Spiritual knowing

Front matter

Chap. Copvriott No.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

OR

Preface

The American people are unconsciously arraying themselves on one or the other side of a sharp dividing line. The standard or ideal of life on the one side is vigor, energy, activity, dominion, conquering circumstances by the strong right arm. It has recently coined a new phrase to express its ideal. It calls upon the youth of the land to follow " the strenuous hfe," which is an appeal for the strongest possible exercise of the human will. Its standard of success is material prosperity.

The ideal of the other side is exactly the opposite of this. It sees in the history of mankind a perpetual failure of the human will to give happiness, comfort, peace or even permanent prosperity. It sees that not only the teachings of the world's Saviour, the Man of GaHlee, but the analogies of science show that the secret of happiness lies in surrendering the finite human will to the Supreme Eternal Will, and that true success is not to be gained by a strenuous materialistic life, but by a spiritual life.

An essential element of this movement is its larger and profounder interpretation of the word spiritual. Its followers believe that the spiritual universe and not the material is the basis of rational thinking; that, in truth, the spiritual or mental is the only real and permanent vi PREFACE.

entity. They accept the statement of philosophy which is voiced in the words of Professor Borden P. Bowne of Boston University: '' A thought-world is the only knowable world; a thought^world is the only real world."

As materialism has its watchword in the phrase " the strenuous life," so the other movement expresses its fundamental thought in the process described as " spiritual knowing." It is a moderate estimate that there are not less than two million people in America who accept that term as descriptive of their thought and purpose.

The strenuous life is the law of material evolution. It results in " the survival of the fittest." Spiritual knowing is a process of moral and spiritual development. Its effect is to fit the human race to survive. It is a movement of the people and not of the churches. But it belongs in the churches, and will in time be assimilated by them. It is simply the spiritual gospel of Jesus the Christ, which the people are rediscovering and applying.

It should be noted that the new, and what may be called the scientific conception of the spiritual life, does not belong to the old order of pietism or quietism. It is, rather, a strenuous life in a higher sense of that term, the outcome of right thinking. In the recognition of his unity with God man gains his true and only potentiality. The life of Abraham Lincoln serves as an illustration. It was a strenuous life, yet beneath its assiduous effort and persistent purpose there was a double source of power — trust in a divine guidance, and an ideal of freedom for ail and not for a favored few.

PREFACE. vii

The choice which every citizen of this free land is called to make is between a materialistic and a spiritual ideal. Shall we obey the human and selfish will, or the Divine Will of Love? We must not only make the choice for ourselves, but we must decide which standard shall be held before the children and youth of America in the homes, the schools, the universities and the churches.

It is not merely a religious choice. It affects education and politics as truly as it concerns the so-called religious life. In fact, the old division between the sacred and the secular no longer exists. If our educational and political systems are not religious, they must become so, or be dropped like the corn-husks of autumn. They have served their purpose, and must give way to something more vital. It is not piety, but righteousness that exalteth a nation. Righteousness is the only true piety. Love is a universal solvent. No problem of individual or social life can be wrought to a just conclusion without it.

THEODORE F. SEWARD,

iNew York City.

December, 1900.

Introduction

The phrase '' spiritual knowing " is the keynote of thought and life in the twentieth century. It indicates the coming of a new era when man is to enjoy

"The freer step, the fuller breath.

The wide horizon's grander view; The sense of life that knows no death, The life that maketh all things new."

Until the present time matter has been regarded as the one substantial reality whose appeal to consciousness was unimpeachable, the one element concerning which knowledge was supposed to be definite, accurate and satisfactory. Spirit was thought of as something unreal, df whose qualities and powers little could be known. Its very existence was doubted by many.

Opinioi^ on this subject is now completely reversed. Spirit is recognized as the real and substantial, and matter as the unknowable. Intuition is acknowledged to be a surer guide than intellect; soul perception or spiritual perception a more accurate source of knowledge than sense-perception. Instead of thinking ourselves as bodies with spirits somewhere inside of us, we now realize that our true being is spiritual, and the physical body is an evanescent and vanishing element.

The change of thought from the standpoint of matter

X INTRODUCTION.

to the standpoint of spirit is introducing a new philosophy, and a new standard both in the ways of thinking and of living. It reverses the relationship of the natural and the supernatural. Heretofore the material world has been the nearest to men's thoughts, and it has been called natural, while all that belongs to the spiritual realm has been regarded as supernatural. Reversing this process and treating the spiritual as the natural changes confusion of thought to simplicity, and leads to a wonderful discovery, namely, that, this is exactly what Jesus of Nazareth tried to do for the human race nineteen centuries ago. He taught the truth that the inner or spiritual world is the real world — the realm of causation. "The kingdom of God is within you. Seek first the realities of this inner kingdom, and the things of the external world will be added unto you."

This declaration confirms the statement in Genesis that man is made in the image of God, and that he is given dominion over all the earth. It also supplies a key by which the Bible may be read as a revelation of pure love, and not as a mixture of love and vengeance; in other words, it shows the book to be a fountain of pure sunshine.

Very far from a book of sunshine has the Bible heretofore appeared to most of its readers. The picture of Mount Sinai with its " clouds and thick darkness " filled their minds so exclusively for centuries that when the Messiah came to reveal God's light in its fulness, the human race was in no condition to receive it. " The light shineth in darkness, but the darkness compre-

INTRODUCTION, xi

hended it not." Individuals received the message for several centuries, and their lives were blessed and transformed by it. But a spirit of formalism and materialism began to displace the simple faith of the early disciples, and once more the world gave more heed to the thunderings df Sinai than to the tender voice of love, and the Heavenly Father revealed by Jesus Christ was supplanted in human thought by the stern Judge of scholastic theology. The two vital errors of man-made theological systems which have robbed the Bible of much of its sunshine are (i) a degraded view of man as a worm of the dust, and (2) postponing the consequences of right and wrong living, to a heaven and hell beyond the grave.

The worm-of-the-dust idea of man belongs tO' the limited condition of human thought when it was supposed that God could and did separate Himself from the objects of His creation, as one can build a complicated machine and set it in motion. It was also a time when all the thinking was done from the standpoint of the material.

To apply the law of spiritual knowing to the varied experiences of life, and to the interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures, is the purpose of the present volume.

Chapter I. God And Man In The Bible

Beneath the various forms of scriptural writings, whether olf history, prophecy, poetry, gospel narrative or parable, one purpose is never lost sight of, namely, the purpose of revealing God and man, and showing their mutual relation — of God to man, and man to his fellow man. The names given to the Creator in different parts of the Old Testament are themselves revelations of different phases of Divinity. The Hebrew names for the Supreme Being have been called '' lenses through which to see the character of God." It is interesting and instructive to observe the progressive order of the divine titles.

The first name that occurs is " E^ohim,*' meaning " Mighty One," " the All-Powerful." It is in the plural form, which is the Hebrew method of expressing the idea of majesty and power.

The second Hebrew word for God is "Jehovah- Elohim," which is defined in Exodus as " I am that I am," "the Ever-Existing One." This name marks a new departure in revelation. Man, a sinner, finds God- Jehovah his Redeemer. By this name God had not been known (Ex. 6: 3). All later names are unfoldings of this name as the redemptive title of God.

The third name is " El Shaddai," in which God reveals himself to Abraham as working above nature. Abraham had passed nature's limit in begetting children, but God shows him that He is not limited to nature.

The fourth name is " Jehovah-Jireh," God as a provider. The revelation of God's care in this name should lift us above all anxiety. Christ Jesus emphasizes this in Luke 1 2th, where he declares that faithfulness in spiritual things will bring material blessings.

The fifth name is '' Jehovah Nissi," " The Lord our banner" — indicating protection. The Pslamist says: " His banner over us is love." His protection is absolute if we will but trust it.

The sixth name is " Jehovah Raphai," " The Lord our Healer." It is strange how this Truth has been lost sight of, although Jesus' life was a constant exemplification of it. This subject will be considered in a separate chapter.

The seventh name is "J^^o^ah Tsidkenu," "The Lord our Righteousness " — a name which meets and touches man in his infirmities and sins.

The eighth name is "Jehovah Shammah," "God everywhere to be recognized." How often we have occasion to say " God was in this place and I knew it not."

The ninth name is " Jehovah Shalom," " The Lord our Peace." Peace is the consummation and fruition of all human desires.

One other name, " Jehovah-Rohi," " the Lord our Shepherd," gathers up and includes the meaning of all the rest.

What more do we need to give us encouragement and

GOD AND MAN IN THE BIBLE. 5

strength than the character of our God as revealed by the foregoing names?*

But the change of thought from the standpoint of matter to the standpoint of Spirit necessitates a new and larger conception of God than has thus far been generally held. The conception of the Supreme Being has resulted from a process somewhat similar to the enlargement of a photograph. Man has been taken as the type or norm, and the attempt has been made to expand the pattern from the finite to the Infinite. This has led to what is called the anthropomorphic or giant-man conception of God.

In the vastly extended knowledge of the present day this idea of taking mortal man as a type or pattern of the immortal God, the Supreme and Self-existing Jehovah, is clearly seen to be unphilosophical and inadmissible. The method must be reversed. To gain a true conception we must recognize that God, Love, is an infinite and all-pervading Principle. He is not a God of Love, a Being who can both love and hate. He is Love, and in this Love we. His children, " live and move and have our being." There is no room for darkness in this conception.

But in considering this new standard of thought our first feeling is a fear that we are losing our sense of God as a personal being — the Father whO' loves and pities His children. It is a difficult subject to treat, as it is neces-

* For this suggestion of the progressive order of the divine titles I am indebted to the Rev. W. W. Pratt, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Passaic, N. J.

sary to employ finite terms for the expression of infinite ideas.

God is Personal Being. Yes, we know this because we are made in his image and likeness. But what do we know concerning the nature and modes of expression of an infinite Personality? Our forefathers were satisfied with a conception of personality which could not, so to speak, be expanded to infinitude. It is impossible to start with man as the initial conception and enlarge it to a true idea of the Infinite. In the attempt to do this, the mind is inevitably held to the idea of corporeality. Even if God is described as being .without body, parts or passions," the corporeal concept still remains to confuse the thought.

The mode of thinking must be changed. God must be thought of as both Infinite PersonaHty and Infinite Principle. Which shall come first, and be to some extent the governing idea? The " personal " thought has prevailed entirely in the past, and we see its limitations and disadvantages. It is impossible to dissociate it entirely from human weaknesses and defects. Moreover, a personal God — in our limited conception of it — carries with it almost unavoidably the counterpart of a personal devil. Some one has said " Human nature takes something from good and calls it God, and adds something to evil and calls it devil." Probably all the theologians who feel it necessary to defend their notion of the personality of God by rejecting the idea of Infinite Principle, are no less strenuous in defending the personality of Satan.

GOD AND MAN IN THE BIBLE. 5

Against all this the lay mind is beginning to revolt. God is Love. Then where can He be found as far as each individual is concerned except in our own consciousness?

'* I searched for God with heart-throbs of despair, 'Neath ocean's bed, above the vaulted sky; Al last I searched myself, my inmost I, And found Him there."

There is little danger that the personality of God will ever be lost sight of, for the heart of man demands it. His whole being cries out for it. In that respect we are all Jacobs in saying, " I will not let thee go except thou bless me." But the practical question is, as already stated, which is the best underlying thought to hold concerning the Supreme Being? Swedenborg says: "In heaven, by loving the Lord is not understood to love Him as to His person, but to love the goodness which proceeds from Him." Our present thought of personality is associated with the Giant Being who has been relegated to the skies by formulated theology. We have been taught to look up in the sky to find God. The idea of an Infinite Principle as Love turns the expectation within. No one would dream of looking up intO' the sky for Infinite Principle. It also places the mind in a totally different attitude toward the question of evil. The thought of an Infinite Principle as Love and Goodness is comprehensible and uplifting. The thought of an Infinite Principle of Hate and Evil is inconceivable. The mind is thus led to an appreciation of the vital, essential .truth that Love is positive, and evil is negative. Love is the Creative Force, but evil has no self-derived power; it can only have the influence over us which we permit it to have. '' The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound."

Accepting the idea of a Divine Personality and rejecting that of Infinite Principle is equivalent to accepting the sun and rejecting the sunshine. Taking the sun as a type or figure to represent the Supreme Being helps to makes the subject clear. God as Infinite Principle is representedii by the orb. All our knowledge of the sun is gained by studying the light and heat that it gives forth, and all the benefit we derive from the sun is gained from the use we make of this light and heat. So all our knowledge of God must be dbtained by studying the Love and Truth which emanate from Him, and all the benefit we derive is from the use we make of this Love and Truth. Therefore the introduction of the term Infinite Principle should be welcomed as a means of turning attention from the abstract and unknowable to the concrete and practical.

Emphasizing unduly the personality of God, in connection with the anthropomorphic idea, has obscured the truth of His being as including both the masculine and feminine qualities. " God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.'' Scholastic theology lost sight of that truth and assumed the Divine Creator to be a man. Humanity has always longed for the feminine element in its thought of God, and has tried in many ways to supply it. It is this craving which led the Roman

GOD AND MAN IN THE BIBLE. 7

Catholic Church to the worship of Mary. Now the weary-hearted children of men are beginning to think and speak of " our Father-Mother God," and they are supported in this thought by reason as well as by revelation. Edwin Markham has written a poem entitled " A Song to the Divine Mother." Four of its seventeen stanzas are here quoted :

" Come, Mighty Mother, from the bright abode.

Lift the low heavens, and hush the earth again; Come when the moon throws down a road Across the sea — come back to weary men.

" Come down, O Mother, to the helpless land.

That we may frame our Freedom into Pate,

Come down, and on the throne of nations stand,

That we may build Thy beauty in the State.

* *

" Come shining in upon our daily road,

Uphold the hero heart, and light the mind; Quicken the strong to lift the People's load, And bring back buried justice to mankind.

" Some day our homeless cries will draw Thee down.

And the old brightness on the ways of men Will send a hush upon the jangling town. And broken hearts will learn to love again."

One of the vital errors of the past has been the beHef that God could not be known and understood. This in the face of Jesus' specific statement that a knowledge of God is an essential element of eternal life. "This is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God; and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." That is, know Jesus Christ as the revealer of the only true God.

The error arose from the condition of the race in the former centuries when intellect was the standard and " knowing " was supposed to be a process of intellectual analysis. By that process God can not be known. He is Love and can only be comprehended through the logic of the heart.

The. statement has been previously made (in the Introduction) that '' the change of thought from the standpoint of matter to the standpoint of spirit is introducing into the world a new philosophy, and a new standard, both in the ways of thinking and of living." In. fact, it must result in an absolute revolution and transformation of human methods in individual and social life. It creates a philosophy which is based upon a rational conception of God. All Christians, however they may differ on secondary questions, will accept the following statements :

1. God is Infinite.

2. God is Spirit.

3. God is Life, Truth and Love expressed and reflected in Wisdom, Goodness, Beauty and Harmony.

Now, in the light of the highest reason, what deductions must be drawn from these statements?

1. Since God is infinite, there can be nothing in the universe but God manifested in every variety of expression.

2. Since God is Spirit, there can be nothing in the universe but Spirit. All that appears otherwise is not a reality, but a seeming.

3. Since God is Love, and infinite, there cannot be anything in the universe but Love in its various manifes-

GOD AND MAN IN THE BIBLE. p

tations of Life, Truth, Wisdom, Goodness, Beauty, Harmony.

Therefore the real universe must be a spiritual universe, and this universe must include Man as a spiritual expression of God.

The intellect, which is the interpreter of sense-perception, finds it hard to accept these truths, but the heart accepts them readily and joyfully, and the theology that belongs to the truths is that which Jesus said must be received in the spirit of a little child.

Let no one think that understanding God as Infinite Principle as well as Infinite Personality will put Him away from us and make it harder to realize His nearness and His fatherly care. It has exactly the opposite effect. Every Christian knows how difficult it is to bring the " Supreme Ruler " down out of the sky and sO' understand His infinite Love as to rest upon it, with a perfectly calm and peaceful trust. In fact, it is impossible. Even the ministers of the Gospel who preach self-surrender and perfect trust do not enjoy any deeper experience of peace than their unsatisfied congregations. I know of a devoted and consecrated preacher who sO' longed for " the peace which passeth all understanding " that during the course of his life he read the Bible through seven times on his knees, in addition to all his other study of the book. Yet he " died without the sight.'*

In fact, it is the laity rather than the clergy who are working out the problems of faith and life from the spiritual standpoint. This is but natural, inasmuch as their minds are comparatively free from the limitations of formulated theology.

There is a large and rapidly increasing host of people who believe that they have found the key tO' life, truth, happiness and heaven by accepting the teachings of Jesus Christ naturally rather than theologically or ecclesiastically. They beheve that the " Pearl of Great Price " lies in his Principle of Eternal Life as being a present development of the " kingdom within," which Principle may be summarized as follows:

There is no reality but Spirit and no life but Love.

Love and not death is the gateway to the Spiritual Universe.

Only through love of the Good can man enjoy his naturaj dominion and gain a mastery of material conditions.

This is a religion of the heart and not of the head, and must be understood through the process of " spiritual knowing."

WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST f'' ii

Chapter II. " What Think Ye Of Christ? "

This question of the Master is still the perplexity of Christendom. Ecclesiastic, scholastic and dialectic methods of thought have thrown no light upon it; they have only added to the hopeless confusion of ideas. Yet Jesus said that the truth he taught must be received in the spirit of a little child. Can this profound theme be presented in such a way that a child's mind can comprehend it?

The confusion of thought has arisen from the error of looking upon Christ as one with the personality of the human Jesus. Therefore in seeking simpHcity the first thing to be done is to separate the two- in our thought.

Whatever view we hold must be consistent with his own affirmation " The Lord our God is one God." To wors'hip Jesus as God is to put ourselves in opposition to his own teaching " The Father is greater than I," and much more to the same effect. Dr. George D. Herron says " At all times Jesus strenuously denied having any special privilege in God. He came to destroy the gods of special privilege. Above all things he sought to keep men from thinking of him apart from the common life — and putting him in some special category of his own. That would annul the meaning and value of his coming, for he came to bring the common life of man to light."

Yet his individuality was in some way different from ours. He was " Jesus the Christ." We do not read of " John the Christ," or " Paul the Christ." In what did the difference consist?

The only rational solution of the problem is tO' be found in the truth that " the spiritual is the only real" — that man is spiritual and not material.

By belief in a power apart from God the human race has brought itself into a state of illusion — of false consciousness. Indulgence in selfishness and sin has shut out the true consciousness of God and the spiritual universe. The world that is discerned by the material senses is an unreal world; all its objects are inversions — counterfeits of the realities of the actual universe, the spiritual universe. To this unreal world belong experiences which cannot possibly exist in the spiritual universe — evil, sorrow, hate, disappointment, sickness; the whole catalogue of human miseries ending in death.

How can a race in such a condition as this be redeemed and brought out its illusions? Clearly it can only be done by one who represents eternal Truth, eternal Life and eternal Love, and who yet is in sympathy with the deluded people; one who can be " touched with the feeling of all their infirmities." Such a one was Jesus the Christ. Jesus was born of the human Mary. But the Christ in him was born of God. Hence he could say on one side, " The Father is greater than I," and on the other " Before Abraham was I am." He was the archetypal man. The Christ-thought is the image and likeness of God. Jesus revealed to the world

'WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST f " ij

the nature of Christ or the Christ-spirit, and taught that the Christ-spirit is the true Hfe of man. Jesus the Christ was the mediator between God and man; as St. Paul says, *' There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." Jesus could perform this office because he included the two natures. " In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," says the Apostle Paul, and immediately adds, " And ye are complete in him which is the head of all principality and power." All that he had in his present realization we have potentially. Hence our way is made plain; " As ye have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk ye in him." How shall we walk in him? " If ye then be risen with Christ seek those things which are above, where Christ (not Jesus, or Christ Jesus) sitteth on the right hand of God." The " right hand of God " is next in Divine order, as sonship, to God.

How clear all this becomes when we have the key in our thought — namely, that man is a spiritual being who only needs to realize his own true nature. The last quotation above shows the mistake of supposing that we can only " depart and be with Christ " by dying. "If ye then be risen with Christ." If ye be risen now; not when you have risen at some future time. If we have risen and are striving to rise above the false material consciousness into the true consciousness of Spirit, then as Paul further says, '' ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." And in one short sentence he indicates the rule of the new life. " Set your affection on things above, and not on things on the earth." How completely this reflects the teaching of Christ Jesus. " Seek first the inner spiritual kingdom of God."

All this truth with reference to Jesus Christ is an expression of spiritual psychology, and should be read in connection with the chapter on that subject. Materialism is death. Spirituality is life. Adam is a type of error, or all that belongs to the false materiality. Christ is the reality of Truth — of all that belongs to the true spiritual life. Hence we read '' As in Adam (error) all die, so in Christ (Truth) shall all be made alive." Materialism is death to the spirit, and material existence (the false material consciousness) is a dream from which all must sooner or later awake. Hence we read again: " Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept!' Elsewhere Paul says : " It is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." This he says in connection with his remarkable assertion " Love is the fulfilling of the law." When we understand this vital Truth, our salvation or awakening is much nearer than when we only hold vague beliefs about Truth.

In the light of these interpretations we see the basis of Jesus^ statements concerning man's equality with himself.

" Verily, verily, I say unto' you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he also do, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father." John 14: 12. This promise was not given only to the disciples of Jesus' time, but to the disciples of all time. Why did the Master say that his followers should