The Dram A OF THE Spiritual Life ANNIE LYMAN SEARS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/draniaofspiritualOOsearrich THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE ■■rt^^^ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK - BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE A STUDY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND IDEALS BY ANNIE LYMAN SEARS w . di tua vita il viaggio." — Dante. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1916 Alt rights retened 3 3-1 OOPTEIOHT, 1915, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1915. r,«- f J. 8. Cashing Co, — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mas8., U.S.A. MY FATHER WHOSE INTEREST IN POETRY, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION FIRST INSPIRED MY OWN AND TO MY MOTHER WHOSE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HUMAN WAS A WELL-SPRING OF JOY TO HER CHILDREN I DEDICATE THIS BOOK IN GRATEFUL MEMORY 314728 PREFACE Since the appearance, in 1902, of William James's book, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," many persons have delved into the field of the psychology of religious ex- perience and have tried to find an interpretation thereof. Since the field is inexhaustible, each seeker hopes that he may illuminate afresh its problem and perhaps discover therein some "Cosa Nuova." The method which this study follows is that of Professor James's book, but the material used is for the most part different and in consequence the outcome is not the same. James used largely autobiographical material, with the re- sult that genuine religion seemed to him principally a matter of individual, emotional experience. The material I have taken is derived chiefly from prayers, hymns, and religious poetry, with the outcome that religious experience appears to me to be a social as well as an individual experience, and quite as practical as emotional. This material, since it is the embodiment of the religious faith of the ages, I may well speak of, as far as I am con- cerned, as a gift. In regard to the historical problems which arise, I have used the result of the research of scholars, recognized as authorities in their special fields — such scholars as Robertson-Smith, Frazer, Harnack, Pfleiderer, and others. Although I have tried as well as I was able to enter freshly into these "varieties of religious experience" and to interpret them accordingly, yet even here in the analysis and interpretation of the types and states of religious ex- perience, many teachers have taught me, both by their books and through the spoken word. To all these teachers, known and unknown by me, I wish here in a general way, since 1 Viii PREFACE cannot name them all, to make acknowledgment. More especially, however, I would record my thanks to those pro- fessors in the Department of Philosophy of Harvard Univer- sity, who were at one time my teachers in the more technical sense of the word, all of whom helped me to clearer think- ing; and particularly I would make acknowledgment to Professor Josiah Royce, without whose wise counsel and stimulating suggestions, this book could hardly have been written. What I owe to these teachers at particular points will be apparent to all who are conversant with their theories. To work with such teachers is a very great privilege, and it has seemed to me that I should try to pass on to others, in some measure, what I have received from them. This book was finished (with the exception of a few minor changes and additions) before the outbreak of the European War. In those days (recent, though they seem to us now so long ago) of commercialism, of business efficiency, and the successes of applied science, many people have held that religion was a back number. To-day, face to face with a world-crisis, with the carnage and desolation of war and the threatened submergence of every outward sign of our civili- zation, men are crying out that religion is a failure. It may be that the Day of the Lord is at hand, when all outward symbols of the present-day civilization are about to perish and not a wrack be left behind ; when men shall cry on every side : " Who shall show us any good ? " and " Peace, peace, when there is no peace I " Bold, imaginative thinkers, like H. G. Wells, for example, believe to find in science some permanent value, and some message of freedom, peace, and hope for man's troubled spirit. Science, like ethics, though from a different stand- point, believes in the infinite possibilities of man and in the great adventure before him ; and science, like religion, holds to man's relations to an undiscovered country, — an "un- seen world." But the new world of science is in part still a world man-made, and in part a world belonging to the old natural order, and inevitably we ask, can such a value, which is after all of our finite world, be an eternal value ? PREFACE IX It is otherwise with the new world which religion holds to. The new world of religion belongs to an order which we may call a transformed, or supernatural order, yet this order, as we shall see, is still in close touch with the tem- poral order, and it is, I believe, an order which is completely rational. It is not religion itself, then, which is a failure, but man's own thinking about it ; and his own attitude, in that he does not practise what he really sees and experiences. The present war may serve as a chastening experience to make man see again the need of the quickening of the re- ligious spirit, and may reveal to him that while old formulas, old symbols and creeds may need to be "re-phrased to the lights and perfections of a new dawn," in religion is still to be found man's perennial, healing spring of strength and hope both for the way of his every-day life, and in the great crises of the individual life, as well as in the life of nations. At the present hour many persons are prophesying that when the war in Europe is finally over there vfiW follow, out of man's sense of his own weakness and his great need, a revival of religion. What we want to be sure of is — and this is in man's power — that this religious revival, when it comes, shall be a re-awakening of a religious spirit that is truly spiritual^ that is, profoundly ethical. Man, in his sense of weakness and need, is so prone to fly to some magic- making substitute for religion, no matter how irrational it may be. A spiritual religion requires effort, self-control, concentration, reflection, determination of the will, and these men are not ready to give. If it seems to us that this con- scious thirst for the deep springs of the spiritual life is that of which our own age stands most in need, doubtless this has been felt to be the fundamental lack in every age. For man is, after all, so little spiritual. He has as yet hardly broken loose from nature. He is like a statue only just emerging from the rough block. His wings have hardly begun to grow. In my interpretation of religious experience it may pos- sibly seem to some of my readers that I have laid too great stress on the "ministry of sorrow." I can only appeal to X PREFACE the testimony of human experience. Sorrow has many forms, but in one form or another, it comes, sooner or later, to all. Then, if the soul of the man is strong enough to meet the test of this chastening experience, sorrow becomes a purifier and a supreme revealer of truth. It gives a new sense of brotherhood and impels to helpful deeds and service. Nevertheless, to my mind, the glad quest and service of man's divine ideal and the blessed vision of it, are expe- riences equally fundamental, and equally conducive to spirit- ual growth. The point I have wished to make is, that neither joy nor sorrow, in the purely natural form of them, is particularly a means to the growth of the spirit, but that these natural experiences must undergo a spiritual trans- formation in order to become such. This book, whatever its failures (and no one knows better than I how many they are) has as its excuse for being this — that it is an effort to add, what one may, to the message of those masters among us who are striving to bring in the life of the spirit. In it I have tried to avoid language which is technical, and while in a few places the reasoning is rather close and demands some concentration of attention (as for example in the discussion of the freedom of the will, in Chapter IV), yet, since on the whole the work is so little technical, I hope that it may appeal to the general reader who is interested in the questions with which religion deals. This book is offered, then, in the hope that it may help, if ever so little, to clearer thinking upon these problems of religion and philosophy, and to the wisdom and peace of mind which may be born from such thinking, from which shall come at last the creation of that soul which is alike valiant and gentle, steadfast and serene. ANNIE LYMAN SEARS. ^ The fiend that man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon, Lit by rays from the Blest, The Lethe of Nature Can't trance him again. Whose soul sees the perfect, Which his eyes seek in vain J ^ — R. W. Emerson. Son of Man, to-night my lot Naught hut Thy presence can avail; Yet on the road Thy wheels are not. Nor on the sea Thy sail ! My how or when. Thou wilt not heed. But come down Thine own secret stair, That Thou mayst answer all my need — Yea, every by-gone prayer,'^ — George MacDonald. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAOB The Problem of Religious Idealism and the Answer op Religious Mysticism CHAPTER II The Universal Elements of Religious Experience . . 41 Note on Sin and the Consciousness of Sin . . , . 65 CHAPTER in The Way of Life — Its Nature 83 1. Mystical and Ethical. 2. Individual and Social. CHAPTER rV The Way of Life — Its Sources 123 1. Grace and Merit 124 2. (a) Necessity and Freedom 141 (5) Original Sin and Moral Responsibility .... 141 (c) Social Authority and Individual Judgment . . . 168 CHAPTER IV (Continued) 3. The Inner and the Outer 175 CHAPTER V The Way of Life — Its Forms . ...,,. 207 1. The Temporal and the Eternal 208 ziii PAGE XIV CONTENTS CHAPTER V (Continued) 2. The Static and the Dynamic 249 Prayer and its Office 262 CHAPTER V (Continued) 3. The Many and the One 341 CHAPTER VI The Indwelling op the Spirit . . . . . . . 413 APPENDIX 477 INTRODUCTORY NOTE In this Introductory Note I propose not an exposition of the book of Miss Sears, which will speak for itself, nor a critical discussion of its method, — a discussion for which there is here no adequate space, — but a brief in- dication, first, of what I find most interesting and original in the spirit of this volume, and secondly, of the place which I hope that it will take in the minds of some readers, as it has also taken such a place in my own mind. I have been privileged to follow, during a number of years, the growth of the author's study and thought regarding the problem of religion, as this study and thought find expression in the present volume. It is true that for some years, in connection with work at Radcliffe College, and as member of one of my own Seminaries at Harvard, Miss Sears has stood in the rela- tion of a pupil of my own. When a teacher writes how- ever brief an introductory statement regarding the book of a pupil, readers are likely to assume that the book has a somewhat close relation to ideas and opinions which the teacher has conveyed to the pupil. The very fact that such an Introductory Note was written tends, therefore, in the minds of some readers, to deprive the book of an opportunity to produce its own fair impression as a piece of independent research, and as an expression of the author's personal interpretation and solution of the problems studied. The reader tends to regard the willing- ness of the teacher to commend certain features of the book as an acknowledgment of some sort of discipleship on the part of the author, and consequently as a reason why the book should not be treated quite as considerately as if it XV XVi INTRODUCTORY NOTE stood solely on the foundation of its author^s wholly individual study and opiaion. So far as possible I wish to say that such a judgment, if passed upon the book of Miss Sears on the basis of the fact that she was for some years, and in a limited degree, under the influence of my own philosophical teaching, and has worked in Seminaries of mine, while this book has to a considerable extent grown up under the influence of criti- cisms and suggestions of my own, would be an unjust judgment, unless in passing this judgment the reader were duly to acknowledge the actual degree of independence, and the actual originality of opinion, of idea, and of method which are to be found in this work. As a student of philosophy I have had frequent occasion to write about the philosophy of religion, and about various problems of the religious life. The book of Miss Sears is neither an exposition of philosophical opinions of my own, nor does it deal with the problems of religious philosophy as I have usually dealt with them, nor is its method one that I could myself apply, nor is its degree of discipleship such as deprives it of a very important independence. The main idea of Miss Sears, the idea expressed in the title of the book, the idea of studying '^The Drama of the Spiritual Life,^^ and the idea of the particular way in which this book studies that drama, — these are features which Miss Sears has made thoroughly her own, and which are due to the results of any teaching of mine only in the sense that after Miss Sears had herself thought of this mode of treating the topic of the present work, I approved her plan, watched from time to time the way in which she gave it expression, suggested modes by which she could collect material, and sometimes made com- ments upon the way in which the material had been collected, and in which it is, in the course of the present volume, used. The metaphysical views which frequently appear in the background of Miss Sears 's inquiry are much less expressive of any metaphysical doctrine of my INTRODUCTORY NOTE Xvii own than they are independent queries of hers regarding whether or no such metaphysical ideas of hers as have been influenced by me can be rightfully used as a basis for the interpretation of religion. Not so much the pupil, as the critic, of my own special metaphysical theses, speaks in these pages. And the criticisms impUed are distinctly such that if I were again writing upon the problems with which Miss Sears here deals, I should have to modify my own expressions of opinion, and in certain respects, my own opinions, in order to be just to what she has presented. Thus, however near at some points the interpretation of religion which Miss Sears uses approaches interpreta- tions which she has heard in lectures or in Seminaries of my own, she is nowhere writing either as expounder, or as mere disciple, of any philosophy of religion which I have maintained or shall maintain. The book is an expres- sion, first, of its author's personal experience in religious matters, and secondly, of the results of her own decidedly wide reading of the literature wherein certain types of religious experience have received their expression. The range of this reading is the author's own, the choice of the documents of religious experience which she has used has been, in most cases, also largely her own. I have not suggested, in the majority of cases, either the documents read or the special reflections which they have suggested to Miss Sears, although I have very naturally given, from time to time, advice concerning the carrying on of her research, and the interest of the results which she has reached. Characteristically and especially due to the author of this book is the feature emphasized in the title, and almost everywhere, both in the choice and in the treat- ment of the documents used in her text. I know of no other effort to deal with the problem of the estimate and the guidance of religious experience which anywhere nearly furnishes what is thus most characteristic of the present volume. As a reader of the documents of the Xviii INTRODUCTORY NOTE religious life, Miss Sears is very notably guided by what William James loved to call 'Hhe dramatic temperament," and by its interests. James said that the true pragmatists are especially characterized by this predominance in their minds of ''the dramatic temper.". I do not believe that Miss Sears would call herself a pragmatist, although I leave the judgment of that matter to the reader of this book. But I am sure that this work shows throughout the ''dramatic temper," estimates both religious experience and its documents in terms of such a temper, is singularly free from any such "barren intellectualism " as James abhorred, and has not derived these notable features either in its methods or in its materials, from any agreement with metaphysical opinions of my own, or from the fact that the author has listened to lectures of mine, or has attended Seminaries of which I was a leader. Of course it might be easy to say that the author's mode of treating religious problems shows some signs of the so-called "dialectical method," since certain antitheses and paradoxes of the religious consciousness and of its experience are emphasized, while various attempts are made to solve, or at least to clarify, these paradoxes. Such use of the "dialectical method" might be referred by some readers to philosophical tendencies which Miss Sears has acquired from the sort of philosophy which she has studied, more or less, under my influence. But a fair study of the text of this volume will show how far Miss Sears's treatment of the paradoxes and problems of religious experience which are here in question is from being a mere catalogue of possible philosophical opinions, or a mere study of their dialectics. Experience and life, in precisely these their most paradoxical phases, form her problem, furnish her topics, get expressed in the conflicts of opinion to which she makes reference, and give the back- ground and the basis for so much of the dialectical pro- cedure as plays its part in this volume. But it is not as dialectics, but as life and as experience that the rehgious INTRODUCTORY NOTE XIX problems with which Miss Sears has to do present them- selves, and pass through their various phases. No reader of Miss Sears's third chapter, on '^The Way of Life, Its Nature, '^ and of the manifold and various illustrations which appear in that chapter, can regard her interpretation of the '^ Drama of the Spiritual Life" as the mere summary of any philosophical opinion, or as the product of any merely intellectual dialectics, or of the influence of any one philosophy or philosopher. If the material of religious experience of which the author makes use is in this, and in many other chapters, the result of collection and of obser- vation, the method of collection is new, the observations are everywhere colored by personal experience, the oppositions considered and estimated are stated in terms of no merely abstract dialectic, but in terms of what the poets and the prophets, and in general the leaders and guides of the human race, have noted and have recorded. The way in which these records are used is not due to the acceptance of the opinions of any philosopher, and is everywhere characterized by an independence, both in the choice and in the treatment of the text, an indepen- dence which I can only urge the reader of this book to recognize from the first, and to view with high hope, and with keen interest. The reader of this book will find novelties in plenty. That the author has studied the philosophy of religion, he will recognize, but he will readily see that no philosopher is responsible either for her mode of treating the subject or for the results which she obtains. She is neither sceptic, nor uncritical disciple of anybody, nor the adherent of any one dogmatically asserted religious or philosophical creed. The process of the religious life she regards as an empirical fact whose importance is to be tested by experience. The tests of the values of religious experience, and her hypotheses with regard to its meaning, are neither those of Professor Leuba, nor those which William Jameses ^^ Varieties of Religious Experience" rendered for a while so fascinating. XX INTRODUCTORY NOTE She does not present a formal psychology of reUgion, such as one finds in the book of Professor Leuba, nor is this volume a treatise on the history of reUgion, nor yet on what is technically called ''the phenomenology of reUgion." She does not, like more than one recent religious psy- chologist, depend upon a collection of materials furnished by individual correspondents, and obtained by means of questionaires, or similar devices. Nor does Miss Sears attempt to use in a systematic way the scholarly results of such investigators of the history of religion as Professor G. F. Moore, and Professor Toy. She does not trespass upon the field of the OrientaUst, of the classical philologist, or any other specialist. Her materials come to her from sources which I should not have expected to find so fruit- ful, had not her own patience and ingenuity shown how valuable they can be, and in her volume are. William James sought his materials for religious psy- chology in the personal records of extraordinary religious geniuses. The philologist and the phenomenologists of religion have found their own materials in the sacred documents, and in the customs and ceremonies and social organization of the various recorded faiths, as well as in the ritual and in the practices of different churches, sects, and other organized religious bodies. Miss Sears can use, and does use, fragments of such material whenever she needs them, so that very various sources furnish for her inspection incidents, and scenes, from the ''Drama of the Spiritual Life." But her interests in such materials, her mode of col- lecting them, and her arrangement of them are in many respects unique, and serve to distinguish her treatise no less from the histories of religion, from the psychologies of religion, from the " phenomenologies of religion" which are now so numerous, than from the philosophies of reli- gion which are due to the systematic effort to interpret religion in the light of this or of that metaphysical opinion. Miss Sears uses, namely, and uses very variously and INTRODUCTORY NOTE XXI skilfully, materials that are found in poetry, in religious scriptures, in general literature, sometimes in current literature, very frequently in authors of classic rank, and also very frequently in less widely known books, docu- ments, and writers. Such materials are indeed accessible to all. What is unique in this treatise is the way in which the materials are selected, rearranged, and massed. Unique also is the way in which the materials are em- ployed to illustrate the nature and the meaning of the religious life. We have a good many recent books which are devoted to depicting the lives, the doctrine, and the influence of representatives of some one type of religion. Thus, in particular, the Mystics have for various reasons been treated with great care and in great detail in well- known recent discussions of the religious life, as for in- stance in the two well-known works of Evelyn Underhill. Miss Sears has taken a very reasonable and appreciative notice, both of the Mystics and of their contribution to religion. But for her the Mystics are only some of those who take part in the *' Drama of the Spiritual Life.'' She neither opposes them, nor is she at their mercy. In her choice of the writers to furnish illustrations for her drama contemporary poets and critics, as well as the prayers, hymns, and poems of the most various ages and religions, Walter Pater, and Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam, Professor Carver, and PhiUips Brooks, Marcus Aurelius, and the Buddhist scriptures, Seneca, and Tolstoy, George Meredith, and Bunyan, the Song of Deborah, Homer, and Tennyson, as well as St. Augustine, the Psalms, the Apostle Paul, are used with the greatest catholicity and breadth of interest. Yet this widely various material is so ingeniously massed and so interpreted in terms of the leading ideas in whose illustrations the ^' Drama of the Spiritual Life" consists, that the book nowhere pro- duces the impression of the miscellaneous. James's '^Varieties of Religious Experience" made use of very various illustrations, and was characterized both XXll INTRODUCTORY NOTE by a tolerant and catholic spirit, and by a great breadth of sympathy. But James, after all, sympathized most with eccentric beings, with geniuses who were more or less abnormal, with saints who were, at their best, con- verted ^'cranks." On the other hand, the tolerance of Miss Sears is especially attracted by the persons, the religious documents, the inspirations which illustrate the main ideas of her drama, — ideas which can best be surveyed by considering the titles of her various chapters, and the passages of her book which contain definite sum- maries of problems and results. If the reader will first become acquainted with the opening chapter of the book, and with some of the summary passages in question, he will hereby be provided with the key to the author's method of selecting and massing her material. Then he will see, that despite the familiarity of the main issues here discussed, and despite the very large space devoted to citations, to quotations, and to what at first sight appears to be unoriginal about the work, the whole is full of a decidedly unique treatment of familiar, but essentially always novel, problems. If in addition to this preparation for reading this volume, the reader also takes account of the author's independence and sympathetically critical attitude towards all doctrines and dogmas of a meta- physical nature, whether they be due to tradition or to philosophy, the work will tend to become to anyone who has once come to understand its spirit and its method, a kindly, a sustaining, and an enlightening companion. As a fact, the book is neither an anthology nor a syste- matic history or philosophy of religion. It is the por- trayal of a process which is at once universally human, and of intense interest to every really awakened individual, deeply dramatic in its significance, and capable of being understood all the better through a reading of the exposi- tion which it here receives, whether the reader, in Lord Gifford's often quoted words, used in his bequest which founded the Gifford lectureships at the Scottish univer- INTRODUCTORY NOTE XXIU sities, '^Be of any religion or whether he be, as men say, of no religion/^ In brief, anybody who reads this book and makes it his companion, will, in my opinion, make better use of his own faith, understand better its meaning, appreciate more deeply its problems, be less perplexed by its paradoxes, and better prepared, both to give reasons for the faith that is in him, if he has any faith, and more intelligently adapted for the tolerance, the critically reverent, and the positively constructive examination of the meaning of the '^ Drama of the Spiritual Life." Since I am sure that these excellences of the present work are due to its author's skill, ingenuity, and devotion, and not to any accidental instructions which happen to have occurred in technical lectures or in Seminary con- ferences in which I myself had part, I feel that, in urging the reader to take this book as it is intended to be taken, and to learn from it what its author intends to have learned, I am not merely speaking as a teacher, some of whose views have indeed influenced the author's inquiry. Nor am I speaking in the interests of any technical religious philosophy or psychology. Nor yet am I mak- ing light of the great work which technical scholar- ship has done and is doing for the history, or the psychology, and for the philosophy of religion. I write as I do because of the deep, and, as I hope, wise influence which a due acquaintance with the author's careful collections and admirable massing of her material ought to have, not merely as an exposition of the ''Drama of the Spiritual Life," but as an influence which will add, at the present crisis, new ways of acting, and, as I hope, new deeds to that drama. In her Preface the author has wisely spoken of the relation of her book to the situation and to the needs of civilization at the present moment, when all that is dear in and for the spiritual life of human- ity is threatened, and is in need of defence, and of some inspiring and reawakening influence. At such a moment a treatise on the philosophy of religion might well have XXIV INTRODUCTORY NOTE the fortune to be overlooked altogether. But a volume like the present one, which deals with our greatest prob- lems by means of so tolerant and kindly an exposition, which uses such keenly critical and yet such sympathetic methods of reviewing what mankind has done towards winning the goal of the ''Drama of the Spiritual Life,'' ought not to be neglected. It of course cannot be judged as a technical treatise on the history of religion, or on the problems of the psychology or philosophy of religion. It is a statement of the great needs and issues of life, — a statement wherein the voices of many of the good and wise, both of former times and of our own times, are so brought together, that every one who makes this book his companion should be better prepared to endure the tragedies, and to read the lesson of that ''great and terrible day of the Lord," through which, as many of the ancient prophets would be telling us, were they now with us, humanity, if viewed in the light of the "Drama of the Spiritual Life," now seems (if we may use the old and well-worn figure), to be passing. I heartily commend this book, then, both to those who will find its author's analysis of religious ideas and experi- ences attractive, as I hope that many will do, and to those who are willing frequently to ponder, and watch- fully to read and reread the illustrations of religious experience which our author has collected from so many sources, has chosen for such good reasons, and has massed and arranged so skilfully, in such wise that the ideas in terms of which she depicts the "Drama of the Spiritual Life," are so well lighted up by the reports of experience that render them so vital and so concrete to every justly attentive reader. JOSIAH ROYCE Cambridge, Massachusetts Memorial Day, 1915 "And her desires are those For happiness, for lastingness, for light ; 'Tis she who kindles in his haunting night The hoped dawn-rose." "Fair fountains of the dark Daily she waves him, that his inner dream May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam, A quivering lark." — George Meredith. 'As one seeing the invisible." — Hebrews. THE DEAMA OF THE SPIEITUAL LIFE CHAPTER I The Problem of Religious Idealism and the Answer OF Religious Mysticism Out of the far-away and hazy past from which religion comes to us, it is a difficult task to disentangle the threads which lead to religion's source. Doubtless a number of psychological motives have contributed their various influences, but I wonder, should we follow that path which leads to the most distinguishing characteristic of man, should we not at the same time discover the foun- tain head of religion ? What is that quality which especially marks the dis- tinction between man and the lower animals to whom in so many ways he is closely allied? I find this essential distinction in man's power to form ideals. The animal lives in and for the moment. He has, properly speaking, no religious experience. The poet, watching the skylark soaring and singing far up in the heavens, felt that man could never attain to the bird's ''clear, keen joyance," for, as for man, "He looks before and after And pines for what is not." Without this characteristic attitude, man would not be man. He is forever a dreamer, a creator of ideals. It is ideals which inspire his conduct. He seeks for them through all his days. He gives his life to the search for them, or to the service of them when found. This attitude and this motive appear again and again in those records of primitive man and of the childhood of the 2 '^ ^' the'draSia.Pf the spiritual life -A ^ > -^ ^".^ •»••:, . race ^-^" in -folk lore, fairy -tale, and myth. To be sure, even the flower turns to the sunlight and the amoeba stretches out its tentacles towards the agreeable stimulation. But we do not hold that the plant or the amoeba are governed by ideals,^ for their movements are impelled by something actually present to sense, hence we speak of these reactions as chemical or mechanical. But man creates for himself an unseen and a so-far-unrealized world. The first or underlying thesis of this essay, then — the fact that it undertakes to establish — is the funda- mental ideality of religion; and the ground of this fact I find in the essential nature of man. Man is a creator of ideals. He lives, therefore, in part in an unseen world. This fact makes for him at once the tragedy and the joy of existence. It is usually said that man's sense of need is the source of his religious experience. Out of his vague longings, his sense of Umitation and lack, he builds a better world. Religion, it is often said, is essentially the comforter. Certainly this is in a measure true. From the outset, man is a creature of needs, and, especially in the higher religions, the sense of inner sin has played a prominent part in the rehgious life. Yet, we may ask, would man know his state as an evil one which he might either escape from or overcome, — that is, as something which ought not to be, — had he not already the vision of a better or a higher state? The vision and the need, it may be said, arise together. The true sinner is not to be found amongst the lowest representatives of society. "That which I strove to be And was not — comforts me." wrote Browning, — for I hardly recognize my need beyond the mere sensation of discomfort, unless I already ^ That is, self-conscious ends. From a metaphysical point of view we should perhaps say that all conscious life strives for something beyond itself — that the lowly animal form, for example, blindly strives to fulfil its type. THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 6 see beyond my need to some possible or expected good. Religion comforts and helps man in his need — this the prayers and hymns and the other records of religious experience throughout the ages abundantly testify. Yet religion itself comes rather as a joyful thing. It comes to man in his sorrow and necessity, to be sure, but it comes borne on the wings of inspiration, glad- ness, and hope; it comes with Hfe-giving, with trans- forming power, and it comes because, in a sense, the vision was already there. Man creates his ideal world, but he creates it because he already has it. This is the perplexing psychological paradox of the re- ligious — shall we perhaps say of the human — con- sciousness. That man's need is not the sole nor perhaps the most fundamental motive to the creation of an unseen world appears, I think, in another way. The creation of the ideal world is due in part to an impulse, or creative in- stinct, like the creative imagination of the artist. Con- sider, for instance, the child's world. In the little child, imagination has not been dulled by prosaic, everyday life. How easily the child creates an unseen fairyland. He is not only the Fairy Prince, the Giant-Killer, the Little Sand-Man, the street LampUghter, but also the cater- pillar, the butterfly, the ''Old Gray Cat," ''Jack Frost,'' "The Little New Year." And as he transforms himself through his keen imagination, so he transforms and re- builds his world. As he watches the dying embers in the grate, he fancies a world of other lives and happenings different from his own. As he paddles his boat on the stream which runs through the meadow near his house, he fancies himself on a magic voyage on an enchanted river, and across the hills which bound his horizon he im- agines a world of wonder and of promise where enchanting dreams come true. The poets, Wordsworth, Stevenson, Blake, tell us of the child universal — the child striving to make real — 4 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "Some fragment of his dream of human life." "I can in the sorrel sit Where the ladybird alit. I can climb the jointed grass ; And on high See the great swallows pass In the sky. And the romid sun rolling by, Heeding no such things as I." Children love fairy tales and myths which have for their motive the search involving the elements of adventure, of danger, and the overcoming of difficulties, for some great prize worth a life's devotion — for example, the search to discover the enchanted castle, the fairy princess, the Golden Fleece, the Dark Tower. We find this motive repeated in the poet's search for the blue flower ; in the search for the philosopher's stone or the elixir of life ; and in the quest for the Holy Grail. This spirit, too, animates the Crusades. Some men and women have always in their hearts the fountain of per- petual youth ; their own real world is an enchanted land full of mystery, — in its heart dwells a hidden glory, and every person they meet is to them more or less an in- carnation of the divine. But these men are near akin to the religious-minded, — '^They invest the world with its own divinity." This universal, idealizing tendency appears again in that realm which seems furthest removed from the world of the child, of the romancer, and of the poet. Namely, in that world which is called essentially the world of knowledge and of hard cold facts — for science, too, has its fairy-land, its unseen world of the creative imagination, its ideals which it strives to realize, its startling hypotheses, its thrilling tales of discoveries which are like adventures in fairy-land. Take, for example, the following prophecies of the future : — " Take that one per cent of argon in the atmosphere and its wonderful promise. 'The man who first combines argon into a compound/ says THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 5 Prof. R. K. Duncan, 'so that it may pass by metathesis through a series of combinations, is likely to have accomplished the feat of having turned topsy-turvy the elements of our civilization/ Then there is the prediction about the energies which are one day to be extracted from matter. They reach us slowly now, but Sir William Ramsay suggests that if we could rush the process by using an appropriate 'catalyzer' the 'whole future of our race would be altered/ But this is indej&nite. Hear Nikola Tesla. He claims that 'the day is not distant when the very planet which gave man birth will tremble at the sound of his voice/ Man is to 'draw the mighty ocean from its bed, transport it through the air, and create lakes and rivers at will ; he will command the wild elements ; he will push on and on from great to greater deeds, until, with his intelligence and force, he will reach out to spheres beyond the terrestrial/ And then, adding shudders to the thrills, Prof. E. Rutherford announces the possibility 'of devising a detonator which could send a wave of atomic disintegration through the earth and decompose the whole round world into helium, argon, and other gases, leaving literally not one stone upon another/ " ^ Like childhood and youth, like the poets and speculative scientists, religious experience either builds for itself a better and a brighter, an unseen or ideal world, or it trans- forms, through its vision of the divine, its actual world and everyday life into a Beulah Land of peace, harmony, and love — into a heavenly and abiding city, the city of God on earth. Some of these Utopian dreams of re- ligious experience we shall consider more fully in a later chapter. In the earliest records of religious experience which have been preserved to us — in the Pyramid Texts of Ancient Egypt — is portrayed the view of the early Egyptians of a beyond world. How closely akin is this ^^ first celestial hereafter'' to the fairy-land of childhood! The gods dwell in the sky and thither, after death, the king goes to live the life of the gods. The Utterances of the Texts are magic charms to secure his safety on his journey as in a ferry he must cross the Lily Lake ; or, as he flies on the wings of a falcon, or moimts the ladder made for his ascent by the oblique rays of the sun to the 1 Boston Herald, June, 1912. 6 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE wonderland beyond with its strange inhabitants and its new perils.^ Man, too, is a child universal. This is our outcome so far. He, too, like the child has a vision of the unseen, and an unconquerable faith in a better country, even an heavenly. The idea of God is an idea which belongs to this unseen and supernatural realm. Primitive man wor- shipped the Great Unseen Spirit — for the stock, the stone, the idol, is hardly itself his God. The Spirit dwelleth in these symbols. The child's earliest idea of God is of an unseen being, even though this being may somewhat re- semble his own father or mother. To youth — especially, perhaps, to lonely and independent youth — the thought of God has a twofold development and significance. He is the unseen ideal which fills all life with wonder and beauty, but this ideal is embodied. God is especially the Great Unseen Companion, Inspirer, Sustainer, Sympa- thizer. On the other hand, God is *'One Who Knows," the Judge — one whose insight is true and complete. He supports the lonely soul of youth in his attitude of " Mens sibi conscia recti." We shall see more fully, later on, how the concept of God becomes moralized and spiritualized into the Absolute Self — the true self of you and me and of all of us — one's '^public" selfhood, yet in intimate communion with one's inmost individuality. While it is a fact, I believe, that the ideality of man is the essential source of religious experience, the various other motives have played their part in the development of this experience. For instance, it has often been said that fear first created the gods. When one considers the widespread belief of primitive peoples in demons and Jinni, and the universality among savages of the practice of sympathetic magic, considerable warrant seems to be given to this opinion. ^See J. H. Breasted, ^'Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," Lectures III and IV. THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 7 Primitive man lived his daily life in an environment very different from our own. When his whole world was embedded in mystery; when the future was wrapped in impenetrable darkness, and night brought terrors in her train ; when every bit of ill luck seemed the work of an evil spirit or sorcerer, and disease due to the ill will of some demon ; when dreams were frought with meaning, and an eclipse or an earthquake was a portent, and every chance coincidence an omen — then, indeed, savage men must have dwelt constantly in a state of fear.^ And out of this state of dread it seems almost inevitable that he should have made appeal for help, and sought with propitiatory offerings either to win to his side the mys- terious spirits dwelling in natural phenomena, authors of all those ills which beset him ; or to overcome and exorcise the demon with curses, magic incantations and practices such as we find in the hjonns of the Artharva Veda. Thus from the primitive root of fear it is comparatively easy to develop those other motives which have been suggested as the source of religion, viz. the sense of dependence and the sense of need — the feeling of reverence, the attitude of adoration, and the various social functions and practices which accompany every stage of religious feel- ing and belief. Yet, after all, fear is a negative state of mind, and every negation must rest on a positive basis. Why does man fear — the mysterious world which surrounds him — the powers of nature, strange animals, his fellow-men? Be- cause there is something he longs and hopes for, — some satisfaction, some better state of himself, his family, or tribe, — some dream or plan which he fears may be thwarted by his enemies, by ill luck, by wizards or de- moniac powers. Even primitive man has a positive ideal which he seeks to carry out. And if he uses curses and incantations against wizards and demons, he at the same time utters appeals and prayers, makes offerings and 1 See Robertson Smith, " The Rehgion of the Semites." Lecture III on the "Jinn." 8 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE sacrifices, to win to his side the unseen powers, whatsoever they may be. Robertson Smith makes the distinction between the Jinni or demons and the gods that while both are super- natural beings and divine, the god as such is a supernatural being who enters into stated relations with man or a com- munity of men. The difference between the two is not in the different kind of power, but in the relation with man. The gods have friendly relations with a circle of wor- shippers ; the "Jinni'' are, so to speak, outsiders. To the god belongs the country known to the tribe, and especially some sacred spot which is his sanctuary ; to the demons the wastes of the desert, wild glens, and impenetrable jungles. Here, then, we meet with the first of the op- positions (here of good and evil powers) in which religious experience abounds. It rests, as we see, on a fundamental fact of human consciousness. From such an opposition develop the positive and negative forms of rites and cere- monies already referred to. The two types seem to meet in the savage institution of "taboo," a system of restric- tions on man's use of natural objects because they are divine, ix. primarily — charged with supernatural powers, which are infectious, holy, consecrated to the gods. Also in the Semitic religion, however, "taboo" may mean that which is unclean. There is, as Robertson Smith points out, no distinct boundary in the Semitic religion between the rules of holiness and rules of imcleanliness. Both go back to the savage notion of "taboo." So the motive of fear, we may conclude, springs out of the fact that man has an ideal. The two motives (of "hope" and "fear") are interestingly brought together in those records of human thinking which come to us from the remote past, the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, which we have already quoted. The chief function of these Texts, Breasted tells us, "is to ensure the king's felicity in the hereafter." For this exist the utterances, many of which are magical charms, while others are prayers and petitions I THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 9 on behalf of the dead king. Thus they imply, says Breasted, a great hope that life shall continue after death, but bound up with this hope is a great fear — the fear of that great catastrophe which must come to all ; hence the dominant note of these Texts is ^'an insistent, passionate protest against death, '^ a protest in which all nature joins. ^ 2 "The sky weeps for thee, the earth trembles for thee, Clouds darken the sky. The stars rain down, The Bows (a constellation) stagger, The bones of the hell-hounds tremble, The (porters) are silent When they see king Unis Dawning as a soul." ' What is implied in the state of mind called *' having an ideal"? It means, first of all, that there is something not his actual self and beyond his present self, yet desirable and good for him, which a person sets before himself as an object of attainment. It involves therefore, first, an interest, an emotional attitude. And in the second place, it involves activity on the part of the person whose ideal it truly is. If pas- sionately loved, a life's devotion will not be too much to give. An illustration of this state of mind would be, for instance, the case of some poor boy in one of our villages, who will endure all sorts of hardships and privations that he may go to college ; as the boy Erasmus lived on mouldy crusts and slept on straw that he might attend the lectures of the Sorbonne in Paris. Or if this college education comes to a lad as a ^'free gift," as it does perhaps too often nowadays, then it may be the boy's ideal will be to be * See J. H. Breasted, " Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt,'5 Leotures III and IV. 2 Pyramid Texts, # 1365. » Ihid., #393. 10 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE captain of the college football team, a leader of his group ; or it may be his dream will be to be an inventor in me- chanics, or an artist. For any of these aims the boy is ready to work day and night, to cut off all sorts of other interests and pursuits, — "To scorn delights and live laborious days." An instance of the opposite — a man without an ideal — is Ibsen's Peer Gynt. Supreme egotist and fanciful dreamer, imagining himself all sorts of characters and constantly playing a part, and like many another seeking restlessly for ever new experiences, Peer Gjoit is too much absorbed in himself to make any plan of life, or to find any aim which claims his whole allegiance. Wrecked at last, wandering voices haunt him, telling him of the missed opportunities of his life. "We are thoughts; Thou shouldst have thought us ; Feet to run on Thou shouldst have given us ! " We are deeds : Thou shouldest have achieved us ! Doubt the throttler Has crippled and ruined us. On the Day of Judgment We'll come a-flock, And tell the story, — Then woe to you ! " ^ Yes, when a man has an ideal which is to him as ^'a burn- ing and a shining light," he will not only toil to win it and realize it, but he tends to worship it — he is ready to suffer and to die for it. It becomes his guiding star. It gives meaning and purpose to his life and transforms what was otherwise dreary, desolate, and obscure. Usually it is embodied in some person or at least in something concrete and personified. As an illustration, it was thus that the city of! Christminster (Oxford) became the embodied ideal of the boy Jude Pauley.^ 1 " Peer Gynt," Act V, Scene VI. 2 Thomas Hardy, "Jude the Obscure." THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 11 ". . . It had been the yearning of his heart to find something to anchor on, to cling to — for some place which he could call admirable. Should he find that place in this city if he could get there? Would it be a spot in which, without fear of farmers, or hindrance, or ridicule, he could watch and wait, and set himself to some mighty undertaking like the men of old of whom he had heard ? As the halo had been to his eyes when gazing at it a quarter of an hour earlier, so was the spot mentally to him as he pursued his dark way. " *It is a city of light,' he said to himself. " 'The tree of knowledge grows there,' he added, a few steps farther on. " *It is a place that teachers of men spring from and go to.' "'It is what you may call a castle, manned by scholarship and religion.' " After this figure he was silent a long while, till he added, "* It would just suit me.' " A recent illustration of such an attitude is that of Cap- tain Scott, the South Pole explorer, and his comrades, when with loyal courage and single-minded devotion they faced death on the bUzzard-swept ice fields of the Ant- artic Ocean. An instance, almost as interesting still, as it was two generations ago when Florence Nightingale ^ was a pioneer example of it, is the case of the woman with an ideal dif- ferent from that of the conventional, or, at the time, so- cially-accepted ideal for woman, who must, therefore, to win her own ideal and realize it, face the prejudices and opposition, and scorn, often of those nearest and dearest to her.2 An instance from history is the case of Christopher Columbus. Columbus had a great dream. He dreamt that the world was round instead of flat, as was the ac- cepted view at that time, and that by keeping on sailing one would come back to the same point. Columbus wanted to test his vision, and hoped to discover unknown lands and prove his dream a reality. We have all read 1 See **Life of Florence Nightingale," Part I, by Sir Edward Cook. 2 See the curious article on this subject in London Spectator, February, 1914. 12 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE of his struggles, his disappointments, the heart-rending refusals and delays he met with, and of how he held on to his dream and gave his hfe's devotion to prove it true. For America, the great historical illustration is Abraham Lincoln, martyr to the cause of anti-slavery and the pres- ervation of the union. ^' I never saw so sad a face,*' one who saw him has said of him — ''His face bore a look, not as a man in pain, but as a man bearing a terrible burden — the look of Another who had suffered on the Cross." Or, we may take some illustrations of what is the mean- ing of Ufe in relation to an ideal end from our own field of rehgious experience — from the parables of Jesus. "The kingdom is like unto a treasure hid in a field ; which a man found and hid ; and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. " Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls : and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had and bought it." (Matt. 13:44, 45.) " If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospels* shall save it. For what doth it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life." (Mark 8 : 34-36.) Or, again, in the Gospel of John — "I come that they may have life, and may have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd ; the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep. He that is an hireling and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, beholdeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and fleeth, and the wolf watcheth them and scattereth them: he fleeth because he is an hireling and careth not for the sheep." (John 10 : 10-14.) Men live, then, by ideals, by desire for the '^better*' and 'Hhe ought to be,'' and the content of these ideals changes with man's development. Man's desire is his own, and so of necessity the ideal is closely associated with THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 13 the thought of self. It must be striven for — yet it is never wholly independent of the environment. Its at- tainment is in part conditioned and made possible by what is not self. The god (or gods) of savage man is somewhat dis- sociated from the object of desire. His god is that power which helps him to win the better state he seeks. The good of primitive man is chiefly associated with good hunting, the winning of mate, plenty of food, protection from disease, wild beasts, and the catastrophes of the natural world. In this stage the god is the god not of the individual alone, but of his kin, i.e, of all those who are bound together through some supposed physical tie to the same animal kind, which is in friendly relations with them and aids them with its supernatural powers. Since the relations with the god involve times and seasons, ritual and taboo, rules and restrictions and special places — the notion of '' sacred" ^ comes to be associated with this supernatural power. But as the ideal of primitive man becomes, with his growth, more and more ethical and spiritual, i.e. becomes an '^ ought" which sometimes is set over against the per- sonally desired object, so the god whom man worships tends to become identified with this ''ought to be," i.e. tends to become an unattainable spiritual ideal. A recent investigator of myths and legends gives the following evolution of the conception of God. Passing over the demon and ancestor which cannot properly, he says, give the preparatory stage for this conception, he finds the starting poi^t in the civilizing hero who in the totem stage appears in animal form. The chain is then : (a) totem, (6) civilizing hero-animal, (c) civilizing hero- human, (d) god with a specialized function — (e) God. As illustrations, he gives Jahwe as in class (c) ; Heracles from (c) to (d) ; Zeus passed from (d) to (e) ; Mithras 1 Robertson Smith, "The Religion of the Semites," on the meaning of "taboo," p. 152 £f. 14 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE was still nearer (e), in which class is the God of modern Christianity.^ No statements certainly about the beginnings of re- ligion can be more than hypotheses, yet it seems justi- fiable to start with animism or a belief in spirits as the universal basis of definite religious belief. Various tend- encies led to this belief, of which perhaps the interpreta- tion of dreams and hallucinations was the chief {i.e. at least according to Van Gennep and RikUn). It is also the principal motive in the production of the legend, story, and myth, and may be traced back at last to desire (so Dr. Riklin, a pupil of Froed, claims), principally to desire for power of a social or magical kind. Pfleiderer holds that the original form of the deity was an union of the collective ancestral spirits of the group in question, with some per- sonified nature-power, and that in this conception two ideas are united, viz. the superhuman, unchanging power of the natural world, and the relationship with men which the god holds by virtue of the blood bond. So that primi- tive religion was a community affair, and, though in itself not moral, had within it the germ of a moral development. Our interest, of course, is chiefly with the higher re- ligions. If we want to follow the ethical development of religion from the primitive germ, we can trace it fairly well in that historical religion which is best known to us — the religion of Israel. In the Old Testament narrative, two separate writers have been discovered, called respectively J and E because of the different word they used for God, viz. Jahwe — the god of the nomadic tribes, the god who dwelt in Sinai and was the god of the lightnings and storms and of the mountain and also the god of the song of Deb- orah, who leads the tribe to victory; and (2) Elohim, a word used to express collectively the local gods of the people of Canaan who, as the Israelites passed to the agricultural stage, under the form of Baalin lords of the land and givers of fertility, at first alternated with, and 1 A. Van Gennep, ** La Formation des Legendes." THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 15 finally were absorbed into the original conception of Jahwe. Robertson Smith ^ holds that all Semitic religions have passed through the totem stage and that this is a develop- ment from the original conception of the Jinni, who, finally, became the friendly gods with their local sanc- tuaries (developed from the haunts of the Jinni) at Shiloh, Bethel, Kadesh-Barnea, and other sacred spots where the caravans stopped in their travels, where merchants, pil- grims, and other wanderers listened to the story-teller as with rhythm and repetition, as in the East to-day, he re- cites the wonderful stories of the appearance of the divine beings at the sacred stone, well, or grove. As the Hebrew tribe settles down in Canaan, it becomes more united in itself. It has to fight for it» existence and for the possession and retention of the land with the Canaanite tribes already dwelling there. The tribal god Jahwe tends to become one over against the many gods of the heathen. He is lord and king, the god who helps them to victory. A crisis for the nation is reached in the reign of Ahab, when the people as a whole must choose between the sterner form of worship of Jahwe, which made for purity and self-control, and the worship of the Baalim, which was a glorification of the powers of nature and which worked toward moral degeneracy. Under the great Israelitish prophets the development toward an ethical religious attitude takes great strides forward from the critical moment when Elijah's prayer is answered and by an external sign Jahwe, the God of Isreal is vindicated and the priests of Baal rejected, to the culmination point in the purely spiritual religion of Jeremiah and of the second Isaiah.^ Under the former religion has become a matter of the inner life rather than 1 Robertson Smith, *' The Rehgion of the Semites." 2 If we want to trace this development f m-ther, we may do so in the standard works on the prophets of Israel. Professor Comhill's " Prophets of Israel " gives an interesting, brief account on which mine is based. See for a parallel development the religion of Ancient Egypt in J. H. Breasted's " Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt." 16 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE of the outer act ; under the latter the conception of Jahwe is universalized. He is no longer the god of the Hebrew people alone. A new coloring is given to the conception of Jahwe in the Psalms of the exile. He is the redeemer, ^Hhe shadow of a great rock in a weary land." A '' refuge " from the storms of life — the good shepherd. In the drama of Job, we meet with the passionate appeal for one who will appreci- ate and justify the ways of the righteous, together with the final attitude of trust and submission to the will of God. Leaving on one side the legislative development of the religion of Israel, together with the Babylonian and Greek influences of the post-exilic period, the religion of Jesus of Nazareth seems to me the logical outcome and climax of the religious conception of the more spiritual of the great Hebrew prophets. The great fundamental concept in the religion of Jesus is the spiritual relationship between God and man. Based on this thought certain elements are emphasized. Jesus begins his ministry with the words of John the Baptist — '^ Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand." In form this is not unlike the message of Amos when he bursts upon the feasting and sacrifices at the sanctuary at Bethel. The points emphasized in the teachings of Jesus as we get at them in the three Synoptic Gospels seem to me to be : — 1st. The thought of God. — First, as perfect in righteous- ness, and second, as a loving father. He, whose love pro- tects the sparrow, will care even for the despised of this world — for the forsaken and sinners — i.e. God is uni- versal, and God is both just and merciful. 2d. The thought of man. — Every man is potentially a child of God, but he must make this potentiality actual. He must be perfect as his Father is perfect. He must put away the lusts of the flesh and worldly ambition, all time-serving, doubleness of nature, and self-seeking, i.e. he must repent and be born again. THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 17 3d. The tie between God and man ^& a spiritual bond. — God is spirit and man must worship him in spirit and in truth. He must seek to carry out God's will — and this attitude is shown by the spirit of the law and not by the letter, — by the purity of heart, single-mindedness, and by the practice of the spirit of human kindness. The possibilities involved in this attitude are infinite. Hence those stern sayings of the Master — ''He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." And to him who would bury his father before he became a disciple — ''Leave the dead to bury their dead, and follow me" — "He that would save his life must lose it," he must, ix.j seek to save the lost. This relationship between God and man is reciprocal. We learn this both from the sayings of Jesus and from the parables — "Seek and ye shall find. Ask and it shall be opened unto you." Notably in the Beatitudes — "He that doeth the will of God shall enter into the kingdom," in the parables of the Prodigal Son, the house builded on a rock, the Last Judgment, etc. But what did Jesus mean by the coming of the Kingdom of God which is the heart of his gospel? This "kingdom" is really involved in the relationship between God and man. This is, as we have seen, a spiritual and moral relationship. So that first of all the kingdom is to come in the heart of every individual. "The Kingdom of God is within you." It is a matter of individual decision and attitude. But whatever may have been the thought of Jesus concerning his own Messiahship, it is not probable that his thought was so entirely different from that of his forerunners, the Hebrew prophets, or from the conceptions of his own generation — that "the kingdom" should not have had for him also a social significance. The coming of the kingdom in the heart of each individual, i.e. the coming of the spirit of infinite love, leads inevitably to the spiritual community. Or, as Paul put it, the atonement doctrine is a phase of 18 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE the thought that men are members one of another and so must bear each other^s burdens. The law of love and the social nature of the kingdom are really correlatives of each other. The thought, then, of a spiritually regenerated com- munity must have formed a part of the teaching of Jesus. The law of love is not mere social sympathy. The two commandments have to be taken together — love to man in the light of love to God. It is sometimes said that nothing new was involved in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Already the law of love to God and love to man had been laid down as fundamental in the Hebrew law book of Deuteronomy, and is found in the teachings of the Jewish Rabbi, Hillel. Amos and the other prophets had emphasized the ethical nature of the bond between God and man and the thought of a righteous community. Hosea had set forth God's mercy, and the spirit of for- giving, compassionate love as the crown of the righteous life. Jeremiah emphasized the inwardness and univer- sality of religion. All this is true. Yet when we picture to ourselves this gracious personality against the back- ground of the simple village Ufe of Galilee, as it is given to us in the three synoptic gospels — we know that something has been added to reUgion by this Hfe, and that it is just the uniqueness of this divinely human personality; it is the actual and entire consecration to his ideal, and the perfect translating of his gospel into his own life which makes him the Master whom men love to imitate and follow. For Jesus, then, religion is essentially an inner attitude, the relation of the finite soul to God — for right- eousness is first of all or essentially a matter of individual choice and initiative. But no righteousness can stop here, for there is no choice which does not involve action. The kingdom of righteousness, then, — the coming of the Son of Man — the realization of the spirit of love, will be its realization in a group; or the ^'kingdom of God" is the community of those who have accepted and pledged THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 19 themselves to practise this spirit, or law of the kingdom. This thought of the spiritual community surely appears in the teaching of Jesus concerning the kingdom. The essence of Paul's teachings seems to me not differ- ent from this, i.e. the heart of Paul's Christianity, as expressed in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. It is true that Paul emphasized salvation through the suffering on the cross, and through the death and resur- rection of Christ. The religion ahke of Jesus and of Paul is a redemptive rehgion — but while Jesus lays stress on individual effort, Paul, without denying this as essential, '^For if any man have not the spirit of God he is none of His" — for the identification of the individual with the death and resurrection of Christ, means, I take it, his acceptance of the Christ-spirit, — Paul lays special stress on the notion of redemption through grace. It is not Ukely that Paul got the thought of the power of the death and resurrection of a divine being out of his own head. Already in Hosea and Second Isaiah, we have met with the conception of the atoning life in the picture of the suffering servant of Israel. In Egypt, in western Asia, and in Greece, the violent death and resurrection of a god had long been celebrated with special rites and mysteries which survive in folk customs even to-day. The rhythmic^ phenomena of nature which, in temperate zones at least, is universal and striking and intimately bound up with the well-being of primitive man, — viz. the death of vegetation in the autumn and its resurrection in the spring, — is, according to scholars, the original fact at the root of this group of myths.^ The ritual of Osiris, of Adonis and Attis, of Dionysos, of Demeter and Kore, were originally rites to celebrate this dying and revival, and to secure the return of life to the nature- world. 1 The activity of mind is a rhythmic process, and the mind finds its own activity mirrored in nature, see e.g. in " The Sun Myth " — "The Wanderer," etc. 2 See J. G. Frazer, " The Golden Bough," Chap. III. 20 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The Adonis rites were practised at Antioch and, as Pfleiderer points out, were probably taken over into the primitive community, as we know so many pagan rites have been since taken up by the Christian Church everywhere. Paul finds these rites at Antioch, but for him they are trans- formed into a spiritual meaning, — the new meaning is the death of the old life of sin, and the victory over death and rebirth into the new life ^^hid with Christ in God'' through the coming into the heart of the spirit of Christ, i.e. of that spirit of righteousness and of ^^love which never faileth." This thought of redemption or salvation by grace comes more and more to the fore in the Christian Church, as we can discover from the mediaeval prayers and hymns, and tends to drive into the background the thought of individual effort for righteousness. For ex- ample : '^0 Lord, who dost work out our offences, do then comfort us who faithfully call upon thee, that thou wouldest blot out our transgressions and restore us from death to the land of the living through Christ our Lord," or ^'Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace." This conception of salvation by grace in so far as it retains its spiritual significance, is the thought of the vicarious atonement of self-sacrificing love, expressed by Browning in the climax of the poem of Saul : — "He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand most weak. 'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh that I seek In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever : a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the Christ stand." Here we reach that notion of the eternal Christ, which, as an ideal^ is the ideal of Christendom for the most part to-day. This brief outline of the development of the historical religion best known to us is given, not as in any way a complete account, nor the only form of development the THE PKOBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 21 religious ideal may take, but to show the trend of develop- ment in one type of religious experience ; to show, that is, how this ideal may become moraUzed and spiritualized. At each stage the thought of the divine is conditioned by the content of man's need, desire, and longing. The thought of God is at once a conception of something in itself valuable, a goal of striving, and also it is a pragmatic conception of that which will aid and further the striving itself. Religion lives by ideals, i.e. religious experience is an attitude to an invisible world. To live in the light of an ideal means both the striving to attain the ideal, and self-surrender to its guidance. This, I take' it, is in form the higher life which religious experience/ relates of. ^ While the content of the religious ideal changes with 1, the spiritual and intellectual growth of man, the fact of the ideahty of rehgion remains, for it has its roots as deep as human life itself. It springs, as we have seen, out of man's great need in a world to which he is never com- | pletely adjusted, and which is full of inevitable tragedy i and pain ; and also out of his deep dream and longing for ; a supreme good. If the fact of the ideality of religion is granted, then certain other propositions follow : — 1st. The universality of religion, — at least in pos- sibility. By possibiUty I mean : Not that all men ac- tually are religious, but that the possibility follows, since all men are capable of being religious, i.e. of striving for, and giving themselves to a supreme, unseen good, or because in other words — Ideality is a universal char- acteristic of normal human nature; this fact explains why no tribe has been found above the lowest conditions of savagery, which has not some sort of religion ; and it also explains what is meant when on the plane of spirit- ual religion it is said that all men are '^Children of God." 2d. It is impossible that a life which lives for the sen- 22 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE sations of the moment, whose principle is ''Gather ye roses while ye may/' should be a rehgious life. The ideal is always in some sense beyond present experience. 3d. That religion is not life according to nature, if the natural life means the life of man as he at any moment is. Religion means a redemption, a ''new birth,'' a transfor- mation through the power of the ideal, though this trans- formation may come by gradual growth, as well as by sud- den revelation and conversion. Religious experience, then, cannot be described simply as "natural," if this term is used as modern science uses it, for the transformation of religion cannot be expressed in terms of natural law as we describe and measure the transformations of energy — for the transformation or regeneration of rehgious experience is in a sense a miracle, indescribable and occult. 4th. Since to have an ideal means actively to seek means to attain it and to carry it out in Hfe, that is, to embody the ideal in the actual, therefore religious experience will always have its rites and dogmas, and an ethical religion its forms of social-moral activity. But since the essence of reUgion is in the transformed life itself, in the spirit and not in the letter, nothing which puts an emphasis on the means to the ideal Ufe, or on a merely external good, — on the improvement of social conditions, e.g. as if, as far as the spiritual life is concerned, they were ends in themselves, — is religion, or can ever completely satisfy the religious spirit. Spiritual leaders have found the essence of religion in that saying of St. Augustine's — "Our souls are restless till they find rest in Thee." If religion is idealistic, then, clearly, union with the ideal is a forever-beyond-attainment. Religion, therefore, seeks that which is in one sense the impossible. 5th. Religion, although in some aspects more an affair of the will and of the emotion than of the intellect, yet, in so far as its essence is ideality, is of the reason, for ideals are created by reason. To be sure, we cannot, as the THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 23 older psychology did, separate the various faculties of man — the intellect, will, and emotions — and shut them up each in its own compartment in the brain. These faculties play into each other's hands, so to speak. Yet we must acknowledge a distinction between them. An ideal, though it implies activity and both will and emotion, is also an idea of the mind and as such be- longs to the world of thought ; and, in the second place, an ideal is not that which man merely feels^ but that which he judges to be good or the ''best," but judg- ments are tools of the reason; and, in the third place, in so far as religion is ethicalj its dependence upon reason seems perfectly clear. As we shall see more fully later on, a universal principle of action, free from self-interest and independent of results, which is the principle of the absolutely good-will, can only be given by reason. A word, however, must be said about the meaning of the term reason in this connection. In using this word here I mean to make a distinction between the process of abstract reasoning — the analyzing of logical concepts and of hypotheses ; between that process which the German philosophers call ''the understanding," and reason in the wider and commoner use of the term. By reason in re- lation to religious experience, I mean that faculty which, from the basis of all the past concrete experience, and of the more or less unconscious and inarticulate intuitions, clearly and consciously draws its conclusions ; distinguishes between absolute and relative issues ; sets up standards of value and determines which "revelations" (so-called) to consciousness are divine ; which gives, in a word, to finite experience an ideal standard and goal. A good illustra- tion of this type of the synthetic function of reason is to be found in the story of the Buddha, when, meditating under the Bo-tree, he discovered the origin of misery and the way of escape. It was a state of deepest reflection which led to enlightenment. It involved reflection on 24 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE the process of life, and also an actual living and concrete experience of it.^ No human reason, of course, is completely enhghtened or sure to see the whole of the issue in any given concrete experience. An absolute reason or insight would see the issue in its wholeness, or in all its relationships. In the content of man's highest reUgious ideal, God is partly one *' whose judgments are true and righteous altogether," one who knows or sees the world as it is, i.e, not in frag- ments, but in its entirety. P^ But if we have estabUshed the fact of the ideaUty of rehgion, we have not thereby distinguished religion from morahty. Morahty also finds its basic element in ideality, and every proposition which we have deduced from this fact of ideaUty for rehgion is equally true of morahty. If we disentangle rehgion from its external forms and superstitions with the emotional accompaniments, if, i.e., we pull off the outer wrappings and reach rehgion's heart, have we anything left but morahty ? — that is our present question. Evidently the spheres of rehgion and morality move in pathswhichlie very close together, and those agnostics of our time who remain earnest and humanitarian in spirit, hold that religion of a spiritual type is simply pure morahty. Yet the conclusion that rehgion is nothing but morality or "morahty touched with emotion," or as our humani- tarian age might choose to express it, — religion is phi- lanthropy and social service, or even the effort to amelio- rate economic conditions, — does not satisfy us. We feel instinctively that the spheres of rehgion and morahty, close as they are together, yet are, in some way, different. Let us consider, then, the relation between religion and morahty, and let us begin by considering these two in their earliest form. * The future Buddha's experience on the drive in the Park. *' Bud- dhism in Trans." H. Warren, p. 56 ff. THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 25 To a superficial view, it appears as if savage religion were entirely divorced from morality, and yet the savage man's religion was a social affair, and, in truth, for primi- tive man his socially organized hfe was wholly permeated with rehgion. The individual man in our sense of the word did not exist. Primitive man's dream of good was boimd up with the welfare of his group, with his tribe, over against another tribe or the hostile powers of nature. ReUgion is the bond which unites the community or group to its ^Hotem," to the beneficent nature power, the spirit ancestor, the civihzing hero or king, the lord of battles and victory, i.e. to whatever form, in the given case, the tribal god may assume. For all primitive peoples, as Robertson Smith points out, the tie which binds the worshippers to their god and so to one another is the blood bond,^ The worshippers and the god are of the same kin. This bond finds outward expression in rites of lustration, sacrifice, and taboo; in ceremonies and festivals with their sacred marches, dance, and song. Primitive religion was then social and consisted very largely of a series of acts and outward observances. And, although it is generally said that savage religions are unmoral, yet since the savage religion was on the side of law and order and the maintenance of the group, whatever there was of moraUty was contained in these social re- Hgious observances. But the tendency is for such ex- ternal religious observances to gain in importance over the inner spirit, i.e. for the significance of the bond of kinship and union, itself to go into the background. But now and again arise those seers, prophets, and reformers, men who themselves have had dreams and have heard the voice of the god, who call the people back to the inner meaning of their rites and observances, to the original message of the god. With the exception of those cases * Blood bond, that is, the common to all — the universal — the socially uniting; to God, to the universe; it is the divine or the more than individual — this is the warrant of its worth. 26 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE where the motive was of a political or self-seeking nature, this is, perhaps, the significance of the oracles of pagan gods, and this is the message of those Hebrew prophets like Amos, when, descending upon the feasting of the Israehtes, he sacrificed in honor of Jahwe at the market- place of Bethel : — "Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord ! Wherefore would ye have the day of the Lord? It is darkness and not light. I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn as- semblies. Yes, though ye offer unto me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I will not accept them, neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat hearts. Take them away from me, the noise of thy songs ; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judg- ment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream." (Amos 5 : 19-25.) The above suggests perhaps the way in which morality at the beginning tends to separate itself from religion. ReHgion would, for the mass of the people, become iden- tified more and more with external rites, — the ^' taboo '' and the penalties following an infringement of these rules, together with ceremonies for special times and seasons; while morality would be that which in his everyday life a man beheves in his heart to be right and his social duty to practise. With the incoming of individualism with Stoicism and Christianity, this separation gains in em- phasis until it reaches its culmination in the individualism of the nineteenth century, until men have even come to think of religion as hostile to morality. And in truth it is not difficult to find instances of this hostility, from the simple case of the negro, cited by Professor Palmer, who stole a chicken on his way home from prayer meeting, to the practices of the Holy Inquisition in the Middle Ages.^ iln his book "The Man Furthest Down," B. T. Washington de- scribes how the Christian religion has become, in Sicily, a matter of superstition which has no connection with morality. "The image of the Virgin," he says, "has become little more than a fetish to conjure with," e.g. the peasant who proposes to avenge himself on his landlord by stealing from him will pray before one of THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 27 But I am not concerned with the origin and develop- ment of rehgion (or of morahty) from its primitive be- ginnings, except in so far as to show the connection between the rehgion of to-day and the primitive form of rehgion, i.e. the universal elements of religious experience as a whole. The first distinction which appears, then, between re- hgion and morality is this : While both are concerned with socially organized life, morality is primarily interested in the inner virtues and purity of heart, and in outer deeds as an expression of this changing and growing inner life; religion, on the other hand, as a socially uniting bond, has to be embodied in institutions and creeds which tend to become unchanging, static, and meaningless in respect to morality. Hence it is sometimes said religion is simply '^ ossified morality. '' Our interest, however, is only with the spiritual form of religion, and it is evident from the records of concrete religious experience that there is something more in re- ligion than mere external observance. Indeed, James in his analysis passes over external religious observances entirely as unworthy to be called religious experience. Possibly the relation might be expressed as a circular one. Morality is deeply embedded in rehgion and sanc- tioned and illumined by it, and religion is controlled, di- rected, and spiritualized by morality. Each is an inner spirit, an attitude, and each is a bond which unites the members of a community to one another and to the com- munity itself as a whole. Religion is as much practice as morality, and in its higher types, religion is as ethical as moral practice itself. About rehgious practice, how- ever, there is a glow, an enthusiasm, which morahty pure and simple hardly gives, though even here we must not forget the saying of Kant that the two things which filled him with reverence and awe were the starry heavens above and the moral law within man. these images, before starting out, for success, and if successful he may offer to the saints a portion of what he has stolen. 28 THE DRA.MA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Is the difference in emotional atmosphere, then, the only- distinction between rehgion and morality? Whatever further distinctions between rehgion and morality the sequel may reveal, one fundamental differ- ence at once appears. This fundamental difference be- tween religion and morahty, however, hes very close to that which constitutes their essential likeness, or to that which chiefly they have in common, viz. both religion and morality demand an absolute and ultimate value. To summarize our results so far: Both rehgion and morahty have an ideal standard of value. Morality says to the finite individual: ''You ought to strive to attain this ideal goal." Morahty is a serial process — a ''pro- gression," as it is called — no last term to the series is possible. An absolute good cannot be attained by the finite and the partial — there is always something beyond to be accomphshed — some further duty to be done. On the other hand, rehgion says to the finite individual : There is a divine order. It is more than you, and yet you are even now one with it — hence your sense of security and certainty of permanence; your blessedness, your peace. Morahty emphasizes obhgation, striving, self-initiative, creation of goodness through deeds on the part of the finite individual; while rehgion emphasizes acceptance, obedi- ence, self-surrender of the individual to that good which is greater than he and which he did not create. The ideal of morahty is an infinitely removed goal. It is an idea in men's minds, a law, a categorical imperative to be sought, achieved, obeyed, and carried out in practice — yet it remains forever an "ought to be" which is never fully attained by moral striving. But religion is more than practice. It is a faith, a certainty. Religious faith holds that this ideal, this "ought to be," is also an "is." It holds that however the actual embodiment of the moral ideal in finite life may fail and change and fluctuate, the ideal itself is permanent and changeless, — forever the Son THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 29 of Righteousness is realized in the being of God. '*The heavens shall wax old as a garment, as a vesture shalt thou change them and they shall be changed, but thou art the same and thy days shall know no end.'^ Religious faith holds, moreover, that man may commune with this Son of Righteousness in such a way as he cannot with a re- flective ideal of his own creation. Such is religious faith, but is this faith justified ? Is this communion with God an actual experience, and if so, in what sense? There are few thoughtful minds who have not sooner or later asked this question. The philosopher perhaps may take refuge in subjectivity and feel — "If there's no Sun, I still can have the Moon ; If there's no Moon, the Stars my needs suffice ; And, if these fail, I have my Evening Lamp ; Or, lampless, there's my trusty Tallow Dip ; And, if the Dip goes out, my Couch remains. Where I may sleep and dream there's Light again." * The practical man of affairs, or the reformer too much absorbed in actual doing to stop to reflect whether it is all worth while : the poet whose — " Imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown " till these airy nothings of his brain seem more real than any outer world; the seer who beholds things invisible and hears voices unheard by other men ; the mystic lost in ecstatic experience ; these, perhaps, do not at the mo- ment of absorption ask this question, but it is asked by the reflective consciousness wherever found. It is asked by the thoughtful child; it is asked by questioning, tragic youth eagerly seeking to mould the world to the dear desires of its heart ; it is asked by the mature man whose life has been brought into close touch with some of life's deeper and heartrending experiences. * John Kendrick Bangs. 30 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Yes, this is the ultimate problem buried deep in the heart of rehgion. It is a vital problem, for close to it is the question — is life itself worth while ? It has been said that even if there were no God, it would be better to be brave than cowardly, true than false, un- selfish and kind than selfish and cruel. Such a view seems a matter of course, but without asking what the term ''better'^ could signify and whether this position is logically tenable, we must admit that it is a view which is lacking in encouragement and hope. ^^ Though he tarry long, yet he will surely come in the end.'' This is the attitude of religious faith. And this position is not a mercenary one. What man who has worked for an un- popular cause in which he believed, has not felt that it made all the difference that truth was on his side, and that people were bound to see truth in the end? Probably, as a matter of fact, every man who has a serious purpose and a ''cause" has reUgious faith, whether he acknowledge it or not. He believes that his ''cause" is a "holy cause" and will win in the end, i.e. he beheves that it is really in accord with the nature of things. But to hold the faith is not to prove that it is justified. And so we return once more to our problem : Is there a spiritual rehgion which is in essence anything but mo- raUty? Must we in the end identify a spiritual religion with morality, or does something of the primitive con- ception of the divine remain as a reahty which can be won to respond to man's needs and which upholds his ideals? Does the dream come true? Is the fundamental desire of man, as expressed in the prayer of St. Augustine, sat- isfied? The above problem is a form of the problem of the relation between the ' ' ought ' ' and the " is " and one of those " oppositions " in which, as we shall find, religious experience abounds. This is, is it not, what we all want to know ^- it is the ultimate problem for rehgion and that which drives the religious consciousness at last to philosophy. THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 31 While we are primarily concerned with religion, not with metaphysics, to which the solution of this ontological problem properly belongs, yet the problem of the ^' ought to be" versus the ''is" is so closely inwrought with re- ligious experience that at bottom this whole paper is in- evitably an attempt to answer this deep question. In the days of old, the answer seemed easy, for then the gods came into close touch with men. When man believed in the divinity of the powers of nature or of animal kind and ancestral spirits, when God appeared in the storm clouds, and in the burning bush ; when he revealed his presence in the sacrifice at the sacred stone or grove, as in the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal ; when he spoke to the seers in dreams and hallucinations and to the diviners in strange coincidences and unusual occm-rences of nature ; when magic spells and incantations brought rain and sun- shine for the crops, and won the divine powers to dispel disease and destroy enemies, — then the divine was veri- fied to the senses and man was satisfied and, intellectually at least, at peace — for this was to primitive man a form of scientific verification. But modern science with its insistence on an unvarying order and unchangeable law has done away with the possibility of miraculous intervention in the world of natural phenomena. ''When Israel of the Lord beloved Out of the land of bondage came, His father's God before him moved, An awful guide in smoke and flame. " By day along the astonished lands, The cloudy pillar glided slow ; By night Arabia's crimson sands Returned the fiery column's glow. " Then rose the choral hymn of praise And trump and timbal answered keen, And Zion's daughters pour'd their lays With Priests' and warrior's voice between. 32 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE " No portents now our foes amaze. Forsaken, Israel wanders lone ; Our fathers would not know Thy ways And Thou hast left them to their own." Nor, indeed, is an ethical religion interested in such signs and wonders. A spiritual religion must seek for the veri- fication of God's presence in the hearts of men and in their deeds of love and righteousness. But this brings us back to morality and the cycle of thought already considered. The important distinction between religion and morality appears to be this : The goal of perfection which morality seeks is infinitely removed — it may be only ideal, while religion holds that it is — is now and always realized. If anywhere realized, however, a spiritual ideal must appear in human lives, but where in finite experience is an infinite and perfect love and absolute holiness realized? In the great personalities? In the civilizing hero? the inspired priest? the righteous ruler or king? the self -renouncing saint? In the prototype and pattern ? In the eternal Christ ? In the moral ideal ? If so it is an ideal in men's minds, but nowhere attained here below. How then actual and real ? Is the religious ideal, in short, more than a subjective dream, a vision of the night, an illusion which will finally pass away when science shall have completely come to its own? And if the religious ideal is not realized in human life, where, then, can we find it? Surely not in the physical world, for dear and beautiful as again and again mother nature may appear to some individual among her children, when we consider the natural system as a whole, we have to admit that, if not cruel, it is at least indifferent to man's moral ideal and to his dearest hopes. The rain and the sunshine fall ahke on the evil and the good; tempests and earthquakes, fires and floods, strike equally the vir- tuous and the guilty. Man looks out upon the world, as Gotama did, and beholds everywhere in the natural order, ignorance, disease, old age, and death, — or, as the THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 33 Psalmist who saw the wicked flourishing like a green bay tree and the just man begging his bread. And who can picture to himself, without a pang at the heart, the piteous suffering of innocent and helpless animals.^ No, not in the natural order of the universe, nor in the natiu*al life of man, is the religious ideal realized. The natural order is indifferent. "So let the stricken deer go weep, The Hart ungalled play, For some must watch while some must sleep. Thus runs the world away." And so, again and again in agony and bloody sweat men have prayed to whatever powers there be, that the cup of sorrow might be removed, and this whole sorry scheme of things changed and moulded nearer to the heart's desire. We must conclude that it is very difficult to see in the natural order as it is a revelation of the divine. Nor is the religious-moral ideal realized in the organized life of society. For where in human institutions do we find the expression of perfect love, of righteousness, and of social justice? Only here and there in some individual life is the ideal in a measure attained, and this finite in- dividual lives a natural life, and before he is able to trans- form the life of the community, he perishes from the earth like the flower of the field ; often, indeed, as a martyr to the ideal at the hands of society itself. Only the ideal as ideal Uves in the mind and heart of man, forever changing, 1 " High above the woods some startled pigeons were wheeling. No other life in sight ; but a gleam of sunlight stole down the side of the covert and laid a burnish on the turned leaves, till the whole wood seemed quivering with magic. Out of that quivering wood a wounded rabbit stole into the open to die. It lay down on its side on the slope of a tussock of grass, its hind legs drawn uuder it, its fore legs raised like the hands of a praying child. Motionless as death, all its re- maining life was centered in its black soft eyes. Uncomplaining, unknowing, with that poor soft wandering eye, it was going back to mother earth." (** The Country House," John Galsworthy.) D 34 THE DEAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE forever unfulfilled ; and man himself with his ideals shall some day perish and not a wrack be left behind. So we seem to have reached the position of Nietzsche's Zara- thustra, who, hearing the old saint praising God in the forest, said : '^ Can it be possible that this old saint has not yet heard aught of God being dead. . . . This world is the ever imperfect image of an eternal contradiction . . . alas brethren that God whom I created was man's work and man's madness like all Gods." Yet himaan needs remain, and the passionate cry of the heart will not be stilled. If the universe is in the hands of a perfectly good Being, then all else can be borne. But if God exists, then, somehow, surely he must manifest himself. In some manner he must appear to his worship- pers. But where and how? Such a question admits of no offhand reply. It is really bound up with the prob- lem of the ultimate constitution of the universe. To summarize our results so far : Religious experience demands the reaUty of its object. But if there be a God, then, in some way, he must make his presence known. In primitive times either the supernatural was verified to the senses in natural phenomena by the appearance of the deity at the local sanctuary, or in the activities of an inspired individual ; or, as in Vedic hymns, — when with an amulet and with recitation of the magic formula men sought to win the gods, — if the charm works, if the misfortune is done away, or blessing comes, then some friendly supernatural power has surely come to man's aid. And even to-day, men believe in miracles and seek for verification to the senses of divinity. To the devout CathoHc, the real presence is in the bread and wine, and the Protestant still prays for rain. But the presupposi- tion of science is an ordered universe. Miracles are a weak prop for religious faith, if by miracle is meant a supernatural event which causes results in the physical world, and which takes its place in the chain of phenomena. THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 35 There are doubtless many unexplained events. These events belong to the sphere of man's ignorance. But they cannot be miraculous^ i.e, they cannot enter the phe- nomenal world, and in principle contradict the funda- mental ground of such a world's existence. If such events enter the chain of phenomena, then there is some order which can explain their relation to other events and phenomena, and some law which can summarize this re- lation, although this order and this law may not be defined by any hypothesis so far set forth. An ethical, spiritual religion, however, is little interested in signs and wonders. It looks for the realization of an absolute ideal in the human, moral order. The nearest approach to this realization it finds in certain exceptional individuals like Sakya Muni and Jesus. But the records show that these were men amongst other men (and if they were not, it is to return once more to the world of signs and wonders). But an absolute ideal cannot be identified with any one finite human being, and even if it could be, — since these exceptional persons were perfect as far as we can judge, — it would give us no ground for believing that the ideal was eternally and per- manently realized. If, however, we mean by ^^God" simply an ideal in men's minds like the conception of 'Hhe eternal Christ" of the church — then the same problem returns: How is the divine made actual — for this ideal in men's minds is constantly changing. We are not sure that it is growing spiritually, or will con- tinue to do so. We want to know that God is living now, eternal and permanent, and that he supports our ethical ideals and our deepest purposes. But from this point of view (i.e. of subjective idealism), God becomes an unattainable ideal, and how can such a God be in touch with man? Can he hear man's prayers or help him as the gods of old helped their worshippers ? ^ 1 Here a new religious opposition appears on the horizon which we shall consider in detail later on ; i.e. in this phase of our question, the 36 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The fundamental distinction between religion and morality is that religion holds that the absolute ideal is an actual experience. God is in touch with — communes with — man, and the order of the world is at heart divine. And, yet, because of the critical, reflective consciousness of the modern day we cannot find God as did the men of old. Thus, often, the modern attitude is one of subjective idealism. As Swinburne has expressed it: — "Save his own soul, he has no star." Yet we are not really satisfied to be agnostics, and still comes the passionate cry of the heart : — "O that I knew where I might find Him I " Because of the failure to find God either in the natural order or in the moral life of men, the world has turned to mysticism. This turning seems to be a recurrent phe- nomenon.^ It appears strikingly during the latter days of the Roman RepubUc and the period immediately pre- ceding Christianity.^ At that time when the ancient reli- gions of Greece and Rome were passing away, when moraUty seemed about to vanish and superstition, oppres- sion, and injustice were abroad, men sought to come into immediate contact with the divine through the various Oriental cults — cults such as that of the Great Mother, of Isis, and Seraphis, and of Mithra. These mystery religions with their secret initiations, their rites of purification, their myths and stories of divine love and sorrow, and their promise of immortality made an appeal to the emotional nature which men had not found in the Graeco-Roman rehgions, and brought to a world lost in sin and disillusioned, healing, the promise of redemption, and underlying, logical problem arises in respect of the paradox of the static and the dynamic, the permanent and the changing, in religion, and how to reconcile these two phases of religious experience. ^To-day, in the autumn of 1914, men are prophesying that when "the great war" is over there will follow a revival of rehgion; and it has been said that this religious revival will take a mystical form. 2 See S. Dill, "Roman Society," Vol. I. THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 37 a great hope — the hope "that this poor struggling in- effectual life should not close at death." And so again to-day, as a natural reaction against the scepticism, scientific rationalism, and evolutionary ma- terialism of the last part of the nineteenth century, the heart once more asserts itself as in " In Memoriam " — " And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered — 'I have felt,' " and this revolt of the heart finds expression in the New Thought Movement, in Christian Science, and other forms of religious mysticism of the day. Mysticism as the es- sence of religion is the position taken in that notable book which has done so much to reawaken an interest in the psychology of rehgion, the "Varieties of Religious Ex- perience'' of William James. In spite of the verdict of science and of the logical understanding, in the deeper reaches of the human consciousness — in the world of the "subliminal self," 'tis said God appears to man, and this immediate experience itself cannot be doubted. Here, then, in the world of pure experience we seem to have found reality itself. Our day emphasizes the psychical. The properties of matter — color, sound, form, weight, space-characters, and the rest — can all be dis- solved into elements of sensation. There are no such things as "material" atoms. The "psychical" has dis- placed the old materialism. But experience itself is real ; we cannot get back of that and outside it. Religious mysticism is at home in this world of psychic reaUty. In the depths of his own immediate experience, then, man comes into touch with the divine. But no sooner is this position attained than the critical world-spirit returns with its relentless questionings. Granted that the bugaboo of scientific materiaUsm has been driven away or dissolved in the reality of immediate sensational experience, yet in pan-psychicism and mys- ticism what value is there ? — what hope for the reahzation 38 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE of man's dreams ? — for the actuality of his vision of the ideal? For what have we, after all, in psychical experi- ence but the ceaseless vibration of pulses, momentary sen- sations which come in a flash and are gone — a Heraclitean world of eternal mutabiUty ? The outcome is that as pure experience reality is reduced to a changing experience, an ebb and flow without permanence, significance, or value. If the mystic declares that in his heart of hearts he has had a revelation of divinity,^ — that the moral law was not written once by the finger of God on tables of stone and given to the prophet on the sacred heights of Mt. Sinai amid lightnings and smoke and quakings of the holy mountain, while the waiting people trembled, — but that in his own immediate experience divinity has passed by, and spoken to him, and written the law on his heart, — what have we, after all, but an individual experience, a revelation of moral law which is of value only to the in- dividual ? Experience shows that there have been a great variety of interpretations of such an immediate, moral con-« sciousness. Pure experience, then, after all gives no uni- versal moral revelation, nor any warrant that there is any absolute support in the universe for our ethical ideals, or that the best is permanent, or the '^good^' also the ^Hrue/' And, further, mystical experience is not able to interpret all actual forms of rehgious experience, — not those of a social type, — and we have seen that primitive rehgion was primarily social, and we can hardly eliminate from religious experience the social forms which survive to-day. We found the ground of human, rehgious experience in the essential ideahty of man's nature. Man creates an ideal world. But religious experience claims that this ideal world is also actual and real. It beheves the unseen eternally is. Yet our brief review of some of the phases of rehgious experience has left us in a position of more or less un- certainty and doubt regarding the reahty of the rehgious 1 See the account of mystic experiences in James's book. THE PEOBLEM OF RELIGIOUS IDEALISM 39 ideal ; that is, in the sense of its realization in the actual universe, and not merely as a subjective dream or illu- sion. Yet one result we have reached. We cannot doubt or deny that there has been such a thing as religious experience itself, whether or no this experience signifies all that it is held to mean of God and of ultimate value. It may be that in some other way than those ways which we have thus far briefly considered, the ideal is made con- crete, the divine verified, and God is in touch with man. In our perplexity our best course would seem to be to start with the reality which we know, and to institute an examination of some of these concrete experiences them- selves ; to gather up, so to speak, the elements which they yield, to discover first of all which of these elements are universal, and secondly, in what sense, if any, actual re- Kgious experience is a revelation of God to the world.^ 1 At this point I Jiave naturally to assume my own investigation of prayers, hymns, poems, and other records of religious experience. Many of these will be used as illustrations in what follows. " O liebe fliichtige Seele Dir ist so bang und weh ! " — Heine. CHAPTER II The Universal Elements of Religious Experience The reflections of the foregoing chapter led us to a brief consideration of two phases, as they may be called, of religious experience. Ideality, we saw, is the heart and soul of religious experience, and yet this ideality, if it is to be objective and a character of reality, must bear also the quality of immediacy. Ideality and immediacy, there- fore, are the two wings of religion by which it rises into light and life and becomes a thing at once of human and eternal value. But the conclusion of the chapter left us in doubt as to whether these two phases of religious experience could be unified, and if so in what way the reconciliation could be effected. It is true the religious ideal we have, but is it more than a subjective ideal? Again, 'Hhe immediate" we have, but has it any spiritual worth and value ? Such is the position to which we were brought at the close of the chapter. In other words, in a spiritually developed religion, God becomes man's highest ideal, and his life in relation to (union with, communion with) God — or salvation — his supreme end. The fundamental question for religious experience then is : Does God exist, and is salvation possible ? Leaving this great question in abeyance for the moment, we turned in our perplexity to an analysis of such concrete religious experience as we have in order to discover afresh the elements and the essential nature of this experience. We have, then, as a starting point, the fact of concrete religious experience, and we find that this experience when 41 42 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE analyzed implies the ideality of religion — i.e, religious experience, whatever else it is, is an aspiration, a longing for an invisible goal, for an ideal good — and, for spiritual religion, an ^^ ought to be,'' — and, further, religious faith holds that this invisible good, this supernatural world, exists and may be attained (by right rules and practices — magic — prayers — meditations, rituals, ceremonies, moral actions, renunciation, social service, etc.). Out of 'the fact of the ideality of religion, then, we get the first contrast and op- position of religious experience, and from the faith that this opposition may be overcome appears the bond which unites the elements of the opposition in one whole of experience. Hence the universal form of religious experience is a triadic relation, and its universal elements — (1) The present state which is restless, incomplete, un- satisfactory, and relatively at least, evil — or a state of sin. (2) Over against this — the longed-for, invisible state — an unseen world which is good, satisfaction, peace, fulfill- ment, etc. (3) The bond or process — a way of life, of attainment, of passing from the evil to the good — and also from the good to the evil — the infinite to the finite, the divine to the human — for the process is a reciprocal one — a longing and a response, a seeking and a bestowing. "O that I knew where I might find Him " — "If ye seek me truly, ye shall find me " — "Ask and it shall be given you." So much for a very general expression of the universal elements of religious experience. Concretely, of course, they take a great variety of forms. We saw in the opening chapter that, granted the ideality of religion, it follows that certain propositions are true. I want to speak a little more in detail of these deductions from religious ideality. If they are true, then some groups of experiences seem to be eliminated from the field of re- ligious experience. For example, first, we must eliminate that whole group of experience which can be classed as I UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 43 purely immediate states of experience. We must eliminate Epicureanism in its refined as well as in its more sensual forms. The goal of religious experience will not be the Arabian paradise, nor the attainment of distinction, ele- gance, and refined taste of certain forms of modern cul- ture. Greek Epicureanism was a philosophy, not a reli- gion. The disciple of Epicurus saw life as a series of impres- sions, a Heraclitean flux. Yet he sought, as all men do, for something permanent, something real and of value — and he found the concrete experience of the moment — ■ "A moment's Halt — a momentary taste Of Being from the well amid the Waste, And lo, the phantom caravan has reached The Nothing it set out from — Oh, make haste ! " If living reality is just the moment of experience be- tween a past which is no more, and a future which perhaps may never be at all, then let us make the most of the mo- ment which is ours and drain the cup of life to the dregs — "Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears To-day of past Regrets and future Fears. To-morrow ! — Why, To-morrow I may be Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n thousand Years." In its more refined form, as the doctrine of culture, an interesting expression of this type of experience is given in Pater's ^'Marius, the Epicurean.'' The moment's ex- perience is concrete, direct. Be perfect to what is ''here and now." Aim for the perfection of all powers of sen- sation, perception, intelligence, and emotion. We saw in the opening chapter that religion could not be identified with mere morality. The question which confronts us now is — how far religious experience can be identified with aesthetic emotion. Greek Epicureanism was a philosophy, not a religion, but in our day there is a tendency not only to substitute the delight of aesthetic experience for rehgion, but even to identify the two — and to say religion is simply aesthetic experience. But in so far as aesthetic experience can be 44 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE^ defined in terms of immediate satisfaction, this experience cannot constitute the whole of, or the essence of, reUgious experience. And this further raises the question how far Mysticism in its pure form is a satisfactory expression of reHgious experience. We saw in the preceding chapter that the mystic ex- perience is an individual experience, that each individual must find it and experience it for himself, — and we saw further that no purely individual experience could be a warrant of the universal truth of the experience. Im- mediate experience is an individual affair. Then man — the individual simply — would be the measure of all things, and from this immediacy no universal standard could be derived. Also it was suggested that life shows other forms of religious experience — viz. such as we find in social religious types. We have now to raise the further question whether mystic experience as merely immediate is reUgion at all. To the mystic this experi- ence is a real and thrilling experience. He seems to see more into the depths of reality. New meanings flash upon him, new powers are quickened within him, and his whole being rises up in response to the new insight. No wonder that he fancies that in this experience he has come — "on that which is And caught the deep pulsations of the world." For him there is no need of any ^' other'* — there is no "beyond." This is bliss, — this is peace, — this is en- lightenment, — this is reality, — this is God. But in this experience what has become of the ideality of religion ? If the answer is that reUgious experience is a* finding as well as a seeking, a response as well as a prayer, a satisfaction as well as a longing and striving, still we have to ask whether this immediate consciousness of a finite individual (which varies from one individual to another and even in the individual himself from moment to mo- ment) can constitute the complete state which is the goal of UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 45 religious ideality? We should have, in any case, to aban- don our search for universal elements in reUgious experi- ence, for my immediate experience is not yours or an- other's ; it is just my own and unique. The immediate in itself is not religion. In the second place, we have, I think, to eliminate from the sphere of religion that group of experiences which em- phasizes the value of the ^'natural" man and of a purely ^'natural" development in the evolutionary sense of the word, because religious experience implies a ^transfor- mation'' in relation to an ideal, — a conscious self- consecration such as took place in the knight of mediaeval days as he kept vigil over his arms in the sanctuary. The above, however, is not meant to imply that the develop- ment of instincts and impulses to a higher level may not take place gradually and unconsciously in a religious at- mosphere and environment, nor that the transformation into the Ufe of the spirit must be necessarily attended by emotional phenomena such as accompany '^religious con- version" in the technical use of this expression; but it does mean that at last that which is highest to the indi- vidual, the conscious relation of the soul to God, must be consciously chosen and pursued by him in such wise as to control and transform his natural instincts and impulses through the dedication of them to the service of his ideal end. As a result we conclude that the ''outgoing of energy," or "vital force" are not good expressions for the rehgious experience. ReHgious experience cannot be thus captured and its practical value transferred to other fields and made use of there while that which constitutes its essence is thrown on one side.^ Our result impUes further that not everything can be done by the environment or ''Nature," and so eliminates from the field of rehgion proper that " scientific culture " and those social movements which lay stress on the external factors of the '^environment/^ and which, while they are good in themselves, are not re- 1 See Professor Carver : "A Religion Worth Having." 46 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE ligious in the true sense of the term. For religion, poverty is not the ^' cause of sin/' nor psycho-therapeutics, which possibly banishes nervous indigestion and headache and other such ills, — the ^^cure" of moral evil. In a word, I should say there is no such thing as a ^'rehgion of science." For, for the ^^new life" (transformed life) of rehgion that distinction holds which was described by Saint Paul as the distinction between the natural man and the spir- itual man ; by the Stoics as the distinction between the life contrary to Nature and the life in accord with Reason — (as used by Marcus Aurehus where Nature and Reason are identified) ; the distinction of Buddhism between the transitory life full of ignorance and misery, and en- lightenment; the distinction of the two wills of Saint Augustine; of this world and the next, or ^' world to come," of early Christianity. In the words of the Fourth Gospel, ^^ Except ye be born again, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven." This is what one means by the religious life. And this is the real or eternal significance of the Christ- mas birth story — as it has been expressed, for example, in the hymn of Phillips Brooks : — ''0 holy Child of Bethlehem, Descend to us, we pray ; Cast out our sin and enter in ; " Be bom in us to-day. "We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell. come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel." The two views thus far considered and rejected, while they appear to represent opposite issues, — the one la3dng stress on the value of the moment, because, like the water of a stream, life passes away and is no more ; the other emphasizing the value of the passing life as a whole, in its natural change and unfolding, — these two views have UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 47 really, fundamentally, the same starting point, viz. the value of the purely natural life — the life, that is, of in- stinct, impulse, sensation, perception, or, even if on a higher plane, the life of natural affection and social ten- dencies, and natural intelligence. But from our starting point of the essential ideality of religion, neither the theory which emphasizes the value of the ^^here and now,'' nor that which finds its value in "liie^^ itself in its whole nat- ural development, properly defines the religious experi- ence ; and taking these theories together as in principle one — it is, I think, this attitude towards life and reality which runs as a subtle poison through so much of our modern literature and makes its influence dangerous. For this view finds in the first place man organically one with nature, — the cosmic process working in and through him, — and in the second place it finds this cosmic pro- cess is what it is — it is natural and in that sense good. Man is, therefore, in the hands of impulses which he can- not control. The true life of man, then, is the life of the cosmic process within him, of natural impulses as they naturally unfold and adapt themselves to the environ- ment. This is what we find in so much present-day Nietzscheism, as exemplified by Nietzsche's followers, in the will to power and the so-called religion of the Super- man. They seem not to have heeded the warning given in the watchword of their Master concerning ^Hhe trans- formation of all values." These views which, seeking to do away with other worldliness, emphasize the value of the " immediate " of natural life, either in part or in its whole natural evolution, as if it were all, — in so far as they are consistent in reality overthrow the spiritual basis of religion and abandon religious value as such. In the third place religious experience is essentially op- timistic. Religious faith holds that the religious ideal exists and may be, in some sense, attained. Yet since reli- gion implies the conscious relation to an unseen good, the very fact of the ideality of religion makes the present state 48 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE of experience incomplete, unsatisfactory, and in so far tragic and relatively evil. Hence in religious experience, in prayers, hymns, and religious biographies, we constantly find expressed the sense of world- weariness and despair of life as, e.g., in the Orphism of Euripides' Bacchae. Here it is the longing to escape from the irreligion, sordid ambition and restless striving of the times, from 'Hhe worship of the Ruthless Will,*' to the mystic joy of inspiration in the ^'Muses' land, aiid to peace in acceptance of the eternal nature-born laws of God." "... A better land is there Where Oljmapus charms the air, The high still dell where the Muses dwell, Fairest of all things fair ! there is Grace and there is the Hearths Desire And peace to adore thee, thou Spirit of Grinding Fire." "Happy he on the weary sea, Who hath fled the tempest and won the haven ; Happy whoso hath risen free Above his strivings." "Oh, feet of a fawn to the greenwood fled, Alone in the grass and the Leap of the hunted no more in dread Beyond the mares and the deadly press." "Onward yet by moor and glen To the clear lone lands untroubled of men." (Translation of Sir Gilbert Murray.) In Buddhism, this pessimistic attitude appears as the sense of the mutability and the transitoriness of life, of the darkness of its ignorance and of the tragedy of death which comes to all ; or, again, it is a sense of the emptiness of all purely human things, the vanity of the gifts of fickle fortune and of earthly fame of a Marcus Aurelius. An- other example of world-weariness and despair is seen in the ^'Contemptus Mundi" of the mediaeval monks, in the longing to escape from the world and to flee away to the UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 49 idealism and serenity of the inner recesses of the spirit, or to seek out some retreat of peace, — a monk's cell, forest or holy mountain — where the refugee from the vanity of the world may ponder and pray, where perhaps he may catch a vision of a redeemed world, or of some bliss in the heaven of the hereafter. I give a few illustrations of this experience of world- weariness and disillusionment. 1. From Buddhism — The Misery of existence, of birth and re-birth: — "What misery to be bom again ! And have the flesh dissolve at death ! "Subject to birth, old age, disease, Extinction will I seek to find, Where no decay is ever known, Nor death, but all serenity. "There is, there must be an escape! Impossible there should not be ! I'll make the search and find the way Which from existence shall release ! " "Even as although there evil is. That which is good is also found ; So though 'tis true that birth exists. That which is not birth should be lost." (Story of Sumedha — from the Jataka, Warren's translation.) 2. /From the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius : — "How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them ; what is the nature of all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with the bait of pleasure or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by vapory fame; "Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing dull of judgment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. Some things are emerging into existence, and others are emerging out of it ; and of that which is coming into 50 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE existence part is already extinguished. In this flowing stream, then, in which there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows which fly by, but it is already out of sight. Something of this kind is the very life of every man. What then is worth being valued ? "Live with the gods. And he does live with the gods, who con- stantly shows to them that his soul is satisfied with that which is assigned to him, and that it does all that the daemon wishes, which Zeus has given to every man for his guardian and guide, a portion of himself. And this is every man's imderstanding and reason. Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shore, and mountains, and thou art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of man, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet, or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them, he is immediately in perfect tranquillity. '* The best proof, perhaps, that the incomplete, unsatis- fied, tragic consciousness — in moral terms the conscious- ness with a sense of sin (James's twice-born men) — forms an integral element in the religious consciousness, is the fact that the complete consciousness of the longed-for goal is (when it is not described in terms of the sensuous imagination) described by means of terms which express contrast and opposition to the present unsatisfied state. For example, in Buddhistic accounts of Nirvana, Nir- vana is called the ^^ abode of bliss," of ^^ peace,'' of ''en- lightenment" in contrast to the misery of finite existence, with its mutability, its pain, its turmoil, and its ignorance. When we try to discover what positively the Nirvana experience is, logically all we find is this contrast with and negation of everything which finite existence is. It is the world beyond our present existence which is attained through the great renunciation of this world ; or through enlightenment by means of the series of trances of which series it is the limit. It is the ''sorrowless state," a state of ''incomparable security." "It is the complete ces- UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 51 sation of desire — a losing hold, a relinquishment/' Logically, Nirvana is annihilation — is nothingness. For the emotional, religious consciousness it remains the abode of peace and bliss ; but positively all we can say about it is that it is the goal which is the cessation of the wheel of existence whose roots are desire and ignorance and their consequences, transitoriness, sinfulness, pain, and sorrow. "There is, O disciples, a state, where there is neither earth nor water, neither light nor air, neither infinity of space, nor infinity of reason, nor absolute void, nor the co-extinction of perception and non-perception, neither this world nor that world, both sun and moon. That, O disciples, I term neither coming nor going nor standing, neither death nor birth. It is without basis, without procession, without cessation : that is the end of sorrow." (From Urdana, quoted by Oldenberg.) We find this contrast between the two states of the re- ligious consciousness again in the Hebrew book of Psalms. Here the goal — the ideal good which is sought — is thought of as a state of trust in God and as a perpetual dwelling in his presence through righteousness of life, or, in some cases, of ceremonial purity, and of help and strength coming from God to the righteous man. By contrast the unsatisfied or bad state is described as being forsaken of God and given over to unrighteous enemies. Almost any psalm will serve as an illustration: — " I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. " The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer ; my Godj my strength, in whom I will trust ; my buckler and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. " I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised : so shall I be saved from mine enemies. " The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid. " The sorrows of hell compassed me about : the snares of death pre- vented me. " In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God : he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears. 52 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE " As for God, his way is perfect : the word of the Lord is tried : he is a buckler to all those that trust in him." (Psalm 18.) "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? . . . " O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not ; . . . " But thou art holy. . . . " Our fathers trusted in thee : they trusted, and thou didst deliver *^^^-" (Psalm 22.) Compare with these the well-known Twenty-third Psalm, ^^The Lord is my Shepherd,'' and the Twenty- seventh Psalm, ^'The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?" Again, we find the contrast of the two states in the writings of the Stoics as already suggested; although here the goal seems to be not so much a world beyond as a world within. It is the peace of the resigned and heroic mind — ''The city of men's souls," as Seneca called it. And finally, the Christian heaven, when it is not defined in sensuous terms, is defined by means of a series of con- trasts and oppositions to the present type of existence. That is what we find in many Christian hymns. The pattern and prototype of this class of hymns is usually, as to their form, the account of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21. "And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it : for the glory of the Lord did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. . . . And the gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by day — for there shall be no night there. . . . And there shall be no curse any more. . . . And God will dwell with his people and be their God ; and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes : and death shall be no more ; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying nor pain, any more : the first things are passed away." "Hie breve vivitur, hie breve plangitur, hie breve fletur; Non breve vivere, non breve plangere retribuetur ; Patria luminis, inscia turbinis, inscia litis, Patria splendida, terraque florida, libera spinis, Danda fidelibus est ibi civibus, hie peregrinis. i UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 53 Pax sine crimine, pax sine turbine, pax sine rixa, Meta laboribus, atque tumultibus anchora fixa. Para mea Rex mens, in proprio Deus ipse decore Vivus amabitur, atque videbitur Auctor in ore. Tunc Jacob Israel, et Lia tunc Rachel efficietur, Tunc Syon atria pulcraque patria perficietur." ("Hora Novissima," Bernard of Cluni.) Or, again, in the group of ^* Pilgrim" hymns, where heaven is defined as the goal of the pilgrimage, and as of a contrasting character to the pilgrimage itself, e,g, in Faber's hymn, ' ' The Pilgruns of the Night " : — "Hark, hark, my soul : angelic songs are swelling O'er earth's green fields, and ocean's wave-beat shore ; How sweet the truth those blessed strains are telling, Of that new life when sin shall be no more. " Rest comes at length ; though life be long and dreary, The day must dawn, and darksome night be past : All journeys end in welcomes to the weary. And heaven, the heart's true home, will come at last. " Angels ! sing on, your faithful watches keeping ; Sing us sweet fragments of the songs above ; While we toil on, and soothe ourselves with weeping Till life's long night shall break in endless love." Or this : — "I'm but a stranger here, Heaven is my home. Earth is a desert drear. Heaven is my home. " Dangers and sorrows stand. Round me on every hand. Heaven is my fatherland. Heaven is my home." Or, in the well-known hymn : — " O Paradise ! O Paradise ! Who doth not crave for rest? Who would not seek the happy land Where they that love are blest? i 54 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE " Paradise ! O Paradise ! The world is growing old ; Who would not be at rest and free Where love is never cold? " Paradise ! O Paradise ! I want to sin no more ; I want to be as pure on earth As on thy spotless shore. " Where loyal hearts and true Stand ever in the light, All rapture through and through In God's most holy sight." It is true that many of these evangelical hymns seem, from the popular present-day point of view, to over- emphasize the emptiness and misery of the temporal life and the consequent sense of weariness and despair, and if we should give the autobiographical accounts of con- version experiences, this unhappy consciousness and the contrast with the post-conversion state would even more strongly appear. But may it not be that our modern, scientifically enlightened consciousness is mistaken in regard to the sense of world-weariness, incompleteness, and sense of sin ? Do we not find the same general char- acter expressed in the Buddhistic literat\u:e and in the writings of the Stoics ? It would be arbitrary, therefore, to dismiss this whole experience from religion as mere sentimentalism and pessi- mism. As to the modern sense of sin, the moral conscious- ness of unworthiness in an enlightened religious experience, — perhaps the reason that this consciousness, when it ex- ists, is so strong, — is because of the clearness of vision of the ideal, because of the realization of what ''ought to be." Before our vision of perfect Holiness, there seems no weakness in admitting that we are ''miserable sinners'' all. "Against thee, thee only have I sinned," says the Psalmist. UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 55 It is true, again, that we do not find this, which I have termed the second element of religious experience much expressed in the hymns and other literature of modern liberalism. There are two reasons, I think, for this. First, liberalism tends to emphasize another attitude, namely, the motor element of religious experience. That is, the given situation being as it is, what shall I do in regard to it? The consideration of this attitude belongs to a discussion of the third element of religious experience — the process. The second reason is that modern liberal- ism often seems to tend to Naturalism and a natural religion so-called. This attitude we have already con- sidered and rejected as incompatible with the essence of religious experience. And after all, does not the awakened social consciousness, which is so striking a characteristic of our times, really imply very much this same dualistic experience? The modern man feels himself responsible for the wrongs, the suffering, and injustices of the social order — even if he did not by his own deed bring them about. In essence he has in this respect a consciousness of sin, although this is a community sense of sin rather than of the evangelical individualistic type. "At vesper tide One virtuous and pure in heart did pray, 'Since none I wronged in deed or word to-day, From whom should I crave pardon? Master, say.' " " A voice replied : — " 'From the sad child whose play thou hast not planned, The goaded heart whose friend thou didst not stand, The rose that died for water from thy hand.' " "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of them, ye did it not unto me." ^ Enough has been said, I think, to suggest to our minds that for the distinctly religious consciousness this opposi- tion in one form or another of longing and satisfaction, of *And see, for recent literature, Galsworthy's plays of "Strife" and "Justice" and Tolstoy's "Resurrection." 56 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE the incomplete over against the complete state, the sin- ful consciousness over against the consciousness of the goal of perfection and holiness is universally present. To give the logical ground of its universaUty would take us back once more to the natural ideality of man, — which in creating a better world inevitably finds by contrast this its present world unsatisfactory, incomplete, and to some extent at least evil, and its present state one of un- satisfied longing, of incompleteness — on the ethical level, — of moral sinfulness.^ Of course there are types of consciousness for which this contrast is not as strongly marked as it is in the ex- amples given. In those persons, for instance, whose re- ligious life seems to have been a gradual unfolding like unto that of a plant, without any apparent crisis of trans- formation or conscious recognition of the conflict between their present state and the ideal end — James's ^^ once- born men." Yet even for these (when not a case of mere naturalism or unconscious growth), the opposition must exist between the less developed state and the goal con- sciously aimed at, desired, or hoped for — between im- perfection and perfection. Certainly not all experiences go down into such abysms of guilt, doubt, or despair as some of those described in conversion cases, or those in records of the Salvation Army, e,g. in '* Twice-Born Men" of Begbie. But everywhere there is the contrast in some form between the '^old life" and the ''new," and especially do we find this contrast emphasized in those typical figures in reUgious experience, the great mystics and saints of the church. The cleavage between the old life and the new life marks a critical point in religious experience. And so in all spiritual religion we find, I think, some- thing which corresponds to a day of Judgment. Mediaeval and Renaissance literature and art symbolize for us again and again this crisis of the soul. The great illustrations * For a special consideration of the sinful consciousness, see "Note" following the present chapter. UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 57 it has been said in these two fields are Thomas of Celano's hymn, the ^^Dies Irae/' and Michael Angelo's fresco of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. I give three verses from the hymn : — "Quantus tremor est futurus, Quando Judex est venturus, Cuncta stricte discussunis." "Liber scriptus proferetur, In quo totum continetur, Unde mundue judicetur. " Judex ergo cum sedebit, Quidquid later, apparebit : Nil inultum remanebit." The symbolism for this hymn is foimd in the book of the prophet Zephaniah : — "That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, . . . and I will bring distress upon men because they have sinned against the Lord, . . . Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord thy God ; for the day of the Lord is at hand." (Zeph. 1.) Here historically it is a judgment for the sins of Ma- nasseh, king of Judah. But this "day of the Lord'' ap- pears in many of the prophetic books — and wherever the expression occurs it refers to some catastrophe about to take place as a punishment for the sins of Israel or of some other nation. In the first of the prophets, Amos, we find the beginning of this concept as the critical dis- tinction between moral good and moral evil. So we may say, the day of judgment represents, perhaps, that spir- itual crisis, when sooner or later, man shall see himself as he is in the sight of God. "Oro supplex et acclinis Cor contritum quasi crinis. Gere curam mei finis. " Lacrymosa dies ilia Qua renuget ex punilla Judicandus homo verus Huic ergo parce Deus." 58 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE It is in tragic symbolism that such a day of judgment is usually portrayed. Yet there are those who have no con- viction of sin in any such intense form. Nevertheless, the fundamental distinction between the old and the new, the incomplete and the complete, the evil and the good, re- mains for all who have had any religious experience whatever. The recognition of the distinction may come, however, through a joyful insight rather than through sin and sorrow. It may come as the beautiful revelation of new life — as the meaning of a heroic or unselfish deed flashes upon us ; or it comes as a glimpse of beauty, some wonder at new truth ; or as ^Hhe inspiration in some human face divine " ; or, as Emerson describes the experience in the ' ' Over-soul ' ' : ' ' Perceptions of the absolute law, " ^ ' Solu- tions of the souFs own questioning,'^ ^'A blasting with excess of light," ''That shudder of awe and delight with which the individual soul always mingles with the uni- versal." Thus beholding the vision of the Ideal Good, the individual realizes his own incompletion and unworthi- ness, and worshipping prays : — "May thy light within us shine, Oh, thou light and life and love divine." Such an experience, joyful as it is, usually comes at last, as the above illustrations suggest, in some sudden flash of intense insight which may well be called mystical, and which marks a crisis in the life of the soul. Finally, then, we may conclude that religious experience is formally a triadic relation, of two opposed terms, and a third, the tie between them, which expresses their re- lationship. Concretely, this opposition assumes a great variety of expressions, which, however, follow in the main two general types which we may call perhaps — ^ The cosmic opposition, and The moral opposition, 1 Pfleiderer notes this distinction. See " Rehgion and Historic Faiths." I do not know who first classified the historic reUgions in this way. UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 59 or, again — The opposition in the outer world and the opposition in the soul of man. And again these two types of opposition themselves are, and have been, in the history of religion, in more or less conflict the one with the other. If Pfleiderer's contention is correct ^ that the earliest form of religion is ^^ naive patriarchal Heno theism,^' and that the earliest form of the tribal deity was "a. combina- tion of the collective ancestral spirits of the group with a personified natural power" (the sun in Japan and Peru, and Ra in Egypt) or of the earth as the giver of fertility (Isis, Osiris, Magna Mater) or some species of animal; then we can see how historically such a conflict between the cosmic order and the moral ideal might arise. The relation of the tribal god to his worshipper is at first a naturalistic one through the bond of physical de- scent (blood bond). The powers of nature act in a regular way. They act without reference to man's individual caprice; they embody some permanent fate or order to which man must submit, or in some way get into har- mony with. They represent a world order — which may or may not express that which seems highest, or preserve and protect that which is dearest to the heart of man. On the other hand, the deity as collective ancestral soul, the father and protector of the tribe, must have some- thing of human, moral characteristics. The relation of the tribal group to its god was also the primitive, moral- social bond which united the members of the tribe to one another and which devoted them to a common good, the social welfare, — a primitive moral obligation which becomes more spiritual in significance with the ethical development of tribe and nation. From these two con- ceptions, then, we are able to understand how some such opposition and conflict as that referred to above might arise and the various forms it might assume — while it 1 See Pfleiderer, !' Religion and Historic Faiths." 60 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE remains fundamentally a conflict between an unchanging or fated natural order, the order of the universe — and the ethical ideal of man, which he comes inevitably to embody in his conception of his God. In the childhood of the race, man looked out upon his world with wondering eyes as the little child does to-day, and like the child he asked the questions, ''What?" and ''Why? " In the physical world certain contrasts and rhythmic phenomena of nature seem to have impressed the mind and imagination of primitive man, e.g. the contrast and repetition of day and night, of light and darkness, the procession of the sun in its diurnal and annual course, the summer and winter solstice, the movements of the stars in their courses, the rhythm of the seasons with the decay and death of vegetation in the autumn and its rebirth in the spring, and the phenomenon of physical growth. Primitive man believes in spirits, but at first these spirits are chiefly identified with the powers of nature. But as man advances intellectually and morally, the op- position in the outer world, the opposition between dark- ness and light and the rest, is to a great extent transferred to the inner world and interpreted as a struggle going on in his own heart. The microcosm is a copy of the ma- crocosm. We find classic illustrations of this conflict in the experience of St. Paul (Romans 7), in St. Augus- tine's ' ' Confessions '' ; in John Bunyan's ' ' Grace Abounding to the Chief of Signers" ; and, indeed, throughout litera- ture {e.g. in Shakespeare : Lancelot Gobbo, in the "Mer- chant of Venice"; Macbeth; The King, in "Hamlet"; Edmund, in " King Lear," etc.) as well as in Salvation Army accounts and in the evangelical experience of conversion which students of the psychology of religion, like Starbuck and Coe, have collected by the questionnaire method. Further, the experience is not merely one of the individual, but of social groups and nations. The opposition, when it does not reach the level of the guilty conscience, still UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 61 remains as the problem of evil in the world. Different historical religions emphasize the opposition in one or the other form — giving us two principal types of histori- cal^ religion: First, the nature types, starting from the contrast in the outer world, find beside the opposition itself, regularity, rhythm, repetition, eternal recurrence, unity, allness, wholeness, the conflict absorbed in the all or one which is good either in the sense of fated but morally indifferent, or in the aesthetic sense of good, when the tragedy and evil become merely partial elements in an harmonious whole, as musical discords are solved in the symphony as a whole. These are Pantheistic and Ab- solutist religions of the type of the Egyptian religion and of Brahmanism. The second type, starting from the conflict in the inner life of man, in the opposition of the morally good and evil, gives the dualistic and moralistic types, like Zoroastrian- ism and the Hebrew religion. Later types of historical religions emphasizing especially one motive or the other have tried to unite the two motives, and to reconcile the opposition to which the two types themselves give rise, e.g. such religions as Buddhism, Orphism, Stoicism, and Christianity. Buddhism and Stoicism, while they are profoundly ethical systems, yet still refer to an invisible world, the proper relation to which is in part renunciation and sub- mission, i.e. the distinctly religious attitude as it is usually called. Orphism, Neo-Platonism, and mediaeval Chris- tianity emphasize especially the mystical and aesthetic side, yet have also their essential ethical practices. The Christianity of the present day seems to be gradually swinging over to the ethical and social side — while yet such movements as Theosophy, New Thought, and Chris- tian Science represent the other, the mystical or specifically religious elements. 1 See Pfleiderer, "Religion and Historic Faiths." 62 the drama of the spiritual life Summary But leaving this discussion for the present, let us return to our primary opposition of the elements of a concrete religious experience. The terms used to describe these contrasting elements are various, but take their coloring in the main from the above differing lines of thought — e.g. In Buddhism, the opposition is expressed as the oppo- sition between the wheel of existence and Nirvana, Ig- norance and Enlightenment, Desire and Renunciation, Consciousness and Not-Gonsciousness, Birth and Not- Birth, Transitory Life which is Misery and the Abode of Peace, Bliss, utter Nothingness. For Stoicism, it is the opposition between the Emptiness and Vanity of a life dependent on changing fortune, and the calm, disciplined, and resigned life of Reason, i.e. *^The City of Man's Soul.'' For Orphism, the opposition is that between the life heedless of the eternal laws, the life of those given over to restless ambitions, jealousies, and petty strife, — the worship of ^Hhe ruthless will," — and the mystic joy of the purified and free, who have learnt the meaning of wisdom and of love. For the early Hebrew prophets, the opposition is that between moral evil and moral good, and the contrast is drawn between the sinful Israel and the redeemed Israel. In the prophets of the Exile, the goal becomes distinctly social, — embodied in the regenerated social community, for Ezekiel a legalistic and formalistic conception of a city which is a temple and the name of it ''The Lord is there" ; while the New Jerusalem of the redeemed Israel of the later Isaiah, is described rather in the aesthetic terms of happiness, prosperity, and beauty, which contrast with the description of the preceding state of Israel for- saken and sorrowing. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek ; he hath sent me to bind UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 63 up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the accept- able year of the Lord, to comfort all that mourn in Zion, to give unto them a garland for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. And they shall call them a holy people, the redeemed of the Lord: and thou shalt be called Sought out, a city not forsaken." (Isaiah 60 ; also Isaiah 61, 62.) "For behold I create new heavens and a new earth : and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in my people : and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying." Or, again, in the Psalms the distinction is drawn between the life of even one day in the courts of the Lord and a thousand elsewhere : — "One thing have I asked of the Lord ; that will I seek after ; That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple, For in the day of trouble he shall keep me secretly in his pavilion : In the court of his tabernacle shall he hide me : He shall lift me up upon a rock." (Psalm 27 : 4r-5.) In the writings of St. Paul, the contrast is between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God, between the natural man and the spiritual man, or the natural life and the redeemed life hid with Christ in God. Then, again, the opposition is expressed simply as the opposition between (spiritual) darkness and light; ^Hhis life" and the life eternal of the Fourth Gospel; as the ^^Unio Mystica" of Christian experience which was most completely expressed, perhaps, in the monastic cell, as opposed to the life of worldliness and separation from God ; in the ''Neant" of the extreme Mystics and Quietists like St. Theresa and Mme. Guyon — a state of acceptance, passivity, and trance, a state of disinterested love over against the Hfe of the striving personal will. Other forms are the city of Satan and the city of God of St. Augustine ; or, once again, in the more individual illustrations such as I 64 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE we find in books like Starbuck's on conversion experiences, where in psychological terms the contrast is drawn be- tween the '^Old Life'' and the ^^New Life," the Lesser Life and the Larger Life, the Habitual self and the self of Surrender and Aspiration, Incompleteness and Complete- ness, Longing and Satisfaction, the Lost and the Saved, a Seeking and a Finding, a State of Sin, and Estrangement from God, of doubt, restlessness, anxiety, or a state of Forgiveness, Redemption, Relief, Acceptance, Salvation, united to God, Wholeness of life. Calmness, Harmony, Peace, Beatitude ; or, once again, as in the experience of Tolstoy — '^The Meaningless Life" and the consequent state of despair, over against a life of meaning through resignation and the practice of the simple life and the spirit of social kindhness — ''To know God and to live are one." Or, once again, the opposition is expressed in religious- social terms as in the Utopian ideals of all ages. Here the contrast is drawn between the present social order with its inequalities, injustices, and inhumanities, and the golden age to come of the transformed social order, when all these world-old wrongs shall be done away in a universal human brotherhood, — that ever- recurring, ever unfulfilled world-dream of the idealist man. This, then, is what we find upon an analysis of cases of concrete religious experience, viz. a sense of need, of limitation, of incompleteness deepening into the conscious- ness of sin with its whole tragic story of bitter regret, self- accusation, anguish, and despair, and, over against this, an experience of redemption, of salvation, of wholeness and unity ; peace ; harmony. So much for the primary contrast of two of the universal elements of religious experience. This experience is, after all, one, and religious faith holds that this funda- mental opposition of the religious consciousness can be UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 65 overcome. But how ? We must now turn to a considera- tion of the third element, — the process or bond which unites in one whole of experience the two elements already considered. Note on Sin and the Consciousness of Sin "Midway upon the journey of our life I found myseK in a dark wood, where the right way was lost. Ah ! how hard a thing it is to tell what this wild and rough and difficult wood was, which in thought renews my fear ! . . . So bitter is it that death is little more." In our second chapter we considered, in a general way and especially in relation to the first element which we have called the religious ideal, the second of the universal elements, namely, the sense of dissatisfaction which in an ethical religion deepens into the bitter anguish of the sense of guilt. In this unhappy consciousness, we have the reverse side to that consciousness of the goal of blessed- ness and salvation which the fact of the ideality of religion presents and which religious immediacy claims to have found. In a word, in rehgious experience we found the divided self of which Professor James has had so much to say. This unhappy consciousness itself we did not very fully describe, but books on the psychology of religion have given a full account of this period of storm and stress, the abysm a^nd dark night through which the soul passes on its way to the light. In our analysis, moreover, we did not lay great stress on the ''conviction of sin." In this ''Note" I shall try to analyze more in detail this second element when it has reached the moral stage, or the consciousness of guilt. Nowadays, the enlightened and scientifically trained consciousness asks : Is there such a thing as real sin? That is a hard saying: "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations," yet we know that it is true that the children bear the bitter fruits of ancestral wrong-doing ; but did the fathers really sin, or was it in their case, too, the result of ignorance, inheritance, and 66 THE DKAMA OP THE SPIRITUAL LIFE environment ? In short, if we track back sin to its source, what do we find ? Let us consider this problem of sin for a little, more closely than we have done heretofore, and first we must note that sin in itself — or the logical definition of sin — and the sinful consciousness are two very different matters. The Definition of Sin, — Logically speaking, we should mean, I think, by sin the attitude of one who having seen what is the ^^best," that is, of one who having an ideal and having freely chosen it as his ideal or purpose in l^f e, more or less dehberately becomes faithless to this end. In other words, sin in the final meaning of the term is bound up with the idea of freedom of the will. This is the defini- tion of sin, but the consciousness of sin is something else. One may have a consciousness of guilt when not guilty at all in the sense defined above. Of the consciousness of sin, there appear to be three types or classes. They have been suggested in our second chapter. They are all found in Paul's letter to the Ro- mans ; the first two types are explicitly expressed in the famous seventh chapter ; the third is implied throughout the Epistle. Class I. — First, then, there is the inherited sin, — the sin of the natural man, — of the old Adam, as Paul describes it. These inherited tendencies may be all wrong according to the socially accepted standards, yet there is no sin in them until the individual becomes conscious of the social standard, or rather, until he con- sciously recognizes something as the ^^besf or what '^ ought to be.'' '^Before I knew the law," said Paul, '' 1 had no sin. Without the law sin was dead. When the law came, then sin slew me and I died." In a word, inherited tendencies may have become rooted habits before a man is conscious of them as par- ticularly vicious, as a child acquires the habit of lying out of romancing or play tendencies. These inherited ten- dencies had grown strong before the ideal came to the man, UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 67 therefore if his acts Tare sinful according to the social standard or ideal standard, they were in no sense dehber- ately so, but now, through some accepted standard, or through the enlightening vision of some vivid personaHty, or through the direct teaching of friend or book, or through some mystical revelation so-called, the man begins to recognize the value of another way of life, and in the light of this revelation his own life seems miserably base and unworthy. And now it seems too late to break with the past, hence the struggle, the intolerable anguish, described by St. Augustine and Bunyan in their autobiographies.^ Again and again the man struggUng with all his might to drive out his bad impulses (Satan) fails. The sin had nothing to do with deliberate choice; so St. Paul and St. Augustine can say : '^It was not I," but Satan who did this evil deed (^^sin in me'') or lived this evil life. Yet, because, now, on the whole, they identify themselves with the will to overcome and get away from bad habits, there is a genuine consciousness of sin with all its accompanying struggle and misery. We do not know how much freedom a man has to break with such impulses and rooted habits. The Ideal has got to win the mastery. Perhaps it will, in time, as it did with Augustine and Bunyan. Salvation is, we may believe, in large measure a work of grace, but everywhere this world-old battle between good and evil is going on both in the individual and in the community as a whole. '^ Self, Ambition, Advancement, on the one side; Right and Love on the other." Class II. — In the second class is that consciousness of sin which is in accord with the logical definition of sin. I had once a dream, an ideal, a way of life. It was my own enlightened choice, and I have been faithless. I turned my back on it and forgot it, so I wilfully disrupted my own selfhood ; I have estranged myself from God and become ^'si. divided self." Can there be any anguish more in- 1 See Chapter IV. 68 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE tolerable than such a guilty consciousness? (Shake- speare has some illustrations of it, as Edmund in " King Lear/' perhaps, and the King in ^' Hamlet '' ; Arthur Dimmesdale in '' The Scarlet Letter.") It is said in the light of scientific teaching and a more cheerful reUgious view of the nature of God, that the sense of genuine sin and the belief in hell are disappearing ; that the sin in our first class is not really sin and that the sin of the second class is at least very rare in an enlightened age and really impossible from a scientific point of view. Class III. — But this, at least, is not true of the consciousness of sin in our third class. This comprises that social consciousness of sin which is, in fact, largely a phenomenon of modern times. In this class of the con- sciousness of sin, the individual is not necessarily guilty in either of the above senses of sin. His consciousness of sin is bound up with the fact that he is a member of the community and that ^*all creation groaneth and travaileth together. '' Thus the sensitive, socially developed con- sciousness of our time feels responsible (one may even say guilty) for evils such as those which grew out of our Civil War; for graft; for the negro problem ; for white slavery ; for child labor and the other evils of our civilization which gained a foothold in his country before he was born. Few who are alive to-day, for instance, could be held directly responsible for the evils of the reconstruction period in the South. Yet, the modern man does feel guilty in regard to this old wrong. It was in this sense that the Prophets of Israel bore on their shoulders the guilt of the whole community. Israel had sinned, and they were one with Israel's life. ''He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. . . . All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.'' The relation of the consciousness of sin to the social consciousness is complex ; the two are variously inter- woven. Here we find that tension so characteristic of UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 69 our day ^ between the social and the individual standard of right, and we learn that there is sometimes an individual consciousness of sin where there has been no active sin at all, but even the opposite. Society has set a moral standard to which it expects the individual to conform. This standard, it is true, is constantly changing, but as an external standard it changes more slowly than does the thought of the ''ought" in the mind of the individual (that is, of some individuals). It is not a foregone con- clusion that the social whole i^ right in its thought of what ought to be the universal standard of right. Is the in- dividual strong enough to be a pioneer? If so, he may rejoice in his new adventure. But the individual is bound in any case to suffer because he is so dependent on social sanction and approval; thus he may come to feel as if a sinner. Shakespeare's plays abound in this confronta- tion of the individual with the social world, and modern drama and fiction have dealt abundantly with this type of the consciousness of sin, as has also ancient Greek drama. Our individual may actually abandon and re- nounce his own ideal of what he believes ought to be the social standard. But his own earlier motives and conduct were really fine. It was the conventional thing which was the wrong thing. If he weakly yields to the conventional standards against his own convictions, is he not now the sinner? On the other hand, if a pioneer, how far shall he go to establish an idea? He may not do that which would lead to general anarchy in a society as yet unready for his idea; surely he may not wreck the social whole of which he is a member, yet may he not still be faithful to his ideal in intentj even if not able to carry it out practically in a world which is as yet un- able to receive it ? In this connection it may be well to say a word about forgiveness and to ask if there is any absolutely unpar- 1 See Chapter IV, Section III. 70 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE donable sin. What is the relation of forgiveness to our various types of the consciousness of sin? What makes forgiveness possible ? To begin with our last type (Class III), — the conmiunity consciousness of sin, — it is easy to see that man can be freed from this sin, because either he himself or others in the community can atone for these evils by their self-sacrificing deeds which overcome and drive out the evils. Human experience shows every day how those who have had nothing to do directly with the wrongs of the social order are striving with all the love, strength, and enthusiasm that is in them to overcome such ancient evils and turn the currents that have gone astray into channels of social efficiency, order, and righteousness and creative work. And from type I the individual can be freed by a union of ''grace'' and effort of his own which shall at last overcome inherited impulses and bad habits and transform them into good. But in regard to the second type (i.e. of voluntary sin), supposing it exists, the case is more doubtful. The man has been faithless, a traitor to the light. Is it possible that he should ever forgive himself for wilful sin? for in this type of sin there are certain irrevocable evils. First, he has done the terrible deed and, as George Meredith puts it, "the deed once set in motion flows on forever to the great account." In the second place, there is perhaps some other human being (or a community of such) whom the sinner has wronged — one not only whose happiness has been destroyed, but whose moral nature, perhaps, has been stunted or wrecked. Alas, alas for that life which was meant to bless the world with its beauty and its joy ! In the third place, there is the actual denial of the man's self-chosen good (his ideal), and this is a wrong against the universe itself. Now the irrevocable is the irrevocable; is it, then, possible that such wrongs can ever be wiped out? This is a matter for serious consideration. We may note in the first place that in regard to points one and two, in the UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 71 foregoing paragraph (i.e. the irrevocableness of the deed and its fatal consequences in the injury done to another individual or to a community), — that what is true here of voluntary sin holds equally in regard to sin of the other types, — to involuntary sin, to inherited sin, and even to the case of ignorance. The point of difference, then, lies not in outer effects.^ It is an inner difference, the differ- ence of intent. I wilfully turned from my ideal, became faithless, and so struck a blow at the moral constitution of the universe. How does this affect the sinner, his repent- ance and hope of forgiveness ? What can undo this deed ? Now, it is true ^ that this sinful deed may be the means of enlightenment, and that others, especially those whom the sinner has wronged and betrayed, may so use it that through their creative deeds they may bring good out of evil. We all know such noble spirits who in all gentle- ness, long suffering, patience, and courage bear the wrongs of others, give their lives to redeem them, and by their deeds create good out of wrong and bring new life to the community. So the sinner may rejoice that in God's hands his sinful selfhood has become, as it were, an in- iMore than this even. A man may be a good citizen in all outer respects and he may plan to do good public service, and yet in his in- dividual private life he may be a sinner. For instance, in the third cir- cle of hell Dante asks Ciacco after some acquaintances of his who had "set their minds on doing good," " che a ben fa posca gl' ingegni," as we surmise, in a pubhc way — " dimini ove sono, e fa ch' io li conosca : che gran disio mi stringe di sapere, se il ciel gh addolcia o 1' inferno gli attosca." E quegli : " Ei son tra le anime piil nere ; diversa colpa giu gli aggrava al fondo : se tanto soendi gh potrai vedere." That is, the spirit replies to Dante's question that these " Are amongst the blackest spirits ; a different crime weighs them downwards to the bottom ; shouldst thou descend so far, thou mayest see them." 2 See Professor Josiah Royce in !'The Problem of Christianity," Vol. I, Chapters III, V, VI. 72 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE strument for greater good in the world than could have been possible except through his wrongdoing. But in such an atonement the sinner himself has no active part. Is the sinner, then, redeemed from his sin, if redeemed he be at all, by Divine Grace incarnate in others? Has he no personal responsibility in the matter? Must not his redemption rest in part (though surely in part only) on his own shoulders? ''What must be done now?" ^ Raskolinkoff asks of Sonia, to whom he has confessed his crime. ' ' What must be done ? Rise — go this very moment to the nearest public place, prostrate yourself, kiss the earth you have stained, proclaim at the top of your voice to the passers-by, ' I am a murderer ' and God will give you peace again. " ''You wish me to go to the galleys, then, Sonia ; is it not so?" "You must make atonement so that you may be re- deemed thereby." The answer to our question depends upon an under- standing of the meaning of repentance. What, then, let us ask, is the nature of repentance at its inmost heart? "Except ye repent," said the Master, "ye cannot be born again." The question now becomes — What does it mean to be born again ? Does it not mean to have become an entirely new man, and so one who can be taken back as the lost sheep into the fold, or like the prodigal son to a place in the kingdom ? It means, that is, that the sinner has become so transformed that he can be received once more as a member of the social group or community. Now, if in all truthfulness of soul a man who has been a sinner can say, "I hate that deed of mine, and know as well as I know anything that were the temptation again present to me, I would not commit that sin now, " such a man is worthy of forgiveness. In one of George Meredith's novels, there i^ an interest- * Dostoieffsky, "Crime and Punishment." UNIVEKSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 73 ing instance of a case where forgiveness was withheld by the heroine from the hero, who had deeply wronged her, and at the last one's sympathy is almost transferred from Corinthia Jane to the selfish Fleetwood. She seems hard and unforgiving, but she knows in truth that Fleetwood has not really renounced his old pride and self-will; he has not really been born again into a manhood of unselfish love and humi],ity. ''Try what repentance can? What can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent? " ^ How far, then, can a forgiven sinner be reconciled to his own sinful deed? Surely he can never outlive the sorrow for that deed which wrecked another l^fe or perhaps a whole community, and which was a denial of his own true selfhood and of God. This deed of his has been the cause of tragedy in the world, and whose sorrow, remorse, and anguish can be as great as that of the repentant sinner when in the light of the ^'new Kfe" he comes to behold his sin in all its enormity, blackness, and treachery? But, may not the sinner himself get insight from the depths of such anguish which shall lead on his own part to the creative will and the atoning deed? May he not make good the wrong by a life's devotion, by a boundless com- passion, by love that never faileth, by deeds whose su- preme power is made possible by that very evil ? For the sinner in his redeemed state is, as it were, another man (a new man) than the man who sinned, and so his relation to his sin becomes other, while at the same time, as a doer of the deed and through the remorse and sorrow which are peculiarly his own, the insight, too, of the repentant sinner may have special power and efficacy. But having said so much about the forgiveness of sin and the reconcilement of the sinner to the community and to the universe, we still have to ask whether such a thing as voluntary (or real) sin actually exists. 1 " Hamlet," Act III, Scene iii. 74 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE It is what has been called the submerged class which "sins" most against the outward requirements of society. Yet when we consider the inheritance and the environ- ment of this class, we wonder that there are to be found among them so many as good as they are. These men, we say, are not themselves the sinners. Is it, then, only the educated, the enlightened, the fairly prosperous people amongst whom the sinners are to be found? Yet these have their own special temptations and difficulties from the environment, and often a particularly difficult inheri- tance of nerves, of sensitiveness and timidity, of hesitancy and of all kinds of inhibitions,^ and 'Ho him who knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Sin, as we have seen, depends upon the recognition and choice of an ideal, or, as we may say, of the ''best." But this is an universal experience in a normal man of some stability of character and of self-control. The corollary, then, of the fact that every man is capable of having, and commonly has, an ideal of some sort, is that every normal man is capable of becoming a sinner. Logically, the fact of sin demands freedom of the will, but the question is sure to arise how far the individual man can be free either biologically or psychologically, since we know his relation- ship to and dependence upon the social milieu, and since biological science and medicine have revealed the intimate interrelationship of mind and body. As we shall see in the sequel, the relation between mind and body is a per- plexing one and remains a good deal of a mystery.^ The criminal class may be divided into two types. First, the physically degenerate; and, second, the habitual crim- inal. One of the first type, we do not count as free, but rather a case for the hospital or the asylum. The other type of the criminal class consists of those who have been hardened, stunted, led astray by a cruel and hostile en- * See, for this type of sinner, John Bunyan's autobiography, ''Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners." 2 Chapter IV continued, '* The Inner and the Outer." UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 75 vironment both material and social. These men have come to feel the hand of the world against them, conse- quently they have become social rebels. But given a friend, and a kindly, stimulating environment, such men may be, and usually are, redeemed. Where, between these two classes, shall we place the true sinners? Bunyan, for example, belongs to the neu- rasthenic type. He writes ^^he is possessed by the Devil and whole floods of blasphemies pour in upon his soul." '^Sin bubbles out of his heart as water from the fountain." To which of the above classes is he nearer, or is he a ^^true" sinner? Bunyan recovers from his neurasthenic tendencies, and his sin likewise disappears. His healing seems to come from without. After his first conversion from the habit of blasphemy, he writes ''how it came to pass : I know not. It was a great wonder to myself to observe it. It might have been an angel that came upon me." As in Bunyan, so in Paul, in Augustine, in the hero of ''Crime and Punishment," we find a more or less abnormal, psycho-physical condition. Is all sin so accompanied? Then what becomes of freedom? Must we abandon our inner criterion of sin? Professor Starbuck, after his research work in regard to the sense of sin, concludes that the cause underlying the sense of sin is found "in part in certain temperamental and organic conditions, and sin should not be considered simply a spiritual fact," and Ribot says: "To produce a great moral or intellectual effort, the appropriate nerve centers must be able to produce intense work over and over again and must not be quickly exhausted or slow to repair losses." ^ The cure for sin, according to this theory, would depend upon the building up of cerebral tissue, thus producing change of career. This would reduce the problem of sin to the general problem of evil, and our question would become : Why, in a moral world, are these things so ? » Ribot, "Diseases of the Will." I 76 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Our criterion must, if true, interpret the facts. It must, however, also be logical. We cannot take this fact by itself without regard to the rest of the universe. Psy- cho-physical parallelism has been suggested as the solu- tion, but psycho-physical parallelism leaves an unbridged chasm which in our direct experience we do not find. For in experience, mind and body are intimately connected. If, following Aristotle, we should take as the criterion of the moral-normal, or the tjrpical man, one whose activities conform to reason and are directed to an end of ends, we are on the ground where the sinner, in the logical sense, is to be discovered. To recognize an ideal or end of ends, is to recognize a higher and a lower self. The moral-normal contains the possibility of sin. The sinner turns volun- tarily from his ideal to follow the path of least resistance, and if it is often found that the sinful consciousness is governed by ^'insistent ideas ^^ which are accompanied by abnormal psycho-physical conditions, may it not be that the ''insistent idea^^ leading to the sinful act, itself induces the accompanying abnormal physical condition? In ''healthy minds," says Dr. Cowles, "are found acci- dental, irregular coordinations of idea and feeling which indulged or otherwise fixed by habit are the germs and often growths which are not degenerate, but spring up more readily in neurasthenic soil." The fixing of the idea, in the first instance, is the point where freedom resides ; having become fixed, the idea may take possession of the whole life and result at last in imperative, involuntary action and accompanying disease.^ If we accept a moral universe, we seem bound to accept the fact of sin (in the logical sense). The question of sin is not, in the last analysis, one for biology or psycho- physics. It is a question of meaning and intent — a metaphysical problem. Whether or not abnormal phys- ical conditions, like abouha, or like states of excessive impulsion, invariably accompany the sinful consciousness ^ Arthur Dimmesdale, in "The Scarlet Letter." UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 77 of this type, is a question for the nerve specialist and psychologist. But, granted that our wills are limited by such condi- tions, limitations may still turn out to be the chief stepping stones to spiritual achievement and such necessity the law of reason. This appears to be the meaning of the Pro- logue to " Faust''; or, as Browning puts it: — "Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will " The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Was the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin." In other words, whatever its psycho-physical accompani- ments, the fact of sin is a spiritual fact and the limitations of the environment, in a spiritual world, may themselves be essential elements to greater spirituality. We know now what we should mean by sin. Whether or not actual sin exists, it is not easy in any particular case to say. There are some hardened evil doers, like Shakespeare's lago and Stevenson's Master of Ballantrae, who appear to be cases of wilful, voluntary, detestable sin. In the lowest circles of hell Dante has placed the hypocrites, the fraudulent of every class, and in the deep- est pit of perpetual ice, the proud, who, like Lucifer, thought to make themselves equal to God, and the traitors. Whether or not sin in its special and logical meaning exists or not, we know that the consciousness of sin exists. St. Paul and St. Augustine and the evangelical sects have greatly emphasized this sense of sin, and such men as Calvin and Jonathan Edwards have sometimes, perhaps artificially, induced it. But this is an experience which is limited to no special period of history. In the records of the mediaeval mystics, we note how many passed through the ''abyss" and experienced the ''dark night of the soul." This consciousness of sin, as we have seen, falls into three groups. Can we limit actual sin entirely to the 78 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE second group ? Though this tragic fact of our human life is about us everywhere, its appearance, as we have seen, is most complex and baffling. It seems as if there were borderland cases between groups 1, 2, and 3. Yet, be- tween good and evil, sin and righteousness in themselves, there is a sharp line of cleavage. It either is or is not sin. Once more, then, let us consider our definition of sin with reference to the concrete case. Sin, we have seen, is not in the outer deed but in the intent — the wilful intent to be faithless to the ideal. It is because the harmful consequences of sin are so great that it is difficult to be just to the sinner himself. If a man knew the full conse- quences of his sinful act, or quite realized at the time he took the first step that he were really betraying his ideal, it is doubtful if there would be many sinners. For sin, I think, resides at that little point of failure of attention to the ideal which James makes the sole point of our freedom of will. The young man who abandons for one evening the hard study of preparation for a college career, to pass it with a fascinating companion, has no idea that that one evening is going to be fatal to the possibility of his college career, perhaps to his whole life. When he decides to go, he has no intention of forsaking and betraying his ideal more than temporarily. He desires to go, and then makes ex- cuses to himself as to why he should go, and before he knows it, the fatal step is taken. So the bank clerk who takes money from the bank to meet, perhaps, the extrava- gances of his household, intends and expects to pay the money back before any harm is done. The real sin is in lack of concentration. That is, it is found in the moment when a man ceases to hold on to his ideal or consciously chosen purpose. Sin is in dallying with temptation. We have forgotten our own ideal. Later, unrestrained impulses, a flood of passion, tendencies which have become habits, once set in motion, are too strong; the man is whirled away on the current to the UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 79 committing of the fatal deed. The result is out of pro- portion to the initiation of the deed in which sin began. It is just at the one little point described above that there is sin. Yet sin is an awful thing. Just at this point (or possibly a succession of points) a man could have done otherwise. It is a wilful choosing to forget. He does not fully realize that he is betraying his cause. Love reconciles and takes back the sinner, because it realizes that the sin — though in itself as betrayal, so awful a thing — was not in conscious intent equal to the results or evil caused. This is part of the ijiscrutable tragedy of the universe, and it is as true of ignorance as of sin. ^'Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more." Yet, I think we must conclude that there is such a thing as real sin. And yet, in truth, this deed of black- ness and betrayal may be transformed into glory, and, for such a transformation to be complete, we must believe the insight and creative will of the sinner himself plays a part, if but a small one. Without divine grace, indeed, man may not save himself. Yet grace demands that the individual will shall cooperate. ''The only way to get rid of a past," says Phillips Brooks, ''is to get a future out of it." The case of the sinner is not hopeless; yet, on the other hand, he may not give up either in complacency or despair, trusting to others to do the work of redemption for him. The discipHne of his sin is stern, ascetic, tragic. The utmost height of pure devotion will not be too much to pay in atonement and redemption. In this, his own will shall have its part, even though at the same time he says : "Of myself I am nothing. It is the work of Divine Grace in me." To his passionate cry of Mea culpa comes the response from the community : — "0 Lamb of God, who taketh away the sios of the world, grant us thy peace." The sinner knows that his own task is an endless one, in correspondence with the consequences of the guilty deed 80 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE itself — for these consequences, unrecognized perhaps, go on and on and long after the committing of the deed when the sinner believes that his subsequent life has fully- atoned for his guilt, in some hour of crisis in his life they return to avenge themselves upon him.^ He knows that the devotion of his whole life '^and more lives yet" will not be too great a sacrifice to pay to redeem his guilt. Yet, though his task is endless and his sorrow and anguish deep, even here in the midst of sin and despair, there must be found something of that essentially religious attitude which we call acquiescence and faith. The repentant sinner believes that the stern discipline of his repented sin, the grief and harm he caused to the com- munity which he betrayed, even the very blow which he struck against the universe itself, shall, somehow, because of that world's essential spirituality, redound to ^'a more exceeding weight of glory." In such faith and such acquiescence, he finds peace for his stricken spirit, but never a cessation of his own earnest and active endeavor in every possible way to make atonement. * See, e.g.f Story of Bulstrode in George Eliot's " Middlemarch." " Visions come and go, Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng, From angel lips I seem to hear the flow Of soft and holy song. " In a purer clime My being fills with rapture — waves of thought Roll in upon my spirit — strains sublime Break over me unsought." — Milton. " Where every something being blent together Turns to a wild of nothing save of joy, Expressed, and not express'd." — Shakespeake. "And an highway shall be there and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness." — Isaiah 35: 8. CHAPTER III The Way of Life — Its Nature Taking as our premise the basic fact of the ideality of religion, we have seen that there are certain true proposi- tions concerning religious experience, and we have seen further that these assertions imply some negations in re- gard to religious experience as a whole, or, — as we may more concretely express it, — they involve some elimina- tions from the field of religious experience. Granted the ideality of religion, we have seen that religious experience is, or may be, a universal experience, yet the field itself is limited. It does not cover the whole of hmnan life. We have found that the essence of this experience can be expressed logically as a triadic relation, that is, a re- lation between two terms together with a third, a medi- ating term. Two of these universal elements of religion we considered in the last chapter. In the present chapter, we shall begin an analysis of the third term or process. The eliminations of which we have spoken above, while they simpHfy our problem in regard to the nature of the religious experience, still leave us with many perplexities on our hands in regard to the essence of religion. These perplexities appear at once when we begin our examina- tion of the third element in the total of religious ex- perience. The two universal elements of our second chapter do not completely express the content of the religious con- sciousness. It is not enough to have the experience of incompleteness and the dark abyss of sin, and over against this the great fight of an ideal world shining off on a far horizon. Somehow, if man is to win salvation, these two 83 84 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE elements must be brought together. The great light must shine in man's heart and transform its darkness ; the new life must come down and dwell on the earth. How shall this be? Many and various have been the ways in which man has actually won salvation, — that is, — as to the particular embodiment, the ways are countless, yet they have one general form. It is by a mediating process, a uniting term, a method, an undertaking, a way of life. The discussion of the foregoing chapter, then, has shown us that religious experience consists, as to its form, of a triad of elements which in a general way we may describe as : (1st) a state of incompleteness, of dissatisfaction, of need, of sin ; (2d) an ideal, a goal, a realization of salva- tion ; and (3d) a way of attaiiunent, a way of salvation, or a way of life. In the different historical religions, this universal form of religious experience has, of course, received various particular colorings. For instance, in Buddhism the triad is expressed as (1) the endless cycle of reincarnations, (2) Nirvana, and (3) the Pathy the threefold path of purity, self- abnegation, and enlightenment. ^In Orphic religion, the triad-form appears: (1st) as the need to escape from ^Hhe sorrowful, weary wheel" of existence; (2d) the attainment of divine life and con- sequent immortaUty ; and (3d) the means thereto, which consisted (1st) of rites of abstinence and purification — those ancient Bacchic rites to which Orphism gave a new and spiritual significance, — and (2d) of a practical effort on the part of the initiate for purity of life. In Christian experience, these elements are usually described as: (1st) a state of sin, (2d) salvation, and (3d) a process of redemption ; or, again, as (1) imperfection, (2) right- eousness or holiness, and (3) a way of life — an ^'imitatio Christi'' — (^*I am the way, the truth, and the life") — ^For a discussion of Orphism see Miss Jane Harrison's "Prole- gomena to Greek Religion." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 85 either through an acceptance of Christ and a self-surrender to him as a personal leader, a mediator and saviour, and a mystical union through this acceptance which is sym- bolized in the rites of the church; or else through an effort to live a Christ-like life of heavenly love (ix. love of God and of the neighbor, — the Christian community), made real in devoted service. In short, religion is not merely a longing or a striving for an ideal goal. It is also a faith that the goal is real and can be attained. Religious experience seeks salvation. But how, when, and where? This leads us to a special consideration of the third element of a universal religious experience, — the bond or process, — which becomes the most important element in the concrete religious life. In short, religion is a practice. Now, logically speaking, this third element — the tie which unites the two contrasting elements (i.e, the need and the goal of salvation) in one whole which we call religious experience — is one and simple ; and as the way of salvation or a means of attainment, also, it is one. It is a way of life. Thus, theoretically, the primary opposition of the form of reUgious experience is overcome. But religious experience is not a theory ; it is life, an actual experience, and when we consider concretely this third element of a universal religious experience, the bond or process itself breaks up into a series of oppositions, as a ray of white Ught striking a prism breaks up into all the colors of the rainbow. We find the following series of oppositions: — First, as to the [ 1. Mystical, as opposed to ethical, nature of the spiritual life. [ 2. Individual, as opposed to social. Second, a^ to l^' ^'^^^' ^« ^PP^'^^ *^ ^^"*- its source. I ^' N^^^^^i^y ^^^ Freedom. I 3. The Inner and the Outer. Third, as to its form. 1. The Temporal and the Eternal. 2. The Dynamic and the Static. 3. The Many and the One. 86 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE It seems impossible to identify ^^the way of life" with any one of the elements in these oppositions, or with any one of the oppositions themselves. We can see that the various oppositions are more or less related. They seem phases of one experience; yet it is difficult to say which opposition is the deeper, and from which one as starting point we might deduce the others. For instance, an ethical experience seems on the whole to be a social ex- perience; while a mystical experience seems individual. Yet in primitive religious dances and festivals, and in all public worship, there are elements of social experience which are aesthetic rather than ethical ; and on the other hand, in the moral consciousness of a religious reformer and leader we have an experience which is so far above the level of society as to be in some respects a solitary, individual experience. Again, a mystical experience is rather anti-social and individual, and yet its aim appears to be the losing of individuality in the life of God, — the All. These various forms of religious experience conflict more or less with one another and give rise to different values ; yet all are elements in a total religious experience, and as such demand reconciliation. Is it possible, we ask, to overcome these various oppositions and to unite the dif- ferent values in one perfect whole of experience, as in one perfect world-crystal ? Our next undertaking, then, must be a consideration of the varieties of religious experience. The Varieties of Religious Experience In the present chapter, I shall consider particularly the essence or nature of the spiritual life and shall begin some- what arbitrarily by a consideration of the opposition between the mystical (aesthetic) religious consciousness and the ethical religious consciousness. Because this opposition in religious experience appears so fundamental, and because it has a far wider range than THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 87 the special field of religion, it seems worth while to examine it rather closelj'' and broadly, i.e, to consider it as it touches upon other fields. The Mystical Experience as Opposed to the Ethical or Practical Experience. — This opposition exists outside the special field of religion as the opposition between the ethi- cal and aesthetic consciousness or value, or as the opposi- tion between the practical and active and the meditative and receptive consciousness. The mystic is one who may be called, as James has called him, a religious genius. His experience of enlightenment, his sense of a special revela- tion, his recognition of salvation, come to him very much as his imaginative creations come to the genius in the realm of art. As this opposition appears in actual life it is in part a matter of temperament, and these two differing ideals or values give zest and variety to Ufe. Yet, also, they seem to be at the bottom of many of its conflicts and tragedies. In '^Wuthering Heights," Emily Bronte has sketched these opposing ideals as they exist for the active and passive temperaments of two children : — "Linton said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day- was lying from morning till evening in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the flowers, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his most perfect idea of heaven's happiness. Mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above; and not only larks, but throstles, and blackbirds and linnets and cockoos, pouring out music on every side, and the moors seen at a distance broken into cool, dusky dells, but close by great swells of long grass undulating in waves to the breeze; and the woods and sounding water, and the whole world awake and wild with joy. He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace ; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee." ^ It is proverbial that men of aesthetic genius are hard to live with, and this applies more or less to the artistic or the specialized type of temperament generally even when * Emily Bronte, " Wuthering Heights." 88 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE not a case of genius. Also it is sometimes said that genius is a law unto itself and cannot submit to those conventions and regulations which seem necessary to social intercourse. On the other hand, there are those who vehemently de- nounce genius which either goes its own way regardless, or feeds on other lives and makes them suffer. People sometimes speak in severe criticism of even so great a genius as Tolstoy for his unpractical ideals and his lack of consideration of the point of view of his family. Thus the opposition and the conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical has a wider range than the re- ligious sphere and appears as the tragedy of genius, a tragedy either to himself or to others. The genius eats his heart out alone, unrecognized, or misunderstood, or, if he seeks to enter into social relations, it is all too prob- able that he will cause others sorrow, and that they in their turn will thwart his expression of his genius and his inner life. Or, if there be no external pain and tragedy, there is possibly an even greater one in his own heart, when social duty and affections draw him one way, and the interest of his own temperament in another. (Shelley might be taken as illustration.) And all this is increased when conventions and customs make the decision espe- cially difficult, as in the case of women. Mrs. Browning has told us something of this problem in '^ Aurora Leigh,'' and a recent work of fiction ^ has taken it up again. Although I have heard highly intellectual women say that they had no idea what this problem of the moral as opposed to the aesthetic, the social as opposed to the indi- vidual experience, meant, yet I fancy the conflict does come home rather often to the young woman about to graduate from college, who is no genius, perhaps, but yet a case of specialized temperament. I think of one such college 1 May Sinclair, "The Creators." It appears in much of the so-oalled feminist literature of the last few years. See, also, "The Man and the Militant," Alice Brown, Atlantic Monthly, August, 1913. I THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 89 graduate, one ''all spirit, fire, and dew,'^ who devoting her life to the children of the immigrant has little time or strength left for the poetry and philosophy she used to dream of, and who bravely contents herself with the thought that she is helping these, often gifted, foreign children to do better work than she would ever have done. Or, I think of another highly gifted young woman whose home in a western city is just one of the many centres for the development and culture of the great West, but she, with all her own home work to do, has not sufficient physical vitality for the aesthetic or intellectual life which she so dearly loved. Devoted wife and mother as well as ardent social-service worker as she is, it is not selfishness which makes her long at times to lead her own life, but the call of something stronger than herself, the call of her spe- cial temperament and individuality. At the same time, on the other hand, no one is without the sense of social bonds and relationships and the claims of immediate friends and family ; in our day, even the needs of the whole world make their moving appeal to the sensitive consciousness. It may be that, morally, a decision in either direction is good enough, if steadfastly pursued ; but this is not the whole story. Whichever way the choice is made there is bound to be a sense of limitation and pain. Sunt lachrymce rerum. Our opposition, then, is very real and concrete. In the special sphere of religion it is often spoken of as the opposition between the Martha and Mary types of char- acter. In the gospel story, a supper was given to Jesus, and Martha was busy serving, but Mary sat at His feet and drank in the words of life. Then Martha bade Jesus chide Mary because she did not help her serve. In another story, a woman brings an alabaster box of precious oint- ment and anoints the feet of the Master, and Judas, one of the disciples, complains : ''Why was not this ointment sold and given to the poor?" And even so it is to-day. On the one hand, it is said: "What can a man give in 90 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE exchange for his own soul?'^ And on the other: ''Man should not consider his own soul, as the mediaeval monks did, but rather forgetting self, minister to the souls and bodies of others." The practice of preventive medicine, for instance, it is said, may be the best sort of religion. It is almost impossible to consider this opposition of the mystical and practical religious consciousness with- out passing over into the other opposition, — that of the individual and the social type of religious consciousness. The mystic's concern is the inner life. ''The Kingdom, '* said Tauler, "is seated in the inmost recesses of the spirit." In fact, the deeply aesthetic religious consciousness seems ever to have loved and sought soHtude, as have also done the poets. Consider, for example, the hermits in the wilderness and the monks in their cloisters. Moses seeks the holy mountain, and the Psalmist the courts of the temple; Jesus went alone to the mountain to pray ; and to the Buddha it was the last temptation not to proclaim the doctrine to uncomprehending ears. For the mystical (aesthetic) religious consciousness, whose interest, as we have said, is the inner life, this love of, and even neces- sity for, solitude seems perfectly natural. For it is through concentration, meditation, and trances that the mystic enters this inner kingdom, or, like St. Paul is caught up into highest heaven, hears unearthly voices, and beholds visions of another world. But the active, practical consciousness calls to the mystic to come down from his mountain or out of his cell and take up the work of the world. "What I will you fiddle while Rome is burning?" — for does it not reduce to this in the end? Hear "the bitter cry of the children." Remember: "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." But the mystic answers: "Why should I come down? Are we not on a quest for reality and the highest good? I have found God." And why should the mystic seek further? Religious experience THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 91 wants God and the mystic claims to have found Him. The mystic, to be sure, has his ascetic practices and series of meditations and trances which help to the vision, but his guide is the inner light, his gospel the inner hfe. This mystic way of life is twofold. It may be a Via Negativay as it was for Buddhism, a way of renunciation, a cutting off of interests and desires; or rather (though there seems always something of this ascetic element to be found in religious mysticism), it may be, as in the pagan worship of Dionysos, and in much Christian mysticism, a joyful expansion, a rhythmic exhilaration. In both cases it is felt as self-abandonment, a self-surrender to a higher life. The mystic is not content with a pragmatic experience. The problem for him is not what is God good for ^ but to see and know God, as the ^'pure in heart see Him '' ; this is itself blessedness. '* Get close to yourself ; then you will find God," is the counsel of the mystic. The method is (1st) the elimination of all external conditions and interests, (2d) concentration on the inner life, or the idea of God, His love and goodness, (3d) the losing of self in such concentration, — for the soul tends to lose itself in letting go all external things. God's grace alone works in the soul, and when God is found finite personality dis- appears; and so losing itself the soul says: ''Let there be no more mine and thine." This is insight, at,tainment, the highest bliss. Mysticism is a philosophical system. Tauler says : ^ — "^God is the unity in which all miiltiplicity is transcended ; in Him are gathered up both becoming and being, eternal rest and eternal motion." But mysticism is also a living experience. It is an ex- perience, however, which the mystic cannot communicate to others. Like St. Paul, he is caught up into Paradise, 1 See three stages of the mystic's ascent in Tauler's sermons, quoted by Inge, ^'Christian Mysticism," p. 186; also Buddhistic series of trances, "Buddhism in Translation," Henry Warren; Ruyshroek's "Ladder of Love," seven grades. 92 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE and hears unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Like the experience on the lawn at mid- night in Tennyson's ^^In Memoriam," he knows his state is changed, but the experience itself is inexpressible. "Ah me ! but oh how hard to frame, In matter moulded forms of speech, Or even for intellect to reach Through memory that which I became." The experience is unique, an affair of appreciation ; every man must experience it for himself. The mystic can only say, ^^Come and see." Come and drink for yourself of the Uving water. Find for yourseK the way of life. Give up all for the pearl of great price. And yet the mystic tries by various formulae and by the language of the sen- suous imagination to describe this experience. The mystic expresses this state variously as ''Becoming one with God," as ''bathed in love," a state "in which the creature is lost, engulfed," as Nirvana or "blissful nothingness," "cosmic consciousness," "intellectual en- lightenment," "illumination," "state of ecstasy," "trans- port like an immediate perception," "highest stage of contemplation." "Still desert of the Godhead." i "A conversation of the soul with God, in which no particular thing is asked for, an aspiration on one side and inspiration on the other." * A "life hid in Christ with God." « "Knowledge of God's wisdom in a mystery." ' "Visions and revelations of the Lord." ^ "Caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words." ' "Vision of the divine essence." "The vision and contemplation of the truth." * "Mihi adhaerere deo bonum est." * "Vast darkness of the Godhead into which the soul sinks." * "The Divine Abyss," into which man flings himself.^ * Eckhardt. ' Francis de Sales. » St. Paul. 4 St. Augustine. •^ Ruysbroek. « Tauler. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 93 "The immeasurable sea of God's infinite goodness into which the individual sinks and there rests steadfast and immovable." ^ " Summa merces te videre, Tibi semper inhaerere ; Tu es dulco vitae verse, Fons f elicitatis merae ; Fac ut tibi placeam." * "It was a breaking forth of the sweetness of eternal life, felt as present in the stillness of contemplation." * "When we rise above ourselves and in our ascent to God are made so simple that the love which embraces us is occupied only with itself, above the practice of all the virtues, then we are transformed and die in God to ourselves and all separate individuality. The devout and inward spirits are by grace one and the same thing with God, because the same essence is in both." * For modern illustrations : — "Thou comest not, thou goest not; Thou wert not, will not be; Eternity is but a thought By which we think of thee." "^ "I love my God, but with no love of mine, For I have none to give ; I love thee, Lord ; but all the love is thine, For by Thy life I live. I am as nothing and rejoice to be Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in Thee." "Thou, Lord, art all thy children's need. And there is none beside ; From thee the streams of blessedness proceed, In thee the blest abide ; Fountain of life, and all abounding grace. One source, one centre, and one dwelling-place." • A poet's description of the mystical consciousness : — "That serene and blessed mood In which the affections gently lead us on. Until the breath of this corporeal frame. And even the motion of our human blood 1 Molinos. 2 Richard Bolle de Hampde. 3 Susa's "Vision of Eternal Wisdom." < Jluysbroek. ^ Faber. " Mme. Guyon. 94 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul. • While with an eye made quiet by the power Of Harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things." ^ "Thou Life within my life, than seK more near, Thou veiled Presence infinitely clear. From all illusive shows of sense I flee. To find my centre and my rest in thee." ^ But by these descriptions we shall agree the mystic hardly defines his experience, and so at last we accept his "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which God hath prepared for those that love Him." or again in the lines which end Goethe's Faust : — "Alles Vergangliche 1st nur ein Gleichnisz, Das Unzulangliche Hier wird Ereignisz Das Unbeschreibliche Hier ist es gethan." The final word of the mystic is, '^ Farewell, we lose our- selves in light." The Ethical Religious Consciousness. — But now let us turn to the other side of the opposition. The ethical- practical, or motor type of religious consciousness appears as the exact antithesis of the mystical consciousness. For the mystic "the way of fife" is the yielding of himself to the will of God. It is letting God's grace work in and through him — thus he finds peace and reality. Hence the mystic emphasizes self-abandonment, grace, immedi- acy, the actual experience of the attained goal, of the Real which is union with God. But for our present type of consciousness, the rehgious ideal is a goal which is in- finitely removed. It is the object of an endless quest. * Wordsworth. * Newman, "Dream of Gerontius." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATUEE 95 It must consequently be sought by means of a temporal process, yet in no temporal process can it ever be attained. To the ethical, religious consciousness the ideal shines like some star, pure and serene, on a far horizon, which ever inspires, beckons, and draws, which is never reached, yet must be sought with steadfast loyalty, on the straight and narrow way of life. Or, the ethical ideal appears as the voice of conscience and duty ; in religious language, the voice of God in the soul of man. It is a stern, a compelling voice, and he who hears it speak must needs Usten and obey. "Though love refine and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, 'Tis man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die." * Yet to those who hear the voice, hearken to it and obey it, it comes like a glad trumpet call to a life of high adventure, strenuous living, combat, and victory. Hence this type of consciousness is illustrated by the rehgious battle hymns of all the ages. See the song of Deborah, Deut. 15, for a primitive illustration. In mediaeval and modern hymns, many examples may be found. As for instance : — "Onward, Christian Soldiers, Marching as to war." "Fight the good fight, with all thy might; Christ is thy strength and Christ thy right. Lay hold on life, and it shall be A constant joy and crown to thee." "God's trumpet wakes the slumbering world; Now each man to his post ! The red-cross banner is unfurled ; Who joins the glorious host? * Compare Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" and "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. . . . And he that doth not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake, shall find it." 96 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "He who in fealty to the Truth And counting all the cost, Doth consecrate his generous youth, He joins the noble host ! "He who with calm, undaunted will, Ne'er counts the battle lost. But though defeated battles still, He joins the faithful host ! ^ "He who is ready for the cross. The cause despised loves most, And shuns not pain or shame or loss, He joins the glorious host ! " ^ Although the ethical ideal is so lofty and remote, yet those who serve it must have their feet firmly planted on the ground. They must, i.e., seek to embody it in their actual everyday life. (Hence the Martha illustration, p. 65.) In no mystical, subliminal region is this ideal to be found, but only through its expression in the commonplace life of every man ; for this way of life is the active way of overcoming and doing; and since the goal is beyond any present attainment, this type of consciousness is always restless and unsatisfied; for every level of spiritual at- tainment is but a stepping-stone to a goal which seems to recede with every spiritual advance. This is what we find expressed in the meditations of the saints. This form of religious experience is described in motor terms. Sometimes it is a warfare or pilgrimage — like the ex- perience of Christian on the journey to the heavenly City, the way is beset with many foes, both inner and outer, — for in a sense this experience is twofold. The goal may be personal righteousness of fife, the attainment of a holy will. ''Be ye, therefore, perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matt. 6.) Or, since this ethical type is on the whole social, the effort for personal righteous- ness becomes largely identified with a struggle against the evils of the environment, and with deeds of active service ^ Samuel Longfellow. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 97 and kindness to the neighbor. And, as the goal is two- fold, so also in correspondence, is the way. It means, ultimately, the righteousness of the individual life (a perfectly holy will or universalized will), and righteous- ness (perfect justice and law) in the social order. Sometimes this type of consciousness is described by the figure of a race, as by St. Paul in the Epistle to the PhiUppians. ''One thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal, unto the prize of the high calling of God!" ^ Or, again, in the familiar hymn of Philip Doddridge : — "Awake, my soul ; stretch every nerve, And press with vigor on. A heavenly race demands thy zeal, And an immortal crown." Sometimes as a wrestling with spiritual foes, as in the Epistle to the Ephesians — "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." ^ "Christian, dost thou see them On the holy ground ? How the powers of darkness Rage thy steps around ? Christian, up and smite them, Counting again but loss, In the strength that cometh By the holy cross." * Sometimes as a life of adventure, involving much wandering, as in Homer^s Ulysses, and VirgiFs iEneas. Sometimes as the ascent of a difficult mountain, as in the purgatorial process described by Dante in the second part of the "Divine Comedy." 1 Phil. 3: 13, 14. 2 Ephesians 6 : 10-17. 3 St. Andrew of Crete, d. 732, tr. by J. M. Neale. 98 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Sometimes, directly, as the object of an endless quest, as in the poems relating to the search for the Holy Grail. ^ We find it further illustrated in all those hymns, ancient and modern, which express a '^ motor'' element. Under all the forms already mentioned, and further as labor in the vineyard, as an effort to realize the kingdom of God on earth through missionary effort, and by deeds of brotherly love, through which the '^way of Hfe'' becomes the way of the cross, the way of vicarious suffering and self-sacrifice and atonement. See, for illustration, Hosea, Chapters 2, 3, and 11, where, under the form of what is supposed to be his own personal experience, Hosea de- scribes the love and suffering of God for sinful Israel. Or, in the description of the '* suffering servant" in Isaiah, Chapter 53, or "Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friend." "^ Again, in Greek and Latin early Christian hymns which emphasize the death on the cross : — "O Lover of Mankind, To Thee all glory be, For Thou didst give not death, but life When hanging on the tree." ^ 1 Compare search for the golden fleece. Also, garden of the Hes- perides, and lost Atlantis ; and quests in fairy tales and folklore, and "Ulysses" of Tennyson — **For my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulf wiU wash us down ; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides ; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven ; that which we are, we are ; One equal temper of heroic hearts. Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." « St. John, 15 : 13. ' Hymn of the Greek Church. Latin Hymns, and other illustrations in hymns of aU ages : — THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 99 and also in all collections of Evangelical sects.^ Even from the fourteenth century mystics we get "Works of love are more acceptable to God than lofty contempla- tion." 2 We find as we should expect to do, this ethical, active type of religious consciousness frequently illustrated in our modern poetry which is not religious in the technical sense. For example, in Tennyson's ^' Wages," and "Last Lines." WAGES "Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, Paid with a voice flying to be lost on an endless sea — Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong — Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she : Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. " The wages of sin is death : if the wages of Virtue be dust, Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky : Give her the wages of going on, and not to die." Browning, is, of course, preeminently the poet who sings "the glory of the imperfect." Paracelsus illustrates it amongst the longer poems, "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Pros- pice" and "Epilogue" and many another amongst the shorter ones. "One who never turned his back but marched heart forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed though right were worsted, wrong would triimiph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better. Sleep to wake. ** Vexilla regis Stabat Mater.*' ^*Ah, wounded Head!" — Gerhardt. ^*0 love divine, that stooped to share." — O. W. Holmes. ^ Montgomery's Hymn, *<* A poor wa5^aring man of grief.*' John Tyler's "Lord, what offering shall we bring At thine altars when we bow? " « Tauler. 100 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE ** No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the miseen with a cheer ! Bid him forward, heart and back as either should be ; 'Strive and thrive ! ' cry 'Speed,' — fight on, forever. There as here!'" We meet it also in Stevenson's "If This Were Faith" : — "To thrill with the joy of girded men, To go on forever and fail, and go on again, And be mauled to the earth and arise. And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes." In Goethe's '' Faust '' : — "Whoever strives unweariedly Is not beyond redeeming." that is, so long as the ideal is consciously pursued, man is on the way to salvation. In reUgions other than the Hebrew and Christian, this type of religious experience is found. As we should natu- rally expect, in Zoroastrianism, whose fundamental con- ception is that of warfare between the principles of light and darkness, of good and evil, — a warfare in which man must actively struggle without rest in order to overcome evil and bring in the good. " The will of the Lord is the law of righteousness, the reward of heaven is to be hoped for for those works, performed in the world of Mazda ; Ahura holds him right who supports the poor. Righteous- ness is the best possession; blessed is the man whose righteousness is perfect." ^ But we find this consciousness also in Buddhism and Stoicism. Even though these, forms of religion lay stress on renunciation and the acceptance of fate and on negative moral principles, we feel them to be ultimately ethical — dramas of the inner life — which emphasize an attitude dependent at last on the will of man. And further, the ideal in both is one which is never attained in time. For where, as Plutarch said, is to be found the completely ^ Formula of confession of Zoroastrianism. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITB . NAT^UI^^ " {}://^lQi'' wise man of the Stoics ? And as for Nirvana, — the heaven of Buddhism, — it is the hmit to the series of trances, but ever the term beyond the actual series. Buddhism is a rehgion of universal compassion and brotherly love, and even though this ethical attitude is, in Buddhism, rather negative than affirmative, yet in its ^^ discipline of ele- vated conduct" ; in the command to ''win merit '^ through the practice of good deeds ; in the attitude of renunciation of the world through the overcoming of ignorance and (in consequence) of desire ; in the duty which the Buddha enjoined upon his disciples both by precept and example to spread insight, to preach the doctrine ; and in the doc- trine of '' Karma, '^ which teaches that future happiness and misery (re-birth) depend on the nature of the deeds done, — in all this we have surely an active religious principle and experience. As for the Stoic, he makes, once for all, like the Buddhist, ''the great renunciation" ; that is, he accepts the decrees of the imiverse, the brevity of mortal existence and the chances of fortune. Then, for the rest, the ordering of his life is in his own hands and he seeks to control it ac- cording to the dictates of the higher nature and of uni- versal reason. "Live with the gods. And he does live with the gods who con- stantly shows to them that his soul is satisfied with that which is assigned to him, and that it does all that the daemon wishes, which Zeus hath given to every man for his guardian and guide, a portion of himself. And this is every man's understanding and reason." ^ But the perfect "golden mean" or the life completely in accord with universal reason, is an unattainable goal. This motor type, again, is very prominent, of course, in the proselitizing activity of Mohammedanism, though combined here also with a fatalistic attitude. In order to bring out more clearly the contrast be- tween the two types of religious experience which we ^ "Meditations," Marcus Aurelius. 102 THE IPRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE have been considering, I give herewith the two following poems : — "O world invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknownable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee ! " Does the fish soar to find the ocean. The eagle plunge to find the air, That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumor of thee there? " Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars ; The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. " The angels keep their ancient places ; Turn but a stone, and start a wing ! 'Tis ye, His your estranged faces. That miss the many-splendored thing. "But (when so sad thou can'st not sadder). Cry : and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder. Pitched between heaven and Charing Cross. " Yea, in the night, my soul, my daughter. Cry, clinging heaven by the hems ; And lo ! Christ walketh on the water. Not of Genesareth but Thames." ^ "A man said unto his Angel : * My spirits are fallen low. And I cannot carry this battle ; O, brother, where might I go? " * The terrible kings are on me With spears that are deadly bright ; Against me so from the cradle Do fate and my fathers fight.' " Then said to the man his Angel : 'Thou wavering, witless soul. Back to the ranks ! What matter To win or to lose the whole, * Francis Thompson. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE " * As judged by the little judges Who hearken not well nor see? Not thus, by the outer issue, The Wise shall interpret thee. " * Thy will is the sovereign measure And only event of things ; The puniest heart, defying, Were stronger than all these kings. " * Though out of the past they gather Mind's Doubt and Bodily Pain And pallid Thirst of the Spirit That is kin to the other twain, " * And Grief, in a cloud of banners. And ringleted Vain Desires, And Vice, with the spoils upon him Of thee, and thy beaten sires, " ' While Kings of eternal evil Yet darken the hills about, Thy part is with broken sabre To rise on the last redoubt ; " * To fear not sensible failure, Nor covet the game at all, But fighting, fighting, fighting, Die, driven against the wall ! ' " * 103 Another form of opposition which reUgious experience, in its essence, takes, is the opposition between the indi- vidual and the social experience. In describing the mystic experience, we have in a measure already described that type of religious experience which is most isolated and individual. The mystic is the ^'God-intoxicated man." He finds God in the depths of his own inmost conscious- ness. It is here that the directing voice speaks to him, the inner light shines to guide him. Here are two illustrations of the mystic-individuahstic consciousness : — 1 Louise Imogen Guiney. 104 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE " In the orison of union the soul is fully awake as regards God, but wholly asleep as regards things of this world, and in respect to herself. God establishes himself in the interior of the soul in such a way, that when she returns to herself it is wholly impossible for her to doubt that she has been in God and God in her. If you ask how it is possi- ble that the soul can see and understand that she has been in God, since during the union she has neither sight nor understanding, I reply that she does not see it then but that she sees it clearly later, after she has returned to herself, not by any vision, but by a certitude which abides with her and which God alone gives her." * Ruysbroek writes : "All men who are exalted above their creature- liness into a contemplative life are one with the Divine Glory, yea are the glory. Wherefore contemplative men should rise above reason and distraction, and gaze perpetually by the aid of their inborn light, and so they become transformed, and one with the same light, by means of which they see, and which they see." Again and again in the '^Book of Acts" and in PauFs letters, we read that Paul was directed by God in a dream or vision, that is, in inner experience, to undertake a certain task or go on a certain journey. 1. As we study the experience of Buddhist and Chris- tian mystics, we note that this inner experience appears to be one of intense concentration of attention with accom- panying intensity of emotion, of '4neff ability," as the mystic calls it, and a consequent sense of illumination. Now for the average consciousness to attain such a state of rapt attention and abstraction, stillness and soUtude are requisite. Hence we find the mystic consciousness haunting the sohtary mountain top, the desert, or the monk^s cell. " God, who gave to him the lyre, Of all mortals the desire, For all breathing men's behoof, Straightly charged him, * Sit aloof ' ; Annexed a warning, poets say, To the bright premium — Ever when twain together play, Shall the harp be dumb. * Autobiography of St. Theresa, quoted by Professor James. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 105 " Many may come, But one shall sing ; Two touch the string, The harp is dumb, Though there come a million. Wise Saadi dwells alone." ^ An example from Buddhistic experience : — "If before me, if behind me, my eye sees no other, it is truly pleas- ant to dwell alone in the forest. Come, then, into the forest, which Buddha praises; therein it is good for the soUtary monk to dwell who seeks perfection. Alone, without comrades, in the lovely forest, when shall I have gained the goal? When shall I be free from sin? When the monk in a mountain cave surrenders himself to abstractions, he can have no greater joy." Let us compare with this the experience of Mohammed. Before his assumption of the prophetical office, Mo- hammed retired from his people and hved sohtary on Mount Hura, in the practice of devotion to God. There the Most High imparted to him religious guidance, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, with true dreams, the voices of angels, and just meditations. Meanwhile, he advanced in the degrees of divine love and knowledge, and was adorned with all that is praiseworthy and excellent.^ The epitome of the life of the cloister whose song is "O sola beatitudo, beata solitudo." is found in the ''Imitation'^ of Thomas h Kempis. In self-denial and purity, in renunciation of the world and in avoidance of society and conversation, true peace is to be found. 2. Another form of this type of individual religious consciousness is the proud self-dependence of the Stoic consciousness. Thus Seneca says : — "Whenever I have gone among men, I have returned home less than a man." 1 See Emerson's "Saadi." 2 "Life and Religion of Mohammed," from the "Sheeah Traditions of the Hyat-ul Kuloob," tr. by Rev. J. L. Merrick. 106 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The Quakers, with their gospel of the ^4nner light '^ and divine '^openings/' as a direct response from God, are another instance. These are a variation of the mystic type, although we must, to be sure, remember the social nature of ^Hhe meeting" ; and still other illustrations are the Wesleyans with their emphasis on individual experi- ence as the final test of truth. Thus I read in a recent doctor's thesis: '^for the individual the only possible standard of evaluation is the personal experience. Other standards do not exist for him." '* Personal reUgious experience is the fundamental fact." For a philosophic expression of this type of conscious- ness see ^'On The Inward Ruler" (from the Brihadaran- yaka-Upanishad, III. V. 2). "He who, dwelling in the understanding (etc.) is other than the understanding, whom the understanding knows not, whose body the understanding is, who inwardly rules the understanding, is thy Self, the Inward Ruler, the deathless. He unseen sees, unheard hears, unthought thinks, uncomprehended comprehends. There is no other than he who sees, no other who hears, no other who thinks, no other who comprehends. He is thy Self, the Inward Ruler, the deathless. All else is fraught with sorrow." 3. Still another illustration of the individual, religious experience is that in which the relation is dual, ix. it con- sists of an intimate sense of God's unseen presence and of communion with Him as with a person, as companion, father, guide, protector, etc. The prophets of Israel, one and all, have a social pro- gramme, and yet the way in which the divine message comes to them, the 'Hhus saith the Lord," appears to be very much of this individual and inward type of experi- ence. Note especially the prophet Jeremiah, the founder of individual religious experience and the father of prayer, as he has been called. Jeremiah talks with God. We find the same thing illustrated in the ''Confessions of St. Augustine." Augustine's theory and doctrine, although influenced by the thought of the day as to form, was de- THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 107 rived largely from reflections on his own personal ex- perience. "Roam not away beyond thyself; in the inner man dwells the truth ; seek it in the stillness and leisure of thy spirit. To love God is to know God, the purer the heart from all defilement, so much the more is it capable of beholding the truth." * George Herbert's poems are another instance of the dual rehgious consciousness. In Professor George H. Palmer's interesting sketch of Herbert's hfe, he tells us how the England of Herbert's day was everywhere awakening to the spirit of the Renaissance, — to individuahsm in poUtics, art, science, and rehgion. In religion Puritanism was an expression of it. The watchword was the in- dividual's responsibihty to God. It is variously em- bodied in the great leaders, Thomas Hume, George Fox, and John Bunyan. '^Herbert," says Professor Palmer, "is the child of this age of awakening individuahsm. He declares his resolu- tion to be "that my poor abilities in poetry shall be all and ever consecrated to God's glory." To him God also is an individual. The language which some of the mystics use, perhaps unconsciously, is consciously employed by Herbert to set forth his relations to Christ, i.e. he takes the language of the love lyrics of his day and devotes it to the description of heavenly love. He loves to analyze and play with the varieties of his emotional experience. Here we have not the lonely mystic consciousness, nor yet the motor consciousness which tends to include other men in its experience. It is a dual relationship, a communion of two individuals, God and man. The finite individual is not in the least lost, for by contrasting situations of question and reply, appeal and rejection or acceptance, of seeking and finding, hiding and discovering, etc., the separation and yet relation of one individual to another is constantly emphasized. In the poems we find expressed 1 " St. Augustine's Confessions." 108 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE on the one hand, God^s attitude to man. God is the lover of man who seeks to win him from his wanderings to him- self. In others, man's side is given, his hesitations, waverings, withdrawals, sense of sin and remorse; his loneliness, aspirations, longing and love of God.^ Here are two examples from Herbert's poems : — BITTER-SWEET "Ah by deare angrie Lord, Since thou dost love, yet strike, Cast down, yet help afford, Sure I will do the like. " I will complain, yet praise ; I will bewail, approve ; And all my soure-sweet dayes I will lament and love." A PARODIE "Soul's joy, when thou art gone, And I alone Which cannot be, Because thou dost abide with me And I depend on thee, " Yet when thou dost suppresse The cheerfulnesse Of thy abode. And in my powers not stirre abroad, But leave me to my load ; " O what a damp and shade Doth me invade ! No storme night Can so afflict or so affright As thy echpsed light." 4. Then there is that type of rehgious experience, the experience of the leaders, heroes, saviours, reformers, martyrs of the race, which being more unique and original and of deeper insight than that of the social group to which 1 See "Life of George Herbert," in the edition of Herbert's poems by George Herbert Palmer. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 109 it belongs, must to some extent be a solitary, an individual, experience. If the master of religious ceremonies, the priest who leads the litany,^ the dreamer or interpreter of an exceptional dream, even the leader of a savage dance or chorus, must have a consciousness slightly differen- tiated from the social consciousness of the throng, how much more must this be true of those great personalities, the founders of new religious thought, the bringers of a new religious life and gospel ! How lonely must have been the consciousness, for in- stance, of that great Hebrew prophet who was forced by the inevitable voice of God to be the messenger to his beloved people of coming doom ! We get some notion of it in Jeremiah 20 : 7-9. "0 Lord, thou hast deceived me and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am become a laughmgstock all the day, everyone mocketh me. For as often as I speak I cry out ; I cry violence and spoil because the word of the Lord is made a re- proach unto me, and a derision all the day. And if I say I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name, then there is in mine heart, as it were, a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with forbearing, and I cannot contain." The lonely consciousness appears again in the descrip- tion of 'Hhe suffering servant" in Isaiah 53. 5. Finally, we have another variation of the individual religious experience in that type of ethical religious con- sciousness which holds itself directly accountable to God for its deeds, which knows no mediator between God and the soul. To such an one life as a whole is dramatic, and the individuaFs own place in it unique, his attitude 1 As an illustration, see description of the Christian religious service in Pater's "Marius, the Epicurean" : "The mystery, if such in fact it was, centred, indeed, in the actions of one visible person (the bishop) distinguished among the assistants. The solemn character of the singing was at its height when he opened his lips. Like some new sort of rhapsodos, it was for the moment as if he alone possessed the words of the office, and they flowed anew from some permanent source of inspiration within him." 110 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE momentous, his experience irreducible and incommuni- cable; it is 'Hhe unclassified residuiun" of James, the indefinable uniqueness in the writings of Emerson and of Stevenson. "It (the new church) shall send man home to his central solitude. He shall expect no cooperation, he shall walk with no companion. The nameless Thought, the nameless Power, the superpersonal Heart, he shall repose alone on that." ^ "Ask no man's counsel but thine own only and God's. Brother, thou hast possibility in thee for much, the possibility of writing on the eternal skies the record of an heroic life." ^ "Out of the heart are the issues of life." ^ "I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart I will write it." * But now, having seen in our illustrations the prominence of individual experience in reUgion, let us turn to the other side of the opposition, for certainly rehgious experience is also social. If we may judge from such external religious phenomena as ancient customs and ceremonials, the reports of which have come down to us, and from the religious practices of savages at the present day, primitive religion must have been entirely a social affair ; and in fact when all life practically was group-life, religion was, inevitably, social. There was no individual consciousness in our sense of the word. The life of the individual was wrapped up in the life of the group ; the protection, preservation, and pro- motion of social solidarity was the primary concern, and for this the religious ceremonies and religious taboos ex- isted.^ Hence in savage life special emphasis was laid on all those crises in human life which involve strain and 1 R. W. Emerson, ^'Worship." 2 T. Carlyle. » Proverbs 4 : 23. * Jeremiah, 31 : 33. •^See "Psychology of Religious Experience," Part II, by Charles Scribner Ames. THE WAY OF LIFE ITS NATURE 111 danger to the welfare of the tribe, — such crises as birth, death, marriage, war, youth, sickness. These, and the transformations in nature cycles, such as the change of the seasons, which are especially bound up with primitive human interests, are the occasions for ceremonies and magic rites, ''rites de passage," as they have been called. These religious group-actions have usually a strong emo- tional accompaniment. From the genetic point of view action is primary, and religious acts appear to be those acts of a social nature with intense emotional accompani- ment which relate to the common or tribal good. These group activities are often of the type of sympathetic or imitative magic, but sometimes the magic seems to con- sist in the emotional frenzy itself, of the dancing, march- ing, singing throng ; and those individuals in whom it is most extreme, who lose themselves in trance and ecstasy become the totem or the god. They utter oracles, heal disease, acquire supernatural power and magic efficacy, etc., but these powers must be used for the good of the group as a whole. ''Religion in primitive society," says Professor Ames, "may be regarded as primarily a system for the controlling of the group with reference to the ends which are felt most acutely by the group as a group." Robertson Smith, in his "Religion of the Semites," shows that the religion of the IsraeUtes, as well as of other Semitic peoples, was at first a tribal affair, its essence the sohdarity of the gods and their worshippers, based on the physical principle of kinship. Jahwe was the god of the tribe, perhaps at first a totem, and Israel his peculiar people. The individual was born into this religion and accepted it as he did the political, social environment; and he performed its obligations as he did the rest of his social duties. The religious powers were held to be on the side of tribal, social order and whatever of moral there was was boimd up with the preservation and welfare of the tribal group, — ^^the social whole. "A man," says 112 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Robertson Smith, '^had no right to enter into private relations with supernatural powers that might help him at the expense of the community to which he belonged. In his relations to the unseen he was bound always to think and act with and for the community and not for himself alone. '^ Since the ceremonials required magic practices, Ames makes the distinction between ^'collective magic'' and '^ individual magic." An individual who practised magic on his own account would probably have been considered a malefactor, or one to be expelled from the tribal group. Even prayer, that most intimate and personal form of religious experience, — as it appeared in our considera- tion of individual experience, — seems originally, in primi- tive society, to have had rather a social than an individual bearing. Prayer began as a magic formula or incantation, and was simply a verbal accompaniment to the social rites and ceremonial activities. No god was directly invoked, but the prayer formula itself was a kind of "spell" which had magic efficacy.^ In the collection of the Artharva Veda, the incanta- tions or prayers accompany some rite, as the laying on of an amulet, an ointment, etc. ; i.e. prayer was inciden- tal to the active rite and this, if a religious rite, was social. But leaving primitive man, we find that social religious experience exists to-day. We may classify this experi- ence according to that psychic character which is most prominent in each of the different forms in which the experience manifests itself, but this can be but a rough sort of classification, since there are so many border- line cases. (1) The motor experience of the Active Type. Doing things to- gether. Stress on together. 1 See Ames, "Psychology of Religious Experience." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 113 (2) Feeling together, sense of presence of others in oneness of feeling. (3) Religious experience as thought which has become public, collective, expressed in the institutions and organizations of society. (4) Religious experience as universalization or socialization of the will. Categorical imperative. Golden rule. (5) Thought, feeling, and will of all united in a mystical experience. Vine and branches. Love of God and man. Christian church. Class I. — (1) Under Class I we may group all those religious ceremonies and acts of worship found in all his- torical religions, from the experience of primitive man to the present day, which are motor and emphasize doing things together, frequently with strong rhythmic action, the "togetherness" being essential to the activity as a whole. As for instance in the sacred dance, sacred march, and sacred chorus; the singing of hymns together, the antistrophic movement of litanies. "Sursum corda! Habemus ad dominimi Gratias argemus Domino Deo nostro ! " In this class belong also those social acts such as taking part in sacred rites, as in sacrifices, lustrations, initiations, etc. The hymns which express a motor element have usu- ally this social character as well, e.g, of fighting or march- ing together as an army, a band of pilgrims, or fellow laborers. "Come, brothers, let us go. We travel hand in hand, Each in his brother finds his joy, In this wild stranger land." In fact, hymns used for public worship are supposed, for the most part, to express the collective consciousness, a consciousness which the social activity involved tends to emphasize and augment. "0 come, let us sing unto the Lord." "All ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord." I 114 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE ADESTE FIDELES "Adeste fideles, Lasti triumphantes Venite, venite in Bethlehem. " Cho. Natum videte, Regem angelorum, Venite adoremus, Dominum." (2) Social Religious Experience as Emotional. — In religious experience, besides action, there is emotion and thought which we should rightly call social. It is difficult, as we said before, to separate these three varieties ; e.g. at a revival meeting, the singing together tends to increase the social emotion. The emotional suggestibility of a mass of people appears at a revival meeting where the moving appeal of the speaker arouses the emotion at first of one or two, which emotion gradually spreads like a contagion through the crowd, and one after another rises and responds to the appeal to give himself to Jesus, i.e. he ''gets religion '' or is '^ converted. '' Religious emotion of the crowd is proverbial and has led to religious persecu- tions, the stoning and crucifying of the prophets, and to religious wars. This social consciousness is not the consciousness of the separate individuals of the group taken apart from the group. To quote Le Bon in regard to what he calls a psychological crowd : — "Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or un- like be their mode of life, their occupations, their character or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isola- tion. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd." ^ 1 Gustave Le Bon, "The Crowd." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 115 (3) Social Experience as Revealed in what we may call Public Thought. — Generally, however, the social religious experience imphes not merely f eehng together but thinking together. To be sure, an idea and also an emotion must start with some individual, but this fact itself has its social imphcations. The ideas of an Augustine, Luther, or Wes- ley must become socially accepted before they can result in the modern Cathohc Church, the Protestant Reforma- tion, or in Methodism. It is the thought of the '^pubhc self '' — here the pubHc religious self — which is embodied in the rehgious organizations and institutions of society. For without this which Professor Baldwin calls ''a common self -thought situation" cooperation is impossible. Here we have the basis of the Christian church, which is of two tjrpes : — A. The church of authority where the public self is a limited self, represented by the clergy. To the rules and dogmas established by early councils all churches and individuals belonging to them, have to submit. The Catholic church seems always to have been a social-political organization, more interested in saving souls for the church, that the church may be triumphant on earth as well as in heaven, than in the saving of the individual as such, i.e. in his personal righteousness. B. In the second type, the Puritan churches and their descendants, the people themselves are the church. The commonwealth of the Pilgrims was a religious commonwealth, the governor himself bemg the minister to start with. The individual is responsible to God. The religious sanction is identified with the ethical ; nevertheless, it is a social experience because the ethical individual is a public or universal self. In this type of church we have a group of people united to further the spiritual interests of the community and of humanity. Again, the crusades are a good example of a social rehgious experience in which these three varieties, of social emotion, thought, and actions, are united. (4) The second type of church mentioned above leads us over directly to our fourth variety of social religious experience, namely, the universalization or socialization of the will. Religious experience on the motor side is ex- pressed in Christian experience as "following Jesus" or 116 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE doing the will of God. Concretely, this reduces almost to Kant's categorical imperative. ''So act that the princi- ple of your action could be a law for all intelligent beings/' or ''act as your completest, your ethical, your public self demands." This means not merely so to act as not to injure or interfere with the rights of others, but act so as to serve them, so as to spread insight, to help them to develop their completest selfhood. This is clearly a social experience, even though it may seem at times to ignore or deny certain special, social acts, for the sake of those which are really more deeply social. When a number of people unite together as in a church for a social end, this experi- ence becomes more completely social. It is rehgious as well as ethical, when those who have the experience think of it as a work which they are doing with God, or as in his sight and in the service of his children, as " Do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with thy God." That is, while it is identical as to will, it is differentiated in thought and feeUng from a purely ethical experience. (5) The expressions of religious experience in songs and prayers of the church, and in the maxims of rehgious teachers lead us to beheve that there is a consciousness of mystical union with God which also includes one's fellow- men. This "Unio Mystica" which includes the neighbor is the mysticism of St. Paul and of the fourth Gospel : — "Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; so neither can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine ; ye are the branches." * "They are thine : and all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine." ^ "... that they may be one even as we are one." ^ "... even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us." '' "If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love." ^ » St. John 15 : 4 and 5. ^ gt. John 17 : 10. » St. John 17 : 11. * St. John 17 : 21. 6 St. John 15: 10. THE WAY OF LIFE ITS NATURE 117 "So we who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally mem- bers one of another." ^ "We who are many, are made one through partaking of the bread." ^ "Diversities of gifts but the one spirit. But all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he wUl." 3 "0 Love, O Life, one faith, one sight, Thy presence maketh one." * This is also the mysticism of the prayer of St. Augustine : — "O Thou Good omnipotent which so carest for every one of us, as if thou carest for him alone; and so for all, as if all were but one! Blessed is the man who loveth Thee, and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thee." Again, the social rehgious consciousness appears in the conception of the Church Universal ; the City of God, the union of all the faithful : — From the Catholic Mass : — "Behold, Lord, we all here, though of different conditions, yet united by charity, as members of that one body, of which thy dear Son is the Head, present to thee in this bread and wine, the symbols of our perfect union." "Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us." And, in general, there is an expression of the communal consciousness in the Psahns, the hymn book of the second temple, where the experience given is that of the servant of the Lord (Israel being used collectively) ; in the prayers, litany, '^Te Deum," etc., in the prayer books of the church ; in the sacred festivals ; in revival meetings ; in the sacrament of the Eucharist; in the communion of the saints. This social experience leads to a consideration of the type of the rehgious consciousness as found in a church. It may be an individual experience, but it is more often, I beheve, social, and includes many of the * Romans, 12 : 5 and following verses. »lCor. 12:4, 11. 2 1 Cor. 10:17. 4 Whittier. 118 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE above-mentioned varieties. To the little child the first going to church is a social affair. He imagines stories about the persons with whose faces he grows famihar Sunday after Sunday, and this becomes a part of his ex- perience which he never quite loses — at least in that par- ticular church building. Then going to church or Sun- day school means to him in great measure the singing and doing things with his fellows. This is, of course, not al- ways a religious experience at all. The psalms and prayers, the wonderful ritual of the Catholic church, which, springing from human need and aspiration, has grown as the grass grows, gathering to itself the beauty and mystery and pity of ages of human experience and worship, — all this weaves itself into the individual's own experience and transforms it into a social consciousness. The peasant woman who enters a great cathedral, who tells her beads, and dips her fingers in holy water, brings here perhaps her personal need, yet she comes as to a place where other sufferers, wanderers, sinners, and doubters have come for help, light, forgiveness.^ In general, the psahns, hymns, prayers, the rites and ceremonies as used in pubhc worship give expression, as it seems to me, to collective experience. The adult con- sciousness in a church is probably not particularly aware of others as special individuals, but as his fellows who are united with him in a common experience. And this is perhaps one of the chief argimaents for church going. "Remember not, Lord, our offenses, neither take thou revenge of our sins; spare us, good Lord, spare thy people whom thou hast re- deemed by the most precious blood of thy Son and be not angry with us forever." "Spare us, good Lord." ^ What is truest, perhaps, is that in these religious ser- vices the individual expresses his own through a universal 1 See Hawthorne's case of Hilda in St. Peter's at Rome, in "The Marble Faun." 2 The Litany. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 119 experience. As in all religious experience, so here the individual is reaching out for the ''more," the ideal larger life which is to complete his own. As he takes his part in the common service and acts of worship, he enters into the common religious inheritance. New insights come to him. A new self is born within him. He is one with his fellows, but one only through the common relation to an ideal good, " a spiritual presence amongst them which restores, redeems, transforms, inspires, and elevates, and to which, with the uttermost devotion, the worshippers consecrate their renewed powers." Other instances of the social religious consciousness are: — (1) The notion of the efficacy of the prayers and intercessions of the saints (dead and living) of which so much is made in the Roman Catholic church. Illustrations of this appear in Dante's " Purgatorio." (2) The Roman Catholic doctrine of "merit"; The conception here is that merit attained by individual good deeds accrues to the church as a store of merit. (3) In aU those dreams of social Utopias, a recovered golden age, the social programme of the prophets for a redeemed Israel and the accompanying conception of a Messianic kingdom, a New Jerusalem, the kingdom of God, of Jesus of Nazareth. In the little Christian communities or churches of the Apostolic age which were bound to- gether by a sense of the living presence of Christ in their midst and by a common bond of personal loyalty to him, something of this community consciousness seems actually to have been realized ; and it has been attempted again and again in religious brotherhoods of every age. Again, other instances are the beatific vision of "the great white rose of Paradise'^ described by Dante, at the close of the Divine Comedy; and the "City of Light" of the Ethical Culture movement has surely a religious I character, though it claims to make the only possible rehgion identical with social ethics. Have you heard of the golden city Mentioned in the legends old? Everlasting light shines o'er it. Wondrous tales of it are told. 120 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE " Only righteous men and women Dwell within its gleaming walls, Wrong is banished from its borders. Justice reigns supreme o'er all. " Do you ask where is that City Where the perfect right doth reign? I must answer, 1 must tell you. That you seek its site in vain. " You may roam o'er hill and valley, You may pass o'er land and sea. You may search the wide earth over ; 'Tis a City yet to be! " We are builders of that City, All our joys and all our groans Help to rear its shining ramparts ; All our lives are building stones." * Even monasticism, that citadel of individualism in religion, and even the monasticism of an individualistic type of reUgion as Buddhism tends to be, has its social character in the inner Ufe of the monastery, — in the common meal and common acts of worship ; still more is the social found in the outside activities, educational and missionary. Also, in the humanitarianism of Buddhism we find the social rehgious consciousness. The ancient Roman faith, with its Lares and Penates, and its popular festivals is an instance of a social religion very similar to patriotism. The Stoicism of the Roman emperor, Marcus AureHus, is social on a higher ethical level. "The intelligence of the universe is social. Thou seest not it has subordinated, coordinated, and assigned to everything its proper portion, and has brought together into concord with one another the things which are best. "Whether the universe is a concourse of atoms or a system. . . . I am a part of the whole which is governed by nature and I am inti- mately related to the parts which are of the same kind with my- self. . . . Inasmuch as I am in a manner intimately related to the parts which are of the same kind with myself, I shall do nothing un- » Felix Adler. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS NATURE 121 social, but I shall rather turn all my efforts to the common interest and direct them from the contrary. . . . Until the end comes, what is sufficient? ''Why, what else than to venerate the gods and bless them, and to do good to men, and to practise tolerance and self-restraint." ^ We saw in the preceding chapter that religious experi- ence consists of three elements, viz., first, the sense of need, sometimes of misery and sin — a divided consciousness ; second, a dream, a vision, even at times a concrete realiza- tion of what is meant by salvation, peace, unity ; third, following these, the belief that the misery can be perma- nently overcome and the goal won through some process of attainment — a way of life, or a way of salvation. Analyzing, as we have done in the present chapter, this third element which appears as that element in rehgious experience which unites the other two and is in some ways, in actual hfe, the most developed and important of the three, we find that as a particular experience there is no one way of winning salvation, but that in its essence ^^the way^' of the rehgious hfe is an experience at once appre- ciative and active, mystical and ethical, individual and social. The highest type of religion, or religious experi- ence in its wholeness consists of all these experiences in their unity. But how it is possible that such opposing and conflicting experiences should be unified, we are not able to understand. Yet that the religious consciousness is such an harmony of many various experiences in one, the lives of the saints of religion throughout the ages reveal to us. It is made manifest in such very different types as Gotama and St. Paul, St. Francis and St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, Savonarola and Luther, Wesley and Chan- Lning, Emerson and Brooks. How did religion come to these men, or how did they win it? In a word, what are the sources of rehgious ex- perience? Let us now see if we can find light by con- sidering the Way of Life as to its source. 1 ''Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," tr. by George Long. I "I thirst for truth, But shall not drink it till I reach the source." — Robert Browning. " And so I think that the last lesson of life, the choral song which rises 'from all angels,* is a voluntary obedience, a necessitated free- dom. . . . When man's mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order and does with knowl- edge, what the stones do by structure." — R. W. Emerson. CHAPTER IV The Way of Life — Its Sources The illustrations of religious experience given in the preceding chapter suggest that the ''Way" to salvation is no way J one and simple, in the sense of a unity without diversity, but that it (the way) may be as various as human experience itself. Salvation, for example, may be found through faith (see the teachings of Luther) ; it may be found by re- liance upon the authority of a larger body like the historic church (the case of Newman) ; by self-remmciation and escape from the world — the ''Via Negativa" of the oriental mystics; by concentration upon the thought of God and by obedience to the inner light as in the Quakers and other Christian mystics ; salvation may be through joyful self-surrender to the personaUty of Christ and through the acceptance of his atoning blood (see the hymns of the early Christian church) ; it may be by the way of asceticism and of service to the brethren, i.e. the way of poverty and charity of St. Francis of Assisi ; it may be through works of merit and by character : "This do and thou shalt Uve'^ ; it may be the way of love : "Her sins which were many are forgiven her for she loved much" ; it may be through absolute devotion to a rec- ognized and freely chosen ideal good : "Whosoever hath forsaken father or mother for my sake shall inherit eternal Hfe" — by all these various paths, men have actually found the way of life. In this diversity of concrete experience, however, two principal, contrasting trends or oppositions appear; namely, the opposition between the mystical and ethical 123 124 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE experience and the opposition between the individual and social experience. These general types appear as ele- ments or phases of reUgious experience itself. All these varieties belong in the whole which religion is. Yet they are in conflict one with another, and so far we have not much hght as to how these oppositions can be rec- onciled. We might hope to get help towards the solution of the rehgious problem from a consideration of the later oppositions in our series (given on page 85, Chap. Ill) ; namely, those oppositions which relate to the forms of reUgious experience and those which relate to its source, but when we analyze these oppositions, we shall discover a tension and conflict similar to that which we have already met with. Let us consider first the question as to the source of the experience of salvation. How does one, in truth, find the Way of Life? What is its source? For instance, is the individual saved by divine grace or by personal merit? This is an old, old problem which appears again and again in the history of religion. Grace and Merit. — While this opposition clearly is related to the mystical and ethical opposition as well as to the individual and social opposition, yet the relation is not a perfectly clean-cut and simple one. For to be saved by grace means, on the one hand, self-abandonment to an inner and immediate experience. The grace' of God is an indwelUng presence, that which is emphasized in Brahman- istic teaching as the '* Inner Self," the 'inward Ruler.'' It is a light to guide, yet it is "A light which never was on sea or land." And yet, inward and indwelling as this ''grace" is, it is not something in the individual's own power. "Not of myself or through my own deed," says in effect St. Paul, "have I overcome sin and won salvation or righteousness THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 125 of the Christ-life, but rather through the grace of God, or through '^ Christ who is in me." The man who prays to be saved by the grace of God goes humbly to the altar. He does not rely upon his own strength or desert ; hence, in a sense, this ^' grace" is outside of, or beyond, him, and in so far it appears as a social rather than an individual experience and condition. The individuaFs self-abandon- ment to the divine grace is to something more or greater than himself. For example, as an illustration the hymn — "Just as I am, without one plea." This dependency upon divine grace is the meaning, I take it, of all those Christian hymns which pray for the coining of the Holy Spirit, — such hymns as the following familiar ones : — "Veni, Sancte Spiritus; Da virtutis meritum Da salutis exitum Da perenne gaudium." or "Veni, Creator Spiritus." "Light of life, seraphic fire." — Charles Wesley. "Thou Grace Divine, encircling all." — E. SCUDDER. "O spirit of the living God ! In all thy plenitude of Grace." — J. Montgomery. Illustrations may be found in prayers as well, notably in those of St. Augustine and of the ^^ Imitation." Although called by a different name, this sense of de- pendence upon, and appeal to, divine grace and power appears in all rehgions. "Nothing, O mighty Lord, is strong before thee. Do what thou wilt do, thou who hast grown so strong." — From the "Vedic Hymns." "May that grace of yours by which you help the wretched across all anguish, and by which you deliver the worshipper from the reviler, come hither, Maruts. May your favor approach us." — "Prayer to the Maruts, the Storm Gods." 126 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Grace in Upanishads. — The Upanishads teach that peace and salvation come through enhghtemnent — the awakening of the individual from the bUndness in which he saw himself as separate from Brahma the All, to an im- mediate intuitive union of the real oneness of the individual self with the Eternal. He is saved because seeing his one- ness with the Eternal, for him there are no more incarna- tions into the world of sense and separateness, and also he is beyond works. "Now within this town of Brahma is a dwelling; a little lotus flower; within this is a little space ; what is within men should inquire after, yea, should seek to know. ... If they should say to him: * If all being and all desire are lodged in this town of Brahma what remains thereof when old age comes upon it or it dissolves?' He shall say : * This grows not old with his aging nor is it smitten by slay- ing of him. This is the true town of Brahma. In it are lodged the Desires. It is the Self free from evil, ageless, deathless, sorrowless, hungerless, thirstless, real of desire, real of purpose. ... So they who depart without finding here the Self and these real Desires, walk not as they list in any worlds; but they who depart after finding here the Self and these real Desires, walk as they list in all worlds. . . .* " Now that perfect Peace, rising up from this body, enters into the Supreme Light and issues forth in its own semblance. ' This is the Self,' said he, Hhis is the deathless, the fearless; this is Brahma. . . .' " Now the Self is the dyke holding asunder the worlds that they fall not one into another. Over this dyke pass not day and night, nor old age, nor death, nor sorrow, nor good deeds, nor bad deeds. All ills turn away thence; for this Brahma-world is void of ill. Therefore in sooth the blind, after passing over this dyke is no more blind, the wounded no more wounded, the sick no more sick. Therefore in sooth even Night after passing over this dyke issues forth as Day ; for in this Brahma-world is everlasting light." ^ " Verily this great unborn Self it is that is compact of understanding amid the life-breaths that lie in the ether within the heart, master of all, lord of all, ruler of all. He becomes not greater by a good deed nor less by an ill deed. . . . This Self is Nay, Nay : not to be grasped, for He is not grasped ; not to be broken, for He is not broken ; un- clinging, for He clings not; He is not bound, He trembles not. He takes no hurt. One (who knows this) is overcome neither by having * Chandogyga Upanishad, VIII. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 127 done evil for His sake nor by having done good for His sake ; he over- comes both ; work done and work not done grieve him not." * This is said by a verse : — "The Brahman's constant majesty by works Nor waxes more, nor wanes. This shall he trace ; This known, ill deeds defile him nevermore." No effort of the individual, then, will bring about the saving enlightenment. It is accomphshed through the inner self, but this, the true Self, is Brahma the All. The Book of Psalms. — Although the Psalms lay stress on the value of the righteous hfe as a condition of salvation, yet more than anything else are they an appeal out of need and anguish to a divine helper. The domi- nant note is trust in God, — the rock and strong tower of defence, the helper, the guide and redeemer. He will not let his servant Israel perish. In the end the righteous shall be deUvered from the hands of his enemies ; because he has trusted in God, He will watch over him till the calamity is past. When we consider the historical situation, we get light on the content of these songs. Israel's dream of salva- tion grows out of, and is colored by, the longing of an op- pressed people to be free and to return to the promised land where, under the leadership of a prophet or king of the Davidic line, they should loyally serve Jahwe and should prosper. Almost any psalm will serve as an il- lustration : — "Hear my cry, God ; Attend unto my prayer. "From the end of the earth will I call unto thee ; when my heart is overwhelmed : Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. "^For thou hast been a refuge for me ; a strong tower from the enemy. * Brihad-aranyaka Upanishads, IV. IV. 22-23. 128 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "I will dwell in thy tabernacle for ever : I will take refuge in the covert of thy wings (Selah). "For thou, O God, hast heard my vows; Thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name." ^ In the Christian church, it is held grace may come through some immediate revelation but also through the prayers and intercessions of the saints, i.e. it has a social aspect ; and from our modern point of view, grace seems mediated to the individual in all sorts of ways ; through Nature (to such a poet as Wordsworth, for example ; while to a poet of the Walt Whitman type. Life or Experience itself, is the bearer of the gifts of grace) ; through social institu- tions — (the rites of the church, especially Catholic cele- bration of the Mass) ; and above all, through the presence of grace in heroic and lovely human personalities.^ Augustine's Doctrine of Grace .^ — Augustine's doc- trine of grace grew out of his own experience interpreted in the light of Neo-Platonism and the teachings of Paul and Manicheism which had influenced his youth and from which he never quite freed himself. Augustine's early life had been a long struggle with bad tendencies and habits which he had been unable to master. In the experience of his own perturbed spirit he finds the paradox of the will and of sin over against the paradox of grace. The will knows the good which is in truth the heart of its own longing. In a way, therefore, the will has the power of choosing the good ; therefore the evil will is responsible by a kind of defect for not so choosing. The '^summum bonum" is that which ought to be the motive of the will and which should lead in the realizing of the good in life, i.e. by changing the mere longing of the will into a reality. The ought has to lay hold on the will as love of the good, 1 Psalm 61. 2 See the case of Silas Marner, where "the instrument of grace" was a little child. * Harnack's "History of Dogma," from which this account is taken. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 129 i.e. through the gift of the Holy Spirit or divine grace. Then this "beata necessitas boni" becomes the true free- dom of the will because it sets it free from the impulses of the lower life ; for the ought, or the willing of the good will, has now become the only love of the will — hence '' Volun- tas" becomes ^^Caritas." In yielding to the call of divine grace salvation is attained. The bad will Augustine identifies with the doctrine of evil substance, which notion he retained from Manichean dualism. Through this influence the sin of the will becomes to him original sin — a corrupt nature inherited from Adam. Man cannot free himself from this inherited evil through his own will and merit. He knows the good and "partly wills and partly does not will" to follow it. Divine Grace sets him free to follow the true law of the will, but this grace is a gift and chooses whom it will. Augustine's scheme of redemption is bound up with his dogma of the church. It is to or through the organi- zation and rites of the earthly church that the transcen- dent grace becomes visible and efficacious. The church is the body of Christ. Man's own righteousness avails nothing if he is outside of the unity of the church . For the bond of this unity is not in purity of life, not in righteous acts and individual merit, but in the acceptance through love of the righteousness of Christ. That is, the bond of unity is by the spirit of love to Christ and the sense of fraternity. The only true and holy Catholic church is, to be sure, an ideal, for this bond of brotherhood and this community of the saints are never completely realized in the earthly church. The sacraments of the church are, however, a magically efl&cacious means of obtaining grace and sal- vation. But the church, with its organizations and rites, is a social institution. Hence grace appears partly, at least, as a social experience. A study of the experiences of sudden conversion, but also, however, of a gradual growth in grace (as in a life like that of T. H. Green) reveals the fact that salvation 130 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE by grace is an aesthetic and mystical experience. It has been held that the coming of the divine grace or the seizure of a man by the divine spirit, manifests itself variously as trance, frenzy, ecstasy, speaking with tongues, rapture, enlightenment; and without this ''inward witness" of some such experience, some Christian sects, as well as some ancient historical religions, deny the name rehgion. The experience of grace, as we learn from Paul, does not come through obedience to external forms, by keeping all the points of the law, or by works. It means " being trans- formed " into a ''new creature," through letting the hfe of the spirit spring up, so to speak, in the soul. And then, following the complete giving up of the individual self to the guidance of this experience, comes the finding by him of a wonderful peace and joy — the peace and joy of God, and of new and larger insight into Hfe's meaning. This experience is a surprising thing — a great discovery of what it means in reahty to live. This experience, then, is mystical, yet to be saved by grace is not merely a mystical, aesthetic experience. As we have already seen, it has characteristics which make it social ; and for a spiritual religion the most excellent manifestations of grace are generally held to be the qualities of the moral life. So that grace appears to belong, too, to the realm of ethical values. " I can do all things," said Paul, " through Christ who strengtheneth me." To know God as revealed in Christ meant for Paul a surrender to the Christ Hf e ; but this life and acceptance of the Christ spirit, — this "Spirit which was in Christ Jesus" — was a life of self-sacrifice and of unfaihng love to the brethren. Hence in Paul's account, not especially in speaking with tongues and in other signs and wonders is the Holy Spirit revealed. The gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit are moral gifts ; and in his summary of the Christian Hfe in Corinthians 13, the Christ-like hfe is shown to be a Uf e of ethical value. Here is the real " witness of the spirit." And yet this inward THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 131 spirit of heavenly love is for Paul '^ a gift of grace." Some strength not my own, then, the religious man reports, brings me peace, healing, new power and enthusiasm ; a new life is born in me. This new life redeems me from the slavery of the natural man, from wayward impulses, from bad habits, lack of self-control, worldliness, selfishness, and the rest ; and it leads me to the life of brotherhood, a life of devoted service and atonement, i.e. its truest manifestations are ethical and social. Two hymns on grace follow : — "0 Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee ; I give Thee back the life I owe That in Thine ocean depths its flow May richer, fuller be.^ "0 Light that followest all my way, I yield my flickering torch to Thee ; My heart restores its borrowed ray, That in Thy sunshine's blaze its day May brighter, fairer be. " O Joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to Thee ; I trace the rainbow through the rain. And feel the promise is not vain That mom shall tearless be. " Cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from Thee ; I lay in dust life's glory dead, And from the ground there blossoms red Life that shall endless be." "He leads us on by paths we did not know ; Upward He leads us, though our steps be slow ; Though oft we faint and falter on the way, Though storms and darkness oft obscure the day, Yet when the clouds are gone. We know He leads us on. 1 George Matheson, " O Love that Will not Let Me Go." 132 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "He leads us on through all the unquiet years ; Past all our dreamland hopes, and doubts, and fears He guides our steps ; through all the tangled maze Of losses, sorrows, and overclouded days We know His will is done, And still He leads us on. "And He at last — after the weary strife, After the restless fever we call life. After the dreariness, the aching pain, The wayward struggles which have proved in vain, After our toils are past — Will give us rest at last." ^ The Doctrine of ''Merit." — We are thus led to see, through such typical experiences as those of Paul and Augustine, that the real gifts of grace are gifts which belong to the sphere of spiritual and ethical values. And this brings us over very naturally to a consideration of the other side of the opposition — the side of merit. And here we must say at once — if eternal hfe or salvation is most truly manifested in moral character and activity, these qualities depend on individual effort, responsibility, and freedom, i,e. on merit. They cannot be given from with- out ; they must be striven for by the individual himself. In short, spiritual life is no gift; it is an achievement. Paul, who at conversion, had received divine revelation and grace, at the close of his strenuous career says : — "Not as if I had already attained or am already made perfect — but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretch- ing forward to the things which are before, I am pressing on toward the goal and unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 3.) For the life of moral value is a life never completely won. Its essence is 'Hhe glory of the imperfect." Finality is death. There is ever beyond the open country the un- travelled road of a larger experience, of a more abun- dant hfe, the unmeasured possibilities of a divine sonship. 1 Hu-am O. Wiley, "He Leads Us On." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 133 The conclusion is, then, that salvation is something to be won. The doctrine of grace and the doctrine of merit alike emphasize the fact that the essence of salvation is an inward spiritual value. In neither case is it an external good or gift of chance fortune or material possession. But while for the one view this value is a blessing bestowed^ for the other it is a blessing won. But if salvation is a moral good, must not a moral good of necessity be won? What meaning has moral value apart from individual effort? We recall the case of Faust: — "Whoever strives unweariedly Is not beyond redeeming." Salvation must be won by me — no other can do it for me. The essence of moral hfe is in individual decision and responsibility. ''This I choose. This I intend." ''I can no otherwise," as Luther said. Religion has not always been ethical. This appears plainly in primitive religions, as we have seen. If we want a modern instance of a reUgion quite apart from morality, I know of no more striking illustration than that given in "The Story of Daniel Drew," Drew, the New York finan- cier who wrecked the Erie Railroad. According to this account, while Drew beheved it did not pay in business to be rehgious, still he seems genuinely to have beUeved in keeping the Sabbath strictly, and he loved to attend church meetings regularly. He founded the Drew Theo- logical Seminary for the glory of God. But he thought that a man^s life in his home and on Sunday was one thing, in the business world and on week-days another. At the close of his long career, Drew complained that religious teaching at the present day was not what it had been, the ministers of religion were concerned too much with this world rather than with other-worldliness. He complains he does not enjoy preaching as he used, for ''Preachers," he says, "are talking so everlastingly about this earth. I've done my best to get them to stick to the 134 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Gospel, and not allow worldliness to get into the teachings of the church ; but the good old preachers have gone to glory. '^ How external to the individual the doctrine of salvation by grace could become, we learn from Drew's account of it ; and from the old hymn : — "From every stormy wind that blows, From my multitude of woes, There is a calm, a sure retreat, 'Tis found beneath the mercy seat." Whatever religion may have been in the past, to-day a religion which is not in essence spiritual, i.e. ethical, can hardly be called valuable, whether or not ethical values constitute the whole of religion. But for an ethical religion salvation seems to mean something to be attained by the individuars own effort and will. For example, is forgiveness possible without true repentance, and does not repentance mean the setting of the individual will steadfastly in the direction of the goal? It means to '^ hitch one's wagon to a star" ; to make a universal ideal, ''an ought," the guide of one's life. And this ethical ideal can only be the good will itself. As Kant said, ''There is nothing perfectly good in the world but a good will." But the achievement of a good will would seem to have no meaning apart from individual effort, respon- sibility, and freedom. So Henley : — "It matters not how strait the gate. How fraught with punishment the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." And so, likewise, in Emily Bronte's prayer, "The Old Stoic":— • "And if I pray the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is leave the heart that now I bear And give me liberty. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 135 " Yes, as my swift days near their goal 'Tis all that I implore, In life and death a chainless soul With courage to endure." This is the Stoic attitude. Although, as we have already- seen, the Stoic held that much must be accepted from the hands of fate, and that to be ready to renounce was the part of wisdom, yet on the whole the Stoic was ''Sapiens contra mundum." To be at peace and content; to live according to reason; ''to live with the gods,'^ — all this was in his own power. This thought is carried to its extremest limit in Swinburne's poem of "Hertha,''^ and again this ideal is expressed in Nietzsche's conception of the Superman, the scorner of passive virtues, who hurled defiance at the sentimentaUsm of the age. 1. "Yes, I know thy danger, but by my love and hope I conjure thee reject not thy law and thy hope. The noble one is always in danger of becoming an insolent, a sneering one and the destroyer. Alas, I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope, then they slandered all high hopes. By my love and my hope, I conjure thee, do not cast away the hero in thy soul. I believe in the hohness of thy highest hopes." ^ And so, also, in Buddhism, we find the same stress laid on individual initiative and effort. To make the great renunciation by which one overcomes desire and re- birth, and through which one attains enhghtenment and peace — this is an individual act. The Buddha reveals the Way, but the path of emancipation, "the Path which 1 Swinburne, "Hertha." ^*A creed is a rod, And a crown is of right ; But this thing is God, To be man with thy might. To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit and live out thy life as the light." 2 Thus spake Zarathustra ; Nietzsche. 136 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE opens the eyes and bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind, to higher wisdom, to. full enlight- enment, '^ — this path must be undertaken by the in- dividual for himself; '^not rite nor prayer, not god nor man" can help him in the end if the will to live is not transformed into the renouncing will. Again, we find, as we should naturally expect to do, the attitude of individual initiative and effort expressed in those historical reUgions which fall into the class of the typically ethical religions, — the religions of the He- brew prophets and of the Persian Zoroaster. The early religious history of the Hebrews is one long struggle between the purer religious worship of the no- madic tribes and the nature worship of the Canaanites whose land they had invaded. The contrast is strikingly set forth in Amos and the later prophets. The historically earliest of these critical moments is given in Kings, in the dramatic account of the trial by fire between Jahwe and the Baalim when the moral decision is set before the the people: ^^ Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." Again, in the Persian religion, we meet a similar conflict between a moral and a naturalistic conception of the divine; when Zoroaster calls upon the people to choose between the '^ lying gods" and Ahura-Mazda, upholder of 'Hhe best order," protector of the righteous. In the formulae of confession already quoted the individual renounces the powers of evil and binds himself to the loyal service of Ahura the holy. "I speak myself free from the evil spirit and confess myself to be one of the Mazda — faithful." "The will of the Lord is the law of righteousness, the reward of heaven is to be hoped for for these works performed in the world for Mazda. Ahura holds him right who supports the poor." "Righteousness is the best possession; blessed is the man whose righteousness is perfect." In order to bring together the two points of view and the conflict between them, I summarize : — the way of life — its sources" 137 Summary of the Opposition between Grace and Merit. — Grace comes as a free gift. According to the doctrine of grace, the individual is passive. Grace is mediated to him in various ways, but chiefly in ways which are social. Yet the experience itself is rather one which is immediate, appreciative, individuahstic. In the Christian religion, grace seems to be used especially as the favor of God to sinners, in the sense of God's forgiveness and redeeming love. The sinner is saved from his sin not through works or merit of his own. In many unfore- seen ways, his sin is atoned for — and this experienced grace is immediate. It is no far-off goal to be won. The day-spring from on high hath visited him. He is re- deemed here and now. Eternity is in the moment. Merit, on the other hand, is an active experience. It depends on a unique decision of the will, on individual effort and responsibihty. Hence the emphasis is on the individual, since nothing outside himself can determine his will, that is, '^save" him ; and yet the manifestations of merit are necessarily social. Hence the social pro- grammes of the Hebrew prophets and others to which we have already referred in a preceding chapter. Man is bound by the ideal he serves, and this ideal relates the individual in active service to the community or social order. Yet not because he is a member of a race or of a social group will the individual be saved in the end ; not because he accepts any creed or performs any rite; but because in practice he reveals an enlightened and dis- cipUned, a loving and perhaps an atoning will. The victory is the victory of spirit over matter, of the en- lightened and righteous will over mere instinct and im- pulse, of the higher self over the lower. But the task of the good will is never fully accomplished, the victory never complete; the temptation returns, the struggle is con- stantly renewed. Rest for the will would be death, not salvation. The will glories in the strife. From the point of view of an enhghtened and spiritual 138 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE religion, certainly an artificial and mechanical scheme of salvation can have no meaning or value. There is, there- fore, no question in this discussion of the propitiation of an angry God, or a God with whom a bargain must be made ; nor of a ransom of many sinners by the sacrificial blood of one righteous person to satisfy a logical scheme of justice. But when we have said all this, we have not settled the issue between ''grace and merit," for the deeper underlying question remains of the relation of the individual to the community ; of the part to the whole in a moral universe ; and especially the relation of the sinner to the moral order from which he has separated himself. This problem, i.e. the problem of the relation of the individual to the community and to his race, also reaches beyond the range of the religious field. It appears in relation to the works of the creative imagination, in re- lation to inventions and discoveries of science, as well as to the creations of art. It may throw light on the present problem to consider the relation of the individual artistic genius to the community Ufe. Are creative works produced by the individual alone by his own effort and intent? So unique and original they are that they appear unaccountable, spontaneous variations, ''bolts from the blue." But the individual genius himself — is he a chance variation separate from other men, who cannot be accounted for by his ancestry, his race and environment ; or is he essentially bound up with society, an outgrowth and development of the com- munity life of his time? When we consider the appear- ance of great works of art and of scientific discoveries, we find that as a rule they take place in or immediately following an age productive of many lesser works. Many unknown craftsmen, working silently, helped to build the Gothic cathedrals. They were an expression of the in- terest and aspiration of the community hfe. The four Gospels of the New Testament grew gradually out of THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 139 the needs of the little early Christian communities. '* The litanies of nations^' came as a response to the question- ings and longings of man in the Dark Ages. "Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, These canticles of love and woe." Many wandering romancers and bards had recounted their stories and legends and sung their songs in the popu- lar tongue before Homer and Dante wrote their great epics. The forerunners of Phidian sculpture appear in the archaic figures of early Greek art ; and the "motifs'' of the Florentine painters of the Renaissance in the Byz- antine rehgious mosaics and paintings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Great music, like the music of Beethoven, has its roots deep in the elemental expression of the race spirit in the folk songs. In the field of science many workers were working for the telephone and the aeroplane before the successful inventions finally came. An enhghtening account of the psychology of genius, and of the cyclic or reciprocal relation between the in- dividual genius and society has been given by Professor Mark Baldwin.^ The genius draws from the life of so- ciety, but he transforms through his own creative im- agination the material he has received, and gives the product back to society to be tested by it as to its truth or worth, and in order that it may receive society's sanction. This sanction, to be sure, the work or message of genius may not receive until many generations have passed away. Ultimate truth and value are not affirmed or de- nied by the verdict of any temporal society ; but if the message of the genius is true, it will be heard by society in the end ; for his message came out of the community life — that is, out of his insight into its deepest and per- manent needs, dreams, and ideals. "Himself from God he could not free." ^Mark Baldwin, "Social and Ethical Interpretations," Chap. V. 140 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Sanctioned by society, then comes the next step — the divine vision of the prophet or creative genius reacts to raise to higher levels the life of the community out of which itself sprang. This is the rhythm of growth. It is not otherwise, I take it, with religious genius. Could we solve the problem in one field we could solve it in all. So wonderful is the endowment of genius that from earhest times men of genius, and especially men of re- ligious genius, have been held to be divinely inspired. It was beilieved that they were ^^ seized upon by the god" and that they received a direct revelation from the un- seen world. Men of aesthetic genius as well as scientific discoverers themselves report inspired moments when they are swayed, as it were, by some power outside themselves, which flows through them as passive instru- ments of its will. In such divine moments the solution of a problem, or the motive or form of a poem or musical composition, has flashed upon their minds from some source other than that of their clear self-conscious pur- pose and intent. So Goethe reports of the composition of ^^Werther" that he wrote this little book *' somewhat unconsciously, like a sleep-walker " ; and Kant says : — "The reason why eneptomy — originality of talent — receives that mystical title is that the subject of it cannot explain its eruptions, or that he finds himself in possession of an art which he could not have learned and which he cannot comprehend. For . . . (the cause of an effect) is an attitude of the mind (a genius with which a gifted person is endowed from his birth), whose inspiration, as it were, he only follows." In ancient times it was said that the poet was breathed upon by the Muse, but in our age of scientific methods another name has been found for these sudden inspira- tions of genius. This new name is the '* subliminal consciousness." This sub-marginal region is a deeper region of consciousness than that of the individual's own conscious intent. It is something more intuitive, and is THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 141 truer in its verdicts, it is held, than the reasoning powers of the mind. The subliminal consciousness seems to contain the stored-up experiences and instinctive ten- dencies of the individual's own past; of the past of his ancestors, and even of his race ; that is, the individual is not expressed merely or wholly in his own self-conscious purpose. Now the products of the subliminal conscious- ness have a very wide range. ^ They vary from the merely trivial, from wild impulses and passionate outbursts, to revelations of true insight and creations of real value. It follows that the works of the so-called inspired imag- ination have to be sanctioned and tested as to their truth and worth by some standard other than that of the sub- liminal consciousness itself. The divine message is in- terpreted by human standards of value. Hence the cyclic or rhythmic process between the individual and society already described. The immediate vision, the voices and ''revelations" of religious consciousness, — the ''gifts of grace'' — I believe come not otherwise. Who knows how much effort of the ages, effort individual and racial, apparently silent and unsuccessful, has gone to make possible the immediate inspiration of genius? But still we must admit that the nature of genius, in what- ever field, is, after all, more or less of a mystery. It remains itself an "unanswered question." Yet it has, possibly, thrown back some light on the relation between "divine grace" and "individual merit." II There is another group of oppositions which is closely related to the already discussed opposition between Grace and Merit. This group consists of: — a. The opposition between Necessity and Freedom ; h. Original sin and individual responsibility ; c. Established authority and individual judgment. 1 This is noted by William James in his book on religious experience. k 142 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 1 shall consider (a) and (6) together. a and 6. — // ideality is in truth the essential character- istic of religious experience; if, that is, man's life is in- spired and guided by ideals, and if rehgion is ethical, then it seems man must be free. The essence of the conscious will, as Kant taught, is autonomy. It acts from reverence for a self-imposed law. You can because you ought. ^ On the other hand, if man is saved by grace, and if grace, when it comes, is irresistible, then he is saved by a free gift of God as by a decree of fate, and he is not free. "For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son ; . . . and whom he foreordained, them, also, he called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified." (Romans 8 : 29, 30.) Salvation through Grace appears to be entirely un- related to man's merit and responsibility. As a modern illustration, note Daniel Drew's experience of Grace: — "The soul that knows its sins forgiven by the atoning blood ap- plied, and that has had vouchsafed unto it the sprinkled conscience and the inward witness." The question arises then — what of sin ? Is man free to be a sinner? Perhaps if we imderstood the nature and significance of sin 2 we should see more clearly into all these problems. '*Who answers one of my questions," saith the Sphinx, "is master of all I am." If man is free to win salvation * The standpoint of the civil law is somewhat differentiated from this point of view, for the concern of the law is not the individual citizen, but the protection of the community and its welfare. The standard of the law, therefore, is an external standard as far as the individual is concerned, i.e. its standard is the average man and what may reasonably be expected of him. The law holds a man guilty and punishable in case his act proceeded from his own intent and deliberate purpose ; but ignorance of the law excuses no man, because it is assumed that a sane being could have known the law. The in- dividual, therefore, is judged by the Average Man. (See ."The Com- mon Law," by Justice Holmes.) 2 See Note 1, Chapter II. THE WAY OF LIFE ITS SOURCES 143 in the sense of moral redemption, i.e. through the achieve- ment of a holy will, then, must he not be equally free to turn aside from 'Hhe way," to be a backslider and a sinner ? This is the meaning and destiny of man according to Dante : — "Considerate la vostra semenza Fatti non foste a viver come bruti, Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza." Yet in our day, with its emphasis on biological science and the theory of evolution, and with its passion for the scientific investigation of man^s environment in the search for the causes of his actions, we incline to a very different point of view, for we have seen how important a part the social and economic factors of man's "milieu' ' play in deter- mining his life's possibilities. We feel often very strongly that the criminal classes are not responsible for their deeds ; environment and inheritance have made them what they are. So it has been claimed that poverty is the cause of sin, and in a recent book on religion I find the following inscription : — "Sin is Misery; Misery is Poverty; the Antidote of Poverty is Income." But this is to identify sin with external conditions, and appears to contradict the notion of freedom and of ethical values. For, after all, if this doctrine appUes to the ex- treme cases, can it not be applied all along the line? When the well-born, and well-nurtured, and ordinarily upright man yields to sudden or strong temptation, he, too, may claim that his passion or his weakness was due to the overwhelming force of circumstances or to inherited tendencies which may even be racial, and perhaps very remote. A modern literary instance of the opposition and con- flict between individual responsibility and '^original sin" is to be found in John Galsworthy's play of "Justice." In this play a young man, well-intentioned but weak, and 144 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE with inherited tendencies to disease, under dire stress of circumstances, yields to temptation and forges his em- ployer's name on a check. The question for the law is — how far he was responsible, guilty, and punishable, and how far he was the prey of social causes, represented by inheritance and circumstance. It is a case, common enough probably in actual hfe, where it seems almost im- possible to do complete justice at once to society and to the individual. In order to keep a universe of moral values, it seems necessary to admit freedom to sin. Yet how different appears to be the view of sin of Paul and Augustine ! Since these two forms of opposition, viz. the opposition between freedom and necessity and the opposition between individual moral responsibility and original sin are so closely related, and since the same problem is involved in both of them, I shall consider them together. In so doing it may be also that hght will be thrown back upon the foregoing problem involved in the opposition between grace and merit. In various ways, then, man seems not to be free, but his chiefest fetters do not come from the physical world. The doctrine of necessity holds ^Hhat the state of things existing at any time and certain laws being given, the state of things at any other time is completely deter- mined." Man's motives are products of nature and can be determined like any other natural thing. But against this theory two objections may be raised. First, the mechanical sequence of cause and effect appears, after all, to be only our ^'construct" for getting some sort of unity and identity, i,e, some understanding into the flux of sensational experience, and so ultimately some practical control of it. How, then, should man feel him- self bound by this, his own human construction ? He is bound by it when making scientific experiments, — but, as Professor Miinsterberg is constantly reminding us, this scientific construction does not affect his real life. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 145 And further, in the second place, this necessitarian hypothesis is not the only one, nor necessarily the best that he can make. Some order and invariability there must be ; but as Professor Pierce points out ^ the con- clusions of science are only approximately true, or in the long run and statistically; and science seems never to have been able to explain spontaneous variations. But the nature-world is not merely a scientific construc- tion. Man lives in an environment, and this non-hmnan environment affects him surely. It appears to do so in two ways. First, as chance and accident, and secondly, as suggestion. (1) The External Limiting World as Chance and Accident. — He may not escape earthquake, floods, and tempests. In the carrying on of his everyday vocation these primeval forces of nature may overwhelm him. If a fisherman, he may be overtaken by a storm and his boat shipwrecked. If a miner, in spite of all human precautions, he may be buried in the mine. If a physician, he must constantly expose himself to infection. His body is subject to old age, disease, and finally death. These are the things which the Buddha saw in sorrow, and from which he found also a way of escape. Evils in themselves, they are, but they do not necessarily interfere with man's true freedom. Man learns to re-define his world and his '^summum bonum.'^ Physical infirmities do not cut off the greatest joys. Death, to be sure, ends all in this world, and fife is too short for all man wishes to accomphsh. Yet to die a few years sooner or later, does this really make so very much difference ? To live forever here is not perhaps after all so great a good, nor the fact of death so great an evil. (2) The External World as Suggestion. — The second form in which the natural environment seems to hmit man is in the form of suggestion. The country boy or girl leads an innocent life till he or she comes to the great 1 Professor Charles Pierce in "The Monist." ii 146 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE city with its manifold temptations to pleasm-e, excitement, and ambition. The moving picture shows, e.g., lure the boy, who afterwards imitates the sentimentahty or crime he beholds on the stage of that dream world. Even the saint has his own temptations from the call of the en- vironment. The devil says : ^^ Throw thyself down from the temple walls — show some sign and wonder, and then all thy world will believe in thee." The suggestions from the environment may be also, of course, an incentive to good. The question whether they are irresistible influences is just the question whether man is free, or whether all his acts are strictly determined and under natural law, as the necessitarian holds. The illustrations lead over to our main topic. These suggestions may be primarily chance influences, but as a rule and fundamentally, they express some form of social consciousness ; and it is here that the essential limitation to man^s freedom seems to lie. Limitation Through the Social Milieu. — Here, again, we meet with two principal types. The individ- uaFs will seems to swing between two poles of social causation. On the one hand, we have the suggestible conscious- ness, the self of habit, of untrained emotion, and of race inheritance, — the '^ natural man" of St. Paul. At the opposite pole we have the individual will which, in renouncing its own will, has become identified with the universal, social will of God. But this will of the universe, if a good will, has always willed the good, is necessary and unchanging. If man's will is identified with the absolute will, how far can man be free? His individuality seems to make no difference to the whole. The problem of the limitation of man's freedom through these two forms of social causation has been set forth by Paul and Augustine and is exemplified in their experience. The experience of the two men seems to have had much in common, and these common elements are further enhanced THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 147 in their doctrinal expression of their experience by the fact that Augustine studied deeply the epistles of Paul and makes use of the latter's categories. The Doctrine of St. Augustine Concerning Sin AND Grace. — Long before his conversion, the tempes- tuous youth of Augustine was already seeking after an ideal good. Hence his own passionate sense of sin and failure. From this sin which had such deep hold upon him, he seemed unable to escape by the force of his own will. The sin was his own, for it was the result of habit long indulged in, and habit not resisted had become ne- cessity. And yet all the time he disapproved his sin, and was longing for God, the true good. Hence the evil in him seemed not himself, but rather some natural evil of habit or inheritance, the '^original sin" from Adam. In his own words : — "It was myself, indeed, in either will; yet more myself in that which I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved. For in this latter it was more not myself, for in great part I rather suffered it against my will than acted wilhngly. But yet it was through me that habit had obtained such a fierce ascendency over me, because I had willingly come whither I willed not. Yet all the time I was long- ing for Thee, but I was bound, not by the chains of another but by my own iron will. . . . For the law of sin is the force of habit, whereby the mind is drawn and held even unwillingly, but deservedly in that it willingly fell into it." — "St. Augustine's Confessions." The new will which he began to have was not strong enough to overcome that other will strengthened by age. ''So these two wills — the one old, the other new; the one carnal, the other spiritual — contended together and by their discord dis- turbed my soul." All his struggles seemed hopeless until the grace of God came. ' ^ Who, then, should deliver me, wretched man, from the body of this death, but Thy Grace?'' When this grace comes it is irresistible. Augustine meditated on his own experience to find truth. 148 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "Roam not away beyond thyself; turn into thyself; in the inner man dwells the truth ; seek it in the stillness and leisure of thy spirit. To love God is to know God, the purer the heart is from all defilement, so much the more is it capable of beholding the truth." In this inner experience, Augustine found the paradox of the will and sin, and over against this the paradox of grace. ^ The impulses of the will are impulses to get pleasure and avoid pain. Formally the will is free ; ac- tually it is bound by these inclinations, its motives. Yet it knows the good ; hence the will has in a way the power of choosing the good. Under the influence of Manichean dualism, Augustine interprets the sin of the will as evil substance or original sin inherited from Adam; hence infants who had never sinned through their own wills are yet sinful. Yet all has been created by God and God being good can create only the good. Augustine seeks to interpret this evil substance by the light which he had gotten from Neo-Platonic doctrine. The evil substance becomes an evil principle — a mere negative. God's order is good and there is nothing outside it to corrupt it. Yet there is the will to evil and the original sinful nature of man. Augustine's ^ conclusion is that man was created ex nihilo. The nothing which, in Neo- Platonic doctrine, constituted the ground of sin was man's finitude and, in Buddhism, the transitoriness and mu- tability of life is really in Augustine a kind of survival of the evil substance of Manicheism. Man cannot free himself from this inrooted evil through his own will and merit. He knows the good and '^partly wills, and partly does not will" to follow it. Divine Grace sets him free to follow the true law of the will ; but this grace is a gift and chooses whom it will. Hence we find the contradictions of predestinating grace and election over against the responsibility and merit of the choosing will. The Doctrine of St. Paul in Romans 7. — Like to the personal experience of sin and grace of Saint Au- 1 See Harnack, "History of Dogma." ^ Ihid, THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 149 gustine, is the personal experience of Saint Paul. Long had Paul struggled under the Jewish law to attain per- fection, through works and formal requirements of him- self to attain merit. But Paul had found this to be an impossibility. As with Augustine, two wills struggled in him for mastery, the will of the flesh was his own, yet not his own. For he desired the good and delighted in it ; ^'yet not what I would ^' he says, *^do I practice ; but what I hate, that I do. . . . So now it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me," i.e, a kind of inherited original sin. Then in a revelation, ''whether in the body or out of the body," Paul says, ''I know not," there appeared to him the power of the risen Christ, his cross and righteousness. This vision so overwhelmed Paul, and thereafter took such complete possession of him, that it seems to have driven out all other thoughts and to have quite transformed his life. ''To me," he says, "to live is Christ ; and all things that before were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ." (Phil. 3.) But this new love of Christ and of the Christlike life which — coming to him so suddenly and mysteriously — so overpowered Paul, could not be of his own will and merit, which had before so vainly struggled after right- eousness. It must, then, be the gift of the Holy Spirit. "Not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings." ^ Salvation is no more in struggling after an impossible standard, but in self-surrender to the Christ ideal; to the God who loves and forgives the sinner, and who be- lieves in his ultimate perfectibility. It is not what man does for himself, but what God does for him which is the principle of PauFs new religion. His conception of God 1 Phil. 3 : 9, 10. I 150 THE DRAMA OP THE SPIRITUAL LIFE is no longer the legalistic conception of Israel, but the conception of Jesus of the loving father, the father of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, of the good Shepherd who seeks for the lost Sheep. '*By the grace of God,'' says Paul, "I am what I am — and His grace which was be- stowed upon me was not foimd vain ; but I labored more abundantly than they all ; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." Paul's Doctrine of Sin and Grace. — Paul's doctrine, though expressed in the categories of Jewish legalism and of the Alexandrian philosophy, is based on his own personal experience of redemption and transformation. Without going into these historical conceptions which students of theology have deeply studied, let us try to express what Paul's experience seems really to have meant to him. First, Paul traces sin back to Adam's disobedience. Yet at the same time he holds man had not known sin except for the law, i.e. the natural life is not sinful till an ideal comes. ^'I was aUve once apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived in me and I died." Sin, then, is man's own deed; it is disobedience to an ideal of society and in a measure his own ideal embodied in an external command or ^' ought." By means of the law, as Paul had found, it was impos- sible to attain perfection. His striving and meritorious works are of no avail to win salvation. Man's life, then, must be transformed through self -forgetting surrender to the grace of God, i.e. surrender to a Christlike personality creates righteousness in man. We imitate what we love, and this love to Christ is a life-giving power. Thus we attain the Christ point of view and so are ^'justified." Paul's Doctrine of Justification by Faith. — Faith is not used by Paul in the sense of an intellectual conception of the saving power of Christ's death and resurrection ; but as an act of self-surrender of the total individual personality to the personality of Christ, and the acceptance of his suffering and cross. This ^Ho be THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 151 laid hold of '^ by the spirit of Christ meant for Paul, " a moral enthusiast as well as a mystic/' to become for his part an imitator of this life and spirit. ^'The love of Christ," Paul says, '^constraineth me.'' This new life of grace means a real transformation of the will, a trans- formation into ^'the glorious liberty of a child of God." '^Yet it is no more I, but Christ who dwelleth in me," writes Paul. In Paul's doctrine of sin and of grace we find that ten- dency to contradictory views which we found in Augustine, i.e. it is difficult to make out whether or not sin is man's own deed, and also whether grace which finally redeems him from this sin is wholly ^'a free gift." Because of this complication, it is hard to say how far Paul believed in man's free will. Augustine^ seems at first to have believed in free- dom and later to have become a determinist. His diffi- culty was in the divided will.^ Evil is in the perversity of the will turned away from the supreme good which yet it longs for. This supreme good for Augustine is not an intellectual satisfaction, nor yet the ecstasy of mysticism, but that which ought to he the motive of the willy freeing it from ''misera necessitas peccandi." Nothing is good but God, the good will. In yielding himself to this good, man's will becomes really free. ^'The soul is restless till it finds rest in God." Now this '^ yielding," is it an act of freedom or the influence of an irresistible grace? In Paul's epistle to the Romans, Chapters 8 to 12, wherein we get his doctrine of foreordination and election, Paul seems to be a determinist. "He hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth — Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he still find fault? For 1 Harnack, op. cit. 2 'For not only to go, but also to arrive thither, nothing more was required than to will to go, but to wiU firmly and undividedly; not to turn, tossed this way and that, a will haK-wounded, strugghng, rising in one part with another part falling." — ' ' Augustine's Confessions." k 152 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE who withstandeth his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God ? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why didst thou make me thus ? Or hath not the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour?" (We have to remember that Paul had in mind here the special application to the Jews and Gentiles.) '^Eternal life," is the "free gift" of God. On the other hand, in his exhortations to his converts to adopt the Christ- life and to put on the fruits of the spirit, we are led to believe he must have believed in some power of self- determination, as also from his own zeal for personal righteousness, and the account he gives of his life in Philippians (3) : ''I press toward the mark," etc. Paul was constantly confronted with the objection that freedom from the law and reliance on the gift of grace would lead to a lack of striving and abolish morality. But how can this be, Paul asks, since acceptance of the gift of grace means (1) having died to sin, and (2) newness of life, — i.e. birth into the self-sacrificing love of the Christ- like life. Wherefore Paul says : — "Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free." Yet, again and again he emphasizes the fact that it was a strength not his own which made this new life pos- sible to him. "My Grace is sufficient unto thee : for my power is made perfect iQ weakness." "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." The prayer of J. H. Newman well illustrates the attitude of salvation through grace : — "O Lord, I give myself to Thee, I trust Thee wholly. Thou art wiser than I — more living to me than I myself. Deign to fulfil Thy high purposes in me whatever they be — work in and through me. I am bom to serve Thee, to be Thine, to be Thy instrument. Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see. I ask not to know. I ask simply to be used." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 153 It appears that the conception of freedom of Paul and Augustine must have been a decidedly limited freedom. How far, then, let us ask, can we find in their theology a place for moral significance and value, and have their conceptions of election, grace, and atonement any meaning to-day? A Closer Consideration of the Opposing Views. — In Kant's view, moral responsibility goes hand in hand with freedom. Hence if we take away freedom, we seem to destroy the moral life. If man cannot help himself, how can he be responsible for his guilt ? On the other hand, if he is saved only through an irresistible grace and the elec- tion of God, what merit has he ? His salvation has no re- lation to himself — and what justice can there be in God? A very different conception of freedom, — if any free- dom remains at all, — must have been the conception of Paul and Augustine from that of James Martineau, for example. To Martineau, will is the real cause. This will-cau- sality, known to us immediately, would not be recognized except for the resistance of the external world. From this cause in ourselves, we carry abroad the conception of causality. Will-causality is the only causaHty we know. The essence of will is its aim and power of choice. It stands between equal possibilities, but through its own initiative it is able to pursue one motive and reject all others. We have an inmiediate consciousness of this freedom of choice of the will. Wordsworth writes of those "Glad hearts without reproach or blot, Who do God's work and know it not." And Harnack says of Pelagius and Caelestius who took part against Augustine in the so-called Pelagian con- troversy : — "They must have belonged to those lucky people who, cold by nature and temperate by training, never notice any appreciable differ- ence between what they ought to do and what they actually do." 154 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Martineau is not like either of these types. He seems to have been highly self-conscious, moral, and religious, yet his must have been a decidedly united personahty, with a clear sense of his own purpose, and so of self-deter- mination. But no intuitionalism makes freedom certain. The feeling only reports itself, and against Martineau's im- mediate certainty we have the very different feelings re- ported by Paul and Augustine. It is evident that in many ways man is not free. It might happen that in the course of its revolutions our earth should cross some fiery comet's path, and that such a comet should envelop the earth in its poisonous gases. In such an happening man's will would be absolutely im- potent to prevent the catastrophe which would follow. But no one is interested in freedom from this point of view. The point of interest here is why there should be so much evil and chance, in relation to men's purposes in the universe. But the freedom we care about is free- dom of choice and self-determination. Now how far in these ways is freedom possible ? The will is guided by motives ; and these motives, are they not absolutely determined? Is not a man to a great extent what he is because of his inheritance and his social training and environment, and can he really help these? Can a man free himself from these forms of social causation of the emotional subhminal self, of the self of natural inheritance, of habit, of social influence? A man may see visions and dream dreams, but if he has not the natural gift for the technique of color and form, or if he has not the power of expression in words and rhythm, no amount of training will ever make him a great artist or poet. In a word, there is the "unearned increment" of all natural gifts to which George EHot calls attention in speaking of the depth of feeling expressed in the face of that vain, pleasure-loving little soul, Hetty Sorrel. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 156 ''There are faces which nature charges with a meaning and pathos not belonging to the single human soul which flutters beneath them, but speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations/' And if there is the unearned increment of natural gifts, there is also the unearned in- crement of the opposite, — of suffering, of hindrances, and defects, PauFs ''enemies of Satan.'' We forge our own past perhaps to some extent, but once chosen, we are bound, as Augustine pointed out, by the iron chains of habit and necessity. And were we really free, when in some far away past of our childhood or youth we chose in ignorance of all the consequences involved? or can it be said that we really chose at all? Did we not slip more or less unconsciously into the path of least resistance? or, swept away by some inherited passion, yield to temptation? But if our actions are conditioned by motives as causes, which, when once set in motion, operate with as much necessity as any form of causaUty and lead to actions which pass over into habits — still, have we not the power to break with habits ? — is there not somewhere an in- calculable element which renders our actions unpredict- able, and frees them from the law of necessity? If we mean by free-will the liherum arhitrium indif- fer entice, ix, "that a given human being in a given situa- tion can act in two different ways" — this, as Schopen- hauer said, is an utter absurdity. A will without a pur- pose which holds through a series of acts is not free. Its sole motive is caprice, and this at last seems no different from chance. Certainly our acts are bound up with our character, — this character we have partly made and partly inherited. If, then, the same environment or stimulus is given, will not our acts be completely pre- dictable and subject to the law of causality? ^ There are two factors involved in this situation ; (1) the circumstances or conditions, and (2) the character. But * See Schopenhauer's essay on "Freedom of the Will." 156 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE as a matter of fact the elements are never exactly repeated, so that we never have exactly the same situation given again, and therefore the experiment can never be tried over again exactly. But (3) even if we allow the stimulus to be exactly the same, the character, acted on by pre- vious stimuli and reacting upon them, has undergone change ; and further, the relatively fixed character is not the whole man. As suggested by the transformations and conversions of religious experience, there appears to be in man something more than his clearly conscious self — another, a '^ subliminal self," or '^ buried life" — which in unaccountable ways makes ^^uprushes" into the every- day self, and influences its action. It seems, then, that we have some power to break through the chains of the habitual self. But^ again, is this power of '^ the subliminal " our own? Man is truly free only when he acts from principle — when he makes the motive of his will the good will itself — when he takes as his life's guiding star a universal ideal — an *' ought." Knowing the principle of a man's life, his acts can, to be sure, be in a measure predicted, because freedom does not mean freedom to choose any- thing we please — but, on the other hand, his acts cannot be put in a ''class," and made material for statistics. They are unique acts, valuable because determined by, or proceeding from, the purpose of the individual in ques- tion. ''This I (the individual) intend." It is my in- dividual selection and choice. It shall be individual. Freedom, then, is not a natural gift. It is something to be attained. But how is it attained ? Man can because he ought — yet, once again, how far can he ? When we consider the conversion cases, such as those of St. Paul and St. Augustine, and the everyday instances given by Starbuck and other psychologists of religious experience, we see that even in the case of much striving, at the last there seems to be a yielding, a self-surrender to what appears to be a higher power. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 157 And this is what we find, too, when we reflect upon the answers to prayer. Some strength not my own, the re- hgious man reports, flows in and brings to me peace, heahrig, and new power and enthusiasm. ^^I can do all things,'' said Paul, ^'through Christ who strength eneth me." And again long before in Isaiah : '^In returning and rest shall ye be saved ; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." ''Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee ; because he trusteth in thee — for in the Lord is an everlasting rock — He is my strength and my salvation." (Psalms.) For cases of genius, see Emerson's ''Inspiration" : "We are waiting till some tyrannous idea emerging out of heaven shall seize and bereave us of this liberty with which we are falling abroad." "All poets have signaHzed their consciousness of rare moments when they were superior to themselves — when a light, a freedom, a power came to them, which hfted them to a performance far better than they could reach at other times." And George Eliot : "After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us." The conclusion is, man must be free to be moral. He is personally responsible. He must save himself through his own acts ; if he hardeneth his heart no righteousness of another can save him. And yet as a matter of fact he never does of himself entirely save himself. He is saved at last by the grace of God. But, then, if he is saved by the "grace of God," is he any longer accountable and free — and what becomes of moral values ? The problem before us is that which appeared histori- cally in the Pelagian controversy of Augustine, but it is in truth a fundamental problem involving universal issues. It is the problem of nature versus grace, morahty pure and simple versus religion, rationalism versus super- naturaUsm. 158 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The first step for us to take seems to be to try to dis- cover the real meaning of grace. From a study of the epistles of Paul, the " Confessions of St. Augustine/' and the use of this term in prayers and religious experience generally, I find the following pos- sible definitions of grace : — The Meaning of Grace. — Grace as ^'Nature" — i.e. natural endowment. Grace as enlightenment — complete revelation and vision. Grace as the subliminal self; or as the '^better con- sciousness" of Schopenhauer. Grace as the undivided will. Grace as the social consciousness. Grace as receptivity, responsiveness, self-surrender to the personality of Christ, or to an ideal, or the opening of the heart to all good influences. Grace as God's friendship to the undeserving — Re- demptive Grace. Grace as the power of the sacraments of the Church — i.e. grace made visible here. Grace as the result of striving — its reward, so to speak. Grace as the spirit of self-sacrificing love — (1 Cor. 13). Grace as a gift of the Holy Spirit, i.e. self-identifi- cation with an ideal, over against an external ought; Paul and Augustine expressed this as being one with Christ — i.e. identification with the Christ-like spirit — as revealed in the life and death of Jesus. Eliminating from the various definitions the elements which belong to the conditions of any particular time, the common element which remains seems to be some- thing like this : grace is something outside of, or more than, the individual as he is at any given time, — some- thing which helps him to salvation and beatitude. And *' salvation" which is to include moral values can only be interpreted as the attainment of the true self — a self who THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 159 is morally responsible. Such a self, we can see, would have to be a social, a universal, Self. Now how does grace actually help to this attain- ment? At first the ideal comes to a man as something external — a command, an ought. But an external ^^Thou shalf or a ''Thou shalt not,'' tends to contrary action on the part of the life of natural impulse and habit. "I was alive apart from the law once," ^ says Paul — ''but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died; and the commandment, which was unto life, this I found to be unto death; for sin finding occasion through the com- mandment beguiled me, and through it slew me.'' "Yet the law is holy and righteous and good. Did then that which is good become death unto me ? God forbid. But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, by working death to tae through that which is good ; that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful." (Romans 7 : 7-15.) The "law" supported by social sanctions condemned the life of the "natural man" and it became acknowledged by the individual as sin. And yet of himself he could not free himself from this sin dwelling in him. "But the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak" was accomplished through the acceptance of the Spirit of Christ and iden- tification, through this acceptance, of the individual with the divine spirit. "And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. . . . And we know not what to pray, but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us." But Grace is something over and above the grace which redeems the sinner, — though, to be sure, in a measure all men who have lived at all have probably sinned ; that is, 1 Romans 7 : 7-15. 160 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE fallen in some way short of their ideal. But apart from the question of sin, how can finite man make the ideal the real? how realize it, either in himself, the individual, or embody it in a righteous community? Youth is not humble. Vital and full of hope, it beheves all things are possible to it, and also it beheves in its own luck: Such and such a misfortune, it says, can never happen to me. Youth hears of catastrophies as real events, yet still it believes, '^ It is not possible that I shall ever be actually in one." ^ Or, again, it thinks such and such a fortunate event is sure to come to pass. Life is to youth a '' perilous adventure," yet full of wonder and promise of the future. So Youth trusts to its star and goes boldly forward. Later on, we learn how many of the best things do not come by our unaided efforts, — are often, indeed, pure gifts. We learn, too, how many of the worst things we are spared through no merit of our own. In a word, we learn how much we owe. Thus are we aided to righteousness, to salvation, in all sorts of ways — ''The spirit bloweth where it listeth." The grace of God may come to us through ''openings" and "uprushes," of the subUminal consciousness; it may come from social training, social expectations and demands. Chiefly, perhaps, it comes to us through some helpful and inspiring personahty, some devoted, self-sacrificing life. So it has been for Christianity embodied in the personahty of Jesus — or as it was for Paul in the Christ- Spirit. But man^s ideal soars away beyond any actual embodiment. Hence to him the grace of God is best interpreted as an ideal which is supernatural but which still has a personal embodiment, i.e. which is actually realized, but not in its totality experienced by the finite. This ideal or complete personality, man calls God. Such a conception contains more than is expressed in the 1 As a striking illustration of this, see Arnold Bennett's "Hilda Lessa^ ways," also the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, " Cast moi — moi — moi," to whom this misfortune has come. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 161 notion of a social community. Yet as a universal will and love it is mediated to the individual through nature, through other individuals,^ and through the social or community life, and he learns that to realize this imi- versal will is his own task. A young friend, a college graduate, wrote me a while ago, ^'I have been thinking very much about ^ the grace of God ' (a phrase I should never think of using) and what it possibly can mean." She comes to the conclu- sion that it means acceptance of the laws of the universe when they conflict with our emotional nature, and should properly be called '^ self-control." By '^New Thought," she adds, it would be called " right or harmonious think- ing." This view, however, puts the emphasis too much on the side of the individual and makes the grace of God identical with individual striving and merit. This is perhaps the tendency of modern ''Liberal thought." But with the strong idealistic and humanitarian tenden- cies of our day, it seems as if sooner or later we should be led back to a belief in ' ' the grace of God." Just as spiritual prayer is both an appeal to something above us (the Divine Spirit, or however we may name it), and also an auto- suggestion, so the divine grace is at once more than our- selves and also our own truest selfhood — the "more" than ourselves. "The grace of God" is a beautiful expression for the first, and it seems a pity to lose it. Expressions like this, and such terms as "Justification," "Election," "Atonement," "Incarnation," if interpreted philosophically, there seems no reason whatever for not accepting. On the other hand, it is a little difficult to free these terms from their Jewish legalistic or Greek * As an illustration of the mediation of divine grace in the form of a social process, see Browning's "Pippa Passes." In this poem the little silk-spinner from a mill, on her one holiday in the year, imagines herself, in turn, the four happiest people (as she supposes) in Asolo. As she passes, singing, the song of the pure-hearted girl, coming at the critical moment, in each of the four instances saves from the yielding to sin, or the committing of further crime. M 162 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE mythological significance; and they are a stumbUng- block to those who, having been brought to the verge of religious darkness and despair through irrational creeds, are just beginning to see the coming of the dawn. The great difficulty with modern rationalism and hb- eraUsm seems to me to be that in emphasizing the natural goodness in the universe, it fails to recognize that there is really such a thing as a '^ state of sin, ^' and the need for the individual or community not merely of growth^ but of transformation. And in the second place, it is so actively occupied with the amelioration of material and social conditions that it is in some danger of forgetting that the Hfe of the spirit is not really dependent on these things, for ''The life is more than meat and the spirit than raiment." Hence we find a tendency to a rather shallow optimism and a lack of the mystical in reUgious experience. To the observer, the animal world seems full of piteous pain. But in the human world and everyday experience there is fully conscious and so doubtless deeper suffering. Songs and ballads which express the life of the people often reveal an unspeakable sadness. ''No wonder," writes George Eliot, "man's rehgion has much sorrow in it ; no wonder he needs a suffering God." No wonder the experience of fife has led to the dogma of the atonement ! There is need of transformation from the natural life. The question is now, how is this transformation to be accomplished ? We are thus led back once more, after some disgression, to our main problem, the relation of grace and merit, necessity and freedom, sin and respon- sibility. To be a self, a person, means to be free, — but if grace is irresistible, if grace does all for man, have we not ipso facto abandoned freedom? So we return to our problem. To hold that man's salvation is dependent on something quite apart from his moral strivings and merit seems an irrational doctrine. Yet what is more evident than the fact that the "new birth" is dependent on much that is THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 163 outside of the individuaFs personal struggles and deserts? ''Of myself/' says Paul, ''I am nothing.'' ''Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to help ourselves." "By the grace of God I am what I am." "I laboured, yet not I but the grace of God which was with me"; and, finally, in Paul's prayer and its answer : — "Concerning this thing I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me. And he hath said unto me : My grace is sufficient for thee; for my power is made perfect in weakness. Wherefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake ; for when I am weak, then am I strong. " Shall we not admit that all this is true to experience? It may be well to consider for a moment what St. Thomas Aquinas has to say on this matter. Notion of Grace in the " Summa." — He asks: "Can man without the gift of grace merit eternal life?" "No," he replies, "for if he is a sinner he could not merit eternal life, but rather death unless God had first forgiven his sin, and this is by grace." But there is a double nature in man, i,e, before and after the fall, as in the case of Adam. But the earlier state cannot deserve beatitude because its merit depends on divine preordination. Moreover, an act of merit cannot exceed that proportion of virtue which is the prin- ciple of the act, and nothing can drive it further ; but eternal life far exceeds all natural creation, for "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what God hath prepared for those that love him." The conclusion is that God ordains human nature to eternal life, not through its own merit, but by the aid of grace. For, indeed, man would have no virtue whatso- ever unless he had first received it from God. But there is such a state of mind as habitual grace. Is man able to prepare himself for grace of himself without the aid of grace ? Man is not able unless moved by God. He has a susceptible disposition, but we can go on ad 164 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE infinitum^ unless we finally admit that a man is first moved by grace, for this requires nothing to go before. But man is not able to deserve this first grace. He is not then able to wish or do the good without grace. But what of freedom? Man is able to deliberate and choose. Yes, but that he does deliberate must ultimately rest on some- thing external, i.e. it is by the grace of God. Nature chooses God as the chief and end of natural goods, but the state of grace chooses God more eminently, i.e. as the ob- ject of beatitude. For the highest grade of such choice is not only of love, but also the reason of loving, and the measure of the highest grade is that by which Charitas — the state of grace — chooses God as blessedness. But may not a man established in grace deserve eternal life through worthy deeds? Acts of merit can be con- sidered in two ways: — First as proceeding from free will. Second as proceeding from grace of the Holy Spirit. The first cause is the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is the sufficient cause and due to the mercy of God ; but our merit is the subsequent cause. An act of faith is not meritorious unless done through love. Charitas moves the other virtues to work. It does not lessen the labor, for it works yet greater things. As the ultimate cause, St. Thomas seems to trace all finally to grace. " Quia ratio hujus menti dependet ex motione divinse gratiae." Final Meaning of Grace. — The doctrine of grace seems really to mean that man's ideal is no longer a mere external ''ought'' to which he is rebellious, or which he accepts unthinkingly. It means that he has come to love this ideal, and to consciously identify himself with it. Then he has attained a state of grace. Now if we ask with St. Thomas whence comes this love and interest, — is it the unearned gift of God, or is it the result of man's personal striving towards the already recognized ideal, — THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOUKCES 165 we see that whether we think of grace as nature or social influence, or as something divine in the sense of the uni- versal will as a social ideal, the individual has never de- served all that he has received. We have seen how in all sorts of ways this is the case, and how especially this unearned grace comes through the self-sacrificing love of others, — the atoning life symbolized by the church in the ^' blood of Christ" and the ''cross of Christ." But if all this is true, once again, what place is there left for moral worth and human freedom ? The facts seem to be that man is bound or determined on the one side by his natural inheritances and by his social environment, and on the other by the irresistible ideal, the grace of God which constraineth him. On the other hand, moral values are bound up with freedom. I can because I ought, Kant says, therefore I am morally responsible and free. Final Meaning of Freedom. — In the first place, to answer this question, we want to know a little more definitely what we can mean by freedom. To be free to act this way and that, without steady purpose and ideal, this is not to be free. As any one can see, it is to be the slave of caprice and impulse. And therefore it seems that if the grace of God is identified with the ''subUm- inal consciousness," with the emotional, suggestible self, the resulting action is not freedom, though such subliminal influences may act for good, as in the case of the inspiration of genius and of religious insight. To be free means, first, not to be causally determined or explained by any external other. Now almost everything in the individual can be explained and accounted for by his inheritance and train- ing. There is just one thing which cannot be so explained, that is his own intent and meaning. That is, the irreduc- ible, the unique, and individual. The individual, — that is the indefinable, as logic has it. Free will is not capri- cious choosing. It means, ''I serve in my own way the imiversal ideal," — in religious language, — ''the Will 166 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE of God." How often people say to us: ''Give up your way, work in miney it is a better, a more useful, a more practical way." But if we are brave, we refuse. Not, of course, from caprice and contrariness, nor from the impulse of the subliminal consciousness, but because at the last we cannot go back on that which life means to us, — our intent, our interest, our ideal ; in short, our own will to be individual. How I came to have this particular in- terest and ideal may be explained by my ancestors, by race and environment ; but that it is now mine — the will to be an individual — cannot be explained by any such reference. The freedom we want is to be ourselves, individual. But the individual, that is the unique. Thus freedom seems to reduce to uniqueness. Ultimate and prior, from a temporal point of view, is the fact of grace : ''Not that we loved Him, but that He first loved us." So the good Shepherd seeks the wandering sheep, and in all sorts of ways He seeks it. But essential to moral worth is man's own effort. He is not saved, however, till this effort towards an external ideal, "the law," has become joyful and self-conscious identification with the ideal. But even here he has been helped, taken pos- session of, so to speak, by grace. To attain to the beatific vision, "the seeing of what is believed," the will must be won by grace. And so as St. Thomas pointed out, we become involved in an infinite process. Now if freedom really means individuality, — unique- ness of purpose, — then this same question comes up again in a rather different form. For uniqueness of the finite individual is teleologically determined by his re- lation to the whole.^ Or, as religion has it, to be free is to serve the will of God, but this will is triumphant and omnipotent in any case. If uniqueness of the individual depends upon the purpose of the Absolute, then every individual, finite purpose is unique by virtue of its place 1 Professor Royce, in ^*The World and the Individual," says : *'The self gains its very individuality through its relation to God/' THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOUKCES 167 in this whole, and there seems to be no difference between those who have striven and won through tribulation, and those who have simply followed caprice and impulse, or yielded to temptation generally. In a word, once again moral distinctions and values seem lost. Now this would be a serious charge to bring against any philo- sophical hypothesis. We seem to have reached this point : If the individual will in its supposed freedom is identical with the will of God, then the world as a whole is static and changeless ; there is no novelty, no creation, no progress. It is the world described by Paul's epistle to the Romans; the world of the potter and his clay of Omar Khayydm's Bubdiydt : — "We are no other than a moving row Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go Round with this sun-illumined Lantern held In Midnight by the Master of the Show." We appear to be more or less involved in a circular pro- cess as regards the relation of grace and merit, of freedom and necessity. Logically, *' merit" and ''freedom" seem absolutely essential to moral salvation, but concrete experience and religious feeling put the emphasis on ''necessity" and on "grace." The foregoing discussion has brought us into close connection with the results of the opening chapter. In that chapter we saw that the roots of religion are to be found in the essential ideality of man's nature. In our present chapter we discover that with this fact of ideality is bound up man's uniqueness, moral responsibility, and freedom. But just as in the opening chapter we found ideality besieged and held captive by the insistence of religious immediacy, so here we are obsessed by the idea of divine grace and its power of salvation as something over and above man's free intent and purpose. 168 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Perhaps further light may come to us as we proceed ; more especially when we consider the ''forms" of the religious life in Chapter V. Ill SOCIAL AUTHORITY AND INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT Another opposition in religion is that between ''author- ity" and individual judgment. The discussion of this problem grows rather naturally, as we shall see, out of the foregoing discussion of the opposition between grace and merit, necessity and freedom. Authority, expressed in tradition, in holy writ, in dogma, creed, sacrament, religious organizations and orders, represents the force of the social consciousness over against the right of the individual to judge for him- self. This form of opposition appears particularly in re- lation to the criterion of truth and of right. Is the final test of truth individual or social? Is the standard of morality to be set by the individual conscience or by the decree of society? On the one hand, are the rationalists in religion who claim the right of the individual mind and conscience to determine for the individual himself what he should be- Ueve and what he ought to do. Although a rationalist in religion appears as the very opposite of the mystic type, this claim tends to bring him into the class of Quiet- ists. Friends, and other mystics, the followers of the inner light and of the subliminal consciousness. We have an example in Theodore Parker, who claimed that his con- science was an infallible guide. But psychological in- vestigation shows that the dicta of the immediate and subliminal consciousness are not always valuable. They are sometimes trivial, and sometimes they are abnormal.^ 1 E.g. William James, ^'Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 476. **The Subliminal Region contains every kind of matter; 'seraph and snake' abide there side by side." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 169 How, then, are we to determine when the dictum of the immediate individual consciousness is sane and its revela- tions trustworthy? A test is needed not supplied by 'Hhe subliminar' itself. If it is claimed by the individual, as Antigone claimed, that the laws which she obeyed are '^ unwritten and imchanging laws of God — not of to-day or yesterday, but from everlasting" — '^No man can tell at what time they appeared ''; if these ^4aws" are not the ''estab- lished" social laws and we try to carry them back to perennial human instincts, is there not a return here to a nature-worship of ''hidden forces" of life, of "blind necessities," — a kind of Dionysos worship, — that is, a naturalism, over against the religion of the spirit? A return to nature is a breaking away in a sense from the limitations of self, but it is not moral growth. And have we not already seen that there is a distinction be- tween the natural man and the transformed spiritual? The spiritual man does not simply follow natural instinct. He lives in the light of an ideal. A spiritual religion only is valuable, and we mean by spiritual, ethical and ideal- istic. It is difficult to distinguish the "inner light" from natural instinct ; thus we are driven to the other side of the opposition. And as we have already seen, as a matter of fact actual religious belief is largely social. It is belief in established authority based upon tradition and brought to the individual through his social inheritance and train- ing, and the "suggestions" of the community in which he lives. Religion in primitive days expressed through social rites and institutions the bond which held a group to- gether in a common life. The individual accepted his religion as he did his other social obligations, for not to do so was to make himself an alien from the common group life, and to cut himself off from right relations to the tribal gods.^ This bond was sanctioned and established 1 See Robertson Smith, op. cit. 170 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE by its workability, ^.e. at first through success in war and by the prosperity of the group, and further by miracles. But the religious tradition, which at one time expresses fairly well the ideals of the social group, ceases to do so. The creeds and institutions become outworn. They no longer embody the inner life, the needs and aspirations of humanity; they are dead ideals, and here and there an individual more ardent and more reflective than the rest has the courage to express his revolt from them. Such rebels against established authority have been the great religious personalities, — Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates, Aknaton Pharaoh of Egypt, the Hebrew prophets. Such men break away from the authority of institutional religion and make appeal to individual judgment and conviction. And after all, what is the warrant for the authority of tradition with its various social embodiments ? It is as a rule traced back to some supposed direct in- spiration. If the value of this be not found in individual experience, what is the test of its value? If attested by miracles,^ then there must be some further test for the value of these wonders, for it is not held that all of these are valuable, since workers in magic — witches, so-called, and sorcerers — can produce miracles. If the subliminal experience is the test of divine in- spiration, then we are back at the old difficulty. If di- vine, this experience should be a guide for all men, but as an experience it is purely personal, and carries in itself no universal warrant that others should accept it. If the inspiration is to be attested by its workability, what exactly do we mean by this term ? Must there not still be some test of the value of the results achieved ? Is success in war or an abundance of crops and flocks a proof of divine intervention and blessing? If such were the case, then Jahwe, the god of the Israelites, must often have helped the enemy. The Israelites, who at one time ^ A Miracle : an interruption of the orderly working of the natural process which science afiGu:ms. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 171 had prayed for such material ''good/^ had either to change their conception of the meaning of divine blessing or abandon Jahwe. Hebrew religion became ethical; but for an ethical religion, miracles which contradict natural law, even if they could be accepted in a scientific age, would be no proof of spiritual value. '^Authority'' thus seems to lead us back to the insight or judgment of the individual (or possibly to that of a select group). No external form of authority can pos- sibly justify ethical values. The standard of the right must mean that which is right to me. The '* witness of the spirit ^^ is an inner conviction and criterion of value. Do we say, then, the inner vision of the individual is ultimate? Yet whence this vision? It arises out of a social background which partly makes it what it' is. If a man comes of honorable stock, and from a home where pure and high ideals are cherished and habits of self-control practised, we feel confidence that such an one is likely himself to have a high standard of character and conduct. The outward standard of authority has influenced and helped to create the inner conviction, and yet if he has not been able to make the outer right his very own, when he goes out into the world with its mani- fold temptations and its dijfferent standards of value, such an one will not be able to stand fast. To this fact the life of many a young man or woman coining from a good country home to a great city bears sorrowful witness. Out of whatever background, then, the '* inner witness'' may have developed, it must ultimately be the individuars very own choice and determination which judges what is right and what course to follow. Social authority cannot be ultimate, for social standards themselves change. The social consciousness is a growing thing, and as its own development proves, it is not on a level with its own highest products, — the highest individual experiences, — since society persecutes and slays the prophets and afterwards comes to accept their doctrines, and perhaps to 172 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE worship them as gods. Especially is the religious social consciousness intensely and fanatically loyal to its tra- ditions and customs. Thus religious motives are the underlying cause of the persecutions and martyrdoms in which history abounds. We seem to have reached the point that some individual experience at any given time is more valuable, more truly a criterion of truth than that of the social group to which it belongs. It grows, to be sure, out of the common social life ; but it reacts upon this common experience and brings back to it something novel and unique. This insight or conviction of the individual can be no mere whim, per- sonal wish, or will to believe, for if so it were on a par with the '^subliminal." Nor is it an infallible judgment. It is a judgment which, striving to free itself from all in- terested motives, believing in the '' sanctity of human experience," and keeping in close touch with life, seeks in single-minded devotion to the truth, and in all hu- miUty, to discern, in the light of all that is involved, what is the reasonable and enlightened point of view. Such a judgment will change if greater Hght comes, nor probably, can any judgment of beUef quite free itself from the emo- tional bias of the individual temperament. In three ways the individual judgment is bound up with and falls back upon the social judgment. First; Because it has grown to be what it is in part, perhaps largely, through the suggestions of the social en- vironment. Second; It may change through social influences. Third; It needs the support of social sanction. It seeks, that is, to be in accord with the deepest wisdom of the past, and it seeks social response. Hence the difficulty as to whether the final test of truth is individual or social is hke the difficulty as to whether man is saved by grace or by merit. The higher insight of the individual may not meet with social response. There may be a discrepancy between THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 173 the ^' ought" of the individual and the '4s^' of society. In such a case the individual has to remain true to the inner Ught. This is what Socrates meant when under the sentence of death he said to his accusers, "I would rather have spoken after my fashion and die than after yours and live, for I feel that there, on trial for my life, I dare not say anything unworthy/' An enlightened conscience, however, over against in- dividual caprice, means a consciousness responsive to all higher social suggestions — to all influences of the Holy Spirit. These suggestions must be tested and reacted upon by the inner standard of value. The Hebrew prophets interpreted their inner vision, — which surely also grew out of reflection upon the life of their people — as a 'Hhus saith the Lord." That is, the individual vision of the prophet had a social background and environment, and also the prophets sought a form of social sanction. Yet if the divine will is social it remains ideal — for it is not completely found in any existing society. So we come back once more to the problem, the para- dox, or circular process of the individual religious ex- perience and the social religious experience. " That only which we have within can we see without. If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. . . . He only is rightly immortal to whom all things are immortal." — R. W. Emerson. " Seeing she lives and of her joy of life Creatively has given us blood and breath For endless war and never wound unhealed, The gloomy wherefor of our battle-field Solves in the spirit, wrought of her through strife To read her own and trust her down to death." — George Meredith. CHAPTER IV (Continued) The Way of Life — Its Sources IV the inner and the outer The opposition between authority and individual judgment leads us over directly to another set of prob- lems, viz. to the opposition in religious experience be- tween the Inner and the Outer, the Literal and the Spiritual, the Worldly and the Other-worldly. In all our investigation of religious experience, emphasis has been put on the fact that reUgion should be spiritual and an affair of the inner life. Not with ^Hithing of mint, anise, and cummin," not with lip-service, must the divine be sought. ''God is spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." This appears as the highest aspect of all historical religions. And yet as a matter of fact in history religion seems to be very much a thing of the outer life. Not only did primitive man seek to woo the capricious will of his gods with incantations and offerings and with ceremonies in their honor; but ev^n mystics and Quakers, even monasticism itself, reveal this external aspect of the religious experience. Both tendencies, then, appear as aspects of religion, and we seem justified in asking, is the ultimate source of religion inner or outer? In fact, each tendency seems to require and call for the other. No ritual, dogma, or religious custom was at the outset a mere form artificially devised, and without inner spiritual meaning. "Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilUng Delphic oracle." 175 176 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE '^Our creeds/' it has been said, ^'are but the brief abstract of our prayer and song.'' Recent investigators of religious phenomena seem to consider the outer primary. Thus Ames : ^ ''Religious customs, taboos, rites, and ceremonies rise unconsciously. They concern group welfare. They spring from the powerful, unreasoning will to live of the entire group." Yet it seems difficult here to separate the outer from the inner. These out- ward forms would not have arisen without this more or less unconscious ''will to live." If early religious rites expressed in symbols the bond of the common life, still there must have been some more or less conscious recognition of this bond itself. It is not altogether because religion is social that it is external; yet it seems true that it is more difficult to keep a group at a high spiritual level than it is to keep some single individuals. Yet for both individual and social experience, some form of embodiment is necessary. In religious experience as elsewhere, we find man for- ever striving to realize his dream and aspiration, to make the ideal the actual, to transform the "is" into the "ought to be." But in our actual life this is to strive to make the inner the outer. Thus we are led at once to a recognition of the eternal tension and conffict between these two tendencies. The opposition appears in the logical forms of the two tendencies as well as in the concrete experience of them. The two processes, then, belong to one whole, and yet this whole, as we know it in time at least, is really never complete. It exists, i.e., by virtue of a certain defect. For as soon as the spiritual process of the inner life has embodied itself in some outward form, this form repeated over and over again tends to become a matter of habit and routine, a mere "ghost" of the ideal significance, — the vision of the prophet, — which probably, indeed, at the outset it never completely expressed, since for the 1 Ames, *i* Psychology of Religious Experience," p. 12. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 177 ideal of the individual to be accepted by society some compromise is generally necessary. The prophet's dream and programme for a spiritually redeemed Israel becomes a matter of ceremonial purifications and legal require- ments, until another dreamer and reformer comes who overthrows or revitalizes the old forms by creating new values ; and to this process there appears to be no end. It is from the point of view of formal logic a conflict and tension between two processes, the serial process on the one hand and the cyclic on the other. On the one hand, we have the ^^ife of the spirit," the righteousness of the heart and its inner values of peace and gladness, and over against it the life of external service, of form and of the letter. Now when we consider the instances of the spiritual tendency in religion, the main characteristics seem to me to be : First, that it is a matter of the inner life ; second, that the goal sought is an ideal end, a heavenly city, something beyond the actual process of seeking; and third, that every term or element in the process is unique and can never be repeated. In a word, it is a serial pro- cess, and it has the character of such a series, where A implies A (A -< A) is never true. In opposition to the spiritual tendency in religious experience is the tendency to the literal and worldly. The temporal forms in which this tendency expresses itself are religious habits and customs, traditions, creeds and dogmas, rites, ceremonies, institutions and religious orders. All of these are relatively permanent or cyclic processes. For the acceptance of the letter means that that which was given once, even though colored by the prevailing notions of the age, is given once for all, and that ^' merit'' may be acquired or salvation hereafter secured through the frequent performance of rites, the repetition of creeds and dogmas, and, in general, the keeping up of traditional modes of action. Now the constant repetition of rites and observances 178 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE leads to a mechanical religion. Things are done as a matter of course, without fresh thought and feeling. On entering his church the devout Catholic makes the sign of the cross and bows before the altar quite instinc- tively, as one may suppose. In countries of southern Europe, the stranger visiting a cathedral will observe ^^un poverOy'^ who, while mechanically repeating his prayers be- fore an image, has his eye and his attentive consciousness fixed all the time on " il forestierey^^ whom he watches, waiting for an opportune moment to beg for alms. Religious Rites as Cyclic Processes. — As an example of the persistence and permanence of religious forms and their cyclic character, consider the forms of the rites of the Christian church which are similar to those in use in Greek and Eastern mysteries. Tyler, in his '* Primitive Culture,'' gives instances from American Indians and other savages of the use of prayer, sacrifice, fasting, lustrations, etc. The spiritual significance of these rites is to be sure often greatly transformed, in accordance with the change in the conception of the nature of God, as for example in the case of sacrifice. The rosary is an example of the cyclic and mechanical in religion. The prayers of the rosary are a kind of magic defence against heresy and vice. This institution is found in Buddhism and Mohammedanism as well as in Christianity. It consists of a string of beads represent- ing, in Roman Catholicism, a series of ''Ave Marias" with ''Pater Nosters" interpolated after every decade. Good Catholics tell us that there is "great merit" in re- peating the rosary and that " good " people do it every day. But when the same form of prayer is continually repeated it tends to become formal and mechanical, a matter of habit, an exercise supposed to have magic efficacy. The baptismal formula is originally of this "magical" type. Where absolute verbal accuracy is required, we find such mechanical forms for acquiring merit as the prayer-mill of the Tibetan Buddhists, — which are ma- N THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 179 chines on wheels turned by wind or water, which roll out papers on which are written the prayers, — sentences by the million. The prayer formula is : — "Om the Jewel in the Lotus ! "Hum!" This sentence constantly repeated is supposed by the Tibetan Buddhist to be a means of enlightenment and a panacea for all evils. A form which an external religious system often as- sumes is that of the hierarchy, i.e. the aggregate of persons having authority, arranged in a certain order. While the individuals change, the organization or form of the hierarchy is permanent ; and these persons are thought of as in a sense sacred and of divine power because of their office and entirely apart from the quality of their inner life. Religious Ceremonies and Ritual as Cyclic Pro- cesses. — Religious ceremonies are in themselves finite series, often with a culmination point as in the ceremony of the Mass or as in pagan mysteries. But the Mass is repeated the following Sunday and on each successive Sunday. So in the telling of the rosary, already mentioned. All the beads are finally told, but at the appointed time the monk begins and goes through the cycle again, re- peating every prayer (term or element). The Church Year. — The motive here, I take it, is to repeat in the consciousness of the disciple or wor- shipper the spiritual experience of the Master. Hence we have a finite experience beginning at Christmas (or formerly, Epiphany) whose climax is reached at Easter. But the experience of dying to live is never completed in the finite disciple or in the religious community ; hence the process must be repeated again and again. Thus though serial as to significance, the services themselves of the Christian year form a perpetual cycle. 180 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The Rite of Confession. — And so, too, with the rite of Confession. The penitent confesses all his sins and receives absolution. But the old temptations come again, or new ones assail him and he falls. Hence he must confess and be absolved again and yet again. Thus confession becomes a cyclic process, both in the individ- ual's own life, and as a permanent institution of the church. In so far, then, as based on and interpreting genuine and universal human experience, religious institutions, like other institutions, become relatively permanent and their method cyclic. Religious Festivals. — We have already seen that Christian rites can be traced back to primitive pagan institutions. So, too, with our church festivals. Christ- mas and Easter were originally heathen festivals, and many of the ancient customs connected with them are still practised. Beside the regular repetition of the festivals as the years roll round, so that each term of the cyclic process occurs again, we have often an inner rhythm, so to speak, in the cycle itself. Some of our Christian festivals were connected with the ancient sun worship and were based on the course of the sun through the heavens. Thus Christmas marks the winter solstice, — ''Dies Natalis Solis Invicti," — and our Christian customs reveal their origin in pagan sun-rites, as, for example, in the bring- ing in of greens from the forest ; the burning of the Yule log, and candles; games and festivities directed by the Lord of Misrule ; mince pies, plum pudding, boar's head, etc. The climax is reached at the summer solstice or mid-summer fire festival, when the sun has reached the height of its course, a festival which appears in Chris- tianity as the festival of St. John's Eve. A similar process is met with in the Greek harvest and spring festivals which follow the process of vegetation, its renewal in the spring and death in the autumn. Now since processes, which through repetition become THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 181 matters of habit which are performed without conscious attention, are Hkely to be practised from a beUef in their having a kind of magic efficacy, these external ^'forms'' of religion come to be thought of as having value in them- selves, — as, for example, in the pronouncing of a sacred name, or as in the rite of baptism, — by means of which the individual may be saved without initiative or moral struggle of his own. Christianity in this respect is re- lated to those other redemptive religions, such as the religion of Isis and Mithraism. The disciple of Mithra was to become a new creature, to be set free from evil spirits, and '4n aeternam renatus.'^ And so, too, through the sacramental efficacy of water and the name, the Christian disciple entered the kingdom and was in con- sequence released from sin. But this efficacy is magical rather than moral. Thus religious value is transferred from the inner attitude of the self-conscious spirit to the outer formal practice, a practice which has become mechanical. Cyclic processes are processes whose elements are repeated again and again. Hence this side of religious ex- perience appears as an absolute antithesis to the forms of the spiritual religious consciousness already con- sidered. It is, ^.e., in complete opposition to the mystic consciousness which abhors external forms and the authority of tradition and established routine — which follows the guidance of the inner light, the revelations of individual experience, — and which seeks a goal in which all processes whatsoever disappear in light, har- mony, and ecstasy. Likewise, is it opposed to the ethical religious consciousness for which every himian experience is a new discipline, every act a unique and novel element in a progression over stepping stones of dead selves towards the infinitely far-away goal of moral perfection. Looking back over our analysis of the double aspect of religious experience, we see that these two tendencies are in their logical form as well as in their inner essence 182 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE opposed, and we may even ask if they are not contradic- tory. How, for example, can there be an union of a cyclic process with every term repeated, and of a serial process where this is never the case ? Or, again, how can there be harmony between the spiritual motive and the worldly motive? Can one at once serve God and Caesar? ^'The letter killeth ; the spirit alone gives life." ^ And yet irreconcilable as the two processes seem, it is out of the demands of the religious spirit itself that the external and formal arise. For man believes that he can do something himself to obtain the gift of the gods, his Heaven, Nirvana, better state of self, or whatever may be the form in which his goal and ideal finds ex- pression. In a word, his aim is to find a way of life, and the two tendencies have this in common, that each holds to a way of salvation, though they differ as to its source. In the recurrent processes, the forms or means to salvation tend to become the source and end, and yet as outward expression of the inner life and a means to its preservation, these outer forms seem essential to religious experience. Some form of worship, some external expression, some suitable environment and fixed times for recollection are necessary to retain and develop the religious sentiment and attitude. Even the mystic, that extremest believer in the inner light and immediate personal revelation, must repeat in his trances the syllable '^Om," or fixate in some way his attention in order to attain the bliss of union with the Divine, to attain ^'enlightenment,'' or the '^ unconditioned consciousness." Because man is a practical and social being his inner faith and the spiritual meaning of his life must make ^ Similar tendencies, we may note in passing, are found in the biological realm, viz. in the tendency to variation and the tendency to conservation of the type ; and also in psychology in the tendency to social imitation and the tendency to social opposition, which Bald- win and Tarde have noted; in radicalism and conservatism in the political field ; and in the actual time process and its measurement. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 183 themselves visible in habit and action, and must receive the sanction of his fellows. As Professor Baldwin has shown, his own self-thought involves the thought of others, till he grows to have an ideal of a public self, — a selfhood which is common to . all, — and an ideal of conduct to which all must conform. Out of this senti- ment arise public religious institutions and formulas, laws, customs, creeds, and social organizations, — forms which attempt to embody once for all the religious emo- tions and ideals ; for in religion, as elsewhere, some stand- ard there must be, some rule or law understood by all, something repeated or relatively permanent which shall control the lives of individuals. And then, also, many persons feel their inner religious experience heightened through public worship with its necessary formal pro- cesses. Or, again, there is the need to find the dogma such as the mystical union of God and man made visible or tan- gible in sensuous expression. Hence the ''Holy Place" where this union is believed to take place; the cere- monies and mysteries like the celebration of the Mass; images and other symbols of the revelation of the divine. Negro religion holds to the visible manifestation of the Divine in the ''shouting" at revivals, in the stamping and frenzy, the trance and vision of the possessed, — "when the Spirit of the Lord passed by." This exter- nal manifestation is for the negro communion with God. Tensions between Serial and Cyclic Processes. — But as soon as the inner life gets outward expression and social acceptance or sanction, it tends to become a matter of habit and routine, a cyclic process. Against such a mechanism in religion there are sure to be found rebeUious spirits — Protestants — who strive to overthrow the es- tablished institutions, — idols of the tribe, as they seem to them, — while the conservative spirits cling to the old forms. The result will be, as, a rule, some sort of compromise. 184 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The whole process of rehgious history illustrates such tensions and conflicts, compromises or reconciliations. The prophet seeks for his ideal an expression unique and spiritual in a series, each element of which is novel, but as a social being he needs the sanction of his fellowmen, and as a moral religious being he seeks to bring to them his own insight, comfort, or whatever else his reli- gious experience has meant to him. The vision of the prophet becomes a ritual, a creed, a ceremony ; the inner purity of the heart is transformed into a process of ex- ternal purifications. It becomes a repeated process, — cyclic, — and this cyclic process continues till some new reformer appears with his transforming ideal. Then if the old forms are retained they become symbols merely of a higher spiritual meaning. The religious ideal and conscience is thus continually rediscovered by the individ- ual in his own experience. It comes to him in moments of inspiration with a sense of ultimate certainty — but the individual cannot live by the inspiration of fleeting moments. Some standard he needs and some support when the vision has fled, the will is paralyzed, and "Life is darkened at the core." Hence once again the religious institutions and conven- tions, the cyclic processes. Without these we have the type of the poet Blake, whose creed was anarchy. Blake, a believer in instinct and feeling, who held that man might ignore law and live by inspiration, like the angels, *^ beyond good and evil." Now anarchy may have a sweetness of its own, but it is an impossible creed for social beings. But, on the other hand, a criterion for common action is bound to develop external forms which tend to become cyclic. It is not social motives alone, however, which lead to the externalization of religious experience. In part the motives are aesthetic. The religious reformer emphasizes the inner, spiritual THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 185 attitude of the soul to God. This attitude is essential, but how shall it be maintained? It sometimes happens that those who have been brought up from childhood in a ritualistic form of worship come to hate these forms, which seem mere vain repetition, and to prefer the extemporary, individual form of prayer and a general simplicity of service and surroundings; while those who have attended congregational churches react from the coldness, barrenness, and lack of aesthetic quality, and find the individual form crude and egotistical, and feel that their own needs are better expressed in those forms which have embodied the experience of the ages, its love and sorrow, its aspirations and renunciations, its sense of sin, repentance, need of forgiveness, its victory over temptation, its joy of communion. In a great mediaeval cathedral, for example (and to a lesser degree in other places of worship), the '^dim re- ligious light, ^' the ^' long-drawn aisles,'' the soaring vaults ; the burning colors of the stained glass windows; the lighted candles before the altar ; the sacred music and the solemn entrance and procession of the priests and choristers, the intoning of the rhythmic phrases of the litany, holy places, the solemn call to prayer — all these act as ^'sensitizers" and reminders to intensify the re- ligious consciousness and to keep it at a high emotional level. But such an emotional consciousness seeks for itself, as all emotion does, external expression. Hence we have a circular movement. External form heighten- ing the emotion, and emotion embodying itself anew in form. The rhythmic form appears to be the natural spon- taneous form of expression for surplus emotional states. Thus Spencer says: ''The undulatory movement is habitually generated by feeling in discharge." Hence those forms which have accompanied both savage and pagan religious ceremonies everywhere; the sacred dance and chant and march ; the whirling of dervishes ; 186 THE DEAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE the dancing of maenads; the swaying and stamping of savages; the ^^repetitions'' of the revival meetings, — phenomena which when carried to the extreme end in the trance state. The Arab priest to-day sways rhythmically back and forth as he chants the Koran, as the boys also are taught to do at the University of El-Azar, in Cairo. This rhj'-thmic movement is a means perhaps of concentrating the attention on spiritual things. Africans here in America on the Sea Cotton Islands still, at their meetings, dance in a circle, all the time with more and more excitement, with faster and faster rhythm, till finally, exhausted, some drop out and new ones take their places. But rhythmic movement helps also to make labor easier. Hence the so frequent experience of singing while at work. One notes this particularly when travel- ling in Egypt, where through the long, warm day the shardvf workers chant a monotonous song to the periodic stooping and rising over their machines; and the Nile boatmen sing rhythmically as they row the dahabeeyah down the river. But this last instance suggests that rhythmical ex- pression has also its social ''motif." As the savages circle round the sacred camp-fire or altar, singing in chorus and dancing, they turn now to right and now to left, they sway the body back and forth, lift the foot and beat the ground to mark periods and to keep the group together, as the baton of the conductor does in a modern orchestra. The repetition and rhythm of the litanies of the mediaeval and modern church seem to express a certain fundamental tendency and need. The priest recites the prayers and the congregation responds in recurrent phrases. Here we meet again with that blending of the serial and the cyclic forms which is so conamon in the religious field. The individual prayers seeming to soar higher and higher in spiritual meaning towards a climax, like the ascending notes of the violins THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 187 in some musical phrase — while the responses of the congregation are recurrent repetitions, i.e. a repeated or cyclic process. Further, we must admit that man has need of worship. If he believes in and seeks an ideal good, it is not for pragmatic or utilitarian reasons alone. He seeks in some way to commune with, and to unite himself to, the Ideal Life, his essential good. To express feelings of adoration and devotion is a natural accompaniment of this religious attitude. Related, perhaps, to the impulse to seek outer expression for inner thought and feeling is that tendency of religion to image for itself the divine in human form. Personality is man's highest concept, and how otherwise than in terms of the highest qualities of personality is he able to make real to himself the divine life? Moreover, he feels the need of a being to whom he can not only pour out his feelings of adoration and exul- tation, of gratitude for blessings received or his sense of woe, of repentance, of need of forgiveness and the rest, — but also of one who will respond to these his outpoiu-- ings. The psalms, hymns, and prayers of reUgious experience bear witness to this perennial need of man to which we may give the general name of worship.^ In all historical religions except in Buddhism, I think, we find this tendency to personify the divine, and even the followers of the Buddha soon came to deify their Master. Wherever, as in Brahmanism, the supremely divine life seems too great and infinite to be thought of under the limitations of the finite and human, we have the conception of lesser gods standing between God and man; or we have hierarchies of jinni, angels, mediators and saints ; and men who have not been able to believe in God at all have sometimes substituted a '^rehgion of *The Hymn of Akhnathon (see ^'Akhnathon Pharaoh of Egypt," by Weigall, p. 150) and many of the Hebrew Psalms are illustrations of the outpouring in worship of the inner joy of the heart which has found God. 188 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE humanity/' or found their religious ideal embodied for them in some individual human form, as in father, mother, wife, child, or beloved friend, and their attitude towards these becomes in a measure adoration. Our poetry very frequently embodies this substitute for reUgious feehng: "My days are tuned to finer chords And lit by higher suns, Through all my thoughts and all my words, A purer purpose runs. " No matter if my hands attain The golden crown or cross, Only to love is such a gain That loving is not loss. "And thus whatever fate betide Of rapture or of pain, If storm or Sun the future hide, My love is not in vain." ^ It is this motive of finding the divine in the human which has led to the deifying of the seer, or teacher, who has brought to society some new divine message ; or of some national hero, or benefactor of his race. The disciples who have lost their Master dwell on the thought of his personality and of what his life meant to them when on earth, and out of their love and sorrow they build up and win for themselves the sense of an abiding presence which comforts and inspires and sustains them on life's pilgrimage. That is, they idealize the loved person and his relations to them. We see clearly in the Pauline epistles that this is what Paul did, who had not known Jesus in the flesh; and many another both before and since has found in this ideahzation of a personaUty the foundation of his reUgious life. No man hath seen God at any time, but in his mes- senger he has revealed himself. 1 John Hay. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 189 J' God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." "He that hath seen Him hath seen the Father." This is the word of the Fourth Gospel; and yet we must acknowledge that this personification is in a sense a sacrifice of the spiritual to the literal. The great poet of the Middle Ages has told us how men have been led to the Divine and Eternal through first seeing the heavenly life embodied in some loved human form. Yet we must remember that Beatrice was already transformed into an idealized personality when she became Dante^s guide to the heavenly life. Dante saw Paradise revealed in the eyes of Beatrice, but Beatrice would not let her pilgrim rest there. " Volgiti ed ascolta che non pur ne miei occhi e Paradise." She led him on, as he was able to bear it, through spheres of increasing light, till his eyes came to rest at last on the Light Eternal. Calvinists and Puritans have sometimes gone so far as to believe that the love of their fellowmen detracted from the love of God. So, too, Thomas a Kempis : ^'When thou settest thine eyes upon creatures, the face of the Creator is withdrawn from thee. How small soever anything be, if it be loved inordinately it holdeth us back from the highest good and corrupteth." To find the Ideal of Perfection completely embodied in any finite form, no matter how wonderful, is in its measure idolatry. Only in an Absolute Good can perfect satisfaction be found, hence for finite religious experience the endless quest. Yet embodiment in external form seems essential to religion. ^^Men," says Emerson, '^as naturally make a state or a church as caterpillars a web.'' Hence arise the tensions and conflicts in religion of which we have already spoken. The problem of the inner and the outer in religious experience appears as a form of that wider problem of 190 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE the relation of mind and body of which our time has so much to say. Modern psychology and medicine have shown us, what indeed common sense had already recog- nized, the mutual relationship of these two ; and yet it seems impossible to quite express this relationship as science would Uke to do in terms of cause and effect. For which is cause of the other? Philosophy has in turn emphasized one or the other element, and has thus given rise to two opposite types of doctrine, viz. to ideal- ism and to materialism. The first reduces all to spirit, while the second makes matter ultimate; but neither form of philosophy has quite succeeded in overcoming the opposition between the two elements. And parallel- ism, which aims to unite the two conceptions while still maintaining their difference, does not really succeed in showing the connection between its ^'double aspect, '^ or how the two processes are really one. The intimate relation and interdependence of mind and body with which our everyday experience, as well as our science, makes us familiar, and the world of art, which exists only as embodied in the outer, i.e, in matter, make it plain that somehow these two are really one. The ultimate basis of their union, however, we do not as yet clearly see. The most we can say is that our intents and purposes in order to become actual need concrete embodiment. For without externality we return to the mystic attitude. We have already noted the subjectivity of this attitude and its difficulty for higher religions which must be ethical religions. And yet, — if God is the Soul of our souls, the Self of ourselves, what need of external forms or any sort of mediators? Why not throw off all formahsm and ex- temaUty, and entering into the inner chamber of our spirits, worship God, as the Master bade his disciples, in spirit and in truth? Why not the direct relation between man and God "As a friend draws near to a THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 191 friend" as St. Augustine puts it? or as it is expressed by Tennyson : — "Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, And spirit with spirit can meet — Nearer is He than breathing, And closer than hands and feet." The difficulty is perhaps bound up with the fact that rehgion is not pure mysticism. It is ethical, active, social, and, consequently, temporal. ^'If ye truly seek me, ye shall surely find me," said Jahwe through his prophet. Where, then, shall man come face to face with God? Not in the inner spirit alone, and surely not only in the outer life. In religious history we meet with various attempts at reconciliation of the two tendencies. Forms of Reconciliation or Compromise between THE Two Tendencies. — When the human spirit revolts against the external authority and worldliness of estab- lished institutions from which the essential spirit of rehgion seems to have departed, the form which this revolt frequently assumes, in natures at once sensitive and rebellious, is that of ffight from the world. The Motive of Flight from the World. — Thus in the words of the Hebrew Psalmist : — "0 for the wings of a dove — Then would I fiy away and be at rest. So then would I wander far off, I would lodge in the wilderness." And again and again in the lyrics of the ''Bacchae," Euripides expresses this attitude: — "O feet of a fawn to the green-wood fled, Alone in the grass and the loveliness, Leap of the Hunted, no more in dread." Escape from the * Worship of the Ruthless Will," from ** Dreams of the proud man making great And greater ever Things that are not of God." 192 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE In ancient Egypt, two thousand years before Christ, death itself was sometimes looked upon as a happy re- lease from life. DEATH A GLAD RELEASE ^ "Death is before me to-day (Like) the recovery of a sick man, Like going forth into a garden after sickness. " Death is before me to-day Like the odor of myrrh, Like sitting under the sail on a windy day. " Death is before me to-day Like the odor of lotus flowers, Like sitting on the shore of drunkenness. " Death is before me to-day Like the course of the freshet. Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house. " Death is before me to-day Like the clearing of the sky. Like a man 'fowling therein toward ' that which he knew not. " Death is before me to-day As a man longs to see his house, When he has spent years in captivity." It is not only in the ancient or mediaeval world that this motive of flight from the world, in despair of finding a solution in the world, appears. The latest illustrations of the abandonment of active, social life are to be found in those two great and otherwise contrasting figures of the close of the last century, Count Leo Tolstoy and Friedrich Nietzsche. The supreme instance of it is the monastic system. In the early days of Christianity in the decadence of the Graeco-Roman religion, we meet with the anchoritic type, living alone in cave or forest. Also, of course, in 1 Quoted by Breasted. P. 175 of " Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 193 Buddhism we find the Ufe of soHtary contemplation. Flight, however, in itself is perhaps rather the abandon- ment of a solution of the conflict. Monasticism. — In the monastic system itself, we have an attempted solution for a comparatively small group. The goal of the monk was the ^^Unio Mystica'* by means of the '^ Vita Contemplativa " and by asceticism. The monastery was a kind of barrier against the tempta- tions of the world, and through it were adjusted the monk^s relationship to his fellows, both in the monastery and without it. Monastic life is a community life and develops necessarily social regulations, ceremonies, set times and seasons for prayer and fasting, — cyclic pro- cesses, — in a word. Even the Buddhist monk who forsakes the world because of its hopeless corruption and misery founds an order and seeks to draw others away from the world to the community life of the disciples of Buddha. The ideal of Christian monasticism was not for the mass of mankind retirement from the world, but the laity could be united to the church, the spiritual whole, through partaking in the rites, and by the acceptance of the dogmas. Roman Catholic Church. — The Roman Catholic church stands out as another form of compromise or union of the two tendencies, — the spiritual and the worldly. A whole of many antagonistic tendencies, it has been called a ' ' complexio oppositorum. ' ^ Augustinian and spiritual it is in its inner spirit, its sense of individual sin, its need of grace ; its personal piety, worldly, temporal, and formal in its outer expression. It is in its outer hierarchical form and in its legal and political tendencies a successor of the Roman Empire. The history of the Mediaeval Church abounds in ten- sions and conflicts between the two tendencies. To give one illustration only, consider the awakened religious spirit in St. Francis of Assisi, which aimed to return to 194 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE the simpler, purer ways of early Christianity, — the effect which his message had for a time on the mass of the people, the struggles with papal authority of Francis, the final losing of his cause when the Order of Franciscans, which he had founded in poverty and humility, coming more and more under the authority of the Pope, became more organized and formal, and at the same time proud, luxurious, and worldly. Another form of adjustment of the inner to the outer is modern church work in its various forms. This lays stress on charity, on work for social betterment, on amusement, on sound physical health, on missionary enterprises and proselyting as means to the religious life. But these "means,'' repeated again and again, tend, as all religious cyclic processes do, to become ends in themselves, — and to lack that which seems to be the essential spirit of religion. Still another type of solution of the conflicting ten- dencies is the socialistic Utopia. This type, though especially prominent in modern times as a result of the awakened humanitarian consciousness, is, as we know, as old as Plato; and even centuries before his day the Hebrew prophets had their social programme for a re- deemed Israel, when (as in Isaiah) justice and kindness should be universal, the crooked should be made straight and the rough places plain, poverty and disease should be done away ; for then men should buy and eat without money and without price, the lame should leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb should sing. So in pictorial form, Isaiah expresses that which ever since in more commonplace language seems to be the Utopian solution of many an one of our modem reformers. Isaiah's dream never came true. The theocratic ideal of Ezekiel turned to the legalism and formalism of the post-exilic Judaism. The Puritan revolted against the forms and externality of the established religion with its Popish munomeries, — and surely there was a rebirth THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 195 of the spiritual life in the great leaders of Puritanism, such as Bunyan and Milton, — and yet in the end or in general, Puritanism itself tended to lip-service, to literal- ism, and a mechanical religion. The spiritual Kingdom of God, of Jesus of Nazareth, how has it been fulfilled in mediaeval or modern church and state? The latest attempt to carry it out is the modem Christian socialist's plan for the reorganization of society. Will it fulfil this Christian vision of a kingdom of love? Socialism. — The fundamental proposition of socialism is equal opportunity for all. So far all is well. But socialism seems to me rather to emphasize external and material good than the things of the spirit. It therefore attempts to do through laws and government what is rather a matter of the disciplined and regenerated inner spirit. Why is it that the stories of the regenerated socialistic world always give one a sense of boredom? It is, I believe, because this form of reconciliation is not other-worldly. It is to be carried out here and now. Such is, generally speaking, the ideal of modern life with its emphasis on richness of life and on practical efficiency. Instead of the old dualism, which we find in the two cities of St. Augustine,^ the spiritual life is to find its true em- bodiment in the present earthly life. The fundamental note in William Morris's scheme is delight in the natural life of man and in the expression of simple kindliness, combined with joy in handiwork. All these Utopian schemes, doing away to a great extent, as they do, with pain and sorrow and conflict, leave one with a sense of dissatisfaction and shallowness. For not here, not here in present, earthly things, is the goal of life. The social- istic world, which has apparently attained perfection, seems therefore stagnant and dull, without incentive, romance, or spiritual inspiration. ^ "Two loves made these two cities : Love of self even to despising God, made the earthly city ; Love of God even to despising self, made the heavenly." Civ. Dei, XIV, 28. 196 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "Man has to live a life beyond, Have a hope to die with dim-descried." A perfect, finite world is a contradiction. Given human nature as it really is, we may doubt whether such a re- constructed whole as socialism proposes could ever be permanent. Only the moment can be complete and perfect — but the moment itself is only a fragment in an infinite whole. In the socialistic Utopia new conflicts and tensions would necessarily inunediately arise, and the whole religious-social movement continue, if on some- what altered lines. Thus, again, no finite external religious-social order can be perfect, and on the other hand the inner religious spirit must seek outward expression. No form of reconciliation or compromise between the two elements of our opposition seems entirely satisfactory. None of them completely embodies the significance of the inner religious life. Must we say, then, with Ibsen^s priest Brand, that '^all compromise is the work of the devil"? But man's spiritual life must be adapted to the earthly conditions in which he necessarily lives. Brand himself is an instance of what happens when there is no attempt at reconciliation of the inner and the outer. Brand's creed of ^'all or nothing" leads to no goal, only to the solitary ice church on the barren mountain peak. Thus, once again, no finite, external religious order perfectly embodies the inner religious life, and on the other hand the inner spirit must seek outward expression. Summary We feel that what really constitutes religious experience is not outer form and observance, but inner spirit. Not with tithes of mint, anise, and cummin ; not with the keeping of fasts; the repeating of prayers; the taking part in ceremonies; not in church-going is the essence THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 197 of religion to be found. This is true in our own time just as it was in the time of Jesus, and of the prophets. And yet, we are driven to ask, is it possible to have the inner without the outer? The Modern Spirit of Restlessness. — It sometimes seems in our day as if we were given over to a new pagan- ism. A restless craving has seized upon the heart of the rising generation. The youth of the present day rushes hither and thither in search of more life, of an ever wider and wider experience. Trained and equipped, as in some respects these young people are as never before, they feel efficient, and ready for all that life has to offer. They rush to seize it with outstretched hands; nothing must escape them. So eager are they that it sometimes seems as if they mistook mere restless activity for ^4ife.'' They hurry from one experience to another. They drink fuller and fuller draughts of the exciting cup of life. There is not time for meditation and prayer, for the slow sinking in of experience, for the brooding spirit which brings wisdom and understanding, gentleness and humility. Hence, in spite of their practical efficiency and their eagerness to serve, one sometimes feels a cer- tain superficiality, a lack of steadiness and quiet strength, the absence of an unifying, controlling purpose in their lives, — a lack (shall we say it ?) of real self-consecration. But it is the older generation which is to blame. Having lost the vividness and depth of conviction of the faith of its fathers, it has not known what to give to its children. Biological science, sociology, and political economy have taken the place of religion. Evolution and energy, effi- ciency and humanism (a kind of socialized naturalism) and progress are the words of the day. The more thoughtful among us, not quite content with this attitude, are begin- ning to substitute for God and the other-worldliness of the religious life 'Hhe social consciousness," and devotion to the public good of the actual present. But this notion of a public self or community whole is a difficult con- 198 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE ception to bring home to the mind of the child or very- young person ; and, further, it is doubtful if it is a wholly- adequate conception. For the social group, too, is in a sense a Umited and finite and ever-changing experience. Yet if we do not give to the child the conception of some- thing higher than himself, or of something more unified and permanent than mere experience as it passes, there is doubt whether he will get it at all in later years ; not at least till he has been tried in the fire of experience and suffering in which many an one will go to pieces. Let me try to make clear the contrast of the religious attitude with this attitude of our day by a simple illus- tration from a field with which I have some acquaintance. In the well-regulated kindergarten, the kindergartner tries to bring home to the little child in unconscious ways the sense of a law which is above teacher and child alike, and which alike they must obey. One feels that the child does absorb from the atmosphere of the kinder- garten some vague notion of this impersonal law, but for him it must be mostly embodied in the higher personali- ties of his milieu, in father, mother, or teacher. The child naturally personifies, and it comes to be fairly easy for him, gradually as he develops, to find this law of his whole social group finally embodied in the being of God. So the youth rises to the conception of the Highest and Holiest, the wholly Just and Loving, whom he not only obeys, but to whose service he freely and gladly conse- crates his powers and his life. Now we may agree that the highest outward manifesta- tion of the inner religious spirit is in righteousness of character and personal conduct, and in devoted service of the community, but the question still remains whether some outward form and observance, some times for meditation and prayer, for the uplift of the soul of man to the Highest that he knows, are not necessary to foster and maintain this religious consecrated attitude. There are perhaps a few rare spirits who are an exception. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 199 There are those who are able to meet their own needs from then* own imaginative or reflective life, whom no forms J as they actually exist, can satisfy. These persons, I think, are however exceptions. The experience of the inner religious life is unique. The mystic himself acknowledges that his experience is incommunicable, and not verifiable by others. It is ineffable, but it is also fleeting, and the absolutely desired goal is beyond. And out of this fleeting character of our time experience, our own individual isolation and sense of the imperfection of our experience, comes the need for expression, for communication, for united action, and for some permanent and abiding value. Thus arise the external and cyclic processes, the more or less perma- nent forms, aesthetic and social, of religious rites and institutions which we have considered. But when every experience is thus embodied in a cyclic form it seems a-s if there were really nothing new under the sun. What has been will be. The passions, joys, and griefs of men, «ven their aspirations and ideals, which seem to them so unique and novel, are but instances of the same old process. The well-established forms tend then to be- come meaningless or expressive only of dead ideals. The individual conscience, with its hunger and thirst for righteousness, for freedom of thought and for creativeness, revolts against the conservatism which would crush out all life and progress. Again, the cyclic form reestablishes itself with somewhat altered inner significance — and again and yet again the movement is repeated. No adjustment of the inner to the outer therefore seems complete in a temporal world. It is like trjdng to measure the in- stantaneous velocity of a moving object, for at zero velocity the terms disappear. So the process sweeps on, the conflict finding solution only in the moment which comes but to vanish. Of course if these two tendencies are not parts of one whole, then there is no conflict and no problem. The 200 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE inner and spiritual may be religion, and the external, cyclic process may be politics, commercialism, or some- thing else, just as an element in a series might touch a circle at one point; or as two apparently contradictory propositions need not necessarily conflict. The problem needing a solution arises only when the two tendencies are claimed as parts of one whole. We might solve the problem by saying that one pro- cess is appearance, the other reality. The serial process is religious experience in reality; the cycle is but the appearance. The individual progresses, even though the external forms remain the same. Or, again, the progress of the serial process is but appearance; in reality there is only the cyclic repetition. The problem then would be : Can parallel aspects constitute one whole? But if we make the cyclic or external, the real, the serial and inner appearance, then we have a process which reducing to mere repetition lacks ethical signifi- cance and value and can hardly constitute religion in any spiritual sense. On the other hand, it seems hardly possible to reduce the cyclic and external to mere ap- pearance since the inner life itself requires expression, and because the individual is also social. Because, in short, religion has its social side. But if each tendency claims to be a genuine and vital religious experience, — and this they do as we have seen, — then, if parts of one whole, the two tendencies are contrary and conflicting. Wherever we have the inner religious spirit and at the same time social (community) life, there we seem invariably to find outer forms, ritual, and institutions, and this is so because man has a sen- sational, aesthetic, and social consciousness. Even in the case of the individual alone, some environment and atmosphere seem necessary to foster the religious spirit — (even silent communion in solitude is a form). We have considered the result of the conflicts and ten- sions, the revolts, reformations, readjustments and recur- THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 201 Fences, as they appear in history in the lives of individuals and nations. Logically all we can say is that the adjust- ment of the cycle to the series, or of outer to inner, — the result of the synthesis of the two tendencies, is a process of the spiral type, a perpetual readjustment of the cyclic to the serial. At the close of a long discussion this does not seem to be saying very much. We want to know why it is so, i.e. the logical ground for it. Of course we can say that man's need for communication with his fellows and co- operative action lead inevitably to organized religion; and that the law of habit tends to make religious forms and institutions relatively permanent and cyclic; or, again, that a class of exorcisers, medicine men and priests, for the glory of their cause or for their own glory, seek power and control over other men and so establish in- stitutions with their forms, which shall be more enduring than any individual life, and which shall represent on earth the spiritual community. Or, we may say that the life of a frail and finite creature requires discipline and a suitable environment, i.e. '* scaf- foldings" and ^^sensitizers" in religion, as well as in other fields. Hence the repeated forms of religious observance, the discipline of meditation and prayer, the setting apart of holy places and holy days for " recollection." In the words of a prayer : — "To recover the pure wisdom of a Christian mind, we are called to this day of remembrance and this house of prayer." And, further, we can say that because of our physical constitution, our fluctuating attention and liability to fatigue in aesthetic appreciation, rhythmic processes, — alternations of activity and repose are developed to heighten and prolong the aesthetic-religious experience. But these notions are psychological. Conflicts and ten- sions are also psychological affairs. The difficulty is that the logical world is static while the actual and concrete 202 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE is in perpetual flux. It is like the difiiculty about the relative value of part and whole. Logically each re- quires the other. There seems to be no meaning in speaking of a whole without parts or of parts without the whole ; hence, logically one is no more valuable than the other. But if the inner life needs the outer, we must not forget that equally the outer needs the inner. No socialistic programme can initiate or regenerate and perfect the world apart from the regeneration in the inner life of every individual in the community. And no external perfecting of the environment — as for example through the elimination of poverty — is sufficient to secure this rebirth of the spirit, ''/n ceternam renatus^^ depends ultimately on an individual decision of the will. The repetition of creeds and dogmas is a process which is cyclic, but therein is expressed once for all a statement about events which are supposed to have happened (or which will in the future) once upon a time in the world's history, i.e, events of inner significance ; and in the same way our ceremonies, our festivals and holy days com- memorate striking and unique occurrences. Thus here the cyclic and the serial, the outer and the inner, are interwoven. Professor Santayana ^ suggests interestingly, how the nature worship of the Vedic hymns — a wor- ship based on recurrent natural, external processes — developed in the Greek Olympian age into a religion which was dramatic, humanized, and morally significant. But moral and dramatic processes are serial. Suggestion of Solution. — May it not be that the drama of the fall and redemption, that judgment days, incarnations of the divine in the human, atonements, resurrections and the rest, are not events which happened once in a cosmological or historical process, but rather infinitely recurrent processes or events, and therefore cyclic as in our external religious forms we make them ? 1 George Santayana, "Life of Reason." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 203 And yet equally in the life of each individual (or nation) may the judgment day or the day of atonement or of rebirth be a unique event, a crisis and miracle in the drama of his lifers story, where no term is ever exactly repeated, since were it repeated it would lose for him its ethical significance and value. The ethical process is serial and dramatic with a limit or climax as its goal. But the process as a whole would be mirrored in some or all of its parts, i.e, it would be a rhythmic process. It may be that the cycUc, mechanical processes do symbolize or embody some such fundamental meanings ; yet in detail they may need constant revising and readjust- ment to the deepening insight of individuals and to the growing enlightenment of the commimity, with respect to the spiritual interpretation of the meanings themselves. For whatsoever forms we retain they must not become mechanical, but must be vested with the life of the spirit, — that is, they must be symbols and ministers of grace. As symbols adequate and not fanciful, nor such as to absorb attention in themselves as ends, i.e. as having in themselves magic efficacy. They should be means to lead the religious spirit to higher levels of spiritual attain- ment, and as symbols intimate revealers of the life within. To Swedenborg the body was an expansion or process of the soul. To Paul it was the temple of the living God. To the prophets and psalmists of Israel, the whole earth was a vesture of divinity. "The heavens declare the glory of God, And the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, And night unto night sheweth knowledge." ^ The religion of the Sufis, influenced by Neo-Platonic doctrine, looked upon the outer world as an emanation or a mirror of God, the '^ Beloved'^ and '^AU Beautiful." ^ Psalm 19. Compare the coming of the day of the Lord in Isaiah 35. 204 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The English poet, Spenser, expresses the intimate relation of inner and outer thus : — "For every spirit as it is more pure And hath in it the more of heavenlie light, So it the fairer body doth procure to habit it. For of the soul the body form doth take For soul is form and doth the body make." And thus Emerson : — "Onward and on, the eternal Pan, Who layeth the world's incessant plan, Halteth never in one shape, But forever doth escape. Like wax in flame into new forms, Oxygen, and air, of plants, and worms. The world is the ring of his spells. And the play of his miracles. **As the bee through the garden ranges. From world to world the godhead changes, As the sheep go feeding in the waste. From form to form he maketh haste ; This vault which glows immense with light Is the inn where he lodges for the night. What recks such traveller if the bowers Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers, A bunch of fragrant lilies be, Or the stars of eternity? " Thou meetest him by centuries, And lo ! he passes like the breeze ; Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy. He hides in pure transparency ; Thou askest in fountains and in fires, — He is the essence that inquires. He is the axis of the star. He is the sparkle of the spar, He is the heart of every creature. He is the meaning of each feature ; And his mind is the sky. Than all it holds more deep, more high." * 1 Mayday. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS SOURCES 205 Shall we in some "hereafter/^ whereas we now see through a glass darkly, — through external forms and mediators, — then see face to face and ^'know" un- mediately even as we are known? That question can only be answered by another. Will man then become another type of being? Christianity, like other religions, has emphasized the distinction between two worlds, — 'Hhis world and the next," ^^this world and a ^beyond' or invisible world," — and the distinction between a temporal and an eternal order. This is the significance of the fact of the ideahty of religious experience, which we noted at the outset. Now if this '^beyond" of the religious consciousness, if this ideal and '^ ought" of the ethical consciousness is to be significant and operative in our present life, then, indeed, outward form is needed, just as it is in the world of art or of practical life, to bring the ideal out of the inner world of dreams, to give it concreteness and definiteness, and so to make real to the average man the invisible world. It is a work for the creative imagination to paint in appropriate colors this ideal world, to sing of it in fitting language; in short so to ^'body forth" ** The forms of things unknown." that these inward ideals shall become the master-forces in human life, and thereby transform it wholly into the life of the Spirit. Could this be attained, could the religious ideal be wholly experienced in this world, "And the whole world give back the song Which once the angels sang," then, indeed, should we find a complete union of the outer and the inner, and our problem would at last be solved. "I saw eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright ; And round beneath it, time, in hours, days, years, Driv'n by the spheres Like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world And all her train were hurl'd. "Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing. And sing and weep, soar'd up into the ring ; But most would use no wing. *0 fools,' said I, Hhus to prefer dark night Before true light ! To live in grots and caves, and hate the day Because it shews the way, The way, which, from this dead and dark abode, Leads up to God ; A way where you might tread the sun, and be More bright than he ! ' " — From Henry Vaughan's poem, "The World." CHAPTER Y The Way of Life — Its Forms Part I In the preceding chapter, we considered the source of that element of reUgious experience which we have called the process, the Way of Life, or — as many have called it — the way of salvation. ('^What shall I do to be saved ? " " This do and thou shalt live.") Already in the chapter before the last, we had found that this ex- perience is as to its nature both mystical and practical, both social and individual ; and in our last chapter, we found that the source, also, of this experience may be de- scribed either as aesthetic feeling or as ethical activity ; that is, that it may be found alike in individual experience and in social experience. Man is saved by grace, yes, but also by his individual effort and merit. Further, we saw (in the second part of Chapter IV) that the source of religious experience is to be found in the inner life of the individual, and is manifested in the outer forms and embodiment of religious ideas and feeling such as the es- tablished institutions of religion and the accustomed acts of worship ; or, also again through the social experience of his relation to other inspiring personalities. In the words of Browning's Pompilia : — "Through such souls alone God's stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i' the dark to rise by." How all these different and opposing characters could be true at once both as to the nature and as to the source of that whole which we call religious experience, we could 207 208 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE not clearly see. To assert it to be true seemed to be to assert contradictory propositions, but at the close of the discussion in relation to the inner and the outer, light began to dawn. In the present chapter, we shall consider the forms in which religious experience presents itself and I shall hope to show before the chapter closes how the con- flicting elements of religious experience, which in our investigation we have discovered, may be united and the oppositions (so far as in finite life they can be) overcome. The way of life appears under various forms. We shall consider these as follows :. — I. The Temporal and the Eternal. II. The Dynamic and the Static. III. The Many and the One. Already, in our study of the nature and of the source of the religious life, we have met with these forms of religious experience. The antithesis between the tem- poral and the eternal appeared in our discussion of the ethical and the mystical consciousness. The antithesis between the dynamic and the static appeared in the same section, and also in the discussion of the opposition between the inner and the outer. The opposition be- tween the one and the many, — another form of the fore- going antithetical types of experience, — we have not as yet specifically noted. I The Temporal and the Eternal A striking and essential characteristic of human life is its transitoriness and mutability ; that is, the pervasive- ness of the time-consciowsness. Philosophers have called time the form of our consciousness. On all experience it lays its ** unimaginable touch." Time is a whole made up of three indivisible parts — past, present, and future — whose characteristic is that it is fleeting. The ^^Now,'' 1 THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 209 the elusive present, the point, so to speak, of our immediate consciousness, we can never grasp or retain. When we reflect upon it even, it has already vanished. To elude time, as it were, we arbitrarily group together moments into hours, days, weeks, and call them the present ; but this '^ present," too, is fleeting. "The Bird of time flies fast, and hark ! I hear the flutter of her wings." Time is a whole of never-returning moments. ^'You cannot step twice into the same stream." It is this time-character of our consciousness which gives to our experience so much of its tragic aspect ; for while it is true, that alike of joy or sorrow — " The path of its existence still is free " the fact of mutability and transitoriness seems to be more striking with regard to all that man holds dearest and fairest. The springtime, with its sunshine, birds and blossoms passes; flowers perish; beauty fades; youth vanishes; remembrance dies; friendship grows cold; love has wings; death puts an end to all. Bound up with change is the character of irreversi- bility. The moment fraught with import and oppor- tunity not grasped, is lost forever ; the deed done cannot be undone; the word spoken cannot be recalled. Poet and sage, in East and West, have sung of, and reflected on, this mutable and transitory character of all things human and natural. "The heavens shall wax old as a garment. As a vesture shall thou change them and they shall be changed." "As for man, his days are as grass and as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passes over it and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more." "We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly ! Yet soon Night closes round and they are lost forever." p 210 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE A further character involved, so at first it seems, in this transitoriness of our experience, is the meaningless- ness of it all. What is this our life but "A bubble on a river, One moment here, then gone forever." "The flower that smiles to-day- To-morrow dies ; All that we wish to stay Tempts and then flies. What is this world's delight? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright." Yet deep in the heart of man is a need, a longing for significance and permanence; and in various ways he has tried to overcome the transitory character of his experience. The concepts of science, the permanence and unchangeableness of natural law, seem to be an attempt in one particular form of experience to overcome the changing, and to harness mutability itself to the car of our practical needs. What is the motive to art, but an impulse to give permanence to our experience ? That is we seek to give lasting expression to the fleeting mood of sorrow or of dehght, to recapture and make enduring some heroic or self-sacrificing deed, some lost felicity or vision of beauty? So Keats sings in the ''Ode to the Grecian Urn" ; so Shakespeare in his- Sonnets sang of the youth whom he adored. Philosophers are supposed to report only the facts and to interpret them without personal bias. Yet in their theories on time and the logic of its necessity, something of human interest, and desire to escape from the tragic fact of mutability seems to enter. So some of them have counselled to cheat time by giving one's self up to drain- ing the dregs of the cup of the sensuous present. "A book of Verse beneath the Bough, A jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS . 211 Beside me singing in the Wilderness, O Wilderness were Paradise enow ! " Or in a finer type of Epicureanism there is the attempt to seize the flying moment and render it eternal after the fashion of Marius the Epicurean/ one ''whose aim had ever been to use life not as the means to some problematic end, but as far as might be, from dying hour to dying hour as end in itself/' Positivism emphasized the value of the stream of Time itself. The restless life of our own day is perhaps another form of this same motive. In hurrjdng after flying experience, it attempts to grasp the fulness of all that life holds. Other philosophers have sought to attain to a timeless attitude, an attitude so concentrated on meaning and purpose that Time, with its losses and changes, is of no account. Platonic philoso- phy sought to transcend the flux of phenomena through the notion of thought, grasping the eternal order of the universe. The dreams of another world, of a new Jerusa- lem — Heaven — the longing and hope of immortality, are other forms of the impulse in man to overcome the changeful, fleeting character of his existence. For the bitterest aspect of the transitoriness of experience is its meaninglessness ; for, for all its change and variety, life, after all, seems to be naught but endless recur- rence ; the same old tasks, the same old aims, the same old stories endlessly repeated. The moment so fair not only does not last,* but if it did, what then ? Even a chain of such moments is not only soon fled, but the mo- ments are without permanent significance. They go and leave not a wrack of meaning behind. Death sooner or later ends all, and standing by the grave of one beloved, it is not alone the anguish of personal loss which over- comes the heart, nor is it the irrevocability of the past, but the sense of meaninglessness, — that a life so full of promise and beauty should ''sink below the verge,'' with so many hopes and ideals unfulfilled. 1 Walter Pater. 212 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "Ah what avails the sceptred race! Ah what the form divine ! What every virtue, every grace ! Rose Aylmer all were thine." Especially in religious experience have men tried to find a realm of changelessness. In Hindu and Hebrew ex- perience the Supreme Being is the Unchanging, the ^^Rock of Ages," the Refuge from the storms of life, the goal of human striving, everlasting blessedness, rest, peace, the Eternal. This new life above struggle, change and multiplicity was to be found in flight from the world. Already in the preceding chapter, we noted how the religious consciousness, weary of the life of the world with its pettinesses, its agonizing changes, its seeming irration- ality, loves to take refuge in flight to some sanctuary of the inner life to some ^^ still desert of the Godhead," or else to some outer place of refuge where peace and per- manence abide. "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple." (Ps. 27.) This was the spiritual motive of monasticism. The outer forms, institutions, and customs of religion have been possibly another attempt to escape from Time, the world-destroyer, by building up a world of permanent and imchanging values. Buddhism. — In the religions of the East, the value of the eternal aspect of our opposition is strongly em- phasized. An overwhelming consciousness of the per- petual flux of existence seems to have been the starting point of Buddhistic rehgious experience. The Buddhist reasoned somewhat as follows : — The Three Characteristics op Being.^ — I. The constituents of being are transitory, hence subject to * This account of Buddhism is based on Henry C. Warren's "Bud- dhism in Translation." i 1 THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 213 decay, old age, death; hence the constituents of being are misery. Further, because of this transitory charac- ter of being, there is no significance, no **somewhatness," no permanence, no Ego to be found in existence. II. There are the facts of flux, change, rebirth, and these are evil. Then the contradictory of these, not- birth, changelessness, non-existence, nothingness. Nir- vana, will be good. III. Is there any escape from the misery of existence to 'Hhe incomparable security of a Nirvana free from birth and its accompaniment of old age, disease, death and sorrow?'^ This was the problem which the Buddha Gotama set to himself. "In secret then I sat me down, And thus to ponder I began : What misery to be born again ! And have the flesh dissolve at death ! " Subject to birth, old age, disease, Extinction will I seek to find, Where no decay is ever known, , Nor death, but all security. " There is, there must be, an escape ! Impossible there should not be ! I'll make the search and find the way, Which from existence shall release ! " Even as, although there misery is, Yet happiness is also found ; So, though indeed existence is, A non-existence should be sought. " Even as, although there may be heat, Yet grateful cold is also found ; So, though the threefold fire exists, Likewise Nirvana should be sought. " Even as, although there evil is, That which is good is also found ; So, though 'tis true that birth exists, That which is not birth should be sought." ("Story of Sumedha from the Jataka.") 214 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Having himself attained to enlightenment (Buddhaship) by means of the Ten Perfections, the aim of Gotama be- comes a practical and social one — that is, to teach to the world the way of escape from the wheel of existence with its accompanying misery. This escape is possible, for existence is of dependent origination. This is the insight to which the Buddha attained after experiencing the bliss of emancipation for seven days together at the foot of the '' Bo-tree.'' "On Ignorance depends Karma, etc. ; On Karma depends consciousness ; On consciousness depends name and form ; On name and form depend the six organs of sense ; On the six organs of sense depends contact ; On contact depends sensation ; On sensation depends desire ; On desire depends attachment ; On attachment depends existence ; ^On existence depends birth ; On birth depend old age and death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair." " Thus does this entire aggregation of misery arise." The Elements of Being have Causes. — There is the fact then of change, and also the law of cause and effect. But whatever has a cause also ceases to be. Hence in the complete fading out and cessation of ig- norance ceases Karma, and with it the whole chain of consequences of old age, death, misery, and despair. Whosoever has attained to this insight and put it in prac- tice in his own life, he has attained to ''the sorrowless state.'' The Way of Escape or of Salvation. — Thus the two sources of being appear to be ignorance and desire. Buddha teaches the way of escape, called variously, the Way of Conversion, the Path of Purity, Way of Sancti- fi cation. Way of Salvation. Concentration is an Intentness of Meritorious Thoughts. — The first step is through overcoming ig- THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 215 norance. Through concentration and meditation the disciple enters upon the series of trances with their vari- ous characteristics, until he attains the mental reflex and acquires insight into the fact of the dependent origination of existence and the fact that there is no ego. ''I am" is a mere figment, "a mode of expression," there is only '^name and form." One who has attained to this insight sees things as they really are ; and seeing the emptiness of existence and the objects of sense, he begins to feel an aversion for them and a cessation of desire for them. But now, although there is no ego, there is something called Karma, ^ whose definition appears to be ''deeds," but it is difficult to make out if Karma really represents a motor element, for it also appears to mean an embodi- ment of the principle of cause and effect, and is perhaps best translated as character, as the result of past deeds. Thus a man's Karma at any given time is the result of his acts in a former existence. "His good deeds and his wickedness — Whate'er a mortal does while here, 'Tis this that he can call his own, This with him take as he goes hence ; This is what follows after him, And like a shadow ne'er departs." Merit. — If his deeds are good deeds, he will attain to a higher grade of existence at the next metempsychosis, but while there remains in him any attachment to any object whatsoever, he shall not cease to be reborn. "From Karma, then, rebirth doth spring And thus the world rolls on and on." '' Fires of Infatuation, Hatred, Covetousness." — It is not sufficient, then, for the escape from misery and sorrow to the ''sorrow-less state" to have reached insight into "dependent origination" or the chain of causes of existence, for deeds remain. Now these deeds (or Karma, * See Warren's "Buddhism in Translation." 216 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE which is fruitful Karma) arise through motives of covet- ousness, infatuation, or hatred. The disciple then must perform ''barren Karma," or in other words must free himself from all desire, must make the great retirement and renunciation as the Buddha did. When such an one has abandoned 'Hhe household for the houseless life,'' has renounced father and mother, wife and child, wealth and social position and all other objects of ambition and de- sire, and has retired to the forest and adopted the mendi- cant life, ''then he is aware that he is free, he knows that rebirth is exhausted, that he has lived the holy life, that he has done what it behooved him to do and that he is no more for this world" (Maha-Vagga). In a word, misery has ceased and he is ready for Nirvana. Enlightenment and renunciation constitute the genuine realities. In this system there is no self. "Misery only doth exist, none miserable. No doer is there, naught save the deed is found. Nirvana is, but not the man who seeks it. The Path exists but not the traveller on it." Through enlightenment and renunciation the disciple of Buddha overcomes earthly existence, mortality, and rebirth ; in short, the whole temporal process ; and he is now able to live the eternal Ufe, i.e, he is ready for Nir- vana. And what is Nirvana? Meaning of Nirvana. — As to the meaning of Nir- vana there seems to be three possible points of view : — 1. Nirvana is annihilation. This is the view of Nirvana taken by the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" and a number of Oriental authorities are cited ; and, in truth, this would appear to be the logical meaning for the good sought, since it is to be escape from misery, and all existence is miserable. "And then do name and form both cease, And utter nothingness become. And then when consciousness hath ceased, This all hath turned to nothingness." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 217 2. On the other hand, there is much m the translations from Buddhistic writings which leads one to think of Nirvana as a state of mind resembling to some extent, as already observed, that of the Stoics, a state which may be attained in this life. A State of Mind Enlightened, Calm and Passion- less, CALLED '^The Colorless Life.'^ — The priest who has reached a state of insight into dependent origination and who knows that there is no Ego, ^*he ceases to attach himself to anything in this world, and being free from attachment he is never agitated, and being never agitated he attains to Nirvana in his own person, and he knows that rebirth is exhausted, that he has lived the holy life, that he has done what it behooved him to do and that he is no more for this world /^ (From Maha-Nidana-Sutta.) " A mind unshaken by anguish or passion and secure, this is the greatest blessing." (Pali text.) *'0f the priest who has entered on the cessation of per- ception and sensation, bodily Karma has ceased and become quieted, vocal karma has ceased and become quieted, mental karma has ceased and become quieted, but vitality has not become exhausted, natural heat has not subsided, and the senses have not broken up/' . . . *^0n account of the non-existence of any positive reality it cannot be said either that it is conditioned or uncon^ ditioned, and either that it is worldly or that it is tran- scendent/' Inasmuch, however, as it can be entered upon, therefore it is correct to say that it is brought about, not that it is not brought about/' ** Whereas the wise who cultivate The wisdom which doth make a saint Are they who reach this holy trance — This trance by saints at all times prized, And ever by them held to be Nirvana in the present life — Therefore the faculty to reach This state of trance which is conferred 218 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE By wisdom in the holy paths A blessing of those paths is called." According to Warren, in relation to the mental groups of sensations, perceptions, and consciousness. Nirvana can be attained in this life, because some of these mental states are not subject to depravity, while this is not the case with the /orm-group. 3. On the whole. Nirvana, whether it should be inter- preted as extinction simply, or as an abode of bliss, ap- pears in its completeness to be a world beyond our present existence, reached by conduct and by the trances of con- centration and wisdom, to which world the fifth trance (the trance of cessation) approaches the nearest. Pos- sibly by studying a little the steps of approach (the trances) of the monk ^*who is no more for this world" we shall get some insight into the real nature of the Nirvana- experience. The Series of Trances. — The basis of good conduct (gentleness, self-restraint, and brotherly love to all) being presupposed, the would-be disciple who has renounced the world and its ambitions and retired to the solitude of the forest, now enters upon the disciplines of concentration and of wisdom, or the five trances. The first trance is produced by isolation. The voice has ceased but reason and reflection are still active. It is characterized by joy and happiness. The disciple attains to insight into the constituents of being, their transitoriness, emptiness, and misery. He contemplates the constituents of being with an insight ^'not very full, nor yet very keen," and thereupon enters the second trance. This trance comes about through concentration and is ^^an intense tran- quillization and intentness of the thoughts." Reflection and reasoning have ceased and happiness remains. In the third trance happiness fades somewhat ; the state is rather one of indifference and of contemplation. In the fourth trance, happiness and misery are alike abandoned. It is ''contemplation as refined by indiffer- THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 219 ence." The priest enters the realm of the infinity of space, the infinity of consciousness, the realm of nothing- ness, the realm of neither perception nor yet non-percep- tion, and finally reaches the fifth trance, the trance of cessation of perception and sensation, where he is quite out of reach of Mara, has thrown off the burden of exist- ence and is ready to enter Nirvana. In this accoimt of the trances or path to Nirvana, there seems to be a gradual dying out of all mental and physical processes such as sensation and perception. Nirvana is the step just beyond ; it would therefore appear to be the realm of complete unconsciousness and annihilation. It is described, however, as beyond the realm of ^^ nothing- ness,^' and when perception and sensation have ceased, it is said before the clear vision of wisdom all depravity wastes away. At the same time, then, that there is a fading out, an extinction of all perceptions and desires, there seems to be a deepening of the inner light to intens- est concentration, and yet it is said that those who dwell in cessation ^'lose all thought" and that there is ^^noiv existence of any positive reality." On the whole, I do not see that a consideration of the approach to Nirvana helps very much to the understanding of the experience. Nirvana is the limit to the series of trances, but it does not follow that it shares the character of the trances them- selves.^ 1 In the new mathematical logic there are two propositions con- cerning "limits" : 1st, the limit to a given series is the point beyond which the series does not extend, while beyond any given element of the series there is always another element belonging to the series. 2d, the limit may or may not partake of the character of the series, e.g. let /S be a series, and the terms a, a', a" etc., and X the limit : — S Now what is true for every member of the series is not necessarily true for the limit itself. If there were a last whole number or an infinitesi- mal quantity, the limit would belong to the series ; but in such cases as the measurement of quantities, the limit cannot be reached, 'and if 220 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Let US turn, then, in order to find its meaning to the descriptions or definitions of Nirvana which are given in the Buddhistic writings. We shall find that this meaning is expressed almost entirely in negative terms. (a) Nirvana is renunciation. ^^It is the complete forcing out and cessation of desire, a giving up, a losing hold, a relinquishment.^' (6) Nirvana is emptiness. It is freedom from rebirth and misery of all kinds, as such the ^'sorrowless state'* a state of ^^incomparable security. '* (*^ Digha-Ni-Kaya,'' P-16.) (c) Nirvana is a passive state. It is without attach- ment, without Karma. A cessation of hatred and in- fatuation and of deeds good or bad. (d) Questions concerning existence do not apply to it, for consciousness has been uprooted like a palmyra tree. (" Digha-Ni-Kaya,'' p. 16.) What is left? In positive terms Nirvana is sometimes described as the ''abode of peace," or a state of bliss; but this peace, this bliss, are again defined in terms of negation or passivity. Peace is quiescence, indifference. Bliss is exemption from the sorrows of existence and desire. "The five groups form the heavy load, And man this heavy load doth bear ; This load 'tis misery to take up, The laying down thereof is bliss. " He who this heavy load lays down, Nor any other taketh up, By extirpating all desire Shall hunger lose, Nirvana gain." attained would vanish in an absurdity like zero velocity of a moving point. But in the example of the halving fractions between zero and unity, the second grade of infinite as a limit to the straight infinite, or the circle as the limit to a series of polygons, we have a different type of limit. And here, what is true of the series, does not hold for the limit of the series. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 221 Nirvana as Wisdom. — Nirvana is not this, not this — it is that which is the contrast and opposition of all these things. That which is perhaps most positive about it is enlightenment, i.e. the vision of the truth (the four noble truths — truth concerning misery, origin of misery, cessation of misery, path leading to cessation of misery) although this wisdom really belongs to the stage preceding Nirvana itself. According to Oldenberg ^ after a struggle through successive rebirths, the wisdom of the '^knowl- edge of salvation comes in one incomparable instant of time." ''Such an one 'has obtained salvation and beheld it face to face.*" Nirvana-consciousness is like unto a state of mind absolutely peaceful and quiescent, with perfect control over the senses and the moods of the mind ; in short, a state in which all personal desires and ambitions have ceased. One who has attained to this state is gentle and compassionate towards all, because he knows the manifold sorrows of the world — "the tears of things." His only aim is to help his brethren to win insight, self-mastery, self-renunciation and the consequent peace. Such an one seems always a little sad, but from the Nirvana-consciousness, we are told, all misery has passed away. Nirvana is like the con- sciousness of one returning to a state of convalescence after a serious illness, or like a state of redemption from sin; when the weariness, pain, fever, longing, remorse, and regrets are stilled, "When passion's trance is overpassed " a lethe-like forgetfulness steals over the mind, or a sense of physical ease and the gradual renewing of lifers forces — a quiescent state. "Who conquers that despicable thirst which it is difficult to escape in this world — that thirst which leads from one rebirth to another rebirth — from him all suffering drops like drops of water from the lotus flower." ^ ^ Oldenberg, "Buddhism." 2 Quoted by Oldenberg. Compare with this the restoring effect of 222 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE As far as we can make out, the meaning of Nirvana- experience vibrates between unconsciousness and an experience of perfection in terms of blissful quiescence or indifference, "Since indifference is bliss, And happiness is likewise called." ("Visuddi-Magga") It is, however, the goal of all the strivings in the series of the disciplines of concentration and wisdom. It is the limit of the series of trances, yet it differs from nothing- ness, for beside it this earthly life with all its stars and milky ways is, as Schopenhauer, its modern interpreter, has expressed it, nothing. We are driven to take refuge in Goethe's description of beatitude : — "Das Unzulangliche Hier wird's Ereignisz ; Das Unbeschreieliche Hier ist es gethan." For the rest, questions about existence and conscious- ness do not apply to Nirvana, and the law of causality which governs finite existence has here no reality. \yhen all alternatives concerning being are exhausted, there is no answer. That is, it is not true to say the saint is reborn or not reborn ; nor that he is both reborn and not reborn ; nor that he is neither reborn nor not reborn, for the question is not appositive, so there is no ground to make one either affirm or deny. Such questions, the Buddha held, do not conduce to holiness ; hence the in- variable answer is — ^^The Perfect One has not revealed it." (This was the reply of Buddha to Vaccha, the wandering ascetic, concerning the future existence of the saint.) time and the influence of nature on Faust (Part II, Act I, Sc. 1) and also Dante, Inferno XVI : !*Let^ vedrai, ma fuer di questa fossa La ove vanno I'anime or lavarsi — Quando la colpa penuta e rimossa." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 223 After all is said, the main concern is ethical, which brings Nirvana back very nearly to that enlightened state of mind which has renounced the world and every form of desire and ambition, which has therefore over- come the sorrows of mutability and of the insatiability of the will. "That moment of the earthly life of the Tathagata, when he has attained the status of sinlessness and pamlessness, this is the true Nirvana." ^ How does this state differ from the sub specie oeternitatis of Spinoza, or from the timeless world of values of some modern thinkers? But to attain to perfect sainthood in this life is for most men an impossibility, and in truth a contradiction from an ethical standpoint. And yet it is through an individual act that individuality destroys itself, and the impression one gets is of a very intense, as well as ethical, individuality which recalls Stoicism in its attitude of self-restraint and serene self-control of taking counsel with itself and in its indifference to events.^ Along with the resemblance, however, there runs a subtle contrast — "The man whose mind, like to a rock, Unmoved stands, and shaketh not ; Which no delights can e'er inflame, Or provocations rouse to wrath — O, whence can trouble come to him, Who thus hath nobly trained his mind?" (Translated from the "Udana.") Let us compare the foregoing with the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antonius : — "Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sear shores, and mountains ; and thou art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from 1 See Oldenberg's "Buddha." 2 Compare, e.g., "Buddha under the Bo-tree." 224 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that, by looking into them, he is immediately in perfect tranquillity ; and I affirm that tranquillity is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly, then, give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself ; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest. "This, then, remains: Remember to retire into this little territory of thine own, and above all, do not distract or strain thyself, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal. But among the things readiest to thy hand to which thou shalt turn, let there be these, which are two. One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immoveable ; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within. The other is, that all these things which thou seest, change immediately and will no longer be ; and constantly bear in mind how many of these changes thou hast already witnessed. The universe is transformation ; life is opinion. "Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be. "Thou wilt soon die, and thou art not yet simple, nor free from perturbations, nor without suspicion of being hurt by external things, nor kindly disposed towards all; nor dost thou yet place wisdom only in acting justly. "Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it. "Unhappy am I, because this has happened to me — not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future. For such a thing as this might have happened to every man ; but every man would not have continued free from pain on such an occasion. Why then is that rather a misfortune than this a good fortune? And dost thou in all cases call that a man's misfortune which is not a devia- tion from man's nature? And does a thing seem to thee to be a deviation from man's nature, when it is not contrary to the will of man's nature? Well, thou knowest the will of nature. Will then this which has happened prevent thee from being just, magnanimous, temperate, prudent, secure against inconsiderate opinions and false- hood ; will it prevent thee from having modesty, freedom, and every- thing else by the presence of which man's nature obtains all that is THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 225 its own? Remember, too, on every occasion which leads thee to vexation to apply this principle ; not that this is a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune." Compare further Carmen XXII of Horace : — "Integer vitae scelerisque purus Non eget Mauris jaculis, neque aveu, Nee veneratis gravida sagittlis, Fusee pharetra ; Sive per Syrtes iter sestuosas, Sive facturus per inhospitalem Caucasum, vel quae loca fabulosus Lambit Hydaspes." Also compare with the above the Christian hymn : — "How happy is he born and taught. Who serveth not another's wiU ; Whose armor is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill ! Whose passions not his masters are ; Whose soul is still prepared for death, Not tied unto the world by care Of public fame or private breath ; This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall ; Lord of himself, though not of lands, And having nothing, yet hath all." — Sir Henbt Wotton. The fundamental difl&culty with the temporal life, from the Buddhistic standpoint, is that "Wish is insati- ate." This is the cause of all human misery. Time is the form of the will. The giving up of the will is the road to peace, bliss, quietude, the cessation of existence, the "eternity" of Nirvana. The need of retiring from the world to lead the eternal Ufe led to the founding of the Buddhistic order of monks. Christian Monasticism. — A similar thought is at the root of Christian Monasticism and of Christian 226 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Mysticism. The world is full of evil, as St. Bernard, the monk of Cluni, says : — " Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt." Eternal life is a complete contrast with the life of the world and an actual breaking with it. This way of life can only be carried out thoroughly through a monastic type of life. Monachism or Monasticism means in the first instance the act of dwelling alone. The earliest Christian monks, Paul of the Thebaid and St. Anthony, were of the anchoretic type, i,e. monks who live in solitude so far as this is practicable. The term has come to mean, however, the corporate life of a religious community whose members live under a rule of strict discipline, and who have taken the vows of purity, celibacy, and obedi- ence. In this community-type, however, the earlier element is not lost, since each monk has his own cell and hours of solitude, and the motive at bottom seems much the same, i,e. retirement from the world for the sake of an ideal experience which cannot be found in society because of its corruption and worldliness, its conflicts, and tur- moil. According to the Oriental view, as we have seen, society was hopelessly corrupt. The mission of the Ori- ental monk was not to regenerate society, — since such effort would have been vain, — but to prevail upon all men to renounce worldly existence altogether. The aim of Christian monasticism was the spiritual perfection of the individual through contemplation and prayer. To the regular vows of the monk, St. Benedict joined the principle of ''Quies," which included contemplation, adoring love, purity, reverence, humility, and stability. /^The Imitation of Christ." — In the book of the '* Imitation of Christ," the experience of monastic cloister and cell finds its completest expression. Here is revealed the life which has forsaken earthly things to live with the eternal. For example : — " My son, my son, thou canst not be alone with me and at the same time be delighted with transitory things. Thou oughtest to be sepa- THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 227 rated from thy acquaintances and dear friends and keep thy mind free from all worldly comfort. Christ's faithful ones bear themselves in this world as strangers and pilgrims. "In silence and quiet the devout soul goeth forth and learneth the hidden things of the Scriptures. Therein findeth she a fountain of tears, wherein to wash and cleanse herself each night, that she may grow the more dear to her maker as she dwelleth the further from all worldly distraction. To him who withdraweth himself from his ac- quaintance and friends God with His holy angels will draw nigh. It is better to be unknown and to take heed to oneself than to neglect oneself and work wonders. It is praiseworthy for a religious man to go seldom abroad, to fly from being seen, to have no desire to see men. "No man is worthy of heavenly consolation but he who hath dili- gently exercised himself in holy compunction. If thou wilt feel com- punction in thy heart, enter into thy chamber and shut out the tumults of the world, as it is written, 'Commune with your own heart in your chamber and be still.' In retirement thou shalt find what often thou wilt lose abroad. Retirement, if thou continue therein, groweth sweet, but if thou keep not in it, it begetteth weariness. If in the beginning of thy conversation thou dwell in it and keep it weU, it shall •afterwards be to thee as a dear friend, and a most pleasant solace. "Busy not thyself with the affairs of others, nor entangle thyself with the business of great men. Keep always thine eye upon thyself first of all, and give advice to thyself specially before all thy dearest friends. If thou hast not the favour of men, be not thereby cast down, but let thy concern be that thou boldest not thyself so well and cir- cumspectly as becometh a servant of God and a devout monk. It is often better and safer for a man not to have many comforts in this life, especially those which concern the flesh. But that we lack divine comforts or feel them rarely is to our own blame, because we seek not compunction of heart, nor utterly cast away those comforts which are vain and worldly. "Know thyself to be unworthy of divine consolation, and worthy, rather, of much tribulation. When a man hath perfect compunction, then all the world is burdensome and bitter to him. A good man will find sufficient cause or mourning and weeping ; for whether he con- sidereth himself, or pondereth concerning his neighbor, he knoweth that no man liveth here without tribulation, and the more thoroughly he considereth himself, the more thoroughly he grieveth. Grounds for just grief and inward compunction, then, are in our sins and vices, wherein we lie so entangled that we are but seldom able to contemplate heavenly things." " What, then, shaU I do, Lord ? 228 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "0 Lord, I shall need more grace, if I would arrive where neither man nor any other creature may hinder me. For so long as anything keepeth me back, I cannot freely fly unto thee. He desired eagerly thus to fly, who cried, saying ' that I had wings like a dove, for then I would flee away and be at rest.' What is more peaceful than the single eye? And what more free than he that desireth nothing upon earth? Therefore must a man rise above every creature, and per- fectly forsake himself, and with abstracted mind to stand and behold that Thou, the Creator of all things, hast among Thy creatures nothing like unto Thyself. And except a man be freed from all creatures, he will not be able to reach freely after Divine things. Therefore, few are found who give themselves to contemplation, because few know how to separate themselves entirely from perishing and created things. ''But he who attribute th anything good to himself, hindereth the grace of God from coming to him, because the grace of the Holy Ghost ever seeketh the humble heart." The note of individualistic experience characteristic of religious mysticism is found here also : — "Trusting in thy goodness and great mercy, O Lord, I draw near, the sick to the Healer, the hungering and thirsting to the Fountain of Life, the poverty-stricken to the King of Heaven, the desolate to my own gentle Comforter. Who am I that Thou shouldst offer me Thy- self? How doth a sinner dare to appear before Thee?" (IV-II.) This is individual experience, yet the monastic indi- vidual was potentially every man. Social rank made no difference, the individual was received on his merit as a possible child of God.^ But this sonship to God meant for monasticism, renunciation of the world with its earthly delights, and all the things of time in order to live, as far as might be, the eternal life here and how ; that is, by means of monastic disciplines and the principle of '^Quies," the monk hoped to attain to the ^'Visio divinse essentiae/' The Time World. — To live in the eternal and permanent, is to be above the time world with its questionings, cares, and pettinesses; its personal jeal- ousies, rivalries and quarrelings. It means to live no more ^'a life of shreds and patches" but to live in ^ See Henry S. Nash, "The Genesis of the Social Conscience." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 229 ^'a divine unity." But, on the other hand, will seems to be the essence of life and certainly of morality; and how is it possible to completely break with it, as the Buddhist, for example, counsels? A double protest therefore is raised against the '^ eternal'^ attitude, a pro- test from morality and from an ethical religion ; (1st) be- cause, in making time unreal as Buddhism does, and as Christian monasticism and mysticism tend to do, it takes away all meaning from our actual life, and after all, it is in the midst of this everyday life that most men must live. To find eternal life is to lose life itself. It is not only to make concrete existence meaningless, but the eternal goal an emptiness and a void. The Nirvana experience which has broken away from the time world into the ^'sorrowless state" of a timeless world vanishes at last at the limit of the trances into a realm of uncon- sciousness and of nothingness, or at least of the inexpres- sible and incommunicable of sheer emotion, and is not this outcome true in the final analysis of all mysticism? (2d) It is to overthrow morality with its endless striv- ing for perfection. The goal of an ethical religion is the goal of a temporal process, a process which is a ^' pro- gression" or series of steps, in which no act is exactly repeated, in which no recurrence takes place. But an "eternal Now" would be the death of such a process. The perfect carrying out of the principle of "Quies" of Christian monasticism, i.e. of withdrawal from the world to meditate upon the eternal, until the individual selfhood is lost, engulfed in the infinite, would make of eternal life a dream vain and ineffectual in relation to concrete life. Already we have seen in our study of the motive of flight from the world that this life of with- drawal in so far as it does appear in the life of the world, inclines to intellectual bigotry, to egotism and the disregard of social obligations, and to persecutions and inquisitions for the glory of God. Monasticism never completely carried out the princi- 230 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE pie of ''Quies.'' Even the Buddhistic monks, whose goal, as far as external conditions were concerned, was the life of the forest (see p. 105), must, as enjoined by their master, teach their gospel to the people. And the Nirvana-state of ''blissful nothingness" itself could only be attained by means of the disciplines of the ten perfections and by the long series of trances, — them- selves temporal processes, — and not even then could Nirvana be reached unless we identify Nirvana with an enlightened state of mind, for Nirvana is still the limit to the series, it is still the ever-beyond. The aim of monasticism in the West seems always to have differed somewhat from that of Oriental monasti- cism. The Benedictine monks believed in the gospel of work. If the imagination loves to dwell on the mediaeval monk in solitary prayer in his cell, if it delights to picture him illuminating a missal in the great library of some old-world monastery, surrounded by ancient treasures in leather-bound volumes, and with frescoes of sacred scenes or portraits of the saints upon the walls; if we love to think of him at work amongst his flowers in the monas- tery garden, or walking with a chosen companion in the cloisters overlooking some wonderful scene of nature, while the two perhaps discuss together some high theme ; still we must not forget that monasticism had its social side, its organization and its rules, and that the monk, too, went down into the struggle of the world and took part in its conflicts and its active needs. Fleeing from the world, the monks sought to build up an ideal com- munity of the type of the apostolic community, in a world of its own, ix. in the monastery life. But this new social ideal soon involved the monk in the actual, temporal world of everyday people. The Benedictine monks, at least, were both unconsciously and con- sciously active promoters of civilization. In the history of Christian monasticism, we read how the Benedictines cultivated the soil, drained the marshes, cleared the THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 231 forest. They kept learning alive in a barbarian age, promoted industrial and aesthetic arts. They gave to the world an example of a consecrated life and an orderly government. Consciously they were the teachers of the people and the upholders of social morality. They were devoted to works of charity and reform. The monastery far away in the hills became a shelter for the wayfarer, a hospital for the sick, a refuge for the needy, the dis- tributor of alms for the poor. The monk, going about among the humble and poor of the neighborhood, healing the sick, giving counsel, teaching all the arts from ag- riculture to music, was at that time perhaps the chief upholder and promoter of civilization, — i.e. he was the preserver and promoter of the practical, moral life ; in a word, of the life in a concrete, a time world. The principles even of mysticism and of quietism seem to have been compatible with much practical activity, as is shown by the preaching of the German mystics, Tauler and Suso ; and this is seen again in the founding of orders, as by St. Dominic, St. Francis, and St. Teresa, and also in their philanthropic labors. The monastic communities themselves were social organisms, with their governing rules, disciplines, divisions of labor and of command, regular tasks, fixed times, etc. The governing principle, to be sure, of this organism, was the principle of ^^Quies" already referred to. Finally, of course, in the great social organization of the mediaeval Catholic church, the ideal of the early monas- tics and of the reformers such as St. Dominic and St. Francis, — the ideal of the direct relation of the individ- ual soul to the divine soul, — was almost lost sight of in the pomp, luxury, and worldliness of a temporal world- power. Yet by means of the social structure of monas- ticism the spiritual ideal was kept alive and held up as a possibility for every man ; and although its ideal — of a consecrated life — could be perfectly carried out only in the monastery and by means of ascetic disciphnes, 232 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE yet in spite of themselves the monastic orders were brought into relations with the temporal, social life of the outside world which they helped to humanize and spiritualize. Our age seeks to return to the Greek view of life. It seeks to find the summum honum in the temperal world, and in some purely natural good, — in the completest development of natural human powers. Moreover, our age is strenuous. For it there is no life "beside still waters, '' no life of meditation and prayer. It is absorbed in present-day activities, and to the values of a world be- yond the social morality which is actually realizable, here and now it pays Uttle heed. To seek to save one^s own soul for another world, as monasticism did, that is selfish and unjustifiable. To work for men, in the every day life, to improve social conditions and increase opportuni- ties, this is a better, a truer aim. For instance, to take an example of the highest expression of this aim: " To set up ideals of perfection which are other than the serious recognition of the possibiUties resident in each concrete situation is in the end to pay ourselves with sentimentalities, if not with words, and meanwhile it is to direct thought and energy away from the situa- tions which need and which welcome the perfecting care of attention and affection." * Nevertheless because we have lost our vision of a " be- yond world," and our sense of the reality of the fife of the spirit, we seem to be drifting rudderless on the sea of life. In bewilderment we see all about us ideals and standards of action which we once believed to be as fundamental and as enduring as anything could be, changing and col- lapsing under the searching criticism of the new age. In- toxicated with its brilliant scientific discoveries and in- ventions and with the future possibilities in this respect which beckon to it along the far horizon; self-compla- cent in its great materiaKstic, industrial development » Dewey and Tufts, "Ethics," p. 422. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 233 which it too often takes for progress; and over self-con- scious in its demand for social reform, opportunity and education for all men, our age heeds not the warning voices of its moralists and preachers who upbraid it for forsaking spiritual issues, and spiritual goals. For the spirit of a ^^ new paganism '^ is abroad, and one cannot tell whither it will lead. If we do not harken to these prophetic voices and take up arms against the peril of this new paganism, it may be that in our recklessness we shall at last find ourselves swept by winds and currents of skepticism and pessimism, by an overwhelming sense of the relativity of all values and the illusoriness of all those undertakings over which we have been so eager, far out into the sea of disenchantment and despair; or our age will turn doubting and disillusioned — as so many ages have done before it^ — to that recurrent state of mediaeval mysticism, or else to a " new " mysticism. We cannot find peace however in a purely temporal order or a merely natural development or goal. On the other hand the experience of the past seems to show that the flight to the emotionalism and passivity of pure mysticism is unavaiUng. We shall not find life's goal and significance there ; and the new form of mysticism is a kind of scientific mysticism for which reality is also at bottom naturalistic, — a mysticism which, in trying to give a scientific basis for its existence, becomes a non- spiritual mysticism. It worships the blind forces of life even when it calls them by the name of God. To be sure, it extols reason and himian ideals of justice and mercy. But these are for it, man-made and finite ideals, even if ideals as yet unrealized in the social order. These ideals seem like some wandering meteor, from an unknown and alien realm, which has chanced to visit our earth ; or like some exotic plant leading a perilous existence in a strange environment ; whether they will be able to triumph and en- dure in a non-spiritual world we cannot tell. This is a kind 1 See Chapter I. 234 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE of mysticism, so it seems to me, which one finds poetically blended with the empiricism of George Santayana, and of the same type is the mysticism of Maurice Maeterlinck. The half -gods, to be sure, have gone ; but the true gods tarry. Already we have seen how religion has sought through flight to live the eternal life apart from the world. But there is a danger in thus lifting life out of time that the religious consciousness will become indifferent to actual, human experience. For the majority of men, monasticism is an impos- sibiUty. They demand that life shall be active and prac- tical. Hence we find the tendency either to separate the life of religion from the everyday life of the workshop and the street, or else to identify religion with morality and to abandon entirely the more specifically religious attitude. Have not mediaeval Christianity and the vari- ous Christian sects of the present day failed in most respects to carry out Christ^s gospel of the Kingdom of God on earth ?^ For let us look for a moment at the actual life of Christian communities. The ''ruth- less wiir' seeks to get for itself what it can out of life regardless of the rights and welfare of the neighbor. We have only to consider the lives, without oppor- tunity and without joy, of the children who work in mines and factories, in whose young lives the most valuable creative impulses are crushed out with the destruction of their vitality; of the monotonous toil in dangerous occupations of thousands of adults ; of the horror of overcrowded, unsanitary tenements ; of the de- velopment of vice and crime in innocent youth through amusements carried on for individual gain. The immense fortunes made in a brief time in the United States in the latter part of the nineteenth century are one witness to the fact that man is serving mammon and not God.^ ^ The present " great war" is surely another witness to failure. * See the story of the rapid development of New York City and the immense fortunes made there unscrupulously in **Book of Daniel Drew," already cited. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 235 Only now are the American people beginning to awaken to the crying need for social regeneration. We cannot, however, return to the past, and, here in America, this means we cannot return to the days of the Pilgrim Fathers whose high ideals we rightly honor. For, as has been said, *' plainly, it is a new age.'' ^ The literature of our day, when vital, throbs with a new significance, a new passion. The modern atti- tude as we have said is changed from that of the past. The immigrants from the old world who throng to our shores have brought to us a new type of char- acter and another point of view.^ The spiritual ideals of the past which we cherish must be adapted to a new people and a new civilization. '^We need,'' as President Wilson has said, ^^a new point of view, a new method and spirit of counsel." But as we rise to this insight and our conscience responds to its appeal, and some at least among us, our leaders, accepting the challenge of the new spirit, devote themselves to the task of the reconstruction of the economic social life of the community, another danger threatens, the danger that the rehgious consciousness — that consciousness which is Ufted to God in worship and prayer — will disappear, through being merged in the purely social consciousness, and that the human race and the social whole of the actual present will take the place of the ''Eternal" — the God of our fathers. I think we find this attitude exemplified in very many of the books on religion which have appeared since the opening of the present century.^ Yet in our study of the mystical and Buddhistic 1 President Wilson in his letter of acceptance of the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. 2 See, on this point, the writings of Jane Addams. ' For example, in the books of Professors Ames and Patton and Carver, already cited. 236 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE consciousness, we saw that religious experience does seem to rise out of time. It is able to abandon the longing, striving will, and to find peace in the vision of God, and in contemplation, which pays little heed to the temporal world with its passing events and chang- ing fortunes. It views the world suh specie oeternitatis. The eternal point of view, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is a totum simul. For God takes no account of the passing show of time. God's plan is fulfilled and every temporal event and every finite will has its unique place or significance in the meaning of the universe as a whole. Can man, the finite, rise to this point of view, and if so, once more, what becomes of this our concrete temporal fife? There are, I think, in man's life moments which may properly be called '^timeless'' moments. The playing child, absorbed in carrjdng out his ''dream of human life," what has he to do with time? The boy, who spends a June day wandering over hills and pastures in search of adventure, is surprised when he finds on his return home that dinner was over long ago. What did Stevenson's ''Lantern Bearers" know of the passing hours, I wonder! Men and women, too, have sometimes their hours of creative playing. In the intense appreciation of art in its various forms, the element of time seems not to enter. And even more must this be true for the creative artist himself, or for the joyful discoverer of new truth, who, as he works over his problem, as one who watches the coming of the dawn, begins to get glimpses of the solution. It is true, too, of the care-free hours of conversation when at its best — ("a series of intoxications," Emerson calls it) — and also of happy companionship. Again and again the poets ^ have shown us that the ecstatic moments of the true lover of nature are timeless. Especially, as we have 1 See, e.g.y Wordsworth, the lines beginmng, ** Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 237 seen in our discussions, does it appear to be true of the rapturous moments of religious contemplation which the mystic knows. To a Thomas a Kempis, living the life of the cloister, while he meditates on the meaning of the Cross of Christ, and becomes absorbed in the ecstatic vision of the Eternal, the outside world and the passing of the moments of the time-stream are as if they were not. There are, then, '^ timeless moments" in the life of finite man. In these moments our purposes are, rela- tively speaking, fulfilled. But these are either the ab- sorbed, or the appreciative, or the aesthetically creative moments of our lives. They are not its practical, its ethically active moments. Nor, when we speak specifi- cally of the religious problem in relation to time, do such mystical moments represent the whole of the religious consciousness. For religious experience as a whole, " Time like a pane of many-colored glass Stains the white radiance of eternity." For man, because of his essential ideality, the beyond re- mains and the world is in time. Summary The restless fleeting moments of our concrete experience pass in vivid contrast-effect with the absolute and un- changing ideals which the religious experience demands. Religion, therefore, has turned away from time and the mutability of our actual fife, to meditate upon eternal hfe; to dwell with God, in communion and prayer, and thereby to attain peace and enUghtenment, or to lose itself in ecstasy. But from the point of view of the active, concrete ex- perience, and of social morality, life has meaning and value just because it is temporal. The life in time, with its infinite variety, its vitality and its dramatic quality, is contrasted with the emptiness of Nirvana and a Heaven 238 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE of unending bliss, which appears stagnation. Logically, unity without difference reduces to nothingness. Con- cretely, a finished and perfect world means monotony, stagnation, and weariness of spirit. It means the end of morality and of progress. Hence the tendency of our own day and generation to prize change, to pursue variety and novelty as ends in themselves, to find the crown and goal of existence in the concrete moment as it flies. The nineteenth century was very proud of its achieve- ments, which it termed progress. No doubt there has been a gain in freedom of action, in wealth and variety of experience and in a better adjustment to the environment, physical and social. But already the twentieth century is beginning to scorn the ideas and sentiments of the nine- teenth which, in English-speaking countries, it names somewhat derisively early, mid and late Victorian. The twentieth century appears to stand for social ideals — and it has a great task before it on social lines. Yet one is not sure how far these ideals are truly spirit- ual, how far, that is, the new century has really ad- vanced beyond its predecessor. The attitude described above is a perilous one and sure at last to fail. Then the alternative to pessimism and despair is, as we have already noted, likely to be some form of mysticism. Yet, as we have said many times, religious experience is not pure mysticism. It is active, ethical, social, and consequently, it is temporal. The eternal, therefore, needs the temporal. From this position we seem un- able to escape. For what ethical value can there be in a life which ignores all the anguish and misery of this our human world, and abandons it to fate in order to dream its dream of eternity and heaven? Because the mutability of the time stream of actual life seems to reduce life to meaninglessness, the reli- gious spirit flees away from the perishable and tem- poral to rest in the eternal. Yet if the ^'unchanging" and eternal is all, we are driven logically to the con- THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 239 elusion that there is no change, no progress, no history, no moral efficiency, nothing dramatic in existence, no meaning or value in the universe. But if once more we introduce the temporal, we are involved in an unending process; all is incompleteness and the whole is not the whole. There is no assurance that our ideals have any foundation in fact or that ^'the besf is also the ''real'' and the "true.'' Progress seems to be merely a rhythm of ebb and flow, like the rise and fall of the tides of the ocean, an eternal recurrence, rather than evolution towards a goal of spiritual value. As in the case of the opposi- tion between the mystical and the ethical religious experi- ence, neither form alone is satisfactory ; yet if we seek to combine them we appear to be involved in a contradic- tion. For how can we unite that which is eternal, unchanging, at rest, satisfied, complete and perfect, with that which is a striving, an unceasing change, a dissatis- faction, incompleteness and imperfection? It is the same problem, in another form, which we en- countered in our discussion of the opposition between ''grace" and "merit," "freedom" and "necessity." In that discussion, we found that if man is saved by grace, then there is apparently no merit or moral quality in man's activity ; or, if his freedom is finally reduced to uniqueness, — that is, identity between his will and the will of God in him, — then, since uniqueness of the individual will logically has its basis in its relation to the universal will, — the world as a whole seems static, changeless, and as a con- sequence to be without novelty, creative activity, or progress. In that discussion we looked forward to the consideration of the opposition of the eternal and the temporal for further light. In so far, however, as we view • our immersion in the time stream as something fatal, these difficulties seem only increased. It has been said, however, that time is the form of the will, and it seems necessary to consider more fully what this implies and means. 240 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE According to William James's account,^ we have an immediate intuition of time, i.e. a qualitative experience of the '^ specious present/' so-called, which is no mere point or '^glow-worm spark of consciousness" but is itself a duration, a perception of sequence, i.e, of elements fading out of consciousness and of elements coming into consciousness and of the change between them. This irreducible experience is 'Hhe paragon and prototype of all conceived times." Quantitative time — the time of our clocks and calen- dars, is not this time of our immediate experience ; it is conventionalized time. Conventional time is artificially divided, for purposes of practical and scientific conven- ience, into equal intervals. It is a transformation of our real experience. The material or phenomenal world ex- ists in quantitative time because the concept of matter also implies a transformation of our direct sense experi- ence into terms of science. But time in its final meaning is neither an immediate datum of experience, nor yet a scientific ^^ construct." Time — the unending series of "befores and afters" with the '^between" link of the vanishing present, — an instant which ever flies and as we speak of it is no more — this time stream is in ultimate meaning a teleological series, a series determined by our will activity and our purposes.^ Reflection upon the swiftly flying moments of himian experience gave, as we saw, to the religious conscious- ness a sense of the fateful irreversibility of time, and a further sense of unreality and lack of meaning to the temporal life. Hence religion sought eternity. For like the life of the moth which flutters for a brief hour in the sunshine, seemed the life of man in its emptiness and meaninglessness on the one hand; and on the other 1 Waiiam James, ^'Principles of Psychology," Vol. I, Chap. XV. 2 For this whole discussion, see Professor Royce's interpretation of time in "World and Individual," Vol. II, Chap. Ill, and Hihbert Journal, July, 1907. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 241 hand, the irrevocableness of the moments when gone, gave a sense of a bUndunpersonal fate in the universe which brings to the heart such poignant anguish as escapes in the poet's cry : — " O death in life, the days that are no more ! " And, as for the future, it remains a "golden dream which may never be fulfilled. But from this deeper aspect of the temporal, the dis- tinctions of past, present, and future of the time stream are the necessary distinctions of the purposeful will. For the deeds of this same past are the stepping-stones or basis of future deeds. So in a sense it is true we forge our own past, and the past lives on in the present. The present is the opportunity for action; the future that temporal field to which our present purposes and deeds reach out, and in which they seek their fulfilment, and so long as there are valuable purposes of the universe unfulfilled, so long will the future endure. Hence we speak of the imending stream of time. The distinction of past, present, and future, and the irrevocability of the temporal are finally due to a will which demands that each one of its acts shall be unique, hence acts which necessarily appear in a temporal process and which are non-recurrent. This practical will is a purposeful will, which seeks to embody its ideal in a temporal series of unique acts, and for such a will, seeking perfection, the goal is un- attainable, i.e. there is always another step to take, another task to be accomplished, another duty to be done, another goal to be won, another obligation to be met. The ideal therefore is ever beyond. But this, we saw at the outset, is the very essence of religious experience, and in the light of this truth the present state is necessarily one of dis- satisfaction. This fact, also, we found in our study of the universal elements of religious experience. For an ethical rehgious consciousness — because perfection is 242 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE yet to be won — demands an infinite series of new and unique deeds, i.e. logically, a progression of terms, ^'an open series," as it is called ; metaphysically, it is a teleo- logical process. Time, chance, and change — these are among the most tragic facts of our existence, not only because we cannot keep the beloved past in its immediacy, but even more, perhaps, because in a sense we must keep it, because of the unique and irrevocable nature of our deeds. I am not one of those to counsel one to try to get away from the past by ignoring and forgetting it, yet it is not well to dwell upon it in such an exclusive way as tends to morbidness and sentimentality. We have to remember that whatsoever be our sorrow, there is still the life of the world which may need us and such gifts of healing and service as we perchance can bring. We should live so deeply in our past experience as to learn from it what we may — to learn to overcome our own longing by a trans- formation of it into such new values as are possible only on the basis of the past experience itself. So we may be as " one new-born." ^ Yet to attain to this state of wis- dom, spirituality, and charity is, we must admit, "to go through death to reach one's immortality." The Opposition between the Temporal and the Eternal. — The solution of the opposition between the temporal and the eternal seems to be somewhat as follows : 1st. We must change our notion of the meaning of time, i.e. we must discover its ultimate and essential meaning. Time is not a fatal series of happenings. It is a teleological process whose distinctions of past, present, and future are dependent on a will ever seeking after an ideal good, hence seeking for itself more self-expression, i.e. seeking a series of novel and unique deeds. For this reason, it is quite true, as the ancient philosopher of Greece said of the temporal : — *' You cannot step twice into the same stream." 1 "In seternam renatus." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 243 2d. It is clear that it is not altogether the individual finite will on which the time-stream depends. While the time order is not fatal, for it expresses the purposes, i.e. is the concrete embodiment of the striving will, yet it is the expression of no whim or personal caprice of mine, i.e. of any finite individual as his will exists at any actual pass- ing moment. For in our lives are happenings which we do not will, which seem to us irrational, which stifle our dearest desires, and put out the light of our brightest hopes. The time-stream as a whole expresses a Univer- sal Will — a will, however, to which our finite wills in their deepest desires really belong, and to which they may become consciously united. " Our wills are ours, we know not how Our wills are ours to make them Thine " Thus time is another instance of the interdependence of the individual and the universal, of the part and the whole. On the basis of our own experience, it seems legitimate to generalize and to interpret the whole temporal process as the process of a universal, creative will which incar- nates itself in individual finite wills. Yet those wills, in so far as they are merely natural and unconscious pro- cesses, are not truly embodiments of the Divine Will. For it is the obligation of these finite wills to consciously carry out the meaning of the universal will in a series of unique deeds. In this accord of the finite and particular with the infinite and universal exists at once the duty and the essential freedom of the finite wills. It gives a glimpse, also, into the union of the eternal and the tem- poral. Such a duty on the part of the finite must imply some insight into the will of God : it implies, i.e., a " visio deiJ^ Yet such an insight for the finite being is necessarily frag- mentary : he cannot grasp the time-process as a whole ; hence there are many temporal elements whose meaning 244 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE he is not able to interpret ; he does not see their place in the whole process. Taken by themselves, they may even appear to him irrational and evil. Further, this insight into the significance of the universal will is a growing insight — an insight ^Vhich grows with the individual's experience in so far as he at each step is loyal to bis own highest ideal.'' In such devotion and self-consecration the finite is truly in touch with the infinite. The tem- poral and eternal are harmonized and united when man lives his concrete daily life as in the presence of God. The prophet and religious reformer dreams his dream of ideal perfection and beatitude. He sees his vision of God and of a new world. Then he comes down from the Mount of Vision to embody the vision in a plan of individual and social reform. All this we have seen in our study of concrete religious experience. The great group of Prophets of Israel are a notable instance of it. Jesus and Paul, Buddha, Zoroaster, St. Francis, Luther, Savon- arola, and St. Theresa are other instances. ^^ Where there is no vision the people perish." But this process is no mere rhythm or alternation of vision and acting. No, the deeply religious man lives as in the con- tinual and persistent light of the eternal ideal; that is, in the constant presence of God. It has become the habit of his life. It requires no great crises for its actualization. It shines in his countenance and is partially expressed in his every attitude and in his least deed. The life in time is a striving after an ideal good ; the essence of will is therefore its ideality. The essence of religion is its relation to a beyond-world, of which it be- holds the eternal vision, but not the concrete reality. The aim of the religious consciousness, therefore, is the over- coming of its present dissatisfaction ; but this is a never- completed task. It is, i.e., a temporal process; yet in every unique temporal deed the eternal is present, and in some measure expressed. If the goal of the religious consciousness were an Arabian paradise of mere sensuous THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 245 enjoyment, as the dog enjoys lying in the sunshine ; or of pure emotion, then there would be no temporal process concerned. But if we admit the will activity, we forth- with admit, in the religious consciousness, both elements of time and elements of dissatisfaction. Our study of the concrete religious consciousness has shown that the reli- gious consciousness has not reached perfection morally, or aesthetically even. If, on the other hand, however, we do not admit the will and its temporal activity, we forthwith banish purpose and significance from finite life. Yet the religious consciousness knows the eternal moment. The experience of the eternal life of the religious conscious- ness implies that it is, then, a type of consciousness which unifies the temporaL It is, i.e., a consciousness which grasps the process, so far as its significance is concerned, as one whole. The Eternal needs the temporal. While this is fairly clear in relation to those essentially ethical types of re- ligions like the religion of Israel and Zoroastrianism, it is in reality no less true of the more mystical religious ex- perience. This fact our study of concrete religious ex- perience has, I think, clearly shown. The oneness with the divine which is the goal of Orphism is dependent on ascetic disciplines of purity and self-control, on the one hand, and on practices which lead to states of ecstasy, on the other. The Nirvana of Buddhism depends on a way of approach. If defined as pure peace, nothingness, un- consciousness, it is reached by means only of the series of trances and by the path of purity or way of salvation. If defined as a state of enlightenment, self-renunciation and self-control, it is attained only through the practices of overcoming of the mutability and insatiability of the will. The heaven of the Christian mystic requires the temporal for its realization as well as for its description. The New Jerusalem of the Christian mystics is defined only by means of its contrast with temporal dissatis- factions or through the overcoming of these: — 246 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more, . . . And God himself shall be with his people and be their God ; and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain, any more. The first things are passed away. . . . "And the leaves of the tree of life shall be for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no curse any more : . . . and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be thereon: and his servants shall do him service; and they shall see his face. . . . And there shall be night no more. And they need no light of lamp, neither light of sim, for the Lord shall give them light. . . ." ^ "Hie breve vivitur, hie breve plangitur, hie breve fletur; Non breve vivere, non breve plangere retribueter ; O retributio ! stat brevis actio, vita perennis ; O retributio ! coelica mansio stat lue plenis ; **Nunc tribulatio; tunc recreatio, sceptra, coronae; Time nova gloria pectora sobria clarificabit, Solvet enigmata, veraque sabbata continuabit "Patria splendida, tarraque florida, libera spinis, Danda fidelibus, est ibi civibus, hie peregrinis. " Pax sine crimine, pax sine turbine, pax sine rixa, Meta laboribus, atque tumultibus anchora fixa." ' As a final summing up of this whole discussion, we may- say that the eternal peace and beatitude which religion seeks, and which the religious consciousness finds, is absolutely dependent on a way of life in a temporal world. And this is equally true whether the religious experience in question is individual or social. For instance, the Zion to be, which was the ideal of the religious conscious- ness of the Hebrew prophets, was a social experience. "The wilderness and solitary place shall be glad and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. . . . They shall see the glory of the Lord, the excellency of our God. . . . Say to them that are 1 "Revelation of St. John," Chaps. 21, 22. 2 From Hymn "Hora Novissima" of Bernard de Morlas, monk of Cluni. Translated Hymn, "Celestial Country," by Dr. J. M. Neale. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 247 of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not. . . . Behold your God will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man run as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing, for in the wilder- ness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. ... And an high way shall he there, and a way, and it shall he called the way of holi- ness . . . and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shnll be upon their heads: they shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." ^ Thus does the poetic imagination body forth the ideal of the religious consciousness ; thus does it make manifest through the symbolism of poetry the union of religion's eternal and temporal forms. 1 Isaiah 35 "Let us be like a bird a moment lighted Upon the twig that swings. He feels it sway, but sings on unaffrighted, Knowing he hath his wings." — Victor Hugo. "This is my prayer to thee, my lord — strike, strike at the root of pining in my heart. Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows. Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might. Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love." — Rabindranath Tagore. CHAPTER V {Continued) The Way of Life — Its Forms Part II. The Static and Dynamic In the last section we considered the opposition between the temporal and the eternal as determining a form of the rehgious consciousness. We saw that the statement : The world is in time — reduces to this : Time is a form of the will because of the will's ideality and its practical activity. We saw that the fact of the temporal aspect of the religious consciousness, as of the world, does not exclude the fact that this consciousness is also an eternal consciousness, or that the universe as an whole is eternal. From the consideration of the temporal-eternal form we readily pass over to other forms in which the paradox of the religious consciousness expresses itself; namely, first the form which we may call the static-dynamic form and, secondly the one-many form. Shelley has suggested the interrelatedness of these various forms in his lines : — "The many change; the one remains." Let us consider first the form whose antithesis we have expressed in the terms much in use at present — viz. the '' static-dynamic' ' As we begin to consider this form, its relation to the temporal-eternal form which we have just analyzed at once appears. For correlative with the pervasiveness of the time consciousness is the fact of change: ''All things move.'' ''You cannot step twice into the same stream." Or again, we have said — time is a form of the will, but it is the character of the will to 249 250 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE be restless, mutable, dynamic like the changing moment of the time-stream itself, and whether we will it or not, the facts of experience point to the conclusion that we live in a changing world. Not only is the sensational life, as one might expect, in a constant state of flux, but in the inner psychic life as well there is the change of mood and purpose, the passing of memory, interest, and desire ; yes, even there in the citadel of the spirit — even the very ^' self ^' of man (as we shall see more fully in the next sec- tion) is a restless, changing, fluctuating thing; while the external events of our conscious life, as an whole, unroll themselves and pass before our eyes like the pictures of a cinematograph. Let one, for example, read over a bundle of old letters covering from ten to twenty years of his own life and note the changes which they reveal. And what is true of the individual story appears again in the pages of history. Where are now the noble names of history? What has become of "The glory that was Greece! The grandeur that was Rome ! " Or, let one observe the transformations which take place, in comparatively few years, in one of the modern cities of our western world. Let him note the change in the character of the population and in the type of buildings, in a given section of such a city. We are driven, in- evitably, to one conclusion — we live in a world of change, of movement; in a restless, dynamic, dramatic kind of world. The religious consciousness, however, has always emphasized the notion of permanence and stability, the unchanging and everlasting aspect of the religious life; and it has often made reply to the dynamic view of the world that all change is but appearance; reality as an whole is permanent and static, and though the will itself be restless, yet the goal of the will is perfection, peace, completion, a consciousness for which no change, no ''other" can exist, which is, therefore, static. It is the THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 251 one beyond the many, the quiet beyond all restlessness, " the eternal sea of being " which as the mystics say is one and unchanging for all the ebb and flow of the tides, the coming and going of ocean currents, the restless play of the billows. God, the highest concept of religion, is described as the Perfect and Absolute, the One with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning ; and the universe itself is held to be complete. "The heavens shall wax old as a garment, As a vesture shalt thou change them and they shall be changed. But thou art the same and thy days shall know no end." (Psalm 102.) "Whither shall I go from thy spirit Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there ! " (Psalm 139.) Or, again : — "Our hearts are restless till they find rest in thee." " St. Augustine's Confessions." Thus the religious consciousness has ever sought for itself peace, rest, and security in contemplation and beatific vision far away from the world of change and the transitoriness of the finite. It is true, as St. Gregory says : ^'Life is a smile that flutters on our lips, a shadow, an appearance, a dew-drop, a breath, a dream, a torrent which flows away." Yet this very instability of human beings, thanks to the blessed vision of God, is in the perfection of his decrees, for by it we are compelled to seek after solid and unchangeable good." To the religious consciousness, then, change is either an evil which belongs to Maia — to the world of mere appearance and unreality; or change which appears as genuine change is in reality simply eternal recurrence. What has been will be again. It is the same old story endlessly repeated, hence without significance or value. The finite, temporal world is an evil, therefore, which 252 THE DRAMA OP THE SPIRITUAL LIFE the religious consciousness must either ignore, or over- come by renouncing it. It is true that man is frail, temporal, and finite, that the generations pass and are no more seen. Yet in relation to the unchanging, the One, the Eternal, all mutability is, after all, but appear- ance. The Real, above all change, may be sought, and if rightly sought will surely be found. This, as we have already seen, is the attitude of Brahminism, of Buddhism, and also of Christian monasticism. And yet, equally true it is that the religious conscious- ness itself is active, dynamic, changing. We note this in the impulse, often fanatical, to make converts which is found in most religions, notably, in mediaeval days, in Mohammedanism. This dynamic spirit appears in Christianity. It is found in the spirit of romance and adventure in the Crusades ; in the missionary movement of modern Christian sects, and in religious reformers of all ages. It is exemplified in the fighting spirit of those religions, like Zoroastrianism, which emphasize the dualism of the universe (good and evil principles) ; and in intensely ethical religions like the religion of the Hebrew Prophets. As it appears, the impulse to change in the religious consciousness seems, indeed, a form of an universal human tendency which we might call, possibly, in one of its phases at least, the nurturing tendency — the tendency to make grow or redeem ; and, as a means to this end, the im- pulse to bestow upon others the good we ourselves possess. We note this tendency in the animal world as well as in the human race. It reaches the acme in those persons, found in most historical religions, e.g. Horus, Buddha, Mithra, Jesus, who are acknowledged as the heroes, benefactors, redeemers, and saviours of their people. The dynamic element, again, is clearly to be seen in the tendency to change of religious opinions and of reli- gious institutions. To be sure, there is an equally strong tendency for these outer forms of religion to become fixed THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 253 and static. We have already studied these tendencies of the religious consciousness in the opposition between the inner and the outer religious life. We saw that while a conservative religion cherishes the institutions and religious symbols of the past and seeks to keep them unchanging, yet to an enhghtened and ethical religious consciousness these outer forms seem too often like ^4dols of the tribe/' mere ^^ ghosts/' or ''half -gods/' which have lost their significance for the moral consciousness of the time. Now what we can logically mean by ''change" or "movement/' it may not be as easy to determine as appears to a superficial view of the matter. Yet one thing is clear, for morality and for a religion which seeks to be ethical, change must exist; that is, be a reality. If change is only appearance, then there is no value in moral struggle and effort and man is not really free. All this we considered in the section on Grace and Merit. If change is simply eternal recurrence, then nothing really happens, and there is no novelty, no imiqueness, no significance in our world. "And fear not lest Existence closing your Account, and mine, should know the like no more; The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour. *' When You and I behind the Veil are past, Oh but the long long while the World shall last, Which of our Coming and Departure heeds As the Sev'n Seas should heed a pebble-cast. " A Moment's Halt — a momentary taste Of Being from the Well amid the Waste — And Lo ! — the phantom Caravan has reached The Nothing it set out from — Oh, make haste I" But the moral consciousness demands that the change which it brings at least shall be not repetition or appear- ance, but something genuinely novel and unique. It demands that its world shall be dramatic and dynamic, 254 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE that experience shall be a call to adventure in a world which through human endeavor constantly grows more perfect as it progresses toward the goal, but which will not progress without hiunan effort. For surely, the world as we know it is very evil, abounding in injustices and misery, and if we may by no possibility really alter it, there is ground for an attitude of despair. If reality is static — ^^a block universe" — it may give us a good excuse for taking ^' a moral holiday "; but a static universe destroys the freedom and creativeness of individuals by taking away all value from their efforts and their aims. It leads to an ultimate pessimism and nihilism. This appears to be the real groimd of William James's so strenuous onslaught on Absolute Idealism. The active attitude, devoted to change and growth, is especially characteristic of our time. Even the supreme object of religious consciousness is sometimes defined in terms of change, as a '' growing God" ^ or "God as pro- cess." Individualism is supposed to be a characteristic movement of the present age. Individualism certainly is not necessarily connected with the dynamic, but the individualism of the day is, I think, so associated; for the individualism of our day differs from that which appeared during the latter part of the eighteenth century. The individualism of the age which rediscovered the principle of growth in things — the age of Hamann and Herder — emphasized "uniqueness of quality." In the time of the Romantic movement in Germany, every man was a genius. The Christianity of Jesus taught that man is a child of God. (Matthew 5: 9, 45; Matt. 7: 11.) Christian Monasticism took up this doctrine, and in the monasteries where distinctions of birth were levelled, ap- plied it to every man. Every man, even the sinner, if re- pentant, is a citizen of the Kingdom of God. Again, the political individuaUsm of the American and French Rev- olutions emphasized the unique value of each individual ^ Professor Foster and the Chicago School. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 255 in relation to the State. But in modern individualism we mark a change of note. It is not so much uniqueness of quality as individual efficiency that is emphasized. The words of the day/ as we have remarked before, are Evolu- tion, Growth, Progress, Efficiency. The individual, that is, must prove his uniqueness and worth by accomplishing something. This attitude is really, I think, at the bottom of the present demand for vocational training. The doctrine of efficiency is not necessarily either altruistic or egoistic. The '' activity '' of the present day is, generally speaking, the demand for self-expression, for abundant life and power. It is essentially a strenuous attitude. Its fundamental aim is to do something " big '^ or worth while ; to build a railroad or work a mine, to develop a new country. In the more earnest spirits, it is very often directed towards the amelioration of social and industrial conditions. It aims to effect changes in legis- lation, and in the working principles of government and of economics, finding in these forms of man's environment the ^'causes" of his unhappiness and sin. Modern as this doctrine appears to be when it comes to us with the new names of Pragmatism and Socialism, yet it is in reality no merely modern tendency. The opposition between the static and dynamic has appeared again and again in old-world philosophies and religions. Only, to-day, it comes to us with this new note, i.e. with a social emphasis which is a product of the newly awakened social consciousness seeking to improve its external con- ditions, with the hope that by such means it may bring about a moral regeneration of the world. But especially characteristic of modern life is its restlessness .^ It must be moving — ^'on the go," as the slang phrase has it. In this dynamic universe, then, something is always happening. The world moves; at every instant some- * See Chapter IV (Continued) . 2 Over the door of an automobile factory in Boston, this sign ap- pears : '* The World in motion — true to life." 256 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE thing new appears above the horizon. Swept along in the mad whirl of existence, in the pursuit of novel excite- ments, carried away by every " wind of doctrine," or lost bewildered in a sea of doubt, blind even in its zeal for social reform, so restlessly eager is the life of our day that it finds no occasion for brooding reflection, no time for the deepening of the roots of experience. In consequence there is little profundity to the inner life, no experience of "the warfare of the spirif ; while much of the sense of the mysterious beauty and wonder of life seems to have departed from our midst. Only here and there some lonely and isolated spirit, some artist or poet perhaps, still holds aloft the torch. For it is a man-made universe, and there is nothing which the "will to live" may not accomplish. Already it is working to wholly stamp out disease, poverty, and accident. It is bringing in the old Greek attitude which held to the joy of life, to "living in the whole of social relationships," in the normaUty of the present life without reference to a "beyond world." ^ If the present- day point of view finds more value in the present earthly life than did our fathers, its ideas about God are uncertain and its hope of immortality weak. If we accept this view as final, i.e. of the universe as a whole as a changing process, one thing is clear : for the religious consciousness there is no one supreme Being; or else, the very fact of change itself is the one reality.^ The question may be asked, if there is no supreme, ab- solute Being, have we a right to call the fact of change by the name of growth and development (a "growing God"), as this modern philosophy does? These concepts imply at least direction, and how are we to know, if there is no absolute goal to serve as a standard of measure- ment, that the direction which things actually move in is surely a direction of value? Inferences drawn from 1 See Professor Patten, "Social Basis of Religion.'* 2 "The deepest truth known to me is that this my present truth will change," said Friedrich Sehlegel. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 257 the *' sampling '^ of our past experience, together with the fact of ^' workability" can be our only guides, and these cannot be infallible ones. A world of growth ^ merely , is at best a world of relative values only. Hence the religious consciousness, which demands absolute values, returns once more to the static, the perfect, the absolute for which there is no ''more," no ''beyond," no "other." It turns to a "Nirvana" of incomparable security which is beyond all change and all desire, where there is no more sorrow, no more in- carnations, no death, no temporal existence. It turns to the heavenly Jerusalem of the Apocalypse of John. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away ; and the sea is no more. . . . And death shall be no more ; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying nor pain any more : the first things are passed. "And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever." (Revelation 21 : 1, 4 ; 22 : 5.) The fundamental objection to the static conception, however, it is hard to overcome. This objection is that a static view of the universe takes away reality and ethical significance from finite existence. It seems to leave man without freedom, initiative, or power to work changes in his world. And this his outer, social world as well as the world of his own inner life, seem to him often and often in such desperate need of change. Hence espe- cially, the problem of evil drives one back to the dynamic view, to the "pragmatism" and "meliorism" of James and of the modern humanists and social economists and reformers. "The dynamic" is a popular notion and a much-used term in our day, even while those who use it are not perhaps very clear as to its meaning. Evidently, the concept "dynamic" contains a deeper meaning than that of mere change. It means an energy that is efficient, * I.e. growth as change simply, s 258 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE that genuinely accomplishes something; and further, it is implied that this something is worth while. Our age, as we have already noted, is characterized by rest- lessness and the longing for change.^ As opposed to in- difference and sloth, almost any form of activity seems desirable ; and in every field — in education, in hterature, in religion and philosophy — is the tendency to emphasize the value of activity. For instance, self-activity is the ideal of the new education, and efficiency the ideal in business, in politics, and practical life. Original energy is the ground of reality, in various modern forms of phi- losophy.2 We note it again in the activity for social re- form in religious organizations ; in a demand for a recon- struction of the social world as the main end of religion,^ ix, a building up of the city of God on earth instead of the eternal attitude towards a heavenly city or ^^ beyond world " characteristic of some types of ancient and me- diaeval reUgion. It is sometimes said that the roots of this opposition between the static and the dynamic in religion are to be found in temperament, and especially arise out of the temperamental difference between man and woman. Women, it is said, are conservative and loyal to the old forms of religion, while men are active and grow im- patient of the old, which they seek to change and reform. Modern church congregations, it is held, exemplify this fact, for they are largely made up of women; while in the outer world, men, though greatly absorbed in business activities, are quite as interested as women in social and ethical movements. Professor Starbuck in his ^'Psy- ^ Note the signs of unrest in Europe and Asia and the problems which are disturbing every country there. 2 Reality, as defined by the latest metaphysical doctrine, **is a center from which worlds shoot out. ... It is not a thing, but a continuity of shooting. God, thus defined, has nothing of the ready- made. He is unceasing life, action, freedom." Henri Bergson, "Creative Evolution." » E.g., Professor Patten, ^'The Social Basis of Religion." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 259 chology of Religious Experience/' based on a study of conversion cases, emphasizes the point that in respect to the emotional life, the emotions of men are more con- centrated and acute, those of women more diffused. Hence in an emotional crisis, a man will, so to speak, grasp at any relief in sight as an outlet for the emotions, and when the crisis is past and the emotion has cooled, will go on to new experiences and new aims which have intervened and driven out the old; while, on the other hand, woman could face the inevitable necessity, but uncertainty and change wear out her life and break her heart, for she is loyal to the old, which has seemed to her of supreme value.^ No doubt this difference in attitude is in part a matter of temperament. Since human nature may always be divided into two classes — that of the radical and that of the conservative. And no doubt men and women differ in their emotional attitudes and often fail because of this difference to understand one another — a failure which gives rise to many an heartrending tragedy.^ And no doubt this antithesis between the static and dynamic in religious experience — an experience which after all is the experience of men and women — is in part temperamental. Yet I think the deeper motive, logically speaking, and a more general way of expressing the matter, lies in the distinction between religion and morality; hence we are back at the old problem of our opening 1 Starbuck finds in this fact of the different types of emotion the reason for the difference which his cases seem to show in the Conversion experience of men and women. Professor Starbuck' s •* Psychology of Religious Experience." 2 Nietzsche says somewhere, ** The same emotions are different in their rhythm for man and woman, therefore men and women never cease to misunderstand one another." See for an illustration of this difference of emotional attitude, the sad love story of Mary WoUstonecraft and Imlay. Life of Mary Wollstonecraft in ^'Famous Women Series"; and John Masefield, ^'Daffodil Fields"; Thomas Hardy in "Two on a Tower," and others of his novels. 260 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE chapter, which is, essentially, the problem between religion and morality; or between religion in the par- ticular sense and the ethical type of religion. Now, undoubtedly, religion has its static or cyclic forms. These we have already considered in a preceding chapter (Chapter IV (Continiied) : The Inner and the Outer). The Structural Aspect or Static Forms of Religious Experience. — Such structural forms of religious experience are either objective or subjective. Objective Forms. — I. Under the head of objective, we may group : — (1) The fixed religious habits. (2) The forms of institutional religion which are relatively per- manent, such as creeds and rites, ceremonies of propitiation, etc., which, while they change, no doubt, as to their inner significance, are in external form as old as religion itself. (3) The "church" as the social organization and expression of spiritual solidarity, and as the storehouse of religious ex- perience. (4) The form of the hierarchy which is found in ancient Egypt and in Persia, in Jewish religion and even in Buddhism; and in Roman Catholicism to-day. (6) Permanent types and levels of character, such as the worldly- minded and the saved, saints and ordinary people, the clergy and the laity ; while these classes, again, could be subdivided into individual varieties. (6) Again, universally in religious experience there appears to be (if we omit the active mediating process) a kind of dualistic structure exemplified for instance by the opposition be- tween : — (a) Darkness and Light, a contrast which is emphasized in the Gospel of St. John and in the two principles of Zoroastrianism. (6) Or the antithesis in Greek religion between the under world and the bright Olj^mpian abode of the gods. (c) Or the contrast between " this age " and " the age to come " of Apocryphal writers. (d) Or the antithesis in the teachings of Jesus between the kingdom of this world which is given over to worldly cares and ambitions, and the kingdom of God, whose principles are humility, love, and self-sacrifice. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 261 (e) Or, again, the antithesis between the natural man and the spiritual man of which the Pauline letters and later Christian writers have so much to tell us ; which motive appears again in Christian monasticism and in Christian hymnology. (/) Or, again, in the contrast between the two cities — the city of God and the city of Satan, on which opposition St. Augustine bases his work "Ci vitas Dei." ig) Or, once more, the antithesis between heaven and hell of Protestantism. (h) In Buddhism, we find this dualistic structure in the con- cept of the endless cycle of rebirths in contrast with the state of enlightenment wherein ignorance has been overcome and desire renounced. (i) This dualistic form appears in religious philosophy as the opposition between the one and the many — world of mutability and the world of the one — the permanent; the world of time and of appearance, and the world of eternity and reality. (7) Certain beliefs and myths and the rites and observances based upon them seem fairly universal, and so might be considered to constitute a relatively permanent structure of religious experience. For example, the myth of the death and resurrection of a nature god — following the natural rhythmic process of the death of vegetation in autumn, and its revi- val in spring (noted in Chapter I). This myth appears, according to Frazer, amongst savage people, and is found in the historic religions of Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and in the Mithra cult of Persia. It is also found in its spiritualized form in Christianity. (8) Further, we may note as structural the mystery cults, — the rites of communion and of purification which grew out of the above belief; and finally, prayer, conmiunion and sacrifice in some form seem universal, permanent, and, as we may say, structural elements of religion. Subjective Forms. — II. The static or structural forms of subjective religious experience would fall, on analysis, under those fundamental attitudes which appear in the varieties of religious experience already considered in previous chapters. As I have already considered rather carefully some of the forms which appear in this problem of the static and the dynamic in Chapter IV 262 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE (on the inner and the outer, and on the relation of free- dom and necessity), I propose in this section to consider the problem in another way; that is, in relation to the question of the efficacy of prayer. This, also, is worth doing for its own sake, since in prayer we come upon that which is usually considered the innermost essence of the religious life. Hence if we can determine whether prayer is dynamic or static, we shall have some ground for determining the nature of religious experience as an whole in this regard. II Prayer and its Office Prayer I have just mentioned as one of the cyclic and static forms of religious experience. By this statement, however, it will be objected that one can mean only the rite of prayer, or formal, external prayer, and in such forms we do not discover the essence of prayer. And, further, it will be objected that prayer is not static, for prayer, if it is to be of any value, must be efficacious. Some result, that is, must come to pass through prayer which would not have happened otherwise. But if prayer causes novel changes, then, surely prayer is effective, dynamic, non-static. The Dynamic and Static in Relation to Prayer. — ■ But to the modern mind to make prayer dynamic seems to be to make prayer miraculous, and this is to contradict the dictum of modern science, which attributes all change to purely natural causes. Thus is the problem of the static-dynamic involved in the concept of prayer, — and we are led to ask is there any significant meaning or value for modern life in the experience of prayer. Let us note, in the first place, that a careful study of various types of prayer reveals the same fundamental elements and the same fundamental tendencies and oppositions which we have already met in our consideration of religious experience in general ; namely, the fundamental elements THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 263 of dissatisfaction, a seeking and a satisfaction ; ^ and we find in prayer the two types of the individual and the social experience; and in both these types we find the opposition of the mystical and the practical experience. But further, we find in prayer an element correspond- ing to the magic efficacy of old-world spells and incanta- tions. There are, in general, three types or classes of prayer, and, besides, one intermediate class, as follows : — 1. Magic formulae and incantations. 2. Petitional or pragmatic prayers. 3. Mystical prayer ; that is, prayer as communion. 4. Intermediate class — Divination. Although these groups are distinct, yet in a given prayer and at any historical period, all three types may be represented. Let us turn at once to prayer in the concrete and let us study some of the earliest prayers. When we enter the world of primitive man, the first thing that strikes us is the pervasiveness of magic; of mystic formulae, spells, incantations, and rites of magic. Magic, according to Frazer,^ is a primitive form of science rather than a primitive form of religion, and the powers which man seeks to influence are natural forces. Whether or not we agree with this view, we must admit, I think, that in religion and in prayer something very closely related to magic, with its incantations, spells, and mystic formulae, survives. I shall therefore consider these magic formulae as the first type or class of prayer. The life of savage and primitive peoples, both in its individual and social aspects, is saturated with magic beliefs and practices,^ and some of these still survive * Hindu prayer : "Out of the unreal lead me to the real ; out of darkness lead me to light ; out of death lead me to deathlessness." 2 Frazer's studies in "The Golden Bough." 3 W. W. Skeats, "Malay Magic." 264 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE amongst the peasantry of Europe at the present day. Mary Antin, a Russian Jew, says : — "If my mother had an obstinate toothache that honored house- hold remedies failed to relieve, she went to Droske, the pious woman, who cured by means of flint and steel and a secret prayer pronounced as the sparks flew up. During an epidemic of scarlet fever we pro- tected ourselves by wearing a piece of red woolen tape round the neck. Pepper and salt tied in a corner of the pocket was effective in warding off the evil eye. There were lucky signs, lucky charms, spirits and hobgoblins, a grisly collection gathered by our wandering ancestors from the demonologies of mediaeval Europe." ^ Primitive Magic. — What, then, is this ^^ magic" which seems so universally present in primitive life? Sympathetic or imitative magic ^ appears to be the belief that by means of the proper arts the powers of nature may be influenced in man's behalf. The prin- ciples of this beUef are twofold : The first principle is that '^like produces like" ; and the second that between things that have once been in contact a secret sympathy exists ; hence they continue to act on one another even when separated, and what is done to one will affect in like manner the other. That is, the logical relations involved are the relations of similarity and of contiguity ; the underlying principle, that of invariable order. The spells and incantations which accompany magic rites are in form either positive or negative. They re- quire some positive act, or they enjoin a ^' taboo J' They seek a blessing or a curse. The early prayers of the collection of the Atharva-Veda, — for prayers these hymns really are, — abound in instances of both kinds. With witchcraft rites, such as tying of knots, binding of amulets with healing herbs, or with imitative pro- cesses, the petitioner seeks to gain protection or blessing, or to bring curses and vengeance to sorcerers and demons and to his enemies. The incantations have a constraining power which even the gods must obey. > Mary Antin, "Within the Pale," Atlantic Monthly, Oct., 1911. « Frazer, VThe Golden Bough." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 265 To make the point clear, I give a few illustrations of the two types (positive, for blessing; negative, for curses and vengeance). Class I. Magic Incantations. — The coining of the rain is naturally a very important matter to primitive agricultural peoples, and magic rites for rain-making are amongst the most universal of the examples of imitative magic. As an example, we may cite an illustration from Frazer's collection. In one of the East Indian islands a wizard makes rain by dipping a branch from a certain tree in water and then scattering the water from the bough over the ground. In Papua, if he wants rain, the Papuan appeals to the rainmaker, who puts the right articles in a stream of water, reciting at the same time the appropriate spells. Or, again, if he wants cer- tain products of his garden to flourish, a sorcerer can tell him the proper objects to bury in the garden.^ Similar customs for making rain, for making the wind blow or the sun to shine, seem to be common everywhere amongst primitive peoples, and even at the present day are found ceremonies of this kind in Southeastern Europe. Another familiar illustration is the belief foimd amongst many peoples that to destroy or injure the image of an enemy is to destroy or injure him.^ Sympathetic magic may be combined with imitative. * From the annual report of the Lieutenant-Governor of Papua, quoted by the London Morning Post, 1912. 2 For literary instances, see Theocritus, Idyll II. Biu*mng of Image of Eustacia Vye in Thomas Hardy's ** Return of the Native." Rossetti's "Sister Helen." *** Oh the waxen knave was plump to-day. Sister Helen ; How like dead folk he has dropped away T * Nay now, of the dead what you can say ; Little Brother?' (O Mother, Mary Mother, What of the dead between Hell and Heaven ?) " ***But he has not ceased to cry to-day, Sister Helen, 266 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The fonner depends on the belief of the savage that if he can obtain possession of anything belonging to another person, he has power over that person. The logical prin- ciple here is that of contiguity. Frazer gives an illustration of a combination of the two types of magic in the following Malay charm : "Take parings of nails, hair, eyebrows, etc., of the victim; make them into his likeness with wax from a deserted bees' comb. Scorch the figm-e slowly by holding it over a lamp every night for seven nights, and say : — "*It is not wax that I am scorching. It is the liver, heart, and spleen of so-and-so that I scorch.' After the seventh tune, bum the figure, and your victim will die." The same power attaches to the clothes, weapons, and even to the name of a person. As an instance, an illus- tration from Frazer which also contains the two types of magic. In Burma a rejected lover sometimes gets a sorcerer to make an image of the scornful maiden, con- taining a piece of her clothes or something worn by her. Certain charms or medicines are also used in the com- position of the image, which is then hung up or thrown into the water ; and as a result the girl is supposed to go mad. The Magic of the Name. — In primitive rengions, frequently, magic power is supposed to be bound up with the name. The baptismal name may not be men- tioned even by near relatives, lest it should be overheard by evil spirits, or by an enemy, who would then have power over the person. For example, in ancient Egypt, to obtain the name of the god was to transfer his power to the possessor ; to obtain the name of a human being, / That you should take your curse away.' * My prayer was heard — he need but pray, Little Brother!' (O Mother, Mary Mother, Shall not God hear between Hell and Heaven?)" THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 267 to make him a slave. Amongst the Romans, too, the name of the guardian god of Rome was kept a profound secret from Romans enemies, since there was magic in the name. Various illustrations follow. FROM "THE HYMNS OF THE ATHARVA-VEDA " Illustration of an incantation for release from evils and for welfare : — "From perdition, from imprecation of the sisters, from hatred do I release thee, from Varuna's fetter ; free from guilt I make thee by my incantation ; be heaven and earth both propitious to thee." (Atharva-Veda.) With an oblation for confluence of wealth : — "1. Together, together let the rivers flow; together the winds; to- gether the birds ; this my sacrifice let them enjoy of old ; I offer with a confluent oblation." "4. What fountains of butter flow together, and of milk and of water; with all those confluences we make riches flow together for me." For increase of barley : — "1. Rise up, become abundant with thine own greatness, O barley; — let not the bolt from heaven smite thee. "2. When we appeal unto thee, the divine barley that listens, then rise up like the sky; be . . . like the ocean." With an amulet : — "In order to length of life, to great joy, we taking no harm, bear the Jargeda amulet. . . . "Let the amulet of thousandfold radiance protect us about on every side." Hymns from Egyptian Book of the Dead. — The Egyptian Book of the Dead is largely talismanic. It consists of prayers to the gods mingled with mystic formulae and incantations which shall enable the soul to escape the dangers and secure the blessings of the life after death. For in the other world as here, hymns must be sung and the ''right word" used which, by the 268 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE magic dwelling in it, could open gates, drive away demons and wild beasts, give escape from the net of the snarer, power to enter through transformation into the various animal forms; to pass the judgment of a sacred Osiris and, finally, to enter the realms of bliss and secure divinity. A chapter about the cornelian, Ta (Buckle), to be put on the back of the deceased. " 1. Blood of Isis, magic power of Isis, talisman to protect this Great One and to break to pieces what is hated by him." (Chap. CLVI.) "4. To him are opened the gates of another world. To him are given wheat and barley in the field Anro. He is similar to the gods who are there, say the servants of Horus who reap there." A chapter about performing the transformations into a lotus : — "I am a pure Lotus, going forth from the Luminous Ones. I keep the nostrils of Ra, who keeps the nostrils of Hathor ! I write the messages. I am a pure Lotus springing out of the field of the Sun." (Chap. CXXVII.) "Hail you gods of the double retreat who inhabit the Amanti ! "1. Hail you people to the gates of the Tnort, who keep this god and make descend. "2. the allocutions before Osiris to protect those who glorify you and annihilate foes of Ra. Make light dispel "3. your darkness. Contemplate your chief. Live as he lives. Invoke him who is as your Disk. Guide me towards your ways. Let my soul see through the mystery of your dwellings. I am one of you. ..." "Open to "12. me the gates of heaven and earth. Let my soul overtake Osiris there and may I pass through the gates of those who acclaim me when they see me. May I enter praised." (Chapter XIX.) A chapter about the crown of truth speaking : — "1. Says the Osu-is N: Thy father Tmu set the fine crown of truth speaking upon thy forehead, thou livest beloved by the gods. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 269 "2. and shall live forever, for Osiris N residing in the West made thy work Truth against thy foes. ..." " 12. Horns repeated those incantations four times and all his foes fell, thrown down, slaughtered. The Osiris N shall repeat these incantations four times and all his foes shall fall. Thou shalt say this chapter in the morning and it shall be very efficient indeed." A chapter about repelling the crocodiles that come to take off the man's magic charms in the nether world : — "Back! Recede! Back, crocodile! Do not come to me! I know my magic charm. Do not utter the two names." Chapter CLXII. A chapter about the talisman of the sacred cow for putting heat under the head of the deceased. "1. Hail thou, O Lion of the Double Force. "2. whose beaming is boundless; thou art the Master of the various wrappings that thou hidest in the solar eye for their births. Thou art the one whom the adorers invoke amidst "3. the gods, the great runner, the swift moving. Thou art the god who is invoked, coming to him who invokes thee, protecting the unfortunate against his oppressor. Come at my calling, I am the "4. sacred cow. . . . Thy name is in my mouth. . . . "5. I adore thy names. ... I listen to thy voice on the day "6. when thou puttest heat under his head to protect him at the sacred gate of On. . . . "11. O Ammon who art in Heaven! Turn your face towards the body of your son. O give him health in the nether world. "12. This book is the greatest of the mysteries. Do not let it be seen. It is an abomination to have it known. Conceal its existence. The book of the Hidden Dwelling is its name. It is ended." The following are magical texts and incantations from the religion of Babylon ^ — formulas against the power of witches, sorcerers, and demons. These demons and sorcerers cause disease and other ills such as famine, storms, etc. Illustration : — "They (the witches) have used all kinds of charms to entwine me as with ropes, 1 Jastrow, "Religion of Babylon." 270 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE to catch me in a cage, to tie me as with cords, to overpower me as in a net, to twist me as with a sling. But I, by command of Marduk, the lord of charms. . . ." The incantation continues by threatening the witches with the same ills, while the actions are symbolically performed by exorcises on effigies of the witches. Incantations shade off into prayers proper to the gods, and then pass from prayers back again as in the following : "O Shamash, on this day purify and cleanse the king, the son of his god. Whatever is evil within him, let it be taken out, cleanse him like a vessel. . . . Illimiine him like a vessel of. . . . Like the copper of a polished tablet let him be bright. Release him from the ban." Other examples are for blessing on kine, success in agricultm*e, in gambling, for rain, for harmony, for the long life of a child, for superiority, success against enemies, purification, expiation from guilt ; matrimonial happiness, for healing, for wisdom, etc. Illustration. For relief from guilt : — "1. If knowing, if unknowing, we have committed sins, do ye free us from that, O all gods, accordant. "2. If waking, if sleeping, I have committed sin, let what is and what is to be free me from that as from a pest. ". . . Like sacrificial butter purified by a purifier, let all cleanse me from sin." The following examples give the negative aspect, i.e. Curses : — "Up hath gone your sun, up this spell of mine, that I may be slayer of foes, without rival, rival slayer." "Let the curse go to the curser. Our part is along with the friendly ; of the imfriendly the eye confuses we crush in the ribs." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 271 Against demons with an amulet of lead : — ''What devourers on the night of the new moon have arisen troops- wide? The fourth Agni is the demon slayer ; he shall bless us." Besides the negative in the hymns, it is found in the form of '^ taboo" in many of the magic rites and spells, and in primitive superstitions. One effect of the ^Haboo " appears to have been to isolate whatever was supposed to be charged with mysterious, supernatural power, that it might not harm by contact, — as in the case of a dead body, holy person, the gods, etc. Various taboos surround the acts of eating and drinking because the soul might escape through the mouth at such times, through the spells of wizards and demons. We have already noted how often the god had a secret name, i.e. a name which was ^' taboo'' because of the supernatural power residing in it. Many other instances of taboo might be given. They can be found in Frazer's collection,^ but enough perhaps has been said to suggest the element of the negative, — the '^Thou shalt not," — in the primitive magic rites with which were connected incantations, hymns, and prayers . . . while in the Vedic hymns themselves, we find along with the positive entreaties for protection and for blessings of various kinds, the negative side expressed in the demand for destruction of foes and in the cursing of them. Class II comprises the prayers of the petitional or pragmatic type. The emphasis here is on the will, either capricious or orderly, of the god. In the history of primitive religion we find two general trends or tendencies in regard to a belief about divinity. First, there is the Nature-tendency, i.e. the tendency to endow with supernatural powers such striking phe- nomena of nature as sun, moon, stars, storms, winds, ani- mals, birds. It is held that these have an influence on 1 Frazer, " The Golden Bough." 272 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE man's life and destiny. Already, in the discussion of imitative magic, we have seen how closely dependent upon these nature powers primitive man felt his life to be. This may have been the origin of man's sense of dependence, which is often made the root of rehgious experience. But the psychological history of religious experience shows in primitive man, besides the sense of dependence, a sense of mystery and awe, and so we meet in the history of religious belief a second general tendency, — a tendency to a behef in unseen presences, which come as friend or foe, and which may appear in nightmare and in dreams as mysterious visions, or as the disturbing, haunting presence of departed ancestors ; or they appear simply as capricious spirits, of the type of Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel, which, weaving spells and enchantments, bewitch and vex mortal man, or else perhaps assist him and bring him felicity. In the further development, beyond their original significance, of these two tendencies, — the social ten- dency and the nature-tendency, as we may call them, — they become blurred and blended and suggest that if we go back far enough, these two streams of tendency take their rise at last in the same source. Man's sense of dependence and his sense of mystery find their origin in that fundamental tendency to ideality which we noted at the beginning of our investigation and out of which springs his irresistible and unconquerable faith in the spirituality of the universe as an whole. At first primitive animism and nature worship, then, are present together in the early history of religion. Gradually in the mind of primitive man the order of nature and natural phenomena became transformed into personal beings, with wills and interests capricious like their own. Whether ''the critical step," by which the unseen powers behind natural phenomena became personified, came about through the reflection of the more thoughtful who saw the failure of magic arts, as THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 273 Frazer suggests; whether through the deification of heroes and of men possessed of peculiar powers (as medi- cine men, magicians, and '^holy men") ; whether through ancestor worship, ghosts and apparitions in dreams; through totemism; through the personification of ab- stract ideals resulting from the grouping of particular concrete experiences under one general notion, as from special springs or fires is created a general water-god or fire-god; or whether from elements contributed by all of these; somehow the belief in spirits arose. It seems probable that Pfleiderer is right in holding from the study of historical religions that 'Hhe being in which a particular communal group, family or clan or race or people found its deity originated in a combination of the collective ancestral spirits of the group with a per- sonified natural power (thus in ancient Egypt, in China and in Japan we find the worship of earth and earthly spirits of fruitfulness ; and the sacred animals of totem- istic tribes). In the religion of ancient Egypt we find the worship of the sun as Amun-Ra (etc.), and of the power of the water of the Nile, in relation to vegetation, in the Osiris worship. ^^Why in particular this or that natural object was chosen," says Pfleiderer, ''we cannot tell; the main fact remains that each of these groups worships in its god the power by which their common life, as members thereof, and their natural environment was caused and preserved; for each of his worshippers, the god is the creating and preserving power of life, mak- ing the group collectively permanent . . . the tribe-god of the oldest religions is thought of not as a man, but as a living being of heavenly or earthly kind ... he was worshipped as a god not because he was an ancestor, but because he was worshipped he was held to be the race- father of his worshippers." ^ In passing from the religion of the Vedas to that of Greece we get some suggestions of how the transformation 1 Pfleiderer, "Religion and Historic Faiths." 274 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE may have taken place in the Aryan race. Indra, the shining heavens, the hurler of thunderbolts, in India, is transformed in Greece into Zeus, in whom there is a survival of nature characters in the midst of his acquired human ones. In Hebrew history some hint too is given of how the Semitic tribal deity, a storm god, sacred animal, or tree-spirit, becomes Jahwe, the god of war, Israel's de- fender, guide, and deliverer. The point for us is, that however the belief in spirits arose, or however the transformation of the gods from natural phenomena to personified beings occurred, when primitive man thought of his god as a being with a capri- cious will akin to his own, he could no longer think of him as moved by mere magic, but rather as one to be propitiated and wooed by sacrifice and by supplication, by entreaty and promises. Thus the rites of sympathetic magic pass over into sacrifice and prayer; yet in these latter much of the essence of the old magic charms, spells, and incantations survives. The underlying thought of sympathetic magic, as we have seen, appears to have been that by imitative activi- ties the coming of rain, of wind and sunshine, of vegeta- tion and of similar natural processes could be aided and hastened. Hence man himself assisted in the processes of nature, and in so far as divinity was associated with these processes man was a fellow-worker with the divine. So far as prayer proper is found in the Vedic hymns, it is pragmatic, with a double aspect positive and negative, representing the simple needs and demands of primitive people, prayers for blessings to the sacrificer himself and his kin and possessions, destruction and curses upon enemies, evil spirits, and sorcerers. Closely intermingled with the sacrifice and prayers are old survivals of witch- craft rites, exorcises and incantations of savage folk. With amulets and healing plants evils are exorcised and blessings brought ; " with water and fire some guilt is purged ; with the sacrifice of a black animal and himself THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 275 dressed in black garments, the sacrificer draws down the rain clouds ; with imitative magical rites, such as kiUing the corn spirit, mimic marriages, and various harvest customs — with rules regulated by the waxing and waning of the moon — he seeks to secure the return of vegetation and good harvest ; or, eating of the animal sacrifice, he is supposed to acquire the powers of the divine being whom the animal represents '\* in knots,^ rings, etc., he finds magic charms which make these objects 'Haboo" on critical occasions. Already in the Vedas natural phenomenon had become endowed with spiritual and a quasi-personal life. Another ''critical step^^ was taken when the psychical ^ became ethical. Something of the moral already appears em- bodied in some of the Vedic hymns. Though for the most part favor and protection of the god must be won by sacrifice, or by a drink of intoxicating soma, yet there are hints that the gods are on the whole supporters of the social-moral order (such as it was), protectors of the up- right, and avengers of guilt.^ As an instance, A song of the Rig- Veda — of one guilty and pursued by disaster : — "I commune thus with myself. When may I again approach Varuna? What offering will he deign to accept without showing anger? When shall I, my soul reviving, behold again his favor? Humbly as a servant will I make reparation to him, merciful that he is, that I may be once more blameless." The further development of the process we can trace to some extent in Greek mythology and in the religion of Israel. Even^ the Homeric gods have some moral qualities in their more public functions as guardians of * Hymn to accompany the releasing of a house : — "What of thee is tied, O thou that possessest all choice things, what fetter and knot is made, that with a spell I make fall apart." (Atharva-Veda. ) 2 See George Santayana, " The life of Reason." 3 See "Varuna's Fetter," page 267. * George Santayana, " The Life of Reason." 276 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE the law and order of the state; Apollo and Athena embodied to a great extent spiritual ideals. In the religion of Israel an original Semitic nature god becomes the tribal god, champion and upholder of Israel in its experiences of defeat and victory — Jahwe of hosts ; and finally in the prophets and Psalms, the god of righteousness, judge of all the earth, who loves justice and mercy better than sacrifice. The prayers which we have been considering are of the non-ethical naturalistic type ; when religion becomes ethical, the pragmatic character is still found, also the magic element, since in some of the psalms and early prophets righteousness becomes a kind of magic to bring prosperity; but the blessings asked for are spiritual blessings. The Hebrew Psalms (hymns largely intermingled with prayers) represent a state of transition. They are mainly spiritual, yet we find also prayers for material prosperity, long life, offspring, etc., and also a cursing of enemies as vehement if not as repellent in expression as the curses of the Atharva-Veda. Class II. — In the petitional type of prayer, as already noted, the gods are thought of in the likeness of men, and the emphasis is on the Will as cause. Whether this Will be capricious or orderly — whether the good sought is a material or a spiritual blessing, the principle is the same; that is, the principle of ''I give that thou mayest give." ^ The will of the supernatural powers may be propitiated and wooed by flattery and praise, by supplication, entreaties and promises, together with some accompanying gift or sacrifice ; — hence a possi- bility is open for something to happen contrary to the expected or regular order of nature, — that is, a miracle may take place. Examples of this type of prayer are so common that it is not necessary to give many instances. Examples ^ Jane Harrison, "Prolegomena to Greek Religion." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 277 are found in some of the prayers in the English book of Common Prayer, and in Christian sects generally; in Indian prayers, Vedic hymns, and other early historical prayers; in Olympic religious rites; in types of prayers in the early Old Testament, and in some of the Psalms. Here are a few primitive prayers : — INDIAN PRAYER "O, Wohkonda (Master of Life) pity me! I am very poor ; Give me what I need ; Give me success against my enemies ; May I be able to take scalps ; May I be able to take horses." (Osages of the United States) PATAGONIAN "O Father, Great Man, King of the land ; Favor us, dear spirit, every day, With good food. With good water. With good sleep. Art thou hungry? Poor am I, poor is this meal ; Take of it if thou wilt." FROM "THE VEDIC HYMNS" "O Indra, come O hero with thy two bays, drink of the pressed soma ; enjoy the sweet draught ; help, O Mighty one ! for our prayer come to us ; hear my call, enjoy my songs ; hither, O Indra, with self- harnessed studs, come with great joy." (Praise and Prayer to Indra.) The prayer of iEneas in sailing from Italy : — "We follow Thee, O Holy Power, whoever thou art and once more with joy obey Thy commands. O be present ; lend us Thy protection and light up friendly stars in the heavens." * Prayer of the Hidery ; dwellers in northwestern America to their Sun Totem : — * Quoted from the ** Outdoor Life of Greek and Roman Poets," by Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco. 278 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "O thou Sun look down upon us, shine on us, Sun take away the dark clouds that the rain may cease to fall because we want to go hunting. Look kindly on us, O Sun. Grant us peace in our midst as well as with our enemies. Again we ask thee to hear us, Sun." ^ TibuUus describes how at the Ambarvalia, or Spring Festival, when all work ceased and the fields were purified, the holy lanab is led to the altar and Bacchus and Ceres invoked : — "Gods of our native land, we purify our fields; we purify our hinds, repel, ye Gods, all evil from our boundaries. Let not our crops cheat the laborers of the harvest with deceitful blades, nor the slow- footed lamb fear the swift wolves." ^ Prayer of an Inca of Peru for the removal of guilt by lustration : — "O thou river, receive the sins I have this day confessed unto the sun, carry them down to the sea and let them never more appear." ^ Early Latin prayer quoted by the late Father Mars i^ — "I pray and implore Thee that Thou wouldst turn away from us disease, sin, sorrow, destitution, desolation, distress and that Thou wouldst suffer the fruits of the earth, corn, grass and young olives to increase and thrive, and wouldst preserve shepherds and their flocks in safety." A Babylonian Penitential Psalm : — "It is good to pray to thee, for thou art inclined to listen. Thy glance is a hearing of prayer, thy utterance light. Have mercy upon me, Istar, proclaim my welfare. Hearken to my beseeching — If I bear thy yoke, relieve me of my burdens. If I have regard to thy glance, may my prayer be heard and granted. If I seek thy rulership, may life and salvation be my portion. May the good protecting spirit which stands before thee be mine. May I achieve the pros- perity which stand to thy right hand and to thy left. May I be healthy and uninjured that I may worship thy divinity. ... As I wish, may I achieve. . . . May the gods of all render homage to thee." (A prayer to the goddess Istar.) 1 Quoted by Tyler in "Primitive Culture." 2 See "Outdoor Life of Greek and Roman Poets," by Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco. 3 Tyler, "Primitive Culture." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 279 This prayer is a petition for escape from evil and the consequences of guilt. Many prayers are transitional in type, i,e, they are between the class of petitional prayer and the truly spiritual prayer. A Transitional Group. — The prayers of the Hebrew psalmist are very largely cries to God for help in distress, deliverance from enemies and evil doers, — the natural expression of a nation in captivity. Help is expected in so far as the nation, or the remnant represented, is righteous. Still very many of these prayers hardly express positively a prayer for spiritual or moral gifts. As typical, we may take Ps. 27, 7-12 : — " Hear, Lord, when I cry with my voice. Have mercy upon me also, and assure me. When thou saidst, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek. Hide not thy face from me ; Put not thy servant away in anger. Thou hast been my help ; Cast me not off, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. For my father and my mother have forsaken me. But the Lord will take me up. Teach me thy way, Lord ; And lead me in a plain path. Because of mine enemies." From the Devotions for the Mass : — "Mercifully hear our prayers, O Lord, and graciously accept this oblation which we, thy servants, wouldst make to thee; and as we offer it to the honor of thy name, so it may be to us here a means of obtaining thy grace, and life everlasting hereafter." On the negative side perhaps we can all recall some of the prayers for vengeance upon enemies in the Psalter : — " Strive thou, O Lord, with them that strive with me. Fight thou against them that fight against me. Let them be turned back and confounded that desire my hurt. Let them be as chaff before the wind and the angel of the Lord driv- ing them on." (Psfllm 35.) 280 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "O Lord, thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, Thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, shine forth. Lift up thyself, thou Judge of the earth, Render to the proud their desert. Lord, how long shall the wicked triumph?'' (Psalm 74.) The point to be noted in these Hebrew prayers is, that while destruction of enemies is prayed for, these enemies are not so much personal foes as ^'evil doers,'' '* workers of iniquity" who have ^^ rebelled against God" — a God of righteousness, hence his foes as well, and deserving of punishment. So we may note in passing the social aspect of these prayers. "O Lord, in thee do I put my trust, Keep me from the snare the wicked have laid for me. Let the wicked fall into their own nets, Whilst that I withal escape." (Psahn 141.) In the litany (Book of Common Prayer) prayers for deliverance from sin are curiously intermingled with prayers for deliverance from material ills and merited punishment. For example : — "Remember not, Lord, our offences, neither take thou vengeance of our sins; spare thy people. . . . From all blindness of heart, from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy ; from envy, hatred and malice and all uncharitableness ; from all inordinate and sinful affections, and from all the deceitful allurements of this transitory world. Good Lord, deliver us. . . ." "We humbly beseech thee, O Father, mercifully to look upon our infirmities, and for the glory of thy name turn from us all those evils which we most justly deserve ; and grant that in all our troubles we may put our whole trust and confidence in thy mercy, and evermore serve thee in holiness and pureness of living." Gretchen's prayer to the Virgin, in " Faust, ^^ is wholly a prayer for deliverance from the sorrow and punishment of sin : — "Ach, neige Du Schmerzenreiche Dein Antlitz gnadig meiner Noth THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 281 Das Schnitt im Herzen, Mit tausend Schmerzen Blickst auf du deines Sohnes Tod. "Die Scheiben for meinen Fenster. Bethaut ich mit Thranen, ach ! Als ich am friihen Morgen Dir diese Blumen brach. "Hilf ! rette mich von Schwach und Tod I Ach neige, Du Schmerzem-eiche, Dein Antlitz gnadig meiner Noth ! " Compare the above with the following Hymn of the Artharva-Veda in a remedial rite : For release from guilt and distress : — "Beautiful are heaven and earth, pleasant near by, of great vows; seven divine waters have flowed ; let them free us from distress. "Let them free from that which comes from a curse, then also from that which is of Varuna; then from Yamas* fetter, from all offence against the gods." and also with the following Babylonian penitential prayer for any god : — "0 lord, my sins are many, great are my transgressions. I know not the sin which I have committed, nor do I know the transgression. The god whom I know, whom I do not know, hath oppressed me; the goddess whom I know, whom I do not know, hath caused me pain. When I sought help, no one took me by the hand. When I wept, no one came to my side. How long my god, my goddess, will thy anger not cease, and thy unfriendly heart not find rest? Lord, despise not thy slave. Cast into the waters of the marsh, take him by the hand. Turn the sin which I have committed to good, and make the wind to carry off my transgression. Forgive my sins, and I will bow before thee." These sinful and sorrowful ones have not reached the stage of penitence described by Dante in the Purgatorio, of those who sought to endure their punishments until completely purified ; e.g. in the circle of the gluttonous : — 282 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "All the folk who sing weeping because of following their appetite beyond measure, here in hunger and in thirst make themselves holy again. The odour which issues from the apple and from the spray that spreads over the verdure kindles in us desire to eat and drink. And not once only as we circle this floor is our pain renewed. I say pain, and ought to say solace, for that will leads us to the tree which led Christ gladly to say *Eli' when with his blood he delivered us." The following are illustrations of prayers still petitional in form, but for blessings purely spiritual : — "O Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth, send thy Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever live this counted dead before thee." (Book of Common Prayer, 1549.) "Grant me, I beseech Thee, Almighty and most Merciful God, fervently to desire, wisely to search out, and perfectly to fulfil, all that is well pleasing unto Thee. Order Thou my worldly condition to the glory of Thy name ; and, of all that Thou requirest me to do, grant me the knowledge, the desire, and the ability, that I may so fulfil it as I ought, and may my path to Thee, I pray, be safe, straight- forward, and perfect to the end. "Give me, Lord, a steadfast heart, which no unworthy affection may drag downwards ; give me an upright heart, which no unworthy purpose may tempt aside. "Bestow upon me also, Lord, my God, understanding to know Thee, diligence to seek Thee, wisdom to find Thee, and a faithfulness that may finally embrace Thee, — Amen." St. Thomas Aquinas. "Enlarge our souls with a divine charity, that we may hope all things, endure all things; and become messengers of Thy healing mercy to the grievances and infirmities of men. In all things attune our hearts to the holiness and harmony of Thy kingdom, and hasten the time when Thy kingdom shall come, and Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen." James Maetineau. "I ask of thee, O unspeakable Spirit, the great gift of infinity. Be thou my head, be thou my heart; do thou ever grow in me. Be thou the constraining law of my life, my holy conscience, and compel me to follow thee. Make to-day different from yesterday and let me ever press on to perfection." MOZOOMDAR. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 283 Prayer of Socrates : — That the gods would give such things as are good, for they know best what are good. "0 sweet Pan and ye other gods, whoever ye be, grant to me to be beautiful within." Xenophon in " Memorabilia." We have discovered so far two characteristics of prayer. First, prayer appears to have about it something of the constraining power supposed to belong to the old magic rites and incantations; and secondly, all the prayers we have so far examined are practical. They express a request, an entreaty, and this petition is either positive or negative, ethical or non-ethical and materialistic, as the case may be ; that is, it varies in accordance with the conception of the divine being to whom the prayer is ad- dressed, and with the idea of what constitutes beatitude. In regard to the first characteristic, the incantations which primitive man used to accompany witchcraft rites were themselves magic formulae of compelling power. That something of this old magic still survives in more spiritual ideas is seen not only in many of our customs for bringing good luck or for warding off ills, but also in prayers and religious exercises themselves. People not only hang the horseshoe over the door for luck, avoid thirteen at table, wear bits of coral as a charm to ward oS the evil eye, but in Catholic lands the vo- tive offering at the wayside shrine still betrays the hope that thus some grace may be obtained ; or in a church, the lighted candles or flowers before the image of Virgin or saint bespeak the prayer of some heart that through these means a boon may be granted.^ The peasant woman who dips her fingers in the holy water believes that thus disease may be cured and other ills banished ; the devotee telling the beads of his rosary thinks to guard from heresy and to ^' win merit " ; by making the sign of the cross, it is * "Eeoutez, Sainte Marie Je donnerai mon beau collier, 284 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE held, evil spirits are driven away ; by the doing of penances that some guilt may be cleansed. In the Catholic rite of the Mass there is magic efficacy in the supposed trans- formation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. In some Protestant sects, too, the rites of baptism and of communion seem to be considered not symbolic so much as an actual washing away of sin.^ And indeed in all forms of sacrifice, even that of the broken and contrite spirit, something is supposed to be accomplished, as in the savage days, by binding on an amulet, sorcerers and demons were driven away; or in the Vedas, by offering a cow, a gift of barley or drink of soma to Agni or Indra, favor was obtained, gifts bestowed. And what is true of the sacrificial rites is true of the prayers (corresponding to the magical incantations) which accompany them. By crying aloud with the voice, by supplication and entreaty, the divine being will be com- pelled to hearken and respond, as in Psalm 86 : — "Bow down thy ear, Lord, and answer me; For I am poor and needy. Si vous ferez rapporter, Revenir mon cher Pedro." (From Songs of the Pyrenees.) See also the ballad of Victor Hugo called " La Fiancee du Timbalier." The whole poem appropriate to the present hour of 1914. " J'ai dit a Notre Abbe : Messire Priez bien pour tous nos soldats I — Et, comme on sait qu'il le desire, J'ai brule trois cierges de cire Sur la ohasse de saint Gildas. " A Notre-Dame de Lorette J'ai promis dans mon noir chagrin, D'attachee sur ma gorgerette Fermee a la vue indiscrete Les coquilles du pelirin. * "Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat this flesh of thy dear son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us." (Commim- lon service of Episcopal Church.) THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 285 O thou my God, save thy servant that trusteth in thee. Be merciful unto me, Lord ; For unto thee do I cry all the day long. . . . Give ear, Lord, unto my prayer ; And hearken unto the voice of my supplications. In the day of my trouble I will caU upon thee ; For thou wUt answer me. Thou, Lord, art a God full of compassion and gracious, Slow to anger and plenteous in mercy and truth. O turn unto me and have mercy upon me ; Give thy strength unto thy servant, Show me a token for good." The above illustrations, together with what has gone before, suggests the possibility of combining the two ele- ments we have so far discovered as belonging to prayer and of offering as a trial definition of the essence of prayer the following: cries and supplications which shall com- pel a blessing or at least a response (positive or negative) from the divine being or beings to whom the cries are addressed : — "I will not let thee go except thou bless me." Can we say then that all prayer is practical, its essence a compelling request, supplication, entreaty? There are prayers which can hardly be put in this pragmatic class. I mean prayers of a mystical character, which express rather the soul's relation to the divine in the sense of union, trust, and outpouring of its need, or of its sense of joyfulness and thanksgiving, or in confession of sin; of adoration, or communion — an actual talking with God, — which is so characteristic of St. Augustine's ^^Con- fessions," of ^'The Imitation" of Thomas a Kempis, of the hymns of George Herbert, and of the Book of Jeremiah. Class III. Prayer as Communion. — Let us turn, then, to the third type of prayer. This type, however it may express itself in the petitional form, is not so much a prayer jor anything as it is an attitude of mind and spirit — a sense of communion and union with the spirit of the universe which takes the attitude either of a with- 286 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE drawing into the inmost recesses of the personal life, as in the essentially mystic type of prayer — ('^Recollec- tion'^ of Catholics, '^ Entering the Silence '' of the Mind Curists) ; or, it is a dual communion as with another person, the Friend or ''Great Companion '^ as in the prayers of George Herbert ; or an expansion towards the source of life and strength, which we get from some of the poems of Whitman ; or an essentially ethical attitude of self-discipline and consecrated activity. In a general way the prayers of St. Augustine are as beautiful as any, and a classic instance of this type. The same thing is true of some of the Psalms. The fol- lowing illustration from St. Augustine combines the various attitudes noted, and suggests what is supposed to be the efficacy of this type of prayer : — "Late have I loved Thee, O Thou Eternal Truth and Goodness; late have I sought Thee, my Father ! But Thou didst seek me, and when Thou shinedst forth upon me, then I knew Thee and learnt to love Thee. I thank Thee, O my Light, that Thou didst thus shine upon me ; that Thou didst teach my soul what Thou wouldst be to me, and didst incline Thy face in pity unto me. Thou, Lord, hast become my hope, my Comfort, my Strength, my All. In Thee doth my soul rejoice. The darkness vanished from before my eyes, and I beheld Thee, the Sun of Righteousness. When I loved darkness, I knew Thee not, but wandered on from night to night. But Thou didst lead me out of that blindness ; Thou didst take me by the hand and call me to Thee, and now I can thank Thee, and Thy mighty voice which hath penetrated to my inmost heart. Amen." The following Hindoo prayers are of the same general type: — "Lord, look upon me, nought can I do myself. Whither can I go; to whom but Thee can I tell sorrows? Often have I turned my face from Thee and grasped the things of this world, but Thou art the font of mercy, turn not Thy face from me. "They who never ask anything but simply love, You, in their heart abide forever, for this is Your very home." It is difficult, however, to separate the prayers of this class, which we may call mystical prayers, from the THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 287 examples last given, i.e. prayers for spiritual good, for nearly all prayers seem to contain a request in some form, which leads one to wonder if there is not in petition some- thing which is fundamental to the meaning of prayer. Saint Thomas Aquinas in his section on prayer (Oratio) in the Summa says, quoting Damascenus : ^' Oratio est ascensus mentis in Deum'^ (Prayer is the lifting of the mind to God), and following the epistle to Timothy he says: '^Prayer is made up of supplications (Obsecra- tiones), orationes, intercessions (intercessiones), and thanksgivings (actiones gratiae) ; but prayer (^ Oratio ') is essentially ^Ascensus mentis in Deum,''' and this defi- nition seems to have a wider connotation than request, petition, or supplication. Indeed, in the mystical type of prayer we find often the negation of all particular demands,^ as in the prayers of Christina Rossetti and Thomas a Kempis ^ ; and already we have seen that 'Haboo" — ^'Thou shalt not'' — was characteristic of savage religious customs and rites. The following are some examples of the more mystical type : — ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE GATHAS OF ZOROASTER "Arise to me, Ahura ! Through Devotion send me power. Most bounteous spirit Magda, for my good invocations offering. And mighty strength give Asha, and thrift, Lord with Thy Good Mind! "For grace, for light, I see Thee fully, reveal to me, Magda, Thy stature. And Thy Kingdom's blessings. Lord ; the rewards of thine are good- minded; yes, now, thou bounteous Devotion, Through the law light up our souls ! " (Consecration to Magda.) "Asha the only hope, Aye doth my soul attain /a real defender * Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee ; remove this cup from me ; albeit not what I will, but what thou wilt. Mark 14 : 36. * Such prayers have the spirit of the Hindoo prayer, p. 263, footnote. 288 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE For self and flock Can I /a saviour find Other than Holiness (Asha) or thee, Ahura. Invoked, desired one, or Thy Best Mind!" "That thou art holy, O all-wise Ruler, I have seen when the best of spirits came to me, when by thy words I first was taught. Who- ever gives himself to thee will suffer sorrow at the hands of men, but whatsoever thou sayest is best, that shall be done. I know why it goes ill with me, and I make my complaint to thee. Look thou into it, O Lord, and give me joy such as a friend offers to a friend." At the shrine to Apollo at Delphi were these inscriptions : "For the good one drop suffices, but for the bad all the waves of the sea cannot wash their sins away." "Know thyself." "Nothing beyond measure." "Govern all by Thy wisdom, O Lord, so that my soul may always be serving Thee as Thou dost will, and not as I may choose. Do not punish me, I beseech Thee, by granting that which I wish or ask, if it offend Thy love, which would always live in me. Let me die to myself, that so I may serve Thee ; let me live to Thee, who in Thy- self art the true Life. Amen." <^ ^ — St. Theresa. "O Lord, Thou knowest what is best for us, let this or that be done, as Thou shalt please. Give what Thou wilt, and when Thou wilt. Deal with me as Thou thinkest good, and as best pleaseth Thee. Set me where Thou wilt, and deal with me in all things just as Thou wilt. Behold I am Thy servant, prepared for all things; for I desire not to live unto myself, but unto Thee ; and Oh, that I could do it worthily and perfectly ! Amen." — Thomas a Kempis. "We ask not, O Father, for health or life. We make an offering to Thee of all our days. Thou hast counted them. We would know nothing more. All we ask is to die rather than live unfaithful to Thee ; and, if it be Thy will that we depart, let us die in patience and love. Almighty God, who boldest in Thy hand the keys of the grave to open and close it at Thy will, give us not life, if we shall love it too well. Living or dying we would be Thine." — Francois de la Mothe Fenelon. "O Lord, my God, Light of the blind and Strength of the weak; yea, also. Light of those that see, and Strength of the strong ; hearken unto my soul, and hear it crying out of the depths. "0 Lord, help us to turn and seek Thee; for Thou hast not for- THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 289 saken Thy creatures as we have forsaken Thee, our Creator. Let us turn and seek Thee, for we know Thou art here in our hearts, when we confess to Thee, when we cast ourselves upon Thee, and weep m Thy bosom, after all our rugged ways; and Thou dost gently wipe away our tears, and we weep the more for joy; because Thou, Lord, who madest us, dost remake and comfort us. "Hear, Lord, my prayer and grant that I may most entirely love Thee, and do Thou rescue me, O Lord, from every temptation, even unto the end. Amen." — St. Augustine. Here are some modern instances : — "Lord, take my lips and speak through them; take my mind and think through it ; take my heart and set it on fire." -y^ Aitken. "I ask neither for health nor for riches, for life nor for death ; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory, for my salvation, and for the use of the church and of your saints, of whom I would by your grace be one. You alone know what is expedient for me ; do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours." (Prayer of Pascal quoted by James.) "0 Thou unseen source of peace and holiness, may we come to Thy secret place and be filled with thy solemn light. As we come to thee how can we but remember when we have been drawn aside from the straight and narrow way, when we have not walked lovingly with each other and humbly with thee, when we have feared what is not terrible, and wished for what is not holy in thy sight. In our weakness be thou the quickening power of life. Arise within our hearts as healing strength and joy. Make us obedient to thy pure and righteous thought. Inspire us with the divine faith, subdue us to the lowly practice of those who have lived as fellow-workers with thee. May we have only one care — to abate the transitory ill and be faithful to the everlasting good. Day by day may we grow in faith, in self-denial and charity, in the purity of heart by which we may see thee, and the larger life of love to which thou callest us." James Martineau. "Grant unto us — Thy peace that passeth understanding; that we amid the storms and troubles of this our life, may rest in Thee, knowing that all things are in Thee, imder Thy care, governed by thy wUl, guarded by thy love ; so that with a quiet heart we may see the storms of life, the cloud and the thick darkness, ever rejoicing to know that the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee. Guide, guard and govern us even to the end, that none of us may fail to lay hold upon the immortal life." George Dawson. 290 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "Saviour of sinners! when a poor woman, laden with sins, went out to the well to draw water, she found Thee sitting at the well. She knew Thee not ; she had not sought Thee ; her mind was dark, her life was unholy. But Thou didst speak to her. Thou didst teach her ; Thou didst show her that her life lay open before Thee, and yet Thou wast ready to give her that blessing which she had never sought. Jesus! Thou art in the midst of us, and Thou knowest all men; if there is any here like that poor woman — if their minds are dark, their lives unholy, if they have come out not seeking Thee, not desir- ing to be taught, deal with them according to the free mercy which Thou didst show to her. Speak to them, Lord; open their ears to Thy message ; bring their sins to their minds, and make them thirst for that salvation which Thou art ready to give. Lord, Thou art with Thy people still ; they see Thee in the night watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with them by the way. And Thou art near to those who have not known Thee ; open their eyes that they may see Thee — see Thee weeping over them, and saying — 'Ye will not come imto me that ye might have life* — see Thee hang- ing on the cross and saying — 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do' — see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to judge them at the last. Amen." George Eliot, Prayer from "Adam Bede." "0 Lord, the portion of our inheritance, give us grace, I pray Thee, never to aim' at or desire anything out of Thee. What we can enjoy in Thee, give us according to Thy will; what we cannot, deny us. Amen." Christina G. Rossetti. "0 Lord, who art as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, who beholdest Thy weak creatures, weary of labor, weary of pleasure, weary of hope deferred, weary of seU, in Thine abundant compassion and unutterable tenderness, bring us, we pray Thee, unto Thy rest. Amen." Christina G. Rossetti. "0 Lord, grant us grace never to parley with temptation, never to tamper with conscience ; never to spare the right eye, or hand, or foot that is a snare to us ; never to lose our souls, though in exchange we should gain the whole world. Amen." Christina G. Rossetti. Closely related to this type are confessional prayers, such, e.gr., as the general confession in the communion service in the Book of Common Prayer. The individual prayer too is very often a confession. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 291 "Almighty God — We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins which we from time to time most grievously have committed, by thought, word and deed, against thy divine majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings ; the remembrance of which is grievous unto us. Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father. ..." Prayer is often considered as an individual relation, — an intercourse between the individual soul and its God. "Thou, when thou pray est, enter into the inner chamber and pray to the Father in secret." But as the above prayer (Book of Common Prayer) sug- gests, prayer has also its social aspects. I . We find this social aspect of prayer, for instance. First, in prayers used in public worship where men pray to- gether, and what is asked for one is asked for all; or, again, we find the social aspect in a general confession or thanksgiving. A prayer for the whole human race : — "0 Eternal God, the Father of all mankind, in whom we live and move and have our being; have mercy on the whole human race. Pity their ignorance, their foolishness, their weakness, their sin; sheep wandering on the mountain without a guide. Set up an en- sign for the nations, O Lord, and bring them to Thy glorious rest. Let the earth be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Hasten thy kingdom, Lord, and bring in everlasting righteousness, for the honor of thy Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen." "Bind us to one another, Thou Holiest, by a common search for thy ways and a common thirst for thy spirit, and raise us to some worthiness of the communion we seek with the wise and good of every nation and of every age." "We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favor, folk of many families and nations gathered together in the peace of this roof, weak men and women subsisting under the covert of Thy patience. Be patient still ; suffer us yet a while longer with our broken purposes of good, with our idle endeavors against evil, suffer us a while longer to endure and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to us our extraordinary mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, 292 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE brace us to play the man under affliction. Be with our friends, be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest ; if any wake, temper to them the dark hours of watching ; and when the day returns, return to us, our Sun and Comforter, and call us up with morning faces and with morning hearts — eager to labor — eager to be happy, if happi- ness shall be our portion — and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it. Amen." _ x o. KoBERT Louis Stevenson. From the Indian Daily Prayer for the World : — "In the East and in the West In the North, and in the South, Let all things that are. Without enemies, without obstacles. Having no sorrow, and attaining cheerfulness. Move forward freely. Each in his own path ! " II. Intercessions and masses for the dead are prayers social in character. There is the behef in the CathoHc church, at least, that the saints in heaven and on earth are able to intercede for those in pm-gatory or on earth. ^'Ora pro nobis." Dante's ^^Purgatorio" abounds in instances of this mediatory aspect of prayer. For instance : — Virgil symbolizing human reason, goes to aid the wanderer at the entreaty of Beatrice, grace, or divine wisdom. "One who withdrew from singing Hallelujah, to rescue the wanderer from the dark wood." And all those they meet in purgatory " pregar pur ch' altri preghi Si che s' avacci 1 lor divenir sante." "Have compassion, we beseech Thee, O Lord, upon all those whose hearts are touched with sorrow, whose spirits are troubled or cast down within them. Lord, remember those to whom the burdens of this life bring dimness or darkness of soul. Send them help from above, and have mercy upon all who suffer in body or mind, from whatever cause. O Lord, have mercy upon them continually. Amen. ' ' "We beseech Thee, O Lord, remember all for good; have mercy upon all, O God. Remember every soul who being in any affliction, THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 293 trouble or agony, stands in need of Thy mercy and help, all who are in necessity or distress ; all who love or hate us." ^ With the awakening of the social consciousness of modern times, there is a new emphasis on the social in religion. A recent book of prayers (called ^^ Prayers of the Social Awakening" by Walter Rauschenbusch) has, besides general social prayers, prayers for special social groups. Here is one — III. A Prayer for Workingmen : — " God, thou mightiest worker of the universe, source of all strength and author of all unity, we pray thee for our brothers, the industrial workers of the nation. As their work binds them together in common toil and danger, may their hearts be knit together in a strong sense of their common interests and destiny. Help them to realize that the injury of one is the concern of all, and that the welfare of all must be the aim of every one. If any of them is tempted to sell the birth- right of his class for a mess of pottage for himself, give him a wider outlook and a nobler sympathy with his fellows. Teach them to keep step in a steady onward march, and in their own way to fulfil the law of Christ by bearing the common burdens. "Grant the organizations of labor quiet patience and prudence in all disputes, and fairness to see the other side. Save them from malice and bitterness. Save them from the headlong folly which ruins a fair cause, and give them wisdom resolutely to put aside the two- edged sword of violence that turns on those who seize it. Raise up for them still more leaders of able mind and large heart, and give them grace to follow the wiser counsel. "When they strive for leisure and health and a better wage, do thou grant their cause success, but teach them not to waste their gain on fleeting passions, but to use it in building fairer homes and nobler manhood. Grant all classes of our nation a larger comprehension for the aspirations of labor and for the courage and worth of these our brothers, that we may cheer them in then* struggles and understand them even in their sins. And may the upward climb of Labor, its defeats and its victories, in the farther reaches bless all the classes of our nation, and build up for the republic of the future a great body of workers, strong of limb, clear of mind, fair in temper, glad to labor, conscious of their worth, and striving together for the final brother- hood of all men." » Lancelot Andrews, 1555-1626. 294 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Another example of a social prayer is Dante^s version of the Lord's Prayer, as prayed by the proud. Those who had been so self-centred and isolated in Hell, here express in their prayer universal fellowship and the complete abandonment of self-seeking. "O our Father who art in Heaven, not circumscribed, but through the greater love which to the first effects on high Thou hast, praised be Thy name and Thy power by every creature, even as it is befitting to render thanks to Thy sweet influence. May the peace of Thy Kingdom come towards us, for we to it cannot of ourselves, if it come not, with all our striving. As of their will Thine angels, singing Hosanna, make sacrifice to Thee, so may men make of theirs. Give us this day the daily manna, without which through this rough desert he backward goes, who toils most to go on. And as we pardon every- one for the wrong that we have suffered, even do Thou, benignant, pardon and regard not our desert. Our virtue which is easily over- come, put not to proof with the old adversary, but deliver from him who so spurs it. This last prayer, dear Lord, truly is not made for ourselves, for it is not needful, but for those who behind us have remained." Or again, the prayer of the writer of Ephesians for his brethren and disciples. "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man ; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that we may be filled unto all the fulness of God." All these prayers show that prayer may be a social as well as an individual relation and thus again emphasis is given to the social elements in religious experience as an whole. Class IV. Divination. — Finally, an intermediate type of prayer may be noted, namely, in certain processes of divination which are in part prayer and in part ex- periment and observation of the ways of nature. Li THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 295 the interpretation of omens, such as sneezing, the flight of birds, the phases of the moon, dreams, etc., a certain order of analogy is followed, but much is based on chance coincidence. To sneeze to the right is lucky, to the left unlucky; to meet an owl or raven unlucky, to meet a hawk is lucky. To undertake any activity at the time of the waxing moon will insure good fortune, at the waning moon ill. To dream of gold is good, of silver bad. " Fri- day night's dream on Saturday told is sure to come true.'' In divination proper the diviner prepares the experi- ment, repeats his charm formula, incantation, or prayer, and observes what takes place. Such divining is by flight of birds, examination of entrails of animals, by fire, or by water, ^ by lots, charms, by arrangement of pebbles ^ or points on the ground and sometimes by crystal gazing. King James in his ^'Demonology '' describes instances of this last-mentioned process. While the conjurer repeats his charm and the invocation belonging to the special spirit in question, the seer (a person of a perfectly pure life) gazes into the beryl or crystal, and sees the answer revealed in figures or types; rarely he hears the voice of the spirit. Sometimes the divination is with circles joined together with use of holy water, and the rite must be performed on special days and with the muttering of long prayers. Interpretation of the will or caprice of the deity, by means of oracles and omens, plays a prominent part in Babylonian religion.^ The nature of the Babylonian prayer was a request or petition for the removal of an evil or the bestowal of a blessing — hence the importance of learning the intention of the deity, for the prayer was useless unless there was a response. Besides incantation 1 In his " Pirate " Seott gives a picturesque account of divination by means of fire and of melted lead, and at the same time an instance of cure of disease by sympathetic magic. See also the witches' cal- dron in " Macbeth " for example of divination. 2 See Dante, ** Purgatorio," Canto XIX, v. 4 on " Maggior Fortuna." 3 See Jastrow's account of Babylonian ritual. Jastrow, ^'Religion of Babylon." 296 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE and offerings, omens are required. The petitioner seeks to know : will the magical arts — the rain charms, loosing of knots, burning of images — be successful. Omens are introduced into prayers in Babylonian ritual; here is one accompanying the examination of a lamb : — "By virtue of this sacrificial lamb, arise and grant true mercy, favorable conditions of the parts of the animal, a declaration favorable and beneficial be ordained by thy great charity. Grant that this may come to pass. To thy great divinity, O Shamash ! great lord ! May it be pleasing, and may an oracle be sent in answer !" An interesting illustration of this type is that of the reports of the astrologers of Babylon to the king. Here we have an observation of nature processes such as the conjimction of planets, the relative positions of sun, moon, and stars ; appearance of ecUpses, their dura- tion and extent; halos, etc.; all of which phenomena are sources of omens. Mathematical calculations are based on these phenomena, and also interpretations whose motives are in part political, but largely statistical, and to some extent escape our power of understanding altogether. OMENS DIVINED FROM POSITION OF PLANETS, ETC. "Sun and moon are seen apart, The king of the country will manifest wisdom." "On the fourteenth day sun and moon are seen together, There will be loyalty in the land. The gods of Babylonia are favorably inclined, The soldiery will be in accord with the king's desire, The cattle of Babylonia will pasture in safety." From Ishtar, "Shummeresh." OMEN FROM ECLIPSES "On the fourteenth an eclipse will take place; it is evil for Elam and Aharru, lucky for the king my lord ; let the king my lord rest happy." ** When an eclipse happens in the morning watch, and it completes the watch, a north wind blowing, the sick \ THE WAY OP LIFE — ITS FORMS 297 in Akkad will recover. . . . When an eclipse happens in the month Sivan out of its time, an old powerful king will die, Ramman will inundate, a flood will come, and Ramman will diminish the crops of the land; he that goes before the army will be slain." Eclipses were an omen of evil of some kind which could only be averted by prayer. In the series of prayers called '' Lifting of the Hand" ^ are given certain eclipse formulae to be recited during and after eclipses to obtain the protection of the gods. Eclipse formula : — "In the evil of the eclipse of the moon, which in such and such a month on such and such a day, has taken place. In the evil of the powers, of the portents, evil and not good, which are in my palace and my land. Have turned towards thee ! I have established thee I Listen to the incantation ! Before Nabu . . . intercede for me. May he hearken to my cry at the word of thy mouth ; may he remove my sighing ; may he hear my supplication ! At his mighty word may god and goddess deal graciously with me! May the sickness of my body be torn away ; may the groaning of my flesh be consumed." In general, so far as we are able to interpret divination in its connection with prayer, it appears to rest on the importance of knowing the will of the divinity, or the ways of behaving of natural powers and nature processes, in order that the human individual may govern his acts and make his petitions accordingly. Hence the close observation of natural phenomena and order of events; of chance coincidence, "what happens," and the use of the statistical method. Freeing ourselves from all presuppositions as to what prayer ought to mean in a spiritual religion, we have approached the subject of prayer mth open minds. Our investigation shows quite clearly, I think, in all the various types of concrete prayer — the same universal 1 King, ^'Babylonian Sorcery and Magic." 298 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE elements which in an earlier chapter we found to belong to religious experience generally. In the Hindu prayer quoted above, page 261, these elements are quite explicitly stated. Our concrete illustrations show further that prayer may be either a social or an individual experience ; that it may be a mystical experience and that it may be ethically efficacious. We have found, moreover, in our examination of prayer in detail all these groups or types of prayer with their distinguishing characteristics and motives synthesized and blended in the history of religious experience. The religious rituals of India and Egypt are pervaded with the spirit of magic practices. In Babylonia-Assyrian religion it is especially to be noted how the incantations or magical tests are combined with direct appeals to the gods. The blending of magic and religion survives to-day in the customs of European peasantry, and also in rites of Christianity. In the superstitions, until recently, at least, surviving in Scotland and England,^ charm formulae for exorcising demons and witches are interwoven with the regular language of Christian prayer. (In the instance quoted from Hardy, above, the Lord's prayer was re- peated backwards as a charm.) The mechanical prayers of magic efficacy are not confined to any one historical period. The ''prayer mill" of the Buddhist grinds out magical formulae by the thousand. These are mechanical prayers; but the same thing may be said of the Catholic rosary. The prayers are addressed to the Deity, but the rosary itself is a kind of charm to protect against heresy. The votive offerings at world-old shrines to-day show the survival of the second type of prayer with its appeas- ing and entreating motives. In the Catholic mass all the tjrpes of prayer appear. iSee ^*The Darker Superstitions of Scotland." "British Antiqui- ties," Hazlett. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 299 They are petitional, ethical, and mystical, and at the same time the sacrifice is supposed to have a magic effect. As a preliminary observation we may note that one thing emerges from our whole empirical study of prayer ; namely, that in every type of prayer the will of man is in itself a cooperating cause. In the rites of sympathetic magic, primitive man believes he can do somewhat to influence the powers of nature, or the supernatural beings dwelling in nature. In omens and divinations certain rules and the proper prayers must be carefully observed (as for instance, that the animal examined must be with- out blemish). In the second type of prayer the will of the deity must be entreated and wooed by the worshipper, and he must offer sacrifice. Finally, in the third type, mystical and ethical, it is quite evident that very much depends on the attitude of the finite will. In Hindu thought the magical power of prayer came to be identified with Brahma, for this was what the name originally meant. And Brahma is Atman the spirit in every man. Thus says Professor Hoffding, commenting on this: 'Hhe innermost ground of the world in Hindu philosophy is one with the highest goal of all striving or is striving itself." Yet it is also evident, I think, in all the types of prayer that something more and other than the human will is involved. We have now to ask what, for the modern consciousness and for a spiritual religious experience, the various motives which we have found in prayer can mean. Can old-world magic have a place in spiritual prayer, and what part can petition play in relation to the already perfect will of a divine being? If in the more spiritual and higher types of prayer the petitional element is largely eliminated, even though the petitional form remains, can we say the essence of spiritual prayer is communion; and if so, is not this to make prayer static? I think not. First, because 300 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE such coimnunion implies another^ i.e. one to be appealed to, — a dual relation, — and this is perhaps the deeper ground of the universaUty of the petitional form in spiritual prayer ; hence we can never quite reduce prayer to the ''unio mystica^' of absolute absorption in the divine, or to the unconsciousness of Nirvana. In the second place, the meaning of prayer presupposes a response, it presupposes one who will not only hear but answer. Yet it is true that in its deepest essence, prayer is communion ; but if this is the essence of prayer, in what sense can we still say that prayer is dynamic and efficacious? for reUgion still holds that something really happens through prayer, that prayer works changes in the outer world. An illustration of the usual view is the case of George Miiller, who prayed for gifts for his orphan asylum; and his prayers seemed to him to be answered, for in- variably the gifts came, though sometimes '*the Lord tarried long.'' ^ But in our chapter on the relation between the inner and the outer, we saw how little we really know about psycho-physical causation and the real relation between the material and the spiritual. They appear to belong to two different orders of being ; and we were not able to see how they could be unified by the categories of cause and effect. For we have : — First — A series of will attitudes, which is a progression of terms, a discreet and irreversible series, and Second — The natural order which is cyclic and con- tinuous, which can therefore be treated as quantitative. But if in the first series something new and significant appears (through prayer as by miracle), how can we have the recurrent sequence of a mechanical science? Psy- 1 ''To-day I gave myself once more earnestly to prayer respecting the remainder of the thousand pounds. This evening five pounds were given, so that now the whole sum is made up. During eighteen months and ten days this petition has been brought before God almost daUy." " Life of George Miiller." THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 301 chophysical parallelism, after all, even if it could be perfectly carried out, does not really synthesize the ele- ments of each series, they are still apart. ^ The failure of the theory of psychophysical causation to interpret satisfactorily the efficacy of prayer has led recently to another theory, namely, the theory of the subliminal consciousness, or the ^^reser^^e energy'^ theory. This is exemplified in the present-day tendency to identify the divine with the transmarginal region of our conscious- ness. Religious experience believes that, whether or not particular events are changed as George Miiller held, at least subjective relations are altered, and through them outer events become changed to the subject himself. As actual religious experience abundantly testifies, when we get into touch with the divine through prayer, man views his life in another way. Our lives are transformed — suffused, as it were, with the golden glow of the heavenly life. Through prayer new meaning comes into our life; sorrows are bravely borne; difficult tasks are undertaken ; burdens are dropped or lightened ; anxieties and fears banished; serenity of mind attained — it is "a new life,^' surely. Thus there is a tendency in our day to make of the response to prayer the quickening of our own psychophysical processes. Prayer is a form of auto-suggestion. James says in effect, that in prayer the mind draws near to the source of its being, and by prayer energy is set free and operates in the phe- nomena world. Christian Scientists claim that through prayer diseased minds and bodies are healed. These healers are often successful; and also it is true that apparent miracles occur at the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre, at the healing waters of Lourdes, and elsewhere.^ Yet the doubting modern mind asks : do these methods ^Suggestion of Charles Pierce C'The Monist") : "The laws of nature may be nature's habits, only relatively invariable.** Here, however, we are largelj^ in the field of speculation. 2 See also answers to prayers in Evangelical sects. 302 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE really differ from those used by psychotherapeutics, methods of suggestion, of hypnotism, of education, en- couragement, rest-cure, work-cure, and the rest? And cannot these '^ cures," as well as the phenomena of stig- mata, hallucinations, of visions and voices, mind-reading, crystal vision, automatic writing, etc., be explained as science would explain them — through the mediation of physical processes? Have we any right to say that spiritual power set free by prayer brings such things to pass ? And further, if we say that such things come from the transmarginal region of our consciousness, and that there is '' always some power of organic expression in abeyance or reserve," have we any reason to identify this transmarginal region, this subliminal self, with the divine? '^In the study of conversion, of mystical ex- periences and of prayer," says James, ^ invasions from this region play a striking part; but from it come also imperfect memories, silly jingles, inhibitions, timid- ities, ' dissolutive ^ phenomena of various sorts." ^ There must be in these suggestions from the subliminal con- sciousness some means of distinguishing what belongs to the divine from what belongs to the devil. An in- teresting case of neurasthenic type is that of John Bunyan. Here the suggestions came largely from the side of the tempter. In prayer time Bunyan is overwhelmed with temptations to pour forth '^floods of blasphemies," to doubt the truth of the Scriptures, to '^commit the un- pardonable sin," to sell Christ, etc. The subliminal consciousness is held to be ''more" than the self-con- scious personality. If by this more a social consciousness is meant, social suggestion is not always for good, for example, as seen in mob action and also in some of the effects of religious revivals. In the olden days savages held that the unseen world was peopled by evil spirits — ^For cases of the subconscious self as abnormal see "Story of Miss Beauchamp," Dr. Morton Prince ; also articles by Janet, Prince, and others in Journal of Abnormal Psychology. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 303 demons and witches — weaving magic spells ; so one of the Vedic prayers is against the flying arrow, for in it a spirit dwells, and the person who shoots the arrow prac- tises magic in letting loose the spirit which may prove dangerous by taking up its abode in some visible object, by making some one ill, or by causing some other harm. In the first place then, as we have seen in earlier chap- ters, there seems no reason to hold that the subliminal self is necessarily a more divine self. A criterion of value, an ethical judgment^ is necessary to determine whether instincts and impulses, suggestions and desires coming from this region are really higher and nobler, more god- like and divine. And, in the second place : If through some functioning of the subliminal consciousness miracles and ' ^ cures ^^ are effected, have we logically the right to say that these are the result of, the answer to, prayer? The process, it appears to me, is like that described by Starbuck ^ in his account of religious conversion, and may be wholly expressed in psychophysical terms. Through suggestion of another, auto-suggestion, or through various influences which gradually become con- centrated, a new brain centre is stimulated and gradually becomes the controlling centre. The new idea, as Star- buck says (p. 107), becomes a disturbing element until equilibrium is again restored. This happens when the stimulated centre becomes the organizing centre. Then we say conversion takes place, the person leads a new life, on a higher plane. The following is one of Star- buck's cases, that of a young girl : ^' On the impulse of the moment I went to the altar. After an hour of pleading and prayer, I felt something go from me, which seemed like a burden lifted, and something seemed floating nearer and nearer just above me. Suddenly I felt a touch as of the divine one, and a voice said, ^Thy sins are forgiven thee ; arise, go in peace.''' Similarly, in the cure of nervous diseases, whether bf 1 Starbuck's "Psychology of Religion," pp. 107-117. 304 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Christian Science, the miracles of the past, of quacks, or of modern psychotherapeutics, all depends on strengthen- ing the right stimulus either through concentrating the mind on one idea, — as the thought of wholeness, for example, — until it gradually fills the whole mind ; or through the inhibition of antagonistic impulses; or through the method of calming the mind by the process of letting go, giving up, and resignation, of which Star- buck ^ has so much to say, ix. methods which give a chance for a readjustment of impulses. The nervous system thus set in motion, and new energy set free dis- charging itself in new channels till the old channels are blocked and their currents inhibited, will influence the pathological processes till the cure is effected. Another way of expressing it is — Old habits must be overcome by setting up new habits. When physicians and ministers of the present day, who have become interested in the psychic treatment of dis- ease, say that functional maladies may be cured by prayer, what they probably mean is that since ^'religion means the most searching, inclusive, and profound activity pos- sible for the individual, — since it reaches to the depths of personality and frees its most powerful motives" — ^ it must make a difference in the kind of life a man leads. A man who continuously holds an ethical-religious attitude will hardly be able to be gluttonous, or slothful, or avari- cious, perhaps not even wrathful and proud. The seven deadly sins described by Dante would naturally have their psychophysical accompaniments, as his symbolism ^ Starbuck, op. cit., ''Conscious volition, before the change of heart, is the wilful assertion that life shall still be viewed through the old port- holes, rather than from the new vantage-ground. It is God and sinful man striving against each other. It is at the point of self-surrender that the deadlock is broken. The act of yielding is giving oneself over to the new life, making it the centre of a new personality." Similar to this state of "yielding to grace" are cases of unconscious cerebration such as trying to solve a problem, or to remember some- thing vainly at night and finding it clear in the morning. 2 Dr. Richard C. Cabot. THE WAT OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 305 of these and of their punishment shows. Thus, speaking loosely and unscientifically we may say that religion (prayer) cures disease ; but is it not a mixing of things that are mechanical and things that are spiritual? Science transforms the real world of will attitudes and values into a world of psychic elements with their nec- essary physical accompaniments in order to describe and explain psychic life; science makes use of mechanical categories. These conceptions are simply mental short- hand for the convenience of scientific communication. To this world, psychic elements — sensations, brain cells, the nervous system with its nervous discharges — belong. Prayer, however, belongs to another series: it is ethical, and its effect, if any, must be ethical, not psycho- physical. The Christian Scientists, though wrong in their presuppositions, seem more logical in their conclu- sions ; for if disease is sin,» it belongs to the moral world and might be cured by aspiration and prayer. We must deal with facts of the same order, and not confuse the two. Psychophysical categories and elements belong to one order, moral and religious attitudes and values to another. The subliminal consciousness is not by any means always an abnormal consciousness, and it is here that James's theory comes to the fore.^ The concept ^'sub- liminal self sums up those slowly maturing, stored-up experiences of the life of the individual or the inherited tendencies of his ancestors and of his race which burst some day into the conscious life. We have seen how the "up- rushes'^ of the subliminal consciousness, together with its influence, vary from the trivialities of any normal con- sciousness, from dangerous suggestions of psychasthenic states (Janet's examples)^ and so-called demon posses- sions, to the inspiration of genius, the divine calls of prophets, the answers to prayer. ^ "The subliminal" I take it is a type of social consciousness. 2 Pierre Janet in the " Journal of Abnormal Psychology." X 306 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE So far in our analysis of the subliminal consciousness, one point at least is clear. It is this : The subliminal consciousness is a highly suggestible self. It is analogous to the crowd consciousness which Le Bon describes. It is suggestible, impulsive, uncritical, carried away by one idea, by sentiments, shows lack of control and respon- sibility, is ready to sacrifice itself to some emotionally appealing cause. A study of the subliminal conscious- ness, then, leads us to this preliminary result. If we accept such an empirical view as that of James, then the proposition ''God answers prayer" reduces to the prop- position ''the subconscious is suggestible." The value of prayer will then depend upon the propositions — (o) The sub-conscious self, the suggestible consciousness, is a better or higher type of self than the conscious ; and (6) The value of its influence will depend on the value of the suggestion given, and on the supposition that this value can be determined^ — since there are all kinds of suggestions, good and bad. Our consideration, then, of the subliminal theory has led us so far. It has been sug- gested the efficacy of prayer resides in auto-suggestion or in social suggestion, direct or indirect.^ But what consideration really emerges? It is evident that sug- gestion is not ultimate. Suggestions imply, do they not, some ideal or purpose beyond themselves? Our final conclusion is, then, that ultimately ideals are the inspirers of conduct, the releasers of activity. Now ideals stand for a vision of good either individual or social, and these seek some form of outward expression or embodiment in order not to perish. If we turn to the history of religious experience, the religious ideal appears in the two forms already men- tioned ; that is, as an aesthetic ideal, and as an ethical ideal. The individual type of religious experience seeks ^ The method of suggestion is well known in the practice of psy- chotherapeutics, and no doubt was used in the miracle cures in which history abounds. THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 307 the beatific vision and the strength and wisdom born of communion. The individual type of the answer to prayer is a sense of inspiration, enhghtenment, of joy and peace which means a change in inner experience, — a new birth. It means that the individual finds his united, whole or pur- poseful selfhood. Emotionally it is the rapture of direct revelation and communion (as it seems to him), with God as an holy ideal, or holy cause to which he burns to devote his new strength in contemplation, in service or sacrifice. This, too, is in large measure an emotional experience. It may have such outward forms of expres- sion as sensory, auditory, or motor automatism, of which religious history has so much to tell; for if one kind of activity is inhibited, some other outlet will be found ; even the life of the monastery, as we know, has its regular ex- ternal forms, its times and seasons. The social religious experience turns to practice. The social response comes when some appeal in the heart of an individual or group of persons, — as in the prayers of a church, — comes into touch with the deep heart of humanity. The result will then be some change in the outward social world, as some new institution, reform or other form of social activity. Prayer, then, is an individual experience, but it is really social, too, and in so far as the subliminal conscious- ness takes part in this experience, in saying that the sub- liminal self is suggestible, we have really said at the same time that it is a social self. For if suggestible, it may be socially disciplined and educated. Let any one, for instance, in an experience of sorrow try the simple experiment of repeating to himself pessimistic verses such as those which dwell on the passing of life, its futility and tragedy, or let him, on the other hand, repeat to himself as a discipline to strength and consolation those hymns, prayers, and poems which express the experience of triumph, of peace or of enlightenment of the saints, martyrs, heroes, throughout the ages, and let him note 308 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE the instinctive, inevitable difference in his own attitude thereafter which one experiment or the other tends to make. Such appears to be the testimony of religious experi- ence in regard to the response to prayer. But still we have to ask — Is this experience, are these ideals valuable? Is the prayer really efficacious in the world ? — is the response in very truth the presence of God in the soul of the individual and the social com- munity? Since the suggestible, social consciousness can be dis- ciplined, as we have seen, again the value of its revela- tions will depend on the kind of education it receives. Not all social suggestions and not all auto-suggestions are valuable. So we come back to the question what is good? What is an ultimate value? What do we really mean by an absolute or religious ideal ? It is in the light of this consideration that we cannot, in the last analysis, hold as was suggested above that the final efficacy of prayer resides in suggestion, either auto-suggestion or social suggestion. The theory that God is a reservoir of power which the prayer might turn into the channels of man's capricious will, is not a spiritual theory of prayer. Prayer belongs to the moral order, to the world of will attitudes, meanings, and purposes, but is it not true that here prayer has efiicacy and is dynamic ? The records of the lives of the saints answer in the affirmative. Yet still one may ask : Granted that prayer belongs to the world of ethical values, what does prayer actually do ? What is the nature of the response? What, then, for a final interpretation, is the essence of the prayer experience ? Let us turn once more to the '^concrete situation,'' and from an analysis of the concrete and particular experience attempt to discover afresh the essence and the efficacy of prayer. No doubt religious experience is often a joyous out- pouring of the heart scarcely conscious of present needs THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 309 or of past woes; and there are prayers of adoration, thanksgiving, and the like, — though we usually call such prayers hymns, — and, surely, divine revelations come through the experience of joy as well as of grief and pain, and yet, probably we can more easily find the essence of prayer experience in times of stress, of sorrow, of perplex- ity, or of sin. ''Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee.'' This seems to be the typical prayer experience. What, then, does this cry mean? Let us analyze two typical prayer experiences, one the case of sorrow, the other the case of sin. 1. First let us take one of the most common of human experiences, — the crisis which comes in the life of man or woman when one dear to him or her — parent, child, or friend — has been suddenly snatched away by death, or it may be removed by estrangement or misunderstanding. Such an experience as that which Leigh Himt describes in ''Rose Alymer," which we quoted above, or an experience like that of Milton's " Lycidas," of Tennyson's "In Memo- riam," of Arnold's "Thyrsis," of Emerson's "Threnody," of Browning's "Too Late," or Wordsworth's lines to Lucy : — "She lived unknown and few could know, When Lucy ceased to be ; But she is in her grave, and oh, The difference to me !" As in these poems, the individual's life was bound up with the life of this beloved person and now it is desolate ; the whole life is changed, its crown and meaning gone. The soul feels itself to be in an irrational world. It beats its wings against the iron bars of fate and the irrevocable, vainly striving to turn back the cruel march of time and to make what has happened as if it were not. Or, in striving to overcome its sorrow, stoically through the effort of its own imconquerable will, the soul of man learns its powerlessness to fight against the world. Thus struggling, the awful sense of the irrevocable comes near to 310 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE overwhelming the soul. Then comes the turning to prayer in the cry/ My God ! or as in the Psalmist's, ^'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ! ' ' And herewith, I take it, we have the beginning of the prayer-experience. For this cry is first of all an appeal to the spirit of the universe, to the omnipotent All Knower to justify his ways to man, and at the same time it is the beginning of wisdom. Until this moment he who prays has been, in James's language, '^a divided soul." But in his recognition that this ex- perience of his is in the order of the universe, and that the past is irrevocable, man finds himself in touch with 'Hhat which is" — 'Hhe real." So in his acceptance of the in- evitable fact is the beginning of the response to prayer. For in his acceptance of the irrevocable order of the uni- verse, he sees the futility of his own desperate strivings, so he begins to recover and his wounds begin to heal. For, facing the experience as an inevitable element in the real world, he yields himself to the order of the world and he begins to find the new way of adjustment. This is the second step to enlightenment and to the attainment of self-mastery and serenity of spirit. This acceptance is in part an act of faith. He cannot at first see why the ex- perience is good for him ; what he sees is that it is inevi- table, — an element in the universal order, an order of which he is a part, upon which he is dependent, and which he has to accept. Let us see how Pusey has described the attitude of renunciation and consent to the Divine decree : — " God knows us through and through. Not the most secret thought, which we most hide from ourselves, is hidden from Him. As then we come to know ourselves through and through, we come to see ourselves more as God sees us, and then we catch some little glimpse of His designs with us, how each ordering of His Providence, each check to our desires, each failure of our hopes, is just fitted for us, and for something in our own spiritual state, which others know not of, * The simplest form of prayer seems to be just a cry to God : ** Hear my cry, God ; Attend unto my prayer." (Psalm 61 : 1.) THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 311 and which, till then, we know not. Until we come to this knowl- edge, we must take all in faith, believing, though we know now, the goodness of God towards us. As we know ourselves, we, thus far, know God.'^ And Vaughan in the following hymn : — "Lord, with what courage and delight I do each thing, When Thy least breath sustains my wing I I shine and move Like those above. And, with much gladness Quitting sadness. Make me fair days of every night." "How shall we rest in God? By giving ourselves wholly to him. If you give yourself by halves, you cannot find full rest. There will ever be a lurking disquiet in that half which is withheld. Martyrs, confessors, and saints have tasted this rest and 'counted themselves happy in that they endured.' A countless host of God's faithful servants have drunk deeply of it under the daily burden of a weary life — dull, commonplace, painful or desolate. All that God has been to them, he is ready to be to you. The heart once fairly given to God with a clear conscience, a fitting rule of life, and a steadfast purpose of obedience, you will find a wonderful rest coming over you." ^ There is a state of inner (heavenly) beatitude following acquiescence, which is the beginning of the creation of new values and is the mystical answer to prayer. It is when the heart of man feels that something is wrong with the world-order, when it feels that what is now the inevitable might well have been otherwise, that it cannot be at peace. Or, again, when it seems that the world is irrational and meaningless, as the hypothesis of scientific materialism makes it seem to many minds, then struggle, doubt, conflict, suffering follow till at last the sorrow-laden heart turns to God in prayer. For in the prayer-experience, man seeks to get into 1 Jean Nicolas Grou. 312 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE communion with the soul of reaHty, with the whole and inmost nature of things, and the first step to this, as we have seen, is the acceptance of the inevitable. **When your sorrow seems intolerable to you, pray — pray and the devils become changed to shining angels." My sorrow is inevitable. I must bear it, but how? When the stricken heart of man asks this question, it has begun to learn wisdom. In its loss and sorrow it prays for help, for strength, for enlightenment. The mystic is right when he says he has seen God, or been with God. For in the response to prayer, man wins new insight into the essential, that is, the divine^ meaning of things, and he goes forth with new strength to meet the adventure of hfe ; like a knight of the olden days to fight the evils of life and to serve life's needs. Then the sorrow which cannot die becomes a transfigured sorrow, a holy memory, an inspiration, a blessed peace-bringer. The beloved from whom he is separated will become to him an abiding presence, his guide, inspirer, and comforter ; and now he begins to see life as an whole, and the place in the whole of his own tragic experience. He begins to make a friend of his sorrow. We have spoken of separation and death, but pari passu the application can be made to the sense of guilt and re- morse, to sickness, limitation, disappointment, or any of the other countless adversities which may overtake the human spirit on its pilgrimage. The third step in insight (and response) is this : Since this tragic experience is an element or part of the total world experience and order, it is a universal element and the world is very tragic. Like the great heave of the tides of the ocean and its deep moaning undertone before the coming of the east wind, when perchance there is a storm far out at sea, so in all human experience there appears to be an undertone of sorrow and tragedy.^ ^ We shall consider this point further in the next section. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 313 Nevertheless, such sorrows it now appears have, if we will take them so, a transforming, a redeeming power. It is common experience, all his brethren suffer, but also they may be saved. So he, the individual, enlightened by prayer, goes forth to bring the good word to man. Strong, calm, and serene he goes because the universe has told him its secret, because he has been in the presence of God. Such an experience or vision brings peace and may become ecstatic even as the Mystics say. It is like the experience of Jacob when, alone in the desert at night, he wrestled with one unknown and he said : ^^Let me go for the day breaketh'^ and Jacob said : ^'I will not let thee go except thou bless me. '^ And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel : for he said ^^I have seen God face to face.'' The blessing was the peace and joy wliich come through self- mastery over the private will ; or, we may express it more religiously, — as conversion, the self-surrender to the Ideal, — the '^life hid in Christ with God" as Paul called it. We have such hours of insight — mystic they have been called because they seem supernaturally enlightening — yet in fact no miracle is needed to explain them. Through repeated reactions to a situation, we have ac- quired the habit of memory ; that is, of summarizing the past in our fleeting momentary experience so that at times the passing moment reveals to us a great deal more than its own immediacy. It becomes a symbol or an epitome, as it were, of a rich experience. Our life is lived in the midst of symbols of this kind — symbols such as the ^ ' Cross ' ' and the ' ' Flag ' ' exemplify. General ideas are of this nature, but the same thing is true of sense perception. WTien on the sea beach I scent the salt smell of the brine, and listen to the roar of the waves, the experience which comes to me ranges, it may be, all the way from other days of my own life to the experience of ships at sea and all the adventure and tragedy of sea life ; the voy- ages to discover treasure islands, unknown continents or 314 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE poles, pirate cruises, sea fights, perils of storms, wrecks, disaster. Or, again, the picture I saw one day from a country- roadside, — the look of pain in the deep eyes of a woman passing through the orchard of a New England farm — brings to my mind all the love and sorrow of all the women in the world who have suffered. Or to some one a certain flower which blooms in the early spring is so enwrought with intense inner experience that the drops from its leaves are like drops of blood from the heart. ^ This type of experience is described again in the often quoted lines of Wordsworth's ^'Highland Reaper." He could not hear the words of the song but the wild, plaintive tones of the voice brought to the poet the sense of "Old, unhappy, far-off things And battles long ago." or it might be "... some more humble lay Some natural sorrow, loss or pain That has been, and will be again.' This is the prayer experience on the '^hither side." Man is in communion with ^Hhat which is," or, in spe- cifically religious language, God answers prayer. How the experience should be described on the ''beyond" side of experience, or metaphysically, that is not for us here to determine. The study of typical prayers shows, I think, that this is the essence of the prayer experience and in the fight of our analysis we may turn back to examine anew our con- crete illustrations. The prayers of the ' ' Imitation ' ' may be taken as classical expressions of prayer for help in tribula- tion. Here is one from a recent collection of hymns : ^ — "I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me ; 1 Robert Browning, "May and Death." 2 Hymns of the Kingdom, 1904. THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 315 It was not I that found, O Saviour true, No, I was found of Thee. **Thou didst reach forth Thy hand and mine enfold; I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed sea, — 'Twas not so much that I on Thee took hold. As Thou, dear Lord, on me. "I find, I walk, I love, but the whole Of love is but my answer. Lord, to Thee ; For Thou wert long beforehand with my soul, Always Thou lovedst me." The following prayer of John Woolman suggests the relation of the prayer state to the experience of sorrow or misery. "O Lord, my God ! the arraying horrors of darkness were gathered round me, and covered me all over, and I saw no way to go forth ; I felt the depth and extent of the misery of my fellow creatures separated from the Divine harmony and it was heavier than I could bear, and I was crushed under it. I lifted up my hand, I stretched out my arm but there was none to help me. In the depth of misery, O Lord, I remembered that thou art omnipotent and that I had called thee Father, and I felt that I loved Thee and I was made quiet in my will and I waited for deliverance from Thee. Thou hadst pity upon me, when no man could help me ; I saw that meekness under suffer- ing was showed to us in the most affecting example of Thy Son — Thou taughtest me to follow him and I said, 'Thy will, O Father, be done.'"i Or, take this from Tauler : — "God takes a thousand times more pains with us than the artist with his picture by many touches of sorrow, and by many colors of circumstance, to bring man into the form which is the highest and noblest in his sight, if only we receive his gifts in the right spirit. But when the cup is put away, and these feelings are shifted or unheeded, a greater injury is done to the soul than can ever be amended. For no heart can conceive in what surpassing love God giveth us this m5rrrh ; yet this which we ought to receive to our soul's good we suffer to pass by us in sleepy indifference and nothing comes of it. Then we come and complain : 'Alas, Lord ! I am so dry and it is so dark within me ! ' I tell thee, dear child, open thy heart to the pain and it will do thee more good than if thou wert full of feeling and devoutness." 1 John Woolman. 316 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE To give here a less technical illustration, consider the following poem of Matthew Arnold : — "Calm soul of all things make it mine To feel amidst the city's jar That there abides a peace of Thine Man did not make and cannot mar. "The will to neither strive nor cry The power to feel with others give Calm, calm me more, nor let me die Before I have begmi to live." The spiritual bond which binds man to the '* Holiest" is only too easily broken. The redeeming spirit which comes through prayer cannot abide with us except by constant renewal at the source of strength and peace, that is, by prayer. Hence, even in individual experience, the need of repeated or cyclic processes ; and the method of approach to prayer is largely that of the Via Negativa which all the Mystics emphasize. It requires the shutting out of all that is irrelevant, of all worldly interests and cares, in order to concentrate the mind on the things of the spirit, on such deep questionings as these: What does life really mean, and what part ought man to play in it ? Buddhism names this process of discipline and en- lightenment through meditation, trances, and prayer, the '^ extinction of desire." We may use this expression if we mean by it the overcoming of the partial point of view for the sake of the whole, i,e. I cannot strive or pray for the fulfilment of the partial end no matter how much longed for in itself if it contradicts the meaning and purpose of my unified life, i.e. my life in relation to the whole. But ** extinction" implies the turning away from, rejecting and forgetting precious memories and experiences. Better, therefore, than extinction is the expression the sublima- tion or idealization of the particular end through taking it up as an element in the whole. Others, again, like the Stoics, have called this experience "resignation," but rather is it, I think, a process of self-surrender upon enlighten- THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 317 ment, loyalty, and endeavor, — that is, a determination of the will, — following a vision of the whole or united life, of the ideal good.^ The mystic state is ineffable, noetic, passive in self- surrender, and, without renewal, the state is transient.^ It is ineffable because of the intensity in concentration of the emotional life. The noetic or illuminative character is due, I think, to the fact that while the analytic, effort- ful reason is at rest, the synthetic reason acts easily and harmoniously (the state of mind on first awakening from sleep described by Tauler). It is ^'a moment of greater mental integrity," as it has been called. Such an experi- ence is at once intercourse with our deepest selfhood and conununion with God. For the thought of what our life and all life as a whole signifies, inevitably brings us calm, and strength, and courage to go out into the world with renewed consecration of spirit. Such a state of prayer is not, however, I think, so much a return to the ^'simple and primitive " of the childlike soul as it is the com- pletest development of a self-consciously dedicated spirit which strives for the realization of an entirely holy will. In the last analysis, we have seen that the efficacy of prayer is determined by that profound ethical judgment of what ''is best '' and by the choice of it (or the yielding to it, if we like to call it so) which is an act of self-determination. For, again, for the discipline of prayer to avail it must always be followed by active, ethical endeavor in the outer world. *' Where there is no vision, the people perish." Yes, but where there is no endeavor to be loyal to the vision by carrying it out in a task, we wake to find the vision itself is fled. 1 Dante, "Divine Comedy," Paradiso, Canto XXVIII. "Hence may be seen how beatitude is founded on the act which sees, not on that which loves, which follows after. And the merit to which grace and good will give birth is the measure of this seeing." 2 William James, "Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 380. 318 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 2. We have analyzed the prayer experience in relation to the acceptance of sorrow ; but let us take, more briefly, another common experience, namely, the case of sin. Very many prayers are prayers for strength to overcome temptation, or for deliverance from sin, as, for example, the early prayers quoted on page 269. The prayers of St. Augustine are passionate cries for help in the storm and stress of the sinful consciousness. "But when a deep consideration had from the secret bottom of my soul drawn together and heaped up all my misery in the sight of my heart; there arose a mighty shower of tears. Which that I might pour forth wholly, in its natural expressions, I rose from Alypius: solitude was uggested to me as fitter for the business of weeping ; so I retired so far that even his presence could not be a burden to me- Thus was it then with me, and he perceived something of it; for something I suppose I had spoken, wherein the tones of my voice appeared choked with weeping, and so had risen up. He then re- mained where we were sitting, most extremely astonished. I cast myself down I know not how, under a certain fig-tree, giving full vent to my tears; and the floods of mine eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to Thee. And, not indeed in these words, yet to this purpose, spake I much unto Thee: and Thou, Lord, how long? how long. Lord, wilt Thou be angry, for ever? Remember not our former iniquities, for I felt that I was held by them. I sent up these sorrowful words ; How long? how long, 'to-morrow and to-morrow?' Why not now? why is there not this hour an end to my uncleanness?" * "O God, Thou only refuge of Thy children * who remainest true though all else should fail, and livest though all else die, cover us now when we fly to Thee, rebuke within us all immoderate desires, all un- quiet temper, all presumptuous expectations, all ignoble self-indul- gence, and feeling on us the embrace of Thy fatherly hand, may we meekly and with courage go into the darkest ways of our pilgrimage, anxious not to change Thy perfect will but only to do and bear it bravely." As in sorrow, so in sin the soul is divided against itself. We saw in the case of sorrow that the great difficulty is that man is not able to accept the inevitable. The past which is over for ever and for which he restlessly longs, ^ "Confessions of St. Augustine," p. 1. ' James Martineau. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 319 seems to him more beautiful, more valuable than the present, and life without that which is gone seems to be- come irrational. So in great sorrow we lose for a time the sense of reality in life, our grief is numbing, and life seems unbearable, for we have not learnt the lesson of sorrow, we have not come to see the new meaning in life which sorrow brings. "Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass. Wer nie die Kummer-voUen Nachte Auf seinem Bette weinend sass. Der kennt euch nicht ihr himmlischen Machte." In our analysis we found that the grief-stricken soul has first of all to learn acquiescence in the inevitable, and so it comes at last to find God. '^O, if you knew,'' one has said, ''the peace that comes from an accepted sorrow.'' After our acquiescence, we gain strength through this very act to turn away from our own private grief to meet the burden, needs, and sorrows of all the world. In sin, the case is a little different,^ because the sinner recognizes the good, yet he cannot wholly will to abandon his lower self and unite himself actually to the good. He longs, that is, for something different and incompatible. So, as St. Augustine says of himself: there were two wills in him which in their struggle with one another for mastery rent his soul asunder. "Therefore was I at strife with myself and rent asunder by my- self" — for "this rent befell me of my will." Yet the united self which sees the good is the real self. "Therefore it was no more I that wrought it, but sin that dwelt in me." "What said I not against myself? with what scourges of con- demnation lashed I not my soul, that it might follow me, striving to go after Thee ! Yet it drew back; refused, but excused not itself. . 1 Illustrations of the consciousness of sin : St. Paul in Romans 7 ; "St. Augustine's Confessions," Book 8; John Bunyan's "Autobiogra- phy"; Donatello in the "Marble Faun"; Arthur Dimmesdale in " The Scarlet Letter " ; Dostoieffsky in " Crime and Punishment." 320 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE All arguments were spent and confuted ; there remained a mute shrink- ing; and she feared, as she would death, to be restrained from the flux of that custom, whereby she was wasting to death." Then, at last, after his utter misery and despair comes the prayer for deliverance. The prayer is to be freed from the bondage to the lower self, to be at peace, whole, united, self-possessed.^ The following words of St. Augustine can, therefore, be applied both to the state of sin and to the state of grief : — "Woe to the audacious soul which hopes by forsaking Thee to gain some other thing." Deliverance from the lower, disrupted, wilful, selfish self into the peace of self-possession and union with the will of God is in sin as in sorrow the answer to prayer. So much of man's wrong doing is in part ignorance, for there is no sin unless the ideal is to some extent rec- ognized. Sin is conscious rejection of the seen ideal.^ Yet the ideal is never wholly known and the sinner is rarely conscious of the whole extent of his turpitude. From man's sin, as from his sorrow, he may learn the great lessons of life. But that it is necessary for him, sometimes, to descend into hell, we learn from Beatrice's speech to Dante : "Nor did it avail me to obtain inspira- tions with which, both in dream and otherwise, I called him back ; so little did he heed them. So low he fell that all means for his salvation were already short, save show- ing him the lost people." ^ How agonizing is the experience through which the great life lessons must be learnt, Dante's whole tragic story of his journey through hell profoundly reveals to him who will hear. We have seen how much the finite self has to do with the response to prayer, yet we have also seen that man unaided cannot attain to salvation. In this connection, it is interesting to consider the petitional element in prayer. ^ "Confessions of St. Augustine," pp. 155-156. 2 See Paul's account of sin and the law in Romans 7. » " Purgatorio," Canto XXX. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 321 It is sometimes said that spiritual prayer should wholly lose its petitional character, which is a survival from a savage past. But prayer cannot lose the relation to an- other, and in the attainment of spiritual life there is some- thing which may be called ^^ Divine Grace/' A friend of mine, interested in these matters, asked some very modern young girls (readers of Shaw, Ibsen, Wells, and the rest) what prayers they said. She found that, through force of habit, they were saying the little prayer they had been taught in childhood — '^Now I lay me down to sleep'' — though one of them had questioned the appropriateness of this prayer for a grown person. My friend then asked them to whom they prayed; and they replied to their 'better self.' Now the question is — what is the content of this better self, what is it thought of as ? Is it our purely individual better self — so making prayer largely reflection and monologue? Is it 'Hhe great Companion" — so that prayer becomes a dual relation, as we find it so distinctly in the hymns of George Herbert, for example? Is it the subliminal consciousness embodying the spirit of the race, as Le Bon calls it — our suggestible, emotional self of unconscious, social inheritance and tradition? Is it the community of the faithful — embodied for us perhaps in some church, city, or nation, or as an ideal, universal social consciousness? Or would some such concept as ''the universal individual" better express our meaning? Psy- chologically, no doubt, this content differs for different temperaments. A reUgious metaphysic, not content with Pluralism, would seek to reconcile all experiences in some total point of view and absolute experience. The presupposition and starting point of the religious consciousness, its sole excuse for being, so to speak, is that this "better self" is another than just the everyday consciousness. An empirical theory like that of William James's, which seeks to identify this other self with the subUminal consciousness, must show, however, that this 322 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE consciousness is not only another, but also a higher, more valuable, self than the everyday consciousness. Our study of this theory has shown that in the last analysis the sub- liminal consciousness reduces to the suggestible, emotional consciousness, and therefore that the proof of its value depends on proving the two propositions a and h. (a) The subconscious self is a higher type of self than the conscious self. (6) The value of the suggestion (any suggestion given) can be determined. Now, for my part, I accept James's conclusion that the experience of the religious mystic is valuable to Mm. It may be really, that is universally, enlightening ; but it is essentially an aesthetic, an inner, an emotional value. Religion is to a great extent a thing of imaginative, emo- tional life. Human nature universally is possessed of a kind of creative energy and inspiration, and a need of an outlet for the passional forces. Therefore, aesthetic values and mysticism will, I think, always have to play their part in any religious experience which shall satisfy the cravings of the human spirit. But inner experience is variable ; its value has a wide range. What is aesthetically valuable to one man is not to another, and there is no way of prov- ing to another that my experience is the highest good. The epicure's enjoyment of a good dinner is an aesthetic experience, as well as the musician's enjoyment of a symphony. In its religious form, aesthetic experience may be expressed as a kind of rapture of insight and en- lightenment and passionate self-devotion, — what per- haps Gautama ^ felt when, sitting under the Bo-tree medi- tating on the mystery and misery of human experience and seeking for life's meaning, the thought came to him of the fourfold path of deliverance from ignorance and suffering and the unsatisfied longing of the will and the attainment of the enlightenment and peace of Nirvana. 1 Compare "Bachae" of Euripides, "On where the vision of holiness thriUs." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 323 We might ask, then — First, is there an absolute and objective aesthetic value which all men ought to accept; and, second, is this standard of value given in the sub- liminal consciousness ? The outcome of James's theory is, of course. Pluralism. There are many gods and many values. It is all an individualistic affair. Now, in the first place, the subliminal consciousness, even if we exclude distinctly abnormal phenomena (and it is hard to find the line of cleavage between the normal and the abnormal) has various manifestations, such as the impulsive action of mobs, and the automatisms of revival movements, as those under Jonathan Edwards, Wesley, and the Kentucky revivals of the last century. There seems to be no ground for holding that the inner experience of emotion is in itself divine. Second, aesthetic experience seems to be an inner and passive state of appreciation, but if we class ^'hap- piness" under aesthetic values, — and this is the aesthetic end which most men seek — this seems to involve social relations and to lead over to activity and a possible con- flict of interests. For why should my happiness count for more than yours or another man's ? And surely religious experience has its active, practical, ethical aspect and value, as well as its aesthetic aspect and value. The psychology of religion seems to show that the roots of primitive religion are buried deep in the emotional life, — ''Deep below the depth of conscious being," if you will; at the same time the history of rehgion, I think, proves religion to have been in the beginning more a social than an individual affair ; and if social, moral values are bound at once to enter. Certainly in the moral field, — what- ever we may think of the aesthetic, — the subliminal con- sciousness furnishes no criterion for the propositions a and b above. James's theory of the "subliminal," with its "uprushes" as the manifestation of the divine, leads to the individual- istic point of view : God is myself, any one's self ; and empirically I cannot prove that this extra-consciousness 324 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE of mine is higher, the emotional life itself divine, for the content of the subliminal is variable. It depends on the suggestions given, and the values of these again cannot be determined by the subliminal itself, for this would be to argue in a circle. After all, the subliminal consciousness as ^^more^^ than the individual consciousness seems ultimately to be a social consciousness of a primitive type, a kind of in- stinctive, suggestible, emotional race inheritance, or *' spirit of the race," as Le Bon calls the crowd conscious- ness. As such a consciousness it is, I think, neither good nor bad. It is simply the 'Aplastic, suggestible conscious- ness," a '^ buried life" which, as Mr. Bradley has well said, may issue in ^^love and light or in dirt and fire." ^ In other words, the value of the subliminal consciousness will be determined by those conscious processes which discipline and control it.^ Now, if we can substitute for this form of the social consciousness one of a higher, more orderly type, if we can substitute a ^'social self" which is characterized by activity, self-control, and a sense of re- sponsibihty, as well as by feeling, we shall get nearer to an objective criterion for determining our propositions a and 6. Such a social consciousness could be represented for religion as ^Hhe community of the faithful," — as an or- ganized institution like a church, or by some social group which, working for the welfare of humanity, might really be actuated by a religious motive in the deepest sense; or again, it might be expressed in an ideal form as the New Jerusalem of the Hebrew prophets or St. Augustine's City of God.3 1 F. H. Bradley, "Ethical Studies." 2 That "social suggestion" is not always for good appears, as already noted, in mob action and in some revival movements, also, easily, outside of the distinctly religious field. ^ Recently there has been a tendency to define this highest self in terms of a purely social consciousness — not at present realized in the social order, to be sure, but which could be so realized. Thus Professor Ames defines religious experience as "the consciousness of THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 325 That such a social consciousness, that is, the conscious- ness of the spiritual community as an union of the one and the many, — a consciousness which differs from the mob type of social consciousness through its self-control and organization in relation to a social ideal — is possible, we are able easily to realize in idea, but it is not difficult to show that it is also emotionally and concretely realized. Let me give a few illustrations. It is realized, emotion- ally, when a large group of people of different race, tradi- tions, and creed join in singing some of the patriotic songs or familiar hymns such as Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic, or Auld Lang Syne, Nearer My God to Thee, For All the Saints (to mention a few only). For, although the emotional experience of each individual in the group refers to some particular experience, yet the emotion itself the remembrance of days it may be of adventure and loyal service ; of youth and friendship ; the emotion of love and sorrow, of repentance and striving, of aspiration and triumph, is a common emotion, and it is different from any individual emotion because of the fact that all are feeling it together. Again, we can see how this social consciousness is con- cretely realized in small groups as in brotherhoods, and in the members of a church. When the people of a state watch the young men marching forth, with the band play- ing and their country's flag flying, to join the cause of liberty, something of this community-consciousness is theirs. Up to a certain point, the Crusades of the Middle Ages bound together in a common cause all the nations of Christendom. To make our illustration more concrete by relating it more closely to the present day, let us think of a modern group such, perhaps, as the members of a the highest social values," "the social attitude of solidarity." But some of us prefer to this definition the old concept of our fathers — God — and mean by this name a consciousness of a personal or supra- personal type — "the great Companion" — the soul of our souls, the being in whom our finite lives are actually completed and satisfied though never to our imperfect and finite earthly vision. 326 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE woman's club in an American city who, dissatisfied with the school system of their city, dream of a time when school work shall arouse more individual interest and shall em- body more of the play spirit, shall make life more worth the living and create a more responsive and more loyal type of men and women. Amidst much misunderstanding and perhaps opposition and criticism, let us suppose that they start a Froebelian kindergarten in the city, and later establish a playground for older children. After a time, the fathers and mothers of the children are ready to plead before the school board and board of aldermen, to have these new activities and methods of education adopted as a part of the school system. Then, at last, there comes a day when all the people of the community gather on their Common to watch hundreds of children from the different schoolyard playgrounds take part in athletic sports, games, folk dancing, and singing. Now, no doubt, the thoughts and emotions of the different individuals gathered there to watch the training of the young citizens of the future city are various, yet I maintain that there is something in coromon which makes the consciousness there present a social or community consciousness. What is this social experience as past, present, and future rush together? It is, in part, a love of the child universal (not merely of each one's own child). It is, in part, a common thrill with a sense of the golden future when these children shall be the worthy citizens of a noble city which they have largely created ; even more is it the sense that all, old and young, are bound together in loyalty and devotion to a common cause — that is, to the community and to the highest ideals for it, as each one is able to embody these ideals to himself. It is, in fact, an attitude consecrated to the highest ideals in relation to actual life, that is, to God. And so, at last, we can come to say not only : ''Beloved City of Athens,'' or Rome, or New York, or Boston, but ''Beloved City of God." In such a social consciousness as this, every individual THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 327 iias to be considered in the light of the whole; but the whole is what it is because of the character of each in- dividual. Its working principle would be an ethical one, which could be expressed in some such formula as Kant's categorical imperative. Or, as religion would put it, to each individual — So act that the will of God, or the uni- versal will, shall be expressed in your life and in that of the community as a whole. Augustine has expressed this idea in his notion of the Church — the temple of God — based on two principles, — ^'Remissionem peccatorum stat ecclesia quae est in terris" — and ''In caritate stat ecclesia ..." that is, through a spiritual bond the true church is an union of many in one. The difficulty is that such a social consciousness which can really serve as a criterion is never fully objectified. The principle has numerous applications, but it is carried out only here and there, in an isolated individual or in small groups; as universal it exists only as an ideal.^ Nevertheless, this ideal is forever trying to express itself in social traditions, customs and institutions and creeds, and so wins partial realization and fulfilment. Religion is not content to be a poetical expression of mere dreaming, and to dwell in a world apart, an unreal world ; but, in- deed, like poetry itself, it seeks to find itself in the outer and everyday life of man, and to make these outer forms valuable. But again, these ''tables of values '^ are only, as Nietzsche puts it, "a transition" and "a destruction." The old idols have to be broken, and new values substi- tuted ; and the first impulse to these new values seems to come from the individual, not from the social group. He is the creator, and the martyr. To return again to the problem of the efficacy of prayer : If we pass over the difficulty of psychophysical caus- ation, really still involved in the "reserve energy" theory ^ This ideal of an all-inclusive self-consciousness is, I take it, what we mean by God in relation to our finite social life. Yet we believe that He also is or exists. 328 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE (see Starbuck^s account),^ we have still the difRculty of determining how the process of the subliminal conscious- ness as a response to prayer is a divine response; for the surplus energy of the subliminal is not in itself to be identified with God, and we can hardly say that the experience of emotion or the mere sense of wholeness and repose is itself the divine, — that is, it is not a priori evi- dent that the whole is better or nobler than the part. What we need here is a criterion of value, an ethical judg- ment, an ought or ideal ; and this leads us directly over to the other kind of efficacy and the ethical way of prayer ; and it is really here, I think — to the world of ethical values — that the deepest meaning of the efficacy of prayer belongs, and this is what our analysis of the con- crete prayer state revealed. The ethical, i.e. the truly spiritual, form of prayer is at once an appeal to an ideal reality, and a concentration of the mind upon its own thought of the highest good ; further it is a resolve to carry out the vision. It is, i.e., an active attitude. The prayer is for the coining of the spirit of enlightenment and devotion, — "the understanding heart ^' for which Solomon is said to have prayed. Or, as the prayer of Socrates, which was ''simply for things good, because the gods know best what is good." If there is a petition for the fulfilment of any particular de- sires, these desires are, to speak symbolically, laid upon the altar of the Lord ; that is, the petition is like that of the prayer in Gethsemane, — it involves the condition : be it granted only if in accord with the will of the world. Further, as Emerson said, there is no need to seek for the solution of private riddles, — no need for oracles and divi- nations, — for such prayer is the beginning of its own response. The question and the answer, the prayer and the response, are one. For this attitude of prayer is itself at once the effort to seek for insight, and the resolve to live out the insight when discovered. No man can ^Starbuck, "Psychology of Religious Experience." THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 329 earnestly pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God, for the realization of the universal will in himself or the world, without meaning to do his part towards the fulfilment. This meaning is the beginning of the act, and the act again leads to greater insight into the meaning. This is the revelation of prayer. Again, the dwelling on divine issues tends to a universalization of the will of the finite and so to the negation of purely personal aims. Such an attitude is in itself an unto mystica, communion, or '^ascent of the mind to God.'' So the efficacy of prayer is ultimately the power to live the eternal life in the world. ^^The Kingdom of God" said Paul, ^'is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." But to seek first the Kingdom of God and righteousness is also to some extent to have other things added unto you. We know from the prophetical literature^ that the Hebrews came to beheve in the magic power of virtue. The righteous remnant, '* the ransomed of the Lord," was to be saved and should re- turn with singing to the blessedness of the New Jeru- salem. If we turn to that '' master in literature and also in religious experience," — Dante, — and consider the account which he gives us of the seven deadly sins of the church, we can see the ill effects or punishment of these in the appalling images of woe of the Inferno. But it is impossible to hold continuously the attitude of ethical prayer and at the same time to listen to these voices, alluring though they be. And yet this is not the whole story. Primitive prayer sought through magic spells and petitions to drive away all forms of ill ; but in the world of spiritual values, to do away with all misfortune and suffering is not necessarily an effect of prayer. We have already analyzed the prayer state in relation to sorrowful experience. The experience of prayer of St. Paul is illuminating in this respect ; and we may take it as a test case rather than such cases as that of George 1 In Isaiah, for example. 330 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Miiller, or instances of the controlling of storms by prayer or the cure of disease. Paul felt himself called to a great task. But he was much hampered by some physical infirmity with which he was afflicted. How could he undertake so great a task, weak and hindered as he was by this heavy burden ? Earnestly he besought the Lord that the hindrance might be removed : — "There was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me : 'My grace is sufficient for thee.^ " ^ Paul was not to gain in efficiency through the removal of the obstacle. His prayer was answered, but the answer was a spiritual answer — *^My grace is sufficient for thee.'' The Subliminal, a Form of Social Consciousness. — In relation to the subliminal-self theory of the efficacy of prayer, we may conclude : This ''subliminal self rep- resents no magic influence. This concept rather sum- marizes, — when it is used to apply to a comparatively normal experience, — our social-racial inheritance ; in James's words, ''deposits from life experience" — and further, in so far as these experiences are not directly un- der the control of the central or most-self-conscious per- sonality.^ They may appear as habit reactions or as caprices, and usually they come with a strong emotional accompaniment. They may be so much dissociated from normal reactions as to pass over the borderland into the abnormal. But even in the normal "subliminal" the in- dividual is in the control of something not altogether him- self, — a fact which religious experience emphasizes and religious theory builds upon. But as we have seen, there 1 2 Corinthians 12. 2 Such a type of social consciousness is a limit for good or ill to human freedom, e.g. social suggestion of the mob-consciousness ; and, see further the account of the subliminal consciousness in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 331 is no criterion in the nature of the '^subliminar^ itself for judging these experiences to be things of worth. Prayer Belongs to the World of Ethical Values. — In relating himself of his own choice, though it is also his ^^bounden duty and service,'' to the higher type of social consciousness, — namely, to that which is the embodiment of a rational, self-controlled, orderly and universal Will, that is, in becoming himself a ''social self" — the individual regains his freedom. He may even through the free expression of his individuality add some- thing to the embodiment of the social will, and help to bring it nearer to his ideal of a divine unity. This will, which is at once a universal (social) will and fimdamentally the individual's own (free) will, is then the universal ele- ment (the invariant) in the social-individual process as a whole, for this will is one. Such a will-attitude on the part of the individual, — that is, the attitude of a will which wills the universal and eternal will, — is both the prayer and the answer. It is an appeal to the Spirit of the universe, the divine Grace, to come and dwell in the heart; and it is an auto-sug- gestion of the individual and an effort to begin at once for his part to live the life of the Spirit. In the words of the Lord's Prayer: ''Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done . . . Lead us not into temptation." This prayer can be expressed in the form of auto-suggestion. But such a prayer cannot, of course, be completely efficacious until it becomes a universal prayer, i.e. a will-attitude on the part of every man. Summary A study of the essence of prayer brings us face to face again with the universal elements of religious experience which we analyzed in Chapter II, viz. : — (1) a state of dissatisfaction (hell, "wheel of existence"), (2) an experience of satisfaction both at once an ideal and an immediate experience (heaven, Nirvana, etc.), (3) a way of life, or a way of salvation. 332 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE This is expressed very clearly in the Hindu prayer, already quoted : — "Out of the unreal lead me to the real ; out of darkness lead me to light ; out of death lead me to deathlessness." Prayer is a complex experience, and for this reason it is difficult to give a clear interpretation of the essence of prayer and of the response to prayer. For prayer, as we have seen, is a mystical and individual experience. Yet, certainly, prayer is also social and it is profoundly ethical. Thus our study reveals to us once more the fundamental trend of religious experience as a whole ; religious experi- ence is both mystical and practical, both individual and social, and it is at once static and dynamic. Moreover, in the prayer experience as it disclosed itself in the various types of prayer, we discovered certain fundamental attributes or elements. These elements are : First the constraining power of magic. Second. Observation of the ways, physical and psychical, of the order of the universe. Third. The petitional form. Fourth. The mystic consciousness, which finds itself at peace in the presence of God. We found these elements variously blended in the differ- ent classes of prayers which we have examined. None of these elements seem to be wholly lost in the prayers of the ages, and now we want to know how they may be inter- preted to a modern world, to a rational consciousness, and for an ethical religion. 1. Magic: The constraining power which primitive man found in the spells and incantations of sympathetic magic becomes in spiritual prayer the constraining power of the human will, both the individual will and the social will. In our further analysis, we discovered the subliminal consciousness or self, and we found that this self was a kind of social self, for it was suggestible ; and hereupon THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 333 arose the idea that magic compulsion means the compul- sion of auto-suggestion and social suggestion. Suggestion and the efficacy of Prayer. — In prayer then as auto-suggestion and social suggestion something of the compulsion of old-world magic survives. By dwelling on thoughts of God as wholeness, peace, and safety, on the thought that ultimately all is well with the world, and by attempting to identify one's self with or lose one's self in this wholeness and peace, — prayer seems to have the effect of concentrating and stimulating the latent energies, and so makes for courage, strength, and calmness of mind, a sense of emancipation, a quickening of the whole life. Christian Science carries this to the extreme, — as is done also in the ''Life of Prayer" in a technical sense, the life of the cloister and the monastic cell in which the life of the world is shut quite away. Here there is a tendency to assist the efficacy of prayer by means of "sensitizers," as in other forms of suggestion and hypnotism. In its purest form, we find this type of efficacy expressed in Emerson, though he may not make use of the actual language of prayer. I will give one quotation from the ''Over-Soul." The whole essay bears on the subject. "We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Mean- time within man is the soul of the whole ; the wise silence ; the uni- versal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all-accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one." "Hence there is no asking of particular questions, or making par- ticular requests, or interpreting of oracles." "These questions about the future are a confession of sin. . . . The true communication is an influx of the Divine mind into ours. . . . It inspires in man an ineffable trust . . . which sweeps away all particular uncertainties and fears, and all need to seek a solution of private riddles. ... So more and more as the surges of everlasting nature enter into me and I become public and hmnan in my actions. ... So I come to live in thoughts and act with energies that are immortal." 334 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE This is the more aesthetic and mystical type of rehgious experience. It may be called the way of grace. The effect of prayer here is the power to view the world differ- ently, to see God's presence everywhere, and so to find new significance in life and the possibility of a changed attitude of will, a trustful mind and even the experience of blessed- ness, peace, and freedom. This is the positive side. On the negative, it is a negat- ing of, or not letting the mind dwell on the things which make for the life of the world, on worry or personal cares, or temptations, ix. on the disintegrating forces generally. Thus the life is purified and freed. As social suggestion we have the religious phenomena of revivals, the Crusade movement, prayer meeting, and public services in general. The effort of a group of freely united individuals to bring about some ideal and funda- mentally religious end, may act as social suggestion to the rest of the community. George Miiller's case seems to be one of indirect social suggestion. But behind suggestions are ideals and purposes. Sug- gestions are efficacious only when there is a turning of the will, and the decision of the will depends, in the last analy- sis, upon its recognition and acceptance of an absolute and eternal, that is, of a constraining, ideal. 2. The observation of and experimenting with nature and the statistical method resulting therefrom, which we found in the group of prayers called " divination," become in spiritual religion a reflection, rather, upon experience as an whole and not merely upon its superficial aspects ; and the lesson learnt therefrom is of the true method of adjust- ment to the spiritual laws of the universe. That is, this type of prayer leads to a perception of new values and to a transformed life in relation thereto. 3. Spiritual religion distrusts the petitional element in prayer. Nevertheless, we found that this element never wholly disappears from prayer. The petitional form implies the appeal to the ''more'' than ourselves. We THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 335 recognize our own finitude, — that we are not able of our- selves to realize our best selfhood or to do all we would to serve the highest good. Petition implies ^'another," one who will respond to man's appeal. For this reason, we cannot find the efficacy of prayer entirely in the power of the individual will. In prayer, man consciously attempts to put himself into relation to his ideal of the absolute good. He appeals to the all-knower of the universe to answer his demands, to heal his wounds ; i.e. he seeks con- sciously to get into touch with the Divine, and at the same time he yields himself to the intimations which come to him (i.e. he abandons his private and particular will). Then comes the mystic sense of unity, self-surrender, and self-mastery which, beginning in the experience of prayer finally pervades the whole religious life. So we are brought back once more to the recognition of ideals as the dynamic power in prayer. These, again, may be in- dividual or social ideals, aesthetic or ethical. The spirit- ual prayer does not ask that something contrary to the laws of nature shall take place in order that its particular desire shall be brought to pass. It seeks rather a change in the will itself. It demands that the individual will shall be purified, enlightened, and disciplined into conformity with the deepest will of the world. It does ask therefore, that a miracle shall take place, — that man shall be trans- formed and born again from the natural man into the spiritual man, from the partial and finite point of view into that of the whole or eternal. It prays, '^Create a pure heart and renew a right spirit within me." ^'What should I do without God ! " cried the unhappy Sonia in Dostoieffsky's novel of ^' Crime and Punishment.' ' The greatest amongst the Hebrew prophets, Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, record how in their sense of very probable failure in the great tasks to which they felt themselves called, God spoke to them to strengthen them, to give them power and courage for the work. Very often, in religious experience, it is recorded that the response to 336 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE prayer came through a biblical text. St. Augustine and John Bunyan, in their autobiographies, have made much of this method,^ and many an humble soul has reported how in some great crisis of fear or anguish of spirit, help has come to meet the experience through the suggestion of some verse of the Bible, through some hymn or psalm such as the following : " The Lord is my Shepherd ; I shall not want." (23d Psalm.) "Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is staid on Thee." (Isaiah 40 : 30, 31.) " They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount upon wings Hke an eagle, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." (Isaiah 30 : 15.) "Be strong, and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid . . . for the Lord thy God, He it is that doth go with thee. He wiQ not fail thee, nor forsake thee." (Deut. 31 : 6.) "I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things for me." (Psalm 57:2.) This form of response has evidently its social implica- tions, and this thought of the social could be carried much further into the ritual and worship of institutional re- ligion. Auto-suggestion and social suggestion, then, play their part in prayer, and yet these are really effective only when there is a turning of the will, which means an in- dividual decision or choice.^ Prayer as the Attitude of Self-control and In- sight. — As a final simimary, we may say the only truly spiritual prayer is that which means a re-creation of the divine will in the finite will through enlightenment, self- 1 St. Augustine, "Confessions" ; John Bunyan, "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners." 2 The two attitudes are combined in the following prayer of Augus- tine : — *' O God our Father who dost exhort us to pray, and who dost grant what we ask, if only when we ask we live a better hfe ; hear me," eto. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 337 discipline, self-mastery, and self-surrender. This is a free effort of the individual, and the deep magic of it lies in man's unshaken belief that the universe is in accord with his essential ideals and with his earnest endeavors to serve them. And Jacob said, ''I will not let thee go except thou bless me." Prayer is therefore also social, as well as individual, for it is an appeal to the community of spirits,^ to God, to strengthen the individual for his task. Such a prayer is answered. The suggestible consciousness depends ultimately on a de- sire of the will to put itself into touch with the absolute ideal, i.e. metaphysically we should say the union is a spiritual one. Our world is a world of self-conscious spirit, and when we have found the way to identify ourselves with the World-Spirit, we have ipso facto found unity and peace. In the end, then, the constraining dynamic of prayer is found, on the one hand, in the decision of the will to devote itself to that ideal of life which reason has judged to ex- press the highest good ; and, on the other hand, it means the seizure of the individual by the absolute ideal. As St. Thomas Aquinas said: ''Man could not choose the highest unless Divine Grace working in him had put into his heart so to choose." Prayer, then, is communion with the self-conscious spirit of the universe through a yielding to its intimations and at the same time by an active self- consecration to its commands. The prayer state is a rhythmic state, a whole of parts. It is a give-and-take relation, a dual state of appeal and response, which is yet one whole. And in this dual or rhythmic form of prayer, in its cry and response, in its seeking and finding, we get a suggestion of the form of religious experience as a whole. So prayer is at once dynamic and static. It is static because the only direct change wrought by prayer is a 1 " Speak to her all things holy and high Powers of the height, powers of the deep." — Tennyson. z 338 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE change which brings the finite will into accord with the already perfect will of God. Yet prayer is dynamic, for the change is the greatest of all changes, and some- thing really happens — it is a moral transformation, a new birth. It is the miracle of miracles. This miracle is the overcoming, for the sake of a universal ideal — for ''a vision of holiness" — through self-discipline, self- control, and self-dedication, sometimes, or rather at the same time through relaxation and yielding to ''Divine Grace'' ''the mutability and insatiability of the finite wiU.'' "Prayer," says Mozoomdas, "when wrung out of the soul, is the transmuting force by which the passions are changed into their opposite virtues. " It is the magic wand, the touch of which turns ashes into gold." "Still, still the secret presses; The veiling clouds draw down." — R. W. Emerson. "The ultimate Being is Spirit; in other words, it has appeared, it is revealed . . . this spiritual unity — unity where the distinctions are merely in the form of moments, or are transcended and maintained. "The world is no doubt implicitly reconciled with the Divine Being ; and that Being no doubt knows that it no longer regards the object as alienated from itself, but as one with itself in its Love. But for self-consciousness this immediate presence has not yet the form and shape of spiritual reality. Thus the spirit of the communion is, in its immediate consciousness, separated from the religious consciousness, which declares, indeed, that these two modes of consciousness im- plicitly and inherently are not separated, but this is an implication which is not realized or has not yet become an absolute explicit self- existence as well." — Hegel, "Phenomenology of Mind." CHAPTER V (Continued) The Way of Life — Its Forms Part III. The Many and the One The one-many form of the religious consciousness is clearly, intimately related to those other forms already considered, viz. to the eternal-temporal form and to the static-dynamic form. The opposition which it involves has been all along implied in our discussion alike of the mystical as opposed to the practical reUgious experience, and of the social as opposed to the individual experience. It is in the former of these oppositions that the one-many form first appears as offering an essentially religious prob- lem. We may take as typical the problem of the Buddha (imder the Bo-tree). To overcome the misery of existence, it is necessary to renounce earthly life, to give one^s self up to trances and to the enlightenment, the peace, the rapture, and, at last, to the nothingness, of Nirvana. Nevertheless, the Buddha felt constrained to teach the doctrine. He must help others to share in the blessing he had found. In a word, he must make his individual experience a social experience. Having attained to the deliverance from rebirth and to the incomparable security of a Nirvana free from cor- ruption, the Blessed One reasoned : — ''This doctrine to which I have attained is profound, recondite, difficult of comprehension . . . intelligible only to the wise. Man- kind on the other hand is captivated, entranced, held spellbound by its lusts, it is hard for them to understand the doctrine of Dependent Origination and how all the constituents of being may be made to subside and Nirvana be attained. If I were to teach the Doctrine, others would fail to understand me, and my vexation and trouble would be great. 341 342 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "Thus, O Priest, did I ponder, and my mind was disinclined to action, and to any proclaiming of the Doctrine. ..." ^'Then, gazing over the world with the eye of a Buddha'' he beholds ^^how all mankind is plunged in sorrow — yet that there is a great variety of people with a great variety of dispositions and of faculty — as in a pond of blue lotuses, of water roses, or of white lotuses, some do not reach the surface of the water but grow under water while others shoot up above the water, so there will be found some who will understand the doctrine. " "Rise thou, Hero, Victor in the Battle! O Leader, Guiltless One, go amongst the nations ! The Doctrine let the Buddha teach, Some will be found to master it." ^ While primitive man worshipped many gods, the en- lightened religious consciousness has on the whole tended to the ^^One," and in this experience has sought refuge from the storm and stress of life with its bewildering manyness and variety. To the mediaeval Christian the way to the monastery was the way to the holy life, and many an ancient faith has dwelt on absorption in the divine, on the mystic vision, the rapture and the enlighten- ment of individual experience. To lose one's life is to save it. Renounce yourself, indulge in ascetic disciplines, be nothing, as indeed you already are in God's sight. This is the keynote to the meditations of an a Kempis ; like- wise, although in a more ecstatic form, it is the experience of the later Christian Mystics (St. Teresa, the Quietists, etc.). ^'The soul," says Tauler, ''must lose itself in the love of God as a drop of water is lost in the ocean." The essence of this experience is the surrender of the individual finite will to the absolute and holy will of God. Voluntas Dei, — that is the goal and significance of the truly re- ligious life. It is apt to be a solitary experience, "I the alone fly to the Alone." as one Mystic ^ said. 1 H. C. Warren, ''Buddhism in Translation," pp. 339, 390, 391. 2 Plotinus. THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 343 Says Molinos/ ^' Happy is the state of the soul which has slain and annihilated itself, for then it is filled with the mystical grace and ^ sinks ^ and doses' itself in the im- measurable sea of God's infinite goodness and rests there steadfast and immovable." Here is an illustration from the ^'Scholastic Mysti- cism'' of Albert Magnus: to worship God in spirit means 'Hhe mind must be cleared of all sense images" — '^ Nothing pleases God more than a mind free from all occupations and distractions . . . such a mind is in a manner transformed into God." For the great speculative mystic of the Middle Ages, Eckhart, ''The soul of man is at peace when it has emanci- pated itself from the phenomenal world and returned to its source — to 'the eternal Ground,' the 'stille Wiiste,' 'the unity where no man dwelleth.' Then it is satisfied in the light ; then it is one ; it is one in itself, as this Ground is a simple stillness, and in itself immovable." Like the doctrine of the static in religion, this experi- ence tends to emphasize submission to things as they are ; the acceptance of fate. It is an attitude either Stoical in its endurance, or renunciative, as in a religion of sorrow and atonement. In this respect the Mystic of any age is spokesman for a universal mystical experience. In St. John of the Cross we find: "One desire only doth God allow — that of obeying Him and carrying the cross." "When thou dwellest upon anything, thou hast ceased to cast thyself upon the All." Philosophy, too, on the whole has tended in the direc- tion of the One. We meet it in the Vedanta philosophy ; in the great systems of Plato and Aristotle ; in Plotinus ; in Spinoza and Leibnitz; and in the modern absolute idealists. The Many and their Need. — Yet to-day, both in religion and philosophy, we find a reaction in the other direction. 1 Miguel de Molinos. This and the following quotations are from Inge's "Christian Mysticism." 344 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE No longer does the religious individual think of saving his own soul. No longer does he sing the song of the cloister : — "O sola beatitudo beata solitudo." Or pray as Thomas a Kempis : — " My Son, thou must give all for all, and be nothing of thine own. ... It is wonderful that thou committest not thyself to Me from the very bottom of thy heart, with all things which thou canst desire or have. "Why art thou consumed with vain sorrow? Why art thou wearied with superfluous cares? Stand thou by My good pleasure, and thou shalt suffer no loss. If thou seekest after this or that, and wilt be here or there, according to thine own advantage or the ful- filling of thine own pleasure, thou shalt never be in quiet, nor free from care, because in everything somewhat will be found lacking, and everywhere there will be somebody who opposeth thee. "Therefore it is not the gaining or multiplying of this thing or that which advantageth thee, but rather the despising it and cutting it by the root out of thy heart ; which thou must not only understand of money and riches, but of the desire after honour and vain praise, things which all pass away with the world." No longer to-day does the individual yearn to lose him- self in the divine, for in this modern age a new note soimds, the note of democracy, of essential equality and universal brotherhood ; that is, an emphasis on the many. And out of the pity and horror of the evil in the present state of things, there has arisen the new attitude of war- fare against the ills of the environment and of generous practical service for the unfortunate and weak. Values, too, are transformed. It is the Martha rather than the Mary ideal which is extolled. No longer are the monk and the priest honored as the superior in- dividuals. This honor has been transferred, rather, to the physician, the social reformer and working philan- thropist — those who live the common life and who toil together for and with their less fortunate brethren. The world scorns those who, dreaming of '^the ought to be," apparently do not lift a hand to change the is. The I I THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 346 young men of lofty purpose of our day do not, as a rule, go into the profession of the ministry ; or, if they do, they severely arraign the church of to-day for its drowsiness and selfishness and seek to transform it into an agency for social, economic, and legislative reform. The best of the young men in the Church, and social workers out of it, who proclaim their views and offer resolutions at the various denominational conferences are on fire with a sense of the need for social justice and the abolition of those external conditions which they hold are the '' causes of poverty." They call passionately to the Church if it would live, to come out from its seclusion into the world of men and to busy itself with human affairs. Not for them the sorrowful, ascetic figure bearing the cross and crowned with the crown of thorns or the halo of early Christianity and of the paintings of the old masters. Let us get back, they say, to the life and message of the his- toric Jesus. In the ^'Man of Galilee" we find a simple, human figure; one who himself went about doing good, and whose message concerned the coming of the kingdom of social righteousness. The Church, like the individual, must repent. "Because I held upon my selfish road, And left my brother wounded by the way, And called ambition duty, and pressed on, O Lord, I do repent. "Because I spent the strength Thou gavest me In struggle which Thou never didst ordain, And have but dregs of life to offer Thee, Lord, I do repent. "Because Thou hast borne with me all this while, Hast smitten me with love until I weep, Hast called me as a mother calls her child, O Lord, I do repent." These fiery souls make the individual feel as if the burden of the wrongs of the whole world were on his 346 THE DRAMA OP THE SPIRITUAL LIFE shoulders, and those churches which have always con- cerned themselves with the neighbor feel, perhaps, some surprise at this arraignment — yet there is something new in this appeal. It is a cry for social justice rather than for philanthropy, and one needs very little experience surely to see the need. This attitude has been set forth by Henry Van Dyke in his two poems, ^'The Legend of Felix" and ''The Legend of Service," and it is found in many another modern poem and hymn. "Leave the chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee ! "He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the path-maker is breaking stones. "Deliverance? Where is deliverance to be found? "Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense ! What harm is there if thy clothes are tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow." — Rabindranath Tagore. UNTO THESE LEAST By Edward Glenfaun Spencer "I knelt one day within a lofty fane, And, voicing all my heart in earnest prayer, Half -listened for a motion in the air, — The rush of angel pinions, and the strain Of mellow-voiced trumpets blown amain By artless lips grown tuneful o'er my share In holy ways. Instead, I was aware Of one who searched my face with eyes of pain. "Clothed as he were a village artisan. And in his hand a joiner's rule and square ; A ragged, crimson furrow marked I where A thorny wreath uptore the quivering flesh ; And, as I gazed upon his forehead wan. Behold, the cruel circlet pierced afresh ! 'These thorns I wear, this guiltless blood I shed, Son of man, so long as God is shamed In this sad brood, his offspring, maimed I THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 347 And sapped by bootless toil. Upon my head, My wounded head and heart, the burthen dread Of this world's care and dole — its wealth misnamed, Its want unkenned, its virtue unacclaimed — Falls, like a ravin'd army's ruthless tread. With plentitude of pain. What boots it, ye. To roll aloft your swelling hymns of praise While starvling children throng my altar stairs? As unto these, so do ye unto me. Nor in dim aisles are found the eternal ways. But where man strives and faints yet onward fares.' " We find it expressed in its purest general form per- haps in Leigh Hunt's well-known poem of ^'Abou Ben Ahdem." The man who loved his fellow-man was the man whoes name was written first in the book of the Lord. But, of course, already this note was struck in the Sermon on the Mount and the parables of Jesus. ''If ye love not your brethren whom ye have seen, how can ye love God whom ye have not seen?" or in the parables of the ''Last Judgment" and the "Good Samaritan" : "Inasmuch as ye did it not imto one of the least of these, ye did it not unto me." How, indeed, shall the disciple find the Master while he leaves his brother to perish by the way? Once, indeed, the Church with its dogmas, creeds, and ritual was absolutely authoritative, and religious traditions, conventions, and superstitions with their "thou shalt" and their "thou shalt not" dominated men's minds. Then came the rebels of the Romantic Movement of the later eighteenth and of the early nineteenth centuries; the heroes of Byron and Shelley, the Faust and Prometheus of Goethe, and later on Nietzsche and Ibsen, and their followers in England and Germany to-day. The whole Romantic Movement is mirrored in Goethe's Faust. Faust wants to know all experience even to its depths of tragedy and evil. "Ich fiihle Muth, mich in der Welt zu wagen Der Erde Weh, der Erde Gliick zu tragen, . . .*' I 348 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Faust yearns for the perfect moment. If he fails to win it then life is a worthless thing. " Was bin ich denn, wenn es nicht moglich ist, Der Menscheit Krone zu eringen Nach der sich alle Sinne dringen." Faust calls upon magic to come to his aid — magic, which appears to mean Faust's own romantic, self- determining will.^ Hence Faust is driven endlessly from one experience to another, and hence his pact with Mephistopheles. If Faust shall say to the flying moment "Verweile nicht! du bist so schon!'* Mephistopheles wins Faust's soul. This modern devil is the negating spirit. " Ich bin der Greist der stets vemeint Und das mit Recht ; denn alles was entsteht Ist werth dass es zu Grunde geht." Faust seeks the perfect, yet he sees actual life as a dream, a longing for the impossible, a " tale that is told " without significance or worth. For every value has its negation. Opposed to longings and ideals are death and circumstance, finitude and fate. How then can the will of man attain the perfect when every value changes ^ and crumbles as soon as experienced ? There is no permanent value in any finite experience. The truth at last to Faust, always a Romanticist, is this, that the process of seeking and going on is itseK salvation and the way — He learns that " Whoever strives unweariedly Is not beyond redeeming." " Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben, Der taglich sie erobem muss." Byron's Cain is another example of the spirit of the Romantic Movement. 1 " The Will to Power " ? The relation of the Romantic Movement to the Germany of the present hour — the Germany of 1914-1915 — is an interesting one. ' See quotation from Friedrich Sohlegel, p. 261. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 349 For Cain is in reality a rebel against man's finitude. Enlightened by the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Cain can no longer be satisfied with the good of the natural life. He longs for the lost Paradise and laments because " 'Tis but a dream, A forbidden place of joy." The paradise he seeks however is fundamentally the realization of a glorious self-will. But all finite life is incomplete. Man cannot reach the goal of perfect happi- ness. After dreams of Eden and of immortality, he re- turns to the common lot of the earthly life and feels again his nothingness. Before him flits the thought of the unknown and the mysterious — death. Cain rebels against a universe in which the distinction between good and evil seems to rest solely on the omnipotent will of an external ruler and judge — a universe in which the innocent suffer for and with the guilty and in which death limits all. This experience is not unlike that of Gotama, but, as we have seen. Buddhism turned in a very different direction for escape from misery and the '^ wheel of existence." Its doctrine was renunciation rather than self-assertion. It sought to overcome the personal ego. The private will is the evil thing — desire and ignorance its roots. But these young rebels of Romanticism, abounding in life and spirit, feel that no good which is not a realization of their own individual selfhood can be satisfying in the end. A similar spirit of revolt against the arbitrary decrees of an external power runs through the poetry of Shelley. Shelley's own life was a passionate protest against the tyr- anny of external authority. His heroes illustrate various phases of this revolt. Prometheus endures intolerable suffering because he has dared defy the tyrant Jupiter. Prometheus is triumphant in the end, but his Paradise, like all exactly described paradises, is not very convincing as an ultimate satisfaction of the aspiring human spirit. 350 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE One feels that, after all, the real consummation for Prome- theus is expressed in the final words of Demagorgon: — *'To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent ; To love, and bear ; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates : Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent ; This, like thy glory. Titan ! is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory ! " Prometheus, like Shelley, remains a rebel to the end. Cain believes in absolute resistance and defiance of tyranny. But Cain's rebellious spirit is finally overcome by the sight of death, which startles him into a realization of his own sin. Starting from the same premises, quite different is the outcome of the rebelUon of Nietzsche's ^^Zarathustra." Zarathustra scorns the ^' good men. ' ' He breaks in pieces the tables of value which extol the passive (Christian) virtues. But out of the wreck of his own scorn and de- fiance, he creates new values — the ideal of the ^^ super- man" and the '^will to power." Nietzsche's Superman, — '^What is great in man at present is that he is a * transition' and a ^destruction.' He is that which must be surpassed. Zarathustra comes to teach men ' beyond men.' The noble, the self-assertive, those who have courage to follow their star whithersoever it may lead, they are the creators of new values. Ay, for the play of creating, my brethren, a holy asserting is wanted ; it is its own will that the spirit now willeth. It is its own world that the recluse winneth for himself. Not to accept the traditions of the past because they are old and once had value ; to take to one's self the right to new values — that is the most terrible taking for a spirit able to bear the load and reverent. To create for one's self freedom and a holy way even towards duty ; there- fore, my brethren, the lion is required." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 351 Yes, for the ^'beyond man^' one may even be self-sacri- ficing. " I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers. They are arrows of longing for the other shore. I love those who do not seek behind the stars for a reason to perish and be sacrificed, but who sacrifice themselves to earth in order that earth may some day become beyond-man's. . . . Canst thou give thyself thine evil and thine good, hanging thy will above thee as a law? Canst thou be thine own judge and the avenger of thine own law ? Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger of one's own law — Thus a star is cast out into the void and into the icy breath of solitude. " Beware of the good and just ! They would fain crucify those who invent their own standard of virtue — they hate the lonely one." * Then there is that other group of rebels who belong especially to our own day and generation — I mean the group of women who appear in the pages of Ibsen and Sudermann and in the playwrights and noveUsts, the followers of Ibsen, in England. These women are rebels against the laws and conven- tions of society. The law of society for women has al- ways been the law of self-sacrificing and patient submis- sion to further the ends of others, but these heroines of modern fiction and drama long to be free to follow their own will. Like Sudermann's Magda, they declare they have their own Ufe to live and that nothing shall hamper them. Or like Hedda Gabler they seek a '^ career," for which they are ready to sacrifice all the sacred tradi- tions and precious associations of the past ; or, like Nora Helmer, who, awakening from a fooFs paradise, is unable to remain in the house where she is treated as a pet play- thing. "Nora: I think that before all else I am a human being just as much as you are — or at least I will try to become one. I know that most people agree with you, Torwald, and that they say so in books. But henceforth I cannot be satisfied with what most people say, and what is in books. I must think things out for myself and try to get clear about them." ^ 1 Fr. Nietzsche, "Thus Spake Zarathustra." « H. Ibsen, "A DoU's House," Act III. 352 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Or, like a Rebecca West, the mysterious heroine of '^Ros- mersholm," so radical and rebellious in theory, who is so eager to be a leader in the movement for emancipation, yet when it comes to action, is held, equally with John Rosmer, in thrall to the heritage of the race — ''its doubts, its agonies, its scruples'' even to its superstitions. And what does it all mean — this Prometheus-like de- fiance of the past, this cry for freedom ? In all these rebels what we find is, is it not, at bottom, the longing to be truly themselves; to express and create, so far as they may, their own ideals; not to have their individuality sup- pressed ; not to follow the alien ideals of others ? That is, it is first an assertion of one of the deepest of human impulses — the creative. ''To create new values for one's self — that is the greatest of all creating," as Zarathustra said. And in the second place, it is the more self-con- scious assertion essential to the truly ethical life — that they too are persons unique and individual. In all these instances, the individual is confronted with his world. We have before us the old, old problem of the self-assertive as opposed to the self-renouncing self. It is, in a word, essentially a moral problem. There is a Christian hymn which runs: "O to be nothing, nothing," and in Buddhism and mysticism we have followed the loss of in- dividuality in the blissful unconsciousness of Nirvana ; or as it is absorbed in a sea of being — the one — of Pagan and Christian mysticism. The emphasis on The All and The One tends to crush out freedom and spontaneous, creative life; that is, to rob the finite human life of all value. Modern individualism over against this emphasizes the will to power, individual freedom, assertiveness, and " la joie de vivre.^^ So much for the rebellious individuals with their em- phasis on diversity and uniqueness and the self-assertive will. Our age is still considered an individualistic one, and in the woman-movement, which is essentially the movement for greater self-expression and recognition of THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 353 personality; in the labor movement, which strives for greater opportunity and a greater share in the fruits of production, and in the political unrest in Asiatic nations, individualism is still active, indeed often anarchistic. Yet much that we call individualism is, after all, perhaps, only the unrest and maladjustment between the newer ideals of the individual and the old ideals of society at large. There is self-assertion in relation to these newer ideals over against the felt tyranny of the old, but not less of loyalty to them. And in spite of all, somehow it seems to me the world has begun to swing again to- wards a kind of unity. One observes this in the tendency everywhere to organize and form groups whether for work or amusement. For instance, in the centralization and trend towards paternalism of government as well as in the federation of churches; in cooperative movements in the industrial world, in socialism, in certain educa- tional tendencies, and the attempt on the part of the state to interfere with the more private concerns of in- dividuals ; in the work for ^'the common welfare'^ through conservation of natural resources, and especially the hmnan, and through the unprovement of the environ- ment, — which latter tendency appears to be the modern ideal par excellence. This whole movement leads to a general levelling of society and away from individual uniqueness. It has been said even of our day that the passion for liberty which animated the undertakings of our fathers, is dying out, and that men are content to let themselves be governed by a tyrannical group and by the majority vote. Religion, to be sure, no longer holds its authorita- tive sway over the more thoughtful minds, but, in its place, a new authority has arisen, namely, the authority of what one may call the social-scientific consciousness. To-day, we must be scientific if nothing else, and we must be socially organized. The scientific and the re- ligious spirit have generally been in conflict. ^^The 2a 354 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE fact," ^ said Nietzsche, ^Hhat science has become as sov- ereign as it is to-day, proves how the nineteenth century- has emancipated itself from the dominion of ideals. . . . The nineteenth century instinctively goes in search of theories by means of which it may feel its fatalistic sub- mission to the empire of facts justified." The theory runs as follows : ^^The success of determinism, the genealogical derivation of obligations which were formerly held to be absolute, the teaching of environment and adaptation, the reduction of will to a process of reflex movement, the denial of the will as *a working cause.' Naturalism, the elimination of the choosing, directing, interpreting subject on principle." The Social-Scientific Consciousness. — Nurtured by the scientific spirit of the age, this newly awakened con- sciousness seeks to promote the community welfare through making authoritative the social whole.^ By scientific methods of experimentation, it aims to create by external means human beings who shall be as efficient as machines and as mathematically dependable in their ac- tivities as the laws of nature and who, presumably, will reach a high level of happiness in correlation with their high efficiency and good environment. The Need of the Recognition of the Personal Element, — It is a rather curious fact, I think, that the modern attitude of social sympathy and social activity which must have taken its rise from interest in some individual case similar to that in the tale of some neglected boy in a great city, such as Dickens recounts ; from the case of some unhappy mother in the slums watching the frail life of her baby fade before her eyes in spite of her utmost self-sacrifice ; or from the story such as the pages of a Tolstoy make real to us of some young man or woman of good natural im- pulses goaded on to sin and crime by the injustice of their social milieu — this attitude has in its outcome, in its 1 Fr. Nietzsche, "The Will to Power." 2 Is this perhaps the Grerman ideal to-day ? THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 355 programme for social-economic reform, in its eager work for humanity as a whole, almost lost sight of the individual himself. It is so easy to see in humanity the divine, so hard, in some particularly irritating individual. Thus men and women busy over eugenics and child-labor laws have sometimes no understanding whatever of the lonely child in their own homes ; and in the midst of all the toil and stress for better inspection laws, for a minimum wage, for the doing away through legislation of slums, disease, and poverty, some poet soul lives forlorn with no one to speak the little word of appreciation which would make all the difference in his power to work,^ or some man or woman struggling for light and strength to meet some difficult problem in his or her life, perhaps even already going down before some terrible temptation, finds no outstretched helping hand, no loving wisdom to guide him or her to the better self .^ An illustration of what I mean is given in the novel of Thomas Hardy, from which I quoted in our open- ing chapter. The hero, who belongs to the laboring class, has had from boyhood a passion for learning. To go to college in the neighboring city of Christminster is the dream of his life. He sets himself to work alone and studies persistently for years in the even- ings after his day's work to prepare himself to enter college. But when, at length, he gets to Christminster, he finds all doors closed. Wholly ignorant of ways and means, in such a place, he knows not where to turn for help, but finally with some hesitation, he decides to write to the heads of four different colleges, whom he has observed and picked out as men likely to be sympathetic and appreciative. He waits for a long time for his letters. Finally, one of the Heads deigns to reply. He advises the young man to give up his 1 The recent Life of Fr. Nietzsche makes us familiar anew with the frightful loneliness of an unappreciated literary genius. 2 Illustrations of lonely youth in the books of Jane Addams. 356 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE ambition and remain in the sphere into which he was born, if he wants to succeed in Hfe. *'He saw what a curious and cunning glamour the neighborhood of the place had exercised over him. To get there and live there, to move among the churches and halls and become imbued with the genius loci, had seemed to him from its halo on the horizon, the obvious and ideal thing to do. 'Let me only get there,' he had said with the fatuousness of Crusoe over his big boat, 'and the rest is but a matter of time and energy.' It would have been far better for him in every way if he had gone to some busy commercial town with the sole object of making money by his wits, and thence surveyed his plan in true perspective. Well, all that was clear to him amounted to this, that the whole scheme had burst up, like an iridescent soap-bubble, under the touch of a reasoned inquiry. He looked back at himself along the vista of his past years, and his thought was akin to Heine's : — "Above the youth's inspired and flashing eyes I see the motley mocking fool's-cap rise." "He always remembered the appearance of the afternoon on which he awoke from his dream. Not quite knowing what to do with him- self, he went up to an octagonal chamber in the lantern of a singularly- built theatre that was set amidst this quaint and singular city. It had windows all round, from which an outlook over the whole town and its edifices could be gained. Jude's eyes swept all the views in suc- cession, meditatively, mournfully, yet sturdily. Those buildings and their associations and privileges were not for him. From the roof of the great library, into which he hardly ever had time to enter, his gaze travelled on to the varied spires, halls, gables, streets, chapels, gardens, quadrangles, which composed the ensemble of this unrivalled panorama. He saw that his destiny lay not with these, but among the manual toilers in the shabby purlieu which he himself occupied, unrecognized as part of the city at all by its visitors and panegyrists, yet without whose denizens the hard readers could not read nor the high thinkers live." And on a large scale, in industrial life, the same thing is true. The employers of labor in mine or mill, do not, as a rule, think of the workers as human beings with feelings, somewhat at least, akin to their own. The management of a mill seems, too often, to look upon the men and women as mere machines out of whom to get the most possible work in order to build up a big industry. The recent THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 357 strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts, is an instance of the difference of attitude on the part of the labor agitators. The labor agitator, however selfish his appeal, treats the operatives as men and women with passions and interests of their own. But to-day, when the air is full of talk of '^efficiency" in industrial life, it is seen even by the capi- talists that some account must be taken of the personal element in the situation. So the doctrine of efficiency may come to our aid here, even if its end is actually unrelated to the personal or ethical problem. Our age should, first of all, pray for the '^ understanding heart." For what we need to-day, I think, is a more personal attitude in our relation to others, and I mean by that a greater emphasis on the fact of the individuality and personality of others ; the attitude so well expressed by Emerson in his poem "Friendship." "Me, too, thy nobleness has taught To master my despair The fountains of my hidden life Are through thy coming fair. " or in the following lines of Mrs. WooUey : — "Had I been one of those Who watched their sleeping flocks by night And saw the heavens, joy-faint with light, Beneath fair Bethlehem's rose ; Would I have known, could I have guessed, Would I have followed with the rest Upon that far strange quest? "And had I been A guest in that small crowded inn Where Mary and the child enstabled lay. Would I adoring too have knelt to pray? "And had I heard The hillside preacher's word — 'Come unto me,' and 'Blessed are the meek,' Would I have guessed, would I have known This was the One we came to seek, This is Messiah ; He alone? 358 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "Would I have loved upon his breast to lean, Or coldly asked 'Who is this Nazarene?' In wrath for Him have raised the sword — Incarnate God, the Spoken Word — Yet thrice denied him in one day. Mayhap have kissed his life away? "Had I been one that day To stand on Calvary's way. Would I have joined the cry, 'Away with Him,' and 'Crucify'; And helped to plait the crown of thorns. And held to him the cup of gall. And deemed him lost whom the world scorns, And said 'This is the last' and 'This is all'? "How easy in these safe and pleasant days To worship and praise ! But if a sleeping babe now lay Within a manger filled with hay. And God's star pointed out the way Would I believe? Would I obey? "How many great hearts silently Seek their Gethsemane To pray and weep. While we, forgetting, sleep. For Truth is mocked and scourged alway, And Love is crucified each day." Thus, even, in the midst of our talk of social service and social justice and all our bustle and eagerness and anxiety the old question returns. To what end ? When we have created a system which runs with the exactness and per- fection of a machine what has become of variety and uniqueness, of quality, of individuality, — of all, in short, that makes life interesting ? Were our present-day social Utopia carried out, all would be on a dead level. When we are a people well-fed and housed and free from disease, shall we at the same time have furthered in our midst the life of the spirit? We shall be more efficient workmen, perhaps, — that is, better able to make money; we shall be better athletes, but somehow, I am afraid the hero, the THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 359 appreciator, the friend, the poet, the worshipper in us will be dead. In spite of our talk of social justice and social welfare, we are not seeking for inspiration from the foun- tain of living waters. If even the Church, in answer to the present demand, is to lose itself in social work, who will hold aloft the ideals of the unseen world or care for man's need of discipline and inspiration ? ^ I am afraid all our social efforts are leading us onl}'' further into materialism and commercialism instead of to idealism and true spirituality. The Outcome of "Herd Morality," — For Naturalism and Paganism are the deadly foes in our midst, and what shall redeem us ? Our restlessness, as we saw in the last chapter, betrays our discontent, and while the best among us work for external means to social betterment, others less worthy of aim throw themselves into the maelstrom of excitement and sensationalism, in all their various forms, and at last are overcome by world-weariness and pessimism, and the end is the desperate all ''In Vain" of Nietzsche. The follow- ing is Nietzsche's severe arraignment of the social values of what he calls ''herd morality." "The highest values in the service of which man ought to' hve, more particu- larly when they are oppressed and constrained the most, — these social values, owing to their tone-strengthening tendencies, were built over men's heads as though they were the will of God or 'reality' or the actual world, or even a hope of the world to come. Now that the lowly origin of these values has become known, the whole uni- verse seems to have become trans-valued and to have lost its significance." ^ This leads to nihilism — that is, a dis- belief in all values. Pessimism is an intermediate stage. Now, as we have already seen, the emphasis on the social experience easily tends to the external and mechan- 1 This same tendency is at work in the educational field. For Instance, the attempt to transform Froebel's Kindergarten into a place of free play, industrial occupation, and social intercourse. What a misunderstanding of Froebel's principle of "self-activity" do we here behold ! 2 "Will to Power," p. 10. 360 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE ical, and yet the conscious goal of the modern social move- ment is not an external and mechanical one. It is in part brotherhood, but not even merely brotherhood. It is in part an emphasis on the enhancement of life, that is, on a value which is aesthetic and individual as well as social. This goal of abundant life, however, is not the goal of life emphasized by Christianity.^ For this ideal is not expressed in terms of *' the cross of Christ," or of the unseen world. It seems to have no place for sorrow, suffering, and such evils as are not up- rooted by the fighting spirit alone. It is, in a word, a neo-Pagan ideal of happiness and well-being which would not admit the necessity and, indeed, inevitability of a tragic element in existence or the need of renunciation of in- compatible desires and ends and the acceptance of neces- sary limitations. It is an ideal which does not feel the need of the unseen goal, and the value beyond the here and now of this life. This is what I mean by the present- day tendency to neo-Paganism. It is not a religious attitude.^ Shall we not, I wonder, in the coming age, behold a new type of rebel? The protest and rebellion of the new day will come, I believe, not from the rebels against established religion, but from the religious idealists, and from the lovers and crea- tors of beauty, — the artists and poets, — for it is these who to-day suffer under the weight of the authority of scien- tific-materialism and of social, practical life. The artist works alone and grows discouraged through lack of appreciation ; the dreamer is crushed by the crit- icism of his practical friend. They criticise him because » St. John, Chapter 10 : 10. 2 In a recent work on religion (William Ernest Hocking, "The Meaning of God in Human Experience") I find these words: "No historic religion has pretended to recommend itself to men solely on the ground of its value for the present life and social order. They insist rather on the comparative worthlessness of these goods. Their treasures are elsewhere." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 361 he cannot mend a chair or cook a pudding ; he does not criticise them because they cannot read a poem with expression, or see the beauty in cloud shadows. It is the most sensitive and appreciative of spirits, and above all poet-souls who are most overwhelmed by the tragic con- tradictions, the commercialism, materialism and worldli- ness of the life of our day. ''Oh sorrowful, great gift conferred on poets of a twofold life When one life has been found enough for pain." * For an instance of this sense of discoordination in modern life, we may turn to A. C. Benson's ^* Beside Still Waters," or again to the following poem : — "On a time, not of old, When a poet had sent out his soul, and no welcome had found Where the heart of the nation in prose stood fettered and bound In fold upon fold — He called back his soul who had pined for some answer afloat ; And thus in the silence of night and the pride of his spirit he wrote : "'Come back, poet- thought ! For they honor thee not in thy vesture of verse and of song. Come back — thou hast hovered about in the markets too long. In vain thou hast sought To stem the strong current that swells from the philistine lands ; Thou hast failed to deliver the message the practical public demands. " 'Come back to the heights Of thy vision, thy love, thy Parnassus of beauty and truth — From the valleys below where the labor of age and of youth Has no need of thy lights ; — For Science has marshalled the way with a lamp of its own. Till they woo thee with wakening love, thou must follow thy pathway alone.' "We have striven, have toiled — Have pressed with the foremost to sing to the men of our time The thought that was deepest, the lay that was lightest in rhyme. We are baffled and foiled. The crowd hurries on, intent upon traffic and pay. They have ears, but they hear not. What chance to be heard haa the poet to-day? * Aurora Leigh. 362 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "So we turn from the crowd, And we sing as we please — like the thrush far away in the woods ; They may listen or not, as they choose, to our fancies and moods Chanted low, chanted loud In the sunshine or storm — 'mid the hearts that are tender or hard. What need of applause from the world when art is its own reward? " — Christopher P. Cranch. Sometimes we hear of lonely youth overcome by the contradictions of his own nature, — by the conflict of his socially trained instincts with his own self-conscious ideal, or the conflict between the demands of society which re- quires submission and adjustment to its own standards and his own inner vision of new values of a more sesthetic type — who, in despair, seeks escape in suicide, for there has been none to appreciate and help him. More than food and raiment, more than comfortable houses, opportunities for recreation, etc. — much as the world needs these things — does man need the crucible of oil, the alabaster box of precious ointment, even the flower laid upon the grave, which, it is true, could be sold for much pence and given to the poor — the little word of belief and encouragement and appreciation which shall lead him to rely upon himself and to become a person. "If thou by fortune be bereft And in thy store there be but left Two loaves, sell one and with the dole Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul." Beautifully has one of our own poets expressed this ap- preciative attitude : — "Sing, for the others! Sing; to some pale cheek Against the window, like a starving flower. Loose, with your singing, one poor pilgrim hour Of journey, with some Heart's Desire to seek. Loose, with your singing, captives such as these In misery and iron, hearts too meek ; For voyage — voyage over dreamful seas To lost Hesperides. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 863 "Sing not for free-men. Ah, but sing for whom The walls shut in ; and even as eyes that fade The windows take no heed of light nor shade, — The leaves are lost in mutterings of the loom. Sing near ! So in that golden overflowing They may forget their wasted human bloom ; Pay the devouring days their all, unknowing, — Reck not of life's bright going ! " We need to win the appreciative attitude. We need first, for our own redemption, a keener realization of the unseen and spiritual realities ; and, secondly, we need more appreciation of that type of harmony and wholeness which embodied beauty gives. The Redeeming Forces. — The spirit of beauty and the spirit of a religion which holds to the unseen and gives it a personal interpretation shall be our redeemers from scien- tific-naturalism and paganism. If few and far between, there are yet signs visible on the horizon of a trend in this direction. We find these signs where in practical America we should naturally expect first to find them — in those forms of activity and of art which are nearest to utilitarian values. For instance, in the movement for city planning there are signs that the spirit of beauty which means an harmonious whole of a variety of parts is awakening, and with it a new ci\dc spirit. This aesthetic tendency is also to be seen in some phases of the play movement. For instance, in the rhythmic movement of the folk dances; in pageants with their ensemble of beauty and of stimulus to the community spirit ; in the creative activity which some of the games encourage, and in the inspiration in this direction which dramatic work in the best literature can give. Again, in the delight in out-of-door life, in the genuine love of nature, here and there; in the aesthetic appreciation and creative ability which our foreign fellow- citizens may bring to practical, money-getting America, there is occasion for hope. In religion the old forms and impossible beliefs are fast passing away or finding their true place as " scaffoldings, *' 364 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE as poetry, and symbols. Yet, as James has said, ''Man is incurably religious/^ And, even now, it is claimed that he is more inwardly religious than formerly, when out- wardly he appears to be less so. Also, it is said, by those who should speak with authority, that in spite of the evi- dence of neo-realism amongst our younger philosophers there is awakening an interest in philosophic idealism. But the idea of the city beautiful, for instance, as so much brick and mortar (or marble, with parks, foim- tains, etc.) will not help us very much unless we idealize and personalize it.^ And still more is this true of religion. That is, it is doubtful if a religion which had become merely ethics, with its emphasis on impersonal law even if ethics of the highest order, could long hold the majority of men. Hence emerges the importance, for religious experience, of the concept of personality. The appreciative attitude referred to above is that at- titude which recognizes that personality is the essential quality of human life. And when we come to analyze personality, we shall see that this attitude is essentially a religious attitude. In contemporary philosophy there is a movement which stands for personality, its spontaneity and freedom, and for the dramatic element in reality as opposed to the * See for instance Lowell's "Commemoration Ode " : — " O Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once more I Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, And letting thy set lips, Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, Thy rosy edges of their smile lay bare. What words divine of lover or of poet Could tell our love and make thee know it. Among the Nations bright beyond compare ? What were our lives without thee? What all our lives to save thee ? We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare I " THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 365 intellectualism and determinism of the scientific inter- pretation of things. I refer to the movement variously called Pragmatism, Meliorism, Humanism, of which James and Bergson are the most brilliant expositors. This philosophic Weltanshauung holds that while science is useful for certain purposes, it is the business of philosophy to interpret reality from an entirely different standpoint. Reality arises from the reaction of the whole man, not of the intellect alone with its snapshot con- cepts. To discover what reality is we must investigate concrete individual experience. The will of man creates his own world. Intuition and the subliminal conscious- ness are better revealers of reality than conscious thought. This philosophic movement runs parallel, in relation to the one and the many, to the attitude which we discussed in the earlier part of the chapter on the static and dynamic form of the rehgious consciousness, — the attitude toward the subliminal consciousness. The Pragmatic philosophy emphasizes the fact of change and becoming. It is opposed to a ''block uni- verse" and to the ''eternal now" aspect of absolutism. Evolution is a dramatic process; becoming is the truth, unity the illusion ; the many are the real. In so far as the ethical element in this new philosophy appears in con- temporary religion, it is the religion of the "Son of Man." Jesus is a type of what all men may become. Scientific thought from a different angle sometimes, also, emphasizes this religious attitude as the religion of the future. Now, in so far as this philosophy emphasizes the value of the free, creative spirit, and the human element in things as opposed to impersonal, scientific constructions, as final, and in so far as it emphasizes an appreciative attitude as a deeper way of viewing reality, it is bound to bring relief and deliverance of some sort to the troubled human spirit which has been so long bound in the chains of scientific de- terminism, or has been thrown, shipwrecked, on the shores of the sea of materialism. The danger is, however, that 366 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE this philosophy of personality will tend to over-emphasize the individualistic point of view and standard of value, and so stimulate and encourage those capricious ten- dencies to which, side by side with the social, organizing tendencies, our age already inclines. In a word, for this new philosophy there are no absolute values except the mere variety of the individuals themselves. It stands, therefore, for the many as opposed to the one. Summary and Criticism of Results. — The problem which we have been considering has three aspects. First, it is the essentially religious problem of how to harmonize the ethical and the mystical experience. Second, it is the old, old problem of morality. The problem of the self- renouncing as opposed to the self -asserting will, or the problem of the adjustment of the individual to his world. And, third, the philosophic problem of how to reconcile the one and the many. Now, whichever way we turn, whichever side we em- phasize in our analysis, we find in the argument a deep- lying fallacy and a self-destructive principle. For, first, if we start from the usual standpoint of re- ligious experience and declare that reality is one and that inner peace and salvation are to be found, as say the Upanishads, Plotinus, and the typical Mystics of all time, in the surrender of individuality and in its engulfment in the sea of absolute being or in the negation of Nirvana, then we are confronted with the paradox — how, if God has created man and needs him, he can need him to be nothing. "Ich bin so gross als Gott: Er ist als ich so klein Er kan nicht iiber mich, ich unter Ihm nicht sein." * Moreover, if man's freedom and individuality are sac- rificed and lost, then also morality vanishes, and this result contradicts the data which concrete religious experience itself gives. * Angelus Silesius. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 367 Already, in the preceding chapters, we have noted the discrepancy between the mystical and the ethical aspects of religious experience and the difficulty of reconciling the apparently contradictory states of aspiration and striving towards an infinitely removed goal on the one hand, and the sense of attainment, satisfaction, and beatitude on the other. Let us, then, turn in the other direction and emphasize the uniqueness of the individual and the importance of individual initiative. This attitude leads to the reliance of the individual entirely upon himself. It breaks the bonds which bind him to the invisible universe and he loses his sense of dependence upon it. In a word, it lead's away from religious experience which has always implied man's relation to something more than himself. This problem we have already considered in our discussion of grace and merit. Furthermore, ^Hhe individual" can only mean each and every individual. So, unique value of individuality, the one is transformed into plurality and manyness. Man in his finite capacity is the measure of all things. In his own experience is the criterion of value. But, out of this manyness, arise variety and clash of interests, and aims, and different judgments of value as in the rebellious selves we have already passed in review. We saw that in break- ing from the obligations and sanctions of the past and of society these selves have, again and again gone under, their life wasted by following capricious individual and partial aims. In isolating themselves from the social whole their sense of separation from the common welfare leads to despair. As a vivid illustration of the isolation of the solitary individual, we should turn to the final chapters of Dante's ^'Inferno" and view with him the souls of the proud and treacherous bound fast in the frozen abyss of the ninth circle of hell. In general, the outcome of a purely individual criterion of value is anarchy, the sense of the relativity of all values, as we saw in relation to Faust and 368 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE the Romantic Movement and a resulting pessimism ex- pressed in the thought that the universe is meaningless and ^'all in vain." Once again, then, we seek unity as we are doing to-day in our emphasis on organization, social solidarity, and socialism. The individual must cease to be an isolated unit ; he must get into connection with the social whole. But we must beware lest in turning in this direction, we abandon inner values for outer. Can the peace and joy the religious consciousness seeks be found in external things ? Our social service tends too much to become me- chanical^ and over-organized and to miss the true spirit of service which, as we have seen, is the spirit of friendship. The kind of unity in which the spirit of the times ex- presses itself hampers and stifles the creative spirit. Wit- ness the vast industrial systems, the life of the individual workers in mill and factory; the suppression and sub- ordination of the individual in the great armies of Euro- pean countries ; the tendency to paternalism in govern- ments and to trust to legislation for moral reform. It is not an age of great artists, poets, and prophets. Rather than a unity so soulless, mechanical, and dead, we some- times cry even for a return to the capricious individualism of the Romanticist. Organized religion, as we saw in a previous chapter, frequently embodies this type of unity. Mechanical and dogmatic, it is opposed to the free expres- sion of the individual and to his criterions of value, so it often is not only no inspirer of morality but even the re- verse, and in so far it deserves the condemnation of its critics who claim that the Church has failed. From the point of view of the individual we all know of cases like the story I heard of a certain boy, who on being told that nothing could do away with the wrong done by lying, said, it could be gotten rid of by the absolu- tion of the priest; and in its social aspects to-day, ^ As, for instance, in the tendency referred to above to trace back sin to poverty and disease as its sole causes. THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 369 we are overwhelmed as perhaps never before by the thought of Christian nations engaged in a terrible world- war. If, however, we hope by means of altruism and social service to spiritualize our work, we discover here, too, a fallacy. For if it is so good to serve, then one must not deny to his neighbor this supreme value. Let every man serve another. But if all are to become servants, who is to be served ? We have an endless series with no absolute value anywhere. Or, on the other hand, if we add self- sacrifice to service to make it complete, and I am to sacrifice my own good to serve you, can it be shown that your life is of more value than mine? This cannot be shown unless we arbitrarily assume that some lives are of more ^^alue than others, or else to be sure it implies some other criterion of value than that of social service and self-sacrifice themselves.^ Mere cutting off is not a good ; nor is mere altruistic activity necessarily so ; and a chain of relative values does not make an absolute value. It seems, in the end, to reduce to "quantity" and "an ag- gregate," and a lowering of man's life to unspiritual levels. With this result in view, a new test of value comes to the fore in our day, which is once again an emphasis on the individual. This test of value is : that is good which makes for the enhancement of life or for individual efficiency; that is, it is an emphasis on all the instincts and capacities of the individual, and the need of giving them opportunity for complete expression, together with the accompanying sense of freedom and joy which such spontaneous activity inevitably gives. It is a kind of "frolic," play spirit and attitude which some persons hold to have been characteristic of the early Greeks. It is called a neo-Pagan attitude because it is an attitude in opposition to the fundamental attitude of Christianity. 1 For this reason the thesis of Mrs. Comer's story, " Seth Miles and the Sacred Fire," Atlantic Monthly, December, 1914, does not reason quite sound. What if Richard Bonniwell, Jr., had not " lifted the torch " ? 2b 370 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE It is opposed to the Christian spirit first, because although it seeks to ehminate suffering, as far as possible, and to give opportunity to all men, yet it is, on the whole, opposed to self-sacrifice; and, secondly, it is an emphasis on the value of the exceptional individual, — an emphasis on the value of those whom Nietzsche loves to call the ^^ noble." For if not an emphasis on the exceptional individual, we have once more the old difficulty of the conflict of aims and a resulting anarchy. It is, therefore, an attitude in opposition to the teaching of the New Testament parables which emphasizes the value of the humble, even of the sinners ; and it is opposed to the spirit of the atonement doctrine as exemplified by the parable of the Good Shep- herd who goes out to seek for the lost sheep and gives his life for it ; and to the significance of the Cross of Christ. Secondly, it seems to be an emphasis on the completest earthly life merely, and as such it is a limited ideal, which, in denying or ignoring the reality of the unseen world, gives us that sense of finiteness and of dissatisfaction which any consummation described in finite, earthly terms al- ways seems to give. As instances of this, Shelley's para- dise in " Prometheus Unbound, '^ and the pictures of the various Utopias. The latest illustration is Nietzsche's attempt to depict the triumph of his Zarathustra. Zara- thustra having made his new values loved by the mass of the people, announces the doctrine of the ^^ eternal re- turn." Decisive moment : Zarathustra interrogates all the multitude assembled for the festival : — "*Do you wish/ he says, 'the return of it all?' All reply : Yes." "He dies of joy. "Zarathustra dying holds the earth locked in his arms. And al- though no one said a word, they all knew that Zarathustra was dead." Nietzsche, himself, felt the unsatisfactoriness of this solution. '^I am a seer," he wrote in his notes; '^but my conscience casts an inexorable light upon my vision, and I am myself the doubter." ^ 1 "Life of Fr. Nietzsche," by Daniel Halevy, pp. 276-277. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 371 Even the New Jerusalem of Isaiah, the Paradise of Dante, the finales of Beethoven's symphonies somewhat fail to be the consummation we have hoped for and ex- pected. Plotinus, Isaiah, Dante, and Goethe admit that the realization of the vision is indescribable. The third aspect of our problem, the problem of how to reconcile the many and the one leads us over into one of the deepest regions of philosophic thought. Ever since its beginnings, philosophy has been trying to solve this fundamental problem. We can trace it throughout the history of Greek philosophy in the search for a first or fimdamental principle. Now one, now the other aspect of the opposition has been emphasized without any wholly satisfactory reconciliation of the two. Greek philosophy culminated in the systems of Plato and Aristotle. These systems, on the whole, made the aspect of the one the more important or real aspect. For instance, the 'ideas'' of Plato, as opposed to the world of perpetual flux which exists as a kind of negation of the real ; the prime mover, of Aristotle, eternally evolves a series of spheres which has no beginning or end, — and ever since each of these systems has in its own way influenced later philosophic thought.^ Hindu philosophy reduces plurality to the evil prin- ciple Maia, but this principle has no real existence ; it exists only in the mind. It is a mere negation. Brahma, the reality, is the one ; the all. He is Atman, the Self. He is the essence of all things. Would you find him, look within. ''Verily this All is Brahma. It has therein its birth, end, breath; as such one should worship it in stillness." ^ Brahma is a unity without plurality which has no rela- tion to time and space, to cause or effect, and for which the opposition of subject-object does not exist. ^ For example, the great systems of Spinoza and Leibnitz ; these systems, though ultimately monistic systems, incline to parallelistio interpretations. 2 Chandogya Upanishad, iii, 14. 372 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The Brahman teaches the disciple : — "Bring from yonder a fig." "Here it is, my lord." "Break it." "It is broken, my lord." "Whatseestthouinit?" "Here are but little seeds, my lord." "Now break one of them." "It is broken, my lord." "Whatseestthouinit?" "Naught whatsoever, my lord." And he said to him : "Of that subtleness which thou canst not behold, beloved, is this great fig-tree made. Have faith, beloved. In this subtleness has this All its essence ; it is the True ; it is the Self ; thou are it, Svetaketu." "Let my lord teach me further." "Be it so, beloved," said he. What is the nature of the self and how to find it ? Most of all is the self realized in dreamless sleep. For then the individual con- sciousness is merged in the All or One. This state is one of absolute unconsciousness, not of knowledge. In such deep sleep there is no other. " There is no second outside of him ; no other distinct from him. "While He sees not, yet without seeing He sees ; the sight of the seer is not to be broken, for it is imperishable. But there is naught beside Him, naught apart from Him, that he should see. . . . When He understands not, yet without understanding He understands ; the understanding of the understander is not to be broken, for it is im- perishable. But there is naught beside Him, naught apart from Him, that he should understand." How, then, shall we define the self, if He is unknowable ? It can only be done in negative terms — " Neti, Neti." (It is not so, it is not so.) " Thou canst not see the seer of seeing, thou canst not hear the hearer of hearing, thou canst not comprehend the comprehender of compre- hension, thou canst not know the knower of knowledge; he is thy soul, that is within all." » The poet attempts to describe the self by attributes which are contradictory. * Paul Deussen, "The Philosophy of the Upanishads." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 373 "He stays, yet wanders far from hence, He reposes, yet stays everywhere around. The movement hither and thither of the god, Who could understand besides me?" ^ "Resting is he and yet restless. Afar is he and yet so near ! He is within all. And yet yonder outside of all." * "He is the smallest of the small, the greatest of the great." "This is my soul (Atman) in my heart, smaller than a grain of rice or grain of millet ; this is my soul in my heart, greater than the earth, greater than the air, greater than the heavens, greater than these worlds." 3 In deep sleep the finite is united to Brahma in a state of supreme bliss which is beyond knowledge, for all contrasts are overcome. ^^For when a man finds his peace, his resting place, in that invisible, unreal, inexpressible, un- fathomable one, then has he attained to peace." * In our study of Buddhism we saw how the disciple over- comes plurality, transitoriness, and evil by renouncing the desires of the personal will, and by the attainment of en- lightenment through ascetic disciplines and trances. A somewhat similar outcome is found in Stoic phi- losophy. For Stoicism there is the fact of transitoriness and finitude as a kind of fate in things. Yet it is quite pos- sible for the wise man to ignore this fate and to find the inner peace above the turmoil of this fleeting existence by retiring into the citadel of the inner life, and by setting his heart on obedience to the laws of life or nature — the true good. Thus Epictetus : — "Does any one fear things that seem evils indeed, but which it is in his own power to prevent? * Paul Deussen, quoted in ^*The Philosophy of the Upanishads," p. 149. 2 Compare Emerson's poem of "Brahma." 3 In Chand. 3. 14. 3 ; quoted in Deussen's "The Philosophy of the Upanishads." * Deussen, Ihid. 374 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "No, surely. "If, then, the things independent of our will are neither good nor evil, and all things that do depend on will are in our own power, and can neither be taken away from us nor given to us unless we please, what room is there left for anxiety? But we are anxious about this paltry body or estate of ours, or about what Caesar thinks, and not at all about anything internal. Are we ever anxious not to take up a false opinion? No; for this is within our own power. Or not to follow any pursuit contrary to nature?" And Marcus Aurelius : — "Think thyself fit and worthy to speak or to do anything that is according to nature, and let not the reproach or report of some that may ensue upon it ever deter thee. If it be right and honest to be spoken or done, undervalue not thyself so much as to be discouraged from it. As for them, they have their own rational overruling part and their own proper inclination, which thou must not stand and look about to take notice of, but go on straight whither both thine own particular and the common nature do lead thee ; and the way of both these is but one." ^ "Whatsoever is expedient unto thee, World, is expedient unto me. Nothing can either be unseasonable unto me, or out of date, which unto thee is seasonable. Whatsoever thy seasons bear shall ever by me be esteemed as happy fruit and increase. O Nature! from thee are all things, in thee all things subsist, and to thee all tend. Could he say of Athens, Thou lovely City of Cecrops; and shalt not thou say of the World, Thou lovely City of God ? "He that seeth the things that are now hath seen all that either was ever or ever shall be, for all things are of one kind and all like one unto another. Meditate often upon the connection of all things in the world, and upon the mutual relation that they have one unto another. For all things are after a sort folded and involved one within another, and by these means all agree well together. For one thing is consequent unto another by local motion, by natural conspiration and agreement, and by substantial union or the reduction of all sub- stances. "What a small portion of vast and infinite eternity it is that is allowed unto every one of us, and how soon it vanisheth into the general age of the world. Of the common substance and of the com- mon soul also, what a small portion is allotted unto us, and in what a 1 Bakewell, Charles M., "Source Book in Ancient Philosophy." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 375 little clod of the whole earth it is that thou doest crawl. After thou shalt rightly have considered these things with thyself fancy not any- thing else in the world any more to be of weight and moment, but this : to do that only which thine own nature doth require, and to conform thyself to that which the conunon nature doth afford. "How easy a thing it is for a man to put off from him all turbulent adventitious imaginations, and presently to be in perfect rest and tranquillity ! "Think thyself fit and worthy to speak or to do anything that is according to nature, and let not the reproach or report of some that may ensue upon it ever deter thee. If it be right and honest to be spoken or done, undervalue not thyself so much as to be discouraged from it. As for them, they have their own rational overruling part and their own proper inclination, which thou must not stand and look about to take notice of, but go on straight whither both thine own particular and the common nature do lead thee ; and the way of both these is but one." ^ But if evil is reduced to nothingness and mere appearance, as in Hindu thought, it still exists as evil in the mind and works quite as much havoc there as elsewhere, so that the problem is not solved either from the theoretical or prac- tical points of view. And the Stoic solution really suffers from the same defect. Transitoriness and manyness, if evil, are not made of no account by simply refusing to consider them. Moreover, as Plutarch said in his refu- tation of the Stoic theodicy: ''The Stoic sage does not and never did exist anywhere in the world." Sometimes, in philosophy, all plurality is ''dumped," so to speak, into the class called mattery and we have a duality rather than plurality. Matter is opposed to the spiritual principle of the universe, as that which is irra- tional, which is necessity, and evil. This is the point of view, for instance, of Plotinus, whose doctrine is of interest to us because of his influence on Christian thought — , on St. Augustine, and through him on the later mystics.^ A few selections only from Plotinus can be given here. " Everything," says Plotinus, " exists by virtue of its unity." Unity is primal, yet plurality 1 Marcus Aurelius, ''Meditations." 2 q^ ]y[. Bakewell, op. cit. 376 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE seems to have a kind of secondary existence. "Again, strictly speaking, we cannot talk of the One as a Hhis/ or a 'that,' but looking at it from without, may only wish to interpret the ways in which it affects us. Now we get nearer to it, now we fall farther short of it, be- cause of the difficulties that hedge it about." *'The greatest of these difficulties is that our apprehension of the One does not partake of the nature of either understanding or abstract thought as does our knowledge of other intelligible objects, but has the character of presentation higher than understanding. For under- standing proceeds by concepts, and the concept is a multiple affair, and the soul misses the One when she falls into number and plurality. She must then pass beyond understanding, and nowhere emerge from her unity. She must, I say, withdraw from understanding and its objects and from every other thing, even the vision of beauty. For everything beautiful comes after it and is derived from it, as all daylight from the sun. It is for this reason that Plato says that the One is in- effable in spoken or written word." "Then too the source does not need the things which follow after it, and the source of all things has no need of any. For what wants, wants in the sense that it strives after its source. Again if the One needs anything, it is clearly seeking not to be One, and hence needs its own destruction qua One. Everything which wants, however, stands in need of well-being and preservation. It follows that for the One, nothing can be good, nor can it wish anything. It is rather super- good, a good not for itself but for other things, if any of them be able to attain it. Nor can the One be thinking, lest there be difference and motion in it. It is prior to motion and to thinking. For what shall it think? Itself? In that case before it thinks it will be ignorant, and what is self-sufficient will need thought in order to know itself. But it does not follow that because it does not know or think itself, it will be ignorant of itself. For ignorance has to do with an external object, as when one thing is ignorant of another. But the Only One will neither know anything, nor have anything to be ignorant of. Being One and united with itself it does not need to think of itself and of anything else. It must not be conceived as the thinker, but more after the fashion of mere thought, which does not think but is the cause of thinking m something else. "The One is all things and yet no one of them. For the origin of all things is itself, not they, yet all things are in their origin inasmuch THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 377 as they may all be traced back to their source. It is better, perhaps, to say that in their origin they exist not as present but as future things. How then can they proceed from the One in its simplicity, in whose self-identity there is no appearance of variety or duality whatsoever? I reply, for the very reason that none of them was in the One are all of them derived from it. Furthermore, in order that they may be real existences, the One is not an existence, but the father of existences. And the generation of existence is as it were the first act of generation. Being perfect by reason of neither seeking nor possessing nor needing anything, the One overflows as it were, and what overflows forms another hypostasis. . . . "If now the world of real existences and what transcends real exist- ence is such as we have described, no evil can inhere either in real ex- istence or in the transcendent One. For they are good. If then evil exist, there remains for it the sphere of not-being, and it is as it were a certain form of not-being, and is concerned with things mixed with not^being or having some commerce with it." * Fundamentally, matter is simply "another." That is, it is what is indeterminate as opposed to what is indi- vidual. Plotinus is interested in this doctrine in connection with the religious experience of sin and salvation. Now, the soul which has seen as in a vision the true good, and then turns away from it to the plurality of this world of shadows and the perishable is, according to Plotinus, the soul that sins. "But if they alter their mode of existence and change from the whole to the part, and take to existing independently and of them- selves, and find, so to speak, their association with the world-soul irksome, they revert each to an independent existence. When they have done this for some time, and have deserted the world-soul and estranged themselves from her through their separation, and no longer regard the intelligible universe, then each becomes a part and is isolated and weakened and busied with many things, and regards the part instead of the whole. And then when each through her separation from the whole has lighted upon some one particular part, and has deserted everything else, and turned to and entered into that one part which is subject to the impact and influence of other things, her apos- tasy from the whole is accomplished, and she directs the individual surrounded as he is by an environment, and is already in contact and 1 Bakewell, "Source Book in Ancient Philosophy." 378 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE concerned with external things, and lives in their presence and has sunk deep into them. Then it is that she is aptly said to have lost her wings and to lie in the bonds of the body — erring as she is from her life of innocence passed in governing the higher world at the side of the world-soul." Salvation is in the vision of the good which comes when we renounce the things of this world. "He who has beheld the True Beloved knows the truth of what I say, how the soul then receives a new life when she has gone forth to it and participated in it. . . . Ourselves we see illumined, full of the light of the intelligible, or rather as that very light itself . . . verily we see ourselves as made, nay, as being God himself. Then it is that we are kindled. But when we again sink to earth, we are, as it were, put out.'' "But why then do we not remain in the vision? I reply, because we have never wholly come forth from our earthly selves. But there shall come a time for us when the vision will be unbroken, and we are no longer disturbed by any unrest of the body. "Now whosoever beholds himself, when he beholds his real self will see it as such a being, or rather he will be united with such a being, and feel himself to have become such as is wholly simple. Indeed we ought perhaps to say 'he will see himself.' Nor should we speak of an object of his vision, if he have to mean thereby a duality of the seer and the seen and do not identify the two as one. It is a bold thing to say, but in the vision a man neither sees, nor if he sees, distinguishes what he sees from himself nor fancies that there are two — the seer and the seen. On the contrary, it is by becoming as it were another than him- self, and by neither being himself nor belonging to himself that he at- tains the vision. And having surrendered himself to it he is one with it, as the centre of two circles might coincide. For these centres when they coincide become one, and when the circles are separated there are two centres again. And it is in this sense that we too speak of a differ- ence. It follows that the vision is hard to describe. For how could a man report as something different from himself, what at the time of his vision he did not see as different but as one with himself? "This is clearly the intent of that injunction of the mysteries which forbids communication of their secret to the uninitiated. Since it was not communicable it was forbidden to explain the divine secret to any one to whom it had not been vouchsafed to see it himself. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 379 "So it is that the life of the gods and of godlike and blessed men is a liberation from the things of earth, a life that takes no joy in them, a flight of the soul isolated from all that exists to the isolation of God." * So, here too, in Plotinus, salvation consists in a flight from the transitory, finite, plural existence to the sanctu- ary of mystic, inner experience ; but out there in the world plurality and evil remain, and again the problem is not solved. And the One itself, what is it apart from the manyness and variety of the finite? It is ineffable and indescribable. Does it not reduce, then, very nearly to the indeterminate which is the character ascribed to matter and to evil (the other) ? In all these systems of philosophy, it is apparent that there is something other than the One which cannot be made intelligible as a mere zero or negation of the one, or simply by calhng it matter or evil.. Clearly, philosophy needs the many in order to have any real one. Yet, again, how can the real be one if it is many? Or, to express the matter in religious language, if God is good and om- nipotent, why is there evil in this God's world ? This is the serious problem which an absolutist philosophy and religious monotheism aUke have to face. A recent attempt to overcome the opposition between the one and the many by first reducing them to a duality of spirit and matter is to be found in the brilliant exposi- tion of Professor Henri Bergson. The primal reahty for Professor Bergson is a vital en- ergy, or better, a supra-consciousness which is spontaneous, free, and incalculable. It may be symboUzed by the rush- ing or shooting forth of a mighty torrent or meteor. It is like a great tide of the sea which has its ebb as well as its flow. Bergson himself speaks of the movement and the counter-movement: ^^Life is an ascending wave op- posed by the descending movement of matter." ^ 1 Bakewell, " Source Book in Ancient Philosophy." 2 H. Bergson, "L'Evolution Creatrice"; and "Life and Conscious- ness," Hibbert Journal, December, 1912. 380 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The primal energy is creative but, like instinctive im- pulse, it is unconscious as to its end. It recalls Tennyson's "Like some wild poet when he works Without a conscience or an aim." Now matter for Bergson is defined simply as the in- version of this primary movement. Matter is essentially the extended. Matter is not a thing; it is simply the ebbing of the tide, the inverse of the life impulse. It is energy which has run down into passivity and the extended of space forms. It is consciousness which has lost its creative freedom and become automatic, lifeless — like ''dead matter," as we call it. That is, matter is the re- sult of the relaxing of the tension of the great ''inner push" of the life current which sweeps through time. Says Bergson, "The rising wave of life or consciousness — which at one point has passed through matter, the obstacle which it, however, drags along with it to weight its progress — includes potentialities without number which interpene- trate and to which, consequently, neither the category of unity nor that of multiplicity is appropriate, used, as they both are, for inert matter. This matter which it bears along with it alone can divide the life current into distinct personalities." By thus reducing all to movement and a reverse move- ment, or more psychologically, to free conscious impulse and its opposite habit, Bergson thinks to overcome dual- ism and to make matter rational. But to make movement a fundamental principle seems to me rather to obscure than to clarify the whole subject. If we express it more psychologically in terms of consciousness and habit, (and this is what Bergson really means, I should suppose,) we have still to ask whether the synthesis is really accom- plished or the existence of matter really'- explained. The theory simply states the fact that in the universe there is something other than self-consciousness itself, something immediate, irrational, and irreducible. Matter is still THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 381 what consciousness finds as a limitation to its free activity — an obstacle, '^another/' It is the state into which the free consciousness lapses when it becomes passive and non-creative, i.e. a state which is mechanical and deter- mined as matter is. Bergson means, I should suppose, a state with which we are familiar as action which has become automatic — a habit, a necessity. Thus, according to Bergson, matter and consciousness have a common origin and one is simply the reversal of the other. Consciousness is active, free, creative. Mat- ter is ''action unmaking itself," degenerating, stagnating, becoming unfree, determined. In Bergson's terms ''the extinguished fragments of the rocket consciousness is what we mean by matter." Consciousness meets with resistance in matter but it seeks "to penetrate matter with contingency and to turn it into an instrument of freedom." In this its task, the creative impulse only partially succeeds. "Because of the presence of matter, the primary impulse cannot create absolutely. Matter so reacts upon the life impulse as to break up its original force into separate individualities." Matter is an ob- stacle. Yet also, a stimulus to effort, and so, in a way, itself makes creation possible. Matter is only the degen- eration of the activity of the conscious force itself, and in this way the dualism of spirit and matter is explained and done away with. Reality is one. It is a life impulse, or rather supra-consciousness setting forth on a great spirit- ual adventure. Its story is expressed in terms of evolu- tion. If the teleology which Professor Bergson explicitly excludes but which the terms which he uses suggest (for instance, when matter is treated as an obstruction to creative consciousness it appears to be an evil and what ought to be overcome by this free energy) were admitted, then, perhaps, this system might offer some explanation of the difficulty of the many and the one. As it is, the success which consciousness has attained is, and always 382 THE DRAMA OP THE SPIRITUAL LIFE will be, limited and partial. Its attainment is, as Mr. Balfour has described it, simply: 'Ho inflict a few scratches on the outer crust of the world . . . while the huge mass of matter remains and must remain what it has always been — the undisputed realm of lifeless de- terminism." ^ Another notable though very different attempt in con- temporary philosophy to harmonize the one with the many is that of F. H. Bradley in his '^ Appearance and Reality." F, H. Bradley on the One and the Many, — For Bradley the great difficulty is with the discursive and relational character of thought. Bradley holds the real cannot be outside thought. There is no ^Hhing in itself" — and yet e\ddently there is another than thought, for there is always a distinction between the ''what" and the ''that," between the predicate and the subject. ''The 'that' of the actual subject will forever give a something which is not a mere idea, something which is different from any truth, something which makes such a difference to your thinking that without it you have not even thought com- pletely." Reality should be the identity of idea and existence but in thought these two aspects of the real fall asunder. The aim of thought "is to give a character to existence in which it can rest." Yet thought never succeeds in com- pletely uniting the two aspects of the real. It cannot, for instance, unite the thing with its qualities or transcend the infinite process which the relational form involves so as to reach the immediacy which belong to existence. The dilemma, in a word, is as follows : We have, on the one hand the fact of sensible immediate experience which is different from thought because of thought's essential ideaHty. Ideality consists in the alienation from the "what" of the "that" — and if this distinction were transcended, it would mean the end of thought, for thought which does not involve relating is not thought — and if, 1 A. H. Balfour, Hihhert Journal, October, 1911. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 383 on the other hand, the immediate exists outside thought then thought does not include all reality. But this would be to reintroduce the thing-in-itself. But this again if real would be unknowable; and the very fact that our immediate experience is always changing its content brings back ideality ; that is, difference, distinction, comparison, and relations. The relational form, however, points be- yond itself to an all-inclusive unity beyond relations, and thought strives to make the ideal content one with the felt reality. Yet, to attain this goal thought would have 'Ho transcend its proper self and become another" and why, asks Mr. Bradley, ^'should not thought be thus overcome?" ''Does not the river run into the ocean and the self lose itself in love?" Thus "in thought's happy suicide," thinks Mr. Bradley, the goal might be attained. First : The other into which mere thought would be transformed would be an absolute experience which would have beside thought the immediate character of feeling. It would be one, that is, a harmonious system which con- tains all its differences in a unity. It would be an identity of idea and existence. Although we cannot realize this absolute experience in detail, we are sure it exists, Bradley holds, for it is the criterion we make use of when we judge between the true and the false and condemn inconsistency, discrepancy, and "mere appearance" generally. More- over, the effort we make to overcome incompleteness in theory and in practice points to this conclusion of an all- inclusive and harmonious experience. Secondly: This experience is individual and perfect. To be individual implies determinate being. That is, the one reality is qualified, even restricted in a way, by the manyness of appearance — for if it were not thus qualified we should have simply the vagueness and immediacy of mere feeling, but absolute reality is the union of ideaUty with immediacy. The absolute experience overcomes the distinction of a world of appearance by including it in its essence. Only as anything is taken in isolation is it 384 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE excluded from the absolute experience. Hence the ab- solute experience includes all struggle, error, pain, evil and finiteness generally, but in such wise that they are transcended and transmuted J This outcome of Bradley^s, that is, of an One in which the many of finite experience are transmuted and absorbed — unlike any experience that we know — gives us, some- how, in spite of Bradley^s own insistence on the fact of the reality of the world of appearance, and on the need of the one to retain the many to give it concreteness and defi- niteness, — the impression of an One of which nothing can be said. Thus Bradley's whole, in which phenomenal distinctions are merged, is very like the ineffable and indescribable One of Plotinus and of the other mystics; also like the negation and nothingness of Nirvana which can only be described as not this particular experience yet better than anything that finite experience has imagined. We have, in a word, arrived at an essentially mystical attitude. Now again and again in our study of religious experience we have noted the logical difficulty about mysticism. Further, our study of this experience in con- crete instances showed us that the mystic attitude is only one element in the whole which religious experience is. Mr. Bradley seems more or less to have accepted the conclusion which in his argument he condemned, namely, of passing beyond thought to reach complete reality. In a word, the manyness of the finite self with all its aspira- tions, struggles, ideals, its experience of tragedy or of joy seems to become again unimportant and unreal. But, on the other hand, the attainment since it is the attain- ment of the finite striving and search, has no meaning apart from these. Nietzsche^ s Doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence as a Solu- tion of the Opposition between the One and the Many. — This doctrine — in which Nietzsche appears to have found great satisfaction — runs, if I understand it, as follows : The * Italics are mine. THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 385 world as we know it is a world of flux and change and chance — '^fragments and members and fearful chance — • but no men." To Uberate it is needed a ''bridge into the future. " ' ' To redeem what is past and so transform every 'it was' into 'thus would I have it' — that alone I call redemption." There are some hours for the return of which man would give all that he possesses, and all his hope of heaven. " It was" — thus the affliction of the will is named. "That it cannot break time and the desire of time — that is the hardest affliction of the will." Yet all that has been will come again — the good and the bad together — for all moments of time and all events are interrelated. We cannot have one without the others. "Eternity is sought by all delight." " The woe of the world is deep And deeper still than woe — delight." "If ye ever wanted to have one time twice, if ye ever said 'Thou pleasest me, happiness, O instant, O moment,' ye wished everything to come back. "Everything anew, everything etemaJ, everything chained, knotted, in love. Oh ! thus ye loved the world ! Ye elemental ones, ye love it eternally and for all time. And even unto woe ye say: *Pass, go, but return ! ' For eternity's sought by all delight." ^ Thus all events will appear again in eternal recurrence and the wheel come full circle. I have given, of course, too briefly and inadequately, these sketches to suggest the way in which various sys- tems of philosophy have grappled with our problem of the one and the many. It is not the business of religious faith to solve the metaphysical problem of the one and the many, yet religion does need in the end an adequate metaphysic to rest upon. Hindu thought, we saw, emphasized the fact that ab- solute reality is the Self, and this Self is in all things. For Plotinus the one is individual. The contemporary * Thus spake Zarathustra. 2c 386 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE theories of Bradley and Bergson, while not wholly success- ful, suggest, at least, a possible solution to the problem from the point of view of religious experience. Reality, says Bradley, is experience; it is one and absolute, yet individual, and the individual is determined by what is denied and excluded as well as by what is afl&rmed. A perfect and absolute Individual does include the rest- lessness, the error, the tragedy of finite life in one whole and perfect self-conscious experience even though trans- muting them in an harmonious system. Bergson emphasizes the other aspect. The one con- scious life is broken up by the obstruction of matter into a plurality of finite individuals and thereby the one is made more ^'precise." The life impulse is creative; that is, ' ' it gives out more than it has. ' ' Hence it is ^ ' a spiritual force.'' But to be truly creative means to overcome re- sistance in the material realization of the creative ideal. The idea, for instance, of a poem, or of a solution of a scientific problem, the dream of some business enterprise, or whatever form the idea may take, — becomes real only when made concrete and embodied in some material ex- istence. Says Bergson: *'The passage of consciousness through matter has just this aim, we may suppose, to bring to precision in the form of distinct personahties — tendencies and potentialities which at first were mingled, and also to permit these personahties to test their force whilst at the same time increasing it by an effort of self-creation — an effort which may pursue its path into the beyond — of a higher form of existence, so that the ultimate reason of human fife is a creation of self by self, the continual en- richment of personality by elements which it does not draw from outside but causes to spring forth from itself." ^ We have reached the crux of the situation. The essen- tial problem is to find the true self or experience which can be an harmonious union of the many and the one. This was also essentially the outcome of our quest in the 1 H. Bergson, "Creative Evolution." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 387 discussion of the opposition between the temporal and the eternal and also of the opposition between the static and the dynamic form of religious experience. Furthermore, this is really the issue in the rebellion of those individuals, the Fausts, Cains, Zarathustras and the heroines of Ibsen, whose self-assertion we considered above. These rebellious spirits, we saw, are each and all rebels against an external authority, whether of church or state, whether of tradition or convention, embodied in the family or any other social group, an authority which imposes itself arbitrarily upon them. Science emphasizes the value of the natural human life. Christianity has taught the value of every human soul. Kant's critical analysis reveals the practical value of the personal will. These rebels find their good in being a law unto them- selves. They cannot find satisfaction in the renunciation and submission which religion and social life alike have demanded of them, for they cannot overcome their in- stinctive belief in the value of something which they call their individual self. Hence the end for them means to express themselves, to live the complete life at every point — in every nerve and in every muscle, in every in- terest, in every plan and purpose. They will be a law unto themselves. Then out of the inevitable conflict of the many individual ideals arises the question — Who is myself ? ^ Now the individual self as it appears in experience is not imified. It is itself an unsolved problem of the many and the one. For as we find it in experience, it is a mass of fleeting experiences and of changing content, of restless longings and capricious needs. A many which would fain be one, but so far an unreconciled many and one. The self is changed by what comes to it from the environ- ment. The varying experiences which it encounters on its pilgrimage from the cradle to the grave so disturb and 1 See F. H. Bradley, "Appearance and Reality," Chapter IX, on the Internal Disruption of the Self of Experience. 388 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE change the self that it is impossible to find any iden- tity whether of body or mind, of self-feeling or interest to which we can give the name of one's self. ''There is no limit to the self's mutability." The wholeness which the self longs for is a beyond to its present experience. — Another, as the philosophers have called it. Yet this other, beyond the self's present ex- perience, is not altogether an alien other, for it is that which, if present, would give to the imperfect and partial experience of the self the peace, salvation, completion of experience which it longs for. It is the self's own ideal. Therefore it is the experience which it ought to strive for. These considerations point to an ethical solution to our problem. We want to find some universal principle which shall not only unify ''the many'' of fleeting individual experience, but one which shall harmonize the conflicting variety of ideals of the world of many individuals. That is, as already suggested, that which shall unify the self's discrepancy is an ought, an universal, ethical ideal, an ideal for all selves. I know of no better expression of such an ethical prin- ciple than that of Kant's categorical imperative. This universal law is a command to every one to so act that the principle of his action might become a law for all intelli- gent beings. Or, otherwise expressed, Will always the good- will. This imiversal statement of the ought is, of course, highly abstract, and to reUgious experience it seems cold. Professor Royce ^ has given more concreteness and warmth to the principle in his statement of it. "Be loyal to the spirit of loyalty, everywhere." Kant, again, has expressed the principle in another way which brings it nearer to re- ligious experience. His expression is, in effect. Reverence personaUty everywhere. By a person Kant means that whose nature it is to be an end in itself, that is, a rational and self-determining being. The categorical imperative then becomes: "Act so as to use humanity whether in 1 Josiah Royce, "The Philosophy of Loyalty." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 389 your own person or that of another always as an end, never as merely a means." This is the essential teaching, also, I take it, of the Sermon on the Mount and the par- ables of Jesus, and likewise of Paul's chapter on Caritas (1 Cor. 13). ^ For the fundamental elements or ideas in the gospel of Jesus are : 1st, the idea of the fatherhood of God involv- ing the sonship of man ; 2d, the value of the individual and the spiritual nature of religion — that is, the inner nature of sin and salvation and of the way of life as a way of righteousness; 3d, the idea of The Elingdom of God, or the interrelatedness of individuals, an interrelatedness brought about through their sonship to God, which, again, depends on righteousness of life (for instance, the sayings ''Not every one who saith unto me 'Lord, Lord' shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he who doeth the will of my Father"; "Be ye therefore perfect as your Father is perfect" ; the golden rule; the two command- ments of the Kingdom). The key to our problem is personality, but, again, a new problem confronts us. For it is not easy to discover con- cretely what we mean by personality. Already it has been hinted that there is scarcely a bound to the self's mutability. In truth, it is almost a commonplace to assert to-day what modern psychology has made so clear — first, that the social experience of his heredity and environ- ment have largely made the individual what he is ; and, secondly, he is what he is only through his relatedness to other men. As father or son, as citizen, friend, physician, teacher, or business man, he stands in relation to others, and this relatedness involves obligations and limitations which make his whole life another from what it would be without them. He is not a person in so far as he is iso- lated. His very life is in its relatedness, and in so far as the individual is capricious and free from obligations, he * See Chapter I, where I tried to sketch the ethical development of the reUgion of Israel. 390 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE is not a person. In fact, he is a person only as he is bound to something more than himself. He is a person in so far as he is dedicated to an ideal — loyal; in religious lan- guage, in so far as he embodies in his Hfe the will of God (the absolutely good will). The real solution of the problem of diversity in unity of the individual self, and also of the interrelations of the many individual selves — the union of their various ideals in a system or kingdom of ends, as Kant called it — will be found when a principle is found — or more concretely an universal and ideal selfhood — which shall be inclusive enough to unite and harmonize all aims. In small groups we have concrete experience of how this may be carried out. When, for instance, the people of a city differing in creed, in class, and race, cooperate to secure some common end, — let us say, for instance (to take an illustration from the experience of our own day), to secure a play- ground for the children of the city as a whole, then we have a real community spirit and life — an inclusive selfhood.^ To treat another as a person implies, then, that he and we together stand in relation to a larger life or ideal com- munity which includes us both. Such an attitude is far more than an attitude of mere altruism whether of pity, sympathy, philanthropy, or social service. So far Zara- thustra was right when he scorned these so-called Chris- tian virtues. Said Tolstoy, whose doctrine seems the very antithesis of Nietzsche's: ^^ There is nothing to do with men (including our would-be enemies) but to love them." This is true, if we define love after the manner of Paul (in 13 Cor.). If we turn to the Christian Gospels we must join to the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan that austere saying of the Master : '^He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not ^ This appears to be one good point in an appalling war. Petty sepsr- rate interests for the time being are swept aside, — there is a common spirit in the national life. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 391 worthy of me." "He who is not ready to leave all and follow me, is not worthy of me." A person is a person, then, only in the light of some- thing more than himself, that is, only through his rela- tions to God and his fellow-men. The goal is a develop- ment in each and all of a holy will, but this means a will which wills the other's good in the light of the whoUj or as a member of the whole. We may not out of love for another do that which will injure the universal ideal or tend to loosen the bond which binds all men together. If you are unjust or cruel or false to another for my sake, — so one friend may say to another, — some day I shall come to doubt your truth and justice and kindness. We have an austere and beautiful ideal to serve and we must be true and loyal to that whatever else we are. I find this attitude expressed in a number of prayers, for instance in this of St. Augustine : — "Blessed is the man who loveth Thee and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thee. For he only loses none dear to him, to whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost." The bond which unites the many and the one is a spirit- ual bond. In an earUer part of this discussion we spoke of the importance of the personal attitude, the attitude of the friend and neighbor. We now see a httle more clearly what this attitude really means. For when we have said the word : ''Be a friend or neighbor," we must remember that this is no exclusive affection. We can only truly love our friends in the Ught of something larger than they, that is, as members together with ourselves of a larger whole or community. So, sometimes, for a public duty we seem even to neglect our friends. But, to-day, the danger seems rather the other way. In our lives of count- less committee meetings, and social service activities, there is no leisure for real companionship and friendship. In the second place, also, we have always to remember that to treat our friend as a person means to leave him free to serve the whole in his own way, not in the way we think 392 THE DKAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE best. Thus we arrive at last at the ideal of the spiritual community, of the invisible church, the company of the faithful — that whole which is a many in one. St. Paul has given a description of this in 1 Cor. 12 : — "Now there are diversities of gifts but the same spirit.** Just as the body though it has many members is one — so is it with the life of the spirit, "and if one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it ; and if one member is honored all the members rejoice with it.** Many have been the Utopian dreams which have tried to embody concretely this principle of union. The small Greek state ^ suggested it. In Athens, for example, the greatest liberty of development was given to the individ- ual, but the individual himself was largely constituted by his relation to the state which was his highest self- expression. Because of the perfection of this diversity in unity, the glory and heroism of Marathon was pos- sible, — Marathon which might well be an inspiring ideal for an age of ease, luxury, and money-getting like our own. Plato's " Republic " gives us an ideal interpretation of the Greek state. Now if the state did really serve the interests of the whole community, then such a state would concretely illustrate the above principle. For instance, in the matter of taxes, if the tax-money were actually used to further the best interests of the community as a whole and not in the interests of the classes, we should not perhaps have our present state of tax-dodging. The modern state or city too often fails to embody the essential interests of its citizens. For other illustrations, we may turn to the prophets and statesmen of Israel with their dream of the Messianic Kingdom — a spiritual theodicy — which should express the life of God in the righteousness and happiness of the individuaPs Hfe; as an instance, the poem of the First Isaiah, Chapter 35. The thought of Jesus of Nazareth concerning the Kingdom was a development of this idea on even more spiritual lines. ''The Kingdom of God is 1 Lowes* Dickenson, **The Greek View of Life.'* THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 393 not meat and drink, but righteousness and life.'' In the marvelous parables, we have the story of the dream of Jesus concerning the new social order which shall spring out of the righteousness of the inner life.^ So wonderful is the spirit of this new kingdom it is worth while to strive and suffer for it, to give one's all to it, even to the lay- ing down of life itself. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like imto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls; and having found one pearl of great price he went and sold all he had and bought it." Again the little Christian communities (or churches) of the apostolic age — bound together as they were by their relation to their Master and by his message of good-will and brotherhood — were, in a small way, a concrete em- bodiment of the unity of the many and the one. But too well we know from Paul's letters how speedily disruptions, divisions, jealousies broke up their harmony. Again the mediaeval church sought to be a visible order which should unite the many and the one, and the Roman Cathohc church seeks to-day to be such an whole. The church is the depository of grace. Men are bound to- gether by spiritual conviction and by communion, by as- senting to the dogmas and by receiving the rites of the church. In many ways, this church allows freedom to the individual to follow his own ends, as for instance in the foimding of orders; and so to a great extent it has been successful in holding the loyalty of the individual to the church. Yet we know how this ancient chm-ch has strayed into paths of] political intrigue, has tended to the mechanical and external, to worldliness and corrup- tion. In its absolute authority over the spiritual life of the individual it has persecuted and overwhelmed that free thought of the individual which when at its best is the inspiration to spiritual religion ; or it has branded as heretics and banished from the church the more thought- ful and original minds ; and so we may well ask to-day 1 Math. 13. 394 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE — will it be possible for the movement called Modernism* to be successful? How far man is from realizing such an ideal of diversity in unity in society, this, indeed, we have already noted in preceding chapters. The one which harmonizes the many without putting out their individual lights, remains an ideal to our earthly sight, and yet reUgious faith holds that it exists. In the presence of beauty — in the appreciation, still more, it must be in the creation of it — man learns something of the way in which the one and the many may be reconciled to feeling. So Schopenhauer held that in aesthetic experience man has a momentary solace and fore- taste of the final peace, when the striving ''will to live" is brought to rest. For that side of religious experience which is akin to the sesthetic experience, this aesthetic appreciation and ab- sorption is perhaps a solution of the problem of the one and the many. Yet this cannot be the final word for religion. Even the great mystics have had something practical and social about their experience as an whole. For instance, the founding of orders, the initiating of reforms by St. Francis, St. Theresa, and the rest. The saints of the mediaeval legends who lose themselves in ecstatic communion with God are generally able to make converts, rescue sinners, perform miracles. ^ The higher religions are ethical and practical. This we have noted all through our discussion. Nothing can satisfy the finite individual but that which is the expres- sion and completion of his own selfhood. But what is true for one is true for every finite self. The goal of the many, then, is the one complete and all inclusive self- hood in which their finitude is completed but their unique- ness preserved. * I understand that Modernism as a movement is to-day practically dead. 2 See, for instance, **The Little Flowers of St. Francis." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 395 How, then, shall the finite self find and unite itself with the complete and perfect self? We have already seen that it cannot be by the mystical way of feeUng alone, for this leads to self-annihilation and absorption. " The way" cannot be the way of individual caprice, for this is anarchy and could not lead to One Self. It can only be the way of righteousness and love. In order to carry out the will of God in human life, there must be one spirit J as Paul said, animating the various finite aims. When we ask what this one spirit is — or what is the con- tent of the Holy Will as related to finite existence — I think we can only reply in ethical terms. It must be stated as an universal ethical principle. The will which wills an ought or ideal ; or, after Kant, the absolutely good and free will — is a will which creates for itself universal laws. In a word, the bond of the religious life which unites the one and the many is a moral bond. All his- torical religions have had their ethical aspect. Confucian- ism and Buddhism expressed the moral law negatively. In the golden rule and the parables of Christianity it is given in positive form. But now if ^Hhe way of life" is essentially the ethical way, the old question returns — How can finite man ever reach the goal? How can the imperfect many ever be united with the perfect One? For has not our whole study of the ethical process shown that this process is essentially a striving for an infinitely removed goal, and that to attain the goal would be the death of morality? To find the true self is, indeed, for the individual no easy task. Youth yearns to devote itself to some ''cause," yet it is not always very clear what road to take, and many have followed ''wandering fires." Then comes one of the older generation and says to the young man or young woman — "Here is a noble career open to you, take it." Or, "Here is a worthy philanthropy needing workers, give yourself to it." It is not by any means certain, how- ever, that you will find your wholly true self there. " Neti, 396 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Neti." It is not that, not that. For the true self has a mysterious, twofold and paradoxical nature. Yet the law of the road is a perfectly clear and simple one. It is a twofold principle and it is in correspondence with the two elements or phases of the self. The first part of the principle is — ^'Eoiow thyself," as the old Greek saying went. To gain insight, take counsel with yourself in quiet reflection and prayer, and listen humbly to all the wisdom of the past, then alone if need be, and unafraid of the scorn or shouting of the crowd, choose that plan of ac- tion which has *' warmth" for you, which appeals to you, in which there is some probability that you will accomplish something, because even apart from your natural abiUty the interest will hold through necessary drudgery, and through the difficult exclusions which any definite choice involves. And the second part of the principle is — devote yourself to something larger than yourself. '^ Bring your gifts to the altar" ; that is, consecrate them to something which is in the deepest sense social, even if not always obviously so,^ and be ready to sacrifice yourself to this end. Young people often delight in sacrifice. Now, mere self-sacrifice, indeed, the ascetic cutting off of any good, is not worth while, but sacrifice for a chosen ideal is not a meaningless limitation. It is also self-expression and creative activity, and he that loseth his life for this end shall find it. If one asks for a concrete illustration of self-sacrifice applicable to our day, is it too much to ask of the young men and women of the rising generation that they shall be ready to lead a simpler, more purposeful, more consecrated life ; that they shall not be quite so eager in the pursuit of mere pleasure, or so dependent on the luxuries of life ; or so prone to follow safely with the majority ; that they shall renounce the thirst for making and possessing large 1 Compare Marcus Aurelius, "Fancy not anything else in the world to be of weight and moment, but this : to do only which thine own nature doth require, and to conform thyself to that which the common nature doth afford." THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 397 fortunes and shall choose to devote themselves to those more ideal professions which do not, materially con- sidered, pay as well ? — If they will, then we may hope that the age of the great teachers and preachers, the age of the prophets and creative artists may come again amongst their children. This difficxilty about actually finding one's true self comes to us in a form both theoretical and practical. For, as we have said, the goal of the complete and perfect self- hood which alone can satisfy the religious consciousness is infinitely removed. Logically, we cannot sum an in- finite series, or reach a last term which does not exist; and, practically, the individual who seeks perfect right- eousness acknowledges his failures and at last prays to God to be merciful to him a sinner. While, as far as the community life is concerned, we have seen how the shores of time are strewn with the wrecks of social Utopias. In answer to the objection stated above in the first place to sum an infinite series or reach the last term is not nec- essary if the Absolute Self is a self which wins immediacy of expression in the interrelated finite selves. That is, if it is a self -consciousness of the type of *'a self-represen- tative system.'' By a self-representative system is meant a whole or system whose elements can be put in one to one correspondence with a proper part of itself. Such a system is infinite. The number system affords an il- lustration.^ The law of the system being given, it is possible to develop to infinite variety, diversity in unity. Now, a relation of this kind to the infinite self is possible for the finite self for we know the law of the structure of the whole. We do not, therefore, need to reach the last term to understand the system as an whole. This structure has for man, as we have seen, a moral character. The plan or purpose as revealed to him is: Act in the light 1 For discussion of the Self as a self -representative system, see Professor Royce, !*The World and the Individual," Vol. I, supplement- ary essay. 398 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE oj the whole. Act so as to develop and further selfhood everywhere, in yourself and in all others. To attain to this attitude, to be sure, a change of heart is usually nec- essary. ^^ Christ is not born in Bethlehem unless in you and me.'* And man, as he is, is only potentially a person. He is genuinely a person only through his relation to the highest ideal he knows, — to God. It is the attitude of consecration to this ideal which makes him a person. The task is an endless one. The rebirth is not accomplished once and for all, but must be renewed in each unique moment and in each individual deed. To be perfect as the High and Holy One who inhabits eternity is perfect, is an endless, ever recurrent process. Whereas primitive man and, indeed, not primitive man alone, has sought through prayers and propitiations, to reconcile the Divine Will to his own, the enlightened and dutiful self-consciousness goes the other way. It seeks to bring its own will into harmony with the eternal purpose, to carry out the Divine Will in the series of acts of a life in time. It is a moral process, but the sense of realization in so far as at any finite moment it is realized, gives the joy and inner peace which the mystical type of religious con- sciousness has always sought. '^Brahma," says the Eastern sage, '4s joy and knowledge." For to view the universe " sub specie seternitatis " is itself, as Spinoza said, com- munion with the Divine. So the mystical and the practical experience may be united and the opposition reconciled. Concept of Immortality. — Besides personality or the concept of the true self there is another concept of re- ligious faith which seems to me to unify these two ten- dencies, namely, the mystical and the ethical tendencies, and, also, in a sense to combine the many and the one. I refer to the concept of immortality. One can hardly analyze religious experience without sooner or later coming upon the behef in immortaUty. To religious faith to hold that *Hhe momentary taste of THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 399 being" which this world affords is all there is, is to make the universe more or less irrational. On the other hand, it seems equally irrational and presumptuous for the in- dividual to think that any merely personal plan or desire of his own has completion in another Hfe, or that he re- ceives any material reward or compensation for what he may here have suffered or endured. Below all the yearnings and strivings of humanity, — the pain and anguish of the bereaved heart and of broken lives, — what is the essence of the idea of immortahty? The dream or hope of immortality is found everywhere from the savage to the enlightened religious consciousness, and various have been the pictures of the future state. They range from the happy himting-grounds of primitive man, or the heaven of singing and feasting of the simple- minded of the present day, to the state of spiritual com- munion of the mystic saint ; and the practical life united through noble activity and self-surrender to the Divine Will of the moral hero and martyr. Immortality is bound up with the concepts of personality and individuality. It has often been said that we, the individuals, die and our lives are but pebbles on the beach, yet the corporate life of humanity goes on and we can live for the good of that. This was the faith of George Eliot : — . "May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love. Be the sweet presence of a good diffused. And in diffusion ever more intense ! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world." But if each separate individual is worthless, how, we may well ask, does an aggregate of individuals or even a community of individuals become of worth? What then is fundamental in this thirst for immor- tality? The motives are, it seems to me, twofold. Let us consider each in turn. 400 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The first motive is the desire to Uve the life of the god or gods ; that is, to be as God. Thus many an ancient faith has sought the fulfilment of its longing through mys- tical union with the Divine. That is, the way to immor- tahty is by union with God, and this union is accomphshed through various rites, initiations, and ascetic disciplines. This motive is characteristic of the mystery religions, so-called. In these cults, the initiate, through various practices which are of the nature of imitative magic, shares in the trials and sufferings of the Divine Being and hkewise has part in his triumph and fehcity. With Deme- ter in her search for Persephone, the votary of the Eleusin- ian mysteries fasts in sorrow, and then drinks the Kykeon in joy as Demeter did when her daughter was found. Again, in the rites of Isis, which follow the Osiris myth. The murdered Osiris was plunged into the Nile and so was restored to fife. In correspondence, the initiate is baptized and thus made a participant in the drama of the death and resurrection of the god. That is, through taking part in the mystic rites, he himself becomes the god. The rites of Attis,^ of Adonis, and those of the Persian Mithra cult follow similar lines. In each case the purpose was to unite the worshipper to the god. This, too, is the goal of Orphism,2 and the significance of its ascetic as well as of its ecstatic rites. Through the magic efficacy of the mystery-rites, the disciple beheld the god, took part in his life, and expected to share his immortality. But is not this in essence true as well of Pauhne Christianity? Through partaking of the sufferings and death of Christ, the Christian may rise with him into newness of life and share in the glories of his fife in God (Romans 6 : 3-11).' A new element, however, enters with Christianity. The ancient mysteries grew out of rites connected with the 1 Frazer, "The Golden Bough." 2 Jane Harrison, ** Prolegomena to Greek Religion." 'See Alfred Loisy, "The Christian Mystery," Hibbert Journal^ October, 1911. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 401 decay of vegetation in the autumn and its revival in the spring. This is the original meaning of the Persephone myth, and also of the Attis and Adonis myths.- These cults, to be sure, had involved ascetic practices and to some extent purity of hfe, but the emphasis is not, as in the Pauline epistles, on the moral change and regenera- tion. The death in the Epistles is death unto sin, the new Hfe of the spirit is the life of moral purpose and of brotherly love and service. The Ethical Motive. — Thus we pass over to the second motive or element in the idea of immortaUty, and this motive takes a very different form. It is the longing and practical demand on the part of a creature, finite, mutable, yet striving and aspiring to attain perfection and comple- tion. It is an ethical motive, and it requires an endless process for its consummation. Hence we can see how the demand of the will itself creates the time process. Man, from this point of view, becomes one with God and divine, when in his concrete life he mirrors, or better re-creates, the perfect life of God. In so far as the purpose of the Divine Will is repeated in his every deed, he is in truth an incar- nation of God, the perfect image of the Eternal. It is for this ethical reason, because of the beauty of his life, that men have seen in Jesus of Nazareth the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, the true ^'Son of God." But it is clear that for the finite to wholly attain to the perfection of God requires an infinite process. No finite will can ever be satisfied with what it has already accompHshed. Because it is a dutiful will, there is always another obligation to meet, and the individuaFs duty is his own and no other^s. Hence the very individuality of the will demands an un- ending series of unique deeds. This is the essence of our demand for a continuance of that which constitutes our personal identity. We are truly one with God and divine, in the mystic ^s language, when we are transformed into His image by the sacrifice of our merely personal will to the unseen ideal of the absolutely Holy Will of God. The 2d 402 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE ground for our faith in immortality is an ethical ground; but this is the ground of our whole religious consciousness, and it is bound up with the nature of things. In relation to the question of immortality no other point of view or froof appears to be particularly relevant or important. '*The fulfilment of meaning" is what is essential to our lives. The answer and outcome to our particular desires and aims we can well afford to leave, in spite, perhaps, of '^an inevitable sadness," with the Will which wills the good of the whole. Immortal life, then, means hoKness of life. The lives of some saints we know already suggest to us what it may also mean in the way of increased insight and freedom, greater sanity and serenity of spirit. But, now, a final question arises — why in a world of interrelated selves should there not be discord instead of harmony? And why in actual fact do we find so much evil in God^s world ? The problem of evil is the great difficulty both for a philosophy of absolute idealism and for monistic religion. One cannot hope to deal satisfactorily with this problem in a summary fashion, nor can imperfect human vision ever presume to fathom the divine plan in its details.^ Yet certain suggestions which experience teaches us may be offered. In the first place, then, we recognize that in the time-world the finite selves are still in the process of winning salvation. It is through the temporal and chang- ing that the soul^s wings are developed. Professor Berg- son has emphasized this point, as we noted in his account of creative energy in its encounter with the obstacle mat- ter. Many of the evils of life come from human ignorance and wilfulness and are bound up with the question of freedom. In fact, it is difficult to see how there could be moral growth if there were not something to be overcome : * " Matto e chi spera che nostra ragione possa trascorrer la infinita via." Dante Purgatorio iii, 34, 35. THE WAY OF LIFE ITS FORMS 403 "Des Menschen Thatigkeit kann allzu leicht erschaffen, Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh ; Drum geb' ich gern ihm den Gessellen zu, Der reizt und wirkt und muss als Teufel schaffen." A Religion of Sorrow and Atonement. — We conclude that in a world of interrelated wills and purposes such as our world is, there is bound to be a note of suffering and tragedy. In a certain sense it is true that the woe and wrongs of all the world are on our shoulders, and, vol- untarily or involuntarily, men have to bear one another's biu-dens. In other words, to fully interpret the data of the religious consciousness we need the spiritualized and universalized doctrine of 'Hhe atonement." We cannot separate ourselves from our fellows, even if we would. For if we should separate ourselves from others another tragedy is involved — the tragedy of isolation. "In our relatedness,'' says Emerson, ''are we strong." In so far as the rebelUous self is a rebel against the ills and limitations of fortune or the wrongs and sufferings caused by others, one has to say to such a self ^ — ''Truly the temporal world is not the creation of your merely personal will, and as a matter of fact what are you as in- dividual apart from the whole? And if you accept the unearned increment of the world's joys, shall you not be ready, too, to accept the burdens which accompany them ?" One lesson of experience is that while every sin sooner or later meets in some form with its just retribu- tion,^ at the same time much undeserved evil comes to the innocent. The second lesson is, that while the in- dividual may reach the heights of attainment morally, the corresponding degree of happiness does not necessarily * When Dante wept at the pimishment of the augurs and diviners Virgil said to him : — " chi ^ piu scellerato che colui che al giudicio divin compassion porta." Inferno xx, 29, 30. 2 That is, in the moral degeneration which is the result of continual sinning. See Dante's symbolism in the "Inferno." 404 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE accompany it.^ In this our life not every particular desire is fulfilled, not every prayer granted. No, we have our purposes and make our plans, which seem to us very good ; and, then, the cold, hard fact runs athwart them. Tragedy is born. Now the outcome of the difficulty involved in these two statements is the same. It is the meaning of the Cross of Christ. We read in history how ^'the blood and tears " of the past generations, as in our own Civil War, for instance, have been freely given for our redemption. For the world is one whole. Each is responsible for all. ^'Ye are members one of another." Whether we will or no, we must accept the common destiny. Accept it, then, freely, even gladly. When your plans are defeated and your hopes turned to ashes, when the iron of some unearned sorrow has pierced to your heart and you are broken with anguish, when your beloved friends leave you and the radiance seems to have gone out of your life, when the deep waters have gone over you and your soul is ex- ceeding sorrowful even unto death — face your sorrow, feel that God is with you still ; reflect upon the evil which has happened to you, see if you do not feel that you are face to face with real life as never before, and if new in- sight does not come to you such as joy never brought you, — then when your fife is deepened and sanctified by grief, go forth with outstretched hands to meet your brother's and sister's need and sorrow. When a great sorrow comes to our lives, it serves as a touchstone to prove the depth of quality of our friends. They help us most who, having themselves experienced sor- row, have learned how to turn their own tragic experience into ' ^ ministers of grace." With their stripes we are healed and win courage to face our own overmastering anguish and pain, and disciplined by sorrow, to take up our lives again. So, sometimes, even in the midst of our disap- pointment and grief, our sense of limitation and lack, it 1 The wicked flourish as the green bay tree while the righteous beg for bread, as the Psalms have it. THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 405 is given us to see, as perhaps in the mystic's vision, how even this experience, which seems in itself pm-e loss and evil in relation to our dreams and desires, may be a stepping- stone for good, or an element in the universal life of won- derful if austere beauty. If we have been on the heights and seen the vision, and if we have succeeded in trans- forming our lives thereby — then life will never be the same to us again — we have won the "new life." This is the mystery of sorrow. Says Bradley, ''Even our one- sidedness, our insistence and our disappointment may somehow all subserve an harmony and go to perfect it. The ends which fail . . . are ends selected by ourselves and selected more or less erroneously. They are too par- tial, as we have taken them, and if included in a larger end to which they are related, they cease to be failures. They subserve a wider scheme and in that they are realized. Not, of course, that every private end as such is realized — it is lost and becomes an element in a wider idea which is one with existence." ^ In a word, to summarize, we may say : First, the true self which unites the many and the one is a Self of selves. It is an whole of interrelated individuals, it harmonizes the many and various wills and ideals, for ultimately each in its different way is seeking the goal which the complete Self is. Secondly, this whole of interrelated parts is a social whole, yet in it the individual wiU is not absorbed and made naught as in mysticism. The fact and value of individuaUty itself is ultimate, and if we let it go, we are shipwrecked. We went in quest of the Self ; we find, how- ever, that the true Selfhood is for tis ideal. It is a Self of selves, a one in many " One undivided soul of many a soul." In fact, it is in part because of his relation to God and to other individuals that the finite will has its own unique 1 F. H. Bradley, "Appearance and Reality," pp. 200, 201. 406 THE DEAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE task and that its individuality is fulfilled in the whole. * ' In Him we live and move and have our being. ' ' For each serves the whole but each in his own way. Or, as the poet puts it : — "Each has his end to serve and his best way of serving it." In this way, the opposition of the one and the many is overcome and the social experience reconciled with in- dividual experience. An illustration of this, already given, is that of St. Paul : "There is a diversity of gifts but the one Spirit." Another, in St. John, is the parable of the vine and the branches. Here we have diversity in unity and the relation of the part to the whole. As the dis- ciples of Jesus were bound together by the spirit of the Master, by his life and death, so the whole spiritual com- munity is bound together by the sharing in the common joys and sorrows, and in the taking of each upon himself the burdens and the services of their mutual life as a whole, and for the sake of the whole. But one ultimate question arises. If the bond which practically unites the many and the one is a moral bond, why could it not be expressed as an impersonal, universal law? This would give us "pure morahty," not religion. The answer is : The absolutely good and self -determining will is the fundamental principle of moraUty, but a good- will-in-itself is an abstraction. To become actual, it must become an embodied will. ReHgion takes this universal good-will — an ideal for every man — and embodies it in the Holy Will of God. Thus rehgion brings to the stern obligations of duty the joyousness of gratitude, adoration, and love. As we saw before, the inner and cuter religious experience cannot be separated, and this is true as well of rehgion and morahty. Morahty, after all, must have its roots deep in the constitution of things. The ultimate term for rehgion is personahty. The meaning and beauty of life are revealed to us in human personality. Yet per- sonahty is a mystery. It surely has the possibility of THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 407 reaches far beyond anything that we know or dream of. And when we turn to metaphysical considerations the absolute self-consciousness or spirit is the only self -explaining and ir- reducible ground for reality. At least, I can see no other significant criterion of what reaHty can possibly mean to us. Pure morahty, that is, a morahty based upon a seK- determining will, a religion of supreme personality, and a metaphysical theory of absolute idealism — these are, it seems to me, three different ways of saying the same thing. All of the higher rehgions have contributed something to religious experience as a whole. If we dwell more on Christian experience, it is because to the modern Western mind it seems more inclusive and more vital. The en- lightened Christian consciousness to-day pictures to itself the being of absolute personality under the image of the transforming power of Divine Love. Sometimes it is as tender mother love bending over the cradle of the helpless Httle child ; sometimes it is redeeming love going out to the forsaken places of the earth to bring healing and joy, to redeem sinners — as the religious consciousness often expresses it ; sometimes as the self-sacrificing love of the Christ on Calvary who gave his life for the world's redemp- tion ; sometimes as heroic love consecrated to an ideal, like that of Jesus of Nazareth, one who working solely for the Kingdom of righteousness was ''misimderstood by the common people whose cause he had espoused" and "who payed the penalty of spiritual independence by a cruel and ignominious death." ^ We have to start from the basis of our own finite experience, hence our descriptive terms are necessarily anthropomorphic. Hence, perhaps, we can find no better expression for our highest ideal than that love and wisdom of I Cor. 13, "The love which seeks not its own, which suffereth long and is kind." ^ * Compare death of Socrates. 2 Compare the Gospel of St. John, Plato's "PhsBdro," third act of Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," last scene of the second part of "Faust," Emerson's "Celestial Love," and Hegel's account in his "Philosophy of Religion." 408 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE The great poet of the Middle Ages has given in the clos- ing canto of the ' 'Divine Comedy" another wonderful pic- ture of Divine love. "Thus my mind wholly rapt was gazing fixed, motionless, intent and ever with gazing grew enkindled. In that light one becomes such that it is impossible he should ever consent to turn himself from it for other sight, because the good which is the object of the will is all reflected in it, and outside, that is defective which is perfect there. "Oh Life Eternal that sole dwellest in Thyself, sole understandest Thyself and understanding lovest and smileth on Thyself! That circle, which thus conceived appeared in Thee as a reflected light, being somewhile regarded by my eyes, within itself of its own color, seemed to be depicted with one effigy wherefore my sight was wholly set upon it. As is the geometer who wholly applies himself to measure the circle, and finds not by thinking that principle of which he is need, such was I at that new sight. I wished to see how the image accorded with the circle and how it has its place therein; but my own wings were not for this, had it not been that my mind was smitten by a flash in which its wish came. "To my high fantasy here power failed ; but now my desire and my will, like a wheel which evenly is moved, the Love was turning which moves the sun and the other stars." Yet we must admit that no one word or quahty can describe for us even our own inadequate vision of the ''most High and Holy who inhabiteth eternity." "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it en- tered into the heart of man to conceive" the wonder and the glory of the universe in its spiritual reality. So, at last, it is true that the rehgious consciousness takes refuge in a kind of rapture of mysticism which seems to it to be enlightenment. Thought is for a moment quenched in ecstasy, and there appears to be no "other." And there is no other when absolute self-consciousness is fulfilled. That is, there is no external other. The nature of spirit, says Hegel, "is to differentiate itself. The universal differentiates itself into the particular embodiment. There is a difference between the universal and the par- ticular, yet there is also identity between them. They are one. As the entire Idea in and for itself brought forward THE WAY OF LIFE — ITS FORMS 409 into actuality, their difference is shown to be no differ- ence, and thus the one is at home with itself in the other. The fact that this is so is what is meant by Spirit. Or, expressed in terms of feehng, by Eternal Love, The Holy Spirit is eternal love. . . . God is love; i.e. He repre- sents the distinction of Himself from the other, and the multipHcity of this distinction, the sort of play of this act of distinction . . . which is therefore posited as some- thing abolished, i.e, as the eternal simple Idea.'' As insight and feehng, love recognizes then the distinc- tion and at the same time the identification of itself and the other. As carried out in the life as will-acts, it em- bodies the command ^^Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, with all thy mind, with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself." ^ He is my neighbor be- cause of our common sonship to God, i.e, we are members together of a spiritual community. From the meaning of love, then, we get a suggestion of how the two thoughts of the good, that is, as fulfilment of desire and as an ethical ought, may be reconciled. To be creative of personality — that is the true end of life. To love the neighbor as the self means to try to carry out in his fife, — to get him to carry out for himself rather, — the eternal insight and the absolute purpose, the reaUza- tion of which is union with God. And this sense of union is the fulfilment of the rehgious consciousness on the aesthetic side. But this command may be also expressed as the categorical imperative — an absolute ought — that is, as the way that all men ought to act. It means to reahze in the particular the universal will. Love unites the particulars through identifying them with the ab- solute whole. Love, however, also individualizes, and the distinction remains in the whole. It is a many in one. * John 15: **If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love. This is my commandment that ye love one another." The good- will is the socialized will. See, also, the hymns on love of the neighbor. 410 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Through love, then, the oppositions between the aesthetic and the moral experience, and between the individual and the social experience are harmonized. Love also enables us to see how God may be omnipotent and yet a person. A person requires another, hence it is said personality always impUes limitation. Self-limitation, however, is a very different thing from external Hmitation.^ Love implies another (as also do thought and will) but this other is at the same time identical with the self — they are one. Once a poet sang of that '^best philosopher" : — "Haunted forever by the eternal mind On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find." The philosopher in his study meditating upon the nature of reality observes the playing child and says : '^And that art thou, O little child." Thus poet and philosopher aUke have seen the life of the spirit revealed in the wonder- ful heart of the unspoiled child and have caught there intimations of our immortal inheritance and destiny. And their vision is the truth — if in a somewhat other sense, perhaps, than they intended — for what we ought to be and may be, that we truly are. 1 If the centre of personality is in purpose, a purpose is selective. It chooses and so necessarily excludes the irrelevant. Hence in a sense, it is limited, that is, self-limited. " There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by. . . . With that I sail out into the dark ; it is my promise of the immortal ; teaches me to see immortality for us." — George Meredith. "To know God and to live are one." — Tolstoy. CHAPTER VI The Indwelling of the Spirit We have been studying the religious consciousness to discover its essence and its value and it is time we should bring our discussion to a close. Amidst the clash and warfare between freedom and necessity, between spirit- uality and materiality, in problems of the relation be- tween the many and the one, the temporal and the eternal, the inner and the outer, one fact emerges. We ask our questions : for instance. Is man free, is he bound ? I do not know if the question is put in that bald way. What I do know is that man is essentially a dreamer, a possessor of ideals. He dreams, "... of good Illimitable to come." Without his golden dream of the future we have seen man's life becomes shattered and meaningless. The mys- tery of it is turned to a '' universal mystery of despair and futility and death." The ideality of religion was the start- ing-point of our discussion and at the close it appears again, I think, as the all-pervasive, basic fact of the re- ligious consciousness. The unseen ideal haunts man like a passion, he can in no wise escape from it. But let us note the consequence of this conclusion. If religious experience rests upon ideality, then it is some- thing more and other than mere feeling. What the nature is of the unseen good which man longs for, he does not perfectly know. We have seen, for instance, how ma- terialistic are the objects sought in prayer by primitive 413 414 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE man. Man never knows perfectly what his true good is, but more and more as he becomes ethical, this good appears to him in the form of a Self. The fulfilment of his own selfhood? Yes. But it is more than this. This good Self is not subjective and purely personal. Each man has not his separate, special God. His ideal is a universal and perfect Self to which he gives the name of God ; and God is the God of all men. He stands for a bond which binds men to Himself and through Him to one another as in the prayer of St. Augustine: '^Blessed is the man who loveth Thee and is friend in Thee. . . . For he only loses none dear to him to whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost." The being of God and man's deepest ideal are one and the same thing. What further is implied and involved? First : This ideal good, though universal, is still my very own. The self sought is the individual's best and com- pletest selfhood. This is true for the rebelhous spirits, the Cains and Zarathustras, as well as for the religious saints who humbly accept the divine decrees, as exempli- fied for instance in the teachings of the "Imitation" or the following prayer of Pascal : — "0 Lord, let me not henceforth desire health or life, except to spend them for Thee, with Thee, and in Thee. Thou alone knowest what is good for me; do, therefore, what seemeth Thee best. Give to me, or take from me ; conform my will to Thine ; and grant that, with humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may receive the orders of Thine eternal Providence; and may equally adore all that comes to me from Thee ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." Or this of F^nelon : — ■ * "How does our will become sanctified? By conforming itself universally to that of God. We wiQ all that he wills and will nothing that he does not will. We attach our feeble will to that all-powerful will which performs everything. Thus nothing can ever come to pass against our will for nothing can happen save that which God wills and we find in his good pleasure an inexhaustible source of peace and consolation." THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 415 Second : The ideal is no mere dream or illusion. It is a living, an embodied experience. Thus it makes its deepest appeal to us. It is at once human and divine, son of God and son of man, as the church has loved to express it. This, it is said, is to poetize, yet it is the truth, as deepest poetry always is the deepest truth. Third : There is an unseen good, then, and this good moves men to action. For man must get away from his present state of dissatisfaction, of evil, or of sin. All things are possible to him who beheveth. When the ideal becomes spiritualized to man, it takes the form of an obligation. He must serve it unconditionally. It is an ought which compels, and yet at the same time it is a love which inspires. Fourth : Because he has an ideal, then, man is active. He aspires and longs to attain his vision of good. He strives for it without rest. Now this activity inevitably, sooner or later, brings the individual into relation, for good or for ill, with his fellow-men. If the ideal remained purely individual, this social confrontation would lead to anarchy, disloyalty, and the disruption of human life. As an universal or community ideal, however, it leads to mutual discipline, self-control, cooperation, and also to vicarious atonement. The individuars good is seen to be a social good. We have seen that this was true of the re- ligious ideal even in the case of primitive man. It is the religious bond which holds the primitive group together. The religious ideal, then, is a social ideal. Fifth : That man has an ideal is ultimately as Thomas Aquinas has said (see pp. 164 and 337) no merit of man's own. It is through ^^ grace whereby we are potentially children of God.'' Yet only potentially are we so. To serve the ideal for its own sake can only be by our own free choice. This means by a decision on man's part which leads to a transformation and a new birth into the world of spiritual values. '^ Sell all thou hast and come follow me." This is what it means to become truly a person, ix. one 416 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE whose restless, self-seeking will has been transformed into a holy will — one who has become heavenly minded — one who serves an absolute Ideal — one changed into the image of God. In order to discover if the essence and content of re- ligious experience cannot be interpreted in terms of man's ultimate ideal, one can test it by taking any collection of hymns or prayers and, — granted that this ideal life is expressed in personal terms, — see if it will not answer in every case. Let us make the experiment. For instance, what are some of the names of God when appeal is made to Him in prayer. He is called the *' Remembrancer of Eternity,'' the '^Master of that which is or is denied," the "Chance which gives Life," the '^Searcher of Hearts," the "Healer." He is the "Light," the "Strength," the "Redeemer," the "Helper of the Helpless," "The Ever- lasting Pity," the " Fountain of Life and Immortality," the "Source of Everlasting Good," the "Deliverer from Foes," "Salvation and Refuge," a "Tower of Defence," the "Eternal Rock of Ages," the "Giver of Every Perfect Gift," the "Guide and Comfort of the pilgrim soul," the "Crown of Life," the "Haven of storm-tossed souls," the "Star and Guide of those that sail the tempestuous seas of the world," the "Giver of Wisdom." Now, all these terms which men have used in naming God can, I think, be applied to the spiritual ideal. We commune with this ideal, this greater than self, as in the prayers of Thomas a Kempis, St. Augustine, George Herbert, and the Psalms. We appeal to it to pervade our lives and to make us consecrated to itself. For instance, as in the prayer of John Henry Newman : "Only give me and increase in me that true loyalty to Thee which is the bond of the covenant between Thee and men, and the pledge in my own heart and conscience that Thou, the Supreme God, wilt not forsake me." Through all the experiences of life whether of joy or of sorrow, the unseen good is constantly drawing us to itself. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 417 When we give ourselves to it, it clarifies our lives and be- comes a light to guide until we are wholly conformed to its image, so that the life of love and of righteousness becomes the very ground of our souls. The heart which can love and attain the highest good can be satisfied with nothing less. To serve the ideal is joy. It gives rise to songs of praise and adoration. When we accept it as the founda- tion of our happiness, it frees us from cares and anxieties, and none of the trifling pleasures or temptations of life can appeal to us ; but it demands of us a living sacrifice of our wills, a free surrender of our hearts. We must ask nothing, reserve nothing for ourselves. "As a deso- late soul, we draw near to the Tender Comforter as one hungry and thirsty to the fountain of life" (a Kempis). "We seek Thy face" (O Ideal Good) "show it to us and our longing is satisfied and our peace perfect " (St. Augustine). When we sacrifice all to it, it brings us heal- ing, strength, and joy (Martineau). It is the fountain of wisdom which frees from sorrowful heaviness, and gives us to drink the sweetness of life eternal (Mozarambic, 700). "If we fly to it in every tribulation, we shall be delivered. It sweeps away our troubles, lest being broken by them we should be overthrown" (a Kempis). The ideal strength- ens our weak resolutions, restrains our wayward desires, renews a willing spirit within ug. All are weak and need help of grace, — that is, we need the power and inspira- tion of the ideal life. "Come into my heart, and Thy power shall be my power" "The world shall be mine when Thy spirit is in me " (George Matheson). A good instance by which to test our thesis is Whitman's " Prayer of Columbus." "O I am sure they really came from Thee, The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will, The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words, A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep, These sped me on. 2e 418 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE "One effort more, my altar this bleak sand ; That Thou O God my life hast lighted, With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, Light rare untellable, lighting the very light, Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages ; For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees, Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee." — From " Prayer of Columbus," by Walt Whitman. When we give ourselves to this Ideal Life, sin disappears, for there is nothing of it left when the ideal light, love, and life fill our souls. Sin is not caring for the ideal Life. It is the turning of our backs upon it when we have rec- ognized it. There is nothing to dread in Ufe but the loss of the ideal Good. At first we give up what has seemed *Hhe best" because God's will demands it — but through transformation this renunciation becomes the best of gifts which one has oneself freely brought to the altar, as in the following hymn "Then, O my Heavenly Father Give what is best for me And take the wants unanswered As offerings made to Thee." It is the spirit of wisdom to save us from all false choices, so it drives away the darkness of sin and ignorance. In the light of the Ideal we reaUze that too often we '^with- hold that entire sacrifice of ourselves without which we are not crucified with Christ or sharers in His redemp- tion " (Martineau). The Ideal alone can cleanse and renew the heart, purge the eyes, give the purity of heart which only can receive its inspiration. When our hearts are fixed in unbroken communion with it, the storms of hfe will pass over us, and not shake our inner peace. "And if Thy consolation be wanting, let Thy will in just trial of me be unto me the greatest comfort '^ (a Kempis). It inspires us to social activity. (See the various social hymns, etc.) Concentration upon the Ideal as in prayer and in medi- THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 419 tation leads to a clearer vision of things eternal, — to *' enlightenment," as the Buddhist calls it. Such con- centration brings about a repression of wandering thoughts and merely personal desires. In the light of it we recog- nize the horror of our own sin. '^Unable to be altogether like Thee, we need thy forgiveness " (Thomas a Kempis). ''The Holy Spirit will lead us forth into the land of right- eousness. It will give us the peace which passeth under- standing. It may be by the way of sorrow, yet it brings us inward comfort, for it teaches us that ' our light afflic- tion which is but for a moment, worketh for us a more eternal weight of glory. ^ It leads us by a way that is not ours till all 'self-will and contrariness' are overcome, 'all evil passions and unholy desires' subdued, till we come at last to the sublime state of wilhng obedience to the highest good." "Lord, I fling myself with all my weakness and misery into Thy ever-open arms. I know that I am ignorant and much mistaken about myself. Thou, who seest in very truth, look mercifully on me. Lay Thy healing hand upon my wounds. Pour the life-giving balm of Thy love into my heart. Do for me what I have not the courage to do for myself. Save me in spite of myself. May I be Thine; wholly Thine, and, at all costs, Thine. In hu- miliation, in poverty, in suffering, in self-abnegation, Thine. Thine in the way Thou knowest to be most fit- ting, in order that Thou mightest be now and ever mine.'' We must, however, as the last prayer suggests, give in the end to our ideal personal embodiment, if it is to satisfy. No abstract moral law however sublime can take the place to human souls of that eternal Being, loving Father, divine Friend, Great Companion, expressed in such prayers as the following of St. Augustine : — "O Lord, my God, Light of the blind and Strength of the weak; yea, also, Light of those that see, and Strength of the strong ; hearken unto my soul, and hear it crying out of the depths. *'0 Lord, help us to turn and seek Thee; for Thou hast not for- 420 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE saken Thy creatures as we have forsaken Thee, our Creator. Let us turn and seek Thee, for we know Thou art here in our hearts, when we confess to Thee, when we cast ourselves upon Thee, and weep in Thy bosom, after all our rugged ways ; and Thou dost gently wipe away our tears, and we weep the more for joy ; because, Lord, Thou, who madest us, dost remake and comfort us. "Hear, Lord, my prayer, and grant that I may most entirely love Thee, and do Thou rescue me, Lord, from every temptation, even unto the end. Amen." It is because this ideal life of God has been made to seem to men abstract and out of all relation to the life of humanity that men have continually sought for mediators — beings half human, half divine — to stand between themselves and God. This has helped in a way to spirit- ualize human life ; and yet it is a wrong to the nature of God. For the life of God is our very own life in perfection. This is what the mystics have always taught. He is the better self in each one of us. Our lives are His con- cern. He pities us as a father pitieth his children. His own being is completed through our aspiration and our choices of the good, and in His wholeness and holiness we find our goal, our fulfilment, and our peace. Is it all an illusion, this experience of rehgion? "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ?^^ asks the doubting disciple. And the answer is, "Come and see ! '' Give the ideal life of which rehgion teaches, the test of trying it. The trial has been made of it, and we have the records of lives all the way from the experience of those lowest dwellers in the slums of London, whose stories of con- version Begbie ^ recounts, to the experience of such saintly characters as St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, John Wesley, Martineau, Brooks, and others now hving among us, who have told us of their experience — heroic, devoted lives of the active type hke that of Dr. Grenfell ; or of the type of those who, having learned "How sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong," 1 H. Begbie, "Twice Born Men." THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 421 have brought from their own experience insight, sym- pathy, and help for others^ need. But how shall the Ideal be won? How shall we find 'Hhe way of life''? It seems to me concentration, self- sacrifice, and prayer are necessary to find and hold the ideal life, hid with Christ in God. And yet the way of the cloister, so to speak, is not the appealing or the necessary way for the modern man. ^^Take me out of the cloister into the world," said St. Francis, ^'and the very chatter and singing of his little birds teach me how God loves his creatures and his children." The popular way to-day is the way of youth and of the open country, the call to high, adventurous service of one's fellow-men, — a way like that set forth in Dr. Grenf ell's *^What Life Means for Me." Yet never must we forget that the Ideal may be served quite as truly in those seemingly (but only seem- ingly) unsocial ways of the students' library and labora- tory, or the artist's studio ; for the real secret of salvation is the absolute and entire giving of the heart to the Ideal. This is what we find in the stories of conversion cases ; in the experience of mystics ; in the pages of the '^ Imitation." It is no half-hearted surrender of our wills which the un- seen Good demands. Our consecration must be perfect. '^Sell all thou hast and come follow me." It means cast- ing every idol from the heart. It means a transforma- tion of our values. And so it is true that there is something ascetic about salvation, even as the mystics say. We do not realize this when life is easy. We cry "All good things are ours, Nor soul helps flesh more now Than flesh helps soul." There is something shallow, is there not, about our present- day activity? So oftentimes we say, ''Let us not cry over spilt milk." We try, by rushing hither and yon, to escape from our griefs, our mistakes, and our sins. We 422 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE turn our backs upon the past, but when fate, when the stern realities of existence, strike us in the face, when life is wounded to the core and shattered, — then if the soul of man is not to go under wholly, if it is to become spirit- ualized by its adversities, then it seems that whatever new life is possible to it can only be one bound up with much remembrance of the things it has cherished which must rise Uke the phoenix from grief and ashes. Solitude and concentration of mind are needed for such deepening of consciousness, and something is needed which we may call worship^, and which finds its expression not only in soUtude, in the inner sanctuary of the heart, but also in outer forms of public worship. The external forms and institutions of religion are a natural expression of common thought and feeling, and if public worship is a means for the refreshment and re-creation of the spiritual Hfe of the individual, — spiritual catharsis, — it also serves, as we have seen (Inner and Outer, Chap. IV Cont.)y to revivify and rekindle the fire of the spiritual life of the community, the enthusiasm upon which the active life depends. If to work together for a great common cause is the best means of permanently binding a community into one, still to feel together the common aspiration to the spiritual life (or cause), — as those may feel who pray together at the same altar, or sing together the songs of the church, the songs of love and sorrow, of victory and redemption, — may be the best means of stimulating the love of the spiritual cause, and without this enthusiasm we shall have in the end but half-hearted and ineffective activity. Granted, then, the ideality of religious experience, and we may say that all the rest — i.e. the other elements — inevitably follows. Has man a vision of an unseen good ? Then his present state seems to him evil — a dissatis- faction, an incompletion, a state of lack and need. Has his ideal good come to take an ethical, that is, a spiritual, form ? Then his failure to attain the good self will seem to him a state of sin which will give him unrest and an- THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 423 guish, and spur him to seek for salvation. "Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee.'' Out of his vision and his need arises the impulse to the Way of Life, to the con- sideration of which so many pages of this essay have been devoted. The Way of Life, as we have seen, is not one simple way as far as concerns its particular form. The way of salvation varies hke human nature itself, and much depends on temperament ; and in a world of interrelated beings it develops all sorts of oppositions. We have seen in every instance which we have considered, that neither side of the opposition has the whole truth. The great word is the "togetherness" of the experience. For in- stance, man's life is at once temporal and eternal. For the ideal Ufe can and must be lived in the midst of the world, and we may learn its meaning best in everyday experience, for "every path of life temporal may be the straight and narrow way which leadeth unto life eternal." (Roman Breviary.) True religion is a thing of the inner Hfe. Yet it cannot survive without the outer forms. On the one hand, we have this from Tauler: "Behold, dear friend, if thou shouldest spend all thy years in run- ning from church to church, thou must look for and re- ceive help from withirij or thou wilt never come to any good." And on the other hand, the following from "Au- rora Leigh" : — " Without the spiritual observe, the natural is impossible ; no form, no motion ; Without the sensuous, spiritual is inappreciable, — no beauty, no power." Man is at once saved by grace and by his own free choice. Only through his own decision can he live the life of the spirit, yet only because the spirituality of the universe is with him does he succeed. Character, it is said, is destiny. Yet just as in the case of the temporal, it is quite clear that no man wholly makes his own character. The individual's life is inextricably bound up with the 424 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE life of the community. There is a moral, social order from which he cannot escape. Those who follow individ- ual insight a,s against that of the community, which may be higher than that of the community; or those who follow wayward impulse, which is probably lower than the standpoint of society, are alike brought sooner or later into conflict with society, and unless they can influence society to change its standards, both alike are bound to perish. Literary instances of this are Sophocles's ^' An- tigone,'^ Shakespeare's '^ Romeo and JuHet,'' and ^'Mark Antony" ; and Ibsen's Rebecca West and John Rosmer in '^Rosmersholm." Finally, then, religious experience, like the whole life of man, must be both social and in- dividual. ReUgious insight may vary in either direc- tion from the average, — the accepted standard which is embodied in institutions, creeds, and ritual, — yet ulti- mately, religious life is an instance of the Many in One. God's life is expressed in the individual, but in the in- dividual chiefly in so far as he is a member of a spiritual community. It has been said, '^He who loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me," and yet there is such a thing as the ruthless will, the self-seeking ambition, love of praise and Pharisaism hidden behind the "cause" and sacrificing all to this end. We have our big plans for social reform and social justice, and these, we feel, must mean justice, well-being, and opportunity for every man. And, thus, in our thought of the big task we have to do, in our haste and the strain of overwork, we forget or cruelly wound some individual who needs us, to whom, perhaps, we had been bound by special pledges. We forget the saying which had seemed to be the very root and inspiration of our new values : — "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." Must the wayside weed or flower be trampled under foot in our march to the triumph of our cause? Our age with THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 425 its awakened social consciousness is really in a hard plight in respect to the recognition of where its duty lies. It sees how dependent the individual is on his social en- vironment, how largely it makes him what he is, and seeing this, it sees that it is not the individual in isolation, but the individual as a member of a community that it should serve; and again not any one individual alone, but all men. So, as we have seen, arises the modern ideal of the social community. But when we make our aim the ser- vice of the social whole — the community — we must not forget that this ideal is not something abstract. The community, after all, is made up of individual persons. How will it be with us when we remember how, with our minds all aglow with the thought of serving the com- munity, we shut our hearts to one humble individual, or when full of the thought of our great work, we spoke the cruel, stinging word or neglected one little hungry heart or cruelly shattered, perhaps drove to madness or death by our indifference or misunderstanding, some finely touched, sensitive spirit with nerves as tightly strung and vibrant as the strings of a violin ? It was seemingly such a Httle thing we did, or neglected to do, and yet it may have made a whole world of difference to the other. It may have been the last drop in the cup, the last straw which caused some sad and lonely heart to break. To-day when so great a readjustment of values is going on, it is a serious problem to the individual to find his place in the social whole. It seems as if in the process of re- adjustment some lives were bound to meet with the failure of their individual ends, and to be, as it were, instances of either voluntary or involuntary vicarious atonement. It is difficult, therefore, in concrete cases for the individual to discover his right course. Who will show us the Way of Life? Yet the individual is sure of his end and he may be sure that his motives are pure. He may be sure, if he will, that he is not in social service seeking personal aggrandizement, popularity, and social prestige. 426 THE DBAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE To create personality, to aid in the growth and the de- velopment of unique individuality everywhere in the spiritual community, and as a member of it : this is man^s task and also it is his goal ; and if we should win all wealth and social distinction, if we should have all power and renown and yet have failed when we saw it, — when it came in our way to help to true selfhood the least of our brethren (and we may sin in this way quite as much by our own attitude of lack of restraint in the expression of our own individuality as by failure in positive service),^ it is true of us that we have not love and are nothing. '* Flame beaten to ash by the too fierce wind of a day ; Flower torn at the roots, ere noontide drooping gray ; "Flower of a surging soul, laughing flame of a life — But the laughter and song, where are they? Lost in that sore wind- strife. "Pray to the souls of men, ere the new day rises in power Pray to the souls of men : 'Forget not the flame and the flower.' " If it has been ours to cause any such wrong, I am afraid that in the light of that irrevocable past, there is nothing left for us but the FooPs prayer: — "Oh God be merciful to me, a fool !" It is also true, however, that if we love and appreciate the individual in the light of the highest ideal, we may hold him worthy to be a sacrifice to its fulfilment; and he may come himself freely to accept the sacrifice of his individual ends, and it may be to hun a glory, for the Ideal is uni- versal and it may become his own. As we saw in the last chapter, the union of the many in the one in a spiritual community is best accomplished when every man serves a universal ideal, but serves it in his own individual way, and when he helps all the other individuals with whom his life is bound up, to serve in their own unique way. 1 See "The Atoning Life," Chapter I, by Henry Sylvester Nash. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 427 "Every atom gives resistance not the universe can break; Each rose-petal holds perfection angel artists could not make. "As each white wave feels the motion of the moon-led tidal main, Plato and the seven sages shine in every human brain. "Each true prayer foretastes the glory saints and prophets burn to teach In my brother's heart enfolded lies the kingdom Christ would reach. "Under every power and passion burns the element divine: If I grasp the moment's meaning, all eternity is mine." In spite of the tendency of the present day to a religion of prosperity, efficiency, and the social welfare of a purely earthly existence, the time seems ripe for a more spiritual religion, for this religion of '^efficiency" cannot satisfy the deeper needs of the human heart. It knows nothing of the anguish of sin, hence there has been nothing revealed to it concerning repentance and redeeming grace. It has no inspiration in it when the challenge comes to meet the stern call of duty, no consolation for the inevitable losses and limitations of life. Yet, further, the religion of the future will fail if it tries to become pure ethics, for there is another side to man^s nature which demands mystery, the expression of feeling, ecstasy, the aesthetic appeal, personal relations, man's need to worship and adore. But yet, again, a religion cut loose from ethics would have cut off the very breath and essence of its life. Thus, from the starting point of the ideality of religion and the dependence of religious experience on an eternal and an unseen good, the whole scheme unfolds itself in logical fashion as Hegel developed the whole spiritual uni- verse from the self-unfolding idea. But this logic is no formal logic of scholasticism and of modern Catholicism. It is the logic of life itself, and true because life is deeply logical. But of course no logical scheme can give the passion and the movement, the texture, so to speak, of the warp and woof of life. This is why, when we have developed our scheme, — as thought inevitably must, — 428 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE and believe we have seen how every element has its place in the whole ; when we turn back to the throbbing experi- ence of life itself, to Ufe's mystery and anguish, its tragedy or its ecstasy, sometimes we doubt again. For there seems at times to be something so irrational and valueless about existence. Man longs for the rose of yesterday, which has already turned to ashes. He tries to do what seems to him beautiful and good, and one swift instant can destroy his plans and dash his dearest hopes into nothingness. "Der Gott, der mir im Bosen wohnt, Kann tief mein Innerstes erregen ; Der iiber alien meinen Kraften thront, Er kann nach aussen nichts bewegen ; Und 30 ist mir das Dasein eine Last, Der Tod erwiinscht, das Leben mir verhasst ! " Against the primal forces of nature, earthquakes, ice- bergs, floods, man is almost powerless; and even in his own inner life there is much which relates him closely to the natural life. He is only partly spiritual. It is difl&cult for his ideals to win the day. As the disciples listened to the teachings of the Master, they felt the goodness of God in the world. It all seemed so possible of realization, the perfection of the kingdom, the beauty of the law of love. Then came the week of sorrows. Jesus began to talk to them of the things that he must suffer, and of his death. Fearful and sorrowing they ask one another, How shall these things be? Why, why, why? That is the inevitable question of the passionate finite heart seeking for a perfect good, for as we have noted all along there are two elements in re- ligious experience because there are these two elements in human nature itself. Religion rests upon an ideal, and this ideal becomes an "ought," a moral obligation. Yet man is also emotional and aesthetic. It is not merely "the instinctive, habitual and passionate tendencies" THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 429 of his nature which have to be subdued and controlled by his devotion to a spiritual principle. It is not alone the '' sinful self '^ of which Paul and Augustine have so much to say, which causes the clash and warfare in man's inner life. He demands a happiness which shall be in harmony with his spiritual life. His ideals must be fulfilled in con- crete reality. The crown of life seems to him to mean a perfect union of his ethical and his aesthetic demands and values. But in human life, the realization of these two demands together appears, as a rule, incompatible. The fact of the objectivity and universal validity of man's religious ideal I tried in the last chapter to make plain. It is objective and universal because it is a social and ethical ideal, that is, it is a value that will hold for every man. But now, side by side with the ideality of religion, appears that other fact of the religious conscious- ness of which the mystics have so much to tell us, — I mean the fact of the immediate experience of the divine. There are moments when to the mystic his dream of blessedness is actually realized. He is in touch with " that which is." He beholds the visio Deij and feels himself one with God. And who has not known such mystic hours, when, seeing as it were in a vision, we have come with passionate devotion, bearing in our outstretched hands whatever treasure we possess to consecrate it to some cause of truth, of beauty, or of brotherhood, — to the cause which seems to us at the time the highest embodi- ment of the divine? For the mystic all of our opposi- tions have disappeared. ^^ Day and night," said one, have disappeared for me like a flash of lightning. I em- braced at once eternity both before and after the world. To those in such a state a hundred years and an hour are one and the same." The difficulty, as we have seen, with this emotional experience is to prove its reality and objective value. It is valuable to me, yes, but this value is immediate, sub- jective, fleeting, perhaps. It is an individual, an aesthetic 430 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE experience, and this is just where the difficulty comes in relation to religious experience as an whole. How shall we reconcile the social and the individual experience — the mystic or aesthetic with the moral value? The two values seem to belong to different spheres, therefore it is hard to subordinate one to the other. Our life seems, of necessity, to be social, and therefore we tend to give the supreme place to the ethical values and to make the final word the ought. "Though love repine and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply, 'Tis man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die." This moral attitude carried to the extreme was the out- come of the movement of Puritanism.^ But these emo- tional tendencies represent something fundamental in man's nature too. Suppressed in one form, they will appear in another less normal and wholesome. In our own day there is a reaction against the Puritan ideals. Men seem to have lost interest in '^ duty.'' — They have not a passion for spiritual ends and aims. The spirit of the hour tends to sensationahsm and waywardness, to love of luxury and ease, and a disregard of social restraints and obligations. Thus it appears in the anarchistic type of socialism, in the tendency to seize ruthlessly upon the goods of fortune and to keep them for one's self, or for one's (more or less limited) social group. What has become, men ask despairingly, of the energy, self-con- trol, and the purity of moral sentiments of our ancestors ? We cannot deny that the aesthetic tendency is individual- istic and anarchic, and how can man live in an anarchic, anti-social world ? Yet the aesthetic (so-called) experience of religion has surely a value of its own, — the highest value, so the mystic claims; and without the aesthetic ^ We may see an historical illustration of this difficulty of reconciliation in the pathos of the opening canto of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel." THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 431 experience, furthermore, we could not have creations of art, music, Hterature, those things which of all others seem to be ends in themselves and the crowning expres- sions of human experience. We must admit, I think, finally, the need and the reality of the mystical as an element of religious experience — that experience which means a kind of rapture of delight in the universe, and a sense that one is in union and harmony with the world- soul — a vision that through all the discords, at bottom all is well, — the world sound at the core. Now, such mystical hours come in all sorts cf ways. Oftenest now- adays, I fancy, they come through the stimulus of the nature-world, — as, for instance, the fiery rose clouds mounting upwards against the pale blue sky of dawn, or the sight of a swallow winging its way south, may bring such an experience to some one. Or, in weariness and physical pain there may come a mystical revelation of the atonement — ^^This body which is broken for you.'^ Or, again, in bitter disappointment, or in sorrow and anguish of spirit may come as in a mystery the thought, as it came to the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah, Chapter 6), that one has been called and deemed worthy to be purified as by fire. What we need is to be mystical about our ethical values and the life of righteousness, as Paul was a mystic in his thought of ^'the life hid with Christ in God'^ and in re- lation to the church of Christ and the Holy Spirit, that is, the Spiritual Community. We must bring in the per- sonal note. Our ideal is God — our spiritual community is a community of individuals. Dualism of the World. — The primtive mind looked out upon the world and beheld a duaUsm and opposition in nature. In the contrast of day and night, of light and darkness ; in the death and resurrection of vegetation ; in the rhythm of the seasons ; in the ebb and flow of the tide ; in the movements of the planets in their spheres, — the primitive religious consciousness saw opposing spiritual 432 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE forces like the good and evil principles of the Persian Ormuzd and Ahriman, or the life bringer and life de- stroyer in the religion of Egypt. We start, in our inves- tigation, not as primitive man with the outer world, but rather with the experience of man's inner life. We have sought to express all as the data of self-conscious experi- ence, but we, too, find a dualism ''an other.'' In our analysis of religious experience, we discovered as a basic fact the ideality of religion. Man's spirit is creator of a ''beyond world" which is better than his immediate experience. We found that in the last analysis, for the moral-social man this ideal good could only be self-conscious spirit — a Self. Only in this way, too, can we affirm the rationality of the universe. The Absolute Self is a unifier of all experience. This is the conclusion to which we were brought at the close of the last chapter. Yet, all along, in every problem which we have considered, has appeared another than self-conscious spirit. Ulti- mately, perhaps, this other is still, as Hegel taught, a form of consciousness. But to finitude it appears as another , something immediate, a hindrance and limitation to the purposeful will. This other we have met with in all the special problems and in every system of philosophy ^ which we have considered. In philosophy, this problem appears as the problem of how to overcome the dualism of mind and matter, of nature and spirit, of reason and intuition, of thought and the immediacy of feeling. In his early work, "The Birth of Tragedy," Friedrich Nietzsche, who was then a student of Schopenhauer, sketches this dualism as it appears in the world of art. In man, the artistic creator, there are two tendencies — first, the Dionysian tendency of passionate, ungoverned primitive feeling. Man is Dionysos the reveller. And, secondly, we find in man the Apollonian tendency which makes for order and harmony. The Delphic god re- 1 For example, the systems of Plotinus, Bradley, Bergson, sketched in the preceding chapter. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 433 strains and puts into form the wild outbursts of theDiony- sian horde. The '' Inspired votary of Dionysos'^ feels his oneness with all life. He beholds the vision of his God; but the Apollonian dream-world of appearances, as Nietzsche calls it, breaks up this unity into the diversity of individuals. The great tragedy of human life, according to Nietzsche, and the cause of the '^antagonism in the heart of the world '^ as well, is the dualism of the finite and the infinite. The daring man seeks to overcome infinitude ''to pass beyond the bounds of individuation and become the one universal being." He can only accomplish this by a crime against the gods. This is what we find, says Nietz- sche, in the great Greek tragedies, for instance in the "QEdipus" of Sophocles and in the "Prometheus" of iEschylus. Thence arises eternal suffering and tragedy. Apollo, however, seeks by means of self-knowledge, measure, and proportion — the holiest laws of the universe — and by means of individuation itself, to passify human striving. Art is contemplative and produces harmony. It offers, therefore, an escape to the restless, striving will. "In the extremest danger of the will," says Nietzsche, "art comes to save man." For in the creation and ap- preciation of art, he lives in an ideal world. "Yet the noble man" ((Edipus), says Nietzsche, does not sin; all laws, all natural order, yea, the moral world itself, may be destroyed "through his action, but through this very action a higher magic circle of influences is brought into play which establishes a new world on the ruins of the old that has been overthrown." And now, for a moment, let us consider this fact of "another" than self -consciousness in relation to the special problems and oppositions of our own study. For instance, in relation to the problem of the temporal-eternal or to the static-dynamic form of religious consciousness. Each paradoxical form turns out to be an epitome and mirror of life-experience as a whole. For consider : the 2p 434 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE facts of time, change, and mutability are among the most tragic facts of our experience, and yet these facts represent the form of the embodiment of our deepest ethical hfe. ''That it cannot break time or the desire of time," said Nietzsche, ''that is the loneliest affliction of the will." ^ That it cannot recall the past just as it was, that, as we have seen, is one great cause of human sorrow and a deep motive in religious experience. "I have been in the meadows all the day And gathered there the nosegay that you see ; Singing within myself as bird or bee When such do field-work on a morn of May ; But now I look upon my flowers, — decay Has met them in my hands more fatally Because more warmly clasped ; and sobs are free To come instead of songs. What do you say, Sweet counsellors, dear friends, that I should go Back straightway to the fields, and gather more. Another, sooth, may do it, — but not I ; My heart is very tired — my strength is low — My hands are full of blossoms plucked before, Held dead within them till myself shall die." Yet time is the form of the will. The will creates the time stream in order to express itself in a way which is unique, free, and individual. So the time process is bound up with man's active, practical life. This we noted in the pre- ceding chapter. And so it is with the great fact of mutability. The ar- tistic, mystical state of mind craves the unchanged good. It longs to hold the golden moment, to keep "One fair, good wise thing Just as it grasped it." And, oh, the pity of it, says the poet, that this cannot be! It is because of the tragedy of such experience as this that sometimes, in some horrible moment of agony and despair, men have doubted either the goodness or the 1 "Thus spake Zarathustra." THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 435 omnipotence of God, and have come to feel either that the universe is a plaything of a capricious Chance, or that an ultimate dualism of good and evil powers (or a pluralism as in the philosophy of William James) alone can inter- pret the facts of existence. And so, sometimes, men feel their own ideals a delusion and their devotion, with the sacrifices they involve, too high a price to pay for what was but an empty dream. Mr. H. G. Wells gives a wonderful account of this state of mind in his ''New Machiavelli." After his final parting, as he supposed with Isabel Rivers, the hero writes: — "I wandered about that night like a man who has discovered his gods are dead. I can look back now, detached yet sympathetic, upon that wild confusion of moods and impulses and by it I think I can understand oh, half the wrong doing and blundering in the world. I do not feel now the logical force of the process that must have con- vinced me then that I had made my sacrifice, spent my strength in vain. ... It seemed to me I had aspired too high and thought too far, had mocked my own littleness by presumption, had given the uttermost dear reality of life for a theorizing dream. "All through that wandering agony of mind that night, a dozen threads of thought interwove; now I was a soul speaking in protest to God against a task too cold and high for it ; and now I was an angry man scorned and pointed upon, who had let life cheat him of the ulti- mate pride of his soul. Now I was the fool of ambition who opened his box of gold to find blank emptiness, and now I was a spinner of flimsy thoughts whose web tore to rags at a touch. ... I was afraid beyond measure of my derelict self. ... I remember how I fell to talking to God : 'Why do I care for these things?* I cried — 'when I can do so little ! Why am I apart from the jolly, fighting, thought- less life of men ? These dreams fade to nothingness and leave me bare ! ' "I scolded: 'Why don't you speak to a man, show yourself. I thought I had a gleam of you in Isabel. Then you take her away. Do you really think I can carry on this game (of political reform) alone, doing your work in darkness and silence, living in muddled conflict, half living, half dying? . . .' " Then he thought of Christ and his teachings. ... "I had a new vision of that great central figure preaching love, with hate and coarse thinking even in the disciples about him, rising to a tidal wave at last 436 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE in that clamour for Barabbas, and the public satisfaction in His fate. ... He did mean that : I said . . . and remembered his last de- spairing cry : ' My God ! my God ! why hast Thou forsaken me ? ' *0h, He forsakes every man,' I said." ^ On the other hand, man longs for change, for the novel, the unique. A static, changeless hfe is stagnation. It means the sacrifice of all moral growth and social progress. So, sometimes, the spirit of youth — youth daring, ad- venturous, scorning the old ideas which seem to it dead, always seeking new ideals — this youthful ^'ever-daring, ever-hopeful spirit" is called the saviour of the world. Moral growth, freedom, uniqueness, individuality, — the most precious facts of our spiritual life, — appear to be bound up with these tragic facts of time, change, and mutability. So the final word of the latest philosophic thought of our day — that of Bergson, James, and their followers — is this : Plunge into change itself in order to find reality. The fact of change, says Professor Bergson,^ is what first drove man to philosophy. He sought for the per- manent. But the permanent we seek, i.e. the real, we seek, is in change itself. For the real is not the static; it is the dynamic, the eternally changing. It is interesting to compare this word of the philosophy of our day with the religious experience of Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Stoicism, which we have already studied. All these philosophies found the goal they were seeking in an escape from the flux and turmoil of the world into the sanctuary of the inner hfe of immediate intuition and the enlightened attitude. But reHgion to-day seeks for permanence not only in the inner world of the self, but it would find some imchanging reahty in outward existence as well. It can hardly be satisfied with the dictum that 1 For other examples of this despairing and sceptical attitude, see Edward Thompson's "City of Dreadful Night," and Thomas Hardy's "Dynasts." 2 In his lecture in Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 24, 1913. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 437 change is synonjmaous with reahty. For this makes hfe appear as it appeared to the poet Tennyson in his early youth : — "All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true, All visions wild and strange ; Man is the measure of all truth Unto himself. AU truth is change : ' All men do walk in sleep, and all Have faith in that they dream : For aU things are as they seem to all, And aU things flow like a stream. "There is no rest, no calm, no pause. Nor good nor ill, nor light nor shade, Nor essence nor eternal laws : For nothing is, but all is made, But if I dream that aU these are, They are to me for that I dream : For all things are as they seem to aU, And all things flow like a stream." And, again, if time is the form of the will, it is perfectly clear that the finite, individual will does not wholly create the time process, or bring to pass all events in the changing web of life-experience. For how many things come to me which are not of my own choosing and which appear, moreover, quite independent of my moral purposes! What of the things which happen to me when I seem not to be free ? This raises the question which we considered in a previous chapter — that is, the question how far, and in what sense, is man free? We saw there that man was not free in the sense in which sometimes the rebellious spirits have wanted freedom — that is, not free to follow a capricious self-will. We saw clearly, moreover, that man is in a measure bound by his inheritance, by his social relations, and by social traditions, and that his ultimate salvation depends in part on something outside of his individual will. Yet we also saw that he is free to serve the ideal of a holy and righteous will. He is free to be himself (his true self). He is free to serve the Ideal 438 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE uniquely J if not always in the way which his purely in- dividual will (self-will) would have chosen. As for the things which happen to us in spite of our- selves, as we say, — the things which seem to us cruel and irrational, mere hindrance and limitation, — it may be that these things are permitted to happen to us just to free us, because in spite of oiu-selves we have been in bond- age to what seemed to us from one point of view desirable — to free us, that is, to follow higher issues. For in order to realize spiritual personahty we must be wholly free, not bound even by that which seems to us very good, if it is, as it may be, a hindrance to the life of the spirit. As for change, man's moral growth is, as we have noted, bound up with this fact. "From change to change unceasingly His soul's wings never furled." Without change we cease to grow, and the end is stag- nation.^ "This is the inexorable law of aU life to which the spiritual life is no exception . . . physically, intellectually, socially, spiritually, we must change or die. This stern necessity to readjust faith to the changing conditions of life is the tragedy of personal experience as it is the test of religions and churches." "^ In prayer man has always sought for God's help to transform the world in order to bring it more into accord with his desires and ideals. Yet, as we saw in our study 1 It is certainly true that our experience changes, and that the con- sciousness of time is pervasive. But the judgment of change or of the time process, i.e. "my experience changes" seems to me to represent a very reflective type of consciousness. If we reduce our conscious- ness to its lowest terms, we should have left, I think, not so much the consciousness of duration, as such, as the sense of difference in sensa- tion. For neither the higher nor the lower type of experience does it seem true to make duration the absolute fact, as Bergson, for instance, seems to do. "I find, first of all . . . that I change without ceasing." If we "install ourselves in change" to discover reality, we find, do we not, something more fundamental and spiritual than the mere fact of change and duration? 2 Professor Graham Taylor in The Survey, Feb. 3, 1912. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 439 of prayer, the primal and fundamental change can only be in the discipline and self-control of the finite will. Prayer is answered if we pray in the spirit of sm-render to, and acceptance of, the will of God, and in the serious endeavor to live in the light of our deepest insight into what this will is. Thus the attitude man takes toward the world is the fundamental thing. It makes man in a measure in- dependent of the world. Such an attitude we have found in all the great religions. Buddhism and Brahmanism turn away from the world to the enlightenment of the inner self. Christianity of mediaeval times renounced the world to lose itself in God, but since has returned more nearly to the religion of Jesus, finding its task in the temporal world, and its inward as well as its outward peace there, while yet above the transitory allurements of the world, the strokes of chance, the decrees of fate. Stoicism takes an intermediate attitude in the refuge of an inner life in accord with the laws of outer nature. "Nothing for me is too early or too late, O Universe, which is in time for Thee." But while this attitude of the spirit is the fundamental thing in ethical religions, the world is always present to which the spirit must ad- just itself. Our special problems, then, show us that there is ''another" to be reckoned with. The Microcosm is made in the image of the Macrocosm. Man is a creature of opposing tendencies. In him is found the life of matter and the life of the spirit, the contrasts of the inner life and the outer, of necessity and freedom. He is the centre of tendencies both static and dynamic. He is a being at once temporal and eternal. These various contrasts and oppositions in man^s life can, as we have seen, be over- come and harmonized. Yet there are things in his life which seem absolutely contradictory and incompatible, — I mean that which is exemplified by the ''yes-no" consciousness. We cannot say both yes and no. When we have made a moral decision, there are things which 440 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE have to be absolutely cut off, and sometimes it seems we have to sacrifice just that, which, from another point of view, — from the point of view of the aesthetic and emo- tional consciousness, — appears to be the crowning good. Our civihzation seems of necessity to be based on social moraUty. The greatest difficulty in living the community life will, therefore, be for those instinctively individualistic, those of great emotional tendency, for the artistic tempera- ment, for the men of aesthetic genius, and for that wider class, who have what Miss Puffer has called *Hhe talent for the aesthetic experience.'' ^ For if I act arbitrarily, if I follow an emotional impulse, an individual interpretation of the right, if I obey ''the inner light," — and this is what the artistic genius does and the religious mystic may do, — then I am hkely ruthlessly to ignore and to injure the person- ahty of others, and to destroy the basis of trust and the possibility of community Ufe, and from the ethical stand- point this seems to be to commit the ''unpardonable sin." I must at all cost of suffering to myself and those dear to me, be loyal to that ideal bond which is the basis of the unity of social relationships, and the foundation for spirit- ual life in the world. I must hold myself responsible for my deeds. But just this is precisely the difficulty for the men of aesthetic gift. The artistic temperament is impulsive, anarchic. It would sacrifice all to beauty. Not merely in vain for it the lures of "Thriving Ambition and paltering Gain He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than to live for bread." The artist and poet would sacrifice even the responsibili- ties and relationships of social life. He would follow his own sweet, wayward will, free from life's obligations and activities. He is essentially the vagabond and the wan- 1 See Miss Puffer's interesting essay, "The Great Refusal," in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1911. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 441 derer. Must we, then, with Plato ^ banish the artist and the poet from our spiritual community? To do so, we feel at once, would be not only to impoverish hfe, but to take away the appreciation and creation of supreme beauty (even if we could still be social and moral), would be, we feel, almost to deprive human life of ultimate mean- ing and value. For, as we consider our problem from this point of view, the work of the creative artist (and SBsthetic appreciation is closely related to this) seems the thing of all others, with the exception of noble and heroic deeds, which is an end in itself, and that which justifies all the struggles and failures, all the anguish and tears of human life. Without these supreme creations of the human spirit, would life — life taken up with practical activities, with buying and selling, with getting and spending, and with the mere reproduction of itself — would such life be of any particular value? Even the life whose chief con- cern is the welfare of the commimity seems to fail in the light of such a possibility. But now if it is said the genuinely artistic tempera- ment and the artistic genius are after all exceptions, let us consider the universal demand for, and the quite common experience — for a limited time at least — of, happiness. A man has an experience which seems to him an almost perfect thing, then, suddenly, as by the swift descent of fate, it is snatched away. He has, let us say, a noble ambition in some way to serve humanity, and all at once his health fails. Or into his hfe comes one of those part- ings which life and death alike bring. As far as he can see, his aim was an honorable one, his happiness pure, and he cannot help asking in his anguish of spirit why the good thing should have to go. Life abounds in such bitter woes as the agony of the sense of guilt, the over- whelming consciousness of irrevocable deeds, the tragedy of broken promises, of bereaved hearts which long to re- 1 "The Republic." 442 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE tain the immediacy of the good they have known. The world is full "Of infinite passion and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn." Now if we could make our final solution ethical, there would be httle difficulty, from the theoretical standpoint at least, for we should then say : The spirituality of life demands the sacrifice of the aesthetic values. The good which the instinctive, habitual, emotional tendencies of our nature seek is not the good which the Supreme Wisdom sees to be best. It does not make for the highest spiritual life. The aesthetic consciousness is emotional and anarchic . It is in some measure '* the bad self." We must root out our purely personal desires, as Buddhism taught. Now the '^ aesthetic gift," the creation or appreciation of beauty, is, it is said, an inner subjective, personal experience. Should we not, then, sacrifice it in extreme need to our ethical demands? For the world is ultimately ethical. The limitations and oppositions of life, even the destruc- tion of happiness and the suppression of the beautiful, are means to the final spiritual victory. Lifers pilgrim asks : — "Does the road wind up-hill all the way?" "Yes, to the very end." Yet once again the questioning spirit returns. How can we sacrifice the aesthetic values? From the point of view of what is *' given" in consciousness these seem quite as primitive, fundamental, and ultimate as the moral values, and, in their own sphere, of equal worth. We beheve that beauty must be ^' right." But unless we sacrifice one value to the other, we have on our hands a fundamental dualism.^ We ask : Must not happiness, in the end, be in harmony with duty? Do not the ideal and the real ultimately be- 1 This is the problem of the poem of the Book of Job, and Kant touches upon it in "The Critique of Practical Reason," in a discussion of the relation of happiness to goodness. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 443 long together ? How can God be good and permit the ter- rible chances and catastrophies of which life is full ? It is true, we say : '^ Trust in God and give yourself to Him." But then comes the deep cry out of the heart of religious experience: '^O, that I knew where I might find Him!" God's voice is not in the floods or catastrophies, but in the meaning. Yes, the meaning is greater than the tragedy, and so great tragedy may be a catharsis which teaches us heroic endurance. It teaches us sympathy and, if we are so fortunate, we may win through it the privilege of ser- vice and a deepened sense of unity with our brethren. And yet, in relation to happiness, the question seems not quite solved. Is the " order " of the universe of a type so universal that the private happiness of any single indi- vidual is of no consequence in the whole ? This was not the teaching of the Master, who said : ^'Know ye not that not one sparrow falls to the ground without your Father?" But we who witness the suffering of many of the Httle ones of this earth — what meaning can we see in all this? What answer can we make, for instance, to the bereaved mother whose lost child was the passion of her life ? It is the difiiculty about immediate experience. This answer was given to Mary when she turned sorrowing from the empty tomb of her Master: ''He is not here; He is risen." Clearly, a form of that stubborn problem of the relation of religion to morality which we met with at the very be- ginning of our inquiry, in essence confronts us once again. Concerning the relation of duty and happiness, two possible answers suggest themselves to this ultimate prob- lem of the religious consciousness. The first answer is that in the universe there is an element of irrationahty and chance, — chance, that is, which is something more than a purely subjective chance due to the ignorance of our point of view. For instance, a tornado, a chance shot, a pure accident, as we say, destroys a man of genius who might have greatly 444 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE served the world, and this seems to us one of the most irrational of the facts of human experience. Or, again, two men may — without thought, the one of the other — be following aims which are perfectly- rational from the point of view of each of them, and yet the chance crossing by each of the other's path may cause disaster. Primitive man seems to have had some notion of this kind in mind in his interpretation of omens and dreams. The second answer is that every experience which comes to us may be a means of self-mastery and thus lead to higher levels of spirituality. The "will to refrain" is quite as fundamental as the "will to live." " Accept, she (Nature) says : it is not hard In woods ; but she in towns Repeats, 'accept' ; and have we wept, And have we quailed with fears, Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward We have whom knowledge crowns ; Who see in mould the rose unfold, The soul through blood and tears." For our individual wills need discipline till they become wholly conformed to the will of God. This means the transformation of all our experience, whether of joy or of sorrow, of all the gifts of fortune or the strokes of fate, the limitations of nature and the struggle against our temptations into spiritual values. By freely willing this transformation of om* aesthetic values such as "gifts" and "happiness," we create, it may be, a new, if somewhat mystical, ethical value. "In sua voluntade e nostra pace." Such an union of our wills with the will of God is the true ^^unio mystica^' and the real significance of the symbolism of our Easter — it is the New Life of the Spirit, and this attitude, I take it, is what is meant when it is said we do our duty not because we must, but out of love.^ It is a 1 The gospels and epistles of Paul illustrate this attitude. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 445 transformed aesthetic value which makes mere "happi- ness" and "the perfect" of finite life seem of small ac- count in comparison. Let us consider, for a moment, these two solutions to the problem of the sesthetic-ethical religious para- dox. Both answers involve an element of sorrow and tragedy in the universe and this result, I think, we may take as final. Whoever has looked life in the face knows, sooner or later, either through his own sorrowful experience, either of ill fortune or of the weakness and waywardness of human wills, or he knows through the experience of his friends, or of those whose life has in any way touched his own, that life is sorrow- ful — and even had he no other experience of sorrow, he can in no wise escape, as the Buddhist tells us, the ultimate tragedy of death; "When death comes it is inevitable." Religion has often been considered — especially this — the comfort of those who are in sorrow. It is said if our life were always happy and adjusted to circumstances, we should not need God. Our needs are the source of re- ligious experience. We have found another ground for religion. I have tried to show that man is essentially a creature of infinite ideals and therefore that he never can be in perfect adjustment to a finite environment. He belongs to another world, and from his childhood on he is a continual creator of a better and happier world to dwell in, i.e. sl "beyond world." Yet as a final word, we must admit that no solution is possible without including this element of sorrow and of need. The world as we know it is tragic. Like children, we cry for our lost good. We want the past to -come back just as it was, and this is im- possible for ethically free and unique beings. Memory, it is true, can in a measure restore the past, and the power of visualization and kindred faculties of the imagination can bring our past vividly to us again. And yet, it has never the quality of immediacy which the experience 446 THE DEAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE itself possessed in happening, and it cannot lead on to new issues. It is over and done with. That art which springs spontaneously out of the deep heart of humanity has often given expression to this tragic note. Sometimes one hears this woe of all the world in primitive song, e.g. in the negro spirituels and in the folk songs of all nations : — "He who sleeps by the fire doth dream Doth dream that his heart is warm, But when he wakes, his heart is cold. Didst thou mark how the swallows flew, How they flew away from hence?" Or this : "To-morrow The days of gladness will be done for me, Heavy and overcast my soul will be. And day will seem like night to me To-morrow." ^ In the prayers and even in the incantations of simple folk : "Premez piti4 des villes Premez piti^ des cceurs Vous la vierge, or sur argent." And sometimes one sees this tragic element in the face of a great statue, in the expression of unspeakable sorrow for the inevitable and irrevocable. The tragic is, then, an element in religious experience and in the universe itself, and there is need in interpreting the meaning of human life for an atonement doctrine. It is an element, but it is not the whole, for out of its profound anguish and out of the wreck and ashes of the past the religious spirit rises triumphant and a new life is born. For to the religious consciousness the universe is ultimately divine. It is radiant with the presence of God, and this new life which rises out of tragic experience is a life of so much deeper insight into life's whole meaning {visio dei), of a so much more living sense of the unity of all life and hence of a deeper sense of brotherhood and of active charity toward 1 Roumanian Folk Songs. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 447 all, that at last, coming to see the glory of it, the religious consciousness rejoices that its experience was ^^even so." ^ In other words, we have to change our idea of what con- stitutes, or is the essential meaning of, 'Hhe good.'' The tragedy then remains. For man cannot help seeing the partial as if it were the whole. Hence the pity of it — the tragedy for him. All that is left for him is an act of faith. His reason leads him to the view that there is something more real than the passing moment ; that a consciousness which is permanent, good, eternal holds the world in its hands. Hence man's idealism comes to his rescue. If he could see the whole in its wholeness, it would be good, and even the misfortune which chance has brought into his life, which appears so evil, this, too, is a needed stone in the building of the great spiritual temple of the world. For, as soon as we begin to idealize our sorrows, we begin to see life in a new dimension. To be sure at first the '^new life" does not seem to be better. This we saw in our special analysis of the two cases of sorrow and of sin. We do not see how this dark- ness can be better, for the old had, perhaps, seemed very fair — and, often, when we may have learned to see the place of sorrow and misfortune in the whole in relation to others' experiences, should the catastrophe come to our- selves, when the Master says to us '^Can you drink of the cup that I must drink of, and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?" we shrink away in agony — ''Why just this experience ? " we cry, ' ' Why to this one ! " ' ' Why to me ! " But our grief may be our best enlightenment. This friend whom death has snatched from me is not far away. His life and mine are still united and in touch with one another. So we begin to feel the weight of immortality. The immortal life, it, too, is close to mine, not a far-away, dim, unknown world. It was so, out of their sorrow, that the Judsean exiles built up the kingdom of the New Jerusalem. * See especially St. Paul's letters and Browning's poetry. 448 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE So much seems settled, there is an element of tragedy in the universe of which any final interpretation must take account. So much our two solutions have in com- mon. But let us consider further our two answers. In regard to the first answer, objective chance as an ultimate explanation of the universe seems far from satisfactory. That answer at once points beyond itself and raises the question if there be not some more fundamental and in- clusive principle of interpretation. The second answer solves the paradox from the ethical standpoint,^ yet it, too, I think, leads beyond itself to a more inclusive and fundamental answer. For the aes- thetic values in religious experience, as we have said all along, seem quite as ultimate as the ethical, and our task is to interpret that which we find as given in the concrete religious consciousness. Our ethical principle of a self- determining good-will gave us the basis for a religious experience which should be objective and universally valid. But beauty, I take it, is not mere subjective experience. It, too, has an '^over-individual'' value. Beauty demands an entire devotion. It demands the inhibition of all activities directed to gain, or to wel- fare, which is personal and limited. It, too, is social in its ultimate intention for it reveals to us life's common interests and the significance of life's ideals embodied in forms which are emotionally appealing. Beauty in its organic wholeness, in its harmony, in its power to free our lives from petty personal ends and so to give us peace, and in its ability to express for us as it were in a vision a reahzation of our dreams, — beauty, as Professor George Herbert Palmer has said, ''sets the goal" which is sought by the moral life. Beauty inspires us by showing us an end valuable in itself, an end which does not lead to something beyond itself. ^ That is, by transforming the aesthetic value into a kind of ethical value. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 449 Thus beauty in its variety and unity, and in its har- mony of inner meaning and outer expression, reveals to us in image and symbol that goal unto which our ethical life forever strives to attain. Beauty is a true expression of the ''many in one.'^ Some movements of Beethoven's symphonies and the close of Dante's ''Paradiso" to my mind come the nearest to a suggestion of the united ethical and aesthetic values; but once before we said, however, that even art fails a little when it tries to give us a picture and concrete embodiment of paradise. Endurance of life, good as it is, could never be the final word of religious experience. The final rehgious attitude is one of joy in the ideal life, in the sense of security and peace in communion with God, and of active union with the divine purpose. This is the essential spirit of the Hebrew book of the Psalms, that universal expression of religious experience. "The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life ; Of whom shall I be afraid?" ^ "I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel. I have set the Lord always before me : Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth. Thou wilt show me the path of life: In Thy presence is fulness of joy ; In Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." * "With Thee is the fountain of life,' In Thy light we shall see light." This ultimate expression of the religious consciousness, — this joy in the vision and in the active effort to realize its Ideal, which is the will of God, — seems to me to come nearer, in a final interpretation of it, to the aesthetic than to the ethical experience. Yet we must remember that this peculiarly rehgious attitude could not be unless it 1 Psalm 27 : 1, 2. 2 From Psalm 16. » Psalm 36 : 9. 2g 450 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE were an expression of an universally good- will. It is a joy born out of pain and realized only through self-discipline ; and just as sorrow is an element in this experience which as an whole is one of deep joy, so the ethical is a strain, an attitude involved in the religious experience as an whole. But sometimes one wonders whether the moral qualities, such as human kindness, love, loyalty, devotion, charac- ter, heroism, the wholly good-will, perfection, heavenly- mindedness, consecration, do not seem to us the summum bonum of our experience partly because they are alHed to the supremely beautiful. We want, perhaps, some inclu- sive term, some concept which shall include the supremely good from the ethical standpoint with the beautiful, or absolutely desirable. Such concepts as immortahty, per- sonality, friendship, the invisible church, the realized ideal, variously suggest to us how such an union is possible. Beauty is a perfect whole and the spiritual life in its wholeness is beautiful. Beauty, it is often said, exists in isolation, and an absorption in aesthetic values takes men away from practical, active life, — for beauty is the nega- tion of the linked life of the social-ethical consciousness. Yet in that ^' whole'' where all is linked, yet nothing out- side and beyond, there could still be a place for beauty. The difficulty is that such a perfect whole is not for fini- tude. The beautiful whole is the beyond world, the prom- ised land, the New Jerusalem, the Heaven of our dreams. So perhaps from a metaphysical standpoint, the final opposition and the tragedy of life is where Nietzsche found it. Man wants, like Prometheus and the other rebels, to be as the gods, infinite. He wants to have all experience, to be as the whole. And yet, he wants to be unique and individual. He wants his happiness to coincide with his moral obligations. He wants to be at once active and at rest. He wants to harmonize his creative, aesthetic values with his ethical strivings; to have a life of rich experience, yet a life of self-mastery and of inner order and peace. He wants to follow his own THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 451 particular aims which seem to him vital and significant, and yet he wants to be social and in relatedness to all his world. Perhaps it is because for a fleeting moment the mystic religious consciousness feels itself to be one with God in an ineffable immediacy, that it seems to itself in its rapture to be standing on the mountain top, to have a vision of reality in its wholeness, and to be one with the All. But life is a matter of the everyday experience. The way of life is a common road where we jostle with our brothers. Our wills are often thwarted. We feel our limitations. There is tragedy, and necessity for vicarious suffering. We have to be limited if we are to have definiteness of purpose, uniqueness, individuality, per- sonality. Our limitations, therefore, may be our crown of glory. The final opposition of religious experience, then, is between the finite and the infinite, between God and man. This opposition and difference cannot be wholly overcome, for it constitutes the significance of the universe. For God needs man, since He has created him, and without man God's life would be a blank unity as Angelus Silesius has said.^ God incarnates himself in man. And it is perfectly clear that man needs God. Without God, there would be no real basis for ideality and we should sacrifice that which is the very soul of our selfhood. Man needs the gift of grace. Yet the difference is transcended, as far as it rationally may be, when man seeks to lead his life in accord with that which the wisdom of the ages and his own deepest insight have revealed to him as his own highest good. And for the universe as a whole, God is that realized ideal, that absolute self-consciousness which is the many in one, — which is an union of longing and satisfaction, of ideal and immediacy. The consummation of the ethical attitude — if this could be — is aesthetic. We have seen now in what sense 1 See page 276. 452 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE this cannot be. Man cannot be God. A distinction be- tween the finite and the infinite has to remain for on this distinction depends the significance of the world as an whole. Yet, in another sense, as the last chapter tried to show, the consummation is realized and our analysis of beauty has further illumined the way to us. It is real- ized when the life task is found which is at once an ex- pression of individual uniqueness and which has — to use Professor Miinsterberg's words — ''over individual value '^ — that is, that task which is to us emotionally appealing, and at the same time of universal (social) service. Emer- son was right when he said, ''Every man's task is his life preserver." It takes two elements to constitute complete self-realization. These two together will be for us the will of God. If this right task is not found — and alas ! too often youth misses it — the individual may still be devoted to the will of God in strictly ethical fashion. He can even find his happiness therein, though it will not have quite the quality of the best.^ It is an old, old story, this missing by youth of its perfect opportunity and way to social and individual self-realization, and we know the va- riety of reasons why he does so lose his way. It should be, perhaps, the chief aim of the guides and teachers of youth and the business of our democratic institutions ^ to help him find this way of salvation and selfhood. The real vocational training will lead not to money-making effi- ciency, but to this ideal end. On the social side, the per- fect expression in every man of unique individuality in a task for the good of the whole community ought to be the ideal of democracy, for which it should find, as means to its reaUzation, adequate expressive sjnnbols and activities. We set out to answer the question "What is the es- sence of spiritual religion?" We found that to get the * While the individual sort of happiness may be destroyed or lost, happiness of the social or community kind never can be. ' See for illustration "The Promised Land," by Mary Antin. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 453 answer it was necessary to grub in the earth for the con- crete experience itself. This is not to go back to the primitive experience, as some say, but to get close to the true, the original, or the genuine experience. Now looking back over our consideration of religious experience in the concrete, we may, I think, say that we find here certain dominating ideas. First, we find the longing for a better than the present state, for an ideal, or, in more religious terms, for salvation. Second, we find a sense of immediacy, the feeling of certainty of the immediate presence of the di- vine. Third, the judgment ; this unseen ideal is Good and will help men, and it is also true. Fourth, the obligation on man's part to get into friendly relations with this unseen good. The implications of these elements of religious experience are various. We have studied them at length. Grouping together the above elements, we may say that the characteristic or fundamental religious attitude is that of an unconquerable trust in God — a trust which holds through all change and mischance, through all failures and losses, through all sin and grief. This attitude is expressed, for instance, in many of the Psalms : "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." "If God is on my side, what can man do to me?" and in the following : — **The wind that blows can never kill The tree God plants ; It bloweth east, it bloweth west, Its tender leaves have little rest ; But any wind that blows is best." "My terminus near, The clouds already closing lq upon me, The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost, I yield my ships to Thee. "My hands, my limbs grow nerveless, My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd. Let the old timbers part, I will not part, I will cling fast to Thee, God, though the waves buffet me, Thee, Thee at least I know." ^ 1 Walt Whitman, " Prayer of Columbus." 454 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE It is the attitude of mind which can say, in the midst of solitude and fear, in the depths of sorrow and anguish, and at the approach of death : ''The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord ; " which gains healing from troubled waters; which learns through its own agony the meaning of that love which is strong ''to nourish and succor like the heavens/' Yet as many of our illustrations have shown us, this trust is dependent in part on the active, practical atti- tude of the worshipper. Thus we see that the trust which is to some extent a "spiritual adventure, '^ a leap into the unknown, a "will to believe,'' is justified by the fact that man himself strives to put himself into right relations to that which his reason judges to be the absolute and universal good. Yet at the same time we have seen man could not of himself achieve salvation. Divine grace has always been ready to redeem him. "It was not that we loved God, but that He first loved us." "God so loved the world that He gave His only be- gotten son, to the end that we should not perish but have eternal life." We have traced the source of religious experience to man's essential ideality, to his deep-rooted impulse in a world to which he is imperfectly adjusted, to create an unseen, a beyond world. We have seen, moreover, that such ideality is necessary for an ethical or spiritual religion which is the only form of religion which can survive or be of value in a community life. Now we may acknowledge that this is true, and yet, alas! it may be after all but a rainbow dream, an ideal which is only subjective, and thus it may turn out to be no more satisfactory than the religion of prosperity, of pagan " joie de vivre," or the religion of science, but lead at last, even as they, to disenchantment and despair. It is true that ideality is the very ground and inspiration of a spiritual religion. It is this fact of ideality which THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 455 gives to man his unconquerable faith that he is not merely nature's child. When he works with all the de- votion that is in him for an ideal, when he serves until death the cause of truth or beauty or righteousness, when he atones with his own dearly loved ends, in order to redeem or to fulfil the personality of another ; then he knows he is not nature's son. Yet this whole idealistic attitude is fraught with danger to the practical life ; for consider such lines as these of a recent socialistic poet : — "Think, think ! Since tune and life began Your mind has only feared and slept ; Of all the beasts they call you man Only because you toiled and wept. "Beyond your flesh and mind and blood Nothing there is to live and do. There is no man, there is no God, There is not anything but you." Such an attitude leads, does it not, to the wayward whim of the individual and the uncontrolled passion of the mob, with its hatred of law, order, and self-discipline, march- ing under the red flag of anarchy, whose motto is : "No God, no Master"? The hfe of the imagination, to return, may give to man the greatest of joys, but there is always a subtle danger in it, — the danger, namely, that it may take its votary away from the common life and from the sense of reality in existence. And so, especially in the realm of religion, were man's vision of the ideal an illusion, could there be for him a greater calamity ? Better, indeed, to know the truth at all costs, for the knowledge of the truth will at least enable him better to adjust himself to his actual life. One feels instinctively that there is something wrong with the doctrine of all those philosophers who, accepting the ideal good, make it reside solely in the mind of man. How great is the ideal of the Stoic "Sage" of Epictetus and 456 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Marcus Aurelius, we have noted. Yet like all unrealized ideals it is liable to become ineffectual or even to perish entirely. The prevalence of this point of view of subjective ideal- ism amongst the thinkers of the later nineteenth century- must, it seems, have led to the opposing type of religion and the movement of mysticism, and account in part for the existence in our midst to-day of so many pseudo- mystical sects. For the mystic claims that his experi- ence of the divine is immediate and ultimate. He has actually found God. To find the roots of religious ex- perience in the fact of ideality is, therefore, at once to raise the question as to the objective reality of the ideal, for this, — that the ideal shall be real, existent, — is the ultimate demand of the religious consciousness. At this crisis the mystic comes with another type of reality. He has an immediate experience of the divine, and we have found it impossible altogether to reject this claim of mys- ticism. Only, it seems, the mystic does not altogether rightly interpret his experience. What he tells us of is subjective experience, — his own psychic state.^ He knows his own need, his own anguish of spirit, his longing for regeneration, his sense of redemption, enlightenment, peace ; and surely it is true the individual must himself have the experience of religion if it is to be of any avail, — that is, the experience must be genuine and original. Religion is not something imposed from the outside. The soul of the individual must at least be responsive to the grace of God. It must feel inwardly its present dissatis- faction ; it must itself long for redemption. But how is it that the mystic comes to interpret this, his subjective experience, in terms of an absolute and divine reality? At first the mystic brings all his experience to bear on his judgment : God is the Good. With all his attention con- centrated on this thought, he enters upon the ''Negative 1 See W. E. Hocking, " The Meaning of God in Human Experience," for a fine psychological account of the mystic's inner experience. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 457 Path." Concentration of the attention, the shutting out of irrelevancies and eUminating of distractions is in itself, as we know, a method which leads to enlightenment. The mystic's negative process, then, tends to be illumi- nating, even as the mystic describes it. When all dis- tractions are gone, he holds — as Buddha at the limit in the series of trances finds Nirvana — that he will come face to face with God. Feelings of unity, harmony, and peace pervade his consciousness and these naturally tend to become associated with his idea of the Good. But his judgment that God is good and what constitutes this goodness (that is a good which is social and ethical) is, after all, based on his whole hfe's experience.^ But mysticism is justified from the point of view of immediacy, for it is true that reality appears most vividly and intensely in the immediacy of feeling. This is the real ; this is the truth, this is life, we cry, in some moment of overwhelming inner experience of rapture, sorrow, or surprise. But when we consider more closely this ex- perience, we note its poignancy arises out of its signifi- cance and meaning ; that is, its reality belongs in part to the idea J — to the thought world: — "O dreadful is the check intense — the agony When the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see ; When the pulse begins to throb and the brain to think again, The soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain." Sometimes our souls are prophetic. We see as in a flash that which eventually comes to pass. We call it a deep intuition — something deeper than reason. It is not a process of critical analysis. We do not reason it out as we do a problem in algebra, or symbolic logic, neverthe- less the data are all in, the premises which lead to the in- evitable conclusion are before us. Interest and feehng * " 'Tis Reason herself, tiptoe At the ultimate bound of her wit, On the verges of Night and Day." George Meredith, "A Faith on Trial." 458 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE have led to certain perceptions on our part — knowledge and experience have made us acquainted with what happens when these things meet. We do not consciously reason it out. It all dawns upon us in a moment — in- stinctively as it were — yet it is really thought in his workshop all the same. Reality is immediacy and thought, but this is not the whole story. For religious experience, reality is even more to be found in the creative deed as this deed appears in relation to the data of fortune ; that is, to the other than the human will. The will faces the question: ''What shall I do to be saved?" The creative will finds itself confronted by a world which is not of its own making, a world to whose laws it must, in a measure, submit, and yet a world which it can transform into elements of spiritual value. The creative will takes the gifts of fortune and dedicates them to the service of its own divine ideal. As for the stings and buffets of fortune, the limitations, losses, tragedies of this our mortal life, they, too, can be trans- formed and transfigured by the wholly dedicated will into necessary elements in the life of the Holy Spirit. Every deed is in its way creative, for it is unique in its irrevocableness,^ but " the typically creative deed " is a deed which is alive with thought and suffused with feeling. There is another than self, then, another than my private will, namely, the data of fortune, nature, environment, — and sometimes this other seems wholly alien to my will, a cruel and hostile other. Now, when any adversity which seems not of our own making but to come from this alien other, from nature and environment, appears to us cruel, intolerable, and irrational, we have to do one of two things: we have either to reject the rationality of the universe, or we have to readjust our idea of what constitutes ration- ality for the universe as a whole. Now the former we cannot do rationally, for it upsets every judgment of truth and makes none true. As to the second alternative, the 1 As set forth in the phiJosophy of Professor Royce. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 459 way to transform our notions of what constitutes a ra- tionally good world is in a great measure by means of the creative deed. The creative will, taking up the given of nature into its own purposes, while at the same time yielding to the natural laws, unites them to itself in the creative deed and thereby transforms them. And the will which acts in the service of the universal ideal is also united to it ; that is, to the Eternal and Self -existing Real. Man is confronted with an alien world, but we have learned that ^^he who overcomes his own coward spirit" overcomes the world. This truth imphes that the Way of Life is in truth the way of renunciation, yet it is no mere state of passive resignation to an ahen world-will, for man overcomes the World through a free creative deed which transforms the data of life into new values. This is the beginning of a new life for man, for if man's act were simply submission to an ahen, hostile will, we could not, as we saw above, even begin to find the solution of the problem to which the conflict of our aesthetic and our ethical values gives rise. But man can only overcome the world and himself because of the light of his ideal. And if, in the fierce struggle and conflict of the spirit for self- mastery, the frail physical body is worn out and succumbs, in God's world this is not failure. The creative imagina- tion constructs the ideal and the creative will strives to make it actual in finite Ufe. The synthetic reason judges the ideal to be true and existent. This ideal it is which is the redeeming grace of God. The religious consciousness recognizes, as indeed the metaphysical consciousness must prove, that man's ultimate good is no mere dream or sub- jective ideal. It is very God. The reality which the Pragmatists and the Neo-realists and even the Mystics, although they may use the language of idealism, are seeking, is a sensible reality, a reahty which requires scientific verification. But rehgious values belong to another dimension and require other verification. It is childish to seek for a sign. God is not in the earthquake 460 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE or the thunder. God belongs to a world of meanings. A world of meanings can only be verified by searching out man's own deepest meanings and by trying to discover whither they lead and what they can, without contradic- tion and in the light of all the facts at issue, possibly mean. This task belongs to the synthetic reason. Such a thor- oughgoing search of the reason can only lead us, I believe, to the concept of an eternal and supernatural world, — a complete knower, a realized personality or self. This is the only point where without contradiction of our own meanings we may find rest. Like Dante after his journey through the land of thick air and dark shadows we have come through doubt and strife and questionings into an atmosphere serene and pure and suffused with heavenly light. We have been listening with our ear at the mouth of the world-shell, and have caught a murmur of the secret of the universe, and have felt, as it were, the beat and rhythm of angel wings. In our consideration of the tendencies of religious experience in their variety of difference, contrast, opposition, or blending, it is as if we had been watching the fates weav- ing with many-colored threads on the loom of the world the pattern of man's life. We have seen that none of the opposing tendencies which we have analyzed, or the forms which they have taken, could, if considered sepa- rately, give us the whole truth. The great word is the 'togetherness" of the experience. This gave us the '^ paradox of the religious consciousness" which we have been pursuing, and which it has taken us so long to solve. We have been like children playing the game of ''magic music," for all along the solution has been going on before, just hidden from our eyes, beckoning and calling to us to come and follow after. Rehgious experience in its wholeness seems to me like Emerson's idea of the universe — a circle. It is a crystal, shining with wonderful radiant hues ; it is a fluent sphere in which the opposing tendencies balance each other and THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 461 SO hold the whole together. And what these opposing tendencies are, we hardly need to repeat. We analyze religious consciousness into its elements in order to de- scribe it and make it clearer to ourselves and to others, and then synthesize the elements again and try to express the whole in one or two logical concepts. This we have to do if we are thoughtful, while acknowledging fully that something ever escapes our logical constructions. As we have seen, religion while it has its eternal, permanent, unchanging aspect, is also a movement, a process, a way of life, and it is these together. Neither the concepts of structure nor those of process, therefore, will entirely de- scribe religious experience as an whole. If we want one term or concept to express the inclusiveness of religious experience in its double aspects of ideahty and immediacy, of permanence and change, of rest and activity, of feeling and doing, of self and another, of mystical insight and of ethical practice, its moods of exaltation and depression, its sense of sin and of salvation, — I suggest the concept of rhythm. In rhythm we find a temporal process, and yet at the same time the series of elements must be expressed as one whole or group.^ ^ What is the structural form of the rhythmic unit ? Briefly, the essential objective conditions in the constitution of rhythm appear to be 1. Recurrence. 2. Accentuation. 3. Rate. The whole group of elements which make up the rhythmic unit must be present to consciousness as a single experience, the first and last elements together. And in the rhythmic unit is found the funda- mental antithesis of two phases, the accented and the unaccented portions. Recurrence is essential to give the impression of rhythm, and the fact of differentiation in an orderly way — that is, the main- taining of temporal intervals amongst the elements of the series and the periodic accent of certain of these elements. Hence to quote McDougall ; — " Rhythmic forms are not themselves rhythm. They must initiate the factor of movement for rhythm to appear. The form is indepen- 462 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Further, we can say that '^rhythm" is at once a social and an individual experience, as religion is.^ As an inti- mate, an immediate, an appreciative experience, rhythm is individual ; it is an aesthetic experience. ^ But rhythm is also a social phenomenon. Dancing seems to have been the earliest of the arts, and some writers hold that the rhythm of music and poetry devel- oped as an accompaniment to the dance and march, re- ligious or social. Thus, rhythm which is immediately felt and which is the spontaneous expression of emotion, becomes in this external expression the embodiment of '^communal consent. '' Instances of it appear in the customs of primitive people. For instance, in the treading of the wine press, in the pulhng of the oar, in the activities of grinding at the mill and in the spinning together of women, in the marching to battle of warriors, in the plays of children, in the rehgious dances of negroes, in choruses and refrains generally. In brief, in festivities and play, dent of the movement. The limit to the rhythmic unit is the periodic accentuation. From one rhythmic unit we get no impression of rhythm, but with the first recurrence rhythm at once appears. . . . As to rate : A certain rate, neither too fast nor too slow, is necessary to give the impression of rhythm." ^ Recent psychophysical theories find an explanation of rhythm in the functioning of consciousness itself. Thus T. L. Bolton in the American Journal of Psychology shows that consciousness always rhythmizes objectively equal sense stimuli — and Professor Miinster- berg shows that attention or vividness fluctuates periodically, hence of stimuli reeurrii^ at regular intervals, certain ones will receive greater emphasis than others. Rhythm is pleasure giving. It is stimulating but yet reposeful, for it is in harmony with our natural functioning ; yet, since the first element in rhythm seeks the last, it is cyclic and felt as one whole. Thus rhythm meets the requirements of Miss Puffer's aesthetic formula of favorable stimulation with repose. 2 The field of Art is of course peculiarly the sphere of rhythm. It is found in all the arts — I will give just one instance here. In the " Convivio " (Book II, Chap. 12), in explaining the first canzone, Dante says : — " In order that this (final) part may be more fully understood, I say that in all canzoni it is generally called the Return (Tomata) because the poets who used it in the first place, made it so that the canzone being simg, with a certain portion of the song they could return to it." THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 463 in labor, in religious rites, in going to battle, we find rhythm, and the significance of it is ^togetherness/' This brief sketch of the rhythm-concept may be suffi- cient to suggest how the rhythmic form may serve to interpret the whole of rehgious experience. Certainly, there is something complete and permanent in religious experience, but the temporal — the process — is an es- sential element in such an whole, since even the mystic experience exempHfies it. The practical, the moral, the aesthetic, and the emotional, are all elements in the struc- ture of the rehgious unit, as are the varying phases and elements in the unit of rhythm. In rehgious experience there are alternations of activity and repose as in rhythmic movements ; and the experience is at once individual and social as rhythm is. The temporal process is essential and real as it is in rhythm; and, further, religious pro- cesses are to some extent repetitions, cycHc, — movement returning upon itself as is the case in rhythm. Just as in music we have the strain of the melody to return to the fundamental note, so in the rehgious consciousness the finite individual strives to return to its source — to the Infinite, but the striving is genuine and cannot be eUm- inated — only the Mount of Purgatory leads to the Bea- tific Vision, as Dante knew, — and the striving is ever renewed. But this consciousness, the process and the fulfilment together^ is one experience, one whole, as the rhythmic sequence is. So, too, religious experience turns out to be no isolated phenomenon, no emotional, fanciful, or sentimental pro- cess. And by means of rhythm, we can unite it to other processes, cosmic and organic as well as aesthetic. ''To winds and waves and waters," to undulations of light, heat, and sound, to rhythmic movements of heart beats and of respiration, and to periodicity in an organism's growth ; to fluctuations of attention, to the circular re- action of habits, to vibrations of cells, and to the swing of planets in their orbits. Our day with its alternating 464 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE phases of day and night and night and day is a rhythmic unit, and this rhythm appears again in the physical hfe of man, in periods of activity and repose ; and further, if self-representation is 'Hhe most characteristic function of consciousness, " to quote Professor Royce, then conscious- ness itself is a recurrent or rhythmic process, and reHgious experience will be in form one with that which we must take to be the essential structure of the universe as an whole. In Hegelian phraseology, Spirit is movement, — life. Its nature is to differentiate itself, to manifest and find itself in another and so overcome the distinction, since this other is no external other but in reality identical with the spirit itself. The rhythm of the religious consciousness appears in the recurrent alternations of appreciation and activity, of recollection and re-creation and, in general, in the re- current striving on the part of the finite and particular to return to its source — to the universal, or to that which in its completion it truly is. The finite religious con- sciousness — the part — achieves oneness with the whole through apprehension of the divine purpose ; that is, the purpose of the whole. Its task, or way of life, is the carry- ing out of this purpose in the temporal world, and this is its salvation. This oneness of purpose is, then, the con- stant and unifying principle between the finite and the in- finite. Such identity of purpose is the true " ought " and goal of the ethical religious consciousness, and on such identity follows the mystic's beatitude, sense of security, and inner peace. For the partial can find such harmony and permanence only in that wholeness to which, as a part, it inevitably belongs. The whole is analogous to the rhythmic series in its totahty. It is one, unchanging, eternal, but it includes in its wholeness the temporal pro- cess of the sequence of elements (moments, parts) or groups of such elements on which the rhythm itself de- pends for its actual realization and being. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 465 We have analyzed religious experience into its primal elements in order to discover its nature and its source, and then, as well as we could, we have reconstructed the whole and have suggested its value. Our task has been a theoretical not a practical one. Yet, in a subject of this kind where questions of value and worth are raised, the practical side is inevitably impHed. Rehgion is not something outside of life. It is at its very heart. This, I think, has been implied all along our way. Yet now, in closing, I would make a more direct appeal for the practical re-creation of the life of the spirit in ourselves as indi- viduals and in the community as a whole. Not long since it was the fashion, especially in scientific circles, so-called, to decry religion as a thing of the cloister which attempted only to fit men for a supernatural world, — a world which was itself an illusion. That ancient warfare between science and religion is not ended yet, and yet to-day there has arisen a scientific type of religion, — a religion which takes the form either of psychothera- peutics, or of social efficiency, of social service, or a kind of religion which may simply be called a rehgion of comfort and prosperity. For to-day it is recognized even by the scientifically trained that religion is a valuable asset. A recent book, ''A Religion Worth Having,"^ whose main in- terest appears to be the conquering of nature to increase production, attempts to translate religion into terms of social economics and of social efficiency. According to this book the goal of life should be expressed as '^The fellow- ship of the Productive Life." Rehgion may be used to banish worry, to keep men in sound health and so to make them efficient and comfortable. Religion may be em- ployed to fill men with enthusiasm for the true business of life — that is, work for the better adjustment between man and his earthly environment through the improve- ment of external conditions and through the development of that '^character" which can be wholly described in terms of muscle reactions. 2 H ^ Thomas Nixon Carver. 466 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Again, religion may simply mean the sense of such ad- justment on the part of the prosperous efficient individual and of the community to which he belongs. That is, it is a rehgion belonging to our prosperous, hustling, efficient, modern world. Thus, while the profounder scientific thinkers, though themselves still perhaps agnostic, appear perfectly tolerant towards a religious attitude, among the scientifically cultured, as we may perhaps call them, has appeared the religion of science, so-called. But this religion of adjustment and prosperity, or of a social service limited to the conditions of our earthly existence is, I think, on the wrong track, and is bound in the end to fail. The Failure of '^the Religion of Science.^ ^ — The funda- mental reason why this is so, is, after our discussion, per- fectly clear. The religion of science is not a rehgion of a supernatural world, but man, by virtue of his ideality and his creativeness, belongs to such an invisible order ; and, further, this rehgion of science will fail because it ignores some of the facts of life. It does not consider the essential elements in the universe of beauty or of tragedy, and it fails to interpret the real meaning of sin. Science makes for the better adjustment of the indi- vidual to his environment, but there are ills which science will never be able to banish entirely from the world. The first group of evils which we may mention consists of evils due to unpreventable accident from the forces of nature ; from the ageing process ; from the fact of death ; and from the sorrow to ourselves and others which is inci- dental to these fact's. There will be woe and anguish while man is human with a heart which suffers itself and which beats in sympathy with others. Secondly, science is occupied with the material world, its elements, relations, and laws. It does not strike at the root, hence it cannot overcome those evils whose roots are in the selfishness, waywardness, and love of ease of the human will. Such evils, for instance, as the misunderstandings and estrangements of friends, or THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 467 the cruel shafts of hypocrisy, flattery, and malice. We ask again whether a religion of prosperity and efficiency will lead to an entire overcoming of the ''bad self" and, if not, how will a religion of science meet such perennial human needs as those mentioned above? Whither shall the life which has been wounded at the heart and which drags its way fainting along life's road flee for refuge — whither ? And what of our sense of guilt and our need of forgiveness ? Can a religion of science really cleanse the soul from sin or free man's heart from this anguish of spirit ? We have spoken of individual experience, of human sin, need and sorrow, but this is not all. The old order changeth, giving place to the new. Our age is, as we have already noted, an age of transition and of radical readjustment of values, and there are signs already on the horizon of even greater social and industrial change in the approaching future, and who knows in what cat- astrophic manner the Day of the Lord will come ! Will our democratic institutions and laws, and those customs and ideals behind them, from which they have sprung, be able in their essential spirit to survive the cataclysm which may overtake them ? And if not, what then ? In the days perchance of panic, anarchy, and peril, of misery and desolation, of wars and rumors of war, when our most cherished ideals seem going under and our whole civiliza- tion on the verge of being overthrown, what will a religion of prosperity and of scientific efl&ciency avail ? In the third place, science ignores the integral ele- ment of beauty. Like the moral, the scientific attitude is the antipodes of the aesthetic attitude. The artist, the lover and creator of beauty, is more richly endowed as to his emotional nature than the rest of us. In him lives that underground fife of racial instincts and intuitions, with its up-rushes into consciousness, which has been called ''the subliminal self." The artistic temperament ^ 1 The fundamental distinction between the scientific attitude and the appreciative attitude — to use an expression which seems more 468 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE cannot adjust itself to the conventional regulations of so- ciety. It cannot wholly submit to, or be controlled by, the laws and customs of a science-ridden world. Hence, too often, emotionally and morally, this life suffers ship- wreck. Here is one of the chief causes of man's sorrow as well as of his greatest achievement. Already we have seen how difficult it is to find the final word here. One who has thought much on this subject has suggested that the artist, as person, is a case of involuntary vicarious atonement. The artist brings us the best of gifts, but for himself, as individual, there is disaster. No one, I think, has found a wholly satisfactory solution to the problem of the aesthetic-ethical consciousness and its values. Perhaps the reason is that it really cannot be solved from the point of view of a finite world. May this not be one justification of man's inevitable beUef in '^a. beyond world," and a guarantee of its actuality ? The artistic temperament and genius needs an infinite out- look. It can only be judged in relation to the universe as an whole. In an '^ unseen universe " where man's ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness are finally revealed in whole- ness and harmony, it, too, finds, we may believe, its perfect adjustment to its world. Because a scientific and rationalistic type of religion fails to meet the emotional and appreciative side of human nature, men have turned to-day to mysticism. But the current forms of mysticism are of small avail when the hour of rapture has passed. Mysticism, as we have seen, offers no permanent or universal basis of truth and valid- ity. The thrill of emotional ecstasy is not itself the crown generally applicable than the expression "artistic temperament" which latter appears to connote a special class — is this : The apprecia- tive consciousness is interested in human beings as persons who love and hate, suffer and rejoice, make plans and pursue them while science is interested in them as a bundle of brain cells, nerves, and muscle reactions. Hence the far greater suffering (shall we say, also, joy) which must come to the appreciative type and the greater difficulty he has in carrying out his own ends. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 469 of glory, and, moreover, it passes swiftly away, and whether it will return or not, no man can tell. We have seen again and again how in pure mysticism the moral will and all that depends upon it vanishes. ''In the still desert of the Godhead when never was difference '' nor change, there is nothing at all. The actual attainment of the mystic is unconsciousness. His description of it is in ''borderland" terms. At the hmit of the mystic series (for instance of Buddhistic trances : neti, neti, of the Hindoos, etc.) the universe itself would disappear into nothingness, but this result is irrational and absurd. The danger of mysticism is, as we have noted all along the way, in its tendency to emotionalism, sensationalism, individualism, caprice, and anarchy. Yet the mystic cults have one element of value. They liber- ate the spirit from the pettiness, worldliness, and com- mercialism and thirst for power of our time. If we are to live the true life of the spirit, we must turn away absolutely from* the "Zeitgeist" of this restless, materialistic spirit of gain with which our time is cursed ; from the love of luxury and ease ; from the paganism of a mere "joie de vivre" of a psychophysical, temporary existence, which can give no abiding peace. Socialism, — the Utopian dream of our day, — seeking as it does to improve external conditions, may be, if it succeeds in securing equal opportunity for all, a means of help to the life of the spirit; yet, in the end, these ex- ternal aids which socialism proposes are mere "scaffold- ings," and of no avail, without the resolve on our part to be men independent of circumstances, in whom the divine life reveals itself. It is no use to try to escape from our individual responsibilities by laying the blame on social groups (such as corporations, churches, governments, etc.). We are individually responsible for the intention of our Hves. Only an entire self-consecration to that unseen good which in our purest moments we hold to be the best can win us salvation. But this does not mean 470 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE that we are to go apart and separate ourselves as the religieux of old from our brethren. No, it means to live the common life, to give the helping hand, to do the self- sacrificing deed, yet, so to live as the heavenly-minded, having the peace of God in our hearts and the ideal light as our guide. It means, moreover, the transformation of all natural values through the dedication of them to the service of the religious ideal, that is, to God. If we have set our hearts on the things of the spirit, no catastrophe can overcome us. This is what the great teachers of religion have always said (Buddha, Jesus, Socrates, Psalms, etc.). And now we can see in what sense it is true. If we are loyal to the ideal, loyal at all cost, whatever the changes we cannot founder. This attitude of religion is like the spirit of forgiveness. For- giveness means a taking back. But forgiveness cannot really be granted without repentance, that is, a complete change of heart, the giving up of old idols and facing steadily in the new direction. So it is with the religion of the spirit. We must, without reservation, give ourselves freely, wholly to the ideal good.^ This wholly dedicated attitude is expressed in the following prayer of Christina Rossetti : — "O Lord, grant us grace never to parley with temptation, never to tamper with conscience ; never to spare the right eye, or hand, or foot that is a snare to us. Never to lose our souls, though in exchange we should gain the whole world." The mission of religion has always been to be the healer and consoler, but we have learned that it is far more than this. The attitude of rehgion, of self-consecration to the Ideal, is the saviour of our souls. It is our deliverer from the selfishness, slothfulness, passion and caprice, hypocrisy and meanness of the lower self. It inspires us to self- 1 This is usually expressed in Christian religion as ''self -surrender," but it is an active not a passive surrender, and it implies active service of the Ideal. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 471 mastery, and spurs us on to new and ever new spiritual achievement. As for our sorrows, it strengthens us to meet those ills which are unavoidable, by idealizing them ; that is, it enables us to find their place in the Whole and thus to transform them into ministers of grace. But, one asks, will not the content of my highest ideal change with the changes of civilization? Surely, the content expressed by the concept of God has changed immensely through the ages. Whether this ^'highest good'^ shall be expressed and embodied in the particular forms and institutions which now seem highest to the community, this, of course, is more than doubtful. Just as in the past men of spiritual insight and ethical reformers have arisen, whose teachings have finally changed our standards of the highest social good, so they will un- doubtedly arise in the future. The change of content in relation to the actual order, and the adjustment thereto, often renders perilous and tragic the way of the spirit, yet this "warfare of the spirif is perhaps the thing of which the religious life of our generation stands most in need. Some people to-day are finding war, in spite of its recognized horrors, more inspiring than peace for this reason, that peace (and Christianity is a religion of peace) seems to dwell in a land of complacent ease and plenty and of hberation from the things that make man fear, while war is a challenge to an intenser life and to a su- preme renunciation. Let us admit that there is an ele- ment of value in a "Religion of Valor'' and that Nietzsche was not wholly in the wrong when he decried passive virtues. In our opening chapter we saw how instinctive and natural to man is the ideaUstic attitude, but now we see, also, how difiicult on the supreme levels such an at- titude is. It is only by strenuous effort, self-sacrifice and loyalty, and in the fight of wisdom and in singleness of heart, that man can fift himself to, and keep himself on, these heights. This is, I beUeve, the great reason why we have so Httle of the deepest, most spiritual type of re- 472 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE ligion. We may have a religion (so-called) which is a kind of social-ethics, and we have an emotional mysticism, but "the religion of the spirit" which sees God and is the love of God we feel is different from these. If religion leads us to a better country where are the delectable mountains of our dreams, yet since religion is, as we have seen, a thing of our everyday life, the content of the highest good must be developed in relation to the world we actually inhabit, in relation to our fellow-beings and to natural phenomena. We must be ready to meet the challenge of hfe and the discipline of the wrestUngs of the spirit. In loyalty to our ideal some things have to be eliminated. There is an element of negation in life, as has been already suggested. At the gateway to some paths stands the angel with the flaming sword, and some lives must be baptized with the baptism of fire. But whatever the changes of content of the Ideal when actualized in the temporal order, something which is per- manent and eternal abides. It is this, the basic fact of religion is its ideality, and man's salvation consists in his entire devotion to an ideal, unseen good, as failure in this is his deepest sin. The Master says to us, " Are ye so soon weary of serving the Ideal ? ' What, could ye not watch with me one hour ? ' '* Such is the life of the spirit, and when we are transformed into it we begin to understand its value and to see its glory, and for us has arisen the dawn of the New Life. Becatise men have come to see the supreme value for actual living of this religious attitude, and of the enthu- siasm which accompanies it and the renunciation of private pm-poses which it makes possible, great thinkers ^ have proposed to retain the religious attitude while abandoning what they hold to be the religious superstition of the real existence of religion's highest ideal — God. I consider this to be an impossible position.^ Essential to a re- 1 For example, the Hon. Bertrand Russell in his essay " The Essence of Religion," in the Hibbert Journal of October, 1912. ■ See Appendix. ^ See Appendix. THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 473 ligious experience is the belief in the real existence of that good in whose presence is fulness of life and the trust in whose goodness makes possible the heroic endurance of all ills, as well as the attitude of renunciation of particular finite joys. If I am right that the fundamental religious attitude is one of absolute trust in God through all ex- periences, of joy and sorrow, in the blackest of misfortunes, yes, even in the depth of the abyss of sin, then reUgious experience as an whole must be a state of serenity and of joy. It is the life hid with Christ in God. Such a re- ligious attitude, however, does not excuse us from taking our part in the fight against the evil of the temporal order. The triumph of the spirit is still due to the creative will — God's will manifest in man. Surely, the world is often dark enough and the Way of Life beset with many diffi- culties, and yet the religious attitude may be attained by the individual at every temporal moment. "When He giveth quietness, who then can make trouble!" How in the cosmic order the evil of life, which we hold to be due to human, voluntary sin, may be overcome and reconciled, the Christian church has set forth in the dogma of the atonement.^ "He was wounded for our transgressions and with His stripes we are healed." When the chronicler, whoever he may have been, wrote these words, he was simply reflecting and commenting upon the concrete human situation, — that of the prophet in relation to a sinful people, — and it is a common human situation that the innocent suffer for and with the guilty, and their suffering and the insight they attain enables them to be revealers of new truth to mankind, and doers of such deeds as will win new and higher good even out of the heart of evil. In this reconcilement, to make it com- plete, the sinner's will, too, must in time come to have its part. 1 In his book "The Problem of Christianity," Professor Royce has translated this doctrine for us into human and universal terms. 474 THE DRAMA OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Shall we not call our experience (of adversity) good? That depends on what price we are ready to pay for deeper insight into the meaning of the world, for awakened hearts, for greater consequent ability to serve our comrades, and for unfaltering courage to further meet the demands of life. Some evil, some misfortune is inevitable. Nothing that we can do can change it or drive it away. It is, as we say, as inevitable as a decree of Fate, but rather we should say, it is the will of God that we drink the bitter cup to the dregs. If we rebel and fight against it (as at first poor human nature can hardly help doing), we miss its blessing ; and so it is, too, if we try to escape from it by flight or yield to it in weakness. Our part in the face of such inevitable ills is a dauntless acquiescence. Who knows, after all, what chains may be breaking which all unconsciously we had forged for ourselves, or how through calamity and acquiescence our souls may be freed to live on those higher spiritual levels to which we were blind in our unawakened hours of ease? On those levels the light is shining "A light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the poet's dream." The higher religions must be ethical, and so the goal which the religious consciousness seeks can be no place and no Utopia of our earthly life. Neither can it be a mystical state of consciousness in which individuality perishes. It can only be that which completes or is the fully realized life of every unique and morally free in- dividual. Religious experience depends, as we have seen, alike on thought, wiU, and feeling, and the reality which is to respond to these must be something which will satisfy the demands of each of these characteristic attitudes of reUgious experience. The only sufficient response is to be found in supreme personality. If one should say, such a God is too high and abstract THE INDWELLING OF THE SPIRIT 475 for me, I cannot attain unto him, he does not hear my cry or answer my prayers, to such an one we can reply God is in truth transcendent, but he is also immanent ; he is the absolute and eternal fulfilment which is the ideal of every finite, temporal striving, but he is also the spirit of the striving itself, and if mediators are necessary between you and God, find them in such divinely human person- alities as you can recognize. For God reveals himself above all in the purity and single-mindednessof spirit which seeks the ideal good alone, and in the divinely self-sacri- ficing and atoning deeds which a pure love of God inspires and calls forth. Finally, then, the spiritual man lives in the constant presence of the invisible and eternal and this is a real and unchanging and ever-living Presence. Yet man^s task is a recurrent, temporal process; it is an ever-renewed achievement. Thus (as far as it rationally may be), the religious paradox of the aesthetic-ethical consciousness is solved. It can only be solved, however, in the light of an unseen, yet profoundly real, world. "We men, who in our morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish. Be it so : Enough, if something from our hands have power To live and act and serve the future hour ; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go. Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know." APPENDIX! The article by the Honorable Bertrand Russell in the Hihbert Journal for October, 1912, calls, I think, for a protest. For inspiring and practically helpful, up to a certain point, as the view taken in this article is, and close as it comes to a true interpretation of the essence of re- ligion, it yet seems to fail in one fundamental respect. Mr. Russell rejoices in what he terms ''the undeniable fact" that all the dogmas of religion, including the dogma which asserts the existence of God, have been rejected and are decaying, yet he holds that it is essential to retain the religious attitude ^ for ''bare morality" will never be a sufficiently potent motive to right action. There are in religion (or in Christianity), says Mr. Russell, three elements which should be retained. These three are worship, acquiescence, and love. Worship (or may we not say more generally — religious experience) is of two fundamental kinds : (1) "selective worship" — an attitude towards an ideal good or absolute perfection ; and (2) "impartial worship " of the existent, or the attitude of faith that the absolute good exists, and that man longs to, ought to, and, as the mystics say, does actually unite himself to this good. In religions which believe in the existence of God these two forms of worship are united. Now, in our modern world of scientific interpretation, Mr. Russell says in effect, it is quite possible to maintain the first attitude — that of selective worship, for the ideal of perfection is a creation of the constructive imagination, and this ideal inspires man to work for its actuality in the world, where as actually embodied it is always more or less imperfect. 1 This * note ' was written in November, 1912. 477 478 APPENDIX Because the good is only ideal, however, to hold this attitude alone gives man the sense of exile in a world of shadows. Hence the other kind of worship — the wor- ship which is only given to what exists, is essential. Yet we cannot hold, as Christianity, for example, does, that the absolute good exists. The tragic facts of life, and the interpretations of science, are at variance with such a belief. Since, then, we must have this sense of union with the existent, as religion abundantly testifies, man must unite himself in non-selective worship and love to what- ever does exist. This attitude of ^ impartial worship,*' as Mr. Russell calls it, finally reduces, I think, to a love or worship of life itself, of "the Ufe force" or "life energy," wholly apart, of course, from the judgment that this "life" is good. Now we cannot say that this attitude ^ is non-religious, for it has been found in some religious cults, for example in those Oriental mystery-cults and forms of worship such as the worship of the Great Mother with which Chris- tianity had to contend for supremacy in the early days of its existence. The worship of life itself, then — hfe morally indifferent, is found in rehgious experience. What I would maintain is that this is not a spiritual attitude, is not found in the higher or spiritual types of rehgion, cannot be combined with the selective kind of worship, and is not desirable to encourage as a fundamental attitude or attitude of wor- ship. It is a kind of neo-pagan attitude which we find extolled in many of the pages of the reforming essayists and writers of fiction of the twentieth century. In the higher rehgions the distinction between good and evil is retained and the universe as a whole or in essence is held to be good. That is, the absolute or ideal good is also existent. Mr. Russell, I think, tacitly admits that the ethical attitude is really the fundamental attitude to which the 1 To-day it appears to be taking a rather dififerent form, i.e. as the worship of the pushing, striving "will to live." APPENDIX 479 other (the impartial worship of whatever exists) must be subordinated, when he says: "Only the ideal good can fully satisfy our hunger for perfection^' — and yet, "when this worship stands alone it produces a sense of exile in a world of shadows, of infinite soHtude amid aUen forces." "Only in the complete union of the two could the soul find permanent rest.'' ReUgion is forever trying to unite the two forms of worship by "making more good exist and more existence good," or again, "The worship of the good is the greater of the two conmciandments (love to God and love of man) since it leads us to know that love of man is good and this knowledge helps us to feel the love of man." (This asserts, if we were without the love of the good there would be no special reason for the love of the existent.) Are not the two attitudes, then, really interdependent? Must not the absolute good somehow exist in man and in the world if we are to love anything existent at all ? The ethical judgment, it appears, is fundamental and logically prior. But if we ought to love the absolute good, is not something more implied in such a demand? In a word, does it not involve us in a contradiction to hold that the love of the good is essential and that we cannot unite ourselves in love to the world without it, though we must love (worship or unite ourselves to) something which exists; and yet at the same time to hold that the good itself does not exist but dwells in a world apart — a world of the creative imagination only, which is without connection with the actual world ? Why, on the one hand, should we feel any obligation to love the existent, indifferent world ; or why, on the other, if we love the indifferent, existing world, should we love the absolute good? If, as a matter of actual fact, we do love both, what does this inclusive attitude signify? The contradiction arises, I think, from an underlying assumption which Mr. Russell keeps in the background but which appears in the following lines which Mr. Russell introduces in relation to the attitude of acquiescence. 480 APPENDIX '^We cannot," Mr. Russell says, ''feel indignation against evils for which no one is responsible. When it is realized that the fundamental evils are due to the blind empire of matter, and are the wholly necessary effect of forces which have no consciousness and are, therefore, neither good nor bad in themselves, indignation becomes absurd, like Xerxes chastising the Hellespont." Mr. Russell has written with special beauty and truth (or what would be truth on a different, metaphysical basis) about the reUgious attitude of acquiescence in the irrevocable and the inevitable, and yet, here again, are we not led to a contradictory position ? If the inevitable evil is due to bhnd fate or to chance forces which we cannot in any way square with our love of perfection or our moral judgment of what ought to be, is acquiescence possible? that is, an acquiescence which can in any sense be called free, moral, or religious acquiescence ? Were not a Prome- thean defiance of the universe a nobler and more justifiable attitude? To be sure, submission or annihilation are in a fate-ridden world the only really possible alternative at- titudes in accord with reason. Any other attitude would be, indeed, as Mr. Russell says, absurd. But is it reason- able to demand that we work for the achievement of the good in such a world where the distinction is of no final value and where the good cannot possibly triumph or make any real difference in the end? Mr. Russell holds that we must work to advance the good in the world and make it prevail (no doubt to a great extent at present we can trust to our instincts and training to do this) yet theoretically, and from a religious point of view, he says we must abandon ''any demand that the universe shall conform to our standards," we must ac- quiesce in it as it is. We are forced to ask again : Is it possible to find satis- faction; is it possible really "to live in the infinite" (p. 60) at all, if we can do so only by abandoning our fundamental, ethical judgment of what is best in relation APPENDIX 481 to a final interpretation of what the universe means and is? I do not think that this is a possible attitude, and the difficulty arises, it seems to me, from the assumption on which Mr. Russell builds, the assumption, namely, that the interpretation of science is ultimate. The scientific interpretation that the existent universe is morally in- different leads in the end to the view that blind fate gov- erns the world. Now although I quite agree with Mr. Russell that our distinctions between good and bad as applied to the universe as a whole are ^' human, all too human," yet the legitimate outcome of such a meta- physical or final interpretation as the above can only be an attitude of defiance or despair. It leads inevitably to pessimism and to nihilism. On such a foundation the essentially, that is, the spiritually, religious attitude (unless to be sure blindly held to in despite of reason) could not but perish. 2i INDEX Absolute experience, for Bradley, 383. Absolute good, for Russell, 481. Absolute ideal, realization of, sought by spiritual religion, 35 ; held to be an actual experience by religion, 36. Absolute self, the concept of God and the, 6 ; of self-representative system, 397 ; unifier of all experience, 432. Absolute will, surrender of finite will to, 342. Addams, Jane, 355 note. Adler, Felix, poem by, quoted on social religious consciousness, 199- 120. .^neas, prayer of, 277. iEsthetic-ethical, values, 440-442 ; two solutions of religious paradox considered, 445 ; consciousness, solu- tion from point of view of finite world impossible, 468 ; conscious- ness, only solution possible is in light of unseen but real world, 475. iEsthetic experience, not identical with religious experience, 43-44 ; for Schopenhauer, 394 ; value of, 429 ; and ethical experience, 87-90. Aitken, W., mystical prayer of, 289. Ames, Charles Scribner, quoted on religion in primitive societies, 110, 111, 112 ; "Psychology of Religious Experience" by, quoted on social institutions as outer source of re- ligion, 176. Amos, Hebrew Prophet, quoted, 26. Andrew, S., of Crete, poem by, illus- trating motor type of religious consciousness, 97. Angelo, Michael, Last Judgment fresco by, 57. Animism, universal basis of definite religious belief, 14; and nature worship in early religions, 272. Antigone, example of individual test of right, 169. Antin, Mary, "The Promised Land," 452 note ; quoted on magic formulae and spells, 264. Appreciative attitude, 362 ; our need of, 363 ; essentially religious, 364 ; contrasted with scientific attitude, 467 note. Aquinas, St. Thomas, on grace, 163- 164; prayer for spiritual blessing by, 282 ; on prayer in the " Summa," 287. Aristotle, his criterion of the typical or moral normal man, 76; the "one" in the system of, 371. Arnold, Matthew, poem by, quoted on prayer in tribulation, 316. Artistic temperament cannot adjust itself to a science-ridden world, 467. See Appreciative attitude. Atonement, 72-73 ; individual co- operation necessary, 79; endless, 80 ; dogma of, is result of life ex- perience, 162; religion of sorrow and, 403; artist example of invol- untary vicarious, 468; Christian dogma of, 473. Attitude, of acquiescence, Russell on, 479-480; of man towards world, 439. Augustine, St., quoted on essence of religion, 22 ; City of Satan and City of God, 63 ; description of mystical experience by, 92 ; dual relation in individual religious experience illus- trated in " Confessions " of, 107 ; his Doctrine of Grace, 128-129 ; Doc- trine of Sin and Grace, 147-148; on freedom and necessity, 151 ; prayer of, quoted, 286; mystical prayer of, 288-289 ; loyalty to the ideal, 391, 414 ; " Confessions " of, quoted on prayer experience in case of sin and sorrow, 319-320 ; quoted on surrender to the ideal, 417; prayers by, emphasizing personality of ideal, 419-420. Aurelius, Marcus, "Meditations" quoted on world weariness and disillusionment, 49-50 ; quoted on ethical consciousness of Stoics, 101 ; quoted on social element in Stoicism, 120-121 ; views on eternal-temporal life, 223-225; solution of evil for, 374-375. 483 484 INDEX Auto and social suggestion, preserves old world magic compulsion, 333 ; their part in prayer, 336. Babylon, religious texts and incanta- tions of, 269-270. Babylonian Penitential Psalm, quoted, 278. Bakewell, "Source Book in Ancient Philosophy," 374-379. Baldwin, Mark, "Social and Ethical Interpretations" cited on relation of genius to society, 139. Balfour, A. H., quoted on matter consciousness, 382. Bangs, John Kendrick, quotation from, 29. Beauty, 448-450; social, an end in itself, 448 ; true expression of * ' many in one," 449 ; a perfect whole, 450 ; an essential element ignored by science, 467. Begbie, H., "Twice-Born Men" cited, 56 ; on religious experience, 420. Benedictine Monks, social work of, . 230-231. Benson, A. C, "Beside StiU Waters" by, cited, 361. Bergson, Henri, "Creative Evolution" by, quoted, 258 note; the "one and many" for, 379-381, 386; on change, 432. ** Better self," its content, 321 ; iden- tified with subliminal consciousness by James, 322 ; in each one is God, 420. Blake, William, his creed was anarchy, 184. Bolton, T. L., rhythm of sense stimuli, 462 note. "Book of Daniel Drew," cited on separation of religion and morality, 133-134 ; quoted, on experience of "grace," 142. Bradley, F. H., on subliminal con- sciousness, 324; "one and many" for, 382-384, 386; value of our failures, 405. Brahmanism, idea of mutability in, compared with present idea, 433. Breasted, J. H., "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt" cited on idealizing tendency, 5-6 ; cited on hope and fear, 9 ; cited, 15 note. Bronte, Emily, "Wuthering Heights" by, quoted, 87 ; " The Old Stoic " by, quoted on individual effort, 134-135. Brooks, Phillips, Grace requires in- dividual cooperation, 79 ; hymn by, quoted, 46. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, " Aurora Leigh," cited on tragedy of genius, 88 ; quoted on sense of the contra- dictions of life, 361 ; quoted on inner and outer in religious life, 423. Browning, Robert, quoted on need and vision as sources of religious experi- ence, 2 ; "Saul" by, quoted on vica- rious atonement, 20 ; quoted on sin, 77 ; his poetry illustrates ethical type of religious consciousness, 99 ; "Pippa Passes" cited, 161 note; "Ring and The Book," quoted on source of religious experience, 207. Buddha, example of synthetic func- tion of reason, 23-24 ; experience of, 213-214 ; opposition between mysti- cal and practical experiences for, 341-342. Buddhism, pessimistic attitude due to transitoriness of life, 48, 49 ; goal of, described in terms of contrast to present finite state, 50-51 ; religious attitude of, 61 ; religious opposition for, 62 ; expression of the triadic form of the religious experience, 84 ; ultimate ethical elements of, 100- 101 ; need of solitude, 105 ; social religious consciousness in, 120 ; em- phasis on individual effort, 135-136 ; account of, 212-223 ; fundamental difficulty with temporal life for, 223 ; permanence sought by, compared with permanence sought by reli- gion of to-day, 436. Bunyan, John, type of sinner, 75; cited on suggestions from the sub- liminal consciousness, 302. Carlyle, T., on individual experience, 110. Carver, Thomas N., "A Religion Worth Having" cited on practical value of religion apart from its essence, 45 ; religion a scientific asset, 465. Catholic Church, social organization of, 231-232. Chance, 443, 444, 448. Change, prevalence of, 250 ; aspects of, for the religious consciousness, 251-253 ; impulse to, a form of an universal human tendency, 252 ; nature of, 253 ; its reality demand- ed by the moral consciousness, 253- 254 ; as the one reality, 265 ; con- sequences of this idea, 256-257; essential to man's moral growth, 438. Character, 423. INDEX 485 Christian experience, religious opposi- tion in, 63 ; expression of triadic form of the religious experience, 84. Christian hymnology, describes ideal goal in terms contrasting with pres- ent existence, 52-54. Christian Monasticism, flight from time worid, 225-228. Christian Science, form of religious mysticism of the day, 37. Christianity, mystical element in, giving way to social and ethical, 61 ; comparison with mystery religions, 400. Church Year, a cycle, 179. Columbus, Christopher, cited on de- votion to an ideal, 11. "Common Law," by Justice Holmes, quoted, 142 note. Communion, examples of this type of prayer, 285-290. Confessional prayer, and examples of, 290-292. Conscious will, essence of, 142. Consciousness, hymns for public wor- ship express the collective, 113; Bergson on, 379-381. Consciousness of sin, social, 55 ; three classes of, 66, 69. Cook, Sir Edward, "Life of Florence Nightingale " cited, 11. Cosmic opposition, 58. Cranch, Christopher P., poem by, quoted on discoordination in modern life, 361-362. Creative impulse, 3, 352. Criminal class, two types of, 74. Cyclic processes, in religion, 177 ; examples of, 178-181 ; significance and results of, 181 ; contrasted with serial processes, 181-182 ; element common to both, 182 ; tension and conflict between, 183- 184 ; arise from a sense of imper- fection and the need for expression, 199 ; as symbols, 203. Dante, on sinners, 71 note ; illustration in "Divine Comedy" of motor type of religious consciousness, 97 ; "great white rose of Paradise," instance of social religious con- sciousness, 119; quotation on meaning and destiny of man, 143 ; quotation from "Purgatorio" on penitence, 281-282 ; mediatory prayers in " Purgatorio," 292 ; ver- sion of Lord's Prayer, 294 ; isola- tion of solitary individual in the "Inferno," 367 ; " Inferno" cited on religion of sorrow and atonement, 403 note; "Divine Comedy" quoted on Divine love, 408. Dawson, George, mystical prayer of, 289. "Death a Glad Release," quoted on flight from the world, 192. Democracy, the new emphasis on the many, 344. Deussen, Paxil, "The Philosophy of the Upanishads " quoted, 372-373. Dewey and Tufts, "Ethics" quoted on modern aim of perfection in tem- poral world, 232. Dickenson, Lowes' "The Greek View of Life," 392. Dill, S., "Roman Society," 36 note. Divination, as form of prayer, 294- 297, 334. Doddridge, Philip, hymn by, illustra- ting motor type of religious con- sciousness, 97. Dostoieffsky, "Crime and Punish- ment" quoted on, repentance, 72; on prayer experience, 335. Dualism, universal problem, 431-432 ; in the world of art according to Nietzsche, 432^33 ; in relation to temporal-eternal problem, 433 ; in relation to static-dynamic pro- blem, 432-437. Dynamic, element in changing insti- tutions and opinions, 252 ; and dramatic world demanded by moral consciousness, 253-254 ; true mean- ing of, as destinct from change, 257-258; of prayer, 337; and static as forms of Way of Life, 208. See Static. Easter, real significance of its sym- bolism, 444. Eckhart, description of mystical ex- perience by, 92 ; on the "One," 343. Eclipses, 296-297. Efficacy of prayer, 327-331, 333. Egyptian Book of the Dead, hymns illustrating incantations, mystic formulae, etc., 367-369. Eliot, George, " Middlemarch " cited on endless consequences of sin, 80; "unearned increment" of natural gifts, 154-155 ; on ' 'grace," 157; on sorrow in religion, 162; prayer from "Adam Bede" by, 290 ; on immortality, 399. Embodiment in external form essen- tial to religion, 189. Emerson, R. W., "Over-soul" by, cited on recognition of difference between evil and good, 58; 486 INDEX "Saadi" by, quoted on mystic's need of solitude, 104-105; "Wor- ship" by, illustrates "unique" consciousness, 110; "Inspiration" by, cited on cases of genius, 157; on external embodiment of religion, 189; "Mayday" by, quoted on ultimate relation of inner and outer, 204; on prayer, 328 ; "Over-soul" by, quoted on efficacy of prayer, 333; "Friendship" by, quoted on personal attitude, 357 ; "Brahma" by, 373 ; idea of the universe, 460. Environment, affects man as chance and accident, 145 ; as suggestion, 145-146. Epictetus, on good and evil, 373-374. ' Epicureanism, reality the experience of the moment, 43 ; attitude toward time, 211. Erasmus, cited on devotion to an ideal, 9. Eternal, longing for the, exemplified in Buddhism, 212-223; in Mo- nasticism, 225-228; attitude criti- cised by morality and ethical re- ligion, 229; danger of its being superseded by "social whole" of the actual present, 235 ; needs the temporal, 238-239 ; this need illus- trated by various religions, 245 ; the beatitude of the religious con- sciousness is dependent on a way of life in a temporal world, 246. Eternal Christ, ideal of to-day, 20. Ethical, and mystical, a religious prob- lem, 366, see mystical ; religion, requires salvation by merit, 134 ; protests against "eternal attitude," 229; religious consciousness, 94- 103 ; its ideal infinitely removed, 94-95; contrasted with mystical consciousness, 94; demands a teleological process, 241-242; reli- gious ideal, expressed in motor terms, 96-99 ; values, not justifi- able by external form of authority, 171 ; vs. aesthetic values, 448 Process, serial and dramatic, 203 aspect of all historic religions, 395 Way of Life, difficulties involved, 395 ; Attitude, its consiunmation is in the aesthetic, 451. Ethical culture movement, religious character of, 119. Ethics, value to religion, 427. Euripides in the "Bacchae" cited on flight from the world, 191. Evil, problem of, 61, 402; beyond power of science to prevent, 466. Faber, description of mystical ex- perience by, 93. Faith, of the repentant sinner, 80 ; Paul's doctrine of justification by, 150-151 ; man's unconquerable, 455. Fate, in Russell's scientific interpreta- tion, 480-481. Fear, as source of religious experience, 6-7. F6n61on, Franpois de la Mothe, mystical prayer of, quoted, 288; on the perfect self, 414. Finite, surrender to absolute will of finite individual will, 342 ; unifying principle between infinite and, 464. Flight from the world, examples of, 191-192 ; danger of, 234. Forgiveness, 69-73, 134. Frazer, J. G., "The Golden Bough" by, 19 ; cited on magic incanta- tions, 265, 266, 271. Freedom, of the will in relation to sin, 74-76 ; for William James, 78 ; and determinism for Augustine and Paul, 151-153, see necessity; for Kant, 153, 165 ; final meaning of, 165-167 ; extent of man's, 437-438. Free-will, meaning of, 155, 165. Galsworthy, John, "The Country House" quoted, 33 note; "Strife" and "Justice" cited on social con- sciousness of sin, 55 note; "Jus- tice" cited on conflict between individual responsibility and orig- inal sin, 143-144. Genius, 87-88 ; tragedy of, exemplified by Shelley, "Aurora Leigh," Alice Brown's "The Man and the Militant," etc., 88 ; relation of, to the community, 138-141 ; cited in Emerson's "Inspiration," 157. God, concept of, 6; relation to man in teachings of Jesus, 16 ; of Hebrew Prophets, 17 ; evolution in con- ception of, 13, 472 ; the Ever-living Presence, 474-475 ; existence of, rejected by Russell, 477. Goethe, inspiration of genius, 140 ; "Faust" by, cited, 77; quoted on mystical experience, 94 ; quoted on ethical type of religious con- sciousness, 100 ; quoted on in- dividual effort, 133 ; Gretchen's prayer quoted, 280-281 ; symbolic of Romantic movement, 347-348. Grace, essential to man's salvation, 79 ; demands individual cooperation, 79 ; an indwelling presence yet INDEX 487 beyond individual's power, 124— 125 ; in the Upanishads, 126-127 ; in the Psalms, 127-128; in the Christian church and for poets, 128; Augustine's doctrine of, 128- 129 ; for St. Paul, 130 ; hymns on, 131-132 ; meaning and definitions of, 158 ; of God, 160-161 ; for St. Thomas Aquinas, 163 ; final mean- ing of, 164-165. Grace and merit, 124-141 ; essence of salvation for, 133 ; summary of the opposition, 137-138. Grace and Salvation, 158-159. Grace and Sin, for St. Augustine, 147-148; for St. Paul, 148-150. Greek State, a concrete embodiment of the many in one, 392. Gregory, St., quoted on instability of life, 251. Grenfell, Dr., "What Life Means for Me," cited on popular way of life, 421. "Growing God," characteristic of active attitude of to-day, 254. Guiney, Louise Imogen, poem by, on ethical type of religious experience, 102-103. Guyon, Mme., mystical experience described by, 93. Habit, 380-381. Halevy, Daniel, "Life of Friedrich Nietzsche" by, 370 note. Hamlet, quoted on repentance, 73. Hampde, Richard BoUe de, mystical experience described by, 93. Happiness, versus duty, 442-443 ; two possible answers to problem, 443- 445. Hardy, Thomas, "Jude the Obscure" quoted on devotion to an embodied ideal, 10—11 ; quotation on need of the personal element, 355-356. Harnack, quoted on freedom of will, 153. Harrison, Jane, "Prolegomena to Greek Religion" cited on orphism, 84 note ; quoted on petitional prayer, 276. Hawthorne, "Marble Faun" cited on religious experience in a church, 118 note. Hay, John, poem by, illustrating "religion of humanity," 188. Hebrew prophets, religious opposition for, 62 ; relation of individual judgment of, to social judgment, 173. Henley, quotation by, on individual effort, 134. Herbert, George, Life of, by G. H. Palmer, cited, 107; poems by, quoted, 107-108. Herd morality, result of, according to Nietzsche, 359. Hidery, prayer of, 277-278. Hindoo prayer, 263 note; 286. Hocking, W. E., "The Meaning of God in Human Experience" quoted on religious attitude, 360 note ; cited on the mystic's inner experience, 452 note. Homer's Ulysses cited on motor type of religious consciousness, 97. Horace's Carmen XXII quoted on escape from time world, 225. Hugo, Victor, "La Fiancee du Tim- balier" by, quoted on sacrificial rites, 284. Hunt's "Abou Ben Adhem" expresses social service ideal, 347. Ibsen's Peer Gynt, example of a man without an ideal, 10 ; Hedda Gabler, Nora Helmer, Rebecca West, rebels against laws of society, 351-352. Ideal, "Having an," 9; embodiment of the, 10-12 ; changing content of man's, 12-13 ; essential to man and the religious consciousness, 413 ; its content and implications, 414-416 ; content of the religious experience interpreted in terms of man's ultimate, 416-418 ; needs personal embodiment, 419 ; way of winning the, 421 ; objective reality of the, 456 ; loyalty to the, 470. IdeaUstic attitude, danger of, 455. Ideality, of man, essential source of religion, 6 ; of religion, a permanent fact, 21 ; resultant propositions, 21-22, 42-47; the ground of spir- itual religion, 454. Idealizing tendency, of children, poets, and speculative scientists, 4-5. Ideals, man's distinctive quality is his power to form, 1 ; man a creator of, 2 ; inspirers of conduct, 306. Idolatry, the danger of, 189. Imitative magic, 264. Immediacy, alone is not religion, 41- 45 ; one element of religious experience, 453. Immortality, concept of, 398 ; two motives in desire for, 399-402. Inca of Peru, petitional prayer of, 278. Indian Daily Prayer for World, 292. 488 INDEX Indian Prayer, 277. Individual, religious consciousness, ex- amples of, 103-1 10 ; self-dependent type of, expressed by Stoic Seneca, 105-106; dual type of, 106-107; type for master minds, 108-109 ; uniqueness of, 199-110. Individual, will, and the universal, social will, 146; judgment, as standard of right, 171 ; its relation to social judgment, 172-173 ; experience, rapture and enlighten- ment of the, 342. Individualism, characteristic of present age, 254-255; 353. Inner, life, given outward expression becomes a cyclic process, 183 ; highest outward manifestation of, religious spirit, 198 ; experience of, religious life is unique, 199. Inner and outer, aspects of religion, 175-177 ; a form of the problem of mind and body, 189-190 ; forms of reconciliation or compromise, 191- 196 ; unsatisfactoriness of these forms, 196 ; viewed as reality and appearance, 200 ; tendencies are contrary and conflicting, 200 ; re- sult of synthesis of the two tenden- cies, 201 ; interdependence of, 202 ; relations expressed by Spencer and Emerson, 204. Inward ideals, transforming power of, 205. James, William, "Varieties of Religious Experience" by, cited on mysticism as essence of religion, 37 ; on free- dom of will, 78; quoted on the subliminal, 168 note ; on time, 240 ; on prayer, 301, 302 ; theory of the subliminal consciousness cited, 305 ; its outcome in pluralism and individualism, 321-324. Jesus, parables of, illustrate meaning of life in relation to an ideal, 12 ; teachings in Synoptic Gospels, 16- 17; spiritual community for, 18- 19 ; fundamental ideas in gospel of, 389. Judgment, day of, 56; individual, 168; of unseen ideal, an element of religious experience, 453. Eant, categorical imperative, 116, 388 ; quoted on inspiration of genius, 140 ; autonomy the essence of conscious will, for, 142 ; moral responsibility rests on freedom, 153. Karma, 214, 215, 216. Kempis, Thomas h, "Imitation of Christ" by, cited on solitary life of the cloister, 105; "Imitation of Christ" quoted on renunciation of temporal for eternal life, 226-228; mystical prayer of, quoted, 288; self-renunciation keynote of, 342 ; prayer of, quoted, 344 ; quoted on surrender to the Ideal, 417, 418. "Lay of the Last Minstrel," cited on conflict of moral and aesthetic, 428 note. Le Bon, Gustave, "The Crowd" by, quoted on the social religious con- sciousness, 114. Liberalism, tends to Naturalism, 55. Lincoln, Abraham, cited on devotion to an ideal, 12. Longfellow, Samuel, hymn by, quoted on ethical religious consciousness, 95-96. Love, Divine, is form in which Chris- tian consciousness to-day pictures absolute personality, 407 ; in the "Divine Comedy," 408; har- monizes opposition between aes- thetic and moral, individual and social experiences, omnipotence and personality of God, 410. Magic, according to Frazer, 263; formulae and incantations as prayer, 263-271 ; examples of sympathetic and imitative, from East Indies, Papua, Malay, Burma, 265-266; of the Name, illustrated by Atharva Veda hymns, etc., 266- 267. Magnus, Albertus, "Scholastic Mysti- cism" by, quoted, 343, Man, his opposing tendencies, 439. Manichean dualism, influence on St. Augustine, 148. "Many," present emphasis on the, 343-344 ; tendency of Pragmatic Philosophy to the, as opposed to the "one," 366; and "one" form of the Way of Life, 208; see "One and Many." Mars, Father, prayer by, quoted, 278. Martineau, James, conception of free- dom, 153 ; petitional prayer of, quoted, 282 ; mystical prayer of, quoted, 289 ; sacrifice to the Ideal, 417; 418. Materialism, displaced by the "psy- chical," 37. Matheson, George, "O Love that Will Not Let Me Go " quoted on INDEX 489 "grace," 131; quoted on self- surrender to the ideal, 417. Matter, 375; for Bergson, 379-381. McDougall, quoted on rhythm, 461 note. Meredith, George, on the irrevocable deed, 70 ; novel by, cited on for- giveness, 72-73; "A Faith on Trial" quoted, 457 note. Merit, 132-136 ; an active experience, 137. Mind and Body, problem of, 190. Miracles, as test of value, 170-171. Mohammed, cited on solitude, 105. Mohammedanism, motor type of reli- gious consciousness in, 101. Molinos, Miguel de, mystical ex- perience described by, 93 ; quoted on self-renouncing self, 343. Monastic system, supreme example of flight from the world, 192. Monasticism, social character of, 120 ; an attempt to solve the problem of the "inner and outer," 193; of the West, contrasted with the Oriental, 230 ; value of its social structure, 231. Montgomery, J., quoted on "grace," 125. Morality, ideality of, 24 ; a serial pro- cess, 28; goal infinitely removed, for, 32; protests against "eternal" attitude, 229; problem of, 366; fundamental principle of, 406 ; pure, 407; Russell on, 477. Mozoomdar, prayer of, quoted, 282; on prayer, 338. Miiller, George, efficacy of prayer for, 300. Miinsterberg, on limitation of scientific construction of cause and effect, 144 ; on fluctuating attention, 461 note. Mutability, 434-439 ; Bergson on, 436. Mystery cults, attitude of impartial worship in Oriental, 478. Mystery religions appeal to the emo- tional nature, 36 ; union with God characteristic motive of, 400. Mystic, the, a religious genius, 87 ; his concern is the inner life, 90 ; twofold way of life for, 91 ; his experience is unique, 92 ; descrip- tion of his experience, 92-94 ; his experience immediate and ultimate, 466-457. Mystical, experience, unable to inter- pret all forms of religious experi- ence, 38 ; an individual experience, 86 ; religious consciousness and ethical religious consciousness, 86 ; vs. ethical experience, 87-103 ; summary of opposition and criti- cism of results, 366 ; opposition reconciled, 398; type of prayer, examples of, 287-290. Mystic-individualistic, consciousness, illustrations of, 103-104. Mysticism, a recurrent phenomenon, 36 ; an immediate and individual experience, 44-^5 ; a philosophical system and a living experience, 91 ; immediacy of the experience, 91- 92, 456-457; new scientific, 233- 234 ; limitations of, 468 ; danger of, 468-469; element of value in, 469. Mystics, Salvation for Oriental and Christian, 123 ; self -renouncing ex- perience of later Christian, 342; practical and social elements in experience of the, 394. Nash, Heruy Sylvester, "The Atoning Life" by, cited, 426 note. Naturalism, tendency toward, 55. Nature-tendency, in primitive reli- gions, 271-272. Necessity, doctrine of, 144; objection to, 144-145 ; and freedom, 141- 167. Need, a source of religious experience, 2. Neo-Pagan, attitude, 369, 478; ideal, 360. Neo-Paganism, present tendency to, 360. Neo-Platonism, mystical, aesthetic and ethical, 61. New Thought Movement, form of religious mysticism of to-day, 37. Newman, John Henry, description of mystical experience in "Dream of Gerontius" by, 94; prayer of, quoted, 152, 412. Nietzsche, "transformation of all values" disregarded by his fol- lowers, 47; abandoned active social life, 192 ; the Superman, 350; on science, 354; on "Herd Morality," 359 ; Eternal Recur- rence doctrine, 384r-385; on dualism in world of art, 432- 433 ; on time, 434 ; " Thus Spake Zarathustra " quoted, 34 ; quoted on the Superman, 135 ; quoted on the rebellious spirit, 351 ; quoted on the "eternal return," 370. Nightingale, Florence, cited on devo- tion to an ideal, 11. 490 INDEX Nirvana, described in terms of con- trast to finite state of existence, 50-51; meaning of, 216-223; trances of, 218-219 ; as defined in Buddhistic writings, 220 ; con- sciousness, 221 ; main concern is ethical, 223. Oldenberg, quoted on Buddhism, 24. Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, quoted on the static, 167. Omens, 295-296. "One," the, enlightened religious con- sciousness has tended to, 342 ; emphasis on, 352. *' One and Many," a philosophic prob- lem, 336 ; problem of, in Greek and Hindoo Philosophy, 371 ; in Stoic Philosophy, 373-375 ; for Plotinus, 375-379, 385; for Bergson, 379, 386; for Bradley, 382-384, 386; for Nietzsche, 384-385; the true self necessary for union of, 386; union of, in the Greek State, 392 ; in Jesus* thought of the Kingdom of Heaven, 393 ; in the mediaBval and Catholic churches, 393 ; united by a spiritual bond, 391 ; in society, 394 ; united by a moral bond, 395 ; opposition overcome, 405, 406; united in love, 409. Original energy, in various modern philosophies, 258. Orphism, of Euripides' " Bacchse," cited on worid weariness, 48 ; an attempt to solve moral opposition, 61 ; religious opposition for, 62 ; triadic form of religious experience ex- pressed in, 84. Outward form needed to give inner ideal concreteness, 205. Paganism, of present-day restlessness, 197. Palmer, George Herbert, case of , separation of religion and morality cited by, 26 ; on beauty, 448 ; "Life of George Herbert" by, 107. Parker, Theodore, cited on authority of individual conscience, 168. Pascal, mystical prayer of, 289 ; prayer of, 410. Patagonian prayer, 277. Pater, Walter, "Marius, the Epicu- rean" by, cited on reality as the experience of the moment, 43 ; quoted, 109 note. Paul, St., his Christianity, 19 ; reli- gious opposition for, 63 ; mystical experience described by, 92 ; motor type of religious consciousness de- scribed by, 97; on "grace," 19, 124-125, 130, 159, 163; spiritual life an achievement, 132 ; personal experience of sin and grace, 148- 149; doctrine of sin and grace, 150 ; doctrine of justification by faith, 150-151 ; on determinism and freedom, 151-153; his ex- perience of prayer, 329-330. Personal element, 354-357. Personality, man's highest concept, 187 ; idealization of a, 188 ; im- portance of, to religious experience, 364 ; concept of, in contemporary philosophy, 364-365; its danger, 366 ; nature of, 389-391 ; the ulti- mate term for religion, 406 ; man's task and goal is to create, 426; the reality of religious experience, 474. Pessimism, outcome of scientific in- terpretation of world, 481. Petition and spiritual prayer, 335. Pfleiderer, Otto, on the deity in primi- tive religions, 14, 273; "Religion and Historic Faiths" by, cited on the opposition of the cosmic and moral, 58, 59, 61. Philosophy, former tendency to the "one," present tendency to the "many," 343. Pierce, Charles, on conclusions of science, 145. Plato, the "one" in the system of, 371. Plotinus, doctrine of dualism, 375- 379. Plutarch, refutation of Stoic theodicy, 375. Positivism, attitude of, toward time, 211. Pragmatism, 365. Prayer, social nature of primitive, 112 ; external strength in answers to, 157 ; static or dynamic, 262- 337 ; elements, tendencies and oppositions in, 262-263 ; classes of, 263 ; magic type of, 263-271 ; origin of petitional type of, 271- 274 ; nature of, in Vedic hymns, 274-275; development of, in religions of Greece and Israel and in Hebrew Psalms, 275-276; ex- amples of petitional type of, 276- 278 ; transitional group of, 279- 282 ; for spiritual blessings in petitional form, 282-283; two characteristics of, 283-285: trial INDEX 491 definition of, 285; as communion, 285-294; social aspects of, 291- 294; as divination, 294-297; universal elements of religious experience found in, 297-298; place of man's will in, 299 ; static and dynamic qualities of com- munion as, 299-300 ; as auto- suggestion, 301 ; for James, 301- 302 ; as cure of functional diseases, 304 ; ethical, 305 ; an individual and social experience, 307 ; ex- perience in case of sorrow, 309- 310 ; in case of sin, 318 ; method of approach, 316 ; efl&cacy of, 317 ; ethical or spiritual form of, 328; efficacy of, 329 ; subliminal self theory of, 330; a will attitude, 331 ; a complex experience, 331 ; suggestion and efficacy of, 333 ; as attitude of self-control and in- sight, 336 ; social and individual, 337 ; a rhythmic state, 337 ; static and dynamic, 337-338; for Mo- zoomdar, 338. Prayer-mill of Thibetan Buddhists, 178-179. "Prayer to Maruts, the Storm Gods," quoted on "grace," 125. Psalms, ideal goal described in, 51- 52 ; religious opposition expressed in, 63; quoted on "grace," 127- 128; quoted on permanence of God, 251 ; quoted on prayer, 279 ; union with divine, 449. " Psychical," displaces the old material- ism, 37. Psycho-physical causation, fails to interpret efficacy of prayer, 300- 301. Pscho-physical parallelism, as solution of sin and evil, 76 ; defect of, 301. Psychotherapeutics, a type of scientific religion, 465. Puffer, Ethel D. (Mrs. Brewster), quoted on aesthetic experience, 440. Puritanism, inner and outer aspects of, 194-195. Pusey, Edward Bouverie, attitude of renunciation described by, 310-311. Pyramid Texts of Egypt, 5. Quakers, way of salvation for, 123 ; cited on individual religious con- sciousness, 106. *'Quies," principle of, 226; criticism of, 229-230. Rationalism, difficulty with modem, 162. Rationalists, 168. Rationality of universe, 458. Rauschenbusch, "Prayer for Working- men" by, quoted, 293. Reality, of pure experience, 37-38; for Bradley, 382-384, 386; for the religious experience, 458; sought by Pragmatists, Mystics, etc., 459. Reason, 23. Rebels, of the Romantic Movement, 347 ; of the present day, 351 ; future type of, 360 ; real issue for, 387. Redemption, for Augustine, 129; for Nietzsche, 385. Religion, ideality of, 2; ethical development of, traced in the religion of Israel, 14-17 ; universal- ity of, 21 ; its dependence on reason, 22-23 ; spiritual basis of, endangered by the "immediate" theories, 47 ; earliest form of, according to Pfleiderer, 59; a practice, 85 ; and the time stream, 237 ; its essence, 244 ; needs an adequate metaphysic, 385 ; per- sonality the ultimate term for, 406; of the inner life needs outer forms, 423 ; modern scientific type of, 465 ; its value recognized by scientists, 465 ; its mission, 470 ; of humanity, 187-188 ; of science, failure of, 465-466, non-existent, 46. Religion and morality, 24—36 ; compari- son of early forms of, 25 ; distinc- tion between, 26-28, 32-36; 406. Religious attitude, contrast with present-day attitude, 198; value of, 472 ; value of, for Russell, 477 ; incompatible with scientific interpretation of universe, 481. Religious ceremonies, cyclic processes, 179. Religious consciousness, psychological paradox of, 3 ; goal for, described in terms contrasting with temporal existence, 50-54; third term of the, 83-84; ethical motor type of, 94-103 ; examples of social, 117- 120 ; a harmony of various ex- periences, 121 ; its longing for permanence, 212 ; a temporal process, 244 ; reality is static for the, 250-252; dynamic element of, 252; "one-many" form of, 341 ; ideality the basic fact of, 413 ; reality the ideal demanded by the, 466; its goal, 474. 492 INDEX Religious experience, need as source of, 2 ; ideality of man as source of, 3-6 ; fear as source of, 6-9 ; not ground for, 38 ; reality of, 39 ; uni- versal elements of, 41-65 ; ideality and immediacy of, 41-42 ; funda- mental question for, 41 ; universal form of a triadic relation, 42, 58, 84 ; elimination of all purely immediate experiences, 42-44 ; elimination of merely " natural " experiences, 45- 46 ; optimism and dissatisfaction in, 47-54 ; opposition for, 55-56 ; cosmic and moral opposition, 58 ; opposition in concrete experiences, 62-64 ; third term in the triadic relation, 83, 85, see Salvation and Way of Life ; triadic form as expressed in historical religions, 84 ; varieties of, 86 ; opposition between individual and social types of, 103-121; social type of, 110- 121 ; nature of, 121 ; interpreted in terms of man's ultimate ideal, 416-417; not an illusion, 420; final attitude of, 449 ; final opposi- tion, 451 ; exemplified by concept of rhythm, 460-464. Religious faith, justification of, 28-32. Religious festivals, cyclic processes, 180. Religious ideal, content changes, 21, 470 ; realization of, not found in natural or moral life, 32-36; a social ideal, 415. Religious rites and ritual, cyclic processes, 178-179. "Religion Worth Having, A," by T. N. Carver, cited, 45 ; cited on value of religion to science, 465. Repentance, meaning of, 72-73. Restlessness of modern life, 255-256. Rhythm, structure of, 461 note ; an individual and social experience, 462; significance of, 462-464. Rhythmic, phenomena of nature, 19 ; expression of surplus emotion, 185-186 ; movement, social motif of, 186. Ribot, "Diseases of the Will" by, quoted, 75. Riklin, Dr., on aniniism, 14. Rite of confession, cyclic process, 180. Roman Breviary, quoted on the Way of Life, 423. Roman Catholic church, 193. Romantic Movement, mirrored in Goethe's Faust, 347. Rosary, the cyclic in religion, 178. Rossetti, Christina G., prayers of, quoted, 290, 470. Royce, on loyalty, 388; "The World and the Individual" by, cited on self-representative system, 397 ; cited on irrevocableness of deeds, 458 ; quoted on consciousness and self-representation, 463; "The Problem of Christianity" cited on the atonement doctrine, 473 note. Russell, Hon. Bertrand, "The Essence of Religion," cited, 472 note; criticism of article in Hibhert Journal by, 477-481. Ruysbrock, mystical experience de- scribed by, 92-93 ; quoted on mystic-individualistic conscious- ness, 104. Sales, Francis de, mystical experience described by, 92. Salvation, a way of life, 84 ; various ways of, 123 ; sources of the experience of, 124; by "grace," 20, 129-130, 142-143, 162; for Buddhism, 214. Santayana, George, "Life of Reason" cited on cyclic and serial, 202 ; empiricism and mysticism of, 234. Schopenhauer, on freedom of the will, 155. Science, creative imagination of, 4-6; and religion, 465. Scientific attitude, vs. appreciative attitude, 467 note. Scott, Capt., cited on devotion to an ideal, 11. Scudder, E., quotation on "grace," 125. Self, problem of the, 387-388; place of the, in various philosophies, 385 ; way of attaining the true, 395 ; the true, a self of selves, 405 ; man's ideal is a universal, 414 ; problem of self-assertive, and self-renouncing, 352-366. Self-realization, 452. Self-renunciation, way of salvation, 123. Self-representative system, 397. Self-sacrifice, 396. Self-surrender, 470 note. Serial, process, 177 ; and cyclic forms, 186-187. Shelley, quoted on transitoriness of life, 210 ; on interrelatedness of forms of religious consciousness, 249 ; a rebel against external authority, 349; "Prometheus Un- bound" by, an example of rebellion of Romantic Movement, 349-350; cited, 370. INDEX 493 Silesius, Angelus, quotation by, 366. Sin, existence of, questioned, 65 ; definition of, 66, 78; and forgive- ness, 69-73 ; consequences of voluntary, 70 ; existence of real, 73-78 ; types of sinners, 74 ; and freedom of will, 74, 77 ; and evil, 75 ; a metaphysical problem, 76 ; existence of, 77 ; its consequences endless, 80 ; and freedom, 141-143 ; cause of, in modern view, 143 ; Paul's doctrine of, 150; and the prayer experience, 318-320 ; and ignorance, 320. Smith, Robertson, on Jinni and gods, 8, 15; "The Religion of the Semites" cited on "taboo," 13 note ; on the blood bond, 25 ; on social element in religion, 111-112. Social, authority vs. individual judg- ment, 168 ; justice, the modern ideal, 346 ; result of, 358-359. Social consciousness, 197-198, 324-327. Social, milieu, limits man's freedom, 146 ; tendency in primitive religion, 272. Social religious consciousness, instances of, 119-121. Social religious experience, classes of, 112-113; as emotional, 114; re- vealed in public thought, 115; as socialization of the will, 115; as mystical union, 116; in concep- tion of the church universal, 117. Social scientific consciousness, 333, 334. Social service, 368-369 ; religion of, 464. Socialism, 195 ; its value and limita- tions, 469. Socialistic Utopia, as a solution, 194. Socrates, quoted on individual vs. social judgment, 173 ; prayer of, 283. Sorrow, and the prayer experience, 309-317 ; and sin and the prayer experience, 318-320; religion of, 403 ; mystery of, 405 ; in uni- verse, 445. Spencer, Edmund, quoted on intimate relation of inner and outer, 204. Spencer, Edward Glenfaun, "Unto These Least" by, quoted on social service ideal, 346. Spirit, its nature, 463. Spiritual religion, essence of, 452, 454. Spiritual tendency in religion, 177. Starbuck, cited on religious opposition, 64 ; on sin, 75 ; on temperamental differences between man and woman, 258-259; on suggestion, 303-304. Static, universe, result of, 254 ; reli- gious consciousness seeks the, 257; objection to, conception, 257; forms of religious experience, 260- 262. Static-dynamic, form of the Way of Life, 249 ; opposition in tempera- ment, 258-259; and religion and morality, 259 ; problem of, in re- lation to prayer, 262, 337-338. Stevenson, R. L., "If This Were Faith" by, quoted on ethical reli- gious consciousness, 100 ; "unique- ness" in writings of, 110; prayer by, 291-292. Stoic, attitude expressed in Swin- burne's "Hertha" and Nietzsche's Superman, 135; Philosophy, prob- lem of "one and many" for, 373- 375. Stoicism, religious attitude of, 61 ; religious opposition for, 62 ; ethical elements of, 100-101 ; idea of mutability in, 433. Stoics, the, ideal goal of, 52. Subjective idealism, 35-36 ; 456, Subliminal consciousness, inspiration of genius, 140-141 ; value of its dicta, 168-169 ; and eflScacy of prayer, 301 ; more than self-con- scious personality, 302 ; suggesti- ble, 305-306 ; its nature and value, 321-324. Subliminal experience, 170. Subliminal self, its nature, 156, 305 ; a suggestible and social self, 307. Sudermann's Magda, a rebel, 351. Suggestible consciousness, the, and the absolute ideal, 337. Suggestion, social, 302 ; examples of, 334 ; not ultimate, 306 ; value of, 306, 308; and the efficacy of prayer, 333-336. Supreme Good, for Augustine, 151. Susa, mystical experience described in "Vision of Eternal Wisdom" by, 93. Swedenborg, relation of body and soul for, 203. Swinburne, quoted on subjective idealism, 36; "Hertha" by, quoted, 135 note. Sympathetic magic, 264, 265. Taboo, in primitive prayer, 271. Tagore, Rabindranath, quotation on social service ideal, 346. Tauler, quoted on mysticism, 91 ; mystical experience described by, 92; a prayer by, quoted, 315} 494 INDEX on self-surrender, 342; religion a thing of the inner life for, 423. Taylor, Graham, on change, 438. Temporal, life for Buddhism, 225; life emphasized at present, 232 ; life contrasted with Nirvana, 237 ; alone reduces to eternal recurrence, 239 ; process as a universal creative will, 243; and Eternal, forms of Way of Life, 208-247; opposition between, 242; union of, 243-244, 245, 246,^247. Tennyson, "In Memoriam" by, cited on the mystical experience, 92 ; "Ulysses" and "Wages" by, quoted on motor type of religious consciousness, 98 note, 99; quoted on relation between God and man, 191 ; on primal energy, 380 ; on change and reality, 437. Theresa, St., autobiography of, quoted, 103-104; mystical prayer of, 288. Thomas of Celano, " Dies Irse" quoted, 57. Thompson, Francis, poem by, 102. Time, its nature, 208-209; for the religious experience, 237 ; a form of the wiU, 230, 249 ; for WiUiam James, 240; quantitative, 240; a tragic fact, 434. "Timeless," moments of life, 236-237. Tolstoy, Count Leo, "Resurrection" by, cited on consciousness of sin, 55 note ; cited on flight from the world, 192 ; on personality, 390. Transitoriness, an essential characteris- tic of human life, 208 ; meaning- lessness of, 210-211. Trust, fundamental religious attitude, 453 ; justification of, 454. Truth, tests of, 168. Tyler, John, quoted on ethical type of religious consciousness, 99 note. "Udana," translation from, 223. Unity, modem tendency toward, 353. " Upanishads," quoted on individual type of religious consciousness, 106; on "grace," 126-127; on the "one," 371, 372. Utopian ideals, expression of religious opposition in, 64. Values, modern transformation in, 344 ; modern test of, 369. Van Dyke, Henry, poems by, cited on social service ideal, 346. Van Gennep, A., "La Formation des Legendes" cited on evolution of the conception of God, 13-14. Vaughn, poem by, quoted on self- surrender to God, 311. Vedic Hymns, quotation on "grace" from the, 125; examples of peti- tional type of prayer from the, 277. Virgil's ^neas, cited on motor type of religious consciousness, 97. Warren, Henry, "Buddhism in Trans- lation," 24. Washington, Booker T., "The Man Furthest Down" cited on hostility of religion and morality, 26 note. Way of Life, its nature, 84-85 ; series of oppositions in, 85-86; its essence, 121 ; chief oppositions in, 123-124; its source, 124; nature and source of the, 207 ; its forms, 208; popular way to- day, 421 ; varied form of, 423. See Salvation. Wells, H. G., "New Machiavelli" by, quoted on mutability and despair, 435-436. Wesley, Charles, quotation by, on "grace," 125. Wesleyans, cited on individual reli- gious consciousness, 106. Whitman, Walt, "Prayer of Colum- bus" quoted, 417-418. Wiley, Hiram O., "He Leads Us On" by, quoted on "grace," 131-132. Will, its essence and ideality, 244; and prayer, 331. Wilson, President, quoted on the new age, 235. Woolley, Celia, poem by, quoted on personality, 357-358. Woolman, John, prayer in sorrow, 315. Wordsworth, William, mystical con- sciousness described by, 93-94 ; "Ode to Duty" by, cited on ethical religious consciousness, 95 note; quoted on morality, 153. Worldly tendency in religious experi- ence, a cyclic process, 177. Worship, acts of, 113; man's need of, 187; value of, 422; "selective" and "impartial," for Russell, 477- 479. Wotton, Sir Henry, hymn by, quoted on escape from time world, 225. Zoroaster, prayers from the Gathas of, 287-288. Zoroastrianism, example of active type of religious consciousness, 100; conflict between moral and naturalistic conceptions of the divine in, 136. INDEX 495 SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLICAL REFERENCES 1 Corinthians 12 : 4 ; 10 : 17, quoted on mysticism, 117 ; 12, quoted on the many in one, 392 ; 13, quoted on love, 407. 2 Corinthians 12, quoted on prayer, 330. Deuteronomy 15, cited on ethical re- ligious consciousness, 95 ; 31 : 6, quoted on prayer, 336. Ephesians 6 : 10-17, quoted on ethical religious consciousness, 97. Hosea 2, 3, 11, cited on ethical religious consciousness, 98. Isaiah 60, 61, 62, quoted on the reli- gious opposition, 63 ; 53, quoted on the ethical religious consciousness, 98 ; 40 : 30, 31 ; 30 : 5, quoted on prayer, 336. Jeremiah 20 : 7-9, quoted on individual religious experience, 109 ; 31, 33, quoted on individual religious ex- perience, 110. John 10 : 10-14, quoted on meaning of life in relation to an ideal, 12 ; 15 : 4, 6, 10 ; 17 : 10, 11 ; 5 : 21, quoted on mysticism, 116; 15 : 13, quoted on ethical religious consciousness, 98 ; 21, 22, quoted on temporal and eternal, 246 ; 10 : 10, cited on goal of Christianity, 360 note; 15, quoted on love, 409. Kings, conflict between moral and nat- uralistic conceptions of the divine in, 136. Mark 8 : 34-36, quoted on meaning of life in relation to an ideal, 12. Matthew 13 • 44, 45, quoted on mean- ing of life in relation to an ideal, 12; 6, quoted on ethical religioua consciousness, 96 ; 6 : 9, 45 ; 7:11, cited on individual value, 254 ; 13, quoted on the many in one, 393. Philippians 3 : 13, 14, quoted on motor type of reUgious conscious- ness, 97 ; 3:9, 10, quoted on " grace," 149 ; 3, Paul's idea of self-determination in, 152. Proverbs 6 : 23, quoted on uniqueness of religious experience, 110. Revelation 21 : 1, 4 ; 22 : 5, quoted on the static demanded by the religious consciousness, 257. Romans 12 : 5, quoted on mysticism, 117; 8:29, 30, ; quoted on deter- minism and necessity, 142 ; 8—12, cited on Paul's doctrine of fore- ordination, 151 ; 7 : 7-15, quoted on " grace," 159 ; 6 : 3-11, cited on mystical union with the divine, 400. Zephaniah 1, quoted on Day of Judg- ment, 67. Printed in the United States of America. 'TpHE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. NEW BOOKS ON RELIGION Modern Religious Movements in India By J. W. FARQUHAR Cloth^ 8vOj illustrated, $2.jo This comprehensive survey of present-day religious tendencies in India is of tremendous importance and significance to every student of religion. In it are described the various new religious organizations which, under the impact of the West, have arisen in India during the past century. 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