Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 079:315 (Jul 1922)
Article: The Supremacy Of The Spirit
Author: Charles H. Richards

The Supremacy Of The Spirit

Charles H. Richards

The history of humanity is the story of the gradual emergence of spirit into self-consciousness, freedom and power. In the earliest human life the soul was hardly more than a dormant germ hidden in its calyx of matter like the undeveloped rose slumbering in its bud.

It was only little by little that man waked up to a perception of himself as essentially and radically different from his surroundings. Like an earlier Columbus he discovered within himself a new continent of being wholly unlike the outer self of flesh which he imagined was all there was of him. He found that this new hemisphere of rational and moral life matched and mated the old hemisphere of physical life, was joined with it in making up the rounded whole of manhood, yet was immeasurably superior to it.

Having thus discovered himself, man has been engaged through the centuries in coaxing out these inner faculties which alone give glory and promise to his life, and drilling them for active service. This process of drawing out and disciplining the spirit’s powers gives the clear perception, the trained memory, the illuminated intelligence, the trenchant and trustworthy reason, the sturdy conscience, which give nobility and strength to life. It takes education to produce this superb result. It will not come spontaneously, without pupilage of some sort, either in the school of books or of experience.

Emerson says that “in the snake all the organs are sheathed—no hands, no feet, no fins, no wings. In bird and beast the organs are released and begin to play. In man they are all unbound, and full of joyful action. With this unswaddling, he receives the absolute illumination we call Reason, and thereby true liberty.” Yes, but while man by his very endowments has larger powers than the creatures that crawl, and swim, and fly—yet this un-

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swaddling process is a gradual one, as far as his spiritual powers are concerned. He gets the use of himself by education, as these inner faculties are developed and drilled into efficiency.

The Liberation of the Spirit

Thus man has been busy through the ages in securing more and more the liberation of the spirit, from the fetters of the flesh, developing its latent forces, and giving it ascendancy increasingly in the conduct of life. Had it not been so, what would man have been but an organized lump of clay, a bundle of appetites and brute forces? But he came to a recognition of himself as a soul, refused to be, or to be called, a worm of the dust, rose up to free his spirit from the domination of the flesh, and by training and discipline gave this inner spirit mastery over his own body, over the powers of nature, over the animal creation.

Every one has to secure this liberation of spirit for himself to a large degree. True, a good heredity gives us an immense advantage to begin with. The garnered treasure of the ages is ours. The victories of the spirit won by a hundred generations before us have lodged their riches in our natures. Yet, after all, we cannot secure for the spirit its full development and mastery except by strenuous endeavor on our own part. George Eliot said that “each of us is only an omnibus, carrying down the leading characteristics of our ancestors.” True enough as far as our native gifts are concerned; but each of us is a living will, a creative force, and character is an achievement wrought out by the exercise of this will.

The progress of humanity has been along this line of individual endeavor to give the spirit the right of way. Civilization is but the triumph of the spirit over materializing conditions. Every convenience and comfort in a modern hom...