XI
THE NATURE OF CHRISTIANITY
The deepest effect must have been produced upon believers in Christianity by the fact that the Divine, the Word, the eternal Logos, no longer came to them in the dim twilight of the Mysteries, as Spirit only, but that when they spoke of the Logos, they were made to think of the historical, human personality of Jesus. Formerly the Logos had only been seen in different degrees of human perfection. The delicate, subtle differences in the spiritual life of personalities could be observed, and the manner and degree in which the Logos became living within those seeking initiation. A higher degree of maturity was to be interpreted as a higher stage of evolution of spiritual life. The preparatory steps had to be sought in a spiritual life already pa.s.sed through, and the present life was to be regarded as the preparatory stage for future degrees of spiritual evolution. The conservation of the spiritual power of the soul and the eternity of that force might be stated in the words of the Jewish occult teaching in the book of Sohar, "Nothing in the world is lost, nothing falls into the void, not even the words and voice of man: everything has its place and purport." Personality was but a metamorphosis of the soul, which develops from one personality to another. The single life of the personality was only considered as a link in the chain of development stretching backwards and forwards.
This Logos metamorphosing itself in the many separate human personalities has through Christianity been directed away from these to the one unique personality of Jesus. What had previously been distributed throughout the world was now united in a single personality. Jesus became the unique G.o.d-Man. In Jesus something was present once which must appear to man as the greatest of ideals, and with which, in the course of man"s repeated earthly lives, he ought to be more and more united. Jesus took upon Himself the divinisation of the whole of humanity. In Him was sought what formerly could only be sought in a man"s own particular soul. One did not any more behold the divine and eternal within the personality of a man; all that was now beheld in Jesus. It is not the eternal part of the soul that conquers death and is raised through its own power as divine, but it is that which was in Jesus, the one G.o.d that will appear and raise the souls.
It follows from this that an entirely new meaning was given to personality. The eternal, immortal part had been taken from it. Only the personality, as such, was left. If immortality be not denied, it has to be admitted as pertaining to the personality itself. Out of the belief in the soul"s eternal metamorphosis came the belief in personal immortality. The personality acquired infinite importance, because it was the only thing which was left to man.
Henceforth there is nothing between the personality and the infinite G.o.d. A direct relation with Him must be established. Man was no longer capable of himself becoming divine, in a greater or less degree. He was simply man, standing in a direct but outward relation to G.o.d. This brought quite a new note into the conception of the world for those who knew the point of view held in the ancient Mysteries.
There were many people in this position during the first centuries of Christianity. They knew the nature of the Mysteries. If they wished to become Christians, they were obliged to come to an understanding with the older conceptions. This brought them most difficult conflicts within their souls. They sought in most various ways to effect a settlement between the two tendencies in the conception of the world.
This conflict is reflected in the writings of early Christian times: in those of heathens attracted by the sublimity of Christianity, as well as in the writings of those Christians who found it hard to give up the conceptions of the Mysteries. Slowly did Christianity grow out of these Mysteries. On the one hand Christian convictions were presented in the form of the Mystery truths, and on the other, the Mystery wisdom was clothed in Christian words.
Clement of Alexandria (ob. 217 A.D.), a Christian writer whose education had been pagan, is an instance of this, "G.o.d has not forbidden us to rest from good deeds when keeping the sabbath. He permits those who can grasp them to share in the divine mysteries and in the sacred light. He has not revealed to the crowd what is not suitable for them. He judged it fitting to reveal it only to a few, who are able to grasp it and to work out in themselves the unspeakable mystery which G.o.d confided to the Logos, not to the written word. And G.o.d hath set some in the Church as apostles; and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." Individual souls in those days sought by very different paths to find the way from the ancient views to the Christian ones.
And the one who thought he was on the right path called others heretics. In the meanwhile, the Church grew stronger and stronger as an outward inst.i.tution. The more power it gained, the more did the path, recognised as the right one by the decisions of councils, take the place of personal investigation. It was for the Church to decide who deviated too far from the divine truth which she guarded. The idea of a "heretic" took firmer and firmer shape. During the first centuries of Christianity, the search for the divine path was a much more personal matter than it afterwards became. A long distance had been travelled before Augustine"s conviction became possible: "I should not believe in the truth of the Gospels unless the authority of the Catholic Church forced me to do so" (_cf._ p. 143).
The conflict between the method of the Mysteries and that of the Christian religion acquired a special stamp through the various Gnostic sects and writers. We may cla.s.s as Gnostics all the writers of the first Christian centuries who sought for a deep, spiritual meaning in Christian teachings. (A brilliant account of the development of the Gnosis is given in G.R.S. Mead"s book mentioned above, _Fragments of a Faith Forgotten_.) We understand the Gnostics when we look upon them as saturated with the ancient wisdom of the Mysteries, and striving to understand Christianity from that point of view. For them, Christ was the Logos, and as such of a spiritual nature. In His primal essence, He cannot approach man from without. He must be awakened in the soul.
But the historical Jesus must bear some relation to the spiritual Logos. This was the crucial point for the Gnostics. Some settled it in one way, some in another. The essential point common to them all was that to arrive at a true understanding of the Christ-idea, mere historical tradition was not enough, but that it must be sought either in the wisdom of the Mysteries, or in the Neo-Platonic philosophy which was derived from the same source. The Gnostics had confidence in human wisdom, and believed it capable of bringing forth a Christ by whom the historical Christ could be measured: in fact, through whom alone the latter could be understood and beheld in the right light.
Of special interest from this point of view is the doctrine given in the books of Dionysius the Areopagite. It is true that there is no mention of these writings till the sixth century; it matters little when and where they were written, the point is that they give an account of Christianity which is clothed in the language of the Neo-Platonic philosophy and presented in the form of a spiritual contemplation of the higher world. At all events this is a form of delineation which belongs to the first Christian centuries. In older times the truth was handed on in the form of oral tradition; the most important things were not entrusted to writing. The Christianity described in the writings of Dionysius is set forth in the mirror of the Neo-Platonic conception of the world. Sense-perception troubles man"s spiritual vision. He must reach out beyond the senses. But all human ideas are primarily derived from observation by the senses. What man perceives with his senses, he calls existence; what he does not so perceive, he calls non-existence. Therefore if he wishes to open up an actual view of the Divine, he must rise above existence and non-existence, for these also, as he conceives them, have their origin in the sphere of the senses. In this sense G.o.d is neither existent nor non-existent; he is super-existent. Consequently he cannot be attained by means of ordinary cognition, which has to do with existing things. We have to be raised above ourselves, above our sense-observation, above our reasoning logic, if we are to find the way to spiritual vision. Thence we are able to get a glimpse into the perspectives of the Divine.
But this super-existent Divinity has brought forth the Logos, the basis of the universe, filled with wisdom. To him man"s lower powers are able to attain. He is present in the cosmos as the spiritual Son of G.o.d, he is the Mediator between G.o.d and man. He may be present in man in various degrees. He may for instance be realised in an external inst.i.tution, in which those diversely imbued with his spirit are grouped into a hierarchy. A "church" of this kind is the outer reality of the Logos, and the power which lives in it lived in a personal way in the Christ become flesh, in Jesus. Thus the Church is through Jesus united to G.o.d: Jesus is its meaning and crowning-point.
One thing was clear to all Gnosis, that one must come to an understanding about the personality of Jesus. Christ and Jesus must be brought into connection with one another. Divinity was taken away from human personality and must, in one way or another, be recovered. It must be possible to find it again in Jesus. The Mystic had to do with a degree of divinity within himself, and with his earthly personality.
The Christian had to do with the latter, and also with a perfect G.o.d, far above all that is attainable by humanity. If we hold firmly to this point of view, a fundamental mystic att.i.tude of the soul is only possible when the soul"s spiritual eyes are opened; when, through finding higher spiritual possibilities within itself, the soul throws itself open to the light which issues from Christ in Jesus. The union of the soul with its highest powers is at the same time union with the historical Christ. For mysticism is an immediate consciousness and feeling of the divine within the soul. But a G.o.d far transcending everything human can never dwell in the soul in the real sense of the word. The Gnosis and all subsequent Christian mysticism represent the effort, in some way or other, to lay hold of that G.o.d, and to apprehend Him directly in the soul.
A conflict in this case was inevitable. It was really only possible for a man to find his own divine part, but this is both human and divine,--the divine at a certain stage of development. Yet the Christian G.o.d is a definite one, perfect in himself. It was possible for a person to find in himself the power to strive upwards to this G.o.d, but he could not say that what he experienced in his own soul, at any stage of development, was one with G.o.d. A great gulf was fixed between what it was possible to find in the soul, and what Christianity called divine. It is the gulf between science and faith, between knowledge and religious feeling.
This gulf does not exist for the Mystic in the old sense of the word.
For he knows for a certainty that he can only comprehend the divine by degrees, and he also knows why this is so. It is clear to him that this gradual attainment is a real attainment of real divine life, and he finds it difficult to speak of a perfect, isolated divine principle. A Mystic of this kind does not seek a perfect G.o.d, but he wishes to experience the divine life. He seeks to be made divine, not to gain an external relation to the G.o.dhead.
It is of the essence of Christianity that its mysticism in this sense starts with an a.s.sumption. The Christian Mystic seeks to behold divinity within him, but at the same time he looks up to the historical Christ as his physical eyes do to the sun. Just as the sun is the means by which physical eyes behold physical objects, so does the Christian Mystic intensify his inner nature that it may behold the divine, and the light which makes such vision possible for him is the fact of the appearance of Christ. It is He who enables man to attain his highest possibilities. It is in this way that the Christian Mystics of the Middle Ages differ from the Mystics of the ancient Mysteries (_cf._ my book, _Mystics of the Renaissance_).
XII
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHEN WISDOM
At the time of the first beginnings of Christianity, there appear in heathen civilisation conceptions of the universe which seem to be a continuation of the Platonic philosophy, and which may also be taken as a deepening and spiritualisation of the wisdom of the Mysteries.
The beginning of such conceptions is to be dated from Philo of Alexandria (B.C. 25-A.D. 50). From his point of view the processes which lead to the divine take place in the innermost part of the human soul. We might say that the temple in which Philo seeks initiation is wholly within him, and his higher experiences are the Mysteries. In his case processes of a purely spiritual nature replace the initiatory ceremonies of the sanctuary.
According to Philo, sense-observation and knowledge gained through the logical intellect do not lead to the divine. They have merely to do with what is perishable. But there is a way by which the soul may rise above these methods. It must come out of what it calls its ordinary self: from this it must withdraw. Then it enters a state of spiritual exaltation and illumination, in which it no longer knows, thinks, and judges in the ordinary sense of the words; for it has become merged, identified with the divine, which is experienced in its essence, and cannot be imparted in thought-concepts or abstract ideas. It is experienced, and one who goes through this experience knows that no one can impart it, for the only way of reaching it is to live it. The visible world is an image of this mystic reality which is experienced in the inmost recesses of the soul. The world has come forth from the invisible, inconceivable G.o.d. The harmony of the cosmos, which is steeped in wisdom, and to which sense-phenomena are subject, is a direct reflection of the G.o.dhead, its spiritual image. It is divine spirit poured out into the world,--cosmic reason, the Logos, the offspring or Son of G.o.d. The Logos is the mediator between the world of sense and the unimaginable G.o.d. When man steeps himself in knowledge, he becomes united with the Logos, which is embodied in him.
The person who has developed spirituality is the vehicle of the Logos.
Above the Logos is G.o.d; beneath is the perishable world. It is man"s vocation to form the link between the two. What he experiences in his inmost being, as spirit, is the universal Spirit. Such ideas are directly reminiscent of the Pythagorean manner of thinking (_cf._ p.
57 _et seq._).
The centre of existence is sought in the inner life, but this life is conscious of its cosmic value. St. Augustine was thinking in virtually the same way as Philo, when he said: "We see all created things because they are; but they are, because G.o.d sees them." And he adds, concerning what and how we see: "And because they are, we see them outwardly; because they are perfect, we see them inwardly."
Plato has the same fundamental idea (_cf._ p. 63 _et seq._). Like Plato, Philo sees in the destiny of the human soul the closing act of the great cosmic drama, the awakening of the divinity that is under a spell. He thus describes the inner actions of the soul: the wisdom in man"s inner being walks along, "tracing the paths of the Father, and shapes the forms while beholding the archetypes." It is no personal matter for man to create forms in his inner being; they are the eternal wisdom, they are the cosmic life.
This is in harmony with the interpretation of the myths of the people in the light of the Mysteries. The Mystic searches for the deeper truth in the myths (_cf._ p. 94 _et seq._). And as the Mystic treats the myths of paganism, Philo handles Moses" story of the creation. The Old Testament accounts are for him images of inner soul-processes. The Bible relates the creation of the world. One who merely takes it as a description of outer events only half knows it. It is certainly written, "In the beginning G.o.d created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of G.o.d moved on the face of the waters." But the real inner meaning of the words must be lived in the depths of the soul. G.o.d must be found within, then He appears as the "Primal Splendour, who sends out innumerable rays, not perceptible by the senses, but collectively thinkable." This is Philo"s expression. In the _Timaeus_ of Plato, the words are almost identical with the Bible ones, "Now when the Father, who had created the universe, saw how it had become living and animated, and an image of the eternal G.o.ds, he felt pleasure therein." In the Bible we read, "And G.o.d saw that it was good."
The recognition of the divine is for Philo, as well as for Plato and in the wisdom of the Mysteries, to live through the process of creation in one"s own soul. The history of creation and the history of the soul which is becoming divine, in this way flow into one. Philo is convinced that Moses" account of the creation may be used for writing the history of the soul which is seeking G.o.d. Everything in the Bible thereby acquires a profoundly symbolical meaning, of which Philo becomes the interpreter. He reads the Bible as a history of the soul.
We may say that Philo"s manner of reading the Bible corresponds to a feature of his age which originated in the wisdom of the Mysteries. He indeed relates that the Therapeutae interpreted ancient writings in the same way. "They also possess works by ancient authors who once directed their school and left behind many explanations about the customary method pursued in allegorical writings.... The interpretation of such writings is directed to the deeper meaning of the allegorical narratives" (_cf._ p. 200). Thus Philo"s aim was to discover the deeper meaning of the "allegorical" narratives in the Old Testament.
Let us try to realise whither such an interpretation could lead. We read the account of creation and find in it not only a narrative of outward events, but an indication of the way which the soul has to take in order to attain to the divine. Thus the soul must reproduce in itself, as a microcosm, the ways of G.o.d, and in this alone can its efforts after wisdom consist. The drama of the universe must be enacted in each individual soul. The inner life of the mystical sage is the realisation of the image given in the account of creation.
Moses wrote not only to relate historical facts, but to represent pictorially the paths which the soul must travel if it would find G.o.d.
All this, in Philo"s conception of the universe, is enacted within the human soul. Man experiences within himself what G.o.d has experienced in the universe. The word of G.o.d, the Logos, becomes an event in the soul. G.o.d brought the Jews from Egypt into Palestine; he let them go through distress and privation before giving them that Land of Promise. That is the outward event. Man must experience it inwardly.
He goes from the land of Egypt, the perishable world, through the privations which lead to the suppression of the sense-nature, into the Promised Land of the soul, he attains the eternal. With Philo it is all an inward process. The G.o.d who poured Himself forth into the world consummates His resurrection in the soul when that soul understands His creative word and echoes it. Then man has spiritually given birth within himself to divinity, to the divine spirit which became man, to the Logos, Christ. In this sense knowledge was, for Philo and those who thought like him, the birth of Christ within the world of spirit.
The Neo-Platonic philosophy, which developed contemporaneously with Christianity, was an elaboration of Philo"s thought. Let us see how Plotinus (A.D. 204-269) describes his spiritual experiences:
"Often when I come to myself on awaking from bodily sleep and, turning from the outer world, enter into myself, I behold wondrous beauty.
Then I am sure that I have been conscious of the better part of myself. I live my true life, I am one with the divine and, rooted in the divine, gain the power to transport myself beyond even the super-world. After thus resting in G.o.d, when I descend from spiritual vision and again form thoughts, I ask myself how it has happened that I now descend and that my soul ever entered the body at all, since, in its essence, it is what it has just revealed itself to me. What can the reason be for souls forgetting G.o.d the Father since they come from the beyond and belong to Him, and, when they forget Him, know nothing of Him or of themselves? The first false step they take is indulging in presumption, the desire to become, and in forgetfulness of their true self and in the pleasure of only belonging to themselves. They coveted self-glorification, they rushed about in pursuit of their desires and thus went astray and fell completely away. Thereupon they lost all knowledge of their origin in the beyond, just as children, early separated from their parents and brought up elsewhere, do not know who they themselves and their parents are."
Plotinus delineates the kind of life which the soul should strive to develop. "The life of the body and its longings should be stilled, the soul should see calm in all that surrounds it: in earth, sea, air, and heaven itself no movement. It should learn to see how the soul pours itself from without into the serene cosmos, streaming into it from all sides; as the sun"s rays illuminate a dark cloud and make it golden, so does the soul, on entering the body of the world encircled by the sky, give it life and immortality."
It is evident that this vision of the world is very similar to that of Christianity. Believers of the community of Jesus said: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life ... declare we unto you." In the same way it might be said in the spirit of Neo-Platonism, "That which was from the beginning, which cannot be heard and seen, must be spiritually experienced as the Word of life."
And so the old conception of the universe is developed and splits into two leading ideas. It leads in Neo-Platonism and similar systems to an idea of Christ which is purely spiritual; on the other hand, it leads to a fusion of the idea of Christ with a historical manifestation, the personality of Jesus. The writer of the Gospel of St. John may be said to unite these two conceptions. "In the beginning was the Word." He shares this conviction with the Neo-Platonists. The Word becomes spirit within the soul, thus do the Neo-Platonists conclude. The Word was made flesh in Jesus, thus does St. John conclude, and with him the whole Christian community. The inner meaning of the manner in which the Word was made flesh was given in all the ancient cosmogonies. Plato says of the macrocosm: "G.o.d has extended the body of the world on the soul of the world in the form of a cross." The soul of the world is the Logos. If the Logos is to be made flesh, he must recapitulate the cosmic process in fleshly existence. He must be nailed to the cross, and rise again. In spiritual form this most momentous thought of Christianity had long before been prefigured in the old cosmogonies. The Mystic went through it as a personal experience in initiation. The Logos become man had to go through it in a way that made this fact one that is true for or valid to the whole of humanity. Something which was present under the old dispensation as an incident in the Mysteries becomes a historical fact through Christianity. Hence Christianity was the fulfilment not only of what the Jewish prophets had predicted, but also of the truth which had been prefigured in the Mysteries.
The Cross of Golgotha gathers together in one fact the whole cult of the Mysteries of antiquity. We find the cross first in the ancient cosmogonies. At the starting-point of Christianity it confronts us in an unique event which has supreme value for the whole of mankind. It is from this point of view that it is possible for the reason to apprehend the mystical element in Christianity. Christianity as a mystical fact is a milestone in the process of human evolution; and the incidents in the Mysteries, with their attendant results, are the preparation for that mystical fact.
XIII
ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE CHURCH
The full force of the conflict which was enacted in the souls of Christian believers during the transition from paganism to the new religion is exhibited in the person of St. Augustine (A.D. 354-430).
The spiritual struggles of Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory n.a.z.ianzen, Jerome, and others are full of mysterious interest when we see them calmed and laid to rest in the mind of Augustine.
In Augustine"s personality deep spiritual needs developed out of a pa.s.sionate nature. He pa.s.sed through pagan and semi-Christian ideas.
He suffered deeply from the most appalling doubts of the land which attack one who has felt the impotence of many varieties of thought in the face of spiritual problems, and who has tasted the depressing effect of the question: "Can man know anything whatever?"
At the beginning of his struggles, Augustine"s thoughts clung to the perishable things of sense. He could only picture the spiritual to himself in material images. It is a deliverance for him when he rises above this stage. He thus describes it in his _Confessions_: "When I wished to think of G.o.d, I could only imagine immense ma.s.ses of bodies and believed that was the only kind of thing that could exist. This was the chief and almost the only cause of the errors which I could not avoid." He thus indicates the point at which a person must arrive who is seeking the true life of the spirit. There are thinkers, not a few, who maintain that it is impossible to arrive at pure thought, free from any material admixture. These thinkers confuse what they feel bound to say about their own inner life, with what is humanly possible. The truth rather is that it is only possible to arrive at higher knowledge when thought has been liberated from all material things, when an inner life has been developed in which images of reality do not cease when their demonstration in sense-impressions comes to an end. Augustine relates how he attained to spiritual vision. Everywhere he asked where the divine was to be found. "I asked the earth and she said "I am not it" and all that was upon the earth said the same. I asked the ocean and the abysses and all that lives in them, which said, "We are not thy G.o.d, seek beyond us." I asked the winds, and the whole atmosphere and its inhabitants said, "The philosophers who sought for the essence of things in us were under an illusion, we are not G.o.d." I asked the sun, moon, and stars, which said, "We are not G.o.d whom thou seekest."" And it came home to St.
Augustine that there is only one thing which can answer his question about the divine--his own soul. The soul said, "No eyes nor ears can impart to thee what is in me. For I alone can tell thee, and I tell thee in an unquestionable way." "Men may be doubtful whether vital force is situate in air or in fire, but who can doubt that he himself lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? If he doubts, it is a proof that he is alive, he remembers why he doubts, he understands that he doubts, he will a.s.sure himself of things, he thinks, he knows that he knows nothing, he judges that he must not accept anything hastily." Outer things do not defend themselves when their essence and existence are denied, but the soul does defend itself. It could not be doubtful of itself unless it existed. By its doubt it confirms its own existence. "We are and we recognise our being, and we love our own being and knowledge. On these three points no illusion in the garb of truth can trouble us, for we do not apprehend them with our bodily senses like external things." Man learns about the divine by leading his soul to know itself as spiritual, so that it may find its way, as a spirit, into the spiritual world. Augustine had battled his way through to this knowledge. It was out of such an att.i.tude of mind that there grew up in pagan nations the desire to knock at the gate of the Mysteries. In the age of Augustine, such convictions might lead to becoming a Christian. Jesus, the Logos become man had shown the path which must be followed by the soul if it would attain the goal which it sees when in communion with itself. In A.D. 385, at Milan, Augustine was instructed by St. Ambrose. All his doubts about the Old and New Testaments vanished when his teacher interpreted the most important pa.s.sages, not merely in a literal sense, but "by lifting the mystic veil by force of the spirit."
What had been guarded in the Mysteries was embodied for Augustine in the historical tradition of the Evangelists and in the community where that tradition was preserved. He comes by degrees to the conviction that "the law of this tradition, which consists in believing what it has not proved, is moderate and without guile." He arrives at the idea, "Who could be so blind as to say that the Church of the Apostles deserves to have no faith placed in it, when it is so loyal and is supported by the conformity of so many brethren; when these have handed down their writings to posterity so conscientiously, and when the Church has so strictly maintained the succession of teachers, down to our present bishops?"