The Incarnate Purpose: Essays on the Spiritual Unity of Life

by G. H. Percival

The rituals of religious creeds, regarded as combinations of symbols as infinite in variety and arrangement as the needs of men, may surely be designated as works of art if it be remembered that admiration and imitation of natural objects is mainly responsible for the conception of those several deities whose supposed supernatural authority forms the summit of each particular creed, and whose character stands not only as a summary of a people's appreciation of what is admirable in human conduct, but also as an expression of artistic feeling.

Growth of art is proportionate to intellectual development. That is to say, expression follows conception—a precept evidenced by the progressive works of men, which bear witness to their makers' increasing power to give utterance to what has hitherto been unutterable because incomprehensible. Thus considered, symbolism appears as the alphabet of truth, whereby men may read the history of past days, and write the record of their own achievements in the Book of Time. It is the link between seen and unseen, real and ideal, knowledge and mystery, finite and infinite. It is the seal of divinity set upon man who, made in the image of God—an artistic expression of the supreme Spirit of Life—is endowed with the attributes of his Creator, thereby enabled to manifest his creative energy in his own works of art and so to offer continual testimony to the indwelling and divine Spirit of his life. Thus the glory of the Creator is made visible to His creatures not only in the wonders of the natural world scientifically revealed in the course of intellectual development, but also in a correspondingly progressive spiritual revelation of essential truth behind the vesture of symbolic being.

Contemplative life is to men the reflection of their minds, Nature acting as the mirror of those mental visions which connect thought with spiritual perception. And since psychical ideals are regulated by intellectual limitations, understanding of spiritual truths must be proportionate to intellectual insight.

Jesus Christ offered no evidence of the essential truth of His spiritual convictions save by symbolism. Like all idealists, He sought by means of art to convey His ideas to the understanding of His disciples. This was done in three ways. He spoke in parables; His actions were dramatically contrived to illustrate His verbal teaching; and He ordained a ceremony, the performance of which should perpetuate the epitome of His doctrine. His view of life being the reflection of His spiritual ideals, and more or less dependent upon His intellectual perceptions, it was necessary, in order to make others see as He saw, to teach them to look at life from His point of view.

He saw the earth and the fulness thereof as the outer sign of the supreme Spirit of Life—Nature being the vesture of God, the cloak of spirit, making all creatures likenesses of God and manifestations of the divine will. God's works of art—natural phenomena—are variously interpreted, because men's spiritual perception is regulated by their intellectual capacity to understand what they perceive. In the same way the symbolic works of art employed by Christ to illustrate His teaching are variously interpreted according to men's ability to grasp the true inner meaning behind the vesture of parable and ritual. His symbolic teaching was interpreted literally by the materialists among His audiences. Only a few understood that He spoke in parables, and that His actions were intended to illustrate spiritual truths. Even His chosen disciples failed sometimes to distinguish between the outer signs of His doctrine and their inner significance. But Christ looked to the future for a wider acceptance of His gospel of love and its application to the whole scheme of life. He foresaw that by the spirit of truth inherent in all knowledge and emanating from the supreme Spirit of Life, His teaching would be tested and purged of whatever false interpretations idolatrous generations of men might place upon it. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Matt. xxi. 35). Truth is not bounded by the duration of men's finite term of earthly life.

For the sake, therefore, of unborn generations of men He desired to safeguard the perpetuation of His ideas of truth, so that they might carry their message to a future and more spiritually minded age. Would not a comprehensive symbol, a rite, carrying significance proportionate to the discriminating intelligence of those who should witness it, combat the danger of His doctrine becoming irretrievably corrupted? The foundation of His gospel of love lay in His sense of union between God as the supreme Spirit of Life and individual being—every form of life appearing to Him as a manifestation of God and a part of the Divine essence. The symbol He contrived must be closely associated with Himself and with this doctrine. It must be the likeness of His idea, and as a true work of art it must be capable of conveying its meaning to all able to recognise a spiritual truth beneath its outward form. It must be the epitome of all that was of vital importance in His teaching. It must be suited to all countries, and to all manner of men at all times. And in order to ensure its faithful perpetuation, it must be inaugurated as a personal memorial of Himself, to be celebrated through all ages as a symbol of the spiritual unity of life. What more fitting material for His purpose than the common daily food and drink of people of all classes? What could better illustrate the bond of union existing throughout Nature than a ceremony which should show how living creatures are sustained by the fruits of the earth, and which should emphasise the fact that animate and inanimate Nature is pervaded by the same Spirit of Life which works through a recurring cycle of birth and death for a perpetual manifestation of God, who is Life, the vital principle of being? What could better illustrate this Spirit of Life dwelling in men's bodies and making them temples of God than a rite which drew attention to the fact that nourishment of the body is necessary for the continuance of the manifestation of the Spirit? Bread, the staff of life, is in some form or other the daily food of all peoples. The tilling of the fields, the garnering of the grain, the grinding of the corn, bring men into intimate relation with Nature, and fittingly demonstrate that connection between natural laws and the lives of men fundamental to their existence and necessary for the maintenance of life. The vine served as the subject of some of Christ's most beautiful parables; it was an object of familiar interest to the people of Judæa; its cultivation was associated with the habits of their daily lives. Its fruit was thus another suitable symbol of intercommunion between the products of the earth and the bodies of men.

The accounts of the inauguration of the rite of communion given by St Matthew, St Mark, and St Luke agree in the statement that it occurred when Christ and His disciples met together to celebrate the Feast of the Passover, immediately before the betrayal by Judas. The occasion was clearly chosen by Christ as suitable in all respects for the institution of the ceremony He had conceived as adequately embodying a symbolic epitome of His doctrine. Throughout His mission He had rigorously observed the letter of the Jewish law, it being in accord with His office as a reformer of a distorted religious symbolism to utilise existing ritual in order to expatiate on its neglected spiritual significance. The keeping of the Passover with His twelve disciples could be made to signify very much. It would be the last Passover He would keep with them. Nay, more, it would be the last meal. When the Feast next occurred this present celebration would be remembered as the last occasion when He had broken bread with them. All that He had then said and done would be graven on their memories as the last words and deeds of their beloved Master before He was taken from them to undergo His trial and death. He would appeal, therefore, to their affectionate memory of Him in order to induce a faithful performance of the rite He was inaugurating. Though they might fail to grasp its full spiritual significance, their attachment to Him would ensure the carrying out of His command to fulfil it in memory of Him. If the faithful celebration of the rite were secured, there was made possible a fuller understanding of its meaning by future and more enlightened generations, who would subject His doctrine to the test of the Spirit of Truth, proceeding from the supreme Spirit of Life, and inherent in all knowledge.

St John gives no account of the institution of the rite at the time of the Passover, although he alone of the four Evangelists reports Christ's verbal teaching of the doctrine thus embodied on occasions other than its inauguration as a symbol of communion. In the sixth chapter of his gospel we find Christ reported as using the same symbolic phraseology with regard to His flesh and blood that He employed in His speech introducing the rite at the Last Supper. We read of the disciples and the Jews disputing Christ's words, interpreting them literally, and calling forth His explanation that "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." Notwithstanding the implied injunction that His doctrine of the unity of life was to be interpreted in a spiritual sense, we find that "from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him."

Since then, how many literal interpreters of Christ's symbolic utterances have turned aside from following after Him, and have been led away into idolatrous worship of the letter of His teaching to the neglect of its spiritual significance!

It would appear that the symbolic epitome of the doctrine of communion had been conceived by Christ some time before He introduced it as a rite on the occasion of the Last Supper; that the idea had already been verbally expounded by Him; and that its consolidation into the form eventually chosen was achieved as a dramatic finale to the whole of His previous teaching. If the fourth gospel be the work of John, the disciple whom Christ loved, it is significant that he alone reported the injunction that Christ's words were to be interpreted in a spiritual sense. The doctrine of the unity of life, incorporated in the rite of communion, permeates the whole of the gospel, and lends strength to the supposition that its writer had in some special way known personal intimacy with Christ. Union between God as the supreme Spirit of Life, and the Word as the expression of God, is the basis of its doctrinal construction; and the institution of the rite of communion, duly reported in the other gospels, is here shown to be the logical conclusion, in the form of a symbolic epitome, of the premisses adopted by the writer.