Most Rev John L Spalding

Religion, Agnosticism and Education Most Rev John L Spalding

Excerpt: WHAT we call matter is known to us only when it has been sublimated in the soul's alembic, and so the visible universe is a symbol of the Infinite Spirit. Reason springs from conscious communion with the Eternal, the Absolute, the Perfect. Its roots are in the real and permanent, as distinguished from the apparent and transitory. Where there is no self-consciousness there is no truth, no goodness, no beauty. Self-consciousness is born of the union of subject and object. When we view the external world what we perceive is the impressions it makes on us. The self, then, being at once subject and object, grows in power and dignity in proportion to the worth of the things it habitually contemplates, and to the intimacy and completeness of its communion with them. Hence the value of life for each one is determined by the self, which makes him what he is; and the self is fed and fashioned by what he ponders, admires, loves, and does. If he lives for what is material merely, he has no true self, since the self is essentially spiritual. If he lives subservient to instinct and appetite he has but an animal, an apparent self. The element of the true self is moral freedom, which is born of obedience to reason and conscience, which exists for those alone who live in conscious communion with the Eternal Creative Spirit. When we think God we think ourselves in and with Him; are made conscious of the self as formed and nourished by the ideas of absolute truth, goodness, and beauty. Our first and deepest certainty is of the existence of this self, springing from the communion of the soul with God. We can know only what is akin to ourselves. Hence our knowledge is necessarily anthropomorphic; and our progress is a process of self-realization and of self-revelation. If we could attain perfection, we should find ourselves at one with God and whatever He creates. Were it possible to conceive a mode of being higher than the personal, it would be necessary to ascribe it to God, who is a person, but in a way infinitely above anything we can know. He transcends man so unimaginably, that, though we must say we are like Him, it seems little less than blasphemy to say He is like us. The likeness is true, but the difference is infinite. Nevertheless, it is the likeness we must contemplate if we hope to attain even a feeble knowledge of Him. Therefore we say -- He thinks, though His thoughts are not our thoughts; that He loves, but as we can never hope to love. We are akin to Him, yet even less than atoms are akin to worlds. This at least we may understand and feel -- that whatever in us is good and fair is so because it is of Him and for Him; that without Him there could be nothing; or, if so, nothing could have worth or meaning. If thought and love are possible, it is because He is with the thinker and the lover.