in sº
ºf
74 Buchanan Street º
DETROIT, Mich.
THE NEW GHRISTIANITY

THE NEW CHRISTIANITY.
—s-—-
-i. how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to
dwell together in unity. -
There can be no doubt that a new religion is
about to arise, as a natural outgrowth of the ex-
tinetion of Christianity.
For Christianity, in every deep and true sense, is
extinct.
By the very principle which it, battled to main-
tain-the adequacy of private judgment in matters
of dºctrine—Protestantism is destroyed. How can
one who demands the right of modifying old faiths
to suit his private opinion find fault with another
who by his private judgment abrogates the old
faith entirely? r
How shall he who rejects the doctrine of the
apostolic succession condemn me if I reject the
divinity of Jesus?
Protestantism made its stand to establish free-
dom of thought. Protestantism is, in the best
sensé, free thinking. -
As for Catholicity, it rests its claim upon histor-
ſcal authority, and, as far as that goes, its position
pregnable.
5 when it is not the authority of the teacher
hat is called in question, but the validity of what
is taúght; when men lose their respect for arbi-
frary power; when the common acceptation uppn
which that power was based is gone—what then?
39th Protestantism and Catholicity have almost
lost; their hold on men's hearts and minds. Prot-
tant churches have become rich men's amuse-
* ments, temples of matmmon, exclusive clubs where
wealth buys the leadership and hires the perform-
ers, Hollow shams erected for the glory of God and
to improve the surrounding property.
‘Catholicity is still the church of the poor, but
h9; the church that plunders than the church
#:

3
that protects them; the church that overlooks in-
justice in high places, and contents itself with re-
pressing the manifestations of the misery which
that injustice has produced.
Can we go on as we are going?
Can we rest content with no settled belief; doubt-
ing all things; doubting the possibility of truth,
mercy, justice ; knowing only that this life is
wretched, and that there is no other tangible hope?
What then can we do?
Shall we keep on pointing to the god of the
churches, the individual.who has created and main-
tains all the misery, all the violence, and blood and
sin and wretchedness of the present desperate state
Of affairs? *
Shall we go on trying to make men believe that
such a person is benevolent and just?
Shall we keep on teaching that this life is nor-
mally miserable, and that the only hope in life is
after life is over?
It cannot be.
What shall we do? At least we need not fear.
The churches themselves have revolted against the
hell doctrine. The dread of burning is gone : the
terror of death is past.

Yet where shall we look? We have lost our old
faith; where shall we find a new and better one?
Is there a God?
We wander through all the fields that science has
explored; we divide atoms from atoms; we search
the mysterious forces of the universe; with micro-
scope we look through the minute world hitherto
unknown; with telescope and spectroscope we
penetrate the depths of the stars, but we find no
evidence of the individual mind that is upheld by
the theology of the day as the only god it knows
All the great facts that we do note, all the broad
principles that we thereon found are blindly and
systematically antagonized by that theology, which
gives us in place of them nothing.
4
So the mind returns and beats against the bars
of its limitations as it asks again the question:
What is all this Universe of things? Does it really
exist at all? For what purpose does it exist? What
are we, conscious atoms of the Whole?
And, as we look into the blackness of eternity
before us and behind us, we shudder as we are re-
pelled by a veil more impenetrable than the cloud
on Sinai.
If it were not for the pride of intellect that leads
men to think that they are capable of conceiving
the Inconceivable, they would before this have
learned that thought is permissible as far as thought
is possible, and that we need never restrain the
exercise of our intellect, for at the point where the
intellect would mislead us, the use of intellect be-
comes impossible, the mind stands aghast.
Years ago it was written: “Canst thou by search-
ing find out God? Canstthou find out the Almighty
to perfection? It is higher than heaven, what
canst thou do: deeper than hell, what canst thou
know?”
Yet now, as then, after saying that God cannot
be conceived by the mind of man, Christian theo-
logians go on to define a god after their own fan-
cies, describing a man such as they are themselves,
with the thoughts, the hopes, the desires of a man.
They even deify their teacher. Jesus; not know-
ing the real grandeur of his teachings, they wor-
ship as the Inconceivable God a man like ourselves.
gº it be that we ought to worship any man as
Od?
Or is it not that we have higher ideas of God
than prevailed when Jesus was deified?
To the nations of antiquity God was not the mas-
sive and overwhelming thought that it is now. In
recognizing another god they were doing what was
an every-day thing. Gods were plentiful then.
But for us it is so no longer. We cannot admit
that any man is God.
To go further, it is impossible for us to attribute
to God any human qualities. Is it not as much

5
idolatry to set up a god who is like man in mind as
one who is like man in body?
To say that God is loving, angry, pleased, is it
not idolatry? Can we say that God is a moral
being, and define divine morality by human mo-
rality?
Can we say that God is a conscious being, or a
personal individual at all, without making an image
of ourselves for our god?
It is all mere idolatry. -
We cannot say anything that implies that the
human mind can know or conceive the Unknowable
and Inconceivable.

What, then, is Knowledge?
All our Knowledge is of the external aspect of
things only. As given through our senses we say
that things are red, that they are hot, that they are
heavy, Square, bitter, and so on, and we compare
things among themselves by their qualities.
But what.things are apart from their qualities by
which they are related to our senses, what they are
beneath the surface, what they are when all con-
sciousness is removed we can never know.
Yet that things do exist, that something was be-
fore anything was conscious of it, that the same
Something will continue though all consciousness
of it be gone, we must assume.
We do not know it: we believe it.
How things exist, relatively to our senses, we
know by our senses; that things exist at all we do
not know, but we must assume.
We cannot prove that things exist—we found our
proofs of how they exist upon the ineradicable be-
lief that they do exist.
We believe because we cannot avoid believing.
As the fundamental assumption upon which all
thought, all proof, all knowledge rests lies the be-
lief that Something exists.
This ever-present and inevitable belief in the
Existence of that which to our bodily senses is
6
known as the visible universe is the true faith
which is above knowledge.
We believe, not because “belief is impossible,”
but because unbelief is impossible.
That Existence, which we are compelled to be-
lieve in, is indeed that which, under many man-
made disguises, men have ever recognized as God.
We assert it the more confidently because it is
beyond proof. We do not know, we cannot prove
that anything exists. We are compelled to believe
§ Something exists, and that which Exists is
OCl.
It is not belief against reason, but it is belief
upon which reason rests.
Whether we will or not we must believe that
Something exists, and that Something in which are
all things we can only call God.
The manifestation of the Existence in which we
believe is only through the temporary and relative
existence which we know through our senses. The
only revelation of God is in the book of Nature.
The highest worship is the investigation of the
workings of the visible universe.
Worshiping God thus we need fear no science;
we worship by science.
Trace as we may the genesis of worlds and gal-
axies from the primeval ethereal aggregation, our
wonder and reverence is not diminished for the
God that Is.
Analyze as we may the last particles of brain-
matter, identifying thought with motion, life with
electricity, each with all and all with each, we but
add to our awe at the mysteries of Existence.
We may not use words to describe God: we may
not speculate as to the connection between the rela-
tive and absolute; we may not because we cannot.
We may not say that God is one any more than
we would say that God is many. We may say
only: God Is. Existence is God.
Through and in all things; beneath all things
and above all things: by which the whole is filled
and moved and driven onward.

7
g
Origin and cause and reason and end of all things,
beyond all words, beyond all thought : before
which the most careful phrases are but false and
misleading, for it is beyond all words as far as the
mystery of Existence surpasses all other mysteries.
We take refuge in our ignorance. We defend as
our highest knowledge our incapacity to know at
all. We say only : God Is.
What shall we say then of the Soul?
Just as the pure idea of God has hitherto been
hidden under various personifications and masks,
so under similar disguises shall we find the soul.
All the notions in which the soul is figured as an
attenuated and bleached body are of the same order
as the idolatrous notions of God in the past.
What is that which we call Self?
Each one knows himself to exist only in the con-
sciousness of the existence of things outside of
self. Self-consciousness there cannot be apart
from the consciousness of other things.
Yet among the thfmgs of the visible universe we
are compelled to distinguish two orders; that
which is perceived and that which perceives. As
before, the distinction is one that cannot be proved,
but must be assumed as axiomatic. That reality
which we know only as it perceives other things;
and which we must recognize as the same reality
which is manifested in the things that are p r-
ceived, is indeed the soul divested of the fanciful
forms with which men have tried to bring the in-
conceivable down to their grasp. Second only to
the belief in God is the belief in self, and it is as far
beyond proof. And as we recognize the visible
things by which we are 1ed to believe in the exist-
ence of the soul-self as of the same visible universe
wherein is manifested the Existence of the Whole,
so we may say that our Souls are indeed in and of
that Existence; that we are truly the “ sons of
Gnd 33
As the inconceivable self of the individual is the
8.
Soul, so the Inconceivable self of the Universe is
God
OCl.
Is there, then, any life after death?
Does the soul continue to live after the body is
separated into grass and stones and worms?
No doubt, as stones and grass and worms, as well
as men, are manifestations of existence, however
scattered the body may be, its constituents still
correspond to some existence. But that there is
not after death any conscious individual life, con-
nected by memory with this life, is as certain as it
is certain that we lived no such life before we were
born.
With the death of the body consciousness ends.
The soul, the real Self, then is merged in the Ex-
istence of the Whole.
“Then the body shall return to dust, and the
soul shall return to God who gave it.”
The whole doctrine of future life as a thing to be
desired is the result of the natural wish for happi-
ness in a world where man's wrong-doing has made
happiness hitherto exceptional.
When it was invented the world was torn by tyr-
anny, rapine and destruction. The masses were
slaves, ground down by injustice and violence.
Poverty and servility for the many were the natural
results of the vast riches and cruelty of the few.
What wonder that men grasped at the hope of a
happy life hereafter when a happy life here was im-
possible
And since then this same hope of future life has
done much to reconcile men with the evils of the
world, to paralyze their desires for righting the
wrongs, and doing away with the miseries of the
present life on earth. -
Now light is coming, day is at hand. The hope
of the ages is close upon us.
We have learned now that happiness here on
earth is the normal lot of mankind; that not merely
for the ox is living a pleasure in itself; that the
natural joy of existence ought to be the keener in
men as much as they are above oxen; that it is
9
otherwise only by the mistakes and wrong-doing of
men themselves.
When we live happily shall we not die peacefully?
Death, indeed, is no more to be feared than sleep.
We are but merged again in that God in which we
live and move and have our being.
Who can say that there is no need for right-doing
if the expectation of future life is removed? That
there is no incentive to moral excellence but the
hope of reward?
As much stronger for us is the motive for doing
right as the attainable is more earnestly sought
after than the unattainable.
Men's only chance of happiness here lies in their
doing right.
What is this right that we are to do?
Acknowledging no personal dictator, what do we
establish as a standard of right actions?
As the Inconceivable Existence which we have
agréed to call God is known to us only in the sen-
sible universe, so the only laws of God that we
know are the laws by which the Sensible universe
operates.
Not laws in the sense of the arbitrary fiat of man,
or of a being like man, but the modes in which,
things are related to each other to our Senses, as
we discern by our senses; what Christian theolo-
gians call the laws of nature, and blasphemously
deny to be the laws of God.
When we search out how this globe developed
from the primeval fiery cloud; when we trace sim-
ilar fiery clouds in the sky from which their suns
and worlds have not yet sprung; when we trace
the birth of seas and continents, and the beginning
of vegetable and animal life; when we follow up
the wonderful chain by which, from a formless
jelly, man came to pass; when we divide the brain
and identify the thoughts of it as of the same order
as the lightning flash, do we not in all these things
learn the laws of God in the highest Sense?
10
We need not fear to use our minds to the extent
of their power. We need not harass ourselves
with the idea that we are trying to know what is
too deep for us. We know that where thought is
too deep, thought is impossible. Even if all our
discoveries later on were shown to be mistakes, we
could but begin again to search out the wonders of
the knowable universe, sure that the existence
which it reveals to us is forever hidden from us.
So that it is not merely in moral matters that we
see the laws of God. As all things in the universe
are in and of God. the laws of all things are in very
truth the laws of God.
Whether it be the formula of gravitation, or of
heat absorption. or the rules by which we measure
the electric current in the wire, or the still more
obscure relations of heredity or mind-action, they
are all for us the laws of God.
Not a clod by the roadside, not a speck in the
sunbeam, not an atom of invisible star-dust that we
do not recognize as of the same universe of God as
ourselves, as not less wonderful in nature than the
mind of the greatest sage.
All about us is an Order of things which goes on
whether we will or not.
If we interfere with that order, if we transgress
the law, we suffer; if we transgress beyond a cer-
tain point we die.
If we jump from too great a height we break our
limbs; if we expose ourselves to cold we incur
sickness.
Inexorable in action, inevitable in effect, above
all human might, is the Only Might which is above
right, that Might conformity with which is indeed
the last standard of right.
When we thus realize our ignorance, when we
admit our helplessness, hurled on, we know not
wherefore, whence, nor whither, we feel for the
first time the Fear of God, we reverence for the first
time the Power of God.
11
In our search into the laws of God we have but
recently formulated certain broad generalizations,
expressing the fundamental relations among all the
things of the universe, and showing how they have
been developed. This is popularly called the law
of evolution.
In the development of animal races it is shown
how, by the immensity of the destruction of life
that goes on in nature, the comparative few that
survive are those who have some offensive or de-
fensive characteristic in a more marked degree.
which gives them a superiority over their fellows.
This is called the survival of the fittest.
There are some who say that according to this
law it is right that the mass of mankind should be
wretched and degraded; that it is right that men
should struggle for advantage over each other, and
that the few should profit by the misery of the
many; that thus only can the best men be singled
out for preservation. -- -
If a separate individual life were the condition of
greatest happiness to man, this assertion would be
true.
Man's greatest happiness, however, is not in his
Solitary existence; his greatest happiness is in
Social existence in the company of other men.
It is because the condition of greatest happiness
for man is the social condition that society has de-
veloped, and must continue to develope.
With the development of society a new state of
affairs begins. The prosperity of the society takes
precedence necessarily of the prosperity of the in-
dividual The actions of individuals must be regu-
lated by their fitness to further the existence of the
society. Moral action, which is action regulated
by other than individual motives, begins with the
existence of society. Society is, in fact, a moral
organism. -
When men live in the society of other men the
actions that are right, that are best suited to har-
monize with the Order of the Universe for the fur-
thering of individual life, these very actions


12
become wrong in social life, because they are pre-
eisely the ones most antagonistic to the existence
of the society
Selfishness, self-esteem, pride, cruelty, deceitful-
ness, theft, lying, murder, these and all such which
for solitary-lived animals are right, and according
to the laws of God, become for gregarious animals
to a certain extent and for social man wholly
wrong, and opposed to the laws of God.
The punishment for the infraction of the rules
that must be observed for the maintenance of so-
ciety, the natural punishment that is, lies not in the
injury or death of the individual, but in the injury
or death of the society. Such divine punishments
are the uprisings that occur when men have pushed
their wrong-doing to such a pass that society is
maimed, the injured portion rises in blind violence.
The mad excesses of men in such cases are not to
be judged by a moral standard; the revolution,
never to be advocated from a moral standpoint,
when it does come is a physical revulsion, the true
divine vengeance upon the wrong-doers who have
caused it, no more a moral convulsion than is the
tornado or the earthquake.
The law that lies at the foundation of society,
that must be observed for society to attain full
health and vigor, is clearly pointed to by man's
natural instincts.
Accompanying the social instinct which makes
the greatest happiness for man only attainable in
Society, is the ruling passion of man's nature—the
desire for the approval of others.
It is not true that selfishness is the strongest
human motive. Strong although that undoubtedly
is, there is a strenger.
The motive that is really the strongest is the
universal, overpowering demand of man's mature
for the sympathy and support of his comrades.
That they may receive the sympathy and win the
approval of others, it is easy to see what the actions
of the individual must be.
They must be such as will benefit those whose

13
approval is desired. The rule of life for each indi-
vidual in society must be to do good to others.
Under all circumstances, regardless of all selfish
motives, to do good. Even at a loss to himself, to
do good. “He that sweareth to his own hurt and
changeth not :” this is the secial type of man.
Though others do evil to him he must do good to
them. Retaliation of injuries, the avenging of in-
sults, emulation, profiting at the expense of others,
all these are foreign to the principle of doing good
that must be the rule of conduct for each social
unit, if society is to become perfect.
If it be asked, what is good; the answer is that
the desires of each for his individual happiness
must be his guide in suggesting his actions towards
others. He must do towards them what he would
wish them to do towards him. To love others as
OneSelf is not to protect our own interests as much
as we protect theirs; it is to protect theirs as
single-heartedly and disinterestedly as we would
wish them to protect ours.
They who admit that God Exists; they who ad-
mit that God is known to us through the sensible
universe; they who admit that the laws of God
may not be infringed with impunity; they who ad-
mit that social life is happier than solitary; they
who admit. that social life is impossible without
mutual approval; these, in their reverence for the
Power of God, and seeing it is necessary that they
should, will gladly conform their lives to the rule
of doing to others as they would wish others to do
to them.
This is the doctrine which Jesus preached, but
which never yet has been practiced.
Everything goes on now as it did when Jesus
preached. If he were to come again to-day men
would still say: He is crazy, he hath a devil.
Nations still make war, and men murder each
other, and think they do right.
Courts, with the civil power that they control,

14
are based upon the idea of doing evil for evil, of
the retaliation of the master upon the slave, of the
ruling classes upon their inferiors, the masses.
Never for a moment do they try to discover the
principles of natural justice, to prevent wrong by
attacking its causes, to do good to anybody.
In their intercourse with each other men still en-
tertain the opinion that some are entitled to privi-
leges which others are not entitled to ; that some
ought to be content with a scale of living that
would be disgraceful and impossible for others:
that it is the duty of most men to call somebody
master here on earth.
The state of things which is before our eyes,
which has been brought about by our wrong-doing,
is indeed desperate.
We have erected a society where some are too rich,
with the vices and sins of riches, and where others
are too poor, with the vices and sins of poverty.
By our courts we have legalized natural injustice,
such wrongs as interest and private land owner-
ship, with our whole system of commercial inter-
course, by which men receive without giving an
equivalent, so that the rich are made continually
richer and the poor poorer.
In our intercourse man with man we admire and
uphold all evil passions, quickness to take affront,
pride in our superiority to somebody else, emula-
tion, the return of injury for injury, implacability,
hatred, envy, luxury, idleness. g
Nation with nation we ignore our common broth-
erhood, and each nation holds itself superior to
other nations. Men rush to war against their
brothers, inspired only by national antipathy, and
homes are desolated, wives widowed, children left
destitute, men tortured and crippled for absolutely
no good accomplished.
Even now is impending for many nations the
Social destruction that our neglect of natural law
must entail for all should it continue, by pestilence
from our reeking cities, by riot and bloodshed from
our downtrodden and irresponsible poor,

15
The destruction of Sodom and Ephesus and
Rome will be the destruction of St. Petersburgh
and London and Chicago should things go on as
they are going.
Yet it may be that men will change their course
in time to avert the danger.
It may be that they will leave the old Christian
idolatry, and do the things that Jesus taught, and
that pure religion and science together demand.
Then war will be impossible, for mer; will refuse
to murder each other under any circumstances.
Then the assumption of dignities and privileges
by one man above another on the ground of the
superiority of his natural endowments will also be
impossible, for each will be occupied not in de-
manding good for himself, but in deing good to
others -
Then the enjoyment of any material pleasures by
one above another will finally be condemned by the
general voice, and will fall out of vogue; such en-
joyment will be regarded as sin against society,
and will not be sought by the well-disposed and
virtuous.
The equality of fortune which would result if the
boasted almsgiving of Christians were done by
them as a duty and not as a merit, will follow.
Then courts will be established to seek out the
principles of natural right, to arbitrate friendly
differences without power of injuring anybody, for
acquiescence in the decision will be wholly volun-
tary.
Then the crime which law is supposed to sup-
press, but which really is created by law, will dis-
appear.
Then all men will be as brothers, peace and right
and the joy of life will be the equal inheritance of
every son of God.
John Beverley Robinson,
67 Liberty Street, N. Y.
18 June, 1886.