G. H. Percival

“ What kingdom divided against itself can stand? How can we expect to train our children in the ways of Truth if we give them no consistent standard for estimating what is true? How dare we hope to rear a generation worthy of its inheritance of nearly twenty centuries of established Christianity, when we formulate a religious standard of integrity in opposition to that of the secular knowledge of the world? ”

“ Inasmuch as the spirit of humanity reaches out towards immortality from one generation to another, our lives are not our own. Rather are they hostages to fortune, to that evolutionary principle which, while allowing us as individuals to participate in the benefits actualised to-day as the results of the labours of past generations of men, also exacts from us our own contribution towards the slow perfecting of our kind.
It is indubitable that suffering is an important factor in the evolution of the mind as well as of the body of man. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ In grief and sadness of heart we cry out against the infliction of sorrow and pain upon those who are made to suffer vicariously for the wrong-doing of others. Surely a God who wreaks vengeance for one man's sin upon his innocent children cannot be a God of Justice! Surely the dealing out of madness as the reward for superlative endeavour, strenuous idealism of thought, and consistent self-denial, the inflicting upon finely organised sensitive temperaments a capacity to suffer in a measure scarcely appreciable by coarser natures, cannot be by the direction of a God of Love! ”

“ Growth of art is proportionate to intellectual development. That is to say, expression follows conception—a precept evidenced by the progressive works of men, which bear witness to their makers' increasing power to give utterance to what has hitherto been unutterable because incomprehensible. Thus considered, symbolism appears as the alphabet of truth, whereby men may read the history of past days, and write the record of their own achievements in the Book of Time. It is the link between seen and unseen, real and ideal, knowledge and mystery, finite and infinite. ”

“ But such a man has compensation for the lack of human fellowship in his consciousness of achieving work capable of raising the standard of thought in the minds of those who behold it. They may not understand, but they can admire. They acknowledge the work of genius—an attitude which is conducive towards a fuller appreciation of what they admire. They behold, in fact, evidence of something they do not fully understand, but which they apprehend to be true. ”

“ Hope, the outcome of the imaginative or creative faculty in man, is the pioneer of knowledge, for it is by that reaching out of the human mind into realms of speculative thought that ideas and apprehensions, if true, become gradually clothed with evidence of their truth, according as the spiritual and physical evolution of man makes him more capable of approaching the illimitable and infinite glory of God. ”

“ If we would regard life as a Whole, and thus attain a right appreciation of the relation of individual consciousness to spiritual unity, we must learn to live in the Whole. If we desire a true understanding of the government of life; if we would conduct aright our critical inquiry into the methods by which the law of suffering manifests the progressively revealed Will of Love; if we would behold this Will of Love pictured upon the face of life, and receive the same spiritual illumination upon our souls, we must first establish a right attitude of heart and mind towards the divine revelation. ”

“ What could better illustrate the bond of union existing throughout Nature than a ceremony which should show how living creatures are sustained by the fruits of the earth, and which should emphasise the fact that animate and inanimate Nature is pervaded by the same Spirit of Life which works through a recurring cycle of birth and death for a perpetual manifestation of God, who is Life, the vital principle of being? ”

“ Here, then, are two aspects of the phenomenon of suffering—two pictures of life drawn from two points of view—the one apparently so irreconcilable with the other as to make it difficult to realise that it is indeed one and the same objective which is subjected to critical inquiry, i.e. the compatibility of sin and suffering in a world created and controlled by a God of Love. But we are not justified in condemning, on the score of dissimilarity of conception and treatment, either representation as incorrect or worthless. The point of focus is responsible for their seeming contradiction. ”

“ Speculative thought acts as an impetus to the mind to set about the finding of evidence that shall induce a natural growth of knowledge from mystery. Were there no knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, its development could not continue, for stagnation of thought, checking mental activity, must lead subsequently to degeneration. It is the effort to get, rather than the getting, which is the zest of existence. Without the hunger of mind and body, how could the nourishment necessary for the continuity of mental and physical life be obtained? ”

“ If a man participate in the common habits of his fellows, he must take his share in those dangers to individual existence which the development of his race necessitates. The advantages which we to-day derive from our employment of social and scientific contrivances common to civilised communities have been wrought from the effort and suffering of men of past times. We are debtors to our ancestors who, by their own labour and sacrifice, have given us a better equipment for the battle of life than was their own inheritance from their forefathers. ”

“ Symbolic worship is an attestation to an unseen God, its ostensible purpose being of course that a gradual revelation of God may be vouchsafed to the pious devotees of sacraments and ceremonies. The inaugurator of a rite, desiring to express his ideas of abstract or absolute truth, contrives a symbol, a work of art that shall stand as the likeness of his thoughts—a likeness capable of carrying significance according to the discriminating intelligence of all who may behold it. ”

“ Where it has been given to man to penetrate some way into the knowledge of so-called Natural Law, a beautiful coherency in the structure and continuity of life has always been observed. The Unity of Nature, and the working together of the Whole of Life, is a fact, the evidence of which has been deduced and declared over and over again in corroborative detail as the results of scientific investigation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those who are ignorant of what is necessary for the preservation of health receive the wages of their imperfection—suffering, and premature death unto the third and fourth generations—not as the vindictive vengeance of an offended Deity, but as the remedial vindication of a persisting will of love, a transmuting process [89] which must endure until the result of fatal ignorance is expurgated from a progressive world. ”

“ Granted that man has attained his present high position in the evolutionary scale chiefly through his ability to feel, to suffer; granted that the establishment of morality, brought about largely by registration of contrast in sensation, leads directly to realisation of spiritual life; granted that we may be privileged thereby to exercise a transmuting influence upon evil and its effects, thus making us partakers in the progressive government of life; if our future evolution, proceeding on the same lines of development, entails an ever greater capacity to suffer, is it a desirable thing? ”

“ But not until, from the several types of man now inhabiting the earth, one were proved fit to survive in the struggle for existence and capable of maintaining its supremacy, could mankind worship the same idea of God. If this should ever occur, the change in the spiritual consciousness of man might be as stupendous and of consequences as far-reaching as that crisis in his physical evolution when the brute, becoming apprehensive of a God, was born into spiritual life and became possessed of a soul. ”

“ When life is looked at as a whole—a point of view entailing perception of God as the supreme Spirit of Life informing and governing all matter—there appears no injustice in the suffering of the human race, or of other organisms whose evolution requires their conscious susceptibility to environment. Men must suffer for their ignorance in order to become wise, and to get wisdom they must eat from the tree of good and evil. ”

“ A study of the religions of men of past ages is thus a study of the index of their lives, their thought, their social and moral status, enabling us to estimate their positions in the evolutionary scale of humanity. As we review this register of the life-stories of mankind, we find the idea of the nature of God [25] keeping pace with intellectual advance. But although the distinguishing characteristic of man, even in his crudest stage, is always his idea of and his worship of a Deity, mankind as a whole has never worshipped at any one time the same idea of God. ”

“ The magnification of natural into supernatural occurrences, out of mistaken zeal for His glory, and the refusal to accept the verdict of rational investigation of the evidence for the truth of such occurrences, is not the way to further the ends of Christianity. Is it conceivable that the founder of a code of ethics calculated to meet the needs of men could desire exemption from an examination of the doctrine he taught and believed to be true, or, still less, of doctrine taught in his name, for the truth of which he has given no guarantee? ”

“ Man, being capable of foreseeing death as an inevitable termination of his earthly existence, has conceived the idea of spiritual survival as a possible corollary of physical life. But for the justification of this hope there is as yet no conclusive evidence, since demonstration of its truth necessitates a transference of thought from the finite reckoning to that of Infinite Truth veiled as yet in mystery.
A creature which by reason of its organisation lacked the intellectual capacity to imagine its death, could not know the desire for immortality. ”

“ Hostility towards criticism of religious doctrine appears to all impartial minds to be not only of doubtful service to the cause of Religion as a whole, but also to cast discredit [3] on the ability of any particular creed to sustain an examination in detail of its articles. In an era when most things touching the health and general well-being of men are subjected to critical inquiry, it would be strange if their spiritual welfare should escape remark. Science has much to say about the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the habits of our daily lives ”

“ There exists in certain religious circles the idea that criticism of Christian doctrine is an undesirable thing, because indicative of a spirit of irreverence and faithlessness that is at variance with the fundamental principles of Christianity. According to Catholic teaching, the Church is founded upon divine revelation, to doubt the reality of which is to question the truth of the Word of God. It is not to be supposed that the finite understandings of men can fathom the infinite mysteries of God. ”

“ All that is true in the writings connected with the mission of Christ requires no miraculous accompaniment to demonstrate its truth: the only requisite [16] standard by which its verity should be tested is that afforded from generation to generation by the current standard of knowledge. Is not the application of scientific methods of criticism to that grand conception of life and its responsibilities which we associate with the name of Christ, the highest compliment we can pay to His memory? ”