035. CHRIST GIVES THE SENSE OF UNITY

CHRIST GIVES THE SENSE OF UNITY

It is sometimes said that Christianity is in debt to modern science. It is far more true that modern science is in debt to Christianity. The guiding thought of modern science is that of unity. This sense of unity Christ virtually gave to man when he died for him upon the cross. The feeling of personality existed indeed before, but it was weak; and since the idea of unity is derived from no other source than our own self-consciousness, man could not see unity outside of him until he saw himself as a single person. When he realized that the Son of God had given up all to save him, he could no longer regard himself as a mere congeries of impressions or as the mere victim of circumstance. There arose within him the ineradicable conviction of the singleness, the dignity, and the worth of his own being. Christ’s cry from the cross, "It is finished !" was a trumpet call to the human will to believe in its unity and to assert its freedom. Just as men before Christ suspected that death did not end all, and hoped for a life beyond the grave, but reached assurance only when Christ by his resurrection from the dead brought life and immortality to light, so before Christ the belief in personality was weak, and even philosophers like Plato and Aristotle saw no clear dividing line between man and nature ; but since Christ died and rose again belief in the unity of the soul, its immeasurable superiority to nature, its infinite worth, and its immortal destiny, has become an unwavering conviction, no longer shrouded in obscurity but standing forth in the clear daylight of recognized reality. With belief in the unity of man’s being came belief in the unity of God. No longer could men rid themselves of the notion of responsibility to one moral Lawgiver and Judge by dividing up his manifestations and attributing them to separate wills. Milton well represents the birth of Jesus as signalizing the downfall of polytheism:

Peor and Baalim Forsake their temples dim . Nor all the gods beside

Longer dare abide when once the God of gods and Lord of lords has come. But while it has been noted that Christ’s coming gave final and convincing proof of the unity of God, it has not been noted that his coming was also the first demonstration of the unity of nature. Humboldt, in his "Cosmos," points out that the unity and creative agency of the heavenly Father have given unity to the order of nature, and so have furnished the modern impulse to physical science. But let us recognize the equally important fact that this is the work of Christ. It is only he who has revealed the unity and creative agency of the heavenly Father, only he who has shown heaven and earth to be one, and so only he has made it possible to speak of a "universe." The unity of the soul, the unity of God, the unity of nature,—these three are discoveries of Christ. They had no scientific precision, they had no universal acceptance, before his advent. As logical implications of his teaching, his work, his divinity, they have gradually taken possession of the world. But still the soul, nature, and God have been kept apart from each other, and have been regarded at times as mutually independent. An instance of this is found in the philosophy of fifty years ago. Subjective idealism invaded our schools of learning. It despised the external world, and regarded the body as having no essential part or lot in man’s being. And a yet more marked illustration is found in the theology of our fathers. Deism had unconsciously infected it, and many Christian thinkers had come to look on the universe as a house built indeed by God, but from which the Builder had shut himself out, locking the door behind him, and then tying his own hands so that he could not even use the key. The last half-century of theology has been, in its innermost substance and meaning, a profound reaction against deism. It has been a practical rediscovery of God in the universe and in the soul. I am proposing to describe this movement of our time by indicating in order some of the elements which compose it. And the first which I shall notice is the great truth of the immanence of God. We differ from our fathers by interpreting nature not mechanically but dynamically. To us her symbol is no longer that of Paley’s watch, but that of Darwin’s flower. God does not create a universe which goes of itself without his presence or control, but the universe is full of his life and is the constant expression of his mind and will.

We speak of the book of nature; but nature is not so much a book as a voice, or, to use Bishop Berkeley’s noble words, "God’s ceaseless conversation with his creatures." The Scriptures do not content themselves with past tenses; the heavens declare the glory of God and the God of glory thundereth,—nature, in other words, is the manifestation of a present God. Herschell said that the force of gravitation seems like that of a universal will. We may go further and say that it not only seems like will, but that it is will. And this is only Augustine’s doctrine: Dei voluntas est rerum natura. What we call nature’s laws are nothing but God’s generic volitions, his regular, and, as it were, automatic activities,—no less free because they are regular and no less regular because they are free.

Even within the last twenty-five years there has been a notable change in the spirit and temper of scientific men, and this change has inured to the benefit of theology- Just ^a quarter of a century ago John Tyndall, in his opening address as President of the British Association at Belfast, declared that in matter was to be found the promise and potency of every form of life. But only last year Sir William Crookes, in his address at Birmingham as President of that same British Association, reversed the apothegm and declared that in life he saw the promise and potency of every form of matter. The days of materialism indeed are numbered. The old materialism has given place to materialistic idealism, and that in turn to a conception of matter so ethereal that it can no longer be distinguished from spirit. Martineau has well said that matter, as scientific men of late describe it, "but for the spelling of its name, does not seem to differ appreciably from our old friends, Mind and God." More and more it is seen that nature is the constant manifestation of an infinite intelligence and life, and that this intelligence and life can be none other than those of the immanent God.