"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you" (St John xvi. 12).
In these sayings, among very many others, we have a declaration that the Spirit of Truth, inherent in knowledge and proceeding from God, the supreme Spirit of Life, accompanies intellectual and spiritual evolution. Christ's doctrine was not intended only for His immediate followers and men of His own race and time. Much that was to them incomprehensible, much that by reason of their intellectual limitations He could only teach by implication, He referred to future generations of men who might discover and appreciate by the clearer light of after-days the intrinsic truth of His doctrine of spiritual unity. How has His appeal to posterity been answered? How has His recommendation to test His words by the Spirit of Truth been obeyed?
It is part of the function of scientific criticism to examine emotional apprehension, and to corroborate or disprove by means of evidential testimony the truth in spiritual suppositions. The modern view of the universe, which recognises for the elements of matter an essential correlation of principle, may thus be regarded as the rational endorsement of Christ's spiritual apprehension of the intercommunion and oneness of all forms of life. That the bodies of men are reared upon and sustained by innumerable other forms of life; that every individual is in reality an aggregate of others; that Nature rests upon the continued intercommunion of all its parts; that no one part has power and meaning save in conjunction with others; that correlation is the perpetuating principle of life; that the very universe depends upon the mutual support of its component parts--are scientific facts that have their psychical counterparts in the spiritual ideals contained in Christ's gospel of love, and are emphasised in the symbolic summary of His teaching--the rite of communion.
Let us now take the actual words supposed to have been used on the occasion of the inauguration of this rite, and examine them by the light of attested scientific facts:--