RELIGION AND BRAINS by Christian Commonwealth

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 23, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 49.

RELIGION AND BRAINS.

By Christian Commonwealth

THERE is much that has never been thought out in the teaching of the Lord Jesus. Every sentence of his doctrine is one of the artesian wells of truth. When once we have touched its meaning, it never ceases to pour out new fountains of significance, of refreshment, of cleansing, and of healing. Where, for instance, has there ever been a preacher who has been able to do more than to hint at the force of Christ's precepts on love to God: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength"?

Now here is a quadrilateral of spiritual strength which massively confronts all the malign forces of all the ages. Love to the Deity is the prime duty of every man. But this fourfold agency of love is perhaps the one great subject, the general misunderstanding of which vitiates the whole life of the race. For almost universally, love is associated solely with emotion. It is reckoned to be the cordial distilled from the strongest affections of humanity, and it is understood to be noble or ignoble according as it is idealized or sensualized. And here the common doctrine exhausts its application. But how small a beginning is this of the divine doctrine? Love in its highest application is not only a function of the heart, affection, emotion, but equally of all the mind, all the soul, and all the strength of man. If it be at all understood what this involves, the extension of signification is indeed vast and immeasurable, for the whole nature of humanity is at once involved. The mens, the mind power, the reasoning intellect, is as much concerned with love as the warm, impulsive, passional function; the psychē, the very vital essence that is distinguished by consciousness, is called to this high responsibility; and that there may be no supposed limit, the ischys is to be yoked to the faculty of love, this being the summing up of the whole capacity of manhood.

This first and great commandment receives astonishingly little attention. It is treated as if the love with all the heart were the main body of the truth, and all the other three precepts were but the tail to the theological kite. But the more these four great terms are reviewed the more convincingly does it appear that the great commandment is treated by the unconscious majority as if it were but a comparatively trivial obligation or a mere fraction of our human responsibility. The words which Christ chose sweep the whole extent of our being. Kardia covers everything that metaphysicians bring in under the realm of affection; psychē is the spiritual principle, the breath of life, which gave the name in Greek also to the winged butterfly, seen fluttering from the mouth in so many images; dianoia measures all the splendid endowment by which the philosopher discriminates between the animal soul and the human spirit, including intellect, will, memory, imagination; and ischys brings in even the physical powers, which become transfigured by association with such spiritual faculties. Here is a study at which most preachers hardly even glance. Of course none of them would deny that the subject of study exists. Preaching, as it is, does not contradict or deny it, but it for the most part ignores the extent of the empire of love. Is it wonderful, then, that love should come to be regarded as the prerogative simply of the heart? The truth is that here we have on the one hand a marvelous provision and an equally marvelous neglect of it. Christ has filled up the ocean of our needs; we persist in exploring one region alone of the glorious expanse. Man needs to love, for he is made to love, and he must in order to his own highest development love One worthy of his capacities; and, moreover, in exercising his affection he must do so with every faculty of his nature.—Christian Commonwealth.