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 EVERYMAN'S RELIGION 
 
 BY 
 GEORGE HODGES 
 
 Ifork 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1911, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1911. Reprinted 
 August, 1912 ; August, 1913. 
 
 Norfooob 
 
 J. S. Gushing Co. Berwick <k Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION . . 3 
 
 II. THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION . 23 
 
 III. RELIGION AND REVELATION ... 43 
 
 IV. RELIGION AND MIRACLE . . .61 
 V. THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD . 89 
 
 VI. THE SUPREME REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 1 1 1 
 
 VII. THE CHRISTIAN DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 131 
 
 VIII. THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION . . .149 
 
 IX. RELIGION AND THE WORLD . . .167 
 
 X. RELIGION AND THE FLESH . . .191 
 
 XL RELIGION AND THE DEVIL . . .209 
 
 XII. THE REINFORCEMENT OF RELIGION. . 227 
 
 XIII. THE MEANS OF GRACE . . . 243 
 
 XIV. THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS . .261 
 XV. THE LIFE EVERLASTING 281 
 
 206491O
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF 
 RELIGION
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF 
 RELIGION 
 
 HE background of Every- 
 man's Religion is the fact of 
 mystery. 
 
 We live in a strange world, 
 surrounded by surprises. After all the 
 uncounted centuries of our residence 
 here, the conditions of our life are still 
 imperfectly understood. A part of the 
 world is explained by science, and an- 
 other part of the world is explained 
 by philosophy. But the two together 
 hardly do more than describe the sur- 
 face of things. 
 
 Man has made his slow way towards 
 knowledge by the light of a succession 
 of discoveries. Now one determining 
 fact or law, and then another, has 
 come within our mental reach, and has 
 changed the face of society. But we 
 know that a thousand other facts and 
 forces, not only beyond our reach but 
 beyond our imagination, await us and 
 our children.
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 The increase of our knowledge serves 
 to show the increased horizon of our 
 ignorance. We perceive that the world 
 is inconceivably more vast, more won- 
 derful, and more mysterious than we 
 had thought. At first, the discoveries 
 seem to explain the universe. The 
 doctrines of Copernicus, of Newton, 
 and of Darwin seem to solve the prob- 
 lems of our life. But presently we 
 find that they have but magnified the 
 marvel of the world. They bring us 
 to the heights of hills whence we look 
 over into lands unvisited and boundless. 
 
 The world is compact and common- 
 place only to the dull and ignorant. 
 A man may be so occupied with the 
 details of his business as to give the 
 matter no attention. He may keep 
 his eyes so closely on his job as to be 
 unaware of any background. He may 
 be only vaguely and remotely conscious 
 of the mystery in the midst of which 
 he lives. Even so, there are inevitable 
 times when the situation forces itself 
 upon him. The mystery of birth, the 
 mystery of death, and, between the 
 two, the mystery of life, compel the
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 most thoughtless and the most occupied 
 to consider seriously the meaning of 
 the world. The more we know and 
 think, the more amazing is the mystery 
 in which we live. 
 
 Mazzini .said that everybody ought 
 to study astronomy. "A man learns 
 nothing if he has not learned to wonder, 
 and astronomy, better than any other 
 science, teaches him something of the 
 mystery and grandeur of the universe." 
 
 The background of mystery is dimly 
 visible in the starry sky. Beyond the 
 sun and moon, along those far horizons 
 whose incredible distances elude the 
 calculations and even the guesses of 
 astronomers, stand the stars. On a 
 clear night, the unassisted eye sees a 
 thousand stars ; the telescope sees hun- 
 dreds of thousands ; the camera sees 
 tens of millions. And the stars are 
 suns. It is perceived by the delicate 
 instruments of the observatory that 
 some of them perhaps all have 
 dark stars about them, like the earth 
 and other planets about our sun. 
 Each of the forty million stars may 
 have a solar system of its own. We
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 read with a new understanding the 
 ancient attribute of God, "He telleth 
 the number of the stars." 
 
 The nearest of these stars is so far 
 distant that all ordinary measures of 
 extension fail. The length of the foot- 
 rule of the sky is six trillion miles. 
 Six trillion miles is a light year : the 
 journey which a ray of light, travelling 
 at the rate of a hundred and eighty-six 
 thousand miles a second, will accom- 
 plish in twelve months. The nearest 
 of the fixed stars is more than four light 
 years distant from the earth : twenty- 
 six trillion miles. Some of them are so 
 remote that their light must travel 
 more than a hundred light years before 
 it meets our eyes : more than six 
 hundred trillions of miles. The little 
 constellation of the Pleiades, twinkling 
 like a group of fireflies in a mist, is 
 millions of times farther from us than 
 the sun ; many of the stars which com- 
 pose it are hundreds of times bigger 
 than the sun, and the spaces which 
 separate them are billions of miles iong. 
 To our sight it is the smallest constella- 
 tion in the sky. 
 6
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 Thus we stand at night on the sur- 
 face of this dark star, the Earth, and 
 look out into the immeasurable uni- 
 verse. 
 
 The stars are the symbol of mystery. 
 They are the lights of undiscovered 
 lands in comparison with which our 
 whole planet is but the smallest island 
 in a boundless ocean. They make 
 the claim of man to the ownership of 
 the world ridiculous. These vast other 
 worlds, set at these incalculable dis- 
 tances, were made and are maintained 
 without regard to us. They are the 
 result of forces or of purposes which 
 leave us altogether out of account. We 
 still say, and never more sincerely than 
 in the light of all our present knowl- 
 edge, "When I consider the heavens, 
 the work of Thy fingers, the moon and 
 the stars which Thou hast ordained, 
 what is man that Thou art mindful 
 of him?" 
 
 The relation of human knowledge to 
 human ignorance is like the relation of 
 the town to the stars. Here is our 
 own town, along whose familiar streets 
 we walk, with whose houses we are ac-
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 quainted, where we have our various 
 interests and occupations, whose area 
 is accurately bounded and divided into 
 voting districts, this small space of 
 earth wherein we have our residence ; 
 and overhead are the stars. 
 
 Some people see no farther than the 
 street. There is nothing in their life 
 at least in their customary life 
 which might not be included in a fair 
 description of the town. They are 
 like ants in an ant hill. 
 
 Imagine an ant hill in a public park. 
 Of the trees and flowers and spreading 
 lawns, of the ponds and the people, 
 the ants are altogether unconscious. 
 There is a soldiers' monument in the 
 park, but the ants are unaware of the 
 meaning of it ; for them the tragedy, 
 the self-sacrifice, and the achievement 
 which it commemorates have no signifi- 
 cance. There is the statue of a poet 
 or of a statesman : the ant hill is at the 
 very base of it ; but it belongs to a 
 world in which the ants have no place. 
 There is a public meeting in the park, 
 and men standing by the ant hill are 
 thrilled with the brave words of a great 
 8
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 speaker; but the ants go on, getting 
 in their provisions for the winter. The 
 ants at our feet and the stars over our 
 heads teach the same lesson. When we 
 look up at the starry heavens, we get 
 an idea of what it means to contemplate 
 the earth from the summit of an ant 
 hill. 
 
 We are surrounded on all sides by 
 realms of mystery. As the omission 
 of a single sense would obliterate for 
 us a great part of the world of our 
 present knowledge, so the addition of 
 a sense would bring into our conscious- 
 ness new conditions of existence, won- 
 derful beyond imagination. In the 
 midst of these we live, without perceiv- 
 ing them ; or faintly guessing at them, 
 as the keener sight of a poet, a phi- 
 losopher, or a prophet sees dimly some- 
 thing "deeply interfused" which he 
 tries in vain to make us apprehend. 
 
 We cannot go in any direction with- 
 out getting lost. Every blade of grass 
 conducts us into the mystery of life ; 
 every pebble, into the mystery of 
 matter. We ourselves are mysterious 
 to ourselves. The mystery of our
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 birth answers to the mystery of our 
 death. The mystic words spoken of 
 King Arthur in the legend "From 
 the great deep to the great deep he 
 goes" are true of every one of us. 
 After all the centuries, the very wind is 
 as true a type of mystery as it was 
 when Jesus talked with Nicodemus. 
 Between the ant hills and the stars 
 blow the mysterious winds. In a world 
 pervaded through and through with 
 mystery, we live our mysterious lives. 
 
 The response of man to this everlast- 
 ing fact of mystery is the beginning of 
 religion. 
 
 We look upon the world not only 
 with wonder, but with awe. We have 
 an instinctive feeling that the world 
 means not only power, but personality. 
 In this vast universe, we are not alone. 
 We perceive that the world is too great 
 for us ; the house is too big to have 
 been made only for our accommoda- 
 tion. The universe of the stars is too 
 ample for our residence, as the earth is 
 too vast for the ants. The inconceiv- 
 able ranges of mystery imply other 
 existence than our own. Both our 
 10
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 imagination and our reason go behind 
 the mystery of life to a maker and 
 maintainer of it all. Both in history 
 and in psychology wonder passes into 
 worship. The primitive man fell upon 
 his knees and upon his face in the 
 presence of the starry sky. And we 
 ourselves, when we think about these 
 things, when we recognize anew the 
 strangeness, the grandeur, the vastness, 
 and the marvel of the world, are lifted 
 out of the routine of our customary 
 thought into a new consciousness of 
 our dependence upon unseen powers. 
 
 This perception of a divine presence 
 in the midst of the mysteries appears 
 in primitive religion. 
 
 To the man who sees the sky from 
 the forest or from the desert, undis- 
 turbed by the intervening roofs of 
 houses and by the shining of the lights 
 of the streets, the stars are either divine 
 powers moving about by their own will, 
 or are moved by divine hands. So he 
 says his prayers to the stars. 
 
 This impulse to adore the sky sur- 
 vives the faith on which it is founded. 
 It is plain to Job that the God of the 
 
 ii
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 hosts of the stars made the cluster of 
 the Pleiades, and the bands of Orion, 
 and the signs of the Zodiac, and the 
 Great Bear; yet he confesses that 
 when he beheld the sun when it shined, 
 and the moon walking in brightness, 
 his heart was secretly enticed, and his 
 mouth kissed his hand. He under- 
 stood that this was wrong, but he felt 
 it to be a mighty temptation. The 
 thought in his heart had the sanction of 
 innumerable generations of his ances- 
 tors. The sky, the wind, the fire, the 
 earth, are the natural symbols of 
 primitive religion. 
 
 By and by, the substance is separated 
 from the symbol, and the worshipper, 
 kneeling beside the altar on which 
 blazes a sacrificial fire, adores One who 
 is above all these, unknown and un- 
 imaginable, yet of present power, the 
 determining force of every life. Be- 
 cause life in the primitive world is 
 difficult and beset with terror, and 
 beasts and men are cruel, and the 
 world is full of fear, the unseen 
 powers are feared. In the presence of 
 the mystery of the universe, man in his 
 
 12
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 smallness and weakness is afraid. He 
 implores the powers to be good to him. 
 But always and everywhere he per- 
 ceives the divine. That is the signif- 
 icant fact. The details are crude and 
 mistaken, but the recognition is plain. 
 This is the extraordinary character- 
 istic which essentially distinguishes us 
 from the other animals. They see the 
 sky as well as we do, perhaps better, 
 but man alone says in adoration, 
 "The heavens declare the glory of God, 
 and the firmament showeth His handi- 
 work." 
 
 The perception of the divine presence 
 is expressed in poetry. 
 
 Men try to put into words the feel- 
 ings which the mystery of life stirs in 
 their souls. There is something more 
 in the world than can be touched or 
 seen ; something which cannot be de- 
 scribed by geologists or astronomers 
 or botanists ; some indefinable, elusive 
 presence ; some light shining which 
 never shone on sea or shore, to this 
 the poet is responsive. He perceives a 
 presence,
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 "Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 The Psalms are filled with this reli- 
 gious interpretation of the world. Men 
 are summoned in these verses to praise 
 the Lord with thanksgiving, "Who 
 covereth the heaven with clouds, and 
 prepareth rain for the earth, and mak- 
 eth the grass to grow upon the moun- 
 tains, and herb for the use of men ; 
 Who giveth snow like wool, and scat- 
 tereth the hoar-frost like ashes. He 
 sendeth out His word and melteth 
 them, He bloweth with His wind and 
 the waters flow." "O praise the Lord 
 of heaven, praise Him in the height. 
 Praise Him, all ye angels of His ; praise 
 Him, all His host. Praise Him sun and 
 moon ; praise Him all ye stars and 
 light." The whole world is called to 
 join in thanks and praise to Him by 
 whose might and loving-kindness all 
 things are. And in this song humanity 
 is to carry the refrain: "Young men
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 and maidens, old men and children, 
 praise the name of the Lord ; for His 
 name only is excellent, and His praise 
 above heaven and earth." 
 
 This perception of the divine in the 
 universe, which the priest of the primi- 
 tive religion endeavors to express by his 
 naming sacrifice, and the poet by the 
 music of his verse, appears also in the 
 devotions of the mystic. 
 
 The mystic waits for no precedents, 
 depends on no authority, asks no aid of 
 priest or sacrament, reads no books. 
 He beholds this splendid world, of 
 wonder and might and mystery, and 
 in the midst of it, plain and clear to the 
 sight of his soul, he sees God. 
 
 In the Old Testament, he is Isaiah, 
 saying: "I saw the Lord, sitting upon 
 a throne, high and lifted up ; and I 
 heard the song of those who cried one 
 to another, 'Holy, holy, holy, is the 
 Lord of Hosts ; the whole earth is full 
 of His glory. ' ' In the New Testament, 
 he is St. Paul, saying: "At midday I 
 saw in the way a light from heaven, 
 above the brightness of the sun, shining 
 round about me and them which jour- 
 
 15
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 neyed with me. And when we were 
 all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice." 
 The religion of those men was at first 
 hand. They spoke out of their own 
 original and direct experience of the 
 divine. The Master comes, the su- 
 preme mystic, perceiving God in the 
 wind, in the impartial sun and rain, 
 in the harvest, in the common life. 
 Looking up into the sky, he says, 
 " Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast 
 heard me, and I know that Thou 
 hearest me always." 
 
 The mystics follow in these steps, 
 seeing visions, climbing celestial ladders 
 into paradise, having their feet on the 
 earth and their heads in the clouds, 
 perceiving already the new heavens 
 promised of old, and sure of the divine 
 in the mystery of the world, because 
 they have looked for themselves, and 
 have seen God with their own eyes, in 
 Whom we live and move and have our 
 being. For them, too, the skies shine 
 and voices are heard with messages 
 and praises. 
 
 When we ask, what is the value of 
 these responses to the mystery of the 
 16
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 world ? what is the validity of these 
 recognitions of the divine in the uni- 
 verse ? we find that they rest upon 
 two strong foundations. 
 
 They stand upon the foundation of 
 universal experience. 
 
 When we find men always and every- 
 where conscious of a divine presence, 
 we perceive that we are in possession 
 of a compelling testimony. It is upon 
 this sort of evidence that all our 
 knowledge proceeds. When it is ob- 
 served that always and everywhere 
 there is a tendency of material bodies 
 toward the earth, the universal fact 
 signifies a universal law. When we 
 observe that man is inevitably and 
 invincibly religious, that the impulse 
 to pray is in all races and conditions of 
 men, and that the devotion of the 
 primitive priest, the emotion of the 
 poet, and the confidence of the mystic 
 are expressions of a common human 
 consciousness, we perceive that there is 
 something to which this consciousness 
 is a response. 
 
 Life is not made up of eating and 
 drinking, of working and sleeping, or of 
 
 c 17
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 the interests and the pleasures which 
 compose so considerable a part of the 
 common day, nor does it consist in 
 the abundance of the things which we 
 possess. It is not contained within the 
 limits of any journey by land or sea. 
 We rush about with heads down, upon 
 this errand and upon that, but overhead 
 shine the reminding stars. And in the 
 midst of the stars, as in the midst of all 
 our most customary experiences, in the 
 heart of the unescapable mystery of 
 our existence, dwells the divine. 
 
 And this, to which the universal 
 experience bears witness, is evidenced 
 also by reasonable inference. 
 
 We argue from the known to the 
 unknown. We interpret the world by 
 our understanding of ourselves. The 
 highest form of being of which we are 
 conscious is man, with personality, 
 will, reason, and conscience. When we 
 would go beyond that vague sense of 
 the divine in the world which is instinc- 
 tive with us, and somehow present the 
 divine to our imagination and our faith, 
 we cannot do other than begin with our 
 own selves. It is plain that the soul 
 18
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 of the universe is in no way inferior 
 to us. All that is best in us must 
 somehow exist in Him. All our good 
 qualities must have their counterparts 
 in Him. The Divine Being, the Soul of 
 the Universe, Who dwells in the light 
 which no man may approach unto, and 
 Who is revealed in the fact of mystery, 
 is made manifest so far as He can 
 be manifested to our understanding 
 in our nature, created in His image. 
 
 Here is the background of religion. 
 This is the idea of the world in which all 
 worship is contained. When the world 
 is thought of in this way, worship is 
 imperative. This is that gravity of 
 mind, that sense of wonder, of awe, of 
 reverence, in which all flowers and fruits 
 of religion grow as in a fertile soil. 
 The Christian faith is contained in it, 
 as the tree is in the seed. Religion is a 1 
 recognition of the meaning of the world. 
 The sense of it may be subordinated or 
 even effaced by ways of living which 
 make people blind and deaf to the great 
 facts of life, but the facts recall us. 
 Even they who live for the most part 
 without God in the world come to some 
 
 19
 
 THE BACKGROUND OF RELIGION 
 
 consciousness of Him in the midst of 
 the supreme crises of their joy or sorrow. 
 None of us is as sensitive as he ought 
 to be to the divine presence. But the 
 divine is present. We have only to 
 look about us with an understanding 
 heart. We lift up our eyes unto the 
 hills from whence cometh our help, 
 and from the hills to the stars, and from 
 the stars to Him who made the stars. 
 
 20
 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS 
 OF RELIGION
 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF 
 RELIGION 
 
 HE background of religion is 
 the presence of the mystery 
 of the world. But this mys- 
 tery, when we consider it 
 attentively, resolves itself into two 
 fundamental facts : the being of God 
 and the soul of man. They are so 
 fundamental that without them reli- 
 gion is impossible, while with them 
 religion is imperative. 
 
 Without God and the soul, religion 
 is impossible. 
 
 For religion consists in the relation 
 between the soul and God. The sym- 
 bol of that relation may be a sacrifice, 
 wherein man takes of his best and offers 
 it to the unseen powers ; it may be a 
 sacrament, wherein man, holding out 
 hands of prayer and expectation, asks 
 for help from heaven and enters into 
 communion with the spiritual world ; 
 it may be a creed, wherein man pro- 
 
 23
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 claims his understanding of the uni- 
 verse, and his interpretation of experi- 
 ence, and his faith in the invisible ; it 
 may be a life, lived according to the 
 instructions of conscience. Some rela- 
 tion between man and God is necessary 
 to religion. There must be a soul to 
 speak, and God to answer. 
 
 And with God and the soul, religion 
 is imperative. 
 
 Whoever is conscious of God above 
 and of the soul within must enter into 
 the relation which that consciousness 
 implies. The consciousness may be 
 dim, being obscured by dulness of 
 mind, or by hard conditions of life, or 
 by evil courses ; it may be felt but 
 rarely : but the crises disclose it. They 
 who imagine themselves to be living 
 without God in the world, and who seem 
 both to themselves and to their neigh- 
 bors to be getting along very com- 
 fortably under that condition, come 
 swiftly and surely into another mind 
 when a great joy or a great sorrow dis- 
 pels for a moment the conventional 
 satisfaction which hides the supreme 
 realities. 
 24
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 The expression of the consciousness 
 of God and of the soul may not be 
 made in the accustomed ways. The 
 man may not go to church, nor account 
 himself as belonging to the company of 
 the religious. But he is religious after 
 all ; inevitably and invincibly reli- 
 gious. The habit of public worship is 
 admirable, but it is only an aid to 
 religion ; it is not of itself religion. 
 There is an immeasurable amount of 
 silent but sincere religion ; a great, 
 unknown number of persons who, 
 though they are not seen in the churches, 
 are endeavoring in their own way to 
 live the spiritual life. They care about 
 these things. They believe in God 
 and in the soul, and they think some of 
 the thoughts, and pray some of the 
 prayers, and do many of the deeds 
 which that belief implies. It is from 
 this multitude of the unsuspected 
 saints that they will come whom Jesus 
 describes as meeting the awards of the 
 final judgment with a great surprise. 
 
 To prove the fundamental facts of re- 
 ligion is very difficult. But this diffi- 
 culty is in no way peculiar to religion. 
 
 25
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 It arises in part from the nature of 
 things. God and the soul cannot be 
 seen or felt or tested by the senses. 
 
 A generation ago, it was commonly 
 held by men of science that the facts 
 which cannot be proved by the senses 
 are not facts. They are beliefs or 
 guesses. All facts, it was said, can be 
 stated in terms of matter. Both 
 science and philosophy were materi- 
 alistic. But this was only the tem- 
 porary effect of the amazing progress of 
 the age in natural science, in the dis- 
 covery and application of natural forces. 
 So many wonders were at that time 
 coming into view in the earth and in 
 the stars, so many old problems were 
 being solved by the perception of 
 universal laws of nature, that it ap- 
 peared as if these laws would explain 
 everything. Men confidently antici- 
 pated the abolition of mystery. They 
 expected to be able to interpret the 
 whole world, with God and the soul 
 included, in terms of nature, as the 
 action of material forces, as a combina- 
 tion of material facts. 
 
 To-day, the pendulum of thought 
 26
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 swings back. The emphasis of interest 
 passes from chemistry to psychology. 
 A whole new range of facts comes into 
 sight. Men said, Oxygen is a fact, 
 carbon is a fact, hills and stars are 
 facts. But it is now perceived that 
 consciousness is a fact; personality is 
 a fact; memory, reverence, affection, 
 faith, are facts. It is plain that there 
 is a multitude of mightily important 
 facts which cannot be seen or tested 
 by the senses. It is true that God and 
 the soul cannot be proved by the tests 
 of the senses. But this is also true of 
 matter itself. The nature of matter 
 eludes all material tests. The exist- 
 ence of matter cannot be proved by 
 instruments of precision ; neither can 
 life, nor will, nor personality; nor the 
 soul, nor God. 
 
 The difficulty of proving the funda- 
 mental facts of religion, which thus 
 arises from the nature of things, is 
 further increased by the nature of man. 
 
 These facts are not only spiritual, 
 but moral. That means that the per- 
 ception of them depends on character. 
 They are not only outside the scope of 
 
 27
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 instruments of precision ; they are also 
 beyond the range of processes of reason. 
 They depend on the character of him 
 who judges. And here, again, they 
 share this condition with other sides of 
 life. The difficulty is real and great, 
 but it is in no way peculiar to religion. 
 It belongs also to art and music and 
 letters. 
 
 How shall we convince the unappre- 
 ciative ? How shall we answer one 
 who maintains that the works of the 
 old masters are all foolish, and are not 
 to be compared with the pictures in 
 the illustrated magazines ; or who be- 
 lieves that the old sculptures in the 
 museums ought to be thrown out with 
 other broken and battered things upon 
 the rubbish heap ? How shall we argue 
 with the Shah of Persia who was 
 greatly pleased with the tuning of the 
 orchestra, and greatly bored by the 
 symphony ? How shall we persuade 
 those who do not care for poetry ? 
 Here is the book which to us is filled 
 with noble thought, splendidly ex- 
 pressed, a book of joy, of help, of 
 inspiration, which we have read so 
 28 '
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 often that we know a great part of it 
 by heart ; and to this book our neigh- 
 bor is altogether indifferent, he turns 
 its leaves and lays it down, to him it 
 has no value. What shall we say ? 
 How shall we prove that the book is a 
 great book ? How shall we establish 
 against incredulity the excellence of the 
 art or of the music which ministers to 
 our souls ? 
 
 These illustrations are a commen- 
 tary on the words of Jesus, "The pure in 
 heart shall see God." The sight of the 
 divine is not a reward given to the pure 
 in heart, but it is an experience which 
 is conditioned upon purity of heart as 
 the sight of the world is conditioned 
 upon good eyes. Thus it is said again 
 that in order to know the doctrine, 
 whether it be of God, we must live the 
 life. One whose concerns are wholly 
 material, whose interests are altogether 
 of the body, is thereby incapacitated. 
 The indifference or unbelief of such a 
 one is no verdict on the fundamental 
 facts, but on the mind which is unap- 
 preciative of the facts ; as the distaste 
 of the reader for the book may be a 
 
 29
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 verdict not upon the book, but upon the 
 reader. 
 
 When we say, then, that the funda- 
 mental facts of religion are difficult 
 to prove, we cast no doubt upon the 
 facts. We only affirm that they have 
 the quality of all fundamental facts. 
 They are difficult to prove because of 
 the nature of things, like life and will 
 and personality ; and they are difficult 
 to prove because of the nature of man, 
 like music and art and letters. 
 
 Proof is difficult, but there are two 
 kinds of strong evidence. 
 
 There is the evidence of the uncom- 
 mon experience of uncommon people. 
 
 I mean the poets, the prophets, the 
 mystics, who come to the realization of 
 God by direct approach, who perceive 
 God and the soul by the exercise of 
 faculties which in them are extraordi- 
 narily developed. And I mean the 
 philosophers, who come to the percep- 
 tion of God and the soul by the ap- 
 proach of reason, finding God in the 
 order of the world, and the nature of 
 God in the nature of man, being able 
 to work out these conclusions by virtue 
 
 30
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 of unusual gifts of intellect, so that they 
 make discoveries in the spiritual world 
 as other men make discoveries in un- 
 travelled lands. These uncommon peo- 
 ple assert these fundamental facts on 
 the basis of their uncommon experience. 
 
 And there is another evidence, in the 
 common experience of common people. 
 
 The fundamental facts of religion, 
 as of life, rest on broad bases. They 
 are not dependent on the vision of any 
 prophet, on the dream of any mystic, 
 nor on the logic of any philosopher. 
 They rest on common sense. And 
 common sense is the invincible asser- 
 tion of the human mind. It is the thing 
 which we must say, no matter what 
 arguments may be urged to the con- 
 trary. 
 
 For example, philosophers have 
 doubted the existence of the material 
 world ; or, at least, have denied that it 
 corresponds to its impression on our 
 senses. And it is manifestly true that 
 our knowledge of the material world is 
 of necessity derived from our senses, 
 which are only five in number, and 
 every one of them notoriously imper- 
 
 31
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 feet. But this doubt does not affect 
 us. We do not care what the phi- 
 losophers say. We are satisfied that 
 our knowledge of the world is sufficient 
 for all practical purposes. We take 
 the world on the evidence of common 
 sense. 
 
 Also, philosophers have doubted the 
 freedom of the will. All things, they 
 say, are determined for us. We act 
 by necessity. We have no choice. 
 And these conclusions they draw not 
 only from metaphysics, but from the- 
 ology. But this doubt makes no differ- 
 ence with us. We may not be able to 
 answer the arguments of the phi- 
 losophers. They may prove till we are 
 helpless and speechless that neither 
 the will nor the world has any true 
 existence. But somehow, we know 
 better. 
 
 We may listen likewise to the reason- 
 ing which forbids us to believe in God 
 and the soul. It is not necessary for 
 our peace of mind to be able to contra- 
 dict it. The reasoning may appear in- 
 vincible. The chain of logic may bind 
 us hand and foot ; we may have no 
 
 32
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 answer; but we know better. We all 
 know better. Against all doubt, we 
 set the barrier of common sense. 
 
 Thus we perceive that man has 
 always believed in God and in the soul. 
 Everywhere, the world over, and 
 through all time, is the presence of 
 mystery. And in the mystery of the 
 world men have always found the be- 
 ginning of religion. It is as universal 
 as humanity. Faith in God is as char- 
 acteristic of man as the love of our 
 neighbor. Each of these human char- 
 acteristics has appeared under strange 
 forms, has begun in crude manners, has 
 grown out of unpromising beginnings, 
 has only gradually and very slowly 
 come into clearness, into excellence, 
 into its strength ; and there are indi- 
 viduals in every community who seem 
 to contradict them both. But thus 
 they are. Man is a social and religious 
 being; and as religious as social. 
 
 Religion is a universal human fact. 
 The earliest traces of man, away back 
 in the ages of ice, show him burying in 
 the grave of his friend that which may 
 be of use to one who has survived death ; 
 
 D 33
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 he knows that even after the body, the 
 soul lives. And the first clear sight of 
 man reveals him with hands uplifted, 
 making his prayer to God. The funda- 
 mental facts of religion are the com- 
 mon property of the race. They are 
 validated by the common sense of 
 common men. 
 
 Moreover, we perceive that the af- 
 firmation of God and of the soul brings 
 the world and all our life into harmony 
 and reason, while a denial throws us 
 into immediate and inextricable con- 
 fusion, and defeats not only our reli- 
 gious aspirations, but our processes of 
 thought. Then we argue that the 
 explanation of the universe which works 
 best is most likely to be true. We 
 bring the matter to the test which 
 determines the validity of a universal 
 law : does the law actually work ? 
 does it interpret the facts ? 
 
 Of course, a great amount of mystery 
 remains, in religion as in science, and 
 there are questions unanswered and 
 perhaps unanswerable. But we expect 
 that. In this vast universe of mystery, 
 wherein our place is so microscopic, 
 
 34
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 and wherein, as a wise man says, 
 "Nobody knows a seven billionth of 
 one per cent about anything," difficul- 
 ties are certain to survive all explana- 
 tion. But the fundamental assertions 
 of religion interpret so much of the 
 world with satisfaction that we set 
 down the remaining difficulties and 
 mysteries to the account of our igno- 
 rance. Religion makes the world intel- 
 ligible. The fundamental certainties,' 
 which in philosophy are called convic- 
 tions and in religion are called beliefs, 
 the consciousness of the being of God 
 and of the soul of man, explain both 
 our observation and our experience of 
 life. 
 
 What do the fundamental facts of 
 religion mean ? They mean a thousand 
 things. They imply religion in all its 
 details and consequences. But in the 
 large they signify the everlasting re- 
 ality of the life of the spirit. 
 
 There is a world within our con- 
 sciousness whose vital phenomena, in- 
 stead of being light, heat, motion, are 
 will, love, reverence, faith, the virtues, 
 prayer. In that world, it is our privi- 
 
 35
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 lege to live. A good working descrip- 
 tion of life is that which defines it as 
 response to environment. We live in 
 proportion as we are responsive to our 
 surroundings. In order to find out 
 whether a dog lying by the road is 
 asleep or dead, the thing to do is to 
 poke him with a stick ; if he does not 
 respond, he is a dead dog. A stone is 
 dead because it does not respond to 
 anything. A plant lives, and is sensi- 
 tive to sun and wind and rain and 
 earth. An animal lives more because 
 it is in relation with more of life ; and 
 a man lives more and more according 
 as his correspondence with the world 
 is widened and varied. If he has five 
 sound senses, he lives that much. If 
 he knows astronomy, geology, and bot- 
 any, he lives so much the more. If he 
 understands and appreciates books and 
 art and music, he increases both the 
 quantity and the quality of his life. 
 Then, beyond and within the world to 
 which all these belong, is the world of 
 the spirit. 
 
 Religion is an interpretation of the 
 mystery of the world. It is an answer
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 to questions concerning which both 
 science and philosophy are silent. It 
 tells us whence we came and whither 
 we go. It asserts the presence and the 
 preeminence of the spirit in us and in 
 the world about us. It declares that 
 all matter and all life have worthy 
 meanings. 
 
 Religion is also the experience which 
 belongs to a world thus interpreted. 
 It is the response of the soul of man to 
 the life of God. It can be had in its 
 fulness only by the cultivation of the 
 soul. One whose body is developed, 
 and whose mind is developed, while his 
 soul is undeveloped, belongs to the 
 defective classes. One whose interests 
 are altogether in his business, or in his 
 recreation, has something the matter 
 with him. He is living a narrow, 
 limited, and defective life. He is miss- 
 ing a great range of human privilege. 
 He is failing to avail himself of the best 
 rights of man. He perceives sometimes, 
 when the experiences of life reveal the 
 souls of his friends, that there is a joy, 
 an uplift, a strength, a blessing, in 
 which he has no part. 
 
 37
 
 Thus we understand the words of 
 Jesus, when He said, "I am come 
 that they may have life, and that 
 they may have it more abundantly." 
 The purpose of religion is not only 
 the salvation of man out of his 
 sins. Its part is not merely that 
 of the police whose business is to 
 protect society and keep the peace. 
 Its function is not simply to pro- 
 hibit, like a series of warning signs. 
 It is to direct us into happiness. The 
 characteristic of religion is abundant 
 life. 
 
 Here man truly lives. Here he is 
 responsive and sensitive to the whole 
 of his environment. Here he realizes 
 himself. Here he stands upright in 
 the completed glory of his normal 
 manhood. And entering into the ful- 
 ness of life, he enters also into the ful- 
 ness of satisfaction. He has learned 
 the secret of abiding happiness. His 
 heart is filled with the joy of living, 
 and with gratitude that he is alive and 
 appreciative of the seen and of the 
 unseen. He goes about among his 
 neighbors ; he looks upon the earth and 
 
 38
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF RELIGION 
 
 sky ; he encounters the experiences of 
 the common day ; saying, under 'his 
 breath, "Praise the Lord, O my soul, 
 and all that is within me praise His 
 holy name." 
 
 39

 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 |HE relation between the soul 
 of man and the life of God, 
 which constitutes religion, is, 
 indeed, instinctive, but it 
 needs to be made definite. It cannot 
 well be left to the unaided experience 
 of the individual man. The individual 
 may not be able to perceive God either 
 clearly or truly. By reason of the 
 shortcomings of his mind, or of the de- 
 fects of his character, he may fall into 
 error concerning God, or may lose sight 
 of Him. 
 
 Moreover, in so great a matter as 
 this, the individual needs to avail him- 
 self of the privilege of the race. In 
 religion, as in science, in art, and in 
 politics, he is entitled to the results of 
 past experience. The world into which 
 he comes is an old world. Little as is 
 the total fund of our knowledge of it, 
 such knowledge as we have is mightily 
 useful. On the basis of it, each new 
 
 43
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 generation begins. We are the chil- 
 dren of all the inventors, reasoners, 
 discoverers, of the past. We enter 
 into their labors. We are taught in our 
 youth what they learned with pain and 
 patience in the maturity of their studies. 
 We begin with their books : books of 
 science, books of geography and history, 
 books of religion. 
 
 A number of the most useful of the 
 books of religion are bound together 
 in the Bible. They contain the expe- 
 riences and conclusions of men who 
 were masters of the religious life. They 
 bring to us the results of their study of 
 the soul of man and of the being of 
 God. They tell us what God said to 
 them. 
 
 Such a communication from God to 
 men may be made in one or other of 
 two ways : by dictation, or by inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 According to the doctrine of dictation, 
 God has revealed His will to men by 
 speaking in audible words out of the 
 sky, or by guiding the hands of the 
 writers of sacred books. The prophet 
 by whom, under these conditions, God 
 
 44
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 speaks, contributes nothing himself. 
 He is simply the recipient of a divine 
 communication, and comes to us from 
 God as a servant sent on an errand with 
 a message. An example of this doctrine 
 is the Koran ; which Mohammed, in a 
 vision, saw in the library of heaven, 
 and there copied page by page, and 
 word by word. A symbol of it is the 
 ancient bas-relief of Hammurabi, king 
 of Babylon, receiving his code of law 
 from the hands of the sun-god. 
 
 The Christians of the early church 
 were restrained from adopting the doc- 
 trine of dictation by certain convinc- 
 ing facts. 
 
 They were influenced by the fact of 
 the unbound book. 
 
 When the Christian religion began, 
 there was no completed Bible. There 
 was no book to which one could point 
 and say, "Behold the word of God." 
 The Old Testament, finished as to the 
 composition of its books, was unfinished 
 as to their collection. In the synagogue 
 the Bible was kept in a box, and this 
 box, being opened, was found to con- 
 tain a considerable number of rolls of 
 
 45
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 manuscript. On some of these rolls 
 the books of the law were written, from 
 Genesis to Deuteronomy ; on others 
 the books of the prophets. But the 
 number of the rolls differed. There 
 was still in progress a long debate as to 
 the admission or rejection of certain 
 books. Shall we include in the Bible 
 the Song of Solomon, which is a collec- 
 tion of lyrics of love with no reference 
 to religion ? Shall we include the book 
 of Esther, in which the name of God is 
 not mentioned ? What shall we do 
 with the books of the Maccabees, with 
 the romance of Bel and the Dragon, 
 with the philosophy of Ecclesiastes 
 which appears to deny the future life ? 
 These questions were not answered 
 till the end of the first Christian 
 century. In the days of the apostles, 
 the Old Testament was an unbound 
 book, whose table of contents had not 
 been determined. 
 
 As for the New Testament, one 
 church had a copy of one Gospel, an- 
 other had a copy of another ; here were 
 certain epistles of St. Paul, there were 
 other epistles. Gradually, by inter-
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 change and transcription of these treas- 
 ures, the possessions of the different 
 churches increased. But even then, 
 there were books whose value was 
 debated. What shall we say about 
 the epistle of St. James, and about the 
 epistle of St. Barnabas ? What shall 
 we do about the Revelation of John, 
 and about the Revelation of Enoch ? 
 These questions were not finally an- 
 swered till the end of the fourth cen- 
 tury. During all that time the Bible 
 was unbound. 
 
 The early Christians were influenced 
 also by the precedent of freedom. 
 
 Jesus had dealt very informally with 
 the Old Testament. He had quoted 
 even the Commandments without re- 
 gard to verbal accuracy. He had criti- 
 cised and altered the moral standards 
 of the ancient Scriptures. The phrase, 
 "Ye have heard it said by them of old 
 time," means, 'Ye have read in the 
 Bible thus and so" ; but "I," He said, 
 "tell you other than that." And this 
 example of the free handling of the 
 Scriptures had been followed by the 
 apostles. When they met at Jerusalem 
 
 47
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 to debate the questions raised by the 
 mission of St. Paul to the Gentiles, the 
 chief point at issue was the authority 
 of the Bible. The Bible, declaring the 
 word of God, set forth the law of 
 Moses. Concerning that law, the Jews 
 held a doctrine of dictation. These 
 words, they said, were spoken by the 
 mouth of God. The Christians, as- 
 sembled in convention, decided not 
 to obey the Bible. The book of Leviti- 
 cus enjoins the law of Moses, but it 
 seems good, they said, to the Holy 
 Ghost and to us not to enforce it. 
 These precedents of freedom made it 
 impossible for the early Christians to 
 hold the doctrine that the Bible is 
 binding in detail upon the conscience. 
 Some parts of it are true and in force 
 to all eternity, but other parts have 
 only a temporary value. 
 
 In addition to these restraining facts, 
 the fact of the unbound book, and 
 the fact of the precedent of freedom, 
 the early Christians were further influ- 
 enced by the fact of the living voice. 
 
 Even after the Bible was bound, it 
 was not a sole authority. Side by
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 side with the Bible, sometimes inter- 
 preting it, sometimes adding to it, 
 was the church. The divine promise 
 that the Holy Spirit should lead men 
 into truth continued beyond the com- 
 pletion of the Scripture, and made the 
 history of the church a contemporary 
 Bible for the guidance of the will of 
 man, and for the disclosure of the will 
 of God. Thus it was the church, and 
 not the Bible, which decided that 
 children might be baptized. It was 
 the church, and not the Bible, which 
 retained the sacrament of the breaking 
 of the bread and declined the sacra- 
 ment of the washing of the feet. 
 
 Long after, beginning in the seven- 
 teenth century and extending into the 
 nineteenth, a doctrine of dictation was, 
 indeed, maintained. The book was 
 now bound, the living voice was dis- 
 credited by the queer things which it 
 was reported to have said during the 
 Middle Ages, and the exercise of free- 
 dom was mainly directed towards eccle- 
 siastical changes. In the place of the 
 infallible authority of the church was 
 placed the infallible authority of the 
 
 E 49
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 Scripture, and this was logically devel- 
 oped into theories of verbal dictation 
 and inerrancy. The Mohammedan 
 idea of the Koran became for the 
 moment the Christian idea of the 
 Bible. And it was held that this idea 
 is essential to the maintenance of the 
 Christian religion. For if there are 
 errors in the Bible, we have no reliable 
 authority in religion. The necessary 
 qualification of a guide is to be trust- 
 worthy. If the Bible is mistaken in 
 anything, it may be mistaken so ran 
 the argument in everything. 
 
 Out of this theory of the method of 
 revelation, the Christian faith was 
 rescued by two considerations. 
 
 First, by consideration of the fact that 
 there are actually errors in the Bible. 
 There they are : in science, in history, 
 in morals, even in theology. We know 
 that the world was not created in six 
 days ; we know that when the book of 
 Kings gives an account of an event and 
 the book of Chronicles gives a contra- 
 dictory account of the same event, they 
 cannot both be right ; we know that 
 the imprecatory psalms and the Sermon 
 
 So
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 on the Mount teach a very different 
 ideal of conduct ; and we perceive that 
 between the vision of God walking in 
 the garden in the cool of the day, at the 
 beginning of the Bible, and the vision 
 of God, high and lifted up, adored by 
 all the saints, at the end of the Bible, 
 there is a long progress in spiritual 
 knowledge. 
 
 And to this consideration of the fact 
 of error was added the consideration of 
 the fallacy which exaggerates the im- 
 portance of these errors. The old 
 proposition mistaken in one thing, 
 mistaken in everything may do very 
 well in logic, but it does not work at all 
 in actual life. Our senses, for example, 
 are notoriously defective. They are 
 mistaken not in one way only, but 
 in a hundred ways, and bring us mis- 
 leading reports of the world in which 
 we live. But they are good enough for 
 practical purposes. They are a suffi- 
 cient authority for our daily life. So 
 it is with the Bible. Every book that 
 ever was made, in the Bible or out of 
 it, contains some error; because no 
 man is infallible or omniscient. Error 
 
 SI
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 and human nature belong together. 
 But errors in detail do not invalidate 
 the book. In his great sonnet on 
 "Chapman's Homer," Keats says that 
 the Pacific Ocean was discovered by 
 Cortez. Not at all ; it was discovered 
 by somebody else. But that does not 
 hinder for a moment the splendor of 
 the sonnet. To hold that errors dis- 
 crejdit the supremacy of the Bible over 
 the spiritual life is as irrelevant as to 
 dismiss a pilot because he is ignorant 
 of botany. Back comes the foolish 
 passenger from an interview with the 
 pilot, crying : "Friends, the ship is lost. 
 Our pilot is untrustworthy. I find that 
 he knows nothing whatever about inten- 
 sive farming, that he is very imperfectly 
 acquainted with the history of the cru- 
 sades, and that his ideas about the 
 tariff are absurd." But it is the alarm 
 of the foolish passenger that is absurd. 
 "Why," says Coleridge, "should I 
 not believe the Scriptures throughout 
 dictated, in word and thought, by an 
 infallible Intelligence ? For every rea- 
 son that makes me prize and reverence 
 these Scriptures. Because the doctrine 
 
 52
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 in question petrifies at once the whole 
 body of Holy Writ with all its har- 
 monious and symmetrical gradations. 
 This breathing organism, the doctrine 
 in question turns at once into a colossal 
 Memnon's head, a hollow passage for a 
 
 voice." 
 
 We give over, then, the doctrine of 
 dictation as explaining the method of 
 the making of the Bible, and return to 
 the doctrine of inspiration. 
 
 It is true that in so doing we aban- 
 don the definite for the indefinite. 
 The doctrine of dictation may be stated 
 clearly and precisely ; the doctrine of 
 inspiration is not so easily defined. 
 So much the better. So much the 
 likelier is it to be true. For whatever 
 involves the element of the divine 
 cannot be brought into simple, compact, 
 and complete statement. 
 
 According to the doctrine of inspira- 
 tion, there are two kinds of people, 
 common people and uncommon people. 
 
 The uncommon people are distin- 
 guished from their neighbors by their 
 ability to see more, to understand more, 
 and to do more. Thus at Athens all 
 
 53
 
 RELIGION AND ^REVELATION 
 
 sorts of citizens went out to the hill 
 Pentelicus to quarry stone for building. 
 The common people built common- 
 place houses ; the uncommon people 
 built the Parthenon. Thus Beethoven 
 wrote the Fifth Symphony and Shake- 
 speare wrote " Hamlet " because they 
 were uncommon men. The contro- 
 versy as to the authorship of the plays 
 arises from the apparent inconsistency 
 between the commonness of Shake- 
 speare and the production of these 
 works of genius. Bacon was evidently 
 an uncommon man. So in science, 
 Copernicus and Newton were uncom- 
 mon men. It is characteristic of these 
 men, whether they apply themselves 
 to music, to poetry, or to scientific 
 investigation, that they are sensitive 
 to impressions, and have an instinctive 
 understanding of the uses and mean- 
 ings of things. A usual word to ex- 
 press this singular faculty is genius. 
 But in religion, the word is inspiration. 
 Hosea and Isaiah, St. John and St. 
 Paul, were uncommon men. They 
 were as alert to the significance of the 
 world of the spirit as Copernicus and 
 
 54
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 Darwin were alert to the significance of 
 the world of matter. They were pecul- 
 iarly sensitive to spiritual influences. 
 They were different, like Shakespeare 
 and Beethoven, from all their neighbors. 
 
 Now, at infrequent intervals, often 
 marking great eras of progress, an un- 
 common man perceives a new truth. 
 Copernicus did. He saw the sun stand- 
 ing still. In comparison with this, the 
 adventure of Joshua was insignificant. 
 To Joshua the sun seemed to stand still. 
 But to Copernicus, there it stood ; 
 and there it stands still to this day. 
 Newton perceived new truth ; Dar- 
 win perceived new truth. The thing 
 eludes explanation. Suddenly, into the 
 mind of the uncommon man, comes 
 a great, new, interpreting knowledge. 
 In science, this is called discovery ; 
 in religion, it is called revelation. 
 Suddenly, into the soul of Abraham, of 
 Moses, of Isaiah, came a new knowledge 
 of God, illuminating life. God is love, 
 says Amos. God is love, says Hosea. 
 These are spiritual discoveries. 
 
 When we say that inspiration is the 
 same thing in religion as genius in art 
 
 55
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 and letters, and that revelation is the 
 same thing in religion as discovery in 
 science, we have not defined anything. 
 All of these conditions and achieve- 
 ments belong together to the domain of 
 mystery. But we have taken away an 
 artificial distinction between these. 
 We have shown that whatever diffi- 
 culty is connected with the divine 
 disclosure in the Bible is connected 
 also with the divine disclosure in every 
 range of thought and activity. 
 
 The result of revelation is the divine 
 disclosure. It is not the communica- 
 tion of facts in science or in history. 
 The statement that the world was 
 made in a week is of no scientific assist- 
 ance to us, but the statement that in 
 the beginning God made the heavens 
 and the earth is of everlasting value. 
 The details of Hebrew history are of 
 no more significance in themselves than 
 the details of the history of the Greeks 
 and Romans, but the continual per- 
 ception of the divine presence and pur- 
 pose in those old annals interprets all 
 the history of the world. Neither is 
 revelation the disclosure of an order of 
 
 56
 
 RELIGION AND REVELATION 
 
 worship or of a system of morals. 
 The old regulations are outworn and 
 abandoned. What is revealed is the 
 universal endeavor of man to unite 
 himself with God, and to conform his 
 life to the will of God. 
 
 Revelation is the disclosure of God : 
 of the care of God, evidenced in nature, 
 but uncertainly ; of the righteousness 
 of God, to which history bears witness, 
 but not always convincingly ; of the 
 love of God, which we know, indeed, 
 by our individual experience, but not 
 with unfailing assurance. To reenforce 
 and strengthen the faith which rests 
 upon our common experience, come 
 these strong, revealing visions of the 
 uncommon people : of the prophets, 
 speaking to the fathers ; of Jesus 
 Christ, speaking in the very accents of 
 the divine, to us. We may guess and 
 doubt, but these men know. They 
 have heard the voice of God. And 
 what that voice has said to them they 
 have written down, as best they could, 
 in the Book of Inspiration and of 
 Revelation, in the Word of God, for 
 the saving of our souls. 
 
 57
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 |HE books of the Bible, which 
 thus put us in possession of 
 the experiences and conclu- 
 sions of the masters of reli- 
 gion concerning the being of God and 
 the soul of man, are made difficult to- 
 day to many men because some of 
 them contain accounts of miracles. 
 These miracles were formerly aids to 
 faith, but they do not now so securely 
 assist us. A new knowledge of the 
 order of the world has changed our 
 minds about the miracles. It has 
 given us a somewhat different under- 
 standing both of their nature and of 
 their importance. 
 
 Miracles are described in the Bible 
 as "signs and wonders." They compel 
 our admiration and astonishment ; they 
 are wonders. They assure us of the 
 existence, the power, and the personal 
 interest of God ; they are signs. These 
 
 61
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 two elements must be in combination 
 to make a miracle. A mighty wind 
 which blows a path across a sea is a 
 marvel. If it thus makes a path, at 
 the right moment, for a company of 
 escaping slaves, it is a miracle. 
 
 The essential value of a miracle is in 
 its disclosure of a divine personality. 
 The result which the miracle accom- 
 plishes may be of high importance; 
 the achievement may be a deliverance, 
 a recovery, or a victory ; but the 
 supreme satisfaction is in the assur- 
 ance that God cares. It is made plain 
 that the unseen, heavenly powers are 
 aware of us, and interested in us, and 
 on our side. 
 
 Such an assurance we desire greatly. 
 The background of religion is in the 
 presence of mystery ; the fundamental 
 facts of religion are the being of God 
 and the soul of man ; and these are 
 given a certain definiteness by the 
 evidence of the uncommon people whose 
 spiritual experiences are recorded in 
 the Bible. But the heart of the matter 
 is a sense of relation between man and 
 God. It is indeed a great matter to 
 62
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 be able to look out into the surround- 
 ing mystery of the world and cry, 
 "O God!" But it is a far greater 
 matter to be able to go on and complete 
 the sentence in the words of the 
 psalm, crying, "O God, thou art my 
 God!" That is the essential thing. 
 
 We are perceiving, however, that 
 this essential relationship may be cer- 
 tified without the evidence of what are 
 commonly called miracles. We dis- 
 cover, as we read the Bible, that the 
 Supreme Spiritual Master, while He 
 cast no doubt upon the miraculous, 
 and daily worked miracles, neverthe- 
 less gave to this whole side of the 
 religious life a distinctly subordinate 
 place. He was Himself conscious of 
 the fatherly presence of the Unseen 
 by other testimonies. 
 
 A significant example is His refusal 
 to cast Himself down from a pinnacle of 
 the temple. He was tempted, He said, 
 to do that. In the desert, in prepara- 
 tion for His ministry, He was definitely 
 rejecting certain possible principles of 
 action. One of them He expressed 
 by this dramatic symbol. He stands 
 
 63
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 in vision on a pinnacle of the temple. 
 The great court below is filled with 
 worshippers. Shall He come down in 
 their sight upheld by wings of angels ? 
 The effect will be to make it evident 
 to all the people that He is a super- 
 natural person. He is accredited by 
 miracle. Thus attested, thus divinely 
 commended, He will be accepted. The 
 priests will receive Him, the Pharisees 
 will welcome Him, the people will 
 adore Him. The work of John the 
 Baptist in preparing the way of the 
 Lord will be insignificant in compari- 
 son with the splendid service of these 
 attendant angels. 
 
 The meaning is plain. To leap from 
 a height for the sake of defying the law 
 of gravitation never entered into the 
 mind of Jesus. But to perform a 
 compelling and convincing miracle, to 
 begin His ministry not as a carpenter 
 from Nazareth but as a messenger from 
 Heaven, this was an attractive and 
 reasonable proposition. 
 
 Why not do it ? Because He knew 
 the heart of man. He knew the dif- 
 ference between a faith which is founded
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 in amazement, and a faith which is 
 founded in quiet, gradual understand- 
 ing and appreciation. 
 
 He expressed the difference with per- 
 fect clearness in the parable of the rich 
 man and the beggar. The rich man 
 in torment prays that the beggar may 
 be sent to warn his brothers, lest they, 
 following in his steps, come to that 
 same place. The answer is, "They 
 have Moses and the prophets ; let 
 them hear them." That is, the broth- 
 ers and all their neighbors have plenty 
 of churches, and in them the will of God 
 is continually declared ; that is enough. 
 But the rich man is not satisfied. 
 "Nay, Father Abraham," he cries, 
 "but if one went to them from the 
 dead, they will repent." But Abraham 
 replies, "If they hear not Moses and 
 the prophets, neither will they repent, 
 though one went unto them from the 
 dead.". The miraculous, as evidential 
 and persuasive in religion, is here dis- 
 missed. It is set aside as ineffective. 
 That which really counts for the con- 
 version of the soul of man is the word 
 of God, the will of God, the presence of 
 
 F 65
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 God, in common life. This is why the 
 Lord refused to force the faith of the 
 people by a supernatural appearance. 
 He had no confidence in either the faith 
 or the repentance which was induced 
 by that sort of testimony. 
 
 By and by, we find Him transfigured 
 on the mountain, in the presence of 
 three disciples. But the place to be 
 transfigured is not a mountain, but a 
 market. Let Him come out into the 
 crowded city, and in the presence of a 
 multitude beholding and adoring, let 
 His face and His vesture shine like the 
 sun. No, the transfiguration is not 
 for purposes of evidence. The Lord 
 prays, entering into the cloud which is 
 a symbol of the divine presence, and 
 as He prays His face is illumined, and 
 the light of heaven shines upon Him. 
 It is an intimate and sacred experience. 
 The three are brought for a moment 
 into a realization of the spiritual life 
 of Jesus Christ. It is as remote from 
 the purposes of evidence and argument 
 as prayer is remote from the purposes 
 of syntax and rhetoric. 
 
 Presently, He rises from the dead. 
 66
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 Now, if ever, is the time for Him to 
 show Himself openly to the world. 
 He did not, indeed, come down from 
 the cross to meet the conditions of a 
 promised faith. "Let him come down 
 from the cross," they said, "and we 
 will believe." But here He is alive. 
 Here is the occasion for the final 
 convincing of all incredulity. Now 
 let Him satisfy the Sadducees. Now, 
 in the face of all men, let Him estab- 
 lish the certainty of the life eternal. 
 No ; He appears "not to all the people, 
 but unto witnesses chosen before of 
 God." From the point of view of the 
 "evidences of Christianity," this careful 
 selection of witnesses is a suspicious 
 circumstance. But He is paying no 
 attention to the evidences of Chris- 
 tianity. He is working no miracle for 
 the greater confirmation of the faith. 
 He is alive, and they whose souls are 
 receptive see Him. It is the same sort 
 of evidence which is intended in the 
 saying, "The pure in heart shall see 
 God." 
 
 Jesus Christ subordinated the mi- 
 raculous. He did not deny it; He
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 worked miracles. But he detested the 
 idea of being followed as a miracle 
 worker. He turned sharply to one 
 whom He suspected of that kind of 
 discipleship, saying, "Except ye see 
 signs and wonders, ye will not believe." 
 He said to Thomas, "Now you have 
 seen a miracle, and you believe ; blessed 
 are they who have not seen and yet 
 have believed. " 
 
 This is a blessing into which we our- 
 selves may enter. Miracles have no 
 place in our religious experience. God 
 has never disclosed Himself to us in any 
 astonishing manner, nor do we expect 
 that He will do so. We do not antici- 
 pate any repetition of the plagues of 
 Egypt, nor of the falling of the walls of 
 Jericho, nor of a supply of food from 
 heaven. In a true sense, all our food 
 comes from heaven, but by processes 
 which are at the same time divine and 
 natural. And we are content to have 
 it so. The miracles as dramatic mar- 
 vels, blazing in our faces, we have never 
 seen, nor do we expect to see them. 
 We read about them in the ancient 
 pages of the Bible. 
 68
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 
 
 When, however, we come to consider 
 the miracles of the Bible, we perceive 
 that they are very few in number. 
 They make so great an impression that 
 they seem many, but they belong for 
 the most part to three cycles only, in 
 the long course of the history, and are 
 grouped about six persons. There is a 
 cycle of miracles at the beginning of 
 the era of the Law, performed by Moses. 
 There is a second cycle at the beginning 
 of the era of the Prophets, performed 
 by Elijah and Elisha. There is a third 
 cycle at the beginning of the era of the 
 Gospel, performed by our Lord, and by 
 St. Peter and St. Paul. 
 
 Those three cycles may mean that in 
 these initial periods God manifested 
 Himself with unusual power and plain- 
 ness. They may be analogous to the 
 times when the mountains were erected 
 on the earth, amidst the rushing of 
 fire and flood and the grinding of ice; 
 as our own days are analogous to the 
 long, slow, silent processes whereby 
 the mountains have since been shaped 
 by the rain and the frost. It is a rea- 
 sonable belief that God saw at certain 
 
 69
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 times a need for an uncommonly 
 direct exercise of His will in the aifairs 
 of men. 
 
 Or the cycles may mean that these 
 eras so touched the imagination of the 
 people that the only expression which 
 they felt to be adequate to their sense 
 of wonder was in terms of the miracu- 
 lous. This is what appears in the lives 
 of the saints. The devout biographer 
 is trying to bring into the mind of a 
 new generation a true idea of the holi- 
 ness, the loving service, the spiritual 
 greatness of the saint, in order that his 
 good life may be abidingly influential, 
 and that he may affect others in the 
 future as he affected his loving and 
 revering disciples in the past. But 
 the spirit of the man cannot easily be 
 brought into the conventional sentences 
 of accurate biography. The lines must 
 be deepened, the colors must be height- 
 ened, so that the canvas may be seen 
 at a distance. The result is an honest 
 narrative of miracles that never hap- 
 pened. The purpose of the biographer 
 is akin to the intention, not of the 
 photographer, but of the artist. He 
 70
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 desires to reveal the splendor of the 
 saint, and he perceives that this may 
 best be done by the use of symbols. 
 In art, the symbol which marks the 
 saint is a halo of celestial light about 
 his head. In history, the correspond- 
 ing symbol is a miracle. Every ancient 
 nation which honored its founders and 
 champions expressed that honor in the 
 language of the supernatural. It may 
 be this habit of the old time which has 
 thus magnified and glorified the genius 
 of Moses and Elijah and Elisha. 
 
 Whatever explanation we may give 
 to account for this singular concen- 
 tration of the Bible miracles at these 
 three points of time, the fact remains 
 that these miracles were few in number. 
 
 Not only, however, were they few, 
 but a study of them reveals the further 
 fact that they were ineffective as aids 
 to faith and to the progress of religion. 
 
 The miracles of the first cycle made 
 but a passing impression upon either 
 the Egyptians or the Jews. Again and 
 again, in the face of them, Pharaoh 
 refused to let the people go. Even 
 at the last, after the accumulated stress 
 
 71
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 of all the plagues, when he did let them 
 go, he immediately changed his mind 
 and followed them to bring them back. 
 It was not made clear to him that he 
 was contradicting the will of- the Lord 
 of all the earth. The ten miracles 
 added together did not convince him. 
 Neither did they withhold the Israelites 
 from criticising and reviling Moses, re- 
 fusing his advice, disobeying his com- 
 mands, and rebelling against his admin- 
 istration. After all the mighty plagues, 
 and the crossing of the Red Sea, and 
 the thunderings of Sinai, and twenty 
 miracles besides, they were with diffi- 
 culty restrained from stoning him. 
 
 The most dramatic miracle of the 
 second cycle was the calling down of 
 fire on the sacrifice at Carmel. All the 
 conditions were present which should 
 make a miracle effective. It was an 
 accepted test of the truth of one or 
 other of two competing religions. Is 
 Baal God, or is Jehovah God ? "The 
 God that answereth by fire, let him be 
 God." Then out of the cloudless sky 
 flamed the fire of Jehovah, and con- 
 sumed the sacrifice. But the next 
 72
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 chapter in the story is an account of 
 the flight of Elijah. The prophet who 
 had called down the divine fire to prove 
 the truth of his religion had not made 
 a single convert. He fled for his life. 
 And he confessed to God that so far as 
 he knew he was the only man in the 
 whole land who believed the creed 
 which had been thus accredited by 
 miracle. 
 
 The same condition attends the 
 miracles of the New Testament. No- 
 body denied them, but the fact that 
 they were accepted as true miracles did 
 not make them convincing. For the 
 moment they attracted crowds, so that 
 the Pharisees said, "Behold, the world 
 is gone after Him." But the Pharisees 
 themselves, who made this comment on 
 the raising of Lazarus, were affected 
 by that miracle only to consult how 
 they might put to death Lazarus as well 
 as Jesus. The matter is made plain in 
 the Acts, where the rulers, meeting in 
 conference after the healing of the lame 
 man, say, "What shall we do to these 
 men ? for that indeed a notable miracle 
 hath beeji done by them is manifest 
 
 73
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 to all them that dwell in Jerusalem, 
 and we cannot deny it." They can- 
 not deny it. There is the miracle as 
 plain as the shining sky. But that 
 makes no difference whatever. The 
 effect of the miracle, instead of gaining 
 their allegiance, is to make them more 
 determined enemies than ever. "That 
 it spread no farther among the people, 
 let us straitly threaten them, that they 
 speak henceforth to no man in this 
 name. And they called them and 
 commanded them not to speak at all 
 nor teach in the name of Jesus." 
 
 These two facts regarding the Bible 
 miracles that they are few in num- 
 ber, and that they are ineffective as 
 aids to faith illustrate Christ's 
 habitual depreciation of the miraculous. 
 He never raised the question as to 
 whether the miracles really happened, 
 but He insisted that they are not of 
 any great spiritual value. They do 
 not contain the essential revelation of 
 God. 
 
 The subordination of the miraculous 
 by the Supreme Spiritual Master, and 
 the confirmation of His judgment by 
 
 74
 
 RELIGION_AND MIRACLE 
 
 the evidence of Bible history, prepare 
 us to meet the minimizing of the mi- 
 raculous with a serene mind 
 
 Some miracles are subtracted from 
 the old lists by a process of natural 
 explanation. It is perceived, for exam- 
 ple, that healing without medicine is 
 in accordance with regular and par- 
 tially understood laws of human nature. 
 That Jesus performed wonderful cures 
 is no longer doubted, but that the 
 cures were such as to imply the personal 
 and particular act of God appears un- 
 likely. They belong, with all healing, 
 to the application by man of the forces 
 of the world to meet a special need. 
 
 Other miracles are subtracted by a 
 process of literary interpretation. They 
 are seen to derive their wonder not 
 so much from the event as from the 
 enthusiastic words in which the event 
 is recorded. They belong not to prose, 
 but to poetry, and are to be read, not 
 in the light of science, but in the 
 light of imagination. Thus Joshua 
 commands the sun and moon to stand 
 still, and they obey him, but the state- 
 ment is quoted from a book of ballads. 
 
 75
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 It has no connection with astronomy. 
 It is a poet's way of expressing the 
 greatness of a victory : the day seemed 
 to be marvellously prolonged, so much 
 did they accomplish in it ; the sun and. 
 moon stood still to watch the Israelites 
 as they chased the Canaanites down 
 the long pass. 
 
 Jonah meets with a great fish. But 
 Christian, also, in the "Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress," meets with strange animals. 
 They all belong together, not to the 
 world of zoology, but to the world of 
 parable. They are pictures which illus- 
 trate a story. Our Puritan ancestors 
 disliked fiction, partly because it seemed 
 to them out of keeping with so serious 
 a world, and partly because the fiction 
 of the Elizabethan age was not what 
 they considered profitable or proper 
 reading. Their dislike we have vaguely 
 inherited. This is why some good 
 people are troubled at the suggestion 
 that there is fiction in the Bible. The 
 fact, however, remains. In the Bible, 
 even fiction is used for the setting forth 
 of spiritual truth. Jesus so used it in 
 the story of the Prodigal Son. The
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 book of Daniel, the book of Esther, the 
 book of Jonah, are instances of it. The 
 great fish swims about and swallows 
 Jonah in a story, not in a history. 
 
 Still other wonders are taken from 
 the lists of miracles as being the state- 
 ments of honest but mistaken observa- 
 tion. The Gadarene swine run vio- 
 lently down a steep place and perish in 
 the water. That was the fact. The 
 historian believed that the panic of the 
 swine was caused by the entrance into 
 them of a thousand devils. That was 
 his interpretation of the fact. Such 
 a conclusion was easy and natural in 
 those days. A different observer, dif- 
 ferently educated, might have had a 
 different opinion. 
 
 There was a pool in Jerusalem, called 
 Bethesda, whose water singularly 
 moved. It lay still for a time, and 
 then suddenly began to bubble ; and 
 this stirring of the water was repeated 
 again and again, day after day. A 
 sentence written into the fifth chapter 
 of St. John so long after the making of 
 that Gospel that the early manuscripts 
 do not contain it, says that "an angel 
 
 77
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 went down at a certain season into the 
 pool, and troubled the water." That 
 was a common explanation. It shows 
 how the plain man, looking on at that 
 phenomenon, beheld a miracle. As a 
 matter of fact, the pool of Bethesda 
 is an intermittent spring, and the 
 troubling of the water is entirely due 
 to natural causes. 
 
 Will this process of subordination 
 and of subtraction result at last in the 
 elimination of the miraculous ? Will 
 the miracles of the Bible take their 
 final place with the miracles of the 
 fairy stories ? No : for several reasons. 
 
 The miraculous will endure by reason 
 of the fact of mystery. 
 
 Nobody knows enough, nor will any- 
 body ever know enough, to explain 
 everything. Even in the face of the 
 most sober and most accurate reason, 
 this is a strange world in which almost 
 anything may happen. The endeavor 
 to write all life in plain prose, and to 
 bring all experience into the ordered 
 range of common law, will never suc- 
 ceed. The world is too big, and the 
 known part of it is too little for our 
 
 78
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 legislation. The universe will never 
 be brought under our cultivation like 
 a garden of useful vegetables, fenced 
 and weeded and planted in straight 
 lines. It is more like an endless forest, 
 containing mountains and rivers, in- 
 habited by uncounted forms of life, 
 defying us to bring it into subjection to 
 our rules. The miracles belong, with 
 the colors of the clouds and the odors 
 of the flowers, to the everlasting poetry 
 of the world. 
 
 The miraculous will endure by reason 
 of the facts of history. 
 
 There has been an experience of mira- 
 cle. It has not come into the lives of 
 many people, but it has entered with 
 conviction and splendor into the lives 
 of some people, and they have done 
 great things in consequence of it. 
 The evident course of history has 
 been turned this way and that a hun- 
 dred times by miracle. Something 
 has happened for which nobody has 
 ever found an adequate explanation in 
 the usual course of nature. God has 
 exercised His special will in the affairs 
 of men. 
 
 79
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 The miracles which have affected 
 history do not satisfy, indeed, the old 
 idea of a miracle as an interference 
 with the laws of the life of the world. 
 They are rather to be defined as a 
 divine use of the material forces of the 
 world. Thus the Red Sea does not 
 suddenly part without a reason ; it 
 is blown back by a strong east wind. 
 The Jordan does not run dry without 
 a visible cause ; it is dammed by falling 
 banks, so that it stands "on a heap." 
 Such events have happened at other 
 times. The disclosure of God in them 
 is the blowing of the wind and the fall- 
 ing of the bank just at the right 
 moment. A miracle is not an interrup- 
 tion, but a direction, of the processes 
 of the universe. 
 
 The miraculous will endure by reason 
 of a fact in psychology : the fact of the 
 reality of the will. 
 
 If there is a will in man, there is a 
 will in God ; else He is less than we 
 are. And if God has a will, the miracu- 
 lous, even in its most dramatic forms, 
 is forever both possible and reasonable. 
 We work miracles ourselves ; that is, 
 80
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 we bring our will to bear as a determin- 
 ing factor upon the constant sequence 
 of cause and effect. We perceive in our 
 own experience that there is such a 
 thing as a spiritual cause. The ball 
 is falling, but we stop it ; the garden is 
 withering, but we water it ; the patient 
 is failing day by day, but we introduce 
 a new remedy ; things are going to the 
 bad, but we intervene and reenforce 
 the good. The miracle is just this, in 
 the realm of the divine. God can work 
 miracles, because we can. It is highly 
 probable that if He cares as much about 
 people as we do, He will work miracles 
 upon due occasion; though it is probable 
 that, in His infinite and foreseeing 
 wisdom, such occasions will be very 
 few. A denial of the miraculous is 
 an affirmation of the impotence of 
 God. It maintains that we live in a 
 closed universe. It substitutes an un- 
 regarding law for a paternal person- 
 ality. It contradicts the free will of 
 God. God must work miracles in 
 order to assure us of His presence and 
 His care. 
 
 The progress of our knowledge will 
 
 81
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 not eliminate the miraculous, but it will 
 enlarge our perception of it. It will 
 transfer our interest from the infrequent 
 disclosure of God in the marvellous 
 and the dramatic to the constant dis- 
 closure of God in the ordinary course 
 of daily life. 
 
 Our interest in the infrequent dis- 
 closure of God is due, in part, to our 
 natural delight in the wonderful. The 
 meadow is full of bushes, but Moses 
 turns aside to examine the strange bush 
 which burns. That is human nature. 
 But a part of our interest is due also to 
 a common theory of the remoteness of 
 God. It has been believed by many 
 that God, having made the world, went 
 back to heaven, and thereafter paid no 
 particular attention to our affairs except 
 to intervene sometimes by miracle. 
 Under the stress of this belief, the mir- 
 acle was not only a disclosure of God, 
 but the only real disclosure that we 
 have. The miraculous was our only 
 evidence of the being, the will, and 
 the nature of God. Every miracle, 
 then, which was explained, and thus 
 by explanation taken over into the 
 82
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 natural order, weakened by just so 
 much our faith in the spiritual world. 
 
 But we do not now believe in the 
 remoteness of God. We do not believe 
 in an absent God, Who manifests Him- 
 self only in the tremendous crises of 
 life. Our faith is in the God of whom 
 St. Paul said "in Him we live and 
 move and have our being." We per- 
 ceive an ever present, an all-pervading, 
 an unending disclosure of God in all 
 the world, in all our life. God is in the 
 universe as the sun is in the world, as 
 the soul is in the body, the condition 
 of all existence, the inspiration of all 
 being, the motive of all progress, the 
 mind of all thought, the conscience of 
 all duty, the heart of all love. He is 
 revealed not only in the past, but in the 
 present, not only to the fathers, but to 
 us, and not only in the infrequent 
 wonders of the world, but in those 
 constant wonders of nature and experi- 
 ence which are seen by those who have 
 the eyes to see them. 
 
 Indeed, it is in the miracle of the 
 commonplace, not in the miracle of 
 the crisis, that God is most evidently 
 
 83
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 manifested. This is his accustomed 
 disclosure. "The undivineness of the 
 natural, and the unnaturalness of the 
 divine," has well been called "the great 
 heresy of popular thought respecting 
 religion." One comes and says, "I 
 have had a great manifestation of the 
 providence of God : everybody in the 
 car was killed but me." But another 
 says, "I have had a greater revelation 
 of the providence of God than that : 
 we went a thousand miles, and all 
 arrived in perfect safety." 
 
 The heart of the whole matter is the 
 reality of a direct and personal relation 
 between God and man. We want to 
 be sure that God is interested in us, 
 and concerned about us. We want to 
 be sure that God cares. This assur- 
 ance is based, not on the uncertain 
 foundation of distant miracles which 
 cannot be verified, but on the broad 
 and solid ground of the constant min- 
 istry of God to man in the order of the 
 world. This is the plain and unde- 
 niable and evidential miracle : the 
 miracle of progress, whereby God guides 
 the race, as all the histories show; the
 
 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 
 
 miracle of providence, whereby God 
 ministers every day, in His infinite 
 wisdom and His love which passes 
 understanding, to every one of us, 
 answering our prayers ; the miracle of 
 the fatherhood of God.
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF 
 GOD
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF 
 GOD 
 
 |HE elements of revelation and 
 of miracle in religion meet in 
 a supreme disclosure. 
 God has made Himself evi- 
 dent to us in the world of nature. The 
 heavens declare the glory of God, and 
 the changing seasons, the sun and rain, 
 the seed-time and harvest, manifest the 
 providence of God. But this is not 
 an adequate disclosure of the divine. 
 The great place of the miraculous in all 
 religions testifies to the strong desire of 
 man for clearer evidence. The order 
 of the world is so impersonal, the years 
 go on about their business with so little 
 regard for our concerns, the just and 
 the unjust are treated so alike, that the 
 whole universe seems a vast machine, 
 which may indeed bear witness to some 
 mighty force, but which gives us no 
 assurance of individual interest. 
 
 89
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 What we want is a swift and certain 
 interposition in our affairs, which shall 
 settle all our doubts without a per- 
 adventure. We want to see the light- 
 ning flash. The stars are symbols of 
 wonder, and we look up at them as 
 they shine out of the environing mys- 
 tery of space ; but they stay in their 
 courses so serenely and everlastingly 
 that they do not give us any satisfac- 
 tion. They make no response. If the 
 sun should be turned into darkness, and 
 the moon into blood, if the stars 
 should fall, then we might realize the 
 relation between earth and heaven. 
 
 After all is said about the manifes- 
 tation of God in common life, and the 
 subordination of the old belief in mira- 
 cle to the new belief in the divineness 
 of the commonplace, we are not con- 
 tented. There is a common feeling, 
 which may be illogical but is certainly 
 natural, that a world without a miracle 
 is a world without convincing evidence 
 of the personality of God. And that 
 means that the disclosure of God in 
 nature is not enough. 
 
 God has spoken unto us also in the 
 90
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF_ GOD 
 
 world of humanity. The course of 
 history declares the glory of God. 
 Taking the life of man thus in the large, 
 we see as we can rarely see in our 
 own experience or observation that 
 there is a guiding hand. On comes 
 the race along the highway of the 
 nations, led by providential powers, 
 slowly learning the essential lessons, 
 taught by pains which at the moment 
 seemed sheer tragedy and cruelty, but 
 which time interprets as the dealings 
 of an infinite wisdom and affection. 
 But this again, like the revelation of 
 God in nature, fails to satisfy our long- 
 ing for the assurance of a direct rela- 
 tion between God and our own life. 
 It bears witness to a mighty God Who 
 does indeed care for the race, but 
 Who, so far as we can see, is too great 
 to care for the individual. Sometimes, 
 indeed, there seems to be a clear indi- 
 cation in our own experience which 
 enables us to look out into the invisible 
 and pray, "Our Father." But often 
 such evidence is transitory and uncer- 
 tain. Even in the large, the nature of 
 God as He is revealed in humanity is 
 
 91
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 hard to read. Is God law, or is He 
 love? O-fio, 
 
 Then, in the midst of the theological 
 uncertainties and perplexities presented 
 by nature and by humanity, come 
 the voices of the prophets. The com- 
 mon experience of common people is 
 interpreted by the uncommon experi- 
 ence of these uncommon people. As 
 the mysteries of nature are lightened 
 here and there by discovery, and the 
 mysteries of humanity are lightened 
 here and there by genius, so that we 
 understand the world better and our- 
 selves better, so God speaks to us with 
 a new plainness by the prophets. 
 These uncommon persons, delicately 
 sensitive to spiritual impressions, see 
 what we cannot see, and hear what we 
 cannot hear. Where we doubt or 
 guess, they perceive God. 
 
 But this perception of God is con- 
 ditioned and limited by the minds and 
 souls of the prophets. It is affected 
 by their prejudices and ignorances. 
 It is dulled by their sins. We acknowl- 
 edge that they know more about God 
 than we do, but we cannot help seeing 
 92
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 that they are liable to error. As a 
 matter of fact, they have erred, and 
 must err. We desire, therefore, a per- 
 fect prophet, to whom, and in whom, 
 the disclosure of the divine may be 
 made in all possible fulness. Such a 
 prophet must carry our human nature 
 to its loftiest height. He must be 
 our ideal of what man ought to be ; and 
 this ideal must be in terms of character. 
 He need not be the mightiest of men, 
 nor even the wisest of men ; these 
 qualities have been found to be con- 
 sistent with baseness. He must be 
 the best of men. Then shall he be 
 able to look with clear sight into the 
 invisible, and to hear the voice of 
 God. And in the presence of his per- 
 fection we shall say, "Here is one 
 who can tell us of God with a certainty 
 which passes all our possibilities, and 
 to whom we can go with humility and 
 confidence for the supreme divine dis- 
 closure." In our search for the truth 
 about God, in our endeavor to know 
 the nature of God and the relation of 
 God to our soul, our reasonable trust 
 is in the perfect prophet. 
 
 93
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 Not only is it true that such a prophet 
 will know more of the divine than we 
 may ever hope to know, but it is true 
 that in such a prophet God will be 
 able to make an adequate revelation of 
 Himself. Not in nature, not in hu- 
 manity, not even in the words of 
 many prophets, shall God speak to us 
 adequately, but in the teaching and 
 still more in the life of the perfect 
 prophet, who is both the symbol and 
 the manifestation of the divine. Here, 
 'plainly, is the supreme disclosure of 
 God. This perfect prophet, in whom 
 is made this supreme disclosure, is 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 This statement is expressed in the 
 careful language of theology in the 
 doctrine of the Incarnation. 
 
 A good deal of confusion is cleared 
 away from this doctrine by a consider- 
 ation of the two-sidedness of truth. 
 Truth has two sides, a nearer and a 
 farther. Thus in the physical world, 
 the nearer side of truth is what we 
 call practical, and the farther side is 
 what we call scientific or technical. 
 We have a practical acquaintance with 
 
 94
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 many things concerning which we 
 are ignorant technically. We know 
 enough about the law of gravitation to 
 use it in our business, and we know 
 enough about electricity to turn on the 
 current which lights the lamps. But 
 a scientific exposition of either of these 
 matters not only exceeds the knowledge 
 of the layman, but serves only to per- 
 plex him. The same distinction holds 
 between religion and theology. Reli- 
 gion is the practical side of theology ; 
 theology is the scientific or technical 
 side of religion. One is plain enough 
 to the simplest mind ; the other is 
 plain only to those who are expert in 
 metaphysics, and it is not very plain 
 even to them. 
 
 For in addition to this difference be- 
 tween the two sides of truth, whereby 
 one side is practical and the other is 
 technical, there is a further difference. 
 The nearer side is that aspect of truth 
 which we are able to understand, and 
 which we can define in clear sentences ; 
 the farther side is that aspect of truth 
 which reaches away into the infinite, 
 beyond our understanding. These two 
 
 95
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 sides are in all truth, even in the 
 material world ; the distinction is ob- 
 vious in the world of the spirit. What 
 we actually need, in faith as in knowl- 
 edge, is a definite hold upon the 
 nearer, practical side of truth ; together 
 with a clear perception that beyond this 
 lie illimitable ranges of truth which 
 exceed our common understanding. 
 
 The nearer side of the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation is a recognition in Jesus 
 Christ of the realization of two ever- 
 lasting desires. One of these is the 
 desire of man to know God, and to 
 know him in some such way as we know 
 our neighbors. The request of the 
 apostles, " Lord, show us the Father, 
 and it sufficeth us," expresses it. This 
 craving for God in the concrete, which 
 is characteristic of man in all ages, is 
 strengthened at this moment by the 
 giving up of the old thought of God as 
 sitting remote upon a throne, and the 
 taking on of the thought of God as 
 pervading all our life. This present 
 conception of God is no doubt truer 
 than the old, but it greatly increases 
 the difficulty of setting the personality 
 
 96
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 of God before our minds. We reach 
 out through all this divine environ- 
 ment, which likens God to the air and 
 the light, for God Himself. 
 
 The other everlasting desire is that 
 which we believe to be in God : the 
 desire to reveal Himself, to meet with 
 the touch of His hand our groping 
 hands. This desire we believe to be in 
 God, because it is in us. If He cares 
 for us, as the prophets say, He must 
 wish to make His nature and His will 
 known to us ; He must somehow 
 satisfy this human craving for Himself 
 in our image. And it is plain that this 
 can best be done, not by a book, nor 
 by a voice, but in the universal human 
 language, the language of life. God 
 must somehow enter into man ; He 
 must in some way act and speak, and 
 be accessible to us as man. " 
 
 These two desires meet in Jesus 
 Christ, of whom the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation declares that He is at the 
 same time God and man. 
 
 And here our present thought of God 
 as infinitely near rather than infinitely 
 distant assists our imagination. For- 
 H 97
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 merly, when God was believed to be 
 sitting on a throne in heaven, we had 
 to think of him as "coming down." 
 Somehow, He came down and united 
 Himself with human nature, and resided 
 for a time upon this planet. That 
 was very hard to think. To-day, the 
 interpretative phrase, instead of " com- 
 ing down," is "shining through." 
 
 God is in all the universal life, as the 
 sun is in the world. At sundry times 
 and in divers manners, He discloses 
 Himself. He shines through nature, 
 as the sun shines through a clouded 
 glass, dimly. He shines through hu- 
 manity, especially in the lives of good 
 people, as the sun shines where the glass 
 is clearer; still dimly, but more dis- 
 tinctly, we see God in them. But 
 here is a clear place in the glass where 
 the sun shines straight through. We 
 look, and behold the sun ! Not the 
 sun in the perfection of his strength, 
 because our eyes are not strong enough 
 to see that ; even the best telescopes 
 are insufficient for that, but still, 
 the sun. 
 
 Thus shines God through Jesus
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 Christ. He is a man ; for we may 
 touch His hands and hear His voice. 
 His humanity makes Him our example ; 
 in Whom we perceive the possibilities 
 of mankind at its best ; Who thus calls 
 us on to high achievement, and fills our 
 souls with the inspiration of a splendid 
 ideal. He is that concrete embodiment 
 of the divine for which we long. And, 
 at the same time, He is God ; in Him 
 we see God. When we would draw 
 near to God, we draw near to Him. 
 When we would understand, as best 
 we may, the nature and the will of God, 
 we learn of Him. 
 
 It is true that when we endeavor 
 to distinguish between the human and 
 the divine in Him, we fall easily into 
 confusion. Are they indeed distin- 
 guishable ? Is the divine spirit foreign 
 to the human spirit ? Is God, who 
 made us in His own image, quite apart 
 from us whom He has made ? The 
 moral qualities, which constitute the 
 best of our humanity, must be the same 
 in Him and in us ; truth the same, 
 righteousness the same, love the same. 
 The human and the divine meet in 
 
 99
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 Christ as the physical and the spiritual 
 meet in every act and thought of man. 
 Together they enter into the nature 
 and the life of the one Christ. As we 
 cannot discern which part is oxygen 
 and which is hydrogen in the water 
 which we drink, so we receive that 
 living water to which He likened Him- 
 self, satisfied to be refreshed by it, 
 without need of analysis. 
 
 It is true that when we endeavor to 
 persuade our neighbor that not man only, 
 but God, was in Christ, we find that 
 we are put of the region of reasoning, 
 in the region of recognition. We can- 
 1 not prove it. Neither can we prove the 
 splendor of the sky. There it is, shin- 
 ing in the eyes of all men. But the 
 argument for it is not in the books of 
 the astronomers, nor in the calcula- 
 tions of the observatories. It is its 
 own argument. So the hero is his own 
 argument; the saint is his own argu- 
 ment. The greatness of these men 
 cannot be demonstrated to the satis- 
 faction and conversion of the indif- 
 sjL ferent. They wait, not for reasoning, 
 but for recognition. Jesus Christ, when 
 100
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 He was visibly and audibly among 
 us, waited often in vain. Men saw 
 and heard Him, and then went by on 
 the other side of the street. The 
 supreme man of all time was in their 
 town, but they did not know it. 
 God was manifested among them, but 
 they were not aware that anything was 
 happening. Jesus Christ is seen to be 
 the Son of God, not by comparison of 
 texts, but by looking into His face. 
 
 This recognition exists, I suppose, 
 in the souls of all good people who 
 have come to the knowledge of Jesus. 
 They may express themselves in other 
 words than ours. They may be reluc- 
 tant to recite our creeds. Under the 
 stress of controversy they may express 
 a difference which is much wider than 
 they truly feel. Nevertheless, Jesus 
 is the master of their soul, the revealer 
 of eternal truth, the Son of God, whom 
 they revere and serve and love, in 
 whom they find the disclosure of the 
 divine. Dr. Everett, in the notes of his 
 lectures in the Harvard Divinity School, 
 says : "The divine principle in the 
 world manifests itself more and more 
 
 101
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 till it comes to the full consciousness 
 of itself in the life and teaching of 
 Jesus. . . . His divinity is not that 
 of one who has come down from above ; 
 it is that of the life in which the divine 
 element that has been working in the 
 world comes at last to its consumma- 
 tion, and reaches the point at which 
 the doors open between the lower and 
 the higher, so that the divine life flows 
 freely downward and the human life 
 upward, and the divine and human 
 mingle." This may not satisfy all 
 the requirements of theNicene theology, 
 but it touches the heart of the truth. 
 
 The essential conviction is that God, 
 Who spoke in times past to the fathers 
 by the prophets, has spoken to us by 
 his Son. "In the beginning was the 
 Word," says the Fourth Gospel, "and 
 the Word was God." Yes, we lift up 
 our eyes to these high truths, which 
 loom above the level of our sight. St. 
 Paul puts it in an easier way. "God 
 was in Christ," he says. That is the 
 nearer side. God was in Christ. 
 There are perplexities in plenty, and 
 questions which we cannot answer. 
 102
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 The divinity of Christ, like every other 
 assertion which contains a divine factor, 
 is beyond complete definition. If we 
 could completely define and under- 
 stand it, that would mean that the 
 divine factor had been left out. But 
 this is enough for our common reason 
 and our common faith ; enough for^ 
 practical religion. God was in Christ. 
 Here is our assurance in the midst of 
 all confusion ; the words which He spoke 
 were not the conjectures of philosophy, 
 but the certain words of life eternal. 
 Here is our courage, our faith, our 
 consolation, our strength, in the midst 
 of difficulty : we know beyond all 
 hesitation that God cares for us. God 
 in Christ has made the supreme dis- 
 closure of Himself. 
 
 This new divine disclosure in the 
 person and word of Jesus Christ made 
 necessary a new definition of God. 
 
 There were at that time two defi- 
 nitions of the being of God. In most 
 religions God was defined in terms of 
 polytheism. There were many gods. 
 The natural association of the idea of 
 personality with the fact of motion led 
 
 103
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 to the theory of an immediate divine 
 cause for every phenomenon of life. 
 There was a god of the sky and of the 
 sea, a god of the wind and of the rain, 
 and gods were resident in whispering 
 trees and singing springs. Behind 
 these many gods, the wisest men found 
 God. They had a dim perception of 
 one eternal and universal source of 
 life and power. 
 
 . This definition of God in terms of 
 monotheism was made a popular belief 
 in Judaism. It began, indeed, in the 
 idea of one god for the land and for 
 the nation, and it was only after a long 
 time and with great difficulty that this 
 tribal monotheism rose to the concep- 
 tion of one god over all the earth. In 
 spite of the teachings of the prophets, 
 even the Jewish creed for centuries 
 was popularly expressed in the sentence 
 of a psalm, which reads, "Among the 
 gods there is none like unto Thee." 
 The people believed that every nation 
 had its god. The Jewish god was the 
 Lord, Jehovah. Gradually, by the 
 lessons of great tribulation, the Jew- 
 ish people came to that faith in one 
 104
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 supreme God which makes the Old 
 Testament at its height preeminent 
 over all the ancient theologies. When 
 Christ came, they all believed in one 
 only God. 
 
 The first theological difficulty which 
 the Christian religion had to meet was 
 presented by the idea of the divinity 
 of Christ. The Christians had to ex- 
 plain Him to themselves and to their 
 neighbors. An obvious and easy ex- 
 planation was in terms of polytheism. 
 Christ was an inferior god. Behind 
 all life, the maker and maintainer of 
 the universe, was the supreme God, the 
 Father, and, coming to earth on His 
 errand, to teach men the truth about 
 Him, to get His will done on earth as it 
 is done in heaven, was His Son. 
 
 This was the interpretation of Christ 
 which was offered at the beginning of 
 the fourth century by Arius. He held 
 the divinity of Christ, but taught that 
 it was a secondary and subordinate 
 divinity. Thus the Christian religion, 
 according to his doctrine, had two 
 gods. It was the fear of polytheism 
 which made the contention against 
 
 105
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 Arianism so bitter. The Christians had 
 their dwelling in a polytheistic world ; 
 all their neighbors, except the Jews, 
 were of that way of thinking. And 
 the Christians knew by observation and 
 experience that polytheism was unsatis- 
 factory both in theology and in morals. 
 They were determined the clear- 
 sighted among them not to go back 
 to it. 
 
 But how could the divinity of Christ 
 be reconciled, then, with monotheism ? 
 This was accomplished by the doctrine 
 of the Trinity. 
 
 This doctrine begins with the state- 
 ment of the unity of God, but it defines 
 that unity not in terms of simplicity, 
 but in terms of complexity. The natu- 
 ral symbol of simplicity is the number 
 One. The natural symbol of com- 
 plexity is the number Three, which is 
 suggested to the mind by the begin- 
 ning, the middle, and the end. Cer- 
 tain words of the Gospels, confirmed 
 by the phenomena of the spiritual life, 
 brought into Christian consciousness 
 the presence of the Holy Spirit. Thus. 
 in Christian theology, the one God 
 106
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 came to be known under three names, 
 the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 To the theologian, the three names 
 represented three eternal distinctions 
 in the divine nature. To the layman 
 they represented three manifestations 
 of God. The one God is given one or 
 other of three names according as He 
 deals with us in one or other of three 
 ways. An excellent statement of this 
 popular definition is that of the Church 
 Catechism, where the child is taught 
 to say, as a summary of the creed : 
 "First, I learn to believe in God the 
 Father, Who hath made me and all the 
 world ; secondly, in God the Son, Who 
 hath redeemed me, and all mankind ; 
 thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, Who 
 sanctifieth me, and all the people of 
 God." 
 
 Thus when God is thought of as the 
 creator of the world and man, the lord 
 of the universe, the maintainer of the 
 suns and stars, we are thinking of Him 
 as the Father. When God is thought 
 of as making known to man His will 
 and His love in the revealing person- 
 
 107
 
 THE SUPREME DISCLOSURE OF GOD 
 
 ality of Jesus Christ, we are thinking 
 of Him as the Son. When God is 
 thought of as speaking in the souls of 
 all men, the world over, in the voice of 
 inspiration which leads to all manner 
 of progress, and in the voice of con- 
 science which leads to all manner of 
 righteousness, we are thinking of Him 
 as the Spirit. There is one only God, 
 in the world about us, in the world 
 within us, and in Jesus Christ, Who 
 interprets both. 
 
 108
 
 THE SUPREME REQUIREMENT 
 OF RELIGION
 
 THE SUPREME REQUIREMENT 
 OF RELIGION 
 
 1HE same sentence in which 
 St. Paul states the supreme 
 disclosure of God contains 
 also a statement of the essen- 
 tial purpose of that disclosure. "God 
 was in Christ," he says, " reconciling 
 the world unto Himself." 
 
 The fundamental facts of religion, 
 the being of God and the soul of man, 
 meet in Jesus Christ, Who is the highest 
 revelation and the greatest miracle. 
 But the effect which is intended by His 
 life and death is the reconciliation of 
 man to God. This reconciliation has 
 often been expressed in terms of a 
 salvation in the future from the pain 
 of punishment, but it is constantly 
 expressed in the New Testament in 
 terms of a salvation in the present from 
 the habit of sin ; that is, the supreme 
 requirement of religion is character. 
 
 in
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 The disclosure of God in Christ 
 may be considered from the point of 
 view of theology, or from the point of 
 view of religion. The difference be- 
 tween theology and religion is like the 
 difference between psychology and phi- 
 lanthropy. Psychology is a way of 
 thinking, a study of human nature, 
 an analysis of the human mind. Phi- 
 lanthropy is a way of living, a kindly 
 feeling extending into kindly action 
 for the benefit of society. So theology 
 is a way of thinking; the word itself 
 expresses thought rather than action, 
 a discourse concerning God. Theology 
 concerns itself with the greatest and 
 deepest of all themes, and the purpose 
 of it is the knowledge of the truth ; 
 while religion is a way of living, a carry- 
 ing of the truth into common life, an 
 assertion of faith by the practical evi- 
 dence of works. 
 
 Neither of these distinctions be- 
 tween psychology and philanthropy, 
 or between theology and religion 
 may be accurately drawn. Neither 
 the psychologist nor the theologian is 
 content to be kept within the fences 
 
 112
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 of philosophy. They are both con- 
 cerned with life. The psychologist 
 complains that his experiments and 
 conclusions are taken with so little 
 seriousness. "The laboratories for the 
 study of the inner life flourish," he 
 says; "experiments are made, inven- 
 tions are tested, new vistas are opened, 
 but practical life goes on without 
 making any use of all these psycho- 
 logical discoveries. It is, indeed, as if 
 the steam engine were confined to the 
 laboratory table, while in the practical 
 world work were still clumsily done by 
 the arms of slaves." The theologian 
 is protesting with the same vigor 
 against being relegated to those regions 
 which busy people with some contempt 
 call "academic." His studies are for 
 our use. Their right result is better 
 religion. 
 
 In the New Testament, theology is 
 always thus connected with ethics. 
 The purpose of the discussion of it is 
 to provide a solid foundation of con- 
 viction or encouragement on which to 
 build a house of life. The epistles of 
 St. Paul begin with considerations of 
 I 113
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 faith, but they end with considerations 
 of works. The statement, "The grace 
 of God that bringeth salvation hath 
 appeared to all men," belongs indeed 
 to history, but still more to theology. 
 It has to do with that Supreme disclos- 
 ure of God which we have been discuss- 
 ing. But the sentence goes straight 
 on to a practical application : "teach- 
 ing us that denying ungodliness and 
 worldly lusts, we should live soberly, 
 righteously, and godly in this present 
 world." It proceeds from the supreme 
 disclosure to the supreme requirement. 
 An ancient and common opinion, in 
 the apostolic age, and long after, main- 
 tained that the most necessary part of 
 religion is ritual. It was taught by 
 the priests of most religions that what 
 God most desires is the accurate per- 
 formance of certain prescribed cere- 
 monies. He must be approached with 
 proper reverence. He must be offered 
 the odor of incense and the fat of sacri- 
 fices. So long as the services are duly 
 conducted, with the sound of music 
 and the color of vestments, God, they 
 said, is satisfied. It seems to us a 
 114
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 curious and even grotesque idea of 
 God, but of the existence of it there 
 is no doubt. The Old Testament 
 prophets met it, and contended against 
 it, not always with success. 
 
 The characteristic names by which 
 Christians have called themselves in 
 the East and in the West suggest two 
 other theories as to the supreme reli- 
 gious requirement. One of these 
 names, which is exalted in the East 
 and is made a part of the title of the 
 Eastern Church, is " orthodox." It 
 expresses a right relation to the creed. 
 It means that a man is to be consid- 
 ered a good Christian according to his 
 acceptance of a certain formulation of 
 Christian truth. The other name, 
 which is exalted in the West, and is 
 made a part of the title of the Western 
 Church, is "catholic." Thus refers to 
 order, as "orthodox" refers to faith. It 
 is erected against schism, as "orthodox" 
 is erected against heresy. It expresses 
 a right relation to the church. It means 
 that a man is to be considered a good 
 Christian according to his loyalty to 
 a certain organization of Christian life.
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 
 These ideas as to the supreme require- 
 ment of religion are additions to the 
 New Testament ideal. The creed was 
 introduced into Christianity by the 
 Greeks. It represents their racial in- 
 stinct to get truth into clear form. 
 Faith, in the New Testament, is for 
 the most part emotional rather than 
 intellectual. The faith which is made 
 a condition of salvation is related not 
 to a formula, but to a person. It con- 
 sists in allegiance to Jesus Christ. It. 
 is the faith of a child in his parents. 
 In the later books of the New Testa- 
 ment, we come upon faith as "the 
 faith." This is the beginning of the 
 making of a creed. But the creed is 
 nowhere exalted in primitive Chris- 
 tianity as it came to be in the East. 
 
 The church was introduced into 
 Christianity by the Romans. It was 
 their characteristic racial contribution. 
 Their instinct was to get life into order. 
 They had an executive, governmental 
 gift. They found the New Testament 
 Church so loosely organized that St. 
 Paul gives two or three quite different 
 lists of the names and duties of its 
 116
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 officers. There was a church, in the 
 sense of a fraternal organization, from 
 the beginning; but the emphasis of 
 interest was not upon it. That was a 
 Roman emphasis, the gift of a people 
 who, like the Greeks, brought their 
 best and offered it to God. 
 
 The supreme requirement of religion 
 is not the performance of a ritual, 
 nor the recitation of a creed, nor 
 allegiance to a church. It is the living 
 of a good life. The supreme requisite 
 is character. 
 
 This religious ideal the Christians 
 inherited from the Jews. It was strik- 
 ingly symbolized in the construction 
 of the Jewish temple. 
 
 The temple was so planned as to 
 lead the heart and mind of the wor- 
 shipper along an ascending series of 
 holy places. He entered first into a 
 great enclosure, like the yard of a 
 church, whose name the Court of 
 the Gentiles indicated that there the 
 sacred and the secular were inter- 
 mingled. The world was indeed shut 
 out, but only in part ; the doors were 
 open for all sorts of people. In this 
 
 117
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 enclosure stood the temple itself, and 
 at the Beautiful Gate which gave 
 access to it, a process of sifting and 
 selection began. Only the faithful had 
 the privilege of entrance. Thus they 
 came into the Court of the Women. 
 Here the women stayed, while the men 
 went on up a high range of steps to the 
 Court of the Priests. And there the 
 laymen stayed, while the priests went 
 on into the Holy Place. And the 
 priests themselves remained in the 
 Holy Place, by the altar of incense, 
 while the High Priest entered, on 
 certain days, into the Holy of Holies. 
 He lifted the veil which hung before 
 the door, and went in to make his 
 prayers for himself and for his people 
 before the supreme symbol of the 
 divine presence. That symbol was an 
 ancient chest, the ark, stained and bat- 
 tered in the journeys and the wars of 
 the old time ; made, they said, by 
 Moses, when he came down from 
 Sinai. Nobody saw it but the High 
 Priest, and he saw it only once a year. 
 Its position at the end of this succes- 
 sion of increasing sanctities, and its 
 118
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 mysterious seclusion, deepened the awe 
 with which it was regarded by the 
 people. In the ark were the tables 
 of stone, written over with the Ten 
 Commandments. 
 
 Thus at the summit of the Old Testa- 
 ment religion, in the most sacred place 
 in the sanctuary of the Old Testament 
 worship, higher than all the altars, 
 the sign and assurance of the presence 
 of God, was the statement of the moral 
 law. When you got to the very heart 
 of it, past all the sacrifices, through the 
 smoke of incense, there was that sym- 
 bol of the fact that the chief thing in 
 true religion is character. 
 
 Of course, the creed is important, 
 and the church is important. 
 
 The creed is the best statement 
 which we are able to make concerning 
 the relation of the being of God to the 
 soul of man. The world of nature is 2 ' 
 a manifestation of God the Father. 
 Jesus Christ, the flower of the world of 
 humanity, is a manifestation of God 
 the Son, living our life, dying for our 
 sake, rising again to life everlasting, 
 coming finally to judge us. The prog- v 
 
 119
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 ress of the world, and of every indi- 
 vidual in it, is the work of God the 
 Holy Ghost, whose voice is the voice 
 of conscience, and who is the inspirer 
 of all good accomplishment. This is 
 what the creed says, bringing into its 
 brief space the intuitions of the saints, 
 and the conclusions of the sages. 
 
 But the essential purpose of the 
 creed is practical. The orthodox intel- 
 lectual acceptance of it has no religious 
 value whatsoever. Jesus said, "The 
 devils believe and tremble." They 
 believe, so far as that goes, and tremble, 
 too. But it makes no difference ; it 
 has no moral effect. The devils are 
 orthodox, but they continue to be 
 devils notwithstanding. An efficient 
 faith is practical. It carries the articles 
 of the creed into daily effect. Thus the 
 creed is not only related to life, but is 
 of value in proportion as it affects life. 
 It is to be estimated by the pragmatic 
 test. Some of its statements are of 
 primary importance, others are of sec- 
 ondary importance, according to their 
 working power. "I believe in God the 
 Father," is of primary importance; 
 1 20
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 "I believe that Christ descended into 
 hell," is of secondary importance. 
 Upon one of these beliefs everything 
 depends ; it is a cardinal truth of reli- 
 gion. Upon the other, nothing de- 
 pends ; it is but a detail, true enough, 
 but of little daily value. The impor- 
 tance of knowing the meaning of the 
 world as it is set forth in the creed is 
 that we may live in accordance with 
 it. The creed is for the sake of char- 
 acter. 
 
 The church is the organization of the 
 religious life as the creed is the formu- 
 lation of religious truth. It is an asso- 
 ciation of Christians for the sake of 
 service : for service considered devo- 
 tionally, as we enter into the church 
 for the good of our souls ; and for 
 service considered socially, as we go 
 out of the church to undertake the 
 good of others. 
 
 But this double use of the word 
 "service" discloses the true purpose of 
 the church. The two aspects of reli- 
 gion, devotional and social, belong 
 together. Prayer and philanthropy are 
 two sides of the same good life. Wor- 
 
 121
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 ship and work are dependent the one 
 upon the other, like the steam and the 
 machine. They act and react. The 
 sermons and sacraments of the church 
 are privileges which carry responsi- 
 bilities with them, and enable men to 
 do the things for which they are 
 responsible. It is all eventually prac- 
 tical, like the creed. 
 
 The true test of a church is not the 
 glory of its buildings, nor the strength 
 of its organization, nor its wealth nor 
 -. numbers, but its actual result in char- 
 acter. Thus a parish is tested by the 
 conduct of the congregation, and an 
 individual by his ordinary behavior. 
 What does our religion do for us ? 
 What does our church mean as repre- 
 sented by us among our neighbors ? 
 What are the virtues which our loyal 
 churchmanship implies ? These ques- 
 tions are vital, and what they signify 
 is that the church, like the creed, is for 
 the sake of character. It exists to 
 make men good. 
 
 Accordingly, in Christ's description 
 of the Last Judgment, there is no 
 mention of either creed or church. 
 122
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 Men are estimated there by what they 
 are as the result of all the influences of ^ 
 their lives. One may say, "I kept the 
 faith ; I believed everything that was 
 set down in the creeds, every least bit 
 of it, and more beside." But the ,1 
 Lord will answer : "Very well, what 
 good did it do you ? How did it 
 appear in your common conduct ? 
 That excellent faith should have made 
 you honest, generous, considerate, fra- 
 ternal. Are you of that character as 
 the consequence of your creed ?" An- 
 other may say, "I was devoted to the 
 church; I entered unfailingly into all 
 its rites and customs, and partook of 
 all its sacraments ; I was baptized and 
 confirmed and came with uninterrupted 
 regularity to the Holy Communion ; 
 I was a good churchman all my life." 
 And the Lord will answer : "And were 
 you also a good Christian ? Did the 
 sacraments of the church inspire you 
 to self-sacrifice for the welfare of 
 others ? Were you more kind because 
 you went to church, more watchful of 
 opportunities to be of use, more re- 
 strained in your criticism of your 
 
 123
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 neighbors, more conscious of the con- 
 stant presence of God ?" 
 
 Neither orthodoxy nor churchman- 
 ship shall avail anything when the 
 Lord says, "I was anhungered, and 
 ye gave me no meat." They will 
 only aggravate the offence of our 
 omissions. "Why call ye me Lord, 
 Lord," He asks, "and do not the 
 things which I say?" It all comes 
 back to character. That is both su- 
 preme and essential. It is the real 
 thing. 
 
 The debate between faith and works 
 can never be decided by the formula 
 "either, or." They are both neces- 
 sary. The conflict between the epistles 
 of St. Paul and the epistles of St. 
 James is only on the surface. They 
 are both right. The existence of the 
 faith on which St. Paul insisted is 
 shown by the good works which, as St. 
 James said, are the fruit of it. And 
 the significance of the works 
 whether they are done for the glory 
 and love of God, or only for the praise 
 of man is measured by the faith 
 which lies behind. For faith, as the vital 
 124
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 part of works, is the spirit in which the 
 works are done. In the order of prog- 
 ress, faith passes into works, as the 
 seed passes into the life of the plant, 
 and is made evident by the plant, and 
 is for the sake of the plant. 
 
 Thus, in the transfiguration of Christ, 
 the vision came first and then the 
 task : first the revelation of the divine 
 presence and blessing, then the con- 
 veyance of the blessing to meet the 
 needs of men. The vision was for the 
 sake of the task. Thus, Jesus said, 
 "For their sakes I sanctify myself." 
 He enriched His own spirit, in order 
 that thereby He might be of larger 
 service to His disciples. It comes 
 again to the same thing, to the 
 requirement of character as the supreme 
 purpose of religion. 
 
 The question, What is essential in 
 Christianity ? is answered in two ways. 
 Some say that the essential is the teach- 
 ing of Christ ; some say that the essen- 
 tial is the person of Christ. Those 
 who emphasize the teaching quote the 
 first three gospels, the narrative gospels, 
 whose main interest is to tell us what 
 
 125
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF, RELIGION 
 
 Christ said and did. Those who em- 
 phasize the person quote the Fourth 
 Gospel, the interpretative gospel, whose 
 chief interest is to tell us what Christ 
 was, and is, and whose intention is 
 plainly stated in the words, "These 
 are written that ye might believe that 
 Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God." 
 
 Even so, the incarnation and the 
 atonement are for the saving of men's 
 souls. They are filled with moral 
 meanings. They are bound up with 
 conduct. Between these apparently 
 rival interests, on one side in the teach- 
 ing, on the other side in the person of 
 Christ, there is no exclusive decision 
 to be made. The teaching of Christ is 
 living, appealing, and convincing by 
 virtue of His personality behind it; 
 much of it had been taught before ; 
 what He did was to make it real by 
 speaking it and living it. And the 
 person of Christ is interpreted by the 
 teaching; the reverence which is 
 claimed for Him is based on the disclos- 
 ure of an ideal character. 
 
 When we ask, then, What does 
 Christ desire of men to-day ? What 
 126
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 does He desire, in whom God and man 
 meet, Who discloses the being of God 
 and the soul of man and the true rela- 
 tion of the one to the other ? What is 
 the supreme requirement of religion ? 
 the answer is in His own words, again 
 and again repeated. He desires that 
 we may do the will of God on earth as 
 it is in heaven. He did not come as a 
 sage, gathering men about Him that 
 He might reveal to them the mysteries 
 of the unseen. His errand was wholly 
 practical, altogether concerned with 
 conduct. He scandalized the strict 
 religionists of His time by His disre- 
 gard for things ecclesiastical. For such 
 things He cared nothing. It is char- 
 acteristic of Him that He ministered 
 not in Jerusalem, a place whose main 
 concern was centred in the temple, 
 but in Capernaum, a place whose main 
 concern was centred in the fish-market.^. 
 He found congenial followers, not among 
 the priests, but among the men of 
 business. The orthodox churchmen 
 instinctively hated Him. They per- 
 ceived truly that His success meant 
 their ruin. His ideals and purposes 
 
 127
 
 THE REQUIREMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 were altogether different from theirs. 
 He cared about conduct. He wanted 
 to make men honest, and pure, and 
 helpful, and thus to increase the happi- 
 ness of life. He was crucified by a 
 church which was intent on the advan- 
 tage of its own organization, and had 
 no care for the community. They 
 crucified Him because He insisted on 
 enforcing the importance of goodness. 
 He died in defence of the proposition 
 that true religion is essentially moral, 
 and that the supreme requirement of 
 religion is character. 
 
 128
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DEFINITION 
 OF CHARACTER
 
 THE CHRISTIAN DEFINITION 
 OF CHARACTER 
 
 HE assertion that the supreme 
 disclosure of God teaches that 
 character is the supreme re- 
 quirement of religion is not the 
 whole of the truth. As much was de- 
 clared before that disclosure was made. 
 The importance of righteousness is the 
 constant message of the Old Testament. 
 The great words, "What doth the Lord 
 require of thee but to do justly, and 
 love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
 thy God," are very ancient words. 
 They might have been inscribed over 
 the entrance into that temple whose 
 Holy of Holies enshrined the procla- 
 mation of the moral law. The prophets 
 were teachers of righteousness. The 
 heart of the Bible religion, long before 
 Christ came, was a good life. 
 
 When He came, He added something. 
 He brought a new note into conduct,
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 raised a new standard of behavior, 
 introduced a new definition of char- 
 acter. 
 
 This is evident in the criticisms 
 which He made upon the ethical ideals 
 of His time. When He told His dis- 
 ciples that except their righteousness 
 should exceed the righteousness of the 
 scribes and Pharisees they could not 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven, He 
 implied thereby not only that these 
 teachers were failing to observe their 
 own best principles, but that He had 
 new principles in mind. 
 
 And this is confirmed by the aston- 
 ishment with which they received His 
 ethical teaching in the Sermon on the 
 Mount. 
 
 One reason for their surprise was the 
 manner of His speech. "He taught 
 as one having authority, and not as 
 the scribes." He spoke, that is, with 
 a directness to which they were not 
 accustomed. His words had a new 
 tone of personal conviction, and were 
 enforced by the use of a new pronoun. 
 He said /. And this He said not only 
 as one who speaks naturally, after the 
 132
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 fashion of earnest conversation, say- 
 ing "I" as we all do when we talk one 
 with another, but as one who speaks 
 originally, declaring His own thought 
 in contrast with those who are only 
 quoting other people's thoughts. 
 "You have heard," He said, "what 
 the fathers have taught, you know what 
 was said by them of old time, but I 
 say unto you" something different 
 from that, and better. 
 
 This was the first reason for the 
 popular astonishment. The people 
 were accustomed to the manner of the 
 scribes. These men, as the name indi- 
 cates, were copyists. Their business ~ 
 was to write and rewrite not their own 
 ideas, nor their independent conclusions 
 or convictions, but the words of wise 
 men of former generations. They had 
 no intention to contribute anything to 
 the religion of their day. They had no 
 criticism upon the past in the light of 
 new experience, new reflection, new 
 instruction from God. They were con- 
 cerned only to repeat what they had 
 been taught, and to get their disciples 
 to repeat it accurately, in their turn. 

 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 Their teaching was all from the text- 
 book, at second hand, a series of quo- 
 tations. Their characteristic formula 
 was, "It is written." Thus when Jesus 
 came, speaking His own mind, declar- 
 ing His own position, differing with- 
 out hesitation from accepted doctrines, 
 quoting from nobody, proclaiming new 
 ideas, His hearers were astonished at 
 His teaching. Of course they were 
 astonished. In all their respectable 
 lives, they had never heard anybody 
 speak like that. 
 
 But there was another reason for 
 their surprise. They were amazed not 
 only at the manner, but at the matter 
 of His speech. They were astonished 
 at the things which He said. His 
 doctrine was not only new, but revolu- 
 tionary. The changes which He pro- 
 posed were not only, nor chiefly, in 
 the field of belief, but in the field of 
 conduct. A new creed may come to 
 the minds of men as a strange thing, 
 to be accepted or rejected, and they 
 may debate it eagerly, for and against, 
 but there is at first a certain remote- 
 ness and even unreality about it. Not 
 
 134 
 
 r**v
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 for a long time does it appeal to people 
 in general as related immediately to 
 their own lives. That is not so of a 
 new commandment. The creed may 
 seem of the nature of theory, but the 
 commandment brings matters out of 
 the world of thought into the world of 
 action. It is something to be done. 
 It demands decision. It calls for obedi- 
 ence or for disobedience. Christ pro- 
 claimed a new commandment, a new 
 ideal of conduct, a new test of the 
 excellence of life, a new definition of 
 character. 
 
 It is to the Sermon on the Mount 
 that we are to go to learn what this 
 new definition of character is. 
 
 The beginning of that sermon defines 
 character in terms of aspiration. Its 
 first words are the beatitudes of in- 
 completeness : blessed are the poor in 
 spirit, blessed are they that mourn, 
 blessed are they that hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness. 
 
 These words are intended to develop 
 the virtue of discontent. They praise 
 those who are discontented not so much 
 with their lot in life as with themselves. 
 
 135
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 It is only in the spirit of such discon- 
 tent that one desires to be different. 
 And that desire is the beginning of all 
 betterment. The people among whom 
 Jesus could do nothing were those 
 contented persons who had ceased to 
 be receptive because they had become 
 satisfied. At that point, they stopped 
 growing. St. Paul had the same expe- 
 rience at Athens. He failed in the 
 university city, as his Master had 
 failed in the cathedral town. The 
 people there were intellectually con- 
 tented ; they had stopped learning. 
 Blessed, says Christ, are they who 
 perceive their needs, and are aware 
 of their negligences and ignorances, 
 and desire to be better. 
 
 This quality of aspiration is made a 
 
 permanent part of the definition of 
 
 \y-' character by the exaltation of ideals. 
 
 Thus the beatitudes differ from the 
 commandments. The commandments 
 are negative : most of them begin with 
 the formula, "Thou shalt not." The 
 beatitudes are positive : "This do, 
 and thou shalt live." Both of these 
 ways of dealing with conduct are neces- 
 136
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 sary. We cannot get along with police- 
 men only, or with preachers only. 
 Some persons are amenable only to 
 prohibition, put in strong terms and 
 enforced by penalties. Others are per- 
 suaded by reason, by the plain presen- 
 tation of the thing that is right. But 
 these different people belong evidently 
 in different classes, and represent dif- 
 ferent stages of moral progress. Thus 
 childhood is a time for imperatives ; 
 the chief virtue is an unquestioning 
 obedience. The same rule holds with 
 uneducated and undeveloped races and 
 individuals. They must live under 
 regulation. They must be explicitly 
 directed. Thus the commandments 
 precede the beatitudes not only in the 
 order of time, but in the order of 
 progress. As men grow wiser and 
 better, they pass out of the stage of the 
 commandments into the stage of the 
 beatitudes. 
 
 The beatitudes are ideals. Even 
 if the formula, "Thou shalt not, " were 
 changed, and the decalogue was made 
 to command a series of positive virtues, 
 even then these rules would not be on 
 
 137
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 a moral equality with the beatitudes. 
 For the commandments, however 
 phrased, are laws ; and it is of the 
 nature of law to be effective from with- 
 out. It is imposed and enforced by 
 authority. The beatitudes are ideals. 
 They wait not for any authority, but 
 appeal to the honest and free desire 
 of the soul. 
 
 What we wish to do in school and 
 in the larger world of business and 
 society is to bring youth out of the 
 range of laws into the range of ideals. 
 The perfection of discipline and the 
 success of religion are attained when 
 such a state of mind is secured that the 
 right thing will be done simply because 
 it is right. All the people will then 
 desire that which the best people desire, 
 and will seek not to evade but to 
 enforce it, beginning with themselves. 
 Then the lawyers whose business it is 
 to find how much injustice a client 
 may commit without being in peril of 
 a prison will be without employment. 
 
 Character is defined in the com- 
 mandments as a goodness which con- 
 sists in obedience to the laws. But 
 138
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 this is an inferior goodness, not only 
 because it depends on the enforcement 
 of the laws, but because it extends 
 only to speech and action, not to , 
 thought and motive. Character is de- ' 
 fined in the beatitudes as a goodness 
 which consists in the endeavor to attain 
 ideals. It is independent of all laws ; 
 never asks, What does the law say ? 
 never asks, What must I do ? It is a 
 glad following of splendid examples. 
 It is a joyous exercise of high principles. 
 It is far removed from what is called 
 "eye-service," being in the constant 
 sight of God. St. Paul was always 
 talking about the bondage of the law, 
 and rebuking people for living under 
 the law. He did not wish them to 
 break the law. What he wanted was a 
 Christian goodness which is good with- 
 out formal obligation, from the sincere 
 desire of a good heart. 
 
 The courts and the churches repre- 
 sent these two kinds of appeal to the 
 consciences of men : the appeal of 
 authority, and the appeal of the ideal. 
 The mission of the church in the mak- 
 ing of character is to bring into the 
 
 139
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 hearts of people new desires, and to 
 help them to bring the new desires to 
 good effect. Thus at the heart of the 
 ethical teaching of the Christian reli- 
 gion is neither a commandment nor a 
 beatitude, but a Person in Whom all 
 the commandments and beatitudes 
 are realized, the sight of Whom gives 
 us our supreme ideal and encourages 
 us to follow it. To be like Him is the 
 complete definition of Christian char- 
 acter. 
 
 A study of the beatitudes dispels the 
 common illusion that they praise only 
 the passive virtues. The command- 
 ments, it is said, have in mind the 
 active life ; the beatitudes, the passive 
 - life. The inference is that the com- 
 / mandments ^are fitted for robust na- 
 tures, while the beatitudes have their 
 proper place in the lives of quiet people, 
 who are neither very prosperous nor 
 very well. But the beatitudes will 
 : not bear that construction. 
 
 It is true that they set forth ideals 
 which may be attained without physical 
 strength. They open the door of reli- 
 gion, and of eminent spiritual achieve- 
 140
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 ment, to women ; and are thereby the 
 expression of a notable difference be- 
 tween Christianity and most other 
 religions. Religion is commonly ac- 
 counted an affair for men. Only in 
 the Christian church are women made 
 welcome and received as equals. 
 
 It is true that the beatitudes set 
 forth ideals which may be attained 
 without material prosperity. The 
 blessing of God which is independent 
 of strength of arm is independent 
 also of weight of purse. Christianity 
 is a poor man's religion, and has had 
 a welcome for the poor, since the day 
 when its Founder came out of a car- 
 penter shop. 
 
 In both of these respects, the beati- 
 tudes present a new idea of greatness. 
 A most important factor in the life of 
 any people is their ideal of greatness, 
 because that is the goal which the youth 
 of the people will desire to attain. 
 They will surely direct their energies 
 that way. It is of mighty importance 
 what sort of standard of success is 
 commonly accepted. Is the supreme 
 hero the successful soldier ? Is he the 
 
 141
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 successful merchant ? Blessed is the 
 people whose chief hero is a saint, 
 whose eminence consists in character, 
 whose integrity, and courage, and 
 purity, and service, and self-sacrifice 
 are the glory of the nation. 
 
 But the saint, as he is depicted in the 
 beatitudes, is by no means a passive 
 person. The beatitudes are by no 
 means in praise of quiet virtues only, 
 belonging to the cloister and the 
 sheltered life. 
 
 Three times the Lord blesses dis- 
 content, the most revolutionary and 
 dynamic of the virtues : when He 
 praises the poor, the sad, and the 
 hungry, and promises that they shall 
 be satisfied presently. All revolt 
 against injustice, all social change, all 
 reformations, march under these sen- 
 tences. 
 
 Twice He blesses service. Blessed 
 are the merciful, who are engaged in 
 the abolition of pain. It means phy- 
 sicians, who are contending with disease, 
 and reformers, who are fighting the 
 battles of the weak against the selfish- 
 ness and cruelty of the strong. And 
 142
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 blessed are the peacemakers, who are 
 engaged in the abolition of hate. It 
 means lawyers, who are enlisted against 
 injustice, and statesmen, who are trying 
 to put an end to the belated barbarismj/v^ 
 of war, and to get the nations to settle 
 their differences like civilized citizens. 
 
 Once He blesses sincerity, when He 
 praises the pure in heart. These are 
 they who are without hypocrisy, and 
 who speak the truth. They are not 
 passive persons. Emerson said, "_He 
 who habitually speaks the truth will 
 find himself in situations sufficiently 
 dramatic." To be faithful to one's v 
 own convictions, to be loyal to one's 
 own ideals ; under difficulty, in the 
 midst of adverse circumstances, in a 
 minority, to speak the truth, every- 
 body in business, everybody in society, 
 knows by experience and most of us 
 by sad experience how hard that is. , 
 
 Once He blesses constancy, when 
 He praises those who are persecuted. 
 They would not be persecuted if they 
 were willing to submit. Passive per- 
 sons rarely feel the hand of persecution. 
 It is the constant, the unyielding, the 
 
 H3
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 people who persist and go on undaunted 
 and unchanged, who are persecuted. 
 The purpose of persecution is to make 
 men change their minds, or, at least, 
 to make them say that they have 
 changed their minds. The purpose of 
 persecution is to make men stop the 
 thing which they are doing. They 
 who are praised in the beatitudes 
 will not stop. They defy persecution. 
 
 Once, indeed, He blesses meekness. 
 And here, it seems, is a virtue which is 
 plainly passive. Is not meekness sy- 
 nonymous with passivity ? Does it not 
 consist in quietness, and silence, and 
 folded hands, and downcast eyes ? Is 
 it not a feminine grace, wholly different 
 from masculine strength ? Chaucer 
 has glorified it in the person of patient 
 Griselda, who suffers all manner of 
 domestic tyranny without retaliation 
 or reply, smiling the difficult smile 
 of duty. Does it not consist in the 
 prudent quality of having no opinion 
 of one's own ? 
 
 Not according to the examples of it 
 in the Bible ; where the meekest man 
 in the Old Testament is Moses, and 
 144
 
 THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER 
 
 the meekest man in the New Testament 
 is Jesus Christ. These examples com- 
 pel a new definition of meekness ; or, 
 rather, they send us back to the mean- 
 ing of the word which was in the minds 
 of the makers of the English Bible. 
 They made meekness synonymous with 
 unselfishness. It signified a subordi- 
 nation of self, indeed, but not in indo- 
 lence, still less in cowardice. The 
 meek man sought not his own advan- 
 tage, but, at the same time and in the 
 same spirit, he sought the good of his 
 neighbor or of the whole community of 
 neighbors. He asserted not his own 
 rights, but the common rights, and to 
 maintain them he contended mightily. 
 Thus Thomas Malory called Sir Laun- 
 celot the meekest of knights. The 
 adjective was too good for the hero, 
 but the use of it shows how naturally 
 it goes with fighting habits. The most 
 dangerous enemy of public wrong 
 is a meek man. When he appears, 
 dishonest politicians tremble. Asking 
 nothing for himself, he is invulnerable 
 to threats and bribes alike. His is 
 the most militant of virtues. 
 
 L 145
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 HE Christian definition of 
 character which is set forth 
 in the Sermon on the Mount 
 in terms of aspiration is fur- 
 ther declared in that disclosure in terms 
 of motive and in terms of service. 
 
 The presentation of character, not 
 as a matter of obligation, to be enjoined 
 in laws and enforced by courts, but as 
 a matter of aspiration, to be desired 
 and endeavored after, prepares the 
 way for the statement that the heart of 
 character is not an act, but a motive. 
 
 To inspire men to right living, in- 
 stead of compelling them, is to intro- 
 duce into ethics a new method ; but 
 to teach that obedience to the law con- 
 sists not in action only, but in motive, 
 is to introduce a new meaning. Char- 
 acter thus interpreted is a matter first 
 of being, then of doing. The initial 
 and essential part of it is what we are. / 
 
 149
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 Even what we desire to be, though we 
 fail to attain it, even that, as Brown- 
 ing says, counts to our good. The 
 necessary thing is the quality of life. 
 It may result in great achievement ; 
 it may result in failure. That depends, 
 in great part, on the circumstances. 
 Sometimes it is easy to be good, 
 in some surroundings, under restrain- 
 ing and assisting influences, some- 
 times it is tremendously difficult. In 
 the parable of the talents, the man 
 who made his five talents earn five, 
 and the man who made his two talents 
 earn two, are rewarded alike. They 
 get the same blessing, in the same 
 words. The man with the one talent 
 is reprobated not because he failed to 
 make it five or two, or even one, but 
 because he did not even try to make 
 it anything. The blame which was 
 visited upon him was not for lack of 
 gain, but for lack of character. 
 
 Accordingly, Jesus took the com- 
 mandments in which the obligations 
 of character are expressed, and gave 
 them a new and surprising interpre- 
 tation. 
 
 ISO
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 The law, "Thou shalt not kill," 
 forbids, He says, all unf raternal thought. 
 The murderer breaks it, but so does the 
 man who is angry with his brother. 
 He transgresses the commandment who 
 cries, "Thou fool," and curses his 
 brother and strikes him ; but so also 
 does he who only says, "Thou fool," 
 under his breath, and does not lift 
 his hand. The offence is in the spirit, 
 in the motive. 
 
 The law, "Thou shalt not commit 
 adultery," forbids, Christ says, all im- 
 pure desires. It lays its hand, indeed, 
 on the man who steals his neighbor's 
 wife, but also on the man who accom- 
 plishes that primitive kind of plunder 
 by the processes of law. He is divorced 
 by the courts, and she is divorced by 
 the courts, and thus they marry. It is 
 a longer method, but also a safer one, 
 than the old savage fashion of beating 
 the husband with a club and carrying 
 off the wife on horseback, but it is 
 essentially the same thing. It may 
 not involve a definite act of adultery ; 
 that may not precede, but follow, the 
 divorce. But that is only a detail.
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 And not only is he an adulterer who, 
 in any manner, however prudent, steals 
 his neighbor's wife, but he is also a 
 member of that unclean and poisonous 
 company who desires to do it, and would 
 if he dared, but dares not. He is a 
 coward as well as an adulterer. And 
 with him belong all readers of sensual 
 books, and all frequenters of sensual 
 plays, and all admirers of sensual 
 pictures, and all thinkers of sensual 
 thoughts ; no matter how decent they 
 appear. The rottenness is in the mind 
 and heart. It is in the motive. And 
 that determines the true quality of 
 character. 
 
 Nothing so searching and disconcert- 
 ing was ever said. 
 
 It is dimly illustrated by that recent 
 change in public opinion and in the 
 enforcement of the law, whereby men 
 were sent to prison for conducting 
 their business according to methods 
 which, up to that time, had been com- 
 monly considered proper. Anyhow, 
 proper or not, they were in common 
 use, and the fact constituted a general 
 standard by which they were permitted. 
 152
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 Excellent men were aghast to find 
 themselves suddenly exposed to execra- 
 tion. The scribes and Pharisees had 
 the same feeling. 
 
 The new definition of character ex- 
 posed the sins of the respectable. It 
 made ridiculous the men who said, 
 "All these commandments have I kept 
 from my youth up." According to this 
 emphasis on motive as the decisive 
 element in conduct, all men are sin- 
 ners, every one. The very saints are 
 sinners. 
 
 Indeed, one of the differences between 
 saints and sinners is that the saints 
 know that they are sinners, while the 
 sinners do not know, or do not care. It 
 is in religion as in philosophy. The 
 wise man, as Socrates contended, is he 
 who is aware of his own ignorance ; 
 the ignorant man is of the opinion that 
 he knows all that is worth knowing. 
 Socrates was put to death because he 
 made it his business to show that the 
 sages of Athens were not so wise as 
 they looked. Jesus was put to death 
 because He made it His business to 
 show that the saints of Jerusalem were 
 
 153
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 not so good as they seemed. The 
 effect of Christ's teaching was to change 
 the field of ethics from the street to the 
 heart. He disclosed a whole new series 
 of sins. A great company of eminently 
 respectable and self-satisfied persons 
 were declared to be under the con- 
 demnation of God. 
 
 This interpretation of the command- 
 ments was extended to the customs 
 which were characteristic of the current 
 religion. Christ took three of them, 
 almsgiving, prayer, and fasting, 
 and showed that not one of them has 
 any value in itself. One may keep 
 these customs, and all others, carefully 
 and diligently, and yet not be in any 
 true sense religious, or even righteous. 
 One may give alms and fast and pray 
 without being good. The combina- 
 tion has been effected innumerable 
 times. 
 
 The significance of these things de- 
 pends upon their motive. When alms 
 are given to the accompaniment of 
 trumpets, so that everybody may know 
 who gives, and how much ; when 
 prayers are said in public, on the 
 
 154
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 corners of the streets ; when they who 
 fast put on a sad face, and dress them- 
 selves in penitential clothes, the infer- 
 ence is that these devout acts are done 
 for popular effect, to attract attention, 
 and to gain applause. They get it, 
 Jesus said ; but that is all they get. 
 As for the favor of God, they made no 
 endeavor after that. He values the 
 words and deeds of men according to 
 their sincere intention. The principle, 
 "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
 he also reap," applies here as in all life. 
 The idea that one who sows the seeds 
 whose harvest is only the praise of men 
 may expect also the praise of God, is 
 like the idea that thistle seeds may 
 grow presently into grape-vines. They 
 are rewarded of God who seek for His 
 reward. 
 
 Give your alms in secret, Jesus said. 
 When you pray, go into your own room 
 and shut the door behind you. When 
 you fast, wash your face and be of a 
 cheerful countenance, and say nothing 
 about fasting. 
 
 It was in accordance with this per- 
 spective, whereby the quality and im-
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 portance of the act are determined by 
 the motive, and men are judged not 
 only by what they say and do, but by 
 what they are, that Jesus amazed His 
 contemporaries by His severity on the 
 one side toward those who were ac- 
 counted saints, and His kindness on 
 the other side toward those who were 
 accounted sinners. He was very con- 
 siderate of the sinners of the street, but 
 very hard upon the sinners of the 
 church. 
 
 This was in part because the church 
 sinners were so self-satisfied that only 
 the unexpected thrust of a hard word 
 would arouse them ; but also because 
 they were actually, in His judgment, 
 the worse of the two. There was some 
 hope for common sinners : often, they 
 knew their ill condition and were sorry 
 for it ; often, they had fallen into sin 
 under the impulse of some sudden, over- 
 mastering temptation. But the re- 
 spectable sinners were hypocrites. 
 Their serene faces, their good words, 
 their public charities, their devout 
 attendance at religious services, aggra- 
 vated their offences. The sight of 
 
 156
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 their superficial respectability filled the 
 soul of Jesus with indignation. 
 
 A man in the heat of passion kills 
 his neighbor ; another man in the cold- 
 ness of selfish calculation cuts down 
 his neighbor's wages, steals his busi- 
 ness, robs him, ruins him. They are 
 both of them murderers together ; but 
 the respectable, church-going murderer 
 gets the worse blame of God. The 
 man who sells liquor over the bar, 
 and sees with his own eyes the working 
 of the poison in the corruption of human 
 life, is bad enough ; but the esteemed 
 citizen who owns the business is worse, 
 according to the Christian definition. 
 Between the prostitute and the poli- 
 tician who profits by her trade, there 
 is no difference ; except that which 
 says to the prostitute, "Neither do I 
 condemn thee, go and sin no more"; 
 and to the politician, "Ye generation 
 of vipers, how shall ye escape the dam- 
 nation of hell." 
 
 The statement that the heart of 
 character is not an act, but a motive, 
 leads to a definition of motive in terms 
 of social service. 
 
 157
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 The great thing, indeed, is to please 
 not men, but God ; but God is pleased by 
 the service of humanity. Thus Christ 
 not only interpreted the old command- 
 ments in a new way, but He added a 
 new commandment. This command- 
 ment, as stated in the Golden Rule, 
 had been taught before. Confucius 
 had expressed it in a negative form, 
 advising his disciples not to do that 
 which they would not like to have 
 others do to them. The formula, 
 "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself," was a deduction from the 
 Jewish law. "Whatsoever ye would 
 that men should do to you, do ye even 
 so to them," was but another expres- 
 sion of it. 
 
 Even in theory, however, as Christ 
 said, the Jewish rule interpreted the 
 word "neighbor" as remotely differ- 
 ent from the word "enemy." "Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor," the men of 
 old time said, "but hate thine enemy." 
 The parable of the Good Samaritan 
 denned a neighbor as any one, of any 
 nation or condition, who is in need of 
 help. But the new teaching did not 
 158
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 stop there. "I say unto you, Love 
 your enemies." And this strong say- 
 ing was explained and applied in the 
 sentence which is called the new com- 
 mandment. "A new commandment 
 give I unto you, That ye love one 
 another, as I have loved you that ye 
 also love one another." In this sen- 
 tence, the Christian definition of char- 
 acter is completed. Character con- 
 sists in aspiration, whereby we desire 
 to be better; it consists in motive, 
 whereby all our goodness is estimated 
 according to its meaning in the sight 
 of Him who knows the heart of man ; 
 and aspiration and motive meet in 
 service, whereby we advance the king- 
 dom of heaven by increasing the 
 common stock of happiness, accord- 
 ing to the ideal set by Jesus Christ 
 Himself. 
 
 Thus, on the Day of Pentecost, at 
 the beginning of Christianity as an 
 organized religion, the apostles came 
 down out of the upper room into the 
 street. That was their immediate 
 impulse. In the upper room, the 
 pentecostal wind was blowing and the 
 
 159
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 pentecostal flames were blazing, but 
 the apostles could not stay. The place 
 was filled with benediction, and the 
 symbols of the wind and fire were assur- 
 ances of the divine presence ; but the 
 apostles were eager to share the bene- 
 diction with others, and, as for the 
 divine presence, they perceived that 
 that was to be found in the street also. 
 They betook themselves instinctively 
 to the work of social service. The 
 nearness of God impelled them to get 
 near to men. 
 
 The particular instructions of Jesus, 
 by which He applied the Sermon on 
 the Mount to social service, have been 
 criticised on the ground that they 
 cannot be obeyed. Nobody, it is said, 
 can do these things under the condi- 
 tions of human nature. And if they 
 could be done, the result would be 
 more harm than good. Thus the coun- 
 sel, "Give to him that asketh thee, 
 and from him that would borrow of 
 thee turn not thou away," would 
 destroy all efficient charity, make an 
 army of idle paupers, and put an end 
 to all reasonable financial business. 
 160
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION" 
 
 No wise man will give to all askers, 
 or lend to all borrowers. The same 
 holds true against the counsel, "Take 
 no thought for the morrow," though 
 here this explanation that the word 
 means "take no anxious thought" 
 mitigates a little the seeming abandon- 
 ment of prudence. So with the advice 
 to give our cloak to everybody who by 
 violence takes our coat, and to turn the 
 other cheek to him who strikes us, and, 
 in general, to love our enemies. 
 
 It may be said, in reply to these 
 criticisms, that Christ knew very well 
 that human nature would not be misled 
 by His strong words. He knew that 
 men would make for themselves all the 
 necessary abatements. He was setting 
 Himself, at the moment, against a 
 selfishness which is as old as time and 
 as universal as the race of man. He 
 was fighting it, and striking the blows 
 which belong to battles. The idea that 
 His words are to be read as if He were 
 quietly discussing the principles of a 
 utilitarian philosophy, is wholly remote 
 from the situation. His method was 
 to stir His hearers into attention by 
 M 161
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 putting His truth in such a way as to 
 amaze them. 
 
 Also, in a time when nobody was 
 making a written record and publishing 
 it, He got His words remembered. His 
 hearers could not forget what He said. 
 He was intent on the immediate effect. 
 At other times, He supplied some 
 needed counterbalance. 
 
 It is true that He told one man to 
 sell his goods and give the money to the 
 poor, but He gave no such advice to 
 other rich persons whom He knew. 
 The parable of the talents praises the 
 industry which succeeds in business. 
 It is true that St. Paul, when he was 
 struck on one cheek, and, instead of 
 turning the other, flamed out, "God 
 shall smite thee, thou whited wall," 
 immediately apologized ; but Jesus 
 Himself did not turn the other cheek ; 
 when He was struck, He said, "If I 
 have spoken evil, bear witness of the 
 evil, but if well, why smitest thou 
 me?" 
 
 Nevertheless, the words as they stand 
 in the Sermon express a certain self- 
 forgetting recklessness which is char- 
 162
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 acteristic of Christian heroism. How- 
 ever remote from the ordinary pursuit 
 of business and the common conduct 
 of life, they have supplied, and will 
 again supply, the watchwords of revolu- 
 tions and crises and great social move- 
 ments. It is in the spirit of the literal 
 words that martyrs and confessors 
 have behaved themselves. Francis of 
 Assisi, taking these counsels without 
 mitigation, changed the life of Europe. . 
 It illustrates their fighting value. 
 They may hang on the wall in times of 
 peace, and gather dust and rust, but 
 the times come when they must be 
 taken down and used. 
 
 Meanwhile, the social meaning of 
 Christianity is plain and constant. 
 It is true that God and one man are 
 enough for most religions, but that it 
 takes God and two men to make the 
 Christian religion possible. The dis- 
 tinctive Christian virtues are social 
 virtues. He who came not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister, is 
 against selfishness. He went about 
 doing good, for our example. He was 
 occupied, without rest, in the difficult 
 
 163
 
 THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION 
 
 endeavor to make men brotherly. The 
 true saint, as He both taught and prac- 
 tised, is not a solitary person saying 
 his prayers, but a strong and cheerful 
 and effective participant in the life of 
 society, occupied in good works. When 
 He described the Day of Judgment, 
 and thus set forth the essential quality 
 of acceptable living, He made the single 
 test of life to consist in social service. 
 They who are blessed of God have 
 served Him by serving their fellow-men. 
 They who have omitted such service 
 have no equivalent virtues or attain- 
 ments. They may not plead the excel- 
 lence of their private life, their honesty, 
 truth, purity, their individual merits. 
 These are admirable, but they are not 
 sufficient. The sole determining ques- 
 tion is, "What have you done for the 
 good of others ?" 
 
 164
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 'HE practice of religion, in- 
 terpreted in terms of aspira- 
 tion, of motive, and of 
 service, involves in detail a 
 certain relation to the world, the flesh, 
 and the devil. It implies, in the words 
 of an ancient formulary, a renunciation 
 of "the devil and all his works, the 
 pomps and vanity of this wicked world, 
 and all the sinful lusts of the flesh." 
 
 In the Old Testament, the man of 
 religion is commonly a man of the 
 world : of the world, in the good mean- 
 ing of the phrase. He is a leader of 
 men, and a founder of institutions, like 
 Moses. He is a soldier and a com- 
 mander of armies, like Joshua. He is 
 a king-maker, like Samuel ; or a king, 
 like Solomon. Sometimes, indeed, he 
 cries, with the writer of Ecclesiastes, 
 "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity"; 
 but this is in his old age, when he has 
 
 167
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 discovered the emptiness of a worldly 
 life by long and intimate experience. 
 
 It is true that some of the prophets 
 were enemies of the established order, 
 fomenters of revolution, like Elijah 
 and Elisha, suggesting the assassina- 
 tion of kings. They reviled the 
 church, like Amos. They stood among 
 the peasants, like Micah, and assailed 
 the wealth and luxury of cities. Others, 
 however, like Isaiah, were themselves 
 a part of the established order, gentle- 
 men and courtiers, men of religion, 
 but men of the world, also. 
 
 In the New Testament, the man of 
 religion is so separate from the world 
 that he accounts the world irreligious. 
 He has no share in politics, and takes 
 no interest in the affairs of government. 
 He is not in society. He has no money. 
 He finds it easy to recite beneath his 
 breath the malediction of St. James : 
 "Go to, ye rich men, weep and howl 
 for the miseries which shall come 
 upon you"; because he has no friends 
 who are included in that condemnation. 
 
 It is true that one of the apostles, 
 St. Matthew, held a government office ; 
 168
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 but he resigned it. Barnabas owned 
 property in Cyprus, but he sold it 
 and gave away the money. That, in- 
 deed, was a condition though not a 
 universal condition of discipleship. 
 Nicodemus was ready to be a disciple, 
 if he might continue to be a senator; 
 but Jesus would not receive him on 
 those terms. The difficulty, indeed, 
 was not so much about the senatorship, 
 as about the desire of Nicodemus to 
 keep his allegiance secret ; but the 
 requirement of complete loyalty to 
 Christ seemed to make other interests 
 impertinent and hostile. 
 
 The rich young ruler who said, 
 "What good thing shall I do that I 
 may have eternal life ? " was told to 
 sell all that he had and give to the poor. 
 This was an individual requirement, 
 prescribed for the conditions of a 
 particular case. There is no sign of 
 such a doctrine in the parable of the 
 talents. There the men are praised 
 who were diligent and successful in 
 their business. The words, "the mam- 
 mon of unrighteousness," seem to 
 refer to money, but this has its good 
 
 169
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 uses. It is only the love of money, 
 as is said later in the New Testament, 
 which is the root of all evil. 
 
 Nevertheless, behind these instances, 
 there was an insistence on a renuncia- 
 tion which seemed to include the good 
 with the bad. The world, in the New 
 Testament, seems to mean the ordinary 
 occupations and pleasures of men. 
 Whatever is not of religion, whatever 
 is not immediately connected with 
 prayer and praise, and with the con- 
 cerns of the soul, is of the world. St. 
 Paul's earliest epistles, to the Thessa- 
 lonians, were written to men who for 
 the sake of religion were giving up 
 their work. They were abandoning 
 the interests of this present life, and 
 looking up expectantly to heaven. St. 
 Paul gave them good advice, and sent 
 them back to their shops and markets ; 
 but the incident illustrates the ease 
 with which the early Christians sepa- 
 rated themselves from the duties of the 
 world. 
 
 The difference between the two 
 Testaments is probably due in part to 
 the increasing wickedness of the world. 
 170
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 The world of Solomon was bad 
 enough, but its evil was simple and 
 unsophisticated compared with the 
 world of Caesar. The opening chapter 
 of the Epistle to the Romans is so frank 
 in its disclosure of the corruption of the 
 Roman world that it is unfit to be read 
 in church. The doctrines of original 
 sin and total depravity were reasonable 
 inferences from the social situation. 
 The only right and safe procedure for 
 a Christian seemed to be to keep away 
 from the wicked world. 
 
 The different definitions of worldli- 
 ness in the two Testaments are due 
 also to a change in the political and 
 social condition. 
 
 The New Testament people had lost 
 their political independence, and their 
 political responsibility had perished 
 with it. They were in subjection. 
 They could do nothing. Had St. Paul 
 followed the example of Isaiah, we 
 should never have known of his exist- 
 ence. He would have died suddenly, 
 after his first speech. See how the 
 radical and revolutionary boldness with 
 which he confronted the contemporary 
 
 171
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 church passes into prudent compli- 
 ance when he confronts the contem- 
 porary state. "Honor the king!" he 
 says. The king at that moment being 
 Nero, the counsel was a difficult one to 
 follow; but it was necessary, in the 
 circumstances. One can hardly carry on 
 two successful revolutions at the same 
 time, and Paul, most wisely, addressed 
 himself to the revolution in religion. 
 
 It was evidently easy, however, to 
 confuse^ the good with the bad in the 
 condemnation of the world. The bad 
 world was rich ; riches, then, were 
 worldly possessions, and only poverty 
 was truly righteous. The bad world 
 amused itself in the theatre and the 
 amphitheatre ; and the things in which 
 it delighted in those places undeniably 
 affected the soul like a disease ; there- 
 fore all amusements were of the world 
 worldly. The bad world sat on all 
 thrones, administered all the laws, 
 collected all the taxes, and governed 
 the nations ; all that, then, was of the 
 world. 
 
 A third reason for the difference 
 between the Old Testament identifica- 
 172 
 
 i^i*^L *- 
 &-+M
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 tion with the world and the New Testa- 
 ment separation from the world was 
 the New Testament conviction that 
 the days of the world are numbered. 
 
 Not only was the world bad, and 
 not only did the badness of the world 
 taint all its interests and actions, but 
 the whole world, bad and good, and 
 all the innocent concerns of life, were 
 near their inevitable end. To-morrow 
 morning, when the cock crows, the 
 sound may loose the solid foundations 
 of the sky, and the stars may fall, and 
 the Son of Man may come. The sense 
 of emergency which pervades Christ's 
 doctrine of renunciation, calling men, 
 as in the crisis of a war, to leave all 
 and follow Him, became a dramatic 
 and universal fact in the light of this 
 expectation of the end of the world. 
 The ties which hold the ordinary life 
 together lose their importance at the 
 approach of such a culmination and 
 winding up of all human affairs. Some, 
 at least, of the counsels of the New 
 Testament are to be read as applicable 
 rather to such a situation than to the 
 common course of human life. 
 
 173
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 In the midst of these confused judg- 
 ments as to what is worldly and what 
 is not, and as to the limits of the renun- 
 ciation of the world, appears the great 
 figure of Jesus Christ. His precept is 
 contained in His desire for His disciples, 
 not that they may be taken out of the 
 world, but that they may be kept 
 from the evil of it. And this He con- 
 firms by His example. In a time when 
 the religious life was lived as by machin- 
 ery, in a complication and tangle of 
 regulation and prohibition, He lived 
 freely and naturally. He entered with 
 frank human pleasure into the fes- 
 tivities of the society about Him, till 
 His enemies called Him "a gluttonous 
 man and a wine-bibber." He associated 
 freely with all sorts of people, so that 
 He was called, in bitter criticism, 
 "a friend of publicans and sinners." 
 
 At the same time, being in the world, 
 He was not of it. By His association 
 with the rich and poor alike, and His 
 frank entrance into all sorts of society, 
 He asserted that worldliness is not 
 necessarily a matter of circumstances 
 or of occupation. It is not determined 
 
 174
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 by riches or by poverty. It is a state 
 of mind, a spiritual attitude, a certain 
 emphasis of interest, a valuation of 
 things. It consists, as St. John said, 
 in loving the world. When an excited 
 person announced to Emerson that 
 the world was coming to an end, 
 Emerson answered, "I can get along 
 very well without it." The worldly 
 person cannot get along without it. 
 His life is wholly concerned with mate- 
 rial and temporary matters. He is so 
 intent on social pleasure, so depend- 
 ent on the conveniences of the world, 
 so occupied with the amusements of 
 the world, that he loses all sense of the 
 serious aspects of living. Or he is so 
 taken up with the plans and transac- 
 tions of his business or his profession, 
 that his eyes are always on the ground, 
 and he loses consciousness of a vastly 
 larger side of life which is represented 
 by ideals, by conscience, by the .soul, 
 and by the presence of God. 
 
 The unworldly person does not sepa- 
 rate himself from either the business 
 or the pleasure of the world, but he 
 keeps all this in true perspective, 
 
 175
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 maintains the right proportions of im- 
 portance, and puts first things first. 
 His citizenship is here where he lives 
 and votes, but it is in heaven also ; 
 and the higher citizenship rules the 
 lower. He knows that the world passes 
 away, and the lust thereof, but he that 
 doeth the will of God abideth forever. 
 That is his purpose, by doing the divine 
 will to live the abiding life. 
 
 Whoever has this purpose, to whom 
 the will of God is the supreme and 
 determining consideration, has re- 
 nounced the world. No matter where 
 he is, nor what he does for a living, 
 nor how he spends his time, whether 
 he is rich or poor, in society or out of it, 
 he has escaped the corruption which is 
 in the world through lust. For lust 
 means the desire of the world, the satis- 
 faction of the senses, the adequacy of 
 things material. It means the love of 
 the world. They are unworldly who 
 set their affection on things above, not 
 on things on the earth, remembering 
 that that which is seen is temporal, but 
 that which is unseen is eternal. 
 
 As for the pleasures of the world, the 
 176
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 attitude of religious people has often 
 been curiously illustrated by the elder 
 brother in the parable of the Prodigal 
 Son. "As he came and drew nigh to 
 the house, he heard music and dancing, 
 and he was angry and would not go in." 
 It is a mighty serious world, they say, 
 with a great amount of sin in it, and 
 much sickness and pain and poverty; 
 and it ends, so far as the individual is 
 concerned, in certain death ; and after 
 death, the judgment. Little children 
 laugh and play because they are igno- 
 rant of the ills which beset our path ; 
 but they who have come to years of 
 discretion ought to know better. This 
 perilous planet, on whose uncertain 
 surface we live our brief lives, is not a 
 place for levity. Diversion, as the 
 word indicates, is that which diverts 
 us from the straight course of sober 
 thinking. But we ought not to allow 
 anything to divert us. Under con- 
 demnation for our sins, under sentence 
 of death, in imminent danger of hell, 
 we ought to consider our condition, 
 we ought to occupy our minds with 
 sober thoughts, and to conduct our 
 N 177
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 bodies in accord. "If any be merry, 
 let him sing psalms !" 
 
 This feeling is so strong that many 
 regard it as one of the universal and 
 eternal facts. It is so evidently a part 
 of our own history that it seems a 
 part of general history, true always 
 and everywhere. But this is not the 
 case. Of course, religion has always 
 been the opponent of vicious pleasures. 
 And there have been times, as for 
 example in the days when the church 
 was contending with the Roman Em- 
 pire, when all the pleasures of the world 
 seemed to be corrupt and corrupting. 
 But the alliance of religion with the 
 sobrieties of life alone, the dissocia- 
 tion of the church from the natural 
 joys of society, the clothing of the 
 saints in black and white, leaving all 
 the pleasant garments for the sinners, 
 this is a modern and local situation. 
 
 For instance, in the Middle Ages, 
 not only was the church the patron 
 of the theatre, but the performance 
 of plays proceeded under the church 
 roof. The Passion Play at Oberam- 
 mergau is a survival of a time when 
 178
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 religion was freely given dramatic ex- 
 pression. The mediaeval church was 
 the mistress of all the pleasant arts. 
 Music and painting were developed 
 under her approval. The fasts and 
 festivals of the Christian year, with 
 processions through the streets, and 
 manifold appeals to ear and eye, con- 
 tinually enriched the common life. 
 The church was a vital part of society, 
 entering into all human interests, the 
 condition and background of all living, 
 like the sky. And though, like the sky, 
 it was sometimes dull and gray, this 
 was not for long. It was varied and 
 bright and shining, and gave a celestial 
 color to the days. The bells were 
 always ringing in the steeples, and the 
 sound was a cheerful undertone be- 
 neath the noises of the street. The 
 mediaeval church may be criticised for 
 lack of moral strictness. It was too 
 easily contented. But it had the virtue 
 of adding immeasurably to the interest 
 and to the happiness of life. 
 
 Then, in Germany and England, 
 and so in this country, the Protestant 
 churches reacted from this situation. 
 
 179
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 Bringing a new moral earnestness into 
 religion, and a new ideal of conduct, 
 and a new sensitiveness of conscience, 
 they took the emphasis which had been 
 put on adoration, and put it on ad- 
 monition. The sermon displaced the 
 service. The ritual which, it must be 
 confessed, had ministered unhappily 
 to superstition, was dismissed in dis- 
 grace. The church, which had been 
 filled with light and color and incense 
 and music, was now designedly con- 
 structed to be as cold and bare as 
 possible. No appeal was made to the 
 senses. Religion was brought into the 
 pulpit on Sunday morning by the 
 preacher, and when he and the con- 
 gregation departed at noon on that 
 day, they took it along with them. 
 Not a vestige remained behind. To 
 most persons, the meeting-house be- 
 tween Sundays was the most dreary of 
 all dull places. They who went into 
 it, on some infrequent errand, shivered 
 even in the summer. 
 
 This change from church to meeting- 
 house was a symbol of a like change in 
 the relation of the church to society. 
 1 80
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 Religion became an isolated and sombre 
 fact. The church had been open all 
 day long, and people old and young 
 had gone freely in and out. The new 
 meeting-house was tight-shut, except at 
 hours of service, and children were 
 forbidden to play in the yard. The 
 function of religion was to forbid. It 
 spoke in prohibition. It interfered with 
 the pleasures, even the innocent pleas- 
 ures, of the world. Not content to do bat- 
 tle with the ancient and elemental sins, 
 it invented new ones, which it declared 
 to be as bad as the old. To go to the 
 theatre was a sin, no matter, whether 
 the play was bad or good ; to dance was 
 a sin, no matter under what conditions ; 
 a new definition of the proper observ- 
 ance of the Lord's Day presented to 
 the tender conscience the possibility 
 of a whole array of new transgressions. 
 However far these prohibitions were 
 wise and necessary, the effect was to 
 make the church appear as an austere 
 censor of the common life. The Puri- 
 tan minister who recorded in his diary 
 that his sermon at a wedding was, by 
 divine grace, the means of banishing 
 
 181
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 from the occasion all "carnal joy," 
 represented the situation in its most 
 unsympathetic aspect. As he came 
 and drew nigh to the house, he heard 
 music and dancing, and though he did 
 go in, thus far departing from the 
 example of the Elder Brother, all 
 the dancing and the music stopped 
 when he appeared. 
 
 The minister's text, that day, could 
 hardly have been taken from the ac- 
 count of the presence of Jesus at the 
 wedding in Cana. At that feast, Christ 
 made plain for all time that, to His 
 mind, the renunciation of the world 
 demands nothing artificial or unnatural, 
 signifies no inordinate solemnity of 
 conduct, makes no sombre Christians, 
 and sets no ban upon the pleasures of 
 the world other than that which is set 
 by any sense of the difference between 
 right and wrong. Being bidden to the 
 wedding feast, He went, and brought 
 His disciples with Him ; and His 
 contribution to the festivity increased 
 rather than diminished that carnal joy 
 which the hard-featured preacher did 
 his best to banish. 
 182
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 The truth is that the pleasures are as 
 essential as the virtues, and are vitally 
 related to them. It is necessary not 
 only that children should be taught to 
 read and write, but that they should 
 have opportunity to play. It is a 
 satisfaction of instincts which are a 
 divine part of human nature. The 
 child who has no chance to play is 
 hurt both in body and in soul. The 
 Playground Association is engaged in 
 the service of religion. Religious 
 people may be of several minds as to 
 the pleasures of the world, conven- 
 tionally defined, but there is only one 
 right mind regarding the need of pleas- 
 ure for the children. The effective 
 bringing forward of the kingdom of 
 God, which is the mission of the church, 
 begins when good people increase the 
 happiness of youth. The newer parish 
 houses have playgrounds on their roofs ; 
 as if, with uplifted hands, they presented 
 to heaven as their offering and sacrifice 
 and sacramental gift, this sight of the 
 glad faces of playing children. 
 
 As for the theatre, the matter is 
 quite different. The theatre appeals, 
 
 183
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 indeed, to a universal instinct, and that 
 fact secures it against any attempt 
 on the part of good citizens to abolish 
 it. There it is, and there it will 
 remain, and grow. But the theatre 
 is an increasing menace to common 
 morals. It presents a false idea of 
 life, gradually breaks the barriers which 
 guard the refinements and sanctities 
 of the mind, makes a jest of the 
 family, upon whose soundness all our 
 social institutions rest, and develops 
 that lust of the flesh and lust of the 
 eyes which constitute worldliness as 
 the open enemy of righteous living. 
 Such is the condition of the stage that 
 no prudent parents may permit their 
 children to see plays concerning which 
 they have not carefully informed them- 
 selves beforehand. 
 
 At the same time, the recent history 
 of the theatre is notable for the appear- 
 ance of plays which one can hardly see 
 without being helped and bettered by 
 the experience. Not only are the great 
 classic dramas kept upon the stage, 
 but new and original productions show 
 a desire on the part of writers and 
 184
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 managers and actors to restore the 
 theatre to its true place in the life of 
 the community. The dramatic ser- 
 mon of "Everyman" has been followed 
 by a series, short, indeed, but signifi- 
 cant, of plays of high purpose. To 
 neglect the performance of such plays 
 is to miss a religious opportunity to 
 share in the improvement of the 
 theatre. And the improvement of the 
 theatre means a lifting of the ideals of 
 multitudes of people. It is a kind of 
 church extension. It is a preaching 
 of religion to great numbers of per- 
 sons who are not accustomed to hear 
 it preached in any other way. 
 
 The substantial reformation of the 
 theatre is assisted not by those who 
 abuse the stage without seeing it, but 
 by those who go to the theatre, and 
 whose absence when the play is bad is 
 a disapproval which is noticed and felt. 
 
 The same is true of the betterment 
 of society. Society must be reformed 
 from within. The part of it which 
 needs to change its ways will pay no 
 heed to the distant voice of preachers, 
 and will care nothing for the good 
 
 185
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 opinion of the good people who, with 
 all their excellences, are not in society. 
 All their efforts are ineffective. Such 
 changes as should be made in the cus- 
 toms of social life wait for the precept, 
 and, still more, for the example, of 
 Christian men and women for whom 
 society cares much, who are in it 
 by virtue of birth, or wealth, or better 
 reasons, and are esteemed by it. It is 
 the people who amount to something 
 socially who decide how society shall 
 keep Sunday, and whether it shall 
 gamble or not. If Christian people of 
 social position were to stay out of 
 society, they would abandon their most 
 important mission. Being in society, 
 their opportunity opens before them 
 daily. 
 
 It is to be remembered that there is 
 a passive goodness which is in great 
 peril of the contagion of evil. The 
 passive persons catch disease. Not 
 the doctor, not the nurse, who are 
 made in a great degree immune by the 
 fact of their active and aggressive 
 attitude. They are fighting the dis- 
 ease, and the disease is in retreat. 
 186
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 The passive, nervous persons, who 
 are apprehensively conscious of the 
 contagion, and are troubled for their 
 own safety, catch the disease. And 
 the same holds true socially. 
 
 They are in no great peril from the 
 pleasures of the world who are engaged 
 in a plain, definite contention with 
 the evil of the world. Theirs is an 
 aggressive goodness. They delight in 
 all true happiness ; they are merry and 
 joyful, like the saints in the Old Testa- 
 ment ; they are cheerful companions ; 
 they enjoy the world. But they hate 
 the devil ; and all their acquaintances 
 know it. When temptation comes, 
 when a sudden social alternative be- 
 tween right and wrong demands reply, 
 when they must reveal themselves, 
 they are assisted to say No by a con- 
 sciousness that that is what everybody 
 expects them to say. 
 
 These people are Christians in so- 
 ciety. They save themselves and their 
 neighbors. They keep the social cur- 
 rent strong and clear, a river of refresh- 
 ment and delight. And they have a 
 thousand times more influence over 
 
 187 
 
 ^0 jT***""*' t*s^<t +* & 1^p*a~f ^f- ^._-i3 
 
 "
 
 RELIGION AND THE WORLD 
 
 prodigal sons than any of the elder 
 brothers, or elder sisters, who, when 
 they draw nigh the house and hear 
 music and dancing, are angry and will 
 not go in. 
 
 188
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 ji]HE practice of religion is con- 
 cerned not only with the world, 
 but with the flesh. 
 
 The doctrine of the bad 
 world was supported and confirmed by 
 a doctrine of the bad flesh. While one 
 of these doctrines, however, rested on 
 observation, the other rested on phi- 
 losophy. The world was bad in fact, 
 as every wise observer knew, but there 
 were some redeeming virtues ; it was not 
 wholly given to evil. Indeed, as Chris- 
 tian thought about the matter became 
 more clear, it was perceived that the 
 world is not only the subject of redemp- 
 tion, but is capable of being redeemed. 
 The business of the Christian is to 
 make the bad world better. 
 
 But philosophy is a much more 
 thoroughgoing process than experience, 
 more positive and radical. It is less 
 likely to be interrupted by inconsistent 
 
 191
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 facts. The relation of religion to the 
 flesh, being affected by a system of 
 ancient philosophy, was accordingly 
 much more hostile than the relation of 
 religion to the world. It was a war of 
 extermination. 
 
 The philosophy which played so 
 vigorous a part in this field of ethics 
 came out of the East, where the facts 
 of life were explained by a doctrine of 
 dualism. The opposing phenomena of 
 light and darkness, and of good and 
 evil, were attributed to two gods. 
 The universe is filled with the warfare 
 of these gods. They fight about us, 
 and within us. The good god is in- 
 trenched in the soul, the bad god in the 
 body. Matter, of which the body is 
 r composed, is inherently evil. 
 
 This law of sin which affects us as 
 constantly as the law of gravitation, and 
 is quite as mysterious, whence is it de- 
 rived ? Where does it get its malign in- 
 fluence over us ? This philosophy an- 
 swered, "From the body." The origin 
 of evil is in the substance of matter. 
 Made of matter, fashioned out of the 
 dust of the earth, the body is the resi- 
 192
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 dence of all the malign forces. That 
 is what the Oriental teachers said. 
 
 This theory of the body as the source 
 of all evil came gradually into some 
 such place in the common thought of 
 those days as is now taken by the idea 
 of evolution. It was in the air. ,The 
 church opposed it ; it was condemned 
 as heresy. Now as Manichseism, now 
 as Gnosticism, now as Neoplatonism, 
 the fathers fought it. Their efforts, 
 however, were as ineffective as an 
 endeavor to keep back the tide. The 
 heresy became orthodox. The counsels 
 of Christ concerning the body, where 
 He advised the plucking out of offend- 
 ing eyes and the cutting off of offend- 
 ing hands, seemed to confirm the 
 current thought. So did St. Paul's 
 words, about keeping the body under, 
 and about the strife between the spirit 
 and the flesh. These teachings seemed 
 to mean what the Oriental philosophy 
 implied. The body is evil ; all sin 
 comes from that source; and the 
 reasonable thing to do is to set our 
 attack in that direction. We may 
 expect to defeat the devil by weaken- 
 o 193
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 ing and assailing and otherwise master- 
 ing the fortress in which he is in- 
 trenched, the body. 
 
 The story of the renunciation of the 
 flesh, whereby this doctrine of the evil 
 of the body was applied to human life, 
 is a pitiful chapter in the history of 
 man. It is a record of starvation and 
 torture, of pain of body and distress 
 of soul. Duties are forsaken, hearts 
 are broken, all the tender ties of life 
 are severed, in this fierce passion to 
 attain ideal holiness by hurting and 
 maiming and gradually destroying the 
 body. St. Simeon Stylites on his tall 
 pillar, 
 
 "Thrice ten years, 
 
 Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs, 
 In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold, 
 In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and 
 
 cramps, 
 A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud," 
 
 bowing there in prayer, somebody 
 counted twelve hundred times, and 
 left off counting, while the saint went 
 on bowing, what a pitiful caricature 
 he is of the religion of Christ, but what 
 an admirable symbol of the renuncia- 
 194
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 tion of the flesh ! He is the master of 
 all the agonizing saints, the chief 
 apostle of the ascetic life. 
 
 The spectacle of these men, making 
 themselves miserable for the salvation 
 of their souls, becomes not only pitiful 
 but tragic when we perceive that they 
 did not, after all, attain their pious 
 purpose. 
 
 The sufferings of the man who by 
 virtue of his painful efforts gains his 
 end, makes his great discovery, wins 
 his hard battles, are glorified by the 
 result. We see that they were worth 
 while. But most of these men failed. 
 Withdrawing from the world, and 
 thinking thereby to escape the temp- 
 tations of the world, they carried the 
 world's temptations with them. St. 
 Jerome confessed that the solicitations 
 of the flesh assailed him in the soli- 
 tude of the desert with more fierceness 
 than in the pagan society which he had 
 abandoned. And all his natural infirm- 
 ities of temper were increased by his 
 austerities. 
 
 The monks of the deserts of Egypt 
 and of the mountains of Cappadocia 
 
 195
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 came out to take their part in the delib- 
 erations of church councils. They 
 came from their days and nights of 
 prayer and fasting, from their commun- 
 ion with God, from their renunciation 
 of the flesh ; and they showed how 
 much it had all availed for the clearing 
 of their spiritual sight and for the 
 betterment of their souls. It had 
 availed nothing. They were a horde 
 of unclean, ignorant, and superstitious 
 fanatics, worse than savages, whose 
 only arguments were clubs and curses. 
 And on its milder side, in quiet 
 monasteries, where the fierce austerities 
 of the desert were kept under wise 
 restraint, still the sermons on the eight 
 sins of the monks show that all the 
 common sins were present as in the 
 outer world. Indeed, asceticism added 
 a new sin, on which all the monastic 
 teachers found it necessary to preach, 
 the sin accedia, which means indif- 
 ference. The renunciation of the flesh 
 produced the sin of indifference, a 
 sheer weariness of spirit, wherein all 
 life and all religion seemed but vanity 
 and dull vexation. 
 196
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 This failure of the effort to subdue 
 the body to the purposes of the soul 
 was the result of two causes. 
 
 The renunciation of the flesh failed 
 to produce the desired spiritual results 
 because it was in defiance of the will 
 of God. 
 
 There is a revelation of God in the 
 world and in ourselves. Our posses- 
 sion of a body is in itself a revelation 
 of the will of God. Thus He has made 
 us, because thus He would have us be. 
 He has placed us in a world of sight 
 and sound, of taste and feeling, and 
 has given us senses to enjoy it all, 
 because He desires us to enjoy it. 
 The response to this revelation is not 
 asceticism. That is a contradiction 
 of the obvious meaning of the world. 
 The grazing monks, who ate grass like 
 the oxen, declared thereby that man 
 at his best ought to live like an ox; 
 but they reduced their whole ideal to 
 absurdity. We are not to be ashamed, 
 like some ancient philosophers, that 
 we dwell in bodies. We are divinely 
 made that way. Our part is to keep 
 our nature open and sensitive and 
 
 197
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 responsive to all the gracious influ- 
 ences of physical life. 
 
 Also, the renunciation of the flesh 
 failed to attain its spiritual purpose 
 because it was in disregard of the 
 nature of man. 
 
 It tried to effect the betterment of 
 man by negation, by putting out the 
 evil. The parable of the swept and 
 garnished chamber shows the working 
 of that plan. The chamber is swept 
 and garnished, clean and adorned ; but 
 it is empty, and its emptiness invites 
 the return of its former tenants, and 
 more and worse than before. The effect 
 of renunciation is to empty the soul ; but 
 if the betterment stops there, in comes 
 the devil, and seven other devils with 
 him. The thing to do is to bring in good 
 guests. That is essential. The true 
 formula of effective improvement is, 
 "The expulsive influence of the good." 
 
 The people who devoted themselves 
 to the renunciation of the flesh found 
 that they thought more about the flesh 
 than about anything else. They could 
 not help it. They aggravated all that 
 side of life. The true way to renounce 
 198
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 the flesh is to emphasize the spirit. 
 The law of sin which we find in our 
 members is escaped by obeying, more 
 and more diligently, the law of God. 
 
 The right renunciation of the flesh is 
 assisted by remembering certain truths 
 about our bodies. The body is the 
 dwelling of the spirit. It is to be 
 kept fit for the soul to live in. We 
 have got to live in our bodies : that 
 is the unescapable fact. If they are 
 enfeebled by indolence, if they are 
 injured by neglect, if they are hurt 
 by appetite, if they are poisoned by 
 sin, we have got to live in them, just 
 as we have made them. We are build- 
 ing day by day the house of the body, 
 and are daily determining what sort 
 of house it is, and are occupying it 
 under advantages or disadvantages 
 which we ourselves have in great 
 measure determined. 
 
 There is still an idea prevalent among 
 youth that the laws of religion and of 
 society concerning sins of the flesh are 
 only the arbitrary and unreasonable 
 regulations of elderly and cold-blooded 
 persons, and that the only serious 
 
 199
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 consequence of breaking them is a loss 
 of the esteem of those whose esteem is 
 not of any great value. There are 
 penalties attached to them, but the 
 cleverness of youth may conceal the 
 offences and escape the consequences. 
 Science, however, has come now to 
 reenforce the warnings of religion and 
 of society. A study of the facts of 
 mind and body shows that the punish- 
 ment of the sins of the flesh waits for 
 no discovery of the offender, and for 
 no verdict ecclesiastical or social. It 
 proceeds with the unerring and im- 
 partial promptness of fire. Lust and 
 appetite poison body and soul, as fire 
 burns. No sin of the flesh leaves the 
 transgressor where he was before ; he 
 has injured himself. 
 
 The worship of the old gods, Bacchus 
 and Venus, is still maintained. If 
 anybody desires to ascertain how it 
 felt in the old days to be persecuted 
 by the votaries of pagan religions, he 
 has only to attack the priests and 
 pontiffs of these shrines in his own 
 town. He will find out, speedily and 
 sharply. The gods are worshipped 
 200
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 with human sacrifices. They put their 
 victims to slow torture. And, as in the 
 former times, they disguise their pur- 
 poses by the glamour of manifold attrac- 
 tions. The supply of victims is a 
 profitable business. That is why an 
 interference with it is so tragically 
 resented. 
 
 The body is the temple of the Holy 
 Spirit, and is to be kept sacred like a 
 shrine. We guard a holy fire, upon an 
 altar consecrated to the God of health 
 and purity. The body is our living 
 sacrifice which we are to give to God, 
 sound, holy, and as He made it. The 
 body is our means for accomplishing the 
 work >of the world. It is to be kept 
 fit for use. 
 
 It is no sin to be comfortable, but 
 if we get to depend on comforts so that 
 we cannot be comfortable without 
 them, we are venturing into the per- 
 ilous neighborhood of sin. It is no 
 sin to consider what we eat, and what 
 we drink, and what we wear. Christ's 
 admonition refers to nervous care about 
 these things. But to be chiefly inter- 
 ested in clothes and food, to be more 
 
 20 1
 
 RELIGION _AND THE FLESH 
 
 concerned about these provisions for 
 the body than about the difference 
 between right and wrong, to be more 
 attentive to fashion than to conscience, 
 to think with lively satisfaction of our 
 pleasant meals, and not to think at 
 all of that which nourishes the soul 
 this is to have what St. Paul calls a 
 "carnal mind." And the carnal mind, 
 he says, is enmity with God. It is 
 opposed to God's supreme purposes for 
 our life. The result of living in accord- 
 ance with it is that human beings live 
 like animals. 
 
 The carnal mind is not of necessity a 
 vicious mind, though it opens us to 
 temptation on that side. It is a mind 
 which is satisfied with the gratifica- 
 tion of the flesh. It is contented with 
 that which appeals to the senses. The 
 criticism of the wise upon it is not only 
 that it dwells in the lower levels of life, 
 next to the animals, but that it rests 
 the great treasure of happiness upon 
 insecure foundations. The pleasures of 
 the flesh depend on the unstable senses, 
 any one of which may at any moment 
 be transformed into a source of pain. 
 
 202
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 What we desire is such a relation to 
 the body that our happiness, our expec- 
 tation, and our true life are independent 
 of it. Thus far, we would renounce it. 
 Thus far, we would cast it from us. 
 The true renunciation of the body is 
 the exaltation of the spirit. When St. 
 Paul said, "I keep under my body," 
 he expressed only a half of the truth. 
 He kept his body under by keeping up 
 his soul. He delighted in the law of 
 God. Meditating in it day and night, 
 there was no place in his mind for 
 petty or unworthy thoughts. Busy 
 continually with the endeavor to attain 
 his high ideals, to serve his generation, 
 to do the constant deeds of ministry 
 which he desired to do, he had no time 
 for any of the baser part of life. 
 
 This is the true prescription for keep- 
 ing the right relation between the body 
 and the soul. The most wholesome 
 exercise in which one can engage is 
 social service. Sir Philip Sidney's fine 
 counsel, "Whenever you hear of a 
 good war, go to it," may well be applied 
 to the present contention against the 
 public enemies who are using the senses 
 
 203
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 for their own gain. That which makes 
 their fortune destroys the happiness of 
 those by whom they make it. It is 
 their deliberate business to stimulate 
 the appetites which result in immo- 
 rality and intoxication. They intend 
 not only to minister to these elemental 
 instincts, but to increase them for the 
 increase of their own gain. The fact 
 that the process means shame and 
 torture of the bodies and souls of their 
 neighbors does not deter them. They 
 are organized to make money out of 
 the sins of the flesh. 
 
 Against this sort of organization 
 must be opposed the strength of coun- 
 ter-organization. No amount of senti- 
 ment, of pity, or of indignation will 
 of itself avail anything. It is like 
 opposing an invading army with peti- 
 tions and entreaties and menaces from 
 the side of the road. The only effec- 
 tive force against generalship is general- 
 ship. Combination must be fought 
 with combination. The hope against 
 these devourers of men and women 
 and children is in the societies which 
 are arraying good people against them. 
 204
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 Every citizen who would do more than 
 bemoan the sins of the flesh must give 
 his time or his money to this kind of 
 effort. On one side is the purpose to 
 make money, no matter what it costs in 
 human misery ; on the other side is a 
 Christian determination that all men 
 and all women, however poor, shall 
 have the right and the opportunity to 
 possess their bodies in soberness and 
 chastity. 
 
 The providing of public recreation, 
 the building of baths, the opening of 
 libraries and picture-galleries and con- 
 servatories, the free privilege of music, 
 the widening of open spaces, the direc- 
 tion of games and exercise, all this 
 is a contribution to the campaign 
 against the vices which are assisted 
 by sluggishness of body and lack of 
 better interest. The problem of rent, 
 the problem of hours, the problem of 
 wages, are all concerned in this matter, 
 and call for the attention of religion. 
 The connection between drunkenness 
 and the conditions of work in mills, 
 and between prostitution and the 
 wages of women, is such as to 
 
 205
 
 RELIGION AND THE FLESH 
 
 make it idle and impertinent for the 
 men who own these industries to give 
 liberally to societies which deal with 
 these evils, while at the same time they 
 maintain the situation out of which 
 the evils come. It is like endowing 
 hospitals for the care of typhoid fever 
 patients, and paying no attention to 
 the supply of water. The initial con- 
 sideration in all Christian business is 
 the value of human life and character. 
 As for our own selves, all care of the 
 body, like all enrichment of the mind, 
 is our approach to that divine ideal 
 which is declared in human nature. 
 We are, indeed, to renounce whatever 
 dulls our senses, masters our strength, 
 enfeebles our frame, and makes us 
 unresponsive to the manifold appeals 
 of the world about us. But we are to 
 make that renunciation complete by 
 the consecration of the body, sound 
 and strong, to the supreme purposes of 
 the soul. Whatsoever things are true, 
 and fine, and lovely, and uplifting, 
 these are to engage our senses ; to 
 these we are to give our thoughts. 
 
 206
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 HE attainment of character, 
 which is the supreme require 
 ment of religion, implies not 
 only a renunciation of the 
 world and of the flesh, but also of the 
 devil. Not the devil of theology, who 
 is the embodiment of the mystery of 
 evil ; but the devil of ethics, who is a 
 convenient symbol of the wickedness 
 of the world. 
 
 It is a curious fact that in the Pas- 
 toral Epistles very earnest warnings 
 against the devil are addressed to 
 bishops. 
 
 The warnings stand at the end of a 
 list of 'virtues and vices which are par- 
 ticularly commended to the attention 
 of bishops. A bishop must be vigilant, 
 sober, and of good behavior ; he must 
 be of a temperate habit and of a peace- 
 able disposition, a patient person, of a 
 grave demeanor. Twice he is warned 
 p 209
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 against the love of money : he must 
 not be greedy of filthy lucre, he must 
 not be covetous. Twice he is warned 
 against the temptations of a hasty 
 temper; he must be no striker and no 
 brawler. These admonitions against 
 violence remind us of the turbulent 
 times in which the words were written, 
 when there was persecution without and 
 controversy within, and earnest men 
 were inclined to enforce their argu- 
 ments by using the minor premiss of 
 the fist and the major premiss of the 
 club. St. Paul never forgot how he 
 had himself assisted in the stoning of 
 Stephen. 
 
 It is by no means certain that the 
 bishops who are here addressed held 
 such an office as the name suggests to 
 us. This, however, is of no immediate 
 concern. They who are thus had in 
 mind are the leading Christians of the 
 place. They are esteemed by their 
 brethren as good examples. They are 
 the best people, the most earnest, 
 the most devout, the most interested 
 in the affairs of the church. 
 
 These are the people who are warned 
 210
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 with solemn repetition to be on their 
 guard against the devil. 
 
 The fact suggests a distinction be- 
 tween the temptations which may be 
 labelled "of the devil" and those 
 which may be labelled "of the world" 
 and "of the flesh." The temptations 
 of the world lead to offences which 
 may be described as the sins of society. 
 The temptations of the flesh lead to the 
 sins of the body. But the temptations 
 of the devil lead to what may be called 
 the sins of the spirit. One may be 
 innocent of the transgressions of the 
 world and of the flesh, and yet be under 
 the dominion of the devil. Such a 
 person is apt to be very religious. 
 Such a sin is one of the maladies which 
 attack the spiritual life. 
 
 Thus the eminently religious persons 
 by whom Jesus was rejected and per- 
 secuted and at last crucified were not 
 addicted to the sins of the world. They 
 kept themselves apart from the world. 
 Some of the members of their guild 
 were called "bleeding Pharisees," be- 
 cause they went about with eyes blind- 
 folded, that they might not even see the 
 
 211
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 world, and were always bruising them- 
 selves on sharp corners, in consequence. 
 And all of them were grave and serious 
 churchmen, whom nobody suspected 
 of frivolity. Neither were they ad- 
 dicted to the sins of the flesh. They 
 fasted twice in the week, and kept the 
 moral law with anxious care. The 
 trouble with the scribes and Pharisees 
 was that they committed the sins which 
 are connected with the devil. 
 
 It is characteristic of these sins that 
 they are very respectable. The sinner 
 .-"' is not made obnoxious to the police. 
 One may commit such offences every 
 day, like the Pharisees, and yet keep 
 - the esteem of the community. They 
 are sins of motive : so that while we 
 seem to be living aright because of 
 conscience, and the fear and love of 
 God, we are really living aright because 
 that is the conventional, or convenient, 
 or prudent thing to do. Or they are 
 sins of thought : so that while our 
 actions and words are excellent, our 
 hearts behind them are rilled with envy, 
 hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. 
 Thus Jesus called the Pharisees hypo- 
 
 212
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 crites. "Ye outwardly appear right- 
 eous unto men," He said, "but within 
 ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." 
 
 The arraignment of the Pharisees, 
 which astonished the listening people, 
 who held them in high respect, probably 
 astonished the Pharisees themselves. 
 For one of the snares of the devil is 
 to persuade men that respectability is 
 righteousness. And another snare of 
 the devil is to persuade men that vices 
 are virtues. 
 
 It is a doctrine of the devil that 
 respectability is equivalent to right- 
 eousness. 
 
 The doctrine is one of easy and popu- 
 lar acceptance. The young man in the 
 Gospel who said of the commandments, 
 "All these have I kept from my youth 
 up," was under the influence of it. 
 His satisfaction was suggested by the 
 devil. The precise iniquity which kept 
 back the Pharisees from a knowledge 
 of the truth concerning Jesus and con- 
 cerning themselves, and made them the 
 enemies of God when they thought they 
 were His friends, was the conviction 
 that they were good enough already. 
 
 213
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 The New Testament teaches the 
 possibility of the damnation of the 
 respectable. The rich man in the para- 
 ble, who awoke in the other world in 
 torment, was a most respectable citizen. 
 He lived in one of the handsomest 
 houses of the town, and his gracious 
 hospitality enriched the social life of 
 the neighborhood. The priest and the 
 Levite who saw a wounded man on the 
 Jericho road, and prudently passed by 
 on the other side, were on their way 
 to church. On they went, without a 
 qualm of conscience, and presently, in 
 the devotions of the service, they 
 thanked God for a safe journey. The 
 Pharisee who said, "Lord, I thank thee 
 that I am not as other men are," told 
 the truth. He was not as many other 
 men. He was no extortioner; he was 
 no adulterer. He attended divine ser- 
 vice with unfailing regularity and made 
 his proper contribution to the support 
 of the institutions of religion. 
 
 There is a long procession of these 
 
 people through the chapters of the 
 
 Gospels, a long and pious procession. 
 
 They pass by with hands folded, pray- 
 
 214
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 ing or singing as they go, straight in 
 the direction of the bottomless pit. 
 They are all respectable. They deceive 
 us. But when they come to God, after 
 their estimable lives, and say, "Lord, 
 Lord, we have preached in Thy name, 
 and in Thy name have cast out devils, 
 and done wonderful works ; we come 
 bringing our good record with us," the 
 Lord looks at them, and says : "I 
 never knew you. I never heard a 
 prayer you said, did you pray to 
 Me ? I never heard a sermon which 
 you preached, did you preach for 
 Me ?" No, they preached and prayed 
 and did their excellent works of charity 
 and public service for their own satis- 
 faction. They had no religion ; they 
 had respectability in the place of it. 
 
 This is described in the third person 
 and illustrated outof the ancient pages of 
 the Bible, but we know that it touches 
 all of us. It concerns a present and 
 impending peril. It reveals a situa- 
 tion such as made even St. Paul say, 
 "Lest by any means, when I have 
 preached to others, I myself should 
 be a castaway." 
 
 215
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 The trouble with mere respectability 
 is that it is negative, conventional, 
 formal ; without serious meaning, with- 
 out worthy purpose, without warmth 
 or life. It is like a painted post. Even 
 a crooked tree which is alive has some 
 sort of soul, responds however feebly 
 to the influences of the earth and air, 
 and may grow. There is no growth 
 in a post. 
 
 The difference between respectability 
 and religion is like the difference be- 
 tween a painted fire and a fire. The 
 fire in the picture may be admirably 
 laid, and may blaze over a hearth 
 which is immaculately swept, but the 
 real fire, for all its ashes and dis- 
 order, is warm, it flashes and flames, 
 it burns high and low, it is alive. 
 Christ saw some such difference be- 
 tween Pharisees, correct and unrespon- 
 sive, and sinners, who, with all their 
 defects, had some understanding of 
 their own shortcomings, knew that 
 they were far from good, and honestly 
 desired to be better. They are pre- 
 sented side by side in the feast in 
 Simon's house, where the self-righteous 
 216
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 host watches the woman who washes 
 the feet of Jesus with her tears and 
 wipes them with her hair. The sins 
 of the sinners were such as had to do 
 with the world and with the flesh ; the 
 sins of the Pharisees were of the spirit, 
 the results of falling into the snares of 
 the devil. 
 
 Not only does the devil persuade us 
 that respectability is righteousness and 
 religion, he also assures us that vices 
 are virtues. 
 
 It is in this occupation that he is 
 busying himself when he appears as an 
 angel of light. He thus appeals to 
 good people, who have a sincere desire 
 for virtue, and who would not do a 
 wrong thing if they knew it. He makes 
 the wrong look right. 
 
 This was the procedure of the three 
 temptations in which Jesus summed 
 up the alternatives which met Him at 
 the beginning of His ministry. If He 
 can turn stones into bread, why not ? 
 He is hungry ; may He not provide 
 Himself with food ? If the angels will 
 uphold Him with their wings, why not 
 leap from a pinnacle of the temple ? 
 
 217
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 Even the third and plainest tempta- 
 tion, to kneel down and do a moment's 
 homage to the devil, is confused by the 
 good results which are to follow : He 
 may thus free the world from the 
 bondage of sin and pain. It is the old 
 temptation to do a little reasonable 
 evil that great benefit may come there- 
 by. We need to stop and consider, 
 before we perceive that these tempta- 
 tions at least the first and second 
 are temptations at all. They look 
 like profitable suggestions. 
 
 One ancient vice which is thus dis- 
 guised to appear like virtue is the sin 
 of pride. 
 
 The good side of pride is a high 
 appreciation of our own privileges. 
 We rejoice that, in the distribution of 
 the good things of this life, so many 
 have fallen to our share. We honestly 
 appreciate our own excellent qualities,' 
 our special gifts, abilities, and posses- 
 sions. Pride, thus far, is not inconsis- 
 tent with humility. That quiet virtue 
 gets its name from humus, the ground, 
 and does not necessarily imply that 
 we are to kneel upon the ground; the 
 218
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 humble man may stand erect upon it, 
 basing himself upon the actual facts. 
 To conceal them, and thus appear 
 worse than we really are, may be no 
 better than an inverted hypocrisy. 
 
 Pride becomes a vice when they who 
 have possessions use them wholly for 
 their own satisfaction, and draw a line 
 of separation between themselves and 
 their less privileged neighbors. The 
 divine purpose of possessions is to 
 share them. They are meant to min- 
 ister not to self-conceit, but to social 
 service. They are the measure of social 
 opportunity. Thus, Jesus was con- 
 tending with the devil when He opposed 
 the religious and racial antagonism of 
 His countrymen towards their neigh- 
 bors. When He praised the Samaritan, 
 and crowned the humility of the publi- 
 can with His approval, He chose these 
 alien heroes for His parables because 
 He expressed thereby His mind con- 
 cerning current prejudice. When, on 
 His way to Jerusalem, He dined at 
 Jericho with the publican Zacchaeus, 
 He shocked profoundly the social sense 
 of the community, but this He did 
 
 219
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 according to His purpose, breaking 
 down those ugly barriers, even with 
 violence. He saw plainly that the 
 condemnation of men by classes is a 
 stoppage of all social progress. It is 
 false, for men cannot thus be judged 
 by wholesale ; and it affects society, 
 as some wise man has said, like putting 
 all the dough in one pan and the yeast 
 in another. It is the combination of 
 the knowledge, of the interests, of the 
 needs, of the spirit, of the rich and poor, 
 the cultivated and the uncultivated, 
 the progressives and the conservatives, 
 which stimulates and improves society. 
 
 Another old and ugly vice which is 
 attired in the pleasant garments of 
 virtue, with a shining halo round its 
 head, is the sin of hating our neighbors 
 for the love of God. 
 
 The consecration of hatred to the 
 service of religion appears with all 
 frankness in the Old Testament. "Do 
 not I hate them, O Lord, that hate 
 thee ?" cries a psalmist. And he an- 
 swers his own question, saying, "I 
 hate them with a perfect hatred." 
 Then he adds, in all honesty and 
 220
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 confidence, "Search me, O God, and 
 know my heart ; try me, and know my 
 thoughts ; and see if there be any 
 wicked way in me, and lead me in 
 the way everlasting." The idea that 
 it is wicked to hate even the Lord's 
 enemies with a perfect hatred has no 
 place whatsoever in his mind. 
 
 Then came Jesus, with His contra- 
 diction of all that, saying, "Love your 
 enemies." But the old vice kept its 
 honored place among the virtues. It 
 early entered into Christian contro- 
 versy. It set Christians to persecute 
 Christians. It was in the camp 
 throughout the "wars of religion." 
 It was responsible for the Inquisition 
 and all its fiendish horrors. It invented 
 those implements of torture which 
 one finds hanging idle and rusty on 
 the walls of old castles, marked with the 
 sign of the cross by the finger of the 
 devil. 
 
 Only within modern times has the 
 sin of hating our enemies for the love 
 of God been found out. It was ac- 
 counted an evidence of earnestness. 
 It was a mark of conviction. Who- 
 
 221
 
 RELIGION AND THE DEVIL 
 
 ever was disposed to recognize the ever- 
 lasting fact of difference, and to consent 
 to its presence in the community, was 
 held to be a lukewarm Christian, and 
 to belong of right to that parish of 
 Laodicea which is condemned in the 
 Revelation. It was considered a con- 
 scientious Christian duty to stone our 
 enemy with hard words, and to poison 
 him with bitter sentences. We thought 
 it was right; that is the curious thing 
 about it. The deception was complete. 
 We were taken so cleverly in the devil's 
 snare that we did not know it. 
 
 We read in the Gospels, with all 
 plainness, that Christ was put to death 
 not by common sinners, but by men of 
 religion, by churchmen ; and that the 
 sole occasion was a difference of church- 
 manship. They were good churchmen ; 
 He was not, they said. They crucified 
 Him that they might protect thereby 
 the ancient customs which He had 
 set at naught, and save the church. 
 Nevertheless, we disregarded the great 
 lesson. We went on in their spirit, 
 blind to the fact that we were following 
 in their steps. In a thousand contro- 
 
 222
 
 RELIGION AND THE _ DEVIL 
 
 versies, we crucified the Lord afresh, 
 and put Him to an open shame. 
 
 We see that now, as we turn the 
 unreadable pages of the eager debates. 
 We see that hatred and uncharitable- 
 ness, and the spirit of strife, and the 
 willingness to believe evil, and all 
 unbrotherliness are of the devil, and 
 were by him interjected into Christian 
 discussion when he persuaded men 
 that vice is virtuous. 
 
 To renounce the devil is to turn our 
 backs upon those sins which have their 
 source not in the world, nor in the flesh, 
 but in the spirit. It is to keep our 
 hearts with diligence, to control not 
 our words and actions only, but our 
 thoughts, to live as in His presence 
 who sees in secret. It is to change a 
 formal and indifferent respectability 
 into a living religion. It is to keep our 
 virtues from degenerating into vices. 
 
 223
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF 
 RELIGION
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF 
 RELIGION 
 
 HE statement of the require- 
 ment of religion in terms of 
 aspiration, of motive, and of 
 service, and the carrying of 
 the matter into detail as regards the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil, tend to 
 discourage those who perceive that 
 these things are true, but doubt their 
 ability to fulfil them. This state of 
 mind is met in the last paragraphs of 
 the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount is con- 
 cerned with the ideal life. In the 
 course of it, Christ criticises the current 
 standards of religion. He says that 
 in order to enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven, these standards must be 
 exceeded. He points to the men who 
 are conspicuous for their religious zeal, 
 the eminent churchmen of His time, 
 and tells His disciples that theirs is a 
 misleading example. You must be 
 
 227
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 better than that, He says. He com- 
 pares the common righteousness 
 superficial, material, mechanical, and 
 easy --with the true righteousness, 
 spiritual and sincere, and including the 
 inmost thoughts and motives. 
 
 Such a statement calls out three 
 quite different kinds of response. 
 
 Some of the hearers begin at once 
 to think about their neighbors. "That 
 is pretty hard," they say, "on So-and- 
 So who pretends to be so pious. I hope 
 that Ephraim took to heart what the 
 preacher said about swearing; and 
 that Manassah, with his bad temper, 
 heeded that mighty reproof of those 
 who are angry with their brethren 
 without a cause ; and that Levi will 
 wash his face when he fasts, and not 
 look so much more solemn than he 
 really is ; and that Reuben, whose name 
 is always so conspicuous on subscrip- 
 tion lists, noticed what was said about 
 ostentatious giving." 
 
 To these critics who have enjoyed 
 
 the sermon because it seemed so 
 
 admirably adapted to their neighbors 
 
 Christ says, "Judge not," and illus- 
 
 228
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 trates and enforces the saying with the 
 grave humor of the parable of the mote 
 and the beam. "You will be ready," 
 He says, "to attend to these bits of 
 dust in your brother's eye, when you 
 have improved your sight by taking 
 out the stick of wood which is in your 
 own eye." 
 
 A second class of hearers begin at 
 once to think of nothing at all. They 
 agree that the sermon was excellent. 
 They have no criticism of it. They 
 praise it for its interest and eloquence. 
 But it makes no difference. They are 
 in no way affected by that which they 
 have heard. They do not ask, like the 
 hearers of John the Baptist by the 
 Jordan, and the hearers of Peter in 
 Jerusalem, "What shall we do?" It 
 does not occur to them to do anything. 
 They look about at the clouds and the 
 trees, and at their companions, noting 
 who is present and who is absent. 
 They consult the time, and go home 
 to dinner. 
 
 To hearers such as these, Christ 
 says, "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, 
 and do not the things which I say ?" 
 
 229
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 But there is a third company of 
 hearers. They are thinking not of 
 their neighbors, and not of things in 
 general, but of themselves. In the 
 presence of such an ideal as has been 
 uplifted in the sermon, they say, "It 
 is too high. I cannot attain unto it." 
 They are discouraged. They consider 
 the great requirement, and compare 
 their own small lives with it, and are 
 dismayed. The contrast distresses 
 them, but the impossibility of doing 
 anything about it distresses them still 
 more. If it were only a matter of 
 ceasing to do evil and learning to do 
 well, the case would not be so hope- 
 lessly difficult; but what the Lord 
 requires is a new quality of being, a 
 new series of motives, a new way of 
 thinking. Righteousness, it seems, 
 consists not in putting away our sins 
 only, but in putting away our sin. 
 It demands a change not in our habits 
 only, but in our selves. 
 
 These people have perceived the 
 real meaning of the new teaching. 
 They understand that Jesus has pro- 
 posed a new definition of character. 
 230
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 He has taken the old commandments 
 which all respectable people have been 
 obeying and has so interpreted them 
 that nobody can obey them completely. 
 Before the sermon, they were ready to 
 say with the excellent young ruler, 
 "All these things have I kept from 
 my youth up." They were ready to 
 pray with the devout Pharisee, "Lord, 
 I thank Thee that I am not as other 
 men are, extortioners, adulterers." 
 They had no such petition in their 
 litany as, "God be merciful to me, a 
 sinner;" and they would have resented 
 the suggestion that they ought to pray, 
 "God be merciful to me a miserable 
 sinner." But if extortion is to be 
 defined as any taking of an unbrotherly 
 advantage, however well within the 
 terms of law, and if adultery is to be 
 defined as any sensual look or thought, 
 the whole standard of right living is 
 thereby changed tremendously, and 
 their estimate of themselves is changed 
 with it. 
 
 The result of such a conception of 
 righteousness is displayed with all 
 frankness in the confessions of St. 
 
 231
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 Paul. "Touching the law," he says, 
 meaning the letter of the law, 
 "I was blameless." He had never 
 murdered anybody, nor stolen any- 
 thing. But touching the new law, the 
 old law fulfilled, the heart of the law, 
 "Wretched man that I am," he cries, 
 "who shall deliver me from this body 
 of death!" At once, however, he 
 answers his own question: "I thank 
 God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord." 
 
 To produce in the soul of the con- 
 science-stricken hearer this hope and 
 confidence and gratitude is the pur- 
 pose of the preacher of the Sermon 
 on the Mount when He says, "Ask and 
 ye shall receive." The task is difficult, 
 the needed reformation seems impos- 
 sible, the ascent from satisfied respec- 
 tability to true religion is like climbing 
 up the steep face of a straight cliff, 
 but there is help ; there is divine and 
 sufficient help. 
 
 This help is to be had by asking. 
 The act is emphasized. We must our- 
 selves do something in order to get an 
 assisting response. We may not be 
 contented with a passive mind. 
 232
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 There is, indeed, a "wise passive- 
 ness." Wordsworth, with his profound 
 experience in the appreciation of nature, 
 advises it as the ideal mood in the 
 presence of the landscape. We are 
 not to be introspective, nor anxious, 
 nor overdesirous of results. We are 
 to submit ourselves to the gentle influ- 
 ences of sky or plain or sea. This 
 applies to nature what Christ applies 
 to our relation to all life. We are not 
 to be nervous about the morrow. We 
 are to rely with confidence on the divine 
 care. 
 
 Even here, however, in the midst 
 of these strong admonitions against 
 worry, there is a limit set to our wise 
 passiveness. There is even here an 
 antecedent condition of activity. If 
 we are to have "all these things," the 
 necessities of life, we must seek first 
 the kingdom of God and His right- 
 eousness. There is, indeed, a benedic- 
 tion of passivity. It is illustrated by 
 the "great courtesy of God," who 
 grants His rain and sun to the just 
 and to the unjust. But there are 
 better benedictions which the passive 
 
 233
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 miss. The material blessings of food 
 and shelter depend on the fulfilment 
 of these social conditions which the 
 "kingdom of God and His righteous- 
 ness" imply. And the spiritual bless- 
 ings of uplift and guidance, and moral 
 help and inspiration depend on asking. 
 We must not expect to be delivered 
 passively from the bonds of our sins. 
 We must ask, we must seek, we must 
 knock. The doors of the richest bless- 
 ings are shut, and wait for us to present 
 ourselves and request to have them 
 opened. 
 
 Thus Christ's ministry of mercy was 
 not general, but particular. He never 
 healed a town, nor a crowd. The 
 corridors of the pool of Bethesda were 
 filled with the sick that day when He 
 said to one man, "Wouldst thou be 
 made whole," and healed him. The 
 multitude in the Capernaum street 
 was thronging about Him when He said, 
 "Who touched me ?" They were all 
 touching Him, but the virtue, the heal- 
 ing power which went out from Him, 
 had no magical efficacy to heal every- 
 body. He cured one because she 
 
 234
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 asked. So in Jericho, when they said, 
 "Jesus of Nazareth passeth by," one 
 blind beggar cried, "Lord, that I may 
 receive my sight ! " and the Lord gave 
 him his sight. There were a hundred 
 men in that town, beggars and blind, 
 who had no help from Him. His 
 presence did not bless them. Because 
 they did not ask Him. 
 
 All the time, God waits to be gra- 
 cious. His compassions fail not. His 
 heart of sympathy goes out to us in 
 our difficulties, in our struggles. He 
 knows our needs. But He has bound 
 Himself, if we may so express it, 
 under the conditions of His wise order- 
 ing of our life. And one of them is 
 declared in the words, "Ask, and ye 
 shall receive." Our part and His part 
 in the matter are here set down to- 
 gether. Thus all harvests depend on 
 the essential condition of planting, and 
 all business prosperity on the essen- 
 tial condition of working, and all social 
 happiness on the essential condition of 
 showing one's self friendly. 
 
 This asking is, of course, what is 
 meant in the language of religion by the 
 
 235
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 act of prayer. It is not necessary, 
 however, that it should take the con- 
 ventional forms of petition. The rela- 
 tion of prayer to desire is simply 
 psychological. The effect of giving to 
 the act of asking the form of prayer is 
 to make it definite. It is thus brought 
 out of the possible vagueness of unex- 
 pressed desire and put into words, 
 and thereby made concrete ; not for 
 the sake of God, who knows our neces- 
 sities before we ask, and also our 
 ignorance in asking, but for our own 
 sake, for the deepening of our desire. 
 We wish for help against our besetting 
 sins, for strength to live nearer to our 
 ideals ; we wish for better thoughts 
 and better motives, for a better self. 
 The wish is an act of asking. But 
 we intensify the wish when we put our 
 desire into articulate speech. For hu- 
 man nature works that way. 
 
 Some people may be able to get along 
 without it, but it is a common expe- 
 rience that the divine condition is 
 better fulfilled when we kneel down 
 and ask in prayer for the satisfaction 
 of our needs. O God, help me to meet 
 236
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 this one particular daily temptation, 
 which I name before Thee. Thou 
 knowest my weakness, and I know Thy 
 promises of strength. Fulfil now, O 
 Lord, these promises in me. Direct 
 the thoughts of my heart. Help me 
 not only not to do this evil, but not 
 to desire to do it. Protect me against 
 my pleasure in it. Make me a clean 
 heart, O God, and renew a right spirit 
 within me. This I ask, to-day and 
 every day, in His name who said, 
 "Ask, and ye shall receive." 
 
 Asking, then, is the condition of 
 receiving. This is one of the everlast- 
 ing facts of human life. The other is 
 like it : Receiving is the sure conse- 
 quence of asking. 
 
 It is like it, but it goes beyond it. 
 "Every one that asketh receiveth, and 
 he that seeketh findeth, and to him 
 that knocketh, it shall be opened." It 
 is in the present tense, because it is a 
 matter of present experience ; and in 
 the future tense, "it shall be 
 opened," because it is true eternally, 
 an abiding promise of divine renewal. 
 
 The promise is stated in general 
 
 237
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 terms. It assures no exact corre- 
 spondence between the request and the 
 reply. It gives no guarantee that if 
 we ask for this, that, and the other, we 
 shall certainly receive this, that, and 
 the other. The words of our prayers 
 are inadequate, and God does not 
 read them according to a literal inter- 
 pretation. The specifications of our 
 prayers are affected by our ignorance 
 of the present and of the future ; and 
 God attends to the spirit and not to 
 the letter of our petitions. We do not 
 know enough to pray aright. We 
 would be answered according to the 
 wise providence of God. We would 
 receive what He would have us have. 
 The chief apostle asked, but did 
 not receive ; he did not receive the 
 exact thing for which he prayed. The 
 supreme saint had the same expe- 
 rience in the Garden of Gethsemane. 
 He who prayed, "Let this cup pass 
 from me," nevertheless drank it to the 
 dregs. Yet they both received. They 
 both received the blessing for which 
 they prayed, but in another form : 
 not in its material form, but in its 
 238
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 spiritual equivalent. "Lord," they 
 cried, "I am too weak to bear this; 
 take it away." And what the Lord 
 did was not to take it away, but to 
 give them strength to bear it. That 
 was the spiritual equivalent. 
 
 It is in this sense that every one that 
 asketh receiveth. The promise may 
 not be fulfilled in the lesser details, 
 for which we prayed because we knew 
 no better. It is fulfilled in a benedic- 
 tion of which the denied request was 
 but a faint symbol. God gives us 
 more than we ask. We knock and the 
 door is opened, and we enter into 
 unexpected places. Sometimes we are 
 disappointed. But we go on, following 
 the unseen guide, and presently we 
 come into the paradise of perfect peace. 
 We sought a passing satisfaction, and 
 we are made partakers of a satisfac- 
 tion which no chance can change. We 
 cried out for sight, but we were blind 
 and did not know what sight is ; at 
 first, the new light hurt our eyes, and 
 we felt for the moment that the cool 
 blindness was better, but only for the 
 moment. We asked for help, and the 
 
 239
 
 THE REENFORCEMENT OF RELIGION 
 
 Lord helped us as the physician does, in 
 ways unexpected and beyond our under- 
 standing, and painful ; but we received 
 help. 
 
 Thus religion brings with it not only 
 a requirement, but a reinforcement. 
 It demands much, but it enables those 
 who use its privileges to meet its 
 demands with strength. 
 
 240
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 HAT reenforcement of the will 
 which is given in religion for 
 the asking is increased by 
 the means of grace. 
 For grace means moral and spiritual 
 strength. It is the blessing of God 
 applied immediately to daily life. We 
 need it ; we know that well enough. 
 We need increase of grace, that we 
 may be enabled to encounter our temp- 
 tations with success, to make good use 
 of our opportunities, and, in general, 
 to live our lives aright. Grace is 
 made necessary by the exceeding diffi- 
 culty of being good. 
 
 Anybody who finds it quite easy to 
 be good is in a perilous position. 
 Something is the matter with him. 
 Either his conscience is so dull or dis- 
 couraged that it has ceased to trouble 
 him, or his ideal of goodness is so low 
 that he can reach it without effort. 
 In the light of the Christian definition 
 
 243
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 of character, it is exceedingly difficult 
 to be good. Our standard of right 
 may not be so high as it ought to be, 
 but every day we fail to reach it. 
 Every day we are enabled to under- 
 stand, at a long distance, that bitter 
 cry of St. Paul when he said, "The 
 good that I would, I do not ; and the 
 evil that I would not, that I do." We 
 need help. We need to follow the 
 example of the wise commander, who, 
 finding the fight too hard for him, 
 calls for reinforcements. 
 
 The good Christian, realizing that 
 it is mighty hard to be good, will 
 bring to his aid all possible assistance. 
 He will defend himself, as best he may. 
 If he suspects that the road to the left 
 is beset by liers-in-wait, he will take 
 the road to the right. He will join 
 himself to the protecting company of 
 others who are on their way to the same 
 destination, as travellers across the 
 desert go in caravans, that their num- 
 bers may keep them from the attack 
 of robbers. He will avail himself, if 
 he may, of power from on high. He 
 will make use of all the means of grace. 
 244
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 Various misunderstandings as to the 
 means of grace arise from three kinds 
 of confusion : a confusion of the phrase 
 with the fact, a confusion of the irregu- 
 lar with the invalid, and a confusion of 
 ritual with righteousness. 
 
 The first confusion is of the phrase 
 with the fact. 
 
 The facts with which we deal in the 
 means of grace have to do with God 
 and the soul. And that implies that 
 they belong to the region of the in- 
 definable, of the mysterious, of that 
 which we can only in small part under- 
 stand. The relation between God and 
 the soul must be expressed in some 
 sort of language ; but no words are 
 adequate. Indeed, in dealing with this 
 matter, words are not only inadequate, 
 but misleading ; for, of necessity, they 
 express the spiritual in terms of the 
 physical. It may be possible to escape 
 this condition by use of the technical 
 and accurate definitions of philosophy, 
 but for... the purposes of religion the 
 language of philosophy is not only 
 difficult, but foreign. For we naturally 
 express our religious faith and emotion 
 
 245
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 in the words of the Bible, a book which 
 contains not a formula of philosophy 
 from beginning to end. Accordingly, 
 when we would set forth in the creed 
 the exaltation of Christ, we say that 
 He sits at the right hand of God. It 
 is a phrase which easily conveys to 
 unreflective minds the idea of a celes- 
 tial throne, on which the Almighty is 
 sitting, like a king. The phrase is 
 only in a poetical or symbolical sense 
 an expression of the fact. When we 
 say, "The fact must be this or that, 
 because the phrase which describes it 
 is thus or so," we fall into error. 
 
 Thus baptism is described as regen- 
 eration ; we are born again. But when 
 we make the description serve as a 
 definition, we enter immediately into 
 the fallacy of Nicodemus, who said, 
 "How can a man be born when he is 
 old ?" A modern form of this fallacy 
 was the position of those who found 
 that in some places in the New Testa- 
 ment the word "regeneration" implies 
 a moral change, and said, "How can 
 the sprinkling of a few drops of water 
 effect a moral change ?" The phrase 
 246
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 is in the language of poetry and 
 symbol. It means that so great are 
 the possibilities of blessing which are 
 involved in the membership of the 
 church, that baptism, whereby we 
 are admitted into that membership, 
 is like a new birth. 
 
 Also, in the Holy Communion, we 
 say that we receive the body and blood 
 of Christ. But when we try to make 
 the fact fit the phrase, we fall into the 
 fallacy of the congregation at Caper- 
 naum, who said, "How can this man 
 give us His flesh to eat ?" Evidently, 
 He cannot, and would not. The sen- 
 tence is a symbol to us now a remote 
 and difficult symbol of participa- 
 tion and intimacy. A literal interpre- 
 tation, or even a spiritual explanation 
 of a literal interpretation, misses the 
 truth. It mistakes the counter for the 
 coin. It identifies the fact with the 
 phrase. It overlooks the constant 
 habit of Holy Scripture, which con- 
 tinually speaks in metaphor. The 
 bread is the Lord's body, the wine is 
 the Lord's blood, only as it is said that 
 Christ sits at God's right hand. 
 
 247
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 A second confusion is of the irregular 
 with the invalid. 
 
 These two adjectives as applied to 
 spiritual functions have very different 
 meanings. They imply altogether dif- 
 ferent results. In a transaction with 
 a bank, you may present a check 
 which misspells your name, and get 
 the money for which it calls. The 
 check is irregular, but that will not 
 hinder the payment. But if you 
 present a check which is signed by 
 somebody who has no money in that 
 bank, you get nothing. The check 
 is invalid. A like distinction governs 
 the ministry of the sacraments. 
 
 Here are the sacraments of baptism 
 and of the Holy Communion admin- 
 istered by two different men. One 
 man has been ordained by a bishop ; 
 the other man has been ordained by 
 a group of his neighbors. What is 
 the difference ? It may be expressed 
 either in terms of canon law, or in 
 terms of divine providence. Under 
 canon law, the ministry of the man 
 who has not been episcopally ordained 
 is irregular, and his sacraments are 
 248
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 irregular ; for the canon law requires 
 a certain procedure of entrance into 
 the ministry, and recognizes no other. 
 But under the divine providence, the 
 blessing of God comes with the sacra- 
 ment, however irregular, into the recep- 
 tive soul. This has always been ac- 
 cepted in the sacrament of baptism, 
 which, though administered irregularly, 
 by lay people, is nevertheless accounted 
 valid. They who come to any ministry 
 with open hearts, with penitence and 
 faith, find the sacraments the means 
 of grace. They know it. They have 
 had experience of blessing. They may 
 or may not admit that the sacraments 
 which they receive are irregular; they 
 know, beyond all assaults of argument, 
 that they are valid. 
 
 A third confusion which hinders a 
 true understanding of the means of 
 grace is of ritual with righteousness. 
 
 This is of all religious fallacies the 
 oldest, the idea that God cares more 
 for ceremony than he does for conduct. 
 It is the oldest and the most per- 
 vasive. It appears in the notion that 
 attendance at public prayers and par- 
 
 249
 
 ticipation in sacraments make the 
 greater part of true religion. The 
 truth is that in the New Testament 
 these duties have to be looked for with 
 a microscope. The emphasis is on 
 character. The call is to live a right- 
 eous life, to keep the moral law, to be 
 honest, to be truthful, to be a good 
 neighbor and a good citizen. These 
 are the things for which God cares. 
 The sacraments, and all the sacra- 
 mental rites which accompany them, 
 are means of grace. They are directed 
 towards moral and spiritual results. 
 They are of value in proportion as 
 they assist to bring such results about. 
 
 Thus the water of baptism, as St. 
 Paul says plainly, never saved any- 
 body ; but the answer of a good con- 
 science. The bread and wine of the 
 Lord's Supper are without value, and, 
 as St. Paul says, do more harm than 
 good, unless they minister to the moral 
 life. The test of right religion is not 
 the punctuality with which people go 
 to church, but the kind of people they 
 are in consequence of going to church. 
 
 To these three confusions of the 
 250
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 phrase with the fact, of the irregular 
 with the invalid, and of ritual with 
 righteousness may be added a mis- 
 taken distinction between the sacred 
 and the secular. 
 
 There is a distinction, plainly enough. 
 There is an obvious difference between 
 a schoolhouse and a church, between 
 the thirteen books of Euclid and the 
 thirteen epistles of St. Paul. But when 
 we try to put the things of the spirit 
 definitely on one side, and the things 
 of the mind and of the body on the 
 other side, we are endeavoring to 
 divide into parts that which has true 
 life only in combination. The two 
 parts of hydrogen in water may be 
 separated from the one part of oxygen, 
 but the water in that condition is not 
 good for drinking. It is not water, 
 but an exhibit of chemical elements. 
 And in like manner, the whole man and 
 the whole life of man go together. 
 
 The first commandment of religion 
 summons us to love" God with all our 
 heart and mind and strength, with our 
 whole being. And the blessing of God 
 comes to us with all of these activities. 
 
 251
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 Thus in the First Epistle of St. John 
 the distinctive benediction of each of 
 the sacraments is promised in connec- 
 tion with the moral and social life. The 
 distinctive benediction of baptism is a 
 divine birth, and St. John says, "Every 
 one that loveth is born of God." The 
 distinctive benediction of the Lord's 
 Supper is a divine indwelling, and St. 
 John says : "If we love one another, 
 God dwelleth in us, and His love is 
 perfected in us. He that dwelleth in 
 love, dwelleth in God, and God in 
 him." ^ 
 
 Grace means .help from God, and is 
 ministered in all manner of ways, and 
 amidst all these differences is the same 
 divine thing. It comes by the reading 
 of good books, and by the companion- 
 ship of good friends. We know that 
 we have received it because we are 
 uplifted, energized, directed, strength- 
 ened. It comes by the sacraments, 
 and its presence is made known by the 
 same evidence. It is not one thing in 
 church, and another thing at home. It 
 is not grace in religion, and something 
 else in society. Everywhere and al- 
 252
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 ways it is the same divine blessing, 
 and under all conditions it is sacra- 
 mental and mysterious, like the breath 
 of the wind. 
 
 One of the means of grace is an en- 
 vironment of expectation. I mean 
 that anybody who is trying to be good 
 will be mightily assisted by keeping in 
 the company of the good. One of the 
 means of growth is good ground. The 
 seed may be good, but the parable of 
 the sower shows to what different har- 
 vests it comes under different condi- 
 tions. So one of the means of grace is 
 good neighborhood. To this we owe 
 the greater part of our own righteous- 
 ness, to the privilege of residence among 
 people who expect us to do right. 
 
 The ecclesiastical name of the or- 
 ganized good neighborhood is the 
 church. The most valuable influences 
 of the church depend upon the fact 
 that it is an environment of good 
 expectation. Baptism is a means of 
 grace because it admits people into 
 this environment. Thus it is defined 
 in the church catechism as the act 
 whereby we are made members of 
 
 253
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 Christ, the children of God, and in- 
 heritors of the kingdom of heaven, 
 because these are three descriptions of 
 the church : which is the body of 
 Christ, the household of God, and the 
 kingdom of heaven. The answer to 
 the question, Precisely what is accom- 
 plished in baptism ? is, By baptism 
 persons are admitted to the member- 
 ship of the church. 
 
 Another means of grace is a decided 
 initiative. This is only a condensed 
 statement of the plain psychological 
 fact that if we really desire to keep a 
 good resolution, we must begin strong. 
 We must not only exercise our will in 
 an emphatic determination, and our 
 patience in a resolute endeavor to 
 admit no exceptions, but, if we are 
 altogether wise, we... must make the 
 matter public. Thus we bring the 
 environment of expectation to bear 
 definitely upon our case. 
 
 Whoever makes a resolve in the 
 secret of his own soul may break it 
 without losing any respect other than 
 his own ; but if we make our good 
 resolve in the hearing of our neighbors, 
 
 254
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 then when temptation comes we are 
 provided with reinforcements. We 
 say, "Now if I do this thing which I 
 said I would not do, all of my friends 
 will look upon me with astonishment, 
 and I shall be ashamed." 
 
 Thus it is that confirmation is a 
 means of grace. It takes advantage of 
 the plain conditions of human nature. 
 It is the making of a great resolution 
 in such a manner that all our acquaint- 
 ances shall help us to keep it. Up 
 stands one among his neighbors, and 
 declares himself on the Lord's side. 
 And when he kneels, and hands of 
 benediction are laid on his head, he is 
 manifestly blessed. He receives power 
 from on high. Not only the theo- 
 logian, but the psychologist, will tell 
 us that. 
 
 A third means of grace is the prac- 
 tice of the presence of God. I mean a 
 continual consciousness of the divine 
 nearness, for strength, for comfort, 
 for serenity of mind, for guidance, for 
 protection. Whoever is thus aware 
 of God, cries in temptation, "Thou, 
 God, seest me"; and in difficulty, "I 
 
 255
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 can do all things through Christ which 
 strengtheneth me"; and in trouble, 
 "In the world ye shall have tribula- 
 tion, but be of good cheer, I have over- 
 come the world"; and in the deepest 
 grief, "Yea, though I walk through the 
 valley of the shadow of death I will 
 fear no evil, for Thou art with me." 
 And these words of confidence bring 
 spiritual results. They verify the say- 
 ing, "The words that I speak unto 
 you, they are spirit and they are life." 
 The same effects are brought about by 
 prayer, from which we rise up, when 
 we pray aright, with the sun shining 
 in our soul. 
 
 The word and the prayer meet in the 
 Holy Communion, which is a means of 
 grace because it enables us to realize 
 this divine presence. The promise is 
 there fulfilled which declares that He 
 will dwell in us and we in Him. God 
 is made real to us in the person of Jesus 
 Christ, and Christ is made real anew 
 in the breaking of the bread and in the 
 pouring of the wine ; and when we 
 receive the bread and wine, we receive 
 Him into our souls. 
 256
 
 THE MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 For Christ comes in this sacrament 
 as our friend comes in his letter. Here 
 is the written page, an outward and 
 visible sign, and the page brings the 
 mind, the will, the heart, the love, the 
 spiritual presence of our friend. And 
 here are bread and wine, bringing the 
 benediction of Him from whom they 
 come. And the truth of this we know 
 by our experience. We know that we 
 have actually found this sacramental 
 feast nourishing to our souls. We 
 have come hoping for light and power 
 and courage and comfort, and have 
 found them all. As we go away, the 
 consciousness of the presence of God 
 goes with us. 
 
 An environment of expectation, a 
 decided initiative, and the practice of 
 the presence of God baptism, con- 
 firmation, and the holy communion ; we 
 know that they are means of grace, 
 because we have tried them and found 
 them satisfying. We can recommend 
 them. In a world in which it is hard 
 to be good, they who are wise will 
 look about for help. And they will 
 find it in the means of grace. 
 
 s 257
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPI- 
 NESS
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPI- 
 
 NESS 
 
 HE result of all this is the 
 attainment of happiness, here 
 and hereafter. 
 
 Against the universal back- 
 ground of mystery stand the funda- 
 mental facts of religion : the being of 
 God and the soul of man. They are 
 attested by revelation and by miracle : 
 by revelation, in the uncommon expe- 
 rience of uncommon people ; and by 
 miracle, the manifestation of God in 
 uncommon events, and in the common 
 life. Revelation and miracle meet in 
 the supreme disclosure of God in Jesus 
 Christ. That disclosure of the being 
 of God and of the soul of man declares 
 the supreme requirement of religion to 
 be character; defined in terms of 
 aspiration, of motive, and of service, 
 and applied to the temptations of the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil. For 
 
 261
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 the mastery of the evil and the gaining 
 of the ideal good, religion provides not 
 only counsel, but reinforcement ; in 
 prayer and sacrament. And the pur- 
 pose of it on the part of God is the 
 happiness of man. 
 
 It is true that the Christian religion 
 has made a considerable contribution 
 to the stock of human misery. It has 
 often aggravated the ills of life. It has 
 often multiplied them. To the horrors 
 of persecution it has added the terrors 
 of conscience. It has darkened the 
 sky. But all this has been a perver- 
 sion of its true meaning. And during 
 it all, in quiet households whose affairs 
 have no place in history, it has brought 
 patience and peace and comfort. In 
 the days of pagan persecution, it so 
 filled the hearts of the Christians with 
 great joy that they were recognized 
 in the streets. The happiness of their 
 souls shone in their faces. The Chris- 
 tian religion, mistakenly understood 
 and mistakenly applied, has afflicted 
 the heart of man, but its true mission, 
 abundantly fulfilled, is to bring peace 
 and a serene mind. 
 262
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 With all our differences of disposi- 
 tion and of circumstances, there is one 
 thing in which we all agree. We all 
 have one desire. When the good fairy 
 came, in the old stories, and offered 
 the hero three wishes, whatever he 
 would choose, he always wished for 
 the same thing. Wise or foolish, he 
 always wished for the same thing. He 
 said to himself, "How can I get the 
 greatest happiness ?" He desired to 
 be happy. So do we, also. Our com- 
 mon and universal desire is to be happy. 
 
 In the language of religion, the 
 synonym of happiness is salvation. 
 The words mean substantially the same 
 thing. To be saved is to be safe and 
 sound ; it is to abound in health and 
 happiness. 
 
 This happiness which in religion is 
 thus called salvation may be desired 
 as a future blessing or as a present 
 possession. 
 
 A generation ago, the prevailing 
 desire of those who spoke the language 
 of religion was for salvation as a future 
 blessing. They were devoutly intent 
 upon the world to come. The present 
 
 263
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 world was regarded with indifference 
 or with hostility. Favorite hymns be- 
 gan with the proposition that "the 
 world is very evil," and with the reso- 
 lution to have as little to do with it as 
 possible. "I'm but a stranger here, 
 Heaven is my home. Earth is a desert 
 drear, Heaven is my home." A typical 
 figure of a common mind was Chris- 
 tian in the "Pilgrim's Progress" who, 
 finding himself a resident in the City 
 of Destruction, proceeded immediately 
 to get out. He seems not to have 
 thought for a moment about starting 
 a Good Government Club, or a social 
 settlement, or even a church. His 
 instinct directed him towards self- 
 preservation. It did not occur to him 
 that the city might be saved. He 
 abandoned it, in haste, for the salva- 
 tion of his own soul. 
 
 At best, the present was considered 
 as a preliminary period, a time of 
 preparation and probation. People 
 thought that life would really begin 
 after death. Just now, under these 
 present skies, in this antechamber of 
 eternity, we are waiting. We are like 
 264
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 players, expecting our turn to come 
 upon the stage, and meanwhile put- 
 ting in the time as best we may. Or 
 like students, getting ready for an 
 examination which shall admit us into 
 a life of privilege. The prevailing 
 mood was one of expectation. At 
 least, this was the ideal spirit. People 
 who found their interests entangled in 
 the pursuits and pleasures of this 
 present life had an uncomfortable 
 sense of wrong, and felt that they 
 ought to be ashamed of themselves. 
 
 This doctrine of the relation of the 
 world which now is to the world which 
 is to come expresses a profound truth. 
 The present takes a great part of its 
 significance from the future. To-mor- 
 row depends upon to-day. "What- 
 soever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap." Our whole life, present and 
 future, is bound up together. This 
 is so everlastingly true that some have 
 been led by it to question the possi- 
 bility of a universal salvation. They 
 perceive that those who live in certain 
 ways bring upon themselves at first 
 pain and then weakness, presently 
 
 265
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 serious and mortal sickness, and at last 
 the death of the body. They per- 
 ceive a like process in the mind, a sim- 
 ilar connection between certain ways 
 of using or not using or ill-using the 
 mind, and the sure loss of apprehen- 
 sion and of appreciation. People may 
 so live that they cannot enter into the 
 higher joys. They infer a like death 
 of the soul. If one who breaks the 
 laws of his body loses his body, shall 
 not one who breaks the laws of his 
 soul lose his soul ? 
 
 Important, however, as such con- 
 siderations are, they no longer interest 
 us quite as they did our ancestors. 
 We are intent upon the world in which 
 we actually and immediately live. The 
 salvation for which we greatly care is 
 not a future blessing, though we 
 care for that, it is a present posses- 
 sion. How to be saved to-day, how 
 to be happy to-day, how to make the 
 most of the opportunity of this day, 
 that is what we have in mind. 
 Whether for better or for worse, that 
 is the honest situation. 
 
 Thus there is a shifting of the centre 
 266
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 of gravity of the religious life from 
 faith to works ; or, rather, from a faith 
 which expresses itself in creeds, to a 
 faith which expresses itself in deeds. 
 The prevailing purpose of the modern 
 church is to increase the daily happiness 
 of men. The missionary goes, not as of 
 old to rescue men from eternal damna- 
 tion, but to increase both the goodness 
 and the joy of the present life. He 
 used to preach the wrath of God ; now 
 he preaches the love of God for every 
 living soul. There is a new emphasis 
 on the social aspects of Christianity. 
 The parish house is a symbol of it. 
 The social settlement is an illustration 
 of it. The aim of the endeavors 
 which are thus represented is plain, 
 practical, and immediate. Here is 
 scant patience with postponement, and 
 no disposition whatever to alleviate the 
 distress and injustice of present con- 
 ditions by telling people that it will be 
 all right after they are dead. The 
 purpose is to make things right now, 
 to bring the kingdom of heaven down, 
 to increase the common stock of good- 
 will and happiness. 
 
 267
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 But when we come to consider salva- 
 tion as a present possession, and to ask, 
 "How may we attain it ?" we perceive 
 that there are various answers. Every- 
 body is trying to attain it, but there 
 are a great many very different ap- 
 proaches. The saint retires from the 
 world to fast and pray ; that is his 
 idea of a good time. The scholar 
 heaps his desk with books ; the glutton 
 heaps his board with food and drink ; 
 the merchant betakes himself to his 
 merchandise, the idler to his indolence, 
 all for the same purpose. Along these 
 different paths, all are trying to get to 
 the same goal. And the difference 
 indicates different temperaments, so 
 that the joy of one would be the death 
 of the other. But there is one universal 
 and veracious test. There is one way 
 of proving every endeavor after salva- 
 tion or happiness in order to ascertain 
 its real value. This is the test of 
 persistence. For it is characteristic 
 of true happiness that it lasts. It is 
 good to-day, but it is not good for 
 much unless it remains until to- 
 morrow. If it brings a present joy, 
 268
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 but brings with it a future regret, or 
 pain, or bitterness of remorse, it is not 
 a valuable possession. And if it oper- 
 ates only under favoring but uncertain 
 conditions, it is not of any abiding 
 value. People used to tell time by 
 sun-dials, but the difficulty was that 
 the dial depended on the shining of the 
 sun. The clock was invented in order 
 to enable us to tell time in all weathers, 
 and in the middle of the night. After 
 that, the sun-dial became an anach- 
 ronism, or a curious ornament. 
 
 It is accordingly plain that some 
 kinds of happiness must be counted 
 out. We may not attach great value 
 to the happiness which depends on 
 health of body ; for sickness comes, and 
 this excellent happiness departs. We 
 cannot be saved by appetite. Neither 
 may we attach much value to the 
 happiness which depends upon the 
 balance at the bank : for riches, accord- 
 ing to the old proverb, have long since 
 discovered the secret of aerial flight ; 
 away they go, and those who have 
 relied upon them are disconsolate. 
 Neither may we place a very high 
 
 269
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 estimate upon the happiness which is 
 bound up with the integrity of the social 
 order, for though the approbation of 
 the community is a precious reward of 
 our endeavors, and the love of friends 
 sweetens all life, these, too, are transi- 
 tory ; minds may change, misunder- 
 standings may arise, death may come, 
 and we may be deprived of the things 
 in which our life seemed to consist. 
 Neither prosperity nor society can 
 save us. 
 
 We have got to have for our present 
 salvation a happiness which shall con- 
 tinue in spite of sickness, and poverty, 
 and persecution, and bereavement. In 
 order to be happy, we must be able to 
 face triumphantly the heaviest assaults 
 of pain, of disappointment, of failure, 
 of distress of soul. Whoever is living 
 in a house which may be swept away 
 by any storm of temporal disaster has 
 built upon the shifting sand. You 
 recognize in these references the begin- 
 ning and the end of the Sermon on the 
 Mount. The theme of that sermon is 
 the salvation of the soul. It begins 
 with a series of splendid sentences in 
 270
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 which Christ sets forth the conditions 
 of an abiding and victorious happiness. 
 The Master looks out over the multi- 
 tude and proposes to tell them how 
 to be happy. Some of you, he says, are 
 poor, some are sad, some are grievously 
 tempted, some are persecuted ; that 
 need make no difference. You may. 
 all be blessedly happy. You may all 
 set the house of your serene content 
 upon the everlasting rock. That rock, 
 to give it a single, convenient name, is 
 religion. The salvation of the soul 
 of man, the invincible joy of the heart 
 of man, is to be found in religion. 
 
 The lives of good Christians to this 
 very hour prove this assertion. It is 
 not an ecclesiastical dogma, nor a meta- 
 physical proposition. It is a veri- 
 fiable statement, open to common ob- 
 servation. You must every one of you 
 know somebody who lacks most of the 
 customary means of happiness, and 
 yet is abundantly and abidingly happy. 
 You must know sick persons who are 
 marvellously patient, and afflicted per- 
 sons who are wonderfully brave. And 
 you know, also, that their explanation 
 
 271
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 of their strength is given in terms of 
 religion. 
 
 But religion is a large and vague 
 word. There are two questions which 
 we desire to ask : What have these 
 persons found in religion which has 
 given them this strong serenity of 
 spirit ? and, How have they found it ? 
 
 What have they found ? They have 
 found the meaning of the world. They 
 have, it is true, an imperfect under- 
 standing of the matter, but it is a suffi- 
 cient understanding. They have dis- 
 covered beyond all peradventure that 
 this world is the world of God our 
 Father ; He made it and maintains it. 
 They know that all our life proceeds 
 under His providential ordering. They 
 have arrived at an invincible con- 
 viction that things are right. The 
 world is good. 
 
 And they have found strength against 
 sin. They have not escaped tempta- 
 tion, nor are they free even from fail- 
 ure. They are still contending with 
 the world, the flesh, and the devil. 
 But they are in receipt of reenforce- 
 ments. They have been given access 
 272
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 to a new base of supplies. They have 
 got the key to an armory of the soul. 
 And they are putting the devil under 
 their feet. They are no longer servants 
 to sin. They are living under a> 
 splendid declaration of independence. 1 
 They are breathing the clear, invigo- ; 
 rating air of a new freedom. 
 
 This they have found the meaning 
 of the world, and the mastery of the 
 soul. When we ask, How have they 
 found it ? the answer is that they 
 have come into this strong position of 
 understanding and of victory by the 
 help of Jesus Christ : by the supremacy 
 and by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. 
 
 By the supremacy of Christ comes 
 a knowledge of the meaning of the 
 world. 
 
 The supreme personality in the whole 
 course of history is Jesus Christ. His 
 place has no parallel. He has entered 
 into all thought, all literature, all human 
 progress ; and to-day, after all the 
 centuries, is mightier than ever. He is 
 the Son of Man, the flower of humanity ; 
 He is the Son of God, the manifesta- 
 tion of the divine nature. Therefore, 
 T 273
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 we may take His word as our highest 
 truth about the world. He knows 
 better than we do, a thousand times. 
 When He looks up in the midst of His 
 sorrows, His disappointments, His fail- 
 ures, in the midst of the profound 
 tragedy of His life, and speaks to God 
 as His father, He assures us that this 
 is a good world, after all ; and we 
 receive His saying. Remember how 
 it was said of a great man that he was 
 able to see stars where his neighbors 
 could see nothing but gray cloud. 
 That is what Jesus did. He had both 
 sight and insight. He perceived with 
 the certainty of personal experience, 
 and declared with the assurance of 
 personal knowledge, that the love of 
 God and the pain of man are not in- 
 consistent. Thus He revealed the 
 meaning of the world. 
 
 As by the supremacy of Christ comes 
 the revelation of the significance of 
 the world, so by the sacrifice of Christ 
 comes the mastery of the soul ; we 
 get strength against sin. 
 
 The supreme revealing act in the 
 life of Jesus Christ was His death. It 
 274
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 summed up all that He did and taught, 
 and was and is. . For the death of 
 Christ showed His understanding of 
 sin. To Him, it was immeasurably 
 serious, awful, and hateful. In con- 
 tending against it, He was willing even 
 to give His life. He did not need to 
 do it. He might have lived in peace 
 and quiet. His perception of the 
 nature of sin compelled Him. But 
 He went, like an errant knight, and 
 fought it. Also, the death of Christ 
 showed His love of man. It was for 
 us He suffered, to save us out of the 
 misery and death of sin. For love of 
 us He climbed with unimaginable pain 
 to those sublime heights of which He 
 spoke when He said, "Greater love 
 hath no man than this, that a man 
 lay down his life for his friends." And 
 thus revealing His hatred of sin and 
 His love of man, He disclosed the 
 heart of God. That is how God feels. 
 Then we understand that when we sin, 
 we grieve the heart of God. God is 
 not our "great taskmaster," though 
 a noble poet called Him by that name ; 
 He is our Father. And in the sacrifice 
 
 275
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 of Christ is added to the divine father- 
 hood a quality diviner still. For sacri- 
 fice is the highest thing in life. To 
 love is much, to love and serve is more, 
 but so to love and serve as to forget 
 ourselves, and give ourselves utterly, 
 without shadow of reservation, without 
 count of cost, this is the supreme thing. 
 Nothing is better than this. The cross 
 revealed this in the relation of God to 
 man. How can we offend Him who 
 so loved the world ? 
 
 Two kinds of confusion have obscured 
 and made difficult the doctrine of the 
 atonement. 
 
 One is a confusion of fact with 
 philosophy. The fact is that Christ 
 died for our sins. The philosophy is 
 the explanation of the effectiveness 
 of His death to save us. The fact 
 shines like the stars ; the philosophy 
 varies like the theories of the astron- 
 omers. But the fact only is of essen- 
 tial importance. The other confusion 
 is of the nearer with the farther side 
 of truth. The formula of the farther 
 side is in the words, "This is the 
 Lamb of God which taketh away the 
 276
 
 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS 
 
 sin of the world." Here we enter into 
 the mysteries. But the formula of 
 the nearer side is in the words : "God 
 was in Christ, reconciling the world 
 unto Himself." The father of the prodi- 
 gal son needs not to be reconciled ; 
 he is ever waiting for the opportunity 
 to show his unchanged love. It is 
 the prodigal who is to be reconciled, 
 and this is accomplished when he per- 
 ceives his condition, and returns to 
 the welcome which awaits him. Mys- 
 teries, indeed, remain ; there are hard 
 sayings still uninterpreted ; but in 
 that parable is the atonement on its 
 nearer side. God, whose hatred of sin 
 and love of man is revealed in the cross 
 of Christ, desires our allegiance and our 
 love. When we give it, we are recon- 
 ciled to Him. We enter into the joy 
 of God. We experience the salvation 
 of our souls. 
 
 277
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 S for happiness hereafter, it is 
 mightily reassuring to see the 
 certainty of the saints. ; 
 
 St. Paul has no doubt about 
 it. "We know," he says. He confesses 
 that the times are hard. We are 
 troubled on every hand ; we are per- 
 plexed, persecuted, cast down. But 
 we are not distressed, not in despair, 
 not discouraged. We perceive that 
 these hardships enable us to enter into 
 the fellowship of the sufferings of Jesus 
 Christ. We are assisted to endure 
 these trials by the inspiration of His 
 example. 
 
 We perceive also that these are but 
 incidents in a life eternal. They are 
 the inevitable discomforts of a journey 
 through this world to the world to 
 come. We are able to endure them 
 cheerfully because we look through and 
 beyond them to our final destination. 
 
 281
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 Thus our Lord, for the joy that was 
 set before Him, endured the cross. 
 Thus our light affliction, which is but 
 for a moment, worketh for us a far more 
 exceeding and eternal weight of glory, 
 while we look not at the things which 
 are seen, but at the things which are 
 not seen ; for the things which are 
 seen are temporal, but the things 
 which are not seen are eternal. 
 
 These words take the doctrine of 
 immortality out of the realm of specu- 
 lation, and bring it into vital touch 
 with the working day. St. Paul, under- 
 taking great tasks under conditions of 
 unusual difficulty, finds it the very 
 breath of his life. If we are of a some- 
 what different mind to-day, it is for 
 the most part the natural result of a 
 reaction. We have come out of a 
 time when religion was preached as 
 pertaining mainly to the other world. 
 The supreme business of this life, we 
 were told, is to make ourselves ready 
 for the next, and the next world was 
 set before us in detail. In particular, 
 the miseries of hell were impressed 
 upon our minds. Most of us who have 
 282
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 come to middle age had dreadful mo- 
 ments in our childhood when we 
 thought it very likely that we should 
 come at last to that place of torment. 
 Now the emphasis of interest has 
 changed. The light which shines upon 
 the stage of our human affairs shines in 
 another place, and all this side of reli- 
 gion is for the moment in the shadow. 
 Our supreme concern as Christians is 
 in the betterment of this present world. 
 We do not think once about the life to 
 come, where our fathers thought of it 
 a thousand times. 
 
 St. Paul held the two great interests 
 together. He was greatly concerned 
 about social betterment; he addressed 
 himself to the relief of the poor of 
 Jerusalem, and took up a contribu- 
 tion for them everywhere he went; 
 his persistent purpose was to bring 
 justice, righteousness, peace, and fra- 
 ternity into every place where he had 
 influence. But in all this he found 
 himself strengthened, compelled, di- 
 rected, encouraged, by the significance 
 which is brought into this world by its 
 relation with the world to come. His 
 
 283
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 citizenship, as he said, was in heaven. 
 His business was to found colonies 
 which should live according to the laws 
 of heaven. The arrival of information 
 that the kingdom of heaven had ceased 
 to exist, that, in fact, there is no 
 heaven at all, would have affected 
 the mission of St. Paul as a like piece 
 of tragic news would affect any am- 
 bassador of a foreign power. No doubt 
 he would have gone on being good 
 and doing good according to his best 
 ability, but the heart would have been 
 taken out of his endeavors. He would 
 have lost his sense of divine mission. He 
 could say no longer in the face of imme- 
 diate failure : " I cannot fail ; behind 
 me is the everlasting power of God." 
 This is true still. We may not think 
 so definitely of the other world as our 
 ancestors did ; it may not enter so 
 consciously into our common life, but 
 it is as necessary to us as the universal 
 air. We may take it for granted, as we 
 are accustomed to take many of our 
 essential blessings ; we may account it 
 a matter of course and give our atten- 
 tion to other matters ; but we per- 
 284
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 ceive, upon the least reflection, that 
 we cannot get along without it. Our 
 idea of the meaning of our life, what- 
 ever patience we maintain in the midst 
 of disappointment, whatever persist- 
 ence we show in the difficult task of 
 doing good, our subordination of the 
 material side of the world beneath the 
 spiritual, our sense of values, our 
 strength and comfort in sorrow, our 
 refuge in affliction, all this depends 
 on our assurance of the immortality of 
 the soul. 
 
 The only reasonable argument 
 against the immortality of the soul is 
 the death of the body. 
 
 The body dies, and, so far as we can 
 see, all individual existence ceases. 
 There is no response. There is no 
 manifestation of continued life. The 
 students of psychical research encour- 
 age us to believe that they may even- 
 tually bring light into this deep dark- 
 ness, but such light as they have 
 brought thus far is not enough to see by. 
 The ordinary evidence of our senses 
 denies the doctrine of the immortality 
 of man. 
 
 285
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 To this denial an obvious reply is 
 that death is one of the oldest of all 
 facts. 
 
 From the beginning of time, death 
 has confronted life. So far as the 
 death of the body constitutes an argu- 
 ment against the immortality of the 
 soul, it was as valid a contradiction 
 a hundred thousand years ago as it is 
 to-day. But it has never prevailed. 
 The argument is plain enough, and 
 makes its appeal to the reason of every 
 man, but it has never been effective. 
 It comes, indeed, with crushing weight 
 in the moment of affliction. For many 
 a grieving heart it turns the earth 
 and the sky alike into a horror of 
 great darkness. But the soul of 
 man recovers. 
 
 Nothing happens to show that the 
 argument of death is invalid in any 
 particular. There it is, and we cannot 
 gainsay it. But we do gainsay it. 
 The primitive man, contemporary with 
 the glaciers, buries in the grave of his 
 dead the symbols of his faith in immor- 
 tality. Confronting the unanswerable 
 facts, he cries, "My friend is dead, but 
 286
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 he shall live again !" And this cry of 
 hope, of confidence, of victory, has 
 been repeated every day since life and 
 death began. It is evident that some- 
 thing is the matter with an argument 
 which is at the same time so plain and 
 so everlastingly unconvincing. 
 
 The psychologists, in their exami- 
 nation of the argument, find several 
 things the matter with it. 
 
 It is criticised by Professor Royce 
 on the ground that it takes no account 
 of the affirmation of individuality. 
 
 Among the many uncertainties of our 
 life, one thing is absolutely sure, and 
 that is that we are ourselves. You 
 are yourself, and nobody else. No- 
 body in the world can possibly be so 
 like you as to be you. Philosophy is 
 doubtful about things, and has some- 
 times denied the reality of the visible 
 world, but it is sure of persons. It is 
 sure, also, that personality is not 
 dependent on the body. The body 
 perishes and is dissolved into its con- 
 stituent elements, but the individual 
 cannot perish. 
 
 The position that death is an argu- 
 
 287
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 ment against the continuance of indi- 
 vidual life is criticised also by Professor 
 James, on the ground that it confuses 
 the transmissive with the productive 
 functions of the brain. 
 
 The point of the common argument 
 against immortality is that there can 
 be no thought without a brain. This 
 is apparently true when we set it along- 
 side of the proposition that there can 
 be no steam without fire and water ; 
 the fire acting on the water produces 
 steam. But it is absurd when we set 
 it alongside of the proposition that 
 there can be no light without a prism. 
 The function of a prism is not to pro- 
 duce light, but to transmit it. The 
 prism may be broken into a thousand 
 pieces, but the light remains. Thus 
 our conscious life is associated with the 
 activity of our brain, as the world out- 
 side our room is associated with the 
 window. The brain is the window 
 through which we look into the world 
 of reality. It is our present medium 
 of communication between our self 
 within and the world without. It is 
 a reasonable belief that at death, when 
 288
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 this medium of communication is dis- 
 used, some other takes its place. The 
 window opens, and out we go into a 
 new and better sight of the real world, 
 into a new and more intimate relation 
 with it. The fact that there is no more 
 window does not signify the abolition 
 either of the world or of ourselves ; it 
 signifies only some other point of view. 
 
 Turning now from the only serious 
 argument against the future life, the 
 unconvincing argument of death, 
 we find a positive assurance of immor- 
 tality in human nature and in divine 
 revelation. 
 
 This assurance is based in human 
 nature upon two foundations : upon 
 the expectation of the race, and upon 
 the worth of the individual. 
 
 Each of these foundations has come 
 into clearer light in our own time. In 
 a day when the philosophy of material- 
 ism prevails, the only facts which count 
 for much are those which come within 
 the province of the natural sciences. 
 Facts, in order to be facts, and espe- 
 cially in order to be arguments, must be 
 capable of weight and measurement, 
 u 289
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 and must respond to the tests of the 
 laboratory. Under such conditions, 
 ideas are easily disregarded, and emo- 
 tional and spiritual phenomena are 
 set at naught. But the defect of 
 materialism is precisely in this arbi- 
 trary solution of facts. The materialist 
 leaves out of consideration a great part 
 of the actual world ; he omits the 
 inconvenient facts which do not agree 
 with his conclusion ; and the result is 
 that a larger vision of life makes his 
 conclusions ridiculous. 
 
 Then we perceive that a universal 
 human expectation is a fact to be as 
 seriously considered as a universal 
 law of gravitation. 
 
 There it is, always and everywhere 
 present in the mind of man. There it is, 
 triumphantly confronting the physical 
 fact of death. It is one of the human 
 qualities, one of the permanent factors in 
 any accurate description of man. Man 
 is an animal who expects to live for- 
 ever. Now, a universal human quality 
 must be the assurance of a universal 
 reality, or else God has put us to con- 
 fusion. If man is made expecting a 
 290
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 life which goes on after death, and then 
 at death dies like a weed, we are the 
 plaything of malignant forces. On the 
 contrary, a universal spiritual fact is 
 like a universal physical fact ; it is 
 the evidence of an everlasting law of 
 being. 
 
 So, also, with the worth of the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 With the discrediting of materialism 
 we begin to deal with the whole man. 
 In the material realm, the eminent 
 facts are force and matter; in the 
 spiritual realm the eminent facts are 
 consciousness, personality, thought, 
 will, and love. And to all this we 
 apply the doctrine of the conservation 
 of value. The material facts persist ; 
 on they go, through manifold trans- 
 formations, into existence without end. 
 What shall we say as to the spiritual 
 facts ? Shall oxygen and hydrogen 
 continue, while faith and reverence and 
 self-sacrifice and honor and affection 
 perish ? "The idea of immortality is 
 an assertion of the indestructible worth 
 of the values that characterize human- 
 ity at its best." And these values are 
 
 291
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 not satisfied by any immortality of 
 lasting influence, or by any merging 
 of the soul of man into the soul of the 
 universe. They demand a conscious, 
 individual existence. Justice and truth 
 and love have no meaning apart from 
 persons. Personality itself is one of the 
 precious facts of human life. Man 
 has been too long in growing, through 
 the ages of the universe, to live a few 
 years, to make a beginning of an end- 
 less life, and then perish. Man is of 
 too much value to be outlived by a 
 stone wall, or even by a mountain. 
 
 To these foundations of the assurance 
 of immortality in human nature, in 
 the expectation of the race, and in the 
 worth of the individual, we add the 
 foundations which are disclosed by 
 divine revelation. We turn from the 
 common experience of common people 
 to the uncommon experience of un- 
 common people. 
 
 The significance of this uncommon 
 experience may be expressed in one or 
 other of two ways : we may say that 
 there are persons to whom God may 
 speak with the expectation of being 
 292
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 understood ; or we may say that there 
 are persons who are peculiarly sensitive 
 to the spiritual world, as others are 
 sensitive to the world of music, of art, 
 or of natural phenomena. In either 
 case, we are speaking of that special 
 perception of religious truth which is 
 called revelation. It is plain that there 
 are outstanding men who see more 
 than their neighbors. In consequence 
 of this sight, some of them make dis- 
 coveries, some of them put forth inven- 
 tions, some of them write abiding 
 books. The materials with which they 
 deal are common to us all, but they 
 handle them with a conviction and a 
 result which is beyond our power. It 
 is plain that the uncommon religious 
 people know more about God than we 
 do. They are not always able to give 
 clear reasons for their conclusions ; 
 sometimes the reasons which they give 
 do not satisfy us ; but we perceive 
 that they have somehow come into 
 relation with divine truth at first hand. 
 And what they say has convincing 
 influence with us, for that reason. 
 Sometimes the men are uncommon 
 
 293
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 men, such as St. Paul, with his direct 
 perception of the fact of the spiritual 
 body. Sometimes the uncommonness 
 is in the experience, as in the case of 
 those disciples who with their own 
 eyes saw the risen Lord. 
 
 This experience is at the heart of 
 Christian history. It made Chris- 
 tianity possible and actual. The exist- 
 ence of the Christian religion is an 
 evidence of it. The Lord of truth and 
 life, the Son of God, speaks His great 
 words, and does His great deeds, and 
 is met with indifference and with 
 hostility. He comes unto His own, 
 and His own receive Him not. Down 
 He goes day by day, amidst the for- 
 saking of friends and the increase of 
 enemies, into that valley of the shadow 
 of death where the cross awaits Him. 
 The cross is the logical and inevitable 
 end of His life. It sets the seal to a 
 career of failure. 
 
 But the end is only the beginning. 
 The disciples, whom the tragedy of the 
 crucifixion had scattered, who had 
 gone every man to his own, who had 
 lost heart and hope, suddenly appear 
 294
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 transformed. They have been changed 
 from cowards to heroes. They are 
 filled with a joy for which articulate 
 speech is wholly inadequate, which can 
 find no better expression than the 
 tongues of Pentecost. They have a 
 sense of final victory, of absolute tri- 
 umph over all the world, which makes 
 persecution insignificant. It is not only 
 one of the most remarkable, but one of 
 the most determining facts of history; 
 for it has changed the whole face of 
 society. The whole Christian move- 
 ment to this day goes back for explana- 
 tion to the experience of the disciples. 
 
 They said, "We have seen the Lord." 
 They said : "The strong desire of all 
 the race is at last answered. Out of 
 the regions of death one has come back 
 to tell us in plain words that our faith 
 is valid. Christ is risen from the 
 dead ; we shall rise also. He lives, 
 and His life is our assurance that after 
 death the soul of man goes on into life 
 eternal." This message they brought 
 immediately to their neighbors, and it 
 confirmed the universal human hope. 
 
 Thus it comes to us. We always 
 
 295
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 knew that the fact of death is an uncon- 
 vincing argument against the life of 
 the spirit. We perceive that our com- 
 mon experience discloses the expecta- 
 tion of the race and the worth of the 
 individual. And here is a confirma- 
 tion of our faith. Here is another fact 
 to set over against the fact of the death 
 of the body. Here is a revelation of 
 God to the soul of man. Christ says, 
 "Because I live, ye shall live also; he 
 that liveth and believeth in Me shall 
 never die." The sight of Him, victo- 
 rious over death and alive forever- 
 more, is the final assurance of our 
 immortality. 
 
 The discussion of the elements of 
 religious believing and living ends, 
 indeed, as it began, with mystery. Out 
 of the mysterious past we came ; into 
 the mysterious future we go. And the 
 factor of mystery makes all our equa- 
 tions indeterminate. It prevents reli- 
 gion from appealing to the mind of 
 man with the convincing arguments of 
 logic. It removes the consideration 
 of religion from the regions of science, 
 of mathematics, and of intellectual 
 296
 
 THE LIFE EVERLASTING 
 
 certainty. It invites the emotions and' 
 the aspirations to help to solve the 
 problem. 
 
 But the problem, nevertheless, is 
 solved. Religion, especially as mani- 
 fested in Jesus Christ, presents the only 
 interpretation of the world which is 
 consistent with the worth of man, and 
 satisfying to the soul. This is a good 
 world, still in the making. The debris 
 of construction confuses our eyes, be- 
 cause we have only a dim idea of the 
 complete plan. But the plan is in 
 process, under the hand of God, for 
 our good, for our happiness in this 
 present life and in a life to come. 
 
 297
 
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 Lucas Slowcoach 
 
 BY E. V. LUCAS 
 
 "The record of an English family's coaching tour in a great old- 
 fashioned wagon. A charming narrative, as quaint and original as its 
 name." Booknews Monthly. 
 
 Mabie Book of Christmas 
 BY H. W. MABIE 
 
 " A beautiful collection of Christmas verse and prose in which all the 
 old favorites will be found in an artistic setting." The St. Louis Mir- 
 ror. 
 
 Major The Bears of Blue River 
 
 BY CHARLES MAJOR 
 "An exciting story with all the thrills the title implies." 
 
 Major Uncle Tom Andy Bill 
 
 BY CHARLES MAJOR 
 
 "A stirring story full of bears, Indians, and hidden treasures." 
 Cleveland Leader. 
 
 Nesbit The Railway Children 
 
 BY E. NESBIT 
 
 "A delightful story revealing the author's intimate knowledge of 
 juvenile ways." The Nation. 
 
 Whyte The Story Book Girls 
 
 BY CHRISTINA G. WHYTE 
 
 "A book that all girls will read with delight a sweet, wholesome 
 story of girl life." 
 
 Wright Dream Fcfc Story Book 
 BY MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 
 
 " The whole book is delicious with its wise and kindly humor, its just 
 perspective of the true value of things." 
 
 Wright Aunt Jimmy's Will 
 
 BY MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 
 
 " Barbara has written no more delightful book than this." 
 
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