VI SPIRITUAL CORRESPONDENCE

Careful examination of the articles of most religious creeds reveals so remarkable a connection between the ideas of prayer and immortality inculcated therein, that in an attempt to trace and summarise the effect of either of these devotional outcomes of the religious sense over the spiritual evolution of mankind, it is expedient to subject them to a dual consideration.

The infinite diversity of the human mind is made strikingly apparent by the different ideas of the significance and utility of prayer existing at various periods in the history of religion; and if this exercise of the evolving soul of man be recognised as yielding the basis of those conceptions of human immortality which, when defined as the goal of established creeds, distinguish such from all purely philosophical systems of thought, the difficulty of dissociating these two devotional factors in the development of spiritual correspondence becomes even more clearly apparent.

It is noteworthy that most interpretations of the function of prayer, although acknowledging its fundamental purpose to be that of providing a means of direct communication between God and man, vary according to the different conceptions of the nature of God of which prayer is the logical corollary, and from which all ideas of immortality are derived. For instance, the notion of God as a Person, made in the image of man, and endowed with his characteristics and powers in a superlatively human degree, is naturally accompanied by belief in the efficacy of prayer as a means of modifying the circumstances of life by permitting them to deviate from the normal operating sequence of cause and effect, into irregular acquiescence with the particular and changing desires of individuals. Such an interpretation of the use of prayer is chiefly characteristic of the religious history of the childhood of the human race; but it also represents a type of mind surviving to-day under the domination of ecclesiastical Christianity which, inculcating the theory that the government of God in the world is directed towards the especial benefit of mankind at the expense of the so-called "lower creation," is largely responsible for those ideas of inconsistency between the principles of religion and science which have led to controversial warfare between these two educative influences of the human mind.

Most of the conceptions of immortality which accompany belief in a purely personal Deity trend towards an actual epitomised realisation of all that appears possible to obtain from God through the medium of prayer. The savage, attributing to his deity the power of capriciously inflicting upon him pain and pleasure, misery and happiness, prays for the satisfaction of his personal desires, and for immunity and protection from bodily harm. His ideas of immortality hover consequently about the imagined summarised reality of his prayers—Heaven being conceived of as a place where the human joys for which he has prayed can be realised in a magnified degree for ever; and Hell as the threatened compendium of all his fears, the culmination of pains and perils, to escape which he offers up propitiatory and supplicating prayer.

In order to guard as far as possible against verbal misunderstanding, it is perhaps as well to offer a definition of the sense in which the word prayer is here used.

The expression of the desire to correspond with the will of God.

Have we not here a basic point of spiritual correspondence, from which man's hope of immortality may be seen to justify its conception?

Careful consideration of the many and apparently conflicting methods of enunciating prayer leads to the observation that there exist practically but two great categories into which all varieties of prayer naturally fall:—

1. "Prayer of Specific Petition"—the outcome of the physical susceptibilities of men.

2. "Prayer of Spiritual Acquiescence"—the expression of the psychical apprehensions of men working through the medium of sense into perception of God as the supreme Spirit of Life, revealed in form, and present as the Spirit of Truth in knowledge.

The one is antecedent to the other. That is to say, prayer of spiritual acquiescence is a natural growth from prayer of specific petition, observation of which fact offers striking evidence of the evolution of the soul of man.

It is one of the foremost characteristics of youth to demand from established authority satisfaction of those mental and physical desires which growth of consciousness entails. A child naturally attributes to his parents the ability to grant or to deny his requests. He receives from them all the necessaries of life; reward and punishment are in their keeping; and he therefore conceives the idea of propitiating their good-will towards him, trying by his conduct to rouse the approval and pleasure and avert the wrath of the parental government. He is disappointed when his requests are refused or ignored, and grateful when they are granted, perceiving himself at the mercy of a strength and power greater than his own.

Under precisely the same circumstances of ignorant youth, the so-called "uncivilised man" bows to the authority of what he believes to be supernatural power exerted upon him by the gods. He is, apparently, the plaything of a capricious deity, who holds as clay within his hands those conditions of life which bind him to his fate. Surely he does wisely to propitiate this authoritative power by gifts, vows, and supplications; by thank-offerings for danger averted; by petitions for the deliverance from threatened evil. Before all serious undertakings he tries by means of omens to read the will of his god towards him, even as the little children, studying their parents' faces, hope to discern thereon the propitious moment for the voicing of a particular request. But there comes a time when the child ceases to be a child; when he puts aside childish things—idle questions and unreasoning entreaties; when he no longer asks in words for the satisfaction of each transitory desire; when he acquiesces with perfect confidence in that loving wisdom of his father, which experience has proved to him to be a will for his own good in conjunction with the good of the whole of life; when the reasonableness of such acquiescence with his father's will controls his thoughts and pervades his consciousness; when the maturing man, looking out with awakened perceptions of the order of the world, recognises the will of God, written upon the face of Nature, as the true revelation of his own will. His mode of prayer has changed. Spiritual acquiescence has taken the place of specific petition. He enters into fuller understanding of the works of his Father; he approaches communion of consciousness with the supreme Spirit of Life.

Development of the desire to correspond with the will of God accompanies both the spiritual progress of the individual consciousness of men and of the collective consciousness of mankind. That is to say, the evolution of prayer here suggested—showing how a faithful desire to know and to do the will of God induces its own fulfilment by growing consciousness of and acquiescence with the divine Spirit of Life—is not only applicable to individual effort, but also to those combinations of aspiration which we designate as public prayer. For if the repetition of a sincere desire to be, say, moral, be in an individual a strong bias towards morality, the office of general prayer, employed for a like congregational purpose, must be capable of carrying with its rehearsal a similar inducement towards its own fulfilment.

But although a priest may give utterance to the noblest of sentiments, to the highest and purest aspirations of those human hearts whose mouth-piece he professedly is, if the spirit of sincere individual desire be not instilled into the spoken prayer that is supposed to represent the congregational will, performance of the office becomes a mockery of its intention, its expression as surely falling into nothingness as the echoes of the human voice fade to silence. But when the performance of public prayer is truly utilised to express the united wills of many individuals, such a concentration of desire must make for fulfilment by means as purely natural as those by which the laws of demand and supply operate in life—the medium between desire and its fulfilment being the operating power of will. If the efficacy of public prayer were more generally recognised, surely there might be added to orthodox liturgies an increasing power which would illuminate the idea of the divinity of man, witness to the glory of the government of God, and bring into a union of love the souls of the children of God. For word is the fruit of the Spirit which brings into being the germ of the deed that shall, at the appointed time, fulfil the purpose of its being.

To those thinkers whose spiritual perceptions have been quickened by the doctrine of the unity of Nature into recognition of God as the Spirit of Life present in all form, a connection between prayer and immortality will be plainly evident. But if the idea of the aim of prayer which accompanies the interpretation of Nature as the vesture of God be that of voluntary effort to become one with the Divine Will, what idea of immortality is the natural outcome of such belief?

If we assume Christ's conception of God to have been drawn from His interpretation of Nature as the vesture of the Divine Spirit of Life, we may expect to find some presage of His ideas relating to the immortality of man in His teaching concerning the meaning and function of prayer.

The so-called "Lord's Prayer" is commonly accepted as summarising His doctrine relating to the right rendering of prayer, and offers a remarkable illustration of that combined specific petition and spiritual acquiescence which is characteristic of His own employment of prayer.

In His dual capacity of reformer of a corrupted religious symbolism and innovator of new esoteric ideas, He sought to cultivate a new order from the old, not by grafting upon past habit and tradition the bud of an extraneous growth, but by inviting the co-operation of the free-will of men with the working of the natural laws of development, perceived by Him to offer a means of attaining to a higher plane of spiritual consciousness. When He told His disciples that "All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive," He tacitly acknowledged the value of specific petitionary prayer, the right employment of which we know to be capable of providing an educational basis for the attaining of higher ideas of the relation between things material and things spiritual.

But His advocacy of all such specific petition was accompanied by a prefatory acknowledgment of God as the Father of man, the natural expression of His sense of union with the supreme Spirit and Source of Life. On the occasion of His own prayer before His betrayal, we find an expression both of His physical and spiritual desires. The man prays that suffering may be averted from him, while the spirit voices its longing to conform to God's Will and thus to obtain perfect union with the Spirit of Life in him and over him.

"Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt" (St Mark xiv. 36).

Is not this acknowledgment of the spiritual fatherhood of God, which here prefaces Christ's own employment of prayer, as well as His recommended form for the use of His disciples, another expression of the conception of God as the supreme Spirit of Life, manifested through love, and attested by the Spirit of Truth, which finds representation in His words and deeds and in His rite of communion?

Now, if we assume men's ideas of heaven and hell to be respectively the imagined realisation of desire and the compendium of fear, of a degree and kind consistent with their physical and spiritual evolution, and forming the basis of their prayer to God, an appreciation of the means and end of prayer as advocated by Christ should in some measure reveal His ideas on the subject of human immortality.

The keynote of His reported teaching on prayer is that of union with the Will of God which, held by Him to be the true end of all attempted spiritual correspondence with God, becomes at once the foundation of and the justification for the Christian's hope of immortality.

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of the Father which is in heaven" (St Matt. vii. 21).

Not merely by calling upon the name of Christ, but by obeying His injunction to realise with Him our union with God as the Spirit of Life, and to make our wills one with the Divine Will, is the certainty of our spiritual inheritance revealed to us. For, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (St John xvii. 3).

We know the true God through form, through the expression of God, through the Word, learning from Christ to apprehend the Spirit of Life behind the Name or Manifested Life. "I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.... I have given them the word ... thy word is truth" (St John xvii.).

The mental development of man gives him vantage-ground whence he can, if he will, obtain with a clearness, certainty, and completeness proportionate to the intellectual elevation he has attained, on the one side a retrospective view of his descent, and on the other a perspective discernment of his possible destiny. In other words, the whence of his being is more remotely traceable, and the whither of his evolution more definitely perceptible, according as his growing powers of thought and reason enable him to deduce from his present circumstances certain data bearing on the past history of his life. Knowledge of facts pertaining to his descent, by enlarging his consciousness of himself in his relation to the Whole of Life, offers an explanation of his present status that is at the same time a basis for the forecasting of his future possible fate, testifies to the continuity of his being, and brings his conception of immortality within reasonable bounds of justification.

But confirmation of his ideas of human immortality is dependent upon an ability to attain an intellectual vantage-ground high enough to permit him to trace to its source the history of his life, and to throw a previsionary understanding over the destined end of his evolutionary career, wherein the blending of his physical and spiritual immortality is gradually revealed to him. For in the same way that an examination of the evolution of prayer leads to the observation of a change from specific petition to spiritual acquiescence—a change which we may interpret as evidence of the development of the soul of man, and of the collective consciousness of Creation—so in the study of the life-history of mankind we reach a point whence we may behold the unbroken continuity of his physical evolution merging into that of spiritual evolution. That is to say, the physical immortality of mankind as a whole (the varied manifestation of the Spirit of Life through changing species) is crowned by individual consciousness of spiritual immortality, wherein the purpose of the incarnation of life finds fulfilment.

Pride of ancestry is so prominent a characteristic of nations, families, and individuals alike, that there is some justification for calling it a peculiarity of the human race. Men glory in the possession of records that tell of mighty deeds of valour wrought by their progenitors. Pride of kinship with heroes of past times breeds a sense of responsibility as an accompaniment to the inheritance of a noble name, urging the necessity of passing it on to posterity if not enriched, at least untarnished in its purity.

The idea of the immortality of the individual in the race, characterising the Hebrews as recorded in the Books of the Old Testament, is one outcome of this innate pride of birth, which here becomes, as in many other instances, incorporated as part foundation of a religious creed. Ancestor-worship is another such example. Only, be it noted, whereas this idea of the continuity of being finds its chief expression in recognising and revering the link between present and past generations of men, that of the Hebrew is built upon a conception of survival in their children. Both offer a remarkable testimony to the innate desires of men to contribute towards the continuity of humanity in the establishment of the individual's relationship to the Whole of Life. The Hebrew prays that his seed may multiply and cover the face of the earth, seeing therein the security of his own immortality. But the prayer of a devout Chinaman embodies rather his recognition of honour due to his dead ancestors than his desire to secure a prolific progeny. He is the child of the past, rather than, as the Hebrew, a child of expectancy.

With regard to the ideas of spiritual correspondence embodied in the theories of the transmigration and reincarnation of spirits, it would appear that such are an outcome of the same search after truth that found expression nineteen hundred years ago in the Christian doctrine of the spiritual immortality of all men, by reason of their derivative union with God as the Spirit of Life, and which are to-day confirmed and reincorporated in the scientific theories of the evolutionary descent of man and the unity of Nature.

But it is noteworthy that although the Christian idea of immortality is dissociated from that of the survival of the individual in the race, as well as independent of the belief in the transmigration and reincarnation of spirit in ways other than by the transmission of personality from parents to their children, it is by no means antagonistic to, but rather comprehensive of, all these ideas of the continuity of being. Christ's teaching adequately gathers together the truth in all the scattered and imperfect ideas of spiritual survival latent in the tenets of the religious creeds and theories to which reference has been made. But whereas the Hebrew and Chinese ideas inculcate the keeping apart of races and of nations, with a clinging to past tradition necessarily detrimental to progress; and whereas the transmigration and reincarnation theories constitute a practical annihilation of the survival of individual consciousness,—the Christian conception makes for union among men of all peoples of all times, showing immortality to consist not only in men's relationship to past and future generations of their own race, or by connection with the inter-evolution of other organisms, but also and chiefly in their recognition of God as the supreme Spirit of Life manifested through love, and known to them as the Father of their beings. Perception of this truth establishes union among all men, and gives them consciousness of their assured spiritual and individual immortality.

Thus considered, the Christian idea of human immortality may be seen to be a natural growth from the conception of the survival of the individual in the race. It is as remarkable a testimony to the development of spiritual consciousness, regarded as a whole, as is the evolution of prayer from its form of specific petition to that of spiritual acquiescence. For here again we can perceive how spiritual has accompanied physical evolution—how the evolving apprehension of the soul has kept pace with the confirming comprehension of the mind of man. And here again we see how the doctrine of Christ unites past tradition with new developments of intellectual aspiration, His method of instruction following the perfect order of Nature, wherein nothing is irregular or unreasonable, and whereby the indwelling Spirit of Truth affords perpetual evidence of the development of spiritual consciousness through natural evolution. The changing of the old order is a necessary accompaniment to progress. When Christ announced His mission to be that of fulfilment and not of destruction, was He not inferring the expansion of knowledge physically perceived into apprehension of its spiritual significance—an expansion which, foreseen by Him to be the accompaniment of the future development of man, would call for continual verification by the critical testimony of the Spirit of Truth? The insistence laid by Him upon the necessity of the realisation by men of their spiritual union with God as the basis of all effective prayer, is fully corroborated in His teaching relating to human immortality. Indeed, the whole programme of thought and conduct presented by Him to His disciples can be resolved into an advocacy of prayer as the means of obtaining conscious spiritual union with God, with the attendant purpose of establishing thereby the conviction of spiritual immortality. For eternal life is perceived to be the natural inheritance of all who through prayer have established correspondence with God as the Spirit of Life and the Father of their beings, and who therefore know themselves to be partakers of the infinite and illimitable divinity of God.

Whether we consider the brotherly love between men recommended by Christ as the Will of God; or the self-sacrifice of the individual in the interests of the community, advocated by Him as the foundation of true happiness; or the indwelling Spirit of Life in form, manifested by love in Nature and illustrated in His rite of communion—the same realisation of the kinship of all life follows the putting into practice of His commands, with the result that spiritual life is perceived to be the birthright of all the children of God.

Proof of immortality is thus closely associated with the desire to correspond with the Will of God, for through prayer is the Divine Spirit of Life made visible. Born of the prayers of the faithful expectant, the Manifested Deity is the incarnation of the ideal desires of mankind—the accumulated product of those periods of anticipation which constitute the preparation for fulfilment of desire, and thus make possible some special culminating revelation which shall be adapted to human recognition. If the light of God be in men, shall they not by that light perceive His glory? Designed in the image of God, shall not man become like unto God, according as the divinely implanted desire to know God shall lead him towards a more perfect correspondence with His Will?

All revelations of God are representative also of the spiritual progress of mankind. The cultivation of qualities considered admirable in human conduct must be preliminary to the evolution of that type of humanity which shall be capable of appreciating as a divine manifestation the incarnation of certain desired spiritual attributes which are conceived of as partaking of the nature of God.

The Kingdom of God is within us. Therefore must the manifested Divinity be born of the prayers of the devout. Thus only can God be made visible to men. Thus only can His Kingdom be established as heaven on earth. And thus do we learn to regard immortality as the fulfilment of prayer. For since the spiritual progress of mankind is achieved and sustained by an increasing consciousness of the glory of God, men must worship as the manifested Divinity of God the embodiments of those spiritual qualities which represent the ideals of their own desire. Therefore, to bring about the conscious and willing co-operation of Creation with the progressive Will of Love, we have first earnestly to desire the coming of the Kingdom of God, which desire shall be the preparation for our enlightenment, when the pure in heart shall see God. His Kingdom is here at hand, shaping in the midst of us, not approaching from afar as a condemnatory judgment upon our imperfections, but as the increasing revelation of Divine Love—a manifestation which is at once our judgment and our joy. For from the beginning the Word of God, the absolute Truth of God, has been one with His divine glory; and from the beginning the progressive consciousness of Creation has been guided by the revelation of the Will of Love and sustained by the Spirit of Truth.

Therefore, if language be the sign of thought, making for progressive union of men, and thereby promoting the growth of spiritual consciousness; and form be evidence of spirit, productive through love of continuity of the manifestation of spirit; and Nature be the vesture of God, wherein the intercommunion of all God's creatures is shown to rest upon mutual sacrifice for mutual continuity of being—is not the incarnate purpose of all these things the attainment by men of conscious union and co-operation with their God?