ETERNAL LIFE.
"Supposing that man, in some form, is
permitted to remain on the earth for a long series of years, we merely
lengthen out the period, but we cannot escape the final catastrophe. The earth
will gradually lose its energy of rotation, as well as that of revolution
around the sun. The sun himself will wax dim and become useless as a source of
energy, until at last the favourable conditions of the present solar system
will have quite disappeared.
"But what happens to our system will happen
likewise to the whole visible universe, which will, if finite, become a
lifeless mass, if indeed it be not doomed to utter dissolution. In fine, it
will become old and effete, no less truly than the individual. It is a glorious
garment, this visible universe, but not an immortal one. We must look elsewhere
if we are to be clothed with immortality as with a garment."
THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE.
" This is Life Eternal--that they might know
Thee, the True God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."--Jesus
Christ.
" Perfect correspondence would be perfect
life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism had
adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which
it met them, there would be eternal existence and eternal
knowledge."--Herbert Spencer.
ONE of the most startling achievements of
recent science is a definition of Eternal Life. To the religious mind this is a
contribution of immense moment. For eighteen hundred years only one definition
of Life Eternal was before the world. Now there are two.
Through all these centuries revealed religion had
this doctrine to itself. Ethics had a voice, as well as Christianity, on the
question of the summum bonum; Philosophy ventured to speculate on the
Being of a God. But no source outside Christianity contributed anything to the
doctrine of Eternal Life. Apart from Revelation, this great truth was
unguaranteed. It was the one thing in the Christian system that most needed
verification from without, yet none was forthcoming. And never has any further
light been thrown upon the question why in its very nature the Christian Life
should be Eternal. Christianity itself even upon this point has been obscure.
Its decision upon the bare fact is authoritative and specific. But as to what
there is in the Spiritual Life necessarily endowing it with the element of
Eternity, the maturest theology is all but silent.
It has been reserved for modern biology at once
to defend and illuminate this central truth of the Christian faith. And hence
in the interests of religion, practical and evidential, this second and
scientific definition of Eternal Life is to be hailed as an announcement of
commanding interest. Why it should not yet have received the recognition of
religious thinkers--for already it has lain some years unnoticed--is not
difficult to understand. The belief in Science as an aid to faith is not yet
ripe enough to warrant men in searching there for witnesses to the highest
Christian truths. The inspiration of Nature, it is thought, extends to the
humbler doctrines alone. And yet the reverent inquirer who guides his steps in
the right direction may find even now in the still dim twilight of the
scientific world much that will illuminate and intensify his sublimest faith.
Here, at least, comes, and comes unbidden the opportunity of testing the most
vital point of the Christian system. Hitherto the Christian philosopher has
remained content with the scientific evidence against Annihilation. Or, with
Butler, he has reasoned from the Metamorphoses of Insects to a future life. Or
again, with the authors of " The Unseen Universe," the apologist has
constructed elaborate, and certainly impressive, arguments upon the Law of
Continuity. But now we may draw nearer. For the first time Science touches
Christianity positively on the doctrine of Immortality. It confronts us
with an actual definition of an Eternal Life, based on a full and rigidly
accurate examination of the necessary conditions. Science does not pretend that
it can fulfil these conditions. Its votaries make no claim to possess the
Eternal Life. It simply postulates the requisite conditions without concerning
itself whether any organism should ever appear, or does now exist, which might
fulfil them. The claim of religion, on the other hand, is that there are
organisms which possess Eternal Life. And the problem for us to solve is this:
Do those who profess to possess Eternal Life fulfil the conditions required by
Science, or are they different conditions? In a word, Is the Christian
conception of Eternal Life scientific?
It may be unnecessary to notice at the
outset that the definition of Eternal Life drawn up by Science was framed
without reference to religion. It must indeed have been the last thought with
the thinker to whom we chiefly owe it, that in unfolding the conception of a
Life in its very nature necessarily eternal, he was contributing to
Theology.
Mr. Herbert Spencer--for it is to him we owe it--
would be the first to admit the impartiality of his definition; and from the
connection in which it occurs in his writings, it is obvious that religion was
not even present to his mind. He is analysing with minute care the relations
between Environment and Life. He unfolds the principle according to which Life
is high or low, long or short. He shows why organisms live and why they die.
And finally he defines a condition of things in which an organism would never
die--in which it would enjoy a perpetual and perfect Life. This to him is, of
course, but a speculation. Life Eternal is a biological conceit. The conditions
necessary to an Eternal Life do not exist in the natural world. So that the
definition is altogether impartial and independent. A Perfect Life, to Science,
is simply a thing which is theoretically possible--like a Perfect Vacuum.
Before giving, in so many words, the definition
of Mr. Herbert Spencer, it will render it fully intelligible if we gradually
lead up to it by a brief rehearsal of the few and simple biological facts on
which it is based. In considering the subject of Death, we have formerly seen
that there are degrees of Life. By this is meant that some lives have more and
fuller correspondence with Environment than others. The amount of
correspondence, again, is determined by the greater or less complexity of the
organism. Thus a simple organism like the Amoeba is possessed of very few
correspondences. It is a mere sac of transparent structureless jelly for which
organization has done almost nothing, and hence it can only communicate with
the smallest possible area of Environment. An insect, in virtue of its more
complex structure, corresponds with a wider area. Nature has endowed it with
special faculties for reaching out to the Environment on many sides; it has
more life than the Amoeba. In other words, it is a higher animal. Man again,
whose body is still further differentiated, or broken up into different
correspondences, finds himself en rapport with his surroundings to a
further extent. And therefore he is higher still, more living still. And this
law, that the degree of Life varies with the degree of correspondence, holds to
the minutest detail throughout the entire range of living things. Life becomes
fuller and fuller, richer and richer, more and more sensitive and responsive to
an ever-widening Environment as we rise in the chain of being.
Now it will speedily appear that a distinct
relation exists, and must exist, between complexity and longevity. Death being
brought about by the failure of an organism to adjust itself to some change in
the Environment, it follows that those organisms which are able to adjust
themselves most readily and successfully will live the longest. They will
continue time after time to effect the appropriate adjustment, and their power
of doing so will be exactly proportionate to their complexity--that is, to the
amount of Environment they can control with their correspondences. There are,
for example, in the Environment of every animal certain things which are
directly or indirectly dangerous to Life. If its equipment of correspondences
is not complete enough to enable it to avoid these dangers in all possible
circumstances, it must sooner or later succumb. The organism then with the most
perfect set of correspondences, that is, the highest and most complex organism,
has an obvious advantage over less complex forms. It can adjust itself more
perfectly and frequently. But this is just the biological way of saying that it
can live the longest. And hence the relation between complexity and longevity
may be expressed thus--the most complex organisms are the longest lived.
To state and illustrate the proposition
conversely may make the point still further clear. The less highly organized an
animal is, the less will be its chance of remaining in lengthened
correspondence with its Environment. At some time or other in its career
circumstances are sure to occur to which the comparatively immobile organism
finds itself structurally unable to respond. Thus a Medusa tossed ashore
by a wave, finds itself so out of correspondence with its new surroundings that
its life must pay the forfeit. Had it been able by internal change to adapt
itself to external change--to correspond sufficiently with the new environment,
as for example to crawl, as an eel would have done, back into that environment
with which it had completer correspondence--its life might have been spared.
But had this happened it would continue to live henceforth only so long as it
could continue in correspondence with all the circumstances in which it might
find itself. Even if, however, it became complex enough to resist the ordinary
and direct dangers of its environment, it might still be out of correspondence
with others A naturalist for instance, might take advantage of its want of
correspondence with particular sights and sounds to capture it for his cabinet,
or the sudden dropping of a yacht's anchor or the turn of a screw might cause
its untimely death.
Again, in the case of a bird, in virtue of its
more complex organization, there is command over a much larger area of
environment. It can take precautions such as the Medasa could not; it
has increased facilities for securing food; its adjustments all round are more
complex; and therefore it ought to be able to maintain its Life for a longer
period. There is still a large area, however, over which it has no control. Its
power of internal change is not complete enough to afford it perfect
correspondence with all external changes, and its tenure of Life is to that
extent insecure. Its correspondence, moreover, is limited even with regard to
those external conditions with which it has been partially established. Thus a
bird in ordinary circumstances has no difficulty in adapting itself to changes
of temperature, but if these are varied beyond the point at which its capacity
of adjustment begins to fail--for example, during an extreme winter--the
organism being unable to meet the condition must perish. The human organism, on
the other hand, can respond to this external condition, as well as to countless
other vicissitudes under which lower forms would inevitably succumb. Man's
adjustments are to the largest known area of Environment, and hence he ought to
be able furthest to prolong his Life.
It becomes evident, then, that as we ascend in
the scale of Life we rise also in the scale of longevity. The lowest organisms
are, as a rule, short-lived, and the rate of mortality diminishes more or less
regularly as we ascend in the animal scale. So extraordinary indeed is the
mortality among lowly-organized forms that in most cases a compensation is
actually provided, nature endowing them with a marvellously increased fertility
in order to guard against absolute extinction. Almost all lower forms are
furnished not only with great reproductive powers, but with different methods
of propagation, by which, in various circumstances, and in an incredibly short
time, the species can be indefinitely multiplied. Ehrenberg found that by the
repeated subdivisions of a single Paramecium, no fewer than 268,000,000
similar organisms might be produced in one month. This power steadily decreases
as we rise higher in the scale, until forms are reached in which one, two, or
at most three, Come into being at a birth. It decreases, however, because it is
no longer needed. These forms have a much longer lease of Life. And it may be
taken as a rule, although it has exceptions, that complexity in animal
organisms is always associated with longevity.
It may be objected that these illustrations are
taken merely from morbid conditions. But whether the Life be cut short by
accident or by disease the principle is the same. All dissolution is brought
about practically in the same way. A certain condition in the Environment fails
to be met by a corresponding condition in the organism, and this is death. And
conversely the more an organism in virtue of its complexity can adapt itself to
all the parts of its Environment, the longer it will live. " It is manifest a
priori," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, " that since changes in the physical
state of the environment, as also those mechanical actions and those variations
of available food which occur in it, are liable to stop the processes going on
in the organism; and since the adaptive changes in the organism have the
effects of directly or indirectly counterbalancing these changes in the
environment, it follows that the life of the organism will be short or long,
low or high, according to the extent to which changes in the environment are
met by corresponding changes in the organism. Allowing a margin for
perturbations, the life will continue only while the correspondence continues;
the completeness of the life will be proportionate to the completeness of the
correspondence; and the life will be perfect only when the correspondence is
perfect."[68]
We are now all but in sight of our scientific
definition of Eternal Life. The desideratum is an organism with a
correspondence of a very exceptional kind. It must lie beyond the reach of
those "mechanical actions "and those "variations of available food," which are
"liable to stop the processes going on in the organism." Before we reach an
Eternal Life we must pass beyond that point at which all ordinary
correspondences inevitably cease. We must find an organism so high and complex,
that at some point in its development it shall have added a correspondence
which organic death is powerless to arrest. We must in short pass beyond that
finite region where the correspondences depend on evanescent and material
media, and enter a further region where the Environment corresponded with is
itself Eternal. Such an Environment exists. The Environment of the Spiritual
world is outside the influence of these "mechanical actions," which sooner or
later interrupt the processes going on in all finite organisms. If then we can
find an organism which has established a correspondence with the spiritual
world, that correspondence will possess the elements of eternity--provided only
one other condition be fulfilled.
That condition is that the Environment be
perfect. If it is not perfect, if it is not the highest, if it is endowed with
the finite quality of change, there can be no guarantee that the Life of its
correspondents will be eternal, Some change might occur in it which the
correspondents had no adaptive changes to meet, and Life would cease. But grant
a spiritual organism in perfect correspondence with a perfect spiritual
Environment, and the conditions necessary to Eternal Life are satisfied.
The exact terms of Mr. Herbert Spencer's
definition of Eternal Life may now be given. And it will be seen that they
include essentially the conditions here laid down. "Perfect correspondence
would be perfect life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the
organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the
efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal existence and eternal
knowledge."[69] Reserving the question as to
the possible fulfilment of these conditions, let us turn for a moment to the
definition of Eternal Life laid down by Christ. Let us place it alongside the
definition of Science, and mark the points of contact. Uninterrupted
correspondence with a perfect Environment is Eternal Life according to Science.
"This is Life Eternal," said Christ, "that they may know Thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."[70] Life Eternal is to know God. To know God is to
"correspond" with God. To correspond with God is to correspond with a Perfect
Environment. And the organism which attains to this, in the nature of things
must Live for ever. Here is "eternal existence and eternal knowledge."
The main point of agreement between the
scientific and the religious definition is that Life consists in a peculiar and
personal relation defined as a "correspondence." This conception, that Life
consists in correspondences, has been so abundantly illustrated already that it
is now unnecessary to discuss it further. All Life indeed consists essentially
in correspondences with various Environments. The artist's life is a
correspondence with art; the musician's with music. To cut them off from these
Environments is in that relation to cut off their Life. To be cut off from all
Environment is death. To find a new Environment again and cultivate relation
with it is to find a new Life. To live is to correspond, and to correspond is
to live. So much is true in Science. But it is also true in Religion. And it is
of great importance to observe that to Religion also the conception of Life is
a correspondence. No truth of Christianity has been more ignorantly or wilfully
travestied than the doctrine of Immortality. The popular idea, in spite of a
hundred protests, is that Eternal Life is to live for ever. A single glance at
the locus classicus, might have made this error impossible. There we are
told that Life Eternal is not to live. This is Life Eternal--to know.
And yet --and it is a notorious instance of the fact that men who are
opposed to Religion will take their conceptions of its profoundest truths from
mere vulgar perversions--this view still represents to many cultivated men the
Scriptural doctrine of Eternal Life. From time to time the taunt is thrown at
Religion, not unseldom from lips which Science ought to have taught more
caution, that the Future Life of Christianity is simply a prolonged existence,
an eternal monotony, a blind and indefinite continuance of being. The Bible
never could commit itself to any such empty platitude; nor could Christianity
ever offer to the world a hope so colourless. Not that Eternal Life has nothing
to do with everlastingness. That is part of the conception. And it is
this aspect of the question that first arrests us in the field of Science. But
even Science has more in its definition than longevity. It has a correspondence
and an Environment; and although it cannot fill up these terms for Religion, it
can indicate at least the nature of the relation, the kind of thing that is
meant by Life. Science speaks to us indeed of much more than numbers of years.
It defines degrees of Life. It explains a widening Environment. It unfolds the
relation between a widening Environment and increasing complexity in organisms.
And if it has no absolute contribution to the content of Religion, its
analogies are not limited to a point. It yields to Immortality, and this is the
most that Science can do in any case, the broad framework for a doctrine.
The further definition, moreover, of this
correspondence as knowing is in the highest degree significant. Is not
this the precise quality in an Eternal correspondence which the analogies of
Science would prepare us to look for? Longevity is associated with complexity.
And complexity in organisms is manifested by the successive addition of
correspondences, each richer and larger than those which have gone before. The
differentiation, therefore, of the spiritual organism ought to be signalized by
the addition of the highest possible correspondence. It is not essential to the
idea that the correspondence should be altogether novel; it is necessary rather
that it should not. An altogether new correspondence appearing suddenly without
shadow or prophecy would be a violation of continuity. What we should expect
would be something new, and yet something that we were already prepared for. We
should look for a further development in harmony with current developments; the
extension of the last and highest correspondence in a new and higher direction.
And this is exactly what we have. In the world with which biology deals,
Evolution culminates in Knowledge.
At whatever point in the zoological scale this
correspondence, or set of correspondences, begins, it is certain there is
nothing higher. In its stunted infancy merely, when we meet with its rudest
beginnings in animal intelligence, it is a thing so wonderful, as to strike
every thoughtful and reverent observer with awe. Even among the invertebrates
so marvellously are these or kindred powers displayed, that naturalists do not
hesitate now, on the ground of intelligence at least, to classify some of the
humblest creatures next to man himself.[71]
Nothing in nature, indeed, is so unlike the rest of nature, so prophetic of
what is beyond it, so supernatural. And as manifested in Man who crowns
creation with his all-embracing consciousness, there is but one word to
describe his knowledge: it is Divine. If then from this point there is to be
any further Evolution, this surely must be the correspondence in which it shall
take place? This correspondence is great enough to demand development; and yet
it is little enough to need it. The magnificence of what it has achieved
relatively, is the pledge of the possibility of more; the insignificance of its
conquest absolutely involves the probability of still richer triumphs. If
anything, in short, in humanity is to go on it must be this. Other
correspondences may continue likewise; others, again, we can well afford to
leave behind. But this cannot cease. This correspondence--or this set of
correspondences, for it is very complex--is it not that to which men with one
consent would attach Eternal Life? Is there anything else to which they would
attach it? Is anything better conceivable, anything worthier, fuller, nobler,
anything which would represent a higher form of Evolution or offer a more
perfect ideal for an Eternal Life?
But these are questions of quality; and the
moment we pass from quantity to quality we leave Science behind. In the
vocabulary of Science Eternity is only the fraction of a word. It means mere
everlastingness. To Religion, on the other hand, Eternity has little to do with
time. To correspond with the God of Science, the Eternal Unknowable, would be
everlasting existence; to correspond with "the true God and Jesus Christ," is
Eternal Life. The quality of the Eternal Life alone makes the heaven; mere
everlastingness might be no boon. Even the brief span of the temporal life is
too long for those who spend its years in sorrow. Time itself, let alone
Eternity, is all but excruciating to Doubt. And many besides Schopenhauer have
secretly regarded consciousness as the hideous mistake and malady of Nature.
Therefore we must not only have quantity of years, to speak in the language of
the present, but quality of correspondence. When we leave Science behind, this
correspondence also receives a higher name. It becomes communion. Other names
there are for it, religious and theological. It may be included in a general
expression, Faith; or we may call it by a personal and specific term, Love. For
the knowing of a Whole so great involves the co-operation of many parts.
Communion with God--can it be demonstrated in
terms of Science that this is a correspondence which will never break? We do
not appeal to Science for such a testimony. We have asked for its conception of
an Eternal Life; and we have received for answer that Eternal Life would
consist in a correspondence which should never cease, with an Environment which
should never pass away. And yet what would Science demand of a perfect
correspondence that is not met by this, the knowing of God? There is no
other correspondence which could satisfy one at least of the conditions. Not
one could be named which would not bear on the face of it the mark and pledge
of its mortality. But this, to know God, stands alone. To know God, to be
linked with God, to be linked with Eternity--if this is not the "eternal
existence" of zoology, what can more nearly approach it? And yet we are still a
great way off--to establish a communication with the Eternal is not to secure
Eternal Life. It must be assumed that the communication could be sustained. And
to assume this would be to beg the question. So that we have still to prove
Eternal Life. But let it be again repeated, we are not here seeking proofs. We
are seeking light. We are merely reconnoitring from the furthest promontory of
Science if so be that through the haze we may discern the outline of a distant
coast and come to some conclusion as to the possibility of landing.
But, it may be replied, it is not open to any one
handling the question of Immortality from the side of Science to remain neutral
as to the question of fact. It is not enough to announce that he has no
addition to make to the positive argument. This may be permitted with reference
to other points of contact between Science and Religion, but not with this. We
are told this question is settled--that there is no positive side. Science
meets the entire conception of Immortality with a direct negative. In the face
of a powerful consensus against even the possibility of a Future Life, to
content oneself with saying that Science pretended to no argument in favour of
it would be at once impertinent and dishonest. We must therefore devote
ourselves for a moment to the question of possibility.
The problem is, with a material body and a mental
organization inseparably connected with it, to bridge the grave. Emotion,
volition, thought itself, are functions of the brain. When the brain is
impaired, they are impaired. When the brain is not, they are not. Everything
ceases with the dissolution of the material fabric; muscular activity and
mental activity perish alike. With the pronounced positive statements on this
point from many departments of modern Science we are all familiar. The fatal
verdict is recorded by a hundred hands and with scarcely a shadow of
qualification. "Unprejudiced philosophy is compelled to reject the idea of an
individual immortality and of a personal continuance after death. With the
decay and dissolution of its material substratum, through which alone it has
acquired a conscious existence and become a person, and upon which it was
dependent, the spirit must cease to exist."[72] To the same effect Vogt: "Physiology decides definitely
and categorically against individual immortality, as against any special
existence of the soul. The soul does not enter the foetus like the evil spirit
into persons possessed, but is a product of the development of the brain, just
as muscular activity is a product of muscular development, and secretion a
product of glandular development." After a careful review of the position of
recent Science with regard to the whole doctrine, Mr. Graham sums up thus:
"Such is the argument of Science, seemingly decisive against a future life. As
we listen to her array of syllogisms, our hearts die within us. The hopes of
men, placed in one scale to be weighed, seem to fly up against the massive
weight of her evidence, placed in the other. It seems as if all our arguments
were vain and unsubstantial, as if our future expectations were the foolish
dreams of children, as if there could not be any other possible verdict arrived
at upon the evidence brought forward."[73]
Can we go on in the teeth of so real an
obstruction? Has not our own weapon turned against us, Science abolishing with
authoritative hand the very truth we are asking it to define?
What the philosopher has to throw into the other
scale can be easily indicated. Generally speaking, he demurs to the dogmatism
of the conclusion. That mind and brain react, that the mental and the
physiological processes are related, and very intimately related, is beyond
controversy. But how they are related, he submits, it still altogether unknown.
The correlation of mind and brain do not involve their identity. And not a few
authorities accordingly have consistently hesitated to draw any conclusion at
all. Even Buchner's statement turns out, on close examination, to be tentative
in the extreme. In prefacing his chapter on Personal Continuance, after a
single sentence on the dependence of the soul and its manifestations upon a
material substratum, he remarks, "Though we are unable to form a definite idea
as to the how of this connection, we are still by these facts justified
in asserting, that the mode of this connection renders it apparently
impossible that they should continue to exist separately."[74] There is, therefore, a flaw at his point in the argument
for materialism. It may not help the spiritualist in the least degree
positively. He may be as far as ever from a theory of how consciousness could
continue without the material tissue. But his contention secures for him the
right of speculation. The path beyond may lie in hopeless gloom; but it is not
barred. He may bring forward his theory if he will. And this is something. For
a permission to go on is often the most that Science can grant to Religion.
Men have taken advantage of this loophole in
various ways. And though it cannot be said that these speculations offer us
more than a probability, this is still enough to combine with the deep-seated
expectation in the bosom of mankind and give fresh lustre to the hope of a
future life. Whether we find relief in the theory of a simple dualism; whether
with Ulrici we further define the soul as an invisible enswathement of the
body, material yet non-atomic; whether, with the "Unseen Universe," we are
helped by the spectacle of known forms of matter shading off into an
ever-growing subtilty, mobility, and immateriality; or whether, with Wundt, we
regard the soul as "the ordered unity of many elements," it is certain that
shapes can be given to the conception of a correspondence which shall bridge
the grave such as to satisfy minds too much accustomed to weigh evidence to put
themselves off with fancies.
But whether the possibilities of physiology or
the theories of philosophy do or do not substantially assist us in realizing
Immortality, is to Religion, to Religion at least regarded from the present
point of view, of inferior moment. The fact of Immortality rests for us on a
different basis. Probably, indeed, after all the Christian philosopher never
engaged himself in a more superfluous task than in seeking along physiological
lines to find room for a soul. The theory of Christianity has only to be fairly
stated to make manifest its thorough independence of all the usual speculations
on Immortality. The theory is not that thought, volition, or emotion, as such
are to survive the grave. The difficulty of holding a doctrine in this form, in
spite of what has been advanced to the contrary, in spite of the hopes and
wishes of mankind, in spite of all the scientific and philosophical attempts to
make it tenable, is still profound. No secular theory of personal continuance,
as even Butler acknowledged, does not equally demand the eternity of the brute.
No secular theory defines the point in the chain of Evolution at which
organisms became endowed with Immortality. No secular theory explains the
condition of the endowment, nor indicates its goal. And if we have nothing more
to fan hope than the unexplored mystery of the whole region, or the unknown
remainders among the potencies of Life, then, as those who have "hope only in
this world," we are "of all men the most miserable."
When we turn, on the other hand, to the doctrine
as it came from the lips of Christ, we find ourselves in an entirely different
region. He makes no attempt to project the material into the immaterial. The
old elements, however refined and subtil as to their matter, are not in
themselves to inherit the Kingdom of God. That which is flesh is flesh. Instead
of attaching Immortality to the natural organism, He introduces a new and
original factor which none of the secular, and few even of the theological
theories, seem to take sufficiently into account. To Christianity, "he that
hath the Son of God hath Life, and he that hath not the Son hath not Life."
This, as we take it, defines the correspondence which is to bridge the grave.
This is the clue to the nature of the Life that lies at the back of the
spiritual organism. And this is the true solution of the mystery of Eternal
Life.
There lies a something at the back of the
correspondences of the spiritual organism--just as there lies a something at
the back of the natural correspondences. To say that Life is a correspondence
is only to express the partial truth. There is something behind. Life manifests
itself in correspondences. But what determines them? The organism exhibits a
variety of correspondences. What organizes them? As in the natural, so in the
spiritual, there is a Principle of Life. We cannot get rid of that term.
However clumsy, however provisional, however much a mere cloak for ignorance,
Science as yet is unable to dispense with the idea of a Principle of Life. We
must work with the word till we get a better. Now that which determines the
correspondence of the spiritual organism is a Principle of Spiritual Life. It
is a new and Divine Possession. He that hath the Son hath Life; conversely, he
that hath Life hath the Son. And this indicates at once the quality and the
quantity of the correspondence which is to bridge the grave. He that hath Life
hath the Son. He possesses the Spirit of a Son. That spirit is, so to
speak, organized within him by the Son. It is the manifestation of the new
nature--of which more anon. The fact to note at present is that this is not an
organic correspondence, but a spiritual correspondence. It comes not from
generation, but from regeneration. The relation between the spiritual man and
his Environment is, in theological language, a filial relation. With the new
Spirit, the filial correspondence, he knows the Father--and this is Life
Eternal. This is not only the real relation, but the only possible relation:
"Neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son
will reveal Him." And this on purely natural grounds. It takes the Divine to
know the Divine--but in no more mysterious sense than it takes the human to
understand the human. The analogy, indeed, for the whole field here has been
finely expressed already by Paul: "What man," he asks, "knoweth the things of a
man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth
no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the
world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are
freely given to us of God."[75]
It were idle, such being the quality of the new
relation, to add that this also contains the guarantee of its eternity. Here at
last is a correspondence which will never cease. Its powers in bridging the
grave have been tried. The correspondence of the spiritual man possesses the
supernatural virtues of the Resurrection and the Life. It is known by former
experiment to have survived the "changes in the physical state of the
environment," and those "mechanical actions" and "variations of available
food," which Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us are "liable to stop the processes
going on in the organism." In short, this is a correspondence which at once
satisfies the demands of Science and Religion. In mere quantity it is different
from every other correspondence known. Setting aside everything else in
Religion, everything adventitious, local, and provisional; dissecting in to the
bone and marrow we find this--a correspondence which can never break with an
Environment which can never change. Here is a relation established with
Eternity. The passing years lay no limiting hand on it. Corruption injures it
not. It survives Death. It, and it only, will stretch beyond the grave and be
found inviolate--
"When the moon is
old,
And the stars are cold,
And the books of the Judgment-day
unfold."
The misgiving which will creep
sometimes over the brightest faith has already received its expression and its
rebuke: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" Shall
these "changes in the physical state of the environment" which threaten death
to the natural man destroy the spiritual? Shall death, or life, or angels, or
principalities, or powers, arrest or tamper with his eternal correspondences?"
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love
of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."[76]
It may seem an objection to some that the
"perfect correspondence" should come to man in so extraordinary a way. The
earlier stages in the doctrine are promising enough; they are entirely in line
with Nature. And if Nature had also furnished the "perfect correspondence"
demanded for an Eternal Life the position might be unassailable. But this
sudden reference to a something outside the natural Environment destroys the
continuity, and discovers a permanent weakness in the whole theory? To which
there is a twofold reply. In the first place, to go outside what we call Nature
is not to go outside Environment. Nature, the natural Environment, is only a
part of Environment. There is another large part which, though some profess to
have no correspondence with it, is not on that account unreal, or even
unnatural. The mental and moral world is unknown to the plant. But it is real.
It cannot be affirmed either that it is unnatural to the plant; although it
might be said that from the point of view of the Vegetable Kingdom it was
supernatural. Things are natural or supernatural simply according to
where one stands. Man is supernatural to the mineral; God is supernatural to
the man. When a mineral is seized upon by the living plant and elevated to the
organic kingdom, no trespass against Nature is committed. It merely enters a
larger Environment, which before was supernatural to it, but which now is
entirely natural. When the heart of a man, again, is seized upon by the
quickening Spirit of God, no further violence is done to natural law. It is
another case of the inorganic, so to speak, passing into the organic.
But, in the second place, it is complained as if
it were an enormity in itself that the spiritual correspondence should be
furnished from the spiritual world. And to this the answer lies in the same
direction. Correspondence in any case is the gift of Environment. The natural
Environment gives men their natural faculties; the spiritual affords them their
spiritual faculties. It is natural for the spiritual Environment to supply the
spiritual faculties; it would be quite unnatural for the natural Environment to
do it. The natural law of Biogenesis forbids it; the moral fact that the finite
cannot comprehend the Infinite is against it; the spiritual principle that
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God renders it absurd. Not,
however, that the spiritual faculties are, as it were, manufactured in the
spiritual world and supplied ready-made to the spiritual organism--forced upon
it as an external equipment. This certainly is not involved in saying that the
spiritual faculties are furnished by the spiritual world. Organisms are not
added to by accretion, as in the case of minerals, but by growth. And the
spiritual faculties are organized in the spiritual protoplasm of the soul, just
as other faculties are organized in the protoplasm of the body. The plant is
made of materials which have once been inorganic. An organizing principle not
belonging to their kingdom lays hold of them and elaborates them until they
have correspondences with the kingdom to which the organizing principle
belonged. Their original organizing principle, if it can be called by this
name, was Crystallisation; so that we have now a distinctly foreign power
organizing in totally new and higher directions. In the spiritual world,
similarly, we find an organizing principle at work among the materials of the
organic kingdom, performing a further miracle, but not a different kind of
miracle, producing organizations of a novel kind, but not by a novel method.
The second process, in fact, is simply what an enlightened evolutionist would
have expected from the first. It marks the natural and legitimate progress of
the development. And this in the line of the true Evolution--not the
linear Evolution, which would look for the development of the natural
man through powers already inherent, as if one were to look to Crystallisation
to accomplish the development of the mineral into the plant,--but that larger
form of Evolution which includes among its factors the double Law of Biogenesis
and the immense further truth that this involves.
What is further included in this complex
correspondence we shall have opportunity to illustrate afterwards.[77] Meantime let it be noted on what the
Christian argument for Immortality really rests. It stands upon the pedestal on
which the theologian rests the whole of historical Christianity--the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It ought to be placed in the forefront of all
Christian teaching that Christ's mission on earth was to give men Life. "I am
come," He said, "that ye might have Life, and that ye might have it more
abundantly." And that He meant literal Life, literal spiritual and Eternal
Life, is clear from the whole course of His teaching and acting. To impose a
metaphorical meaning on the commonest word of the New Testament is to violate
every canon of interpretation, and at the same time to charge the greatest of
teachers with persistently mystifying His hearers by an unusual use of so exact
a vehicle for expressing definite thought as the Greek language, and that on
the most momentous subject of which He ever spoke to men. It is a canon of
interpretation, according to Alford, that "a figurative sense of words is never
admissible except when required by the context." The context, in most cases, is
not only directly unfavourable to a figurative meaning, but in innumerable
instances in Christ's teaching Life is broadly contrasted with Death. In the
teaching of the apostles, again, we find that, without exception, they accepted
the term in its simple literal sense. Reuss defines the apostolic belief with
his usual impartiality when--and the quotation is doubly pertinent here--he
discovers in the apostle's conception of Life, first, "the idea of a real
existence, an existence such as is proper to God and to the Word; an
imperishable existence--that is to say, not subject to the vicissitudes and
imperfections of the finite world. This primary idea is repeatedly expressed,
at least in a negative form; it leads to a doctrine of immortality, or, to
speak more correctly, of life, far surpassing any that had been expressed in
the formulas of the current philosophy or theology, and resting upon premises
and conceptions altogether different. In fact, it can dispense both with the
philosophical thesis of the immateriality or indestructibility of the human
soul, and with the theological thesis of a miraculous corporeal reconstruction
of our person; theses, the first of which is altogether foreign to the religion
of the Bible, and the second absolutely opposed to reason." Second, " the idea
of life, as it is conceived in this system, implies the idea of a power, an
operation, a communication, since this life no longer remains, so to speak,
latent or passive in God and in the Word, but through them reaches the
believer. It is not a mental somnolent thing; it is not a plant without fruit;
it is a germ which is to find fullest development."[78]
If we are asked to define more clearly what is
meant by this mysterious endowment of Life, we again hand over the difficulty
to Science. When Science can define the Natural Life and the Physical Force we
may hope for further clearness on the nature and action of the Spiritual
Powers. The effort to detect the living Spirit must be at least as idle as the
attempt to subject protoplasm to microscopic examination in the hope of
discovering Life. We are warned, also, not to expect too much. "Thou canst not
tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." This being its quality, when the
Spiritual Life is discovered in the laboratory it will possibly be time to give
it up altogether. It may say, as Socrates of his soul, "You may bury me--if you
can catch me."
Science never corroborates a spiritual truth
without illuminating it. The threshold of Eternity is a place where many
shadows meet. And the light of Science here, where everything is so dark, is
welcome a thousand times. Many men would be religious if they knew where to
begin; many would be more religious if they were sure where it would end. It is
not indifference that keeps some men from God, but ignorance. "Good Master,
what must I do to inherit Eternal Life?" is still the deepest question of the
age. What is Religion? What am I to believe? What seek with all my heart and
soul and mind?--this is the imperious question sent up to consciousness from
the depths of being in all earnest hours; sent down again, alas, with many of
us, time after time, unanswered. Into all our thought and work and reading this
question pursues us. But the theories are rejected one by one; the great books
are returned sadly to their shelves, the years pass, and the problem remains
unsolved. The confusion of tongues here is terrible. Every day a new authority
announces himself. Poets, philosophers, preachers try their hand on us in turn.
New prophets arise, and beseech us for our soul's sake to give ear to them--at
last in an hour of inspiration they have discovered the final truth. Yet the
doctrine of yesterday is challenged by a fresh philosophy to-day; and the creed
of to-day will fall in turn before the criticism of tomorrow. Increase of
knowledge increaseth sorrow. And at length the conflicting truths, like the
beams of light in the laboratory experiment, combine in the mind to make total
darkness.
But here are two outstanding authorities agreed--
not men, not philosophers, not creeds. Here is the voice of God and the voice
of Nature. I cannot be wrong if I listen to them. Sometimes when uncertain of a
voice from its very loudness, we catch the missing syllable in the echo. In God
and Nature we have Voice and Echo. When I hear both, I am assured. My sense of
hearing does not betray me twice. I recognise the Voice in the Echo, the Echo
makes me certain of the Voice; I listen and I know. The question of a Future
Life is a biological question. Nature may be silent on other problems of
Religion; but here she has a right to speak. The whole confusion around the
doctrine of Eternal Life has arisen from making it a question of Philosophy. We
shall do ill to refuse a hearing to any speculation of Philosophy; the ethical
relations here especially are intimate and real. But in the first instance
Eternal Life, as a question of Life, is a problem for Biology. The soul
is a living organism. And for any question as to the soul's Life we must appeal
to Life-science. And what does the Life-science teach? That if I am to inherit
Eternal Life, I must cultivate a correspondence with the Eternal. This is a
simple proposition, for Nature is always simple. I take this proposition, and,
leaving Nature, proceed to fill it in. I search everywhere for a clue to the
Eternal. I ransack literature for a definition of a correspondence between man
and God. Obviously that can only come from one source. And the analogies of
Science permit us to apply to it. All knowledge lies in Environment. When I
want to know about minerals I go to minerals. When I want to know about flowers
I go to flowers. And they tell me. In their own way they speak to me, each in
its own way, and each for itself--not the mineral for the flower, which is
impossible, nor the flower for the mineral, which is also impossible. So if I
want to know about Man, I go to his part of the Environment. And he tells me
about himself, not as the plant or the mineral, for he is neither, but in his
own way. And if I want to know about God, I go to His part of the Environment.
And He tells me about Himself, not as a Man, for He is not Man, but in His own
way. And just as naturally as the flower and the mineral and the Man, each in
their own way, tell me about themselves, He tells me about Himself. He very
strangely condescends indeed in making things plain to me, actually assuming
for a time the Form of a Man that I at my poor level may better see Him. This
is my opportunity to know Him. This incarnation is God making Himself
accessible to human thought--God opening to man the possibility of
correspondence through Jesus Christ. And this correspondence and this
Environment are those I seek. He Himself assures me, "This is Life Eternal,
that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast
sent." Do I not now discern the deeper meaning in "Jesus Christ whom Thou
hast sent"? Do I not better understand with what vision and rapture the
profoundest of the disciples exclaims, "The Son of God is come, and hath given
us an understanding that we might know Him that is True"?[79]
Having opened correspondence with the Eternal
Environment, the subsequent stages are in the line of all other normal
development. We have but to continue, to deepen, to extend, and to enrich the
correspondence that has been begun. And we shall soon find to our surprise that
this is accompanied by another and parallel process. The action is not all upon
our side. The Environment also will be found to correspond. The influence of
Environment is one of the greatest and most substantial of modern biological
doctrines. Of the power of Environment to form or transform organisms, of its
ability to develop or suppress function, of its potency in determining growth,
and generally of its immense influence in Evolution, there is no need now to
speak. But Environment is now acknowledged to be one of the most potent factors
in the Evolution of Life. The influence of Environment too seems to increase
rather than diminish as we approach the higher forms of being. The highest
forms are the most mobile; their capacity of change is the greatest; they are,
in short, most easily acted on by Environment. And not only are the highest
organisms the most mobile, but the highest parts of the highest organisms are
more mobile than the lower. Environment can do little, comparatively, in the
direction of inducing variation in the body of a child; but how plastic is its
mind! How infinitely sensitive is its soul! How infallibly can it be tuned to
music or to dissonance by the moral harmony or discord of its outward lot! How
decisively indeed are we not all formed and moulded, made or unmade, by
external circumstance! Might we not all confess with Ulysses,--
" I am a part of
all that I have met "?
Much more, then,
shall we look for the influence of Environment on the spiritual nature of him
who has opened correspondence with God. Reaching out his eager and quickened
faculties to the spiritual world around him, shall he not become spiritual? In
vital contact with Holiness, shall he not become holy? Breathing now an
atmosphere of ineffable Purity, shall he miss becoming pure? Walking with God
from day to day, shall he fail to be taught of God?
Growth in grace is sometimes described as a
strange, mystical, and unintelligible process. It is mystical, but neither
strange nor unintelligible. It proceeds according to Natural Law, and the
leading actor in sanctification is Influence of Environment. The possibility of
it depends upon the mobility of the organism; the result, on the extent and
frequency of certain correspondences. These facts insensibly lead on to a
further suggestion. Is it not possible that these biological truths may carry
with them the clue to a still profounder philosophy--even that of
Regeneration?
Evolutionists tell us that by the influence of
environment certain aquatic animals have become adapted to a terrestrial mode
of life. Breathing normally by gills, as the result and reward of a continued
effort carried on from generation to generation to inspire the air of heaven
direct, they have slowly acquired the lung-function. In the young organism,
true to the ancestral type, the gill still persists--as in the tadpole of the
common frog. But as maturity approaches the true lung appears; the gill
gradually transfers its task to the higher organ. It then becomes atrophied and
disappears, and finally respiration in the adult is conducted by lungs alone.[80] We may be far, in the meantime, from saying
that this is proved. It is for those who accept it to deny the justice of the
spiritual analogy. Is religion to them unscientific in its doctrine of
Regeneration? Will the evolutionist who admits the regeneration of the frog
under the modifying influence of a continued correspondence with a new
environment, care to question the possibility of the soul acquiring such a
faculty as that of Prayer, the marvellous breathing-function of the new
creature, when in contact with the atmosphere of a besetting God? Is the change
from the earthly to the heavenly more mysterious than the change from the
aquatic to the terrestrial mode of life? Is Evolution to stop with the organic?
If it be objected that it has taken ages to perfect the function in the
batrachian, the reply is, that it will take ages to perfect the function in the
Christian. For every thousand years the natural evolution will allow for the
development of its organism, the Higher Biology will grant its product
millions. We have indeed spoken of the spiritual correspondence as already
perfect--but it is perfect only as the bud is perfect. " It doth not yet appear
what it shall be," any more than it appeared a million years ago what the
evolving batrachian would be.
But to return. We have been dealing with the
scientific aspects of communion with God. Insensibly, from quantity we have
been led to speak of quality. And enough has now been advanced to indicate
generally the nature of that correspondence with which is necessarily
associated Eternal Life. There remain but one or two details to which we must
lastly, and very briefly, address ourselves.
The quality of everlastingness belongs, as we
have seen, to a single correspondence, or rather to a single set of
correspondences. But it is apparent that before this correspondence can take
full and final effect a further process is necessary. By some means it must be
separated from all the other correspondences of the organism which do not share
its peculiar quality. In this life it is restrained by these other
correspondences. They may contribute to it or hinder it; but they are
essentially of a different order. They belong not to Eternity but to Time, and
to this present world; and, unless some provision is made for dealing with
them, they will detain the aspiring organism in this present world till Time is
ended. Of course, in a sense, all that belongs to Time belongs also to
Eternity; but these lower correspondences are in their nature unfitted for an
Eternal Life. Even if they were perfect in their relation to their Environment,
they would still not be Eternal. However opposed, apparently, to the scientific
definition of Eternal Life, it is yet true that perfect correspondence with
Environment is not Eternal Life. A very important word in the complete
definition is, in this sentence, omitted. On that word it has not been
necessary hitherto, and for obvious reasons, to place any emphasis, but when we
come to deal with false pretenders to Immortality we must return to it. Were
the definition complete as it stands, it might, with the permission of the
psycho-physiologist, guarantee the Immortality of every living thing. In the
dog, for instance, the material framework giving way at death might leave the
released canine spirit still free to inhabit the old Environment. And so with
every creature which had ever established a conscious relation with surrounding
things. Now the difficulty in framing a theory of Eternal Life has been to
construct one which will exclude the brute creation, drawing the line rigidly
at man, or at least somewhere within the human race. Not that we need object to
the Immortality of the dog, or of the whole inferior creation. Nor that we need
refuse a place to any intelligible speculation which would people the earth
to-day with the invisible forms of all things that have ever lived. Only we
still insist that this is not Eternal Life. And why? Because their Environment
is not Eternal. Their correspondence, however firmly established, is
established with that which shall pass away. An Eternal Life demands an Eternal
Environment.
The demand for a perfect Environment as well
as for a perfect correspondence is less clear in Mr. Herbert Spencer's
definition than it might be. But it is an essential factor. An organism might
remain true to its Environment, but what if the Environment played it false? If
the organism possessed the power to change, it could adapt itself to successive
changes in the Environment. And if this were guaranteed we should also have the
conditions for Eternal Life fulfilled. But what if the Environment passed away
altogether? What if the earth swept suddenly into the sun? This is a change of
environment against which there could be no precaution and for which there
could be as little provision. With a changing Environment even, there must
always remain the dread and possibility of a falling out of correspondence. At
the best, Life would be uncertain. But with a changeless Environment--such as
that possessed by the spiritual organism--the perpetuity of the correspondence,
so far as the external relation is concerned, is guaranteed. This quality of
permanence in the Environment distinguishes the religious relation from every
other. Why should not the musician's life be an Eternal Life? Because, for one
thing, the musical world, the Environment with which he corresponds, is not
eternal. Even if his correspondence in itself could last eternally, the
environing material things with which he corresponds must pass away. His soul
might last for ever--but not his violin. So the man of the world might last for
ever--but not the world. His Environment is not eternal; nor are even his
correspondences--the world passeth away and the lust thereof.
We find then that man, or the spiritual man, is
equipped with two sets of correspondences. One set possesses the quality of
everlastingness, the other is temporal. But unless these are separated by some
means the temporal will continue to impair and hinder the eternal. The final
preparation, therefore, for the inheriting of Eternal Life must consist in the
abandonment of the non-eternal elements. These must be unloosed and dissociated
from the higher elements. And this is effected by a closing
catastrophe--Death.
Death ensues because certain relations in the
organism are not adjusted to certain relations in the Environment. There will
come a time in each history when the imperfect correspondences of the organism
will betray themselves by a failure to compass some necessary adjustment. This
is why Death is associated with Imperfection. Death is the necessary result of
Imperfection, and the necessary end of it. Imperfect correspondence gives
imperfect and uncertain Life. "Perfect correspondence," on he other hand,
according to Mr. Herbert Spencer, would be "perfect Life." To abolish Death,
therefore, all that would be necessary would be to abolish Imperfection. But it
is the claim of Christianity that it can abolish Death. And it is significant
to notice that it does so by meeting this very demand of Science--it abolishes
Imperfection.
The part of the organism which begins to get out
of correspondence with the Organic Environment is the only part which is in
vital correspondence with it. Though a fatal disadvantage to the natural man to
be thrown out of correspondence with this Environment, it is of inestimable
importance to the spiritual man. For so long as it is maintained the way is
barred for a further Evolution. And hence the condition necessary for the
further Evolution is that the spiritual be released from the natural. That is
to say, the condition of the further Evolution is Death. Mors janua
Vitae, therefore, becomes a scientific formula. Death being the final
sifting of all the correspondences, is the indispensable factor of the higher
Life. In the language of Science, not less than of Scripture, "To die is
gain."
The sifting of the correspondences is done by
Nature. This is its last and greatest contribution to mankind. Over the mouth
of the grave the perfect and the imperfect submit to their final separation.
Each goes to its own--earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Spirit to
Spirit. "The dust shall return to the earth as it was; and the Spirit shall
return unto God who gave it."
[68] " Principles of Biology," p, 82.
[69] "Principles of Blology," p. 86.
[70] John xvii.
[71] Vide Sir John Lubbock's "Ants,
Bees and Wasps," pp. 1, 181 .
[72] Buchner: "Force and Matter," 3rd Ed., p.
232.
[73] "The Creed of Science," p. 169.
[74] "Force and Matter," p. 231.
[75] 1 Cor. ii 11,12.
[76] Rom. viii. 35-39.
[77] Vide "Conformity to Type," page
287.
[78] "History of Christian Theology in the
Apostolic Age," vol ii. p. 496.
[79] 1 John v. 20.
[80] Vide also the remarkable
experiments of Fraulein v. Chauvin in the Transformation of the Mexican Axolotl
into Amblystoma. --Weismann's "Studies in the Theory of Descent," vol. ii. pt.
iii.