The Emmanuel Movement

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 11, 1909

The Emmanuel Movement

Its Theology and Its Psychology

We have already called attention somewhat briefly to the theological teachings which underlie the Emmanuel Movement. Before passing to the psychical philosophy through which these teachings are developed into a system of therapeutics, it may be well to note further some of the religious views entertained by the founder of this movement. It is possible to do this clearly and authoritatively by quoting some leading statements from “The Living Word,” Dr. Worcester’s latest book. The first sentence in the chapter “Man’s Life in God,” reads thus:—

The secret of all spiritual religion is the union of the human soul with the divine soul, the belief that man’s spirit and God’s Spirit are in their essence one.—Page 105.

This is not an isolated expression of a subordinate idea, but is an essential part of Dr. Worcester’s theological thinking, as is shown by further quotations:—

To realize to the utmost our life in God is simply to realize God in our life. If we are in God, we are in God as parts of his spiritual nature. . . .

But how much more satisfaction may you find in the thought that God lives and feels and acts in you and through you, that you are bound to him by every fiber of your being, and not only to him, but to all the other hosts of finite spirits which constitute his mind, especially to those who are bound to you through laws of association. . . .

But if you are in God and your soul and will part of God’s spiritual nature, your freedom is simply part of God’s universal freedom which you employ and enjoy in him and under him. [Italics ours.]—Pages 120, 121.

It should be remembered that this view of the essential union of the soul with God and of the indwelling of God in man is not predicated only of those who have been “created in Christ Jesus,” or of those concerning whom the apostle Paul prays “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,” but of humanity as a whole, regardless of the personal acceptance of the gift of God in Christ. It should be further noted that this teaching is essentially the same as the philosophy of the pantheist, Fechner, whose God is “that absolutely totalized consciousness of the universe,” “an absolutely universal consciousness.”

This pantheistic philosophy is further developed in the following manner:—

As a Spirit, God has a relation to the material universe, but what that relation is we can learn only through the relation of our soul to our body. God does not draw the world after him like a horse. He does not push it before him like a perambulator. He is in it as the soul is in the body. God as a Spirit also has relation with other spirits. If he is indeed the only infinite, all-comprehending spirit, they can not exist outside him and independent of him. . . . This, then, is the conception I propose to sincere seekers after God, to those who are unsatisfied with a mere Judge, an absentee Deity, a Being throned above the stars, in timeless, changeless idleness; and who desire a real and working God who is present in this world as the soul is present in the body.—Pages 117, 118.

That conception of the nature and being of God which is held up to ridicule by these pantheistic philosophers as “an absentee Deity,” is not derived from the revelation of God made in the Scriptures. There we learn of God as one who has a dwelling-place in heaven, where, as a personal Being, he may be found in a sense in which he is not found elsewhere, but who is also everywhere present by his Spirit. “The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven.” “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” It is just as much a perversion of the truth to represent God as “an absentee Deity” as to make him the “totalized consciousness of the universe,” a mere essence pervading all matter, and of which all matter is the body. Thus Dr. Worcester merely substitutes for one perverted idea of God another idea which is equally a perversion of the truth.

Adopting fully Fechner’s pantheistic teaching that all the heavenly bodies are living beings, the founder of the Emmanuel Movement presents his remarkable philosophy concerning the angels:—

If you think of these bodies as mere dead, inert masses of matter, ask yourself if the being that is the source of all life can be accounted dead. . . . What leads us to believe that the worlds are living beings is the inexhaustible fulness of life which one of the least of these heavenly wanderers [the earth] has brought forth.

Have not men from the earliest times fabled of angels who dwell in the light, and who fly through heaven, needing neither food nor drink? Have they not conceived of the angels as intermediary beings between us and God, who purely and perfectly fulfil the will of God? But here are beings that dwell in light, and that fly through the heaven in absolute obedience to the will of God, without fainting, and needing no earthly food or drink. And if heaven is really the house of the angels, then we must look for the angels of heaven in the stars; for theheavens have no other inhabitants, and the other sort of angels have long since vanished, ceasing to appear altogether when men ceased to believe in their appearances.—Pages 176, 177.

This teaching concerning angels is almost word for word the teaching of Fechner, the pantheist, upon the same subject, as summarized by Prof. William James.

In his chapter entitled “What Is Death?” Dr. Worcester inculcates a philosophy absolutely subversive of the gospel of life through Christ, but quite in line with the spiritualistic conception of the soul as an entity capable of a conscious existence apart from the body. To quote:—

It is because we make such a mystery, such a dark secret of Death, that we hate him. Did we know him better, we might almost love him.—Page 199.

What a picture of man standing and shuddering at the thought of death, which is his second birth!—Page 204.

It [death] transplants us. Like our first birth, it is the beginning of a new life.—Page 206.

To attain that higher and perfect life, to know, to be happy, to be perfect, death is necessary.—Page 210.

Even now the dead are nearer to you than you imagine. Do not shrink from this thought as though it contained something terrible. Emotions do not flow all in one direction; they are reciprocal; they flow from us to the beloved one and from the beloved one to us, just as a blow is felt by the object smitten and the hand that strikes. If you think lovingly and earnestly of the lost one, it is because he is near you. The more earnestly, the more lovingly you think, the nearer he draws.—Pages 215, 216.

The real and important outcome of all I have been saying is this: death is nothing more than a second birth; not figuratively, but literally. We need dread it no more than the child need dread to be born.—Pages 217, 218.

Reviewing his course of reasoning at the close of this chapter, Dr. Worcester himself states the conclusion to which any thoughtful reader must come:—

In reality, the argument I am pursuing is only a new application of the argument of evolution,—the following of the life history of the individual, instead of the history of the race. The one is just as fruitful, just as legitimate, as the other.—Page 224.

From the evidence already submitted, we are warranted in saying that Dr. Worcester’s system of theology may be expressed in three words,—pantheism, Spiritualism, evolution. A system of therapeutics based upon such a system of theology must itself be pantheistic, spiritualistic, evolutionary. It can have no proper basis upon which to rest the claim that it is Christian, or that it is a return to the system of healing practised by Christ and his disciples.

The Emmanuel Movement not only represents the newest of the New Theology, but also the latest developments of psychology, which, according to Dr. Worcester, consist “in the recognition of powers in man beyond those usually employed in his normal consciousness. To this obscure domain of the soul,” he says, “a great variety of names unfortunately has been given,—the unconscious mind, the subconscious, the subliminal, the subjective, etc.” While admitting that all psychologists have not accepted the new theories, the founder of the Emmanuel Movement fully commits himself to them in this statement:—

We believe with Professor James that the subconscious powers of the mind really exist, and that the recognition of them forms the most important advance which psychology has made since the days of Fechner and Weber.—“Religion and Medicine,” page 14.

The nature of this so-called subconscious mind is further defined thus:—

The subconscious mind is a normal part of our spiritual nature. There is reason to believe that it is purer, more sensitive to good and evil, than our conscious mind. . . . Neither should we regard it as a mere generalized mind-stuff without personal characteristics. Though it is doubtless more generic and in closer contact with the Universal Spirit than reason, yet its creations bear the imprint of individual genius.—Id., page 42.

It is more than intimated that in this latest development of psychology may be found the true basis for belief in immortality,—a belief for which evidence must necessarily be found outside the Scriptures. To quote again:—

The subconscious mind is purer than the conscious, and if any part of our being is permanent, we may believe this to be such.—Id., page 38.

The relation which this subliminal self sustains to our material system is thus stated:—

They [examples of the physiological action of the subconscious mind] prove beyond question that our subconscious mind acts through the instrumentality of our whole nervous system, both cerebrospinal and sympathetic, and that through this complex mechanism it can effect important changes in our physical functions.—Id., pages 40, 41.

Before proceeding further with this study, it may be well to cite some evidence tending to show that Dr. Worcester’s theories concerning the subconscious mind are not above question. As throwing some light upon the subject, we quote from an article in the current number of The Hibbert Journal, by Dr. Henry Rutgers Marshall, of New York City, entitled “Psycho-Therapeutics and Religion:”—

Much of the mystery usually felt in relation to this subattentive consciousness (“subconsciousness”) results from our overlooking the fact that it is most intricately systematized, just as the parts of the nerve system, whose activities correspond with it, are intricately systematized. It is fundamentally of the same nature as attentive consciousness, and we should therefore not be surprised to discover that it is affected by elements which appear in the field of attention, nor surprised to find the field of attention affected by influences initiated within it.

Dr. Marshall declares that the claim that “the subconscious mind is a normal part of our spiritual nature” is not well founded, and he further asserts:—

The statement that the “subconscious mind” is “purer, more sensitive to good and evil, than the conscious,” is equally unwarranted, although it seems to have the support of so eminent a psychologist as William James.

Dr. Marshall further opposes an important feature of Dr. Worcester’s psychology in these words:—

We are also compelled to question the statement that the subattentive consciousness (“subconscious mind”) “has more direct control of physical processes than the conscious.” The subattentive consciousness is broader than the narrow field of attention; and its nerve activity correlates are doubtless more numerous, and more thoroughly integrated, than those corresponding to the mental elements in attention; but it is difficult to see how what we call mental control of physical processes can be more efficient in the one case than in the other. . . .

It may be well here also to call attention to the fact that attentive consciousness merges into subattentive consciousness; out of the latter, as it were, appears the flitting field of the former.

While not consenting to Dr. Worcester’s theories of psychology, we are now prepared to understand their application in the Emmanuel Movement. The case may be stated thus:—

1. There is in every man a subconscious mind, which is in one place designated as “the strange power of which we have been so long ignorant, though it resides within us, and manifests itself in so many of the most important acts of our lives.”

2. This subconscious mind is “purer, more sensitive to good and evil, than our conscious mind.”

3. “The subconscious mind has more direct control of our physical processes than the conscious.”

4. “Anything which weakens or depresses our subconscious mind exposes us to disease by rendering us less able to resist its encroachments. And on the other hand, we possess such allies and resources within ourselves that apart from surgical interference, the physician’s chief function is to awaken in his patient the will to live and to employ every element of resistance which the system itself affords.”

5. The subconscious mind “is more generic, and in closer touch with the universal processes of nature than our conscious intelligence,” and is “in closer contact with the Universal Spirit than reason.”

It follows that the one who can control the so-called subconscious mind can,

through such control, have greater power over the physical processes than it is possible to obtain through the operation of the conscious mind, and that the best method of directing the conduct is to eliminate as far as possible the activity of the conscious mind, and having obtained full possession of the will, to impress such instruction upon the subconscious mind as shall afterward be revealed in the life experience.

What these premises mean when developed in their practical application in the Emmanuel Movement will form the subject of the next article.