Superciliousness

“ At the same time the fecundity of superstition created hosts of new divinities and genii who peopled every scene of human life.9 On the other hand syncretism was in the air. Amid all the confused ferment of devotion a certain principle of unity and comprehension was asserting itself, even in popular religion. The old gods were losing their sharp-cut individuality; the provinces and attributes of kindred deities tended to fade into one another, and melt into the conception of a single central Power. ”

“ I have tried to show that the belief in superhuman spirits arose in primitive times when man knew little about the world in which he found himself. Investigators in the history of religion trace the steps from polydemonism to polytheism and thence to henotheism and monotheism. Along with this evolution, which reflected changes in social organization, went a corresponding moral transformation of these divine beings. Yet the setting of the outlook was largely the same as in earlier days. Social relations were supposed to control the universe as a whole. ”

“ But if even the absolute has to have a pluralistic vision, why should we ourselves hesitate to be pluralists on our own sole account? Why should we envelop our many with the 'one' that brings so much poison in its train?
The line of least resistance, then, as it seems to me, both in theology and in philosophy, is to accept, along with the superhuman consciousness, the notion that it is not all-embracing, the notion, in other words, that there is a God, but that he is finite, either in power or in knowledge, or in both at once. ”

“ And so, in this system, our nature appears in contrast, not in alliance, with the divine, and those views of it are favoured which make the opposition strong; its puny dimensions, its swift decadence, its poor self-flatteries, its degenerate virtues, its giant guilt, become familiar to the thought and lips; and life, cut off from sympathy with the godlike, falls towards the level of melancholy, or the sink of epicurism, or the abjectness of vicarious reliance on the priest. ”

“ Perhaps it is the tendency of all systems which most amply spread forth the Divine Infinitude, to be less occupied with the conception of the Divine Holiness: perhaps the mind intensely occupied with the idea of one solitary Power, absorbing all subordinate agencies, and willing every change that renders space or time perceptible, has all its strongest impulses, both moral and sympathetic, suppressed in the abyss of mystery; and the distinction between different beings and different acts appears, in so vast a view, too trivial to be worthy of deep emotion and resolute volition. ”

“ Why should we attempt to confine the idea of the Supreme Mind within an arbitrary barrier, or exclude from the limits of veracity any conception of the Deity, which, if imperfect and inadequate, may be only a little more so than our own? ”

“ The real nature of these energies manifesting in humanity I do not know, but they have been hinted at in the Scriptures, the oracles of the Oversoul, which speak of the whole creation laboring upwards and the entry of humanity into the Divine Mind, and of the re-introcession of That Itself with all Its myriad unity into Deity, so that God might be all in all. I believe profoundly that men do not hold the ideas of liberty or solidarity, which have moved them so powerfully, merely as phantasies which are pleasant to the soul or make ease for the body ”

“ Instead of viewing ourselves as the particular and partial objects of the care of a great Deity, or of receiving those dogmas of the priest which teach us that every thing has been made for the convenience and use of man, and that man has been made in the express image of the Deity, we should consider ourselves but as atoms of organized matter, whose pleasure or whose pain, whose existence in a state of organization, or whose non-existence in that state, is a matter of no importance in the laws and operations of Nature ”

“ All earthly unions are but poor adumbrations from afar of that deep, transcendent, mysterious, but most real union, by which the Christian soul is in Christ, as the branch is in the vine, the member in the body, the planet in its atmosphere, and by which Christ is in the Christian soul as the life sap is in every twig, as the mysterious vital power is in every member. ”

“ Once more this unity, whereof the apostle speaks, consists in submission to one single influence or spirit. Wherein consists the unity of the body? Consists it not in this,—that there is one life uniting, making all the separate members one? Take away the life, and the members fall to pieces: they are no longer one; decomposition begins, and every element separates, no longer having any principle of cohesion or union with the rest.
There is not one of us who, at some time or other, has not been struck with the power there is in a single living influence. ”

“ It is the base, and they are the superstructure. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." ”

“ Was such an union possible in itself, yet, for a superior nature to unite with an inferior one in the same essence, would be degrading to the former, as it would put both natures on a level by constituting an identity of nature: the consequences whereof would either deify man, or divest God of his divinity, and reduce him to the rank and condition of a creature; inasmuch as the united essence must be denominated either divine or human. ”

“ Why were ordinary and natural means so completely set aside, and the qualifications which are generally found adequate for the conduct and regulation of life supplanted by divine Charismata? At least, we may suppose that communities endowed with such supernatural advantages, and guided by the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, must have been distinguished in every way from the rest of humanity, and must have presented a spectacle of the noblest life, free from the weakness and inconsistency of the world, and betraying none of the moral and intellectual frailties of ordinary society. ”

“ For, after all, such a helper of men, outside of humanity, the truth will not allow us to see. The dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from before us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure—of Him who made all Gods and shall unmake them. ”

“ We have learned from the study of these two sorts of experience that, whatever else we need for our salvation, one of our needs is to come into touch with a life that in its unity, in its meaning, in its perfection, is vastly superior to our present human type of life. And so the question has presented itself: Have we any evidence that such a superhuman type of life is a real fact in the world? ”

“ Such a one is the friend neither of God nor man, for he is incapable of communion, and he who is incapable of communion is also incapable of friendship. And philosophers tell us, Callicles, that communion and friendship and orderliness and temperance and justice bind together heaven and earth and gods and men, and that this universe is therefore called Cosmos or order, not disorder or misrule, my friend. But although you are a philosopher you seem to me never to have observed that geometrical equality is mighty, both among gods and men ”

“ Whatever be the imperfections of human agents, is there not enough in all this to make us behold the working of a Divine and supernatural power? Should we not each, in our several spheres, labour and pray for reconciliation and unity—the adjustment of differences—the mutual understanding of Christendom? ”

“ For, if the whole cosmos is and must be fashioned after that supreme pattern, how much more must the church, which is the inchoative and initial perfection of the whole cosmos, the cosmos of personalities! Consequently, we must find in its interior organism all the laws of the genesis of God’s life—laws which in the whole cosmos are reflected in those of unity, variety, hierarchy, communion. ”

“ Deny the Catholic Church, or the union of the attributes and substance of the Theanthropos with the sacramental elements, because those opposite things cannot be brought together, and you must deny the union between human nature and the eternal Word for the same reason. Deny the hypostatic moment, and you must deny every kind of union between the finite and the infinite for the same identical reason, and you must deny the very coexistence of the finite and the infinite, and throw yourself into pantheism. ”

“ The mind of the one plays calmly, in its capricious and inimitable graces, over all the provinces of human interest; the other concentrates powers as vast, but far less various, on a few subjects; the one is catholic, the other is sectarian. ”

“ And now at the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes kindles itself, like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable from Earth;—whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member of Christ's visible Church; a veritable Hero, if he prove a true man! ”

“ But as soon as you arrive at a unity that is living, the form becomes more complex, and you search in vain for uniformity. In the parts, it must be found, if found at all, in the sameness of the pervading life. The illustration given by the apostle is that of the human body—a higher unity, he says, by being composed of many members, than if every member were but a repetition of a single type. It is conceivable that God might have moulded such a form for human life ”

“ Including the Supreme and even the Ultimate, all reality, excepting the unqualified values of the seven Absolutes, is relative. The fact of Supremacy is predicated on Paradise power, Son personality, and Conjoint action, but the growth of the Supreme is involved in the Deity Absolute, the Unqualified Absolute, and the Universal Absolute. And this synthesizing and unifying Deity—God the Supreme—is the personification of the finite shadow cast athwart the grand universe by the infinite unity of the unsearchable nature of the Paradise Father, the First Source and Center. ”

“ But I will say withal, and that is what these Divine-right men meant, That in Kings, and in all human Authorities, and relations that men god-created can form among each other, there is verily either a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong; one or the other of these two! For it is false altogether, what the last Sceptical Century taught us, that this world is a steam-engine. There is a God in this world; and a God’s-sanction, or else the violation of such, does look-out from all ruling and obedience, from all moral acts of men. ”

“ Explain it as we may, the craving for unity, for synthesis, for mediation is radical in human thought. The mind cannot rest at anything short of it. God and the world, held asunder conceptually or only nominally united, constitute a contradiction in excelsis, and, as such, provide an irresistible motive for further and deeper thought.
As is natural, the swing of the pendulum carries the mind to the opposite extreme. Co-existence failing to supply the required solution, the key is sought in identity. God and the world are thought as identical. ”

“ And, finally, he goes so far as to say that it is only by, and to, mere earthly and finite perception, that this one and homogeneous life of reason is broken up and divided into separate individual persons. What a piercing thought! Surely it is almost past believing that the eternal Life is itself in us, nay, that it is we; that in very literal truth we may say, "I and the Infinite are One". ”

“ The union of spirit with bodily essence appears to be a {51} necessary condition of human consciousness, and to have been ordained for the special reasons that we are destined to live hereafter not only individually, but in social relations also, and that only through the medium of body is there communion between one man's spirit and that of another. ”

“ And may it not by silence say what it will, and intimate the precise thing, and that only, which is at heart?—whence there grows insensibly that firm root of excellence, truth with one’s own self. The priestly fancy of an hereditary or lineal sacredness can have no place here. The soul and God stand directly related, mind with mind, spirit with spirit: from our moral fidelity to this relation, from the jealousy with which we guard it from insult or neglect, does the only sanctity arise ”

“ Here again, then, we find her thirst for unification strikingly at work. For she discovers one single divine Goodness as active and efficient throughout the universe; and she everywhere finds spiritual pain to consist in the discordance felt by the rational creature between its actual contingent condition and its own indestructible ideal, and such pain to be everywhere automatically consequent upon deliberate acts of self-will. ”

“ Now the elements of Multiplicity and Friction and of Unity and Harmonization, absolutely essential to all life, everywhere and always cost us much to keep and gain. But there are also, very special reasons why the three great constituents of religion should, each in its own way, tend continually to tempt the soul to retain only it, and hence to an impoverishing simplification. Let us try and see this tendency at work in the two chief constituents, as against each other, and in combination against the third. ”

“ But, in the present chapter, we are not concerned so much with the problem of the number and inter-relations of the superhuman agents at work in the universe as with the idea of personal agency itself. The point I wish to call attention to is that the change from polytheism to monotheism did not involve any essential modification of the accepted notions of agency. Nature—and human life with it—was thought of as under the control of a superpersonal agent who guided the course of events in accordance with his purposes. ”