"Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep." — Romans xiii, 11.
"Sleep" is a very good word to describe the general mental condition of civilized society at this century's end, though perhaps "uneasy slumber" would be a more accurate description. For, from a spiritual point of view, the world has been sleeping. The concerns of our inner life, the interests of our higher and real nature have been avoided and shelved. There has been a "conspiracy of silence" about them. Religious topics have been tacitly avoided in our daily life and conversation; they would interfere too much with the comfortable, drowsed state which best suits our ordinary occupations, and arouse uncomfortable qualms; or else they would bring on unseemly quarrels. Religion is therefore carefully pigeon-holed in that division of our time known as Sunday, when we go to a meeting from which unpleasant topics are too often discreetly banished, and the parson aids and abets in the slumbrous soothing of our consciences. Whenever, in our daily life, an unwelcome truth pops out its head, does not everyone at once combine to put on the "blinkers," to explain it away, or to change the subject? We cannot always keep hidden these inconsistencies, especially when the enfant terrible (which means a child only partially perverted) is around. Religion, in short, is apt to be found leagued with the sleepers, on the side of vested interests and old abuses, an anodyne and narcotic rather than a stimulant; and the impatient aspirant usually finds himself at arms with it.
Nor is it of any use, failing religion, to throw ourselves into the arms of modern science for help against the tide of materialism that invests us; for modern science does not even profess to throw light on the problems of man's spiritual nature. It lends itself, like religion, to the abuses of civilization, fortifying the rich, the idle, or the selfish in their castles and pleasure-gardens, and strengthening the bonds of the feeble. Its philosophy, when it has one, is one of despair and doubt, denying the warm impulses of the soul and reducing life to a cold calculation.
The present time is like the time when our door is rapped in the morning; we must either shake off sleep and rise to begin a new day, or else we must sink again into a new but heavier slumber. We cannot stay as we are. Hence we have now in the civilized world two classes; those who are so comfortable that they will try all they can to slumber further, and those who are tired of sleep and are rubbing their eyes and straining to arouse themselves. Things to-day are not as they were yesterday. The sun has risen higher; the world's inquietude is becoming more urgent. The strain of humanity's present conditions grows day by day more intolerable. It is harder for the sleepers to keep their eyes shut and sleep on. The position of an awakened man planted in a society built on self-seeking is very painful. There are very many such people. Soon there will be so many that the strain will become too great and they will burst their bonds and seek for the light and the salvation of humanity. Isolated from one another they can do but little; and most of them must needs take refuge in the best kind of compromise they can effect. But set them free, unite them in a Universal Brotherhood, and give them a nucleus around which they can gather, and the wasted energy will be utilized, the smoking flax blown into flame.
Another characteristic of these times that has often been remarked is the absence of leaders of men among us. There are none who can stir the people and gather them round their banners, no great religious and moral teachers, no poets, statesmen, scientific luminaries, nor geniuses of any kind. We are restless, unsettled, and without definite aim or tendency. There are no great tides of enthusiasm, but only a choppy sea, washing hither and thither on the surface. Men are asleep; the energies of civilization have run down. Humanity has steered so long on the one tack that its course is in danger of being lost.
This is, in short, just the kind of time when students of history should expect a great leader to appear and collect into one focus the scattered rays of hope and energy which are otherwise in danger of fading out because of their isolation. A Leader with a strong new message for poor leaderless, despairing humanity; such a Leader as Joan of Arc or Mahomet or Buddha or Jesus, who would reawaken the spirit of dash and enthusiasm that has so died down. And we members of the Universal Brotherhood know that there is such a Leader in the world who has already proclaimed the Brotherhood of humanity and pointed out the path to follow. Those who are wise will prepare themselves silently for such a change in men's affairs. They will not strive to involve themselves still deeper with the things that are passing away, but will "sell out," so to say, and invest in the rising securities of the new life of Brotherliness. Those who cannot change with the times must fall behind; for, when compromise is no longer possible, "all or nothing" is the only cry.
When narrow, hard and fast lines of long standing are broken up, men are thrown back on their own character and on the original and eternal principles of human nature. They are in fact stripped of their clothes and disguises and become once more the plain "forked radish" of which Carlyle speaks. Hence, to "awaken out of sleep" means that we must leave off adorning those vestments and masks of society and begin strenuously to cultivate and foster those real qualities which alone will serve us in the crisis. Thus money, ambition, love of rule, mental dogmatism, graceful accomplishments, social position, and such like, are not the things to be invested in now. They are the mere external paraphernalia and trappings of a man. Character is the great asset of the coming time; and the main-spring of character is selflessness. Self-seeking is the motive which will suffer most in the crisis, for it is the basis of the old order that is crumbling. But the selfless man will be in his own element. He cannot be harmed; he has no stock in the old order, and nothing to lose. He is at home anywhere; humanity is his world. His personal belongings are his character, which cannot be taken away. Let us therefore awaken out of sleep and cultivate that which endureth.