Mystic Immanence, the Indwelling Spirit

The question, "Whose is this image and superscription?" is suggestive, first, of the deeper meaning of a harvest festival, and that is the recognition in public worship that the material universe is the visible thought of God. What is the principle by which everything came into being? Physical science has now reduced all material things to a primary ether, universally distributed, whose innumerable particles are in absolute equilibrium.[#] The initial movement, then, which began to concentrate material substances out of the ether could not have originated with the particles themselves, and we are logically compelled to acknowledge the presence of a Creative Intelligence exercising volition. That Creative Intelligence exercising volition, that Parent Mind, has impressed His image and superscription upon all that is—upon the life and beauty of the animal world, upon the marvels of the vegetable world, the prolific fruits of the earth, the gorgeous flowers with which church and altar are decorated to-day. Whose is their image and superscription? Whom do they manifest? Whence come their life and their beauty? To understand the deeper meaning of a church decorated with fruits and flowers we must have risen to some conception of the Invisible Intelligence that is realizing itself in concrete phenomena. Everything in the physical world is what it is by reason of a spirit-organism or mind-form which relates it to the Universal Mind, and the Universal Mind is that Divine activity which St. John calls the Word, the Logos, the Originator in creative activity. "Through every grass-blade," says Carlyle, "the glory of the present God still beams." It does, and therefore a harvest festival suggests, not only the obvious duty of profound thanksgiving to a bounteous Father—that goes without saying—but also a reverent mental recognition of the intense nearness of God, that "Earth’s crammed with Heaven and every common bush afire with God."

[#] Cf. Troward’s Edinburgh Lectures.

So the first thought of to-day is that the world is ruled by Mind and not by Matter, that "there is a soul in all things, and that soul is God," that in the true philosophy of Creation every atom, every germ, has within it a principle, a life, a purpose, a degree of consciousness appropriate to its position in the scheme of things. That consciousness, that mind, differs in magnitude in its different manifestations; higher in the insect than in the vegetable, higher in the animal than in the insect, and occasionally there is evidenced in the animal a shrewdness which implies observation and close reasoning. For example, recently I was at Christchurch, in Hampshire, and was conducted by Mr. Hart over his unique museum of birds, representing the life-work of an expert and enthusiast. He told me many most interesting things, and amongst them the following:

It is well known that the cuckoo makes no nest of its own, but places its eggs in the nest of one of the smaller birds. Now, in order to deceive the bird amongst whose eggs the cuckoo intends to place its own egg, the cuckoo causes the egg it is about to lay to assume the colour and markings of the eggs of the small bird who is to be the foster-mother. Mr. Hart showed me over forty cuckoos’ eggs, each one coloured to imitate the natural egg of the bird whose nest the cuckoo had commandeered. This had been done with extraordinary accuracy, from the bright blue of the hedge-sparrow’s egg to the dull olive of the nightingale’s egg, and even the peculiar markings, like notes of music, of the yellow-hammer’s egg, had been imitated.

Consider the extraordinary mental power implied. The cuckoo has first to decide which nest she will lay under contribution. She has then to study the colouring of the eggs in that nest; then, with some amazing exercise of the creative power of thought, she has to cause her unlaid egg to assume that colour. She then lays it on the ground, and, carrying it in her beak, carefully places it amongst the eggs of the little foster-mother. What an intense, ever-present reality is the Infinite Mind! What a glorious thought it is that the Eternal Purpose is everywhere! When the heart grows faint and the hands weary, how sustaining it is to know that there is no chance, no mere machinery—everywhere purpose, intelligence, evolution, love!

Now, obviously the operation of the Originating Mind in all that is differs in quality of self-realization in proportion to the receptive capacity of the matter in which it is immanent. It is not sufficient for us intellectually to affirm the immanence of God in a blade of grass, but it is for us to carry the thought higher, and not to rest until we have realized that Divine immanence is in a far more intense degree in ourselves. Man is the crown of Creation, and when our Lord took that coin in His hand and asked the question, "Whose is this image and superscription?" He was stimulating thinkers to consider man’s unique place in the cosmic order, and man’s true relation to the Universal Originating Spirit; and when a man has really found that, he is well on his way to the region of understanding and realization.