This has generally been taken to mean that war is as terrible as h.e.l.l; but it is more than that, it is h.e.l.l literally, _because h.e.l.l is never anything but war_. If there were no war of any kind there would be no h.e.l.l. This is equally true either side the grave. If there were no individuals in the universe to oppose G.o.d"s will and so misuse His enfolding energies as to harm one another, h.e.l.l would cease to be. The beginning of h.e.l.l is very pleasurable, and that is why men begin it. But it always grows more and more terrible until it becomes a lake of fire.
It is worse than brimstone, because men have found hotter materials to use. It is curtains of fire, poisonous gases, shrapnel, bombs, machine guns, and mud mixed with blood.
War begins in selfish desire, and continues in the misuse of G.o.d"s good gifts. Intensified desire diverts to its own use that which does not belong to it; and becoming powerful, arrogant, and oppressive, it brews h.e.l.l without knowing it. Thinking that it knows all, it refuses instruction. To the perverted mind, imprisoned in a distorted body, Jesus looks weak, while G.o.d seems a myth, or mere brute force. Finally h.e.l.l breaks loose in all its fury.
The most pathetic thing in this whole affair is that the good have to go to h.e.l.l with the bad,--at least in this life. But it was ever so. Jesus truly "descended into h.e.l.l," only it was before He died. The same is true of G.o.d and all His good sons. There is no other way to save the situation. Gehenna, as well as heaven, begins _here_ and _now_. It may be that the rebellious sons of G.o.d have created a worse h.e.l.l on the other side of the grave, but if they have, it is exactly the same in kind as that which they have made here. Every immoral and painful condition in the universe is wrought in G.o.d. G.o.d was as closely related to the recent war as a man is related to the abscess on his finger; and He is so related to all h.e.l.ls, in all worlds. For h.e.l.l is never anything but a painful disturbance wrought in G.o.d"s body by the sons whom He has enfolded in His bosom. And since there are so many discordant and vicious elements throughout all the world, it is to be hoped that the nations are being purged by the awful fires through which they are pa.s.sing.
Has the earth had its last war? That is not at all likely. There is plenty of discord in society even now that the main war is over. Many wrongs must be righted and many problems solved or terror will break out somewhere. Human society and human inst.i.tutions have grown about as large and complex as is possible, unless they can be dominated by a larger ideal and a more Christlike spirit. While I sympathize with all the hopes and aspirations of the n.o.ble men and women of our day for a more peaceful earth, yet I do so only on the condition that men will learn to know and obey the truth. Nothing should be left undone that will hasten the day of righteousness and peace.
G.o.d has two hands with which He is trying to save the world. The one is a crucified hand, and the other is a great steel hand. The crucified hand, which is the pledge of forgiveness and good will, is both logically and chronologically first. For nearly two thousand years G.o.d has been extending this hand. Millions have accepted it and lived; but many more have refused it, preferring the strife of the world. It is perfectly plain that society will not be saved by this means alone.
Without minimizing the worth of the crucified hand, or withdrawing it, G.o.d is at last employing a hand of steel, as vast as the machinery of the world, and identical with it. G.o.d is placing His great steel fingers around men and drawing them together. No longer may men live apart, for under this new pressure nothing has value in isolation. Capital has no value without labor, neither has labor any value without capital; and these may no longer work successfully together without uplifting the weak nations of the earth. The ma.s.ses and cla.s.ses can no longer escape each other. Bound together by bands of steel, they may do one of two things--kill each other or love one another. There is no third alternative. I have faith that when men see themselves in the grip of the steel hand, they will choose the better alternative and, by clasping G.o.d"s crucified hand, become brothers. As things have been going, scores of peoples on our little earth have lived in darkness and under the hand of awful oppression; they could have suffered and rotted for millenniums without the prosperous nations knowing or caring. At last, however, we know, and our own salvation now clearly rests on our caring.
The articulate body of humanity has become as great as the nations of the earth, and that body is made up of the infinite energies of G.o.d. We now have the privilege of making this mighty body express more fully than ever before the thought and love of G.o.d, or else we shall be compelled to shape it into the most gigantic monster that ever stalked forth to do the foul deeds of h.e.l.l. Were there a legion of leering and jeering devils, plotting evil against our earth, the comprehending mind could hear them say, "We wish for no more awful instruments of torture than these energies of the Infinite with which His children clothe themselves. Only let us lead them to fall out by the way, and they will d.a.m.n each other by smiting with the infinite powers of their G.o.d."
Men,--individuals and nations!--do we see it, do we know the simple rudiments of life, is it not clearly manifest that we must strive for the Christ life or socially commit suicide and murder?
Men have made such great mental and material growth that unlimited power is placed at their disposal. That fact makes this the greatest day in human history. I have already said that the man soul is in quest of omnipresence by progressively making the universe the instrument of his will. The hour has struck for his supreme effort in that direction; though simply creeping in the past, he may now run if only he will obey the divine law. However, if he will not obey, the hour for disintegration has arrived; and once more nations and empires must burn to the ground, and upon the ashes of the conflagration, the n.o.ble "remnant" must again begin to rebuild slowly and painfully the temple of G.o.d on earth.
If our old men are dreaming dreams, and our young men are seeing visions, let them come forth in this crisis. But thank G.o.d, they are coming! Millions are coming! We believe there will be enough to save the day. And what a day it will be if, after all this dreadful upheaval, we can reconstruct the world on such broad principles of righteousness and love that the race shall start upon a new era of peace and good will! We must not on account of ignorance or selfishness throw away this golden opportunity.
Get ye up upon the mountains, O Israel, O Church of G.o.d, and look for the day!
CHAPTER IV
DOES G.o.d HAVE A BODY, AND COULD HE BECOME A MAN?
_Was Jesus G.o.d or a good man only?_
_Can modern psychology any longer believe in the Deity of Jesus?_
_Where does Jesus belong in the religious, social, and thought world?_
1. Introductory statement
Thus far our discussion of G.o.d has been largely in relation to physics.
At last, however, we are ready to consider Him on a higher plane.
Our knowledge of both G.o.d and man is incomplete until we see their oneness in Jesus and in the kingdom which Jesus proclaimed. In the life of Jesus, G.o.d and man are viewed from a higher spiritual level. The world lies broken into fragments until these fragments become united in the Christ type of life. Then the body, the human mind, G.o.d, and the whole material universe coordinate to make one beautiful whole.
Starting with the Scriptural idea that all things proceed from Wisdom, or G.o.d, then strictly speaking, G.o.d is the only person in the universe who has a body of His own. All other spirits live in His bodies. This is necessarily so if all the way from its simplest elements to its most highly organized forms, nature is but the expression of the divine Will.
As we have already shown, the human body is but a part of universal nature,--the finest part, the blossom. Therefore, what we call the human organism is primarily G.o.d"s. Not only is it the very finest bit of His _workmanship_, but it is His to _use_, unless His child, the man soul, robs Him of His own. In these highly specialized parts of nature G.o.d has not merely one, but billions of bodies,--all the bodies there are. The Infinite Mind would find one such body utterly inadequate. With but one bodily form He would be incomparably worse off than an organist with but one finger. If G.o.d could come to articulate speech and deed through but one physical instrument, He and all His family might well despair. If as the Scriptures teach, however, each and every physical body is His very own, in which and through which He may live, then every condition is provided for a G.o.d humanly personal and infinitely satisfying. He may be as local and personal as our parents or neighbors. Though greater than all, He is yet in all and through all,
"Center and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving heart how near!"
Not only is G.o.d lovingly present to every Christian heart, but at the same time He is personally revealed by every human form through which He is permitted to live and love and serve. The pity of it all is that we so often prevent G.o.d from using His own body, in which we too live, by causing it to express in word and deed that which is contrary to His thought and love.
Before we take up the subject of the Incarnation, it may be well to consider what is meant by the trinity.
2. The idea of the trinity and how it came about
When we say that G.o.d is a trinity we do not mean that there are three G.o.ds. There is just one G.o.d who, as we have repeatedly said, is a Loving Intelligent Will.
The idea of the trinity came about in this way:
The early Christians were so deeply impressed by Jesus, and so warmly attached to their Master, that they instinctively adored and worshiped Him; for, somehow, He brought G.o.d to them even as He brought them to G.o.d. Yet the Christians, like the Jews, strenuously opposed the worship of more than one Divinity. Their stout opposition to Polytheism provoked the retort from their heathen neighbors that Christians should not be so particular about the number of G.o.ds, because they worshiped at least two, a Father G.o.d and a Son G.o.d,--and three, if they added a Holy Spirit G.o.d. So it is not strange that the Christians, to justify their own conduct, were driven to a profound study of Deity. And though they made some grave mistakes, nevertheless they discovered some vital truths concerning the nature of personality which greatly enlarged and enriched their conception of G.o.d. It must be remembered that in the early Christian centuries many thought of G.o.d as something very remote and placid, like a sea of bliss; being infinitely happy and self-contained, He was at perfect rest. Such a One would not contaminate Himself by being identified with nature or man. To the Christian Gnostics and Jews, the idea that G.o.d became incarnate and suffered death on the cross was repugnant. Some believed that it was beneath G.o.d even to create a world like ours. They, therefore, attributed creation to lesser divinities.
However, in the third century Origen stoutly maintained that G.o.d must have created the world. Yet so eminent a man as Origen believed that He created it for "tainted souls."
After much study, the Church Fathers arrived at the conclusion that G.o.d was somehow Three in One, a sort of society within Himself,--and they were right. For without something like a social experience in one"s self, it is impossible to be a person at all. This is equally true of G.o.d or man. To be a person one must know himself, and this he could not do if he were not able to keep company with himself. The pen with which I am writing is not a person because it has no capacity for self-communion. But because I hold _fellowship_ with myself I am a person. Since every human being keeps company with himself more than he does with all other persons put together, may G.o.d have mercy on him if he is bad company, if he is not safe to be left alone with himself. A tree may stand alone in infinite solitude, companionless; but for better, for worse, a man must forever remain in his own company, hearing praise or condemnation from his own heart. How is this possible, unless there is something in a man"s individual experience that resembles society? In self-knowledge, as in all knowledge, there are the _knower_ and the _known_. When we commune with ourselves we are, at the same moment, the subject and the object of our own experience. The self that sees may fittingly be called the father of our personality, and with equal propriety the self that we see may be called the begotten of our personality. Thus something resembling father and son is experienced in our first step toward self-knowledge. Whether the capacity to be our own subject and object amounts to much or little, it was this that the Fathers saw and rightly attributed to G.o.d.
Furthermore, there is yet another step to be taken in the act of coming to true self-knowledge. By what power does one determine that the person with whom he communes is himself? There is something in our experience resembling a third person, one who recognizes both subject and object and bears witness that they are one. The reader may say, "I can see the first and the second, but I cannot see the third." The self that sees the first and the second is the third. This power by which we complete the unity of our being is by no means trivial, as some may think. There are abnormal personalities who successfully achieve the subjective and objective in their experience and keep up an abnormal communion with themselves from morning till night, who cannot witness true. So they insist that they are "General Jacksons" or "Jesus Christs" or great "railroad magnates." Their personalities have broken down, not because they lack self-consciousness, but because they lack the power of coming to unity. A perfectly sane person, therefore, is subject, object, and witnesser all in one. If G.o.d were not this kind of trinity He would not be a person at all.
To grasp so clearly the significance of personality was a great spiritual achievement. The Church Fathers did more than they realized; they described the elements inherent in all personalities. They saved G.o.d to the intellect and to the affections by bringing Him out of remote obscurity into the blazing light of moral and spiritual personality. G.o.d is personal because He is triune; that is, because He is complex enough to keep company with Himself and to know Himself. If the reader asks "What does all this amount to for us?" my answer is, "It amounts to the difference between a personal G.o.d and the deity who is an "immobile placid sea of bliss." In the second place it shows the difference between the G.o.d who is a Loving Intelligent Will and the materialist"s G.o.d who is no more than a blind Samson. It also discloses the essential likeness between all personalities, however much they may differ in development."
If I were asked to put my finger on the greatest weakness in present-day thought I should unhesitatingly point out the subject of personality.
Men are falling down like ten-pins before the intellectual difficulties of believing in a personal G.o.d; and many of them are even doubting the spiritual personality of man. And this is largely due to the fact that they are unable to form any mental picture of personality. One of the beautiful surprises for this generation is that the Fathers in working out the personality of G.o.d found the only conception of personality that is true to universal experience. They did not realize that they were a.n.a.lyzing the human spirit as well as G.o.d, because their thought was wholly on Him. But they saw G.o.d through their own personalities, and if they had not borne G.o.d"s image they never could have a.n.a.lyzed the personality of G.o.d. In this generation we turn their a.n.a.lysis of G.o.d upon ourselves and find that it tallies perfectly with our experience.
We at last see that the triune, or personal, man soul is the child of the triune, or personal, G.o.d Soul; and thus a deeper bond is established between the Father and His child.
The use to which the Church Fathers put this a.n.a.lysis of G.o.d"s personality was both fortunate and unfortunate. It was fortunate because it enabled them to continue their belief in the deity of Jesus and, at the same time, their belief in the oneness of G.o.d. They were still able to oppose polytheism, and yet come to Jesus as the fountain of divine blessing. They worshiped G.o.d in the face of Jesus. In other words, they believed in a genuine Incarnation. This was fortunate beyond all calculation. Just how fortunate it was we shall have to ill.u.s.trate to the best of our ability when we come to the subject of Incarnation. Thus far I have not discussed the Incarnation, neither have I had Jesus in mind while considering the trinity. For in whatever sense G.o.d is a trinity, He was such before Jesus was born.
Before discussing the divinity of Jesus we must briefly call attention to the unfortunate use which the Fathers made of their a.n.a.lysis of the personality of G.o.d. They thought they had solved the question of Christ"s divinity when they took this objective element in the experience of G.o.d and clothed it with flesh. Though they denied that these distinctions in G.o.d were properly named by the word person, yet they admitted their inability to think of a better term. Then they so wrenched G.o.d"s personality apart as to send His objective self, which was simply an element in His experience of self-consciousness, into the world to be the Messiah. And though they stoutly maintained that these three elements in G.o.d were indivisible, yet G.o.d"s subjective self could stay far away in heaven while His objective self could go to earth as a man. At the same time each of the three elements in G.o.d"s experience of self-hood could perform all the functions of a full personality. This was doing the worst possible violence to the personality of G.o.d; and it has wrought confusion from that day to this. As we have already seen, it takes these three elements in G.o.d"s experience to make Him any person at all. The common use made of the subjective, objective, and witnessing elements in the personality of G.o.d is pure Tri-Theism, regardless of how they are united. G.o.d does not have three personalities that can be scattered about in the universe.
The idea that G.o.d"s objective experience can go off on a journey, or that it can return to heaven while His witnessing experience in turn goes to earth, leaving the subjective and objective in heaven, is religious illiteracy. Neither G.o.d nor any part of G.o.d ever goes or comes. The triune, or personal G.o.d, is never far enough off to come anywhere. There is no place in the universe where for a moment He is not. He is always the Father, and Creator, and Intelligent Will in whom all creation lives, and moves, and has its being. The _second element_ in G.o.d"s own act of consciousness did not become incarnate in Jesus; the conscious G.o.d Himself entered the life of man.
The baptismal formula, "In the name of G.o.d the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," has no reference to the triple element in G.o.d"s self-consciousness. It beautifully represents the three ways that we are to look at G.o.d, if we are to see Him in the fulness of His glory. First, we think of G.o.d as He is in Himself, and as He must be to His own infinite thought. Second, we think of Him as He has expressed Himself in nature, in humanity and, best of all, as He has revealed Himself in His obedient Son Jesus. Third, we think of G.o.d as the still small voice within, the Soul of our souls, the One to whom we speak when we have shut the door; the one to whom we whisper our deepest secrets, and ask Him if He loves and forgives us. Beyond the fact that the trinity const.i.tutes G.o.d a person, it has nothing to do with the deity of Jesus.
How G.o.d became incarnate is another question; a question to which we now gladly address ourselves.
3. Was Jesus G.o.d or a good man only?
At a meeting of city ministers, addressed by one of their own number, the speaker took from Jesus the last shred of divinity. According to this minister, Jesus was a prophet sent from G.o.d, and the best of men, but nothing more. A progressive Jewish rabbi asked if this were not the present att.i.tude of all intelligent ministers, and whether they did not, for the sake of expediency, leave the pew in ignorance of their real belief. In the opinion of the rabbi, Jesus was one of the greatest of Jewish reformers, but not the founder of Christian religion. His contention was that Paul founded the Christian Church on a peculiar, psychic experience which came to him on his way to Damascus.
"The Divinity of Jesus" was then a.s.signed to me as a topic for the next meeting. Naturally, I turned to the Scriptures to see what they had to say concerning the relation of G.o.d to man. Though expecting to find on this subject a marked degree of difference between the Old and New Testaments, yet I was wholly unprepared for the facts as they appeared.
Before presenting my findings, I asked the rabbi to consider whether Jesus was a "Jewish reformer," or a Jewish fulfiller,--it being my conviction that He was the latter. I then stated that, having examined the Old Testament on the relation existing between G.o.d and man, I failed to find a single pa.s.sage recognizing G.o.d within the human life; and that no greater surprise than this had come to me in my recent study of the Scriptures. In the Old Testament, the nearest approach to the immanence of G.o.d in the soul was the following:
"I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh," and "Is not my dwelling with the humble in heart?" But even here the divine Spirit was only _upon_ them or _with_ them. Never, so far as I could discover, did He dwell _in_ them. In some twenty-four hundred verses, G.o.d was represented as sustaining many beautiful and terrible relations to men. This relationship was symbolized by birds, beasts, and natural elements, to the very limit of the imagination. After the most solemn warnings and attractive promises, G.o.d would depart from His people for a season and then return with rewards and punishments according to their faithfulness. He scrutinized their inmost thoughts; in fact, He did everything except enter their lives.
On turning to the New Testament, however, I found a startling contrast.
G.o.d dwelt not only in the hearts but in the bodies of men. "For know ye not that ye are the temple of G.o.d, and that the Spirit of G.o.d dwelleth in you? Yea, ye are the temple of the living G.o.d." "Know ye not that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?" "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the l.u.s.ts of the flesh." Jesus said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, show us the Father?
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" "The Father abiding in me doeth His works." "In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father and ye in me, and I in you." "If a man love me he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
As a prospector seeks for gold, I sought in the Old Testament for G.o.d in the life of man and did not find Him; but no sooner had I reached the New Testament than all was changed. Here was a new country. The prospector was in the midst of that for which he sought. No mountain was ever as rich in gold as the human heart, according to the New Testament, was rich with the indwelling G.o.d.
The religion of Jesus in contrast with that of the prophets is like a tree, which Luther Burbank has transformed into a new variety bearing strange and luscious fruit. I wondered that I had overlooked for so long a time the complete cleavage between the two parts of our Bible on this subject. Jesus was truly a Jewish reformer, but to a much greater degree He was a Jewish fulfiller. In revealing G.o.d"s true oneness with man He completed the prophet"s imperfect religious vision, and best of all, made the vision a fact in His own experience. At the same time He began making it a reality in the experience of His disciples.
I told the friend who in a previous meeting had stripped Jesus of all His divinity, that he had very successfully demolished some antiquated psychology, but strange to say had completely overlooked the new psychology which, in my opinion, fully restored Christ"s divinity. As to his statement that "Jesus was a good man only," I reminded him that there is no such being. For, each one of us, in so far as he is "only,"
is a bad man. It requires the oneness of G.o.d and man to make a _good_ man. When a human soul is separated from G.o.d, he ceases to be a complete person. G.o.d and the true self always come or go together; in order to be a human soul, in any worthy sense, one must be both G.o.d and man in one.
A man severed from G.o.d is but the fragment of a man, a limb broken from the tree, a lifeless branch. To touch the living branch of a tree is to touch the tree. The fruit of the branch is likewise the fruit of the tree. That any person can be a "good man only," is an idea contrary to the New Testament and modern psychology.