Our outlook becomes well-nigh hopeless, when we make our tests of admission to the kingdom so much more exclusive than Christ himself made them.
III. ESSENTIAL LIKENESS UNDER VERY DIVERSE FORMS
It is particularly important for theology that this conviction of the like-mindedness of men has come from a growing power to discern essential likeness under very diverse forms; for this consideration bears not only on the problem of natural evil, but also on the problem of sin and of the progress of Christianity.
We have taken some curiously diverse paths to this understanding of diverse lives. Travels, history, biography, autobiographical fragments, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and—to no small degree—fiction, with its stories of out-of-the-way places and out-of-the-way peoples and of unfamiliar classes,—all have been thoroughfares for the social consciousness here.
We are slowly learning to see the likeness under the differences, and so to transcend the differences even between occidental and oriental. All this means much, not only for our practical missionary putting of the truth, but also for our final theological statements. They will inevitably grow simpler, larger, more universally human, and at the same time more deep and solid.
We are slowly learning, too, to discern a deep inner content of life under conditions that have no appeal for us, and to see like ideals and aspirations under very diverse forms of expression. Take, for example, these three or four sentences—a small part of that quoted by Professor James in his essay, On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,—from Stevenson's Lantern-Bearers: "It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid. It may be contended rather that a (somewhat minor) bard in almost every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor. Justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man's imagination. His life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud; there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it in which he dwells delighted."[63] And, later, on the side of ideals, Stevenson is quoted once again: "If I could show you these men and women all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls!"[64] And now, having quoted Howells and Stevenson as theological authorities, I shall be pardoned if, for a moment, I erect Kenneth Grahame's Golden Age into a "theological institute": "See," said my friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder, "how this strange thing, this love of ours, lives and shines out in the unlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields in early morning? Barren acres, all! But only stoop—catch the light thwartwise—and all is a silver network of gossamer! So the fairy filaments of this strange thing underrun and link together the whole world. Yet it is not the old imperious god of the fatal bow—ἐρως ἀνικατε μάχαν—not that—nor even the placid respectable στοργή—but something still unnamed, perhaps more mysterious, more divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one must stoop!"[65]
It means very much for the sanity of our outlook on life, and for any possible theodicy, that we can believe the heart of such a view as this for which Stevenson and Grahame are here contending. And what is all this attempt to get away from this "certain blindness in human beings," of which Professor James speaks, but a growing into one of the fixed habits of Jesus, what Phillips Brooks calls "his discovery of interest in people whom the world generally would have found most uninteresting?" "And this same habit," he adds, "passing over into his disciples, made the wide and democratic character of the new faith."[66]
IV. AS APPLIED TO THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY
It may probably be safely said that this steadily growing conviction of the social consciousness, of the essential likeness of all men, which is daily confirmed afresh, and the more confirmed the more careful the study, is not likely to take kindly to the idea—which comes into a part of Dr. McConnell's argument concerning immortality, in his interesting book, The Evolution of Immortality—that living creatures classed as men on physical grounds are not, therefore, to be so classed on psychical grounds.[67] The considerations and illustrations brought forward by Dr. McConnell, in connection with this proposition, I cannot think would seem at all conclusive to either the trained psychologist or sociologist. It is exactly the like-mindedness of men which the social consciousness affirms, and it has not come hastily to its conclusion. It will not quickly surrender that conclusion. There is an "evolution of immortality," and it has been age-long, but it is pre-human. The belief in immortality so far as it does not rest purely on the question of the moral quality of a given human life (where the hypothesis of "immortability" may properly enough come in) is grounded upon characteristics—like that of the possibility of absolutely indefinite progress[68]—which in sober scientific inquiry cannot safely be denied to any man, and must be denied to all creatures below man. In any case, the new theory of "immortability," so far as it is based upon the proposition here considered, has its battle to fight out with this established conviction of the social consciousness of the essential like-mindedness of all men.
There are various considerations, not all of them wholly creditable, which will lead many to turn a willing ear to this new prophesying; but, though it makes much of evolution, it seems to me to have the whole trend of the social evolution against it, and to give the lie to that patient sympathetic insight into the lives of other classes and peoples, which is one of the finest products of the ethical evolution of the race. If one is tempted to believe that a good large share of the human race are really brutes in human semblance,—and our selfishness and pride and impatience and unloving lack of insight and desire to dominate may naturally tempt in this direction,—let him read that chapter of Professor James to which reference has already been made, On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings, and its pendant, What Makes a Life Significant. It may help his theology. Let him recall the words of Phillips Brooks concerning this "strange hopelessness about the world, joined to a strong hope for themselves, which we see in many good religious people." "In their hearts they recognize indubitably that God is saving them, while the aspect of the world around them seems to show them that the world is going to perdition. This is a common enough condition of mind; but I think it may be surely said that it is not a good, nor can it be a permanent, condition. God has mercifully made us so that no man can constantly and purely believe in any great privilege for himself unless he believes in at least the possibility of the same privilege for other men."[69]