"die-hard " ravings are swan songs and they don't pay serious heed. "Let's get a move on, if one Government won't, another will," is all their reply. In such times the instinct of the mystic, the spiritual climber, is to turn a deaf ear and keep out of politics, yet we cannot altogether neglect political and economic questions. They are moral and spiritual issues, Phantoms of the Dawn that refuse to pass unnoticed. Neither soulless abstractions nor flaming hearts can solve the industrial problem. Industry to-day is an international not a national question, and intimately concerns all Brotherhood movements. The chasm betwixt brawn and brain is nearly bridged. We want to get back to the unity of the front when the order was : 66 "Over the top altogether." No class, or section of a class, existed there and then. Where is the lost spirit that carried us through the War? One never now hears the word reconstruction" because multitudes have learned that the real seed of the future is a hope, not an organisation, that a strengthening of the inner life is more potent than a programme. The world is awakening to find its heart and purpose changed. There has now emerged out of the red fog of war a mass mind that is preparing to embark on the greatest adventure of all time, the great adventure of belief in God, and His power to rule His own world. Multitudes are asking is God's way force or love? and they recognise that the world belongs, not to us but to its Maker; and it is now worth considering whether or not He will permit us always to rule by our methods instead of His. They look out upon our old methods with agonised eyes and they see nothing in them but failure to bring happiness to the world. Can any statesman hold higher ideals than the happiness of the multitude over whom he rules? Our present chaos is the struggle to throw up such a man, and chaos will continue until he is found. There are multitudes now who have learned the lesson voiced by the heroic Edith Cavell as she stood on the verge of eternity. That we must have bitterness in our hearts to none. "Patriotism is not enough." What did she mean by that last utterance omitted so often by us when her words are graven or quoted. It has always seemed to me that they could only mean one thing. Before patriotism comes the way of The Christ, and there is often a choice to be made. Lord Grey has said : "Hatred is never going to do good to the world. I don't mean by that, that you ought not to hate what is wrong but when hate becomes the dominant motive . your action will be destructive not constructive." It is not in our power to alter edicts which we believe do not accord with the Christ ideal, but we need not countenance them through public support. We have been governed by men who take no heed whatever of the question: "What would be the Christ way ?" and we have suffered accordingly. Two of our most prominent politicians openly scorn such idealism, and the People have rejected their services unhesitatingly, perhaps in anger against the wasted lives in Gallipoli, the millions of money thrown away on the desert sands and the Russian White Armies. Had we these millions to spend for the benefit of our own people, how enormously the home situation would be eased. R. L. Stevenson has said: "The demand of the soul is that we shall not pursue broken ends, but great and comprehensive purposes, in which the soul and body may unite like notes in a harmonious chord." Nations must choose for themselves whether they will have reform or revolution, and in the constantly changing Phantoms of the Dawn; which no man's hand can stay from breaking into full daylight we have the conditions of the Powers battling for mastery. The Masters of Light and Wisdom are on the side of union and brotherhood. The dark forces are striving to restrain the evolution of the world by division and hatred. There we have the real simple test. Will you strengthen brotherhood and victory and aid the Sons of Light, or will you cast in your lot with those who preach the sword, coercion and hatred Man has free will. Choose which path you will tread. CHAPTER XVI PHANTOMS OF THE DAWN "And not by eastern windows only, SEVENTEEN hundred years ago Marcus Aurelius wrote: "There is but one light of the sun, though it be scattered. . . . There is but one common substance, although it be divided. . . . There is but one soul, though it be distributed among countless different natures and individual forms. There is but one intelligent spirit, though it may seem to be divided." Science to-day is briskly engaged in re-discovering these truths. Every intelligent mind will admit that there are countless things in heaven and earth that cannot be tabulated or systemized in any philosophy. However wide be the view there will always remain an overplus of meaning that evades us, of fact which cannot be accounted for, perhaps never will be accounted for. I have dealt with many such facts in these pages, and I make no apology for failing to supply plausible explanations. The man of science knows how far beyond his ken are the ultimate relations, and that knowledge of the spiritual is no mere affair of the intellect. What folly it would then be for a writer of my modest calibre to attempt to define the undefinable? I hold that our relation with The Absolute is a matter not for argument but for the working out in our own lives. I believe in a supernatural revelation because I have experienced it. I believe in a spiritual revelation for the same reason. The Universe does not need to be explained to me in words, I know it as the expression of a supreme all embracing spirit, and I can dispense with formulated creeds which are only useful for gaining obedient acceptance to defined doctrine. I am frankly unorthodox. The world moves and always has moved, and I try to move with it. Orthodoxy is stagnation. The Apostles and their Master were innovators, as the Prophets were before them. The evolution of the Christianity of Christ shows us that truth has no limit. I am an adventurer into the Infinite, and to me the only obedience which is worth a straw is obedience to the call of the Higher Self-The God within. A new supernaturalism is now dawning. Men have suddenly discovered that religion cannot be taught because it turns out to be an experience. It is as easy to teach religion in a church as it is to teach love in a school. For years we have been confronted by new facts to which we can attach no meaning. Something has unaccountably broken in on what we believed to be a set order of nature. The meaning of a fact that has puzzled us more often flits across the limited outlook of our horizon. Moments come |