The seeming unreality of the spiritual life; the Nathaniel William Taylor lectures for 1907, given before the Divinity school of Yale university

Front matter

THE

SEEMING UNREALITY

OF THE

Preface

This book aims to face, as straightforwardly as may be, the problem implied in its title. It seeks to speak directly, as frankly and simply as possible, and yet with some adequacy, to the fundamental religious need of men, — to the need of all who cherish ideals of any kind. The book has been written, just because this problem of the seeming unreality of the spiritual life was felt to be fundamental both for thought and life; and with the hope that considerations, that had meant much to the writer, in the solution of this problem, might not be without helpful suggestion for others. Its lines of thought might have been greatly extended, but the intention has been to treat the subject suggestively rather than exhaustively, and elaboration of thought is left to the reader.

A portion — and only a portion — of the material of the book has been given in different forms in lectures at the Harvard Summer School of Theology, at the Federate Summer School of Theology at Berkeley, California, and as the Taylor Lectures at Yale Divinity School. In the publication of these discussions it has

V

VI PREFACE

seemed best, however, quite to abandon the lecture form. The nature of the subject has made necessary some recurrence of considerations brought out in previous books, but the argument, as presented, is intended to form an independent whole.

My indebtedness to others I have tried to make clear in the course of the discussion.

HENRY CHURCHILL KING.

Oberlin College, February, 1908.

Introduction

chapter Page

I. The Fundamental Nature of the Inquiry 3

II. The Meaning of the Theme 7

III. The Order of the Discussion 13

PART I THE CAUSES OF THE SEEMING UNREALITY Misconceptions

IV. Ignoring Bodily Conditions 23

V. Forgetting the Complexity and Unity of Life 27

VI. Knowledge Never Merely Passive 32

VII. No Merely Theoretical Solutions 37

VIII. The Practical Nature of all Belief 52

IX. Some Common Logical Fallacies 56

X. Some Traditional Objections 63

XL Difficulty in the Conception of God 72

XII. The Difference Between the Scientific and Religious

Problems 79

XIII. The Difference Between the Philosophical and Religious Problems 85

XIV. The Spiritual Life not a Life of Strain 90

XV. The Spiritual Life not a Life of Imitation 98

XVI. The Spiritual Life not a Life of Magical Inheritance 102

XVII. The Spiritual Life not a Life of External Rules 105

vii viii CONTENTS

Failure to Fulfil Conditions

chapter page

XVIII. The Way into the Great Values m

XIX. The Conditions of a Deepening Personal Relation... 117

The Inevitable Limitations and Fluctuations of our Natures XX. Limitations and Fluctuations Common to All our Life 123 XXL The Special Bearing of Limitations and Fluctuations

on the Spiritual Life 131

XXII. The Witness of our Consciously Best Hours 136

A Purposed Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual

XXIII. The Seeming Unreality a Large Factor in our Moral

and Spiritual Training 141

XXIV. The Special Religious Need of the Unobtrusiveness

of the Spiritual 147

XXV. Our Very Questionings a Proof of Reality 156

Part II The Way Into Reality

The Presumptive Evidence

XXVI. The Test of Present Trends of Thought— Historical,

Philosophical, Scientific, Ethical, and Social 165

XXVII. The Test of Present Trends of Thought— Psychological 172

XXVIII. Man's Essential Need of Religion 181

As to the Theistic Argument

XXIX. Facing the Facts often Ignored 191

XXX. The Necessary Limitations in the Argument 199

XXXI. The Main Lines of Argument 202

As to the Personal Relation to God

XXXII. The Need of the Modern Man met only in Christ. . 215

XXXIII. The Needed Emphases in Modern Religious Life.. 220

XXXIV. The Method of the Spiritual Life 224

As to Particular Christian Doctrines XXXV. Doctrine as Expression of Experience with Christ.. 231 XXXVI. Illustrated in the Doctrine of Personal Immortality 237

INTRODUCTION

THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF THE

INQUIRY

Our deepest need, always, for any ideal view or for any ideal life, is faith in the reality of the spiritual, faith in a God who can save us from being at constant war with ourselves. We all need a God, who can make rational and consistent our deepest longings, aspirations, and purposes; who can save us at least from counting as illusions all that in us which — ourselves being judges — is worthiest and most deserving to abide; — who can save us from "glorying in having renounced that which no one has ever any right to renounce."

In all this, religion does not stand alone; it makes common cause with every ideal interest and aim, of whatever kind. The aesthetic, the ethical, the philosophical, the scientific, the broadly rational of every sort, are equally concerned. Our problem is nowhere that narrow and mistaken one of the so-called "harmony of science and religion," but rather that more serious question — Have we any justifiable ideals? is there any standard for men and for life, except a pettily utilitarian one? When we think our life through to the bottom, when we carry our thought of the world to the farthest limit possible to our thinking, shall we then find our best self an illegitimate offspring of pride and error, standing naked and laid open unto that eye of reason which pierces all shams? or shall we find that rational judgment itself forced to own itself to be, in common with all other ideals, the child of faith in God, and of faith in a spiritual world whose reality we cannot doubt and continue to think at all? This is the central question of this little book.

A true theology must face this deepest question, must do something to answer this deepest need of men. A theology, therefore, that understands itself cannot be an isolated, esoteric interest of a few. Is it not rather the great attraction of theology that to it, as the science and philosophy of religion, are most directly committed the supreme interests of the race? Is it not even true that one cannot continue in philosophy to the end, without becoming a theologian? In a very real sense, thus, it is still possible to think of theology as "queen of the sciences," never because it seeks authoritatively to lord it anywhere, but queen because it is able to take account of the entire range of

THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF THE INQUIRY 5

man's ideals, as no other science — and not even philosophy — has commonly felt free to do. In this sense, as the old schoolmen declared, theology finds what philosophy only seeks.

In other words, one must hold it to be the chief business of the theology of any given age or year or hour, to help to save men from "evasion of life's proof," to deliver them from shame of their best selves, to point out the conditions upon which the spiritual life may be made indubitably real. And the theme of this book thus seems to be thrust upon the theologian as demanding proof even of his right to be a worker in theology at all.

A self-respecting theologian, certainly, must always be profoundly and steadfastly unwilling to be considered the hired advocate of a little religious coterie, that can forget that the interests it defends are universal interests and meet universal needs. Is it not involved in the very conception of a religion, that it demands universal recognition? and is not this sense, as Lotze has called it, the one respectable root of fanaticism? How can the theologian, then, forget that he stands — not for the schoolmen nor for any shibboleths of the schools; not for the Fathers, nor for any ostracizing dogmas of the Fathers; but for all men and for their right and call to live the highest life, for room in which a man may stretch himself in the farthest ranges of his being, for air to breathe and light to rejoice in?

How can it be, then, that it should be particularly charged against theology, that it is unreal and binding, rather than real and setting prisoners free? That such theology, so-called, there has been, I reluctantly admit. But, nevertheless, theology belies itself, and denies its very reason for being, if it fails to be real and freeing — and freeing because it makes the spiritual life indubitably real. Our theme, thus, lies at the very heart of the theologian's problem, and, at the same time, at the heart of life. And the theologian may call artist and poet and moralist and philosopher and scientist, and every common seeker of truth and goodness and beauty, and all true lovers, to witness that in this, his quest, he fights their battles all, no less than his own.

"Does God love, and will ye hold that faith against the world?"

II The Meaning Of The Theme

And what is meant by the reality of the spiritual life? How much, in the first place, should reality involve?

The value of religious opinions and experiences, it may be said with James, "can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them, judgments based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can ascertain of their experimental relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true. Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria." In other words, if the spiritual life is to be to us a real and recognized power, it must seem, first, an undoubted reality; second, to be knit up with our best thinking in other spheres; third, to have clear significance for life, as appeal and impulse to character, and as bringing enjoyment and enrichment into life. That is to say, the spiritual life must justify itself to our best judgment as real, rational, and vital. All three elements are intended to be included in the assertion of the reality of the spiritual life implied in the theme of this book.

In the spiritual life, as used in the title, it is intended to include the conviction of the fact of the Christian God and of our personal relation to him, with all that is most directly involved in these convictions.

In speaking, now, of the seeming unreality of the spiritual life, it is not, of course, intended to imply that a spiritual — that is, religious, theistic, and Christian — view of the world is ultimately less defensible than some other view. Quite the contrary. The ultimate ground and meaning of the world form a problem for any possible view that really aims to be all-embracing, for the solution of which it can only offer some hypothesis. It is not doubted that the Christian theistic hypothesis is least open to objection, when the matter is thought completely through.

But the intended suggestion of our theme is this: Probably, the great difficulty for most, in adopting the Christian point of view and coming into the Christian life, does not arise from doubt whether the Christian position is capable of a better final philosophical defense than any other position. Many would

THE MEANING OF THE THEME 9

probably say that when it comes to measuring swords in logical defense of ultimate positions, the theistic and Christian view must be, no doubt, counted the victor. But that admission, though freely made, does not satisfy them. Whether with full consciousness or not, another and deeper difficulty for such minds lies behind the question of the possible philosophical defense of the Christian view. Granting that the theistic and Christian hypothesis is the best of all proposed, still they would say, why is it itself so hard to hold? Why is it not more clear and obvious? Why is so much difficulty felt by many in coming to the Christian view at all, or, at least, in justifying it rationally, after coming to it? Why is the fact of such a God as Christ reveals, and of our relations to him, not as indubitable, for example, as the existence of other persons and our relations to them? Why do not the facts of the spiritual world seem as real to us as the facts of the material world? In a word, why does the spiritual life seem often so unreal? Why is the conviction of it a wavering one with its constant ups and downs?

These are questions that press upon us from the start in every thorough-going discussion of the reality of a spiritual view and of a spiritual life. They are there, before we begin any of our arguments for the existence of God, hindering the argument at every step; they are there, after all our arguments are completed, sapping the strength of the conviction the arguments are supposed to bring. Men everywhere go more or less consciously under the constant burden of the feeling that even this best hypothesis has more difficulties than it ought to have to be true; that especially such a God as the Christian view affirms, and as the heart everywhere cries out for, must have made himself more unmistakably manifest, and not have permitted faith to be so difficult a deed in any case.

Some time ago, one of our religious papers1 furnished an illustration of this perennial question of the race about the hidden God.

"Two girls, as they walked home one night from work, were engaged in earnest talk. A stranger who stood on the sidewalk near them saw the play of anxious feeling on their faces as they stopped a moment beneath a streetlamp's dim light. Suddenly one was heard to say to the other, 'Yes, but why has no one ever seen God?' — that was all, just a fragment-word

1 Sunday School Times, April 5, 1902

THE MEANING OF THE THEME II

throbbing with pain and regret, and they vanished again in the night.

"How like humanity that was ! Like children, they pause now and then in the darkness of life, lift their weary faces to the pale lights glaring along the way, and, peering into baffled eyes, cry, 'Why can we not see our God?' It was Philip's old question, you remember, 'Show us the Father,' and all of us are now and then in Philip's class, for it is large."

The incident is a single modern echo of the ancient plaint of Job: "Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: on the left hand, when he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him." And we are likely to return from all our scientific excursions into the world of nature and of history, to say again with Job: "Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways: and how small a whisper do we hear of him I"

The precise difficulty felt in all such cases may be, perhaps, thus formulated: Though, by hypothesis, God is the one realest of all facts and the most loving of all beings, he does not seem to be thrust upon us as such at all.

After all is said, is this not the real and great difficulty for the Christian view? And for the establishment of real conviction, and of joyful spiritual living, does not more depend upon meeting effectively this everywhere underlying doubt of the soul, than upon either repeating in new forms the old arguments, or in elaborating new arguments for the existence of God and the possibility of an ideal view of the world? Do we not need to give this particular aspect of our problem such a careful, detailed, and comprehensive consideration as it seldom receives? Just this is our task.

Can something be done, now, to meet this constant, underlying difficulty of the seeming unreality of the spiritual life, felt at the start, and felt after the Christian view is admitted to be the most reasonable? Can the ground be cleared of misconceptions, mistaken prepossessions, certain fallacies of common speech and thought, unreasonable demands, failures to remember essential conditions in our life problems? Can something be done toward giving a really different point of view, that may make the seeming unreality of the spiritual world less a burden to us? In a word, can we see the reasons for the seeming unreality of the spiritual life?

Ill

THE ORDER OF THE DISCUSSION

Exactly this is the problem of the first of the two large divisions of our inquiry. From the discussion of the reasons for the seeming unreality, we are then to turn, in the second division, in the light of the principles brought out in the first division, to a briefer consideration of the positive way to a convincing sense of reality in religious thought and life. The question is throughout both a theoretical one — of the possible full defense of the theistic view of the world, and a practical one — of the religious life.

From the beginning it seems clear that the reasons for the seeming unreality of the spiritual life would naturally include two classes of causes: those causes which are removable by us; and those causes which lie in the nature of the facts involved, and which while not removable by us, can be recognized and taken into account. That is, there are removable causes, and causes not removable but recognizable.

On the one hand, then, there is the unreality which is not due to the necessity of the facts, but to something removable in ourselves — the unreality that exists either because certain misconceptions are held which prevent our seeing the problem aright, or because certain conditions are not fulfilled, upon which alone the clearer vision could come. The removable causes, then, are misconceptions of the facts, and failure to fulfil the natural conditions of the spiritual life.

On the other hand, there are the causes which we cannot remove, but which we can recognize: the seeming unreality which is due to the inevitable limitations and fluctuations of our finite natures; and the seeming unreality which is needed for our moral training. While these causes cannot be removed, the clear recognition of them would do, perhaps, most of all to lift the burden of the sense of the unreality of the spiritual world.

We are to turn first, then, to the removable causes

At bottom, both of the removable causes of the seeming unreality of the spiritual life — misconceptions, and failure to fulfil needed conditions — grow out of the deeper failure rightly to relate the spiritual life to the rest of life, to see both its likeness and its difference.

THE ORDER OF THE DISCUSSION 1 5

For, it is to be carefully noted, a thing may be unreal to us either because it seems to have no living connection with the rest of our life, or because it seems to have no special contribution to make to life. Some will feel one difficulty most, others the other; but all of us probably feel both difficulties in some degree. So, if the spiritual life is to have reality for us, on the one hand, it must be seen to be of a piece with all life, bound up with the indubitably real world; and yet, on the other hand, it must have individuality — its own reason for being — in its unique and valuable point of view and contribution. That is, the spiritual life must have the reality of connection with all other reals, and the reality of individuality in its own specific contribution to the meaning of life. It must not be so different that it cannot be believed to belong to the same world, and to the same human nature, and to the same God, as the rest of life; and yet it must be seen to be different enough to have a genuine and indispensable contribution of its own to make.

The radical liberal — if I may so call him — - feels most the first difficulty, and everywhere has done most to solve it. What Pfleiderer calls the "abstract supernatural" is to this l6 THE SEEMING UNREALITY OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

radical liberal a perpetual stumbling-block, and he is ever pointing out the connection, the likeness, and the unity of things. The immanence of God is his one great insistence. The radical orthodox — as perhaps the other temperament may be called — feels most the other difficulty, and has done most for its solution. His great insistence is the transcendence of God. The liberal has done most to establish the likeness; the orthodox, the individuality of religion. And yet, for a man who is willing to see the whole problem, both difficulties are equally real; both solutions are needed; they cannot be thought of as antagonistic. Both the misconceptions of the spiritual life, therefore, and the failure to fulfil its natural conditions, may come from ignoring either the likeness or the difference of the spiritual life.

The two classes of misconceptions of the spiritual life which so arise are particularly plain. Men stumble at the spiritual life, that is, either because it seems so unlike the rest of their life, its conditions all so different; or because they do not see that it has anything of indispensable value to give.

Sometimes the solution of the difficulty of unlikeness seems to have proved too much. It has made religion so like all the rest of life,

THE ORDER OF THE DISCUSSION 17

that religion itself seems to have disappeared in the process. Thus arises the frequent barrenness of the liberal defense of religion. On the other hand, one may seem to make religion so unique as to make it unbelievable, an absolute miracle, with no possible tie of connection with the world we know — an error into which the Ritschlian seems sometimes likely to fall. We shall be guarded against these opposite errors, only by recognizing frankly and fully both needs from the start.

We begin, then, with the misconceptions which come from ignoring the likeness of the spiritual life to the rest of life — its close-knit connections with the whole of existence.

If the spiritual life is a reality at all, we must expect to find it so closely connected with the rest of our life that conditions which hold in all the other realms of our experience will not be without their effect in the spiritual realm. We may not safely forget or ignore, therefore, in the religious life, those great common conditions of all our living which are always at work. Much of our disappointment in spiritual things comes either from quietly ignoring circumstances which we constantly take into account as matters of course in other spheres of life; or from carrying over into the religious life without question certain common fallacies or unwarranted assumptions of ordinary crude thinking, which are felt to be necessarily unspiritual in their implications. Against both mistakes, we have to emphasize the likeness of all the spheres of life: to see, on the one hand, that the spiritual life cannot be set free from the conditions involved in its connection with the rest of life; and, on the other hand, that the fundamental implications of the other spheres of life are not anti-spiritual, as common and cruder views often tacitly assume.

And, first, we need to take into account the effects of the great common conditions of all our living — bodily and psyschical.

PART I

THE CAUSES OF THE SEEMING UNREALITY

MISCONCEPTIONS