MAN CAN MOVE GOD 191 Stuart Mill, Du Bois Raymond, and other extreme Agnostics," say deliberately that the study of phenomena has not revealed that 'necessary connection' of events which alone would hinder the Divine Will, if there is a Divine Will, from disposing of them as men do in their own restricted sphere, and at the petition of their fellows." Browning's conception of God is on this wise “All changes at His instantaneous will, Whose maker is elsewhere at other work. Man's praise can forward it, man's prayer suspend." 1 Browning's noblest and most beautiful female character, Pompilia, dying in her convent bed, tells the long story of her prayers to God. Man helped her not, prelates hindered and rebuffed her. When all lights were quenched inside "God's glimmer came through the ruin-top❞— "God, who makes the storm desist, Can make an angry violent heart subside"; 2 and so she 66 Sent prayer like incense up To God the strong, God the beneficent."3 For our own good she thinks He makes the 1 Luria, Act V. 2 The Ring and the Book: "Pompilia," ll. 1101-2. 192 GOD INTENDS US TO PRAY need extreme, till He puts forth His might and saves, for prayers move God." True, the experience of a long life seldom fails to teach us that God often grants most by denying all, for we know not what to pray for as we ought. In praying for temporal blessings this is sufficiently obvious, it is less so with reference to spiritual gifts. "Some tell us that a man is to pray for spiritual benefits, not expecting that God will deign to notice him-but because it is a mode of influencing his own heart. What! can a man go, as if before God, and say, ‘O God, I ask Thee to subdue this or that evil desire, knowing that Thou hearest not, but hoping that by this conscious fiction I shall call my own soul into action ?'" 1 Browning answers such an objection in the poem entitled "Two Camels" in Ferishtah's Fancies. We are dependents upon God; not His equals. We are to desire joy and all other blessings and thank God for them, otherwise we abjure our creatureship, isolate ourselves, and own no more than ourselves give ourselves, yet God has undoubtedly implanted wants which only His power can meet and gratify. Browning rebukes this attitude of indifference, and tells us that God has contrived our necessities that He may supply them; the ear hungry for music, the eye before which He unfolds the rainbow. We 1 F. W. Newman, The Soul, p. 119. COMMUNION WITH GOD 193 could never know God, were knowledge all our faculty. He must for ever be ignored in that case, but "Love gains Him by first leap. Frankly accept the creatureship; ask good To love for." 1 It must be good for us to feel that "there is a holy will at the root of nature and destiny," to believe that God, in the Person of His Son, does not disdain to slake His thirst at the poorest love ever offered, that He suffers us to follow Him, and by prayer and praise reach the garment's hem.2 If we have not communion with God, then our loneliness is horrible. "That way madness lies," says one who knew well what life was if not cheered by converse with the Infinite. "We dream alone, we suffer alone, we die alone, we inhabit the last resting-place alone. But there is nothing to prevent us from opening our solitude to God. And so what was an austere monologue becomes dialogue, reluctance becomes docility, renunciation passes into peace, and the sense of painful defeat is lost in the sense of recovered liberty Tout est bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppe." 3 1 Ferishtah's Fancies: "A Pillar at Sebzevah." 2 Christmas Eve. 3 Amiel's Journal, Introduction, lxix., vol. i. CHAPTER XIII THE FOUR LAST THINGS: DEATH, JUDGMENT, HEAVEN, AND HELL IN all ages and in all places mankind has looked upon death as a passage to another state of existence. It is a common practice with Christian apologists to argue "that the very idea of immortality which the soul possesses, and its intense longing for its possession, prove the fact." St. Augustine says 2-"The soul can conceive the thought of immortality; therefore it is an immortal being, distinct from the body.” Too much stress, however, must not be laid upon this line of argument. The mind of man can conceive the thought of many things which are not true. One of the commonest ideas amongst savages is that all diseases are caused by evil spirits. This is the most ancient and universal theory of sickness. Many tribes of savages, and many races of men far removed from savagery, have held the belief that the 1 Hettinger, Natural Religion, p. 236. 2 C. Gentes, 81 seq. ANIMISM AND A FUTURE STATE 195 weapons and personal objects of the deceased warrior can be sent to accompany him in the life beyond the grave if they are "killed" by being broken and cast into the grave with the corpse. Nor is there any great uniformity amongst the notions of savage people as to the future state of the soul. Anthropologists trace such beliefs as exist to animism. The national religion of the Maori race is the worship of the Atua, or the personified Powers of Nature, which are looked upon by the Maori as their own primitive ancestors. They also addressed prayers to the spirits of dead ancestors of their own line of descent. These invocations were called karakia, and of course presuppose a belief in the existence of the soul after death.1 When the spirit leaves the body, it is supposed to go on its way northward till it arrives at two hills. The first is named Wai-hokimai, and is a place on which to lament with wailings and cuttings, a kind of purgatory; there the spirit strips off its clothes. Arriving at the other hill, called Wai-otioti, the spirit turns its back on the land of life, and goes on to the spirits' leap; it then reaches a river which it crosses. The name of the new-comer is shouted out. He is made welcome, and food is given to him; if he eats this he can never return to life.2 1 Shortland, Maori Religion and Mythology, p. 11. |