Science of Religion.
I suppose that most of us, sooner or later in life, have felt how the whole world—this wicked world, as we call it—is changed as if by magic, if once we can make up our mind to give men credit for good motives, never to be suspicious, never to think evil, never to think ourselves better than our neighbours. Trust a man to be true and good, and, even if he is not, your trust will tend to make him true and good. It is the same with the religions of the world. Let us but once make up our minds to look in them for what is true and good, and we shall hardly know our old religions again. There is no religion—or, if there is, I do not know it—which does not say, 'Do good, avoid evil.' There is none which does not contain what Rabbi Hillel called the quintessence of all religions, the simple warning, 'Be good, my boy.' 'Be good, my boy,' may seem a very short catechism, but let us add to it, 'Be good, my boy, for God's sake,' and we have in it very nearly the whole of the Law and the Prophets.
Science of Religion.
In order to choose between different gods, and different forms of faith, a man must possess the faculty of choosing the instruments of testing truth and untruth, whether revealed or not; he must know that certain fundamental tenets cannot be absent in any true religion, and that there are doctrines against which his rational or moral conscience revolts as incompatible with truth. In short, there must be the foundation of religion, there must be the solid rock, before it is possible to erect an altar, a temple, or a church: and if we call that foundation natural religion, it is clear that no revealed religion can be thought of which does not rest more or less firmly on natural religion.
Science of Religion.
Universal primeval revelation is only another name for natural religion, and it rests on no authority but the speculations of philosophers. The same class of philosophers, considering that language was too wonderful an achievement for the human mind, insisted on the necessity of admitting a universal primeval language, revealed directly by God to men, or rather to mute beings: while the more thoughtful and more reverent of the Fathers of the Church, and among the founders of modern philosophy also, pointed out that it was more consonant with the general working of an all-wise and all-powerful Creator that He should have endowed human nature with the essential conditions of speech, instead of presenting mute beings with grammars and dictionaries ready-made. The same applies to religion. A universal primeval religion revealed direct by God to man, or rather to a crowd of atheists, may, to our human wisdom, seem the best solution of all difficulties; but a higher wisdom speaks to us out of the realities of history, and teaches us, if we will but learn, that 'we have all to seek the Lord, if haply we may feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us.'
Science of Religion.
The study of the ancient religions of mankind, I feel convinced, if carried on in a bold, but scholarlike, careful, and reverent spirit, will remove many doubts and difficulties which are due entirely to the narrowness of our religious horizon; it will enlarge our sympathies, it will raise our thoughts above the small controversies of the day, and at no distant future evoke in the very heart of Christianity a fresh spirit and a new life.
Science of Religion.
No judge, if he had before him the worst of criminals, would treat him as most historians and theologians have treated the religions of the world. Every act in the lives of their founders which shows that they were but men, is eagerly seized and judged without mercy; every doctrine that is not carefully guarded is interpreted in the worst sense that it will bear; every act of worship that differs from our own way of serving God is held up to ridicule and contempt. And this is not done by accident but with a purpose, nay, with something of that artificial sense of duty which stimulates the counsel for the defence to see nothing but an angel in his own client, and anything but an angel in the plaintiff on the other side. The result has been—as it could not be otherwise—a complete miscarriage of justice, an utter misapprehension of the real character and purpose of the ancient religions of mankind; and, as a necessary consequence, a failure in discovering the peculiar features which really distinguish Christianity from all the religions of the world, and secure to its founder His own peculiar place in the history of the world, far away from Zoroaster and Buddha, from Moses and Mohammed, from Confucius and Laotse. By unduly deprecating all other religions we have placed our own in a position which its founder never intended for it; we have torn it away from the sacred context of the history of the world; we have ignored, or wilfully narrowed, the sundry times and divers manners in which, in times past, God spake unto the fathers by the prophets; and instead of recognising Christianity as coming in the fulness of time, and as the fulfilment of the hopes and desires of the whole world, we have brought ourselves to look upon its advent as the only broken link in that unbroken chain which is rightly called the Divine government of the world. Nay, worse than this, there are people who, from mere ignorance of the ancient religions of mankind, have adopted a doctrine more unchristian than any that could be found in the pages of the religious books of antiquity, i.e. that all the nations of the earth, before the rise of Christianity, were mere outcasts, forsaken and forgotten of their Father in heaven, without a knowledge of God, without a hope of heaven. If a comparative study of the religions of the world produced but this one result, that it drove this godless heresy out of every Christian heart, and made us see again in the whole history of the world the eternal wisdom and love of God towards all His creatures, it would have done a good work.
Science of Religion.
Do you still wonder at polytheism or at mythology? Why, they are inevitable. They are, if you like, a parler enfantin of religion. But the world has its childhood, and when it was a child, it spoke as a child, it understood as a child, it thought as a child, and in that it spoke as a child its language was true. The fault rests with us, if we insist on taking the language of children for the language of men, if we attempt to translate literally ancient into modern language, Oriental into Occidental speech, poetry into prose.
Science of Religion.
Religion is inevitable if only we are left in possession of our senses, such as we really find them, not such as they have been defined for us. We claim no special faculty, no special revelation. The only faculty we claim is perception, the only revelation we claim is history, or, as it is now called, historical evolution. But let it not be supposed that we find the idea of the Infinite ready made in the human mind from the very beginning of our history. All we maintain is that the germ or the possibility, the Not-yet of that idea, lies hidden in the earliest sensuous perceptions, and that as reason is evolved from what is finite, so faith is evolved from what from the very beginning is infinite in the perceptions of our senses.
Hibbert Lectures.
Each religion has its own peculiar growth, but the seed from which they spring is everywhere the same. That seed is the perception of the infinite, from which no one can escape who does not wilfully shut his eyes. From the first flutter of human consciousness, that perception underlies all the other perceptions of our senses, all our imaginings, all our concepts, and every argument of our reason. It may be buried for a time beneath the fragments of our finite knowledge, but it is always there, and, if we dig deep enough, we shall always find that buried seed, supplying the living sap to the fibres and feeders of all true faith.
Hibbert Lectures.
Instead of approaching the religions of the world with the preconceived idea that they are either corruptions of the Jewish religion, or descended, in common with the Jewish religion, from some perfect primeval revelation, the students of the science of religion have seen that it is their duty first to collect all the evidence of the early history of religious thought that is still accessible in the sacred books of the world, or in the mythology, customs, or even in the languages of various races. Afterwards they have undertaken a genealogical classification of all the materials that have hitherto been collected, and they have then only approached the question of the origin of religion in a new spirit, by trying to find out how the roots of the various religions, the radical concepts which form their foundation, and before all, the concept of the infinite, could have been developed, taking for granted nothing but sensuous perception on one side, and the world by which we are surrounded on the other.
Hibbert Lectures.
A distinction has been made for us between religion and philosophy, and, so far as form and object are concerned, I do not deny that such a distinction may be useful. But when we look to the subjects with which religion is concerned, they are, and always have been, the very subjects on which philosophy has dwelt, nay, from which philosophy has sprung. If religion depends for its very life on the sentiment or the perception of the infinite within the finite and beyond the finite, who is to determine the legitimacy of that sentiment, or of that perception, if not the philosopher? Who is to determine the powers which man possesses for apprehending the finite by his senses, for working up his single, and therefore finite, impressions into concepts by his reason, if not the philosopher? And who, if not the philosopher, is to find out whether man can claim the right of asserting the existence of the infinite, in spite of the constant opposition of sense and reason, taking these words in their usual meaning? We should damnify religion if we separated it from philosophy: we should ruin philosophy if we divorced it from religion.
Hibbert Lectures.
Who, if he is honest towards himself, could say that the religion of his manhood was the same as that of his childhood, or the religion of his old age the same as the religion of his manhood? It is easy to deceive ourselves, and to say that the most perfect faith is a childlike faith. Nothing can be truer, and the older we grow the more we learn to understand the wisdom of a childlike faith. But before we can learn that, we have first to learn another lesson, namely, to put away childish things. There is the same glow about the setting sun as there is about the rising sun; but there lies between the two a whole world, a journey through the whole sky, and over the whole earth.
Hibbert Lectures.
I hope the time will come when the subterranean area of human religion will be rendered more and more accessible, ... and that the Science of Religion, which at present is but a desire and a seed, will in time become a fulfilment, a plenteous harvest. When that time of harvest has come, when the deepest foundations of all the religions of the world have been laid free and restored, who knows but that those very foundations may serve once more, like the catacombs, or like the crypts beneath our old cathedrals, as a place of refuge for those who, to whatever creed they may belong, long for something better, purer, older, and truer than what they can find in the statutable sacrifices, services, and sermons of the days in which their lot on earth has been cast; some who have learnt to put away childish things, call them genealogies, legends, miracles, or oracles, but who cannot part with the childlike faith of their heart. Each believer may bring down with him into that quiet crypt what he values most, his own pearl of great price—the Hindu, his innate disbelief in this world, his unhesitating belief in another world; the Buddhist, his perception of an eternal law, his submission to it, his gentleness, his pity; the Mohammedan, if nothing else, his sobriety; the Jew, his clinging through good and evil days to the one God, who loveth righteousness and whose name is 'I am'; the Christian, that which is better than all, if those who doubt it would only try it—our love of God, call Him what you like, the infinite, the invisible, the immortal, the father, the highest Self, above all, and through all, and in all, manifested in our love of man, our love of the living, our love of the dead, our living and undying love.
Hibbert Lectures.
If we see the same doctrines, sometimes uttered even in the very same words, by the Apostles, and by what people call the false prophets, of the heathen world, we need not grudge them these precious pearls. When two religions say the same thing, it is not always the same thing; but even if it is, should we not rather rejoice and try with all our might to add to what may be called the heavenly dowry of the human race, the common stock of truth which, as we are told, is not far from every one of us, if only we feel after it and find it?
Gifford Lectures, I.
Religion, when looked upon not as supernatural, but as thoroughly natural to man, has assumed a new meaning and a higher dignity when studied as an integral part of that historical evolution which has made man what he is, and what from the very first he was meant to be. Is it no comfort to know that at no time and in no part of the world, has God left Himself without witness, that the hand of God was nowhere beyond the reach of the outstretched hands of babes and sucklings; nay, that it was from those rude utterances out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, that is, of savages and barbarians, that has been perfected in time the true praise of God? To have looked for growth and evolution in history as well as in nature is no blame, and has proved no loss to the present or to the last century; and if the veil has as yet been but little withdrawn from the Holy of Holies, those who come after us will have learnt at least this one lesson, that this lifting of the veil which was supposed to be the privilege of priests, is no longer considered as a sacrilege, if attempted by any honest seekers after truth.
Gifford Lectures, I.
Religion consists in the perception of the infinite under such manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man.
Gifford Lectures, I.
No opinion is true simply because it has been held either by the greatest intellects or by the largest number of human beings at different periods in the history of the world. No one can spend years in the study of the religions of the world, beginning with the lowest and ending with the highest forms, no one can watch the sincerity of religious endeavour, the warmth of religious feeling, the nobleness of religious conduct, among races whom we are inclined to call pagan or savage, without learning at all events a lesson of humility. Anybody, be he Jew, Christian, Mohammedan, or Brahman, if he has a spark of modesty left, must feel that it would be nothing short of a miracle that his own religion alone should be perfect throughout, while that of every other believer should be false or wrong from beginning to end.
Gifford Lectures, I.
The more we study the history of the religions of the world, the clearer it becomes that there is really no religion which could be called an individual religion, in the sense of a religion created, as it were de novo, or rather ab ovo, by one single person. This may seem strange, and yet it is really most natural. Religion, like language, is everywhere an historical growth, and to invent a completely new religion would be as hopeless a task as to invent a completely new language. Nor do the founders of the great historical religions of the world ever claim this exclusive authorship. On the contrary, most of them disclaim in the strongest terms the idea that they have come either to destroy, or to build a completely new temple.
Gifford Lectures, I.
The whole world in its wonderful history has passed through the struggle for life, the struggle for eternal life; and every one of us, in his own not less wonderful history, has had to pass through the same wonderful struggle: for, without it, no religion, whatever its sacred books may be, will find in any human heart that soil in which alone it can strike root and on which alone it can grow and bear fruit. We must all have our own bookless religion, if the sacred books, whatever they may be, are to find a safe and solid foundation within ourselves. No temple can stand without that foundation, and it is because that foundation is so often neglected that the walls of the temple become unsafe and threaten to fall.
Gifford Lectures, I.
The heart and mind and soul of man are the same under every sky, in all the varying circumstances of human life; and it would be awful to believe that any human beings should have been deprived of that light 'which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' It is that light which lighteth every man, and which has lighted all the religions of the world, call them bookless or literate, human or divine, natural or supernatural, which alone can dispel the darkness of doubt and fear that has come over the world. What our age wants more than anything else is Natural Religion. Whatever meaning different theologians may attach to Supernatural Religion, history teaches us that nothing is so natural as the supernatural. But the supernatural must always be superimposed on the natural. Supernatural religion without natural religion is a house built on sand, and when, as in our days, the rain of doubt descends, and the floods of criticism come, and the winds of unbelief and despair blow and beat upon that house, that house will fall because it was not founded on the rock of bookless religion, of natural religion, of eternal religion.
Gifford Lectures, I.
Every religion, being the property of the young and the old, the wise and the foolish, must always be a kind of compromise, and, while protesting against real corruptions and degradations, we must learn to bear with those whose language differs from our own, and trust that in spite of the tares which have sprung up during the night, some grains of wheat will ripen towards the harvest in every honest heart.
Gifford Lectures, II.
In all the fundamentals of religion we are neither better nor worse than our neighbours, neither more wise nor more unwise than all the members of that great family who have been taught to know themselves as children of one and the same Father in Heaven.
Gifford Lectures, II.
What can a study of Natural Religion teach us? Why, it teaches us that religion is natural, is real, is inevitable, is universal. Is that nothing? Is it nothing to know that there is a solid rock on which all religion, call it natural or supernatural, is founded? Is it nothing to learn from the annals of history that God has not left Himself without witness in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts, and the hearts of the whole human race, with food and gladness?
Gifford Lectures, II.
While on the one side a study of Natural Religion teaches us that much of what we are inclined to class as natural, to accept as a matter of course, is in reality full of meaning, is full of God, is in fact truly miraculous, it also opens our eyes to another fact, namely, that many things which we are inclined to class as supernatural, are in reality perfectly natural, perfectly intelligible, nay inevitable, in the growth of every religion.
Gifford Lectures, II.
The real coincidences between all the religions of the world teach us that all religions spring from the same soil—the human heart; that they all look to the same ideals, and that they are all surrounded by the same dangers and difficulties. Much that is represented to us as supernatural in the annals of the ancient religions of the world becomes perfectly natural from this point of view.
Gifford Lectures, II.
To those who see no difficulties in their own religion, the study of other religions will create no new difficulties. It will only help them to appreciate more fully what they already possess. For with all that I have said in order to show that other religions also contain all that is necessary for salvation, it would be simply dishonest on my part were I to hide my conviction that the religion taught by Christ, free as yet from all ecclesiastical fences and entrenchments, is the best, the purest, the truest religion the world has ever seen.
Gifford Lectures, II.
To expect that religion could ever be placed again beyond the reach of scientific treatment or honest criticism, shows an utter misapprehension of the signs of the times, and would, after all, be no more than to set up private judgment against private judgment. If the inalienable rights of private judgment, that is, of honesty and truth, were more generally recognised, the character of religious controversy would at once be changed. It is restriction that provokes resentment, and thus embitters all discussions on religious subjects.
Gifford Lectures, III.
So far from being dishonest, the distinction between a higher and a lower form of religion is in truth the only honest recognition of the realities of life. If to a philosophic mind religion is a spiritual love of God, and the joy of his full consciousness of the spirit of God within him, what meaning can such words convey to the millions of human beings who nevertheless want a religion, a positive, authoritative, or revealed religion, to teach them that there is a God, and that His commands must be obeyed without questioning?
Gifford Lectures, III.
People ask what can be gained by a comprehensive study of religions, by showing that, as yet, no race has been discovered without some word for what is not visible, not finite, not human, for something superhuman and divine. Some theologians go even so far as to resent the discovery of the universality of such a belief. They are anxious to prove that human reason alone could never have arrived at a conception of God. They would much rather believe that God has left Himself without witness than that a belief in something higher than the Finite could spring up in the human heart from gratitude to Him who gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.
Gifford Lectures, III.
Physical religion, beginning in a belief in agents behind the great phenomena of nature, reached its highest point when it had led the human mind to a belief in one Supreme Agent or God, whatever his name might be. It was supposed that this God could be implored by prayers and pleased by sacrifices. He was called the father of gods and men. Yet even in his highest conception, he was no more than what Cardinal Newman defined God to be. 'I mean by the Supreme Being,' he wrote, 'one who is simply self-dependent, and the only being who is such. I mean that he created all things out of nothing, and could destroy them as easily as he made them, and that, in consequence, he is separated from them by an abyss, and incommunicable in all his attributes.' This abyss separating God from man remains at the end of Physical Religion. It constitutes its inherent weakness. But this very weakness becomes in time a source of strength, for from it sprang a yearning for better things. Even the God of the Jews, in His unapproachable majesty, though He might be revered and loved by man during His life on earth, could receive, as it were, a temporary allegiance only, for 'the dead cannot praise God, neither any that go down into darkness!' God was immortal, a man was mortal; and Physical Religion could not throw a bridge over the abyss that separated the two. Real religion, however, requires more than a belief in God, it requires a belief in man also, and an intimate relation between God and man, at all events in a life to come. There is in man an irrepressible desire for continued existence. It shows itself in life in what we may call self-defence. It shows itself at the end of life and at the approach of death, in the hope of immortality.
Gifford Lectures, III.
So long as we look on the history of the human race as something that might or might not have been, we cannot wonder that the student of religion should prefer to form his opinions of the nature of religion and the laws of its growth from the masterpiece of Thomas Aquinas, the Summa Sacræ Theologiæ, rather than from the Sacred Books of the East. But when we have learnt to recognise in history the realisation of a rational purpose, when we have learnt to look upon it as in the truest sense of the word a Divine Drama, the plot revealed in it ought to assume in the eyes of a philosopher also, a meaning and a value far beyond the speculations of even the most enlightened and logical theologians.
Gifford Lectures, IV.
The question is whether there is, or whether there is not, hidden in every one of the sacred books, something that could lift up the human heart from this earth to a higher world, something that could make man feel the omnipresence of a higher Power, something that could make him shrink from evil and incline to good, something to sustain him in the short journey through life, with its bright moments of happiness, and its long hours of terrible distress.
Preface, Sacred Books of the East.
It has been truly said, and most emphatically, by Dr. Newman, that neither a belief in God by itself, nor a belief in the soul by itself, would constitute religion, and that real religion is founded on a true perception of the relation of the soul to God, and of God to the soul.
Gifford Lectures, IV.
It may be truly said that the founders of the religions of the world have all been bridge-builders. As soon as the existence of a Beyond, of a Heaven above the earth, of Powers above us and beneath us, had been recognised, a great gulf seemed to be fixed between what was called by various names, the earthly and the heavenly, the material and the spiritual, the phenomenal and nomenal, or best of all, the visible and invisible world, and it was the chief object of religion to unite these two worlds again, whether by the arches of hope and fear, or by the iron chains of logical syllogisms.
Gifford Lectures, IV.
Religion, in order to be real religion, a man's own religion, must be searched for, must be discovered, must be conquered. If it is simply inherited, or accepted as a matter of course, it often happens that in later years it falls away, and has either to be reconquered, or to be replaced by another religion.
Autobiography.
Religion is growth, never finished. From the lowest to the highest stages it is growth, not willed only, nor given only, but both. The lowest stages may seem very imperfect to us, but they are all the more important. Language and mythology show us the old path on which man travelled from Nature to God.
MS.
There is no lesson which at the present time seems more important than to learn that in every religion there are precious grains; that we must draw in every religion a broad distinction between what is essential and what is not, between the eternal and the temporary, between the divine and the human, and that though the non-essential may fill many volumes, the essential can often be comprehended in a few words, but words on which 'hang all the law and the prophets.'
Preface, Sacred Books of the East.
Religions were meant to be many, like languages. To us, one language for the whole human race would seem to be far better; but it was not to be. Each language was to be a school for each race, a talent committed to each nation. And so it is with religion. There is truth in all of them, the whole truth in none. Let each one cherish his own, purify his own, and throw away what is dead and decaying. But to give up one's religion is like giving up one's life. Even the lowest savage must keep his own old faith in God, when he becomes converted to Christianity, or he will have lost the living and life-giving root of his faith. If people would only learn to look for what is good in all religions, how far more beautiful the world would appear in their eyes. They dig hard enough to get the ore from out a mine, they sift it, smelt it, purify it, and then keep the small pieces of gold they have got with all this trouble, forgetting the scoriae and all the refuse. That is what we must do as students of religion; but we do the very contrary—we hug the scoriae and shut our eyes to the glittering rays of gold. Jews and Christians are worse in that respect than all other people. It may be because their religions are freer from human impurities than all other religions. But why should that make them blind to what is really good in other religions, why should it blind them so much that they look upon other religions as the work of the Devil? The power of evil has had its work in all religions, our own not excepted—but the power of goodness prevails everywhere. Till we know that, life and history seem intolerable. It would not put an end to missionary labour, it would only make it more a labour of love, less painful to those whom we wish to win, not away from their God, but back to their God, Him whom they ignorantly worship, and whom we should declare unto them, according to our own light, such as it is, less dark than theirs on many points, but yet dark, as those know best who, like St. Paul, have striven hardest to look through the glass of our own weak human mind.
MS.
If people would only learn to see that there is really a religion beyond all religions, that each man must have his own religion which he has conquered for himself, and that we must learn to tolerate religion wherever we find it! Christianity would be a perfect religion, if it did not go beyond the simple words of Christ, and if, even in these words, we made full allowance for the time and place and circumstances in which they were spoken—that is, if we simply followed Christ where He wishes us to follow Him. We have gone far beyond those times and circumstances in many things, but in what is most essential we are still far behind the teaching of Christ. How many call themselves Christians who have no idea how difficult it is to be a Christian, a follower of Christ! It is easy enough to repeat creeds, and to work ourselves into a frame of mind when miracles seem most easy.
MS.
It was the duty of the Apostles and of the early Christians in general to stand forth in the name of the only true God, and to prove to the world that their God had nothing in common with the idols worshipped at Athens and Ephesus. It was the duty of the early converts to forswear all allegiance to their former deities, and if they could not at once bring themselves to believe that the gods whom they had worshipped had no existence at all, they were naturally led on to ascribe to them a kind of demoniacal nature, and to curse them as the offspring of that new principle of Evil with which they had become acquainted in the doctrines of the early Church.... Through the whole of St. Augustine's works, and through all the works of earlier Christian divines, there runs the same spirit of hostility blinding them to all that may be good, and true, and sacred, and magnifying all that is bad, false, and corrupt, in the ancient religions of mankind. Only the Apostles and their immediate disciples venture to speak in a different and, no doubt, in a more truly Christian spirit of the old forms of worships.... What can be more convincing, more powerful, than the language of St. Paul at Athens?
Science of Language.
Those who believe that there is a God, and that He created heaven and earth, and that He ruleth the world by His unceasing providence, cannot believe that millions of human beings, all created like ourselves in the image of God, were, in their time of ignorance, so utterly abandoned that their whole religion was falsehood, their whole worship a farce, their whole life a mockery. An honest and independent study of the religions of the world will teach us that it was not so, ... that there is no religion which does not contain some grains of truth. Nay, it will teach us more; it will teach us to see in the history of the ancient religions, more clearly than anywhere else, the Divine education of the human race.
Science of Religion.
The Divine, if it is to reveal itself at all to us, will best reveal itself in our own human form. However far the human may be from the Divine, nothing on earth is nearer to God than man, nothing on earth more godlike than man. And as man grows from childhood to old age, the idea of the Divine must grow with us from the cradle to the grave, from grace to grace. A religion which is not able thus to grow and live with us as we grow and live, is dead already. Definite and unvarying uniformity, so far from being a sign of honesty and life, is always a sign of dishonesty and death. Every religion, if it is to be a bond between the wise and the foolish, the old and the young, must be pliant, must be high and deep and broad; bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. The more it is so, the greater its vitality, the greater the strength and warmth of its embrace.
Hibbert Lectures.
REVELATION
True inspiration is, and always has been, the spirit of truth within, and this is but another name for the spirit of God. It is truth that makes inspiration, not inspiration that makes truth. Whoever knows what truth is knows also what inspiration is: not only theopneustos, blown into the soul by God, but the very voice of God, the real presence of God, the only presence in which we, as human beings, can ever perceive Him.
Autobiography.
There is nothing in the idea of revelation that excludes progress, for whatever definition of revelation we may adopt, it always represents a communication between the Divine on one side and the Human on the other. Let us grant that the Divine element in revelation, that is, whatever of truth there is in revelation, is immutable, yet the human element, the recipient, must always be liable to the accidents and infirmities of human nature. That human element can never be eliminated in any religion.... To ignore that human element in all religions is like ignoring the eye as the recipient and determinant of the colours of light. We know more of the sun than our forefathers, though the same sun shone on them that shines on us; and if astronomy has benefited by its telescopes, ... theology also ought not to despise whatever can strengthen the far-sightedness of human reason in its endeavour to gain a truer and purer idea of the Divine. A veil will always remain. But as in every other pursuit, so in religion also, we want less and less of darkness, more and more of light; we want, call it life, or growth, or development, or progress; we do not want mere rest, mere stagnation, mere death.
Gifford Lectures, I.
It was the sense of an overpowering truth which led to the admission of a revelation. But while in the beginning truth made revelation, it soon came to pass that revelation was supposed to make truth. When we see this happening in every part of the world, when we can watch the psychological progress which leads in the most natural way to a belief in supernatural inspiration, it will hardly be said that an historical study of religion may be useful to the antiquarian, but cannot help us to solve the burning questions of the day.
Gifford Lectures, I.
I believe in one revelation only—the revelation within us, which is much better than any revelations which come from without. Why should we look for God and listen for His voice outside us only, and not within us? Where is the temple of God, or the true kingdom of God?
Life.
There are Christian mystics who would not place internal revelation, or the voice of God within the heart, so far below external revelation. To those who know the presence of God within the heart, this revelation is far more real than any other can be. They hold with St. Paul that man is in the full sense of the word the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth within him, nay, they go even further, and both as Christians and as mystics they cling to the belief that all men are one in the Father and the Son, as the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father. There is no conflict in their minds between Christian doctrine and mystic doctrine. They are one and the same in character, the one imparted through Christ on earth, the other imparted through the indwelling spirit of God, which again is Christ, as born within us. The Gospel of St. John is full of passages to which the Christian mystic clings, and by which he justifies his belief in the indwelling spirit of God, or, as he also calls it, the birth of Christ in the human soul.
Gifford Lectures, II.
I cannot connect any meaning with a primeval revelation, or with an original knowledge of God. A knowledge of God is surely at all times impossible; man can only trust, he cannot know. He can feel the Infinite, and the Divine, he can never class it or subdue it by knowledge. The question seems to me, how our unconscious relation to God, which must be there and can never be destroyed, becomes gradually more and more conscious; and that is what one can best learn to understand in the history of the various religions of the world—so many voyages of discovery, each full of sufferings and heroic feats, all looking towards the same Pole, each to be judged by itself, none, I believe, to be condemned altogether.
MS.
To assume that every word, every letter, every parable, every figure was whispered to the authors of the Gospels, is certainly an absurdity, and rests only on human ... authority. But the true revelation, the real truth, as it was already anticipated by the Greek philosophers, slowly accepted by Jews, like Philo and the contemporaries of Jesus, taught by men like Clement and Origen in the ancient Greek Church, and, in fine, realised in the life of Jesus, and sealed by His death, is no absurdity: it is for every thinking Christian the eternal life, or the Kingdom of God on earth, which Jesus wished to establish, and in part did establish. To become a citizen of this Kingdom is the highest that man can attain, but it is not attained merely through baptism and confirmation; it must be gained in earnest spiritual conflict.
Silesian Horseherd.
THE RIG-VEDA
The Veda alone of all works I know treats of a genesis of God-consciousness, compared to which the Theogony of Hesiod is like a worn-out creature. We see it grow slowly and gradually with all its contradictions, its sudden terrors, its amazements, and its triumphs. As God reveals His Being in nature in her order, her indestructibility, in the eternal victory of light over darkness, of spring over winter, in the eternally returning course of the sun and the stars, so man has gradually spelt out of nature the Being of God, and after trying a thousand names for God in vain, we find Him in the Veda already saying: 'They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna; then they call him the Heavenly, the bird with beautiful wings; that which is One they call in various ways.'... The belief in Immortality is only the other side, as it were, of the God-consciousness, and both are originally natural to the Aryan race.
Life.
SCIENCE
Every true Science is like a hardy Alpine guide that leads us on from the narrow, though it may be the more peaceful and charming, valleys of our preconceived opinions, to higher points, apparently less attractive, nay often disappointing for a time, till, after hours of patient and silent climbing, we look round and see a new world around us.
Chips.
A new horizon has opened, our eyes see far and wide, and as the world beneath us grows wider and larger, our own hearts seem to grow wider and larger, and we learn to embrace the far and distant, and all that before seemed strange and indifferent, with a warmer recognition and a deeper human sympathy; we form wider concepts, we perceive higher truths.
Chips.
What is natural is divine; what is supernatural is human.
Gifford Lectures, I.
Man is the measurer of all things; and what is Science but the reflection of the outer world on the mirror of the mind, growing more perfect, more orderly, more definite, more great, with every generation? To attempt to study nature without studying man is as impossible as to study light without studying the eye. I have no misgivings, therefore, that the lines on which this College (Mason Science College) is founded will ever become so narrow as to exclude the science of man, and the science of that which makes man, the science of language, and, what is really the same, the science of thought. And where can we study the science of thought, that most wonderful instance of development, except in the languages and literatures of the past? How are we to do justice to our ancestors except by letting them plead their own case in their own language? Literary culture can far better dispense with physical science than physical science with literary culture, though nothing is more satisfactory than a perfect combination of the two.
Life.
THE SELF
As behind the various gods of nature, one supreme deity was at last discovered in India, the Brahmans imagined that they perceived behind the different manifestations of feeling, thought, and will also, a supreme power which they called Atma, or Self, and of which the intellectual powers or faculties were but the outward manifestations. This led to a philosophy which took the place of religion, and recognised in the self the only true being, the unborn and therefore immortal element in man. A step further led to the recognition of the original identity of the subjective Self in man, and the objective Self in nature, and thus, from an Indian point of view, to a solution of all the riddles of the world. The first commandment of all philosophy, 'Know thyself,' became in the philosophy of the Upanishads, 'Know thyself as the Self,' or, if we translate it into religious language, 'Know that we live and move and have our being in God.'
Gifford Lectures, I.
The death of a child is as if the flash of the Divine eye had turned quickly away from the mirror of this world, before the human consciousness woke up and thought it recognised itself in the mirror, often only to perceive for a moment, just as it closes its eyes for the last time, that that which it took for itself was the shadow or reflection of its eternal self.
Life.
A man need not go into a cave because he has found his true Self; he may live and act like everybody else; he is 'living but free.' All remains just the same, except the sense of unchangeable, imperishable self which lifts him above the phenomenal self. He knows he is wearing clothes, that is all. If a man does not see it, if some of his clothes stick to him like his very skin, if he fears he might lose his identity by not being a male instead of a female, by not being English instead of German, by not being a child instead of a man, he must wait and work on. Good works lead to quietness of mind, and quietness of mind to true self-knowledge. Is it so very little to be only Self, to be the subject that can resist, i.e. perceive the whole universe, and turn it into his object? Can we wish for more than what we are, lookers-on—resisting what tries to crush us, call it force, or evil, or anything else?
Life.
The impression made on me by the look of a child who is not yet conscious of himself and of the world round him is that of still undisturbed godliness. Only when self-consciousness wakes little by little, through pleasure or pain, when the spirit accustoms itself to its bodily covering, when man begins to say I and the world to call things his, then the full separation of the human self from the Divine begins, and it is only after long struggles that the light of true self-consciousness sooner or later breaks through the clouds of earthly semblances, and makes us again like the little children 'of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven.' In God we live and move and have our being, that is the sum of all human wisdom, and he who does not find it here, will find it in another life. All else that we learn on earth, be it the history of nature or of mankind, is for this end alone, to show us everywhere the presence of a Divine providence, and to lead us through the knowledge of the history of the human spirit to the knowledge of ourselves, and through the knowledge of the laws of nature to the understanding of that human nature to which we are subjected in life.
Life.
To my mind the birth of a child is not a breach of the law of continuity, but on that very ground I must admit the previous existence of the Self that is here born as a child, and which brings with it into this new order of things simply its Self-consciousness, and even that not developed but undeveloped potentia, in a sleep. When afterwards a child awakes to self-consciousness, that is really its remembrance of its former existence. The Self which it becomes conscious of, remember, is in its essence not of this world only, but of a former as well as of a future world. This constitutes in fact the only distinct remembrance in every human being of a former life. There are besides indistinct remembrances of his former existence, viz. the many dispositions which every thinking man finds in himself, and which are not simply the result of the impressions of this world on a so-called tabula rasa. Unless we begin life as tabula rasa we begin it as tabula preparata, as leukomata, and whatever colour or disposition, or talent, or temperament, whatever there is inexplicable in each individual, that he will perceive, or possibly remember, as the result of the continuity between his present and former life.
MS.
What, then, is that which we call Death? Separation of the Self from a living body. If so, does the body die because the Self leaves it, or does the Self leave the body because it dies? What has life to do with the Self? Has the Self which for a time dwells in a living body anything to do with what we call the life of that body? Does the Self take possession of a body because it lives, or does the body live because the Self has taken possession of it? The difficulty arises from our vague conception of life. Life is only a mode of existence. Existence is possible without what we call life, not life without existence. To live means to be able to absorb, but who or what is able? The Self exists, it is sentient, capable of perception by becoming embodied. It is perceptive because sentient, it is conceptive because perceptive. The difficulty lies in the embodiment. It is there where all philosophy becomes ridiculous.
MS.
Knowledge belongs to the Self alone, call it what we will. The nerve fibres might vibrate as often as they pleased, millions and millions of times in a second; they could never produce the sensation of red if there were no Self as the receiver and illuminator, the translator of these vibrations of ether; this Self that alone receives, alone illumines, alone knows, and of which we can say nothing more than that it exists, that it perceives, and as the Indian philosophers add, that it is blessed, i.e. that it is complete in itself, serene, and eternal.
Silesian Horseherd.
Nothing eternal can have a beginning, and there can be no immortal life after death, unless our true immortal life has been realised here on earth. Hindu philosophers called those who had realised their true, immortal, eternal, or divine Self 'free while living.'
MS.
SORROW AND SUFFERING
How mysterious all this suffering is, particularly when it produces such prostration that it must lose all that elevating power which one knows suffering does exercise in many cases. It seems sometimes as if a large debt of suffering had to be paid off, and that some are chosen to pay a large, very large sum, so that others may go free. We have our own burden to bear, but it is a burden that seems to make other things easy to bear—it strengthens even when it seems to crush. But how could one bear that complete prostration of all powers which must make death seem so much preferable to life. And yet life goes on, and people care about a hundred little things, and break their hearts if they do not get them.
MS.
Such trials as you have had to pass through are not sent without a purpose, and if you say that they have changed your views of life, such a change in a character like yours can only be a change in advance, a firmer faith in those truths which have been revealed to the dim sight of human nature, a stronger will to resist all falsehood and tampering with the truth, and a deeper conviction that we owe our life to Him who has given it, and that we must fight His battle when He calls us to do it.
MS.
God knows that we want rain and storm as much as sunshine, and He sends us both as seems best to His love and wisdom. When all breaks down He lifts us up. But when we feel quite crushed and forsaken and alone, we then feel the real presence of our truest Friend, who, whether by joys or sorrows, is always calling us to Him, and leading us to that true Home where we shall find Him, and in Him all we loved, with Him all we believed, and through Him all we hoped for and aspired to on earth. Our broken hearts are the truest earnest of everlasting life.
Life.
We must submit, but we must feel it a great blessing to be able to submit, to be able to trust that infinite Love which embraces us on all sides, which speaks to us through every flower and every worm, which always shows us beauty and perfection, which never mars, never destroys, never wastes, never deceives, never mocks.
MS.
There is but one help and one comfort in these trials, that is, to know by whom they are sent. If one knows that nothing can happen to us without Him, one does not feel quite helpless, even under the greatest terrors of this life.
MS.
How little one thinks that many trials and afflictions may come upon us any day. One lives as if life were to last for ever, and as if we should never part with those who are most dear to us. Life would be intolerable were it otherwise, but how little one is prepared for what life really is.
MS.
Why is there so much suffering in this world? I cannot think it improves us much, and yet it must have its purpose. All these are questions far too high for us—we are like children, and more than children, when we come to think of them. All we know is that where we catch a glimpse of God's handiwork, either in the natural or moral world, it is so wonderfully perfect, so beyond all our measures, that we feel safe as in a good ship, however rough the sea may be. Whatever we may believe, or hope, or wish for, will be far exceeded by that Higher Will and Wisdom which supports all, even us little souls.
MS.
The sorrows of life are inevitable, but they are hard to bear, for all that. They would be harder still if we did not see their purpose of reminding us that our true life is not here, but that we are here on a voyage that may be calm or stormy, and which is to teach us what all sailors have to learn, courage, perseverance, kindness, and in the end complete trust in a Higher Power.
MS.
Sorrow is necessary and good for men; one learns to understand that each joy must be indemnified by suffering, that each new tie which knits our hearts to this life must be loosed again, and the tighter and the closer it was knit, the keener the pain of loosening it. Should we then attach our hearts to nothing, and pass quietly and unsympathetically through this world, as if we had nothing to do with it? We neither could nor ought to act so. Nature itself knits the first tie between parents and children, and new ties through our whole life. We are not here for reward, for the enjoyment of undisturbed peace or from mere accident, but for trial, for improvement, perhaps for punishment; for the only union which can secure the happiness of men, the union between our Self and God's Self, is broken, or at least obscured, by our birth, and the highest object of our life is to find this bond again, to remain ever conscious of it and hold fast to it in life and in death. This rediscovery of the eternal union between God and man constitutes true religion among all people.
Life.
Every one carries a grave of lost hope in his soul, but he covers it over with cold marble, or with green boughs. On sad days one likes to go alone to this God's acre of the soul, and weep there, but only in order to return full of comfort and hope to those who are left to us.
Life.
The sorrows of life, like all other things, pass away, and the larger the number who await us beyond, the easier the parting from those we leave behind.
Life.
Grief is a sweet remembrance of happiness that was.
MS.
There is the old riddle always before me, why was ... taken from me? Human understanding has no answer for it, and yet I feel as certain as I can feel of anything that as it is, it is good, it is best, better than anything I can wish for. One feels one's own ignorance why what seems so right and natural should not be, and yet one knows it could not be. One hides one's head in the arms of a Higher Power, a Friend, a Father, and more than a Father. Wait, and you will know. Work, and you will be able to bear it.
MS.
People think that grief is pain, but it is not so: Grief, the absorption in the quiet recollection of what was, but is no longer, is a pleasure, a consolation, a blessing.
MS.
Those who would comfort us by bidding us forget our grief, and join their happy gatherings, do not know what comfort is. Hearts which have suffered have a right to what the world may call grief and sorrow, but what is really a quiet communion with those whom we love, and whom we can find no longer among the laughter of the happy.
MS.
What can we pray for? Not for special gifts, but only for God's mercy. We do not know what is good for us, and for others. What would become of the world if all our prayers were granted? And yet it is good to pray—that is, to live in all our joys and sorrows with God, that unknown God whom we cannot reason with, but whom we can love and trust. Human misery, outward and inward, is certainly a great problem, and yet one knows from one's own life how just the heaviest burdens have been blessings. The soul must be furrowed if it is to bear fruit.
MS.
What is the tenure of all our happiness? Are we not altogether at the mercy of God? Would it not be fearful to live for one day unless we knew, and saw, and felt His Presence and Wisdom and Love encompassing us on all sides? If we once feel that, then even death, even the death of those we love best and who love us best, loses much of its terror: it is part and parcel of one great system of which we see but a small portion here, and which without death, without that bridge of which we see here but the first arch, would seem to be a mere mockery. That is why I said to you it is well that human art cannot prolong our life for ever, and in that sentiment I should think we both agree. I have felt much for you, more than I cared to say. We are trained differently, but we are all trained for some good purpose, and the suffering which you have undergone is to me like deep ploughing, the promise of a rich harvest.
Life.
There is a large and secret brotherhood in this world, the members of which easily recognise each other, without any visible outward sign. It is the band of mourners. The members of this brotherhood need not necessarily wear mourning; they can even rejoice with the joyful, and they seldom sigh or weep when others see them. But they recognise and understand each other, without uttering a word, like tired wanderers who, climbing a steep mountain, overtake other tired wanderers, and pause, and then silently go on again, knowing that they all hope to see the same glorious sunset high up above. Their countenances reflect a soft moonlight; when they speak, one thinks of the whispering of the leaves of a beech forest after a warm spring shower, and as the rays of the sun light up the drops of dew with a thousand colours, and drink them up from the green grass, a heavenly light seems to shine through the tears of the mourners, to lighten them, and lovingly kiss them away. Almost every one, sooner or later, enters this brotherhood, and those who enter it early may be considered fortunate, for they learn, before it is too late, that all which man calls his own is only lent him for a short time, and the ivy of their affections does not cling so deeply and so strongly to the old walls of earthly happiness.
Life.
We cannot know, we cannot name the Divine, nor can we understand its ways as manifested in nature and human life. We ask why there should be suffering and sin, we cannot answer the question. All we can say is, it is willed to be so. Some help our human understanding may find, however, by simply imagining what would have been our life if the power of evil had not been given us. It seems to me that in that case we, human beings as we are, should never have had a conception of what is meant by good: we should have been like the birds in the air, happier, it may be, but better, no. Or if suffering had always been reserved for the bad, we should all have become the most cunning angels. Often when I am met by a difficulty which seems insoluble, I try that experiment, and say, Let us see what would happen if it were otherwise. Still, I confess there is some suffering on earth which goes beyond all understanding, which even the truest Christian love and charity seems unable to remove or mitigate. It can teach us one thing only, that we are blind, and that in the darkness of the night we lose our faith in a Dawn which will drive away darkness, fear, and despair. Much, no doubt, could be done even by what is now called Communism, but what in earlier days was called Christianity. And then one wonders whether the world can ever again become truly Christian. I dare not call myself a Christian. I have hardly met the men in all my life who deserved that name. Again, I say, let us do our best, knowing all the time that our best is a mere nothing.
Life.