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Page 11
The first step in the Ascent of the Soul is the development of ability
to discriminate between right and wrong. The powers of the soul are
enlarged and vivified with the bodily growth, but whether there is any
necessary connection between the growth of the one and that of the
other, we know not. This alone is sure--clearer vision, with
ever-increasing distinctness, reveals the certainty that moral laws are
universal and unchangeable. The process of adjustment to the moral
order is partly voluntary and partly involuntary. It is hastened by the
hidden forces of vitality, and it may be hindered by its own choices. As
a human being who refuses to eat will starve, so a soul which turns away
from truth will starve. The law in one case is as inexorable as in the
other. This consciousness of the moral order is sometimes dim even in
mature years because neglect always deadens appreciation. Paul said that
the law is a schoolmaster leading to Christ. By that he intended to
teach that we must realize that we are under moral law before we can
know that its violation will result in a state of ruin needing
salvation. First that which is natural, then that which is spiritual.
The phrase "natural law in the spiritual world" means that the
consequences following right and wrong are as inevitable and essential
in the realm of spirit as in that of matter.
The progress of the soul is dependent on the realization that there is
a moral quality in thoughts, emotions, choices; that the consequences
following them grow out of them as flowers from seed, and that they
determine not only the character but the happiness and welfare of the
one exercising them.
The next step in the upward movement of the soul is the realization of
its freedom. It is possible for one to know that he is under law,
without at the same time appreciating that he is free to choose whether
he will obey. I may see a storm sweeping toward me and know that behind
it is resistless force, and know, also, that to step outside the track
of that storm is impossible; and it is conceivable that a soul may know
itself as able to think, feel, act, and, at the same time, be under the
dominion of forces before which it is powerless. The practical question,
therefore, for all in this human world is not, are there spiritual
laws? but, may we choose for ourselves whether we will obey or disobey
them? Until the soul knows itself to be free to choose, there will be no
deep feeling of obligation, without which there can be no motive
impelling toward the heights. Here also we walk in the dark. The genesis
of the consciousness of freedom has never been observed. DuBois-Reymond
has called it one of "the seven riddles of science." We are no nearer
the solution of the problem than were our fathers a thousand years ago.
But one thing at least we do know: He who believes himself to be a
puppet in the hands of unseen forces will never fight them. If freedom
is a fiction the universe is not only unmoral, but immoral. The final
argument for freedom is consciousness. I know I could have chosen
differently from what I did. But how do I know? The process cannot be
pushed farther back. Consciousness is ultimate and authoritative. But
what then shall be said of heredity? A child when first born is little
but a bundle of sensibilities. Its growth seems to be but the unfolding
of inherited tendencies. Every man is what his ancestors have made him
plus what he has absorbed from his environment. How can we say then that
any are free? That man who is surly, uncomfortable, ugly, as hard to
endure as a March wind, is but the extension of his father. When one
knows the elder it is difficult to do otherwise than pity the younger.
He is but living the tendencies which were born in him and which are an
inseparable part of his nature. He cannot be genial and urbane. Are not
some born moral cripples as others are born with physical deformities?
Are not some spiritually deaf, dumb, and blind from birth? It cannot be
doubted. We are all more or less what our fathers were, but our
surroundings do much to modify us. Many men seem to be driven on wings
of passion, as leaves by tornadoes; and yet we know that we are free,
and that all life and conduct, individual and social, must be ordered on
that hypothesis. Teach men that they are not free, and anarchy and chaos
will quickly follow. No freedom? Then there is no obligation. No one
feels that he ought to do what he cannot do, and no one will try to do
what he does not feel that he ought to do. If men are but machines,
moving only as the power is turned on, there is no moral quality in any
action. If we live in a moral world, whether we can understand it or
not, we must be free to choose for ourselves. The possibility of the
soul's expansion depends on its freedom. There is no right and no wrong,
no truth and no error, if it is a slave to the inheritance with which it
was born. What gives to the invitations of Jesus a quality so serious
and so solemn is the fact that they may be rejected. The power of
choice is the most sublime endowment which man possesses. When we have
learned to know ourselves as free a long step forward has been taken.
The soul grows by a right use of the power of choice.
How may it be adjusted to this knowledge? It will undoubtedly grow to
it, but the process will be slow. It may, however, be hastened by a use
of the experience of others. No man should be allowed to begin the
battle of life as ignorant as his father was. Each new soul should have
the benefit of the experience of all who have lived before. Children
should be taught by example and conversation, in the home and the
school, that the beginning of wisdom is a right use of the experience of
others. However this lesson may be learned, and however swift may be the
process of growth, the next step in the soul's progress, after its
realization that it is in a moral order, must be its adjustment to the
fact that it is a free agent and sovereign over its own choices.
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