•10. b
no- 1
\i
ETHICAL ADDRESSES
AND
ETHICAL RECORD
FIFTEENTH SERIES
Philadelphia
Ethical Addresses, 141 5 Locust Street
1908.
(Tontents
PAGE
Adler, Felix. Walter L. Sheldon Memorial Address 64
Anesaki, M. Walter L. Sheldon Memorial Address 61
Bacon, Fanny M. Walter L. Sheldon Memorial Address. . 55 Brandenburger, W. a. Walter L. Sheldon Memorial Ad- dress 51
Dodson, George R. Walter L. Sheldon Memorial Address.. 58 Elliott, John Lovejoy. Walter L. Sheldon Memorial Ad- dress 42
Martin, Alfred W. The Spiritual Greatness of the Real
Jesus 89
Meaning of Membership in the New York Ethical So- ciety 168
Moore, Robert. Walter L. Sheldon Memorial Addresses. ... 46
Moral Education Congress 227
MosKOWiTz, Henry. Ethics Teaching in the School 82
MuzzEY, David Saville. A Vision for the New Year 103
" " " The Challenge of Socialism 141
Sale, Samuel. Walter L, Sheldon Memorial Address 60
Salter, Wm. M. A Help to the Moral Life 162
" Moncure D. Conway 86
" Reflections of a Traveler in Italy 247
" The Need of a Religion of Morality y^
" The Good Fight — With a Closing Word. . 115
" Walter L. Sheldon Memorial Address Z7
Schmidt, Nathaniel. The Inspiration of the Ethical Move- ment 79
Seligman, Edwin R. A. The Character of the Ethical
Movement 69
Sheldon, Walter L. Ethical Aspect of the Belief in Im- mortality 211
" " " Funeral Service i
" " " Marriage Ceremony 28
" " " Men and Women : What They Ought
to be to Each Other 229
" Words Spoken at Funerals 11
Spencer, Anna Garlin. Social Ethics and Private Morality 193
Sprague, Leslie Willis. An Ethical Conception of God. . . 185
ii
CONTENTS. Ill
Taussig, William. Walter L. Sheldon Memorial Address.. 49 Weston, S. Burns. Walter L. Sheldon Memorial Address 33
ZuEBLiN, Charles. Religion and the Church 169
" " The Value of Ethical Organization 135
Songs and Responses 265
America 272
Autumn Song 285
Be Lord of Self 276
Bird Song 283
Ceasing to Give, We Cease to Have 279
City of Light, The 265
Dawning of Liberty, The 275
Doing Right 267
Dreamer, Act 278
Fear Not the Truth 271
Fruits of Labor, The 278
Greeting to the Sun 281
Harvest Days , 284
Influence of Good Deeds, The 279
Land of Greatness 271
Let in Light 270
Love 270
Morning Breaketh on Thee 268
Morning Light is Breaking, The 266
New Order, The 277
New Year 282
Nobility 274
Onward, Brothers 265
Raise Your Standard 267
Singing Joyfully 274
Sing, Let Us Sing 269
Speak Out the Truth 279
Splendor of the Morning 281
Spring Song 283
Spring Time 282
Thanksgivmg Song 284
The Heart it Hath Its Own Estate 271
The Fountain — Spiritual Constancy 280
The Light 273
IV CONTENTS.
The Path : 276
These Things Shall Be 273
Think Truly 275
Truth is Dawning 280
When Work is Delight ^^
Work, for the Night is Coming 268
Responses 285
Autumn 286
Harvest Festival 287
Spring 285
General 287
SERVICE AT THE FUNERAL OF WALTER L. SHELDON
Conducted by Dr. John Lovejoy Elliott, at Memorial Hall, St. Louis, June 8th, 1907*
MUSIC BY THE STRING QUARTET.
Adagio, Moonlight Sonata Beethoven
Berceuse Reber
Music of the Spheres Rubenstein
Mr. Sheldon's Own Words at Funeral Services.
Once more we are called upon to assemble and bow the head in the presence of the Mystery-of-all-Mysteries. Death has garnered another of our number into the great ocean of the Infinite. We surrender and submit to a Higher Will than ours. Sorrow and pain may have come to us from the blow. And yet it is our trust that all is right and all is well. Life for each and all may be rich and full of meaning. It is a glorious privilege to live and love and work. A single day of this human exist- ence is beyond all measure of value. Each moment of time for us has in it something of the Eternal. The living soul of man is not of earth and not of time. The web that it is weaving is to form part of an Infinite Fab- ric. The life of each and all is a part of the Infinite Life. The mighty fabric we are weaving can have no end. What the vast design may be the mind of man cannot fathom. It is for us to do our work, to fulfill the trust committed to our charge, and to have faith in the Infinite Justice.
*Mr. Sheldon having expressed the wish that no address should be made at his funeral, the service consisted entirely of his own words on such occasions, together with favorite selections of his from different authors.
2 FUNERAL SERVICE
If we care for the highest pleasures which Hfe has to offer us, if we want all that love can bring, all that fel- low-feeling may give us, all that good-will has to fur- nish; then we must take the pain with the pleasure, the sorrow with the joy, the heartache with the gladness. Life gives us all that it is worth, only when it gives us all the depth of heart-experience. And the man who knows not sorrow, who has never felt a touch of pain, whose soul has never been harrowed with anxiety, whose face has never worn the lines of care, whose eye has never been dimmed with tears, — that man has never known what it is worth to be alive. He has never known the value of life and has never really tasted the cup of joy.
No burden ever fell on any shoulders that were not strong enough to carry it. No blow ever struck a human creature who was not able to withstand it. No affliction ever fell upon a living soul where there was not strength enough to face it and endure. With the sorrows that one is born to, comes the strength by which one is able to hold oneself together and obey. The soul of man is equal to any blow or any calamity. If we give in and succumb, if we refuse and will not submit, it is by our own choice. We have not availed ourselves of that spiritual force that is our supreme endowment. No sorrow was ever too great for the human soul to bear, no anguish ever too keen for the human heart to withstand its blows. The love that has been real will find its own true compensation for its losses. The affection that has been genuine will sustain itself against any catastrophe. The soul within us grows by its own sorrows and gains strength from its disap- pointments. Behind the losses, beneath the disappoint- ments, at the root of the sorrows, we are conscious of riches that do not fade away.
WALTER L. SHELDON 3
If it is our choice to be men, we must take the sorrows of men. If it is our privilege to be Hving souls, we must accept all that goes with that privilege. It is not true that life is only a vapor, nor is it true that we are chasing empty phantoms of joy. The love of the human heart is the most real and the most beautiful of all realities. The richest gift of our manhood and our womanhood is this gift of human affection. It is the love that joins us together as brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, children and comrades, husbands and wives, companions alike in joys and sorrows. Whatever the length of time may be, to have had something of this, is to have experi- enced the supreme privilege of our divine manhood and womanhood. The anguish of parting cannot destroy this most real of all realities. The love has been there, the affection existed. The ties have been woven which united hearts and souls together. The love that once was born — in a sense can never die, for it is a part of the texture of our being. We may chafe under the burden of life; we may cry out in disappointment ; we may feel as if the weight for us was greater than we could carry ; we may clamor for relief and ask for rest, — but our clamors may be of no avail. It matters not how we may chafe, we can- not interfere with inscrutable law.
It is true that life in a sense would seem to be only one long giving up. What is sweetest to us is taken away. What is nearest to us is removed. The choicest of our treasures may be snatched from our grasp. But the soul itself, in all its richness and fullness is still there. It has loved, it has felt, and it has suffered. For every experience of giving up, we get something in return. It may not be what the heart, at the moment, yearns for ; it
FUNERAL SERVICE
may not satisfy all our cravings. And yet, in the fullest sense, the soul knows itself, knows no losses, for in itself is something that does not rust or decay.
While we live, if we live truly, we shall love; and while we work, if we work faithfully, affection shall con- tinue. The heart that knows its own strength may bend, but it will not break. The soul that knows its own power may tremble, but it will not give in. The divine privi- lege is ours to face the ills as they come, to acquit our- selves like men and to be worthy of all our richest her- itage.
FAVORITE SELECTIONS OF MR. SHELDOn's.
"The world does not know that we must all come to an end here; — but those who know it, their quarrels cease at once." — Dhammapada.
'The virtuous man is happy in this world, and he is happy in the next ; he is happy in both. He is happy when he thinks of the good he has done ; he is still more happy when going on the good path." — Dhmnmapada,
"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of the Eternal is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people. And the Eternal shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain ; for the former things are passed away." — Revelations.
"Now I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore and show thyself a man." — / Kings.
WALTER L. SHELDON 5
"Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affec- tioned one to another with brotherly love ; in honor pre- ferring one another. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to things that are lowly. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." — Romans.
"The Eternal shall endure forever: He hath prepared his throne for judgment. And he shall judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister judgment to the peo- ple in uprightness. The Eternal will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble." — Psalms.
"Who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and work- eth righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart." — Psalms.
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam. When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell.
And after that the dark ! And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark ;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place,
The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face.
When I have crost the bar. —Tennyson.
FUNERAL SERVICE
Others shall sing the song, Others shall right the wrong, — Finish what I begin, And all I fail of win.
What matter, I or they? Mine or another's day, So the right word be said And life the sweeter made?
Hail to the coming singers. Hail to the brave light-bringers ! Forward I reach and share All that they sing and dare.
The airs of heaven blow o'er me; A glory shines before me Of what mankind shall be, — Pure, generous, brave and free.
Parcel and part of all, I keep the festival. Fore-reach the good to be. And share the victory.
I feel the earth move sunward, I join the great march onward, And take, by faith, while living, My freehold of thanksgiving.
-Whittier.
O 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 scorn
For miserable aims that end with self.
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues.
WALTER L. SHELDON
So to live is heaven : To make undying music in the world, Breathing as beauteous order that controls With growing sway the growing life of man. So we inherit that sweet purity For which we struggled, failed and agonized With widening retrospect that bred despair. Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued, A vicious parent shaming still its child. Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved; Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies, Die in the large and charitable air. And all our rarer, better, truer self. That sobbed religiously in yearning song. That watched to ease the burthen of the world Laboriously tracing what must be. And what may yet be better — saw within A worthier image for the sanctuary, And shaped it forth before the multitude Divinely human, raising worship so To higher reverence more mixed with love — That better self shall live till human time Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb Unread forever.
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.
— George Eliot.
8 FUNERAL SERVICE
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language ; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. Whien thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart; —
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around —
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air, —
Comes a still voice — Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; ....
. . . . Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past. All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun — the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods — rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. . . .
.... All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come, And make their bed with thee. As the long train
WALTER L. SHELDON
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man —
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side.
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night. Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave. Like one who draws the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
—W. C. Bryant.
By Dr. Elliott:
In the forty-ninth year of his life, after twenty-one years of service in this city, at the close of a long illness, and knowing that death was upon him, Mr. Sheldon turned a smiling face to those about him, and said :
"Good-by : all is well ; my love to everybody, Auf wieder sehen."
MUSIC BY THE STRING QUARTET.
The Death of Asa Grieg
Traumverloren Komzak
Andante Tschaikowsky
Traumerei Schumann
10 FUNERAL SERVICE
SERVICE AT THE CREMATORY
"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust" has been the saying of old, and it is the same to-day. But more than the ashes and more than the dust is the heart of him who has left us now. In the hands and arms of the Great Keeper we lay him away. Behind our sorrow or pain, our faith tri- umphs that Justice reigns in the world, that truth shall conquer, that love is master and that all is well. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, but the soul of him to the Infinite Soul who gave it. With faith and trust in the mercy and justice of the Infinite One we consign him to the Father- over-All.
Each true deed is worship: it is prayer,
And carries its own answer unaware.
Yes, they whose feet upon good errands run
Are friends of God, with Michael of the sun;
Yes, each accomplished service of the day
Paves for the feet of God a lordlier way.
The souls that love and labor through all wrong,
They clasp His hand and make the circle strong;
They lay the deep foundation, stone by stone.
And build into Eternity — God's throne!
— Edwin Markham.
He is made one with Nature : there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone;
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never wearied love.
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
— Shelley.
WORDS SPOKEN BY WALTER L.
SHELDON AT FUNERAL
SERVICES.
Death is the great and solemn fact that gives to our human Hfe its halo of glory. If our existence here should be without end or limit, we would not know how to value its worth. Just because the time is brief and the days of our years are few in number, for that reason we are led to realize what a privilege it has been to live, what a gift we have had in this interval for human effort. As we stand by the graves of our dead we are conscious that it is an hour for revival of strength and renewal of courage. The thought of them restores to us our half-broken faith in the worth of life. We think what they have been and done ; and though sorrowing at our loss, we are inspired to take up once more the tangled threads of human ex- istence, and to work on in loyalty to the best and highest motives that can actuate the human heart. What they have done and been we also can do and be, — and more, for we are the heirs of their high efforts and share in what they have been and done.
It is Death that gives back to us at last those whom we have loved but never wholly known. While they went in and out among us, we thought of them as we saw them yesterday or the day before, in some special garb or on some special occasion. Now as we lay them away to their rest we see them as they actually were in themselves. They live on in our hearts no longer hidden from us by the veil of form and circumstances. We loved the living ; we venerate the dead.
II
12 WORDS SPOKEN AT FUNERALS
We have our work to do, each and every one of us. The sphere of life is before us that we have to fill ; the hearts are there to whom we are to be devoted. But in a time like this we are led to feel that there is an universal heart we are to love, including all men and women who draw the breath of life. Not only of ourselves and our own circle we think now, but of that great army of liv- ing men and women all over the earth who are fighting the battle of life and who are there as our brothers. It is death in its solemn and beautiful form that makes us feel that there is only one family, including all those who have lived before, who are living to-day, or who are yet to live ; one mighty Brotherhood of which we are members and to whose welfare we are consecrated. And every effort that we make to do our work faithfully, every effort we put forward to be loyal and true to the duty at hand, every effort on our part to widen this circle of fellowship and to be of service to this brotherhood — every effort of this kind is carried on beyond ourselves and beyond our lives. It lives on when we have passed away.
When the sun is sinking out of sight and the day is over, when night is coming on and the twilight is passing on into darkness, it is then that the beauty of the sunlight is made known to us as it is never made known to us in the noonday brightness. It is then that all earth and all sky takes on a new and greater glory than it ever seemed to have had before. And so it is with the fading light of those whom we have known, or who have been dear to us. When their sun is setting or has set on earth and the light may have gone out, some- how it is then as if we saw their light and their lives in a way we had never seen them before. It is as if at such
WALTER L. SHELDON I3
times we were taken to those distant peaks where one looks down over the earth and over the seas and across the skies and through the stars, — as if in the ones who had been taken from us Death had revealed a beauty and a glory of whose presence we had never before been truly aware.
As we stand by the bier of them whom we have loved, it is revealed to us as never before, what things are of real worth in life. We pause now to pledge ourselves anew in fidelity to the living and in loyalty to the supreme purposes which alone give worth to our existence. For us it still remains to strive and labor for the better things to come on earth, stirred by our veneration for the dead to an ever more determined effort in the cause of a love universal. The calm, the rest, and the peace that now reigns in their breast will come to us when our work is over. We too, like them, shall live on in the hearts of those we have served and in the work we have achieved. Their peace shall be our peace. Over their graves the sunlight will play and the rain will fall, but no sunlight and no rainfall should change or alter the love and gratitude we bear to them whom now we place among the consecrated dead. They have worked faithfully and well, and have earned their peace. We consign them to their rest.
There are treasures which come from the lives of those who never teach, garnered anew in every age as the story of the soul of man repeats itself from generation tO' gen- eration. Thoughts may come and go ; they surge through the soul by what we see all around us, and it may come easy to voice those thoughts to others. But iiiore and
14 WORDS SPOKEN AT FUNERALS
more it grows upon us that the greatest lives may have been those who do their teaching in noble silence. As we think of the precious soul which has slipped its moor- ings from us just now, of one who has been loved and loving, one whose life had been knitted closely, tenderly, devotedly, into the lives of others, we are made con- scious of those depths of experience which no man can fathom. It is not an easy thing to live the life of truth. The voice of the great teachers has gone out to the world, and carried its message ; and the written page has handed it on. But no written page hands on the story of the silent lives who are the messengers of a wisdom more profound, more far-reaching, more intense, than language has ever recorded ; or than is to be found in the teachings of any priest or prophet.
History, as we know, has been made far more by the few rare noble lives who have had no history; lives, the events of which, each taken by itself, would not stand out before the eye, nor count for much on a written page. Easy enough it may be to perform one heroic act, to let one's life shine out for an instant by the flash of one bril- liant deed. But to go on day after day, in the life of pa- tient devotion to those simple duties which are close at hand and always present, to the cares which weigh on the soul, but count for little in the busy world — this is not easy. It is of such lives we think to-day, of those who have hidden themselves away in the work they have done, with a lofty patience which has withstood every ill, fighting against the odds of existence as if no odds were there at all. This is a beauty of life that makes us pause in solemn awe at its divine simplicity and majesty. In a career like this, where there has been depth of soul, and
WALTER L. SHELDON 1 5
a richness of experience, life is always a battle. Few and rare are they who through it all can wear a face of cheer and never break down, — taking alike the good and the ill, carrying the soul on in the even tenor of its way and holding one's self always serene and sure.
Those who teach by their lives do more than those who teach by their lips. The influence may not go into lan- guage or pass into verse ; it may not speak anywhere on the page, and no book may record it. But it finds its way just the same, working itself out like those silent forces of nature, the mystery of which we cannot solve. And so it is in the lives of those humble workers, where a force lies hidden that we cannot reach or touch or see. We cannot describe it, nor explain it, nor set down what it is. But the less it goes into language, the less we are able to describe it, the more truly we are aware of its presence. For the depths of the human soul no man has read.
The stories of the lives of the world-conquerors are told us as a spur to ourselves. They are to urge us on in the course we are to pursue, to fire us with new energy, and goad us to greater achievement. And it may be that something of this kind does come from them if we give them heed. It may be that we do catch an efflatus from the heroes of old, and that the torch of force or fire is handed on by this means from age to age. But there is another kind of strength which the lives of those conquerors may not inspire. In carrying on the work of life, there is call for a strength on the inside, for a force to withstand the ills which must face us, to support the burdens we have to bear, to walk through the routine of
l6 WORDS SPOKEN AT FUNERALS
daily toil and never break down. The inspiration which should help us and renew our courage for battles like these, must corrie from conquerors of another kind. It is from a life like this, one which remains unrecorded to the world, that we draw spiritual courage. A new lease of strength is given us as we pause and think over what such a life has meant and what it has actually achieved.
Sometimes we feel as if all the noble lives which have ever been lived, all the efforts of strength on the inside which have ever been put forth; all the spiritual energy unmentioned in history; all the self-sacrifice, all the di- vine patience, all the heroic efiPort of the human soul, — as if all this had been piling up down over the ages, and was living still as one mighty force to help us on. It is as if all that spiritual strength was there as a store- house on which each one of us could draw, — ^as if we might have all the more courage and all the more pa- tience because of all the patience and all the courage which had gone before. It is a spiritual storehouse, a treasure which each soul may draw upon without fear of depleting what is already there. In taking from that storehouse for ourselves, we leave more treasure than we carry away. We are all by this means helping to in- crease that great pyramid of spiritual strength, for others to draw upon in future ages. In spite of ourselves, and in spite of our sorrows, we may grow stronger as the ages go by ; the spirit-life may grow firmer and the soul grow more serene as it reaches to ever loftier heights.
It is true that joy never can come to us all by itself. It is true that we can never have the love without its sor- rows and pains. There are the thorns pressing on the
WALTER L. SHELDON I7
side while the cup of happiness is at our lips. Joy and pain are intertwined or interwoven and can never be sep- arated. The web of life is made up of threads running together, and no mortal finger could pull them out or dis- entangle them and give us the pain without the joy or the joy without the pain. No tie of fellow feeling between man and man was ever formed or ever held together, that did not give its pangs or sound its notes of woe, even while it gave the thrills of the sweetest, deepest joy.
We could put so much more earnestness, so much more heart, so much more character into our life if only we made the effort. Each day could seem like a year, crowded with feeling, crowded with sympathies, crowded with love, if we choose to have it so. "Life is more than meat and body than raiment." The beautiful skies with their clear blue of the day and their shining stars at night, tell us this; the fresh verdure of springtime, the young leaves and the budding flowers, all speak of it. It is whispered to us by the Autumn winds and falling leaves of November. Every human eye looking out from the soul within reminds us of this same truth.
It is not for us to say what is the mystery of life. But it rests for us to live it out and to do this faithfully and well. Those who live truly and faithfully, those who are loyal to the trust committed to their charge, those who have worked like men, and have fought valiantly and well, — they get a faith which stands unshaken through any ca- lamity. They are taught what no books can teach them, for they have sounded the heights and depths of human experience, and have entered the Holy of Holies behind whose veil lies the mystery of this our mortal life.
1 8 WORDS SPOKEN AT FUNERALS
When we stand by the graves of our fathers, we stand, too, in another sense, by the graves of the fathers of the world. They do not simply belong to us, they are not simply our own sacred dead ; we cannot lay claim to them all to ourselves. In thinking of them we are conscious of an invisible choir of memories rendering its solemn hymn to all the world. As the years go on, the soul of man in- tertwines itself with an ever larger and larger circle. The friends who love him become more numerous ; the multi- tude who have directly or indirectly felt the influence of his effort becomes ever larger. When at last he has joined the great army of the Departed, then we say that he belongs to us all as our comrade and brother. As we who have been his friends, as others who have been strangers to him, as posterity in the coming ages, each and all may stand by his grave, we as friends or as strangers, they of the coming centuries, one and all may say truly, he was ours. The world is not the same world it would have been had he not lived and done his work. Whether the change be great or small, something has been done, a movement awakened in the great tide of human affairs, and we know that it will live on forever.
It is of a mother and a mother's life we are thinking now. The story of such a life can never be told. It has been long, and it has been full of experience. It has been woven into the lives of others, and gone into their life history as a part of themselves. The light of truth and of experience shines in its own way for each and all of us, and we have done well if we have been loyal to that beacon within, and obeyed its behests. Only in this way can the world move onward, and only in this way can the world move upward.
WALTER L. SHELDON IQ
What we do and what we get, may be one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow. But in the turmoil and the struggle, the nearest and the sweetest of all treasures, are those ties of comradeship that grow of themselves as we walk shoulder to shoulder in the daily round of toil. It is these ties that cheer us in moments of despondency, and seem to make life always worth having and worth living. To have had such comrades, to have been such a com- rade one's self, to have felt this knitting together of hearts in fellowship; this it is to have lived and to have tasted the good of life.
"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers And I linger on the shore And the individual withers And the world is more and more."
When the ties of comradeship are sundered and the ranks are broken, we pause for a little while to think and feel and look around. It is at a time like this that we who are left behind begin to be aware what things in life are great and what things are small. It is death that gives us our real measure of values. Then it is we know what it was that we cared for most in our comrades ; then it is we are conscious what things are fleeting and what things are abiding. Because of this one life which has been woven into our lives, we shall never be the same persons we should have been if he had not been here. Our lives were the richer for his presence, our ranks the stronger and the steadier because he marched with us in the same line. It was the line of toil and daily duty, from which no man escapes, and to which all men are pledged. But the void is there and his place shall know him no more.
20 WORDS SPOKEN AT FUNERALS
The torch once carried by those who have passed away falls into the hands of those who are living. It is for us to take up the burden of their work, to carry on their tasks and hand the light on throughout the years and through the generations. The torch we bear will gleam fitfully and faintly, or it may shine out clearly and boldly, ac- cording to the spirit in which we do our work. It is for us to hold this light aloft with the eye looking upward; as we strive for all that is best and all that is highest. To work faithfully in one's sphere is the core or kernel of all true religion. It is as if the Invisible Power we look to as the source of all that we are and into whose arms we finally return — it is as if we felt this Power v^rking with us and conscious of what toil and labor meant.
It is good to have lived and loved and labored. It is good to be missed from the ranks while the march is go- ing on. It is good to have lived so that men shall sigh and hearts shall ache when we are gone. The sigh and the heartache shall bring their joy in after days, when memory half gives back what we thought we had lost forever. It is good to have worked with all the energy at our command. And it is good to rest when that work is done.
As year by year we grow older, from childhood into youth, from youth into manhood, then on into middle age, we find the other spiritual world growing ever larger. The circle of human forms that live around us lessens in number; but the memories that constitute this other world fasten themselves upon us and cling with an undy- ing hold. By every lasting separation, with every new and final good-bye, we are just so much more enriched
WALTER L. SHELDON 21
within ourselves. Our life is no longer merely what we see around us; it consists not simply of the friends we meet, whose hands we shake, whose voices we hear, whose homes we share ; for there is ever growing this other and larger sphere within. Nature on the outside does not change. The sunlight continues the same; the sky is as blue overhead; the grass may be just as green; or the snow be just as white and pure. And yet for us it is not the same. When we were young we lived in this blue sky, and sunlight, and snowfall and raindrop; it was all the life we had. Now as we grow and ripen we have so much more life within, so many other lives are added to our own, that nature and its beauties fall into the back- ground, and the world for us seems to be above every- thing else a world of souls. It is like an invisible host of feelings and memories, that are to us for a possession everlasting.
All the sorrow which has been in the world, all the pain and suffering which is there, all the blows which strike us, and seem to lay us low — all this never takes away from the fact that love is there, that hearts are linked to hearts both in joy and sorrow, that in sorrow we sometimes are drawn closer together than ever before, that in sorrow we come to know what love really means. All the pang and heartache which must come with this separation does not make us wish that the love had never existed. Better this much of life, these few years with the loved one, than none at all. The sweetness of memories can never be taken away. It lives on like a perfume in the soul of man, as something that never dies; as something in- deed which seems to grow sweeter and more tender with every passing year.
22 WORDS SPOKEN AT FUNERALS
As we look over the life of him who has taken his last departure from us and gone to his long and final rest, it would be a mistake on our part to wear the attitude of sorrow or gloom. We are all young, whatever may be our years, if our hearts are in sympathy with the young world and what the young world is dreaming of and hop- ing for. It may strike us with despondency when a pre- cious life is taken away from us in early years. It is hard for us then to face the blow and think that all is well. But there should be nothing really of gloom when death comes tO' one who is ripe in experience and labors. Enough that he fought the battle of life bravely and well ; that he went through hardship and trial manfully; that he had looked upon the future without fear and always with courage. Enough that those around him loved him and were dear to him. Surely at such a time to talk mournfully of the vanity of life would be a mistake. In the presence of death after a career like this, let us think rather of what a privilege it has been to live. Let us feel hopeful for ourselves and grateful for these memories.
It comes so hard, these partings, and all the harder when the parting is from one who is so young. It miakes the heart rebellious and one is inclined to cry out in de- spair. It may seem right and natural when the aged die, after they have had their turn. We all expect sometime by and by to go to our long rest and be at peace. Life's fitful fever here below must come to an end sometime for you and me and all of us. But it takes all the courage of soul we possess, all the faith, all our strength of will to stand by when the blow falls on one so young and fair. It makes all life seem like a trial, as if we were here just to face the burdens and feel the weight of sorrow. And
WALTER L. SHELDON 23
yet, it is not for you or me to choose. In the great events of life which are woven into the web of history, going back to the beginnings of things, and running on down to the end, — in the events which are woven into that web, it is not always for us to have our will. All that remains for us at times is to bend before the storm which seems to strike us, — but not to give way.
When the ties break, as break they must sometime, when we are young or when we are old, then we draw nearer together in loving fellowship with those that re- main. The heartache which must survive leaves the heart still open to all the sweet influences of love. The stern realities of duty go on just the same ; and in facing these one's courage comes back again, with a resolution to do one's work faithfully and well while the light lasts. If there is cloud and darkness in some of our lives here below, if the shadows are thick around us a great deal of the time, yet it is not all shadow nor is it all darkness. There is a sky overhead; the stars go on shining, the sun sheds its light, and the sunlight and the starlight shine through the mists and vapors, until they may turn sor- row into peace.
When these farewells come, the truth enters our hearts, in a way we have never before believed it, that the meas- ure of success or measure of what life has been to each and all, is according to what man is in himself, and not according to what he has on the outside ; that a full, long life means a life full of thought, full of sweetness, full of earnestness, full of love, and full of brave effort ; that the only true life is the life of the soul. There is so much we could get out of the world, out of existence, out of our daily routine of work, if only we made the effort, if ^nly we pause to think what it all means !
24 WORDS SPOKEN AT FUNERALS
Who shall tell of the richness and fullness and power that goes with the privilege of our manhood and our womanhood? Who shall snatch from us the heart's love we have had? Who shall take from us the deep experi- ences that have gone before? They are ours to-day as they were ours yesterday, and as they shall be ours to- morrow. Life and death continue the same old mystery. These ties will go on being sundered. Those that we love to-day may not be with us in future years. Over the great fact of life and of death we have no control. The end and the beginning must rest in other hands than ours. But the joy of life is there just the same, and heart's loves go on. We arc living in a great atmosphere of human feeling and human fellowship.
Strange and solemn it seems to us when Death strikes home, even to one who is distant from us, unknown by face or name. Sad and mournful it seems to us when Death comes nearer and takes one who has been our fel- low in the daily routine of life, where we have met him on the street or in the business hall, in the office or at the door. Painful and heart-rending it seems when Death lays its fingers on one who has been of our household and home, who has been our companion in all the struggles of life, bearing burdens with us, upholding us in our troubles, sharing our sorrows, taking bread with us day by day, and year by year, one whose face we have seen by night and day, in storm and sunshine. Close and search- ing it seems when Death takes from us him who has been our guide in the early days of our childhood and youth ; who has fed us ; who has worked for us ; who has given us our daily bread; who has seen us in our smiles and in our tears, at our best and at our worst, but who has
WALTER L. SHELDON 25
loved US through it all as if we had always been the same. Strange and solemn, sad and mournful, painful and heart-rending, close and searching to the inmost depths of our being as it must be when the Messenger appears who has to summon us all, yet this same messenger is the one who teaches us how to value the life we have. It is this messenger who teaches us how to live and how to know our fellows. It is this same messenger who opens up to us the hearts of those we have only half known in all the years of life, disclosing qualities of beauty, or ten- derness, of devotion, such as we had only half observed.
Consolation for one's loss there is none ; and yet there is something better than consolation. Joy is the richer, deeper and more lasting when mixed in the cup of sor- row. By and by the anguish softens, though it never changes; the void aches less, though it is never filled. Love blends with sadness, but no longer with torture. Round it, over it, all about it grow the tendrils of another feeling. We join the Brotherhood of Sorrow. A troubled and stricken world pleads with us and says: "Give us of that love, share it with the living." If it clings only to that aching void, it may then fade away and die. Only as it reaches out in tenderness and yearning for all man- kind, does it cling more devotedly to this one memory. And as we hear that plea of suffering men, we say to ourselves in thought of the one that is gone : "If we can- not have you with us, for your sake and by the love you gave, we will render back that feeling to the world you have left. It shall spread itself abroad to those who may be remote from us, who have never given us of their af- fection, yet who are our brothers and sisters in the larger brotherhood and sisterhood of all mankind."
26 WORDS SPOKEN AT FUNERALS
At this solemn occasion when it would seem as if all our souls were touched with gloom, when darkness comes close to us, when there is heartache to some, a pang of broken friendship to others, and a shock of severed home, — even at such a time, here and now, I venture to sound the notes of the deep joy of life, asking you to take life for all it is worth and to get all the true and the real joy of existence. It may seem as if at such a solemn moment, happiness itself could not come, as if the cup of pleasure no longer had quite the same meaning or the same sweet taste to the lips. But I can remind you that there is an- other beautiful and solemn aspect in the presence of this Messenger. It is as if somehow at this moment we felt, down underneath all the jar and the strife, the pressure and the strain, the push and the struggle, as if under- neath it all just now there were sounding the notes of a Hymn of Peace. In the center of all this jar, at the core of the universe we live in there is a calm; the jarring notes from the struggle of life no longer sound; while the only music to be heard is that of Peace.
As our fathers and mothers, our friends and our com- rades separate from us and go to their rest, each time it seems to strengthen anew the better life within us, and we grow richer with each last good-bye. When these dear ones rest from their labors, we are strengthened to go forward ; more life is given us, new light is thrown upon our pathway, and an added staff is furnished us to lean up- on, one more guidepost is placed there directing us which way to go. An Invisible Army all seem pointing in the same way and telling us that there is something better than earthly success or material possessions; that it is worth more to have known these loved ones, and to pos-
WALTER L. SHELDON 2J
sess them in memory in our hearts, than to have had the ownership of all the outside world. Rest and peace are softly whispered on the one hand to the weary souls to whom we say good-bye; but there is sung to us who must continue to live, at the same moment another kind of message. It is ever and always the refrain of King David : "Now I go the way of all the earth ; therefore be ye strong and acquit yourselves like men."
The time of separation and farewell should be a time on our part for making new vows. With every last fare- well those who remained should once more determine that they will make life more real and more true; that they will take it ,on its spiritual side as well as on its material side; that they will think of the good life, the loving life, as well as the successful life, and so come to feel that the only successful life is the life that is good and true.
Our sorrow must be tempered with calm. Life must go on, the work has to be done, and the duties of life must be performed. The severance of these human ties does not sever us from the work before us. This calm life, whose visible presence is no longer with us, tells this same story, because it was a life of faithfulness to duty.
Standing here at this moment, looking back over the past, with the consciousness of the farewell we have taken from one who has lived his long life on earth ; and for ourselves looking now into the future, we make our vows again : we will be loyal and true ; we will work faithfully and well ; we will meet that great change when it comes, bravely and calmly and fearlessly, — and approach our graves "like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams."
FORM OF MARRIAGE CEREMONY USED BY WALTER L. SHELDON.
(to the witnesses.)
We are here to witness the pledge of two persons who are to be joined in the bonds of marriage. It is as though at this moment the whole human family stood by in sol- emn majesty to hear this promise. The history of past ages rises up before us, and like an invisible presence it consecrates and sanctifies the occasion. We are reminded that this step is the most eventful act of human existence. Whatever has been most sacred and inspiring, all that is highest and most precious, gathers around us at this mo- ment: You, the friends whom they have cared for and who have cared for them, listen now in silence and bear witness to their pledge.
(the charge.)
You who are to be joined at this time in the bonds of marriage, are to remember that from this union there is no step backward. What you do now, you do for life. It is to determine for you the course of your existence for all the rest of your days. The pledge you are to take is an act of supreme self-surrender. It is a confession on the part of man and woman that the only true existence is that in which they share their life and interests with the life and interests of their fellowmen. Under the bonds of this union one ceases to belong to oneself as an indi- vidual and may never think of oneself alone. All that you have and all that you are is now to be shared to-
28
WALTER L. SHELDON 29
gether. We ask of you, therefore, that you take this pledge with the consciousness of its full meaning. We charge you that you accept it as a promise with which your lives must in every detail be in accord, and which you are always implicitly and without question to obey.
(the pledge.)
We ask you, [Name], do you take this man to be your husband? Will you cherish him as the one nearest and dearest to you of all persons on earth ? Will you be loyal to him as the one only man of your choice ? Will you care ever for his interests and welfare, as you would for your own? Will you seek ever to share with him what good may befall you, and help to bear what ills or burdens he may have to endure? Will you endeavor to aid him in the aims of his life in so far as they are worthy and just? Will you assist to make his life helpful to others? Will you be patient and loving and true in the hour of trial or adversity? Will you be faithful in rendering that service which should come from you for the needs of the life in the home? Will you encourage him in what is right and true and do what you can to hold him back from evil or wrong? Will you strive as you move on together to de- velop in each other the highest and purest life of the spirit? Will you watch and take care as the years go by that your life together becomes closer and deeper and more precious ? Will you see that it rises to a firmer and higher plane of mutual sympathy and trust with every passing season ?
Will you be all this to him and to him above all others ; will you do all this for him and for him above all others ; — not only for to-day and to-morrow, but throughout the years, until death doth you part?
30 MARRIAGE CEREMONY
We ask you, [Name], do you take this woman to be your wife? Will you cherish her as the one nearest and dearest to you of all persons on earth ? Will you be loyal to her as the one only woman of your choice? Will you care ever for her interests and welfare, as you would for your own? Will you seek ever to share with her what good may befall you, and help to bear what ills or bur- dens she may have to endure? Will you endeavor to aid her in the aims of her life in so far as they are worthy and just? Will you assist to make her life helpful to others? Will you be patient and loving and true in the hour of trial or adversity? Will you be faithful in rendering that service which should come from you for the needs of the life in the home? Will you encourage her in what is right" and true and do what you can to hold her back from evil or wrong? Will you strive as you move on together to develop in each other the highest and purest life of the spirit? Will you watch and take care as the years go by that your life together becomes closer and deeper and more precious? Will you see that it rises to a firmer and higher plane of mutual sympathy and trust with every passing season?
Will you be all this to her and to her above all others ; will you do all this for her and for her above all others ; — not only for to-day and to-morrow, but throughout the years, until death doth you part?
(vow.)
You have made the pledge for yourselves. But we call others to witness. We ask of you a promise, binding and enduring as life itself. By the religious faith which you may cherish : by the memory of the dear ones whom you may have loved and have laid to their rest : by the friends
WALTER L. SHELDON 31
you think of and care for : by the loved ones around you at this moment : by those who gave you birth : by those who have cherished you in childhood and youth : by what you most care for on earth: by what you most esteem in yourselves: by the highest sense of Duty which exacts unswerving obedience: — By all these sacred ties and fel- lowships, do you say that you make this promise and take each other for husband and wife?
By this pledge and these vows made in the presence of these, your friends and witnesses, you now become hus- band and wife.
(the after-charge.)
To this union in the bonds of marriage the Fatherhood of the Human Family to which you belong, gives forth its benediction. It offers you a heritage of peace that can never be taken away. The pledge which you have spoken makes you the heirs of all the good which men in the past have done or suffered. The world now changes for you and life takes on a new meaning. From this time forth you are not the same persons. You are another in yourselves and another for the world. Your life should become more beautiful while new and greater duties de- volve upon you. For the rest of your days your lot is now joined together and cannot be sundered. By the vows you have taken, by the new relation in which you stand, you should rise above the influence of fate or for- tune. Joy and pain alike should link you the closer to- gether. While you continue true to this pledge no sor- row will be too' great for you to bear, for another heart will help to share the burden; no trial will be too se- vere for you to endure, because other shoulders will be
32 MARRIAGE CEREMONY
here to aid in carrying the load. Go forth in the new I 'i that begins for you to-day. Walk in its pathway re ^rently, hopefully, faithfully, and be worthy of your her «.ge of joy.
(conclusion.)
On ( r part we give you the assurance that you do not go forti alone. The hearts of your friends go with you and they wish you joy. Those who have loved and cared for you, iiow join hands with you in sympathy and fel- lowship. '. hey trust in you and believe in your pledge. They hope j jv you and have faith in you. Let the ties which have 1 :)und you in the past still hold on firm and strong, while he new affection deepens and widens and makes your lil so much more rich and full. May the joy that is high st and best illumine your life's journey, and may the lig •• of trust never grow dim. May the peace that is deei st and most enduring crown you with its everlasting bk *ng. May the Father-Over-All guide you and lead you . hose pathways where the light from the Eternal ever siir es. Go forth in the trust of your friends and in the ^e of your own hearts, faithful to your tasks and loya. o each other. And so shall the Truth, the Joy, and th^ Peace be and abide with you now and forever more.
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
By S. Burns Weston.*
Since we last met together the Ethical Movement has sustained a great loss. For the first time since the Ethic- al Culture movement was started, thirty-one years ago, death took away, in the early part of last June one of its foremost leaders, the lecturer of the St. Louis Ethical Society, Walter L. Sheldon. And on reassembling this morning to begin our new year's work, it is our first and most sacred duty to pay a tribute to his memory.
It was my good fortune to have met Mr. Sheldon twenty-six years ago, when we were both students in the University of Berlin. Ever since then, our lives have been brought into such intimate personal touch, I can hardly trust myself to speak of him in any other than an historical vein.
His boyhood and school days, like mine, were spent in New England, surrounded by orthodox religious influ- ences. In youth, he became a devout and earnest mem- ber of a church of the Puritan type, but while studying philosophy at Princeton his religious creed was shattered.
After graduating from Princeton he spent a year in foreign travel, visiting Palestine and other lands, and had come to Germany to pursue studies in one of her great universities.
*Before the Philadelphia Ethical Society, Sunday, October 20th, 1907. Also previously in substance at the Memorial Meet- ing of ethical leaders and workers at Glenmore, in the Adiron- dacks, September 5th.
33
34 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
At one time he had thought that he would Hke to enter the ministry, but all idea of that had been given up, since he had lost his orthodox faith, and his life work was wholly undetermined — though he thought that he might perhaps some time teach in a college or university. He had never heard of the Society for Ethical Culture, which Felix Adler had founded in New York a little over five years before, but the idea of such a Society at once ap- pealed to him.
We came back from our two years in Germany in the autumn of 1883, and studied and worked together for two years with Professor Adler in New York. In 1885 my work began here, and in the following year Mr. Shel- don organized the St. Louis Ethical Society and remained its faithful, vigorous and inspiring leader until his death,
Summer and winter, year in and year out, he worked incessantly, with all the marvelous energy and power of will he possessed, to build up a strong Ethical Society, and to do genuine and effective service in the cause to which he had dedicated his life. Under his leadership the St. Louis Ethical Society steadily grew in strength and influence from the first, and has long been recognized as one of the foremost institutions of that city engaged in the work of bettering the moral and spiritual life of the people.
Immediately after celebrating his Society's Twentieth Anniversary, a year ago last May, Mr. Sheldon made a three months' trip to Japan, and while returning home was stricken down in "health. But during all the months he was so seriously ill he did not abandon for a moment the responsibilities he had assumed in his chosen life's task. His interest in directing the work of the Society
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 35
he had built up from the beginning, was active and alert to the very last.
Apart from the great grief Mr. Sheldon's death brought to some of us, as an irreparable personal loss, it is sad be- yond measure that he was cut off, in the very prime of life, from the work with which his whole active career was so vitally identified — that he could not con- tinue for many more years to build upon the strong and splendid foundation he had laid for an Ethical Society, that should be a constantly uplifting moral force in the community.
But though that noble worker in the Ethical cause has gone, the seed he has sown will grow and ripen into the rich moral and spiritual fruitage that it was his one aim in life to produce. And what a great work he did accom- plish in a single score of years of active moral leadership — enough, indeed, to give lasting honor to anyone who could do as much in twice as many years.
The fine self-culture institution he established for the wage earners of St. Louis was an ach^iyement that will long endear his name to the working people of that city.
His memory will be revered, too, by the large number of men and women whom he has influenced for the bet- ter, not only by his earnest spoken words on the Sunday platform, but by the addresses he gave before college students and other bodies, and through his ethical books and pamphlets which have been widely read.
Then, again, how much he did for the moral instruction of the young, not only in building up a successful Sunday School in St. Louis, and in giving the material that made it possible for us to build one up here, but in writing and publishing books for non-sectarian ethical teaching in the school and Sunday School and the home, adapted to
2,6 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
every age, from the youngest to adults — ^books that have been sought and used by rabbis and ministers and teach- ers and parents, in Sunday Schools and week-day schools and homes, far outside of the Ethical Societies. This indeed, was one of his most notable achievements, and the one dearest to his own heart.
Looking at the rich and abundant fruits of Walter Sheldon's life, and the great moral and spiritual heritage he left behind in his writings, his example, his character, we cannot but feel that, in his case, death was robbed of its sting and the grave of its victory. Though his days were far too few, yet in his own moral development he had reached heights rarely attained, and death found his life and work crowned with a moral and spiritual suc- cess that few in so large a measure achieve.
Fearlessly he faced life as it was, and strenuously he applied himself to its deepest and highest problems. And though many ultimate questions could not be solved, yet what an unfaltering trust he had in the worth of life, and ■•^^hat a steadfast faith in the ultimate triumph of the good, if men would pursue it — would work for it !
When such a life goes from us, when the physical form passes away, though the mystery of the beginning and the end deepens, yet our moral and spiritual vision becomes clearer ; for then the light of his life shines out before us as a bright guiding star to lead us on to higher moral and spiritual heights.
Inspiringly brave and beautiful was the way that mas- terful personality, that strong moral and intellectual leader of men, met his death! And we who knew and loved him may say of him in our hearts, what he said to those about him as he was passing away, "All is well !"
walter l. sheldon memorial addresses. 37
By William M. Salter.*
It is hard to speak objectively of one who has been so near to me as Mr. Sheldon. We have been pioneers to- gether in two Western communities, we have been friends from the start, we have shared our discouragements and been happy in each other's successes, we have been dif- ferent in many ways and yet we have always loved. How can I think of all this strenuous life of my brother as belonging to the past, as a closed book wherein no more a line shall be written, how can I think of that face with the deep-set eyes, with the arching dome above them, with the firm, tense mouth, yet so capable of sweetness, as vanished, gone, irretrievably gone! It is as if some strong mountain disappeared from our familiar horizon, some tall spreading tree were laid low.
And yet reality does not change because we see it no more. For our sake and the future, it is well to fix the lineaments of this strong soul, to whose work itself and its undying effects we can add nothing.
Mr. Sheldon was one of the most individual of men. I have not known — has any of us? — one just like him. He was so much so that we came near losing him from our movement at an early day, and he always remained a unique figure in it. He would not follow another's lead. He had to map out his own course. He would listen to you and weigh, no doubt, what you had to say, and then go his own way.
Happily his views coincided in cardinal points with those of the rest of us, and co-operation was possible ; but we all felt an independent force in him, and he had his own peculiar ways of formulating things, his own phrases,
*At Memorial Meeting held at Glenmore. Also before the Philadelphia and Chicago Ethical Societies.
38 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
just as he developed a characteristic set of practical ac- tivities in the St. Louis Society, I recall his insistence on the religiousness of the Ethical Movement, not because of transcendental views connected with ethics, but be- cause ethics itself was to him a sacred subject, because it excited sacred feelings — he saw perhaps more clearly than any of the rest of us that the specific sense of the sacred was what made religion — not a set of cosmical views; he spoke in an early lecture of an "Ethical Church," and later of "we the clergy" — an expression that I remember grated on me at the time.
In another way he was strongly individual. He held that one might belong to our movement and to one of the recognized churches at the same time. Though a ra- tionalist himself, he did not insist on rationalism as a part of the movement. He did not think it proper for an Eth- ical Sunday School to say whether Jesus turned water into wine or not. He had such a sense of the supremacy of the one thing — ethics, that the lesser matters of scien- tific enlightenment he passed by. He did so theoretically — ^this was his view; whether he did so practically and whether he was altogether consistent even in holding such a view, is another matter; happily not, to my mind — for I must think that to know how things are done in the world is almost of as much moment as to know that they ought to be done.
The fact is that it was because he was so essentially and thoroughly a modern and progressive man in his views, that he had the rich, sane influence on his community and time that he had. Intellectually speaking Sheldon was of no common order. If he had not found a practical outlet for his energies, I surmise that he might have done no mean work in philosophy, or some of the social sciences. His mind was keen, penetrating. I have been struck
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 39
with this as I have just reread a paper of his in the Jour- nal of Speculative Philosophy for 1886. It is a thorough- going piece of critical writing, and coincides in some striking particulars with what I suspect to be one of the most important constructive books in philosophy of this year, Montgomery's 'Thilosophical Problems in the Light of Vital Organization." His wonderful range of read- ing, and his power of grasping the vital characteristic marks of a system, are shown in an article entitled "A Bird's Eye View of the Literature of Ethical Science Since the Time of Charles Darwin," in the Transactions of the St. Louis Academy of Science of so recent a date as 1903. He was a laborious, indefatigable worker, and while in the harness and amid the cares and distractions of life in a metropolis, found or took time to mingle with the great intellectual currents that move through the modern world.
But he was not only a thinker. This shy man, with al- most the manners of a recluse when I first knew him, had a rare power of seeing men as they are and conditions as they exist. He knew how to estimate a situation. He knew what might be done and what he had better not attempt. He was prodigious, lavish in his energies, but along practical lines. He had a keen sense that, as he once said, "human nature is something besides intellect." He knew the power of habit, the inertia of the masses, the natural conservatism of man. He learned to resign himself to the prejudices which could not be conquered, to the timidity on the part of others which could not be overcome. He did not identify himself with causes that would not go.
But the things he did undertake he pushed to the end. There was something dauntless, untiring about him, as if
40 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
he would weary heaven and earth rather than not get what he wanted. He did not allow himself to be dis- couraged. What infinite good humor in his confession about his efforts to start an Ethical Sunday School : "We tried and we tried. The young people would come, but they would not stay. The fathers and mothers could not see much value in it. The teachers to whom I gave the notes which they were tO' make use of in their classes would tell me that their notes were of no avail, and that Jvhat was given them would not work." And yet "as one set of notes or lessons went into my wastebasket, we would try another." And at last came the system and methods that would work. It was so with the Working- men's Self-Culture Clubs which Mr. Sheldon started. They observed strict neutrality on religious, political and social questions — they took an attitude with which success was possible, and after no end of labor and pains, suc- cess came, and so abundantly, that Mr. Sheldon no longer needed to give the Clubs his personal superintendence.
And yet behind all and deeper than all was the soul of the man with its far-reaching visions, its reverences, its absolute trust. His philosophy taught him that the dis- position to mutual helpfulness was a part of human na- ture and prior to any specific religions — and love and justice were an immediate reality tO' his mind. To them he bowed, of them he expected the final victory, in them life found its meaning — ^they were to him man's higher self on which he can ever rely. They meant man's per- sonal redemption, they meant social redemption — and if he was sceptical about some of the reforms of the day it was because these commanding sentiments did not inspire them. "It is because these great efforts do not concen- trate upon an ethical ideal that I am afraid of them," he said in one of the first public addresses he ever gave.
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 4 1
Man must act from his highest self — this was his feehng. It is a new version of the old commandment, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God."
This was all personal vision, and, in the degree in which it is possible to our frail humanity, personal experience. He wished above all to have his own life right. I seem to feel this personal note in a very early statement he made, which I shall quote in full : "Many have thought that be- cause they do not feel the need of a church, because they are conscious of their own integrity, therefore it is not for themselves but for the rest of the world, for the poor and illiterate, for the 'half moral,' that an Ethical Society is needed. But do they fully appreciate what is meant by moral culture? Does a man come to a plane of moral elevation when he can say, *I can go no further ; I am at the summit'? We shall not reform the world unless we are ever reforming ourselves. The most perfect man is never more than half-perfect in comparison with what he might become. From the dawn of earliest consciousness down to the last hour, when we are passing out through the portals into the realm of eternity, through that vista of years along which we pass, there is not a day nor an hour when we do not need to be in a process of inward refining. The education of the inward man, of the in- most man, never stops. This purification of the inward feelings, this constant lifting up of the better self within ourselves, this is the supreme purpose of an Ethical So- ciety."
One other passage I will quote in closing as showing the depths or rather the heights of power, to which he believed human nature could rise. We all crave to be happy, in the ordinary sense of having what we want; "but," says Mr. Sheldon, "I doubt whether a completely
42 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
happy man would ever know what it was to live the life of the spirit. When you get what you do not want, or do not get what you do want, then it is that you are led to ascend to new heights of your being or to strike into its deeper recesses. We conquer nature only to find that it may conquer us, unless somehow we can enter a sphere where the 'tendencies of nature,' as we term them, do not hold sway."
Somehow I feel that it was into such a sphere that this strenuous soul was ever and anon arising amid the strug- gles and disappointments of his earthly life — and that in the last struggle, the last disappointment, he passed into it to abide there forever. The end was not death, but peace and victory.
By Dr. John Love joy Elliott.*
My words will be brief, and so far as possible in the spirit of the man we are thinking about to-night. In coming into his presence or in thinking of him, I got the same impression one does in reading of those strong cities built of old, with great walls about them that could protect all who dwelt within from sudden attack from without. They are not to be surprised, they are not to be overcome quickly. And within these walls there flows a living stream of water out of a deep well, an inex- haustible spring, that refreshes and enriches those who are living in the city, so that they never fear the siege. And so I feel about Mr. Sheldon, that he was strong. And he was chiefly strong because in his own nature, out of his own inner life, he had the elements of strength and
'''At the Memorial Meeting at Glenmore.
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 43
power that made him able to live as he lived. What he was, was no mere accident. One felt about him as was said of Lincoln that he "was strong within himself, as in a fate." You felt that no mere accident or chance could change his course, or change his way. There was some- thing fixed about the direction in which he was going. He was not a man who reacted quickly on any mere thing that came to him. It was an inner life that prompted him. He was as far from being a faddist as a man could be. The cry or the shout did not drive him in this or that direction; he kept on his way, sanely, steadily, and in a strong fashion. It was the element of strength in him that gave him his power to create strength in other men.
His way was not easy. I remember his saying that the first thing a man had to learn when he went into a new community to do the kind of work he was doing in St. Louis, was that he was not wanted there. And al- though he had that experience, he lived there and he worked mightily until he was wanted, until he was need- ed in that city — wanted and needed by the people whose lives he had touched. He had a peculiar power of in- fluencing young men. I very gratefully acknowledge that years ago, in Berlin, I received a letter from Mr. Sheldon which influenced very much the things that I was to do. This great energy and power in him was of the kind that called forth like energy and power in others.
He had a peculiar gift for setting other people to work, and setting them to work along the lines on which he was working. And what were these lines? They were the lines that a man must follow who builds. Mr. Sheldon was one of the builders. He was not so much a talker. You did not hear him talking much about social reform ;
44 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
but he built his Self-culture Halls and they will stand. He was not one who was driven simply to discussing how we can help — he felt that he must do something. Thoughtfully, resolutely, determinedly, he brought the best gifts of thought and help and encouragement that either he could get or find in any one else, to the work- ing people, the poor people, those who would culture themselves. He was a builder — a builder for the poor, but before everything else a builder of the ethical life through his Society.
His view of life was not mere optimism. There is a picture of a scene by Millais that comes to my mind. The landscape is dark; it is early morning, and the field is rough. But the strong central figure strides forward in its manly vigor, scattering the seeds of the harvest that you feel will surely come; and in a way that figure is typical of Mr. Sheldon. He began to gather some of those fruits, the seeds of which he had planted, and for which he had prepared, in the strong men and women of his Society, in the young men and women in the work of his Sunday School.
When I visited him in those last months he said : "Well, when I get up, it is all to do over again; it is all to be begun over again." I could not help rejoining that the Society which he had cared for was going on better than ever. "Oh," he said, "it is not that at all. As I read the newspapers that come in here from day to day, I cannot help but wonder, What are these people quarreling about out there in the world? What are they competing for? What is all this irritation and bad feeling, but so much of useless, wasted life and time? What is all that for?" And he added: "You know one cannot withdraw for these months and months, and look at the world from the
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 45
sick bed, and not get a new point of view." A grander and better world than ever he had seen before dawned on him in those months of sickness. And he felt that his work was to begin anew in accordance with this new vision.
For the soul of the man there is no simile, it has not its like in all the world, it is itself. And so, we can only say of our comrade and our leader, he was a man who kept faith with his own higher nature. He was one who strove with all his energy and all his mind to bring justice and kindliness and hope and holiness into this world. He disdained the baser means of excitement as unworthy, and used for his tools the things of reason, and of the nobler sentiment. He did what he could for the poor and lowly. He lives in the energy and in the holiness of the men and women whose lives he touched, and, at the end of his life, like Moses upon the high peak, he died with a vision of a grander, better life clearly within his sight. That vision of the holy life of man which he beheld shall be and abide with us who yet live to guide us in our way upon this earth.
46 walter l. sheldon memorial addresses.
By Mr. Robert Moore.*
Nothing can be more difficult than to speak of what is so close to us as the subject of our thoughts this even- ing. The strongest impression, perhaps, that Mr. Sheldon has left with us is the absolute, complete devotion of the whole man to his work. Never in my life have I seen a man whose whole soul was so completely wrapped up in the single aim of accomplishing the task he had set be- fore him; no medieval saint ever manifested a more ab- solute self-surrender to his life work.
And the marvelous activity and energy with which he gave himself to it was a matter of constant and increas- ing surprise to all who knew him. I never knew a man who could approach him in the amount he could accom- plish. What was apparently impossible he did, and where failure looked certain for the rest of us he was certain to succeed. So that we came to the feeling that what he proposed would be successful, notwithstanding our own doubts as to how it could possibly be. In organizing his courses of lectures it seemed that he had only to go to the man he wanted, — no matter how far off in his sphere of thought and line of work, — to help him, and he came. I have seen busy men, judges on the bench, pro- fessional men in every line, whose assistance he needed in some course of lectures, and whom the rest of us would hardly have dared to speak to on such a subject, regard- ing it as a hopeless and impossible thing, and yet without fail they did what he asked of them.
And so in the Society his influence upon the young men, the young women, the people everywhere, was something that was simply marvelous. It was the begin-
*President of the Ethical Society of St. Louis. From the ad- dress given at Memorial Meeting at Glenmore.
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 47
ning of their life, in its highest and best sense. His in- fluence has indeed been incalculably great — one that can never be effaced.
By Mr. Moore.*
To proclaim the sovereignty of ethics, the supreme value of the good life, and to build up in St. Louis a So- ciety dedicated to this ideal became the ruling purpose of his life. And though the range of his activities was exceptionally wide, this Society was the center about which they all revolved. It was for this that he lived and worked — worked with an intensity which, though it enabled him to accomplish what would otherwise have been impossible, beyond doubt shortened his life.
Meantime he became widely recognized throughout the city as a power for good, and, what is of much greater import, he kindled in the lives of many the fire of ear- •nestness and noble purpose. Of all this, however, great and valuable as it is, he could know almost nothing, and no doubt his greatest reward was found in watching the Society, of which he was the leader, grow from its feeble beginnings to its present position of conscious unity and assured strength.
And when, more than a year ago, at his summer home in New England, near the place of his birth, he lay stricken with his last illness, he could not rest until brought back to St. Louis, here to work again if possible, or if not, then here to die. And during the whole year, though confined to his chair and his bed, he directed practically all the work of the Society. He chose the
*From the address at the St. Louis Memorial Meeting, Saturday evening, October 12th, 1907.
48 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
speakers who should occupy his place, made selections to be read from the platform, and kept himself fully in- formed of everything affecting the Society's welfare — all the time looking forward with an intense longing to a time when he might again occupy the platform himself. And, for a brief hour, as you know, this longing was gratified when at our last meeting here, the closing Sunday of our twenty-first year, he occupied the platform with Prof. Adler, and in a clear, strong voice read the closing words. From this supreme effort, however, he never rallied, but in a few weeks breathed his last.
As now we look back upon his brief career, which in the breadth and depth of its accomplishment puts most older men to shame, there is nothing in it more admirable or more characteristic than his spirit and bearing during his last illness. Those who visited him during these weary months found him always cheerful, always inter- ested in what others were doing, with almost nothing to say about himself. So that such a visit, however sadden- ing, was even more inspiring. For one could hardly fail to catch something of the faith which animated and sus- tained him — a deep and abiding faith in the ultimate tri- umph of the true over the false, of the better over the vvorse.
We can almost hear him now as he read those last
words ever uttered by him on this platform:
"Be patient, O be patient, go and watch the wheat ears grow So imperceptibly that ye can mark nor change nor throe ; Day after day, day after day till the ear is fully grown, And then again day after day till the ripened field is brown."
And when his final summons came there was no fal- tering; but with a kindly smile for those around him, a message of love to his people, and the word "Auf Wiedersehen" — he passed out of sight.
walter l. sheldon memorial addresses. 49
By Dr. William Taussig.*
I CONSIDER it a privilege to have the opportunity, at the invitation of the president of the Ethical Society, to pre- sent to you the merits which are due to the memory of our departed friend in a line of activity diflferent from that of the Ethical movement, but fully as rich in its beneficial results.
This activity he put into practical shape, on entirely original lines, for the uplifting, in moral and educational ways, of the working classes, through the bringing into life the Self-Culture Hall for wage-earners.
It was he who founded that Association in 1888, aided by a few men who were in sympathy with his philan- thropic ideas.
He felt that the mission of bringing home to the work- ing men and women the fact that moral and intellectuas culture could be made accessible to them just as well as to those better situated, had never been thoughtfully con- sidered by the people of St. Louis.
He believed that such culture would be apt to bring some of the graces of life to the humble firesides of these people, that the enjoyment of such opportunities would cast a ray of light and cheerfulness into their lives, and that the desire to be instructed and elevated, and to keep pace with the progress of the world was as keen rela- tively with the average working men as w ith other classes.
Thus he formed the Association, had it incorporated, organized its working system, raised the necessary funds, and entered upon this work with all the noble enthusiasm, the restless energy and indomitable will which distin-
*President of the Self Culture Hall Association, at Memorial meeting in St. Louis.
50 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
guished him in this as well as in all other efforts for social betterment in which he was engaged.
This is not the place or time to enlarge upon a history of the small beginnings and the gradual enlargement of this institution, and I can only say that it stands to-day a living monument that Sheldon, unconsciously and un- selfishly, had erected to himself; and that, in the course of many years, conducted and operated on lines origin- ally laid down by him, this Self Culture Hall has cast the light of knowledge, of purity and of social friendliness upon thousands of men, women and children who other- wise might have been shut out from it.
The path had not always been clear, many difficulties, external and internal, had to be overcome, but there never was a moment where he flinched in his course, and where the love of the cause and the conviction of its great use- fulness did not impel him, with dauntless courage and devotion to insist upon the maintenance of the work and the widening of its sphere of influence.
It has been my good fortune to have been associated with him in this work for many years and I can bear witness to the nobility and unselfishness with which he performed what he conceived to be his duty.
When his precious life was ended he had for nineteen years given the best forces of his life to this cause un- selfishly and without the slightest compensation, with no reward other than the esteem and admiration of his fel- low workers, and the love and gratitude of the benefici- aries.
Mr. Sheldon was a moral enthusiast, a lover of hu- manity, a preacher and follower of high ideals, but, above all, a character as pure, noble, unselfish and lovable as is rarely met with, and as such we honor his memory.
walter l. sheldon memorial addresses. 5 1
By W. a. Brandenburger.*
Everyone of us can recollect a time when into our young lives there came some man of noble mien and char- acter, older than ourselves, who seemed to us to be the very embodiment of honor and of stoic virtue, a man whose mind was the throne of self-dependence, who, if he had at times a troubled spirit, outwardly at least seemed always at repose, and to this man our very souls went out in silent reverence, respect and love. It was perhaps just at that time of life when we were groping out in search of an ideal, and our keen, untarnished, youth- ful sense quickly recognized the ring of true sincerity in his spoken word, and felt that deep-seated earnestness and enthusiasm which endeared him to our hearts. We re- member how almost unconsciously we strove to mold our own forming character so that it might in some de- gree conform to the cherished standard.
Such a man was Mr. Sheldon to us who knew him and to many young men and women who in the course of the twenty years of his manifold activity, came for a time within the range of his influence, some to stay, some to pass out into other spheres, but all carrying with them strength and inspiration imparted by his words.
Many of you know how true this is ; how, reluctantly though surely under his influence you parted with some long-cherished prejudice; how some pet panacea for so- cial amelioration, which you had embraced in a moment of youthful enthusiasm, was through his calm fair argu- ment relegated to occupy a position in your minds more properly proportioned to its merit. Himself filled with
*Superintendent of the Ethical Sunday School, at the St. Louis Memorial Meeting.
52 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
enthusiasm treasured from his youth, he would have been the last to dampen the enthusiasm of others, and when he laid on the hand of caution, did it in such a way as to pre- serve, not crush, the ardent spirit; his word engendered that calm introspection which brings forth the soul none the less steady in its purpose for having mastered its im- mature fervor.
He taught us the power of knowledge as we had not known it before. His respect for the truth was bound- less. If knowledge of a subject was to be obtained by application and research, no time nor effort was too much for him to spend in acquiring it. Never did he offer to treat a subject without first having mastered what the best minds of the world had said of it before, and when he gave it forth to us, the thought had become trans- formed into his own, vested with something of his own personality and power, that gave it force and directness.
If the function of an Ethical leader is to give purpose and direction to the lives of others, we young men know how well he succeeded. Mere preaching never could have done it — it was the power of his example that was all compelling. The exalted standard which he fixed, he followed, and while his charity excused the shortcom- ings in others, none who in their conduct wilfully trod on ethical standards dared face the austerity of his dis- approving countenance.
We, seeing only the results of his labors, scarcely ap- preciated the cost at which they were secured. Possessed by nature of a fine mind, the easy acquisition of super- ficial knowledge never sufficed him, but with searching energy he went to the sources, securing his facts at the fountain head and martialing them as his treatment of the subject demanded. Such a mind is a rare possession,
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 53
and like the faithful servant in the parable who employed his talents that they might increase, so his mind was ever acquiring a maturer and more certain judgment from his steadfast application.
Not what he said, but the way he worked, taught us that the moments of life are precious. He crowded the work of two lifetimes into one. It was as if he kept say- ing to himself in the words of Carlyle : "Behold, the day is passing swiftly over, our Hfe is passing swiftly over; and the night cometh when no man can work." Every moment not employed in action was employed in thought. Every day was a working day spent in service to his fel- low men.
Among the verses which he compiled for his own stim- ulation and inspiration, I find this one:
"The energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun ; And he who flagged not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing — only he, His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly to eternal life."
Coming as a stranger to our city, into a community which is perhaps more than ordinarily conservative, he won recognition for himself, for the Society and for the idea upon which it is founded, largely by reason of his sweet earnestness that had something of winsome child- hood in it, and which was quite as fascinating. The outside world admired him for his powers, but we who knew him loved him for his faults as well. We, who find it easy to mingle with men upon the simple plane of good- fellowship, cannot know the intensity of his struggle to overcome a temperamental barrier in himself, which tend- ed to remove him from close contact with other men, yet
54 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
we know it must have been tragic and we loved him for the effort.
Yet in what I have said, there is not even a hint of his achievements or any measure of his work. His contri- butions to literature and the effect of his thought in ad- vancing the cause of Ethical Religion I have not men- tioned, feeling that this can be more adequately treated by others. I have attempted to express, if I could, the appreciation and regard of our younger people for his memory. The results of his work are destined to live and many who have not known him during his life will be the beneficiaries of his work, but we who have known him are especially privileged, having personally experi- enced contact with such a rare personality.
It is written: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." No man ever more literally laid down his life for his fellow men, than did our great friend and good counsellor, our leader and master. Scornful of physical limitations, he sacri- ficed his very life's blood at the altar of Duty. Let us young men who owe to him so much, see to it that the sacrifice was not in vain ; let us carry forward the work which he inaugurated, and the burden of which he bore so many years on his own strong shoulders. We can best pay our debt to him by serving the cause for which he labored. The harvest truly is great and the laborers as yet are few, but we may say of his cause as we can of him that "The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."
walter l. sheldon memorial addresses. 55
By Miss Fanny M. Bacon.*
Two days before Mr. Sheldon left for Japan he came to the Marquette School. More than 200 children were gathered to accept a picture given by one of their school- mates. The picture was of a noble knight in armor seated upon a splendid horse. This knight overlooked the roofs of the little town at his feet, in which was the home he was going out to defend.
Mr. Sheldon stepped forward to .the picture and asked the children five questions.
1. "Is this a good horse?"
2. "How do you know it is a good horse ?"
3. "Is this a good man?"
4. "How do you know it is a good man ?"
5. "Children, what is the difference between a good horse and a good man?"
He shook his head at the answers, and told them to "Think, think." At the end of a week they could go to Miss Bacon for the right answer and when he returned in the fall he would come and see what she said.
Such questions — this method of stimulation — Mr. Shel- don used better than any other person I ever knew.
For sixteen years I have been a member of the Greek Ethics Club, during which time Mr. Sheldon watched it grow from a membership of less than twenty to two hun- dred, and the influence of the Club has been strong enough to hold many members year after year.
In the Club a large variety of religious inheritance and training have been brought to the discussions of prob- lems presented and all of these united eagerly on ethical
*Principal of the Marquette School, at the Memorial Meeting in St. Louis.
56 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
questions. Each member of the Club has felt personally responsible for answers to Mr. Sheldon's not-easy ques- tions.
Often these questions pursued us for days — often they were never absolutely answered. But our search for an- swers helped clarify and define motives, ideals and prin- ciples— helped us crystalize our ethical ideals.
Our books were read, not for intellectual enjoyment, but for character study. Our leader believed that this would arouse the conscience to greater energy and strengthen it for a firmer stand.
The consideration of such questions as Mr. Sheldon asked ought to make one live carefully from day to day. Here are some of the questions:
"What was the motive of his life?"
"Should the guiltless hold themselves aloof from the guilty as a duty?"
"What was it that Zenobia most cared for in life?"
"Which characters show any strength from worse tc better?"
"What was false in the life philosophy of Irma?"
These are only a few out of over thirteen hundred that Mr. Sheldon took the time and made the effort to write for this Club during the last four years only.
A large class remember with great pleasure two win- ters' work on "The Old and New Testament as Litera- ture," when the leader did all the work and the class fol- lowed with absorbed interest, and have ever since been grateful for all the valuable notes Mr. Sheldon gave them.
From his pulpit — from his written words — from his life's work we know Mr. Sheldon. In his work we know that he was willing and brave enough "to commence
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 57
with the commencement." Modest and unselfish enough to be willing to take the "one step" needful to advance others ; and who has accomplished more !
We know such a life as this meant a daily, an hourly life "of patience, of self abnegation, of devotion to oth- ers" and of devotion to the duties of life. His creed was: "We shape ourselves." His religion was love of men. He said. "Our great need in life is religion. Re- ligion is a support against affliction, or suffering, or de- feat. When the road is rough and long, religion lifts us out of ourselves and holds us in the true pathway." Love of men lifted Mr. Sheldon out of himself and kept him steadily in the true pathway. He sought always what he called ''Uplifts for the spirit," and these found, he shared them all, shared them in the hope that they might give to others the comfort and strength and in- spiration they gave him.
To us how dear are all the messages Mr. Sheldon has left. Who among us would be without his precious booklet, "A Sentiment in Verse for Every Day in the Year?" in which we read, and hear the very voice of him these selections helped and inspired.
And how much we care for the addresses in which we follow thought after thought until we find the ultimate, universal and eternal law, and know that in each of us is a self that may hold to this law.
All of us who knew him are richer and better for his life, and we shall grow. Growth Mr. Sheldon loved. We shall grow better so long as the influence of the choir in- visible shall last.
"When a good man dies,
For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men."
58 walter l. sheldon memorial addresses. By Rev. George R. Dodson.*
Another noble man has gone from among us to join that invisible choir whose music is the gladness of the world. A man has been here, one who has entered into our affections, who made part of our lives, whose earnest words still ring in our ears, and whose memory is con- nected with our aspiration to be better men and women, to establish righteousness, and to make the world a cleaner, safer, better and more beautiful place to live in. Through twenty years he was building his life into this city, and the influence he exerted will not cease.
His may be cited as a life that, measured by the high- est standard, was truly successful and happy. And we may say this without forgetting that it was all too short and that it was not withiut suffering.
We call Mr. Sheldon's life happy because it was his privilege to work effectively for the highest things in the world in company with the best men and women, to have their confidence and support, to warn them from the evil and lure them toward the good, to encourage those who in the face of difficulties needed his word, to reinforce the passion for the true, the beautiful and the good, and to be the friend and helper of the best in the inner life of all.
It was his mission and high privilege to aid you in the clarification of your thoughts and in burnishing and keep- ing bright your moral ideals. We are always in danger of forgetting that the highest results of the highest activ- ity are not material, and that the greatest work that can be done and most needs to be done is in the minds and hearts of men. The supreme questions are those of our
*Minister of the Church of the Unity, St. Louis, at Memorial meeting.
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 59
proper attitude to the world and of our right relation to each other. Whoever can help us here makes as solid a contribution to human welfare as those who feed and clothe the race.
As your moral teacher and guide, his relation was the highest possible. For while conscience is in the individ- ual and is therefore a private matter, its education is possible only in the ethical action and reaction of men, in the appeal of character without to character within.
Our teachers and inspirers serve us by uttering clearly what our own hearts are trying to say. It is the high office of the minister and ethical teacher to thus help to make explicit what is implicit in all. The summons to noble living comes with such force precisely because there is that in us which is already struggling upward. And when the path of duty is revealed, we feel as if we had been made clear as to what was all along our own intent. And to those who help us here we rightly feel sincere gratitude. There is no service more real than that which helps to clearer thinking and to the ennobling of those ideals which give our lives direction. And it is because your leader was so successful in helping you here, that I call his life happy.
For me his departure means much. The company of ethical and religious teachers whose sympathies are as wide as the world, and who feel that their fellowship is with all who look upward, is still so small that when a man like W. L. Sheldon lays down his work, his fellows feel bereft.
But though he has gone, St. Louis is richer that he has lived.
60 walter l. sheldon memorial addresses.
By Samuel Sale.*
As I was going abroad for the summer, I went to bid Mr. Sheldon good-bye. It was only a few days after he had assisted in the closing exercises of the Ethical So- ciety. I found him sitting on the porch of his home in the sunlight and as he was looking forward so hopefully to the time when he might resume the work that he loved, I little thought that I had said the last farewell and should never grasp him by the hand again. When I heard of his departure, I was shocked as if one of my own had been taken from me. It was once my pleasure and privilege to address the graduating class of the Mar- quette school, together with our lamented friend, and as I think of him now, the quaint bit of rabbinic lore that I made use of then, comes to me again, as if it applied to him with peculiar force and fitness.
Thus runs the legend : "When God was about to create man, he took counsel of his ministering angels, Loving- Kindness and Truth, Righteousness and Peace; Loving- Kindness pleaded for the creation of man, on the ground that he would be a worker of deeds of love, while Truth sought to dissuade, saying that man's life would be full of falsehood. The angel of Righteousness counseled the creation of man, pleading that he would be a worker of righteousness, while 'Peace' again sought to forestall it, on the ground that man's life would be full of strife and contention. To end the dispute, God cast down 'Truth' from heaven to earth." In its fall, it must have been shattered into numberless fragments, so that we poor mortals may well rest contented, if we find but one of these divine splinters. Of our departed friend it may be
*Rabbi of Congregation "Shaare-Emuth," St. Louis, Mo., at the St. Louis Memorial Meeting.
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 6l
said that he had gathered up into his soul one of the luminous fragments of divinity and that looking upon him and his beautiful and useful life, the angels would have all been of one accord, for the ministers of grace, loving-kindness and righteousness and peace had found a permanent abode in him. His friends feel that they have sustained a personal loss in the passing of this earnest worker in the cause of the good, this gentle-natured and modest man, while the larger community will sadly miss the guidance and inspiration of one of its most zealous toilers in behalf of its best and highest interests. Mr. Sheldon not only co-operated with others in every- thing that made for the lasting general well-being, but he was himself the sponsor of movements tending to that end. A strong and decided moral force has gone from the scene of his earthly labors and as such we shall re- member him and bless his memory.
By M. Anesakl*
I DEEM it a great privilege to speak on this grave oc- *casion, yet I hardly know how to express my sorrow for the great loss to your Society in the death of Mr. Sheldon ; but please accept my words as the expression of the sin- cere condolence of all the members of the fraternal Ethic- al Society of Tokyo. It was in June last year that we re- ceived, to our great joy, the eminent leader of your So- ciety. He favored us by speaking at several of our meet- ings and you can imagine how his personality and words of keen insight impressed us. He stayed three weeks in Tokyo and strove, during the time, to mix with
*Professor in the Imperial University of Japan and member of the Tokyo Ethical Society, at the St. Louis Memorial meeting.
62 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
every layer of society. He saw our educational work in various directions and gave many instructive words to the teachers and pupils. He saw many authorities in education, visited nobles in their mansions, and went around in the slums and showed his interest in and sym- pathy for the people dwelling in those nests of poverty. One day, in a long private talk with me, he asked many questions concerning the morality of the people; and evinced a most keen interest in the matrimonial relations in our country. Another time, in a meeting of our So- ciety, he stimulated us to active practical works, especi- ally for the benefits of the lower classes. His idea seems to have been that we should not remain an "ethical talk club," as he designated our association, but should be actively ethical, i. e., we should concern ourselves with the actual moral problems, instead of academical discus- sions on ethics. Mr. Sheldon's eager interest in and keen insight into everything concerning the moral life were incessant.
I do not know exactly what was his object in paying a visit to Japan — a visit which caused the lamentable de- cline of his health, I am indeed sorry to say. Probably his vigilant attention to moral problems attracted him to our country, where rapid and radical changes in life and ideas are going on, after having jumped into the stream of the world's civilization and just after a war which gave a significant stimulus to the awakening of our na- tional self-consciousness. The school boys and girls in- structed in the ethics of loyalty towards their sovereign and of filial piety towards parents, the coolies with their growing consciousness of being a component part of the rising nation, a simple woman humbly bowing before a Shinto shrine paying her homage to the names of those
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 63
who died in war — all these things seem to have appealed to his heart and head.
And this man, a man of thought and deed, is now no more amongst us. A young friend of his from Japan, whose hope in coming to America was to see him, can do nothing but speak warmly in his memory. How sad is the fate of human life, but how sweet the tender and af- fectionate memory of the friend and leader of us all! His last words "Auf widersehen" must find their fulfil- ment, not in physical eyes but in spiritual eyes. His "love to all" should one day be reaHzed in our ideas and deeds. A Japanese saint, whom I might call the St. Francis of Japan, left a poem to his followers before going to exile. It reads :
Wlhat though our bodies, fragile as the dew, Melt here and there, resolved to nothingness? Our souls shall meet again, some happier day, In this same lotus-bed where now they grow.
May these lines be dedicated to the soul of our friend and leader! We must seek for the lotus-bed, on which the spiritual unity and ethical harmony of mankind may rest by following the noble ideals and lofty aspirations which inspired and enlivened the whole life of our la- mented leader.
64 walter l. sheldon memorial addresses.
By Felix Adler.*
The sincere appreciation and praise of those whom we love is deeply gratifying to us while they still live. It is the sweetest consolation after they have passed away. The tributes to which we have just listened, so earnest and so heartfelt, bear evidence to this truth. It will be my part as a colleague of Mr. Sheldon, as one of the little company of leaders of which he was so active and cher- ished a member, to speak a farewell word, to offer a part- ing tribute in the name of the Fraternity of Lecturers and of the Ethical Societies at large. I do so with the emotion which under the circumstances is most natural, for Mr. Sheldon's departure is the first break in the ranks of our little company and is an unspeakable loss, not only to your Society, but to our common cause.
It is as a leader that I wish to speak of him as a mod- ern priest, if I may use that expression, as one who ex- ercised under modern conditions and in new ways the sa- cred function of the minister. Mr. Sheldon himself pointedly ranked himself with the clergy, and it may be well for us to consider the reasons that animated him in so doing. The function of the priest in its highest and broadest sense is not obsolete, it is not confined to any system of Theology or any specific church. What is that function ? And what are the qualifications and character- istics that we are to look for in the person that exercises it? In the first place, the function of the modern priest is paramountly ethical. It is to minister to the moral distress of mankind.
There are those whose profession it is to minister to physical distress. The physicians endeavor to cure disease
*At the Memorial Meeting at St. Louis.
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 65
and to relieve the suffering which it entails. John How- ard was profoundly stirred to pity by the terrible condi- tions that prevailed in the prisons of his day and by the misery of those confined in them. Florence Nightingale devoted herself to the wounded. In the case of others, philanthropists, social workers of every description, it is poverty and its attendant privations that has appealed to the heart and stirred up the effort to mitigate and to uplift. The priest is pre-eminently one who is stirred by the moral distress of his fellows. In one form or an- other the moral evil that exists in the world around him, the awful consequences which it involves for the individ- ual himself and for society, the degradation to which it inevitably leads, the pity and the horror of it come home to him and are intensely realized by him. In a flash of blinding light, as it were, he sees the waste places in the moral world around him. Generally it is some one form of evil that thus, at the outset, attracts his attention, and the deep purpose is established in his soul to help, if he can, to awaken those who slumber on the brink of preci- pices— to arouse, to encourage, to redeem.
This is the beginning. No one is fitted to be a priest in the modern sense, who has not had something like this initial experience. Mr. Sheldon was assuredly a priest in this sense. The more material forms of distress, the pain and trouble to which humanity is heir assuredly did not leave him untouched or cold. But he saw the connec- tion between even these external modes of evil and the underlying moral mal-adjustment and it was the latter that challenged his supreme interest, his most consecrated devotion.
I have used the word "devotion" and one cannot think of the priestly office, of the modern ministry, and of Mr.
^ WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
Sheldon as one who fulfilled its obligations, without at once recognizing how this quality of absolute devotion enters into the very nature and texture of it. Single- mindedness, singleness of purpose, concentration of the whole life upon one lofty aim was his outstanding char- acteristic. It is written "Thou shalt have no other Gods before my face." Mr. Sheldon had no other Gods ex- cept his work and the moral purpose to which that work' was pledged. He had many and varied interests, he was singularly versatile in his methods. He was open to sug- gestion in regard to the means by which the end in view might be attained. But the end itself in everything which he undertook was ever identically the same, the one and only goal toward which every effort pointed, on which every part converged.
There is yet another important qualification which the modern minister must possess, another condition which he must fulfill. He must be a student, a learner. He must bring the dry light of the intellect to bear upon the problems of the moral life. He must seek the aid of many sciences to solve the perplexities by which he is confronted. It has been said, mistakenly by some, that moral knowledge is easy, that the moral will alone is dif- ficult to create. But in truth moral knowledge itself is often lacking. The life we possess is wavering and dim. That there is an ultimate right we know, but what the right in particular instances is, is often doubtful. More light we need as well as more power, and Mr. Sheldon was an assiduous and painstaking searcher for light. He was an omnivorous reader. He strove to master the va- rious branches of knowledge that bear upon ethical ques- tions and how various and complex they are, only he who has honestly tried to master them can know. And what-
WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. ^
ever he said or wrote had the ring of truth about it. The metal which he dug out of the mine of knowledge was stamped with the impress of his own first hand experi- ence. He said many things which others have likewise said, but nothing that he said was commonplace, for he said nothing which he had not realized.
But there is one other characteristic which I must not forbear to mention because it is most honorable to him and because it implies the inmost secret of the influence he exerted and explains the genuine affection and rever- ence with which he is mourned. I have said that at the outset the priest is struck and roused by the moral evil which exists in the world around him. He does not pro- ceed far on his way before he becomes aware that this evil, not in its crass forms perhaps, but in many subtle ways, extends into his own nature. He finds himself in- volved in the complicity of what in theological language is called sin. Hence the inward struggle, hence the heartache and the soulache, hence the persistent endeavor to purify himself, to expurgate the dross, to be saved him- self, saved in order that he may save ; or, to put it in other language, he feels the imperative necessity of achieving larger moral growth himself in order that he may help others to grow, to conquer his faults of temperament and disposition, to ripen morally in order that he may if pos- sible assist his fellows, who are perhaps morally less awake, less enlightened as to their own condition, to at- tain maturity. And it was this ripening in Mr. Sheldon, as he advanced in years, this unremitting, honorable, hon- est effort to apply an exacting standard to his own con- duct and inner self that makes him stand out in our eyes, the true priest he was, a noble figure, worthy not only of loving commemoration, but of reverential regard. And
68 WALTER L. SHELDON MEMORIAL ADDRESSES.
it was in that last year of prolonged agony that this quality in him shone out most tenderly and radiantly. And the fact that it was given him to attain such ripeness, that out of suffering he won this precious prize, is our su- preme consolation in looking back upon those days. How uncomplaining he was, how unselfish, how intent on per- forming punctually to the last poor shreds of strength that were left him, the duties that remained to be done. And oh, how patient! Who of us will forget the last occasion when he appeared upon this platform and when by a commanding effort of the will he subdued the pain he was suffering and read to us the touching words which he had selected for the close of the service. "Be patient, oh be patient!"
Truly we have sustained a grievous loss — you, the members of this Society in particular and also the Ethical movement at large. But we have also secured a priceless gain, a memory of a noble life well lived, of a great and loyal struggle well ended, of a race all too brief indeed, but one that touched the goal and won a lasting prize. Let us find strength in the hour of bereavement by clos- ing the ranks and earnestly resolving that the fruit of his labors shall not be lost, that his example shall not grow dim, and that the beneficent work which he has done in this community shall be perpetuated for genera- tions to come.
THE CHARACTER OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT.*
By Prof. Edwin R. A. Seligman, President of the
New York Society for Ethical Culture and
OF THE American Ethical Union.
Our movement, it is said, is more or less ephemeral in character, and were our leader to disappear, it would go the way of so many supposedly similar movements in the past. To this criticism the present meeting is the best answer. Our movement from its humble beginnings of almost a generation ago has now far transcended not only the limits of any one community, but also the con- fines of any one country. The ferment is working in men's minds in places and nations far removed from each other; and the recent creation of the International Union is an eloquent proof of this fact. As each nation has to some extent at least, its own peculiar ethical problems to solve, it is fitting that we should discuss at our peri- odical reunions the questions of deepest actual import- ance to ourselves. We must regard these conventions as one of the surest and most efficient methods of weld- ing together our interest and of helping to perpetuate the movement which we have so close at heart.
While therefore, we have every reason to be satisfied with the progress that is being made, and that has been made, both here and abroad, it may not be amiss to dwell for a moment on three obstacles in the path of a still more rapid development.
*Part of the address of welcome to the delegates at the As- sembly of the American Ethical Union held in New York, May 9-12, 1907.
69
70 THE CHARACTER OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT.
In the first place, there still exists a widespread misap- prehension of the character of a movement like ours. We are indeed no longer exposed to the danger of such misrepresentations as were common a decade or two ago, charges namely of agnosticism, atheism, irreligion, and what not? We have, I think, successfully lived down such wholly undeserved suspicions. But there is still a widespread sentiment that societies for ethical culture are primarily destructive rather than constructive, that they remove from the mass of men the support of moral ac- tion which is supposed to come from theological and dog- matic sources, and that they are therefore really weaken- ing the up-building forces in the community. Such a charge as this, however, betokens a woful incapacity to grasp our fundamental position. For our movement is nothing if not constructive ; our movement is nothing if it does not plant itself on the rock foundation of moral im- pulse and moral fact ; our movement is nothing if it does not cause its votaries to recognize that the very basis of our fellowship is a hope for, and belief in, the realization of ethical ideals.
The second obstacle to our more rapid growth is the attachment of individuals through custom or inertia to the existing churches. We have, of course, no quarrel with the churches. We are all striving to some extent at least for the same goal, and if men find a satisfaction of their spiritual needs within the folds of the existing church, — well and good. What I refer to, however, is the great and growing mass of men and women who are unable intellectually to follow and to accept the teachings of the particular creed or theology, but who, nevertheless, through custom or inertia, remain members of the fold. To us, this is an essentially illogical position. A man
THE CHARACTER OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 7 1
who is no longer able to lend intellectual credence to the more or less rigid or dogmatic contents of a particular creed has really no justification for remaining a member of that sect. If the particular creed teaches what is to him an untrue or an unacceptable doctrine, he cannot as a fully self-respecting intellectual force subscribe to that doctrine. There can be no mental reservations. And yet because of the admirable ethical and social work that is .''one by so many of our churches, not only the timid and the indolent remain members, but even many of the more forceful who are mentally estranged are nevertheless will- ing to silence their intellectual misgivings because of the spiritual benefits. Is it, however, too much to expect that with the course of time, more and more of the latter class at least will find their way to a movement which, if they only knew it, would satisfy all their spiritual longings, without causing them to haul down the flag of intellec- tual sincerity?
The third obstacle in our path is the feeling on the part of so many modern men that religion is primarily aii individual matter, that every man must choose his own religion for himself, and that he needs no other church or society. I do not, of course, allude here to that grow- ing number of individuals who assume the purely materi- alistic attitude, and who deny the need of any kind of religion. For these are the foes which all religious bodies, whether in or out of church, must meet. I refer speci- fically to the man who rates the spirit higher than the body, and who nevertheless is unchurched. We find examples of this primarily among the so-called scientific classes. Such an attitude is a perfectly explicable result of the unfortunate clash in former years between science and religion. It rests at bottom upon a decided over-
y2 THE CHARACTER OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT.
estimate of the function of science in the economy of human Hfe. The most difficult part of our problem is to convince these people of the truth of what we ourselves feel and know — that religious comradeship is necessary in the highest sense of the term ; that the word religion itself means the binding together of men in a spiritual fellow- ship and that there can be no such thing, logically, or ethically, as an individual religion. In this highest sense of the term, we also lay claim to being a religious move- ment and a religious fellowship, but it is a movement and a fellowship which is based on what is common to all religions, without accepting what is particular to each re- ligion. Just as the old system of the narrow Roman law was broadened into the noble jurisprudence of the imper- ial period by adopting the essential elements which were common to the instincts and strivings of all the different systems of provincial law; just as the old narrow Eng- lish common law was broadened and deepened by the sys- tem of equity which abandoned the forms in order to de- velop the essence, so the ethical movement is seeking to find the sub-stratum of all religions and is sloughing off the forms and dogmas which have only an historical sig- nificance in order to secure the emergence of the real es- sence in the very palpable shape of ethical fact and ethical aspiration.
We hope and believe that with each succeeding year these misapprehensions and these obstacles will diminish in number and influence, and we feel that nothing can better contribute to this end than the keeping before the public mind through such meetings as these the con- structive character of our movement and the need of such a fellowship.
THE NEED OF A RELIGION OF MORALITY.*
By William M. Salter.
The question whether morality can take a deep hold on individuals is the question whether morality can become a religion. Morals as custom touches only the surface of human life ; morals as scientific ethics simply clarifies the intellect ; but morals become religion would go to the bot- tom of life and remake it.
For consider what the two things mean — morality and religion. Morality is the rule or law which aims not merely at my or your, but the common good. That type of conduct is called moral which holds the family to- gether, which holds the tribe or community together, and, when the perception of humanity or the world arises, which holds the world together. For man above the animal, morality is a condition of existence, like chemical attraction for a molecule of water, like gravity for the earth.
Religion — what is it, on the other hand, but man's sense of what is sacred and divine, reverence, awe and wor- ship before it? It is a mistake to identify religion with belief in the supernatural or with a sense of the mysteri- ous and unknown — it is these things only in so far as the supernatural or mysterious becomes sacred in men's e3^es, so far as it awakens reverence and awe, so far as it becomes an object of worship, and these emotions may conceivably have other objects than the supernatural or
*Address at the closing meeting of the American Ethical Union, Carnegie Hall, Sunday, May 12, 1907. 70
74 THE NEED OF A RELIGION OF MORALITY.
mysterious. The primitive nature-worship is an instance ; the perhaps equally primitive ancestor-worship is an- other instance — and, among the cultivated races, Bud- dhism is still another. The sun, fire, light, rivers and wells were revered and worshiped not because a creator was placed behind them, but as they were and for the bless- ing and help they gave to men. The head of a house- hold was honored after death as he had been in life — the offerings and sacrifice to him were the bread and wine he had been accustomed to in life. In Buddhism it is the law that is sacred ; sacrifice has passed into obedience, prayer into holy meditation. The supernatural and mysterious do not exist to Buddhism, or if so, only as a philo- sophic speculation; yet it has its temples, shrines, ro- saries, religious vows and sacred brotherhoods. Taken broadly, in the light of universal history, religion is the sense of what is sacred and divine, whatever the sp(?- cific object may be.
If so, the question — our question — is whether religion may not have morality for its object, whether morality itself may not awaken those feelings of what is sacred and divine, that reverence, awe and worship which are the essence of religion.
How has any object excited the religious sentiments? The primal fact of life is need, the craving for help. If man were self-centered, self-sufiicient, he would never become religious. But what he is is dependent on what he is not. What were he without the sun, the light, the air, water and the fruitful earth? When man first rose above an instinctive life and began to think, he saw his de- pendence on these things, — that his life hung on them, — and they became divine to his wondering eyes. "Divine" originally meant "shining," recalling to us through the
THE NEED OF A RELIGION OF MORALITY. 75
reaches of history the time when the shining objects of the sky were objects of worship. Prometheus called:
"Ether of Heaven and Winds untired of wing, Rivers whose fountains fail not, and thou, Sea, Laughing in waves innumerable! O Earth, All-mother ! — 'Yea, and on the Sun I call, Whose orb scans all things."
In the. same way men were led to worship their an- cestors. They wanted their help after death, as they had had it in life. According to the crude science of the day, they continued on in shadowy form — hence the honors paid them and all the ritual of sacrifice. And when the deeper problems of Hfe arose, when social needs were felt, when men craved inner peace and happiness, when food and raiment and earthly success and triumph were seen to fall far short of bringing a happy society or of satisfying the spirit's need, then came religion^ like Buddhism (and, in a more mixed form, Hebrew prophet- ism and Christianity), and the help and redemption they gave were in a law and commandments, in deep-going moral ideals — and these became the holy, reverend things in men's minds. Pity, justice, detachment from self, love, love ruling through life and conquering death — these were what brought peace among men, peace in man, the deep-down inner happiness men craved. Here was help, the only help — in view of the wider, greater needs of man.
But from these last-named instances we see that in one sense our question is already answered. There have al- ready been (in more or less mixed form) religions of morality in the world, — religions, I mean, which make the law which holds the world together the object of their
76 THE NEED OP^ A RELIGION OF MORALITY.
reverence and awe, which bow before pity, justice, love. True, Jews worshiped Yahweh and Christians worshiped the Father-in-Heaven, and only Buddhism worshiped the law alone, but the Jews (their later representatives, who gave immortality to Judaism) worshiped Yahweh above all as the source of the law, and for Christians the su- preme reason for worshiping the Father-in-Heaven has been that his name is synonymous with love. The early animism and anthropomorphism of the race linger on in Judaism and in Christianity, but the substance and eter- nal content of these religions is ethical. They are the na- tural progenitors of a religion of morality for our west- ern world to-day. Adapt Judaism and modern Chris- tianity to the modern scientific view of things — and you have religions of morality, two in one. We are out in the wilderness calling for such a consummation.
The possibility, then, of a fusion of ethics and relig- ious sentiment is settled. Not that the old simple, na- tural religion, the sense of help and grace from Nature's forces, will ever pass away, but that ethical religion is its necessary completion and crown.
But more than the possibility, the need of such a con- summation is what weighs on us now — on all who feel the insecurity, the unrest, the unhappiness of life, social and personal, as it exists to-day. The Hfe of man at ali times on the earth is an uncertain thing; it is so uncer- tain and full of trouble, in part at least, because men do not know the conditions of life, and because they trust where they should not trust and do not trust where they should trust. They have false gods, false reliances. It might be shown, — a great sociologist * has shown — that all the succession of powers and institutions man has de-
*Lester F. Ward.
THE NEED OF A RELIGION OF MORALITY. 7/
veloped are to the end of making his lot less pre- carious. Religion is one of them. It stays the wayward and lawless and binds them; it creates a con- science in them. It is more than philosophy or science — it is attention to what these teach on the central concerns of life, reverently laying it to heart, in humility obeying it. The true object of religion is that which is not fan- cifully but really the commanding fact of life, the impera- tive, unalterable, awful condition of life, and this is, as all history teaches, that law, at once so simple and so rich, which we call the law of right, the law which in its higher ranges means infinite pity, infinite justice, infinite love. As we rise to this law, humanity lives ; as we fall short of it, humanity is ever perishing. If this is true, if there is nothing that would make human life so stable, so strong, so rich, so beautiful as the spread and rule of the moral sentiments in it, if they would make a new atmos- phere and put a new face on everything and make it al- most seem as if heaven had descended on earth, how im- mense, how vital would be the significance of a religion that turned the tide of reverent emotion in that specific way ! Suppose that men had reverence before a thought of justice, so that they bowed before it, that when love prompted them they felt they must leave all to follow it a? the disciples forsook all to follow Christ, what a differ- ence it would make, how some things would become easy that are now so hard, what changes starting from an in- ner center would follow in every shallow and corner of our social, political and industrial life ! O, the need of a religion of morality — it sometimes comes over me — to make life life, and man man !
Whether we of the Ethical Movement are a religious movement is a question, not of possibility or need, but
yS THE NEED OF A RELIGION OF MORALITY.
of personal fact. We aim to be ; our idea, I take it, is to be. But the reality is another matter. An authority on Buddhism ^ says : "Had the Buddha merely taught phil- osophy, he might have had as small a following as Comte." Is there perhaps too much of the air of philoso- phy about our meetings? Is there speculating and ex- plaining and making rational, but too little of the force that makes men do? Are we possibly deceiving our- selves and thinking that much talking and hearing about duty and reverence and religion gives us an odor of good- ness, while in our hearts and in our week-day lives we are selfish and grasping and hard, as if great awe had never made its seat within our souls? This Buddhist scholar says that Gautama's power over the people arose in a great measure from the glow of his practical philan- thropy, which did not shrink in the struggle with the abuses most peculiar to his time — that the equalizing ten- dencies of his teaching attracted the masses, as its com- mon sense did the man of the world. Perhaps we have the common-sense, but have we the glow of philanthropy, the equalizing tendencies, are we ready to lose all in boldly struggling with the abuses of our time? I put these searching questions, not to you merely, but to my- self as well. I do not answer, — I only see, and say, that after all it settles little that we think or call ourselves re- ligious, but that it makes all the difference in the world whether we are religious. Let us keep the faith and the hope that we may be — let us not talk much, but be humble and strive. And let us remember that the cause, the call, stands, whatever we do or fail to do.
"I steadier step when I recall That, if I slip. Thou doest not fall."
^Rhys Davids, "Buddhism," p. 151.
»
THE INSPIRATION OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT.*
By Prof. Nathaniel Schmidt, Cornell University.
What inspirations can the ethical movement offer to men? What joy and consolation can it give to the weary and heavy-laden, the sick and the suffering, the poor and the oppressed, the minds that are perplexed by the prob- lems of existence and the hearts that are lacerated by the trials of life? What strength can it impart to the weak and the discouraged, the tempted and the fallen, what en- thusiasm to those who earnestly seek after truth and with stout hearts struggle for justice?
The answer, to have any value, must come from ex- perience. Whence have we ourselves drawn courage and power, comfort and cheer? What inspires us to work, if work we do, for the improvement of our own moral life, and the elevation of private and public morality about us? Nothing that is new and untried, certainly, nothing that our fathers did not also possess, nothing that is not available to all men. That which really has lifted, purified and filled with glory human lives in the past is also what expands, refreshes and invigorates our souls.
We may give different names to the fountains of in- spiration; we may approach them in a different manner. But they are the same. They are the infinite and eternal reality by which we are surrounded, the human life in which ours is imbedded, our own personality with its un- sounded depths, the work of overcoming evil with good
*Address at the closing meeting of the American Ethical Union, Carnegie Hall, Sunday, May 12, 1907.
80 THE INSPIRATION OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT.
and its effects, the sense of a noble destiny for the indi- vidual and the race.
The old words pass away, or lose their significance ; the outlook upon life changes; but the inspiring realities re- main, without and within, and the communication is un- broken, deep calling unto deep. The vanished gods ap- pear again as guardians of the faith of childhood and adumbrations of the larger life, while the source itself whence we have sprung floods us with light and energy that were not in the shadows. The sacred oracles that merged with all the great words of man's faith speak to us with a mightier voice and a truer accent than they ever did. The heaven that disappeared beyond the con- fines of existence returns to cheer our hearts as one of the tokens of man's wistful march toward the ideal.
It is inspiring to contemplate the boundless energy and wealth of nature, to observe the unfailing operation of its laws, to search for its mysterious essence, to mark its marvelous adjustments and to trust in its inherent rationality and rightness. It is inspiring to see the world reflected in the human spirit, to behold its forms and colors, to hear it§ sounds, to feel its rhythms and fra^ grances and tastes, as reproduced and varied by man's art. It is inspiring to watch the growth of human fa- culty, to note the upward trend in man's affairs, to feel the thrill of countless aspirations, to enter into the ex- periences of noble souls, to listen to the oracles of the spirit of life, to discern the laws that govern man's ex- istence, and to be bound with tender ties to home and kindred, friends and fellowmen.
But whether joy and strength shall come to us from all these sources depends upon our own part in the onward movement to a better life. There is no inspiration like
THE INSPIRATION OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 8l
that which comes from the pursuit of goodness. The very effort to reject the evil and to choose the good, to resist temptation and to rise from failure, to remain at the post of duty, to bear with patience, and to conquer every form of selfishness, gives inspiration; and each success gives added stimulus and zest.
The hope of larger things to come inspires us. We have the consciousness of a high destiny. It is not yet apparent what we shall be. But we divine what it is pos- sible for us to be when we with gratitude and love drink from the living waters that issue forth from some strong soul that went before. We cannot now imagine what will be the glory of the city that shall have the true founda- tions, the social life that shall rest securely on equity and freedom, love and truth. But we have a foretaste of its supreme worth when we observe how each succeeding type of man's collective life has marked an advance in righteousness and liberty, enlightenment and happiness.
These spiritual forces are the mountains whence cometh our help; they are the fountains that refresh our thirsty souls. They are the great, abiding sources of inspira- tion, in weakness and in strength, in sickness and in health, in life and in death. Therefore we rejoice to see the growing emphasis in all religions on the ethical con- tent, the increasing interest in all questions that concern the right relations between men, and the development of new agencies for impressing men with the supremacy of the moral law. Humanity has no higher concern than the improvement of the moral quality of its life, and there is in all the world no cause that is more inspiring.
ETHICS TEACHING IN THE SCHOOL*
By Dr. Henry Moskowitz, Leader of the Down Town Ethical Society in New York.
The necessity of direct ethical instruction being as- sumed, the question arises, What are the quaHfications of an efficient Ethics teacher? And if the instruction is in- tended to train as well as to teach. What sort of school environment is necessary to confirm the truths explicated and driven home in an Ethics lesson? Only after these questions are satisfactorily answered can we properly con- sider the practical problem of incorporating Ethics as an essential subject in a school curriculum.
In answer to the first question, What are the qualifica- tions of an efficient ethics teacher — this general propo- sition holds true : there are two factors to be considered in determining the merits of a teacher of any specific branch. These I shall vaguely term the personal and the imper- sonal. By the personal factor I mean those marks of breeding, manner, habits of thought and character pe- culiar to the individual which we denote as the teacher's personality. This factor plays a more important part in an ethics lesson than, for example, any mathematics or physics lesson; for in ethics teaching, perfunctoriness must be avoided. The eloquence that vivifies the moral experience is a necessary condition of any efifective ethics lesson.
By eloquence I do not mean the gift of fluent and at- tractive speech necessarily. This, of course, will aid in
♦Address at the Public Conference on Direct Moral Instruc- tion, held at the Ethical Culture School, New York, May ii, 1907. 82
ETHICS TEACHING IN THE SCHOOL. 83
giving the lesson effectiveness. I mean, hov^ever, the power of imparting to the pupils a sense of the reality of the experience and the moral judgment which the teacher aims to impress upon the pupils. Children are very sensi- tive and keen to detect any false note in the tone of the teacher's handling of an ethical lesson. They despise mere sentimentality and the "goody-goody" tone. It is necessary that the teacher's moral judgment be precise, ripe and deep, in order that the child unconsciously feel the eloquence of that reserve of moral force which the teacher has not articulated in the lesson and which often escapes speech.
This qualification, it is evident, is less imperative in a mathematics teacher if we are seeking mere instruction. But not so even in mathematics, if we regard the teaching of this branch from the standpoint of training. In ethics teaching, however, instruction is only a minor aim. Character-building is the goal. Therefore, subtle force of the teacher's personality is a very potent influence.
In the usual branches of the school curriculum the im- personal factor — that is, the method of presentation and expounding a subject according to right educational and psychological principles — is an important factor to be con- sidered. So also, in measuring the qualification of an ethics teacher, this test must also be made: Has the les- son definite points ? Is the method of presentation syste- matic? Are the points developed clearly, etc.? These are questions involving the pedagogy of a specific branch of study.
Now, if you agree with me concerning these two fac- tors, let us take a glance over the educational field and ask ourselves if as yet, there is a sufficient number of teachers, whether professional or voluntary, who can satisfactorily
84 ETHICS TEACHING IN THE SCHOOL.
Stand this test, — first, as to personality; second, as to knowledge of the methods of teaching ethics. You will reply, from the highest standards. No; but if the good will counts and if the effort as well as the consciousness of the importance of the task is there, the personality will deep- en with every sincere attempt to teach, for after all, the spontaneous side in human nature cannot be measured or formulated, it is so subtle, elusive and varied. Yet one thing is certain — mere uncritical enthusiasm will not suf- fice. Social workers have many a sad tale of disappoint- ment and inefficiency to tell of people who have come to them with plenty of good intentions but with nothing else. Unfortunately, the best people are paralyzed into inactivity by the appalling difficulties of the task and are naturally too timid to come forward and try.
As to the pedagogy of the subject, what a pathetic dearth of material does the earnest teacher find! After thirty-one years of active pioneering in this field, even the New York Ethical Society has as yet very scanty printed material either in subject matter or in methods of teach- ing, which a faithful teacher can use in his or her class work. We have thus barely touched the periphery of the problem. We are merely in the agitating stage of the movement.
In this stage of the movement for moral instruction, wisdom cautions us to go slow. When even the pioneers in the field are as yet disagreed as to the best methods of moral education, how can we venture to urge those re- sponsible for our public schools to incorporate ethics teaching in their curriculum ? They are looking to us for guidance and assistance. We must first prove our ex- periment successful before they can incorporate this new feature of education into their system. It is their duty
k
ETHICS TEACHING IN THE SCHOOL. 85
to guard the school system from any new experiments before they have been properly tested and proven success- ful without question.
In effective ethics training, the school environment is^ in my opinion, the most essential factor. The child must feel the spirit and atmosphere of the school in its effective organization, in the esprit de corps among the teachers, and in the many details of school life. The environment must confirm the truths articulated in the ethics lesson. The child can turn to its school environment for a verifi- cation in life of what is presented in speech. The school environment gives reality to the ethics lesson and tends to deepen the moral influences of the teacher's personality and exposition.
When children are crowded together in a class room o^ fifty, can we expect the school environment to reflect the spirit of the teacher? And in a congested tenement dis- trict, in the homeless homes of the poor, can we be so de- void of imagination and the sense of humor as to enter- tain the hope that a mere ethics lesson will strengthen the moral will, when what is taught in the class is openly ta- booed in public life, in the neighborhood and in the home? There is danger of impressing the child with the thought that ethics teaching is only a moral luxury, in- tended for the school and the church, but not for life itself. We can never hope to make moral education ef- fective without providing our children of the public schools with a decent school, home and neighborhood en- vironment, to strengthen and deepen the influences of di- rect ethical instruction.
MONCURE D. CONWAY.
A Prelude, by Wm. M. Salter, before the Society
FOR Ethical Culture, in Handel Hall,
Sunday Morning, Nov. 24.
A picturesque figure in modern religious life has pass- ed away. Moncure D. Conway was a man of letters and had close contact with most of the eminent literary men of the last two generations in both England and America ; he published largely, wrote essays, travels, "Lives;" yet religion was his central interest and theme — and to the end he kept something of the attitude and fervor of the preacher.
The significant thing about him is that he traveled, was a pilgrim, in the things of the spirit. A Virginian by birth, the son of a slave-holder, a "fire-eater" himself, he came to hate slavery. Emerson's Essays awoke his re- ligious nature and made him a Methodist preacher (the only kind that lay within his horizon as a possibility at the time) ; but he moved on from Methodism to Unitarianism — then from Unitarianism to Theism — and later from Theism to a still broader outlook. He followed the scientific developments of the last century, shifted his point of view as Agassiz, Lyell, Darwin, came to the fore, and remodeled his theology accordingly. The spirit of truth was in him and led him — something greater than any special "truths." Yes, the spirit of humanity and of right was also in him — and this was more than any special social or moral views.
One of his most interesting books is "The Earthward Pilgrimage" (published in 1870, when he was minister of 86
MONCURE D. CONWAY. 87
South Place Chapel, London). It is a modern "Pilgrim's Progress," not from the City of Destruction to the Celes- tial City, but from the World to Come to the World which Is. Some faithful Christian has written on the fly-leaf of the public library copy I have been reading, "Infidel work," — as a warning to the unwary. It pictures the veritable and conscious spiritual pilgrimage of Mon- cure Conway. One of its texts is a dialogue with Con- fucius. "Ke Loo asked about serving the spirits of the dead. The Master said, 'While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve their spirits?' Ke Loo added, *I venture to ask about death.' He was answered, 'While you do not know life, how can you know about death ?' " Conway felt the call to know life, and the needs of life made a tremendous appeal to him. He had a sense of the evil in the world. The schools of philosophy have elimi- nated Satan, but the scientific counterpart of Satan — the perils and passions of man's breast, the diseases, agonies and desolations in society, — he knew and recognized: and this actual Satan he fought without mercy. The humanitarian, reforming note began with his espousing Unitarianism. What he was really aiming at was a new world, beginning with the abolition of slavery. A world free from Slavery, War, Superstition, Ignorance — this was his ideal ; and these were the great evils that weighed down his soul. As he got deeper into the contest he broke with Emersonian optimism and the Unitarian ideas of God. He thought they lamed the soul, made it trust where it ought to fight. Even the ordinary evolutionist confidence he parted with — the forces of natural selection must be controlled, or supplanted, by human selection, he urged. At the last the Cosmos came almost to wear a gloomy air to his mind — so strong did the forces of evil,
88 MONCURE D. CONWAY.
the blind forces of the universe, seem. And yet he fought to the end. When I read of the anti-slavery times in his pages, those who now dare to take up the labor or social questions seem to tread a bed of roses. The di- vision of families, the splitting of churches, violence and threats, were common — and imminent was the shadow of war. Conway played a man's part in the struggle — here and in England. It was an altogether peculiar part — he hated slavery, yet war was to him worse than slavery ; he called our war a "damnable, double-tongued war" — in view of the way the negro was treated in it and has been since.
Conway felt that the great issue now was the war against War. He did not believe in civilized warfare more than in any other kind — indeed, he said there was no such thing as civilized warfare. He berated us for our Cuban war, President Cleveland for his threatenings in behalf of Venezuela, and rejoiced in the defeat of mili- tarism and the French army in the Dreyfus case. In- deed, he was in Paris, when death overtook him, in the in- terests of the "Peace" propaganda.
Whatever we think of his judgments in detail, let us give honor to this brave soldier, this militant pilgrim, as now he lays his armor down and has reached the end of his earthly pilgrimage. The closing words of his "Au- tobiography" sum up the stress of his life and embody his matured religious conceptions: "Implora pace, Oh my reader, from whom I now part. Implore peace, not of deified thunder-clouds, but of every man, woman, child thou shalt meet. Do not merely offer the prayer, 'Give peace to our time,' but do thy part to answer it! Then, at least, though the world be at strife, there shall be peace in thee."
THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS.*
By Alfred W. Martin.
The tendency to idealize is common to humanity every- where. In all ages and in all countries people have en- dowed the objects of their admiration, reverence and love with attributes they did not possess, and with deeds they did not perform. Especially has this been true in the case of the great religious leaders of history, and hence the one gigantic task of criticism has been to determine what these idealized persons actually were, and what they ac- tually did.
As an illustration of this tendency taken from our own time, let me refer to the case of Keshub Chunder Sen, an eminent leader of the Brahmo-Samaj in India. Hardly had this great leader been laid on his funeral pyre, when his disciples began to talk about him in terms that remind us very forcibly of the manner in which the author of the fourth gospel talks about Jesus. I happened, a short time since, upon the resolution which the apostolic council of Calcutta passed after the death of their famous leader. I have brought a copy of that resolution with me this morning, thinking it would interest you and serve to il- lustrate the point I am trying to make. It reads :
"We believe our minister was living in the bosom of God as minister to the Brahmo-Samaj before the begin- ning of creation, and our relationship with him is not for
*Given before the Society for Ethical Culture, of Philadelphia, Sunday, December 15, 1907, and stenographically reported by Ernest Jacques.
89
90 THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS.
time but for eternity. None can accept this dispensation except through him ; hence, when preaching the new dis- pensation, we should proclaim his eternal relation to it."
Similarly, in the very susceptible soil of Palestinian thought and imagination, the man Jesus became the God Christ. Indeed the process of idealization began while Jesus was still on earth, and it has continued down to our own day.
Without pausing this morning to discuss in detail this process of idealizing the real Jesus, let me, in order to make the point as clear as I may, simply touch upon the successive idealizations in the course of Christian history. While Jesus was still on earth he was spoken of as "the Messiah," the long expected deliverer, and it may be that he so regarded himself and said of his own personality that he was the Messiah. But be that as it may, the first three gospels in the New Testament regard Jesus as the Messiah, and that explains their constant use of the ex- pression "In order that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying." Then we come in the next century to the conception of Jesus as the Logos, the crea- tive principle in the Godhead, or that element in deity which created the universe. That is the standpoint of the fourth gospel. Jesus is there represented as this creative principle, the Logos, the Word. You can easily see that it was only a single step from that idealization to the "second person in the trinity." Then we come to the fourth century in which the great church council of Nicaea convened. You will remember that this church council was concerned with settling among other prob- lems, this one question — Did Jesus have the same nature as God, or only a nature like that of man? Was it ''ho- mooiision" or "homoioiision," the little letter "i" making all the difference between the two sides in this great con-
THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS. 9I
troversy ? But the idealizing process went on, and to-day we have it illustrated in the common custom among min- isters of all denominations to first frame a picture — a beautiful picture of "the perfect man," a picture of "hu- manity's ideal," and then proceed to square Jesus with that picture, regardless of what the New Testament may have to say about him. Thus you see this process has gone on from the apostolic age down to our own day, and I need hardly say that not a single one of these idealiza- tions has its exact counterpart in history. This tendency to idealize is the chief reason why the real Jesus of Naz- areth has been kept from view through all the centuries. Just like a fossil that has lain embedded in some ancient stratum of the earth, so the real Jesus has been buried beneath the strata of Christian idealizations. Conse- quently one of the great tasks of modern bibhcal criticism has been what we might call the excavation of the real Jesus.
And for the accomplishment of that task you and I who speak the English language are particularly indebted to that eminent English orthodox critic and commentator, Edwin A. Abbott, who wrote the article on "Gospels" in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Just as an expert in art criticism, when endeavoring to decide whether a certain painting is a Rembrandt or not, goes down beneath the external glazing and paint, varnish and sizing to the orig- inal drawing — and the less of such drawing, the more sure he is that the painting is a Rembrandt, — so the New Testament critic goes down below the gospel-record to earlier and still earlier sources of information about Jesus. That is the great task Edwin A. Abbott has achieved. And the original source of information to which he re- verts, his ultimate reliable source he calls "the triple tra- dition." It is that story of the life of Jesus in which Mat-
92 THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS.
thew, Mark and Luke agree. The story these first three evangelists tell, setting aside all points on which they are not agreed, this, Dr. Abbott thinks, is our earliest reliable source of information. And that point of view has come to be very generally accepted. Turning to this source we find that, in spite of the meagre details concerning the actual person of Jesus, in spite of the dense obscurity that enshrouds eighteen of the thirty years of Jesus' life; in spite of all the imperfections in the record ; in spite of the absolute silence on many points concerning which we would be thankful to have information, in spite of all these defects and deficiencies, the real, essential man re- mains, in clear and unmistakable outline.
Of the physical appearance of Jesus we know abso- lutely nothing. No authentic portrait has come down to us, and in the literature of the first two- centuries there is not a single allusion to the physical appearance of Jesus. Why should there be? When his contemporaries in Pal- estine expected that he was coming back in a few years, why should they be concerned about his appearance, oi even, for that matter, about his words and teachings? Had he not said he would return ? Consequently the peo- ple waited for his second coming, and only when the sense of disappointment over his non-appearance became in- tensely keen did the queries arise. What was his physical appearance? What were his parables, his teachings?
The earliest allusion in Christian literature to the phy- sical appearance of Jesus is found in the works of Justin the Martyr, written in the middle of the third century. He said, simply, that Jesus looked as the Scriptures said he looked, referring to the Messianic passage in the fifty- third chapter of Isaiah, where the Messiah is described as ''having neither form not comeliness," and so Justin simply declared, "he had no beauty as the Scriptures
THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS. 93
said." Now in the absence of all reliable information on the subject, you and I are at liberty to think as we please ; and that in truth is what all the painters and sculptors of Christian history have done. Of all such representations in art, the one that is perhaps most satisfying, the one that takes in more detail of Jesus' personality, is the head in the center of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper at Milan. No reproduction can tell you what the original does. But there, if I mistake not, I see a representation of Jesus in art which comes nearer to expressing the full re- ality than any other with which I am familiar.
Socially, Jesus was no ascetic; he was no Essene;-he was no precursor of sombre puritanism. The blood in his veins ran warm and ruddy. His parables give abundant evidence that his sympathies were warm and broad. We have the story of the wedding-feast at Cana in Galilee, the story of the little children that were taken up in his arms and blessed, showing how vital his sympathies were, showing how essentially democratic he was in nature and in spirit.
Great as are the parables of Jesus from the standpoint of art, his greatest work of art was not the parables, nor even the sermon on the mount ; his greatest work of art was his own life. He made his own life his greatest ser- mon. He taught by example much more than by pre- cept. Now a great personality cannot be adequately or completely estimated. Its very greatness stands in the way of anything like adequate estimation. It defies analy- sis and exhaustive explanation. But of a great person- ality we can say this: that it owes its greatness, not so much to any possessions or attributes that differentiate it from other personalities, as to its magnificent embodi- ment of qualities that are universal. Sympathy, sincerity, consecration, trust — these are universal. They are known
94 THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS.
of all men, among all nations. And the spiritual great- ness of the real Jesus lay in his particular incarnation of these universal qualities. Whatever may be the distinctive attributes of other great religious leaders, Jesus, I think, will always be remembered, reverenced and loved for his unswerving loyalty to conviction, his unsurpassed sympa- thy for man, his unalloyed consecration to a great life-pur- pose and his unwavering trust in a power higher than himself.
These, I take it, are the constituent elements of the spiritual greatness of the real Jesus. And it is to a con- sideration of these that I invite your consideration at the beginning of this Christmas season. I ask you to note with me these four elements, and their practical bearing upon the life of to-day.
First, then, loyalty to truth, intellectual integrity, abso- lute consonance of thought and word — meaning what he said, and saying what he meant, white-mindedness in a word. This, I believe, was the crowning attribute in the character of Jesus. His soul was literally on fire with great convictions, and he held to them with an adaman- tine inflexibility. What were these convictions? Above all else he had the conviction that in the near future the existing order of society would pass away and a miracu- lously-established new order of society would take its place. He called that new order "the Kingdom of Heav- en." He believed that in spite of all the oppression, in spite of the terrible cruelty, in spite of the tyranny and despotism of his day, nevertheless justice and love would still reign as king and queen over all the world. Here was a man who dared to entertain that magnificent dream in the face of the untoward political and social conditions of his time, daring, moreover, to believe that his dream would be realized within twenty-five years.
THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS. 95
His second great conviction was that morality is pro- gressive, that the ethical code of one age is not neces- sarily sufficient for the needs of the next. Jesus was an evolutionist in ethics. He held that because the laws of Sinai were wonderfully well suited to the people of that ancient civilization, it did not follow that they were suited to his generation, and he did not hesitate to differ from the ancient Jewish code. He said, for example, in sub- stance : it is not enough that thou do no murder, excellent as that sixth commandment is, you must do more; you must go down below the murderous deed to its source, to the passion of anger that is the root of murder. It is not enough to obey the seventh commanndment, to avoid the adulterous act ; you must go below the adultery to the evil desire. After all, the fundamental sin is not the mur- der, but the wrath ; not the adultery but the lust. Jesus respected the authority of Moses, but he did not regard it as either infallible or final. And that brings us face to face with one of the most impressive of all paradoxes. Remembering the attitude of Jesus to Moses you may ap- preciate the significance of this paradox — he is most like Jesus who sometimes differs from him. If you would be like Jesus, then dare to differ from Jesus, as Jesus dared to differ from Moses. If you would be like Jesus, then like him be true to truth. If you would reverence the re- ligion of your ancestors, then reverence the loyalty to conviction which those ancestors displayed. If you would be true to the memory of your mother, then rever- ence the devotion to truth and duty that you saw in her. Rather than betray his own soul, rather than be false to his convictions, Jesus preferred persecution, ignominy and finally death. The luxury of his convictions was more to him than the luxury of mere existence. He measured life by its breadth not by its length. To Jesus life con-
96 THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS.
sisted in an untrammeled mind, an unpolluted conscience, an unsullied soul.
Come we now to the practical application of this crown- ing grace in the character of Jesus. Has the world out- grown the need of the inspiration that comes from con- templating a loyalty like his ? In answer to that question, I appeal to you simply to look at the widespread disloyalty to truth. See how men and women to-day deliberately barter their most precious religious convictions at any price the social market may dictate. Look at the sorrow- ful spectacle of intellectual insincerity — men and women supporting churches with which they are not in sympathy, lending their presence and ;^iving of their purse to sup- port one kind of religion when their hearts are wedded to an altogether different kind. Far be it from me to ignore the fact that there are thousands of Christians who are loyal, faithful followers of their Master, yet I cannot ig- nore the equally obvious fact that there are other thou- sands who cannot be classed with the faithful, the sin- cere and conscientious. Look, I say, at this sorrowful spectacle of intellectual dishonesty, and then you can say whether the world is in need of looking back to the loy- 'alty that there was in Jesus. And to me the saddest aspect of the whole sickening spectacle is this — that so many of these guilty men and women call themselves Christians, and sometimes engage in the worship of Jesus ! Would to God that they worshiped him less and followed him more, by exhibiting in their lives some little fraction of the loyalty and integrity that were in him. Even while Jesus was still on the earth, there were those to whom he said : "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?" and that class has never been left without a wit- ness in any age — certainly not in our own.
The second element in the spiritual greatness of Jesus
THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS. 97
was his sympathy for man — a sympathy so full, so deep, so broad, that I can only compare it to a clear, sparkling stream that flows in a thirsty land where no water is. If you want to understand the fulness and depth of that sym- pathy, you have only to recall the age in which it ap- peared. And if your history serves you right you will re- member that it was an age of cruelty, oppression, despot- ism; an age in which monarchs were playing chess with nations for pawns ; an age in which provinces were being sacked to supply splendid processions for pompous roy- alty, an age in which the wealth of colonies was drained to furnish sumptuous feasts for selfish statesmen ; an age in which the word brotherhood was a synonym for cliques and for caste. It was in such an age that Jesus revived the ancient protest of humanity, denouncing caste, de- nouncing cliques, denouncing oppression, everything that would hinder personal development and social progress.
There was a mighty pressing problem confronting Jesus in that day, the same problem, forsooth, that is confront- ing us in our day — how to break down these barriers that divide the classes of society; hov/ to get rid of these jeal- ousies, these antipathies and hatreds that are current in our time as in his. That was the problem confronting Jesus — how to make society essentially and truly demo- cratic. He summed up his solution of the problem in terms of sympathy. Love was to be the solvent in which every kind of ill-will, according to Jesus, would melt away. And is it not significant that that solution is, in the twen- tieth century, coming to recognition anew, and serving as the underpinning of all our modern penology? What is the supreme conviction underlying the best efforts to-day in our prisons and reformatories? It is the redeeming power of a great spiritual love. If we are fine enough, if we have enough of the heart-culture that was in Jesus,
98 THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS.
then it does not matter how degraded any human soul may be, that soul will be within reach of our redeeming. If we fail, then it can only be because our love is either not strong enough, or not deep enough, or not wise enough, or perchance not patient enough. For when these elements of love are present, then there can be no such thing as failure. And perhaps your experience has been like mine in discovering many satisfying proofs of this truth. Do I exaggerate when I say that the gospel- record is literally flooded with this sympathy that was in Jesus? That sympathy floods the gospel-story as the waters of the sea flood its basin and its shore. Very sig- nificant it is that no single trace is anywhere to be found in the New Testament of any personal hatred that Jesus ever entertained towards anyone. The nearest approach to anything of the kind were those terrible maledictions he heaped upon a certain group of Pharisees who were proud, autocratic, hypocritical, contemptuous. On them he poured the stream of his indignation. From their foul purposes he tore away the veil ; their sophistries and make- shifts he exposed, and branded them with their own proper black names. And you and I would think small things of the spiritual greatness of any moral reformer who would do otherwise. Some one came to Channing one day and asked him, how could the meek, mild, gentle Jesus ever have uttered those maledictions ? Opening his Bible, William Ellery Channing, with sweet, tender, ethereal tones, read the passage that begins — "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees." But do you think that Jesus uttered those expressions in any soft, mild, ethereal tone ? I certainly do not. For I take it that Jesus' nature had the breadth that was equal to infinite tenderness on the one hand, and also equal to infinite scorn and contempt for hypocrisy and sham.
THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS. 99
When we recall the brazen haughtiness, the jealous ex- clusiveness, the false pride, the artificial politenesses, the hypocritical courtesies, the anti-democratic tendencies in our modern society, we see the bearing of the sympathy, the democracy, the love that was in Jesus upon the condi- tions of our own time. Surely in the light of these de- plorable characteristics that mark so much of American society we are forced to the conclusion that "the one thing needful" to-day is a revival of the sympathy that was in Jesus.
Come we now, for a moment, to his consecration to a great life-purpose, the third of the constituent elements of his spiritual greatness. That life-purpose, you remember, was to fit men and women for membership in the coming "Kingdom of Heaven." There could be no grander aim than that in the first century of our era, or even in our own time, albeit we do not accept Jesus' belief in the miraculous establishment of the kingdom. But consider- ing the thought of his consecrated devotion to a great purpose, from the standpoint of our modern sociology and evolution, I, for one, take the ground that there is more hope for the world in one Jesus with a transcendent aim like that than in ten thousand men, trained to scien- tific habits of thought yet without any such transcendent aim to which their thoughts shall tend.
When we see how many people there are absorbed in what Emerson called the "pepper-corn aims of life," when we see the tendency (and especially here in these great Eastern cities) towards Mammonic interests and ends, — the worship of Mammon, — when we see how many people there are perfectly satisfied and contented if only they have enough to eat and drink; satisfied in providing for themselves and their families and propagating their kind, yet without any ulterior life-purpose, then we realize what
lOO THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS.
the consecration of Jesus to a great life-purpose must mean as an inspiration for the twentieth century in America. How many men and women there are to-day that come under the category of those needing the in- spiration that comes from contemplating the strong conse- cration to a great life-purpose that was in Jesus! How many women there are who have time for ''bridge" and "teas" and no time at all for the great philanthropic and educational interests that are crying out for recruits! How many men have time for "poker" and business, but none for those civic duties from which no man has the right to excuse himself ! If I understand the teaching of Jesus, he was in favor of people having a good time, but also of their manifesting public spirit, civic patriotism, and a sense of the obligations devolving upon citizens.
The fourth element in his spiritual greatness was trust in a power higher than himself, trust in "the Heavenly Father," seated on a throne somewhere behind the blue sky. That conception of God which Jesus entertained has been out of date since 1543, when the discovery of Co- pernicus shattered the Ptolemaic theory of the universe and the god-idea that was built on that theory. But Jesus, like all the rest of his contemporaries, inherited and ac- cepted the Ptolemaic idea of the world, and the Ptolemaic conception of a localized man-like God. But what con- cerns us now is not that peculiar, antiquated, outgrown conception of God which Jesus and his contemporaries entertained. What concerns us is the spirit of trust that was attached to that outgrown idea, because that spirit of trust is just as necessary, just as imperative to-day as it was 1900 years ago. Without that spirit of trust, — albeit we cannot any longer attach it to the god-idea that Jesus held, — without that spirit of trust in some power, somewhere, somehow, sometime making for justice, truth,
THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS. lOI
right, love; how could we live at all? In the face of all the iniquities and inequities of our modern life, in the face of everything that tends to make us gloomy, pessi- mistic, sceptical, I say we need that spirit of trust in our lives if we are to give them both balance and peace.
So, then, as I look back over these constituent ele- ments that make up the real, spiritual greatness of the historical Jesus, I feel that in each single instance they have an application, a fitness for the conditions that ob- tain in our own day, so much so indeed that we may say to go back to Jesus is to go forward.
Many of the views that Jesus held I find myself unable to accept. I cannot go with Jesus in his conception of a miraculously-established Kingdom of Heaven on earth; I cannot accept Jesus' theory of marriage, or of the fam- ily, I cannot go with him in his doctrine of wealth, 1 cannot share his attitude towards aesthetic and intellec- tual pursuits ; but I do find in him an inspiring exemplar of sincerity, sympathy, consecration and trust, — four great qualities that can make human life glorious and sublime. Who of us can contemplate his loyalty to conviction and at the same time be indifferent to that which is holiest and highest in ourselves? Who of us can meditate upon his sympathy for man and then turn a deaf ear to the calls for sympathy and practical helpfulness that appeal to us from every side ? Who of us can ponder that devotion to a life- aim transcendently beautiful, such as was his, and then be indifferent to the promptings of that inner voice that bids us live the divine life? Who can recall that deep-seated trust in the ultimate triumph of truth and right, the reign of justice and love, and not feel moved to a like peace- giving trust ?
We hear a great deal in our day about "living a spiritual life." Considerable vagueness and piousness have gathered
102 THE SPIRITUAL GREATNESS OF THE REAL JESUS.
about that phrase ; yet in its essence it is nothing but liv- ing this very life that Jesus lived, manifesting in our lesser lives that same spiritual greatness that was revealed by him. To stand upon our own feet, to exercise a manly self-reliance, to maintain our own convictions, let the op- position be what it may, to cultivate the spirit of sympathy and helpfulness for our fellow-men, and, above all, to be steadfastly devoted to an ideal life-aim, — that is what we understand by living a spiritual life. And perhaps no more beautiful example of it has ever been furnished the world than that which we see in Jesus.
A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR.
By David Saville Muzzey.
The message that I have to bring is suggested by a verse in the Old Testament. At a time when Israel was either luxuriating in short periods of immunity from danger from the Assyrian, or wildly imploring help from Egypt or Ashur, living, in either case, from hand to mouth, on the favors or fears of the moment — one of her prophets spoke these marvellous words: "Where there is no vision the people perish."
The attention of the leaders of Israel was constantly directed to the national, the corporate life of the people ; but their words of wisdom touch the universal heart, and are as applicable to the individual as to the group. And it is a message to the individual that I see this morning in those same words of the Hebrew prophet: "Where there is no vision the soul perisheth." Life there may be, phy- sical and persistent — the reappearance morning after morning, the sitting down to meals and the rising up therefrom, the going into one's office, the dictating of let- ters, the giving and receiving of money, the going back again to the home, the sleeping and the awaking — that may go on, even as the sun rises and sets, even as Na- ture lays off her foliage for the barren winter and re-dons it in the verdant spring. But, nevertheless, where there is no vision the man perisheth. For it is not life to exist, to be entangled in the web of things, to have them "in the saddle," as Emerson says, and riding us. He alone lives, at least in spirit, who sees beyond and through that web of things, and creates a new and growing world from day to day in his own spirit.
103
I04 A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR.
Nature, so far as it has meaning at all, is spiritual ; and hence that deep word of the German Fichte, that "nature is but the objectified material of duty." Point to what you will about us, the seemingly solid building, the seem- ingly immortal institution; it all melts and vanishes into vapor when we search it with the vision of philosophy and history. What are these buildings, what this material life about us that holds so many people in subjection, before which so many are dumb in spirit and blind in soul? Is it all anything more than the creation, the projection and objectification of someone's vision? And take away that vision, and all of our material world would collapse and lie in the dust, sleeping as deeply as those old crumbled mounds of Babylon of thousands of years ago. Even an institution less palpable and apparently more stable— such an institution as a great church or a great constitution, the foundation of a free country, like our own democracy — what is it? Is it something which exists by its own power, is it something that stands independent of the cre- ative spirit of man ? To many it is. They do not get be- hind it all. To many, such things as the institution of the church or the constitution seem to have no more demon- strable beginnings than the solar system, or anything else beyond their reach. They are lost in them, they are buried in them. They do not see that these things are created by man for man, by man's spirit, by man's vision. And unless we have the vision that can penetrate all the world about us, in its material aspects, in its ideal aspects, in its institutional, its educational, its commercial, its in- dustrial and its political aspects, we are to some extent en- slaved and not yet free. Where there is no vision, where none of these things is seen and appreciated from the heights above, the soul within is dead, and the people per- ish.
A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR. IO5
That has been the burden of philosophers and theolo- gians, of all thinkers along spiritual lines, ever since we have record of man's thought. You may go back to Plato (to go no further) and you will find this thought permeat- ing all of his wonderful work. He, to be sure, conceived the problem a little differently than we do; but Plato's real world of image forms is the real world of impalpable spiritual forms of which these material forms of earth are but the shadow, which corresponds exactly to what we mean when we speak of the spiritual vision of these things. And man's chief duty has been, since time began, and will be till the last trump blows, the elevation of himself out of the material, out of the institutional, out of all cre- ated things which are his creation, to a place of elevation above them all, whence he can know them in their becom- ing and in their out-dying. Thence we may stwiy them to create newer, better forms and institutions. "Do you think," said the great French Pascal, "to intimidate me by pointing to the universe and telling me I am but an atom in it? I esteem myself the more for the power of reaching through this universe, atom though I be." This standing on things, and not lying down under them, is the power of vision ; that alone is originality, life.
We ought to distinguish very carefully between real vision, and two things which seem perhaps allied to vision, but are in reality only caricatures of real vision or in- sight. I mean, on the one hand, hallucinations, vague dreamings, and, on the other hand, mere staring at the actual. Both of these things are constantly confused with real vision.
Hallucination, or dreaming, to which our adjective visionary is usually applied, means cutting the lines which bind us to real things, as one might cut the cords which bind a balloon to earth, and let it go up. So we say such.
I06 A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR.
and such a philosopher "goes up like a balloon," when he severs connection with reality. Vision does not mean that. Of course, it does not mean scorning the surround- ings, the environments in which we must work. It does not mean rejecting all forms because they do not fulfil our requirements. It does not mean despising them, and setting them aside, as all theories of quietism and asceti- cism do. All that tends dangerously towards getting us away from work in the world ; it tends towards releasing us from the duty which is the very essence of spiritual life. So I would not despise or minimize environments in which we have to work. I would not despise my tools; neither would I let them crush or cut me. I would han- dle them in fair and fine workmanship. So the power of vision does not mean dreaming.
Neither, on the other hand, does it mean m"ere obser- vation. How many men pride themselves on keenness of observation ! They think they have the seeing eye. Yes, they see very shrewdly just how things are going; they see on which side their bread is buttered ; they know what to do to increase their little pile of money ; they know what to do to get themselves engineered into this office, and then into the next. Keen observation, great judg- ment of their fellowmen, but all on a low, low plane, that has for its object the satisfaction of desires which will never refresh man's soul, and never lead him one step nearer the true heaven of the spirit. Penetration — yes, it is a good thing. I would not decry it ; we all wish we had more of it. We should all like to be able to judge our neighbors rightly and shrewdly and carefully always. But let us beware of putting that in the place of spiritual vision; let us beware of thinking that the cultivation of a keen eye for our advantage in the world can ever lead us to know the origin or the power of the great forces
I
A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR. 10/
that have given us this magnificent civilization in which we are Hving and making our fame or our money. There is something better and higher than that for our aspira- tion. Our vision is insight, it is not oversight or mere foresight.
Now, of course, there are many ways in which this power of insight must affect us, many interests of life and various problems of life in which we need to have the power of vision to clarify our judgment. I am go- ing to speak of only two or three conditions of insight or vision to-day, that we may, if possible, take with us at the beginning of the New Year, a few suggestions which may help us in the weeks to come to regulate, to clarify, to purify our lives, to' make them more worthy of these in- dependent, deathless spirits that we bear in us.
In the first place the power of vision is, of course, a power of imagination. To enjoy true spiritual vision we must be able to put ourselves in another's place. The young must learn to feel the feelings of their elders, and the elders must learn to feel the feelings of their younger friends. The parent and child must try constantly to ap- proach each other in feeling, in order that there may be the deepest harmony of life. And that is an imaginative power. In order to appreciate our friends, those who are working on entirely different lines, those whose condi- tions are entirely different, perhaps distasteful, to us, we must exercise this power of imagination. We must see ourselves poor if we are rich, and see our- selves rich if we are poor; we must see ourselves toiling with our hands if we are brainworkers and working with our brains if we are hand- workers. That power of putting ourselves in another's place is one of the chief marks of the predominance of the ideal in us over the material. What differentiates us
I08 A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR.
from the beast, why are we men and women, with these wonderful spirits, instead of mere machines? Is it not because the impulses to ideal life and social life in man predominate; because they check, inhibit and form an efficient barrier to those other impulses of the deeply selfish animal life, which are so deep in us? Why is it we can think, indulging in splendid dreams? Is it not just because of this power of the ideational life in us that our insight go.es on, grasping at truth until we reach truth indeed ? That to me is one of the most inspiring thoughts in connection with my hope for the millennium and the brotherhood of man, that everything in us shows the power and possibility of the evolutionary, ideational life — the life of vision, of insight. And that, of course, means that then we shall see our neighbor face to face, and know as we are known. Our lives shall be open. How covert they are now ! How little we share that is worth sharing ! How little we know that is worth knowing! Because those great founts of spiritual insight which are in us all are clogged.
We need no proof of the ideal power of vision. It is more real for us at times than anything we call real. At some moments we live with ourselves in our dying hour ; at some moments we see ourselves led away to rest forever. Or we look to a point two thousand or two mil- lion years hence, and then it is as though we turned the opera glasses of our spiritual nature on time and brought it up from the end of eternity before our very eyes. Then again, turning the glasses the other \^ay, the present stretches into a million years, and this solstitial moment in my life becomes pregnant with meaning which shall not be exhausted throughout eternity. Wonderful, wonder- ful power that can face time, which entangles the un- thinking person, rules him, winds him around its finger,
A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR. ICQ
and say, I stand above you, I reach out, I seize you, I dis- miss you, the future and the future's future, and am still at the end and over all. Why, have not all the beginnings of man's inspiration, of his deliverance from his environ- ment, hinged exactly on his power of insight? How did science begin? When did man cease to be one of the things of the world, like the boulder and the brook, the snake and the tiger, and become master of the things of the world ? He began to do that when he began to culti- vate vision, insight; when he began to ask: Who am I, what am I, and how related ? And by the constant disen- tanglement of relations, freeing himself, now from one, now from another of the attributes of things, he became a man and dominated things. But if this power of the ideational life stopped merely with the appreciation of the intellect, which has evoked creations, shaped institutions, produced the material civilization which we see about us, it would stop at a very low plane. That is but the pre- paration of the ground for the sowing of the seed, and the real import and the real uplift of the theory of vision is moral. The real significance of insight is moral. The real life of man is, of course, moral and not intellectual. The intellect, the power of controlling time and space, the domination over nature, is but power to be applied to the cultivation of moral ideals. Insight, or vision for the New Year, must then be chiefly directed toward moral uplift and improvement.
In the first place, we must have patience. I think that perhaps the very first condition of moral vision is pa- tience. Now patience is one of those words which seem to me to hang like a lantern above the path of life, shedding rays in all directions. It is a word of radiating meaning ; patience — power to endure, power to bear, power to hold up, power to persevere. It sums up the whole of life. It
no A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR.
has its negative side, and that is the one which is gener- ally emphasized — the power of endurance. But it also has its positive side — ^the power of persistence.
Now visions do not come at bidding. We cannot sum- mon them by a ring of the bell. Sometimes they wait, and we must wait for them. But the man who is worthy of insight will cultivate that patience, that power of endur- ance, and when this vision comes, it will be to him a con- stant source of inspiration. When I think of the power of patience in the world, there occurs to me often that wonderful picture in Dante's "Purgatorio" of the souls who are making their way up slowly towards the mount of heaven. Some are weighted down, their backs bend- ing like giant corbels of some building, supporting the architrave above. They seem to say, "I can bear no more." And still they stand and stand, until their burden is lifted, and they reach the winding way to the summit. Our burdens are sometimes like that. "The weary weight of all this unintelligible world" presses upon us, and we stand like corbels seeming able to bear no more. At other times they are less striking but no less trying burdens that we have to bear. We must have patience for the dreary routine of duty which presses upon us. We must have patience for the little things of life which often crowd us. Whether we stagger under a heavy load, or resist the temptation to be petty and impatient in the common sense of the word, the standard of perfection, undemanded by our neighbors, but demanded by our own soul, will hold us and draw us.
Again, this power of insight gives us great indepen- dence. Is there anything that our society needs more than moral independence, the moral conviction in the breast of the individual that he knows and the determination that he will do the right? How like a flock of sheep we are!
A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR. Ill
How conforming! Why, even in our pleasures we do not seem to be able to be independent. Very many of them we take like persons riding on the top of a tally-ho coach, who enjoy the thought that others are looking at them and thinking how much they are enjoying it. And in our soberer affairs of life, how little true independence ! We must dwell with our own past, and yet we do not give ourselves the great joy of creating our own future to dwell with. How unfair to ourselves not to cultivate this power of vision ! We are forced, no priest ordaining it, •to sit amid deep ashes of our vanished years, and yet we do not turn from them and make for ourselves a mighty everlasting present of spiritual insight. Marcus Aurelius said: "Thou shalt meet to-day with the busy-body and the back-biter, with the trivial and the wicked, but thou canst pursue thine own path."
The sentiment of goods and pleasures which are ours is unfortunately very often rendered nugatory, by a fool- ish, jealous sort of apprehension of the superior goods and pleasures of other people. We think that ours are not so good. We envy others. We are poor, miserable depen- dents, when we do that. We ought to know, every man and every woman of us, that no neighbor of ours can have anything better than we can have in spiritual vision. For not by the process of robbing each other, which is often the way in which the secondary, meager goods of life are gained, but by the glorious process of sharing with others, do we cultivate gifts of vision, these great uplifting gifts of spiritual insight, which by dividing increase, and by scattering are multiplied.
Finally and most important, it seems to me, this power of spiritual insight leads us more and more to realize the community of life. It weaves thicker and better the web of Hfe. Community of interest has developed justice in
112 A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR.
the world, community of suffering has develoj>ed all the gentle qualities of our nature, community of joy has de- veloped strong ties of fellowship. The will relations have been our real educators. Without them there is no such thing as progress. The beasts of the field do not progress because they are not related to each other through will. The savage progresses little because his will relations are so crude, so confined to the secondary interests of life. You may measure the progress of a nation's civilization, as you may measure the progress of a man's spiritual vision, by the intricacy and delicacy of will relations ex- isting between man and man. All history, could we view it with a purely spiritual eye, would resolve itself into a network of will relations. And that is what Emerson meant when he said that the last lesson in life, the lesson for the graduating minds of life's university is worship, the recognition of worth. Only as our will relations be- come more and more complex, more and more identified with the great scheme of civilized life, which every gener- ation is making man's life more dependent on the life of his neighbors, will our spiritual vision be realized in its highest reaches.
Aristotle, "the master of those who know," said we must practice immortality. Men do not expect that per- fection, in any branch of art, or letters, or handiwork, is to come of a sudden, that they are to wake up and find themselves musicians, or wood-carvers, or engineers, or story-writers. They know that long years of toil must go into these things, they know that they must sweat and agonize if they are to become artists, experts. And yet thousands are foolish enough to believe that some turn of the wheel of fortune is going to bring them happiness, though they have never sought spiritual insight ; that they are to wake sometime immortal, having been all their
A VISION FOR THE NEW YEAR. II3
lives mortals. Never! We must practice immortality, we must work for it, we must be immortal this moment in our lives, we must live the eternal life every single day, or we shall never, never find it. No statement of this universe can be worth a penny that does not give the first place to spiritual effort. So, through the power of in- sight (not hallucination, and not the keen, selfish, pene- trating view of the man of the world), through spiritual insight, realizing itself in patience, in independence of soul, and above all in community of effort to realize the travailling process of social brotherhood and justice, we must work our way out toward the perfect mount of vision.
Tomorrow we start on a New Year. The day will not be much different, the weather report will publish as us- ual its prognostications, and so far as we can see there will be no change in this great mass of material things about us, which so entangle most spirits. But it is our privilege and inspiring practice, as these times come around, in the revolving years, to pledge ourselves again to the life of the spirit, again to mount the way of heaven, The perfect life becomes clearer and clearer to our spirit- ual eye.
. . . . "Lo, on the face Of things there smiles the promise of the time. But, brothers, we must stand together true. Forgetting minor things for the great end, Together we must gain the larger view. And for the great essentials we must spend Our daily blood and sweat. If this we do, This hour is marked in time's eternal trend."
ETHICAL ADDRESSES
TBABLT, $1.00. SIMOXi: NUMBER, 10 CTS.
Vol. XII. No. 1. (September, 1904.) Is Life Worth Living? William James. Origin and Growth of the Ethical Movement. Percival Chubb. A Naming Service. Percival Chubb.
Vol. XII. No. 2. (October, 1904.) A Modem Scientist's Answer to the Questions: Whence and Whither? Felix Adler. The Christian Church and the Ethical Societies. Zona Vallance. A New Statement of the Aim of the Ethical Culture Societies. Felix Adler.
Vol. XII. No. 3. (November, 1904.) Ethics in the Schools. The Bible in* the Schools. William M. Salter.
Vol. XII. No. 4. (December, 1904.) What It Means to Work for a Cause. Walter L. Sheldon. The Mission of the Ethical Movement to the Sceptic. Percival Chubb. The Functions of an Ethical Sunday- School. John Lovejoy Elliott.
Vol. XII. No. 5. (January, 1905.) The Ethical and Religious Outlook. James H. Leuba, Dick- inson S. Miller, Morris Jastrow, Jr. The Ethical Move- ment in Various Countries. Gustav Spiller.
Vol. XII. No. 6. (February, 1905.) Shall Ostracism be Used by Religious Societies in the Strug- gle Against Public Iniquity. Felix Adler. Moral Bar- barism. Percival Chubb.
Vol. XII. No. 7. (March, 1905.) Heine: A Soldier in the Liberation War of Humanity. William M. Salter. The Function of the Festival in School Life. Percival Chubb. An Ethical Funeral Service. Percival Chubb.
Vol. XII. Nos. 8, 9, 10. (April, May and June, 1905.) Moral Aspiration and Song. Edited by William M. Salter.
THE GOOD FIGHT— WITH A CLOSING WORD.*
By William M. Salter.
It perhaps affects to some extent the way in which we pass the brief days of our Ufe, how we regard it — in what vague, general Hght we view Hfe.
In a kind of groping, subconscious way one person thinks that life is to give pleasure or happiness (in the ordinary sense of the word), and he or she is accordingly on the look-out for agreeable, delightful moments, a love adventure, a happy hour at the theatre or concert, a sum- mer holiday, a tramp in the mountains, a motoring excur- sion or what not. These give zest to life, a kind of mean- ing to an existence that would otherwise be a bit monot- onous— not to say, dreary.
Another person does not care so much for pleasures as to be something, somebody in the world. He or she wants to stand out, to be noticed, spoken of — and the times when they are recognized, admiringly mentioned, are the times that count to them, that give a point to aimless days and bring a blush of satisfaction to their hearts.
Still another does not care for notice, but wants power — and when he wins a business or political victory, when he sees his enemies beneath him — this makes him feel what life is for.
Others still think life at its best and deepest is a search for truth — and the moments when some obscurity van- ishes from their field of vision or some puzzling question
*An address before the Society for Ethical Culture, of Chi- cago, in Handel Hall, December 22, 1907.
115
il6 THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD.
is on the way to being solved are the shining moments in their consciousness.
So do varying conceptions of Hfe affect us — determine where we shall put the stress.
Now the conception I propose is that life is essenti- ally a battle — a war, if you will, and a long one — between good and evil, right and wrong, and hence that the great thing is to take a part in it, to line up, and be in some poor, blundering way a soldier, before our sun sets.
It is a commonplace conception, but our lives would not be commonplace if we acted on it, if it were really our dominant view.
Let me explain. I do not believe in any two contending powers or principles in the universe. Good and Bad, Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman, God and Satan. I am not a dualist in religion, as the late Moncure Conway came near being. All the same what serves in one set of circum- stances may not serve in another, what was good once may not be good now, and what at any time is good un- der control may not be good without control. In other words, there is nothing absolutely bad — and if every fact and force in life were as it might be if properly ordered and adjusted, all would be good. What comes nearest being bad, what Kant called the only thing in the world absolutely bad, is the bad will. But will in itself is a good ; energy, I mean, determination, affirmation ; it is the fount and spring of life. It is only a certain direction of the will, something that does not cleave to its essence, that we call bad. In its essential elements and forces the world is good, I hold — all that is needed is to order them.
And yet the ordering is no small, but rather an im- mense task. And here it is that the distinctions and the battle arise. Evil is the disorderly, the rude, the chaotic
THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD. 11/
in comparison with the order, the adjustment that ought to be. Consider our passions, our animal instincts, our lusts — they are what our life is built on ; but the evolu- tion of life consists in regulating, taming them, in making reason, and large, impersonal and what we call moral views conquer and rule them. The good fight is this evo- lutionary effort — it does not consist in attacking our nature as if it were mere evil, but in civilizing, refining — in short, bring order and beauty and harmony into — it. The real evil is contentment with our rude instincts as they are — acquiescence, submission — in a word, inertia and baseness. The battle between evil and good is the battle between stagnation and progress.
For this is the pathetic thing, the tragic thing — that sometimes our instincts (this rude creative basis of our life) do not want to be regulated, they oppose the effort to adjust and harmonize them — in short, are anarchical. Hence, in this relative and subordinate sense, comes on a real war. There has to be veritable conquering — a let- ting of blood — on one side or the other. Either chaos or order — there is no other alternative. At the same time conquering does not mean exterminating ; wise conquerors in the past have enslaved, used those they conquered — so here.
In this light I look on progress. It consists in this con- quering, this making the higher victorious over the lower. God (or nature) does not make things good to start with (save in an elementary sense), but good in its higher meaning is our creation, the result of our effort.
Hence what I call the "good fight." We are by our na- ture called to it. Man is distinct from the animal in this respect. The animal has no idea of order, of making himself over, of perfecting himself, of evolving higher
Il8 THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD.
types of family and social life. That is why he always remains an animal. It is because man thinks, forms ideals, strives after a higher, and is capable of progress that he is a man. Man has advanced — and may advance — • the species of animals are eternally the same, as perfect thousands of years ago as they are to-day. We can set no limits, a priori, to the progress man may make in the future — we cannot say what he may not evolve, as Ber- nard Shaw and Nietzsche think, a higher race.
The progressive, conquering, militant spirit is the true spirit of man. We are not here for momentary pleasure, not to get notice and applause, not to win selfish power, not even to get truth as a private possession, but we are here in this world to fight, to assist by daring and by lowly faithfulness in making order and reason and beauty and love triumphant over the chaotic, rampant and un- regulated elements in life.
A man has a battle with himself — even as a child he ought to begin it; as soon as reason dawns in him, he ought to learn and be taught to make it rule — to over- come brutality, cowardice, deception, stubbornness, slug- gishness, and all the raw and chaotic in him. I need not speak of the battles of the good citizen, of every man in his profession or trade (both to discipline himself and to elevate the common standards), of the reformer, of the teacher and preacher. Somewhere or other, in some way or other, we must fight — and those who do not, those who loll in the easy chairs of life, those looking for delightful sensations and all that, do not know what true Hfe is. Yes, those who strive and are strenuous, but only for per- sonal ends do not know. Such persons are rather, to this extent, among the forces and elements that have to be overcome in the war I speak of. All mere selfishness,
THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD. II9
all individualistic greed and ambition have to be over- come— the force, energy and will involved in them, trans- fonned, developed into free service for common ends.
From this general standpoint I view religion. To some religion means rest and comfort ; to me it means inspira- tion to battle. It is the sense that this battle is an inci- dent in the evolution of things, a part of the world order, that to which you and I are called; the great deep Spirit of things calls us. Practically, religion is reverence to that call, yes, heeding it, plunging into the fight, finding joy in it — and having down in the depths of our being, though we may not always be aware of them, a peace and satisfaction that no words can describe. Of course there are times when we cannot fight, and after a strenuous fight we may be tired, worn, worn-out if you will; but that we have fought, and that, if we had strength, we would fight again — what comfort or what anodyne is equal to that ! We see old age creeping on those we love, in time we feel ourselves growing old, we know the end is ahead for us too — but if we have been true to the high- est as it came to us, if we have fought not thinking of our- selves, but of the cause we worked for, we are consoled — we have a peace within us, which is above all earthly dig- nities,
''A still and quiet conscience."
That is my conception of religion — ethical religion. It is the sanctification of the cause of progress in the world — and the sanctification of ourselves in the service of that cause. It is identical with truth, with science, with morality, with reform — and will be more and more, I hope, with beauty and with joy.
The Ethical Society, so far as I have had a hand in it, has striven to be a concrete example of such a religion.
I20 THE GOOD FIGHT — WITH A CLOSING WORD.
Like all human things it falls short of its idea. It must be judged by its intent, not by its performance. We may be criticised and may deserve to be, we may criticise our- selves and feel keenly our own shortcomings, but we have no doubt of the cause of which we are followers and we lift up our heads and are proud as we think of that.
For about twenty-five years now we have been in existence and most of the time I have been one of you. As human things go, and with all just abatements, we have had an honorable existence. I believe we have made our mark in the thought and religious life and even the practical activity of this city. I believe the tone and character of religious sentiment have been modified, that ideas are broader, the emphasis more ethical than they might other- wise have been. And from our District Nursing in the early days ^ came, at least by way of succession, the pres- ent Visiting Nurse Association with its larger scope and resources ; from impulses among our members and par- ticularly one 2 came the Bureau of Justice and the still larger work into which that Bureau is now merged ; from us came the Economic Conferences with their contribution to larger and clearer thought on social questions; and from us Henry Booth House. Within limits, fixed by the moderate talent of your Lecturer and the moderate abilities and resources of our members, we have been an energizing force in the direction of better religious thinking, of higher justice, of more practical love and philanthropy.
Let me speak briefly of certain landmarks in our his- tory, which have served to fix our character. In the first place, and before I came among you, we adopted our
1. The Margaret Etter Creche bears the name of one of our Nurses.
2. Mr. Joseph W. Errant.
THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD. 121
Statement of Principles and a plan of organization. In substance these have not changed. Our Principles, how- ever, have been modified by becoming more positive and less negative in tone, and our By-Laws by the abolition of fixed dues, leaving it to the interest and generosity of each member to fix his own contribution and making it possible for those who can give very little or even noth- ing to belong to our number, — in other words, making us more strictly a religious society and not a club. These slight changes were made in the early days of my lectureship. After my return from a few years' absence other changes were made. One set forth more clearly, what had always been our under- standing but now was put in so many words, that we were a religious society, and stating just what we did and did not mean by saying so. This was a change in our Statement of Principles ^ (which had a general, though slight, revision at the same time 2). Another forward step was taken in adopting the so-called Zurich pro-
1. For the discussion leading up to this, see The Cause, May,
1897, P- 41.
2. The following is the Statement of Principles of the Chi- cago Society, as it stands at the present time.
"The general aim of the Society for Ethical Culture is to in- terpret morality in the light of science, tc give it reverence and devotion, and to make it a ruling influence in the lives of men._
"i. We recognize the truth that the well-being of the State in which our interests are so vitally concerned is intimately bound up with the well-doing of its individual members. We wish in every possible way to strengthen and deepen the foundations of virtue in the private heart.
"2. We consider just and rational views of our relation to the Universe in which we are placed, to be obviously essential to the proper comprehension of our duty. Where the mental vision is clouded by mists of superstition no clear conceptions of duty are attainable. We welcome the light which modern science and mod- ern thought are bringing in this realm.
"3. The ancient forms of religious belief are undergoing an inevitable process of change. We approve of and would co-oper-
122 THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD.
gramme or manifesto — a statement drawn up by the lead- ers of the Ethical movement at large in an International Conference at Zurich, Switzerland. This programme was adopted after a discussion continued for three or four meetings, and with some revision of the original docu- ment. It serves to set forth our general attitude to some of the great questions of the day ; it is not a programme of specific reforms, but of the principles of reform. Any-
ate with all changes which increasing enlightenment and higher moral standards may require.
"4. As there are general laws governing man's physical life upon his obedience to which his physical health is dependent, so there are lav/s, as yet but imperfectly understood, underlying the life of society, upon obedience to which social security and well- being depend. The study of these laws is of the highest import- ance, both for the well-ordering of our own lives, and for en- abling us to discover the true lines of social advance.
"5. Having constantly before us the spectacle of debasement and misery resulting from the violation of these laws, often through ignorance, and realizing how inadequate the methods heretofore employed to cure these evils have been, as shown by the results, we feel that a sacred duty rests upon us, while we seek to cor- rect our own lives in whatever may be amiss, to do all in our power to help the suffering about us, and to lift society to higher levels,
"6. While not proposing to teach religion in the sense of a creed about the supernatural (and as little denying it) we do wish to teach and to practice religion in the sense of reverence and awe before the naturally or Divinely appointed laws of life. Morality, so understood, is the supremely sacred thing to us ; we recognize it as the comprehensive rule of our lives; it makes our religion. We accordingly wish to form a 'religious' society.
"7. With these convictions and in response to the solemn ob- ligations which they impose, we do hereby unite in an association to be known as The Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago.
"8. Our methods shall include lectures and discussions for adults and schools for the young, in which our principles shall be developed, propagated and advanced, and such other means as experience from time to tim^e may suggest.
'And we do hereby invoke the co-operation of all who earnest- ly think and feel with us, sincerely trusting that our union may become an instrument of lasting good to the community in which we live and may at all times faithfully serve the best interests of mankind."
THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD. I23
one who reads our Statement of Principles and this so- called "Ethical Manifesto" (printed in No. 2 of our ''Ethical Leaflets" 1 ) will see that the Ethical Society has a distinct character in the religious and social world — has its own die or cast.
And now after extended service among you and the re- newal of several terms, my present term expires January first, and it seems to me better that it should not be re- newed. In a matter so vital, at least to me, I am ready to speak with the utmost plainness and simplicity. The change is better for me and for you — excuse my putting myself first. I confess I have a deep desire for studies
I. The manifesto reads as follows :
"I. The aim of the Ethical Societies is to elevate the moral life of their members and of the community. The better moral life is not merely a gift that we wish to bring to others ; it is a good that we must strive after with unremitting effort for ourselves. At the same time we can never be content to think of ourselves alone, but must strive to lift the whole community to higher levels.
"W'c understand by 'the moral life* the aim and, effort to serve the welfare of all.
"II. We recognize that morality obliges us to take an interest in the great social questions of the day, and believe that Ethical Societies should further the cause of social progress.
"(a) We hold that the efforts of the masses of the people to obtain a more humane existence, imply a moral aim of the great- est importance, and we consider it our duty to second these efforts with all possible earnestness and to the full extent of our ability. We believe, however, that the evil to be remedied is not only the material need of the poor, but that an evil hardly less serious is to be found in the moral need which exists among the wealthy, who are often deeply imperiled in their moral integrity by the discords in which the defects of the present industrial system in- volve them.
"(b) We acknowledge that resistance to injustice and oppres- sion is a sacred duty, and that under existing circumstances con- flict is still an indispensable means in clearing up conceptions of justice and in the attainment of better conditions; but we de- mand that the struggle be kept within humane limits, and that it be conducted in the interest of the community as a whole, and with continual reference to ultimate social peace.
"(c) We maintain that in the solution of the so-calltd labor
124 THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD.
for which I have no leisure in this work. The multi- farious cares of leadership of a society in a metropolis like this — and perhaps all the more so because ours is a small and struggling society — leave me no leisure. My strength is drained by what I have to do — and my intel- lectual cravings go unsatisfied. My summers are tanta^ lizing ; after I am rested, I see what I might do and know I cannot do it. I undoubtedly have a double self; one that loves preaching and one that loves the still severe air, in which thoughts of preaching have no place — in which
problem the question is one not only of the material necessities of the laborers, but of their social and legal status, and of their full participation in the highest results of civilization, science and art.
"(d) We expect of the organs of the Ethical Federation that they will endeavor to provide, so far as they are able, intellectual armor to serve in the social struggle — by this, we mean, the pub- lication of careful, scientific treatises, which shall have for their object to ascertain whether the positions of individualism and so- cialism are not susceptible of being united in a deeper philosophy of life; further, statistical investigation to show, with the impres- siveness of facts, how profoundly our present conditions are in need of reform, and furthermore, to see to it that the results thus obtained shall be spread far and wide, so that the public conscience may be developed in the direction of a higher social justice.
"(^) We leave it to the several Societies, according to the particular circumstances of the countries to which they belong, to carry out the above general purpose in particular ways ; but we especially call upon all the members of the various Societies, in their individual capacity, to promote the progressive social move- ment of the times by simplicity in the conduct of life and by the displiy of an active public spirit.
"III. We recognize the institution of the marriage of one man and one woman as a priceless possession of mankind, and we demand an equal standard of morality in this respect for men and ^\omen.
"IV. (a) We demand for woman opportunity for the fullest development of her mental and moral personality, and realizing that her personality is of equal worth with that of man, we pledge ourselves as far as we are able, to secure the recognition of this equality in every department of life.
"(b) We recognize that the economic independence of woman is a condition towards which society is tending, but we protest
THE GOOD FIGHT — WITH A CLOSING WORD. 1 25
one only wants to know, to know the essence and core of things. Whether for weal or woe (and that of my fam- ily), I am determined to cut loose and satisfy my mind. Surely I love to preach — ^to guide, to help, to inspire) when the numbers who come to our meetings are consid- ered, you or anyone might say that I must love preaching very much — sometimes I think if I am in touch with only one soul, I am satisfied ; but I have the other love, too — the other deep, ineradicable desire. Sometimes I put it this way : I have been trying to save others — now I want
against the conditions which force into industrial life mothers of young children and women physically unable to meet the re- quirements of that life.
"V. We hold it to be a fundamental task of our age to give to the educational system the unity which it has in no small measure lost through the disintegration of old-time religious creeds and the division of the community into sects, by making the promotion of a common, ethical purpose the end of all edu- cation,
"VI. (a) We heartily appreciate the efforts being made to bring about universal peace among the nations, and we w^ould con- tribute our share towards the success of these efforts by inward- ly overcoming the military spirit, by endeavoring to counteract the attraction that military glory exerts on the minds of the young, and by seeking to provide that the ethically valuable ele- ments which the military system contains may find expression in nobler and worthier forms.
"(t>) Furthermore we would oppose that national egotism and national passion which at the present day are just as dangerous foes of peace as are the prejudices and interests of the governing classes ; and in times of excitement and of political hatred we will exert ourselves in conjunction with others who think as we do, to compel attention to the voice of reason and conscience.
"VII. We ask our Ethical Societies not only to direct their attention toward the outward extension of the movement,^ but to devote their utmost energy to the building up of a new ideal of life, which shall correspond to the demands of enlightened thinking, feeling and living, confident that such an ideal for which mankind is thirsting will in the end be of equal profit to all classes and to all nations."
I have to confess that no other American Ethical Society has adopted the Zurich manifesto (in substance identical with the above, or even discussed it at length, so far as I am aware.
120 THE GOOD FIGHT — WITH A CLOSING WORD.
to save myself. And perhaps ultimately I may be able to help others better by doing this. I hope so.
And yet I should go with a heavy heart did I not think the change would be better for you, too. I feel keenly my inadequacy. I should hardly have thought of coming to a place like Chicago, had not now nearly twen- ty-five years ago Dr. Adler (in a way) sent me. I am, I trust, earnest, but perhaps more of a scholar or rather student than a leader of men. Before now I should have given way, had anyone been in sight to take my place — I have kept on to hold the fort and keep the flag flying; I would not and could not desert. But the situation is dif- ferent now. Speakers have come forward, who speak to greater effect than I can — I need only mention such men as Prof. Schmidt and Prof. Zueblin. No one of them may be able to give us all his time ; but together they and others like them may fill the platform for the year, giving a varied interest, as one lecturer cannot do, at- tracting a wider, more varied, constituency, and building up in time, I am confident, a larger society, making it stronger in almost every way — even for its practical work. There is possible, I mean, now a staff of lecturers, who can actually do better than I or any one lecturer can do, unless he is an extraordinary man. I am not talking in the air. I am thinking of the experience of our Phila- delphia Society. It does better now without me, than it did with me. The Sunday meetings have doubled or rather trebled in size, the membership has increased, there are one hundred and fifty and more in the Sunday Chil- dren's Classes and recently the Society has launched an en- terprise like Henry Booth House. But it has no lecturer; various speakers, and now a selected few, occupy the plat- form. Mr. Weston as counselor and director has been in-
THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD. 1 27
valuable; but the results of his experience are available for all, and we can profit by them even if we haven't a Mr. Weston among ourselves.
In this, my parting word, I want above all to show you the outlook I have. I should like, if I may be allowed to. to suggest a sort of programme and policy that you may follow. Whether you do follow or no is of course for you to say — but I fully believe that if you do you will gradually go to greater and greater success in all your undertakings — and I want to persuade you ; it is my last privilege as a leader.
The basis of the programme is this Staff of Lecturers proj ect. It does not mean- that you may not some day find one man whom you would like to have your sole lec- turer again : it is a working arrangement for the pres- ent and you may find it the best for always. I have spok- en of Prof. Schmidt and Prof. Zueblin; Miss Jane Ad- dams has also consented to go on such a staff; I believe Mr. John Graham Brooks, of Cambridge, would; and there are men in New York, new additions to our forces there, of striking promise. I would suggest that these lecturers give each from two to six lectures during the year. An occasional single lecture might be given by some other person ; but the staff would give solidity, char- acter, continuity to the platform. It goes without saying that they should stand for our ideas, our spirit, whether technically members of any local Ethical Society or not. One in aim, each should speak freely his own special views. Unity, not uniformity should be the ideal ; variety would make a part of the interest and charm of the new programme.
Secondly, let our Ethical classes for children and young people be continued. There are few more cheerful sights
128 THE GOOD FIGHT — WITH A CLOSING WORD.
than those we have. Those who feel blue should see Misa Seifert's little group of thirty to forty children on the North Side — or see Miss Stafford's class of young wo- men. Many of you do not know what is going on in the Society. There should be more neighborhood classes — they are the only kind to try for in this big city. And they only wait for leaders, organizers. May the leaders arise ! — I believe under the new programme they will.
Thirdly, let the organization of the women of the So- ciety go on — though I do not need to say "let," for it will go on any way. It seems to be almost the livest single thing in the Society. Its help, particularly in the prac- tical work of the Society, has been invaluable.
And let the Monthly Conferences of the Society go on -—there topics of the day should have the freest discussion among the members. It only needs some energy and forethought and planning to make them always the suc- cess they have sometimes been.
And further, let the public, philanthropic work of the Society, Henry Booth House go on! It is one of the distinguishing marks of the Ethical movement from ordi- nary liberal societies (or was when it started) that it is not a platform or pulpit or school or place for discus- sion merely. The first cry of Dr. Adler now over thirty years ago in New York was "to work !" "Not the Creed, but the Deed!" Thereby he marked off the Ethical So- ciety from other liberal organizations that met for preach- ing or contemplation merely. It was this note that at- tracted young men like Dr. Coit, Mr. Westort, Mr. Shel- don and myself to Dr. Adler — and made Unitarian churches and Free Religious movements seem tame. We wanted to put these fine ideals of human brotherhood into some practical earthly shape — we wanted to preach louder
THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD. I29
by what we did than by any talk. The New York So- ciety was then a kind of bee-hive of measures and re- forms— free kindergartens, manual training, district nurs- ing, co-operative experiments, tax reforni, model tenement houses and so on. When I came to Chicago, we started at once District Nursing for the sick poor — our members and the outside public generously supporting me. And soon after I returned from Philadelphia, we inaugurated Henry Booth House, partly with the idea that in work of this peculiar sort a large number of our members could take part, and also that it was better to cover one dis- trict thoroughly than to spread ourselves all over the city. We might have undertaken something else, but we undertook this and have carried it on with increasing success for now some eight or nine years ; the only thing is to go on with it. The work is now housed and equipped and manned as never before ; in all manner of helpfulness it is interweaving itself with the life of the neighborhood ; it is a subtle elevating, civilizing, humanizing influence among hundreds, I might say thousands, of people. It is withal a happy, cheerful place ; I should have been alto- gether happy could I have had my family while I have been in residence there — ^and it seems to me that the peo- ple of the Society whom I meet there (the residents and the many more who come to work) are about the happiest people in the Society. If one has the blues one should go to live or to work there. Go on with Henry Booth House — and be proud to help carry its burdens as those of every part of the Society that normally belongs to it.
Such is my programme, not a great one — a very small one compared to what is being carried out in the parent Ethical Society in New York — but one suited to our re- sources and abilities at present. The practical point is to
130 THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD.
find a few men and women, earnest, determined, with a bit of courage and enthusiasm in them, to lead in carrying it out. There is nothing impossible in it — nothing even involving strain, unless some make strain for others. I speak guardedly and with no disrespect to my old Phila- delphia friends, when I say there is more strength here than there was in the Philadelphia Society when I left it. But you have got to believe in your resources, and the thing is to find a few who will take the lead in believing, and commit the Society's direction to their hands. A dozen such people can surely be found, or if not twelve, then nine, or six, and the board of directors or trustees should be entirely made up of them. If one cannot take the affinnative attitude in the present situation, he should not be on the board. I look to the few natural leaders be- coming known to you somehow and to your committing the direction of things to their hands at the approaching Annual Meeting. I hope they will be women as well as men, for in this age of the world true progressive causes give a place to woman and they need woman — for work, and for counsel, too.
And yet I have spoken up to the full limit of my privi- lege in saying all this. I can only tell you, friends, that I have felt my responsibility while I have been your lec- turer in the past, and I cannot now throw off my responsi- bility— cannot till I leave you January first, and I feel it almost my duty to the Society and its members whom I love, to show this way out, this way on. I hear some of you — a very few, I think, — are dubious. They say they care for me, but not for the cause. I only beg them to re- member that they hardly care for me at my deepest and best, if they do not care for the cause. The Ethical So- ciety is a poor human thing and full of faults, but is it the
THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD. I3I
only thing in this city that stands for the cause as I have defined it, and as it is set forth, articulated, in our State- ment of Principles and so-called Ethical Manifesto. If you do not carry on this organization, you unwittingly go so far in undoing what I have worked for all these years. Surely I have not been speaking to divert myself or to divert you, but to engage and to engage you in a fight, which is far above our personal interests or satis- factions for the time, and which calls for pennanent or- ganization to carry it on. Stay by this little society, and make it a bigger and stronger society — ^that is the best parting gift or assurance any of you can make to me.
Others among you are perhaps tired. They have worked hard and .long — sometimes without due appreciation; they have borne the burden and heat of the day — and wish for rest. I honor them — one in particular to whom it has fallen to do a task that is generally thankless in societies like ours — a prosaic and yet absolutely indispensable task (those who have read Shaw's "Major Barbara" will know what I mean), the task of raising money — money which some aflfect to despise, yet is the prime necessity of hu- man life and of all human organizations. To him and to the other workers who have stood by me through thick and thin during these last ten years, who have whether encouraged or discouraged stuck fast and fought a good fight, I wish to give this public meed of praise. If they want rest, they have earned it. Fresh blood will be forth- coming, let us not doubt it. As a German poet puts it in a glorious little song which I will not attempt to trans- late:
"Und wo immer miide Fechter Sinken im muthigen Strauss,
Es kommen frische Geschlechter Und kampfen es ehrlich aus."
132 THE GOOD FIGHT — WITH A CLOSING WORD.
A word to those who are near us but not of us. For various reasons, old associations, memories, perhaps a Ht- tle timidity, you hesitate to join us. And yet progress always depends in this world upon those who leave a good for a better, who go where their highest soul belongs. If your intellect is' satisfied here as it is not in ordinary religious organizations, if your best moral ideals are re- flected, if you go away feeling your conscience touched, why, do the brave, honest thing and join us. We need you, and believe me, in a way, you need us — the dignity and honor of common labor with us. Henry Fourth of France said to one of his courtiers, "Hang yourself, brave Crillon, we fought at Arques and you were not there."
And now as I give this last address as the lecturer of the Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago (for Dr. Ad- ler speaks next Sunday) I think of past years, and wish, dear friends and comrades, that you and I together might have made them better years — better for us both. Yet so far as my public teaching goes, I have no re- grets. I have spoken straight what I thought and I regret nothing. I believe I have been right in the main contentions of my career, — in agitating for Eight Hours, against the wholesale sentence on the "Anarch- ists," for the right of Labor to organize, for what as far back as 1885 I called "Rational Socialism," against An- archy in every shape, whether of working man or busi- ness man, for industrial Arbitration, for Profit-sharing, for Co-operation, for the cause of Woman, for the Negro, for the Children in our factories and shops, (for the In- come Tax, against the Russian Treaty making America an accomplice in Russia's barbarism, for President Cleve- land in his attitude to England in the Venezuelan case ^ )
On these questions I took my stand in Philadelphia.
THE GOOD FIGHT WITH A CLOSING WORD. I33
for the essential principles of the Single Tax, for the war to liberate Cuba, against the war to subjugate the Phil- ippines. I retract nothing. I repent nothing. And you have always left me free — free to speak and to act. (The only time about which there could be a question was when an issue was raised that was involved in misunderstand- ing.^) And I, on these special questions have never sought to commit you — the only apparent exception being in relation to resolutions about the Philippines — the move- ment for which originated not with me but with some members who were stirred by my lecture on "Imperial- ism." 2
These past years have indeed been strenuous, but they have been sweet to me. I have formed ties that will con- tinue while life continues. I have been glad to serve you, I have made no sacrifices — sacrifice made willingly, out of love, is no sacrifice. I would do everything I have done again — except that I might perchance be wiser, at times, and might wish that I could be stronger, plow deeper.
But courage, friends, that is my last word. Not fare- well, but courage ! Let it not be said of any of you that you shirked a call of duty, that you slunk from any field in advance, that you damned a cause by declining to ven- ture for it.
Go ahead and fight out the battle on which you have entered. Continue the honorable traditions of the Ethical Society in this community. Continue to keep a home
1. The issue was whether I and the Head-worker at Henry- Booth should be free to help any set of struggling working peo- ple in our neighborhood to organize. Some thought this com- mitted the Society to Trade Unionism. To my mind the ques- tion was simply one of freedom. News Letter (Chicago) Feb- ruary, March and April, 1907.
2. See The Cause, March and October, 1899.
134 THE GOOD FIGHT — WITH A CLOSING WORD.
here for the free mind of man and for his higher soul. Continue to hold up standards of conscience, to inspire the individual and society alike with their duty. Continue to breed shame for mean and unholy things. Fight for the Ethical Society, as an instrument, an example of the one great holy cause. The end will justify you and on the way, now, in the midst of your efforts and struggling, a strange joy will sometimes come over you.
THE VALUE OF ETHICAL ORGANIZATION.*
By Charles Zueblin, University of Chicago.
The nineteenth century produced both philosophy and movements of great significance in the furthering of the higher Hfe of organized society. The revolt against eigh- teenth century formalism and conventionality, which was expressed in the ramifications of the romantic movement, included the reaction against pietism in the Methodist revival of the eighteenth century and the ritualistic move- ment of the nineteenth; the Gothic revival with, on the one hand, its protest against the formal, unenthusiastic, pseudo-classic, and on the other, the constructive social philosophy of Walter Scott, Pugin and Ruskin ; the "re- turn to nature" of Rousseau and the destructive criticisms of Voltaire; the "illumination" in Germany and the fer- tilizing forces of the philosophies of Goethe, Kant and Hegel ; and, not least, the political revolutions in America and France and the industrial revolution in Great Britain.
After this creative ferment it was logical that the nine- teenth century should witness constructive agencies lay- ing new foundations on the ground cleared of ancient formulas, dogmas and shibboleths. Among these per- haps the most significant are non-theological ethics, evo- lution and sociology.
Theology dies hard, but it is periodically robbed of its authority. It then readjusts itself to the changed limi- tations with renewed vitality. The greatest advances in
*An address at the closing meeting of the American Ethical Union, Carnegie Hall, New York, Sunday, May 12, 1907.
136 THE VALUE OF ETHICAL ORGANIZATION.
modern times in theological speculation and biblical criti- cism are due to theology's being shorn of its dominion over morality. A greater social gain, however, is the emancipation of ethics. The harmony of ethical systems is incomplete but the service of ethics is vastly enriched by the substitution of social utility for theological sanc- tion. A new social dynamic is found in the conception that man's chief activities are to be devoted to the im- provement of this world rather than preparation for an- other. A corollary, satisfactory even to the theologian, is that life in any other world is determined only by ser- vice in this. Thus far is non-theological ethics trium- phant over the historic theologies.
The interpretative value of the doctrines of organic evolution is equally important to the furtherance of the interests of the higher life. The modern point of view is not only illuminated by the study of human origins and processes, but furnishes the key to social responsi- bility by the application of the laws of development. As Drummond says, "Man must now take charge of evolu- tion, even as hitherto he has been the one charge of it." Thrown by non-theological ethics on his own resources he finds in the teachings of evolution a safer guide than in the spasmodic creations and inspirations of the old cos- mogony. He finds in natural, sexual and artificial selec- tion the means of transforming not only social institu- tions, but human nature itself, in defiance of the ancient enervating doctrine that the frailty of human nature and original sin are immutable. The inevitable consequence of the revelations of organic evolution was the birth of sociology.
This third product of the nineteenth century suffers, not only from the spontaneous protest of those to whom
THE VALUE OF ETHICAL ORGANIZATION. 1 37
doctrines of social transformation are repugnant, because inconvenient, but also from the deliberate apposition of the pseudo-scientists, trained in the intellectual atmos- phere of theological and pre-evolutionary philosophies. To these muse be added the handicap of its exponents who often utilize it for half-baked projects of social reform, dictated by enthusiastic but untrained minds, or who ob- scure its social value by labored scrupulousness to be more exact than a science of human wants and motives ever can be. There is too great justification for the definition, paraphrased from a famous description of metaphysics, which declares sociology to be "the science of telling peo- ple the things they already know in ways which they cannot understand." Nevertheless, non-theological ethics and evolution make the science of the satisfaction of hu- man wants inevitable. As its conclusions become estab- lished in wide research it will cease to be speculative or controversial and become constructive and dynamic.
These products of nineteenth century thought incorpor- ated the moral ideal in sundry ethical organizations, of which the most representative are positivism, ethical cul- ture and socialism. Every extension of the intellectual horizon is fertile in new religious movements. The emo- tional temperaments are caught by soul satisfying sects like Methodism, Swedenborgianism, the Salvation Army or Christian Science, while the exaggeration of material- ism produces secularism and new thought, of mysticism, theosophy.and oriental cults. The sounder basis furnish- ed by a knowledge of human needs has produced positiv- ism, the worship of humanity ; ethical culture, the fellow- ship of humanity ; socialism the organization of humanity.
Auguste Comte's religion of humanity has not been a success, but his followers have been a noble band of
138 THE VALUE OF ETHICAL ORGANIZATION.
humanitarians, enriching sociology and social reform. The worship of humanity has satisfied neither theist nor atheist, but it is a lofty conception, not without value to the race. More impersonal than ancestor worship, more unselfish than the religions of reincarnation, it has served to emphasize the worth and immortality of humanity. A religion founded on science, emphasizing the process of development from the theological, through the meta- physical to the positive and devoted to the service of hu- manity, it is the very embodiment of non-theological eth- ics, evolution and sociology. The abstractions of Comte, however, have not become popular, although the novels of George Eliot and the essays and activities of Frederic Harrison are invaluable.
The founder of the Ethical Culture movement would probably not admit that fellowship is its goal, but he was the first to demand union for moral action regardless of profession of faith. It is not expected that Societies for Ethical Culture should undertake the organization of hu- manity, but they provide a meeting place for the lovers of their kind, whose actions and aspirations are guided by the moral ideal. The movement is numerically insigni- ficant, but as a type of the indispensable religious fellow- ship of the democratic future it is prophetic. If men and women of varied traditions, differing gladly and profitably in their intellectual conceptions, but united by a moral purpose, can organize disinterestedly in the service of humanity, it can only strengthen their fellowship as a basis of the common life.
The organization of humanity can be effected only by the state, which alone represents all human interests in any area. Every human being, with his activities and hopes, is the concern of the state. No human being has
THE VALUE OF ETHICAL ORGANIZATION. 1 39
a life which he can call his own apart from the state. Hence, the force which undertakes the organization of humanity must utilize the state. Socialism proposes to extend indefinitely the bounds of the democratic state. It is easy to think of state socialism as a merely political movement. As such it is unsatisfying to orthodox social- ists, who find in collectivism an economic system and a materialistic philosophy. Whether viewed politically or economically, it must not be overlooked that a fervor of moral idealism pervades the movement ; that however vain its dreams it is the only contemporary, organized effort to secure absolute justice for all; that its parish being the world, the state is simply a unit; and that the interna- tional organization of the workers of the world, if it could be accomplished, would become shortly the organization of humanity.
These three movements, so widely divergent, are among the joint products of non-theological ethics, evolu- tion and sociology. They are all extra-ecclesiastical, if not anti-theological. Their common source is the im- perfect organization of society; their motive power the service of humanity.
Positivism has had its day, ethical culture still illumi- nates the way, but the future seems to belong to some form of socialism. If the democratic state is at all to re- alize the dreams of collectivism and to avoid the dangers pointed out by the critics of socialism, it will be by the organization of its ethical forces in harmony with its other elements. The function of an ethical organization is not to produce a sect of perfectionists or furnish the consolations of revealed religion, but rather the Fabian policy of helping to moralize church and politics, educa- tion, the press and industry — in short, life. This it can
I40
THE VALUE OF ETHICAL ORGANIZATION.
accomplish only by the co-operation of those who unite their diversities of personality and conviction in the fel- lowship of the moral life. For such an organization there will be need in any society.
L
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM*
By David Saville Muzzey.
Every civilization is a compromise. Association in any enterprise whatever, political or social, religious or secular, international or parochial, is possible only by the abatement of some part of somebody's interests or choice. The human will, unchastened by the salutary attrition of fellow-wills, is a tyrannous titanic force, which moves straight to its goal, and grows surer of its own infallibility the longer its period of immunity. It ends in anarchy. Society, which is the antithesis of anarchy, exists only by the restraint and balance of the individual wills ; and the more deHcate the civilizing influences of science, letters,, and intercourse have made the balance, the more stable tends to be the form of society conditioned thereby. We need not at all assent to Rousseau's fanciful theory of the origin of human society in the deliberate, contractual sac- rifice of the untamed individual will to the general wel- fare, if we still recognize that the amelioration, yes, even the bare continuance of human society at the level at- tained, does actually depend on just such a sacrifice.
Probably not a decade of the world's history nor a corner of the world's surface has ever been free from men or women who have been convinced that the sacrifice was vain. Probably for tens who have registered their protest, or devised a remedy, thousands have lived in baffled rebellion, and died in baffled resignation. Eight
*A lecture given before the Women's Conference of the Society for Ethical Culture of New York, and printed by the special re- quest of the Conference.
141
142 THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM.
centuries ago Omar Khayyam launched his impotent challenge :
"Ah, love! could thou and I with fate conspire To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits — and then Remould it nearer to the heart's desire !"
Twenty-three centuries ago Plato dreamed of a society in which men should turn from the black shadow-pictures on the walls of their prison house, and face sunlit reality. And for aught we know, twice twenty-three centuries before the ancient records of clay tablet and papyrus, men were compounding panaceas for the ills of their doomed society, or embracing the mild protest of monas- tic retirement.
The thoughtful and historical-minded to-day will not marvel at the unrest in our society, or seek to drown the voices of discontent by raising in counter-clamor that most inappropriate word of all the world to raise in clamor, "Peace! Peace!" Each man and woman among us, according to the light vouchsafed to each, should purify his political and social vision, and do his part to purge from the body social those hideous superstitions and sanctioned malefactions whose combined power has wrought the tragedy of history.
We are face to face, in our stiate of the opening twen- tieth century, with conditions of the utmost gravity. A combination of factors, all good in themselves — unsur- passed wealth of natural resources, long years of peace, miraculous multiplication of labor-saving inventions, space-mocking engines of transportation, giant intellects of organization, and giant hands of direction — has resulted in a situation critical in the extreme. Why ? Because the
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM. I43
economic and material vigor of our country has outrun its political wisdom and its ethical warnings. Because the unit of production has grown until it has not only burst the geographical, mechanical, industrial bonds of a gen- eration ago, but threatens to shatter the political and moral framework of our democracy as well. We read that Mr. Morgan, beside his chain of ten or a dozen banks, controls industries capitalized at $4,700,000,000 — an amount of wealth greater than the total valuation of the thirteen American Colonies at the time of the Revolution, greater than the combined wheat, corn, and live-stock trade of our country to-day. And Mr. Morgan is only one — primus inter pares — among the group of financial At- lases on whose broadcloth shoulders this free government seems to rest. These men have their emissaries in our halls of congress ; their agents control our press ; they ap- pear, in the majestic calm of the gods of old, theophanic, ex-machina — and, pouring out a few tens of millions like oil, they soothe the turbulent waves of the stock-pit ; they fix the price of our meat and drink, our clothing and shel- ter ; and to them our elected magistrates run to ask their favor that this government may live !
To some robustly optimistic minds this triumph of in- dustrial concentration is altogether a good and wholesome thing. Perhaps the most remarkable expression of eco- nomic "stand-pattism" is the recent book of Chancellor James R. Day, of Syracuse, The Raid on Prosperity. Chancellor Day deprecates the raid. He warns a sensa- tion-loving and meddlesome government not to endanger the progress of the greatest age in all history. He scorns the regulator and the trust-buster. Hear some of his sentiments :
"Millions have taken the place of hundreds of thousands as a
144 THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM.
measure of wealth. Billions will displace millions before the cen- tury closes .... The man who is shouting himself hoarse over trusts and corporations and swollen fortunes will take his place in history with the men who smashed Arkwright's loom and Whitney's cotton-gin, and the pamphleteers who ridiculed Steph- enson's locomotive .... The poor man owes more to cor- porations than to any other commercial force for his opportunity to work at good wages, or to work at all, for that matter. Let those who hate the corporations go back to the canal-boat, the little railway, the stage-coach, and a dollar a day wage."
So admiration for the strong men who have thrown bands of steel across our continent, and gathered the har- vests of half a world in their arms, takes hold of many a mind that sees in the protest of the soberest constitution- ality or sincerest conviction at best only the short-sighted policy of obstruction to our swelling columns of exports, and at worst the hateful, envious shriek of confiscation and class war.
No less proud of the splendid achievements of our in- dustrial age, but far less confident in the wisdom of the present management of our great industries is a large class of men, our President in the lead, who look to gov- ernment regulation as the panacea for fevered economics. They would bring the trusts to book — the statute-book. By commissions, investigating committees, federal prose- cutions, enormous penalties, they would curb the spirit of lawless gain, and persuade the lion of the Montana forest to lie down in peace beside the lamb of Wall Street. To the robust optimism of the stand-patters these apostles of government regulation seem like mischievous meddlers ; they destroy confidence, reduce our prestige in the eyes of Europe, side-track thousands of freight cars within stone's throw of the grain and cotton they should be moving, and drive the already meagre supply of currency into barren vaults, strong-boxes, and stock- ing-toes. To another class of critics the regulators seem
I
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM. I45
rather stupid than deliberately unwise, in their hope to stamp out the disease of economic dropsy by strengthen- ing and protecting all the evils on which it feeds — high tariffs, monopolistic franchises, corporation banking, pri- vate ownership of the sources and tools of production, artificial markets, and all the manifold ills of the capital- istic regime. As well, say these critics, put a wooden dam across the Mississippi and open a thousand fresh springs at its sources.
So we have a third class of men who look with the ut- most anxiety on the capitalistic usurpation, and with utter misgiving on the power, or even the ultimate will, of our government as at present constituted to dethrone the usurpers. Their remedy is nothing less than a complete reorganization of society — a new earth. Their dirge of warning is at the same time a pean of thanksgiving; for the cruel regime which allows a few to revel in wanton luxury while the millions are being pushed closer and closer to the starvation line, is to be swept away. The ballot is in the hands of the oppressed. Economic pen- nilessness will wake to its political omnipotence. It will rise and assert its strength ; and, although in its first clash with entrenched capitalism it will set in motion a battle beside which all other revolutions of history will look like a storm in a glass of water, and although for a while "the extreme medicine of state will," in Burke's vivid phrase, "become its daily bread" — yet the end will be peace. A new society, disposing of its own boundless resources for the good of all, producing for use and not for profit, enjoying life instead of fighting on the one side to sustain it and on the other side to accumulate the millions that turn its enjoyment into the gall of bitter- ness. The men who look for this radical transformation
146 THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM.
of society are called Socialists, and the various programs by which they hope to bring it to pass, or according t5 which they see it inevitably developing, are called So- cialismr
No word in the English language, not even religion itself, is harder to define than socialism. It is a perfectly colorless word. According to its etymology every man who believes in a society of human beings — every man, that is, above the lowest savage — is a socialist. Yet per- haps no other word has no rapidly acquired a sinister meaning. The socialist is commonly believed to be a violent, envious, ignorant, lazy man, who prefers to di- vide up the wealth others have accumulated rather than to earn his own living. In the jingle of Ebenezer Elliott, "the Corn-law Rhymer:"
"What is a Socialist? One who is willing To give up his penny and pocket your shilling."
But this epigram we shall agree, with a little reflection, is quite as apt to characterize the capitalist. The unfor- tunate qualities of envy, indolence, and greed are too widespread to be the distinct property of any school or party. And it is to be feared that a majority of those who so confidently and finally announce the dismaying cata- logue of socialist sins have never read or thought it worth while to read a single reputable socialist on the principles of his party. Huxley once said that the un- pardonable sin of science was pronouncing opinions, dic- tated by prejudice, on matters never faithfully studied; and indeed most of the pulpit tirades against that great man himself were from clergymen who considered it a sin to read and understand the man whom they vilified. The prophets are generally stoned before they get through their first few sentences !
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM. I47
I am not here maintaining that the socialists are the true prophets or that socialism is the inevitable form of society. I am simply maintaining that it behooves us to study very carefully a movement which has grown faster in the last generation than any other movement in the history of the world, with the exception of the Moham- medan religion in the years immediately following the death of the prophet. The socialist vote increased in the United States from 96,000 in the presidential election of 1900 to 409,000 in that of 1904. In France it increased from 47,000 in 1887 to 1,120,000 in 1906; in Germany from 30,000 in 1887 to 3,008,000 (far the largest party vote in the Empire) in 1903 ; and in the countries of western Europe and the United States from 30,000 in 1870 to 7,000,000 in 1905. As yet we do scarcely more than rub our eyes and stare at these figures. But they in- vite us to read and ponder.
In the brief hour at my disposal I have planned to deal with three aspects of sociaHsm: the first historical, to give a summary view of the course of socialistic thought in the last half century ; the second expository, to set forth some of the tenets agreed on by the socialists quite gen- erally; and the third critical, to indicate what should be the attitude toward the socialist claims and principles of those who, like us, are pledged to the doctrine of the su- preme value of the ethical life.
The rise of modern socialism lies within the memory of living men. The events of the year 1848 gave it its impetus. For in that year political reaction triumphed over dawning liberal ideas in central Europe, and the hopes of economic reform in the regular course of middle- class government were rudely cast down. By a singular coincidence, there was cast into the revolutionary turmoil
148 ' THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM.
of 1848 one of the most remarkable of the world's writ- ings, the Communist Manifesto. The chief author of the Manifesto, Karl Marx, was a powerful genius, trained in the study of history and philosophy, a cogent writer^ and a dauntless fighter. He stands as the founder of modern Socialism. Before Marx there had been plenty of men, from Plato downward, who had dreamed of a better society; plenty who, like Sir Thomas More, Cam- panella, Harrington, Cabet, Mably, and Morelli, had im- agined Utopian societies on earth, sun, or moon — antici- pating the modern Utopias of Bellamy, H. G. Wells, and Anatole France. But till Marx socialism meant Utopi- anism. The Utopians either retired from society to form a little community of their own, or else made over so- ciety by some artificial, mechanical devices, like those of Bellamy's Looking Backward, Their ideal state was not only actually opposed to the present world, but it was also fundamentally antagonistic to it. Utopianism could not be derived from the present world by any natural devel- opment. It was cataclysmic. Marx, on the other hand, laid at the foundation of his socialism (which he called communism to avoid the Utopian implications in the word socialism) a philosophy of history. He said not, this is what we should like to make society, but, this is what is actually happening in society. Marxian socialism was natural not artificial, a growth from within not a force from without, an evolution not a cataclysm, scien- tific not visionary.
Marx declared that "in every historic epoch the pre- vailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social org-anization necessarily following from it, form the basis on which is built up and from which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history of that
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM. I49
epoch." The present bourgeoisie or middle-class had ef- fected, he declared, a great world revolution in the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries, by overthrowing feudalism, but they had now created a proletariat, a wage-oppressed, expropriated fourth estate, which would soon swamp the bourgeoisie themselves. They had collected the masses in great towns by their centralization of industry; they had kept the course of industry in perpetual flux by rapid successive transformations of the instruments and pro- cesses of production, and by continual recurrences of commercial crises; they had reduced the yeomanry and small tradesmen and artisans to a proletariat, and were making the life of the proletariat one of privation, un- certainty, discontent, and incipient revolution. "They treated the laborer like a ware, buying him in the cheap- est market for the cost of his production (the bare cost of his living), and taking from him the whole surplus value of his work, after deducting the value of his sub- sistence." We do not seek to destroy the state, cried Marx, but only the capitalistic government of the state. We do not wish to abolish property, but rather that sys- tem under which property is now abolished for nine- tenths of society. We do not advocate the destruction of the family, but rather the restitution of the family now destroyed by a regime which makes a slave of the father, and takes the mother for the factory and the child for the mill, to make up good measure for the capitalist's profits. We demand that all who are able shall labor, that landed property be expropriated, that inheritances be abolished, that the state control means of transportation, that na- tional factories be established, that child-labor cease, and that education be public, compulsory, and gratuitous. Marx concludes with a ringing appeal to the workers of
150 THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM.
all lands : "The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains ! They have a world to win ! Proletarians of all nations, unite !"
Cicero said that Socrates "brought philosophy from heaven to earth," that is, from its vain speculations on the nature of science (without experimentation), and clever dialectics on the nature of justice (without principles), to a reasoned study of the human mind and its powers. So, we might say, Marx brought socialism from heaven to earth — out of the clouds of imaginary Utopias into the everyday atmosphere of politics and economics. Although earlier socialists, notably St. Sim.on, had in the first half of the nineteenth century, anticipated some of the Marx- ian positions, such as the essential antagonism of the ap- propriating and the expropriated classes, nevertheless it was Marx who first clearly and forcibly divorced social- ism from its Utopian implications and complications. I would call your attention to four features of the Marxian doctrine which have characterized most of the socialistic thought to our own day, and which consequently entitle Marx to be called the founder of modern socialism.
First, Marx gave socialism a philosophical basis in history. He showed his doctrine to be an inevitable stage in a great evolutionary process. As a student and de- voted follower of Hegel, Marx adopted the theory of the unfolding of the consciousness of freedom (Hegel's Freiheitshewusstsein) through the successive harmonies of opposites. Critics of Marx soon pointed out that he allowed his Hegelianism to sharpen the actual conflict be- tween the classes to too fine a point, but his general thesis of the evolutionary significance of socialism, as against the cataclysmic Utopian view, they adopted.
A second feature of Marxian socialism is its interna-
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM. I5I
tional character. The Utopias were all exclusive groups of the elect. Marx appealed to the workers of all na- tions. The Communistic League, which he and Engels founded, became a few years later the International Workingmen's Association. The International was dis- credited and disrupted by its revolutionary exercises at the time of the Paris Commune (1871), and socialism drew for a while into a nationalistic phase. But the hol- lowness of Bismarck's imitation of state socialism in Prussia, the combined hostility of state, church, and army in France, the progressive dampening of political aspira- tions among the radicals of almost all the European coun- tries, have led the socialists back to the international plat- form advocated by Marx, until at the recent congress held at Stuttgart it was even demanded by some of the dele- gates (notably the French) that socialists should refuse to bear arms for the fatherland against their comrades of foreign nations.
A third feature of Marx's socialism is its close connec- tion with the working people. Marx made socialism a program for the proletariat, whereas it had been a pastime for the dreamer. Any man with a reforming or protest- ing interest; any radical dissatisfied with church or state or society in general was a "socialist." He might be laboring to establish Apostolic Christianity or to abolish God, to house all the workers in model tenements holding two thousand each, or to have a religious test introduced into the Constitution of the United States. Marx called on the proletariat to wake to their cause and fight their own battle. He bade them be the chief actors in the drama of social regeneration, instead of the passive recipients of the blessings planned for them in the Utopias. He inter- preted the worn phrase, "dignity of labor" as a prophetic
152 THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM.
motto, pointing to a time when the laborer should enjoy the only dignity possible — the dignity of freedom.
And finally, Marx made socialism a political affair. To be sure, in his day the ballot was as generally denied to the proletarian as it is granted to him to-day. By the circumstances of the time, then, Marx was unable to make his appeal, as present-day socialists do, to the working class at the polls. Agitation had to take the place of the ballot in his scheme, and therefore his social- ism has a more revolutionary aspect than it would prob- ably have, had Marx lived in these days when the ballot is in the hands of the workingmen. But while the ballot does not figure in Marx's Manifesto, still he is the father of political socialism by virtue of his clear development of that class-consciousness which makes the socialist cast his ballot as a party man to-day.
This four-fold nature, then, of the Marxian type of so- cialism— an inevitable, historic, evolutionary, class-con- scious movement of the proletariat of all nations to gain for themselves through political agitation their emanci- pation from economic oppression — characterizes it as the fountain-head of all socialistic theory and the germ-cell of all socialistic growth during the last half century.
Into the details of that growth in America and the va- rious countries of Europe (some statistics of which I no- ticed a few moments ago) we cannot obviously go in this hour. In general it may be remarked that while the pro- gress of democracy may have tended to relieve that ex- treme tension between the ruling and the governed classes, which Marx experienced in the midst of the reac- tionary wave of the year 1848, still the industrial concen- tration, the monopolization of the means of production in. the hands of a few, the power of the capitalist to reduce
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM. 1 53
the wage-earner to virtual slavery, has become accentu- ated in our day, rather than diminished.
Pari passu with the growth of socialism has gone the development of the trade unions. Trade unionists and socialists have quite often been identified, or at least greatly confused with each other. The trade union is very much older than Marxian socialism. And, until in very recent times the distinction between skilled and un- skilled labor has been almost obliterated by the develop- ment of machinery, the trade union was rather a conser- vative than a radical force. It faced the masses rather than the employers. Its object was to keep out the swarm of unskilled laborers who were pressing for admission into the trades, and whose entrance would cause wages to drop. The long apprenticeship is a thing of the past. In- dustrial schools teach thousands rapidly to handle the tools of modern machinery, which are fed by the workers of the lower grades of intelligence. The trade union has no longer much to fear from socialism, and all mod- ern signs point to a rapprochement between the two» Large numbers of socialists are anxious for the consoli- dation of interests. Vaudervelde, the veteran Belgian socialist, said at the Stuttgart Congress : "The increase in the efficiency of the trade unions is of infinitely higher significance for the working class than the capture of a few seats in ParHament." To be sure, at the meeting of November 15th, at Jamestown, of the American Federa- tion of Labor, the delegates voted three to one against government ownership of railroads and mines. But that was rather from a divergence in view as to the best method of securing the due recognition of the rights of labor than from any hostility to the socialists. The trade unionists still doubt the efficacy of public owner-
154 THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM.
ship, as against the general strike; but they are begin- ning to realize that the strike becomes ineffective in pro- portion as the trade is democratized, and that scabs and strike-breakers are likely to be more willing to thwart the strike in proportion as they are more numerous and more able to do so. Perhaps the alternative will be pre- sented to the unions of quietly joining the socialists in political action for economic reform, or of openly pro- claiming themselves the armed guardians of the portals of their trade.
Of the movements more or less allied with Marxian socialism — of Fabianism, with its forensic interest and its municipal activities, of the socialism of the chair, the economic speculations of college professors, of christian socialism and the brotherhoods and societies of semi- religious, semi-economic aim — there is not time to speak now. We must pass to the second aspect of our subject, namely, a brief exposition of some of the leading tenets of socialism.
With its fundamental Marxian doctrine that all forms of political and social life are determined by economic factors, socialism naturally makes a revolution in eco- nomic conditions its first demand. The natural sources of wealth and the machinery of production must be "re- turned" to the people, in order that those who labor may fully enjoy the fruits of their labor. Ownership and use must be joined. Production for the sake of profit-mak- ing, with all its unnatural stimulation of markets, even to waging unholy wars in distant lands, must give place to production for need in consumption. The whole capital- istic system of rent, interest, and profit is an incubus on society. By it the past weighs on the present like a mountain. In our bourgeois society the labor of the liv-
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM. 155
ing goes to augment the vast masses of capital already ac- cumulated by the labor of the dead, instead of the labor of past generations being as it should a means of enlarg- ing, enriching, stimulating the life of the present gener- ation. The earth and its fulness belongs to the living. But our labor is sold before we are born, our lives are mortgaged, enfoeflfed to the lords of capitalism, before we came into the world ; our strength is a tribute paid to the cunning masters of past ages ; our seven youths and seven maidens are devoured yearly by the Minotaur of mammon in the labyrinth of mine and mill Nay, the la- borer is doubly a serf ; he not only works at another's bid- ding and pleasure, but he works blindly too — ^to ends that he has not conceived, through means that he does not control. Insensibly he has been deprived of the interest in his work, and left only with its drudgery and monot- ony. Gradually the manipulation of his products has been taken from him, while the penalty for their miscarriage has remained. The meat industry has been divorced from the ranch and put into the hands of the packers ; the cream and butter industry has been separated from the dairy and concentrated in the hands of middlemen; the grain crop has been taken from the farmer and delivered over to the great elevators and railroad corporations!
Such is the impassioned cry of the socialist. His pro- gram is more than a theory ; it is a religion. Redemption is his creed — the redemption of the earth, which lieth under the bondage of accumulated capital.
By just what means political, educational, legal, indus- trial, this redemption is to be accomplished the socialists are, of course, not agreed. When were the apostles of the world's redemption ever agreed on means? When did creeds, christian or pagan, ever show unity? For
156 THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM.
some socialists entrance into the councils of state has been the way of promise; for others parliaments have been "the marsh in which socialist energies are hopelessly engulfed/' Many welcome any measures of government which look to the reform of capitalistic tyranny, while more ''fear the Greeks even bearing gifts," and repudiate any concurrence with bourgeois politics as a surrender of principle. Some find the agrarian problem at the bot- tom of the whole question, others see it primarily as a problem of production and distribution, others still as a question of consistent democracy, a desideratum of ethics, or religion pure and undefiled. But in all the declara- tions of the socialist party, in America or Europe, that have come within my reading, although there is ample profession of a revolutionary aim (that is, the changing of the government into other hands), I have never seen advocated the doctrines which many respectable oppo- nents charge to the account of socialism — anarchy, athe- ism, confiscation, free-love. That these things are direct corollaries of the socialist program many of their oppo- nents believe. It is for them to labor to substantiate such belief by convincing argument and example.
The anarchists say. No government, for governments oppress us by taxes — ^but the socialists ot Germany ex- pelled the anarchists from their ranks in the Erfurt Con- gress of 1 891. Their example was followed by the Aus- trians and the Italians in 1892, and by the International Socialist Congress of London in 1896. Said Liebknecht, one of the acknowledged leaders of German socialism: "The anarchists of Europe could be put into a couple of police wagons. With their ridiculous revolutionary phrases, their senseless assassinations, and their stupidi- ties generally, they have done nothing for the laboring
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM. 1 57
classes, but have worked into the hands of their adver- saries." Undoubtedly many socialists are atheists, as are many capitalists. Atheism is not a plank in the so- cialist programs, however. They have constantly de- clared religion to be a private matter with which they did not meddle. Any student of the movement has a perfect right to say, if such be his conclusions after fair study, that socialism must inevitably lead to the destruction of state, family, business, and character ; but he has no right to say that the socialists propose to destroy any of these things. Indeed, the Socialists propose and claim to save all these things, and to be the only force that can save them all, from sure destruction. We may flout the sanity of their claim ; we cannot deny its sincerity. And we may well ponder which is the wiser and safer attitude, that of the socialists who say, Behold this instant danger of de- struction at the hands of capitalism; let us up and meet it now ! or that of their opponent. Prof. Theodore D. Woolsey, of Yale, who says : "If unfettered freedom can bring about a state of things in which a few great mer- chants, manufacturers, ship-owners, transporters, money- lenders can absorb the capital of the country, it will then be time to rectify the evil, if it can be done, by appropri- ate legislation."
I have tried to state the main thesis of socialism, in this brief time at my disposal, and I wish your indulgence for a few minutes longer, in which I may suggest something of the attitude of mind which it is fitting for us to take toward this movement. That there is room for the wid- est difference of honest opinion on the subject, I would be the last to deny. Herbert Spencer, a life-long student of social conditions, wrote only a few days before his death (October, 1905) : "Socialism will triumph . . .,
158 THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM.
and it will be the greatest disaster the world has ever witnessed." William Morris, on the contrary, as con- fident of the triumph of socialism, hailed "the wonderful day a-coming, when all shall be better than well." But whether we judge socialism favorably or unfavorably, it is of the first importance that we treat it fairly, "on its merits and not in its spelling;" that we judge it by the writings of its acknowledged leaders — Marx, Lassalle, Bernstein, Liebknecht, Bebel, Vollmar, Kautsky, in Ger- many; Vaillant, Guesde, Jaures, Herve, in France; Van- dervelde, in Belgium ; Loria and Ferri, in Italy ; Aveling, Morris, Blatchford, Webb, Hardie, in England; Simonsj Kirkup, Hillquit, Spargo, in America. Thousands have a ready and final condemnation of socialism on their lips who have not read a single one of these authors, and whose only information on the subject is the repetition of a neighbor's repetition of some venomous editorial on socialism in the columns of a newspaper whose every ut- terance, except the weather prediction, is governed by a party in Wall Street. The ethical judgment is first of all a judgment from sufficient information.
Again, as we insist on fair-mindedness in judging the validity of the socialist theories, we must insist on fair play in the agitation for the socialist program. Violence, in a country of law, where the will of the people has chance to express itself in due forms of legislation, we unhesitatingly condemn. Demagoguism, the appeal to the base passions of envy, hate, and greed, we reject as a wicked and stultifying practice. We are jealous, too, of the rights of quality. Merit must not be confused with demerit, industry with indolence, thrift with shiftlessness, mental endowment with mediocrity or dullness. The largest freedom compatible with the health and service-
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM. 1 59
ableness of society must be preserved, our varied tastes, gifts, callings must be encouraged and enriched, not sup- pressed or levelled. We shall examine the program and the practices of socialism, then, if we are lovers of fair play, to see whether they support us in these demands and condemnations, and if they do not, we shall reject, and know why we reject, the doctrines of socialism.
Further, it is our duty to discover and rebuke, all clap- trap methods of reform, all rosily advertised panaceas, all undigested schemes of ushering in the millennium Prof. Simon Patten, of Pennsylvania, has given us a re- markable little book in the last year entitled, A New Basis of Civilization. He reminds us of the long way by which we have come to our present eminence — and mis- ery. He tells us that we are still in thought and instinct the children of the men whose life depended on their neighbor's death, whose wealth depended on their neigh- bor's poverty, whose pleasure depended on their neigh- bor's pain. The cruel competitive habits of that pain economy in which there was not enough fruit of man's in- dustry to supply all, have been carried over as deleterious survivals into our age of a surplus economy, in which there is more than enough for all, were it rightly produced and rightly apportioned. He warns us to beware of believing too readily that the "weight of centuries" would drop from the back of "the man with the hoe," if only the implement in his hands were his own or if he had not rent to pay for his stony quarter acre. "He comes to us from yesterday's wrongs, and generates beings who are carrying into to-morrow the birth-marks of to-day's evils." In the light of such words we shall ask, then, very seriously whether competition is the life and health of society, as Benjamin Kidd maintains, or only a most
l6o THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM.
pernicious survival and dismal delusion; whether we are not to be ready in this twentieth century to welcome "mutual aid as a factor in evolution" (to adopt Prince Kropatkin's phrase) and agree that co-operation works in higher spheres of human development than competition; whether we shall not confess that mankind is ready now to trust the appeal of service to the various causes of art, letters, industry, medicine, education, to stimulate in him his best endeavor, in place of the eternally reiterated call of the dollar; whether men and women will not now at least miake a beginning of transferring their satisfaction from the enjoyment of things which they have in excess of or to the exclusion of their fellows, to things which they may share in common with their fellows. To all these vital questions the challenge of socialism should rouse us.
But most significant of all the features of the ethical attitude toward socialism should be a readiness to believe that a new society is a possible consummation ; that forms of political and economic structure are not fixed but fluid ; that we are still in process of achieving intellectual free- dom, moral responsibility, and social brotherhood. The men of a century ago, the men of '76 in America and the men of '89 in France, had a lively faith in their power to transform a society oppressed in law and old in abuse. It often seems to me that we have lost some of that vigor of political protest, and transferred all our faith to the increase of material wonders. We are not much sur- prised at any number of figures in our statistics of crops and commerce. We accept the Mauretania as a prophesy of what will come shortly in ship-building. But we ar> hopelessly astounded before the proposal of a new form of society. The draft of a new state is a marvelous thing
THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIALISM. l6l
in the eye of our modern Solons. Yet when did mammon ever set his rainbow in the sky in token that the capi- talistic regime should not go the way of the feudalism which it outflooded !
In these last days, for the first time in the history of civilization, mankind has reached a point of efficiency where the means of satisfying his needs are far in excess of the needs themselves — yet millions of human beings pass their lives in toil, misery, and want. We have dis- covered the secrets of earth and air; we have made the rocks, the waves, the winds, and the lightnings the min- isters of our wants and pleasures. We have explored the past ages of man and sounded the starry abysses of the universe. Yet we have not taken one step toward se- curing that seemingly most elementary right of man, the right to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
Socialism claims to secure that right. Have we weigh- ed its claim? Have we cared to examine the system? Has it ever crossed our minds that our children's chil- dren may wonder that the universal sadness of a world in which men and women spent lives of miserable want in the midst of abounding wealth and died of starvation in sight of mansions fit for kings, should have "appealed to our transient sympathies, but could not absorb our deepest interest?"
A HELP TO THE MORAL LIFE
By William M. Salter.
The moral life, to which in our better moments we aspire, is the life dominated by the good purpose. It is not merely one right in the eyes of the world, but one in which the animating thought is to do right and to do all that is right. It is a life the centre of which is within, and in which hidden things — thoughts, feelings, imagina- tions— count as much as anything that others can take no- tice of, and more. May I be wholly pure, wholly true, wholly patient, wholly brave, wholly free from vanity and pride ! — that is the instinct of the moral life.
There may be various helps to such a life, but one that I have now particularly in mind would be a book that should put us into the frame of mind we desire, that should serve in the midst of our busy lives to remind us of higher things ; that should freshen our aspiration and nerve our will. Almost every one, who has tried the ex- periment of setting aside a little time each day for serious thought, knows how difficult it is to concentrate one's attention without some external help. At times good thoughts visit us; at other times the soul is barren and dry, — our efforts seem like pumping an empty cistern. It is, of course, possible that our moral insensibility may be so great at a given moment that nothing can break it up; but often by reading some chapter or passage in an appropriate book we may ifind ourselves passing into a serious mood without effort or struggle. I should con- vey a poor idea of what I have in mind, if it were thought 162
i
A HELP TO THE MORAL LIFE. 163
that I proposed reading in some set and consecutive fash- ion books or writers like the Bible, Plato, Marcus Au- relius, or Emerson. Though there are passages, the books are rare — I confess I do not know of any — that could serve just the purpose I have in mind. We should surely never think of treating the Bible in this way, but for the [Protestant reaction and extravagance. The Bible is really great literature, or rather a number of literatures; [there are pages in it that are simply statements of fact (or what purport to be), there is folk-lore in it, there are >hilosophical arguments in it, there are love-poems, there fare songs of vengeance, and there are pages and, I might LSay, books almost unintelligible without scholarly com- fmentary. What is most needed at present is not so much revised translations of the Bible or critical com- mentaries upon it (though both are valuable), but the [selection from it of what is available for the moral life of man to-day, — a selection that could be put into the hands ;of the common people and might be every man's friend.^ ; For there are pages in the Bible that belong to the immor- [tal literature of the world, that can be, and forever will [be (if they can be found without too much searching) [sources of moral inspiration to men,— trumpet-calls to Ithe higher life. The Catholic Church itself — which we are accustomed to think the most superstitious, but is per- haps the most reasonable of all churches in )ractical matters, as its worship is the most ^picturesque and affecting — never dreams of ask- ing its members to read the Bible, chapter by chap-
*As a praiseworthy effort in this direction, "The Ethics of the Hebrew Scriptures, arranged and edited by the Rabbis Isaac S. and Adolph Moses (Chicago, E. Rubovitz & Bro.), may be men- tioned. Matthew Arnold's little books on Isaiah are chiefly valu- able as literary studies.
164 A HELP TO THE MORAL LIFE.
ter, from beginning to end; it has never made such a fetich of the Bible as we of Protestant Hneage often have. Yet, of course, the principle of selection I now suggest is different from that which the Catholic Church has fol- lowed. I would select only that which would help to build up the moral life. There are Psalms, there are pas- sages from Isaiah and other prophets, there are passages i in the New Testament that have and always will have; their power, their charm, their high value for this pur- pose.
In a similar way we may treat Plato. I know of noth-j ing so profoundly moving in Plato as a passage or two in Isaiah; he was a poet and philosopher, — a philosophical poet, we may say, rather than anything else. Yet there are at least in the "Apology of Socrates" (whether the language be original with Plato or not) sentences that lift us to the very heights of moral heroism, that give us a courage, a serenity, a sublime confidence in the sov- ereign nature of the good in the universe itself, that no other writings could better inspire. Perhaps no one book, easily accessible to all, comes so near being wholly good, none might be made so unhesitatingly a companion and friend, as the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius. There is less that is strange in it, less that offends either the common sense or the cultivated thought of to-day, than there is in the Bible or any other book of the ancient world that could be brought into comparison with it. It is a solace, a reminder, and an inspiration. I can well remember the heights to which it seemed to lift me when I first read it. The sky of those June mornings was not more blue, more serene, more clear, than was the atmos- phere of thought and emotion into which its pages trans- ported me. Yet Aurelius has his limitations; he is not
A HELP TO THE MORAL LIFE. 165
uniformly inspiring; he sometimes depresses us; and sometimes he does not move us at all. It is what really touches and helps us that needs to be culled out and preserved for habitual use.
It was surely no detraction, nor meant as such, but the loftiest praise, when Matthew Arnold said that Emerson was not so much either philosopher or poet as the friend and helper of those who live in the spirit. To no one per- son, perhaps, could so many young men and young wo- men (and older ones, too, — for the days are passing) bear testimony to-day, as one who had quickened what was best in them, who had led them out into ample ranges of thought and emotion, who had released them from tyrannous bands, and put manliness and true womanli- ness, strength and sturdy truth, into them, as to Emerson. Yet there is not a volume of Emerson that will bear to be used as a close companion in just the sense I have in mind. While the moral sentiment is a ground-tone in all his writings, it is not and is not to be expected to be a distinct note everywhere. Emerson was a Yankee, and there are passages where Yankee wit and keenness alone shine. We should not wish to miss these passages, but they are not moral inspiration. He discusses men and events, he is the critic of literature and art, and his ulti- mate standpoint is always the ethical one; but there are whole pages that do not bear on the personal life or com- municate moral impulses. Moreover, I must confess that there is something lacking in Emerson. He always writes like one in perfect health. He hardly seems to know our human weaknesses. If there were faults in that se- rene and elevated soul, they never prompt to confession. For example, in all his writings I do not know of any- thing of such power and pathos, of such purifying sad-
l66 A HELP TO THE MORAL LIFE.
ness as a passage in one of George Eliot's letters on evil- speaking,2 which, should some new book of scriptures ever be compiled, would surely make a sacred chapter on the sins of the tongue.
These are but a few writers or books. I should not even venture to say that they are the chief sources from which moral help may be drawn. There are passages from Lowell and other American writers that would serve, passages from Matthew Arnold, from Browning, from John Henry Newman, from Frederic W. Robertson, from Channing, from Wordsworth, from Carlyle, from Schil- ler, perchance from Goethe, to go no further back; but none who did not love the good in their own souls, no matter how learned or profound they were, or however perfect the literary form they used, can ever communicate that love to others.
I am aware that in speaking of a help to the moral life, I am speaking of something that, so far as I know, does not yet exist; for no collection of passages from just the point of view I have in mind (i. e., with the sense of our intimate personal needs) has as yet fallen under my observation. No one would think of treating Conway's "Sacred Anthology" as such a companion, or Mrs. Child's "Aspirations of the World," though the latter comes nearer the mark and the former is a monument of indus- try and (considering the time at which it appeared) of learning.3 The book that can be once more to us a sacred
^I have quoted the passage 'in The Ethical Record, October, 1889, p. 126 (article, "George Eliot's Views of Religion")-
'Still nearer the mark comes Dr. Stanton Coit's "The Message of Man," published since the above was written. It might almost be called a book of Holy Scriptures for modern men and women (and for others who, though holding to ancient theological con- ceptions, do not rest their moral life on them). The very titles of the chapters are of rare suggestive power and sometimes equal in
A HELP TO THE MORAL LIFE. 1 67
book, that shall endear itself to us in the sacred moments (or what we may make such) of each day and may be helpful whenever we take it up, has yet to be made. And as every one's individual experience is apt to be more or less narrow, and yet as every thoughtful person must now and then in his reading meet with passages that pe- culiarly affect him and touch the springs of his better life, the ideal way to make such a book would be to have it the outcome of the experiences, the suggestions of many minds. If ten, or, better, a hundred, persons would agree to send from time to time such passages as I have de- scribed to some one who might serve as editor of the col- lection,— do so for a period of five or ten years, — some- thing valuable might be the result."*
effect anything that stands below. But the full impression of the passages is impaired by their being broken up into verses and numbered (as in the Bible) ; there are not enough long extracts — and, if it is not foolish to say so, some passages that have deep- ly moved the present writer are not in the volume. Mr. W'. L. Sheldon's "A Sentiment in Verse for Every Day in the Year" and "Morning and ^/ening Wisdom Gems" are excellent, if one can collect himself in a minute, and perhaps serve better for "grace" at table than for the purpose I have in mind.
*If any persons after reading this article should feel prompted to send me selections which have moved them, I should be grate- ful; and if no one better fitted is found, I might myself undertake in time to edit such selections as commend themselves to me. I may be addressed at 107 Irving St., Cambridge, Mass.
W. M. S.
MEANING OF MEMBERSHIP IN THE NEW YORK ETHICAL SOCIETY
The Society invites to its membership all persons interested in its aims and desirous of participating in its work.
As an explanation of the meaning of membership in the Eth- ical Culture Society of New York City, the following was adopted in 1894, and published as
The Basis of Union.
I.
We aim to increase among men the knowledge, the love and the practice of the right.
II.
As a means to this end, our Society devotes itself to the fol- lowing specific objects:
1. Meetings in public at stated intervals, and the maintenance of a public platform for the enforcement of recognized standards of right, the development of new and higher conceptions of duty and the quickening of the moral life.
2. Systematic moral instruction of the young, founded on true pedagogic principles.
3. Promotion of continued moral self-education among adults, by forming classes and groups for study and mutual inspiration.
4. General educational reform, with main stress on the form- ation of character as the purpose of all education.
5. Earnest encouragement of all practical efforts which tend to elevate social conditions.
6. Such other specific objects as the Society may from time to time agree upon.
III.
Interpreting the word "religion" to mean fervent devotion to the highest moral ends, our Society is distinctly a religious body. But toward religion as a confession of faith in things super- human, the attitude of our Society is neutral. Neither acceptance nor denial of any theological doctrine disqualifies for member- ship.
IV.
The supremacy of the moral end is implied as a cardinal truth in the demand for ethical culture.
RELIGION AND THE CHURCH*
By Charles Zueblin.
The measure of both religion and morality is social ef- ficiency. A distinguished clergyman said recently in the course of a sermon that attracted some attention, — "While this is not the most wicked age, — while, in fact, it is the most moral age, — it is without doubt the most godless age." Is not directly the opposite true, that this is a godly but immoral age? There is little decline in the belief in God, but this belief, like many others, has lost its dynamic power. It is surely a matter of greater concern that a belief in God can be associated with immorality, than that morality is possible to the godless.
The unhappy reconciliation of theological belief and immorality is illustrated by the beautiful sculptured frieze over the door of the Royal Exchange in London, bearing this legend: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." One can understand the sensation which we should have at seeing that declaration above the door of our Stock Exchange or Board of Trade ; but they have become so accustomed to it in London that they are not shocked at the incongruity between the practice and the faith. Perhaps an even more flagrant example of this contradiction is found in the new capitol at Harrisburg, where, in the House of Representatives, as one looks be- yond the great candelabra (purchased by the pound at
*The fourth in a course of six Sunday evening lectures on "Democratic Religion" given before the Philadelphia Ethical Society. This course will soon be published in a volume, entitled 'The Religion of a Democrat," by B. W. Huebsch, New York.
169
I/O RELIGION AND THE CHURCH.
extravagant figures), to the sumptuously embossed lery (contracted for by the yard and equally extrava- gant), one sees in raised letetrs, — "Ye shall knov^ the truth, and the truth shall make you free." A great out- cry has been raised against the removal of the familiar motto "In God we trust" from some American corns. Clergymen who have never felt responsibility for unholy traffic carried on by these tokens, demand the restoration of the hypocritical legend. Trifling with the symbols and words of religion and toying with sacred things is certain- ly a sadder commentary on our times than any evidence of godless morality.
With regard to its being a godly or godless, a moral or immoral, age, we cannot believe that God is concern- ed ; we cannot speak of God as vain any longer, nor can we longer believe that He is jealous, as the Old Testament does. He is less moral than we try to be if He can be moved by such impulses. It is not possible to conceive of a Supreme Being in terms of twentieth century moral- ity, who could ask more than that his creatures be moral. There is both historic and contemporary evidence that performance without profession is preferable to profession without performance, as in the case of the son who said, — 'T go not," but went.
Politics is not the only order that "makes strange bed- fellows." Statistics indicate that criminals are generally orthodox; this has a quantitative explanation in the fact that criminals naturally belong to the class of men which constitutes the greatest number, the class which takes its religious creed and its moral code most easily. But it is also involved in the fragmentary character of our lives. Religious faith is detached from secular life, as is relig- ious organization. In this respect it is no more peculiar
1
gal-V
RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. I/I
than politics or industry; so that the lack of harmony need not be laid exclusively at the door of either theology or ethics, although it is more reprehensible in the religious world to fail to grasp the fulness of life. Morality and religion may be harmonized and, at the same time, recon- ciled with the other human wants, only by considering life as a whole. The social process consists — as Profes- sor Small * has most lucidly expounded — in the progres- sive satisfaction of the six comprehensive wants : Wealth, health, sociability, taste, knowledge, righteousness. To put the satisfaction of these wants within the reach of all is the goal of society, the function of the state; and by this standard we must also measure religion. These six wants have been analyzed: they must also be moralized, synthesized and democratized. Desirable as would be the moralizing of the various wants, nothing less than synthe- sis is demanded, but the more conspicuous tendency of the church to-day is to fall into the prevalent error of our nineteenth century heritage, — that of overspecialization, As an illustration of the way in which human interests are specialized, consider the emphasis on the economic want. Because of the exaggeration of its purely material aspects, we cannot speak of wealth in the broad, human language of John Ruskin or John Hobson or Simon Pat- ten, which claims "there is no wealth but life." The church has seldom interfered with economic processes, but it preaches the stewardship of wealth and demands for itself the administration of a portion, on the ground that wealth will be thus moralized. This is pitifully partial, and indicates, as the examination of every other want would, the superior potentialities of the State. The higher moral standards of to-day will no longer tolerate the con-
*Albion W. Small, "General Sociology."
172 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH.
ception of the classical economist, that some economic ac- tions are non-moral. Twentieth century ethics knows no non-moral act. The popular philosophy of Mr. Benjamin Kidd, which condoned the cut-throat struggle for exis- tence, on account of the beneficent influence of a subse- quent application of altruism, yields to the common sense ethics of a democratic philosophy. The two opposing philosophies concerned with the material satisfactions are individualism and socialism: each has its resultant re- ligious expression, the one in Protestantism, the other in materialism. Protestantism came into Europe at the time of the development of the world-market, and has ex- panded with the growth of industry. It has been identi- fied with the nations of western Europe and America, which have stood in the front of the movements of com- merce and which have earliest witnessed the industrial revolution.
Protestantism has easily been reconciled to the doctines of the struggle for existence, the survival of the fittest and competition. It has been itself an individualizing, disin- tegrating influence. In the process of disintegration it has done what in Nature is well done. We do not al- ways want cohesion, we must have occasionally a disin- tegrating force, and in securing the right of private judg- ment and protesting against the undue compulsion and conformity of the church, it has performed valuable ser- vices. Nevertheless, it has thereby given sanction to some of the most destructive forces of industry. So harmoni- ous has Protestantism found its beliefs with those of con- temporary industry that it has been entirely ineflFectual in combating industrial evils. On the contrary, by its de- pendence on voluntary financial support, it has come largely under the control of those who are directing the
RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. I73
affairs of business and whose philosophy of life is de- termined chiefly by pecuniary motives. It has also under- mined the broad, mediaeval catholicity of the historic church, the special haven of the poor and oppressed.
At the other end of the scale, socialism, with its pro- test against individualism, has found much of its support in the philosophy of materialism. A scheme of social re- ^construction, primarily designed to secure economic jus- tice, from which the satisfaction of all other wants is ex- pected to result, it has necessarily concerned itself almost exclusively with the economic want. The justification of placing socialism under the religious movements, corres- ponding to the church, is found in the tremendous moral zeal which accompanies the possession of this faith, and which opposes the fundamental principles of protestant individualism. The materialistic interpretation of history furnishes a philosophy of life, and the socialistic ideal de- duced from it is both a prophetic and an evangelizing force. Its function is as obvious as that of the Protestant Reformation, but its obsession with economic functions is as great a limitation as the dependence of Protestantism on industrial competition.
Physiological satisfactions have also found their ex- pression in the organization of religion. Sensualism has characterized not only such a great religion as Moham- medanism, but such a Christian off -shoot as Mormonism. Mormons may be as free from the sensual element of their religion as many Mohammedans are; polygamy may be abhorrent to them, but the original differentiation came from the exaggeration of the sensual. A more refined, ibut equally specialized emphasis of the physiological is found in that modern form of Epicureanism, Christian Science. Christian Scientists are normally no more sen-
174 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH.
sual than worthy Epicureans, of whom it could not have been said that "their god is their belly;" but the inevit- able result of focussing the attention on the body, even when it involves the denial of bodily ailments, is to give to physical welfare an inordinate amount of attention. There are broad-minded people in the Christian Science churches; there are very kindly people, and socially dis- posed people. Their positive contribution is found in the denial of the time-honored conception that virtue is in- evitably associated with pain; but their complacent, per- sonal satisfaction with health, physical or spiritual, inter- feres with social service and social organization. Chris- tian Science opposes by its cheerful inertia the aggres- sive movements towards the unity of society.
The satisfaction of the social want has its most impor- tant exposition in the state, but second only to this are the emphasis and exaggeration which come from the great Catholic churches, — Roman, English, and Greek. The danger of making the form of organization more impor- tant than the content is familiar to Americans through the obstructive force of their written constitutions and char- ters. It is a common American fallacy to expect automatic government through the perfection of political mechan- ism, until the citizen exists for government, and not gov- ernment for the citizen. The same exaggeration of social organization, in this case, the hierarchy, oppresses the Roman Catholic church. The infallibility of the Pope is an anachronism, like the infallibility of the Czar, in an age of increasing democracy ; but the parochial organiza- tion of Catholicism is a beneficent result of the evolution- ary process, which testifies to the value of systematic or- ganization. It is not impossible to anticipate the recon- struction of the Catholic churches on the basis of democ-
RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. 1/5
racy, after the manner of the origin of representative government on the ruins of the feudal system.
However, two of the obvious flaws of this over-system- atized system are the inevitable repression of freedom of thought and the unhappy device of celibacy. The limita- tions put upon the freedom of thought in any given time are perpetuated by the prevention of the physical inherit- ance of much of the best talent of the Catholic population, because it remains ceHbate. In the face of these handi- caps, the insidious influence of progressive ideas is a most hopeful sign. When a peasant Pope can condemn such pregnant truths as fall under the ban of the recent En- cyclical, the thoughtful onlooker has raised for his con- sideration two queries. If such criticism is at work within the church, in spite of all the repressive influence of its huge organization, how long can that powerful structure withstand the assaults on its foundation? And, secondly, if the mandate of a Pope can establish the authority of current ideas, what may not a progressive Pope accom- pHsh by lending the power of his infallibility to the dis- semination of such doctrines as are contained in the fol- lowing statements of Catholics, condelmned by Pope PiusX?—
Christ had not the intention of constituting the church as a society to endure on earth through successive centuries ; on the contrary, He believed that the kingdom of heaven would come at the end of the world which was then imminent.
The organic constitution of the church is not immutable. Oti the contrary, Christian society, like human society, is subject to perpetual evolution.
The dogmas, the sacraments, the hierarchy, in their concep- tion, as well as in their existence, are only the interpretation of the Christian thought and of the evolution which by external additions have developed and perfected the germ that lay hidden in the gospel.
176 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH.
Simon Peter never suspected that the primacy in the church had been conferred upon him by Christ.
The Roman Church became the head of all churches, not by divine ordinance, but by purely political circumstances.
The church has shown herself to be an enemy of natural and theological sciences.
Truth is no more immutable than man himself, with whom, and in whom, and through whom, it changes perpetually.
Christ did not teach a fixed determined body of doctrine, ap- plicable to all times and to all men. But rather, He started a religious movement, adapted or capable of being adapted to dif- ferent times and places.
The church has shown herself incapable of effectively defend- ing ethical gospel, because she obstinately is attached to im- mutable doctrines which are incompatible with modern progress.
The specialization of the aesthetic want is found in such diverse expressions as the Salvation Army and the Ritual- istic movement. While there is an appeal to a different quality of taste in these two religious movements, there is in each case an emphasis of the sensuous. The jarring note of the tamborine, like the delicate aroma of in- cense, makes no appeal to the intellect, but stirs the senses. The appeal may be entirely legitimate when co-ordinated with the satisfaction of the other wants, but it is likely to lead to such extremes as we have seen in the excessive crudities of the Salvation Army and the ultra refinements of Ritualism.
The same defect characterizes those movements which have exaggerated the intellectual want. Knowledge is power, and with the popularization of science in the nine- teenth century people have tried to save their souls by it, and so we have secularism and rationalism. During the middle decades of the nineteenth century, and to a less degree subsequently, especially in England, organizations multiplied, based upon the expectation that exact science
RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. I//
would afford a sufficient philosophy of life. There is still a great international, free thought movement whose de- structive services are invaluable. Its weakness is not the one commonly attributed to it, of undermining the foun- dations of faith, but rather of building upon a new basis of insufficient breadth through the exaggeration of knowl- edge.
A kindred force has been that of rationalism, not nec- essarily denying the divine or supernatural, but escaping from the authority of revelation and inspiration. The latest form of this is in the growing contemporary New Thought movement, the adherents of which believe in the conquering power of mind. Without any authoritative sanction such as the Christian Scientists find in the mira- cles of Jesus, the New Thought advocates nevertheless believe in what agnostic psychologists would call miracu- lous transformations, to be effected by the power of the trained mind. It is idle to deny the abundant evidence of the increasing value of these principles, but they suffer from the same flaw, — the over-emphasis of one of the essentials of human satisfaction.
It may seem hypercritical to quarrel with those who make righteousness the end of their religious organiza- tions ; but unhappily we find that such single-mindedness of purpose, however lofty, may divert from the whole- ness of human life. Among the most earnest and valued exponents of spontaneous morality are the Quakers, yet the fine spiritual quality of their interpretation of religion cannot conceal the fact that it has proved itself ineffec- tive. The Society of Friends does not arrive ; it does not affect society as it should. It has been quite frequently associated with a devotion to business, inconsistent with
178 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH.
good politics and good society, notably in the Quaker City.
The same tendency to exaggerate individual righteous- ness receives an extreme expression to-day in that sort of Christian faith expressed by the word ''Tolstoyan",- the belief in non-resistance and asceticism. It is among the most wholesome of all the protests against the com- plexity of modern civilization and the timidity of organ- ized Christianity, and yet it is ineffective because its fol- lowers do not comprehend life as a whole. It is unequal to the expression of a universal religion. The truly relig- ious must at least be in the world, if not of it, and while there is no taint of self-righteousness about the follow- ers of Tolstoy, such as that associated with those whom the Scot calls the "unco' guid," there is an abstraction and an aloofness, which are intrinsically admirable but socially unsatisfying.
The church has failed as the organizer and defender of religion. It is dominated too often by some single human interest. It is too worldly to let religion expand, and too unworldly to give humanity a chance. It is sensitive to the limitations of every age, while lacking the freedom to rise to the new possibilities. When it moralizes human wants, it is with conventional morality ; when it specializes them it is to curtail its susceptibility to the universal forces of the time. It is serviceable in conserving or reviving various wants while inadequate to their synthesis. Re- ligion must reach into the recesses of the remotest human interests, but the church has not been big enough to com- prehend them all.
We are confronted by the difficulty of a national church and the need of a national organization of religion. It is no more incongruous to have a national organization of
RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. I79
universal religion than to have a national organization of humanitarianism. Patriotism is in inverse ratio to sect and to party. Patriotism is the expression of our loyalty to the largest group of human beings we can comprehend, as Mazzini has taught us. There can no longer be a na- tional religion, but there may be a national faith as a con- dition of a universal faith, which shall at least be larger than any of the integral elements in the country itself ; in the church; in industry; in politics; or any other frag- ment of social life.
There is a common faith of the whole people; it may not be tangible, it may not have been capable of expres- sion in creeds without producing seism and sect; but it can be conceived, and it is in need of organization. The state must be supreme ; the church must be subordinate ; and religion can only be free in the state. Our minds have been so befogged by the conflict between church and state that we have grown unable to see the harmony of religion and society. When it is recognized that every individual must have his own religion, regardless of the ecclesiastical authority to which he may hold allegiance, then it will be seen that only the state can facilitate this.
The conflict between state and church in France seems to throw light upon our problem. The state is trying to assert its supremacy over the church; the church, so far as it is conscientious in its activities, is trying to argue that it is universal and therefore superior to the state. If it were, if they had such a national church, if it could make its claims to universalism good, would it not be loyal to the interests of society as a whole, and how can society as a whole be served except through the state? The present organization of the state may be as imperfect as the present organization of the church, but the state is
l80 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH.
the only organization which represents society. The church is the very imperfect, highly specialized organi- zation of one of society's functions, and if it actually mor- alized all human wants, it could still serve society fully only as an instrumentality of the state.
That the church has sometimes seemed superior to the state only means that sometimes churchmen have been su- perior to statesmen in their capacity for understand- ing the interests of society as a whole. The transition through which France is passing gives promise of a great spiritualizing force, in consequence, on the one hand, of the state's having won its supremacy as the best organiza- tion that human beings have as yet been able to find to protect their common interests, and, on the other hand, by the endeavor of the church to prove its worth as the exponent of the religion of the people, rather than the politics of the ecclesiastics.
We have the same problem here in relation to church and state. We declare by our Constitution that citizens shall be free from any special religious influence. We began when it was more easy to distinguish, but if religion becomes universal, and the antithesis with the secular dis- appears, we do not need to make these limitations. At present we are in the unhappy state where those who would like to see a better knowledge of the Bible on the part of our American citizens generally, are nevertheless unable to assent to the idea that it should be taught in the public schools. One must deprecate the lack of interest in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. It is a grievous gap in our intellectual and moral equipment ; but so long as the belief in the inspiration of the scriptures gives people di- vine sanction for their differences of interpretation, it
RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. l8l
becomes an infringement of democratic liberties to give the state's support to the common study of the Bible.
In spite of this dilemma, which has been so uncom- promisingly met by the Constitution, in many of the states religious exercises are conducted daily in the schools. A person of religious sensibilities cannot, with- out offence, attend a school and hear the Bible read per- functorily, by the teacher who has this onerous duty for the day, to an uninterested and irreverent group of chil- dren, especially when this is followed by a labored extem- pore prayer, — the least objectionable response to which is boredom. In violation of the principle that everyone shall have free expression of his own religious convictions, we also open our legislative assemblies and political conven- tions with prayer, — a peculiarly disheartening practice, when one appreciates that the only persons distressed are probably those with conscientious scruples and those who are impatient to proceed with their unrighteous plans^ which are momentarily delayed by this hypocritical pro- cedure.
There is no objection to any devout persons praying for the legislators and administrators of the state. There is no objection to the use of the property of the state for such purposes, provided it does not infringe upon the equal rights of other citizens. When, however, a prayer in the Oklahoma legislature that a certain candidate may be the next President of the United States is greeted with ap- plause by the Democratic members, it implies that those whose sentiments are not expressed have either their po- litical or their religious rights violated.
There ought to be no opposition to the use of the public school for the teaching of the Bible, provided it is not a part of the school curriculum and is permitted to every
l82 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH.
group of people who wish to give such instruction outside of school hours. It is deplorable that the instruction might be given by dogmatists and sectarians instead of by a trained teacher in literature; but that must be the solu- tion until the belief in the inspiration of the scriptures shall cease to divide people into sects. Meanwhile, it would be much better to have this public form of instruc- tion subject to review at the bar of public opinion, than to leave Biblical and other ethical instruction to the incompe- tents who constitute the majority of the staff of the aver- age Sunday School.
In America, where the state church is scorned, and re- ligion and politics are supposed to be divorced, there is, however, the exemption of ecclesiastical property from taxation. This again violates the equal rights of citizens in that it involves the greater taxation of others who do not believe in the ministrations of these churches. It is more practicable for the state to provide edifices for com- mon worship, or for the consecutive service of different bodies of religionists, so that all may have use of public property without discrimination, than to exempt sectarian church property. If people will have private churches, they should be permitted to do so and to pay for them; but if they will worship in common, or in a common build- ing, as often occurs in Switzerland, it may promote uni- versal religious fellowship. The field houses of the Chi- cago small parks may be used, so the authorities declare, for all worthy public purposes which are not political or religious. A more advanced stage is represented by the frequent use of the English town halls for all public pur- poses without distinction, so long as there is no discrimi- nation. The promoting of universal religion by the na- tion may be furthered at least by the public provision of
RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. 183
places of worship and religious instruction for all who are willing thus to recognize the supremacy of the state, without insisting on special privileges from the state for the private worship of their private God in their private meeting house.
The inevitable difficulty which will be perennially en- countered with those who cannot make a universal inter- pretation of religion may be illustrated by the protest made in New York City and elsewhere against the ob- servance of Christmas in the public schools. The argu- ments which have been used against the reading of even selected passages from the Bible, in the schools attended by Protestants, Catholics, Jews and others, do not seem to hold with equal force against the observance of Christ- mas. If songs expressive of the miraculous and super- natural are eliminated, as should of course be done out of deference to the varying faiths, the most orthodox Jew cannot find fault with the celebration of the anniversary of the birth of the most important individual in western civilization. The fact that the festival coincides with a Jewish celebration, and is only the historic successor of a great pagan institution, need not detract from its widely accepted significance as a day of "peace and good will among men."
This protest in New York against Christmas exercises in the public schools and the almost contemporaneous dis- cussion in Chicago on the literary use of selected passages of the Bible point to the most significant weakness of the church as the custodian of religion. In the city with the largest Jewish population in the world, a very imposing protest was made against the Christmas celebration, only to be overruled by the spontaneous expression from or- ganized Christianity and elsewhere, which resulted in the
184 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH.
prompt decision to retain the Christmas exercises. In Chicago, on the contrary, where a very sober and har- monious demand had come for the use of passages of the Bible, approved by Catholics, Protestants and Jews, pub- lic opinion again made the decision for the school board, this time adversely. In each case the extent of popular disapproval was quite unexpected. It would seem that greater reliance can be placed upon the good common sense of the people than upon the demands of theologians, or even the judgment of pedagogues. In neither case is the decision necessarily final; but in both, one must see the tremendous significance of drawing, from the great heart and common sense of the multitude, the dynamic of faith. A national organization of religion, like the na- tional faith, will pass beyond the scope of the church or churches.
AN ETHICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD*
By Leslie Willis S Prague.
I TRUST that the suggestion that there is an Ethical God does not sound irreverent to anyone. If I had said a loving God, or a just God, or a forgiving God, or a righteous God no one would have failed to recognize the familiar conceptions of one or another aspect of relig- ious thought. But Ethics einbodies all of these qualities — love, justice, compassion, righteousness — and many more. I am to speak, then, of the moral attributes of God. To the sceptically minded it may raise a question, to speak concerning God at all. I wish to make it clear that I speak to-day, as ever from this platform, to give my best personal thought. I do not speak for the Ethical movement, nor for the fraternity of lecturers, nor do I commit anyone to my views. S^ome of the members of this society believe very differently perhaps, some much more and others much less than I am able to believe about such matters. We are not united in belief, nor upon a basis of belief; but we are united in the purpose to de- velop moral ideals, principles and qualities in ourselves and to promote the moral welfare of others and of the world. What we may think about the great problems of faith, about the ultimate sanctions of conduct, is interest- ing, perhaps, and is surely important; but that which is imperative is the eflPort to- live and help others to live a moral life.
I want to speak, then, of the place of ethics in religion,
^Substance of an address given before the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture.
185
1 86 AN ETHICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD.
to try and discover the religious mission of ethics, the part which the development of the moral life has to play in the unfoldment of religious conceptions, and especi- ally in the development of the idea of God.
Concerning the relation of ethics and religion there are various conceptions abroad in the land. A very gen- eral idea is that the good life is itself, necessarily, relig- ious. Many feel that if they are no worse than their neighbors they are being religious, whatever their be- liefs or devout practices. An outworn idea still lingers in some quarters, and there are those who sometimes liken righteousness to "filthy rags;" and there are those even who regret a good life which is lived outside the church and without religious dogmas, because such a life helps to separate morality from the ecclesiastical agencies with which it has so long been associated.
There is doubtless a legitimate place for religion in ethics. But I am now concerned with the place of ethics in religion. Religion and ethics have throughout the course of human culture gone hand in hand. If it seems that there was no such relation in primitive times, as some scholars declare, it is because we seek such morality as we now know in those older ages. Side by side with the primitive religions, acting upon them and effected by them, there was a primitive morality. In earliest times laws derived their sanctions from their supposed divine origin, and moral practices were enforced by religious sanctions.
Religion has always been the conservative factor, cher- ishing tradition, looking to the past, representing the cen- tre of life. Ethics has always been the progressive force, looking towards the future and broadening the scope of
AN ETHICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD. 187
life; and this because ethics has developed with the un- folding of human relations into ever wider areas.
Ethics has therefore been one element, an important element, in the development of religion, and even in the development of the idea of God. There have been other elements, such as mental dfevelopment itself — ^the in- creasing power of mind — a growing consciousness of self on the part of all men ; the progress of thought from the rational limitation to the spiritual and universal, from the natural to the subjective conception of life. Each change in knowledge and attitude has necessitated a change in the conceptions and ideals of religion.
In the earlier religions, unconscious of ethical needs, men associated no ethical demands with the deity whom they worshipped, they imputed to the gods no distinctive moral command. Even when mankind came to think of the gods as imposing moral obligations upon men, it was not yet thought the gods were under obligation to keep these commands themselves. The higher nature-relig- ions, as the Greek, Egyptian and Norse, imposed a moral code which was not binding upon the deities. The gods demanded chastity; but mythology is full of descriptions of the unchastity of the gods ; they required truthfulness, but themselves were described as given to deception. Even the Jewish scriptures portray this anomaly. Moses is a far more moral being than the Jehovah which he wor- shipped.
It was a long way from the idea of a divine sanction of right, to the idea of a divine right. Here Judaism led the way of progress for all men. A writer in Genesis asks, "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" The Psalmist chanted, "The commandments of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether," and again we read, "The
l88 AN ETHICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD.
righteous Lord loveth righteousness." The author of the book of Job had so mastered the idea that God is him- self righteous that he could declare, "Even though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." But these high con- ceptions were for the prophetic few. The world is still struggling to grasp their import. The God of the popu- lar theology of Christendom to-day, is less good than many a Christian man and woman. Jesus commanded, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is per- fect," the highest commandment ever given. But the Father-in-Heaven is still in thought far from perfect. Those who are themselves compassionate often worship a God of wrath and hate. Those who would not harm a little creature of the fields, pray to a God who condemns infants to everlasting flames. If such anomalies of be- lief are less familiar to-day than they were a generation ago, it is because an age of humanitarianism has affected the teachings of Christianity. With Whittier many have come to feel,
"I dare not call that good in Him — Which evil is in me."
Browning gives voice to the same moral awakening when, in his "Paracelsus," he makes Festus, the devout and loving, side with the friend for whose salvation he fears.
"I am for noble Aureole, God. I am upon his side, come weal or woe. His portion shall be mine. He has done well. I would have sinned, had I been strong enough, As he has sinned. Reward him or I waive Reward. If thou canst find no place for him, He shall be King elsewhere, and I will be His slave forever. There are two of us."
The Rev. Dr. Campbell, of England, is to-day, in the
AN ETHICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD. 1 89
name of Christianity, making this attack upon the popu- lar creed. He is illustrating anew how Ethics leads the way in the moralization of God. The Ethical Theism of Jesus is only slowly getting itself understood by his fol- lowers, and in these late days Christianity has followed in the lead of Zoroastrianism, and opposed Satan to God. Eternal torment, fortunately not so popular a doctrine now as heretofore, is a survival of this antithesis. One of the leading Congregationalists of this country now de- clares that there is no alternative between Atheism and Universalism ; either God must be the Father of all or he is no God.
Science has battled with theology for the conception of the reign of law. Law is the way the forces of the uni- verse act, just as institutions express the habitual action of human beings. No place is left for miracle, once the sole way in which God was supposed to act. God, once beyond the law, as beyond the moral demand, is seen by us to-day, if at all, in and through the law of nature and life. Ethics, proclaiming a moral law, and doing away with the thought of other action than that within the lim- its of moral law, is helping to bring the idea of God to an ethical fulfillment.
The task of Ethics to-day, its service to the spiritual life, is not simply to elucidate the moral law for the guid- ance of the conduct of man ; but also for the guidance of the faith of men, — to a certain conviction of the sanctity of life.
In the traditional conceptions of God — and they are various — historic conditions are necessarily reflected, and the limitations of different ages are imputed to the deity.
The God of scientific thought takes on the coloring and hampering imperfections of material nature, — the pro-
igO AN ETHICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD.
vince of the natural sciences. The God in which poetry and the arts delight is the god of sentiment, and is lack- ing in authority and moral commandingness. It becomes the task of Ethics, in this day as in the past, to lead the way into a truer Theism, at least to a more ethical inter- pretation of the ultimate and absolute Being.
This is partly the task of ethical thought, of considera- tion of the moral law, and is to be accomplished by the mental effort to relate mankind to the ''Eternal not our- selves that makes for righteousness." It is more largely the task of the will, of the human soul striving vitally to relate itself to the Infinite, to the law and power and pur- pose which informs, sustains and fulfils. It was said of old : "He that doeth the will of my Father shall know of the doctrine if it be pure." Now, as ever, life is the certain way of knowledge. To live deeply, richly, obedient to the way of all, is to be in accord with the Hfe of all, and is to discover the faith which shall redeem.
Ethics should rise, eventually at least, to its religious task. It should follow out to ultimate issues its inspira- tions and hopes. It shall discover that human love has in- finite corrolaries and human duty is one with an Eternal rule.
Thus will Ethics again contribute, as in all past ages, to the ennobling and glorifying of the idea of God, and thus shall religious sanctions be brought to the support of the moral life.
I have been asked what Ethics has to offer in the way of an idea of God, what help from the ethical view of life has come to me in my own religious thinking. Modesty, I would answer. The God of revelation has for me grown indistinct because of the inconsistency of the vari- ous ideas of God which the claims of revelation put forth.
AN ETHICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD. I9I
The God of science fails to satisfy, and becomes at last vague and partial. The traditional teaching is so colored by antiquated processes of thought that I cannot make it my own. The God of philosophy is somehow too ab- stract, too remote from daily experience to be made real in my imagination and feeling. And yet I cannot think of life without an ultimate and absolute Being, whose spirit, power, purpose — or whatever may be conceived [as the infinite corrolary of these human definitions — in- fuses, informs and sanctifies the whole. There must be somewhat towards which our strivings tend, somewhat infinite informing our human potencies, somewhat per- fect which lures oiir imaginations and wills. To find what this infinite and absolute may be, I turn not to some old book, not to some once sacred creed, not to some labora- tory or to the labyrinths of philosophical speculation ; but I turn to love, duty, longing; to conscience with its pain and satisfaction, to the moral purpose and the moral po- tency of the human soul — more sacred than bibles, more authentic than creeds, more real than science, more pro- found than philosophy. If I may once grasp more fully the meaning and nature of love, the significance of duty, the augustness of conscience, the sanctity of aspiration, if I may so richly feel and in action realize these poten- cies of my own nature as to taste their sweetness and glory in their power, I shall begin to know and under- stand the divine.
The God that ethics leads me to is the Being whose nature is infinitely what the moral qualities of human life are finitely and potentially. If I cannot grasp this infi- nite, I am satisfied to believe that I do take hold at the human end of that which is infinite and eternal. And I hope that with a richer moral life I shall have a larger
W'
AN ETHICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD.
and truer religion. I may not be able to say, now or ever, what God is. I will be modest in my thought ; but I am able to feel that love and duty, aspiration and hope, the stings of conscience and the satisfaction of acts well per- formed relate me to that in the life of all which I can trust, in which I may hope, and from which I draw life and breath and all things.
SOCIAL AND PERSONAL ETHICS: DOES
THE CODE OF SOCIAL ETHICS
ANNUL THE LAW OF
PRIVATE MORALITY?*
By Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer.
I „,..,„„..,.,..
^B}iad its own specific ideal of excellence. The classic il- ^^bustrations of that fact are the ideals of Greece and Rome. The ideal of Greece was that of a perfect physical de- velopment, and of an acute and masterful intellectual power ; to which ideal all sentiment of regard for the im- perfect, of pity for the weak, of care for the incompetent and loathsome, was sacrificed. The ideal of Rome was that of power, supremacy, organized force, social control in its political sense ; to which again all regard for the au- tonomy of weaker peoples, all sentiment of pity for the unfortunate, was sacrificed to the imperial reign of one great city.
The element that entered into the world's history in the early period of what we call Christian civilization, intro- duced quite another point of view, — the idea of the sa- credness of human life, no matter in what low or weak or pitiful forms it may be exhibited. This point of view started a tendency quite opposed to the classic or pagan idea, that is, the tendency to preserve alive all human be- ings, whether they promise to be useful or not, to care for all human beings, whether they are effective in social life
*An address before the Philadelphia Ethical Society, Sunday, Feb. 29, 1908.
194 SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
or not, to encourage every form of sympathy and every form of consideration, and to discourage, in the long run, every form of cruelty and oppression.
These varied social ideals have produced differing so- cial conditions, while under all social conditions similar examples of individual morality have been known and recognized as "good" and "just."
Social and personal, ideals of ethics in certain great periods of history have coalesced. Those were the peri- ods of great achievement. But when personal ideals and social ideals of excellence differ, then come periods of confusion, of failure to find the way of life. We have had many such periods of confusion in history, when the old was breaking up, and the new had not yet formed itself into conscious leadership.
The Stoics felt such confusion when the Roman civili- zation had become corrupt, and the whole life of the peo- ple was far from the standards of ideal excellence which these Stoics, a little group of philosophers and moralists, held and exhibited for themselves. "The times" were indeed "out of joint" for them.
In all great periods of social change there comes a time when there is a discrepancy in substance or a dissonance in emphasis between the common ideal of what is excel- lent for the individual life and the newly perceived social codes which aim to achieve general progress.
In the law of private morality, one element remains always the same. The claim is always made that the normal human being has the power of choice. That is the assumption upon which all idealism in ethics rests. There may be great differences of opinion as to how extensive that power of choice may be, how far one is able to be master of his fate ; but no system of idealism, no system
SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY. I95
of religion (for religion is always idealistic) and no sys- tem of ideal ethics, can exist that does not base itself upon that master assumption that man has the power of choice in conduct.
Another assumption goes with this : that a normal hu- man being may show his power of choice most signally in the most untoward circumstances ; that in the midst of difficulty and moral danger the moral hero most clearly shows his heroism. Still another assumption goes with these : that although much in our natures is surely the re- mit of heredity and the influence of environment, yet luch — how much no one dare outline — 'is our own re- [sponsibility ; that is to say, that a human being can make lis character. The word "character" comes from the en- [graver's power to make an imprint, and man, it is be- ^lieved, thus makes his own mark, his character, upon the ^ inheritance he receives, and the circumstances that sur- round him.
Those are the most important assumptions of religion, and they are likewise the assumptions of the idealistic code of private morality. Idealistic ethics declares, no matter whether everyone around you does that which you know to be wrong, you are not therefore to be excused for being one of those who do wrong ; no matter if all the world around you seems to be going in the direction of degeneracy, it is for you to show the power of regenera- tion in your own life. The stupendous call of religion in all the ages, under all religious forms, is the same call of the ideal that we hear to-day : "Be ye therefore perfect." No circumstances, however difficult, no inheritance, how- ever bad, is to be used as an excuse : — but all experience is to be used as an opportunity in which to develop to the utmost the power of the personal life.
ICl6 SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
Have we outgrown that theory ? Have we come to the point when it is no longer true that we can honestly and sincerely make these tremendous assumptions that man has the power of choice ; — that his power is shown most nobly, and most in the line of his higher development, under the greatest difficulties; — and that the essential element of every human personality is its own character, that which comes by way of conscious purpose, so far as that purpose is realized in life ? Have we indeed come to a time when we ought to put sin in quotation marks, and when we may excuse all manner of departure from the higher law on the part of those to whom observance of the higher law is difficult?
Let us consider. There are certain fallacies that we often hear stated as commonplaces, and find in the daily press, in magazines and in books. One of these fallacies is that this is the first time in the moral history of the race that we have come to a point of divergence between this law of private morality and the code of social ethics. This is not true. Whenever in the moral history of the race some ancient social evil had to be outgrown, there has been apparently a necessary concentration of attention upon that particular ethical undertaking, which has for the time being left in blurred half-consciousness the call of religion to the perfect individual life.
To illustrate: During so recent a period as the anti- slavery conflict in this country, there was, among many of the anti-slavery reformers, an impatience of the ordi- nary forms of religious association, a marked inattention to the claims of moral responsibility upon the individual life in respect to ordinary conduct. These reformers were so consumed with the fire of their one purpose, so de- voted to redeeming our national life from this one evil
SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY. I97
&i slavery, that they seemed to think that was the only moral question in the universe at that particular time. It zms the main business of that particular time. One well might sacrifice temporarily something of the rounded and harmonious development of individual human beings for the sake of getting rid of this one hoary social evil that was such a stumbling block to the moral development of so many weak and unfortunate ones.
We may say, speaking broadly, that the eighteenth cen- tury had a social ethics which was political — political in iits interpretation of history, political in its demand for so- [cial progress, political in its ideal of what social progress should achieve. In the same way, the nineteenth century had a social ethics which was educational in its interpre- tation of history, in its claim for social progress, in its ideal of what social progress might achieve. Each of these codes of social ethics had its period of dwarfing the claims of private morality.
What is the social ethics of the twentieth century, as distinguished from the code of private morality? Briefly, it includes a conception of the approach to the realization of an ethical ideal through society, rather than through the individual. The ideal of religion is to kindle the spark of holiness in this life and that life and the other life, and by spreading the contagion of aspiration and of righteous living to make a new world, a "City of God," out of individual human beings, each set on fire with the passion for personal holiness.
The ideal of social ethics of this twentieth century calls us to approach the individual through the social organ- ism ; not appealing to him directly but indirectly. It bids us raise the conditions which surround all human beings, not only in order that it may be easier for the mass of
198 SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
men to respond to whatever call to the higher life they may hear, but as the supreme end of social effort. Social ethics means, then, the approach to the individual life through the social organization ; while on the other hand, the appeal of religion is always to the individual, the "I" and "thou" in the universe.
In the eighteenth century it was thought and believed, and truly so, that the time had come to have a democratic form of government to curb the power of kings, to modify the exactions of nobility, to give the common life a chance to express itself in government. This democracy in gov- ernment had to be attained by a concentration of effort which made political heroes, and made them all out of stuff that could be expressed in political systems. "Make way for liberty !" cried the hero of that epoch. And oh, the countless heroes who endured in this struggle all "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" in order to make freer governments !
We hardly think in these days — unless we have just come from some country where oppression still lives and rears its head in power — what it has cost to gain even that approach to free government which we enjoy to-day. Seeing the terrible need for an immediate change in the social order in this particular, what were the teachings of the greatest leaders in the eighteenth century? Not the teachings that appeal to individual, to be resigned to evil conditions, to be patient under misfortune, to bear oppression without injury to their own moral nature ; but those that are full of appeals to resist, to rebel, to make all jx)ssible effort to overcome the evil conditions of an oppressive form oi government.
In the same way, in the nineteenth century, after a cer- tain progress had been made toward political freedom,
SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY. I99
it was perceived that if account were to be taken politic- ally of the opinions of all the people, then all the people must have education. Even the great leaders did not see at first what kind of education was needed by the en- tire people; so they took the kind of education that had been developed for the few master nobles at the top of society and tried to apply it to everybody. Bad mistakes were made by that process, but it was the best that could be done, because education, culture, then represented the )rivileg-e only of the few. In the quaint writings of the mcient wisdom books, written when the ignorance of the lasses was accepted as a permanent condition, the work- lan could only attain his "power through his handicraft," lis work; and the few philosophers only, those living lives of leisure, could deal justly with ideals and be in- |vited "to rule in the assembly." When Emerson wrote, 'God said, 'I am tired of kings, I suffer them nO' more,' " that was a poetic way of expressing the feeling of the eighteenth century that not the nobles only, not the phil- )Sophers only, but all the people were to be counted in as m active part of the body politic.
The reformers of the nineteenth century raised the cry — and that is the keynote of nineteenth century social ethics — that these newly recognized people should have a chance at education ; a chance not only to use their hands at their "craft" but also to study in the school, in order that they, too, might become fitted "to rule in the as- sembly."
Thus education for all became the great demand of human progress. It was forgotten, as well it might be, in such a mighty task, that in and through the service of the race, whether that service be intellectual or manual, had come the moral discipline of the race. It was thought
200 SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
therefore, that the schooling of the people would be suf- ficient if they were taught a few things out of books, instead of learning through doing.
We have come to the time in our new and more con- scious social life when another social ethics is clamoring for admission to the first place in social direction, and it will receive the first place ; a social ethics, economic in its interpretation of history, economic in its form of demand for social progress and economic in its ideal of what so- cial progress should achieve. This new social ethics of the twentieth century is already born. It is to be the test of the intelligence, the radical thought, the power of response in the individual to the spirit of the age. This new social ethics will guide the concentrated social ac- tivity of our modern complex life for an untold period of moral struggle. This new social ethics is that which aims to democratise industry and to equalize economic condi- tions. To-day, instead of political social ethics, or edu- cational social ethics, we have economic social ethics. Some deny to this economic theory the name or quality of ethics altogether. Many are saying, because economic ethics seem out of harmony with the call of religion, out of touch with the idealistic appeal of ethics, that it is not ethics at all. It is ethics — let no one doubt it. It is social ethics and made out of the same stuff that political and educational reforms were made, the vital conception of human brotherhood. It is open to exactly the same criti- cism from one who wishes to take a balanced philosophic view, as -was the eighteenth century political ethics or the nineteenth century ethics of free schools. The ethical philosopher of the eighteenth century could well have said, "you will not make people better in wholesale fash- ion by making them freer in government. You will have
\
SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY. 201
the same old task of personal character development for all human beingSj even if they do live under a democratic form 'of government." We have found that to be true. In the early part of the nineteenth century, when the claim was made that every child should be educated, en- lightened, and every State wrote compulsory education laws, the philosophic thinker might then have said, "you will not save the multitude by merely teaching them how to read and write and cipher. They will learn to be more efficient by this process, but somehow you must put into those persons as individuals an ideal, a high purpose of consecration to the highest they can see, or you will not make superior persons." We have found this also to be true.
Now we have this new economic social ethics. I won- der how many are conscious of the tremendous influence that the new ideals of social progress are having over our young students at the college centres, over the numerous and wonderfully increasing socialistic societies, over the great number of intelligent young people who are study- ing social conditions to-day. It is an over-mastering in- fluence. Listen to some statements of economic social ethics as an interpretation of this new form of social ap- proach to human progress.
A recent book,* which perhaps presents in most complete outline this modern social ethics, contains the following words: "Many thinkers affirm that progress is possible only through the evolution of character." "But the im- provement of nations is measured by that margin of riches and power left from the cost of living." "Regener- ation is prevented, not by defects in personality but by defects in environment." "The sole test of dynamic civili-
*Prof. Simon N. Patten's "New Basis of Civilization.
202 SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
zation is that of physical efficiency in the children." "That course is normal and therefore moral, which enables indi- viduals to add to the superabundance of the general goods." In this book the old code of private morality, that which traced the progress of the race through the de- velopment of individual character, is set over against the economic advance in the nation ; and the latter is used as the explanation and goal of social effort. The author advocates "social control" as the great ethical require- ment by which to improve industrial conditions and to "enlarge the income of the masses of men." This, he thinks, will lead to new forms of social control that will draw men later toward higher forms of civilization. The material progress must however, in his opinion, come be- fore any other form of social advance can effectively im- prove the race.
Again, "The aim of social work is democracy rather than culture, energy rather than virtue, efficiency rather than goodness, social standards for all rather than genius and opportunity for the few." A disciple of this author out-does his master, as disciples are apt to do, and puts into his own book a whole chapter on the "Goodness Fallacy;" as if goodness and efficiency were inconsistent one with the other. Finally, "social work," says the author, "has to do with the means of progress and not with its ends."
A social ethics that is frankly and specifically economic, therefore, is the social ethics that is to-day testing our re- ceptivity and our response to the spirit of the time. It plants itself firmly in an almost antagonistic attitude to the inherited code of personal morality. It says: "Stop talking about personal virtue, seek to develop energy in a man; stop talking about the culture of people on the
f
SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY. 203
higher side of Hfe, and work with all your might to pro- mote the interests of the weak, to raise the social stan- dards for all. The people at the top can take care of themselves." "What we want to do now," declares the social ethics economist, "is to make every human being more healthy, give him a better work-efficiency, pay him better for his labor, give him a better chance to live a happy, healthy and comfortable life." Many people, tak- ing up a book of this kind, are injured in their moral sense. They say : "This is not ethics, even social ethics : — this is the doctrine of the epicurean, the doctrine of the man who thinks only of material interests." This is only a superficial criticism. As well might a person have said in the eighteenth century, when the struggle for po- litical freedom was dwarfing all other interests and send- ing people out by thousands from the church to the battle- field : "this is not ethics ; this is only a struggle on the low- er side of life, for the sake of each class grasping more power for itself." Again, when the effort was being made to share more widely the heritage of education, a person might as well have said the same thing — "one need not go to school to learn and do his duty. "This new economic claim of democracy, like the older claims of politics and education, is social ethics; but social ethics is not all of ethics. It is true that the time is coming when those who are not counted as belonging to the intellectual nobility must be counted as entitled to leisure to learn. It is true that the time has come when the workers are to be reck- oned as entitled to the franchise of the ideal by means of a better compensated industry ; not alone to be counted at the ballot box, not alone to have a chance to go to school for a short time ; but to be reckoned in as full sharers in the benefits of an improved economic system, which is to
204 SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
give all easier access to the comforts of life, and thus also easier access to the refinements of life.
The difficulty is that our masters in this new economic social ethics undertake to do too much. Were they to say, "our work is to supply the means for human pro- gress, to make it easier for people to answer this call of religion and the ideal side of Hfe, and it is the task of religious and moral teachers to apply these means of hu- man progress to the ends of social progress, viz. : a higher sort of human being," then they would be giving us an unmixed truth. But the tendency of all masters in one line is to try to cover all other lines, and hence many teachers of the new social ethics attempt to make the interpretation of history itself wholly economic, and to give a prophesy of the future which is wholly economic. They speak truth and have facts innumerable, dark and awful facts in human life, on their side, when they say that the mass of mankind have been acted on by their en- vironment like a plant. But let them listen when the other side — the spiritual side — is brought to their attention. Man is and has been acted upon by his environment like a plant; but it is an august fact, proved in individual per- sonalities, that a man may also re-act on his environment like a god ! Let us all understand the limits of any form of social ethics. It is but one side of the ideal. The other side is the personal. The social side is one so long neglected that we may well be caught and swept on in the rush of enthusiasm for this new movement to count every- body in, to count all as "fit for the assembly," all "able to learn judgment," because no longer "poverty-men."
We may well hesitate to cast one shadow of suspicion upon a leadership which is marching so bravely toward the conquering of poverty, of distress, of disease, and all
I
SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY. 205
the evils which in the past man has accepted as inevitable. We may well hesitate to check an enthusiasm which in- sists on the radical cure of monstrous inequalities in hu- man condition. Moreover, it is true, as these leaders say, that everyone of us is today tested in respect to our in- dividual moral perception, by our attitude toward economic social ethics. If we are unprepared to de- clare ourselves, it is our primal duty tO' study and learn. If we are, by tradition or inheritance, averse to consider- ing the democratizing of industry as a part of social pro- gress, it is our duty tO' take counsel with ourselves and go to school to history and learn the actual conditions of the past and present. Let us clearly understand that if we fail in this test, we are ranked with those who were on the side of the kings and the nobles in the eighteenth century, and not on the side of the people ; we are ranked with those in the nineteenth century who held culture to belong only to the few and not with those who covered themselves with glory and gave the human race its dear- est possessions, by framing and establishing the people's common schools. Social ethics demands of us to-day a clear answer to this one great question : — ^Do you believe in the sharing of the common-wealth of the human race? Do you believe in the democratizing of industry ?
The free spirit declines to pronounce a shibboleth of method in answering this question; it will not be forced into use of any set phrases. The free spirit will not ac- cept a label, a name, as a sufficient substitute for a ra- tional judgment. It will not say that it is socialistic or anti-socialistic in advance. It will not accept the chal- lenge of method, but only the challenge of principle. But in the fullness of time, this challenge of principle has come, and no man or woman of mature life to-day can
206 SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
escape that challenge, any more than any man or woman of mature life could escape the challenge in America in the anti-slavery conflict. You are for the universal shar- ing of the common-wealth of human kind, you are for the universal expression of democracy in every form, or you are against it. From now on, the call to stand where you belong on this dividing line has gone forth. No hu- man being can escape it. Only the ignorant, the imma- ture and thoughtless can put aside this demand of the eco- nomic social ethics of the twentieth century.
Accepting that fact as I do, and believing that sympa- thy and good will go in the right direction, even though the wisdom of leadership has not yet developed, and standing myself clearly on the side of the greater democ- racy, I have this to say: whenever a new social ethics has been outlined, whenever a new form of approach to individual life through the social organism has been pre- sented, there is the danger point for the individual moral life. If we go up and down the land, proclaiming that people who live in bad tenements and have too little wages and are not sufficiently fed — what the author of the book I have cited calls "poverty men"^are what they are wholly and solely because of their bad condi- tions, then we lessen, and for some fatally, the power of self-control and self-help. Unless somebody else goes up and down the land appealing to these individuals to live up to the utmost of their possibilities as human be- ings— no matter how hard their lot — we shall inspire class-feelings that are degenerating, and we shall encour- age a moral inertness on the part of those who should be struggling hardest for their moral birthright which will prove to the last degree dangerous. Not only that ; if we let our enthusiasm run exclusively in a channel of social
SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY. 20/
ethics, and that enthusiasm is not modified and spiritual- ized by the old appeal to the human being to be the best person he can, we have marred our own thinking by dwelling on half-truths only, and our leadership is there- by lessened in its permanent value.
For example, I was present not long ago at a meeting where there was a serious discussion as to the best meth- ods of protecting young girls — immigrants from foreign lands, and those going from one State to another — from the terrible moral dangers which beset them. The last word of the meeting was given by a Christian minister and it was a surprising one : — **This is a purely economic question," he said ; *'the girls do not earn enough. Their whole life is too poverty-bound, and we have the social evil because of this condition. It is a purely economic question." This from the Christian minister, and there was no chance for another word ; but another word ought to have been said. With full acknowledgment of the eco- nomic elements in the social evil, it should have been said that greed and lust clasp hands together for the exploita- tion of innocence and ignorance and poverty. And greed and lust are the bad elements in man that must be attacked as sins for which the individual is responsible. Until we have put these two things, the moral accounta- bility of the individual who uses his power for the op- pression and exploitation of the weak, along side of the conditions that make it possible and easy for weakness to be so exploited, we have not said the whole truth in the matter of the social evil.
The same thing is true of that larger question of labor reform. If every man in America were well-fed, well- clothed, well-housed, well-paid, we would not thereby necessarily be sure that every man in America would be a
208 SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
desirable human being. Something else must come into the account — something that has to do with the spirit of the man. It is true that bad housing tends to make it dif- ficult for people to live a right life ; it is true that we must curb disease in order to raise the potency of human life ; that we must share in a much larger way than is done to- day, all of material comfort that has come to us from the united efforts of the human race. But, when all is said and done, man is improved as a human being by the use to which he puts his opportunity, and man is spiritually developed by the choices he makes. He may make a choice in poverty, in economic defeat, in pain and suffer- ing and death, which lifts him and lifts the race ; and he may make a choice under the most favorable material conditions which starts his life on the swift sliding plane of degeneracy, and thwarts the hope of the race by his moral failure.
Religion is not outgrown; ethical appeal is not obso- lete ; social ethics does not annul the code of private mor- ality. The present demand of social ethics is to give us all more guidance than ever before in the attainment of general progress ; but it alone cannot hold aloft the ideal of the possibility of individual achievement by which personal character is developed. In the words of Marcus Aurelius, the call is still to everyone to "no longer delay being among the number of the best, using the divinity that is within." Unless in some way our religious life retains its own distinctive vitality, unless our ministers of religion cease to join in with the economists in saying that everything evil is simply and only an economic ques- tion, we shall, for the time being, lose our command of the spiritual world. So surely as we do that, our economic progress will be attained by revolutionary and not by evo-
SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY. 209
lutionary methods, and we shall have to go back and be- gin over again in order to gain the saner and surer way of growth. The jewel of ideal endeavor must be recovered from the mire in which it has been thrown or we shall lose the pearl of greatest price. For this office of religion the Christian Church exists, although sometimes it forgets and subordinates its life to lower ends, not daring to live by its own gospel. For this the Synagogue exists, that its ancient call to holiness may be heeded in the dark as well as in the light places of earth. For this, supremely, Ethical Societies exist.
Every human being may be better than he is. We know it, because we — the human beings we know best — ^could be better than we are. Every human being should take advantage of his opportunity, however poor. We know this because we feel that we have failed to make the best of our opportunities. Every human being can, if he will, become a larger, finer, and fairer specimen of the human race. This is the gospel of religion and this is the gospel of personal ethics.
"To put forth all one's strength," as the Psalmist says, to become that better creature one sees in vision, — this is to "verify one's credentials" as a spiritual being. For this end of spiritual appeal and stimulation, for this end of daring uplift even from the dregs of circumstance, the church has existed and societies like this been formed. This high function of religion has been justified as valid by human experience. It was never more needed for conscious leadership than now, when the rush of thought and activity is so overwhelmingly on the side of mass ap- peal and mass direction.
It is for us who believe in the essence of religion to stand by the roadside and cry aloud to those who are
210 SOCIAL ETHICS AND PRIVATE MORALITY.
mending the highways of material advance: Yes, brave leaders, this is the task of our time, — ye do well to un- dertake it! But we have to declare that there is an- other task, in all times the same, and to this, also, we de- vote ourselves. This is the ancient task of inspiring men and women to be better worthy of the "means of pro- gress" they now have; to see clearly and reach after with prevailing passion of endeavor, here and now, the "ends" for which all means of human progress exist. So- cial ethics in changing forms brings about higher and higher conditions of human development through wider and wider areas of human life. The law of private moral- ity changes not from age to age; albeit its expression, in deed, has form as varied as each type of age and race. This law demands to-day, as when the first spiritual im- pulse dawned in the heart of man, — Be and do the best you see and can gain strength to realize, wherever life has placed you and at whatever cost of struggle !
THE ETHICAL ASPECT OF THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY
By Walter L. Sheldon.*
People want evidence with regard to the Hfe after death. They would Hke to know whether modern thought fully justifies the belief in the immortality of the soul. Men can never be quite satisfied on the question. They always want more evidence. Whatever that life beyond may actually be, we know that it must be something dif- ferent from this life here on earth. On this account very few persons grasp the belief with the same kind of abso- lute assurance or intensity of conviction that they would feel with reference to facts connected with this natural world. If the belief in it were so complete, probably the majority of persons would much rather at once slip this mortal coil and pass over into eternity. But, as we know perfectly well, there are very few who do not shrink from going to that "bourne whence no traveler returns."
For this reason there is an unusual interest attaching to the discussion of this question. We like to have one another's views upon it, we are eager to read in regard to it. The human mind searches for every crumb of evi- dence in favor of the belief. It not only cares for the hope, it wants positive knowledge. Rational people are actually making the most desperate efforts to have some kind of communication with the world beyond the grave. They make every possible effort to have some kind of
*The founder and lecturer of the St. Louis Society who died June 5th, 1907.
. 211
212 ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.
communication with persons who have passed away from earth. It would seem as though people would rather give up the belief in God than in the immortality of the soul. It is a striking fact that a large number of persons who have developed a special and most intense faith in an- other world are unbelievers in a personal Deity. They believe in Nature and the supernatural, but not in a su- pernatural, personal God.
It is a striking circumstance that the great scholars of antiquity who thought the most deeply on the purposes of life took just the other standpoint. They had a most in- tense faith in a guiding Providence, in a personal Deity, in a Father of the world, but they did not believe in the immortality of the soul. Undoubtedly a certain class of minds also at the present time are opposed to that belief. They are the enthusiastic materialists who appear satisfied with this one life here on earth. Their number however is comparatively few.
The Ethical aspect of the question is not concerned with the fact at all. What a man thinks as to the facts of the beyond he is entitled to reserve in his own soul, just as he should be entitled to the same kind of privacy in reference to his views about a belief in a God. We each one of us have our own belief. It may be interesting to think upon it, it may be gratifying to us to listen to lec- tures on the subject. We may be desirous of reading the books which discuss the trustworthiness of the belief. But that particular desire or interest in the question is to a certain extent independent of our relation to it as moral beings.
There was a time in the middle of the century when it looked for a little while, as though, from a purely scien- tific standpoint, the best evidence was going to be offered
I
ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 213
that the soul of man could not be immortal because, in fact, it was said there was no' soul of man at all. There was only a brain, and the soul was a function of the brain, living while it lived, and dying when it passed into dissolution. It was said therefore that this soul of ours either did not exist as a soul, or else was so definitely connected with the material organism as to live and die with the life and death of the body.
We understand perfectly well at the present time how it was that such an attitude of mind was taken. It came along with the prevalence of a negative atheism. It was simply a reaction from the former idea that the soul of man was quite separate and distinct from the bodily or- ganism, just as it was assumed that there was a soul ot the world quite separate and distinct from the material universe. It appears now to be pretty satisfactorily determined that there is no such absolute disconnection. If there be a God, he and nature somewhere must touch and belong together. If there be a soul, it and the nerve force of the body somewhere must connect and mutually be influenced.
But the philosophic and scientific world has passed be- yond that negative materialism. I believe it is now pretty generally agreed that no evidence has yet been of- fered to disprove the possibility of the life of the soul after death. Consciousness, as such, has not been ex- plained or resolved into atomic forces or into nerve sub- stance. Probably all, or nearly all, of the leading scien- tists of the present day would admit the scientific possi- bility of the soul of man continuing in life after the disso- lution of the body. The human race has passed through the age of negative atheism or materialism. It is doubt- ful whether that stage will ever return again in the his-
214 ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.
tory of western Christendom. They may have to go through it some time in the Orient in their reaction from their condition of absolute faith. As I said a few Sun- days ago with regard to Nature and Nature's God, it is quite generally admitted that there is something beyond the mere universe that we see. What there is we do not know ; we may not be able to describe definitely, but there is something else not open to bodily vision. We have not probed the last great mystery and found the ultimate source of the Universe. Just in the same way it is with regard to this body and soul of ours. The connection between the two has not been determined ; probably it is beyond human understanding. The eye of the mind can not grasp it any more than the physical eye. Scientific research leaves a gap unfilled. There is something more in consciousness than this mere bodily organism. That much also now appears to be agreed upon. We may not be able to determine just what it is; but there is some- thing more in ourselves than the material organism, just as there is something more in Nature than the material atom. If you care for an authority on the question, I would refer you to a little volume entitled : "The Unseen Universe," writ- ten by two English scientists, Stewart and Tait. They have given the standpoint of modern science in the con- fession it makes in regard to its own limitations ; that is to say, they will tell us what science dare not say about the soul. I will quote two or three paragraphs. I fancy the same standpoint would be taken, though in other words, by the leading writers on the subject.
"Now, it is well known that since the days of Bishop Butler, a school has arisen, the members of which assert that they have at length learned what Death is, and that in virtue of their
ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 215
knowledge they are in a position to tell us that life is impossible after death. It is one of the main objects of this volume to demonstrate the fallacy which underlies the argument brought forward by this school. We attempt to show that we are abso- lutely driven by scientific principles to acknowledge the existence of an Unseen Universe, and by scientific analogy to conclude that it is full of life and intelligence — that it is in fact a spiritual uni- verse and not a dead one.
**But while we are fully justified by scientific considerations in asserting the existence of such an unseen universe, we are not justified in assuming that we have yet attained, or can easily or perhaps ever attain, to more than a very slight knowledge of its nature. Thus we do not believe that we can really ascertain what death is.
'To those, therefore, who assert that there is no spiritual un- seen world, and that death is the end of the existence of the in- dividual, we reply by simply denying their first statement, and in consequence of this denial, insisting that none of us know any- thing whatever about death. Indeed, it is at once apparent that a scientific denial of the possibility of life after death must be linked with at least something like a scientific proof of the non- existence of a spiritual unseen world. For if scientific analogy be against a spiritual Unseen, then evidently it is equally against the likelihood of life after death.
"Bu': if, on the other hand, we feel constrained to believe in a spiritual universe, then though it does not follow that life is cer- tain after death, inasmuch as we do not know whether any pro- vision has been made in this unseen world for our reception, yet it does follow that we cannot deny the possibility of a future life. For to do so would imply on our part such an exhaustive knowledge of the Unseen as would justify us in believing that no arrangement had been made in it for our transference thither. Now, our almost absolute ignorance with regard to the Unseen must prevent us from coming to any such conclusion."
All that the volume undertakes to do in scientific form is to show that the belief in the life after death is not in contradiction with the best work in modern scientific re- search. They have shown almost conclusively that even as rationalists, as students of nature, we are compelled to go further than the elementary atom of physics; we must even go further than the delicate ether that is sup- posed to fill all space. It is shown that there must be something finer and more spiritual than ether itself. They have shown it probable that the atom itself had an origin
2l6 ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.
in time and will also have an end. They also make it plain that the visible universe itself must have begun in time and will come to an end. It must have been born of some other universe and will pass into some other universe. It reminds one of Shelley's wonderful lines :
Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay."
This may sound abstract and rather metaphysical, but after all it is not so deep or mysterious when one investi- gates the elements of physical science. There is nothing of the mystical about it. The most clear-headed mathe- matician will be the one quickest to grasp the truth. It is not a fact which has to be accepted by intuition or imme- diate faith. It is simply one of the inevitable conclu- sions of natural science. What Stewart and Tait there- fore have done is simply to show the possibility of another world or perhaps of a multitude of other worlds.
What is of vastly more consequence to us is the his- tory of the belief through past ages. This is significant, not because it furnishes any evidence one way or the other with regard to its trustworthiness, but because it is an indication of the evolving process of the human soul. There is little doubt that a large share of our religious beliefs do not come to us by careful intellectual reflection. The soul of man adopts them, or has usually adopted them, as an expression of his highest aspirations. What man has thought about the other world and the life be- yond the grave in past times is, therefore, a suggestion as to his stage of spiritual advancement. It tells us of the moral plane of feeling or character which he has reached.
Now, there is no doubt whatever that the process of history has been more and more, in the course of the ages,
ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 2\J
to render men's Ideas of the life beyond indefinite. Un- derstand me, this does not refer to the fact whether there is such a Hfe after death. The actual number of persons who doubt that is very few. Most persons have a pretty positive conviction that they will live again after they die. Those who doubt the fact make themselves
I heard of because of the striking character of their unbe- lief. We are led therefore to over-estimate their num- ber. No, what I have in mind is rather the indefinite- ness of mind as to just what tJmt life is. You remember Shelley's remark with regard to the belief in the Deity. "Where indefiniteness ends there superstition begins." This has reference to the character of the Deity, not to the question as to whether there is a Supreme Being. Probably it is equally true in reference to the belief in a life after death. As we go back to early history, we observe that the human mnd had as clear an idea of the life beyond the grave as of the life here on earth. Men could venture to describe just what took place there, how it appeared, how the human soul conducted itself, what it did and what it suffered. In the very earliest stages, of course, it is noth- ing more than a direct continuation of the life here on earth. We are familiar with the fact that the Aborigines P^ of our own country buried the hatchet and favorite dog of the warrior chief assuming that he would want them in the happy hunting grounds.
It has sometimes been assumed that the belief was general that the life after death would necessarily be a happy one to the good, if not to the wicked. This, how- ever, was only partially true. We know, for example, that the Greeks in the time of Homer had, after all, only a mournful view of the beyond. The joys of earth were
2l8 ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.
far preferable in their thought to the joys of the soul in the Unseen. They had very clear ideas of the invisible world, but the ideas tended to be somber and gloomy. You remember we have descriptions of visits paid by mortals to the other world.
Even now definiteness of belief exists among primi- tive races. I remember an incident told by a writer on the origin of civilization. I believe it was of two women who were enemies to one another among the peasant pop- ulation of India. They believed so clearly that it would be possible for them after death to visit the earth, that one of them took her own life and went to the grave just so that she might be able to come back and torment the other person whom she hated.
The students of sociology have given a great deal of attention to studying the origin of the belief in another world. It is questionable whether this is of very much consequence. Mr. Herbert Spencer has done a great deal in reference to the matter. His theory is, I believe, that the dream life makes a man have faith in a kind of double self, because he appears to travel over the world without his body in the land of dreams. At the present day the faith would rest on altogether different founda- tions. The point, however, to be considered is simply the fact, as I have intimated, that, as the world grows older, as the human soul has grown deeper and more profound, as the spiritual character of man has grown more and more refined, — human thought has come to have less and less a definite notion of that other life. This I believe is true quite independent of whether men do or do not be- lieve in spiritual revelation. There was no doubt a time when the majority of persons looked upon the Apocalypse of St. John as a true picture of Heaven. They probably
ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 21i)
had definite faith in the gates of pearl, the streets of gold, the walks of jasper and amethyst. They expected to wear actual crowns and stand before a throne not at all unlike the throne of a human king. But at the present time, probably the deeper minds would all confess that that is only a picture or allegory, a mere suggestion to the mind of the joy of that other life. It is doubtful whether a refined nature would take much satisfaction out of that picture at the present time, save as it reduces it all to a metaphor. I fancy indeed that many of us would be only too sorry if we had to see any more gold in Heaven, after all the bitter associations of sorrow and selfishness that have come to us in the scramble for the possession of gold on earth. We should be only too glad over there to be rid of those associations, and to think rather of the spiritual idea of fellowship and brother- hood.
Probably for this reason the world will never again produce such a poem as the divine comedy of Dante. The interest in such a poem would not exist. We could say the same thing of the pictures given us in Paradise Lost by John Milton. We read them now with interest, but they are works of art and not much of a spiritual help, whatever a person's belief may actually be. The finer nature would shrink from that definite material kind of life beyond the grave. It is said that Dante himself meant it only as an allegory. Whether that be true or not, we shall have to think of it as an allegory in order to receive any spiritual help from it. We can enjoy the realism of its poetry as we would enjoy the realism of Homer.
Children want material things. So, too, the human mind in the childhood of history wants material things; but the whole process of evolution in individual life, as
220 ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.
well as in all history, is rather to refine the soul so that it cares less and less for the actual material. It wants rather the ideal, or the spiritual. It is for this reason, probably, that even in our modern hymns we can sing the words given us by the writers of former times, but the inspiration for composing them seems to have passed away. The world, even now, begins to like better those which are less definite. Such a hymn, after all, as "Near- er my God to Thee" is only a vague aspiration. It sug- gests another life of supreme spiritual joy to be found, but it leaves a definite idea of that that life to be felt in music, rather than expressed in words. The same is true, probably, of the well known song "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." There is an expression of joy in meeting one's friends over there, but the how and in what way is left unsaid. The most beautiful hymn ever written, by Cardi- nal Newman, is of the same kind, "Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom." It is to be noticed that the finer nature, if it wants religious music, prefers those vague aspirations rather than the definite pictures of former ages. I should not be surprised if, by and by, the more religious and refined persons would prefer as- pirations expressed exclusively by music without words at all. They would rather have it in orchestral sym- phonies, or rendered by the human voice in some unknown language, so that the expression should be nothing more than the aspiration of the higher spiritual life, without any definite thought as to what that special life would be, save that it would be spiritual rather than material, in the direction of what we feel to be the highest, the purest, and the best.
There is another fact that comes home to me of great consequence in the evolution of this faith in the life be-
ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 221
yond the grave. I have spoken of the way the idea itself has revived in the process of human evolution. But it is of still greater interest and consequence to observe how the motive out of which the desire for immortality had its origin has been refined. The ethical significance of this change is very great. We know perfectly well what the desire in the first case actually was. Man wanted a life beyond the grave just because he liked the joys and pleas- ures of the real life on earth. He wanted the continuation of the physical satisfaction of existence. He shrank from giving up the actual pleasures of life ; he hungered in his very soul for the assurance that those pleasures would go on through eternity. The Aborigines of this country wanted more of the everlasting happy hunting ground. The warriors of Scandinavia and of Iceland dreamed of another world of battles and conflicts, the endless joys of war, the pleasures of heroism, the delight in courage, the emotions that come from being con- querors.
We know how this too has changed. The desire, un- doubtedly, started out of a purely selfish impulse. A man wanted a heaven just for himself. He shrank from death because it was the end of his own pleasures. But now leap over the centuries to the present day, or pass from the rude savages of uncivilized countries to the finer na- tures where we live and dwell. Think of the difference. What is it that makes most of you really desire to have a belief in another life? Is it for yourselves? I doubt it. Most of you care for it because you have lost some one from earth. It is not your own immortality you are thinking about, that is second in your consciousness to the intense longing in your heart to feel that that other friend is living in the beyond.
222 ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.
There is a wonderful significance in this extraordinary change which has taken place. It shows how the soul of man has expanded and glorified so that it is possible for him to care less about his own everlasting future than the everlasting future of those he loves. The thoughts turn to another world when a friend has passed away from this one. We watch the literature on the subject and try to get some new assurances that there is such a life in the beyond. We go to other thinkers and ask their opinions ; we look up the works of science on the subject; we venture even to probe the investigations of the less educated minds of the present day. We go searching any where and everywhere just with the vague hope of find- ing some encouragement for the belief. This would ap- pear to be almost the climax of unselfishness. It may not be universal, but the tendency is becoming more and more apparent. It is for our friends that we dread anni- hilation even more than for ourselves. We cannot endure the thought of absolute and eternal separation.
Some have thought that the significance of this change was not merely an indication of higher unselfishness ap- pearing in human nature. It has been suggested as a possibility that the same tendency could go farther, that is to say, that in the process of human feeling and aspira- tion the time may come when we might be indifferent as to whether those we love, as well as ourselves, had a life after death, provided we could only be conscious or as- sured of the perpetual life of the human race. It would imply that what we cared for was that the universal life we are identified with should go on, and if that continued to be contented to pass into an endless sleep.
Whether human nature is capable of reaching that height, or that depth, remains an open question. One
ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 223
of the greatest minds suggested it, John Stuart Mill, but broke down completely when he was put to the test. The man who said that the time might come when the human race would not care for immortal life was the very per- son who, in later years, when the great separation came between him and his loved companion, fixed his home for the last few years where at least he could have the satisfaction, as he was at work, of looking out upon her grave from his open window. Undoubtedly this would indicate a triumph of human self-sacrifice and a spiritual communion with the whole brotherhood of the human race. But whether it is possible or not, as yet it is quite certain that we have not realized it.
You will perceive now the main point I want to bring out with regard to the ethical aspect of this belief. As I have said, I am not concerned with the fact at all. Each man can have his own opinion on that subject. It is a question what kind of stress we shall lay upon the belief; what kind of views with regard to it are the most strengthening to the personal human char- acter. Now I have no hesitation in saying that the in- definite idea in regard to the life beyond the grave is much more refining and strengthening to the deeper feel- ings and character. I have no doubt whatsoever, from personal observation, that the former definite conception of heaven and hell would tend, if existing at the present day, to increase or intensify average selfishness. It would make the world even more material in its ideas of relig- ion; it would keep our thoughts on the joy that was com- ing to us ; it would tend to make us care for the same kind of pleasures that we have on earth. The whole moral as- pect of the question lies not with our faith in the fact, but on the stress we lay on it. Shall we be constantly think-
224 ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.
ing about it ; shall we be turning it over in our minds and asking, is there a heaven? What is hell? How do our friends look over there ? Do they know of us and what we are doing? The effect is to limit human sympathies. It will either, as I have said, keep a man's attention on the good that is coming to himself, and make him care just for himself, or concentrate the energies of his emotions on the few friends that have left this life and gone into the beyond.
Now, if there is one fact more clear than another, it is that Nature, or God, does not want us to spend our en- ergy in mere feeling. The emotion that cannot do some- thing is perilous, wears itself out, is liable to make the character deteriorate. Nature exacts that we should con- centrate our emotions on those we can help and do some- thing for. For this reason I believe it is perfectly clear that, if there is an actual purpose in nature, if there is an actual Providence overlooking human affairs, it is plain to see that that purpose is actually in this direction, (if, as is apparent, the whole course of human history has been to render the beyond indefinite) to make us care less for ourselves than for our friends. It means, if it means anything at all, that that indefiniteness is there just so that we cannot constantly be turning our attention to the ques- tion. If that clearness of vision, that positive heaven, was revealed to us by scientific research, we should be constantly thinking about it and become weak rather than strong, do less rather than more, in our life here on earth. That strikes me as perfectly plain as the law of moral evolution. The subject is better left indefinite so that we might not think too much upon it. We are not rendered spiritual just by thinking of the beyond; we are not rendered religious or refined by pouring forth our
ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 225
emotions upon something. That result only comes when we can actually, definitely, positively help or serve the person on whom we throw those emotions. It is that kind of an act which makes us spiritual. God, by the very pro- cess of history, would seem to be saying: Stop thinking of Me and think of your fellows ; serve them, and you will find Me in spite of yourself. In the same way He would appear, by the process of history, to be saying: Stop thinking of heaven and the life beyond the grave, and in that way only will you fit yourselves for heaven when it comes.
Matthew Arnold's sonnet tells the whole story when he says :
"Why not rather say: 'Hath man no second life ? Pitch this one high ! Was Christ a man like us ? Ah ! let us try If we then, too, can be such men as he !' "
He expressed it better and still more profoundly when he said:
"No, no ! the energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun; And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife,
"From strength to strength advancing — only he, His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life."
I have not been endeavoring to give a personal opinion on the question, but simply to read the law of history, which must after all be the law of God. I do not say that this process would be the greatest for human joy; I do not say that it would give the greatest satisfaction, but I do say that this is just what Nature intended that we should do. The Great Power cared more to make us strong and brave and good and refined and spiritual.
226 ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.
than he did to make us happy. The constant thinking of the life beyond the grave, casting our emotions in that one direction, might give us greater pleasure, but this higher law stands over us, — "thou canst not by searching find out." If you come to it at all, if you ever get to heaven, it will be by the way you devote your life to the work of earth, and not in the way you keep thinking about heaven. It is equally true that, if we care to be loyal to those we have lost, we are far truer to them by devoting ourselves to those who have remained behind, than by constantly dwelling on them in our thoughts and emotions. Again, it is true that this might be what we would most like to do, but we are not speaking of what we would like to do, but of the law of Nature and of Na- ture's God. The whole lesson of history, and the whole lesson of Providence, is in learning how to be strong, and those who are truly strong find out, by and by, without having thought of it, that that was the way, after all, of getting the purest and deepest kind of joy. Nature in- tends that we should grow refined, that we should care less for earthly or material things, that we should have interest in that which is supreme and high. We serve not the other world by thinking about it. We serve it best and grow refined by working here, by pitching this life high. You perhaps thought that I was going to suggest some other kind of immortality. That is the usual thing at the present day. George Eliot tells us of "another life to come which martyred men have made more glorious for those who strive to follow." We are told, in various ways, to look for substitutes, — an immortal something else, if we cannot be immortal ourselves. Others point us to the lines of Browning: "Each deed thou hast done dies, revives, goes to work in the world." That is all
ETHICAL ASPECT OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 227
very well, but it is not personal immortality. I see no use in trying to find a substitute for the thing itself. The ethical consideration is, not to find something else to take its place, but to lay just that degree of stress upon it, or lack of stress, which nature exacts of us, rather than to put our whole and supreme thought on the thing itself. We make a mistake in perpetually turning our thoughts to the life beyond the grave. Let us work here, rather, and be strong. The finest utterance I remember on the whole subject came from King David, in his dying hour to his son. Did he say to him. Think of where I am going ? Did he remind him of the futility of life, and urge him to dwell on death and eternity? Did he wish him to remember his father and think of him in Heaven ? No, he as it were turned the son's face away from himself, point- ed him in another direction, and said to him: "Now I go the way of all earth : therefore be thou strong and show thyself a man."
MORAL EDUCATION CONGRESS
INTERNATIONAL MEETINGS TO BE HELD IN LONDON NEXT SEPTEMBER FAMOUS EDUCATORS MUCH INTERESTED.
Educators will look with hope toward the Interna- tional Moral Education Congress, to be held in London, September 23-26, 1908. The congress will deal with the problems of moral training in school and home. Papers will be read on the topics of school organization, coeduca- tion, the moral values in the curriculum, discipline, juve- nile literature, civics, the education of the morally back- ward, and many other subjects of importance in educa- tional theory. The public meetings, sectional meetings, and special conferences will be supplemented by a care-
fully chosen exhibit of books, pictures, and various illus- trative material bearing on the work of moral education.
Throughout the congress the speculative aspects of ethical training, tending to philosophical and religious discussion, will be subordinated to the practical end of im- proving education in its relation to character and conduct. But while limiting itself to matters of ethical education which concern men of all shades of religious opinion, the congress will not be in any sense anti-religious, nor will it seek to exclude reference to the religious aspects of edu- cational problems.
A number of distinguished educators, editors, publi- cists, statesmen, and professors of Europe have shown their interest in the congress by consenting to act on a general committee of the same. Among these are Gabriel Compayr6, author of works on education and inspector- general of public instruction in Paris; Charles Wagner, author of "The Simple Life"; Baron d'E'stournelles de Constant, the distinguished member of the French Senate, whose work in behalf of international peace is well known to Americans, and from whose hands Andrew Carnegie received the decoration of the Legion of Honor at the peace banquet at the Astor Hotel two years ago; the Italian Socialist, Achille Loria; Prof. Michael Sadler of Manchester, one of the strongest personalities in the field of British pedagogy; Prof. Friedrich Paulsen of Berlin, known to hundreds of American students abroad, and others of international reputation. The presidents of sev- eral American colleges have already signified their inter- est in this congress, and many of our best-known educa- tors have joined the movement with enthusiasm. Litera- ture descriptive of the aims of the congress may be had on application to Dr. David Saville Muzzey, No. 33 Cen- tral Park West, secretary of the congress for the United States.
MEN AND WOME'N: WHAT THEY OUGHT TO BE TO EACH OTHER*
By Walter L. Sheldon.
It is always interesting and oftentimes fascinating to trace up the evolution of certain words, to see how they have been changed or transformed, and then to observe the connections, as far as one can do so, which have brought about these transformations.
In connection with my topic I have been led to think of a word which even in its present form goes back to the languages used in Athens and Rome. We might per- haps, if we chose, trace it back further and find its source in the tongue of those pre-historic forefathers who had their home in the highlands of Asia and who sep- arated, some of them to make their home in India, and others to scatter over all the sections of Europe.
To the citizen of Athens it was kahalles, and to the tongue of the Roman it was caballus; and it meant in those days the horse which carried the burdens for man. When the Roman Empire went to pieces and languages fused, the Celtic and the Teutonic mixed with the old Latin and there came the Italian and the Spanish and the French and the English with their many dialects. This same word re-appeared but in a new form. It is now the riding horse, the steed who bears the soldier in his armor, the brave and loyal creature which might fall wounded and dying on the battle field in the service of its master.
With the changes that went on in forms of warfare, in the eighth century or thereabouts, this element of the
*A lecture given before the St. Louis Ethical Society.
229
230 MEN AND WOMEN :
army assumed new and commanding- importance — far more, perhaps, than in the days when the Greek fought round the walls of Troy, or when Caesar led his legions into Gaul and the armies of Rome crossed the Rhine. The horseman in his armor was the man of power. He sat above the world, he was an aristocrat, and claimed for himself the title of gentleman. He it was who came to decide what should be the code of civility, of gentility, the code of honor for the aristocrat.
It was in the Middle Ages that out of the cavalry of earlier days evolved the soldier-knight, the man of ar- mor who took vows, just as the loyal churchman took his vows on entering the monastery. But the vows of this new order of men — the new centaurs, as it were, of the later world — were the vows, not of the monk, but of chivalry.
And so it is that we have this new word at last, beau- tiful in its meaning, evolving in the Middle Ages out of that old term which stood for the beast which carried the burdens. Out of cahalliis, the packhorse for the Roman, evolved the word "chivalry" and its code of honor.
To-day it is a much worn coin, and one must look at it with a keen eye and study it, as it were, with a glass in order to see its original markings, or even the markings it had when it got its full stamp in the time of the Cru- sades.
As the centuries wore on, the old coin was stamped over again a number of times, almost entirely effacing its original marking, and so our word chivalry to-day but dimly suggests what it meant to the Crusader. But the feature of all features which it has retained as the final remnant from its old meaning in the Middle Ages, is connected with the code of honor that was tauofht in those
WHAT THEY OUGHT TO BE TO EACH OTHER. 23 1
days for man toward woman. This was but one of its many features. Yet in some respects it was the most striking and unique of them all; and the one most per- plexing to account for.
How came it about that the human being who, in his primitive days, when he wandered as a savage in the for- ests, and was accustomed to secure his wife, perhaps, by hitting her on the head with a club — who made her his beast of burden and his slave — should have been led to set woman on a pedestal as a. goddess, to treat her as a be- ing superior to himself, to assume that one of the high- est duties, nay more, one of the highest privileges open to him, was to shield her from harm, to protect her, to wait upon her, to guard her and be hpv champion ?
All the reasons or occasions for this transformation we shall never know. The causes are subtly interwoven with the whole history of the human race. But it marks the transformation in the world's history between cul- ture and savagery. The cultured man is the re-built man, the made-over man, as contrasted with the natural man. It was the made-over man, the re-built man, who evolved this phase of chivalry. It was a new being, as it were, who saw in a fellow creature weaker than himself, some- thing to shield and protect, to guard and watch over, and to be regarded as in a sense superior to himself. It was the spiritual man and not the natural man that insti- tuted the ideal of chivalry.
Of course it was only an ideal. Only here and there out of the thousands and thousands of those armored horsemen who rode up and down Europe, was there one who lived up to all the rules of the new code of honor. The old natural man was there just the same, hidden away under that coat of armor, the beast man, the ani-
232 MEN AND WOMEN !
mal man. He had not yet become divine, he was not al- together made over.
I touch upon the development of the word chivalry, not because it is to be the main theme of what I wish to talk about on this occasion, but because it takes us into a consideration of a distinction which is much older than the human race. As soon as the living creature which had been called into existence in the primeval waters be- gan to be differentiated, the principle on which life evolv- ed was that of sex distinction; the principle of depen- dence, the principle that one living creature was only the half of a whole.
It is not my intention to discuss the marriage problem and its history, but to touch on the broader relation — on this distinction in its widest aspects. The foundation of it lies in the fact that man and woman are structurally dif- ferent, in their souls as well as in their bodies. In the very soul or spirit man is incomplete, an incomplete unit by himself; and so too of woman. Perhaps, therefore, the greatest of all problems in human relations, the one that towers above every other, is just this problem of the relation between man and woman because of the dis- tinctions which exist between them.
This is a problem altogether separate from the other great ethical problem of the relations between human be- ings as such, between one human being and another, be- tween man and man over against the distinction between man and the beast. The problem of the relations between two creatures structurally the same is vastly different from that of the relation between two creatures made on separate planes, with separate endowments, with separ- ate feelings, temperaments, gifts.
There is first of all the relation of dependence — that
I
WHAT THEY OUGHT TO BE TO EACH OTHER. 233
great law which runs through all forms of life save those of the most primitive kind. On this fundamental dis- tinction the Middle Ages developed its peculiar code of chivalry. Something was due to woman from man in his way of dealing toward her, just because, while of the same kingdom of life as himself, she was different. The law of the animal kingdom had been that might made right. Power was given that it might be asserted and attain the sway due to itself. But here, on the other hand, there was a change; and the theory grew up that power must bend and sue rather than command. This meant the re-built man, the culture-man over against the sav- age.
Codes of conduct must all depend on the specific rela- tions in which people are thrown together, the circum- stances under which they meet, or the class of deahngs which they have with each other.
Now one of the first steps after man began to pass from the most primitive savagery, was to separate wo- man from the outside world, to put her in a condition of seclusion. Of course this was only a tendency and only partially prevailed. But in the middle period of the world's history, we might say, when codes grew up, there was practically for the more civilized people but four relations in which man came in contact with woman. It was that of wife, sister, daughter and the mother. Men themselves met each other in many other relations. They jostled together in the fight of war or in the war of com- merce. They met socially at the banquet, politically in the state and religiously in the church. But for the most part, man met woman only as the wife, sister, daughter or the mother.
It is doubtful whether any more important change has
234 MEN AND WOMEN *.
come about in the world's history, more sweeping in its influence and in the new conditions it has brought about, than the new relations in which man has been led to meet woman during the last one hundred and fifty years. To those other four forms of comradeship — the sister, the daughter, the wife and the mother — there now come three others, and man meets woman as the school com- rade, the office comrade, and the social comrade.
In the old days, to a large extent, the man knew lit- tle of his wife until their marriage. It was a choice by family and not a choice of persons seeking each other. To-day man and woman meet in a big social world. They are thrown together in a great number of ways whereby they come to know one another, to have a knowledge of one another's personal characteristics, to have some insight into one another's character. And us- ually it is not until after such an acquaintanceship or comradeship by which they know each other's natures that choice takes place.
Our vast educational system which insists that every man and woman shall know how to read and write and have the elements of knowledge by w^hich to live and be active in the world, has brought the two types of life to- gether in a way they had never been brought together be- fore. We perhaps dimly realize how much our whole so- cial life has been changed by the way children are thrown together in our common school system, where boys and girls sit side by side, play together and study together from the age of five or six years to fourteen.
But a greater change perhaps, has come about through the change in the market world — if we may use that fig- ure of speech^ — by which what I call office comradeship has grown up. By this I mean the contact brought about
WHAT THEY OUGHT TO BE TO EACH OTHER. 235
in the factory, on the street car, in the office, from the cir- cumstance that woman so largely is now a wage earner, self-supporting or helping in the financial support of the family.
The effects of these stupendous changes have scarcely appeared even in their incipiency; and what they are going to be we can only dream. Shall we let things drift and take their own course? If we do, then we are back on the plane of the savage. But if men all over the world will take up this problem seriously, they can have something to say as to what shall be the outcome. And they can determine it in part by an ideal of what the out- come ought to be.
I do not presume for a moment that any one of us can say just what the codes or rules should be under these new relationships, by which high ideals between man and woman can be worked out in the future. Neverthe- less it is possible to have gleams. There are features of the ideal latent in our consciousness, and we can bring them in part to the light.
The thought I wish to bring out centers around just one point. To me the whole problem is simply a prob- lem of distance. What distance shall be kept between man and woman in order that their relations shall be the most ideal.
Of one fact we must be certain ; we cannot under the new conditions re-establis'h the old theories of distance. The theories which required that man and woman should only see each other as two beings across a chasm, with- out knowledge of each other's character, were bound in the long run to play havoc because they were bound to foster illusions. It meant disillusion, a crashing of ideals ;
236 MEN AND WOMEN I
and the crash often would be so great that the re-adjust- ment to facts and truth would not take place at all.
In the old days of chivalry we can fancy that to the armored horseman who chose his fair lady, the person of his choice was regarded as the incarnation of a being that he was to worship. And, on the other hand, to a large extent the horseman in his armor was the same kind of idealized vision to the woman. To her he was a hero because he had made her his choice.
All this had its useful features. It helped to build up ideals. Visions of the perfect are glorious things even if they are never incarnate in man or woman. To be looked upon by another as perfect must always be a stimulus, goading on an individual to live up to that code of perfection. Yet the whole theory was founded on what is not true of human nature. There are no perfect men or perfect women ; there are no incarnations of the ideal for us to see with our naked eye.
Chivalry could not have permanently survived; it had in itself, by the conditions under which it arose, the seeds of its own collapse. The chasm of distance had been made too wide and fostered illusions. It was based on a false theory of human nature, it was founded on the no- tion chiefly that woman as woman was born immaculate, innocent of evil, with stainless soul, each one, as it were appearing like a re-incarnation of Mary of Bethlehem.
But to-day under the new conditions, we are in danger of the opposite extreme. The new forms of comrade- ship are threatening to work in the other direction and to abolish the element of distance altogether. This is the menace and this is the point we have to consider. Men and women cannot jostle each other in the street cars, and preserve that kind of spiritual distance that was pos-
WHAT THEY OUGHT TO BE TO EACH OTHER. 237
sible in the days of the Crusades when the daughter was hidden away in a castle and saw the world, as it were, only across the moats and the drawbridge outside.
The new forms of comradeship, for the most part, have come to stay. We may modify them to a de- gree, but they will continue in the world. There will be the meeting together as man and woman alike helps in earning the subsistence for the race. With the increase of the world's population, it is doubtful whether the race could go on if the work in earning the means of subsistence were left to only one- half. And there will be the meeting in the social world. We can never go back to the old conditions of the castle ; f' they belong to the Middle Ages and the period of the Crusades.
Our one problem is how shall we preserve a certain element of distance in spite of these new conditions from which we cannot escape? The point I am anxious to bring out is that unless we are on our guard, unless we are aware of the danger and take measures against it we shall inevitably experience a decline, and the conscious- ness of worth will be tarnished.
The life of mind and soul cannot go on — that is to say the better life, the real life worth having and living — un- less there survives a mutual respect on the part of man for woman and woman for man by which each pre- serves his and her own self-respect. I am speaking now of all the relations of life in which man and woman meet each other, not simply of the conditions under which tlie young man and the young woman may meet each other in society. It applies to the home life, as well as to life in the office or on the street car. It applies to the rela- tion between brother and sister, or husband and wife,
238 MEN AND WOMEN :
and in the relations between school comrades and office comrades. In all these relations there is a degree of fa- miliarity which may make the relationship common, so that each shall feel less respect for the other, and in that way both lose their consciousness of worth. There are lines, for example, which husband and wife may not cross over without losing something in themselves which they can never regain. There is a reserve which should never be sacrificed by any human soul. There are de- grees of familiarity in the home which may be ruinous to the self-respect of brother and sister. There is language possible which should never be used between them, con- versation which should never prevail, if they would pre- serve their own self-respect, their manhood or their wo- manhood. It is possible in the home with brothers and sisters crowded together for each one to keep his dignity or her dignity if he or she chooses, and the respect a man may have for womankind as a whole, and vice versa, may be determined by it.
Our battle now is to keep these distinctions and pre- serve them in spite of the freedom of relations into which we are forced by the conditions of the modern world. Everything that we do which tends to break down these barriers is a menace.
One cannot help but feel distressed when one listens to the kind of talk that sometimes goes on between young men and young women and sometimes even between brother and sister. They are utterly thoughtless of what they are doing, they do not realize the sacrifice of stan- dards they are guilty of or what they are sacrificing in themselves.
There is a freedom of familiarity which a man should never tolerate on the part even of his own men comrades,
I
WHAT THEY OUGHT TO BE TO EACH OTHER. 239
there are lines which he should draw and across which he should never allow men to go, close and dear as those men may be to him. His self-respect depends on draw- ing those lines. The consciousness of worth in himself which gives him dignity as a man will depend on whether he can sustain a certain reserve in the way he lets other men treat him. But the foundation of it all is in the kind of reserve he displays in the way he treats other men. By his conduct toward another, he invites others to treat him- self in the same way. There is a distance that every hu- man being is bound to preserve if he cares to be a man.
But if this is true in the relations between man and man, how overwhelmingly more true it is in the relation between man and woman. All our refinements, all the nicest and most beautiful features of our civilization hang on that one point of the distance which men and women shall preserve between each other, no matter what their relations may be.
I am pleading for all the relations in which men and women meet together. I am pleading for the rescue of ideals within ourselves, which are seriously menaced. And I plead for them with the sense that there is a re- sponsibility on our part, and something that we ourselves can do to keep alive our ideals of man and woman and the relationships those ideals call for.
I have touched on certain phases of chivalry. We are fond of the word, still, as if it covered about all the pre- cepts which should regulate conduct between man and woman. There is a sentiment clinging to the word which makes people reluctant to give it up; and rightly so. But there were certain very crude features in the old conception of chivalry. On the part of man, we think of the chivalry especially in the times of the Crusades, as a
240 MEN AND WOMEN :
protection toward woman when she was in great danger. The soldier on horseback in his armor who had taken his vows was to rescue women hidden away by wicked men in castles, rescue them from big dangers, shed blood freely on their behalf. And this was done frequently. The man who had taken his vow did shed his blood for injured woman, did risk his life to protect her, did go into battle and do soldierly duty on her behalf. And he won a big name for himself with his tournaments and his fighting and his picturesque garb.
But there are also sad stories coming down from that age of chivalry. There are anecdotes in plenty of un- knightly conduct on the part of those warriors. The same hero who might fight and shed his blood for woman to rescue her from a dungeon, might be guilty of very unknightly conduct in other respects and be even rough and brutal in the way he dealt with her.
If the new conditions of life are to hold and we are to meet. freely as men and women in the new forms of com- radeship, then a new type of chivalry is called for. It may be inconvenient at times in the office or factory or on the street car to put one's self out, or be on one's guard as to how one behaves just because one is in the presence of a woman. Conduct which is legitimate when we are with men alone may be utterly unworthy of us in the presence of a woman. We may sometimes chafe under the conventional restrictions, but some of them are just what preserves the consciousness of worth in woman.
I have not touched on the most striking feature in this special phase of chivalry. Chivalry as a scheme or code of conduct was a masculine creation. It was man who laid down the rules, it was he who worked out the pre- cepts, it was he, in a sense, who put woman on a pedestal.
WHAT THEY OUGHT TO BE TO EACH OTHER. 24I
Woman did not write out that code and summon man to obey it, but man, as it were, drafted it for himself. And the peculiarity of it is, that it left so little for woman her- self to do. It was for the masculine world only.
It collapsed because it was too one-sided. Woman did not have enough share in building up a chivalrous world. And I do not think that the woman-world has yet appre- ciated what her share ought to be. All the chivalry in the world on the part of man is not going to protect her, if she does not assert her own dignity. There are no castles with moats and drawbridges around them where woman can hide and from which she can look from the parapets and be seen from a distance by the outside world. She is seen with the naked eye; she meets the world and the world talks with her. If she does not carry in herself that consciousness of worth and this does not show itself in her face and bearing and the tones of her voice, then she will not receive that respect that should be shown to her.
Much might be said as to the share woman has in a truly chivalrous world. It is sometimes said that it takes two people to make a quarrel. In the same way it takes two individuals, man and woman, to make chivalry. The woman must command it by what she is and not by man's theory of her, if chivalry is to survive. All the preaching and the teaching in the world will not save it.
The decline of what is called chivalry is not due en- tirely to masculine selfishness. It is at least in part, though of course not altogether, due to the fact that wo- man has forgotten the share due from her. If there is a cry going up in the world that man should be more care- ful in the courtesies to woman, the cry also should go up that woman should be more careful in the preservation
242 MEN AND WOMEN I
of her dignity in the presence of man, so that man would feel more willing to extend to her those little courtesies.
What I say applies not merely to the big relations of life in the outside world. It is true of the relations in the home just the same. There are wives to-day who are looked up to with a kind of awe by their husbands though a quarter of a century of home life may have passed over their heads. They have made their husbands respect them, respect their dignity and their worth through all the routine of everyday life. To be sure there are men unworthy of such women. But the experience holds as a general rule: we get the kind of respect we uncon- sciously command from our fellows. We get the distance preserved by others which we preserve in our dealings with others. If man is to protect and shield woman, and to guard her for the sake of his own ideal of her, just as truly woman has to shield herself and be on her owti guard lest she loses the fine consciousness of worth and her own self-respect.
First or last, man and woman must sometime find each other out. The woman must come down from her pedes- tal as a goddess and be discovered to be human. And for the man, his armor and helmet must be laid off, he must step from the steed he has been riding and look like an ordinary mortal.
As man and woman come to know each other better in real life, they must see the human side. They must see the defects as well as the beautiful elements of character in each other. We are often one person to the stranger and another to the acquaintance, and a third person to a friend and a fourth person to those in our homes. And sometimes it is for the better and sometimes it is for the worse. In the more intimate relationships we cannot al-
WHAT THEY OUGHT TO BE TO EACH OTHER. 243
ways be walking on stilts, we cannot keep up all the con- ventional forms and, alas, what is more, we shall not al- ways be saints in each other's presence. It is easy enough to hold the tongue and perhaps obey the conscience in the presence of strangers; for we only see those strang- ers now and then.
But among those we see often, we shall find it harder always to be obedient to the conscience, always to be un- selfish, always to have our guard on that unruly member, the tongue. We find each other out in the closer walks of life. This is true in the office, true in the factory and true in the home. The woman at the office desk in a downtown business establishment may not always keep her serenity under the burdens upon her. The husband and wife may not each be hero and heroine at every min- ute.
And if this be true, there is one rule of lasting signifi- cance that should be kept in mind. Sad it is if we care- lessly allow ourselves to lose our ideals, to lose our af- fection for those whom we have cared for at a distance, to lose our regard or esteem for others because they are not quite heroes or saints. Where we are compelled to be more or less in close contact in these many forms of com- radeship, we shall forget ourselves at times and show ourselves human. We shall say words we may afterwards regret, we shall be selfish or neglectful in a manner that perhaps we had not supposed ourselves capable of.
But here, as everywhere, the rule must be to bear and to forbear. Though your comrade show himself selfish or neglectful for an instant, that is not the whole man. It were better had he not been so; but bear and forbear is the only rule by which life can go on as long as we are human. Because these things happen, we must not let
244 MEN AND WOMEN :
the ideal slip away altogether, we must not let the old hero or heroine worship entirely perish.
When one thinks of the sorrows which are brought about the relations between men and women by words which slip carelessly from the tongue, and when one thinks of the joy which would have been there if the words had not been said, we cannot but wish that men and women, whether as friends in the office, as sisters and brothers, or as husbands and wives, would ever take as their watchword that old maxim, bear and forbear.
Those who will carry this maxim in their hearts, those who will try to live up to it, will not lose the ideals they have of each other. The years will roll by and brother will still respect the sister, and sister respect the brother. The wife will still feel an awe of the husband, and the husband bow to the character of the wife. And in the world at large man shall respect the woman in woman, and the woman respect the man in the man — if only they will learn the full meaning of that precept, bear and for- bear.
I like to think of people who have known each other for forty years, and yet who feel that they really still only half know each other. That is my ideal of the re- lationship in all its many forms for man and woman.
In regard to this whole subject of the relation between man and woman, I am reminded of a peculiar circum- stance which takes us back almost to the dim twilight of the pre-historic world. Far back in those days there arose a disposition to associate with this relationship the ele- ment of religion. Down through the ages that sentiment has developed as if there were an element of sacredness in the relation between man and woman. We know how true this is in reference to the marriage tie, how almost
WHAT THEY OUGHT TO BE TO EACH OTHER. 245
universal it has been to connect a religious ceremony with the union in marriage. But the element of sacredness has a wider range; it ought to apply in the relation be- tween father and daughter, brother and sister, in office comradeship, school comradeship and social comradeship. With the very notion of religion goes the feeling of awe and this factor of distance. We may not come too close to that which we look up to. And it seems to have been implanted in the very nature of things that man and wo- man should look up to each other as complements, one to the other. Whatever drags down this barrier, whatever obliterates this sense of sacredness, means that much up- rooting of the basis of our civilization. Who ever de- fies this ideal or acts contrary to it, strikes a blow at him- self and a blow at the human race.
An exquisite little dialogue from one of George Eliot's novels often comes to my mind as I study life and see it in its many phases. The picture I have in mind you will recall at once, where a young woman is leaning over the shoulders of her father and saying something to him. She is letting out the secret of her heart in the dawning of an attachment which is to bind her for life. She knows what that will mean, that it may call her to a life of toil and drudgery. There will not be the charm of the home life she has had, and its comforts will no longer be with her. But with the fact of the sacredness of this re- lationship between man and woman on her mind, she has been thinking. And out of that new thinking she stammers brokenly over her father's shoulders as he lis- tens, these beautiful words :
"But that must be the best life father. That must be the best life." "What life, my child," asks the father. _ "Why," she an- swers, "that where one bears and does everything because of some
246 MEN AND WOMEN
great and strong feeling — so that this and that in one's circum- stances don't signify."
I know that one must feel very deeply to say that and mean it, one must have gone far in life's deep feelings to be able to say truly that this and that in my circumstances does not signify. But the sacredness of that relationship between man and woman is what did it. This was the compensation. Father and daughter might say it in their feehngs for each other, mother and son likewise. So too, brother and sister, and husband and wife. So too, any man and woman who have true and right feelings for each other.
I would emphasize then the religiousness — ^in the broadest sense of this term — of the relationship between man and woman. And I urge that each and all of us do what we can to preserve this religiousness, to keep that relationship forever sacred. Then shall come back in higher form the true Age of Chivalry. It will not be one- sided, with something for the one element to do, leaving the other element passive only. It will mean that man and woman alike shall each contribute his and her share in the upbuilding of the new kingdom of chivalry—a kingdom where each shall respect and revere the other, because this respect and reverence have been planted in their very nature. Yes ; that must be the best life "where one bears and does everything because of some great and strong feeling, so that this and that in one's circum- stances don't signify."
REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY*
By William M. Salter.
I doubt if any of the Lecturers of our movement have been more generously treated than I by you. When, nearly two years ago, you renewed your invitation to me for three years, you proposed that one of them should be to me a vacation. And I have had a holiday such as I have never had in my life before — a long year without a care, full of novel and interesting experience, to which I have so thoroughly given myself up that I have thought of little beside, not even of the lessons I might gather from it, or of any profit either for myself or for you. As one a little wearied may lie down and rest, as one may escape from the smoke and dust of the city into green country fields and rejoice only in the lib- eration— so I have gone from my work and care and bustle here into new and strange and far-away scenes, and the novelty of it all, the different landscapes and skies, the altered faces and ways, the memories coming down from a long distant past, were fascination enough, and I quite gave myself up to the enjoyment of the pass- ing moment.
You must not expect from me anything instructive — save by accident. I am not aware that I have any more or any better ideas than when I went away. Perhaps you will find me even a little less strenuous — for after being so long idle, one cannot at once jump into the traces and pull with all his might.
*An address before the Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago, in Steinway Hall, November i8, 1906. 247
248 REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY.
And yet without any effort on my part I have received some impressions that may not be without interest to you. After all, every man is his own self wherever he goes and one whose main interests are in religion and in social and political conditions and problems cannot fail to be aft'ected by what he observes along these particular lines.
For one who feels the spell of the past as well as the power of the present, what a country is Italy! There I first touched land, and there, but for a short venture into Africa hard by, and but for a few weeks across the border into Austria during the summer, I stayed all my time, even giving up a projected visit to England, for the sake of deepening my impressions, so full of interest and wonder, there. The charm (at least, one charm) of this country is that it connects you with the antique world, the world of culture and civilization and art ibefore Christ — this you cannot feel, or feel appreciably, in England or Germany, and only a very little in France or Austria. But in Italy you not only stand at the seat of Imperial Rome, you not only tread the soil of Virgil and Horace and Cicero, and of Marcus Aurelius as well, since though born after Christ he belongs quite to the pre-Christian world — ^but you are in touch with what is older and in many ways more beautiful and grander yet. I refer to the remains of ancient Greece that one finds in bodily form in Italy. Two things stand out in my memory as my great surprises there — the first was that on a low- lying almost uninhabited plain, near the sea not far from Naples to the south, were Greek temples that in simple majesty were second only to those in Athens; the sec- ond, that still nearer Naples, though in the opposite di- rection, was the immemorial site of the entrance to the
REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY. 249
Underworld, into which Aeneas, conducted by the Sibyl from neighboring Cumae, made the memorable descent described by Virgil, where Homer brings Ulysses to see the ghosts of Achilles and Agamemnon and other mighty dead. I need not say that I went to both places, and had strange emotions. It is so different to read, or even talk and teach, about the Greek religion, and then to stand in a Greek temple, where the spirit of the old wor- ship still seems to touch your soul with awe. Some Ital- ian automobilists (I am glad to say they were not Ameri- can) wheeled up in their noisy odorous vehicle to the very portals of one of these temples at Paestum and took their lunch on the steps; for the moment I felt almost as if it were a profanation. The sea to which the Greek col- onists entrusted themselves was still there and to the God of the Sea they had erected this temple — and had indeed named their town after him, Poseidonia (Paestum was a later Roman name). These men felt their dependence on the great forces of the world without them — and in their own way sought to show gratitude, honor and wor- ship. They raised noble columns, three series of them, with a ponderous roof and far-reaching projection of cornice, and within the innermost series, they placed an image of the god; in front of the whole they built a massive altar on which to offer sacrifice — and so they sought to make friends with the Destinies that surround- ed them and that now as always enwrap man's uncertain life. The columns, once covered with stucco, smoothed so as to look like marble, and colored, are now bare, but they have a mellow tone, almost an orange hue, which gives them the dignity and grace of ancient things. The statue of the god is gone, and the roof; and only the foundations of the great altar still stand — ^but somehow
250 REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY.
the whole was eloquent to me — it was my first visible contact with the sacred things of the old Greek world. There are besides two other temples in Paestum. And how singular ! The town was later overwhelmed by bar- barians from the inland mountains, the Lucanians ; then the Roman rule fell upon it; afterwards it was subject to the Saracens, and then Robert Guiscard with his Nor- mans took possession of it and despoiled it — yet of all these peoples practically no traces remain, and all that still stands, all that has a semblance of immortality, goes back 2500 or 2600 years to those children of the morning, those progenitors of the higher intellectual life of man, the ancient Greeks — even the walls that still in great measure encircle the city were built by those earliest hands; over one of the principal gates are dim worn re- liefs of a Siren and a Dolphin, reminiscent of the sea.
But there were Greeks in Italy before those colonists in Poseidonia. Just north and west of Naples is a tract where Hellenic civilization first established itself on these western shores — perhaps a thousand years before Christ. You may still see ancient Cumae — i. e., the height or Acropolis where fragments of the huge external walls of the old fortifications are visible, with openings and subterranean passages on the sides — no doubt, the tra- ditional home of the Sibyl — which Virgil has in mind, when he says,
"A spacious cave, within its foremost part,
Was hewed and fashioned by laborious art,
Through the hill's hollow sides; before the place,
A hundred doors, a hundred entries grace;
As many voices issue, and the sound
Of Sibyl's words as many times rebound."
And besides you may wander over the wide plains be- low the hill, where the ancient town spread itself out, now
REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY. 25 1,
all under-wood and vineyards, in the midst of which I came on the perfect outlines of a theatre, its retreating rows of seats now terraces for grapes. From this Greek town of Cuma'e came the alphabets of all the dif- ferent Italian tribes, this was the center whence spread the Hellenic forms of worship, and hence, too, it is said that Rome received the mysterious Sibylline books.
But hard by this seat of blooming Greek Ufe, between it and Naples, was a region of mystery and often of ter- ror. It has from time immemorial been a scene of vol- canic activity. When you stamp the ground with your feet, it sounds hollow under you. Hot steam and water sometimes rise to the surface. In a certain grotto gas oozes up from below, the fumes of which will render a dog insensible in a few seconds — or if you put a light to the vapor, it is at once extinguished. There is a lake about which the tradition goes that no bird could fly across it and live, owing to the poisonous exhalations; and about it in ancient times were deep, dark, densely- wooded ravines. This weird uncanny region is the Phle- graen Plain. It deeply affected the imagination of the Greeks, as doubtless it had that of the native tribes be- fore them. If the earth is ordinarily quiet, here it was evident that mighty forces lay beneath it ; this was their outlet, this the means of communication with them; in other words, here was the entrance to that deep, dark underworld, into which, it vv^as believed, the shadows of spirits of the dead were gathered — ^but which ordinarily seemed so inaccessible and far away. Homer knew the region, at least from hearsay — ^here in the dark ravines about the poisonous lake were the dismal, sunless Cim- merians mentioned by him; here coming up through a cleft or fissure in the ground, thronged the spirits of the
252 REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY.
dead with whom Ulysses had converse. Virgil describes it more particularly. He speaks of the "deep forests and impenetrable night," of the gates to the imderworld as being always open, the descent thither easy and the re- turn hard, of the innavigable lake,
"O'er whose unhappy waters, void of light, No bird presumes to steer his airy flight; Such deadly stenches from the depth arise, And steaming sulphur, that infects the skies; From hence, the Grecian bards their legends make. And give the name, Avernus, to the lake."
It gave me an extraordinary sensation to touch the very borders of the imaginary underworld of the an- cient time. I had not realized that the Greeks definitely located it, any more than Christians do heaven (or the way to heaven) now. Indeed a guide will pretend to lead you to the exact traditional spot and will take you a ways down the dark passage if you wish; you can even get on the back of a man afterwards who will substitute for Charon and carry you across the river Acheron — and whether you do this or whether oppressed by the dark- ness and the mystery, the number of turns you have made, and the depths to which you have descended, you prefer to betake yourself as quickly as possible back to the upper air and the light of day, and whether the pas- sage and the waters are a real reminiscence of the old traditional way to the abode of the dead or are simply what remains of an underground tunnel which the Em- peror Augustus made to connect Lake Avernus with a naval harbor near by, whatever the facts, there is no doubt at all that this region of which Lake Avernus is the center was regarded with an altogether peculiar awe in the ancient time as a point of contact between this world and that other shadowy realm into which men were be-
REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY. 253
lieved to descend when they died. Even to Dante, Hell at least was under the surface of the earth and the im- agery with which he describes his descent thitherward is all vaguely reminiscent of the descent of Aeneas which Virgil portrays — Virgil indeed is his guide as the Sibyl had been Aeneas's; and when one reads in the first lines of Dante's great poem of the dark wood in which he found himself, one cannot help recalling the old-time sunless shores of Avernus.
There are other traces in Italy of the ancient world, so long vanished — Sicily particularly is rich with them; there are temples at Girgenti that rival those of Paes- tum; there is one at Segesta, high up on a lovely green hill, that seemed a dream of beauty as I looked up at it from afar, and was no less wonderful and majestic as I approached it: there were no human habitations near save that of the custodian, and great gray mountains made its background — one wondered how the beautiful creation ever rose there, till one saw on a neighboring hill the semi-circular rows of a large theatre and learned that once upon a time the region was covered by an im- portant Greek or rather Hellenised town. And, though not for its religious connections, how can I fail to men- tion Syracuse — "the greatest of Greek cities and the fair- est of all cities" as Cicero called it, the leader of the west- ern Greeks against their enemies near Cumae and else- where, the city in which Aeschylus flourished and where Pindar sang, which at last defeated Athens itself and put an end to her brief-lived, brilliant empire, and where the most impressive thing to me about its Christian Cathe- dral was the grand columns built into its walls (or rather between which and against which its walls were built) which belonged to the ancient Greek temple of
254 REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY.
Athene. Southern Italy and Sicily were, indeed "Magna Graecia" (Greater Greece) — and after seeing what I did I realized the significance of that title, as I never had before.
I pass over the remains of old Rome — one must limit himself somewhere, and the striking things like the Forum, the Colosseum, the great Aqueducts are better known to most Americans anyway, at least through pic- tures and descriptions; I pass over even the remains, so interesting to the student of religious history, of early Christianity — particularly those which speak eloquently of the terribly adverse fates against which the follow- ers of a new gospel had to contend, who witnessed to their faith by martyrdom and died when it was better not to live — ^those silent catacombs, crowded with bones and dust which though dead yet seem to speak to us, and now and then rudely yet sweetly adorned with portraits of the new Lord and Saviour of men, and with inscriptions ex- pressive not only of peace but of joy and triumph — I pass over all this and come down to the modern world, Italy as we see it to-day.
Italy is still three-quarters mediaeval and feudal, said recently one of Italy's well known public men. At least, the Middle Ages do not seem far back. How strange the contrast to one coming from America, where we, of course, have forts on our coast lines or in frontier towns for defense against the Indians, but hardly, with few ex- ceptions, elsewhere ! SupfMDse Chicago were encircled with a high wall, suppose St. Louis were, suppose Mil- waukee were — suppose the lesser towns about had such battlements around them, which hid all from sight except the church steeples and the roofs of houses; that high towers rose at intervals along the walls, and that here and there was an opening or gate through which all passing
REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY. ±S5
in and out had to be done; — what would it mean? Evi- dently that the populations inside them were more or less in a state of fear of chance foes outside them or of one another. It would mean that there was no common gov- ernment over all the towns, which protected them and each against the others and forbade war between them; it would mean that each really was a government by it- self and perhaps forced to use these means of defence. Well, that was very much the condition of Italian cities in the Middle Ages and later, the evidences of which are before your eyes. After the dissolution of the Roman Empire and its feeble successors, Italy relapsed into a state that it would be very near the truth to call anarchy — not meaning by that violence and disorder necessarily, but simply the absence of central and all embracing gov- ernment. Each group of people defended itself as well as it could, did what was right in its own eyes — and when it was ambitious and strong enough, it was apt to covet the possessions or trade of other groups and to resort to war to get what it coveted. The group might be more or less of a democracy, or it might have a despot for a ruler; this would make little difference so far as its pro- tection was concerned or in its ambitions and in the vio- lent measures to which it might resort. Fortifications such as we have on the borders of our country, each group had about the few square miles that its territory covered. In the city which I only left to take my steamer home, Siena, the great massive walls with here and there a ruinous tower still rise as they did hundreds of years ago — and to-day you cannot (coming from Florence or elsewhere) go into those tortuous narrow streets, lined with old gray houses and palaces, or out (from the city) into the soft, undulating country round about, covered
256 REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY.
with vineyards and silver-green olive trees, without pass ing through great gates that yet bear their mediaeval names, and where as the peasants enter them, they have still to pay taxes on whatever wine and oil and eatables they bring in. Not sixty miles away is Florence, and I shall not -soon forget the impression made on me by see- ing in the Great Hall of its chief public building frescoes of the assault on Siena by the Florentine forces — an as- sault which had for its result the subjugation of one old- time sister republic to another. So Pisa, still nearer to Florence, at one time one of the first commercial towns of the Mediterranean, Pisa which had repelled the Sara- cens and won victories over them in Sardinia, Sicily and Africa, was subjugated by Florence — and in the Great Hall are frescoes of that triumph too. And as Pisa and Siena by Florence, so Amalfi at a still earlier time, when it was the foremost naval and commercial port of Italy, was reduced by Pisa, and later Venice fought a duel almost to the death with Genoa, and what Venice failed to accomplish was completed by Milan. Why, I have seen two remnants of towns high up on the beau- tiful hills behind Amalfi, on opposite sides of what is little more than a great ravine, around which I often passed in a few minutes, Ravello and Scala, that were once possessed with a feud that led them to almost anni- hilate each other, the public hostilities running into all manner of petty private harrying, so that the peasants from one side of the ravine could not venture into their fields to till them without danger of being beset by ene- mies of the neighboring town. I think I never before so vividly realized the moral significance of strong, central government, as on reading the tale of that awful persis- tent feud which simply would have been impossible had
REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY. 257
both cities belonged, been parts of, one state. Italian cities were (in the main) then what nations still are — each the judge of its own right, each ready at a provoca- tion to go to war and each having to defend itself in time of war; really a state of anarchy, just as internationally there is a state of anarchy in the world now — with the
i deplorable result that the stronger were ever destroying or crippling the weaker instead of all working together according to their differing gifts in the harmony of a commonwealth. But the anarchy went further. In Florence, in Siena you may see grim towers not only on the city wall's but in the city streets — even in modernized Rome you may see one or two huge remnants of them, and in the little town of San Gemignano, half way between Florence and Siena, you see them shooting up into the blue (the town itself is on a high hill) like sky-scrapers, only a little more picturesque. Let no one think that they were put up for ornament or a picturesque effect — the truth is they served for private individual defense and war as the city walls and towers did for public. Here the nobles forti- fied themselves against the people and against one an- other. At times they and their retainers would descend for street fights. Family feuds were numerous. Mur- der was common and there was often no thought of pun- ishing it. We talk of footpads — ^but then it was all in the day and sometimes as a man was coming out of church or even under the altar in the church. What was the meaning of this? There was no public protection, or next to none — hence private protection; there was no public punishment, or very little, hence private vengeance. This is simply anarchy carried a degree further down; each individual doing what is right in his own eyes as
258 REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY.
well as each city. We have all heard of those horrible secret organizations among the lower classes of Italians, called the Mafia and Camorra ; and we have a vague idea of Italian criminality as something peculiar and ab- normal— I know too little about the subject, but I ven- ture to suspect that the Mafia at least was in its origin a kind of poor man's vigilance committee or lynching asso- ciation and reflects as much on general political condi- tions as it does on the half-civilized men who formed it, and that if the individual Italian, too, more easily uses his knife or his gun than other people, it is because from long hereditary experience he has no confidence in anything else — and not that he is essentially lawless. It is an in- teresting fact (though here I am anticipating) that since Italy has been unified under one government, and the be- ginnings of a civilized order have been felt all over that distracted land, crime has diminished — the homicides that were something over eleven in a hundred thousand in 1880 were only something over six in 1899; carrying concealed weapons, even knives with spring-blades, ,i§ now prohibited; and brigandage too is disappearing, the isolated cases of highway robbery, says Baedecker, being scarcely distinguishable from similar crimes in other countries.
But if such, roughly speaking, was the civil order (or lack of order), what was the religious? In the absence of an organized state, the nobles and the priests were the natural leaders of the people. But did they lead ? While the nobles defended and guided the people outwardly, did the priests elevate and renovate the sentiments? It is hard to make out that the church exercised any appre- ciable moral influence on the people. What a paradox it is that strikes our eyes in Italy! Everywhere in the
REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY. 259
churches (and for that matter out of them) figures of gentleness, of compassion, of wilHngly endured suffering, look down upon you; apparently it is a religion of mild- ness and love such as the world (at least, our Western world) has never seen before. Christ on the cross, the soft, tender Virgin face with her sweet child, — these are no heroes, victors in any worldly sense: the chants, the prayers, the Misereres are all to mercy and for mercy. And yet the people actually, once outside the church or away from the shrine, and sometimes in the sacred pres- ence itself, were practically uninfluenced, if not untouched, by all this — they followed their natural animal instincts, grabbed, fought, gloated in victory like any barbarian who had never heard of Christ. And the priests were often little better — if they performed their stated functions, they did their duty, and religion became chiefly a thing of routine, very practical indeed in undertaking any haz- ardous enterprse or at the approach of death, since there- by Unseen Favor was won — but this rather a regenera- tion of the heart, and a renovation of the life. Indeed, the church, as an ecclesiastical organism, became ani- mated with the same spirit as the nobility, annexing house to house and land to land; bishops often were secular princes — ^there came to be a whole series of petty Papal states, and the head of the church himself was sometimes as avaricious, as intriguing, as domineering and as un- scrupulous as any old-time Roman emperor — so that one might have been tempted to invert the Emperor Julian's cry, and instead of "O Christ, thou hast conquered!" say "O Rome, thou hast conquered." The Catholic Church became a part of that unmoral and immoral world it was meant to redeem. Instead of leading the people, it sat on the people and oppressed them and drained them; it
26o REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY.
made them believe it had a right to because it held the keys of heaven and hell; it left them ignorant and kejyt them ignorant, because knowledge might have dissipated this superstition. I have been speaking in the past tense, but here, unlike the mediaeval political conditions to which I was alluding a moment ago, the past insensibly merges into the present. Though bishops are no longer secular lords, though the Pope is no longer a political sovereign, the general aspect of Catholicism is not much changed. I confess that with Emerson,
"I like a church, I like a cowl,
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles."
— ^but I like them no better after having been to Italy. Abstractly they have the same attraction, but the actu- ality is somewhat chilling — and I can now understand those Catholic friends of Cardinal Newman who did not wish him to go to Rome. Allowing for the good and holy men and women who are in the church, allowing for such saints as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena, who now and then arise and show that the true seed of the gospel of love and self-renunciation still slumbers there, though almost buried, my general im- pression is that the Catholic Church of Italy belongs frankly to the things and the order of this world, that is destined to pass the way. It does not lead the world or lift the world, in any direction — it is a part of old hab- its, prejudices, ignorances, lusts and fears, on the ashes of which a new world must arise. It even opposes pro- gress and keeps the world back. Now, in those parts of Italy where its sway is most complete — in the southern part of the peninsula, in Sardinia and in Sicily — illiteracy is greatest and crime most abounds. It opposed the great-
REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY. 261
est blessing which Italy has had in hundreds, if not thou- sands of years — that unification under the democratic monarchy of the House of Savoy which took place scarcely more than a generation ago. It opposes the forces that make for social progress, the schools of the^ new state, the rising aspirations of the working classes — and to priests who are touched with the ardor of the new day, it says, particularly through the mouth of the present Pope, Be silent or get out. It is evident that this religion is a survival, a remnant — and reduced sometimes to the expedients of dying things, as when it advertised a while ago, on an official announcement of a Pilgrimage to Lourdes, that among the first hundred purchasers of tickets there would be distributed by lot two prizes of a hundred lire each.* And actually, as I gather, the people are less and less frequenting the churches — and I found myself wondering at times, in case the churches were ab- solutely thrown upon themselves for their support, in- stead of being a public charge, how far the people of their own volition would support them.
The churches are more and more becoming interesting art museums, the old walls and gates and towers are pic- turesque relics of a political era happily gone by; the living things that are of promise in Italy are different. No art, no poetry, no romance attaches to them — thev have a shadowy side to them in some cases ; but they ap- peal to those who take an interest in life as it is lived now, in the struggles of what is practically a new people to maintain itself and to advance toward a higher type of human existence. I have already referred to the better public order — so that life and traveling have now become as safe as in most European countries. The people are
*So E. Nathan, "Vent' Anni de Vita Italiana," p. 399.
262 REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY.
poor, pitiably poor — (their past leaders have not led nor taught them, but have plucked them, both noble and priest) ; hence the enormous emigration to America — the greatest from the poorest parts; and yet the Italians are a laborious people — we know it here, and I have been struck with it. abroad; they often become relatively rich in America — and now the tendency is slowly upward at home. Tax statistics show that they eat more, and drink more, and smoke more — and better tobacco, than a quarter of a century ago. Begging is less, — in some places, the public authorities make set effort to break it up. Moreover, the collective nation is showing capacity — as much as could be expected in a fledgling — in large economic enterprises, like the post and telegraph office, like the railroads, most of which are now in public hands, in the manufacture of tobacco — on which there is a profit yearly of over 50 million lire, or 10 millions of dollars. The taxes indeed are enormous — ^they fall on all man- ner of consumption; the Italians have not learned any more than other peoples that taxes ought to fall heaviest on incomes that are least earned — and indeed land assess- ments seem to be now lower than they were a while ago. Private interests know how to protect themselves and to push themselves in various ways — and there appears to be more or less jobbery and corruption in the governing circles in their dealings with private contractors. There are, too, gigantic war expenses — in part, no doubt nec- essary for defense against Italy's northern neighbor, from which she bought her partial freedom at so great a price. But though laboring and stumbling, this young people moves on — and in one direction is making heroic efforts : I refer to education. Incredible as it may seem, the illiter- ates in 1872 were over 72 per cent, of the population ; in
REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY. 263
1882 the percentage was reduced to 67, and in 1901 to 56. You see school houses frequently — often the newest and smartest looking public building in the place. Up in the little mountain towns of the Tyrol I saw them: and where the town is still too poor to put up a special struc- ture— you will see the sign over the door of some old convent, now turned to a better use. To show you how earnest the spirit may be, let me quote an incident. It is a Sunday morning in the Pistoian mountain region (north of Florence), and up toward the summit of a hill on which stands the parish church, a long procession is moving. They are old men and women, youths, boys and girls, even little children. They carry no religious em- blems— this strange procession — no torches or images or relics or even a Madonna. Silently they mount step by step, each one carrying a big stone — or as big as his or her strength will allow. When they reach the little pi- azza in front of the church, they deposit their heavy bur- dens, and turn again down the hill to fetch more. The priest is there, a young man of refined face, with a sweet smile, in a worn cassock, to receive them. And on in- quiry one learns that these peasants have become keenly conscious that they must educate their children, that the communal school is far away, that they have appealed in vain for one more convenient to them, that they have thenee determined to build one for themselves, that on Sundays and other festival days they — all of them, old and young — are bringing up the needed materials, and each head of a family gives two lire a month in addition — and that the curate, the soul of the project, whose sti- pend is 400 lire a year (not a hundred dollars) has given 300 lire to buy the necessary land. And Sundays and Festas the work goes on ; occasionally a passer-by assists ;
264 REFLECTIONS OF A TRAVELER IN ITALY.
word in time reaches the ear of the government and it aids ; and at last, the building is up, the roof on, the tri- color is unfurled over it, and the church bells ring.*
My friends, something is to be expected of a people who (if only occasionally) make sacrifices like that. Yes, priests have human hearts and can respond to great senti- ments— and gradually, little by little, the whole Italian people may move on to a sublimer destiny. Another en- couraging thing is how in this old feudal country, with habits of lordliness on one side and of uncomplaining submission on the other, the laboring classes are begin- ning to assert themselves, and in their unions and in the Socialist party are putting forth their demands. No mat- ter if the demands are excessive, no matter if the work- ing-people are ill-considered in much that they do, in movement, in aggression there is life, while in the old- time contentment and submission there were only impov- erishment and death.
To my mind, Italy rich in her historic memories, rich in her art treasures, rich in her possession of a Dante, of a Savonarola, of a St. Francis, is not rich in these alone — she has Mazzini and Garibaldi as nearer voices, she has come to self-consciousness, she is not and will not any longer be the vassal of Spain or France or Aus- tria or the Pope, she will be herself, a sister among the great nations of the world, an independent worker along the paths of civilization and human progress.
*See E. Nathan, op. cit., pp. 406-8.
SONGS AND RESPONSES FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL
THE CITY OF THE LIGHT.
Have you heard the golden city
Mentioned in the legends old? Everlasting light shines o'er it,
■Wondrous tales of it are told. Only righteous men and women
Dwell within its gleaming wall; Wrong is banished from its borders,
Justice reigns supreme o'er all.
We are builders of that city,
All our joys and all our groans Help to rear its shining ramparts.
All our lives are building-stones. But the work that we have builded.
Oft with bleeding hands, and tears. And in error and in anguish.
Will not perish with the years.
It will be at last made perfect,
In the universal plan ; It will help to crown the labors
Of the toiling hosts of man. It will last and shine transfigured
In the final reign of right; It will merge into the splendors
Of the City of the Light.
— Dr. Felix Adler.
Music— Ethical Songs, 131.
ONWARD, BROTHERS.
Onward, brothers, march still onward.
Side by side and hand in hand ; Ye are bound for man's true kingdom.
Ye are an increasing band. Tho' the way seem often doubtful.
Hard the toil ye may endure, Tho' at times your courage falter.
Yet the promised land is sure.
265
2(^ SONGS AND RESPONSES
Olden sages saw it dimly,
And their joy to rapture wrought; Living men have gazed upon it,
Standing on the hills of thought. All the past has done and suffered,
All the daring and the strife, All has helped to mould the future,
Make us masters of our life.
Still brave deeds and kind are needed,
Noble thoughts and feelings fair; Ye, too, must be strong and suffer.
Ye, too, have to do and dare. Onward, brothers, march still onward,
March still onward, hand in hand; Till ye see at last man's kingdom.
Till ye reach the promised land.
—H. H. Ellis.
Music— Ethical Songs, C9.
THE MORNING LIGHT IS BREAKING.
The morning light is breaking
Tlie darkness disappears. The light of truth in coming
Will bless all future years; For, lo, the days are hastening,
By prophet bards foretold. When, with the reign of kindness,
Shall come the age of gold.
The morning light is breaking
The darkness disappears. Humanity is waking,
And peace on earth appears ; The winds shall tell the story,
The waves shall waft it o'er. And now the age of glory
Shall come to ev'ry shore.
The morning light is breaking.
The darkness disappears. Good tidings to all nations.
To set at rest all fears ; And over ev'ry ocean
The story shall be borne. Of kindness and protection
To beast, and bird and man.
Tune— "Webb."
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 267
DOING RIGHT.
Courage, ever; do not stumble;
Tho' thy path be dark as night, There's a star to guide the humble;
Trust within, and do the right: Do the right; do the right; Trust within, and do the right.
Let the road be long and dreary,
And its ending out of sight. Foot it bravely, strong or weary.
Trust within, and do the right: Do the right; do the right; Trust within, and do the right.
Some will hate thee, some will love thee.
Some will flatter, some will slight; Heed not man, but look above thee;
Trust within, and do the right: Do the right; do the right; Trust within, and do the right.
Music— Church Hymnal. 342, 2d tune.
RAISE YOUR STANDARD.
Raise your standard, brothers. Higher still and higher!
Let the thought of justice All your deeds inspire!
Let your eyes be kindling With a love-lit fire!
Virtue for our armor,
Justice for our sword. Human love our master
Human love our lord; So shall we be marching.
Fighting in accord.
Rest not till within you Strength of virtue grow.
Till with streams of kindness Heart and mind o'erflow,
Till a sense of kindred Bind both high and low.
Virtue for our armor, etc.
268 SONGS AND RESPONSES
Fight till you have silenced All the rebel throng,
Silenced lawless passions, Luring men to wrong —
Fight till all things human To the Right belong.
Virtue for our armor, etc.
Music— Ethical Songs, 59.
-Gustav Spiller.
WORK FOR THE NIGHT IS COMING.
Work, for the night is coming.
Work through the morning hours Work, while the dew is sparkling,
Work 'mid springing flowers; Work when the day grows brighter,
Work in the glowing sun; Work, for the night is coming
When man's work is done.
Work, for the night is coming,
Work through the sunny noon; Fill brightest hours with labor,
Rest comes sure and soon; Give every flying minute
Something to keep in store; Work, for the night is coming
When man works no more.
Work, for the night is coming,
Under the sunset skies. See, rosy tints are glowing,
Work, for daylight flies; Work, till the last beam fadeth —
Fadeth to shine no more; Work, for the night is coming
When man's work is o'er. Old Tune. —Sidney Dyer.
MORNING BREAKETH ON THEE.
Morning breaketh on thee Fresh life's pulses beat,
Earth and sky new-kindled Once again to greet.
I
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 269
With a thousand voices
Woods and valleys sound, Leaf and flower with dewdrops.
Sparkle all around.
Day is all before thee,
Vanished is the night, Wouldst thou all accomplish,
Look towards the light; Let a mighty purpose
In thee stir and live After all that's highest
Evermore to strive.
As through mist and vapor
Breaks the morning sun. Shine and work, thou spirit,
Till thy task is done. When from farthest hill-top
Fades the fire of day. Blest in blessing others
Shalt thou toil alway.
—Rev. T. W. Chignell.
Music— Ethical Songs. 32.
SING, LET US SING.
Sing, let us sing, with a right good will!
Cheerily, cheerily singing! Helping the world with joy to fill,
With pleasant voices ringing.
Work, let us work, with a steadfast mind!
Earnestly, earnestly working! Trying our best to help mankind,
Out duty never shirking.
Love, let us love with a fervent heart!
Tenderly, tenderly loving! So we'll take our humble part
In needless ills removing.
Live, let us live, with the noblest aim !
Patiently, patiently learning! With lofty thought to keep the flame
Of high endeavor burning.
Music— Church Hymnal. 98. 2d tune.
270 SONGS AND RESPONSES
LOVE.
Love is kind and suffers long, Love is meek and thinks no wrong, Love than Death itself more strong, Therefore, give us love.
Prophecy will fade away. Melting in the light of day; Love will ever with us stay. Therefore, give us love.
Faith will vanish into sight, Hope be emptied in delight; Love in heaven will shine more bright, Therefore, give us love.
Music— Church Hymnal, 527, 1st tune.
— C. Wordsworth.
LET IN LIGHT.
Let in light — 'the holy light
Brothers, fear it never; Darkness smiles, and wrong grows right;
Let in light forever. Let in light! When this shall be,
Joy at once and duty. Men in common things shall see
Goodness, truth and beauty.
Let in light — the holy light.
Brothers, fear it never; Darkness smiles, and wrong grows right;
Let in light for ever.
I will hope and work and love.
Singing to the hours, While the stars are bright above.
And below the flowers. Who, in such a world as this.
Could not heal his sorrow? Welcome this sweet hour of bliss!
Sunrise comes to-morrow.
Let in light, etc.
—W. M. W, Call
Music— Ethical Songs, 108.
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 27I
THE HEART IT HATH ITS OWN ESTATE.
The heart it hath its own estate.
The mind it hath its wealth untold; It needs not fortune to be great,
While there is wealth surpassing gold.
No matter which way fortune leans,
Wealth makes not happiness secure; A little mind hath little means,
A narrow heart is always poor.
'Tis not the house that honor makes,
True honor is a thing divine; It is the mind precedence takes.
It is the spirit makes the shrine.
— Charles Swain.
Music— Ethical Songs, 10.
FEAR NOT THE TRUTH.
Be true to ev'ry inmost thought;
Be as thy thought, thy speech; What thou hast not by suffering bought,
Presume thou not to teach.
Woe, woe to him, on safety bent,
Who creeps to age from youth, Failing to grasp life's intent,
Because he fears the truth.
Show forth thy light! If conscience gleam,
Cherish the rising glow ; The smallest spark may shed its beam
O'er thousand hearts below.
Face thou the wind! Though safer seiem
In shelter to abide; We were not made to sit and dream;
The true must first be tried.
— Henry Alford.
Music — Ethical Songs, 1.
LAND OF GREATNESS.
Land of greatness ! Home of glory !
Mighty birthplace of the free ! Famed alike in song and story!
All thy sons shall honor thee.
2/2 SONGS AND RESPONSES
North and South are firmly bonded, East and West as one unite;
All by honor well compounded Strong in striving for the right.
Noble deeds of old inspiring
Every heart with lofty aim; Now our emulation firing,
Lead us on to greater fame. So shall love and truth unshaken
Sturdy courage, honest worth, Mighty echoes still awaken
To the farthest bounds of earth.
Homes by safe defense surrounded
Rights which make our freedom sure, Laws on equal justice founded.
These shall loyalty secure. While with love and zeal unceasing
We are joining heart and hand, Shine with brightness yet increasing,
Shine, O dearest Fatherland.
Music — Haydn, Church Hymnal, 190.
AMERICA.
My country, 'tis of thee. Sweet land of liberty.
Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims' pride, From every mountain side
Let freedom ring.
My native country, thee, Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love ; I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills. My heart with rapture thrills.
Like that above.
Let music swell the breeze. And ring from all the trees
Sweet Freedom's song; Let mortal tongues awake, Let all that breathe partake.
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 2/3
Let rocks their silence break, The sound prolong.
Our Father's God, to Thee, Author of Liberty,
To Thee we sing; Long may our land be bright With freedom's holy light, Protect us with Thy might.
Great God, our King.
— Samuel Francis Smith.
Music— Church Hymnal, 309.
THE LIGHT.
The light pours down from heaven,
And enters where it may; The eyes of all earth's children
Are cheered by one bright day. The soul can shed a glory
On every work well done; As even things most lowly
Are radiant in the sun.
Then let each human spirit
Enjoy the vision bright. The peace of inward purity
Shall spread like heaven's own light; 'Till earth becomes love's temple,
And every human heart Shall join in one great service.
Each happy in his part.
— From the German.
Music— Church Hymnal. 283.
THESE THINGS SHALL BE.
These things shall be ! A loftier race
Than e'er the world hath known, shall rise.
With flower of freedom in their souls. And light of science in their eyes.
Nation with nation, land with land, Unarm'd shall live as comrades free;
In ev'ry heart and brain shall throb The pulse of one fraternity.
274 SONGS AND RESPONSES
New hearts shall bloom of loftier mold And mightier music thrill the skies;
And ev'ry life shall be a song, When all the earth is paradise.
These things — they are no dreams — shall be For happier men when we are gone;
Those golden days for them shall dawn, Transcending aught we gaze upon.
— /. A. Symonds.
Music— Ethical Songs, 10.
SINGING JOYFULLY.
For the sky so bright and blue, For the fields so fresh with dew. For the hearts so fond and true.
We will go, to and fro,
Singing, singing joyfully.
For the land so rich and wide, Land for which the bravest died. All its pure and lofty pride.
We will go, to and fro,
Singing, singing joyfully.
For the ways by wisdom trod. For the feet with kindness shod. For the perfect peace of love.
We will go, to and fro.
Singing, singing joyfully.
— /. W. Chadwick.
Music— Selected.
NOBILITY.
True worth is in being, not seeming —
In doing each day that goes by Some little good — ^not in the dreaming
Of great things to do by and by. For whatever men say in their blindness
And spite of the fancies of youth. There's nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.
We get back our mete as we measure, We cannot do wrong and feel right,
Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure. For justice avenges each slight.
r
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 275
The air for the wing of the sparrow,
The bush for the robin and wren, But alway the path that is narrow
And straight, for the children of men.
We cannot make bargains for blisses,
Nor catch them like fishes in nets; And sometimes the thing our life misses.
Helps more than the thing which it gets. For good lieth not in pursuing,
Nor gaining of great nor of small, But just in the doing, and doing
As we would be done by, is all.
Music — Selected.
— Alice Cary.
THINK TRULY.
Thou must be true thyself.
If thou the true wouldst teach; Thy soul must overflow, if thou
Another's soul wouldst reach. The overflow of heart it needs To give the lips full speech.
Think truly, and thy thoughts
Shall the world's famine feed ; Speak truly, and each word of thine
Shall be a fruitful seed; Live truly, and thy life shall be
A great and noble creed.
— Horatius Bonar, D. D.
Music — ^Ethical Hymn Book, 16.
THE DAWNING OF LIBERTY.
Out of the dark the circling sphere Is rounding onward to the light;
We see not yet the full day here. But we do see the paling night.
And hope, that lights her fadeless fires. And faith, that shines as spotless will.
And love, that courage re-inspires — These stars have betn above us still.
O sentinels, whose tread we heard Through long hours when we could not see,
2y6 SONGS AND RESPONSES
Pause now, exchange with cheer the word — Th' unchanging watchword, Liberty!
Look backward, how much has been won, Look round, how much is yet to win !
The watches of the night are done, The watches of the day begin.
— Samuel Longfellow.
Music— Ethical Hymn Book. 19.
BE LORD OF SELF.
How happy is he born and taught
Who serveth not another's will — Whose armor is his honest thought,
And simple truth his only skill !
Whose passions not his. masters are, Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied to this vain world by care For public fame or private breath!
This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands.
And having nothing, yet hath all.
— Sir Henry Wotton.
:Mu8ic— Ethical Hymn Book. 21.
THE PATH.
He who walks in virtue's way. Firm and fearless, walketh surely;
Diligent while yet 'tis day. On he speeds, and speeds securely.
Flowers of peace beneath him grow, Suns of pleasure brighten o'er him;
Memory's joys behind him go, Hope's sweet angels fly before him.
Thus he moves from stage to stage. Smiles of earth and sky attending;
Softly sinking down to age. And at last the heights ascending.
— Sir John Bowring.
Music — Ethical Hymn Book, 40.
i
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 2'J'l
WHEN WORK IS DELIGHT.
The morning light flingeth
Its wakening ray, And as the day bringeth
The work of the day, The happy heart singeth;
Awake and away.
No life can be dreary
When work is delight; Though evening be weary,
Rest Cometh at night; And all will be cheery if
Faithful and right.
When duty is treasure,
And labor is joy, How sweet is the leisure
Of ended employ ! Then only can pleasure
Be free from alloy.
Music— Ethical Hymn Book, 94.
-F. R. Havergat
THE NEW ORDER.
A nobler order yet shall be Than any that the world hath known,
When men obey, and yet are free. Are loved, and yet can stand alone.
Oh, boldly speak thy secret thought,
And tell thy want, and by the wise Be unto nobler action brought.
And breathe the air of purer skies.
Strive less to bring the lofty down
Than raise the low to be thy peers; Love is the only golden crown
That will not tarnish with the years.
Soon the wild days of war shall end.
And days of happier work begin, When love and toil shall man befriend.
And help to free the world from sin.
—W. M. W. Call.
Music — Ethical Hymn Book, 115.
2/8 SONGS AND RESPONSES
THE FRUITS OF LABOR.
Work! It is thy highest mission, Work! All blessing centres there;
Work for culture, for the vision Of the true, and good, and fair.
Work! By labor comes th' unsealing Of the thoughts that in thee burn;
Comes in action the revealing Of the truths thou hast to learn.
Work! In helping loving union With thy brethren of mankind;
With the foremost hold communion. Succor those who toil behind.
For true work can never perish;
And thy followers in the way For thy works thy name shall cherish; —
f
—F. M. White.
Work! While it is called to-day
Music— Ethical Hymn Book, 121
DREAMER, ACT !
It is not dreaming and delay.
But doing something every day That wins the laurel and the bay.
And crowns the work of duty.
Be satisfied that thou art right, And that thy deed will bear the light.
Then execute it with thy might For that will be thy duty.
The planets as they roll on high,
The river as it rushes by. For ever and for ever cry,
"On, man, and do thy duty!"
All, all is working everywhere. In earth, in heaven, in sea, and air.
And nothing indolent is there To mar the perfect duty.
— Edward Capern.
Music— Ethical Hymn Book. 130.
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 279
THE INFLUENCE OF GOOD DEEDS.
Whene'er a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spok'n a noble thought Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise.
The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls, And lifts us unawares
Out of all meaner cares.
Honor to those whose words and deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs. And by their overflow
Raise us from what is low.
— H. W. Longfellow.
Music— Ethical Hymn Booli, 161.
CEASING TO GIVE, WE CEASE TO HAVE.
Make channels for the streams of love.
Where they may broadly run; And love has over-flowing streams
To fill them every one.
But if at any time we cease
Such channels to provide, The very founts of love for us —
Will soon be parched and dried.
For we must share, if we would keep,
That blessing from above; Ceasing to give, we cease to have;
Such is the law of love.
— R. C. French.
Music— Ethical Hymn Book. 170.
SPEAK OUT THE TRUTH.
He who has the truth, and keeps it. Keeps what not to him belongs.
But performs a selfish action That his fellow mortal wrongs.
He who seeks the truth and trembles At the dangers he must brave.
Is not fit to be a freeman, He at best is but a slave.
28o SONGS AND RESPONSES
He who hears the truth, and places
Its high promptings under ban, Loud may boast of all that's manly.
But can never be a man.
Be thou like the noble ancient — Scorn the threat that bids thee fear;
Speak! no matter what betide thee; Let them strike, but make them hear.
Be thou like the first apostles —
Be thou like heroic Paul ; If a free thought seek expression,
Speak it boldly — speak it all !
— /. G. Whittier.
Music— Ethical Hymn Book. 190.
TRUTH IS DAWNING.
Softly breaks the morning light O'er the peaceful slumb'ring earth.
Banishing the gloom of night Waking all things into mirth.
Rosy beams illume the hills
Then, descending, valleys glow; Now no cloud of darkness fills
Any spot of earth below.
Thus the truth in silent pow'r
Dawns upon the human brain, Touching first the heights that tow'r
Then, expanding, floods the plain.
— E. Toser.
Music— Ethical Hymn Book, 199.
THE FOUNTAIN— SPIRITUAL CONSTANCY.
Into the sunshine, full of the light.
Leaping and flashing, from morn 'til night ! Into the moonlight whiter than snow, Waving so flow'r like, when the winds blow !
Into the starlight rushing in spray, Happy by midnight, happy by day! Ever in motion, blithesome and cheery. Still climbing heavenward, never aweary.
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 281
Glad of all weathers, still seeming best, Upward or downward, motion thy rest; Full of a nature nothing can tame, Changed every moment, ever the same.
Ceaseless aspiring, ceaseless content, Darkness or sunshine thy element; Glorious fountain, let my heart be Fresh, changeful, constant, upward like thee!
— /. R. Lowell.
Music— Ethical Hymn Book. 53.
SPLENDOR OF THE MORNING.
Splendor of the morning sunlight
Shines into my heart to-day. Floods each cranny of my being
With new strength and spirit gay.
Let me use the golden hours
As they glide so swiftly by; Fill them with a precious freight of
Truth and Love and Knowledge high.
And when evening comes and kindling
Stars my conduct seem to ask. May I look aloft and tell them
I have finished well my task.
—Dr. Felix Adler.
Music— Ethical Hymn Book. 309.
GREETING TO THE SUN.
Good morning to you, glorious sun.
You bring the morning light; You pale the moon and stars from view
And drive away the night,
And drive away the night.
You waken every little bird
That sleeps upon a tree; You open all the flower buds.
Their golden hearts to see.
Their golden hearts to see.
You waken all the children, too. And seem to each to say.
282 SONGS AND RESPONSES
"Rise, dearest child, I bring to you Another happy day, Another happy day."
Music—Songs of the Child World, Gaynor.
NEW YEAR.
Another year of setting suns.
Of stars by night reveal'd, Of springing grass, of tender buds,
By winter's snows conceal'd.
Another year of summer's glow —
Of autumn's golden brown, Of waving fields, and ruddy fruit
The branches weighing down.
Another year of happy work
That better is than play. Of simple cares and love that grows
More sweet from day to day.
Another year to follow hard
Where better souls have stood. Another year of life's delight,
Another year for good.
— J. W. Chadwick.
Music— Ethical Hymn Book, 308.
SPRING TIME.
There's life abroad! From each green tree
A busy murmur swells ; The bee is up at early dawn.
Stirring the cowslip bells. There's motion in the lightest leaf
That trembles on the stream; The insect scarce an instant rests,
Light dancing in the beam.
There's life abroad! The silvery threads
That float about in air, Where'er their wanton flight they take,
Proclaim that life is there. And bubbles on the quiet lake.
And yonder music sweet. And stirrings in the rustling leaves,
The self -same tale repeat.
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 283
All Speak of life! And louder still
The spirit speaks within, O'erpowering with its strong deep voice
The world's incessant din; There's life without; and better far,
Within there's life and power. And energy of heart and will
To glorify each hour.
Music — Ethical Hymn Book, 257.
-Emily Taylor.
BIRD SONG.
All the birds have come again, Come again to greet us; And a joyous song they raise. Chirping, singing merry lays; Pleasant Springtime's happy days. Now return to meet us!
See how gaily one and all To and fro are springing! As their chanting meets my ear. Voices sweet I seem to hear. Wishing us a happy year, Blessings with it bringing.
What they teach us in their song
We must e'er be learning;
Let us ever cheerful be,
As the birds upon the tree,
Welcoming so joyously
Every spring returning.
— From the German.
SPRING SONG.
Tlirice welcome glance of smiling spring,
That lightens earth and sky! New rapture to the hills you bring,
Fresh life to heart and eye,
Fresh life to heart and eye.
Thrice welcome band of shining days,
That kiss the vernal mould! You fill the tree with starry sprays.
284 SONGS AND RESPONSES
The bush with sunset gold, The bush with sunset gold.
All hail thee, spirit-fire of May, That glows in every mead!
Ah, give me love to light my way. And hope, a winged seed. And hope, a winged seed.
Music — Songs of the Child World, Gaynor.
— Isabel R. Hunter.
THANKSGIVING SONG.
Summer ended, harvest o'er. From our heart our thanks we pour. For the valley's golden yield. For the fruit of tree and field.
For the care that while we slept. Watch o'er field and furrow kept. Watch o'er all the buried grain. Soon to spring to life again.
For the promise ever sure. That while heaven and earth endure. Seed-time, harvest, cold and heat Shall their yearly round complete.
Music — Selected.
HARVEST DAYS.
The harvest days are come again. The vales are surging with the grain. The happy work goes on amain.
Pale streaks of cloud scarce veil the blue,
Against the golden harvest hue
The autumn trees look fresh and new.
And wrinkled brows relax with glee. And aged eyes they laugh to see The sickles follow o'er the lea.
The wains the sunny slopes roll down, Afar the happy shout is blown Of children, and of reapers brown.
»
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 285
May we into time's furrow cast
Our deeds, as seed-corn, thick and fast,
Whose fruit eternally shall last.
— Frederick Tennyson.
Music — Ethical Hymn Book, 255.
AUTUMN SONG.
For autumn's golden days In loud thanksgiving raise.
Hand, heart and voice. The valleys smile and sing. Forest and mountains ring, The plains their tribute bring,
The streams rejoice.
For autumn's golden days Hearts, hands and voices raise,
AVith sweet accord. From field to garner throng. Bearing your sheaves along, Labor the harvest crowns
With full reward.
Music— Songs for Ethical Serrices.
RESPONSES.
SPRING
LEADER.— The storms of winter are over and gone and Spring in radiant beauty once more rules the earth.
SCHOOL. — All Nature rejoices, and we rejoice with her.
LEADER.-^Not a blade of grass, nor the tiniest flower, but speaks to us of unseen Power.
SCHOOL. — Rejoice and be glad! Let all the earth give forth praise.
LEADER. — We are glad for the renewal of life; for the prom- ise of harvest.
SCHOOL. — Our hearts and our voices unite in joyful praise.
LEADER, — The abundance of life which Nature bestows awakens strength within us.
SCHOOL. — ^May we use this strength aright and help each other.
286 SONGS AND RESPONSES
LEADER. — Let not selfishness steal from us the music and joy in our hearts.
SCHOOL. — But let us join in one chorus of helpfulness and
union.
LEADER. — Earth received her increase from Nature only after weary toil and patient waiting. So shall man by earnest effort and constant toil reach his goal.
AUTUMN RESPONSES. •. LEADER. — What things declare the year is ripe? SCHOOL. — The song of reapers by the wayside. LEADER. — ^The cornfields piled with tasseled grain. SCHOOL— ^The vineyards filled with purple clusters. LEADER. — Treasure of orchards fills our land. SCHOOL— -Fruits are their riches, gold and crimson. LEADER.— Where go the splendors of the leaves? SCHOOL.— They lie within the vales and hollows. LEADER.— They cloak the seed against the wind; SCHOOL.— They fill the mold with strength and virtue. LEADER.— The woods are strewn with falling nuts; SCHOOL.— The squirrel stores them in his hollow. LEADER.— The full-grown lamb is in the fold; SCHOOL.— The cricket chirps beside the furrow. LEADER.— All these are children of the Earth, SCHOOL.— And of the Earth we, too, are children. LEADER.— How may I add to Nature's store? SCHOOL— By strength of heart and joy of spirit. LEADER.— How shall my seedlings come to fruit? SCHOOL— With root of love, and branch of courage. LEADER.— What is the test my life must bear? SCHOOL— My life is tested in the harvest.
FOR AN ETHICAL SUNDAY SCHOOL. 287
HARVEST FESTIVAL.
SCHOOL (Singing) — Come, ye thankful people, come. Raise the song of Harvest Home; All is safely gathered in. Ere the winter storms begin; Every field doth food provide For our wants to be supplied; Come, together let us come. Raise the song of Harvest Home.
LEADER.— For what are we thankful?
SCHOOL. — We are thankful that once more our land has been blessed with an abundant harvest.
LEADER. — Rejoice and be glad that to us has been given the power of appreciation.
SCHOOL. — We do rejoice, and from our abundance bring an offering.
LEADER. — For what are we thankful?
iSCHOOL— Not only for the lavish gifts of Nature, but for life and for the opportunity to help one another.
LEADER.— For what are we thankful ?
SCHOOL. — For country, home and friends.
LEADER. — We show our gratitude in the spirit of good fellow- ship and in the effort to do unto others as we would they should do unto us.
SCHOOL (Singing)— All the world is Nature's field. Fruit unto her praise we yield; Wheat and tares together sown. Unto joy or sorrow grown: First the blade, and then the ear, Then the full corn shall appear. Blessed Harvest, grant that we Wholesome grain and pure may be.
GENERAL RESPONSES.
LEADER.— There is a light that lightens every man that comes into the world.
SCHOOL. — The kingdom of heaven is within.
288 SONGS AND RESPONSES
LEADER.— Honor thy father and thy mother.
SCHOOL.— Every one shall reverence his mother and his father.
LEADER. — 'Keep the commandments of thy father.
SCHOOL— And forsake not the teachings of thy mother.
LEADER. — Children are the crown of the old.
SCHOOL— Parents are the glory of the children.
LEADER, — My children, love ye one another.
SCHOOL— iAnd if thy brother does thee a wrong remember that he is thy brother.
LEADER. — Do unto others as ye would by them be done to.
SCHOOL. — Love thou thy neighbor as thyself.
LEADER.— Ye shall not lie.
SCHOOL.— Nor deceive.
LEADER.— As filth is upon the hands:
SCHOOL — So is an impure thought in the mind.
LEADER. — Remember the poor. Thou shalt not h^den thy heart nor close thy hand against thy poor brother, but thou shalt surely give him sufficient for his needs and that which he wanteth.
SCHOOL— And let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth.
LEADER. — Youth is the spring time, manhood is the summer, sow then thy seed in the spring time of youth.
SCHOOL. — That the fruit may appear in due season.
LEADER. — ^Hereafter shall come a new heaven and a new earth ; on that day all men shall speak a pure language, and no one shall hurt another any more, and no one shall wrong another any more, but the earth shall be full of goodness and truth as the waters upon the sea.
SCHOOL (Singing) — -A nobler order yet shall be.
Than any that the world hath known, When men obey and yet are free, Are loved, and yet can stand alone.
BJ 1
V.15
Ethical addresses
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
|
■ |
■ |
^IgMjjj^Sm |
|||
|
■ |
■ |
■ |
m |
i^i!:''^