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Discovering Diverse Content Through
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 XII

SOUL AND SPIRIT

Q. 12. What is to be said of man’s higher

faculties?
A. The faculties and achievements of the
highest among mankind—in Art, in Science,
in Philosophy, and in Religion—are not
explicable as an outcome of a struggle for
existence. Something more than mere life is
possessed by us—something represented by
the words “mind” and “soul” and “spirit.” On
one side we are members of the animal
kingdom; on another we are associates in a
loftier type of existence, and are linked with
the Divine.
 CLAUSE XII

The highest of those who have walked the earth reveal to us what
we, too, may some day be: they link us with the Divine, and teach
us that, however pathetically defaced by our infirmities and distorted
by our imperfections, we may yet reflect the image of God.
[Part of the following explanation is based upon a study of certain
facts not yet fully incorporated into orthodox science, nor fully
recognised by philosophy: it must therefore be regarded as
speculation.]
This idea, which permeates literature—that man has a spiritual as
well as a material origin—emphasises from another point of view the
doctrine of the Fall. For the utilisation of a material body, of animal
ancestry, exposes the individual to much trial and temptation, and
makes him aware of a contest between the flesh and the spirit, or
between a lower and a higher self, which constitutes the element of
truth in the otherwise mistaken doctrine of “original,” or inherited, or
imputed sin. Vicarious sin is a legal fiction: so is vicarious
punishment; vicarious suffering is a reality. The mother of a ne’er-
do-well knows it: it is undergone by the children of vicious parents;
the highest souls have felt it on behalf of the race of man; but it is
not artificial or imputed suffering, it is genuine and real; and
experience shows that it can have a redeeming virtue.
The double nature of man,—the inherited animal tendencies, and
the inspired spiritual aspirations, if they can both be fully admitted,
reconcile many difficulties. Our body is an individual collocation of
cells, which began to form and grow together at a certain date, and
will presently be dispersed; but the constructing and dominating
reality, called our “soul,” did not then begin to exist; nor will it cease
with bodily decay. Interaction with the material world then began,
and will then cease, but we ourselves in essence are persistent and
immortal. Even our personality and individuality may be persistent, if
our character be sufficiently developed to possess a reality of its
own. In our present state, truly, the memory of our past is imperfect
or non-existent; but when we waken and shake off the tenement of
matter, our memory and consciousness may enlarge too, as we
rejoin the larger self of which only a part is now manifested in
mortal flesh.
The ancient doctrine of a previous state of existence, of which we
are now entranced into forgetfulness, is inculcated in the familiar
lines—
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home,”

the idea being that the forgetfulness is not complete, especially

during infancy; nor need it be complete in moments of inspiration.
Myers’ doctrine of the subliminal self is an expanded and modified
form of this idea, and is to a large extent apparently justified by a
certain range of psychological inquiry: though Myers lays stress, not
on memory of a past, but on a present occasional
intercommunication between the part and the whole.
The Platonic doctrine of reminiscence exhibits one variety of the idea
of pre-existence, though in a necessarily inaccurate and somewhat
fanciful form—as though infants were a stage higher in the scale
than grown men. Such an idea would involve the old mistaken
postulate of initial perfection, which was made long ago concerning
the race: whereas the truth was innocency, not perfection. But the
idea that nothing less than the whole of a personality must be
incarnated—even in the body of an infant—leads to innumerable
difficulties;—it does not even escape unanswerable questions about
trivialities such as the moment of arrival; and it is responsible for
much biological scepticism concerning the existence of any soul at
all. Whereas, on the strength of the experience that all processes in
nature are really gradual, the idea of gradual incarnation—increasing
as the brain and body grow, but never attaining any approach to
completeness even in the greatest of men—sets one above
innumerable petty difficulties, and to me seems an opening in the
direction of the truth. On this view, the portion of larger self
incarnated in an infant or a feeble-minded person is but small: in
normal cases, more appears as the body is fitted to receive it. In
some cases much appears, thus constituting a great man; while in
others, again, a link of occasional communication is left open
between the part and the whole—producing what we call “genius.”
Second childishness is the gradual abandonment of the material
vehicle, as it gets worn out or damaged. But, during the episode of
this life, man is never a complete self, his roots are in another order
of being, he is moving about in worlds not realised, he is as if
walking in a vain shadow and disquieting himself in vain.
It may be objected that our present existence is very far from being
a dream or trance-like condition, that we are very wide awake to the
“realities” of the world, and very keen about “things of importance”;
that an analogy drawn from the memories of hypnotic patients and
multiple personalities, and other pathological cases, is sure to be
misleading. It may be so, the idea is admittedly of the nature of
speculation; but the greatest of poets lends his countenance to the
notion that phenomena and appearances are not ultimate realities,
that our present life is not unlike the state of a sleep-walker—that
we slept to enter it, and must sleep again before we wake—
“We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
As to the question whether we ever again live on earth, it appears
unlikely on this view that a given developed individual will appear
again in unmodified form. If my present self is a fraction of a larger
self, some other fraction of that larger self may readily be thought of
as appearing,—to gain practical experience in the world of matter,
and to return with developed character to the whole whence it
sprang. And this operation may be repeated frequently; but these
hypothetical fractional appearances can hardly be spoken of as
reincarnations. We must not dogmatise, however, on the subject,
and the case of the multitudes at present thwarted and returned at
infancy may demand separate treatment. It may be that the abortive
attempts at development on the part of individuals are like the
waves lapping up the sides of a boulder and being successively flung
back; while the general advance of the race is typified by the steady
rising of the tide.

Soul and Body

The philosophic doctrine of the “self” on this view is a difficult one,

and involves much study. As here stated, the form is sure to be
crude and imperfect. Philosophy resents any sharp distinction
between soul and body, between indwelling self and material
vehicle. It prefers to treat the self as a whole, an individual unit;
though it may admit the actual agglomeration of material particles to
be transient and temporary. The word “self” can be used in a
narrower or in a broader sense. It may signify the actual continuity
of personality and memory whereof we are conscious; or it may
signify a larger and vaguer underlying reality, of which the conscious
self is but a fraction. The narrower sense is wide enough to include
the whole man, both soul and body, as we know him; but the phrase
“subliminal self” covers ideas extending hypothetically beyond that.
The idea of Redemption or Regeneration, in its highest and most
Christian form, is applicable to both soul and body. The life of Christ
shows us that the whole man can be regenerated as he stands; that
we have not to wait for a future state, that the Kingdom of Heaven
is in our midst and may be assimilated by us here and now.
The term “salvation” should not be limited to the soul, but should
apply to the whole man. What kind of transfiguration may be
possible, or may have been possible, in the case of a perfectly
emancipated and glorified body, we do not yet know.
In a still larger sense these terms apply to the whole race of man;
and for the salvation of mankind individual loss and suffering have
been gladly expended. Not the individual alone, but the race also,
can be adjured to realise some worthy object for all its striving, to
open its eyes to more glorious possibilities than it has yet perceived,
to
“... climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou
Look higher, then—perchance—thou mayest—beyond
A hundred ever-rising mountain lines,
And past the range of Night and Shadow—see
The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day
Strike on the Mount of Vision!”
 XIII

GRACE

Q. 13. Is man helped in his struggle

upward?
A. There is a Power in the Universe vastly
beyond our comprehension; and we trust
and believe that it is a Good and Loving
Power, able and willing to help us and all
creatures, and to guide us wisely, without
detriment to our incipient freedom. This
Loving-kindness continually surrounds us; in
it we live and have our real being; it is the
mainspring of joy and love and beauty, and
we call it the Grace of God. It sustains and
enriches all worlds, and may take a
multiplicity of forms, but it was specially
manifested to dwellers on this planet in the
life of Jesus Christ, through whose spirit and
living influence the race of man may hope
to rise to heights at present inaccessible.
 CLAUSE XIII

The guidance exercised by the Divine Spirit, by which we are

completely surrounded, is not of the nature of compulsion; it is only
a leading and helping influence, which we are able to resist if we
choose.
The problem of manufacturing free creatures with a will of their
own, to be led, not forced, into right action, is a problem of a
different nature from any of those that have ever appealed to
human power and knowledge. What we are accustomed to make is
mechanism, of various kinds; and the essential difficulty of the
higher problem is so obscure to us that some impatient and
unimaginative persons cry out against its slowness, and wonder that
everything is not compulsorily made perfect at once. But we can see
that the kind of perfection thus easily attainable would be of an
utterly inferior kind.
It is to be supposed that incarnation, or a connexion between
consciousness and material mechanism, is auxiliary to the difficult
process of evolution of free beings, thus indicated; and it is probable
that matter is thus an instrument of lofty spiritual purpose. Some
religious systems have failed to perceive this, and have depreciated
matter and flesh as intrinsically evil.
One important feature of Christianity is that it recognises as good
the connexion between spirit and matter, and emphasises the
importance of both, when properly regarded. It is not mystical and
spiritual alone, nor is it material alone; but it tends to unify these
two extremes, and to place in due position both soul and body: the
material being utilised to make manifest the spiritual, and being
dominated by it.
The whole idea of the Incarnation, as well as some of the miracles
and the sacraments, are expressive of this wide and comprehensive
character of the Christian religion.
It recognises the wonder and beauty of the animal body, destined to
be the scene of extraordinary spiritual triumphs in the long course of
time; and it teaches
“That none but Gods could build this house of ours,
So beautiful, vast, various, so beyond
All work of man, yet, like all work of man,
A beauty with defect—till That which knows,
And is not known, but felt thro’ what we feel
Within ourselves is highest, shall descend
On this half-deed, and shape it at the last
According to the Highest in the Highest.”

Christianity is a planetary and human religion: being the revelation

of those aspects of Godhead which are most intelligible and helpful
to us in our present stage of development. But it is more than a
revelation, it is a manifestation of some of the attributes of Godhead
in the form of humanity.
The statement that Christ and God are one, is not really a statement
concerning Christ, but a statement concerning what we understand
by God. It is useless, and in the literal sense preposterous, to explain
the known in terms of the unknown: the converse is the right
method. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Every son of
man is potentially also a son of God, but the union was deepest and
completest in the Galilean.
The ideas of incarnation and revelation are not confined to the
domain of religion; they are common to music and letters and
science: in all we recognise “a flash of the will that can,”
“All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,
All through my soul that praised, as the wish flowed visibly forth.”
The spirit of Beethoven is incarnate in his music; and he that hath
heard the Fifth Symphony hath heard Beethoven.
The Incarnation of the Divine Spirit in man is the central feature of
Terrestrial History. It is through man, and the highest man, that the
revelation of what is meant by Godhead must necessarily come. The
world—even the common everyday world—has accepted this, and is
able to perceive its appropriateness and truth; and the traditional
song of the angels, at the epoch of the Birth—
“Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace, goodwill among
men,”

is still heard in the land. Whenever there is war at Christmas-time it

is universally felt to be incongruous. Goodwill among men is
conspicuous in cessation of private feuds, in overladen postbags, in
family reunions and Christmas hampers and all manner of homely
frivolities.
The Incarnation doctrine is the glorification of human effort, and the
sanctification of childhood and simplicity of life; but it is a pity to
reduce it to a dogma. It is well to leave something to intuitive
apprehension, and to let the life and death of Christ gradually teach
their own eloquent lesson without premature dogmatic assistance.
From that event we date our history, and the strongest believer in
immanent Godhead can admit that the life of Jesus was an explicit
and clear-voiced message of love to this planet from the Father of
all. Naturally our conception of Godhead is still only indistinct and
partial, but, so far as we are as yet able to grasp it, we must reach it
through recognition of the extent and intricacy of the Cosmos, and
more particularly through the highest type and loftiest spiritual
development of man himself.
The most essential element in Christianity is its conception of a
human God; of a God, in the first place, not apart from the Universe,
not outside it and distinct from it, but immanent in it; yet not
immanent only, but actually incarnate, incarnate in it and revealed in
the Incarnation. The nature of God is displayed in part by
everything, to those who have eyes to see, but is displayed most
clearly and fully by the highest type of existence, the highest
experience to which the process of evolution has so far opened our
senses.
“’Tis the sublime of man,
Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves
Part and proportion of one wondrous whole.”

The Humanity of God, the Divinity of man, is the essence of the

Christian revelation. It was truly a manifestation of Immanuel.
The Christian idea of God is not that of a being outside the universe,
above its struggles and advances, looking on and taking no part in
the process, solely exalted, beneficent, self-determined, and
complete. It is also that of a God who loves, who yearns, who
suffers, who keenly laments the rebellious and misguided activity of
the free agents brought into being by Himself as part of Himself,
who enters into the storm and conflict, and is subject to conditions
as the soul of it all.
This is the truth which has been reverberating down the ages ever
since; it has been the hidden inspiration of saint, apostle, prophet,
martyr, and, in however dim and vague a form, has given hope and
consolation to the unlettered and poverty-stricken millions:—A God
that could understand, that could suffer, that could sympathise, that
had felt the extremity of human anguish, the agony of bereavement,
had submitted even to the brutal hopeless torture of the innocent,
and had become acquainted with the pangs of death—this has been
the chief consolation of the Christian religion. This is the
extraordinary conception of Godhead to which we have thus far
risen. “This is My beloved Son.”
“Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by and by.” The
Christian God is revealed as the incarnate Spirit of humanity; or
rather the incarnate spirit of humanity is recognised as a real
intrinsic part of God. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”
 XIV

INSPIRATION

Q. 14. How may we become informed

concerning things too high for our own
knowledge?
A. We should strive to learn from the great
teachers, the prophets and poets and saints
of the human race, and should seek to
know and to interpret their inspired
writings.
 CLAUSE XIV

People at a low stage of development are liable to think that they

can arrive at truth by their unaided judgment and insight, and that
they need not concern themselves with the thoughts and
experiences of the past. Unconscious of any inspiration themselves,
they decline to believe in the possibility of such a thing, and regard it
as a fanciful notion of unpractical and dreamy people.
Great men, on the other hand, are the fingerposts and lodestars of
humanity; it is with their aid that we steer our course, if we are
wise, and the records of their thought and inspiration are of the
utmost value to us.
This is the meaning of literature in general, and of that mass of
ancient religious literature in particular, on which hundreds of
scholars have bestowed their best energies: now translated, bound
together, and handed down to us as the Canon of Scripture, of which
some portions are the most inspired writings yet achieved by
humanity. It is impossible for us to ignore the concurrent mass of
human testimony therein recorded, the substantial and general truth
of which has been vouched for by the prophets and poets and seers
of all time. Accordingly, if we are to form worthy beliefs regarding
the highest conceptions in the Universe, we must avail ourselves of
all this testimony; discriminating and estimating its relative value in
the light of our own judgment and experience, studying such works
and criticism as are accessible to us, asking for the guidance of the
Divine Spirit, and seeking with modest and careful patience to
apprehend something in the direction of the truth.
 XV

A CREED

Q. 15. What, then, do you reverently

believe can be deduced from a study of the
records and traditions of the past in the
light of the present?
A. I believe in one Infinite and Eternal
Being, a guiding and loving Father, in whom
all things consist.
I believe that the Divine Nature is specially
revealed to man through Jesus Christ our
Lord, who lived and taught and suffered in
Palestine 1900 years ago, and has since
been worshipped by the Christian Church as
the immortal Son of God, the Saviour of the
world.
I believe that the Holy Spirit is ever ready to
help us along the Way towards Goodness
and Truth; that prayer is a means of
communion between man and God; and
that it is our privilege through faithful
service to enter into the Life Eternal, the
Communion of Saints, and the Peace of
God.
 CLAUSE XV

Notes on the Creed

The three paragraphs correspond to the three aspects or

Personifications of Deity which have most impressed mankind,—
The Creating and Sustaining. The Sympathising and Suffering.
The Regenerating and Sanctifying. The first of the three clauses
tries to indicate briefly the cosmic, as well as the more humanly
intelligible, attributes of Deity; and to suggest an idea of creation
appropriate to the doctrine of Divine Immanence, as opposed to the
anthropomorphic notion of manufacture. The idea of evolution by
guiding and controlling Purpose is suggested, as well as the vital
conception of Fatherly Love.

In the second paragraph, Time and Place are explicitly mentioned in

order to emphasise the historical and human aspect of the Christian
manifestation of Godhead. This aspect is essential and easy to
appreciate, though its idealisation and full interpretation are difficult.
The step, from the bare historic facts to the idealisation of the
Fourth Gospel, has been the work of the Church, in the best sense
of that word, aided by the doctrines of the Logos and of
Immanence, elaborated by Philosophy. It all hangs together, when
properly grasped, and constitutes a luminous conception; but the
light thus shed upon the nature of Deity must not blind our eyes to
the simple human facts from which it originally emanated. The clear
and undoubted fact is that the founder of the Christian religion lived
on this earth a blameless life, taught and helped the poor who heard
him gladly, gathered to himself a body of disciples with whom he left
a message to mankind, and was put to death as a criminal
blasphemer, at the instigation of mistaken priests in the defence of
their own Order and privileges.
This monstrous wrong is regarded by some as having unconsciously
completed the salvation of the race; because of the consummation
of sacrifice, and because of the suffering of the innocent, which it
involved. The Jewish sacrificial system, and the priestly ceremony of
the scapegoat, seem to lead up to that idea; which was elaborated
by St. Paul with immense genius, and taught by S. Augustine.
Others attach more saving efficacy to the life, the example, and the
teachings, as recorded in the Gospels; and all agree that they are
important.
But in fact the whole is important: and at the foot of the Cross there
has been a perennial experience of relief and renovation. Sin being
the sense of imperfection, disunion, lack of harmony, the struggle
among the members that St. Paul for all time expressed;—there is
usually associated with it a sense of impotence, a recognition of the
impossibility of achieving peace and unity in one’s own person, a
feeling that aid must be forthcoming from a higher source. It is this
feeling which enables the spectacle of any noble self-sacrificing
human action to have an elevating effect, it is this which gropes
after the possibilities of the highest in human nature, it is a feeling
which for large tracts of this planet has found its highest stimulus
and completest satisfaction in the life and death of Christ.
The willingness of such a Being to share our nature, to live the life of
a peasant, and to face the horrible certainty of execution by torture,
in order personally to help those whom he was pleased to call his
brethren, is a race-asset which, however masked and overlaid with
foreign growths, yet gleams through every covering and suffuses the
details of common life with fragrance.
This conspicuously has been a redeeming, or rather a regenerating,
agency;—for by filling the soul with love and adoration and fellow-
feeling for the Highest, the old cravings have often been almost
hypnotically rendered distasteful and repellent, the bondage of sin
has been loosened from many a spirit, the lower entangled self has
been helped from the slough of despond and raised to the shores of
a larger hope, whence it can gradually attain to harmony and peace.
The invitation to the troubled soul—“Come, and find rest”—has
reference, not to relief from sin alone, but to all restlessness and
lack of trust. The Atonement removes the feeling of dislocation; it
induces a tranquil sense of security and harmony,—an assurance of
union with the Divine will.
Every form of Christianity aims at salvation for the race and for each
individual, both soul and body; but different versions differ as to the
means most efficient to this end. Varieties of Christianity can be
grouped under the symbolic names, Paul, James, Peter, and John;
with the dominating ideas of vicarious sacrifice, human effort,
Church ordinance, and loving-kindness, respectively.
In the coldest system of nomenclature these four chief varieties may
be styled, legal, ethical, ecclesiastical, and emotional, respectively.
More favourably regarded, the dominating ideas may be classified
thus:—
1. Faith in a divine scheme of redemption.
2. Simple life, social service, honesty, and virtue.
3. Spiritual sustenance by utilisation of means of grace.
4. Obedience, unworldliness, trust, and love.
With the treatment of these great themes, sectarian differences
begin: differences which seem beyond our power to reconcile. We
need not dwell on the differences, we would rather emphasise the
mass of agreement. Probably there is an element of truth in every
view that has long been held and found helpful by human beings,
however overlaid with superstition it may in some cases have
become; and probably also the truth is far from exhausted by any
one estimate of the essential feature of a Life which most of us can
agree to recognise as a revelation of the high-water-mark of
manhood, and a manifestation of the human attributes of God.
None of the above partially overlapping subdivisions of Christianity
equals in importance the overshadowing and dominating theory
emphasised in the above creed: namely, the idea of a veritable
incarnation of Divine Spirit—a visible manifestation of Deity
immanent in humanity. The facts of the life, testified to by witnesses
and idealised by philosophers and saints, have been transmitted
down the centuries by a continuous Church; though with a mingling
of superstition and error.
At present the process of interpretation has been accompanied by a
sad amount of discord and hostility, to the scandal of the Church;
but the future of religion shall not always be endangered by
suspicion and intolerance and narrowness among professed disciples
of truth. There must come a time when first a nation, and
afterwards the civilised world, shall awake and glory in the light of
the risen sun:—
“—A sun but dimly seen
Here, till the mortal morning mists of earth
Fade in the noon of heaven, when creed and race
Shall bear false witness, each of each, no more,
But find their limits by that larger light,
And overstep them, moving easily
Thro’ after-ages in the love of Truth,
The truth of Love.”

The emphasis laid by the above explanation on the conception of the

human nature incorporated into Godhead, is appropriate to this
country and to the Western World generally; but we thereby imply
no abuse of the religions of the East, in their proper place, any more
than of the religions of other planets. Silence concerning them is not
disrespectful. It is not to be supposed that any one world has a
monopoly of the Grace of God; nor does it exhaust every plan of
salvation. In estimating the value of another dispensation, or of any
ill-understood religion (and no one can perfectly understand and
appreciate more than one religion, if that, to the full), the old test is
the only valid one: Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of
thistles?

The third paragraph speaks of our progress along the Way of Truth
to goodness and beauty of Life, and of the assistance constantly
vouchsafed to our own efforts in that direction. It is not by our own
efforts alone that we can succeed, for we cannot tell what lies
before us, and we lack wisdom to foresee the consequences of
alternative courses of action,—one of which nevertheless we
instinctively feel to be right. Acts of self-will, and fanatical
determination, and impatience, may operate in the wrong direction
altogether; and effort so expended may be worse than wasted. But
if we submit ourselves wholly to a beneficent Power, and seek not
our own ends but the ends of the Guiding Spirit of all things, we
shall obtain peace in ourselves, and may hope to be used for
purposes beyond what we can ask or think. This kind of service is
what, in its several degrees, will be recognised by the Master as
“faithful”; and it is by being faithful in a few things that hereafter we
shall be found worthy of many things, and shall enter into the joy of
our Lord.
By the Holy Spirit is meant the living and immanent Deity at work in
the consciousness and experience of mankind,—the guider of human
history, the comforter of human sorrow, the revealer of truth, the
inspirer of faith and hope and love, the producer of life and joy and
beauty, the sustainer and enricher of existence, the Impersonation
of the Grace of God.
This mighty theme has been treated, in an initial manner, in
connexion with Clause XIII.
Supplementary questions will be asked concerning other terms in the
third paragraph; but as to the phrase with which the Creed
concludes—the Peace of God,—its meaning, we are well assured,
surpasses understanding, and can be felt only by experience; hence
no supplementary question is asked concerning that phrase.
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