Читать книгу The Incarnate Purpose - G. H. Percival - Страница 5

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One of the most perplexing and saddening problems of life, which presents itself in mournful frequency to thoughtful minds, is that of so-called unmerited suffering. This seeming injustice, co-operative throughout Nature with the struggle for existence, is a stumbling-block to many thinkers to whom the creed of propitiation for sin and suffering in the person and mission of Christ, as well as those dicta of Natural Science which declare the sacrifice of the weak and helpless to be a necessary accompaniment of evolutionary life, appear rather as different aspects of vicarious suffering than as reconciliating explanations of its compatibility with the supreme government of a God of Love. Is it not the fact that a large proportion of our trouble and perplexity concerning certain problems of spiritual morality has origin in our resentment at the seeming injustice of the operation of the law of suffering? 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! When we behold the visitation of such mental and physical torture upon pure and upright men and women, whose conduct seems utterly undeserving of punishment, we ask ourselves if such things can be in accord with the supreme government of Divine Love. Our hospitals and asylums are recruited largely from the ranks of those who suffer from the wrong-doing of others. Inherited disease and tainted environment set from birth a handicap tantamount to foredoomed life-failure upon the children of the multiplied unfit, whose continued tenancy of the earth constitutes a deterring factor in progressive life. If these things are done by divine ordinance, surely the laws of human justice, framed for the punishment of wickedness and vice, and for the maintenance of virtue and its reward, are more in accord with a true conception of a government of Love and Justice! Can it truly be the Will of God that the innocent shall suffer for the guilty, the pure for the impure, the just for the unjust? If so, for what end are these things ordained?

Most of us have at one time or other "withered and agonised" under the relentless insistency with which some such ideas as these have intruded upon our spiritual tranquillity. We try to put them aside as beyond our understanding. We tell ourselves that we lack faith, that we are not meant to comprehend the mysteries of God. And yet, if the Creator endows His creatures with the ability to question, and thus approach, the border-land between Known and Unknown, Seen and Unseen, can it indeed be irreverent or presumptuous to look to Him for guidance from mystery into knowledge, from ignorance into understanding?

If the revelation of God be indeed a revelation throughout Nature, chronicled by the evolving collective consciousness of Creation; and if the incarnate purpose of Love be recognisable as the vesture of the Spirit of Life, God; can a like unfolding of the Will of Love be withheld from personal and individual understanding?

It is clear that problems of spiritual morality must be approached from the spiritual plane of thought. That which pertains to the manifestation of spiritual consciousness and which is subject to the time-limit of human calculation must be dissociated from apprehension and contemplation of the eternal verities. 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.

Differences noticeable between the religious and scientific interpretations of certain phenomena are not necessarily fundamentally hostile the one to the other, since each represents an opposing point of view rather than a contradictory likeness of fact. Any system of reflective thought, registered as opinion and propagated as substantial truth, may appear in opposition to any other established line of thought; but neither should be on this account judged as wholly right or wholly wrong, since each may be a perfectly correct impression of the thing seen, if the reflective machinery available has been properly employed. For whether artistic perception be utilised as an aid to the desire so to interpret Nature as to provide an endorsement of psychical apprehension, or whether it be directed towards the production of evidence for the verification of intellectual conjecture, the alternative result of a religious or a scientific interpretation of life is equally dependent upon focus for its representation in kind.

Under certain unlike conditions of light and distance, two artists engaged in the representation of the same object produce totally different impressions of the thing seen. Difference of focus in the actual outward vision; difference of personality, whereby difference in the mental powers of registration, reconstruction and expression becomes apparent, are together productive of difference in representation. A discerning critic does not, however, condemn either picture as worthless or incorrect because the one does not resemble the other. He knows that a just opinion of their respective values rests upon his ability to gauge that relative difference of focus which is responsible for their dissimilarity. The worth of his criticism depends upon his capacity so to focus his own point of view as to embrace and reconcile the differences of aspect in the representations submitted to his judgment. Given this ability, he is aware that his perception of the reconciled differences has enlarged his own appreciation of what he is called upon to judge. His criticism becomes his own enlightenment. Thus it appears that true critical appreciation is based upon the focussing of diverging points of view into converging actuality; and only when inquiry is attended with such impartial discernment can elucidation ensue.

The question of suffering, particularly of vicarious suffering, is one which, from the intimate nature of its bearing on the spiritual as well as on the physical aspect of human consciousness, gives rise to certain apparent irreconcilable differences between the religious and the scientific interpretation of its place and meaning in the scheme of life. On the one hand we have the point of view derived from that type of mind which cannot dissociate suffering from sin, regarding each as a concomitant consequence of a derangement of the divine and originally perfect order of Creation by reason of the intervention of Evil in opposition to God's Will for Good. Such is the creed of pessimistic suffering—a practical denial of the progressive action of the Spirit of Love. On the other hand, there is the point of view derived from that type of mind which believes the susceptibility of organisms to contrasting sensations to be a necessary factor in spiritual as well as in physical evolution. Such is the creed of optimistic suffering—the affirmation of the inherence of the divine Spirit of Life in all creatures, whereby pain and evil are shown to be as truly ordained by God as those opposing elements of consciousness known to us as joy and good, to the end that for evil so much good more, for sorrow so much joy more, may be evolved through the transmuting and progressive purpose of His Will.

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. May not, therefore, some adjustment of our powers of critical discernment give us a point of focus which shall embrace both aspects, reconcile their seeming contradictions and differences, and enable us to draw one comprehensive conclusion from them both, to the enlightenment of our intellectual and spiritual consciousness? Our analytical appreciation is directed towards a fair consideration of different aspects of a natural phenomenon. Is it not possible to attain a vantage-ground above the divergence of aspects high enough to allow us to behold the spiritual and physical signification of suffering as one harmonious accompaniment of spiritual and physical evolution, in accord with the divine directing Will of Love?

As, within the physical universe, sound-waves, once set in motion, must circulate for ever, ripple on ripple, in widening vistas of echoing reproduction, unless broken in their course by contact with some barrier capable of arresting and absorbing the progress of vibration; so, in spiritual consciousness, the influences for good and evil which emanate from all effort, whether individual or collective, volitionary or involuntary, must circulate for ever throughout Infinity, unless checked, broken, absorbed, cancelled by centralization in some interposing and receptive agent. And so, within the Communion of Love, the saints on earth, chosen by God as worthy to co-operate in the divinely appointed regenerating purpose of life, may summarise and transmute the effects of evil into good by means of their own suffering; may so sanctify their minds and bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit, that they may be found worthy to share the passion of Incarnate Love in the redemption of the world. It is the Will of God, it is the Law of Life, that we bear each other's burdens; that the just suffer for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, the pure for the impure! Not in ourselves or by ourselves alone can sins of commission and omission be expiated; not by our own unaided efforts can we arrest the consequences of action. Life is a whole, and individual thought and action touch the whole, and their effects are felt by the whole. We derive no virtue in ourselves from ourselves alone. Do we not owe our very ability to discriminate between good and evil, our standard of right and wrong, our civilization, our culture—nay, in short, the whole of our evolving realization of the Love of God—to the collective consciousness of Creation, which is a continual revelation of God? Do not we stand to-day as inheritors of wisdom accumulated by the united efforts of mankind in past times, and as guardians of this, the world's increasing consciousness of God, revealed throughout all Time, throughout all Creation? According as our forefathers struggled and attained, do we in our generation enter upon the inheritance of the earth. Thus the progressive spiritual consciousness of the world is at once our inheritance and our trust. We are debtors to the past and custodians of the future generations of our kind. Through the infinite condescension of God in employing mankind as a medium of His revelation, the privilege of realising the increasing purpose of His Will is placed within our keeping. Made in the image of God, man is endowed with the creative faculties of his Maker. The Creator wills that His creatures shall consciously share in the glory of creation, whereby through the perfecting of spiritual apprehension is revealed the Kingdom of God. Are we willing to take up the cross of sacrifice and suffer gladly with and in the passion of Incarnate Love? If we are indeed judged worthy of use in the elimination of evil by conversion through suffering of the effects of evil into elements of good, must we not rejoice in our participation with Divine Love in the revelation of the glory of God? If we are called upon to surrender ourselves, our minds and souls and bodies, as a reasonable sacrifice in the service of Love; if we are chosen by God to suffer in Love and with Love in the progressive redemption of the world from evil by the translation and transmutation of its effects in ourselves through suffering into recreated good; shall we not uplift our hearts and minds and souls in praise, prayer and thanksgiving, in that we are thus consciously brought into the Holy Communion of Love?

All creation groaneth and travaileth together, but it is not given to all forms of life to suffer consciously and willingly in co-operation with the divine government of life. Participation in the redemption and salvation of the world through Love is the privilege of those only who are born into spiritual apprehension of their essential unity with God, and who thus become one with Him in the transmuting purpose of His Will. These are they who, obeying the command of Love to resist not evil, become agents of the divine Alchemist. But the power thus to suffer willingly in the transmuting process of spiritual progress implies a dual susceptibility of physical and psychical consciousness which is the peculiar privilege of mankind. The whole organic world lies under that law of suffering which ordains that the sacrifice of individual interest shall form the collective and increasing good of life. But to humanity alone as yet has been given perception and power to share consciously in the divine government of Creation. As part of the organic world we are bound by the law of suffering, but we are not condemned to suffer in total ignorance of the purpose behind the working of the Will of God. We are spiritual beings, made in the image of God, and endowed with a birthright of free-will. We are called upon to suffer gladly in Love and for Love, so that the Creator may be glorified in His creatures. We are chosen instruments of the divine Will, but we are free to accept or refuse our election into active service in the Communion of Love. Shall we give ourselves to God in willing co-operation with the divine regenerating purpose of life? Or shall we resent the sacrifice of ourselves in the forwarding of His Will? We are offered co-operation with the Spirit of Life, whereby we may become the agents of divine healing in the progressive redemption of the world, and whereby the effects of evil may be transmuted into elements of good. We are called upon to share the passion of Incarnate Love and to take up willingly the cross of sacrifice. If we disregard the divine command to suffer gladly, we reduce ourselves to the level of the unenlightened brute creation, thereby proving ourselves unworthy of our vocation to conscious and active membership of the Communion of Love, inasmuch as we stultify the divinely implanted powers of transmutation and redemption within us, and hinder the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth.

For, if men are responsible to a certain extent for their own suffering and disease of mind and body; if payment in their own persons is exacted as a just result of ignorance, or as the punishment of abuse of knowledge; yet the consequences of thought and action are not thereby entirely arrested. Life is a Whole, and the conduct of the members of the spiritual Communion of Love must affect the Whole for evil or good. By our willing acceptance of our suffering as the transmuting agent for the conversion of the effects of ignorance and of active evil into elements of recreated good; by our endeavours to add to the world's accumulating consciousness of the Love of God by means of our own rightly directed thought and action; by our readiness to suffer in ourselves the physical and psychical effects of evil, and translate them into good, may we not prove ourselves more worthy of our high vocation to the Communion of Love?