Love, the Law of Life

Science has turned man’s soul inside out. It is the content of the soul observed externally. Just as the kitchen is the extension of man’s stomach, so science is the extension of the soul. Where is the man who does not love his own stomach? So with science—it is the content of the soul. Where is the man who does not love his own soul? I cannot understand how man can fear science. Those so-called failures of civilization,

Tolstoy and his followers, how ridiculous it is that so many among them have nervously feared science! ~ Science is not the enemy of the soul. It is the soul’s

\\ally. Fraudulent science is indeed the soul’s enemy, but genuine science is the ally of life and spirit.

I would penetrate still deeper. The inanimate world speaks to us through science. It tells of the evolution of the universe, of its fixed laws, and of immutable cosmic energy. Listening to its revelation, I am awed by the depth of cosmic love. The vital love which I have thought out in the depths of my small soul is explained cosmically by the light of science streaming in through the windows of the soul.

When science first taught the theory of evolution and the laws of universal gravitation, the indestructibility of matter, and the conservation of energy, insignificant men began thinking that God was no longer necessary and declared their belief in these fragmentary principles. They cast out the God of Life and declared their preference for the principles produced by the soul’s experience of external life. But is there any man who is able to establish the proofs for this absolute law of the indestructibility of all existence? Does anything other than absolute life behind the ego establish the truth of the principle?

These principles all—are they not the inner structure of life, externally, objectively, reflected? These entities which possess an absolute quality—are they not God? The ideas that God and law are disparate, that God and energy are disjunct, that indestructible matter can exist apart from indestructible force, 7. e., apart from God—such are the fantastic ideas ground out by the inconsequential, low-grade, unintelligent pseudo-scientists of the nineteenth century.

However, I cordially sympathize with them. They were men of divided selves, unable to find control, unity, of their personalities. But in the affection of the universe for humanity, which we know through science— by such knowledge as that the blood which courses through man’s arteries has something of the same quality as the water of the sea—man may feel the pulsations of the cosmos come beating into his soul.

The inanimate world is not meaninglessly ranged before man’s eyes: all creation stands beside the path of a marvelous evolution. While some entities approach man, others would flee from him.

But the totality isa stupendous drama. Quite apart from the idea of all being “for man,” after the utilitarian conception, they unite in composing avast drama.

When I peer at a test tube or look through a telescope, I feel as if I were entering the great theater of the universe. I seem to be transported from my lonely life upon the earth to the life of cosmic will. Science is in this sense a splendid religion. It does not guarantee direction of conduct through the will, but it gives relief through meanings and ideas. It is for this reason that the scientists of today are forsaking formal religion and becoming interested in natural science.

Indeed, for the thinking man of today natural science has a higher attraction than formal religion. It reveals the secrets of Nature. It loves those who love Nature. I do not consider it wicked for the natural scientist to remain shut up in his solitary cell. The inner temple of Nature may be even more mysterious than that of formal religion. The intelligent production of life, its direction, its deep emotion too, possess far more of the bread of life than does unregenerate formal religion.

I love science passionately; I delight in it. Science is the perfect gift of God. Itis the sole window through which we may know the good will which inanimate Nature holds for us. Science is in truth the religion of ideas.

But unfortunately science is lame. Ideas are not the totality of life. Ideas afford mankind only certain suggestions. They do not teach humanity how to reach its goal. They teach the existence of God, but do not impart the device for becoming divine.

We wish to become divine. Failing of this hope, science is useless. The reason why we study science arises from this high ambition. If we term the science up to the present the science of reason, then may we not call the new science the science of volition?

Science is the movement preparatory to our becoming divine. None of us may take the cowardly attitude of disregarding science. When mani starts thus from the controlled self, science is never a traitor to humanity. It is the perfect friend of life and love. I would beg of scientists that they look not only at the fragmentary sciences, but open their eyes to the vaster science.

I love science passionately. For me, science is that which most forcefully reveals the drama of inanimate Nature, and ushers me into the theater of the cosmos. I could not live a day without science.

My religion, while taking for its foundation the intuitive perception of the inner life, makes science, which looks in through the windows of the soul, its adornment. My religion has over it the dome of science. Science for me possesses the greatest function of perfect religion.

Science is my soul art, the art of truth which God reveals for me. Through science I know how powerfully I am loved by the Cosmic Will. For the new religion of life, science is intrinsically the supreme solace, the strongest love. Just in the degree that it is a great radiance, it becomes the potent love which shapes the content of the soul.

I do not flee from science. Into the laboratory, into the dissecting room, into the typhoon, into the flames would I rush. I believe in the new religion of life, and therefore I know that science is a perennially fresh contribution to the soul.

When man sets out from the indistinctly conscious world of mutual aid to the more conscious world of life based upon self-awakening, then comes the birth of a new love—the dynamic which creates all souls afresh, even those who have failed in the process of natural selection. Love is the new life of moral selection, directed not alone toward superior beings, but in particular toward the weak, lifting them by its tremendous efforts.

These efforts of love, however, are not due to the strength of the individual himself. In 1 John 4:7 are the words: ‘ Beloved, let us love one another, for love belongs to God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” “Everyone who loves,” i. €., every man who is impelled forward by a new conscience originating in an awakened inner perception, considers that he is loving others, but he learns that as a matter of fact his love is due, not to his own power, but to the effort of the God of Life, dynamic within his soul. The man who loves others is alone able to perceive Divinity dynamic within him. John further writes: “‘He who does not love, does not know God, for God is love. This is how the love of God has appeared for us, by God sending his only Son into the world, so that by him we might live.”!

The phrase “that... we might live’ means precisely that it is life, through love, that maintains the creative process. And “the love of God has appeared for us’’ conveys the same idea as ‘‘God proves his love for us” in Romans 5:8. That is, God’s love does not extend only to those whom it likes, but with the same effort which it employs in creating a new world, it draws even those who are estranged from God, those who seem worthless, within the sphere of His mercy. Thus arise the tolerance and the strength of love. The power which remoulds even criminals, who from the criterion of natural selection would be excluded, is neither mutual aid nor social justice, but is, absolutely, God’s new creation. Such is the signification of John’s words.

It is twenty years since I entered into the life of faith, yet even today I have not fathomed all the meaning there is in the words, ‘‘He who does not love, does not know God, for God is love.’”’ We are bound to wonder at John’s depth of experience and the profundity of his characterization of love.

I am convinced that Christianity’s victory over Europe was through the one word love. Before the coming of Christ the condition of Europe was one of extreme cruelty. It is no exaggeration to say that love was absolutely non-existent.

According to Wallace’s The World of Life, plant and animal life in the valleys of the Alps exhibits unparal- | leled struggle. This condition of struggle is not confined to plants and animals: it exists also among mankind. In these Alpine valleys the number of folk who have perished in vain is unimaginably great. It is even said that there were races living here who were more combative than the Cro-Magnon peoples. But the fighting folk perished in their struggles, and their conquerors likewise perished.

Wallace characterizes the Alpine valleys as the “melting pot of human struggle.”’ And it was in this crucible of conflicts that the World War boiled over. Not alone the races of men who dwelt here, but the gods of the Hun mythology as well were fighting gods, full of fierce cruelty.

But suddenly there appeared here Jesus’ religion of love. Maeterlinck says that in Europe the world’s horns grow—the two great horns, one the horn of France, and the other, Germany. For from the beginning of the world the Teutons and the Latins have continued their struggles. However, into this arena of struggle appeared the evangel of love, through Jesus— an event of deep import.

The evangel of love has its rebirth periodically in — Europe, whose history is a record of alternating love and conflict. The budding forth in Europe today, in this period following the Great War, of a world religious reconstruction is after all merely one octave in this rhythmic series. May it not be that Europe will continue thus in this repetition of peace and war and eventually fail of salvation and perish in its struggles?

In other periods, love and struggle came not only alternately, but simultaneously—on the one hand there was war, and on the other an emergence of love. There were, for example, at the time of the German Revolution cases like that of the army lieutenant who crawled out from the trenches, threw away all his possessions, and began proclaiming love and the Cross.

But, upon careful observation of present-day conditions in Europe, it is correct, I believe, to say that in these Alpine valleys genuine love is not yet born. The appearance of the love-order which developed in the spirit of Jesus is still far off. The hope for this love order is, of course, not wanting, even in Europe. As the love order approaches emergence, the birth pangs are upon them, and they are believing in this religion of love.

There are folk who claim that they do not understand Jesus’ teaching of love, and they therefore ask if exciting struggle is not to be preferred to feeble love. But Iam confident that when there is felt that inner power dynamic with life, men will surely find within their souls the fresh force of love.

Naturally, to the man who sees nothing but struggle, the emergence of the morality of love which is bestowed upon us is something incomprehensible. Here is where men need to remember the declaration of the New Testament thinkers that our recognition of God must be through love. The failure to know God is unquestionably due to the failure to love. It is not “the emergence of love and recognition,” as M. Kurata has it in the title of his popular book, but “the emergence of recognition through love.”’

Men find it difficult to understand this. They think that they can of themselves find God. The idea of recognizing God through love is a bit hard for them to grasp. They claim that John’s theory of love is one quite divorced from knowledge. In their view, knowledge is shrewd, but love is stupid.