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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Unitarian Gospel, by Minot Savage
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Our Unitarian Gospel
+
+Author: Minot Savage
+
+Release Date: June 13, 2006 [EBook #18578]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR UNITARIAN GOSPEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Edmund Dejowski
+
+
+
+
+
+OUR UNITARIAN GOSPEL B M. J. SAVAGE "The good news of the blessed God"
+BOSTON GEO. II. Ews, 141 FRANKLIN STREET 1898.
+
+Dedication
+TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE THAT THE MESSAGE OF GOD TO HIS CHILDREN MUST BE
+ONE OF LIFE AND HOPE INSTEAD OF A THEOLOGY WHICH TEACHES DEATH AND
+DESPAIR.
+
+NOTE. The sermons which make up this volume were spoken in the Church
+of the Messiah during the season of 1897-98. They are printed as
+delivered, not as literature, but for the sake of preaching to a larger
+congregation than can be reached on Sunday morning.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+UNITARIANISM "WHAT DO YOU IN PLACE OF WHAT YOU TAKE AWAY?"
+ARE THERE ANY CREEDS WHICH IT IS WICKED FOR US TO QUESTION?
+WHY HAVE UNITARIANS NO CREED?
+THE REAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION
+DOUBT AND FAITH - BOTH IS LIFE A PROBATION ENDED BY DEATH?
+SIN AND ATONEMENT PRAYER, AND COMMUNION WITH GOD
+THE WORSHIP OF GOD
+MORALITY NATURAL, NOT STATUTORY
+REWARD AND PUNISHMENT
+THINGS WHICH DOUBT CANNOT DESTROY
+EVOLUTION LOSES NOTHING OF VALUE TO MAN
+WHY ARE NOT ALL EDUCATED PEOPLE UNITARIANS?
+WHERE IS THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH?
+
+
+
+
+UNITARIANISM.
+
+THROUGH the lack of having made themselves familiar with the matter,
+there is a common and, I think, a widespread impression among people
+generally that Unitarianism is a new-fangled notion, a modern fad, a
+belief held only by a few, who are one side of the main currents of
+religious life and advance.
+
+Even if it were new, even if it were confined to the modern world, this
+would not necessarily be anything against it. The Copernican theory of
+the universe is new, is modern. So are most of the great discoveries
+that characterize and glorify the present age.
+
+But in the case of Unitarianism this cannot be said. It is not new: it
+is very old. And, before I come to discuss and outline a few of its
+great principles, it seems to me well that we should get in our minds a
+background of historic thought, that we may see a little what are the
+sources and origins of this Unitarianism, and may understand why it is
+that there is a new and modern birth of it in the modern world.
+
+All races start very far away from any Monotheistic or Unitarian
+belief. The Hebrews are no exception to that rule. The early part of
+the Bible shows very plain traces of the fact that the Jews were
+polytheists and nature-worshippers. If I should translate literally the
+first verse of the Bible, it would read in this way: In the beginning
+the Strong Ones created the heavens and the earth. "The word that we
+have translated God is in the plural; and I have already given you its
+meaning. This is only a survival, a trace, of that primeval belief
+which the Jews shared with all the rest of the world."
+
+From this polytheistic position the people took a step forward to a
+state of mind which Professor Max Muller calls henotheism; that is,
+they believed in the real existence of many gods, but that they were
+under allegiance to only one, their national Deity, and that him only
+they must serve.
+
+I suppose this state of thought was maintained throughout the larger
+part of the history of the Hebrew nation. You will find traces
+constantly, in the early part of the Old Testament, at any rate, of the
+belief of the people in the other gods, and their constant tendency to
+fall away to the worship of these other gods. But by and by all this
+was outgrown, and left behind; and the Hebrew people came to occupy a
+position of monotheism, spiritual monotheism, that is, they were
+passionate Unitarians, so far as the meaning of that word is concerned.
+Though, of course, I would not have you understand that many, perhaps
+most, of the principles which are held today under the name of
+Unitarian were known to them at that time, or would have been accepted,
+had they been known.
+
+In the sense, however, of believing in the oneness of God, they were
+Unitarians.
+
+Now, when Christianity comes into the world, what shall we say? It is
+the assumption on the part of most of the old- time churches that Jesus
+made it perfectly plain to his disciples that he was a divine being,
+that he claimed to be one himself, and that the claim was recognized.
+
+So far, however, as any authentic record with which we are familiar
+goes, Jesus himself was a Unitarian. All the disciples were Unitarians.
+Paul was a Unitarian. The New Testament is a Unitarian book from
+beginning to end. The finest critics of the world will tell you that
+there is no trace of any other teaching there. And so, for the first
+three hundred years of the history of the Church, Unitarianism was its
+prevailing doctrine.
+
+I have no very good memory for names. So I have brought here a little
+leaflet which contains some that I wish to speak of. Among the Church
+Fathers, Clement, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and
+Lactantius, all of them in their writings make it perfectly clear and
+unquestioned that the belief of the Church, the majority belief for the
+first three centuries, was Unitarian. Of course, the process of thought
+here and there was going on which finally culminated in the doctrine of
+the Trinity. That is, people were beginning more and more to exalt, as
+they supposed, the character, the office, the mission of Jesus; coming
+more and more to believe that he was something other than a man, that
+he was above and beyond humanity.
+
+But one other among the Fathers, Justin Martyr, one of the best known
+of all, takes care to point out explicitly his belief. I will read you
+just two or three words from it. He says: "There is a Lord of the Lord
+Jesus, being his Father and God, and the Cause of his existence."
+
+This belief, then, was universal, practically universal, throughout the
+first three centuries. But the process of growth was going on which
+finally culminated in the controversy which was settled by the Council
+of Nicaea, held in the early part of the fourth century; that is, the
+year 325. The leaders of this controversy, as you know, were Arius, on
+the Unitarian side, and Athanasius, fighting hard for the doctrine then
+new in the Church, of the Trinity.
+
+The majority of the bishops and leading men of the Church at that time
+were on the side of Arius; but at last the Emperor Constantine settled
+the dispute. Now you know that the sceptre of a despotic emperor may
+not reason, may not think; but it is weightier than either reason or
+thought in the settlement of a controversy like this at such a period
+in the history of the world. So Constantine settled the controversy in
+favor of the Trinitarians; and henceforth you need not wonder that
+Unitarianism did not grow, for it was mercilessly repressed and crushed
+out for the next thousand years.
+
+Unitarianism, however, is not alone in this. Let me call your attention
+to a fact of immense significance in this matter. All this time the
+study of science and philosophy, that dared to think beyond the limits
+of the Church's doctrine, were crushed out. There was no free
+philosophy, there was no free study of science, there was no free
+anything for a thousand years. The secular armed forces of Europe, with
+penalties of imprisonment, of the rack, of the fagot, of torture of
+every kind, were enlisted against anything like liberty of thinking.
+
+So you need not wonder, then, that there was neither any science nor
+any Unitarianism to be heard of until the Renaissance. What was the
+Renaissance? It was the rising again of human liberty, the possibility
+once more of man's freedom to think and study. Though the armed forces
+of Europe were for a long time against it, the rising tide could not be
+entirely rolled back, and so it gained on human thought and human life
+more and more. And out of this the Renaissance came, the new birth of
+science, on the one hand, and on the other, issuing in the
+Reformation's assertion of the right of thought and of private judgment
+in matters of religion; and along with this latter the rebirth of
+Unitarianism, its reappearance again as a force in the history of the
+world.
+
+During this Reformation period there are many names of light and power,
+among them being Servetus, whom Calvin burned because he was a
+Unitarian; Laelius and Faustus Socinus, Bernardino Ochino, Blandrata,
+and Francis David; and, more noted in some ways than any of them,
+Giordano Bruno, the man who represents the dawn of the modern world
+more significantly than any other man of his age, not entirely a
+Unitarian, but fighting a battle out of which Unitarianism sprung,
+freedom of thought, the right of private judgment, the scientific study
+of the universe, the attempt, unhampered by the Church's dogma or
+power, to understand the world in which we live.
+
+As a result of this Renaissance, what happened? Let me run over very
+rapidly the condition of things in Europe at the present time, with
+some glances back, that you may see that Unitarianism has played just
+as large a part as you could expect it to play, larger and grander than
+you could expect it, considering the conditions.
+
+In Hungary, one of the few countries where freedom of thought in
+religion has been permitted, there has been a grand organization of the
+Unitarian Church for more than three hundred years, not only churches,
+but a Unitarianism that has controlled colleges and universities and
+directed the growth of learning.
+
+Let us look to the North. In Sweden and Norway it is still a crime to
+organize a church that teaches that Jesus is not God. So we may expect
+to find no Unitarian churches there; though there are many and noble
+Unitarian men, thinkers and teachers. Come to Germany. There are no
+organized Unitarian churches under that name here; but there is a
+condition of things that is encouraging for us to note. There is a
+union of the Protestant organizations, in which the liberals, or
+Unitarians, are free, and have their part without any question as to
+their doctrine.
+
+There are hundreds and thousands of Unitarians in South Germany. In the
+city of Bremen I called on a clergyman who had translated one of my
+books, and found out from him the condition of things there. The
+cathedral of Bremen has half a dozen different preachers attached to
+it. Some of them are orthodox, and some are Unitarian, all perfectly
+free; living happily together in this way, and the people at liberty to
+come and listen to which one of them they choose. This is not an
+uncommon thing in Germany. That is the condition of things, then,
+there.
+
+In Holland there are no Unitarian churches, no churches going by that
+name; but there are thousands of Unitarians particularly among the
+educated and leading men, and one university, that of Leyden, entirely
+in control of the liberal religious leaders of the country.
+
+When you come to France, which you know is dominantly Catholic, you
+still find a large body of Protestants; but one wing of their great
+organization is virtually if not out and out Unitarian. And a few of
+the most noted preachers of the modern time in France have been
+Unitarians. I have had correspondence with men there which showed that
+they were perfectly in sympathy with our aims, our purposes, our work.
+
+In Transylvania and Poland there were large numbers of Unitarian
+churches which were afterwards crushed out.
+
+You find, then, all over Europe, all over civilization, just as much
+Unitarianism as you would expect to find, when you consider the
+questions as to whether the law permits it and as to whether the people
+are educated and free.
+
+I should like, not for the sake of boasting, but simply that you may
+see that you are in good company, to mention the names of some of those
+who are foremost in our thought. Take Mazzini, the great leader of
+Italy; take Castelar, one of the greatest men in modern Spain; take
+Kossuth, the flaming patriot of Hungary, all Unitarian men.
+
+Now let us come a step nearer home: let us consider England, and note
+that just the moment free thought was allowed, you find Unitarianism
+springing into existence. Milton was a Unitarian; Locke, one of the
+greatest of English philosophers, a Unitarian; Dr. Lardner, one of its
+most famous theological scholars, a Unitarian; Sir Isaac Newton, one of
+the few names that belong to the highest order of those which have made
+the earth glorious, a Unitarian.
+
+And, then, when we come to later England, we find another great
+scientist, comparatively modern, Dr. Priestley, who, coming to this
+country after he had made the discovery of oxygen which made him famous
+for all time, established the first Unitarian church in our neighbor
+city of Philadelphia.
+
+The first Unitarian church which took that name in the modern world was
+organized in London by Dr. Theophilus Lindsey in 1774; and its
+establishment coincides with the great outburst of freedom that
+distinguished the close of the eighteenth century.
+
+You must not look for Unitarians where there is no liberty; for it is a
+cardinal principle of their thought and their life.
+
+Soon after the London movement, the first Unitarian church in this
+country was organized, or rather the first Unitarian church came into
+existence. It was the old King's Chapel of Boston, an Anglican church,
+which came out and took the name Unitarian.
+
+There is a very bright saying in connection with this old church, which
+I will pause long enough to repeat, because there is a principle in it
+as well as a great deal of wit. They kept there the old English church
+service, except that it was purged, according to their point of view,
+from all Trinitarian belief. It is said that Dr. Bellows, who was
+attending a service there some years ago, had with him an English
+gentleman as a visitor. This man picked up the service, looked it over,
+and, turning to Dr. Bellows, with a sarcastic look on his face, said,
+"Ah I see that you have here the Church of England service watered."
+Whereupon Dr. Bellows, with his power of ready wit, replied, No, my
+dear sir, not watered, washed. King's Chapel, then, was the first
+Unitarian church in this country. But the number grew rapidly, and in a
+few years perhaps half, or more than half, of the old historic Puritan
+and Pilgrim churches in New England had become Unitarian, including in
+that number the old First Church of Plymouth.
+
+Now, before I go on to discuss the principles underlying our movement,
+I wish to call your attention to a few more names; and I trust you will
+pardon me for this. There is no desire for vain-glory in the
+enumeration. I simply wish that people should know, what only a few do
+know, who have been Unitarians in the past, and what great names,
+leading authoritative names in the world's literature and science and
+art, find here their place.
+
+Among the Fathers of the Revolution, all the Adamses, Dr. Franklin,
+Thomas Jefferson, and many another were avowed Unitarians. And, when we
+come to modern times, it is worth your noting that all our great poets
+in this country, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, and in
+this city Stedman, are Unitarian names.
+
+Then the leading historians, Bancroft, Motley, Prescott, Sparks,
+Palfrey, Parkman, and John Fiske, are Unitarians. Educators, like
+Horace Mann, like the last seven presidents of Harvard University,
+Unitarians. Great scientists, like Agassiz, Peirce, Bowditch, Professor
+Draper, Unitarians. Statesmen and public men, like Webster, Calhoun,
+the Adamses, the Hoars, Curtis. Two of our great chief justices,
+Marshall and Parsons. Supreme Court Judges, Story and Miller. Literary
+men, like Whipple, Hawthorne, Ripley, and Bayard Taylor; and eminent
+women, such as Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child, Lucretia Mott, Helen
+Hunt Jackson, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe.
+
+I mention these, that you may know the kind of men, ethical,
+scientific, judicial, political, literary, who have been distinguished,
+as we think from our point of view, by being followers of this grand
+faith of ours.
+
+And now I wish you to note again, what I hinted at a moment ago, that
+it is not an accident that Unitarianism should spring into being in the
+modern world coincidently with the great movements of liberty in France
+and England, and the outburst that culminated in our own Revolution and
+the establishment here of a State without a king as well as of a church
+without a bishop.
+
+Wherever you have liberty and education, there you have the raw
+materials out of which to make the free, forward looker in religious
+thought and life.
+
+Now what are the three principles out of which Unitarianism is born?
+First, I have already intimated it, but I wish to emphasize it again
+for a moment with an addition, Liberty. Humanity at last had come to a
+time in its history when it had asserted its right to be free; not only
+to cast off fetters that hampered the body, not only to dethrone the
+despots that made liberty impossible in the State, but to think in the
+realm of religion, to believe it more honorable to God to think than to
+cringe and be afraid in his presence.
+
+Second, coincident with the birth of Unitarianism is an enlargement and
+a reassertion of the conscience of mankind. A demand for justice. Just
+think for a moment, and take it home to your hearts, that up to the
+time when this free religious life was born, according to the teaching
+of all the old creeds, justice and right had been one thing here among
+men and another thing enthroned in the heavens. The idea has always
+been that might made right, that God, because he was God, had a right
+to do anything, though it controverted and contradicted all the ideas
+of human righteousness; and that we still must bow in the dust, and
+accept it as true.
+
+If I could be absolutely sure that God had done something which
+contradicted my conscience, I should say that probably my conscience
+was wrong. I should wait at any rate, and try to find out. But, when I
+find that the condition of things is simply this, that certain
+fallible, unjust, uneducated, barbaric people have said that God has
+done certain things, then it is another matter. I have no direct word
+from God: I have only the report of men whose authority I have no
+adequate reason to accept.
+
+At any rate, the world came to the point where it demanded that
+goodness on earth should be goodness up in heaven, too; that God should
+at least be as just and fair as we expect men to be. And that, if you
+will think it out a little carefully, is enough to revolutionize the
+theology of the world; for the picture of the character of God as
+contained in the old theologies is even horribly unjust, as judged by
+any human standard.
+
+In the third place, Unitarianism sprang out of a new elevation of love
+and tenderness. As men became more and more civilized, they became more
+tender-hearted; and they found it impossible to believe that the Father
+in, heaven should not be as kind and loving as the best father on
+earth.
+
+And here, again, if you think it out, you will find that this is enough
+to compel a revolution of all the old theological ideas of the world.
+
+Just as soon, then, as the civilized modern world became free, there
+was a new expansion of the sense of the right to think; there was a new
+expansion of conscience, the insistent demand for justice; there was a
+new expansion of tenderness and love; and out of these, characterized
+by these, having these in one sense for its very soul and body, came
+Unitarianism.
+
+Now another point. It is commonly assumed by those who have not studied
+the matter that, because Unitarians have no printed and published
+creed, they are all abroad in their thinking. They take this for
+granted; and so it is assumed by people who speak to me on the subject.
+They think that there must be just as many views of things as there are
+individuals.
+
+If there are any persons here having this idea, perhaps I shall
+astonish them by the statement I am going to make. After more than
+twenty years of experience as a Unitarian minister, I have come to the
+conviction that there is not a body of Christians in the world to-day,
+not Catholic or Presbyterian or Methodist or Congregational or any
+other, that is so united in its purposes, not only, but in its beliefs,
+as these very Unitarians.
+
+And the fact is perfectly natural. Take the scientific men of the
+world. They do not expect a policeman after them if they do not hold
+certain scientific opinions. There is no authority to try them for
+heresy or to turn them out of your society unless they hold certain
+scientific ideas. They have no sense of compulsion except to find and
+accept that which they discover to be true. The one aim of science is
+the truth. There is no motive for anything else.
+
+And truth being one, mark you, and they being free to seek for it, and
+all of them caring simply for that, they naturally come together,
+inevitably come together. So that, without any external power or
+orthodox compulsion, the scientific men of the world are substantially
+at one as to all the great principles. They discuss minor matters; but,
+when they discuss, they are simply hunting for a deeper truth, not
+trying to conquer each other.
+
+Now Unitarians are precisely in this position. The only thing any of us
+desire is the truth. We are perfectly free to seek for the truth; and,
+the truth being one, we naturally tend towards it, and, tending towards
+it, we come together. So there is, as I said, greater unanimity of
+opinion in regard to the great essential points among Unitarians than
+among any other body in Christendom.
+
+Now, as briefly as I can, I want to analyze what I regard as the
+fundamental principles of Unitarianism. I am not going to give you a
+creed, I am not going to give you my creed: I am going to give you the
+great fundamental principles which characterize and distinguish
+Unitarians.
+
+First, liberty, freedom of the individual to think, think as he will or
+think as he must; but not liberty for the sake of itself. Liberty for
+the sake of finding the truth; for we believe that people will be more
+likely to find the truth if they are free to search for it than they
+will if they are threatened or frightened, or if they are compelled to
+come to certain preordained conclusions that have been settled for
+them. Freedom, then, for the sake of finding the truth.
+
+Second, God. The deep-down conviction that wisdom, power, love, that
+is, God, is at the heart of the universe. Third, that God is not only
+wisdom and power and love, but that he is the universal Father, not
+merely the Father of the elect, not merely the Father of Christians,
+not merely the Father of civilized people, but the Father of all men,
+equally, lovingly, tenderly the Father of all men.
+
+In the next place, being the Father of all men, he would naturally wish
+to have them find the truth. So we believe in revelation. Not in
+revelation confined to one book or one epoch in the history of the
+world, though we do not deny the revelation contained in them. We
+believe that all truth, through whatever medium it comes to the world,
+is in so far a revelation of our Father; and it is infallible
+revelation when it is demonstrably true, and not otherwise.
+
+The next step, then: in the words of Lucretia Mott, we believe that
+truth should be taken for authority, and not authority for truth. The
+only authority in the world is the truth. The only thing to which
+intellectually a free Unitarian can afford to bow is ascertained and
+demonstrated truth. We believe, then, in revelation.
+
+In the next place, we believe in incarnation. Not in the complete
+incarnation of God in one man, in one country, in one age, in the
+history of the world. We believe in the incarnation of God
+progressively in humanity. All that is true, all that is beautiful, all
+that is good, is so much of God incarnate in his children, and reaching
+ever forth and forward to higher blossoming and grander fruitage. The
+difference between Jesus and other men, as we hold it, is not a
+difference in kind: it is a difference in degree. So he is the son of
+our Father, our elder brother, our friend, our leader, our helper, our
+inspiration.
+
+The next principle of Unitarianism is that character is salvation. We
+do not even say that character is a condition of salvation. Character
+is salvation. A man who is right, who is in perfect accord with the law
+and life of God, is safe, in this world, in all worlds, in this year,
+in all future time.
+
+And, then, lastly, we believe in the eternal and universal hope. We
+believe that God, just because he is God, is under the highest
+conceivable obligation, not to me only, but to himself, to see to it
+that every being whom he has created shall sometime, somewhere, in the
+long run, find that gift of life a blessing, and not a curse.
+
+We believe in retribution, universal, quick, unescapable; for we
+believe that this is mercy, and that through this is to come salvation.
+
+These, then, are the main principles, as I understand them, of
+Unitarianism.
+
+There is one point more now that I must touch on. When I was
+considering the question of giving this series of sermons, one of my
+best friends raised the question as to whether I had better put the
+word Unitarian? into the title. He was afraid that it might prejudice
+people who did not like the name, and keep them from listening to what
+I had to say. This is a common feeling on the part of Unitarians. I was
+trained as a boy, and through all my youth and early manhood in the
+ministry, to look with aversion, suspicion, on Unitarianism, and to
+hate the name. But to-day, after more than twenty years of experience
+in the Unitarian ministry, I have come to the conviction, which I wish
+to suggest to you, that it is the most magnificent name in the
+religious history of the world; and I, for one, wish to hoist it as my
+flag, to inscribe it on my banner, not because I care for a name, but
+because of that which it covers and comprehends.
+
+Now, not in the slightest degree in the way of prejudice against other
+names or to find fault with them, let me note a few of them, and then
+compare Unitarianism with them. Take the word "Anglican," for example,
+the name of the Church of England. What does it mean? Of course, you
+know it is simply a geographical name. It defines nothing as to the
+Church's government or belief or anything else. There is the word
+"Episcopal," which simply means a church that is governed by bishops;
+that is all. Take the word "Presbyterian," from a Greek word which
+means an elder, a church governed by its old men or its elders. No
+special significance about that. Then "Baptist," signifying that the
+people who wear that name believe that baptism always means immersion,
+indicating no other doctrine by which that body is known, or its method
+of government. "Congregational," no doctrine significance there. It
+simply means a church whose power is lodged in the congregation. It is
+democratic in its methods of government. "Methodist,", applied to the
+members of a particular church because they were considered over-exact
+or methodical in their ways. There is no governmental significance
+there. The name Catholic? or Universal? is chiefly significant from the
+fact that the claim implied by it is not true. Now let us look for a
+moment at the word Unitarian, and see whether it has a right to be
+placed not only on a level with these, but infinitely above and beyond
+them in the richness, in the wonder of its meaning. Let me lead you to
+a consideration of it. I want you to note that unity? is the one word
+of more significance than any other in the history of man; and that it
+is growing in its depth, its comprehensiveness. What have we
+discovered? We have discovered in this modern world, only a few years
+ago, that this which we see, the earth, the stars, and all the wonders
+of the heavens, is one, a universe. Not only that. We have discovered
+the unity of force. There are not, as primitive man supposed, a
+thousand different powers in the universe, antagonistic and fighting
+with each other. We have learned to know that there is just one force
+in the universe. That light, heat, electricity, magnetism, all these
+marvellous and diverse varieties of forces, are one force, and can be
+at the will and skill of man converted into each other.
+
+Next, we have learned that there is one law in the universe. Should we
+not be Unitarians? Should we not believe in the unity of God, when we
+can see, as far as the telescope can reach on the one hand and the
+microscope on the other, one eternal, changeless Order?
+
+Another point. We have learned the unity of substance. We know how
+Comte, the famous French scientist, advised his followers not to
+attempt to find out anything about the fixed stars, because, he said,
+such knowledge was forever beyond the reach of man. How long had Comte
+been dead before we discovered the spectroscope? And now we know all
+about the fixed stars. We know that the stuff we step on in the street
+this morning as we go home from church is the same stuff of which the
+sun is made, the same stuff as that which flamed a few years ago as a
+comet, the same stuff as that which shines in Sirius, in suns so many
+miles away that it takes millions of years for their light to reach us.
+One stuff, one substance, throughout the universe; and this poor old,
+tear-wet earth of ours is a planet shining in the heavens as much as
+any of them, of the same glorious material of which they are made.
+
+Then, again, we have discovered the unity of life. From the little tiny
+globule of protoplasm up to the brain of Shakspere, one life throbbing
+and thrilling with the same divinity which is at the heart of the
+world.
+
+We have discovered not only the unity of life, we have discovered the
+unity of man. Not a hundred different origins, different kinds of
+creatures, different-natured beings, but one blood to dwell in every
+country on the face of the earth: the unity of man.
+
+We have discovered the unity of ethics, of righteousness, of right and
+wrong, one right, one wrong. A million applications, but one goal
+towards which all those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are
+striving.
+
+One religion: for underneath all the diversity of creeds and religions,
+barbaric, semi-civilized, civilized, enlightened, we find man, the one
+child of God, hunting for the clearest light he can command, after the
+one Father, that is, the one eternal, universal search of the religious
+life of the race.
+
+Religion then one; one unifying purpose; every step that the world
+takes in its progress leading it towards liberty, towards light,
+towards truth, towards righteousness, towards peace. One goal, then,
+for the progress of man.
+
+And, then, one destiny. Some day, every soul, no matter how belated,
+shall arrive; some day, somewhere, every soul, however sin stained,
+shall arrive; every soul, however small, however distorted, however
+hindered, shall arrive. One destiny. Not that we are to be just alike;
+only that some time we are to unfold all that is possible in us, and
+stand, full statured, perfect, complete, in the presence of our Father.
+
+Do I not well, then, to say that Unity, Unitarianism, is a magnificent
+name, a name to be flung out to the breeze as our banner under which we
+will fight for God and man; a name beside which all others pale into
+insignificance; a name that sums up the secret, the centre, the hope,
+the outcome of the universe? Greatest name in the religious history of
+man, it coincides with that magnificent hope so grandly uttered by
+Tennyson, "One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event,
+To which the whole creation moves."
+
+"WHAT DO YOU GIVE IN PLACE OF WHAT YOU TAKE AWAY?"
+
+MY theme is the answer to the question, What do you give in place of
+what you take away? For my text I have chosen two significant passages
+of Scripture. One is from the seventh chapter of Hebrews, the
+nineteenth verse; and it sets forth, as I look at it, the drift and
+outcome of the process of which we are a part, the bringing in of a
+better hope. Then from the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the thirty-
+ninth and fortieth verses, expressing the relation in which we stand to
+those who have looked for God and his work in the past: And these all,
+having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise;
+God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us
+should not be made perfect.
+
+What do you give in place of that which you take away? This is a
+question which is proposed to Unitarians over and over and over again.
+It is looked upon as an unanswerable criticism. We are supposed to be
+people who tear down, but do not build; people who take away the dear
+hopes and traditional faiths of the past, and leave the world desolate,
+without God, without hope.
+
+Not only is this urged against us, from the other side, but there are a
+great many Unitarians, possibly, who have not thought themselves out
+with enough clearness to know the relation between the present
+conditions of human thought and the past; and sometimes even they may
+look back with a regretful longing towards something which they have
+outgrown, and left behind.
+
+I propose this morning to answer this question, just as simply, as
+frankly, as I can; to treat it with all reverence, with all
+seriousness, and try to make clear what it is that the world has lost
+as the result of the advances of modern knowledge, and what, if
+anything, it has gained.
+
+But while I stand here, on the threshold of my theme, and before I
+enter upon its somewhat fuller discussion, I wish to urge upon you two
+or three considerations.
+
+It is assumed, by the people who ask this question, that, if we do take
+away anything, we are under obligation straightway to put something in
+its place. I wish you to consider carefully as to whether this position
+is sound. Suppose, for example, that I should discover that some belief
+that has been held in the past is not well founded, not true. Must I
+say nothing about it because, possibly, I may not have discovered just
+what is true?
+
+To illustrate what I mean: Prince Alphonso of Castile used to say, as
+he studied the Ptolemaic theory of the universe, that, if he had been
+present at creation, he could have suggested a good many very important
+improvements. In other words, he was keen enough to see that the
+Ptolemaic theory of the universe was not a good working theory. Must he
+keep still about that because, forsooth, he was not able to establish
+another theory of the universe in its place?
+
+Do you not see that the criticism, the testing of positions which are
+held, are the primary steps in the direction of finding some larger and
+grander truth, provided these positions are not adequate and do not
+hold?
+
+The Rev. Dr. George A. Gordon, of the historic Old South Church in
+Boston, told us, in an address which he gave in Brooklyn the other day,
+that Calvinism was dead; that it was even necessary to clear the face
+of the earth of it, in order to save our faith in God. At the same time
+Dr. Gordon said frankly that he had no other as complete and finished
+system to put in place of it. Was he justified in telling the truth
+about Calvinism because he has not a ready-made scheme to substitute
+for it?
+
+I wish you to note that I do not concede for an instant that I must not
+tell the truth about anything that I perceive because I have not a
+ready-made theory of some kind to put in the place of that which is
+taken away. It is my business to tell what seems to me true in all
+reverence, seriousness, earnestness and love, and trust the
+consequences to God.
+
+In the next place, another consideration. I have been talking as though
+I conceded that Unitarians, or that I myself, sometimes take away
+things, beliefs. Now I wish to ask you who it is that takes away
+beliefs. Has Unitarianism ever taken away any faith or hope or trust
+from the world? Has anybody ever done it?
+
+If we pit ourselves against one of God's eternal truths, is that truth
+going to suffer? Rather shall we not beat ourselves to pieces against
+God's adamant? If a thing is true, nobody is going to take it away from
+the world; for nobody has the power to uproot or destroy a divine
+truth.
+
+Who is it, then, that takes these beliefs away? Is it not just this?
+Does it not mean that men have discovered that what they supposed to be
+true is not true, and it is the old belief that passes away in the
+presence of a larger and clearer light? Is not that the process?
+
+When Magellan, for instance, demonstrated that this planet of ours was
+round by circumnavigating it, the ship returning to the port from which
+it started, did he take away the old flat earth, fixed and anchored,
+immovable, around which the sun moved? Why, there was no old, flat and
+anchored, stationary earth to take away. There never had been. All
+Magellan did was to demonstrate a new, higher, grander truth. He took
+away a misconception from the minds of ignorant and uneducated people,
+and helped put one of God's grand, luminous truths in the place of it.
+That is all he did.
+
+It is modern intelligence, increasing knowledge, larger, clearer light
+that takes away old beliefs. But, if these old beliefs are not true, it
+simply means that we are discovering what is true; that is, having a
+clearer view and vision of God's ways and methods of governing the
+world.
+
+I wish you to note, then, in this second place, that Unitarianism does
+not take away anything.
+
+One third consideration: Suppose we did. Suppose we took away belief in
+the existence of God. Suppose we took away belief in man as a soul,
+leaving him simply an animal. Suppose we took away faith in continued
+existence after death. Suppose we had the power to sweep all of these
+grand beliefs out of the human mind. Then what?
+
+If I had my choice, I would do it gladly, with tearful gratitude,
+rather than keep the old beliefs of the last two thousand years.
+
+The late Henry Ward Beecher, in a review article published not long
+before his death, said frankly this which I am saying now, and which I
+had said a good many times before Mr. Beecher's article was written,
+that no belief at all is infinitely, unspeakably better than those
+horrible beliefs which have dominated and darkened the world.
+
+I would rather believe in no God than in a bad God, such as he has been
+painted. And, if I had my choice of the future, what would it be? I
+have, I trust, just over there, father, mother, two brothers,
+numberless dear ones; and I hope to see them with a hope dearer than
+any other which I cherish. But, if I were standing on the threshold of
+heaven itself, and these loved ones were beckoning me to come in, and I
+had the choice between an eternity of felicity in their presence and
+eternal sleep, I would take the sleep rather than take this endless joy
+at the cost of the unceasing and unrelieved torment of the meanest soul
+that ever lived. And I would have no great respect for any man who
+would not. I would not care to purchase my joy at the price of endless
+pangs, the ascending smoke of torment, the wail going up to the sweet
+heavens forever and ever and ever.
+
+So, even if it were a choice between no belief at all and the old
+beliefs, the darkness would be light to me; and I would embrace it with
+joy rather than take the selfish felicity of those men who estimate it
+as a part of their future occupation to be leaning over the battlements
+of heaven and witnessing the torture of the damned. This, though
+sounding so terrible to us now, is good old Christian doctrine, which
+has often been avowed. Thank God we are outgrowing it.
+
+These, then, for preliminary considerations.
+
+Now let me raise the question as to what has been taken away. You
+remember I said that I have taken nothing away, Unitarianism has taken
+nothing away. But the advance of modern knowledge, the larger, clearer
+revelation of God, has taken away no end of things. What are they?
+
+Let me make two very brief statements right here. I am in the position,
+this morning, of appearing to repeat myself; that is, I must go over a
+good many points that I have made from this platform before. But please
+understand that it is not on account of lapse of memory on my part. I
+am doing it with a distinct end in view, which can only be attained by
+these steps.
+
+In the next place, my treatment has so much ground to cover that what I
+say will appear somewhat in the nature of a catalogue; but I see no
+other way in which to make the definite statement I wish to lay before
+you. I am going to catalogue, first, a lot of the things that modern
+knowledge has taken away. Then I am going to tell you some of the
+things that modern knowledge is putting in place of what it has
+removed.
+
+In the first place, the old universe is taken away; that is, that
+little tiny play-house affair, not so large as our solar system, which
+in the first chapters of Genesis God is reported to have made as a
+carpenter working from outside makes a house, inside of six days. That
+little universe, that is, the story of creation as told in the early
+chapters of Genesis, is absolutely gone. I shall tell you pretty soon
+what has taken the place of it.
+
+Secondly, the God of the Old Testament, the God of most of the creeds
+has been taken away, that God who was jealous, who was partial, who was
+angry; who built a little world, and called it good, and then inside of
+a few days saw it slip out of his control into the hands of the devil,
+either because he could not help it or did not wish to; who watched
+this world develop for a little while, and then, because it did not go
+as he wanted it to, had to drown it, and start over again; the God who
+in the Old Testament told the people that slavery was right, provided
+they did not enslave the members of their own nation, but only those
+outside of it; the God who indorsed polygamy, telling a man that he was
+at liberty to have just as many wives as he wanted and could obtain,
+and that he was free to dispose of them by simply giving them a little
+notice and telling them to quit; the God who indorsed hypocrisy and
+lying on the part of his people; the God who sent a little light on one
+little people along one edge of the Mediterranean, and left all the
+rest of the world in darkness; the God who is to damn all of these
+people who were left in darkness because they did not know that of
+which they never had any chance to hear; the God who is to cast all his
+enemies into the pit, trampling them down, as Edwards pictures so
+horribly to us, in his hate for ever and ever. This God has been taken
+away.
+
+In the third place, the story of Eden, the creation of man and then
+immediately the fall of man and the resulting doctrine of total
+depravity, this has been taken away. That man was made in the image of
+God, and then, inside of a few days, fell into the hands of the Power
+of Evil, and that since that day he has been the legitimate subject
+here on this earth of the prince of this world, that is, the devil, and
+that is taught both in the Old Testament and in the New, that man is
+this kind of a being, this is forever gone. There is no rational,
+intelligent, free belief in it left.
+
+Then the old theory of the Bible has been taken away, that theory which
+makes it a book without error or flaw, and makes us under the highest
+obligation to receive all its teachings as the veritable word of God,
+whether they seem to us hideous, blasphemous, immoral, degrading, or
+not. This is gone.
+
+Professor Goldwin Smith, in an article published within a year, treats
+the belief, the continued holding to this old theory about the Bible,
+under the head of Christianity's "Millstone." He writes from the point
+of view of the old belief; but he says, if Christianity is going to be
+saved, this millstone must be taken off from about its neck, and
+allowed to sink into the sea.
+
+If we hold that theory, what? Why, then, we must still believe that, in
+order to help on the slaughter of his enemies on the part of a
+barbarian general, God stopped the whole machinery of the universe for
+hours until he got through with his killing. We must believe the
+literal story of Jonah's being swallowed by the whale. We must believe
+no end of incredibilities; and then, if we dare to read with our eyes
+open, we must believe immoral things, cruel things, about men and about
+God, things which our civilization would not endure, were it not for
+the power of tradition, which hallows that which used to be believed in
+the past.
+
+This conception of the Bible, then, is gone.
+
+Then, in the next place, the blood atonement is gone. What did that
+mean to the world? It meant that the eternal Father either would not or
+could not forgive and receive back to his heart his own erring,
+mistaken, wandering children unless the only begotten Son of God was
+slaughtered, and we, as the old awful hymn has it, were plunged beneath
+this fountain of blood I Revolting, terrible, if you stop to think of
+it for one reasoning moment, that God cannot forgive unless he takes
+agony out of somebody equal to that from which he releases his own
+children! That, though embodied still in all the creeds, has been taken
+away. It is gone, like a long, hideous dream of darkness.
+
+Belief in the devil has been taken away. What does that mean? It means
+that Christendom has held and taught for nearly two thousand years that
+God is not really King of the universe; that he holds only a divided
+power, and that here thousands on thousands of years go by, and the
+devil controls the destiny of this world, and ruins right and left
+millions on millions of human souls, and that God either cannot help it
+or does not wish to, one of the two. This belief is taken away.
+
+And then, lastly, that which I have touched on by implication already,
+the belief in endless punishment is taken away. Are you sorry? Does
+anybody wish something put in the place of this? The belief that all
+those except the elect, church members, those who have been through a
+special process called conversion, these, including all the millions on
+millions outside of Christendom and from the beginning until to-day,
+have gone down to the flame that is never quenched, the worm that never
+dies, to linger on in useless torture forever and ever? Simply a
+monument of what is monstrously called the justice of God! This is
+gone.
+
+Now, friends, just ask yourselves, as you go home, as you think over
+what I have said this morning, as to whether there is anything else
+lost.
+
+Is there anything of value taken away? Let me run over now in parallel
+fashion another catalogue to place opposite this one, so that we may
+see as to what has been our loss and as to whether there has been any
+gain.
+
+In the place of the little, petty universe of Hebrew dream, what have
+we now? This magnificent revelation of the Copernican students; a
+universe infinite in its reach and in its grandeur; a universe fit at
+last to be the home of an infinite God; a universe grand enough to
+clothe him and express him, to manifest and reveal him; a universe
+boundless; a universe that has grown through the ages and is growing
+still, and is to unfold more and more of the divine beauty and glory
+forevermore. Is there any loss in this exchange?
+
+Now as to God. I have pictured to you, in very bald outline, some of
+the conceptions of God that have been held in the past. What is our God
+to-day? The heart, the life, the soul, of this infinite universe;
+justice that means justice; power that means power; love that surpasses
+all our imagination of love; a God who is eternal goodness; who from
+the beginning has folded his child man to his heart, whispering all of
+truth that he could understand, breathing into him all of life that he
+could contain, inspiring him with all love and tenderness that he could
+appreciate or employ, and so, in this way, leading him and guiding him
+through the ages, year by year and century by century, still to
+something better and finer and higher; a God, not off somewhere in the
+heavens, to whom we must send a messenger; not a God separated from us
+by some great gulf that we must bridge by some supposed atonement; a
+God nearer to us than our breath; a God who hears the whisper of our
+want, who understands the dawning wish or aspiration before it takes
+form or shape; a God who loves us better than we love ourselves or love
+those who are dearest to us; a God who knows better what we need than
+we know ourselves, and is more ready to give us than fathers are to
+give good gifts to their children. Is there any loss here?
+
+In the third place, the new man that has come into modern thought. Not
+the broken fragments of a perfect Adam; not a man so crippled
+intellectually that, as they have been telling us for centuries, it was
+impossible for him to find the truth, or to know it when he did find
+it; not a being so depraved, morally, that he never desires any good,
+and never loves anything which is sweet and fine; a being totally
+depraved, a being who, as one passage in the Old Testament tells us, is
+so corrupt his very prayer is a sin; conceived, born, in evil, and all
+his thoughts tainted, and drifting towards that which is wicked. Not
+this kind of a man. A man who has been on the planet hundreds of
+thousands of years, who has been learning by experience, who has been
+animal, who has been cruel, but who at every step has been trying to
+find the light, has been becoming a little truer and better; a being
+who has evolved all that is sweetest and finest in the history of the
+world; who has made no end of mistakes, who has committed no end of
+crimes, but who has learned through these processes, and at last has
+given us some specimens of what is possible by way of development in
+Abraham and Moses and Elijah and David and Isaiah, and a long line of
+prophets and seers of the Old Testament time; not perfect, but
+magnificent types of actual men; who has developed in other nations
+such men as Gautama, the heroes and teachers of China, like Confucius;
+then Aristotle, Plato, Socrates; the noble men of Rome; who has given
+us in the modern world the great poets, the great discoverers, the
+great philanthropists; those devoted to the highest, sweetest things;
+musicians and artists; who has given us Shakspere, who has given us,
+crowning them all, as I believe, by the moral beauty and grandeur of
+his love, the Nazarene, Jesus, our elder brother, Son of God, and
+helper of his fellow-man; this humanity that has never fallen; that has
+been climbing up from the beginning, and not sinking down. Is there any
+loss here?
+
+Then let us see what kind of a Bible modern science and modern
+discovery and modern scholarship and modern life have given us.
+
+Our Bible is the sifted truth of the ages. There is not a passage in it
+or a line for which we need apologize. There is nothing incredible in
+it, except as it is incredibly sweet and good and true. It is the truth
+that has come to men in all ages, no matter spoken by whose lips, no
+matter written by what pen, no matter wrought out under what conditions
+or in whatever civilization or under whatever sky.
+
+All that is true and sweet and fine is a part of God's revelation of
+himself to his children, and makes up our Bible, which is not all
+written yet. Every new truth that shall be discovered in the future
+will make a new line or a new paragraph or a new chapter. God has been
+writing it on the rocks, in the stars, in the hearts, on the brains of
+his children; and his hand does not slacken. He is not tired: he is
+writing still. He will write to-morrow, and next year, and throughout
+all the coming time. This is the Bible.
+
+We believe, for example, that the saying of the old Egyptian, God shall
+wipe away all tears from their eyes, is just as divine and sweet as
+when said in the New Testament. We believe that the Golden Rule is just
+as golden when uttered by Confucius hundreds of years before Jesus as
+it was afterwards.
+
+We believe that the saying about two commandments being the sum and
+substance of the law was just as holy when Hillel spake them as when
+Jesus uttered them after his time. All truth is divine, and part of
+God's divine revelation to his children.
+
+Here is our Bible, then. Now let me speak about Jesus, and see if our
+thought is less precious than the old. In my old days, when I preached
+in the orthodox church, Jesus was never half so dear, so helpful to me,
+as he is now. If I thought of him at all, I was obliged to think of him
+as somehow a second God, who stood between me and the first one, and
+through whom I hoped deliverance from the law and the justice of the
+first. I had to think of him as a part of a scheme that seemed to me
+unjust and cruel, involving the torture of some and the loss of most of
+the race. You cannot pick the old-time Jesus out of that scheme of
+which he is a part. I could not love him then as I love him now. I
+could not think of him as an example to follow; for how can one take
+the Infinite for an example? How can one follow the absolutely Perfect
+except afar off?
+
+But now I think of Jesus and his cross as the most natural and at the
+same time the divinest thing in the history of man. Nothing outside of
+the regular divine order in it. Jesus reveals to me to-day the
+humanness of God and the divineness of man. And he takes his place in
+the long line of the world's redeemers, those who have wrought
+atonement, how? Through faithfulness even unto death.
+
+The way we work out the atonement of the world, that is, the
+reconciliation of the world to God, is by being true to the vision of
+the truth as it comes to us, no matter by the pathway of what
+suffering, true as Jesus was true, true even when he thought his Father
+had forsaken him.
+
+Do you know, friends, I think that is the grandest thing in the world.
+He verily believed that God had forsaken him; and yet he held fast to
+his trust, to his truth, to his faithfulness, even when swooning away
+into the unconsciousness of death.
+
+There is faith, and there is faithfulness; and he shares this with
+thousands of others. There are thousands of men who have suffered more
+than Jesus did dying for his own truth; thousands of martyrs who, with
+his name on their lips, have gone through greater torture than he did.
+All these, whoever has been faithful, whoever has suffered for the
+right, whoever has been true, has helped to work out the atonement, the
+reconciliation, of the world with God, showing the beauty of truth and
+bringing men into that admiration of it that helps them to come into
+accord with the divine life.
+
+Then one more point. Instead of the wail of the damned that is never,
+through all eternity, for one moment hushed in silence, we place the
+song of the redeemed, an eternal hope for every child born of the race.
+We do not believe it is possible for a human soul ultimately to be
+lost. Why? Because we believe in God. God either can save all souls or
+he cannot. If he can and will not, then he is not God. If he would and
+cannot, then he is not God. Let us reverently say it: he is under an
+infinite obligation to his own self, to his own righteousness, to his
+own truth, his own power, his own love, his own character, to see to it
+that all souls, some time, are reconciled to him.
+
+This does not mean a poor, cheap, an easy salvation. It means that
+every broken law must have its consequences so long as it remains
+broken. It means that in this world and through all worlds the law-
+breaker is to be followed by the natural and necessary results of his
+thoughts, of his words, of his deeds; but it means that in this
+punishment the pain is a part of the divine love. For the love of God
+makes it absolutely necessary that the object of that love shall be
+delivered from sin and wrong, and brought into reconciliation with
+himself; and the pain, the necessary results of wrongdoing, are a part
+of the divine tenderness, a part of the divine faithfulness, a part of
+the divine love. So we believe that through darkness or through light,
+through joy or through sorrow, some time, somewhere, every child of God
+shall be brought into his presence, ready to sing the song of peace and
+joy and reconciled love.
+
+Now, friends, I have gone over all the main points of the theology of
+our question. I have told you what I think the results of modern study
+have taken away. I have indicated to you what I believe is to come and
+take the place of these things that are absolutely gone. Ask yourselves
+seriously, if you are not one of us, is there a single one of these
+things that modern investigation is threatening that you really care to
+keep? If you could choose between the two systems and have your choice
+settle the validity of them, would you not choose the second, and be
+grateful to bid good-by to the first?
+
+Remember, however, at the end let me say, as I did at the beginning,
+that, if these things pass away and the other finer things come in
+their places, Unitarianism is not to be charged by its enemies with
+destroying the old, neither is it to take the credit on the part of its
+friends for having created all the new. That distinguishes us as
+Unitarians from any other form of faith is that we believe in the
+living, loving, leading God of the modern world, and are ready gladly
+to take the results of modern investigation, believing that they are
+only a part of the revelation of the divine truth and the Father's
+will.
+
+We accept these things, stand for them, proclaim them; but we did not
+create them. If anything is gone that you did not like, we did not take
+it away. If anything is come that you do like, give God the glory; and
+let us share with you the joy and praise.
+
+ARE THERE ANY CREEDS WHICH IT IS WICKED FOR US TO QUESTION?
+
+ANY body of people whatsoever has, of course, an undoubted right to
+organize on the basis of any belief or principles which it may happen
+to hold. This, always, on the supposition that those principles or
+beliefs are not antagonistic to human welfare. They have a right to
+establish the conditions of membership and limit their numbers as much
+as they please.
+
+For example, suppose a set of persons chanced to hold the belief that
+the so-called Shakspere plays were written by Bacon. They have a
+perfect right to organize a society, and to say that nobody shall be a
+member of that society unless he agrees with them in this belief. If I
+happen, as I do, to hold some other conviction about the matter, I have
+no right to blame them because they do not wish me to be a member. I
+can organize, if I please, another society that shall have for its
+cardinal doctrinal statement the belief that Shakspere was the author
+of these plays. There is no need that I should quarrel with people
+holding these other ideas.
+
+Or, if I am a laboring man, in the technical sense of the word that is
+commonly used to-day, I have a right to organize a society devoted to
+the furtherance of the eight- hour movement, or any other specific end
+or aim which seems to me necessary to the welfare of society as
+organized in the modern world.
+
+All this we concede at the outset. People have a perfect right to
+organize on the basis of their particular beliefs, and to keep out of
+their organization those persons who do not happen to agree with them.
+But, and here is a most important consideration, if these beliefs seem
+to us who are outside to be vital; if they appear to concern us, to
+touch our well-being, our future hopes, then we certainly have a right
+to study those beliefs, to criticise them, to put them to the test to
+see whether they are well founded, whether they have any adequate basis
+of support.
+
+And, still further, if the people holding a certain set of beliefs tell
+us that they are inspired of God, that they are spokesmen for God, that
+they have had committed to them a certain definite deposit of faith for
+the benefit of the world; if they tell us that, unless we agree with
+them, unless we accept the conditions and come into their organization,
+then we are opposed to God, are endangering our own souls, and are
+enemies of the human race, then it becomes not merely our right to look
+into these matters: does it not become our most solemn duty? Are we not
+under the highest of all obligations to decide for ourselves one way or
+the other as to whether these claims are valid? For, if they are, then
+there is nothing so important for us as that we should accept them and
+live in accordance with them, join the societies that are organized on
+them as a basis, do our utmost to extend their acceptance throughout
+the world.
+
+If they are not valid, then we ought to do our very best to prove this
+also, and help those who are in bondage to these false ideas to attain
+their liberty, in order that they may join with us in finding out that
+which is true, in order that together we may work for the discovery of
+the will of God, and that we may co-operate in helping the world to
+find and obey that will.
+
+You would suppose from the ordinary assumption of those who hold the
+old creeds, and who have organized their churches on these creeds, as
+foundation stones, that there had been at the outset a clear, a
+definite revelation of truth, that it had been unquestioned, that it
+had come with credentials enough to satisfy the world that the speakers
+spoke by authority, and that the matter had from the beginning been
+well understood.
+
+It is assumed that we who do not hold these ideas are wilfully wrong,
+that we are not inclined to accept the divine truth, that it is on
+account of the hardness and wickedness of our hearts, and that we
+prefer evil rather than good. We are told that we might know, if we
+would, that the matter is definite, and has been perfectly well settled
+from the beginning. This, I say, is the assumption.
+
+Let us now, then, investigate the matter for a little while, just as
+calmly, just as simply, just as dispassionately as we are able.
+
+I confess to you, at the outset, that I do not like such a task as to-
+day seems to be imposed upon me. I do not like to be put in the
+position of seeming to criticise my fellow- citizens, my friends, and
+neighbors; but it seems to me that it is more than a task, that it is a
+duty, and one that I cannot readily escape. I mean as little as
+possible even to seem to criticise people; but I must look into the
+foundations of their beliefs, and see whether they are valid, whether
+there is any reason why we should feel ourselves compelled to-day to
+accept them.
+
+Let us take our place, then, at the outset of Christianity by the side
+of Jesus and the apostles. Now let us note one strange fact. For the
+first two or three hundred years the belief of the Church was chaotic,
+unconfirmed, unsettled. There was dispute and discussion of the most
+earnest and most bitter kind concerning what are regarded to-day as the
+very fundamentals of the Christian faith.
+
+This would hardly seem possible, would it, if Jesus had made himself
+perfectly clear and explicit in regard to these matters? If Jesus were
+really God, and if he came down on to this earth for the one express
+purpose of telling humanity what kind of moral and spiritual condition
+it was in, just what it needed in order to be saved, would you not
+suppose that he would have been so clear that there could have been no
+honest question about it?
+
+If, for example, Jesus knew he was God, ought not he to have told it so
+plainly that no honest man could go astray about it? If he knew that
+the human race fell in Adam and was in a condition of loss under the
+general wrath and curse of God, ought not he to have said something
+about Adam, something about the Garden of Eden, something about the
+fall? Yet it never appears anywhere that he did. If he knew it was
+absolutely necessary for us to hold certain ideas about the Bible,
+ought not he to have told us? If he knew that the great majority of the
+human race was going to endless and hopeless torment in the future
+unless they held certain beliefs, ought not he to have made it plain?
+
+But take that which I read as a part of our Scripture lesson this
+morning, that magnificent picture of the judgment scene, where he
+divides the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. Who are
+the sheep, and who are the goats? Those who are to be admitted with
+glad welcome to the presence of the Father are simply those that have
+been morally good; and those who are told they must be shut out are
+simply those who have bee morally bad. There is no hint of the
+necessity of any belief at all. Nothing said about any Bible, about any
+Trinity, about any faith, about anything that is supposed to be
+essential as a condition of salvation, not a word. Only the good
+receive the welcome, and the bad are shut out. That is all.
+
+If this is not true, ought he not to have told us something about it,
+and made it perfectly clear?
+
+Now what was the condition of popular belief? Let me illustrate it by
+one or two points. Origen, for example, one of the most famous of the
+Church Fathers, believed and preached the pre-existence of the human
+soul and universal salvation. Now, if Jesus said anything contrary to
+this belief of universal salvation, either Origen did not know anything
+about it or he did not regard it as of any authority, one or the other.
+We cannot conceive of his holding a position of this sort if he had
+known that Jesus had pronounced explicitly to the contrary.
+
+Take another illustration. Two weeks ago this morning I had occasion to
+quote to you a few words from another of the old Church Fathers, Justin
+Martyr, who taught explicitly that Jesus was not the equal of the
+Father, but a subordinate and created being. Now, if Jesus had clearly
+taught anything approaching the doctrine of the Trinity, is it
+conceivable that Justin Martyr had not heard of it, or, having heard of
+it, had not accepted it?
+
+At any rate, if these things were true and important, it is
+inconceivable that the Church Fathers, the very founders of
+Christianity, should have been all at sea in regard to them, should
+have held divergent opinions, and should have been discussing these
+questions one way and the other for three hundred years.
+
+Let us now see what we have as a basis for belief in regard to what
+Jesus really did say. The Gospels grew up in a time when there was no
+shorthand writing, no reporting. Jesus does not say one word about
+having any record made of his teaching, does not seem to have
+considered it of the slightest importance. He simply talks and
+converses as friend with friend, preaches to the crowds wherever they
+gather, but says nothing whatever about founding any system of
+doctrine, says nothing about the importance of having a statement of
+his doctrine kept.
+
+The Gospels, as a matter of fact, did not come into their present shape
+for many years after his death. How long? The critics are not at one in
+regard to it. A book has recently been translated from the German, by a
+professor in the Union Theological Seminary in this State, which says
+that not a single one of the Gospels was known in its present shape
+until between the years 150 and 200 A.D. All scholars do not accept
+this; but they are all at one in the statement that it was a great many
+years after the death of Jesus before they came into the shape in which
+we know them to-day.
+
+There was, then, no clear record at the first in regard to these
+matters of belief; and, as I said a moment ago, for the first two or
+three hundred years the condition of the Church was chaotic. It was a
+long time coming to a consciousness of itself.
+
+Now let us note the time when a few of the creeds were formed, and what
+are some of their characteristics.
+
+Although the Apostles' Creed would seem to take us back to the
+apostles, we are not to deal with that first, because it was not the
+first one of the creeds to come into its present shape.
+
+The oldest creed that we have to-day is the Nicene. When was that
+formed? It was agreed upon at the Council of Nicaea, in the early part
+of the fourth century. Now note, if you please, what influences shaped
+and determined it.
+
+Did those who proposed that this particular clause or that should enter
+into it have any proof of their belief? Did they even claim to have?
+Why, the idea of evidence, the thought of proof, was absolutely unknown
+to the mind of Christendom at that time. Nobody thought of such a thing
+as proposing to prove that this or that or the other was true.
+
+The Nicene Creed came into existence very much, indeed, as does the
+platform of a political party at the present time. One man fought for
+this proposition, another man for that one; and at last it was a sort
+of compromise decided by a majority. And how was the majority reached?
+Friends, there were bribes, there were threats, there were all kinds of
+intimidation, there were blows, there was wrangling of every kind,
+there was banishment, there was murder. There has not been a political
+platform in the modern world evolved out of such brutal, conflicting,
+anti-religious conditions as those which prevailed before and in
+connection with the Council of Nicaea.
+
+Anything like evidence? Not heard of or thought of. Anything like quiet
+brooding of those who supposed they were, under the influence of the
+Holy Ghost, receiving divine and sacred truth? The farthest possible
+from any conditions that could be suggested by such a thought.
+
+And at the last, though undoubtedly the majority of the Church at that
+time was Unitarian, as I told you the other day it was the decisive
+influence of the Emperor Constantine which settled the controversy.
+Thus came into existence in the fourth century the oldest of the church
+Creeds which is recognized as authoritative in the Catholic, the
+Anglican, and the Episcopal churches of the present time.
+
+And this Nicene Creed, if I had time to go into it and analyze it, I
+could show you contains elements which no intelligent man in any of
+these churches thinks of believing at the present time; and yet nobody
+dares suggest a change, or the bringing it into accord with what the
+intelligence of the modern world knows to be true.
+
+Let us pass on, and consider for a moment the Apostles' Creed, so
+called. There was a time in the Church when people really supposed that
+the apostles were its author. There are persons to-day who have not
+discovered the contrary. I crossed the ocean a few years ago when on
+board were a bishop of one of the Western States and a young candidate
+for orders who was travelling with him as his pupil. I fell into
+conversation with this young man, and found that he really believed
+that the twelve clauses of the Apostles' Creed were manufactured by the
+apostles themselves. He had never discovered anything to the contrary.
+
+A still more astonishing fact came to my knowledge last year. During
+that discussion over Ian McLaren's creed, in which so many people were
+interested last winter, Chancellor McCracken, of the University of New
+York, published a letter, in which he referred to the Apostles' Creed
+as  written eighteen hundred years ago. It took my breath away when I
+read it. I wondered, Could the chancellor of a great University
+possibly be ignorant of the facts? Would he state that which he knew
+was not true? I could not explain it either way. I was compelled to
+think, if he was thoughtless and careless about it, that he had no
+business to be about a matter of such importance. But he said the
+Apostles' Creed was written eighteen hundred years ago.
+
+Now what are the facts? The apostles had nothing whatever to do with
+the creed, as everybody knows to-day who chooses to look into the
+matter. It grew, and was four or five hundred years in growth, one
+phrase in one shape held in a certain part of the Church, another
+phrase in another shape held in another part of the Church, people
+holding nothing so sacred about it but that they were at perfect
+liberty to change it and add to it and take away from it, until, as we
+get it to- day, it appeared for the first time in history at about the
+year 500. And yet it stands in the Church to-day claiming to be the
+Apostles' Creed.
+
+And this Apostles' Creed, if it were a part of the purpose I have in
+mind this morning, I could analyze, and find that it contains elements
+which nobody accepts to-day; and yet nobody dares to propose touching
+it, such is the reverence for that which is old. So much more reverence
+does the world have for that which is old than for that which is true.
+
+If you approach a Churchman in regard to his belief in the resurrection
+of the body, he will say, Of course, we do not believe in the
+resurrection of the body: we believe in the resurrection of the soul.
+But he does not believe in the resurrection of the soul, either.
+
+Let me make two statements in regard to this. In the first place, if he
+does not believe in the resurrection of the body, he has no right to
+say it, because the House of Bishops, representing the whole Church of
+the United states, in an authoritative pastoral letter issued within
+three years, declares that fixity of interpretation is of the essence
+of the creeds. No man, then, is at liberty to change the interpretation
+to suit himself.
+
+And then, again, nobody, as I say, believes in the resurrection of the
+soul. Why? Because that statement, with the authority of the House of
+Bishops that nobody has any business to change or reinterpret, carries
+with it a world underneath the surface of the earth to which the dead
+go down; and resurrection means coming up again from that underground
+world. Nobody believes in any underground world to-day. You cannot be
+resurrected. That is, you cannot rise again unless you have first gone
+down. It is the ascent of the soul we believe in to-day, and not its
+resurrection, much less the resurrection of the body.
+
+Now a word in regard to another of the great historic creeds.
+
+The third one to be shaped was the Athanasian Creed. Curiously named
+most of these are. There was a tradition in the Church that Athanasius,
+who was one of the great antagonists of the Council of Nicaea, wrote
+this creed called after his name; but, as a matter of fact, the creed
+was not known in the Church in the shape in which we have it now until
+at least four or five hundred years after Athanasius was dead.
+
+The Athanasian Creed dates from the eighth or ninth century; and in
+this for the first time there is a clear, explicit, definite
+formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. It never had been shaped in
+perfection until the time of the Athanasian Creed; and this creed
+contains among other things those famous damnatory clauses? which the
+Episcopal Church in this country, to their credit be it said, have left
+out of their Prayer Book. But this Athanasian Creed is obliged to be
+sung thirteen times every year in the Church of England; and you can
+imagine with what grace and joy they must sing the statement that,
+unless a man believes every single word and sentence of it, he shall no
+doubt perish everlastingly.
+
+The Athanasian Creed, then, takes us only to the eighth or ninth
+century. You see, do you not, that, instead of there having been any
+clear, explicit, definite statement of church beliefs on the part of
+Jesus and his apostles, they are long and slow growths, and not built
+up on the basis of proof or evidence, simply opinions which people came
+to hold and fight for and preach, until at last they got a majority to
+believe in them, and they were accepted by some council.
+
+I wish now to ask your attention for a few moments to one or two of the
+modern statements of beliefs. We are face to face here in this modern
+world with a very strange condition of affairs. I wish I could see the
+outcome of it. Here are churches printing, publishing, scattering all
+over America and Europe, statements of belief which perhaps hardly one
+man in ten among their pew-holders or vestrymen believes. They will
+tell you they do not believe them; they are almost angry with you if
+you make the statement that these are church beliefs; and at the same
+time we are in the curious position of finding that the man who
+proposes himself as a candidate for the ministry in any of these
+churches dares not question or doubt these horrible statements. And, if
+it is found that he does question them after he gets into the ministry,
+he is in danger of a trial for heresy.
+
+We have had a perfect storm here in New York in one of our greatest
+churches over Dr. Briggs. And what was Dr. Briggs tried for? Simply for
+raising the question as to whether every part of the Old Testament was
+infallible. That was all. Another professor in a theological seminary
+in the West was turned out of his professorship for a similar offence.
+An Episcopal minister, a friend of mine in Ohio, was turned out of his
+church for daring to entertain some of the modern ideas which are in
+the air, and which intelligent people believe everywhere. One of the
+best known Episcopal ministers in this city to-day has an indictment
+over his head. It has been there for eight years; and it is only by the
+good will of his bishop that he is tolerated. His crime is daring to
+think, and to believe what all the respectable text-books of the modern
+world teach.
+
+And people in the pews are indignant if you say that their Church holds
+these ideas! It is a curious state of affairs. How long is it going to
+last? What is to be its outcome? I do not know.
+
+But let us look for a moment at another. Let us note one or two points
+in the Presbyterian Confession of Faith.
+
+It teaches still, with what it claims to be absolute authority, that
+God, before the foundation of the world, selected just the precise
+number of people that he was going to save; that he did this, not in
+view of the fact that they were going to be good people at all, but
+arbitrarily of his own will, not to be touched or changed by anything
+in their character or conduct. All the rest he is to "pass by "; and
+they are to go to everlasting woe. The elect are very few: those who
+are passed by are the many. And why does he do this? Just think for a
+moment. There is no such colossal egotism, such extreme of selfishness,
+in all the world as that attributed to God in this Confession of Faith.
+The one thing he lives for, cares for, thinks of, labors after, is
+what? His own glory. He saves a few people to illustrate the glory of
+his grace and mercy. He damns all the rest purely to illustrate the
+glory of some monstrous thing called his justice.
+
+This kind of doctrine we are expected to believe to-day.
+
+And worse yet, if anything can be worse. I wonder how many loving,
+tender mothers in all these churches know it, how many know that the
+little babe which they clasp to their bosoms with such infinite
+tenderness and love, which they think of as a gift from the good God,
+right out of heaven, is an enemy of God, is under the curse and wrath
+of God? How many of you know that your creed teaches that God hates
+this blessed little babe, and that, if he does not happen to be one of
+the elect, he must suffer torment in darkness forever and ever?
+
+That is taught in your confession of faith, which I have right here at
+my hand. The only mitigation of it that I have ever heard of on the
+part of consistent believers is the saying of Michael Wigglesworth, a
+famous alleged poet of the Puritan time in New England, when he states
+explicitly that none of these non-elect children can be saved, but
+since they are infants, and not such bad sinners as the grown up ones,
+their punishment shall be mitigated by their having the easiest room in
+hell.
+
+Friends, you smile at this. This poem of Michael Wigglesworth's was a
+household treasure in New England for a hundred years. No end of
+editions was sold. It was earnestly, verily believed; and the doctrine
+is still taught every time that a new edition of the Presbyterian
+Confession of Faith? is issued in this country or in Europe.
+
+Shall we escape these things by going into other churches? Some of
+them, yes; but the essentials are there in all of them.
+
+Take for one moment the Episcopal Prayer Book. I have had friends in
+the old churches who have become Episcopalians for no reason that I
+could imagine, except that it seemed to them they were escaping some of
+the sharpest corners of the old beliefs; and yet, if you will read
+carefully the form of service for the baptism of infants in the
+Episcopal Prayer Book as held to-day and in constant use in every
+Episcopal Church in this country and England and throughout Europe, you
+will find that it is taught there in the plainest and most forcible way
+that the unbaptized infant is a child of wrath, is under the dominion
+of the devil, is destined to everlasting death, and is regenerated only
+by having a little water placed on its forehead and by a priest saying
+over him certain wonderful words.
+
+Can you believe, friends, for one moment that a little child this
+minute belongs to the devil, is under his dominion, hated of God,
+doomed to eternal death, then the priest puts his fingers in some
+water, touches its forehead, and says, "I baptize thee," etc., and the
+child, after this is said, five minutes later, God loves, has taken to
+his arms as one of his own little children, and is going to receive him
+to eternal felicity forever?
+
+Can we believe such things to-day? Do people believe them? If they do
+not, are they sincere in saying they do, in supporting the institutions
+that proclaim to the world every hour of every day of every week of
+every month of every year that they do believe them?
+
+I have now said all I am going to about these creeds in any special
+way. I wish now to discuss the general situation for a little.
+
+I have heretofore said, I wish to say it again, to make it perfectly
+plain and emphasize it, that all these old Creeds are based on the
+supposed ruin of the race. They have come into existence for the
+express purpose of saving as many souls as possible from this ruin.
+They never would have been heard of but for the belief in this ruin.
+And yet to-day there is not a intelligent man in Christendom that does
+not know that the doctrine of man's fall and ruin is not only doubtful,
+but demonstrably untrue. It is not a matter of question: it is settled;
+and yet these churches go on just as though nothing had happened.
+
+Is it sincere? Is it quite honest? Is this the way you use language in
+Wall Street, in your banks and your stores? Is this the way you
+maintain your credit as business men?
+
+Oh, let us purge these statements of outgrown crudities, cruelties,
+falsities, blasphemies, infamies! Let us dare to believe that the light
+of God to-day is holier than the mistakes about Him made by those who
+walked in darkness.
+
+Now let me suggest to you. Every one of these creeds sprang out of a
+theory of the universe that nobody any longer holds. They are Ptolemaic
+in their origin, not Copernican. They sprang out of a time when it was
+believed that this was a little tiny world, and God was outside of it,
+governing it by the arbitrary imposition of his law. Every one of these
+creeds is fitted to that theory of things; and that theory of things
+has passed away absolutely and forever.
+
+Consider for just a moment. Why should we pay such extravagant
+deference to the opinions of men who lived in the dark ages, of the old
+Church Fathers, of Athanasius, of Arius, of Justin Martyr, of Origen,
+of Tertullian? Why, friends, just think for a moment. There was hardly
+a single point connected with this world that they knew anything about.
+How did it happen that the whole modern world should get on its knees
+in their presence, as though they knew everything about the Infinite,
+when they knew next to nothing about the finite? Is there any proof
+that they knew anything about it? Not one single particle.
+
+Think for a minute. We know to-day unspeakably more about the origin of
+the Bible, how it grew, how it came into its present shape, than any
+man from the first century until a hundred years ago could by any
+possibility know. We know a good deal more than Paul, though he was one
+of the writers, unspeakably more. He had no means of knowing. We have
+sifted every particle of evidence, every source of knowledge that the
+world has to show. We know unspeakably more about this universe than
+any man of the olden time had any way of knowing. He had no way of
+knowing anything.
+
+I said something recently about the origin and nature of man. Very
+little was known about this until within the present century. We know
+something about how religions grow. We have traced them, studied them,
+not only Christianity and Judaism, but all the religions of the world
+back to their origin, and seen them coming into shape. We can judge
+something about them to-day. You want the antiquity of the world?
+People are bowing in the presence of what they suppose to be the
+antiquity, that is, the hoary-headed wisdom, of the world. Why,
+friends, as you go back, you are not going back to the old age of the
+world: you are going back to its childhood. The world was never so old
+as it is this morning. Humanity was never so old, never had such
+accumulated experience, such accumulated knowledge, as it has this
+morning.
+
+If you want the results of the world's hoary-headed antiquity, its
+wisdom, its accumulated experience, its knowledge, then get the very
+latest results of the very finest modern investigations; for that is
+where you will find them.
+
+Then let us note in just a word some other reasons why we cannot hold
+these old creeds. The statements that are made about God are horrible.
+The statements that are made in regard to the method by which God is
+going to deal with his creatures are horrible; and then what they tell
+us in regard to the outcome of human history is pessimistic and
+hopeless in the extreme.
+
+Where do they claim to get the authority for these old beliefs? They
+tell us they find them on the one hand in the Bible. What do you find
+in the Bible? You find almost anything you look for. Is it not
+perfectly natural you should? The Bible was written by ever so many
+different writers during a period covering nearly a thousand years.
+Would you expect to find the same ideas throughout it? The book of
+Ecclesiastes teaches that man dies like a dog. The Bible upholds
+polygamy, slavery, cruelty of almost every kind. You might prove almost
+any kind of immorality from the Bible if you wished to.
+
+But take the highest and noblest conception of the Bible you can have.
+I was talking with an eminent and widely known clergyman of the
+Presbyterian Church during the present year; and we were speaking about
+the Bible. I tell you this to show how modern ideas are permeating the
+thoughts of men. He said: I confess that, if God had ever given the
+world an infallible book, I should be utterly appalled and
+disheartened; because it is perfectly clear that we have no such book
+now. And, if God ever gave us such a book, then he has lost control of
+his universe, and was not able to keep us in possession of it.
+
+Here are Quakers and Methodists proving their beliefs, the Baptists
+proving theirs, the Episcopalians proving theirs, the Presbyterians
+theirs, all of them different in some particular, and each of them
+getting their proof from the Bible.
+
+Let us remember that the Bible is simply a great body of national
+literature, and that you can prove anything out of it. Then remember
+that it has been proved over and over again by the facts of the
+handwriting of God himself to be mistaken and wrong in any number of
+directions.
+
+God is writing his own book in the heavens, in the earth, in the human
+heart; and we are reading the story there. No creed, then, particularly
+if it be infamous and unjust and horrible, can prove itself to us so
+that we are bound to accept it to-day on the basis of an appeal to any
+book. But the Catholic Church claims not only that the book is
+infallible, but that their church tradition is infallible too. Is it?
+How can a church prove that its declarations are infallible? Is there
+any way of proving it? Think for a moment. It can make the claim: the
+only conceivable way of proving it is by never making a mistake. Try
+the Catholic Church by that test. It has committed itself over and over
+and over again to things which have been demonstrated beyond question
+to be mistakes. It has made grave mistakes, not only as to fact, but as
+to morals as well.
+
+On what, then, shall we base any one of these "infallible" creeds?
+There is no basis for any such claim; and thank God there is not. For
+now we are free to study, here, there, everywhere; to read God's word
+in the stars; to read it in the rocks; to read it in the remains of
+old-time civilizations; to read it in the development of education, the
+arts, science; to read it in the light of the love we have for each
+other, the love for our children, and the growing philanthropy and
+widening benevolence of mankind.
+
+We have thus perfect freedom to listen when God speaks, to see when he
+holds a leaf of his ever-growing book for our inspection, and to
+believe concerning him the grandest and noblest and finest things that
+the mind can dream or the heart can love.
+
+WHY HAVE UNITARIANS NO CREED?
+
+FOR a Scripture suggestion touching the principle involved in my
+subject, I refer you to the words found in the fifth chapter of the
+Gospel according to Matthew, the forty-third and the forty-fourth
+verses, "Ye have heard that it hath been said; but I say unto you." I
+take these phrases simply as containing the principle to which I wish
+to call your earnest attention at the outset.
+
+Jesus here recognizes the fact that the religious beliefs of one age
+are not necessarily adequate to a succeeding age. So he says over and
+over in this chapter, Ye have heard that it hath been said by the
+fathers, by the teachers, the religious leaders in old times, so and
+so: but I say unto you something else, something in advance, something
+beyond.
+
+If any one chooses to say that Jesus was infallible, inspired, and
+therefore had a right to modify the teachings of the fathers, still
+this does not change the principle at all. In any case he recognized
+the fact that the beliefs of the old time might not be sufficient to
+the new time.
+
+And, even if any one should take the position that Jesus was the second
+person in the Trinity, that he was the one who revealed the old-time
+truth, and also revealed the new, still the principle is not changed:
+it is conceded, whatever way we look at it. For, even if he were God,
+he is represented as giving the people in the time of Moses, the time
+of David, certain precepts, certain things to believe, certain things
+to do, and then, recognizing at a later time that they were not
+adequate, changing those precepts, and giving them something larger,
+broader, deeper, to accept and to practise.
+
+Because this principle is here involved, I have taken these words as my
+Scripture point of departure.
+
+Now to come to the question as to why Unitarians have no creed. Of
+course, the answer, though it sounds like an Hibernicism, is to say
+that they do have a creed. Not a creed in the sense in which some of
+the older churches use the word. If by creed you mean a written or
+published statement of belief, one that is supposed to be fixed and
+final, one that is a test of religious fellowship, which is placed at
+the door of the church so that no one not accepting it is able to
+enter, why, then, we have no creed. But, in the broader sense of the
+word, it means belief; and Unitarians believe quite as much, and, in my
+judgment, things far nobler and grander, than those which have been
+believed in the past.
+
+We are ready, if any one wishes it, to write out our creed. We are
+perfectly willing that it should be printed. We can put it into twelve
+clauses, like the Apostles' Creed; we can make thirty-nine clauses or
+articles, like the Creed of the Anglican Church; we can arrange it any
+way that is satisfactory to the questioner. Only we will not promise to
+believe all of it to-morrow; we will not say that we will never learn
+anything new; we will not make it a test of fellowship; we will admit
+not only to our meeting-house, but to our church organization, if they
+wish to come, people who do not believe all the articles of the creed
+that we shall write. Perhaps we will admit people who do not believe
+any of it; for our conception of a church is not the old conception.
+
+What was that? That it was a sort of ark in which the saved were taken,
+to be carried over the stormy sea of this life and into the haven of
+eternal felicity beyond. As opposed to that, our conception of the
+church is that it is a school, it is a place where souls are to be
+trained, to be educated; and so we would as soon refuse to admit an
+ignorant pupil to a school as to refuse to admit a person on account of
+his belief to our church. We welcome all who wish to come and learn;
+and if, after they have studied with us for a year, they do not then
+accept all the points which some of us believe, and hold to be very
+important, we do not turn them out even on that account.
+
+Unitarians, then, do have a creed, only it is not fixed, it is not
+final, and it is not the condition of religious fellowship.
+
+Now I wish to give you some of the reasons, as they lie in my mind, for
+the attitude which we hold in regard to this matter.
+
+I do not believe in having a fixed and final statement of belief which
+we are not at liberty to criticise or question or change. Why? Because
+I love the truth, because I am anxious to find the truth, because I
+wish to be perfectly free to seek for the truth.
+
+Our first reason, then, is for the sake of the truth.
+
+Now let me present this to you under three or four minor heads. The
+universe is infinite, God is infinite, truth is infinite. If, then, on
+the background of the infinite you draw a circle, no matter how large
+it may be, no matter how wide its diameter, do you not see that you
+necessarily shut out more than you shut in? Do you not see that you
+limit the range of thought, set bounds to investigation, and that you
+pledge yourselves beforehand that the larger part of truth, of God, of
+the universe, you will never study, you will never investigate?
+
+There is another point bearing on this matter. If a man pledges himself
+to accept and abide by a fixed and final creed, he does it either for a
+reason or without a reason. If he does it without a reason, then there
+is, of course, no reason why we should follow his example. If he has a
+reason, then two things: either that reason is adequate, sound,
+conclusive, or it is not. If it is not adequate, then we ought to study
+and criticise and find that out, and be free to discover some reason
+that is adequate. If the reason for his holding the creed is an
+adequate one, then, certainly, no harm can be done by investigation of
+it, by asking questions.
+
+If the men who hold these old creeds and defend them can give in the
+court of reason a perfectly good account of themselves, if they can
+bring satisfactory credentials, then all our questioning, all our
+criticism, all our investigation, cannot possibly do the creeds any
+harm. It will only mean that we shall end by being convinced ourselves,
+and shall accept the creeds freely and rationally.
+
+It has always seemed to me a very strange attitude of mind for a man to
+feel perfectly convinced that a certain position is sound and true, and
+to be angry when anybody asks a question about it. If there are good
+reasons for holding it, instead of calling names, why not show us the
+reasons? He who is afraid to have his opinions questioned, he who is
+angry when you ask him for evidence, to give a reason for the position
+that he holds, shows that he is not at all certain of it. He admits by
+implication that it is weak. He shows an attitude of infidelity instead
+of an attitude of faith, of trust.
+
+There is no position which I hold to-day that I consider so sacred that
+people are not at liberty to ask any questions about it they please;
+and, if they do not see a good reason for accepting it, I am certainly
+not going to be angry with them for declining to accept. The attitude
+of truth is that of welcome to all inquiry. It rejoices in daylight, it
+does not care to be protected from investigation.
+
+Then there is another reason still, another point to be made in regard
+to this matter. People are not very likely to find the truth if they
+are frightened, if they are warned off, if they are told that this or
+that or another thing is too sacred to be investigated. I have known
+people over and over again in my past experience who long wished they
+might be free to accept some grander, nobler, more helpful view of
+truth, and yet have been trained and taught so long that it was wicked
+to doubt, that it was wicked to ask questions, that they did not dare
+to open their minds freely to the incoming of any grander hope.
+
+If you tell people that they may study just as widely as they please,
+but, when they get through, they must come back and settle down within
+the limits of certain pre-determined opinions, what is the use of their
+wider excursion? And, if you tell them that, unless they accept these
+final conclusions, God is going to be angry with them, they are going
+to injure their own immortal souls, they are threatening the welfare of
+the people on every hand whom they influence, how can you expect them
+to study and come to conclusions which are entitled to the respect of
+thoughtful people?
+
+I venture the truth of the statement that, if you should inquire over
+this country to-day, you would find that the large majority of people
+who have been trained in the old faith are in an attitude of fear
+towards modern thought. Thousands of them would come to us to-day if
+they were not kept back by this inherited and ingrained fear as to the
+danger of asking questions.
+
+Do I not remember my own experience of three years' agonizing battle
+over the great problems that were involved in these questions, afraid
+that I was being tempted of the devil, afraid that I was risking the
+salvation of my soul, afraid that I might be endangering other people
+whom I might influence, never free to study the Bible, to study
+religious questions as I would study any other matter on the face of
+the earth on account of being haunted by this terrible dread?
+
+And, then, there is one other point. I must touch on these very
+briefly. The acceptance of these creeds on the part of those who do
+hold to them does not, after all, prevent the growth of modern thought.
+It does hinder it, so far as they are concerned; but the point I wish
+to make is this, that these creeds do not answer the purpose for which
+they were constructed. They are supposed to be fixed and final
+statements of divine truth, which are not to be questioned and not to
+be changed.
+
+Dr. Richard S. Storrs, of Brooklyn, the famous Congregational minister,
+said a few years ago that the idea of progress in theology was absurd,
+because the truth had once for all been given to the saints in the
+past, and there was no possibility of progress, because progress
+implied change. And yet, in spite of the effort that has been made to
+keep the faith of the world as it was in the past, the change is
+coming, the change does come every day; and it puts the people who are
+trying to prevent the change coming in an attitude of what shall I say
+I do not wish to make a charge against my brethren, it puts them in a
+very curious attitude indeed towards the truth. They must not accept a
+new idea if it conflicts with the old creed, however much they may be
+convinced it is true. If they do accept it, then what? They must either
+leave the Church or they must keep still about it, and remain in an
+attitude of appearing to believe what they really do not believe. Or
+else they must do violence to the creed, reinterpreting it in such a
+way as to make it to them what the framers of it had never dreamed of.
+
+Do you not see the danger that there is here of a person's disingenuous
+attitude towards the truth, danger to the moral fibre, danger to the
+progress of man? Take as a hint of it the way the Bible has been
+treated. People have said that the Bible was absolutely infallible:
+they have taken that as a foregone conclusion; and then, when they
+found out beyond question that the world was not created in six days,
+what have they done? Frankly accepted the truth? No, they have tried to
+twist the Bible into meaning something different from what it plainly
+says. It expressly says days, bounded by morning and evening; but no,
+it must mean long periods of time. Why? Because science and the Bible
+must somehow be reconciled, no matter if the Bible is wrenched and
+twisted from its real meaning.
+
+And so with regard to the creeds. The creeds say that Christ descended
+into hell; that is, the underworld. People come to know that there is
+no underworld; and, instead of frankly admitting that that statement in
+the creed is not correct, they must torture it out of its meaning, and
+make it stand for something that the framers of it had never heard of.
+I think it would greatly astonish the writers of the Bible and the
+Church Fathers if they could wake up to-day, and find out that they
+meant something when they wrote those things which had never occurred
+to them at the time.
+
+Is this quite honest? Is it wise for us to put ourselves in this
+attitude?
+
+I wish to speak a little further in this matter as to not preventing
+the coming in of modern thought, and to take one illustration. Look at
+Andover Seminary to-day. The Andover Creed was arranged for the express
+purpose of keeping fixed and unchangeable the belief of the Church..
+Its founders declared that to be their purpose. They were going to
+establish the statement of belief, so that it should not be open to
+this modern criticism, which had resulted in the birth of Unitarianism
+in New England; and, in order to make perfectly certain of it, they
+said that the professors who came there to teach the creed must not
+only be sound when they were settled, but they must be re-examined
+every five years. This was to prevent their changing their minds during
+the five years and remaining on there, teaching some false doctrine
+while the overseers and managers were not aware of it. So every five
+years the professors and teachers of Andover have to reaffirm solemnly
+their belief in the old creed.
+
+It is not for me to make charges against them; but it is for me to make
+the statement that so suspicious have the overseers and managers come
+to be of some of the professors in the seminary that they have been
+tried more than once for heresy; and everybody knows that the leading
+professors there to-day do not believe the creed in the sense in which
+it was framed.
+
+And, to illustrate how this is looked upon by some of the students, let
+me tell you this. My brother was a graduate of Andover; and not long
+ago he said to me that when the time came around for the professors to
+reaffirm their allegiance to the creed, one of the other students came
+into his room one day, and said, "Savage, let's go up and see the
+professors perjure themselves."
+
+This was the attitude of mind of one of the students. This is the way
+he looked at it. I am not responsible for his opinion; but is it quite
+wise, is it best for the truth, is it for the interests of religion, to
+have theological students in this state of mind towards their
+professor?
+
+Modern thought does come into the minds of men: they cannot escape it.
+What does it mean? It means simply a new, higher, grander revelation of
+God. Is it wise for us to put ourselves into such a position that it
+shall seem criminal and evil for us to accept it? If we pledge
+ourselves not to learn the things we can know, then we stunt ourselves
+intellectually. If, after we have pledged ourselves, we accept these
+things and remain as we are, I leave somebody else to characterize such
+action, action which, in my judgment, and so far as my observation
+goes, is not at all uncommon.
+
+We then propose to hold ourselves free so far as a fixed and final
+creed is concerned, because we wish to be able to study, to find and
+accept the truth. There is another reason. For the sake of God, because
+we wish to find and come into sympathy with him, and love him and serve
+him, we refuse to be bound by the thoughts of the past.
+
+What do we mean by coming into a knowledge of God? Let me illustrate a
+moment by the relation which we may sustain to another man. You do not
+necessarily come close to a man because you touch his elbow on the
+street. The people who lived in Shakspere's London might not have been
+so near to Shakspere as is Mr. Furness, the great Shakspere critic to-
+day, or Mr. Rolfe, of Cambridge.
+
+Physical proximity does not bring us close to a person. We may be near
+to a friend who is half-way round the world: there may be sympathetic
+heart-beats that shall make us conscious of his presence night and day.
+We may be close alongside of a person, but alienated from him,
+misunderstanding him, and really farther away from him than the
+diameter of the solar system. If, then, we wish to get near to God, and
+to know him, we must become like him. There must be love, tenderness,
+unselfishness. We must have the divine characteristics and qualities;
+and then we shall feel his presence, know and be near him.
+
+People may find God, and still have very wrong theories about him; just
+as a farmer may raise a good crop without understanding much about
+theories of sunshine or of soil. But the man who does understand about
+them will be more likely to raise a good crop, because he goes about it
+intelligently; while the other simply blunders into it. So, if we have
+right thoughts about God, it is easier for us to get into sympathy with
+him. If we think about him as noble and sweet and grand and true and
+loving, we shall be more likely to respond to these qualities that call
+out the best and the finest feelings in ourselves.
+
+I do not say that it is absolutely necessary to have correct theories
+of God. There have been good men in all ages, there have been noble
+women in all ages, in all religions, in all the different sects of
+Christendom. There are lovely characters among the agnostics. I have
+known sweet and true and fine people who thought themselves atheists. A
+man may be grand in spite of his theological opinions one way or the
+other. He may have a horrible picture of God set forth in his creed,
+and carry a loving and tender one in his heart. So he may be better
+than the God of his creed. All this is true; but, if we have, I say,
+right thoughts about him, high and fine ideals, we are more likely to
+come into close touch and sympathy with him.
+
+And, then, and here is a point I wish to emphasize and make perfectly
+clear, this arbitrary assumption of infallibility cultivates qualities
+and characteristics which are un and anti-divine.
+
+Let us see what Jesus had to say about this. The people of his time who
+represented more than any others this infallibility idea were the
+Pharisees. They felt perfectly sure that they were right. They felt
+perfectly certain that they were the chosen favorites of God. There was
+on their part, then, growing out of this conception of the
+infallibility of their position, the conceit of being the chosen and
+special favorites of the Almighty. They looked with contempt, not only
+upon the Gentiles, who were outside of the peculiarly chosen people,
+but upon the publicans, upon all of their own nation who were not
+Pharisees, and who were not scrupulously exact concerning the things
+which they held to be so important.
+
+What did Jesus think and say about them? You remember the parable of
+the Pharisee and the publican. Jesus said that this poor sinning
+publican, who smote upon his breast, and said, "God be merciful to me a
+sinner," was the one that God looked upon with favor, not the Pharisee,
+who thanked God that he was not as the other people were. And, if there
+is any class in the New Testament that Jesus scathes and withers with
+the hot lightning of his scorn and his wrath, it is these infallible
+people, who are perfectly right in their ideas, and who look with
+contempt upon people who are outside of the pale of their own inherited
+infallible creeds and opinions.
+
+We believe, then, that the people who are free to study the splendors
+of God in the universe, in human history, in human life, and free to
+accept all new and higher and finer ideas, are more likely to find God,
+and come into sympathetic and tender relations with him, than those who
+are bound to opinions by the supposed fixed and revealed truths of the
+past.
+
+We reject, then, these old-time creeds for another reason, for the sake
+of man. A long vista of thought and illustration stretches out before
+me as I pronounce these words; but I can only touch upon a point here
+or there.
+
+One of the most disastrous things that have happened in the history of
+the past and it has happened over and over again is this blocking and
+hindering of human advance, until by and by the tide, the growing
+current, becomes too strong to be held back any more; and it has swept
+away all barriers and devastated society, politically, socially,
+religiously, morally, and in every other way.
+
+And why? Simply because the natural flow of human thought, the natural
+growth of human opinion, has been hindered artificially by the
+assumption of an infallibility on the part of those who have tried to
+keep the world from growth.
+
+Suppose you teach men that certain theological opinions are identical
+with religion, until they believe it. The time comes when they cannot
+hold those opinions any more, and they break away; and they give up
+religion, and perhaps the sanctities of life, which they are accustomed
+to associate with religion.
+
+Take the time of the French Revolution. People went mad. They were
+opposed not only to the State: they were opposed to the Church. They
+tried to abolish God, they tried to abolish the Ten Commandments; they
+tried to abolish everything that had been so long established and
+associated with the old regime.
+
+Were the people really enemies of God? Were they enemies of religion?
+Were they enemies of truth? No: it was a caricature of God that they
+were fighting, it was a caricature of religion that they were opposed
+to. When Voltaire declared that the Church was infamous, it was not
+religion that he wished to overthrow: it was this tyranny that had been
+associated with the dominance of the Church for so many ages.
+
+This is the result in one direction of attempting to hold back the
+natural growth and progress of the world. If you read the history of
+the Church for the last fifteen hundred years until within a century or
+two, and by the Church I mean that organization that has claimed to
+speak infallibly for God, you will find that it has been associated
+with almost everything that has hindered the growth of the world. I
+cannot go into details to illustrate it. It has interfered with the
+world's education. There is only one nation in Europe to-day where
+education has not been wrenched out of the hands of the priesthood in
+the interests of man, and that even by Catholics themselves; and that
+country is Spain. It pronounced its ban on the study of the universe
+under the name of science. It made it a sin for Galileo to discover the
+moons of Jupiter. And Catholic and Protestant infallibility alike
+denounced Newton, one of the noblest men and the grandest scientists
+that the world has ever seen, because in proclaiming the law of
+gravity, they said, he was taking the universe out of the hands of God
+and establishing practical atheism.
+
+So almost everything that has made the education, the political, the
+industrial, the social growth of the world, this infallibility idea has
+stood square in the way of, and done its best to hinder. Take, for
+example, an illustration. When chloroform was discovered, the Church in
+Scotland opposed its use in cases of childbirth, because it said it was
+a wicked interference with the judgment God pronounced on Eve after the
+fall.
+
+So, in almost every direction, whatever has been for the benefit of the
+world has been opposed in the interests of old-time ideas, until the
+whole thing culminated at last in this: Here is this nineteenth century
+of ours, which has done more for the advancement of man than the
+preceding fifteen centuries all put together. Political liberty,
+religious liberty, universal education, the enfranchisement and
+elevation of women, the abolition of slavery, temperance, almost
+everything has been achieved, until the world, the face of it, has been
+transformed. And yet Pope Pius IX., in an encyclical which he issued a
+little while before his death, pronounced, ex-cathedra and infallibly,
+the opinion that this whole modern society was godless. And yet, as I
+said, this godless modern world has done more for man and for the glory
+of God than the fifteen hundred years of church dominance that preceded
+it.
+
+For the sake of man, then, that intellectually, politically, socially,
+industrially, every other way, he may be free to grow, to expand, to
+adopt all the new ideas that promise higher help, hope, and freedom,
+for the sake of man, we refuse to be bound by the inherited and fixed
+opinions of the past.
+
+Now two or three points I wish to speak of briefly, as I near the
+close.
+
+We are charged sometimes, because we have no creed, with having no bond
+of union whatever. As I said a few Sundays ago, they say that we are
+all at loose ends because we are not fixed and bound by a definite
+creed.
+
+What is God's method of keeping a system like this solar one of ours
+together? Does he fence it in? Does he exert any pressure from outside?
+Or does he rather place at the centre a luminous and attractive body,
+capable of holding all the swinging and singing members of the system
+in their orbits, as they play around this great source of life and of
+light? God's method is the method of illumination and attraction. That
+is the method which we have adopted. Instead of fencing men in and
+telling them to climb over that fence at their peril, we have placed a
+great, luminous, attractive truth at the centre, the pursuit of truth,
+the love of truth, the search for God, the desire to benefit and help
+on mankind. And we trust to the power of these great central truths to
+attract and keep in their orbits all the free activities of the
+thousands of minds and hearts that make up our organization.
+
+Then there is one more point. Suppose we wanted an infallible creed;
+suppose it was ever so important; suppose the experience of the world
+had proved that it was very desirable indeed that we should have one.
+What are we going to do about it? I suppose that men in other
+departments of life than the ecclesiastical would like an infallible
+guide. Men engaged in business would like an infallible handbook that
+would point them the way to success. The gold hunters would like an
+infallible guide to the richest ores. Navigators on the sea would like
+infallible methods of manning and sailing their ships. The farmer would
+like to know that he was following an infallible method to success. It
+would be very desirable in many respects; it would save us no end of
+trouble.
+
+But it is admitted that in these other departments of life, whether we
+want infallible guides or not, we do not have them. And I think, if you
+will look at the matter a little deeply and carefully, you will become
+persuaded that it would not be the best for us if we could. Men not
+only wish to gain certain ends, but, if they are wise, they wish more
+than that, to cultivate and develop and unfold themselves, which they
+can only do by study, by mistakes, by correcting mistakes, by finding
+out through experience what is true and what is false. In this process
+of study and experience they find themselves, something infinitely more
+important than any external fact or success which they may discover or
+achieve.
+
+So I believe that a similar thing is true in the religious life. It
+might be a great saving of trouble if we were sure we had an infallible
+guide. I am inclined to think that a great many persons who go into the
+Roman Catholic Church, in this modern time, go there because they are
+tired of thinking, and wish to shift the responsibility of it on to
+some one else.
+
+It is tiresome, it is hard work. Sometimes we would like to escape it:
+we would like infallible guides. But I have studied the world with all
+the care that I could; and I have never been able to find the materials
+out of which I could construct an infallible guide, if I wanted it ever
+so much.
+
+Whether it is important or not to have infallible teaching in the
+theological realm, there is no such thing as infallibility that is
+accessible to us; and I, for one, do not believe that it would be best
+for us if there were. God is treating us more wisely and kindly than,
+if we were able, we would treat ourselves; because it is not the
+discovery of this or that particular fact or truth that is so important
+as is the development of our own intellectual and moral and spiritual
+natures in the search for truth.
+
+Lessing said a very wise thing when he declared that, if God should
+offer him the perfect truth in one hand and the privilege of seeking
+for it in the other, he should accept the privilege of search as the
+nobler and more valuable gift, because, in this seeking, we develop
+ourselves, we cultivate the Divine, and work our natures over into the
+likeness of God.
+
+And now at the end I wish simply to say that God has given us the
+better thing in letting us freely and earnestly and simply investigate
+and look after the truth, cultivating ourselves in the process, and
+being wrought over ever more and more into the likeness of the divine.
+
+And I wish also to say, for the comfort of those who may think that
+this lack of infallible guides is a serious matter, it may astonish you
+to have me say it, that there is not a single matter of any practical
+importance in our moral and religious life concerning which there is
+any doubt whatsoever. If anybody tells you that he is not living a
+religious life or not living a moral life, for the lack of light and
+guidance, do not believe him.
+
+What are the things that are in question? What are the things of which
+we are sure? Take, for example, the matter of Biblical criticism, as to
+who wrote the book of Chronicles, as to whether Deuteronomy was written
+by Moses or compiled in the time of King Josiah. Are there any great
+spiritual problems waiting for those questions to be settled? Do you
+need to have that matter made clear before you know whether you ought
+to be an honest man in your business, whether you ought to judge
+charitably of a friend who has gone astray, whether you ought to be
+helpful towards your neighbors, whether you ought to be kind to your
+wife, and whether you ought to lovingly train and cultivate your
+children?
+
+Take another of the great questions, as to the authorship of the Gospel
+of John. I shall be immensely interested in the settlement of that if
+the time ever comes when it is settled; but it would be a purely
+critical interest that I should have. I am not going to wait until that
+is settled before I lead a religious life. I am not going to let that
+stand in the way of my helping on the progress of the world.
+
+I tell you, friends, that these matters that are in doubt, that need an
+infallibility to settle them, are not the practical matters at all. We
+look off into the vast universe around us, and question about God. Is
+he personal? Can we have the old ideas about him? One thing is settled:
+we know we are the product of and in the presence of an Eternal Order,
+and that knowing and keeping the laws of the universe mean life and
+happiness, but the opposite means death. That is the practical part of
+it.
+
+We know that the Power that is in this universe is making gradually
+through the ages for righteousness; and we know that the righteous and
+helpful life is the only manly life for us to lead, for our own sake,
+for the sake of those we can touch and influence.
+
+Are we going to wait for criticism to settle metaphysical problems
+before we do anything about these great practical matters?
+
+Whatever your theory about Jesus may be, you can at least be like him,
+and wait; and, when you see him, you will love him, and know the truth
+about him, if you cannot before.
+
+Matthew Arnold, an agnostic, has put into two or three lines, which I
+wish to read now at the end, what might well be the creed of the person
+who doubts so much that he thinks nothing is settled. If you cannot say
+any more than this, here is all that is absolutely necessary to the
+very noblest life:
+
+"Hath man no second life? Pitch this one high. Sits there no Judge in
+heaven our sin to see? More strictly, then, the inward judge obey. Was
+Christ a man like us? Ah I let us try If we, then, too, can be such men
+as he."
+
+THE REAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION.
+
+SCIENCE tells us that the law of growth is embodied in the phrase, "the
+struggle for life and the survival of the fittest." As we look beneath
+the surface in any department of human endeavor, analyze things a
+little carefully, we discover that this contest is going on. We know
+that it is not confined to the lower forms of life or the order of the
+inanimate world. It is a universal law. We are not always conscious of
+it; but, when we do think and study, we discover it as an unescapable
+fact.
+
+In the religious world, for example, between the different thoughts and
+theories which are held among men as solutions of the problems of life
+we find this contest going on. Here, again, it is not always noticed;
+but in the mind of any man who thinks, who reads, who reflects, this
+process is apparent. This view is considered, another view mentioned by
+somebody else is set over against it, and the claims of the two
+theories are brought up for judgment. And so there goes on perpetually
+this debate. Now and again it comes to the surface, and attracts
+popular attention. We have been in the midst of an experience of this
+kind for the last two or three weeks here in New York City.
+
+But the thing I want you to note is -- and that is the great lesson I
+have in mind this morning that all of this superficial discussion of
+one point or another is only an indication of a larger, deeper contest.
+When, for example, men are debating as to the infallibility or
+inerrancy of the Old Testament, as to the story of the creation as told
+in Genesis, as to the nature and work of Jesus, as to the future
+destiny of the race, when they are discussing any one of these
+particular problems, they are dealing with matters that are really
+superficial. Underneath these there is a larger problem; and to this
+problem and its probable issues I wish to call your attention this
+morning.
+
+There are two great world theories, complete each in itself, both of
+them thinkable, mutually exclusive, one of which only can be true, and
+one of which must finally become dominant in the educated and free
+thought of the world. These two theories I wish to place face to face
+before you this morning, call your attention to some of their special
+features and note the claims they have on our acceptance.
+
+Before doing this, however, I wish you to note that there are
+indications of a dual tendency on the part of the human mind which has
+not been manifested in the development of these two theories alone, but
+which has had illustrations in other directions and in other times.
+
+In the early traditions of Greece and Rome you find two tendencies on
+the part of the mind of man. There was, first, an old-time tradition
+which placed the Golden Age of humanity away back in the past. The
+people dreamed of a time when Saturn, the father of gods and men, lived
+on the earth, and governed directly his children and his people. In
+that happy time there was no disease, no pain, no poverty. There were
+no class distinctions. There were no wars. The evil of the world was
+unknown. That was the Golden Age which a certain set of thinkers then
+placed far back in the past. They told how that age was succeeded by a
+bronze age, a poorer condition of affairs, how the gods left the earth,
+and ill contentions and evils of every kind began to afflict the world.
+This was succeeded by the age of brass, that by the age of iron; and so
+the poor old world was supposed to be getting worse and worse, lower
+and lower, from one epoch of time to another.
+
+But also among these same people there were another set of traditions,
+illustrated sufficiently for our purpose by the story of Prometheus.
+According to this the first age of humanity was its worst and poorest
+and lowest age. The people lived in abject poverty and misery. They
+were even neglected on the part of the gods, who did not seem to care
+for them, but treated them with contempt. Prometheus is represented as
+pitying their evil estate, caring more for them than the gods did; and
+so he steals the celestial fire, and comes down to the world and
+presents it to men, and so helps them to begin civilization, a period
+of prosperity and progress. For this he is punished by the gods.
+
+The point I wish you to note is that even among the Greeks and the
+Romans there were two types of mind, one of which placed the Golden Age
+in the past, and the other of which placed it in the future as the goal
+of man's endeavor and growth.
+
+A precisely similar thing we find in the Old Testament, so that these
+two types of mind appear among the Hebrews. In one of these we find
+again the Golden Age, the perfect condition of things, placed at the
+beginning. There was a garden, and man and woman were perfect in it.
+There was no labor, no toil, no pain, no sorrow, no fear, no trouble of
+any kind. But that was followed by sin, evil, entering the world, by
+their being driven out; and so the world has again been going from bad
+to worse, as the ages have passed by.
+
+On the other hand, among the Hebrews, as illustrated in the writings of
+the great prophets, the master minds of the Hebrew race, there is the
+opposite belief manifested. There is no fall of man, no perfect
+condition of things, no Golden Age at the beginning, in the prophets.
+There is none in the teaching of Jesus. Rather do they look forward
+with kindling eye and beating heart to some grander thing that is to
+be.
+
+Here is this dual tradition, then, in the world, in different parts of
+the world, this dual way of looking at the problem of life.
+
+Now I wish to place before you the two great contrasted theories of the
+universe. In presenting that which has been dominant for the last two
+or three thousand years, two thousand, perhaps, speaking roughly, I am
+quite well aware that I shall have to seem to tell you what you
+perfectly well know, what I have said on other occasions; but it is
+necessary for me to run over it, and I will do so as briefly as I can,
+setting it before you in outline as a whole, so that you may see it in
+contrast with the other theory which I shall then endeavor to set forth
+also as a whole.
+
+According to that theory of the world, then, which lies at the
+foundation, the old-time and still generally accepted theory of
+Christendom, the world was created in the year 4004 B.C. It was created
+in a week's time. This was the general teaching until thinkers were
+compelled to accept another theory by the advances of modern
+investigation. The world was created inside of a week. God got through,
+pronounced it good, and rested. Then in a short period of time we do
+not know how long evil entered this world which God had pronounced
+perfect. Satan, a real being, the leader of the hosts of the fallen
+angels, the traditional enemy of God, who had fought him even in his
+own heaven and been cast out, invades this fair earth. He seduces our
+first parents, gets them to commit a sin against God which makes them
+his enemies, turns them into rebels against his just and holy
+government. The world, then, is fallen. Now from that day to this the
+one effort on the part of God, according to this theory, has been to
+deliver the world from this lost condition. Jonathan Edwards, for
+example, published a book called "The History of Redemption." He
+conceived the entire history of the world under that title, because the
+history of the world, according to this theory, has been the history of
+the effort of God to deliver man from the effects of the fall.
+
+Now let us note the story as it proceeds a little further. The world
+exists for I think I have a date here which may interest you 1,656
+years, God meantime doing everything he could, by sending angels and
+special messengers and teaching the people; and he had accomplished so
+little that the world was in such a condition that he was compelled to
+drown it. So came the flood. After that, he chooses one family, one
+little family and the descendants of that family, one little people,
+and bends all his energies to the education and training of that
+people,-- a small people inhabiting a country on the eastern coast of
+the Mediterranean Sea just about as large as the State of
+Massachusetts.
+
+For more than two thousand years he devotes himself to the training of
+this people. How does he succeed here? He sends his messengers again,
+his angels, his prophets, one after another. He inspires a certain
+number of men to write a book to deliver his will to the people, fallen
+into such condition that they are incapable of discovering the truth
+for themselves. But, after all his efforts, they are so far from the
+truth that, when the second person of the Trinity appears, they have
+nothing to do with him except to put him to death. After that, God
+sends the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to organize his
+Church, spread his truth, convert men, bring them into the Church, and
+so fit them to be saved. And, after two thousand years of that kind of
+effort, what is the result? They tell us that not more than a third
+part of the inhabitants of the world have heard anything about it, that
+the majority of those who have heard about it reject it. Mr. Moody told
+us last year that in this country, which we love to think of as the
+most favored and highly civilized and intelligent country in the world,
+out of seventy millions of inhabitants, not more than thirty millions
+ever see the inside of any kind of church. I do not vouch for the
+accuracy of the statistics. I wish to impress upon you the result of
+this theory of this six thousand years of endeavor on the part of God
+to bring his own children to a knowledge of his own truth. The upshot
+of it is that the few, the minority, will be saved, and the great
+majority eternally lost.
+
+Now here is one world theory, one scheme of world history which I wish
+you to hold clearly and as definitely as possible in your minds, while
+I place alongside of it another theory.
+
+According to this other, God did not suddenly create the world in a
+week or in a hundred thousand years. It is a story of continuous and
+eternal creation. As Jesus said, with fine and noble insight, "My
+father worketh hitherto." He did not recognize that God was resting on
+any day or through any period of time.
+
+ The world, then, has always been in process of creation. The same
+forces at work in accordance with substantially the same laws. The
+world has been millions of years in this process; and the process all
+around us, if we choose to open our eyes and note it, is still going on
+with all its wonder and divinity. And we know, as we study the heavens
+above us, or around us rather, with our telescopes, that there are
+worlds and systems of worlds in process of creation on every hand. We
+are permitted to look into the divine workshop and observe the divine
+method.
+
+The world, then, is always in process of creation. This is the first
+point in the new theory. It follows, of course, from this that we are
+to hold the story of the antiquity of the earth, the earth millions of
+years old, instead of six thousand or ten thousand.
+
+And then, in the third place, it tells us the story of the antiquity of
+the human race.
+
+All scholars, for example, as bearing on this I will give you just this
+one illustration, know that there was a civilization in Egypt, wide-
+spread, highly developed, with nobody knows how many ages of growth
+behind it, there was this civilization in Egypt before the world was
+created according to the popular chronology that has been generally
+received until within a few years.
+
+We know that man has been on the earth hundreds of thousands of years.
+This is the next point in that story.
+
+In the next place, they tell us a wondrous tale of the origin and
+nature of man, tracing his natural development from lower forms of
+life. When I say "natural," I do not wish you to think for one moment
+that I leave out the divinity; for, according to this story of the
+world which I am hinting and outlining now, God is infinitely nearer,
+more wonderfully in contact with us, than he ever was in the old.
+Natural, then, but divine at every step, so that we are seeing God face
+to face, if we but think of it, and are feeling his touch every moment
+of our lives.
+
+No fall of man, then, on this theory. No invasion of this world by any
+form of evil or any evil person from without. This story of the fall of
+man came into the world undoubtedly to account in some philosophical
+fashion for the existence of pain, of evil, and of death. We account
+for it on this new theory much more naturally, rationally, more
+honorably for God, more hopefully for man.
+
+The history of the world, then, since man began has not been by any
+means a history of universal progression. Evolution, however much it
+may be misunderstood and misrepresented, does not mean the necessity of
+progress on the part of any one person or any one people, any more, for
+example, than the growth of the human body is inconsistent with the
+fact that cells and composite parts of the body are in process of decay
+and dissolution every hour, every moment of our lives.
+
+Nations grow, advance, if they comply with the laws, the conditions, of
+growth and advance; and, if not, they die out and disappear. And so is
+it of individuals. But, on the other hand, in the presence of the
+loving, lifting, leading God, humanity in the larger sense has been
+advancing from the beginning of human history until to-day; and the
+grade, dim glimpses of which we gain as we look out toward the future,
+is still up and still on.
+
+According to this theory of the universe, there does not need to be any
+stupendous breaking in of God into his own world after any miraculous
+fashion. We do not need an infallible guide in religion any more than
+anywhere else, unless we are in danger of eternal loss because of an
+intellectual mistake. We do not need any stupendous miracle to
+reconcile God to his own world; for he has always been reconciled. We
+do not need any miraculous bridging of any mythical gulf; for there
+never has been any gulf. And the outcome, not as we look forward are we
+haunted by fearful anticipations of darkness and evil; as we listen, we
+do not ever hear the clanking of chains; as we look, we know that the
+dimness that hangs over the coming time is not caused by "the smoke of
+the torment that ascendeth up forever and ever." It is a story of
+eternal hope for every race, for every child of man and child of God.
+
+Here are these two theories, then, two schemes of the universe and of
+human history. Which of them shall we accept?
+
+I wish you to note now, and to note with a little care, that you cannot
+rationally accept a part of one theory and a part of the other, and so
+make up a patchwork to suit yourselves. Take, for example, the one
+question, Is man lost or is he not? He is not half lost or sort of
+lost: he is either lost or he is not lost. Which is true? If he is not
+"lost," then he does not need to be "saved." He may need something
+else; but he does not need that, for the two correspond and match each
+other. Let us think, then, a little clearly in regard to this matter,
+and remember that the outcome of the conflict between these two
+theories must be the supremacy of either one or the other.
+
+Now, before I come to any more fundamental and earnest treatment of the
+subject, let me call your attention to certain things that are
+happening to the old theory.
+
+How much of that old theory is intact to-day? How much of it is held
+even by those who, being scholars and thinkers, still hold their
+allegiance to the old-time theology? Let us see. The story of the
+sudden and finite creation of the world is completely gone. Nobody
+holds that now who gives it any attention. They have stretched the six
+days of the week, even those who hold the accuracy of the Genesis
+account, into uncounted periods of time. So that is gone. The antiquity
+of man is conceded by everybody who has a right to have and express an
+opinion; that is, by everybody who has given it any study. Every
+competent and free scholar knows to-day that the story of the fall of
+man and the whole Eden story, is a Babylonian or a Persian legend that
+came into the life of the Jews about the time of their captivity, and
+was not known of till then among them, and did not take hold on the
+leading and highest minds of their own people. And there are, as you
+know, hundreds, if not thousands of clergymen in all the churches to-
+day who are ready to concede that the story of Eden is poetry or legend
+or tradition: they no longer treat it as serious history. And yet, as I
+have said a good many times, they go on as though nothing had happened,
+although the foundation of their house has been removed. Only theories
+which stand in the air can thus defy the law of gravitation.
+
+Nobody to-day who has a right to have an opinion believes that God ever
+drowned the world. That is gone. As to the question as to whether we
+have an infallible book to guide us in religious matters, there are
+very few scholars in any church to-day, so far as my investigations
+have led, who hold any such opinion. That is gone; and the Bible, the
+Old Testament, at any rate is coming to be recognized, not as
+infallible revelation, but as ancient literature, immensely
+interesting, full of instruction, but not as an unquestioned guide in
+any department of life.
+
+There are many among the nominally old churches who are coming to hold
+a very different theory concerning Jesus, his life, his death, and the
+effect of his death on the salvation of man. More reasonable ideas are
+prevailing here. In every direction also there are thousands on
+thousands who are becoming freed from that horrible incubus of fear as
+they look out towards the future.
+
+As you note then, point after point of this old scheme of the universe
+is disappearing, being superseded by something else; until I am
+astonished, as I converse with friends in the other churches, to find
+how little of it is really left, how little of it men are ready, out
+and out, to defend. In conversation with an Episcopal clergyman a short
+time ago on theological questions, we agreed so well that I laughingly
+said I saw no reason why I should not become a clergyman in the
+Episcopal Church.
+
+Now, friends, what I wish you to note is this: that there is not one
+single point in this old scheme of the universe that can be reasonably
+defended to-day. It is passing away from intelligent, cultivated human
+thought.
+
+And note another thing: it is a scheme which is a discredit to the
+thought of God. It is unjust. It is dishonorable in its moral and
+religious implications. It is pessimistic and hopeless in its outlook
+for the race. It does not explain the problems of human nature and
+human experience half as well as the other theory does, even if it
+could be demonstrated as truth.
+
+Now let us look at the other. The other theory is magnificent in its
+proportions. It is grand in its conception and in its age-long sweep
+and range. It is worthy of the grandest thought of God we can frame;
+and we cannot imagine any increase or heightening or deepening of that
+thought which would reach beyond the limits of this conception of the
+universe, magnificent in its thought of God. And, instead of being
+pessimistic and hopeless in its outlook for man, it is full of hope, of
+life, of inspiration, of cheer, something for which we well may break
+out into songs of gladness as we contemplate.
+
+And, then, it is true. There is not one single feature of it, or point
+in it, that has not in the main been scientifically demonstrated to be
+God's truth. I make this statement, and challenge the contradiction of
+the world. Whatever breaks there may be in the evidence for this second
+theory that I have outlined, every single scrap and particle of
+evidence that there is in the universe is in its favor; and there is
+not one single scrap or particle of evidence in favor of the other. As
+I say, I challenge the contradiction of the scholarly world to that
+statement.
+
+It is true then. Being true, it is God's truth, God's theory of things,
+the outline of human history as God has laid it down for us; and, as we
+trace it, like Kepler, we may say, "O God, I think over again thy
+thoughts after Thee."
+
+Now I wish you to note one or two things concerning this a little
+further. There are a great may persons who shrink from accepting new
+ideas because they are haunted with the fear that in some way something
+precious, something sweet, something noble, something inspiring that
+they have associated with the past, is going to be lost. But think,
+friends. When the Ptolemaic theory of the universe gave way to the
+Copernican, not only did the Copernican have the advantage of being
+true, but not one single star in heaven was put out or even dimmed its
+light. All of them looked down upon us with an added magnificence and a
+fresher glow, because we felt at last we were standing face to face
+with the truth of things, and not with a fallible theory of man.
+
+Do not be afraid, then, that any of the sanctities, any of the
+devoutness, any of the tenderness, any of the sweet sentiments, any of
+the loves, any of the charities, any of the worships of the past, are
+in danger of being lost. Why, these, friends, are the summed-up result
+of all the world's finest and sweetest achievement up to this hour; and
+our theories are only vessels in which we carry the precious treasure.
+
+I am interested in having you see the truth of this universe, because I
+believe you will worship God more devoutly and love man more truly and
+consecrate yourselves more unreservedly to the highest and noblest
+ends, when you can think thoughts of God that kindle aspiration and
+worship, and thoughts of men as children of God that make it grandly
+worth your while to live and die for them.
+
+Do you think there is going to be a poorer religion than there has been
+in the past? I look to the time when we shall have a church as wide as
+the horizon, domed by the blue, lighted by the sun, the Sun of
+Righteousness, the Eternal Truth of the Father; a church in which all
+men shall be recognized as brothers, of whatever sect or whatever
+religion, in which all shall kneel and chant or lisp their worship
+according as they are able, the worship of the one Father, cheered and
+inspired by the one universal and eternal hope for man.
+
+Do not be afraid of the truth, then, for fear something precious is
+going to be lost out of human life. Evolution never gives up anything
+of the past that is worth keeping. It simply carries it on, and moulds
+it into ever higher and finer shapes for the service of man.
+
+ I intimated a moment ago? I wish to touch on this briefly for the sake
+of clearness that man, according to this new theory, does not need to
+be saved, in the theological sense, of course, I mean, because he is
+not lost. He has never been far away from the Father, never been beyond
+the reach of his hand, never been beyond the touch of his love and
+care. What does he need? He needs to be trained, he needs to be
+educated, he needs to be developed for man is just as naturally
+religious as he is musical or artistic, as he is interested in problems
+of government or economics, or any of the great problems that touch the
+welfare of the world.
+
+Man needs churches, then, or societies of those interested in the
+higher life of the time, needs services, needs all these things that
+kindle and train and develop and lift him up out of the animal into the
+spiritual and divine nature which is in every one of us. So that none
+of the worships, none of the religious forms of the world that are of
+any value, are ever going to be cast aside or left behind.
+
+But there is one very important point that I must deal with for just a
+little while. I will be as brief as I can.
+
+I have been very much surprised to note certain things that have come
+out in the recent religious discussions. The editor of the Brooklyn
+Eagle, for example, has deprecated all talk in regard to matters of
+this sort, saying, in effect: What difference does it make? What is
+involved that is of any importance? Why not let everybody worship and
+believe as he pleases? A writer in the New York Times? I think perhaps
+more than one, but one specially I have in mind has said substantially
+the same thing. It does not make any difference. Let people worship as
+they please, let them believe as they please, let them go their own
+way. What difference does it make?
+
+Friends, it makes no difference at all, provided there is no such thing
+in the world as religious truth. If there is, it makes all difference.
+Let us take this "Don't care" and "No matter" theory for a moment, and
+in the light of it consider a few of the grandest lives of the world.
+
+If it makes no difference what a man believes in religion or how he
+worships or what he tries to do, how does it happen that we Unitarians,
+for example, glorify Theodore Parker, and count him a great moral and
+intellectual hero? Why should he have made himself so unpopular as to
+be cast out even of the Unitarian fellowship? Was he contending for
+nothing? Was he a fool? was he making himself uncomfortable over
+imaginary distinctions? Perhaps; but, then, why are we foolish enough
+to honor him?
+
+Why is it that we glorify Channing, who at an earlier period was cast
+out of the best religious society of the world for what he believed to
+be a great principle? Why is it to-day that we lift John Wesley on such
+a lofty pedestal of admiration? He left the Church of England, or was
+cast out of it, went among the poor, preached a great religious reform,
+led a magnificent crusade, teaching a higher and grander spiritual
+religion, a religion of heart, of life, of character, against the mere
+formalism of the Church of his time. Was he contending about airy
+nothings without local habitation or a name? If so, why are we so
+foolish as to admire him?
+
+Go back further to Martin Luther, putting himself in danger of his
+life, standing against banded Europe, and saying, "Here I stand: God
+help me, I can do no otherwise!" What is the use? What did he do it
+for? If it made no difference whether a man worshipped God
+intelligently or according to the things Luther thought all wrong, what
+was the difference? What was he contending about, and why does the
+world bow down to him with reverence and honor?
+
+Why are we fools enough to honor the men who were burned at Oxford? Why
+do we honor to-day the line of saints and martyrs? Why do we look upon
+Savonarola with such admiration?
+
+To go back still farther, why was it that the early Christians were
+ready to suffer torture, to be racked, to be persecuted, to be thrown
+into kettles of boiling oil, to be cast to the wild beasts in the
+arena? Were they contending for nothing at all? If it makes no
+difference, why were they casting themselves away in this Quixotic and
+foolish fashion and, if there was nothing involved, how is it that
+these names shine as stars in the religious firmament of the world's
+worship?
+
+Go to the time of Jesus himself. A young Nazarene, he leaves his home
+in Nazareth, joins the fortunes of John the Baptist. After John the
+Baptist had been fool enough to get his head cut off contending for his
+theory, Jesus takes up his work, dares to speak against the temple,
+dares to challenge the righteousness of the most righteous men of their
+time, dares at last to stand so firmly that he is taken out one
+afternoon and hung upon a tree on the hill beyond the walls of the
+city, the one supreme piece of folly in the history of the world from
+the "Does not make any difference" point of view.
+
+Is there any truth involved? Does it touch the living or the welfare of
+the world? If not, why, then, are these looked upon as the grandest
+figures since the world began? Are all men fools for admiring them,
+except these wiseacres who stand for the theory that it makes no
+difference and who ought not to admire them at all?
+
+Suppose you apply the principle in other departments of life. We had a
+tremendous issue in this city and country last fall over the financial
+question. Would it have made any difference which side won? If it was
+just as well one way as the other, why not let the people who clamored
+for silver have silver, those who wanted greenbacks have greenbacks,
+and those who desired gold have gold? What was the use of troubling
+about it? We thought there were principles involved.
+
+Take it in the economic world, the individualist here with his theory,
+the socialist here with his; theories outlined like those in Edward
+Bellamy's "Looking Backward"; a hundred advancers of these different
+schemes, each contending for mastery. And we feel that the welfare of
+civilization is at stake; and we stand for our great principles. Take
+it in politics. What difference does it make whether the theories
+embodied in the reign of the Czar of Russia prevail, or these here in
+the United States which we are so foolish as to laud and pride
+ourselves so much about? What did we have a Civil War for, wasting
+billions of money and hundreds of thousands of lives? Are these great
+human contests about nothing at all?
+
+Friends, think one moment. Either man is a child of God or he is not.
+Man fell at the beginning of his history, and came under the wrath and
+curse of God, or he did not. God has sent angels, breaking into his
+natural order of the world, or he has not. He has created an infallible
+book or he has not. He has organized an infallible church that has
+authority to guide and teach the world or he has not. He himself came
+down to earth in the form of a man once and for all, and was crucified,
+dead and buried and ascended into heaven, or he did not.
+
+These are questions of historic fact. Does it make no difference what
+we believe about them? If man is a fallen being, condemned to eternal
+death, and God has provided only one way for his escape and salvation,
+then it makes an infinite and eternal difference as to whether we know
+it or believe it or act on it or not. If the majority of the human race
+is doomed to eternal torture unless it escapes through certain
+prescribed conditions, does it make any difference whether we know it
+or not?
+
+And, if he is not so doomed, does it make no difference to the heart
+and hope, the life, the cheer, the courage and inspiration of man,
+whether or not we lift from the brain and the heart this horrible
+incubus of dread and fear?
+
+Here are all these churches with their wealth, their intelligence,
+their enthusiasm, their inspiration, ready to do something for
+humanity. Does it make any difference whether they are doing the right
+thing for it or not? We could revolutionize the world if we could be
+guided by intelligence, and find out what man really needs, and devote
+ourselves to the accomplishment of what that is. The waste, the waste,
+the waste of money and thought and energy and time and inspiration
+poured into wrong channels, unguided by intelligence, directed towards
+things that do not need to be done, and away from things that do need
+to be done!
+
+These are the questions involved in discussions as to what God is and
+has done and is going to do with his world.
+
+The one thing we need, then, almost more than all others just now, is
+to be led by the truth, and have the truth make us free from the errors
+and the burdens of the past, so that we may place ourselves truly at
+the disposal of God for the service of our fellows.
+
+O star of truth down-shining, Through clouds of doubt and fear, I ask
+but 'neath your guidance My pathway may appear. However long the
+journey, How hard soe'er it be, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on,
+I'll follow thee. I know thy blessed radiance Can never lead astray,
+However ancient custom May tread some other way. E'en if through untrod
+desert Or over trackless sea, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll
+follow thee. The bleeding feet of martyr Thy toilsome road have trod;
+But fires of human passion May lead the way to God. Then, though my feet
+should falter, While I thy beams can see, Though I be lone and weary,
+Lead on, I'll follow thee. Though loving friends forsake me Or plead
+with me in tears, Though angry foes may threaten To shake my soul with
+fears, Still to my high allegiance I must not faithless be, Through life
+or death, forever Lead on, I'll follow thee.
+
+DOUBT AND FAITH-BOTH HOLY.
+
+THE object of all thinking is the discovery of truth. And truth for us,
+what is that? It is the reality of things as related to us. There has
+been a good deal of metaphysical discussion first and last as to what
+things are "in themselves." It seems to me that this, if it were
+possible to find it out, might be an interesting matter, might satisfy
+our curiosity, but is of absolutely no practical importance to us. I do
+not believe that we can find out what things are in themselves, in the
+first place; and I do not believe that, if we could, it would be of any
+service to us. What we want to know is what things are as related to
+us, as touching us, as bearing upon our life, upon our practical
+affairs.
+
+Once more: there has been a good deal of discussion as to whether the
+universe is really what it appears to be to us. They tell us that it is
+quite another thing from the point of view of other creatures, to
+beings differently constituted from ourselves. Again, all this may be.
+It might be interesting to me, for example, to look at the world from
+the point of view of the fly or of the bird or some one of the animals;
+but, again, while it might satisfy my curiosity, it could be of no
+practical importance to me. It might be very interesting to me to know
+how the universe looks from the point of view of an angel. But, so long
+as I am not an angel, but a man, what I need to know is what the
+universe is as related to man.
+
+So truth, I say, then, is the reality of things as related to us.
+
+I must make another remark here, in order perfectly to clear the way.
+Philosophers and scientific men, a certain class of them, are
+perpetually warning us of the dangers of being anthropomorphic. Some
+one has said, "Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is." This means,
+as you know, that we look at things from the point of view of
+ourselves. We see things as men, as anthropoi. This has been erected in
+certain quarters into a good deal of a bugbear in the way of thinking.
+We are told we can never know the universe really, because we shape
+everything into our own likeness, we are anthropomorphic, we look at
+everything from the point of view of men.
+
+I grant the charge; but, instead of being frightened by it, I accept it
+with content. How else should we look at things except from the point
+of view of men, since we are men? We cannot look at them in any other
+way. Let us be, then, anthropomorphic. The only thing we need to guard
+against is this: we must not assume that we have exhausted the
+universe, and that we know it all. This is the evil of a certain type
+of anthropomorphism. But I cannot understand why it is important for us
+to be anything else but anthropomorphic. I want to know how things look
+to a man, what things are to a man, how things affect a man, how I am
+to deal with things, being a man.
+
+This is the only matter, let me repeat again, which is of any practical
+importance to us, until we become something other than men.
+
+Truth, then, the truth that we desire to find, is the reality of things
+as related to us. Now doubt and faith are attitudes of mind, and are
+neither good nor bad in themselves, either of them. They are of value
+only as they help us in the discovery of this reality about which I
+have been speaking. If a certain type of doubt stands in our way in
+seeking for truth, then that doubt so far is evil. If a certain
+something, called faith, stands in the way of our seeking frankly and
+fearlessly for the truth, that is evil. If -doubt helps us to find
+truth, it is good: if faith helps us to -find truth, it is good. But
+the only use of either of them is to help us discover and live the
+truth.
+
+The attitude of the Church and by the Church I mean the historic Church
+of the past towards doubt and faith is well known to us. It has
+condemned doubt almost universally as something evil, sinful. It has
+extolled faith as something almost universally good. But in my judgment
+and I will ask you when I get through, perhaps, to consider as to
+whether you do not agree with me the trouble with the human mind up to
+the present time has not been a too great readiness to doubt: it has
+been a too great inclination to believe. There has been too much of
+what has been called perhaps by the time I am through you will think
+miscalled faith; and there has been too little of honest, fearless,
+earnest doubt. This is perfectly natural, when you consider how the
+world begins, and the steps by which it advances.
+
+Let us take as an illustration the state of mind of a child. A child at
+first does not doubt, does not doubt anything. It is ready to believe
+almost anything that father, mother, nurse, playmate, may say to it.
+And why? In the first place it has had no experience yet of anything
+but the truth being told it; and in the next place it lives in a world
+where there are no canons or standards of probability. In the child-
+world there are no laws, there are no impossibilities, there is nothing
+in the way of anything happening. The child mind does not say, in
+answer to some statement, Why, this does not seem reasonable. The
+child's reason is not yet developed into any practical activity. The
+child does not say, Why, this cannot be, because there is such a force
+or such a law that would be contravened by it. The child knows nothing
+about these forces or laws: it is a sort of a Jack- and-the-Beanstalk
+world. The beanstalk can grow any number of feet over night in the
+world in which the child lives. Anything is possible. If father and
+mother and nurse tell the child about Santa Claus coming down the
+chimney with a pack of toys on his back, it does not occur to the child
+to note the fact that the chimney flue is no more than six inches in
+diameter, and that Santa Claus and his pack could not possibly pass
+through such an opening. All this is beyond the range or thought of the
+stage of development at which the child has arrived.
+
+So in the childhood world. As I said, anything may happen. But you will
+note, beautiful, sunny, lovely as this childhood world is as a phase of
+experience, as a stage of development, sweet as may be the memory of
+it, yet, if the child is ever to grow to manhood, is ever to be
+anything, ever to do anything, it must outgrow this Jack-and-the-
+Beanstalk world, this Santa Claus world, this world in which anything
+may happen, and must begin to doubt, begin to question, begin to test
+things, to prove things, find out what is real and what is unreal, what
+is true and what is untrue, must measure itself against the realities
+of things, learn to recognize the real forces and the laws according to
+which they operate, so as to deal with them, obey them, make them serve
+him, enable him to create character and to create a new type of
+civilization, new things on the face of the earth.
+
+Now what is true of each individual child has been true of the race.
+The world started in childhood; and for thousands of years it believed
+very easily, it believed altogether too much for its good, it believed
+altogether too readily. Naturally, perhaps, necessary in that stage of
+its development; but so long as it remained in that stage there was no
+possibility of its becoming master of the earth.
+
+Note, for example, the state of mind of the old Hebrews, I use them
+merely as an illustration, because you are familiar with their story as
+told in the Old Testament. Similar things are true of every race on the
+face of the earth. They knew nothing about the real nature of this
+universe. They knew nothing about natural forces working in accordance
+with what we call natural laws. Consequently, they lived in a child-
+world, a world of magic and miracle, a world in which anything might
+happen. It did not trouble one of the people of that time to be told
+that, in answer to the prayer of one of the prophets, an axe-head which
+had sunk in the water rose and floated on the surface. There were no
+natural laws in his mind contradicted by an asserted fact like that. It
+never occurred to him to be troubled about it. There was nothing very
+startling to him in being told that the sun stood still for an hour or
+two to enable a general to finish a battle in which he was engaged. He
+did not know enough about the universe to see what tremendous
+consequences would be involved in the possibility of a thing like that.
+He was not troubled when you told him that a man had been swallowed by
+a great fish, and had lived for three days and three nights in its
+stomach, and had come out uninjured. There was no improbability in it
+to him. Simply, a question as to whether God had chosen to have the
+fish large enough so that it could swallow him. To be told again that a
+human body that could eat food and digest it, a body like ours, might
+rise into the air and pass out of sight into some invisible heaven, not
+very far away, there was nothing incredible about it. He knew nothing
+about the atmosphere, limited in its range so that it would be
+impossible to breathe beyond a certain distance from the planet. He
+knew nothing about the intense cold that would make life impossible
+just a little way above the surface.
+
+The world in which our forefathers lived until modern times was just
+this magic, Jack-and-the-Beanstalk world, a world without any
+impossibilities in it, without any improbabilities in it. All this
+thought of the true and the untrue, the possible and the impossible,
+the probable and the improbable, is the result of the fact that man has
+grown up, has left his childhood behind him, has begun to think, has
+begun to study, has begun to search for reality, to find out the nature
+of the world in which he lives, the forces with which he must deal, to
+understand the universe at least in some narrow range, measured by his
+so-far experience.
+
+The world, then, until modern times has believed too readily, has
+accepted things too easily. Let us note, for example, what have been
+called by way of pre-eminence the Ages of Faith, the Middle Ages, the
+age, say, from the seventh or eighth century until the thirteenth or
+fourteenth. What was characteristic of those ages? Were they grand,
+noble? They were ages of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, of
+immorality, of poverty, of tyranny, of degradation. Almost everything
+existed that men would no longer bear to-day; and hardly any of the
+grand things that characterize modern civilization had then been heard
+of.
+
+Where did this modern civilization of ours begin? Did it ever occur to
+you that it began when men began to doubt? It began, we say, with the
+Renaissance. What was the Renaissance? The Renaissance was the birth of
+doubt, the birth of question, the demand on the part of men, who began
+to wake up and think, for evidence. It was the beginning of the
+scientific age, the birth of the scientific spirit which has renovated,
+re- created, uplifted the world. Men began to think, to look about
+them, and to prove all things. And instead of holding fast all things,
+as they had been doing in the past, they began to hold fast only the
+things which they found by experience, and after testing and trial, to
+be good.
+
+Here began, then, the civilization of the world; and all that is finest
+and highest in industry, in education, in discovery, in the whole
+external civilization of the world, came in with the coming of this
+spirit that questions and that asks for proof.
+
+I do not wish you to understand me as supposing that all kinds of doubt
+are good, equally good. The Church, as I said a little while ago, has
+been accustomed to teach us that doubt was wrong; and there are certain
+kinds of doubt that are morally wrong, certain kinds of doubt that are
+disastrous to the highest and finest life of the world.
+
+I wish now to analyze a little and define and make clear these
+distinctions, that you may see the kind of doubt which is evil and the
+kind of doubt which is good.
+
+There are doubts which spring out of the fact that men, under the
+influence of personal interest, as they suppose, or strong desire, wish
+to follow certain courses, wish to walk in certain paths; and they
+doubt and question the laws, moral or mental, religious or what not,
+which stand in their way, which would prohibit their having their will.
+As an illustration of what I mean, suppose a man is engaged in a
+certain kind of business, or wishes to manage his business in a certain
+kind of way. He suspects, if he stops and thinks about it, that the
+interests of other people may be involved, that the way in which he
+wants to conduct his business is a selfish way, that the interests of
+other people may be injured, that the world as a whole may not be as
+well off; but it seems to be for his own advantage.
+
+Now it is very difficult, indeed, for you to persuade a man that he
+ought to do right under such circumstances. He is ready to doubt and
+question as to whether these laws of right are imperative, whether they
+are divine, whether they may not be waived one side in the interest of
+the thing which he desires to do. So you must guard yourself very
+carefully, no matter what the department of life may be that you are
+facing, if you find yourself doubting under the impulse of your own
+wishes, if you are trying to argue yourself into the belief that you
+may be permitted to do something which you very much want to do.
+
+Be suspicious of your doubts, then, and remember that probably they are
+wrong. Great moral questions may be involved, and doubt may mean wreck
+here.
+
+There is another field where doubt is dangerous and presumably an evil.
+You will find most people, in regard to any question which they have
+considered or which has touched them seriously, with their minds
+already made up. They have some sort of a persuasion about it, they
+have a theory which they have accepted; and, if you bring them a truth
+with ever such overwhelming credentials which clashes with this
+preconceived idea or prejudice, the chances are that it would be met
+with doubt, with denial, not a clear-cut, intelligent, well- balanced
+doubt, but a doubt that springs out of the unwillingness that a man
+feels to reconstruct his theory.
+
+Let me give you an illustration of what I mean, and this away off in
+another department of life from our own, so that it will not clash with
+any of your particular prejudices. Sir Isaac Newton won a great and
+world-wide renown, and magnificently deserved, by his grand discovery
+of the law of gravity. You will see, then, how natural it was for
+people to pay deference to his opinion, to be prejudiced in favor of
+his conclusions. It was perfectly natural and, within certain limits,
+perfectly right. Sir Isaac Newton not only propounded this law of
+gravity, but he propounded a theory of light which the world has since
+discovered to be wrong. But it was universally accepted because it was
+his. It became the accepted scientific theory of the time. By and by a
+man, unknown up to that time, by the name of Young, studied Newton's
+theory, and became convinced that it was wrong; and he propounded
+another theory, the one which to- day is universally accepted through
+the civilized world. But it was years before it could gain anything
+like adequate or fair consideration, because the preconception in favor
+of Newton's theory stood in the way of any adequate consideration of
+the one which was subsequently universally adopted.
+
+So you will find scientific men, I know any quantity of them, grand in
+their fields, doing fine work, who are not willing to consider anything
+which would compel a reconstruction of their theories and ideas. This
+is true not only in the scientific field, but it is true everywhere: it
+is true in politics. How many men can you get fairly to consider the
+political position of his opponent? He not only doubts the rightness
+and the sense of it, but he is ready to deny it. How many people can
+you get fairly to weigh the position of one who occupies a religious
+home different from their own? And these religious prejudices, being
+bound up with the tenderest and noblest sentiments, feelings, and
+traditions of the human heart, become the strongest of all, and so are
+in more danger of standing in the way of human progress than anything
+else in all the world.
+
+People identify their theories of religion with religion itself, with
+the honor of God, with the worship and the love of God, and feel that
+somehow it is impious for them to consider the question whether their
+intellectual theories are correct or not; and so the world stands by
+the ideas of the past, and opposes anything like finer and nobler ideas
+that offer themselves for consideration. And not only in the religious
+field; but these religious prejudices stand in the way of accepting
+truths outside the sphere of religion. For example, when Darwin
+published his book, "The Origin of Species," the greatest opposition it
+met with was from the religious world. Why? Had they considered
+Darwin's arguments to find out whether they were true? Nothing of the
+kind. But they flew to the sudden conclusion that somehow or other the
+religion of the world was in danger, if Darwinism should prove to be
+true. And it is very curious to note I wonder how long the world will
+keep on repeating that serio-comic blunder from the very beginning it
+has been the same; almost every single step that the world proposes to
+take in advance is opposed by the constituted religious authorities of
+the time because they assume at the outset that the theories which they
+have been holding are divinely authorized and infallible, and that it
+is not only untrue, this other statement, but that it is impious as
+well.
+
+The doubt, then, that springs from preconceived ideas is not only
+unjustifiable, but may be dangerous and wrong.
+
+Then there is another kind of doubt against which you should beware.
+There are certain doubts that, if accepted and acted on, stand in the
+way of the creation of the most magnificent facts in the world. Take as
+an illustration of what I mean: when Napoleon, a young man in Paris,
+was asked to take command of the guard of the city, suppose he had
+doubted, questioned, distrusted, his own ability; suppose he had been
+timid and afraid, the history of the world would have been changed by
+that one doubt. Take another illustration. At the opening of our war or
+in the months just preceding the beginning of active hostilities the
+man then occupying the presidential chair had no faith, no faith in
+himself, no faith in the perpetuity of our institutions, no faith in
+the people; and so he sat doubting, while everything crumbled in pieces
+around him. And then appeared a man in whom the people had little faith
+at first, and who had no great faith perhaps in his own ability; but he
+had infinite faith in God, faith in right, faith in the people, faith
+in the possibilities of freedom trusted in the hands of the people. And
+this faith created a new nation.
+
+If there had been doubt in the heart of Abraham Lincoln, again the
+history of the world would have been &hanged. He believed that "Right
+is right, since God is God, And right the day must win: To doubt would
+be disloyalty, To falter would be sin."
+
+You see, then, here is another field where you had better be wary of
+doubt. Do not doubt yourself, do not doubt the possibilities of noble
+action, noble character, of achievement. We say of a young man entering
+life, brimful of enthusiasm, that all this will be toned down by and
+by; and we speak of it as though the enthusiasm itself somehow was a
+fault or a folly. And yet it is just this enthusiasm of the young men
+that moves and lifts the world. It is this faith in themselves and in
+the possibility of great things, it is this faith that lies at the
+heart of every invention, of every great discovery, of every
+magnificent achievement. Read the history of invention. The world is
+full of stories of men who got a new idea. They were laughed at, they
+were told it was impracticable; and, if they had been laughed out of
+it, it would have been impracticable. It was their faith in the
+possibility of some great new thing, their faith in the resources of
+the universe, their faith in themselves as able to discover some new
+truth and make it applicable to the needs of the world, it was this
+faith which has been at the root of the grandest things that have ever
+been done.
+
+It is this which was in the heart of Columbus as he sailed out towards
+the West. It is this which was in the heart of Magellan as he studied
+the shadow of the earth across the face of the moon, and believed in
+the story that shadow told him against the constituted authorities of
+the world.
+
+But now let us turn sharply, and find out where doubt does come in, and
+where it is as honorable, as noble, as necessary as faith.
+
+People misuse this word "faith." Doubt applies to all questions of fact
+that may be investigated, to all questions of history, to all questions
+open to the exercise of the critical faculty. For example, if I am told
+that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and I say I accept that statement on
+faith, I am abusing the dictionary. I have no business to accept it on
+faith. Faith has nothing whatever to do with it. It is a pure matter of
+scholarship. It is a matter of study, of investigation, a matter of
+clear and hard intelligence and nothing more.
+
+Suppose I am told that the Catholic Church is infallible, and I am
+asked to accept it as an article of faith. Here, again, the
+introduction of the word "faith" into a domain like that is an
+impertinence. Faith has nothing whatever to do with it. That is a
+question of fact. We can read history for the last eighteen hundred
+years. We can find out what the Catholic Church has said and what the
+Catholic Church has done, as to whether it has proved itself absolutely
+infallible or not. It is a matter of study and decision intellectually;
+and it is my duty to doubt that which does not bring authentic
+credentials in a field like this.
+
+Take the question of the authorship of the Gospel of John. Was it
+written by the apostle John, who lay in the bosom of Jesus, and was
+called the beloved disciple? Have I any business to say I have faith
+that it was written by him, and let it rest there? Faith has nothing to
+do with it. We can trace the history of that book, find out when first
+it was referred to, follow it back as far as possible, find out whether
+it was in existence before the apostle John had died or not. It is a
+pure matter of criticism, a matter of study; and I have no business to
+accept it as a matter of faith, because, if I do, I am in danger not
+only of deceiving myself, but of misleading the world. And truth, we
+cannot say it too often or too emphatically, truth is the only thing
+that is holy in investigations of this kind. Men's beliefs and
+mistakes, old, venerable, reverenced though they may have been by
+thousands and for hundreds of years, are no less unworthy longer to
+delude the minds of men. Truth is divine, truth is the one object of
+our search.
+
+Now let us come to consider for a moment the nature of faith. I said a
+little while ago that the word is very frequently misused. Nine times
+out of ten, when I hear people using the word "faith" and I see the
+connection in which they use it, I discover they do not know the
+meaning of the word. That which has favor generally under the name of
+faith is simple credulity. It is closing the eyes and accepting
+something on somebody's authority without any investigation. That,
+remember, is not faith.
+
+Let us see now if I can give you a clear idea of what faith really is;
+and now I have the Bible and I am glad to say it  behind me. This
+magnificent chapter,* a portion of which I read as our lesson this
+morning, gives precisely the same idea of faith as that which I am
+going to outline. What is faith? Faith is a purely rational faculty. It
+is not irrational, but it is perfectly understandable. Suppose there is
+a man suddenly accused of a crime, and I never saw him before, I do not
+even know his name; but I go into court when he is brought up for
+trial, and I say that I have faith in that man, and I do not believe
+that he committed the crime. Do you not see that I am talking nonsense?
+I have no business to have faith in him, there is no ground for faith,
+it is an entire misuse of the word. But now take another case. Here is
+a man that I have known for twenty years. I have seen him in business.
+I have seen him in his home, among his neighbors and friends, and in
+the street. I have met him in all sorts of relations. I have talked
+with him, I have tested him. I have been intimate with him. He is
+suddenly accused of crime, and is brought into court. I appear, and say
+I have faith in that man, I do not believe that he committed the crime.
+I do not know that he did not commit it; but I have grounds here for
+faith. In the light of his past life, of his experience, of his
+temptations, of his opportunities to go wrong, and of his having gone
+right, in the light of all this past experience of years, I have faith
+in this man; and I say it, and I am talking reason and sense. In the
+other case I am talking folly.
+
+Faith, you see, is a rational faculty. Let me give you another
+illustration. Suppose I am driving along through the country some
+morning when there is a very thick fog hanging over the landscape. The
+fog is so thick that I can see no more than ten or fifteen feet ahead
+of me; but I discover that I am near the bank of a river, and I come to
+the entrance to a bridge. I can see enough to know that here is an
+abutment of a bridge and an arch springing out into the fog. I drive on
+to that bridge with simple confidence. I do not know that there is any
+other end to the bridge. I have never seen it before. I have seen other
+bridges, however; and I know that, generally, bridges not only begin
+somewhere, but end somewhere. So, though I do not know for certain that
+the bridge ends on the other side of the river, for aught I know there
+may be a break in it, the bridge may not be completed, something may
+have happened to it, I confidently drive on; and in ninety-nine times
+out of a hundred my faith is justified by the result. This is a pure
+act of faith, but faith, do you not see, based in reality, springing
+out of experience, and so a purely rational act of the mind.
+
+Let me give you one illustration of the scientific use of faith, very
+striking, beautiful, as it seems to me. The only time Mr. Huxley was in
+this country, I happened to be in New York, and heard him give the
+opening one of a brief course of three lectures in Chickering Hall. He
+was very much interested then in the ancestry of the horse. Most of you
+are probably aware of the fact that they have traced its ancestry to a
+little creature having five toes, like ordinary animals. At the time
+that Mr. Huxley was here, one link in this chain was missing; that is,
+one of the forms in the line of the horse's ancestors had not been
+discovered.
+
+But here, for example, was the first one and the second one, we say,
+and the third one was missing, and here was the fourth one, and here
+was the horse itself. Now, in the light of the presumable uniformity of
+nature, Mr. Huxley went on to describe this missing animal. He said, if
+the remains of this creature are ever found, they will be so and so;
+and he went into an accurate detailed explanation as to what sort of
+creature it would be. He had not been at his home in England a year
+before Professor Marsh, of Yale College, discovered this missing link
+in Colorado, and it answered precisely to the description which
+Professor Huxley had beforehand given of it.
+
+Now here is a case of scientific prophecy, scientific faith, a faith
+based on previous scientific observations, based on the experienced
+uniformity of nature. Mr. Huxley did not know, he could not have known;
+but he believed. He believed in the universe, he believed in the sanity
+of the universe, he believed in the uniformity, the order, the beauty
+of the universe; and the result justified his faith.
+
+Faith, then, is a purely rational faculty. It has nothing to do with
+the past, but is always the evidence of things hoped for, the substance
+of something not yet seen. It is always looking along the lines of
+possible experience for something as possibly or probably to be.
+
+Now at the end I wish to suggest a few things that are in the rightful
+province and field of faith, fields where we can fearlessly exercise
+this grand faculty, where indeed we must exercise it if we are to
+achieve the highest and finest results in the world.
+
+And, in the first place, quoting the words of the old writer, let me
+say, "Have faith in God." I do not mean by this, accept certain
+intellectual statements or propositions about him, though they may be
+mine, and though I may thoroughly accept and believe them.
+
+You may doubt the representation of God that is made in any one of the
+theologies of the world, as to whether the statements made about him
+are accurate. It is not this intellectual belief that I am talking
+about at this minute. Have faith in God! You may not even use the name.
+I am no such stickler for phrases as to condemn a man who cannot say
+"God." I have known a good many men, who have hesitated to pronounce
+the name, who were infinitely more divine in their life and character
+than those who are glibly uttering it every hour of their lives. It is
+not this I mean. It is something deeper, higher, grander than that. As
+you look along the lines of history from the far-off time when we begin
+to trace it until to-day, and see the magnificent march of advance, an
+orderly universe lightening and glorifying as it advances, becoming
+ever finer and higher and better; as you observe the order and truth
+and beauty and good dominant, and ever coming to be more and more
+dominant as the years advance, believe in this and trust this, trust to
+all possibilities of something finer and grander by way of outcome in
+the future. Have faith in God!
+
+And, then, have faith in truth. I meet only a few people that seem to
+me to have utter faith in truth, who really believe that it is safe to
+tell the truth, always tell it. I talk with a great many people I wish
+to mention this as an illustration of what I mean who speak in the
+greatest commendation of the Roman Catholic Church. They say, We do not
+know what we should do in this country if we had not the Roman Catholic
+Church to keep a certain section of the people down, to keep them in
+order. I wonder if people ever realize just what this means. It means a
+lack of faith in God and faith in truth and faith in humanity, all
+three. If it is not safe to tell the truth, then I am not responsible
+for it. I propose to say it, although people tell me that there is
+danger of the explosion of the universe on account of it. If there is,
+I am not responsible for making it true. Oh, I get so tired of this
+kind of timidity, this playing hide-and-seek with people! I have had a
+minister tell me that he wished he was free to tell the truth in his
+pulpit, as I am; and then I have had people in his congregation tell me
+afterwards that they wished their minister would preach the truth
+plainly, as I did. Simply playing hide-and-seek with each other!
+
+You remember the story of the man in Italy, who asked the priest if he
+really believed the religion of the country; and the priest said, "Oh,
+no! we have to go slowly on account of the people; they believe it."
+And when the people were asked if they believed it, they said, "Oh, no,
+we are not such fools; but the priests believe it." And so people play
+hide-and-seek with each other, not daring to tell the magnificent,
+clear truth of things.
+
+Have faith in the truth. It is feared that it is not quite safe to tell
+people the truth, because they are not quite ready for it; and I have
+had no end of conversations during the religious discussion of the last
+two or three weeks right in this line. It seems to me very much like
+saying that, because a man has been shut up in a dark prison for a long
+time, you had better keep him there, because it would be such a shock
+to him suddenly to face the light. Undoubtedly, it would be a shock.
+Undoubtedly, it would trouble and stagger people for a little while to
+be told the simple truth; but how is the world ever to get ahead, if
+you keep on, as a matter of policy, lying to it for ages? How is it
+ever going to find the truth? Shall I lie for the glory of God, the
+supposed honor of God? I will take no such responsibility.
+
+Let us have faith in the truth, then. Tell it fearlessly, simply,
+utterly; and, if God is not able to take care of his own world, why,
+the sooner it ends and we get into a stage of existence where it is
+safe to tell the truth, the better.
+
+Have faith in men. Have faith in the people. This it is that we trust
+to in all our hopes of progress for the future. This it is which
+distinguished Lincoln among our statesmen. You remember that grand
+saying of his, true and humorous, so that it sticks in our memory, and
+we can never forget it, "You can fool all the people a part of the
+time; you can fool a part of the people all the time; but you can't
+fool all the people all of the time." Here is the basis on which we
+rest our republic. Our republic is fallen unless the people are really
+to be trusted.
+
+Have faith, then, in the people, faith in their healthy instincts,
+faith in their general sanity, faith in their desire for the right and
+the true; and this is a genuine exercise of faith, for the past history
+of the world justifies it.
+
+And, then, have faith in yourself as a child of God. I do not mean
+conceit now. I do not mean an overestimate of your ability, but belief
+that you can do great, grand, noble things, belief that you can become
+something great, noble, grand; belief in the possibility in this life
+or in some other life of unfolding all that is highest, truest,
+sweetest, in manhood and womanhood. It is this faith that is able to
+create the fact and make that which it trusts in.
+
+Let us then believe in God, believe in truth, believe in humanity,
+believe in ourselves; and then we may work towards the coming of that
+far, grand time when the dreams of the world shall be realized and its
+faith shall become reality.
+
+IS LIFE A PROBATION ENDED BY DEATH?
+
+MY subject this morning is an attempted answer to the question, "Is
+Life a Probation ended by Death?" It will broaden itself naturally, if
+we cannot accept that theory of it, into the further question, What is
+the main end and purpose of our life? I take my text from the fifth
+chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the fifteenth and the
+sixteenth verses. I will read them as they appear in the Old Version:
+"See, then, that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
+redeeming the time."
+
+The idea of the writer is that, as we pass through the world, we should
+do it with our eyes kept intelligently open, looking about us on every
+hand, trying to comprehend the situation, to see what things are, and
+what we ought to do to play our part in the midst of them. Not
+heedlessly, not unwisely, he says, perhaps hardly the harsh word
+"fools," but as wise, as persons intelligently ready to take advantage
+of the situation and make the most of the condition in which one finds
+himself; redeeming the time, or, as the Revised Version has it, "buying
+up the opportunity "; being ready, that is, to pay whatever price is
+necessary in order to make the most of the situation.
+
+This, then, is the spirit according to our text in which we should look
+over the problem of life; and this is the method by which we should
+attempt to guide its practical affairs.
+
+That which people regard as the matter of most importance, any
+particular theory or plan of life which they may hold to be for them
+the most desirable, this, of course, is that to which they will direct
+their chief attention, on which they will lavish their thought, on
+which they will pour out their care, to which they will consecrate
+their energies. If now the theory or plan of life be false, if it be
+inadequate, if one is looking in the wrong direction for the success
+that he desires, or if he expects to achieve the great end and object
+of living by means which are not real, which do not match the actual
+facts of the world and of human life, then of course his effort is so
+far thrown away. He wastes energies, power, time, enthusiasm on wrong
+ends which might be used to the attainment of things which are real and
+fine and high.
+
+Is it not then of the utmost importance that our conception of life,
+what it is for, what we ought to attempt to reach, and how we should
+make this attempt, should be an accurate one? Any young man starting
+out in life, if he sets up for himself a goal which is unworthy, which
+does not match his faculties and powers, and if he proposes to reach it
+by means which are not adequate to the attainment of his desires, do
+you not see how he wrecks and wastes his life? His opportunity is gone;
+and by and by he wakes up to find that the years have been dissipated,
+and he has not attained any worthy or noble end.
+
+If this be true of a young man as he looks forward to a scheme or plan
+of life here during these few short years, how much more is a similar
+thing true, when we are contemplating not merely the question of a
+business, or professional or social failure and success, but are
+looking at the grander and more inclusive theme of the beginning and
+aim and outcome of life itself We have inherited from the past the idea
+that this life here, under the blue sky for a few years, as we live it,
+is a probation, that we are put here on trial, and that death ends it,
+and that, when we have passed that line, gone over from that which is
+visible here into the invisible, we are either "lost" or "saved," and
+things are definitely fixed forever.
+
+I am perfectly well aware that the most of us who are here have given
+up this idea, though there may remain fragments and suggestions of it
+in our minds still haunting the chambers of the brain, not yet
+outgrown, not yet cleared away. But with most people in the modern
+world, if they are sincere, if they are consistent, the one great
+question with them is whether they are to be saved or lost in another
+life. And, if this be the true theory of things, then not only ought
+men to bend all their thought, their energies, devote their
+enthusiasms, consecrate their time and money to it as much as they do,
+but a thousand times more.
+
+We look, perhaps, with a sort of amused curiosity, some of us, from
+what we regard as our superior point of view, at a man like Mr. Moody;
+and yet Mr. Moody is one man out of a million for his consistency and
+consecration to the thought which underlies all the Protestant churches
+of the modern world, with the exception of a few here and there. Mr.
+Moody believes that this life is a probation ended by death. There are
+thousands on thousand on thousands of men who say they believe it, who
+still cast in all their influence with churches that are based on it,
+and who yet devote their energies mainly to making money, to attaining
+social success, to pleasures of one kind or another, to political
+ambitions, who live as though this great fate were not overhanging the
+world, who meet their neighbors for pleasure or business, believing, if
+they are sincere, that this neighbor is heedlessly walking on to the
+brink of a gulf, and yet never speaking to him about it, never saying a
+word to imply that they really believe it; and yet this fear hangs over
+them, haunts their consciousness waking or sleeping; and, if you ask
+them if they believe it, they will say they suppose they do. In hours
+of danger, when disease threatens them or they are looking death in the
+face, they are affrighted, and try to flee to the traditional refuge as
+a place of safety.
+
+The whole great Catholic Church teaches that nobody has the slightest
+chance of being saved except by becoming a member of her great body of
+believers and partaking of her sacramental means of grace.
+
+This, I say then, is the great underlying belief of Christendom; and,
+if it is true, the world ought to consecrate itself, head and brain and
+soul, time, money, power, prayer, enthusiasm, everything, to delivering
+men from the imminent danger. If it is not true, then it ought to be
+brushed completely one side, put out of consciousness, of thought, of
+fear. The world ought to be dispossessed of its haunting presence. Why?
+So that we may fix our attention on the true end and aim of life, and
+find out what it means to live, how we ought to live, and why and what
+for, what ought to be the goal of our human endeavor.
+
+So long, then, as this belief does lie at the foundation of all the
+great churches of Christendom, so long as it is employed in all the
+criticisms of us who do not any longer accept it, it seems to me that
+it is worth our while to reconsider the question for a little while, so
+that we may clear our minds and thoughts, and may fix our attention
+definitely and earnestly on that which ought to be the goal of all our
+endeavor, our enthusiasm and our hope.
+
+Let us, then, look for just a few moments at this theory, and see what
+it means and implies.
+
+It is said that our first father was put on probation, was called upon
+to decide, not for himself only, but for all his descendants, as to
+what the future history of the inhabitants of this planet should be.
+Two famous books were published only a few years ago by Dr. Edward
+Beecher, the eldest son in that famous family. These were "The Conflict
+of Ages" and "The Concord of Ages." Dr. Beecher argued that anything
+like a fair probation on the part of Adam was an impossibility. This in
+the face of the prevailing beliefs of the time when the books were
+written. He said that, if a man were to choose on such a momentous
+question as this, choose adequately, choose fairly, he must be so
+circumstanced and endowed that he could comprehend the entire result of
+his choice. He must be able to look down the ages imaginatively, and
+see on one hand all the line of sin and misery, of death, finite and
+eternal, which should issue from his choosing in one direction. He must
+be able to comprehend all the good, the music, the joy, the beauty, the
+glory, the infinite perfectibility, in this world and the next, which
+should follow his choice in the other direction. And he said that Adam
+had no such opportunity as that, and was not endowed with the ability
+or the experience to make any such momentous choice; in other words,
+that the fundamental basis of the whole theological scheme of the world
+was unjust and unfair.
+
+This was Dr. Beecher's contention. How did he get over the difficulty?
+He believed in the pre-existence of human souls, and that in some other
+life before Adam there must have been an intelligent and fair choice,
+and that we here and now are only fighting out one stage of the results
+of that far-off decision. But, if you will stop to think of it a
+moment, you will see that this puts the difficulty only a little
+further back: it does not solve it. How does this first person, if it
+is so, countless millions of ages ago, happen to be endowed with
+intelligence and experience and ability enough to make such a momentous
+choice?
+
+And now just consider a moment. Is it conceivable that a sane person
+should intelligently choose evil, unless he had some inherited bias or
+tendency in that direction? For what does the choice of evil mean? It
+means sorrow, it means pain, it means death, it means everything
+horrible, everything undesirable, and means that a person deliberately
+and intelligently pits himself against an infinite and almighty power
+in what he knows must be an eternally losing battle. Can you conceive
+of a sane person making such a choice as that?
+
+If one of these first ancestors in the Garden of Eden, or no matter how
+far back, had a right to choose for himself, I deny his right to choose
+for me. What right had he to choose for you? What right had he to
+determine that you should be born with a perverted and corrupt nature,
+so that you would be certain to choose evil instead of good, helpless
+in the hands of a fate like this?
+
+Now you may look at this theory any way you please, place this
+probationary choice at the beginning of human history on this planet,
+or place it just as far back as you will, it is inconceivable, it is
+unfair, it is unjust, it is insane, it is everything that is foolish
+and wrong. And yet, note clearly one thing. So long as the world
+believes this, so long as the one end and aim of human life, as held up
+to people, is to be saved, think of the waste, think of the time, the
+anxiety, the enthusiasms, the prayers, the consecrations; think of the
+wealth, think of the intellectual faculties, think of the moral
+devotion, this whole power of the world expended on a false issue,
+turned into wrong channels!
+
+Is this a dead question? Is there no reason for us to consider it here
+in this latter part of the nineteenth century? Why, nine-tenths of
+Christendom to-day is spending its time in trying to propitiate a God
+who is not angry and trying to "save" souls that are not "lost."
+Expending its energies along mistaken channels towards issues that are
+entirely imaginary! Think, for example, if during the last two thousand
+years all the time and the money, all the intelligence, all the
+consecration, could have been spent on those things that would have
+really helped men to find out the meaning of life, and to illustrate
+that meaning in earnest living; suppose the money that has been spent
+on the cathedrals, on the monasteries, spent in supporting hordes and
+hordes of priests, spent in all the endeavor to save men in a future
+life, if all this had been used in educating men and training them into
+a comprehension of what kind of beings they really are, what kind of a
+world this is in which they have found themselves, spent in training
+them into mastery of themselves, spent in teaching them how to
+understand and control the forces of nature in order to serve and
+develop the higher life, think what a civilization might have been
+developed here on this poor old planet by this time! How much of the
+disease, how much of the corruption, how much of the unkindness, how
+much of the cruelty, how much of all that still remains in us of the
+animal, might have been outgrown, sloughed off, put underneath our
+feet!
+
+Is it not, then, a vital question, so long as so many thousands, so
+many millions of people are still consecrating their time, their money,
+their energy, in the attempt to do that which does not need to be done?
+
+Let us turn, now, and for a little while face another theory of human
+life; try to find out, or to suggest, what we are here on this planet
+for, what may be accomplished, how much of grand and true may be
+wrought out as the result of our attempt.
+
+The philosopher Kant has somewhere said that there are three things
+needed to the success of a human life, "something to do, some one to
+love, something to hope for." The old Catechism says that the chief end
+of man is "to glorify God and enjoy him forever." I indorse the words
+of Kant; I agree most heartily and thoroughly with the Catechism.
+Philip James Bailey, the author of that once famous poem "Festus," has
+said,
+
+"Life's but a means unto an end; that end, Beginning, mean, and end to
+all things, God."
+
+This also I indorse. I believe that life is something inner, something
+deeper than that which we ordinarily think of as constituting the
+matters of chief concern regarding it. Let me quote two or three lines
+again from Bailey's "Festus," familiar to you because so fine.
+
+We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not
+in figures on a dial.
+
+We should count time by heart-throbs. "He most lives Who thinks most,
+feels the noblest, acts the best."
+
+What is human life, then? What is it for? The object of life is living.
+But what does living mean? Most people cannot answer that question,
+because they have never more than half lived, and consequently have
+never appreciated its depth and significance. As I have had occasion
+over and over and over again, to say to business men, and I like to say
+it on every opportunity, it seems to me, as I look over the face of
+society, that most people live only in some little fragmentary way,
+some corner of their being.
+
+Most men spend their lives in the attempt to accumulate the means to
+live, and forget to begin to live at all. Sometimes, as you are riding
+through the country on a winter evening, you come to a silent farm-
+house, and you see one window lighted; and, if you should go and knock
+at the door, you would probably find out that the light is shining from
+the kitchen, where the family is gathered in the evening, perhaps as a
+matter of economy to save fire, perhaps to save trouble. And, if you
+examine the lives of these people, you would find that they live
+chiefly in the kitchen. They may have a sitting-room where they spend a
+few leisure hours; perhaps they have the beginning of a library; but
+they do not spend much time in that. They have little opportunity for
+the life of the parlor, representing the expansive, social human life
+which comes into contact with other lives. And so you will find that
+this, which is a figure, represents that which is true of most of us.
+We have only begun to live; and we live in the lower ranges of our
+nature, or perhaps we have touched life on a higher level in some
+tentative sort of way. But the most of us are only partly alive, have
+only developed a little of what is possible in us, have only come in
+contact with some fragments of this wonderful universe that is all
+around us on every hand.
+
+What, then, is the meaning of life? What shall we try to do? What are
+we here for? I do not attempt to go into the profound explanation of
+mysteries too deep for me to answer, as to what must have been in the
+mind of God when he planned and created this universe of which we are a
+part. My task is a humbler one. Let us see if I can help you comprehend
+a little part of it. Take an illustration.
+
+An immensely wealthy man suddenly dies, leaving his estates to a little
+boy seven or eight years of age. He has wide stretches of land, hill
+and valley, river, woods, all that is beautiful as making up a
+landscape. The house represents the accumulated resources of the
+experiences and the intelligence of a lifetime. There are not only
+beautiful drawing-rooms, telling of taste, but there is a library in
+which is all that the world has been able to accumulate of learning, of
+literature in every department. Here is another room containing
+instruments of music and the works of the great composers. There is an
+art gallery, containing some of the finest masterpieces in the way of
+painting and sculpture; and then there is a room devoted to scientific
+experiments,-- chemistry, the microscope, the telescope. Here are means
+and opportunity for finding out what the world has so far developed.
+
+Now has this young boy come into possession of these things? He has
+inherited them, he is his father's heir. We say they belong to him; but
+do they belong to him? In what sense and to what extent do they belong
+to him? They belong to him just in so far and just as fast as he
+develops himself into capacity of comprehension and enjoyment, no
+faster, no farther. As he enters upon his inheritance then he is put
+under tutors. Some man comes to teach him the languages which he does
+not comprehend; and by and by that part of the library which is
+composed of books written in other speech than his own begins to belong
+to him. It belongs to the tutor a good deal more than it does to the
+child, until the child has learned the lessons of the tutor. And so
+another teacher comes to instruct him in art; and the masterpieces of
+art belong to the person of taste, of culture, with appreciation, to
+the teacher again, to any one who knows and who feels, instead of to
+the boy, who merely has possession of the title-deeds.
+
+Do you see the suggestion of the picture? Man wakes up here on this
+planet what sort of a being? Not at first "a little lower than God," as
+the old Psalmist says of him, but only a little higher than the
+animals, ignorant of himself, ignorant of his surroundings, weak,
+undeveloped in every faculty and power. He begins, we say, to live; and
+what does that mean? He begins to explore this wonderful world, which
+is his heritage; and do you not see that along with this exploration
+there goes of necessity a process of self- development? I would pit
+against that statement of Kant's a phrase something like this. The
+object of life is threefold: it is to become all possible, it is to
+serve all possible, it is to enjoy all possible. But I cannot outline
+completely either one of these suggestions; for they blend, they
+intermingle, as you will see in a moment. They are like different notes
+in a piece of music that are so blended together that they constitute
+one tune, while separate they are only fragments, or discords.
+
+The first thing, then, if a man wishes really to live, is that he
+should develop himself, unfold the faculties and powers which lie
+dormant in him. He is a child of God. He is capable of comprehending
+within his limit that which is divine. He is capable of being touched,
+played on, by all the phases and forces of the universe surrounding
+him. He is an instrument of ten thousand strings; and marvellous may be
+the music of his life.
+
+First, he should be as complete an animal as possible. Then he should
+develop himself as a being capable of thinking, of knowing. How many
+men are there that take possession of the intellectual realm that lies
+around them on every hand? Just think. Let me hint suggestions,
+illustrations, in one or two directions. A man goes out for a walk in
+the park, or, better yet, into the country. The park is too artificial,
+perhaps, to carry just the meaning that I have in mind. Let it be a
+walk in the country, then. How much do the grasses and the flowers have
+to say to him?
+
+I have a friend in Washington, a famous botanist, a botanist not only
+of all things that live and grow to-day, but who has pushed his
+researches back and down into the prehistoric ages so as to understand
+and explain the records, the prints, the leaves and twigs, the forms of
+every kind that are on the rocks and left to tell the story of a life
+that has passed away many thousands on thousands of years ago. How much
+of all this marvellous realm, or even a suggestion of it, is revealed
+to the ordinary man as he walks through the field?
+
+Look in the direction of geology a moment. Here is a river course; here
+is the shape of a hill top; do they say anything to the ordinary man
+who walks with his head down, and occupied with some problem of Wall
+Street, perhaps? Here are marvels of creative power. God shaped the
+slope of that hill as really as though he smoothed it down with his
+hand. And he who understands the methods of world building, of
+landscape-sculpture, may stand in wonder and awe and reverence before
+the forces that have been at work for millions of years, and are at
+work the same to-day. How many men have even a conception of the
+wonders of the microscopic world? To how many men do the star have
+anything to say at night? A man looks at a bowlder, unlike any other
+rock there is to be found anywhere in the neighborhood, and perhaps he
+does not even ask a question about it; while a man who has made a
+careful study of these things sees spring up before him in his
+imagination that long ice age before man lived on the planet, when this
+bowlder was swept from some far-off place by the glacial power,
+deposited where it is, scraped on its surface by the passing of the
+ice, as if God himself had left his sign-manual here, his autograph,
+that he, in after- ages who might make himself capable of reading,
+might understand.
+
+These merely as fragmentary, brief hints of what it is to live in the
+intellectual realm.
+
+Go up to that realm where the intellect is blended with the emotions,
+the glamour of pictures, poetry, sculpture, music, beauty of color and
+form and sound. What a world this is, infinite resources of an infinite
+universe, appealing to, and, if a man responds, calling out the
+faculties and powers of his own nature that are capable of dealing with
+these things, so that a man may feel that he is thinking over the
+thoughts of God, tracing his footsteps, listening to the marvellous
+music of his words! This is one of the results of self-development, if
+a man is unfolding, developing himself, becoming as much as possible.
+
+Now let us turn sharply to one of these other phases which I spoke of,
+of doing what we can to help the world. And now note, this universe is
+so cunningly contrived that a man cannot possibly be successful as a
+selfish man. It is one of the most conclusive proofs, it seems to me,
+not only of the divine goodness, but of the moral meaning and scope of
+the world. Selfishness is not wicked only, it is the most outrageous
+folly on the face of the earth. If a man develop himself, if he
+develops that which is finest in him, that which is best and sweetest
+and truest, he develops not only his power to think, but his capacity
+to love, his capacity to enjoy, and to bestow enjoyment; and he cannot
+possibly succeed in the long run, and in the best ways, on selfish
+lines.
+
+People used to have a notion that he who grasped and retained
+everything he could get hold of was the fortunate, the successful man.
+People had an idea in politics, for example, that that nation was
+happiest which humbled other nations; and, if it was superior to all
+the rest, by as much as they were poor and devastated, this nation was
+fortunate. We know now that a nation finds its prosperity in that of
+other nations, in its ability to exchange, to trade, to carry on all
+the grand avocations of life with them. If a man writes a book, he
+wants the world intelligent enough to understand and appreciate it. If
+a man paints a picture, he wants artistic ability on the part of the
+public, so that they will appreciate and buy his pictures. If a man
+carves a statue, he wants the people to appreciate glory of form enough
+to see how great and true his work is, and reward him for his endeavor.
+In other words, no man would write a book, and go off with it alone by
+himself. No man would paint a picture, and hide it. No man would carve
+a statue, and conceal it from his fellows.
+
+We have learned, and are learning constantly in every direction, that
+our happiness is involved in the happiness of other people. The world
+is haunted to-day and I thank God that it is with the thought of the
+unhappiness, the misery, of men. What does it mean? It means that men
+have developed so on their sympathetic side that they cannot be happy
+themselves while the world is unhappy. So you see that this self-
+development, which I placed as the chief thing at the outset in the
+meaning of life, carries with it the necessity on the part of those who
+are developed, of doing everything they can to develop and lift up
+everybody else; so that making the most of yourself means making the
+most of everybody else.
+
+And now, if I turn for a moment to that other point, merely to
+distinguish it by itself, although I have been dealing with it all the
+while, the end and aim of life once more is to be happy. I am perfectly
+well aware that the old Puritan theology has taught otherwise, so far
+as this life is concerned. I was brought up with the feeling that, if I
+wanted to do anything, the chances were it was wrong, that it was a
+good deal more likely to be in the way of virtue if it was something
+that was disagreeable to me. And yet, curiously enough, this old
+Puritan theology invented and held up before men, as a lure to lead
+them to virtue, the most tremendous bribe that ever entered into the
+imaginations of men, eternal felicity on the one hand, and eternal woe
+on the other. So that it conceded the very thing that it seemed to
+deny, that men naturally and necessarily sought happiness, and could
+not possibly do otherwise.
+
+And so we learn to live, to think, to serve others. We are beginning to
+learn also that this desire for happiness is natural, is necessary, is
+right. If a man is not happy, you may be sure there is something wrong.
+If there is pain in the body, it means disease, difficulty,
+obstruction, something out of the way. It means that God's laws are not
+perfectly kept. If there is pain up in the mental realm, pain in the
+moral realm, pain in the spiritual realm, it means always something
+wrong. Man ought to be happy. He ought to seek happiness as the great
+end and outcome of human life.
+
+And we are learning, as the natural and necessary result of our
+experiences in knowing and in serving, that just in so far as we know
+the laws of God, just in so far as we obey the laws of God, just in so
+far as we help others to know and obey, just in so far there comes into
+our lives the blessedness of the blessed God.
+
+The end of life, then, the object of life here on earth, is to develop
+ourselves to the utmost. It is to learn to know, take possession of our
+inheritance, this earth, control all its forces for the service of
+civilization. It is to rejoice in all this self-development, in all
+this help, in all this knowledge, in all this power. It is to feel
+ourselves thrilling with the consciousness that we are sons of God, and
+are co-operating with him in bringing about the grand result of the
+ages, the perfection of man.
+
+And then what? Death? This is only one stage of our career. We are here
+at school; we learn our lessons or we do not; we attain the ends we
+seek after or we only partly attain them or do not attain them at all;
+and then we go on. Does that mean that it ends there? I do not believe
+it. I believe that it simply means that we go out into a larger
+opportunity, from the planet to the system, to the galaxy, to the
+universe, wider knowledge answering to more magnificent resources in
+the infinite universe. We, with undeveloped powers that may increase
+and advance forever, and a universe so complete, so exhaustless, that
+it may match and lure and lead and rejoice us forever; we being trained
+as God's children in God's likeness and helping others to attain the
+same magnificent ends, this I believe to be the significance, the
+meaning, the purpose, of life.
+
+Are there any here this morning who think or fear that the taking away
+of the old idea concerning the results of Lying may remove moral
+motive, may undermine character, nay make people less careful to do
+right? It seems to me hat, if people understand the significance of
+this universe, and their relation to it, they will find that all the
+carelessness of motive, the ease of salvation, as they call it, is with
+the old idea. Our theory is a more strenuous and insistent one. Children
+are learning as they become wiser that evil is not only evil, but it is
+folly. A man wishes life, health, happiness, prosperity, all good. He
+learns, as he goes on, that the universe is in favor of the keeping of
+its own laws; and that, f he flings himself against the forces of the
+universe, he is only broken for his pains. If you wish to be healthful,
+sappy, strong, wish to attain any desirable thing, it is to be bound
+not in defiance of the laws of the universe, but in loving and tender
+obedience.
+
+And, then, if you only remember that in this universe and coder the
+universal law of cause and effect you are building to-morrow out of
+to-day, and next week and next year, and all he future, that every
+thought, every word, every action, is  cemented together as a part of
+this structure that you build, hat you can make your own future for
+good or ill, and that you cannot build it successfully except in
+accordance with he eternal laws of things, then you find that here are
+the most insistent and tremendous motives it is possible for the human
+mind to conceive.
+
+This life of ours, if we lead it nobly and truly, then, we shall find
+to be a growth into the likeness of the Divine, a growth into an
+increasing opportunity to share the work of our Father in building and
+helping men, and that, as the result of this, joy, infinite joy, is to
+fill our hearts until we share the very blessedness of our Father.
+
+God made our lives to be a song Sweet as the music of the spheres, That
+still their harmonies prolong For him who rightly hears. The heavens
+and the earth do play Upon us, if we be in tune: Winter shouts hoarse
+his roundelay, And tender sweet pipes June. But oftentimes the songs
+are pain, And discord mars our harmonies: Our strings are snapped by
+selfish strain, And harsh hands break our keys. But God meant music;
+and we may, If we will keep our lives in tune, Hear the whole year sing
+roundelay, December answering June. God ever at his keyboard plays,
+Harmonics, right; and discords, wrong: "He that hath ears," and who
+obeys, May hear the mystic song.
+
+SIN AND ATONEMENT.
+
+For the sake of clearness, and in order that you may definitely
+comprehend the doctrine of sin and atonement which I believe to be the
+true one, I need in the first place to outline as a background that
+which lies at the foundation of all the popular theologies of
+Christendom. I am perfectly well aware that at least a part of the
+time, while I am doing this, I shall be traversing ground with which
+you are already familiar. Some of it, however, I think may be somewhat
+strange to you.
+
+The tradition begins with the story of a war in heaven. In some way
+rebellion began among the angels; and he who had been Lucifer, the
+light-bearer, prince among the glorious sons of God, took up arms of
+rebellion against the Almighty. Naturally, he failed in this inevitably
+losing battle, and was cast out into the abyss, with a third part of
+all the angels, who had followed him. Then the tradition goes on: God
+decided to create the world, that the sons of men born and trained here
+might ultimately take the places that had been held by the angels who
+had been cast out on account of their sin. But Satan, seeing this fair
+and beautiful earth, this wondrous handiwork of God, determined, if
+possible, to thwart and defeat the purposes of the Almighty. He
+therefore invades this beautiful world. He finds Adam and Eve in their
+condition of perfect felicity, innocent, but inexperienced; and they
+fall a ready prey to his intention.
+
+They then share his rebellion, accept him instead of God as king.
+Henceforth they are followers of him in his age-long warfare against
+light and truth, and, unless in some way saved, are to be sharers of
+his eternal destiny, cast out into chains and darkness forever.
+
+Now comes the necessity for noting for a moment the nature of sin on
+this theory. You see it is not ignorance, it is not weakness merely, it
+is not inherited passion only: it is conscious and purposeful rebellion
+against God, putting yourself at enmity with his truth, his
+righteousness, his love. In action it is some specific deed done
+against God or against his truth or his right. As a state of mind, it
+is a heart perverted, choosing always that which is evil, a heart at
+enmity with God and with all that is good; and the theologians have
+always been obliged, as a matter of consistency, to hold, no matter how
+noble, how unselfish men might appear to be, that the natural man has
+inherently, always, necessarily been evil. He carries about with him
+the taint of original sin; that is, sin of constitution, ingrained,
+inherited, that which is of the very fibre of his being. This is the
+character of man as required by the old theological systems; and this
+is how it happened to come about. Evil is not something natural, not
+imperfection, not something undeveloped, not yet outgrown. Sin
+originated outside of this world, invaded it, and worked its ruin and
+destruction.
+
+Now comes the device that has been called the Atonement, by which it is
+supposed that God is going to be able to save at least a part of this
+rebellious humanity. There have been a good many different theories of
+the atonement that have been held, eighteen or twenty varieties of the
+doctrine, three or four of which I must outline, in order to make them
+clear to your mind, that you may see what have been the devices by
+which the theologians have supposed that they could find a way for the
+deliverance of man from this condition of loss, and fit him to share
+the felicity for which he was originally intended.
+
+Of course, the main point in the whole scheme is that the Second Person
+of the Trinity becomes incarnate, comes down here to this world, is
+born, grows up, teaches, suffers and at last is put to an ignominious
+death. This is the central idea of the doctrine of the atonement; or,
+rather, the Christ is the central figure in that doctrine. But how is
+it supposed to work out the atonement that is necessary, in order that
+man may be saved? You will see that the world, according to the ideas I
+have been delineating, is in a condition of rebellion. What men need is
+to be persuaded that they are wrong, convinced of sin, in theological
+language, and then made repentant, and in some way be forgiven for the
+wrong which they have done.
+
+Now it is supposed that God must invent some scheme by which to make it
+possible for him to save these lost and fallen men. If you read the
+parable of the Prodigal Son as Jesus has so tenderly, touchingly,
+beautifully outlined it for us, you will see that there is no thought
+or plan or necessity for either in that. The son left his home,
+followed the impulses and passions of youth, had gone among those that
+were degraded, had soiled his character, done despite to his father's
+love, injured his own nature, degraded himself by his associations and
+actions. But when at last he awakes, becomes conscious of his father's
+love and righteousness and truth, and says, "I will arise, and go to my
+father," there is no talk of God's not being ready to receive him, or
+not being able to receive him, or needing to have something done before
+he can receive him, no thought of anybody's suffering any more in order
+that he may be forgiven. You see all these elements that are associated
+with the popular doctrines of atonement are not once thought of, never
+even alluded to. He simply arises, and goes to his father; and his
+father is so anxious to help him that he goes to meet him before he
+reaches the father's house, and gladly falls on his neck and kisses him
+and folds him in his arms. It only needs that the son should recognize
+the righteousness and goodness of his father, and should wish to go
+back. That is the doctrine of Jesus as taught in this wonderfully sweet
+and beautiful parable.
+
+Now what are the theories of atonement as outlined in the popular
+theology? For the first thousand years of Christian history one of the
+strangest conceptions possessed the ecclesiastical mind that has ever
+been dreamed of. It was held literally that through the sin of Adam the
+human race had become the rightful subjects of Satan, that they
+belonged to him. He was their king, their emperor, their ruler, and had
+a right to them in this world and the next. And so some diplomatic
+negotiations must be entered into with the Devil, in order to deliver a
+certain part of these his subjects, and open the way for them to be
+saved. So the Church Fathers taught that Satan recognized in Christ his
+old adversary in heaven, and he entered into a bargain with God that,
+if he could have Christ delivered over to him, in exchange for that he
+would give up his right to so many of the souls of men as were to be
+saved as the result of this compact. So the work of the atonement used
+to be preached as being this sort of bargain entered into with Satan.
+
+But note what quaint, naive ideas possessed the minds of people at that
+time. Satan did not know that Jesus possessed a divine nature, and
+that, consequently, he could not beholden of death; and so, when he
+entered into this bargain, he was cheated, he found out to his dismay
+that he had lost not only humanity, but Christ also, had been defrauded
+of them both. This was the doctrine of the atonement that was preached
+during the early centuries of the Christian Church, at least in certain
+parts of Europe.
+
+But later there came another doctrine, the belief that the sufferings
+of the Christ were a substitute offered to God for what would have been
+the sufferings of the lost. He was made sin for us, he who had known no
+sin, as the New Testament phraseology has it. So that he, being
+infinite, in a brief space of time during his little earthly career,
+during his suspension on the cross and his descent into hell, was able
+to suffer as much pain as all the lost would have suffered throughout
+eternity. And this suffering of the Christ was supposed to be accepted
+on the part of God as the substitute for that which he would have
+exacted on the part of the souls of those that for his sake were to be
+saved.
+
+There is still another theory that I must mention briefly, that which
+is called the governmental theory, that which I was taught during my
+course of theological instruction. The idea was that God had a moral
+government to maintain, not only on this earth, but throughout the
+range of the universe among all his intelligent creatures, and, if he
+permitted his laws to be broken without exacting an adequate penalty,
+then all governmental authority would be overthrown. In other words,
+men took their poor human legal devices, their political ideals, and
+lifted them into the heavens, made them the models after which it was
+supposed God was to govern his great, intelligent universe.
+
+So they said that God would be willing to forgive, he would like to
+forgive, he was loving and tender and kind, but it was not safe, safe
+for the interests of his universal government, for him to forgive any
+one until an adequate penalty had been paid in expiation of human sin.
+
+You see, according to this theory, it does not apparently make much
+difference who it is that suffers, whether it is the person who has
+committed the sin or not; but somebody must pay an adequate penalty,
+and Jesus volunteered to do this, to be the victim, and so to deliver
+man from the righteous deserts which he had incurred as a transgressor
+of the law of God.
+
+Gradually, however, as the world became civilized, as wider and broader
+thoughts manifested themselves in the human mind, as tenderer and truer
+feelings took possession of the human heart, these theories receded
+into the background; and there came to the front I remember the bitter
+controversies over it in my younger days what was called the Moral
+Theory of the Atonement. The originator and sponsor for this theory was
+the famous Dr. Horace Bushnell, of Hartford. He taught that God did not
+need the punishment of anybody to uphold the integrity of his moral
+government. He taught that God was not angry with the race, and did not
+care to exact a penalty before he was ready to forgive human sin. He
+taught that the inner nature of God was love, and that in the Second
+Person of the Trinity he came to earth, was born, grew up, taught,
+suffered, died, as a manifestation to the world of his love, of his
+goodness, of his readiness to forgive and help, and that the efficacy
+of the atonement as thus wrought on the part of the Christ was in its
+revelation to men of the love and saving power of righteousness.
+
+This was the moral theory of the atonement. It was not supposed to work
+any result in the nature of God or his disposition towards men. Its
+effect was to work along the lines of human thought and human action:
+it was to affect men, and make them willing to be saved instead of
+making God willing to save them. This was the moral theory of the
+atonement; and you will see how it gradually approaches that which
+intelligent and free men, it seems to me, must hold to-day in the light
+of their careful study of human history and human nature. It is almost
+the theory which is being held by the freest and noblest men of to-day.
+The difference between it and that which I shall in a moment try to set
+forth is chiefly that Dr. Bushnell confines this work of the atonement
+to the person and history and character of one man instead of letting
+all men share in this divine and atoning work which is being wrought
+out through all the ages.
+
+Let me now come to set forth what I believe to be the simple and
+demonstrated truth. My objections against this old theory are
+threefold. I will mention them, and have done with them in a word.
+
+In the first place, the supposed origin of sin in heaven seems to me so
+absurd as to be utterly unthinkable. This idea of war in heaven,
+rebellion against God, smacks too much of the Old World traditions, of
+the mythologies of Greece and Rome and of other peoples. Jupiter could
+dethrone his father, the god Saturn, because Saturn was not almighty
+and all-wise. These gods of the ancient time were merely exaggerated
+types of human heroes and despots. There could be war among them, and
+one of them overthrown; and Jupiter could divide the universe, after he
+had conquered and dethroned his father, with his two brothers.
+
+All this is reasonable, when you are talking about finite creatures;
+but try to think for one moment of an archangel, a pure and clear-eyed
+intelligence, deliberately choosing to rebel against Omnipotence! He
+must have known it would be utterly, absolutely, forever hopeless!
+Intelligent creatures do not rebel under conditions like that,
+particularly when you combine with the absolute hopelessness of the
+case the fact that he knew he was choosing misery, suffering, forever.
+
+As I said, the whole conception of the origin of evil that implies the
+rebellion of a spiritual being who knew what he was doing is
+inexpressibly absurd, so absurd that we may dismiss it as impossible.
+If there were any such rebellion, if you waive the absurdity for the
+moment and consider the possibility, God would be responsible; for he
+made him. The whole theory is not only absurd: it is unjust in its
+implications towards both God and man. And then, and perhaps we need
+not say any more about it, we know that it is not true. It did not even
+originate in the Bible, it did not even originate among the Jews: it is
+nothing in the world but a pagan myth imported into Jewish tradition
+just a few hundred years before the birth of Jesus. It is of no more
+authority in rational human thought than the story of Jason or
+Hercules, not one particle.
+
+Let us now turn, then, to what we know, from the history of man and the
+scientific study of the universe, to be something approaching the
+reality of things. People have always been talking about the origin of
+evil. It is not the origin of evil that we have to face or deal with or
+explain at all. Let me ask you to consider for a moment the condition
+of the world when man first appeared on this planet. Here among the
+lower animals were what? All the vices and all the crimes that we can
+conceive of, only they were not vices nor crimes at all. There were all
+the external actions and all the internal feelings and passions; but
+they were not vices, and they were not crimes. Why? Because there was
+no moral sense which recognized anything better, no moral standard in
+the light of which they might be judged.
+
+Here, for example, in this lower world, were all hatreds, jealousies,
+envies, cruelties, thefts, greeds, murders, every kind of action that
+we speak of as evil in man. And yet I said there was no evil there, no
+moral evil there, because there was no consciousness, no recognition,
+of the distinction between the lower and the higher. This was a part of
+the natural and intended order of the development of life, not an
+accident, not an invasion from the outside, not a thwarting of the will
+of God, not an interference with his purpose, all of this a part of the
+working out of his purpose.
+
+Now, when man appeared, what happened? The origin, not of evil, but the
+origin of goodness. A conscience was born. Man came into possession of
+a moral ideal, in the light of which he recognized something higher
+than this animalism that was all around him, and became conscious of
+the fact that he must battle against that, and put it under his feet.
+So that the life of the world, from that day to this, has been the
+growth, the gradual increase, and the gradual conquest of good over
+that which was in existence before.
+
+There is no fall of man, then, there is no conscious and purposeful
+rebellion against God to be accounted for, there is no need of any
+devil to explain the facts. He is only an encumbrance, only in the way,
+only makes it difficult and practically impossible to solve our
+problem.
+
+The old story was that, after the rebellion, pain and death and all
+evil came into the human world; and the natural world was blighted.
+Thorns and briers and thistles sprang up on every hand; and animals
+which before had been peaceful began to fight and destroy each other.
+We all know this to be a childish myth, and pagan. The actual history
+of the world has been something entirely other than that.
+
+Now I do not wish that you should suppose that I minimize evil, that I
+make light of sin, that I do not properly estimate the cruelties and
+the wrongs that have devastated the world. I need only suggest to you
+that you look in this direction and that to see how hideous all these
+evils may be; how bitter, how cruel, is the fruit of wrong thoughts and
+of wrong actions. Look at a man, for example, divine in the
+possibilities of his being, but through vice, through drink, through
+habits of one kind and another, corrupted until it is an insult to a
+brute to call him brutal. We do not deny all this. Notice the cruelties
+of men towards each other, the jealousies, the envies, the strifes, the
+warfares. How one class looks down upon and treats with contempt
+another that is a little lower! How masters have used their slaves; how
+tyrants like Nero and Caligula have made themselves hideous spectacles
+of what is possible to humanity, on a stage that is world-wide and
+illuminated by the flash-lights of history!
+
+I do not wish you to suppose for a moment that I belittle, that I
+underestimate these evils, only we do not need anything other than the
+scientific and historic facts of the world in order to account for
+them. What is sin, as science looks at it and treats it? Not something
+consciously and purposely developed, not something originating in a
+rebellion in some other world than this. It seems to me that we can
+very easily account for it when we recognize that man has been
+gradually coming up from the lower orders of life, and that he still
+has in him the snake and the hyena, the wolf, the tiger, the bear, all
+the wild, fierce passions of the animal world only partly sloughed off,
+not yet outgrown; when you remember how ignorant he is, how he does not
+understand yet the meaning of these divine laws and the divine life,
+glimpses of which now and then attract his attention and lure him on;
+when you remember that selfishness, misguided by ignorance, can believe
+that one man can get something for his behoof and happiness and good at
+the expense of the welfare of somebody else, and harm come only to the
+person that is defrauded. Right in here, if I had time to treat it in
+still further detail, it seems to me we have a simple and adequate
+explanation of all the evil that has ever blasted, blighted, and
+darkened the history of man.
+
+Now, man being this kind of a creature, having an animal origin as well
+as a divine one, gradually climbing up out of this lower life and
+looking towards God as his ideal, what is it that he needs? Is there
+any need of atonement? All need of atonement! What does atonement mean?
+The word itself carries its clearest explanation. In its root it means
+"atonement," healing the division, whatever its nature or kind,
+bringing man into one-ness with God and men into one-ness with each
+other.
+
+Now let me suggest to you a little as to the things that keep man and
+God apart, keep men away from each other; and they will suggest the
+atonement that is needed to heal all these divisions, and bring about
+that ideal condition of things that we dream of and pray for and talk
+about, when men shall perfectly love God, and when they shall love each
+other as themselves.
+
+What is it that keeps man from God? First, it seems to me, it is
+ignorance. What man needs in order to bring him into oneness with God
+is first to have some clear conceptions of the divine, some high,
+sweet, noble thoughts of God, some knowledge of the laws of God as
+embodied in himself and in the universe around him. Man needs
+intelligence, then, to help him, needs education.
+
+In the next place, he needs such a picture of God as shall; make him
+seem lovable. You cannot make the human heart love that which seems
+hateful. The picture of God, as he has been outlined to the world in
+the past, has repelled the human heart; and I do not wonder. I do not
+think it strange that humanity should be at enmity with that conception
+of the divine. Make God the ideal of all that is noble and sweet and
+lovely, and the heart will be as naturally attracted and drawn to him
+as a flower is toward the sun.
+
+Then man needs to have his spiritual side developed, that in him which
+is akin to God, so that he shall naturally live out the divine love.
+Education, then, is all on man's side, you will see. God does not need
+to be changed: we need to know him, to love him, to come into conscious
+relationship with him. This is what we need, so far as our relation to
+God is concerned.
+
+Now for the more important side; for it is infinitely the more
+important practically. Let me speak a little while of the work of
+atonement between man and man. If we trace the history of humanity, we
+find that men were scattered in groups all over the world, isolated,
+separated from each other, ignorant of each other, misunderstanding
+each other, hating each other, fighting each other; and the work of
+some other world than this. It seems to me that we can very easily
+account for it when we recognize that man has been gradually coming up
+from the lower orders of life, and that he still has in him the snake
+and the hyena, the wolf, the tiger, the bear, all the wild, fierce
+passions of the animal world only partly sloughed off, not yet
+outgrown; when you remember how ignorant he is, how he does not
+understand yet the meaning of these divine laws and the divine life,
+glimpses of which now and then attract his attention and lure him on;
+when you remember that selfishness, misguided by ignorance, can believe
+that one man can get something for his behoof and happiness and good at
+the expense of the welfare of somebody else, and harm come only to the
+person that is defrauded. Right in here, if I had time to treat it in
+still further detail, it seems to me we have a simple and adequate
+explanation of all the evil that has ever blasted, blighted, and
+darkened the history of man.
+
+Now, man being this kind of a creature, having an animal origin as well
+as a divine one, gradually climbing up out of this lower life and
+looking towards God as his ideal, what is it that he needs? Is there
+any need of atonement? All need of atonement! What does atonement mean?
+The word itself carries its clearest explanation. In its root it means
+"atonement," healing the division, whatever its nature or kind,
+bringing man into one-ness with God and men into one- ness with each
+other.
+
+Now let me suggest to you a little as to the things that keep man and
+God apart, keep men away from each other; and they will suggest the
+atonement that is needed to heal all these divisions, and bring about
+that ideal condition of things that we dream of and pray for and talk
+about, when men shall perfectly love God, and when they shall love each
+other as themselves.
+
+What is it that keeps man from God? First, it seems to me, it is
+ignorance. What man needs in order to bring him into oneness with God
+is first to have some clear conceptions of the divine, some high,
+sweet, noble thoughts of God, some knowledge of the laws of God as
+embodied in himself and in the universe around him. Man needs
+intelligence, then, to help him, needs education.
+
+In the next place, he needs such a picture of God as shall: make him
+seem lovable. You cannot make the human heart: love that which seems
+hateful. The picture of God, as he has been outlined to the world in
+the past, has repelled the human heart; and I do not wonder. I do not
+think it strange that humanity should be at enmity with that conception
+of the divine. Make God the ideal of all that is noble and sweet and
+lovely, and the heart will be as naturally attracted and drawn to him
+as a flower is toward the sun.
+
+Then man needs to have his spiritual side developed, that in him which
+is akin to God, so that he shall naturally live out the divine love.
+Education, then, is all on man's side, you will see. God does not need
+to be changed: we need to know him, to love him, to come into conscious
+relationship with him. This is what we need, so far as our relation to
+God is concerned.
+
+Now for the more important side; for it is infinitely the more
+important practically. Let me speak a little while of the work of
+atonement between man and man. If we trace the history of humanity, we
+find that men were scattered in groups all over the world, isolated,
+separated from each other, ignorant of each other, misunderstanding
+each other, hating each other, fighting each other; and the work of
+civilization means to bring men together, to work out an atonement
+between nation and nation, religion and religion, family and family,
+man and man.
+
+Here, again, as in the case of God, the first thing that needs to be
+overcome is ignorance. Look back no further than our late war. I think
+every careful student of that tremendous conflict is ready to say
+to-day that, if the North and South had been acquainted with each other,
+known each other as they know each other now, the war would have been
+impossible. We need to know other men. As you go back, you find curious
+traditions illustrating this ignorance of different nations and
+different peoples of each other. Plato, for example, taught it as a
+virtue that the Athenians should hate all other peoples except the
+Greeks and all other Greek cities except Athens; and they spoke of the
+outside nations that did not speak Greek as barbarians, people who
+could not talk, people who, when they essayed to speak, said, "Ba, ba,"
+misusing words and expressions. They had traditions of men who carried
+their heads under their arms, who had only one eye, which was in the
+middle of their forehead, all sorts of monstrosities in human shape,
+antagonistic to the rest of mankind.
+
+Even in modern times those ignorances, misconceptions, and prejudices
+are far from being outgrown. Lord Nelson counted it as a virtue in an
+Englishman that he should hate a Frenchman as he did the devil. How
+many people are there to- day who look with an unprejudiced eye upon a
+foreigner?
+
+The things, then, that keep nations apart are ignorance. Then there is
+the lack of sympathy. You will find people walking side by side here in
+our streets, people in the same family, who find it impossible to
+understand each other.
+
+They cannot put themselves in the place of another; they cannot
+comprehend something which is a little different from what they are
+accustomed to hear; not only cannot they understand it, they cannot
+lovingly or patiently look at it. Think of the things that have kept
+people apart in physical and mental and spiritual realms, the rivers,
+the mountain chains, the oceans; differences of religion, differences
+of language, differences of civilization; different ethical ideas,
+until people of the world have sat looking at each other with faces of
+fear and antagonism instead of with the dawning in their eyes of love
+and brotherhood.
+
+Now what the world needs is something to atone, to bridge over these
+differences, to bring men into sympathetic and loving acquaintance with
+each other. I wish to note two or three things that have wrought very
+largely and effectively in this direction. Does it ever occur to you
+that commerce is something besides a means for the accumulation of
+wealth? Commerce has played one of the largest parts in the history of
+this world in atoning the differences, the antagonisms, between nation
+and nation and man and man. It has taught the world that there is a
+community of interests, and that, instead of fighting each other, they
+are mutually blessed and helped by coworking, co-operating, exchanging
+with each other.
+
+So the inventors, the discoverers, have helped to bring about this
+sense of human brotherhood, this community of human interests. How
+much, for example, was wrought when the electric wire was placed under
+the seas, and, instead of allowing weeks and weeks for a
+misunderstanding to grow and for ill-feeling to ferment between England
+and this country, puts us in such quick relations that a
+misapprehension could be corrected in an hour. All these things have
+helped bring the world together, are engaged in this magnificent
+religious service of atonement, of making nations one, making humanity
+one, a family.
+
+I do not wish you to suppose that I misunderstand or underestimate the
+work of the Christ in this direction. He has done a grander work of
+atonement than any other figure in the history of the world. He
+revealed to us the glory, the tenderness, the love, of God, and so
+lifted the heart of the world towards the Father as no other one man
+has done who has ever lived. And, then, he lived out and manifested the
+glory, the tenderness, the wonder, of human character and human life as
+hardly any other man who has ever lived; and on so world- wide a stage
+did he do this that the influence of his work has overrun all national
+barriers, and is rapidly coming to be world-wide, and in admiration of,
+and love for him, Jew and Greek, and barbarian, Scythian, Arabian,
+European, and Asiatic, all the nations of the world are becoming one.
+For no matter what their theory may be about him, whether they hold him
+to be God or man, they hold the ideal that he set forth and lived to be
+spiritually human and nobly divine. So Jesus is more and more, as the
+ages go by, helping us to one-ness with God, helping us into
+sympathetic one-ness with each other.
+
+But I would not have you think that Jesus is the only one who has
+wrought atonement for the sin of the world. Every man in his degree, in
+so far as he has been divine and human, patient, faithful, has rendered
+service to the world, has done his part in bringing about this
+magnificent consummation.
+
+Look for a moment at Abraham Lincoln. Think what he did by the atoning
+sacrifice of his life for liberty, for humanity, for truth. On the one
+hand, his murderer showed what sin may come to in its ignorance, its
+misconception, its antagonism to whatever is right and good and true.
+And, on the other hand, he, with words of forgiveness on his lips,
+words of human love, with all tenderness and charity in his heart,
+illustrated again and lived out the sweetness of divinity and the
+tenderness of humanity.
+
+As another illustration, human, simple, natural, just let me say a word
+concerning the act, the attitude, of General Grant at Appomattox. He
+did more at the surrender of Lee to send a thrill of brotherly sympathy
+through North and South and help wield this nation into one than he
+could have possibly done by the most magnificent achievement of arms,
+when he refused to take his opponent's sword; when he let the officers
+go away with their side-arms; when he told each man that his horse or
+his mule was still of right his because he would need it to begin the
+new life again that was before him.
+
+Facts like these suggest the naturalness, the humanness, as well as the
+God-likeness of the work of atonement that is going on all over the
+world, as it climbs and swings slowly up out of the darkness and into
+the light of life. Jesus the great atoning sacrifice? Yes, but
+thousands on thousands of others atoning in just the same divine way,
+just the same human way, just as naturally, just as necessarily. Every
+man who does an honest day's work, every man who is kind and loving in
+his family, every man who is helpful as a neighbor, every man who
+stands faithfully by his convictions of truth, every man who shows that
+he cares more for the truth than he does for worldly success, that he
+knows that in that truth only is immortality, and that it is greater
+and better and sweeter than even life, every man who consecrates
+himself in this way is doing his part towards working out the atonement
+of human sin, the reconciliation of man with God, the reconciliation of
+men with each other.
+
+Let us, then, while loving Jesus, while reverencing him for the
+grandeur of his work and the beauty of his life, let us rise and claim
+kinship with him, rise to the dignity and glory of the thought that we
+are sons of God as he was, and that we may share with him the grandest
+service that one man can render to his time, the helping of people to
+find and love and serve God, the helping of people to discover and love
+and serve each other. The outcome of this atoning work is simply the
+coming of that time which we speak of familiarly without half
+comprehending it, when the world shall recognize the universal
+Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man.
+
+PRAYER, AND COMMUNION WITH GOD
+
+SOME years ago I heard a minister, then widely known throughout the
+country, say in a public address, "Prayer is the power that moves the
+arm that moves the world." Can we accept that to-day as a definition of
+a rational view of the relation in which we stand to God? Many of you
+will remember that not long ago the churches and the scientific men of
+England and America were much stirred and roused over a discussion
+concerning the practical efficacy of prayer. There was much talk of
+what was called the "prayer-gauge." I think it was Professor Tyndall
+who proposed to test the question as to whether prayer was a real power
+in the physical world; and his test, if I remember rightly, was
+something like this. He said: You churchmen claim that prayer is able
+to heal the sick. Now, he said, let us take a certain hospital. We will
+divide it, a certain number of wards on one side, and a certain number
+of wards on the other, equalizing so far as we can the nature of the
+illnesses which afflict the patients. You now concentrate as much as
+you please, and as many as you please, the prayers on certain wards in
+the hospital, and we will commit the rest to the ordinary treatment of
+the physicians; and we will see if you are able to produce any results.
+
+Against a certain type and theory of prayer I suppose a test like that
+is legitimate enough; and this type, this theory, is the one that has
+prevailed throughout Christendom largely for a good many hundreds of
+years. I suppose you can remember in your boyhood some of you are as
+old as I that it was not an uncommon thing for the minister to pray
+earnestly for certain things that intelligent men would hardly think of
+praying for in the same fashion to-day. It was not an uncommon thing, a
+few years ago, to have a special prayer- meeting during a drought in
+the endeavor to prevail upon God to send the rain; and there was
+certainly a Scriptural warrant for it; for Elijah is represented in the
+Old Testament as having, by the power of prayer, shut up the heavens
+for three years and a half, and then as bringing rain again as the
+result of his petition. If you study the Book of James, and remember,
+when you do study it, that it was not written by the apostle, but by
+some unknown author towards the middle of the second century, you will
+see that he teaches that, if any one is sick, you are not to send for a
+physician. The brethren are to assemble, the invalid is to be anointed
+with oil, they are to pray over him, and the explicit and unqualified
+promise is given that the prayer of faith shall save the sick. And yet
+we have been confronted for ages with the spectacle of people breaking
+their hearts in pleading prayer for those that were sick, and seeing
+them fade and vanish from their sight in spite of their petitions.
+
+I have heard it said a good many times that the fame of the Cunard line
+of steamships touching the matter of the safety of its passengers was
+to be explained by the piety of the founders of the line, and the fact
+that they prayed every time a ship sailed that it might safely cross
+the seas and land its passengers without accident in the wished-for
+haven. Are there no prayers for other lines? Has no one ever prayed on
+behalf of a ship that did meet with an accident? But this would be
+explained on this theory by saying that the prayer was not the prayer
+of faith or that there was some defect in it somewhere.
+
+I refer to these things simply by way of illustration to recall to your
+mind that prayer used to be supposed to be a power touching the winds,
+the waves, the prosperity of the crops, insuring safety during a
+dangerous journey; that it was a power that was able to heal disease,
+that could accomplish all sorts of strange and startling effects in the
+physical realm.
+
+And now I simply wish to call your attention to the naturalness of that
+kind of prayer in the olden time. To some of us this thought may seem
+strange, it may seem almost absurd, to-day; but remember it was not
+strange, it was not absurd, in the times when the old theory of the
+universe was thoroughly believed in, not only by church members, but by
+scientific men as well.
+
+What was that old conception? I have had occasion to refer to it in one
+connection or another a good many times; and now I shall have to refer
+to it again, so that you may clearly see what is involved in this
+question of the efficacy of prayer. God was supposed to be up in
+heaven, away from nature. Nature was a sort of mechanism, a machine
+that ordinarily ran on after its own fashion. God had made it, indeed,
+in some sense, God supported it continually; but it went on apart from
+him, and he was away from it. He was, as Carlyle used to say, looked
+upon as an absentee God. He was up in heaven. He ruled this world as
+the Kaiser rules Germany, arbitrarily. He was not even always supposed
+to know everything that was going on, at least, if you are to judge by
+the tone of the prayers of a good many people such as I have heard. He
+needed information concerning matters. He needed to be pleaded with,
+that he might interfere and accomplish some results that would not
+otherwise take place. He ruled the world arbitrarily and from a
+distance.
+
+Now, if any German wishes a certain thing accomplished that would not
+happen in the ordinary course of nature and human life, he knows that
+the Kaiser has almost unlimited power; and, if he can persuade him to
+undertake it, it may be accomplished. So he will send a petition to the
+Kaiser; and he will back that petition with all the influence that he
+is able to bring to bear upon it. If there is a prime minister who
+stands specially high in favor with the Kaiser, do you not see how much
+might be accomplished by winning his ear, and getting him to intercede
+on behalf of the petitioner? Do you not see right in there the parallel
+to the old idea that used to dominate us in regard to the government of
+the universe? If only we could get God interested in the matter, if we
+could bring to bear upon him an adequate amount of influence, if we
+could get Jesus to intercede with him, then something might be
+accomplished.
+
+Are these antiquated ideas? I received a letter only a little while
+ago. It told me nothing new; but it came to me with a shock, roused me
+to a recognition of ideas still dominant and popular in the common
+mind. It was from a Catholic. He said: We do not worship Mary; but she
+is in the spirit world, and she is in sympathetic relation with this
+world's sorrow and trouble. We pray to her, asking her to intercede
+with her son, because a mother's influence is efficacious. Think for a
+moment of the implications of this theory of governing the universe.
+God is away off, has forgotten us, or does not care, at any rate, is
+not doing for us the things we need. If we can get Jesus to intercede!
+But, according to this Catholic theory, Jesus had perhaps forgotten or
+was not attentive. So he pleads with his mother, and gets the mother to
+exert her influence on Jesus so he may exert his influence on God, and
+at last something may be done. I confess to you, friends, that this
+theory of things does not seem piety to me, but the precise opposite.
+
+I ask you now to follow me while I attempt to point out some of the
+difficulties that confront us in this old-time theory of prayer. Why is
+it that we cannot pray to God to change the order of the natural world?
+Why cannot we believe that prayer is the power that moves the arm that
+moves the world??? Why cannot I consistently pray to God to heal my
+disease or the disease of a friend, or to save the soul of some friend
+who would otherwise be neglected by the divine care? Why cannot I any
+longer pray to God to send his light and truth to the heathen world?
+Why cannot I pray to him to insure my safety in mid-Atlantic, to do
+something to prevent my colliding with a derelict, as the Van-dam has
+done during the last few days? Do you think there was no one on that
+ship that prayed? What is the difficulty in the mind of the
+intelligent, modern thinker when he faces this conception of prayer?
+
+Let us think a little clearly just a moment; and I imagine I can make
+it plain. We no longer think of God we cannot think of him as outside
+the system of nature, and as possibly interfering with it to produce a
+result that would not otherwise take place. Why? Because God is the
+soul, the mind, the heart of nature. The forces of the universe, acting
+according to their changeless and eternal laws, are simply God at work.
+And, when I pray to God to interfere, I am praying him to interfere
+with himself, I am praying him to contradict his own wisely and
+eternally and changelessly established methods of controlling the
+world.
+
+The question is sometimes asked, but a man can interfere with the
+course of nature, and produce a result that would not be naturally
+produced without it? Certainly, because man does not stand in this
+relation to natural forces. But man, however, does not change any law,
+he does not interfere with any law. He simply discovers some law and
+obeys it, and in that way produces a result that would not otherwise be
+produced. But man does not stand, I say, in this vital relation to the
+forces of the universe and their laws. When you remember that these
+forces working, as I said, changelessly, eternally, after their
+methods, when you remember that these are God in his ceaseless and wise
+and loving activity, then do you not see that he cannot contradict or
+interfere with himself? Here is the great difficulty in regard to this
+old method, this old conception of prayer which confronts the
+intelligent, the educated, the thoughtfully devout man.
+
+When I was first struggling out into the light? as it seems to me now
+from my old theological training, I met another difficulty that I think
+will appeal to you. It seemed to me an impertinence for me to be
+telling God, as I heard so many people on every hand, all sorts of
+things that he knew before. I reconsidered the words of Jesus, You are
+not to give yourself to much speaking in your prayers, for your Father
+knoweth what you have need of before you ask him. And then there was
+another difficulty which troubled me more than any of the others, a
+delightful, splendid difficulty it has seemed to me since those days.
+It was connected with the thought of God's goodness and love. There are
+heathen, they tell us, who have got a glimpse, from their point of
+view, of this fact about God. It is said they do not bring any
+offerings, except some flowers, to the deities they regard as good,
+because, they say, they do not need to be persuaded. They bring all
+their costly offerings to the bad gods, the ones they are afraid of;
+and they attempt to buy their favor or buy off their anger.
+
+When I waked up to the free and grand conception of the eternal love
+and the boundless goodness of the Father, then it seemed to me that
+many of my prayers in the past had been so far from reasonable that
+they were absurd, and so far from piety that they were wrong. To
+illustrate what I mean. When I was minister of an orthodox church in
+the West, a lovely, faithful lady came to me to raise some question
+touching this matter of prayer. It had been suggested, I suppose, by
+something I had said; and I asked her this question: What would you
+think of me if I should come to you, and with pathos in my voice, and
+perhaps with tears in my eyes, plead with you to be kind to your own
+children, beg you to give them something to eat, beseech you to furnish
+them with clothes, entreat you to educate them, to do the best for them
+that you knew how? What would you think of it? I asked. She said, I
+should feel insulted. And I replied, Do you not think that God is
+almost as good as you are?
+
+If you are anxious and ready, do you think that God needs to be pleaded
+with and entreated and besought in order to make him willing, in order
+to make him kind, in order to bring some sort of pressure to bear upon
+him so that he will do the things for his children of which they most
+stand in need? No scientific difficulty, no question of theories of the
+universe, has ever affected my practice in the matter of prayer so much
+as this overwhelming, blessed thought of the loving-kindness and care
+of the infinite Father. He does not need to be informed, he does not
+need to be persuaded. Has not Jesus told us that your heavenly Father
+is more ready to give the things which you need than you are to give
+good gifts to your children?
+
+And so I came to have a difficulty with the kind of prayer- meetings in
+which I was brought up as a boy, and which I used to lead as a young
+and earnest minister. I have heard kinds of prayers which have seemed
+to me reflections on the goodness and the kindness of our Father in
+heaven. I remember one man I used to hear him over and over again, week
+by week who would pray, It is time for thee, O God, to work! And, as I
+came to think of it, it hurt my sense of reverence. I shrank from it.
+And I could not believe that God was going to let thousands of souls in
+China or Africa perish merely because Christians in America did not
+pray hard enough and long enough for their salvation. Why should they
+meet with eternal doom on account of the lack of enthusiasm or devotion
+of people of whom they have never heard?
+
+So I used to find myself troubled about this question of praying so
+hard for the salvation of other people's souls. If, as the old creeds
+tell us, it is settled from all eternity as to just who is to be saved
+and who is to be lost, there would hardly seem place for a vital
+prayer; and if, as a friend of mine, a minister, and a very liberal and
+broad one, though in one of the older churches, said to me, "I believe
+that God will save every single soul that he can save," then do you not
+see again that it touches this kind of prayer? If he cannot save them,
+then why should I beg him to do it? If he can, and loves them better
+than I do, again, why should I plead with him after that fashion to do
+it?
+
+These, frankly and freely spoken, are some of the difficulties
+connected with a certain theory of prayer.
+
+I gladly put all that now behind my back, and come to the grand and
+positive side of my theme. I wish to tell you what I myself believe in
+regard to this matter of prayer. And, in the first place, let me
+suggest to you that prayers, even the prayers of the past, any of them,
+the most objectionable types, are not made up only of petition; they
+are not all begging, teasing for things. There enter into their
+composition gratitude, adoration, reverence, aspiration, a sense of
+communion with the spiritual Being, a longing for higher and finer
+things; a sense of refuge in time of trouble, a sense of strength in
+time of need, a sense of hope, uplift, and outlook as we glance towards
+the future. A prayer, then, you see, is a very composite thing, not a
+simple thing, not merely made up of the element of pleading with God to
+give us certain things that we cannot come into possession of by
+ordinary means.
+
+Right here let me stop long enough to ask you to attend a little
+carefully to the teaching of Jesus on the subject of prayer. You will
+see he chimes in almost perfectly with the things I have been saying.
+If we followed his directions literally, we should never pray in public
+at all. He says, Enter into your chamber, and shut to the door, and
+commune with the Father in secret. He does not advocate long prayers,
+nor this kind of pleading, begging prayers that I have referred to. Do
+you remember the story of the unjust judge? Jesus tells this parable on
+purpose to enforce the point I have been speaking of. He says: Here is
+an unjust judge: a widow brings her case before him. She pleads with
+him until she tires him out; and at last he says, although I am an
+unjust judge, and fear neither God nor men, because with her continual
+praying she wearies me, I will grant her petition. Jesus does not say
+you are to weary God out in order to get your petitions granted, but
+just the opposite. How much more shall God give good gifts unto those
+that ask him Read once more that other story of the man who rises at
+night and goes to a neighbor for assistance. The neighbor, for the sake
+of being gracious and kind, will rise, although it gives him trouble
+and he does not wish to, and grant his request. But God is not like
+that neighbor: he does not need to be wearied or roused to make him
+care for our interests. This is the teaching, you will notice, of
+Jesus. If there is anything that appears like contrary teaching, you
+will find it in the supposed Gospel of John, written by an anonymous
+author, in which quite different doctrines are taught in regard to a
+good many things from those that are reported of Jesus in the other
+gospels.
+
+Now I wish to come to my own personal position concerning the subject
+of prayer. It is fitting is it not that we should open our hearts with
+gratitude to God, no matter what has come to us of good or bright, of
+beautiful, sweet and true things, no matter through what channel, by
+the ministry of what friend, as the result of the working of no matter
+how many natural forces. Trace it to its source, and that source is
+always of necessity the one fountain, the one eternal Giver. And, if
+there be no more than courtesy in our hearts, ought it not to be easy
+and fitting for us to think, at least, if we do not say, Thank you,
+Father? Not only thanksgiving, but adoration.
+
+Any uplook to something beautiful and high and fine above you partakes
+of the nature of worship. So that prayer which is worship, is it not
+altogether fitting and sweet and true? Only as we look up do we ever
+rise up, do we ever attain to anything finer and better.
+
+And then there is communion. Is it true that God is Spirit, and that he
+is Father of his children, also spirit? Are we made in his likeness? Is
+there community of nature between him and us? I believe that he is
+human in all essential qualities, and that we are divine in all
+essential qualities. I believe the only difference between God and man
+is a difference not of kind, but of degree, and that there is,
+possibility of constant interchange of thought, of feeling, communion,
+between God and his children. Profound, wonderful truth it seems to me
+is expressed in those beautiful words of Tennyson's:
+
+"Speak to him thou, for he hears, And spirit with spirit may meet.
+Closer is he than breathing, And nearer than hands and feet."
+
+Communion then possible, the very life of that which is divine within
+us!
+
+Then I do not believe for one moment that prayer is only a sort of
+spiritual gymnastics, that it produces results in us merely by the
+exercise of spiritual feelings and emotions. I believe that in the
+moral and spiritual realms prayer does produce actual results that
+would not be produced in any other way. This, however, mark you
+carefully, not by producing any change in God, only changing our
+relations towards God. Can I illustrate it? I have a flower, for
+example, a plant in a flower-pot in my room. It seems to be perishing
+for the lack of something. It may be that the elements in the air do
+not properly feed it: it may be that it is hungry for light. At any
+rate, I try it: I take it out into the sunshine, I let the air breathe
+upon it, the dews fall upon it, the rains touch it and revive it and
+the plant brightens up, grows, blossoms, becomes beautiful and
+fragrant. Have I changed natural laws any? Not to one parunticle. I
+have changed the relation of my plant and the air; and I have produced
+a result of life and beauty where would have been ugliness and death.
+
+So I believe in prayer in that sense, that it may and does change the
+spiritual attitude of the soul towards God so that we come into
+entirely new relations with him, and the spiritual life in us grows,
+unfolds, becomes beautiful and sweet, not because we have changed God,
+but because we have got into a new set of relations with him.
+
+If I thought that I could change God by a prayer, that I could
+interfere in the slightest degree with the working of any of the
+natural forces, I would never dare to open my lips in prayer again so
+long as I live. We do not need to change God: we need simply to change
+our attitude towards him, change our relations to him. Is not this true
+in every department of human life? How is it that you produce results
+anywhere? You wish a mountain stream to work for you. Do you change the
+laws of motion? You adapt your machinery to those laws of motion, and
+all the power of God becomes yours. You do not change him, you change
+yourself, your attitude towards him. And so in every one of the
+discoveries, in every one of the revolutions, that have come to the
+world, simply by discovering God's methods, and humbly adapting our
+ways to those methods Thus the forces of God, which are changeless and
+eternal, produce for us results which they would not have produced but
+for adapting our lives to the working of their ways.
+
+A great many people do not think they ever pray. I have never seen a
+man yet who did not pray. You cannot live, and not pray: you cannot
+escape it if you try. Take Montgomery's famous old definition, "Prayer
+is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed, The motion of a
+hidden fir That trembles in the breast."
+
+Soul's sincere desire. Yes, the body's desire, the mind's desire, the
+heart's desire, any desire, any outreach of life, is a prayer, an
+appeal for something that only the universe, that only God, can bestow.
+So, no matter whether you think you are religious or not, you are a
+praying man so long as you are a living man; and you cannot escape the
+fact if you try. It is merely a question whether you are a loving praying
+man or some other kind.
+
+There is another aspect of prayer to which I wish to call your
+attention. Prayer is the refuge of a soul in trouble. It does not mean
+here, again, that you change God any. Can you not understand what it
+means to go to God, as it were, and fling yourself, like a child,
+against his breast and feel yourself folded in the everlasting arms?
+Your sorrow may not be removed, the burden may not be taken away, the
+life of your friend may not be saved, the sickness may not be healed;
+but there is comfort, there is strength, there is peace, there is help.
+Why, even in our human life do you not know how it is? You go to some
+friend you trust and love with your trouble. Perhaps he cannot lift it
+with one of his fingers; but he can tell you that he loves you, he
+cares, he would help you if only he were able. He can put his arm
+around you, he can say, God bless you; and you are stronger. You go
+away with lifted shoulder and with head that fronts the heavens; and
+you are able to bear the burden. Is there nothing akin to this in the
+sense of coming into intimate relations with the eternal Father, when
+troubled, pressed, when the outside world is dark, and feeling that
+here is refuge in a love deeper, higher, unspeakably more tender than
+that of the dearest friend that ever lived?
+
+And this suggests another point. I have no doubt that sometimes, in my
+attempts to lead the devotions of this congregation, I use words which,
+if I were to sit down and critically analyze, I could not logically
+justify. I do not mean to; but, perhaps, sometimes I do. What of it?
+When my children were small, and my little boy came and climbed up in
+my lap and expressed himself in all sorts of illogical and foolish
+ways, telling me every sort of thing he wanted, impossible things,
+unwise things, things I could not get for him, things I would not get
+if I could, because I thought myself wiser than he, did these things
+trouble me? I loved to have him pour out his whole little soul into
+mine, because he was my child and because I did not expect him to be
+over-wise. It was this simple touch of kinship, this simple communion
+of father and child, which was sweet and tender and true.
+
+So I believe with my whole soul that God loves us, his little children,
+with an unspeakable tenderness, a tenderness infinitely beyond that
+with which any earthly father ever loved a child, and that we can go to
+him freely and pour out our hearts, whether it is wise in expression or
+unwise; only let us do it with the feeling, "Not my will, Father, but
+Thine, be done," not as though we were trying to persuade him to do
+things for us that he would not otherwise do, but merely as the pouring
+out of our gratitude, our tenderness, our love.
+
+There is another thing that needs just a word of suggestion. I believe
+that we ought to pray to God, not in the sense of begging for things,
+but sympathetically bringing in the arms of our sympathy all those we
+love and all those we hate, if there are any, and all things that live
+on the face of the earth. There is a hint of what I mean in those
+beautiful words of Tennyson's:
+
+"For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life
+within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands in prayer Both
+for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round
+earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
+
+Let us reach out our arms of sympathy to all the world and bring the
+world sympathetically into the presence of our Father. So our own
+hearts and loves will broaden, until they, too, are divine.
+
+And, then, there is one other thing. What a strength prayer has been to
+the grandest souls of the ages! Never was truer, finer truth written
+than those magnificent words of Isaiah: "Even the youths shall faint
+and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait
+upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with
+wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and
+not faint!"
+
+Take Jesus in his hour of agony, take Savonarola with his struggle,
+take Huss, Wyclif, Luther, take all the grand souls of the ages when
+they have simply stood with the feeling, One with God is a majority,
+and ready to face the world, if need be, in the conviction that they
+spoke for and represented the truth. The times of which Lowell speaks:
+
+"Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that
+scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God
+within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."
+
+This sense that God is for the truth and right, and, if you are
+standing for the truth and right, the Almighty Power is backing you up,
+the ground you stand on impregnable, because of that position. You do
+not expect God to work miracles, you do not expect him to do anything;
+but simply the sense that you are in his presence, that you are on his
+side, re- enforces you more than a thousand men could re-enforce an
+army in the time of its need. This is the great sense of surety that
+the poet Clough had in mind, when he wrote those wonderfully fine
+words:
+
+"It fortifies my soul to know That, though I perish, Truth is so; That
+howsoe'er I stray or range, Whate'er I do, thou dost not change. I
+steadier step when I recall That, if I slip, thou dost not fall." Here
+is the confidence, the strength, that comes from prayer, from communion
+with God, from the sense of being in his presence, from a feeling of
+fellowship with the Divine.
+
+The truest and finest, the sweetest prayer must come oft of the loving,
+the sympathetic, the tender soul. No selfish prayer can expect to enter
+into the heart of God. You will note in the words that Jesus teaches
+his disciples, it is not "My" Father, it is "Our" Father. And, if we
+wish to pray in the divine spirit, we shall broaden that "Our" until it
+includes not only our family, our church, our city, our State, our
+nation, our humanity, but until it includes all life that swims or
+walks or flies, feeling that it is the one life of the Father that is
+in us all. For, as Coleridge has finely put it, He prayeth best who
+loveth best All things, both great and small; For the dear God who
+loveth us, He made and loveth all.
+
+THE WORSHIP OF GOD
+
+THERE are those who in religious matters, as well as in all other
+departments of life, are content to walk unquestioningly the path which
+the footsteps of previous generations have made easy and familiar. But
+there are others and these among the more thoughtful and earnest minds
+to whom it is not enough to utter earnest words concerning enthusiasm
+and devotion, consecration and worship. These spiritual attitudes and
+exercises must first be made to appear reasonable to them, fitting,
+fitting to their conception of God, fitting to their ideas of that
+which is highest and finest in man.
+
+So there are many things that pass to-day as forms of worship, many
+ideas connected with worship, which this class of minds cannot heartily
+and fully accept. Some of them do not seem to them fitting, as they
+look upward towards God. They cannot, for example, believe that God
+cares for flattery, cares to sit on his throne, and be told by his
+creatures how great and how wonderful he is. They cannot think that he
+cares to have presents brought to him, gifts offered on his altar, as
+men say. They cannot believe that he really is anxious for many of
+these external forms and ceremonies, which seem to the onlooker to
+constitute the essential element of much that passes as popular
+worship.
+
+And then, on the other hand, man has grown into a sense of dignity. He
+has a higher and loftier idea of his own nature and of what is fitting
+to a man; and he cannot any longer heartily enter into the meaning of
+words which speak of him as a worm of the dust, which seem to him to
+intimate that God cares to have him prostrate himself in utter
+humiliation, to speak of himself always as a miserable sinner, as one
+without any good in him.
+
+Many of these things from the point of view of the man himself no
+longer constitute the real conviction, the real feeling of the noblest
+hearts; and so there are many who are troubled over this question of
+worship, who are not quite sure as to how much spiritual significance
+it may any longer retain, not quite sure as to how vital a part it may
+play in the development of the religious life of man.
+
+We find an adequate and perfectly natural explanation of some of these
+phases of worship that trouble us to-day, as we look back and note some
+of the steps in the religious development of the race. I shall not
+raise the question as to how or where or in what way the act of human
+worship began. I will simply say that one of the first manifestations
+of that which came to be religious worship which we are able to trace
+at the present time is to be found in the burial-mounds of the dead.
+Men reverenced the memory of the chief of the tribe who had passed into
+the invisible. They did not believe that he had ceased to exist: they
+rather looked upon him as having become, because invisible, a higher
+ruler. They thought of him as still interested in the welfare of the
+tribe, still its guardian, still its avenger, still demanding of the
+tribe the same reverence that it paid to him while he was yet alive;
+and his followers clothed him with all the human attributes with which
+they were familiar during the time he was among them. He was still
+hungry, he was still thirsty, he still wanted his old-time weapons, all
+those things he was familiar with during his earthly career. And so
+they brought food, and laid it on the burial-mound above his body; and
+they poured out their libations of drink to quench his spiritual
+thirst.
+
+These were very real beliefs on the part of man universally during a
+certain stage of his mental, his moral, his spiritual growth. It was a
+very natural step beyond this to the origin of sacrifices. All
+sacrifice began right here. It was a religious meal, in which God and
+his worshippers equally shared. Some animal, supposed to partake of a
+life similar to that which distinguished the god and the worshipper,
+too, is sacrificed. It is cooked, and the worshippers partake of the
+meal; and they fully believe that the god joins in it also. And then
+the drink they partake of, and pour out their libation for the
+invisible spirit.
+
+So the first sacrifice was a meal eaten together; and just as, for
+example, to-day you see a remnant of this idea when a man eats with an
+Arab, although the Arab may discover five minutes after that it was his
+bitterest foe, he finds himself at least during a little time bound to
+amity and peace by the fact that they have shared this sacred meal
+together, so in the act of sacrifice it was believed that the
+worshipper consecrated himself in loyalty to his God, and that the God
+consecrated himself in faithfulness to his worshippers as their
+guardian and protector. Here is given the central significance of
+sacrifices that have made so large a part of the religious ceremonial
+of the world.
+
+These are not peculiar to what we call pagan people. Do you remember
+the story of how, after the flood, Noah offers a sacrifice, and God up
+in heaven is represented as smelling the flavor of the burning meat and
+as rejoicing in it, accepting the offering, and pledging himself to
+guard and care for his worshippers? Do you remember, also, that story
+of Jacob, how, when he is on his journey, he falls asleep, and has his
+wonderful dream, and sees the ladder starting at his feet and ending at
+the throne of God, up and down which the angels are passing? When he
+wakes in the morning, he says, "Surely, this is holy ground"; and he
+takes the stone on which he slept, and sets it up as an altar, and
+pours out the sacred oil as an offering to his God.
+
+All the way through the Old Testament, in the history of the Hebrew
+people, you trace these same ideas that you find in the life of almost
+all the other nations of the world. It was only a step beyond this to
+the idea of presenting gifts to God, no matter what the nature of that
+gift might be. And, as men came to make him these sacred offerings,
+they came also to believe and in the most natural way in the world
+that, the more costly the gift, the more likely it was to be accepted
+on the part of its sublime recipient.
+
+So human sacrifices arose; for there could be no more sacred gift than
+for a man to offer his own child or his own wife to God. The gods were
+looked upon as sometimes demanding these tremendous sacrifices as the
+conditions of their mercy or their care. I refer you for illustration
+to one of the most striking and touching of Tennyson's poems. I think
+it is entitled "The Victim." There had been famine in the land, and the
+priests have announced that they have learned that the gods demand as
+an offering that which is most sacred and most dear to the heart of the
+king; and the question is as to whether it is his son, his boy, or his
+wife. They think it must be the boy, because he was the one that would
+continue the kingly line; but the wife detects the gladness of her
+husband when he sees that the boy is to be selected, and knows by that
+sense of relief that passes over his face that the priests have made a
+mistake, and that she herself is to be the victim. And so, in her love
+for him and for the people, she rushes upon the sacrificial knife.
+
+All these ideas, you see, are perfectly natural in certain stages of
+human development, logically reasoned out in view of their thought of
+the gods and of their relations to them and of what these gods must
+desire at their hands. It is not only among the very early beliefs that
+you find these ideas controlling the thought and action of men. Study
+the ancient classical times as they are reflected in the Iliad, in the
+Odyssey, or in Virgil's Aeneid, and you will find that the gods were
+very human in all their feelings, their thoughts, their passions. As,
+in the Old Testament, Yahweh is reported to have been a jealous God,
+not willing that respect should be paid to anybody but himself, so you
+find the old Greek and Roman deities very jealous as to what were
+regarded as their rights, as to what the people must pay to them; and,
+if they are angry, they can be appeased if an offering rare and costly
+enough be brought by the worshipper. You can buy their favor; you can
+ward off their anger, if only you can offer them something which is
+precious enough so that they are ready to accept it at the worshipper's
+hands.
+
+These are not merely Old Testament ideas, nor only pagan ideas. Some
+years ago, when I was in Rome, I visited among others one of the many
+churches dedicated to Mary under one name or another; and there was a
+statue of the Virgin by the altar, and it impressed me very much to see
+that it was loaded down with gifts. Every place on the statue itself to
+which anything could be attached, anything on the altar around it, was
+weighted down with gold chains, with jewels, with precious gifts of
+every kind. These had been brought as thank-offerings, expressions of
+worship, or pledges connected with a petition, because I have brought
+thee this gift, have mercy, do this for me which I need.
+
+So these old ideas are vital still, and live on in the modern world.
+And yet modern and magnificent are those utterances of the old Hebrew
+prophet, who had so completely outgrown the common customs even of his
+time, when he represents God as saying that he is weary of all these
+external offerings. He says: I do not want the cattle brought to my
+temples. Those that wander on a thousand hills are already mine. If I
+were hungry, I would not ask thee. He does not want the rivers of oil
+poured out. What does he want? The old prophet says, What doth the Lord
+require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly
+with God? And some of the later writers caught a glimpse of the same
+spiritual truth when they said, Not burnt- offerings, not calves of a
+year old; when they cry out, Shall I bring the fruit of my body for the
+sin of my soul? No, it is a broken and contrite heart, a heart sorry
+for its sin, a heart consecrating itself to righteousness and truth,
+this inner, spiritual worship.
+
+The prophets, you see, were climbing up to that magnificent ideal so
+finely set up by Jesus as reported in the Gospel from which I read our
+lesson this morning. They had not only believed that God was to be
+worshipped after these external fashions, but that there was some
+special place, not only where it was easier to think of him, but where
+he demanded the offering should be brought. He said to the woman at the
+well: You think it is Mount Gerizim where the people ought to worship,
+and the Jews think it is Mount Moriah; but I say unto you that neither
+in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem shall men worship the Father. God
+is spirit, the universal spirit, every place a temple, every spot
+hallowed, if only those that worship him do so in spirit and in truth.
+
+You see, then, how up these stairways of gradual approach the human
+race, in the person of its highest and finest representatives, has
+climbed, how near it has come to the spiritual ideal of God and the
+spiritual thought of that which he requires at our hands.
+
+Is worship, then, so far as external form is concerned, to pass away?
+By no manner of means, as I think. As you analyze any one of these old
+primitive acts of worship, no matter how crude, no matter how cruel,
+how bloody, how repulsive it may be to-day from the outlook of our
+higher civilization, you will note that it has in it an element which,
+I believe, is permanent, and can never be outgrown. Whatever else there
+is, there is always the sense of a Presence, Invisible, mighty, high,
+and, from the point of view of the worshipper, holy and set apart.
+There is always the feeling of being in the shadow of the high and
+lofty One who inhabiteth eternity. There is always the sense of
+uplooking, of worship, in the higher sense of that term. Always, at any
+rate, the germ of these; and this, it seems to me, we may be sure and
+certain, however it may clothe itself in the future, shall never pass
+away.
+
+I wish now, if there are any who think it is not befitting the
+greatness, the nobleness of man that he should bow himself in the
+presence of the highest, humiliate himself, if you choose to use that
+term, in acts of worship, I wish now, I say, to consider worship under
+two or three aspects, and see what it means. And, in the first place, I
+ask you to note that the ability to worship is always the measure of
+the rank of a being, it is the test and the standard of greatness.
+
+As you look over the animal world, which one of them are we accustomed
+to think of as coming the nearest to man? What one do we love to have
+most with us, to associate most with our joys, with the peace of our
+homes? Is it not the dog? And as you examine the dog, study carefully
+his nature and characteristics, do you not note that there is in his
+nature a hint, a suggestion, of that which is the root of all worship?
+The dog is the one animal with which man is accustomed familiarly to
+associate himself, who looks up with an incipient reverence, love,
+almost worship, to his master. And it is this quality in the dog that
+enables him to look up, and, however dimly, feel the life of some one
+that is above him, that lifts him into our society, and makes us feel
+this tenderness of heart-kinship with that which is finest in his
+nature.
+
+And man is man simply because he is able to look above himself. The old
+Greeks had an anticipation of that idea when they called man anthropos;
+for the meaning of the word is the upward-looker. As in imagination you
+go back and down to the time when man first appeared, developed from
+the lower life which preceded him, the first thing you can think about
+him as human is the opening of his eyes in wonder, the lifting of his
+face in curiosity and question, and the birth of adoration in his soul.
+This is that which made him man.
+
+You go and study the lowest type of barbaric life to-day; and you will
+find that the barbarian has very little curiosity as compared with the
+civilized man. You will find that it is very difficult to astonish him
+with anything. He does not wonder. He takes everything for granted. He
+does not see clearly and deeply enough to appreciate the marvel. Let me
+illustrate from a specimen of barbaric life itself. A few years ago the
+chief of an Indian tribe was brought from the plains of the West to
+visit Washington. The idea was to impress him as much as possible with
+the idea of our civilization, so that he might report it to his people
+when he went home. After they had crossed the Mississippi on their way
+to the West, the gentleman in whose care he was travelling asked the
+chief what the one thing which he had seen during his trip was which
+had impressed him the most; and he said at once the St. Louis bridge.
+But his companion said, Are you not astonished at the Capitol of
+Washington? "Yes," he said, "but my people can pile stones on top of
+each other; but they cannot make a cobweb of steel hang in the air."
+
+You see how that perception lifted him above the average level of his
+people? He was showing his capacity for higher and nobler civilization.
+It is just this ability in the man to wonder, to see something to
+wonder at, to worship, to admire, which lifts him one grade higher than
+that of the average level of his tribe. So that which makes man a man
+is the capacity in him to admire. All admiration is the essence, the
+root, of worship. And, the more things a man admires, the greater and
+nobler type of man he is seen to be. If he can admire music, if he can
+admire painting, if he can admire sculpture, if he can admire poetry,
+if he can admire literature of every kind, if he can admire grand
+architecture, the beautiful monuments of the world, we say, Here is a
+large, all-round type of man. We estimate his dignity, his greatness,
+by the capacity that he shows for worship in its lower type; for
+worship is simply looking up with admiration.
+
+There is another quality about this worship that I wish to speak of. It
+is the power that is capable of transforming a man, making him over
+into the likeness of that which he admires. You find the man without
+this capacity, and you know it is hopeless to appeal to him, hopeless
+to set up ideals, hopeless to place before him enticing examples. There
+is nothing in him to which these things appeal. Take Alexander the
+Great. It is said he carried around with him a copy of the Iliad, and
+that Achilles was his ideal of a hero. Do you not see how this
+admiration transformed the life of the young king, and made him after
+the type of that which he admired? It does not make any difference what
+this special admiration may be. Let a man admire Beethoven, and he will
+cultivate instinctively the qualities that make the beauty and
+greatness of Beethoven's character and the wonders of his career.
+
+This ideal may be in a book, it may be embodied in fiction. I have
+liked always, either on the walls of my room or on the walls of my
+heart, to have certain portraits of persons whom I have loved, who are
+no longer living; and they are to me constant stimulus. They speak to
+me by day, and in my dreams at night their eyes follow me, and seem to
+look into my soul; and in their presence I could not do a mean, an
+unmanly thing. I love, I reverence, I worship these lofty ideals. And
+the quality of these characters filters down through and permeates the
+thought and the life.
+
+You remember how the other aspect of this thought is illustrated by
+Shakspere. He says, "My nature is subdued To what it works in, like the
+dyer's hand." If that with which you keep company, that you admire, is
+below you, it degrades; if it is above you, it lifts. In any case you
+are transformed, shaped into the likeness of that which you admire.
+
+There is another aspect of this close akin to that which I have just
+been dealing with. It is only the worshipper who has in him any
+promise, any possibility, of growth. Whether it is the individual or
+the nation, it makes no difference. If you find no capacity to admire
+that which is above and beyond you, then there is no hope of progress.
+Take the young man who thinks he has exhausted the possibilities of the
+world, who has reached the stage, who prides himself on not being
+surprised, not being over whelmed, not admiring anything. The careful
+outside observer knows that, instead of having exhausted the
+possibilities and greatness and wonders of the universe, he has simply
+exhausted himself.
+
+The man who knows how full the world is of that which is beautiful and
+great and true and noble walks through the universe with his head bared
+and bowed, and feels, as did Moses when standing in the presence of the
+burning bush, that he ought to take off his shoes from his feet, for
+the place where he is standing is holy ground. Wherever you are
+standing in this universe, which is full of God from star to dust
+particle, is holy ground; and, if you do not feel it, if you are not
+touched, if you are not bowed, if you are not thrilled with wonder, it
+is defect in you, and not lack of God.
+
+If the musician admires his great predecessors and strives to emulate
+them; if the painter in the presence of the Sistine Madonna feels
+lifted and touched, so that he never can be content with poor work
+again; if the sculptor is ready to bend his knees in the presence of
+the Venus of Melos, as he sees her standing at the end of the long
+gallery in the Louvre; if the lover of his kind admires John Howard,
+and can never be content unless he is doing something for his fellow-
+men again; if we can be touched by lives like Clara Barton's, like
+Florence Nightingale's, like Dorothea Dix's, like the great and
+consecrated ones of the earth; if in any department of life we can be
+lifted, humbled, thrilled, at the same time with the thought of the
+greatness and glory and beauty that are above and beyond us, then there
+is hope of growth, then there is life that can come to something fine
+and noble in the future.
+
+I wish, in the light of these illustrations of what worship means, to
+note the thought that a great many men  conscientious, earnest, simple
+who have never been accustomed to think of themselves as religious, and
+perhaps would deny it if a friend suggested to them that they had in
+them the possibilities of worship, that perhaps they are worshippers,
+even if they know it not. A great many persons have thrown away the
+common ideals of worship, and perhaps have settled down to the idea
+that they are not worshippers at all, while all the time the substance
+and the beauty and the glory of worship are in their daily lives and
+always in their hearts. I want to suggest two or three grades of
+worship, to show that this worship climbs; and I want to call attention
+to the fact that on the lowest grade it is worship of God just the same
+as on the highest, that all worship or admiration for truth, for
+beauty, for good, wherever, however, manifested, is really worship of
+God, whether we think of it or call it by that name or not, because
+they all are manifestations of God.
+
+Take the man who is touched and lifted by natural beauty, the sense of
+natural power; the man who loves the woods, who turns and stands to see
+the glory of a sunset, who is lifted by tides of emotion as he hears
+the surf beat on the shore, who feels bowed in the presence of the wide
+night sky of stars, who is humbled at the same time that he is uplifted
+in the presence of the mountains, who is touched by all natural scenes
+of beauty and peace and glory. Are not these men in their degree
+worshippers?
+
+Take the feeling that is expressed in those beautiful lines of Byron.
+We do not think of Byron as a religious nature, but certainly he had in
+him the heart of worship when he could write such thoughts as these:
+
+"'Tis midnight.
+On the mountains brown
+The cold, round moon shines deeply down;
+Blue roll the waters; blue the sky
+Seems like an ocean hung on high,
+Bespangled with those isles of light,
+So wildly, spiritually bright.
+
+Whoever looked upon them shining
+And turned to earth without repining,
+Nor wished for wings to flee away
+And mix with their eternal ray?"
+
+And Wordsworth says he feels a Presence that "Disturbs him with the joy
+of elevated thought, A sense sublime of something far more deeply
+interfused."
+
+And so you may run all through the poets, these simply as hints,
+specimens, every one of them worshippers, touched by the beauty, glory,
+uplift of the natural world.
+
+And then pass to the next stage, and come to the worship of the human,
+to the admiration of the highest and finest qualities that are
+manifested in the lives of men and women. Who is there that is not
+touched and thrilled by some story of heroic action, of heroic self-
+sacrifice, of consecration to duty in the face of danger and death? And
+no matter what this manifestation of human goodness may be, if you can
+be thrilled by it and lifted by it, then you have taken another step up
+this ladder of worship which leads you into the very presence chamber
+of the Divine.
+
+Let a boy read the life of Lincoln, see his earnest thirst for
+knowledge, the sacrifice he was willing to pay for it, his consecration
+to his ideals of truth, the transparent honesty of the man, the supreme
+contempt with which he could look down upon anything poor or mean or
+low, the firmness and simplicity with which he assumes high office, the
+faithfulness, the unassuming devotion, that he carries into the
+fulfilment of the trust. Take him all the way through, study his
+character and admire, and you are a worshipper of that which is divine.
+
+So in the case of Jesus, the supreme soul of history in its
+consecration to the Father, its simple trust in the divine love, its
+superiority to fear, to question, to death. When we bow ourselves in
+the presence of the Nazarene, we are not worshipping another God. We
+are worshipping his Father and our Father as lie shines in the face of
+Jesus, as he illumines and beautifies his life, as he makes glorious
+the humble pathways of Galilee, and so casts a reflected glory over the
+humblest pathways any of us may be called upon to tread.
+
+The next step in our ascent brings us to the conscious worship of God
+himself. We cannot grasp the divine idea. The finite cannot measure or
+outline the infinite; and so, when we say God, we mean only the
+grandest ideal that we can frame, that reaches on towards, but can
+never adequately express the Deity. And so we worship this thought,
+this ideal, growing as our capacity develops, advancing as the race
+advances, and ever leading us Godward, as when we follow a ray of light
+we are travelling towards its source. And the attitude of our souls in
+the presence of this which is divine is truest worship. The humility of
+it, the exaltation of it, is beautifully phrased in two or three lines
+which I wish to repeat to you from Browning's Saul: "I but open my
+eyes, and perfection, no more and no less, In the kind I imagined,
+full-fronts me, and God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the
+flesh, in the soul and the clod. And, thus looking within and around
+me, I ever renew (With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises
+it, too), As by each new obeisance in spirit I climb to his feet!"
+
+Here is the significance of the thought I had in mind at the opening.
+We talk about humbling ourselves. When we can bend with reverence in
+the presence of that which is above us, the very bending is exaltation;
+for it indicates the capacity to appreciate, to admire, to adore. Thus
+we climb up into the ability to worship God, the infinite Spirit, our
+Father, in spirit and in truth.
+
+Now to raise one moment the question suggested near the opening, Are
+forms of worship to pass away? The reply to this seems to me perfectly
+clear. Those forms which sprang out of and are fitted to only lower
+ideals of worship, ideals which humanity outgrows, these must be left
+behind, or else they must be transformed, and filled with a new and
+higher meaning. But forms will always remain. But note one thing: they
+sometimes say that we Unitarians are too cold, and do not have form
+enough. You will see that, the higher men rise intellectually, the less
+there is always of outward expression.
+
+For example, before men were able to speak with any large vocabulary,
+they eked out their meaning by all kinds of motions and gestures. But
+the most highly cultivated men to- day, in their conversation, are the
+ones who get the least excited and have the least recourse to gestures,
+because they are capable of expressing the highest, finest, and most
+varied thoughts by the elaborate power of speech which they have
+developed. And perhaps the highest and finest worship of the world will
+not be that which has the most elaborate ceremonial and ritual; but it
+will have adequate and fitting ceremonial and ritual, because it will
+naturally seek to express in some external way that which it feels.
+
+I sometimes wish and perhaps you will pardon me for saying it here and
+now that we Unitarians were a little less afraid of adequate posture
+and gesture in our acts of public worship. God is, indeed, everywhere
+as much as he is here; but this is the place we have specially
+consecrated to thinking about him and to going through our stated forms
+of worship. And if, when you enter the house of a friend, you take off
+your hat, you bow the head, it seems to me it would be especially
+fitting to do it, when one enters a Christian church. And, in the
+attitude of prayer, I wish that all might find it in their hearts to
+sit with bended brow and closed eyes as in the presence of the Supreme,
+shutting out the common, the outside world, and trying to realize what
+it means to come consciously to the feet of the eternal One.
+
+I love these simple, fitting, external manifestations of the worshipful
+spirit; and, if we do not substitute them for the worship, and think we
+worship when we bend the knee, this appropriate expression of the
+spirit, or feeling, it seems to ought to help cultivate the feeling and
+the spirit, and make it easier for us to be conscious of the presence
+of the Divine.
+
+We are men, then, in the highest sense of the term, only as we are
+worshippers. And the more worshipful we are, in high and true sense of
+that word, the nobler and higher manhood, and the grander the
+possibilities in us of de intellectual, moral, spiritual growth.
+
+Let us, then, cultivate the admiring, the wondering, the worshipful
+attitude of heart and mind, and recognize on lowest steps of this
+ladder that lifts to God, the presence of the same divine power and
+beauty and glory as that which we see clearly on the highest, and know
+that always, when we are worshipping any manifestation of God, we are
+shipping Him who is spirit, in spirit and in truth.
+
+When on some strain of music Our thoughts are wafted high; When,
+touched with tender pity, Kind teardrops dim the eye; When thrilled
+with scenes of grandeur, Or moved to deeds of love, Do we not give thee
+worship, O God in heaven above? For Thou art all life's beauty, And
+Thou art all its good: By Thy tides are we lifted To every lofty mood.
+Whatever good is in us, Whatever good we see, And every high endeavor,
+Are they not all from Thee?
+
+MORALITY NATURAL, NOT STATUTORY.
+
+IT is very common for people to identify their special type of religion
+or their theological opinions with religion itself, and feel that those
+who do not agree with them are in the rue sense not religious. Not only
+this. It is perhaps quite less common for them to identify their
+particular type of religion with the fundamental ideas of morality, and
+think that the people who do not agree with them are undermining the
+moral stability of the world. For example, those who question the
+absolute authority of the Catholic Church are looked upon the
+authorities of that Church as the enemies, not only of religion, but as
+the enemies of society, the enemies of humanity, as doing what they can
+to shake the very foundations of he social order. You will find a great
+many Protestant theologians who seem to hold the opinion that, if you
+dare to question the authenticity or authority of some particular nook
+in the Bible, you are not only an enemy of religion, but you are an
+enemy of morality. You are doing what you can to disturb the stability
+of the world.
+
+But, if we look at the matter with a little care, we shall see that we
+ought to turn it quite around, look at it from another point of view.
+Though every Bible, every particle of religious literature, every hymn,
+every prayer on the face of the earth, were blotted out of existence
+to-day, religion would not be touched. Religious books did not create
+religion, did not make man a religious being. It is the religious
+nature of man that made the Bibles, that uttered itself in prayers,
+that created the rituals, that sung the hymns and chanted the anthems.
+It is man, a religious being, who makes religious institutions, who
+creates all the external aspects and appearances of the religious life.
+And the same is true precisely in regard to moral precepts. If the Ten
+Commandments were blotted out of the memory of man, if every single
+ethical teaching of Jesus should perish, if the high and fine moral
+precepts of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and all the great teachers of
+the pagan world should cease to exist, if there were not a printed
+moral precept on earth, morality would not be touched. It is not these
+that have created morality. It is the natural moral nature of man that
+has written all the commandments, whether they have come to us by the
+hand of Moses or of Gautama or Mohammed or Confucius or Seneca, or no
+matter who the medium may have been.
+
+Man is a moral being, naturally, essentially, eternally, and this is a
+moral universe, inherently, necessarily, eternally; and, though all the
+external expression of moral thought and feeling should be lost, the
+human race would simply reproduce them again.
+
+It is sometimes well for us to get down to the bed-rock in our
+thinking, and find how natural and necessary the great foundations are.
+The Hindu priests used to tell their followers that the earth, which
+was flat, rested on certain pillars, which rested again on some other
+foundation beneath them, and so on until thought was weary in trying to
+trace that upon which the earth was supposed to find its stability. And
+they also told their followers that, if they did not bring offerings,
+if they did not pay the special respect which was due to the gods, if
+they were not obedient to heir teachings, these pillars would give way,
+and the earth would be precipitated into the abyss.
+
+But we have found, as a result of our modern study of he universe, that
+the earth needs no pillars on which to rest; but it swings freely in
+its orbit, as the old verse that used to read in my schoolboy days
+says, "Hangs on nothing in the air," part of the universal system of
+things, stable in its eternal sound and motion, kept and cared for by
+the power that lever sleeps and never is weary. So, by studying into
+the foundations of the moral nature of man, we have discovered a last
+that it needs no artificial props or supports, but that morality is
+inherent, natural and eternal.
+
+I shall not raise the question, which is rather curious than practical,
+as to whether there are any beginnings of moral feeling in the animal
+world below man. For our purpose this morning it is enough to note that
+the minute that man appears conscience appears, and that conscience is
+an act which springs out of social relations. In other words, when the
+first man rose to the ability to look into the face of his fellow and
+think of the other man as another self, like himself in feelings, in
+possibilities of pleasure or pain, when this first man was able
+imaginatively to put himself in: he place of this other, then morality
+as a practical fact was Dorn.
+
+We may imagine, for the purpose of illustration, this man saying: Here
+is another being who appears to be like myself. He is capable of
+suffering pain, as I am. He does not like pain any better than I do.
+Therefore, I have no right to make him suffer that which I do not wish
+to suffer myself. This other man is capable of pleasure. He desires
+certain things, similar things to those which I desire. If I do not
+wish him to take these things away from me, I have no right to take
+them away from him.
+
+I do not mean that this was thought out in this clear way, but that,
+when there was the first dim perception of this other self, with
+similar feelings, similar possibilities, similar pleasures, similar
+pains, then there became a conscience, because there was a
+consciousness of this similarity of nature. Morality, then, is born as
+a social fact.
+
+To go a little deeper, and in order to trace the natural and historical
+growth of the moral ideal, let me say that morality in its deepest and
+truest sense is born of the fact of sex, because it is right in there
+that we find the root and the germ of permanent social relations. And I
+wish you to note another very significant fact. You hear people talking
+about selfishness and unselfishness, as though they were direct
+contraries, mutually exclusive of each other, as though, in order to
+make a selfish man unselfish, you must completely reverse his nature,
+so to speak. I do not think this is true at all. Unselfishness
+naturally and necessarily springs out of selfishness, and, in the
+deepest sense of the word, is not at all contradictory to that.
+
+For example: A man falls in love with a woman. This, on one side of it,
+is as selfish as anything you can possibly conceive. But do you not see
+by what subtle and divine chemistry the selfishness is straightway
+transformed, lifted up, glorified, and becomes unselfishness? The very
+love that he professes for her makes it necessary for his own happiness
+that she should be happy, so that, in seeking for his own selfish
+gratification, he is devoting himself unselfishly to the happiness of
+somebody else.
+
+And, when a child is born, do you not see, again, how the two
+selfishnesses, the father's and the mother's, selfishly, if you please,
+brooding over and loving the child, at once go out of themselves,
+consecrating time and care and thought and love, and even health or
+life itself, if need be, for the welfare of the child?
+
+Right in there, then, out of this fact of sex and in the becoming of
+the family, are born love and sympathy, and tenderness and mutual care,
+all those things which are the highest and finest constituent elements
+of the noblest developments of the moral nature of men.
+
+Imagination plays a large part in the development of morality; for you
+must be able to put yourself imaginatively in the place of another
+before you can feel for that other, and in that way recognize the
+rights of that other and be ready to grant these rights to that other.
+So we find that morality at first is a narrow thing: it is confined
+perhaps to the little family, the father, the mother, the child, bound
+together by these ties of kinship, of love, of sympathy, devoting
+themselves to each other; but they may look upon some other family as
+their natural enemies, and feel no necessity whatever to apply these
+same principles of love and tenderness and care beyond the limits of
+their own little circle.
+
+So you find, as you study the growth of the moral nature of man, that
+it is confined at first to the family, then to the patriarchal family,
+then the tribe; but the fiction of kinship is still kept up, and, while
+the member of the primeval tribe feels he has no right to rob or murder
+within the limits of his tribe, he has no compunction whatever about
+robbing or murdering or injuring the members of some other tribe. So
+the moral principle in its practical working is limited to the range of
+the sympathy of the tribe, which does not go beyond the tribal limits.
+We see how that principle works still in the world, from the beginning
+clear up to the highest reaches which we have as yet attained.
+
+Take the next step, and find a city like ancient Athens. Still,
+perhaps, the fiction of kinship is maintained. All the citizens of
+Athens are regarded as members of the same great tribe or family. But
+even in the time of Plato, whom we are accustomed to look upon as one
+of the great teachers of the world, there was no thought of any moral
+obligation to anybody who lived in Sparta, lived in any other city of
+Greece, and less was there any thought of moral obligation as touching
+or taking in the outside barbarian. So when the city grew into a
+nation, and we came to a point where the world substantially stands
+to-day, do you not see that practically the same principle holds, that,
+while we recognize in some abstract sort of fashion that we ought to do
+justice and be kind to people beyond our own limits, yet all our
+political economy, all our national ideas, are accustomed to emphasize
+the fact that we must be just and righteous to our own people, but that
+aggression, injustice of almost any kind, is venial in our treatment of
+the inhabitants of another country? And it may even flame up into the
+fire of a wordy patriotism in certain conditions; and love of country
+may mean hatred and injustice towards the inhabitants of another
+country, or particularly towards the people of another race.
+
+Let me give you a practical illustration of it. What are the relations
+in which we stand to-day towards Spain? I have unbounded admiration for
+the patience, on the whole, for the justice, the sense of right, which
+characterize the American people. I doubt if there is another nation on
+the face of the earth to-day that would have gone through the last two
+or three years of our experience, and maintained such an attitude of
+impartiality, of faithfulness, of justice, of right. And yet, if we
+examine ourselves, we shall find that it is immensely difficult for us
+to put ourselves in the place of a Spaniard, to look at the Cuban
+question from his point of view, to try to be fair, to be just to him.
+It is immensely difficult, I say, for us to look at one of these
+international questions from the point of view of another race,
+cherishing other religious and social ideas, having another style of
+government.
+
+And there is another illustration of it that has recently occurred here
+in our country, which is sadder still to me. Only a little while ago a
+postmaster in the South was shot by a mob. The mob surrounds his house,
+murders him and his child, wounds other members of the family, burns
+down his home; and why? Under no impulse whatever except that of pure
+and simple race prejudice, the utter inability of a white man to put
+himself in the position of a black to such an extent as to recognize,
+plead for, or defend his inherent rights as a man.
+
+I am not casting any aspersion on the South in what I am saying, none
+whatever. Were the conditions reversed, perhaps we should be no better.
+It is not a practical problem with us. If there were two or three times
+as many colored men in the State of New York as there are white men,
+then we might understand the question. Let us not mentally cast any
+stones at the people across the line. I point it out simply as
+illustrating the difficulty that we have in recognizing the rights, the
+moral rights, of people beyond the limits of that sympathy to which we
+have been accustomed and for a long period trained.
+
+I believe the day will come when we shall be as jealous of the right of
+a man as we are now of the right of an American. We are not yet. There
+have been foregleams and prophecies of it in the past. Long ago a Latin
+writer said, I am a man, and whatever is human is not foreign to me.
+But think what a lone and isolated utterance that has been for hundreds
+of years. Jesus taught us to pray, not my Father, but our Father, and
+we do pray it every day in the-year; but how many are the people in any
+of the churches that dream of living it? A hundred years ago that
+heretic, who is still looked upon as the bugaboo of all that is fine
+and good, Thomas Paine, wrote, "The world is my country, and to do good
+is my religion," a sentence so fine that it has been carved on the base
+of the statue of William Lloyd Garrison on Commonwealth Avenue in
+Boston, as being a fitting symbol of his own philanthropic life.
+
+How many of us have risen to the idea of making these grand sentiments
+the ruling principles of our lives? But along the lines of moral growth
+it is to come. The day will be when, as I said, we shall feel as keenly
+whatever touches the right of any man as to-day we feel that which
+touches the right of one of our own people; and the moral growth of the
+world will reach beyond that. I love to dream of a day when men will no
+longer forget the inherent rights of any inhabitant of the air or of
+the waters or of the woods or any of the domesticated animals that we
+have come to associate with our lives.
+
+We feel towards them to-day as in the old days a man felt towards
+another man who was his slave, that he had a right to abuse, to
+maltreat, even to kill, if he pleased. We have not yet become civilized
+enough, so that we feel it incumbent upon us to recognize the fact that
+animals can suffer pain, that animals can enjoy the air or the
+sunshine, and that they have a right to each when they do not trespass
+upon the larger rights of humanity. I was something of a boy when it
+first came over me that it was not as amusing to animals to be shot and
+killed as it was to me to shoot and kill them. From the time I was able
+to lift a gun I had always carried one; but I soon learned that for me
+there was no pleasure in taking needlessly the life of anything that
+lived. We are only partially civilized as yet in the treatment of our
+domesticated animals. How many people think of the torture of the curb
+bit, of the check, of neglect in the case of cold, of thirst, of
+hunger? How many people, I say, civilized and in our best society, are
+careful yet as to the comfort, the rights, of those that serve them in
+these humble capacities?
+
+The time will come when our moral sympathetic sense shall widen its
+boundaries even farther yet, and shall take in the trees and the
+shrubs, the waters, the hills, all the natural and beautiful features
+of the world. I believe that by and by it will be regarded as immoral,
+as unmanly, to deface, to mar, that which God has made so glorious and
+so beautiful. As soon as man develops, then, his power of sympathy, so
+that it can take the world in its arms, so soon he will have grown to
+the stature of the Divine in the unfolding of his moral nature.
+
+I wish now to raise the question, for a moment, as to what is to be our
+guide in regard to moral facts and moral actions. I was trained, and
+perhaps most of you were, to believe that I was unquestioningly to
+follow my conscience, that whatever conscience told me to do was
+necessarily right. The conscience has been spoken of as though it were
+a sort of little deity set to rule man's nature, this little kingdom of
+thought and feeling and action. But conscience is nothing of the kind.
+Half of the consciences of the world to-day are all wrong.
+
+Let me hint by way of illustration what I mean: Calvin was just as
+conscientious in burning Servetus as Servetus was in pursuing that
+course of action which led him to the stake. One of them was wrong in
+following his conscience, then. You take it to-day: some people will
+tell you there is a certain day in the week that you must observe as
+sacred. Your conscience tells you there is another day in the week that
+you must observe as sacred. Can both be right? Many of the greatest
+tragedies of the world have come about through these controversies and
+confusions of conscience. The Quaker in old Boston went at the cart's
+tail, in disgrace, because he followed his conscience; and the Puritan
+put him there because he followed his conscience. Were both of them
+right? The inquisitor in Spain put to death hundreds and thousands of
+people conscientiously; and the hundreds and thousands of people
+conscientiously went to their deaths.
+
+What is conscience, then? Conscience is not a moral guide. It is simply
+that monitor within that reiterates to us forever and forever and
+forever, Do right. But conscience does not tell us what is right. We
+must decide those questions as a matter of calm study and judgment in
+the light of human experience. It is the judgment that should tell us
+whether a thing is right or wrong. And how shall we know whether it is
+right or wrong? Simply by the consequences. That which helps, that
+which lifts man up, that which adds to the happiness and the well-being
+of the world, as the result of human experience, is right. That which
+hurts, that which injures men and women, that which takes away from
+their welfare and happiness, that is wrong. All these things, as we
+shall see before I get through, are inherent in the nature of things,
+not created by statute, not the result of the moral teaching of
+anybody.
+
+This leads me to extend this idea a little farther, and to raise the
+question as to what is the standard by which you are to judge moral
+action. If you will think it out with a little care, you will find that
+the standard of all moral action may be summed up in the one word
+"life." Life, first, as continuance; second, to use a philosophical
+term, content, that which it includes. Life, this is the standard of
+right and wrong.
+
+To illustrate, take me physically, leave out of account all the rest of
+my nature now for a moment, and consider me as an animal. From the
+point of view of my body, that which conduces to length of life, to
+fullness, to completion, to enjoyment of life, is right, the only
+right, from this physical point of view. That which threatens my life,
+that which takes away my sum of strength, injures my health, takes away
+from my possibility of enjoyment, that, from a physical point of view,
+is wrong; and there can be no other right or wrong from the point of
+view of the body.
+
+But I am not simply body. So this principle must be modified. Come up
+to the fact that I am an intellectual being. In order to develop myself
+intellectually, I may have to forego things that would be pleasant on
+the bodily plane. I sacrifice the lower for the higher; and that which
+would be right on the physical plane becomes relatively wrong now,
+because it interferes with something that is higher and more important.
+
+Rise one step to man as an affectional being. If you wish to develop
+him to the finest and highest here, you may not only be obliged under
+certain conditions to sacrifice the body, but you may be obliged to
+sacrifice his intellectual development. In order that he may be the
+best up here, he must put the others sometimes, relatively, under his
+feet. So, again, that which would be right on the physical plane or the
+intellectual plane becomes relatively wrong, if it interferes with that
+which is higher still.
+
+And so, if you recognize man as a spiritual being, a child of God, then
+you say it is right, if need be, to put all these other things under
+his feet, in order that he may attain the highest and best that he is
+capable of here. But you see it is life all the way, it is the physical
+life or it is the mental life or it is the affectional life or it is
+the spiritual life; and that which is necessary for the cultivation and
+development of these different grades of life becomes on those grades
+right, and that which threatens or injures one or either of these
+grades becomes, so far as that grade is concerned, wrong.
+
+Life, then, continuance, fullness, joy, use, this is the standard of
+right and wrong; a standard which no book ever set up, which no book
+can ever overthrow; a standard which is inherent, natural, necessary, a
+part of the very nature of things.
+
+I wish now for a moment I must of course do it briefly to consider the
+relation of religion to this natural morality. And perhaps you will
+hardly be ready some of you, at any rate for the statement which I
+propose to make, that sometimes, in order to be grandly moral, a man
+must be irreligious. I mean, of course, from the point of view of the
+conventional religion of his time, he must be ready to be regarded as
+irreligious. In the earliest development of the religious and moral
+life of a tribe, very likely, the two went hand in hand, side by side;
+for the dead chief now worshipped as god would be looked upon as in
+favor of those customs or practices which the tribe had come to regard
+as right. But religion perhaps you will know by this time, if you have
+thought of it carefully is the most conservative thing in the world.
+Naturally, it is the last thing that people are willing to change. This
+reluctance grows out of their reverence, grows out of their worshipful
+nature, grows out of their fear that they may be wrong.
+
+But now let me illustrate what I mean. Religion, standing still in this
+way, has become an institution, a set of beliefs, of rites and
+ceremonies, which do not change. The moral experience of the people
+goes right on; and so it sometimes comes to pass that the moral ideal
+has outgrown the religious ideal of the community. And now, as a
+practical illustration to illume the whole point, let us go back to
+ancient Athens for a moment at the time of Socrates. Here we are
+confronted with the curious fact that Socrates, who has been regarded
+from that day to this as the most grandly moral man of his time, the
+one man who taught the highest and noblest human ideals, is put to
+death as an irreligious man. The popular religion of the time cast him
+out, and put the hemlock to his lips; and at the same time his teaching
+in regard to righteousness and truth was unspeakably ahead of the
+popular religion of his day.
+
+Let us come to the modern Athens for a moment, to the time of Theodore
+Parker in Boston. We are confronted here, again, with this strange
+fact. There was not a church in Boston that could abide him, not even
+the Unitarian churches; and in the prayer-meetings of the day they were
+beseeching God to take him out of the world, because they thought he
+was such a force for evil. And at the same time Theodore Parker stood
+for the very highest, tenderest, truest moral ideal of his age.
+
+There was no man walking the earth at that time who so grandly voiced
+the real law of God as did Theodore Parker. And yet he was outcast by
+the popular religious sentiment of his time.
+
+This, then, is what I mean when I say that we ought to be careful, and
+study and think in forming our religious ideals, and see that we do not
+identify our own unwillingness to think with the eternal and changeless
+law of God. This is what I have meant in some of the strictures which I
+have uttered during the last year upon some of the theological creeds
+of the time. The people have grown to be better than their creeds, but
+they have not yet developed the courage to make those creeds utter the
+highest and finest things which they think and feel. This is what I
+have meant when I have said that the character of God as outlined in
+many of these creeds is away behind and below the noblest and finest
+and sweetest ideals of what we regard as fitting even to humanity
+to-day.
+
+Religion, then, may be ahead of the moral ideal or it may be behind it.
+The particular type of religion I mean, of course, which is being held
+at any particular time in the history of the world. But the moral ideal
+of necessity goes on, keeping step with the social experience of the
+race.
+
+I must touch briefly now just one other point of practical importance
+that we need to guard, in order to be tender and true in our dealings
+with our fellow-men. You will find, if you look over the face of
+society, that there are two kinds of morality, frequently quite
+inconsistent with each other; and sometimes the poorer of the two kinds
+is held in higher esteem than the better. I mean there is conventional
+morality, and there is real morality.
+
+As a hint of illustration: An American woman goes to Turkey to-day; and
+she is shocked by the customs of the women and their style of dress. It
+seems to her that no woman can possibly be moral who, although she
+covers her head, can appear on the street with feet and ankles bare.
+But this same Turkish woman is shocked beyond the possibility of
+utterance to know that in Europe and America women carefully cover
+their feet, but expose their faces and their shoulders. It seems
+terrible to her, and she cannot understand how a European or American
+woman can have any regard for the principles of delicacy and morality.
+
+Do you not see how, in both cases here, it is purely a matter of
+convention? No real question of morality is touched in either case. I
+speak of this to prepare you to note how conscience can be as troubled
+over things which are purely conventional as it can over things which
+are downright and real. Let me use another illustration, going a little
+deeper in the matter. Here is a man, for example, who is terribly
+shocked because his neighbor takes a drive with his family on Sunday
+afternoon. It seems to him an outrage on all the principles of public
+and social morality; and he is eager to get up a society to abolish
+such customs, that seem to him to threaten the prosperity of all that
+is good in the world. But this same man, perhaps, has been trained in a
+way of conducting his business that, while legal, is not strictly fair.
+This man may be hard and cruel towards his employees. He may cherish
+bitter hatreds towards his rivals. In his heart he may be transgressing
+the law of vital ethics, while fighting with all the power of his
+nature for that which does not touch any real question of right or
+wrong at all.
+
+Or take a woman who, while shocked at the transgression of some social
+custom in which she has been trained from her childhood, or, for
+example, has come to think that a certain way of observing Lent, on
+which we have just entered, is absolutely necessary to the safety of
+religion and morals both, is yet quite willing, and without a qualm of
+conscience, on the slightest hint of a suspicion, to tear into tatters
+the character of one of her neighbors or friends, does not hesitate to
+slander, perhaps is unjust or cruel to the servants that make the house
+comfortable and beautiful for her; in other words, transgressing the
+real laws of right and wrong, she is shocked and troubled over the
+transgression on the part of others of some purely conventional
+statute, the keeping or breach of which has no real bearing on the
+welfare of the world.
+
+A good many of our social judgments are like the case of the old lady
+pardon me, if it should make you smile, but it illustrates the case who
+criticised with a great deal of severity a neighbor and friend who wore
+feathers on her bonnet. Somebody said to her, But the ribbons on your
+bonnet are quite as expensive as the feathers that you criticise. "Yes,"
+she said, "I know they are; but you have got to draw the line
+somewhere, and I choose to draw it at feathers." So you find a great
+many people on every hand in society who are choosing to draw these
+lines purely artificial, purely conventional in regard to matters of
+supposed right or wrong, while they are not as careful to look down
+deeply into the essential principles of that which is inherently right
+or wrong.
+
+And now at the end I wish to suggest what is a theme large enough for a
+sermon by itself, and say that these laws of righteousness are so
+inherent that they are self-executed; and by no possibility did any
+soul from the beginning of the world ever escape the adequate result of
+his wrong-doing. The old Hebrews, as manifested in the Book of Job, the
+Psalms, and all through the Old Testament, taught the idea, which was
+common at that time in the world, that the favor of God was to be
+judged by the external prosperity of men and women. The Old Testament
+promises long life and wealth and all sorts of good things to the
+people who do right; and I find on every hand in the modern world
+people who have inherited this way of looking at things. I have heard
+people say: I have tried to do right, and I am not prosperous. I wonder
+why I am treated so? I have heard women say, I have tried to be a good
+mother: why is my child taken away from me? As though there was any
+sort of relation between the two facts. I hear people say, Don't talk
+to me about the justice of God, when here is a man, who has been
+dishonest all his life long, who has prospered, and become rich and
+lives in a fine house, drives his horses, and owns a yacht. As if there
+was any sort of connection between the two, as though a man  merely
+because he had a fine house and owned a yacht was escaping the
+punishment of his unjust and selfish life.
+
+Remember, friends, look a little below the surface. There is no
+possibility of escape. I break some law of my body; do I escape the
+result? I break some law of my mind; do I escape the result? I break
+some law of my affectional nature; is nothing to happen? I break a law
+of my spiritual nature; does nothing take place as the result of it?
+You might as well say that the law of gravity can be suspended, that a
+man can fling himself over the edge of a precipice, and come to no
+harm. The precipice over the edge of which you fling yourself may be a
+physical one, may be a mental one, an affectional one, a spiritual one;
+but the moral gravity of the universe is never mocked, and the man who
+breaks any of God's laws never goes free. He may discover that he has
+broken it, be sorry for it, begin to keep it again, and recover
+himself; but the consequences are sure, inevitable, eternal.
+
+You look at a man who is externally prospering, and because of this you
+say he is not suffering the result of the evil he has done. Go back
+with me to Homer's Odyssey at the time when Ulysses and his companions
+fell into the hands of the sorceress, and his companions were turned
+into swine. Would you go and look at these swine, and say they are not
+suffering anything? See how comfortable they are. See with what gusto
+they eat the food that is cast into their troughs. See how happy they
+are as swine. They are not suffering anything Is it nothing to become
+swinish, merely because you have your beautiful pen to live in? Is a
+not suffering the result of his moral wrong when he debases and
+degrades and deteriorates his own nature, and becomes less a man,
+because he is surrounded with all that is glorious and beautiful that
+art can supply? Look within whatever department of nature where the law
+has been disobeyed, and there forever and forever read the result, the
+inevitable law, that the soul that sinneth, in so far as it sinneth, it
+shall die.
+
+REWARD AND PUNISHMENT.
+
+Two WEEKS ago I preached a sermon, the subject of which was "Morality
+Natural, not Statutory." Judging by the conversations which I have had
+and letters which I have received, it has aroused a good deal of
+question and criticism in certain quarters. This must be for one of
+three reasons. In the first place, the position which I took may not be
+a tenable one. In the second place, it is possible that the views
+expressed, being somewhat new and unfamiliar, were not found easy of
+apprehension and acceptance. In the third place, it is possible that,
+in endeavoring to treat so large a subject, I did not analyze and
+illustrate enough to make myself perfectly clear.
+
+At any rate, the matter seems to me of such supreme importance as to
+make it worth my while this morning to continue the general subject by
+a careful and earnest treatment of the great question of reward and
+punishment as applied to feeling, to thought, to conduct, the whole of
+human life.
+
+Let me say here at the outset, as indicating the point towards which I
+shall aim as my goal, that in the ordinary use of language, in the
+popular use of language, I do not believe in either reward or
+punishment: I believe only in causes and results. This, as I said, is
+the point that I shall aim at. Where shall I begin?
+
+I need to ask you to consider for a moment the state of mind of man, so
+far as we can conceive it, when he first wakes up as a conscious being,
+and begins to look out over the scene of nature and human life with the
+endeavor to interpret facts as they appear to him. Of course, he knows
+nothing whatever of what we mean by natural law: he knows nothing of
+natural cause and of necessary result. So far as we can discover by our
+researches, all the tribes of men about whom we have been able to
+gather any information have had a belief, if not in God, at least in
+gods, or in spiritual existences and powers that controlled within
+certain limits the course of human events. It may have been the worship
+of ancestors, it may have been the worship of some great chief of the
+tribe; but these invisible beings have been able to help or hurt their
+followers, their worshippers; and of course they have been thought of
+as governing human life after substantially the same methods that they
+used when they were living here in the body.
+
+That is, it has been a magical or arbitrary government of the world
+that has been for ages the dominant one in the human mind. People have
+supposed that these invisible beings desired them to do certain things,
+to refrain from doing certain other things, and they have expected them
+to reward or punish them how? By giving them that which they desired,
+on the one hand, or sending them something which they did not desire,
+on the other. They have brought the gods their offerings, their
+sacrifices, their words of praise, and have asked that they might be
+successful in war, that they might bring home the game which they
+sought when they went on a hunting expedition. When there have been
+disease, pestilence, famine, drought, no matter what the nature of the
+evil, they have been regarded as allotments of these divine powers sent
+on account of something they have done or omitted to do. It never
+occurred to them to interpret these as part of a natural order, because
+they knew nothing about any natural order. They reasoned as well as
+they were able to reason at that stage of culture in any particular age
+of the world's history which they had reached. But this has been the
+thought of men time out of mind concerning the method of the divine or
+spiritual or unseen government of the world.
+
+Is this way of looking at it confined to primitive man, confined to
+pagan nations? Do we find something else, some other condition of mind,
+when we come to study carefully the Old Testament? Let us see. Take the
+first verse which I read as a part of my text. The author of this Psalm
+we do not know who he may have been says, "I have been young, and now
+am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
+begging their bread." As I have read this a great many times in the
+past, I have wondered as to the strange experience that this man must
+have had in human life, if this is a correct interpretation of that
+experience. I have been young: I do not like to admit that as yet I am
+old; but, whether I am or not, I have a good many times seen the
+righteous forsaken, and his seed begging their bread.
+
+It seems to me that the writer of this verse was trained in a theory of
+the government of human affairs that does not at all match the facts.
+He has this magical, this arbitrary theory in his mind. It was the
+general conception I think, as any one will find by a careful reading
+of the Old Testament or study of Jewish history, the ordinary
+conception among the Hebrews, that God was to reward people for being
+good by prosperity, long life, many children, herds of cattle,
+distinction among his fellow-men, positions of political honor and
+power; and the threat of the taking away of these is frequently uttered
+against those that presume to do wrong. In other words, it seems to me
+that the ordinary theory of the government of human affairs as set
+forth in the Old Testament is precisely this same one that I have been
+considering as the natural and necessary outcome of the ignorance and
+inexperience of early man.
+
+As time went on, now and then some deeper, more spiritual thinker
+begins to question this method of reasoning, begins to wonder whether
+it is quite adequate; and we have a magnificent poetical expression of
+this kind of critical thought in the Book of Job. This Book of Job is
+any way and every way worthy of your careful attention. It is the
+nearest to a dramatic production of anything in the Bible. James
+Anthony Froude said once in regard to it that, if it were translated
+merely as a poem and published by itself, it would take rank as a
+literary work among the few great masterpieces of the world.
+
+But the thing that engages our attention this morning is not its power
+as a dramatic production, but its criticism of God's government of the
+world. It has been assumed, as I have said, and we are not through with
+that assumption, that, if a man suffered, if he was ill, if his wife or
+children were taken away from him, if his property was destroyed,
+somehow he had offended God, and that this was a punishment for the
+course of wrong-doing in which he had been engaged. But the author of
+the Book of Job conceives that this does not quite match the facts; so
+he gives us this magnificent character that he declares upright,
+spotless, free from wrong of any kind, who yet is suffering. He has
+lost his property, it has been swept away, his children have been put
+to death, almost everything that he cared for he has lost, and he from
+head to feet is sick of a loathsome disease; and he sits in the midst
+of his deprivation and sorrow. His friends gather around him; and with
+this old assumption in their minds some of them begin to taunt him.
+They say, Now, Job, why not confess, why not own up as to what you have
+been doing? Of course, you have been doing something wrong, or all this
+would not have happened. This is the tone that one of his critics
+takes. This is the kind of comfort that he receives in the midst of his
+sorrow. But Job protests earnestly and indignantly that it is not true.
+He says he is innocent, there are no secret wrongs in his life; and he
+wishes that he might find some way by which he could come into the
+presence of the great Ruler of the universe, and openly plead his
+cause. But his friends do not believe him.
+
+Now the writer of the book lets us into the explanation he has thought
+out for this: God for a special reason is testing Job, to see whether
+he will be true to him in spite of the fact that he does not get the
+ordinary blessings that the people were accustomed to look for as the
+rewards of their conduct. But the writer is not consistent with the
+wonderful position that he makes Job assume; for, after the trial is
+all over, he falls in with the popular theory, and shows us Job, not
+with the old children who could not be brought back, but with a lot of
+new ones, with herds and cattle again in plenty, with honor among his
+fellow-citizens, with all that heart could wish in the way of worldly
+prosperity and peace.
+
+So I say the writer is not quite consistent, for he falls back at the
+end on the old theory, and he lets us gain a glimpse behind the scenes,
+just enough to see that there are cases, special cases, where the
+popular theory does not hold; but he still seems to assume that, in a
+general way, we are to accept it as correct, and as explaining the
+facts of human life.
+
+The Jews acted on this theory in their political history. Their
+prophets, their great teachers, asserted over and over again that, if
+they were true to their God, if they were faithful in their obedience
+to the law, if they lived out all these highest and finest ideals of
+ceremonial as well as heart righteousness, that they would be mighty as
+a nation, that their enemies would be put under their feet, that they
+would have political success and power; and yet their increasing
+insistence on this ceremonial and interior righteousness of thought and
+life was found to be no adequate defence against the Roman legions.
+Political success did not come to them. In spite of all their
+obedience, they were swept out of existence as a nation.
+
+Now do we find any difference in teaching in the New Testament? We do;
+and we do not. The teaching of the New Testament is not consistent in
+this matter. If Jesus be correctly reported, his own teaching is not
+quite consistent on this subject. Let me give you one or two
+illustrations, that you may see what I mean. John tells us that a
+certain man, who had been born blind, was brought to Jesus to be cured;
+and the people stood about, and said to Jesus, "Who is it, this man
+himself or his parents, that sinned, so that he was born blind?" You
+see it does not occur to them that there is any natural cause for a
+man's being blind, apart from some sin on the part of somebody. Who is
+it, then, his father or mother, or he himself, that has sinned, that is
+the cause of it? Jesus says, "Neither this man nor his parents have
+sinned," and you think at first that you are going to get an adequate
+explanation; but he straightway adds that the man was blind in order
+that the works of God might be manifest in him; which we cannot accept
+to-day as quite an adequate explanation.
+
+Then take the case of the man who was lying at the pool of Bethesda,
+and was reported as cured. Jesus meets him, after a good deal of
+question and criticism on the part of the Jews, and says, "Now you have
+been healed, see to it that you sin no more, lest a worse thing come to
+you," seeming to imply again that sin might be punished by lameness, by
+affliction of this kind or that.
+
+So it seems to me that we do not get, even in the New Testament,
+entirely free from this old conception. Indeed, there are the verses
+which I read as a part of our lesson from the fifth chapter of Matthew,
+one of which for a clear or more spiritual insight I have quoted as a
+part of my text, "Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after
+righteousness, for they shall be filled" with what? Filled with
+righteousness; not filled with health, external prosperity, many
+children, friends, political position, honor. Blessed are the pure in
+heart, for they shall what? See God. "Blessed are the merciful, for
+they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are they that are persecuted for
+righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
+
+You see these beatitudes strike down to the eternal principle of
+natural, necessary causation and result, just as does the last verse
+which I have quoted from Galatians, "Be not deceived; God is not
+mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," not
+something else, that. Here is a clear and explicit annunciation of the
+eternal, universal law of cause and effect, of the idea that those
+things which happen are not arbitrary infliction, but natural and
+necessary result.
+
+Let us, then, consider this matter for a little as we look over the
+face of human life as it is manifested to us at the present time. I
+suppose hardly a week passes that, either by letter or in conversation,
+I do not come face to face with this same old problem, showing that
+only partially and here and there have men and women even to-day come
+to comprehend the real method after which this universe of ours is
+governed. For example, let me give you a few illustrations.
+
+I have a friend in Boston, one of the noblest men I ever knew, sweet,
+gentle, true: he came to me one day, and said: "Mr. Savage, I have
+tried all my life to be an honest man. I do not own an ill-gotten
+dollar. I have tried to be kind and helpful to people in need, in
+trouble; and yet," and then it began to dawn on him that he was not on
+a very logical track, for he smiled, "and yet I have not got on very
+well in the world; I have not made a great deal of money; I have not
+been specially prosperous in business." And the implication was that
+here, next door or in another street, was a man who had a good many
+ill-gotten dollars, and who had not been generous or kindly or humane
+or tender, but who had prospered and become rich, as he had not. And he
+raised this as a serious objection against the justice of the
+government of the world.
+
+I have had mothers; I presume a thousand times, say to me: "I have
+tried to take the best possible care of my child. I loved my child, I
+watched over it night and day, I have money enough to give it a good
+education, I could train it into fitness for life; and yet my child is
+taken away." Here is somebody else who has not the means to educate her
+child, perhaps whose character and intelligence are a good deal below
+the average level. Her child is spared, spared for what? Spared for a
+career for which it will be entirely unfitted; and the question is, Why
+does God do such things, why is the universe governed in this fashion?
+
+And I have had persons say to me: "I have been ill all my life, I have
+suffered no end of pain and trouble: I wonder why? What have I done
+that I must be burdened and afflicted after this fashion?" So these
+questions are coming up perpetually, showing that underlying the
+ordinary surface of our common daily life is still this theory that God
+arbitrarily governs the world, and rewards people for being good with
+health and with money and with children and with all sorts of
+prosperity. There is no end of talk in regard to judgments, as they are
+called. I remember when I was living in the West I take this as an
+illustration as good as any a neighboring small city was badly
+devastated by fire. All the ministers around me in my city began to
+preach about it as a judgment of God for the supposed wickedness of
+this city. One peculiar thing about this particular judgment, which I
+noticed as reported in the papers, was that the last thing which the
+fire burned was a church; and it left standing next door, and
+untouched, a liquor saloon. It seemed to me a very peculiar kind of
+divine judgment, if that is what it really was.
+
+And so, as you look into these cases of supposed divine judgments,
+which people are so ready to see in regard to their neighbors, you will
+find that it has some serious defect of this sort almost always that
+makes you question whether a wise man would be guilty of that method of
+conducting his affairs.
+
+This, perhaps, is enough by way of setting forth the popular method of
+looking at these problems. I want to ask you now to go with me for a
+little while, as I attempt to analyze some of these cases, and get at
+the real principle involved as to what it is that is really going on.
+
+Now take this case of the mother whose child is taken away from her, as
+she says. Let us see if we can find out what is really being done. It
+is possible, of course, that the child has inherited, it may be from a
+grandfather or great-grandfather, from somewhere along the line, a
+tendency to a particular kind of disease. It may be that, without
+anybody's being to blame for it or anybody's knowing it, the child was
+exposed to some contagious disease on the street or at school. It may
+be that the mother, through a little otherwise pardonable vanity,
+wishing to display the beauty of the child rather than to dress it in
+the healthiest manner, has been the means of exposing it to cold. It
+may be any one of a dozen things has caused the death of this child.
+And do you not see that in every case it has nothing whatever to do
+with the mother's moral goodness or spiritual cultivation? It is absurd
+to think that the mother, in this case, is being punished for something
+that she is entirely unconscious of having been guilty of. Do you not
+see that there is no logical connection between an inherited disease,
+between exposure, between taking cold, between any of these natural
+causes and the goodness of the mother? Is it not absurd to talk about
+their having anything whatever to do with each other?
+
+I remember hearing a famous revivalist preach some years ago; and in
+this particular sermon he represented God as using all means to try to
+turn such a man from his path of evil, as he regarded it, into the way
+of right and truth and salvation; and he said: First, perhaps, God
+takes his property away from him; and that does not change him. And by
+and by he takes his wife; and that does not change him. And then he
+takes one of his children; and, as he expressed it, he lays these
+coffins across his pathway in order to warn him of his sinful
+condition, and turn him into the right way.
+
+Think of a God who kills other people on account of my wrong!
+
+I had a friend in Boston once, a lady, a school-teacher, who in all
+seriousness told me, when her sister died, that she was afraid God had
+taken her sister away because she had not been sufficiently faithful in
+attending church services during Lent. Think of it! Not only the lack
+of logic in linking things like these together, but the practical
+impiety of attributing to God such feelings and action in regard to his
+dealings with his children!
+
+Let us take the case of a man who, not being highly elevated in
+character, becomes rich. Let us see if we can get at the principles
+involved here. Perhaps you can call to mind one or another case that
+you may be thinking of while I speak. Of course I shall mention no
+names. Here is a man who possesses remarkable natural business ability,
+power to read the commerce, the business of his times. He deals with
+these in a practical way. He complies with the conditions of
+accumulating wealth. No matter for the present whether he does wrong in
+doing it or not, that is, whether he is unjust or hard or cruel; but he
+complies with the conditions for the obtaining of money in this
+particular department of life. Now do you not see that, no matter what
+his moral character may be in other directions, whether he is kind to
+his wife, whether he is loving towards his children, whether he is
+generous in a charitable way, whether he is politically stanch or
+corrupt, do you not see that these questions are entirely irrelevant,
+have nothing whatever to do with the question of success in the money
+field? He sows according to the laws of the product which he wishes to
+raise, and the product appears.
+
+Or take the case of a farmer: Here is a certain tract of land adapted
+to a particular crop. He sows wisely in this field. He cultivates it:
+the rain and the sun do their part; and in the fall he has a
+magnificent result. Now has that anything whatever to do with the
+question whether the man was a good man or not, as to whether he went
+to prayer-meeting or not, as to whether he read his Bible or not, as
+to whether he was profane or not, as to whether he was a good neighbor
+or not? Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap, and reap it where
+he sows it. Is it not perfectly plain? So in any department of human
+life, I care not what, trace it out, and you will find that precisely
+the same principle is involved, and that you get results, not arbitrary
+bestowal's of reward or punishment.
+
+Now I must come having, I hope, made this sufficiently clear, though
+after this fragmentary fashion to deal a little more with some of the
+ethical sides of this question. I have had no end of persons tell me,
+first and last, that it seemed to them that the universe could not be a
+moral universe, that it was not governed fairly, that reward and
+punishment were not meted out evenly to people; and they based their
+criticism on statements of fact similar to those with which I have been
+dealing.
+
+Now let us look into the matter a little deeply; and let us see if we
+can find any hint of light and guidance. I have had a person within a
+week say to me, "I do not feel at all sure that it means much that
+people get the moral results of their moral action in a particular
+department of life. If a person becomes a little bit callous and hard,
+wisely selfish and prudent, and so prospers in the affairs of this
+life, I am not sure that he is not as well off as anybody, perhaps a
+little better off, perhaps a little better off than a person who is
+sensitive, and worries because he does not reach his ideals; and it is
+possible that he serves the world after all quite as well." This is a
+kind of criticism, I say, that has been made to me in the last week.
+
+Let us look at it for just a minute. People do not seem able as yet to
+understand that a man is really "punished," in the popular sense of
+that word, unless they can see him publicly whipped. It does not seem
+to them to mean anything because a man deteriorates, because the
+highest and finest qualities in him atrophy and threaten to die out. I
+used an illustration in my sermon two weeks ago to which I shall have
+to recur again, to see if I can make it mean more than it did then. It
+is the story of Ulysses who fell into the hands of the famous
+sorceress, and whose companions were turned into swine. Now would you
+be willing to be turned into a pig, merely because, being a pig, you
+would not know anything about it, and would not suffer? Would you be
+willing to be reduced to the life of an oyster, merely because, being
+an oyster, you would be haunted by no restless ideals, and, so far as
+you had any sense at all, would probably be very comfortable indeed? Is
+there no "punishment" in this deprivation of the highest and finest
+things that we can conceive of?
+
+It seems to me that a person who has deteriorated, who has become
+selfish, who has become mean, who has lost all taste for high and fine
+and sweet things, and is unconscious of them, is having meted out to
+him the worst conceivable retribution. If a man is mean and knows it,
+if a man is selfish and is conscious of it, if a man is unjust and is
+stung by the reflection, there is a little hope for him, there is life
+there, there is moral vitality, there is a chance for him to
+recuperate, to climb up into something higher and finer; but, if he has
+not only become degraded and mean, but has become contented in that
+condition, it seems to me that he is worse off than almost anybody else
+of whom we can dream.
+
+Let us see for a moment on what conditions a man who has deteriorated
+is well off. There are three big "ifs" in the way, in my thought of it.
+If a man really is a spiritual being, if he is a child of God, if there
+are in him possibilities of unfolding of all that is sweet and divine,
+then he is not well off when he is not developing these, and is content
+not to develop them. Browning says, in his introduction to "Sordello,"
+"The culture of a soul, little else is of any value."
+
+If we are souls, and if the culture of a soul is of chiefest
+importance, then cursed beyond all words is the man who has
+deteriorated and become degraded and is content to have it so. Blessed
+beyond all words is the soul that is haunted by discontent, haunted by
+unattained and unattainable ideals, who is restless because of that
+which he feels he might be and yet is not, he who is touched by the
+far-off issues of divinity, and cannot rest until he has grown into
+the stature of the Divine!
+
+And then, once more, if it be true that it is worth our while to help
+our fellow-men in the higher side of their nature, to help them be men
+and women, to help them realize that they are children of God, and to
+grow into the realization of it, if, I say, this be worth while, then
+lamentable beyond all power of expression is the condition of that man
+who does not feel it and does not care for it, and does not consecrate
+himself to its attainment. Look over the long line of those who have
+served mankind. Who are they? From Abraham down, the prophets of
+Israel; Jesus, Paul, Savonarola, Huss, Wyclif, Luther, Channing,
+Parker, who have these men been but the ones who were ready at any
+price to do something to lift up and lead on the progress of mankind?
+These are the ones who have felt the meaning of those sublime words of
+Jesus: "He that loseth his life shall save it." If there is any meaning
+in that splendid passage from George Eliot, that is so trite because it
+is so fine,
+
+"Oh may I join the choir invisible
+Of those immortal dead who live again
+In minds made better by their presence: live
+In pulses stirred to generosity,
+In deeds of daring rectitude, in score
+For miserable aims that end with self,
+In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
+And with their mild persistence urge man's search
+To vaster issues.
+So to live is heaven:
+To make undying music in the world,
+Breathing as beauteous order that control
+With growing sway the growing life of man.
+This is life to come,
+Which martyred men have made more glorious
+For us who strive to follow.
+May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls
+The cup of strength in some great agony,
+Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
+Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
+Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
+And in diffusion ever more intense.
+So shall I join the choir invisible
+Whose music is the gladness of the world."
+
+If, I say, there is any meaning in that magnificent song, then indeed
+it is worth while to be miserable, if need be, worth while to suffer,
+worth while to sacrifice for the sake of planting seed in the spiritual
+fields, and looking for its spiritual results, and not finding fault
+with the universe because we do not get results of spiritual goodness
+in material realms.
+
+There is one other "if." If it be true, as I believe it is, that this
+life goes right on, and that we carry into the to-morrow of another
+life the precise and accurate results that we have wrought out in the
+to-day of this; if it be true that, when we get over there, it will be
+spiritual facts and spiritual things with which we shall deal, then the
+man who has cultivated his spiritual nature and has reaped spiritual
+results has no right to find fault with the universe because it has not
+paid him with material good.
+
+Let us remember, then, that we get what we sow. God has not promised to
+pay you in greenbacks for being good; God has not promised to give you
+physical health because you are gentle and tender; God has not promised
+to give you long life because you are generous; God has not promised to
+give you positions of social or political honor because you are kind to
+your neighbors, faithful to your wife, true to your children. Can you
+not see that whatsoever a man sowest, that shall he reap; and that he
+will reap in the field where he sows, and not in some other; and that
+God is dealing fairly, justly, tenderly, truly, with you in giving you
+the results at which you aim, and not the results at which you do not
+aim?
+
+So, if you really care to be a man, if you care to be a woman, honest,
+noble, tender, true, then be these, and be grateful that you reap the
+reward where you sowed, and do not find fault with God or the universe
+because he does not pay you for things that you have not done, because
+he does not make a crop grow in some field that you have not
+cultivated, because it is eternally true that God is not mocked, and
+that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
+
+THINGS WHICH DOUBT CANNOT DESTROY.
+
+THE critical and investigating work of the modern world threatens to
+shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And there are large numbers
+of people who are disturbed and afraid: they are troubled lest certain
+things that are precious, that are dear to them, may be taken away. Not
+only this, they are troubled lest things of vital importance to the
+highest life of the world be taken away. I propose, then, this morning
+to run in rapid review over a few of the changes that are caused by the
+investigating spirit of the time, and then to point out some things
+that are not touched, that cannot be shaken, and that therefore must
+remain. And I ask you to have in mind, as I pursue this line of
+thought, the question whether doubt has taken away anything really
+valuable from mankind. The negative part of my theme I shall touch on
+very lightly, and dispose of as briefly as I may.
+
+What has doubt, what has investigation, done concerning the universe of
+which we are a part? In the old days, before doubt began its work,
+before men asked questions and demanded proof, we lived in a little,
+petty, tiny world, which the imagination of the superstitious and the
+fear of ignorant men had created. But the cycles and epicycles which
+Ptolemy devised, and by means of which he explained, as well as he knew
+how, the movements of the heavenly bodies around us, these have passed
+away. The breath of doubt has blown upon them; and they have gone, like
+mists driven by the wind.
+
+But has doubt quenched the light of any star? Has doubt taken away from
+the glory of the universe? Rather, as the result of the work of these
+myriad investigators, whose one aim and end was truth, at last we have
+a universe worthy to be the home of an infinite God, a universe that
+matches our thought of the Divine, a universe that thrills and lifts
+us, fills us with reverence, and bends us to our knees in the attitude
+of worship.
+
+The same spirit has raised no end of questions concerning God. What has
+been the result? We have lost the old thought of God in the shape of a
+man sitting on a throne located in the heavens just above the blue or
+on some distant star. We have lost the thought of a God as a tyrant, as
+a jealous being, as angry every day with his children, as ready to
+punish these children forever for their ignorance, for their
+intellectual mistakes, for their sins of whatever kind. We have changed
+our conception of him; but have we lost God? I will not answer that
+question at this stage of the discourse, because I wish merely to
+suggest it now, and dwell on it a little more when I come to the
+positive treatment of our morning's theme.
+
+Let us glance at the Bible a moment. Doubt and investigation have been
+at work there. What has been the result? Have we lost the Bible? No. We
+have gained it. We have lost those things about it which were
+intellectual burdens because we could not believe them, which were a
+moral burden because they conflicted with our highest and noblest sense
+of right. We no longer feel under the necessity of reconciling human
+mistakes with divine infallibility. Professor Goldwin Smith has told us
+recently that these old theories of the Bible were a millstone about
+the neck of Christendom, and that they must be gotten rid of if
+Christianity was to live. This is all that doubt and investigation have
+done to the Bible. They have cleared away the things that no sane and
+earnest and devout mind wishes to keep; and they have restored to us in
+all their dignity and beauty and sweetness and power the real human
+Bible, the Bible which poured out of the heart of the olden time, and
+which is in all its truth and sweetness, so far as they go, a
+revelation of the divinest things in human thought and human dream.
+
+Preachers tell us every little while that those who ask questions have
+taken away our Lord, and they know not where he has been laid. What has
+this spirit done concerning Jesus? Has it taken him away from us?
+Rather, as the result of all this question and criticism, at last we
+have found him, found him who has been hidden away for ages, found the
+man, divine son of God, son of man, brother, friend, inspirer,
+companion, helper. It has done for Jesus the grandest service of which
+we can conceive.
+
+And now one more point. People used to suppose they knew all about the
+next world. They knew where heaven was and where hell was, and who were
+to be the inhabitants of either place, and why. Doubt and question have
+been at work here, and now we do not know where heaven is; and we do
+not know where hell is, except that it is within the heart of those
+that are not in accord with the divine life. Where the places are, we
+know not; but blessed beyond all words be ignorance like this! We know
+because we believe in righteousness and truth that there is no hell
+except that which we create for ourselves; and that is in this world,
+in any world where there is a breach of a divine law. But has the great
+hope gone? Has doubt touched that, so that it has shrivelled and become
+as nothing? That I shall have occasion to touch on a little more at
+length in a moment; and so I leave it here with this suggestion.
+
+I wish you now to note, and to note with a great deal of care, that
+doubt, criticism, question, investigation, have no power to destroy
+anything. People talk as though, if you doubted a thing, it
+disappeared, as though doubt had magical power to annihilate in some
+way a truth. If you really do doubt an important divine truth, it may
+disturb and trouble you for a while; but the truth remains just the
+same. I remember some years ago a parishioner came to me, an
+intelligent lady, and said, "Mr. Savage, I have about lost my belief in
+any future life." I smiled, and said: "I am sorry for you, if it
+interferes with your comfort and peace; but remember one thing, neither
+your doubt nor my belief touches or changes the fact." The eternal life
+is not something to be puffed away with a breath, if it be real. So
+rest right there in the firm assurance that whatever is true is true,
+and rests on the eternal foundation of the permanence of God; and
+asking questions about it, digging away at its foundations, testing it
+in any and all sorts of ways, cannot by any possibility injure it.
+Enforce thus this idea, simple as it seems, because thousands of men
+and women at the present time are made to tremble by utterances from
+the pulpit, as though doubt were really a destroyer. Of course, it
+seems commonplace the moment you think of it; and, still for your peace
+and for the restfulness of your mind as you look on the things that are
+taking place about us, hold fast to this simple idea.
+
+There is one other point which I wish to raise. What is the use of
+criticism? What is the use of all this investigating? Why indulge in
+all this doubt? And now let me give you an illustration which will lead
+me to answering this question and enforcing the point I have in mind. A
+farmer, if he selects a favorable piece of ground, plants good seed,
+cultivates it properly, if the rain falls and the sun shines, and the
+weather is propitious, will have a successful crop. Does it make any
+difference now whether the farmer has correct ideas about soil and seed
+and cultivation? Does it make any difference whether he has any true
+conception of the nature and work of the sunshine in producing this
+crop? In one sense, No. In another, a very important sense, Yes.
+Suppose the farmer, having gotten into his mind the idea that the sun
+is the source of all the life and growth of the things that he plants
+and the crops he cultivates, should say, "Well, now, it does not make
+any difference whether I have correct scientific theories about the sun
+or not: the sun carries on his work just the same." I have heard people
+say, over and over again, using an illustration like this: "What
+difference does it make what your theories are about the spiritual
+life, about the origin and nature of religion, about morality? If you
+live a good life, the results are just the same, whatever your thinking
+may be." And I grant it. But now suppose the farmer should say to
+himself: "The sun is the source of all the life that I am able to
+produce, that I see growing around me; and now I will worship him as a
+god. I will pray to him, I will sing songs of praise to him, I will
+bring birds and animals and burn sacrifices to him; and so I will win
+his favor, and get him to produce these wonderful results for me."
+Suppose he should so seek his results, and pay no attention to the
+character of the soil, to the kind of seed he planted, or to proper
+cultivation: would that make no difference?
+
+Do you not see that theory may be of immense practical importance in
+certain contingencies? Whether he has any knowledge of the sun or not,
+if he complies with the laws, the conditions, if he is fortunately
+obedient, then his results will be produced. But, if his ignorance, his
+superstition, lead him to neglect the natural forces with which he
+deals, then it may make all the difference in the world. So, as I study
+the history and development of religious thought, I see everywhere that
+men and women, through their ignorance in regard to the real nature of
+the universe and of God and of their own souls, are going astray,
+wasting time, wasting thought, wasting effort, misdirecting all these
+instead of complying with the real natural universal conditions on
+which these noblest and highest results which they desire depend.
+
+If a man, for example, believes that he is to please God by a
+sacrifice, by an offering, by swinging incense, by going through a
+certain ceremony, instead of being righteous and true, does it make no
+difference? Carry out the idea as far as you please, I think I have
+made plain the thought I had in mind.
+
+So it does make a difference what our thoughts, our theories, may be;
+and, therefore, there is good in this work of investigation which
+proposes to sift and test and try things, and find out the real nature
+of the forces which confront us and with which we have to deal.
+
+Now, then, I come to the positive answering of our question. Are there
+some things that doubt cannot touch? And are these things the most
+important ones, the ones that we need to feel solid under our feet?
+What do we need? We do not need to be able to unravel all the mysteries
+of the universe. Any quantity of the questions we ask are not practical
+ones. We do not need to wait for an answer to them. Any number of the
+things that are in doubt are of no practical consequence; and we need
+not wait for their settlement before we begin to live and to help our
+fellowmen and to do what we can to bring in the coming kingdom of our
+Father.
+
+I wish to note now a few of the things that seem to me very stable
+things, that doubt cannot disturb. And first I will say that which I
+mean when I use the word "God." I wish you to learn to separate between
+the word and the reality. Sometimes people are quarrelling over a label
+instead of the reality that is back of all. I care very little for a
+name. I care for things, for the eternal truths of the universe. May we
+then feel that modern doubt does not touch our belief in God? I ask you
+to consider a moment, and see. As we wake up, assuming nothing, and
+look abroad, what do we find? We find ourselves in the presence of a
+Power that is not ourselves, another Power, a Power that was here
+before we were born, a Power that will be here after we have died, a
+Power that has produced us, and so is our father and mother on any
+theory you choose to hold of it, a Power out of which we have come. Now
+suppose we look abroad, and try to find something in regard to the
+nature of this Power. We can conceive no beginning: we can conceive no
+end. And let me say right here that, as the result of all his lifelong
+study and thinking as an evolutionist, Mr. Herbert Spencer has said
+that the existence of this infinite and eternal Power, of which all the
+phenomenal universe is only a partial and passing manifestation, is the
+one item of human knowledge of which we are most certain of all.
+
+An Infinite Power, then, an eternal Power, shall I say an intelligent
+Power? At any rate, just as far as our intelligence can reach, we find
+that the universe matches that intelligence, responds to it, so that we
+must think of it, it seems to me, as intelligent. Out of that Power, as
+I have said, we have come; and who are we? Persons, persons that think,
+persons that feel, persons that love, persons that hope; and we are the
+children of this Power, and, according to one of the fundamental
+principles of science, nothing can be evolved which was not first
+involved, the stream cannot rise higher than its source, that which is
+produced must be equal to that which produces it.
+
+This Power, then, eternal, infinite, intelligent, must be as much as
+what we mean by person, by thought, by love, by hope, by all that makes
+us what we are. Shall we call a Power like this God? Shall we call it
+Nature? Shall we call it Law? Shall we call it Force? It seems to me
+that, if we take any name less and lower than God, we are indulging in
+a huge assumption, and a negative assumption at that. Suppose that,
+looking at one of you, I should call you body instead of calling you
+man. I should be assuming that you are only body, which I have no right
+to do. If I call this Infinite Power, then, Nature, Force, Law, Matter,
+I am indulging in a negative assumption which is scientifically
+unwarranted. As a reasonable being, then, I think I am scientifically
+warranted in saying that belief in God is something that all
+investigation only affirms, and affirms over and over again, and with
+still greater and greater force.
+
+I have not time to go into this at any further length this morning; but
+I believe that we are scientifically right in saying that all the
+doubt, all the investigation, all the questioning of the world, have
+only given us a stronger and more solid assurance that we have a divine
+Power around us, and that we are the children of that Power.
+
+In the next place, to carry the idea a little farther, we want, if we
+may, to believe that this Infinite and eternal Power manifested in the
+universe is a good Power. If it be not, we are hopeless. I hear
+reformers sometimes in their zeal picturing the dreadful condition of
+affairs socially or industrially or politically, and saying that the
+world is getting worse and worse, that the rich are getting richer, and
+the poor are getting poorer, and the republic is becoming more corrupt
+week by week and year by year, giving the impression that the world in
+general is on the down grade. If I believed that, I should give it up,
+I should see no reason for struggle and effort. If an Infinite Power is
+against me in my efforts to do good, what is the use of my making the
+effort?
+
+We want to know, then, as to whether a belief in the goodness of this
+Infinite Power is a thing that doubt and investigation have not touched
+and cannot disturb. Let us consider just a moment one or two thoughts
+bearing upon it.
+
+The pessimist tells us that the universe is bad all the way through,
+that this is the worst possible kind of world. When a man makes a
+statement like that, I always wish to ask him a question which it seems
+to me absolutely overturns his position, how did he happen to find it
+out? If the universe is bad all through, essentially bad, where did he
+get his moral ideal in the light of which to judge and condemn it? How
+does this bad universe produce an amount of justice and truth and love
+to be used as a measuring-rod in order to find out whether it will
+correspond with these ideals or not? That one question seems to me
+enough to turn pessimism into nonsense.
+
+Let us look at it in another way. As we look back, as far as we can
+towards the beginning of things, we find this fact: when man appeared
+on the earth, conscience was born, as I told you the other day, a sense
+of right came with him, and since that day he has been struggling to
+attain and realize an ever and ever enlarging and heightening ideal.
+This, then, the conscience, the sense of right, the ideal, must be a
+part of the nature of the universe that has produced them. And we
+notice that these have been growing with the advance of the ages.
+Before dwelling on that a little farther, let me touch another
+consideration which is germane to it.
+
+If you look over the face of human society, you get proof positive,
+scientific demonstration unquestionable, that good is in the majority,
+love is the majority power of the world. How do I know? You draw up a
+list of all those things that you call evil, and you will note, as you
+analyze them, that they are the things that tend to disintegrate, to
+separate, to tear down; and you draw up a list of those things that you
+call good, and you will find that they are the things that tend to
+build up, that bind human society together, and help on life and growth
+and happiness.
+
+Now the simple fact that human society exists proves that the things
+that tend to bind together are more powerful than the things that tend
+to disintegrate and tear down. Just as, for instance, if you see a
+planet swinging in the blue to-night, you will know that the
+centripetal power is stronger than the centrifugal, or there would be
+no planet there. That which tends to hold it together is mightier than
+that which tends to disintegrate and fling its particles away from each
+other. So the simple fact that human society exists proves that good is
+in the majority.
+
+And then, as we trace the development of human society from the far-off
+beginning, we find that justice, truth, tenderness, pity, love,
+helpfulness, all these qualities have been on the increase, and are
+growing; and, since the Power that has wrought in lifting up and
+leading on mankind is unspent, we believe that that Infinite Power of
+which we have been speaking is underneath this lifting, is behind this
+progress, and that the end may reasonably be expected to issue in that
+perfection of which we dream and whose outlines we dimly see afar off.
+
+An infinite power, then, a power that is good, a power that we may
+study, partially understand, at any rate, and co-operate with. We can
+help on this progress instead of hindering it. We can do something to
+make the world better. Here are two things then, God and goodness, that
+no doubt, no investigation, have ever been able to touch or destroy.
+
+A third thing. We want to believe that there is a meaning in these
+little individual lives of ours. Sometimes, when we read of pestilences
+or the great wars of the world, when we think of children born and
+dying so soon almost as they are born, when we note the brevity of even
+the longest life and take into account the sweep of the ages, we
+sometimes find ourselves depressed with the thought that these human
+lives of ours mean so little. It sometimes seems as though nature cared
+nothing for us, and swept us away as the first cold and the frost sweep
+away the millions of flies that had been buzzing their little hour of
+sunshine.
+
+We need to feel, then, if we are to live manly, womanly lives, that
+there is some plan, or may be some purpose in our being born, in our
+little struggle of a few years, in our being thwarted, in our
+succeeding, in our being sick or well, in our being rich or poor, in
+our being learned or ignorant. Does it make any difference how we live
+these lives of ours? Is there significance in them, any purpose, any
+plan, any outcome, to make it worth while for us to struggle and
+strive? We need to know this; and what do the investigation and the
+doubt and the struggle of the world say to us concerning these? If
+there is anything which science teaches us, it is that the infinite
+God, the Power, whatever we name it, that is the thought and life of
+this universe, is expressed just as perfectly in the tiniest atom as in
+the most magnificent galaxy. There is no such thing as an imperfect
+atom in this universe. The infinitesimal atoms below us, and the tiny
+orbits through which these atoms and molecules sweep, are as much in
+the grasp of the Eternal Law as the movements of the stars over our
+heads.
+
+Things are not lost in this universe out of the eternal purpose because
+they are little. So our apparent littleness, the weakness, feebleness
+of our lives, need not disturb the grandeur of our trust in this
+direction.
+
+Then as we study ourselves, as we see the good that has been growing
+through the ages, and as we note the fact that I hinted at a moment
+ago, that we can plant ourselves in the way, and hinder the working of
+the Divine, so far as our tiny strength goes, or that we can study the
+conditions of this growth and co-operate and help it on, and so be just
+as truly a builder of the highest and finest humanity of the future as
+God is himself, as we note this, are not our little lives raised into
+dignity and touched with glory? And why should I cringe and humiliate
+myself in the presence of a planet a thousand times larger than our
+earth, or a sun a million and a half times larger than the planet that
+shakes to its centre as I stamp my tiny foot? I, or one like me, has
+measured the sun, weighed it as an apothecary can weigh a gram in his
+scales. I have untangled the rays of his light, and am able to tell the
+substances that are burning those ninety millions of miles away, in
+order to send down that ray of light to our earth. I have untangled the
+mysteries of the heavens, and find these only aggregations of matter
+like those of which my body is composed; but I deal with all these and
+overtop them, speeding with my thought with the rapidity that leaves
+the lightning behind. And I know that, because I can think God and can
+trace his thoughts after him as he goes through his creative processes,
+so I am more than these,-- a child of the Creator. I may feel as a
+little boy feels who stands beside his father who is the captain of
+some mighty ship. The ship may be a million times greater than he; but
+the captain's intelligence and hand made it, shaped it, rules it, turns
+it whithersoever he will. And I am the captain's child, like him, and
+capable of matching his masterly achievement.
+
+And so I may believe that I, as a child of the infinite Father, am of
+infinite importance to him in this universe of his; and I can live a
+grand and noble life. Nobody can harm me but myself. Place an obstacle
+in my path, and, whether it be insurmountable or not, I may show myself
+a coward or a hero as I face it. Tell me I have made a mistake, I can
+repair it. Tell me I have committed some moral error, am guilty of sin,
+I confess it. But I can make all these mistakes and sins stairways up
+which I can climb nearer and nearer to God. You may test me with
+sorrows, affliction, take away my property, take away my health, take
+away my friends; and the way in which I receive these may either make
+me nobler or poorer and meaner, as I will. The sun shines upon the
+earth. It turns one clod hard, makes it incapable of producing
+anything. It softens and sweetens another, the same sun: the difference
+is in the way in which it is received. So these influences may touch
+me, may make me hard and bitter and mean and rebellious, or I may stand
+all, and say, as the old Stoics used to, "Even if the gods are not
+just, I w ill be just, and shame the gods."
+
+So man may say, Whatever comes upon me, I will meet it like a man, and
+like a child of the Highest, and so make my life significant, a part of
+the divine plan, something glorious and real.
+
+One thought more. When we have got through with this life, and stand on
+the shore of a sea whose wavelets lap the sands at our feet, and the
+ships of those that depart go out into the mist, and we wonder whither,
+what has doubt done, what has investigation done, touching this great
+hope of ours, as we face that which we speak of as the Unknown? So far
+as the old-time and traditional belief is concerned, I hold that doubt
+has been of infinite and unspeakable service. Certainly, I could rather
+have no belief at all than the old belief. Certainly, I would rather
+sink into unconsciousness and eternal sleep than wake to watch over the
+battlements of heaven the ascent of the smoke of the torment that goeth
+up forever and ever. But is there any rational ground for hope still? I
+cannot stop this morning even to suggest to you the grounds for the
+assertion that I am about to make. I believe that, if we have not
+already demonstrated eternal life, we are on the eve of such
+demonstration. I believe that another continent is to be discovered as
+veritably as Columbus discovered this New World. As he, as he neared
+the shore, saw floating tokens upon the waters that indicated to him
+that land was not far away, so I believe that tokens are all about us
+of this other country, which is not a future, but only a present,
+unseen and unknown to the most of us.
+
+But grant, if you will, that that is not to be attained, modern
+investigation and doubt have done nothing to touch the grounds of the
+great human hope that springs forever in the breast, that hope which is
+born of love, born of trust, born of our dreams, born of our yearning
+towards the land whither our dear ones have departed.
+
+Let me read you just a few lines of challenge to those that would raise
+a question as to the reality of this belief:
+
+What is this mystic, wondrous hope in me, That, when no star from out
+the darkness bore Gives promise of the coming of the morn, When all
+life seems a pathless mystery Through which tear-blinded eyes no way
+can see; When illness comes, and life grows most forlorn, Still dares
+to laugh the last dread threat to scorn, And proudly cries, Death is
+not, shall not be? I wonder at myself! Tell me, O Death, If that thou
+rul'st the earth, if "dust to dust" Shall be the end of love and hope
+and strife, From what rare land is blown this living breath That shapes
+itself to whispers of strong trust, And tells the lie, if 'tis a lie,
+of life? Where did this wondrous dream come from? How does it grow as
+the world grows?
+
+It must be a whisper of this eternal Being to our hearts; and so, in
+spite of all the advance of knowledge, all the criticism, it remains
+untouched, brightening and growing. And so there is reason, as we gaze
+out on the future, why we should look with contempt, if you will, upon
+the conditions that trouble us in this life, the burdens, the sorrows,
+the illnesses, when all that life means at its highest is that out of
+the conditions, whatever they are, I should shape a manhood, cultivate
+a soul, make myself worth living, fitting myself for that which gleams
+through the mist a promise, if you will, of something there beyond.
+
+Now I wish simply to call your attention to the fact that doubt does
+not touch this eternal Power, does not touch the fact that this is a
+good Power, and that it is on the side of goodness, does not touch the
+fact that we are the children of that Power and may co-operate with it
+for good and share its ultimate triumph, does not touch the great hope
+that makes it worth while for us to suffer, to bear, to dare all
+things. And these great trusts, are they not all we need to be men, to
+be women, to conquer the conditions of life and prove ourselves
+children of the Highest?
+
+EVOLUTION LOSES NOTHING OF VALUE TO MAN.
+
+I TAKE two texts, one of them from the New Testament. It may be found
+in the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, the
+seventeenth verse, "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the
+prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil." The other text is from
+Emerson: "One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never
+lost."
+
+The theory of evolution to-day, in the minds of all competent students,
+is quite as firmly established as is the law of gravity or the
+Copernican theory in astronomy. But, when it was first propounded in
+its modern form by Herbert Spencer, when he issued his first book, and
+when Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published, there was an outcry,
+especially throughout the religious world. There was a great fear
+shuddered through the hearts of men. They felt as though the dearest
+things on earth were threatened and were likely to be destroyed.
+Essayists declared that this theory undermined the foundations of
+morals. They said that it took away, not only the Bible, but God and
+all rational religion. They told us that, in tracing the ancestry of
+man back and down to the animals, humanity was being desecrated, and
+that the essential feature of man as a child of God was being taken
+away.
+
+If I believed that any of these things were true, I might not be an
+enemy of evolution, if indeed it be established; for there is very
+little reason in a man's setting himself against an established truth.
+But I should certainly be very sad, and should wish that we might hold
+some other theory of things. But I believe that it will appear, as we
+study the matter a little while carefully, that not only are these
+charges that have been brought against the theory baseless, but that
+right here is to be found not only the real progress of the world, but
+the true conservatism. Evolution is the most conservative theory that
+has ever been held. It keeps everything that has been found serviceable
+to man. It may transform it. It may lift it to some higher level, on to
+some loftier range of life; but it keeps and carries forward everything
+that helps. This inevitably and in the nature of things.
+
+There are two great tendencies which are characteristic of that method
+of progress or growth which we call by the name of evolution. One is
+the hereditary tendency, and the other is the tendency to variation.
+One, if it were in full force, would merely, forever and forever,
+repeat the past: the other, if it were in full force, would blot out
+all the past, and forever be creating something new. It is in the
+balance of these two tendencies that we discover the orderly growth of
+the world; and this orderly growth it is which constitutes evolution.
+Let me illustrate: Here is a tree, for example. The tendency that we
+call heredity would simply constantly repeat the past: the tendency to
+vary would vary the tree out of existence. The ideal is that it shall
+keep its form, for example, as an oak, but that, in the process of
+growth, the bark shall expand freely and sufficiently to make room for
+the manifestation of the new life. Now, if the bark had power to refuse
+expansion, of course, you know, the tree would die. If there were not
+power enough to maintain the form, then, again, the tree would cease to
+exist. This you may take as a type and illustration of the method of
+all life and all progress everywhere.
+
+Those people who naturally represent the heredity tendency  what we
+call the conservative people of the world are the ones who are always
+afraid of any change. They deprecate the utterance of new ideas. They
+hesitate to accept any new-fangled notions, as perhaps they call them.
+They are afraid that something precious, something sweet, something
+dear, that belonged to the past, may be lost.
+
+This manifests itself in all departments of life. I suppose that there
+never was an improvement proposed in the world that somebody did not
+object to it in the interests of the established order. And yet, if
+these people that do not want any changes made had had control of the
+world ten thousand years ago, where should we be to-day? We should
+still be barbarians in the jungles. For it is because these people have
+not been able to keep the world still that we have advanced here and
+there in the direction of what we are pleased to call civilization. You
+remember, for example, as illustrating this opposition, how the
+workingmen, the laborers of the time, a few years ago, in England,
+fought against the introduction of machinery. They said machinery was
+going to take their work away, it was going to break down the old
+industrial order of the world, it was going to make it impossible for
+the laborer to get his living. A few machines were to do the world's
+work; and the great multitude were to be idle, and, not having anything
+to do, were to receive no pay for labor, and consequently were to
+starve. This was the cry. The outcome has been that there has been
+infinitely more done, a much larger number of laborers employed,
+employed less hours in the day, paid higher wages; and in every
+direction the condition of the industrial world has been improved. I
+speak of this simply as an illustration of this tendency.
+
+When we come to religion, it is perfectly natural that the opposition
+here should be bitterer than anywhere else in the world; and it always
+has been. If you think of it just a little, if you read the history of
+the world a little, you will find that the last thing on earth that
+people have been willing to improve has been their religion. And this,
+I say, is perfectly natural. Why? Because men have instinctively felt
+and rightly felt, as I believe that religion was the most important
+thing in human life. They felt that it was the most sacred thing, that
+on it depended higher and more permanent interests than on anything
+else; and they have naturally been timid, naturally shrunk from change,
+with the fear that changing the theories and the practices and the
+thoughts was going to endanger the thing itself. They have said, We
+will hold on, at any rate, to these reverences, these worships, these
+precious trusts, these hopes; and we will hold on to the vessels in
+which we have carried them, because how do we know, if the vessels are
+changed or taken away, that we may not lose the precious contents
+themselves? This, I say, has been the feeling; and it has been a
+perfectly natural feeling.
+
+I wish then, this morning, for a little while to review with you some
+of the steps in evolution that the world has taken, and let you see how
+it has worked in different departments of human thought and human life,
+so that you may become convinced if possible, as I am that evolution
+has never thrown away, has never lost, anything precious in any
+department of the world since human life began. If I believed it did, I
+would fight against it. For instance, here is a devout Catholic
+servant-girl. She believes in her saints. She counts her beads and
+recites her Ave Marias. She goes to the cathedral on Sunday morning.
+And this is her world of poetry and romance. Here is a source of
+comfort. This throws a halo around the drudgery of the kitchen, the
+service of the house in which she is an employee. Would I take away
+this trust, this poetry, this romance, untrue as I believe it to be in
+form, inadequate as I believe it to be? Would I take it away, and leave
+her mind bare, her heart empty, leave her without the comfort, without
+the inspiration? Not for one moment. I would take it away only if, in
+the process, I could supply her with something just a little better, a
+little more nearly true, something that would give her comfort,
+something that would be an inspiration to her, something that would
+buoy her up as a hope, something that would help her to be faithful and
+true in the work of her daily life. This is what evolution means. It
+means taking away the old, and, in the process, substituting therefore
+something a little bit better. I would not take away the idol of the
+lowest barbarian unless I could help him to take a step a little
+higher, so that he should see the intellectual and spiritual thing that
+the idol stood for, and so enable him to walk his pathway of life as
+firmly, as faithfully, as hopefully, as he did before.
+
+I have been watching the work that has been going on in our streets
+during the last months. You, too, have seen how they will replace the
+track on an entire line of railway without stopping the running of the
+cars. They take away the old and worn and poorer, but constantly
+substitute something better for it; and human life moves right on.
+Everything is better; the change has come; but that change is; an
+improvement. This is what evolution does; for evolution is nothing new
+in the world. It is only the name for the method of God, which is as
+old as the universe itself, new to us because we have just discovered
+it; but as old as the light of a star that has been travelling for
+twenty-five thousand years, and has just come into the field of the
+astronomer's telescope, so that he announces it as a new discovery..
+This is what it means.
+
+Now let me call your attention to the fact that in the world below us
+the world of the trees and the shrubs and the flowers and the plants
+this evolutionary force is working after precisely the same method that
+I have just been indicating. All the fair, the beautiful things have
+been developed under this process, in accordance with this method, out
+of the first bare and rough and crude manifestations of vegetable life.
+Nothing has been thrown away that was of any value. Take it, for
+example, in regard to the wild weeds which have become the oats and the
+wheat and the barley and the rye of the world. All the old that was of
+value has been kept and has been developed into something higher and
+finer and sweeter. The aboriginal crab-apple has become a thousand
+luscious kinds of fruits; and the flowers all their beauty, all their
+fragrance, all their color and form? are the result of the working of
+this method of God's power that we have called evolution. Nothing of
+any value is left behind in the uncounted ages of the past. All that is
+of worth to-day has been transformed and lifted to some higher level
+and made a part of the wondrous life that is all around us.
+
+So, when you come to the animal life, you find the same thing. The
+swift foot, the flashing wing, the beauty of color, all the wonders of
+animal life have simply been developed in accordance with this method
+and under this impelling force which we call evolution, which is only a
+name for the working of God.
+
+When we come up to the level of man, what do we find? Man as an animal
+is not the equal of a good many of the other animals in the world. He
+is not as swift as the deer, he is not as strong as the lion, he cannot
+fly in the air like a bird, he cannot live in the sea like the fishes.
+He is restricted to the comparatively contracted area of the surface of
+the land. He is not as perfect as an animal; but what has evolution
+done? It has given him power of conquest over all these, because the
+evolutionary force has left the bodily structure, we need expect no
+more marked changes there, and has gone to brain. So this feeblest of
+all the animals physically speaking he would be no match for a hundred
+different kinds of animals that are about us is able to outwit them
+all, that is, to outknow, he has become the ruler of the earth. And not
+only has this evolutionary force gone to brain, it has gone to heart;
+and man has become a being whose primest characteristic is love. The
+one thing that we think of as most perfect, that we dream of as
+characterizing his future development, is summed up in his affectional
+nature. Then, too, he has become a moral being.
+
+There are times, like the present, when it seems as though the animal
+were at the top, and the affectional nature suppressed, and the
+conscience were ruled out of court; and yet you study the methods of
+modern warfare as compared with those of the past, you see how pity and
+tenderness and care walk by the side of every gun, hide in the rear of
+every battlefield to attend to the wounded and suffering. And you know
+what talk there has been of pity for the hungry, the desire of the
+world to feed those that need; and the one dominant note in the
+discussion of the war all over the world has been the question as to
+its being right. No matter how we may have decided, whether the
+decision be correct or not, the civilized world bows itself in the
+presence of its ideal of right, and demands that no war shall be fought
+the issue of which is not to be a better condition of mankind.
+
+Evolution, then, tends to the development of brain, heart, conscience,
+and the spiritual nature of man. It has left nothing behind that is of
+any value to us. It has transformed or sublimed or lifted all up into
+the higher range of the life that we are living to-day, and contains
+within itself a promise of the higher and the grander life that we
+reach forward to to-morrow.
+
+I wish now, for a moment, to illustrate the working of this in regard
+to some of the institutions of the world. If I had time, I could show
+you that the same law is apparent in the development of the arts,
+sculpture, painting, poetry. I must pass them by, however. As
+illustrating what I mean, let me take the one art of music. From the
+very beginning man has been interested in making some sort of sounds
+which, I suppose, have been regarded as music by him. Most of those
+that are associated with the barbaric man would be anything but music
+to us. The music, for example, that they give in connection with a play
+in a Chinese theatre would not be acceptable to the cultivated ear of
+Americans. We have left behind much that the world called music. We
+have left behind any number of musical instruments. We do not now have
+those that the Psalmist makes so much of, the old-time harp, the
+sackbut, the psaltery. I do not know, though you may, what kind of
+instruments they were. The world has completely forgotten them, and
+left them out of sight. And yet no musical note, no musical chord, no
+musical thought, no musical feeling, has been forgotten or dropped
+along the advancing pathway of the world's progress; and in our organs
+all the attempts at instruments of that kind from the beginning of the
+world are preserved, transformed and glorified. In our magnificent
+orchestras all the first feeble beginnings are developed until we have
+a conception of music to-day such as would have been utterly
+incomprehensible to the primeval man. What I wish you to note is and
+this is the use of my illustration that the advancing growth of the
+music of the world has forgotten nothing that it was worth while to
+keep.
+
+Let me give you one more illustration. Take it in the line of
+government. The first tribes were governed by two forces, brute force
+and superstitious fear. These were the two things that kept the primal
+tribes of the world in order, such order as was maintained in those
+far-off times. The world has gone on developing different types of
+government, different types of social order. I need not stop to outline
+them for you this morning: you know what they are; and I only wish you
+to catch the thought I have in mind. I suppose that every time one of
+the old types was about to pass away the adherents of that type have
+been in a panic lest anarchy was threatening the world. Believers in
+these types have said that it was absolutely necessary to keep them, in
+order to preserve social order. Take the attitude of the monarchy
+to-day, for example, as towards the republic. When we attempted to
+establish our republic here in this western world, it was freely said
+by the adherents of the old political idea in Europe that it would of
+necessity be a failure, that there was no possibility of a stable human
+order without a hierarchy of nobles with a king at the top; and I
+suppose they believed it. But we have proved beyond question that we
+can have a strong government, an orderly government, without either
+nobility or king. There is less government in the United States here
+to-day than in almost any other country of the world, a nearer approach
+to what the philosopher would call anarchy. Anarchy does not mean
+disorder, when a philosopher is talking: it means merely the absence of
+external government. And that is the ideal that we are approaching.
+
+Paul says, you know, that the law was made for wicked people, for the
+disobedient and the disorderly, not for good people. How many people
+are there in New York to-day, for example, who are honest, who pay
+their debts, who did not commit a burglary last night, who do not
+propose to be false to wife and home, on account of the law, the
+existence of courts and police? The great majority of the citizens of
+America to-day would go right on being honest and kind and loving and
+helpful, whether there were any laws or not. They are not kept to these
+courses of conduct by the law. They have learned that these are the
+fitting ways of life that these are the things for a man to do; and
+they despise themselves if they are less than man. In other words, this
+governmental order, which exists as an outside force, at last gets
+written in the heart and becomes a law of life.
+
+Now precisely the same process is going on in other departments of the
+world: it is going on in religion. And now let me come to religion, and
+illustrate the working of the law here. The old types of religious
+thought and life and practice, the first ones that the world knew, are
+long since outgrown. We regard them as barbaric, as cruel.
+
+We have learned that there are not a million gods of whom we need stand
+in awe. We have learned that God is no partial God. We have learned
+that God does not want us, as universal man once believed, to sacrifice
+the dearest object of our love. We have learned that he does not want
+us to sacrifice our first-born child, as the old Hebrews used to, and
+the remains of which custom are plainly visible throughout the Old
+Testament everywhere. We have left behind these old types of religious
+thought and life; but the world has lost nothing in the process. The
+world has not left religion behind. The whole process of growth and
+development in the sphere of the religious life and the development of
+man has been one of outgrowing crude and partial and inadequate
+thoughts and feelings about the universe and God and man and duty and
+destiny.
+
+We do not care so much about ceremony as the world did once. The most
+civilized people in the world are not so given to these things in their
+religious development. We do not care so much about creed as they did a
+thousand or five hundred years ago. We do not believe that God is going
+to judge us by our intellectual conceptions of him and of our fellow-
+men. And I suppose it is true, always has been true as it is to-day,
+that the adherent of any particular form or theory of the religious
+life has the feeling that, when that is threatened, religion is
+threatened; and he defends it passionately, fights for it, perhaps
+bitterly, feels justified in opposing, perhaps hating, those he regards
+as the enemies of God and his great and sacred and religious hopes. And
+yet we know, as we study the past, whether we can quite appreciate it
+as true in regard to the theories which I am voicing to-day, that the
+truth has never been in any danger, and the highest and finest and
+sweetest things in the religious life have never been in any danger,
+are not in any danger to-day.
+
+Let me indicate in two or three directions. There has been a class of
+thinkers, which has done a good deal of talking and writing in this
+direction, who are telling us that the poetry, the romance, the wonder,
+the mystery, of the world  those things that tend to bring a man to his
+knees and to lift his eyes in awe and reverence are passing away; that
+science is going to explore everything; that there is going to be no
+more unknown; and that, when we have completed this process, one of the
+great essentials of religious thought and feeling and life will have
+perished from among men. I venture to say to you that there has never
+been a time in the history of the world when there was so much of
+mystery, so much of wonder, so much of reverence, so much of awe, as
+there is to-day. We are apt to fool ourselves in our thinking, and,
+when we have observed a fact, and labelled it, to think we know it.
+
+For example, here is this mysterious force that we call electricity,
+which is flashing such light in our homes and through our streets as
+the world has never known before. The cars, loaded, are speeding along
+our highways with no visible means of propulsion. We step up to a
+little box, and put a shell to our ear, and speak and listen, and
+converse with a friend in Boston or Chicago, recognizing the voice
+perfectly, as though this friend were by our side. We send a message
+over a wire, under the deep, and talk to London and all round the
+globe; and we have labelled this force electricity. And, instead of
+getting down on our knees in reverence, we get impatient if our
+communication is delayed two minutes or three. We fool ourselves with
+the thought that, because we have called it electricity, we know it, we
+have taken the mystery out of the fact. Why, friends, do you know
+anything about electricity? Do you know what it is? Do you know why it
+works as it does? I do not; and I do not know of anybody on the face of
+the earth who does. The wonder of the "Arabian Nights" is cheap and
+tame and theatrical compared to the wonder of this everyday workaday
+world of ours, in the midst of which and by means of which we are
+carrying on our business and our daily avocations. The wonder of the
+carpet that would carry the person through the air who sat upon it and
+wished is nothing compared with the power of electricity, steam, any
+one of these invisible, intangible powers that are thrilling through
+the world to-day. There never was so much room for mystery, for awe,
+for poetry, for romance, as there is in the midst of our commercial
+life in this nineteenth century.
+
+This element of religion, then, is in no danger. We know nothing
+ultimately. Who can tell me what a particle of matter is? Who can tell
+me what a ray of light is, as it comes from a star? Who can tell me how
+the movements in the particles of air striking my eye run up into nerve
+and brain, and become translated into thought, into light, into form,
+into motion, into all this wondrous universe that surrounds us on every
+hand?
+
+Then take the element of trust. People used to think they could trust
+in their gods. Rebecca, for example, stole her father's gods, and hid
+them in the trappings of her camel, and sat on them. She thought, then,
+that she had a god near her who would care for her. The old Hebrew,
+with an ox-team, carried his God, in a box that he called the ark, into
+battle, and supposed that he had a very present help in time of need.
+But we have the eternal stability and order of the universe, a God that
+never forgets, a God on whom we can lean, in whom we can trust, who is
+not away off in heaven, but here, closer to us than the air we breathe,
+a God in whom we live and move and have our being.
+
+And has this evolution of the religious life of the world threatened
+the stability of truth? There never was a time on earth when there was
+such a passion for truth as there is today. What means all this intense
+activity of the scientific world? these men that devote their lives to
+some little fraction of the universe which they study through their
+microscope, not for pay, to find one little fragment of the truth of
+God; these critics that are rummaging the dust-heaps of the ages in
+the hope that they may find one little, bright-glittering particle of
+truth in the midst of the rubbish? There never was such a passion for
+truth as there is here and now.
+
+Are we going to lose the sense of righteousness which is the very heart
+of religion? There never was a time since the world began when the
+average man cared so much for righteousness, when he laid so much
+emphasis on human conduct, on kindness, on help, on all those things
+that make this life of ours desirable and sweet. The ideal of character
+and behavior has risen step by step from the beginning, and is higher
+to-day than it ever was before. Not because men fear a whipping, not
+because they are threatened with hell in another world, not because a
+God of vengeance is preached to them, because they have grown to see
+the beauty of righteousness, because they know that obedience to the
+laws of God means health, means sanity, means peace, means prosperity,
+means well-being, means all high and good and noble things. This
+righteousness is not driven into one by blows from outside: it blossoms
+out from the intellect and the conscience and the heart, as the
+recognized law of all fine and desirable and human living.
+
+What are we losing, then, as the result of this growth of the world in
+accordance with the law of evolution? Are we losing our hope of the
+future? The form of that hope is passing away. We no longer believe in
+an underground world of the dead, as the Hebrews did. We no longer
+believe in a heaven just above the blue, as Christendom has believed
+for so long. We no longer believe in a heaven where all struggle and
+thought and study and growth are left out, where there is to be only a
+monotonous enjoyment that would pall upon any living rational soul. The
+form of it is passing away; but there never was a time when there was
+such a great and inspiring hope, not simply for myself and my friends,
+not simply for my neighbors, not simply for my particular church. There
+never was a time when there was such a great hope, including humanity
+for this world and for the next, as that which inspires us now.
+
+Nothing, then, in religion that is of any worth has the world forgotten
+or is it likely to forget. All the old reverences and loves and trusts
+and inspirations and hopes and tendernesses are here intermingled. They
+are in the highest and noblest people; and they are being carried on
+and refined and purified and glorified as the world goes on.
+
+And now let me suggest one thought more that may be of comfort to some.
+A great many people have been accustomed to associate so much of their
+religion with the forms of their religious expression that they fancy
+that the world's outgrowing these means that religion is being
+outgrown. I said, you remember, when touching upon government as an
+illustration of the working of the law of evolution, that governmental
+forms were being outgrown just as fast as the world was becoming
+civilized. If this world ever becomes perfect, government will cease to
+be, in the sense of these external forms, simply because there will be
+no need of it; just as you take down a staging when you have completed
+a house. So I look forward to less and less care for the external forms
+of the religious life. I believe they will remain, and they ought to
+remain, just as long as they are any practical help to anybody; but,
+because a person ceases to need them, you must not think that he has
+ceased to be religious. When the world gets to be perfectly religious,
+there will be no need of any churches, there will be no need any more
+of preachers, there will be no need of any of the external ceremony of
+religion.
+
+You remember what the old seer says in the book of Revelation, as he
+looks forward to the perfect condition of things. He is picturing that
+ideal city which he saw in his vision coming down from God out of
+heaven. This was his poetical way of setting forth his idea of the
+perfected condition of humanity; and he said, speaking of that city,
+"And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God was the temple of it."
+
+The external forms pass away when the life needs them no more. Take,
+for example, the condition of things when Jesus came to Jerusalem. You
+know how they put him to death. And what did they put him to death for?
+They put him to death because he preached of a time when there would be
+no need of any temple, no need of any priesthood, no need of any of the
+external things that they regarded as essential to religious life. They
+thought he was blaspheming, they thought he was an enemy of God and of
+his fellowmen, because he talked that way. He said to the woman of
+Samaria, You think you must worship God on this mountain, Gerizim, and
+the Jews think they must worship him on Mount Moriah; but God is
+spirit, and the time will come when you will not care whether you are
+in this place or that, but will worship him in spirit and in truth.
+
+You see it was just along these lines that Jesus was preaching and
+working in his day. So, when humanity becomes perfected, external
+forms, that have helped mould and shape man into his perfection, will
+be needed no more. They will fall off, pass away, and be forgotten; but
+that will not mean that humanity has forgotten or left behind any great
+essential to the religious life. It will mean simply that he has taken
+them up into his own heart, absorbed them into his life. He naturally
+drops them when he is no longer in need of external supports.
+
+This law of evolution, then, is simply the method of God's progress
+from the beginning, the same method which was to be found in the
+lowest, the method which has lifted us to where we are, the method
+which looks out with promise towards the better things which are to
+come.
+
+The one life thrilled the star-dust through,
+In nebulous masses whirled,
+Until, globed like a drop of dew,
+Shone out a new-made world.
+The one life on the ocean shore,
+Through primal ooze and slime,
+Crept slowly on from less to more
+Along the ways of time.
+The one life in the jungles old,
+From lowly creeping things,
+Did ever some new form unfold,
+Swift feet or soaring wings.
+The one life all the ages through
+Pursued its wondrous plant
+Till, as the tree of promise grew,
+It blossomed into man.
+The one life reacheth onward still;
+As yet no eye may see
+The far-off fact, man's dream fulfill?
+The glory yet to be.
+
+WHY ARE NOT ALL EDUCATED PEOPLE UNITARIANS?
+
+THE religious opinions of the average person in any community do not
+count for much, if any one is studying them with the endeavor to find
+out their bearing on what is true or what is false. This is true not
+only of popular religious opinions, but of any other set of opinions
+whatever; and for the simple reason that most people do not hold their
+opinions as the result of any study, of any investigation, because they
+have seriously tried to find out what is true, and have become
+convinced that this, and not that, represents the reality of things.
+
+Let us note for a moment and I do this rather to clear the way than
+because I consider it of any very great importance  how it is that the
+great majority of people come by the religious opinions which they
+happen to hold. I suppose it is true in thousands of cases that a man
+or a woman is in this church rather than that merely as the result of
+inheritance and childhood training. People inherit their religious
+ideas. They are taught certain things in their childhood, they have
+accepted them perhaps without any sort of question; and so they are
+where they happen to be to-day. If you stop and think of it for just a
+moment, you will see that this may be all right as a starting-point,
+but is not quite an adequate reason why we should hold permanently, and
+throughout our lives, a particular set of ideas. If all of us were to
+accept opinions in this sort of fashion, and never put them behind us
+or make any change, where would the growth of the world be? How would
+it be possible for one generation to make a little advance on that
+which preceded it, so that we could speak of the progress of mankind?
+Then, when persons do make up their minds to change, to leave one
+church and go to another, it is not an uncommon thing for them simply
+to select a particular place of worship or a special organization for
+no better reason than that they happen to like it, to be attracted to
+it for some superficial cause. How many people who do leave one church
+for another do it as the result of any earnest study, or real endeavor
+to find the truth? And yet, if you will give the matter a moment's
+serious consideration, you will see that we have no sort of right to
+choose one theory rather than another, one set of ideas rather than
+another, because we happen to like one thing, and not something else.
+Liking or disliking, a superficial preference or aversion, is an
+impertinence when dealing with these great, high, and deep questions of
+God and the soul, of the true or the false.
+
+Then I have known a great many people in my life who went to a
+particular church for no better reason than mere convenience. It was
+easily accessible, it was just around the corner, they did not have to
+make any long journey, and did not have to put themselves out any to
+get up a little earlier on Sunday morning, which they would otherwise
+need to do. A mere matter of convenience! And this is so many times
+allowed to settle some great question of right or wrong. Then you will
+find those who select a particular church or a particular church
+organization, become identified with it, merely because on a casual
+visit to the place they were taken with the minister, happened to like
+his appearance, his method of speaking, the way he presented his ideas.
+Or perhaps they were attracted by the music. There are persons who
+decide these great questions of God and truth and the soul for no more
+important a reason than the organization and the capacity of the church
+choir.
+
+It is not an uncommon thing for people to attend some particular church
+because it promises to be socially advantageous to them. It is
+fashionable in a particular town. I have a friend, I still call him
+friend, a Boston lawyer, who told me in conversation about this subject
+one day that he deliberately went to the largest church he could find,
+and that, if in the particular city in which he was residing the Roman
+Catholic Church was in the majority, he should attend that. There are
+thousands of persons who wish to be in the swim, and who are diverted
+this way or that by what seems to them socially profitable. Think of
+it, claiming to be followers of the Nazarene, who was outcast, spit
+upon, treated with contempt, on whom the scribes and Pharisees of his
+day looked down with bitterness and scorn, and who led the world for
+the sake of his love for God out into a larger truth, who made himself
+of no reputation, claim to be followers of him, and let a matter of
+fashion decide whether they will go this way or walk in some other path
+I Think of the irony of a situation like that!
+
+Then, again, there are those who attach themselves to some one church
+rather than to another because, after looking over the ground, they
+made up their minds that it would be to their business advantage. They
+will become associated with a set of people who can help them on in the
+world. It is all very well, if there be no higher consideration, for a
+person to be governed in his action by motives like these; but is it
+quite right to decide a question of truth or falsehood, of God or duty,
+of the consecration of the human soul, of the service of one's fellow-
+men, on the basis of supposed financial advantage? There is hardly a
+year goes by that persons do not come to me, considering the question
+as to whether they will attend my church. I can see in a few minutes'
+conversation with them that they have some purpose to gain. They wish
+to be helped on in the prosecution of some scheme for their own
+advancement. If they succeed, they are devout Unitarians and loyal
+followers of mine. If not, within a few weeks I hear of them as devoted
+attendants somewhere else, where they have been able to make their
+personal plans a success.
+
+These are some of the reasons there are worthier ones than these which
+influence the crowd. There are, I say, worthier ones. Let me hint one
+or two. I do not think it is any sacrilege, or betrayal of confidence,
+for me to speak a name. The late Frances E. Willard, one of the ablest,
+truest, most devoted women I have ever known, frankly confessed to me
+in personal conversation that she was more in sympathy with my
+religious ideas than of those of the Church with which she was
+connected, but her love, her tender love and reverence for her mother
+and the memory of her mother's religion were such that she could not
+find it in her heart to break away. She loved the services her mother
+loved, she loved the hymns her mother sung, she loved the associations
+connected with her mother's life. All sweet, beautiful, noble; but, if
+nobody from the beginning of the world had ever advanced beyond
+mothers' ideas where should we be to-day? Is it not, after all, the
+truest reverence for mother, in the spirit of consecration she showed
+to follow the truth as you see it to-day, as she followed it as she saw
+it yesterday?
+
+So much to justify the statement I made, that the average popular
+belief on any subject is not a reliable guide to a person who is
+earnestly desiring to find the simple truth.
+
+Now let us come to the answer of the specific question which I have
+propounded. Why are not all educated people Unitarians? I ask this
+question, not because I originated it, but because it has been put to
+me, I suppose, a hundred times. People say, You claim to have studied
+these matters very carefully, you have tried to find the truth, you
+think you have found it. You have followed what you regard as the true
+method of search. If you have found the truth, and if other people,
+using this same method and being as unbiased as you, could also find
+it, how does it happen that Unitarians are in the minority? Why do not
+all persons who study and who are educated accept the Unitarian faith?
+This question, I say, has been asked me a great many times; and it is a
+question that deserves a fair, an earnest and sympathetic answer. Such
+an answer I am now to try to give.
+
+In the first place, let me make a few assertions. I have not time to
+prove them this morning; but they are capable of proof. The advantage
+of a scientific statement is that, though you do not stop to prove it,
+you know it can be proved any time, whenever a person chooses to take
+the time or trouble. For example, if I state the truth of the
+Copernican system, or that the earth revolves around the sun, and you
+challenge me to prove it in two minutes, I may not be able to; it may
+take longer than that; but I know it can be demonstrated to-morrow or
+next week or any time, because it has been demonstrated over and over
+again.
+
+I wish now to assert the truth of certain fundamental principles; and
+these principles, you note, are those which constitute the peculiarity
+of the Unitarian people as a body of theological believers. For
+example, that this which is all around us and of which we are a part is
+a universe is demonstrated beyond question. It is one, the unity of the
+universe. The unity of force, the unity of substance or matter, the
+unity of law, the unity of life, the unity of humanity, the unity of
+the fundamental principles of ethics, the unity of the religious life
+and aspiration of the world, these, I say, are demonstrated. And do you
+not see that demonstrating these carries along with it the
+unquestioned, the absolute demonstration of the unity of the power that
+is in the universe and manifests itself through it? The unity of God?
+The Lord our God is one! And this is no question of speculation, it is
+demonstrated truth. Now, as to any speculative or metaphysical division
+of God's nature into three parts or personalities, there is not, and
+there cannot be, in the nature of things, one slightest particle of
+proof. The unity is demonstrated: anything else is incapable of
+demonstration.
+
+Next, the Unitarian contention I say Unitarian, not because we
+originated it by any means, but simply because we first and chiefly
+among religious bodies have accepted it as to the origin and nature of
+man as science has unfolded it to us, thus precluding the possibility
+of the truth of any doctrine of any fall. This is not speculation, it
+is not whim. It is not something picked up by the way, that a man
+chooses because he likes it, and because he does not like something
+else. This is demonstrated truth, as clearly and fully demonstrated as
+is the law of gravity or the fact that water will freeze at a certain
+temperature. Then the question of the Bible. The Unitarian position in
+regard to the origin, the method of composition, the authenticity and
+the authority of Biblical books, is a commonplace of scholarship. There
+is no rational question in regard to it any more. Next, the question of
+the origin and nature of Jesus the Christ. The naturalness of his
+birth, the naturalness of his death, his pure humanity, are made
+clearer and surer by every new step which investigation takes; and
+there is nothing in the nature of proof that is conceivable in regard
+to any other theory. If any one chooses to accept it, well; but nobody
+claims, or can claim, to prove it, to settle it, to demonstrate it as
+true. It becomes an article of faith, a question of voluntary belief;
+but there is no possibility of holding it in any other way. So as to
+the nature of salvation. It is a matter of character; a man is saved
+when he is right. And that he cannot be saved in any other way is
+demonstrable and demonstrated truth.
+
+Now, these are the main principles which constitute the beliefs of
+Unitarians; and in any court of reason they are able to make good their
+claim against any corner. And, if there be no other motive at work
+except the one clear-eyed, simple desire to find the truth, there can
+be no two opinions concerning any of them.
+
+Why, then, are not all thoughtful, educated people Unitarians? Well may
+the listener ask, in wonder, if the statements I have just been making
+are true. Now I propose to offer some suggestions, showing what are
+some of the influences at work which determine belief, and which have
+very little to do with the question as to whether the beliefs are
+capable of establishing themselves as true or not.
+
+In the first place, let us raise the question as to what is generally
+meant by education. We assume that all educated people ought to agree
+on all great questions; and they ought, note now what I am saying, they
+ought, if they are really and truly educated, and if with a clear and
+single eye they are seeking simply the truth. But, in order to
+understand the situation, we need to note a good many other things that
+enter into this matter of determining the religious path in which
+people will walk. Now what do we mean by education? Popularly, if a man
+has been to school, particularly if he is a college graduate, if he can
+read a little Latin and speak French, and knows something of music, if
+he has graduated anywhere, he is spoken of as educated. But is that a
+correct use of language? Are we sure that a man is educated merely
+because he knows a lot of things or has been through a particular
+course of study? What does a human education mean? Does it not mean the
+unfolding, the development of our faculties in such a way that in the
+intellectual sphere we can come into contact with and possession of the
+reality of things, the truth? Intellectually, is there any other object
+of education than to fit a man to find the truth? And yet let me give
+you a case. Here is a man, I take it as an illustration simply, not
+because I have anything particular against the Catholic Church any more
+than against any other body of believers, who has been through a
+Catholic college, has made himself master of Catholic doctrine, become
+familiar with theological and ecclesiastical literature; suppose he
+knows all the languages, or a dozen of them, having them at his
+fingers' ends. Do you not see that as a truth-seeker in a free world he
+may not be educated at all? He may be educated, as we say, or trained
+is the better word, into acceptance of a certain system of traditional
+thought, that can give no good reason for itself; for his prejudices,
+his loves and hates may be called into play. He may be trained into the
+earnest conviction that it is his highest duty to be loyal to a
+particular set of ideas.
+
+Take the way I was educated. I grew up reading the denominational
+reviews, and the denominational newspapers. I was taught that it was
+dangerous and wicked to doubt. I must not think freely: that was the
+one thing I was not permitted to do. I went to a theological school,
+and had drilled into me year after year that such beliefs, about God
+and man and Jesus and the Bible and the future world, were
+unquestionably true, and that I must not look at anything that would
+throw a doubt upon them. And I was sent out into the world graduated,
+not as a truth-seeker, but to fight for my system, as a West Point
+graduate is taught that he must fight for his country without asking
+any questions.
+
+Do you not see that this, which goes under the name of education,
+instead of fitting a man to find the truth, may distinctly and
+definitely unfit him, make it harder for him to find any truth except
+that which is contained in the system which has been drilled into him
+from his childhood up and year after year? Education, in order to fit a
+man to be a truth-seeker, must be something different from this merely
+teaching a man a certain system, a certain set of ideas, and drilling
+him into the belief that he must defend these ideas against all
+corners.
+
+A good many people, then, who are called educated, are not educated at
+all. I have had this question asked me repeatedly: If your position is
+true, here is a college graduate, and here is another; and here is a
+minister of such a denomination, or a priest of the Catholic Church;
+why do they not accept your ideas? Do you not see, however, that this
+so-called education may stand squarely in the way?
+
+Now, in the second place, I want to dwell a little on the difficulty of
+people's getting rid of a theory which possesses their minds, and
+substituting for it another theory. And I wish you to note that it is
+not a religious difficulty nor a theological difficulty nor a Baptist
+difficulty nor a Presbyterian difficulty: it is a human difficulty.
+There is no body of people on the face of the earth that is large
+enough to contain all the world's bigotry. It overflows all fences and
+gets into all enclosures. Discussing the subject a little while ago, by
+correspondence with a prominent scientific man in New England, I got
+from him the illustrations which I hold in my hand, tending to set
+forth how difficult it is for scientific men themselves to get rid of a
+theory which they have been working for and trying to prove, and
+substitute for it another theory. I imagine that there may be a
+physiological basis for the difficulty. I suggest it, at any rate. We
+say that the mind tends to run in grooves of thought. That means, I
+suppose, that there is something in the molecular movements of the
+brain that comes to correspond to a well-trodden pathway. It is easy to
+walk that path, and it is not easy to get out of it. Let it rain on the
+top of a hill; and, if you watch the water, you will see that it seeks
+little grooves that have been worn there by the falling of past rains,
+and that the little streams obey the scientific law and follow the
+lines of least resistance. There comes a big shower, a heavy downfall;
+and perhaps it will wash away the surface and change the beds of these
+old watercourses, create new ones. So, then, when there comes a deluge
+of new truth, it washes away the ruts along which people have been
+accustomed to think; and they are able to reconstruct their theories.
+Now let me give you some of these scientific illustrations. First, that
+heat is a mode of motion was proved by Sir Humphry Davy and Count
+Rumford before 1820. In 1842 Joule, of Manchester, England, proved the
+quantitative relation between mechanical energy and heat. In 1863 note
+the dates  Tyndall gave a course of lectures on heat as a mode of
+motion, and was even then sneered at by some scientific men for his
+temerity. Tait, of Glasgow, was particularly obstreperous. To-day
+nobody questions it; and we go back to Sir Humphry Davy and Count
+Rumford for our proofs, too. It was proved scientifically proved then;
+but it took the world all these years, even the scientific world, to
+get rid of its prejudices in favor of some other theory, and see the
+force of the proof.
+
+Now, in the second place, it was held originally that light was a
+series of corpuscles that flew off from a heated surface; but Thomas
+Young, about the year 1804, demonstrated the present accepted theory of
+light. But it was fought for years. Only after a long time did the
+scientific world give up its prejudice in favor of the theory that was
+propounded by Newton. But to-day we go back to Young, and see that he
+demonstrated it beyond question.
+
+In the third place, take another fact. Between 1830 and 1845 Faraday
+worked out a theory of electrical and magnetic phenomena. It was proved
+to be correct. Maxwell, a famous chemist in London, looked over the
+matter, and persuaded himself that Faraday was right; but nobody paid
+much attention to either of them; until after a while the scientific
+world, through the work of its younger men, those least wedded to the
+old-time beliefs, conceded that it must be true.
+
+The Nebular Theory was proved and worked out by Kant more than a
+hundred and thirty years ago. In 1799 Laplace worked it out again; but
+it was a long time before it was accepted. And now we go back to Kant
+and Laplace for our demonstration.
+
+Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published in 1859. But it was
+attacked by scientists as well as theologians on every hand. Huxley
+even looked at it with a good deal of hesitancy before he accepted it.
+To-day, however, everybody goes back to the "Origin of Species," and
+finds the whole thing there, demonstration and all.
+
+Lyell published a book on the antiquity of man in 1863. It was twenty-
+five years before all the scientific men of the world were ready to
+give up the idea that man had been on the earth more than six or eight
+thousand years.
+
+So we find that it is not theologians only; it is scientists, too, that
+find it difficult to accept new ideas. I know scientific men among my
+personal friends who are simply incapable of being hospitable to an
+idea that would compel them to reconstruct a theory that they have
+already accepted. Why are not all educated men Unitarians? Why do not
+scientific men accept demonstrated truth when it is first demonstrated
+as truth? It puts them to too much trouble. It touches their pride.
+They do not like to feel that they have thrown away half their lives
+following an hypothesis that is not capable of being substantiated.
+
+Then, in the third place, there are men, and educated men as the world
+goes, who deliberately decline to study new truth; and they are men in
+the scientific field and in the religious field. They purposely refuse
+to look at anything which would tend to disturb their present accepted
+belief. In my boyhood I used to hear Dr. John O. Fiske, a famous
+preacher in Maine. He told a friend of mine, in his old age, that he
+simply refused to read any book that would tend to disturb his beliefs.
+Professor William G. T. Shedd, one of the most distinguished
+theologians of this country, a leading Presbyterian divine, published
+so I am not slandering him by saying it a statement that he did not
+consider any book written since the seventeenth century worth his
+reading. And yet we have a new world since the seventeenth century, a
+new revelation of God and of man. To follow the teaching of the
+seventeenth century would be to go wrong in almost every conceivable
+direction. What is the use of paying any attention to the theological
+or religious opinions of a man who avows an attitude like that?
+
+Faraday, to come now to a scientific illustration, so that you will not
+think I am too hard on theologians, Faraday belonged to one of the most
+orthodox sects in England; and he used to say deliberately that he kept
+his religion and his science apart. He says, "When I go into my closet,
+I lock the door of my laboratory; and, when I go into my laboratory, I
+lock the door of my closet." He did very wisely to keep them apart;
+for, if they had got together, there would certainly have been an
+explosion.
+
+Another scientific illustration is Agassiz. Agassiz unconsciously
+wrought out and developed some of the most wondrous and beautiful
+proofs of evolution that the world has ever known; and yet he fought
+evolution to the last day of his life, simply because he had accepted
+the other theory. And he got it into his head that there was something
+about evolution that tended to injure religion and degrade man, not a
+rational objection, not a scientific objection, but a feeling, a
+prejudice.
+
+There is another class of people that I must refer to. Institutions and
+organizations come into being, created, in the first place, as the
+embodiment and expression of new and grand truths; and after a Arile
+their momentum becomes such that the persons who are connected with
+them cannot control their movements, and these persons become victims
+of the organizations and institutions to which they belong. So, when a
+new truth appears, the old organization rolls on like a Juggernaut car,
+and crushes the life, so far as it is possible, out of everything in
+its way. Take, for example, and note what a power it is and what an
+unconscious bribe it is to those who belong to it, the great Anglican
+Church. A man's ambitions, if he has learning, power, ability, tell him
+that there is the Archbishopric of Canterbury ahead of him as a
+possibility. His hopes, the chances of promotion and power, are with
+the institution. And, then, it is such a tremendous social influence.
+It is no wonder, then, that men who are not over-strong, who have not
+the stuff in them out of which heroes are made, should cling to the
+institution and remain loyal to it, even while they are false to the
+truth that used to animate it and for which alone any institution ought
+to exist.
+
+Let me give you another illustration. Edward Temple, late Bishop of
+London, and who is now the Archbishop of Canterbury, had a priest of
+the established Church come to him and make a confession of holding
+certain beliefs which he knew were heretical. The archbishop said to
+him frankly: As Edward Temple, I believe them, I am in sympathy with
+your views. As the head of the English Church, I must be opposed to
+them; and the opinions which you hold cannot be tolerated. That is what
+the influence of a great organization may come to.
+
+Let me give you another concrete illustration. Here is our American
+Bible Society, which publishes and circulates millions of Bibles all
+over the world. It is obliged, as at present organized, to print and
+distribute the King James version of the Bible; but there is not a
+scholar or a minister connected with the organization anywhere who does
+not know at least, since the revision at any rate that in many
+important respects the King James version is not an accurate
+translation of the original, even if that is conceded to be infallible.
+So that this organization stands to-day in the position of being
+obliged to circulate all over the world for God's truth any number of
+teachings that are simply blunders of the translator, of the copyist,
+or interpolated passages that have come down from the past.
+
+So men in every direction become persuaded that they must be loyal to
+the organization. I know cases where a minister in conversation with a
+friend has said: So long as I remain a member of this Church, I have
+got a great institution back of me, and I can accomplish so much
+socially and in every way on account of it. I know I do not believe
+half of the creed, but any number of other ministers are in the same
+box. And so they stay true to the organization, while truth to the
+truth is sacrificed.
+
+One other influence that keeps so many of these old ideas alive or
+prolongs their existence beyond the natural term  is right in here. Any
+number of men, educated, strong, prominent men, give their countenance
+and influence to the support of old-time religious organizations
+because they believe that somehow or other they are serviceable as a
+police force in the world, they keep people quiet, they help preserve
+social order. I have had people over and over again say that they
+believed it would be a great calamity to disturb the Roman Catholic
+Church, because it keeps so many people quiet. Do you know, friends, I
+regard this as the worst infidelity that I know of on the face of the
+earth. It is doubt of God, his ability to lead and manage his world
+without cheating it. It is doubt of truth, as to whether it is safe for
+anybody except very wise people, like a few of us! It is doubt of
+humanity, its capacity to find the truth, and believe in it and live on
+it. Do you believe that God has made this universe so that it is
+healthier for the masses to live on a lie than it is for them to live
+on the truth? Is that your confidence in God? Is that the kind of God
+you worship? It is not the kind I worship. There is no danger of the
+ignorant masses of the world getting wise too fast, judging by the
+experience of the past up to the present time. There is only one thing
+that is safe; and that is truth. Do you know what the trouble was at
+the time of the French Revolution? It was not that the people began to
+reason and think, and lost their faith, as so frequently said by
+superficial historians: it was that they waked up at last to the idea
+that the aristocracy and the priesthood had not only been fleecing them
+financially and keeping them down socially, but had been fooling them
+religiously, until at last they broke away, having no confidence left
+in God or priest or educated people or nobility or anything. No wonder
+they made havoc. If you want to make a river dangerous, dam it up, keep
+the waters back, until by and by the pressure from the hills and the
+mountains becomes so great that it can be restricted no longer; and it
+not only breaks through the dam, but bursts all barriers, floods the
+country, sweeps away homes, farms, cattle, human beings, towns, cities,
+leaving ruin in its path. Let rivers flow as God meant them to; and
+they will be safe.
+
+So let the world learn,-- learn gradually, and adapt itself to new
+truth as it learns, and there will be an even and orderly march of
+human progress. The danger is in our setting ourselves up as being
+wiser than God, wiser than the universe, and doling out to the
+multitude the little fragments of truth that we think are fitted for
+their digestion. The impertinence of it, and the impiety of it!
+
+I must not stop to deal with other reasons which lie in my mind this
+morning. You can think along other channels for yourselves. I have
+simply wished to suggest that, in the kind of world we are living in,
+you may not be sure, at any particular age in history, that a set of
+ideas is going to be accepted by the multitude merely because they are
+true; and, because they are not accepted at once, you are not,
+therefore, to come to the conclusion that they are not true. There
+never has been a time in the history of the world when the truth was
+not in the minority. Go back to the time of Jesus: do you not remember
+how the people asked whether any of the scribes or the Pharisees
+believed on him? They were ready to accept him if they could go with
+the crowd; but it never occurred to them to raise the question as to
+whether it was their duty to go with him while he was alone, as to
+whether two or three might not represent some higher conception of God,
+some forward step on the part of humanity. Consider for just a moment,
+let it be in literature, in art, in government, in ethics, anywhere,
+find out where the crowd is, and you will find where the truth is not.
+Disraeli made a very profound remark when he said that a popular
+opinion was always the opinion which was about to pass away. By the
+time a notion gets accepted by the crowd, the deeper students are
+seeing some higher and finer truth towards which they are reaching.
+
+The pioneers are always in the minority. The vanguard of an army is
+never so large as the main body that comes along behind after the way
+has been laid out for it.
+
+"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust."
+
+That is Lowell's suggestion, in that famous poem of his. If we care for
+truth, we shall not wait until it becomes popular. The truth in any
+direction to-day, if we had the judgment of the world, would be voted
+down. Christianity would be voted down among the religions;
+Protestantism would be voted down in Christianity; and the highest and
+finest thinkers in the Protestant churches would be voted down by the
+majority of the members.
+
+Do not be disturbed, then, or troubled, because you have not the crowd
+and the shouting accompanying you on your onward march; and remember
+that there must be something of heroism in this consecration to truth.
+I wish to quote to you, as bearing on this truth, a wonderfully fine
+word which I have just come across in a recent number of the
+Cosmopolitan Magazine, the word of the Hon. Thomas B. Reed, the Speaker
+of the House of Representatives. He says, "One with God may be a
+majority; but crucifixion and the fagot may antedate the counting of
+the votes." But, if it means crucifixion and the fagot, and we claim to
+be followers of the Nazarene and worthy of him, even for that we shall
+not shrink. It is our business simply to raise the question, and try to
+answer it or ourselves, Which way must I go to follow the truth? And
+that way I must tread, whether it means life or death, whatever the
+consequences; for the truth-seeker is the only God-seeker.
+
+WHERE IS THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH?
+
+As you are aware, there are certain churches that have taken the name
+of Evangelical, thereby, of course, putting forth the claim that in
+some special or peculiar way they have the gospel in keeping. For
+"Evangel" is the word translated "gospel," "Evangelist" is a "preacher of
+the gospel," "Evangelical" is the appropriate name for the church whose
+ministers preach the gospel. And the word "gospel," as you know,
+translated, means good news. It is the proclamation of hope, of
+something that the world has been groping in darkness for, a message
+that should lift the burden off the human heart, make men stronger to
+endure, fill them with cheer in the midst of life's difficulties and
+dangers, and give them a trust with which to walk out into the darkness
+that lies at the end.
+
+A certain section, I say, of the Christian Church has appropriated this
+name; and by common consent it has been conceded to it. And as usage
+makes language, and the dictionaries only record the results of popular
+usage, why, of course, we must confess that this use of words is right.
+Right in that sense, I say. But I wish to go back of this popular usage
+this morning, and raise the question as to whether these churches that
+claim the title are the ones to whom it peculiarly or exclusively
+belongs. I wish to put forward the claim that we, though the idea is
+entirely against popular thought, are really the ones who are preaching
+the gospel of God, and that the liberals of the world come nearer today
+to proclaiming the actual original gospel of Jesus the Christ than do
+any other body of Christians in the world. I wish to do this, not in
+any spirit of antagonism, but simply by way of clear definition, and
+that we may understand where we are, and may unfalteringly and
+trustingly and loyally and hopefully go on to do the highest work that
+was ever committed to human hands.
+
+At the outset, though it will necessitate my saying certain things
+which I have said to you before, I must outline briefly that body of
+doctrine which goes by the name of "Evangelical." I will not go back
+two or three hundred years to include in it such dogmas as
+Foreordination, Election, the Damnation of non-Elect or non-Baptized
+Infants, though these doctrines still remain in the creeds. I will take
+what must be considered the simpler and fairer course of confining
+myself to setting forth those beliefs which are generally accepted, and
+which are made a part of the creed of the so-called "Evangelical
+Alliance" that is, an organization including representatives of all the
+great so-called Evangelical Churches. These beliefs, in brief, are that
+God created the world perfect in the first place, but that in a very
+short time it was invaded by the evil powers, and mankind rebelled
+against the Creator, and became the subjects of the devil as the god of
+this world. Then man, by thus rebelling against God, lost his
+intellectual power to discern truth, became mentally unable to discover
+spiritual truth, to find the divine way in which he ought to walk; and
+that he became morally incapable, so that, even when the truth was
+presented to him, he felt an aversion towards it, and was disinclined
+to accept it. The next point is this being the condition of things that
+God began to reveal himself to the world, first, by angel messengers,
+by prophets, by inspired men, and that then at last, through certain
+chosen mediums, he wrote a book telling men the truth about their
+condition, about his feeling towards them, about what they ought to do,
+and the destiny involved in the kind of life they should live here.
+After the world had been in existence about four thousand years,
+according to this teaching, and very little headway had been made even
+among the chosen people, the few that had been selected from the great
+outside and wandering nations, God himself comes down to earth, by
+means of a woman specially prepared to be his mother he is born without
+a human father. He lives, he suffers, he dies. This, after one theory
+or another, I need not go into them, to make it possible for God to
+forgive, and to enable him to save those who should accept the terms
+which he should offer.
+
+Then, after his withdrawal from the earth, his Church is organized
+under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit. Its mission is to
+proclaim the gospel among all nations. That proclamation has gone on;
+but after two thousand years not a third of the world has heard the
+gospel, not a third of the people who walk the planet knows anything
+about the book that has been written. But they still stumble along in
+darkness, worshipping anything except the one only and true God. So
+that this effort up to the present time would strike us, if we judged
+it as a human device, as being a sad and lamentable failure.
+
+The upshot of this, according to the Evangelical creed, is that the
+great majority of the world is to be permanently lost. Only a few,
+those who are converted or those becoming members of the true Church,
+connected with it sacramentally or in some way, only the few are to be
+saved, and the great majority outcast forever.
+
+This, in substance, makes up what has been called the gospel; and those
+who claim that they are preaching the gospel are preaching these things
+as true. I am well aware  and I would not have anybody suppose that I
+overlooked it  that this creed is undergoing very striking and marked
+changes, and that a great many of those things which some of us look
+upon as more objectionable are being left out of sight, and not
+preached, as they used to be, though they still remain in the creeds.
+
+I am aware, for example, that what it is to be orthodox or evangelical
+has been reduced to very low terms as compared with those which I have
+just set forth; that is to say, reduced to very low terms in certain
+quarters. For instance, Dr. Lyman Abbott, of Brooklyn, tells us that we
+need not believe in the infallibility of the Bible any more; that we
+need not believe in the old-time Trinity; that we need not believe that
+Jesus was essentially different from a man; we need not believe in the
+virgin birth, unless we find it easy to accept it. But the two things
+which he tells us we must believe in order to be orthodox, or
+evangelical, are that in some way, though he does not define how, the
+Bible contains a special message from God to the world, and that in
+some way Jesus particularly and specially represents God, and that he
+reveals him to men, so that, when he speaks, he speaks with authority,
+as representing divine truth. Everlasting Damnation eliminated,
+Foreordination not referred to, the Trinity transformed, Infallibility
+no longer insisted on, the humanity of Jesus granted, to be orthodox,
+according to Dr. Abbott, has become a comparatively simple thing.
+
+In my conversations with clergymen of other churches during the past
+winter I have discovered that there, too, among certain men, the
+conditions of being orthodox are a great deal simpler than they were a
+hundred years ago. An Episcopalian tells me it is only necessary to
+accept the Nicene and the Apostles' Creeds, and that even then one is
+at liberty to interpret them as he pleases; that this is what
+constitutes Orthodoxy and makes one evangelical.
+
+But this process of eliminating the hard doctrines has not gone on in
+any authoritative way on the part of the Church itself. There has been
+no proclamation of any such liberty allowed; and I am not aware that
+the most of these men have made any public statement in their own
+churches of these positions. It may be known through personal
+conversations that they hold these views; and, if they are rendering
+good service, they may not be disturbed by the church authorities in
+their positions.
+
+So much, then, for a statement as to what constitutes the Evangelical
+Church, as to what must be the message of the minister who is to preach
+"the gospel of Christ."
+
+Now I wish to call your attention for a moment to another way of
+looking at these doctrines. I am not to question their truth. I simply
+wish to ask you to note as to whether, considering them true, we should
+be inclined to speak of them as good news. Are they a gospel? Can we
+with gladness proclaim them to men? For example, suppose God, after
+creating the world, loses control of it, an evil power comes in, his
+enemy, takes possession of his fair earth, alienates from him the
+hearts of the only two of his children who are in existence here, and
+who are to be the parents of a countless race. Suppose that is true. Is
+it something we would like to believe? Is it good news? Can we call it
+an integral part of a gospel?
+
+Suppose, again, that God writes a book, an infallible book, and gives
+it to whom? To a few people, to the little company of Jews who lived on
+that little narrow strip of land on the eastern shore of the
+Mediterranean. He does not give it to anybody else. He has given,
+indeed, according to this theory, the Old Testament and the New to
+Christendom since that day. But think a moment.
+
+According to what we know to be true now, man was on this planet for
+two or three hundred thousand years before God revealed himself at all;
+and the race went stumbling on and falling in darkness, no light, no
+hand stretched out to help, no voice speaking out of the silent
+heavens, the world, apparently, absolutely forgotten, so far as God's
+truth was concerned. Suppose that, after two or three hundred thousand
+years, God did give an infallible book to the world. As I had occasion
+to say a moment ago, comparatively a very small part of his children
+have heard anything about it. And, then, what is very striking, the
+proofs of its having come from him are so weak that most of the wisest,
+the best, the noblest of the world, cannot accept any such claim on its
+behalf. Is this, if it be true, good news? Would we speak of it as a
+gospel, something of which to be glad, something to proclaim to mankind
+as a cheer, a message from on high?
+
+Once more, suppose, after the world had been in existence for two or
+three hundred thousand years, God comes down, incarnates himself, wears
+a human body, and does what he can to save men. If it is true, in the
+economy of the divine government, that human souls could be saved in no
+other way, is that good news? Would we think of it as a gospel to
+proclaim to mankind, that God himself must suffer, must be outcast, be
+spit upon, be reviled, be put to death, and that only so could he
+forgive one of his wandering children, and bring him back to himself?
+
+Then, once more, suppose all this to be true, and suppose that, as the
+outcome of it all, the countless millions of men and women and children
+that have walked the earth during the last three hundred thousand
+years, until the Jews received their first light from heaven, suppose
+that they have been lost: that is a part of this gospel. Suppose that
+since that time all the nations outside of Christendom have been lost:
+that is a part of this gospel. Suppose that not only this be true, but
+that all people in Christendom who have not been members of churches
+have been lost. Suppose even, as I used to hear it preached when I was
+a boy, that large numbers of those who were church members were not
+really children of God, and would be lost. Suppose this most horrible
+doctrine be true. Is it good news? Could we proclaim it with any heart
+of courage as a part of the gospel of God?
+
+It seems to me, then, that I am bringing no railing accusation when I
+say that those Churches that claim to be Evangelical are not
+proclaiming a gospel to the world. But, though this be literally true,
+they may claim that they are delivering the message of Jesus the
+Christ, and that, from their point of view, this is relatively a piece
+of good news, good news, at any rate, to the few who are going to be
+saved. So I ask you now to turn, while I examine with you for a few
+moments the essence of the gospel which Jesus proclaimed. Note its
+terms. Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of
+God, and saying: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at
+hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel;" that is, this proclamation of
+good news, the coming of God's kingdom. Was this the essential thing in
+the gospel of Christ?
+
+Let me ask you now to look with me for a few moments. You are perfectly
+well aware of the fact that the Jews cherished a belief in the coming
+of a Messiah and the establishment of God's kingdom here on earth and
+among men. You are not so well aware, perhaps, unless you have made a
+study of it, that a belief like this has not been confined to the Jews.
+In many other nations a similar expectation has been cherished. We find
+it, for example, among some of the tribes of our North American
+Indians. It is world-wide, in other words, in its range. It is no
+peculiarity of the Jews. But let us confine ourselves a moment to their
+particular hope. It is a perfectly natural belief. It required no
+revelation in order for it to grow up. They believed that the God of
+the world, of the universe, was their God; that they were his chosen
+people. Do you not see what a necessary corollary would be a belief in
+their ultimate prosperity and triumph? God would certainly bless and
+give the kingdom to that people which he had specially selected for his
+own. And so, as the coming of the kingdom was postponed, they believed
+that it was because they had not complied with the divine conditions,
+they had not kept the law or they had not been good, they had not
+obeyed him. Somehow, they had done wrong; and that was the reason the
+kingdom so long delayed.
+
+Remember another thing. We have come, in this modern time, to place the
+kingdom away off in another world after the close of this life. The
+Jews had no such belief about it. They expected it to come right here
+on this poor little planet of ours; and they expected that a kingdom
+was to be set up which was not only to place them at the head of
+humanity, but through them was to bless all mankind. Different thinkers
+among them held different views, but this in substance was the belief;
+and they were constantly looking for signs of this imminent revolution
+which was to make the kingdoms of this world the kingdoms of our God
+and of his Christ, that is, his Anointed One.
+
+John the Baptist preached that this kingdom was coming. But he was
+imprisoned and beheaded, having come into conflict with the civil
+authority. Jesus, then, having come from Nazareth, where he had studied
+and thought and brooded over the divine will, takes up this broken work
+of John, and begins a proclamation of the gospel; and the one thing
+which constituted that gospel was: The kingdom of God is at hand,
+repent and believe; accept this statement. And note that "repent" on
+the lips of Jesus did not mean what we have been accustomed to
+associate with it. The New Testament word translated "repent" means
+change your purpose, change your method of life. You have not been in
+accord with the truth, you have not been obedient to God; turn about,
+come into accord with the divine law, become obedient to the divine
+message.
+
+Jesus taught no kingdom in any other world. He believed that the
+kingdom was to be here. For, even after he had disappeared from the
+sight of men, and this reflects in the clearest possible way the burden
+of his message, his disciples expected, not that they were to be
+transferred to some other planet or into an invisible world to find the
+kingdom, but that Jesus was to come back, to return in the clouds of
+heaven, and establish the kingdom here.
+
+The kingdom, then, that Jesus preached was a kingdom of righteousness
+here on this earth, among just the kind of people that we are. And,
+note, he said, This kingdom of God does not come by observation. You
+are not to say, Lo here, Lo there, look for wonders. He says, The
+kingdom of God is within you, or among you. It is translated both ways;
+and, I suppose, nobody knows which way it ought to be. I believe both.
+The kingdom of God that Jesus preached is essentially in us. It is
+also, after it is in a few of us, among us, right here already, so far
+as it extends, and reaching out its limits and growing as rapidly as
+men discern it and become obedient to its laws.
+
+Now I have been asked a great many times how I can be sure, or
+practically sure, as to what sayings in the Gospels are really those of
+Jesus and what are traditional in their authority, what are doubtfully
+his. I cannot go into a long explanation this morning; but I want to
+suggest one line of thought. And I do this because I wish it to be the
+basis of a statement that Jesus has not made any of these things that
+are to-day labelled "Evangelical" any essential part of his gospel at
+all. Jesus, for example, does not preach any Garden of Eden or any Fall
+of Man. Jesus says nothing about any infallible book. Jesus says not a
+word about any Trinity. He nowhere makes any claim to be God. His
+doctrine concerning the future is doubtful. But one thing which I wish
+to insist upon is perfectly clear: the conditions of citizenship in the
+kingdom of God are the simplest conceivable. He says, Not those that
+say, Lord, Lord, not those that multiply their services and ceremonies,
+but those that do the will of my Father shall enter the kingdom. The
+only condition that Jesus ever established for membership in the
+kingdom of heaven is simple human goodness, never anything else.
+
+I am perfectly well aware that somebody may quote to me, "He that
+believeth and is baptized shall be saved; and he that believeth not
+shall be damned." But the reply to that would be, The acknowledged
+statement to-day on the part of all competent scholars is that Jesus
+never uttered those words. They are left out of the Revised Version of
+the New Testament: they are no authentic part of the story of his life
+or his teaching.
+
+How can we find his words? In the first place there are the great
+central, luminous truths which Jesus uttered, the fatherhood of God,
+the brotherhood of men, goodness as the condition of acceptance on the
+part of God. And, on the theory that he did not contradict himself, we
+are at liberty to waive one side those statements which grew up under
+the influence of later tradition, popish or ecclesiastical, and which
+plainly contradict these. But the main point I have in mind is one
+which scholars have wrought out under the name of the Triple Tradition.
+It takes for its central thought, "In the mouth of two or three
+witnesses every word shall be established." We know that the Gospels
+grew up through a long process of accretion after a good many years.
+They were not written or planned by any one person; and, so far as we
+know, they may not have been written by anybody whose name is
+traditionally connected with them to-day. If, however, we find that
+three of the four witnesses agree in reporting that he said or did a
+certain thing, we feel surer about it than when only one witness
+reports it. And if two report, why, even then we feel a little more
+certain than we do when the report is from only one. And yet, of
+course, the three may have omitted that which only one has recorded,
+and which is true. But scholars have wrought out along this line what
+is called the Triple Tradition; that is, they have constructed a
+complete story of the life and the teaching and the death of Jesus out
+of the words which are common to three of the gospel writers. All of
+them tell this same story; and this story of the Triple Tradition has
+no miraculous conception, it has no resurrection of the body, no
+ascension into heaven. The miracles are reduced to the very lowest
+terms, becoming almost natural and easy to be accounted for. In this
+story Jesus teaches none of the things of which I have been speaking.
+
+I say, then, that along the lines of the very best critical
+scholarship, coming as near to the teaching of Jesus as we possibly can
+to-day, we are warranted in saying that this which has usurped the name
+of the gospel of Christ is not only not good news, but it is not the
+news which Jesus brought and preached. As has been said a good many
+times, it is a gospel about Christ instead of being the gospel of
+Christ.
+
+I am ready now to make the claim that we liberals of the modern world
+are the ones who come nearer to preaching the gospel of Christ than any
+other part of the so-called Christian Church. For what is it that we
+preach? We preach that the kingdom of God is at hand. We preach that
+there is not a spot on the face of the earth where we are not at the
+foot of a ladder like that which Jacob saw in his dream, and which
+leads up to the very throne of the Almighty. Jesus taught that the
+kingdom of God might begin anywhere and at any time in any human heart.
+Note what Matthew Arnold has called the secret and the method of Jesus.
+He says, The secret of Jesus is that he who selfishly seeks his life
+shall lose it: he who throws it away for good and God finds it. Do we
+need to go very deeply into human life to discover the profound truth
+of that saying? Seek all over the world for good and happiness, and
+forget to look within, and you do not find it. The kingdom of heaven is
+within. It is in the spirit, the temper of the heart, the disposition,
+the life. And the secret of it is in cultivating love and truth and
+tenderness and care, those things which bring us into intimate
+connection with which we mean when we say, Be unselfish, and that in
+doing this we find our own souls. For the man who gives out of himself
+love and tenderness and care, of necessity cultivates the qualities of
+love and tenderness and care; and those are the ones which are the
+essence of all soul-building. And he who looks outside for the greatest
+things of life misses them; while he who looks within, and cultivates
+the spirit, finds God and happiness and truth.
+
+This gospel, then, that the kingdom of God is at hand, is always ready
+to come, is the gospel which we proclaim. And now I wish to extend that
+idea a little. The form in which Jesus held his dream of human good has
+changed in the process of the centuries. We no longer expect a
+miraculous revelation of a kingdom coming out of the heavens to abide
+on earth. The form of it is changed; but the essence of it we hold
+still, the same perfect condition of men here on earth and in the
+future which Jesus held and proclaimed.
+
+Now let me hint to you a few of the elements that make up this hope for
+man which we liberals proclaim everywhere as the gospel, the good news
+of the coming kingdom of God.
+
+In the first place, we proclaim the possibility of human conquest over
+this earth. What do I mean by that? I mean that man is able and he is
+showing that ability ultimately to control the forces of this planet,
+and make them his servants. Within the last seventy-five years this
+increasing conquest has changed the face of the planet. We now use
+water power not only, but steam, electricity, magnetism. All these
+secret forces that thrill from planet to planet and sun to sun we use
+as our household and factory drudges, our every-day servants. And it
+needs only a little imagination, looking along the lines of past
+progress, to see the day when man shall stand king of the earth. He
+shall make all these forces serve him. I believe that we have only just
+begun this conquest. Already the wonders about us eclipse the wonders
+of novelist and dreamer; and yet we have only begun to develop them.
+What follows from this? When we have completed the conquest of the
+earth, when we have discovered God's laws of matter and force and are
+able to keep them, it means the abolition of all unnecessary pain,
+unnecessary pain, I say; for all that pain which is not beneficent,
+which is not inherent in the nature of things, is remedial. And we
+preach the gospel, the coming of God's kingdom when pain shall be
+abolished, and shall pass away.
+
+Another step: We preach the gospel of the abolition of disease. We have
+already, in the few civilized centres of the world, made the old
+epidemics simply impossible. They are easily controlled. Nearly every
+one of those that rise to threaten Europe and America to-day come from
+the religious, ignorant, wild fanaticism of Asia, beyond the range of
+our civilized control. The conditions of disease are discoverable; and
+the day will come when, barring accidents here and there, well-born
+people may calmly expect to live out their natural term of years. We
+preach this gospel, then, of the kingdom of God in which disease shall
+no more exist.
+
+We preach a gospel that promises a time when war shall be no more. At
+present wars are now and then inevitable; but they are brutal, they are
+unspeakably horrible. And how any one who uses the sympathetic
+imagination can rejoice, not over the victory, but over the destruction
+of life and property which the victory entails, I cannot understand. We
+have reached a time when civilized man no longer thinks he must right
+his wrong with his fists or a club or a knife or a pistol. On the part
+of individuals we call this a reversion to barbarism. The time will
+come, and we are advancing towards it, when it will be considered just
+as much a reversion to barbarism on the part of families, states,
+nations, and when we shall substitute hearts and brains for bruises and
+bullets in the settlement of the world's misunderstandings. We preach,
+then, a gospel of the coming of the kingdom in which there shall be no
+more war. And then life under the fair heavens will be sweet.
+
+There shall be no more hunger in that kingdom. To-day see what
+confronts us, bread riots in Spain and in Italy, thousands of people
+hungry for food. And yet, if we would give ourselves to the development
+of the resources of this planet instead of to their destruction, this
+fair earth could support a hundred times its present population in
+plenty and in peace. There shall be no more famine in that kingdom the
+gospel of which we preach.
+
+Then, when men have lived out their lives, learned their lessons, and
+stand where the shadow grows thicker, so that we try in vain to see
+beyond, what then? We preach a gospel of life, of an eternal hope. We
+believe that death, instead of being the end, is only a transition, the
+beginning really of the higher and the grander life. We cannot look
+through the gateway of the shadow; but we catch a gleam of light beyond
+that means an eternal day, when the sun shall no more go down. This we
+believe.
+
+And we do not partition that world off into two parts, the immense
+majority down where the smoke of their torment ascendeth forever, and
+only a few in a city gold-paved and filled with the light of peace.
+Rather we believe it is a human life there just as here, that we are
+under the law of cause and effect, that salvation is not a magical
+thing, that we are saved only in so far as we come into accord with the
+divine law and the divine life. And, if anybody says we preach an easy
+gospel because we eliminate an arbitrary hell, let him remember we
+preach a harder gospel, a more difficult salvation, not a salvation
+that can be purchased by a wave of emotion or by the touch of priestly
+fingers, a salvation that must be wrought out through co-working with
+God in the building of human character, a salvation that is being
+right.
+
+This is our gospel; but it is a gospel of eternal and universal hope,
+because we believe that every single soul is under doom to be saved
+sometime, somewhere. We preach the inevitable results of law-breaking,
+are they to last one year, five, a hundred, a thousand, a million, ten
+millions? There is no possibility of heaven except as people are in
+perfect accord with the divine law and the divine life; for that is
+what heaven means. You can no more get heaven out of a disordered
+character than you can get music out of a disordered piano. This
+salvation which we preach is the constituent element of life. You
+cannot have a circle if you break the conditions of a circle. You
+cannot have a river if you break the conditions the very existence of
+which constitutes a river. So of anything in God's natural world. There
+are certain essential things that go to make these what they are. So
+heaven, righteousness, happiness, the constituent elements of these are
+right thinking, right feeling, right acting, obedience to the laws of
+God, which make them possible.
+
+We believe that God, through pain, through suffering, down through the
+winding ways of darkness and ignorance, one year, a million years, must
+pursue the soul of any one of his children until that child learns that
+suffering follows wrong, and must follow it, and that God himself
+cannot help it, and so, learning the lesson, by and by turns, comes
+back, and says: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee,
+and am not worthy to be thy son: make me at least as one of thy hired
+servants. And then the love that has pursued all the way, that has been
+in the light and that has been in the dark, shall go out to meet him,
+and fall on his neck in loving embrace, and rejoice that he who was
+dead is alive again, and he who was lost is found.
+
+This is the gospel we preach, a gospel of God's eternal, boundless
+love, the good news that every human being is God's child; that here on
+earth, co-operating with God and discovering his laws, we may begin the
+creation of his kingdom now; that we may broaden and enlarge it until
+it encloses the world; and that it reaches out into the limitless ages
+of the future. And this, as I said, is the gospel of the Christ,
+changed in its form, if you please, but one in its essence; for he
+came, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying: The time
+is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Change your purpose,
+accept the message, and come into accord with the divine life. This is
+the gospel that the Christ preached: this is the gospel we preach
+to-day.
+
+Do I make, then, an extraordinary claim when I say that we are the
+Evangelical Church, that the church which preaches the gospel is here?
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Unitarian Gospel, by Minot Savage
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