DEATH
" What could be easier than to form a
catena of the most philosophical defenders of Christianity, who have exhausted
language in declaring the impotence of the unassisted intellect? Comte
has not more explicitly enounced the incapacity of man to deal with the
Absolute and the Infinite than the whole series of orthodox writers. Trust your
reason, we have been told till we are tired of the phrase, and you will become
Atheists or Agnostics. We take you at your word; we become Agnostics."
LESLIE STEPHEN.
"To be carnally minded is
Death."--Paul.
"I do not wonder at what men suffer, but I
wonder often at what they lose."--Ruskin.
"DEATH," wrote Paber, "is an unsurveyed
land, an unarranged Science." Poetry draws near Death only to hover over it for
a moment and withdraw in terror. History knows it simply as a universal fact.
Philosophy finds it among the mysteries of being, the one great mystery of
being not. All contributions to this dread theme are marked by an essential
vagueness, and every avenue of approach seems darkened by impenetrable
shadow.
But modern Biology has found it part of its work
to push its way into this silent land, and at last the world is confronted with
a scientific treatment of Death. Not that much is added to the old conception,
or much taken from it. What it is, this certain Death with its uncertain
issues, we know as little as before. But we can define more clearly and attach
a narrower meaning to the momentous symbol.
The interest of the investigation here
lies in the fact that Death is one of the outstanding things in Nature which
has an acknowledged spiritual equivalent. The prominence of the word in the
vocabulary of Revelation cannot be exaggerated. Next to Life the most pregnant
symbol in religion is its antithesis, Death. And from the time that "If thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" was heard in Paradise, this solemn word
has been linked with human interests of eternal moment.
Notwithstanding the unparalleled emphasis upon
this term in the Christian system, there is none more feebly expressive to the
ordinary mind. That mystery which surrounds the word in the natural world
shrouds only too completely its spiritual import. The reluctance which prevents
men from investigating the secrets of the King of Terrors is for a certain
length entitled to respect. But it has left theology with only the vaguest
materials to construct a doctrine which, intelligently enforced, ought to
appeal to all men with convincing power and lend the most effective argument to
Christianity. Whatever may have been its influence in the past, its threat is
gone for the modern world. The word has grown weak. Ignorance has robbed the
Grave of all its terror, and platitude despoilt Death of its sting. Death
itself is ethically dead. Which of us, for example, enters fully into the
meaning of words like these: "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while
she liveth"? Who allows adequate weight to the metaphor in the Pauline phrase,
"To be carnally minded is Death;" or in this, "The wages of sin is
Death"? Or what theology has translated into the language of human life
the terrific practical import of "Dead in trespasses and sins"? To seek to make
these phrases once more real and burning; to clothe time-worn formulae with
living truth; to put the deepest ethical meaning into the gravest symbol of
Nature, and fill up with its full consequence the darkest threat of
Revelation--these are the objects before us now.
What, then, is Death? Is it possible to define it
and embody its essential meaning in an intelligible proposition?
The most recent and the most scientific attempt
to investigate Death we owe to the biological studies of Mr. Herbert Spencer.
In his search for the meaning of Life the word Death crosses his path, and he
turns aside for a moment to define it. Of course what Death is depends upon
what Life is. Mr. Herbert Spencer's definition of Life, it is well known, has
been subjected to serious criticism. While it has shed much light on many of
the phenomena of Life, it cannot be affirmed that it has taken its place in
science as the final solution of the fundamental problem of biology. No
definition of Life, indeed, that has yet appeared can be said to be even
approximately correct. Its mysterious quality evades us; and we have to be
content with outward characteristics and accompaniments, leaving the thing
itself an unsolved riddle. At the same time Mr. Herbert Spencer's masterly
elucidation of the chief phenomena of Life has placed philosophy and science
under many obligations, and in the paragraphs which follow we shall have to
incur a further debt on behalf of religion.
The meaning of Death depending, as has been said,
on the meaning of life, we must first set ourselves to grasp the leading
characteristics which distinguish living things. To a physiologist the living
organism is distinguished from the not-living by the performance of certain
functions. These functions are four in number--Assimilation, Waste,
Reproduction, and Growth. Nothing could be a more interesting task than to
point out the co-relatives of these in the spiritual sphere, to show in what
ways the discharge of these functions represent the true manifestations of
spiritual life, and how the failure to perform them constitutes spiritual
Death. But it will bring us more directly to the specific subject before us if
we follow rather the newer biological lines of Mr. Herbert Spencer. According
to his definition, Life is "The definite combination of heterogeneous changes,
both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences
and sequences,"[55] or more shortly "The
continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations."[56] An example or two will render these
important statements at once intelligible.
The essential characteristic of a living
organism, according to these definitions, is that it is in vital connection
with its general surroundings. A human being, for instance, is in direct
contact with the earth and air, with all surrounding things, with the warmth of
the sun, with the music of birds, with the countless influences and activities
of nature and of his fellow-men. In biological language he is said thus to be
"in correspondence with his environment." He is, that is to say, in active and
vital connection with them, influencing them possibly, but especially being
influenced by them. Now it is in virtue of this correspondence that he is
entitled to be called alive. So long as he is in correspondence with any given
point of his environment, he lives. To keep up this correspondence is to keep
up life. If his environment changes he must instantly adjust himself to the
change. And he continues living only as long as he succeeds in adjusting
himself to the " simultaneous and successive changes in his environment" as
these occur. What is meant by a change in his environment may be understood
from an example, which will at the same time define more clearly the intimacy
of the relation between environment and organism. Let us take the case of a
civil-servant whose environment is a district in India. It is a region subject
to occasional and prolonged droughts resulting in periodical famines. When such
a period of scarcity arises, he proceeds immediately to adjust himself to this
external change. Having the power of locomotion, he may remove himself to a
more fertile district, or, possessing the means of purchase, he may add to his
old environment by importation the "external relations" necessary to continued
life. But if from any cause he fails to adjust himself to the altered
circumstances, his body is thrown out of correspondence with his environment,
his "internal relations" are no longer adjusted to his "external relations,"
and his life must cease.
In ordinary circumstances, and in health, the
human organism is in thorough correspondence with its surroundings; but when
any part of the organism by disease or accident is thrown out of
correspondence, it is in that relation dead.
This Death, this want of correspondence, may be
either partial or complete. Part of the organism may be dead to a part of the
environment, or the whole to the whole. Thus the victim of famine may have a
certain number of his correspondences arrested by the change in his
environment, but not all. Luxuries which he once enjoyed no longer enter the
country; animals which once furnished his table are driven from it. These still
exist, but they are beyond the limit of his correspondence. In relation to
these things therefore he is dead. In one sense it might be said that it was
the environment which played him false; in another, that it was his own
organization--that he was unable to adjust himself, or did not. But, however
caused, he pays the penalty with partial Death.
Suppose next the case of a man who is thrown out
of correspondence with a part of his environment by some physical infirmity.
Let it be that by disease or accident he has been deprived of the use of his
ears. The deaf man, in virtue of this imperfection, is thrown out of rapport
with a large and well-defined part of the environment, namely, its sounds.
With regard to that "external relation," therefore, he is no longer living.
Part of him may truly be held to be insensible or "Dead." A man who is also
blind is thrown out of correspondence with another large part of his
environment. The beauty of sea and sky, the forms of cloud and mountain, the
features and gestures of friends, are to him as if they were not. They are
there, solid and real, but not to him; he is still further "Dead." Next, let it
be conceived, the subtle finger of cerebral disease lays hold of him. His whole
brain is affected, and the sensory nerves, the medium of communication with the
environment, cease altogether to acquaint him with what is doing in the outside
world. The outside world is still there, but not to him; he is still further
"Dead." And so the death of parts goes on. He becomes less and less alive.
"Were the animal frame not the complicated machine we have seen it to be, death
might come as a simple and gradual dissolution, the `sans everything' being the
last stage of the successive loss of fundamental powers."[57] But finally some important part of the mere animal
framework that remains breaks down. The correlation with the other parts is
very intimate, and the stoppage of correspondence with one means an
interference with the work of the rest. Something central has snapped, and all
are thrown out of work. The lungs refuse to correspond with the air, the heart
with the blood. There is now no correspondence whatever with environment--the
thing, for it is now a thing, is Dead.
This then is Death; "part of the framework breaks
down," "something has snapped"--these phrases by which we describe the phases
of death yield their full meaning. They are different ways of saying that
"correspondence" has ceased. And the scientific meaning of Death now becomes
clearly intelligible. Dying is that breakdown in an organism which throws it
out of correspondence with some necessary part of the environment. Death is the
result produced, the want of correspondence. We do not say that this is
all that is involved. But this is the root idea of Death--Failure to adjust
internal relations to external relations, failure to repair the broken inward
connection sufficiently to enable it to correspond again with the old
surroundings. These preliminary statements may be fitly closed with the words
of Mr. Herbert Spencer: "Death by natural decay occurs because in old age the
relations between assimilation, oxidation, and genesis of force going on in the
organism gradually fall out of correspondence with the relations between oxygen
and food and absorption of heat by the environment. Death from disease arises
either when the organism is congenitally defective in its power to balance the
ordinary external actions by the ordinary internal actions, or when there has
taken place some unusual external action to which there was no answering
internal action. Death by accident implies some neighbouring mechanical changes
of which the causes are either unnoticed from inattention, or are so intricate
that their results cannot be foreseen, and consequently certain relations in
the organism are not adjusted to the relations in the environment."[58]
With the help of these plain biological terms we
may now proceed to examine the parallel phenomenon of Death in the spiritual
world. The factors with which we have to deal are two in number as
before--Organism and Environment. The relation between them may once more be
denominated by "correspondence." And the truth to be emphasised resolves itself
into this, that Spiritual Death is a want of correspondence between the
organism and the spiritual environment.
What is the spiritual environment? This term
obviously demands some further definition. For Death is a relative term. And
before we can define Death in the spiritual world we must first apprehend the
particular relation with reference to which the expression is to be employed.
we shall best reach the nature of this relation by considering for a moment the
subject of environment generally. By the natural environment we mean the entire
surroundings of the natural man, the entire external world in which he lives
and moves and has his being. It is not involved in the idea that either with
all or part of this environment he is in immediate correspondence. Whether he
correspond with it or not, it is there. There is in fact a conscious
environment and an environment of which he is not conscious; and it must be
borne in mind that the conscious environment is not all the environment that
is. All that surrounds him, all that environs him, conscious or unconscious, is
environment. The moon and stars are part of it, though in the daytime he may
not see them. The polar regions are parts of it, though he is seldom aware of
their influence. In its widest sense environment simply means all else that
is.
Now it will next be manifest that different
organisms correspond with this environment in varying degrees of completeness
or incompleteness. At the bottom of the biological scale we find organisms
which have only the most limited correspondence with their surroundings. A
tree, for example, corresponds with the soil about its stem, with the sunlight,
and with the air in contact with its leaves. But it is shut off by its
comparatively low development from a whole world to which higher forms of life
have additional access. The want of locomotion alone circumscribes most
seriously its area of correspondence, so that to a large part of surrounding
nature it may truly be said to be dead. So far as consciousness is concerned,
we should be justified indeed in saying that it was not alive at all. The
murmur of the stream which bathes its roots affects it not. The marvellous
insect-life beneath its shadow excites in it no wonder. The tender maternity of
the bird which has its nest among its leaves stirs no responsive sympathy. It
cannot correspond with those things. To stream and insect and bird it is
insensible, torpid, dead. For this is Death, this irresponsiveness.
The bird, again, which is higher in the scale of
life, corresponds with a wider environment. The stream is real to it, and the
insect. It knows what lies behind the hill; it listens to the love-song of its
mate. And to much besides beyond the simple world of the tree this higher
organism is alive. The bird we should say is more living than the tree; it has
a correspondence with a larger area of environment. But this bird-life is not
yet the highest life. Even within the immediate bird-environment there is much
to which the bird must still be held to be dead. Introduce a higher organism,
place man himself within this same environment, and see how much more living he
is. A hundred things which the bird never saw in insect, stream, and tree
appeal to him. Each single sense has something to correspond with. Each faculty
finds an appropriate exercise. Man is a mass of correspondences, and because of
these, because he is alive to countless objects and influences to which lower
organisms are dead, he is the most living of all creatures.
The relativity of Death will now have become
sufficiently obvious. Man being left out of account, all organisms are seen as
it were to be partly living and partly dead. The tree, in correspondence with a
narrow area of environment, is to that extent alive; to all beyond, to the all
but infinite area beyond, it is dead. A still wider portion of this vast area
is the possession of the insect and the bird. Their's also, nevertheless, is
but a little world, and to an immense further area insect and bird are dead.
All organisms likewise are living and dead--living to all within the
circumference of their correspondences, dead to all beyond. As we rise in the
scale of life, however, it will be observed that the sway of Death is gradually
weakened. More and more of the environment becomes accessible as we ascend, and
the domain of life in this way slowly extends in ever-widening circles. But
until man appears there is no organism to correspond with the whole
environment. Till then the outermost circles have no correspondents. To the
inhabitants of the innermost spheres they are as if they were not.
Now follows a momentous question. Is man in
correspondence with the whole environment? When we reach the highest living
organism, is the final blow dealt to the kingdom of Death? Has the last acre of
the infinite area been taken in by his finite faculties?. Is his conscious
environment the whole environment? Or is there, among these outermost circles,
one which with his multitudinous correspondences he fails to reach? If so, this
is Death. The question of Life or Death to him is the question of the amount of
remaining environment he is able to compass. If there be one circle or one
segment of a circle which he yet fails to reach, to correspond with, to know,
to be influenced by, he is, with regard to that circle or segment, dead.
What then, practically, is the state of the case?
Is man in correspondence with the whole environment or is he not? There is but
one answer. He is not. Of men generally it cannot be said that they are in
living contact with that part of the environment which is called the spiritual
world. In introducing this new term spiritual world, observe, we are not
interpolating a new factor. This is an essential part of the old idea. We have
been following out an ever-widening environment from point to point, and now we
reach the outermost zones. The spiritual world is simply the outermost segment,
circle, or circles, of the natural world. for purposes of convenience we
separate the two just as we separate the animal world from the plant. But the
animal world and the plant world are the same world. They are different parts
of one environment. And the natural and spiritual are likewise one. The inner
circles are called the natural, the outer the spiritual. And we call them
spiritual simply because they are beyond us or beyond a part of us. What we
have correspondence with, that we call natural; what we have little or no
correspondence with, that we call spiritual. But when the appropriate
corresponding organism appears, the organism, that is, which can freely
communicate with these outer circles, the distinction necessarily disappears.
The spiritual to it becomes the outer circle of the natural.
Now of the great mass of living organisms, of the
great mass of men, is it not to be affirmed that they are out of correspondence
with this outer circle? Suppose, to make the final issue more real, we give
this outermost circle of environment a name. Suppose we call it God. Suppose
also we substitute a word for "correspondence" to express more intimately the
personal relation. Let us call it Communion. We can now determine accurately
the spiritual relation of different sections of mankind. Those who are in
communion with God live, those who are not are dead.
The extent or depth of this communion, the
varying degrees of correspondence in different individuals, and the less or
more abundant life which these result in, need not concern us for the present.
The task we have set ourselves is to investigate the essential nature of
Spiritual Death. And we have found it to consist in a want of communion with
God. The unspiritual man is he who lives in the circumscribed environment of
this present world. "She that liveth in pleasure is Dead while she liveth." "To
be carnally minded is Death." To be carnally minded, translated into the
language of science, is to be limited in one's correspondences to the
environment of the natural man. It is no necessary part of the conception that
the mind should be either purposely irreligious, or directly vicious. The mind
of the flesh, , by its very nature, limited capacity, and time-ward
tendency, is Death. This earthly mind may be of noble calibre, enriched by
culture, high toned, virtuous and pure. But if it know not God? What though its
correspondences reach to the stars of heaven or grasp the magnitudes of Time
and Space? The stars of heaven are not heaven. Space is not God. This mind,
certainly, has life, life up to its level. There is no trace of Death. Possibly
too, it carries its deprivation lightly, and, up to its level, lives content.
We do not picture the possessor of this carnal mind as in any sense a monster.
We have said he may be high-toned, virtuous, and pure. The plant is not a
monster because it is dead to the voice of the bird; nor is he a monster who is
dead to the voice of God. The contention at present simply is that he is
Dead.
We do not need to go to Revelation for the
proof of this. That has been rendered unnecessary by the testimony of the Dead
themselves. Thousands have uttered themselves upon their relation to the
Spiritual World, and from their own lips we have the proclamation of their
Death. The language of theology in describing the state of the natural man is
often regarded as severe. The Pauline anthropology has been challenged as an
insult to human nature. Culture has opposed the doctrine that "The natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto
him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." And
even some modern theologies have refused to accept the most plain of the
aphorisms of Jesus, that "Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom
of God." But this stern doctrine of the spiritual deadness of humanity is no
mere dogma of a past theology. The history of thought during the present
century proves that the world has come round spontaneously to the position of
the first. One of the ablest philosophical schools of the day erects a whole
antichristian system on this very doctrine. Seeking by means of it to sap the
foundation of spiritual religion, it stands unconsciously as the most
significant witness for its truth. What is the creed of the Agnostic, but the
confession of the spiritual numbness of humanity? The negative doctrine which
it reiterates with such sad persistency, what is it but the echo of the oldest
of scientific and religious truths? And what are all these gloomy and
rebellious infidelities, these touching, and too sincere confessions of
universal nescience, but a protest against this ancient law of Death?
The Christian apologist never further misses the
mark than when he refuses the testimony of the Agnostic to himself. When the
Agnostic tells me he is blind and deaf, dumb, torpid and dead to the spiritual
world, I must believe him. Jesus tells me that. Paul tells me that. Science
tells me that. He knows nothing of this outermost circle; and we are compelled
to trust his sincerity as readily when he deplores it as if, being a man
without an ear, he professed to know nothing of a musical world, or being
without taste, of a world of art. The nescience of the Agnostic philosophy is
the proof from experience that to be carnally minded is Death. Let the
theological value of the concession be duly recognised. It brings no solace to
the unspiritual man to be told he is mistaken. To say he is self-deceived is
neither to compliment him nor Christianity. He builds in all sincerity who
raises his altar to the Unknown God. He does not know God. With all his
marvellous and complex correspondences, he is still one correspondence
short.
It is a point worthy of special note that the
proclamation of this truth has always come from science rather than from
religion. Its general acceptance by thinkers is based upon the universal
failure of a universal experiment. The statement, therefore, that the natural
man discerneth not the things of the spirit, is never to be charged against the
intolerance of theology. There is no point at which theology has been more
modest than here. It has left the preaching of a great fundamental truth almost
entirely to philosophy and science. And so very moderate has been its tone, so
slight has been the emphasis placed upon the paralysis of the natural with
regard to the spiritual, that it may seem to some to have been intolerantly
tolerant. No harm certainly could come now, no offence could be given to
science, if religion asserted more clearly its right to the spiritual world.
Science has paved the way for the reception of one of the most revolutionary
doctrines of Christianity; and if Christianity refuses to take advantage of the
opening it will manifest a culpable want of confidence in itself. There never
was a time when its fundamental doctrines could more boldly be proclaimed, or
when they could better secure the respect and arrest the interest of
Science.
To all this, and apparently with force, it may,
however, be objected that to every man who truly studies Nature there is a God.
Call Him by whatever name--a Creator, a Supreme Being, a Great First Cause, a
Power that makes for Righteousness--Science has a God; and he who believes in
this, in spite of all protest, possesses a theology. "If we will look at
things, and not merely at words, we shall soon see that the scientific man has
a theology and a God, a most impressive theology, a most awful and glorious
God. I say that man believes in a God, who feels himself in the presence of a
Power which is not himself, and is immeasurably above himself, a Power in the
contemplation of which he is absorbed, in the knowledge of which he finds
safety and happiness. And such now is Nature to the scientific man."[59] Such now, we humbly submit, is Nature to
very few. Their own confession is against it. That they are "absorbed" in the
contemplation we can well believe. That they might "find safety and happiness"
in the knowledge of Him is also possible--if they had it. But this is just what
they tell us they have not. What they deny is not a God. It is the
correspondence. The very confession of the Unknowable is itself the dull
recognition of an Environment beyond themselves, and for which they feel they
lack the correspondence. It is this want that makes their God the Unknown God.
And it is this that makes them dead.
We have not said, or implied, that there is not a
God of Nature. We have not affirmed that there is no Natural Religion. We are
assured there is. We are even assured that without a Religion of Nature
Religion is only half complete; that without a God of Nature the God of
Revelation is only half intelligible and only partially known. God is not
confined to the outermost circle of environment, He lives and moves and has His
being in the whole. Those who only seek Him in the further zone can only find a
part. The Christian who knows not God in Nature, who does not, that is to say,
correspond with the whole environment, most certainly is partially dead. The
author of "Ecce Homo" may be partially right when he says: "I think a bystander
would say that though Christianity had in it something far higher and deeper
and more ennobling, yet the average scientific man worships just at present a
more awful, and, as it were, a greater Deity than the average Christian. In so
many Christians the idea of God has been degraded by childish and little-minded
teaching; the Eternal and the Infinite and the All-embracing has been
represented as the head of the clerical interest, as a sort of clergyman, as a
sort of schoolmaster, as a sort of philanthropist. But the scientific man knows
Him to be eternal; in astronomy, in geology, he becomes familiar with the
countless millenniums of His lifetime. The scientific man strains his mind
actually to realize God's infinity. As far off as the fixed stars he traces
Him, `distance inexpressible by numbers that have name.' Meanwhile, to the
theologian, infinity and eternity are very much of empty words when applied to
the Object of his worship. He does not realize them in actual facts and
definite computations."[60] Let us accept this
rebuke. The principle that want of correspondence is Death applies all round.
He who knows not God in Nature only partially lives. The converse of this,
however is not true; and that is the point we are insisting on. He who knows
God only in Nature lives not. There is no "correspondence" with an Unknown God,
no "continuous adjustment" to a fixed First Cause. There is no "assimilation"
of Natural Law; no growth in the Image of "the All-embracing." To correspond
with the God of Science assuredly is not to live. "This is Life Eternal, to
know Thee, the true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast
sent."
From the service we have tried to make natural
science render to our religion, we might be expected possibly to take up the
position that the absolute contribution of Science to Revelation was very
great. On the contrary, it is very small. The absolute contribution,
that is, is very small. The contribution on the whole is immense, vaster than
we have yet any idea of. But without the aid of the higher Revelation this
many-toned and far-reaching voice had been for ever dumb. The light of Nature,
say the most for it, is dim--how dim we ourselves, with the glare of other
Light upon the modern world, can only realize when we seek among the pagan
records of the past for the gropings after truth of those whose only light was
this. Powerfully significant and touching as these efforts were in their
success, they are far more significant and touching in their failure. For they
did fail. It requires no philosophy now to speculate on the adequacy or
inadequacy of the Religion of Nature. For us who could never weigh it rightly
in the scales of Truth it has been tried in the balance of experience and found
wanting. Theism is the easiest of all religions to get, but the most difficult
to keep. Individuals have kept it, but nations never. Socrates and Aristotle,
Cicero and Epictetus had a theistic religion; Greece and Rome had none. And
even after getting what seems like a firm place in the minds of men, its
unstable equilibrium sooner or later betrays itself. On the one hand theism has
always fallen into the wildest polytheism, or on the other into the blankest
atheism. "It is an indubitable historical fact that, outside of the sphere of
special revelation, man has never obtained such a knowledge of God as a
responsible and religious being plainly requires. The wisdom of the heathen
world, at its very best, was utterly inadequate to the accomplishment of such a
task as creating a due abhorrence of sin, controlling the passions, purifying
the heart, and ennobling the conduct."[61]
What is the inference? That this poor rush-light
itself was never meant to lend the ray by which man should read the riddle of
the universe. The mystery is too impenetrable and remote for its uncertain
flicker to more than make the darkness deeper. What indeed if this were not a
light at all, but only part of a light--the carbon point, the fragment of
calcium, the reflector in the great Lantern which contains the Light of the
World?
This is one inference. But the most important is
that the absence of the true Light means moral Death. The darkness of the
natural world to the intellect is not all. What history testifies to is, first
the partial, and then the total eclipse of virtue that always follows the
abandonment of belief in a personal God. It is not, as has been pointed out a
hundred times, that morality in the abstract disappears, but the motive and
sanction are gone. There is nothing to raise it from the dead. Man's attitude
to it is left to himself. Grant that morals have their own base in human life;
grant that Nature has a Religion whose creed is Science; there is yet nothing
apart from God to save the world from moral Death. Morality has the power to
dictate but none to move. Nature directs but cannot control. As was wisely
expressed in one of many pregnant utterances during a recent Symposium,
"Though the decay of religion may leave the institutes of morality intact,
it drains off their inward power. The devout faith of men expresses and
measures the intensity of their moral nature, and it cannot be lost without a
remission of enthusiasm, and under this low pressure, the successful
re-entrance of importunate desires and clamorous passions which had been driven
back. To believe in an ever-living and perfect Mind, supreme over the universe,
is to invest moral distinctions with immensity and eternity, and lift them from
the provincial stage of human society to the imperishable theatre of all being.
When planted thus in the very substance of things, they justify and support the
ideal estimates of the conscience; they deepen every guilty shame; they
guarantee every righteous hope; and they help the will with a Divine
casting-vote in every balance of temptation."[62] That morality has a basis in human society, that Nature
has a Religion, surely makes the Death of the soul when left to itself all the
more appalling. It means that, between them, Nature and morality provide all
for virtue--except the Life to live it
It is at this point accordingly that our subject
comes into intimate contact with Religion. The proposition that "to be carnally
minded is Death" even the moralist will assent to. But when it is further
announced that "the carnal mind is enmity against God" we find ourselves
in a different region. And when we find it also stated that "the wages of
sin is Death," we are in the heart of the profoundest questions
of theology. What before was merely "enmity against society" becomes "enmity
against God;" and what was "vice" is "sin." The conception of a God gives an
altogether new colour to worldliness and vice. Worldliness it changes into
heathenism, vice into blasphemy. The carnal mind, the mind which is turned away
from God, which will not correspond with God--this is not moral only but
spiritual Death. And Sin, that which separates from God, which disobeys God,
which can not in that state correspond with God--this is hell.
To the estrangement of the soul from God the best
of theology traces the ultimate cause of sin. Sin is simply apostasy from God,
unbelief in God. "Sin is manifest in its true character when the demand of
holiness in the conscience, presenting itself to the man as one of loving
submission to God, is put from him with aversion. Here sin appears as it really
is, a turning away from God; and while the man's guilt is enhanced, there
ensues a benumbing of the heart resulting from the crushing of those higher
impulses. This is what is meant by the reprobate state of those who reject
Christ and will not believe the Gospel, so often spoken of in the New
Testament; this unbelief is just the closing of the heart against the highest
love."[63] The other view of sin, probably the
more popular at present, that sin consists in selfishness, is merely this from
another aspect. Obviously if the mind turns away from one part of the
environment it will only do so under some temptation to correspond with
another. This temptation, at bottom, can only come from one source--the love of
self. The irreligious man's correspondences are concentrated upon himself. He
worships himself. Self-gratification rather than self-denial; independence
rather than submission--these are the rules of life. And this is at once the
poorest and the commonest form of idolatry.
But whichever of these views of sin we emphasize,
we find both equally connected with Death. If sin is estrangement from God,
this very estrangement is Death. It is a want of correspondence. If sin is
selfishness, it is conducted at the expense of life. Its wages are Death--"he
that loveth his life," said Christ, "shall lose it."
Yet the paralysis of the moral nature apart from
God does not only depend for its evidence upon theology or even upon history.
From the analogies of Nature one would expect this result as a necessary
consequence. The development of any organism in my direction is dependent on
its environment. A living cell cut off from air will die. A seed-germ apart
from moisture and an appropriate temperature will make the ground its grave for
centuries. Human nature, likewise, is subject to similar conditions. It can
only develop in presence of its environment. No matter what its possibilities
may be, no matter what seeds of thought or virtue, what germs of genius or of
art, lie latent in its breast, until the appropriate environment present itself
the correspondence is denied, the development discouraged, the most splendid
possibilities of life remain unrealized, and thought and virtue, genius and
art, are dead. The true environment of the moral life is God. Here conscience
wakes. Here kindles love. Duty here becomes heroic; and that righteousness
begins to Live which alone is to live for ever. But if this Atmosphere is not,
the dwarfed soul must perish for mere want of its native air. And its Death is
a strictly natural Death. It is not an exceptional judgment upon Atheism. In
the same circumstances, in the same averted relation to their environment, the
poet, the musician, the artist, would alike perish to poetry, to music, and to
art. Every environment is a cause. Its effect upon me is exactly proportionate
to my correspondence with it. If I correspond with part of it, part of myself
is influenced. If I correspond with more, more of myself is influenced; if with
all, all is influenced. If I correspond with the world, I become worldly; if
with God, I become Divine. As without correspondence of the scientific man with
the natural environment there could be no Science and no action founded on the
knowledge of Nature, so without communion with the spiritual Environment there
can be no Religion. To refuse to cultivate the religious relation is to deny to
the soul its highest right--the right to a further evolution.[64]
We have already admitted that he who knows not
God may not be a monster; we cannot say he will not be a dwarf. This precisely,
and on perfectly natural principles, is what he must be. You can dwarf a soul
just as you can dwarf a plant, by depriving it of a full environment. Such a
soul for a time may have "a name to live." Its character may betray no sign of
atrophy. But its very virtue somehow has the pallor of a flower that is grown
in darkness, or as the herb which has never seen the sun, no fragrance breathes
from its spirit. To morality, possibly, this organism offers the example of an
irreproachable life; but to science it is an instance of arrested development;
and to religion it presents the spectacle of a corpse--a living Death. With
Ruskin, "I do not wonder at what men suffer, but I wonder often at what they
lose."
[55] "Princioles of Biology," vol. I. p. 74.
[56] Ibid.
[57] Foster's " Physiology," p. 642.
[58] Op. cit., pp. 88, 89.
[59] "Natural Religion" p. 19.
[60] "Natural Religion," p. 20.
[61] Prof. Flint, "Theism", p. 305.
[62] Martineau. Vide the whole
Symposium on "Influences upon Morality of a Decline in Religious
Belief."--Nineteenth Century, vol i. pp. 331, 531.
[63] Muller: "Christian Doctrine of Sin." 2nd
Ed. vol. i. p. 131.
[64] It would not be difficult to show, were
this the immediate subject, that it is not only a right but a duty to exercise
the spiritual faculties, a duty demanded not by religion merely, but by
science. Upon biological principles man owes his full development to himself,
to nature, and to his fellow-men. Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms, "The
performance of every function is, in a sense, a moral obligation. It is usually
thought that morality requires us only to restrain such vital activities as, in
our present state, are often pushed to excess, or such as conflict with average
welfares special or general; but it also requires us to carry on these vital
activities up to their normal limits. All the animal functions, in common with
all the higher functions, have, as thus understood, their imperativeness"--
"The Data of Ethics," 2nd Ed., p. 76
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