The Ascent of the Soul Part 11

testifies to the beneficence of the path in which he had been led in this wise and beautiful stanza,

"Regret is dead, but love is more Than in the summers that have flown, For I myself with these have grown To something greater than before."

From dwelling in a prison with grief as a jailer he has caught a vision of the,

"One far off divine event To which the whole creation moves."

This expansion of the soul is not difficult to follow. Traces of it may be seen in the enlarged sympathy, the growing brotherhood, and in the rapidly increasing conviction that even nationalities are only temporary expedients for bringing the day when love shall be the universal law.

The charities and philanthropies which are blossoming in every city and country district, the consciousness of responsibility for the poor and weak, the angel songs which are heard in the midst of battle, and the gradual disappearance of war, are all vague but true prophecies of what the soul will be when love is perfected. The knowledge of past progress is an inspiration, and the imagination of what will be a glorious hope.

A single clause in the Apocalypse has long seemed to me as fine a statement of the condition which will prevail, when this prophecy is a reality, as could be phrased,--"The Lamb is the light thereof." Light is the medium in which objects are visible, and the Lamb is the symbol of sacrificial love. The great dreamer, in his vision, beheld a time when spirits would see in sacrificial love as now we see physical objects in the medium of light. To those who have studied the expansion of individual souls, and who then have contrasted the selfishness of earlier social conditions with the love of men as it is revealed in the laws, inst.i.tutions, ministries of to-day, this dream of the Apostle rises in the distance as a new continent to a voyager over the wide and desolate ocean.

Equally prophetic is the advance which has been made from the pa.s.sion of savage barbarism, or infantile wilfulness, to the moral reason of the present day as seen in the highest types of humanity in civilized lands.

Wilfulness characterizes the childish nature and pa.s.sion the savage nature. But with the growth of the soul choices are differentiated from impulses, and more and more regularly are inspired by intelligence and unselfish affection. This progress toward intelligent and unselfish choice distinguishes the movement toward civilization. Here, again, the advance made by the individual soul and by the race are equally prophetic. With the years the choices become more rational and loving.

Time mellows all men somewhat, and forces a little wisdom into the hardest heads. Even slight growth prophesies that which shall be swifter when conditions are more favorable.

The soul is a prediction of clearer vision, truer thought, more unselfish love and wiser choices. It is a prophecy of the perfect man.

History is also prophetic of larger souls. The stream of human history, after it has been followed backward a few thousand years, leads into the region of legend and myth--that is, to a time when history could not be written because there was no writing, and when all truth was conveyed in symbolical forms. That means toward a time of narrow experience, and of knowledge far more limited than the present. Memory, in those days, was enormously and abnormally capacious and retentive, but there was no appreciation of humanity. Few lessons from the experiences of others were possible, because the mind was filled with merely tribal legends.

What was called early civilization was only relatively splendid. There was unsurpa.s.sed poetry but no science, ample brawn but diminutive brain, much pa.s.sion but little love. Out of the darkness of the past the stream of history, very narrow and shallow at first, has emerged and steadily expanded and deepened. Men are now equally intense but far clearer in vision, n.o.bler in purpose, and purer in character. Their laws year by year have become more humane, their sympathies less contracted, their inst.i.tutions more civilized. Nature's secret drawers have been unlocked.

We are sometimes told that science has added much to the store of man's knowledge but nothing to the strength of his mind or the n.o.bility of his character. That is a serious mistake. With the enlarged visions of the universe, with clearer conceptions of our cosmic relations, with the national neighborliness which is now a necessity, the capacity and the quality of the soul must change. Nay, it has already changed, for we inhabit the same lands over which savages formerly roamed, and we find in the earth and air what they never found; and when we look up into the great wide sky and say, "The Heavens declare the glory of G.o.d," we are not thinking of a tribal Deity, or a partial, and more or less pa.s.sionate, monarch enthroned in the midst of his splendors, but of the King Eternal, immortal, invisible. Knowledge tends to enlarge the mind by which it is acquired. All faculties are strengthened by use.

History has moved along a b.l.o.o.d.y pathway, or, to revert to the figure of a stream, is indeed a river of "tears and blood." The horrors of the process by which the race has been lifted can hardly be exaggerated. I do not forget them while I put stronger emphasis on the fact that the outcome of all the struggle of individuals, the conflict of cla.s.ses, and the wars of nations has been a n.o.bler and purer quality of soul,--not less heroic but more sacrificial, not less strong but far more virtuous.

The growth of the individual soul is mirrored in the progress of the race. When we have learned to read aright the history of the world, we are informed as to the interior forces which have made civilization.

Events are expressions of thoughts; inst.i.tutions are manifestations of soul. If there has been progress in inst.i.tutions there must have been an equal progress in the souls which are the real forces by which progress is always won. As history has been the evolution of humanity toward finer forms, so it is the a.s.surance that the forces which have been at work in the past will not cease, but steadily continue until "the pile is complete." The perfect society will be composed of perfected individuals. History as prophecy is harmonious with soul as prophecy.

The future state of the soul has been the subject of rare fascination for the world's great thinkers. Nearly all religions have a forward look. "The Golden Age" lies far in the distance, but it has commanded the faith of all the seers. It has sometimes been a dream concerning individuals, and again a vision of the perfected society, but in reality the two are one, for the social organism is but a congeries of individuals. Bacon dreamed of New Atlantis, Sir Thomas More saw the fair walls of Utopia rising in the future, Plato defined the boundaries of the ideal Republic, Augustine wrote of the glories of the _Civitate Dei_, and Tennyson with matchless music has sung of the crowning race:--

"Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing l.u.s.t of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be."

The common characteristic of these social ideals is their dependence on the culture of individuals. With the incoming of "the valiant man and free," the man of "larger heart and kindlier hand," there is a reasonable hope that the darkness of the land will disappear.

With that deep look into the inmost secrets of human experience which sounds strangely autobiographical, Browning wrote in "Rabbi Ben Ezra,"

"Praise be thine!

I see the whole design, I, who saw power, see love now perfect too; Perfect I call thy plan; Thanks that I was a man!

Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"

"Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term; Thence shall I pa.s.s, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a G.o.d though in the germ."

Those last lines condense Browning's creed concerning man. He is "for aye removed from the developed brute," and is "a G.o.d in the germ."

Browning holds that while in the future there will surely be expansion of soul, evolution as a physical process is at an end. Henceforward there will be no pa.s.sing from one species to another. Species have to do with physical organisms, not with spirits. Soul in man is but G.o.d "in the germ."

Emerson and Matthew Arnold have written much about education. The one foretells a day when the soul, after mounting and meliorating, finds that even the h.e.l.ls are turned into benefit; and the other makes his own the thought of Bishop Wilson that culture is a study of perfection, and that the soul must ever seek increased life, increased light, and increased power.

Education is the word of the hour and of the century. It is believed to be the panacea for all ills, individual and social. But, precisely, what does this pa.s.sion for education signify if not that, either intelligently or otherwise, all believe in the perfectibility of the soul, and that it will have all the time that it needs for the process.

The absorbing devotion to intellectual training suggests the inquiry as to whether many who affirm that they are agnostic concerning immortality are not in reality earnest in their faith; for why should they seek the culture of that which fades, as the flowers fade; when it approaches life's winter? But, whether faith in continuance of being is firm or frail, few doubt the perfectibility of spirit, because, beyond almost all things, they are seeking its perfection. Literature, which is but the thoughts of the great souls of successive periods recorded, prophesies a day when all that hinders or taints shall be done away, and when the divine in the germ shall have grown to large and fair proportions. If there were no other light the outlook would still be inspiring. It is well sometimes to ask ourselves what we were made to be--not these bodies which are clearly decaying--but these spirits which seem to grow younger with the pa.s.sage of time. I have sometimes thought that the very idea of second childhood is itself a prophecy of the soul's eternal youth. Certain it is that we are the masters of the years. The oldest persons that we know are usually the youngest in their sympathies and ideals. Sorrow and opposition should not destroy, but only strengthen the spiritual powers. Intelligence grows from more to more. The sure reward of love is the capacity and opportunity for larger love. Virtuous choices gradually become the law of liberty. These facts are index fingers pointing toward large and loving, strenuous and sympathetic manhood. And toward such human types, as a matter of fact, the race has been moving. The expectation of the seers and prophets, also, has been of a golden age in which all souls will have had time, and opportunity, of reaching the far-off but splendid goal. Believing, as we do, that death is never a finality, but that it is only an incident in progress; that instead of being an end it is only freedom from limitation, we find ourselves often vaguely, but ever eagerly, asking, To what are all these souls tending? Toward a state glorious beyond language to utter we deeply feel. But has no clearer voice spoken? At last we have reached the end of our inquiry. If any other voices speak they must sound from above. We stand by the unseen like children by the ocean's sh.o.r.e. They know that beyond the storms and waves lie fair and wealthy lands, but the waters separate and their eyes are weak. So we stand before the future, and ask, Toward what goal are all this education, experience and discipline tending? Are they perfecting souls which at last are to be laid away with the bodies which were fortunate enough to win an earlier death? It would be impiety to believe that. Then indeed should we be put to "permanent intellectual confusion." If all the voices of the soul are mockeries, then life is worse than a mistake--it is a crime.

The solution of the mystery is now before us. The man that is to be has walked this earth, and wrought with human hands, and lived and labored and loved, and pa.s.sed into the silent land. Is Jesus the unique revelation of the divine? There may be many to question that, but there are few, indeed, who doubt that He embodied all of the perfect humanity which could be expressed within the limitations of the body. He represented Himself as essential truth and very life. He condensed duty into such love as He manifested toward men. He embodied the heroism of meekness, the courage of self-sacrifice, the vision of goodness. He was an example of all that is strong, serene, sacrificial, in the midst of the lowest and most unresponsive conditions. So much we see, and the rest we dimly, but surely, feel.

It was reserved for Paul, in a moment of inspiration, to put into a single phrase a description of the goal of the human spirit, as something which may be forever approached but never reached, in these words, "Till we all attain unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." The fullness of Christ! That is the soul's final destiny. It was the far call of that goal which it faintly heard at its first awakening and which has never entirely ceased to sound in his ears. Who shall explore the contents of that great phrase? It is a subject for meditation, for prayer, but never for discussion. He who approaches it in a controversial spirit never understands it. What are the qualities of the character of Christ? Some of them lie on the surface of the story. He never doubted G.o.d, or, if so, but for a single moment; He was unselfish; He lived to love and to express love; He had some mysterious preternatural power over nature--such, perhaps, as science is approaching in later times; kindness, sympathy, helpfulness, purity, shone from His words and actions. He declared that the privilege of dying to save those who despised Him was a joy. He lived in the limitations of the human condition and, therefore, on the earth only hints of "His fullness" are discernible. The full revelation is to be the endless study of those who are able to see and to appreciate things as they are. But we may ask ourselves whither these lines tend. When the intelligence, the love, the compa.s.sion, the mercy, the purity, the moral power and spiritual grandeur which only in dim outline are revealed in the Christ, have perfect manifestations, what will the vision be? The very thought transcends the farthest flights of the poet's imagination and the most daring speculations of philosophers. In "the fullness of Christ" is the soul's true goal. For that all men, and not the elect few, were created. That is the revelation of the divine plan for humanity. Toward that evolution has been slowly, and often painfully, pressing from those dim aeons when the earth was without form and void.

When man appeared as the flower of all the cosmic process he started at once toward this goal. And with great modesty, and simply because I believe in G.o.d and that His love cannot be defeated, I dare to hope that, sometime and somehow, after all the pains of retribution and moral discipline have done their inevitable work, after all the fires of Gehenna have consumed the desire to sin, after Hades and Purgatory have been pa.s.sed, the souls which, for a time, have dwelt in these mortal bodies, purified and without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, will be given the beatific vision and permitted to realize the height and depth, the length and breadth of "the fullness of Christ."

"That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and knows."