What is man?Who is man?Would the absence of man cripple God?What could an infinite God care for such a little speck?Is not socialism the best religion there is?
What is man?
Who is man?
Would the absence of man cripple God?
What could an infinite God care for such a little speck?
Is not socialism the best religion there is?
1. What is man?
We do not fully know "what" and "where" God is until we know what man is, and how God and man are working through each other. Our knowledge of God grows with our knowledge of man. We can understand neither without knowing both. At every stage of the discussion our subject is made complex by the intertwining of the human and the Divine. Hence, this chapter—while introducing man—takes us deeper into the life of God.
Man does not have a soul. Neither does the sun set. Though we know better, yet for convenience, we continue to speak of the sun as setting. For the same reason we still say that man has a soul when we mean that he is a soul. Soul is person, body is instrument. Theinstrument does not have the person, the person has the instrument. The soul is the child of God. How strangely, therefore, it would sound to ask: Does a man have a child of God? The reverse question, however, is perfectly fitting: Does a child of God have a body?
Man is a spirit, a soul, or a person. All men are alike in that which constitutes them personalities, or self-conscious wills. It is in their individuality that men differ. In the first place, some are more developed than others; and then they have different tastes, different knowledge, different temperaments, and different occupations. This diversity of individuality clearly distinguishes one man from another, and at the same time greatly enriches society.
Like his Father, man isa loving intelligent will. Like Him, too, he is always silent and invisible, save as his instruments express his thought and wish in time and space. So far, Father and child should be defined in the same terms; for however they may differ in other respects, they are alike in being self-conscious. If either is below self-conscious will, he is something less than a person. Though man, as we find him, is not always so very loving, nor so very intelligent, yet that is what he is in his best estate. So far as we can understand, the sinless man soul lifted to the infinite power would be the same as God. This spiritual definition does not imply that either God or man exists, or could exist, without form and outward expression.
2. Who is man?
We think of Man, the soul, as a child of God, or a god-child. Therefore, he is worthy of his brother's highest esteem, and his Father's tenderest affection. He is a very son of the infinite God; and all created spirits, being his brothers, are members of one family. Again we say, "O god-child, how wonderful you are, and what a pity it would be if you failed to recognize your divinity, or allowed anything to drag you down from your divine possibilities!" Man must know himself if he would attain unto the goal of life.
Though manisa soul, yet without the body he cannot so much as come to self-consciousness. Just how or when a soul begins, we do not know; but it does not appear until some time after the body is born. A new-born babe can neither see, feel, nor hear, with any intelligent meaning of the words. It will stare into the most glaring light without intelligence enough to shut its eyes. It does not recognize objects for some time, and when it does, misses the object for which it reaches. The infant is likewise slow in distinguishing sounds or names. If the soul exists when the body is born, it is only a latent personality which has not yet come to self-realization. Personality is self-conscious will, and this the child has not yet achieved.
Let us here consider the relation of a new-bornbodyto God and the universe. God begins His creative activities in what the scientists call stellar ether, where Hisenergies combine and recombine in a more and more complex world, until the solar system appears with planets in the condition of our earth. After more combinations and recombinations, out on the surface of all things His activities blossom in the finest bit of organism, the sensitized thing which we call the human body. This body, the flower of all God's activities in nature, requires all nature for its support. Furthermore, the chemical energies constituting the body itself are what God is thinking, and feeling, and doing. Strictly speaking, it is His body, the first instrument in the whole order of development, the only body on earth capable of articulate speech and loving deed. If God did not continually will the body and all the supporting energies of the universe, the body would cease to be. Before the man soul appears at all, we have God's world culminating in what we call the human body. When a man soul awakes, it is in God's own bosom, in His own body. Man awakens in God's enfolding energies, and not outside them; for outside of God he could not exist.
It is amusing to hear a little boy speak of his father's automobile as "my car"; but it isn't his, even though the father is pleased to see the little fellow spread himself in it and claim ownership. Yet it is his too, in the sense that the father gladly shares it with him. And some day when the child is too big to be a little boy, and too little to be a big boy, he may take his father's car and run it into the ditch. But even the wreck is his father's wreck. In the same way, if we live at all it is in our Father's enfolding instrument. His body is ours because He gladly shares it with us. However, if we do not use it in harmony with His will, we wreck it in the ditch.
God wakes His child to consciousness in His own body, by making all kinds of impressions upon the sense organs. There are many rappings on the door, and flashes of light through the windows until the soul wakes. And when the soul becomes conscious, God may not cease beating upon the instrument with myriad forces, lest His child fall asleep.
Some morning when a loved form bends over the infant body, the baby smiles, and the soul begins to appear. That is a wonderful day when the baby gives its first smile. Little by little the child becomes aware of itself and of its mother. Should the baby be fortunate enough to have two or three brothers and sisters, he will learn some day, when he is a little older, that they all want the same thing at the same time. Then he will be very conscious ofother wills.
We know that other wills exist because they live in our enveloping world, and constantly use it in a way that we approve or resent. If they did not know and disturb our world, we should not be aware of them even if they existed. We know that other wills exist because they sell us coats that they have made, and cut down trees in our forests, and shape them into things that have meaning for us and them. They modulate the atmosphere in which we live, producing sounds that stand for objects with which we are familiar. They learn our words andfacial expressions, and use them to make us feel happy or uncomfortable. Nature is the common instrument of all wills.
As we cannot come to the consciousness of ourselves, nor of other wills, except through the body and its environments,neither can we develop the soul without cultivating the physical instrument and that which surrounds it. There is always a corresponding development between soul and body. As Browning says,
"We know not whether soul helps body more than body helps soul."
We simply know that soul and body develop together, and that if either is injured the other is harmed. A physical change in our bodies takes place with every thought. We cannot silently love without disturbing the gray matter. We make paths through our nervous system with every thought and deed. If we had a means of photographing all the muscular and nervous conditions wrought in our bodies by our thoughts and actions, they would correspond to every growth of spirit. The face becomes beautiful with a beautiful soul, and the body becomes refined by every improvement of the spirit.
I once shook hands with the great French organist, Guilmant. When I clasped his hand I forgot everything else; the hand was so soft, and yet so firm! All the inspiration and purpose of his soul had been registered in his body. And what a hand it was! I shall never forget that touch. It gave new meaning to Tennyson's beautiful line, "Oh for the touch of a vanished hand!" Ourlooks, smiles, accents, and very gait become the expression of the soul.
We once had a maid who came home in the dejected state following intoxication. When I appeared she said:
"I has me faults the same as others, but me heart is all right." Now, could her heart be right and her body wrong? Can we have a pure soul and an unclean body? Can we have an honest heart and a pilfering hand? Certainly not. For as the pure soul cleanses the body, so the degraded body pollutes the soul. Soul and body must grow together,—and alike. Sometimes we speak of a purely spiritual experience apart from all physical excitability; but such a thing is impossible, because every spiritual thought has its beautiful, physical accompaniment. The physical may run riot, as with some musicians who are principally noise and bluster; but the fact still remains that the most bilious and cold philosopher enjoys his gentle nervous thrill.
All worthy education means the spiritualizing of the body. Both before death, and after, the good man has a spiritual body. Not a spirit body, but a spiritual, a refined and sensitive instrument of the spirit. Throughout eternity man will be spiritualizing his body, or else degrading it.
We soon outgrow our immediate bodies, and find it necessary to augment them with all the forces of nature. These enlarged bodies must likewise be spiritualized or they will pervert the soul,—as is proved by every degraded form of institutional life.
The early man dimly realized that if he could get a larger hand, he would be a greater man. So, augmenting his hand with a club, he achieved a new growth in mind and character. Finding himself a greater man, he tried once more to increase his hand. Next, finding a sharp stone with which he could hack down small trees, he created a new mental and moral demand for a still finer instrument of his spirit. Then, in turn, he augmented his hand with bronze and iron until all great thundering mills and all cunning tools appeared as the mighty hand of the human will. This required an enormous soul growth in knowledge and character, and a corresponding growth in social consciousness and self-consciousness. To further our soul growth there is still a pressing demand for enlarged instruments. So it must ever be an even race between soul growth and hand growth.
In the same way, man developed soul and legs. It became necessary to make swifter legs or suffer a dwarfing of his soul. Consequently, he increased his speed with camels and horses; but even these became inadequate for his soul's growth. Then ensued a race of soul and legs, until to-day automobiles, steam cars, and every means of swift locomotion are but the augmented legs of man. The growing man soul is still in quest of swifter means of locomotion, and as these appear society is changed to its very foundations. New trades, new mental powers, new moral conditions confront him everywhere; and still he is speeding up.
When man made for himself far-seeing eyes in the telescope, the heavens opened; and what he saw in the heavens made for him a new earth. Then making for himself a short-seeing eye in the microscope, he discovered within and beneath things a new world, which in turn was a vast commentary on the heavens above. Likewise it may be truthfully said that soul and eyes have made an even race in their development. The same is true of soul and ears. Said a great building contractor of Chicago thirty-five years ago, "No man in the past ever dreamed of such a business as we are conducting, for it would have been impossible without the telephone." The telephone is but the enlargement of man's ears and mouth. This contractor moved men and materials, at will, over a radius of a hundred miles. Even the musical soul found a new incentive when the mouth was enlarged by piano, pipe organ, and orchestra. Every enlargement of the mouth calls for new musical skill in complex technique, and in finer inspiration and fuller elaboration. In short, every man soul is in quest of omnipresence. Living as he does in his Father's enfolding energies, he can know himself, and grow himself, only so far as he makes the instruments of his Father's will the instruments of his own will. The man soul is in the process of taking on the whole universe as his enlarged body. Two hundred pounds is quite large enough for the little body which he ever carries, and cares for, but to be a growing son of God he must progressively make the universe his augmented body. At night he may lay off his big body andrest; but in the morning he must put on his larger body, the universe, as he puts on his clothes and his boots, and go forth to live and work with God, his Father.
3. Would the absence of man cripple God?
Yes, the absence of man would thoroughly cripple God. Without the possibility of a family, God would just as well never have been. This is not an unbecoming or irreverent remark, but a statement that is very pleasing to God; it vindicates everything that is highest in His Holy Nature. His wisdom, character, and love are all involved in His purpose to have a family.
If we eliminate the thought of His family, what wisdom is there in anything God has made? The production of coal is a wonderful display of wisdom, love, and power; but apart from the thought of children who would discover the coal and put it to all its marvelous uses, what motive could there have been in such an act? God, as a solitary will in the universe, never intended to mine coal, warm houses, cook food, or fire engines. All the marvelous by-products of coal could have no value or meaning apart from a complex society; but with a family in mind the production of coal becomes a sacrament worthy of a God, and lays the foundation of a kingdom, all glorious in wisdom, love, and power.
Iron, likewise, has a rational, moral, and social significance beyond all power to express. Its uses, all the way from steel bridges and engines to the hair springs ofwatches, suggest the imagination of a mind infinite and loving. The human family never could have climbed to glory except on an iron stair; but take away the family, and iron means nothing.
The large part that wood has supplied in the development and happiness of the race is beyond the imagination of any but an infinite mind. To what infinite uses it has been and may yet be put, from the homeliest utilities to organs and violins! Soft woods, hard woods, and precious woods have entered into the very warp and woof of human life. Wood is a miracle, robbed of its wonder because the gift is so lavish. Yet what sense would there be in creating wood in all its varieties, with no one to put it to any of its sacred uses? These same thoughts would equally apply to all the precious metals.
Why should God create a chemical world unless He had chemists in mind? What would it amount to if there were not those who could take nature apart and recombine it to infinity for His glory and their happiness? But there is no end to questions of this kind that might be asked concerning God and His works. In short, a depopulated universe is robbed of all its meaning and glory. Without a family, God would be reduced to a child god playing with a toy world. And being alone, He could not so much as complete His toy. At best the universe is but raw material until His children have turned it into a finished product. When God and His children begin turning nature into finished products the highest creation is just begun. By transforming natureinto a social institution that reflects God's wisdom and love, common nature is glorified. Without a family there is no sense in anything, and God Himself would be without moral worth or meaning. To be sure, He could get along without a few of us if we should utterly refuse to coöperate with Him; but without a loving family, God would be completely defeated. He "So loved the world," and with equal propriety it might be said He so needed the world, "that He gave His only begotten Son."
Before God's family arrived He was simply getting ready to do the supreme thing. But with His children about Him, loving and alert, the meaning of all things from the beginning commences to appear, and the glorious end is dimly discerned. No greater travesty on the nature of God could be conceived than that which makes Him independent of His children. And to think that God's desire for mere adoration is His chief need of man is but slightly less a travesty. God yearns for the love and adoration of His children, and with no less desire, He calls upon them to help Him carry forward His work of creation. Love without work and achievement is first insipid, and then stale. God can no more fulfill Himself without children than men can fulfill themselves without Him. If God's highest works fail Him, then God Himself has failed.
The permanent absence of children would stultify God's reason and character by rendering useless all that He is and all that He has made.
4. What could an infinite God care for such a little speck?
It would be interesting to know who originated this question, for he should wear the badge of his own ignorance. In his mind, the little "speck" probably signified the human body. But as we have already seen, that is not man; it is only his instrument. And besides, man may progressively augment his little body, causing it to articulate with the whole body of nature. Moreover, the human body is primarily God's, the flower of all His works in the vast unfolding universe. Does God care for these myriad blossoms of his universe? One might as well ask, "What could a horticulturist care for the little blossoms on his apple trees?" Let the insects sting them, or the frosts bite them, he has bigtreesto absorb his attention!
Unless God's world could blossom into myriad, delicate forms, as homes for man souls, the universe would be as useless as a barren apple tree. The little flower is not something apart, its production taxes the entire strength and purpose of the tree. Neither is the human body something apart, its production taxes the entire strength and purpose of the universe. As the flower is the tree's glory and promise of fruit, so the human body is nature's glory and promise of souls.
If, however, the "speck" refers to the real man, the spirit, then the question is equally foolish. An intelligent will is neither a "speck," nor something spread out likeether. Furthermore, that which can be so deeply impressed by the vastness of the universe is not insignificant in itself. A mastodon would not be overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe. Neither is the great universe overwhelmed by a sense of its own magnitude. In his sense of awe, the foolish man who asked the question transcends the great universe itself. To be overwhelmed with our inability to know the universe is partly knowing it, or else we should not be so completely overwhelmed. That is not insignificant which can measure the distance to the stars, and weigh the planets, and mark out the shape and size of their orbits. That is not insignificant which can discover the very elements of which the sun is composed. Man's primary body may be relatively small, but it is so highly organized that he can augment it until his instrument reaches the stars. Though the sun is approximately ninety-three million miles from our earth, yet the intelligent mind of man discovered helium in the sun before he discovered it upon the earth. This feat of His child must have given the Father keen delight.
Man's body is potentially as great as the universe because, being so delicately organized, it can articulate with the world elements to the farthest sun that twinkles in the blue.
The Luther Burbanks are revealing our supremacy over the vegetable kingdom. The animal kingdom is known to be equally plastic under our shaping hand; for juggling with animal life is one of man's pastimes. Byusing pressure, he has taken a single cell life and divided it into twins. He has taken two separate cells and formed them into a giant. Taking off the head and tail of some lower forms of life, he has made the head grow where the tail was, and vice versa.
No one mind can find time to learn of all the wonders achieved by the human family in the realms of nature and of social well-being. A simple statement of man's achievements in the twenty or thirty allied sciences is more thrilling than all the romances ever written. Man's power for good or evil is stupendous and overwhelming. It is in the realm of human life that God Himself will be victorious, or else defeated. All creation will fail if man fails. I here speak of man in the sense of God's children, wherever they may be in the universe. The people on this earth might fail without bringing universal disaster; but if God's children throughout the universe should fail Him, then all is lost. If God did not "care for" His children, it would be the same as not caring for Himself, since all His aims and purposes culminate in His family. God has crowned man with glory and honor, by putting all things under his feet.
The world is as ignorant of man as it is of God; and the prevailing idea of either is a caricature.
It is doubtful whether a self-conscious moral will could be awakened outside of a body, or inside of one if it were less highly organized than the human body. The higher animals share our sensations of pain and pleasure, but it is extremely doubtful whether any of them share inour self-conscious, moral purposes. Possibly a soulmustappear in any such highly organized form of God's energies as a human body, andcannotappear where the organization of His energies falls short of this high standard. If we believe the body to be the integration of God's own energies it would not be strange if the body proved to be the incipient soul. We have not yet sounded the depths of God's creative wisdom either in the soul or the body; we only know that soul and body are bound together, and that God's highest achievement and deepest interest center in them. How infinitely precious in the sight of God are His children, the crown and glory of all His wisdom, love, and power!
5. Is not socialism the best religion there is?
When socialism means the Kingdom of God, it is the best religion conceivable. And it is a pity that either religion or socialism should ever mean anything less than the Kingdom of God; for when they drop below that standard, the one is spurious religion while the other is counterfeit socialism; the former discarding society, and the latter eliminating God, both alike become a menace.
Last summer in Madison Square, New York, I listened to a socialist who was ridiculing the very idea of God. Exhorting his listeners to have a little sense, he advised them to get rid of God, priests, ministers, churches, and King Capital. He said:
"You have but one life to live, and it is short; if ever you get anything, you must get it now."
This type of socialism is a scourge, a pest, a bubonic plague. Nevertheless we would not minimize the crime of withholding from men their rights in this life.
Another socialist speaking at a park in my own city said:
"In the past, the capitalist has taken it all, leaving the working man only enough for the food necessary to do his work,—and not always that. But we do not blame him, he had a right to take it because he could;—we should have done the same if we had been in his place. That is what life means; 'the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong.' Only the fittest have a right to live. But our turn is soon coming when we shall be able to take it all,—and we will."
Now, whoever teaches a theory like that, or acts upon it, is a cancer in the social body. It makes no difference whether or not he is a church member, whether business man, or laborer; such a man is a malignant growth in the body of humanity.
It is just because socialism means anything from the religion of Jesus to this putrid stuff, that the average well-meaning person is cautious about identifying himself with any movement bearing the name of socialism. Yet any religion that stands aloof from social well-being is doomed,—as it ought to be. No man can love God while hating his brother; and whether he loves his brother is proved more by his actions than by his words. Tolove our brother, as we shall see, is enlightened selfishness as well as altruism.
"God in the soul" has been rather a popular definition of religion. To many minds this definition conveys a rich and ample meaning. To others it conveys gross error, for religious hysteria is often thought to be God in the soul. A mere psychic state, a religious opiate, a mental disease, may be so interpreted. It is a question whether any definition of religion is safe. A description of religion is far preferable to a definition, and has the advantage of being an easier task. When we identify religion with the Kingdom of God, we have a perfectly clear idea.The Kingdom of God is a loving, intelligent family organised around the Father's good-will, living in the universe as His home, using the forces of nature as the instruments of His will, and making all things vocal with His wisdom, love, and power.
This is true religion; this is a desirable socialism; this is right life. For such an end God, man, and the enveloping powers of nature exist. Any loss of this vision, any lack of warmth or enthusiasm for its realization, spells degeneration. Such a state of mind means the perversion of nature, the engendering of rebellion in the Kingdom of God, and the making of prodigals. Religious experience does not mean just any kind of comfortable, private feeling, but a conscious love for the family of God, and conscious interest in the work that God and His children are trying to accomplishin the midst of nature's forces. Religious experience means an active desire to brighten the great world home, and to gladden the great world family. The idea is so simple that a child can understand it; and a child's heart may glow with happiness while helping to brighten the world. To take one's place in the family of God as a member, loving, and beloved, is something infinitely better than cold ethics. Character that does not root itself in friendship is poor character; it bears not the fruit of righteousness, love, and joy. Our debt of friendship to all men is no less binding than our financial obligations. Friendship is the great power for good in the world. "I have called you friends, and such you are." And because they were friends, Jesus revealed to His disciples all the secrets of His soul, and threw over them the spell of His life. By interweaving their lives in some great purpose, or by promoting a common enterprise, friends lift each other into the finest vision. Simple, hearty, and unfeigned friendship for God and men, is religion pure and undefiled. A wise man does not defer friendship until he is perfect, but seeks friendship first to learn what perfection is, that through friendship he may receive strength to be perfect.
The new truths clearly manifest concerning God, man, and nature cause a new heaven to dawn, and a new hell to yawn. Heaven is brighter, and hell is hotter, than we had been thinking. The relation that exists between God, man, and the universe makes it perfectly plain that God does not go ahead of His children to make either heaven or hell. Thereisno heaven on either side the grave, except that which is made by the coöperation of God and His children. Though there are plenty of heavenly sites in the universe, yet the building of a Holy City is never begun until some of God's children have arrived on the scene. They who organize around the good will of God build a heaven in time and place; out of God's energies in which they live, they make a beautiful home. Heaven is doubtless a place as well as a state, for souls that are in a right state will make a right place in which to live. More than likely there are many heavens in the universe. In my city heaven may be on one floor and hell on another, while the character of the third floor is uncertain. Souls cannot live outside of God's enfolding energies, and therefore they cannot avoid making either heaven or hell out of His infinite powers. Citizens of the Kingdom, under the guiding wisdom of God, make heaven. Those who refuse citizenship, preferring their own way, make hell; but they make it out of the same mighty forces of which heaven is made.
The idea that God, independent of His children, made a pretty place called heaven, and an ugly place called hell, in order that He might put good little people in the one, and push naughty little people off into the other, is the idea of a fool's heaven and a fool's hell;—the facts are much more glorious and awful. There will be just as good a heaven as the Kingdom of God builds, and no better. Likewise there will be just as bad a hell as God's disloyal sons make, and no worse. No dream can picture the paradise that God may make in this universe with the help of His good children. And the hell that His rebellious sons may create is something appalling. Since heaven or hell is simply the shape we give to God's enfolding energies, all of us are unavoidably engaged in constructing the one or the other, and we have been so engaged every moment since our conscious life began. No one dare think that all his work is heaven-building. Altogether, through vice or greed, we have managed to produce of late the hottest Gehenna ever witnessed on earth. It has taken longer to make this sad condition than most of us realize; and many who little suspect their responsibility and guilt have been active agents in creating the fires of war and other fires in which there has been of late so much writhing and gnashing of teeth. And at the moment of the world's greatest anguish, there were those who were trying to get rich out of the state of sorrow into which they had helped to plunge humanity. I refer to all profiteers and crooked dealers, whether they were laborers or capitalists; to those who were willing that additional hundreds of thousands of our boys should go down into the lake of fire, if only they could fill their coffers. These were the devils who stood round the boiling caldron with their flesh hooks, to tear the flesh of innocent boys if they rose to the surface of the boiling liquid. Some of these flesh-hook devils, having refined manners, posed as gentlemen. Others were lewd fellows of various sorts. But the flames which they fed were nothot enough for them. They were getting ready for a fire that will burn much deeper, and they will be sure to find it.
During the war, many found their faith in God staggering before a perdition created by human beings. But their faith should not have been unsettled, because this war was as sure to follow the way the world was living as the wheels of the cart are certain to follow the tread of the ox. Some had the blindness and audacity to blame God for what we have done. God gave us the raw material with which to build a heaven, and we constructed a hell. Through His many prophets and seers God told us what we were doing, but we would not believe Him. Thinking ourselves wise we became fools, and turned His good gifts into instruments of torture. The majority of the people, believing that they could get along without giving much heed to God, took His limitless gifts and made a grand holiday instead of a Holy Day, and then rode in automobiles and yachts to their doom. When a world is bad enough to make war, it needs war. Though I had three sons between my heart and Germany's steel, yet I realized that America had to be hurt for her own salvation, for the salvation of Germany, for the safety of the world, and for the utter destruction of the German intriguers. If the people of the allied nations, however, had been shaping the instruments of their spirits into clean bodies, happy homes, honest business, and good governments, and all of these into the Kingdom of God on earth, Prussia could not have dreamed her dream ofworld dominance, nor would she have dared to throw down the gauntlet before the world. But seeing our weakness, she scorned our threats. Being under tutorship to the god of power, in spite of her vices, which were equal to those of other nations, Prussia became shrewder and stronger than the nations that were too largely feasting under a bacchanalian god, or softly enjoying themselves under a Santa Claus deity, or were piling up unrighteous gains under no god, or under one that was capable of wicked favoritism. It was clear to the prophets of the Most High that something was due,—and it came. Bad as war is, that state of society which makes war possible is even worse. When society grows its body into a monster, the corrective influence of hell, in some form, is the last hope. This does not, however, exonerate Germany from the crime of launching a ruthless war to gratify her lust for world domination. God surely could not help it, since the human family shaped its body as it did against light and conscience; but if there were no retribution for sin and ignorance He would lose His family utterly. Hell inevitably came when the tools were forged and the devils were trained; but God neither forged the tools nor trained the devils.
I am advocating no moral prudery, nor religious bigotry. Neither do I wish to imply that heaven has not been built up side by side with hell during the last fifty years,—for it has. Those who have profited intellectually and spiritually by the revelations of modern learning, and by the new influx of power, and by the new socialopportunities, have made the last fifty years the grandest in human history. Of these noble sons and daughters it should be said: their growth in the knowledge of God, their success in the discovery of man, their achievements in wresting from nature its deepest secrets, their grasp on the meaning of God's Kingdom, their accomplishments in the practical launching of everything pertaining to a new era and a finer world order have made this the golden age for all who have seen the vision and shared in the work. Yet over against this kingdom of light and love, there has grown up a kingdom of darkness and hate. These two kingdoms have grown up side by side in every civilized country. And finally the kingdom of darkness embroiled all the nations in a deadly conflict. Seeing all, and feeling all, God was the greatest sufferer in the awful carnage of the contending armies. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being;" and therefore armies live, and fight their battles in God. They fight their battles with God's own powers, and make gaping wounds in His own body. And yet, some will ask, "Where was God?" Not only was He in the thick of the fight, but the thick of the fight was in His beautiful, enfolding energies. We shall make heaven out of the selfsame energies when we are done making hell out of them. And then, as now, God will be in our midst; but He will be in our midst as a joyous, and not a suffering God.
It would have been a pity if this war had ended before the nations opened their eyes to the higher purposes of God for future civilization, or before their conscienceshad been cleansed for the work of advancing the Kingdom. God will come to our help with mighty power when we come to His help with mighty obedience. General Sherman said, "War is hell." This has generally been taken to mean that war is as terrible as hell; but it is more than that, it is hell literally,because hell is never anything but war. If there were no war of any kind there would be no hell. This is equally true either side the grave. If there were no individuals in the universe to oppose God's will and so misuse His enfolding energies as to harm one another, hell would cease to be. The beginning of hell is very pleasurable, and that is why men begin it. But it always grows more and more terrible until it becomes a lake of fire. It is worse than brimstone, because men have found hotter materials to use. It is curtains of fire, poisonous gases, shrapnel, bombs, machine guns, and mud mixed with blood.
War begins in selfish desire, and continues in the misuse of God's good gifts. Intensified desire diverts to its own use that which does not belong to it; and becoming powerful, arrogant, and oppressive, it brews hell without knowing it. Thinking that it knows all, it refuses instruction. To the perverted mind, imprisoned in a distorted body, Jesus looks weak, while God seems a myth, or mere brute force. Finally hell breaks loose in all its fury.
The most pathetic thing in this whole affair is that the good have to go to hell with the bad,—at least in this life. But it was ever so. Jesus truly "descended intohell," only it was before He died. The same is true of God and all His good sons. There is no other way to save the situation. Gehenna, as well as heaven, beginshereandnow. It may be that the rebellious sons of God have created a worse hell on the other side of the grave, but if they have, it is exactly the same in kind as that which they have made here. Every immoral and painful condition in the universe is wrought in God. God was as closely related to the recent war as a man is related to the abscess on his finger; and He is so related to all hells, in all worlds. For hell is never anything but a painful disturbance wrought in God's body by the sons whom He has enfolded in His bosom. And since there are so many discordant and vicious elements throughout all the world, it is to be hoped that the nations are being purged by the awful fires through which they are passing.
Has the earth had its last war? That is not at all likely. There is plenty of discord in society even now that the main war is over. Many wrongs must be righted and many problems solved or terror will break out somewhere. Human society and human institutions have grown about as large and complex as is possible, unless they can be dominated by a larger ideal and a more Christlike spirit. While I sympathize with all the hopes and aspirations of the noble men and women of our day for a more peaceful earth, yet I do so only on the condition that men will learn to know and obey the truth.Nothing should be left undone that will hasten the day of righteousness and peace.
God has two hands with which He is trying to save the world. The one is a crucified hand, and the other is a great steel hand. The crucified hand, which is the pledge of forgiveness and good will, is both logically and chronologically first. For nearly two thousand years God has been extending this hand. Millions have accepted it and lived; but many more have refused it, preferring the strife of the world. It is perfectly plain that society will not be saved by this means alone. Without minimizing the worth of the crucified hand, or withdrawing it, God is at last employing a hand of steel, as vast as the machinery of the world, and identical with it. God is placing His great steel fingers around men and drawing them together. No longer may men live apart, for under this new pressure nothing has value in isolation. Capital has no value without labor, neither has labor any value without capital; and these may no longer work successfully together without uplifting the weak nations of the earth. The masses and classes can no longer escape each other. Bound together by bands of steel, they may do one of two things—kill each other or love one another. There is no third alternative. I have faith that when men see themselves in the grip of the steel hand, they will choose the better alternative and, by clasping God's crucified hand, become brothers. As things have been going, scores of peoples on our little earth havelived in darkness and under the hand of awful oppression; they could have suffered and rotted for millenniums without the prosperous nations knowing or caring. At last, however, we know, and our own salvation now clearly rests on our caring. The articulate body of humanity has become as great as the nations of the earth, and that body is made up of the infinite energies of God. We now have the privilege of making this mighty body express more fully than ever before the thought and love of God, or else we shall be compelled to shape it into the most gigantic monster that ever stalked forth to do the foul deeds of hell. Were there a legion of leering and jeering devils, plotting evil against our earth, the comprehending mind could hear them say, "We wish for no more awful instruments of torture than these energies of the Infinite with which His children clothe themselves. Only let us lead them to fall out by the way, and they will damn each other by smiting with the infinite powers of their God." Men,—individuals and nations!—do we see it, do we know the simple rudiments of life, is it not clearly manifest that we must strive for the Christ life or socially commit suicide and murder?
Men have made such great mental and material growth that unlimited power is placed at their disposal. That fact makes this the greatest day in human history. I have already said that the man soul is in quest of omnipresence by progressively making the universe the instrument of his will. The hour has struck for his supreme effort in that direction; though simply creeping in thepast, he may now run if only he will obey the divine law. However, if he will not obey, the hour for disintegration has arrived; and once more nations and empires must burn to the ground, and upon the ashes of the conflagration, the noble "remnant" must again begin to rebuild slowly and painfully the temple of God on earth.
If our old men are dreaming dreams, and our young men are seeing visions, let them come forth in this crisis. But thank God, they are coming! Millions are coming! We believe there will be enough to save the day. And what a day it will be if, after all this dreadful upheaval, we can reconstruct the world on such broad principles of righteousness and love that the race shall start upon a new era of peace and good will! We must not on account of ignorance or selfishness throw away this golden opportunity.
Get ye up upon the mountains, O Israel, O Church of God, and look for the day!
Was Jesus God or a good man only?Can modern psychology any longer believe in the Deity of Jesus?Where does Jesus belong in the religious, social, and thought world?
Was Jesus God or a good man only?
Can modern psychology any longer believe in the Deity of Jesus?
Where does Jesus belong in the religious, social, and thought world?
1. Introductory statement
Thus far our discussion of God has been largely in relation to physics. At last, however, we are ready to consider Him on a higher plane.
Our knowledge of both God and man is incomplete until we see their oneness in Jesus and in the kingdom which Jesus proclaimed. In the life of Jesus, God and man are viewed from a higher spiritual level. The world lies broken into fragments until these fragments become united in the Christ type of life. Then the body, the human mind, God, and the whole material universe coordinate to make one beautiful whole.
Starting with the Scriptural idea that all things proceed from Wisdom, or God, then strictly speaking, God is the only person in the universe who has a body of Hisown. All other spirits live in His bodies. This is necessarily so if all the way from its simplest elements to its most highly organized forms, nature is but the expression of the divine Will. As we have already shown, the human body is but a part of universal nature,—the finest part, the blossom. Therefore, what we call the human organism is primarily God's. Not only is it the very finest bit of Hisworkmanship, but it is His touse, unless His child, the man soul, robs Him of His own. In these highly specialized parts of nature God has not merely one, but billions of bodies,—all the bodies there are. The Infinite Mind would find one such body utterly inadequate. With but one bodily form He would be incomparably worse off than an organist with but one finger. If God could come to articulate speech and deed through but one physical instrument, He and all His family might well despair. If as the Scriptures teach, however, each and every physical body is His very own, in which and through which He may live, then every condition is provided for a God humanly personal and infinitely satisfying. He may be as local and personal as our parents or neighbors. Though greater than all, He is yet in all and through all,
"Center and soul of every sphere,Yet to each loving heart how near!"
Not only is God lovingly present to every Christian heart, but at the same time He is personally revealed by every human form through which He is permitted to liveand love and serve. The pity of it all is that we so often prevent God from using His own body, in which we too live, by causing it to express in word and deed that which is contrary to His thought and love.
Before we take up the subject of the Incarnation, it may be well to consider what is meant by the trinity.
2. The idea of the trinity and how it came about
When we say that God is a trinity we do not mean that there are three Gods. There is just one God who, as we have repeatedly said, is a Loving Intelligent Will.
The idea of the trinity came about in this way:
The early Christians were so deeply impressed by Jesus, and so warmly attached to their Master, that they instinctively adored and worshiped Him; for, somehow, He brought God to them even as He brought them to God. Yet the Christians, like the Jews, strenuously opposed the worship of more than one Divinity. Their stout opposition to Polytheism provoked the retort from their heathen neighbors that Christians should not be so particular about the number of Gods, because they worshiped at least two, a Father God and a Son God,—and three, if they added a Holy Spirit God. So it is not strange that the Christians, to justify their own conduct, were driven to a profound study of Deity. And though they made some grave mistakes, nevertheless they discovered some vital truths concerning the nature of personality which greatly enlarged and enriched their conception of God. It must be remembered that in the early Christian centuries many thought of God as something very remote and placid, like a sea of bliss; being infinitely happy and self-contained, He was at perfect rest. Such a One would not contaminate Himself by being identified with nature or man. To the Christian Gnostics and Jews, the idea that God became incarnate and suffered death on the cross was repugnant. Some believed that it was beneath God even to create a world like ours. They, therefore, attributed creation to lesser divinities. However, in the third century Origen stoutly maintained that God must have created the world. Yet so eminent a man as Origen believed that He created it for "tainted souls."
After much study, the Church Fathers arrived at the conclusion that God was somehow Three in One, a sort of society within Himself,—and they were right. For without something like a social experience in one's self, it is impossible to be a person at all. This is equally true of God or man. To be a person one must know himself, and this he could not do if he were not able to keep company with himself. The pen with which I am writing is not a person because it has no capacity for self-communion. But because I holdfellowshipwith myself I am a person. Since every human being keeps company with himself more than he does with all other persons put together, may God have mercy on him if he is bad company, if he is not safe to be left alone with himself. A tree may stand alone in infinite solitude, companionless; but for better, for worse, a man must forever remain inhis own company, hearing praise or condemnation from his own heart. How is this possible, unless there is something in a man's individual experience that resembles society? In self-knowledge, as in all knowledge, there are theknowerand theknown. When we commune with ourselves we are, at the same moment, the subject and the object of our own experience. The self that sees may fittingly be called the father of our personality, and with equal propriety the self that we see may be called the begotten of our personality. Thus something resembling father and son is experienced in our first step toward self-knowledge. Whether the capacity to be our own subject and object amounts to much or little, it was this that the Fathers saw and rightly attributed to God.
Furthermore, there is yet another step to be taken in the act of coming to true self-knowledge. By what power does one determine that the person with whom he communes is himself? There is something in our experience resembling a third person, one who recognizes both subject and object and bears witness that they are one. The reader may say, "I can see the first and the second, but I cannot see the third." The self that sees the first and the second is the third. This power by which we complete the unity of our being is by no means trivial, as some may think. There are abnormal personalities who successfully achieve the subjective and objective in their experience and keep up an abnormal communion with themselves from morning till night, who cannot witness true. So they insist that they are"General Jacksons" or "Jesus Christs" or great "railroad magnates." Their personalities have broken down, not because they lack self-consciousness, but because they lack the power of coming to unity. A perfectly sane person, therefore, is subject, object, and witnesser all in one. If God were not this kind of trinity He would not be a person at all.
To grasp so clearly the significance of personality was a great spiritual achievement. The Church Fathers did more than they realized; they described the elements inherent in all personalities. They saved God to the intellect and to the affections by bringing Him out of remote obscurity into the blazing light of moral and spiritual personality. God is personal because He is triune; that is, because He is complex enough to keep company with Himself and to know Himself. If the reader asks "What does all this amount to for us?" my answer is, "It amounts to the difference between a personal God and the deity who is an 'immobile placid sea of bliss.' In the second place it shows the difference between the God who is a Loving Intelligent Will and the materialist's god who is no more than a blind Samson. It also discloses the essential likeness between all personalities, however much they may differ in development."
If I were asked to put my finger on the greatest weakness in present-day thought I should unhesitatingly point out the subject of personality. Men are falling down like ten-pins before the intellectual difficulties of believing in a personal God; and many of them are even doubting thespiritual personality of man. And this is largely due to the fact that they are unable to form any mental picture of personality. One of the beautiful surprises for this generation is that the Fathers in working out the personality of God found the only conception of personality that is true to universal experience. They did not realize that they were analyzing the human spirit as well as God, because their thought was wholly on Him. But they saw God through their own personalities, and if they had not borne God's image they never could have analyzed the personality of God. In this generation we turn their analysis of God upon ourselves and find that it tallies perfectly with our experience. We at last see that the triune, or personal, man soul is the child of the triune, or personal, God Soul; and thus a deeper bond is established between the Father and His child.
The use to which the Church Fathers put this analysis of God's personality was both fortunate and unfortunate. It was fortunate because it enabled them to continue their belief in the deity of Jesus and, at the same time, their belief in the oneness of God. They were still able to oppose polytheism, and yet come to Jesus as the fountain of divine blessing. They worshiped God in the face of Jesus. In other words, they believed in a genuine Incarnation. This was fortunate beyond all calculation. Just how fortunate it was we shall have to illustrate to the best of our ability when we come to the subject of Incarnation. Thus far I have not discussed the Incarnation, neither have I had Jesus in mind while considering the trinity. For in whatever sense God is a trinity, He was such before Jesus was born.
Before discussing the divinity of Jesus we must briefly call attention to the unfortunate use which the Fathers made of their analysis of the personality of God. They thought they had solved the question of Christ's divinity when they took this objective element in the experience of God and clothed it with flesh. Though they denied that these distinctions in God were properly named by the word person, yet they admitted their inability to think of a better term. Then they so wrenched God's personality apart as to send His objective self, which was simply an element in His experience of self-consciousness, into the world to be the Messiah. And though they stoutly maintained that these three elements in God were indivisible, yet God's subjective self could stay far away in heaven while His objective self could go to earth as a man. At the same time each of the three elements in God's experience of self-hood could perform all the functions of a full personality. This was doing the worst possible violence to the personality of God; and it has wrought confusion from that day to this. As we have already seen, it takes these three elements in God's experience to make Him any person at all. The common use made of the subjective, objective, and witnessing elements in the personality of God is pure Tri-Theism, regardless of how they are united. God does not have three personalities that can be scattered about in the universe.
The idea that God's objective experience can go off on a journey, or that it can return to heaven while His witnessing experience in turn goes to earth, leaving the subjective and objective in heaven, is religious illiteracy. Neither God nor any part of God ever goes or comes. The triune, or personal God, is never far enough off to come anywhere. There is no place in the universe where for a moment He is not. He is always the Father, and Creator, and Intelligent Will in whom all creation lives, and moves, and has its being. Thesecond elementin God's own act of consciousness did not become incarnate in Jesus; the conscious God Himself entered the life of man.
The baptismal formula, "In the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," has no reference to the triple element in God's self-consciousness. It beautifully represents the three ways that we are to look at God, if we are to see Him in the fulness of His glory. First, we think of God as He is in Himself, and as He must be to His own infinite thought. Second, we think of Him as He has expressed Himself in nature, in humanity and, best of all, as He has revealed Himself in His obedient Son Jesus. Third, we think of God as the still small voice within, the Soul of our souls, the One to whom we speak when we have shut the door; the one to whom we whisper our deepest secrets, and ask Him if He loves and forgives us. Beyond the fact that the trinity constitutes God a person, it has nothing to do with the deity of Jesus. How God became incarnateis another question; a question to which we now gladly address ourselves.
3. Was Jesus God or a good man only?
At a meeting of city ministers, addressed by one of their own number, the speaker took from Jesus the last shred of divinity. According to this minister, Jesus was a prophet sent from God, and the best of men, but nothing more. A progressive Jewish rabbi asked if this were not the present attitude of all intelligent ministers, and whether they did not, for the sake of expediency, leave the pew in ignorance of their real belief. In the opinion of the rabbi, Jesus was one of the greatest of Jewish reformers, but not the founder of Christian religion. His contention was that Paul founded the Christian Church on a peculiar, psychic experience which came to him on his way to Damascus.
"The Divinity of Jesus" was then assigned to me as a topic for the next meeting. Naturally, I turned to the Scriptures to see what they had to say concerning the relation of God to man. Though expecting to find on this subject a marked degree of difference between the Old and New Testaments, yet I was wholly unprepared for the facts as they appeared. Before presenting my findings, I asked the rabbi to consider whether Jesus was a "Jewish reformer," or a Jewish fulfiller,—it being my conviction that He was the latter. I then stated that, having examined the Old Testament on the relation existing between God and man, I failed to find a single passage recognizing God within the human life; and that no greater surprise than this had come to me in my recent study of the Scriptures. In the Old Testament, the nearest approach to the immanence of God in the soul was the following:
"I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh," and "Is not my dwelling with the humble in heart?" But even here the divine Spirit was onlyuponthem orwiththem. Never, so far as I could discover, did He dwellinthem. In some twenty-four hundred verses, God was represented as sustaining many beautiful and terrible relations to men. This relationship was symbolized by birds, beasts, and natural elements, to the very limit of the imagination. After the most solemn warnings and attractive promises, God would depart from His people for a season and then return with rewards and punishments according to their faithfulness. He scrutinized their inmost thoughts; in fact, He did everything except enter their lives.
On turning to the New Testament, however, I found a startling contrast. God dwelt not only in the hearts but in the bodies of men. "For know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? Yea, ye are the temple of the living God." "Know ye not that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?" "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." Jesus said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, show us theFather? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" "The Father abiding in me doeth His works." "In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father and ye in me, and I in you." "If a man love me he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
As a prospector seeks for gold, I sought in the Old Testament for God in the life of man and did not find Him; but no sooner had I reached the New Testament than all was changed. Here was a new country. The prospector was in the midst of that for which he sought. No mountain was ever as rich in gold as the human heart, according to the New Testament, was rich with the indwelling God.
The religion of Jesus in contrast with that of the prophets is like a tree, which Luther Burbank has transformed into a new variety bearing strange and luscious fruit. I wondered that I had overlooked for so long a time the complete cleavage between the two parts of our Bible on this subject. Jesus was truly a Jewish reformer, but to a much greater degree He was a Jewish fulfiller. In revealing God's true oneness with man He completed the prophet's imperfect religious vision, and best of all, made the vision a fact in His own experience. At the same time He began making it a reality in the experience of His disciples.
I told the friend who in a previous meeting had stripped Jesus of all His divinity, that he had very successfully demolished some antiquated psychology, but strange to say had completely overlooked the new psychology which, in my opinion, fully restored Christ's divinity. As to his statement that "Jesus was a good man only," I reminded him that there is no such being. For, each one of us, in so far as he is "only," is a bad man. It requires the oneness of God and man to make agoodman. When a human soul is separated from God, he ceases to be a complete person. God and the true self always come or go together; in order to be a human soul, in any worthy sense, one must be both God and man in one. A man severed from God is but the fragment of a man, a limb broken from the tree, a lifeless branch. To touch the living branch of a tree is to touch the tree. The fruit of the branch is likewise the fruit of the tree. That any person can be a "good man only," is an idea contrary to the New Testament and modern psychology.
4. Can modern psychology any longer believe in the Deity of Jesus?
The Scriptures certainly do not teach that Jesus was God only; neither do they teach that He was man only. It is my own deepest conviction that Jesus was very God and very man. Furthermore, I believe this to be the teaching of the Scriptures, and the idea that best conforms to modern psychology. To come to Jesus is to come to God; likewise to come to God is to come toJesus. He is at once God in man, and man in God. I believe in the God of Jesus, and I believe in the Jesus of God. How modern psychology can avoid believing in both the deity and humanity of Jesus, I do not see. Some who believe in Christ's divinity do not believe in His deity. They say, "Yes, He is divine, He is incomparable, He is altogether lovely; but He is not Deity, because Deity is God Himself." But my thesis is that Jesus was "very God and very man."
To picture this truth to our minds will be our next task. An old-time friend, while reporting to me the installation of a minister whom I knew, said:
"Would you believe it! Mr. G. told the council that he not only believed in the divinity, but that he believed in the Deity of Jesus." Here my friend threw his head back and laughed heartily, expecting me to laugh with him. When he had finished laughing, I told him that I also believed in the deity as well as in the humanity of Jesus; and that if I did not believe in His deity I did not think I should believe in any religion at all. This proved to be quite a surprise to my friend. So to his puzzled look of inquiry I replied:
"And I could make you believe it." As his curiosity deepened at this remark, I asked him,
"Do you know where I first met God—not an emanation from Him, but God; the Will that formed the worlds,—all the God there is?" "No," was his reply. "Fortunately," I answered, "I do. It was in my mother. When I was a little boy the great God at timesenfolded me in human arms, and looked into my face through benignant, human eyes, and spoke tender words with a sweet accent. My silent and invisible mother was often so closely identified with God that they would be thinking and feeling the same thing concerning me. At such times the human form expressed their common thought and love; my heavenly Father, no less than my invisible mother, enfolded me with His arms. If in these supreme moments God was not in my mother, then it is useless to look for Him anywhere in the Universe. My mother was different from the non-Christian mothers in our rough frontier. Many times she so loved meinGod, andwithGod, that she became a channel through which God Himself had personal access to me through all the human modes of approach."
I then told my friend of an experience with my mother at church in the little frontier schoolhouse. I was lying on the seat with my head in her lap, tickling my nose with her boa. When the time came for prayers, my mother bowed her head to the desk in front of her. While her lips moved in prayer, I observed that her dear face was troubled. As she was unconscious of my gaze, I continued to look into her sorrowful face. Though but a little child, I fully understood what she was doing, and was able to mark the stages of her progress. My invisible mother was talking with our invisible Father, and the face gradually changed until finally I could tell that her will had merged completely with His will; and then her face, which was primarily His face, becameradiant with spiritual beauty. I had seen the dear human face of God, and at the same time it was the face of my mother.
I called my friend's attention to the fact that once upon a time the invisible God said to the invisible Clara Barton:
"Clara, let us go out onto the battle-field where the poor soldier boys languish and die;" and Clara responded to His thought and love. Then the invisible God and the invisible Clara Barton went to the battle-field in God's body, because Clara had no body exclusively her own. So, when that form bending over the soldier boy wiped away the dust and blood and pain, while whispering of home, of mother, and of God, it was the Father, as much as it was Clara Barton, who was performing the deed; and He, not less than she, was visibly and humanly present. The ministering hand was as truly His instrument as it was hers; while the stronger will and deeper love were the Father's. Before Clara Barton thought of it, the Father, knowing all and feeling all, suggested to her the kindly deed; nor did He stop loving the soldier boy when she began.
Again addressing my friend, I said:
"It is impossible for me to understand you. You have always believed God to be immanent in all nature; you have seen Him in sticks and stones and stars; but you now fail to recognize Him in His highest, His only instrument through which He is capable of coming to articulate speech and deed. How I pity your poor helpless God who is buried fathoms and fathoms out of sight. He can neither see, nor hear, nor breathe; nor can He walk or talk. But you see,myGod can get clear to the surface in audible word, and visible deed. When my God finds a good, clean Frenchman, He begins talking and writing French. If you doubt this, either you are not familiar with French literature, or else you do not know God. Under similar conditions God speaks all the languages. How beautifully and abundantly He has spoken through the German and English tongues! While in Greek and Hebrew, God has uttered mighty words of wisdom, and has filled the earth with His glorious pæans. Human wisdom alone could never have spoken thus. If we but have eyes to see and hearts to feel we shall realize that all about us God is getting to the surface through devoted Christians. When the true preacher lifts the souls before him into the will of God, he sees a divine expression upon their faces; and if he is spiritually wise, he will realize that for the time being these are the dear human instruments of God, as truly as they are the faces of human spirits; and when he has poured out his soul in behalf of some great cause of God for which he would be willing to die, he will find someone with outstretched hand ready to meet him and willing to coöperate, if need be, even unto death, and then it is his privilege to know that, while shaking hands with a brother spirit, he was at the same time shaking hands with the infinite God. In these rare experiences of ours, the invisible God no less than the invisible man hascome to outward expression, and this He would always do, if our wills were not contrary to His will. Our feeble and infrequent inspiration is but intermittent incarnation, while full incarnation is permanent inspiration.
"Why," I asked, "should you hesitate to think of Jesus as God and man? If the Father-Spirit and the child-spirit were thinking and willing the same thing, which one came to expression through the words and acts of the body? If A and B were lifting an object, would it be truthful to say that A was lifting it? The visible form that lived and taught by the shores of Galilee was as truly God as it was man, unless the child-spirit did not know and do the Father-Spirit's will. Sometimes a whole congregation of wills express themselves joyfully and forcefully through one written resolution. God never speaks an audible word, except through one of His bodies in which He has enfolded a child-spirit. When, however, the child-spirit rebels against the Father, and causes the instrument to speak or act vile things, the Father is dumb. His child has robbed Him of His body. We have grown so accustomed to this form of robbery that we naturally think of human spirits as having bodies all their own, while we conceive of God as a vague, disembodied influence. We speak of God as sending men, forgetting that He never sends a man anywhere without sending him in His own body and accompanying him with His own spiritual Presence. And that which the messenger says is not worth hearing if it fails to expressthe Father's thought and will. The God who, through beautiful chemical energies, makes the ear, hears; and the God who makes the eye, sees; and He who makes the lips, speaks. Either God knows the thrill of nerves, or else He has an infinite amount to learn. Why then should we say that Jesus was only a good man, when the body was God's very own, and the guiding will was that of the Father? A man is all God except the invisible human spirit; and in the case of Jesus, even the human spirit rendered such filial obedience that the Father, for once in human history, got to the surface through His own instrument in a steady flow of luminous words and loving deeds. If the composite life of Jesus were named after its major elements, then Jesus should be called God. However, as that would be both confusing and false, we state the truth as it is, and say that Jesus was both God and man, that is, a God-filled man, or a God-man."
"Oh well," said my friend, "if you mean it that way!"
"Did I not tell you," I replied, "that you would believe it? The trouble with you is that you forget it. You should be proclaiming it from the housetop that God has got clear to the surface in human form, and that men have clasped His hand, and heard His voice, and seen His face."
In the life of Jesus, religion reached a new and distinct stage of development. It was in Him that the essentialonenessof Deity and humanity first became clearly manifest. To the friends of Jesus, God was no longer adisembodied spirit. The Christian's God is clearly the God of Israel, but He is the God of Israel become human and visible. The world has been slow to grasp the meaning of Christ's life and teachings. To maintain the uniqueness of Jesus, it has denied the universality of the truth which He proclaimed: namely, the organic and moral oneness of God and man. If the union of God and man as realized in Jesus was so beautiful, a similar union between God and all men would be equally beautiful. That God desires such a union with all His children there can be no doubt; and that He is inspiring His disciples with the glorious hope of its accomplishment is equally certain. Yet for the present, even the most devoted followers have not nearly attained unto the fulness of the stature of Jesus; but some glad day they shall be wholly like Him whose image they already unmistakably bear. This is the Christian's noblest hope.