Theosophy - Looking Forward by Clara M. Codd
LOOKING
FORWARD
The Coming Faith and.... The Coming Social order
BY Clara
M. Codd
Published
in 1918
The
Hour
The Coming Faith
The Coming Social Order
The Message of the Hour
A Dream
IN
HIS NAME
The
Great Captain of our Salvation and to my Fellow-men
Watchman, what
of the Night?
The Watchman said: The morning cometh and also the night:
if ye will enquire, enquire yes: return, come.
He answered and said unto them,......Ye can discern the face of the sky: but
can ye not discern the signs of the times.
THE
HOUR
Not one of us, in
these extraordinary days, but vaguely feels the immensity of the moment, the
tremendous import of the hour. Everywhere, in every direction, change succeeds
change; shock after shock follows each other in our moral and mental world,
more cataclysmic in effect, more perilous to our unthinking security, than the
cyclonic devastation of the raging world war. An age of an old established order
of things is closing its account, a world of of accustomed procedure and opinion
is tottering to its fall, and we stand breathless, shaken, wondering what new
order shall arise therefrom, and at times dimly sensing that beneath the advancing
evolutionary tide a Rock of Ages stands upon which again and again the bewildered
soul of Humanity finds new refuge and fresh faith.
This hour, this dread
and wonderful hour, how shall we understand it? The vague intuition of its mighty
meaning and purpose is expressed in the universal sentiment: "It will never
be the same world after the war as it was before". But to clear that dim
perception it is necessary to grasp certain principles of Life and Purpose.
One thing is axiomatic
and self-evident. The rapid changes, the widening conceptions, are part of a
great evolutionary plan, and have occurred on a smaller scale in previous epochs.
They are the inevitable concomitant of change, the hallmark of the transition
period which accompanies the death-hour of an era, marking the fact that Humanity,
on its great Life-journey, is a "day's march nearer home". Evolution
to be truly comprehended must be viewed from two sides, two aspects of Life
which are inseparable, and yet distinct in manifestation and method, Life and
Form, or as Science would put it with narrower connotations- Force and Matter.
Life and Purpose
are everywhere and at all times one. Fundamentally there is but one Life, one
Purpose, behind all the multitudinous, ever-changing, infinitely diverse Forms
in which it is clothed and expressed. And the great quality of the Life-side
in evolution is that it is ever pressing forwards, gently, irresistibly, unceasingly,
towards fuller, completer, manifestation and expression. And because of that
ceaseless pressure, the great"urge" of Bergsons' Intuitionalism, the
forms, material or immaterial in which Life clothes itself, give way when they
can no longer embody or express it sufficiently, and disappear. They give way
because the Form-side in Nature follows an opposite law, coming into being,
rising to maturity and then crystallising into age, at, which stage, the ever-increasing
Life forces become "cribbed, cabined and confined", and so must burst
asunder to re-create afresh. Thus death means in every case increase of life
and birth into a higher, nobler form.
Life is one, Form
is manifold; Life ever increases, Form continually passes, appears and disappears
under the pressure of the ever-advancing tide of Life of which it is the ever-changing
embodiment or expression. Life strives always towards the Ideal, its temporary
embodiment is what we call the real. And the ultimate purpose of Evolution is
to make of the two one, gradually drawing together these which seem poles asunder,
until one day the real shall perfectly express the ideal, and heaven be born
upon earth, His Will being done upon "earth" as it is always done
in "heaven".
So often we mourn
the passing of a beloved embodiment, cling with desperate insistence to an outworn
mode of thought, not realising that all things must pass, whether of
the outer or inner life, and that the life which thus expressed itself is now
finding nobler, truer embodiment.
"The old order
changeth, yielding place to new,
---and God fulfills Himself in many ways".
Never more than at
this moment was it necessary to grasp this great principle, for with it we may
clear the confusion of the moment, and trace the outlines of the future. It
operates in every sphere of our being. Our bodies pass that we may live anew;
old formulas of life and living grow meaningless beneath the advancing tide
of Life; civilisations crumble so that a new social order may arise on fairer,
true foundations, eras grow old and die that the world may grow young again
in a new "Day" of God. "Behold! I make all things new",
cries the immortal Spirit of Life, "for the former things are passed away".
The
Coming Faith
-I-
On all hands we see
this universal principle of the passing of form in operation in every department
of our common life. It we look too casually, too superficially, we shall but
see the universal disintegration, the surface breaking asunder. In this hour,
of all hours, it behooves us to look deeper still, not at that which passes,
but for that which comes. Standing momentarily as spectators on the shores of
Time, let us not look only at the wave breaking at our feet, but raise our eyes
to that which follows on behind, upon whose advancing crest rides the Spirit
of the Future, He who shall take command when the world staggers purified from
the reek and horror of war. Well for us if the leaders of the nation in both
its material and spiritual life, can take true cognisance of that which is being
writ this day. Again, as two thousand years ago, the Heart of the World cries
to them: "Ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the
signs of the times?" For on that discernment depends the direction of the
tide, the final salvation of the people everywhere. So tragically true for all
time is it that without vision the people must perish.
What then is happening
at this moment in our inner world, the world of man's deepest experience and
most intense realisation? Looking only upon the surface we might unthinkingly
agree with the Bishop of Salisbury when he says: "There has been revealed
to us the terrible and painful fact that a great many are giving up public worship,
and that a large proportion of the people of England pay little attention to
religion at all".
You and I do not
need the Bishop to tell us this. Throughout the length and breath of England
many a church stands practically empty; the Church as an organised form of religion
has lost its hold on the vast body of the people. The indictment pours in on
every side. How often do we see articles in the daily press all dealing with
the question of why the Church has failed us in the hour of our most supreme
need. That something is wrong is clearly felt by many of the clergy themselves,
for the Archbishops have appointed five committees of inquiry to consider what
reforms in the Church are needed and what the nature of the reforms should be.
"It is terribly true", writes the Rev. Dr. Selbie, late President
of the National Free Church Council and Principal of Mansfiedl College , Oxford,
"that God has given the Church the greatest opportunity it ever had, and
that so far it has been neglected".
Why? Because in the
crystallisation caused by the passage of the centuries,the Church has made,
and is making, the old, old mistake, of clinging to the letter which killeth,
instead of going forward with the advancing spirit of Life which ever giveth
life. Narrow, if sincere, formalism, hidebound dogmatism has hampered the Christian
Church, and it was left for an unofficial body like the Y.M.C.A. to make good
in some small measure her omissions and defalcations. I shall never forget how
on the outbreak of war the Sunday Observance Society placarded London with huge
posters pointing out that the evils of war had fallen upon us because of our
non-observance of the Sabbath; nor how a country parson preached upon the theme
of the rains at the front impeding our advance being a "judgment"
upon us for digging allotments on Sundays! Truly, as Dr. Selbie says, "though
the future of religion is as sure as the hills, Christianity in its present
form may possibly not survive".
Dogmatism spells
death in any sphere of life. For what is a true dogma, properly understood.
A symbol, an indication, of a great spiritual truth which can never be wholly
expressed in words , nor even in idea. It is a finger-post indicating where
on the wings of intuition we may rise to the contemplation of an eternal verity,
and if we take it otherwise we destroy its meaning and purpose.
It is interesting
to observe in the evolution of the Christian Church the way in the which the
"seat of authority" has shifted more than once. In the first early
years the body of its members grouped themselves round various teachers, each
looking to his leader as the final authority; then, as the movement consolidated
in the might of her traditions, authority became vested in the Church. With
the coming of the Protestant Reformation, authority was shifted, for a large
part of the Christian community, from the Church to the Scriptures, the anarchy
of individual interpretation thereupon replacing the despotism of Rome.
Yet once again, some
half a century ago, the seat of authority began to be undermined. With the coming
of the "Higher Criticism", the birth of the Science of Comparative
mythology and Religion, the seeming assaults of the tremendous scientific advance
made during the Victorian Age, the letter of the law as revealed in Scripture
received shock after shock; yet once again, the spirit in man, searching for
the certainty his soul demands, was forced to look deeper still.
And wonderfully is
the answer being given in these our days. For a further wonderful truth is emerging
in man's consciousness from the wreckage of the past: this, that the final authority
in the religious life rests in the depth of the human heart, in those splendid
hidden depths which the illuminated, the spiritual giants, of every age and
of every faith, touch, and thereby reach the Divinity within and without. For
to reach the God within us, the "hidden man of the heart in that which
is incorruptible" of St. Peter, the spirit, the pneuma , of St.
Paul's triune classification, is to become one with the Divine Life, the Divine
Purpose, operating everywhere, the great "Oversoul" into which, unknowingly
as yet, the spirit in man labours to be born.
This triumphant proclamation
the inherent Divinity of man is the key-note of the new Theology, which at the
same time is the oldest Theology in the world, and this truth will be the cornerstone
of the Coming Faith. A new conception of God, and of Man, is arising in human
consciousness. A witty Frenchman once said: "In the beginning God created
man in His own image, and man has been returning Him that compliment ever since".
Ever does our conception of Deity rise with our growth, and there has never
at any time been such a person as an Atheist, for all men believe in something
greater and more beautiful than they have yet known, and when a man says: "I
do not believe in God", what he really means is: "I do not believe
in your conception of Him".
In savage states
God is thought of with fear and trembling, a being who personifies the dread,
mysterious unconquerable forces of Nature around man; in a further stage of
growth He takes on the character of a tribal god , one who is the presiding
genius of the tribe, who is pleased when the enemies of the tribe are slaughtered,
commanding that they be smitten hip and thigh. And it would seem that in these
days of modern civilisation some nations have not yet risen above the conception
of God as a tribal deity.
This was the conception
of the early Jewish scriptures which are embodied in our own. After the Babylonian
captivity, a higher note, learnt of the wisdom of Chaldea, replaced it, the
Great God, the "One without a second" of the East, Who was the Father
indeed of all that lived. Yet still was He thought of as apart, or without His
universe, an extra-cosmic god for the generality of mankind.
In these great days
a still greater, more wonderful conception of Him arises; God, as the Father
of us all, not as alone out with His universe, but moving mysteriously within
it , utterly immanent as well as transcendent, His immortal purpose fulfilling
itself ever through the hearts and minds of men who at the same time are eternally
the sons of the Most High. "Some call it Evolution, and others call it
God".
Most of all does
He reveal Himself in the heart of Man, so that he who would God must serve Him
in man "We accustomed ourselves", writes Mr.Francis John Moore, "(is
it not true to say that we were taught?) to see the best in the natural man
, through the dark shadow of the worst, and to believe that the false was true,
and the true false? But the war has taught us that we were wrong, and we know
now that the last thing ('original' if you will) in human nature is goodness
and not evil".
From that sublime
perception springs the new thought of God, voiced, amongst a thousand others,
by H.G.Wells. Again the Spirit of Life, in the youth-time of a New Day, cries
aloud to the hearts of men, who yet in their present weakness are cooperators
and re-builders with Him, "God is a Youth, God is Courage, God is Personality".
He is the unseen King of a Republic as wide as Humanity, the Head of a Brotherhood
of life in which men in measure, according to their growth,have held in common
the undying capacity to see into that Future, otherwise called the region of
ideals, which ever seek realisation upon earth, "the hope of our future
glory".
II
There
are three main factors in the constitution of every religious system: Scripture,
ceremonial, doctrine. And there are three ways of understanding them, as well
set forth by an ancient Father of the Christian Church, St. Clement of Alexandria.
To the unlettered, untutored man, of small understanding and scant leisure for
thought, they must needs be taken literally, and even so they are of use and
benefit to mankind. But to the educated and thoughtful the conviction dawns
that scriptural story and church dogma have a deeper significance; that the
truer meaning is reached when they are taken as allegory and symbol, and at
that stage stand the majority of civilised men today. The last and truest way,
understood by the saint and sage, is the way of mystical interpretation, and
this is the highest and nearest way of all.
The
higher the way of understanding, the nearer the approach to unity. With the
growth of the Science of Comparative Mythology and Religion men begin to glimpse
the unity of inspiration which lies behind the great religions of the world
and time. They began to distinguish between Religion and religious
systems. For there is a difference. Systems vary, and of necessity,
for they come at different times in the world's history, to different races
under different conditions: but the Reality to which they seek to lead us is
everywhere and at all times One. The great saints and mystics of every age have
transcended the bounds of creed, even though their stumbling efforts to describe
in words the ineffable, the indescribable, the Name that never can be named,
are clothed in the familiar terminology of the faith of their upbringing. Once
a man has risen to these heights he discovers Reality and finds it to be everywhere
One. Henceforth to him, the illuminated, a system is a secondary consideration.
The house immortal in the heavens is built, and the system which provided the
scaffolding is done with. How should he desire to know about God, the way to
Him, when in terms of deepest human experience He has become one with the great
Reality, the "One without a second" of the Upanishads. "All the
Vedas (inspired scripture) are as useful to the enlightened Brahmana as tanks
of water would be in a place all covered with water", says the Gita of
Hinduism "The mystics all come from one country and speak the same language",
said Blake, the seer. That "knowledge of God" is the supreme and final
experience in the growth of man upwards, but the ways thereto are as many as
the souls of men.
Comparison
alone convinces us of the underlying unity of the great world-faiths, if we
seek essentials, and as Mr. Wells truly says, "the essentials of religion
can be written on a postcard". Again, upon essentials we are very well
agreed.
It is
the undue emphasis upon unessentials which have torn men asunder. The "Golden
Rule" of Christendom: "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto
you", is paralleled by the Buddha's saying: "Hatred ceaseth never
by hatred, hatred ceased only by love".
Again,
on the side of ceremonial, the ritualistic unity is very marked. In the great
Buddhist temple at Buddha Gya, on the spot where the Buddha is said to have
attained the supreme initiation of Buddha-hood, sits a gigantic gilt figure
of the Teacher before which the faithful burn little candles, other flowers
and jewels. Around smaller side-chapels enshrine other figures, some of them
clothed in bits of silk and satin that remind one irresistibly of Catholic Brittany.
In a little church in Paris built on the spot where hundreds lost their lives
in the burning of a great bazaar stands a large gilt figure of the Virgin Mother
of God. Gazing at the massive golden image of the Buddha at Buddha Gya, before
which countless pilgrims placed flower and jewel and light, the thoughts of
the writer flew back in memory to a day in Paris when she watched the offerings
and prayers of Christian devotees being poured out before another such golden
symbol of God's love and man's trust therein. How many of us too who have watched
the figure of a god taken from the temple in procession round a Hindu village,
have remembered a similar festivity in a Breton hamlet.
And
doctrine, dogma, what are they, but symbols of spiritual truths too great to
be expressed in words , or even to be intellectually apprehended, except very
partially and dimly - for these things are "spiritually discerned".
To take them literally, as complete expressions, destroys their purpose and
utility. Not long ago, a sad but beautiful little book came out entitled "An
Englishman's Farewell to his Church". Let me tell you", says the writer,
"what things men no longer believe". And he cites amongst others,
the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, the Fall of Man and the complementary dogma
of the Atonement.
If taken
literally verily they are no longer believed. But these great dogmas are glyphs
as ancient as the world, and common to every faith. The great doctrine of the
Trinity, which Mr. Wells so quarrels with, and which nearly every world-faith
has embodied, is an attempt to express in formula a self-evident fact in Nature.
Even on the material or Form-side of nature we cannot escape triplicity, for
what material form is there that is not bounded by three-dimensional space,
giving all forms length, and breadth and heights? Again, in the realms of psychology
and metaphysics the same triune quality appears, the poles of the "pairs
of opposites" and the relationship between. Shall we not say that as man
is made in the image and likeness of God, his threefold activity of thought,
emotion, action, of which one is neither "afore or after the other",
is framed to finally express the Ideal, Wisdom, Love and Power, and thereby
to bring down upon earth the quality of God.
The
story of the Virgin Birth contains an occult truth intertwined with the life-stories
of various religious Leaders. It refers to the Cosmic Christ, God made manifest
in a universe, to the pre-evolutionary stage when the Root of Matter or Form
held in solution, in quiescence, the Virgin Sea of matter as yet unproductive,
was just breathed upon by the positive, male, side, the "Will to live"
the Eternal Purpose, "the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters",
whereby the inherent qualities were thrown out of equilibrium and differentiation,
evolution, set in.
Interwoven
with the foregoing is the story of man the microcosm, the universe in miniature.
He "fell" when the Divinity and Eternity within him first entered
the great cycle of generation, and clothing himself in soul (St. Paul's psyche
) and body, was at first blinded by his conditions, held prisoner, "cribbed,
cabined and confined". Life after life in the school of life's experience,
the Son of God in him (St.Paul's pneuma ) learns slowly to express himself
therein, and thereby verily redeems, transfigures and exalts the soul and body
wherein shall one day dwell the "Perfect Man" of man's dreaming and
God's intending. Thus we are saved ultimately by the God within as well as without,
that Higher Self, the Christ in us, which is the hope of our future glory. His
is the final at-onement (not atonement) when no longer conscious of duality
- the war in his members of aspiring Spirit and, as yet, unredeemed matter -
he becomes "One, not by the conversion of the Godhead (in him) into flesh,
but by taking of the manhood into God".
III
Another
factor of enormous importance has been contributed to the evolution of our religious
consciousness by Science. In these days we see approaching the fulfillment of
the saintly Professor Henry Drummond's prophecy that the salvation of religion
would come through science. How near they draw, those ancient enemies, science
and religion, in this day of approaching unity. And yet it is not astonishing
that the old breach should find healing, for the way of Science and the way
of Religion are but two different methods of approach to the same supreme Reality.
Science is unflagging in the search for Truth, and her way is the way of the
mind with its methods of observation, comparison, investigation. Religion seeks
also Reality ,but her way is the way of the heart, rising upon the wings of
aspiration and intuition; and we are reminded of George Sand's words: "The
mind seeks but it is the heart which finds". In these days science is bringing
about the rationalisation of religion, but it is at the same time becoming itself
spiritualised.
Note
the change in the outlook of science now to the dead materialism of its purview
is the Victorian age. Then it would have nothing to do with other-wordliness,
even denied sometimes that anything otherwise than the visible body of things
could exist. But now, how vastly different! Science has begun to deal very seriously
with other-worldliness. Year by year the veil between known and unknown, visible
and invisible, grows thinner. Voices are heard, footfalls from the Beyond, and
science no longer condemns and scoffs. It is itself reaching the borderland
of the unseen, led there in the first instance by the sublimity and truth of
it own intuitive deductions.
Once
Religion alone dogmatised over the soul; now science is beginning to replace
pious hope and belief by knowledge. A London doctor, Dr.Kilner, has succeeded
in perfecting an apparatus whereby a small part of the as yet invisible psychic
(psyche - soul) self, permeating and radiating from, the grosser physical counterpart
may be viewed by the normal physical eye; and a Frenchman, Dr. Baraduc of Paris,
has achieved the same end with a photographic plate of superior delicacy. Perhaps
the discovery of the X-Rays, the coming of wireless telegraphy, paved the way
for the coming Great Adventure of science into the hidden realms of Nature.
That such is its future mission, Sir Oliver Lodge has declared to us himself,
and no unprejudiced man doubts it. "The beginning of the proof", he
writes, "is telepathy - i.e., a connection between mind and mind
through unknown and apparently immaterial channels. .... Admittedly only a minority
of scientific men are willing to declare that a new class of facts needs investigation
and is apparently a prelude to a whole new region of knowledge inaccessible
by exclusively material methods".
A minority
as yet, but led by such names as Wallace, Crookes, Lodge, Lombroso, the coming
age will see the union of science and religion, will witness the rending of
the veil between life and death. And then it will be seen that there is no death,
but only a doorway between life and life in fuller, more radiant measure. Nothing
is dead, anywhere in the whole wide universe. Not even is there such a thing
as "dead matter"; inorganic as well as organic matter lives, as Professor
Bose's experiments have shown. "Why! there is no death", cries the
little boy hero of Maeterlinck's play "The Blue Bird". No death, but
only a change of state, for the universe is seen more and more to be eternally
alive in every atom of its being, to be indeed, in Sir Oliver Lodge's memorable
and splendid words, "the ever-growing garment of a transcendent God".
The greatest Teacher known to man proclaimed a great prophecy, "The last
enemy that shall be destroyed is death". The coming era will conquer the
King of Terrors.
-IV-
What
then is the message of the hour to Christendom? Nay, not alone to Christendom,
but to men of every faith under the sun. The people have moved towards a world
fraternity, through as yet they have not carried their governments with them.
The coming age which will arise from the reeking ruins of war will tolerate
nothing short of unity. The opened eyes of men will see that beyond all creeds,
all statements of faith, all systems, lies the bigger, truer thing of an indestructible
human brotherhood, a splendid eternity of life and purpose moving through, and
binding us all together, for ever. To doubt that is to deny God. A new and splendid
life with all the virility and strength of youth is beginning to stir in the
hearts of men, to arise as a young man from sleep, to shake off as a giant the
shackles of the lesser things than himself. Let us do away with Fear, it has
no place in the coming Day of God. To fear is to deny eternally the Lord of
Righteousness and Love. "Perfect love casteth out fear". We have drawn
nearer together these days of anguish and pain untold; and drawing nearer to
each other have discovered God. That was always the way if we had but known
it. Jerusalem! Jerusalem! if thou hadst but known the things which belonged
unto thy peace But they were hid from thine eyes until the fire of pain unsealed
true vision.
Towards
this hour the very outer development of the world has been tending. For the
first time in human history, the round world is linked into one. Railways, steamships,
telegraphs, newspapers, have brought the uttermost ends of the earth into juxtaposition.
Now is possible a world-faith, a world-policy, a world-consciousness.
What
will the new faith be? How moulded, and how inspired? As yet its outlines only
are faintly adumbrated. But from that adumbration three truths stand startlingly
distinct.
One
is that its final test will be life, not doctrine.
In the words of Mr. Francis John Moore --"For a new faith there most certainly
will be; a faith whose final test will be neither the letter of Scripture nor
ecclesiastical tradition, but the experience of common life... Not that there
are no "convinced" Catholics and Protestants, Neo-Catholics, Nonconformists,
and what-not, who will remain what they always were; there are many of them;
but the general tendency is in the direction of simplicity. In other words,
Christianity is conceived of as a spirit and a life rather than a creed, though
specific belief holds its right and necessary place. Men of all creeds have
been thrown together in strange and common experiences, and in them have learnt
that beneath all the different forms of faith there is a common faith and spirit
that binds them all together, and that life lived on the high level of the Christ,
and governed by His Spirit, is of greater importance than the forms by which
their devotion to Him is expressed. And a Christian life is understood. Belief
may be correct or not correct, truth or superstition, according to the intellectual
equipment and training of the subject; but nobody questions the truth of a Christ-like
life. It is Christian, and it is true, and the coming age will demand no other
sign".
Says
the Rev. Dr. Selbie again: - "I hear men talking vaguely of Christian unity.
Now, I tell you that unity will not be brought about by schemes or tricks. It
will only be brought about by Christian men working passionately for one common
end - the salvation of men's souls and men's lives".
In these
words Dr. Selbie voices another aspect of the future faith : its sphere of
action will be our common life, and it will bring to that world such a
virility and high purpose as shall transform and transfigure the domains of
politics and social reform. And such a coming Joseph Mazzini, warrior and saint,
foresaw , foretold."Religion and politics are inseparable. Without religion,
political science can only create despotism and anarchy", for "the
root of every religion , "says he, "is a definition of life and its
mission".
This
new youthfulness and vigour reflects itself upon the great figure of Christianity's
Leader and Redeemer. Of Him also a newer thought is beginning to arise. No longer
as some pale saint, an an eternally suffering and patient God-man is He envisaged,
but as One Who is man indeed with us, Keeper of the common heart, Teacher of
the common mind, Leader of the common endeavour. The "first-born amongst
the many brethren" is become the Elder Brother of the Race, Captain and
Leader in this day of men's salvation.
To quote
Dr. Selbie again:- "Show men how Christianity appeals to the latent heroism
in them all. Make it a great adventure". With that sense of pathos yet
of answering exultant understanding do the lines of a nameless Australian solder,
slain at Gallipoli, strike us. They were found in his lifeless body.
"Jesus, Whose
lot with us was cast,
Who saw it out from first to last;
Patient and fearless, tender, true,
Carpenter, vagabond,felon, Jew -
Whose humorous eye took in each phase
Of full rich life the world displays;
Yet evermore kept full in view
The far-off goal it leads us to:
Who, as your hour neared, did not fail -
The World's fate trembling in the scale -
With your halfhearted band to dine,
And speak across the bread and wine;
Then went out firm to face the end,
Alone, without a single friend;
Who felt as your last words confessed -
Wrung from a proud unflinching breast
By hours of dull, ignoble pain.
Your whole life's fight was fought in vain,
Would I could win sand keep and feel
That heart of love, that spirit of steel,
I would not to Thy bosom fly
To shirk off till the storms go by;
.................Set me straight
At some vile job I fear and hate;
Some sickening round of long endeavour,
No light, no rest, no outlet ever;
All at a pace that
must not slack,
Tho' heart would burst and sinews crack;
Fog in one's eye, the brain aswim,
A weigh like lead in every limb
And a raw pit that hurts like hell
Where the light breath once rose and fell;
Do you but keep me, hope or none,
Cheery and staunch till all is done,
And at the last gasp quick to lend
One effort more to serve a friend.
And when, for so I sometimes dream,
I've swum the dark - the silent stream -
So colt it takes the breath away -
That parts the dead world from the day,
And see upon the further strand
The lazy, listless angels stand;
And, with their frank and fearless eyes,
The comrades
whom I most did prize;
Then clear, unburdened, careless, cool,
I'll saunter down from the grim pool
And join my friends. Then you'll come by
The Captain of our Company,
Call me out, look me up and down,
And pass me thro' without a frown,
With half a smile, but never a word;
And so - I shall have met my Lord".
This new and splendid
life rushing up from the hidden depths of the human heart, this will towards
life, towards the "final beatitude and fulfillment". of Emerson, is
the "power in a man which makes for righteousness" of Matthew Arnold
, and its increasing and blessed purpose we a last are learning how to trust.
A witty reviewer of Mr. Well's book, "God, the Invisible King", remarks:
"'God's in his heaven', wrote Browning, 'all's right with the world'. 'God's
in us' says Mr.Wells, 'all's right with mankind'". And the future is with
Mr.Wells, for that is the third great lineament of the coming faith which is
becoming visible through the darkness.
It will proclaim unhesitatingly the essential Divinity of man. If a
word may be momentarily coined, it will commonise heaven and thereby
uplift earth .It will be an age of "aye! aye!" in contradistinction
to the nays of the past, the great era of affirmation, so great an age of "doing"
that we shall forget the "do nots" of a dead world which was afraid
of men. The souls of men laid bare in this hour of trial and crucifixion have
shown us the hero, the saint, the god awaiting evocation within us all. Thereby
have we learnt to look ever forwards to the Ideal, the coming of which into
the real is the whole purpose of evolution. WE gaze with throbbing heart at
the portrait in the illustrated papers of the Manchester gaol-bird who won in
death the Victoria Cross. That man of ours, whose kinship no one of us now
will dare deny, is a type of the future. What fitting requiem could we
whisper for him so well as Coventry Patmore's beautiful words:-
"Far, ah!
who can express
How full of bonds and simpleness is God,
How narrow is He,
And how the wide, waste field of possibility Is only trod,
Straight to His homestead in the human heart".
THE
COMING SOCIAL ORDER
-I-
The
advance of the new era is showing in as equally marked fashion in the outer
world of men's obligations and relationships to each other as in the inner world
of the religious consciousness. The one is indeed the outcome of the other,
for to draw nearer to reality within is also to perceive it more clearly without.
And to understand its significance to the world at large we cannot do better
than take as a guide in clear thinking Joseph Mazzini, the most spiritual reformer
who ever lived, and who possessed the understanding and vision of spiritual
genius. Although he lived and died more than half a century ago, he foresaw
the present hour and read its meaning with wonderful precision and accuracy.
To Mazzini
the world was the incarnation a divine idea of perfectibility, to be gradually
realised through the labour of all God's creatures. "The progressive evolution
of the thought of God", said he, "of which our world is the visible
manifestation, is unceasingly continuous. The chain cannot be broken or interrupted".
He taught - a self-evident truth taught also by many of the ancients - that
the life of the world advances through great cycles or eras, each one demonstrating
for all time hereafter some "further word of truth". In this way the
total sum of humanity's great Days shall spell out the Word of God for man.
Every age as it comes formulates a great overshadowing thought, which is only
verified in the sphere of action when the advancing human intellect is already
absorbed in the thought of its successor. Thus "the hypothesis of the middle
ages is the principle of the present day: the idea of the middle ages
is now a recognised admitted law. Does anyone now deny liberty and equality
in principle? . The most illiberal monarch asserts that he is the protector
of the rights and liberties of his subjects against the anarchy of factions.
The question is, in the sphere of principles, decided. The only struggle is
as to its application. The dispute no longer regards the law itself, but its
interpretation".
The
great principle which this past two thousands years of the Christian Era has
been occupied in making clear to men is the principle of individual liberty,
the sacred, inviolable right of men to their own souls and bodies. All
through the passing epoch the urge of Nature has been in that direction. Hence
the increasing sense of personal awareness, of the value and rights of the individual.
This
of necessity engendered strife. One becomes most clearly conscious of selfhood,
when pitted against others. The growing consciousness of individuality meant
the ever-increasing strike for its recognition, the struggle against one autocracy,
oppression, tyranny after another. During this era, human consciousness learnt
no longer to tolerate the holding of slaves and serifs. A man's body became,
theoretically at any rate, his own possession. This was paralleled by the strife
for religious liberty, the coming of free-thought, thereby proclaiming for ever
the right of a man to his own soul and mind.
"The
first epoch of Christianity", writes Mazzini, "was to constitute
individual man as he was destined to be, free, sacred, inviolable. And
this mission is accomplished through the French Revolution, which was the political
translation of the Protestant Revolution... The declaration of the rights
of man is the supreme and ultimate formula of the French Revolution....Ruins
there were without end; but in the midst of these ruins and negations one immense
affirmation stood erect; the creature of God, ready to act, radiant
in power and will; the ecce home, repeated after eighteen centuries
of struggle and suffering, not by the voice of the martyr, but from the altar
raised by the Revolution to victory - right, the faith of individuality, rooted
in the world for ever.".
II
The
next step was clearly evidence. Having gained the consciousness of individual
liberty and value, men, as yet perhaps more aware of rights than responsibilities
through the struggle to obtain their recognition, next began to discover that
other individuals suffered under similar disabilities to themselves, groaned
under the same wrongs and oppressions, and so they learnt to band themselves
together, fighting the same battle for larger rights, the rights of a class,
a trade. Learning in the strike, the lockout to submerge himself in the interests
of his fellow-workmen , a man grew into a larger consciousness, the consciousness
of his particular department of the world's work, the class consciousness
we once heard so much about. And again this larger self-consciousness was
achieved through the same means, by strife, by combat, by the assertion of rights
in the face of opposing interests.
Despite
its sometime crudity, apparent selfishness, oftimes pathetic narrowness of vision,
labour "unrest" is fundamentally the cry of the human soul against
the tyranny of machinery and materialism, against the inertia of the collective
atmosphere of unthinking people; again, here as everywhere ,the fight of life
against matter, its titanic struggle towards freedom, expansion and light. When
shall we learn that the soul of humanity is a living thing, and that
its life is more than meat and its body than raiment? Here, in our world of
social organisation , equally as in the religious world, are the words of the
Greatest Reformer who ever lived eternally true, that "the Sabbath was
made for man and not man for the Sabbath". Here, too, we have made the
old mistake of clinging to the letter, to the encasements of life, rather than
life itself, and so that great, unheeded, advancing urge has swept us away now
in a world catastrophe unparalleled in history.
"Since
this terrible war", people have said to me more than once, "I cannot
believe in God ". Ah! never have I believed so passionately in Him, and
in the Love and Justice which are Himself, as during these past four years of
horror and struggle unprecedented. Faith is shaken because the little world
of comfortable routine, of small personal joys and sorrows, of every-day achievements
set about with the fences of what "everybody thinks" and what "nobody
does" has been rudely broken into by the eruption of tremendous realities
long denied! We shudder because the sleeping volcano, the hidden fires of submerged
human misery and wrong, upon which we all dwelt in a false and fancied - utterly
selfish- security, have at last burst into the open with flame and smoke and
sound unimaginable. On the great picture stage of the war we see horror upon
horror played before our eyes, ay, and thanks God! heroism upon heroism. The
heroism of the commonality is the outstanding glory of the hour. But what we
see played upon the stage of the world-war, was played subterraneously in those
times of peace which were no peace, but only hideous wrong and chaos heading
straight for disaster.
What
shall be said of a civilisation" which knew no higher law than personal
profit and gain, which treated men as "things" worshipping the false
gods of money, place and power? We shudder at the tales of outraged womanhood
of murdered childhood in Belgium and Serbia. But what of the trampled womanliness,
the slow-dying child-life, of our crowded cities, our tenement houses, and sweated
workers' dens? Yet we cannot build them houses which can be homes because of
the price of land and the rise in the rates. Now, we make great show of "Baby
Weeks", and profess great concern in the question of infant mortality.
In Germany, they say, the bringing-up by the State of illegitimate children,
the question of plural marriages are being discussed. Something in all this
grips one tight at the heart with shame and pain. It is not as cannon fodder
that we seek to save the children of the nation, but to save life itself, that
life may grow truly in every member of the corporate family called a nation,
and that we may exalt and render everywhere possible the things which are eternally
dear and true; strong fatherhood, happy motherhood, the laughter of joyous childhood,
the glory of a home.
The
sight of maimed young manhood in hospitable and scarlet tie gives us pitiful
pause, yet how many of us have watched the dwarfed and stunted manhood of the
army of modern industrialism, the poisoned bodies, the shockingly short average
of years of life amongst the numerous dangerous trades, with equal pain?
And
the heroism that lifts our hearts, how often has it shone all unwatched in the
long annals of the poor. I remember a charwoman of my acquaintance whose husband
was repeatedly unemployed, and who supported a large family by charring during
the day, and washing at night; I remember a dear old fragile lady, now gone
to her rest, whose laboured years included uncounted nights when she never slept
at all, but worked on through till another day came again, and in my memory
rises too a woman dying of cancer in the breast who could not stop, or find
time to go into hospital, because there were the children to be fed and clothed
until death called her, and afterwards by only God knows whom.
"The
mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small", says Goethe.
The Love and Justice of God, which is incarnate in life and in the nature of
things, and which shall one day rise triumphant from the last battle and redeem
humanity for evermore, has risen tremendously in thunder and flame and smoke,
striving to break asunder a civilisation which denied Love and was founded upon
the virtual repudiation of human kinship and brotherhood.
The
passing era put property before life - even in the common-law of England today
offenses against property are often more heavily punished than offenses against
human life - success before happiness, intellect before heart, and is therefore
going down in the inevitable nemesis, which follows upon denial of the Law of
Life which may not be broken.
Hence
the great unrest, the swaying, surging bursting tide of life upon whose sporadic
surface manifestations men used to sit and discourse learnedly, one straw after
another grasped at and labeled economic, political, social reform, when all
the time the trouble lay neither in one department of life nor did its panacea
in any one reform, but in the rooted misconception of life which prevail through
human ignorance , and all the false trappings which hide us from the great naked
realities thereof. The growth of class consciousness provoked the strife of
the preceding years, and so fierce has grown the struggle between different
sections of the population, including in these later days a whole sex, that
the hearts of men were torn with the effort to discern the way out, wondering
if at last that way would be found by the fiery road of revolution. And yet
the way was clear all the time if only we could have seen it.
III
What
can bind opposing interests into one, what further ideal transcend the boundaries
of both? The tragedy of war has shown us. It has made us see that behind all
party interests, all claim of class or trade, lies an ideal to which all alike
are subservient, the interest of the nation as a whole. Ah! you say,
that we knew before. Never! Look back at the four long years of war. Before
that great day of August 1914, what was the nation and the Empire to most of
us then? Something we rarely thought of, certainly not anything towards which
we organised daily life. Now, how vastly different! Under the pressure of a
common danger, a common necessity, we have learnt to subordinate private ends
for the common good, to turn divergent energies into a mighty stream of common
endeavour, and thereby we have created the most wonderful war-machine the world
has ever seen. The nationalisation of industries, of the necessities of life,
have gone on apace. Changes have taken place which four short years ago Utopian
dreamers would have imagined possible perhaps in the space of four hundred years.
We have learnt what can be done by the will of a people united in one single
purpose, we have discovered how much better is intelligent cooperation to wasteful
competition ,and lastly, the greatest fact of all, how utterly interdependent
is each one of us, each trade, each class, upon the other.
The
"man in the street" - who was he, what was he, to most of us before
the war? Someone we thought not too much about, whose health, happiness, well-being
was his own concern and not ours. Now we have found out how eternally in fact
we are all very much our "brother's keeper". What of the placards
that used to adorn our walls in the days of that great generous and voluntary
effort which made Britain's name for ever, appeals addressed to the man in the
street? They said "Your King and Country need you". We began to find
out that the ordinary, commonplace man stood between disaster and ourselves,
that upon his courage, fitness, and unselfish patriotism rested the safety and
the honour of us all. So now we see that he is fed and clothed and amused, that
the pressure of anxiety for wife and child is taken from his shoulders. Great
ladies pet him, newspaper heroics proclaim him, nothing is too good for him.
Was it not always so in reality? And did it need a great war to make us see
the bond of brotherhood which binds us altogether, and to realise that if any
one member of the national family goes in misery , privation, ignorance,
the life of the whole is poisoned, that individual health and happiness and
freedom are national assets? We called on his patriotism who
owned personally not one single square yard of British land, nay, more, who
had to pay heavy rent for the privilege of living thereon; we hoped for bodily
vigour from him who had passed an ill-nourished childhood and youth in roaring
factories, darkened mine, and dingy office; we trembled for the moral safety
of many of the men whose amusement had hitherto perforce been found in the streets
and public-house, and yet what good came out of Nazareth, what beauty and what
strength! May we never forget after the war. May we never forget!
If we
can pour out millions a day to compass death in national defence, we can go
on pouring out millions a week at least to foster life and all its glorious
humanities.; If we can put down private profiteering because of national necessity,
we can go on putting it down that the nation itself may grow joyous and fair.
Nobly
and truly spoke the "Weekly Dispatch" of Jan. 21st, 1917: -"If,
in two years, such a vast organism can not only be conceived and born, but achieve
and enjoy the strength of manhood, think of what we could do in twenty years
if we applied ourselves not to preparing people for war but in repairing
war for people". From the wreckage of the conflict, in the chaos and
the ruin, must arise new things - new institutions, new laws, new ideas.
War
is a disaster unparalleled in awfulness, but - the poet found beauty in a thunderstorm-
this war, the worst, the most horrible of all, has shown at least how divergent
views may be blent for one purpose, how conflicting ideals may be merged in
one hope, how warring policies may find in each other elements of truth and
reason.
We stand
on the threshold of the dawn of a new life. The night that has blackened the
world is passing, and in the east is the promise of another day.
As great
a tragedy as the war itself would be a reversal to the old antagonisms, the
old misunderstandings, the old heresies. You see none of this on the film (The
Battle of the Somme official cinematograph). You see a miracle of effort created
by the first real unity Britain has ever known. In that unity science and commerce,
capital and work, brain and muscle, statesmanship and steel, invention and industry,
became as one. They made in two years the greatest War Machine history ever
knew. What a Peace Machine could we make did we, when we were not in personal
peril, realise that the State has always enemies to fight! Poverty is a Prussian,
want is a wanton,hunger is a Hun.
"How
shall we build the New England"?
Thus
in four bitter years of war have we grown nationally conscious , as
we never were before, and all the nations of the earth have learnt that they
are every one of them family parties, bound together by an eternal community
of interests and needs which may not , cannot be, denied without disaster to
the whole.
IV
The
growth from national to international consciousness is but a step, already
adumbrated in the growing perceptions of men; and that is the great ideal of
the coming era, the further "word of truth" which that happier age
will assimilate and apply. As Mazzini puts it: "Collective Humanity"
as against the "Individualism" of the past, with its consequent principle
of active cooperation, as against the competition of the past. "Humanity"
says he, "is one sole body, as members of that body we are bound to labour
for its advance, and to organise both the family and the country towards that
aim".
The
Unity of Humanity, the spirit of cooperation between its different parts, these
are the great ideals of thought and work, which will dominate the coming
age. Politically they will work out in the forming of great Federation. And
the first of these will be what has hitherto been called the "British Empire"
though, as General Smuts rightly says, the man who will give us the proper name
for it will do us all great service. For it is not an Empire in the
ordinary accepted meaning of the term. It is not an Empire such as was the great
Empire of Rome, such as the hegemony that Germany sought to establish, an empire
held by the sword, by economic subjection and political slavery. It is the firest
confederation of free nations that the world has ever seen, and the bond that
holds them together,so invisible and yet so strong, is the true bond of united
endeavour, of a common idealism and a common purpose. And in that coming mighty
federation of free people two partners must find their place - Ireland and
India. The Isle of Saints shall become the heart and centre of a new spiritual
impulse. The days of her ancient curse are lifted, and the spiritual quality
of her people will flower in many a prophet, poet, seer, for the dawning civilisation
of the future.
And
India? For what eternal ends did Britain alone of all nations succeed in "conquering"
India? Only to add a jewel to her crown of Empire, to increase her wealth and
field of commerce? She gave to that stricken land unity and peace, one language
of communication, one great ideal of nationality, and now when her work nears
completion, she will welcome on equal terms the great nation who once lay stricken
at her feet, she will cement a great bond of comradeship that will bring untold
beauty and power to the future."East is East, and West is West, and never
the twain shall meet", writes Mr. Kipling, for once not truly. Whilst in
the outer world of business, government, organisation, the West has been conqueror
of the East this past one hundred years, in the inner world of men's thoughts
and imaginings the East has been slowly permeating the West. Initiations by
Professor Max Muller, a host of translations of the sacred literature and great
poetry of the East continues to flood the book-markets of the West, bringing
with it the inevitable influence of its magnificent spirituality. For the East
is nearer heaven than the West. The artificial separation of matters secular
and religious does not exist there as here. The religious consciousness of the
East is difficult for the Westerner to understand. Its atmosphere being so much
an integral part of daily life, it seems elusive, inarticulate. The sense of
intimate relationship between the Divine Order and human affairs is so full
that, as I heard a missionary once complain, there is no "sense of sin".
Hence there is also consequently less attitude of blame.
The
gift of her spiritual outlook upon daily life is what the East is bringing the
West, and on her side the West has brought the East her special power for material
organisation and advancement. The junction o the two through the medium of the
English language and influence will mould the civilisation of the future..
The
gift of opportunity comes to nations as to men, and inexorable yet beneficent
Nature weighs them continually in her balances of Fate. Such a moment came to
Britain when Germany trampled on the rights and dignity of Belgium and attacked
France. Had she chosen present ease instead of certain trial, immediate expediency
in place of right, she would have gone down the pathway of the future dishonoured,
broken, lost. But, thank God, she chose otherwise, and so to the greatness of
her, her future is secure. How many times have we heard that Britain entered
this war for selfish reasons, that secret diplomacy, secret treaties, jugglings
with the balance of power, were the influences which brought her in, and with
which she wages it? That which governs the mind of Governments the plain man
may not know, but this is clear to all, that the national itself sprung to arms
with an enthusiasm no Government could resist in the defence of weakness unjustly
attacked, in fulfillment of a plighted word. The heart of the nation was sound
in principle, and so the gods have given her the torch-light of the Future when
she shall have arise purged and purified by pain.
For
that is the real meaning of the war, in this great testing time of the nations
upon earth. It is the final working out upon the earth of the strife between
two contrary principles, one which has dominated the past and is already doomed,
and one which seeks expression in the future and spreads the wings of victory
abroad. Making all allowance for certain virtues and excellencies in the nation
itself, it is yet clear that the war party in Germany has become the concrete
expression of the reactionary forces in evolution - that blind will to power
which sees no rights outside its own, no excellence in any "kultur"
alien to its own; that intense individualism, grown national, which is so hideously
selfish that it has grown blind, insensitive, ambitious, unable to see, to understand,
to tolerate; full of that deadly pride and want of humour, which is the result
of the worship of power without compassion, of intellect devoid of heart. The
Allied nations hold in their hands the banner of a greater, truer ideal; the
Spirit of Righteousness that upholds the small as well as the great, the Spirit
of Strength that scorns to abuse its power in the exploitation of weaker people
, weaker things; that knows itself most strong in that supreme control of power
which men call gentleness, the real might that shall inherit the earth,
but which can arise as a very Scourge of God when cruelty and oppression walk
the earth. It is the Spirit of Christ against the Spirit of Antichrist, in this
the true Armageddon of the world.
The
outcome of Germany's defeat will be the federalisation of the world. Already
we hear whispers of a coming United States of Europe, and it will follow upon
the first League of Nations, the coming Federation of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Quite truly, as Mr. Wells says, this is the war that will end war, and those
who give life now, give it that that future may come true, dying in very truth
that generations yet unborn may live.
V
In social
and economic fields this same spirit of the future is working and will work
enormous and fundamental changes. It would have been said a few years ago that
the ancient enemies Labour and Capital could never meet. Yet the National Alliance
of Employers and Employed has sprung into being, and there is a manifest change
of heart and will in many great employers of labour today. The old idea of land,
or a business being the jealously preserved private property of an owner or
employer is losing ground The thought is rapidly growing that the landholder,
the employer, is a steward for the State, and he is learning to regard his employees
not as machines but men, with needs of soul and body beyond their monetary value
to their employer. Whilst professional Socialism has been thinking in blinkers,
real Socialism, because it is the keynote of the future, has come, and is coming
to stay. It is clear to the commonsense of very unprejudiced person, that what
is necessary to the common life of all should be in the hands of all through
their recognised administrators, the State. It is a monstrous obliquity of vision
which can countenance the power of any individual to "hold up", or
"corner", or control the price of any necessity of life. Hence, I
make now a prophecy with absolute certainty and conviction; in the next hundred
years or so we shall see the nationalisation of the land, and of every industry
necessary to human life. Startling as that thought may be to some, it would
be well that we address ourselves to its consideration, for no power on earth
can long delay it. None may fight against God, and to say God wills it is only
another way of saying that Evolution is leading us that way. It will one day
be as hideously immoral to personally own the necessities of men's lives and
their means of production as it now is to own their souls and bodies. The "wage-slave"
is only one remove from the serf. In the brotherhood of a nation men should
not need to barter life for bread. In more ways than one our ruling and possessing
classes are beginning to understand this. The growth of the spirit of love which
is the true spirit of life is moving them to it.
Another
movement looms greatly in the future - the movement for prison reform, in which
field of work Captain Arthur St. John, true gentleman and saint , has done such
devoted service. How fast the tide of life is flowing from the days when the
prisoner was looked on as a hideous alien to ourselves, tortured and degrade
without compunction. Only a short hundred years ago men and women were hung
for sheep-stealing and shoplifting in England. It almost seemed as if the savagery
of English Law was framed mostly to protect the possessions of those who had
from those who had not. And there is still one law for the poor and one for
the rich, and whist to strike physically is to come within its arm, to abuse
the power of position or superior mentality to get the better of a brother-man
is still allowed by the generality of the public conscience and law. There is
dishonour in using "influence" to gain private advantage from public
offices and funds, and a prospective Member of Parliament may fool an electorate
with promises never hereafter redeemed.
It was
once my inestimable privilege, in the old, old days of the fight for Women's
Suffrage, to spend a month as one of His Majesty's prisoners in Holloway Gaol,
and that month lives in my heart for ever and ever. I recall the faces of my
fellow-prisoners, not one of which looked wicked, but only tired and stupefied.
I remember the deeds for which some of them were incarcerated, the prisoner
who brought round the daily sewing, for instance. Four months for pawning, in
desperation, the shirts for which she was paid but sweated remuneration, that
her children might have food. I remember how she told me that after her sentence
all communication with the outside world ceased, and how hear heart ached to
know what had happened to the children whom she supposed the neighbours would
take care of until her return. And the cheery fellow-prisoner who helped me
on with my first prison garments, and told me in whispers that she was in for
five months or "nabbing a ticker, dearie,and I shouldn't 'ave done it only
I was boozed at the time".
And
I remember, too, the awful gloom, the soulless cast-iron system which magnified
petty breaches of custom or discipline into heinous sins, the dreary round of
monotonous tasks, the perpetual silence, the awful cruelty of solitary confinements
on those who had no inner life of thought and dreams; the utter lack of human
sympathy or light, save here and there in a wardress with a soul above the system;
the chapel every day, the sermons from one or other of the two chaplains, one
of which always came back to his bête-noir, the "dragon
of drink", and the other, a better preacher, infinitely more saddening,
for the condescending familiarity of his tone. Would the Christ, I wonder, ah!
would He, ask human beings to strip their souls naked for his professional services
as a doctor directs recruits to strip for medical examination?
But
here, as in other fields, the rising tide is leading us. All the world knows
now of the work of Judge Lindsey of Denvers City, of the woman Governor of Sing
Sing prison. The new age will know no more prisons, no more workhouses (sometimes
costing the ratepayer nine shillings per week per pauper, which might well be
given as pension instead). It will earn to deal with crime as with disease,
and the nurses of sick and twisted souls will be the best amongst us and not
the roughest. They will lead, not drive and coerce, lead by virtue of
love and courage, by being an ideal, not preaching it.
There
is only one way by which the soul of man can rise, by love of something higher
than himself. To the older in soul amongst us, those whose "days"
of life in the continually turning wheel of birth and death have been more frequent,
this may be found in the world of thought and idealism. To the younger, the
"little ones" of a nation's family, it can grow real, a living power,
only as it becomes embodied in some personality near and dear. Hence the tremendous
faculty for hero-worship which inspires youth, that great natural force for
good so often wasted and left to be led astray.
The
new age will prevent crime by removing human misery, by making room for normal
healthy human instincts to grow and expand. It will release that drunkenness,
prostitution, crime are best fought by light and air and happiness, and that
State-supported Conservatories of Music, Theaters, Cinemas, Dancing-Halls, Gardens,
are better than all the punishments and sermons in the world.
The
spirit of the coming era will also work out into cooperative undertakings in
many other directions- notably in the direction of housekeeping. I will venture
another prophecy and say that in a hundred years' time everyone will be taking
the chief meal of the day in a National Restaurant. And why not? The Englishman
is fond of stating that his home is his castle, of greatly resenting any intrusion
into the time-honoured customs of that castle, has a great sense of my
house, my children, my wife, but in these days of the universal
consideration of human rights and hours of labour, has he ever stopped to consider
the position of the workingman's wife - how she embodies several trades in one,
nurse and cook and laundry and charwoman; that whilst the male population can
leave the scene of their labours and have at least a few minutes change with
pipe and beer, either at their own fireside or in the social atmosphere of the
public-house, the working day of the wife begins before anybody is up and stops
only when everybody is in bed, and there is never any change or chance of holiday.
Surely, if by cooperation we can lighten the burden of wife and mother, we shall
learn how to do it.
VI
To sum
up, what therefore is the message of the hour to our social fabric, what the
leading principles which shall govern the coming order, and which can already
be seen outlined on the screen of Time?
It
will bring an ever-increasing sense of human solidarity and unity.
The outer differences will largely be relegated to their proper place, the secondary
one, and humanity's essential unity will be recognised. Industrial and commercial
development have contributed towards that end. Railways, steamships, telegraph
wires, newspapers, have linked this round globe into one as never before. The
steamship has made communication between the uttermost ends of the earth a matter
of weeks instead of months. The after-war development of the airplane will make
it days instead of weeks. "Foreign parts" will mean another planet
before long, and the ideas of "foreigner" and "heathen"
are bound to disappear.
There
will be a greater sense of personal and national responsibility.
War has taught us with startling clarity the entire interdependence of individuals,
classes, nations. With the increasing sense of "otherness" the sense
of "my-ness" will diminish. The belief in the divine right of property
is going the same way as adherence to the divine right of kings. People are
losing the old sense of "my" and developing the new sense of "our"
More and more are men gaining the sense of public responsibility in the possession
and administration of money, land, and goods. We are learning to think no more
in terms of profit, but to think in terms of common human need and happiness.
And
with the growth of the sense of responsibility the clamour for the recognition
of rights will lessen , for it is but the cry of the heart of humanity against
blind stupidity, conscious or unconscious aggression and exploitation. With
strength comes responsibility, whether the power be physical or mental. Rights
belong ever to the weak, the ignorant, the child, and the animal. The right
to be helped and not to be hindered, to be loved and not cursed, to be lead
and not driven, to be understood and not ignorantly looked down upon, to be
guaranteed a "place in the sun" by virtue of a brother's strength
whilst yet not grown enough to hold it for himself, and lastly most of all,
the right to learn by being patiently and willingly allowed cooperation according
to his strength with those who are better than himself.
The
coming age has been called the age of woman, the age of the child, the age of
the animal. It is the age of the weak thing come into his own. And yet it means
such strength as never the world saw before, for the weak thing can
only come into its own when there stands strength to uphold it.
One
of the happiest auguries, the most striking sign, of this new spirit, is the
universal adoption of animal mascots by the Allied regiments. How great a mascot
this spirit of comradeship to the "little brother" of man will prove
to the nations, only the gods can see. He has no voice wherewith to urge his
rights, yet he has suffered more cruel exploitation, his free and beautiful
life been more blindly darkened, than any son of man.
And
this growing sense of "otherness" will spread, is fast spreading,
to national conceptions of honour and rights too. As Mr. Wells so truly says:-
"The social problem is only the international problem in retail, the international
problem is only the social one in gross".
It
will exalt the dignity of Labour,
and by that I do not mean that the labour Party will necessarily be paramount,
though by widening its boundaries and broadening its outlook it bids fair to
become the National Party of the future, but that a man who does not take his
full share of the collective necessity of working that all may live, will become
a moral outcast. We are beginning to realise the truth of Ruskin's teaching
that luxury and idleness are only possible at one end of the social scale at
the cost of human blood and tears at the other, and that all the claptrap about
luxury "making work" is utterly false. Output will be regulated by
human necessity and men no longer crushed by the juggernaut car of profit-making
under the spur of competition. With the gradual disappearance of class feeling,
of "superior" and "inferior" a true artistry of work will
became possible, and a sense of justice which will cause repulsive work to be
proportionately highly paid, and mechanical work to be shortened in its hours
of labour, that the other side of the man may have an opportunity to live. We
shall realise that it does not matter what service a man performs in the nation,
it only matters how he does it. "All service ranks the same with God",
sang Robert Browning. The Age of the true Democracy means the Reign of Brotherhood,
whose aristocracy is neither of blood nor of money, but a nobility of character
and worth.
It all
comes into one growing root-conception, that men are souls and are brothers.
The same immortal and evergreen truths was crystallised for us in an unforgettable
formula by the greatest Teacher of all: "One is your Father, and ye are
all brethren", and from that the consequent Law of Life", "Do
unto others as you would they should do unto you".
VIII
The
Spirit of the New Era stirs within every one of us. It links us heart to heart
if not necessarily brain to brain. With clarion call, a very trumpet of God,
it cries to every one of us at this supreme hour to give and give, all that
we have, all that we are, that the future may be built secure and fair. In the
terrible sincerity of the times no man can live to himself alone, to his family,
his private interests alone. He must learn to think in terms of human
need, do someone service outside the ranks of his personal circle.
For
it depends upon ourselves, how that newborn Day shall shape its future whilst
yet plastic and weak. God will fulfill it truly, but through and by and with
ourselves. Man is eternally cooperator with God, the limitation or the expression
of His Will.
The
outlines of that mighty Future are growing clear. With what spirit shall we
address ourselves to the task? We say that brotherly love shall recreate the
world, but its flame must be fed by the oil of sacrifice, made dynamic by the
Remembrance of God. Brotherhoods have failed for lack of these, systems broken
down because they were forgotten. What is sacrifice? Is it no the giving up
the sense of personal possession and holding all power, material, mental, spiritual,
as a trust for God's Humanity, wherein lies, too, the "Remembrance
of God"- the Ideal.
Let
us give all life over to the Future. What else is it for? Thousands have surrendered
that greatest gift a man can give on the great battlefields of Europe, and thus
dying have won greater life, for they will come back again to life with added
power and larger opportunity to serve, having won by sacrifice the right to
build the future world they died in this hour to save. Would we build with them?
Then we also must give away life by the harder way of daily dying to ourselves.
Life
is never so splendid as when we lose it with unfaltering courage. "Self-preservation
is the law of evolution for the brute, but self-sacrifice is the law of evolution
for men?.
Says
Joseph Mazzini: "The soul's salvation, the progress of the individual being
through the infinite, the development of the principle of life which God has
placed in each of us, depends upon our activity, upon our struggles, upon the
sacrifices cheerfully made, in order that the law may be fulfilled on earth.
God in judging us will not ask 'What has thou done for thy soul?' but 'What
has thou done for the sister souls which I have given thee?'"
And
again: - "We must ascend to the conception of Humanity in order to ascertain
the secret rule and law of life of the individual, of man. Hence the necessity
for a general cooperation, for harmony of effort - in a word, for association,
in order to fulfill the work of all".
In ancient
days it was said that if there had been found but ten men of resolution and
selflessness in Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities would have been saved. A hundred
men of like caliber could save Britain tomorrow. It needs but the deathless
virtues of Courage and Love, allied with the sanity of proven deeds, not wordy
theorisms, and lit with the imagination which comes from thinking in the wide
terms of humanity and not in terms of class or creed or self.
Today
the words of William Blake, poet, patriot, and prophet, voice for us all the
tremendous inspiration of the hour: -
"Bring me
my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! Oh! clouds unfold
And bring my chariot of Fire.
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land,"
That we may hear,
and hearing, spring forward to achieve!
THE
MESSAGE OF THE HOUR
NEVER
before, perhaps, in the history of the world, was an hour so fateful, so full
of presage, as the present. Big with starting possibilities, unfolding vistas
of unimagined boldness and beauty, it speaks with a very trumpet-call of eternally
recreative energy to us "upon whom the ends of the world are come".
For this is the "end of the world", the passing of an era
in time and space. Who amongst us can doubt it? After an hour of darkest night,
the rosy tints of the dawning new day are colouring the sky. And what a Day
dawns! God! what a day for men!
If we
strive, in however dim and stumbling a fashion, to read the word of God now
being written in the Book of Time, it forms itself into one root-idea, concept,
ideal. That Root-ideal is Unity. Mazzini saw it as "Collective
Humanity", with its consequent principle of action, cooperation as against
the root-ideal of the departing era, individuality and separation, with the
natural outcome thereof, competition. The past has been engaged in developing
and completing the separate consciousness of the individual, class, nation.
The future calls these strongly established self-hoods to conscious cooperation
, manifesting once again the fundamental principle of unity, not by imposition
from without , but by voluntary impulse form within.
And
so the old order passes, giving place to new. On the outer plane of life, customs,
systems are being weighed in the balance: on the inner, doctrines, dogmas, principles.
Into the crucible of a world-war the swift-moving evolutionary forces have cast
them, and from that melting-pot is arising "a new heaven and a new earth",
truer, purer, nobler, more worthy a humanity growing daily nearer God.
The
sense of having a mission to mankind was said by Germany to lie deep in her
heart. But she mistook the growing world sense of the unity underlying all life
and purpose and turned it into its dreadful travesty, uniformity, seeking to
impose by force upon an unwilling world a uniform government, culture, dominance,
and that the Germanic. So strongly has materialism saturated the soul of Germany
that she failed to realise the two sides inseparable in evolution: Life and
the multitudinous Forms in which that life expresses itself everywhere, and
that the laws governing these two are fundamentally different. Life is one,
indivisible, inextinguishable, and, therefore, purpose is one in reality, moving
continuously towards "one, far-off, Divine Event"; but the forms in
which life clothes itself, intellectual, aesthetic, physical, are eternally
different the one from the other, and their value lies in their difference,
the bond of union being not uniform appearance and manner, but the recognition
of unity of aim and fulfillment.
Hence,
in the world-conflict, the force at war are not really nations, but ideals,
one which belongs to a past era and therefore doomed, and the other springing
into life from the future and therefore conqueror. Individual consciousness,
whether as the unit man, class, or nation, having grown strong in the struggle
for freedom in the past, is now overleaping its boundaries and bringing an individual
sense of unity, of "brotherly" relationship and interdependence, into
a whole humanity. This again has been hastened on the outer plane by the extraordinary
linking up of the round world in these modern days by means of the steamship,
telegraph,newspaper, etc.
It is
the spirit of the age from which no man can stand wholly aloof In the sphere
of thought it means toleration: in the world of action, cooperation. No
longer will the world tolerate autocracies, tyrannies of any kind. The future
is against autocracies, and the tyrannies of Europe are crumbling into the dust.
Liberty and Unity is its watchword; liberty to utter freedom of development
and expression, for small and great alike, upon the side of Form; community
of aim, purpose, feeling upon the side of Life.
Let
us, therefore, in this tremendous moment, host fast the Message of the Future.
Its word is clear, its meaning wonderful. That its realisation should be striven
for in thought and word and deed, in all private and public relationships, is
the great duty of the hour for all humanity.
The
world marches unceasingly towards its final beatitude and fulfillment, and,
that great World-purpose works its beautiful will through men, integral, growing
parts of the World-order which unfolds Divinity Himself. He calls us at this
Hour to give the utmost we can give, even to life itself. We may not evade that
mighty summons, pass it by, deny it.
For
on us who watch the night depends the destiny of the Day now dawning, and the
future of the humanity who shall possess that day in all its strength and splendour.
So great
the Hour, so tremendous, so divine, the issue!
A
DREAM
Mr.
H.Gordon Selfridge in an address on "Business Organization" stated
that this country lacked that splendid thing "leadership". Alpha of
the Plough writes in the Daily News on "Great Men" and the
vital important of a national ability to distinguish them. "The one security
of democracy", he says very truly, "is to know greatness, moral greatness,
when it sees it". The question is- Where is the Man? How is it that these
supreme times have produced no really great man is asked again and again in
one form or another in the daily press, but the truth is that although remarkable
people are with us in abundance the immensity of the times dwarfs all power
by its magnitude. No ordinary greatness is big enough for the control and conduct
of issues affecting for the first time in history, not nations only, but a world.
And
yet the search goes on for the coming leader. In dumb, inarticulate patience,
men wait his arrival. Almost it seems at times, as if a note sounded in human
hearts of hope deferred. We spring forward with beating hearts at times thinking
that we hear the sound of his coming, and still he has not come who is big enough
for men.
The
last sound came when President Wilson began to say with dignity and clarity
the things which should be said, thus taking on at once and indisputably the
moral leadership of the world. And yet that was not he, not wholly he!
The
attitude of the world is one of expectation, a strained yearning to be delivered
from the bonds of littleness and pride, a voiceless cry towards truth and justice
and love, a long looking into the vistas of the invisible heavens surrounding,
a longing to be led as men have always ached for leading.
True
leadership is the greatest need of man, and one of the most pathetic things
in the world is the way this heart-hunger of men for guidance and inspiration,
leads them, in default of real heroes, to exalt the sham, and to give whole
heart allegiance to unreality.
Men
love a Man, and Mr. Graham Wallace is seriously perturbed for the result of
this human factor on the future of Democracy. He may not understand that his
ineradicable human instinct exerts such power, because in the Great Man every
man sees the fulfillment of himself, the eternal possibility to which the soul
of him stretches dim and yearning arms. The power of Personality is the greatest
force in the world, for to the majority of men ideas and ideals only assume
reality when embodied in human form. "Ideas are useless", once said
the Rev. R.J.Campbell, "until personality lends them wings".
-II-
Mr.Wells
clings to the belief that the religious and social stir of these times will
unify mankind under the kingship of Divinity, God, the Invisible King of a worldwide
system of republican states. Yes, but "God" will not be real to the
majority of men unless His Truth, His Beauty, His Wonder, His Mighty Love, His
all-compelling Power, are shadowed forth in a supreme and complete Personality
inhuman form. A "little bit of God" lives within every one of us,
eternally urging forward towards full expression through us. That is why we
long to see the Man in whom that hidden Godhead has found freedom and expression.
He is ourselves, the promise of the Future to all that lives.
In this
hour or our deepest need, worldwide, immense, unfathomable, the cry goes up
for him as never before. Who will body forth for us the unshaped yearnings after
Truth and Beauty shaking all men's hearts this day? What man is great enough
to guide the trembling aspirations, the newfound understandings born of pain
and tears and loss irreparable? Who will call the hidden resolve of multitudes
of men into flame, direct its power and energy into true channels, speak to
us as a Man to men, utter for us our dearest idealisms, lead us as we ache
to be led, calling upon a world to recreate a world, leading life to victory
and achievement that the beloved dead may not have died in vain? When the hour
strikes, it is aid, the man is there.
The
Hour has struck. He comes
.........................................................
And
so it happened that I fell into a deep sleep, and in a dream I saw the days
that are coming upon earth. For the response to the cry of humanity in its agony
had come as ever it has come, and will come, again and again, as the wheel of
Evolution turns, until the end of Time.
One
walked once more amongst men, through Whom the Face of God shone with all the
glory of the Morning. The old names for Him clustered round Him, the Wonderful,
the Counselor, the Mighty Lord, the Prince of Peace Men knew in His Presence
that He was in very truth the Elder Brother of the Race, long passed now from
the need of human experience, of human struggle, of human pain and joy in the
Great School of Life, yet remembering every step of the Way that He Himself
once trod in eons past, and thereby holding every heart in His. Truly the High-Priest
of Humanity, "after the order of Melchisedec for ever", God's aspect
of Personality to Man. And men knew that there was none other than He, that
He was the Heart of every world-faith, the Leader of every cause which had befriended
men.
The
sick, the sad, the sinful found again healing at His Hands, the strong such
joy in their strength of service, the lovers of men such inspiration in their
work, as never they knew before. The Wisdom dwelt once more amongst us, and
the wings of His Love enfolded the hearts of men, and His Strength brought healing
to a world born out of pain afresh. Thus the Day dawned, and the Man of Men
blessed the Hour of its birth.
...........................................................
To you
I write this as a dream, but to me it is no dream but the crowning message of
the hour. "Die Glöck" of the unshackled German Press writes:
"Greater the longing for the world's Redeemer could never have been than
our longing today for deliverance from this scourge of God!"
Even
so, come! Lord Christ, Leader and Captain of men. |