an instance of this ; and another is furnished by Babbage's Counting Machine, which, after counting a hundred millions with unfailing regularity, suddenly makes a leap and starts a new order. "When we understand that the law of expansion by freezing, instead of being a freak, is a provision without which most, and probably all, of the earth would be unin- vi Relationship of the Persons 231 habitable, we recognise that a law may be over-ridden by what we must consider a benevolent will But if benevolence may be traced in such apparent violations of the usual order, we must not seek in such violations the proofs for the existence of the "Will, but must find these in the order itself. Everything that we call miraculous may be and in so far as it is true, probably is merely a case of the submergence of a lower ordinary law by a higher extraordinary one : or of the displacement of a law which is the expression of the ordinary will of the Supreme, by an act which is the expression of some special will; as a master generally allows his business to proceed by rules which he has laid down, but sometimes interposes his own command. Such interpositions may not be very frequent, or very well known ; and in that case the master could not rely solely, or chiefly, upon them to make his existence felt, but must show himself in the conduct of ordinary affairs. It is there that we have to find the Supreme Person ; for His existence must be declared by every phenomenon of that matter which is His environment. We must look for something, not which breaks through the order of Nature, but which works through it; for a supernatural which is behind the natural, not above it. In our search we found that matter cannot be an end in itself ; cannot, indeed, be at all except as Force, so far as our knowledge goes. For matter can only be known to us by its changes ; since a sensation only presents itself to us as such when it differs from our 232 From Within CHAP. preceding condition. So existence resolves itself into a mere chain of changes. But a chain fastened at this end to Self, but holding to nothing at the other end, is inconceivable. There must be something at the begin- ning : matter must find its origin in something which is not matter. The idea that this origin can have been spontaneous must be too much even for the greatest believer in the miraculous, since it assumes that at some chance for if not, then we have Intellect and Will moment there appeared a power the exist- ence of which could never have been suspected before, and has never been manifested since. Whether or not it is necessary to assume a cause for existence, it is certainly necessary to assume one for change, of whicli existence is one of the forms. We may find the cause for each change in the preceding one : we may push back the line from man to the animal, from the animal to the vegetable, from the vegetable to the matter of the whole earth, from the earth to the sun, from the sun to some nebular mass ; we may trace the beginning of things with Thales in water, or with Anaximenes in air, or with Heraclitus in fire, or with Pythagoras in number ; but in the end we find ourselves as at the beginning, in so far that we are haunted by a sense of something beyond. And it is this sense of limit which puts us into fellowship with the illimitable, and makes us feel that " we are greater than we know." So by matter we are led to the immaterial ; as by some tribes strangers are conducted through their country, and then handed on to their neighbours. vi Relationship of the Persons 233 The same fate attends us when we follow up the phenomena of life. From the unconscious life of plants, we are led to the conscious life of animals ; and so forward to that life which is cognisant of its own consciousness, and which is found only in man. But here we come against the same barrier which met us in our search after the origin of matter. For before every form of life, there must have been another. But there must also have been some point of time at which life first wedded itself to matter, for our globe has evidently been at one period unfit for life of any sort. Now if we could have witnessed this first imparting of life coming from its source, and wedding itself to matter the act would have had the appearance of spontaneous generation, since life is of itself invisible. There would not, however, have been any generation of life, but only a fusion with matter ; and the begin- ning of life would remain as mysterious as ever. So by visible life we are led to the life which is invisible. So both visible matter, and visible life, must find their origin in something which is invisible ; and since matter and life are in such strict harmony, this some- thing must be of the nature of a unit. To such a unit, then, are we led, as to that fabled figure from which first issued the waters of the Nile. So far Evolution which simply means that the primal force has been in contact with matter progres- sively goes along with Theism, for both believe in an underlying principle of unity. But at this point they part company ; Evolution standing still, whilst Theism 234 From Within CHAP, proceeds to the belief that this underlying principle of unity is an Intelligent Personality. We have seen that this advance to Theism seems necessary, because we cannot think of a principle as a cause of anything. For a principle implies Intelligence in its conception, and Will in its operation ; and such operation implies Consciousness ; which implies some Self to be conscious ; that is, a Person. We have also found ourselves obliged to think of this Person, considered merely in the aspect of force, as of a threefold nature ; namely, as force itself, as force embodied, and as force preserving the unity of the other two. For example, we have a centrifugal force balanced by a centripetal force, and another force maintaining this equilibrium. For the originating personality, starting from Himself, must reach Himself again, or He would be an absolutely simple substance. Thus we have the ethically Necessary kept in union with the ethically Eealised, by a third which is not the sum of the two first, but is one of the modes of existence of the divine essence, Thus whether we start from within or from with- out, and on whatever road we travel, we arrive at the same termination ; namely, that the great First Cause is a Person with a triune nature. But the truth of any fact is one thing, and its im- portance is quite another. There are multitudes of facts which are quite true, but the knowledge of which is practically of no consequence to us. Of course in one sense we cannot know too much, because we cannot vi Relationship of the Persons 235 tell what knowledge may come in useful ; but we have to remember that knowledge which neither has stood, nor now stands, nor ever will stand, in any living relationship to ourselves, is only so much lumber. Some people are fond of filling up their houses with articles of furniture which they will never use, or musical instru- ments upon which they will never play, or books and pictures at which they will never look ; and so some have a passion for acquiring knowledge, without any regard to what they will do with it. But useless knowledge is worse than useless ; for, like useless furni- ture, it hinders freedom of movement, clogging the operations of the mind, and turning what should have been wisdom into mere wiseacreness. Hence periods of much knowledge are often marked by little fertility ; so much time being taken by learning, that none is left for thinking and feeling. Not many of the master spirits of the world have been famous for book learning, and but few of them can be claimed by any university ; so that, in face of the present enthusiasm for mere knowledge, one is inclined to think that humanity will have to rescue its genius by some relapse into barbar- ism. The art of printing has taken away the chance of any such windfall as the famous burning of the Alexandrian library. Whatever may be the case with the Intellect, this certainly holds true in respect to the Soul ; for not only is knowledge which is mere knowledge useless in the spiritual realm, but it is also there converted into something very mischievous. For the Soul, with its 236 . From Within CHAP: natural tendency for substitution, is almost certain to lay hold of any disengaged knowledge, and make it do duty for some virtue. Everywhere and always are myriads of men who are suffering from that worst kind of deception which consists in deceiving themselves ; making knowing stand for being, and talking for doing. Hence the danger in spiritual matters of possessing knowledge which is not assimilated into the personality. Therefore if the fact that the First Cause is a Person with a triune nature be simply a fact, and nothing more ; having no effect upon our lives, and no relationship to our characters, we need not trouble our- selves about it. The bare fact that another person consists of three personalities cannot be of much consequence to us, unless that person stands to us in such a relationship as to give this knowledge a practical influence upon our own personalities. There cannot be any doubt that the First Cause does stand to us in such a relationship, as we see if we merely consider the material connection. For the matter of our own bodies not only forms part of the matter of the universe, but it also has fellowship with every kind of that matter. The creation of man required "the dust of the ground" as well as " the breath of life," so that man is a sort of ellipse, the two foci of which are matter and spirit. And this matter has kindred with all other matter; for man's body is allied to the mineral and vegetable worlds as well as to the animal if, indeed, matter can yi Relationship of the Persons 237 be separated by any such divisions. So there is accurate science in the saying of Herbert that "Herbs gladly cure our flesh because that they Find their acquaintance there." And the idea might be applied much more extensively ; for there is no kind of matter in the universe which may not find in man's body some near relation if not a brother, yet a cousin not very far removed. Thus by our bodies we are put into sympathy with all the matter of the universe, and therefore into relationship with that First Cause by which that matter is ruled ; that is, with the Supreme Person. But relationship with any person implies knowledge of him ; or, at any rate, suggests its desirability. For if we are subject to any human being, we naturally obtain all the knowledge we can of him ; seeking to learn his temper, and habits, and requirements, so that we may regulate our conduct accordingly. Such regulating of our conduct, means placing ourselves in such a relationship to that person, as will make our mutual connection most satisfactory. Therefore as we cannot escape from being connected with the Supreme Person ; and as we cannot prevent this connection from exercising the most powerful influence over our lives ; common sense, or even ordinary selfishness, must lead us to wish this connection to be to us as satisfactory as possible. But such satisfactori- ness can only come from the relationship between this Supreme Person and ourselves being, as far as possible, 238 From Within CHAP. what it should be. Therefore our efforts to bring this about must be chiefly guided by our knowledge of what this relationship should be. Hence this knowledge claims our next attention ; and the first fact to be noticed is that such a relation- ship as the one under consideration, can be looked at from two points of view. The first is when we take our stand at the position of the Outside Person; and the second is when we take our stand at the position of the Inside Person. Another fact to be noticed is that the two persons in this relationship are not like two bodies which act and react upon each other, for only one emits influence, and the other only receives it. "We can hardly think that the Supreme Person can be sufficiently sympathetic to be a Father, without being a good deal influenced by the conduct of His creatures ; but such influence may be very powerful in the domain of feeling, without having any effect in that of action. The Supreme may be greatly distressed because the influence sent forth by Him is not received, or not rightly used ; but we can find no trace that on this account the character of that influence is ever changed. So far as effects are concerned, the Creator gives without receiving, and the creature receives without giving. Therefore so far as influence has to do with this relationship, it only passes in one direction : and we have only to regard this passage from the two points of view ; of the source from which the influence is received, and of the effects of its reception. What vi Relationship of the Persons 239 should be the nature of the relationship between the Person Within and the Person Without ? What should be the effects of this relationship upon the Person Within ? As to the first question, everything depends upon what the Person Within can gain from the Person Without. For, after all, there is much of selfishness even in religion ; and men will not trouble themselves much about their relationship to any being, from whom they have little to hope or fear. This is the principle that guides us in most of the relationships of life ; for we do not keep up friendships which give us neither pleasure nor profit. And rightly so ; since time and energy are too valuable to be bartered away without some fair exchange : and the only fit plea for thus parting with them would be some claim of charity, such as could not be possible in the case of the Supreme. Of course many such claims may be put forward, and ought to be yielded to, for the sake of that Supreme ; but none can be possible in His own case. Our chief motive for caring about our relationship to the Supreme must, then, be the consideration of what He can do for us. Of course we know that we ultimately depend upon that Supreme for all that we have and are ; for food, and raiment, and shelter, and everything that makes the continuance of life possible, as well as pleasant. But in this respect we are only like every one else ; and all these things seem to come to men without any regard to their consciousness of relationship to the 240 From Within CHAP. source from which they come. Not only does the rain fall equally upon the just and the unjust, but often the best material gifts come to those who morally least deserve them, and who intellectually least trouble themselves as to whence they come. Indeed, many of the qualities which seem most favourable to the acquisition of these gifts such as cunning, selfishness, meanness, and suspiciousness are just those which are least favourable to religiousness of character ; and probably the ability not to get these things would, on the whole, be a truer test of such character. But at any rate it is plain that if these things are all that the Supreme can give us, we need not trouble ourselves about Him ; for we are just as likely to get them if we are indifferent. Therefore, unless, besides these things, there is something which is very important to us; which the Supreme alone can give us ; and which He will not give us unless we are placed in a certain relationship to Him ; we need not think about the matter any more. For even though only the Supreme be able to give us something which is of the utmost importance to us ; unless such gift is determined by a certain relationship, it would be futile for us to distress ourselves about that relationship, as we might just as well leave the gift to chance. Hence our next attention must be given to trying to answer the three questions of whether there is any one thing the receiving of which is of the utmost im- portance to us ; whether that thing can be given to us vi Relationship of the Persons 241 only by the Supreme Person ; and whether this gift depends upon our relationship to that Person. But first we must satisfy ourselves as to what we mean by " the utmost importance," for there may be the most different ideas on this subject ; many con- sidering something of the utmost importance, which others do not consider important at all. That which Alexander had spent himself to win, Diogenes held of no value compared with the sunshine, which could be had for nothing ; and Simeon on his pillar voluntarily placed himself in the way of hardships, which others exert their utmost strength to avoid. To many, plentiful meals, or comfortable houses, or proud positions, are the most important things in life ; whilst others relegate these objects to the category of what should be avoided, or at least lightly esteemed. What must be our test of importance ? The one most offered, and most accepted now, is that of Pleasure. We are told that the importance of any- thing to us must be measured by the pleasure it gives us. But this is only the utilitarian test of morality, looked at from the point of view of the feelings caused to ourselves, instead of from that of the effects pro- duced upon others. Therefore the same difficulties meet us which have been referred to before ; of which one of the chief is that we can, and very often do, take most pleasure in things which our own judgment even, and certainly that of all whose opinion is worth heeding, condemn as unworthy. The sot gets more pleasure from drink than from poetry ; the libertine, R 242 From Within CHAP. more from lust than from scenery ; the miser, more from money than from philanthropy. We may tell such men that the higher pleasures are, if properly estimated, the most pleasant ; but they may reply that, if pleasantness is the only test, each man may claim to judge for himself. We have certainly on this principle no right to impose our own standards upon others ; and we do not get over the difficulty by saying to ourselves with Ben Jonson : " If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, Envy them not their palates with the swine ;" for the question is, as to whether there is any test by which a comparison can be made between what they love and what we love. If not, then can we neither envy them, nor they us. There is, however, one fact connected with pleasure which seems to suggest the true solution ; and this is, that the satisfactoriness of pleasures seems to vary inversely with their intensity, and directly with their duration. Physical pleasures are all short- lived, and they are transient in proportion to their in- tensity; the satisfaction arising from a good ineal lasts a few hours ; the joy of drinking is shorter- lived ; and the most exquisite delights of all are the most quickly over. Whereas intellectual and moral pleasures, if less intense, are much more lasting. We do not lose ourselves with ecstasy over a fine picture, or clever book, or sweet melody, or lovely view ; but the effects remain with us, and give us pleasure for months or vi Relationship of the Persons 243 years : we are not carried away by the excitement arising from an act of goodness a temptation resisted, a need supplied, a heroism performed probably at the time we experienced pain rather than pleasure ; but that pain has from the first a certain charm of its own, which keeps growing with time until it hides the pain, like ivy covering an ugly building with beauty. So, after all, it is not easy to find a better test than that of Dr. Johnson, who said that everything we do should now be looked at as it is likely to appear a hundred years hence. As Herbert puts it : " Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." Thus we find that the Law of Mechanics, according to which Time and Power bear an inverse relation to each other, holds also in Morals. Now granting the importance of pleasure if the word is only properly understood it would seem that the supreme object should be to get pleasures which are both intense and lasting. But intensity and duration are only two manifesta- tions of the same thing, which is force ; the one being force spent quickly, and the other force spent slowly. And force, in this connection, means life : as we see when we observe that the joys and sorrows of youth, if keener, are more transient, because its life-blood flows more rapidly ; whereas old age gives out a lower note, because of its slower speed. Thus the supreme object to all of us must be this 244 From Within CHAP. vital force : it is that which alone makes life, to begin with ; and which can alone make that life more or less, both in intensity and duration. Thus, whatever may be our opinions or ideals, all our actions proclaim that it is " More life and fuller that \ve want." We may be taunted with the weakness of wishing for immortality ; but we cannot help it, any more than we can help wishing for light, and warmth, and food. As far as we know, we are not, unless we live ; and if we are not, then is there nothing for us ; and that is an impossible conception. We must wish to live : and that wish cannot be gainsaid by any number of suicides ; for these are often attempts to gain a better life, and are at most confessions of failure in this. But it is with success that we are now concerned ; and success means life. Thus our answer to the first question, of whether there is any one thing the receiving of which is of the utmost importance to us, must be that there is such a thing, and that it is Life. We now turn to the next question, of whether this Life can only be given to us by the Supreme Person ; and we must first note that this Life has to be dis- tinguished from that which each one receives at the beginning of his earthly existence. For that earthly life is marked by one characteristic, unfitting it to be the Life for which we are in search. This charac- teristic is Death. But before we consider by whom this Life, of which vi Relationship of the Persons 245 we are speaking, can be given ; we must first ask whether it is likely that any such life can be given at all. Have we good reasons for believing that there is anywhere a source of such Life as will be free from Death ? All the evidence which conies to us at first would seem to favour a negative answer. Everywhere Death stares us in the face ; nowhere can we come across anything which is free from its mark. Not only are all men like criminals condemned to certain execution though treated, as in France, with the consideration of not being told the time until its arrival but the finger of Death sooner or later drops upon everything about us. Nay, everything is really always in the grasp of Death : crumbling and changing from hour to hour. What is this universal destroyer ? What does he do ? For the answer we must, in accordance with our ruling principle, go back upon ourselves, and ask what Death means there. And we find that not only do human bodies, one after another, disappear from our view like persons in a waiting-room successively summoned to an interview but also that our own bodies are constantly in a condition of melting ; and would disappear altogether were not our organs of nutrition like tentacles which continually seize particles out of the mass of surrounding floating matter, and incorporate them into our organisms. These particles, however, do not remain there ; but leave us again, rejoining the floating mass, until they are again appropriated. Thus not only may Alex- 246 From Within CHAP. ander's dust stop a bung-hole, and Caesar's patch a wall, after death, but also during life each of them might have seen what had once been his dust, serving- such a lowly purpose. We may again come across parts of ourselves in some horse we ride, or some vegetable we eat, or some tree under which we sit, or some person whom we meet on the road. Matter is thus like an often-divorced wife ; for it keeps marry- ing organism after organism, from which it is soon separated again. It is Life that performs such mar- riages ; and Death that dissolves them. We find, however, that Death can do more than this ; for not only does it separate single particles from the body, but it also dissolves that body itself. At first Life is more productive than Death is destructive, and so capital is accumulated ; next the two powers are equal, and there is neither loss nor gain ; but soon Death gets the upper hand, and then he keeps it until the capital is exhausted, and the man disappears. But what is the novelty in this disappearance ? Not the vanishing of matter, for that has been going on all the time. It is the vanishing of the manifested activity of that power which held the body together against the attacks of Death ; and on the cessation of which the particles composing that body were spread about, like boys just let loose from school. But a power itself does not vanish simply because it cannot appear. Therefore Death is neither the vanishing of matter nor of force ; but it is simply the dissolution of a certain union between mattei and force. vi Relationship of the Persons 247 If, after the dissolution of this union, we follow the career of each of its two constituent members Force and Matter we come to the conclusion that this Force must remain somewhere. We have no experience of the destruction of any force ; for all our mechanical arrangements are only concerned with its conversion, or transposition. Motion may be converted into heat, as by friction ; or into light, as by electricity : and heat and light can be converted into motion, as by the steam-engine, coal being only bottled sunshine. And every such conversion of force can be represented by an equation, since there is never anything lost. But force may be bottled in other forms ; and it is not necessary that all these forms shall be physical, or such as make themselves known to our senses. In ourselves we have frequent experience of forces remaining unmanifested during long periods : for years the poet may not sing, or the prophet speak, but the power may remain in him, like volcanic fire ready to break out again. Or the power may never have given any sign of its presence, so that no one ever suspects its existence : when some change of circumstances may draw it forth, as with Cromwell's military generalship and Richardson's literary power. Hence there is nothing unreasonable in believing that all the force which has ever entered into the composition of any human personality is still in existence somewhere. It may also be as near to us as it ever was : and we might perceive it if only our faculties were sharpened ; as we know that, were our 248 From Within eyesight keener, we should see that the air and water about us, which now seem so clear, are really filled with particles and animals. So there may be forces about us on every hand which we cannot now feel ; and these may possess forms which we cannot now perceive. It is easier to believe this, than that such forces have absolutely vanished ; for that would be opposed to all the analogy of our experience. Science, then, cannot make Death mean more to us than, for matter, change of form ; and for force, absence of perceived activity. Immortality is the ultimate note of everything of which we have any experience. But it may be said that, according to this, the personalities of all the animals which have ever lived must still be in existence. There is surely nothing unwelcome in such a thought ; particularly when applied to those companions which give us, in life, so much innocent delight and cheering fellowship. The experience of many of us is touched as we read how the first welcome to Ulysses came from his dog ; and it is not easy to think of any perfect happiness, in the absence of meadows with cows, or hills with sheep, or trees with birds. But in this connection we have to remember that, as far as we can judge, the Life Force of men is distinguished from that of all other animals by a quality which constitutes each individual a self- conscious personality. This personality cannot hence- forth lose this quality, and therefore cannot become blended with other personalities. But it is not impossible that the Life Force of an animal, when vi Relationship of the Persons 249 liberated by death from its individual body, may flow back into some reservoir of such force ; from which it may afterwards be drawn to vivify another similar animal. We see the persistence of human personality when we watch the operations of hereditary descent; for however greatly children may resemble their parents, the personality of each child is always a distinct unity. And hereditary resemblances hold much the most strongly in what is material ; for children resemble their parents much more in their bodies than in their minds. We may owe to our fathers and mothers our height and shape, and the colour of our eyes and hair, but the spirit that moves us has mostly come to us from elsewhere ; from without, rather than from within. The spirit of our time has more power over us than that of our ancestry. For what we can see, the sheep of one generation are exactly like those of another, so far as expression is concerned ; but we may travel the length of the land without seeing a single face resembling those which, according to pictures, were most common a century or two ago. So all our knowledge seems to emphasise the persistence of the Life Force of each human personality ; for it teaches us to expect that all Life Force must persist somewhere, even though in a transposed form : and that that which has once animated human beings must, by this alliance, have received a quality rendering further transposition, or amalgamation, impossible. Hence somewhere or other should be abiding, as eternal 250 From Within CHAP. units, the personalities of all the human beings who have ever lived upon the earth. Let us now follow the career, after dissolution, of the Matter which was the other member of this living partnership. We have seen that each body is a concourse of atoms which are continually changing not only in themselves there being a constant suc- cession of arrivals and departures but also in their relationships, each atom incessantly changing its neigh- bours. So each body is not so much a single structure, as an abode of motions ; which are held in harmony by some central force : as the planets, though possessing varying motions of their own, all continue to revolve round the sun. But this harmony is diminished by the weakening of the central force ; as in a great empire, rebellions begin when government becomes slack. Finally there is a break-up of the constitu- tion, and its members readjust themselves. But such members cannot be abolished altogether, for nothing is more impossible than to get rid of a single particle of matter. We may crush it, but the dust will remain ; we may burn it, but it will come back in one form or other ; we may split it up, but the total will continue the same. Driven from one place, it flies to another : we may scatter it, but cannot destroy it ; we may change its form for it is the most Protean thing in the world but we cannot arrest its being. So if we watch the matter of a human body after death, we find that it spreads itself in various forms vi Relationship of the Persons 251 and directions. We also find that its after-history is marked by a peculiar feature, which is, that such matter seems doomed to fall continually lower and lower in the scale of being. That which has lived a higher life, is most ready to show the next lower form of activity ; as the flesh of animals becomes most speedily quickened. But each succeeding stage is more sluggish ; until this matter at last reaches a condition most widely separated from every association of life. In addition to this feature, we likewise notice that this matter, when once it has taken a lower form, cannot again be brought into a higher form except by contact with the life force of that form. Thus the two chief facts connected with matter, which are brought out by death, are its persistence of being, and degrada- tion of form. We have already seen that this persistence of being holds equally true of the Spirit ; only that this Spirit also retains the unity of its personality. It is con- ceivable that this personality may also make upon the matter of the body such a deep impression of itself as will endure through all subsequent vicissitudes; and will finally come out quite clear, like the early writing of a palimpsest manuscript. So, as the first loves are said to show themselves the strongest at the last, it is possible that each particle which has ever belonged to the personality, may eventually obey that allegiance. How so many particles would be disposed of, we cannot imagine ; except to reform a body as much larger, as the new conditions of life were wider. This arrange- 252 From Within ment might clear us of that difficulty connected with resurrection, which is often so troublesome ; for as we look at an old man, we cannot help wondering whether that can be the form which will persist. But we are now only concerned with considering, whether in the career of the spirit, there is anything corresponding to that degradation which marks the career of the body. We cannot, of course, follow the career of the spirit after death, as we can that of the body ; but we have observed that this degradation of the body begins long before death ; so that what occurs after death, is only the fulfilment of previous promise. Is there, before death, any similar process taking place in the spirit; which seems, in the same way, to foreshadow what will happen afterwards ? We have seen not only that the body must dissolve at death, but also that this process of dissolution is always going on. We have likewise seen that after death the matter of the body naturally runs through a course of degradation ; also that this course is entered upon during life, and cannot be arrested, unless this matter is again vivified by a higher vital force. We have next to inquire whether the history of the non- material part of man corresponds at all in these respects. We have no means of testing whether that part is constantly dissolving, but we know that it is constantly changing ; and that, after a certain point, this process is one of decay, or as it may be called of degradation. As we cannot follow the career of this part after death, vi Relationship of the Persons 253 we must be content to infer what that career is likely to be, from what we can observe before death. And the most significant fact resulting from such ob- servations is the decay which sets in after a certain point is turned. We meet it in whichever direction we look. In the Intellect it is very marked. Of course there are great differences in individuals ; and some retain much more intellectual power even to extreme old age, than many others ever possessed. But we must compare the same Intellect with itself ; and then we find that each one has, like each tree, its times for shoot and fruit, but it has also, alas ! its time for falling leaf and wintry bareness. Wisdom is said to be the crown of old age ; but often this great name is claimed for what is merely want of courage, or want of faith. And when the wisdom is real, it more frequently shows itself in knowing what should not, rather than what should, be done. Nestor might be a careful counsellor in the tent, but he was not the best leader in the field. The value of life is to be tested by what is done, rather than by what is avoided ; it is better to make blunders than to do nothing, and to let our talent run the risk of losses, than to wrap it safely away. Judged by this test, old age is certainly not the zenith of life, so far as the Intellect is concerned. It is not in this age that the greatest works of the intellect have been produced. Few noted books have been written after fifty, and almost none after sixty : some writers may, like Wordsworth, have had an Indian summer ; but that has always been short, and its beauty has always, 254 From Within CHAP. like that of October woods, been marked by the hues of decay. That which is true even of the greatest Intellects, holds much more certainly of the ordinary run of men, whose minds lose their freshness at middle life, or earlier. In most cases what is called public opinion, is very like some repeating echo in the mountains ; for one man starts a cry, and the rest merely pass it on. Dr. Johnson's advice that no man should change his religion after fifty, is practically acted upon by most men, on most subjects, at a much earlier age. We cannot keep our eyes open for any length of time without seeing quite plainly that the hand of decay is stamped indelibly upon the Intellect of man ; and certainly those of us who have reached middle life, cannot turn inwards without recognising there also the same sad mark. To those who are inquiring for Immortality, the Intellect answers " It is not in me." We turn next to Feeling, but only to get the same answer. For nothing can be more certain than that our Feelings at least the best of them lose their fineness and fulness with declining years. So far as the sensations derived from outward Nature are con- cerned, as we grow older we feel " where'er we turn " that "there has passed away a glory from the earth." It often happens to us when, after the lapse of years, we visit some familiar scene, that we are more distressed by what we miss, than gladdened by what we find. The same mountains may tower around us, but their heights do not strike us with the old awe : the same vi Relationship of the Persons 255 trees may wave above us, but we cannot hear the old music in their leaves ; the same waters may spread themselves at our feet, but their waves cannot send the old charm into our souls : even the grass in the fields, and the flowers in the hedgerows, have lost something which makes them seem to us quite changed. And so we come to feel with Hamlet that " this goodly frame, the earth, seems a sterile promontory : this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." But we know that this change is in ourselves ; and is due to some decay in the observingness of the seeing eye, and in the listen- ingness of the hearing ear, and in the sensitiveness of the feeling heart. In vain do we struggle against our natural fate ; in vain do we cry aloud, in our grief, for the voices which will speak to us no more. But we realise the greatest loss when we turn to those feelings which are not so directly associated with external objects. It is in our sympathies and enthusiasms that the devastations are the greatest. We find that our youthful ardour is dying down, and that our youthful tenderness is becoming less and less. We can well remember how, in our early days, we were filled with lofty aims, and moved with fervent loves ; how wrong roused our wrath, and suffering touched our hearts ; how we dreamt of the good that we would do, and of the pleasure that we would give. And now we find that we are growing cold and hard ; 256 From Within CHAP. evil does not stir in us the same indignation, nor good the same enthusiasm ; and even those bound to us by the closest ties, cannot move our sympathies with the same delicate vibrations. So we find that in us Feeling, too, is dying ; and that as we ask there for Immortality, the answer comes sadly back to us, " It is not in me." Is our search then vain ? Is there no part of us upon which there is not laid the ruthless hand of Decay ? We seek again within ourselves, and at last come upon something which fills us with hope ; like the miner who, after long searching, and just when he was abandoning himself to despair, turns up a nugget which is more than an ample reward. For when we anatomically examine Feeling, we find that it consists of two parts a lower, which is associated with our physical organs ; and a higher, which is more or less independent of those organs. We have seen that this lower part is subject to the great Law of Decay, but it is possible that the higher may be free from it. We must therefore test some of the leading faculties of this higher part ; and the two best to choose seem Conscience and Love. We are not here Concerned with how the Sense of Eight and Wrong which is the basis of Conscience originates : it is sufficient for us that very early in life it makes its presence felt; and we have only to watch its career from that point. As we do so, we notice that this sense becomes more acute as time advances ; for at first children are generally less scrupulous, and less vi Relationship of the Persons 257 subject to fits of remorse. It is when the age of youth has been fully reached, and the constitution has received its full burden of development, that the voice of Con- science makes itself heard most loudly and most frequently. Then it stands like a sleepless sentinel, protesting against every entrance of evil ; or at least grieving when it has let any pass. Now comes the period of absorbing interest; for if from this point Conscience eventually goes backward, then it must also be included in the melancholy category of the doomed. And there is much which seems to lead us to this sad conclusion ; for Conscience is like a servant needing the encouragement of appreciation. If its voice is not listened to, it gradually ceases to speak ; or, at any rate, we gradually cease to hear what it says : for it is possible that it may always speak the same, but its tones may be drowned by those of coarser clamourers ; or may be unheard just because of their frequency as those living within some constant sound, like that of a ship's engines, only notice it when it stops. But to judge from our own experience, it seems that each con- science quickly catches the tone of the personality it serves; soon ceasing to criticise influences which are only like those frequently admitted, and to condemn actions which are only like those frequently committed. The doorkeeper of a house which receives all sorts of visitors, cannot be expected to be particular ; and when every one is allowed to enter, he is not unlikely sometimes to leave his post altogether. Thus Conscience, which is so scrupulous when it first enters on full service, soon s 258 From Within becomes inattentive if unheeded ; and often in middle life, or old age, passes without a protest actions for which in youth it would have kept us miserable and sleepless. Hence that internal calm, which so many admire, is often but the stillness of death the sign that, through neglect, the conscience has succumbed to decay. But when we look around we notice that such decay is not universal ; for whilst, with many, Con- science as life goes on becomes duller and duller, with many others it certainly becomes more and more alert. If there are some who, in old age, commit, without hesitation, actions at which in youth they would have shuddered ; so there are others who shudder, in old age, at actions which in youth they would have easily com- mitted. And self-examination soon teaches us that each act of obedience to Conscience not only makes the next easier, but also renders Conscience itself so much more sensitive that it shrinks from that which before it had not noticed. So Conscience is like our physical organs in that it becomes more skilful the more it is exercised ; but it is unlike them in that it is not necessarily subject to the law of decay, but may, even to the very end, grow better and better. The same seems to hold true of Love. How charming is the sight of ardent youth as it sets off on its career ! Trustful and enthusiastic, it lets itself freely go upon the sea of life, unsuspecting that the balmy breezes of affection may not always thus gently blow ; and may even change to the fierce blasts of anger, or the nipping winds of neglect. And perhaps this ardour may burn vi Relationship of the Persons 259 on into middle life ; the heart trusting, like Lear, in the love of children ; or, like Timon, in the faithfulness of friends ; or, like Wolsey, in the gratitude of princes. But sooner or later disappointments come ; and then the heart is apt, like a wounded hedgehog, to roll itself up, and turn only its prickly side to the world. But every heart, when thus turned in upon itself, is sure to go to decay ; for, like the body, it needs fresh air and sunshine to keep it in health. So too often the ex- periences of life act like the water of the famous Dropping Well, turning what was a heart of flesh into one of stone. But though too frequently the affection of youth thus changes into the indifference of middle life, and the coldness of old age ; experience teaches us that this process does not always take place : for we observe many cases in which the heart not only defies these ravages of time, but even unmistakably improves as it grows older. There are hearts made more sympathetic by the disappointments of life, and more generous by its trials, and more tender by its sorrows ; and whose love keeps widening in its scope, and deepening in its power. In old age the physical and mental powers must be diminished, but the moral powers may then shine forth with greater brilliance ; like a lamp which is brighter as its covering is thinner. We have thus found in Conscience and Love two attributes of our personality which can escape the common doom of decay. And we find that what is true of them, is also true of every other moral attribute, 260 From Within so that the moral part of man may like a St. Michael's Mount escape that advancing tide of Time, which eventually covers the surrounding sandy expanses of our physical and intellectual being. But we also find that this moral part of our nature can not only thus preserve and increase its own vitality, but that it can also impart its vitality to other portions of our nature, which in time necessarily lose their own. Thus the tender Conscience, and the good Heart, make the Intellect brighter, and the Body more active. Though we cannot explain the connection between the mind and the nerves, or between the nerves and the organs, we know that it is very close ; so close, indeed, that wickedness and selfishness are not only demoral- ising, but also stupefying. A conscience at ease and a heart moved by love are the best aids to the activity of the mind, and the healthiness of the body ; so that a good old age may realise the words of Shelley " The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past ; there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in the sky, Which through the summer is not heard, or seen." Not much good intellectual work is done by the wicked ; and if insurance tables were compiled on this basis, it would be found that the virtuous have by far the greatest longevity. There was sound philosophy in the advice of the physician, that the best protection against an epidemic of cholera is to get the ninety-first psalm well into the system. Thus the conclusion to which we find ourselves led vi Relationship of the Persons 261 is that Immortality, if it is possible at all, must come to us through the moral part of our personality ; and that, so coming, it may permeate the whole of our being. We have next to consider whether this moral part of us which we call the Soul not only possibly, but also probably, possesses in itself the attribute of im- mortality ; and if so, what is the condition of the tenure of this attribute. We have remarked that our moral qualities are liable to deterioration, as well as to improvement ; and thus it would seem that when such deterioration takes place, these qualities must be going to decay, and so sharing the inevitable fate of our physical and intellectual qualities. This would imply that the Soul itself is liable to death ; and certainly there is much to justify such a conclusion. As far as we can see, a great many people do not possess any qualities worth preserving ; and there seems no reason why the great problem of Being should be burdened with their continued exist- ence. That eternal fire, of which so many religions speak, need not imply that the same fuel burns eternally, but only that there is an eternal supply of such fuel. But there are many phenomena leading us to doubt that the Soul does or can die. And principally we notice that there is a characteristic difference between the deterioration of the Body and Intellect, and that of the Soul ; for the first is a loss of energy, whilst the second is only a diversion. In the natural course of 262 From Within CHAP. things, after a certain time the body becomes weaker and weaker. Physical life is a constant struggle between the processes of nutrition and waste : in early life nutrition gains, and we grow stronger ; in middle life the two are equal, and we remain the same ; but in later life, waste has a constantly increasing advantage, so that we become weaker and weaker, until the struggle can no longer be maintained. The Intellect is so closely bound up with the Body that it is impossible to separate their fortunes ; or even to say what would happen to the Intellect if it could stand alone ; but we certainly know that, so far as its manifestations are concerned, it decays, and that the chief characteristic of such decay is a gradual loss of power. But it is not so with the Soul ; for though it may become worn, it does not become weaker. As we grow older, we may love some things less, but we love others more; for man, in passing through his seven ages, transfers his love rather than loses it : love of woman changing to love of reputation, and then to love of power, and last of all, in the " lean and slippered pantaloon," to love of gold. In our latter days the power of expression may be less, from the failure of physical strength, but the total of affection seems to remain the same. There are no vices so domineering as those of old age. It may be asked why the Soul should not, like the Body, dissolve into its constituents at death ? But even if it is conceivable that the Soul is formed of atoms, it has to be remembered that each of these atoms, unlike vi Relationship of the Persons 263 those forming the Body, receives the distinct charac- teristics of the personality, which it cannot afterwards throw off. If there must be any atomic comparison at all, it would seem that the whole Soul should be con- sidered as one such atom ; and therefore not only as indivisible, but also as indestructible. The supposition of the Soul passing into a state of endless unconsciousness, does not solve the problem, but only defers it. We have also no experience of perfect unconsciousness ; for there is always at least one sentinel faculty awake ; and sleep, which is our only type of such a state, has a physical, rather than a mental, origin. Sleep is a bodily veil drawn by the fingers of physical fatigue over the workings of the Spirit ; and we cannot expect such a veil to be drawn when the Body has been separated from the Spirit. The teachings of Science confirm those of our own experience ; for the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul is only a theological statement of one instance of the universal law of the Conservation of Force. The next point to be noticed is, that though the Soul cannot lose its Life, the possession of that Life carries with it certain conditions, two of which are of primary importance in this connection. One of these is that this Life, whilst remaining the same in quantity, may become better or worse in quality ; and the other is that, if left to itself, it naturally becomes worse, and can only be made better by the action of some external influence. We have seen how general is this deterioration of 264 From Within the Soul: and we easily understand that it is also natural, when we consider how closely the Soul is connected with the Body and Mind, both of which are doomed to deterioration. Such deterioration is more catching than any physical epidemic, and the Soul cannot escape unless it receives some antidote from without. It has also to be remembered that, in the nature of things, the Soul cannot remain still ; and so must fall, unless it is made to rise. But nothing can of itself rise above itself; and so the decline of the Soul can only be prevented by the action of some higher power. But to what should the Soul rise ? Not merely to the level of some other human being, for its immortality precludes such a stopping place. Nothing less than the highest life of all can satisfy the requirements of this immortality ; so that the Soul must be connected with an influence which can give it that life. Such an influence can only come from the source of that life ; and can only affect the personality of a human soul through the Personality in which that source is con- tained. Hence the necessity of a right relationship between the Human Soul and the Divine Personality. The Tightness of this relationship is to be measured by the readiness with which the influence imparting this higher life can reach us, and by the effects which it can produce in us. We need no terrors of future punishment, or an- ticipations of future reward, to make us realise the vi Relationship of the Persons 265 supreme importance of this relationship. It is sufficient for us that it means not only that which is ultimately the only reality left to us, namely Life ; but also whether that Life shall rise higher and higher, or fall lower and lower. It means, in fact, all that can possibly be comprised in the difference between failure and success, badness and goodness, misery and happiness. Thus the proper relationship of the Person Within to the Person Without is that which enables the Person Within to receive this Force of Immortality which can alone proceed from the Person Without. CHAPTEE VII EFFECTS OF THIS RELATIONSHIP UPON THE PERSON WITHIN WE have seen that the proper relationship of the Person Within to the Person Without must be that which best allows the life-giving influence coming and only coming from the Person Without, to reach the Person Within. Relationship is thus in this matter the first key to success ; as it must be in all such matters, for the power of any influence upon anything must always depend upon the relationship of this thing to this influence. The light and heat which can be derived from the sun by any body, depend upon its position ; the inspiration to be gained from any teacher, depends upon the nature of our contact with him ; the quantity and quality of the influence exercised over us by any power, depend upon our relationship to it. The law of effects varying inversely as the squares of distances, seems to prevail through all being. Very different would have been the present condition of the ignorant, had they been placed in another relationship to know- ledge ; or of the stupid, had they been brought into greater contact with brightness ; or of the wicked, had they felt more of the influence of virtue. CHAP, vii Effects of this Relationship 267 Thus those who are not in such a position as makes the reception of the life-giving influence possible, cannot be expected to receive it. Whether the fact of not being in such a position involves any fault or not, depends upon circumstances. To many the attainment of such a position seems impossible : though we have to remember that a position which will serve for some, will not serve for others who are in a different con- dition ; as the heat which brings animals to life at one stage, has little effect upon them at another. We find that, in manhood, the things which pleased us in boy- hood please us no more ; so we have to seek pleasure by other means : and in the same way nations in an earlier, or more backward, stage of civilisation may receive the life impetus by means which would be quite ineffective with us. Because to us now the mythology of the south seems little more than a poetical dream, and that of the north only a savage chaos, it does not follow that the Almighty may not once have blown through the " wreathed horn " of " old Triton," and smitten with the hammer of Thor. Hence in judging of those who cannot stand in the same relationship as ourselves to the Person Without, we have to bear in mind two things : one, that they may have other means of reception which are not open to us ; and the other, that our means might at present be useless to them. Therefore it can be no argument against the validity of any means now offered to us, to say that only a small proportion of the inhabitants of the globe can at present make use of them. Nor can 268 From Within CHAP. this be accepted as any excuse for our own neglect, or as any palliation of its consequences. As in growing a large number of plants of the same sort, perhaps only a few reach any one stage at the same tune, and require then the same treatment ; so only a com- paratively few human beings may simultaneously have the same spiritual necessities. But as these plants will die, if they do not at the proper time receive the proper treatment which is not only then unnecessary to the others, but might perhaps even kill them so human beings must expect to suffer if they neglect an influence necessary to themselves, even though most others cannot receive it. Their chance may yet come perhaps in some other state of being but ours will never return, any more than a wasted Spring will repeat itself. Want of power to place ourselves in a certain relationship may not be a crime, or even a misfortune ; but no escape can be found from the condemnation following want of wish ; the severity of which must be measured by the importance of what is lost. Where the offering is life, the condemnation following refusal must be death. But granting the right relationship of position, there are other considerations involved in the problem of the reception of a certain influence by one body from another. The chief of these in the present case are, the body from which the force comes, and its material surroundings ; and the body which it has to influence, and its material surroundings. vii Effects of this Relationship 269 Now the first two may be dismissed as quantities which are fixed or are, at any rate, quite beyond any influence of ours for it must be assumed that the Person Without remains always the same, and is always pouring forth His vitality, as the sun sends abroad its rays. His material surroundings may be variable, but their variations are quite outside any control of ours : the hills, and clouds, and winds, and waves ; the birds and flowers ; the beauties of nature and its terrors ; all these, and all the other phenomena through which the Supreme communicates with human beings, may change every moment, but their changes depend upon causes quite unconnected with us, and must be accepted as axioms of the problem. It is sufficient for us that none of these changes can ever stop the passage to us of this influence : the voices and tones may vary, but the language is always being uttered ; and if we do not catch its meaning, the fault must be ours. Therefore our attention must be con- fined to the last two considerations named ; which are our own material surroundings, and ourselves. How can these two affect the reception, by the Person Within, of the life-giving influence coming from the Person Without ? In the first place they can affect this reception by preventing it ; as a dirty window can check the entrance of light into a room, and one become com- pletely opaque can stop it altogether. Our circumstances may be extremely unfavourable to the reception of any influence which is not simply 270 From Within physical ; the physical may so press upon us as to elbow out everything else. Our surroundings may be so squalid and ugly, that the sense of beauty is never roused in us ; and our struggle to live may be so hard, that we have no energy or attention to spare for anything else. Or, on the other hand, everything about us may be so comfortable that we rest perfectly satisfied ; and the lack of any incentive to effort may lull us to sleep. So our circumstances may " Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur make ;" or it may be " a thumping of hammers " which drowns all other sounds. But no circumstances can master us except with our own concurrence. Often those have risen highest who started lowest, as the lark springs from its nest on the ground; and often, too, the greatest superiority to luxury has been shown by those most in the midst of it. We may so act, indeed, that circumstances are never a greater drawback to us than is a tail to a kite ; which does not hinder its rise, but only steadies its course. So we must go further in the examination of our material surroundings, and then we come to the body itself; that innermost fortress in which the Person Within is sheltered. So complete is this shelter that we sometimes find it difficult to separate the idea of this fortress from that of. its garrison ; and even when we have overcome this difficulty, we have to recognise that, at any rate, the fortress exercises a very great vii Effects of this Relationship 271 influence upon the garrison. Indeed it is almost impossible to exaggerate the power of the body over the Person Within. We seem to be so completely at the mercy of our bodies, for only through these can we hold intercourse with the material universe. Without a body, each one of us would be a sort of Eobinson Crusoe, alone upon an island of existence ; and unable to hold any com- munication with other forms of being. Everything with any physical association must approach us through our bodies ; which thus stand to the Person Within like those dignitaries at courts, through whom alone an introduction can be gained to the sovereign. But as such dignitaries may deceive their sovereign, so the body may deceive the Person Within ; and such deception generally has its origin in the same tendency to exaggerate the importance of those who are being introduced. The body is apt to teach a very excessive idea of the importance of that material world to which access must be gained through it alone ; and, as in society, each set is prone to think that it includes every one worth knowing, so the body would have us believe that only that with which it is connected can deserve any attention. And the body has much to say for its pretensions. Spirit and Matter are so like the warp and weft out of which the cloth of Life is woven in the loom of Time, that it seems impossible to conceive of anything real being left after matter is taken away. And the exigencies of animal life impress upon us 272 From Within with terrible force this immense importance of matter. We can go on living without poetry, and religion, and philosophy, but not without food, and clothing, and shelter ; the sweetest music is not heard by ears listening anxiously for the coming of a creditor ; the grandest view is not seen by eyes searching eagerly for the chance of a ineal ; the winds may pipe, but we cannot dance if our feet are weary with tramping ; the stars may shine, but we cannot gaze if we have to spend our time in looking for a bed. Almost every man we meet is like a house under whose eaves the birds of care have built their nests, and through whose windows few other sounds enter than their miserable croakings. Wherever there is a man, there is this trouble ; and it is often felt just as heavily, and produces just as dis- astrous results, in the sweet seclusion of the country as in the hurrying bustle of towns. The solitary boatman crossing the most lonely lake, has this in his boat ; the hardiest mountaineer climbing the highest peak, carries this in his knapsack. As this weight of matter rolls along, it causes far more devastation than any Car of Juggernaut crushing out hearts and hopes, as well as lives. The young often and they should always enter the struggle of life full of high enthusiasms and aims, but too many are soon dragged down by the low necessities of physical being ; and so they learn " to take the world as they find it," like the Greek musicians, who turned to boxing when the Eomans did not care for their music. And even those who do not vii Effects of this Relationship 273 realise such a complete defect, must often mourn with Faust that " The teasing world of small anxieties That each day brings, has frittered into dust All joy, until the very hope of joy Is something that the heart has ceased to feel." It is not simply that " life's poor masquerade " dissipates the world "which for itself, the lonely man's imagination builds"; but it is that every material phenomenon, whether pleasant or painful, more or less plays the part of Mephistopheles, in trying to persuade us that all other things are but idle dreams ; and in trying to make us slaves to the Spirit of the World. The surest sign that we are falling into this slavery is our ceasing to be aware of it Self-content not vice is the signal of perdition. What is called vice is, indeed, often but a protest. The poor, thin nature may have no longings which the everyday round of material life does not satisfy ; but he who has been touched by the Promethean fire of uncontent the "mute inglorious Milton," who cannot utter what is within him feels his heart being torn by the eagle of high desire, whilst he is himself chained to the rock of low necessity. It is better to fall some- times from spiritual heights, than never to know that there are such heights to climb ; and those are in the most hopeless plight who heed only the dull, low plain of what is erroneously called " matter of fact." The claims of the material world press most upon them, so they attend to no others; the realities T 274 From Within CHAP. of this world come nearest to them, so they look no further. Such a condition must be an absolute barrier to the reception of the life-giving influence by the Person Within : because this influence can only be received consciously ; and this condition is unconscious of this Person, to say nothing of this influence. Multitudes seem never to have wakened to the fact that they are themselves anything distinct from their bodies, and the material surroundings of those bodies. With such the Person Within is like a heavy sleeper, who cannot hear much less understand any words which are spoken to him. The first thing is to waken him ; and this is mostly done by some blow of sorrow, or disappointment. But even then he is only as one dazed ; and much has yet to be done before he can understand that his physical senses are but channels through which spiritual in- fluences must reach him. At present these channels are choked ; and so he is like the city of Eome when it was cut off from the mountain streams, because its aqueducts had fallen out of repair. How are these channels to be cleared ? Such a clearing must be begun by the man himself ; and such a beginning must come from a desire for the water ; for he who does not desire a thing, will not bestir himself to get it, and in such a case it will not do him any good even if he does get it. We thus have at the beginning to face what seems the insoluble problem of getting a man to desire what he does not desire. vii Effects of this Relationship 275 Our own experience may do something. For as we find that the objects of this world, when grasped, turn, like the fabled apple, into dust ; that the fruit which looked so sweet at a distance becomes, like that of the Dead Sea, ashes between our teeth ; that the comforts we have gathered, pall on us ; that the children we have reared, neglect us ; that the friends we have loved fail us ; that the hopes we have cherished, deceive us ; then we are apt to lose faith in the world, and every- thing it contains. But such a decrease of faith in one direction does not imply an increase in another, but more frequently a loss of faith altogether. Those whose trust has deceived them, are inclined to trust no more, but rather to regard trust itself as a quality not to be encouraged in this life ; as those who have been once bitten, are more than twice shy. This is the natural effect of such disappointments, which do not drive us to seek elsewhere like miners persisting after repeated failures but rather to give up the search, and lower our hopes of life itself. So, though we started out for gold, we make up our minds to put up with lead ; and settle it with ourselves that the beliefs of our early days are but like those phantoms of the desert, which would persuade the weary traveller that palms are waving, and waters are flowing, where there is, in fact, only barren sand. It may be it should be hard to reconcile our minds to the belief, that life is indeed a desert instead of a garden ; and the struggle breaks many of the best hearts ; but the rest go on, though with slower and feebler beats. Here, rather than in 276 From Within CHAP. the diminution of physical power, is the cause of that dulness which creeps over so many men after middle life ; and which turns not a few of them practically dead, long before their bodies cease to go about as usual. From this hemlock the stupor begins, not in the feet, but in the heart. Others, who are of a lower nature to begin with, are affected differently ; for disappointment makes them keen rather than sad. As the phrase goes, they make up their minds to " take the world as they find it " and so to get the most out of it for themselves. This is that " worldly wisdom " which is by many treated as the eldest, and best, child of Experience. But neither of these effects meets our present need ; which is, not that a man shall have to go without water, or to be content with that first offered, but that he shall be led to wish for, and to seek, water of a better and more satisfying kind. What can do this? Evidently nothing in the man himself, alone ; for no man can desire that of which he has no concep- tion, any more than a savage can wish for a copy of Shakespeare. Therefore in addition to the sense of the unreality of what at first seemed real, we require the conception of the reality of what should take its place. We cannot be expected to wish for any other water, unless we have first tasted it ; or at any rate been taught something about it. The water in this case is the living force coming forth from the Eternal ; and this water we cannot taste vii Effects of this Relationship 277 unless it is sent within our reach ; nor can we be taught anything about it, unless by some external kindred influence. What power can send us this water : what influence can teach us about it ? Evidently we must search for something which partakes of the nature of the Eternal, and yet which is sufficiently personified to act upon our personalities. Such a something can only be found in that third Person of the Trinity which we have called the Holy Ghost ; for this alone can satisfy the necessary con- ditions. But if this be so, a serious difficulty at once meets us ; for if a man's enlightenment or awakening or call or whatever it may be named depends upon the action upon him of this external Personality, it would seem that he should not be blamed if this Personality does not so act ; and therefore that there can be no moral responsibility in this connection. Hence the old difficulties about " Predestination " and " Election " : but these seem to disappear, if we realise that this Personality is always wanting to act upon every man ; but that such action, in each man, requires his own co-operation ; as the sun may be shining on a window, but cannot enter the room if the shutters are not opened. If we cannot ourselves apply gas in our houses, and yet refuse admission to the only man who can apply it, surely the responsibility of not having gas must depend upon us. Or if we cannot see what we should, unless certain scales are removed from our eyes ; and if we will not let the only person operate who can 278 From Within CHAP. remove them, we must ourselves bear the blame as well as the consequences of not seeing. It is the same feeling which leads us to submit to such an operation, as to entrust our bodies to any doctor ; namely, the spirit of Faith. This spirit is not merely the result of our own experience : for we cannot learn to believe in a doctor, until we have tried him; so that our belief must precede trial. Nor is such a belief merely the result of other people's experience, for in their case the same must apply ; and also Faith is needed for our acceptance of that experience. Therefore this process, of which the result is the reception of living force, cannot be begun without the feeling of Faith. Such a law seems in harmony with all physical procedure ; for every bodily action which is dictated by Will requires Faith, since Will is based upon Faith. And in physical matters, this Faith is the antecedent of experience, and not its consequent ; for there is every reason to believe that we start with boundless Faith, and that experience only gives this feeling limits and form. Our natural impulse is in everything to dash ahead; and it is only when we receive checks, that we begin to suspect limitations. Left to ourselves, we believe that all things are what they seem, and will continue as they are ; and the experience of life enlarges our knowledge by narrowing our Faith. Faith is the child of Nature ; as Doubt is the child of Experience. We must therefore expect that this will hold true vii Effects of this Relationship 279 in the realm of Spirit, as it does in that of Matter ; and every phenomenon we can observe, confirms this expecta- tion, that Faith is a primal gift to all men. Everywhere in the world this feeling shows itself, and cannot be repressed ; for it will express itself in the most absurd forms, rather than remain unexpressed: and the more grotesque the form, the more certain is the existence of the feeling. There is no race, however savage as there is none, however civilised which has not a religion of some sort ; and over which that religion does not exercise dominant power: thus proving the universal existence of Faith, for all religion must have its begin- ning in this feeling. And it seems probable that the same holds true of every single individual This feeling is uppermost with all, at the start of life ; and if we knew the truth, we should probably find that it so remains to the end. Men do not always or even generally know what they believe, and certainly not what they feel : for feelings of which we are least conscious, may exercise over us most power; as the chief organs of the body give no sensation of their working, except when they are out of order. The king may be ruling even though he is sleeping ; and any moment he may waken, and make us realise what power it is that we have been obeying all along. So it does not do to mis- take the slumbering of Faith for its death ; or to imagine that a power has vanished, because there are no outward appearances of it. Earthquakes only come at long intervals, but the volcanic force is there all the time. But so far as responsibility is concerned, it is 280 From Within CHAP. sufficient if all have this feeling of Faith, to begin with : and of this there seems no doubt ; especially when we remember that this feeling may not at the commencement be different in character when applied to religion, from what it is when applied to other subjects. Therefore we may believe that all have by nature this readiness to accept the operation of such an external influence as has been referred to. We have abundant analogies, in every direction, of our being most powerfully affected through influences coming to us from without, by no will of our own. We thus receive the gift of life ; and not unfrequently we find ourselves endowed physically with a strength which is more than the sum of our own powers. We more frequently observe this phenomenon in the regions of the mind. Flashes of genius are not merely products of past conditions ; new thoughts are not merely fresh combinations of old ones ; for then the world's stock of thought could never increase. It was not merely by turning inward those eyes which had lost all outward sight, that " the blind bard of Scio's rocky isle " saw the combats on the Trojan plain ; or that England's Puritan poet watched the contending forces of heaven and hell : it was not merely from the stores of memory, that the figures of Una and Don Quixote were pro- duced ; nor was it merely by piecing together scraps of old knowledge, that Dante created his Divine Comedy ; or that Shakespeare depicted Hamlet ; or Goethe, Faust. And each one of us has the same experience in his vii Effects of this Relationship 281 own sphere ; for we find that new thoughts will not come into our minds merely by reading our books, or cudgelling our brains. Nor, on the other hand, is success to be won merely by taking no care at all : for as there is a state of feeling called Faith necessary to the reception of the Holy Ghost, so there is a certain state of prepara- tion necessary to the reception of a new thought. It is only by using the powers and opportunities given them, that the fowls of the air are fed ; it was only the shepherds who were watching in the fields by night, who heard the proclamation of the angels. But there is, of course, this difference, that whilst the Holy Ghost is ready to act upon all, new thoughts are not ready to enter all minds. But thought of some sort will act upon all minds, unless its action is pre- vented by some causes under control, as indifference, or prejudice, or stupidity ; and so the Eternal Force will act upon all souls, unless there are impediments which may be removed. But even if this Eternal Force reaches our souls, it may not produce upon them its proper effects ; as in photography, light may reach a plate, but no picture will result if that plate is not in the proper condition. Therefore we have next to consider what are these impediments to the proper action of this Force. Without entering into details, it is sufficient here to note that there are two chief impediments to the action of this Eternal Force. One of these is the absence of all care about it ; and the other is the 282 From Within CHAP. presence of a certain general condition which prevents its operation. Indifference is necessarily a quite effectual barrier, until it is removed. The man who does not care for the influence which can be obtained alone from this Force who does not even care to know whether there is such an influence at all and who has no thought for anything beyond the material adjuncts of existence for raiment, and food, and shelter, and clothing, and for what is associated with these, as riches, and honour, and power, and praise cannot be said yet to have been spiritually born at alL We need not go further than the analogy of Nature, to learn what must be the consequence of a continuance in such a state. He who has not been born into any state, cannot be expected to share any of the experiences of that state ; as only those who have been born into this world can be supposed to feel any of its sensations. But besides missing all the advantages of that state into which he should have been born, such a man must endure all the disadvantages of that state in which he remains. The chief of these disadvantages is that whatever is associated with matter, must share its fate ; as what- ever is put in a ship, must go down if that ship sinks. Now nothing is more certain than that everything which is material must, for each one of us, give way sooner or later ; and for all of us before long. He who will not recognise this most evident fact, or will not act in ac- cordance with it, can no more complain than he who vii Effects of this Relationship 283 has lost his money, because he persisted in putting it into a bank which was certain to break. If a founda- tion gives way, everything resting upon it must go with it ; and the life which has been built solely upon matter, must share its collapse. For life has unity, as well as extension : it is not merely a series of ex- periences, but it is also a single thing in itself, distinct from these experiences ; as the phenomenon of death plainly teaches. For death is not merely the cessation of earthly experiences ; it is also the disappearance from our cognisance of something positive in itself. This something is called the Soul. We may, by watching the phenomena of death, learn something of what may be expected to be the fate of a Soul which, through indifference, has in this life associated itself entirely with what is material. Of course we can only watch the career of the material part of man, but all experience justifies the wide application of analogy to the spirit. So watching, we observe that death involves not only a change of form in matter, but also that the succeeding form is of a lower character. It seems as if, by death, matter loses that power which can alone keep it up to its level; for falling is its natural tendency. Physically we are on a treadmill, up which we must be continually climbing, if we would remain where we are ; since to stand still upon what is falling, must mean to fall with it. So we cannot help expecting that after death, the spiritual part of man must fall into lower relationships, unless it has allied itself to something which can keep it up to 284 From Within say nothing of raising it higher as a man falling down the face of a cliff, grasps at every rock and bush. Indeed, this expectation is confirmed by what we can observe of the career of the spirit whilst it is in the body. It is not seemly or reasonable for any man to judge another with reckless decisiveness ; but the body is often to the soul as a window, through which we cannot help looking ; and all such lockings confirm us in the belief, that souls invariably get worse, unless they are getting better. And instead of supposing that this process of degradation will be arrested by death, all the analogy of matter forces us to expect that it will be quickened. Much less is there any reason to suppose that after death this process will be reversed, and its effects annulled. All experience compels us to associate a certain finality with death, as with every stage of transition from one form of being to another. Nature throughout teaches us that we cannot ignore time, or go back upon it ; there is a time to sow, and if we miss that, in vain for us will come the time to reap. The twig must be bent, if the tree is to be inclined ; and however passionately we may wish it, we can never return to the possibilities of a stage of growth which has passed away. The man bitterly regrets the lost opportunities of his youth, and all the more bitterly because he is absolutely certain that he can never have them again. So in all things, there seem to be allotted to us certain seasons of opportunity, which are quite irrecoverable as soon as they have vii Effects of this Relationship 285 passed away. Nor is any equivalent ever offered to us ; or any means of fetching up, in some other way, what we have lost. It may be thought, however, that, as at death, the physical matter of the body is scattered, and loses its identity ; so the spiritual matter may be dissolved, and the spirit itself may cease to exist as a separate personality ; the unconsciousness of annihilation being the ultimate fate of all. But the phenomena of death do not justify such a supposition ; for whilst the dissolution of matter is a very gradual process, the disappearance of consciousness is instantaneous, and always con- temporary with the departure of the personality. This personality remains complete to the last, and vanishes as a whole ; and we have no reason to expect that it will go to pieces afterwards. We know, too, that whilst the matter of the body is constantly changing during life- time, the character of the soul in its essence continues the same from first to last. Since, therefore, the spirit remains one all through life, and also leaves life as one, we are compelled to believe that it will continue one. We are also compelled to believe that consciousness will continue to be one of its characteristic attributes ; for it has so been from the first, and we have no ex- perience enabling us even to think of the soul divested of this attribute. It is true that in sleep this attribute is in suspense or rather, in diminished activity but all our experience teaches that, unless sleep is of a very transient character, it must pass into death. 286 From Within CHAP. Therefore the conclusion to which we are led is that the soul will continue after death in a conscious state, as those wandering forlornly in Hades knew themselves, and each other ; also that in this state it will have to bear the consequences of having been in this life too identified with what is material, and too indifferent to what is spiritual. It is needless to speculate as to what these consequences are likely to be : it is sufficient for us to feel sure that they must be such as cannot help following our failure to have that which is of the greatest importance to us ; and without which our condition must be the reverse of what we should like it to be. Nor is it necessary to associate with such consequences any idea of specially decreed punishment. We have simply to let Nature follow its own course ; and no man can complain if he is left subject to the operation of those laws, which are the universal edicts of that matter to which he has chosen to link his own destiny. These laws all plainly declare that lost opportunities can never be recovered ; and that each succeeding state must be the result of the preceding one. If the only quenching water is offered to us, and we neglect to drink it, we cannot be surprised if we have to bear the consequences of thirst. Nature is everywhere inexorable ; and we must expect the same to hold true of the spiritual, as of the physical, life. It may seem that there is here indicated an ex- cessive punishment for a fault like neglect, which apparently has associated with it so little of moral vii Effects of this Relationship 287 iniquity. But starting from ourselves, and being guided by Nature, we cannot resist the conclusion to which we have arrived ; especially as this is completely confirmed by our experience of life in every direction. Nothing can be more certain than that neglect of the only means for obtaining anything, implies that we shall have to go without that thing; whether it is material property, or intellectual culture, or spiritual life, or whatever it is. And in regard to spiritual life, we must remember that such neglect is not natural to any man : but is opposed by all the experience to which he is subjected; and is only maintained by causes which are under his own control, and for which he is therefore responsible. It is to be feared that many continue in such a state of indifference to the end ; or at any rate to a point so near the end, that it is hard to see how any differ- ence can be made, except by supposing such a miracle as must be opposed to all the principles of Nature. The test of our condition, in reference to this indiffer- ence, must be found in the power over us of what is material. If this does not become less, as life goes on, it is not easy to believe that we are wakening to what is spiritual. He who has learned that what he thought of the first consequence, is really of very secondary importance, is certain not to continue giving it the same eager attention. We do not go on playing with toys, or dolls, when we are grown up : and so there should come a time when everything material loses its supremacy over us ; when even the beauties of Nature 288 From Within only charm us but charm us then the most for their suggestiveness, and not for themselves. "We may be first struck by the dress of a person, and may only notice that ; but if we afterwards find that this person is some longed-for friend, we shall think no more of the dress. Judged by this test, it would seem that very many become, as life goes on, more and more absorbed in matter which sucks them in like a Maelstrom. The roll of the water lulls them into a sleep, from which no touch, but that of Death, can rouse them. We must pass on from such, and notice those who have been wakened in time. These have learned that material life is an inevitable, if slow, death ; and that if they would continue to live satisfactorily, they must be connected with the source of some life which is more than material, and therefore eternal. For this source we must look to that Being in whom alone all life must have its origin ; and from whom must come such a life-giving influence as can alone revivify us. This life-giving influence must so act upon us as to impart to us its nature. But such an action implies more than the mere receipt of this influence. As a letter is of no use, if it cannot be read ; and food does us no good, if it cannot be eaten ; so this influence will not work upon us, if the conditions are not such as to furnish the necessary co- operation. The sun may give its light arid heat, but there will be no harvest unless the land has been tilled, and the seed sown ; and so the Divine Life may reach a vii Effects of this Relationship 289 man, but it cannot act upon him, unless he is in a fit condition ; any more than music can affect him who has no sensitiveness to sound. We have seen that the two chief preventives to the operation of this force are to be found in its receipt, and in its action. It may not be able to get into the man at all ; or it may not be able to do any- thing when there : as in grafting, there may be some- thing on the surface preventing junction, or something within preventing interaction. This superficial impedi- ment has been treated as Indifference, and now the other remains to be considered. As though we may take the trouble to swallow food, yet it may do us no good because we are out of order ; so it would seem likely that this life-giving influence may reach us, and yet not act upon us as it should do, because of some derangement in ourselves. Do we find any such ? To learn what should be the symptoms, we must turn again to Nature ; and there we find that the chief requisite for the action of any force upon any body is harmony. The sun cannot make the seed grow unless there is harmony, not only between the force of the sun and the nature of the seed, but also between the various circumstances of the seed itself. Heat and light will not make a marble sprout, nor will a seed sprout if sown in marble. Do we find any such want of harmony as can prevent the proper action of this life-giving force ? We must acknowledge that we do, both in the nature of U 290 From Within CHAP. the Person Within, and in its relationship to the Person Without. For we have seen that the Person Within possesses certain powers such as Memory, In- tellect, and Will which are the chief characteristics of this personality ; and the harmony of which is necessary to its proper working. But this harmony is just the most difficult thing to obtain, and to retain. We are constantly performing actions which are opposed to the teachings of our Intellect, and to the dictates of our Will ; whilst our Intellect is constantly suggesting actions which are desired by the Will, yet which are never performed. And there is also frequent discord between the Intellect and the Will : the Intellect suggests what the Will demurs to, and the Will is moved to what the Intellect condemns. There is a law in our members which is continually warring against the law in our minds, bringing us into subjection to the empire of Discord. But there is within each one of us a want of harmony of a much more serious kind even than this. For we have another faculty by which actions are dictated, and also criticised, and this is what we call Conscience. We are not here concerned with how we come by that sense of Eight and Wrong which, together with the sight of the starry heavens above, most filled the mind of Kant with wonder and awe. It is sufficient for us that we all have this sense, to begin with ; and that it is invariably accompanied with the consciousness that all our actions ought to be subjected to its control. But instead of such subjection, we find constant dis- vu Effects of this Relationship 291 obedience ; and the tendency which is the cause of this disobedience is what we call Sin. This tendency shows itself in every part of our being, and produces the most disastrous effects upon character. The existence of Sin need not be dwelt upon, for it is universally acknowledged ; only the very wicked, or very stupid, failing to recognise it : and as to the nature of Sin, the fact here to be noted is that Sin puts us out of that state of harmony with the Eternal, which is necessary to the action upon us of the life-giving force coming from the Eternal. The cause of this want of harmony resulting from Sin, lies in the fact that Sin is a violation of our sense of right ; and this sense of right is to each one of us the faculty by which we recognise the will of the Eternal. We cannot, in our thoughts, separate the sense of right from the mind of God. But it may be said that if this is true, the sense of right should in all people recognise the same commands ; which we know not to be the case. For ideas of right and wrong differ very widely ; some feeling it a most imperative duty to perform actions which others feel it an equally imperative duty to resist, or abstain from. Over the globe the temperature does not vary more than does the code of honour ; and the same holds true over the ages, for one generation feels that to be the highest duty which is soon thought foolish or abomin- able. We do not on this account suppose that the mind of the Eternal is different or variable ; but only 9 2 From Within CHAP. that this mind, like every other similar force, develops itself gradually, and in harmony with the surrounding conditions. The first necessity of such a development is that each man shall obey, at any time, that which then seems to him to be the dictate of right ; and shall also leave himself as open as he can to further learning. This sense of right cannot be out of proportion to our other faculties ; it should, however, not only keep pace with their growth, but should also lead it. The know- ledge of the will of the Eternal comes to humanity like the approach of a band of music, which at first is heard so indistinctly that we are not sure of its direction, and mistake other sounds for it ; then we hear merely the faint throbbings of the drums, and it is only after some time that we catch the tune itself, and the tones of the various instruments. We may of course be mistaken in regard to this sense of right and wrong, as to all our other faculties ; but we cannot be mistaken in following wherever it seems to lead us. The direction is not of so much consequence as the action ; for when exercise is the chief necessity, it does not so much matter on which road we take it. The harm done by occasionally going wrong, is as nothing compared with that which results from not going at all. Blunders may be got over, and no individual or nation was ever ruined by them, for even the most stupid will stumble into the right way at last ; but the mischief caused by a want of regard for the sense of right and wrong, is irremediable. vii Effects of this Relationship 293 It may be well to trace in a single individual this mischief in two directions : namely as to the actions resulting from Sin, and as to its effects upon ourselves. In both these directions the outlook is anything but cheering, for it is overhung with the clouds of Despair. If Nature emphasises one truth more than another, it is that the consequences of all actions are unalterable and eternal ; this truth is, indeed, the foundation of all Science. No sooner is an action performed than like those birds sent out from the ark, which never returned it speeds forth into the realm of being, henceforth entirely free from any control of ours, and entirely heedless of our pursuing voice. If every bullet has its billet, much more has every deed ; and in both cases the fate is fixed when the gun is fired. In the light of Nature, the only use of repentance is to prevent repetition ; for so far as the past is concerned, it can never be more than a self-deceiving dream. We can as well hope by sorrow to change the course of a shot arrow, as to alter the consequences of a finished act. The world is like a huge whispering -gallery, which carries round its circuit every word we speak ; as it feels through its mass every thing we do. Men shrink from what is called the " Doctrine of Eternal Punishment," but if we change the word " Punishment " into its scientific equivalent which is " Consequences " we recognise a law, which not only prevails throughout the universe, but is also obeyed by all men in their dealings with each other.. The man who, in a moment of hungry thoughtlessness, steals a 294 From Within CHAP. rnutton-chop, cannot be let off with a few weeks' imprisonment, however much we may wish it ; for he comes out bearing a prison -taint, which it is im- possible to wash away, either in his own life, or in that of his children. All our punishments are eternal ; not only so far as this life is concerned, but also so far as any other life can be concerned which is a natural result of this. This law of eternality holds true of everything we do, whether good or bad ; therefore it seems futile to think that Forgiveness can be any cure for Shis, except it comes from a power which can arrest consequences. The existence of such a power must transcend Nature, as its exercise must transcend Science ; we are, indeed, in the highest regions of the miraculous when we try to conceive of such a power at all. As far as our thought can Carry us, to forgive an act can never be more apart from the renewal of happy relationships than not to think of it : it is not conceivable that the Recording Angel can blot out her own handwriting ; or even that the Judge's eyes can fail to read it, except because they are filled with tears. But this law has a wider and much more searching sweep. Even if we put actions out of sight, leaving them, to Fate, and letting " the dead past bury its dead," we are still in the grip of this law ; and this grip has hold of a still more sensitive part. For not only is eternality an attribute of the outward con- sequences of our actions, but also of their inward effects ; as in every discharge there is not only the result of the vii Effects of this Relationship 295 shot, but also the recoil of the gun : and in this case, each such recoil makes a mark on the shoulder, which cannot be got rid of. For as every physical action leaves our body in a different state, so every moral action permanently affects our character. We see this law at work even in the region of thought : for every low thought we entertain, makes the reception of a lower one easier, ever afterwards ; whilst if we rise to a high thought, the possibility of rising still higher is greatly increased. Much more does this hold true where right and wrong are concerned ; for every sin makes a worse sin easier, whilst it makes the ascent to higher virtue more difficult. This is markedly shown in the case of Temptation : for every time we yield, a worse defeat is made more probable ; whilst every victory we win, greatly strengthens ourselves, and weakens our foe. So after frequent defeats, our character becomes as demoralised as that of an often-beaten army ; until at length it cannot screw up its courage to go into action at all, and life becomes a rout, instead of a battle. Hence we often find men coming to commit, without hesitation, actions which not long before they would have scorned; and to fall helplessly before temptations which formerly were powerless over them. Thus we recognise the difference between Sin, which is a state, and Sins, which are actions resulting from that state. We have seen that sins, when once com- mitted, pass completely out of our control : for though we may try to compensate evil actions by subsequent 296 From Within CHAP. good ones, we cannot forget that we could have per- formed these good ones without such a prelude ; so that we can never make the equation what it might have been. We also see that the state of Sin is one which must, in the course of Nature, inevitably keep deteri- orating ; for every day each one of us yields to some feelings which are wrong, and so increases the sum of evil effects. These effects each continue to act upon character ; so that to become worse as life goes on is the natural fate of every human being. Thus the Soul is subject to the same law as the Body : for as, after maturity, our physical organs not only decline in vigour, but also decay ; so our spiritual organs gradually lose the power for good, and fall under the dominion of disease. For Sin is really a disease ; and not only so, but it is also a disease which, like cancer or consumption, must, according to all human probability, be incurable. To all of us, as to the "soul -diseased knight" in The Faerie Queen, may the words be applied : "But yet the cause and root of all his ill, Inward corruption, and infected sin, Not purg'd nor heal'd, behind remained still, And fest'ring sore did rankle yet within." For indeed no human doctor can " Cleanse the stuffd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart." So far it would seem that the life-giving influence, even though it reaches us, must have less and less effect upon us ; for this influence requires the co-opera- vii Effects of this Relationship 297 tion of our own state ; and this state inevitably becomes less and less fit for this co-operation. Our own experience confirms this deduction : for we feel that every increase of Sin seems to separate us further from the Eternal ; or at least it thickens the veil which shrouds from us His face. And as no gift can be of proper use to us, unless we are fit for it ; so the eternal influence cannot perform its work upon us, until we are made ready for its action. We especially recognise the importance of such a preparation when we include in our view the probability that another life will follow this. We cannot escape the conviction of this probability ; for we find it im- possible to conceive of the absolute ending of anything, much less of such a thing as life. Therefore since Sin is mixed up with all our actions, and so with all our character, it follows that unless there is such a pulling-to-pieces of the character as would destroy all individual personality, this character must pass into the next life as it leaves this ; that is, diseased through and through with Sin. But this disease must bear with it the germs of further activity ; therefore the conclusion to which we are inevitably driven, both by experience and science, is that in the future we have only the possibility of personal annihilation, or personal deterioration. We are between the Scylla of destruc- tion and the Charybdis of degradation ; and there seems no channel along which we can hope to get safely through. But this is directly opposed to all our highest hopes 298 From Within CHAP. and strongest convictions ; for if there is a belief which bears us up through all the shortcomings and disappoint- ments of this life, it is that anothter life is in store for us which will be free from these defects. This belief has possessed, and possesses now, all men of all ages and conditions ; for though some nations have said little about it, this has only been because they have taken it for granted, as Churches do not naturally define creeds until they are denied. Even those who think they do not believe in individual continuity, dream of an immortality of Humanity, the chief feature of which is the elimination of the defects of this life ; so that such an elimination is in any case an integral part of the aspiration. Is this aspiration a delusion ; a Fata Morgana to which no reality corresponds ? Of course we cannot be sure that it is not ; for no finger has ever raised the curtain, which for each one of us hangs at the end of the vista of this life. Many have pretended to tell us what is behind ; but none can make us quite certain even that there is anything at all ; or that the only picture may not be, like that of the famous Greek story, the curtain itself. There are no voices reaching us from behind ; no footsteps coming back from " that bourne from which no traveller returns." Our curiosity may be so great as to drown all other feelings, so that the chief thought in dying may be of what we are going to see ; but we must possess our souls in patience, for the hand of Death alone holds the bell which can ring up the curtain. vii Effects of this Relationship 299 Yet we must believe that there is something behind, and the mystery of silence only adds to the intensity of conviction. What may be the mise-en-scne of that life to come, is really no concern of ours : but what we cannot help feeling sure is, that such a life must be ; and that everything must depend upon the part we are fitted to play therein. And common sense alone tells us that no part worth playing can be ours, unless we can be rid of these faults which so mar our performances now. We cannot bear to think of going on through eternity making such fools of ourselves as we do here. The problem which is therefore forced upon us merely by the knowledge of our own nature, and by the conviction of another life to come, and of its necessities, is that whilst our personality is preserved, it must be freed from the effects of the damage incurred in this life. We also feel that this problem must be worked out on this side of death, for only then can we conceive it possible to receive that life- giving influence which can alone preserve us from the evil effects of death. Of course we cannot limit the possibilities on the other side of that dividing line : but neither can we shut our eyes to the facts taught us on this side ; one of the chief of which is, that according to all the analogy of Nature, death must be one of those changes of which the effects are irreversible. What light does our own experience throw upon the probable solution of this problem ? Remembering that we are treating man as afflicted with a disease 300 From Within CHAP. from which he must be cured, it seems reasonable to turn to the analogy of doctoring. Now all the methods of treating disease resolve themselves into two the external, and the internal : and, indeed, the external are only remoter forms of the internal ; for no outward application can do any good unless it finds its way inwards. He who would cure erup- tions of the skin by rubbing them, unless with something meant to reach the circulation, is a quack and not a doctor. All true doctoring must work from within out- wards ; affecting the particular place through the general system. This law holds true of all living creatures, and we cannot but expect it to hold true of all life ; even of that life which, like the spiritual, though not physical in itself, is in this world so closely allied with the physical. Therefore we are not surprised to find that both these methods of treatment are applied to the soul as well as to the body. There is quackery in religion, no less than in medicine, and multitudes give them- selves over to it; in the foolish hope that by some merely outward application some creed accepted, some prayer said, some penance endured, some action per- formed, some Church obeyed they can cure an in- ward disease. But Nature is everywhere most loudly protesting against such self-deception : and no man who listens to her voice can abandon himself to such futile methods. What he requires is, that his disease must be cured; and not merely covered up, or condoned. He recognises that there is no hope for such a cure, unless his system can be cleansed from the impurity vii Effects of this Relationship 301 which is the cause of the disease ; and also that there is no hope for such a cleansing, unless the right in- fluence can be brought to bear upon his circulation. What must be the character of this influence, is dictated by the nature of the disease ; for Sin means that which is out of harmony with the character of the Divine, and it can therefore only be cured by that which is in harmony with this character. But an in- fluence might fulfil this condition, and yet not be able to affect mankind, because it could not come into the proper relationship. There is no use in giving a man medicine however potent in itself which his system will not absorb ; for Nature always rejects everything with which it cannot come into alliance. Therefore, if man's character is to be cured from disease, it can only be by something which can assimilate with this character ; as, if man's body is to be cured from disease, it can only be by something which can come into living relationship with the diseased part. The law of relationships prevails equally in the spiritual and physical portions of our being. So an influence which is to act upon mankind, must have sufficient relation- ship with humanity to assimilate with it. Thus the influence which is to succeed with us must possess two attributes at least : namely, perfec- tion, or it conld not cure us from what is imperfect ; and humanity, or it could not assimilate with what is human. Which means that this influence must be at once divine and human. And its humanity must be more than an abstract 3O2 From Within CHAP. property, for it could not thus be brought into the necessary relationship with our concrete human nature. As we have already seen, spirit cannot have com- munication with other spirit which is embodied, unless it also receives embodiment. Divinity cannot come into contact with Humanity, except through human organs. The Divine Being may, indeed, plant a certain feeling in our hearts, as the sense of right and wrong ; but such a feeling requires material circumstances to rouse it into action ; and even when active, cannot be regarded as giving direct contact with the Divine Being Himself. Such contact must come through the organs by which we are put in contact with everything else. Hence all teachers of religion who profess to have had intercourse with the Almighty, claim that they have heard some voice, or seen some form, or received some message written upon matter. But such a connection will not satisfy the present case : for we require not a transient proximity, like that of two electric poles causing a single spark ; but an assimilation, the effects of which will reach through every part of our being, since we are entirely per- meated by the disease which has to be cured. Such a complete action of Divinity upon Humanity can only come through a complete incarnation of Divinity ; and such an incarnation can only be found in that Person of the Trinity which is called The Son. Hence we must look to this Son as the means by which we are to be cured of this disease of Sin ; and we must expect this Son to operate upon our system Effects of this Relationship by cleansing it of those impurities which prevent our being properly acted upon by that life-giving influence coming from the Father. One of the first conditions of such an operation is, therefore, that we shall be placed at one with this Son, as the tree is at one with the stem upon which it has been grafted. And as after such grafting, the sap from the root flows through the tree, revivifying every particle of its substance, to the minutest fibre of a leaf and petal of a flower ; so the divine spirit from the Son flows through every artery and vein of our being, changing what was diseased and imperfect into what is healthy and perfect. Thus life conies to that which was dying ; and this life has the attribute of eternality belonging to everything coming from the source from which it is derived. And this at-one-ness between man and the Son necessarily leads to an at-one-ness between man and the Father ; because it allows the influence coming from the Father to act freely upon man. Also this at-one-ness must be initiated by the action of the Holy Ghost ; for only thus can what seem the in- superable difficulties of the first process of grafting be overcome. Thus the operation should be to join man to all the three Persons of the Trinity in a state of at-oue-ment, the chief result of which is to bring man into the state of eternal life. This process seems not only to be in harmony with the operations of Nature, but also to be absolutely dictated by them. Voltaire recognised the soundness 304 From Within of this principle when he tried to stave oft' the ad- vancing decay of old age by infusing kid's blood into his system. He only made himself ill, instead of young, however ; but the attempt failed, not because the idea itself of infusion was unsound, but because the substance chosen did not fulfil the necessary con- ditions. It is, indeed, impossible to find anything which does ; but that is because the physical con- tinuity of the body is not intended to be preserved. If it were, it is only upon this principle that we can think of the problem being worked out ; and so, since we cannot help expecting the continuity of the soul to be preserved, we cannot help also expecting that this will be the method of operation, and that something will be provided for infusion which will fulfil the necessary conditions. Hence the constant association of the idea of the shedding of blood with religion. But besides this belief as to the method of salvation, we cannot help forming certain expectations as to its manner of operation. For since the disease which has to be got rid of is Sin, the idea of Punishment is forced upon us as necessarily connected with it. All our experience of life strengthens the connection of these two ideas : which has become so complete in some minds, that they only recognise as sin that which receives punishment; making the distinction of right and wrong coincide with that of pleasure and pain that is, with that of reward and punishment. But without going so far, we can recognise the fact that, in this world, punishment always does follow sin. The vii Effects of this Relationship 305 law prevails throughout the whole of Nature, only differ- ent terms are used when moral considerations are absent. Then we simply speak of actions carrying with them their own consequences ; and it is only when these actions are morally wrong, that these consequences are considered as punishments. But the principle is the same ; and it is of universal application, though it may not be possible to trace it so completely in moral as in physical actions. If a twig is bent in a certain direction, we see that henceforth the tree is so inclined; but if a man's moral nature receives a twist, we cannot so easily trace the consequent distortions. But they follow with none the less certainty : for no wrong is ever committed without the corresponding price having to be paid ; so that we can no more think of sin with- out punishment, in the light of being, than of substance without shadow. What is sown, that and that only must be reaped. But it does not follow that he who has to reap the harvest, must be the same person who has sown the seed. On the contrary, it does not even generally happen so. The penalties of wrong-doing have always to be borne to the uttermost ; but the chief weight of the burden generally falls on other shoulders than those of the wrong-doer himself. It is the children, even to the third and fourth generation, who feel most heavily the effects of the father's misdoing : it is not the drunkard, or the knave, or the brute, who suffers most from what he does ; but it is those who have to live with him, or who cannot cut themselves loose x 306 From Within CHAP. from relationship to him. And there is this further aggravation, that the better these people are, the more keenly do they feel these consequences : for it is the innocent who are most ashamed ; the tender who are most grieved ; the sensitive who are most distressed. And the same holds true if we take communities as a whole : for not only, when one member suffers, do all the members suffer with him ; but also when one member does what he should not, or neglects to do what he should do, all the members run the risk of having to bear most of the consequences. Fevers, and all the other devastating complaints which are started by individual neglect, soon become generally spread, and often produce the worst effects amongst those who are most free from the faults out of which they originated. Nature is constantly teaching that the great law of the brotherhood of humanity prevails through every form of life ; so that he who lives to himself alone, is very likely to die ^through some one else. One fact, at any rate, is universally emphasised, and this is that the full consequences of every action have always to be borne by some one ; so that the equation between sin and punishment is constantly maintained. That is, if we take sufficiently long periods of time ; for " the wheels of God grind slowly," though "they grind exceeding small," and also with exceeding certainty. The punishment for every sin may be traced within the confines of this life, and Dante need not have passed along "the deep and vii Effects of this Relationship 307 woody way" leading to that lofty arch whose portal was the entrance to another world, in order to teach the lesson of retribution ; for in merely walking about here, his keen eye might have traced the consequences of those misdeeds for which he beheld the sufferings there. We cannot conceive of anything having an ending : so that these consequences must pass on into the next life, and may there be concentrated upon those who have committed the deeds ; but the subject restricts us to our experience here, and this amply teaches that sin means punishment, and that this is often borne by the innocent in place of the guilty. Experience also teaches that such a bearing of punishment by the innocent in place of the guilty is often the best, and, indeed, the only way of curing the sin itself. Punishment borne by those who deserve it, is but the payment of what is due according to the law of Nature ; and can accumulate nothing to the credit of the account, for the purposes of improve- ment. For, judging simply by internal effects which are what we have chiefly to look at we cannot conceive how the bearing of any punishment which has been deserved, can create any positive virtue, any more than the recovering of lost footsteps can advance us further than we were before we slipped. It takes the best of men those who least deserve punishment to make the world better in any direction ; and especially is this true of such a herculean task as the diminution of sin. And even such men seem able to do little except by a single influence ; for as certain 308 From Within CHAP. substances will only yield to one solvent, so sin seems only affected by the strange power derived from suffering borne for others. Hence Salvation of any kind can only come through Sacrifice. It is by the hard toil and anxious thought of those who themselves reap little reward, that the physical burdens of life are lightened ; it is by the midnight lamp of the eager and neglected student, that the mental darkness of the world is illumined ; it is by the labours and sufferings of those who do right, and not wrong, that the active force of sin is dissipated. Every morning there rises the great army of those who start the new day by thinking of what selfishness they can indulge, or what mischief they can perpetrate ; and if the world was left only to these, and to the punishment which they themselves receive, it would inevitably become worse and worse : but happily there also rises every morning another great army, of those whose first concern is to turn to what good they can do, or what evil they can prevent, or diminish. So each day has its own Armageddon ; and the world only improves as the forces of right gain victories over those of wrong. But, as with all battles from which any good can come, such victories must mean much shedding of blood by the victors. The political freedom which is now ours, has only been won by long struggles of our forefathers ; many of whom perished in the attempt, and none of whom lived to fully enjoy that for which they fought : and so the moral freedom after which vii Effects of this Relationship 309 the world should strive, must come from the sufferings and sacrifices of those who are already least subject to the dominion of sin. If this is what all experience teaches in regard to the general diminution of the effects of sin, much more must we expect it to hold true in regard to that destruction of Sin itself in the Person Within which, we have concluded, can only come from the Person Without, through the chief instrumentality of the Son. Hence we cannot but believe that the operations of the Son to effect this purpose will be based upon the principle of Sacrifice, and attended by the circumstances of Suffering. CHAPTEE VIII CONCLUSION IT seems well now to recapitulate the principal con- clusions which have been arrived at ; also to consider some of the objections which may be offered, either to the conclusions themselves or to the processes by which they have been obtained. It may also be well to suggest a few of the reasons why the whole subject is of primary and universal importance ; for conclusions may be true, and processes may be correct, yet neither the one nor the other may be of particular concern to any one. Truth, before it can have a right to demand our attention, must do more than prove that it is true ; for it must also be able to show that it has a distinct bearing upon ourselves, and that this bearing will be affected if such attention is not given. For example, there is no call for an engineer to know all those truths about agriculture which should be the concern of a farmer ; nor is there any call for every one to under- stand the truth about those forces which, like that of gravitation, may affect all, yet the effects of which are not influenced by our knowledge or ignorance. Action, not Knowledge, is the chief end of life ; and there are CHAP, vni Conclusion 3 1 1 few people more useless than those who spend their time in trying to know something about everything. Therefore, the subject of this chapter naturally divides itself into the three portions of Eecapitulation, Objections, and Claims. And first, as to Eecapitulation, starting with the assumption that man has a necessity for a Eeligion of some sort or other, we saw that this necessity may show itself either, like that of an infant for food, in connec- tion with an external provision unattended by conscious knowledge; or, bike that of a man for something higher, as an internal want leading to the search for an external satisfaction. It seems reasonable to believe that, in re- gard to Eeligion, both these processes are in operation ; so that not only within man there is a conscious want, but also without him there is a provision to meet that want. Hence the subject of Eeligion may be approached in two directions ; for we may begin by considering the character either of the external provision or of the in- ternal want. The first method is that which is adopted and properly adopted by all Churches ; whilst the second is that with which we have here been exclusively concerned. This second method has the important re- commendation that it should furnish a means of testing the various provisions offered by such Churches ; for that Eeligion seems likely to be the truest which best meets the chief necessities of human nature. At any rate, this method should be valuable, if only because our belief in the Eeligion which we were already most inclined to accept, must be strengthened if we find that 312 From Within CHAP. this Religion seems best able to satisfy the necessities which we feel in ourselves. Therefore our first business must be to ascertain what these necessities are ; and in this search each man must begin by trying to understand what is this Self from which he starts, and why he believes that it exists as a Person. In this effort he is soon made to feel that the problem is not so simple as he probably imagined ; for, in the beginning, this Self seems to elude his grasp as a will-o'-the-wisp being chased in the woods : he cannot separate it from that in which it is embodied " But as he grows, he gathers much, And learns the use of ' I ' and ' me,' And finds ' I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch.' " So he is led to the conclusion that his belief in the existence of this Self as a Person is only an inference from certain phenomena. Here the natural instinct of belief cannot help taking a further step ; for if these phenomena justify this in- ference in regard to any particular individual, and to all the individuals constituting the human race, it is impos- sible to resist the conclusion that wherever they are found they must also justify and even necessitate a similar inference. Therefore, if our belief that the matter of each individual body contains a person, depends upon the presence of certain phenomena in the matter of that body ; it would seem that the presence of these same phenomena in the matter of the external universe, must necessitate the belief that this matter also contains a person. VIII Conclusion 3 1 We have also found ourselves led to expect that the nature of this External Person must be threefold ; consisting of Three Persons, each one of which is dis- tinct, yet all of which constitute One Person. Also speculation as to the probable nature of each of these Three Persons has led us to believe that we are compelled to think of the first as an originating Father ; and of the second as an appearing Son ; and of the third as an abiding Spirit. Also, consideration of the probable functions of each of these Persons in relation to humanity has led us to expect that the chief office of the Second must be to bring humanity into the right relationship to the First ; and that the chief office of the Third must be to encourage and preserve this relationship. We found, too, that the chief obstacle to such a relationship lies in a certain disease of humanity called Sin which prevents the proper action both of external influences and of internal forces. We also found that we can only expect this disease to be cured by some supreme influence coming from without, which must act through the Incarnated Supreme that is, through the Second Person and must act by the principles of Suffering and Self-sacrifice. Hence the conclusion at which we have arrived is that the religion which can be expected to adequately satisfy the radical wants of human nature, must be based upon the three principles of a Personal God, a Trinity, and an Atonement. Next, we have to turn to a few of the principal 314 From Within CHAP. Objections which may be offered, either to the method by which these conclusions have been arrived at, or to the conclusions themselves. Objections to the method may refer either to the method itself, or to the way in which it has been carried out As to the method itself, it may be said that it does not afford anything which can be strictly called proof; so that, at best, the arguments are but assumptions, and the conclusions but surmises. All this may be acknowledged without invalidating the claims of the method itself ; for it may be doubted whether any truth of importance is ever reached by any method which can rightly claim the name of proof. There is a good deal of assumption in every truth even in those which seem the most certain. We cannot proceed with any of the demonstrations of Euclid unless we first accept the axioms ; and these axioms would be seen to contain all the possible pro- positions, if only we could realise their import. "What is called Logic is at best only like the mere cracking of nuts to see what they contain ; for it cannot itself give us anything, since its conclusions are always involved in its premises. The model demonstration in the old books is a good case in point : for it started by assum- ing that all swans are white ; and then, from the fact that a particular bird was a swan, clearly proved that it must therefore be white ; which was perfectly good logic, the only fault being that the major premiss was upset by the discovery of swans which were black. vin Conclusion 315 So one of the premises always assumes the conclusion which it is the object to prove; and Logic cannot give us anything really new, but only new views of old truths. Likewise in the process of attaining what are called scientific truths, it is assumption, and not proof, which plays the principal part. Instance after instance of a certain fact is observed ; next we jump to the assump- tion that this fact is a law, and then we proceed to test this assumption by subsequent experience. But the law takes its rise in the assumption ; like a goddess, it is born from no earthly parentage of fact. The same holds true of all proof which can strictly claim to be such ; for it can never do more than make known to us the range of that which we have pre- viously accepted. Strict proof is only like the un- packing of a box which we have received to see what it contains, but it can never itself give us such a box. Such gifts can only come to us through another process, which may be most accurately called Anticipation. We see this strikingly in regard not only to scien- tific truths, but also to those great moral principles which are the very staple of life. These principles cannot be clearly proved; indeed, if they could, we should become suspicious of them, for that which is very simple, is generally either not true, or not im- portant. Men's lives are all lived on the basis of certain axioms, which differ in every age and nation ; since each generation both adds something to the stock, and takes something from it. And if we examine this stock at any particular time, we find that all its 316 From Within chief elements have sprung from surmise, and that none of them can be made to rest entirely upon proof. Especially is this so when we take men collectively ; for then we see them moved, again and again, by im- pulses which they call beliefs, but which have no complete foundation of proof. History has, in all ages, been chiefly moulded by these movements. Such were the swarmings of the early races from their Aryan home ; and the incursions of the Goths into Italy ; and the Mahommedan invasions ; and the Crusading wars ; and the Eeformation enthusiasm : such, too, is the present buoyant and unquestioning faith of the New "World in material development. The impetus in all cases is to be found rather in some over-mastering im- pulse, than in any deliberate and reasoned-out conviction. Such an impulse, when wedded, it may be, to a single fact, gives birth, just at a fit moment, to a dominating anticipation ; and by this men are carried away, to be pulled up only when they find themselves swept against conflicting facts. Fact and Proof play their chief part, not in originating, but in checking and guiding, action. So we must expect it to be with Keligion, which is the normal master-force of the world. For in this, as in all subjects, man has only two ways of getting at Knowledge : he must receive it from without, or reach it from within. And that which is received from without, can only be assimilated if there has been the necessary preparation within ; so that in all cases the beginning must be found in some internal process ; and the chief element of such a process must be found in Anticipation rather than in Proof. vi ii Conclusion 317 In this respect Eeligion and Science are upon the same footing. In both the first stage must be anticipa- tion ; hence the poet plays in Science the part which, in religion, belongs to the prophet. For the great inductions of Science are not made by mere observers, or arguers, but by those endowed with that poetic vision which can see unity behind variety ; that faculty divine which can hear harmony through diversity. Observation collects the material out of which Eeason builds the steps, but it is Insight that is Anticipation which passes up them to the empyrean heights of Truth. In an age like ours there is a danger that the faculty of generalisation may be depressed, and even diminished, by the excessive mass of observations. Its action may, indeed, be thus stopped altogether ; as the road to a Science of Weather seems now to be hope- lessly choked by the vast and disorderly accumulation of data. Thus as men gather books which they cannot read, and pictures which they cannot see, until they pile them up across the windows, and shut out the light ; in like manner Humanity may be so heaped round with mere facts, that it can be reached by no new rays of truth. Hence scientific knowledge may stop the carrying forward of Science ; for Anticipation, in whose hands it must be borne, cannot pass on if her feet are shod with the iron of fact, instead of having on their heels the wings of fancy. Hence we can account for the great difficulty we often find in getting our Eeligion accepted by others : for we offer it to them as completely as we can, and 318 From Within we cannot doubt that it is much better than anything they already possess, yet they obstinately refuse to listen to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. The reason is to be found not in the religion, nor in us, but in themselves. And as music is not cared for by those who have no ear, or no training ; so a Eeligion may be neglected by those who do not feel the wants it satisfies, or not in a degree requiring that satisfaction. In such a case, our Eeligion may do more harm than good : for not only must men have felt hunger before they will put themselves out for a meal, but also a heavy meal may disorder those who take it without appetite. Science and Eeligion thus so far agree, that in every fresh stage, anticipation must precede realisation ; for there must be a certain internal process, before we can receive a new faith, or reach a new truth. The system of Science requires, however, for its completion another process, namely that of Verification ; by which the principles arrived at by Anticipation are tested and applied. This process is in Eeligion chiefly performed by Eevelation ; which both satisfies the wants, and realises the expectations, felt by human nature. Of course Eevelation should do more than this : for it cannot be entitled to the name unless it can also itself rouse desires of which there had previously been no feeling, and reveal facts of which there had previously been no conception. It is this last function of Eevelation which places Eeligion so far above all other kinds of Knowledge ; but from this function we Conclusion 3 1 9 are precluded by the limits of our subject. These limits should not, however, derogate from this subject, as far as it goes ; for it should surely strengthen the certainty of Eeligion, to find that Anticipation has previously been ignorantly worshipping that God whom Eevelation has made known. Nor should it lessen the value of this process of Anticipation to acknowledge that its results are as incapable of absolute proof, by themselves, when they relate to Eeligion, as when they relate to any other subject. But another objection which may be made to the method itself is that it is irreverent. Some may be shocked by the mere taking up of a position which seems to imply that we can, simply by our own efforts, discern that which is admittedly past man's under- standing. This charge would be just if it was pre- tended that from such a position alone complete Knowledge could be gained ; and disaster might be expected from such an attempt to look with mere human eyes upon the face of the Infinite, as Semele was consumed by seeing Zeus in the full attributes of divinity. But it surely is not irreverent to consider everything which may suggest or help to confirm the suggestion that there is such an Infinite. We may be justified in using our faculties to infer that some person is in a room, even though we are sure that we can never quite know what he is like until he opens the door. Because we cannot find out the Almighty to perfection, that is no reason why we should not feel after Him, if haply we may find Him, in some degree : ,2O From Within we may gaze at the statue of Sais, and form our own ideas of its features, without being guilty of the impiety of trying to lift the veil. Those are most strongly condemned who have eyes, but see not, and ears, but hear not ; that is, who do not keep their eyes open for what they may see, and their ears for what they may hear. If impossibility of perfect success justified absten- tion from effort, nothing valuable would ever be accom- plished. Even conceit is better than cowardice : for he who is mistaken in thinking that he can get up ten thousand feet, may yet rise half that distance ; whereas he who has no opinion at all, may never begin to climb. Even the fact that this Infinite has revealed Himself, cannot do away with the advantage of seek- ing Him with our natural faculties. For it may be doubted if Knowledge of any valuable sort ever comes to us unless we meet it half way, and so anticipate it before we receive it. Especially does this seem true in regard to religion ; for thousands of years were allowed to elapse before certain events were brought about, which were necessary to the completion of an ideal : and this not because Humanity was not requiring these events, but because it was not ready for them. Even Eevelation must " know the season when to take occasion by the hand ;" and such occasion must include the anticipation and desire of Humanity. Nor can these be dispensed with when the Eevelation has been made : for a Eevelation is more than an act ; it is also a process, requiring for its operation the continuance of those conditions which made the act Conclusion 321 first possible. A Revelation is not merely the making known of certain facts, but it is also the bringing into play of certain forces ; so that the other forces must be present with which these have to co-operate. Food cannot serve its proper purpose unless preceded by an appetite. So far as reverence is concerned, we have to keep constantly in mind that language is a very poor instrument with which to handle such a subject as Religion ; for at best " speech is but the broken light upon the depth of the unspoken." Such words as " Person," " Trinity," " Incarnation," " Atonement," must at least half conceal, if even they half reveal, the truth within : and truth of any sort is like that point of infinity where parallel lines would meet, but which they can never reach. When we see how impossible are the attainment and expression of complete truth in regard to very simple facts and feelings, we can under- stand, and allow for, the limitations of this sort under which we must work in connection with such a subject as Religion. He who in controversy uses the terms of Religion too positively, is like a man striking another with a pistol which he does not know is loaded, but which may go off and shoot himself. But dismissing the objections, both to the method itself and to the manner in which it has been here carried out, we must next consider a few of those which may be offered against some of the conclusions put forward. As to the reception of new life by the human soul being only possible through some contact with the Y 322 From Within CHAP. divine soul ; it may be said that, according to the analogy of Nature, such a contact ought to cause the generation of a new soul, and not the quickening of a soul previously existing. But the distinction between newness and change is not so great as appears at first : for, even physically, a new person is chiefly a repetition of those who have gone before ; and the newness con- sists simply in some change upon this : so, as the meal which has been leavened may be said to be new meal, compared with the same meal before it underwent that process ; in like manner a. human soul which has been quickened by contact with the divine, may be considered a new soul. Physical birth is but the quickening of old matter ; and so the quickening of spiritual matter may be considered a new birth, whilst it is at the same time a continuance of a previous existence. But if such a quickening is necessary to immortality, it would seem that the souls which are not thus quickened must die ; so that immortality can only be a conditional attribute of the soul. It may, however, be granted that immortality of a certain kind can only be obtained in a certain way, without its being necessary to believe that the only possible alternative must be the loss of immortality altogether. It is enough for us, that only by being brought into a certain state, can we hope to receive all that is desirable ; and that otherwise we can only expect the reverse. We may call such recep- tion Life, and the want of it Death, without introducing any idea of annihilation, or of the absence of suffering. Here only desirable immortality has been considered ; Conclusion 323 and it has been concluded that such an immortality can only be expected from some connection with a source of higher life. But the reverse of such higher life may not be the absence of immortality altogether ; for lower life may be equally immortal. Indeed, this is suggested by our experience of matter ; for there death is often accompanied by an increased presence of vitality. Soon after the great change has occurred, each single body becomes a city of inhabitants : so that there seem to be two kinds of quickening ; the one to a higher life, and the other to a lower. Physical death is also generally associated with suffering ; so that it is not unnatural for us to continue the idea of such an association, in the absence of any influence which can be expected to cancel it, and to induce a higher form of life. As to the Incarnation, it may be said that the point of view here taken shuts out the idea of the Pre- existence of the Second Person. It is, indeed, difficult to understand how an incarnated person can have existed as such before his incarnation : but this person may always have existed as a spirit ; and not only so, but also as a spirit conditioned by the inten- tion of his incarnation, though as yet not conditioned by the fact. Such a conditioning by intention would make this Person different from the unconditioned Supreme, though being substantially the same. In this sense, then, two Persons would have had separate existences from the moment that there was conceived the intention of this Incarnation. 324 From Within But to pass over such detail objections, there is one, affecting the whole matter, which must receive attention. This is that if humanity is able, simply by working from itself, to reach such an anticipation of the realities of religion, it is surely reasonable to believe that this anticipation must have been reached by others than those who accept the religion conform- ing to it. It may be that only a few will yet have performed the complete process : but we should certainly expect to find portions of this anticipation in every religion associated with any power of thought ; and that the development of this anticipation will be proportionate to the development of thought. Do we find that this is the case ? We cannot answer this question unless we are prepared to do justice to all religions. It may simplify some of the most difficult problems of life to start with the assumption that our own religion contains nothing but what is true, and all others nothing but what is false ; dividing humanity into the two classes of those who are all right, because they agree with us, and those who are all wrong, because they differ from us. Such a tendency is very human ; for in every language the original word for those who do not belong to the nation, carries with it the idea of barbarism, as, for example, in the ancient Greek and in the modern Chinese ; and this tendency is especially strong when religion is concerned. But as it is hopeless to under- stand people, unless we begin by sympathising with them ; so we cannot do justice to a religion, unless we Conclusion 325 approach it in a just and appreciative attitude. People do not show their character to those whose only feeling towards them is one of dislike ; and it is only when we look at a religion with the proper spirit, that we can see its real meaning, like words written in ink which is invisible until it is placed before a fire. The warmth of sympathy can alone bring out the meaning of a religion ; as the Egyptian Memnon only gave forth music when touched by the rays of the sun. When we thus look at the religions of the world both in the past and present we soon begin to see in all of them some traces of that anticipation for which we are in search. For these various religions seem like the boys in a class which is being questioned ; and some answ r er one question, and some another, so that amongst them they pretty well answer all. For we can scarcely turn to any religion in which we do not find some foreshadowings of the anticipa- tion of Christianity ; and in some this anticipation is almost completely bodied forth. Thus the idea of a Supreme Person, who is God, is found in all religions ; even in those which seem to teach a plurality of deities. For as Socrates, whilst conforming to the mythology of his countrymen, always used the singular number when speaking quite seriously of the deity; so, under every religion which teaches a plurality of gods, there runs the assumption of some one Supreme Person who is above, and behind, all. In judging of even the most flagrant forms of idolatry, we have to remember at least two things : one, that such idolaters 326 From Within are not likely to be able to make themselves sufficiently understood for us to do them justice ; and the other, that great allowances must be made on account of the universal passion of humanity for personifying its ideals. This passion is stronger as culture is weaker ; and since we are ourselves so far subject to it that we cannot think of the Eternal except in association with a human form, we need not wonder if others thus embody every partial conception. For all such conceptions, if true at all, can be at best only very partial. The views of the Eternal seem like those taken of a mountain from different sides ; to some it seems a sheer precipice, and to others only a gentle slope, whilst the general impression of its height may be to all about the same. So the Brahmins see the Eternal chiefly as Eepose, and the Buddhists as Intelligence, and the Persians as Light, and others as Strength : but all of them recognise that there are other qualities besides the one which principally at- tracts their attention. All of them, too, and the followers of every religion, seem to be conscious even though they may not all make confession of a Single Personality possessing all the attributes to be worshipped. How potent this conception may be is shown by the career of Mohammedanism ; which re- ceived such marvellous strength because it re-emphasised that unity, of which Christianity had lost the force amongst a multitude of secondary devotions. This anticipation of the existence of One Supreme Person is not only to be traced in some degree in all vin Conclusion 327 religions, but also these traces become increasingly strong, until they almost completely foreshadow Revela- tion. The general course seems to be for this Supreme Person when once fully conceived in outline to be regarded chiefly as a Creator ; and it is only quite late that the conception of a Father begins to show itself. Indeed, this conception seems to have been unable to be fully born without the help of Revelation ; for we only find it properly developed amongst the Semitic people. We see these two ideas of Creator and Father brought well into comparison in the Assur of the Babylonians and the Jehovah of the Jews. But perhaps it is not so much a matter of comparison as of addition ; the Jews, adding the conception of Father to that of Creator, rather than replacing one by the other. So the idea of the Eternal comes gradually into view, like a ship appearing on the horizon ; first the flag, then the sails, and last of all the hull. But we find, amongst the various religions of the world, anticipations not only of the character of The Supreme, but also of His nature. As these bespeak a more analytical process, we should only expect the traces of this process to appear in company with a considerable degree of cultivation. Thus we find suggestions that the nature of The Supreme must be triune, in the threefold division of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva ; also in that of Buddha, Dhama, and Sanga. But even idolatry seems to show faint foreshadowings of this doctrine ; for in all its forms there is the under- lying idea of an originating power, and of this power 328 From Within manifesting itself in certain forms, and of its operating through these forms, or otherwise. The anticipations become much more numerous and marked when we come to the doctrine of the Incarna- tion. For even idolatry testifies that the initial principle has a universal hold upon human nature. Mankind is always trying to embody its ideals ; and the desire for such embodiment is, indeed, the motive force of all civilised development. The ideal of the painter struggles to express itself through form and colour ; that of the orator and poet, through language ; that of the sculptor, through marble ; that of the archi- tect, through wood and stone ; that of the mechanic, through iron ; whilst that of the worshipper, in its earlier stages, has recourse to idols, and in its later ones, to ceremonies and symbols. But if all such partial ideals are always thus seek- ing utterance, much more must humanity desire an embodiment of that ideal which generates and in- cludes them all. For painters, and poets, and sculptors, and architects, and the rest, are not so much separate classes of workers, as fellow -strugglers in the effort to express the one great aspiration of humanity. Like musicians in an orchestra, each may produce sounds which, taken by themselves, are always fragmentary, and often meaningless ; but all of which derive their value from being "parts of one stupendous whole." This " whole " is the spirit which we are sure is be- hind matter, and which we all long to be made to feel. If no more is given than is apparent to the physical Conclusion 329 senses, the painter becomes a photographer ; and the sculptor, a modeller ; and the orator, a speaker ; and the singer, a music teacher ; for genius only comes in when the Invisible is made to appear through the visible, like the beautiful face of an Eastern maid through the covering veil. And this Invisible is felt to be One, of which colour, and form, and words, and tones are but different means of expression. Hence were it not for the physical limitations of life, the painter might turn orator, and the poet, sculptor ; so each man in his time playing many parts, in the great drama revealing the Infinite to Humanity. Not only must we long to feel this Infinite, but also to know Him : and such knowledge can never be satisfactory until it finds Him a Person ; for it is personality which gives the chief value to life. As, with a friend, we do not care so much to see his house, or learn his thoughts, or feel his affection, but what we most of all want is to know the man himself ; so humanity could never rest satisfied until it had found the personality of the Infinite. Without this, the universe must be more lonely than the empty house of a friend ; and its sounds more disheartening than the voice of that friend, if we could never see his face. Hence mankind has always been struggling to find better embodiments of the Supreme ; and has never lost the feeling that the time must come when that Supreme would make Himself fully known. So, as we look over the religions of the world, we see this anticipation grow- ing and growing, like the coming of day as watched from 330 From Within CHAP. some mountain top. For first we have the faint streaks of simple idolatry; then the cold gray dawn of re- presentation sometimes uncouth, but always dignified like that of Assyria and Egypt : followed by the rosy tints of the Greek mythology, which anticipated the Christian Incarnation by deifying the human form; and which in the far east had its fellowship in the conception of Buddha as glorified man. So it needed no special gift of prophecy to foretell that humanity would never rest satisfied until it had received that to which all its efforts were pointing; namely an adequate embodiment, which should combine the perfectly divine with the perfectly human. We find more than anticipation when we turn to the great fact of Sin ; and to the great law of Atone- ment by which alone that fact can be reconciled with the principles of an orderly universe. It seems safe to say that there probably never has been a man on this earth, endowed with ordinary sense, who has not sometimes felt that he did what he ought not to do ; and that there was within him a tendency to feel, and think, and act, contrary to the dictates of his truest judgment. This is, indeed, the very foundation of religious interest ; for all attention to religion must be a mere waste of time, unless a man feels that he is not what he wants to be, and that he needs something to make him so. The fact of Sin has always been universally re- cognised ; and in this recognition alone there is endless material for reflection. Why should man be VIII Conclusion 331 for ever dogged by this feeling of dissatisfaction ? No other animal seems to be so pursued ; for cows, and horses, and birds, and all the other creatures in the world, are perfectly contented if their physical con- dition and surroundings are satisfactory : no line of remorse shows itself in their features ; no seeking for duty can be traced in their actions. The dog which is properly fed, goes on sleeping before the fire, with- out the faintest suspicion of wasted time, or lost opportunities ; without the slightest feeling of any- thing to be done which it is not physically compelled to do. But man is ceaselessly haunted by the most miserable sensations of failure ; every day and almost every hour voices are sounding in his ears, telling of things done which ought not to have been done, and of things left undone which it was his duty to do. And even if he can soothe himself into the belief that some power of forgiveness may blot out his sins of commission, he cannot get rid of the conviction that " Before man parted for this earthly strand, While yet upon the verge of heaven he stood, God put a heap of letters in his hand, And bade him make of them what word he could. " But oh ! an inextinguishable sense Haunts him that he has not made what he should ; That he has still, though old, to recommence, Since he has not yet found the word God would." And what is still more remarkable is, that this feeling of uncontent grows stronger as men become better. The coarse, and careless, and conceited seem 33 2 From Within to be seldom troubled with it, whilst the thoroughly bad do not behave as if they ever had it at all. But as men heed it, it becomes more intense ; so that souls seem like xEolian harps, which give forth more music as they are more tightly strung. The boor, who has never moved far from his native village, has no desire for the delights of travel ; for only he who has some idea of the distant beauties of the world, feels the incessant longing to see more of them, and the incessant regret that he has missed so much. So only those who have caught glimpses of the beautiful mountains of Innocence, are able to realise the ugliness of the misty plains of Sin. Hence Sin resembles a bodily disease, in that its most fatal forms, like those of the heart and lungs, are generally least felt ; and it is unlike in that, as we are getting better, we feel worse. In these two facts lie the suggestions for its cure : since only the best can make the required efforts, as they alone feel the disease with sufficient acuteness ; and these are they who necessarily suffer most. Yet they of course deserve to suffer least : so that all cure must be vicarious ; and the highest cure of all must involve the idea of the acutest suffering being endured where none whatever is deserved. This does not interfere at all with the action of punitive suffering, and refers only to that which is remedial. All Eeligions have more or less recognised these truths, and so have anticipated the principles of the Christian Atonement. Idolatry has always been ac- Conclusion 333 companied by sacrifice, from the banks of the Ganges to those of the Thames ; for there is the same idea in the Car of Juggernaut as in the wicker pyramid of the Druids. The fable that the welfare of the city of Athens could only be preserved by the periodical sacrifice, to a threatening monster, of an innocent maiden, is true to the radical instinct of human nature ; so also is the Persian doctrine of the conflict of Orrnuzd with Ahriman : and the Hindoo dream of a new birth foreshadows the Christian promise of salvation. In every religion, including the Jewish with its scapegoat, there is to be found the idea of the innocent suffering for the sake of the guilty. This idea finds expression in the general belief that somehow the mediation of holy and ascetic men can prevail against the power and effects of sin. There is no nation amongst which such men or those who are believed to be such do not gain great spiritual power ; for humanity seems to have by instinct a rooted conviction that holiness, combined with suffering, must approach most nearly to the divine. Hence Christianity, in these respects, only realises that which humanity had all along been anticipating ; and is anticipating now where Chris- tianity has not been accepted. But Christianity goes further than any natural anticipation, because it offers the means, not only of annulling the effects of Sin, but also of raising the sinner to a higher state than any in which he could have existed before. And this is surely what we all 334 From Within CHAP. most desire ; for it is not enough that we should be let off from punishment we have deserved, or that we should be put back to where we were before we sinned. Ambition must always remain the strongest motive force of humanity ; and is only to be con- demned, when it impels in wrong directions. Moving rightly, it makes men long, most of all, to be better : to be purified as well as forgiven ; to be strengthened as well as cured ; to taste a new life, as well as to be spared from death. This longing, which has its root, not in any selfish wish to escape a deserved whipping, or to secure the most luxurious enjoyments, but simply in the natural instinct of growth ; is met and alone met by the Christian doctrine of Atone- ment, which offers not only the cure of the present state of existence, but also the infusion of a new and higher life. Hence no religion has ever taught that life ended with earthly existence. Many religions have said little on the subject ; and most have had very gloomy ideas of the immediate future after death ; representing the disembodied souls as wandering in some comfort- less region, awaiting their final fate. But there has always been the accompanying belief that this fate might for some be happy, and must for all be con- tinuous. So the idea associated with death has been more or less that of saying " good-night " to a friend, who is passing out into the darkness, but who is expected to reach at last the brightness of his own home. Conclusion 335 Much more might be said to show that anticipa- tions of some of the leading doctrines of Christianity are to be traced in all religions ; and that in many religions there are to be found anticipations of all these doctrines : but enough has been said to suggest that such anticipations are the natural outcome of human nature. This suggestion is strengthened by the fact that these anticipations are more numerous, and more fully defined, in proportion as religions are more highly developed. It cannot militate against this conclusion that it may be objected to by most of the adherents of the different religions ; who will indignantly deny that there can be even so much in common between their own and other religions. It must be remembered that most people do not know what they themselves believe, much less what is the belief of others ; also that men become, by birth, or temperament, or accident, ranged in parties without understanding the significance of their professions ; as well as that those generally agree most in reality, who quarrel most amongst themselves. For the apparent paradox is true as a matter of fact, that men disagree most when they differ least. It is as useless to try to argue with those with whom we have no common premises, as it would be to try to fight with a being in another planet ; for men must be within striking distance of each other before they can have a battle. Hence dis- agreements become more intense, as differences become more defined ; and it is quite natural that a Julian 336 From Within CHAP. who cared for none of those things should calmly look on, whilst those who differed only about one or two points, were ready to tear each other to pieces. But if we grant that it is natural for humanity to develop an anticipation of some of the doctrines of religion, even though this be sometimes little more than a feeling preluding a Revelation like that strange sense of stillness going before an earthquake ; we may still ask whether there is any reason why we should particularly heed such an anticipation. There are many truths which have no valid claim upon our attention ; so that much less need we trouble our- selves about the anticipation of such truths. And even if the truths themselves are of primary im- portance, it does not follow that such importance must belong to any anticipations of them. It may be said that an anticipation can be left to take care of itself, until it has become a fact. In regard to many most important matters, we thus pass over the obligation to think definitely. For example, we do not feel called upon to settle it with ourselves as to what is the probable career of the body after death. We have certain ideas, which hardly amount to beliefs ; and we make no attempt to reconcile these with known facts. We are content with the same vagueness even so far as the soul is concerned ; for mourners continually use, at the same time, language implying that the soul of the departed has gone at once to its final abode, and that the judgment-day will not come until the end of the world. Conclusion 337 If we may be thus loose in regard to what we consider beliefs, surely we are not bound to attend to what are, at most, mere anticipations. This contention must be considered valid unless it can be shown that these anticipations are of vital con- cern to us. That they can be of such concern, must depend upon two things : namely, whether these anticipations are necessary to the proper reception of the truths ; and whether the truths themselves are of vital concern. We have already concluded that the nature of Eeligion is such that a Revelation cannot be assimi- lated unless it has been anticipated. Anticipation has thus gone before Revelation, all along the path of the History of Religion, like a herald proclaiming the coming of a king. It was only amongst the people who were looking for a Messiah, that Christianity was consummated ; the star in the East was only seen by those who were watching ; the proclamation of the angels was only heard by those who were listening. But passing to the truths themselves, it may be asked whether these are of sufficient importance to make attention to them imperative upon all. What is to be the test of such importance ? It might be said that these truths are of vital importance to all, because only through their accept- ance can entrance be gained into heaven. But the limits of the subject exclude such a consideration ; for we are confined to what has been, and is ; and cannot concern ourselves with what may be. The future z 338 From Within must be left to take care of itself, as the fruit is left to grow on a tree. And there is great relief in being spared those considerations, which are so apt to de- generate into a selfishness quite alien to the radical principles of Christianity. It is not easy to care much for a religion whose chief motive is getting into heaven : for that may be only an extension of the vulgar greed, which is always trying to gain all it can for itself; and which may be none the less greed, because it makes investments at very long dates. The key -word of Christianity seems to be " Giving " not " Getting " ; and its founder scorned to attract followers by tempting descriptions of the life to come : indeed, except for a few significant words of warning, He rigidly kept His lips closed on the subject. His followers, therefore, may fitly try to imitate His example, by refusing to descend to any sort of spiritual bribery. There is much to admire in the dying wish of Cavour that those around his bed should pray, not for him, but for Italy. Of course we cannot help taking into account the desire for immortality, any more than we can help "Feeling through all this fleshly dress, Bright shoots of everlastingness." But our chief concern must be as to the soil in which these shoots are growing, and the conditions by which they are surrounded. Much of the im- portance of Eeligion may be due to its influence upon immortality ; but the particular form which Conclusion 339 that immortality is likely to take, cannot be included in the consideration. Neither can the pleasure which is here derived from Eeligion be urged as one of the principal tests of its importance. No doubt the chief strength for the endurance of trial, and disappointment, and difficulty, comes from Religion ; as well as the chief joy which can make life hopeful and happy : but the fact that men are so helped by a Religion, is no proof that it is true. For this kind of help is obtained, in some degree at least, from all Religions : and it seems clear that every human being has a certain capacity for religious emotion, which can be brought into action by beliefs which are not true ; as there is a certain capacity for other kinds of emotion, which can be roused by objects which are not worthy. So the emotion of Love in its special form seems to be often like the water of a shower-bath, which will descend upon the head of the first man who steps in and pulls the string, however unfit he may be. Thus each human being so far resembles a musical-box that the sweet notes of Religion are always ready to sound ; and if no true Religion is at hand, the fingers of one that is mostly false may be able to move the starting peg. So neither the pleasure to be derived here from Religion, nor that to be promised by it hereafter, can be accepted as the chief tests of its importance : our consideration being limited to its effects upon character ; and immortality only being concerned in relation to the probable future development of that character. z 2 340 From Within CHAP. It has to be remembered, however, that the effects of a Religion upon character are not to be judged chiefly by individuals. For example, it is often said that Christianity cannot have the practical importance in this life which is claimed for it, because many who refuse to accept its doctrines, lead just as good lives, and have just as good characters, as those who are firm believers. This may be allowed without touching the argument ; for the results of denying an influence cannot be judged by observing those who have lived and still cannot help living subject to its effects. Individuals are never logical ; so that their lives and characters are determined rather by the society in which they live, than by their own opinions. A man who has been brought up as his fathers before him in a Christian community, cannot, by any denial of the doctrines of Christianity, divest himself of that influence which has become part and parcel of his being, and is woven, like a thread, through all the tissue of his character. Such a man, when he changes his opinion, is likely to feel himself a special object of observation, and so be very careful that his conduct shall be right ; forgetting that the standard of right and wrong by which he is regulating his conduct, has probably been derived from that religion which he is now denying. In this denial he may be as unreasonable as a man who should refuse to acknowledge the authority of Greenwich Observatory, whilst he continued to set his watch by it. But if individuals are never consistent, communities VIII Conclusion 341 are always so, in the long run. No community ever reaches a standard of life above that of its beliefs ; for belief is the strongest influence in determining con- duct. Therefore if we would judge the value of Christianity, for example, we must compare the state of the world now with that before its advent ; also the state of those parts of the world which have been subjected to its influence, with that of those by which this influence has not been felt. And if we would judge the effects of beliefs opposed to Christianity, we must not look at individuals living in a Christian community ; but we must consider what would be the result if these beliefs were consistently lived up to by a people inhabiting, for several centuries, some solitary island. It does not seem necessary to do more than suggest such tests to understand what the conclusion to which they lead must be ; for Christianity certainly seems to have done more in the formation of our present civilisa- tion, and in the determination of our present tone of life, than any other single influence. And when each man turns to the single world of his own individual being, he finds that this religion has or should have the same position of supremacy. For though any particular man's conduct and character may not be determined by the religion he accepts at a certain time, or by his denial of any religion, it is true that the prime determining force must be found in the religion which was operating when the character was forming. As Falstaff, in dying, " babbled 3 4 2 From Within CHAP. o' green fields " the fields in which he plucked daisies as a child, and trotted, as a little boy, by his mother's side so all men, as they are moving further from childhood, are really drawing nearer to it. For life is a circle along which, if we travel far enough, we come back to the starting point ; and the intervening arc almost drops out of being. Time is the most unreal of all things, and can, at best, only be accepted as a convenient social fiction : we return to the old spot, after what we thought a long absence, and in a few hours it seems as if we had never been away ; so that,' unless we make a calculation, we can scarcely tell whether the interval has been for two months or two hundred. Through life we may have been seeing all sorts of wonderful sights, but we find that only the pictures of our early days have been able to print themselves on our conscious memory ; we may have been listening to all sorts of glorious music, but only the songs of our childhood linger at last in our ears ; we may have been holding all sorts of curious opinions, but only the principles of our youth seem to have had much abiding influence upon our character. But all through life w r e can trace the operation, and recognise the need, of religion. What can life mean to the man who does not realise that he is a Person Within and distinct from his own body ? A mere whirling chaos of phantoms, of which he is him- self but one. Antf what can life mean to the man who does realise his own personality, but who cannot Conclusion 343 find any other, except of beings as fleeting as himself, and as unknowable as all human creatures are to each other ? A mere heart-breaking solitude ; a wilderness in which there is no guide, and across which there is no path. The longing for personality is the predominant passion of humanity, and accounts for much of the foolishness of this life, as well as for most of its good- ness. We cannot bear to think of ourselves as passing away like mere bubbles upon this rushing stream of Time ; and so all try to fasten themselves to something. It may be fame, or notoriety, or position, or wealth, or power that we make for; and these may, for a few moments, arrest our course towards the inane; but soon they themselves come loose from the banks, like twigs grasped by drowning men, and so are quickly swept out of sight. The only hope lies in our finding our own feet that is, our own personality and in our planting these upon some firm rock. Such a rock can only be a personality, which is firm because it is divine. For the divine only is abiding ; and humanity only can be attached to it through a personality which is at the same time human and divine ; and this at- tachment can only be made by something which par- takes of these characteristics as a cement which is to unite two different bodies, must possess some of the properties of both. But though life can have no meaning unless we are connected with a Divine Being, who is not only Incarnated, but is also operating through the principle 344 From Within CHAP. of the Incarnation ; it may yet be true that the meaning thence obtained may be anything but a satisfactory one. We cannot help asking what it is which may thus be rescued by association with the divine. For if immortality is a cheering thought, it is also a very awful one. What is it that we would have to live for ever ? Surely it should be something good some- thing far better than any of us feel ourselves to be. There is more to be thought of than merely being able to get into heaven, and that is, being able to enjoy ourselves when there; for a heaven which was not enjoy- able would be an anomaly. But the first necessity of enjoyment is that we ourselves must be in harmony with the conditions surrounding us; for a boor cannot be happy in a drawing-room, nor a dullard at a symposium of wits. Hence, if heaven is to be better than earth, we cannot be fit for it unless we improve upon what we are by nature here. The natural law here, how- ever, is not improvement, but decay; for everything goes backward after it has reached a certain point. Therefore improvement can only be expected to be maintained to the end by means of a miracle ; the essence of which must be, the reception by us of an influence which can not only counteract the natural tendency to decay, but can also replace it by a power of continual growth. It is by such a growth that all life here must be tested as to success or failure. Are we getting worse or better : more stupid, more coarse, more selfish, more material ; or more intelligent, more refined, more un- vni Conclusion 345 selfish, more spiritual ? What others think, matters not to me, if I feel that " All I could never be, All men ignored in me, This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped." Hence we see the importance, here, of that principle of the Atonement, through which alone we can hope to receive the force which is necessary to rescue this life from the decay and degradation which are otherwise inevitable. But if Keligion is of such vital importance, it is natural to ask how its benefits are to be obtained. In our search for the answer, we are limited to what we can learn From Within. So far, we have come to the conclusion, not only that there must be a Person Without as well as a Person Within, and that the nature of this Person Without must be triune ; but also that all hope of good must depend upon the establish- ment of a certain relationship between the Person Without and the Person Within. How may we expect it to be possible to establish such a relationship ? Humanity has always been trying and still adopts many different methods; but all of these may roughly be divided into three classes. The first consists of methods which are chiefly mechanical : such as repeating certain words, or per- forming certain ceremonies, and even accepting certain doctrines ; for belief, though an essential stage, may stop at a point which implies no more than a merely mechanical exercise of the intellect. 346 From Within CHAP, vm The second consists of methods which are chiefly chemical : such as rousing certain emotions, or giving way to certain frenzies ; for these may imply no re- lationship more intimate than is that between an acid and an alkali when effervescence is produced. ' The third consists of methods which are chiefly organic : which bring the Person Within into such a relationship with the Person Without, that the organism can be infused by the purifying and vivifying influence ; as a rose cutting may be grafted on a fresh stem, so that every leaf and flower shows new effects. It seems that only by some method which conforms to the conditions of this third class, can we reasonably hope to receive the real benefits of religion. THE END Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh, BY THE SAME AUTHOR. OR, A DEFENCE OF THE PRINCIPLE OF A NATIONAL CHURCH. 8vo, 12s. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. "We have endeavoured rather to give a fair taste of the quality of Mr. Hanvood's work than to criticise it, our object being to get readers to go to the book itself. For, having regard to the antecedents and sur- roundings of the author, we know of no recent work as likely to provoke both Churchmen and Dissenters to reconsider the ordinary ready-made opinions which pass muster on both sides of this great controversy." The Spectator. "His treatment of the subject from a practical point of view is very good indeed, and his answers to objectors display for the most part con- siderable power of reasoning united with much common sense . . . the book is decidedly able, and a valuable addition to the defensive literature of Establishment." Pall Mall Gazette. " This essay, or rather treatise for it is of a very thorough and exhaus- tive character is distinguished by the moderate and tolerant spirit in which it is written, and the clear, sensible, and cogent way in which the argument is conducted." Saturday Review. " A very valuable and timely production." John Bull. MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON, W.C. .BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE COMING DEMOCEACY. Crown 8vo, 6s. CONTENTS: BOOK L THE DEMOCRACY AND FOREIGN POLITICS. BOOK II. THE DEMOCRACY AND HOME POLITICS. PART I. CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS. INTRODUCTION. CHAP. i. THE CROWN. CHAP. ir. THE HOUSE OF LORDS. CHAP. in. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. PART II. SOCIAL POLITICS. INTRODUCTION. CHAP. i. THE UPPER CLASSES. CHAP. n. THE MIDDLE CLASSES. CHAP. in. THE LOWER CLASSES. BOOK III. THE DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION. The Saturday Review says : " A book by a man who thinks for himself always has some value, and the value is certainly not lessened when the book deals with a subject of which he has some particular knowledge. . . . Mr. Harwood has both." The Academy says : "Mr. Harwood, indeed, does not claim to have the gift of prophecy ; but from intercourse with the lower classes he has gained some knowledge of their habits of thought, their prejudices and aspirations, and he gives us very ably his own deliberate opinion as to the way in which they are likely to exercise the political supremacy of which they are as yet the unconscious possessors. . . . Whether we regard Mr. Harwood's forecasts as too sanguine or the reverse, they will merit consideration ; and the book is pleasant reading." The Scottish Review says : " The Coming Democracy will remain a valuable work, even should no high predictions therein be verified, for it will stand for ever as a model of the spirit in which such questions should be treated. A volume more strongly characterised by judicial impartiality, candour, and fairness of statement, we have never come across. Mr. Harwood considers every existing political and social institution which he passes in review, from the Crown downwards, with the same honesty and absence of all party feeling and prejudice. Whatever estimate may be formed of the merit of his opinions, no one, unless hopelessly blinded by prejudice, can fail to be the better for an hour or two spent in the moral atmosphere which pervades Mr. Harwood's book." The British Quarterly Review says : " Mr. Harwood is by no means a wild democrat bowing down blindly before the idol of abstract rights, and he writes throughout with a thoughtfulness and a determination not to indulge in too much prophecy. ... He has thoroughly thought out his subject, and is concerned only to promote the general good ; and we are sure that his book can only have one result, in bringing Aristocracy, Middle-class, and Democracy to understand each other's aim better, and this is surely a substantial service to the country." The St. Jamesfs Gazette says : " What the new Democracy is which is coming, what it will do when it comes, what shape English institutions will take in their ultimate development, and what will be the character of the national policy under the new influence these are the problems with which Mr. Harwood deals. They are among the most important questions that can occupy any political writer, and they are matters of life and death to the English people. Mr. Harwood brings to the consider- ation of them much shrewdness, common-sense, and knowledge." MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON, W.C.