The Incarnate Purpose: Essays on the Spiritual Unity of Life

by G. H. Percival

The keynote of His reported teaching on prayer is that of union with the Will of God which, held by Him to be the true end of all attempted spiritual correspondence with God, becomes at once the foundation of and the justification for the Christian's hope of immortality.

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of the Father which is in heaven" (St Matt. vii. 21).

Not merely by calling upon the name of Christ, but by obeying His injunction to realise with Him our union with God as the Spirit of Life, and to make our wills one with the Divine Will, is the certainty of our spiritual inheritance revealed to us. For, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (St John xvii. 3).

We know the true God through form, through the expression of God, through the Word, learning from Christ to apprehend the Spirit of Life behind the Name or Manifested Life. "I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world.... I have given them the word ... thy word is truth" (St John xvii.).

The mental development of man gives him vantage-ground whence he can, if he will, obtain with a clearness, certainty, and completeness proportionate to the intellectual elevation he has attained, on the one side a retrospective view of his descent, and on the other a perspective discernment of his possible destiny. In other words, the whence of his being is more remotely traceable, and the whither of his evolution more definitely perceptible, according as his growing powers of thought and reason enable him to deduce from his present circumstances certain data bearing on the past history of his life. Knowledge of facts pertaining to his descent, by enlarging his consciousness of himself in his relation to the Whole of Life, offers an explanation of his present status that is at the same time a basis for the forecasting of his future possible fate, testifies to the continuity of his being, and brings his conception of immortality within reasonable bounds of justification.

But confirmation of his ideas of human immortality is dependent upon an ability to attain an intellectual vantage-ground high enough to permit him to trace to its source the history of his life, and to throw a previsionary understanding over the destined end of his evolutionary career, wherein the blending of his physical and spiritual immortality is gradually revealed to him. For in the same way that an examination of the evolution of prayer leads to the observation of a change from specific petition to spiritual acquiescence—a change which we may interpret as evidence of the development of the soul of man, and of the collective consciousness of Creation—so in the study of the life-history of mankind we reach a point whence we may behold the unbroken continuity of his physical evolution merging into that of spiritual evolution. That is to say, the physical immortality of mankind as a whole (the varied manifestation of the Spirit of Life through changing species) is crowned by individual consciousness of spiritual immortality, wherein the purpose of the incarnation of life finds fulfilment.

Pride of ancestry is so prominent a characteristic of nations, families, and individuals alike, that there is some justification for calling it a peculiarity of the human race. Men glory in the possession of records that tell of mighty deeds of valour wrought by their progenitors. Pride of kinship with heroes of past times breeds a sense of responsibility as an accompaniment to the inheritance of a noble name, urging the necessity of passing it on to posterity if not enriched, at least untarnished in its purity.

The idea of the immortality of the individual in the race, characterising the Hebrews as recorded in the Books of the Old Testament, is one outcome of this innate pride of birth, which here becomes, as in many other instances, incorporated as part foundation of a religious creed. Ancestor-worship is another such example. Only, be it noted, whereas this idea of the continuity of being finds its chief expression in recognising and revering the link between present and past generations of men, that of the Hebrew is built upon a conception of survival in their children. Both offer a remarkable testimony to the innate desires of men to contribute towards the continuity of humanity in the establishment of the individual's relationship to the Whole of Life. The Hebrew prays that his seed may multiply and cover the face of the earth, seeing therein the security of his own immortality. But the prayer of a devout Chinaman embodies rather his recognition of honour due to his dead ancestors than his desire to secure a prolific progeny. He is the child of the past, rather than, as the Hebrew, a child of expectancy.

With regard to the ideas of spiritual correspondence embodied in the theories of the transmigration and reincarnation of spirits, it would appear that such are an outcome of the same search after truth that found expression nineteen hundred years ago in the Christian doctrine of the spiritual immortality of all men, by reason of their derivative union with God as the Spirit of Life, and which are to-day confirmed and reincorporated in the scientific theories of the evolutionary descent of man and the unity of Nature.