The meaning of life

Front matter

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Foreword

This IS an attempt to resolve the riddle of being into get-at-able form. It is nothing short of an effort to answer the unanswerable, to make the incredible credible; to render the incomprehensible understandable; with the object of inspiring belief.

Sermons are built as houses are built. The edifice is adapted to those who are expected to occupy it. A dim religious light is intended for the devotional mind, and finely chiseled form for the classical mind. These sermons are for hungry and romantic hearts. So an atmosphere of hominess is sought. Utility and familiarity, it is hoped, will be found upon every page.

Living, as we do, in an objective universe, we are accustomed to think in picturesque terms. Abstract thought is a recoil. It is an arrow that rarely hits the mark, but usually returns to wound the mind that shoots it. Objective thinking may shoot neither so far nor so high but it makes more bull's-eyes. It is the score, after all, that counts. The writers of the Bible have high rating for marksmanship because they have thought and written in parable and analogy. Uniformly, inspiration and revelation are adapted to man's restricted conceptions.

The questions here discussed have been chosen at random from "Why's Why in Life," a voluminous work to be found in the library of every human heart.

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So eager and responsive was the hearing accorded the original deUvery of these sermons that we are encouraged to hope that by giving them their present embodiment many others will be induced to avail themselves of a fuller enjoyment of the common treasures of mankind.

If these messages shall stir the imagination, the souls of men will follow.

A. E. K.

Contents

I WHAT IS LIFE? 17

Whence came it? Why is it? What does it look like? Is it just one thing after another ? Is it existence only ? Is it biological or is it something else? Is it cellular or is it celestial?

II WHAT IS SPIRIT? 26

II What Is Spirit?

*'The body apart from the spirit is dead.'' James JJ^:26.

It is impossible to separate a man's spirit from his body without taking his Hfe. This is so obvious as to need no further comment. Then why will so many persist in separating body and spirit in their thinking? If such attempts are hazardous in physiological experimentations are they less so in metaphysical theorizings ? Reason hath a cold hand and a dead heart when unilluminated by spirit. And spirit is spooky when unbalanced by reason. Let not man put asunder what God hath joined together in the holy wedlock of actuality.

It is high time to ask some straight-out questions, in view of the prevaihng trend of thinking. What is matter? What is spirit? What is the relation between matter and spirit? Are they antagonistic or are they comrades? Are they irreconcilable, or are they interdependent and inseparable ? The answer is : they are intersphered to such a degree that it is quite impossible to separate the one from the other without destroying a full-orbed life.

What, then, is spirit ? In a word, spirit is the creative and unifying energy in man. "The body apart from the spirit is dead." Of course it is. Spirit is the architect and the builder of your body and mine. Spirit is the voHtion lying back of all evolution. Spirit is the directorial dominant of the whole physical organism.

The body apart from the spirit is dead. Says Principal Fairbairn, the philosopher, "In the strongest sense matter has no being whatever apart from spirit." The body subsists upon spirit. Likewise,, to all practical intents, the spirit apart from the body is dead.* There is no such thing as naked spirit. Wherever the spirit is observable it either possesses or is putting on a body. The Bible distinctly tells us that even when spirit steps out of this body into the grave it steps into another body. How or when this is we know not. Nevertheless, to him who walks by faith there need be no fear of stepping over the brink of death into disembodied nothingness. We are abundantly assured that spirit is not to be unclothed but clothed upon, that death may be swallowed up in victory. I repeat, the spirit without the body is dead — until it finds another body in which to live and have its being.

In an Ingersoll Foundation lecture on "Life Everlasting," delivered at Harvard, John Fisk makes this unqualified assertion: ^'Survival of conscious spirit apart from material conditions is unsupported by any facts that we have ever been able to assemble. Not only so, but it is utterly and hopelessly inconceivable."

* See "What Is Death?" pp. 231 ff.

Of course, it is. Because physical man conceives of everything in corporeal pictures. The relation between body and spirit is very intimate and interdependent. Spirit is in the body not as a hand is in the glove; that is to say, as one thing is in an entirely different thing; Spirit is in the body as the germ is in the seed, the determining, the qualifying, the vital element thereof.

Why have I turned on these scientific sidelights? Because so many good and earnest people unquestionably practice a species of vivisection. Here stands one group declaring, **A11 is spirit and spirit is all." Which is sheer nonsense. Those who entertain such views usually become pronounced mystics and eschew all practical reality. Here is another group proclaiming with equal positiveness, "All is matter and matter is all." This too, is nonsense. These latter folks degenerate into rank materialists, eschewing all spiritual reality. So the mystic is eternally hostile to matter, and the materialist is eternally hostile to spirit. But God is hostile to neither, and Jesus is the composite of both.

Because of this sort of tangential thinking we are forever butting our poor heads against the stars, literally braining ourselves. No mind can successfully negotiate the crowded thoroughfare of the universe unless it observes the traffic regulations. The mind of Jesus punctiliously observed them, leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps.

On every hand folks are being bowled over like tenpins. Nations are down, business is flat, the church is on its back, individuals are laid out cold. The power of darkness has scored one strike after another in recent years because men everlastingly persist trying to stand upon a single hypothesis. This requires gifts of equilibrium so extraordinary that almost no mind possesses them. God created man bipedal. If our intellectual processes ever attain the goal it will not be until we try to get there with both feet.

The jarring discords within us are due to the presence of too many soloists. We flatter this or that faculty until it gets puffed up with pride. Thenceforth it sticks up like a sore thumb and is as sensitive. It is dangerous to become enamored of a single attribute of being. It demoralizes the organization and wrecks the harmony. What is needed most within us and throughout the world is a chorus. The distinguishing characteristic of the Gospel of Jesus is its utilization of the paradoxical element of life. Religion is not mathematics and life is seldom logical.

Life is illogical, broadly speaking. So is sane thinking. As a rule sanity declines as thinking becomes more and more wedded to a single idea; until, at the gates of an asylum it expires. Alienists testify that the insane mind is the most logical. From which I conclude that to be sanely orthodox one has got to keep on good terms w^ith the paradox, the chief of which is body and spirit. These are the zenith and the nadir of our intellectual orbit.

I have been reading a work, just off the press, by a distinguished French biologist, who likens physical individuality to a populous city. Each city is distinguished by a thousand traits from a neighboring city. Its elements are independent and autonomous. Each has in itself the springs of life, which it neither borrows from its neighbor nor draws from the community. All the inhabitants have a definite life, and even breathe and are nourished after the same manner, possessing all the same general human faculties. But each has, over and above, its own trade, industry, aptitudes and talents by which he contributes to the social life, and in turn depends upon it. The picture thus far drawn IS that of an animal colony pure and simple.

But, there is something more, the most essential feature must now be supplied to make the picture complete. This is — a centralized direction, which alone is able first to unite and then to maintain, to order, and to direct the human traits for the common welfare. This Governor General is Spirit.

A perfectly beautiful conception of being this is. And I take this to be the conception in our text, *The body apart from the spirit is dead." Spirit without a body is a king without a kingdom ; body without spirit is a kingdom in a state of anarchy. So much, in answer to the question. What is spirit? Spirit is creative and unifying energy in man.

May I now lift your thought a little higher, by asking another question. What is Holy Spirit ? Again, in a word. Holy Spirit is the creative and unifying energy in God. What your spirit is doing within your body, keeping the cells, the life together, and preventing the organism from breaking up in anarchy^ that God's Holy Spirit is doing within the universe, and the whole human race.

Many of us have an inadequate, if not a very wrong idea of Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, as commonly conceived, is either something too sacred for every-day utility, or it is something too spooky to be grasped by an earthbound mind. Neither view is correct. What is the meaning of "holy"? Does it mean ''set apart" in the sense that a gulf is fixed between God's Spirit and man's spirit? Does "holy" mean "other worldly" in the sense that only as a matter of supreme condescension upon the part of God has Holy Spirit any place in an unholy world? I think not. "Holy" means wholeness. It means completeness. It means unity. It means unimpairedness. This is holiness. So the Holy Spirit is the spirit of wholeness, the spirit of sound mind and sound being, the spirit of oneness.

Holy Spirit is not a New Testament doctrine, as some have thought. It is an Old Testament doctrine. That phrase was coined by Synagogue theologians hundreds of years before the advent of Jesus. It was a doctrine, divinely inspired as we believe, by which the Hebrews explained the prophetic gifts possessed by certain men whereby they were able to penetrate the mysteries of Providence and foretell in detail coming events. The doctrine expressed the thought that somehow or other prophets were on terms of peculiar intimacy with God, energized by whose Spirit they were able to think God's thoughts after Him, and anticipate His plans.

With the passing of the last of the prophets the doctrine fell into disuse. Three hundred years of silence intervened between Old and New Testament, during which time there was no open vision. Men called into the darkness, ''Why? Where? When?" But there was no answering voice. They knocked at the gate of the Infinite, but the knob turned not. Mankind appeared to be a homeless orphan upon the Father's doorstep. Then came Jesus! At once Heaven's portal opened, as angels of revelation and regeneration poured out, hands laden with prophetic gifts such as the world had never known before. They wended their way to Bethlehem, to Nazareth, to the wilderness, to the Jordan. You know the rest. Rejoicing was everywhere, for the prophets of Israel were returned again.

Then came that question of Jesus, addressed to His disciples. ''Have ye received the Holy Spirit since ye believed?" "We didn't know there was a Holy Spirit." Three hundred years of silence had obliterated the memory of the doctrine. So Jesus revived the doctrinCj^ giving it a new setting. This Holy Spirit was no longer to be regarded, as formerly, God's peculiar gift to prophets alone. It was to be the possession of every man, woman and child. At this announcement Jesus breathed upon the disciples and sent them forth to be the progenitors of a spirit-filled race.

Then came Pentecost, when drawn together by the Spirit, given tongues by the Spirit, and unified by the Spirit those many men of many minds from as many quarters of the world found common cause and ground for one body of faith, one commonwealth of God.

If the Holy Spirit were to come upon the vast audience before me our faces would not wear the cold and forbidding aspect of spiritual aristocracy, but rather the radiant smile of God's spiritual democracy. We might still think differently, but we would defer to each other's opinion. Those sharper lines of difference between the rich and the poor, the capitalist and the laborer, the foreigner and the American, would be at once softened into the Kingdom landscape. Verily, verily, the unifying energy of God is even now at work in state, in church, in race, in home, in individual heart. This I believe with all my soul and mind — don't you?

Some fine day the Holy Spirit will have His way in industry and will completely revolutionize it. There will no longer be strikes, lock-outs, misunderstandings and mis-carriages of justice. The creative and unifying energy of the Infinite will straighten out the kinks in the spirit of human infinitesimals.

The superlative temptation, in every life before me, is identically that experienced by Jesus. The Spirit within Jesus led Him into the wilderness, there to be tried by the spirit of disunion. The unholy spirit sought, by one means after another, to isolate the several members of Christ's tri-unity. First he sought to isolate the physical. ''You are hungry, you are famished; you need not be; all power is within you; command that these stones be made bread." Holy Spirit triumphed as Jesus said, 'T am more than physical. IMan shall not live by bread alone." Unholy spirit tried another tack. Conducting Him to the holy city and setting Him on a pinnacle of the temple he endeavored to isolate the spiritual nature by this temptation : ''You are the spirit-child of God, the only Begotten and well-beloved Son of God. Your father has promised to give His angels charge concerning you lest at any time you dash your foot against a stone. Come, cast yourself down." Again the Spirit of Wholeness triumphed as Jesus replied: "I am one man, I am one complete whole in my Father. You shall not isolate my spiritual nature or tempt me to commit suicide even in the name of faith." Yet again, the Spirit of Disunion tried It — ^this time his purpose was to isolate Christ's vocational nature. "You are here on earth to establish a kingdom. Why go to Gethsemane or to the cross? Why not be sensible? Only acknowledge my sovereignty in the realm of the physical and I will become your vassal in the realm of the spiritual.'' And Jesus said, "I deny your sovereignty anywhere. This is God's world, man is God's child. So these shall be one in us. Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou understandest not the things that be of God." 'Twas thus that Jesus preserved the unity of His nature, physical, spiritual, vocational ; and angels came and ministered unto Htm. And the New Testament narrative goes on to say 'Then went Jesus forth from the wilderness full of the Holy Ghost and of power."

Of course, He did, and you can, too, my tempted brother, my tempted sister. If you have fallen under the spell of the tempter's machinations, I am able to say to you, as a minister of God, that It is not because you are any worse than other people, but it is because you are permitting the unholy spirit to isolate some part of a nature that God intends shall be a complete whole. You have allowed your physical nature to be isolated, from your spiritual, or your spiritual from your physical, or your vocational from your visionful.

Out of my early ministry I recall a very extraordinary experience which throws a flood of light upon the text. A man of my congregation was dramatically converted. He was at his daily work when like a lightning flash there came over him an unutterable sense of sin. No minister, no song, no religious atmosphere, yet he stood In the presence of God more truly than he ever had In church. He dropped his tools and rushing out into the yard he fell upon his knees beside a broken box crying like a child. Godly men followed. They mingled their tears of joy with his tears of anguish. Slowly they led him into the light and liberty of the Saviour's presence.

For a month or so he was about the happiest man you ever saw. He testified at every prayer meeting. Then, one day he changed. Clouds appeared upon his face. I could not understand It. When I pressed him for the reason he unburdened himself. He had been told that he had not received the Holy Ghost.

'Why !" said I. ''Where have you gotten this notion ? How do you suppose you came by such a dramatic conversion apart from the Holy Ghost? Man, Is it possible that you doubt the Holy Ghost who has laid hands upon you with such violence ? Wake up ! You ought to be on your knees thanking God for what He has done for you. Not one man in a thousand has had the witness of the Spirit and the ringing challenge that you have had."

But he persisted, ''No, I haven't the Holy Ghost."

Said I, "What makes you think so?"

It then came out that he had been attending Holiness Meetings, where certain sanctimonious faddists had gotten him all tangled up in a skein of yarn that he could not untangle. He had been told that to find peace he would have to go to a Methodist altar.

"Well, go," said I. "By all means, go to-night. There's a revival on across the street. I'll go too, and pray for you all evening."

"No, that I won't do! I have always said that I would never be converted at a Methodist altar. I don't believe in that kind of fuss."

"You had about as fussy a conversion as ever I heard of. You are the last man to throw stones at fuss. Since you have erected the altar service as a barrier between yourself and God, no one can pull it dow^n but you. Go do the thing you have said you w^ill never do and you will doubtless find peace."

He took my advice and it came out as I had foreseen.

The end was not yet — for within a month the man was at it again. This time introspection was compHcated with illness, making the case exceedingly distressing. An operation was advised. In the good Providence of God this proved a blessing in disguise, for he fell into the hands of a godly surgeon, who saw at once that back of the physical there was something wrong. The day before the operation he said to his patient, ^'Your life is in God's hands. Are you at peace with Him?" This question led my friend to unbosom himself, whereupon the surgeon administered the following homily : ''Whenever I treat a patient I endeavor to keep the various parts of his being together. I want his mind, his will, his body, his confidence with me. I must treat the whole man. I cannot successfully treat anatomy apart from mind and spirit. If I am to heal you I must have full access to all the fountains of life. It was God who taught me this secret of effectual surgery. I think your trouble is this : You have not permitted God to treat the whole man. You are expecting Him to do His work piecemeal. You want Him to minister to the spiritual life apart from the physical. I don't believe He will do it that way."

My friend was so impressed by this line of thought

that he said, *'Dr. , can you recommend a book

dealing with this matter as you have, which I may read while I am in the hospital?"

''Well, there are many books upon the subject but on the whole I think the best is the Gospel of John. I would prescribe for you daily readings in John, the gospel of the spirit-filled life, the standard work of all life literature. And remember, as you read to read with the whole man, for you will be reading the story of a whole man. John's story is of a man who possessed the Holy Spirit in fullest measure, yet it was perfectly balanced with physical things."

The prescription was taken, and my friend entered upon a joyous Christian experience. I wish you might have heard his first testimony in our prayer meeting when he returned. He declared that it was worth all the suffering to have come under the wonderful surgeon who made it so clear that one cannot receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit unless one surrenders to the Spirit body, mind, soul, and all.

Spirit is the personal urge both in God and in man. This urge which comes out of a past unknowable and moves us onward toward a future unknown is the creative and unifying energy of God working out His perfect will in man. Spirit and Holy Spirit constitute an interlocking directorate. Together they determine the progress of personality and the profits of piety. Wherefore give thyself up to Him and His Spirit will witness with thy spirit that thou art a son of God.

Ill

"THE SOUL'S 'I KNOW!'"

"I know that my redeemer livethf Job 19:25.

This outburst of faith occurs in an immortal epic of the inner life. Its author is at great pains to make it quite clear that the glorious affirmation springs not from the mind, but from the soul. With rare literary genius he eliminates every other possible source. One after another of the so-called supports of faith are skillfully knocked away. Theology is discarded. Discussion is waved aside. Every contributing circumstance of human wellbeing is removed. And faith is stripped to the nude that it may stand forth in simple comeliness.

The story opens with a charming picture of piety domiciled with prosperity. Logically these should ever dwell together. "Godliness is profitable with all.** In the last analysis an unprofitable era is found to be an ungodly era. So quite appropriately the tale of this godly man opens amid scenes of prosperity and piety and domestic felicity.

But at once the author introduces an element of cynicism. It is personified in Satan, who observes, "Doth this pious man serve God for naught ? Not he. He is pious only because he is prosperous. He is good because it pays to be good. Despoiled of his prosperity his piety will evaporate."

There follows a series of calamities, skillfully introduced, one after another and with thrilling effect. Here sits prosperous Job at the city gate easily the leading citizen, honored and beloved by all. Messengers come running with evil tidings. "Your property is gone; your houses are in ruins; your flocks are scattered; your children are dead. Only your w^ife survives." And then, to complete this cataclysm of misery the poor man is robbed of health. Truly it never rains but it pours.

In his extremity Job turns to friends, who are speechless. They can bring no comfort for such exquisite suffering. Or, when they do speak, it is only to add misery to misery by the suggestion that it must be his own fault. He endeavors to think his way out, without success. He falls back upon conventional religion, and orthodoxy has nothing to offer him. Finally, when every prop is gone, when the mind ceases to function, when philosophy and discussion no longer avail, and there is left no ray of light to lend hope of deliverance, he rouses himself for one last and supreme endeavor and by sheer willpower passes out of an atmosphere of negation into the full certainty of the soul's "I know !"

How hath the soul such a faculty for knowing? Whence cometh such a clear shining of things unseen? It comes of intuition ; the only way true faith can ever come. Faith is the gift of God. It is the soul's birthright. It is instinct within man's very being. The human soul, like the Divine soul, is intensely social. When God breathed upon him and man became a living soul the door to the Father's house swung wide open, way back against the wall, affording free access forever between parent and child.

A saying much in vogue is this : "Personality is power." Which, of course, every one knows to be true. But is it no more? Is not personality perception— first of all? The first blush of dawning personality is self-consciousness. It would seem then that the first blush of faith should logically be God-consciousness. We know ourselves to be, by intuition, and for one I can testify that we know our God in like manner. Since we look upon our own reality with unclouded vision, directly and without the aid of any sensual medium whatsoever, it follows that we may, with equal facility, look upon the larger reality — God-consciousness. Immediate awareness of self foretokens immediate awareness of God. Which theorem is proved experimentally and conclusively by Job's "I know !"

If it is true, as science now affirms, that personality is the greatest thing in the universe, and if it is true that God is the greatest personality, then it obviously follows that there must be some instinctive basis of commerce between the twain. To reason otherwise would be to fly in the face of the time-honored axiom **things equal to the same thing are equal to each other."

The outstanding characteristic of personality is fellowship, intercourse, reciprocal exchange. The supreme worth of personality is commerce of ideas and emotions. Which commerce is not contingent upon some form of human ship-subsidy, thanks be! When we are unable to persuade the congress of human faculties, sitting in state within us, to unite upon some form of subsidy, what of it? There are other bottoms — and safer, in which the soul may embark, to which our most treasured possessions may be committed with safety and in which God may send to us His best gift — faith, together with all the riches of His grace.

Job's faith was strictly personal. Heaven^s gifts to him were all personal consignments. A fact clearly brought out in the poem by the Voice in the cloud. The instant the distracted seeker uttered his *T know" God answered, "And so do I." In each new phase of faith "we know as we are known" and per contra. Believe me, my hearer, for I lie not, God will speak to you in some audible tone, once you break the fetters of reservation, ambiguity and uncertainty; once your religion ceases to be a hesitation and a compromise. The truth is, if one may diagnose another's case, you are permitting intuition to be lured away by mere inventiveness. This has excited curiosity but has not imparted insight — as you will freely admit. Faith is not satisfying one's curiosity. Faith is insight. And, insight is intuitive. So, try the upper trail. Try it. Tis all I ask.

It is as needless, as it is futile, to attempt to prove God to anybody. Long since, I gave that up. Time was when I carried about a vest-pocket edition of theology. But never again ! I would as soon attempt to prove to you that you exist this minute. When a thing is obvious why prove it? If God is not permitted to approve Himself to your confidence and love, surely no mere man will be permitted to do so. "No one is able to come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent Me," said Jesus. Personality is nowhere to be found in second-hand shops. Religion is the personal approach of a personal God to the personal man, and vice versa. To expedite this is the function of faith.

I am little interested in intellectual aspects of faith. The older I grow the less is my interest. I have noticed that whenever faith gets up into the mind it languishes. For this reason I resist every impulse of faith to climb the attic ladder. Faith doesn't have to climb. It may mount upon wings as an eagle. The weakness of advancing age is this; we want to wrap everything up in intellectual hypothesis and put it away on some shelf. This may be good housekeeping, but it certainly is not living. Better far that faith should be worn threadbare than that it should smell musty or become moth-eaten through disuse.

Nothing has ever been discovered by the intellect thus far that was not already known to intuition. The intellect always takes up the trail of a more venturesome pioneering faculty. It does the surveying, the organizing, the occupying — and not infrequently the boasting. Kipling put this thought into the mouth of his ''Explorer" thus:

"Well I know who'll take the credit — all the clever chaps

that followed — Came a dozen men together — never knew my desert fears ; Tracked me by the camps I'd quitted, used the water holes