All worthy education means the spiritualizing of the body. Both before death, and after, the good man has a spiritual body. Not a spirit body, but a spiritual, a refined and sensitive instrument of the spirit.
Throughout eternity man will be spiritualizing his body, or else degrading it.
We soon outgrow our immediate bodies, and find it necessary to augment them with all the forces of nature. These enlarged bodies must likewise be spiritualized or they will pervert the soul,--as is proved by every degraded form of inst.i.tutional life.
The early man dimly realized that if he could get a larger hand, he would be a greater man. So, augmenting his hand with a club, he achieved a new growth in mind and character. Finding himself a greater man, he tried once more to increase his hand. Next, finding a sharp stone with which he could hack down small trees, he created a new mental and moral demand for a still finer instrument of his spirit. Then, in turn, he augmented his hand with bronze and iron until all great thundering mills and all cunning tools appeared as the mighty hand of the human will.
This required an enormous soul growth in knowledge and character, and a corresponding growth in social consciousness and self-consciousness. To further our soul growth there is still a pressing demand for enlarged instruments. So it must ever be an even race between soul growth and hand growth.
In the same way, man developed soul and legs. It became necessary to make swifter legs or suffer a dwarfing of his soul. Consequently, he increased his speed with camels and horses; but even these became inadequate for his soul"s growth. Then ensued a race of soul and legs, until to-day automobiles, steam cars, and every means of swift locomotion are but the augmented legs of man. The growing man soul is still in quest of swifter means of locomotion, and as these appear society is changed to its very foundations. New trades, new mental powers, new moral conditions confront him everywhere; and still he is speeding up.
When man made for himself far-seeing eyes in the telescope, the heavens opened; and what he saw in the heavens made for him a new earth. Then making for himself a short-seeing eye in the microscope, he discovered within and beneath things a new world, which in turn was a vast commentary on the heavens above. Likewise it may be truthfully said that soul and eyes have made an even race in their development. The same is true of soul and ears. Said a great building contractor of Chicago thirty-five years ago, "No man in the past ever dreamed of such a business as we are conducting, for it would have been impossible without the telephone." The telephone is but the enlargement of man"s ears and mouth. This contractor moved men and materials, at will, over a radius of a hundred miles. Even the musical soul found a new incentive when the mouth was enlarged by piano, pipe organ, and orchestra. Every enlargement of the mouth calls for new musical skill in complex technique, and in finer inspiration and fuller elaboration. In short, every man soul is in quest of omnipresence. Living as he does in his Father"s enfolding energies, he can know himself, and grow himself, only so far as he makes the instruments of his Father"s will the instruments of his own will. The man soul is in the process of taking on the whole universe as his enlarged body. Two hundred pounds is quite large enough for the little body which he ever carries, and cares for, but to be a growing son of G.o.d he must progressively make the universe his augmented body. At night he may lay off his big body and rest; but in the morning he must put on his larger body, the universe, as he puts on his clothes and his boots, and go forth to live and work with G.o.d, his Father.
3. Would the absence of man cripple G.o.d?
Yes, the absence of man would thoroughly cripple G.o.d. Without the possibility of a family, G.o.d would just as well never have been. This is not an unbecoming or irreverent remark, but a statement that is very pleasing to G.o.d; it vindicates everything that is highest in His Holy Nature. His wisdom, character, and love are all involved in His purpose to have a family.
If we eliminate the thought of His family, what wisdom is there in anything G.o.d has made? The production of coal is a wonderful display of wisdom, love, and power; but apart from the thought of children who would discover the coal and put it to all its marvelous uses, what motive could there have been in such an act? G.o.d, as a solitary will in the universe, never intended to mine coal, warm houses, cook food, or fire engines. All the marvelous by-products of coal could have no value or meaning apart from a complex society; but with a family in mind the production of coal becomes a sacrament worthy of a G.o.d, and lays the foundation of a kingdom, all glorious in wisdom, love, and power.
Iron, likewise, has a rational, moral, and social significance beyond all power to express. Its uses, all the way from steel bridges and engines to the hair springs of watches, suggest the imagination of a mind infinite and loving. The human family never could have climbed to glory except on an iron stair; but take away the family, and iron means nothing.
The large part that wood has supplied in the development and happiness of the race is beyond the imagination of any but an infinite mind. To what infinite uses it has been and may yet be put, from the homeliest utilities to organs and violins! Soft woods, hard woods, and precious woods have entered into the very warp and woof of human life. Wood is a miracle, robbed of its wonder because the gift is so lavish. Yet what sense would there be in creating wood in all its varieties, with no one to put it to any of its sacred uses? These same thoughts would equally apply to all the precious metals.
Why should G.o.d create a chemical world unless He had chemists in mind?
What would it amount to if there were not those who could take nature apart and recombine it to infinity for His glory and their happiness?
But there is no end to questions of this kind that might be asked concerning G.o.d and His works. In short, a depopulated universe is robbed of all its meaning and glory. Without a family, G.o.d would be reduced to a child G.o.d playing with a toy world. And being alone, He could not so much as complete His toy. At best the universe is but raw material until His children have turned it into a finished product. When G.o.d and His children begin turning nature into finished products the highest creation is just begun. By transforming nature into a social inst.i.tution that reflects G.o.d"s wisdom and love, common nature is glorified. Without a family there is no sense in anything, and G.o.d Himself would be without moral worth or meaning. To be sure, He could get along without a few of us if we should utterly refuse to cooperate with Him; but without a loving family, G.o.d would be completely defeated.
He "So loved the world," and with equal propriety it might be said He so needed the world, "that He gave His only begotten Son."
Before G.o.d"s family arrived He was simply getting ready to do the supreme thing. But with His children about Him, loving and alert, the meaning of all things from the beginning commences to appear, and the glorious end is dimly discerned. No greater travesty on the nature of G.o.d could be conceived than that which makes Him independent of His children. And to think that G.o.d"s desire for mere adoration is His chief need of man is but slightly less a travesty. G.o.d yearns for the love and adoration of His children, and with no less desire, He calls upon them to help Him carry forward His work of creation. Love without work and achievement is first insipid, and then stale. G.o.d can no more fulfill Himself without children than men can fulfill themselves without Him. If G.o.d"s highest works fail Him, then G.o.d Himself has failed.
The permanent absence of children would stultify G.o.d"s reason and character by rendering useless all that He is and all that He has made.
4. What could an infinite G.o.d care for such a little speck?
It would be interesting to know who originated this question, for he should wear the badge of his own ignorance. In his mind, the little "speck" probably signified the human body. But as we have already seen, that is not man; it is only his instrument. And besides, man may progressively augment his little body, causing it to articulate with the whole body of nature. Moreover, the human body is primarily G.o.d"s, the flower of all His works in the vast unfolding universe. Does G.o.d care for these myriad blossoms of his universe? One might as well ask, "What could a horticulturist care for the little blossoms on his apple trees?"
Let the insects sting them, or the frosts bite them, he has big _trees_ to absorb his attention!
Unless G.o.d"s world could blossom into myriad, delicate forms, as homes for man souls, the universe would be as useless as a barren apple tree.
The little flower is not something apart, its production taxes the entire strength and purpose of the tree. Neither is the human body something apart, its production taxes the entire strength and purpose of the universe. As the flower is the tree"s glory and promise of fruit, so the human body is nature"s glory and promise of souls.
If, however, the "speck" refers to the real man, the spirit, then the question is equally foolish. An intelligent will is neither a "speck,"
nor something spread out like ether. Furthermore, that which can be so deeply impressed by the vastness of the universe is not insignificant in itself. A mastodon would not be overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe. Neither is the great universe overwhelmed by a sense of its own magnitude. In his sense of awe, the foolish man who asked the question transcends the great universe itself. To be overwhelmed with our inability to know the universe is partly knowing it, or else we should not be so completely overwhelmed. That is not insignificant which can measure the distance to the stars, and weigh the planets, and mark out the shape and size of their orbits. That is not insignificant which can discover the very elements of which the sun is composed. Man"s primary body may be relatively small, but it is so highly organized that he can augment it until his instrument reaches the stars. Though the sun is approximately ninety-three million miles from our earth, yet the intelligent mind of man discovered helium in the sun before he discovered it upon the earth. This feat of His child must have given the Father keen delight.
Man"s body is potentially as great as the universe because, being so delicately organized, it can articulate with the world elements to the farthest sun that twinkles in the blue.
The Luther Burbanks are revealing our supremacy over the vegetable kingdom. The animal kingdom is known to be equally plastic under our shaping hand; for juggling with animal life is one of man"s pastimes.
By using pressure, he has taken a single cell life and divided it into twins. He has taken two separate cells and formed them into a giant.
Taking off the head and tail of some lower forms of life, he has made the head grow where the tail was, and vice versa.
No one mind can find time to learn of all the wonders achieved by the human family in the realms of nature and of social well-being. A simple statement of man"s achievements in the twenty or thirty allied sciences is more thrilling than all the romances ever written. Man"s power for good or evil is stupendous and overwhelming. It is in the realm of human life that G.o.d Himself will be victorious, or else defeated. All creation will fail if man fails. I here speak of man in the sense of G.o.d"s children, wherever they may be in the universe. The people on this earth might fail without bringing universal disaster; but if G.o.d"s children throughout the universe should fail Him, then all is lost. If G.o.d did not "care for" His children, it would be the same as not caring for Himself, since all His aims and purposes culminate in His family. G.o.d has crowned man with glory and honor, by putting all things under his feet.
The world is as ignorant of man as it is of G.o.d; and the prevailing idea of either is a caricature.
It is doubtful whether a self-conscious moral will could be awakened outside of a body, or inside of one if it were less highly organized than the human body. The higher animals share our sensations of pain and pleasure, but it is extremely doubtful whether any of them share in our self-conscious, moral purposes. Possibly a soul _must_ appear in any such highly organized form of G.o.d"s energies as a human body, and _cannot_ appear where the organization of His energies falls short of this high standard. If we believe the body to be the integration of G.o.d"s own energies it would not be strange if the body proved to be the incipient soul. We have not yet sounded the depths of G.o.d"s creative wisdom either in the soul or the body; we only know that soul and body are bound together, and that G.o.d"s highest achievement and deepest interest center in them. How infinitely precious in the sight of G.o.d are His children, the crown and glory of all His wisdom, love, and power!
5. Is not socialism the best religion there is?
When socialism means the Kingdom of G.o.d, it is the best religion conceivable. And it is a pity that either religion or socialism should ever mean anything less than the Kingdom of G.o.d; for when they drop below that standard, the one is spurious religion while the other is counterfeit socialism; the former discarding society, and the latter eliminating G.o.d, both alike become a menace.
Last summer in Madison Square, New York, I listened to a socialist who was ridiculing the very idea of G.o.d. Exhorting his listeners to have a little sense, he advised them to get rid of G.o.d, priests, ministers, churches, and King Capital. He said:
"You have but one life to live, and it is short; if ever you get anything, you must get it now."
This type of socialism is a scourge, a pest, a bubonic plague.
Nevertheless we would not minimize the crime of withholding from men their rights in this life.
Another socialist speaking at a park in my own city said:
"In the past, the capitalist has taken it all, leaving the working man only enough for the food necessary to do his work,--and not always that.
But we do not blame him, he had a right to take it because he could;--we should have done the same if we had been in his place. That is what life means; "the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong." Only the fittest have a right to live. But our turn is soon coming when we shall be able to take it all,--and we will."
Now, whoever teaches a theory like that, or acts upon it, is a cancer in the social body. It makes no difference whether or not he is a church member, whether business man, or laborer; such a man is a malignant growth in the body of humanity.
It is just because socialism means anything from the religion of Jesus to this putrid stuff, that the average well-meaning person is cautious about identifying himself with any movement bearing the name of socialism. Yet any religion that stands aloof from social well-being is doomed,--as it ought to be. No man can love G.o.d while hating his brother; and whether he loves his brother is proved more by his actions than by his words. To love our brother, as we shall see, is enlightened selfishness as well as altruism.
"G.o.d in the soul" has been rather a popular definition of religion. To many minds this definition conveys a rich and ample meaning. To others it conveys gross error, for religious hysteria is often thought to be G.o.d in the soul. A mere psychic state, a religious opiate, a mental disease, may be so interpreted. It is a question whether any definition of religion is safe. A description of religion is far preferable to a definition, and has the advantage of being an easier task. When we identify religion with the Kingdom of G.o.d, we have a perfectly clear idea. _The Kingdom of G.o.d is a loving, intelligent family organised around the Father"s good-will, living in the universe as His home, using the forces of nature as the instruments of His will, and making all things vocal with His wisdom, love, and power._
This is true religion; this is a desirable socialism; this is right life. For such an end G.o.d, man, and the enveloping powers of nature exist. Any loss of this vision, any lack of warmth or enthusiasm for its realization, spells degeneration. Such a state of mind means the perversion of nature, the engendering of rebellion in the Kingdom of G.o.d, and the making of prodigals. Religious experience does not mean just any kind of comfortable, private feeling, but a conscious love for the family of G.o.d, and conscious interest in the work that G.o.d and His children are trying to accomplish _in the midst of nature"s forces_.
Religious experience means an active desire to brighten the great world home, and to gladden the great world family. The idea is so simple that a child can understand it; and a child"s heart may glow with happiness while helping to brighten the world. To take one"s place in the family of G.o.d as a member, loving, and beloved, is something infinitely better than cold ethics. Character that does not root itself in friendship is poor character; it bears not the fruit of righteousness, love, and joy.
Our debt of friendship to all men is no less binding than our financial obligations. Friendship is the great power for good in the world. "I have called you friends, and such you are." And because they were friends, Jesus revealed to His disciples all the secrets of His soul, and threw over them the spell of His life. By interweaving their lives in some great purpose, or by promoting a common enterprise, friends lift each other into the finest vision. Simple, hearty, and unfeigned friendship for G.o.d and men, is religion pure and undefiled. A wise man does not defer friendship until he is perfect, but seeks friendship first to learn what perfection is, that through friendship he may receive strength to be perfect.
The new truths clearly manifest concerning G.o.d, man, and nature cause a new heaven to dawn, and a new h.e.l.l to yawn. Heaven is brighter, and h.e.l.l is hotter, than we had been thinking. The relation that exists between G.o.d, man, and the universe makes it perfectly plain that G.o.d does not go ahead of His children to make either heaven or h.e.l.l. There _is_ no heaven on either side the grave, except that which is made by the cooperation of G.o.d and His children. Though there are plenty of heavenly sites in the universe, yet the building of a Holy City is never begun until some of G.o.d"s children have arrived on the scene. They who organize around the good will of G.o.d build a heaven in time and place; out of G.o.d"s energies in which they live, they make a beautiful home.
Heaven is doubtless a place as well as a state, for souls that are in a right state will make a right place in which to live. More than likely there are many heavens in the universe. In my city heaven may be on one floor and h.e.l.l on another, while the character of the third floor is uncertain. Souls cannot live outside of G.o.d"s enfolding energies, and therefore they cannot avoid making either heaven or h.e.l.l out of His infinite powers. Citizens of the Kingdom, under the guiding wisdom of G.o.d, make heaven. Those who refuse citizenship, preferring their own way, make h.e.l.l; but they make it out of the same mighty forces of which heaven is made.
The idea that G.o.d, independent of His children, made a pretty place called heaven, and an ugly place called h.e.l.l, in order that He might put good little people in the one, and push naughty little people off into the other, is the idea of a fool"s heaven and a fool"s h.e.l.l;--the facts are much more glorious and awful. There will be just as good a heaven as the Kingdom of G.o.d builds, and no better. Likewise there will be just as bad a h.e.l.l as G.o.d"s disloyal sons make, and no worse. No dream can picture the paradise that G.o.d may make in this universe with the help of His good children. And the h.e.l.l that His rebellious sons may create is something appalling. Since heaven or h.e.l.l is simply the shape we give to G.o.d"s enfolding energies, all of us are unavoidably engaged in constructing the one or the other, and we have been so engaged every moment since our conscious life began. No one dare think that all his work is heaven-building. Altogether, through vice or greed, we have managed to produce of late the hottest Gehenna ever witnessed on earth.
It has taken longer to make this sad condition than most of us realize; and many who little suspect their responsibility and guilt have been active agents in creating the fires of war and other fires in which there has been of late so much writhing and gnashing of teeth. And at the moment of the world"s greatest anguish, there were those who were trying to get rich out of the state of sorrow into which they had helped to plunge humanity. I refer to all profiteers and crooked dealers, whether they were laborers or capitalists; to those who were willing that additional hundreds of thousands of our boys should go down into the lake of fire, if only they could fill their coffers. These were the devils who stood round the boiling caldron with their flesh hooks, to tear the flesh of innocent boys if they rose to the surface of the boiling liquid. Some of these flesh-hook devils, having refined manners, posed as gentlemen. Others were lewd fellows of various sorts. But the flames which they fed were not hot enough for them. They were getting ready for a fire that will burn much deeper, and they will be sure to find it.
During the war, many found their faith in G.o.d staggering before a perdition created by human beings. But their faith should not have been unsettled, because this war was as sure to follow the way the world was living as the wheels of the cart are certain to follow the tread of the ox. Some had the blindness and audacity to blame G.o.d for what we have done. G.o.d gave us the raw material with which to build a heaven, and we constructed a h.e.l.l. Through His many prophets and seers G.o.d told us what we were doing, but we would not believe Him. Thinking ourselves wise we became fools, and turned His good gifts into instruments of torture. The majority of the people, believing that they could get along without giving much heed to G.o.d, took His limitless gifts and made a grand holiday instead of a Holy Day, and then rode in automobiles and yachts to their doom. When a world is bad enough to make war, it needs war.
Though I had three sons between my heart and Germany"s steel, yet I realized that America had to be hurt for her own salvation, for the salvation of Germany, for the safety of the world, and for the utter destruction of the German intriguers. If the people of the allied nations, however, had been shaping the instruments of their spirits into clean bodies, happy homes, honest business, and good governments, and all of these into the Kingdom of G.o.d on earth, Prussia could not have dreamed her dream of world dominance, nor would she have dared to throw down the gauntlet before the world. But seeing our weakness, she scorned our threats. Being under tutorship to the G.o.d of power, in spite of her vices, which were equal to those of other nations, Prussia became shrewder and stronger than the nations that were too largely feasting under a baccha.n.a.lian G.o.d, or softly enjoying themselves under a Santa Claus deity, or were piling up unrighteous gains under no G.o.d, or under one that was capable of wicked favoritism. It was clear to the prophets of the Most High that something was due,--and it came. Bad as war is, that state of society which makes war possible is even worse. When society grows its body into a monster, the corrective influence of h.e.l.l, in some form, is the last hope. This does not, however, exonerate Germany from the crime of launching a ruthless war to gratify her l.u.s.t for world domination. G.o.d surely could not help it, since the human family shaped its body as it did against light and conscience; but if there were no retribution for sin and ignorance He would lose His family utterly. h.e.l.l inevitably came when the tools were forged and the devils were trained; but G.o.d neither forged the tools nor trained the devils.
I am advocating no moral prudery, nor religious bigotry. Neither do I wish to imply that heaven has not been built up side by side with h.e.l.l during the last fifty years,--for it has. Those who have profited intellectually and spiritually by the revelations of modern learning, and by the new influx of power, and by the new social opportunities, have made the last fifty years the grandest in human history. Of these n.o.ble sons and daughters it should be said: their growth in the knowledge of G.o.d, their success in the discovery of man, their achievements in wresting from nature its deepest secrets, their grasp on the meaning of G.o.d"s Kingdom, their accomplishments in the practical launching of everything pertaining to a new era and a finer world order have made this the golden age for all who have seen the vision and shared in the work. Yet over against this kingdom of light and love, there has grown up a kingdom of darkness and hate. These two kingdoms have grown up side by side in every civilized country. And finally the kingdom of darkness embroiled all the nations in a deadly conflict.
Seeing all, and feeling all, G.o.d was the greatest sufferer in the awful carnage of the contending armies. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being;" and therefore armies live, and fight their battles in G.o.d.
They fight their battles with G.o.d"s own powers, and make gaping wounds in His own body. And yet, some will ask, "Where was G.o.d?" Not only was He in the thick of the fight, but the thick of the fight was in His beautiful, enfolding energies. We shall make heaven out of the selfsame energies when we are done making h.e.l.l out of them. And then, as now, G.o.d will be in our midst; but He will be in our midst as a joyous, and not a suffering G.o.d.
It would have been a pity if this war had ended before the nations opened their eyes to the higher purposes of G.o.d for future civilization, or before their consciences had been cleansed for the work of advancing the Kingdom. G.o.d will come to our help with mighty power when we come to His help with mighty obedience. General Sherman said, "War is h.e.l.l."