Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

138 The Higher blunders because Self-controlling. [LECT.

But when you come to man, you find a little world that seems to have been furnished with a stock in trade, and made to set up business for itself, and he generally makes a sad bungling mess of it; begins with blunders-may succeed, but the majority seem to end in bankruptcy. Mr. Huxley tells us "the microcosm repeats the macrocosm "-man a little world like the great outside machine. The analogy may be carried to a certain extent. Those parts of man which are directly and specially under the sole control of the Power which rules the universe, answer fully to the scheme and follow Him whose will is expressed in the vast complications and developments of the material world, in the marvellous work of the vegetable and animal organisms, and in instinctive wisdom. But over and above all these things, different from all else in our world, there reigns in man a local ruler, who is not infallible, but who guides the destinies of his microcosm-kingdom and may be untrue to the Power above him.

The fact is the powers of man are stupendous-vast beyond compare. But the secret of the whole trouble, as also the secret of his unbounded possibilities, lies in the fact that his powers have no inherent machine-knowledge and skill, like the animals, etc.; his instincts which point out these powers and the something somewhere to match them all, are only blind impulses and unfledged powers which have no natural skill or knowledge to lead them, such as insects and birds have in perfection. That is the secret of human blundering and floundering and darkness and despair.

But again these latent powers enfolded within the conscious I-the-thinker, show forth true natural instincts; these blind impulses, as blind as new-hatched sparrows, open their mouths and cry for something to feed them, or they must starve. So I-the-thinker must think, and reason, and search, and experiment, until I can satisfy this hungry brood within the soul.

III.]

The Threefold Division.

139

And then little by little they gain strength, they open their eyes, they plume their wings, and there rises a whole flock of powers which exhaust the visible universe for their joy, but finding here no perfect satisfaction, no exhaustion of their powers of growth, no complete scope for perfect action, they migrate like wild-fowl to sunnier wider realms in unseen larger worlds. In the marvellous work of the up-building and guiding monas-or whatever you like to call them-of vegetable and animal and instinctive life, I find nothing that necessarily implies a continued existence of individual life after the organism perishes. But in man that something which rises above the unconscious working of inherent power, that personality which is conscious not only of external influences but is self-conscious, and conscious of other immaterial minds and of the great mind over all, can surely live on, and why not forever?

Let us look a little more closely at these higher powers. We find (1) Mental, (2) Moral, and (3) Spiritual faculties, as the peculiar heritage of man. There is no clashing of these powers, either among themselves or with the lower powers connected with the bodily constitution. The power within me which, independent of my consciousness, built up this framework, works in perfect harmony with me-the-thinker, who must use the body. But I-the-thinker must use this body according to its constitution and not otherwise. It has no wings, I cannot fly. If it had wings, I would be a different kind of man.

In the same way I-the-thinker must think according to the constitution of my mental faculties. I must go on those lines, or become another kind of a being altogether. The constitution of the body shows itself in instincts, which in animals are self-regulative, and in man are to be regulated by the thinker. The constitution of the thinker is shown also by mental instincts, which are invariable, hence we talk of intuition or

140

Intuitions, Mental Framework.

[LECT.

necessary truths, which every human thinker must lay down as the line along which his thoughts must go; the opposite of which would completely unmake the constitution of man. They do not depend on experience: they reach to things beyond experience: they are universal. And as soon as the mind's thinking powers begin to stir at all, these mental instincts, first unconsciously, and then consciously, show themselves. These mental instincts have no contents of knowledge; that must be acquired. But ask any man from pole to pole, who can think at all, if an effect can be without a cause, if two straight lines can enclose a space, and the universal necessary answer will be "never," and yet no one can prove the contrary.

And so all along these intuitional lines of mental instinct, the intellect learns to apprehend, to compare, to distinguish, to generalize, to systematize; with the exercise grows and expands into vastness; transmits this knowledge to others by instruction, but never by inheritance. By inheritance the thinker may give his children a sturdier mental framework, but not a single content of it, nor a variation in its fundamental constitution.

I cannot linger to point out the greatness of the human intellect when expanded, but I ask you to look at the fact that the grandest mountain peaks of pure intellect stand in the background of 2000 years ago. Little Attica within 200 years produced 28 names which have been unmatched in mental power during the 2000 years that have since elapsed. Look where you may, in all the continents, in all the ages they stand peerless, excepting perhaps two or three solitary names. Education is more widespread, science, has given us more facts. But cart-loads of facts by the million will not strengthen the intellectual powers, unless combined in a philosophy that is true to the intellectual constitution of man. On the other hand. combined in a system untrue to the constitution of his highest powers, the multiplication of these scientific facts and theories

III.]

Moral and Spiritual Powers.

141

will add an impetus to the evil influence abroad to emasculate and degrade the intellect of man. Mental success comes not by waiting for Evolution to spin it out, but by a diligent training of mind according to mental laws.

Again, man is moral. He has a moral constitution, moral instincts; feels an ought within him, pointing to duty, obligation. This also, untaught, is a blind impulse, has no inherent contents, must be led; may be taught wrong, and may make great blunders. The soul says I ought, instinct cries I ought: but a knowledge of what I ought to do is not inborn or inherited: I must be taught. Nor can mere experience teach me, nor mere intellect, great though it be; nor philosophy, clear though it tread in mental lines. Intellect can go a good way, when taught by experience; but ethics taught by mind alone with experience as guide, are poor watery things. I come to this subject again, and simply point out here that the only ethics, the only system of morals known to this world, true to the whole mental and moral constitution of man, is to be found in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. That is the Fujiyama, the Peerless, in the moral world. And now man has a spiritual nature, a Godinstinct, that can never be satisfied, though it may be slaincan never live and be satisfied, until it rest in the Great Father Spirit, whose will is visible in nature, in instinct, in mind and here in conscience. This is an essential power in the human constitution by which we know or may know God. But like all other human instincts it is blind, must be taught, and nourished and led until it can walk alone, and then it rises majestic, and like all the other powers, blesses, ennobles all below it.

The instincts are there though they be blind, and they are true to the constitution of man; but if untaught, they will surely develop into monstrosity. What mean those myriad temples, and shrines, and altars, and relics, and pilgrimages? What mean those idols, hideous, uncouth, cruel? What

142

Satisfied only by Christ.

[LECT.

mean those howling incantations and that ceaseless thunder of prayer into the vast unknown? What mean those fires and incense, those holocausts of beasts and of babes, those immolations of beauteous life of woman and growing strength of man? What mean ?-but cease the horrid tale. What means all that and a thousandfold more that has cursed the world of wayward men for millenniums? It all means that in the human constitution there is a spiritual nature with instincts as real as that in the silkworm to spin a silk cocoon, but like all other instincts of man, without instinctive knowledge and skill, which awakened, aroused, untaught or mistaught, grows to be the strongest impulse of humanity, surging, seething, impelling, like the headlong dash of riderless maddened steed-on, on to despair!

Now my business in this land is to try to show not only that these impulses are true instincts, and evidence a true spiritual constitution in man, but also to show that they are also evidences of a something real to match them and perfectly to satisfy them; that the instincts may be directed and taught― may apprehend that for which they were made; they may know God, and knowing him, man may be satisfied by becoming morally, spiritually like him, and thus rise to the sublimest ideal possible to humanity. And this teaching, this needed guidance, is to be found in a revelation which accords so well with the constitution of the visible universe, and of the mind of man, that we must think it came from the very same Creative Mind— I mean the teachings of Christ.

II. SYNTHESIS.

In our discussion of the question,-What is man? we started out with the intention of not assuming anything that was not evidently a fact or sufficiently established by proof. All outside of that was to be relegated to the sphere of hypothesis to be further tested as occasion should arise.

« НазадПродовжити »