Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1113

Four typed pages on ring-binder paper. A penciled notation by Spencer MacCallum says this was “expanded from a much earlier writing.”

September 1956

 

Original is in item 1130.

 

 

THE GOD IN MAN

On the surface of this earth there are two worlds, the new and the old, the Western and the Eastern, the dynamic and the contemplative, the Christian and the pagan world. The new rule and precept has been to do, the old only to desist — the West to protest, the East to submit. To the Western man there is evil and there is good. To the Eastern it is all one. The Western man is moral. What he conceives as evil he must forthwith punish and destroy, hence his turmoils, his revolutions and wars, with no good served. For the good is not in mere cessation or absence of wrong. It is life — that which can be created and, in its creation, enjoyed.

The moral mind is superficial. It confuses means and ends. But the creative mind in men is of the depths. Hence the good they do, like the evil they do, is for the most part unknown to them. Their kingdom of heaven cometh stealthily all unacknowledged, yea and reviled, while it blesses them with abundant life and ever lengthening days.

The virtue that vaunteth itself is narrow and small, and is its own reward. But the blessings of the golden rule are not only personal, they are universal and divine.

Too little do men realize that the kingdom of heaven grows in their midst. We have come to worship sovereignties, “principalities and powers,” country before God. The first Christian scorned worldly power and, in precept and parable, gave the key to the divine.

Men were not to seek salvation by escape merely from death, but by devotion to the way of life that they might have life more abundant. They were to be born into a new relationship among themselves in which each would love by serving many and be in return by many loved and served — in which the greatest would become the servants of all. Treaties of non-aggression, particular covenants to desist from harm, were to be superseded by contracts with all and sundry, by engagements mutually and in balanced measure to serve and, thereby, rationally and objectively to divinely love.

The Western man, all unknown to himself, has been inspired to practice this new relationship despite the power of sovereignties that he worships while on every hand beset. Despite all his weekday practice of the good, his conscious mind gropes darkly in its fealty to the sovereign­ties that enforce all slaveries and promote all wars. On his right hand, all unknown, he builds the Kingdom, while on the left he undermines and pulls it down. Yet the love that serves life outlasts the powers that destroy. However long or short the road, the fortune belongs to the golden and not the iron rule, for it is in nature divinely so ordained.

In the Western world, and there alone, almost every man and woman in his heart believes that life is good, that its joys can far outweigh its pains. Some pause to wonder what it is that goes on as life, few, why, still fewer, how. Yet nearly all believe that life, as we know it, is part of a vast Reality that ever exists, and moves and abides, that it flows ever onward in a chain of change and blooms anew in forms transcending all its past. They believe that it is infinite in substance, limitless in action and power, eternal in its duration. They call it God. And because they feel themselves, each in his very finite way, to be of and one with and in the likeness of this Universal Reality, they believe that it also is like unto them — that it is a Personality with infinite substance, transcendent power, and eternal realization into newness of becoming and of being renewed.

Man, the individual, reflects his Universal as the grain of sand all ocean strands, the sprouting seed the tree-clad hills, the atom the celestial sphere, as the amoeba is the promise of the Godward man.

Man, the finite, is his own measure of the infinite. He describes the Universal in terms of himself, his own substance and form, his own attributes. Substance is fatherhood; action and power (service) is son-ship; and eternality is a holy spirit, an infinite in-spiration.

Man conceives God in his own image because he is the finite image of God. He has a measure of the substance of God, of the power of God and of the eternality of God, and his whole being is instinct with desire towards God, with desire to grow Godward into greater Godhood, and thereby ever more abundant life.

In ways that they know not of, the Holy Spirit in men draws them into a creative unity that is the Kingdom of Heaven. When even two or three are so gathered together in that union, they embody the precept, the living spirit, of the ever newly risen Christ. And therein is the eternality of the Holy Spirit, life more abundant and of ever lengthening days.

In this union there is rebirth from man as creature, from the animal man, into man as creator, into the spiritual man, into his heritage of ever more dominion over all created things. And his new kingdom is of Heaven, for in it the iron rule of worldly powers, of slavery and of death and war, gives way to the golden rule, to the rule of love, not by feeling only and towards but few, but by doing the Will of the Heavenly Father by doing unto all men.

 

 

/The following, written about 1939, was considerably amended in September, 1956 to make the writing, nearly three times longer, above./

 

THE GOD IN MAN

Almost every man and woman in the world believes that life is good — that its joys far outweigh its pains. Some pause to wonder what it is that goes on as life; few, why; still fewer, how. Yet all believe that life, as we know it, is part of a vast Reality that ever exists, and moves and abides; that it flows ever onward in a chain of change and blooms anew in forms transcending all its past. They believe that it is infinite in substance, limitless in action and power, eternal in its duration. They call it God. And because they feel themselves, each in his very finite way, to be of and one with and in the likeness of this universal Reality, they believe that it also is like unto them—that it is a Personality with infinite substance, transcendent action or power, and eternal realization into newness of becoming and of being.

Man, the individual, reflects his Universal as the grain of sand the granite mountain, the sprouting seed the forest, the atom the celestial system, the amoeba the man.

Man, the finite, is his own measure of the infinite. He describes the universal in terms of himself, his own sub­stance and form, his own attributes: Substance is fatherhood, action and power (service) is son-ship, and eternality is a holy spirit, an infinite in-spiration. Man conceives God in his own image because he is the finite image of God. He has a measure of the substance of God, of the power of God and of the eternality of God; and his whole being is instinct with desire towards God — with desire to grow Godward into greater God-hood, into ever more abundant life. In ways that they know not of the Holy Spirit in men draws them together into a larger unity that is the Kingdom of Heaven. When even two or three are gathered together in that union then are they formed into a new body, a greater substance, a higher power, a longer duration of life, a larger measure of the eternality of the Holy Spirit.