Sir Oliver Lodge

“ The self-glorifying instinct of the human mind has resented this negative conclusion, and for long clung to the Ptolemaic idea that the earth was no mere planet among a crowd of others, but was the centre of the universe; and that the sun and all the stars were subsidiary to it. A Ptolemaic idea clings to some of us still—not now as regards the planet, but as regards man; and we, insignificant creatures, with senses only just open to the portentous meaning of the starry sky, presume—some of us—to deny the existence of higher powers and higher knowledge than our own. ”

“ By the Holy Spirit is meant the living and immanent Deity at work in the consciousness and experience of mankind,—the guider of human history, the comforter of human sorrow, the revealer of truth, the inspirer of faith and hope and love, the producer of life and joy and beauty, the sustainer and enricher of existence, the Impersonation of the Grace of God. ”

“ CLAUSE X The existence of higher beings and of a Highest Being is a fundamental element in every religious creed. There is no scientific reason for imagining it possible that man is the highest intelligent existence—there is no reason to suppose that we dwellers on this planet know more about the universe than any other existing creature. Such an idea, strictly speaking, is absurd. Science has investigated our ancestry and shown that we are the product of planetary processes. We may be, and surely must be, something more, but this we clearly are—a development of life on this planet earth. ”

“ Some are inclined to think that man is solitary in the universe, the highest of created things; without equal, without superior, without companionship; alone with his indomitable soul amid scenes of unspeakable grandeur and awe; alone with his brethren in a universe wherein no spark of feeling, no gleam of intelligence, can be aroused by his unuttered longings, no echo of sympathy can respond to his bewildered need.
Yet that is not the feeling which arises during spells of lonely communion with nature, on rock or sea or trackless waste. ”

“ We have to realise that the Will of God is to be done on earth, that the Kingdom of Heaven is to be a present Kingdom, here and now, not relegated indefinitely to the future. Our life is not in the future, but in the present, and it will always be in the present: it is in our life that we have to apply our beliefs, utilise our talents, and bring forth fruit. The Kingdom of Heaven is not only at hand, it is potentially in our midst, and may be actually within us. These are its two chief aspects, the social, and the individual. ”

“ CLAUSE VIII The essence of sin is error against light and knowledge, and against our own higher nature. Vice is error against natural law. Crime is error against society. Sin against our own higher nature may be truly said to be against God, because it is against that purpose or destiny which by Divine arrangement is open to us, if only we will pursue and realise it.
Sin is a disease: the whole of existence is so bound together that disease in one part means pain throughout; the innocent may suffer with the guilty, and suffering may extend to the Highest. ”

“ Many are blind to the meaning—to the fact even that there is a meaning—in nature; just as an animal is usually blind to a picture, and always to a poem; but to the higher members of our race the Intelligence and Purpose, underlying the whole mystery of existence, elaborating the details of evolution—and ultimately tending to elucidate the frequent discords, the strange humours, and puzzling contradictions of life—are keenly felt. ”

“ It all hangs together, when properly grasped, and constitutes a luminous conception; but the light thus shed upon the nature of Deity must not blind our eyes to the simple human facts from which it originally emanated. The clear and undoubted fact is that the founder of the Christian religion lived on this earth a blameless life, taught and helped the poor who heard him gladly, gathered to himself a body of disciples with whom he left a message to mankind, and was put to death as a criminal blasphemer, at the instigation of mistaken priests in the defence of their own Order and privileges. ”

“ Among men and their works we find, on the one hand, cathedrals and oratorios and poems, and faith and charity and hope; on the other, slums and ugliness and prisons, and spite and cruelty and greed. And we must not forget that want of harmony with environment may in some cases be the fault, not of the individual, but of the environment: a fault which it is specially likely to possess when man-made. For every now and then is born an individual far above the average of the race, amid surroundings which he finds deadly and depressing. ”

“ Unknown as this is for purposes of analysis, from the point of view of experience it is more immediately familiar than any other; since it is through the activity of mind that every other kind of existence is necessarily inferred. Thought is our mechanism or instrument of knowledge—through it we know everything—but thought is not what we directly know. Primarily we think of things, not of thought itself. So also sight is our instrument of seeing—through light we see—but it is not light that we perceive, rather it is the objects which send it in certain patterns to our eyes. ”

“ INTRODUCTION There is a growing conception of religion which regards it not as a thing for special hours or special days, but as a reality permeating the whole of life. The old attempt to partition off a region where Divine action is appropriate, from another region in which such action would be out of place—the old superstition that God does one thing and not another, that He speaks more directly through the thunder of catastrophe or the mystery of miracle than through the quiet voice of ordinary existence—all this is beginning to show signs of expiring in the light of a coming day. ”

“ This conspicuously has been a redeeming, or rather a regenerating, agency;—for by filling the soul with love and adoration and fellow-feeling for the Highest, the old cravings have often been almost hypnotically rendered distasteful and repellent, the bondage of sin has been loosened from many a spirit, the lower entangled self has been helped from the slough of despond and raised to the shores of a larger hope, whence it can gradually attain to harmony and peace. ”

“ We needs must love the highest when we see it, but as yet we do not see it: so we are working in the dark, and the best of us try hard to do our duty. The end is unrecognised, the means may be mistaken, but the energy is there; and the race as well as the individual is instinctively working out its destiny;—thwarting itself constantly by misdirected endeavour, yet constantly striving for self-development and enlargement, for progress and happiness. ”

“ A positive or constructive statement of religious doctrine, not indeed deduced from present knowledge, but in harmony with all that bears upon the subject, is now more useful. Such a statement might be called New Light on Old Paths; for the “old paths” remain, and are more brightly illuminated than ever: even the old Genesis story of man’s early experience shines out as a brilliant inspiration. Truth always grows in light and beauty the more it is uncovered.
There are still people who endeavour to deny or disbelieve the discoveries of science. ”

“ The Christian idea of God is not that of a being outside the universe, above its struggles and advances, looking on and taking no part in the process, solely exalted, beneficent, self-determined, and complete. It is also that of a God who loves, who yearns, who suffers, who keenly laments the rebellious and misguided activity of the free agents brought into being by Himself as part of Himself, who enters into the storm and conflict, and is subject to conditions as the soul of it all. ”

“ The character and experience gained by us during our brief association with the matter of this planet, become our possession henceforth for ever. We cannot shake ourselves free of them, even if we would: the enlargement of ideas, the growth in knowledge, the acquisition of friendships, the skill and power and serviceableness attained by us through this strange experience of incarnation, all persist as part and parcel of our larger self; and so do the memories of failure, of shame, of cruelty, of sin, which we have acquired here. ”

“ The struggle for existence has been one of the means whereby animal life has been developed and perfected; but now that it has become conscious and purposeful, in humanity, the apparently blind struggle is suspended at the higher level, and the weak and suffering are attended to and helped—not exterminated. There must always be disciplinary effort: but it can be effort for something better than bare subsistence; it can conduce to evolution of character, and development of soul. ”

“ CLAUSE XIV People at a low stage of development are liable to think that they can arrive at truth by their unaided judgment and insight, and that they need not concern themselves with the thoughts and experiences of the past. Unconscious of any inspiration themselves, they decline to believe in the possibility of such a thing, and regard it as a fanciful notion of unpractical and dreamy people.
Great men, on the other hand, are the fingerposts and lodestars of humanity ”

“ CLAUSE VI We are not something separate from the Universe, but a part of it: a part of it endowed with some power of control—power to guide ourselves and others and assist in the scheme of development—power also to go wrong, to set ourselves contrary to the tendency of things, to delay progress, and break ourselves in conflict with overpowering forces. ”

“ Is man helped in his struggle upward?
A. There is a Power in the Universe vastly beyond our comprehension; and we trust and believe that it is a Good and Loving Power, able and willing to help us and all creatures, and to guide us wisely, without detriment to our incipient freedom. This Loving-kindness continually surrounds us; in it we live and have our real being; it is the mainspring of joy and love and beauty, and we call it the Grace of God. ”

“ They can, however, be taught to have some appreciation of the senses, or channels, whereby our experience of external nature is gained; and to perceive that the way in which we apprehend the universe is closely conditioned by the particular sense-organs which in the struggle for existence have been evolved by all the higher kinds of animal life,—organs which we men are now beginning to put to the unfamiliar and novel use of scientific investigation and cosmic interpretation. What wonder if we make mistakes, and are narrow and limited in our outlook! ”

“ What is to be said of man’s higher faculties?
A. The faculties and achievements of the highest among mankind—in Art, in Science, in Philosophy, and in Religion—are not explicable as an outcome of a struggle for existence. Something more than mere life is possessed by us—something represented by the words “mind” and “soul” and “spirit.” On one side we are members of the animal kingdom; on another we are associates in a loftier type of existence, and are linked with the Divine. ”

“ It has been an ancient puzzle to consider whether the principle of goodness is the supreme entity in the universe—a principle to which God as well as man is subject—or whether it represents only the arbitrary will of the Creator. ”

“ Life of a far higher kind than any we yet know is attainable by the human race on this planet. It rests largely with ourselves. The outlook was never brighter than it is to-day; many workers and thinkers are making ready the way for a Second Advent,—a reincarnation of the Logos in the heart of all men; the heralds are already attuning their songs for a reign of brotherly love; already there are “signs of his coming and sounds of his feet”; and upon our terrestrial activity the date of this Advent depends. ”

“ It does not mean that actions are capricious and undetermined; but that they are determined by nothing less than the totality of things. They are not determined by the external world alone, so that they can be calculated and predicted from outside: they are determined by self and external world together. A free man is the master of his motives, and selects that motive which he wills to obey.
If he chooses wrongly, he suffers; he is liable also to make others suffer, and he feels remorse. In a high grade of existence no other punishment is necessary. ”