Chapter 2
What is true religion, what is that religion by which we shall feel _wholly satisfied?_ It is to have Christ recognised, known, adored, and living in the soul. This is the New Life within us, this is the New Birth. The first proofs of the power of this New Life in us is the victory over all the lower passions, victory over the animal "that once was ourself"! A victory so complete that not only do we cease to desire those former things or be troubled by them but we no longer "respond" to that which is base, even though we be brought into visual contact with such things as would formerly have inevitably excited at least a passing response in us. Can any man free himself in such a manner from his own nature? Common sense forbids us imagine it. It is then a Living Power within us, slowly transforming us to higher levels, from the fleshly to the spiritual, and shaping us to meet the purity of God. And such is the tender consideration of this Power for our weakness that while we are learning to give up these baser pleasures He teaches us the higher pleasures of the soul--we are not left comfortless. So in our earlier stages we may have many very wonderful ecstasies which later are altogether dispensed with, and indeed are eventually not desired by the soul, or even the more greedy heart and mind, which all now ask and desire one favour only--to be on earth in continual fellowship with Christ Jesus and ever able to enter into the love of God. To be without this glorious power of entering Responsive Love of God, to be cut off from this, is the great and only fear of the soul. This fear it is which holds the soul and the creature towards God both day and night lest by the least forgetfulness or wrongful attitude they should lose Him or displease Him.
All these changes no man can bring about for himself--they are accomplished for him by the Holy Spirit; but this he can and _must_ do for himself, invite Sweet Jesus into his heart and enthrone Him there as Ruler. This once accomplished, that mysterious monitor within us commonly known as "Conscience" grows until it attains an excessive sensitiveness which penetrates the minutest acts of life and the deepest recesses of heart and mind. It becomes inexorable, it demands instant and complete obedience. Because of it relations with other persons undergo a drastic change. Complete, instant, entire forgiveness for every offence is demanded, and at last even a momentary annoyance must be effaced; no matter how great the cause of annoyance, it must be effaced in the same instant as that in which it crosses the mind, for a single adverse thought eventually proves as injurious to the Spirit as a grain of sand is to the eyes.
The petty human aims, the smallness of all our former standards, the instinct for "retaliation" must all be overcome, laid upon one side--a slow task of much humiliation to the creature, revealing to it its own smallness and vanity and its own extraordinary ineffectiveness of self-control, its puny powers over itself: nothing short of an absolute self-conquest is aimed at and demanded by this inward monitor--the Soul. With what profound veneration for and recognition of the power of God does the regenerated creature think of those alterations in its own nature which, after long strivings, are eventually given it by God, and of those alterations not yet stabilised because not yet gifts, but only on the way to perhaps becoming gifts--that is to say, still only where the power of the creature itself has been able to raise them: for of these last it may invariably be said that to-day we may feel serene security and to-morrow fall and fail--and this in the very meanest way!
We see on every side men and women who try to fill an emptiness, a wanting that they feel within themselves, by every sort of means except the only one which can ever be a permanent success. Women devote themselves to lovers, husbands, children, dress, society, and dogs; men to business, ambition, the racecourse, folly, drink, games, and arts. Are any of these persons truly happy, truly satisfied in all their being? No, and they descend to old age surrounded by the dust of disillusionment. Lonely and soon forgotten by the hungry pleasure-seeking crowd, such persons pass from this world, and the most their friends have to say is that they have gone to a better one. But have they? For the mere fact of shedding the flesh does not bring us any nearer to God. On the contrary, the shedding of the flesh increases appallingly the difficulty of the soul in finding God. This world is the very place in which we can most easily and quickly get into communication with God. To think that the mere act of dying improves our character and takes us to heaven is a delusion of the Enemy--it is living here which can fit us and carry us to heaven; and we have no great distance to travel either, for heaven is a state of consciousness, and by entering that state of consciousness we become united and connected with such degrees of heaven as the flesh is able to bear, though these degrees fall infinitely short of those required by the soul: hence the fearful hungering and longing of the soul to depart from the flesh. If we do not find Christ whilst we are here, when we cast off the flesh we enter a bewildering vortex of a life of terrible intensity and great solitude. We are aware of nothing but Self, are tormented by Self with its forever unsatisfied longings, and by the _impossibility of achieving any other Self._ In this intensity of self-tormenting loneliness the soul feels to gyrate, and all that she knows of that which is outside of this Self is the sound of the rushing of invisible things, for she is blind. Without the light of this world and without the light of Christ. The joys of space are not open to her, only the dark and lonely horrors of it: she is in an incalculably greater state of isolation from God than here in this world! The remedy for all this lies here; let no one think he can afford to wait to find this remedy until after he leaves this world, for then his chance is gone, and who is able to foretell when it will return? What can be more beautiful, more happy, than to find this remedy, to find the only Being who loves us as much as we love ourselves! the gentle, tender, gracious, all-sufficing Christ; that all-mighty ever-giving Christ who yearns over and longs for us--what madness is it that prevents us seeking Him?
All of us would seem to have two personalities: we are the repentant and the unrepentant Magdalene and daily change from one to the other. But true repentance cannot come before love: if we think we repent before we love, then it is no more than a repentance of the mind, which says to itself, "I must stand well with God because of my future well-being." Where love comes first we get the repentance of the heart, which works this way in us--we love Jesus a little, we love Him more and more, and because of this love increasing to real warmth we suddenly perceive the frightful offences we have committed against this sweet love, and instantly the heart melts and breaks and we are shaken to our depths that we have ever grieved our Holy Lover. This is true repentance--no anxious fears for our own future, but love grieving and agonised for its offences. Such repentance as this pierces to the deepest recesses of the heart and mind, and leaves upon them a deep indelible mark, changing all the aims of our life, and is the beginning of all joys in Christ Jesus. Let us aim therefore not first at repentance, but first at love. A little love to Jesus given many times a day as we walk or wait or work, if only at first said by the lips with desire for more warmth, after a while we shall find ourselves giving it from the heart; then the Divine Seed has begun to grow because we have watered it.
If the natural man were asked, "What is life? what is it to live?" he would reply, "It is to eat, drink, laugh, love, and have pleasure or pain: to hear, see, touch, taste and smell, and to be conscious that I do all these things." Yet this consciousness is but a tiny speck of consciousness, and some mysterious voice within the deeply-thinking man tells him that this is so. But how uncover a further consciousness? This is the secret of the soul.
To pass from one form of consciousness to another--this is to increase life fifty, a hundred, a thousand times according to the degrees of consciousness we can attain. These degrees would seem to be irrevocably limited because of the mechanical actions of heart and breathing, which automatic actions become suspended or seriously interfered with in very high states of consciousness. When first these very great expansions of consciousness take place, the creature is under strong conviction that the soul has left the body--that it has gone upon some mysterious journey--this because of several reasons. The first is because of a certain persistent sound of rushing; the second is because of the sense of living at tremendous speed, in a manner previously altogether unknown and totally undreamed of, in which the senses of the body have no concern whatever and are completely closed down; thirdly, on returning from this "journey" we are not immediately able to exact obedience from the body, which remains inert and stiffly cold and suffers distress with too slow breathing. But reason demands, "How is it possible that the soul should leave the body and the body not die? and also we perceive this, that, though the consciousness is projected to an infinite distance, or includes that infinite distance within itself, it yet remains aware of the existence of the body, though very dimly."
The method employed, then, for administering these experiences to the soul and the creature is not by means of drawing the soul out of the body, but by a withdrawal of the condition of insulation from Divine Life or great magnetic emanation, in which insulation all creatures have their normal existence, living in a condition which may be termed a state of total Unawareness. By Will of God this condition of insulation is removed, the soul enters Connection and becomes instantly and vividly aware of Spiritual Life and of that which Is, at an infinite distance from herself, so that the soul is at one and the same time in paradise or heaven, and upon the earth: space is eaten up. Without seeing or hearing, the soul partakes in a tremendous and unspeakable manner of the joys of God, which, all unfelt by us as "natural" man, pass unceasingly throughout the universe.
These experiences give an immense and unshakable knowledge to the soul and the creature of the immense reality of the Unseen Life, and are doubtless sent us to effect this knowledge. Why, then, is not every man given this knowledge? Because the creature must qualify before being allowed to receive it, and too many hold back from the tests. By these experiences we learn some little portion of the mystery which lies between the pettiness of that which we now are and the great glories that we shall come to; and in this awful heavenly mystery in which are fires that have no flame, and melody which has no sound, the soul is drawn to Everlasting Love. But we cannot endure the bliss of it, and the soul prays to be covered on account of the creature.
But because of the limitations of the flesh we are not to despise it but regard it not as an aim or end (as that if we satisfy its lusts that shall be our paradise), but regard it as a means. Christ willed the flesh and the world to be a rapid means of our return to God. Subdue the flesh without despising it, in humility and thankfulness. Suffer its trials and penalties not in dejection, rebellion, or hopelessness, but as a means to an end. "For everyone shall be salted with fire," says Scripture; and can anything whatever be well forged or made without it be first melted and cleaned? So, then, for each his Gethsemane. As for Christ, so for Judas, who, not being able to endure, went out and hanged himself. Let our care, then, be to choose that Gethsemane which shall open to us the gates of heaven and not hell.
In our raw state we fear the Will of God, thinking it a path of thorns; but as Christ moulds and teaches us we grow to know the Will of God as a great Balm: to long to conform to it, joyfully to join it, to sink into it as into an immense security where we are safe from all ills; and at last, no matter what temporary trials we endure, so great does our love and confidence grow by _Grace_ of God upholding our tiny efforts that, like Job, we cry to Him with absolute sincerity and confidence, "Though Thou slay me, yet will I trust Thee"; having learnt it is not His Will to slay but to restore and purify and make glad. Incessant work is the lot of the awakened and returning soul, and justly so, for because of what folly and ingratitude did she ever leave God? A multiplicity of choices lie before her, and her great concern is which amongst all these possible decisions will prove the shortest path to God. These choices and decisions must be brought down to the meanest details of everyday life. At first on awakening the soul would like nothing better than to forsake and cast away material things altogether, and is inclined to despise the body. But Jesus teaches her that this is not pleasing: it is His Will that she should continually lend assistance to the creature in its weaknesses and uncertainties, not disdaining it but helping it. It is the soul which maintains contact with the Divine Guide, and then in turn should guide the creature. As the Divine Guide condescends to the soul, never despising her, so must the soul condescend to the creature: acknowledging and understanding that nothing is too small or humble for the soul to attend to and lead the creature to do in a beautiful and gentle manner.
By these means the permeation of the natural world by the Divine is carried out, and no act or fact of life can be considered too insignificant for the soul to attend to for the development of this aim.
The more we become familiar with spiritual life the more we observe the regularity of certain laws in it, and the more we find analogies between these new and unmapped laws and the laws and forces already known to us in the visible world. Rightly expounded by some scientific mind, these could bring the world of human thought and aspirations straight into the arms of God.
Science is the friend and not the enemy of religion. Science will light up and illuminate the dark gaps. This world is a house fully wired for lighting: the wiring is perfect, the bulbs alone are incomplete; they give no light: it is the task of the soul to perfect these human bulbs.
The life of conscious connection with God is true living as far as we may know it in the flesh, an enormous increase over the petty normal life of the world or, more rightly, the petty and _lacking_ life of the world. For in this life of God-consciousness is an immense sanity and poise, a balance between soul and body and heart and mind never achieved in the "normal" or "natural" life. Therefore the God-conscious life is not to be named an abnormal but the complete, full, and only truly normal life: a life in which both soul and creature have found their centre, and the whole being in all its parts is brought to evenness, to harmony, to peace and a greatly magnified intelligence. If all men and women attained this state, this world would automatically become Paradise. In this true life living and feeling alter their characteristics and surpass anything that can be imagined by the uninitiated mind. Now, though to convey some idea of this condition of consciousness would seem to be impossible, still there are some types of persons to whom a little something of the commencement of the larger life of the awakened soul might be conveyed before they themselves experience it. The lovers of nature, of music, of the beautiful and romantic, and of poetry: in the highest moments reached by such they are aware of an indefinable Something--an expansion, a going out towards, a longing--yearning, subtly composed of both joy and pain, which goes beyond the earth, beyond the music, beyond the poetry, beyond the beautiful into a Nameless Bourne. At these moments they live with the soul: this is the commencement of spirit-life. When the Nameless Bourne has become to the soul that which It really is--God--and _He sends His responses to her,_ then the soul knows the fullness of spiritual life as we may know it in the flesh.
But she can neither know the Nameless Bourne as God nor receive His responses till the heart and the mind have come to repentance of their ways and have been changed at least in part. Without this mode of living no one can be said to live in a full or whole manner, because nothing is whole which does not include the consciousness of God, and this in a lively and acute degree.
One of our great difficulties is that when, as the merely half-repentant creature, we turn to God and, beginning to ask favours of Him, get no response, then all our warm feelings and longings towards Him fall back, we go into a state either of profounder unbelief (which is further separation) or into total apathy. Apathy is a deadly thing. The more God loves us the more He will do His part to keep us from it. All the circumstances of life will be used to this end. We may lose our nearest and dearest. If it is material prosperity that causes a too complete content to live without Him, then some or all of that prosperity will be removed. In whatever spot we are most tender--there He will touch us. "Oh, if it had been anyone else or anything less that we had lost, then it would not have been so hard to bear," we say. Exactly. For nothing less would have been of any use, and alas! even this may be of no use, for Christ is ever willing and trying to save us, and we will not be saved.
If we do not get out of this apathy, we shall miss the whole reason of our life here. By these living thrusts He brings us to our knees, humbled, humiliated, anguished, in order that, having awakened and purified us, He may lift us into His Divine consolations.
We cannot in one step mount up out of our faithless indifferent wrongful condition into the glories of the knowledge of God. First we must learn to know Jesus, intimately, devotedly. Then Jesus the Christ: then the Father. Finally God the Holy Trinity, once found and known by us, becomes our All, and by some unspeakable condescension He becomes to us all things in all ways. The soul is filled with romantic and divine love, and instantly God is her Holy Lover: she is sad, weary, or afraid, and immediately she turns to Him He comforts and mothers her: she is filled with adoring filial love, and at once He is her Father. Oh, the wonders of the fullness of the finding and knowing of God!
Let the man who would know happiness here study the works of God, and not think he will gain virtue by putting everything that he sees here upon one side, saying it is not real or it is not good. It is very real of its own kind, and good also if he learns how to use it, and very marvellous. Let him study how things are made--God's things, not trivial man-made things--let him observe how all are made with equal care, the humblest and the proudest, "the tiny violet perfect as the oak." Let him learn the manner of the ways of light and the colours of all that he sees,[*] and then stop to consider how, having made all these marvels, God then fashioned his own delicate eyes that he might see and know and enjoy them all. To consider all these things, accepting them from God with love, makes the heart and the mind and the soul dance and sing together not with noise but like sunshine upon water.
[*] _Scientific Ideas of To-day,_ by C. Gibson.
What is Nature but the demonstration in visible objects of an invisible Will? This Will we need to trace to its Source; having done this, we are able to praise and bless God for every single thing of beauty He has fashioned here: and this praising and blessing of God becomes nothing less than a continual ecstasy for both soul and creature, and, indeed, because of this and by means of this burning appreciation of God's works, both soul and creature find their sweetest consolations as they wait to be taken to a holier world.
When they both bless God with the fire of their love for every tender thing that He has made, then their days become to them one long delight.
This blessing of God and His works is not just a blessing with lips, but feels this way. The words being said by the heart, a burning spark of enthusiasm is immediately kindled there, which spark sets light to a spark in the soul; and this invisible fire joining another Invisible Fire, instantly in immense exaltation we enter the joys of God. But because of our flesh we cannot stay but only enter and come back.
We are made to love and adore God, but the mode of entry into this is not by beseeching God to come down and love us, but by constant endeavour to enter up into _His_ estate, to offer _Him_ love: this enthusiasm for God brings about a mysterious accomplishment of all needs, desires, joys.
We are made to love and adore God, and because of this without Him we are an Emptiness, a Great Want. Such is the lovely and perfect reciprocity of love that as this Great Want we are the pleasure and the joy of the All-Giving God. And He is the All-Giving that He may rejoice and fill our extremity of Want. So we are each to each that which each most desires. This is Divine Love.
Do not let us imagine that by making very much of earthly loves we shall by that obtain the heavenly: on the contrary, love of creatures, and too much turning to and thinking of and depending upon creatures, is a sure manner of hindering us _till_ we have learnt to unite with Divine Love. This love for creatures is often for the heart and soul what treacle is to the wings of a fly! Do not be content with creatures, but seek beyond the creaturely for the heavenly.
This is not to say that we are not to love our fellow-creatures, attend to them, wait upon them, bear with them, and work for them; but whilst doing all these we are not to make them the object of our life: we are not to think that by merely running about amongst creatures frenzied with plans for their social improvement and comfort the nearer we are necessarily getting to God, or even truly pleasing Him. All these multiplicities of frenzied interests are best centred upon the finding and knowing and loving of Jesus Christ within our own hearts. When this finding, knowing, loving and believing has been accomplished, then we shall have accomplished the only work God asks us to accomplish, and all other works will automatically, peacefully, and smoothly come to their proper fruition in us through Him.
Neither imagine we shall do this finding of Jesus in, or because of, another person. We shall not find Him in another person or anywhere till we have first found Him in ourselves: and this by inward pondering, delicate tender thinkings, loving comparisons, sweet enthusiasms, persistent endeavours to imitate His gentle ways and manners as being some proof of our desire to love and find Him. The need which is the most pressing of all our needs is to find that Light which will light us when we have to go out from the light of this world into the awful solitudes of that which we often so lightly and confidently speak of as "the other world."
Without Christ we go out into a fearful loneliness: with Christ we walk the rainbow paths of Paradise.
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