VII. THE SOLIDARITY OF THE RACE. The CONSCIOUS life consists of relations. human economy is like a great tree, the branches and leaves of which all springing from one root and nourished by the same sap spread themselves forth that they may feel the glow of the sunlight. Life is a continuous divine communication. While it appears broken into a vast number of disjointed fragments, there is but One Life. It is the material and false sense of life which gives it the aspect of independent units. The true life is a derived, shared, and related consciousness. Without any loss of individual responsibility, each one belongs to the race, which as a whole would be incomplete without him. Life to each seems finited and separated in himself. He thinks of his being as distinct, having its own basis, development, interests, and objects, all within a well-defined boundary. But life is so interwoven with life or rather is so truly a part of the One Life that an individual is like a bit of color in a great mosaic. The ultimate acme of humanity is universal brotherhood. This will not be attained by means of any new departure in sociology, perfected legislation, nor ideal political economy, but from a higher consciousness which will fuse and unify heart and character. The current of spiritual life flows from the centre outwards, carrying on its bosom rich offerings of loving service and ministry. The cold tide of selfishness, which ebbs from without inward, ends in a deadly vortex, because it has no compensating outflow. Individual man does not think for himself. He is taken up and borne along by great thought currents in which he is submerged. While he has a feeling of independence, he is as conditioned as a piece of drift-wood in the rapids of a mighty river. The great sweep of events and developments brings to the surface its successive exponents, but these seeming rulers of the movement are but its incidental expressions. Every great wave of human thought, whether social, political, or religious, bears upon its crest a few leaders upon whom the movement seems to depend; but in reality they are swept along in the prevailing current. In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries the temper of Europe was ripe for the Crusades, otherwise the instigators of those great incursions never could have inspired the vast waves of humanity, which, under the banner of the cross, surged eastward for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. Luther was but the instrumental articulation of the spirit of the ripening evolution of religious liberty of the Renaissance. In the fifteenth century Europe began to feel even though unconsciously the presence of a great western continent, and this blind apprehension became incarnate in Columbus. All great distinctive mental currents find special embodiment; therefore, personal leadership is the outcome rather than the inspiration of great transitions. The general character of great mental currents may be tempered and modified by commanding spirits if their main trend be respected; but oftener apparent leadership is an adroit utilization of existing cumulative forces. The world was just at that stage of religious progress that was fitted for Calvin when he appeared; and when its thought had advanced from stern "decrees towards "free grace" Wesley came upon the stage and gave it formal expression. It would be as easy to transplant the customs, manners, and modes of communication of Calvin's time into the present era as to find a fit place for his theological thought; and yet there are those who would patch up that musty doctrinal fabric for present use. The great ocean of human mind rises and falls, ebbs and flows, in huge waves and not in detached drops. Men are unconsciously bound together by a thousand ties, real though intangible. The thunder of the rhythmic march of the mass drowns the light footfalls of those who mark an independent time. Should we, then, be discouraged in our efforts for individual advancement? Does the deafening diapason of the multitude render all finer melody impracticable? No; for in a sense every man is the race. While in the lower realm of mind, personalities are mainly expressive, in the higher, individual attainment is race potentiality. The very foremost member in his progress towards the divine human ideal, represents a veritable race achievement. Our ideas of human brotherhood are often limited to the present generation; but it includes all who have gone before, and all who will come after. Without affirming the doctrine of metempsychosis, or re-incarnation, there is a sense in which we have lived before the present life. Forms of life come and go; but life in its essence, being in and of God, is without beginning or ending. We shall be spiritually intertwined and incarnated in those yet to come. The race, past, present, and future, is one organism. For it, as well as ourselves, we are thinking, willing, acting, and loving. The Scriptures teach that the fathers still live in the children, and that their transgressions, and still more their attainments, are shared by them, and science confirms the statement. Rightly understood, the seeming hard law of "the survival of the fittest is found to be beneficent, for the fittest are channels of bless |