1 Corinthians 2:11-12 For what man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knows no man… The consciousness of another is impenetrable. We cannot reach it; we cannot even conceive of it. But in our own is our existence; our existence and our personality are the same; and, therefore, we shrink from the extinction of our personality, because it implies the extinction of our existence. Christianity teaches, in a variety of ways, the doctrine of a strict spiritual personality. It is not the least remarkable characteristic of Christianity that, being of all religions the most social, it is likewise, of all religions, the most individualising. We shall look at this Christian doctrine, concerning the personality of life, in a variety of aspects. The spirit of the doctrine we take from the gospel; illustrations of it we shall seek everywhere. If we look into life, in itself as each of us finds it circumscribed in his individual consciousness, we become aware of a principle in our being by which we are separate from the universe, and separate from one another. We become aware that, by the power of this principle, we draw all the influences which act on us into our personality, and that, only as thus infused, do they constitute any portion of our inward life. It is by the power of this principle, which is, properly, myself, modifying all that is not myself, that I live, and that my life is independently my own. But some say that man has no inherent spirituality, no spontaneous energy, no sovereign capacity. Such say that man is never the master, but always the creature of circumstances. These are assertions to which no logic can be applied, and if a man, on consulting his own soul, is not convinced of their falsehood, there is no other method of conviction. No matter what may appear to be the external slavery, we still feel that we have a principle, an individuality of life, that is separate from our circumstances and above them. Take this feeling once away, and we are no longer rational, and we are no longer persons. We do not, certainly, deny the influence of circumstances. In a great degree, circumstances are the materials out of which the life is made; and the quality of the materials must, of course, influence more or less the character of the life. But the influence of circumstances on life does not loosen the inviolability of its interior consciousness. This doctrine of circumstances affords no aid even for the interpretation of that in life which may be interpreted; because for a true interpretation you should know all the circumstances that acted on the life, and you should know in what manner they acted. Bat who knows this of any one? Who knows it of one with whom he has been longest and nearest? Who can know the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him? Race, country, era, creed, institutions, family, education, social station, employment, friend, companions, these are but vague data when a soul is to be judged; and, be it only a judgment on the merest externals of character, such data afford, even for this, but uncertain inference. Perhaps things of which no one takes heed are the most important. A word heard in childhood, a kind or cruel look felt in youth, a tune, a picture, a prospect, a short visit, an accident, a casual acquaintance, these, and a thousand like, may be the chief constituents of many an impulse that begins a destiny. We behold the streams of individual life as they bubble out upon the surface, but we do not see the fountains whence they spring. Every life has combinations of experience, of which another has not an idea, or the means of forming an idea. Every life has treasures of which others know not, out of which, and often when least expected, it can bring things new and old. How is it that events, incidents, objects, changes, alike in outward semblance, enter into millions of minds, and in every one of them assimilate with a different individuality. How one man is a poet, where another man is a sot; how one man is in raptures, where another is asleep; how one man is improved, where another is corrupted. Thus, whatever the visible appearances, within them there is a central self, in which the essence of the man abides. Your life is yours, it is not mine. My life is mine and not another's. Human faculties are common, but that which converges these faculties into my identity, separates me from every other man. That other man cannot think my thoughts, he cannot speak my words, he cannot do my works. He cannot have my sins, I cannot have his virtues. Each must feel, therefore, that his life must be his own. 1. Life is first unfolded through outward nature. In that rudest state of humanity, which seems almost instinctive, we might imagine individuality as nearly impossible, but so it is not; and monotonous as the ideas and experience may appear, they become incorporated with a distinct life, in the personality of each soul. But does not outward nature afford manifest evidence that it is intended to unfold life through higher feelings than sensation? Is there no other purpose for sight than discernment of our position and our way? Is there no other purpose for hearing than the simple perception of sound? Why are there flowers in the field? Why are blossoms on the trees? Why is the rainbow painted with hues so inimitable? Or, why, also, do the waves make music with the shore? These are not necessary to feed, or lodge, or clothe us; they are not necessary to mere labour or mere intercourse. They afford nutriment to the inherent life of rational creatures. The life is indeed but narrowly unfolded in which the sense of beauty in outward nature is dull or wanting. Not to mark the seasons, except by the profit or the loss they bring; to think of days and nights as mere alternations of toil and sleep; to discern in the river only its adaptation for factories; to be blind, and deaf, and callous, to all but the hardest uses of creation, is to leave out of conscious being whatever gives the universe its most vital reality. Such a life may be called a prudent life, and, for its object, it may be an eminently successful life; but its object is paltry, and its success on the level of its object. Not that men are expected to be poets or artists, or to have the peculiar temperaments that characterise poets or artists. Not that men are expected to talk of their experience of enjoyment in nature, or to affect it if they have it not. I merely insist that the sensibilities be open to every influence of natural beauty; and I hold that if these sensibilities belong not to the individual constitution, there is a deficit in it. If the world has deadened them, the world has done the being a serious injury; if education or religious culture has not been such as to incite them, each has failed in one of the most vital offices of a true spiritual culture. Outward nature, also, unfolds life by exercising thought; not thought which is busied only about wants, but thought which delights to seek the end of creation's laws and mysteries. But life is unfolded in its loftiest capacities when everywhere in outward nature the soul is conscious of God's pervading presence; when it sees the goodness of God in all that is lovely, and the wisdom of God in all that is true. Every man, whether he knows it or not, is an incarnation of the immortal; and through his immortality all things that connect themselves with his soul are immortal. In every loving soul, therefore, according to the measure of its power, God re-constructs the heavens and the earth. 2. The individual being of man is also unfolded by society. It is born into society, and by society it lives. Existing at first in passive and unconscious instincts, it finds protection in the care of intelligent affections. The home, therefore, is the first circle within which personality opens, and it is always the nearest. Beyond this, the individual is surrounded with circumstances more complex. He is cast among persons whose wills are not only different from his own, but constantly antagonistic to it. And thus in society, as in nature, the unfolding of his being will be by resistance as well as by affinity. The most self-complete personality can have no development but by means of society. Intellect works by means of society. Thinkers the most abstract have not all their materials of reflection in themselves. The studies that belong purely to the mind as well as those that belong to matter, and to the active relations of life, require observation, comparison, sagacity, variety of acquisition, and experience. No man can be a thinker by mere self-contemplation. He might as well expect to become a physiognomist by always gazing in a mirror, or to become a geographer by measuring the dimensions of his chamber. A man is revealed even to himself by the action on him of external things, and of other minds. Imagination works by means of society. For society it builds and sculptures, paints, forms its concords of sweet sounds, and puts its dreams into melody and measure. But for society, virtue could neither have existence nor a name. Society, by its occupations and injunctions, by the contact in which it places will to will, by its excitements and its sympathies, elicits the power of the moral nature: society it is that trains this power, tries it, strengthens it, matures it; is the arena of its contest, is the field of its victories. But if in society the moral nature has its contests, in society also it has its charities. But while society, whether in calm or conflict, unfolds life, to this its agency should he bounded. It should not be allowed to absorb the individual life, or to crush it. With the strength, the freedom, the integrity of thought and conscience; with honest and unoffending idiosyncrasies, it has no claim to interfere. Men in our age live gregariously; and if the aggregation were for exertion and for work, this might be a benefit; but men think, men feel conventionally, and this is an evil. It enfeebles, it impoverishes the life; it depresses, nay, it denounces originality, it takes away all stimulus to meditation, reflection, or any strong mental effort. I do not impeach the value of public opinion, but I do not bow to it as an authority, nor accept it as a guide. Life in our age is too much in the mass for any thorough spiritual culture; and life is too much in the outward for any intensity of individual character. If those who use efforts for others, and use them seriously, would first use them to the utmost on their own spirits, society would advance more quickly towards regeneration. There is a mawkish tendency in some to charge their failings on this or that cause out of themselves. They were tempted, the evil was placed in their way, and they could neither pass by it nor bound over it. This is a cowardly spirit which, after all, absolves not from the transgression, while it pulls down the soul into the deepest pit of degradation. It is just as far from genuine repentance and humility as it is from honesty and heroism. When we judge others we must make every merciful allowance; but we must not teach themselves to do so; nor must we do so when we judge ourselves. I have said that we should hold every man's personality sacred, as well as our own, and I repeat it. Why should I wish to compel any man, if such were possible, to live my life, think my thoughts, accept my opinions, believe my creed, worship at my altar. If such desire were not utterly foolish, would it not be the climax of presumption? Some one may object that the personality which I defend is an obstinate egotism. Not at all. Nor is it combative or exacting, but charitable and liberal. The absence of a true individuality produces many of the gloomiest evils with which society is deformed. Why else do people consider the meat as more than the life, and the raiment more than the body? Why else do they so esteem that which is not their being, and so little that which is? Why else do people ape the talents of others, and neglect those which are their own? Why do they so abortively attempt the work they cannot do, and overlook the work they can? Let a man be satisfied to be himself, and he will not be dissatisfied because he is not another. He will not, then, be hostile to that other for being what he is; nay, he will rejoice in all by which that other is ennobled; he will lament for all by which he is degraded. For a man, therefore, to be himself, fully, honestly, completely, does not circumscribe his communion, it makes it wider. But a man should not be content to be only roughly himself. A man ought to labour to beautify and harmonise in his interior personality; and if that be done, there will be no confusion in his exterior relationships. And what a glorious work is this! If the sculptor spends years in toil to shape hard marble into grace, and then dies contented, what should not a man be willing to bear and do, when it is a deathless spirit that he forms to immortal loveliness? After all, there is much of one's life that is not unfolded; much that remains uncommunicated, or that is incommunicable. The very medium, language, by which spirit holds converse with spirit, is inadequate to transmit the plainest thought as it is in the mind of the speaker. Language is not representative, but suggestive, and no merely spiritual idea is exactly the same in any two minds. How much of life passes within us, that we make no attempt to impart, that we have no opportunity to impart. If we find such to be our ordinary experience in life, what shall we say of its more solemn passages? Can any man, and let him be of surpassing eloquence, communicate an absorbing thought, and the interest with which it fills him? No; we try in vain to express an overflowing joy; as vainly go we attempt to put into utterance a deeply-seated grief. Even bodily pain we cannot make the most sympathising understand. And then death — death always in shadow, always in silence, always absolute in isolation! Who, then, can know the things of a man save the spirit of a man which is in him? What misgivings, what memories, what darkening fears, what dawning hopes, may then agitate the breast, and none can know, and none can share them! We shall not seek to pierce the mystery. These solemn isolations we ought not to forget; they must, sooner or later, come to us all, and it is but common prudence to gather strength to meet them. The view that I have given in this discourse of life, some, I doubt not, will consider lonely. A great part of life must indeed be lonely. In a pure and reflective loneliness there is strength, and there is depth in it. There is great enrichment in it. To get at the meanings and mysteries of things we must converse with them alone. So the thinker is lonely; the poet is lonely; the hero is lonely; the saint is lonely; the martyr is lonely. Social affection has, indeed, great beauty; public spirit much worth: energetic talents have abundant utility; but it is by habits of independent and solitary meditation that they are matured, deepened, and consolidated. (H. Giles.) Parallel Verses KJV: For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. |
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