Part 7

There are four main departments of the spiritual life which aspire in this way to rise above the evils which beset our mortal state. They are Science and Art and Morality and Religion. As we know them in our experience, they are all of them due on the human side to a dissatisfaction with our experience as we find it. The scientific man is disturbed by the apparent chaos in his experience, and he sets out to give order to it, and he is satisfied in so far as he discovers that all the while it was not chaotic, as it seemed, but orderly. The artist is craving for a beauty which, in his ordinary experience, he does not find. He selects, he concentrates attention on certain aspects, to reach a satisfaction which the world otherwise seems not to give. The man of moral aspiration is dissatisfied with the world as he sees it, and he sets himself therefore to alter both himself and it, that it may be modelled more in accordance with the heart's desire. And the religious man finds all of these sources of dissatisfaction working together within his soul; he seeks, and in faith finds, that which gives him both peace and power.

Let us then begin with what is in itself the least rich of these forms of human activity, and consider how it is that Science reaches its unity. Let us first recall that there are two forms of multiplicity or division which we are seeking to overcome: that which arises from the clash of various ideals or desires, the antagonism of man with man; and that which arises from the changeableness of the world as we see it. With regard to the latter, science does indeed reach real unities; but they are unities which leave Time out of sight. Sometimes, no doubt, the subject matter which is handled is itself non-temporal, but not in the sense of being eternal. So, for example, geometry is entirely without relation to time. There is no temporal sequence between the equality of the sides and the equality of the angles in the isosceles triangle. But where the subject studied is something that changes in Time, it remains true that the aim of science is to reach an unchanging principle. So, for example, the student of biology may be trying to discover the unchanging principle which governs the successive variations of species. But when he has found it he has not really mastered the transitoriness; he has not in any way gathered up the past and dead into his present experience; he has merely found the principle which applies to every stage as that stage comes. He reaches some superiority to the transitoriness of things, only by abstracting from Time altogether.

And, similarly, the unity between men which is produced by a common absorption in such pursuits does not strike very deep. For a man's temperament has nothing in the world to do with his scientific conclusions, or at least ought not to have. In the ideal pursuit of knowledge, all of the things that set men at variance count for nothing whatever. Consequently the differences, just because they are ignored, are not overcome, with the result that, as at the beginning of this war, we may find professors of the various nations, who had been linked together, as one might think, closely enough in the pursuit of knowledge, hurling manifestoes at one another across their national frontiers.

When we pass to the second of the great departments, a real progress may be noted in just these points. For in the experience of the artist Time is genuinely mastered. We get some illustration of this from the absorption which marks the aesthetic contemplation of a picture or a statue. For the time that we are really held by it, we forget about time altogether. But the case is clearer with regard to those arts which handle temporal processes--music and poetry. For it is the whole point, let us say, of a drama, that it shall follow a certain succession; it is vital to its significance that the scenes shall be in that order and no other. If you have two plays, each in three acts, in one of which the first act is cheerful in tone, and the second is neutral, and the third depressing, while in the other the first act is depressing, the second neutral, and the third cheerful, the total effect of the two plays is not the average of the three acts in each case, which would be neutral for both, but is in the one particularly depressing, and in the other particularly cheering. For the play is grasped as a whole. It makes a single impression, if it is a good play. We know what it means--not indeed because we can state it in other words, for it is the only expression of its own meaning; but it has a definite significance for us. And the name of the play comes to stand for that significance. This is especially noticeable in tragedy, where the Greeks, with their sure instinct, chose a story whose plot is known to the spectator in advance, so that we have throughout the play both the impression of the entire story and the particular impression of each scene as it comes and passes. It is significant that the Greeks did so choose for tragedy stories whose plot was known, while their comedians invented their own plots. And most will agree that we enjoy a great play better when we have read it in advance, or when we have already seen it on the stage before; because then we do reach something that may serve perhaps as the nearest image that we can get for eternity--a grasp of the whole stretch of time, realised in its successiveness and in the meaning which that successiveness gives to it, and having the sense of the whole throughout and seeing each moment, as it comes, in the light not only of the past but of the future too.

On this side, then, art is able, for the moment at least, and with regard to a period definitely limited by our capacities of comprehension, to master Time and give us a unity which includes its successiveness within it; so that the past, and even the future, are gathered up into the real experience of the present, and we are not only conscious of what is before our eyes, but are conscious of it as a part of the whole to which it belongs.

In a similar way we notice that while different temperaments are needed for the production of different types of art, yet in appreciation all are united. For example, it would be quite impossible for the great Russian novels to be produced in any other country than Russia; it would have been quite impossible for the great German philosophy to have been produced in any other nation than Germany; it would have been quite impossible for the great English poetry to have been produced in any other nation than England. These literatures belong to the soil out of which they spring. But the people of all the other nations can appreciate them, and all are glad because they are different. And so far as the artistic side of our nature governs our whole being, it is capable of linking us together in a real fellowship, which includes and is based upon our differences and the appreciation of them, and is therefore firmly rooted, because what might have been the source of antagonism is become itself the bond of unity.

But we must notice that each of these only reaches a very provisional attainment. If science likes to mark off a certain department of reality for its investigation, it can reach something like finality concerning just that department. I suppose that mechanics is something like a complete system of truth, so far as the mechanical aspect of things can be isolated from all other aspects. But then, nothing in the world is mechanical and only mechanical. Nothing in the world is chemical and only chemical. There are always other qualities there, from which abstraction has been made. Science therefore inevitably sets before itself as its goal the understanding of the universe, and it could not reach any absolute certainty concerning any real fact except so far as it had obtained omniscience. In mathematics it reaches certainty, because in mathematics the object is what it is defined to be, and nothing else. But no given material thing is just a triangle. It may even be disputed whether any given thing can be, according to the definition, a triangle at all.

Science then is marked by a restlessness until it reaches this omniscience. It began when the first man said "Why?" The moment that question is asked, Science is launched upon its course. But the answer to that question merely prompts anyone of scientific instincts to say "Why?" to the answer. Why is there a war? Historical science will point to the diplomatic documents, and from them to the course of history moulding national aspiration. Then if we say, "Why was the cause of war such? And, why were there such national aspirations?" we shall find ourselves soon investigating the literature of the countries and then their climates; from this we are shortly involved in astronomy and geology and all the other sciences. You can have nothing that is final until you reach omniscience. And so Science moves, perpetually saying "Why?" to every statement that is made. Far in the distance, in the infinite distance, is its goal of a complete satisfaction gained through understanding the universe in its entirety.

Art can similarly only achieve a provisional attainment of its goal; but the attainment while it lasts is more substantial. Its method, as distinct from that of science, is mental rest. The aim of the artist is to concentrate attention upon the object, holding it there by various devices. That is why pictures are put into frames. Something abruptly irrelevant, although not discordant, is put round the object to help us fix our minds upon it. That is why poetry is written in metre. The mind is abruptly brought back by the recurrence of the rhythm or the recurrence of the sound in rhyme, and held within the total composition. We notice that it is precisely where the subject matter of the poem is slight that the rhythm needs to be strongly marked or the system of rhyme complicated; where the subject matter itself has a strong appeal, any rhyming seems to be out of place and tiresome. The aim is simply to grip the attention and hold it upon the object and make us see it as it is; not after the fashion of science, connecting it with other things, but understanding it by getting to know it in and for itself as thoroughly as may be.[#] Now in thus concentrating attention upon some one object and claiming complete absorption in that object, art is implicitly claiming to give a perfect mental satisfaction and an absolute peace. But it can never succeed in that unless the object upon which it is concentrating our attention is an adequate symbol for the whole truth of things in which the whole of our nature will find such satisfaction.

[#] This is why no great work of art over becomes out of date, whereas the work of a great scientist is always liable to do so, because his successors revise it in the light of ever widening knowledge.

Moreover, these activities of the mind or spirit fail to govern our lives as a whole precisely because they are contemplative and not active. We stand before the world gazing at it, setting our minds indeed to work upon it in certain ways, yet not fundamentally changing it. But we are active beings, with wills as well as contemplative minds, and our volitional action lies very largely outside the range which these activities and interests can control. And therefore it is that so little real unity is reached by means of them.

In Morality the practical instincts and impulses are for the first time included. Morality is the science or the art, or both, of living in society; of living, that is to say, as fellow members with other beings, who also have aspirations and ideals as legitimate as our own, so that our own claim to pursue our own ideals must be won by recognition of their equal claim to pursue theirs. And the man who, with full mastery of himself, if such a man exists, is following out a great purpose that is adequate to satisfy his whole nature, is a man who has achieved the conquest of Time in the completest way. It is essential to the pursuit of a purpose that we move from stage to stage, as we adapt means to our end, and yet all of it is one thing, thought and experienced as one. Indeed a test that we always instinctively apply to a biography is whether it enables us to see the different stages of a man's life as constituting one spiritual whole. That is just what we desire the biographer to set forth before us.

At the same time Morality conquers antagonism because it is the life of fellowship. It begins with the recognition that other men have as much right to live as we have, and we buy our rights precisely by conceding theirs. Its root principle is the recognition of this brotherhood or fellow-membership. And yet it, too, never reaches its goal; it fails in two ways; every man in this world, however perfectly he may achieve mastery of his own nature--and it may be doubted if any man has ever done even that by his own strength--is so conditioned by circumstances that he is never able to make his life a perfect masterpiece of art; and as regards the whole fellowship of which he is a member, and his own relation to it, he can find no absolute rules except the command to reach a state of mind which he cannot reach by his own will. There are no moral laws that are absolute except the law to love one's neighbour as oneself. All the rest have exceptions somewhere. "Thou shall not kill," was the formula of the old law. But we have altered it into, "Thou shalt do no murder." It is always wrong to murder, because murder is such killing as is wrong. But it is not always wrong to kill. And so we find no principle that can be made entirely binding and universal, except the law to love our neighbour as ourselves. But how are we to do it? Is there any man who seriously thinks that by taking thought he can make himself love somebody else?

All of these three then, and the last as emphatically as any, in spite of its comprehending a greater section of human nature, fail to reach their own achievement.

In the fourth stage, in Religion, all would find their fulfilment. For the purpose of God, if there be a God, is the principle of unity which the scientist is seeking. The nature of God, if there be a God, is that perfect beauty which would be the culmination of the life of Art. The righteousness of God, if there be a God, is the satisfaction of the moral aspiration. But we are not left so to conjecture what life would be like if we could carry our own spiritual faculties to their own highest development. We are given the express image of the person of God. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." We shall not indeed have perfect knowledge of the sphere of religion until we have seen how the whole of history and every detail of our lives is, after all, the result and work of creative Love; but while Science and Art and Morality struggle towards their goal and only realise their need for it, God gives Himself as the satisfaction of that need. It is His gift, not our discovery; but we see that in this principle all Time is gathered up, for if the life of Christ is the manifestation of the nature of God, then it is the manifestation of the root-principle of all history.[#]

[#] I am aware that the argument here is _per saltum_, but space forbids its full development. I hope soon to have completed a book which will fill in the outline sketch offered in this Lecture. Meanwhile I would refer to my essay on _The Divinity of Christ_ in _Foundations_, specially pp. 213-223, 242-263.

Then we see, too, how all men may be united in perfect fellowship, because all men loving God will find themselves loving those whom God so loves. This hope or conviction remains in the region of faith, not of knowledge; what of that? In the other departments also we have found no knowledge. We have only found approximation towards it. We have, as it were, converging lines which never meet; and we have also the point at which we see they would meet if produced. Is that not enough? Here we find is the principle that will give unity, as we work it out, to the whole scheme of our spiritual life. Morality says, "Love all men." How can I? Science says, "Realise the truth which explains the universe." How can I? But I can gaze upon the manifestation of God in Jesus Christ; I can meditate upon His Cross and Resurrection. I can see here and there how it may be true that this is indeed the explanation of all the sorrow, even of all the sin. For if it is true that the supreme manifestation of the love of God was historically conditioned by the supreme sin of humanity in the treason of Judas, then surely one begins to see how even out of the grossest evil the glory of God wins triumph for itself, which we too may share if we are first drawn to share the sacrifice.

As I become absorbed in that contemplation I find in the first place a new power to love all men, as I remember that He died for them just as He died for me. In the degree in which I really believe that this is the manifestation of the power of God and the governing authority of the universe, I find this thought over-ruling other thoughts and temptations to hostility or enmity. As I remember that those whom I am inclined to despise or hate are those for whom He thought it worth while to die, my contempt and my hatred are rebuked and cancelled.

And similarly, if I realise--or in the degree in which I realise--that here is set forth the power that governs all things, that this is the way in which God rules the world, and that Calvary is the mode of His omnipotence, I begin to find myself indifferent, and that increasingly, to those things which are called sorrow and pain.

But we shall only find this as we expect to find it. All through our spiritual life we may be perpetually in contact, as it were, with the means of receiving what is good, and never receive it because we are not expecting it. We have not expected peace of mind from our worship, we have not expected a sense of security against evil; that is why we have not found it; but it is our fault. And certainly most of us have not expected to find fellowship from worship. We have known something of the grace of Jesus Christ, perhaps even of the love of God; but of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, of the sense of being linked to one another because all dominated by that one power, most of us have found nothing, because we have not expected it.

But if we are expecting this, all the testimony of the saints in every generation goes to show that we shall find what we have expected.

The power that can give us security against the transitoriness of the world and against the instincts of antagonism is there in the faith that we place in God. "I will put my trust in God," the Psalmist says, "I will not fear what flesh can do unto me." This is not because flesh will not do such hurt as it can to the man who puts his trust in God--the Jews crucified Christ--but because to the man who puts his trust in God, anything whatever that happens becomes part of God's purpose for his life, and therefore he will not fear it. For "all things," sorrow as well as joy, pain as well as pleasure, sin as well as righteousness, "all things work together for good to them that love God."

*LECTURE VI*

*GOD IN HISTORY*

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty."--Revelation i. 8.

We have considered the two great instruments of God by which He fashions the spiritual life of man, and we have considered that spiritual life itself in the outline at least of its four main departments; and now, as we close our line of thought, we need still to consider how it is that, in these fields and by these instruments, God carries forward His work.

The conception of God as at work in human history, guiding it, controlling it, and judging men by its course, is the great contribution of Israel to the religion of the world. It is linked of course with that belief in the union of perfect righteousness with the divine, power which we usually speak of under the somewhat cumbrous title of Ethical Monotheism. We remember what was really at stake in that great day upon Mount Carmel when Elijah confronted the priests of Baal; it was whether the conception of God as righteous and demanding righteousness should prevail, or the conception of God as a capricious Being, needing only to be propitiated, and in connection with whose very worship licentiousness was tolerated and even encouraged.

But, after all, the greatest souls, at least in every highly-developed religion, have believed that God is righteous in Himself. What gives to Israel its supreme significance in the spiritual history of mankind is the conviction that this righteous God is daily and hourly at work in the history of men; and that conviction gives to the faith of Israel a primacy and supremacy over all the other partial faiths, even though they may be superior in certain departments.

If we think of some of the conceptions by means of which we try to bring before our minds the meaning of the word "God," we may find that with regard to several of them, other nations had advanced further than Israel before the coming of the Lord.

God is Spirit. The Hindu knew that, and knows it still, quite as much as Israel.

God is Law. The more thoughtful at least among the ancient Romans, and particularly the great Roman Stoics, knew that with a vividness that was scarcely ever attained in Israel.

God is Beauty. Assuredly the ancient Greeks knew that as Israel never realised it at all.

But the conception of Israel that God is at work in history means that the God of Israel gives to these other gods or conceptions of God, each its own time and place of emergence and decay. The God who is revealed to us in the Old Testament is Himself the Being who appoints that the Indian or the Roman or the Greek should reach these particular convictions; and in these partial apprehensions of the Divine, before the full revelation came, the faith of Israel is determinative and regulative for all the other faiths; and moreover, it is this faith that God is at work in the actual daily history of men, which makes the faith of Israel the natural and proper introduction to the Incarnation, where God Himself took flesh and lived among men and died at a time and in a place--in Palestine and under Pontius Pilate.

This exaltation of the Holy God, actually at work within men and at their side, while it leads to a sense of awe before the Holiness of the Almighty, also leads to a sense of the dignity of this world, and of man's life in it, which is lacking, as a rule, from other great religions, and that too in proportion as those other religions are spiritual. For the Hindu, for example, this world and all that is in it is mere illusion. He is spiritual enough but he is not material enough; and we find there that contempt for the things of the body which invariably issues in a contempt for moral conduct; for our moral conduct here, while we live upon this planet, is wrought out through our bodies. But the religion of Israel, and especially its completion in the Incarnation, wherein God Himself came in the flesh, gives at once a dignity to this world of ours, to our bodies, and to all the material side of life.