FIRST-DAY MORNING.

Synopsis of a discourse by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, delivered at Longwood Meeting-house, First-day morning, Sixth month 9th, 1901:

GOD WORKING THROUGH MAN.

TEXT. Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.-Romans xii, 2.

The spirit of man has to work through the brain. The brain is the physical organ of the soul, through which we think and feel; it is the communicating medium of the soul. The brain being a physical organ, is an imperfect, growing thing. When man first began to feel God, to talk with God, and about God, he had a very poor kind of brain. Do not make the mistake of thinking, when I say that the brain is merely a piece of meat that we think with, that I mean that it is a piece of meat that thinks. The brain is the organ that we think with, just as the eye is the organ that we see with.

The transformation of man by the renewal of his mind. involves a development of brain. In order that the Eternal Spirit may permeate and perfect the body in which it is lodged, that body and brain have to grow.

If we soak a thin slice of the brain in nitrate of silver, (I think that is the substance) and examine it under a powerful microscope, we find that the brain contains about 6,000,000 cells, and that from each of these cells radiate hundreds of filaments, something like the feelers of the sea

Each of these cells is connected with our spine, so that the whole nervous system is one complex organism.

Each brain cell can hold only a direct impression, such as color, sound, weight; thinking puts these impressions together and makes pictures. When the blind have been suddenly restored to sight certain forms, as a sphere, cube, or pyramid, placed before them conveyed to them no idea of shape, for all their previous knowledge of this had come to them through their fingers. The baby has at first no idea of distance, and grasps for the moon as readily as for the ball

swinging before him. The eye must be trained before there comes to the mind a knowledge of perspective.

It is by putting together many impressions that we arrive at "a state of mind" If, after a man has made up his mind about anything, he hears a new fact which alters the case, it takes a little while for the brain cells to readjust themselves. A man may go forth in the morning happy; he hears in the course of the day that his house is on fire or his wife dangerously ill, and immediately his feeling changes. Our feelings depend on the arrangement of the brain cells, and this arrangement changes as our knowledge of facts changes.

an animal, with all Starting with this

Let us consider the state of mind of our early progeni tors, when first the religious idea began to grow. In order to understand man we must know the nature of the beast from which he sprung. We must bear in mind that primeval man, -the early savage-was not new; he was old in the endless chain of evolution behind him; he has yet the animal instincts strong within him. primeval savage, there has been a steady development of our human power to outlive, outgrow, harness, handle and control the brute the ancestral pressure of primitive instincts and desires. In this struggle the soul of man began to be born. Early man had but faint glimmerings and gropings after God. The desire to grow is God pushing up through us.

The brain is where we live. If a man who has lived in a one-roomed hut moves into a palace, but puts all his things in one room of that palace and contents himself therein, he is still living as in a hut, though housed in a palace. We have a brain capable of limitless development, capable of receiving broad, deep, subtle and intricate conceptions of God, and of carrying out these conceptions in action, but as yet we are living in a single room, or at most, in a few rooms of our pal

ace.

The baby human race was weak, and its knowledge of God was like the slow unveiling of a great statue; as the curtain is lifted, we see at first only the feet. Then as we have grown from age to age, we have more and more perceived the

infinite justice and infinite love of that Infinite Power we call God. The natural limitation of brain power finds its cure in birth, every new generation renews the mind. Our brains today are physically incapable of believing what was believed ten thousand years ago. Truth is permanent and unchangeable, but each generation has new eyes, and ought to have improved brains with which to perceive it. We have no world to live in but what is in the mind. That only is our world which we can see and think about.

Why are not our brains transformed faster, so that we may live up to the level of what we know? Because it takes great strength and also hard work for a brain to reshape inherited habits of thought, and arrange the little feelers of the brain cells in new ways. The brain is a storage battery, in which the impressions of the past are stored up. That race is superior which can hold the highest perception longest and work toward its realization most steadily, not only without immediate stimulus, but even against such stimulus.

The brain is not a vat into which knowledge may be poured; it is an organ of use and a governing engine to make the body go. What goes in must work out in same way; hence we talk about relieving the mind by speech and work off a fit of anger or other excitement by splitting wood or its equivalent.

The older a habit of mind is the harder it is to change it. We Americans are more susceptible to new ideas than other people, because we are the newest people on the earth; we are only just mixed and have not had time to settle. The earliest races of men did what they thought to be right; they were true to their conceptions, but what was true to them was not true to their descendants after generations. That is the truth to each individual which he can see with his kind of a brain. They set up cast iron limits to the truth and trained that into their children, century after century. And the worst of it was that the most vital and important truths were just the ones that the brain was not allowed to grow in.

Men might teach newly discovered laws of mathematics, new methods of sanitation, new rules of courtesy, but not new ideas of theology. George Fox and his disciples found out what it cost to work out a new truth. They met with such violent opposition because the old faith was so sure it was right. It is easier to be good, in the way of being kind and sympathetic, than to be true. The truth seekers are like men delving into the rock for jewels and sharing them as fast as they are found, and every newly found jewel proves to be in harmony with all the others.

The longer a method of thought has been established, the harder it is to change it. Our thinking is governed by certain main concepts, and if these are disturbed the mind has nothing left to cling to. If a man's faith in the Bible is rudely shaken, his faith in all other things is liable to fall with it. Often a man who loses his faith in his wife, or his friend, goes all to pieces. It is easier to change the mind along the edges than to alter the central concepts. These central concepts determine our opinion of many other things that depend upon them. If a man believes in the Divine right of kings, he must of necessity believe in those things that go with this right.

There are certain governing concepts which hinder more than other things the natural growth of human development. Primitive man had to account in some way for the impulses that led him to do beastly things, so he imagined him. self controlled at times by an evil spirit. Men believed in devils long before they believed in gods, and the human race has not yet outgrown its belief in a personal devil.

Gradually the uplifting influence of God, working through man, wrought great social improvement. Man felt the animal nature in him held back. It was natural for animals and savages to fight, but men are learning that it is not good to be always fighting. The impulse of the primitive man was to strike back when anything hurt him; now the impulse of the well-bred man is to say excuse me," even when some one treads upon his toes. We are learning that the animal in

stincts which we have not outgrown are the devils against which we must strive.

Right and wrong are relative terms, changing with the development of the race. Each generation is likely to have a larger conception of truth than the preceding one. We have to stretch the ten commandments to make them cover the requirements of a virtuous life to-day. To settle the economic questions of the day we must have knowledge as well as sympathy. You have all seen a child squeezing a pet kitten to its hurt in the ignorance of its love? It is not enough to love your fellow men; you must know how to make them happy.

The spirit of God working out our development is hindered by hitches in the machinery, the limitations of our own brains prevent us from interpreting Him rightly. This has kept us from seeing new goodness. This causes us to attribute our own backward tendencies to somebody outside ourselves to say that Satan has taken possession of our hearts. We must be transformed in order that we may know what is the will of God.

One of man's greatest mistakes is the assumption that he is IT. Men are selfish, and the actions governed by self-interest interfere with the actions governed by the social interest. The world is full of small areas of action, and only as these learn to work in harmony with one another shall they become a part of the story of everlasting unity.

We are not conscious of the extent to which our actions are governed by the common interest. We dress as we do and behave as we do largely to please other people. The world-old notion of the independence of the individual is giving place to the thought that ali are one. Our consciousness of pleasure or pain is always accentuated by the power to seek the one and avoid the other, but we have found out that this pleasure or pain is a common feeling. Why did the Friends here at Longwood care for the sufferings of the slaves of the South? Was it not because they were a part of the body politic and it made you ache to feel their pain? The soul of us, of mankind, is one. The whole range of