Something like that is involved in all the spiritual issues of life, and
our deeds and attitudes are all the time irrevocably opening or shutting
doors, which prove to be doors to the Kingdom of God. Christ may possibly
at times have looked for some sudden revelation of destiny, but surely
for the most part He looked for the momentous issues of the Kingdom
_within the soul itself_ rather than in a spectacular event in the outer
world. This principle throws light on all Christ’s sayings about the
future. The coming destiny is not in the stars, it is not in the sentence
of a Great Assize, it is not in the sudden shift of “dispensations”; it
is in the character and inner nature, as they have been formed within
each soul. The thing to be concerned about is not so much a day of
judgment or an apocalyptic moment, as the trend of the will, the attitude
of the spirit, the formation of inner disposition and character. We
are always facing issues of an eternal aspect, and every day is a day
of judgment, revealing the line of march and the issues of destiny.
Conversion crises are fortunately possible, when suddenly a new level
of life may be reached and a fresh start may be made, and in this inner
world of personality, there are always new possibilities occurring, but,
as at oriental marriage feasts, neglected opportunities are irreversibly
neglected, shut doors are irrevocably shut, and blunders that affect
the issues of the soul have an apocalyptic finality about them. New
dispensations may await us; the Kingdom may come in ways we never dreamed
of; the beyond may be more momentous than we have ever expected, but
always and everywhere “the within” determines “the beyond,” and character
is destiny.
V
THE ATTITUDE TOWARD THE UNSEEN
“Nowhere as yet has history spoken in favor of the ideal of a morality
without religion. New active forces of will, so far as we can observe,
have always arisen in conjunction with ideas about the unseen.” So
wrote the great German historian and philosopher, Wilhelm Dilthey. The
greatest experts in the field both of ethics and of religion agree with
this view. Henry Sidgwick and Leslie Stephen are experts in the field
of ethics who cannot be suspected of holding a brief for religion, and
yet Sidgwick says: “Ethics is an imperfect science alone. It must run up
into religion to complete itself;” and Leslie Stephen says: “Morality
and religion stand or fall together.” Spinoza, who was denounced during
his lifetime as an atheist and a destroyer of the faith, nevertheless
makes love of God the whole basis of genuine ethics, insisting that there
is no morality conceivable without love of God. St. Augustine’s famous
testimony may suffice as a religious expert’s view. He says, “Love God
and then you may do what you please,” meaning, of course, that you cannot
then approve a wrong course of action or of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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