The safest creed : and twelve other recent discourses of reason

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

THE

SAFEST CREED

AND

TWELVE OTHER RECENT

DISCOURSES OF REASON.

BY

OCTAVIUS B. FROTHINGHAM.

NEW YORK:

ASA K. BUTTS & CO., PUBLISHERS,

80 Dey Street.

1874.

Langs, Little & Co.,

PM.INTERS, ELECTEOTYPERS AND STEREOTYPED,

108 to 114 Wooster Street, N. Y.

JB"R
F?3s

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

^J I. — The Safest Creed 5

1 II. — The Radical Belief 22

4 III. — The Radical's Root 44

J

r IV.— The Joy of a Free Faith Gl

«N

V. — Living Faith 77

-£ VI. — The Gospel of To-day 93

VII. — The Gospel of Character 110

£ VIII. — The Scientific Aspect of Prayer 181

IX.— The Naked Truth 149

A X. — T'he Dying and the Living God 1GG

p> XL — TnE Infernal and TnE Celestial Love 182

XII. — The Immortalities of Man 200

XIII. — The Victory over Death 220

I.

THE SAFEST CREED.

r | THE great word in the doctrinal part of the New Test-
-■- anient is Salvation. The great word of the Protest-
ant theology is Salvation. Salvation is Safety. Safety is
health. " Safe and sound," we say ; that is sound which
is safe; that is safe which is sound. Health consists in
the proper adjustment of the creature to his conditions.
Health of body consists in this ; it is a perfect under-
standing between the body and its material surroundings,
climate, temperature, food, occupations. The physical
constitution is safe when no inherited disease undermines
its vitality and exposes it to hidden assault from within
the citadel, and when no ill-adjustment of circumstances
threatens it with malady.

The safety of the mind consists in a harmonious rela-
tion with the intellectual world, which assures to it a
healthful, happy activity, undisturbed by tormenting
doubt or disabling fear, uncramped by prejudices that
limit inquiry, or bigotries that prevent culture. The
safety of the heart consists in the fortunate direction and
felicitous play of its natural affections. In what does
the safety of the soul consist, if not in its sense of secu-
rity in the world of Providence, its trust in the Eternal?

The safe creed is the desirable one, as all will acknowl-
edge. Salvation under some form is what all demand of
their faith. Smile as we will at the absurdity of the
statement, to the multitude there is great force in the ar-
gument as put by the " evangelical " to the rationalist,

6 THE SAFEST CREED.

thus : " Whether you be right or not, I, at all events, am
on the safe side. If I am -wrong in my belief, no harm
can befall me in consequence ; all that the unbeliever has
is mine. But if you are wrong, your soul is in peril.
~No penalty is attached to the rejection of your creed;
the rejection of mine brings the penalty of everlasting
damnation."

Salvation is commonly associated with a future state ;
if it were not, it would possess no religious significance.
The safety sought is safety after death, not before. The
creed is a policy of insurance against fire hereafter, the
fire being certain, and the validity of the policy being
guaranteed by the Lord of the Universe himself. If this
were so, if these two grand assumptions could be main-
tained, all debate would be at an end. But this is the
very matter in controversy. If we knew anything about
this hell, its reality, its place, its nature ; if we had reason
to believe that it was a strange, unprecedented, uncon-
jecturable condition, the laws whereof had no relation to
the laws of our terrestrial sphere — a condition in which,
for example, people walked on their heads, ate with their
ears, thought with their stomachs, worshiped with their
collar bones, or by any other arrangement reversed the
rules we are guided by in our present life ; if, in a»word,
salvation, safety, or health, there, meant something very
different from what we have in mind when we speak of
safety or health — we might listen to the theologian, and
take his prescription. But seeing that nobody knows
anything about hell, not even whether there be such a
place ; seeing that the future after death is all an uncer-
tainty, whereof we have no definite account ; seeing that,
in all our experience, to-day is the child of yesterday and
the parent of to-morrow, and therefore the future, how-

TEE SAFEST CREED. 7

ever long, must be the result of the present, the "next life
of this life, and the hereafter of the here — it may fairly
be assumed that salvation must be the same thing in
either state ; what is safety in the one will be safety in the
other; sanity will everywhere be sanity, and health will
everywhere be health. No person can be lost hereafter
who is saved now. The healthy soul can have no fear of
perdition. This is what Father Taylor had in mind
when he made the oft-quoted remark touching Mr. Em-
erson, " lie cannot go to heaven, for he is no Christian ;
but what would they do with him in hell ? He would
change the climate ; he would turn the tide of emigration
that way."

It follows, then, that the present is our only concern.
The safest creed is that which gives the best guarantee
of mental security under actual circumstances. What
this is it may be difficult in detail to say ; it would be
rash to undertake even in general terms to describe it ; for
the laws of health are not laid down finally in regard to
the body ; much less can they be laid down for the mind.
We are in the stage of experiment here ; all is crude,
almost chaotic. The rational method has not, as yet,
been applied to the problem ; the wisest men are students ;
the most experienced are seekers. I have no mind to be
dogmatic, and am more disposed to consider the gen-
eral elements of safety and of peril than to declare the
rules for entering the one, or avoiding the other. But if
safety consists in the natural and harmonious adjust-
ment of the mind to its surroundings, certain positions
may be taken with a good deal of confidence.

There is small risk in declaring, for instance, that no
creed is safe that has insecure foundations; for the re-
moval of the foundations will endanger the creed, though

8 THE SAFEST CREED.

it be of the noblest and most beautiful. St. Peter's it-
self would fall were its supports to give way ; neither the
grandeur of its dome, nor the loveliness of its decorations,
nor the richness of its shrines, would save it. The might-
iest mind crumbles under the influence of inherited dis-
ease.

Now the creed of Christendom does rest on insecure
foundations.

One of these is Pkophecy. Prom first to last, believers
have been disposed to rest their faith on this argument,
that the Old Testament prefigures the New, that the
prophets foretold the Christ. Instances are brought to
prove that ages before Jesus appeared, his coming, his
character, even the main incidents of his career, particu-
larly his miraculous birth and his tragic death, were pre-
dicted ; it is asserted that no effort of human reason would
have availed to lift this heavy curtain of the future, that
it must have been miraculously withdrawn ; and it is
claimed that the correspondence between the prophecy
and the result is perfect, and, this being the case, nothing
remains but to accept the system thus authenticated.

But nothing is more certain than that this proof of
prophecy has given way, utterly. Scholarship has under-
mined it; criticism has thrown it down. Discredit lias
been brought upon every process of the argument. The
correspondence between the event and the prediction is
denied; the very fact of the prediction is called in ques-
tion. When tried by historical and literary tests, the
whole claim fails to justify itself. This fact has not been
extensively divulged as yet; the news has not been widely
spread; the intelligence is confined to the comparatively
small company of the investigators, and those interested
in the investigation. Put to these it is familiar knowl-

THE SAFEST CREED. 9

edge; and they are beginning to communicate it by con-
versation and writing. Before very long the tidings will
be generally made known ; and then what is likely to
happen? The faith of many will be shaken. Belief will
be succeeded by unbelief, confidence by suspicion, trust
by despair. The disease of suspicion will seize on the
common mind; reason will not be listened to; the heart
will refuse to be comforted; souls will feel that they
have lost their hold on the eternal wisdom. Such has^
been the history of multitudes already, and such is des-
tined to be the history of multitudes more.

Another proof is Miracle ; and this is one of the
strongest. But this, like the other, has fallen, though the
noise of the ruin has not yet startled the inattentive ear.
Not only has each separate miracle been analyzed and re- *
solvecljnto natural elements, the principle that lies at the v
ground of all miraculous belief, the principle of suspend- —
ed law, is, by the foremost thmkefs~~and writers of the
ageTrepudiated. The distinction between the Bible mir-
acles and other legends has been obliterated ; all stories
of miracle have been brought under one general classifi-
cation ; the causes of the growth of legends have been
investigated ; the conditions of belief in prodigies have
been examined ; the natural history, so to speak, of mar-
vel has been studied so carefully that for every specimen
a place has been found, and a name invented. And the
result of it all is that the argument from miracle is pro-
nounced worthless.

The discovery has proved most disastrous to those
who made miracle — miracles in general, or special mir-
acles in particular — the corner-stone of their belief.
Some have dropped into atheism and materialism. Con-
sider, for example, the melancholy case of those who

1*

10 THE SAFEST CEEED.

build their belief in an infinite mind on tlie fact of mir-
acle. There are some who do this. There arc some
who declare that their only escape from the creed of
Fatalism is through the persuasion that Elijah called
down lire from heaven, or that Jesus came into the world
differently from other mortals, or that at his command
Lazarus came forth alive from the grave in which he had
lain four clays, or that he himself on the third day from
.his crucifixion rose from the dead and appeared visibly
and palpably to his friends. Facts like these, they say,
testify to the existence of a God superior to Nature; and
if such facts are denied, the existence of a God superior
to Nature falls into disrepute ; so vanish all the hopes
and faiths, the aspirations and the consolations, that ac-
company the sublime creed of the Theist.

But these facts are denied, and are likely to be called
in question more and more widely, and more and more
roughly. The set of the human intellect is against them,
and will be more and more against them. The thinking
people are incredulous, and the thinking people are in-
creasing in numbers daily. Men are feeling, and are
living as though they felt, that the world they live in is
a world of law. The material universe proclaims law in
every part of its domain : the stars in their faithful
courses, the sun in its rising and going down, the seasons
in their beauteous alternation, the plants in their growth,
animals in their development — all attest the rule of law.
In their practical existence men assume law; the con-
duct of life presupposes it ; business is grounded on it ;
enterprise rests on it ; all social arrangements take it for
granted ; calculations, statistics, combinations of all
kinds, demand it. The numberless insurance offices rest
on law. This practical assumption, which is fixed and

THE SAFEST CREED. H

unlimited in secular affairs, lias not yet, to any very mani-
fest extent, touched the domain of religious credence ;
but it" will reach it soon; it is hastening that way, and
when it sweeps over this field as it already sweeps over
the field of practical existence, they who trusted in mir-
acle will he made desolate. Safety demands the instant
removal of all spiritual treasures from such exposed pre-
cincts. The building totters. Happy they who have
nothing they prize there !

The case is still sadder when the heart is touched.
How shall we describe the rashness of people who build
their faith in immortality on. the resurrection of Jesus,
. hanging all their hopes of a hereafter on a cord of tradi-
tion two thousand years long, attached at one end to a
fragment of literature at. which a hundred sharp-toothed
critics are nibbling ; snapping all tethers beside, casting
off as useless the stays which the soul offers, rejecting
with scorn the helps which the heart throws out, disdain-
ing to touch the lines stretched by history and philoso-
phy, and suspending the full weight of the future world
on a thread which runs across deserts and beneath oceans,
and is exposed to the incessant friction of mind all along
its course ! • Can any but madmen take such risk ? The
cord snaps, and the faith is gone ; the ship of the soul
drifts away into the inane ; darkness gathers about the
drifting spirits; the vessel, freighted with the heart's
most precious treasures of- hope, drives away into the
darkness and never is seen more. To confound the sup-
ports of a faith with the faith itself, to make the founda-
tions part of the faith, is the height of unwisdom. The
early Christians accounted for the fact that there were
four gospels, and no more, by analogy with two other
facts : one that there were four main divisions of the

12 THE SAFEST CREED.

earth, the other that the four winds blew from four points
of the compass. The argument was satisfactory to them
in the condition of their knowledge of geography ; but
if they had made their geography a constituent part of
their faith, what would have become of the gospel records
by this time ? A Greek proverb says that God hangs
the heaviest weights on the smallest wires. But he al-
ways makes sure that the wires are strong enough to sus-
tain the weights. It is not quite safe for men to try the
experiment. Their wisdom rather consists in a very ex-
act adjustment of wires to weights. A wise saying warns
people against trusting all their eggs to one basket.
When our ships put to sea, the^ provide boats in case of
shipwreck ; they take extra bolts, chains and tackle,
against the exigency of disaster to the machinery. If
one anchor or cable gives way, the ship need not be lost.
Would we expose the mind to risks we carefully guard
the person from ?

Protestanism grounds its faith on the Scriptures.
" The Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Prot-
estants." If the Bible were another name for the Rock
of Ages, no piece of literature subject to literary laws
and literary criticism, but a monument of the divine in-
telligence, a fragment of intellectual adamant, on which
Time can only break his teeth, and the storms of a thou-
sand centuries make no impression, this foundation would
be safe, and to build on it would be wise. But we all
know that the Bible is nothing of this kind ; that it is a
book, the product of human intelligence, written in
human speech, marked all over with traces of human
speculation. We all know that it holds its place in the
line of mental development ; that it belongs to the litera-
ture of a race, to the literature of a single race. We

THE SAFEST CREED. 13

know that the scholarship of the last two hundred years
has made havoc with the doctrine of its infallible inspira-
tion, and effectually destroyed its claim to be considered
a miraculous volume.

Is it safe, then, to stake the highest moral and spiritual
interests of man, the faith in God, the faith in humanity,
the faith in the moral law, the faith in providence, the
faith in the soul's future, on anything so precarious as a
single collection of documents ? to stake these vast con-
cerns, we may say, on the interpretation of a chapter
or the rendering of a text, on the reading of a comment-
ator, the conjecture of a philologist, the decision of a
new grammar or dictionary ? a faith that a Gesenius or
a Max Miiller may undermine, that a Strauss or a Renan
may sap ; is that a faith for men to put their trust in ?
That thousands do put their trust in it is all too plain,
and the sorrow that comes of it, the unbelief and de-
spair, when the proof they deemed immovable is shaken,
testify to the folly of their proceeding. The assaults on
the Bible have been taken as assaults on religion, and
religion has crumbled when the Bible has given way
under attack. The snapping of that single-stranded cord
has put in jeopardy the whole celestial freight.

The Romanist exults in the catastrophe. It is just
what I predicted, he says, it could not be otherwise.
" The Bible is a book ; if you allow people to read it for
themselves, they will read it variously ; in the multitude
of interpretations the sense will be lost, controversies will
arise, sects- will spring up from the controversies ; the
unity of the faith will be broken, the harmony of the
spirit will be destroyed, the authority of the Word will
be lost, the assurance of the soul's destiny will be taken
away, and skepticism, unbelief, rationalism, materialism,

14 THE SAFEST CREED.

atheism, will come in like a flood. Experience proves
the truth of the prophecy. Under Protestantism, Chris-
tianity is running out ; religion itself is perishing ; it has
come to its last term, the next step will be into utter
atheism."

" The only safety," the Romanist goes on to say, " is
the Church that never changes ; that is the same yester-
day, to-day and forever ; that is, indeed, founded on a
rock ; older than the New Testament, resting on apostles
and evangelists, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cor-
nerstone, it is unassailable by the forces of the enemy.
The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." But have
there been no departures from the Church? Does the
Church really stand the test of criticism ? Is there no
such thing as history ? and does history justify the
churchman's claim of divine authority for his institution %
Is the Church purely and demonstrably the work of
Divine Providence ? Have human wit and witlessness,
human will and willfulness, had no part in its creation ?
Does its story, from beginning to end, justify its title to
rule over the consciences, and prescribe the faith, and
lead the hopes of mankind? Has it never been a story
of diplomacy savoring of cunning, of authority asserting
itself as despotism and making itself chargeable with
bloody crimes, of privilege to teach used for the purpose
of fastening on the minds of men dogmas like that of the
Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, and the in-
fallibility of the Vicar of Christ *

The Church has not proved to be a safe refuge. The
desertions from it on account of ite well-known onsea-_
worthiness, have been by Hie hundred thousand, and it
is a remarkable circumstance that, of those that have
abandoned it, a great multitude have lapsed into utter

THE SAFEST CREED. 15

irreligion. Everything goes down with that one bark.
Look at the condition of Italy ; look at the condition of
Spain; both countries where Romanism has been supreme,
both countries in which Romanism has been identified
with religion. The type of disbelief in these two lands
is of the most stubborn and deadly kind. The religious
sentiment seems well-nigh dead there. Atheism, in the
dreariest form, abounds ; materialism, of the most literal
and prosaic description, is common ; the interest in what
we call spiritual, that is, in ideal tilings, has so far de-
clined as to be regarded with pity and even with ridicule,
as the remnant of an outgrown superstition. The world
has lost its poetic aspect, life has lost its poetical expres-
sion. The sensual element is getting the upper hand ;
politics are all engrossing, and the tone of politics is low.

The Romanist admits all this, and cries : " See the
effect of leaving the Church ! See what comes of aban-
doning the only ark of safety ! " Yes, but the evil hap-
pens because the people were taught that the Church
was the only ark of safety ; and when they left it, as they
needs must, it having become impossible for them to re-
main in it longer as honest people, there was no alterna-
tive but drowning. They had no lifeboats, and had never
learned to swim or float in the open sea.

No creed is safe that rests on a single foundation,
however ancient and imposing. The moment comes
when the swiftly flowing river of time loosens the corner-
stone, and then the whirling travelers are plunged into
an abyss. The safety of rationalism consists in its ability
to use all supports and adapt itself to all emergencies ;
its Lands are free, it is foot-loose ; it has full possession
of its powers, and full command of the field for their ex-
ercise. It is never without resources, it. cannot be re-

16 THE SAFEST CREED.

duced to extremity ; it cannot be driven into a corner.
If one reliance gives way, it has a dozen to fall back on ;
if one argument fails, it shifts its position to another. It
has trenches within trenches, lines within lines, walls be-
hind walls. Take away the Old Testament, it has the
New ; take away the Bible, it has the sacred writings of
other races ; invalidate these, it has the religious senti-
ment to which all Scriptures give expression ; throw
doubt on the religious sentiment, it has recourse to the
facts of human experience, as revealed by the history of
nations, and the result of individual lives ; it appeals to
the long line of tradition common to the race of man —
traditions of worship and faith, of moral obedience and
fidelity, of sweetest trust and sublimest anticipation ; call
these in question, it takes up the method of science,
and shows how divine things are wrought into the very
texture of the material world ; does the scientific man
protest against the use made of his apparatus, rational-
ism retreats to the stronghold of philosophy from which
it cannot be dislodged.

The rationalist fears nothing. " If his bark sink, 'tis
to another sea," whose waters are more tranquil, whose
gales are less violent, whose shores are not rough with
reefs that menace the mariner with destruction. So far
as ports of refuge are concerned, his is the safest creed.

I contend that it is the safest, too, from its own con-
stitution. It has no articles that are put in jeopardy by
the action of human nature in its normal movements.
It teaches no dogmas that are at variance with the es-
tablished laws of reason. Its God is not a larger man,
with human limitations and infirmities, subject to emo-
tions as we are, a mechanician, a contriver, a person
conducting the affairs of the universe by methods of di-

THE SAFEST CREED. 17

plornacy, resorting to expedients, altering and suspending
his own laws, repairing his own handiwork, showing par-
tiality in his treatment of his children, granting to some
the fullness of light and leaving others in total darkness,
electing special tribes and individuals to glory and doom-
ing others to perdition. Rationalism regards God as
truly the Infinite and Eternal, and interprets him by the
largest constructions that the human mind can put on
his works, stripping off whatever is offensive to the finest
intelligence and winning thought to the conception of
him instead of repelling it, thus making human reason
its friend.

It does not deify an individual ; it does not vilify the
race; it casts no aspersion on the natural faculties, but
puts itself as cordially as possible in communication with
the wisest, the profoundest, the most sagacious of earth's
thinkers. There is no danger, therefore, that the march of
mind will sweep it out of the way or leave it behind in
the distance. It has not to defend itself against history,
science, or philosophy ; they are its defenders. The
single circumstance of its being unwilling to commit it-
self to any single statement or delinition, its willingness to
shape and reshape its formulas in accordance with the
growing intelligence of the race, its creedlessness, in
other words, is a great safeguard. Its confidence in the
spirit of truth is worth a thousand confidences in separate
opinions, for the spirit of truth drops its forms as fast as
they become useless or obsolete, and leaves on all the
bushes by the wayside the cast-off skins of its creeds.

Nearly every dogma of theology — it is safe to say every
dogma of the popular theology — stands to-day on the de-
fensive against the prevailing reason of the age. Trinity,
Deity of Christ, Atonement, Election, Justification, Hell

18 THE SAFEST CREED.

and Heaven, all are in this painful category. The first
principles of revealed religion are challenged. They who
hold them are in danger of defeat, and defeat, in hun-
dreds of cases, implies, the loss of everything dear
to the religious mind. Surely that is the safest creed
which can venture to cast off its armor, and throw its
weapons down, and consort peacefully with thoughtful
people, and feel secure in the honest sympathy of earnest,
liberal men.

But rationalism has a stronger guarantee of safety yet,
in that it puts itself in friendliest relations with the hu-
man heart. Here, indeed, is a fortress from which it can-
not be dislodged. Its idea of the essential rectitude of
human nature propitiates the instinctive feelings of all
men; its faith in progress commends itself to the earnest
approval of all who cherish noble hopes for their kind ;
its faith in the vital unity of mankind comes home to all
philanthropists and reformers, to all industrial and other
workers at the social problems that exercise the mind of
the generation ; its faith in the past authenticates every
grand character and sanctifies every glorious memory; its
faith in the present is stimulating to every fine purpose ;
its faith in the future encourages every far-seeing antici-
pation ; its faith in the long future, in the hereafter, en-
lists the sympathies of those who live in their dreams of
affection. Rationalism, in fact, deserves more than any
other to be called the religion of the heart, because it le-
gitimates most completely the heart's vital desires.

Can this be claimed for the faith of Christendom ?
Can it be claimed for the doctrine of human inability \
Can it be claimed for the doctrine of regeneration ? Can
it be claimed for the doctrine of immortality, which limits
the boon to Christian believers, and even to the compar»

TEE SAFEST CREED. 19

•

atively small class of Christian believers who have ex-
perienced the supernatural change which entitles them to
the blessedness of the redeemed, the rest being cast into
the outer darkness, where the wailing and gnashing of
teeth is incessant, where the worm dieth not, and the
fire is not quenched %

The popular doctrine of the hereafter cannot be aban-
doned by those who hold the other points of the " evan-
gelical " creed, for it supposes them all. It is to effect
the rescue of the entire human family from hell that the
scheme of salvation was devised ; and if the hell is abol-
ished, or reduced in compass, or mitigated in character,
if it is altered in any respect, the scheme of salvation is
unnecessary ; the atonement is needless, the incarnation
loses its purpose ; the Church, as an institution, has no
reason for being. Therefore the great preachers of
"evangelical " religion cleave to the doctrine in all its
original features. They stir up the flames, re-animate
the demons, and proclaim the destiny of everlasting fire
to the unbelievers. In so doing they are consistent and
logical. They cannot do otherwise and maintain their
position.

But they have the human heart against them. All deep-
ly feeling men and women struggle, writhe, and, if they
do not rebel, bleed. That the heart of man consents to
entertain the belief in a hereafter under such conditions,
and with such an understanding, is a mystery. Does it ?
Does not the heart's steady, firm, unanimous protest op-
erate as the most stubborn and formidable foe to the ex-
tension of the whole " evangelical " faith % It is hard to
overcome the resistance of reason to doctrines that seem
inconsistent with the first principles of thought ; but to
overcome the opposition of the natural affections to doc-

20 TEE SAFEST CREED.

trines that outrage natural feeling is more than all
churches and preachers can do. For my part, I do not
hesitate to say, nor should I think that any reasonable
man would hesitate to say, that he would be a benefactor
of his race who would deliver people from the popular
doctrine of the hereafter, even at the expense of denying
any hereafter. If immortality is to be a helpless and
unmitigated curse to anybody, then annihilation would
be a boon to all. So says the heart, instructed in the
humanities by the worthiest teachers. The heart of man
would prefer to have no future if it is not promised a
future which it can load with hope. To the heart, the
future means hope ; it is the land of hope. We may
fashion the form of the hope to suit our own anticipation,
desire, or longing, but hope it must be still. A hopeless
future is something inconceivable. They who despair of
the hereafter make despair a kind of hope ; they enjoy
a " luxury of woe." But they who live on that luxury
probably look no further than annihilation. The luxury
of endless burning, either for himself or Iris friends, it
may safely be assumed that no mortal ever dwelt on in
fancy.

No creed is safe that places itself in antagonism to the
natural human heart. Sooner or later it must go down.
The heart will triumph ; and it will triumph by either con-
verting the creed or destining it. In this case, conver-
sion is destruction. To abolish hell is to reconstruct the
spiritual universe; and this is the work that is going on.

It is often said of rationalists that they are "all out at
sea." It is true, they are, and they rejoice in being so.
Out on the wide ocean of truth they are safe. There they
have the benefit of all the winds that blow, and room
enough; no sunken rocks threaten; no fog-covered reef

THE SAFEST CREED. 21

endangers; above them is the whole canopy of the heav-
ens. The navigator dreads the coast. He keeps off
shore in a storm. Tew ships are lost in the open sea. The
coast line has the perils.

The rationalist dreads definitions, doubles the watch
when approaching land, and looks out for breakers. He
is on the voyage. His ship is built for the ocean, not for
the dock, and out on the ocean he is at home. Arrival is
necessary, no ship is always at sea, but arrival is inciden-
tal and occasional. He touches port that he may put
out to sea again, and be in company with Him, " Whose
being is a great deep."

n.

THE KADICAL BELIEF.

Having the same Spirit of Faith, in which one said, "I believed and
therefore spoke," we also believe and therefore speak. — 2 Cor. iv. 13.

r I 1HESE are words of Paul, the one doubted, suspected,
persecuted apostle ; the outsider who came Inside on
grounds against which many protested; the insider who
carried outside a faith which many repudiated ; the
man who announced the gospel of the spirit and preached
justification by faith alone, and at the same time declared
that he worshiped the God of his fathers, "after the
maimer called heresy." He believed and therefore spoke.
If he had not believed, he would not have spoken, for he
would have had nothing to say. All earnest speech is
uttered in faith. In faith all good work is done. Unbe-
lief has no gospel, makes no confession, frames no creed,
organizes no worship, brings no sacrifice. If men deem
it worth their while to preach, will do the amount of
studying and thinking that qualifies them for it, are
prepared for the many difficulties, discouragements, re-
buffs, misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and humil-
iations that attend it, show themselves ready to submit to
the disabilities and sacrifices that so thankless an office
entails, it is to be presumed that they have something
to say that is very dear to them, and is, in their judgment,
very important to their neighbors. If they seem to be
deniers, they only seem so in the eyes of those who fail
to recognize the affirmation their denial contains.

THE RADICAL BELIEF. 23

It is conceded that every affirmation holds a denial in
its bosom. Whoever says " Yes," at the same time says
"No." To announce a belief is to announce, though
silently, an unbelief in something the belief excludes. To
make a declaration of faith is to repudiate some oppo-
sing declaration which somebody else has put forth. The
believer in Moses and the prophets tacitly rejects the tra-
ditions of Egypt ; the believer in the Christ by that act
renounces the anti-Christ ; to affirm God is to discard
atheism ; to affirm the soul is to put materialism away ;
to affirm immortality is to disclaim the doctrine of anni-
hilation. This being conceded, why should it not also
be conceded that every denial holds in its bosom an af-
firmation ? Does not every one who says " No," at the
same time say " Yes ? " To declare against a belief,
may it not be to announce, though silently, a belief
which the discarded article could not hold ? To repu-
diate a well-known declaration of faith, may it not be to
prepare the way for, may it not be to shadow forth, an-
other declaration larger and clearer ? To put aside
Moses and the prophets may imply a putting forward of
the Christ. To deny the Christ may be an affirmation
of Jesus. To place in the background the historical
Jesus may be to bring the spiritual Jesus into the fore-
ground. He who says " No " to the Trinity says " Yes ''
to the Unity. He who disavows hell avows heaven. He
pulls down as a preparation for building, and, before he
begins to pull down, the plans of the new building lie
already finished on his table. Every earnest teacher has
his positive aim, and his positive aim is his real aim.
He denies in the interest of truth. He destroys in the
interest of conservation. He believes and therefore
speaks.

24 THE RADICAL BELIEF.

I should not urge so simple a thought as this if it were
not of very vital consequence. Until it is seen that denial
implies belief as truly as belief implies denial, no discus-
sion in regard to belief and denial can go on. And in
order that this may be seen, the popular modes of think-
ing must undergo a change. At present the largest
creeds seem to be the most negative, the broadest beliefs
the most unbelieving, the deepest affirmations the most
abrupt denials. Not he that believes least is the infidel,
but he that believes most. The most spiritual view of
Christianity is regarded as a rejection of Christianity. To
believe in too much God is held to be equivalent to believ-
ing in none. The atheist, according to the vulgar preju-
dice, is the man who proclaims a living God ! A Conser-
vative said lately to a Radical : " You believe so much
that you believe nothing."

We need not go far to seek the explanation of this sin-
gular paradox. For a couple of thousand years Christendom
has been in the habit of associating belief with a certain
historical tradition. He only was recognized as a builder
who piled his material on the foundations laid by the
Church, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone. To
reject this was to reject everything. To believe anything
else than this, anything aside from this, anything other,
anything more; to believe, however comprehensively,
earnestly, deeply, vitally, was to believe nothing, was, in
fact, utter unbelief. So long as this prejudice lasts — for a
prejudice 'I must call it — no justice will ever be rendered
to liberal believers. They will always be misapprehended.
Their affirmations will go for nothing. Their belief will
be called skepticism, and infidelity will be the kindest
name given to their faith. As that prejudice declines and
passes away, as it is rapidly doing under the influence of
intelligence, the doubters, provers, deniers come to their

THE RADICAL BELIEF. 25

rights, and the beliefs of the unbelievers are recognized as
being what they are.

Questions of belief and unbelief continue to intensely
interest mankind. They are more fascinating than any
questions of practice which seem to be of greater moment.
Where these latter attract a few scores of people, the for-
mer attract thousands. The chief event of interest in our
small circle during the last week was the conference of
Unitarian and other Christian churches, and the most
attractive feature in the conference was the discussion
between the conservative and the radical parties on the
common ground of Christian faith. The matter was quite
incidental. It was almost irrelevant. The churches came
together not to debate theological issues, but to arrange
plans for practical work. There were many things to be
considered : the occupation of new fields, the organization
of societies, the building of churches, the endowment of
schools, the maintenance of colleges, the printing of books,
the support of missionaries, the reform of social abuses,
the removal of social evils, the rescue of the imperiled, the
relief of the perishing, the saving of the lost ; but none of
these great practical concerns secured the attention, enlisted
the feeling, stirred the emotions, as did this apparently
unprofitable talking. Crowds flocked to it, precious hours
were devoted to it; the greater number of the delegates
and attendants evidently felt that it involved th« most mo-
mentous issues that were presented. Let us hope that this
feeling deserves a better name than curiosity to hear spas-
modic elocruence, or delight in witnessing a gladiatorial
encounter, or the idle and unprincipled enjoyment of see-
ing one party or another beaten by a vote. Deeper than
all this, though this was most frequently avowed, was, I
doubt not, the persuasion that beneath all practice lay
belief ; that belief was the basis of noble action of what-

20 THE RADICAL BELIEF.

ever kind; that only as men believed would they speak ;
that only as men believed would they work ; that the
question of belief being unanswered, other questions must
wait; that the question of belief being answered, other
questions would instantly answer themselves.

At all events, whatever the feeling of the participants
of the conference, this is the universal persuasion, that life
is grounded in faith ; that a faithless life must be a foolish
one; that a positive faith must declare itself in deeds.
The Romanist tries to prove that Protestantism demoral-
izes, disintegrates, and subverts society. The Protestant
argues that Unitarianism necessarily results in anarchy.
The Unitarian charges on the liberal doctrine a tendency
to unsettle the foundations of morality, and each believer,
in turn, while thus discrediting the moral bearings of his
neighbor's opinions, claims that the best results will flow
from his own. His claim may be unsupported, but he
would be stultified if he did not make it.

Of the proceedings of that conference it is not my pur-
pose now to speak. I declined being officially present,
though fully entitled to be on every ground, because I
knew that the two parties were not and could not be in
sympathy, and because, with that knowledge, it seemed
better for the party that was in the minority to withdraw.
I would not thrust myself in where I was not wanted, and
I would not embarrass those who had a work of their own
to do in which it was not possible for me to join. There
were vital principles enough to serve as a basis for a cor-
dial union in faith and work. Intelligent, educated,
experienced men and women, who know, respect, honor,
and confide in one another ; who agree in all their moral
and spiritual ideas ; who share with one another the con-
viction that character, not opinion, insures felicity ; who
are of one mind as regards the elements of character and.

THE RADICAL BELIEF. 27

the means of obtaining jt; who have the same standards
of private and public virtue, the same views regarding the
constitution and well-being of society, the same convic-
tions touching the laws and conditions of a perfect social
state ; men and women who cherish the same moral and
spiritual conceptions of God, the same moral and spiritual
conceptions of Jesus, the same confidence in the ultimate
destination of man, the same trust in Providence, the same
visions of eternity, the same assurance of the divine Fath-
erhood, the same yearning after a brotherhood of men,
certainly ought to be able to assemble peacefully and work
harmoniously, leaving theological questions in entire abey-
ance. But if they will not do this, if they will insist on
making speculative opinions the ground of fellowship,
then should either party do its best to make known what
its speculative opinions are, not shading them away at the
edges, but sharply defining them at the centre, going to
the roots of faith, and not fanning the air with its branch-
es, or tickling the sense with the odor of its blossoms.
Honor requires frankness, and if frankness leads to part-
ing, then let the party be in certainty that thus to part is
wiser than a fair-spoken but ungenuine meeting.

As one of the Radicals I am here this morning to state,
not by any means all the details (that would be an inter-
minable task), but the fundamental principles of the faith
in whose interest and in whose inspiration I speak; for,
after what has been said, our claim to have a faith must be
acknowledged. That this faith is, to a certain extent,
undefinable as yet, and is, to a still greater extent, unde-
fined, is no objection to its reality or its positiveness. A
great deal of time is required to define a faith. The creed
of Christendom has been undergoing definitions for two
thousand years, and the full statement is not made. It is
but a short time since the Pope added a new article, that

28 THE JUDICAL BELIEF.

of the Virgin's Immaculate Conception, to the faith of the

Roman Church. The Protestant theologians in Germany,
England, America, are busy modifying, restating, recast-
ing their confessions, giving new interpretations, even to
the essentials of belief. Dissatisfied with these, the Uni-
tarians undertake to say once more, and <»nce for all, pre-
cisely what Christianity is and precisely what it is not.
There is no unanimity of opinion respecting the Christ,
his nature, mission, or rule. There is no accord of mind
in regard to the Godhead, its inner consciousness, its -rela-
tion to humanity, its attitude toward the world.

Is it fair, then, to demand of a new faith that it shall
state itself fully in its first utterances ? May not we have a
generation when Christendom has had two thousand years ?
Must our imperfections condemn us, when its incomplete-
ness is no reproach \ Must our vagueness be decisive of
our fakity, when its hesitancy only proves its truth ( Be-
cause we cannot in half an hour say all we have to say,
must it be declared that we have nothing to say whatever (
The new faith will get articulated by and by ; wait and
you will see what it is ; at present we will give such hints
of it as we can.

I. In the first place, then, we affirm the existence of the
religious sentiment in man. "We declare that man is a
religious being, worshiping from an impulse of his nature,
believing from the necessity of his constitution, yearning,
hoping, loving, aspiring, because an instinct within him
prompts him to do so. While his natural affections attach
him to persons ; while his moral sentiments vitally con-
nect him with society ; his spiritual sentiments of awe,
wonder, adoration, gratitude, impel him to cast his thought
an,d feeling abroad toward the invisible, which is also to
him the perfect. This motion upward, with its sense of
trust, its emotion of prayer, this impulse towards perfec-

TEE RADICAL BELIEF. ' 29

tion, is inborn in self-conscious men. It was not a creation
of the priests, though the priests have taken advantage of
it for their purposes. It was not a device of rulers, though
rulers, too, have made use of it in order to enslave man-
hind. It is not the offspring of ignorance, for it outlives
it. It is the prophecy and the pledge of a higher, even a
spiritual inward and eternal life.

Comte tell us that religion is a feature of the world's
childhood. If it is, humanity is still a child, and will be
a child for ages to come not to be counted. As mankind
advances in intelligence, knowledge, culture, they do not
become less religious, but rather more so. Goethe, one of
the capacious minds of the world, was a magnificent be-
liever and worshiper, as all who read his writings know.
It was he that spoke of the material universe as the " gar-
ment "of Deity. Plato was no rudimental man, jet the
religious sentiment in him kept full pace with his philo-
sophic march, it even outstripped his swift intelligence.
Bacon and Newton were no babes ; but they burst into the
Infinite only to kneel. Milton and Dante had outgrown
the swaddling-clothes of the race ; yet in what temples
they adored! before what ideal forms they bent their
heads ! Kant and Fichtc, and Hegel and Schleiermacher
and Herder, surely had outlived the crudest forms of in-
telligence-; but in what hopes and on what aspirations they
lived ! The age of science is still the age of faith. As I
open the pages of the great explorers and discoverers, even
in the world of matter, I find that in proportion to their
earnestness is their reverence, their trust, their anticipation.
They do not pray, perhaps, but they revere ; they do not
write confessions, but they avow principles ; they call God
the unknown and unknowable, but they have the tender-
est veneration for his immanent being ; they bring no gifts
to his altar, lint they duvote themselves to unfolding his

30 THE RADICAL BELIEF.

laws. The last thing that Comte himself did, was to re-
construct religion at the bidding of his heart.

The churchman treats the religious sentiment as if it
was a tiny glimmering spark in the bosom, which he must
tend and feed lest it become extinct, or else a wild flaring
flame, which he must confine within his enclosure that it
may steadily burn. He says to men : " But for me you
would become animals — but for me your souls would die.
Desert my altars, leave my communion, neglect my pray-
ers, abandon my sacraments, withdraw from the protection
of my arms, and your spirits will droop and languish."
We say to the churchman : " Nay, quite otherwise ; it is
to this religious sentiment you patronize that you owe
your own existence; you are not its master, but its servant
and creature: it articulates your creed, voices your choirs,
hallows your altars, springs the arches of your cathedrals,
breathes the power into your apostles, inspires your proph-
ets, sanctifies your saints ; your establishments rise and
fall with its tides of feeling. When this creative senti-
ment is low, your mechanism creaks and groans; when it
is high, you have much ado to prevent it carrying you and
your apparatus away."

The religions of the earth, past and present, are not, in
our judgment, su pern aturally and miraculously instituted
for the training and education of the religious sentiment,
but are efforts of the religious sentiment itself to find
God, to express its thoughts of Him, and to pour out to
Him its desires. They attest its power, not its weakness.
There could be no Buddhism or Brahmanism, no Parsee-
iam or Zoroastrism, no Mosaism or Christianism, or Mo-
hammedanism, were there not a spiritual nature to create
them. The saints and saviours vouch for the reality of
the soul. Had man not been a religious being he would
never have prayed ; had the religious part of him been

THE RADICAL BELIEF. 31

feeble, his prayers would not have fashioned the mountains
into temples, constructed oratorios, built organs, or lifted
holy men above all the glooms and glories of the earth.

Among rude people, in rude times, the religious senti-
ment finds very uncouth and ugly expression. Its rites are
hideous, and even, it seems to us, degrading. It lurks in
frightful caverns; it hallows ill-omened birds and reptiles ;
it feeds horrid idols with children's blood. It appears as
that dreadful thing called Superstition. But all things
great and beautiful begin in ugliness. Compare the ear-
liest Christian art with the masterpieces of Raphael ; con-
trast the science of the middle ages with that of our own
day. From what rough beginnings philosophy and litera-
ture have grown to be the glorious creations they are.
Cultivated people have cultivated religions. As humanity
matures its faith matures. It thinks more worthily, trusts
more sweetly, believes more rationally,- worships more
purely. Its idols disappear, its temples expand, its forms
become light, variable, ethereal, its beliefs spiritual, its
charities wide, its hospitality generous. The idea takes
the place of the dogma, the principle is substituted for
the ordinance, life is set before opinion. As the science,
literature, art, philosophy of a people are, such will be the
religion ; crude and ugly when they are — noble and beauti-
ful when that character belongs to the in. As noxious
weeds give place to flowers and shrubs and fruit-bearing
trees ; as poisonous reptiles disappear before higher organ
izations of form, so do the idolatries and superstitions, the
errors and terrors of a brutal age, perish when intellectual
light comes in. The religions of mankind are milestones
that indicate the progress of the race.

II. The religious sentiment throws out the thought of
God. The Radical believes in God in the most positive,
cordial, and determined manner. Not in the God of any

32 THE RADICAL BELIEF.

particular church, or confession ; not in the God of tlic
Romanist, the Protestant, or the technical " Christian " ;
not in any special or individual God ; not, let me say, in a
God, but simply and only in God. He lias no thought, he
cannot think of a God who is in time and space, who con-
secrates temples or sanctifies exceptional hours, who lurks
behind altars, nestles in creeds, or inspires officials ; who
created the world in six days, and had to make it over
again, and'at last died himself that it might not finally
perish ; who peeps into his earth through holes in a con-
cealing curtain, tears up his own roads and mines his own
bridges in order to visit his own children in the city he
has provided for them ; throws into confusion his own
press-work and breaks up his own forms in order to make
himself more intelligible than lie was when every letter
was in place ; who appeal's to an individual Moses, Sam-
uel, or Isaiah, haunts the dreams of devout men, and rises
upon the vision of pious women ; a God who listens to
private prayers and takes an interest in private fortunes,
and selects tribes or nations for special favors, and vouch-
safes his witness to this or the-other generation, and prints
books for his favorite tribe of men. The God of Abra-
ham, and Isaac, and Jacob the Radical knows not ; he
knows only God.

Of this Being he does not attempt, he does not dare to
attempt a definition; rather, he tries to break through all
definition, that lie may be absolutely without bound or
limitation, pure spirit, pure intelligence, the fullest ideal
of possibility, the fairest dream of the soul.

The more definitions the better, if there must be defi-
nition ;it all ; welcome all there are or can be, rather than
rest in any one. Let the Trinitarian throw light, if he
can, on the mystery of the divine consciousness ; let the
Unitarian illustrate the harmony of the divine order; let

THE RADICAL BELIEF. 33

tlie Scientist show God as permanent in the world of mat-
ter ; let the Transcendentalist show him as indwelling in
the world of spirit. Come, Spinoza, and tell us of the God
who is the substance of things ; come, Hegel, and tell us
of the God who unfolds himself in history, and in human-
ity becomes conscious ; come, artist, come, poet, and tell
us of God as the Soul of the world; come, Spencer, and
tell us of the Unknown and Unknowable ; came, Vache-
rot, and tell ns of God the Ideal, the vision of the enlight-
ened intelligence. We want you all ; for all together you
will not sufficiently declare what the Infinite is ; all to-
gether you will not succeed in flinging too many lights
upon the bosom of the great Deep. We need the multi-
tude of your thoughts to save us from the tyranny of a
single creed.

Of the moral attributes of God, the Radical hesitates also
to speak. Indeed, he dislikes the word " attributes," as
implying faculties distinct from being. He does not say
that God is loving, but that he is Love. It is not enough
to say that He is wise, for He is wisdom ; or that He is just,
for lie is justice ; or that He is good, for He is goodness ;
or that He is merciful, for He is mercy. To this believer's
mind, it is inconceivable that God should show favoritism
or partiality ; that He should hate, loathe, forget, or for-
sake a living creature ; that He should hold any outcast
for opinion ; that He should hold any outcast for any cause
whatsoever ; that He should dig a hell big enough to hold
an insect, or erect a barrier that would shut out a bird.

The Radical's God is simply a dream of all conceivable
perfection, the perfect thought, will, care, providence, in
whom none die, but in whom all who live at all, live and
move and have their being.

I wish I could use stronger words than these to say
what I mean, I wish there were any other form of speech

2*-

34 THE RADICAL BELIEF.

to convince you how earnestly I mean it. God is ; not
has been, or will be ; and He is infinitely more than the
best believe or the happiest hope.

III. Next we say that God reveals himself. The Radical
believes in Revelation. Not in incidental or particular
revelations ; not in peculiar individual revelation ; but in
Revelation. It is a necessity of the Divine Being that
He should reveal himself. He is light, and light must
shine because it is light. He is love, and it is the nature
of love to flow out. God cannot hide, disappear, veil, or
withdraw himself. He spoke creation into existence, and
creation is his articulated word. Nature is not a cm-tain
dropped before his face, but the visible glory of his face.
The natural universe is not a screen behind which He hides,
but the ether whose waves render Him visible. Our own
closed eyelids, and they alone, conceal God.

Revelation is the opening of our eyes. The natural eye
— trained, tutored, and taught — looks directly into God's
countenance, and sees as much of Him as sense can see,
in the transcendent loveliness of earth, sea, sky ; revelation
of this breaking in successively with increase of perception
a^d closeness of study. The intellectual eye opens and
discerns wonders before unsuspected, wonders of law?
system, order, harmony, in whose presence thought stands
enchanted. The moral eye opens, and new realms of deity
appear in the awful forms of truth, obedience, duty, by
which the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong. The
spiritual eye opens last, and lo ! the Godhead widens on
man's view ; regions of benignity lie all about us ; flowers
of tenderness bloom in the bleak spaces of the universe ;
tendrils of pity and graciousness twine around the iron
clamps and rods of law ; there is a loving radiance in the
sunbeam ; there are soft tears in the rain ; a sweet purpose
is seen gliding through the domains of nature and life ;

THE RADICAL BELIEF. 35

footprints of a boundless good will are detected in all the
first and latest formations, and God is recognized as
Father and Mother, as Saviour and never-forgetting
Friend.

It will be seen at once why the highest revelations are
made, to the very few. There are very few who have the
spiritual eye open and clear. Not many enjoy the privi-
lege of moral vision, for they are not cultivated in it.
Not many discern much with the eye of intelligence; nay,
the multitude perceive nothing distinctly with the eye of
sense.

It is as in a picture gallery. A score or so unintelligently
admire the pictures ; a dozen or two appreciate them ; two
or three gaze at them with delight, being fully in harmony
with the artist's soul ; the multitude chat and gossip, or sink
down wearily in chairs, yawning and wishing to go home
and get to bed. Yet the souls of Titian and Raphael
glow in the canvas .and offer their wealth to all alike. It is
no figure of speech that the pure in heart see God. It is no
bigotry to say that none others can. The fiction of shift-
ing screens, openings into heaven, rents in nature's cur-
tain, audible voices in desert or on mountain-tops, hints
and communications given to eavesdroppers, is too childish
for mention ; such fancies belong to the second childhood,
of which we all have the same opinion. The pure in
heart see God face to face. There is no keyhole or crack
in the wall, or small preternatural aperture through which
any others can get a glimpse of Him. The pure in heart,
wherever they are, and whoever, whether Pagan, Chris-
tian, Turk, or Jew, whether of the olden time or of
to-day, whether men of Jerusalem or men of New York,
whether priests or philosophers, prophets or cobblers,
ministers or menials, men, matrons, or maids, the pure in
heart, and none others, see God.

36 T1IE JUDICAL BELIEF.

IV. The Radical believes in Christianity as he under-
stands it; not as the only religion, by any means, not as)
the absolute or final religion, not as the best religion for
all men, not as the finest expression of the religious senti-
ment, but as the most worthy form of it yet manifest.
Christianity, as vulgarly interpreted, the Christianity of
the Greek church, of the Roman church, of the English
church, of the Lutheran and Calvinist churches, of the
Arminian and Socinian churches, he rejects utterly asm
compatible neither with reason, philosophy, science, nor
even with the earliest prophecies of their own faith.
Their traditions, dogmas, ordinances, forms of worship,
theories of human nature, human society, and human life,
creeds, definitions, confessions, practices, sentiments, be-
liefs, hopes, purposes, anticipations, are, one and all, and
for the same reasons, unacceptable, being mainly grotesque
and unintelligible representations, which distort or corrupt
the ideas they may embody.

To trie Radical Christianity is dear as implying purity
of moral standard, sweetness of spiritual graces, tender-
ness and strength of personal and social aspiration, hope-
fulness in regard to human destiny, affection ateness as a
faith of the heart. He loves it for its feeling towards God
and the world, not for its instruction respecting God and
the world. Greatest of the world's faiths, religion of the
most advanced races and of the most modern men, the
modern mind must spiritualize and refine Christianity
very much before it can accept it, and even then, for
many important things — for knowledge, for practical prin-
ciples, fur working beliefs — must go outside of it wholly.
• The Christianity of the Radical is so attenuated as not
to be recognized by popular Christendom, but it is not so
attenuated as to lie to him merely a shadow. It is still a
substance, a real thing to his soul. Rut it is a tiling which

THE RADICAL BELIEF. 37

lie naturally appropriates, not a thing by which he allows
himself to be appropriated.

Y. The Radical believes in Jesus. Not in " the Christ,"
but in Jesus, as the highest expression of the religious
sentiment in human form ; yes, on the whole, the highest
manifestation of God. The human form offers the grand-
est opportunity for the divine manifestation. There is no
symbol so perfect as man, the last 'development of creative
power, the most complete exposition of creative wisdom
and love. We see God imperfectly till we see Him in the
human form ; and in no human form do we see so much
of Him as we do in the form of Jesus, as that appears
spiritualized to our thoughts.

Jt is not the Jesus of the creeds that the Radical believes
in. It is not the Jesus of the Church. It is not the Jesus
of the New Testament, for the New Testament puts words
into his mouth which no sweet soul can utter, and thoughts
into his mind which no enlightened reason can entertain.
We know how the record of his life was made, we know
what foreign elements came in, we know how the partisans
of his own and after times tried to represent him as favor-
ing their views and originating their schemes. We there-
fore search and sift, endeavoring to extricate the image
from the ooze and rubbish that have accumulated upon it,
and retouch its spiritual lineaments, soiled and all but
effaced. That a divine soul was here is evident; how
divine, his contemporaries did not see. But the spiritual
sense of mankind attests him as being one of God's
brightest manifestations.

Y\re do not bow the knee to Jesus or sit submissively at
his feet; we do not pray to him; lie is not our lord and
sovereign master. We do not call him Saviour, Redeemer,
sole Mediator, and Judge. We do not make him the only
foundation or corner-stone of our faith. He is the child

..

38 THE RADICAL BELIEF.

of human nature, not its king. The heart does not subject
itself to him; it accepts him, authenticates him, places him
on his seat of honor, crowns him with his fame. What
he is reported to have said inconsistent with its best feel-
ing it refuses to believe that he did say ; the ideas that are
ascribed to him at variance with its conviction it declines
to credit him with. It sees in him the expression of its
highest feeling, and is encouraged, cheered, invigorated,
consoled by the persuasion that in him its highest feeling
has been realized.

But, thinking of Jesus, the Radical's thought flies in-
stantly to his brothers. That he ylorijies them is the great
reflection ; that in him their nature is disclosed ; that he is
the flower of their ugly stem ; that in their slime this
fair plant had its root. lie is the natural man. The
Radical, therefore, instead of fixing his gaze on Jesus as a
superhuman person, turns it tenderly on the people about
him, as being, by this testimony, human. It is no easy
thing to do. To see the glory of Jesus is easy enough.
To call him divine, whe cannot do as much ? The murder-
er, the ruffian, the traitor will do that. This confession
comes lightly from the coarsest mouths. But how many
draw the inference? How many say of this drunkard,
this thief, his victim of lust and passion, this poor, ill-born
creature : He is one of those to whom Jesus was kin ?
The glory of the Son of Man touches this dust, irradiates
and should animate this clay ! Be careful, lest your scorn
or bitterness prevent its being seen ! Be watchful, in
order that the sunlight of your hope and the dew of youi
pity may fall on the places that need it most.

What men are we know, and the knowledge is bitter in-
deed, agonizing, at times almost maddening. What they
may become, what capacities lie in them, what possibili-
ties are theirs, we see in this fair shadowv form of Jesus,

THE RADICAL BELIEF. 39

and we have faith to believe that in this form all may be
glorified. In this name we stand over the tombs of those
who are dead in trespasses and sins, and cry: Come
forth !

YI. The Radical believes in Immortality. This is
another of the grand declarations of the religious nature
of man, and, as such, he listens to the assertions of it that
come from all tribes and centuries ; the heart's anticipa-
tions, the soul's prophecies, the reason's intuitive demon-
stration— not because Jesus taught it, for Jesus himself
received it from the conviction of humanity — not because
Jesus demonstrated it by rising from the dead, for had not
men believed in immortality they would never have
believed that he rose— not because prophets and saints
have affirmed it, for prophets and saints are but voices
from the believing heart of the world — not because of
numerous signs and wonders, apparitions, visions, commu-
nications, for these, too, imply a faith that such things
may be, and give the persuasion that they are what they
seem to be — not for any or all of these superficial reasons,
but for a reason deeper than any or all — namely, that the
religious nature asseverates, and has always asseverated
the truth ; that the more it is enlightened the more posi-
tively it asseverates it ; that the greatest souls have been
most confident of it ; that while the critical and practical
have denied, the saintly and illuminated have affirmed ;
that the loftiest intelligences, like Plato, have given it
clearest annunciation ; that grandest souls, like Socrates,
have borne most confidently on it their weight ; that love-
liest hearts, like Jesus, have lived in it as in their home.

The Radical is interested in immortality as a high re-
ligious belief. Modern Spiritualists claim ocular and tan-
gible demonstration of the future life ; they are to be
congratulated on their conviction. But to this bare fact

40 THE RADICAL BELIEF.

much remains to be added before the faith can take rank
among the spiritual convictions of mankind. This alone
does not satisfy the soul. The butcher who, pushing up
his hat, said : " Once I believed that men and women
died like cattle, and there was an end of it ; but now,
damn it, I think no more of dying than of pulling off my
clothes and going to bed," accepted immortality through
his lingers, but not through his soul. It was not a relig-
ious belief with him ; it meant an incident in his biog-
raphy, not a crowning glory and achievement of his heart.
Not from the spiritual nature comes such faith as his.

The Radical believes in immortality meekly, humbly,
with a gladness that is tinged with holy fear ; as a boon
he does not deserve ; a gift he dare not think himself jus-
tified in snatching ; a glory to be prepared and striven
for ; a vision to be waited on with reverent looks.

On this great belief the Radical does not venture to
dogmatize with narrow interpretations. He desires
rather that it should be voiced in the most comprehensive
manner, by the most variously attuned minds. He loves
to have it presented in all possible aspects, that it may re-
spond to all states of feeling ; as the craving for continued
personal existence after death, as the longing for social in-
tercourse and kindred reunion, as aspiration after unat-
tained goodness, as thirst for supersensual wisdom, as the
sigh after more than mortal peace, and, yet further, as
the generous desire to live still in and through others,
though individuality be extinguished ; the inspiring and
unselfish passion to bequeath something to humanity, in
the way of experience, knowledge, or power, and so to
continue a living force in mankind. The belief in im-
mortality takes all these forms according to the minds
that entertain it. In all of them it appears as a protest
against the power of death to destroy that which is the

THE RADICAL BELIEF. 41

most precious part of our personality. The nature of man
refuses to believe itself wholly perishable, rises in rebellion
against the dominion of the grave, and claims the privi-
lege of singing its songs, finishing its education, realizing
its dream, perpetuating its influence, or completing its
blessedness in other worlds.

VII. The Radical believes in as much of the Bible
as answers to his cultured reason and his matured convic-
tion, and in no more. He takes what nourishes him, and
leaves the rest. He reads it as he reads other books, and
judges it. Inspiration is in intelligence, not in print.
Scriptural utterances are weighty as the heart authenti-
cates them. "When not thus authenticated they pass for
naught. The true things in the Bible are not true be-
cause they are there, they are there because they are true.
The good things in the Bible were good before they were
in the Bible, else they would not be good there. The re-
ligious nature always brings the Book to judgment. The
orthodox abolitionist wrung from the Old Testament the
last drop of the virus of slavery before he trusted his con-
science to it. The Swedenborgian turns the preposterous
or wicked sto*ries into parables in order to make the Word
seem divine. The Unitarian compels the Bible to utter
his opinions before he vouches for its inspiration. The
Universalist empties the ugly meaning from the ugly texts
of the ISTew Testament, before he will quote them in proof
of his belief.

A refined age rejects the coarseness of the Bible. A
knowing age rejects the ignorance of it. A moral age
discards its immoralities. A spiritual age changes its raw
statements into allegory, or turns away from them alto-
gether.

There are many Bibles. All the soul's writings are
Scriptures, wherever and by whomsoever penned. They

42 THE RADICAL BELIEF.

are intended for spiritual eyes, and only what such can
read in them is true. Humanity continually revises its
sacred books, comparing them from age to age with the
inscriptions on the heart, which come out clear under the
purifying action of experience and the illuminating power
of culture. Again and again we refer to these, and only
what these will ultimately verify will stand.

Such, briefly stated, are the grand articles of the Radi-
cal's creed ; others there are, of vital importance, which I
need not mention, for the plain reason that they are com-
mon to all good men. Faith in the general principles
of truth and goodness, faith in the moral law, faith in
recompense and retribution, in the sacredness of duty, the
ministering power of kindness, the graces of humility, pa-
tience, meekness, the nobleness of consecration, the joy
of sacrifice — these, thank heaven, all worthy men and
women share alike. All good men believe in the good
life as the acceptable offering, however they may differ as
to the means of attaining it. Whatever they may think
of the communion of sinners, they all believe in the com-
munion of saints. All good men believe that existence is
not worth much unless it be devoted to some generous
aims. All are agreed in regard to the qualities that make
ends generous ; all are persuaded that snch ends will never
be accomplished except by those who keep themselves
rooted and grounded in truth and love.

The Radical believes that the world is to be humanized ;
that the men and women in it are to be made nobler and
better ; that society is to be regenerated by the action of
the natural laws of reason and goodness. lie believes in
the highest education of all men and women, in the largest
possession of rights, the freest sharing of opportunities,
the most cordial participation in privileges, the richest un-
folding of powers; in science, philosophy, literature, art,

THE RADICAL BELIEF. 43

industry, commerce, the most liberal communication be-
tween nation with nation and man with man. He be-
lieves in developing each and binding all together in
human bonds ; he believes in the good time coming — the
kingdom of God — the heavenly Republic — in which edu-
cated reason and experienced conscience shall be the
ground of order, peace, and felicity.

Ill

THE RADICAL'S ROOT.

" Rooted and grounded in Love!" — Ephes. iii. 17.

EVERYTHING that lives lias a root. The plant draws
sustenance from two worlds, a world of darkness and a
world of light, and as much from one'aa the other. Even
the air plants, as we call them, that seem to live entirely on
the light and the atmosphere, still derive their nourish-
ment in part from tangible substances. They pine with-
out moisture. Would you make them grow in your hot-
house, you must provide something, though it be nothing
more than a piece of decaying wood, a lump of charcoal,
or a few mossy stones, to which they can attach their ten-
uous roots. So foolish a thing as the rose of Jericho,
which flourishes all over the East— in the Barbary States,
in Palestine, and Upper Egypt — lingering by the side of
streams, enjoying moist places — a plant that in the dry
season pulls its tiny root out of the ground, curls it tightly
round its body, and rolls off before the wind until it finds
a congenial restiug-f)lace, nevertheless has its suckers
which it unwinds and drops down when its pleasure
serves ; and it always chooses a succulent spot near a
stream of water, in a bed of mould, or on a heap of muck.
The higher the growth upwards, the deeper the root down-
wards. Plants that live near the ground need but a feeble
hold on the soil. An inch or two of earth suffices. They
need not spread at all ; they need only dip. The stem of

THE BA DICAL'S BOOT. 45

the crocus and of the violet is very short ; a child can pull
them up with its fingers; they need no depth of soil. But
the great tree that overshadows half an acre, that takes in
the sunshine of the whole heavens, and is refreshed by the
winds that blow from all the quarters of the globe, reaches
down furlong upon furlong ; its roots are a subterranean
forest stretching out great branches that twine and grasp
like anacondas, and appropriate the vitality that ages have
deposited. The oak-tree, that is to last perhaps a thousand
years, under whose shade generations of children are to
play, draws the nurture that sustains it from an area wider
than it spreads over in the sky ; it lays hold on the very
heart of the planet, coils about huge rocks beneath the
earth, ties itself in with the knotted roots of other trees,
C-oes plunging and burrowing down towards the centre of
the globe in search of things that died centuries before,
and are hastening into mould ; prowls after the hidden
springs of water, finds where the sweetest fountains are,
and will even plunge beneath them, pushing its greedy in-
quiries beyond their ken, levying on other territory that
may perchance have treasure of food for it. All the force
of man will not start a mountain pine. The tempest of
the winter but strips oil its leaves ; the earthquake that
tumbles down the dwellings of a city does not loosen a
single one of its fibres ; it is an organic thing, a piece of
nature ; the upper world of light and glory clothes it an-
nually with the splendor of a new creation; the under
world, cloudy, dark, and secret, but full of living forces,
pours into it the products of all the growth of the planet
for a thousand generations.

The analogy holds in regard to human beings. Every
individual man and woman has a root ; and the grander
the growth of human qualities the deeper is the root. The
persons who oiwlooks his generation you may be sure uu-

46 TEE RADICALS ROOT.

der\ook$ his generation as well. He whose shadow falls
across centuries draws his sustenance from more centuries
that have gone before him, and have left no trace save in
the wealthy world out of which he sprang. According to
the height of the character is the depth of the source
whence it draws supplies. Here is a man who is ironed to
circumstance : in the upper, superficial stratum of things
adjacent to him — what we call the conditions of his life —
the external apparatus by which his existence is kept in
order, furnish the soil he is grounded in. ' He depends
upon those. His fibres strike no deeper than his accidents.
Is he rich — he blossoms and bears fruit. Is he poor — he
dries up, sin-inks away, perishes. In prosperity he shoots
lip tall, spreads his branches wide, waves his leafage in
the air ; adversity strikes him, the foliage is all stripped
off, the branches toss idly in the wind, the trunk sways
wildly hither and thither, the roots are loosened ; if a se-
verer gale than usual strikes him, he is laid prone on the
ground. Is he successful — success feeds him, elates him,
makes him happy ; his veins are full of sap ; his eye is
bright; he hold his head high; his hand is open. Is he
unsuccessful — all the geniality is gone ; no more light in
his eye, no more buoyancy in his step, no more upright-
ness in his form ; his mind has lost its balance ; his heart
is dead. Here is a man who, in the season of popularity,
is open-minded, bright-hearted, happy, warm in his affec-
tions, generous in his impulses; he seems to be ennobled
by the regards of his fellow-men. Is he unpopular — the
withdrawal of the sunlight of common favor, the with-
holding of the praise of ordinary people, take from him
the very breath by which he lives, and he blackens and
dies. To be born at the North was once to be a democrat ;
to be born at the South was to be an apologist for the pe-
culiar institution. In England, this man believes in men-

THE RADICAL'S R001. 47

archy. In Paris, lie praises imperialism or republicanism,
according to circumstances. In Protestant countries he is
a Protestant ; in Papal countries, a Papist. In Mecca, lie
puts off his shoes before entering the sacred precincts, and
kisses the black stone. His faith is that of the country
he sojourns in ; he worships with the multitude, whatever
their superstition ; he is as he happens to be ; like the
chameleon, he takes the color of the ground he lies on,
some say, of the food he eats ; lie is a rose of Jericho, al-
ways hurrying before the wind, his roots in his trunk. If
he has roots, nobody knows where they are until, occasion-
ally, for a moment, he finds it convenient to pause and to
pump up a little sap into his body from the place where
he happens to find himself.

Here is a man with a deeper root, a root in his ancestry.
He is a leaf on a family tree. He refers back to his pre-
cursors ; is proud of their blood in his veins — the red
blood, the blue blood, that father, mother, or some more
distant ancestor, furnishes. This man is mindful of the
stock he springs from, the pit out of which he was digged.
He carries himself with a proud consciousness of superior
worth, if the stock be noble. A kind of nobility charac-
terizes his look and manner. If it be ignoble, the charac-
teristics none the less appear in him, and none the less is
he proud of them ; he boasts of their evil prowess, talks
haughtily of their wild heroism, exults in their question-
able achievements, quotes their strong sayings, tries to
cany himself as their descendant and representative.
There is a good side to this pride of ancestry, if the ances-
try be worthy, but there is a bad side to it even then. The
material that a man derives from his ancestry, however
rich, does not make him human in the noble sense ; it
shuts him in with a few qualities ; it makes him reserved,
exclusive, opinionated, imparts to him the characteristics

48 THE RADICALS HOOT.

of the caste he belongs to. In fact, the caste spirit itself is
due to this narrow veneration, for it confines men to cer-
tain sharply-defined types which clash with each other,
and cause incessant friction and war. On the whole, root
of ancestry is a bitter one, and the fruit it bears is
bitter.

Let us suppose a man to strike his roots lower down than
this. lie is not, we will say, the creature of his circum-
stances— he is not the child of his parentage. lie belongs
to his nation ; lie is an American or German, Frenchman
or Englishman. His suckers spread out to the limits of
the national domain. He is not bounded by State lines.
He does not ask whether his neighbor comes from the East
or the West, the Isortli or the South; he is countryman,
and that is enough; he is blood of his blood, and bone of
his bone, a fellow, an equal, and a brother, sacred in his
person and venerable in his rights. Such a man will be
large, expansive, and generous. He is the patriot; full of
noble sentiments ; a man of comprehensive sympathies and
wide interests. He can take his brother American by the
hand wherever he meets him, be he rich or poor, fortunate
or unfortunate, attractive or forbidding. The fact of
belonging to a common country covers a multitude of infir-
mities. It cannot be denied that a certain grandeur of
intelligence, a certain faith in ideas, a certain breadth of
allegiance to principles, accompanies this patriotic type.
But neither can it be denied that such a person has his lim-
its. He believes in American ideas, but in no others; he
praises American principles, but concedes worth to none
beside ; you may always know him as a man who exults in
his native land so cordially that the foreigner is a barba-
rian. For has he the same feeling to the Englishman?
Does he equally respect the German ? Has he a profound
respect for the Frenchman ? Can he enter sympathetically

THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 49

into the feelings of the Italian or the Irishman ? Not so.
He is possibly a bigot in his prejudices, unable to appreci-
ate the intellectual or moral weight of a fellow-man who
lives on the other side of the Atlantic or the Pacific sea.
In England he has no eye for what may be the advantages
of a constitutional monarchy ; in Germany he cannot wel-
come what may be said for the constitution of the empire;
in France he fails to understand the peculiar temper of a
people that is constantly overturning its own system of gov-
ernment. He can cherish scorn for the stranger, having
but one word for stranger and enemy. Noble, wide,
grand in many respects, his root, nevertheless, is not so
firm that it cannot be shaken by prejudice, passion, and
malice. Should the time come when a controversy arises
between his own government and another, the right is sure
with him to be on one side ; his motto is, " Our country,
right or wrong," but still, our country.

But now, suppose a man to strike down his roots lower
than this — below family, ancestry, class, clan, tribe, coun-
try— down into human nature itself ; not asking whether
one be English, French, German, American, Italian, Irish,
but whether he be human; suppose a man to really make
no distinction between Jew and Greek, barbarian or Scy-
thian, bond or free — to consider simply this one question,
whether the individual has the attributes of a human
being. Such a man has real roots. He is interested in
what concerns his fellows. He strikes down into a prin-
ciple. He draws sustenance from an idea. His sympa-
thies are world wide. He touches every person at the
point where all touch each other. He can surrender him-
self to a cause. The question with him is, Is it just ? Is
it right ? This is the noblest, the most exhaustive root of
all. Deeper than this, deeper than human nature, it is im-
possible to go. When we see a man striking his roots

3

50 THE RADICAL'S ROOT.

down into this principle of human nature, we see one who
strikes down into the core of things ; we see one who is
proof against the severest tribulations, sorrows, tempta-
tions. 1n"o wind can shatter him ; no tempest can unseat
him ; he stands up under calamity, and even comes out
stronger from the shock of the elemental war.

I am to speak this morning of the Radical's Root.

What do we mean by a Radical ? There are three defi-
nitions of the term. According to the popular acceptation,
the Radical is one who pulls up things by the roots, a
destroyer, a revolutionist. This is the definition of the
enemy. The genuine Radical rejects it as being no de-
scription of himself whatever. The Radical says of
himself, " I come not to destroy, but to fulfill." He would
pull up nothing by the roots that had roots to support it.
lie would let even weeds grow in his neighbors field, if
the neighbor preferred them to grain; he has too much
respect for .things that grow, to disturb them without
cause; only the poisonous plants that corrupt the atmos-
phere and impoverish the land, would he eradicate.

A second definition marks the Radical as one who never
can rest until he gets at the root of things. The Radical is
represented as a prying, inquisitive, critical, restless per-
son, who is forever burrowing in the ground, can never be
satisfied, can never leave any belief or institution alone,
can never take a doctrine on trust, must impatiently pull
up his corn to sec how it grows; a man without intelli-
gent motive, or earnestness of purpose, or serious desire
after truth ; inheriting a precious vineyard, which has pro-
duced luscious grapes for a hundred years, the delicious
fruit whereof he has tasted in health and sickness, in clus-
ters and in vintage, since he became a man, he must nev-
ertheless worry and explore and expose the healthy suck-
ers of his vines, that he may ascertain in what precise mix-

THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 51

ture of coil they arc planted; living in a house which has
sheltered him and his parents before him, and a line of
ancestors before them — a house that in generations has
never started, does not show a crack in its walls or a leak
in its roof — still he is not content until he has been down
in the cellar, tested with the hammer every stone in the
substructure, and carried on geological experiments
beneath the foundation, at the imminent risk of upsetting
the building. This, too, I pronounce a caricature. This,
too, is the definition of the antagonist. The Radical is no
such person. That there are persons who do this, may be
true enough, but they are not necessarily Radicals. It is
not the peculiarity of the Radical, that out of mere curios-
ity, in a spirit of restlessness, from an idle desire to know
more than is useful, admissible, or wise, he would unseat
anything that has a valid claim to permanence. Whatever
has a solid basis he allows to stand.

The Radical is simply one who desires a root, who be-
lieves in roots, is sure that nothing is strong without them,
and is concerned to know in what sort of soil he is plant-
ed. He has no fancy for oaks planted in flower-pots ;
pine-trees set in porcelain vases are not to him beautiful.
Knowing somewhat the uncertainty of the seasons, having
had prdof of the variableness of climates, he has no wish
to be put down in a small area., fenced about on all sides,
bricked closely in so that no draught can freshen the air
and enliven the soil. He has discovered that in his daily
life he must face the tempest and brave the blast, and he
would make sure against being stripped by an autumn
wind, or sapped by a trickling stream of water, or over-
turned by a sudden convulsion of nature. He prefers to
be able to stand, and, when the storm has passed, still to
stand. He calls himself, therefore, what he is, a Radical
■ — a root-man, because he believes in a root; the deeper

52 THE RADICAL'S ROOT.

the root, the more he believes in it ; and his sincere de-
sire, his only desire, is to know that his root goes down
deep enough to hold fast amid the severest stress of
weather.

The Radical, therefore, cannot be a sectarian. . The
sectarian stands planted in a sect, but a sect is a fragment
— something cut off from the domain of thought, a small
ground-plot, or yard, not an open field. The sectarian is
a class or clique man ; as the word signifies, a man who is
clipped and trimmed down. He is a tree set in a box, not
in a meadow. That he has a certain amount of verdure,
that he bears a certain quality of fruit, that he has ele-
ments of earnestness, of intensity, may be cheerfully
granted. Every human being has vitality of some sort;
he will grow after a fashion wherever you plant him*; if
you plant him in a small place, he will make the most of
his opportunity, he will ripen to the extent of his limits.
But if the limits are cramped, the stature will be stunted.
The sectarian is an apple-tree, planted in the cleft of a
rock. Chance has put it there ; no gardener is responsi-
ble for the situation ; it makes the best of its handful of
earth and thimbleful of moisture; struggles as well as it
can to get at the light and air; rejoices, after a sickly
fashion, in the sun ; holds out its scanty leaf to catch the
rain-fall, but after all can get no more sustenance than the
conditions allow. The kind wind blows dust into the
nook where the poor twisted body is ; resolutely the root
is let down, and painfully the sustenance there is drawn
up, though it be but a mouthful. But you will see only a
few wrinkled leaves. On the outermost twig, perhaps,
you may discover a single apple, which never ripens, and,
when bitten, proves to be sour. The sectarian has a cer-
tain amount offeree of his own ; but the sound he makes
as he ripples along, is out of all proportion to the volume

THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 53

of the stream ; it is tlie rattle of a thin current of water
flowing over loose pebbles. A very slender rivlilet will
turn a pretty large mill-wheel if you only make the chan-
nel narrow enough. Bat one can have no more life than
his roots supply ; the sectarian's mind, therefore, is nar-
row, dry, thin, and sandy. There is no great impulse, no
eager seeking after the new truth. He holds up his little
shred of doctrine, and it is not apparent to him that any-
body else has any doctrine at all. His heart cannot be genial
or diffusive in its charity. It is impossible for him to feel
that other men who do not believe as he does, are as good
as he is ; that they can be sincerely good at all. There is
a certain amount of conscience, or of conscientiousness,
rather, but it grinds away at the crank of the denominational
organization, it turns the creaking wheel of denominational
duty, and succeeds in bringing out a certain amount of
hard grits which one can, perhaps, make into a dry biscuit.
He cannot worship with grandeur of devotion, for his
deity is a definition, his God is a dogma. He can onlv
catch a glimpse of the divine love at the bottom of a well
as the sun passes over the mouth of it. His soul, there-
fore, is apt to be arid and barren as his mind ; his love of
God is love of his denomination, and the love of his de-
nomination is but a species of the love of himself.

The Radical cannot be a sectarian. Can the Radical be
a churchman % What is a church, but a more comprehen-
sive and better organized sect, a wider denomination, a
more diversified group of believers ? There is something
grand, truly, in the idea of a church ; in every existing
church there is much that is noble, majestic, and attractive.
A church is an organization, not a machine ; it is a growth ;
it lives through ages of time ; it covers a large area of
space ; it includes people of many conditions, many orders
of Intellect, many casts of disposition, many tongues, many

54 THE RADICAL'S BOOT.

types of genius, it may be, many different races. It has
developed in the course of centuries. There are worlds of
experiences in it. Its spiritual- soil is strong and succu-
lent, with the joys and sorrows, the thoughts and desires,
the aspirations and utterances of generations. Its doctrines
are the product of disciplined minds working through
many phases of faith. It has sacraments and ceremonies,
solemn rites, glorious music, beautiful symbols, poetry,
art, architecture. It has great churches, not meeting-houses,
that seem to have grown, by the laws of nature, out of the
soil. To be rooted in a church is to have roots struck into
historic and holy ground ; it is to draw moisture from
many living springs ; it is to appropriate the experience,
perhaps, of a nation. The churchman, so he be a true
churchman, carries with himself an air of calmness and
repose, of dignity and of grace. He seems to be a part of
the institution he belongs to ; a piece of this great organ-
ism that has lived so long, and comprehended so much,
and embraced such various life ; something of the spirit of
antiquity attaches itself to him. He is conservative; he
has a great trust, a large reverence, an earnestness in
thought and feeling that is even impressive and beautiful.
And yet, the churchman, if he be no more than a church-
man, is considerably less than human. What does he
think of other churches ? Of the Roman Church, for in-
stance— of the Greek Church ? What respect has he for
strange forms of worship ? Does he do more than toler-
ate extremes that differ from his own ? Does he tolerate
such as are hostile? The churchman's mind is slow and
opaque ; his heart is rather self-satisfied than sunny ; his
conscience rather punctilious than sensitive ; his worship
is formal ; he prays as the church prays — out of a book.
He allows the church to think for him, to believe for him,
to worship for him, to intercede for him. The church

THE RADICAL'S ROOT. 55

takes care of him ; pardons liis sins ; guarantees his future.
He treads an ecclesiastical path, passes through an eccle-
siastical doorway, enters an ecclesiastical heaven. However
pleasantly he talks with other believers, it is over a fence :
however graciously he looks at them, it is with .eyes of
compassion. He cannot help believing that he is. in a
safer place than they. You are impressed by him, as by
one who feels sure of his past, his present, and also of his
future, and is good enough to be sorry that his fellow-men
arc not as sure of their destiny as he is of his. The ripe-
ness of his belief prevents his being angular, but the in-
terior composure of his mind savors too much of that calm
exclusiveness which enjoys its spiritual privacy, and keeps
intruders out of doors. '

The Radical cannot be a churchman. The church is of
comparatively modern origin, traceable to definite begin-
nings. It is a production of human wit ; a creation of
diplomacy. You can easily go below it, and get at the
secret of it. The Catholic church claims to be older than
the Bible. Is it older than the Hebrew Bible — to mention
no others? The man who strikes his roots into the Old
Testament, strikes them below the church. The man
whose roots go down into the soil of these antique Scrip-
tures penetrates below all Christendom. The Old Testa-
ment, the old Hebrew Bible— what a world it is ! How
wonderful in extent, in comprehensiveness! What wealth
of antiquity there is in it ! What recesses of wonder
and marvel it contains ! It covers a continent ; it absorl s
the life of a race, and one of the most extraordinary races
that ever lived on the planet. There is in it a universe of
thought, feeling, conviction, purpose; the experiences of
two thousand years are packed away in its chapters. What
mountain ranges of thought, what sweet valleys of medi-
tation, what noble rivers of psalmody, what delicious

56 THE RADICAL'S ROOT.

fountains and pure rivulets of praise ! What power of
conviction, what reaches of exaltation, what breadth of
hope, what vistas of anticipation, what thrilling concep-
tions of Providence, of the world that is, and of the world
that is to come ! The man who should sink his roots so
deeply into the Old Bible that they took up everything
there, would be a giant among men. But all depends on
the thoroughness of the exploration. Does one root him-
self in the letter, or in the spirit % — that is the question.
He that roots himself in the letter does not go below the
surface, hardly pierces the outer crust ; knows nothing,
j>erhaps, of the rich world of experience that is stored in-
side. ~No w, the Old Testament man as we see him roots
himself in the letter. The Puritan rooted himself in
the letter. He knew far less than he might of the
resources of moral and spiritual sustenance that lay
hidden in the spirit below the letter. The soil in which
lie struck his root was made up in great measure of the
debris of the Hebrew mind, wild feelings, fanciful specu-
lations, strange superstitions and conceits, that are strewn
broadcast over the surface of the history ; uncouth beliefs
in Providence, rude conceptions of God and man, gro-
tesque notions of the constitution of the world, vagaries
respecting the election of certain races of men, and the
rejection of others ; and the result of all this wTas a charac-
ter of austerity and pride, touched here and there with a
sweet and rich glow of piety, but having, as the soul of it,
more reverence for law than truth, for justice than for
love. The Puritan had a grand life in him, but it was
rough and severe. He was exclusive, arbitrary, and at
times tyrannical. He carried a rod of iron in his hand;
his conscience was a rod of iron.

Go down below the letter in which the spirit is hidden,
— sink your roots until you strike the New Testament, and

THE RADICALS ROOT. 57

?!
you have something infinitely richer. The New Testa-
ment is the older, because it is the heart, the soul of the
Old Testament. Was not Jesus a Hebrew, and what
food did he feed on but that very Bible which we call the
Bible of the Hebrews ? What was his peculiarity, if not
this ; that he dropped roots down below the surface of
the ancestral mind till they touched a secret core of inspi-
ration in the heart of his race ? Everything he had was
there, every thought, every feeling, every hope, every
anticipation ; his trust, his faith in the Heavenly Father,
his conception of the paternal Providence, his sentiments
of reverence and trust, his patience, his meekness — they
are all there. But, with the subtile insight that he possess-
ed, with the exquisite chemistry of his soul, he sent his
roots underground ; they ran out in every direction until
they found those sweetest springs of water, and drew the
sustenance thence that made them bud and blossom. When
you have penetrated the secret of the Beatitudes, when
you have got at the soul of the parables, when you have
searched out the hidden thought in the Sermon on the
Mount, then, and not before, you have touched the centre
of power in the old Hebrew Bible. And when you have
done that, you have struck" into the richest soil that is
offered to the spiritual nature of the Christian. He that
will do this will plant himself in the heart of the New
Testament — not in the letter, not in the strange, crude,
fantastical portions that are heaped upon its surface ; he
that, going down below all this — below the errors, the
mistakes, the superstitions — finds his way into the heart of
Jesus himself, will blossom and bloom into a life as ex-
quisitely pure, sweet, and beautiful as is ever seen in
Christendom. He will have the divinest qualities, and at
the same time the most human ; he will be able to sub-
mit himself to the Supreme, and to give himself to his

58 TEE RADICAL'S ROOT.

brothers. Trust, patience, meekness, reverence — he will
have them all. Simplicity, purity, charity — all these will
be his. The Christian Radical roots himself in the heart
of Jesus; not in his reported word, not in his incidental
thought, but in the heart of his heart. Beyond that, out-
side of that, he does not go. lie explores none of the
outlying regions of literature or philosophy. This beauti-
ful Jewish life is enough for him.

And yet, is there nothing more ? Is this absolutely
all? Is the Hebrew race the only race to be taken into
account ? Does God give his inspiration to none but those
who have lived in Palestine ? Did Jesus exhaust human-
ity? Do we find everything in the New Testament that
can be worked into human character ? Other races have
other gifts ; one, the sentiment of beauty ; another, the
principle of justice ; another, the passion for liberty; an-
other, the devotion to ideal truth in science and philosophy.
Is it forbidden to make excursions into the outlying litera-
tures of China or of Greece, of Asia or of Persia, and to draw
spiritual nourishment from those larger sources, which,
after all, belong to human nature ? They who can do that
are the privileged ; they who can do that are the strong. The
true Radical, the Radical of the Radicals, sinks his shafts
below sect, church, Bible, Old or ]STew; below all partial
experience ; clown into the secret places where man has
stored his treasures of thought, and by all that, tries to live.

Orthodoxy is rigid thinking • but who can claim to
think rightly? How is one to know that he thinks right-
ly ? It is very plain that nobody thus far has earned a
title to monopolize right opinion. To think rightly, is to
exhaust thought. Xo one can be truly orthodox as long
as there is knowledge yet to be acquired. Only the di-
vine mind is orthodox, because only the divine mind is
omniscient, and being omniscient, entertains no error,

TEE RADICAL'S ROOT. 59

Up to this day there is no human orthodoxy. He is most
orthodox who thinks most closely to facts.

We speak of new truth. There is, correctly speaking,
no new truth. All truth is old as God himself. There
are new interpretations of truth, new guesses at truth, new
insights into truth, new readings of truth ; but the Truth
is more ancient than antiquity; it is as old as the world ;
the last reading only comes nearer the first text. To be
orthodox, therefore, we need all the knowledge there is
— of literature, science, art. The Radical accepts the last
interpretation (so it be a satisfactory one), the last inter-
pretation of the oldest truth. Those who accept older in-
terpretations are further off from the original sources than
he is. The "Radical is one who usea the last invented
plow for his tillage, because it subsoils most thoroughly.
What he wants is the old, original, primeval truth; the
truth that is symbolized in nature, which the Infinite
mind, in its first perfect operation, embodied in the uni-
verse.

The peculiarity of the Radical, let me say finally, the
test of the Radical's genuineness, is not that he holds a
certain class of opinions; it is, that he uses the opinions
he entertains. It is not his peculiarity to question and
doubt, to cavil and raise issues ; it is not restlessness of
mind ; least of all is it flippancy, indifference, looseness or
lightness of conviction. Let me declare again, he is not a
destroyer. The true Radical is known not by his restless-
ness, but by his calmness ; not by his flippancy, but by his
seriousness; not by his indifference, but by his earnest-
ness; not by the lightness of his speech about the great
beliefs of mankind, but by the soberness of his speech
about them. He is known by his patience, his cheerful-
ness, his serenity, his trust ; the singleness of his purpose,
the weight of his opinion, his freedom from prejudice, his

GO THE RADICAL'S BOOT.

openness to discovery, his thankfulness for light. He is
one who stands deeply rooted and firmly planted. " He
stands four square to all the winds that blow." His very
name implies that he is rooted and grounded. He is rooted
and grounded — not in prejudice or tradition, not in dog-
ma or formula, not in sacraments or institutions — he is
rooted and grounded in love, that even passes knowledge.

IV.

THE JOY OF A FKEE FAITH.

npHE theme of this discourse is the joy of a free faith.
-*- My thoughts have been turned to this subject by a tone
of remark both frequent and confident, which reveals a com-
mon persuasion that a free faith is incapable of producing joy.
"We hear a good deal about the sadness of the "radicals"
as they are called, the air of discontent they carry about
with them, the melancholy cast of their sentiment, the tone
of uneasiness and pain that runs through their writings,
the evident depression of their moral state. I do not
know that any effort is made to prove this by examples ;
that would not be easy, for as a class the radicals are re-
markably cheerful. But the fact that no attempt is made
to prove it, shows how deep the persuasion is. The mel-
ancholy of the radicals is taken for granted, as a thing that
needs no proof, that is a thing of course, that could not but
follow from their beliefs ; men, the assumption is, cannot
think as they do and not be sad ; their world so dark,
their God so far off, their Saviour so inaccessible, their
destiny so clouded : men must be melancholy without the
sunshine.

True, they must ; sunshine is the cause of health and
life, physical and moral. If this common charge were well
founded it would be fatal. Beliefs that do not beget joy
in the minds that entertain them are not likely to be true.
Joy is the test of sanity. Joy is health ; joy is purity ;
joy is goodness. The joyous man is grateful, innocent,

62 THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH.

kind. Human nature like animal nature blackens in the
gloom. Yice, crime, sin flourish in the shadow. A joy-
ous world would be a perfect world. This is confessed in
the anxiety of sects to make it appear that their members
alone are happy. The Romanist claims a superiority in
this respect above the Protestant, contrasting the cheerful-
ness of his religion with the austere tenets of Luther and
Calvin, his own brightheartedness with the others' painful
anxieties. The Churchman remarks scornfully on the
grim disposition of the Puritan. The " Evangelical "
commiserates the Unitarian, deprived of the celestial so-
laces and inspirations that come to him through faith in
the Redeemer. The Unitarian hears an undertone of
complaint and weariness in the speech of the Rationalists,
who have cut themselves adrift from the shadowy ark in
which he fancies himself to be floating. Possibly the Ra-
tionalist pities those who have reduced the articles of faith
still lower than he has, and who seem to him to have
thrown away the last plank that was bearing them towards
heaven. Even Theodore Parker, heartiest of men, pro-
fessed a deep compassion for those who did not share his
faith in the soul's innate assurance of God and immortal-
ity. " JSTo rainbow beautifies that cloud ; there is thunder
in it, not light. Night is behind — without a star." This
feeling, of course, is not rational ; it is born of prejudice,
not of observation. There are sad people in all faiths,
and there are joyous people in all faiths ; both the joyous-
ness and the sadness proceed perhaps from temperament,
and would exist under any forms of belief. The springs
of sadness and of gladness are within, deep down, and
often hidden, their connection with modes of opinion being
concealed entirely. The physicist says that the brightest
light as a rule proceeds from the blackest substances; so
the most radiant happiness may have its sources, for

THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. 63

auglit we know, in pools of sentiment that to the ordinary
eye look stygian in blackness.

It is not fair to argue from special instances. The poet
Cowper was a faithful believer in the evangelical scheme
of salvation, and yet was a most unhappy man, his joy-
lessness being a cause of anxiety to his friends, and of
torment to himself. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the foremost
man among American free believers, is one of the most
felicitous spirits alive ; he lives in the atmosphere of
serene ideas, joyous and a perpetual cause of joy. The
explanation of the two cases is to be found in the the tem-
perament of the two persons ; that of Cowper was morbid and
low, with a streak of insanity running through it ; that of
Emerson is clear and bright, with a natural healthf ulness in
it that sheds abroad an aroma as from pine trees or newly
mown hay. The temperament of Cowper would have
taken the sunshine out of the most radiant of faiths ; the
temperament of Emerson would make flowers bloom from
the most wintry ground.

The moral effects of religious beliefs can be judged only
from an observation of wide spaces and of continuous
years. Generations must be born in them, and must drink
them in with the mother's milk. They must form the
minds of children, and of childrens' children, being ac-
cepted without question, applied without misgiving,
expressed in literature, voiced in song, condensed into
practical maxims of duty, mixed with the substance of
domestic feeling, incorporated with habitual states of mind.
When thus lived on and worked over, faiths modify tem-
perament, shape it, induce it. A religion will create its
own type of sentiment, as climate creates its own type of
animal and plant. All beliefs have their fresh, creative
period, and by this they must be judged. When that
period is passed, the virtue goes out of them ; they create

64: THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH.

no more ; they tend then to nncreate, to disorganize. The
relation of the living mind to them being disturbed, there
is no more wholesome reciprocity of action, no cordial un-
derstanding, no consent of feeling, disposition, or purpose.
The reason criticizes, the heart rebels, the conscience
doubts and questions, the soul wavers. The faith shows
no longer its happy aspect : the reverse side alone
ajrpears.

This is the position of the " Evangelical " system in our
generation. The ages when people cordially believed it
are gone by; the ages when they can be sure of extract-
ing joy from it are rapidly going. Looking over, the other
day, the correspondence of Theodore Parker, I was
struck by the number of letters addressed to him that
expressed gratitude for deliverance from agonies of soul
that were produced by the " Evangelical " theology. They
were full of groans, some of them bleeding in every line.
My own correspondents tell the same story of distress.
People of every shade of theological opinion, from Cal-
vinism to Unitarian ism, describe themselves as awaking
from a dream-haunted sleep, and are as thankful for what
is called infidelity, as the victim of nightmare is for the
dawn. People I meet among my own acquaintance who
are at times brought to the verge of insanity by horrid
visions proceeding from their impressions of the ordinary
faith of Christendom : they cannot banish them ; they
cannot forget them ; they cannot reason them away ; their
minds cannot clear themselves of the dogmatical rubbish
that clogs all the highways and byways of thought. The
people are becoming fewer and ever fewer in number to
whom the common faith of Christendom brings joy.
There are such, no doubt, both old and young : we may be
sure there are; but it is a question whether the joy is as
intense or as long-lived as it was in the palmy days of the

THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. G5

faith. The genius of the system is on the wane ; its cre-
ative force is spent ; and the ecstacy that accompanied the
fresh experience of its truth is sensibly diminished. The
rapture of conversion is often followed by disappointment
and dejection. The height, if readied, is held but for a
moment, then comes a reaction, sometimes into terrible
apathy and gloom.

Every faith is joyous in its triumphant days ; every
faith has its triumphant days, when it is creative, when it
stands for light and liberty, when it promises and confers
emancipation. What heavens Romanism during the
" dark ages " opened to unenlightened masses of mankind
in the ancient European world ! What liberation from
the bondage of the animal nature, from the despotism of
institutions, from the crushing dullness of ignorance, stu-
pidity, monotony, vice, violence ! The portal of the
church must have seemed literally the gate to paradise.
The cathedral was a place of enchantment; the music and
incense, the pictured madonna, the carved Clirist, the
emblem of godhead, the symbol of eternity, the chapel,
the altar, the lamp of silver and gold, the marble floor,
the stone ceiling, the clustered pillars reaching into the
shadow, the silent priests in their gorgeous robes, the
chanting boys, the mystery of the mass, the crowds of
angels, the space filled with fancies of celestial beings, the
brotherhood of believers, the communion of saints, the
endless vistas into the world to come, charmed and trans-
ported the mind. It all meant to the worshipper, free-
dom ; freedom from doubt and fear, freedom from pain
and sorrow. It gave room for faith to soar, for hope to
singr for thought to wander. The oppression that we
discover in the system was unfelt ; the yoke was easy ; the
burden was light ; the glory alone was visible.

In Luther's day the approaching change was felt. The

CG TEE JOY OF A FREE FAITH.

heart of the early Protestant swelled with joy at the
thought that the spell was broken. He was free from
popery and prelacy, from mass and mummery, from priest-
craft and ritualism. lie could read the Bible with open
eyes ; lie could pray out of his own heart ; he could ap-
proach his Saviour face to face ; he could trust his soul.
His emancipated spirit revelled in the delight of unre-
stricted faith and adoration. lie was a bird loosed from a
cage. He was a prisoner released from his dungeon. All
he saw was the gladdening light ; all he felt was the genial
temperature of the day.

To the early Puritan his faith brought joy, deep and
serene. To him the austere features did not present them-
selves. From him the terrible side that is turned towards
us, was hidden. The sweetness alone he knew. He had
vistas and openings where to us are only closed doors.
Believing himself conceived in sin and shaped in iniquity,
a child of wrath by nature, it was unspeakable ecstacy for
him to be told that a way was prepared by which he could
pass out of his prison-house into the open sunlight of
God's favor. Conscious of his own inability to escape
from the wrath his nature deserved, could he be grateful
enough for the Redeemer who suffered the pains of per-
dition in his stead, and made it possible for him to
mount to heavenly places by means of a simple act of
faith, which consisted in disavowing the private merit he
never possessed, and in loving the greatest of benefactors ?
The Christ was an awful judge: but 1irst of all he was a
gracious Saviour, and In; judged nunc but those he had
done his utmost to save; only they who refused his pity
incurred bis wrath. Was the vicarious atonement an
affront to reason \ He viewed it as a divine mystery be-
fore which be bent in humble awe. The everlasting tor-
ments of the damned were awful to contemplate ; but the

THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. 07

Redeemer came to rescue mankind from them. In that
entrancing belief all painful contemplations were swallow-
ed up. The earnest Puritan could not dwell on thoughts
of hell, he saw only heaven. The reflection which tortures
us is, that the privilege is not extended to all ; that the
divine grace is restricted to a few. " Many are called,
hut few chosen," says the Holy Book, and the few are
foreordained to that felicity from the beginning of the
world. But faith saw a way of escape out of this dilem-
ma ; faith saw only the way of escape ; the dilemma did
not exist for it. All are chosen who choose to be. Are
they few ? That is because few respond to the call. The
few might be many, and any individual of the many may
be entitled to count himself among the few. It is ground
of general rejoicing that the grace is offered to all ; it is
ground of special congratulation that each may have the
consciousness of being numbered among the " elect."
Thus the faith, in any particular case, meant emancipa-
tion, and emancipation meant delight.

But the Unitarian has lost the key. He sees only the
naked, repulsive dogma, and wonders that human creatures
are, or ever were, able to live under it. He rejoices in
having cast the burden of fear off. lie exults in the idea
that he has liberated himself from a cruel bondage, coarse,
pitiless, terrifying, the bondage of an iron creed, every
article of which was a dogma offensive to reason and hate-
ful to the heart.

Careful reflection makes this evident : that every faith
bring:- joy to the devout believers who interpret it from
the inside, that no faith brings joy to the unbelievers who
criticize it from the outside. Every faith is a joyous one
in its living period, no faith is joyous in its period of de-
cline. And this besides is evident, that freedom and joy
are closely associated, that freedom indeed is joy. The

G8 - THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH.

freest faith gives most joy. To this conclusion we are
brought at length. Let a faith be free, truly free, let it
be considered in the light of its freedom, let the element
of freedom in it be recognized and felt, and joy will of
necessity result, as exhilaration results from a pure atmos-
phere, as the sweet summer morning bestows sensations
of pleasure. If the rational faith be the freest of all, it
must be the most joyous of all. Is it the freest of all ? I
claim that it is.

It is freer than any other from superstition, and that is
the soul of all freedom, as superstition is the soul of all
bondage. Romanism delivered men from the grosser su-
perstitions of heathenism. Protestantism delivered men
from the grosser superstitions of Romanism. The Uni-
tarian movement delivered men from the grosser super-
stitions of Protestantism. But Rational faith aims at de-
livering men from all superstition, whatever its name ;
the superstition of the Church, the superstition of the
Bible, the superstition of the dogma, the superstition of
the sect, party, organization, order ; the superstition of the
Romanist, who ascribes supernatural powers to an institu-
tion ; of the Lutheran and Calvinist, who ascribe super-
natural powers to a book ; of the Unitarian, who thinks it
a matter of vital moment that people should hold to a
faint reminiscence of all these.

The Rational believer is happy only when the last frag-
ment of superstition disappears from his mind, and he is
free to walk abroad wherever intelligence leads him. In
proportion as one is able to do this, is he joyous.

Superstition is reliance for special aid on supernatural
powers ; it is a sense of dependence on the will of such
powers. They may be gods or demi-gods, demons, spirits,
angels, imps, beings physical or metaphysical, evil or good,
powers of the air, or of the earth ; the principle working

THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. 69

through them all is the same. The superstitious man is
one who imagines that his health and wealth depend, not
on his conformity with natural laws and conditions, but
on the observance of certain portents or signs on which
the favor of the besetting demon hangs. It is doubtful
whether any living person is totally, at all moments and
in all moods, free from superstition ; it can hardly be
doubted that the moments when he is free are the happiest.
It is a curious fact that superstition is commonly char-
acterized as dark. Whenever it is recognized it is re-
cognized as dark — all superstitions are confessedly dark
except our own — and these last we do not acknowledge.
And superstition is dark ; always dark. Such a thing as a
bright and beautiful superstition, such a thing as an inno-
cent superstitution, does not, exactly speaking, exist. The
fairy fictions of the nursery are not necessarily super-
stition. They may be fanciful, and poetic, and nothing
more. The child is fond of reading about the fairies, but
rarely expects aught from them. If he does, no happiness
ever ensues. Be the superintending power ever so kind,
be the providence ever so gracious, be the watching spirits
ever so loving, the feeling that something must be done to
keep the guardian genius in good humor lest evil befal,
disables the will and causes anxiety to the heart. Some-
thing has been done or left undone, which may put im-
portant interests in jeopardy ; one can never be quite cer-
tain that the gracious powers have been duly propitiated.
If one feels that he has not prayed often enough or aright,
that he has neglected the observance of a day or the use of
a ceremony, that he has fallen short in some point of doc-
trine, or been careless in the performance of a stated duty,
and has thus made himself liable to disaster, however slight
the matter may be, however incidental, a shadow falls on
the spirit.

70 THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH.

\ Tlicrc is no serenity except in a sweet strong confidence
in the natural integrity of the universe, in the prevalence
everywhere of cause raid effect, in the tender immutabil-
ity of law. He alone is happy who believes that nothing
happens ; that whatever comes, comes through cause and
effect, rationally. He alone is joyous who feels glad that
it is so, who answers the encompassing forces with meek
obedience, asking nothing better than their ordinances ap-
point. To feel that all is well, though no gift is brought
to the unseen, and no propitiation offered — to feel safe,
though at home in church time, or in the fields on the
Sabbath — to feel safe though the Bible be unread, the
communion table unapproached, the creed unrecited, all
pious conventionalities disregarded — to feel safe on all days
and in all places alike — to be able to read all books, study
all knowledge, converse with all persons, entertain all
thoughts — to have no misgivings lest the well-meaning mind
be pounced upon unawares from behind some stick or stone
— to feel quite at home in what thoughtless people call the

' outer darkness of unbelief, by whatever ugly name known
— to live as in a friendly universe, cheerily, hopefully,
knowing that if we ascend up into heaven there is good-
ness, that if we make our bed in the underworld there is
goodness still, that if we take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, the same
goodness leads and supports — this is to be full of joy.
And in this way the rational man lives, fitting himself as
well as he can into the conditions of the world he is a
part of, and trusting the well-knit constitution of things.
Should he not therefore be joyous who is a perfect free-
man ?

The anxiety of certain liberal people, lest they should
not have found the whole truth, lest in some point they
should misbelieve, betrays the spirit of superstition in a

TUE JOY OF A FREE FAITH. 71

form perilous through attenuated. The impression that
souls are in danger of some calamity in this world or the
next unless they have in possession the talisman of a
correct faith ; the impression that mistaken opinions in
regard to the secret' of the universe expose people to ma-
lignant influences from some adversary who lurks in error,
is one of those subtle illusions which will destroy the
peace of even noble minds. How can we avoid mistaken
opinions? How can we obtain certainly true ones?
"What right has any body to think that there are beliefs
in which people are necessarily unhappy or unsafe ?
What right has any body to intimate that his neighbor is
on the wav to that wilderness where lions are waitino; to
devour, and no springs are gushing from the ground ? We
shall not have got rid of superstition till we have got rid
of a sorry notion like that, and have become fairly foot-
loose in the realm of mind, not as nomads or roving
Bedouins who have no abiding-place, but as citizens of the
intellectual world, who are always at home with the spirit-
ual laws. The -joy of having this freedom of the universe
is something that cannot be described to one that has never
experienced it. To have the night as bright as the day,
no terrors in the dark, is a privilege which none but the
most emancipated minds know, but it is a privilege which
the rational faith would gladly bestow on all men.

For this faith releases us completely from the bondage
of fear. It does not comprehend fear. What is there to
be afraid of, except fear itself? The great fear is the fear
of death. What a feature that has been in religion !
And religion, that should have taken it away, has intensi-
fied it. The natural terror of death is not great. The
artificial terror of it is immense. Death is the point upon
which the older forms of faith accumulate terrors. Con-
sider the part that death plays in the drama of redemp-

7 2 1 'SE JO Y OF A FREE FA TTIT.

•v

tion. What gloomy pageantry the Church of Home
associates with it! What frightful issues Protestantism
hangs on its fluttering moments! This most natural ar-
rangement of providence has been Beized on by preacher
and priest, and worked up into a grotesque importance
that completely conceals it.- original character. The ap-
proaches of death arc lined with awe and draped with
mystery;* the circumstances of death arc exaggerated into
a ghastly importance ; the hour of death is watched with
painful solicitude: the bearing in death is commented on
fearfully. By the bedside stands the priest with chalice
and book, prayer and holy water. The ceremonies pre-
pared for the last hour are made to convey the feeling
that the great crisis of existence has come, and that the
departing soul has struck into the path of its final doom.
The old religion did what it could and does what it canto
deepen the solemnity and magnify the issues of death.
If there were no death the whole system would give way;
the church would lose the very ground of its exi
the curtain would fall on the drama of redemption ; the
whole machinery of salvation would be consigned to the
lumber room. Of the people that make death the subject
of much thought, the Spiritualists alone take the happy
view of it which characterized the earliest Christians,
especially the disciples of Paul, who regarded death as a
process of transfiguration. The so-called " liberal "sects of
Christendom dwell still under the shadow, more or less
dense, of the ancient fear. The incidents of death are
still in keeping of theology, by which it is regarded as a
supernatural, not as a natural fact, and the efforts of
divines to keep it within the circle of those associations
are incessant.

The rational faith restores death to its legitimate place
among the phenomena of nature, and by so doing emanci-

THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH. 73

pates mankind from a crushing fear ; it rolls a heavy bur-
den from the mind, reclaims from the dominion of gloom
large tracts of experience, lets in light on sickness, old
age, the weakening and decay of faculty, the departure of
friends, the chamber of decline, the last bed, removes the
hideous spectre from the edge of the grave. Questions
respecting the hereafter it leaves open to science and phil-
osophy, taking them from the exclusive possession of priests
and preachers. It bids theology be silent, and reason
speak. The sense of relief is unspeakable. Existence
recovers its fair proportions. The activities of life come
into play. Cndustry takes courage, affection blooms, pri-
vilege invites, and pleasure .-.miles. The awful anticipation
is put out of sight, or contemplated with calmness. Life
is free to use up to Life's last hour, and the end is thought
of only when it eon;

But no words of description, no words specifying ad-
vantages gained, do the least justice to the happy emotions
of this great victory. The joy brims over; the heart is
renewed ; poetry and song express the fresh delight; the
faces of men and women declare if in their radiant looks;
family affection feels it ; flowers take the place of the
shroud ; the coffin is a casket ; a thousand signs indicate
the bright change that has come over the moral wrorld.

How can people thus emancipated from fear be charged
with gloom ? Where do they who bring the charge find
their justification ? In their own fears. The rational be-
lievers, " red republicans " of religion as they have been
called, are supposed to be in danger from their own free-
dom in a world infested by wild beasts. But what if they
see in freedom the only chance of escaping from the beasts ?
What if the creatures suspected of being wild beasts turn
out to be not wild beasts at all, but useful domestic ani-
mals.

4

74 THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH.

The rationalists, it is said, still, as of old, are without
God in the world. If the allegation were that they had
too much God in the world it would be more intelligible,
for this assertion more nearly states the facts in the case.
Without God in the world ! Can we be in God's world,
without God \ They only make the accusation who be-
lieve that through and through this is not God's world, that
vast tracts of the universe are unreclaimed by deity, that
God has here and there a stronghold where his children
may be safe from robbers; a fortress in Jerusalem, another
in Home, another in Constantinople^ another in "Westmin-
ster, another in Cambrid^ ; a castle called " Church," a
castle called " Scripture," a castle called "Articles;" each
a walled city, large enough to contain many thousands of
souls, but to which the souls must resort from the outer
regions of science, philosophy, literature, and art. To those
who believe this in any sense, it must seem a sad thing to
be wandering at large over the face of the earth, in exile
of course, in danger and destitution equally of course.

Theology insists on the minimum of God. It would
limit him to times and seasons; it would confine him to
points of space, assign to him particular spots on the earth's
surface, and forbid his going forth in the world at large.
But suppose we substitute for the minimum of God the
maximum ; suppose, instead of speaking of God as some-
where," we speak of him as everywhere ; what then ? Must
not the joy of his presence be diffused % If we take his
spirit from the Bible, and spread it over the human mind ;
if we take his life from Palestine and distribute it over
Europe, England, America ; if we destroy the theologian's
monopoly of him, and allow the chemist, the naturalist,
the economist, the inventor, the artizan, the industrial
worker to have their share ; if we break up the exclusive
proprietorship of the Church, and let civilization enjoy a

THE JOT OF A FREE FAITH. f 5

portion of the advantage that his presence confers ; if we
dismantle the fortresses of revelation and quarter the ar-
mies of the living God about in the homes of mankind,
must we not by so doing impart to the many the gladness
that was appropriated by the few \

It is the peculiarity of the free faith that it cannot be
without God in the world, for it identifies God with order,
harmony, and beauty, and these are everywhere, in the
world of matter and the world of mind. To perceive this
only by glimpses is ecstacy ; to have the thought always
before one is a perpetual enchantment. The devout be-
liever in the living operations of law, if there be such a
man, must be as joyous as the lot of mortals permits. It
he be free from bodily ailment, from the pinch of hunger,
from the sting of cold ; if his physical and mental powers
be unimpaired, existence to him cannot be other than a
delight. With the conditions I have mentioned he must
be free from sorrow. His mind cannot sutler from doubt ;
he is above fear ; he is sure that what befals in the order of
providence is well. The link that binds causes and effects
together is of pure shining gold. He is unhappy only
when, through some infirmity of passion or purpose, he
has been unfaithful to the j>erfect order to which he be-
longs, and in which he is called to take a rational part.
His hours of dejection are those in which he is conscious
of being out of harmony with nature; when the harmony
is restored by activity, affection, or kindness, it is not in
the power of mortal man to disturb his happy calm. His
sense of intimacy with the Supreme is unbroken.

I know I am describing something which is far, very
far indeed, beyond the range of ordinary experience ; but
I know that the rational faith tends to bring the experi-
ence within reach of every man and woman. There
are those of my acquaintance who share it.- Of course,

Y6 THE JOY OF A FREE FAITH.

outside of my acquaintance there are multitudes who know
what it is. As a rule, Radicals are joyous people, joy-
ous, not as children are who live in sensation, but as in-
telligences are which live in faith. Their joy is unalloyed
by misgivings in regard to themselves, and by apprehen-
sions in regard to their neighbors. They are optimists so
far as the constitution of nature is concerned. To them
the world they live in is the best world possible. Said
Theodore Parker in his last sickness : " If not hilarious as
when wrell, I am never sad. In all my illness, and it is
now in its third year, I have not had a single sad hour. I
have such absolute confidence in the Infinite Love which
creates and provides for the world, and each individual in
it, that I am sure death is always a blessing, a step
forward and upward, to the person who dies." That word
is from the heart of the great prophet of free faith in
America.

When that faith shall have had time to mature, when it
shall have taken possession of the popular mind, so as to
be cpiietly domesticated there, when .it shall have tried its
efficacy in the department of domestic nurture, when two
or three generations of children shall have been reared in
it, when it shall have infused a soul into literature, written
songs, poems, nursery rhymes, hymns for church and
home, its full power as a ministration of joy will be re-
vealed. Then a change will take place in all the habitual
feelings of men. New emotions will be excited by the
incidents of life. Temperaments will be modified in ac-
cordance with the mind's new attitude towards the encom-
passing world. The ancient gloom will be dispelled. The
creature will look into the Creator's face with a smile.

V.

LIVING FAITH.

AMONG the many criticisms that are made on the
Radical Belief, there is one that seems to give a
more hearty satisfaction to the critics than any other, be-
cause it touches the most vital part of the matter. The
criticism is that the faith is not a living one. Intellectual
it may be, brilliant, fascinating, plausible, but it possesses
no power of communicating life either to those that hold
it or to those whom they wish to convince. This is the
charge.

This defect is ascribed to various causes. Some say the
Radical Belief is but a heap of denials, and no faith can
live on denials. It has no Trinity, no Incarnation, no
Redeemer, no Vicarious Atonement, no Day of Judgment,
no Perdition, no Salvation for believers ; it has no mirac-
ulous history, no heaven-sent apostles, no inspired book,
no infallible church, no immutable creed, no special reve-
lations, no saving sacraments, no priesthood or prophecy ;
how then can it be living % What has it to live on ?
What has it to live for ?

Others, who accept the denials of the new faith, and
welcome them, to whom its negative aspect is incidental
to its positive, who are in full sympathy with its ideas of
God, Christ, Christianity, the world present and the world
to come, who see in it the only rational faith, complain,
on their part, of the same thing their adversaries exult in,
namely : that the faith, though it ought to be a living one,

Y8 LIVING FAITH.

is not. It does not strike root, it does not spread, its
"boughs are not laden with fruit, it is smitten with the
plague of barrenness.

I. That ours is not a living faith is supposed to be
proved by its apparent inability to form and establish
churches. Every other sect builds costly houses of wor-
ship and crowds them with people. Catholicism goes on
erecting cathedrals ; Protestantism multiplies chapels, or-
ganizes religious associations, ordains preachers and pas-
tors. Even Unitarianism has its edifices and its clergy.
What institutions of this sort can the Radicals show ?
Their organizations are soon disorganized, their societies,
wanting principles of cohesion, fall to pieces and dissolve.
The perpetuity of their churches, which are not churches
in any true sense, but congregations, audiences, occasional
assemblages, depends on the power of some individual
orator to collect about him people enough to afford him
support, and to hold them by the spell of his eloquence so
long as his popularity lasts ; while he lives, perhaps, the
society flourishes and looks like an institution. But if he
dies, or is taken sick, or loses his voice, or for any reason
leaves his place, the association breaks up and the building
passes into other hands. The faith cannot get itself
planted and instituted; so its foes vociferate — so its friends
deplore.

To this proof of lifelessness which has so convincing a
look, the Radical serenely replies that, admitting the facts
mentioned, he is not in the least disturbed by them. He
does not want churches. He does not desire permanent
organizations, or closely compacted societies that can live
on mechanically, driven by sheer force of momentum, long
after the impelling power is withdrawn. These boasted
religious institutions show that faith was alive once, not
that it is alive now. The object of the new faith is to

LIVING FAITH. 79

form associations, however temporary and limited, on the
ground of intellectual and spiritual affinities; to make as
many centres of fine influence as possible, each to last till
its vitality is spent, and no longer. If these centres did
not exist, if no sparkling points appeared, no magnetic
attractions, no crystallizing processes, then indeed the
faith would be lifeless. But so long as these are extant
and visible to all men, the faith is doing its characteristic
work. The fact that societies vanish is of no significance. .
The significant fact is that they again and again reappear.

II. But the new faith has no Dogma, it is urged again,
and dogma is the foundation of everything. Dogma is
the intellectual substance of every faith. To define the
dogma and defend it, to expound and propagate it, is the
business of the church. This gives the believers their ob-
ject. But* the principle of the nationalist faith is not vital*
enough to build a dogma. It has, consequently, no or-
gans devoted to the dissemination of its views ; no daily
paper, no weekly journal, no monthly magazine. It has
attempted these things and failed. Its chief monthly pe-
riodical goes out of existence after a short and eventful
career. A predecessor sustained a precarious position for
barely a twelvemonth ; it is a question how long the ve-
hicles now running will continue to move. The faith
lacks intellectual no less than organizing faculty. It is
deficient in live mind. Having no system of definite
thoughts, no coherent formulas' of doctrine, it, of course,
possesses no electrifying power.

To this statement, which looks grave,- the imperturbable
Radical quietly makes answer to this effect : that Dogmat-
ism being his chief enemy, he would simply stultify him-
self by trying to rally people about a dogma. His business
is the overthrow of the dogmatic spirit, the abolition of the
creed quality, the destruction of those "organs" of faith

80 LIVING FAITH.

which revive prejudice and bigotry. He would give faith
a natural expression, and let it find its natural channels.
If it will not flow in one avenue it will in another. If it
collects in pools, lakes, reservoirs, well ; equally well if it
flows in rivulets. No " organ " can voice it all, or any of
it for a long time, or for a great multitude of people, and
when one has ceased speaking acceptably it deceases. That
our papers and magazines flourish briefly and disappear, is
a sign that the living water of this dispensation finds flow-
ing streams more congenial than standing pools.

III. Let this pass, then. A more fatal charge lies
against the new faith, and that of a character less easily
met. Professing to be progressive and humane, to pray
for a kingdom of God in this world, to expect a regenerated
social condition instead of a future heaven, it distinguishes
.itself by no efforts to make real its glorious visions of hu-
manity. It inaugurates no great movements of philan-
thropy ; it institutes no original reform ; it sets on foot no
crusade against monstrous vices, crimes, and iniquities ; it
takes the lead in no fresh assaults against the old foes
Christianity has been combating for centuries. Where are
its grand institutions of beneficence ? Where are the evi-
dences of its interest in the poor, the sick, the afflicted, the
abandoned, the disfranchised ? Where are its brother-
hoods of self-sacrificing souls ? Where are its sisterhoods
of mercy? Where are its hospitals, its asylums, its houses
of refuge, its orphans' homes, its retreats for the old, the
disabled, the helpless? The charities of Romanism are
known and esteemed of all men. Protestant beneficence
gives demonstration of power. The Radical does nothing.
[Ie boasts of his humanity, and leaves the humanities to
his neighbors! lie talks hourly of his interest in social
questions, and resigns to his orthodox friend the duty of
solving them. o

LIVING FAITH. 81

I will not urge the usual considerations by which this
accusation is met. I will not cite the examples of eminent
beneficence displayed by Radicals ; the generosity of this
one to the poor ; the munificence of that one to the work-
ing classes; the devotion of this man's fortune to the cause
of popular education, of that one's to the work of aiding
homeless women. All these things are done under the
inspiration of the old ideas, and have nothing characteris-
tic in design or method. Nor will I do more than allude
to the circumstance that among the most advanced and
earnest leaders in every grand movement of reform,
whether social, financial, commercial, political, or moral,
the believers in the new faith will be found toiling and
devoting themselves. Statements of this kind do not fair-
ly meet the objection. For these grand movements in
humanity — the agitation against war, for example, against
intemperance, against licentiousness, against the gambling-
hell, against cruelty in prisons and barbarism in legis-
lation— were initiated by men of the^old faith. The Radi-
cals found them at work and worked with them. They
may have worked with a different interest, under a fresh
motive, in an original spirit ; but the work was old work,
and little has been done to impart to it a new soul, or
supply to it new facilities.

Let the truth of the charge be admitted ; the new faith
cannot compete with "the old in what are commonly called
" benevolent enterprises." It would not, probably, if it
were as rich and capable as the old faith is. Not because
the Radicals are stingy, as has been over and over again
asserted ; but because they cannot accept the principle on
which those enterprises are conducted , and no other prin-
ciple is yet in working order. No original work is as yet
possible. In the old-fashioned, conventional modes of
charity, the new faith has no confidence. It perceives that

4*

82 • LIVING FAITH.

they are not rational ; it knows that they are not scientific;
it strongly suspects that they are not reformatory or regen-
erating ; it is more than half persuaded that they bring
serious mischiefs and even permanent evils in their train ;
its very love of humanity forbids its enlisting itself enthu-
siastically with their supporters.

At any rate, this species of humane labor is sufficiently
well attended to. Both Catholic and Protestant Christen-
dom engage in it with due emulation. There is no dearth
of the hospitality which takes from people the responsi-
bility of caring for their sick. There are enough of orphan
asylums which snatch children away from the toils and
temptations incident to their exposed condition, to make
them nuns or monks, or some other quite useless and hope-
less thing. There" is good supply of " Refuges " and
" Homes," that gather in and sink into oblivion many a
man and woman and child who should be a help to society
and not a burden. Of alms-giving there is a thousand
times more than enough, and of pious attempts to draw
people into the church by holding before them a soup
tureen.

Vast sums of money are given to such charities. Very
little of it, probably, is bestowed out of a free heart, from
pure love of humanity, with the single desire to improve
the social condition of fellow-men, or to diminish mortal
suffering. A great deal of it, no doubt, is bestowed in the
hope of future recompense. The motto of Protestant
charity is : " He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the
Lord." The gift is an investment on the very best secu-
rity. It is a price paid for salvation. It secures a pas-
sage to the heavenly courts and a favored place there. The
Catholic church obtained its wealth, in a large measure,
from persons who wished to secure the safety of their own
souls or the souls of their kindred. The Protestant

LIVING FAITH. S3

churches obtain the wealth they spend in beneficence by
appealing to the love of souls and to the hope of Heaven.
How much of the money would be given were this selfish
motive taken away, it would be idle to conjecture ; proba-
bly a very small proportion of it. To say that disinterested
beneficence is rare, is to state the case feebly. The benefi-
cence that is satisfied with ordinary dividends, with aver-
age returns, with simple interest, is rare. It is the prom-
ise of the celestial compound interest that draws the
subscriptions to the evangelical stock. This promise the
Radical does not consider himself favored with. What he
gives he gives from moral conviction or personal feeling,
from genuine interest or from genuine principle. It is
not an investment, but a contribution ; not a treasure laid
up in Heaven, but a treasure distributed on Earth.

The old methods of charity, discountenanced by reason-
able men, discredited by practical men, denounced by sci-
entific men, are wearing out. But new methods of charity
— reasonable, scientific, practical — have not yet been de-
vised. When they are devised we shall see the new faith
taking hold, and the old faith dropping off. The new
faith will exhibit its charity when it shall find an object
that makes to it commanding appeal.

We are brought, then, at once to the question : What
is it that constitutes a Living Faith? It is not its theology,
its christology, its eschatelogy, ontology, or pneumatology;
it is not the cast of its speculative thought. The Trinita-
rian hypothesis is no more vital than the Unitarian. The
dogma of Christ's divinity is no more vitalizing than the
doctrine of his humanity. There is no more quickening
power in the idea of God's wrath than in the idea of his
love. The most imposing faiths are sometimes the dead-
est. The most unpretending are sometimes the most
alive.

84 LIVING FAITH.

I could tell you the name of a man whose " faith " is
so exceeding small that, with the majority of Christians,
he passes as a man of no faith whatever. For he not only
rejects Christianity under every existing form, and has
something approaching to antipathy toward its dogmas and
institutions, its usages and its officials ; but he will not
call himself a believer in God or in Immortality. He is
not so much as a Deist, but is what is commonly termed
an Atheist. Yet the vitality of this man's — I will not say
spiritual, I will say liuraan — life is wonderful, far sur-
passing the average measure in those who share every re-
ligious help and consolation. Having acquired a compe-
tency by his business, he, while comparatively a young
man, retired with what he had, fearing Jest the absorbing
nature of commercial pursuits should weaken his human
interests, and the passion to be rich should make him in-
different to the needs of his fellow-men. The loss of two
families, the first perishing by drowning before his eyes
while he was looking for means of rescue, though they
saddened, impoverished, and, for a time, desolated his life,
made him neither morose, bitter, nor desperate. He turned
himself bravely toward his consolers, seeking solace in his
plants and flowers, the relief of friendship, and especially
the resources of kindness. His sympathies were his com-
forters. His interest in humanity was his saviour. Fond
of children, he gathered them about him and gave them
joy. Two large orphan asylums— one Romanist and one
Protestant — stand on ground that he presented for the
purpose from his own estate. His services as a public-
s-pi rited citizen are generally acknowledged. It is due to
Iiis sagacity, judgment, and perseverance that a very beau-
tiful cemetery has been laid out in the city of his resi-
dence. No good charity ever appeals to him in vain. His
simple habits, unostentatious demeanor, gentle spirit, liis

LIVING FAITH. 85

truthfulness, friendliness, and entire unworldliness, render
him at once honored and beloved.

Here is a thing to be explained. The living force in
this rare but by no means singular man was not the infi-
■delity or the atheism ; nor was it any other mode of think-
ing about religion that had taken the place of these juice-
less negations. It was not speculative after any sort.
It was the intimate connection he maintained with real
interests. He clung to things ; he stuck to plain facts ;
he did not wander away from palpable concerns. He had
practical purposes which he lived for ; and, living for them,
he lived all over.

This is the secret of all vitality. A Greek fable tells of
the giant Anteeus, who challenged and vanquished all
comers till Hercules came. Hercules discovered after some
wrestling that Antseus derived all his strength from the
ground. Whenever his feet were lifted from the soil, his
vigor seemed to desert him ; but the least touch of his
foot to the earth imparted to him new life. On making
this discovery, the hero, witli a vast eifort, heaved his an-
tagonist up, and strangled him in a terrible embrace while
held in the air.

So faith lives by contact with the ground. The living
faiths of the earth have owed, perhaps, the best portion
of their power to an immediate, practical purpose that
roused and directed their zeal.

What faith has shown more living energy than the faith
of the Israelites ? Persecution has not killed it. Scorn
has not discouraged it. Exile and dispersion _ have not
scattered or decomposed it. It is. flourishing nobly to-day.
It builds its temples in the Xew World as majestic and
gorgeous as those erected by the wealthiest Christian sect.
It gathers its children, observes its customs, institutes its
charities, cares for its poor, prints its iournals, enunciates

86 LIVING FAITH.

its Law, with a spirit as lofty and a heart as tender as ever-
If we ask to what this extraordinary vitality is owing, the
answer is : Not to its doctrine of One God, but to an in-
domitable purpose, ruling and decisive in its early history,
active in every episode of its career, sovereign now in its*
most zealous children, to secure and maintain the position
of a peculiar people, called to a high destiny, and to that
destiny set apart. To preserve and justify their title to
the spiritual command ; to keep the race pure from out-
ward admixture of blood, and from inward apostacy ; to
fulfil the national conditions on which the**divine favor
was pledged, constitutes the deliberate aim and determina-
tion of the Jewish people. Should this aim be lost sight
of, this determination be relaxed, that moment would pro-
bably mark the period of the faith's decline. Its sinews
would be cut ; its power of movement would be paralyzed.
There is nothing in its ideas that will save it. They will
be lost in the ocean of modern thought.

The Mohammedan Faith was a living faith so long as
the national spirit animated the Arab races with an ambi-
tion to plant their civilization in Europe. The sudden
outbreak of Moslem life was prodigious. It was a nation's
soul aflame. The religious beliefs were simple and bar-
ren in the extreme. They had not inspiration enough in
them to stir a tribe from lethargy. It was the determina-
tion of the people to make themselves felt in history that
made Mohammed's name a name of terror, and set the
crescent above the cross.

The Church of Rome has, and always has had in its
days of power, a purpose, which is simply its own aggran-
disement, the establishment of its rule and authority, the
merging of other churches in itself, the gathering of all
Christians into its communion. To accomplish this pur-
pose was the ambition of the great popes ; to aid in it the

LIVING FAITH. 87

terrible Order of Jesus was instituted; to this end the
preaching orders were commissioned ; the Holy Inquisi-
tion exerted its pious offices toward this result. This is
what Pius IX. is praying, protesting, calling councils, and
publishing bulls for. The revival of this purpose will ex-
plain the revival of energy in the old medieval religion.
The church aims at dominion. It represents a policy, not
a faith ; it means statecraft, not religion ; its priests are
politicians. The absorption in temporal concerns keeps
the spiritual enthusiasm burning.

Protestantism has likewise an immediate object, which
it never loses sight of. Its endeavor is to bring souls to
Christ/ a perfectly definite, tangible, practical thing to
do; a thing that excites ambition, rouses enthusiasm, en-
lists determination, in truth, calls for all these qualities in
extraordinary measure. The missionary societies labor in
this interest ; the bible and tract societies hold this end in
view ; the charitable societies derive inspiration from this
purpose. Their " faith" does not animate their effort: it
is their effort that animates their faith.

The Society of Friends has exhibited great vitality. If
we inquire into its causes, we shall find them, I think, not
in the beautiful doctrine of the " Inner Light," but in the
stubborn resistance to the spirit of worldliness in its con-
spicuous forms. It was their battle with formalism, with
the fashions of church and state, with ceremony, hollow-
ness, and pretence, that called out the steadfast courage of
those hearts. "Would you find the secret of their power —
read their rules of discipline, laid down as carefully as any
military code, and in the palmy days of the society ob-
served as conscientiously as if they were soldiers in
presence of an enemy. While the discipline was maintained
the sect flourished. But when idleness, frivolity, and fash-
ion came in, and the world spirit made its power felt

88 LIVING FAITH.

among its old assailants, the faith began to decline. It
can scarcely be called a living faith now.

If now we instance some Faith which, notwithstanding
its pretensions to high spiritual ideas, has never fairly suc-
ceeded in earning the title of a living faith — the Socinian
or old-fashioned Unitarian — it will appear that its defect
consists in the absence of any such purpose as I have de-
scribed. It has no practical justification for itself. It is
not working in the interest of a powerful organization
like the Church of Rome. It is not toiling in the en-
deavor to bring souls to Christ, like the " evangelical " Pro-
testants. It offers no battle to worldliness ; flings down
no challenge to music, art, literature, the drama ; engages
in no deadly conflict with formalism, ritualism, or ceremon-
ialism ; has, in fact, no well-defined foe. It does not toil
to save men from hell, for it believes in no hell of flame
and everlasting torment ; it does, not toil to get men into
heaven, for it believes in no such heaven as men can be
"got into." The salvation of souls is hardly its object,
for it does not put the issue between salvation and damna-
tion with sufficient sharpness to engage the consecration
of the will. The social improvement and elevation of
men is not its object, for it has no working philosophy of
social life. There are ideas enough in it ; but it lives in
ideas, and like the giant Antreus languishes there. ]S"o
fine theological shadings, no ingenious biblical interpreta-
tions furnish the requisites for contact with a world of re-
alities. Not possessing any ruling impulse to do some-
thing, it is not happy in the consciousness of being some
thing.

The living faith is the faith with a living purpose. What
then is our living purpose ? What are we aiming at ? Let
us apply the rule to the new faith. For, bright, intellectu-
al, spirited, and spiritual as this seems to be, it must con-

LIVING FAITH. 89

form to the conditions, or decline. It cannot live on air.
Like all the rest it must feel called to a certain work, and
the imperative necessity of doing that work must be forced
upon it, or the anticipations of those who build on it will
be disappointed.

To me,- the Radical faith has such a purpose, and on ac-
count of it owes all the interest it possesses for me. The
purpose is both negative in aspect and positive.

On its negative side, the new faith proposes to itself the
sacred duty of making war against the great spiritual
powers of Dogmatism and Superstition ; regarding these
powers by whomsoever wielded, in whatever guise arrayed,
as being the foes of all pure religion. These powers, I say
— for such they are— powers instituted, organized, ex-
pressed in rite, symbol, creed, domiciled in churches, and
represented by actual bodies of men. They present a de-
finite object of attack, an object as definite as ever pre-
sented itself to an assaulting column. The Hebrew faith
never proposed a more distinct end to its prophets, priests,
and zealots. The Mohammedan faith had no more palpa-
ble intent when it entered on its determined struggle
with idolatry. The Catholic faith moved toward no more
clearly outlined end. The Protestant faith had in view
no more tangible object. An assault on Dogmatism and
Superstition is no more visionary or vague than an assault
on the foul religions of the Canaanites, or the idolatries
of Islam, the heresies of the middle age, or the infideli-
ties of more modern times.

The abolitionist, when he struck at slavery, had no more
declared a foe ; the temperance men, in their wrestle with
the demon of the still, do not confront a more distinctly
avowed or defiant adversary. The people who rally to
throw off the burdens that oppress the civil and social state
of women, are not conscious of being pitted against a more •

90 LIVING FAITH.

consolidated antagonist. Onr enemy is at our doors; lie is
noisy and violent ; the mischief he does is evident to the
dullest perception ; his baleful influence is visible every-
where. We would keep no terms with him, we would
pursue him to his fastnesses, feeling that, in doing so, we
are contending for the gravest interests of mankind.

This is the new faith's negative work — its work of
destruction ; work arduous and long, but extremely need-
ful, demanding effort, patience, faith, courage, sacrifice —
but rewarding all these with the conviction that the work
is done for humanit}', and will endure when the strife shall-
be ended. Nothing less than a new crusade is called for.
If the Radical faith will undertake it, it will have a name
and a virtue to live ; if it declines to undertake it, no bril-
liancy of intellect or glow of anticipation will rescue it
from death.

j The positive aim of the new faith is the creation and
consecration of Character. This, too, is a definite, and, it
may be said, an original purpose. For, although the old
faith respects character, calls for it as the result of relig-
ious training and the expression of spiritual experience, it
has made.it an incidental rather than a primary thing, an
evidence of the religious life, not the sum and substame
of it. It has given to character an artificial cast, a theo-
logical tone, an unnatural twist that answered to the pecu-
liar kind of training the church imposed. The old faitli
encouraged and cultivated a single type of character, with
some degree, not an. eminent degree, of success. But in
character as a natural, vital development of the man, in
plain human character, based on scientific grounds, avail-
able for every day uses, good for ordinary life, it had no
engrossing interest. It studied neither its elements, its
laws, nor its operations. It was more- concerned with
"graces" than with virtues. And it prized the "graces"

LIVING FAITH. 91

for their talismanic potency in opening the gates of
heaven to believers, rather than for their wholesome
quality in sweetening society.

The new faith concerns itself with the cultivation of
simple human goodness as an end sufficient in and of itself.
Without reference to beliefs or sacraments, without refer-
ence to the rewards of heaven or the punishments of
hell, without any particular feeling that goodness is a
thing well pleasing in the sight of God, or possesses any
character of merit, the new faith emphasizes character in
opposition to custom or credence, and whatever else raises
a false issue with it; it not only puts character before
everything else, it makes it a substitute for everything else,
the one indispensable element in experience. And to this
end it regards character not as the product of ecclesiastical
discipline or theological education, not as a result of
" Christian " or other religious tradition and training, but
as the consummation of obedience to the plain facts of per-
sonal and social life.

Here, too, we have a definite end of attainment. As the
Roman Church labors to bring men to Peter, as the Protes-
tant churches toil to bring men to Christ, we endeavor to
- brimr men to themselves. As Eomanism aims at making
men submissive, as Protestantism aims at making men
believing, so we aim at making men self-respecting and.
true. The Catholic system would break men down ; the
Protestant system would convert them; we -would teach
them the laws of rational development. It is a work
greatly needing to be clone, and requiring the intelligent
effort of many people who are united by a common aim
and enthusiasm. A religious body that will plant itself -
on this rock, that will make character the solitary condition
of fellowship, the sole test of worth, the single pledge of
usefulness, and will make character consist of the simplest

92 LIVING FAITH.

human elements, truthfulness, for instance, fairness, hon-
esty, fidelity to things in hand, not in high-flying " graces,''
or " evangelical " gifts or super-eminent attributes, but in
the qualities that meet the exigencies of daily living — a
religious body that will do this steadfastly will help to
effect a practical revolution in religion. It will inaugurate
a new Protestantism. It will precipitate a new departure
from the ancient folds.

That there exists any religious body that sees the neces-
sity of this mission and accepts it, that comprehends it and
works in it, I do not affirm. I do not declare this to be
the actual endeavor, the deliberate, determined endeavor of
the rational faith. But something like this should be
its endeavor. If the new faith lives, it will be through its
fidelity to this charge. The professors of it are, as yet, too
much under the influence of their old-time associations ;
too much implicated in the modes of thinking and feeling
that prevail around them ; too much in thraldom to the
powers that so long ruled their minds, to be fully awake to
the demands made on their earnestness. Possibly another
generation of men and women, with clearer eyes for actual
issues, and braver hearts for radical toil, may have to come
up and take charge of the great cause of protest against
superstition, and of championship in favor of character. If
the living Radical believers are too idle, too faint-hearted
or too short-sighted to do it, others will appear in the future
who have no such disabilities. The motto of these will
be, and the motto will have kindling power over the mul-
titude:

"Down with Superstition; up with Character."

VI.
THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY.

ly/TY theme is the gospel of to-day — the gospel de-
-L'~L inaiided by to-day, suited to to-day's needs, ad-
dressed to to-day's intelligence. The eternal gospel has
its phases, being variously apprehended by the successive
generations of mankind. Truth is one and the same ; its
interpretations are many. An early Christian writer
speaks of Jesus Christ as being " the same yesterday,
to-day and forever;" and so doubtless he is in his own
spiritual essence. But the Jesus Christ of the Christian
creeds shifts his position from one end of creation to the
other. He occupies every place between simple humanity
and the Supreme Being. He is mortal man, spiritual
man, ideal man, angel, archangel, emanation from Deity,
Deity itself; being according to one apprehension meaner
than the meanest, according to another, higher than the
highest. Even the Eternal God reveals himself in time,
each eye beholding as much of his face as it can.

]STo gospel is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, for
yesterday and to-day are not the same. Every day has its
peculiar need which former days cannot supply or antici-
pate. To be sure, there are constant needs, such as food,
clothing, shelter, and for these the provisions are constant.
Other needs are occasional, incidental, and though deep,
not perpetual. Human nature has its moods and special
exigencies, which must be met as they arise — the mood of
gladness or of sadness, of penitence or of aspiration, of hu-

94 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY.

miliation or of self-confidence, of depression or of joy ; and
the gospel that addresses itself to the mood is the gospel
for the day.

The word "gospel" means good news. But what is
good news to one man or one age is not necessarily good
news to another; it may be bad news, or indifferent news,
or no news at all. Jesus brought to his countrymen the
message that their Messiah had come to fulfill the promise
made to their ancestors through the prophets, that the
Messiah's kingdom should be established on the earth, and
their dream of social felicity be realized. It was blessed
tidings to the Jews, pining in bondage and sick with hope
deferred. But it was not a message that the Greeks and
Romans and Asiatics cared to hear; it was announcement
of no future for them.

Paul brought great news, namely, that the Christ was
soon to come, in clouds of glory, to judge the world and
save his own. The Christian world was on tip-toe of ex-
pectation ; trembling, hoping for the. time of its transfig-
uration ; listening for the trumpets ; watching for the
angels who should deliver the faithful from the rule of the
oppressor and the misery of a world that seemed on the
brink of destruction. But is this good news to us ? Was
it good news to the people of the next century 'I Do we
look for the second coming of Christ ? Do we desire the
end of the world ? Would it be a pleasant thought to any
considerable number of people now, that they were liable
at any moment to put on spiritual bodies and float away
in the air?

Luther's gospel was good news to the hungering souls
of his generation ; a veritable "gospel of the day." They
wanted to hear that their salvation did not depend on the
Church of Rome, the absolution of the priest, the grace
of the mass, penance on the knees or with the whip, pay-

THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 95

ment of Peter's pence, daily paternoster and periodical
confession. To hear that they might be saved by faitli
alone in the personal Saviour, and the interior change of
the heart under the influence of the Holy Spirit, was some-
thing that made their souls leap for joy. It was a procla-
mation of spiritual freedom, restoring to them their man-
hood. But the announcement produces no thrill of ecstasy
now. The Church of Rome is nothing to us ; we have
never been in bondage to it, and never expect to be.
We have been spiritual freemen, we and our forefathers
for generations. The gospel of Luther is an old and
almost forgotten story ; the dust of ages stops the ears
that hailed it.

The great teacher gives voice to his time, not to all time.
His doctrine is not his own, but the persuasion or the
prophecy of his epoch. The Father who sends him is the
spirit of his age, which imparts to him its need and its
hope. I do not perceive that Jesus brought a new reve-
lation, in the usual sense of the word, or, on his own
authority, announced any unknown truth. As he heard,
he spoke, and what he heard was the voice from the heart
of his people. We find all his thoughts in the religious
books of his nation ; sometimes expressed in the very
same language he himself used, sometimes in phrases as
expressive, though less felicitous than his own. His doc-
trine, that God is creator, preserver, guide, comforter,
immediate presence and providence, pitying father, is
enunciated in most touching forms of speech many times,
over; it is the burden of prophecy and psalm. His doc-
trine, that the essence of religion was love to God and
man, was as ancient as the literature of his race. That
God loved mercy more than sacrifice, that spiritual worth
made one greater than the temple and superior to the Sab-
bath, that the kingdom of heaven was within and not

96 TEE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY.

without, a moral, not a political state, were among the
first principles of the wisdom he learned as a child. The
" Golden Eule " was laid down explicitly by the earliest
and latest masters in Hebrew ethics. The substance of, the
" Sermon on the Mount " may be picked up in different
places all along the road of the national progress. The
" Beatitudes," less exquisitely phrased than by his poetic
lips, gem the pages of sacred song and grace the sentences
of proverbial wisdom. Even the " Lord's Prayer " is
made up of invocations and petitions that were familiar to
the piety of his nation.

Jesus voiced the purer and deeper consciousness of his
race, feeling himself surrounded by the spirits of the past ;
in his moments of ecstasy, holding spiritual communion
with Moses and Elias. His " But I say unto you," was
not the claim of a peculiar authority, distinct from that of
other teachers, and above them, for he said that he came
not to destroy the law and the nrophets, but to fulfill them.
It was rather the emphatic declaration of the superiority
of the spirit to the letter, the claim and right of the soul of
the faitli to set aside the traditions, forms, and formularies
of it. It was not himself he preached, but that which
came to him and poured through him.

Paul seemed to be an original teacher, with a gospel all
his own ; a distinct and peculiar message, that had never
been delivered before. But he took particular pains to
say that nothing of the kind was true. The Hebrew scrip-
tures, he said, rightly interpreted, contained all he had to
communicate; not in precise words, perhaps, but in sym-
bol and allegory. The first thing Paul did, in addressing
a Jewish audience, was to convince them by ingenious
exposition of scripture, that his message had been fore-
shadowed in the beginning, and ought to be received as
timely, the appointed word of the hour.

THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 97

"We think of Luther as standing up and delivering a
new doctrine on new authority. But he did no such thing.
His doctrine was as old, at least, as the New Testament,
where it had slumbered for a thousand years, and whence
he derived it. He spoke out of the heart of the Christian
theology as well as out of his own heart, feeling that his
own spiritual experience brought him in closest sympathy
with those who most deeply believed and most fervently
prayed.

Channing, though pushed out of the churches and
forced into a position of isolation and antagonism, preach-
ing what appeared to be a new gospel, never claimed
the character of a solitary prophet. He appealed to
the New Testament, believed that he had the sympathy
of the purest souls in Christendom, and felt that Jesus
stood by his side. The Father that sent him was the
human nature in whose capacity and dignity he put his
trust. He was sure that natural goodness, affection, truth,
and justice were on his side, and in that company he could
not feel alone.

Theodore Parker, that monumental man who stood like
a solitary oak-tree in the middle of a plain — the indepen-
dent soul, strong of thought and strong of speech, stand-
ing up against Bible, church, and creed, casting off his
ecclesiastical and doctrinal leanings, throwing down the
props of ceremonial, and stepping forth into the open air
of thought — nevertheless spake not as of himself, set up
to be no originator or discoverer, but pointed to a Father
who had sent him. This Father spoke to him in many
voices of teacher, philosopher, sage, and saint, bearing
witness to the essential needs and the living hopes of
humanity. Most clearly and emphatically he addressed
him in the profound convictions which he claimed were
native to the universal heart, and which gave immediate

5

98 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY.

demonstration of God, immortality, and the moral law.
2^"one was ever simpler, humbler, more docile than this
sturdy man as he waited on the bidding of the Lord.

!No teacher stands outside, independent of all constitu-
ency. The most radical teacher has the largest constitu-
ency, draws from the deepest well, catches the purest
breath in his sail. Mr. Abbot is conscious of walking in a
large company, and feels his inadequacy to discharge the
message entrusted to him as keenly as ever did an Augus-
tine or a Paul.

The preacher of to-day has a gospel of to-day.

"What now is this gospel ? First, let us ask, "What was
the gospel it hopes to supplant ? What was the gospel of
yesterday and the day before ?

The gospel of yesterday proclaimed the glad tidings of
deliverance from sin. It addressed man as a sinner, need-
ing supernatural aid and rescue. The alleged fact of sin
was the sole occasion of the message. To appreciate the
message you must appreciate the occasion — deliverance
from sin. Xot from ignorance, error, mistake, stupidity,
prejudice, immaturity, inexperience, inherited or acquired*
disability, the effects of an untaught or undisciplined
mind; but from an "inward deep disease;" a subtle,
malign, inwrought, organic power ; a law of corruption
and demoralization ; a taint in the blood ; a traditional
malady; an inherited curse, which was incurable except
by divine and special aid.

To this little word Paul gave the deadly significance it
has borne ever since. Jesus- rarely used it, and never in
its present theological meaning. It occurs but once in
Matthew. It occurs in John but seven times, and only
once in a deeper than the usual sense of wrong-doing. In
the single epistle to the Romans it recurs more than thirty
times, and always loaded with the most terrible signifi-

THE GOSPEL OF TO DA Y. 99

cance. It was the key-note of Paul's theology, the soul
of his religion. " The bondage of sin," " the law of sin,"
" the dominion of sin," are phrases often repeated in his
letters. He exhausts his remarkable powers of language
in describing its irresistible and fatal sway. He ascribes
to it physical death, moral disorder, mental decrepitude,
and spiritual imbecility. Starting with Adam, it had gone
on gaining power from ages ; plunging the races of men
into the pit from which they could not rise. It had ac-
quired the force of an elemental law, which took every-
thing under its sway, and drove all the human family be-
fore it as the breath of the thunder-storm drives before it
the loose straw of the pavement. The risen Christ, risen
because sinless, broke the charm, and opened the way by
which, through faith in him, the rescued believers might
escape from the doom.

In the middle ages, the central thought of theology was
the thought of sin. The' Church of Rome was an organi-
zation for the deliverance of mankind from sin and its
consequences. For, this the hierarchy was instituted ; for
this the priest was consecrated, the altar built, the mass
celebrated, the sacrament administered, the rule and ordi-
nance prescribed. Baptism washed out inherited sin ; con-
firmation imparted strength to overcome actual sin ; com-
munion kept the soul in concurrence with the source of
power ; penance chastised sinful desire ; absolution re-
leased from the penalties of sin committed ; extreme unc-
tion imparted consolation and promise of blessedness to
the dying. At every turn the sinner was met by the de-
liverer. Take the idea of sin away, and you deprive the
church of the whole ground of its existence ; you abolish
it, or reduce it to a shade that ought to be exorcised.

Protestantism made more poignant and intense the con-
viction of sin, by making it more personal. Luther and

100 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY.

Calvin dwelt perpetually on the private experience of sin,
pressing the matter home to the individual consciousness ;
driving it in, so to speak, with all their prodigious power
of statement, argument and exhortation. What were the
Lutheran or the Calvinistic theology, with the total de-
pravity, the vicarious sacrifice, the atonement, the Saviour,
intercessor and mediator, justification, sanctification, final
rescue and salvation, if this idea of sin were taken away ?
Evangelical Christianity, as it is called, owes all its vitality
to that idea ; would be utterly barren and meaningless with-
out it ; would, in fact, be sheer nonsense without it.

The liberal sects of Protestantism, Unitarians and Uni-
versalists, use the word with such effect as they may in
sermon and prayer ; fill it out with meaning as well as
they can ; keep it sounding, at all events, whether emptily
or not, well knowing that if they drop it from their theo-
logical vocabulary there will be an end of their system.
If they cannot say " sin," they cannot say " Christ;" and
if they cannot say " Christ," they must hold their peace.
The doctrine of sin is indispensable to them, for the only
good news they have to bring is that a way of escape from
sin is provided.

It is a common persuasion that the consciousness of sin
is a deep-seated, and indestructible fact in human nature, a
fact that we cannot get away from, the existence of which
is inexplicable, except on the ground that men are sinners
and need salvation. But this is the precise point that I
call in question. It is not difficult to account for the so-
called " sense of sin," or for the belief that men are sinful
creatures. Human experience was not the mother of it,
as much as human speculation and sentiment. The specu-
lation began in the East with contemplative men, who
strove after states of mind with which the necessities of
common life interfered. In their efforts to disengage

TEE GOSPEL OF TO-BAY. 101

themselves from the " bondage of the flesh," as they called
it — that is, from the necessity of providing for their bodily
wants — they contracted a dread and an abhorrence of their
bodily appetites. Their passions became in their eyes evil
and the source of evil. The " animal " nature was at war
with the " spiritual." Their sonls were " imprisoned" in
matter, and to effect its deliverance was the wise man's
highest dutv. The world was a scene of penance ; life a
process of discipline and purification. The sages, in their
writings, dwelt fervently on this aspect of things. Their
litanies were burdens of contrition, supplications to be de-
livered from the fatal tyranny of the body.

From the East these thoughts traveled Westward. They
tilled the air that Paul breathed ; they possessed Paul's
mind ; they became the cardinal thoughts of his system.
The sense of weakness gave them intensity and sent them
home to the heart. A sense of infirmity is generally
accompanied by a sense of guilt. Helplessness is always
ready to make confession of wickedness. Seasons of de-
pression are seasons of contrition. The times in which
Paul lived were heavy with anxiety and discouragement.
The Hebrew state was on the eve of dissolution ; signs and
portents were in the sky ; society was disorganizing, and
all knew and felt it ; the people groaned under oppressive
rulers ; property was unsafe ; life was insecure ; the coun-
try shook with suppressed war ; labor was precarious ; pov-
erty was frightful ; suffering, in every form, was hideous ;
the iron tramp of the Roman legions was heard in the dis-
tance ; the war cloud that was to envelop the nation came
rolling on ; the spirit of delusion and fanaticism seized on
the people ; madmen saw visions, and enthusiasts dreamed
dreams ; melancholy deepened into despair, and despair
rushed into suicide ; from no quarter came promise of
help. Then, in their utter bewilderment, the frightened,

102 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY.

frantic people turned their eves up to heaven, and dropped
on their knees groaning and entreating.

Similar outbreaks of passion have occurred more than
once in history. At the close of the tenth century a por-
tion of Europe was possessed by the belief that the world
was coming to an end in flame. The condition of human-
ity was most deplorable. The earth seemed ready for
burning, and the agony of weakness easily changed into an
agony of prayer. In the course of our late civil war, when
the Government was apparently brought to bay, when the
bloodshed was too appalling to think of, when volunteering
ceased, and the draft was resisted, and civil war menaced
the North, and the mob spirit began to rise, the panic of
penitential fear seized the popular heart, and convulsed it
'with terrible spasms. Fasts were appointed, crowds flocked
to the churches, orthodoxy stirred up its fires, revival
preachers plied their whips on the naked, quivering souls,
and we heard of nothing but sin and judgment. The tide
of public affairs turned, and the sackcloth was put off.

The financial distress of 1857 shook the souls of men
even more fiercely. The collapse of credit ; the fall of
great commercial houses, burying humbler establishments
beneath their ruins ; the widespread impoverishment, the
overwhelming bankruptcy, the general distrust, the crazing
helplessness, brought the usual feeling of moral infirmity
and spiritual desperation. The professors of the art of agi-
tation produced their instruments of torture once more,
and went to work to sting, prick, score and scanty the sen-
sitive conscience of sin. One of the greatest "revivals"
of the century took place. The whole land was shaken ;
the preacher's exhortation was responded to by groans,
cries, confessions, that seemed to indicate that the heart of
the world was breaking. The return of prosperity and the
restoration of commercial credit dispelled the illusion.

THE GOSPEL OF TO DAY. 103

The spectres vanished ; the ministers of the revival picked
up their tools and disappeared ; the churches were shut,
and men recovered their serenity.

The " sense of sin " had another justification in the
gigantic immoralities of former times. More than one
emperor was a monster of wickedness ; great princes and
nobles, even priests, cardinals and popes, illustrated, in
obscene and villainous ways, the bestial elements in human
nature ; eminent statesmen and philosophers practiced,
now and then, vices that would put modern shamelessness
to the blush. The powerful tyrannized, the rich plun-
dered, the great outraged justice, the holy violated decency.
That at the decline and fall of the Roman Empire a belief
in human depravity should have prevailed, is not surpris-
ing. A conviction of sin was all but a necessity when the
most conspicuous men were the most conspicuous sin-
ners.

Such supports as these had the doctrine of sin — such
were its generating causes. But none of these causes exist
now with any force. The first certainly does not, for the
contemplative life is confined to the very few. It may be
said that there is no conscious war between the terrestrial
and the celestial life of men. We are quite content with
our bodies and their corporeal environment. To be disem-
bodied is not the general desire. Very rarely, indeed, do
we find a Plotinus who is ashamed of his flesh.

Nor is our age oppressed with a feeling of helplessness.
Far enough from that! If we are oppressed by anything,
it is by a feeling of our sufficiency. Small sense of imbe-
cility, the minimum of misgiving, have people who under-
take the management of all their own concerns, choose
their rulers, make their laws, set up their institutions, pre-
vent famine, beat off plague, stamp out cholera, travel by
steam, talk in lightning, and make the forces of nature do

104 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY.

their work. Sense of sin, indeed ! It is no easy task to
start a feeble and evanescent feeling of modesty or humil-
ity— to make tliem " realize " the fact that they are some-
thing less than omnipotent and omniscient, infallible and
impeccable. The extravagance of their conceit is as huge
as the former extravagance of contrition. Our enthusiasts
talk of reducing everything to actual science, and ensuring
all possible good to everybody. .They promise prevention
of disease, indefinite duration of life, perfectly congenial
marriages, assurance of healthy offspring, the extirpation
of hereditary taint, and the redemption of natural exist-
ence from all its ills by an easy obedience to known prin-
ciples of hygiene. We hear of balloon carriages and arti-
ficial flying apparatus, by which we shall be enabled to
move like birds through the air. To suggest to such peo-
ple that they are sinners, has an air of grotesqueness that
borders on absurdity. Their confidence in themselves,
however overweening, has, at least, solid ground enough
to make impossible any general persuasion like that.

The sense of sin is not countenanced now by gigantic
private or social enormities. There are bad men, unprin-
cipled gangs of men, criminals, marauders, and plunder-
ers ; but there are no corrupt orders or classes of men.
There is no wholesale oppression of the weak, no system-
atic grinding of the poor, no general defrauding of the
ignorant, no deliberately organized inhumanities. The
rogues who swindle the public, the plotters and schemers
who corrupt legislatures, are seen and known of all good
men. The public are warned against them, the press
exposes them, opinion denounces them ; their proceedings
are noticed, their ways tracked, their plans fathomed, their
motives understood', their character dissected, their doom
foretold. Intemperance and licentiousness are frightful.
evils, but less frightful by far than they were, and are

THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 105

made the mark for general and earnest attack. The virtue
of the community is pledged and banded against them.
There is conscience enough to put all the most grievous
ills away, to banish the rogues, strip the plunderers,
dethrone the tyrants of the railway and the " ring," if the
way to do it were only discovered, if moral force were but
seconded by sagacity. At all events, we feel that our fate
is in our own hands ; confidence in natural ability is
"restored ; the force of honesty and ordinary virtue is con-
ceded. ' ~No one thinks of calling in supernatural aid to
break up the " ring " at Albany, or confound the machin-
ations of Fisk and Gould. We ask no intervention of
miracle-working saviours to redeem us from intemperance
or rescue us from the dominion of the " social vice." If
wit, intelligence, prudence, self-love, love of the public
good, love of humanity, love of God, will not enable us to
redeem ourselves, nothing will.

The consciousness of sin, therefore, is gone ; the doc-
trine of sin is obsolete ; the idea of sin has lost its hold on'
the mind ; and with the sense of sin disappears the ap-
paratus for securing salvation from sin. Farewell to in-
carnate divinity, saviour, intercessor, mediator ; farewell
to priest and altar; farewell to church and dogma, to re-
vealed theology and sanctifying rite, to formularies of faith
and ecclesiastical authorities! Men are not sinners. Dolts
they may be — blunderers, dunces, simpletons, fools, wrong-
doers from ignorance, dullness, inexperience, immaturity,
from unbalanced minds, untrained tempers, undeveloped
consciences ; but sinners, in the old theological or " evan-
gelical" sense of the word, no more. The gospel that an-
nounced the glad tidings of salvation finds few hearers
among the people of to-day. That message is not listened
for. It meets no eager want, and multitudes refuse to go
where it is spoken.

5*

106 TEE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY.

Another idea is substituted for the idea of sin — the idea
of Rectitude. The rectitude of human nature • not its
finished perfection, not "its complete integrity, but the
wholesomeness of its elements and the sacredness of its
constitution. Man is not a perfect machine ; if he were,
he would run more evenly than he does ; he would not
get out of order or dash off the track. He is an organic
being, with powers of expansion and capacities of develop-
ment ; but the law by which he is organized secures all
this, if obeyed, not thwarted. He is to take his constitution
as it is and make more of it, unfolding its faculties and
persuading it to grow in beauty. The " good news " of
to-day imports that this growth is possible; that man is not
divided against himself, that social interests are not at
war, that all the powers are in sympathy and correspond-
ence.

By contrasting in a few particulars, the gospel of yester-
day with the gospel of to-day, this essential difference will
be made apparent.

The gospel of yesterday announced faith in Christ
as its prime postulate ; the gospel of to-day announces
faith in human nature.

The gospel of yesterday bade sit at Jesus' feet; the
gospel of to-day bids stand on our own.

The gospel of yesterday counseled repose on Jesus'
bosom ; the gospel of to-day exhorts to " rally the good in
the depths of yourself."

The gospel of yesterday proclaimed the saving efficacy
of the church, as a close corporation, membership in which
secured the concurrence of the Holy Ghost : the gospel of
to-day proclaims the advent of a free society, membership
in which guarantees participation in all the blessings of a
common life.

The gospel of yesterday offered salvation through sacra-

THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. 107

ments, prayers, pious exercises, and devout observances ;
the gospel of to-day offers mental and moral health, through
education, culture, enlightenment, and training.

The gospel of }"esterday promised saintliness and its re-
ward to those who subdued and suppressed -themselves —
to the self-renouncing, the self-condemning, the self-cruci-
fying ; the gospel of to-day promises wholeness and its re-
wards to those who enlarge, expand, develop, and perfect
themselves — to the noble, the earnest, the aspiring.

The gospel of yesterday praised the beauty of submis-
sion : the gospel of to-day sings the benefits of liberty.

The gospel of yesterday set up as a model the converted
man: the gospel of to-day erects as its model the natural
man.

The gospel of yesterday promised immortality as a boon
to believers in the Christ : the gospel of to-day promises im-
mortality as the natural inheritance of rational beings, the
extension of rational existence beyond the grave.

The gospel of yesterday opened a vision of happiness in
another world : the gospel of to-day opens a vision of hap-
piness here on earth.

These are grave and sharp contrasts, which admit of no
reconciliation.

Is it asked on what authority the new gospel is preach-
ed % Not on the authority of instituted church, revealed
doctrine, or inspired Bible ; not on the authority of any
individual teacher or set of teachers. It claims no miracu-
lous authentication ; it professes not to be the old word
under a new interpretation, but is willing to stand on its
own merits. That it is in accord with the tendencies of
modern thought, in sympathy with current speculation,
may be urged as in its favor. But its title to acceptance
is based on its reasonableness. It makes peace between the
two worlds, the temporal and the eternal. The deadly

108 THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY.

fault of the present systems of religion is their failure to
combine with the present systems of politics, reform, trade,
education, public activity. The thinkers and the worship-
pers hold no communion, have no common sympathy,
share no interests, mingle in no enterprises. Science and
faith are at war. Philosophy and faith are in perpetual
disagreement. Reform and religion meditate different
achievements and draw in opposite directions. The social
economists and the preachers do not understand one an-
other, get in each other's way, cross each other's track,
fight each other's proceedings. The two worlds of busi-
ness and worship do not circle in the same orbit. Men do
not trade and pray in the same breath. Commerce with
men and commerce with God are appointed for different
days. Sense and'soul tear one another.

The effect of this is most disastrous. Nothing of mo-
ment can be done. No great thing that demands a con-
spiracy of all the great powers, of thought and feeling,
prudence and passion, will and wisdom, knowledge and
sentiment, sagacity and aspiration, can be so mnch as at-
tempted. No cause of political or social reform, no mat-
ter of deep human concern in which the interests of
thousands are involved, can be carried through even the
preliminary stages of discussion. Religious conviction is
sure to come in sharp collision with worthy common-sense,
and laudable enterprises are thus baffled at the start. On
wdiat should be the smoothest road, we go hitching, hob-
bling, grating along, to the ruin of our machinery and the
exasperation of our tempers. Unless this radical evil can
be removed, it is difficult to see how society is ever to go
on in a career of wholesome improvement. It is impos-
sible to live at the same in New York and in Jerusalem.
Human nature has no more ability than it requires for its
daily needs, and, if the highest order of its energies is shut

THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY. ' 109

up in a church and held in reserve for extra-mundane pur-
poses, the amount of disposable force must be seriously
abridged.

The gospel of to-day proposes to remedy this defect by
abolishing the discord in question, by making it possible
to think and pray at the same time, and this it proposes
to accomplish by substituting a rational for an irrational
principle, and setting both religion and life to a new key.
It promises to do this, and, if accepted, will do it. It holds
the key of the situation.

Some may ask: Why, if this gospel is truly such a
message of gladness, is it not more cordially welcomed ?
Why is its following so small ? Why are its churches so
few ? . Why are its preachers so feeble ? We might
answer the question by asking another. When was it
otherwise? What new gospel was ever welcomed with
enthusiasm? Jesus left a handful of disciples. The re-
sult of Paul's ardous labor was a group of churches, in all
comprising but a few hundreds of people, probably, none
of them absolutely solid and settled in his faith. Luther's
" good tidings " did not kindle the world. Channing's
fell upon dull ears. Parker's met with a heartier response,
but even his did not run very swiftly. Too many ears
must be unstopped to allow a ready access to new ideas.
The more need that they who have heard the new tidings,
have received and hailed the message, have been kindled
or quieted, stirred or soothed by it, lifted by it to new life,
or composed by it to new serenity, should labor to com-
municate to others the gospel that they are sure the world
needs.

VII.

THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER.

LET our tlieme be Character: the Gospel of Character.
In the book of Micah, an old Testament writing,
occurs the familiar passage : " He hath told thee, O man,
what is good :- and what doth the Lord require of thee
but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before thy
God ? " The New Testament contains many such state-
ments. Jesus says, "Whatsoever things ye would that
men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is
the law and the prophets." Paul writes : " All the law is
fulfilled in this one word : thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself." James declares : " If ye fulfill the royal law
according to the Scripture, thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself, ye do well."

Passing from the Hebrew and Christian writings to the
sacred writings %i' other religions, we find in the Koran,
among other great sayings, this: "A single hour of jus-
tice is worth seventy years of prayer." We open the r.
"Analects" of Confucius, and light on this- passage:"
" When a man's character is right, the whole empire will
turn to him with recognition and submission." Similar
declarations of faith may be found in other literatures. I .
could . cite language equally emphatic from the Greek
poets, the Roman philosophers, the Eastern sages, the
ancient oracles of Persia, India, Egypt, the modern litera-
ture of every country and race, the moral essays, treatises,

THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. HI

discourses of eminent men of all theological complexions,
believers and unbelievers.

L) The gospel of character is the one universal gospel,

proclaimed everywhere in all ages ; always in the same

spirit, always with essentially the same substance, fre-

•' quently in the same language. It is the gospel of no

I church, or sect, or religion, but of humanity. All have a

right to preach it ; none have the right to claim it as

exclusively their own. It is no more Christian than it is

' Pagan. The atheist promulgates it as earnestly as the

| theist ; the materialist may stand by it as loyally as the
spiritualist. It is the voice of experience, the verdict of
the moral nature of man.

The first truth of this gospel is that character is the
Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last word, the
beginning and the end of religion. It is more than altar
and sacrifice, more than creed and confession, more than
ordinance or custom. Character is substantial and essen-

-v tial. It is good and sufficient of itself. Add to it all the
theologies in or out of Christendom, and it will be no
greater or worthier. Take from it everything that men

• in churches call belief, and it will not be diminished in
dignity or cheapened in worth. It fulfills all offices. It
is courage in danger, fortitude in suffering, patience under
calamity, peace in trouble, calmness in agitation, consola-
tion in grief. It answers all questions, solves all prob-
lems. It is ready for any emergency. It is prepared to
die and glad to live. It has no fear, or distrust, or hope-
lessness. "What it is, is well pleasing in the sight of God
and men. It dreads no hell, and it sighs for no heaven ;
for it cannot fear that which vanishes, at its approach;
and it cannot long for that which it carries about with it.
The effects that would follow the reception of this
gospel of character, the effects that might attend its

1 J 2 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER.

earnest preaching, may easily be conjectured. "Were it
possible to suppose that all the preachers in the City of
New York might discontinue their weekly thrashing of
straw, and devote themselves entirely to unfolding and
enforcing this gospel of character, telling men what good-
ness is, and how they may get it, it would be possible to
picture as the result of their efforts a changed condition
of society. A new spirit would be breathed into public
and private life ; a new tone would be imparted to the
sentiments and purposes of men and women ; a new aim
for endeavor, a new standard of action, would be imme-
diately proposed. Yice would be discountenanced, crime
overawed, wickedness rebuked and stayed. Great evils
would sensibly diminish ; politics would be purged of
corruption ; governments would become reputable ; com-
merce would acquire dignity ; trade would be purified ;
journalism would cease to be a scandal. The wealthy
and influential classes would be thrilled and stirred by a
new sense of responsibility ; the unprivileged classes
would feel the smart and tingle of a hitherto undiscovered
self-respect. A sudden economy of intellectual and moral
power would render practicable the concentration of a
vast reserve of spiritual force on objects of urgent im-
portance. Jealousies would be laid aside, hatreds abated,
divisions abolished, false issues discarded; and, as a con-
sequence of this, a simultaneous effort would be made to
apply the plain principles of the moral law to the work
of redeeming the earth.

This being true — and there seems to be no good reason
for questioning the truth of it — this gospel of character
being so simple, so luminous, so universally recognized,
so earnestly advocated, so heartily approved, the neglect
of it is the great marvel. If the principles of it are so
self-evident, why are they not cordially taken up and

TEE GOSPEL OF CEARACTEB. 113

enforced by religious teachers ? Why so much backward-
ness of profession ? Why so much indifference, coldness,
discouragement towards those who transfer their emphasis
from articles of credence to qualities of being ?

The answer is that the gospel of character is not as
unreservedly accepted as we might at first suppose. Char-
acter itself is not placed in the position accorded to it by
the great souls of the race. Of course, all good men
believe in goodness ; all worthy men, of whatever relig-
ious name, believe in truthfulness, justice, honesty, down-
rightness, and uprightness. But the belief is not primary,
cardinal, or fundamental. It is made conditional on other
beliefs, and therefore secondary. Many things are placed
before it in time and in importance, rites, observances,
traditions, formulas, to which attention is first paid, and
these require so much attention that, before they can be
dispatched, the end and aim of them all, character, has
vanished from view.

Let me, with requisite detail, elaborate and illustrate
my point :

In the first place allow me to advert to a doctrine com-
mon to all the " Evangelical " sects, and conspicuous in
their scheme, which seems to preclude entirely the preach-
ing of the gospel of character, and even make character
itself unreal, a shadowy and spectral thing. I mean the
popular doctrine of atonement, reconciliation with God
through the merits of Christ. The doctrine appears in
several different forms; sometimes it is intimated that the
Christ -bore the penalty of our sins ; sometimes it is im-
plied that through his living and dying, a vast fund of
merit was accumulated sufficient, to meet all possible
demands of sinful men. This fund being deposited with
the church, an inexhaustible treasure, may be drawn from
on certain conditions of faith, thus affording any man an

114 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER.

opportunity of paying his debts with another person's
money, and cancelling his undischarged obligations with
another's conscience. A great deal has been and still is
said of the necessity of clinging to the cross, resting on
the bosom of the Saviour, flinging one's self uncondition-
ally into the arms of the Redeemer, accepting unreservedly
the boon of undeserved grace. We hear the phrase
" imputed righteousness," which suggests the idea that
goodness may be transferred, carried over like some private
possession from one person to another.

What such expressions may mean I do not pretend to
understand. To my mind they convey no sense what-
ever. They are unintelligible. They who use them
attach significance to them, no doubt, and significance
that is entirely compatible with individual virtue and
dignity and worth. But to me these modes of speech hint
at ideas that are inconsistent not merely with any gospel
of character, but with such a thing as we understand
character to be. They forbid the preaching up of char-
acter as the all-important, indispensable, radical thing.
They forbid any proper analysis of character, any true
investigation of its sources or laws, any just appreciation
of its elements or conditions. The gospel they imply is
a gospel of redemption and atonement, bristling with
theological points. The preacher makes it his business to
descant on the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the depravity
of human nature, the necessity of faith in the atoning
sacrifice, the need of supernatural pon version and restor-
ing grace. These preliminary matters occupy so much
attention that character is pushed out of sight, almost
forgotten, it appears. If regarded as the end of all the
believing, prayer, trusting, the end is so far off that it
looks shadowy. In any event, character becomes quite a
secondary and incidental concern. Not that any cordial

THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 115

believer in the "evangelical" theology despises it, neglects
it, sets a mean estimate upon it, or counts it of small mo-
ment as a sign or test of the spiritual mind. But the cordial
believer does not make it a primary consideration, does
not come at it directly, ordeal with it as the one absorbing
interest.

Does not this whole cast of thought and speech militate
against the very idea of building up, training character?
The most important element in character — the cardinal
element, in fact — is that of personality :, of individual pos-
session. If anything is our own, character must be.
One's virtue cannot be another's. Nobody can be good,
for his neighbor. What sort of thing is imputed right-
eousness, transferred sacrifice? Apples tied to the twigs
of an apple-tree ; flowers glued to a rose-bush. The Ro-
mish conception of superfluous worth that is available for
those who have no worth of their own, makes all worth a
species of paper currency that is good whether the holder
have earned it or stolen it. A book pasted full of autumn
leaves is not a forest tree.

It is not enough to say that a man's character is his
own. A man's character is the man himself. Take away
his character and you reduce him to a shade, a simulacrum,
a hollow mask or shell. The character is the disciplined
thought, feeling, purpose, passion, will of the person.
What would he be without it ? An image empty of
thought, feeling, purpose, passion, or will ; no person, that
is, at all ; a casket, perhaps, of foreign jewels ; a recepta-
cle of imported goods ; a warehouse of purchased manu-
factures, but no human being.

In another way the prevalent doctrine of vicarious
reconciliation, imputed righteousness, transferred merit,
proves fatal to the gospel of character, namely, by substi-
tuting a wholly different creation in its place. Character,

116 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER.

according to any rational conception of it, consists of the
genuine, natural stuff, the very prime material of our
common humanity. It is the last best product of experi-
ence and discipline working on the mass that is furnished
by temperament, impulse, desire, affection, moral instinct,
and resolution. It assumes the substantial worth of these
organic elements ; and only on this assumption does the-
discipline and effort required to bring them into shape
possess any moral quality. But if these elements be,
through natural depravity, useless for divine purposes ; if
the raw material be unfit for the wedding garment ; if it
must all be condemned as sleazy, rotten refuse, filthy rags,
good for the waste-bag, the construction of character be-
comes quite impossible and inconceivable. ~No training
will avail where the qualities trained are destitute of
capability or soundness. Discipline is wasted on rubbish.
Experience is thrown away on a being whose nature has
no consistency or power of healthy progress. The attri-
butes that are imparted by special grace, as the result of a
new heart formed by the supernatural influence of the
Holy Ghost, may be very heavenly, but they do not in
any sense constitute character. They come from another
than a human source, and are made of other than human
material. They are not the fruit of watching and striving ;
they have not been earned ; they are a gift, not a posses-
sion ; a boon, not an acquisition ; an imparted grace, not
a substantial virtue. They may present something more
seraphic and celestial than character, but they do not pre-
sent character. They are made not of natural, but of
ethereal stuff; they are obtained not by moral, but by
miraculoiTs means.

If we are to comprehend character as it is, in its qual-
ity, law, sources, developments, we must discard these
theological notions, which are potent in raising false issues,

THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 117

interposing veils and obstacles, diverting thought from the
practical problems in hand, and putting endeavor on the
wrong paths. ~\\7e must cease to expect from foreign
sources what can come from native struggle alone. We
must look facts in the face. Until this is done, the strong
questions which slip through the theologian's hands will
go undealt with, and the urgent business of private and
public reform will remain undone.

But there are other obstacles of a different kind which
stand in the way of the noble culture of character that the
times demand. There are those who reject with even un-
necessary emphasis the evangelical doctrine respecting
human nature, yet are almost as far as its believers are
from a clear apprehension of this new gospel : people
who, while admitting that character is the primary and
essential thing, confessing its supreme importance, recog-
nizino; the fact that it is constituted of natural human
stuffs, acknowledging that it is a great achievement of
patience, fortitude, courage, faith, and hope, claiming that
it is man's duty and privilege to work out this great result
for himself — in a word, committing themselves to all the
first principles I have laid down, render their whole pro-
fession inoperative by insisting that the basis, the only
valid basis, of character is the ethical code of the New
'Testament. Of course, they say, character is the end of all
believing ; but there must be believing in order that there
may be character, and the object of belief is the New
Testament and the words of Jesus. But for them, study
of them, devoted contemplation and observance of them,
virtue, if not impossible, is very uncertain, precarious, and
unsatisfactory. The Sermon on the Mount, illustrated by
its author, gives the perfect standard of character, presents
the strongest inducements to cultivate character, lays
down the rules for training character, prescribes the par-

118 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER

ticular qualities that should predominate in character, and
holds up the prize which is to reward its attainment.

So certain are they that this method of cultivating
character is the only legitimate one, that they make
character secondary to the New Testament. This is my
first criticism on their position. The- gospel they preach
is not the gospel of character hut the gospel of belief.
They have much to say about the genuineness of the New
Testament, the authenticity of its record, the importance
of reading it with implicit faith, the surprising grandeur
of its moral ideas, the miracle of moral beauty exhibited
in Jesus, the need that all should sit at his feet, and look
up to him with profoundest reverence. They have much
less to say about honesty, veracity, justice, fair dealing
between man and man. The numerous preliminaries pre-
vent their getting earnestly at work with men and their
affairs. Their problems are all speculative, and semi-theo-
logical.

A graver objection to their method is, that it is un-
scientific. They would ground character on texts instead
of facts, on the printed words of a book instead of the
actual data of modern experience. None but technical
Christians can build on their foundation. The Jew can-
not, for he does not believe in Christ ; the Turk cannot ;
the philosopher cannot ; the unbeliever of whatever class
cannot ; humanity in its unchurched, unindoctrinated con-
idtion cannot. The standard is peculiar ; the education is
partial ; the training is exceptional and eccentric. It is
only when we perceive how peculiar, partial, exceptional,
and eccentric the whole aim and method are, that we un
derstand the full force of objection to it.

It seems to be forgotten that the Bible is an oriental
book reflecting the mind of an oriental people. It seems
to be forgotten that Jesus was an oriental, a child of the

TEE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. HQ

East, partaking all the peculiarities that distinguished the
eastern type of character. Now, the characteristics of the
oriental ethics is passivity. As a people the orientals are
tranquil, sedate, sometimes soft and. yielding, sometimes
inert, capable of fiery outbreaks of passion, but capable,
too, of abject submission. The mild, monotonous climate,
the productiveness of the soil, the languid effect of the
atmosphere, the uneventfulness of daily existence, the ab-
sence of stir and change in the general lot — all conspired
to repress their energies, deaden their ambition, and to
destroy the impulse as they did the necessity of struggle.
Their government being usually despotic, granting no
privileges, offering no prizes, guaranteeing no rights, en-
couraging no liberties, exerted a depressing influence on
their aims and purposes. They naturally became acqui-
escent and content with little; their- expectations feeble,
their hopes faint, their prospects of an improved condition
small, they learned the easy lesson of resignation to the
will of Providence, submission to the appointed lot. The
vigorous virtues did not take root in their temperament ;
the vehement desire for personal rights they knew nothing
of; the aspiration for liberty, power, privilege, rarely
visited their souls. The ethics of civilization, the moral
rules of a progressive people, were unknown to them.

The ethics of the New Testament are of this sad com-
plexion. They are the ethics of poverty, weakness, sor-
row. They are pitched on a low key, for joyless hearts.
They are the ethics of sighing, complaint, and grief. The
Beatitudes are pensive. They promise felicity to the
miserable ; they exalt the timid and the acquiescent.
Blessed are the poor in spirit; Blessed are they that
mourn ; Blessed are the meek ; Blessed are the merciful ;
Blessed are the pure in heart; Blessed are the peace-
makers; Blessed are the reviled and persecuted. The re-

120 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER.

ligion of Jesus lias been called the religion of sorrow. He
is the man of sorrows ; the meek and lowly ; the holy
child ; the lamb. He invites the weary and heavy laden
to his rest. He loves the humble, unambitious mind. His
message is to the disappointed, the unprivileged ; the
burden of the message is, that the Father is their friend.

Special precepts and groups of precepts wear this same
expression of gentle self-abnegation and patient submission
to fortune. The disciple is admonished to surrender his
personal rights and even yield uncomplainingly to wrong.
" Agree with thine adversary quickly, while you walk to-
gether, lest thine adversary deliver thee to the officer."
Compromise is better than controversy. Yield anything
rather than contend. " If any man sue thee at the law
and take thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." "If a
man (a government officer) insist on your going a mile in
his service, go two." " Retaliate not on the injurer."
" Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to
him the other also." Whether absolute passiveness, entire
non-resistance be meant or no, such passages discourage
resentment, and forbid the exercise of the personal will.
To be saintly is to surrender.

The precepts in regard to property and its uses are mark-
ed by the same spiritless tone. " Give to him that asketh
of thee : and from him that would borrow of thee turn
not thou away." " Go, sell what thou hast and give to the
poor." " If ye lend to those from ye hope to receive,
what merit is there ? " " Do good and lend, hoping for
nothing again ; that your reward may be great." No
mention at all of any rights in property ; no intimation
that property may have its uses ; no hint that the making
of money may be a necessity and even a duty. The des-
titute are the people to be considered ; the privileged are
the penniless.

THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 121

The rule of hospitality is made in favor of those who
have nothing. " When thou makest a feast, call not thy
friends and rich neighbors, lest they invite thee in turn,
and a recompense he made; but call the poor, the lame,
the maimed, and the blind." The cardinal principle is.
the mortification of taste, the renunciation of grace, cul-
ture, refinement, the postponement of all social considera-
tions to the single consideration of making the poor happy.

The one quality eulogized, commended, enjoined, urged
without qualification or stint, is the quality of loving-
kindness. You are sure to be in the right way if you
love enough. Ask no questions ; make no comments ;
offer no criticisms ; find no fault ; administer no rebuke ;
plead no excuses ; but open hand and heart to all comers,
whosoever they may be. Love will justify itself. This
is the strain all through. Nowhere will you find similar
commendations of equity, veracity, personal honor, or
loyalty. "We do not hear from the lips of Jesus the stern
bidding to tell the truth, to do justice, to be faithful to the
work of the hour. lie addresses no admonitions to the
weak, the miserable, the dejected. Where does he bid
the poor to be industrious, provident, thrifty, or self-re-
specting ? Where does he make a point of rousing the
wretched to endeavor, or shaming the dependent out of
their idleness or despair ? Whom does he ever summon
to an assertion of rights ? Whom does he ever except
from the categories of compassion ?

The ethics of the New Testament are very beautiful ;
the character of Jesus is exceedingly lovely ; the air of
heaven breathes around him ; his thoughts are celestial ;
his words drop from his mouth like gems. We read his
delicious rhapsodies with unwearied pleasure ; they feed
the heart's craving for blessed dreams ; they are the
ethics of the millennium ; the moral laws of a redeemed

6

122 THE GOSPEL OF I'll All ACT ER.

humanity. They will work admirably when men and
women shall be men and women no longer; when passion
shall be purified and conscience shall be king; when in-
terests shall no more seem to clash, and relations shall no
more be a jangle, and jealousies and hates shall be extin-
guished, and the long struggle with fortune shall be ended,
and we shall all feel like little children in a brighter and
nobler Eden.

But this charming code meets with a harsh reception
from the temper of our Western world. The modern
man finds it quite unfit for a working existence, and
while he pays it a sentimental homage on Sundays, on
the other days of the week he scarcely recognizes its ex-
istence, never its authority, lie blesses the peacemakers
in church, and the next day takes a contract for supplying
arms to a State at war. He hears from the preacher the
touching praises of beneficence, and turns a deaf ear to the
beggars cry in the street. He assents to the lessons of
brotherly love towards enemies and persecutors, and goes
away to commence a long and costly suit for slander, or
to expose to disgrace some person who has unintentionally,
perhaps, insulted him.

The modern man stands for rights. Rights first, duties
afterward, is his maxim. His life is a struggle for power,
place, privilege, often for bare subsistence. He must make
good his title to labor, to enjoy and use the fruits of his
labor, to develop his capacity, to exercise his talent, to
throw h.is influence where it will tell to most advantage.
He is responsible for many things ; for social morality, for
the character of the laws, the spirit and form of institu-
tions, the administration of government. His character-
istic is energy. Every strenuous quality is greeted with
praise. The passive virtues fall into disfavor. Patience
is misunderstood ; contentment is disapproved of; acqui-

THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 123

escence in the established order is rebuked ; pusillanimity is
despised ; humility is, to say the least, not revered ; meek-
ness has a bad name ; resignation is tolerated only in
circumstances of despair. The rule is to submit to noth-
ing vexatious, distressing, oppressive, or unjust, but to
resist, while strength lasts, the encroachments of evil or
mischievous men, of government officials, of legal pressure,
of adverse circumstances. Self-assertion becomes at times
a sacred duty. Even women must compel themselves to
face difficulty, grapple with hardship, resent imposition,
repel injustice, and, in the endeavor to obtain what is
necessary to their culture and usefulness, assume the disa-
greeable -attitude of claimants and contestants. In the
sharp battle for moral existence, even good, kindly,
amiable, humane, delicate people must be perpetually on
the alert to seize opportunities and secure dues. On no
other conditions can modern society exist or modern civil-
ization be carried on.

We do not pretend to obey the precepts of the
Sermon on the Mount. It does not occur to us to imitate
the example of Jesus in his passive submission to wrong.
Who thinks it right or prudent to allow himself to be im-
posed upon by indolent or insolent people ? Who acts on
the principle of compromising issues at any cost ? Who,
as a simple matter of wisdom or caution, turns the other
cheek to the smiter ? Who, however unrevengeful, plac-
able or generous, deems it best to inflict no harm on the
wrong doers, to let criminals escape justice, to allow the
enemies of society to go unpunished % The spirit in our
age is willing and more than willing to take the element
of vengeance out of the criminal code, but it would erect/
new moral safeguards against the encroachments of evil. /

The New Testament law respecting property is, if
possible, still more uncongenial with the modern age.

124 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER.

Property has its rights as well as its duties ; and its duties
have regard to the stability and progress of civilization.
It is^lie great instrument in redeeming nature, multiplying
arts, projecting inventions. It is too precious to be mis-
used or given away or squandered on incompetent people.
Were it held a sacred duty on the part of good men to
" put their property .in such controllable shape as to make it
available for benevolent ends," all the arrangements of the
business world would have to be altered in order that it
might be discharged. Tools to those who can use them,
is our motto. Money to those who have the intelligence
to employ it best, to the men of talent and genius, the dis-
coverers, builders, benefactors of the race. It were poor
economy to give the hardly earned wealth of a community
like ours to the incompetent and imbecile. It were put-
ting ability, sagacity, experience, diligence, to a singular
use, if the object of it all were to be the maintenance of
the feeble, the stupid, the indolent, the unproductive. Let
these by all means have their due share. But to treat
them as if they were the sole objects of concern, would be
to give them vastly more than their due share. The mis-
chief done to all classes by this species of benevolence is
well and bitterly known to all the world. If we sell our
goods, we sell them in the best market to those who most
want them and can best use them. The poor will derive
benefit from the sale in greater opportunities and facility
of living, in cheaper food and more lucrative industry.
Increasing goods is better kindness than distributing goods.
Civilization is a nobler benefactor than charity.

The Kew Testament rule of hospitality would render
cultivated society impossible, for cultivated society is the
result of association of cultivated people with one another.
An attempt to make such feasts as Jesus recommended, if
successful, would lead society downward. But it could

THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 125

not be successful. It would be a silly piece of formal
affectation, like the pope's washing of the paupers' feet at
Easter time in Home. None but saints can exercise hos-
pitality on this gospel plan, and a rule that supposes
saiutliness in mankind at large is no rule for this world.

The " law of Love," which is the foundation of the
New Testament code of ethics, and the essential element
in the evangelical stamp of character, is no where recog-
nized as a working principle by the " Christian " people
of the Western world. The word is charming ; the sen-
timent is gracious ; the view is enchanting ; and if visions
were principles, and feelings facts, and emotions laws,
and sentiments rules of conduct, there would be no diffi-
culty in reproducing in America the type of men and
women that the East furnishes. But love is too soft a
metal for practical needs. A great deal of alloy must be
mingled with it in order that it may do the work of
reform and regeneration. All sorts of strong qualities
must go with it as guards and guides— knowledge, sagacity,
tact, experience, prudence, wisdom, truth. Love does not
always work well. None need to look more carefully
about them than they who undertake to apply it to the
sufferings, sorrows, and ills of men. Who shall say what
love requires in any particular case ? the supplicant for it
or the bestower of it % they who feel the need or they
who supply the need ? What objects is love designed to
serve ? On what conditions is love to be administered?

We must know whom we are engaged with. The
modern man asks questions: Who are }tou ? What -tire
you ? Whence came you ? What have you done ? What
can you do ? What do you mean to do % It is not enough
that you have suffered ; that you are in pain, want, or sor-
row; the question goes deeper: Are you good for any-
thing ? Have you anything to build on ? What are you

126 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER.

capable of becoming ? "What ground is there for believing
that compassion, tenderness, patience, forgiveness, pity,
will do you anything but harm ?

The modern man, the best, the kindest man, asks these
questions, prompted to ask them by his humanity ; by his
anxious desire to do what he can to diminish suffering and
relieve want, and reduce the amount of evil about him.
Love is not searching enough, or clear enough, or quick-
ening enough. The character that is based on love lacks
the substance and cohesiveness which the exigency of life
requires.

This want of sympathy between the ethics of the ISTew
Testament and the ethics of civilization amounts to a
contradiction. Few persons pretend to carry the precepts
of the Sermon on the Mount into their business or social
relations. There are no practical Christians ; Jesus has
few imitators. They who make a profession of copying
him either go out of the world to do it, or satisfy them-
selves with professing. The mischief of this state of
things is appalling. Earnest, devout, conscientious men
are driven out of the world. The rest, seeing how im-
possible it is for them to conform to the ideal standard,
abandon the effort, and fall into the practice of selfishness.
The lowest interest becomes their law. They justify
themselves in coarse manners and mean pursuits, and an
inhuman spirit.

No discipline of character is possible unless character
be grounded on the facts of human nature, human expe-
rience, and human necessities. The New Testament is a
fact in literature ; not a fact in life. So little is known
about Jesus as a man, living in personal relations with
other men, and standing face to face with ordinary cir-
cumstances, that his character can hardly be considered a
fact in human history. He does not teach us as a person ;

THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 127

lie had no home, no child, no wife ; he was without a pro-
fession or trade ; was neither merchant, politician, jour-
nalist, artist, artizan, or man of letters. His attributes
are disembodied ; his sentiments are not organized.

Character must rest on facts ; but a text is not a feet.
Men must be taken as they are, not as they ought to be.
We should dream of them as they ought to be, but we must
train them on the ground where they live and labor. Be-
fore there can be a scientific culture of character, that is,
before there can be any culture of character at all, before
the qualities that compose character can be determined on
and made imperative, there must be a knowledge, not of
the New Testament, but of the elements of personal
nobleness, and of the issues at stake between man and
man.

The investigation of these vital data of character is a
work, at present, of some difficulty, hampered as we are
by such obstacles as I have described. But enough is
known of them to justify us in announcing another prin-
ciple in the place of that put forth in the New Testament.
) That principle is Justice. It is the pillar of noble char-
acter, resting on primeval rock, the absolute truth. It may
be. it will be, it must be, all that wisest love is. It is, in
its nature, tender as tenderness, merciful as mercy, pitiful
as pity, gentle as gentleness, loving as love. But it is all
these because it is more than they all. It has no particu-
lar regard for classes, for its regard takes in all classes.
It does not enter on a special ministry to the poor, the
weak, the afflicted ; for the rich, the strong, the joyous are
equal objects of its care. It knows absolutely no distinc-
tion of persons, no difference of conditions. It knows hu-
man responsibility and duty alone. Its intention is not
t.> soothe distress., but to embolden it; not to support the
poor, but to make them self-supporting ; not to feed the

128 TEE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER.

hungry, but to enable them to earn their own bread ; not
to console sorrow, but to touch the recuperative energies
that will avail to throw it off. Justice tones up the senti-
ments, braces the will, and clears the intelligence, for it
judges all by the same standard, and holds all to the same
rule. Tt emancipates us from the sway of feeling, whose
sentimental rule is so out of place in a world governed by
eternal law.

Justice is both masculine and feminine at once, and the
practice of it is an education in manly and womanly quali-
ties. The ancients painted her in the form of a woman,
and endowed her with masculine virtues. There is a
picture of Jesus in the Wilderness in quest of the lost
sheep. The scene is a sanely waste, with an occasional bit
of rock cropping out from the ground. There is no habi-
tation, there is no forest, there is no shrubbery, save two
or three angry-looking thorn bushes, in one of which a
poor lamb is entangled. In the distance, the clouds of
sand are sweeping along before the wind. In the fore-
ground, the noon-day sun is driving its flaming sword into
the earth. To this place Jesus has come, that he may
save the sheep. His patient arm is outstretched, and
his long, tender fingers penetrate the briars. The great
compassionate eyes melt at sight of the suffering; the
sorrowful, sympathetic face answers the pleading look of
the turn animal. It is very touching, gracious, heavenly.
It is the poetry of tender pity and sacrifice. Cut as we
look at it, there seems to be a disproportion between
means and ends, a lack of adaptation that takes away from
the picture its artistic charm. All this, we are tempted
to exclaim, for a sheep ? Could not the vast intellect that
sits behind the broad brow, the immense kindness that
looks out from the countenance, the prodigious force of
will thai is displayed in every line and feature, be better

THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER. 129

employed than thus ? To devise means of turning the
wilderness into a cultivated field or a verdant meadow, on
which innocent sheep might browse in peace, were a wiser
and a more beneficent deed. Why should the fullness of
the heart suspend the action of the brain ? Why should
excessive compassion push out of the way considerations
of equity and economy ? Why should not all powers be
exercised and all needs consulted ?

Justice is guilty of no such error as this. We look at
her image as set up by antiquity, and behold a woman's
form, stately and graceful in bearing ; she stands erect and
motionless, seeking none, because she is everywhere, in
the wilderness and the city without going thither. Her
right hand rests on the hilt of a sword, sharp at both
edges, and of keen point,* ready to smite transgressors in
case of need. Her left hand holds on high the nicely bal-
anced scales, that will weigh characters, actions, motives,
with unswerving accuracy ; her eyes are bandaged, that
she may not see who drops in the weight, whether it be
prince or peasant, king or beggar, or what the weight is,
whether a crime or a virtue ; she blinds herself to all dif-
ferences in persons, but she herself is not blind ; she sees
with the inward eye the invisible principles of right and
wrong, the impalpable laws of rectitude. These reveal
themselves to her in the night. Though they be hidden
in secret places she detects them. They disclose them-
selves to her ; they come to her and drop into the scale
their own condemnation or praise. She needs not to see
what they put in, the scale is held high ; — the world sees
and judges.

This is the figure the new faith -would set up in the
highways and byways, as the image of the consoler and
saviour. A tract was sent me last week, to one passage
in which my particular attention was called. There it was

6*

130 THE GOSPEL OF CHARACTER.

said that the minister's office was to save souls — not to
preach eloquent sermons, or gather large congregations, or
collect a large revenue, or get a large salary — but simply
to save souls. The silent imputation was, that I was
doing all the naughty things aforesaid, and leaving the one
indispensable thing undone. But if there be one accu-
sation I feel justified in repelling, it is an accusation like
this. Save souls, indeed ! From what, if not from false
reliances and unsafe refuges, from delusions and senti-
mentalisms, from the power of phrases and the bondage
of traditions, from hypocrisy and cant ? He does a good
deed who saves a soul from insincerity, un veracity, holloV-
ness, pretence, and sham, and the gospel that saves from this
seemingly bottomless hell is no gospel of Trinity, atone-
ment, mediation, justification by a Redeemer's blood — it
is the plain gospel of justice and veracity, the gospel of
obedience to the natural laws, which are divine command-
ments ; the gospel of mutual obligation, which is the gos-
pel of eternal felicity.

Yin.

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PKAYEK.

THE subject of this discourse is the Scientific Aspect
of Prayer. The. Bible doctrine of prayer — there is
but one — is simple. It is fully declared in texts like
these : "Ask, and it shall be given you ;" -"All things
whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive ;"
" The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord
shall raise him up ;" " If two of you shall agree on earth
as touching anything they shall ask, it shall be done for
them by my Father which is in heaven." There is no
variety or qualification. Whatever the request, if proffered
in faith by believers in Jehovah or disciples of the Christ,
it is granted. The doctrine is borne out by frequent illus-
trations. " Moses went out of the city of Pharaoh and
spread abroad his hands unto the Lord, and the thunder
and hail ceased, and the rain was not poured upon the
earth." " The Hagarites and all that were with them
were delivered into the hands of the Israelites, for they
cried to (rod in the battle and he was entreated by them."
" Elias prayed earnestly that it might not rain ; and it
did not rain for the space of three years and six months ;"
" And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, oh, that
thou wouldst bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast and
keep me from evil ; and God granted him that which he
requested." The prayer of Elijah is reported to have
brought fire from the Lord that consumed wood, and
stones, and dust, and licked up water in a trench. The

132 TEE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PBA TER.

prayer of Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. The
prayer of the Church opened the doors of Peter's prison.
According to the teaching of the Bible, prayer has re-
ceived every possible form of answer. It has stayed pes
tilence, abated famine, averted war, arrested the heavenly
bodies, made iron float and water burn.

Christendom adopts the belief of the Bible. The doc-
trine of the Church in every period has been coincident
with that of the Scriptures. The same belief is professed
now by Romanists and Protestants. Theological books,
and boohs of piety of both schools, abound in stories of
literal answer to prayer. The rationalizing evangelist,
Horace Bushnell, devotes a chapter of his work on " Na-
ture and the Supernatural," to a discussion of this ques-
tion, and adduces several instances of answer to prayer in
the shape of recovered life and vigor. In England, a sect
calling themselves "the peculiar people," are distinguished
by their implicit faith in the wonder-working power of
prayer. They call in no physician to their sick and use
none of the customary precautions against the effect of
disease. When the sick die, as they frequently do, they
regard the event as of divine appointment. Once or
twice the law has interposed, and the " peculiar people "
have been called to account by society for tampering thus
with human life. Their defense has been the text from
James, which they obeyed strictly, and' against' which,
society, assuming the inspiration of the Word had nothing
to say. The cases were dismissed by the Court of Justice.
To the objection that instances of literal answer to prayers
for rain, or health, or safety, or victory, or other outward
boons, are infrequent now, it is replied that the infre-
quency is due to the prevalent skepticism ; that prayers are
not offered in faith ; that ours is an unbelieving age, ad-
dicted to science and philosophy, which does not, will not,

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRATER. 133

cannot fulfil the conditions on which answer to prayer is
promised. Of course people who cannot heartily pray,
have lio right to complain that God gives them nothing.
They who do heartily pray, may still hope to receive.

To test the validity of the common belief, Professor
Tyndall proposed this experiment. Let two hospital
wards be selected, both equally light, airy, salubrious, both
in general respects, equally well cared for. Let the one
be set apart for patients who have faith in the healing
power of prayer, and whose friends are in the habit of of-
fering prayer in their behalf. In the other, let there be
placed people who are not in the habit of praying or being
prayed for, but who rely wholly on the natural means of
recovery. Let the experiment be carefully watched for
five years. The result will show Avhether and how far
prayer may be counted on as a remedial agent. It has
been doubted whether Professor Tyndall was serious in
the strange plan suggested. If he was not, Mr. Francis
Galton, who seconded him, was. The public understood
him seriously, and there is no good reason for thinking
that the suggestion was made in other than perfectly good
faith. Mr. Tyndall is a delicately organized man of sen-
sitive feeling, of imaginative poetic mind, tender and rev-
erent. He is the furthest possible from a Materialist ;
rather he is an opponent of Materialism ; an idealist of a
fine intellectual type, a reader of Emerson, and to some
extent, of kindred spirit with him. His desire was to es-
tablish a fact, nothing more. This is a very important
matter. If the popular doctrine is justified by experience,
it is well that all men should know it, the sick and the
well, patients and physicians, infidels and believers. If,
on the other hand the popular doctrine will not stand the
test of scientific examination, then equally important re-
sults will follow in another direction. Mr. Tyndall prob-

134 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA TEE.

ably anticipated no objections to his plan from either
quarter; none from the unbelievers, who would doubtless
hail such a trial with joy as establishing their faith in the
unvarying constancy of nature's law ; none from the be-
lievers, who would leap to the proof that would in their
judgment surely confound the infidel. In a cause so mo-
mentous as this, why should not the Lord of the Church
make some startling disclosure of his power, as In the days
of old when the prophets demanded and received a sign ?
The reception of the proposal was not cordial. The
men of science greeted it warmly ; the unbelievers pro-
fessed their sense of its fairness, and their readiness to
abide by it ; but from the opposite party clamors arose.
Some pronounced the plan impious, some impertinent,
some heartless, some idle and chimerical ; some declared
it a trick on the part of the infidels, a cunning trap laid
to bring ridicule on faith. But among the multitude of
objections three were valid and unanswerable. It was
argued that the experiment would be fruitless of result,
because " prayers are not mere utterances in the vocative
case of which any specimen is as good as another, but vary
in proportion to the depth of intensity of the life thrown
into them, so that the very kind of prayers by which Mr.
Tyndall would test his case, the formulated prayers for
classes of persons, are probably those which partake least
of the spiritual essence of prayer." This is well put ;
prayers aimed at a mark, diplomatic prayers, said for a
purpose — prayers of business, as it were, do not fall with-
in the category of availing petitions. Again, it was urged
that the primary condition of all prayer is submission to
the divine will. The prayer might be refused, not because
God could not answer it, but because He did not see fit,
in His love and wisdom, to answer it ; so that the failure
of the experiment would establish nothing as to the va-

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRATER. 135

lidity or invalidity of the prayer. Another weighty and
solid objection ; there is a third party to be consulted —
God. In order to render the experiment successful, must
not His disposition towards it be ascertained? And who
was to obtain that information 1 If prayer was a me-
chanical contrivance that worked like a lever or pulley ;
if every earnest intense petitioner were sure of an an-
swer; if there were no reservations on the part of the
Father of Creation, the issue might be accepted, by both
sides, with confidence. But the possibility of such reser-
vation takes all pith out of the negative proof. Again, it
was suggested, and fairly too, that the experiment to be
successful must conform to conditions of quite impossible
delicacy. Suppose that the patients in the praying ward,
did show a general advantage over the others in respect of
the quickness or completeness of their recovery ; it would
still remain to be determined how much of this effect was
due to prayer, and how much to other agencies, strength
of constitution, subtle peculiarities in the disease, the na-
tural enhancement and exhilaration of the animal spirits
under the excitement of hope and faith, the increased in-
fluence of the mind over the body, which enthusiasm and
fanaticism produce. Our instruments are not yet fine
enough to detect the hidden causes that conspire to build
up or to pull down the human frame. The science of sta-
tistics is as yet in its infancy. It deals with blunt facts
and crude averages. The only valid, induction in a mat-
ter like this, must be based on facts collected in fields in-
accessible, sifted by methods thus far undiscovered, and
collated by a system far more comprehensive than any yet
devised. Statistics cannot penetrate the spiritual region
of prayer, or define the precise efficacy of prayer, or trace
the shadowy boundaries of the mind, or tell what powers
hitherto deemed supernatural are stored up within its

136 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA YEP.

lines. In a word, the experiment proposed cannot be con-
ducted to the satisfaction of either party interested. If
no answer came to the supplications of the sufferers or
their friends, the believers in prayer would allege the
want of earnestness in the petitioners, the unwillingness
of the Lord to enter into the plan, or incompatibility with
the divine love and wisdom. If, on the other hand, an
answer came, the unbeliever in prayer would have a right
to say that the result was brought about by other than
supernatural causes. Unless every earnest prayer is likely
to be answered, prayer cannot be adopted by physicians
in the regular treatment of disease. Unless every earnest
prayer be flatly refused, the priests of religion will urge
people to seek refuge during seasons of trouble in super-
natural help.

Professor Tyndall's suggestion, therefore, is not likely
to be adopted. It has been valuable, however, as creating
discussion, and as opening once more in a practical man-
ner, a question of the deepest spiritual and temporal
moment, a mere enumeration of the bearings whereof on
human affairs would occupy the full time allowed for a
discourse.

The real question at issue is this : Is God, or is He not,
an individual sentient being, a maker, ruler, administra-
tor, in the ordinary sense of these words? If lie is, the
discussion about prayer is at an end. Prayer is entirely
admissible under that supposition. No one doubted the
literal efficacy of prayer before this belief in the individ-
ual creatine, ruling, guiding; God was doubted. Conceive
of Godas mi individual being, thinking, forecasting, pro-
posing, planning, governing as the Czar governs Russia,
superintending as an engineer superintends the machinery,
of a steamship, or a president the concerns of a railroad
company, directing as Von Moltke directed the movements

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRA YEP. 137

of the German army from Berlin, evolving and working
out plans as He goes on, holding nations in His hand as
the first Napoleon held cabinets and major-generals, feel-
ing personal satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the doings
of human creatures ; conceive of God thus, and there is
no difficulty in accepting without the least reserve the
popular theory of prayer. The whole doctrine follows,
for such a being, sitting apart in the focus of the world's
whispering gallery, where the faintest sigh reaches His ear,
with His hand on the springs that set in motion the enor-
mous machinery of His creation, and effect in obedience
to His will all the possible combinations of force, sending
electric thrills along the throbbing nerves of law, bring-
ing the currents of power to bear on the most sensitive
points, and at His discretion starting fresh centres of
energy into life — such a being, I say, omniscient, omnipo-
tent, playing on His universe as a master in music phvys
on his organ, could, without straining a cord or starting a
rivet, snapping a fibre or tangling a thread, respond to the
special needs of His children and meet their requests.
Why should He not give literal answers to prayers for
external things ? Why should he not answer prayers fur
life, success, prosperity, victory, health, and wealth ? Not
all prayers, for that would be inconsistent with a wise
order in the regulation of the world, and with consider-
ate kindness towards people who pray ignorantly and to
their hurt ; not idle, petulant, or passionate prayers, fur
they are nut entitled to respect ; not the conflicting prayers
of men who clamor for opposite things; not the short-
sighted, selfish prayers of men who want to engage the
heavenly powers in the interest of their petty schemes for
place or gain ; but such prayers as voice a human and gene-
ral need. Such a being might, for instance, refuse peti-
tions for rain hundreds, nay, thousands of times, because

138 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA TEH.

He could not grant to one what would injure another;
but can we not imagine a contingency, a case of very pro-
tracted and general drought, when, under heavens of brass,
on an earth of ashes, men pined and nature fainted, a
time when every throbbing brain and every panting heart
and every thirsty soul cried out with one great burst of
agonized accord for rain, rain, till the multitudinous wishes
made the spiritual air quiver ; a time when every living
and dying thing should call for one boon ? And why
should not such a prayer be respected ? Why should not
the atmospheric conditions be supplied and the laws of
nature be silently shifted for nature's benefit ?

Or can we not imagine a state of war between two sec-
tions or nations, the issue of which involves the gravest con-
cerns of human civilization, the emancipation, we will say,
of a whole race, or the overthrow of some dark barbaric
despotism, or the destruction of an empire founded on fraud
and violence, sustained by chicanery, sensual in its dispo-
sition, and demoralizing in its influence? Can we not
imagine such a state, as would render natural and proper
the interposition of the world's ruler, in response to such
eager solicitation from the nobler combatants as prov< d
that they were heart and soul enlisted in the cause of hu-
manity, and were altogether worthy to be entrusted with
civilization's holiest interests ?

Or again, can we not imagine such a God as I have de-
scribed, and as Christendom believes in, arranging the
sanitary agencies with a view to the special benefit of
some precious person whose life or safety is unspeakably
dear to society? Can we not think of Him as sendingHis
messengers, air and light, to exhilarate the nervous system,
quicken the flow of blood, and all in answer to the intense
wish of many who feel that in that life their own deepest
interests are bound up ? Such a thing might occur but

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA YER. 1 39

seldom; but it might occur, and its occurrence would fur-
nish ground for such interposition as the Christian world
expects in answer to fervent, unselfish prayer. Thus we
should concede at once the whole case, and accept with-
out cavil the 'arguments of theologians, the testimony of
pious men and women, the solemn averments of those
who declare that within their own experience prayers have
been answered. And why not? Wlvy not consent to
allow the controlling force of prayer as an agency in the
administration of human affairs — an agency not to be con-
fidently reckoned on for special occasions, not an organ-
ized agency, but still an agency on which men in solemn
emergencies may rely ?

Because, I reply, the conception of God, on which the
whole theory hangs, is one that it is becoming more and
more difficult to hold against the assaults of ripening
knowledge and maturing thought. Men, who, as was the
case of the Bible folks, knew nothing whatever of the
world they lived in, had no proper method of investigation,
never heard of a natural law, never traced the relation of
cause and effect to the most inconsiderable distance, never
traveled, never studied, never explored, held the crudest, the
most child-like beliefs in regard to the commonest pheno-
mena of the natural world, were absolutely without what
we call science or knowledge of anything in heaven or
earth, could easily imagine to themselves a huge being like
a man, presiding over the world of matter and of mind.
As men become acquainted with their globe, with its his-
tory, its formation, its elements, to imagine such a being as
ruling over it day by day, forming its floods, scooping out
its sea basins, balancing its continents, mingling its tribes,
administerino- the economies of its animal and vegetable
kingdoms, working, as by secret wires, the endless com-
plexities of its organization, holding its myriad parts

140 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRA TEE.

together and giving a distinct thought to each, becomes
exceedingly difficult — so difficult, indeed, that they who
apprehend the problem profess themselves unable to form
any clear image of the divine mind. The planet we live
on is so full of fibres, its parts are so intertwined, inter-
linked, interlaced, its elements cross and mingle in such
intricate webs, that there is no posterior door or crack by
which a foreign will can enter. It is already a compact
creation of mind — a perfect flower of intelligence.

Cut we are still on the threshold of our difficulty. This
planet is but a speck in the solar system, which is still in-
cluded in the same network of law that holds the globe
together. And, beyond the solar system, other systems
unfold their blazing sheets of glory, till human calculation
despairs of conjecturing their limits; and all these systems
roll and revolve in obedience to the same rules of order and
harmony that preside over the dance of the autumn leaves,
when the wind strips them from the trees and whirls them
abroad. The conception of the individual God becomes
now absolutely impossible. All our ideas of mind are con-
founded. What sort of intelligence is it that can think in
an instant and at once all these myriads of myriads of
thoughts, and then has myriads on myriads of thoughts to
spare \ What sort of intelligence is it that, having organ-
ized itself in perfect worlds and systems of worlds without
number, is able to give special care to every particle, to
supplement its own complete expression, to improve its
own finished work, to mend, modify, alter, recombine, re-
adjust its own wonderful combinations? What sort of an
intelligence that, having packed a thousand universes with
living purposes, has still more exact and living purposes in
store ; having given every conceivable and inconceivable
expression to its beneficent intention, has yet whole reser-
voirs of intention that have not yet been drawn upon?

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRA TEB. m

But even yet we have not reached the bottom of the
abyss of perplexity. For we find that every point of the
mental and moral universe is pervaded by compact laws of
its own, and is possessed of inveterate habits; is, as it
were, a woven web of will, a seamless coat of purpose.
Every inch of ground as far as we can fancy, as far as we
can dream, as far as we can fling our most audacious con-
jecture, is filled and preoccupied, crammed with cause and
effect, antecedents and consequents, filled till the most
ethereal ether is a tissue of gauzy life — a film of feeling so
thin that you cannot seize it, so tough that you cannot tear
it. The very Fullness is full ! The pleroma overflows !
What becomes now of the Hebrew Jehovah, of the Chris-
tian Father in heaven ? Unless this palpitating universe
be He, lie is past finding out.

Clearly no prayers can be expected to extract another
wish or thought or expression of feeling from a Being who
is beyond all these lines, and who has put these thrilling
worlds between Himself and His creatures, piled these Os-
sas on these Pelions of intention, and fairly exhausted the
possibilities of care in what is already provided. He who
begins to see how much he has, cannot in conscience ask
for more. To lyive the smallest appreciation of the
wealth of the supply is to see reason sufficient for being
dumb.

And so we find what we should expect to find, a decline
of prayer with an increase of knowledge. As people un-
derstand meteorology and climatology, they perceive the
uselessness of prayer for rain. As they understand the
strict connection between the harvest and the seasons, they
cease to pray for good crops. As they understand the inti-
mate dependence of human health on sanitary precautions,
they abate the fervency of their petitions for long and
wholesome life. As they understand the necessary affili-

142 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRATER.

ation of the physiological and the psychological laws, their
prayers for an amiable temper and a kind heart become
weak and infrequent.

A visit to the office in "Washington, where the clerk of
the weather sits with his subordinates about him, catching
the whispers of the wind from the four quarters of the
heaven, counting the rain-drops that fall on a continent,
weighing the atmosphere from sea to sea and from lake to
gulf, and making these flying, illusive witnesses tell whether
it will be wise for people in New York or San Francisco
to take umbrellas down town with them the next day, will
satisfy the most-devout mind that supplication for a sud-
den supply or cessation of showers will be ineffectual.

A visit to the Bureau of Vital Statistics, where the cur-
rents of disease are traced in their flow over large reaches
of territory, and the private correspondence between sanity
and sewerage, death and dirt, fever and fetor, cholera and
uncleanliness, is established with the nicety of mathemat-
ics, will convince the saint that the death-rate is not likely
to be modified considerably by the most fervent utterance
of desire Godward.

The prayer for fresh accessions of temperance, honesty,
peacefulness, sinks into silence before the fact that vices
and crimes too obey their laws ; that outbreaks of moral
distemper accompany changes in the money market; that
social morality follows the line of national prosperity
which rises and falls with the fluctuations of the seasons;
that social disorders have their method ; that sins can be
reduced to an average ; that a skilful actuary will, from
given data, compute with much accuracy the probable
number of murders and suicides for the next twelvemonth,
vice and virtue not being gifts dependent on the favor of a
benefactor, but qualities wrought into the texture of the
world, to be had by fulfilling the conditions, not otherwise.

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRAYER. 143

The Bible encourages prayer for faith. But we all know
that infidelity, like vice, has its causes, which must be re-
moved before it will disappear. The " Age of Keason "
in France, with its appalling excesses, was no inspiration
of the devil, but an inevitable result of the abominations
of the Church, which were again an inevitable result of the
abominations of the State, which again were an inevitable
result of an ancient but outworn theory of the rights of
kings.

Prayer is thus seen to be out of place, because every
possible effect of prayer is guaranteed without it. Prayer
is inoperative, because it is unnecessary. For every prayer
that reasonable mortals can make an answer is already pro-
vided ; answers to prayer being worked into the substance
of life. The compact universe, in fact, is an organized
response to the supplications of men ; an inexhaustible store-
house of adaptations, the key whereof is placed in every
creature's hand. The perfect being could not reply to
human beseeching more sufficiently than lie has done
already. He has even anticipated petition, knowing what
things His children had need of before they asked Him,
and furnishing them centuries long in advance, with every
imaginable means of satisfaction. They fancy their peti-
tions are answered directly by Him when they draw on
some hitherto undiscovered treasury, that had always lain
hidden at their feet ; they fancy that He has just begun
to speak because they have just begun to listen.

Does this view of the question seem chilling and repul-
sive? Then let me, in conclusion, add a few words that
may help to remove or correct such an impression. No
long argument is required to show that the view taken of
prayer and the God of prayer is really more conducive to
mental and moral health than the popular view which it
displaces.

141 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA YEP.

I. In regard to the material condition of mankind.
This depends, all "will allow, mainly, if not wholly, on
human effort. An indolent society will never he a pros-
perous one ; no estate was ever improved by heedlessness
or neglect. Progress in material respects keeps pace with
energy, knowledge, purpose, and these increase with the
necessity for them. To augment these qualities, therefore,
to stimulate the physical, mental and moral activities to
their full normal pitch, is a matter of prime importance
to civilization. The truth is forced on us by all observa-
tion, that the first requisite of improvement is a convic-
tion that man is master of his fate. If he wants a fort he
must build a fort. Every social problem brings this truth
h<une to us. It is the incessant cry of merchant, financier,
politician, reformer, that matters will be no better till
men take the trouble to make them better. Like Cortez,
wo must burn our vessels behind us, and so shut ourselves
up with our work, if we expect to be conquerors.

Now, which belief is most stimulating to activity; the
belief that God will answer our prayers, or that we must
answer them ourselves? A broad survey of the expe-
rience of mankind scarcely leaves room to doubt that the
latter faith is the more quickening. Earnest individuals
no doubt, feel that their mental and moral energies are
quickened and exalted by prayer. But the experience of
earnest individuals is not in point here. We are consider-
ing the effect of the belief in prayer on the great masses
of mankind ; and observing these it is evident that people
are only too willing to let another do their work, and
when that other is the omnipotent God, the complacency
with which they will drop their tools is qnite intelligible.
If in great exigencies, prayer will serve instead el" labor,
great exigencies will not be provided for, and there will
be the most inadequate equipment for the most momen-

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PBA YER 145

tous crises. "What would become of medicine if prayer
could be relied on to heal the sick ? Where would be the
Boards of Health if prayer could baffle infectious diseases ?
Would Social Science have the faintest chance if prayer
could alleviate pauperism, promote co-operation, or dimin-
ish crime % Should we ever make' improvements in naval
•architecture if prayer would protect us from the perils of the
deep % Or keep night watches in behalf of virtue, if prayer
would recover the Magdalene, arrest the burglar, or quench
the incendiary's spark % Nothing endeavor, nothing have,
is the rule of life. For all we get we must pay full- price
in toil, thought, and care. Our whole power of wishing must
go into eyes and ears and finger ends ; not an emotion must
run to waste. When we see people praying against
potato rot and cattle plague, "yellow fever and cholera,
with their lips .instead of their brains, we see an example
of that wof ul misapplication of means to ends, by which
the vast misery of the world is accounted for. When we
hear them praying against unbelief, infidelity, indifference,
worldliness, instead of combating them with knowledge,
we see plainly enough why such things prevaih Let men
be satisfied to accept the answers already given to those
who will take the trouble to look for them in the proper ,
place, and they will be found sufficient.

Civilization, with all its accompaniments, is found to
have kept even pace with the decline of prayer ; not with
the decline of earnestness, ambition, aspiration, longing
after higher and better things, hunger and thirst after
righteousness, but of praye?\ which provides what the
uneducated suppose, and will always suppose, to be a
special dispensation from these purely human qualifica-
tions. I am aware that this ' statement will be gravely
questioned ; but it will appear I am persuaded on examina-
tion, that they who question it are not, as a class, eminent

7

146 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRA YEE.

promoters of civilization, or hearty friends of it. They
are mainly churchmen, who, if they have an ideal of
society in the proper sense of the term,, borrow it from
the book of Daniel or the Apocalypse. For the estab-
lishment of their " kingdom of heaven " they naturally
look to prayer, no other sources furnishing the needed
supply of power. __ What they desire and anticipate must
come supernaturally, if at all, and their faith in the super-
natural will of course correspond to the eagerness of their
desire. But they who desire a better physical and social
state will find the materials for it not in the outlying
spaces of possibility beyond the organized universe, but in.
the organized universe itself, and in themselves as the
crowning portion of it.

II. But this belief, it is urged, falls coldly on the heart ;
it chills feeling ; it freezes emotion ; the spiritual nature
cannot inhale this rarefied air, but, abandoned in a wilder-
ness of uses, it gasps and dies. Not, I think, when the
view of the truth is clear. What the mind needs is bal-
'ance, poise, serenity, the sense of rest in infinite powers,
of repose on divine realities. It is the highest office of
prayer to console and tranquil ize the mind so that its waves
of passion will subside on the bosom of the eternal deep.

The eternal deep is the necessity, not the voice from it.
And the eternal deep is not abolished. It is there still,
where it was, and more crowded than ever with living
forms. Devout persons say : we must have a God to fly
to. But is it not as well to have a God who may be reach-
ed without flying — who besets us behind and before in
life's inexorable conditions, who lays His hand upon us
every moment in some nice adaptation to our mortal ne-
cessities, whose sensorium is the universe itself ?

An unutterable peace steals over the spirit as one sit-
ting on a rock gazes out on the ocean, listens to the prattle

THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PRA YER. 147

of the sunny wavelets on the beach, to the mellow chant
of the breakers on the cliffs, watches the flight of the sea-
birds, the silent passing to and fro of ships, the streaks of
color on the surface of the expanse, the patient rising and
falling of the tide. To look down from a green slope upon
a wide landscape with houses and cattle and the varied
farm-life is composing to the feelings. A deep, strange,
undeiinable sense of quiet comes from the feeling of sym-
pathy with such spacious realms of life, the mingled silence
and noise, the combination of complete solitude with a
vast and active fellowship. We are not addressed, yet a
hundred voices seem to be speaking to us. We say nothing,
yet are holding inaudible converse with something behind
the winged creatures,. and the four-footed cattle, and the
toiling men. There is an interchange of sentiment. Our
petulance and conceit flow out, the vast peace of the whole
steals in ; we are comforted 'unawares, and with calmer
spirit return to our duty.

Could we, in the same way, from the hill-top of medita-
tion, or the slope of reverie, look out on the world of
divine order and harmony, put ourselves in loving com-
munication with the perfect system of which we form a
part, feast on its beauty, admire its grandeur, wonder at
its immensity, gather about us thoughts of its beneficence,
brace ourselves against its immovable pillars of law, the
same effects would ensue, though in much higher de-
gree— calmness and strength would take possession of the
breast ; there would be no prayer, for the answer would
come before the prayer was offered ; the stroke of cala-
mity would be prevented from crushing, the cloud would
pass away from the spirit, suffering would lose its sting,
sorrow its dumb pain, the will would recover its compo-
sure, conscience its serenity, the lurking shapes of fear and
sin would vanish.

148 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF PEA TEE.

It is quite possible so to cultivate the habit of medita-
tion that communion Avith these grand thoughts will be
verily communion with intellectual being — sentiment will
answer sentiment, feeling will respond to feeling, the soul
of order and harmony will melt into the soul of their
worshipper ; there will be patience in the slowly-unfold-
ing processes, pity in the gentle forbearing powers, pardon-
ing mercy in the beneficent forces that hide ugliness and
evil away ; longing is met and aspiration is encouraged, and
faith reposes trustfully on the bosom of an enworlded
deity. Everything that prayer gives to the pure devotee,
this rapt contemplation gives to the worshipper. He is
made partaker of creation's inmost life. His heart is in
unison with the universal heart.

All prayer resolves itself into one petition : Thy will be
done ! They who discover and acknowledge that the world
•they live in is the complete embodiment of the perfect
will, are they who most habitually and feelingly offer that
pure petition ; — theirs is the living piety, for theirs is the
living God, and the living communion with Him.

IX.
THE NAKED TKUTH.

TAKE as a text this morning some remarkable
-*- words of Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians.
Speaking of the spiritual man, he says : " For we know
that if our fleshly tabernacle were dissolved we have a
divine structure, a house not made with hands, eternal,
heavenly. Earnestly we. desire to be clothed upon with
our heavenly frame, so that being thus clothed we shall
not be found naked ; we would not be unclothed but
clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up in
life."

There is a common phrase taken originally from Shakes-
peare— the "Naked Truth." It is used as descriptive of
the simple, pure, unadulterated truth, the final absolute
truth. The method of arriving at it is to strip off what
are called its disguises, whether foul or fair, and get as
near as possible to the bare skeleton of literal fact. Analy-
sis is the method ; the scalpel is the instrument. The
same rule applied to ordinary every-day knowledge would
lead to odd results. What if one were to seek the naked
truth respecting an apple-tree by digging down into its
roots, or of an oak by pulling to pieces an acorn ! Suppose
that to discover the naked truth respecting a harvest-field,
a 'man of science, instead of visiting the barns where the.
product is stored, were to pull up the stubble and dissect
the underground fibres ! To learn the truth about a grape-

150 TEE NAKED TRUTH.

vine, we weigh its clusters and taste their juice ; to learn
the truth about an orangery, we count and suck the
oranges.- We speak of the " naked eye." The naked eye
is the eye unaided by artificial lenses, the eye unassisted
by telescope or microscope, the natural eye. But have
not these fine instruments by which the power of the eye
is augmented become a part of it? Do they not invest or
clothe the organ with new attributes ? Do these instru-
ments impoverish the eye or enrich it ? Is vision increased
by them or diminished ? Certainly it is increased ; these
contrivances supplement the organ, make it more sensitive
to the sunbeam, enable it to comply more fully with the
laws of light. Fancy the telescope and microscope abol-
ished, and none but "naked" eyes left to mankind,
should we be nearer the truth about the eye than we are
at present? Would the disappearance of astronomy on
the one hand and of physiolog}' on the other, the vanish-
ing of the infinitely great and of the infinitely little, add
to our knowledge of the laws of vision ? The natural
organ is the basis on which the noble science of optics
builds. It is most truly itself when it is clothed upon by
its heavenly house.

Nature abhors the naked truth and always clothes it
when she can. She loves the garment of tender verdure,
the investiture of roses and lilies, the splendor of forests.
She is fond of presenting herself in state. Where will
you find an unclothed rock or stone? Not in, forest or
field ; perhaps in some wilderness of sand, as in Africa or
Arabia, where the winds blow the seeds of verdure away,
or the scorching sunbeams dry them up. Travellers across
our continent describe rocks cut and polished by wind and
sand, on whose smooth surfaces the most tenacious plant
has no chance to maintain its hold. But wherever else
you find a stone, laj-ge or small, it is covered with the fine

THE NAKED TRUTH. 151

lace-work of the lichen, which is the beginning of vege-
tation, so fine that only keen eyes can see its tracery ; atop
of this is laid the soft mantle of moss, tender and green,
with its pretty flowers and its wonderful imitations of
forest growths ; as if this were not enough, thick layers of
soil are added, a still richer clothing for the skeleton ;
shrubbery of many kinds makes the concealment more ef-
fectual still, and at last the pine, the ash, and the oak,
glorify the whole. The whole is nature's product, and as
a whole it must be studied. To learn the naked truth
about the rock that serves as a base to the forest or the
grain-field, this magnificent mass of integument must be
taken off, the unclothed stone must be disclosed ; but to
learn the full truth about the region, every stage of natural
growth must be noted. Nature is impatient of naked-
ness. A great writer standing before a nude statue in the
workshop of a modern sculptor in Rome, expresses the
opinion that the day of such work is gone by. It was well
enough for the Greeks to make nude statues of men and
women, calling them gods and goddesses ; the ancient men
of Greece wore little drapery, lived much in the open air,
and were frequently, in the gymnasium or at the public
games, stripped of their garments. But the modern man
is always clothed : his clothes are part of himself; he is
known by his clothes ; they express his sense of beauty,
fitness, propriety; they convey his individuality; they
present him; we do not know him without them. The
great painters made much account of the costume of their
subjects, the satin, velvet, fur, even the jewels in ring and
brooch which were sparkles from the inward character.
To learn the naked truth about a man, one would hardly
think it wise to wait till he was dead, and we could obtain
his skeleton ; one might wait till he was dead, but in order
to get as far away from the skeleton as possible, in order

152 THE NAKED TRUTH.

to gather up all tliat had grown about the man in the
course of his life, and so to bring out the full personality,
the accumulated results of a lifetime are important as ex-
hibitions of character. The exterior clothes the interior.

The point I aim at establishing is this : The naked truth
is not the pure truth, but the rudimental truth. Mr. Dar-
win undertakes to prove that the progenitor of man was
the ape. Let us concede the sufficiency of his proof. That,
let us admit, is the naked truth respecting the animal we
call man. There was a time when his ancestors possessed
caudal extremities and perched in trees, travelling .over
the ground when they had occasion, with bodies prone,
and grubbing roots out of the soil. But that was, accord-
ing to Mr. Darwin, many thousands of years ago. To get
at his aboriginal naked progenitor, he digs down through
layer on layer of humanity the depth of all those ages,
peeling off accretions without number. There at the" bot-
tom is the naked truth. But a great many things have
happened since then. The ape has become a very differ-
ent creature, so different that it is only at moments and in
rare cases that the consanguinity is suspected between him
and the human race. lie stands on two feet now, erect,
with upright spine and trunk, the spine a column and not
a horizontal conduit for transmitting sensations, and that
change alone indicates and makes a new creature. Every
physical organ, from highest to lowest, acquires a different
relative position, and with that, new expansion and in-
creased function ; the arms and hands are freed for use ;
the claws become fingers, endowed with nerves of exquisite
sensibility. The head is newly poised, and in consequence
is rendered capable of new motions. Its shape alters by
virtue of its erect position ; the features become handsome ;
the countenance, no longer kept down near the earth with
back-head upwards but raised to meet the light that streams

THE NAKED TRUTH. 153

from above, falls into harmonious proportions ; the brow
expands ; the dome of the skull rounds grandly out ; the
intellectual part predominates over the animal, and varied
expressions of feeling play over the formerly impassivre
and imperturbable surface. The vital centres draw sus-
tenance from fresh sources ; the influences of air and light
tell on the frame with greatly augmented force ; instead
of crouching low down to the earth, the vital parts hidden
by the mass of the trunk, its eyes searching the ground,
the creature moves through higher strata of atmosphere.
The entire body has an equal chance at the quickening
powers, the eye sweeps the horizon, the uplifted forehead
is bathed in the upper air ; the firmament is revealed ; the
look pierces the celestial spaces ; the all-covering heavens
drop their grandeur upon the creature ; the direct ray
strikes the level vision ; the brain swells, its substance ac-
quires finer texture, its convolutions multiply ; it becomes
an organ of intelligence, sensitive to impressions incon-
ceivably more numerous and inconceivably more delicate
than the maturest ape catches ; images are there of ob-
jects the chimpanzee can never behold ; currents of sensa-
tion wind and play which the gorilla is no more aware of
than the Sphynx of Egypt is aware of the breezes that
blow the light sand from its back. In the long process of
centuries, the ape has been clothed upon with many attri-
butes of flesh* and blood, every lineament and fibre of
him has been transformed, his very skin has become a
garment so exquisite in quality that it resembles the
original membrane about as nearly as the hair shirt of the
Baptist resembled Paul's spiritual body. To learn the
simple truth about man. all this must be taken into account.
The most perfect specimen of the race tells the purest
truth about the race. The last acquisition contributes to
the last judgment. To know the full truth respecting

7*

154 THE NAKED TRUTH.

man, we should look forward not backward, up not down.
It is a matter of prophecy not of tradition.

The materialist comes along ; call him Vogt, Moles-
chott, Buchnei', and proposes to tell us the naked truth
about the human brain. He discovers there no soul, no
intelligence, no mind. He has taken it to pieces and
found out what it is made of. Here in brief- is the result :
eighty parts are water, seven parts are albumen, a little
more than live parts are cerebral fat, a little more than
five parts are acids, salts and sulphur, the rest is almost
equally divided between osmazome and phosphorus.
There is the naked truth respecting the human brain,
which the poets and theologians speak of in such exalted
terms as the " seat of reason," the " dwelling-place of the
soul." Yes, that is the naked truth, but is it the truth,
robed and adorned f If you put those same ingredients
nicely proportioned and mingled into a silver vase will
they perform the functions of a brain, will they throb,
tingle and think? will "Hamlets," and "Phsedons" and
"Principias" exhale from the mixture? will the genius
of Rafaelle steam up ? will the mental powers of a Bacon
become visible, ascending therefrom ? Something is
added by nature which the chemist leaves out, namely the
secret of combination, which qualifies the ingredients to
discharge their special office. Another thing the philoso-
pher omits to mention, the ages of experience which have
deposited the results of cumulative discipline, have dis-
covered the precise proportions in which the animal ingre-
dients are mingled to the best advantage, and have per-
fected the combinations for their fine uses. The brain is
composed of the aforesaid ingredients, plus these myriads
of ethereal deposits. The education of the brain creates
the brain, and the results of education no chemical test
will ever discover. To learn those we must take the liv-

TEE NAKED TRUTH. 155

ing organ at the moment of its grandest performance, as
illustrated by some Leibnitz or JSTewton, some Dante, Shake-
speare or Goethe. The naked truth about the brain is of
the smallest possible value. The truth clothed and adorn-
ed is alone significant, and what that may be only the
regal intellects will show. That truth the most enthusi-
astic language is feeble to express. Call it the organ of
intelligence, the instrument of genius, the seat of inspira-
tion, the dwelling-place of immortal attributes, and you
do not dignify it too much : for all this it is. As the child
cannot find the secret of the flower's bloom and fragrance
by pulling it to pieces, neither can the chemist find the
secret of , intelligence by inspecting the contents of a cra-
nium. There must needs be a poet to do justice to the
flower ; there must needs be an idealist to do justice to a
brain.

The argument may be pushed into other spheres with
equal pertinency and with greater force. In moral ques-
tions the real truth is commonly far away from the naked
truth ; the naked truth is but a skeleton. A man lived in
Paris whose whole aspect was that of a beggar ; he lived
in squalor, dressed in rags, ate food that the swine would
fain fill their bellies withal ; he spent nothing in pleasure ;
he gave nothing in charity ; he was known of all men as
a disagreeable, sour, crusty creature without natural sym-
pathies or the ordinary traits of humanity : he died, and
in looking into his effects a will was discovered bequeath-
ing all he had, a large fortune, the savings of many years,
to the founding of a hospital for incurables.

A similar case occurred not long since in ISTew York.
The tenant of a back attic ' room was found dead in a
wretched apartment, in circumstances calculated to excite
deep commiseration. The floor was uncarpeted, the fuel
box was empty, the stove was cold, the window-frames

156 THE STAKED TRUTH.

were broken, and the vacant spaces staffed with old bits
of cloth or paper, the bed was a heap of rags ; the other '
inmates of the house knew nothing about the man ; they
had seen him stealing in and out, and had supposed him
to be a miser who lived by beggary, and from shame, self-
contempt or misanthropy avoided his fellow-creatures.
But the simple truth about the man was not so easily
reached. That which men saw was literally the naked
truth. The complete truth, robed and adorned, proved to be
that the man lived in his sympathies with the humbler crea-
tures. As the years went by they filled him with pity to-
wards the brute beasts whom he saw daily insulted and
abused in the streets. He lived not for himself but for
them ; that they might be happier he was content to be
miserable ; in his cold garret he was warmed by the senti-
ments of his heart ; there were kind thoughts in that head
so shaggy and hard ; in that withered repulsive bosom tender
feelings had their abode ; what . Goethe called the noblest
reverence, reverence for that which is below us, dignified
his soul ; he was clothed upon many many times by the
house eternal in the heavens, and so when physically un-
clothed, he was not found naked. Under hie bed was found
enough to gladden the heart of the brave man who makes
the cause of the brute creatures his own. The naked
truth about avarice is often a very different thing from
the real truth.

The principle has moral applications of serious impor-
tance. There is an old popular and evil habit of judging
character by picking it to pieces. I am afraid the theolo-
gians who had a zeal for the doctrine of natural depravity
started it. Their method was to submit characters to the
action of crucible and retort, to resolve the seeming virtues
and graces into a few very cheap ill-flavored and ill-scented
elements, and to show as the residuum at the bottom of

THE NAKED TRUTH. 157

the crucible an ugly lump of selfishness. The apparent
nobleness-and saintliness were not discoverable.

Certain minute philosophers, as they seem to me, of the
last century, adopted a similar method. Their plan was to
strip off what they called the amiable disguises of quali-
ties, the mask of disinterestedness, charitableness, kindness,
and show beneath them the play of selfish inclinations.
It pleased them to exhibit man at the last analysis as a
machine worked by two wires, fear and hope, dread of pain
and desire for pleasure. This, said Helvetius and his
school, is the simple unvarnished fact.

The gossips, tale-bearers, censorious critics of the com-
munity pursue the same evil course. Pouncing upon some
well reputed person, they pick at hiin.till they find an in-
firmity, a foible, fault, some unlovely deed or unlucky
step, a blunder perhaps, an ugly speck in the disposition,
and setting everything else aside, they hold it up before
all eyes, and say : " See here, this is the person you rever-
ence ; this is your saint, your hero, your exemplar. ' He is
no better than he should*be." By this rule you may prove
any man base. On this estimate no character possesses
worth ; for the best inherit vices of the blood, infelicities
of structure for which they .are not responsible and which
they cannot overcome. The question is, have they tried
to overcome them, have they overlaid them with any de-
posits of virtue ?

King David was guilty of very black deeds, lustful and
infamous. There was wild blood in his veins, and power
had turned his head. But he confessed his sin, accepted
chastisement meekly. He had royal elements in his
nature, and he did his best to make them supreme. His
acts of penitence and prayer were sincere ; his psalms
were an aroma from a great soul, and these after all exhibit
the truth concerning the man, not the naked truth, but

158 THE NAKED TRUTH.

the truth clothed upon. The instrument by which it is
discovered is sympathy ; love alone perceives qualities in
their relations, and every person, the meanest, the guilti-
est, those whose volcanic passions tear the fair surface of
their existence, have their periods of rest when the sun-
light and the dew refresh and gladden their being. There
are motives, intentions, memories, hopes, feelings, that
envelop even the worst deeds, and make them other than
they seem. But this line investiture is invisible to all
mortal eyes.

The truth I am expounding is so wide that I must push
my exposition further in order to display its bearings. My
friend peels off covering after covering from Christianity,
and having unwrapped and laid by the integuments that
two thousand years have folded about it, shows the small
kernel inside and calls it Christianity. Here you have it,
he says, the real thing as disclosed by the last analysis ;
here it is, a faith that Jesus was the Christ. This is
the whole of it ; you see how small it is ; you perceive
how foreign to our sympathies it is ; how little it is
capable of being or doing for us, how small an interest
modern men and women have in it. All the rest is
aftergrowth.

My friend is quite right ; Christianity -as a naked new-
born babe was nothing more than this. This was all it
was eighteen hundred years ago; this little seed-corn lit
to feed a squirrel. But the seed was planted in Palestine,
Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Germany, Britain. It took
root, grew and flowered variously according to soil, climate
and nurture. Eighteen hundred years have elapsed. The
little seed lias become a forest ; its fleshly tabernacle was
dissolved, and it was clothed upon wonderfully by houses
without number not made by hands. The winds of per-
secution carried it from Palestine to Europe ; it took root

THE NAKED TRUTH. 159

in strange soils; it collected about itself strange influences;
its fruit took color and savor from the social world it grew
in. The Christ idea that was the primitive germ became
transmuted into marvellous shapes suited to the needs of
modern people in a world of which the Jews knew noth-
ing; social customs grew about it, laws, institutions,
standards of character, modes of life, movements of phil-
anthropy, all characterized by the spirit of the new ages ;
at length the original germ all but disappears from view
in the finer forms ■of the faith, and what remains is a har-
vest of moral sentiments, crops of ideas, principles,
feelings, that were not contained by any 'means in the
original seed-com, but which the intellectual light and air
of the western world produced as they acted on it. This
vast, various, abundant, exuberant product, with its num-
berless ramifications, its infinite complexities, is Christian-
ity, not a simple thing at all, but a whole world of things,
many of which seem scarcely related to one another,
worships, reforms, charities, traditions, anticipations, be-
liefs, piled up layer on layer, spread out wide like the
branches of some gigantic tree that has dropped its suckers
into the ground till it has. become a continent of trees.
Theodore Parker said, all sects and churches are required
to express Christianity as it exists to-day; and the saying
is true, because the leaven of the religion has affected
every department of civilization. Indeed there is more
in Christianity than all the sects represent. Though
Romanism perished, though the Protestant churches
disappeared, though the Unitarians and other denomina-
tions vanished, there would still be something left, a grace,
an aroma, an atmosphere, a spirit and style of being, which
men enjoy, feel, live by, but cannot explain.

Once such a thing existed as naked truth, but no such
thing as naked truth exists to-day. All truth is clothed

160 THE NAKED TRUTH.

and adorned, and when most clothed and adorned is most
itself. In times of ignorance people enriched their world
with fairies and nymphs, naiads, dryads, spirits of wood
and river. But our world is so rich that devices of*this
kind are not required. The dry bones of fact are covered
with the softest verdure, the skeleton rocks are clad with
soils, and where once were wildernesses are the habitations
of men. They who would find the naked truth now must
dig and delve for it.

I pray that in this mass of illustration my point may
not be lost sight of. I wish to beget a persuasion that
the true way to find truth of any kind is to take it in its
most advanced and complete form, and then employ the
method of synthesis. Paul says " prove all things," as if
that were an undertaking anybody could enter on. But
the task of proving or testing the least thing is exceed
ingly arduous. It requires all the powers, and tasks all
the faculties one has. To find the whole truth respecting
a June rose calls into requisition all the resources of modern
science, and even with their help the inmost secret will be
concealed. The chemist analyses the soil in which it has
root ; the naturalist studies its vessels, its stalk, its leaves ;
the physicist makes it his business to detect the effects of
the sunbeam on its petals ; the physiologist traces the
processes of its growth from simple to complex, and at-
tempts to show the law by which, in the development of
species, it came to be precisely what it is. Finally, the
poet take's the flower up into the realm of sentiment, as-
sociates it with youth, beauty, purity, love, gives it a
place in the world of fancy where it blooms forever.

A prosaic visitor in a picture gallery judged of the
paintings on the walls by the extent of canvas they cov-
ered, and the amount of pigment that was employed on
them. If permitted, he would have found out the naked

TEE NAKED TRUTH. 161

truth in regard to them with a yard-stick and a penknife.
Yet, to penetrate the soul of one of them, how much was
required ? The eye practiced in lines and colors, ac-
quaintance with the forms of natural objects and the
human figure, knowledge of the principles of grouping
and perspective, familiarity with the artist's methods,
insight into the motives of a piece, the sentiment of
beauty, love of the ideal. Leave out any one of these, and
the judgment is at fault ; combine them all, and. no more
than justice is done to' a master's creation.

Shall we think less of the divine master's creations than
of these canvas productions ? "Will we think to get at
the secret of a faith by pulling it to pieces, and not by
following the law of its structure ? Our modern practice
has been in the art of analysis — the art of reducing all
things to their elements. It is the scientific method, and
the value of it cannot be estimated, too highly. To pul-
verize the solid substances of the earth, to reduce adamant
to vapor, and behind the vapor to touch the imponderable
forces that perform the work of creation — to grind to
powder the solid institutions of men, to resolve establish-
ments into ideas, and behind the mask of usage detect the
movements of the bodiless ^bought that indicates the
presence of universal mind, to sift motives and decompose
principles till the roots of character are laid bare, is cer-
tainly a useful thing to do — all honor to the men that do
it ! This is to get at the beginning of creation, at the
origins of existing things. But it is by the opposite pro-
cess that we arrive at the glory of creation, and see the
consummation of created things. To reduce the diamond
to carbon was a contribution to chemical knowledge ; but
to transform the carbon into diamond was a triumph of
creative genius. The dissolution of the fleshly tenement
into dust is a feat of daily occurrence ; but out of the dust

162 THE NAKED TRUTH.

to create a man, is the effort of Omnipotence. Does any
one ask which is the nobler?

One may wellstand in awe as he thinks of what cheap
material the finest things are made, but to preserve 4;he
awe, thought must dwell on the fine things, not on the
cheap material. A sunset cloud is composed of a wisp of
vapor and a sunbeam, but the gorgeous phenomenon at-
tracts all eyes, that watch with emotion the strange phan-
tasmagoria of mountain ranges, castles, cities, grotesque
forms of animals, monsters and men, shapes of grazing
sheep, camels traveling over wastes of sand, flocks of
birds flying in the air. The vision fades but is forever and
forever renewed, and as often as it is repeated, the chil-
dren of men, the glad, the grieving, poets, lovers, mourners,
feel the active enchantment in their hearts.

" We are such stuff as dreams are made of," says Pros-
pero, " and onr little life is rounded by a sleep." But we
are what we are, nevertheless, fearfully and wonderfully
made as to our bodies, and miracles of wonder as to our
minds. The slenderness of the material does not preju-
dice the solidity of the result.

Most enduring beliefs of mankind are composed of ele-
ments so slight that they almost vanish at a touch. The
belief in God, for example, is made of very ethereal stuff,
the feeling of awe, the sentiment of veneration, the sense
of dependence on higher powers, the emotion of trust, the
childlike instinct that leads in search of causes for phenom-
ena ; yet the belief has a strength like that of the ancient
hills round whose base civilizations appear and disappear,
in whose vales hamlets nestle, whose summits watch-towers
crown.

An analysis of the faith in immortality makes us won-
der how it came into being. Its origins seem not only
obscure, but in some respects discreditable, as when one

TEE NAKED TRUTH. 163

of its roots is seen to be the childish belief in ghosts and
spectres. As water- drops compose the rainbow, so do
falling tears "compose in large part the bow of heavenly
promise that spans the abyss of death. It is only while
the showers are falling and the sun is low that the arch
appears in its beauty.

The world of the hereafter is called into existence by
the passionate hopes, longings, demands, anticipations of
men and women in their excited hours of bereavement or
disappointment. Take these one by one, each by itself,
how evanescent, how all but illusory they appear ; how
wild seems the notion that aught permanent can arise out
of them ! And yet the faith bears the weight of centuries ;
great souls find refuge in it ; and to multitudes it stands
as the one assurance that is certain and immovable. The
house not made with hands is the house that is eternal.

Nothing is more solid than character ; nothing on the
whole is so solid. A great character is the type of the
everlasting. It is the crystalization of the qualities that
we call divine, immortal — justice, truth, purity, kindness,
simplicity, faith. It is the diamond that is hardest of all
substances and yet the most dazzlingly beautiful. But
what is it made of ? Aspirations, purposes, endeavors,
good thoughts, just emotions, acts of fidelity which become
compacted together, vitalized, organized, till they are
proof against all the agencies that would pulverize them
or reduce them to vapor.

All fine beliefs grow richer with time, under the succes-
sive accumulations of experience that gather upon them.
They lose their simplicity, but they gain in luxuriance ;
they are more complex but more glorious. The belief in
God as held by Herbert Spencer or John Tyndall, is to
the belief of an ancient Israelite as the heaven of Her-
schel is to the firmament of Joshua, or a modern city like

164 THE NAKED TRUTH.

London, to t>ethlehem. It is too vast to be explored, too
complicated to be described. Compare the belief in prov-
idence as entertained by the Hebrew propnets, with the
belief in providence as held by Theodore Parker or Stuart
Mill. They are as unlike as the acorn and the oak ; yet
the new belief and the old one are the same, except that
some twenty-five hundred years have done their work in
depositing knowledge and reflection on the primitive per-
suasion of mankind.

'Place side by side the germinal idea of immortality as
described by Lubbock and Tylor with the idea as it lies
to-day in the minds of religious people in Christendom.
Consider the numerous phases of the faith as it is profess-
ed by mankind, from the atheist's conception of immor-
tality in the race, to the spiritualist's familiar thought of
the departed as personally alive and near, within reach of
communication, and even palpable. to touch, from the sen-
timental dream of Kenan, who tenderly addresses the
thought of his dead sister, to the sober business-like per-
suasion of the man of affairs who consults the spirits on
matters of finance and politics. The faith that was once
a flower is now a forest, solemn with shacie, bright with
vistas opening right and left to the sunlit world, the refuge
of the storm-beaten, the haunt of dreamers.

As faiths thus become rich with time, the minds that
are privileged to cherish them ought to expand with satis-
faction. The seekers after the naked truth, living under
ground among the roots of things, toiling in laboratories,
busy at the task of trying all precious substances by fire,
resolving the jewels of the world into smoke, the critics
whose office it is to reduce things to . their rudimentary
elements, can hardly be expected to rejoice ardently over
their work. They do not see things as they are, but as
they were in the beginning ; they see the seed, not the

THE NAKED TRUTH. 165

flower ; the sucker, not the fruit ; the germ cell, not the
organism ; their gaze is riveted on a point of exceeding
smallness ; they have little time or disposition to look
around and up. The duty of generalizing must be left to
others. They scrutinize, and if at times a feeling comes
over them of the poverty and emptiness of the universe,
they are not to be blamed, but forgiven and blessed for
their needed service.

But they whose faces are not held in this way to the
earth, they who can take a broad survey of the world they
live in, can catch the odors of its flowers and taste the
sweetness of its fruits, can revel in the light of its sun-
rises and sunsets and enjoy the eternal beauty of its stars,
should go about filled with serene thoughts, feeling that
now they are the sons of God, content that it doth not
yet appear what they shall be, but satisfied that whatever
does appear will be more glorious than anything which is.

X.

THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD.

r I ^HE- belief in a dying God is the centre of the whole
-*- Christian system, as it is also the. root of nearly all
the ancient religions. The belief, stated in its bare form,
is this; — Touched by the unspeakable sorrow of the world,
moved by the misery in which the human race lay,
shocked by the guiltiness into which his moral creation
had fallen, the Almighty left his throne of light, came
down from his eternal seat, took upon himself the form of
a man, underwent all the sufferings of common humanity,
and, at last, after a short career, which was, nevertheless,
long enough for him to go through every phase of human
experience and life, allowed himself to be put to death as
a malefactor by the humiliating punishment of the cross.

This prodigious transaction is held to be justified by the
assumed necessity of lifting mankind out of their wretch-
ed, sinful state, they being utterly powerless to help them-
selves, even to raise themselves from the ground, to ad-
vance themselves at all in the direction of their own im-
provement or salvation. Doomed to everlasting death,
nothing less than the death of the Everlasting could re-
store their hope of life.

This is the central belief of the Christian religion, and,
as I have said, of all the ancient religions. It is the cen-
tral belief of the religion of this present time, not by any
means remanded to a secondary place in thought. Slightly

THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 167

modified or mitigated it may be in some of its accidents,
but at heart it is' the same thing at present that it was two,
three, four thousand years ago. In the larger number of
churches in any of our cities this belief will be preached
to-day in the sermons, will saturate the prayers, will
breathe through the strains of the organ and the music of
the choir, will appear in every emblem that is presented
to the eye, will stand before the worshippers' vision carved
or emblazoned in the form of cross or cup. It will sigh
and wail through the mournful verses of the Episcopal
liturgy ; it will be the soul of the creed that the people
repeat after the priest ; it will, in fact, be the pervading
idea and sentiment of teaching and worship.

The belief is not confined to Sunday observance or the
services of the Church. It is worked into the theories of
common life. It comes out in every great crisis of human
experience, in each grand event of existence. In the
chamber of the dying the priest murmurs it in straining
ears. It stands by the grave and rolls over its mould the
solemn words of redemption by the blood of the Crucified.
Grief confesses the claim and exalts the glory of the dy-
ing God. The sorrow-stricken are comforted by the
thought that the Lord has died for the sorrowing. The
guilty are confronted with the terrible fact that because
they were guilty the Infinite Perfection Itself had to bow
to the bitterness of death.

To us such a belief seems grotesque, and that only.
For my own part, I have no words to express the literal
absurdity of it. "When we think of God as modern men
are educated to think of him, as the Infinite, the Eternal,
the Unknown, the Unsearchable, the Permanent in the
universe, the perfect "Wisdom and Truth, the absolute
Goodness, the Being in whose hands all these systems of
worlds are less than the dust in the balance ; when we

168 THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD.

think of man and of the little planet that he lives on — >
one of the smallest and darkest of all the Orbs that God
has created ; when we think of the scale of his troubles,
and cares, and sorrows, of his few battles and faint striv-
ings and evanescent griefs, his superb endowments, his
magnificent apparatus of self-help, his unused powers, and
then picture this great Being as coming down, clothing
himself with flesh, and submitting to be driven about,
beaten and buffeted, scorned, spit upon, and mocked, 'and
finally nailed to a tree, that these creatures of his may be
redeemed, — why, it is not in the modern understanding to
take in such extravagant incongruities of thought. The
belief is a poem, an allegory, a parable, a divine romance,
a dream of the soul It is one of those holy fables of
Providence which, under a grotesque and strange form,
convey, perhaps a shadowy, yet a profound truth.

I do not believe in pouring contempt upon any wide-
spread faith. Whatever nations of men have believed in
is sacred, even though it be obsolete. A faith so univer-
sal as this, that has prevailed all over Asia, that the Asia-
tics handed to the Greeks, that the Greeks handed to the'
Christians, is a sacred faith ; it means something, and
what it means it is worth while to know.

The belief in a dying God has accomplished three
things. In the first place, it has .imparted to Providence
an attribute of exceeding tenderness. It has put a tear,
wo may say, into the eye of the Omnipotent. It has made
the almighty heart of the world throb and beat with emo-
tions of compassion. Estimate the power of this if you
can. When the wise man sits down to teach a child ;
when a man of exalted rank or great power stoops to lift up
from the dust some miserable, obscure, and despised crea-
ture ; when a person of eminent character or lofty endow-
ment fights the battle of "the scorned and outcast, the very

THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. IQQ

thought of it touches the heart to the core. But to think
that God himself, the Supreme Goodness and Serenity, the
Holiness and Peace of the world, actually came down in
person, stood by the side of the dying, called back the dead,
to life, wept over humble graves, took little children in his
eternal arms, and comforted wretched mothers for the loss
of their darlings, sat in fishing-boats teaching their duty to
simple people, the thought of it was enough to break the
heart of the world, and it did. A great sob of penitential
agony went up from those early ages to which this faith
was living ; a great sob of shame and pity, as if the heart
of mankind was breaking. It was too much that all
those little ones should be thought of graciously by the
Most High. In dark ages, when there was no knowledge,
or justice, no general idea of kindness, no conception of
Providence, no knowledge of the world, of things, or
men, no understanding of human nature or social rela-
tions—in those dark ages, truly dark, not -only intellectu-
ally but spiritually black — in those ages, a faith like this
was worth more than all the teaching that could be given
by the wisest men. Men are evtm now reached through
their emotions more easily than through their under-
standings, and a faith like this brought an omnipotent
force to bear upon the very tenderest spot in human
nature.

Another effect this belief had. It sanctified suffering ;
it made human sorrow a consecrated thing ; it took the
pitiful weakness" and wretchedness of the world into the
sheltering arms of God. The realm of coldness and
dreariness was no longer an outside realm ; it was annexed
to heavenly places, and made a constituent portion of the
celestial domain. The sufferers stood nearest to heaven ;
they were the most loved ; theirs' was a privileged .condi-
tion. To be in want, and poverty, and weakness ; to be

8

170 TUB DYING AND THE LIVING GOD.

buffeted and despised ; to be persecuted and forsaken ; to
be bated of all men, was to enter into the secret expe-
rience of God's own history. By. this way mortals found
entrance into bliss. Sorrow no longer implied sin, no
longer shut people out from the Lord ; it was sorrow that
brought people into full communion with the Lord, and
made God verily a Father. The great sorrows of the
world seemed now to have a touching expression in them.
The streams of blood that were shed on holy battle-fields
and scaffolds seemed to pour from the Redeemer's side.
The oceans of tears that innocence shed dropped from
heavenly eyes. The sighs and sobs, the meanings and
wailings of the providentially afflicted, the cries of agony
in sick-rooms, in hospitals, and desolated homes were the
sighs, as it were, of God himself weeping for his little
ones. Yes, those bitterest woes that men bring upon
themselves by their recklessness and guilt — the awful pes-
tilences, the ravaging plagues, the hideous wars, the fright-
ful distempers, that sometimes fairly took possession, of
the world and decimated mankind — what were they but
so many expressions of the infinite loving-kindness of
God, that would not allow his people to sink away into
recklessness and ignorance without an effort on his part
to recover them ? Even in the woes that sin brought
down there was something pathetic, pleading, touching ;
and thus all the wretched, and even the family of the
wicked, were brought into the bosom of the Eternal.

Another effect this belief has had. It served as a
refuge from atheism. The atheist says, How will you
account for the wretchedness of the world on the theory
that the world is provided for by a good God ? How can
you explain the existence of want, poverty, suffering,
ac>'on.y> premature and violent death, broken hearts, crushed
spirits, wasted lives, on the supposition that there is a

THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 171

thoughtful Deity ? If God is good, why is not the world
happy ? If God loves his creatures, why does he leave
them all, without exception, exposed to some kind of des-
olation ? If God fills his heavens with light, why all this
ignorance ? If God is compassion, why all this complaint
and bitterness ? If God loves the world, then the world
should be lovely. Not so, says this old belief, not so ; it
is because God loves the world that the world suffers. It
is a mis-read legend that Adam and Eve were driven out
of their Eden by an evil spirit. No evil spirit ever drove
man out of Paradise. No devil ever broke up that lus-
cious state of moral unconsciousness.

An evil spirit would have kept Eden as it was, an evil
spirit would have multiplied Edens all over the earth, so
that there should be nothing else. He would have weeded
the ground, never allowing a briar or a thorn to appear.
The days should always be sunny, the heavens always
bright, the airs balmy, the trees fruitful, the ground fer
tile. No necessity for labor, if an evil spirit was near, no
care, or trouble, or vexation, or annoyance ; no beasts to
be exterminated, no reptiles to be eradicated, no insects
to kill, no violent men to subdue ; nothing but ease and
plenty, and abundance and felicity, in this realm. An
evil spirit would have made the earth a garden, and- there
he would have placed humanity to rot. That fable was
credited when man had no conception of what manhood
was, or what it was that constituted a human creature.
It was the love of God that drove man out of Eden into
the world, where he might know good and evil, where he
should have his destiny fairly set before him, and his fate
in his own hand. Do you complain because the saints
are persecuted, because the martyrs meet a bitter death,
because the hero must lay down his life for a noble cause,
because the grandest careers come to a premature end,

172 THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD.

because the heavenly-minded are destitute and forsaken,
because the pure-hearted are scorned, because the " sons of
men " have hot where to lay their heads ? It was God
who went through all these things. He accepted suffer-
ing. It was He who was poor, and destitute, and forsaken,
who had no place where to lay his head. It was He that
suffered himself to be spit upon, and buffeted, and
scourged, and scorned, and nailed to the tree. It was He
who was brought to a premature end after a brief ministry
of mercy. "Will you say that the kindness of God is an
argument against his existence? "Will you urge that God
is to blame for laying upon his creatures the same expe-
riences that he suffered himself? "Will you make the
infinite benignity of Heaven an argument against its
character? JSTay ! rather stand confounded before this
fact, that Heaven has stooped down and entered into the
very secret of suffering, and in entering into it has justi-
fied it, explained it, and consecrated it.

This is the hidden meaning of that old belief. Look
at it as poetry, and how beautiful it is! Let the imagina-
tion take it in, loveliness graces it all over. Let it lie
simply in the heart as a sentiment, and it warms the heart
to the core. But forget that it is poetry, read it as prose,
instead of a parable make it a dogma, and the whole sig-
nificance of it is changed. Instantly a veil comes over
it all, and what was formerly so beautiful, touching,
divine, becomes cold, strange, and mischievous.

There are three evils that ilow from this belief in a
dying God. It is accountable for an enormous amount
of sentimental ism, it begets a weak, puny, self-conscious,
complaining heart. A dying God, a suffering God ! — then
what is there worth thinking of but suffering and dying?
So men have moaned their sorrows, and told their woes
over and over ; they have sought sorrow in all places, have

THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 173

gone to Nature for it, have fancied that creation was
pitched on a minor key, have detected the sobs of anguish
in the falling of waters, the blowing of winds, the rust-
ling foliage of trees, the murmurs of the brooks. Where
sorrow existed, they exaggerated it, dwelt upon it, pressed
it in, made it more and more an ineradicable part of
human experience. Where sorrow did not exist, they
imagined it. All people must be sad, was the cherished
persuasion. There is sorrow at the heart of everybody.
Beware how you trust to joy or to hopefulness, there is a
pensive strain in all human experience. So profoundly
has this sentiment become impressed upon the heart of
Christendom that nothing is accepted as good which has
not a tinge of sorrow. Only the virtues that are born of
sorrow, it is supposed, are real virtues. Patience, sub-
mission, resignation, self-denial, self-renunciation — these
are the admitted graces. The pale countenance is the
interesting countenance. The downcast eye, full of
unshed tears, is the human eye. This tin,ge of sorrow
deepens even to blackness, and blots out the very light of
joy. The glory is taken out of nature, the cordiality is
taken out of society, the heartiness out of the heart.
Here is one evil — that men are made self-pitying, led to
call themselves miserable creatures, to say, " How sad we
are ! how sad our neighbors are ! what a wretched world
it is ! what a vale of sorrow wTe live in ! what a weary
time we are all having of it ! if there was no other world
but this, life would not be worth having ! " all morbid,
mawkish, and sentimental, all depressing to the springs of
health and life.

Another mischief has followed from this belief. It
has encouraged not only self-pity, but self-contempt. A
dying God — why a dying God ? Because men were sunk
in iniquity, and could not rescue themselves. But, if God

174 THE DYING AND TEE LIVING GOD.

dies because men are wicked, and if the death of God
was necessary to rescue men from wickedness, then men
must be very wicked indeed. There is no possibility of
exaggerating the malignity and depravity of the world.
God would not die for a peccadillo ; He would not die
for a foible or for a fault, for a mistake or for a blunder.
God would not come down from Heaven and die simply
because men were stupid, or blind, or reckless, or fooli&h,
or passionate ; Pie could only undergo such prodigious
experiences because men were utterly depraved ; and so
they must be. They must be, and you must make it out
that they are ; and if they do not seem to be, you must
prove that their seeming does not conform to fact. So, all
over Christendom, for two thousand years, men have been
peering down into their own consciousness, trying to dis-
cover the seeds of evil there, never happy until they did ;
perfectly happy if they could prove themselves to be good
for nothing; entirely content if they could demonstrate
beyond question the truth that they were miserable
sinners ; supremely satisfied if they could comprehend the
whole race in the same dismal category. Could anything
be more deplorable than that? Could any result of
unbelief be more unfortunate? This has been one
result of the belief in a dying God — that men have dis-
believed in their own nature, in the worth of their affec-
tions, the integrity of their moral will, the nobleness of
their conscience, and the purpose for which they were
created. An orthodox preacher once said in my hearing,
that men — other men — were born to live; Christ was
born that he might die. Was ever' a more extravagant
statement made than that?

Another mischief has resulted from this belief. It has
deprived the world of the benefit of divine inspiration.
For it has taken God out of life. The modern world is

THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD., 175

rendered vacant of divine influence. Men who live, work,
purpose, strive, and endeavor here are not Messed in so
doing by the divine spirit. That is away in Palestine.
God's life culminated in a single hour in the city of Jeru-*
salem. lie is shut up in a tomb ; lie dwells in the shadow
of death ; lie belongs to the wretched and the sorrowful ;
lie is the property of the miserable ; He is not for those
who are in light and joy, but for those who are in black-
ness and grief. The consequence has been that to think of
God it has been thought necessary to leave nature, life,
business, art and literature, science and beauty, and to
gather thought around that one hour of crucifixion. Thus,
literally, we have been deprived of the magnetic power
that comes from a conviction that God is with the world.

Now, over against this belief in a dying God we set
the belief in a Living God. A Living God. The very
phrase has an ocean of light in it. It is full of aspiration.
It gives us a sense of buoyancy only to speak the words.
At once, the universe awTakes to joy. Man is a .human
creature again. He feels the breath of divine energy sweep-
ing through his daily affairs. To come from the belief in
a dying God to the belief in a living God is as when one,
after wandering for hours in the depths of the earth, say
in some mammoth cave, groping about among hidden
rocks, creeping along ledges, and crouching in the black-
ness, scarcely seeing in the distance a little trail of light
thrown by the guide's torch, comes out again into the
freshness and beauty of the world, to hear the singing
birds, to see the green grass, and the trees waving in the
wind. It is as when athwart a black cloud a beam of sun-
'light conies streaming down and gives a glory to the land-
scape. It is as when after a period of cold easterly storms,
during which people have been shut up in their houses,
\]\o, earth has become saturated with water, the trees have

176 THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD.

drooped and dripped with wet, and all nature Las seemed
forlorn, forsaken, drowned, we wake up to find a balmy,
sweet dawn. Then the earth itself seems to throb with
new life. The birds sing, as if they had learned a new
hymn of praise. The drops of rain on the leaves are clus-
ters of diamonds. Man himself iroes singing to his work.
The windows are thrown up ; doors stand wide open ; men
go out upon their steps to breathe the air ; the church
spires catch the sunbeams as they pour down from the
sky ; the fronts of the hduses become beautiful in color,
and the atmosphere seems oppressed with the task of bear-
ing up to Heaven the grateful feelings of men.

The belief in a living God restores God to the world ;
makes him a part of it ; constitutes him the grand work-
ing force in it. It makes him the God of business: the
God of recreation ; the God of the exchange and the
market ; the God of the railway and the ship ; the God
of literature and art, of science and of progress. It puts
him down here in the front rank of men. The humanita-
rian does that service for Jesus when in the place of a
dying God he makes him a simple, living soul. Think of
Jesus as a dying God, and your thoughts go back mourn-
fully to Calvary ; you shed tears ; you kneel down in the
dust of Gethsemane ; you hear his prayer, " Father, thy
will, not mine, be done." Your thoughts are drawn away
from domestic life, teaching, professions, whatever you may
be doing, and are gathered up in a melancholy mood about
the suffering King. Take Jesus now into the race; make
him a man, a simple, living man; put him here; take
him into your shop; meet him on the street; associate
him with your labor, with pleasure and care ; at once you
have the the whole benefit of his being. The full weight
of his Hie is thrown into your scale. His spirit is in your
hear!. You have the bencfil of nil that be was, and all that

THE DYING AND TIIE LIVING GOD. 177

he know. The orthodox presses a dying God to his imag-
ination ; the humanitarian has a living God at his side.
There is the difference. The evangelical worships a dying
Christ in his church; the rationalist goes hand in hand
with a living Jesus to his labor. Just what is done for
the world by substituting a living man for a dying deity,
a living Jesus for a dying Christ, that is done when
we substitute a living for a dying God. We give God
to the world. We make him the life of the world — the
limngest life of the world. We throw the whole momen-
tum of his omnipotence into the scale of our endeavors.

Where will you go to seek the life of the age ? The liv-
ing age — where is it ? You will not seek it in Wall street
or on Broadway. It is not necessarily commerce, or
finance, or politics, or business. All these things help the
life of the age, but the life of the age is the effort of the
age to create a perfect society. It is the endeavor to over-
come evil, to cast out mischief, to reform the wrong, and
relieve the wretchedness of the world. Everything that
does this partakes of the life of the age. Commerce does ;
so does traffic, and invention, and business, and art, and
science, in proportion as they help on this great result.
But the living part of the age is that part of human thought,
purpose and feeling, that goes to make society better.
How will you define a living man ? It is not the mart who
is in robust health. He may be very dead indeed. Many
a man is of most rugged health, of blooming complexion,
never tired, sleeps perfectly, always digests his food, and
yet is a living grave. A smart business man is not neces-
sarily a living man. The best part of him may be de-
ceased, in spite of his smartness. His conscience may be
deader than dead, and his sonl may never have been alive.
He may be dead and buried. Your bright politician is not
necessarily a living man. Not of necessity does he have

8*

178 THE DYING AND TEE LIVING GOD.

anything to do with living tilings. He may be a corpse
and the maker of corpses. lie may be one of the sextons
of civilization ; one of the grave-diggers of humanity, as
too often he is. A living man is one whose life is in the
effort to make society better ; to render the world better
worth living in ; to advance its improvement and help its
progress. A living man is a man who, whatever he does,
whether he be merchant or manufacturer, engineer, trader
or artist, acts, with the purpose through his acting, to
make men kinder, juster, sweeter and fairer than they are
now.

Such is the life of the age, and such is a living man.
JSTow what is a living God ? It is a God who is living in
this same sense ; a God who is associated with our effort to
make society what it ought to be — just, pure, kind, fair,
and sweet. And it is in vain to think of any other God as
living; idly do you speak of a God that did live. Jeho-
vah's name was I am; not I was, not I shall he, but I am.
God is. The living God is the God that is. Vainly will
you seek him in the past, you are not in the past ; vainly
will you anticipate finding him in the future, you are not in
the future ; vainly will you think of him as being in Heav-
en, you are not in Heaven ; or in the abyss, you are not in
the abyss. You are here, this moment, on the face of the
globe. Men may say, " lo here, lo there," do not believe
it ; " he is in the desert," follow not after him. Xothing
makes one feel the living God but the sense that one is
himself alive. It is perfectly useless to try to get at a liv-
ing God except by living; useless is the wisdom of the
wise; of no avail' the vision of the seraph. The living
God is the God who is living with living men and in a liv-
ing age. He is with the lawyer who is trying to make
justice the rule of human dealing. He is with the phy-
sician who is trying to eradicate the seeds of disease. He

THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. 179

is with the preacher who forgets himself in his truth. He
is with the philanthropist who loves his fellow-men better
than he loves himself. lie is with .the reformer who is re-
forming according to a principle, and not according to a
crotchet. He is with the merchant who is opening new
avenues of communication between the families of man-
kind, lie is with the trader who is passing round the
gifts of providence among all the members of the human
race. He is with the artist who reproduces the most per-
fect beauty. He -is with the musician who puts into his
song a strain of light and hope. He is with the man of
science who is organizing the strong facts of creation. He
is with the literary man who is expressing truth in .forms
of,beauty. He is with the conservative who will hold on
to all the good there is, and with the radical who will eradi-
cate all the evil. lie is with all men, of whatever degree,
of whatever station, who are doing something to add a lit-
tle spark to the blaze which is to consume the rubbish of
human experience.

The living God is a human God. Swedenborg sa}^s :
God is a man, and that man is Christ. We say God is not
a man, but the human in all men. God is the human
power, the human element, the element which uplifts,
inspires, impels forward to brighter and better futures.
Man's justice is God's justice. Man's compassion is God's
compassion. Man's kindness is God's kindness. When
man forgives, God forgives. When man absolves, God
absolves. All God's attributes are human attributes, and
they are living as they live in us, not as they live out of
us. The very unity of God is one with our unity. Is
God one while his family are a thousand ? Does not all
the recklessness, and hate, and quarrel, and discord of the
world break up into pieces our conception of the divine
unity? Of course it does; for it suggests a kingdom

180 TUE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD.

divided against itself. God lives when man lives. God'
lives in the human heart ; when the heart begins to throb
and beat, his heart throbs and beats ; and when the
human heart dies, then, and then only, God expires.

This is no speculative thing that I have been saying ; it
is of immense practical moment. If, a few years ago, the
Bible could have been set steadily on the side of those who
were working in this country for freedom, our war would
have been rendered entirely unnecessary ; the mere fact
that the Bible, the so-called Word of God, ranked itself
with liberty, light, justice, would have thrown the pre-
ponderating weight of the religious sentiment into that
scale, and would have secured victory. If the Bible
could be planted fairly and squarely on the side of those
who contend for the social rights and privileges of women,
for the . improvement of the condition of the working
classes, for reform in civil and criminal jurisprudence,
these things would be carried, simply because those who
put their faith in the Bible, believing it to be the revealed
Word of God, would rally to these causes. So, if we
could take this great thought of God, fraught as it is with
inspiration, full as it is of light and life, of hope and
purpose ; if we could, I say, take this thought and associate
it with all Ave believe of truest, all we hope of dearest, all
Ave purpose of best, then all this belief, hoj^e, and purpose
would be charged with the very spirit of victory.

Over against one of these beliefs, therefore, I set the
other. The one belief looks to the past ; the other has
its eye on the future. The one belief cowers before God ;
the other stands erect and looks him in the face. The
one belief is fighting always with the devil ; the other
greets the coming of the angels. The one belief begs its
way into Heaven ; the other runs thither with jubilant
feet. The one belief shndders in the presence of hell ;

THE DYING AND THE LIVING GOD. ISi

the other smiles in the presence of heaven. . The one be-
lief counts over the sins and perplexities, the ills and dis-
advantages of life ; the other counts over its benefits and
benedictions, its privileges and its pleasures. The one belief
is full of awe ; the other is the very incarnation of hope.
A poor woman the other day came to me and said : " I
want you to help us — myself, my husband, and my child."
I asked her what was her need, and she told me their
history. " Are you connected with no church ? " I in-
quired. " No." " Have you never been ? " " Yes."
"Where do you belong?" "My husband is a Unitarian
and I am a Catholic." " Will the Catholics do nothing
for you?" " Well, the truth is, neither of us have had
anything to do with religion for a long time. We were
prosperous once, and happy : now we have fallen upon
evil times, and we think of God." Why did they not
think of God in happy times ? Why did they not asso-
ciate God with their felicity, and success, and prosperity ?
Why, when everything went well, was not God hopeful-
ness in their heart, and energy in their will ? It was be-
becarase he was not, and because in their hopeful and
happy times they were simply selfish, thought only of
themselves, never cared to form tine relationships, or to
make earnest friends, that, therefore., they were left
wretched and dismayed. Must we always be scourged to
the banquet of life? Must we always be dragged into
heaven by the hair of our heads? Will it never be
enough that beauty, and privilege, and opportunity are all
before us, but wc mu^t be goaded to them by the fiends ?
Time has been when fear and darkness were the spirits
that-saved the world. In the time to come the world will
be saved by light, and joy, and hope.

XL

THE INFEKNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOYE.

He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for
my sake shall find it. Matthew x. 39.

THIS is one of those paradoxes which are familiar in.
the' language of the East, and which Jesus was espe-
cially fond of using to impress his thought the deeper upon
the minds of his hearers by shocking them into considera-
tion of its meaning. There are two readings of .the pass-
age. In the gospel of John the version stands, " He that
loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in
this world, shall keep it unto life eternal." ^There are
two interpretations of the passage :

First — He who exposes himself to danger and to death
for my sake shall inherit praise, honor, and emolument,
when I come again in my kingdom.

Second — He that lives a life of self-denial in this world
shall have his reward in the world to come.

But there 'is another interpretation that goes deeper
than cither of these, and in my judgment is much truer,
lie. that denies his lower love shall have the satisfaction of
his higher. He that puts away passion shall enjoy princi-
ple, lie that abandons the life of desire shall enter into
the life of spiritual joy.

The life of a man is the love of the man ; the love of
the man is his life. The words love and life are closely
connected in their rool ; and if we substitute in these pass-

THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 183

ages the word love for the word life, a world of meaning
is at once unfolded to us that otherwise we miss ; because
the word love drives the thought inward and keeps it there,
while the word life throws the thought outward and leaves
it there. We think of life as a thing of duration and
extension in space and time. We think of love only as a
state or condition of feeling. We speak of present life,
past life, future life, of the life here and the life hereafter,
of this life and the next life ; but of love we only say it
is better or it is worse ; it is higher or lower ; it is on the
animal plane or the spiritual plane. In a word, love is a
thing of qualities ; life is a thing of quantities.

Now, speaking of love, we find that it has a double
action ; one a self-referring, another social or human, re-
ferring to others. The planets are kept in order, you
know, by a double force ; the centre-seeking, the centrip-
etal force, as it*is called, which is always drawing the
planet to its central orb ; the centrifugal or centre-avoid-
ing force, that drives the globe away from the centre.
Either of these forces acting alone would destroy the
planet. The centripetal force, acting alone, would, by
and by, mass the planets together, and at last absorb them
all in the sun. The centrifugal force, acting alone, would
scatter them widely apart and fling them into the vast
inane, w^iere they would be hopelessly lost ; there would
be no more solar system. The action of both together
keeps the planet in its place, steadily whirling round its
centre and fulfilling its part in the divine decrees. So it
is with this thing that we call love. At first it is a pas-
sion. Man, in one aspect, is a mere organic creature.
Ik- is the last development of the material world; a child of
the mineral and vegetable ; developed out of the ground;
a bundle of propensities and instincts. His life isorganie and
simple, like the life of a tree or a plant. He is a creature of

184 TIIE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE.

material circumstances and elements. As such lie is inevit-
ably self-seeking. Through his five senses man is doinghis
best all the time to draw in all the world. His eye seeks
beauty in every part of the globe ; in the ground, in the
skies, in the sunlight and the shadow, in the faces of his
companions, in the landscape. " His eye dismounts the
highest star," as old George Herbert so beautifully says.
And, not satisfied with finding beauty every where, it must
appropriate beauty everywhere. It will draw it in and
make it its own. Man catches the sunlight and weaves it
into his fine fabrics and tissues, his carpets, his drapery,
paints it on the canvas, carves it in the marble statue, in-
sists on having domesticated in his house all the glories of
the outer world.

The ear ! how it drinks in sounds ; how keen it is ; how
devouring it is ! All voices come to it. It will invent
instruments to make itself keener. !r%t satisfied with
hearing the sounds in nature, it manufactures instruments
for reproducing them. Music is its creature. It builds
the organ with its array of golden pipes ; it fashions
instruments of brass and the stringed instruments ; it
brings together the orchestras that enchant us with their
music.

The sense of smell has narrower range, yet how greedy
it is ! All odors come to it. It extracts the sweetest scent
from the foulest things ; it is not content until it puts on
our toilet-tables the fragrance of the violet and the odor of
the newly-mown hay.

The taste ! What a craving creature that is ! TV hat an
explorer ! How it sends its purveyors out into the most
distant parts of the creation, dispatches its divers down
into the sea, drops its line deep into the ocean, lays snares
for the birds of the air. What a plunderer it is of the
vegetable and animal kingdom ! How it consumes and

THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE.. 185

slays ! "What devastation it makes everywhere, and what
a keen power it has of extracting delicacies from places
where nothing seemed to exist ! How it divides and sub-
divides, and combines and compounds, and separates and
niino-les and mixes ! How it uses the subtle element of
the lire for its purposes, and what elixirs it extracts there-
by ; what delicate tinctures and aromas !

The marvels of the cuisine are infinite, and man is
never satisfied with inventing, discovering, combining,
flavoring, and devising new shapes of delicacy.. There is
no end to it. It goes vastly before human need. We are
never content with the things that our senses can bring in
to us. The Emperor Yitellius had but one stomach ; he
could eat no more than the humblest of his guards ; yet
he spent one million of dollars every week on his table.
Tie did not need it ; it was the worse for him ; it made
him sick ; it helped to kill him at last, and it earned for
him the nickname of the " hog Vitellius."

Insatiable are these senses of ours. We build cities ;
we form lines of commerce ; we clothe ourselves with
silk, and satin, and velvet ; we construct vast ships. Yet
our ships are only larger baskets ; our silk, and satin, and
velvet are only a handsomer kind of blanket ; our vast
commercial cities are but more superb shops and ware-
houses ; our great ports of entry are simply broader door-
steps; and all our vast carrying-trade with fleets of ships
is o\\\j a more elaborate peddling. . •

Push the metaphor further. Take" the passions. There
is the love of power. Can anybody describe its voracity ?
Did anybody ever have enough of it? Was there ever a
man having the most of it who did not want more? The
priest is never content with the power he has over human
souls. The despot is never satisfied with the power that
lie has over human relations and conditions. The rich

ISO THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE.

man is never satiated with the power lie lias over tlie
poor. Tlie tyrant is never weary of grinding. The con-
queror is never tired of absorbing. Alexander the Great
was not the only man who sighed because there were no
more worlds for him to conquer. Every man who has
this last for power sighs for precisely the same thing.
Napoleon sighed for it, and the present Napoleon, though
a sick man, doomed probably within a few months to die —
a man without a dynasty — has such a passionate greed for
the power that lie has gained that he will not loosen the
reins that his hand holds, or give, in conformity with his
own promises, the freedom he has pledged to the people.
The Pope of Home, an old man near his grave, at the head
of an institution that is doomed b}r destiny to fall, reaches
out both his hands and calls upon the whole civilized world
to grant him more power over souls, more power over
states. He must regulate public education and control
the national and state politics even in America. And the
more power a man has the more selfishly he uses it. This
passion for power has been the curse of mankind. All
the devastating wars have sprung from it ; the gigantic
slaveries have been of its offspring ; it has ravaged peoples ;
it has exterminated tribes ; it has ruined empires ; it has
blasted states; it has kept the interior races from develop-
ing themselves; it has exterminated children ; it has sub-
jugated women; it has gone on pillaging and plundering
as if the whole created world was merely its field of rav-
age. There is an infernal element in this love. We need
not speak of a hell hereafter. We need not speak of any
demoniac regions on the other side of the grave. Why,
but a few years ago we all. lived in hell every day that we
breathed, and now, hellish beliefs, hellish passions, rule
over immense portions of the earth.

The passion for wealth, consider that! There is love

THE INFERNAL AND TEE CELESTIAL LOVE. 187

— the love of money. Did anybody ever estimate the
power, or capacity, or grasp of that ? Did anybody ever
have enough, though he had a thousand times more than
he could spend on himself, or than his heart prompted
him to give away % To get money by fair means if pos-
sible, by foul means if necessary, to steal it if it can be
had in no other manner; to cheat for it; to pick it out of
your neighbor's pocket ; to contrive, and plan, and man-
age, until what belongs to others comes to you ; to get it
away from the rich and the poor ; to make others poor in
order that you may have it; to be content that others
should continue poor, in abject want, in order that you
may enjoy it, is not that the commonest experience of the
present, and of the past also ? And how the endeavor to
keep it, though it be kept for no end whatever, possesses
people. The heart grows smaller as the purse grows larger.
The conscience dwindles as the dividends increase. The
soul goes down into the dust as the fortune mounts.up into
the air. The more a man has the less he has to give. "He
will see his poor, old, freezing brother sufi'er from want
and misery, but he has nothing for him. Vainly the
widow comes to his door in her need. Vainly the orphans
call to him that they may be preserved from ruin. Vain-
ly the poor man, whom fortune has stricken down, pleads
for a little relief. Here is an ignorant world asking for
means to teach it, a sorrowing world praying for conso-
lation. Here are men of science and knowledge who
have discovered the secret of human prosperity, and want
but money to set their grand machinery in motion. Vain-
ly do they go to the man who has millions in his pocket.
Why, think what happened in Wall street only a few
weeks ago ! A few men who were enormously rich, fabu-
lously rich, so rich that they had nothing else to do but to
get richer, so rich that they wanted all the riehes theio

1SS THE INFEBNAL ASD THE CELESTIAL LOVE.

were, buy up all the gold (why shouldn't tliey have "bought
up all the cotton, or the irou, or the wool, or the grain ?)
— buy up all the gold and compel men to purchase of
them at ruinous prices. The e%ffect was disastrous.

Two or three weeks ago there came to me a lady, well-
nurtured and educated, brought up in luxury, refinement
on her face, dignity in her manner, sweetness in her voice ;
she said, " Can you do anything to get me a place where
I can earn a little money to support myself and my chil-
dren ? " "Have you no husband?" I said. "Yes, my
husband was one of the innocent victims of the gold panic
in "Wall street, and is a ruined, broken man ; I have two
children who must be educated. I must do something.
Can you help me?"

One week ago to-day I attended the funeral of a man
of culture and accomplishment. He died by a sudden
stroke brought on by intense excitement, caused by that
same crisis, an innocent victim of it. It had first broken
his mind, then slain his body. There was his widow left
without his support. There were his three daughters
standing on the very threshold of their young life. And
all that was due to nothing else but this infernal love of
money. For this poverty and wretchedness, for this loss
of mind and life, those few men were answerable. Did
they care? Would they care if they knew it? Probably
not ; all, they cared for was to amass money, no matter
what ruin heaped up the pile.

Take that other love which bears the name of love pre-
eminently— that instinctive, passionate love which plays
so large a part in the world. How voracious, how insati-
able it is ! What abysses of misery it opens ! What
ravages and wrecks it makes! I need not describe it to
yon. There is one demonstration of it which, unfortunate-
ly, we are never allowed to lose sight of. This passion has

THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 189

created a class which, is, of all classes in society the most
pitiable ; a class of women which has always existed, which
exists now in undiminished numbers, and, for aught that
any of us can see, will continue to exist for generations
and generations to come ; a class of women who are the
despair of society ; "whom we do 'not know what to do with
or what to do for ; whom law and gospel alike stand aghast
before ; whom modesty never speaks of and purity never
thinks of ; whom holiness looks down upon with horror
and pity turns away from in disgust ; whom even mercy
hardly dares to compassionate, and philanthrophy is ready
to abandon the hope that it can help. The utmost that
society, now so many thousand years old, has learned to
do for these unfortunates is to draw a line about them, to
put them under supervision and control, that the poison of
their infection may not eat too deeply into the heart of*
society. Their life is one game of hypocrisy; they make
believe smile out of a cold and dead heart; counterfeit
raptures that have long been impossible to them ; imitate
a love which they do not feel ; pretend to be gay when
their soul is full of despair. Women they are, doomed to
early blight,- decay, and premature death, nnpitied, un-
blest, unwept for, unprayed for. They haunt the night in
the cities, proud when they are insulted, and only grateful
when their womanhood is scorned; a class of unfortunates
— so unfortunate that every heart bleeds to think of them
- — victims of this all-devouring passion ; may we not say
priestesses, sad priestesses, who sacrifice themselves on this
frightful altar ; nay, march into the fire to be burned, that
society may be spared the rain, the devastation, and the
shame which this consuming flame would otherwise cause.
Is there not an infernal element here ! Is there no hell
here ? Walking about in our streets, living in adjacent
houses often, a hell so deep, so utter, so black that no poet

100 TEE INFERNAL AND TEE CELESTIAL LOVE.

like Mil ton has ever been able to paint it, no theologian
like Jonathan Edwards has ever been powerful enough to
describe it.

This is the infernal love ; a love that is altogether
exorbitant, that overflows all uses and all needs in every
direction. It does not and can not control itself. Unless
there were some controlling force, some counteracting
feeling, it would bring the race to destruction. But here
comes in the merciful provision of Providence. To
balance the centripetal power which always seeks self,
there is provided the centrifugal force that throws the
spirit out among mankind. To counteract, the selfish
force is the human force. Over against the all-devouring
love is the all-embracing and beneficent love of heaven.

What, then, are these forces that I comprehend under
the term the celestial love ? God has garnered them np
in institutions.

The first of these is the institution of marriage; a
divine institution grounded in the nature of things,
instituted in the laws of human nature, sanctified by all
that is purest, sweetest, and best in human life, and de-
manded by the exigencies of human society. The object
of this institution is to hold mankind together. It takes
a little group of people, the man, the woman, the brother,
the sister, children^ and holds them by a bond that can not
be dissolved ; compels them, as it were, by their love for
one another, to deny themselves for the sake of those they
live with. The strong must help the weak. The weak
may lean on the strong. The wise must teach the foolish.
The simple may come for advice and counsel to the wise.
The man anil the woman complement each other. The
great and the little live by mutual support. One common
bond exercises such a control over the members of this
outer world that whatever difference may exist in age,

THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 191

taste, culture, disposition, temperament, they are still vir-
tually, to all appearances and to all designs, one person.
This is the intent of marriage, to educate in humanity.
There must be self-denial ; patience is imperative. There
is a great deal to bear and forbear, and it is made indis-
pensable. Woe be unto those who would break up or
weaken this institution of God ! Woe be unto' those who,
in the interest of an animal individualism, would disin-
tegrate this fine communion ! Woe be unto those who
preach the gospel of instinct, passion, desire, who pro-
claim the philosophy of elective affinities, teach the sanc-
tity of impulse, the authority of caprice, and say that what
men have a right to, and all they need to insist on, is
that they shall enjoy themselves, at whatever expense to
society. They who seek to undermine this. institution, or
who disseminate views that are fatal to it, think they are re-
moving a superficial disadvantage and sorrow. They are
striving to beget a'permanent disadvantage and a sorrow
that the world will never cease deploring. They are
defeating the great providences of God. They are up-
heaving the basis of society. They are doing away with
that fine moral and -personal education which is indis-
pensable to the training of men and women in courtesy
and kindness, in free charity and brotherly love. We
know very well and admit very sadly that the system does
not work perfectly. What system does? AVe know very
well that marriage is often an occasion for tyranny and
selfishness. We know very well that there may be
despotism in the home, with misery, fretting, suffering,
sorrow, more to bear than can be borne, more to forbear
than can be done. We feel all the time how infinitely
far this divine institution is from accomplishing its per-
fect end. Do we not know that wives are wretched, that
husbands are untrue, that children are neglected, are

192 ■ THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE.

spoiled, left without training, in ignorance and willful-
ness? Do we not know that sorrows arc engendered
there which nothing apparently can heal ? And yet we
all know that, if there is any sweetness in human life, it
is due in a large measure to this institution of marriage.
It is the parent of the best comfort, the sweetest luxury,
the most permanent and satisfactory content that the
world enjoys. There are homes that are heavens. There
is paradise at the feet of mothers and fathers. There is
education and training in all nobleness within the four
domestic walls, and there is not much of this outside of
them. There are examples of dignity and elevation and
even saintliness there which stand at the top of all human
expedience. The mother bending over her sick child to
save its life, giving up everything, forsaking the world,
watching all night, anxious all day, toiling and angulsh-
ing'continuaily that the spark of life may be kept in that
little frame — is still the type of the purest disinterested-
ness that men have imagined. And the picture of a
father bearing with his misbehaving son, watching for
him, praying for him, thinking of him when he has gone
astray, waiting for him to come back, seeing him from
afar, running to him, throwing his arms about his neck
and kissing the poor prodigal, putting the best ring on his
finger, shoes on his feet, fresh garments on his wasted and
haggard form, and telling men to kill the fatted calf and
feast, because he is returned safe and sound, — why, it is
the image of the parental providence itself! Christ
could think of nothing more divine than that. When we
see parents, as we sometimes do, caring for some poor
child to whom they have given .birth, and to whom life
has been only a weariness and a sorrow, trying to make it
easier for him, to smooth his way, to furnish occupation
for his hands, to give some pleasure to his heart, to open

THE INFE11NAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 193

little glimpses of a better world to liis anticipation; when
we see how the heart softens and sweetens, how passions
become chastened and the mind becomes subdued, how
meekness and patience and loveliness steal into the spirit,
then we say God bless the institution that can so trans-
figure weakness, and want, and pain, and sorrow, and can
make our poor dependent human nature come so near to
heaven even in the hardest experiences of earth !

I know that the discipline of the home is not always
wise ; that the relation of marriage is sometimes narrow-
ing. The household is limited. It is a small group. It
is so in the nature of things. We all know very well that
men and women become so interested in their homes, in
building up their families, caring for the wants of their
own little circle, that they forget the large world outside.
Certainly. It must be so. Marriage is not the only insti-
tution in the world. It is not the only educator that there
is. If Providence had stopped here, we might object
that marriage was an insufficient institution. It is. But
it is supplemented b.y another, and this other, the next
institution by which God tries to check, control, and edu-
cate this selfish, passionate nature of ours, is the institu-
tion of Society.

We do not make society. It is not a manufacture. It
is not a device of human wit and wisdom. It is not
something that we have invented and set going, a machine
that we wind up and allow to run. It is an organic crea-
ture, the growth of ages. It is a being, indeed, made up
of all beings together. It has its roots deep down in the
past. Its branches spread wide in the heavens of the
future. It is so comprehensive that it embraces every
rational creature from the top to the bottom of our life.
Who is so great as to transcend it ? Who is so little as to
be out of its reach ? The greatest depends upon the

9

101 THE INFERNAL' AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE.

smallest. There is no emperor, king, or queen, no noble
or prince, no magnate, no millionaire, financier, banker,
no great genius in literature, no great poet or historian,
no intellect however vast, no soul however tender, that is
not indebted to the smallest and meanest creature that
crawls upon the face of the earth. The emperor on his
throne is dependent upon the ditcher, the delver, the
drudge, upon the mason, the carpenter, the builder, the
farmer who holds the land, the tiller of the ground.
There is no epieen in her robes of state who is not in-
debted, to the poor sewing woman in her garret, passing
her days and nights' singing in her heart the dreary song
of work. And, again, there is none of these, no poor
woman, no sad-eyed, broken-hearted girl, no ditcher,
no drudge, no delver, that is not every. day dependent
upon the great and high ones who sit above. The atmos-
phere of genius finds its way to them. The soul of good-
ness reaches down into their darkness, and the spirits that
dwell nearest the eternal throne pass their air and sun-
shine down to these roots that live below the ground.

Let any man try to get away from society if he can.
Let any man try to fly in the face of society, and see how
instantly he is ground into the dust. Nay, let society try
to get rid of any portion of its own organic structure, and
then see what ruin and devastation ensue. Society is one
living, vital, organic structure, with veins spreading out
in every part, with great arteries swelling with red cur-
rents of blood. There it is, living and beating with the
very spirit of the Eternal in it all the time. It does not
do its work perfectly. Its intention is to overcome the
selfish desires of men by making them love their neighbor,
feel how closely they are bound in with others, help the
helpless, teach the simple, lift up those who are cast down,
serve those who are above them, offer their tribute to the

THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 195

noble and the good, make their contribution to the intel-
lectual, the moral, or the material wealth of mankind.
That is the purpose of it — a purpose to educate men, to
discipline them, to subdue their weaknesses, their levity,
and their foolishness. It does not do it. Society is full
of anarchy. It is full of wretched spirits who wish to
tear it in pieces. Nay, the very structure of society, the
very fact that it is so closely woven together, gives the
opportunity that rude, lawless, and violent spirits need to
make their own advantages out of their fellow-men. On
this very account the tyrant is able to spread his dominion
so widely. On this very account the despot is able to
shake the earth as lie does. Because the web is so fine, a
violent finger will tear it to pieces. But then, much that
is noblest in us owes its training to this very structure of
society. The patriot is its offspring. The philanthropist
is its child. The worthy citizen is its common creature,
and the men who labor that the world may be better — ■
the reformers who are ready to lay down their lives for
the good of their fellow-men — are born out of this respect
for fellow-men. Just as often as anarchy rises and tries
to tear the social fabric in pieces, the fine web forms, again,
and the great work goes slowly on.

A few days ago a man died in London who illustrated
simply and beautifully this truth. He was not born to
wealth, or comfort, or luxury, or high estate. He made
his way upward by his own efforts. He was a lonely man,
unmarried, with never wife or children, with few near
kindred ; he worked by himself, and by his patient work-
ing amassed an enormous fortune. Many, in his case,
thus alone, self-sufficient and self-dependent, would have
been satisfied to live alone and to exalt themselves at the
expense of others. They would have become hoarders of
wealth — what we call misers. They would have contracted

106 THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE.

themselves more and more, forgetting neighbors, oblivious
of human obligations, and doing nothing of that duty
which is incumbent upon every man and woman who lives
in the modern world. But this man remembered that he
was but one member of the family of mankind. lie remem-
bered that he had a duty to perform and a debt to discharge,
lie knew that his wealth came from the labors of the work-
ing class, and he tried to give back to the woikiog class a
portion of the benefit that they had conferred upon him, by
building, in the heart of London, more comfortable homes
for them to live in. America, by continuing to be America,
to reward his faith in her had poured enormous wealth
irito his lap ; having the wealth, he remembered America
in her time of need, and poured it back into her bosom,
that America might be richer, that her untaught millions
might be taught, and that a better civilization might be
started and established in the southern land. Say what
you may about the wisdom of his charities and the suc-
cess of his benilicences, we can not forget that he accepted
and fulfilled this mission, that the mere fact of his being
a member of society overcame his selfishness, drew him
out of his loneliness, warmed his heart, enlarged his sym-
pathies, strengthened the bonds that bound him to his
fellow-men ; and now his memory is in all minds, his
name is spoken in humble gratitude by the lowliest and the
loftiest lips. A Queen sheds tears as he dies. His statue
stands in bronze in the great city of London ; carved out
of grateful memories and pure affections his statue stands
in the niche which* every good heart has for. those who
love their fellow-men.

One thought more is necessary to complete what I have
to say. The education of the family is limited. So is
that of the State. In both there is room for great selfish-
ness, for tyranny, despotism, and violence. Another edu-

THE INFERNAL AND THE CELESTIAL LOVE. 197

cator is needed. Men must learn to love each other, not
as members of the same household, of the same town,
city, tribe, state, or nation, but as members of the same
great human family. This love alone can be purety dis-
interested. The family love is selfish within its limits.
Social love is within its limits selfish. "We know well
how in the State the politician may produce disorganiza-
tion ; how in society those who hate one another or who
mean to plunder one another have abundant opportunity.
Selfishness is not eradicated by these institutions, and so
God plants another. It is the Church. The church rep-
resents fellowship on the simple ground of humanity ; the
Church is not American or French, Roman or English,
it is simply the Church. It is not for the poor or the
rich, for the wise or the simple, for the great or the small ;
it is for everybody. The Church knows no differences
between men, but only one fundamental resemblance. It
speaks of the one God and Father of all ; of the Christ
who is the brother, the friend, the sympathizer, the ser-
vant of all ; of the common lot, the common origin, the
common destiny, the common birth, the common heaven,
the common need, the common suffering, the common
sorrow, the common consolation and redemption. The
Church speaks simply of man — not of man and woman,
but of man — mankind. Its symbol is the communion.
Think of the first communion supper. Think of those
twelve men seated around a table with their Master.
There was John, the intense, passionate, morbid enthusi-
ast and seer. There was Fetor, the organizer, the practi-
cal man, the man of simple common-sense, whose name
is associated with the Church of Rome. There was James,
the ritualist, the formalist, the priest of the early church,
the man who wore the priestly robes and went through
the form of granting absolution to the people, the man

198 THE INFERNAL AND TEE CELESTIAL LOVE. ■

who stood for ordinances and sacraments. There was
Judas, the business man, who carried the bag. Then there
was Matthew, and the rest of the disciples who left no
mark whatever in history — simple men, stupid, ignorant,
who had no comprehension of their Master whatever, and
who were ready to run away when danger came. There
they all sat, and among them the great Christ, sweet, se-
rene, and benign, breaking his bread for all of them to
eat, giving the cup that he tasted to all of them to drink,
blessing them all alike, pronouncing upon all his peace.
The symbol is never realized, never fulfilled. Can we
ever dare to hope it will be fulfilled ? The Church lias
never done its duty. It has never tried fully to do its
duty. In tact, by generating an aristocracy of its own,
an aristocracy of believers, a family of the elect, a select
class of the devout, it has done what it could to break
up the human family. And yet, here and there, in little
spots about in different parts of the world, you will find
these simple, scattered groups of men and women meet-
ing together without distinction of lot or of person, and
bound together by a love so simple, sweet, tender, and
strong that all the hostility of the world can not drive
them asunder. Imperfect as the work of the Church has
been, it has still held up its sign, the sign of the commu-
nion, the sign of the cross, the sign of the dove. Still it
has spoken of the great All-Father ; still of the Christ,
the one Brother of all; still of the great Heaven that
opens to all the immortal destiny.

Slow and long and weary is the process of educating
man out of his selfishness — hard and laborious beyond our
telling or conceiving. But it is done — feebly, imperfectly,
gradually, by slow and tedious stages. The time will
come when each one of these divine institutions will ful-
fill its end more gloriously than it has yet, and, as it does,

THE INFERNAL AND TEE CELESTIAL LOVE. ' 199

each will prepare its way for tlie next, until at last we
shall have on the earth a society — a society of men and
women who are brothers and sisters, mutually dependent
and mutually faithful, mutually loving, serving, and bless?
mg ; then the prayer of Jesus will be answered : " May
thy kingdom come, may thy will be done on Earth as it
is in Heaven."

XII.
THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN.

This mortal must put on immortality. — 1 Cor. xv. 53.'

OF nil the great religions- ideas, none has been so un-
worthily treated as the idea of immortality. Of all
its grand legends, none has been so meanly interpreted
by Christendom as the resurrection. It is popularly re-
garded as a matter of bones and blood. It is read as the
story of a mortal who renewed his mortality, rather than
of a mortal who put immortality on. The point of sig-
nificance in it, indeed the solid proof of it, is made to
consist in the ability of the risen man to eat " a piece of
broiled fish and an honeycomb."

Fairly considered, the New Testament does not record
the physical resurrection of Jesus as a body, but his spirit-
ual resurrection as a power of life in the soul. Thus Paul
— the first witness and the great preacher of the resurrec-
tion— taught it. But even supposing the corporeal resur-
rection of Jesus to be recorded and to be true, that was
not of the first importance. More than one resurrection
of nobler import has Jesus had in history. There was a
resurrection in thought, when, rising in the mind of -Chris-
tendom, he stood a being of light, glorifying the barren
spaces of speculation as the central figure in a new the-
ology. Another resurrection he experienced in Art, when,
as a new ideal of spiritual beauty, he enchanted the souls

THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 201

of Raffaelle and Titian and Da Yinci, and through them
fascinated the modern world. Again he rose as the image
of moral perfection, showing the heavenliness of purity,
patience, peace, humility, aspiration, to the children of a
coarse and cruel age. And yet once more, as a vision of
tenderness, pity, compassion, and utter kindness, as the
spiritual brother of mankind, he came out from the grave
of a landless past, and showed men how they should live
with one another. A great soul has many immortalities ;
they increase in grandeur as its history unfolds and the
spheres of power open before it. The corruptible puts on
more than one form of incorruption, and the mortal robes
itself in resurrection garments of many hues.

When often asked if I believe in the immortality of the
soul, I am tempted to reply : " It is precisely in that I do
believe. It is the sum of all my convictions. Believing
that, it is hardly necessary to say what else I cling to. I
believe not so much in the soul's immortality as in the
soul's immortalities." The difficulty of talking on this
subject arises from its depth and extent. "We hardly know
where to begin ; we never know where to end. There is
so much to say, that it sometimes seems best to say
nothing, lest one should be misapprehended. But I will
try to say something intelligible on this great theme,
about which so much that is unintelligible has been said,
and which yet is unexhausted. Let us consider three or four
of the ways in which our mortal puts on immortality.

I. In the first place, there is a sense in which the body
is immortal. Not the ancient, orthodox, and generally
approved sense; that is abandoned by thinking men. The
doctrine of the Church has always been that, at the last
day, the identical bodies of men and women shall be
raised for judgment. Augustine said : " Every man's
body, howsoever dispersed, shall be restored perfect in the

202 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN.

resurrection, complete in quantity and quality. The hairs
that have been cut off, the nails that have been clipped,
shall return; not in such quantities as to produce deform-
ity, but in substance as they grew." Dr. Gardiner Spring,
but lately deceased, wrote : " Whether buried in the earth,
or floating in the sea, or consumed by the flames, or en-
riching the battle-field, or evaporate in the atmosphere,
all, from Adam to the latest born, shall wend their way to
the great arena of the judgment. Every perished bone
and every secret particle of dust shall obey the summons
and come forth." One Church Father held that the teeth
were providentially made eternal, to serve as the seeds of
the resurrection. Others opined that the resurrection
body would be in the shape of a ball, like the head of a
cherub. According to an old rabbinical tradition, a small,
almond-shaped bone, called the ossiculum luz, formed the
nucleus round which the organic elements would gather,
or the germ from which they would be developed in the
resurrection. This bone, they fancied, was indestructible;
no pounding on anvils with steel hammers, no burning in
fiery furnaces, no soaking in powerful solvents, threatened
it with demolition or touched it with decay. It was incor-
ruptible and immortal. Modern speculation has enter-
tained a similar fancy.

The author of a curious book, called " The Physical
Theory of Another Life," imagines that the body may
contain some imperishable particle in which the soul has
its seat — a particle imponderable and imperceptible, which,
when the gross elements of the body decompose, assumes
a higher life and evolves a nobler organization. Leigh
Hunt, in his charming book, " The Religion of the Heart,"
indulges some such dream. "Physiologists tell us,"
he says, "that the vital knot of the nerves is no bigger
than a pin's head. TV ho shall say of what size is the knot

THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 203

of the knot, — the life and soul of the life itself, that
which receives all our sensations, and acts upon them and
thinks?"

Modern chemistry, which is supreme in the realm of
mutter, which resolves the subtle air into its constituent
elements and takes the light to pieces, brushes such no-
tions away as idle fancies. Nothing ethereal eludes its
grasp. The " spiritual body " it cannot see must be at-
tenuated indeed! Chemistry says: Not thus is the body
immortal, but rather in a fashion conceived by most men
to be fatal to the very idea of its immortality. It is de-
composed ; it passes into the elements ; it dissolves and es-
capes in air; it mingles with the productive agencies of the
ground, and reappears in leaves and plants. It is glorified
in the grass that is green on the grave, and the wild flow-
ers that make living the meadow. The soft garments of
the spring are the resurrection robes of thousands of
mortal forms. Science preaches eloquently tile persistency,
the indestructibility of force. Our bodies are magazines
of power ; and when the " silver cord is loosed " that
binds the frame together, the emancipated force takes
other shape, flows in new directions, and performs fresh
work. The death of the body is its transformation ; the
dissolution of the body is its discharge to new offices. It
escapes from vault and coffin ; it baffles the worm, and,
without displacing stone or sod, becomes ethereal, and
floats away.

The belief, if it be nothing more, is tranquillizing and
pleasant. It may make no one more thoughtful or regard-
ful of the body that is reserved for such fine transfigura-
tions ; it may teach none to respect the frame so sweetly
predestined : but it should have power to disarm the grave
of its merely loathsome terrors ; it should, to some degree,
purify the charnel-house, expelling the phantoms of mould

204 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN.

and rot, and placing white angels in the spot where the
dead body had lain. This idea of fleshly immortality should
relieve us of our disgusts, and make us think more amia-
bly, if it cannot make us think more lovingly, of Death — -
the angel that can spiritualize our much-abused and. often
grievously insulted dust. The first step towards gaining
a complete victory over death will be to think more sweetly
of its processes. If with our clod it deals so tenderly, the
dealing will surely be no less tender with what we respect
more. Superstition demands the resurrection of the cor-
poreal man, that he may appear in very person to be
judged and punished. Reason prefers to think of the
corporeal man's dissolution as the release of the body from
its duty. It is consoled and elevated by the thought that
Nature loves the particles of even the vilest body, and
when its temporary possessor has done brutalizing it, will
kindly change it into forms of loveliness all her own.

II. A nobler immortality is that we have in the memory
of those that love us. It is more than figuratively true
that we live in one another. With very many the in-
ward beino; consists more in others' lives than in their own.
If there be a human creature who is wholly unloved ; who
has no affections, or possesses no power of gaining affec-
tions ; who touches his neighbors as one particle of sand
touches another, at the hard surface, never blending or
mingling: if there be a human creature whom no wife
clings to, no brother or sister cherishes, no child reveres or
blesses, no friend confides in, no neighbor looks up to with
admiration or reposes on'with trust — such a creature knows
nothing of the immortality I speak of. But few, if any,
arc as unfortunate as this, and none need be. Organic
ties bind most of us to more persons than one; and if
organic ties do not, ties of mutual service, of sympathy
and tenderness, do. It is seldom, indeed, that one dies

THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. % )5

leaving none bereaved. Seldom, indeed, does one die and
not leave himself behind, a power of sadness or gladness
in other hearts for years — a presence visible to the mind's
eye, tangible to the heart's feeling, absent never by day,
and often disturbing sleep by dreams — a presence that
cannot be banished ; for it is part and portion of the
mind itself, that "\ve would not banish if we could for
worlds.

If the child of few years, the infant of few months, have
no other immortality, it has a very dear and blessed one
in the heavenly heart of its mother — an immortality of
light ineffable, to which comes no shadow, in which is no
doubt or fear or imperfection — an immortality that deepens
in grace and glory as long as her consciousness endures.
The baby taken from her arms is transfigured in her bosom.
Seeing it no more, no more holding it in her lap, she talks
with it and smiles with it, sits with it in the nursery, ram-
bles with it over the fields, prattles foolish fancies to it,
drops asleep with it nestling in her breast, and wakes to see
its little face looking down upon her. It was j#esA of her
flesh, and bone of her bone ; it is thought of her thought,
feeling of her feeling, and life of her life. Before it left
her womb, it stirred unutterable longings, opened new
fountains of hope, whispered bright promises of happi-
ness ; no sooner did it appear, than a new world within
her was ready to welcome it — a world that the expectation
of the new-comer had prepared. From week to week,
tb rough the period of its dependence on her, the stranger
had been enlarging, uplifting, softening and enriching her
nature, making her a sweeter and better woman ; and each
new thought or feeling is associated, is identified, with the
image of the young Messiah, who preached the kingdom of
heaven, and brought it. When he goes away, is all that
lost? No, indeed, it remains; the child remains — always

206 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN.

to her thought a child, though lier thought becomes
feeble and lier memory of many another pleasant thing
•fails.

An old man, a physician, who called himself an Atheist,
lost his son — his only boy — a youth of fine character and
promise. To the question whether he believed him to be
still living, he replied : " Yes, in me ; in my heart he lives ;
and as long as I have thought and feeling, he will have
thought and feeling in me. "When I cease to be conscious,
he will die." To few people, perhaps, will the thought of
such an immortality be satisfying, but to none should it be
unimpressive. It suggests a life after death that, though
impersonal, is genuine and real, the hope whereof should
be stimulating. To live in another, in several others pos-
sibly— to live as a precious memory, a pleasant thought, a
kindling anticipation, a sweet solace, an example of good-
ness, a help to virtue, — is surely to live a very real exist-
ence, far more real than most people dream of when they
dream of heaven. To live so is worth praying for and work-
ing for. This kind of life may be more effectual than the
life in the body was. The dead mother often sways her
child more than the living mother did ; the imagination,
quickened by sorrow, working mightily to fix impressions
which the actual word or look could not secure. To be
allowed to live thus in her child's future, the mother would
gladly relinquish her hope of an everlasting future for her-
self. This immortality, at all events, may be assured :
those who love us will remember us — alas ! when we wish
they might forget. That which has, for better or worse,
become an organic portion of being cannot be obliterated.
Whether its quality there be the quality of the angel or
the fiend — whether our immortality in the hearts of those
who love us be an immortality of bane or bliss — it is inev-
itable. Though the bane or the bliss be ours in anticipa-

TEE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 207

tion only, though we neither suffer the one nor delight in
the other, the anticipation of it alone should make us lead
nobler lives. If the prospect of misery or happiness fcr
ourselves hereafter is enough to sober or inspire us, how
much more should we be sobered and inspired by the
thought that when we are gone, we may be the cause of
life-long misery or happiness to those that love us better
than we ever loved ourselves !

III. A grander kind of immortality yet — grander,
though less affecting — is that we have in humanity. We
live in humanity; we are vitally connected with it as
members. The human race is an organic being, that lives
and grows from age to age, animated by one spirit, actu-
ated by one power. uNo one liveth to himself, and no
man dieth to himself." Standing midway between those
that have gone before and those that are to follow after
him, he receives and transmits the qualities that build up
the social world. Existence is a process -of receiving and
giving. In us live the fathers ; in the children we shall
'live forever — every atom of our nature being taken up,
absorbed, worked over, as material for the coming man.
As Lessing puts it: "The immortality of souls is indis-
solubly associated with the development of the race. We
who live are not only the offspring of those who have
lived before us, we are really of their substance ; and it is
thus that we are immortals, living forever."

This idea has, for thousands of years, been rooted in the
world. Traces of it are found in the ancient religions. It
was hinted at in the Egyptian doctrine of transmigration ;
it was conveyed in the Indian doctrine of absorption; the
Chinese acknowledged it in their worship of ancestors.
The ancient Hebrews, previous to the captivity, seem to
have known no other doctrine of immortality than this.
The dying Hebrew was said to be " gathered to his fathers ; "

208 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN.

and, as he passed away, the thought last in his mind was
of the posterity in whom he should continue to live. The
Hebrew's prayer was for long life and for children and
grandchildren — generations who should transmit his vir-
tues, and call him blessed. His kingdom of heaven was
on earth ; his dream of eternity was the glorious future of
his race.

Gleams of the same belief shine through Pythagoras
and Plato and other sages of the old world. This is the
belief of the Positivists of our own time. They cherish
no hope of private immortality ; that they describe as the
fond anticipation of egotistical minds. They have much
to say about living again in those that shall succeed them
— about making a contribution to the happiness of their
posterity — adding something to the capacity, skill or virtue
of the coming time — leaving behind works that may fol-
low them ; as they have entered into the labors of others,
they would make it worth while for others to enter into
theirs, consoled by the knowledge that no fragment of liv-
ing bread will be wasted, that no accent of the Holy Ghost
will be lost.

The great master of this school declares that for every
true man there are two forms of existence ; the one tem-
poral and conscious, the other unconscious but eternal ;
the one involving the presence of a body which perishes,
the other involving the action only of intellect and heart
which cannot die — the latter alone worthy to be called
that noble immortality of the soul after which the best
aspire. To his female companion — who complains that
such an immortality appals her, by giving to her a sense
of insignificance that reduces her to nothing, and who begs
to have revived in her a feeling of her own individual ex-
istence— the master replies, that the Great Being,
Humanity, cannot act except through individual agents;

THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 209

the collective life is but the result of the free concurrence
of the efforts of simple individuals ; all are nothing with-
out each one, and each one, while embodied and con-
scious, may feel himself to be an indispensable part of the
living whole ; each is predestinated, and each is useful ;
each has a message, because each is sent. In the same
strain another writer of great power : " Whatever
happiness we derive from pure regard to our fellow-beings,
and from satisfaction in the general welfare, will cling to
us as long as we are capable of entertaining it ; and what-
ever deeds we do, not ' in the flesh,' for the gratification
of self, but ' in the spirit,' for the love of God and man-
kind, we may know to be as immortal in their nature as
God and mankind are immortal."

There is the conception— it must be confessed, a very
impressive one to the calm, brave mind. For thirty years
this gospel of immortality has been eloquently preached,
not without effect. It has taken strong hold, not on the
intellectual and passionless only, but on the working-
people of intelligence in Europe, who have thrown off
Christianity and discarded faith in a personal God. It is
a belief that deserves consideration and respect from all
who consider the claims of truth, and from all who respect
the serious convictions of earnest men. If it is not to be
lightly accepted, it is not to be lightly ridiculed, for it
contains the elements of great power.

The heartiest objection to it is, perhaps, its heartiest
recommendation. It effectually destroys egotism, that
taint in the common belief; it gives no encouragement to
the selfish wish for a happiness purely personal ; grants no
indulgence to the longing for a heaven of idle rest or un-
earned recreation ; rebukes the rash claim for private and
unmerited rewards ; says to men, avaricious of crowns
and throne's in the hereafter, what Jesus said to the am

210 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN.

bitiouS' youths who asked for seats at the right hand and
left hand of his throne : " What you ask is not mine to
give." If pure disinterestedness he noble, then this
doctrine has a character of supreme nobility; for it re-
quires the renunciation of every interested or covetous
passion ; it bids men labor for what they shall never share,
and fight' for what they shall never enjoy. To any but
the earnest, loving and self-sacrificing it is cold and dreary ;
bnt to these it is inspiring and grand.

The doctrine is human, purely human — human in its
very texture. It rests on the fact of human fellowship ;
it derives its vitality from- the power of the sympathetic
feelings : love — deep, unselfish, consecrating love, for
human beings as such, for human beings, unrelated,
unknown, unborn — is its animating principle ; the love of
duty is its strength ; the faithful ministry of mutual ser-
vice is its living pledge and bond. It is nothing without
others, many others, all others ; its grandeur consists in the
solemn perpetuity of that eternal Being called Man,
whose existence rolls on through the ages, gathering might
as it rolls, swelled by the great and little tributaries—
the rivers and rivulets, the brooks and tiny brooklets,
that add their rushing volumes or their trickling drops as
it pours along.

The doctrine is spiritual. Rightly apprehended, it is
the only purely spiritual doctrine that is entertained ; for it
puts out of sight altogether, and utterly abolishes, the con-
sideration of " mine" and "thine." The spiritual faculty
is the faculty of living in ideas, truths, laws ; the spiritual
glory is the glory that comes of so living; the spiritual
being is the being who lives "not for himself alone," not
for his private enjoyment or satisfaction or development,
but, for that which is a great deal more than himself, for
that which is not phenomenal and passing, hut stable and

THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 211

permanent, which will live when lie is no more, the glory
whereof lie can increase and in a measure create, though
in it he is absorbed. Lucifer forfeited his spirituality by
setting up for himself. His brethren preserved theirs by
their meek surrender to the perfect Will. As the spirit-
uality of God consists, not in his being bodiless, but in
his being self-renouncing — as a God who made the end of
the universe to be his own glory would be precisely the
reverse of spiritual — so is he the seeker of a spiritual im-
mortality who desires to live in others' future more than
in his own.

The doctrine has its fine inspiration too. The first
aspect of it sends a chill to the heart. The ordinary man
or woman feels annihilated by it. What is the ocean's
debt to the drop of water? What is the sun's debt to a
candle ? What effect has a summer shower to sweeten the
bitterness of an Atlantic or Pacific sea ? How shall the
planet feel the leverage of my little finger ? What contri-
bution is my faint breathing to the mighty blasts of truth
and conscience that must blow the vessel of humanity, on-
ward ? This doctrine of immortality in the race may an-
swer for a Buddha or a Moses, a Jesus or a Paul ; it may
satisfy a Pythagoras, a Socrates, a Plato ; the Augustines
and Luthers, the Xaviers, St. Bernards and Fenelons may
rejoice in it ; Dante and Milton, Shakespeare and Lessing,
may press it to their bosoms ; Mozart and Beethoven,
Handel and Mendelssohn, may wish nothing better ; Leib-
nitz and Bacon, ISTewton and Galileo, may dwell on it with
rapture ; it may till the dream of Paffaelle, Angelo, Da
Yinci; for their great lives poured into the ocean of hu-
manity as the waters of the Mississippi pour into the Gulf,
as the waters of the Orinoco pour into the Atlantic,
heaving up the level of the sea, and thrusting its pur-
ple current miles from the shore. They who are con-

212 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN,

scions of vast power can rejoice in great influence : but
those who are conscious only of great weakness can promise
themselves no such recognition, and must droop for lack
of inducement.

If recognition were demanded, if an immortality of fame
were the immortality coveted, this objection would be fatal,
for the famous are the few. The mass are soon forgotten,
living but a little while in the memory of their friends. But
fame does not always follow influence. Many a great
benefactor is scarcely remembered even by name. Many
are quite unknown. The mass of mankind make humani-
ty, not the few ; the multitude of the lowly and worthy
decide what the future of society shall be. He who con-
tributes a life of simple truth, sets an example of daily
honesty, makes a happy home, trains his children well, is
a loyal friend and a good citizen, practices the greatest du-
ties in the smallest way — does more to augment the sum.
of moral power in the world than any artist, however ad-
mirable, any poet, however sublime, or any genius, how-
ever inventive. The doctrine of immortality in the race
is peculiarly encouraging to the humble, earnest toilers,
the unprivileged and ungifted ; for their contributions are
just what they choose to make them, and what they add is
that which is most indispensable to the common good.
We are not surprised, therefore, to learn that this doctrine
is especially popular among the artisans, who know that
all they can contribute is industry, patience, fidelity, intel-
ligent skill, temperance, prudence, economy, but who
know, as none others do, that these qualities are precisely
what humanity needs in its struggle fur life.

IY. I have spoken at some length on this view of the im-
mortal life, because it is unfamiliar, and because it is mis-
understood. I have spoken earnestly because I could not
speak at length ; the words had to be vivid because they

TEE IMMORT^LLITIES OF MAN. 213

had to be few. But I leave it, now, to say something on
that other form of immortality — the personal, individual
immortality— which is the hope of so many millions of
mankind, which is, in fact, the only form of immortality
by most people tho ight worth considering. The belief in
conscious immortality has a strong hold on the human
race. It is ancient, though there were times when it did
not exist. It is widely spread, though there have been
people who did not entertain it. All men do not believe
it, and cannot. All do not desire it, life not being so rich
to all that they would continue it if they could. All do not
hope for it ; for there are those who think the hope auda-
cious and extravagant. All dare not claim it, there being
not a few modest souls who cannot think themselves or
their neighbors worthy of so inestimable a privilege as that
of renewed existence. This life, they say, is more than we
can manage ; it would be worse than rash to demand ano-
ther and a longer one. Such will actually resist the argu-
ments that are urged in favor of their falling heirs to such
an overwhelming estate.

But such considerations do not affect greatly the moral
consciousness of mankind. Most men — all men, at some
periods — live in their feelings ; and their feelings all twine
round this column of personal immortality, as the vine
clings to its upright trellis. The instinctive love of life
abhors death, protests against dissolution, insists on contin-
uance. Living man cannot think annihilation ; he can
only think life. Thinking man cannot conceive of thought
as ceasing, and in the activity of his mind finds prophecy
of endless intellectual progress. Loving man cannot bring
himself to believe that the objects of his affection are gone
from him forever, or that he shall ever lack objects to love.
The deathlessness of the beloved seems to be an axiom to
the heart. Earnest, aspiring man, feels certain that he shall

214 THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAX.

be allowed time to fulfill his dream and attain his perfec-
tion. Then, too, we are persons : each one of us says I j
and, when he says it, feels himself to be an indestructible
monad, a separate entity, a solid thing, that he remembers
as having persisted through a changeable past, that he is
sure persists now, and that he cannot persuade himself
will cease to persist through any changes that may befall.
All this is instinctive. Reasoning has little or nothing to
do with the assurance. In fact, the more we reason about
it, the weaker it is. " The only occasions," says a sincere
writer, " on which a shade of doubt has passed over my
conviction of a future existence, has been when I have
rashly endeavored to make out a case, to give a reason for
the faith that is in me, to assign ostensible and logical
grounds for my belief. At such times a chill dismay has
often struck into my heart, and a fluctuating darkness has
lowered down upon my creed, to be dissipated only when
I had left inferenee and induction far behind, and once
more suffered the soul to take counsel with itself."

The strength of the faith lies in these elemental feelings,
in what Theodore Parker calls the " consciousness of
immortality." The so-called "proofs" derive all their
force from these persuasions. The " evidences " are pre-
texts, apologies, excuses ; the "arguments" are illustra-
tions ; they convince none but the already convinced.
Christians appeal to the resurrection of Christ. But Paul,
the original preacher of the resurrection, writes : " If there
be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen."
None but believers in immortality will believe that Christ
rose. The belief evidences the evidence ; the fact follows
the faith it could not create.

Now, it is not to be denied that in these modern times
the belief has been wearing away. Men are not ruled by
feeling, as they were. Ours is an age of research and re-

THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 215

flection with the few; of absorbing practical activity with
the many. Science, a new prophet, lifts up a loud and
importunate voice. Chemistry has raised a host of doubts
in regard to the existence of an intelligence or soul separate
from organization ; and there are philosophers who boldly
assert that mind is the product of organization. Historical
study has shown the groundlessness of the ecclesiastical
traditions of the resurrection. Criticism takes away the
risen form of Jesus. Temporal activities and worldly in-
terests undermine the foundations and' impair the substance
of ideal hopes. The devotion to earthly affairs disinclines —
yes, disables — the mind, so that it cannot feel at home
amid unsubstantial things. The release from the rule of
priest and church brings emancipation from the old author-
ities which upheld the dogma, and the liberated, rebellious
people find that they have thrown away the supports they
had rested on, and have no independent supports of their
own. They have never believed the doctrine for them-
selves, but have taken it on trust from their religious
teachers. They have ceased to take things on trust from
their teachers ; consecpiently they have no assurance, and
their faith leaves them. They never did truly believe the
truth on its merits ; now they cannot even say they be-
lieve. They never had a personal conviction ; now they,
cannot pretend to have one.

There is a profound skepticism on this subject in our
modern society. Of scientific men, some openly avow
unbelief in the future life ; some decline to say anything
about it, as not coming within their province ; and some
accept without question the dogma of the Church which
claims a revelation from God, and the miraculous energy
of the Holy Ghost to quicken its own dead. Worldly
men, whether of business or pleasure, are thinking of other
things, and give the matter little attention. Their faculty

21 G THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN.

of apprehension acts feebly on these sublimated themes,
and the great anticipation fades away from their minds.
A few hardy philosophers deny immortality to the common
herd, who can neither deserve it nor use it, and claim it
for the morally great and good, who, having appreciated
this life, may advance a respectable title to another.

Thus the popular faith goes on crumbling in pieces.
Old arguments are overthrown, or fall by their own
weight. The many believe by force of having believed ;
the few, who are noble and spiritual, believe on grounds
purely moral, listening to the prophecy of their higher,
rational nature. Some of the more intellectual put the
matter aside as of no pressing concern, and say that they
are prepared for either result— immortality or annihilation.
They are willing to trust the Power that made them.
Sure that what is best for them will befall, they await,
unanxious, the solution of the mystery. Says Emerson :
" Of immortality the soul, when well employed, is incu-
rious. It is so well that it is sure it will be well. It
asks no question of the Supreme Power. Immortality will
come to such as are lit for it ; and he who would be a
great soul in the future, must be a great soul now."

The advent of Spiritualism saved the popular belief in
immortality from the danger, if not of total, yet of par-
tial eclipse. To the multitude of mankind Spiritualism
brought a new revelation ; and the eagerness with which it
was welcomed, showed the need of it that was felt. Hun-
dreds of thousands — nay, millions, in America and in
Europe, in sober England and mercurial France — hailed
the promise of communication with rapture. People of
every degree and class — the instructed and the uninstruct-
ed, toilers and thinkers, mechanics and mathematicians,
merchants and men of letters, tradesfolk and philosophers,
physicians, lawyers, professors, judges, divines — investi-

THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. £17

gated and embraced it. It met the crying demand for
palpable evidence, for substantial and incontrovertible
facts. It challenged the experimental method of modern
science : it courted skepticism ; it offered proof for tradi-
tion, law for miracle, the confirmation of the senses for
the dogma of faith. It came to the doubting disciple and
said: "Reach hither thy fingers, and behold my hand;
reach forth thy hand, and thrust it into my side, and be
not faithless but believing." The Baron de Guldenstubbe,
of Paris, attests that more than fifty persons— among
whom were barons, princes, counts, colonels, physicians,
men of culture, and artists of renown — witnessed again
and again the astounding phenomenon of direct commu-
nication by writing from invisible beings.

That a belief thus attested and published should have
spread like a new gospel of the kingdom, is not wonderful.
It would have been wonderful had it not. It was what
fthe world was waiting for. It came as answer to a pas-
sionate prayer; it was the. bringing of life and immor-
tality to light that desponding mankind groaned for. The
shadowy realm came into view ; the gloomy barriers of
the sepulchre disappeared ; the dividing flood was dried
up ; voices were heard from the Silent Land ; the bleak
waste of the Beyond was lively with happy forms ; dirges
changed into songs ; the raiment of mourning fell off.
The heart reached out its eager hands once more, and was
thankful to embrace something more substantial than a
shade. The " family in heaven and earth " was reunited.

That to multitudes Spiritualism has been an unspeak-
able solace, an unmixed boon and blessing, it is impossi-
ble for me to doubt. I have seen the sweet, humanizing
effects of it too many times not to be persuaded of them.
I have seen it reviving hearts and refreshing homes. How
far its benefits have been qualified by the beliefs that have

10

218 TEE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN.

been associated with it, I do not feel called on to deter-
mine. Mr. A. J. Davis, a high authority, declares in
effect that Spiritualism has abandoned its true mission.
Instead of persuading the unbelieving world of the exis-
tence of departed spirits, it turns to the spirits and calls
on them for oracles and information. It sets up the trance
speaker in place of the rational teacher ; substitutes the
seance for the church ; drops the old revelation through
prophets and apostles, only to promulgate a new one
through mediums • discards the literature of Christendom
for the " inspirations " of illiterate men and women ; and
in exchange for the ancient religions of mankind, erects
a new religion on ghostly foundations. The mission of
Spiritualism, according to Mr. Davis, is to convince people
of their immortality. With that its duty began, and
when that is done its duty will end. If it would accom-
plish the purpose for which it was sent into the world, it
must retrace its mistaken steps. If it fails to do so, it
will not only forsake its calling, but will fasten on the
world another superstition in place of the superstitions it
is outgrowing, and will alienate from it both men and
angels.

To the weighty criticism of Mr. Davis, I, who am but
a thoughtful looker-on, shall presume to add nothing. My
purpose has been to show some of the many doorways into
the immortal life. The mortal certainty does put on im-
mortality. In many forms we surely live again, live
eternally and for ever. We cannot die if we would.
Death has no dominion over us. We may live in the
future as we will, cherishing the hope that most inspires.
If we crave personal immortality, the greatest minds and
the best hearts of the race countenance our belief in it.
If we are unable to entertain that expectation, there re-
mains the other — an immortality of wholesome influence

THE IMMORTALITIES OF MAN. 219

in the race. If that seems cold, vague and bewildering,
the knowledge that we may live in the hearts and souls of
those who love us, offers a kindling anticipation and a
tender promise. From one of these convictions — why
not from all ? — we can obtain the strength and the conso-
lation we need ; can be lifted out of despondency, and
saved from the folly of sordid or shameful life. The
faith, that most dignifies and consoles is the best. That is
the noblest conception of immortality that most gloriously
animates and irradiates our dust.

XIII.
THE VICTORY OYEE DEATH.

" The last enemy that sliall be destroyed is death." — 1 Con. xv. 28

TO trie large majority of mankind, whether reflecting
or unreflecting, this description of death as the great
enemy will seem to be literally true. It is the enemy of
whatever in existence is friendliest- —of pleasure, of hap-
piness, joy, satisfaction, mirth, affection, success, pros-
perity, greatness. An old covered bridge at Lucerne, in
Switzerland, is decorated with a series of twenty-four
pictures, entitled,, " The Dance of Death," representing
the " king of terrors" as surprising people in their bliss-
ful moments. The lover, the lord, the fine lady, the
courtier, the prince, the merchant, the reveler, the soldier,
each at the most critical moment, is arrested and hurried
away from the place of honor or the scene of delight. It
was a favorite theme in the Middle Ages. Painter, poet
and satirist celebrated this " dance of death " with the
grim humor that was characteristic of the superstitious
time. Religion kept such scenes faithfully before the
people's mind, and the people welcomed them with the
ghastly satisfaction which images of horror ever excite.

The dread of death is universal and instinctive ; and
yet how many rush into its arms ! Suicide is a most im-
pressive fact in this connection. The disappointed lover,
the discouraged adventurer, the suspected clerk, the child
wounded in its self-love or fearful of punishment, faces

THE VIC TORT OVER DEATH. ■ 221

the great enemy and invites his blow,. Every now and
then the community is shocked by suicides so unprovoked
and so frequent, as almost to persuade us that the natural
fear of death is passing away.

The inconsistency is easily explained. Lord Bacon says
there is no passion that will not overmaster the terror of
death. For passion is thoughtless ; occupied wholly with
an immediate suffering, it makes no estimate of any other
kind of pain ; absorbed in an instantaneous sorrow, it takes
no other sorrow into account. The mind entertains but
one passion at a time, whether it be joy or fear. But men
are not always or generally under the influence of passion.
Ordinary life is calm, calculating, considerate, and it is to
ordinary life that death is terrible.

Tt is the thought of death that is terrible, not death.
Death is gentle, peaceful, painless ; instead of bringing
suffering, it brings an end of suffering. It is misery's
t-iire. Where death is, agony is not. The processes of
death are all friendly. The near aspect of death is gra-
cious.

There is a picture somewhere of a /rightful face, livid
and ghastly, which the beholder gazes on with horror, and
would turn away from, but for a hideous fascination that
not only rivets his attention, but draws him closer to it.
On approaching the picture the hideousness disappears,
and when directly confronted it is not any more seen ; the
face is the face- of an angel. It is a picture of death, and
the object of the artist was to impress the idea that the
terror of death is in apprehension. Theodore Parker,
whose observation of death was very large, has said that
be never saw a person of any belief, condition, or experi-
ence unwilling to die when the time came ; and my own
more limited observation confirms the truth of the re
mark. Death is an ordinance of nature, and like every

222 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH.

ordinance of nature is directed by beneficent laws to bene-
ficent ends. "What must be, is made welcome. Necessity
is beautiful.

But no sweetness of death sweetens the apprehension
of death. That, save to the philosophic or enfeebled mind,
is seldom otherwise than fearful. Few can contemplate
calmly their own dissolution ; few look quietly forward
to the termination of their friend's existence. To thou-
sands, life is simply an effort to escape from death, to
avert or defer the evil hour. Disease loses half its terrors
for us when we feel sure it will not prove fatal. Years of
sickness, of weakness, of agony, are welcomed in prefer-
ence to death. Old people who have nothing left either
to do or to enjoy, shrink from the thought of dissolution.
The sentiment whi<jh Shakespeare puts into the mouth of
Claudio, in " Measure for Measure," expresses the com-
mon feeling of the average of mankind :

" The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death."

The terror is older than the records of mankind, and it
has a solemn character that associates it with doom. There
is a mystery about death. It seizes on the imagination.
Its silence, its secrecy, its unavoidableness, its impartiality,
its pitilessness, the absence in it of anything like moral
emotion, its refusal to be questioned, the grim irony of* its
whole procedure, invest it with an awe that is oj)pressive.
There seems to be something behind it ; some vast power,
conscious yet insensible, endowed with will, but wilful ; a
gloomy power that nothing can break. All mysteries are
summed up in that of death.

THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 223

" From the globe of black day to the summit of Venus,
I traversed all the difficulties of the world ;

Every tie which was fastened around me by deceit and illusion
Was loosened, except that of death."

This impression of death must have been made late in
the experience of the human mind. Ages must have
elapsed before it was indelibly stamped 'there, for it im-
plies the growth of reflection. If we can imagine the
time when the human race was hardly distinguishable
from the brute creation, 'we shall perceive that no terror
of death could have existed. Man probably had at this
epoch no more thought of death than the beast had. Not
till he had separated himself by development from the
animal creation, and in some respects ranged himself un-
der different laws, could death have seemed a singular or
startling event ; and even then the state of violence, war-
fare and perpetual confusion that prevailed everywhere,
must have made all reflection on death impossible.

The usual accompaniments of death concealed its char-
acter. Individual men died by the bite of the serpent,
the claws of the lion, the hug of the bear, the spring of
the panther, the tread of the huge beast, the fall of rocks,
the overflow of the flood, the enemy's club or spear. Hun-
ger, thirst, cold, carried them off ; war and famine swept
them away by hundreds ; but there was always a visible
cause, palpable, usually violent, commonly sudden, and
the effect was connected strictly with the cause. Death
was associated with a shock of some kind. There were
innumerable isolated facts of death, but there was no law
or inevitable sequence of death. Death without a weapon
that accounted for it was probably unthought of. Of
course there were deaths without violence. Women and
children died ; but at that period, and for ages on ages
after, women and children were of no account. Old men

224 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH.

died ; but not many men lived to be old, and the few who
did Avere not worth considering. Their death was proba-
bly hastened by the violent act of their own people, who
felt that they were a useless incumbrance. Strong men
alone were considered necessary to the stability of the
tribe. Their lives alone were significant ; their fate alone
was interesting.

Not until hunting and war had to some extent ceased
to be the universal pursuits, and something resembling a
condition of peace had begun — not until existence had
fallen into fixed conditions of regular habits, could any-
thing like a sober appreciation of the phenomenon of
death have become possible. Then, at a period in the ca-
reer of man comparatively recent, centuries on centuries
after the epoch just described, the fact may have broken
on the human mind that death was an event of universal
and inevitable occurrence ; that it came to all alike — came
at all times, under all circumstances, to men, women and
children — came without noise, without weapon or blood-
shed— came when no'enemy was near, when the wild beast
was driven far off, when the elements were quiet, when
the flood kept its natural channel. Then, for the first
time, the conviction began to gain strength that there was
a rowEii or death. Not yet, however, were these un in-
structed people able to conceive of what we call the law
or ordinance of death; not yet were they able to think of
death without a death bringer, an enemy who killed with
malicious intent. There was no more a visible foe, no
more a distinct foe in each particular instance ; the slayer
was invisible ; moreover, there was but one universal
slayer, one' enemy for all mankind, one subtle, diabolical
adversary, who dwelt in the mysterious chambers of the
air, and, invulnerable, unassailable, shot his vengeful ar-
rows into human hearts. Who was this awful avenger?

THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 225

Who was this remorseless slayer? Why did he slay?
"Why did he hate? What 'had the race done to him that
lie should massacre them one by one, never sparing an in-
dividual for any cause whatsoever ? Could he not be dis-
armed, placated, bought off by gifts ? Was no rescue, no
respite possible?

Then we may suppose began the earliest • efforts at
emancipation from the dreadfid curse. The priest arose,
charged with the duty of making intercession with the
awful destroyer. Altars were built, fires were kindled,
sacrificial knives took the blood of innocent beasts, a per-
petual smoke carried aloft to the dwelling place of the
frightful king the gloomy prayers of the crouching multi-
tudes; sorcerers practiced charms, soothsayers muttered
incantations, jugglers practiced magical arts ; the whole
apparatus of superstition was called into play to rid the
race of its curse, and procure remission from the destroyer.
Religion scarcely had a purpose distinct from that of
evading the necessity of death.

By the side of the priest stood the physician, with his
herbs and philters, his potations and talismans, trying to
heal the wounds the priest tried to prevent. The priest
and physician were brothers, as they always should be.
Their officers were alike ; their purpose was always the
same ; they waged the same warfare, in the same interest,
if not with the same weapons or on the same field. Their
common enemy was death, the enemy of the race. Each
to some extent shared the duties of the other. Both were
sacred persons, holy and honored, set apart, maintained at
public cost, endowed with special privileges. The priest
was a physician, the physician was a priest. The priest
had the gift of healing by his touch ; the physician had
the gift of expelling evil spirits. Neither could do his
full work without aid from the other. Approaching the

♦226 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH.

same problem from different sides, they frequently met
for exchange of counsel and co-operation of endeavor. At
first the priest overtopped the physician, as the office of
placating the slayer was more essential than the office of
warding off the deadly arrows which still, sooner or later,
reached their mark. Gradually the physician acquired
equal eminence with the priest, for the priest's interces-
sion was obviously futile. The slayer did not relent ; no
answer came to the supplication ; the darts fell as thickly
as ever and were as fatal. Death was unavoidable ; but
it might be postponed, it might be alleviated, its agony
might be mitigated. Men bless the good physician, and
well they may. His is still a sacred calling ; his is the
order of the Holy Ghost. He belongs to an ancient and
noble fraternity, a brotherhood which, in all times and
places, has been in league against death. Grouped in
many schools, practicing many methods, pursuing many
lines of study, distinguished by many titles, wearing many
badges, equipped with a great variety of arms, they all
inarch under a single banner, the banner on which is inscrib-
ed the name of the Prince of Life. Every honest physician
is a soldier trained for this great war. His weapons are
the plants, the herbs, the minerals; air, light, water,
electricity, every remedial force in nature; the vital
powers of the frame, the laws of healthful living. With
his cunning instruments he repairs injury, cuts away the
diseased parts of the body, mends bruises, heals wounds.
Faithfully he keeps his post, standing between the living
and the doom that threatens life. It is his mission to in-
troduce life safely into the world, to protect it, to come to
its rescue when assailed, to mitigate its pains, to ease its
conditions, to nurture its powers, to prolong its term. He
snatches the little children from the clutches cf the dark
angel, and gives them back to their mothers; he restores

THE VICTORY OVER DEATH 227

parents io their distressed children ; he gives sleep to the
restless ; he keeps the family circle together ; he is the
preserver of beauty, and strength, and virtue. But for
him the power of death would indeed be felt to be a
curse ; death would be the great enemy. But the physi-
cian gains no victory over death. He baffles it, checks it,,
arrests it, puts it off, disarms it of its agony, compels it to
wait more convenient seasons, makes it respect conditions ;
but he gains no victory over it. Death, in spite of him,
comes to all at last. None escape ; none ever will escape.
The physician cannot save himself or those dearer to him
than himself. It is touching to see how powerless he is t'o
strike the destroyer down. When the fatal hour comes,
he that has rescued hundreds cannot rescue his wife, his
child ; he who has prevented hundreds from falling into
the grave, stands by helplessly and sees his only darling
slip over the edge and disappear. All the medical science
of the century avails nothing to save the best man of the
century when his hour arrives ; nor can we imagine the
time as ever coming when it will.

It is this law, this power, decree, doom of death, that
so impresses the imagination of the world. Paul felt
this ; it was never absent from his mind ; it seems to have
been the one frightful fact to him in all the universe ; it
' tinged all his thought ; it is the key to the secret chambers
of his speculation. The simple historical fact, that " death
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had
not sinned as Adam did," was a fact of tremendous sig-
nificance in his view. He speaks of the " law of death,"
of " the ministration of death," of " death as passing on
all men." The unavoidabieness, the irresistibleness of
the experience overwhelmed him. Death to him was not
a fact merely ; it was a fact with a terrible power behind
it ; it was a doom, a curse, a penalty, Paul always asso-

228 THE VICTORY OYER DEATH

ciates death with sin. Sin is the cause of death. But
for sin there would have been no death ; for " Sin came
into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon
all men, because all had sinned." " The sting .of death is
sin." The law of death and the law of sin are the same.
Sin was the mysterious destroyer. Break his dominion,
and death is abolished.

Here comes in the Redeemer's office. He came to
break the power of sin, and thus strike a blow at the
heart of death. The Christ of Paul was above everything
else the sinless man. This was his peculiarity. In this
lay his redeeming power. What he may have been as
teacher, revealer of truth, reformer, exemplar of right-
eousness, was of quite secondary import. It was as the
sinless man that he saved — saved from death, which was
the great salvation. " The first man was of the earth
earthy j the second man was the Lord from Heaven."
" The first Adam was a living soul, a vital principle ; the
last Adam was a quickening spirit." " As in Adam all
die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." " As by
one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and
so death passed on all men, because all have sinned ; so
the grace of God, and the gracious gift through one man,
hath abounded unto many." " The law of life in Christ
Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.."
The resurrection of Christ was thus a logical necessity.
~\Ye may almost say it was a foregone conclusion. In
advance of proof, perhaps in advance of trustworthy evi-
dence, it might have been assumed on the strength of the
conviction that the Christ was sinless. At all events, the
least hint, the faintest rumor, the slightest tradition of a
resurrection, would have been sufficient for the apostle's
ardent logic. If others believed it on any ground what-
ever, Baul was ready to accept an opinion that jumped so
exactly with his hope.

THE VICTOR T 0 VER DEA TIL 229

The sinless man could not die. Christ was sinless,
therefore the grave did not hold him. The preaching of
the resurrection was, therefore, the great business ; that
was the heart of the gospel ; everything else proceeded
from that. The sinless Christ institutes an order of sin-
less men ; the risen Christ establishes a line of risen men.
" Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-
fruits of them that slept." " Every man in his own order,
Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that' are Christ's at
his coming." " The sting of death is sin, but thanks be
to God who has given us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ." "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesns
from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from
the dead shall also quicken you?' mortal bodies by His
Spirit that dwelleth within you."

This language is to be read "literally. Paul meant ex-
actly what he said, nothing more and nothing less. He
meant that believers in Christ were not to die any more ;
that physical death was for them abolished. If any had
already died, they would rise in bodies of light on the
morning when the Lord should descend from heaven with
a shout and the trumpet's sound ; the others would not
die at all. " Behold, I show you a mystery ; we shall not
all sleep the sleep of death, but we shall all be changed, in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye. The trumpet shall
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we
shall be changed. These corruptible bodies shall put on
incorruption, these mortal forms shall put on immortali-
ty ; " and when all this occurs, " death will be swallowed
up in victory." In anticipation of this wonderful trans-
formation, this dropping off of the material covering and
unfolding of immaterial forms, the apostle breaks out into
rapturous peans of joy ; he cannot contain his transport.
"O death," he cries, "where is thy sting! O grave,

230 THE VICTOR T 0 YER BE A TU.

where is thy victory ! " Henceforth none need die ; all
may be transfigured. The earth need never again be
opened to receive a lifeless body ; the carnal part was to
pass away like an exhalation, and be no more seen. For
a little while the rapture lasted ; for a very few years the
small company of men and women who cherished the
apostle's faith, lived as if death had literally " no dominion
over them." Death to them was not

" So much even as the lifting of a latch ;
Only a step into the open air,
Out of a tent already luminous,
With light that shone through its transparent walls."

The dream did not last long. The laws of nature soon
dispelled the illusion. One by one the company of be-
lievers fell asleep; the apostles themselves died and were
buried like the rest ; no trumpet sounded, no Lord ap-
peared, no grave gave up its tenant, no forms of light
gleamed in the air. Faith in Christ had no virtue to alter
the physiological conditions of being, to adjust the rela-
tions between the human body and its environment, to
prevent the occurrence of accident, to arrest the action of
hereditary disease, to avert the consequences of impru-
dence, ignorance, folly, to render harmless the sudden
blow, the pestilence, the fever, weakening of the blood,
paralysis of the nerves. The constitution of things re-
mained as it had been from the beginning, and gave no
sign of interruption. Death was as inexorable, as impar-
tial, as remorseless as ever; it spared the believer as little
as the unbeliever ; it respected the saint no more than the
sinner.

Victory over death, then, was not to be hoped for.
The only victory that might perhaps be achieved, was
victory over the fear of death. To dethrone the king
being impossible, the only feasible attempt was to deprive

THE VICTOR T 0 VEB BE A TH. 231

him of his terrors. This the church undertook. There
was the sepulchre ; but a doorway could be opened out of
it. The dark river still rushed on ; but lights could be
set on the further shore. The believer must see corrup-
tion, but need not remain in it. Faith in Christ could not
save from death, that was certain ; but it could save from
the bitterness of death. The death-bed of the believer
was declared to be soft and downy, his last hours peaceful,
his departure a sweet release, his unconsciousness a pleas-
ant sleep, his final thoughts and experiences happy. Angel
faces were imagined in his chamber ; glimpses of the risen
Lord, such as were granted to the early saints, were
promised. Of the "agony, the shroud, the pall, the
breathless darkness and the narrow house," nothing was
said. The teaching was all of the spiritual form that
could not perish — of the risen Saviour, of the waiting
angels, of the " green fields beyond the swelling flood,"
and sunny mansions, and deathless songs, and fadeless
flowers, of crowms and snow-white garments. Nothing
was omitted that might help to make complete the victory
over the ancient terror. The church, through all its
voices, gave lessons of cheer : flutes and dulcimers were
sweet substitutes for the clangor of the last trump.

"With a hope like this, Christendom ought to stand on
jubilant feet and welcome death with smiles. It should
count the fear of death a shame and a sin ; it should pro-
nounce the natural terror of dissolution an infidelity. ISTot
once in a year should its Easter day be celebrated ; every
day of death should be a glorious Easter; every grave
should be a gateway ; every funeral mound a mount
of ascension ; a festive hour should be the hour of trans-
figuration, and it should be greeted with murmurs of
thanksgiving and hymns of praise, by people with radiant
faces and shining robes. The hour of death should be

232 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH.

greeted more joyously than the hour of birth, as the hour
that ushers the immortal being into a cloudless, tearless
world. And so it would be but for one drawback, one
fatal qualification, less serious to the devout unquestioning
member of the Roman church than to the .thoughtful be
lievers.of Protestant communions, whose faith is a private
conviction resting on personal experience. The Romanist
reposes in the assurance of the church ; the Protestant
must have the assurance of his heart ; for him, therefore,
the qualification I speak of is of the gravest conse-
quence.

The victory was promised to believers only ; to all others
death remained terrible as before, nay, a thousand times
more terrible. To the unbeliever it was represented as
the awful power that dragged him before his judge for
sentence. , " Afterwards they that are Christ's," said
Paul. His hope was for none besides. ""When thou
hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open
the gates of heaven to all believers" said the ancient Te
Deum. Death to the unbeliever was painted in the most
hideous colors. To him the last hours were hours of phy-
sical and mental agony ; doubt and dread took hold on
him ; his bed was a bed of coals ; no visions of beauty
dawned on his sight, but ghastly shapes haunted his fancy ;
his chamber was infested with evil spirits, demons glared
at him in the night, imps of hell grinned and gibbered by
his pillow ; he tasted in advance the bitterness of perdi-
tion. It was taken for granted that the death of the un-
believer was horrible; no evidence to the contrary was
admitted. Priests took the liberty of declaring, against
all proof, that infidels like Yoltaire, Rousseau, Paine,
suffered in dying the torments of the damned. They
knew it ; they could not have died in peace ; all appear-
ances to the contrary must be regarded as deceptive.

THE VICTOR T 0 VER DEA TU. 233

Whatever the by-standers may have seen and heard was
delusion. The unbelieving heart in its inmost recesses
must have known its own condition, must have -felt the
tooth of the devouring worm.

• But who can be sure that he is one of the true believ-
ers ? There is the terrible question that constantly recurs
to reflecting minds, and that makes the apprehension of
death more bitter within Christendom than it ever was
without. To the natural dread of dissolution is added
the unspeakable dread of that which may come after dis-
solution— the fear of perdition for one's friends, if not
for one's-self. The thought of death has been made ap-
palling beyond description by this dreadful uncertainty —
an uncertainty which weighed most cruelly upon the most
conscientious, and most frightfully tormented those who
had the best right to peace. Horrible misgivings gather-
ed about the bed-side of the so-called believer. The
priest sat by close, trying, to extract comforting admissions
4rom the weak, distracted mind — questioning, cross-ques-
tioning, taking down words, noting expressions, watching
the changing lights in the eye, hanging on the faintest
breath, doing all in his power to insure a triumphant
passage through the dark valley. The most miserable
death-beds have been the death-beds of the saints, whose
hearts were tenderest. The callous suffered nothing.
The believers had misgivings; the unbelievers went their
way untroubled. Few men ever feared the thought of
death as the believing, devoted, excellent Cowper did,
and his experience was by no means a peculiar one.
Certainly no " infidel " we know of has suffered so.
The •" qualification " preyed on Cowper' s heart. This
is the reason why^he victory was not won. It was im-
possible to tell who deserved it, and the fear that one
might not deserve it added to the ancient enemy a sting,

234 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH.

the poison whereof was deadly and could not be ex-
tracted.

Happily, this cause of defeat is now in great measure
removed. The "liberal believers" have modified and in
some respects completely changed the conditions of suc-
cessful battle with this formidable foe. The technical
belief in Christ is not by them demanded. Immortality
is declared to be the common inheritance of mankind,
the general privilege of human nature. By virtue of his
intelligence, his affection, his moral will, the power of his
personality, man is pronounced invulnerable to death. It is
contended that being continues precisely as it was before;
that individuality persists, that consciousness is uninter-
rupted, that love easily overleaps the dividing space between
one sphere of existence and another ; that, in fact, no divid-
ing space exists ; that death is but a change of form,
affecting outward conditions merely — a change which, so
far from being a shock, a convulsion, is a process in the
orderly growth of the spiritual being. The terrors of the
world beyond are also abolished, the abyss of hell- is
covered up, the vengeful demons have disappeared, the
flames are quenched, the instruments of torture are laid
by, the burning sandy wastes are reclaimed and converted
into delicious gardens. Where the devils lurked, the
angels wander; where the damned writhed in agomT, the
children play ; the heavenly Jerusalem covers the whole
plain of the hereafter.

To all who believe thus — and the number of them is
increasing day by day — death is virtually abolished. The
grave is filled up and planted with flowers ; the hour of
departure is the hour of release, the hour of new birth,
hour of freedom, of expansion, of joy, hour of answer to
life's cpiestion, of reward for life's labor, of fruition to
life's hope, of achievement to life's endeavor, of deliver-

THE VICTOR T 0 YEB BE A TU. 235

ance from life's burden and sorrow. To these the old
conflict is over, never to be renewed.

" This is the hud of heing, the dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the vestibule.
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and Death,
Strong Death, alone can heave the massy bar,
And make us embryos of existence free."

All this time physiology has been busy undermining the
foundations of the old fear. With its tine instrument, sci-
ence, with its unerring method, it has made its careful ap-
proaches and drawn its firm parallels, till at length the cit-
adel has been forced to surrender. Reason tells us that
death is an ordinance of nature, an institution of the or-
ganic world, a provision of Providence ; inevitable because
beneficent; inevitable as the development of life on the
planet is inevitable; admirable as the order of the world
is admirable. It has its place along with those indispen-
sable agencies of progress which cannot be altered without
unsettling the fundamental plan of creation ; it has its
mission by the side of the benignant powers that bring
creation to its perfection.

When the" force that lies concealed in the germ-cell of
the human organization is spent, death removes the frame,
now serviceable no longer, to the vast laboratory where na-
ture converts the worn-out material of the universe into
forms of new use and beauty. The cast-off garments reap-
pear in the beauteous vesture of tree and grass, and flower,
and yellow harvest ; not an atom of refuse but has its love-
ly resurrection. When the last scene of existence is ready
to close and the play is over, death gives the signal and lets
the curtain fall. But for him the tiresome acts would drag
on, scene after scene, when the meaning was exhausted ;
but for him feebleness would continue its useless being,
drooping, complaining, whining, wearing out strength and

230 THE VICTORY OYER DEATH.

cheerfulness — a burden to itself, an incumbrance to others,
a dead weight on all. He dismisses the tired actors and
actresses to their rest. Tithonus, beloved of Eos, the
dawn, obtained from the gods the boon of immortality on
earth ; but the foolish boy forgot to ask for the accompa-
nying gift of perpetual youth. His organization wasted
and Mrore out while his years ran on. His immortality was
an endless misery. He was, by his own prayer, con-
demned to the horror of being unable to die.

When space is needed for the new generations that come
crowding on, death gently clears the way for them. One
generation goes that another may come. The bright,
strong children appear, line on line, rank on rank, and en-
ter on their heritage. They bring new eyes for the land-
scape, new ears for the music, new hands for the work.
They break upon the scene with shouts of joy ; they swarm
over the welcoming earth ; they try their bright minds on
the old questions ; they p>ress their brave hearts against
the old experiences. The departure of the old makes
their advent possible, gives them room and opportunity.
We smile on death when we greet these with smiles ; we
drop tears of tenderness on the grave when we drop tears
of gratitude on the cradle in which these are rocked. The
earth is not big enough for all at once.

" All tilings that Ave love and cherish,
Like ourselves, must fade and perish;
Such is our rude mortal lot,
Love itself would, did they not. "

It is death that flings open the hospitable doors and bids
the crowd of new-comers to the feast of life. That so
many laugh and sing ; that so many eat the ambrosia of
life, and sip its nectar ; that, after thousands and tens of
thousands of years, the beauty of the world is still new,
the order of the world still enchanting, the routine of the

TEE VICTORY OVER DEATE. 237

world still interesting, the joy of the world still intoxicat-
ing, the problem of the world still inviting, the work of
the world still engaging; that the experiences of life,
though millions of times repeated, do not lose their zest —
all this we owe to the benignant ministry of death.

But for death, no gain, no improvement, no endeavor,
no progress, no fresh intelligence, no renewed will. For
the new search there must be new curiosity ; for the new
curiosity, new impulse ; for the new impulse, new organ-
ization. Humanity rolls on in successive waves, one
swiftly following another, each pushing further than the
last. No single generation secretes the force that is avail-
able for all time ; it is given in portions to every age in
turn. Death marks the pulsations of the heart-beats.

The law of death is thus a law of progress. The beauty
of the wrorld demands death for its appreciation ; the re-
sources of the world demand death for their development ;
the beneficence of the world demands death, that it may
be shared ; the glory of the world demands death, that the
myriads of mankind may behold it with freshly wonder-
ing eye ; the intellectual and moral grandeurs of the world
demand death, that they may be perfectly understood ;
earth and heaven alike demand death. It is the child of
the perfect wisdom and the primeval love.

To mortals, death still has its agonies and terrors ; but
the time will come when the advent of death will be as
sweet as its intention. The time is coming when the con-
ditions of life wTill be better comprehended, and the laws
of life be more implicitly obeyed ; when children will be
more healthfully born and more wisely nurtured, when
physical excesses will be diminished, when the secrets of
organization will be discovered, and remedies be mul-
tiplied for human ills, and rules of prevention be adopted,
and liabilities of accident, be reduced in number by carer

238 THE VICTORY OVER DEATH.

fulness, and peace be made between the organization and
its environment, and hereditary taints be worked out of
the blood. Then the last enemy will indeed be destroyed ;
death will be a sleep ; man will

" So live that when the summons comes to join

A The innumerable caravan that moves
To that mysterious realm "where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
He.'ll go, not like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged, to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach his grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below

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