The world's redemption

Front matter

Santa Clara University ILL

Trans. #: 130425 III iM

Title The world's redemption Author Rolt, C. E.

Preface

Parts of Chapters I, II, VIII and XI have already, under a slightly different guise, formed the substance of four articles in The English Church Review, and my grateful thanks are owing to the Editor for permission to use the material again; but The English Church Review must not be held responsible for opinions contained in other portions of the essay.

A similar remark applies to the bearer of the initials which I am privileged to place on the dedication page. His acceptance of a book with which he will not entirely agree, springs from the fearless sincerity of his own convictions. I value it greatly, as it enables me to acknowledge, however unworthily, an altogether immeasurable debt which can never be repaid in this life.

My thanks are due to the many friends who have helped me with advice and encouragement, and also with assistance in the drudgery of preparing the book for the press. And I am glad to take this opportunity of thanking Mrs. Romanes and Messrs. Longman for kindly allowing me to make use of the quotation from vil viil PREFACE the latc Professor Romanes’ Darwin and after Darwin which appears, through their courtesy, in Chapter V.

If there appears in any of the following pages to be a somewhat assertive dogmatism, this will not, it is hoped, be set down to a lack of humility. It is impossible for a man to speak with hesitation of the lifebelt which saves him from drowning; and where the language is uncompromising, my excuse must be that I am trying, though hampered by limitations of which I am not unconscious, to offer no mere personal opinion, but what I am driven to regard as a rather obvious deduction from the Gospel. Moreover, ultimate things admit of no hazy outlines, and I have therefore been anxious, avoiding all qualifications, to make the opposition between two great alternatives as clear-cut as possible. Those who reject the main contention of the essay, will thus, it is hoped, at least know the nature of the thing they are rejecting.

I can but end with the oft-quoted words: Domine, quaecunque dixr de Tuo agnoscant et Tur: sr qua de meo, et Tu rgnosce, et Tur,

CoB. RB: October 1913.

XL.

Contents

. THE OMNIPOTENCE OF Gop

. THE OMNIPOTENCE oF Gop (continued) . CHANCE AND Desian

. EvoLuTiIon AND Human PeErsonanity . . THe Prosiem or Evin

Chapter I The Omnipotence Of God

Across the process of evolution is written one great law: first that which is natural and afterwards that which is spiritual. For, as the process advances, each stage leads on to another and a higher one, and matter thus becomes the vehicle of a gradually expanding spiritual principle. So it is that we advance from the inorganic to the organic world, and again from the vegetable to the animal kingdom, or yet again from the brute to man. And so, once more, in human life itself is there the great and final advance from the natural man who understandeth not the things of the Kingdom of God, to the spiritual man who, having received a new birth from on high, is conscious of an eternal worth and of a glorious destiny for which he struggles and yearns. In every case the lower order comes first, and is made a stepping-stone leading on to higher things. And, when the higher things have come, we can read into the lower order, which alone made their first coming possible, a meaning which we could not see there before.

Thus it is that the world proceeds as it fulfils its heavenly destiny. So far as any meaning can be read

I into the process, we can only say that it is becoming more and more spiritual, and that the whole material fabric is being gradually lifted up to higher and yet higher planes.

But not only do we see this law at work in the process of the outward universe: the same great truth applies to the process of the inward world of human thought. As the mind of man grows and, growing, tries, little by little, to understand the system in which it finds itself, it follows, and cannot but follow, the same great law. In the intellectual, moral and religious life of the human race there comes first that which is natural, and only at a later stage of development, that which is spiritual. This principle conditions all human beliefs, and is the invariable method by which they have come into being.

There is in man a marvellous hidden life, which from the beginning of his existence lies dormant in his nature. Infinite, mysterious, inexplicable, it belongs to a region beyond the stars, and when it awakes it cannot but seek its own eternal home. But to awake, it needs arousing. It must escape from the lethargy of blank unconsciousness which holds it fast. And for this a stimulus is necessary. A continuous trumpet-call must sound in the sleeper’s ear to summon him from the land of shadows into the region of wakeful day. Without it, he will not cast off the numb torpor that enthralls him, but will continue for ever to slumber on his oblivious couch.

If man is finally to learn his glorious heavenly destiny, he must first of all be awakened into conscious life. And, for this great process of awaking, the world of sense is needed. From this external world there comes a mighty stimulus, which, as it presses on the man unceasingly each day, each hour, each moment, ealls gradually forth some tiny fragment of his boundless hidden powers. The man must act, or he cannot survive in the struggle to exist; acting, he begins vaguely and unconsciously to think; thinking, he begins dimly and little by little to know: and thus by slow degrees there dawns his natural consciousness.

Thus the material world performs this necessary service. It awakens man into conscious activity and stimulates his mental life. It starts him on that spiritual career the proper end of which is God.

And yet along with these great benefits there are counterbalancing drawbacks. Material things are needed to arouse man from his slumber; but at the same time they tend, very often, to arrest his progress at the point to which they have brought it. Having awakened the man up to a certain degree, they may hinder him from becoming more fully wide-awake. Their imperious call, sounding in his ears, makes it impossible for him any longer to remain asleep; but yet, through its very loudness, it may prevent him from catching those gentler and more mysterious tones which none but the most sensitive and wakeful ear can receive. The hard light of common day breaks in upon his torpor, bidding him arise and move and act. But this same light so dazzles his eyes that he cannot see, nor does he even seek to find, the distant prospect where earth melts into heaven and all things are subdued into a soft radiance of eternal glory.

Man finds himself in a material world. All around him are things which he can use for his own purposes —for food or fuel, for raiment or for building. All around are obstacles and dangers which he must escape or else must seek to subdue. In his constant struggle to maintain and develop his being, the world of matter meets him at every turn as the great insistent reality from which he cannot get away. And while it enables him, in the first place, to become conscious of himself, on the other hand it checks and limits all the actions of his mind. It frees his natural life from its prison of unconsciousness ; but, having released it from this captivity it binds it with chains of iron, lest. this same natural life, having been thus liberated, should pass on beyond material boundaries and enter the region of the spirit. It is but fair to say that these fetters also prevent the rescued captive from returning once more to its dungeon. Nevertheless they do beyond a doubt prevent it from passing on to a wider liberty.

The material world is, then, in the first place, everything to the awakening mind of man. It limits him on every side, and he cannot get beyond it. True itis that, with that strange instinct of awe which is planted deep within the human heart, he peoples the mountain and the trees and all things around him with spirits of good or evil; true that a mysterious principle within him is thus trying to claim its rights; true that, even from the first, the natural world in which man lives is intertwined for him with a supernatural element and reveals to him a spiritual presence: | nevertheless it is the natural world that entirely dominates his mind and he is in bondage to the tyranny of the senses. His spiritual intuitions do not outrun his natural perceptions. His notions of the unseen world are gross, crude and material. He believes in spirits, but he does not, in any real, spiritual sense, exalt them above the material objects in which he conceives them to dwell, and from which he in a dim, half-unconscious way infers their existence. It is only by means of the natural world that he is able to obtain the smallest glimpse of the supernatural world beyond it. His senses are the starting-point of all his spiritual consciousness.

So much for the spiritual perception of the primitive savage. And the same fact is true to some extent of nearly all, and perhaps of all, mankind in their highest spiritual development. The mystic and the saint have generally been helped in their deepest religious intuitions by the presence around them of the material world. Whether in the countless glories of Nature or in the rites and services of a Church, material facts have presented themselves to their bodily senses of hearing and of sight; and these outward things have evoked within them an inward instinct of the spirit which, being thus aided and fostered, has grown from strength to strength. And, though the spirit as it grows may learn to be less dependent on all earthly helps, and though in that heavenly kingdom where they see face to face all types are finally done away, yet the material world is necessary, while we live upon this earth, for awaking into action the slumbering powers of the human soul. Only a few favoured ones have been enabled, at times of peculiar exaltation, to become, in their clear perception of that other world, almost independent of this and unconscious of its existence. In the growth of man’s inward life the perception of the material world comes before his perception of the spiritual.

And here, as so often, the facts of human speech illustrate the law which is at work. It is almost impossible for words to deal directly with anything but the world of matter; and when man tries to speak of the inward processes of the spirit, he is generally obliged to fall back upon the merest metaphor. The very terms for “soul” and “spirit” in more languages than one, mean originally nothing else than “breath,” and thus contain in brief that splendid image by which the Book of Genesis describes the creation of the human race.

Yet more striking are the facts of human language in relation to space and time. For it will be found that, while space can never be spoken of in terms of time, on the other hand it is almost impossible to speak of time except in terms of space. We speak of a long or of a short time, of a length of time, of a lapse (z.e. a “ gliding”) of time, and again of a “ point” or even of a “space” of time, as when we say that a thing happened “‘ within a short space.” And the only possible way by which we can express the connection of an event with its duration is to say that it happens an the time or that it occupies the time. On the other hand, we cannot possibly speak of a “‘ duration ” of space. And yet this very word “duration” was originally bound up with space, coming in the first instance from the Latin “durus,” and deriving the notion of permanence ultimately from that of hardness. So, too, the word “ period,” which can only be applied to time, possessed in the original Greek a spatial reference and meant simply a “course” or “journey.” We always, in fact, speak and think of time as a sort of line going on in one direction or as a sort of space with only one dimension ; nor can we speak of it in any other way. And this fact suggests the conclusion that our whole conception of time comes to us, in the first instance, only through our conception of space.

But space is the home of the material world. Each object has its position in space, and when we think of it merely as a material thing, we consider it merely by the light of this fact. We ignore its power of growth or movement (which are the sign of a vital principle within it) and think only of the fact that it occupies a certain place. Time, on the other hand, is the home of spiritual facts. For not only does the movement which is inseparable from natural life, demand time as well as space for its working, yet further than this all the mental and spiritual activity of man moves, not directly in the sphere of space at all, but wholly in that of time. Thought and will and emotion, hatred and love, fear and desire, are all connected, indeed, with a body and a brain which exist in space, but they themselves, because they are spiritual, belong to a world only of time. And thus the facts of human speech, in which we can speak of time, as a rule, only through spatial metaphors, suggest that the human mind comes to a definite consciousness of spiritual things only by means of the material world. And beyond a doubt they illustrate the fact that nearly all language dealing with spiritual things must necessarily be made up of material metaphors.

Thus the spiritual qualities of man are for the most part beyond the reach of words, and can but be suggested by appropriate metaphors. We speak of a man’s character as deep, of his imagination as lofty, of his sympathies as wide, of his genius as splendid, and in every instance we are using a figure of speech borrowed from the world of matter and space. ‘The words are, indeed, suited to their purpose, and they certainly express our meaning. But at the same time they are being now used in a new and spiritual sense which is more wonderful than that which they originally possessed. The height and the depth and the wide-embracing expanse of the universe on whose mighty fabric we are supported is full of unspeakable mystery and awe, but it is as nothing compared with the height and the depth and the width of the human mind and soul as it rises aloft and sinks into the Divine abyss and spreads its being in endless expansion on the bosom of Hternity.

Human intellect, human genius, human holiness, these are greater things than the greatness of the universe ; and when we speak of the heights and depths of human character we are using earthly metaphors — the best and only kind of language possible—for that which is not of this world.

And because all such language is but metaphor, therefore it is true, but therefore also it may be misleading. It is true; for the earth with all its glories bears a kinship to the hidden glories of the human mind and heart. It may yet be misleading; for one conscious living being is far more wonderful than the whole unconscious universe.

Man is then himself a mystery eluding human words. Much more so is the God in Whom his being has its roots. Here is an immeasurable height which no human foot can scale; here an abysmal depth which no human plummet can fathom. Here is that ineffable mystery of the Infinite which breaks loose from all fetters of man’s finite thought and language. Here is that distant home which beckons to man’s throbbing heart from beyond the utmost margin of all things, that home of rest to which man, from amidst the din and glare of this close world, strains both eye and ear with fruitless longing as he tries to descry its shadowy outlines and to catch the echoes of its tranquil harmony. Ever he strives, and ever is doomed to fail. His earthly surroundings, which have moulded all his forms of speech and all his mental habits, afford him but the sorriest means by which to make articulate his dim and vague surmise. And so he says, as he tries to reach the truth, that God is more great and glorious than earthly kings and conquerers, that He is more terrible in His majesty than the fury of the elements, that He is mightier than all the terrific forces which drive the world upon its way. ;

All of which is true. God is more great and glorious, more terrible and mighty, than all things in the material world. And yet such language is most misleading, for these qualities in God are wholly spiritual and our terms are derived from the world of matter. And thus our words are nothing but the merest hint of the reality; and if we apply them in a literal and earthly sense, they become absolutely false. We say that God is great, and this is perfectly true. God is infinitely great, for He is greater than the boundless universe which draws its life from Him. And therefore the vastness of the material world may rightly give us thoughts of His Infinitude and suggest to us the language in which those thoughts can be expressed. But, on the other hand, the greatness of God is different from all earthly magnitude. It cannot be meted with a measuring-rod or conceived in terms of material proportion. We cannot say that it is so many yards or miles or leagues in height or depth or vastness. We cannot even say that it is of an infinite number of yards or miles or leagues. God is not tied down to matter and space. He is Spirit, and to Him such tests do not apply. And therefore, while He is infinitely great, yet He exists wholly and indivisibly in this place and in that, and in every point and spot of the whole spatial world.

Thus, then, we have a plain and simple rule to use. Whenever we apply to God any words drawn from the outward world of matter and of space, such words, while true and necessary so far as they go, will always become wholly false unless used in a purely spiritual sense. And it will be found that such a spiritual use of terms will finally give them a meaning exactly contrary to that which they possess in this material world. The greater a thing is in this world, the greater is the number of inches or yards or miles into which we can divide it. And yet the Being of God, Who is infinitely great, is, for that very reason, indivisible, and cannot be apportioned into miles or yards or even inches. And thus the conception of size or magnitude, which we draw from the ‘material world and rightly apply to God, teaches us, indeed, a truth about His Being, and yet, in Him, must contradict all our earthly notions.

Now there is one conception which more than any other enters into all our theological beliefs. It is the conception of omnipotence. ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty” are the words in which we express our fundamental conviction as to the Divine Nature,

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD Pe and, in fact, ‘the Almighty” is often used in common parlance as a mere synonym for “ God.”

This notion of omnipotence, like all human conceptions, has behind it a long history. And, like all human conceptions, it first came to man direct from the material world.

We look around us, and on all sides we see the mighty forces of Nature. These continually struggle one against another; and that which is the strongest overrides the rest. We see the action of the winds and storms, or of the cataracts and the ocean waves as they press along with resistless fury and drive before them all that would obstruct their course. We see the avalanche and the volcano and the terrific cataclysms of Nature, and in their presence we feel that we are powerless, as they sweep whole villages and towns to destruction. We see above all things the working of one mighty law—that law of gravitation which nothing can resist. All around us we see force at work breaking down all barriers and compelling all things to obey it.

Moreover, we are conscious that we possess within our being a mysterious power of will. By this power we form a purpose and we seek to carry it into effect. And, though our will is ultimately a spiritual thing, yet we first become aware of its existence when we find it acting by means of our bodies on the material world of which they form a part. It presents itself to us, in fact, as a kind of inward reservoir of material force. I will to move a stone from my path, and at once my body obeys the impulse. I give the stone a push with my foot and, in so doing, I exercise that coercion which is the law of the whole material world. The stone resists me, but I try to tear it from its place.

I am using compulsion and brute force. If I succeed in uprooting it, then I am stronger than the stone; if, on the other hand, it defies all my efforts, then it is stronger than [.

Thus there is all around us a principle of force ; and when we act within the world as parts of the vast material system, this is the one principle which we cannot but employ. Throughout the material universe the same fact always holds good. That thing we regard as the most powerful which can crush and coerce the rest. The ant is more powerful than the grain of corn, for she can move it from its place; man is more powerful than the ant, for he can crush her under his foot; the avalanche is more powerful than man, for it can sweep him into the gulf below, and the mountain is more powerful than the avalanche, which cannot sweep it away.

Such is the earthly conception familiar to us all; and it is at this point that most men start when they try to conceive of the Divine Omnipotence. If the ant is stronger than the grain of corn, if man is stronger than the ant, if the avalanche is stronger than man, the mountain than the avalanche, the earth than the mountain, and the whole universe than the earth, the mind is brought at last to One Who is yet stronger than the universe itself, and Who, just as man by the act of his will moves the pebble from his path, so by the act of an almighty will; which nothing can resist, bends all things to His purposes and compels the whole material system to obey His irresistible commands. God checks and controls the universe, we are told, by His almighty power. He can at will raise aloft and cast down again, drive onward and restrain, create and destroy, without let or hindrance from anything in the world. His power consists of infinite force.

This conception of the nature of omnipotence is accepted by most Christians as a part of the Divine revelation. It is firmly embedded in all popular theology, and unhappily finds a place in most theology that claims to be philosophic. True, the philosophic theologian does his best as a rule to explain it away so far as he can with much talk about God’s “ self-limitation” or the necessity of His obeying the laws He has Himself made for His universe. Nevertheless the fact remains that this conception of despotic force is for him, as for the generality of mankind, the only conception of the Divine Power. He may, in practice, treat it as a piece of lumber, but he regards it in theory as a piece of necessary lumber, however useless and inconvenient. And therefore he allows it to remain blocking out the light and air in his theological edifice, instead of boldly throwing it out of the window. And hence when he becomes vaguely conscious that it does not harmonise with the main lines of the building it occupies or with the rest of the furniture around it, instead of turning the useless thing out and casting it on to the rubbish-heap, he contents himself with raising a dust of words which serve, for the moment, to disguise its hideous outlines and hide them from his sight.

The truth is that the conception of an omnipotence consisting in a kind of infinite brute force is immoral, irrational and anti-Christian, and from this fruitful source have sprung some of the worst travesties of the Christian Faith which have ever hindered the Gospel of God, It owes its origin to a sheer misunderstanding of the most elementary kind. A notion of power derived from the material world has been applied to God in a gross material sense, and it has been supposed that His power resembles in nature, while transcending only in degree, that force which shows itself in the earthquake and the tempest and the fury of the elements. Hence it is that God is regarded as one Who could, if He liked, intervene at any moment to prevent the miseries or the wickedness of this world, but Who does not do so because He sees good reasons for restraining His hand. His power, forsooth, is limited by His wisdom!

But let us turn from such unsatisfying notions as these and look at the matter by the light of the principle stated a short time back. We saw that when we apply a spatial and material category to God, we must spiritualise its meeting. And we further saw that, when spiritualised, it will possess a meaning the exact opposite of its original and earthly one. How does this affect the question of God’s omnipotence ?

Harthly power is that which can coerce and compel. It can crush opposing forces and can break and bend things to its will. If this is so, it follows that heavenly power, which is the reality of which all earthly power is but the distorted shadow, can do none of these things, but can only do their opposites. Thus heavenly power cannot crush opposing forces ; it can only suffer and be crushed by them. It cannot break or bend anything to its will; it can only be bent and broken and yet remain unconquered. It cannot consist of coercive brute force; but only of still and patient endurance. In a word, it cannot drive and compel; it can only hope and wait.

Now, in human life we find that compulsion is the natural and congenial method of characters which are hard and selfish and wanting in sympathy. On the other hand, the quality which gives men patient endurance and enables them to suffer and be crushed, and yet, even in defeat, to know that they are strong, is unselfishness and love. This may sometimes take the form of devotion to a noble cause, and may be called patriotism or even mere sense of duty, but love it always is, for its nature is self-sacrifice. And love, at its truest, can but suffer silently and patiently; it cannot struggle or complain. Knowing its own mysterious secret, it cannot force these treasures upon others who are not yet able to see them. It must wait and hope, in its own sure confidence; for the time when the blind eyes shall be open and its secret shall be revealed to those from whom it now is hid. It cannot cast its pearls before swine; it can but look forward to the day when those who now are as the swine shall have lost their grosser nature and shall turn with delight and wonder to the costly jewel which it holds within its casket. Hatred, anger and selfish passion fill the world with noise ; love is always dumb :

“What shall Cordelia do? Love and be silent.” !

Hence it would seem that the omnipotence of God, because it is the exact opposite of brute force, because it cannot coerce or drive or overwhelm, but can only wait and attract and patiently endure, is therefore nothing else than love itself. It consists in love, and has no other quality whatsoever. Love is, in fact, the only real power, and force is not power at all, but is a

1 King Lear, Act i. se. 1, 1. 63.

mere distortion of the true reality. Brute force is not strong, but is, if we could see it with the eyes of God, mere feebleness and impotence. ‘To say that God has infinite love, and that to this love is added infinite power, is totally and utterly false. He has nothing besides that perfect Love which is Himself. God 1s Love, and this Love is itself His power, nor can we truly conceive of Him as possessing any other power besides.