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the impulse is derived and to which it pertains. The soul has its natural needs and cravings as well as the body. "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God." "When we go deepest down," said the Rev. J. Page Hopps at the International Congress of Spiritualists, held in London last year, "we find the Rock of Religion; and when we penetrate to the heart of Spiritualism we find God."

It is the real significance of life that Spiritualism is now revealing to the world, by showing that the sojourn on earth is but the beginning of man's personal career. Here everything is transitory; the hopes of yesterday become the disappointments of to-day; to-morrow's realization but shows the vanity of to-day's dream. Nothing certain or substantial has worldliness to offer its votary, because, in the words of the Spiritualist of old, "here we have no continuing city; we seek one to come." The earthly pilgrimage, says Spiritualism, is experimental and preparatory; its joys and sorrows, its dazzling hopes and bitter frustrations, the sunshine and the clouds, prosperity and adversity, tears and smiles-all are object-lessons and training to the soul in this its kindergarten.

But the New Revelation does not inculcate helpless submission, or a non-resisting drifting along the currents of circumstance. On the contrary, life here is a perpetual trial of strength-a stern wayfaring, not an idle tarrying. "He that regardeth the clouds shall not reap." In this matter Spiritualism admonishes the Christian religion that spiritual faith-or trust may be perverted into a heedless indolence, entailing social and spiritual stagnation. Herein lies the secret of the "dying notions" to which an English statesman referred not long ago.

The inspirations and revelations of Modern Spiritualism, however, contain less of essential novelty than of corroboration and explanation. They rationalize and supplement rather than subvert; and, by demonstrating that spiritual revelations, as

well as the revelations of external truth, are gradual and conditional, they explain and justify the statement of the Master that there are many things he might have said unto his people had their minds been prepared to receive them. There is a suggestive significance in that statement of the Nazarene which those who persist in the notion of fixed, infallible revelation seem to have missed.

It would be instructive to study history by dividing it into periods of Religion and Non-religion, of Worldliness and Other-worldliness, of Faith and Skepticism. There certainly have been such alternating mental or spiritual states: both of which, we may be sure, are in harmony with the mysterious workings of Evolution--a process that is by no means confined to the physical world. "The elements and roots of religion," says Max Müller, “are seen as far back as we can trace the history of man; and the history of religion, like that of language, shows us a succession of new combinations of the same radical elements. An intuition of God, a sense of human weakness and dependence, a belief in a divine government of the world, a distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life these are the radical elements of all religions.* Though sometimes hidden, they rise again and again to the surface. Though frequently distorted, they tend again and again to their perfect form." And Carlyle, writing of eighteenth-century skepticism, speaks of it, with splendid insight, as "the decay of old ways of believing, the preparation afar off for new, better, and wider ways—an inevitable thing." "We will not blame men for it," he continues; "we will lament their hard fate. We will understand that destruction of old forms is not destruction of everlasting substance; that skepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, is not an end but a beginning."

Skepticism is a sort of mental stock-taking,—a balancing * And, he might have added, a realizing sense of contact with spiritual realms.

of accounts and a clearing out of dead stock,-preparatory to the closing up of the business of one era and the entering into a new and larger method of conducting the affairs of life. It is a sign of growth, not an evidence of degeneration, this doubting and questioning of time-worn conceptions and ancestral habits of thought-reverence for which sometimes becoming a thoughtless makeshift for a genuine religious ideal and breeding that "sincere cant" which Carlyle considered so worthy of consideration. It is a sign of growth, but also an indication that an inner power is at work lifting men out of the sluggish fixity of thought into which they are prone to fall. For the Infinite Presence-though ever abiding in the life of man-seems periodically to make itself manifest in unwonted ways: to some, by startling signs and wonders; to others by a holy inspiration bringing to their consciousness a clear discernment of essential spirituality and a certain realization of Divine relationship and overshadowing.

THERE is no end of growing in the Christian life, but its beginning is in the simplicity of the most natural relations to God and to men. The busiest have time enough for it. The most uncultured know enough for it; and the wisest can only then be truly wise when they have returned to that simplicity.-Henry Wilder Foote.

TO BE disinterested is to be strong, and the world is at the feet of him whom it cannot tempt. Why? Because spirit is lord of matter, and the world belongs to God. "Be of good cheer," saith a heavenly voice; "I have overcome the world.”— Amiel.

IN the other world, as long as men who die in their sins continue to remain in sin, they will have to take the consequences.— Dr. Sweetser.

DEMAND AND SUPPLY.

BY CHARLES BRODIE PATTERSON.

Life is made up of little acts, rather than of great ones. The little things we do day by day constitute the real sum of life. In our haste to accomplish definite results in the world we forget about the little things in our desire to accomplish the great things, and we fail in the latter because we do not know how to achieve the former. There is nothing so trivial in life as to be unworthy of consideration. We should understand life so as to make our thoughts clear even to little children; to do away so far as practicable with the complex side of life; to be as simple-minded as possible; to keep the mind free from all things that tend to tangle or clog it. We should start with the thought of God-God in all life; God in our own individual lives. We should not go through life trying to keep ourselves separate from the world in which we live, feeling that because we have some knowledge of divine law we are above our fellow-men. We should rather go through the world in the spirit of helpfulness—giving and receiving.

No matter how evil a thing may seem to be, if we examine the root of it we will find God there. No matter how bad a man may seem to be, if we can reach his soul we will find God there. And it will make us more charitable, because we will see that the evil of life is only on the surface, where change and growth are forever taking place—where we make mistakes, sometimes wilfully and sometimes unconsciously, yet knowing that through such errors we profit in the end. Then let us think the God thought of life in everything-in our dealings with our fellows, with children, and with animals. to see God in mind and also in Nature, because

Let us try

God is in

both. We should try to see God first in our own lives, for then we shall see Him in everything-everything is expressing God. Let us try to be wise, because when we have the wisdom of God in our own minds we shall find it in everything; for God's law is in everything, and everything moves in accordance with it.

Sometimes things seem to be deflected from their natural course, yet everything moves ultimately in its natural order. We know that the earth in its circuit round the sun is deflected from its path as it passes a greater planet, but having passed it is no longer deflected. We should not get discouraged about things that seem to fail. There are no failures in the plan of God. Failure at its worst is only seeming. Everything is progressing toward a definite end. Vicissitudes are inevitable; therefore, discouragement should never enter into the mind of man. It is the inner life that is important, not that on the surface; it is that which is really trying to express itself outwardly, and frequently failing to do it perfectly. Perfect expression comes through effort that is not strained, but directed when the mind is in a state of peace and rest. We succeed only when we put the restless, anxious side of affairs out of mind and allow the restful side to dwell in our thoughts.

Consider the brightness and the joy of living. We do not pay enough attention to these. There is not enough brightness in the world; yet when we consider things as they really are there is every reason to be happy, to be joyful. To know this is to display both joy and happiness, which are aspects of the Spirit of God. We hear them in the song of the bird; we feel them in the perfume of every flower. There is happiness, there is joyousness in Nature. We should appear bright and happy by showing forth the inner brightness and the inner joy of living, because we are working out a great problem that will bring us into a more harmonious and beautiful condition of life; and we should work from that condition outward in

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