"That to believe these things are so,
This firm faith never to forego,
Despite of all which seems at strife
With blessing, all with curses rife,
That this is blessing, this is life."
The Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the eighth Sunday after Trinity help the attainment of this mental attitude. The Epistle touches upon a question of importance to those who are learning the glorious truth of the Immanence of God. Do not let concentration upon your oneness with Infinite Spirit Immanent hinder your consciousness of Infinite Spirit Transcendent—that is, external to you. The Lord Jesus, knowing that the human mind can only cognize in terms of human experience, gave us the name "Father" to help us mentally to personify Infinite Spirit Transcendent—that is, external to us. The Lord Jesus was intensely conscious of the Immanence of God, He called it "the Father in Him," but He also prayed definitely to the Father outside Him. St. Paul suggests that when we pray to undifferentiated Spirit, who is God outside us, we should use the familar [Transcriber's note: familiar?] affectionate title "Abba." The Lord Jesus is only recorded to have used this title once, at the moment of His deepest agony, and it is in suffering, physical or mental, that you most want it. It is a declaration of your estimate of God, and therefore important, because the ability of Divine Love to help and soothe you is conditioned by your appreciation of Him and your mental attitude of receptivity towards Himself. So in those times of deepest darkness, when He seems most absent, it is well to address Him by the tenderest name, and say, Abba, Father. "Abba, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me."
Let us consider the Collect. How it redeems our Liturgy from its leaven of Augustinianism! How it silences the obscurantists who accuse believers in universal restitution of going beyond the Church's teaching! Is this collect an authoritative formula of the Church, or is it not? "O God, whose never-failing Providence ordereth all things both in Heaven and on earth." In other words, a man's conscious mind may wrongly "devise his way," but "the Lord will direct his steps." Saturate your mind with that thought. Speak to the universal Spirit outside you and individualize Him. Say, "Abba, Father, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in Heaven and on earth, though my heart may be 'devising my way' wrongly and tortuously, I know Thou wilt 'direct my steps' into Thy purpose." In that attitude of mind you know that God will be in whatever happens to you. This gives you a great freedom in worshipping Infinite Spirit. You feel yourself emancipated from all traditional conceptions, and you feel in yourself the aspiration of Faber when he wrote:
"Oh, for freedom, for freedom in worshipping God,
For the mountain-top feeling of generous souls,
For the health, for the air, of the hearts deep and broad,
Where grace, not in rills, but in cataracts rolls!"
It is well to face the principle underlying these words of the collect: Abba, Father, "ordereth all things both in Heaven and on earth." Then, as His will is man's sanctification, the logical conclusion is an absolute ultimate universalism.
The absurdity of the paradox that man by wrongly "devising his way" can ultimately defeat the predestined purpose of Infinite Originating Mind is self-evident. Sophocles and Plato taught that omnipotent purpose governed the apparently accidental phenomena of life, and the writer of the book of Proverbs says plainly: "A man's heart may devise his way," but "the Lord will direct his steps." That is the inspired statement of the problem. Milton thought the problem insoluble, and describes the fallen angels exercising their minds on "fixed fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute," and being "in wandering mazes lost," I really think it only needs common sense. Infinite Mind expresses Himself in individual human life-centres that He may realize His own qualities and have millions of separate entities to love and, after education, to love Him. Is it conceivable that He would so overdo His creative work as to produce beings with a superior will to Himself capable of resisting Him through the endless ages, and putting His purpose to complete confusion? Is it not obvious that He would only give them enough will to train them? The will of man, such as it is, has its clearly-defined sphere. It is with his will he "deviseth his way," and that "devising his way" is the test of his life; but he can no more escape the ultimate purpose of Abba, Father, than a material substance on this planet can escape the law of gravitation. Obviously we have volition, we have the power to "devise our way." This must be so for two reasons. First, Originating Spirit desires to realize His highest qualities in man. Therefore, man must have liberty to withhold his co-operation or he would be only an automaton. Mechanical moral qualities would not be moral any more than your watch is moral. To receive and to distribute the nature of the Divine mind, not mechanism, but mental acquiescence is necessary. "The heavens declare the glory of God," but they do it mechanically, not morally. The solar system is a perfect work of mechanical creation, but the planet cannot leave its appointed orbit. Man can. If man obeyed God, only as a planet revolves in its orbit, he would "declare the glory of God," but he would not be a man; that is, he would not be a mental centre in which the Originating Mind could realize Itself. Then, again, without being free to disobey, we could never become moral beings. The antagonistic pressure of non-moral inclinations challenges our highest self, and as we make, within our limited sphere, correct choice between alternatives presented, we are built up Godward or the reverse. But inasmuch as Infinite Spirit and His vehicles are elementally inseverable, and "Abba, Father, ordereth all things," though wrong choice, and the selection of lower standards, will occasion pain and unrest, and delay the evolution of the Eternal purpose, and grieve the Spirit within us. Creative Spirit is Omnipotent, to defeat Him is impossible. He will ultimately, in ways of His own, "direct man's steps" without turning him into an automaton. When once you perceive that man in his inmost nature is the product of the Divine Mind, imaging forth an image of Itself, you are certain that no negation can finally frustrate the evolution of the Divine principle which is the inmost centre in us all. It must ultimately blend with the ocean of uncreated life whence it came, and whither from all Eternity it is predestined to return, for Infinite Mind has declared of His human children, "Ye shall be perfect." Of course, we must ourselves "open out the way." In that obligation lies the function of our Will and our responsibility for using the Keys of our own Kingdom of Heaven within.
As Browning expresses it so grandly in "Paracelsus":
"There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in.
... TO KNOW
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without."
Those who use the Keys of their Kingdom of Heaven know, and "open out the way." And for those who don't know, though they blunder terribly and suffer in the blundering, the Immanent Spirit "directs their steps." Do you say this implies fatalism, submission to impersonal destiny destructive of independence and self-reliance? The Gospel negatives the suggestion, and demonstrates that this "ordering all things" is not the despotic overrule of an irresistible law, but the immanent influence of an omnipotent Providence ceaselessly suggesting to the Soul of man. The Lord Jesus said: "I can do nothing of Myself, the Father in Me doeth the works." Was that fatalism? No, the Lord Jesus was consciously working out the thoughts, the ideas of the Immanent Spirit, and the Epistle says; "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God; and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." "Joint-heirs with Christ," that is, that the same spirit that was in perfection in the Christ is germinally in us, and though we may not yet be conscious of it, we are co-partners in the same splendid inheritance. Again, the prevalence of evil is to some a stumbling-block. They say God is all, and all is God, and God is Love, resistless, resourceful, perfect. He "ordereth all things both in Heaven and on earth," why, then, this discord between the heart that "deviseth the way" and the Lord who "directeth the steps"? why all this misunderstanding? Have we not learnt the answer? It is an interesting study in human psychology to note how thoughtful men will stumble over the answer. I am always repeating the axiom: Even God cannot make anything except by means of the process through which it becomes what it is. He is making moral beings. He can only make moral beings by means of the process through which a moral being becomes what he is, and that is, by having the opportunity of being non-moral. Therefore Infinite Spirit, who can never make a mistake, is responsible for the conditions under which what we call evil becomes possible, because by those conditions alone can men become moral beings, and these conditions underlie the three functioning centres in the complex mechanism of human beings.
That is the inner meaning of that metaphor about gathering grapes from thorns and figs from thistles in the Gospel. The thorn and the thistle, the grape and the fig, do not signify separate types of men. If so, the force of the metaphor would fail, and Necessitarian Calvinism would be established.