GIFT OF 
 SEELEY W. MUDD 
 
 and 
 
 GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER 
 DR. JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 
 JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI 
 
 to the 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH 
 
 JOHN FISKE 
 
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
The Great Mystery 
 
" BUT what avail inadequate words to reach 
 The innermost of Truth ? Who shall essay, 
 Blinded and weak, to point and lead the way, 
 Or solve the mystery in familiar speech ? 
 Yet, if it be that something not thy own, 
 
 Some shadow of the Thought to which our schemes, 
 Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams, 
 Is even to thy unworthiness made known, 
 Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare 
 To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine 
 The real seem false, the beauty undivine. 
 So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer, 
 Give what seems given thee. It may prove a seed 
 Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds of need." 
 
 WHITTIER. 
 
The Great Mystery 
 
 Two Studies on the Same Subject 
 
 One in the Book of Revelation 
 the Other in the Book of Nature 
 
 BY 
 
 ELIZABETH MILLER JEFFERYS 
 
 AND 
 
 WILLIAM HAMILTON JEFFERYS, A.M., M.D. 
 
 "This is a Great Mystery." EPH. v. 32. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO 
 103-105 SOUTH FIFTEENTH STREET 
 
 o r\ 
 
Copyright, 1901, by 
 ELIZABETH MILLER JEFFERYS 
 
 AND 
 WILLIAM HAMILTON JEFFERYS. 
 
Preface 
 
 3 
 
 THE books of God are two, and all that He has 
 taught us of Himself, His works and ways; His 
 essential Being and its manifestations, is con- 
 tained in these two books. And they must 
 agree; they cannot contradict each other; for 
 their Author is one and the same, and He is 
 Divine. 
 
 If we do not feel their harmony, it is because 
 
 something is wanting in us, not in them. We 
 
 5? have not all the facts in the case, we cannot 
 
 understand the language in which the records 
 
 are written. And we are too impatient, we can- 
 
 ~ not wait. 
 
 Men are realizing more and more, that the 
 teaching of the Bible is progressive, just as the 
 teaching of Nature is. But how differently men 
 deal with the two books! Nature students are 
 reverent. They desire ardently to learn what 
 Nature has to teach, they search . and study 
 to draw from Nature her secrets. But Bible 
 
 5 
 
6 Preface 
 
 study to-day seems to mean destructive criti- 
 cism. Jesus did not so deal with His Father's 
 book. He came not to destroy the law and the 
 prophets, but to fulfil, to fill up, (that which was 
 wanting). His teaching was a development of 
 the older teaching, but the germs were all there. 
 Who can doubt that there are other great truths 
 whose germs lie hidden in the book of God, 
 waiting to reward the searcher who has the rev- 
 erent heart and the childlike spirit! 
 
 Dr. A. J. Mason, after conceding that the 
 utmost deference should be paid to the general 
 opinion of Christians of past ages, goes on to 
 say: "This by no means excludes the necessity 
 of fresh investigations into the meaning of Scrip- 
 ture. In the first place, there are large tracts of 
 the New Testament l which have never received 
 any authoritative interpretation, and which 
 abundantly repay study; and, in the second 
 place, even in some instances where it may be 
 said that there is something like an authoritative 
 interpretation, the authority is mainly concerned 
 to assert a general principle of belief which must 
 not be contravened, rather than to assert that the 
 
 1 Are there not large tracts in the Old Testament also ? 
 
Preface 7 
 
 belief is expressed in the text in question. It 
 may be readily conceded that the Church is, in a 
 general sense, the interpreter of Scripture, with- 
 out holding that a long current interpretation of a 
 particular passage is critically correct." 1 
 
 The true theological method of regarding 
 doctrine is thus set forth: "It considers the 
 doctrinal substance of the Scriptures as a living 
 seed, capable of the most prolific development. 
 In the midst of the most unfavorable influences, 
 it retains the formative energy by which it 
 evokes new and living products adapted to the 
 times. It always recurs to the Scriptures, and 
 measures the products by this canon, but those 
 plants which spring from biblical roots, it will 
 neither drive back into their roots nor cut off." 2 
 
 I ask the readers of the First Study to consider 
 whether the doctrine therein set forth be not "a 
 plant springing from biblical roots," "a new and 
 living product adapted to the times." 
 
 The Second Study is intended to show how 
 the lesson taught implicitly in the Book of 
 Revelation, lying everywhere in germ ready to 
 
 1 Mason's " Conditions of Our Lord's Life on Earth," p. 14. 
 
 2 Hagenback's " History of Doctrine," p. 24. 
 
8 Preface 
 
 spring to the light, is taught explicitly and most 
 clearly on every page of the great Book of 
 Nature; thus does each very wonderfully confirm 
 and complement the other. The second argu- 
 ment will doubtless meet with a more ready 
 acceptance than the first. For men's ears are 
 ever open to hear Nature's voices, and their 
 hearts to receive her teachings. 
 
 The first of the two studies in this book was 
 written in its present shape 1 in April, 1867, thirty- 
 three years ago, the intention being shortly to 
 recast and publish it in book or pamphlet form. 
 After much thought, it was decided that the time 
 had not yet come. 
 
 Since then many things have changed. The 
 trend of modern thought both religious and 
 scientific, has been most decidedly in the direc- 
 tion of such an idea of God as is set forth in this 
 study. 
 
 One who was unborn when this paper was 
 written, now insists that it should see the light. 
 He has offered to do that part for which I am 
 quite incompetent, that is, to prepare the second 
 paper showing the argument from the Book of 
 
 1 That of a letter to my father. 
 
Preface 9 
 
 Nature, for such an idea of God, for which 
 special studies have fitted him. It would seem 
 that the time indeed has come. And it may be 
 that I have been spared to give my testimony 
 before I go hence. So that I dare not refuse. 
 May the Divine Spirit accept and bless our work! 
 
 E. M. J. 
 
 Philadelphia, November 2g, zgoo. 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 
 
 " The things that are in heaven who hath searched out, and 
 Thy counsel who hath known, except Thou give Wisdom, and 
 send Thy Holy Spirit from above ? " WISDOM ix. 16, 17. 
 
go 
 
 ZTbe JSeloveD anD Ibonorefc flbemorg 
 
 of 
 3fatber anD jflftotbet 
 
Note Introductory to First Study 
 
 THE reason why I have insisted on the date 
 (April I4th, 1867) of the following letter is this: In 
 1884 there appeared anonymously a religious ro- 
 mance, " Arius the Libyan," wherein were some 
 things that I might be accused of having ap- 
 propriated, had my article been written after that 
 date. I wish therefore to be able to say that the 
 following letter stands just as it was written, 
 seventeen years before "Arius the Libyan" was 
 in print. I have indeed omitted a few things, 
 some because they were of a personal character, 
 others because they seemed unnecessary, but I 
 have added nothing and changed nothing. 
 
 The notes which follow the letter and are 
 marked "A, B, C," and so on to "O," were 
 part of the original document, and were sent 
 to my father with the letter. The notes inserted 
 in the body of the letter and the footnotes have 
 been added in preparing it for publication. 
 
 15 
 
April i4th, 1867. 
 MY DEAR FATHER: 
 
 I have long wished to have a talk with 
 you on a subject which has been lying very deep 
 in my heart for a long time; but the subject is one 
 so difficult to broach, and so difficult to treat, the 
 thoughts which I have had are so hard to put in 
 words; that I am at last driven to a strange 
 plan (under the circumstances) that of throwing 
 what I have to say in the form of a letter. 
 
 I ask beforehand your indulgent patience, and 
 if anything you read should, as it very possibly 
 may, startle or shock you by its very newness 
 and strangeness, when I tell you that the idea 
 herein developed is the gradual growth of ten 
 years, beginning with my first serious thoughts 
 of religion, a conviction gradually deepening 
 all that time, until I have at last found courage to 
 give it a tangible shape, I am sure you will at 
 least not accuse me of intentional irreverence nor 
 presumption. I take heart, remembering how 
 you lately commended Robertson for his bold- 
 ness in speaking what he believed to be the 
 16 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 17 
 
 truth, even when it conflicted with generally re- 
 ceived notions. 
 
 At various periods of my life, but chiefly at 
 the beginning of my religious life, my mind was 
 exercised on the doctrine of the Trinity; not as 
 one difficult to believe, but hard to get hold of, 
 intangible. I could not see exactly what I was 
 
 to believe. Once I heard Dr. B preach a 
 
 sermon on the subject, and he said in substance 
 (I cannot remember the words) that we might 
 naturally and reasonably have concluded that 
 God's mode of existence would be different from 
 anything we know, in such a sense, he would 
 say, that we could form no conception of it from 
 analogy. That struck me at the time as very 
 deep, and for a time, quieted me. I have since 
 then, seen something in Trench, deeper and more 
 to the purpose, although it may be, unconsciously 
 so. Robertson (F. W.) on this subject is to me 
 very vague and unsatisfactory, Kingsley not much 
 better. 
 
 How the idea that I am about, though imper- 
 fectly, to develop, first took root in my mind I 
 can hardly tell. Very early in my religious life, 
 it came to me by a sort of inspiration, not from 
 
i8 The Great Mystery 
 
 any book or word of man, of that I am certain; 
 although I have since met with many passages 
 in various authors, especially in Trench, which 
 might, I thought, have suggested it, had I seen 
 them before. The more I have studied the sub- 
 ject (with very limited means and capacities, it is 
 true), the more I feel that what I have found is 
 the truth of God; and if it be so, then why hide 
 it in my own breast; and if not, let my error be 
 enlightened. 
 
 If this be indeed, as I believe it is, a truth 
 taught all through the Bible, although for a rea- 
 son, dimly taught, if it be one which helps us to 
 gain by analogy a clearer comprehension of the 
 mysterious doctrine of the Trinity, if it throw 
 light on many hitherto mysterious passages of 
 Scripture, if it supply a great and craving need 
 in the human heart, one that in the effort to fill 
 it with husks, has been the fruitful source of 
 error, is it not worth considering by those who 
 are better able to deal with it than I ? 
 
 I can better, perhaps, preface by that "some- 
 thing deeper" from Trench to which I have 
 referred. He says in one of his introductory 
 chapters to the Notes on the Parables, page 18: 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 19 
 
 "Their power (that is of the analogies in the 
 parables) lies in the harmony unconsciously felt 
 by all men, and by deeper minds continually rec- 
 ognized and plainly perceived, between the 
 natural and the spiritual worlds, so that analogies 
 from the first are felt to be something more than 
 illustrations, happily but yet arbitrarily chosen. 
 They are arguments and may be alleged as wit- 
 nesses, the world of nature being throughout a 
 witness for the world of spirit, constituted for 
 that very end. All lovers of truth readily ac- 
 knowledge these mysterious harmonies and the 
 force of the arguments derived from them. To 
 them the things on earth are copies of the things in 
 heaven. They know that the earthly tabernacle 
 is made after the pattern of things seen in the 
 Mount, and the question suggested by the angel 
 in Milton is often forced upon their meditations: 
 
 " What if earth 
 
 Be but the shadow of heaven and things therein 
 Each to each other like, more than on earth is thought ? " 
 
 Further on he says: "They belong to each other, 
 the type and the thing typified, by an inward 
 necessity; they were linked together long before 
 by the law of a secret affinity." And in a note: 
 
2o The Great Mystery 
 
 "Out of a true sense of this has grown our use 
 of the word likely. There is a confident expec- 
 tation in the minds of men of the reappearance 
 in higher spheres of the same laws and relations 
 which they have recognized in lower: and thus 
 that which is like is also likely or probable." 
 
 In one of his Westminster sermons he says: 
 "An ancient interpreter of Scripture has not 
 scrupled to declare that there are in the book of 
 Revelation (The Apocalypse) as many mysteries 
 as there are words. True as these words are, 
 taken with that natural limitation which of 
 course they demand as applied to that wonderful 
 book, they may be affirmed to be truer still in 
 regard to the first three chapters of Genesis." 
 And again: "Revelation which means unveiling, 
 an unveiling of God, of His character and being, 
 must have mysteries, yea many and deep ones." 
 
 In the first of these three chapters, at the 26th 
 verse we find: " And God said, Let us make man 
 in our image, after our likeness, and let them 
 have dominion, etc." Here we have first unity 
 "God said," next plurality (not yet Trinity) "let 
 us make." Then "let us make man" unity 
 again, "and let them have dominion " plurality 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 21 
 
 again. Third " in our image, after our likeness." 
 (See Trench's Synonyms.) Image implies more 
 than mere resemblance, a copy after some exist- 
 ing pattern. This form of words is repeated 
 thrice in the space of a few lines. Now wherein 
 consists this image of God so emphasized ? "So 
 God created man in His own image, in the image 
 of God created He him, male and female created 
 He them/' If you were hearing that verse for 
 the first time, without any preconceived notions, 
 could it fail to strike you that God is what can 
 only be appropriately imaged by man in his dual 
 state ? 
 
 "Man is at once a summing-up of that which was 
 before him, and a point of new departure. The say- 
 ing, ' Let Us make man in Our image ' (Gen. i. 26), 
 is in no way opposed to the modern theory of our de- 
 velopment (so far as the animal nature is concerned) 
 out of lower forms of life." " In another verse, which 
 by some is supposed to contain a different tradition, 
 and has been hastily judged incompatible with the 
 first, we read, 'The Lord God formed man of the 
 dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
 breath of life.' (Gen. ii. 7.) Without disloyalty to 
 these words, we may, in the light of modern discov- 
 eries, believe that the dust was already animated dust 
 before the breathing spoken of, and ages may have 
 
22 The Great Mystery 
 
 elapsed between the 'forming' and the breathing." 
 (Mason, "Faith of the Gospel," pp. 81, 82.) 
 
 In fact, it makes even more strongly for our argu- 
 ment, if looking back to the primal life cell, you think 
 of it as potentially man, and of God as then and 
 there, making man "in His own image, male and 
 female." 1 
 
 Says Christ "From the beginning of the crea- 
 tion God made them male and female. For this 
 cause shall a man cleave unto his wife and they 
 shall be one flesh; so that they are no more 
 twain but one flesh. What therefore God hath 
 joined together, let not man put asunder." For 
 what cause ? That they may eternally perpetu- 
 ate, even though sinful and fallen, the image of 
 God. 2 
 
 But God is three in one. So has man also a 
 Trinity, and it is significant that the first definite 
 indication of the Trinity of both is conveyed in 
 one word, the promise of the woman's seed 
 who should bruise the serpent's head, Him who 
 was the complement of both God and man. 
 
 If then, man, woman, and child together image 
 God, apart, it would seem, they must image the 
 
 1 See companion study, page 103, Section 4. 
 
 2 See also Notes A. and D. 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 23 
 
 three Divine persons. This is as much as to say 
 that Woman in her unfallen state was the earthly 
 image of the Holy Spirit. And this, you will per- 
 ceive, is the point to which all the foregoing 
 tends. The great doctrine which I would set 
 beside the Fatherhood and the Sonship is the 
 Motherhood of the Holy Ghost. For the Bible is 
 the revelation of God in His relations to man; 
 and if it reveal to us not only a Father in heaven 
 and an Elder Brother, but also a Divine Mother, 
 is not this a precious revelation ? 
 
 But let us see if the foregoing analogies be 
 borne out by any others. First. In the second 
 verse of the first chapter of Genesis we have the 
 first mention of the Spirit, "And the Spirit of 
 God moved (brooded) upon the face of the 
 waters." Scott finds it strange that a word 
 should be used which signifies the act of the 
 mother bird brooding over her nest. 
 
 2d. "She shall be " The Spirit of truth 
 called woman because which proceedeth from 
 she was taken out of the Father." "TheSpir- 
 man. Therefore shall a it which is of (or out 
 man cleave, etc." (The of) God." 
 words of God Himself.) 
 
24 The Great Mystery 
 
 "Therefore," wherefore? That they might 
 perpetuate the image of God, not only as two in 
 one, but in that peculiarity of relationship which 
 is theologically termed "the procession of the 
 Holy Ghost." 1 
 
 "But though neither men nor angels be begotten of 
 the substance of God, or by virtue of any such natu- 
 ral generation be called sons ; yet one person we know, 
 to whom the divine essence is as truly and really com- 
 municated by the Father as to the Son, which is the 
 third person in the blessed Trinity, the Holy Ghost. 
 Why then should the Word by that communication of 
 the divine essence become the Son, and not the Holy 
 Ghost by the same ? ... To this I answer, that 
 the Holy Ghost receiveth the same essence from the 
 Father which the Word receiveth, and thereby becom- 
 eth the same God with the Father and the Word : but 
 though the essence be the same which is communi- 
 cated, yet there is a difference in the communication, 
 the Word being God by generation, the Holy Ghost 
 by procession; and though everything which is be- 
 gotten proceedeth, yet everything which proceedeth is 
 not begotten. . . . Eve was produced out of 
 Adam, and in the same nature with him, and yet was 
 not born of him, nor was she truly the daughter of 
 Adam ; whereas Seth proceeding from the same per- 
 son in the similitude of the same nature, was truly and 
 1 See also note C. 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 25 
 
 properly the son of Adam. And this difference was 
 not in the nature produced, but in the manner of pro- 
 duction. . . . The Holy Ghost proceedeth from 
 the Father in the same nature with Him, the Word 
 proceedeth from the same person in the same simili- 
 tude of nature also ; but the Word proceeding is the 
 Son, the Holy Ghost is not, because the first proces- 
 sion is by way of generation, the other is not." 
 (Pearson on the Creed. On "His Only Son," par. 
 45.) But this illustration is not original with Pear- 
 son. Methodius of Tyre (end of third century) says 
 "the Spirit . . . proceeds, like Eve from the 
 side of Adam . . . yet is consubstantial with the 
 Father." (Smith and Wace, Dictionary of Christian 
 Biography, etc.) 
 
 In the "Foundations of the Creed" by Bishop 
 Goodwin, in the chapter on the Holy Ghost, I find 
 the following : " One fears to express one's thoughts 
 upon so solemn and difficult a subject, lest (as has not 
 unfrequently happened) that which begins with ap- 
 parently innocent speculation should develop into some 
 ancient and condemned heresy. Few thoughts on old 
 subjects in this period of the world's history are both 
 new and true. Yet I have sometimes thought it pos- 
 sible that the being of the Holy Ghost might be as 
 necessary a consequence of the being of the Father 
 and that of the Son, as the existence of the third side 
 of a triangle is the consequence of the other two, or 
 the existence of a third resultant force is the conse- 
 
26 The Great Mystery 
 
 quence of the cooperation of two forces on the same 
 point. The procession of the third person of the 
 Holy Trinity may be a divinely necessary procession : 
 without confounding the persons or dividing the sub- 
 stance, the procession may perhaps be regarded as in- 
 volved in the complete conception of the being of 
 God : in fact, if we could so far enter into the truth 
 of that being, as to grasp the mystery of Father and 
 Son, we should probably find that it was impossible 
 not to include in the mystery the being of the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 If you say you do not understand this story (of the 
 creation of Eve) literally, I answer, neither do I so 
 understand it. I believe it tells us "true historic 
 facts, though the facts are presented to us partly under 
 an allegorical shape. Under any other shape, we could 
 not have received or understood them." (Mason.) 
 In other words, I believe that there is a true sense in 
 which, in the beginning woman proceeded from man, 
 and what that sense is, natural science will perhaps at 
 some not far-off day, reveal to us. 
 
 3d. In that wonderful third of John we read 
 " that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that 
 which is born of the Spirit is spirit." (And see 
 the whole context.) Trench himself declares that 
 "the earthly birth was preordained to typify the 
 mystery of the heavenly." Why not go a step 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 27 
 
 further and say that the earthly mother was pre- 
 ordained to typify the Heavenly Mother? Why 
 should that which has been universally owned in 
 every age as the holiest, highest, purest, most 
 unselfish of earthly affections and relations, alone 
 have nothing in common with heaven ? 
 
 Trench does say, although in another con- 
 nection, that men have at different times regarded 
 the Holy Spirit in the light of a Mother, and cites 
 one of the fathers. In this connection I may 
 quote the traditional saying of Christ, " In the 
 gospel according to the Hebrews the Saviour 
 Himself says, 'Just now My Mother, the Holy 
 Spirit took Me by one of My hairs and bore Me, 
 away to the great mountain Thabor.' ' West- 
 cott says, in a note to his introduction to the 
 Study of the Gospels, "This very singular say- 
 ing, which is evidently of Hebrew origin, from 
 the gender of Spirit (Ruach) is quoted several 
 times." He then cites Origen and others. 
 
 St. Jerome in his commentary on Isaiah has the fol- 
 lowing : "According to their gospel which is written 
 in Hebrew, and read by the Nazarenes, the whole 
 fountain of the Holy Spirit descended upon Him. 
 . . . Besides in that gospel just mentioned we find 
 
28 The Great Mystery 
 
 these things written : ' It came to pass, when the Lord 
 ascended from the water, the whole fountain of the 
 Holy Spirit descended and rested upon Him, and said 
 to Him : My Son, in all the Prophets, I was waiting 
 for Thy coming, and that I might rest on Thee, for 
 Thou art My rest, Thou art My First-begotten, who 
 shalt reign forever. 1 " 
 
 In his commentary on Micah vii. 6, we find : 
 "Whoever reads the Book of Canticles, and under- 
 stands by the Spouse of the Soul, the Word of God, 
 and believes the gospel called According to the He- 
 brews, which we lately translated, in which the Saviour 
 is introduced as saying : ' Just now, My Mother the 
 Holy Spirit took Me by one of My hairs,' will not 
 hesitate to say that the Word of God was born of the 
 Spirit, and that the Soul which is the Spouse of the 
 Word, has for the mother of its Spouse the Holy Spirit, 
 who in the Hebrew language is spoken of in the femi- 
 nine gender." 
 
 St. Jerome, whatever he may have thought of the 
 Nazarenes, speaks quite respectfully of the Gospel of 
 the Hebrews ; but Pearson alludes very disrespectfully 
 to the folly of the "Nazarseans " in "making the 
 Spirit mother of Christ" "upon the authority of a 
 pretended, but no, Scripture." (Pearson, Art. 3, 
 Chap. 2, Note to par. 7.) It may be considered as 
 proved that the Gospel to the Hebrews is not the orig- 
 inal of St. Matthew. Dr. Salmon, however, says "it 
 does not follow that it stands on no higher level than 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 29 
 
 the Apocryphal Gospels." It will be observed that I 
 have not based any argument on any of these passages, 
 but it would be strange, in such a paper, not to refer 
 to them. It is manifest that the association of this 
 doctrine of the Motherhood with the gross fables of 
 the Gnostic heresy must have made the thought of it 
 repugnant to the early fathers; but notwithstanding 
 this, I cannot find anything set down as essential to 
 belief which in any way conflicts with it. 1 
 
 4th. The peculiar characteristics of the Spirit. 
 
 "The Comforter." Not to cite any lesser au- 
 thority, we have the word of God Himself for it, 
 that the office of comforter is the mother's office. 
 " Thus saith the Lord : As one whom his mother 
 comforteth, so will I comfort you." (Isaiah 
 Ixvi. 18.) 
 
 St. James says "The Wisdom that is from 
 above " that is the Divine Wisdom which Trench 
 identifies with the Holy Spirit, 2 "is first pure, 
 then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, 
 full of mercy and good fruits." Then patient, 
 long suffering, striving, being grieved. All that 
 we know of the Spirit is gentleness, tenderness, 
 
 1 See also note E. 
 
 8 As does also the author of the Book of Wisdom. See 
 Note L. 
 
30 The Great Mystery 
 
 patience, entreaty, but above all, holiness, pur- 
 ity, "the sanctifier." On this see (F. W.) Robert- 
 son. Of a similar list of graces he says: "These 
 are graces essentially feminine. How were men 
 to find expression for that idea which was work- 
 ing in them vague and beautiful, but wanting 
 substance, the idea of the Divineness of what is 
 pure above what is strong. Would you have 
 them say simply, we had forgotten these things. 
 Now they are revealed to us. Now we know 
 that love and purity are as divine as power and 
 reason? My brethren, it is not so that men 
 worship, it is only so men think. They think 
 about qualities, they worship persons. Worship 
 must have a form: adoration finds a person; and 
 if it cannot find one it will imagine one. Gentle- 
 ness and purity are words for a philosopher, but 
 a man whose heart wants something to adore 
 will find for himself a gentle one, a pure one. 
 You cannot adore, except a person." And from 
 this, he deduces the origin of the worship of the 
 Virgin Mary. He says the distinctive glory of 
 Womanhood was found to consist in purity. 
 (The Wisdom that is of God is " first pure.") 
 Again he says, after a variety of premises, " It 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 31 
 
 follows that God has yet reserved for Woman- 
 hood a larger and more glorious field for her 
 peculiar qualities and gifts, and that the truth con- 
 tained in the Virgin Motherhood is unexhausted 
 still." And he quotes the infidel French philos- 
 opher Comte as saying that "Woman worship 
 is what the age wants. We want the glory of 
 Woman to worship." Robertson says again, 
 "There is one glory of Manhood and another 
 glory of Womanhood." " Humanity has its two 
 sides. Man and Woman, not Man alone, make 
 up Humanity." (Now it was Man in the sense 
 of Humanity that was made in God's image.) 
 But Robertson thinks that the only safeguard 
 against the idolatrous error of Virgin worship is 
 a full recognition of the perfect Humanity of 
 Christ. And Mrs. Jameson, in her book on the 
 Madonna, says the same in substance, so that 
 Robertson avers she got it from him. "In 
 Christ," says Robertson, "both were glorified, 
 Strength and Grace, Wisdom and Love, Courage 
 and Purity, Divine Manliness and Divine Woman- 
 liness." And all this is true, but not I think, the 
 whole truth, nor the truth that we want. No 
 doubt Christ combined what we know of the 
 
32 The Great Mystery 
 
 two Divine Persons, and as the Son of God, (not 
 alone of the Father) so He should. But the 
 human craving which found relief in the worship 
 of the Virgin, was not so much, I think, for the 
 deification of certain feminine virtues, as for a 
 Divine Mother. Man that is born of Woman, 
 and has drawn his first nourishment from her 
 breast, looks up to heaven with an unspeakable 
 longing to find there the same patient, inexhausti- 
 ble, untiring tenderness, the mother-love, which 
 if it do not image the Spirit's Love, is that anoma- 
 lous thing, a copy without an original. 
 
 Kingsley in his book called "Yeast" which 
 embodies so well the restless longing and ex- 
 pectancy that characterize the present age, ex- 
 presses most vividly by the mouth of one of his 
 characters this longing for a Divine Mother Love 
 that drives him into the Romish church. "I am 
 weak, would you have me say that I am strong ? 
 Would you have me try to be a Prometheus, 
 while 1 am longing to be once more an infant on 
 a mother's breast ? Let me alone. I am a weary 
 child who knows nothing, can do nothing except 
 lose its way in arguings and reasonings, and 
 'find no end in wandering mazes lost.' Will 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 33 
 
 you reproach me, because when I see a soft 
 cradle lying open for me, with a Virgin Mother's 
 face smiling down all woman's love upon me, I 
 long to crawl into it and sleep awhile. I want 
 loving, indulgent sympathy," and soon. 
 
 5th. To quote from Trench again: "It will 
 be my purpose to inquire whether we may not 
 contemplate the relations of the Absolute Truth 
 to the anterior religions of the world, in an 
 aspect in which, instead of being secretly em- 
 barrassed by them, and hardly knowing how to 
 deal with or to range them, we shall joyfully ac- 
 cept these presentiments of the truth as enhanc- 
 ing the greatness and glory of the truth itself, 
 and as being, so far as they are allowed any 
 weight, confirmations of it." Not to quote any 
 further, the whole argument of his lectures on 
 the Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom is 
 based on this idea. For as he says "it is not the 
 presence of these resemblances which need per- 
 plex us, but rather their absence which would 
 have been justly surprising, which would have 
 been indeed most difficult to account for." 
 
 Mrs. Jameson says of the worship of the 
 Madonna: " Everywhere it seems to have found 
 
34 The Great Mystery 
 
 in the human heart some deep sympathy, deeper 
 far than mere theological doctrine could reach, 
 ready to accept it: and in every land the ground 
 prepared for it in some already dominant idea of 
 a mother goddess, chaste, beautiful and benign. 
 As in the oldest Hebrew rites and Pagan supersti- 
 tions men traced the promise of a coming Mes- 
 siah, as the deliverers and kings of the Old Testa- 
 ment and even the demigods of heathendom (see 
 Trench) became the accepted types of the person 
 of Christ, so the Eve of the Mosaic History, (the 
 Mother of all living), the Astarte of the Assyrians, 
 'The mooned Ashtaroth, Heaven's Queen and 
 Mother both,' the Isis nursing Horus of the 
 Egyptians, the Demeter and the Aphrodite of the 
 Greeks, the Scythian Freya, have all been con- 
 sidered as types of a Divine Maternity, fore- 
 shadowing the Virgin Mother of Christ." On 
 the three occasions when we hear Christ speak 
 to, or of the Virgin, 1 He denies her the name of 
 mother. ("Woman, what have I to do with 
 thee?" "Woman, behold thy son! " "Who is 
 
 1 There was another time, when He said, " Wist ye not that 
 I must be about My Father's business ? " (or " in My Father's 
 House ? ") 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 3$ 
 
 my mother ? ") " The Madonna when she assumed 
 to herself the characteristics of the great Diana of 
 the Ephesians, at once the type of fertility and 
 the goddess of chastity, became as the imper- 
 sonation of motherhood, all beauty and gracious- 
 ness, and at the same time, in virtue of her per- 
 petual virginity, etc." 
 
 On the statue of Isis (one of the received "types 
 of the Divine Maternity") were inscribed the 
 strange words: "I am all that has been and all 
 that shall be, and none among mortals has hith- 
 erto taken off my veil." 
 
 (Amun Re the Supreme Deity of the Egyptians, 
 was at once his own father and mother.') 
 
 1 (From Arius the Libyan, page 84.) " In the original faith 
 of all the primitive nations, the divine being is Father-mother, 
 which is one dual God, and a son. If therefore, the Christian 
 religion presents the idea of a spiritual dualism made a trilogy by 
 the generation of a son, it maintains the very idea of the Deity, 
 which is the core of all the primitive religions Egyptian, Indian, 
 Chinese, and, I think, Jewish also." But this author's idea of 
 God is of "an almighty hermaphrodite spirit." "The divine 
 being is spiritually hermaphrodite." This is not tenable for 
 two reasons : 1st, a hermaphrodite in Nature is either a de- 
 generate, or one of a low order of beings. 2d, Such an idea is 
 the "confounding of persons" against which the Church pro- 
 tests. The idea of God which I wish to convey no more 
 " confounds the persons " than it " divides the substance." 
 
36 The Great Mystery 
 
 6th. May not the woman clothed with the 
 sun (Rev. xii. i) typify the Holy Spirit? 
 
 In his notes on the Parable of the Leaven, 
 Trench says: "Is it only a part of the suitable 
 machinery of the parable that it was a 'woman ' 
 who took the leaven, etc. ? Or may we look for 
 something more in it than this? A comparison 
 with Luke xv. 8, the woman who had lost and 
 found her piece of money, may suggest that the 
 Divine Wisdom, the Holy Spirit which is the 
 sanctifying power in humanity, may be meant. 
 But if it be asked ' why as a woman ? ' to this 
 it may be replied that the organ of the Spirit's 
 working is the Church which evidently would be 
 most fitly represented under this image." See 
 now in his notes on the parable above referred to, 
 of the lost piece of money: "The woman in 
 this parable may perhaps be the Church; or if we 
 say that by her is signified the Divine Wisdom 
 which so often in Proverbs is described as seek- 
 ing the salvation of men, and is here as elsewhere 
 set forth as a person (Luke xi. 49) and not as an 
 attribute, this will be no different view, for rather 
 these two explanations flow into one, when we 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 37 
 
 keep in mind how the Church is the organ in and 
 through which the Holy Spirit seeks for the lost. 
 That the Church should be personified as a woman 
 is only natural ; 1 nor has the thought of the Holy 
 Ghost as a mother been at different times far 
 from men's minds." 
 
 But if this be the truth of God, why so long 
 hidden or taught so indirectly ? And why now 
 revealed ? 2 
 
 i st. Hidden for the degradation and punish- 
 ment of woman, as St. Paul almost says in 
 words in that strange passage where he so in- 
 sists on the veil or covering for the woman's 
 head. As she would be "like the gods" so 
 was her typical likeness hidden from all, even 
 from herself, and so was she doubly "deceived, 
 being in the transgression." 
 
 What has been said in the note on page 26 of the 
 partly allegorical character of the story of Eve's pro- 
 cession from Adam applies as well (was originally in- 
 tended by Doctor Mason to apply) to the story of the 
 Fall. No one believes in a literal serpent, and few, in 
 a literal fruit. All however is full of Divine sugges- 
 tion. What was the nature of the sin which separated 
 
 1 See Note O. 
 
 3 See Notes to Sixth Article of the Summary. 
 
 8'9 6 8 6 
 
38 The Great Mystery 
 
 Man from God ? May it not have been in some way, 
 a profanation of the Divine ideal, in which Woman 
 was the original transgressor ? And it is not necessary 
 to assume that the punishment was arbitrary. God is 
 the God of Nature and of Law, as well as of Providence. 
 Woman's degradation through her own sin may have 
 brought about naturally her own punishment, which 
 would not be the less God's curse, because Nature's. 1 
 
 2d. There is another reason which I will 
 develop in the sixth article of the summing up. 
 
 ^d. We may say that when this truth began 
 to dawn on men's minds, it was overshadowed 
 and obscured by the rising worship of the Virgin. 
 Then were given to the star-crowned queen 
 two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly 
 into the wilderness to the place prepared of God 
 for her. And there she has remained hidden, 
 ("but for a time"). 
 
 The names and offices of the Holy Spirit were 
 given to the Virgin. Especially the intercessory 
 office, the central idea of Virgin worship. 
 
 " Not only him who asks 
 Thy bounty succors, but doth freely oft 
 Forerun the asking." 
 
 Cory's Dante. Hymn to the Virgin. 
 
 1 (See companion study, Section 8, on " The Seventh Com- 
 mandment of Nature.") See also Note M. 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 39 
 
 " Sometimes Lady, ere men pray to thee 
 Thou goest before in thy benignity, 
 The light to us vouchsafing of thy prayers 
 To be our guide." 
 
 Wordsworth's Chaucer. 
 
 " Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmi- 
 ties, for we know not what we should pray for 
 as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh inter- 
 cession for us." (Romans viii. 26.) 
 
 TITLES OF THE VIRGIN. 
 Our Lady of Comfort. (The Comforter.) 
 Our Lady of Peace. (The very God of Peace 
 
 sanctify you.) 
 
 Our Lady of Wisdom. (The Divine Wisdom.) 
 Mater Sapientise. (Wisdom of God.) 
 
 Our Lady of Grace. (Spirit of Grace.) 
 Mother of God. (The Scripture calls her 
 
 "mother of Jesus," and Elizabeth says, "the 
 mother of my Lord" but not mother of God, and 
 Christ Himself as I said before, on the only 
 three occasions when we hear Him address her 
 by name, does not give her the name of mother 
 at all. But when He promises to send the Holy 
 Spirit to His disciples, He says, " I will not leave 
 you orphans.") 
 
4O The Great Mystery 
 
 The star-crowned queen has always been con- 
 sidered by the Romanists a type of the Virgin, 1 
 and in innumerable pictures she is represented in 
 accordance with this idea. 
 
 In many others she is represented with the 
 Book of Wisdom in her hands open as Mrs. 
 Jameson tells us, at the seventh chapter, which 
 contains the magnificent description of the Wis- 
 dom of God, supposed to refer prophetically to 
 
 1 " Midmost, all glorious, shining serene, 
 
 Crowned with the star wreath, I see Heaven's Queen ! 
 
 " Over earth to thee is given 
 
 Empire ! Let me in the free 
 Widespread tent of the blue heaven 
 See thy mystery. 
 
 " Aid in man's heart what thou of good, 
 
 Of tender thought and earnest, 
 Of holy love in his best mood 
 Up-breathed to thee, discernest ! 
 
 "Virgin ! from all soil of sin 
 
 Virgin pure ! to thee we bow ; 
 Saintly mother ! Chosen queen ! 
 One with the godlike Thou ! 
 
 " To the heavenly heights as thou floatest away 
 Of the kingdoms eternal, to thee do we pray 
 Thou that hast no peer ! 
 
 Thou that art rich in grace ! Oh ! mercifully hear ! " 
 Goethe's Faust, Second Part. 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 41 
 
 the Virgin Mary. Now the author uses the 
 names of Wisdom and the Holy Spirit inter- 
 changeably. "The things that are in heaven, 
 who hath known and Thy counsel who hath 
 searched out, except Thou give wisdom and 
 send Thy Holy Spirit from above." 1 
 
 SUMMARY OF THE FOREGOING ARGUMENTS. 
 
 i st. We have first the Trinity of the Godhead. 
 
 God created the Heavens and the Earth. (Fa- 
 ther.) 
 
 The Spirit brooded on the face of the waters. 
 (Spirit.) 
 
 And God said, By Him (the Word) all things 
 were made. (Son.) 
 
 Next the trinity of man made in the image of 
 God. 
 
 In the image of God created He him. (Man.) 
 
 Male and female created He them. 2 (Woman.) 
 
 1 See Note G. 
 
 2 On page 87 of " Arius the Libyan " the same idea is de- 
 veloped from the same passage of Scripture. But this idea, 
 all through the book is associated with the heresies of Arius, 
 for which association there is no foundation in history. The 
 real Arius taught that the Holy Ghost is a creature. He also 
 taught that the Son was neither coeternal nor consubstantial 
 with the Father. 
 
42 The Great Mystery 
 
 And God blessed them and said, Be fruitful. 
 (Child.) 
 
 "I will say, boldly, my friends, that if one could 
 find out the full meaning of those two words, mother 
 and child, one would be the wisest philosopher on 
 earth, and see deeper than all who have ever yet lived, 
 into the secrets of this world of time which we can 
 see, and of the eternal world, which no man can see, 
 save with the eyes of his reasonable soul. And yet it 
 is the most common, everyday sight. That only shows 
 once more what I so often try to show you, that the 
 most common, everyday things are the most wonder- 
 ful. It shows us how that we are to despise nothing 
 which God has made ; above all, to despise nothing 
 which belongs to human nature, which is the likeness 
 and image of God. (Charles Kingsley, Sermon for 
 Christmas Day, from Good News of God.) 
 
 2d. But we have more than this: more than a 
 trinity of man made in the image of God. We 
 have the Father and the Son; and these terms, if 
 we are orthodox, we must accept not as mere 
 accommodations, for that, says Trench, is Arian- 
 
 After this volume was in the publisher's hands, my at- 
 tention was called to Edwin Markham's poem just out, 
 " Song to the Divine Mother," with the footnote referring 
 to Gen. i. 26, 27, for the confirmation of his assertion about 
 the nature of God. 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 43 
 
 ism, " but we hold that the Son is truly Son, be- 
 gotten of the Father." 1 
 
 "This then is the known confession of all men, that 
 a son is nothing but another produced by his father in 
 the same nature with him. But God the Father hath 
 communicated to the Word the same divine essence 
 by which He is God ; and consequently He is of the 
 same nature with Him, and therefore the perfect image 
 and similitude of Him and therefore His proper Son. 
 In human generations we may conceive two kinds of 
 similitude : one in respect of the internal nature, the 
 other in reference to the external form or figure. The 
 former similitude is essential and necessary ; it being 
 impossible a man should beget a son, and that son, 
 not by nature a man." " The similitude then in which 
 the propriety of generation is preserved is that which 
 consisteth in the identity of nature : and this commu- 
 nication of the divine essence by the Father to the 
 Word is evidently a sufficient foundation of such a 
 similitude." "The essence which God always had 
 without beginning, without beginning He did commu- 
 
 1 If such a doctrine as the Fatherhood of God has been lost 
 to the Church for centuries, and only recently restored, who can 
 wonder that the Motherhood should have remained so long an 
 undiscovered mystery ? Of the Fatherhood, Dr. John Watson 
 says " it is inexcusable that the central theme of Jesus' teaching 
 should have been ignored or minimized. This silence, from the 
 date of the Greek Fathers to the arrival of the Broad Church- 
 man, has been more than an omission ; it has been a heresy." 
 
44 The Great Mystery 
 
 nicate, being always Father as always God." (Pear- 
 son on the Creed. See the paragraphs on " His Only 
 Son," from 40 to 45.) 
 
 Does not this create the strongest presumption 
 from analogy? And are we not justified by 
 Scripture in arguing from analogy here? For 
 what is St. Paul's reproach to the Gentiles 
 who were without the written law? "The 
 wrath of God is revealed against men who 
 hold the truth in unrighteousness. Because 
 that which may be known of God is mani- 
 fested in them, for God hath showed it unto 
 them, for the invisible things of Him from 
 the creation of the world are clearly seen, being 
 understood by the things that are made, even His 
 eternal Power and Godhead." l 
 
 3d. This doctrine contradicts so far as 1 know, 
 nothing in Scripture, but much therein makes it 
 probable by implication, and it explains and sim- 
 plifies many things. 1 
 
 4th. We find that the characteristics, offices, 
 etc., of the Third Person of the Trinity are such 
 as we are accustomed to consider distinctively 
 feminine. 
 
 ' See note H. See notes F, J, K and N. 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 45 
 
 5th. A sufficient and Scriptural reason may be 
 assigned why this doctrine should have remained 
 an unrevealed mystery. 
 
 6th. (This article is omitted.) 
 
 In the article omitted, the progressive character of 
 Revelation, especially with reference to the Being of 
 God, was suggested. The view taken was similar to 
 that developed by St. Gregory Nazianzen in one of 
 his discourses, which I had not then seen, and I now 
 prefer to put the idea in his words rather than my own. 
 I will premise by recalling the fact that even such 
 fundamental doctrines as the Trinity, and the Person- 
 ality and Deity of the Holy Ghost are not taught dog- 
 matically in Holy Scripture, but had to be gathered 
 by careful study and comparison of text with text; 
 and were only gradually accepted by the Church, in 
 their present form. "St. Gregory Nazianzen (fourth 
 century) preached the Deity of the Spirit. He asks, 
 ' But, why had the doctrine of the Spirit's Godhead 
 been so little dwelt upon in earlier times?' He an- 
 swers that it came last in the order of Divine Revela- 
 tion. The Old Testament revealed the Father ; in the 
 New, the Son was manifested ; each truth had to be 
 firmly established in the minds of men before the next 
 could follow. The Deity of the Holy Ghost was one 
 of those truths which the Church could not bear at 
 first, but which she is now learning from the Divine 
 Comforter Himself" (Smith and Wace.) 
 
46 The Great Mystery 
 
 7th. The presumption from the primitive 
 world religions, and the worship of the Virgin, 
 as implying the craving in the human heart for a 
 Divine motherhood. 
 
 8th. The argument from the procession of 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 To the doctrines of the Deity and Personality of the 
 Holy Ghost, the Church added that of the Procession 
 from the Father. So far, the teaching of the Church 
 about the Divine Spirit had developed rationally and 
 naturally from the text of Holy Scripture. Then, 
 there was a pause. It was felt that the next step was 
 to be an important one. The Church was afraid of 
 making a mistake. Of St. Hilary of Poitiers it is said, 
 "His treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit 
 shows how reluctantly Catholic writers of this period 
 were forced into a minute examination of the mystery 
 of the Spirit's Being." (Smith and Wace.) 
 
 Through what strange bias or warping the develop- 
 ment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was turned 
 aside from its natural course into so extraordinary a 
 deviation as that of the Procession from the Son, I am 
 not sufficiently learned in the tendencies of the time 
 to conjecture. 
 
 The Filioque, however, forms no part of the 
 Creed of the Undivided Church, and was not 
 adopted by any Ecumenical Council. I quote 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 47 
 
 from Bishop Leonard's Church Club Lecture (1893) 
 on the First Council of Constantinople. After re- 
 hearsing the Creed as revised by that Council, he 
 adds, " You will notice that this Creed announces be- 
 lief in the fact that ' the Holy Ghost proceedeth from 
 the Father,' and no mention is made 'of the Son.' 
 This last expression which has crept into the Nicene 
 Creed as it appears in our offices, is the famous ' Fili- 
 oque. ' It was first added to the Symbol, at a Spanish 
 Provincial Council held at Toledo, A. D. 589. It has 
 been the source of much dissension and difference, and 
 was a principal cause for the sad separation of the 
 Eastern and Western Churches. To-day it affects the 
 relations of the Anglican Communion with the great 
 Orthodox Eastern Church of Russia, Greece, and the 
 Orient, and would seem, to some, to mar the perfect- 
 ness of our otherwise beautiful Confession of Faith." 
 To the above, I will only add that the argument of 
 the Western Church, (that, if the Spirit proceeds from 
 the essence of the Father, it must also proceed from 
 the essence of the Son, because both have the same 
 essence) proves just as well that, as the Son proceeds 
 (by generation) from the essence of the Father, (Pear- 
 son) He must also proceed from the essence of the 
 Spirit, since both have the same essence. Of course, 
 the distinction between the Eternal, metaphysical 
 procession and the temporal, double mission must be 
 kept in mind. There is surely nothing strange in the 
 thought that the Divine Son, having purchased by His 
 
48 The Great Mystery 
 
 sacrifice the supreme gift for His infant Church, should 
 send the Divine Mother on such errands of Heavenly 
 Charity as are most fit for mothers to do, or that the 
 Divine Mother should take of the things of Her Son, 
 and show them to those for whom He died, or bring 
 to their remembrance the words that He had said. I 
 appeal to all mothers. 
 
 9th. The fact that the image of God is thus 
 mirrored not only in man, but in miniature, 
 through all living forms of creation, in the mar- 
 riages of the flowers, in the invisible nuptials of 
 the cryptogamia. Thus in the union of Two 
 resides the mystery of creation, Two acting 
 through One, (eternal generation of the Son,) 
 the mediator not only between God and man, 
 but between God and all things. 
 
 (The child, body and soul, is a part of both 
 parents, yet neither loses anything, but both 
 remain entire.) 
 
 i2th. The Divine Wisdom is spoken of with 
 the attributes of a woman. 
 
 1 3th. A negative argument. If God had in- 
 tended to teach that the Holy Spirit is masculine 
 in the same sense that the Father and the Son are, 
 why not use a name which should convey dis- 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 49 
 
 tinctly that idea, instead of by the use of an un- 
 certain or neuter word leaving the question open, 
 so that the very Personality of the Spirit has been 
 called in question ? The Hebrew word has, at 
 any rate, a feminine form, and the Greek is, I 
 suppose, a translation of the Hebrew word. It 
 is true that "in the Greek a masculine article or 
 epithet is joined to the name (Pneuma) which is 
 naturally of the neuter gender," and this, so far 
 as I can discover, is the only fact which makes 
 against my argument. What it amounts to, I am 
 not scholar enough to know. 
 
 This is however true only with regard to the pas- 
 sages in St. John xiv. to xvi., in which the Holy Spirit 
 is spoken of as "The Comforter." The author of 
 " Arius the Libyan " refers to this difficulty, and thus 
 disposes of it : "It is evident that in these places the 
 only thing that can be meant by the ' Holy Ghost ' 
 and the ' Spirit of Truth ' is the Paraclete, the Com- 
 forter ; and while the Greek word for comforter is a 
 noun of the masculine gender, the words ' Holy Ghost ' 
 and ' Spirit of Truth ' still retain their neuter form, al- 
 though put in apposition with it; and the pronouns 
 ' he ' and ' him ' take their masculine form from the 
 word comforter, and not from the words Holy Ghost 
 and Spirit, which re always neuter, and express noth- 
 ing as to sex." 
 
50 The Great Mystery 
 
 It is not without a purpose that I have quoted 
 so largely from the writings of men we both 
 know and revere. I would show you how 
 hitherward those great minds, the earnest, re- 
 ligious thinkers of our day have been tending, 
 how some have stood on the very threshold of 
 the Truth, how one, the master mind has had, as 
 it were, his hand on the very veil of Isis, yet 
 could not or durst not lift it. ... 
 
 (The closing paragraphs of the letter are per- 
 sonal in character, and unsuitable for publication.) 
 
 NOTE A. 
 
 If our first parents had not fallen, the type 
 would have been far more perfect with the union. 
 (See Trench.) "These human relationships 
 and this whole constitution of things earthly 
 share in the shortcoming which cleaves to all 
 that is of earth. Obnoxious to change, tainted 
 with sin, shut in within brief limits by decay and 
 death, they are often weak and temporary, where 
 they have to set forth things strong and eternal; 
 a sinful element is evidently mingled with them 
 while they yet appear as symbols of what is 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 51 
 
 entirely pure and heavenly. They break down 
 with the weight that is laid on them." " Some- 
 where or other man is a liar. He is false that is, 
 to the divine idea which he was meant to em- 
 body, and fails to bring it out in all the fulness of 
 its perfection. We have this treasure in earthen 
 vessels." 
 
 NOTE B. Suggestions. 
 
 The Sanctity of the Marriage Tie. 
 
 The First Ordinance of God. " Be Fruitful." 
 
 Christ's First Miracle performed at a Marriage 
 Feast. 
 
 Adultery punished with death. 
 
 Christ enforces and makes more stringent the 
 laws of marriage. "What therefore God hath 
 joined, let not man put asunder." 
 
 Atheism, the infidelity of the French Revolu- 
 tion, Mohammedanism, Mormonism, Spiritual- 
 ism, all strike first at marriage. 
 
 NOTE C. 
 
 Although woman's subjection to man is a part 
 of her punishment, there is a sense in which she 
 
52 The Great Mystery 
 
 was made subordinate, for man was made first, 
 thenj&pjnan. And she was made for man, to be 
 a help-meet for man, when both were yet un- 
 fallen. And the subordination of the child to 
 the parent is strongly insisted on all through 
 Scripture. 
 
 Now we find that the Spirit is "sent" and 
 " proceedeth " and is of God. And in a still 
 more emphatic sense, the Son is sent. But 
 nothing of the kind is ever affirmed of the 
 Father. No, "The Father is greater than I." 
 "The Son also Himself shall be subject, that 
 God may be all in all." "The head of Christ is 
 God." 
 
 The man, the father, the husband, is head of 
 the household, as husband in one sense and de- 
 gree, as father in another and more emphatic 
 sense and greater degree. It is a superiority of 
 relation and position, not of character nor of 
 nature. 
 
 NOTE D. 
 
 Swedenborg's idea of marriage in heaven, 
 "The marriage of minds." The two are re- 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 53 
 
 garded as one angel. Yet he did not hold the 
 orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Since in the 
 One God there are three distinct persons, we 
 have a pledge that however perfect the future 
 union of souls, the identity of each will not be 
 lost. 
 
 Kingsley has something on the same subject in 
 "Yeast." Argemone says: "Oh, the angelic 
 life is single." Lancelot " Who told you this ?" 
 She quoted the stock text of course. "In 
 heaven they neither marry nor are given in mar- 
 riage, but are as the angels." " As the tree falls 
 so it lies, and God forbid that those who have 
 been true lovers on earth should contract new 
 marriages in the next world. Love is eternal. 
 And how do we know that these angels as we 
 call them, may not be united in pairs by some 
 marriage bond infinitely more perfect than any 
 we can dream of on earth ? " (Yeast.) 
 
 NOTE E. 
 
 In the angel's address to Mary, the work of 
 both Father and Spirit in the human birth of 
 Christ is indicated. "The Holy Ghost shall 
 
54 The Great Mystery 
 
 come upon thee, and the power of the Highest 
 shall overshadow thee, therefore also that Holy 
 Thing which shall be born of thee, shall be called 
 the Son of God." 
 The Father is "The Highest." 
 
 NOTE F. On Ephesians V. jr. 
 
 It is true that St. Paul quotes this passage in a 
 different connection, and uses it to illustrate 
 Christ's relation to the Church. 
 
 But his phraseology is peculiar and seems to 
 imply that he here uses it in a secondary sense. 
 For after saying "A man shall be joined to his 
 wife and they two shall be one flesh," he adds 
 "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning 
 Christ and the Church." As if he would say, 
 "This oneness of two typifies a great mystery, 
 but at present, I use it in a restricted sense to 
 illustrate the relation between Christ and the 
 Church." If this be far-fetched, then what is the 
 meaning of "but" in this connection ? 
 
 NOTE G. On the Honor ableness of Marriage. 
 The mother of our Lord was a married woman, 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 55 
 
 not indeed when the angel came to her, but even 
 then espoused, and formally married at the time 
 of his birth, and if we are willing to take the 
 honest and fair interpretation of the simple text 
 of Scripture, she was afterward truly the wife 
 of Joseph and mother of his children. For the 
 angel says to him, Fear not to take unto thee 
 Mary thy wife. And afterward we read that 
 "he knew her not until she had brought forth 
 her firstborn son," and again we read of the 
 mother and brothers and sisters of our Lord. 
 
 Do not think that in the foregoing pages I 
 meant to cast any slight on the mother of the 
 Lord. How should I, when God pronounced 
 her by His angel "Blessed among women"? 
 But would not her righteous soul be more vexed 
 than any other, could she know of the idolatrous 
 honors that have been paid her ? 
 
 In her indeed, more than in any other, the pure 
 type reappears, woman as she rose pure and 
 stainless under the hand of her Maker. Woman 
 is "saved in child-bearing," it is as the mother 
 that she reasserts herself the type of the Divine, 
 and above all, in her who was " blessed among 
 women." 
 
56 The Great Mystery 
 
 NOTE H. On Romans i. 18, et seq. 
 The argument of St. Paul is very peculiar, in its 
 premises, suite, and conclusions. The heathen 
 are inexcusable because they held the truth in 
 unrighteousness, because God was manifest in 
 them, because the invisible things of God were 
 clearly shown by the things that were made; 
 these things he restricts to two, His Eternal 
 Power and Godhead. Now in the first of Genesis 
 there are two respects in which man appears to 
 be made in God's image, "in the image of God 
 male and female,'' and "in the image of God 
 with dominion " (let them have dominion over 
 the creatures), the power and Godhead thus be- 
 ing clearly shown by the things that were made. 
 But man was made in the image of God first in 
 his mode of existence, one yet three; next in his 
 attributes, as in the Westminster catechism it is 
 put, "in knowledge, righteousness and holiness." 
 This is implied, for God's work is all very good, 
 the image and likeness was one that satisfied the 
 Divine original. And it is perhaps, more per- 
 fect than we are accustomed to consider it, even 
 repeating so far as the finite can repeat the in- 
 finite, those attributes of God which in their full- 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 57 
 
 est sense, belong only to Him. Omniscience, 
 omnipotence, omnipresence, are God's alone. 
 Yet who, especially in these latter days, would 
 dare to limit the capacities of man's mind, even 
 fallen as he is. Robertson holds that it was the 
 perfection and truthfulness of Christ's humanity 
 that enabled him to read men's minds as he did. 
 Who shall say what we might do, if we were 
 true to the Divine idea! 
 
 At all events, it is necessary to St. Paul's argu- 
 ment that men should be able to argue from the 
 finite to the infinite. But, he says, although 
 they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, 
 but they changed the glory of the incorruptible 
 God into the image of corruptible man, and 
 birds and beasts, and creeping things; they 
 changed the truth of God into a lie, and wor- 
 shipped the creature more than the Creator. 
 They reversed the natural order, and instead of 
 trying to raise themselves to realize the Divine 
 idea, they degraded the idea of God, and made 
 Him like their sinful selves. And herein lies the 
 force of the argument and the appropriateness of 
 their punishment. By this folly and wickedness, 
 they so completely lost the image of God, that 
 
58 The Great Mystery 
 
 they were given up, and gave themselves up to 
 nameless and unnatural lusts. (See Romans i. 
 24-27.) 
 
 Note J. has been omitted. But see note which 
 follows. 
 
 On St. John iii. 5, and Titus iii. 5. "All the cir- 
 cumstances of the natural birth were preordained to 
 typify the heavenly." Trench. 
 
 For a child to be born, implies first, the communi- 
 cation of life, a sort of creative act; then a process 
 by which that life is nourished and developed. And 
 so, in the spiritual birth, there is the same sequence. 
 In common theological parlance, the word "regenera- 
 tion" covers both, but in the only place in Scripture 
 where the word (palingenesia) is used of the soul, it is 
 evidently restricted to the creative act, as set forth by 
 baptism, " The washing of regeneration ; " the gradual 
 process is expressed there, by the words "renewal of 
 the Holy Ghost." In regeneration, we are not only 
 " born of the Spirit " but " begotten of God " (i John 
 v. i, 4, 18, iii. 9, iv. 7; James i. 18), begotten by a 
 creative act of sovereign will, but born of the Spirit 
 by the gradual process of renewal. So that born of 
 water and of the Spirit would express both. 
 
 And herein lies the peculiar fitness of baptism to set 
 forth the creative act, that as by the "corruptible 
 seed " of man, our natures are transmitted impure 
 from father to son, so from the " incorruptible seed " 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 59 
 
 of God (i Peter i. 23) is generated a new and pure 
 principle of Divine life which ultimately exterminates 
 the other. And the pure water of baptism fitly typi- 
 fies this purifying, vivifying, "incorruptible seed." 
 
 So that the verse would say, if we would receive it, 
 "born of the Father and the Spirit." Does not this 
 throw some light on the mysterious verse about the 
 three witnesses, "The Spirit, the Water, and the 
 Blood"? 
 
 And as for repentance and renewal, they are only 
 visible effects of divine causes at work. And what is, 
 according to Christ, the central idea of true repent- 
 ance? Is it not this, "I will arise, and go to my 
 Father" ? For in the very act by which we become 
 the sons of God, He communicates the power to rec- 
 ognize that relationship. And this power of recogni- 
 tion is the witness which the Spirit bears that we are 
 indeed the children of God. 
 
 " The cradle of the Lord's newborn 
 Where deeply lurks the living beam 
 
 Lit in the glad baptismal morn. 
 But into keen, enduring flame 
 
 It may not burst, till Heavenly Love 
 Have o'er it spread, in Christ's dear Name 
 
 The pinions of His brooding Dove." 
 
 Keble, Lyra Innocentium* 
 
 NOTE K. On the Unpardonable Sin. 
 Those glorious works of beneficence which 
 
60 The Great Mystery 
 
 Christ wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit, 
 the wicked Pharisees accused Him of doing by 
 the indwelling power of "an unclean spirit." 
 Their sin thus took the form of a peculiar and 
 deadly insult to the Divine purity of the Sacred 
 Third Person of the Trinity. If we consider that 
 this deadliest insult was offered to the person of 
 the Divine Mother of God, we can better under- 
 stand why it should be the one sin for which 
 there can be no forgiveness here or hereafter. 
 For God has implanted such a corresponding 
 feeling in the breast of man, that even on earth, 
 according to man's code of honor, the one un- 
 pardonable sin is an aspersion on the purity of 
 wife or mother. 
 
 NOTE L. On the jth Chapter of the Booh of 
 Wisdom. 
 
 From Westcott's article on the Book of Wis- 
 dom in Smith & Wace's Dictionary. "The 
 magnificent description of Wisdom, Chapter vii. 
 22 to viii. i, must rank among the noblest pas- 
 sages of human eloquence, and it would perhaps 
 be impossible to point out any piece of equal 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 61 
 
 length in the remains of classical antiquity more 
 pregnant with noble thoughts or more rich in 
 expressive phraseology." "In the book of 
 Proverbs, Wisdom is represented as present with 
 God before and during the creation of the world. 
 In the book of Wisdom, Wisdom is identified 
 with the Holy Ghost." 
 
 " It seems indeed impossible to study the book 
 dispassionately and not feel that it forms one of 
 the last links in the chain of providential connec- 
 tion between the Old and New Covenants. It 
 would not be easy to find elsewhere any pre- 
 Christian view of religion equally wide, sus- 
 tained, and definite." And he also says that this 
 book with the rest of the Apocrypha has been by 
 the English Church strangely neglected. There 
 is no doubt that St. Paul repeatedly quotes from 
 it although he does not name it, and it contains 
 a singularly detailed prophecy of Christ's 
 martyrdom. 
 
 Book of Wisdom, chapter vii. 7: "I called 
 upon God and the Spirit of Wisdom came unto 
 me. 10. I loved her above health and beauty 
 
62 The Great Mystery 
 
 and chose to have her instead of light, for the 
 light that cometh from her never goeth out. 1 1. 
 All good things came to me together with her. 
 12. And I knew not that she was the mother of 
 them. 
 
 "24. Wisdom is more moving than any motion. 
 She passeth and goeth through all things by rea- 
 son of her pureness. 25. For she is the breath 
 (Spirit) of the power of God, and a pure influence 
 flowing from the glory of the Almighty. 26-29. 
 She is the brightness of the everlasting light, the 
 unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the 
 image of His goodness. And being but One, 
 she can do all things, and remaining in herself 
 she maketh all things new: and in all ages, en- 
 tering into holy souls, she maketh them friends 
 of God and prophets. For God loveth none but 
 him that dwelleth with Wisdom. For she is 
 more beautiful than the sun and above all the 
 order of the stars: being compared with the 
 light she is found before it. 
 
 "Chapter viii. 3, 4. In that she is conversant 
 with God she magnifieth her nobility: yea, the 
 Lord of all things himself loved her. For she is 
 privy to the mysteries of the knowledge of God, 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 63 
 
 and a lover of His words. 17. Now when I 
 considered these things in myself and pondered 
 them, how that to be allied unto Wisdom is im- 
 mortality ... 18 ... I went about 
 seeking how to take her to me. ... 21. 
 Nevertheless when I perceived that I could not 
 otherwise obtain her, except God gave her to 
 me, ... I prayed unto the Lord and be- 
 sought Him and with my whole heart I said, 
 (Chapter ix. i) O God of my fathers and Lord of 
 mercy, who hast made all things with Thy word, 
 4. Give me Wisdom that sitteth by Thy 
 throne, and reject me not from among Thy 
 children. 8-10. Thou hast commanded me to 
 build a temple upon Thy holy mount, and an 
 altar in the city wherein Thou dwellest, a resem- 
 blance of the holy tabernacle which Thou hast 
 prepared from the beginning. And Wisdom 
 was with Thee which knoweth Thy works and 
 was present when Thou madest the world, and 
 knew what was acceptable in Thy sight and right 
 in Thy commandments. O send her out of Thy 
 holy heavens and from the throne of Thy glory. 
 1 6, 17. The things that are in Heaven who 
 hath searched out, and Thy counsel who hath 
 
64 The Great Mystery 
 
 known, except Thou give Wisdom and send Thy 
 Holy Spirit from above." 
 
 NOTE M. On i Corinthians xi. 10 and the 
 context. 
 
 Why must a woman be veiled ? " Because of 
 the angels." That is a strange answer. What 
 does it mean ? What does a veil mean ? Some- 
 thing hidden covered, "revelation is unveiling." 
 What is there of woman that is hidden of which 
 this veil is a symbol ? Her typical likeness to the 
 Holy Spirit. From man, for her sin, for in the 
 Fall she was far the guiltier of the two, her like- 
 ness to God is hidden, to him she is but the 
 glory of man. She is subject to man. Man 
 alone is the image and " glory of God." To him 
 then, her veil has no profound meaning, and 
 therefore this passage has always remained a 
 mystery. But the angels, they know why, 
 they know that as she would be like "the gods," 
 so by a stern but just decree, her typical and true 
 likeness is hidden from all, even from herself, 
 and so she is doubly "deceived, being in the 
 transgression." Her curse was threefold. She 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 6_f 
 
 was cursed as mother and cursed as wife, and 
 these are plain denunciations, and terribly have 
 they been fulfilled. In all the long misery of 
 pregnancy, in the agonies and deadly perils of 
 childbirth, she drees her curse as mother. In 
 her world-wide humiliation she has suffered the 
 curse of subjection as wife, although where the 
 Cross of Christ is set up, that curse has been 
 mercifully lightened. 
 
 But the third curse is more mysterious, and 
 doubtless intentionally so, for to have made it 
 plainer would have made it void. "Thy desire 
 shall be to thy husband." . . . What was 
 the woman's desire ? There was something she 
 had desired so ardently as to risk death for it. It 
 was to be "as the gods," "to be wise." She 
 who was made in the image of " The Wisdom 
 of God " was not content with that high honor, 
 but would exalt herself by forbidden means. So 
 she was struck down from her height, and the 
 desire of her heart was given to her husband. 
 He alone has been regarded as the image of 
 God. . . . 
 
 In commenting on verses 7, 8, " He (the man) is 
 the image and glory of God : but the woman is the 
 
66 The Great Mystery 
 
 glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman 
 but the woman is of the man." Professor Lias, 
 (Camb. Comm.) tells us, this does not mean that 
 woman is in no sense to be regarded as the image and 
 glory of God, but that man is so immediately, she 
 mediately, through man. In other words, through 
 her procession from Adam, she is the image of God 
 the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth from the Father. 
 
 NOTE N. On Matthew xix. n, 
 
 All men cannot receive this saying, etc. 
 ., . . The whole character of the observa- 
 tion and the context seems to imply that the 
 words " this saying " refer to Christ's declaration 
 of the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage as a 
 holy ordinance of God, and so He would say: 
 All men are not capable of appreciating this view 
 of the sacredness of marriage. For some are in- 
 capacitated by birth or accident, and some even 
 are so mistaken as to think of pleasing God by a 
 voluntary and forced celibacy, so making them- 
 selves virtually or literally (as some have done) 
 eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. And 
 it is well known that it was just the monks of 
 the Middle Ages who were most incapable of 
 
Study in the Book of Revelation 67 
 
 appreciating the "spiritual beauty of marriage." 
 They were " not able to receive" this teaching of 
 Christ. 1 
 
 NOTE O. 
 
 As everything in the Book of Nature and the 
 Bible, the written and unwritten books of God, 
 leads constantly from the lower to the higher and 
 from the higher still up to the highest, I believe 
 that the collective church, the bride, white robed 
 and sanctified and wedded to Christ, is the grand 
 and final type of the Holy Spirit; and that those 
 parables of the leaven and lost piece of money, 
 and the vision of the star-crowned queen are 
 meant to lead us to this. "And the Spirit and 
 the Bride say, Come!" 
 
 1 The Church of Rome has ever taken a false, degrading, 
 and unscriptural view of marriage. 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 
 
 " The sense-world shadows forth the spirit world. 
 These shadow pictures are vouchsafed to man, 
 That he, thereby, the Infinite may interpret." 
 
 PERSIAN MYSTICAL POEM. 
 
 " This visible world is but a picture of the invisible." 
 SIR THOMAS BROWNE, " Religio Medici." 
 
CO 
 
 ffatber anfc /IRotbcr 
 fln loving 
 
 Ol f)ome 
 
Preface to the Study from Nature 
 
 FOR the major idea which I have endeavored to 
 elucidate in this Nature Study, I make no claim 
 whatever to originality. It was given me by my 
 mother, to whom it came in early life, a vision of 
 beauty and mystery, in whose soul it grew and 
 took shape through the days of her young wife- 
 hood and motherhood, by whom it has been 
 treasured ever since, until the present time, when 
 we have judged that men will be ready to discuss 
 it with calm and pure hearts, for only such can 
 hope to see God. 
 
 If there be anything original in the demonstra- 
 tion, it will be found in the idea of referring the 
 question at issue to the teachings of Nature, and 
 in the particular method of so doing. 
 
 Ruskin seems to have had a very poor opinion 
 of the theological knowledge of the young 
 women of England in his day, and a great aver- 
 sion to the idea of their trying to remedy the 
 deficiency. It may be seriously doubted whether 
 
 73 
 
74 Preface 
 
 it could be said to their children at the present 
 day, "You probably know less about God" 
 "than any poor little red, black, or blue savage 
 running wild in the pestilent woods, or naked 
 on the hot sands of the earth." However this 
 may be, and in spite of these sage contra-evolu- 
 tionary dictums, I am persuaded that the higher 
 truth lies in another dictum, that this is Life 
 Eternal, to know the only true God, and Jesus 
 Christ whom He has sent, and yet another, that 
 he who seeks shall find. May it not be that be- 
 cause he did not seek in the faith of finding, this 
 greatest critic of human art failed utterly to see 
 and know the Artist in the greatest of all works 
 of art, Nature ? 
 
 By years of serious scientific training and busy 
 life among men, I have been led to the line of 
 thought followed in this study; and among the 
 writers for whose works I am most grateful (al- 
 though I do not for a moment claim that there 
 was any thought of leading up to this) I should 
 not fail to mention particularly Mr. Darwin, and 
 the Duke of Argyll, and later, Dr. John Fiske, 
 Dr. Lyman Abbott, the late Professor Rider, Dr. 
 George A. Piersol, Dr. B. C. Hirst, Dr. A. J. 
 
Preface 75 
 
 Mason, and Prof. Henry Drummond. To Mr. 
 Drummond, I am indebted not alone for his 
 works, but for the almost ideal life which he 
 lived and so strongly have I felt his personal in- 
 fluence, and so much have I lived with his 
 thoughts, (I never had the pleasure of meeting 
 him otherwise) that I have quoted somewhat 
 from them in these pages. I am persuaded that 
 Mr. Drummond believed or was on the threshold 
 of believing as I do of the nature of God, and I 
 find in his works many passages in which he 
 seems to come to a point but one removed from 
 saying in substance what I have tried to say here. 
 Had he lived, I think he would have said it, and 
 said it better. 
 
 Finally, let me say that I have confined my at- 
 tention here to the study of this question through 
 Nature alone, in order to hear what she might 
 have to tell me; but in so doing, I acknowledge 
 the higher authority of the book of Revelation 
 over that of my interpretation of the book of 
 Nature. And perhaps I can best express this in 
 saying that I believe that Jesus Christ is the only 
 
 begotten Son of God. 
 
 W. H. J. 
 
 Philadelphia, November 29, 1900. 
 
I 
 
 The Artist, his Ideal, and his Work 
 THE STANDPOINT 
 
 IT has many times proved a recreation, as well 
 as my appreciated privilege, to watch from the 
 vantage ground of intimacy, the conception and 
 creation through years, of a great American 
 artist's greatest works. There was an ever-pres- 
 ent mind, perhaps unsurpassed in its power of 
 grasping facts, and of forming and holding ideals. 
 No mere appreciation of the appearance of things, 
 but a knowledge of their actuality. Not an eye 
 for the mere sparkling azure of the sea, but a 
 grand soul for the ocean's trackless wastes and 
 the depths that made it blue; an experience of its 
 storms and its calms, years spent by its side, 
 months spent on its heaving bosom, days spent 
 in studying its birth and life, its works and the 
 laws by which it works. Again, not an eye 
 
 77 
 
78 The Great Mystery 
 
 alone for highly colored canyons and their 
 deeply buried boiling streams; but time spent by 
 their side and in their depths, knowledge of their 
 rocks and the order and process of their forma- 
 tion, of their trees and the classification and 
 nature of their foliation, of the birds and beasts 
 that inhabit the forest depths and the mountain 
 wilds. And above all, and in keeping with all, a 
 great love for all. 
 
 What the artist painted was never exactly 
 what his eyes saw; it was an ideal compounded 
 of this, and of what he knew, felt, thought, and 
 loved. It was his ideal of truth, truth as appre- 
 hended and assimilated by him, the truth that 
 was in, and of him. 
 
 When the ideal was formed, then, and not till 
 then, followed the work. A great white can- 
 vas, an indefinite outline, rough indeed, and all 
 but meaningless, then months spent in the laying 
 of fundamental or base colors, and those which 
 will later on, give body and tone to that which 
 is to follow. Massive forms appear, and here 
 and there, some details are suggested and imper- 
 fectly worked out, and of these, some are mon- 
 strosities, or but hints of later things, and are 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 79 
 
 themselves blotted out. Large patches of green 
 will now appear as forests of pine or oak, and 
 will prove in keeping with great piles of red 
 sandstone or other formation. A harmony has 
 appeared, a certain reason in things. More de- 
 tails and softer colors, and more harmony and 
 more; and higher yet, a train or trend of thought, 
 and in it, mind. Details everywhere, mind 
 everywhere. Perhaps a great white cross upon 
 an everlasting rock and a solitary human figure, 
 his body in the valley, his eyes on the mountain 
 heights; or the shadow of an eagle on a desert 
 place, a carcass where no life is. 
 
 The work is finished, the artist is in it, if we 
 can see him. We read his ideals as best we may, 
 through his creations, through them also we read 
 his nature, for the ideal is of him. Through the 
 first work we may see love in him, and a looking 
 to the heights; through the other, that where 
 there is no life and progress, there the eagles will 
 be gathered. 
 
 Through the pages to follow, I would have you 
 keep this simile constantly in mind, as it "but 
 speaks an imaged life," and represents better 
 than any other that suggests itself to me, the 
 
8o The Great Mystery 
 
 greatest work of art, its ideals which are all 
 truth and beauty and love, and the artist, God. 
 
 Nature, as we know it, seems to be indeed, 
 the greatest work of art, so both science and 
 philosophy are inclining to think. They do not 
 indeed, put it just in this way ; but, discovering 
 through Nature and Mind great ideals of truth, 
 beauty, wisdom, purity, and love, they say in 
 other words the same thing, namely that "All 
 things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we 
 given Thee!" that things were made for the 
 ideal's sake, and whether all else were made for 
 man or not, certainly man and all else were made 
 for a revelation or manifestation of God. " He 
 who runs may read." 
 
 The relationship which exists between the 
 human artist and his work is this: the mind 
 makes the ideal, which is either wholly derived 
 from within, or is a compound of ideas from 
 within, and of certain ideas and groups of ideas 
 derived from without. The ideal is therefore 
 partially, at least, limited by the forming mind. 
 It can never be greater than the artist, unless he 
 goes outside himself for part of it. This he 
 usually does, so that, in some respects, it will be 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 81 
 
 greater than himself. The work is the image of 
 the ideal, and is therefore also limited by the 
 mind. In the case of God and Nature, there is 
 this difference from the above. Whether God be 
 finite or infinite, which is no longer an open 
 question, His ideals are wholly from within the 
 limits of His mind. He could not have gone out- 
 side of Himself for them, since there was no 
 without. And the work is the image of the 
 ideal, and therefore also within the compass, if 
 we may so speak, of His mind. 
 
 In using the words " limit " and "compass " of 
 infinite mind, I mean, of course, derived wholly 
 from within it. The human artist is interpreting 
 another mind's ideas, which he makes his own 
 ideals. The closer he reads the ideas, the higher 
 and truer will be his ideals. The man who can 
 get no further than lewd ballet girls will hardly 
 have such ideals as we believe we find in the 
 works of Burne-Jones and Hofmann. But in 
 God, are His own ideals. Evidently therefore, 
 there is inexpressibly more of God in His work 
 than of the artist in his. 
 
 God's ideals are in Himself, they are also ideals repre- 
 senting His mind, existing in it. The progress repre- 
 
82 The Great Mystery 
 
 sented in the work, and which ever makes toward the 
 ideals, and which has, in turn, its own ideals, may prove 
 eternal in time, an eternal approach to Himself, or 
 rather to the ideals which are in Him, the perfect 
 one, perfect in the sense here, of embracing all ideals. 
 Also, if His life is the highest or best, perfect in 
 this somewhat different sense, (and it is hardly con- 
 ceivable that it should be otherwise than perfect in 
 every applicable sense) our lives which are making to- 
 ward His ideals, must also be tending toward the best, 
 and we are ever more and more divine. 
 
 In the beginning God stretched before the 
 great white throne a canvas from the four corners 
 of endlessness, and He called the canvas Space; 
 and He raised His hand and began to work, and 
 Time began. And in the deep recesses of time, 
 there was a universe upon the canvas, and it was 
 without form and void, and darkness was upon 
 the face of all; and there was no light nor life 
 there. And in the course of ages, foundations 
 were laid, and upon them, seas and floods 
 appeared, and light appeared above and life 
 within, and these were the signs of great ideals, 
 and the ideals were of God. And we say that 
 God is Light, and He is Life. 
 
 And monstrosities appeared, big in body and 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 83 
 
 without reason, and they died, for there was 
 nothing in them to live. 
 
 And as time grew older, a wonder appeared 
 upon the canvas, and the wonder was mankind, 
 men, women, and children, and they had 
 been from the beginning of life as the beasts, 
 and later had reason and wisdom, and knew that 
 they were the image of an ideal and the ideal 
 was God. And Reason and Wisdom were God. 
 And still later, Love was manifested upon and 
 within the work, and it was called God, for it 
 was God, and embraced all other ideals. 
 
 And in these still later times, other ideals have 
 manifested themselves, and some are known and 
 others are thought to be of the nature of God. 
 Of these, are work itself, and progress, liberty, 
 equality of all men, that is of all mankind, of 
 men and women, of children and parents, who 
 are equal as God is equal, free as God is free, in 
 the liberty of truth. And there are many others, 
 and among them, two which are one, and which 
 seem to me to reach farther and more thoroughly 
 to permeate the work than any other except 
 Love itself, and these are the ideas of marriage 
 and of the unity of the family. 
 
84 The Great Mystery 
 
 In the following pages will you consider with 
 me, in the unfeigned reverence of children for 
 their parents, and in the name of the truth which 
 is to make us free, whether or not there may be 
 anything, and what it may be in the Divine 
 nature which stands as the eternal prototype and 
 raison d'etre of those things which permeate all 
 life as we know it, of the holiest relationships 
 which exist among men, and of two of those 
 goals toward which our physical, mental, and 
 spiritual evolution are making, pure marriage, 
 and the family unity which will come of perfect 
 love. 
 
 In discussing this lofty theme, let us realize 
 what is our standpoint and what are our vantage 
 grounds. Are we not ourselves forming figures 
 upon that great canvas, and central figures too ? 
 Much around us is in more detail than we. Our 
 drapery is largely painted in, but our faces are 
 somewhat lacking in soul, as the artist says. 
 Underneath and around us we have all history, 
 from the stretching of the canvas, before we 
 were so much as sketched in, until the present 
 day. And we have the great secret at last re- 
 vealed in the past century, but working through 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 85 
 
 all the ages. We read in this the greater future. 
 And in all we read, as we may, the artist's mind, 
 his nature, his methods, and the trend x of his 
 work, himself, in short, for he is in all. 
 
 In all the foregoing I have spoken much of 
 God, nor have I thought it necessary or within 
 the scope of this discussion to prove His exis- 
 tence. In a nature discussion, if I may so call 
 this, it matters not what name we give to that 
 which I have called God. Our name will not 
 affect His identity. Without wishing to follow 
 in the steps of a class of writers who occasionally 
 and abruptly, would sweep from the board, so 
 to speak, with one move of a pawn a plurality 
 of chessmen, including perhaps a king or so; I 
 would state that the existence of God is, in the 
 present day, acknowledged by thinking men 
 who occasionally lift their eyes from the stage of 
 their microscope, and by many men who do not. 
 And if there be others who yet do not see, I 
 
 1 1 shall make some use of this word, trend. It is not promi- 
 nent in recent scientific literature, and yet perhaps no other 
 expresses so well the method by which through evolution we 
 read from the past into the future. It suits my purpose, and 
 moreover, is short, means something, and that, exactly what it 
 says. 
 
86 The Great Mystery 
 
 would say to these that in Mr. Fiske's " Through 
 Nature to God," I have found some natural rea- 
 sons which I can neither excel nor so well repeat, 
 for believing in the existence of both God and 
 men. 
 
 By God's ideals, I mean whatsoever there may 
 be in God which stands as prototype to Nature. 
 
 And by Nature, I mean what others mean, 
 when speaking in the broadest sense of the 
 word, namely that which conforms to God's 
 laws. 
 
II 
 
 Of Analogies 
 
 Consider the Lilies ! 
 
 THERE are several methods by which we at- 
 tempt to demonstrate truths to each other, and 
 of these, two are in most frequent requisition, 
 namely, that by pure logic, and that by pertinent 
 analogies. 
 
 If the former be applicable to a point in ques- 
 tion, it is the more convincing, indeed its verdict 
 is final. But its use is absolutely conditional on 
 knowledge or admission of all the facts in the 
 case. Otherwise, it is never final, and seldom to 
 be trusted, the danger of error, through some 
 slight technical or verbal flaws, being altogether 
 too great. There are some truths which could 
 not be proved by any human language. We 
 have but to read any history of philosophy to be 
 aware that these statements are true. 
 
 87 
 
88 The Great Mystery 
 
 The method by analogy, on the other hand, if 
 the analogies be reasonable, though its verdict is 
 never final, is often convincing, whether all, or 
 even most of the facts in the question under dis- 
 cussion be known or not. It is for the above 
 reasons that argument by analogy is the method 
 of Nature students and scientists in general, the 
 world over, and can be abandoned by such, only 
 when discussing subjects of which the limits are 
 clearly seen and presumably understood. 
 
 I would not for one moment seem to fail in 
 appreciation of the human intellect, the powers 
 and glory of which can hardly be overestimated; 
 but that it has a limit, it would be foolishness to 
 deny, and its limit of logical demonstrative power 
 is within its grasp of facts. It would seem as if, 
 above all other fields, we might best apply pure 
 logic to pure philosophy; and yet we find among 
 philosophers every grade, for instance, of ideal- 
 ist, from the all but materialist through Leibnitz 
 with his monads, and Berkeley with his arche- 
 types, to the more modern idealism of Herman 
 Lotye and the mysticisms of Prof. T. H. Green's 
 neo-Hegelian doctrines; and we have many of 
 their representatives to-day and neither were 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 89 
 
 these men, nor are their followers, of mean mind 
 power. No two philosophies have ever been 
 shown to be in perfect agreement. They all ap- 
 pear movable quantities, both as to time pro- 
 gressive and time present. What then ? Are 
 we to give over trusting in our mental powers, 
 and sit down to wait until we have them larger ? 
 That would be despair indeed, for in the light of 
 what we know of evolution's requirements for 
 progress, we should thus sit, until we became 
 monads once again. 
 
 Let us rather admit that, though every fact 
 from the simplest to the most involved be doubt- 
 less capable of logical demonstration, such proofs 
 are almost without exception, not as yet, for us; 
 that neither we are fixed quantities, nor are our 
 surroundings; that we live and move in an over- 
 lapping series of ascending progresses, that we 
 can no more prove by logic the more involved 
 facts of Nature and its greater source, than we 
 can put together a watch, no part of which is, as 
 yet, complete, 1 or photograph the finished cathe- 
 
 i One might put it partly together and gain the trend of the 
 unfinished parts, and the probable function of the whole, but 
 one could not dogmatize about the matter. 
 
90 The Great Mystery 
 
 dral of St. John the Divine, while yet it is in proc- 
 ess of building. 
 
 Let us reason as honestly as is in us, and as 
 reasonably as our powers allow, and neither be 
 surprised nor disappointed that others from dif- 
 ferent standpoints, do not see exactly as we do. 
 If there be truth in what we teach, it will be 
 established in time, and if there be no truth, let 
 us thank God from the bottom of our hearts, that 
 it will soon die. 
 
 In the following discussion 1 purpose to use 
 chiefly the method of argument by analogy. 
 We are to deal with a question of Nature, and 
 this is the only method that seems to me to 
 apply to such, as viewed by the human or any 
 other finite intellect Nature is progressive, we 
 are progressive, both as individuals and as a race. 
 We have not all the facts by a very wide margin 
 and indeed are only beginning to classify those 
 we have. Nature is a life, not a philosophy, and 
 its arguments cannot be, for us, fixtures. Could 
 they become so, we should have reason to de- 
 spair, since stagnation would be our portion. 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 91 
 
 Analogy is the argument of science; the very 
 word calls attention to this fact. It is the argu- 
 ment of reaching out, of progress in chemistry, 
 physics, economics, sociology, law, medicine, 
 and theology. These are movable quantities, as 
 can be shown from that so-called fixed science, 
 chemistry. There was a time when there were 
 supposed to be but four elementary substances, 
 earth, air, fire and water. When I was a college 
 student, there were some sixty-eight elements 
 clearly demonstrated to be such, with seven or 
 eight more still in doubt. And it is now begin- 
 ning to look as if there might be but one element 
 after all, and that perhaps a non-condensed form 
 of all the formerly so-called elements, named by 
 chemists "protyle." What are we to think? 
 What of logical proofs based on such movable 
 foundations as these ? 
 
 Boyle and Lavoisier were those to insist that the ele- 
 ments were independent in their nature and ultimate. 
 There are some chemists, however, who propose the 
 view that the elements consist of one fundamental 
 matter in various stages of condensation, and that the 
 stage is dependent on the temperature, the higher the 
 temperature the less being the condensation. In 1815 
 
92 The Great Mystery 
 
 Prout suggested that this fundamental matter was hy- 
 drogen, but the suggestion was shown to be inaccurate 
 by the work of Stas and others. At present the funda- 
 mental matter, called "Protyle," without any further 
 attempt being made to characterize it, is, so to speak, 
 placed lower down in the scale than hydrogen which 
 is itself regarded as protyle in a definite advanced 
 stage of transition. Crookes regards all elements as 
 having been gradually evolved from this protyle ; the 
 heavier elements, such as bismuth, thorium and ura- 
 nium being the younger or more recent species ; the 
 lighter elements, such as lithium, boron, etc., being 
 the older. 1 
 
 Again, anatomy is a fixed science, we say. 
 There was a time when muscle, bone, fat, etc., 
 were anatomical units to argue from, then there 
 were cells of homogeneous protoplasm, then these 
 cells had nuclei, then again nucleoli, then there 
 were polar bodies, chromatin, centrosomes, and 
 a host more of parts, and now a whole series 
 of most complicated and absorbingly interesting 
 processes have their seat within these protoplas- 
 mic once-called units. 
 
 A second reason for the adoption of this 
 
 1 (Information supplied through the courtesy of Dr. John 
 Marshall.) 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 93 
 
 method lies in the fact of its applicability to gen- 
 eralizations. This follows from what I have al- 
 ready said of it. The more we try to include, 
 and the larger our problem, the less trustworthy 
 is the other method. Such generalizers as Dar- 
 win, Huxley, Wallace, Drummond, Fiske, and a 
 host of others have employed it with such suc- 
 cess and power to convince, as makes it un- 
 necessary for me to do more than instance their 
 work. 
 
 And thirdly, it does not depend for its life on 
 dim shades of words and hair-breadths of inter- 
 pretation. In it, we do not arrange our blocks 
 as some other children do, in serpentine chains, 
 so that, if one falls, the whole is lost. We 
 rather range them side by side, and though one 
 or a dozen fall, the truth may remain. 
 
 Fourthly, it is the method that in these latter 
 days, is proving the persuasive argument par ex- 
 cellence. Is there any one who will stake his all 
 on one kind of idealism to the exclusion of all 
 others ? I, for one, will not. Or will any one 
 be willing to live on the conclusions of that 
 marvelous logician, Mr. Sidgewick, as set forth 
 in the Methods of Ethics? I cannot live by 
 
94 The Great Mystery 
 
 them, but I can live by a good and reasonable 
 analogy. I can see light and live by the lilies and 
 the sparrows. 
 
 Finally, if an argument by analogy be not true, 
 or only partly so, it will soon betray itself. If 
 the method be used incorrectly or too closely, 
 the fact will soon be revealed by honest criticism, 
 and whatever truth there may be in it will not be 
 lost by sifting. Mr. Drummond used the method 
 in both of his Nature books; in the second, al- 
 most without error, in the first, with some mis- 
 takes in the matter of overstretched analogies. 
 It is recorded in his biography by G. A. Smith, 
 p. 154, et seq., that in later years Drummond 
 recognized these fallacies, and freely acknowl- 
 edged them, and said in 1890, " I would write the 
 book differently if I were to do it again, etc.," 
 yet the truth in the book remains, and some of 
 its inspiring analogies will remain with us for- 
 ever. 
 
 That there is truth and much truth in what I 
 purpose to discuss in this study, I have no man- 
 ner of doubt. And I earnestly desire to know 
 that others see the same light as I, on the path 
 that we shall follow together. Yet, though I 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 95 
 
 believe, I desire to prove nothing. If there be 
 truth in what I glean, and offer, you will see it. 
 You will know it as you always know truth, 
 by its beauty, by its simplicity, its reasonableness 
 and its adaptability, by its persuasiveness, its 
 universality, and by your willingness to trust it. 
 You will know it, because it is truth, and God is 
 Truth, and you are an image. We have, thanks 
 to God and His army of seekers, given up, or 
 nearly so, cramming our views down other peo- 
 ple's throats as truth. As through republican 
 ideals we are learning slowly to be, each and 
 every one of us, a good governor, so by seeking 
 each for himself, we shall learn together to know 
 truth, which is freedom. 
 
Ill 
 
 Life and its Factors 
 
 ORGANIC life has been defined by Mr. Lewes 
 ("History of Philosophy," p. 80) as the "con- 
 nexus of the organic activities," and though there 
 have appeared many attempts to be more defini- 
 tive, I know of no result that is less involved or 
 more satisfactory than this one. It seems to be 
 a true definition as far as it goes. 
 
 Of these activities of organic life, it is well 
 known that there are two which seem to em- 
 brace all others, and to be essential to the exist- 
 ence of all such life, and these are nutrition and 
 reproduction. And these two factors are shown 
 by Mr. Drummond 1 ("The Ascent of Man," p. 220, 
 et seq.) to have been intimately associated with, 
 and bound respectively to the two great labors 
 
 1 I have given in the preface my reasons and my apology for 
 quoting somewhat frequently and at some length from the 
 writings of Mr. Drummond, and of one or two others. 
 96 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 97 
 
 of evolution, namely, the struggle for life, and 
 the struggle for the life of others. The writer 
 then goes on to show that the exercise of these 
 two activities "in plants, and largely in animals, 
 sums up the work of life. The object of Nutri- 
 tion is to secure the life of the individual; the 
 object of Reproduction is to secure the life of the 
 Species. These two objects are thus wholly dif- 
 ferent. The first has a purely personal end; its 
 attention is turned inwards; it exists only for the 
 present. The second in a greater or less degree 
 is impersonal; its attention is turned outwards; 
 it lives for the future. One of these objects, in 
 other words, is Self-regarding; the other is Other- 
 regarding. . . . Selfishness and unselfishness 
 are two supreme words in the moral life. The 
 first, even in physical Nature, is accompanied by 
 the second. In the very fact that one of the two 
 main springs of life is Other-regarding, there lies 
 a prophecy, a suggestion, of the day of Altruism. 
 In organizing the physiological mechanism of 
 Reproduction, in plants and animals, Nature was 
 already laying wires on which, one far-off day, 
 the currents of all higher things might travel." 
 ("The Ascent of Man," p. 221.) And later, 
 
98 The Great Mystery 
 
 " Taken prophetically, the function of Reproduc- 
 tion is as much greater than the function of Nu- 
 trition as the Man is greater than the Animal, as 
 the Soul is higher than the Body, as Cooperation 
 is greater than Competition, as Love is stronger 
 than Hate. (" The Ascent of Man," p. 222.) 
 
 We clearly see that there are two great factors of 
 organic life, Nutrition and Reproduction, founda- 
 tion stones of the body and of all that may be 
 above it, and, as Mr. Drummond has demon- 
 strated, certainly the latter of these, Reproduc- 
 tion, is eternal, altruistic (especially in all its 
 higher manifestations), and unlimited. 
 
 It is somewhat difficult to see why Mr. Drum- 
 mond should have seen fit to relegate almost 
 without proof the universal function of nutrition 
 to a place so hopelessly inferior to that of repro- 
 duction as to decree that it is mortal, self-cen- 
 tring and limited. It is true that in its origin it 
 is self-regarding, and for the preservation of the 
 individual; while the function of reproduction is 
 at least feebly altruistic from its inception ; yet it 
 is equally evident that in its higher development, 
 nutrition takes on a distinctly altruistic form, and 
 only in this form does it play its most important 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 99 
 
 role, in the evolution of the Father. It was not 
 in the providing of food for himself that the Father 
 was made, but in the provision for his mate and 
 offspring. 
 
 It seems evident too, that in the higher life, 
 mental, moral and spiritual, there is to be found 
 a pretty clear analogue to nutrition in Truth, its 
 quest and its provision. As Phillips Brooks has 
 said and as others have thought, 1 "Truth and the, 
 search for truth are the great food and discipline 
 of human nature." (Sermons. Phillips Brooks.) 
 
 We shall have little occasion again to refer at 
 this time to the factor Nutrition, as it has but 
 slight bearing on our subject, beyond that to 
 which attention has already been called. 
 
 If we should here adopt Mr. Drummond's view 
 which refers the self-seeking function to maleness and 
 the other-seeking function to femaleness, we should but 
 emphasize and add strength to our attempt to demon- 
 strate the dependence of all life, low and high, upon 
 the family relationships. But although Mr. Drum- 
 
 1 " Truth is the soul's proper food, untruth is its poison. . . . 
 The soul takes its food by believing. . . . Some kinds of 
 truth are like some kinds of food, not very nourishing. . . . 
 Truth about God is the very Bread of Life to our souls." 
 (Letter of E. M. J., 1871.) 
 
loo The Great Mystery 
 
 mond's standpoint undoubtedly has firm ground be- 
 neath it, I have not seen fit to lay stress, here, on his 
 division of function, for three reasons ; First : I think 
 that he has but upturned the surface ground about the 
 mystery of sex ; and that this root lies deeply buried 
 in the ideal of life itself; that the distinction of sex 
 lies even deeper than the functions of the same ; and 
 that this performance of function lies in a male or fe- 
 male way of doing things, rather than in a difference 
 of things done, different though the things done cer- 
 tainly are. This is more in accordance with Mr. 
 Drummond's own theory of involution. Second : He 
 does not take sufficient note of the part of the male in 
 reproduction, for besides the fact that the male is ever 
 essential to reproduction of species, in the germ cell 
 the male element is probably more strictly reproductive 
 than the female, which is rather devoted to growth 
 and nutrition, while in the womb and during lactation, 
 the entire nutrition of the offspring is the work of the 
 female. But it is true that at no time are the func- 
 tions of male and female the same, and that in the 
 higher reaches, the divisions are probably as Mr. 
 Drummond has drawn them. Third : The matter is 
 not yet clear, and though it may be sufficiently so, to 
 hold as a theory, or part of a theory, it is not so con- 
 cluded as to warrant me in using it as a basis for a 
 secondary demonstration. 
 
 Of the other factor of all life, Reproduction, I 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 101 
 
 shall have much to say in the sections to follow, 
 and shall but make this note here, that, as to the 
 production of spirit, the only evidence which Na- 
 ture seems to afford us, aside from the facts in- 
 volved in the establishment of the major question 
 we are discussing, have bearing upon the pro- 
 duction of the human spirit. And this evidence, 
 though of a negative, rather than a positive char- 
 acter, must point the thoughtful mind to the 
 inference that our spiritual life is begotten through 
 reproduction, in an analogous manner to the life 
 of our bodies. It is hardly reasonable to suppose 
 that souls should exist as stored up entities, or 
 come into being, as it were, through special crea- 
 tion or intervention. Reason and hosts of ana- 
 logies would lead us rather to believe that spiritual 
 natures are born of parent spiritual natures, as, and 
 in conjunction with the physical natures with 
 which they are so closely associated. I do not 
 say that this is proved; but I do maintain that, 
 as far as we know from Nature about the birth of 
 spirit, we are led to infer that spirit is reproduced 
 from other spirit, or at least, from dual parent- 
 hood. 
 So far as we know, all life is from life, phys- 
 
1O2 The Great Mystery 
 
 ical and spiritual, and if man or any other have a 
 soul, Nature gives us no other explanation of its 
 origin than that it comes by birth, by heredity. 
 We can admit the possibility of other modes of 
 spiritual production, as we can conceive of a 
 monad existence, (a different kind of protoplasm 
 being granted, and ignoring the question of 
 nutritive supply), developing through ages into 
 a higher type of life, without reproduction, and 
 of a spiritual development accompanying the 
 same; but Nature gives us no more grounds for 
 the one than the other. 
 
 Thus far we have spoken of reproduction as a 
 universally found relationship, that is, a relation- 
 ship found throughout life, in its simplest form, 
 consisting of two constituents, namely, begetter- 
 hood and begottenhood, or by more euphonious 
 names, parenthood and childhood. So far as we 
 can see, so far as the eyes of science have ever 
 reached, no life has ever appeared which has not 
 shown the distinct presence of these two re- 
 lationships. From monad to man, and through 
 every intermediate ramification, these two re- 
 lationships appear, and they never fail to appear, 
 if we can get close enough to see them. 
 
1 NEED hardly say that this universal relation- 
 ship, spoken of in the last section, as a dual one 
 of parenthood and childhood, is in reality a triple 
 relationship, consisting of a dual parentage and 
 an offspring element. But it is quite possible 
 that all of us do not appreciate the universality of 
 this principle of dual parentage, as revealed by 
 the scientific researches of this century, and es- 
 pecially by those of the last ten years. It was 
 understood by men of old, that the fact of sex 
 was an important world principle, and this ap- 
 preciation was registered in numberless ways, of 
 which one was the peopling of all Nature, by the 
 Greeks and others, with male and female spiritual 
 life. In a later age, it was discovered that every 
 flower of the field, and every forest tree, was 
 male or female, or both. Then the scientists 
 
 103 
 
104 The Great Mystery 
 
 demonstrated that every individual having life in 
 itself, animal or vegetable, is male or female or 
 both. And perhaps the greatest triumph of the 
 anatomists of to-day is their revelation to us that, 
 without doubt, every living cell in every living 
 organism in all nature has sex. Not even in cell 
 life, do we find anywhere in nature, reproduction 
 without dual parenthood. 1 From the lowest 
 unorganized cell to the highest life expressing it- 
 self through organism, from the farthest past to 
 the present day, we find no trace of life without 
 sex. They are inseparable and coexistent, the 
 one, the foundation of the other ; it would seem 
 as though the very God, from whom all life has 
 come, knows no life without it. 
 
 We have alluded to two forms of dual life, that 
 in which one organism is in possession of both 
 elements, and that in which each element is found 
 in a so-called separate organism. The latter has 
 proved itself the higher type since it has resulted 
 in nature's highest products and God's most 
 
 1 1 have before me a letter dated October 25, 1900, from 
 Dr. George A. Piersol, America's deservedly best known 
 embryologist, which outlines for me the very latest and soundest 
 views on this subject, and satisfies me of the correctness of these 
 conclusions. 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 105 
 
 glorious works, the human Father, the human 
 Mother, and the human Child. But we are speak- 
 ing for the present, of the sexes. 
 
 Now in the lowest forms of life in which there 
 is reproduction through dual parenthood resident 
 in the same organism, these elements find them- 
 selves placed in close proximity, and unite by 
 some as yet undefined affinity, and their union 
 results in a cleavage or a budding which is a divi- 
 sion of the whole organism, the identity of which 
 is practically lost. Sometimes this identity is re- 
 tained for a while, as a parent or mother cell, to 
 be, later on, lost as above. This is the lowest 
 form of organic life. In the next, in which the 
 sexes are already manifested as separate organ- 
 isms, there is not yet any married life at all, nor 
 indeed does this appear through many higher 
 grades of the relationship. In these, we have no 
 least expression of individuality, of parenthood, 
 or of any of the beauties which this relationship 
 presents in the higher types of animal life. The 
 entire life of these species seems to be devoted to 
 the one worthy object of reproducing their kind, 
 sometimes perchance placing their offspring amid 
 surroundings suitable for future development. 
 
106 The Great Mystery 
 
 The relationship has no restriction except that of 
 species. There is no married life, as the parents 
 have no relations beyond the moment, and they 
 never know, nor do they even live to see their 
 offspring alive. 
 
 Of the higher examples of these grades of life, 
 we might mention one well known to all of us, 
 the common house-fly. From this stage upward 
 to the mountain heights of the more strictly 
 monogamous mammal lives, there is every finest 
 grade of progress. There is the wolf-spider who 
 watches over her young for a time, but may be 
 eaten by them in return. There are the bees who 
 guard their young most carefully for a time, and 
 maintain a sort of tribal, polyandrous relation- 
 ship. There are certain wild fowl, who live in 
 polygamous communities, and among whom the 
 young are cared for throughout their short child- 
 hood; and the antelopes, whose polygamy is more 
 restricted, and among whom the period of devel- 
 opment is of longer duration. Still higher in the 
 scale, we find many birds who live faithfully in 
 pairs, for a season, and care well for their off- 
 spring, until they attain maturity. And finally, 
 there are yet higher orders of wild birds, and 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 107 
 
 animals, as the lion and the eagle, who will abide 
 with one mate faithfully, and for life, and rear up 
 their young, until the need for their care ceases, 
 through the physical maturity of their offspring. 1 
 
 As we climb the mountain peaks, the air grows 
 purer, the light more dazzling. A higher ideal 
 of marriage rises, like the sun over the Jungfrau; 
 wedded life as we see it to-day in America, Eng- 
 land, Germany; the life toward and beyond 
 which Christ pointed so long ago, when as yet, 
 Nero and the Maximian laws were possible among 
 men. This life is as far above that of even the 
 eagles and the lions, as the sun is above the 
 mountain-tops; and its glory is its spiritual love, 
 where, the body being under arrest, one man and 
 one woman shall live together in faithfulness of 
 body, mind, and soul, so long as they both shall 
 live, and their children shall be theirs for life. 
 
 But if, with a smoked glass, we gaze at the 
 sun, we see many a spot on its bright face; and 
 such, alas! there are on the fair glory of wedded 
 life in our land to-day. Such are the black spots 
 
 1 " Whenever man does not interfere, monogamy seems to be 
 the general order of nature with all higher organisms." 
 (" Sexes throughout Nature," Blackwell, p. 143.) 
 
io8 The Great Mystery 
 
 of individual impurity, the dark shadows of 
 Mormonism, the shameful stains of our divorce 
 laws, 1 and of polygamy stereotyped in Sulu. 
 "Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's 
 sun staineth!" But there is a light above the 
 brightness of the sun, there are possibilities for 
 human marriage of which the poet-prophet 
 spake: 
 
 " Then comes the statelier Eden back to men : 
 Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm : 
 Then springs the crowning race of humankind." 
 
 1 In San Francisco there is an average of one divorce to 
 every six or less marriages. And in the State of California, 
 according to the Outlook of November 24, 1900, " Divorce 
 in that State is allowed for cruel and inhuman treatment, 
 and under this clause, according to Mr. Meriwether, divorces 
 have been allowed to the husband, in one case, because his wife 
 failed to sew buttons on his vest ; in another, because she would 
 not get up in the morning nor call him in the morning ; and to 
 the wife because the husband did not come home until ten 
 o'clock at night and kept his wife awake talking sometimes 
 until midnight, etc." But with the Outlook, we trust that in 
 the actions of the " Episcopal Committee " we see the dawning 
 of a widespread reaction " in the public sentiment of this 
 country against that freedom of divorce which has been one of 
 the most injurious and dishonoring features of our national 
 life." 
 
V 
 
 Man and Woman, Equal and yet Diverse 
 
 AT this point, let me say a word or two with 
 regard to the comparative rank of the sexes in 
 the natural economy, and to their diversities; not 
 by way of proof, but in review of certain points 
 which have been recently all but established, and 
 which are, at this time, generally accepted as 
 truth on these subjects. 
 
 The author of Sexuality throughout Nature, 
 A. B. Blackwell, some years ago traced very care- 
 fully the relative positions of the sexes, from 
 their lowest manifestations, (as then recognized) 
 through all nature to mankind, and came to the 
 conclusion, that from the foundation up, the 
 sexes are equally important to, as well as equally 
 advanced in, the economy of nature; that physi- 
 ologically (physically and mentally), woman is 
 
 109 
 
llo The Great Mystery 
 
 fitted equally with man, to take the highest places 
 in the reaches of evolution ; that any seeming lim- 
 itation in woman's mental power is but a tardi- 
 ness or lagging, of short durability, and brought 
 about in the comparatively recent centuries of the 
 world's progress, through the arbitrary, force- 
 born assumption of superiority by man, a neces- 
 sary, but temporary state of affairs, and in the 
 immediate future to become a thing of the past; 
 that even this superiority is rather assumed than 
 demonstrated, and will at once betray its un- 
 soundness, when equality is recognized and, 
 through co-education and other measures, dem- 
 onstrated. I trust that I have not misrepre- 
 sented the author's conclusions by so con- 
 cisely sketching them. She also thinks that 
 science, chemistry, physiology, etc., analysis 
 in other words, will prove the equal viability 
 of the sexes. 
 
 Now, since the appearance of this work, an 
 immense amount of time and attention have 
 been given to the matter; comparative mental 
 anatomy and physiology have been developed 
 to a high degree of usefulness; psychology has 
 done much; education, and especially pedagogy, 
 
Study in the Book of Nature ill 
 
 sociology and a host of other lines of investiga- 
 tion have added their evidence; and the evidence 
 of life, as we see it, is becoming plainer, as we 
 learn to read. The whole is crystallizing into a 
 diamond of truth, whose point is gradually pene- 
 trating even the most leathery among us, the 
 truth that woman balances man in the economy 
 of nature, as a golden pound a silver, on the 
 finest scales, or as one-half of the needle in a 
 ship's compass, the other. And, although there 
 are still many who do not care to acknowledge 
 this truth, most of such are to be found, I think, 
 in China or the Ottoman Empire. One of our 
 most famous European anatomists, it is true, 
 demonstrated that the average woman's brain 
 weighs slightly less than the average man's, and 
 drew sage conclusions therefrom; but at his own 
 post-mortem examination, it was shown that his 
 own brain weighed decidedly less than his aver- 
 age for women's; so that the scientist would 
 probably modify certain of his conclusions if he 
 could, especially in view of the fact that the 
 anatomists of to-day have paved the way for 
 him. 
 It seems almost unnecessary to have said even 
 
1 1 2 The Great Mystery 
 
 this much to show the equality of the sexes, 
 which are both as indispensable to life as are the 
 two eyes to binocular vision. If two factors are 
 necessary to prolong the life of which each is a 
 part, it goes without saying that neither can suc- 
 cessfully crowd the other out of existence, with- 
 out self-destruction. Neither sex can therefore, 
 by any possibility, have more competitive vital- 
 ity-power than the other. Such a state of affairs 
 would at once, compel degeneration. 
 
 With regard to the child, I do not think that 
 any one will question the statement that in na- 
 ture, it is the equal of its parents. (Of course, I 
 am speaking of the racial child, not of the indi- 
 vidual whose calibre may be affected by acci- 
 dent.) The child takes on the nature of the par- 
 ent and, except for the minute increment of 
 evolution, is its equal. And while on this sub- 
 ject, I may say that even this slightest superiority 
 is partially negated by the fact that the parent 
 in turn, is, to an equal degree, superior to the 
 grandparent. Also, I will say, that in the ideal, 
 after which, I believe, human nature to be 
 planned in the perfected relationship, the child 
 is not in any sense superior or inferior to the 
 
Study in the Book of Nature ] 13 
 
 parent, 1 for in that, the factor of evolution is 
 eliminated, in our sense of the word, (the sense 
 of perfecting). We must also realize that the 
 duties of obedience, etc., which the child owes 
 to its parents, are not the expression of inequality 
 in nature, but of difference of function. 
 
 Now, to return to woman; though she is the 
 absolute equal of man, she is also absolutely di- 
 verse from him. She is his equal in rank, she is 
 his complement in nature. Or more definitely 
 still, she and he are balancing complements in 
 human nature, and, the third component, child, 
 being added, make up human nature. There 
 have been many demonstrations of this fact, and 
 from many standpoints, of which the most con- 
 clusive and satisfying is that of Mr. Drummond 
 in those chapters of the Ascent of Man, in which 
 he traces the progress of the race through sex, 
 and the evolution of the mother and father. No 
 one has done this so beautifully, or understood 
 the question so thoroughly as he. And what are 
 his evidences from nature? That from their 
 
 1 " The child is the climax and culmination of all God's crea- 
 tion, and to answer the question ' What is a child ? ' is to ap- 
 proach the still greater question 'What is the Creator and 
 Giver of Life ? ' "Parker, 
 
114 The Great Mystery 
 
 foundation upward, the sexes have been working 
 at the same general problem, but at opposite 
 sides of it. They have worked more and more 
 together, as to the problem, but with ever 
 specializing instruments, and at ever specializing 
 work. The more they work, the more they 
 diverge, and yet, as the hands in a factory, the 
 more absolutely indispensable they become to 
 each other. In the very nature of their callings, 
 they must ever become more indispensably diver- 
 gent. 
 
 Hermaphroditism is unnatural and a sign of degen- 
 eracy in the individual, or of stagnation in the species. 
 A womanish man is an abhorrence, a mannish woman 
 is a horror. A man may be brave and a woman may 
 be brave. Each may be true, and each may love. 
 But each will do so in the way that belongs to his or 
 her nature, and man is as different from woman as the 
 ocean from the shore, as the sun at noon, from the 
 starry splendor of the summer night, as Thackeray 
 from George Eliot, as Robert Browning from Elizabeth, 
 as a father from a mother, as a man from his own wife. 
 
 "That cleavage, therefore, which began in a 
 merely physical region, is now seen to extend 
 into the psychical realm, and ends by supply- 
 ing the world with two great and forever sepa- 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 115 
 
 rate types. No efforts, or explanations, or 
 expostulations can ever break down that dis- 
 tinction between maleness and femaleness, or 
 make it possible to believe that they were not 
 destined from the first of time to play a different 
 part in human history. Male and female never have 
 been and never will be the same. They are 
 different in origin; they have traveled to their 
 destinations by different routes; they have had 
 different ends in view." (" Ascent of Man," 
 p. 256.) 
 
 " For woman is not undevelopt man, 
 
 But diverse ; could we make her as the man, 
 
 Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this, 
 
 Not like to like, but like in difference. 
 
 Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 
 
 The man be more of woman, she of man ; 
 
 He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 
 
 Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; 
 
 She, mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 
 
 Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; 
 
 Till at the last, she set herself to man, 
 
 Like perfect music unto noble words. 
 
 And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 
 
 Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers, 
 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 
 
 Self-reverent each and reverencing each, 
 
 Distinct in individualities, 
 
 But like each other ev'n as those who love." 
 
VI 
 
 The Unit of Humanity 
 
 IN seeking to find what there may be in God 
 which stands as prototype to human life or any 
 phase thereof, it will be well to know to what 
 simple terms we can reduce this human life, for 
 all that Nature has ever taught men of God has 
 been on broad and simple lines. Let us then see 
 for a moment if we are able to find a unit of 
 humanity, some simplest representation of it, 
 which yet will leave out no essential part. 
 Some such reduction to simplest terms, many of 
 us think we find in the story of Eden, in which 
 we still believe we see more meaning than in 
 any mere "myth" that ever a race invented for 
 us to dub "folk-lore." 
 
 What is the unit of humanity? What is a 
 unit ? In mathematics, a unit is the smallest 
 known determinate quantity, by the constant 
 repetition of which, any other quantity of the 
 
 116 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 1 1 7 
 
 same kind is measured. In chemistry, a unit is 
 a molecule, the smallest possible portion of a 
 substance into which it may supposably be 
 divided, without destroying the identity of the 
 substance. In other words, and in general then, 
 a unit is the smallest factor of anything, which 
 yet lacks no essential other than repetition. 
 What is this factor in humanity ? A man ? 
 Surely not, for a million million men would never 
 make humanity, nor a million million women. 
 What then ? A man and a woman ? No, not 
 even these. Two essentials are yet lacking, the 
 only possible bond which represents the reason 
 for their union, and the only factor which stands 
 for human progress. Both these the child sup- 
 plies. The unit of humanity is the family and 
 nothing less and nothing more. Divide it, and 
 humanity is lost to view. Multiply it, and noth- 
 ing in all human life will be lacking. Multiply 
 it and tribes and nations will appear and every- 
 thing that makes them such. Multiply it and 
 the love which it begets, and the world will teem 
 with love and every human virtue. History, and 
 all anthropology are but composites of the family 
 life. Philanthropy and brotherly love are the 
 
1 18 The Great Mystery 
 
 overflow of the love that binds these three in 
 one. As the unit of water consists of two dis- 
 tinct and purest hydrogen atoms, bound together 
 by one of oxygen, so does that of humanity con- 
 sist of two distinct parent atoms bound together 
 by a child. The unit of humanity is the family, 
 three elements in one, and each is as necessary to 
 the other two as the three are to life. 
 
 " There is no such thing in nature as a man, or for 
 that matter as an animal, except among the very hum- 
 blest forms." (Science does not now allow of even 
 this exception.) " Wherever there is a higher animal 
 there is another animal ; wherever there is a savage 
 there is another savage the other half of him, the fe- 
 male savage. This much at least sex has done for the 
 world it has abolished the numeral one. Observe, it 
 has not merely discouraged the existence of one; it 
 has abolished the numeral one. The solitary animal 
 must die and leave no successor. Unsociableness, 
 therefore, is banished out of the world ; it has become 
 the very condition of continued existence that there 
 should be always a family group, or at least a pair." 
 (When speaking of the race there cannot be said even 
 this "at least.") ("The Ascent of Man," p. 244.) 
 
 But it may be objected that the family relation- 
 ships were made for the sole purpose of perpetu- 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 1 1 9 
 
 ating the race. That they do perpetuate the race 
 I will admit, that they are necessary to all life as 
 God has made it, I maintain. The family re- 
 lationships were made to make the race and more, 
 they are the race. As " Mother Carey " said and 
 laughed, "Know, silly child, that any one can 
 make things, if they will take time and trouble 
 enough; but it is not every one who, like me, can 
 make things make themselves." This is what 
 God has done in the evolution of the family. 
 But to say that the family was made alone to 
 perpetuate the race is no more reasonable than to 
 say that we read books to pile them one by one 
 upon our shelves, and not "for life " ; or that we 
 build a church to pile one stone upon another and 
 not to worship God. Mind builds with an aim, 
 not for the sake of building. It may be that 
 some men still work thus aimlessly, the God I see 
 in Nature never does so. The grandest thing that 
 God has ever made is the human family, father, 
 mother and child, and this was never made to fit 
 the race it crowns; the race was made to fit 
 God's great ideal. This is reason. 
 
 " To say even that the machinery evolved him is as 
 preposterous as to say of a poem that the printing press 
 
no The Great Mystery 
 
 made it. The ultimate problem is, Who made the 
 machine ? and who thought the poem that was to be 
 printed? " ("The Ascent of Man," p. 202.) 
 
 " To say that the sex distinction is necessary to sus- 
 tain the existence of life in the world is no answer, 
 since it is at least possible that life could have 
 been kept up without it." ("The Ascent of Man," 
 p. 148.) 
 
 Poets have ever been prophets from before the 
 days of David, or of the writer of Jonah. 
 (Whether Jonah be poetic fiction, or history, or 
 both, does not affect the question.) And why is 
 it so ? Is it not because through the closest com- 
 munion with truth and beauty they learn to feel, 
 what others must see, to know ? Thus he who 
 wrote of Jonah knew that God was not for Jews 
 alone, but for every one who breathed His breath 
 of life. And David, that man must some day 
 have a spiritual king and saviour. " Gird on Thy 
 sword upon Thy thigh, O mighty One, Thy Glory 
 and Thy Majesty." (Ps. xlv. 3.) And Job knew 
 that he would some day find his essential re- 
 deemer. "I know that my redeemer liveth." 
 (Job xix. 25.) And even in this our day, two 
 purest poets have prophesied the one of eternal 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 121 
 
 individuality, the other of eternal union. I speak 
 of course of Browning and of Tennyson. 
 
 Man will live and rise by growing ever more 
 truly three in one, and ever more closely one in 
 three. 
 
VII 
 
 The Trends of Evolution. Father, Mother 
 and Child 
 
 " One God, one law, 1 one element, 8 
 
 And one far-off divine event, 3 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 IN consecrating a separate section to the bear- 
 ings of Evolution, I have no thought of divorcing 
 it from Nature, of which of course, it is an 
 essential factor, but I have done so, because its 
 bearing upon our problem is of special sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 The facts in the history of human marriage are 
 innumerable, and the authorities are many, but in 
 Darwin's Descent of Man, Geddes and Thom- 
 son's The Evolution of Sex, Westermarck's 
 
 1 Love. * The family. 
 
 8 The consummation of the image of the ideals. 
 122 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 123 
 
 History of Human Marriage, Drummond's As- 
 cent of Man, and in the works of Piersol and 
 other living embryologists, we find the most 
 satisfactory and suggestive material bearing upon 
 the subject. I know of no study in Nature that 
 is more full of interest, or more pregnant with 
 meaning, more full of promise or more inspiring 
 by its beauty, than this of the origin and history 
 of marriage and its place in Nature. I cannot go 
 into the matter deeply, for I should be carried 
 away, or lose myself. It is only necessary for 
 me to call your attention again to certain broad 
 facts that we have learned, especially from Mr. 
 Drummond and Mr. Fiske, and which are now 
 accepted in principle, and probably in fact, as 
 true. 
 
 From the days of the appearance of life on the 
 earth, evolution has been unceasingly busy at a 
 number of problems, which in their present state, 
 show results of her labors in what are now 
 involved in pure monogamous marriage, and 
 united family life. I have no hesitation in saying 
 that, although these institutions are not yet, by 
 any means, perfected, they are the highest 
 reaches of evolution to the present time, and 
 
124 The Great Mystery 
 
 their reason for being is found in that which is 
 to follow. 
 
 The latter statement I have endeavored to 
 illustrate in the preceding section; the former is 
 clearly shown in Drummond's Ascent of Man. 
 
 Evolution has worked to produce three factors 
 in humanity, the mother, the father, and the 
 child; and these together are humanity. And 
 these wonders of the world have been produced 
 through processes, the ingenuity and intricacy, 
 and the ramifications of which we shall never 
 know, but whose beauty we are beginning 
 dimly to guess at. In briefest outline they are 
 these: From the bisexual cell which becomes 
 extinct at the birth of its offspring, through the 
 partly understood methods of development, en- 
 vironment, natural selection, etc., to the lowest 
 organism in which the sexes are divided, and 
 which pours out upon land and water an endless 
 progeny, which offspring the progenitors never 
 know, from these, through countless higher 
 grades, to those in which there is some, as yet 
 unmaternal provision for a more limited progeny, 
 then to a state in which, through the develop- 
 ment of bodily dependence of offspring on par- 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 125 
 
 ents, closer limitation of number of offspring, and 
 lengthened childhood, maternity dawns upon the 
 earth; while through the necessity of protection 
 and food supply, paternity is born. And as we 
 approach the condition of savage man, from the 
 bond of the child, from the common love of their 
 offspring, the mutual love and sympathy of 
 parent for parent is evolved. From this date on, 
 the progress is rapid. 
 
 It is to Mr. Fiske that we are indebted for the price- 
 less contribution to our understanding of the factors of 
 evolution, in his demonstration of the influences upon 
 development of the prolongation of childhood. The 
 human child brought love and family life. 
 
 The averages for the length of childhood, and for 
 the age for marriage, are steadily rising. In America, 
 we are children until we are twenty-five or more years 
 of age, and thirty is becoming a common age for mar- 
 riage. The higher the culture and standard of life, 
 the later seems to be the average of these dates. In 
 China, children are such while their parents live. This 
 is largely due to the honored place of parenthood in 
 that otherwise, night-bound land. 
 
 The arrest of the body begins and the develop- 
 ment of spirit. Childhood is long, children are 
 few, the temporary home gives way to permanent 
 
126 The Great Mystery 
 
 association. This in turn, as Drummond shows, 
 obliterates seasonal conception, and binds father 
 to mother through the love of their offspring, and 
 child to parent through mutual dependence. 
 
 It may be said that the lengthening of the period 
 which we have called childhood, has another impor- 
 tant result. Among the poor especially, who are al- 
 ways in the majority, the relation changes from one 
 where the child depends on the parent, to one where 
 the parent depends on the child, thus completing the 
 circle, as it were. 
 
 And the end no, the end is not yet. But we 
 see, in these our days, what has at last been 
 evolved, through toil and striving unimaginable, 
 the home life of Christian lands. 
 
 What is this home life ? It is the life of the 
 family. It is that life which is found where one 
 man and one woman, having learned to love each 
 other through reason, finding in each other the 
 seeds of true manhood and true womanhood, 
 which will bear in time, the fruits of faithful 
 motherhood and fatherhood, are living together 
 according to the highest of human ideals, and 
 rearing children in the same. " Physically, psy- 
 chically, ethically, the family is the masterpiece 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 127 
 
 of evolution. The creation of evolution, it was 
 destined to become the most active instrument 
 and ally which evolution ever had. For what is 
 its evolutionary significance ? It is the generator 
 and repositor of the forces which alone can carry 
 out the social and moral progress of the world." 
 ("Ascent of Man," p. 316.) All love, all wisdom, 
 all goodness that the world has ever known, 
 have been its outgrowth, and human life will 
 never know any holier or purer relationships than 
 those which are latent in, and to be revealed 
 through the life of the family. 
 
 I have dwelt upon the place and functions of the 
 sexes and of the family in nature, not because their 
 glories are the glories of the grown-up monad, for this, 
 evolution never teaches. Mr. Drummond has spoken 
 authoritatively upon this subject in that wonderful 
 chapter "Involution" in the Ascent of Man, and 
 there he compares evolution to a flowering plant, and 
 shows that as the flower is not in the root, neither is 
 the monad to be looked for in man. It is not there. 
 . . . Evolution is a process of accretion from en- 
 vironment, not of growth from within. The plant is 
 not the grown-up root, any more than the root is a 
 grown-up flower. A diamond is not a great big car- 
 bon atom, neither is a piece of coal. Accretion has 
 made the brightest gem in inorganic nature, and ac- 
 
128 The Great Mystery 
 
 cretion, environment, or evolution, the painting hand 
 of God has made the brightest jewel in organic life. 
 
 And what of the future of this holy thing? 
 And how are we to tell what that may be ? The 
 future of humanity is bound up in that of the 
 family. Humanity can never live without it. 
 Says Fiske, "From the first dawning of life, we 
 see all things working together toward one 
 mighty goal, the evolution of the most exalted 
 qualities which characterize humanity." ("The 
 Destiny of Man," p. 113.) And Drummond 
 says, more truly than perhaps, he ever knew, 
 "Nature has produced a holy family. Not for 
 centuries, but for millenniums, the family has sur- 
 vived. Time has not tarnished it; no later art 
 has improved it; nor genius discovered anything 
 more lovely nor religion anything more divine. 
 From the bee's cell and the butterfly's wing men 
 draw what they call arguments from design; but 
 it is in the kingdoms that come without observa- 
 tion, in these great immaterial orderings which 
 science is but beginning to perceive, that the pur- 
 poses of creation are revealed." ("Ascent of 
 Man," p. 318.) 
 
 Scientists are quite agreed in believing that the 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 129 
 
 evolution of the body is slowly coming to a stand- 
 still, and that in it lie all the possibilities which 
 the future human life will require. It is large 
 enough to have held the life of Christ. Some 
 have even suggested the possibility of a begin- 
 ning of degeneration. However this may be, we 
 may be sure that the future of human evolution 
 lies in the development of the higher reaches of 
 life. From now on, we are to advance in the 
 mental, the moral, and the spiritual, and espe- 
 cially in the last named. The future of man 
 is to be a spiritual future, even in this life. And 
 the three great factors of that human future 
 will be an ever more spiritual fatherhood, mother- 
 hood, and childhood, an ever more spiritual 
 family. In that future, sexuality will be for- 
 gotten in mutual love. 
 
 And how are we to look into this radiant 
 future? As the skilful archer, who with foot 
 planted on firm ground, with eager soul and 
 steadfast eye, follows the arrow's flight to the far 
 distant goal. 
 
 We take our stand at the beginning of things. 
 Straight as the arrow's flight, the trend of evolu- 
 tion leads the eye along the past, through the 
 
130 The Great Mystery 
 
 shining present, to the misty but dazzling goal of 
 the future. 
 
 It is a vision that we see, a pure and holy 
 thing, such as human words can but half de- 
 scribe. It seems a world of human homes, such 
 as few have seen, even in dreams. And in each 
 home a man and a woman dwells as one, and the 
 bond between them is a little child. Children 
 are few in that far distant land; (a thousand mil- 
 lion years nearer than it seemed 1,900 years ago;) 
 but these are loved as only parents can love, who 
 come of a race that has lived in chastity and peace 
 for ages past. Children are children while their 
 parents live. All men are equal, and all men are 
 as brothers, which, by adoption, they seem in- 
 deed to be. There are no nations there, nor gov- 
 ernments, nor kings; and the only law through- 
 out that world is love. The bodies of that race 
 are much as ours, more healthy, cleaner, sweeter 
 to the sight, but through their eyes shine out 
 such souls as even God only makes through end- 
 less years of toil. They understand the world in 
 which they live, and live as men of wisdom and 
 of power. They understand the men with 
 whom they dwell, and dwell in perfect peace and 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 131 
 
 charity. One thing above all else, is prized and 
 cherished there, and that is the life within the 
 home, where three or four live in such harmony 
 as makes the life seem but the life of one, and 
 from it flow all other life and love. And every 
 morning, when the sun comes up, each one in 
 three, all holy, father, mother, and child, clasped 
 hand in hand, will kneel upon the sod, and turn 
 their eyes toward the glowing East, and wait 
 awhile, then rise and go to earn their daily bread. 
 The work is all but done. 
 
 When I consider what one mother is, I stagger 
 at the thought of what God yet may do. 
 
NATURE has more than one of the decalogue 
 boldly written in her grand old book, but that 
 which is perhaps the most easily deciphered is to 
 be found in a chapter clearly headed "Thou 
 Shalt not Commit Adultery." And this is not all 
 of the matter, for she has followed and empha- 
 sized this chapter by the plainest and most un- 
 compromising of her written curses. 
 
 And thank God that even within the memory 
 of history we trace a trend toward obedience to 
 His commandment. And the future is, as ever, 
 full of promise. 
 
 As we turn back these pages of the world's 
 history not so very far, only a page or two, as 
 time runs, we come upon great blots and 
 stains, black with the blood of innocence and 
 smeared with the filth of lust. We read of 
 
 132 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 133 
 
 Sodom the Polluted, and of the beastly beauty of 
 Daphne's Grove; of the Maximian laws, the 
 vilest things that were ever made by men, and of 
 Nero the Despised; of Borgian delights, and of 
 the passions of Henry VIII. of England, of the 
 passing worship of the Hindoos and on the very 
 page on which the pen of time is writing to-day, 
 we read of New York and Philadelphia and their 
 police-protected hells, and of august delibera- 
 tions concerning the adoption of the " practical" 
 license laws of Paris, the adulteress. 
 
 But the light is brightening as we read, and the 
 pages are cleaner one by one. In the book of 
 Nature and in the book of Revelation is written, 
 though in differing language, one great and iden- 
 tical law; and in both books, it is enforced by a 
 blessing, and by a curse. " Blessed are the pure 
 in heart, for they shall see God," and "They that 
 commit adultery, their blood shall be upon 
 them." 
 
 Physically the family is one flesh so long as it 
 is inviolate. Father and mother are one and the 
 child is one with them and the bond between 
 them, and the wedded life is another bond. 
 This unity Nature guards with never flagging 
 
134 The Great Mystery 
 
 care, and its infringement she punishes with de- 
 generation and death. 
 
 Broadly she guards the family life by guarding 
 the species into which evolution has moulded it. 
 Species are protected from their birth up and the 
 barrier wall is impassable. In the recent dis- 
 covery that to each species there seems to be 
 apportioned a particular and invariable number 
 of chromatin filaments to its segmentation nu- 
 cleus probably lies the physical basis for the long 
 known fact that the attempt to mix species is 
 invariably unproductive of viable offspring. 
 Whether this be the basis of the fact or no, the 
 fact remains. 
 
 The barriers which further narrow in the 
 family unity are many and varied and are 
 adapted to defend various threatened directions 
 of attack. The home life of the family is 
 guarded first by the fact, that the consensus of 
 human opinion and the laws of nations from 
 time immemorial have forbidden consanguineous 
 marriages. The results of the latest scientific in- 
 vestigations seem to show that Nature also has 
 forbidden these marriages, since the risk of per- 
 petuating and emphasizing any vitiation is so 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 135 
 
 greatly increased thereby, as almost to ensure the 
 decay of the family. 
 
 Another bulwark of family purity is built upon 
 the fact that its assault results in unfitted fathers 
 and incompetent mothers and consequently in ill 
 fed, ill clothed, ill cared for, unsurviving and de- 
 generate children whose end is the death of 
 their line. 
 
 The last of these natural defences of family 
 unity that I shall mention is that which brings 
 in its sentence not only upon the innocent ele- 
 ments of the family but especially upon the 
 offender and guilty one. I speak of that group 
 of organic diseases which the medical profession 
 has classified together because of their origin and 
 abiding place in the polluted lives of the world. 
 Within this group are some of the most loath- 
 some and disgusting and most destructive dis- 
 eases and their complications to which the body 
 of man is heir, literally heir, alas! too frequently. 
 It is true that the innocent are often afflicted with 
 these curses of Nature but, in these cases, it is al- 
 most without exception that the disease is in- 
 troduced through the agency of some guilty one. 
 In the majority of cases the offender is the hus- 
 
136 The Great Mystery 
 
 band and father, and there is no exaggeration in 
 saying that the lives of thousands upon thou- 
 sands of purest women and innocent children 
 are hopelessly wrecked each year, because thus 
 sinned against. The largest percentage of cases 
 of the diseases peculiar to women are contracted 
 thus innocently, and there are more incurably 
 blind in our asylums, and these so from their 
 birth, from this, than from any other known 
 cause. It is the physicians of the world who see 
 and know these things, and though they have 
 done much to relieve and save the innocent and 
 the guilty, it is they again, who know that the 
 radical cure is to be found neither in the salts of 
 mercury nor in the iodide of potassium, but in 
 that pure salt of the earth that loses not its 
 savor, in men and women whose hearts are 
 pure with the love that thinketh no evil. 
 
 Of the various more perverted sins against 
 physical purity, I can say no more here, than 
 that there are many such, and that the wrecks 
 they leave to the care of our private and munic- 
 ipal insane asylums are ghastly monuments to 
 the faithfulness of Nature's sentries. 
 
 But it is not in the physical alone, that Nature 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 137 
 
 will be obeyed. In the realm of the higher life 
 as well, her law is in force. As there are no 
 stronger loves in all Nature, nor none so strong 
 as those which bind the family in one, so there 
 are no baser crimes than those which sin against 
 these loves. The names of parricide, of matri- 
 cide, of fratricide and of the unfaithful to mar- 
 riage vows, to innocence, and to purity of life, 
 the world over are in abhorrence. This is true, 
 even among those nations and tribes who have 
 never known any other than the commandments 
 of Nature. The laws of nations punish many of 
 these crimes, the laws of Nature punish all of 
 them. Our prisons and asylums swarm with 
 the dying proofs of Nature's verdicts, and many 
 of the rotting lives that come to the notice of the 
 healers of souls and bodies, and to that of no 
 others except the aching hearts at home, bear 
 added testimony. There are habits which never 
 leave any physical trace whatever but yet result 
 in total mental, moral, and spiritual shipwreck, 
 and there are others which clog the higher 
 reactions and sympathies to an all but incredible 
 degree. 
 I was talking not long ago with a man, who 
 
138 The Great Mystery 
 
 spoke freely to me of his past life, and rather 
 boasted of it, and especially of the fact that he 
 had escaped "unscathed." He was at that time 
 engaged to be married to a good woman and 
 true, and was happy in his good fortune. He 
 seemed anxious that I should concur in his opin- 
 ion, that on the whole he had done pretty well 
 in having had his times, and yet kept his place as 
 a respected citizen, won the love of a good 
 woman and successfully guarded his health ; and 
 was not a little offended at my sentiments of de- 
 cided disapproval of his past. It was some time 
 before I was even able to make him understand 
 that we were looking at the matter from directly 
 opposite points of view, that my regrets were, 
 far more than for him, for the women whom he 
 had used for his pleasure and for their ruin, that 
 it was over their comparative innocence that I 
 yearned, rather than his bribery and cowardice 
 that I regretted. And yet it is an open question 
 whether the degradation of those who sinned 
 and saw, is as great as that of him who sinned 
 and could not see. But the view came to him as 
 a revelation, for he had looked upon those once 
 pure children, as degenerate though necessary 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 139 
 
 factors of society, and supposed that his share in 
 their ruin would be negated by the fact that there 
 would be fast women whether he were virtuous 
 or not. 
 
 That man is now married and may yet be a 
 faithful, happy husband and father, and those 
 women are outcasts and pariahs, women "taken 
 in adultery." Yet let only him that is without 
 sin among us first cast a stone at them, for both 
 Nature and Revelation have evolved ideals of 
 purity higher even than the old, and the new 
 commandment reads, " Every one that looketh on 
 a woman to lust after her hath committed adul- 
 tery with her already in his heart." 
 
IX 
 
 God's Ideals 
 
 STANDING on the heights of human nature, we 
 have been tracing together, as best we could, in 
 the light of the truth that men have striven for 
 and won, the majestic, slow development of 
 God's great work through the ages. We have 
 gazed along the narrowing vistas of the past, and 
 through them as they widen into the unfinished 
 splendor of the present; and we have peered 
 into the misty future, by the search lights we 
 have found in creation's trends; and that future 
 gives promise beyond all hopes. 
 
 We believe that God is painting the image of 
 an eternal ideal, an ideal of life as He knows it, 
 of life in the highest. And these are the lessons 
 that we have learned. That there is no evidence 
 of the existence of any life, organic or spiritual, 
 high or low, which does not consist of three 
 
 140 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 141 
 
 elements, namely, a dual parenthood and off- 
 spring therefrom. That these three elements are 
 universal in life as we know it. That these 
 three elements are the necessary basis of all life. 
 
 We have next learned that as progress has 
 manifested itself, there has developed a separa- 
 tion of the dual parenthood into two organisms, 
 which still later, we may call persons, and that 
 these separated elements have taken upon them- 
 selves distinct and progressively specializing 
 functions or lines of work; and moreover, that 
 there is no evidence which points otherwise than 
 that these types, which we have called male and 
 female, will continually become more and more 
 specialized and separate, and never will and 
 never can become alike or the same. 
 
 We have learned too, that while this separa- 
 tion of the personality is certain and progressive, 
 there is developing along with it, and at the same 
 time with it, a force tending to, and compelling 
 interdependence and unity, and that this force 
 which in its lowest manifestation is physical, 
 through the compulsion of the third element in 
 life, flowers out into that glorious thing we call 
 love. We have learned that the trend of love is 
 
142 The Great Mystery 
 
 to make, forever closer and closer, unity in family 
 life, and that all other loves are based upon and 
 spring from this greatest of loves. 
 
 Mr. Fiske has taught us that on earth there will 
 never be a higher creature than man; and Mr. 
 Drummond, that the human family is and ever 
 will be the crowning glory of humanity. We 
 have seen too, that from an unlimited and un- 
 mothered offspring, Nature has, with steady 
 hand, pointed to an ever-limiting progeny, an 
 ever-lengthening childhood, and an ever-deepen- 
 ing parenthood; that strict monogamy is Nature's 
 highest type of married life; and that physically, 
 mentally, morally, and spiritually, men and 
 women are equal in Nature's economy, and 
 equally fitted to survive. And finally, we have 
 seen that, as the human organism shows unmis- 
 takable signs of arrest, it becomes manifest that 
 the future development of the family will lie in 
 creation's higher reaches, in the mental, moral, 
 and spiritual, and that the ideal or highest reaches 
 will be spiritual. 
 
 This is what Nature teaches of God's ideal of 
 life. It is this that the artist has painted into 
 his work. 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 143 
 
 If God be life in the highest, and it is not 
 reasonable to suppose otherwise, for His is the 
 conceptive mind; if the mind of God be rational, 
 and ours are insane if we can think otherwise; if 
 we have read the trends of Nature aright, and I 
 think the chances for doubt are very slight; it 
 seems to me that it is hardly reasonable or pos- 
 sible for us to come to any other conclusion than 
 that this ideal of highest life, of finished work, is 
 represented in the very life of the eternal God, 
 for it is not conceivable that such a mind, a mind 
 neither hampered by frailties nor restricted by 
 misconceptions, should deliberately, and with 
 infinity of purpose, draw up the plans for His 
 greatest work on any other than the purest lines 
 or from any but the highest type. It is not 
 rational that God should know of a better life, 
 and make through the ages a less good; that He 
 should be the eternal ideal, and bring about a 
 degeneration. 1 Nor is it at all likely that He 
 should develop special universal ideas, to fit a 
 purposed creation, but rather that He should bring 
 
 1 This truth of analogy is probably far broader even than its 
 application to the question we are discussing, and therefore ap- 
 plicable to other possible truths about God and His nature. 
 
144 The Great Mystery 
 
 the creation to fit His ideals. It is the wisdom 
 of humanity to sing and paint and write and 
 teach the best it knows, to create the image of 
 its highest ideals, and the God of our wisdom 
 cannot be less, wise than His image. 
 
 This conception of God is not opposed to Cosmic 
 Theism. As Doctor Wace says, "There seems, in 
 fact, to lurk an extraordinary sophism in the offence 
 which is taken at so-called anthropomorphism. Men 
 observe the operation of the inanimate forces of nature, 
 and deduce from them the methods of God's opera- 
 tion. There, they will say, you observe the course of 
 His action ; and you notice its absolute regularity, and 
 the absence of any indication that we can detect of its 
 disturbance by personal action or will. But the mo- 
 ment the moralist, or the theologian, points to another 
 sphere of nature that of human nature, which is na- 
 ture still and argues from it in a similar manner, re- 
 garding it as a revelation of part at all events, of God's 
 method of action, we are denounced as anthropo- 
 morphic. Be it so. But what is the scientific con- 
 ception but if I may be allowed to coin the word 
 physico-morphism ? They see the likeness and reflec- 
 tion of God in nature ; we see the image and reflection 
 of God in man ; and why not the one as well as the 
 other?" ("The Gospel and Its Witnesses, " p. 103.) 
 
X 
 
 The Image in the Glass 
 
 To hear chords sounding in the herd's deep lowing, 1 
 To taste that daily bread is twice life giving, 2 
 To feel that air is less than we are breathing, 3 
 
 And see a vision where the west wind's blowing ; * 
 
 To know that there is knowledge past the knowing, 5 
 To live since life is more than human living, 6 
 To speak and write what we are thus receiving 
 
 Nor reaping to refuse in turn the sowing ; 7 
 
 For this we are ; 8 and we and all that hand 
 
 And eye and mind and soul can grasp but speak 
 An imaged life 9 and these are but the glass. 10 
 And every best, of sky and sea and land 
 
 Will fade and go 11 the glass itself will break. 12 
 The imaged life alone will never pass. 13 
 
 1 Father and Creator, Ps. 1. 9, Son, Mark xiv. 22. 
 and Gen. i. 25. 3 Holy Spirit, Birth through 
 
 4 One God, 2 Sam. xxii. II. the Spirit, John xx. 22. 
 
 6 Love, Eph. iii. 19. Knowledge, John xvii. 3. 
 
 7 Faith, I John i. 3. 8 Hope, Matt. vii. 7. 
 
 9 Revelation, Ps. xix. 10 Nature, I Cor. xiii. 12. 
 
 11 End of things temporal, 12 Death, I Cor. xv. 22. 
 
 Matt. xxiv. 35. w Immortality, Col. iii. 3. 
 145 
 
XI 
 
 Ideas About God 
 
 WHAT are the ideas of men about God, and 
 whence did men derive them ? From the far-off 
 dawn when primaeval men first conceived the 
 most shadowy notions of invisible powers out- 
 side and beyond themselves, and began to per- 
 sonify these powers, we may say that men have 
 had ideas about God, and it was in Nature's 
 school that these were learned. From that time, 
 and for century upon century, the light has been 
 slowly breaking over the life of the world, until 
 a certain hour, nineteen hundred years ago, when 
 the Sun arose in all his splendor, and on the 
 mountain peaks, men no longer guessed, but 
 knew God; and ever since that eternal sunrise, 
 the shadows have been fleeing away. 
 
 It was Nature that first taught men about God, 
 and through the opening book of Nature alone, 
 
 146 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 147 
 
 the greater part of men have seen Him. Some- 
 times hers is a still small voice, when she speaks 
 of righteousness and peace, and again, in awful 
 diapason she proclaims that God is Wisdom and 
 Power. In the ages of creation, men learn that 
 God is eternal. In the unity of all things, they 
 see that He is immanent. Through progress, 
 they learn that He lives; through goodness, that 
 He is righteous; through reason, that He is Mind 
 and Wisdom. In the faithfulness of Nature, they 
 learn that God is Truth; in the reaches of Evolu- 
 tion, they see that He is Spirit; and Jesus has 
 shown them in the words of Nature and in the 
 needs of men, that God is Father and that God is 
 Son. 
 
 It is thus that men have come to know God 
 through Nature, by the observation of ideals, as 
 He has written them and is writing them through- 
 out the pages of her book, and by applying them 
 through reason to Him. Men have seen these 
 grand ideals, and recognized their universality, 
 have applied them, and know their reasonable- 
 ness, and have said, "This is of God." "This 
 is the nature of God." Some men know that 
 God is Power, Wisdom, and Truth, that He is 
 
148 The Great Mystery 
 
 Righteousness, Purity and Life, that He is Light, 
 Peace, and Love, that He is universal, immanent, 
 and eternal, Spirit and Law, Father and Son. 
 " The lesson of evolution is that through all these 
 weary ages the Human Soul has not been cher- 
 ishing in religion a delusive phantom, but in spite 
 of seemingly endless groping and stumbling, it 
 has been rising to the recognition of its essential 
 kinship with the ever-living God. " x "Evolution is 
 Advolution; better, it is Revelation, the phenom- 
 enal expression of the Divine, the progressive 
 realization of the Ideal, the Ascent of Love." 2 
 
 We think that in the preceding sections, we 
 have traced out other ideals of God's life, written 
 on every page of Nature's book, becoming plainer 
 and more majestic through the ages, growing 
 higher, clearer, and purer, as she reaches into the 
 present times, and giving promise of marvelous 
 consummation in the years yet unborn; ideals of 
 surpassing beauty, ideals universal, eternal, and 
 perfected; ideals of the very God who is perfect. 
 
 And these are the conclusions that we may 
 draw from our study of the Book of Nature. 
 
 1 " Through Nature to God," Fiske, p. 191. 
 8 " Ascent of Man," Drummond, p. 339. 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 149 
 
 God's is a spiritual life, and a life complete in it- 
 self, that is, it consists of three elements, certainly 
 not less, and certainly not more; and these three 
 elements do now and forever stand in relation- 
 ship to each other as eternal Father, Mother, and 
 Begotten. God's life is a complete unity, and the 
 bond which makes it such is consummated Family 
 love. We may infer that this love is the basis of 
 God's love for created things. We may also in- 
 fer that the Begotten of God is limited, and al- 
 though Nature does not thus far teach that it is 
 limited to one Personality, one such Begotten One 
 satisfies all possible indications of Nature's teach- 
 ings. 
 
 This is the God of Nature, the natural God, the 
 satisfaction of every kind of thought, or creed. 
 We are told in the paper of which this is the 
 companion, that the threefold nature of God 
 forms the basis of perhaps all the great religions 
 of the world, and though this is not a proof in 
 itself, it certainly demonstrates the reasonableness 
 of the faith to the human intellect. This reason- 
 ableness may also be demonstrated through an- 
 other and entirely different channel, namely 
 through the logical method of philosophic 
 
150 The Great Mystery 
 
 thought. Let me quote two passages from one 
 of the clearest writers of the present day, on 
 philosophic religion, Dr. A. J. Mason, and ask 
 you to read our truth into the words of the 
 writer, who, by the way, never hints at the truth 
 itself, and probably had no thought of it in con- 
 nection with the subject of which he wrote, the 
 Holy Trinity, and let me ask you also, to judge 
 for yourself whether truth fits truth, or no. 
 
 "God is love. That is His essence. And love 
 is not love without exercise. Until it finds an 
 object, there is but a capacity for love, not love 
 itself. If God, therefore, had no object for His 
 love until He had formed a creation, then God 
 has not always been love is not love by Him- 
 self in His own nature, but only (so to speak) 
 accidentally, through the circumstances in which 
 He finds Himself. And even now, if creation 
 be the sole object of God's love, He cannot find 
 in it adequate exercise for the whole of His love. 
 For we have no reason to suppose that creation 
 is, or can be, infinite. It may well be doubted 
 whether the total fulness of God's being can 
 ever be expressed in that which God makes. 
 Therefore, although infinite love is at work in 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 151 
 
 every part of creation, yet the exercise of it upon 
 creation is not infinite. There remains behind 
 an infinite reserve of love, which never can be 
 expended to the blessed satisfaction of God upon 
 any existing thing which falls short of Himself. 
 And if we say that before creation was, the infi- 
 nite love of God was infinitely expended upon 
 Himself, we cannot but feel that such an expres- 
 sion would be shocking to all our best instincts, 
 if God is a single person. A monstrous selfish- 
 ness is the only picture which such language 
 could suggest. It can only be morally true to 
 say that God loves Himself, if there be eternally 
 within the Divine nature a real distinction of 
 persons, whereby one Divine person may lavish 
 the infinite wealth of His love upon another 
 Divine person, who is infinitely worthy of re- 
 ceiving it. 
 
 "It may, of course, be said that we are judging 
 from what we know of limited, human exist- 
 ence; and that what applies to a limited being 
 need not perforce apply to an infinite, a Divine 
 being. This is quite true: but at the same time, 
 if man is made in the image of God, we have 
 some right to form conceptions about His nature 
 
152 The Great Mystery 
 
 from our own, within due and reverent limits. 
 And if, as a matter of fact, we are wrong in 
 this particular conception and it should at length 
 burst upon us as true that God is a monad, a 
 unit, but aware, before all creation of His own ex- 
 istence, cognizant of the fulness of His powers, 
 and eternally exercising a paternal love, we can 
 only say that such a state of things would not 
 only transcend our experience and thought, but 
 that it would contradict it. Assuming the Arian 
 belief to be true, nothing within our reach leads 
 us in the direction of the true belief, or gives us 
 any hint that may afterward be developed into 
 knowledge. Quite the contrary. Hard though 
 it may be to understand the Church doctrine of 
 the Trinity, it is much harder to conceive how 
 God could be eternally love, if He were a solitary 
 unit." 1 (" The Faith of the Gospel," pp. 41-43.) 
 "Unless, therefore, we are to take refuge in 
 supposing that God is not self-sufficient, but is 
 only, as Pantheism fancies, gradually coming to 
 know Himself by means of the world, we are 
 
 1 I have submitted this passage to the judgment of one who 
 is better trained than I, in philosophic thought, and he assures 
 me that the logic of the argument is sound and irrefutable. 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 153 
 
 drawn to believe, with the Church, that God 
 contains in His own being both subject and 
 object. We human beings find ourselves set 
 off by the world of which we form part; but 
 God must be set off to Himself by something 
 within His own nature. He must be presented 
 to His own contemplation. There must be some 
 movement by which eternally He is reflected to 
 Himself. God must be ever inwardly projected, 
 reproduced, or rather projecting, reproducing 
 Himself; not by a succession of fresh reproduc- 
 tions, for we have no right to say that with God, 
 there is any succession, but by one act of repro- 
 duction, complete and abiding, yet ever new, as 
 if the one act were always in the living process 
 of being performed. Thus there must ever con- 
 front Him somewhat which is at once Himself 
 and not Himself, which He can regard as em- 
 bodying His own whole being, while still (in a 
 sense) separate from and contrasted with, that 
 which in the first instance is the 'I,' the 'Ego' 
 of God. 
 
 "But if there is to be such a reflection of God to 
 Himself, the reflection must needs be personal, 
 in the same sense in which God Himself is per- 
 
154 The Great Mystery 
 
 sonal. God would in no true way be represented 
 to Himself by a mere picture or image in a mir- 
 ror, so to speak, lifeless, and without power to 
 respond to Him. It is inconceivable that there 
 should be within the nature of God anything 
 which is not life; and even if it were conceivable, 
 a lifeless image of God would return to Him, not 
 only an inadequate, but a totally false vision of 
 Himself. That which truly reproduces God must 
 be to Him, not ' It ' but 'Thou'; and God in 
 turn must be ' Thou ' to that which reproduces 
 Him. And if God is truly to know Himself, the 
 living image which is before Him must be in. 
 every respect worthy of Him, that is, equal to 
 Him. Any partial representation of God falls in- 
 finitely short of Him; and no number of finite 
 and partial representations could mount up so as 
 to supply the deficiency. No part of God's per- 
 fections and possibilities can at any time be 
 absent from His consciousness; and they cannot 
 be present to it in infinite detail without being 
 present in their complete unity. Therefore of 
 necessity that absolute reproduction by which 
 God is set before His own eyes must be God, be- 
 cause otherwise, God's self-knowledge would 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 155 
 
 fall infinitely short of the truth. Nothing but 
 God can represent God. 
 
 " Thus we seem led even by reason, apart from 
 revelation to see the need of a duality in the 
 Divine nature. But we are unable to rest here. 
 Although the next step in thought is less easy to 
 express in words, the mind naturally demands a 
 bond between the 'I' and the 'Thou/ by 
 which they are to know themselves as ' I ' and 
 'Thou.' There is, in the Godhead the subject 
 and the object; but how are they related to each 
 other? Duality gives us only the notion of sep- 
 aration. If there were no other movement in the 
 Divine nature but that whereby the first person 
 projects himself into a second, the two might, 
 for all we can see, be left forever gazing upon 
 each other, without knowing the difference be- 
 tween themselves, without mutual sympathy, 
 and therefore without freedom of intercourse. 
 A God whose nature was but dual could hardly 
 to our thinking, rise to as high a level of intelli- 
 gence as man's. There might be mutual ob- 
 servation and attraction; but not the conscious- 
 ness either of antithesis or of union. In order 
 that God may be complete and self-sufficing, 
 
156 The Great Mystery 
 
 there must be within the unity of His nature a 
 process which establishes mutual knowledge and 
 along with mutual knowledge, mutual love. We 
 shall expect to find the movement whereby God 
 places Himself before Himself, followed up by a 
 movement whereby He makes Himself fully 
 known, in all His lovableness and wisdom, to 
 the object thus set before Him, and receives back 
 the response of that object. And we may per- 
 haps dimly apprehend how this mediation be- 
 tween the Divine T and 'Thou' should itself 
 be fitly the work of a person. Were it not so, 
 there would be one view (so to speak) of God, 
 which He would not Himself be able to gain. He 
 would not have the blessedness of seeing Himself 
 effect that union that is within Himself. And as 
 we saw that the object in which God is repro- 
 duced to Himself must be in all points equal with 
 God, so the person who mediates between the 
 two, must be in all points the equal of either, or 
 He could not adequately interpret the one to the 
 other. // seems to put the completing touch to 
 the glory of the Divine life, when we see person 
 and person eternally made known to each other, 
 in their difference and in their unity, by a person 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 157 
 
 to whom both are absolutely known, and who is 
 absolutely one with both." ("The Faith of the 
 Gospel," pp. 43-46.) 
 
 Even if we cannot build our faith on such 
 close and intricate reasoning as this, it would 
 seem as if two questions about God would in- 
 evitably arise in every human soul, questions 
 growing out of its own most sacred needs and 
 cravings, Why should the nature of God alone 
 have no complemental reactive life? Why 
 should the nature of God alone have no Begotten 
 One, not to succeed Him, but to be of Him ? In 
 our human relationships, the higher we ascend, 
 the more we crave them ; the more spiritual we 
 become, the more they mean to us; the more 
 divine we become, the more we feel that they 
 are indispensable to our fullest life. 
 
 It is because God's nature is love, that He is 
 one. Love is the bond that makes His unity. 
 It is because God's nature is love that He is 
 three. Love is the reason that makes Him 
 Trinity. 
 
XII 
 
 A Parable 
 
 MANY, many years ago, there was a king called 
 Agape, because he loved his people. His king- 
 dom was broad and rich, yet the possession 
 which he loved the best was a small and arid 
 island in the middle sea. He had often visited 
 this island, but ever in disguise and unknown to 
 the wild men who dwelt there, for it was his 
 greatest desire that this people should learn to 
 know him through his works alone. 
 
 Therefore, from the day when first he became 
 possessed of its rugged shores, the king sent 
 thither many trained gardeners with seeds and 
 grain and roots innumerable, and all other things 
 needful, and so, before many years had passed, 
 great trees had sprung up, to temper the summer 
 suns, and countless fields were yellow with 
 wheat and every grain, and the people had bread, 
 
 158 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 159 
 
 and ate no longer the rough sea food; and the 
 very rocks were clothed with the greenest grass. 
 All this the king did, and more. And the people 
 knew him somewhat through his works, they 
 knew that there were trees and grass and wheat 
 and many good things in the king's own gardens, 
 for all these things were of him. 
 
 And later on, he caused to be planted there 
 myriads of lovely flowers of every tint and shade. 
 Flowers bloomed from end to end, and shore to 
 shore of that most blessed isle, and the gardeners 
 showed the people that flowers had been with 
 them since that far-off day, when the king began 
 to rule. For every grass blade had its little 
 flower, and the trees and the grain had theirs, for 
 in the flower was life, and there was nothing 
 that grew but by the power of the life in the 
 flower. But, strange to say, the people never 
 saw the king in these; and they said, "In the 
 king's gardens there are no flowers. Why should 
 there be ? " 
 
 Then there appeared upon the land a new 
 flower, the loveliest ever seen, and no fairer ever 
 blossomed there. And they called it lily, and it 
 was full of grace and very white. And the lilies 
 
160 The Great Mystery 
 
 filled the land with the carol of their fragrance, 
 and men knew that the lily was the best of all the 
 flowers. But they still said, " There are no lilies 
 in the king's gardens. Why should there be ?" 
 
 And afterward the king sent his son to that 
 far-off land, and he told the people many things 
 of the king, but chiefly that his father loved 
 them, and that he loved them himself, and that 
 another loved them, and that there were three 
 that abode in the king's palace, the king himself, 
 and the king's son, and in its innermost courts, 
 one that is purer than the whitest snow, more full 
 of grace than all the flowers, so precious in the 
 eyes of the king, that merely to throw a shadow 
 on that purity, is past all forgiveness. 
 
 But the people only said "It is a mystery! 
 We cannot tell what this purest thing may be! " 
 
XIII 
 
 " For the Tree is Known by its Fruit " 
 (Matt. xii. 31-33.) 
 
 IF it be indeed eternal truth, written by God 
 the Father, throughout all Nature's book, and by 
 God the Son, in the gospel of Sonship, that God 
 is also Mother-God; that the very God is three 
 persons and yet One through perfect love; you 
 may know, if you will, this tree as Truth, and no 
 man can uproot it. Therefore, neither fear it, 
 nor accept it, until you have tasted of the fruit it 
 bears. Try it, not as gold by fire, but as the 
 fresh fruit of the earth that gives life and health 
 and strength to all that eat thereof. 
 
 Open the eyes of your mind to it in all its 
 purity and majesty. Read it into history, the- 
 ology, philosophy. Has it a place in these ? 
 Read it into nature where the lion hunts beneath 
 the desert sun and where the eagles are nesting 
 close to eternal snows, where the doves are 
 
 161 
 
162 The Great Mystery 
 
 cooing in the yellow wheat, and the cricket sings 
 his home song on the glowing hearth. Is it in 
 harmony with these? Read it into life when 
 hardy Boers shall fight and die for freedom in 
 their homes across the Vaal. Take it to your 
 own home and look into your mother's eyes and 
 see if God is in your mother's love. 
 
 What one great need has every human life ? 
 Has God alone no complement ? Was there 
 ever a religion of the least beauty among men 
 which did not even dimly seek to preach some 
 echo of this message ? 
 
 Read it into humanity and the needs of men 
 and women for ideals of faithful wedded life, of 
 greater honor and loyalty to parents, of wiser, 
 more loving parenthood, of perfect peace at 
 home. We hear not enough of ideals in these 
 practical days, when men find it " necessary " to 
 license women to be ruined, body and soul, as a 
 practical expedient; when for every selfish whim, 
 there are ten divorce courts for practical reasons, 1 
 
 1 " Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit, 
 Mere imitation of the inimitable : 
 In heaven they have the real and true and sure. 
 'Tis there they neither marry nor are given 
 In marriage but are as the angels : right, 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 163 
 
 whereas, by its very nature, one thing only can 
 destroy a marriage, and that, what the court 
 licenses; when men will have more children than 
 they are able either to love or to feed; or, what 
 is worse, will have no child at all, because it is a 
 practical age, and "women were meant to use 
 their brains." I do not quarrel with the word 
 Practical. Let us be as practical as the times de- 
 mand and more so, if we know how; let us use 
 our minds, but let us set our ideals no lower than 
 the mind of God Himself, whose mind in this, 
 we know. 
 
 Read it for truth, by the blazing light of evolu- 
 tion. Can you fail to see it there ? Read it into 
 every worthy book you ever read. Do they read 
 as well without it ? Read it into Drummond, 
 
 Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ 
 
 To say that ! Marriage-making for the earth, 
 
 With gold so much, birth, power, repute so much, 
 
 Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these ! 
 
 Be as the angels rather, who, apart, 
 
 Know themselves into one, are found at length 
 
 Married, but marry never, no, nor give 
 
 In marriage ; they are man and wife at once 
 
 When the true time is." 
 
 Browning. From Pompilia. The 
 Ring and the Book. See also Par- 
 adise Lost, Book VIII., 620-629. 
 
164 The Great Mystery 
 
 Fiske, Tennyson, Browning, Mason, Brooks, 
 Trench, Kingsley, Robertson, Liddon, and a host 
 of others. Are they richer for its truth or no ? 
 Never strain your eyes! Simply read it in these 
 lights, and in every other light. Truth must ever 
 fit with truth. Truth must ever read the clearer 
 by the light of truth. Be sure that the light is 
 true. 
 
 Read it into the life of Jesus, by the light 
 which lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world. Is it there or no ? 
 
 It may be you will never see it. It may be 
 that you saw it long ago ; I believe that many have 
 done so. As for me, my reason demands it, and 
 my soul as well. I think 
 
 " I am not free 
 
 To say I see not, for the glory comes 
 Nightly and daily, like the flowing sea." 
 
 I see in that glory an ideal of God, such as my 
 mind never before comprehended. I see in it, 
 the God of human needs, and the God of all that 
 lives, the only God of nature. I see in it the 
 God of all the seekers after truth, and of all the 
 honest doubters too. 
 And I seem to see therein, the Trinity as pro- 
 
Study in the Book of Nature 165 
 
 claimed by Christ; the Father, who "so loved 
 the world, that He gave His only begotten Son," 
 and who, to that unspeakable gift, added yet 
 another, the gift of the All Holy and Precious 
 One, to be the nursing mother of the "orphans." 
 And I seem to see that Holy One, as a dove 
 descending, and to hear that Spirit voice from 
 the open heavens, saying "Thou art My beloved 
 Son." 
 
 " I fear no more. The clouded face 
 
 Of Nature smiles ; through all her things 
 Of time and space and sense I trace 
 The moving of the Spirit's wings, 
 And hear the song of hope she sings." l 
 
 1 (Revelation, J. G. Whittier.) 
 
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