Kitabı oku: «The Arena. Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891», sayfa 7
Each other portion of the prayer of prayers is seen to have a correspondingly deep significance, when carefully analyzed, although formulated as an object lesson in our spiritual kindergarten, the church. The name of God we hallow, but not as did the ancient Israelites, by refusing even to mention the sacredly incommunicable Yahweh. For we have learned that the right name is what expresses the nature of that which is named. So that the only way in which we can reverence the name of God or Christ is by the consecration of our time and talent to the expression of all the God-like, Christ-like qualities with which, as human beings, we are gifted.
What foolishness, if not blasphemy, it would be for us to ask that the will of God should be obeyed in the world about us, when His laws of gravitation and chemical affinity, crystallization and cell-growth, rule supremely in each of earth’s kingdoms. But the constant aspiration of our hearts should be that the elements of earthiness within us, that militate against the expression of our highest ideals, shall hear and heed a juster rule than that of selfishness. For no outward act of legislation can usher in heaven’s kingdom on the earth, in human institutions, until many individuals have by its inward presence been guided and illumined.
For a sufficiency of material food from day to day, we rightly ask by the proper use of each faculty and member God has given us, to compel the earth to yield up its resources for our sustenance, which it would do in ample abundance for all, were it not for the inordinate greed and lust, or the gross lethargy, of that many-phased, still unhumanized beast that man has to conquer in himself. But happy is he who hungers for the manna of law and the bread of truth, whose prayer is a sincere desire to be so fed thereon that there shall be such strength in the muscles of his soul as shall make of him a power for good to all with whom he comes in contact.
As to our enemies, we can no longer cherish feelings of resentment toward anyone, however they may misconstrue our purest motive, or malign our best intent. We see that every one must show, when tested, the exact degree of growth he has attained. Hence, the slander and persecution, the “all manner of evil” falsely arrayed against us, we apprehend as the necessary means to determine our fidelity to the truth to which we have pledged allegiance, and to prove that what is of good cannot come to naught though all the powers of earth and hell be set against it. To forgive, aphiemi, is to cause advancement, to bear away burdens. Thus we see it as an axiom that only as we aid the weak, instruct the ignorant, develop the undeveloped, can we receive in turn what we most need to carry us farther forward on the upward path.
Lead us not into temptation, is what we silently say when our thought and action show that we have well learned the lessons that were for us in past trial and tribulation, and so order our course that the leading of His laws, by which alone God ever guides, brings to us joy instead of pain. Then, whatsoever may betide, as men count weal or woe, we see the gold pass from the fire freed from its base alloy. Then all the prayer is answered as with the eye of the prophet to whom the future is as now, we see the soul delivered from, born out of evil, poneros, which well represents the six days or epochs of labor, strife, and friction, of gestation in materiality, that precede and prepare the way for the Sabbath day to dawn.
The word “amen” is a Hebrew term for faith, which it defines as a firm prop or support, a foundation that abides. It pictures to us faith, not as emotion or credulity, nor the mere belief in, or acceptance of, some formulated creed; but as that clear assurance of what the present will produce or what the future has in store, which can only come as we perceive how God, by laws immutable, has ruled throughout the past. And faithful prayer is oneness of the will of man with that of God, through knowledge of His laws and glad obedience thereto. Thus, this word, as a symbol, stands for that which is the first and last of all true prayer.
The works of Jesus, like his words, were all of a symbolic character, in that each so-called miracle foreshadowed a result to be realized as a common heritage of men through the age-lasting evolution of the same intelligence that then produced the transient tokens of its presence. In the New Testament there are four words used, in the original Greek, which have been translated as descriptive of miraculous occurrences.
Their basic meaning is as follows: 1, dunamis, power, energy, a faculty or ability to do; 2, ergon, a work, an arrangement in order, with purpose and skill; 3, teras, to turn, to resolve, to excite wonder or fear; 4, semeion, the word most frequently employed, indicates a sign, mark, or token by which a thing is shown, something used to represent something else. Our word “miracle” is often and erroneously used for a phenomenon supposed to have occurred outside the realm of law. Yet, in the strictest sense, the bursting of a blade of grass from out the ground, the conception and birth of any form of life, are as stupendous miracles, marks of creative power, as the mind of man can ever contemplate.
The wise and great in any department of progress have always towered like gods above their fellowmen. The natural product of their lives has been a constant miracle to those about them. In spiritualizing the story of the prodigies performed by Jesus, we would not question the psychic power, transforming virtue of such an one as he, who was fitted to convey a re-creative influence to the world. But we would wish to show how far those phenomenal evidences of power and intelligence transcended the domain of mediumistic wonder-working or spiritistic occultism. This is easily accomplished as we continue to apply the same principle of interpretation that has already shown us that the supposed miraculous conception and birth of the Christ was but a consummation of the plan, and in obedience to the same laws by which the heavens were made, the earth begotten and born, mineral and vegetable kingdoms formed and sustained, animal life brought forth and evolved, and, finally, man progressively created in the image, according to the likeness of his God. Because the same spiritual nature that the typical man so perfectly embodied has been begotten in our souls and is seeking to express itself along the lines he pointed out, the truth, of which his so-called miracles were illustrative and prophetical, is made apparent. His walking on the sea of Galilee, or bidding its tempestuous waves be still, was not so marvelous a proof of power as has been the advancement of the principle he represented upon the seething ocean of humanity, causing the tumultuous tides of lust and passion, sin and ignorance to subside. The literal narrative of the miraculous draught of fishes vouchsafed to the disciples affords but a feeble symbol of the abundant life that has come to men and nations who have cast their nets, put forth their efforts, in obedience to the injunctions of the Law-giver of the New Testament.
The wonder of the marriage-feast is re-performed as Christ attends the wedding of our souls to truth, that union which cannot by man be put asunder. As this takes place the water turns to wine; that within our mental make-up which before was unformed, unstable, in a condition of flux and change, becomes vivified with creative power, and bubbles and sparkles with newness of life and inspiration, refreshing and stimulating the soul with higher emotions and desires, imparting to the very cells and tissues of the body a reconstructive tendency to health.
By the breaking of the bread of life, the hidden manna of the Word, the reality behind appearance, the multitude of faculties is fed and that unseen assembly nourished whose lives are linked with ours at this Lord’s Supper of the soul. Blinded perceptions are restored to sight from day to day, and gifted with a constantly enlarging field of vision in the realm of truth and law. The understanding that was deaf vibrates with joy in response to the call of a salvatory science. The antitypes of palsied arm and crippled foot, which are the lack of power to do and of ability to advance in a higher, mental life, are healed by the transforming touch that makes its impress on the soul when first made conscious, that by its own free will its highest ideals are to become realities. Even those who have been so earth-bound and selfish as to be lifeless, cold, and dead to the knowledge of God and love to the neighbor are commencing to arise in answer to the spirit of the approaching altruistic age. Accompanying this present resurrection, the veil is being rent that for so long has intervened between this life and the next. And although no outward cloud is sundered for a personal Messiah to descend to rule as temporal prince, the denser fogs of a gross materialism are parting fast before the rising glory of that day whose dawn we see afar on the horizon. For the signs are many and are strikingly apparent that those splendid souls, the wisely great ones of the past, the saviors and educators of the race, are to co-operate with us in the formation of that kingdom and republic which their prophetic vision saw and fervent words foretold. Then, as a spiritual reality, will we understand the truth symbolized by the doctrines of the church concerning the resurrection of the dead and communion with the saints, as the first fruits of them that slept appear to us. And what is now prefigured by the phenomena and personations of modern spiritualism, will then become a blessed fact as our missing loved ones labor with us for our and their redemption and the good of all mankind. Had they been permitted, or were they able, to return for any other purpose, the result would be the furtherance of selfishness and materiality. Spiritualism, with its convincing tests of an unseen intelligence, and its crude communications, sustains the same relation to the angelic intercourse which it simulates, that the symbolic conversion, baptism, and bread and wine of the church bear to the organic experiences of a true life. They are all, alike, signs and forms, shadows cast before the substance drawing nigh, the Christ that is to be.
Our present space will not permit us now to even touch upon, much less delineate, the all-important principles symbolized by the recorded martyrdom of Jesus, and the doctrine of atonement. But they, and all the eschatology of the Gospels, and with which the apocalyptic book of riddles is filled, will be readily unravelled as we still farther trace the working of those laws already seen, that are not restricted in their operation by relations of time and space, but govern through the ages the travail of the embodied or disembodied soul. Suffice it then to say that hell and heaven are not the names of places to which the wicked or the good are called upon to go. Sheol, Gehenna, Hades, Tartarus, and the opposite Kingdom of God, are terms expressing symbolically the experiences and conditions of undeveloped and developed souls here as well as hereafter.
THE TRUE POLITICS FOR PROHIBITION AND LABOR
BY EDWIN C. PIERCE
A vast body of American citizens have a deep concern in the temperance cause, and are bound in conscience to do their utmost to give early success to the movement for the legal suppression of the drinking saloon, which they rightly regard as the fountain of intemperance. Some of them are rich and some of them are poor. Some of them are conservative and some of them of radical tendency as to questions concerning wealth. They belong to the industrious, intelligent, moral, and patriotic reserves of the country. With them in sympathy is the motherhood of America. I think it is only fair to say, and that all social reformers should see, that the radical prohibition constituency—dispersed now in several political parties—is larger than the following commanded by any other single reform idea, and it is distinguished by exceptional persistency. There is also a large and increasing body of American citizens absorbed in what is called the labor question. Some of them are rich and some of them are poor. Some of them are also on the side of prohibition and some of them are hostile or indifferent.
The labor question is the question of social justice, and no question can be higher than that. Stated in other terms, the labor question is the question of how to approximate more nearly to an equal distribution of wealth, not so much of the wealth already amassed by society as of the wealth that is to be produced by labor in the future. Now, while there are very few people who think that entire equality of fortune in this world is either possible or desirable; every free democracy will wish to work towards equality of social condition, looking forward to a glorious time when uninvited poverty shall be outgrown, when manhood shall be of more social weight than wealth.
There is as much high moral sentiment put into the labor question to-day, as ever was put into any crusade against any form of oppression or evil.
If, however, only the radicals with fixed convictions and unflagging zeal were counted, neither of these humane causes would have a majority of American voters. Deeply interested in both, I frankly confess that I do not believe either prohibition or labor can win alone. As we study our political history, we find that political issues are not carried except in combination, and as part of the policy of a political party to the cohesion and the power of which many issues and many forces contribute. We are not under the Swiss referendum; we are a representative republic, with two legislative chambers, each constituted in a peculiar way. Our national life is complex. To hold in party association the six millions or more of American men whose support, continued for years, is necessary to carry a great measure, requires the proper connection with the past, and trenchant dealing with the present which is full of imperious demands. Abraham Lincoln was not borne into the presidency in 1860 solely by the strength of the anti-slavery issue, but found necessary support in Pennsylvania from the committal of the Republicans to the protective principle, while in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and the West generally, he was greatly aided by the homestead issue. Several distinct issues have usually been involved in our presidential elections. Exceptions are presented by the victories of sentiment or tendency under the extraordinary leadership of Jefferson in 1800, and in the extraordinary demonstration for General Jackson and Democracy in 1828.
Successful parties in the United States, as in England, have generic rather than specific names. Federalist, Democratic-Republican, Whig, Democratic, and Republican; all represent popular triumphs and administrations of the government. Anti-Masonic, Liberty, American, Free Soil, Greenback, Prohibition, Labor,—these party names represent no partisan victories. In the Cabinet of the first President of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State, and Alexander Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury. To each of them Washington submitted the question whether Congress had power to incorporate a bank. Jefferson, believing popular liberty safe only in a strict construction of the Constitution, denied the power to create a bank because no such power is expressed, or is strictly necessary to the exercise of any power expressly granted. Hamilton, believing that a liberal construction of the Constitution was essential to the development of America, answered that Congress had the power, that the power was incidental to the national character of the government. He construed the grant of “necessary” powers in these words: “It is a common mode of expression to say that it was necessary for a government or a person to do this or that thing, when nothing more is intended or understood than that interests of the government or person require or may be promoted by the doing of this or that thing. The imagination can be at no loss for exemplifications on the use of the word in this sense. And it is the true one, in which it is to be understood as used in the Constitution.” The Supreme Court, quoting these very words with approval, has adopted Hamilton’s construction. With the writing of those two opinions in the Cabinet of Washington, the enduring lines of party division in America were drawn. There ought to be early recognition of the fact, that in case a new party of the people shall be formed, a party determined upon reform of existing abuses and oppressions, upon the suppression of the liquor traffic as we know it, upon the overthrow of every semblance of plutocracy, upon opening to every child of the American democracy an equality of opportunity as yet unknown, resort must be had to those broad, liberal, and constructive constitutional doctrines which the existing Democratic party steadily opposes, and which the Republican party does not sufficiently apply for the benefit of the masses. It is the duty and opportunity of the prohibitionists to make such a party. A party going to Thomas Jefferson for a baptism of Democratic feeling, and content with no sprinkling, and to the school of Hamilton for its constitutionalism, can supplant the Republicans, and only such a party can meet the case of labor. The woollen manufacturers of Massachusetts have just remonstrated against further reduction of the hours of labor unless the reduction be uniform in all the manufacturing States, and they made the significant suggestion that Congress has power to establish uniform hours of labor. Congress does have that power as a part of the power to regulate commerce. The eight-hour day can only come in this country by act of Congress, and the construction that sustains such an act sustains national regulation of the liquor traffic. The general welfare of the Union is involved in each case. American industry is a unit so far as the interests of American homes require the rule of uniformity, and the home life of America is a unit so far as it needs that protection which, in order to be complete, must come from the national authority. I venture to suggest that one thing that has hindered the cementing of the alliance between labor and prohibition, is the tendency of the prohibitionists while recognizing the importance of labor problems to insist that prohibition must come first. The labor men will never go into any party that puts it quite in that way. Is it not sufficient to claim urgency for the prohibition issue, to say that no work should take precedence of prohibition in party performance? I think the time has come when this issue can be taken up by a political party and I recommend a party that shall declare for prohibition with the same emphasis with which the Republican party declared for protection in 1884 and in 1888. I think, however, that the party that carries a bill for national control of the manufacture and traffic in liquors through Congress, to be signed by a President chosen with a knowledge of his prohibition principles, will have to have a good running mate for its prohibition issue. Yet I believe the prohibition plank in the platform of the great progressive party, lineally descending, would be the centre of attraction and of repulsion. I grant that. But the balance will be so kept that multitudes who take, at first at least, a livelier interest in some other measure which also is promoted by party ascendancy, will vote for partisan prohibition because it is the policy of the party of human progress with which they are keeping step.
I refrain from going at length into a discussion of labor issues. Shall prohibitionists come out for State Socialism, shall they pledge themselves to make that economic nationalism which is now only a prophecy and an ideal, a political fact when they came into administration? No political party should do this. But the word socialism is a word of good meaning. It means fraternity, industry upon a Christian basis. In the discussion that impends in this country, concerning the rights and the wrongs of the wage-earners, and concerning the demands for relief, constantly growing louder, of the agricultural producing classes, the question arises in the mind at the outset, whether our policy, state and national, shall be based upon the laissez faire doctrine, the “let alone” principle; or upon the principle of the intervention of public opinion through the agency of government to effect the ends of justice and of aid to the weaker classes whether by regulative laws, or by the assumption by the public (through local, state, or national government, as the nature of the case may require,) of such business or industrial enterprises as are natural monopolies or can be best performed by the people collectively. I say this question arises in the mind at the outset, but after all, it is, I think, not a question requiring much argument in this day of the world; because, although there are some men more busy with their own daily duties than attentive to the world’s progress who are apt, from time to time, to raise this question, appealing in favor of the “let alone” principle, it is really a question already decided. The people both in England and in America have grown quite away from laissez faire doctrine, the tendency is strong and constantly increasing in the direction of increase of governmental intervention to redress the social balance. I believe it is impossible that this tendency should be arrested. I believe it would not be in the interest of humanity to arrest it. There is a vast field for individualism, and in that field it is eminently useful. There is a field also for society, for the State. The needs of the people in this country to-day are such, the thought of the masses is advancing so rapidly in the direction indicated that no political party can long hold power that does not accept the socialistic tendency and prudently experiment in that direction. There is, in point of fact, no other possible direction in which society can move, and it cannot stand still. From the necessity for some intervention in aid of the weaker classes against the operation of the laws of demand and supply, it follows that “no class legislation” is not a good cry for a labor party.
The land question should have a distinct recognition as a true reform issue, and while committal to the policy signified by the term single tax, in its entirety, should be avoided, land speculation and monopoly should be condemned as a monstrous evil, and against that evil should be directed such special taxation of land values as will check and ultimately destroy it, without too rudely disturbing existing values.
Government ownership of railroads, telegraphs, and of the anthracite coal mines, should be favored.
Gas, electric lights, and street railroads should be municipalized.
Legislation, reducing gradually and prudently the hours of labor, should be given urgency.
National aid to education, unwisely neglected by the Republicans, is strong with labor, and will be stronger the more it is discussed. Prohibitionists should advocate universal suffrage with universal education.
Educational tests for the suffrage offer too easy a repose for the conservatism of wealth, and to advocate them is to touch the wrong note, that of distrust rather than trust in the masses. Stand with Jefferson for Democracy and education, not for education first and the ballot afterwards. Go to the magnificent oration of Wendell Phillips, “The Scholar in a Republic,” for the courage and wisdom to say with that friend of prohibition and labor, that “crime and ignorance have the same right to vote that virtue has…. The right to choose your governor rests on precisely the same foundation as the right to choose your religion.” “Thank God for His method of taking bonds of wealth and culture to share all their blessings with the humblest soul He gives to their keeping.” “Universal suffrage,—God’s church, God’s school, God’s method of gently binding men into commonwealths in order that they may at last melt into brothers.” All attempts to identify prohibition or labor with free trade should be abandoned.
No large extension of our market for manufactures in Spanish America or in other foreign countries is possible, if we are to reduce hours of labor, abolish child labor, call married women from factory to home, and raise wages in America, regardless of the effect upon the cost of production. Labor reform, the socialistic tendency require a rigid adherence to the protective system. But reliance upon the home market will not only make labor legislation possible, but will be economic wisdom as well, for by education, by suppressing the saloon, by shortening hours, by increasing wages, we can indefinitely increase the capacity of our own people to consume. The McKinley tariff will work out its own salvation; for the friends of labor or prohibition to attack it is a fatal mistake. Prohibition, labor reform, and protection are natural allies, and in the party of the future will be united. Whoever wishes to form a new party for prohibition and for labor, will do well to appropriate rather than discard the historic Republican issues. Let the reformers catch the Republicans bathing and steal their clothes, albeit they already have some garments of their own which are very good. If a Democrat, for the sake of temperance or labor, or any issue, will leave the Democratic party, he has outgrown the constitutional doctrines of that party, and will not cling to its economic theories. If he brings a traditional prejudice in favor of government by the masses rather than by classes, he brings what is needed. When the period of political readjustment, not yet surely begun, is over, the Republican party will have been supplanted by a party inheriting many distinguishing articles of its creed; but the Democratic party will remain as the party of obstruction, claiming descent from Jefferson but not the true representative of the eternal truths with which his name is associated. Around the anti-national idea the ultra-conservatives, the cormorants of society, the panderers to vice, the white-liners of the South will rally. The true Democrats, with a unanimity hitherto unknown, will appreciate the utility of the national idea and will demonstrate that our Constitution was indeed intended “to live and take effect in all successions of ages.” The popular party, at once conservative and radical, will demonstrate by its habitual self-restraint, by its scrupulous regard for justice, by the honorable methods which it shall observe and exact, by its prudence in legislation, that the Democracy in the plentitude of its powers, is most truly conservative of all that vast store of good which the past hands down.
