KNOWLEDGE
The lesson that there are limits to our knowledge is an old lesson, but it has to be taught again and again. It was taught by Buddha, it was taught by Socrates, and it was taught for the last time in the most powerful manner by Kant. Philosophy has been called the knowledge of our knowledge; it might be called more truly the knowledge of our ignorance, or, to adopt the more moderate language of Kant, the knowledge of the limits of our knowledge.
Last Essays.
Metaphysical truth is wider than physical truth, and the new discoveries of physical observers, if they are to be more than merely contingent truths, must find their appointed place and natural refuge within the immovable limits traced by the metaphysician.... It is only after having mastered the principles of metaphysics that the student of nature can begin his work in the right spirit, knowing the horizon of human knowledge, and guided by principles as unchangeable as the pole star.
Last Essays.
There is no subject in the whole realm of human knowledge that cannot be rendered clear and intelligible, if we ourselves have perfectly mastered it.
Chips.
The bridge of thoughts and sighs that spans the whole history of the Aryan world has its first arch in the Veda, its last in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In the Veda we watch the first unfolding of the human mind as we can watch it nowhere else. Life seems simple, natural, childlike.... What is beneath, and above, and beyond this life is dimly perceived, and expressed in a thousand words and ways, all mere stammerings, all aiming to express what cannot be expressed, yet all full of a belief in the real presence of the Divine in Nature, of the Infinite in the Finite.... While in the Veda we may study the childhood, we may study in Kant's Critique the perfect manhood of the Aryan mind. It has passed through many phases, and every one of them ... has left its mark. It is no longer dogmatical, no longer sceptical, least of all is it positive.... It stands before us conscious of its weakness and its strength, modest yet brave. It knows what the old idols of its childhood and youth were made of. It does not break them, it only tries to understand them, but it places above them the Ideals of Reason—no longer tangible—not even within the reach of the understanding—but real—bright and heavenly stars to guide us even in the darkest night.
Last Essays.
All knowledge, in order to be knowledge, must pass through two gates, and two gates only: the gate of the senses and the gate of reason. Religious knowledge also, whether true or false, must have passed through these two gates. At these two gates, therefore, we take our stand. Whatever claims to have entered in by any other gate, whether that gate is called primeval revelation or religious instinct, must be rejected as contraband of thought; and whatever claims to have entered by the gate of reason, without having first passed through the gate of the senses, must equally be rejected, as without sufficient warrant, or ordered at least to go back to the first gate, in order to produce there its full credentials.
Hibbert Lectures.
LANGUAGE
The history of language opens a vista which makes one feel almost giddy if one tries to see the end of it, but the measuring-rod of the chronologist seems to me entirely out of place. Those who have eyes to see will see the immeasurable distance between the first historical appearance of language and the real beginnings of human speech: those who cannot see will oscillate between the wildly large figures of the Buddhists, or the wildly small figures of the Rabbis, but they will never lay hold of what by its very nature is indefinite.
Life.
By no effort of the understanding, by no stretch of imagination, can I explain to myself how language could have grown out of anything which animals possess, even if we granted them millions of years for that purpose. If anything has a right to the name of specific difference, it is language, as we find it in man, and in man only. Even if we removed the name of specific difference from our philosophic dictionaries, I should still hold that nothing deserves the name of man except what is able to speak.
Science of Thought.
Every language has to be learnt, but who made the language that was to be learnt? It matters little whether we call language an instinct, a gift, a talent, a faculty, or the proprium of man; certain it is that neither language, nor the power of language, nor the conditions under which alone language can exist, are to be discovered anywhere in the whole animal kingdom, except in man.
Science of Thought.
It was Christianity which first broke down the barrier between Jew and Gentile, between Greek and Barbarian, between the white and the black. Humanity is a word which you look for in vain in Plato and Aristotle; the idea of mankind as one family, as the children of one God, is an idea of Christian growth; and the science of mankind, and of the languages of mankind, is a science which, without Christianity, would never have sprung into life. When people had been taught to look upon all men as brethren, then, and then only, did the variety of human speech present itself as a problem that called for a solution in the eyes of thoughtful observers; and from an historical point of view it is not too much to say that the first day of Pentecost marks the real beginning of the science of language.
Science of Language.
And now, if we gaze from our native shores over the vast ocean of human speech, with its waves rolling on from continent to continent, rising under the fresh breezes of the morning of history, and slowly heaving in our own more sultry atmosphere, with sails gliding over its surface, and many an oar ploughing through its surf, and the flags of all nations waving joyously together, with its rocks and wrecks, its storms and battles, yet reflecting serenely all that is beneath and above and around it; if we gaze and hearken to the strange sounds rushing past our ears in unbroken strains, it seems no longer a wild tumult, but we feel as if placed within some ancient cathedral, listening to a chorus of innumerable voices: and the more intensely we listen, the more all discords melt away into higher harmonies, till at last we hear but one majestic trichord, or a mighty unison, as at the end of a sacred symphony. Such visions will float through the study of the grammarian, and in the midst of toilsome researches his heart will suddenly beat, as he feels the conviction growing upon him that men are brethren in the simplest sense of the word—the children of the same father—whatever their country, their language, and their faith.
Turanian Languages.
LIFE
All really great and honest men may be said to live three lives: there is one life which is seen and accepted by the world at large, a man's outward life; there is a second life which is seen by a man's most intimate friends, his household life; and there is a third life, seen only by the man himself, and by Him who searcheth the heart, which may be called the inner or heavenly—a life led in communion with God, a life of aspiration rather than of fulfilment.
Chips.
Where Plato could only see imperfections, the failures of the founders of human speech, we see, as everywhere else in human life, a natural progress from the imperfect towards the perfect, unceasing attempts at realising the ideal, and the frequent triumphs of the human mind over the inevitable difficulties of this earthly condition—difficulties not of man's own making, but, as I firmly believe, prepared for him, and not without a purpose, as toils and tasks, by a higher Power, and by the highest wisdom.
Chips.
Our life is not completely in our hands—we must submit to many things which we may smile at in our inmost heart, but which nevertheless are essential, not only to our happiness, but to our fulfilling the duties which we are called to fulfil. We ought to look upon the circumstances in which we are born and brought up as ordained by a Higher Power, and we must learn to walk the path which is pointed out to us!
Life.
It is difficult to be always true to ourselves, to be always what we wish to be, what we feel we ought to be. As long as we feel that, as long as we do not surrender the ideal of our life, all is right. Our aspirations represent the true nature of our soul much more than our everyday life. I feel as much as you, how far I have been left behind in the race which I meant to run, but I honestly try to rouse myself, and to live up to what I feel I ought to be. Let us keep up our constant fight against all that is small and common and selfish, let us never lose our faith in the ideal life, in what we ought to be, and in what with constant prayer to God we shall be, and let us never forget how unworthy we are of all the blessings God has showered down upon us.
Life.
I feel quite thankful for any little misfortune; it is like paying something of the large debt of happiness we owe, though it is but a very trifling interest, and the capital we must owe for ever.
MS.
I thought a long time about my happiness, and my unworthiness, and God's unbounded mercy. And then I heard the words within me: 'Be not afraid.' Yes, there must be no fear. Where there is fear there is no perfect love. Our happiness here is but a foretaste of our blessed life hereafter. We must never forget that. We shall be called away, but we shall meet again.
MS.
I begin to be quite thankful for my disappointment—we all want winding up, and nothing does it so well as a great disappointment, if we only see clearly Who sent it and then forget everything else.
MS.
One sometimes forgets that all this is only the preparation for what is to come hereafter. Yet we should never forget this, otherwise this life loses its true meaning and purpose. If we only know what we live for here, we can easily find out what is worth having in this life, and what is not; we can easily go on without many things which others, whose eyes are fixed on this world only, consider essential to their happiness.
MS.
The spirit of love, and the spirit of truth, are the two life-springs of our whole being—or, what is the same, of our whole religion. If we lose that bond, which holds us and binds us to a higher world, our life becomes purposeless, joyless; if it holds us and supports, life becomes perfect, all little cares vanish, and we feel we are working out a great purpose as well as we can, a purpose not our own, not selfish, not self-seeking, but, in the truest sense of the word, God-serving and God-seeking.... Gentleness is a kind of mixture of love and truthfulness, and it should be the highest object of our life to attain more and more to that true gentleness which throws such a charm over all our life. There is a gentleness of voice, of look, of movement, of speech, all of which are but the expressions of true gentleness of heart.
MS.
It is impossible to take too high a view of life; the very highest we take is still too low. One feels that more and more as our life draws to its close, and many things that seemed important once are seen to be of no consequence, while only a few things remain which will tell for ever.
MS.
I don't believe in what is called worldly wisdom. I do not think the world was made for it—with real faith in a higher life I believe one can pass through this life without let or hindrance. What I dread are compromises. There are false notes in them always, and a false note goes on for ever.
MS.
How thankful we ought to be every minute of our existence to Him who gives us all richly to enjoy. How little one has deserved this happy life, much less than many poor sufferers to whom life is a burden and a hard and bitter trial. But then, how much greater the claims on us; how much more sacred the duty never to trifle, never to waste time and power, never to compromise, but to live in all things, small and great, to the praise and glory of God, to have God always present with us, and to be ready to follow His voice, and His voice only. Has our prosperity taught us to meet adversity when it comes? I often tremble, but then I commit all to God, and I say, 'Have mercy upon me, miserable sinner.'
Life.
There is something very awful in this life, and it is not right to try to forget it. It is well to be reminded by the trials of others of what may befall us, and what is kept from us only by the love of our Father in heaven, not by any merit of our own.
MS.
How different life is to what one thought it when young, how all around us falls together, till we ourselves fall together. How meaningless and vain everything seems on earth, and how closely the reality of the life beyond approaches us. Many days were beautiful here, but the greater the happiness the more bitter the thought that it all passes away, that nothing remains of earthly happiness, but a grateful heart and faith in God who knows best what is best for us.
MS.
Oh! if we could even in this life forget all that is unessential, all that makes it so hard for us to recognise true greatness and goodness in the character of those with whom this life brings us in contact for a little while! How much we lose by making little things so important, and how rarely do we think highly enough of what is essential and lasting!
MS.
You must accustom yourself more and more to the thought that here is not our abiding city, that all that we call ours here is only lent, not given us, and that if the sorrow for those we have lost remains the same, we must yet acknowledge with gratitude to God the great blessing of having enjoyed so many years with those whom He gave us, as parents, or children, or friends. One forgets so easily the happy years one has had with those who were the nearest to us. Even these years of happiness, however short they may have been, were only given us, we had not deserved them. I know well there is no comfort for this pain of parting: the wound always remains, but one learns to bear the pain, and learns to thank God for what He gave, for the beautiful memories of the past, and the yet more beautiful hope for the future. If a man has lent us anything for several years, and at last takes it back, he expects gratitude, not anger; and if God has more patience with our weakness than men have, yet murmurs and complaints for the life which He measured out for us as is best for us, are not what He expected from us. A spirit of resignation to God's will is our only comfort, the only relief under the trials God lays upon us, and with such a spirit the heaviest as well as the lightest trials of life are not only bearable, but useful, and gratitude to God and joy in life and death remain untroubled.
Life.
By a grave one learns what life really is—that it is not here but elsewhere—that this is the exile and there is our home. As we grow older the train of life goes faster and faster, those with whom we travelled together step out from station to station, and our own station too will soon be reached.
MS.
It seems to me so ungrateful to allow one moment to pass that is not full of joy and happiness, and devotion to Him who gives us all this richly to enjoy. The clouds will come, they must come, but they ought never to be of our own making.
Life.
The shadows fall thicker and thicker, but even in the shade it is well, often better than in full sunshine. And when the evening comes, one is tired and ready to sleep! And so all is ordered for us, if we only accommodate ourselves to it quietly.
Life.
As long as God wills it we must learn to bear this life, but when He calls us we willingly close our eyes, for we know it is better for us there than here. When so many whom we loved are gone before us, we follow gladly; and the older we become here, the more one feels that death is a relief. And yet we can thankfully enjoy what is still left us on earth, even if our hearts no longer cling to it as formerly.
Life.
Our life here is not our own work, and we know that it is best for us all just as it is. We ought to bear it, and we must bear it; and the more patiently, yes, the more joyfully, we accommodate ourselves to it, the better for us. We must take life as it is, as the way appointed for us, and that must lead to a certain goal. Some go sooner, some later, but we all go the same way, and all find the same place of rest. Impatience, gloom, murmurs and tears do not help us, do not alter anything, and make the road longer, not shorter. Quiet, resignation, thankfulness and faith help us forwards, and alone make it possible to perform the duties which we all, each in his own sphere, have to fulfil.... The darker the night, the clearer the stars in heaven.
Life.
How different life might be, if in our daily intercourse and conversation we thought of our friends as lying before us on the last bed of flowers—how differently we should then judge, and how differently we should act. All that is of the earth is then forgotten, all the little failings inherent in human nature vanish from our minds, and we only see what was good, unselfish, and loving in that soul, and we think with regret of how much more we might have done to requite that love. It is curious how forgetful we are of death, how little we think that we are dying daily, and that what we call life is really death, and death the beginning of a higher life. Such a thought should not make our life less bright, but rather more—it should make us feel how unimportant many things are which we consider all-important: how much we could bear which we think unbearable, if only we thought that to-morrow we ourselves or our friends may be taken away, at least for a time. You should think of death, should feel that what you call your own is only lent to you, and that all that remains as a real comfort is the good work done in this short journey, the true unselfish love shown to those whom God has given us, has placed near to us, not without a high purpose.
Life.
What a marvel life seems to be the older we grow! So far from becoming more intelligible, it becomes a greater wonder every day. One stands amazed, and everything seems so small—the little one can do so very small. One ought not to brood too much, when there is no chance of light, and yet how natural it is that one should brood over life and death, rather than on the little things of life.
Life.
If we only hold fast the belief that nothing happens but by the will of God, we learn to be still and can bear everything. The older one grows, the more one feels sure that life here is but a long imprisonment, and one longs for freedom and higher efforts.... How small and insignificant is all in this life when we raise our eyes above. Gazing up to the Lord of the Universe, all strife is made easy. We speak different tongues when we think of the Highest, but we all mean the same thing.
MS.
It is sad to think of all that was and is no more, and yet there is something much more real in memory than one used to think. All is there but what our weak human senses require, and nothing is lost, nothing can be lost except what we know would vanish one day, but what was the husk only, not the kernel. I have learnt to live with those who went before us, and they seem more entirely our own than when they were with us in the body. And as long as we have duties to fulfil, so long as there are others who lean on us and want us, life can be lived a few years longer, it can only be a few years.
MS.
Life is earnest! is a very old lesson, and we are never too old to learn it. 'Life is an art' is Goethe's doctrine, and there is some truth in it also, as long as art does not imply artful or artificial. Huxley used to say the highest end of life is action, not knowledge. There I quite differ. First knowledge, then action, and what a lottery action is! The best intentions often fail, and what is done to-day is undone to-morrow. However, we must toil on and do what every day brings us, and do it as well as we can, and better, if possible, than anybody else.
Life.
What can we call ours if God did not vouchsafe it to us from day to day? Yet it is so difficult to give oneself up entirely to Him, to trust everything to His Love and Wisdom. I thought I could say, 'Thy Will be done,' but I found I could not: my own will struggled against His Will. I prayed as we ought not to pray, and yet He heard me. It is so difficult not to grow very fond of this life and all its happiness, but the more we love it, the more we suffer, for we know we must lose it and it must all pass away.
MS.
Our idea of life grows larger, and birth and death seem like morning and evening. One feels that as it has been so it will be again, and all one can do is to try to make the best of every day, as it comes and goes.
Life.
The things that annoy us in life are after all very trifling things, if we always bear in mind for what purpose we are here. And even in the heavier trials, one knows, or one should know, that all is sent by a higher power, and in the end must be for our best interests. It is true we cannot understand it, but we can understand that God rules in the world in the smallest and in the largest events, and he who keeps that ever in mind has the peace of God, and enjoys his life as long as it lasts.
Life.
Life may grow more strange and awful every day, but the more strange and awful it grows, the more it reveals to us its truest meaning and reality, and the deepest depth of its divinity. 'And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good.'
Life.
Enjoy the precious years God has added to your life, with constant gratitude, with quiet and purity of soul, looking more to the heavenly than to the earthly: that gives true joyfulness of soul, if we every moment recollect what is eternal, and never quite lose ourselves in the small, or even the large cares of life.
Life.
If we live on this earth only, if our thoughts are hemmed in by the narrow horizon of this life, then we lose indeed those whom death takes from us. But it is death itself which teaches us that there is a Beyond, we are lifted up and see a new world, far beyond what we had seen before. In that wide world we lead a new and larger life, a life which includes those we no longer see on earth, but whom we cannot surrender. The old Indian philosophers say that no one can find the truth whose heart is attached to his wife and children. No doubt perfect freedom from all affections would make life and death very easy. But may not the very love which we feel for those who belong to us, even when they are taken from us, bring light to our eyes, and make us see the truth that, by that very love, we belong to another world, and that from that world, however little we can here know about it, love will not be excluded. We believe what we desire—true—but why do we desire? Let us be ourselves, let us be what we are meant to be on earth, and trust to Him who made us what we are.
MS.
Yes, every day adds a new thin layer of new thoughts, and these layers form the texture of our character. The materials come floating towards us, but the way in which they settle down depends much on the ebb and flow within us. We can do much to keep off foreign elements, and to attach and retain those which serve best in building up a strong rock. But from time to time a great sorrow breaks through all the strata of our soul—all is upheaved, shattered, distorted. In nature all that is grand dates from such convulsions—why should we wish for a new smooth surface, or let our sorrows be covered by the flat sediment of everyday life?
MS.
If we feel that this life can only be a link in a chain without beginning and without end, in a circle which has its beginning and its end everywhere and nowhere, we learn to bear it, and to enjoy it too, in a new sense. What we achieve here assumes a new meaning—it will not altogether perish, whether for good or for evil. What is done in time is done for ever—what is done by one affects us all. Thus our love too is not lost—what is loved in time is loved for ever. The form changes, but that which changes, which undergoes change, remains itself unchanged. We seem to love the fleeting forms of life, and yet how can we truly love what is so faithless? No, we truly love what is, and was, and will be, hidden under the fleeting forms of life, but in itself more than those fleeting forms however fair. We love the fair appearance too, how could it be otherwise? but we should love it only as belonging to what we love—not as being what we love. So it is, or rather so it ought to be. Yet while we are what we are, we love the flower, not the sightless grain of seed, and when that flower fades and passes away, we mourn for it, and our only comfort is that we too fade and pass away. Then we follow there, wherever they go. Some flowers fade sooner, some later, but none is quite forgotten.
MS.
It would be difficult to say at what moment in our young lives real responsibility begins. The law fixes a time, our own heart cannot do that. Yet in spite of this unknown quantity at the beginning, we begin afterwards to reckon with ourselves. Why should we protest against a similar unknown quantity before the beginning of our life on earth? Wherever and whenever it was, we feel that we have made ourselves what we are; is not that a useful article of faith? Does it not help us to decide on undoing what we have done wrong and in doing all the good we can, even if it does not bear fruit, within or without, in this life? A break of consciousness does not seem incompatible with a sense of responsibility, if we know by reasoning, though not by recollection, that what we see done in ourselves must have been done by ourselves. And even if we waive the question of responsibility for the first two or three years of our life on earth, surely we existed during those years though we do not recollect it,—then why not before our life on earth?
MS.
We must learn to live two lives—this short life here on earth with its joys and sorrows, and that true life beyond, of which this is only a fragment or an interruption. When we enter into that true life, we shall find what we cannot find here, we shall find what we have lost here. If only so many things did not seem so irregular, so unnatural. The death of young children before their parents. We love them better because we know we can lose them—that is true—but yet it is a hard lesson to learn.
MS.
One month will go after another, till at last this journey is over, and we look back on it grateful for the many pleasures it has given us, grateful for the company of so many kind friends whom we met, grateful also for the struggles which we had to go through and which will appear so small, and so little worth our tears and anguish, when all is over and the last station and resting-place reached in safety.
MS.
LOVE
I cannot help thinking that the souls towards whom we feel drawn in this life are the very souls whom we knew and loved in a former life, and that the souls who repel us here, we do not know why, are the souls that earned our disapproval, the souls from whom we kept aloof, in a former life. But let us remember that if our love is the love of what is merely phenomenal, the love of the body, the kindness of the heart, the vigour and wisdom of the intellect, our love is the love of changing and perishable things.... But if our love, under all its earthly aspects, was the love of the true soul, of what is immortal and divine in every man and woman, that love cannot die, but will find once more what seems beautiful, true, and lovable in worlds to come, as in worlds that have passed.... What we truly love in everything is the eternal âtman, the immortal self, and as we should add, the immortal God, for the immortal self and the immortal God must be one.
Last Essays.
We must not forget that if earthly love has in the vulgar mind been often degraded into mere animal passion, it still remains in its purest sense the highest mystery of our existence, the most perfect blessing and delight on earth, and at the same time the truest pledge of our more than human nature. To be able to feel the same unselfish devotion to the Deity which the human heart is capable of, if filled with love for another human soul, is something that may well be called the best religion.
Gifford Lectures, IV.
What the present generation ought to learn, the young as well as the old, is spirit and perseverance to discover the beautiful, pleasure and joy in making it known, and resigning ourselves with grateful hearts to its enjoyment; in a word—love, in the old, true, eternal meaning of the word. Only sweep away the dust of self-conceit, the cobwebs of selfishness, the mud of envy, and the old type of humanity will soon reappear, as it was when it could still 'embrace millions.' The love of mankind, the true fountain of all humanity, is still there; it can never be quite choked up. He who can descend into this fountain of youth, who can again recover himself, who can again be that which he was by nature, loves the beautiful wherever he finds it; he understands enjoyment and enthusiasm, in the few quiet hours which he can win for himself in the noisy, deafening hurry of the times in which we live.
Chips.
Would not the carrying out of one single commandment of Christ, 'Love one another,' change the whole aspect of the world, and sweep away prisons and workhouses, and envying and strife, and all the strongholds of the devil? Two thousand years have nearly passed, and people have not yet understood that one single command of Christ, 'Love one another'! We are as perfect heathens in that one respect as it is possible to be. No, this world might be heaven on earth, if we would but carry out God's work and God's commandments, and so it will be hereafter.
Life.
If we do a thing because we think it is our duty, we generally fail; that is the old law which makes slaves of us. The real spring of our life, and of our work in life, must be love—true, deep love—not love of this or that person, or for this or that reason, but deep human love, devotion of soul to soul, love of God realised where alone it can be, in love of those whom He loves. Everything else is weak, passes away; that love alone supports us, makes life tolerable, binds the present together with the past and future, and is, we may trust, imperishable.
Life.
Love which seems so unselfish may become very selfish if we are not on our guard. Do not shut your eyes to what is dark in others, but do not dwell on it except so far as it helps to bring out more strongly what is bright in them, lovely, and unselfish. The true happiness of true love is self-forgetfulness and trust.
Life.
There is nothing in life like a mother's love, though children often do not find it out till it is too late. If you want to be really happy in life, love your mother with all your heart; it is a blessing to feel that you belong to her, and that through her you are connected by an unbroken chain with the highest source of our being.
MS.
Is there such a thing as a Lost Love? I do not believe it. Nothing that is true and great is ever lost on earth, though its fulfilment may be deferred beyond this short life.... Love is eternal, and all the more so if it does not meet with its fulfilment on earth. If once we know that our lives are in the hands of God, and that nothing can happen to us without His Will, we are thankful for the trials which He sends us. Is there any one who loves us more than God? any one who knows better what is for our real good than God? This little artificial and complicated society of ours may sometimes seem to be outside His control, but if we think so it is our own fault, and we have to suffer for it. We blame our friends, we mistrust ourselves, and all this because our wild hearts will not be quiet in that narrow cage in which they must be kept to prevent mischief.
Life.
Does love pass away (with death)? I cannot believe it. God made us as we are, many instead of one. Christ died for all of us individually, and such as we are—beings incomplete in themselves, and perfect only through love to God on one side, and through love to man on the other. We want both kinds of love for our very existence, and therefore in a higher and better existence too the love of kindred souls may well exist together with our love of God. We need not love those we love best on earth less in heaven, though we may love all better than we do on earth. After all, love seems only the taking away those unnatural barriers which divide us from our fellow creatures—it is only the restoration of that union which binds us altogether in God, and which has broken on earth we know not how. In Christ alone that union was preserved, for He loved us all with a love warmer than the love of a husband for his wife, or a mother for her child. He gave His life for us, and if we ask ourselves there is hardly a husband or a mother who would really suffer death for his wife or her child. Thus we see that even what seems to us the most perfect love is very far as yet from the perfection of love which drives out the whole self and all that is selfish, and we must try to love more, not to love less, and trust that what is imperfect here is not meant to be destroyed, but to be made perfect hereafter. With God nothing is imperfect; without Him everything is imperfect. We must live and love in God, and then we need not fear: though our life seem chequered and fleeting, we know that there is a home for us in God, and rest for all our troubles in Christ.
Life.
Let us hold together while life lasts. Hand in hand we may achieve more than each alone by himself. We are much less afraid when we are two together. The chief condition of all spiritual friendship is perfect frankness. There is no better proof of true friendship than sincere reproof, where such reproof is necessary. We are occupied in one great work, and in this consciousness all that is small must necessarily disappear.
Life.
Why do we love so deeply? Is not that also God's will? And if so, why should that love ever cease? What should we be without it? I cannot believe that we are to surrender that love, that we are to lose those who were given us to love. Love may be purified, may become more and more unselfish, may be very different from what it was on earth, but sympathy, suffering together and rejoicing together, lies very deep at the root of all being—were it ever to cease, our very being might cease too. We cannot help loving, loving more and more, better and better. Thus life becomes brighter and brighter again, and we feel that we have not lost those who are taken from us for a little while. We love them all the more, all the better.
MS.
How selfish we are even in our love. Here we live for a short season, and we know we must part sooner or later. We wish to go first, and to leave those whom we love behind us, and we sorrow because they went first and left us behind. As soon as one looks beyond this life, it seems so short, yet there was a time when it seemed endless.
MS.
The past is ours, and there we have all who loved us, and whom we love as much as ever, ay, more than ever.
MS.
MANKIND
The earth was unintelligible to the ancients because looked upon as a solitary being, without a peer in the whole universe; but it assumed a new and true significance as soon as it rose before the eyes of man as one of many planets, all governed by the same laws, and all revolving around the same centre. It is the same with the human soul, and its nature stands before our mind in quite a different light since man has been taught to know and feel himself as a member of a great family—as one of the myriads of wandering stars all governed by the same laws, and all revolving around the same centre, and all deriving their light from the same source. 'Universal History' has laid open new avenues of thought, and it has enriched our language with a word which never passed the lips of Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle—Mankind. Where the Greek saw barbarians, we see brethren; where the Greek saw nations, we see mankind, toiling and suffering, separated by oceans, divided by language, and severed by national enmity,—yet evermore tending, under a divine control, towards the fulfilment of that inscrutable purpose for which the world was created, and man placed in it, bearing the image of God. History therefore, with its dusty and mouldering pages, is to us as sacred a volume as the book of nature. In both we read, or we try to read, the reflex of the laws and thoughts of a Divine Wisdom. We believe that there is nothing irrational in either history or nature, and that the human mind is called upon to read and to revere in both the manifestations of a Divine Power.
Chips.
There are two antagonistic schools—the one believing in a descending, the other in an ascending development of the human race; the one asserting that the history of the human mind begins of necessity with a state of purity and simplicity which gradually gives way to corruption, perversity, and savagery; the other maintaining that the first human beings could not have been more than one step above the animals, and that their whole history is one of progress towards higher perfection. With regard to the beginnings of religion, the one school holds to a primitive suspicion of something that is beyond—call it supernatural, transcendental, infinite, or divine. It considers a silent walking across this bridge of life, with eyes fixed on high, as a more perfect realisation of primitive religion than singing of Vedic hymns, offering of Jewish sacrifices, or the most elaborate creeds and articles. The other begins with the purely animal and passive nature of man, and tries to show how the repeated impressions of the world in which he lived, drove him to fetichism and totemism, whatever these words may mean, to ancestor worship, to a worship of nature, of trees and serpents, of mountains and rivers, of clouds and meteors, of sun and moon and stars, and the vault of heaven, and at last to a belief in One who dwells in heaven above.
Chips.
MIND OR THOUGHT
Wherever we can see clearly, we see that what we call mind and thought consist in this, that man has the power not only to receive presentations like an animal, but to discover something general in them. This element he can eliminate and fix by vocal signs; and he can further classify single presentations under the same general concepts, and mark them by the same vocal signs.
Silesian Horseherd.
Language and thought go hand in hand; where there is as yet no word, there is not yet an idea. The thinking capacity of the mind has its source in language, lives in language, and develops continually in language.
Silesian Horseherd.
All our thoughts, even the apparently most abstract, have their natural beginnings in what passes daily before our senses. Nihil in fide nisi quod ante fuerit in sensu. Man may for a time be unheedful of these voices of nature; but they come again and again, day after day, night after night, till at last they are heeded. And if once heeded, those voices disclose their purport more and more clearly, and what seemed at first a mere sunrise becomes in the end a visible revelation of the infinite, while the setting of the sun is transfigured into the first vision of immortality.
Hibbert Lectures.
As the evolution of nature can be studied with any hope of success in those products only which nature has left us, the evolution of mind also can be effectually studied in those products only which mind itself has left us. These mental products in their earliest form are always embodied in language, and it is in language, therefore, that we must study the problem of the origin, and of the successive stages in the growth of mind.
Science of Thought.
If language and reason are identical, or two names, or two aspects only of the same thing, and if we cannot doubt that language had an historical beginning, and represents the work of man carried on through many thousands of years, we cannot avoid the conclusion that before those thousands of years there was a time when the first stone of the great temple of language was laid, and before that time man was without language, and therefore without reason.
Science of Thought.
MIRACLES
If once the human mind has arrived at the conviction that everything must be accounted for, or, as it is sometimes expressed, that there is uniformity, that there is care and order in everything, and that an unbroken chain of cause and effect holds the whole universe together, then the idea of the miraculous arises, and we, weak human creatures, call what is not intelligible to us, what is not in accordance with law, what seems to break through the chain of cause and effect, a miracle. Every miracle, therefore, is of our own making, and of our own unmaking.
Gifford Lectures, III.
It is due to the psychological necessities of human nature, under the inspiring influence of religious enthusiasm, that so many of the true signs and wonders performed by the founders of religion have so often been exaggerated, and, in spite of the strongest protests of these founders themselves, degraded into mere jugglery. It is true that all this does not form an essential element of religion, as we now understand religion. Miracles are no longer used as arguments in support of the truth of religious doctrines. Miracles have often been called helps to faith, but they have so often proved stumbling-blocks to faith, and no one in our days would venture to say that the truth as taught by any religion must stand or fall by certain prodigious events which may or may not have happened, which may or may not have been rightly apprehended by the followers of Buddha, Christ, or Mohammed.
Gifford Lectures, II.
Our Lord's ascension will have to be understood as a sublime idea, materialised in the language of children. Is not a real fact that happened, in a world in which nothing can happen against the will of God, better than any miracle? Why should we try to know more than we can know, if only we firmly believe that Christ's immortal spirit ascended to the Father? That alone is true immortality, divine immortality; not the resuscitation of the frail mortal body, but the immortality of the immortal divine soul. It was this rising of the Spirit, and not of the body, without which, as St. Paul said, our faith would be vain. It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.
Gifford Lectures, III.
It will be to many of the honest disciples of Christ a real day of Damascus, when the very name of miracle shall be struck out of the dictionary of Christian theology. The facts remain exactly as they are, but the Spirit of truth will give them a higher meaning. What is wanted for this is not less, but more, faith, for it requires more faith to believe in Christ without, than with, the help of miracles. Nothing has produced so much distress of mind, so much intellectual dishonesty, so much scepticism, so much unbelief, as the miraculous element forced into Christianity from the earliest days. Nothing has so much impeded missionary work as the attempt to persuade people first not to believe in their own miracles, and then to make a belief in other miracles a condition of their becoming Christians. It is easy to say 'You are not a Christian if you do not believe in Christian miracles.' I hope the time will come when we shall be told, 'You are not a Christian if you cannot believe in Christ without the help of miracles.'
Gifford Lectures, III.
MUSIC
Music is the language of the soul, but it defies interpretation. It means something, but that something belongs not to this world of sense and logic, but to another world, quite real, though beyond all definition.... Is there not in Music, and in Music alone of all the arts, something that is not entirely of this earth?... Whence comes melody? Surely not from anything that we hear with our outward ears and are able to imitate, to improve, or to sublimise.... Here if anywhere we see the golden stairs on which angels descend from heaven and whisper sweet sounds into the ears of those who have ears to hear. Words cannot be so inspired, for words, we know, are of the earth, earthy. Melodies are not of the earth, and it is truly said,
'Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.'
Auld Lang Syne.
NATURE
There is nothing so beautiful as being alone with nature; one sees how God's will is fulfilled in each bud and leaf that blooms and withers, and one learns to recognise how deeply rooted in one is this thirst for nature. In living with men one is only too easily torn from this real home; then one's own plans and wishes and fears spring up; then we fancy we can perfect something for ourselves alone, and think that every thing must serve for our own ends and enjoyments, until the influence of nature in life, or the hand of God, arouses us, and warns us that we live and flourish not for enjoyment, nor for undisturbed quiet, but to bear fruit in another life.
Life.
When one stands amid the grandeur of nature, with one's own little murmurings and sufferings, and looks deep into this dumb soul, much becomes clear to one, and one is astounded at the false ideas one has formed of this life. It is but a short journey, and on a journey one can do without many things which generally seem necessary to us. Yes, we can do without even what is dearest to our hearts, in this world, if we know that, after the journey we shall have to endure, we shall find again those who have arrived at the goal quicker and more easily than we have done. Now if life were looked upon as a journey for refreshment or amusement, which it ought not to be, we might feel sad if we have to make our way alone; but if we treat it as a serious business-journey, then we know we have hard and unpleasant work before us, and enjoy all the more the beautiful resting-places which God's love has provided for each of us in life.
Life.
In the early days of the world, the world was too full of wonders to require any other miracles. The whole world was a miracle and a revelation, there was no need for any special disclosure. At that time the heavens, the waters, the sun and moon, the stars of heaven, the showers and dew, the winds of God, fire and heat, winter and summer, ice and snow, nights and days, lightnings and clouds, the earth, the mountains and hills, the green things upon the earth, the wells, and seas and floods—all blessed the Lord, praised Him and magnified Him for ever. Can we imagine a more powerful revelation? Is it for us to say that for the children of men to join in praising and magnifying Him who revealed Himself in His own way in all the magnificence, the wisdom and order of nature, is mere paganism, polytheism, pantheism, and abominable idolatry? I have heard many blasphemies, I have heard none greater than this.
Gifford Lectures, II.
OBSCURITY
There may be much depth of wisdom in all that darkness and vagueness, but I cannot help thinking that there is nothing that cannot be made clear, and bright, and simple, and that obscurity arises in all cases from slovenly thinking and lazy writing.
MS.
OLD AGE
Sharing the happiness of other people, entering into their feelings, living life over once more with them and in them, that is all that remains to old people. I suppose it was meant to be so, the principal object of life being the overcoming of self, in every sense of the word.
Life.
This is a lesson one has to learn as one grows older, to learn to be alone, and yet to feel one in spirit with all whom one loves, whether present or absent.
MS.
You cannot escape from old age, whether it comes slowly or suddenly, but it comes unawares, and you suddenly feel that you cannot walk or jump as you used to do, and even the muscles of the mind don't hold out as they used. Well, so it was meant to be, and it will be pleasant to begin again with new muscles, and to take up new work. After seeing a good deal of life, I still think the greatest satisfaction is work: I do not mean drudgery, but one's own findings out.
Life.
As one is getting old, and looks forward with fear rather than with hope to what is still in store for us, one learns to appreciate more and more the never-failing pleasure of recalling all the bright and happy days that are gone. Gone they are, but they are not lost. Ever present to our calling and recalling, they assume at last a vividness, such as they hardly had when present, and when we poor souls were trembling for every day and hour and minute that was going and ever going, and would not and could not abide.
Life.
RELIGION AND RELIGIONS
God is not far from each one of those who seek God, if haply they may feel after Him. Let theologians pile up volume upon volume of what they call theology, religion is a very simple matter, and that which is so simple and yet so all-important to us, the living kernel of religion, can be found, I believe, in almost every creed, however much the husk may vary. And think what that means! It means that above and beneath and behind all religions there is one eternal, one universal religion, a religion to which every man belongs, or may belong.
Last Essays.
True religion, that is practical, active, living religion, has little or nothing to do with logical or metaphysical quibbles. Practical religion is life, is a new life, a life in the sight of God, and it springs from what may truly be called a new birth.
Last Essays.
Our senses can never perceive a real boundary, be it on the largest or the smallest scale: they present to us everywhere the infinite as their background, and everything that has to do with religion has sprung out of this infinite background as its ultimate and deepest foundation.
Silesian Horseherd.
I cannot bring myself to take much interest in all the controversies that are going on (1865) in the Church of England.... No doubt the points at issue are great, and appeal to our hearts and minds, but the spirit in which they are treated seems to me so very small. How few men on either side give you the impression that they write face to face with God, and not face to face with men and the small powers that be. Surely this was not so in the early centuries, nor again at the time of the Reformation?
Life.
We live in two worlds; behind the seen is the unseen, around the finite the infinite, above the comprehensible the incomprehensible. There have been men who have lived in this world only, who seem never to have felt the real presence of the unseen: and yet they achieved some greatness as rulers of men, as poets, artists, philosophers, and discoverers. But the greatest among the great have done their greatest works in moments of self-forgetful ecstasy, in union and communion with a higher world: and when it was done, such was their silent rapture that they started back, and could not believe it was their own, their very own, and they ascribed the glory of it to God, by whatever name they called Him in their various utterances. And while the greatest among the great thus confessed that they were not of this world only, and that their best work was but in part their own, those whom we reverence as the founders of religions, and who were at once philosophers, poets, and rulers of men, called nothing their own, but professed to teach only either what their fathers had taught them, or what a far-off voice had whispered in their ear.... The ancient religions were not founded like temples or palaces, they sprang up like sacred groves from the soil of humanity, quickened by the rays of celestial light. In India, Greece, Italy, and Germany, not even the names of the earliest prophets are preserved. And, if in other countries the forms and features of the authors of their religious faith and worship are still dimly visible amidst the clouds of legend and poetry, all of them, Moses as well as Zoroaster, Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed, seem to proclaim with one voice that their faith was no new faith, but the faith of their fathers, that their wisdom was not their own wisdom, but, like every good and perfect gift, given them from above. What should we learn from these prophets who from distant countries and bygone ages all bear the same witness to the same truth? We should learn that though religions may be founded and fashioned into strange shapes by the hand of man, religion is one and eternal. From the first dawn that ever brightened a human hearth or warmed a human heart, one generation has told another that there is a world beyond the dawn; and the keynotes of all religion—the feeling of the infinite, the bowing down before the incomprehensible, the yearning after the unseen—having once been set to vibrate, have never been altogether drowned in the strange and wild music of religious sects and sciences. The greatest prophets of the world have been those who at sundry times and in divers manners have proclaimed again and again in the simplest words the simple creed of the fathers, faith in the unseen, reverence for the incomprehensible, awe of the infinite, or, simpler still, love of God, and oneness with the All-Father.
Life.
I have endeavoured to make clear two things, which constitute the foundation of all religion; first, that the world is rational, that it is the result of thought, and that in this sense only is it the creation of a being which possesses reason, or is reason itself (the Logos); and secondly, that mind or thought cannot be the outcome of matter, but on the contrary is the prius of all things.
Silesian Horseherd.
Religion is not philosophy; but there never has been a religion, and there never can be, which is not based on philosophy, and does not presuppose the philosophical notions of the people. The highest aim towards which all philosophy strives, is and will always remain the idea of God, and it was this idea which Christianity grasped in the Platonic sense, and presented to us most clearly in its highest form, in the Fourth Gospel.
Silesian Horseherd.
There has been no entirely new religion since the beginning of the world. The elements and roots of religion were there, as far back as we can trace the history of man; and the history of religion shows us throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical elements. An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and dependence, a belief in a Divine government of the world, a distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life, these are some of the radical elements of all religions. Though sometimes hidden, they rise again and again to the surface. Though frequently distorted, they tend again and again to their perfect form. Unless they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion would have remained an impossibility, and the tongues of angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass, or as tinkling cymbals.
Chips.
In lecturing on the origin and growth of religion, my chief object has been to show that a belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in a future retribution, can be gained, and not only can be, but has been gained, by the right exercise of human reason alone, without the assistance of what has been called a special revelation. In doing this, I thought I was simply following in the footsteps of the greatest theologians of our time, and that I was serving the cause of true religion by showing, by ample historical evidence, gathered from the Sacred Books of the East, how, what St. Paul, what the Fathers of the Church, what mediæval theologians, and what some of the most learned of modern divines had asserted again and again, was most strikingly confirmed by the records of all non-Christian religions which have lately become accessible to us. I could not have believed it possible that, in undertaking this work, I should have exposed myself to attacks from theologians who profess and call themselves Christians, and who yet maintain that worst of all heresies, that during all the centuries that have elapsed and in all the countries of the world, God has left Himself without a witness, and has revealed Himself to one race only, the Jews of Palestine.
Gifford Lectures, III.
If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism that no religion can continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founders and its first apostles. Yet it is but seldom borne in mind that without constant reformation, i.e. without a constant return to its fountain head, every religion—even the most perfect, on account of its very perfection, more even than others—suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers from the mere fact of being breathed.
Chips.
To each individual his own religion, if he really believes in it, is something quite inseparable from himself, something unique, that cannot be compared to anything else, or replaced by anything else. Our own religion is, in that respect, something like our own language. In its form it may be like other languages; in its essence, and in its relation to ourselves, it stands alone and admits of no peer or rival.
Chips.
Three of the results to which, I believe, a comparative study of religion is sure to lead, I may here state:—
1. We shall learn that religions, in their most ancient form, or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times.
2. We shall learn that there is hardly one religion which does not contain some truth, some important truth; truth sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord, and feel after Him, to find Him in their hour of need.
3. We shall learn to appreciate better than ever what we have in our own religion. No one who has not examined patiently and honestly the other religions of the world can know what Christianity really is, or can join with such truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul, 'I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.'
Chips.
Many are the advantages to be derived from a careful study of other religions, but the greatest of all is that it teaches us to appreciate more truly what we possess in our own. Let us see what other nations have had and still have in the place of religion, let us examine the prayers, the worship, the theology even, of the most highly civilised races, and we shall then understand more thoroughly what blessings are vouchsafed to us in being allowed to breathe from the first breath of life the pure air of a land of Christian light and knowledge. We are too apt to take the greatest blessings as matters of course, and even religion forms no exception. We have done so little to gain our religion, we have suffered so little in the cause of truth, that however highly we prize our own Christianity, we never prize it highly enough until we have compared it with the religions of the rest of the world.
Chips.
The spirit of truth is the life-spring of all religion, and where it exists it must manifest itself, it must plead, it must persuade, it must convince and convert.
Chips.
As there is a faculty of speech, independent of all the historical forms of language, there is a faculty of faith in man, independent of all historical religions. If we say it is religion which distinguishes man from the animal, we do not mean the Christian and Jewish religion: we do not mean any special religion: but we mean a mental faculty or disposition, which, independent of, nay in spite of, sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under different names, and under varying disguises. Without that faculty, no religion, not even the lowest worship of idols and fetishes, would be possible; and if we will but listen attentively, we can hear in all religions a groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive the inconceivable, to utter the unutterable, a longing after the Infinite, a love of God.
Science of Religion.
Like an old precious metal, the ancient religion, after the dust of ages has been removed, will come out in all its purity and brightness: and the image which it discloses will be the image of the Father, the Father of all the nations upon earth; and the superscription, where we can read it again, will be, not in Judæa only, but in the languages of all the races of the world, the Word of God, revealed where alone it can be revealed—revealed in the heart of man.
Science of Religion.
If we granted that all religions, except Christianity and Mosaism, derived their origin from those faculties of the mind only which, according to Paley, are sufficient by themselves for calling into life the fundamental tenets of natural religion, the classification of Christianity and Judaism on one side as revealed, and of the other religions as natural, would still be defective, for the simple reason that no religion, though founded on revelation, can ever be entirely separated from natural religion. The tenets of natural religion, though they never constituted by themselves a real historical religion, supply the only ground on which even revealed religions can stand, the only soil where they can strike root, and from which they can receive nourishment and life.
Science of Religion.
The intention of religion, wherever we meet it, is always holy. However imperfect, however childish a religion may be, it always places the human soul in the presence of God: and however imperfect and however childish the conception of God may be, it always represents the highest ideal of perfection which the human soul, for the time being, can reach and grasp. Religion therefore places the human soul in the presence of its highest ideal, it lifts it above the level of ordinary goodness, and produces at last a yearning after a higher and better life—a life in the light of God.