GIFT OF 
 
 SEELEY W. MUDD 
 
 and 
 
 GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER 
 
 DR.JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 
 
 JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI 
 
 to the 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH 
 
 JOHN FISKE 
 
 
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 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
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 Form L I
 
 *'Show us the Father" 
 
 BT 
 
 MiNOT J. Savage, Samuel R. Calthrop, 
 
 Henry M. Simmons, John W. Chadwick, 
 
 William C. Gannett, Jenkin Lloyd Jones 
 
 '? "" ?' ' '' *'! ^ ^ ^' %' ^\ ^' 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 CHARLES H. KBBR & COMPANY 
 
 175 Dkarbobn Stbbet 
 
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 Copyright, 1888, 
 By Chakles H, Kbrk <fc Co.
 
 '3"R ^ o 
 
 COJSTTEIS'TS 
 
 1. I' AGE 
 
 The Change of Front of the Universe 
 
 Ml NOT J. Savage 1 
 
 JVVm' York and Hudson River Unitarian Conferenct, 
 Brooklyn, 1882. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Fullness of God - Samuel R. Calthrop 33 
 
 National Unitarian Conference, Saratoga, 1886. 
 
 III. 
 t The Unity of God - - Henry M. Simmons 57 
 
 p.^ Western Unitarian Conference, Chicago, 1887. 
 
 IV. 
 ^ The Revelation of God - John W. Chadwick 
 
 .j^- Unitarian Ministers'' Conference, London, 1887. 
 
 V. 
 
 The Faith of Ethics - William C. Gannett 103 
 
 Illinois Unitarian Conference, Geneva, 1885. 
 
 VI. 
 Religion from the Near End 
 
 Jenkin Lloyd Jones 129 
 
 Berry Street Conference, Boston, 1887.
 
 THE CHANGE OF FRONT OF THE 
 UNIVERSE. 
 
 MINOT JUDSON SAVAGE. 
 
 When the gods visit the earth they are rarely 
 recognized until the time of, or after, their de- 
 parture. So the tale runs in all stories of celestial 
 advent. And what is true of great personages is 
 also true of great events. One of the most strik- 
 ing things that history has to tell us is the uncon- 
 sciousness of what is really taking place on the 
 part of those who are even prominent actors in 
 what afterwards proved themselves to have been 
 the great turning points of time. 
 
 When the crisis of our late war was upon us, 
 even our leaders talked of a breeze that would 
 blow over in " ninety days." They little knew that 
 humanity was gathering its resistless might to take 
 one more bloody step in the upward march of 
 civilization. When Luther nailed his theses on the 
 church door at Wittenburg, Europe saw only one 
 disaffected monk, and little thought that it was 
 really the modern world rousing itself to shake 
 off the dogma-di-ugged sleep of the Middle Ages. 
 When Copernicus died after one look at his 
 speedily-forgotten volume, who thought that the 
 old heavens were being *' folded away like a scroll," 
 that a " new earth " was being given to men, and
 
 2 The Change of Front 
 
 that the '* former things had passed away?" And 
 when the Pharisees at last got rid of the trouble- 
 some meddler fi*om Nazareth, and lay down to their 
 triumphant sleep, who dreamed that they had 
 pulled down their own temple about their ears and 
 turned the disgrace of the cross into the symbol of 
 a world-conquering religion ? So ever does history 
 move on. When the event is passed, then the 
 world wakes up and notes its vast significance. 
 Milton tells us that when the gates of hell were 
 opened for the issue of Lucifer on his voyage of 
 discovery in search of the new-created earth — 
 
 " On a sudden open fly 
 With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, 
 Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate 
 Harsh thunder." 
 
 But not so open the gates of destiny. Their 
 hinges are as noiseless as the axle of a star. They 
 move as silently as the earth turns while we sleep; 
 and the race wakes up to find that it is facing a new 
 morning. 
 
 Victor Hugo says of Waterloo, " It was not a 
 battle; it was a change of front on the part of the 
 universe."' What he uses," with his grand poetic 
 license, in picturing a political revolution, we may 
 use in all literalness to set forth what is going on 
 before our very eyes, and of which we, willing or 
 unwilling, are a part. To-day the universe is 
 changing front. But the great mass of the people 
 seems utterly unconscious of it. Like the pas- 
 sengers on a great ship at sea, sleeping in their
 
 of the Universe. 3 
 
 berths, lounging in the cabin, chatting on the deck, 
 they take little account of the relation which the 
 ship itself holds to the great world, and do not 
 feel the motion when she swings round and sweepn 
 off on another coiu'se. But when they do arouse 
 at last, they find that the old headlands have dis- 
 appeared, and that new constellations are shining 
 out of unfamiliar skies. 
 
 We talk much indeed of the religious transition 
 of the age. Pulpits, platforms, newspapers and 
 magazines touch upon it among the topics of the 
 time, and so far as the words are concerned are in 
 danger of wearing them trite. And yet, it seems 
 to me, that few note the real significance of " the 
 signs of the times," or the revolutionary and far- 
 reaching results that are destined to follow the 
 movements now going on. The Jews were accus- 
 tomed to divide all time into two great epochs, the 
 one preceding and the one following the messianic 
 advent, that stood with them as the tiirning point 
 of all the ages. But with more truth, and in all 
 literalness, we may regard the present age as the 
 pivot point on which the whole of human history 
 turns. There has been a certain homogeneity and 
 consistency in all the past of the world. But that 
 is gone now ; and the Eternal utters his voice, say- 
 ing: "Behold, I make all things new; the first 
 heaven and the first earth are passed away." The 
 universe has changed front ; and the second, and 
 — however long — the final great age of all time 
 stretches out before us. I am aware that this is
 
 4 The Change of Front 
 
 saying a great deal ; and for that very reason, I 
 now ask your attention while I go on to justify my 
 statement. 
 
 But before I do this I must stop long enough to 
 indicate to you in a word what I am doing it for. 
 That is, I wish you to keep in mind all along the 
 bearing which this discussion has on the great re- 
 ligious and moral problems of the age. The one 
 Universal and fundamental fact, then, to be remem- 
 bered is this: that every religion, the wide world 
 over, ivhen analyzed, is found to run hack to, root 
 itself in, and spring out of, some theoretical con- 
 ception of the universe. 
 
 It starts with a scheme of things, including a 
 theory of God, of man, of their actual relations, of 
 certain better ideal relations which ought to exist, 
 and a plan for turning the poor actual into the 
 better ideal. Every religion, then, however crude 
 or however refined, starts with its supposed science 
 of the universe. Each has its cosmology : and in 
 this cosmology it finds its raisoyi d'etre. If then 
 the time ever comes when this fundamental scheme 
 of things is discredited, when its theory of God 
 and man is disproved, then the religion itself is 
 dead in its very tap-root. It may put forth leaf 
 and blossom again for many seasons, but its doom 
 is plain. Its followers henceforth must be those 
 whose allegiance is a thing of tradition and habit, 
 and not the intelligent conviction of informed and 
 earnest men. 
 
 Bearing in mind, then, this one universal and
 
 of the Universe. 5 
 
 fundamental fact, we are now ready to go on and 
 consider the modem change of front of the 
 universe. 
 
 The human race has occupied this planet at least 
 two hundred thousand years. Do you reaHze that 
 that means two thousands of centuries — during 
 which time our forefathers have been slowly climb- 
 ing up to our present vantage of outlook ? Leav- 
 ing one side certain glimpses and foregleams of 
 light, so as to keep the outlines of our thought 
 clear — we may say that our modern day dawned 
 about the middle of the sixteenth century. In 
 contrast, then, with the two thousands of hundreds 
 of years that preceded them, the last four hundred 
 are reduced to hardly more than a point of time. 
 And this point is the pivot on which our universe 
 has turned. Until now, with whatever minor va- 
 riations, one general type of conception of the uni- 
 verse has prevailed, in all nations and in all reli- 
 gions. Henceforth that type of conception can no 
 longer be intelligently held. A certain general 
 type of religion sprang out of, and ivas held along 
 with, the old conception of the universe. Hence- 
 forth that type of religion passes away with the 
 world to which it belonged. 
 
 I must now outline these parallel and companion 
 types of the universe and of religion, that it may 
 appear how naturally they go together. We shall 
 then be ready also to see the nature and the neces- 
 sity of the present and future change of front. 
 This outline must be drawn, if possible, with a few
 
 6 The Change of Front 
 
 bold and clear strokes, confused with no more of 
 detail than is absolutely necessary. 
 
 1. In the old scheme of the universe the earth 
 was the central and the largest body in it, for 
 whose convenience alone all the others moved and 
 shone. Its material was " dead matter," out of 
 which God built it, as a carpenter builds a house. 
 
 2. God was an individualized, outlined, limited 
 being, who had planned and made the universe, and 
 who ruled it from without as a despot governs a 
 kingdom. "* 
 
 3. Man was a creatui-e standing alone, separate 
 from and above all other creatures, especially 
 created by an act of the divine will. 
 
 4. Keligious and moral laws were only statutory 
 enactments of deity — not inhering in the nature of 
 things, and known only as they were revealed super- 
 naturally through prophet, or priest, or book. 
 
 5. Religion, then, was a government, in the 
 ordinary sense of that word. The universe was a 
 kingdom; God was absolute monarch; man was 
 his subject; hell was the prison for all incorrigible 
 offenders; heaven was the court where favorites 
 were received and honored. For one reason or 
 another, nearly all men, first or last, fell under 
 condemnation through disobedience; and hence 
 the necessity for a Commission of Pardons in per- 
 manent session. This took one form or another, 
 priesthood or church, according to circumstances. 
 But in all cases it was the repository and ex-
 
 of the Universe. 7 
 
 pounder of the divine will, and held in its hands the 
 conditions of deliverance. 
 
 This, then, in general outline is the scheme, some 
 fragment or variety of which has dominated human 
 thought and human life for two thousands of 
 centuries. All this is perfectly natural and not to 
 be wondered at. Indeed, it is impossible that it 
 should have been otherwise; for the materials of 
 knowledge out of which to construct any better 
 theory have not been in man's possession until the 
 present time. I have no sort of sympathy, then, 
 with him who merely ridicules the past ; as well 
 ridicule the Swiss Lake-dwellers for their style of 
 architecture. Theologically, as well as socially, 
 they built as well as they knew. Let us, then, see 
 to it that we do the same. The only justifiable 
 victims for our sarcasm are those — too many, it 
 must be confessed — who know, but do not. 
 
 But before leaving this point, let us group the 
 separate conceptions of the old universe into one 
 concrete picture, that we may look at it as a whole, 
 and thus make clear the contrast between it and 
 the new. As one definite variety of the type, let 
 us take the Jewish. They conceived the universe 
 as figured like an oblong square, after which, as 
 tradition asserted, the tabernacle was patterned. 
 In their later thought, it became a sort of three - 
 story stnicture. Sheol, the home of the dead, 
 containing both paradise and gehenna, was the 
 basement. The upper story was heaven, the home 
 of God, of his angelic court, and of certain earthly
 
 8 The Change of Front 
 
 favorites translated. Between the two was earth, 
 the home of man. The sky was a solid concave, 
 the floor of heaven and the dome of earth. The 
 Christian conception, modified in details, was in 
 essence the same. In the great poem of Dante, 
 we find the universe of the Middle Ages crystal- 
 lized into a figure as clear-cut as the outlines of 
 an intaglio. Hell is here a great cavern reaching 
 to the center of the earth ; purgatory a hill on the 
 opposite side; and paradise was placed above nine 
 concentric planetary spheres ; and the abode of 
 man is one side of the surface of the earth. That 
 was five hundred years ago. Let us come down, 
 then, to within about two hundred years, and note 
 the picture which Milton has drawn in " Para- 
 dise Lost." Milton was acquainted with what he 
 doubtless regarded as the speculations of Coper- 
 nicus ; for he makes Adam and the angel discuss 
 the problems involved. But he dismisses the sub- 
 ject as one of those questionable attempts of the 
 finite mind to penetrate divine secrets, which 
 theology has always looked upon with little favor. 
 If now you wish a picture of Milton's universe, 
 draw a mental circle. Cut this circle horizontally 
 in two by a line like an equator drawn across a 
 map of a hemisphere. The upper half of this 
 circle is heaven. Then di-aw a curved line, like the 
 Antarctic circle near the bottom. Beneath that 
 line is hell. Now di-aw another circle, whose upper 
 curve shall almost touch the floor of heaven, and 
 whose lower edge shall reach half-way from heaven's
 
 of the Universe. 9 
 
 floor to the dome of hell. Within this circle are 
 the concentric spheres of the Ptolemaic universe, 
 with the earth at the center. The whole universe, 
 as thus conceived in the great Protestant epic, was 
 not so large as the now known orbit of the moon. 
 For, when the rebel angels are thrust out of heaven, 
 it takes them only nine days to fall clear to the 
 bottom of everything. To get a vivid mental con- 
 trast as to comparative cosmic distances, just re- 
 member that it takes the lightning-like velocity of 
 light, not nine days, but three years and a half, to 
 reach us from the nearest of the fixed stars ; and 
 that, when we have reached that, we are but stand- 
 ing on the outer threshold of infinity. 
 
 In Ptolemy's conception of the universe — of 
 which Milton's is a graphic and definite picture — 
 the earth is at rest at the center. The moon, the 
 sun, each planet, and then all the fixed stars in one 
 plane, are attached to separate, concentric, crystal 
 and so transparent spheres, like so many glass 
 globes inside each other. These spheres hold the 
 heavenly luminaries in their places, and carry them 
 around with them as they revolve. Until Newton, 
 the world could imagine no other way to keep 
 them in their orbits. For even Kepler, after he 
 had discovered the laws of planetary motion, 
 and knew that they no longer moved in circles, 
 could not imagine how they were held in theii 
 places, except on the supposition that an angel was 
 appointed to superintend and guide each one. 
 
 These really magnificent attempts to solve the
 
 10 The Change of Front 
 
 riddle of the universe were indeed very far ad- 
 vanced beyond the cruder thoughts that preceded 
 them, the vague fancies and dreams of semi- 
 civilized and barbaric peoples. But — and this is 
 the great point to be kept in mind — however crude 
 or however complex and highly developed, they 
 are all only varieties of one grand type. They all 
 treat the ivorld as a structure urought upon and 
 made by a God or Gods outside of it. They all 
 hold the earth as central in the universe ; and man 
 as a special creation. They all make religion and 
 moi^ality to consist in the externally imposed will 
 of a God, supernaturally revealed, and hedged 
 about by arbitrary penalties ofreivard and punish- 
 ment. As far as the fetich-worshiper's thought 
 had gone, it had gone in this direction. And the 
 grandest development of organized Christianity 
 has not transcended these ideas. This, then, is 
 what I mean when I say that the whole past of 
 humanity has occupied itself with some special 
 type of this general conception of the universe and 
 of religion. 
 
 But now, at last, comes a change. Those who 
 imagine that it is only superficial, like a hundred 
 other eddies or temporary turnings of the tide in 
 human thought, can have made but a superficial 
 study of the forces at work, and of the direction in 
 which they tend. Those who smile at the preten- 
 sions of the age, and wonder why, if there is any- 
 thing in it, the great revelation has not come be- 
 fore, again can have made but a superficial study
 
 of the Universe. 11 
 
 of the lines of human progress and the events of 
 the modern world. Events occur when the world 
 is ripe for them, and not before. As well wonder 
 why the century plant does not burst into blossom 
 before its hour has come. Thi^ee great things have 
 happened in the modern world. They could not 
 have happened before, because the world had not 
 attained the knowledge out of which they have 
 sprung. Gunpowder must batter do'jvn the bar- 
 riers of the Middle Ages; movable type must give 
 wings to thought; commerce and navigation must 
 turn the oceans into highways and open all lands; 
 invention must have free play to create instruments 
 of investigation; then, for the first time in history, 
 could man even gather the materials from which 
 he might hope to construct even an approximately 
 correct theory of the universe. The conditions for 
 a hopeful attempt, then, have existed only in the 
 modern world. 
 
 But in this modern world, as I said a moment 
 ago, three great things have happened. And these 
 three things are three revolutions — a revolution 
 in physics, a revolution in criticism, and a revolu- 
 tion in biology. And fi'om before their faces 
 "the 'old' earth and the 'old' heaven have fled 
 away, and there is found no place for them." And 
 now we see " a new heaven and a new earth." 
 
 Let me now indicate, briefly as I may, what 
 those three revolutions are. And — 
 
 1. The revolution in Physics. 
 
 So far as we need take account of this for our
 
 12 The Change of Front 
 
 present purpose, it began with Copernicus, near 
 the middle of the sixteenth century. Some hope- 
 ful beginnings had been made in ancient Greece. 
 But the great brain of Plato turned the thought of 
 the world away from physical investigation and 
 into ideal channels. Then came Christianity, and 
 consecrated the old, crude science of the Jews as a 
 part of its infallible revelation of divine truth. It 
 condemned matter as essentially evil, and made 
 scientific study a sin. All progress in this direc- 
 tion was stopped for fifteeen hundi'ed years. Physi- 
 cal discoveiy then, was asleep for a millennium and 
 a half. The Renaissance began where ancient 
 Greece left off. Not that the human mind was 
 inactive; but all its genius and power were engaged 
 in elaborating and speculating within the sacred 
 limits of ecclesiastical dogma. And since the great 
 secrets of the world and of man were hidden out- 
 side those limits, of course they were not dis- 
 covered. 
 
 The revolution, then, practically began with 
 Copernicus. He shattered the crystal spheres of 
 Ptolemy. He set the stationary earth in motion, 
 and sent it spinning round the sun. He spread 
 out before human thought the illimitable universe 
 of suns and systems; and, destroying the illusions 
 of our conceit, taught us to take our true place as, 
 no longer central, but only a subordinate member 
 of the infinite oi'der. 
 
 This was the first great shock that was given to 
 the old belief. The significance of this shock will
 
 of the Universe. 13 
 
 appear if you remember that the theological scheme 
 of Christendom sprang out of, was commensurate 
 with, and fitted, like a picture in a frame, into the 
 baby-house dimensions of the Ptolemaic cosmology. 
 When that was shattered, the theological scheme 
 had no longer a framework or a support. The 
 Copernican scheme furnished no place for the old 
 God, no place for his heaven, no place for his hell. 
 And as the dove of Noah wandered the wide waste 
 and found no place to set its foot, so through the 
 infinite reaches of the Copernican universe has the 
 spirit of dogmatic Christianity wandered and 
 discovered no place of rest. It is not at home 
 in it, and never can be. The leaders of the 
 Protestant reformation scented the danger, and 
 would have suppressed the system of Copernicus 
 as atheism. And indeed from their standpoint it 
 was atheism. Their special conception of God 
 could not live in its infinite spaces nor breathe its 
 rarefied air. And ever since that day it has been 
 suffering and pining from asphyxia, and is doomed 
 to certain death. 
 
 All the later physical discoveries are in the same 
 line; and each one, in its turn, is fatal to some one 
 of the old ideas. They are part of the one movement, 
 and need to be grouped together so as to produce 
 one general impression. This grouping must be 
 very brief, and I gladly avail myself of the elo- 
 quent words of my friend. Prof. 1. H. Allen, of the 
 Divinity School at Cambridge. 
 
 " Think of the steps that have been taken since
 
 14 The Change of Front 
 
 Galileo's discoveries about the planets, suggesting 
 a plurality of inhabited worlds; Kepler's laws of 
 planetary motions, dissolving away the solid 
 spheres of the old astronomy; Newton's theory of 
 universal gravitation, displacing arbitrary will aa 
 the direct cause of the celestial motions ; Franklin's 
 proof that lightning and electricity are the same, 
 doing away with the superstitious awe at thunder 
 storms; Laplace's nebular hypothesis, so gen- 
 erally accepted, carrying back the origin of 
 the solar system to incalculable remoteness; Dal- 
 fcon's demonstration of definite proportions and 
 elective affinities in chemistry, making ridiculous 
 the old notion of 'dead matter' as the antithesis of 
 Spirit or the enemy of Good; demonstration of 
 the speed of light and distances of the stars, de- 
 stroying utterly the old belief in a local heaven; 
 geological proofs of the unifonuity of cosmic 
 forces and antiquity of the globe, disproving abso- 
 lutely the popular chronology of creation ; discov- 
 eries of the spectroscope as to the atmosphere of 
 the sun and the light of stars, widening enormously 
 and at once the range of our physics ; the well-es- 
 tablished doctrine of the conservation and equiva- 
 lence of energy, with its far-reaching effect on our 
 conception of the laws of life; and now the scheme 
 of evolution by natural process, apparently des- 
 tined, with whatever modification, to supersede 
 and swallow up every other theory of the trans- 
 mission of life and the inheritance of natural good 
 or evil. 
 
 " These successive steps — near half of them taken 
 within living memory — interest us chiefly, not as 
 so many advances or conquests of human intellect, 
 but as they bear on conceptions and ideas which 
 were once wrrought up without question into men's 
 religious belief, and were held necessary to their
 
 of the Universe. 15 ' 
 
 salvation. It is very impressive to survey those 
 steps in their connection and in their order of 
 sequence, if we only stop a moment to reflect how 
 prodigious is the mental revolution they imply. To 
 take one step the other way, to roll back by ever so 
 little an arc the driving-wheel of that revolution, is 
 manifestly impossible. And the steps have been 
 coming with increasing frequency and increasing 
 weight." 
 
 2. It is time now to turn to the second of the 
 great revolutions of the modem world — the revolu- 
 tion in criticism. 
 
 There is one point in this wide field which 
 chiefly concerns my present purpose; and, leav- 
 ing one side all else, I shall put my finger on that. 
 A most important chapter in the histoiy of the 
 world's religious and moral progress will, when it 
 is written, concern itself with the results of the 
 commercial enterprise of nations. And it was a 
 commercial exigency that led to what I now wish 
 you to notice. Little did the Christianity of the 
 Anglican church dream of the religious results of 
 the British occupation of India. But in reality 
 that occupation led to the discovery of the Rig 
 Feda, and the opening to European scholarship 
 of its ancient treasure-house. And not only did 
 this discovery furnish a key to the mythology of 
 Greece and Rome; it also created a new science 
 — that of Comparative Eeligions. It furnished 
 proof of the filiation and kinship of languages 
 and peoples, and opened the common source 
 whence have flowed down through the ages the
 
 16 The Change of Front 
 
 parallel streams of religious traditions. The sci- 
 ence of criticism lias since been reconstructed. 
 The world has been ransacked. Mythical cycles 
 and folk-lore tales have rendered up their secrets. 
 And now, instead of one true and supernatural 
 religion, in a class by itself, and in another class 
 all the others by themselves equally labeled false, 
 the educated mind of Europe and America is be- 
 coming accustomed to note the evidences of rela- 
 tionship which prove that all the religions of the 
 earth are only the naturally born members of one 
 great family; and whether large or small, wise or 
 unwise, equally the childi-en of the natural aspira- 
 tion and reverence of man. 
 
 Now, then, criticism equally studies them all, 
 and in the use of the comparative method assigns 
 each its rank and place. It no longer admits that 
 either of them sprang, like Minerva, full grown, 
 fi'om the forehead of a god ; but traces the natural 
 lines of its growth, and seeks after its natural 
 origin. 
 
 This critical revolution is no less disastrous to 
 monarchy in religion than was the French Revolu- 
 tion to monarchy in politics. It brings the "rights 
 of man" to the front; it destroys "divine right" 
 in religion, and makes the test of the right of any 
 religion to live and rule to depend upon the ser- 
 vice it can render to the welfare of humanity. Not 
 power any longer, nor claims as to exceptional 
 origin, are sufficient to establish its dynasty; it 
 can reign only as it can serve.
 
 of the Universe. 17 
 
 It is apparent, to even superficial thought, that 
 this change alone means nothing less than a new 
 religious civilization. 
 
 3. But there is one revolution more — that in 
 biology, the foremost figure in which is the modest 
 student of Down — Charles Darwin. In the short 
 space of twenty-three years he has completely rev- 
 olutionized our total conception of man. Adam 
 and Eden now dwell in the cloud-land of fable. 
 We are seeking man's cradle in the dim, primeval 
 twilight that hovers over the jungle, where our 
 brute-like progenitor first stood upon his feet, 
 began to use his new-found hands, exchanged his 
 wordless cry for a voice, and began to look out over 
 the world and up toward heaven with the dawning 
 human intelligence in his eyes. 
 
 These, then, are the three revolutions of the 
 modern world. This new universe, in its religious 
 and ethical significance, as well as in the magnifi- 
 cent sweep and tendency of its physical processes, 
 is grandly outlined for us by the master hand of 
 Herbert Spencer. Indeed, he is the father of that 
 scheme of evolution which seems destined to be 
 the guiding principle of the coming civilization. 
 Such familiarity with all knowledge, such attention 
 to details, so firm a hold on underlying and uni- 
 versal principles, such com^^rehensive grasp of all- 
 embracing laws, such power to group them all in 
 one orderly system, perhaps the world has never 
 seen before. 
 
 I must now ask you to look with me at their
 
 18 The Change of Front 
 
 logical and necessary results in the department of 
 theology. I regard them as much more radical in 
 some directions, and much less so in some others, 
 than they seem to be considered in the popular 
 mind. 
 
 I wish to hold myself here — as all the way through 
 — to a direct dealing with the few great essentials. 
 It will be understood, of course, that these carry in 
 their sweep all the minor details. We need then 
 to note which way the modern world is facing in 
 its outlook on the two great problems of man and 
 God. The change of front here is complete and 
 irreversible. Let us review its bearings on human 
 nature and human destiny. 
 
 1. Modern theology first took serious alarm 
 when the young science of geology demonstrated 
 the antiquity of the earth. By a resistless logic, 
 each step of which was incontrovertible fact, the 
 Bible chronology was stretched until it broke into 
 a thousand fragments, and the six thousand years 
 became uncounted ages. It was seen, f or.example, 
 that Niagara Falls had takea at least two hundred 
 thousand years to slowly wear its way through its 
 two miles of solid rock up to its present point of 
 thunderous descent. And it was found that the old 
 earth, instead of being made and finished once for 
 all, is always being made and never finished. 
 
 Of course the attempt has been made — it always 
 is in such cases — to reconcile the irreconcilable. 
 The day, with morning and evening, became mar- 
 velously elastic and stretched over uncounted
 
 of the Universe. 19 
 
 periods of time. It was suddenly discovered that 
 Moses had known all the while what the scientist 
 had just found out. And the world was expected 
 to admire a revelation which did not reveal any- 
 thing until after it had been discovered in some 
 other way. 
 
 But this has broken down at last ; and now we 
 are told that the Bible did not undertake to reveal 
 scientific truth, and that it is infallible only in 
 those cases where it can not possibly be put to any 
 decisive test. 
 
 2. Next geology, in its youthful vigor, became 
 the parent of another science called archaeology. 
 And between the two it was soon made clear that 
 not only was the earth older than had been sup- 
 posed, but that man was no parvenu on the planet. 
 And when to the hoary antiquity of his origin was 
 added Darwin's story of his birth, the very founda- 
 tion stone of the popular theology was ground to 
 powder. The very raison d'etre of the Church's 
 " plan of salvation," the only excuse for its exist- 
 ence, is the supposed "fall of man." But what 
 now do we see? No longer the "fall," but the 
 ascent of man. The popular conception of Chris- 
 tendom was well summed up by old Dr. South — the 
 famous English divine — when he pictured Adam 
 as the embodiment of all human perfection, of 
 whose greatness an Aristotle or a Paul were only 
 melancholy ruins or fragmentary remains. 
 
 But all this is proved to be a dream. The per- 
 fect Adam is before us, "not behind. We have
 
 20 The Change of Front 
 
 not fallen away from but are progressing towards 
 him. 
 
 Let US look, then, at the outline of the ecclesias- 
 tical scheme of salvation. Of course, as I have 
 said, its foundation is the fall. On that founda- 
 tion rest the Incarnation, the Sufferings and the 
 Death of Christ as the essential factors in the doc- 
 trine of atonement, which makes it possible for 
 God to save. On these depend the infallible 
 Bible, as the needed vehicle to convey the news of 
 tkis scheme to the world, and the Church with its 
 supernaturally called or gifted priests to expound 
 and apply it. Then, by perfectly logical sequence, 
 follow the doctrines of hell for those who do not 
 accept the redemption, and of heaven for those 
 who do. The whole scheme is one consistent 
 structure, dependent part on part, and all together 
 resting on the one foundation stone, — the fall of 
 man. If man be not fallen, then there is no need 
 of Incarnation, no need of atonement, no need of 
 infallible revelation, no need of a special divinely 
 instituted church, no group of the elect to rejoice 
 over being saved in heaven, no group of reprobates 
 to wail their loss in hell. But the fall of man 
 crumbles before the breath of modern investiga- 
 tion, like some long decayed substance when ex- 
 posed to the air, and the whole towering structure 
 of ecclesiastical theology and ecclesiastical salva- 
 tion totters and tumbles in the dust. It is only 
 rubbish to be cleared away to make room for the 
 temple of the real man and the living God.
 
 of the Universe. 21 
 
 Man is uot "lost," and does not need to be 
 "saved. '' These are terms that are outgrown and 
 ought to be disused. Come up by slow processes 
 of growth from the animal world, man carries 
 about him still, in body, heart and brain, the cling- 
 ing remnants of his old animality, survivals of his 
 origin. Ignorant, he needs to learn the conditions 
 of a true individual and social life. Not to be 
 "saved" then, but to be educated, is his need — 
 educated, not in the sense of head-training only, 
 or of being made the receptacle of information. 
 This alone is partial and shallow. His whole nat- 
 ure must be developed, until the higher in him 
 rules the lower, and he becomes the crowned king 
 of himself, his surroundings and his destiny. 
 
 This much as to the effect of modern knowledge 
 on our conceptions concerning the nature of man. 
 I must now ask you to notice the change that has 
 passed over our thoughts concerning God. 
 
 I speak of the change that has passed over our 
 thoughts concerning God. It is possible that some 
 of you are thinking that change ought to be com- 
 pleted by our ceasing to think of him altogether. 
 Many are ready to say that He does not exist. 
 Many more assert with much confidence that even 
 if He does He must remain unknown. Or, if they 
 recognize anything beyond natural phenomena, 
 they are ready to claim that the term, God, is too 
 concrete and definite to be applied to it. 
 
 My hour is too far gone to make it possible for 
 me now and here to enter into a discussion con-
 
 22 The Change of Front 
 
 cerning the divine existence. But fortunately it is 
 not necessary — I can reach the end I have in view 
 without it. I only care to indicate a few things neo^a- 
 iively, and hint a few others that I should be pre- 
 pared to argue for and defend, if this were the 
 time and place that called for it. 
 
 1. We can no longer believe in an individual- 
 ized God, external to nature and working on it from 
 without. The conviction is forced upon us of the 
 practical infinity of nature; and thus no room is 
 left for an infinite of which nature is no part. It 
 is not God and nature any longer, but God in and 
 through natui'e. What we call natural law we are 
 compelled now to regard as only the method of 
 working of that Power of which natm-e is the 
 expression. In this conception there is no place 
 for miracle, or for prayer regarded as a force 
 capable of interfering with or changing the uni- 
 versal order. It may still be true and grandly 
 true, however, that " They that wait upon the 
 Lord shall renew their strength." For, he who 
 gets into accord with the current of the eternal 
 forces, has all the resources of omnipotence at his 
 back. But — 
 
 2. Until we know that this Power is only blind 
 and unintelligent force, there is as much assump- 
 tion in saying "nature" as in saying "God," 
 
 - Practical omnipotence, intelligible order, " a stream 
 of tendency" that may be regarded as purpose, 
 " a power that works for righteousness " — these 
 are demonstrable.
 
 of the Universe. 23 
 
 And if we refrain from asserting that this 
 Power is " personal " and " conscious," in the 
 ordinary sense of those words, it may well be for 
 the reason that He is regarded as something un- 
 speakably greater than these, instead of being 
 something less. There is no science yet that for- 
 bids our being awed by the feeling of 
 
 " A Power that disturbs us with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 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 motive and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, 
 And rolls thro' all things." 
 Nor need we resist the conviction that the 
 wondrous order of which we are a part contains 
 within itself the prophecy of — 
 
 " One far off, divine event 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 This change of front on the part of the universe 
 does not, then, put religion behind us or make it a 
 thing either antiquated or outgrown. There are 
 two large classes of people at the present time, 
 one of which hopes that science is going to destroy 
 religion, and the other fears it. I find myself 
 unable to sympathize with either of them. I re- 
 gard religion as something inherent and essential 
 in the life of a conscious, intelligent and progress- 
 ive race like man. Its necessity and permanence 
 will appear if we only get clearly in our minds a 
 definition of the thing itself. When the biologist
 
 24 The Change of Front 
 
 defines the vertebrate class of animals he does not 
 concern himself with the thousand varying exter- 
 nal peculiarities of this particular vertebrate or 
 that, but he fixes his attention on the essential and 
 unvarying characteristics. Let us pursue this 
 scientific method in order to get a definition for 
 religion. We shall find it then to be man's thought 
 concerning the relation in which he stands to the 
 universe or to the powers or power which he thinks 
 of as governing it. This thought, is of course, ac- 
 companied by emotions, and these emotions find 
 expression in prayer, rituals, altars, temples, or 
 whatever is regarded as their fitting outward em- 
 bodiment. And the emotions themselves will be 
 slavish, or rand and ennobling, according to the 
 crudeness or grandeur of the thought. But since 
 the ritual and the emotion follow and are governed 
 by the thought, it is easily seen that the thought 
 is the prime essential. And since man must always 
 have some thought as to the relation in which he 
 stands to the universe: and as this thousrht, what- 
 ever it be, must always be accompanied by emo- 
 tion, and must find expression in action, it is 
 obvious that this, which is the very essence and 
 soul of all religion, can never be outgrown or left 
 behind. This definition covers fetich -worship; it 
 covers Christianity; it covers atheism, which is 
 only the obverse side of the current coin of religion; 
 and it equally covers the Cosmic Theism of Mr. 
 John Fiske's Spencerian Evolutionism ; and it must 
 cover forever any attitude that the human mind
 
 of the Universe. 25 
 
 may assume in its endeavor to solve or deal with 
 this great problem. The finite mind in an infinite 
 universe, can never escape awe and reverence and 
 admiration — which are the soul of worship — except 
 as it escapes that which is noblest and best in all 
 true manhood. As well then may the eagle think 
 to outsoar the atmosphere in which it finds lever- 
 age for its wings ; as well may a ship-captain 
 expect to outsail the sea, or transcend the horizon 
 which closes him round — as for man to think it 
 possible for him to transcend the limits of religious 
 thought and emotion. 
 
 The modern conception of the universe quenches 
 the light of no ancient truth any more than the dis- 
 coveries of Copernicus put out the stars that shone 
 on Ptolemy. 
 
 " Kopernik's thought a new world made, 
 Though Ptolemy's stars still shone; 
 New truth a new religion gave, 
 But not a truth was gone." 
 
 The new discoveries only distinguish the false 
 from the true, and set the eternal lights of re- 
 ligion and morality in their true relation, as parts 
 of the eternal order. And not only this, there is 
 another grand thought that seems to me to have 
 very rarely, if ever, found adequate recognition. 
 All the religions of the earth have in essence beert 
 one, and must be to the end of time. A golden 
 thread of continuity runs through them all and 
 binds them, like beads, on one string. 
 
 The differences have been only differences in
 
 26 The Change of Front 
 
 man's mental and moral capacity for finding and 
 cherishing a lower or higher thought concerning 
 man and the universe. This binding thread is the 
 essential purpose that has animated and inspired 
 them all. What then is this one essence? Man 
 has always had some theory of his own nature, and 
 his theory of the powers or power outside of him ; 
 and he haj always felt that his destiny depended 
 on the relation between himself and this external 
 power. His one grand effort then has always been 
 to establish and maintain such relations as would 
 make this power favorable to his own welfare. 
 This is true of the Indian offering tobacco on the 
 stump of a tree ; it is true of the Jewish High 
 Priest in his temple ; it is true of Christianity in 
 its highest manifestation ; it is true of Comte with 
 his religion of humanity ; it is true of science in 
 its broadest and loftiest generalizations. Indeed, 
 this is nothing else than the secret of life itself. 
 The religious search has always been the search for 
 the secret of life ; and the search of science can 
 be nothing less and nothing other. All old forms 
 and names may be discarded. All past theologies 
 may be swept away. But the thing itself, the 
 heart and soul of religion, will escape all eclipses, 
 will burst through all clouds, and after every night 
 will arise afresh like the unexhausted sun, with his 
 unerring aiTows of light piercing through every foe, 
 still cheering and leading on the race forerer with 
 his deathless beams. 
 
 But now a question rises which is of immense
 
 of the Universe. 27 
 
 practical importance. Is the world, poorer for the 
 change that has come into the religious attitude of 
 man? It is perfectly naiiiral that it should be 
 opposed by ignorance and by fear. It is perfectly 
 natural that vested interests should, oppose it. For 
 never yet did. the world take any great step in ad- 
 vance except at the cost of temporary discomfort 
 and loss. Never yet was old field plowed with- 
 out for the time destroying the freshness and 
 beauty of grasses and flowers. And never was a 
 mouse's nest overturned by the plow but she must 
 have thought the world was coming to an end. It 
 is perfectly natural that sentiment should oppose 
 it. For change of mental home means home- sick- 
 ness as much as change of physical residence. 
 Perhaps we may not wonder, then, that Wordsworth 
 should protest against the scientific analysis of 
 nature, and feel for a time that it was destroying 
 the poetry of the world. We will then be patient 
 with him while he exclaims — 
 
 " Great God! I'd rather be 
 
 A pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn, 
 Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, 
 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 
 We will be patient, I say, with his temporary 
 feeling; and yet we will also feel firmly persuaded 
 that poetry shall suffer no loss. On the contrarj", 
 we will confidently look for a grander poetry yet to 
 spring up to fit the grander universe that science 
 has revealed. We will willingly exchange Proteiis
 
 28 The Change of Front 
 
 and Triton for the grander creations of a fancy 
 whose wings shall have free range through the in- 
 finite complexities of the infinite order. Neither 
 will we be surprised when Holmes confronts us 
 with his challenge, or when for a time he forgets 
 the horrors of the past, and remembers only ^ the 
 faith, that, like a timid bird, built for awhile its nest 
 in some sheltering angle of some Middle Age tur- 
 ret that stood as a symbol of robbery and wrong. 
 As he watches the encroachments of modem 
 thought he cries out, — 
 
 " Is this the whole sad story of creation, 
 
 Lived by its breathing myriads o'er and o'er, — 
 One glimpse of day, then black annihilation, 
 A sunlit passage to a sunless shore? 
 
 "Give back our faith, ye mystery-solving lynxes; 
 Robe us once more in heaven-aspiring creeds; 
 Happier was dreaming Egypt with her sphynxes. 
 The stony convent with its cross and beads." 
 
 I have only tenderest sympathy for the feeling that 
 expresses its apprehension thus. And yet I have no 
 sort of fear that the apprehension is well founded. 
 Since the true religion can be nothing else but true 
 adjustment between the universe and man it is not 
 possible that a deeper and broader knowledge of 
 the truth should be anything else than a grand ad- 
 vance and development of religion itself. 
 
 But I am one of those who hold that no faith at 
 all — even were that the end — would be better than 
 the dominant faith of the past. Even Mr. Beecher,
 
 of the Universe. 29 
 
 in his recent North American Review article, has 
 said, "If the groat truth of evolution led to unbe- 
 lief, it could not be so bad as that impious and ma- 
 lignant representation of God and His government 
 which underlies all media3val and most of modern 
 theology." The happiness of dreaming Egypt 
 and the happiness of the mediaeval heaven are all 
 sweet and fair; but what of the horrors of the one, 
 or the hell of the other? In the words of Tenny- 
 son must we not say ? 
 
 "What! I shall call on that infinite love that has 
 
 served us so well ? 
 Infinite wickedness ra*^her that made everlasting 
 
 hell! 
 Made us, foreknew us, foredoomed us, and does 
 
 what he will with his own? 
 Better our dead brute mother who never has 
 
 heard us groan ! 
 The god of love and of hell together, they can not 
 
 be thought. 
 If there be such a god may the great God curse 
 
 him and bring him to naught. 
 Blasphemy? I have scared you pale with my 
 
 scandalous talk; 
 Bat the blasphemy to my mind is all in the way 
 
 you walk." 
 
 No, friends, I do not want any heaven at the 
 price of the undying anguish of the meanest man 
 that ever lived. Let us all sleep together, if need 
 be, in a night that never shall know morning. Biit 
 do not mock me with the offer of an endless song 
 in any mouth that shall have for echo aa endless 
 groan on the burning lips of an outca^it brother!
 
 30 The Change of Front 
 
 When men talk to me about its being a loss to 
 give up my faith in the fall, in total depravity, in 
 an angry God, in hell, I cannot for the life of me 
 feel sorry. And if with these I must give up 
 heaven itself, then farewell heaven, and welcome 
 dreamless sleep. 
 
 I do not for one moment admit that this is the 
 alternative ; I do not for a moment surrender my 
 hope for the future. I cannot treat of that, to- 
 day ; but I wish only to say, with all the emphasis 
 of my soul, that even were heaven the price to be 
 paid for deliverance from the past I would pay it 
 gladly, and thank God, even with tears of joy, for 
 the rest of the grave. 
 
 With one brief thought more I am done. These 
 readjustment and transition times carry with them 
 upheaval, displacement and loss. But all this 
 comes from the false conceptions of the past. A 
 smooth-flowing river glasses the peaceful stars and 
 carries verdure and life for all its shores. But dam 
 its current until the swelling pressure becomes re- 
 sistless, and then the obstruction gives way and the 
 freshet sweeps everything before it, and the coun- 
 try is devastated. Not the river, however, but the 
 obstruction is the source of the ruin. When re- 
 ligion is taught to men as a complete and finished 
 revelation, it becomes a moveless obstruction to 
 human thought. It holds the world back until the 
 onward pressure of human progress becomes too 
 powerful to be longer checked. Then it gives 
 way ; and for the time, human life is devastated
 
 of the Universe. 31 
 
 and human faith is drowned. But let a truer con- 
 ception of religion prevail ; let men learn that the 
 truth of the universe is infinite, and that the secret 
 of the growing life of man is in an ever nearer and 
 nearer approximation to this infinite truth, and re- 
 ligion will no longer be a thing of leaps and breaks 
 and cataclysms ; but rather a progressive and ever 
 advancing adjustment of the finite to the infinite and 
 all-embracing life of the universe. Thus the peace 
 of religion, as well as of the human heart, shall be 
 " as a river." 
 
 This change of front of the universe then puts 
 behind us all the past of fear, of an angry heaven, 
 and a scathed and despairing earth. We look 
 up the futiu-e, along a pathway lighted by ever 
 brighter and brighter suns, and arched over by 
 a sky whose cheerful blue hides no frown of deity 
 or scowl of eternal hate. " The low, sad music of 
 humanity " sinks slowly fainter and fainter down 
 the past, while the future, dimly seen, and far away, 
 gives utterance to the deathless hope of man — " Be- 
 hold ! I make all things new. "
 
 THE FULLNESS OF GOD. 
 
 SAMUEL ROBERT CALTHROP. 
 
 "The fullness of Him that flUeth all in all."— 
 Ephesians i., 23. 
 
 A magnificent, an ovei-whelming conception. 
 God filling all things up with Himself, so that there is 
 no room for anything else ! God, who is all in all ; 
 God, in whom all atoms, worlds, and beings live 
 and move; God, in whom all space, power, beauty, 
 wisdom, justice, thought, love, and life exist for ever 
 and ever; God, in whom man lives; God, whose 
 space and force sun-ound, interpenetrate, and in- 
 clude the body of man, whose thought and wisdom 
 enlighten the mind of man, whose justice gives law 
 to the conscience of man, whose love rejoices the 
 heart of man, and whose life sun'ounds, interpene- 
 trates, and includes the life of man, — God is the 
 transcendent theme of our meditation to-day. 
 
 The theme being so vast, it will be wise for us to 
 deal with it in detail, — in fragments, so to speak. 
 Let us, then, take up one by one the attributes of 
 God. Seeing only one side of God at a time, as it 
 were, we shall be sheltered, as Moses was, by cleft 
 of rock and shadow of hand from the full blaze of 
 the ineffable glory. 
 
 Let us then say, first of all, that, since God is all 
 in all, — that is, is strictly infinite, — all the attrib- 
 utes of God are infinite. Each attribute is coex- 
 
 33
 
 34 The Fullness of God. 
 
 tensive with every other attribute. Where any one 
 attribute exists, there every other attribute coexists 
 with it. Where space exists, there power, thought, 
 wisdom, beauty, truth, justice, love, exist; for all 
 these are attributes of God, modes of the being of 
 God. 
 
 I. The space of God is infinite, and is coexten- 
 sive with all the attributes of God. Spinoza, the 
 father of modern Scientific Philosophy, was, as 
 Schleiermacher lovingly called him, "a God-intoxi- 
 cated man." He saw all things in God. And yet 
 all that most men know, or rather misknow, about 
 him, is that he granted just two attributes to God, — 
 extension and thought. Granted ? Why, the man 
 lived in God! To him God was all in all. What 
 he did say was this: " God, being infinite, lives in 
 infinite modes; and two of these modes are exten- 
 sion and thought." Out of the infinite number of 
 modes, he selected these two, simply because they 
 are not only so closely related to man's own exist- 
 ence, experience, and thought, but also because on 
 these two modes, as foundation, he builds his scheme 
 of the universe. 
 
 The mind demands the origin of the visible uni- 
 verse ; that is, demands something for that universe 
 to rise out of. But the mind also demands that 
 that' something shall itself be unoriginated, as other- 
 wise thought would find no resting-place. Two 
 postulates will forever be essential to any system of 
 thought: 1. Unoriginated Substance; 2. Unorigi- 
 nated Space. On these as basis, the whole universe
 
 The Fullness of God. 35 
 
 can be constructed. If, with Spinoza, we consider 
 space an essential attribute of substance, then Un- 
 originated Infinite Substance is the one all-sufficient 
 postulate, which being granted, the origin of the 
 visible universe is only a question of detail. 
 
 Our one postulate, then, is Unoriginated, Infinite 
 Substance. In other words, our one postulate is 
 God. This mighty postulate once granted, all 
 things, beings, worlds, are modes of motion of his 
 Spirit. The material universe is fated or uniform 
 motion: the spiritual universe is free or independ- 
 ent motion. In God alone do all things find their 
 true substance. 
 
 There are other good reasons why, in our analysis 
 of the attributes of God, we should begin, as Spi- 
 noza did, with space. Space is the first attribute 
 of God of which the infant mind becomes con- 
 scious. Indeed, we may say it is the one attribute 
 of God of which all organisms are more or less 
 conscious. The reason why the commonest minds 
 know something about space is that they have a 
 vast organic inheritance of space-perceptions be- 
 hind them. Other organisms have labored, and 
 they have entered into their labors. It is well, 
 therefore, to begin where experience begins. 
 
 There are, however, difficulties on the threshold 
 of our examination, which could completely block 
 the way, if they were not got rid of. The first 
 class is the besetment of ordinary minds. There 
 is an absurd notion floating about that space some- 
 how exists of itself, independently of any being
 
 36 The Fullness of God. 
 
 whatever. God, therefore, I suppose, in the far 
 past found space conveniently lying round, and 
 wisely made use of it for creative purposes There 
 must therefore be two independent existences, — 
 God and space; for there would be no room for 
 creation if space did not kindly lend itself to His 
 design. Or, perhaps, the two high contracting par- 
 ties agreed on equal terms, one to create and the 
 other to find room for creation. 
 
 The mere verbal statement of the logical out- 
 come of these vague notions is enough to show their 
 absurdity. 
 
 The other class of difficulties besets more thought- 
 ful minds. When a clever man has thought him- 
 self into a fog about space, he is apt to imagine 
 himself quite a metaphysician — especially if he can 
 repeat some perfectly unintelligible formula about 
 space. 
 
 To quote a familiar unintelligibility, " Space is 
 a form of thought." Now, thought is a mode of 
 motion. Human thought is a mode of motion of 
 the human brain, corresponding to and accompa- 
 nying a motion of the human spirit. But motion 
 is not a thing: it is a state of a thing. The motion 
 of a snowflake is not the snowflake: it is a state of 
 a snowflake.. Therefore, the expression, " Space is 
 a form of thought," is equivalent to this other, 
 "Space is a state of the human brain." If, then, 
 you really mean that Space is a state of the small 
 human brain, whose space-filling cavity is only a
 
 The Fullness of God. 37 
 
 few cubic inches, this is not simply absurdity; it is 
 delirium. 
 
 If, however, you say, "Space is the form of 
 thought," — meaning by the form the mould in which 
 all thought is, of necessity, cast, — you have stated 
 a great truth, no longer a piece of metaphysical 
 moonshine. 
 
 If, again, you say, " Space is a form of the 
 thought of God," this is no longer an absurdity: it 
 is only a confusing of two coexistent, infinite at- 
 tributes of God, — extension and thought. God's 
 thought, being infinite, is coextensive with God's 
 space. 
 
 So much for these two classes of difficulty. There 
 are signs abroad that they are both steadily dimin- 
 ishing. Ordinary minds are being educated into 
 an awe-struck sense of the immensity of space; and 
 thoughtful minds are becoming weary cf the end- 
 less treadmill of bad definition, mounted upon which 
 a man can keep on walking upward forever, with- 
 out rising a single inch. 
 
 I had gone thus far, when I was summoned fi'om 
 my desk by a friendly visit fi-om a book- agent. 
 Silver and gold had I none, but what I had I gave. 
 I showed him a grand sun-spot in the telescope. 
 He was evidently deeply impressed, and suddenly 
 burst forth with this: "The one thine: that over- 
 awes and overwhelms me is the infinity of space! I 
 can't take it in! " When a book- agent is overawed, 
 it is a note of advance all along the line. 
 
 But to proceed. Space is the necessary substra- 
 
 93528
 
 38 The Fullness of God. 
 
 tmn upon which, as foundation, all things stand. 
 As all motion is performed in time, so all existence 
 takes place in space. 
 
 Here it is essential to sweep away at once the ten 
 thousand illusions which beset thoughtful minds 
 when they first begin to think about space. We 
 constantly hear such expressions as these : " Thought 
 requires no space, feelingshave no space-relations." 
 The act of thought or emotion, we are told, is 
 purely spiritual, meaning by spiritual something 
 that has no space-relations at all. Now, no entity 
 exists that has no space-relations : each and every 
 part of every being is always and everywhere re- 
 lated to space. 
 
 Thought in the human body is a wave vibration; 
 and a wave vibration must be of something, and not 
 nothing. No matter whether the vibration be of 
 brain and nerve, or of something ineffably finer, 
 which corresponds to an archangel's thought as 
 these do to man's thought, — always and every- 
 where, thought will be a particular state of a 
 being who is wholly immersed in space-relations. 
 
 Christianity has always believed in the spiritual 
 body; that is, in the continuance of natural and 
 intelligible space-relations in the life beyond death. 
 If, however, we take for granted the possibility of 
 pui'ely bodiless finite spirit, that purely bodiless 
 spirit will be as completely immersed in space as 
 rock, plant, animal, or man, will have as perfect 
 space-relations with the All and with each finite 
 thing as if it were a ball of iron. As an example
 
 The Fullness of God. 89 
 
 of moonshiny thinking, I take an instance from a 
 really fine modern thinker. "We might as well 
 talk," he says, " of pure spirit being white or black 
 or green as speak of it being either here or there." 
 This is simply idealism gone mad, and it is not too 
 much to say that no scientific metaphysics will ever 
 be possible to minds that have not got rid of these 
 prescientific notions. 
 
 In the deepest sense, then, we may say that Space 
 is The All, including within itself all forms of be - 
 ing, all matter, all spirit, and all manifestations of 
 both matter and spirit; and Space, to all alike, is 
 that underlying reality without which none of them 
 would be conceivable. 
 
 To the archangel, — that is, to the fully developed 
 man, — Space is the Presence of God, the fullness 
 of Him that filleth all in all, in whose fullness are 
 included all power, all beauty, all intelligence, all 
 truth, all tenderness. 
 
 This stupendous thought, the greatest that a 
 finite mind can grasp, is just dawning on the mind 
 of man. He has begun to behold the rising light, 
 who sees that there is no such thing as empty space. 
 From this, he can proceed to construct his universe. 
 
 The child first learns that the earth is a sphere 
 eight thousand miles thick. The man, all his life 
 long, is busied in filling up this conception, until, at 
 last, each inch of that sphere is seen to be full of 
 power and wonder and beauty. Oceans and conti- 
 nents, mountains and valleys, tropic splendors and 
 icy poles, forests of a thousand woods, flowers of
 
 40 The Fullness of God. 
 
 myriad hues, marts and cities and homes of men, 
 steamships ploughing the mighty deep, trains 
 rushing across the continents, wires flashing their 
 electric message, — all the inconceivable variety of 
 human life, — all this he sees on its surf ace alone ; 
 while, beneath his feet, his thought penetrates be- 
 low the roots of the mountains to that hidden ocean 
 of living fire which eye of man shall never see. 
 
 Just so the first lesson for man as a child to learn 
 is that Space is infinite; that he can send his 
 thought onward for ever and ever in every direc- 
 tion, and still find himself in the very center of 
 things. Developed man is to fill up this skeleton 
 conception with all worlds and beings that are: 
 with galaxy after galaxy filled with light and life ; 
 with destinies innumerable in trillions and trillions 
 of planetary homes; with power, justice, wisdom, 
 truth, and love vindicating themselves everywhere, 
 in everything; while through all, above all, around 
 all, and in all shine the light, life, and glory of the 
 One Eternal, in whom are all things and by whom 
 all things consist. 
 
 II. The power of God is infinite, and is coexten- 
 sive with space and with all the other attributes of 
 God. 
 
 All space is powerful space. There is no such 
 thing as a power-vacuum. Empty space is an 
 empty phrase. ^There is no cubic inch of empty 
 space in the whole universe. Take a cubic inch of 
 space midway between the sun and Sinus. Through 
 that cubic inch the light and heat of Sirius pass.
 
 The Fullness of God. 41 
 
 Let us analyze the beam by the spectroscope, and 
 see what this means. Commencing at the ultra-red 
 end of the spectrum, let us start with the invisible 
 heat waves. The longest of these we may call 
 TTj,W of an inch in length; that is, our cubic 
 inch will contain 30,000 such waves. Omitting all 
 delicate gradations of half-waves, quarter-waves, 
 and so on, we will consider the next group to be 
 those waves of which there are 30,001 to the inch, 
 and the next 30,002, and so on. Each group of 
 waves is present in the cubic inch at the self -same 
 instant, and each passes through without the least 
 interference from the other. When we arrive at 
 40,000 to the inch, we are well inside the visible 
 ' red; and we must keep adding 40,001, 40,002, etc., 
 to our series of waves. At 50,000 to the inch, we 
 are in the center of the visible spectrum, and keep 
 on adding, remembering all the while that the yel- 
 low and green waves are wholly independent of the 
 red. At 60,000 to the inch, we are in the violet, 
 and keep on adding as before. At 70,000, 80,000, 
 90,000, 100,000, we obtain wave-lengths in the 
 ultra-violet, invisible chemical waves, each group 
 being completely present in the cubic inch, and each 
 being absolutely independent of all the rest. At 
 last, we have obtained a fair notion of the number 
 of waves which are present in our cubic inch at the 
 self -same instant from Sirius alone; that is, if we 
 considered Sirius to be a simple tiny point of flame 
 instead of being a mighty globe millions of miles 
 in diameter, each square inch of whose siirf ace sends
 
 42 The Fullness of God. 
 
 forth a series of such waves. At the same instant 
 there is present in the cubic inch a similar series of 
 waves from every square inch of Arcturus, each 
 wave of which does not interfere in the slightest 
 degree with the waves of Sirius; also, from Vega, 
 Canopus, Eegulus, and the six thousand stars visi- 
 ble to the naked eye and the twenty million stars 
 visible in a great telescope. Also, from the innu- 
 merable planets, whose faint light no telescope is 
 fine enough to catch, a series equal in number to 
 those of Sirius is present at the same instant in 
 that same cubic inch. But how long is that instant ? 
 As light travels 190,000 miles in a second, this in- 
 conceivable series ii changed into an entirely new 
 series twelve billion times a second. Space is empty ! 
 But this is only one set of space -relations. Through 
 that inch, the gravitating relations of Sirius with 
 the whole universe in a straight line beyond that 
 inch pass; and you must prolong that gi'avitating 
 line to infinity for Sirius alone. Then a similar 
 line for Arcturus, Vega, and the twenty millions of 
 suns in our galaxy, and the billion planets, and the 
 uncounted nebulee, and the infinite number of atoms 
 of star-dust. Through that inch, all this passes 
 simultaneously; and, at every instant, a difPerent 
 line is drawn, as each of these trillions of objects 
 moves on its destined course. Each change in a 
 star quintillions of miles away is instantly, without 
 any time interval whatever, reported in that inch, 
 so that the movement of the whole universe inces 
 santly registers itself inside that inch. If an arch-
 
 The Fullness of God. 43 
 
 angel, after millions of years of study, could thor- 
 oughly know what goes on in that inch, we might 
 say that he knew the universe. 
 
 The exactness of God is in that inch. Not a 
 single one of this infinite number of results regis- 
 ters itself there wrongly, either as to quality or 
 quantity. 
 
 The economy of God is in that inch. Not one 
 vibration lost ; not a single wave that does not pro- 
 duce its fiill effect; not an ounce of gravitation 
 wasted. 
 
 The beauty of God registers itself in that inch. 
 Apply, in imagination, a microscope magnifying 
 trillions of diameters to that inch. Imagine each 
 light-wave illumined, each with its appropriate 
 color; each mingling with every other, with infinite 
 perfection of shape and curve; each running through 
 each, without displacement, confusion, injury, or 
 loss; and, if the watching of sunlight or moonlight 
 in its play upon the countless waves of lake or ocean 
 be indescribably beautiful, what would such a sight 
 as this be ? The beauty of God is infinite, and is 
 coextensive with space. 
 
 The love of God is in that inch. To whose eyes 
 do these light- waves bring messages of cheer? To 
 whose heart does day utter speech ? To whose mind 
 doth night show knowledge ? Who inhabit the worlds 
 that gravitation holds together? In a word, for 
 whose sake is all this done ? Out of the infinite 
 number of acts of power that pass tkrough that inch 
 (and, in that inch, we may well say that the whole
 
 44 The Fullness of God. 
 
 universe registers itself at each moment), not a sin- 
 gle one can be detected which is for the benefit or 
 advantage of God. All, without exception, are acts 
 of bounty to His finite children. The love of God is 
 infinite, and is coextensive with space. The devout 
 mediaeval man knelt in awe-struck ecstasy before the 
 throne of God. Around that throne, the archangels 
 stood, rank above rank. Around that throne wheeled 
 the host of suns and stars. From thence, through 
 the realms of space, flew thick and fast the arrows 
 of His will. From thence, He ordered all things in 
 heaven and earth ; and yet not Saint Bernard him- 
 self, in highest rapture of devotion, could conceive, 
 as sitting on that throne, as much power, wisdom, 
 beauty, and benignity as dwells in one single inch 
 of space. 
 
 III. The exactness of God is infinite, and is co- 
 extensive with space and all the other attributes of 
 God. 
 
 The Archangel Mathesis forever stands at the 
 right hand of the throne of God. She claims it, 
 not simply as her right, but as her duty, to calcu- 
 late all of His wondrous ways that are calculable. 
 Reverently, with folded wings, but firmly, standing 
 on her feet, and looking with undazzled eye into the 
 very blaze of the everlasting glory, on tablets of 
 steel, with pen of adamant, she forecasts the results 
 of the exactness of God. She claims as her own 
 every motion, thrill, and throb of every atom of 
 matter in the universe. She foretells the fated course 
 of the stars. She predicts the result of every heave
 
 Tlie Fullness of God. 45 
 
 of the mighty forces imprisoned in the bosoms of all 
 worlds. No qiiiver of a leaf, no sparkle of a wave, 
 no gleam of color in the tiniest flower, no throb of 
 sunlight, moonlight, starlight, escapes her. Every 
 bone, muscle, nerve, blood corpuscle, every hair-tip, 
 every invisible molecular change in every plant and 
 animal, pays tribute to her. No blush of a maid- 
 en's cheek, no thought in a sage's brain, no thrill of 
 inspiration in a prophet's heart, no ecstasy of wor- 
 ship in the rapt saint's inmost soul, can claim com- 
 plete exemption from her all-pervading scrutiny. 
 She calculates the power of eveiy heart-beat, the 
 exact amount of tissue used up in each single thought, 
 and knows that no life-change, however sublime it 
 be, can ever go on without her. The whole realm 
 of fate is her province; and fate, she knows, is 
 the adamantine base on which all finite freedom 
 must be built. And to man she saith, " Thy wisdom 
 is to know this : on this stone build the house of 
 thy life; for, if it fall upon thee, it will grind thee 
 to powder." 
 
 IV. The economy of God is infinite, and is coex- 
 tensive with space and with all the other attributes 
 
 of God- 
 
 The science of the last hundred years is one long 
 comment on this mighty text. The eighteenth 
 century discovered that matter cannot be destroyed. 
 The nineteenth century has discovered that force 
 cannot be destroyed. The twentieth century will 
 discover that mind cannot be destroyed. No single 
 atom of matter in all the starry spaces was ever lost;
 
 46 The Fullness of God. 
 
 nay, no atom has ever lost a trillionth part of its 
 potency. No unit of force was ever lost. Unbroken, 
 undiminished, it keeps acting on the universe for 
 ever and ever. In all the starry spaces, no mind 
 was ever lost : it keeps living on in the midst of 
 God for ever and ever. To-day we believe, to- 
 morrow we shall know, 
 
 "That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
 That not one life shall be destroyed, 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete." 
 
 Emerson said that ' it must be possible to make 
 such a statement of religion as would make all scep- 
 ticism ridiculous.' We are fast arriving at this. 
 Certainly, we are already able to make a statement 
 concerning infinite space that makes all scepticism 
 about infinite space ridiculous. The proof that 
 power ia coextensive with space makes all scepticism 
 about infinite power ridiculous. A similar state- 
 ment concerning that infinite exactness and economy 
 which are coextensive with space is becoming part 
 of mathematics. Very soon, we shall have a state- 
 ment of infinite beauty, justice, and love which will 
 equally make all scepticism about them also ridic- 
 ulous. 
 
 In the meantime, never call a man an atheist who 
 believes in and is greatened by one single attribute 
 of God, who is awe-struck with the immensity of 
 space or ravished with the perception of infinite 
 beauty. It is a great thing even to believe that
 
 , Tlie Fullness of God. 47 
 
 power is, and is a rewarder of those who diligently 
 seek it. 
 
 V. The justice of God is infinite, and is coexten- 
 sive with space and all the other attributes of God. 
 
 Michael, the archangel of justice, standing at the 
 right hand of God, with the balances in his left 
 hand and a drawn sword in his right, is the twin 
 brother of Mathesis ; for exactness in the material 
 world corresponds to justice in the moral world. 
 That which a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 
 He who sows to the flesh shall to the flesh reap cor- 
 ruption, and he who sows to the spirit shall to the 
 spirit reap life everlasting. 
 
 The justice of God is everywhere, and eveiywhere 
 makes right might, makes wrong weak, makes self- 
 ishness stab itself with its own hands. 
 
 Daily, the solar system travels through its mill- 
 ions of miles of space; yet no one ever saw one law 
 either alter or grow weak. For the eternal law is 
 equally potent everywhere. 
 
 But here comes a deeply needed caution ; we 
 are artificially dividing God into attributes. 
 
 If you take a red glass, you will see the whole 
 view red. Take a blue glass, and you will see the 
 whole landscape just as well as before. Every tree, 
 hill, and house is in the same relative position: it is 
 simply colored differently. It was red: it is now 
 blue. And so on of all the colors. 
 
 Now, a red glass is red, just because it lets the 
 red rays through, and stops the others. A blue 
 glass is blue for the same reason. Only when you
 
 48 The Fullness of God. 
 
 get a colorless glass — that is, one that lets all the 
 rays through with equal facility — do you see the 
 view as it really is innatui'e, with its thousand hues 
 of green and blue and gold. 
 
 In a precisely similar manner, we may behold the 
 Divine Nature as thi'ough glasses of different hues. 
 
 If we look at God through the red glass of jus- 
 tice, we shall see infinite space only under the color 
 of justice. Star and system, each vast, each tiny 
 life, will be there, only seen through the monochro- 
 matic light of justice. There will still be due pro- 
 portion to everything, for God's justice is equally 
 present in everything. All space will still be rep- 
 resented, for God's justice is coextensive with God's 
 space. Only, we must carefully bear in mind, that 
 we are excluding from our sight the tender shades 
 that are equally present everywhere. We are de- 
 liberately making an artificial glare over everything. 
 
 But some one may say: "But red and yellow, 
 green and blue, are different from each other." Yes: 
 but they are simply different movements of the same 
 element. The immense ocean of ether, which is in 
 all space, is one ; and red and green and blue are 
 all waves of that one ocean, differing in breadth and 
 height, — that is all. 
 
 Just so we must think of power, justice, wisdom 
 in God as so many modes or attributes of His one 
 infinite being. 
 
 VI. The wisdom of God is infinite, and is coex- 
 tensive with space and all the other attributes of 
 God
 
 The Fullness of God. 49 
 
 If an archangel had been given the problem, — 
 " Nothing but God completely filling all space with 
 His presence. From this to show how universes of 
 matter and finite mind can be created," — the arch- 
 angel himself would have been baffled. 
 
 How to make shore and boundary in the midst of 
 the fathomless deep of God; how to build little local 
 earth homes in the midst of limitless space; how to 
 contrive that somewhere in the eaves of the temple 
 of eternity the spaiTow should find a house and the 
 swallow a nest where she might lay her young; how 
 to make material globes out of pui*e invisible space, 
 — that was the problem; and that problem has been 
 solved. 
 
 Wisdom is that which conceives some mighty 
 plan, in order to achieve some great object. The 
 wisdom is shown in the perfect adaptation of the 
 plan to the fulfilment of the object. Make no mis- 
 take here. Be sure you are thinking all wrong, if 
 ever you attribute to yourself a power that the great 
 universe has not. You yourself have some capacity 
 to plan, have some power to adapt moans to ends. 
 "What a surprising little person you would be if the 
 whole galaxy -were to stand astonished at the new 
 revelation you made to it; no such thing had ever 
 been seen before! It is true that God's plan in 
 creation has not been understood ; and it is sadly true 
 that most men seem to have lavished so much rev- 
 erence on an unreal plan of creation that they seem 
 to have none left for the real one. The old idea 
 was that God made stars, suns, earths, plants, ani-
 
 50 The Fullness of God. 
 
 mals, and men out of nothing, just as they are. This 
 thought has vanished to return no more, but only 
 to give place to the thought of a plan immeasurably 
 vaster, more inconceivably wonderful. You have to 
 conceive that, before ever the atoms were, the 
 thought of God planned out the whole creation; and 
 that, out of His own being. He willed that the in- 
 numerable atoms which form the visible universe 
 should proceed, and that each and all, in perfect 
 proportions, should join together to build the mighty 
 whole ; and that eveiything thus planned and created 
 was seen, from the very beginning, to be very good; 
 and that, from that infinitely remote instant, no sin- 
 gle atom has ever changed in size or in velocity of 
 interior motion; that the proportions of each, 
 thought out beforehand, have been absolutely kept, 
 and that the result of this inconceivable dance of 
 matter has been, and will forever be, good; and that 
 each combination is the best possible, in order to 
 reach the result aimed at. The thought of oxygen 
 and hydrogen combining to form water is an abso- 
 lutely perfect thought, and will forever produce 
 good. This is equally true of each one of the im- 
 mense series. Silicon, nitrogen, and carbon spring 
 from a divinely perfect thought, — a thought that 
 has resulted in divinely perfect action; while each 
 one of their combinations with the other elements, 
 and each of their relations to the perfect whole, are 
 equally perfect. Granted the atoms and their spin, 
 granted the pressure of God's presence everywhere, 
 and you can predict the galaxy. Grant free motion
 
 The Fullness of God. 51 
 
 of finite spirit within infinite Spirit, and you have 
 free souls peopling that galaxy. 
 
 You are shut up, I say, to the conclusion that, 
 l>efore ever the worlds and atoms were, the thought 
 of God measured size, shape, and velocity of spin 
 of every atom, and also fitted each sot of atoms to 
 every other before He made them, unless you are 
 ready to maintain that from all eternity, in a given 
 inch, ton thousand trillions of little, self-existent 
 eternal oxygen gods found themselves, to their sur- 
 prise, all exactly alike, and agreed, as it were, to 
 act together; and then, still more to their sui-prise, 
 became aware that there were iu the self-sameinch 
 twenty thousand trillions of little, self-existent, 
 eternal hydrogen gods, all exactly like each other, 
 and all precisely fitted to join together with half 
 their number of oxygen gods or goddesses, as the 
 case mi;^'ht be, and so on and so on, to the end of 
 the ridiculous chapter. If you back out and shel- 
 ter yourself ia mystery, and say that the mystery 
 of self-existent atoms is no greater than the mys- 
 tery of creation, then I answer, One tremendous 
 mystery in one universe is immeasurably more prob- 
 able than a series of little petty mysteries, whose 
 number could not be put down, if you filled the 
 whole orbit of Neptune with figures so small that 
 you would have to use a microscope to see them. 
 
 Forever the atom sings its tiny song in the ears 
 of God, — a song of perfect, infinite content; for it 
 knows that it and its Maker are alike perfect. To 
 all eternity, it fulfils His will with absolutely un-
 
 52 The Fullness of God. 
 
 questioning obedience. Now floating in the sun- 
 light, now imprisoned in the petal of a flower, now 
 hidden for seeming eternal ages in the darkness of 
 the mine or entombed in the awful splendor of the 
 central fires; now throbbing with the sun's incon- 
 ceivable heat, now chilled by the bitter cold of in- 
 terstellar space, — always and everywhere, with equal 
 and unchanged joy, it fills its tiny but essential 
 place in the unfathomable creation of God. It 
 cannot " serve Him much " ; but it can serve Him 
 forever, and can "please Him perfectly." 
 
 " Would'st thou the highest life know, the 'atom' can 
 
 whisper its secret. 
 What that is without will, that be thou, man, with a will." 
 
 VII. The love of God is infinite, and is coexten- 
 sive with space and all the other attributes of God. 
 
 " Tell me a man's riiling love," said Swedenborg, 
 "and I will tell you what he is." Equally true is 
 this, " Give me the sum total of a man's actions, 
 and I will find out from them his lailing love." Let 
 us then judge God by His acts. Whose are the 
 iron and the stone? Whose are the cattle on a 
 thousand hills ? For whom do waves sparkle, winds 
 blow, leaves rustle ? and for whom does earth pour 
 forth her fruit ? Is it for the sake of God that the 
 sun shines, that the moon lights up the night ? Has 
 He built the stars for His habitation, and do their 
 light-waves caiTy messages to Him ? Does gravi- 
 tation keep His house together over His head? 
 AVTiat, then, is all this creation for ? Whose wants 
 does it meet ? Whose intellect does it stimulate ?
 
 The Fullness of Ood. 53 
 
 Whose life does it create, protect, aud glorify? 
 There is but one inevitable answer. The whole 
 galaxy is built, gravitation pulls, light shines, elec- 
 tricity thi'ills, and the atoms cohere to form the 
 worlds, simply and solely for the benefit of God's 
 children. The whole cosmos is one mighty token 
 of His love. 
 
 It is strange to hear a man like Tyndall speak of 
 what seems the " appalling indifference " of nature 
 to the woes of man, as if nature were one thing and 
 man another, and they existed in two different uni- 
 verses, made by two different beings, for two differ- 
 ent purposes, the truth being that this seeming 
 indifference is the crowning triumph of the love 
 divine. It means that in matter God has subjected 
 Himself to man, that in matter God takes upon 
 Himself the form of a servant, that in matter God 
 is absolutely obedient to the dictates of His crea- 
 tures. Keep the laws of matter, and you can shape 
 it to what moulds you please. Meekly it will un- 
 dergo all the blows wherewith you fashion it. With 
 fire-beat and hammer-beat, you weld it to your will. 
 In every mighty workshop of the modern day there 
 is many a Jacob who will suddenly awake from his 
 dream and say, " God was in this place, and I knew 
 it not." In matter, man is the master, and God the 
 servant; man proposes, and disposes also. In mat- 
 ter, God abdicates realm after realm of His king- 
 dom, in order that His childi'en may have a kingdom 
 too. But it is more than this. God has only His 
 own substance out of which to make this kingdom.
 
 54 The Fullness of God. 
 
 In matter, God, by a divine act of transubstantia- 
 tion, forever saith, "Take, eat: this is my body 
 which is given for you! " 
 
 But you say, "Now, you yourself are limiting 
 the power of God." Nay: it is God Himself who 
 is limiting His own power. 
 
 We do not understand in the least the perfection 
 of God's self-surrender until we know that it is ab- 
 solute. 
 
 God has given his worlds away, and cannot take 
 them back again. He has given to us. His children, 
 real eminent domain, over the things He has made. 
 
 God has reserved to Himself absolutely nothing 
 of the galaxy. All is now the absolute property of 
 His children. He has only reserved to Himself the 
 right to protect, to guide, to ransom, to rescue, to 
 forgive, the right in all their affliction to be afflicted, 
 the right to comfort and cheer and strengthen, and 
 the right to protect the weak against the strong and 
 to visit the one who wrongs his neighbor. 
 
 Jesus did not invent self-sacrifice. He discov- 
 ered it, — discovered that self-sacrifice is the great 
 central law of the universe, that this is the heart of 
 God. He obeyed it, loved it, lived it, and gave 
 himself for it. 
 
 God is love. This is the gospel, the good tidings 
 which proclaim liberty to all captives and comfort 
 all that mourn. It is the good news to all, to the 
 weak as well as to the strong. God is love. 
 
 Here is a poor, lonely, forlorn old woman, living 
 all by herself in some crazy attic in a tenement
 
 The Fullness of God. 55 
 
 house. Husband, children, friends, are all dead and 
 gone. It is night. The weary toil of the day, too 
 much for the feeble frame, is over at last; and now 
 the one romance of her desolate life begins. 
 
 By the light of her one tallow candle, she opens 
 her well-thumbed Bible at the passage which tells 
 of that rest which remaineth for the people of God, 
 of that better, that heavenly country, where her dead 
 are alive to God. Unconsciously, she is trying a 
 great experiment. In this miserable room is there 
 anything besides rickety floor, falling plaster, crazy 
 stove, and single chair, and table and empty space 
 around ? 
 
 Yes; there is. She reads on, and the loved faces 
 seem to smile once more upon her, and the loneli- 
 ness departs ; for the Love Eternal which surrounds 
 her makes her sleep once more in safety. 
 
 She dies; and the beloved ones meet her, and lead 
 her toward the great company of " loyal hearts and 
 true," that she may hear the life-song of the re- 
 deemed. It fills her soul with joy at first. But 
 very timidly, after a time, she asks if ever she may 
 be possibly allowed just to catch a far-off glimpse 
 of that third heaven she has read of, where God 
 Himself is moon and stm. Oh, yes ! they will take 
 her at once. Swiftly, they cany her to that blest 
 place. But where is she ? ^^ hy, she is standing 
 in the old rickety attic. This is the very stove, 
 these the tumble-down walls. Here is each com- 
 mon thing that her past life wearied of so often. 
 But, lo ! wall and stove, chair and table, begin to
 
 56 The Fullness of God. 
 
 shine, to grow transparent, to become part and par- 
 cel of the Love Divine, all love excelling. She has 
 seen God, seen the fulness of Him that filleth all 
 things. 
 
 One day, it shall be thus with us all — 
 
 " Soon the whole, 
 Like a jDarted scroll, 
 Shall before my amazed sight uproll, 
 And then be seen, 
 In unclouded sheen, 
 The Presence wherein I have ever been."
 
 THE DIVINE UNITY. 
 
 HENRT M. SIMMONS. 
 
 The idea of Divine Unity is found in various 
 stages of growth in the Bible. The Israelites long 
 served many gods and believed in more, and even 
 so late and honored a sage as Solomon worshiped 
 five. But this polytheism passed, and the saying 
 ran: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one 
 Lord," — or as better translated, " Jehovah is our 
 God, Jehovah alone." He came also at length to 
 be thought not merely God of Israel, but of all 
 nations and nature; and the Deuteronomist says 
 that to him "belongeth the heaven and the heaven 
 of heavens, the earth with all that is therein." Nor 
 was Jehovah's rule shared yet by any Satan. The 
 author of the later Isaiah ascribes to him all bad as 
 well as good, and makes him claim to " create evil " 
 and "do all these things," "there is none else." 
 The diverse gods were united at last; and Zecha- 
 riah, predicting the time when Jehovah should be 
 seen as "king over all the earth," said, "The Lord 
 shall be one, and his name one." 
 
 But now and then some seer declared the Unity 
 of God better; — not that of a ruler throned above, 
 using earth for footstool and counting nations noth- 
 ing, but that of one guardian presence in all, and 
 even one with all. "Do I not fill heaven and 
 earth?" he says in Jeremiah; and another declares 
 
 57
 
 58 The Divine Unity. 
 
 that " the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot con- 
 tain him." The familiar psalm finds him in " the ut- 
 termost parts of the sea," in morning light and mid- 
 night darkness, in heaven and hell alike. So the 
 Christian apostle tells even idolatrous Athenians 
 that this God is with them, for in him they live and 
 have their being. Not only were all in him, but he 
 in all; and Paul asks the carnal and corrupt Corin- 
 thians, if they did not know that they were the 
 "temple of God?" Nor did Deity dwell in men 
 merely as his shrines, but as his sons, and so still 
 more closely one with them. The Jews of Jesus' 
 day were wont to call him " oui' Father " ; the apos- 
 tle told the heathen Greeks that God was their 
 Father too ; and the epistle to the Ephesians calls 
 him " Father of all, over all and through all and in 
 all." And these writers, as well as Jesus, often call 
 men " Sons of God." 
 
 In such sayings we reach a higher idea of 
 unity. God was not merely one personal will apart 
 from the world; but a diviner One, including the 
 world and pervading all things in it, uniting all in 
 his infinite life. He was not merely one in himself, 
 bat one with men, and so calling them to be one 
 with each other. The Divine Unity included, as 
 its best earthly meaning, the human unity. 
 
 Hence with the growth of the idea, religion more 
 and more regarded the unity of men. The belief 
 in one Lord of all nations rebuked the old wars 
 fought in the name of rival gods; and the sanguine 
 monotheistic prophets pictured the coming day
 
 The Divine Unity. 59 
 
 when the world would beat its weapons into plow- 
 shares, and " not learn war any more." These 
 prophets made even religion consist chiefly of hu- 
 manity. Hosea says the 'Lord wants mercy and 
 not sacrifice; Amos asserts that the maker of the 
 Pleiades and Orion has no delight in their solemn 
 assemblies or psalms, and only asks for justice; 
 Isaiah makes light of their sabbaths and ceremonies 
 and prayers, and bids them rather "relieve the 
 oppressed " ; and Micah says the Lord requires 
 nothing of them but "to do justly, and love mercy, 
 and walk humbly with him." Later teachers made 
 religion look still more manward. Rabbi Hillel 
 said the Golden Rule was the sum of the Old Tes- 
 tament law; and Jesus afterward said it was "the 
 law and the prophets" too. 
 
 Indeed Jesus left little of the old religion except 
 this human love and spirit of unity among men. 
 He broke the Sabbath, they said; he compared their 
 religious fasts and similar ceremonies to old bottles 
 about to burst, and old clothes past patching; he 
 commanded them to leave the very altar until they 
 were reconciled to others, — as if peace were more 
 important than praying. In fact he put peace at 
 the head of religious duties, and gave to mere 
 peace-makers his best blessing, and the highest 
 name of "sons of God." He preached peace even 
 to the degree of overlooking evil. He cited the 
 sunshine and rain falling on good and evil alike, as 
 sign that God was perfect, and bade men be as per- 
 fect; and he was himself so true to the teaching, that
 
 60 The Divine Unity. 
 
 Kenan says Jesus had a divine incapacity of seeing 
 evil. In this spirit lie forgave his very murderers, 
 preached love even to enemies, and made religion 
 consist chiefly of the feelings that unite men. 
 
 The same thought prevails in the apostles also. 
 They did indeed add some doctrines about Jesus, 
 which would have surprised him and may not satisfy 
 us. But if we overlook these, we find their emphasis 
 ever on peace and love. Paul exhorts the Thessa- 
 loniansto "abound in love toward one another and 
 toward all men"; he urges the Romans to " be at 
 peace with all men," and says that " love is the ful- 
 filling of the law." He rebukes the Corinthians for 
 their divisions, and preaches to them a charity as 
 broad as Jesus' incapacity of seeing evil ; — says that 
 charity "thinketh no evil," or, in the new version, 
 "taketh no account of evil." And this charity he 
 puts above everything else ; — above prophecy, which 
 " shall be done away" ; above the miracles that could 
 "remove mountains"; above the martyrdom that 
 gives its " body to be burned " ; above even faith and 
 hope, "the greatest of these is charity." Other 
 epistles lay equal stress upon love and unity. That 
 to the Colossians urges them to forbear and forgive, 
 and " above all these things, to put on love, which 
 is the bond of perfectness." That to the Ephesians, 
 which teaches so grandly the Unity of God " through 
 all and in all," especially emphasizes the unity of 
 men. It urges them to " keep the unity of the spirit 
 in the bond of peace," to "walk in love" and "be 
 rooted and grounded in love," and in their very
 
 The Divine Unity. 61 
 
 armor to be shod with the "gospel of peace." It 
 represents Christ as a tiniter of Hebrews and 
 heathen, and calls him " our peace, who hath made 
 both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of 
 partition." Still more was (Jod seen as a uniter, 
 and continually called the "God of peace," and " the 
 God of love and peace." And in the epistle of 
 John, God is especially identified with human love. 
 Every one that loveth, is most closely one with God; 
 for "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, 
 dwelleth in God and God in him." The love that 
 unites men is itself God, 
 
 Here we touch the deepest truth in the doctrine. 
 God is not only One in all, but is especially what 
 makes all one. He not only unites all, but is pecu- 
 liarly the uniting principle. God is the infinite 
 One, living in every thing; but living most in hu- 
 man love, and hence worshiped best by that. 
 
 So far is the idea carried in the Bible. Not in- 
 deed that it is found throughout the Bible, for it is 
 often denied there. Still less is it found in the 
 Bible alone. It was often declared by Roman and 
 Greek philosophers long before Paul, and was 
 familiar in the higher thought of Egypt and else- 
 where before the Hebrews were heard of. Still it 
 was VQYj grandly expressed in these later Jewish and 
 early Christian writings. And what sentence of an- 
 cient or modern literature sums religious truth with 
 more precision and perfection than that: "If we 
 love one another, God dwelleth in us " f The most 
 practical precept, the most perfect theology, the
 
 62 The Divine Unity. 
 
 most profound pbilosopliy, — all packed in eight 
 Greek words. 
 
 But this truth was not always remembered even 
 by the apostles, and was quite forgotten by most of 
 their successors. A school of Christians, represented 
 by such men as Clement of Alexandria and Origen, 
 continued to teach one God " above all and through 
 all and in all"; but most chose a narrower thought, 
 and the leading idea of the Church became not 
 unity, but division. Christianity soon taught a 
 divided God, and hence a divided humanity. 
 
 This division came chiefly from the inherited doc- 
 trine of a devil. For long before the apostles, the 
 higher Hebrew monotheism had been modified by 
 Persian dualism, and Jehovah's kingdom divided 
 with a new ruler called Satan. Evil, which the 
 great prophet's God created and took care of, was 
 now all assigned to this rival ; and inasmuch as evil 
 generally means everything except the little which 
 the speaker likes, Satan's share was much the larger. 
 This later Jewish doctrine naturally remained in 
 Christian thought; and this Satan, who is men- 
 tioned only in three late passages of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and there only as a sort of servant of God, 
 often appears in the New Testament as God's foe, and 
 so powerful as to be called " the prince of the world." 
 
 This division was not only thus inevitable, but 
 was in a sense true. The Divine Unity does in- 
 clude a duality and ever works with opposing 
 principles. The globe is moulded and its orbit
 
 The Divine Unity. 63 
 
 marked out by two contending forces, — one seeking 
 to centralize, the other to separate. On earth, all 
 advance,— from gas to granite, from algae to elms, 
 from mollusks to man, and through all human pro- 
 gress, — has come through the opposing processes 
 of creation and destruction, growth and decay. 
 These processes, though one to the divine view, are 
 distinct to the human, and must be contrasted as 
 good and bad. Man naturally personifies too; the 
 ancient Persian saw his bad as Ahriman, and the 
 Englishman still spells his evil with a D, until he 
 learns better. So apostles, in the manner of their 
 times, saw evil enough, and called it Satan, the 
 adversary ; — and we cannot condemn them for it. 
 Rather we must commend some of them for sepa- 
 rating good and evil so wisely,— not by the super- 
 ficial tests common in religion, but by the deep 
 distinction of love and hate, unity and discord. 
 Paul, if not always seeing the full breadth and 
 depth of the Divine Unity, still saw that human 
 unity is the divinest thing on earth. His evils are 
 " enmities, strife, factions, divisions " ; his fruits of 
 the spirit, "love, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, 
 meekness." Beneath names, his evil and devil 
 were chiefly what divided men; his good and God 
 what united them. All would have been well, had 
 the church kept to this principle. 
 
 But the Church soon began to separate good and 
 evil by quite another line. It yielded to the com- 
 mon tendency, and judged not by a principle, but 
 by a name. Its good ceased to mean love, and
 
 64 The Divine Unity. 
 
 came to mean only what took the name of Christ. 
 Its evil ceased to mean hate, and came to mean 
 everything -which was not called by the Christian 
 name. This was not Jesus' fault, for he had been 
 far too noble to care for his name. Indeed he 
 rebuked those who called him " Lord, Lord," and 
 who said we " have prophesied in thy name, and in 
 thy name cast out devils, and in thy name done " 
 so many wonderful things. The word he had for 
 those people, was " Depart from me, ye that work 
 iniquity;" and there is no record that they had 
 worked any other iniquity than relying on his 
 name. Possibly Jesus really meant, — what all 
 history has proved, — that reliance on names in- 
 stead of principles does "work iniquity" of the 
 worst kind. At any rate, he told them not to use 
 his name as a test. But they did, — and soon made 
 an end of charity by it. Even that epistle which 
 says God dwells in all who love each other, teaches 
 that he dwells only in the little Church though, 
 and says: " We know that we are of God, and the 
 whole world lieth in the evil one." Such thoughts 
 grew more common, until the apostle's Christ, who 
 was a uniter and had "broken down the wall of 
 partition," became a divider, and built a worse wall 
 than the old one. By his name, the Church walled 
 off the heathen and even the Hebrews, walled off 
 most of mankind as cursed, and not only divided 
 God's kingdom, but gave nearly all of it to that 
 Satan of whom the Old Testament prophets did not 
 so much as know the existence.
 
 The Divine Unity. 65 
 
 Nor did the divisiou stop here, but divided the 
 little that was left. This partial God was made a 
 trinity of persons; and, far worse, the Church was 
 divided and redivided over this and other theolog- 
 ical questions. The partitions multiplied, and 
 Christendom was separated by dogmas into more 
 sects than can be catalogued in a sermon. It 
 was divided even by the ceremonies which Jesus 
 compared to old clothes. That fasting which he 
 rejected gave rise to endless contentions how it 
 should be kept, and came to be thought so religious 
 that we read of the Russian robber who killed a 
 traveler, but would not eat the meat found in the 
 cart because it was fast- day. Instead of leaving 
 the altar until they were reconciled, Christians 
 quarreled past reconciliation about the acts and 
 attitudes at the altar. Baptism became more im- 
 portant than purity, and an atonement for impur- 
 ity; and dispiTtes about it sometimes ended in a 
 baptism of blood. Paul, rebuking the Corinthians 
 for their contentions, says he does "thank God" 
 that he baptized so few of them; — and well he 
 might, considering how such rites have called 
 attention away from that love which Jesus and 
 Paul made the one thing needful in religion. This 
 was so often neglected that Tennyson says : 
 
 " Christian lore among the churches looked the twin of 
 heathen hate." 
 
 Unity was forgotten, and in consequence Jesus' 
 teachings were reversed to a degree that would be 
 laughable, if not so lamentable. Renouncing his
 
 66 The Divine Unity. 
 
 5> 
 
 saying that all peace-makers were " sons of God, 
 his worshipers made war on those who would not 
 deny it by calling him the only son of God. Re- 
 versing his charge to forgive " them which despite- 
 fully use you and persecute you," Christianity 
 despitefully used its own another, and persecuted 
 the very nation that furnished its Scriptures and 
 Messiah. The gospel of brotherhood was preached 
 by bloodshed. The dying knight, when told that 
 he must forgive his enemies, said he had none? 
 he had killed them all; and to Jesus' command to 
 love its enemies, the Church could sometimes reply 
 that there were not many left. Even those who 
 were not enemies did not always escape; and the 
 command, " Love thy neighbor as thyself," was 
 sometimes translated, " Burn your neighbor, if he 
 does not believe like you." So many and great 
 evils came from that error of division. Recogni- 
 tion of the Divine Unity, and its corollaiy of human 
 unity, would have prevented every one, and saved 
 history from half its horrors. 
 
 But that forgotten truth at length began to re- 
 assert itself. The Unity of God was again de- 
 clared, and the name Unitarian arose as opposed to 
 Trinitarian. But, of far more importance, its in- 
 volved principle of human unity began to be seen 
 by men of all sects. It was seen that brothers 
 ought not to be divided by mere ceremonies, and 
 that there was " one God and Father cf all ' who 
 kept their doctrines correct. With more advance
 
 The Divine Unity. 67 
 
 it was felt that men ought not to be divided by- 
 minor differences of doctrine, and that there was 
 "one God over all" Christians. So peace grew 
 between the most divergent Christian sects. Even 
 Trinitarians and Unitarians united as far as was 
 proper; and Lowell pictures Calvin and Servetus 
 meeting "at one board," to enjoy a "milder roast," 
 "And o'er their claret settle Comte unread." 
 And when read, even Comte, and countless others 
 not called Christians, prove to be as true to Christ 
 as is the Church, — and often truer. Take, for in- 
 stance, that peace-??iaA;ingr which Jesus put first as 
 sign of very "sons of God." Christian nations, in 
 scorn of that sentiment, have made history a record 
 of wars ; and it is said that even now American 
 farmers and merchants would not seriously object 
 to a foreign campaign which should destroy half a 
 million men, if it would raise the price of wheat a 
 few cents. Nor has the Church condemned the 
 custom very severely. With war murdering five 
 millions of men the last century, and mangling 
 more, and breeding brutal sentiments to last a 
 century to come, — an English writer says that in 
 fifty years' attendance at church, he has heard only 
 one sermon against it. Francis A. Walker makes 
 a similar charge against the preaching of this 
 country, and calls our clergy " the most demoral- 
 ized body in the community in this respect." But 
 heretics, from Voltaire since, have been preaching 
 against this evil. The recent wars of England, 
 while supported by nearly all her established clergy,
 
 68 The Divine Unity. 
 
 have been actively opposed by positivists and ag- 
 nostics, like Frederick Harrison and John Morley. 
 Herbert Spencer rebnkes "the ten thousand priests 
 of the religion of love, who are silent when the na- 
 tion is moved by the religion of hate ;" and one 
 said that Bradlaugh, the atheist, ought to be made 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, since he was so good an 
 advocate of Jesus' religion of peace, while the oc- 
 cupant of that see was false to it. The Christian 
 name is evidently a poor religious test. 
 
 With wider knowledge, even the heathen beyond 
 the influence of Christianity and before it, prove to 
 have had a quite similar religion. That Golden 
 Rule which Jesus said summed "the law and the 
 prophets," appears in the ancient literature of China 
 and elsewhere so common that Christians have al- 
 most ceased to regret it; and the Chinaman seems 
 to live up to it as well as the American believers 
 who set fire to his house and shoot him. Our hos- 
 tility to the heathen was partly ignorance. Charles 
 Lamb, when asked how he could say that he hated 
 a certain man whom he did not even know, replied: 
 " How could I hate him if I did know him ? " Our 
 hate of the heathen softens as we know them better. 
 Travelers tell of their virtues ; and recent writers 
 have been praising the moral progress made under 
 Mohammedanism in Africa, where the advance of 
 European civilization is marked chiefly by gin-bot- 
 tles. Even missionaries admit the heathen merits; 
 and, according to the New York Tribune, Dr. Scud- 
 der said that " for unmixed wickedness and utter
 
 The Divine Unity. 69 
 
 moral depravity, no city of Asia could equal Chi- 
 cago." lu ortler to keep the "missionary nerve" 
 uncut, it is still taught that Chicago is going to 
 paradise and Calcutta to the pit, — and without pro- 
 bation; but the humaner missionaries wince under 
 this gospel, and inwardly wish that the divine de- 
 crees might have been more just. 
 
 Men prove alike the world over, and their re- 
 ligions much alike. When Conway said he was 
 studying the Scriptures Thoreau asked, "Which 
 Scriptures?" there were so many. The Christian 
 has a grand Bible; but he cannot read it much 
 without wishing that he might exchange a part of 
 it for heathen literature. Human brotherhood was 
 nobly taught in the early Church; but was also 
 taught the century before by pagan Cicero " as dis- 
 tinctly," Lecky says. The divine Fatherhood was 
 well declared by the apostles; but when one of 
 them preached it to the Athenians, he took his text 
 from one of their own pagan poets; and the faith 
 was already fossilized long before in the heathen 
 name, Jupiter, the Heaven- Father. Duty to man 
 and faith in God are taught little better in the av- 
 erage pulpit to-day, than in that old Egyptian 
 Prisse papyrus, whose very ink is supposed to have 
 been dried centui'ies before Moses. Revelation is 
 the monopoly of no one religion, and the wise men 
 of all faiths have often united in this confession. 
 Says the old Chinese apothegm: "The broad- 
 minded man regards all religions as embodying the 
 same truths." Says the Persian sentence: "To
 
 70 The Divine Unity. 
 
 him wiio has risen to the throne of the Highest, all 
 religions are alike; Christians, Jews, Guebres, Mos- 
 lems, all adore him in their several ways." And otir 
 own poet sings that in the love and self-sacrifice of 
 all ages, 
 
 " I see the same white wings outspread, 
 That hovered o'er the master's head; " 
 
 and that in all lands, religious truth is one, and 
 
 " Whoso hath eyes to see, may see 
 The tokens of its unity." 
 
 And not only in the diverse religions are we find- 
 ing this unity, but in all things. History comes 
 back from its study of states and institutions, laws, 
 legends, literatures, languages, — to proclaim that 
 all races are alike and all mankind one. One with 
 the animal world too, — adds Anthropolog}", tracing 
 man backward almost to a quadruped. And the 
 whole animal world is one, says Zoology, from her 
 researches amid blending species and indistinguish- 
 able cells. The vegetable world also is one, replies 
 Botany. Aye, and both together are one, adds 
 Biology, unable to say on which side of the line the 
 lowest forms belong. There is no line, but the 
 whole organic world is one. One with the inor- 
 ganic also, continues science, seeing the old wall 
 between them dissolve in protoplasm. All earthly 
 forms are one, shaped from the same substances, 
 and by the same forces. All these forces are one 
 too, adds Physics, — transmuting motion, heat, light.
 
 The Divine Unity. 71 
 
 electricity, magnetism, into each other, and getting 
 all fi'om the same gravity which moulded and 
 moves the earth. And the same gravity moves all 
 other worlds, unites all as one, and seems to have 
 made all out of one, — adds Astronomy, tracing the 
 same orbits and elements through the universe. 
 Even these few elements, too, into which Chem 
 istry dissolves the earth and the stars, are suspected 
 to have been compounded from fewer, and to have 
 come originally from one. 
 
 Such unity have earth's diversities disclosed. 
 Grant Allen, in his recent article on the last fifty 
 years of science, says "its key-note has been the 
 idea of unity." This note of science is religious 
 too J. Addington Symonds, in his article on the 
 progress of thought in the same period, says: 
 " When we begin to regard this unity with eyes 
 from which the scales of Christian antagonism 
 have fallen, we discover that we cannot think of it 
 except as spiritual;" and that science, "while 
 establishing law, has prepared the way for the 
 identification of law with God." Science has only 
 enlarged the old thought, and shown " one Father 
 of all " substances as well as souls, " through all 
 and in all" things. Humanity is one, life one, 
 forms one, forces one, the universe one, — and all 
 these ones united in that infinite One we call God. 
 Each investigator reports as the deepest truth he 
 has found. Unity; all join to chant as the central 
 truth of creation, Unity; and religion hears it as 
 another psalm singing more sublimely the Unity of 
 God.
 
 72 The Divine Unity. 
 
 In this highest Unity, even good and evil become 
 reconciled. Deepest thought sees no more room 
 for devil than did the great prophet ; but its God, 
 like his, says, " I create evil, there is none else." 
 Evil is not Satanic to an infinite view. Disease, 
 death, decay, destruction, and all physical losses, 
 come from laws that guard life, and are ever ad- 
 vancing it. They are bad only to the narrow out- 
 look. Man, getting a moment's glimpse of eternity 
 and infinity through the pinhole of his present 
 personality, sees what seem evil and good. But to 
 the infinite eye these are but the ebb and flow of 
 the eternal tide; the completed swing of the pen- 
 dulum of progress ; the falling and unfolding leaves 
 on the tree of life; the go and come of the beating 
 pulse and warming breath of love. 
 
 Moral evils also lessen to the larger view. Suf- 
 fering and sorrow ripen the soul until it counts 
 them gain. Passions are the foundation of prin- 
 ciples, and struggle against them brings strength. 
 Sacrifice begins in selfishness, even love began 
 with lust, and the worst vices have virtues waiting 
 beneath them. Evils are the lower steps in the 
 ascent of the soul and of society. Each person or 
 class or religion, looking up and down the ladder, 
 divides it into good above and bad below. But the 
 rung which each has beneath the feet as bad, some 
 other is looking up toward as good, — and the evil 
 is only relative. It is not even real to the infinite 
 vision, which sees the ladder undivided, and good 
 and evil one.
 
 The Divine Unity. 73 
 
 On this thought religion rises to that divine for- 
 giveness which Jesus showed. It sees bow often 
 the worst acta come from ignorance; — just as he 
 forgave his murderers, " for they know not what they 
 do." It attains to that divine impartiality which 
 Jesus praised in the sun; and seeks, like that, to 
 shed heavenly light and warmth on good and evil 
 without distinction. It rises to that charity which 
 Paul says " taketh no account of evil." The high- 
 est religion will take "no account of evil"; but 
 ceasing to abuse that, will seek rather to strengthen 
 good, which is the best cure of bad. Keligion will 
 at last learn, as the wisest men of all faiths have 
 taught, to return good for evil and love for hate. 
 Leaving all bitterness, it will aim to unite men, and 
 oppose only what divides them. Not that even 
 divisions are always evil, but religion has better 
 work than aiding them. In the secular field we 
 must have strife; — the rivalry of business men, the 
 contention of political parties, the fiery zeal of 
 reformers seeing only their side. This strife is a 
 necessary element of progress. But it is the secu- 
 lar element. Six days of it are enough. On the 
 sacred seventh, strife should cease; and -religion, 
 recalling us from our divisions, should try to re- 
 unite us by this deeper truth of Unity. Let parti- 
 sans proclaim their dividing principles, let moral- 
 ists contend over good and evil, let sects dispute as 
 they may desire; — but let religion preach its diviner 
 gospel of peace and love. The priest's should be 
 like "The Poet's Creed":
 
 74 The Divine Unity. 
 
 " I am in love with Love, 
 And the sole thing I hate is hate ; 
 For hate is the unpardonable sin, 
 And Love the Holy Ghost within." 
 
 This truth of Divine Unity is the central and 
 saving doctrine of religion. But it must be made 
 far larger and deeper than that denial of the Trinity 
 with which many have confounded it. Indeed the 
 trinity was true enough, — what there was of it, — 
 and did not need denial, but extension. Warner's 
 wise guide in the Adirondacks, hearing Sunday- 
 school teachers discuss the Trinity, said " they had 
 better call it Legion " ; and we need to see not 
 merely *' three in one," but infinity in one, and all 
 things as the "diversities of operations" of the 
 " God which worketh all in all." We need still to 
 teach a "Father and Son and Holy Spirit "; — only 
 we should, like Jesus, see a son in every one of the 
 millions of peace-makers among men, and the Holy 
 Spirit in every upright person on earth, Christian 
 and heathen alike. 
 
 For religion is so divine that it ought not to be lim- 
 ited by even the Christian name. Jesus was a most 
 noble soul, — altogether too noble to wish his name 
 used to narrow the thought of God and to divide 
 humanity ; and to all who so misuse it, he would 
 doubtless still say, "Depart from me, ye that work 
 iniquity." Whosoever uses the name of Christ as 
 a shibboleth, only shows thereby how little he has 
 of the spirit of Christ. Christianity has been the 
 richest province in the kingdom of God on earth.
 
 The Divine Unity. 75 
 
 But in that vast kingdom, embracing so many re- 
 ligions and races and millennia, it is only a province, 
 — and the Christian name only a provincialism. In 
 the living language of the eternal religion of God, 
 this name, except as a noble historic term, will yet 
 become as obsolete as Jesus seems to have ordered; 
 and religion will be referred to that divine and uni- 
 versal sentiment of the soul, which, Emerson said, 
 " carries innumerable Christianities in its bosom." 
 
 Nor will true religion let itself be divided by 
 even the name of God. Many who reject the 
 name are still true to its highest meaning; and 
 ao-nostics and even atheists often show more reli- 
 gious spirit than the men who talk glibly of Deity. 
 Indeed, seeing how often the supposed denial of 
 God is but the denial of some degrading definition 
 of him, to assert a diviner Being, the true wor- 
 shiper will be quite willing to be called atheist. 
 One is sometimes forced to harbor the thought 
 which Thoreau uttered and Emerson admired, that 
 God himself might prefer atheism. Religion need 
 have no fear that it will lose Deity. The blunder- 
 ing boaster of his irreligion, said, " I'm an atheist, 
 thank God"; and denials of Deity have never been 
 any more successful. We can give room to any 
 denial, knowing that it will only deny itself and 
 end in new demonstration. 
 
 But this Unity, which cannot be denied and is 
 proclaimed in suns and souls alike, is itself the 
 largest name of God. It is the truth that includes 
 all others, and God is "One and His name One"
 
 76 The Divine Unity. 
 
 in a deeper sense than the prophet probably meant. 
 So the work for unity among men is his highest 
 service. All who share in that, in every church 
 and none, are his saints. Peace-makers, whether 
 orthodox or atheists, still " shall be called the Sons 
 of God." They are even one with him; for still 
 every one who " dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God 
 and God in him," and needs not to invoke a Divine 
 presence in worship. Human love is itself the 
 best worship. Human love is itself the holiest 
 presence of God; and is the best proof that the Di- 
 vine Love, which has produced it and lives in it, 
 will fulfill all the promises whispered there.
 
 THE REVELATION OF GOD. 
 
 JOHN WHITE CHADWICK. 
 
 My subject is the "Revelation of God." That 
 there is such a revelation cannot be less certain 
 than that God exists, or even is, — to make a philo- 
 sophical distinction. For v^e can be certain that 
 God is only by some revelation of him, God un- 
 revealed would not be necessarily the unknowable, 
 but he would certainly be the unknown. But to 
 affirm that a known God implies a revelation is not 
 to affirm that the necessary revelation must be su- 
 pernatural. The term has generally had this mean- 
 ing. But its derivative meaning is simply unveil- 
 ing. I am aware that traditional usage is more 
 competent to fix the meaning of a word than der- 
 ivation. But there is as little reason for letting 
 traditionalism have all the good words as for letting 
 the devil have all the good tunes, albeit he is wel- 
 come to some that are considered good in these last 
 days. Everything that makes God known to man, 
 and everything that is made known concerning him, 
 is revelation. 
 
 There have been and there are those who, desir- 
 ous of the name or the prestige of it, and some- 
 times for much better reasons, while giving up the 
 customary meaning which identifies revelation with 
 a supernatural — i. e>, miraculously authenticated — 
 
 77
 
 78 The Revelation of God. 
 
 message, still claim for it a semi -supernatural mean- 
 ing, in that they make it representative of a special 
 kind of knowledge, superior to and independent of 
 experience; a transcendental intuition of the higher 
 reason rather than a laborious conquest of the un- 
 derstanding, or in any way conditioned by the lim- 
 its of our ordinary knowledge. But whether there 
 is or not this double-mindedness in man, this higher 
 apprehension not developed from the lower, I insist 
 that we should not confine the scope of revelation 
 to the higher knowledge, but rather hold it true (as 
 one of our own poets. Doctor Martineau, hath said) 
 "that every fruitful study of human things implies 
 a real insight into things divine; " and that "knowl- 
 edge of God, like knowledge of human things, 
 however partial, may yet be direct and progressive," 
 and, as such, a revelation of his character and life. 
 To attain unto the revelation of God has been 
 the hope, the dream, the yearning, and the passion 
 of many generations of the world and of countless 
 millions of mankind. Nor have the generations of 
 the world, the millions of mankind, cherished at 
 any time a grander hope, or dreamed a better dream, 
 or entertained a deeper yearning, or been moved 
 by a more glorious passion, than in relation to this 
 matter. There are those who, born, or born again, 
 into some Flatlandof contented ignorance, are wont 
 to think and speak of the hope for, and the efPort 
 to attain unto, the knowledge of God as fruitless and 
 ignoble. But, though it were never so fruitless, it 
 would not be ignoble. Surely by nothing have men
 
 The Revelation of (Jod. 79 
 
 more approved their nobleness than by their ina- 
 bility to sit down in quiet patience, or to lie in 
 slothful ease, before the curtain that conceals the 
 mystery of the Eternal; even as the imprisoned 
 bird, beating his wings against the obstructions of 
 his cage in futile efforts to escape into the heaven's 
 illimitable blue, is by such fruitlessness approved 
 a creature of diviner essence than if, so long as he 
 had seeds enough to eat and other comfortable ap- 
 pliances, he were not concerned with anything 
 which possibly might lie beyond his gilded bars. 
 As the bird's restlessness declares him native to the 
 fields and sky, so man's impatience with the limi- 
 tations of his knowledge declares him native to an 
 infinite inheritance of expansive reason. Nor is it 
 any derogation to his nature that he has been hardly 
 more contented with blank ignorance than with the 
 observation of a multitude of unrelated facts or 
 even with their co-ordination into laws of narrow 
 range and special application. The true, the char- 
 acteristic man is like unto his glorious image who 
 was busy ever 
 
 " Searching through all he felt or saw, 
 The springs of life, the depths of awe, 
 To find the law within the law." 
 
 Like the Orient sage, he seeks " an all-pervading 
 unity." Like one who climbs a mountain's mighty 
 stairs, and finds himself at length with nothing but 
 the immeasurable sky above him, so from general- 
 ization to generalization he ascends, to find himself
 
 80 The Revelation of God. 
 
 at length alone with the Alone, embraced and over- 
 bowed with nothing but the infinite of God. 
 
 And as the search for God declares the greatness 
 and nobility of those v/ith whom it is a holy pas- 
 sion, and would if it were void of all result objec- 
 tive to the seeking mind, so must the many forms 
 of faith in supernatural revelation, or at least the 
 many efforts to establish such a faith, be recognized 
 as arguing, not, as many teach of late, some mis- 
 erable defect of manhood, but the greatness of 
 man's heart. To have a certain knowledge of the 
 highest things, to see Him as he is, — surely there 
 is no belittling or dishonorable disposition here. At 
 the worst, it only argues men's impatience with the 
 slowness of the ordinary methods of their thought, 
 or some dissatisfaction with their tentative results. 
 They would know certainly and they would know 
 at once " the depth of the riches both of the wis- 
 dom and knowledge of God." Be sure that never 
 have the miracles, so called, approved the revelation 
 to men's minds at the initial or any other stage of 
 the development of a "revealed religion." What 
 has approved it has been the larger thought of God 
 contained in it, the higher and the holier thought 
 of him. The miracles were nothing but the imagi- 
 native tribute of men's hearts to the greatness of 
 some human personality — their stammering speech 
 of gratitude and praise — or to the announcement of 
 some grander vision of the eternal things. The in- 
 fallible church or book, or Christ within the book, 
 so understood, gain nothing on the side of their in-
 
 The Revelation of God. 81 
 
 fallibility ; but they gain immensely on the side of 
 their relation to the religious consciousness, ex- 
 pressing as they do its impatience with all partial 
 and all "regulative truth," its intolerance of delu- 
 sion or deception in the sphere of matters of such 
 vital interest. Revelation there was indeed in the 
 prophetic souls of the Old Testament order, — in 
 Amos and Isaiah and the Great Unknown of the 
 Captivity, whose thought was as near to that of 
 Jesus as the best days in April are to leafy June ; 
 in that "Hymn Book of the Second Temple" which 
 contained the rarest of the Psalms; in the Word 
 made flesh in Jesus ; and not less in Paul, though 
 in his flesh he fancied there was no good thing. 
 
 But it is one thing to honor and to praise the 
 impatience with half-truth or sad uncertainty which 
 has found expression in the demand for a miracu- 
 lous revelation, or to see in the afiirmation of such 
 a revelation the tribute of imagination to a glori- 
 ous personality or a higher thought of God; and it 
 is quite another thing to accept the theory of super- 
 natural revelation, or to imagine that there is here 
 a method of escape from the disabilities of natural 
 reason. 
 
 " They reckon ill who leave me out; 
 When me they fly, I am the wings," 
 
 the natural Reason sings rebukingly to all who 
 think they can climb up some other way than hers 
 into the fold of Truth. Unless every one who claims 
 that he has a vision or a sign is to be accepted 
 equally with every other, Reason must arbitrate
 
 82 The Revelation of God. 
 
 upon the different claims. Whether or not the res- 
 nrrectiou of Jesus, for example, is a supernatural 
 proof of immortality, the fact of such a resurrection 
 is dependent on a film of human testimony so tenu- 
 ous that a brave man, or wise, would much rather 
 trust to his own nature's prophecy than to such a 
 thing as that. But the film by which the resurrec- 
 tion hangs is not more tenuous than that which sus- 
 tains every fact on which depends the evidence of a 
 supernatural revelation,— maa;ma e mirdmis sus- 
 pendens. 
 
 But that there is no supernatural revelation and 
 that, even if there were, our ultimate reliance would 
 be upon our natural intelligence, are statements that 
 suggest no fears, excite no terrors, for the man to 
 whom our natural intelligence is equal to the soul's 
 necessity for finding God. For such a one there is 
 no lack of revelation. There is nothing but reve- 
 lation. The universe is full of visions and of voices. 
 The things we are obliged to say, which manage 
 soon or late to say themselves while we stand by 
 and wonder, are better worth the saying than are 
 those we formulate with the greatest care. And so 
 there has not been a time during the last quarter 
 of a century and more, synchronizing with the de- 
 velopment of various doctrines of religious nescience 
 and the agnostic temper, when between the lines of 
 their imposing expositions some have not read a 
 message of religious affirmation, thrilling their 
 hearts with generous and lofty cheer. And with 
 each restatement of the doctrine of the Unknown
 
 The Revelation of God. 83 
 
 God, the affirmations, at first meagrely implied, 
 come out in clearer lines, until at length they are 
 the text, and the original nescience fades into a 
 dimness that hardly blurs the fair and open page. 
 Surely, we are far from the kingdom of agnosticism 
 and not far from the kingdom of God, when we are 
 told that "we are always in the presence of an In- 
 finite and Eternal Energy from which all things 
 proceed ; " and we are well within its broad and fair 
 demesne, when we are told that " there exists a 
 power, to which no limit in time or space is con- 
 ceivable, and that all the phenomena of the Uni- 
 verse, whether they be what we call material or what 
 we call spiritual phenomena, are manifestations of 
 this Infinite and Eternal Power." 
 
 Manifestation is but another word for revelation. 
 "Though unknown, yet well known!" may we not 
 cry, triumphantly as Paul, of such a power as this ? 
 Known as infinite, known as eternal, known as the 
 source of everything that is, known by its mani- 
 fested life as such a God as is made manifest! And 
 how unknown f As we are to each other save as we 
 are made manifest, save as we are revealed by our 
 phenomenal life, by the living garments that we 
 wear, the vesture that doth grossly (meaning 
 grandly) hem us in. Unknown as the abysmal 
 deeps of our own personality are unknown to us ; ay, 
 as the loveliest or rudest object on which we can lay 
 our hands is unknown to us, both in its inmost es- 
 sence and in its total range of implication. Thread- 
 bare is the bit of verse embodying this perception;
 
 84 The Revelation of God. 
 
 worn so in faithful service of a truth too long dis- 
 honored among men:— 
 
 " Flower in the crannied wall, 
 I pluck you out of the crannies; 
 Hold you here in my hand, root and all, 
 Little flower ; but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and Man is." 
 
 Never, it seems to me, has there been less occa- 
 sion than there is to-day for men to take counsel 
 with their fears, as if the operation of our later 
 thinking were to make the revelation of God less 
 vast and luminous than it has been as apprehended 
 by the supernaturalist or by the semi supernatural- 
 ism of the more daring of the Transcendental school. 
 Never has the revelation of God assumed such 
 grand proportions or so grave a charm, such an 
 awful splendor or such penetrating sweetness, as at 
 the present time. And it comes as one of old, not 
 to destroy, but to fulfill. It takes up into itself the 
 best of all that has been in the revelations of the 
 past. Jesus is still Immanuel, God with us; he is 
 still the Word made flesh. And the sorrow and the 
 gladness with which men turned from him, when 
 he grew hard and cold to their imaginative appre- 
 hension, to worship at his mother's gentle feet, finds 
 here its justification. 
 
 If revelation is, indeed, everything that makes 
 God known to men, and everything that is made 
 known of him, the revelation of God is something 
 of immense inclusiveness and boundless range.
 
 The Revelation of God. 85 
 
 The Old Testament and the New, the mighty per- 
 sonalities and the inspired — because inspiring — 
 utterances that they report, are but a little frag- 
 ment of the whole. Equally fragmentary, I am 
 bound to think, is that department of our human 
 knowledge which is resumed under the name of 
 Science. Here, for some, is no revelation, but the 
 denial of that traditionally received as such, and 
 the confession that all revelation is impossible. 
 Here, for others, is an actual revelation that is 
 exclusive of all others. With neither of these 
 widely different factions shall we find ourselves 
 able to agree. Not with the first, most certainly. 
 For if Science be not revelation, if she does not 
 report a real, and not merely a phenomenal exist- 
 ence, — the relations of things existing independ- 
 ently of our sentient and psychic apprehensions 
 and not merely the projection of these apprehensions 
 on an inner void, — she is at once discrowned and 
 stripped of all her royal habiliments ; and the con- 
 trast of Ludovicus and Ludovicus Rex, in Thack- 
 eray's amusing picture, does not begin to indicate 
 fully the disparity of her clothed and her unclothed 
 condition. Surely, the men of science who have 
 "loved truth and lavished life's best oil," not 
 " amid the dust of books to find her," but in moun- 
 tain heights and ocean deeps, and in a thousand and 
 ten thousand places where her facts have challenged 
 scrutiny, have not been inspired to scorn delights 
 and live laborious days by any miserable egotistic 
 notion that they were leading a mere moonshine
 
 86 The Revelation of God. 
 
 dance with their own shadows; that they were 
 merely formulating the order of their own percep- 
 tions,— no, not perceptions, for there is nothing to 
 perceive, but their own self-stirred activity of pre- 
 sentation. No! whatever foolishness of this sort 
 men of science have allowed themselves when off 
 upon some holiday excursion of the speculative 
 kind, the inspiration of their working hours has 
 been that they were able to discover the relations, 
 part to part, of an objective world. What differ- 
 ence does it make, so long as all are " drugged 
 with the same frenzy?" A world of difference. 
 Yes, just exactly that ; the difference of a world 
 that is a reality and a revelation of the actual God, 
 and a no-world which is the Brocken spectre shadow 
 of ourselves, Ixion-like, embracing an illusive cloud. 
 But, if we may not accept this suicide of Science 
 as a fair account of man's relation to the universe, 
 as little, as a fair account of this and of God's 
 revelation of himself, may we accept the doctrine 
 which declares that science is the only revelation 
 of eternal things. This were a thousand times 
 better than the doctrine of a universe and God 
 projected from the mind of man, but it has its own 
 peculiar limitations. For, while it might be possi- 
 ble, availing one's self of the kinship of science 
 with the most ordinary knowledge, to push back so 
 far the genesis of science that a certain scientific 
 character might be predicated of the earliest re- 
 ligious notions of mankind, the fact would still 
 remain conspicuous that religion had been a mighty
 
 The Revelation of God. 87 
 
 and imposing power upon the earth for centuries 
 and millenniums before the endeavor to attain a 
 quantitative certainty in the prevision of things 
 future had produced an appreciable body of results 
 to which the designation "Science" can be right- 
 fully applied. Science had made but little progress 
 in the world — Thales, its earliest Greek, had still 
 two centuries and more to tarry in the pre- existent 
 heavens — when Homer wrote of 
 
 " When in heaven the stars about the moon 
 Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid. 
 And every height comes out, and jutting peak 
 And valley, and the immeasurable heavens 
 Break open to their highest, and all the stars 
 Shine and the shepherd gladdens in his heart." 
 
 And, long before he wrote of it, the spectacle was 
 there to see, the mind confronting it to be filled 
 with awe, and thrilled with mystery, and roused to 
 questioning. 
 
 And, saying this, what do we say but that, long 
 before the birth of Science, of which Religion was 
 in fact the foster mother, there was the revelation 
 of God as Power and Beauty and Beneficence in 
 the material universe, and there was the appre- 
 hension of this revelation by the human soul. The 
 former part of the nineteenth Psalm is confessedly 
 one of the earliest Old Testament fragments. The 
 writer of it had probably very little science, proba- 
 bly none worth mentioning ; but he had much of 
 worship, much of religion as worship, much sense 
 of a divine revelation when he wrote : " The heav-
 
 88 The Revelation of God. 
 
 ens declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
 showeth his handiwork. Day uttereth instruction 
 unto day, and night showeth knowledge unto night. 
 They have no speech nor language, and their voice 
 is not heard ; but their sound is gone out through 
 all the earth, and their words to the end of the 
 world." That we must have Science to legitimate 
 Religion, to make Revelation possible, — it is a 
 brave man who does not hesitate to take up this 
 position. For it is a position which, if it could be 
 maintained, would discredit all religion antecedent 
 to the genesis of science, all subsequent save in the 
 measure of its scientific inspiration. If revelation 
 and religion could be only for the scientific, they 
 would not be universal ; they would be only for 
 the few, or they would be second-hand, as science 
 now is second-hand for all except the few whose 
 opinions are original or derived intelligently from 
 those that are. But no : religion has not primarily 
 or mainly come to man by deliberate scientific 
 ratiocination, but by spontaneous experience. It is 
 the whole of man responding to the whole of God. 
 Human nature has not thought out, it has experi- 
 enced, religion. Its cumulative and hereditary ex- 
 perience of the wonder and mystery of the external 
 universe, the greater wonder and the vaster mys- 
 tery of its own inward life, have made religion, the 
 upward look of awe and adoration, the outward 
 look of sympathy and fellow-service, the inward 
 look of mingled self-abasement and self -reverence.
 
 The Revelation of God. 89 
 
 as natural to it as hunger, sleep, or normal respira- 
 tion to man's physical life. 
 
 And so, to those who claim a scientific basis for 
 religion, our answer is, " Other foundation can no 
 man lay than is laid ; " and the foundation of re- 
 ligion is laid in human nature, as such ; in the great 
 primal instincts of the soul. It has been deepen- 
 ing down and broadening out through all the cen- 
 turies, but the agencies that have deepened it and 
 broadened it have been, scientific only in a very 
 moderate degree. Before Science was fairly born, 
 it had already become fixed immovably. And when 
 Science went into disgrace and banishment for 
 well-nigh a thousand years, as it did from the fall 
 of the Western Empire to the later Renaissance, 
 the original foundation of religion was still there ; 
 and up from it into the cold and cheerless air sprang 
 many rare and beauteous structures of the mind 
 and heart, many affections, aspirations, and fideli- 
 ties which the scientific spirit dares not regard with 
 absolute contempt. Not only so, but even in these 
 latest times the amount of scientific apprehension 
 does not by any means report the amount of reve- 
 lation and of religious joy therein. There are 
 men and women still to whom the meanest flower 
 that blows, unanalyzed, unclassified, can give 
 thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. There 
 are men and women to whom, in general, the un- 
 scientific aspect of the world, the beauty of its days 
 and nights, the wonder of its fresh and growing
 
 90 The Revelation of God. 
 
 things, the summer's bounty, the return of spring, 
 the mountain's vastness, and the moaning sea are a 
 more moving revelation of the highest God than all 
 their telescopes and microscopes and chemic tubes 
 afPord to other men who, 
 
 " Seeing all things intermittently, 
 In disconnection dull and spiritless, 
 Break down all grandeur." 
 
 But this is not to say that Science has not made 
 important and immense additions to the revelation 
 of God once possible for men. Once clearly un- 
 derstand that the basis of religion is not scientific, 
 that science is not the only organon of revelation, 
 that men cannot live by the bread of science only, 
 but by every word of art and poetry and spontane- 
 ous apprehension that proceedeth from the mouth 
 of God, and we can well afPord to allow that the 
 revelation of God has been mightily enlarged by 
 the development of science, and in some particu- 
 lars made vastly more impressive to the mind, more 
 agitating and inspiring to the heart. A mere Bar- 
 mecide feast of empty phrases was the old theo- 
 logical talk about the infinite in comparison with 
 the scientific infinite of the times through which 
 the stars have shaped themselves from the primor- 
 dial fires, the spaces through which they sweep on 
 their majestic curves, the masses whose attractions 
 and repulsions make all nature's peace. But the 
 infinitely little is to the eye of the imagination a 
 more moving spectacle than the infinitely great. 
 Consider, too, what glory and honor Science brings,
 
 The Revelation of God. 91 
 
 as never could our speculative theology, into the 
 temple of our Unitarian faith. A resolution of 
 apparent difference into essential unity is the out- 
 come of all science. Every part of the plant turns 
 out to be a modification of the leaf; the skull, a 
 modified vertebra; our little earth to be made of 
 the same stuff as the planets and the sun and far- 
 thest stars; our coal but so much buried sunlight, 
 which ages since organized itself into ferny leaf 
 and stalk; our species of animals and plants to be 
 only some distinct varieties ; our genera, only wider 
 species; heat, life, magnetism, electricity, vital 
 force, so many modes of motion; so that " our Uni- 
 tarian literature," of which something has been 
 said from time to time, includes, with much be- 
 sides, the whole body of modern science. Then, 
 too, in measuring our debt to science, its enlarge- 
 ment and its exaltation of our sense of infinite 
 revelation, it must not be forgotten that even our 
 most casual apprehension of the world is variously 
 conditioned by our gradual appropriation of the 
 results of science; that we see, not with our eyes 
 only, but with our brains and with our minds, — 
 our minds made over by the power of science, so 
 that a certain "mind-stuff" mingles with all visible 
 things, and makes them very different from what 
 they were to men of former times, — a glory in the 
 grass, a splendor in the flower, they draw from dead 
 men's minds, not from their buried dust. 
 
 But the revelation of God apparent in the face 
 of outward things and the laws of their develop-
 
 92 The Revelation of God. 
 
 ment and harmony is not sufficient for the mind 
 and heart of man, even when to the fullness of his 
 spontaneous apprehension he has added all that 
 Science, too, has brought of marvel and surprise. 
 This is a criticism that is often made upon the nat- 
 ural religion of the present time by those who find it 
 hardly more satisfactory to their deepest needs 
 than the natural theology of the Paleyologians of 
 former generations. And it is well considered. 
 Only it is a criticism that does not equally apply to 
 every statement that has been, or that can be, made 
 of natural revelation and religion. It applies 
 where nature is conceived as co-extensive with the 
 under-human world of inorganic and organic 
 things, — if in the last analysis there is any inor- 
 ganic thing or particle in all the universe of God. 
 But nature is not always so conceived; and the 
 criticism does not apply where human nature, 
 equally with earth-nature and sky-nature and all 
 under-human nature, is included in its scope. The 
 word of the more thoughtful is that " all the phe- 
 nomena of nature, whether they be what we call 
 natural or what we call spiritual, are manifesta- 
 tions of an infinite and eternal power." The 
 under-human universe is not enough. That is a 
 manifestation of immeasurable Power, of glorious 
 Beauty, of majestic Unity, of unwearying Faith- 
 fulness, of all-embracing, all-enfolding Order, Har- 
 mony and Law. 
 
 But the revelation of God in these high ways is 
 not sufficient for men's hearts. They would have
 
 The Revelation of God. 93 
 
 him reveal himself as goodness; they would have 
 him reveal himself as love. Here is the true Cur 
 Deus Homo of the centuries: " Why God was made 
 man;" why he was made Jesus; why, Jesus hard- 
 ening to the awful judge of mediaeval thought, 
 men turned for comfort to his mother's breast and 
 her embracing arms. It was long before the time 
 of Robert Browning, but there was distinct antici- 
 pation of his stout assertion that 
 
 "A loving worm within its clod 
 Were diviner than a loveless God 
 Amid his worlds," 
 
 Even where men have ascribed to God particular 
 sentiments and actions that were more devilish than 
 divine, — as in the scheme of Calvin, for example, — 
 they have insisted on his goodness and his love. 
 There is nothing more pathetic in the biography of 
 man than his insistence, " Though the Lord slay me, 
 yet will I trust in him." Bemembering under what 
 bonds we place each other by our mutual trust, un- 
 der what bonds is the Eternal placed by the high 
 trust that millions, overborne and crushed in life's 
 hard fray, have put in him, so that, if he were the 
 fiend that men have sometimes painted him, using 
 his giant power most tyrannously like a giant, it 
 would seem that long ere this he must have been 
 compelled to pure beneficence! Mindful of these 
 phenomena, we may be sure that " Cosmic Theism " 
 will never answer to men's cry for goodness and for 
 love in God's self-revelation, unless it is made 
 clear that the glory of the human not less than the
 
 94 The Revelation of God. 
 
 glory of the material universe is part and parcel of 
 his glory. The divinity of man and the humanity 
 of God, — we can as ill spare the second term of 
 this equation as the first. And it is literally an 
 equation. To affirm either is to affirm the other. But 
 the humanity of God is what the human heart must 
 needs most steadfastly affirm. Let the astrono- 
 mers, the cosmologists, go on indefinitely expand- 
 ing and glorifying our conception of the material 
 universe, and the great majority of men will turn 
 from this upon the one hand, and from the God 
 whom it reports, to the loving man of Nazareth or 
 to Mary, "mother mild," with their passionate ad- 
 miration, with their tumult of devout acclaim. And, 
 doing so, they would do well and right. For "the 
 glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" is a more 
 excellent glory than any of the throbbing firma- 
 ment of stars ; the ideal of Motherhood makes every 
 planet dim. 
 
 But it is not as if we were reduced to the alterna- 
 tives of a revelation of cosmic power and splendor, 
 harmony and beauty, and the revelation of good- 
 ness and love in the man Jesus or of tenderness in 
 his mother's face. There are no such alternatives; 
 for there is no legitimate process of thought which 
 gives to us the love of Jesus and the tenderness of 
 Mary as a divine revelation which does not give to 
 us equally all human love, all human tenderness. 
 And so, in truth, our evidence of the humanity of 
 God is infinitely greater than it would be if the super- 
 natm*al revelation of that humanity in Jesus were an
 
 The Revelation of God. 95 
 
 established fact, which it is uot by auy means. There 
 is no evidence for any special revelation of the hu- 
 manity of God. But there is ample evidence of the 
 natural and perpetual revelation of his humanity in 
 all the men and women and in all the little children 
 that ever have been, are now, or ever will be, here on 
 this earth or any other that is circling on its way, 
 freiorhted with human life. It is now several years 
 since Stopford Brooke wrote a delightful sermon on 
 the childhood of God, but I doubt if it contains 
 a line which now he would prefer to blot. Why 
 but because all phenomena, material and spiritual, 
 are manifestations, revelations, of the Infinite and 
 Eternal Energy from which all things proceed? 
 Nothing is evolved which is not first involved. 
 There must be a great fountain of humanity in 
 God, or there would be no humanity in the world. 
 There must be a great fountain of childlikeness in 
 him, or there would be no childhood in the world. 
 There must be a great fountain of motherhood 
 in him, or there would be no human mother- 
 hood. But, as it is, our latest science justifies 
 us, as never did the old theology, in lifting up our 
 hearts to him with the ascription, "O thou who art 
 our Father and our Mother! " 
 
 Some danger here, perhaps it may occur to you, 
 of making the Eternal altogether such a one as 
 ourselves. Not altogether, and not much. "As the 
 heavens are higher than the earth, so are his ways 
 higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our 
 thoughts." Here is no great non-natural man, and,
 
 96 The Revelation of God. 
 
 if "sweet human hands and lips and eyes," only as 
 these make good our human helpfulness and love 
 and joy. " He that made the eye, shall he not see ?" 
 is an argument which loses all its force with the 
 cessation of our thought of God as an outside me- 
 chanical creator; with our acceptance of the 
 thought that he is the infinite, immanent, organic 
 life of everything that is. But that the phenomena 
 of will, intelligence, personality, goodness, love, as 
 manifestations of his infinite being, reveal him as 
 not less than personal, volitional, intelligent, benefi- 
 cent, and loving, — that two and two make four is 
 not more sure than this. So much at least of per- 
 sonality, of will, of intelligence, of goodness, of 
 love, there is in him as there is in all humanity, past, 
 present, and to be. But, where there is so much 
 of immanent actuality, the transcendent possibility 
 must be infinitely more. 
 
 But what if it be said that, when the revelation 
 of God is so greatly apprehended, when the uni- 
 verse is regarded as the manifest God, we do but 
 come out at the same door where we went in, we do 
 but formulate an identical proposition, a verbal 
 equation ? Something of this sort has been said 
 repeatedly. We start with the universe, and our 
 God is but its verbal counterpart. Well, this is true 
 enough of the universe as such. The whole of God 
 is immanent in the whole of that. But he is in- 
 finitely transcendent of the universe as known to us, 
 not merely individually, but collectively. The aggre- 
 gate of science is no small amount; but, if we could
 
 The Revelation of Ood. 97 
 
 take it all into our individual consciousness, we 
 should still be obliged to say, " Lo, these are parts 
 of his ways; but how little is yet known of him!" 
 Yea, verily, how little in comparison with the bound- 
 less whole! 
 
 "Ay, come up hither! from this wave-washed mound 
 Unto the farthest flood-brim look with me, 
 
 Then reach on with thy thought till that be drowned. 
 Miles and miles distant though the last line be. 
 
 And, though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond, 
 Still leagues beyond those leagues there is more sea." 
 
 But the simile is pale and meagre to report the 
 infinite of God that reaches on and on, — an infinite 
 of Power and Beauty, Wisdom and Law and Love, — 
 beyond the farthest possible horizon of the hill- top 
 view of human science. And the God of our imag- 
 ination, of our worship, of our confidence and trust, 
 is not the God of the manifested part alone, though 
 that is practically infinite, but of the manifested and 
 unmanifested whole; the last not as a vague and 
 formless mystery, but as a mystery shot through 
 and through with glory of the known. His glory 
 is the glory of the known cubed upon by an infinite 
 exponent. Well may our hearts leap up at such a 
 thought, at such a vision, far more than theirs who 
 heard the Corybantic mysteries ; far more than theirs 
 who have apprehended the revelation of God as so 
 much splendid personality and helpful teaching as 
 the covers of the Bible fold within their wide em- 
 brace! 
 
 But another sliape arises, and another still. The
 
 98 The Revelation of God. 
 
 first is physical evil, — that tragic side of animal and 
 human life which set on fire the page of Stuart 
 Mill, which generally ran a cold, sometimes an icy, 
 stream. The second is moral evil, — "the problem 
 of sin," in theological phrase, — man's vast capacity 
 for doing harm and wrong, and his exercise of this 
 in manifold and monstrous ways. Now, if all we 
 know of natural :.nd human things is revelation, the 
 rapacities and ferocities of animal life must be so 
 equally with the strength of the strong mountains, 
 the splendor of the mobile sea, and the beseeching 
 loveliness of flowers. So equally revelation with 
 the greatness of a Hampden or a Washington, the 
 goodness of a Paul or Jesus, is the littleness of 
 thousands who care for nothing but to eat and drink 
 and propagate still baser than themselves, the wick- 
 edness of a Nero or a Borgia on an imperial or papal 
 throne. How then ? Do not the baseness and the 
 wickedness neutralize the greatness and the good- 
 ness, so that our revelation is a revelation of infi- 
 nite indifference ? — 
 
 "Alike to him the better, the worse, — 
 The glowing angel, the outcast corse!" 
 
 No, it does not, because it is the impulses of joy 
 and happiness that build the. animal world; and, if 
 they were not dominant, that world would rush to 
 ruin, as it seems not in the least inclined to do. 
 No, it does not, because the trend of things is ever- 
 more from low to higher things, from good to better, 
 and from better onward still. No, it does not, be- 
 cause, if God would pass from being to existence,
 
 The Revelation of God. 99 
 
 from the infinite absolute into finite manifestation, 
 so help him God he could no otherwise than introduce 
 the element of pain and tragedy into sentient life. 
 The revelation of tragedy is no more nor less than 
 the revelation of a God who frankly and unflinch- 
 ingly preferred all possible animal and human pain 
 to eternal self- containment, to the non-existence of 
 animal or human world. The revelation of the 
 word made flesh in an Alva or a Torquemada, in 
 gluttons and debauchees and murderers, is the rev- 
 elation of a God who could not make man glorious 
 with all the possibilities of moral fi'eedom and 
 with the actions that such freedom brings without 
 making it possible for him to choose the path of 
 those whose feet take hold on hell. If men were 
 all automata, then, if they did not go through theii 
 moral motions properly, we might well blame the 
 infinite artificer, save as we should not have the 
 sense of blame or praise in us at all. But, verily, 
 for those who know whereof they speak, a sinner 
 acting freely were better than an automatic saint, 
 a freely acting Nero better than an automatic 
 Christ. Moreover, in all the contradictions and 
 collisions of the moral order, God evermore reveals 
 himself as a power that makes for righteousness. 
 Abraham Lincoln said to some ghostly counselor, 
 who was anxious for him so to conduct himself that 
 the Lord should be on his side, that to see to it 
 tnat he was on the Lord's side was his principal 
 concern. The revelation of God is a revelation 
 that the Lord's side is ever that of Truth and
 
 100 The Revelation of God. 
 
 Righteousness. One half -regrets the softening of 
 the new translation, the old expressed a truth of so 
 much greater range: "Though I make my bed in 
 hell, Thou art there." There, not to make it soft 
 and comfortable and somnolent, but to make it, as 
 it were, a bed of thorns that goad us more and 
 more till we are weary with forbearing, and we can- 
 not stay, but rise up and leave our bed in hell for 
 any one who likes such comfort; we will have none 
 of it. 
 
 So, then, the revelation of God, as it is being 
 apprehended in its boundless range by modern 
 thought, is a revelation corresponding to the two- 
 fold character of Religion, as morality and piety, 
 as ethics and worship. To speak of ethics and 
 religion is a manifest absurdity, if we speak of 
 religion as an ideal good. For what our wise and 
 noble Gannett says is true: "Ethics thought out 
 is religious thought; ethics felt out is religious 
 feeling; ethics lived out is religious life." But to 
 speak of ethics and worship is not disallowed, 
 though ethics at its best is worship, and worship at 
 its best is fellow-service consciously offered on the 
 altar of the highest God. The pure and undefiled 
 worship,* says the New Testament, is this: to visit 
 the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, 
 and to keep unspotted from the world. But there 
 is worship which is not ethical in its first intention 
 which nevertheless is noble, sweet, and good. It is 
 that swelling of the heart and tears which comes 
 *The Greek word means religious service or custom.
 
 The Revelation of God. 101 
 
 from contemplation of the vision of the world, the 
 marvelous order, symmetry, and beauty of its 
 myriad parts, their high consenting unity to form 
 a whole of awful and inspiring grandeur, loveliness, 
 and streaming grace. 
 
 To such a worship we are summoned by the rev- 
 elation of God in nature, not only as it appeals to 
 our least scientific and most spontaneous apprehen- 
 sion, but also as it is interpreted for us in scientific 
 terms by a great company of scientific observers 
 and explorers, from height to height of generali- 
 zation rising to more exalted vision of the world. 
 At the same time, the revelation of God in human 
 nature and in human life, in the exigencies of our 
 social situation, in the instantaneous reward of 
 noble deeds in inward growth, in the penalties of 
 hurt and shame that wait on evil deeds, in the 
 alluring excellence of Jesus, not fixed in monstrous 
 isolation, but as one of a great company of high 
 and consecrated spirits, in the deepest motions of 
 our own spiritual life, summons us with a persua- 
 sive and commanding and compelling voice to 
 deeds of fellow-service and to the cleansing and 
 ennobling of our inmost hearts, O friends, no idle 
 rhapsody is this which I have read to you to-night! 
 If you have heard aright, it has been a trumpet's 
 not uncertain sound, arousing you to gladsome rec- 
 ognition of the glorious Revelation of the Living 
 God in Nature and Humanity, and to faithful ser- 
 vice of all enterprises and ideas that make for 
 justice, truth, and love upon the earth, and for
 
 102 The Revelation of God. 
 
 whatever good awaits us in that country where 
 "beyond these voices there is peace." And seeing 
 that these things are so, changing the words a little 
 here and there of the great poet's lyrical cry of 
 passionate devotion to the memory of the friend 
 whom he had lost, may we not say and sing to 
 the great Friend whom we have found as he was 
 never found before, revealed in nature and human- 
 ity?— 
 
 Thy voice is on the rolling air; 
 
 I hear Thee where the waters run; 
 
 Thou standest in the rising sun; 
 And in the setting Thou art fair. 
 
 What art Thou then? I cannot guess; 
 
 But though I seem in star and flower 
 
 To feel Thee some diffusive power, 
 I do not therefore love Thee less. 
 
 My love involves the love before; 
 
 My love is vaster passion now; 
 
 Though mixed with Man and Nature Thou, 
 I seem to love Thee more and more. 
 
 Far off Thou art, but ever nigh; 
 
 I have Thee still, and I rejoice; 
 
 I prosper, circled by Thy voice; 
 I shall not lose Thee, though I die.
 
 THE FAITH OF ETHICS. 
 
 BY W. C. GANNETT. 
 
 " Are there not seasons of Spring in the moral 
 world, and is not the present age one of them?" 
 asked Dr. Channing toward the end of his life, — 
 and he died in 1842. Doubtless many persons liv- 
 ing then would have rather said, "It is a season 
 of the falling leaf, the old faiths are dropping from 
 the tree, it is November in religion." People say- 
 that to-day. I feel, instead, that Dr. Channing's 
 question is pertinent again: "Are there not sea- 
 sons of Spring in the moral and religious world, and 
 is not the present age one of them ? There come 
 seasons when thoughts swell like buds, old mean- 
 ings press out and unfold like leaves; seasons when 
 we either need new words for greatening thoughts, 
 or else new meanings, new implications, new and 
 larger contents frankly recognized in the old words. 
 And I thihk the present age, which some men call 
 November, is such an April in the world of faith ; 
 that old words are swelling with enlarged meaning, 
 and that that is what's the matter : in religion 
 April's here! 
 
 The truth is that our little Unitarian history in 
 America has been one continuous April, with here 
 and there a day of halt, and here and there some 
 special day of freshening and forthputtmg. In 
 1810 and '20, when that history began in Chan-
 
 ]04 The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 ning's time, the words that showed the April signs 
 were "Bible," " Kevelation," "Human Nature," 
 "Salvation," "Heaven," and "Hell;" these all 
 were swelling with new meaning then. In 1840, 
 Emerson's and Theodore Parker's time, the swell- 
 ing word was " Miracle." In 1870, " National Con- 
 ference" time, it was "Lordship of Christ." In 
 1880, "Year Book" time, it was "Christianity." 
 In the older Churches around ours it has been a 
 slower Spring, but in all of them 
 
 "There is a sound, there is a token 
 That the marble sleep is broken, 
 And a change has passed on things." 
 
 At every crisis of the advancing change there has 
 been a stir, a trouble, a pause, — Nature getting 
 ready for violets, March a little strenuous that it 
 is not yet time for violets, and that violets are safer 
 anyway as roots in the ground than as blossoms out 
 in the light, — and then, somehow, March is April, 
 and April is May, and the violets are here ! How 
 beautiful within our lifetime the fields of religious 
 thought have grown with them! From one specific 
 Bible as the root, generic Scripture has sprung up, 
 — and the world is glad. In place of Revelation as 
 an event. Revelation as a process is discerned, — 
 and the world is glad. In place of Human Nature 
 of the worms wormy. Human Nature with seeds 
 and sparkles of divinity in it, — and the world is 
 glad. Instead of Miracle as a Jdnd of heavenly 
 coup (VMat^ rare and risky like earthly coups d'^.tat, 
 Miracle as another name for Nature's every result,
 
 The Faith of Ethics. 105 
 
 her least thing that,— and the world is glad. For 
 Lordship of Christ, the recognition that great men 
 are seen greatest bare of title. For the name 
 "Christianity" used as a shibboleth of fellowship, 
 the recognition that the spirit of Christianity 
 is the only thing worth fellowship, and that 
 that is a fellowship no man and no name can 
 confer, and that no man at his best will try to 
 deny; and the world is growing glad at that. In 
 each case the larger meaning in the old word has 
 made the word more beautiful. 
 
 I think this April process has now reached words 
 more important than any I have named; that to-day 
 " God," "Eeligion," " Ethics," are the words swell- 
 ing with new meanings, which will unfold them in 
 the same way to something larger, more forceful, 
 more beautiful, — and that the world will again be 
 glad. The Faith of Ethics is my subject; and this 
 phrase,"Faith of Ethics,"opened,will illustrate what 
 I mean. I shall only word thoughts that are slowly 
 taking shape in many of us. " Faith " is a word of 
 religion; and this thing that we call "morals" or 
 " ethics " is going to unfold itself as more vitally 
 "religious," by its deepest elements more vitally 
 religious, than men have yet seen to be the fact. 
 A great deal has recently been said among us that 
 brings to mind the word of Emerson, " Men talk 
 of mere morality, which is much as if one should 
 say, ' Poor God, with nobody to help him! ' " But 
 another word of Emerson, that prophecy he so oft 
 repeated, is also coming true before our eyes: "The
 
 106 . The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 progress of religion is steadily to its identity with 
 morals." . . " The next age will behold God in the 
 ethical laws." It is this tendency of which many 
 of us to-day are growing conscious in our thought. 
 And this process, note you, is not November for the 
 meaning of " religion," — it is April for the mean- 
 ing of "ethics." The term religion is not shrink- 
 ing; it is the term ethics that is swelling. 
 
 How is it with you and me ? Suppose your boy 
 or your little brother, twelve years old, should ask 
 you of a sudden, " What is the difference between 
 morals and religion ? Is there any ? " — what would 
 you say ? I wonder if I cannot put your answer 
 into words. You would say something about duties 
 to man as contrasted with duties to God, and feel- 
 ings towards man in contrast with feelings towards 
 God. " Morality," you might say, refers to the 
 good of fellow- men; "religion" deals with the 
 central power behind all Nature and events. Jus- 
 tice and helpfulness are the great words of the 
 first; reverence, worship, the great words of the 
 second. There is a first and a second command- 
 ment, "like unto" each other, but one is religion, 
 — "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God;" the other 
 is morals, — "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
 self." The angels' song was a two -line song, 
 "Glory to God in the highest," — religion; "On 
 earth, peace, good -^vill among men," — morality. 
 
 But we must let out these definitions a little
 
 The Faith of Ethics. 107 
 
 more. What do we mean by morality? Honesty; 
 truthfulness; justice; the give-and-take of bargains; 
 the live-and-let-live of reciprocated rights; the 
 every- day courtesies and generosities; the dues of 
 tenderness and mercy to those dependent on us, 
 the dues of charity to those a little more remote, 
 the dues of neighborhood lessening as the circle 
 widens; — this is " morals." But reverence, aspira- 
 tion, devotion to supreme ideals; self-sacrifice that 
 prefers death to inward dishonor, and counts risk, 
 pain, or the death cheap price for privilege of ren- 
 dering mankind service; that high loyalty which 
 makes a man stand one against a world, and feel 
 that the standing there allies him with Strength 
 that is eternal ; the bowed awe of the soul before a 
 naked duty, awe turning to delight and peace as 
 the soul enwraps and becomes that duty done, — 
 what do we call all this ? All this belonss to the 
 religious rather than the moral life, as men usually 
 divide the words. On one side, the economic and 
 prudential virtues; that which keeps the peace, 
 and underlies the structure of society, and pioneers 
 civilization, and gradually embodies itself in laws 
 and constitutions, and promotes man to be the cit- 
 izen, and refines the state into the commonwealth 
 — this on the one side; it is morals. And on the 
 other side, all the central facts of the soul's life, — 
 the sense of obligation to act according to seen 
 ideals, the sense of sin for non-fulfilled ideals, the 
 sense of aspiration for unfulfillable ideals; the 
 flame of indignation against strong-handed wrong
 
 108 The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 in others, and the flame of admiration and delight 
 for the struggling right in others; so much of 
 morals as has a stir and a thrill and a passion to 
 it; all of it that looks out on a rimless good, all 
 that prompts the heroic rather than the orderly, 
 prompts enthusiasms rather than seen utilities; 
 and all that working of the spiritual elements in 
 us which gives cheer in trial, quiet in sorrow,' pa- 
 tience in strain, trust during long triumphs of the 
 wronff, — all this is on the other side: it is "re- 
 ligion." 
 
 Have I not spoken your thought, or something 
 like your thought, for you ? 
 
 Now I do not know that I can prove anything 
 against such separation of the two words. Per- 
 haps I can only show that to my seeing there is no 
 separation, that it all joins on. You noticed my 
 trouble, — that I had to describe several of those 
 so-called "religious" experiences in terms of "mo- 
 rality;" and you may have felt of some of them 
 that they belonged rather in the other, in the 
 moral list. So they do; but there, under religion, 
 too ; and I believe I am but following copy in class- 
 ing them as I did among the things religious. 
 Where then does the boundary line fall ? Where 
 does "morality" end, and "religion" begin? All 
 that description of religion seems to be simply a 
 description of the wider and the inner reaches of 
 morality. Of the wider and the inner reaches of 
 morality: the "moral " sentiment erctended and in-
 
 The Faith of Ethics. 109 
 
 tended, becomes " religious " sentiment. Is it not 
 all a question of horizons ? 
 
 To judge if it be not, will you look, first, at the 
 mystic element in every simplest Ought ; and, then, 
 at the mystic element in our deeper, more com- 
 plex, spiritual experiences? And lastly, in the 
 light of what we see by these two looks, let us face 
 the thought of God. 
 
 The Ought. In the mystic element in every 
 simplest perception of the Ought I feel a " faith," 
 the Faith of Ethics. I am not wise to know, per- 
 haps none is, the source and nature of this famil- 
 iar obligation. It may be the instant's intuition 
 seen by some spirit- eyes in us, a voice heard by 
 some spirit-ear; or it may be a slow-gathering in- 
 stinct of the race handed down the generations; 
 or it may be some swift sub-conscious calculation 
 of utility; or it may be all of these. That the 
 theories contradict each other, I do not see; rather 
 they seem to almost necessarily involve each other. 
 But whatever be its origin, hei'e it is in us, a mystic 
 obligation, a thing that haunts us with hints and 
 vanishes of power supreme and absolute. It com- 
 mands! and what is more, its command enters into 
 every conscious deed. There is not a deed unhaunted 
 by this omnipresent imp— a little Ought. I am 
 debating, alone with myself, whether I will go into 
 some new business or remain in some old business 
 which affects the community thus and so; the 
 Ought is there with me, — it is the other debater.
 
 110 The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 My neighbor and I are bargaining, we two together, 
 no one else; the Ought is superintending both 
 sides of that bargain. A hundred men are con- 
 cerned in a deed; the Ought is in them all, de- 
 termining the precise relation of each one to that 
 deed. It is no more an Ought because, instead of 
 two, a hundred are involved. But again, instead 
 of the hundred men, a state is concerned in the 
 deed, a nation in the action, — it is the question of 
 slavery perhaps, or of the Indians, or of the Chi- 
 nese in America; or not one state, but two con- 
 tinents are in danger, — it is some question of war: 
 the Ought is still supreme and there ! The horizon 
 is spreading, but the Ought is no more strong, no 
 more mystic, than when it simply said to one man 
 in one deed, "Thou shalt," or "Thou shalt not." 
 And let that horizon spread to other worlds, to 
 other lives, to other orders of being, we cannot 
 conceive the Ought deciding on essentially unlike 
 principles in farthest spaces or in farthest times. 
 The relations known as Justice, Truth, Love — we 
 are haunted with conviction of it — are always, 
 everywhere. Justice, Truth, Love. — Siu-ely this is 
 faith: it is the "Faith of Ethics." Yet all that 
 greatness joins right on, haloes right around, the 
 littlest Ought in the littlest deed. Only an infinite 
 Ought can explain that littlest Ought. Or rather, 
 the infinite Ought does not a whit explain, and, if 
 it did, would itself just as much await the explana- 
 tion; it expands, but it does not explain. The 
 little Ought is the infinite Ought there and then.
 
 The Faith of Ethics. Ill 
 
 There is no little and big in Ought, any more than 
 there is little and big in gravitation. Here in the 
 drop of the pebble is the absolute gravitation, the 
 whole law of it acting; here in the smallest duty of 
 the moment is the absolute Ought, the whole law of 
 it acting. Faraday said, "A grain of water is 
 known to have electric relations equivalent to a 
 very powerful flash of lightning; " so the smallest 
 deed has moral relations equivalent to an instant 
 of a Judgment Day ! 
 
 Now tell me, if you can: this faith in an infinite 
 element entering into the smallest duty, this faith 
 that a law of Right which presides at the birth of 
 the worlds is holding and playing and presiding be- 
 tween the mixed motives in a little child's breast, — 
 this thought, this fact as it surely seems to us, — 
 tell me, if you can, which is it, a faith of "moral- 
 ity," or a faith of "religion?" If any faith can be 
 "religious" faith, this belongs to that order. And 
 yet I have simply spoken of the very smallest duty. 
 It is a question of horizons, I said. Take your 
 start from that bargain between the two men, — 
 "mere morality," if anything can be so called: 
 start from that bargain and think outwards, out- 
 wards, that the equations of justice between the 
 traders apply between the nations and the races, — 
 and we begin to feel the thrill we call " religious! " 
 The horizons have opened! Or take your start 
 from the bargain and think inwards, inwards, of 
 the fact that a universal law is actually, tangibly 
 pressing in the silences within each trader's self,
 
 112 The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 exacting justice of him there, so that their five- 
 cent chaffer at the street-comer has something in- 
 finite about it through its quality of honesty or 
 dishonesty! Start from the crimson on the little 
 child's face as he tells his first untruth, or fii'st 
 consciously bruises his mother's love, and think in- 
 wards to what that crimson banners out, this 
 namely, that the justice of the universe is mar- 
 shalling its hosts within that baby's conscience; — 
 and again we feel the thrill we call "religious." 
 The horizons have opened ! 
 
 Take a smaller thing than a baby's blush. Start 
 from so seeming-slight a thing as a mere tone in a 
 word; that cold tone in which you consciously an- 
 swered your wife or child this morning. It hurt 
 them; but what makes it hui-t you now, as you 
 walk down town ? What makes it haunt you with 
 its echoes so really that perhaps you will hear that 
 tone years hence, with pain so bitter you would 
 give a year off life could you but unpronounce it ? 
 A mere tone in a word! Such memories have 
 been. Start from this, and think, think inwards, 
 about the sources of that pain, — and we find our- 
 selves in worlds where time changes to eternity, 
 and relative to absolute ! The horizons have opened ! 
 
 In other words, if we insist on dividing between 
 morality and religion, truly it seems as if the di- 
 vision must proceed on some very outward surface 
 of the things concerned. Morality has to do with 
 the relations between men, we say: but the moment 
 we begin to think into the smallest of these social
 
 The Faith of Ethics. 113 
 
 relations, we find the moral element in it circling 
 out and out, and in and in, until " religion " be- 
 comes the only natural word with which to speak 
 oui' recognition of it. But that infinite horizon 
 was of course there all the time, — only we were 
 thoughtless of it. The religion is in the morality 
 all the time, — only we are thoughtless of it. Does 
 it not, then, come to this, which is the one refrain 
 I wish you would cany home with you to think 
 over and see if it be not time, — ^^ Ethics, ^^ thought 
 out, is ^^ religious ^^ thought; Ethics, felt out, is 
 religious feeling ; Ethics, lived out, is religious life f 
 
 Now take that second and deeper inlook that I 
 asked for. If something like a rimless world be- 
 gins to loom upon us when looking at *any littlest 
 action with its littlest Ought, still more we feel the 
 opening of moral horizons, the religious sweep of 
 ethics, when we look at the more complex experi- 
 ences of the soul. The "Faith of Ethics,"— the 
 phrase begins to glow as if a sun passed inside of 
 it, when we think of that ethical drama for which 
 every soul fiuTiishes theatre and stock company, — 
 the drama we call Sin. Sin with its first act, dis- 
 loyalty to Ought ; sin with its second act, pain, — 
 the soul's only real pain, the ache of shame; sin 
 with its third act, repentance; in its fourth act, re- 
 turn, reunion, peace. It is the drama Jesus told 
 out in his story of the good father and the prodi- 
 gal boy and his welcome back to the home. Is 
 that a " moral " or a " religious " story, — the story
 
 114 The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 of the prodigal son ? And at the Pacific Garden 
 Mission in West Chicago, is it a moral or a religious 
 drama that is being acted out in the breasts of 
 twenty men and women, rough men, rough women, 
 every Sunday night? They call it "religious," 
 there. So it is. How Jesus would have stared at 
 our question,— "Moral or religious?" But, after 
 staring, I think he would have given an answer 
 that would make us feel that " moral" — and it as 
 surely is a moral drama — that " moral " is about 
 the most "religious" word that ever slipped be- 
 tween two holy lips. 
 
 Or, instead of Sin, to see what the expression 
 "Faith of Ethics" hints, think, think out, what all 
 those processes of spiritual chemistry imply which 
 we call discipline, — discipline by difficulty, by dis- 
 appointment, by suffering, by soiTow; that spiritual 
 chemistry of which Jesus' Beatitudes are but a 
 few of the formulas. Spiritual chemistry as con- 
 stant in its action, as sui'e in its laws, as universal 
 in each life, as the circulation of the blood and the 
 chemistry of physical digestion are sure and con- 
 stant within the human body. Difficulty which 
 nerves our will, disappointment which teaches pa- 
 tience, suffering which gives us sympathies, sorrow 
 which transmutes itself to trusts such as we never 
 had before ; and all these hard experiences of strain 
 and pain and loss and death working together in us 
 to awake a sense of deathlessness, and a sense of 
 trust in an eternal righteousness! Think of it, 
 friends, -these are the spiritual realities happening
 
 The Faith of Ethics. 115 
 
 all the time, never not happening, in every soul in 
 your city, in every soul on this tiny earth of ours, in 
 every soul through the wide heavens. Spiritual, I 
 say. Realities, I say. Flesh and bone, rocks and 
 trees, not more real, not so deeply real. — Well, is it 
 "moral" or "religious," all this that happens? 
 Moral, surely, as all the words used show; yet, as 
 we think of them in this solemn, searching way, the 
 rims of all the words expand, the thrill begins, the 
 over-awing drops on us, and we are in the realm 
 the word- dividers call " religious." Indeed we are! 
 It all joins on. 
 
 Shall I speak of that still more mystical experi- 
 ence, rarer to full consciousness, but none the less 
 forever going on, I cannot doubt, in our sub-con- 
 sciousness, or super-consciousness,- — the experience 
 which we call Worship, Prayer, Communion with 
 the Highest, and which, whatever we call it, is a 
 sense as if we joined ourselves to that which is all- 
 strong, all-endui'ing, all-righteous ? Here at least, 
 one says, you touch "religion." Yes, but not 
 one whit more really than we touched it in our ex- 
 perience of sin or of that pain-wrought sweetness. 
 Not more reaUy, though now more consciously. 
 That is to say, this experience of sharing in All- 
 mighty Power and Right is " moral " experience too, 
 is intensely moral; and because so intensely moral, 
 the horizons are already circling wide before us, and 
 we say, below our breath, "This is religion!" 
 
 Ah, if we but deeply felt the realities of our 
 spirit's common life when we are not " at prayer,"
 
 116 The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 we should know they all were to be called religion, 
 because these realities all presuppose, involve, the 
 same eternal forces. Thanks to science, we realize 
 to-day that oiu' body is really taken hold of by the 
 sun, that gravitation grasps us, that the world mag 
 nets draw us, that the climates enter into us. As 
 really, the forces we call moral, spiritual, enclose us, 
 pervade us, bind us, fill us, shape us. It is ivorld- 
 force that binds us to justice in our bargain. It is 
 world-force, the peace that passes understanding. 
 It is world- force, the shame that crimsons us; 
 world-force, that links wrong to doom and right to 
 joy in men and nations; world-force, that draws us 
 up in prayer up-reachings; world- force, that sends 
 the Ought-current through our every act, that thrills 
 us with sympathies, that glows in us when we 
 think an heroic thought; world-force, that nails us, 
 willing, to a cross! The reality of this who more 
 than begins to feel ? Yet that mere beginning be- 
 comes evidence to consciousness of bonds between 
 each spirit and all spirits, and of union of all spirits 
 in Spuit Absolute. What word for this mighty 
 faith? It is but "morals." Try again: it is "re- 
 ligion!" Try again: it is conviction that the two 
 are very one. 
 
 Yes, one. It is the "religious" faith; for re- 
 ligion is man's sense of universal relations, however 
 the universe, or man's relation to it, be conceived. 
 Whatever thought or feeling in us reaches out and 
 claims a universal scope, thereby becomes " relig- 
 ious." Hence Science, dealing with the True, is
 
 The Faith of Ethics. UT 
 
 religious in its outcome, cannot be otherwise; fur 
 it affii'ms the cosmic order, universal laws, the One 
 in all. Hence .3ilsthetics, dealing with the Beauti- 
 ful, is religious in its outcome, — can not be other- 
 wise; for Beauty is the sense of cosmic order con- 
 centred in individual objects and radiating thence 
 again. And, in the same way. Ethics, that which 
 deals with the Right and Good, is religious in its 
 outcome, cannot be otherwise; for it once more 
 affirms the cosmic order, affirms relations absolute 
 and everywhere the same. 
 
 So I I'epeat my refrain: "Ethics", thought om?, 
 is " religious '* thought; Ethics, feltow^, is religious 
 feeling; Ethics, lived out, is religious life. 
 
 There — it is only a hint, but something like this 
 that I have hinted is the "Faith of Ethics ". Have I 
 made the great thought at all plain ? If so, I know 
 you feel its majesty ; and will begin to feel with me 
 tliat all that talk that di\ddes morality from religion 
 by saying of religion, "It is something ??i07'e than 
 morality," instead of saying " It is something more 
 in morality than is usually seen," — and all that 
 other talk which mistakes mere doctrine for religion, 
 and, casting out the doctrine, says, " Give us only 
 morals," — that all such talk, in either kind, is close 
 akin to that worse talk which speaks of " mere 
 morality" and "rags of righteousness;" and that 
 the common thought of morals as that which deals 
 with simply sztr/ace relations of society and out- 
 ward conduct, and which has no root in absolute.
 
 118 The Faith of Ethics, 
 
 eternal life-principles, is really -thoughtlessness. It 
 is the irreligiousness, it is the unraorality, in us 
 which speaks so. The trouble with this greater 
 thought, that the Faith of Ethics is the very heart 
 and essence of religion, is that it is too great for us 
 to realize. Friends, we are afraid of believing so 
 much! As we turn away from it, the words, "O ye 
 of little faith ! " sound after us. It makes the awful 
 Powers too near! It makes the common-places of 
 our life so infinite! Which is what the common- 
 places are, when realized, — the infinites of life. 
 
 But what of the thought of God under this con- 
 ception of the Faith of Ethics ? 
 
 Some good men, you know, stifle religion with 
 Chi-istianity, or stifle their Chi'istianity with the ism 
 of their sect: and when one insists on "something 
 more than morality," namely, belief in God, as es- 
 sential to religion, I confess I feel a little stifled by 
 such theism, — such theisticism. Say that this mor- 
 ality, so realized in its awful nature and its awful 
 sweep, is the theism in a man — a theism at first 
 almost unconscious, and then more conscious, and 
 ever more and more conscious as he grows to realize 
 its meaning, — say this, and I begin to feel kindled* 
 inspired, by that word God! " AVhat! already touch- 
 ing God in this small deed of mine, in this mere 
 tone in a word of mine? " Yes! — That astonishes, 
 that is sunrise! I see then that "God" is not 
 niched anywhere, nor massed anywhere, nor throned 
 anywhere, but is heavened everywhere because
 
 The Faith of Ethics. 119 
 
 heavened in the Ought; and of coiuse " the kingdom 
 of heaven is at hand," — where else ? But even if I 
 lose all so-called " God" by the inability, I am not 
 able to think a God -for whom to care— for whom 
 to care, I say — separate from, beyond, outside of 
 this I have been speaking of. Every inch of this 
 morality has been religion. Every inch of it has 
 involved, incorporated, that Power with which the 
 others, who talk of "mere morality," top their 
 moral structure and bound their moral horizon. 
 You and I have looked together at morality enter- 
 ing as infinite and absolute element in eveiy act we 
 do, in every experience of the soul. Each and 
 every time, wherever we have gazed, the horizons 
 have opened wider, wider. To such conception 
 there is no rim, no top, no bound, and no beyond. 
 I gain no explanation of morality, then, by saying 
 " God." I am but saying more intensely, " Infinite 
 Morality." I gain no sanction for it. I gain no 
 source or root or end to it. In the great reforms 
 they used to quote the Bible: but did the Bible - 
 text make slavery wrong, or did the wrong of slav- 
 ery make the Bible-text ? Did Jesus confer sanc- 
 tion on the "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself " and " Thou shalt bless thy enemy,"— or did 
 the perception of these shalts sanction, aye, create 
 the very Jesus ? Even so with the thought of God ; 
 the right creates and sanctions, not indeed that 
 thought entire, but all of it that we most value, al I 
 that makes us worship; that thought does not 
 create and sanction Right. By saying " God " we
 
 ] 20 The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 background moral law on Nature, we say that 
 the Law is real, is alive, acts. Nature conceived as 
 moral through and through, from play of atoms to 
 heart's love and a Christ upon a cross, is the God 
 we worship. Duty does not point, then, to Deity 
 as to something outside of itself: that Ought with- 
 in is the very voice, face, force of Deity present. 
 Deity urgent. Deity declaring in us ever, — " I am the 
 way, the truth, the life!" Enstructured is the 
 word: that Living Law is enstructured in the very 
 nature of man, — and the nature of man is the na- 
 ture of things. The nature of man is the nature of 
 things! The universe is one. That in you which 
 thinks, that in you which loves, that in you which 
 makes the hard duty easy, that in a man which 
 makes it luxury to die that the Right may live in- 
 violate, — that is the moral nature of things en- 
 structured in you ! To see this is to make the great 
 recognition of " God." To help others to see it is 
 to make the great interpretation of " God." 
 
 Conceived in this way, the Faith of Ethics makes 
 " God " the intensely real. It mixes his very life 
 with youi's and mine. It makes him the Inevita- 
 ble, as simply inevitable as the Ought. It leaves no 
 instant of our life free from him. If not with us 
 as Ought, then with us as Ought-Not. If not with 
 us as light upon our path, then with us as trust in 
 the dark path. If not with us as joy and the sense 
 of power, then with us as doom and the sense of 
 distance, disaster, break- down. Yes, blackening 
 sinner and white saint alike bear witness to the
 
 The Faith of Ethics. 121 
 
 Moral Law, self-enacting, sovereign, in man. And 
 what is History biit human life writ large ? In dooms 
 and exaltations of the nations, and in the human 
 tendency toward happier and richer life as the 
 centuries grow kind and Christ's Beatitudes be- 
 come organic instincts of the race, History echoes 
 and re-echoes verdicts of the Moral Law. Ever 
 with us, in us, of us, — the Majesty of Living Right? 
 the God! 
 
 And is this Moral Law, this Living Eight in 
 thinsrs, a law of Lovef Answer, Heart vnthin! 
 If in thee the Moral Law eventuates and flowers in 
 Love, if always in thyself the solemn Bight strains 
 toward self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness, then 
 everywhere and everywhen the Right tends Love- 
 wards. — TF/i?/ everywhere ? Because the universe 
 is One. Because " the Power, not ourselves, that 
 makes for righteousness" is all as truly Power that 
 is oui" very self; and, by self's attestation, in mak- 
 ing for the "righteousness" it makes for Love. 
 Law that is not everywhere in Nature is nowhere. 
 The statutes of the nations have their bounds; 
 statutes of the universe have none. The Moral 
 Law is not one law within the chemistries of human 
 souls and a different law within the chemistries of 
 flowers and stars, one law in children's laughter and 
 another law in tragedies and deaths. The strain 
 must ever be the same. In one place, self, we 
 know what that strain is: then it is ever toward 
 Beatitudes of Friendliness.
 
 122 The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 And still one question yearns: "Can this Be- 
 friending Power bear a tenderer name ? Can we 
 without unreason call it ' Father,' and lean on it as 
 One who cares ? Is it * Love,' not merely in result, 
 but in its very source? " 
 
 No answer to such question, if not in these same 
 deeps within ourselves. And as we listen "in our- 
 selves for answer, the word "Love" opens in trans- 
 figui-ed meanings, till it almost seems belittlement 
 to use our dearest and intensest word to phrase the 
 consciousness that one must speak of. If I read 
 our trust-experience aright, it is a sense of resting 
 child- wise on Parental Care; and yet it is still 
 more the sense of being part of a mighty stream of 
 Love ; by it borne on to ends its own, — ours, too, 
 so far as our ends are its own. It is a sense of 
 care for me, yet rather of care with me, — ^with me, 
 down to the last details of all I do or bear. I 
 think I feel it most as care for me, when I am 
 weak in faith, or weak in will, to clasp some Eight 
 which yet I seej for then I am separate enough 
 from that which makes for Eight to feel it as Power 
 apart from self, — Power within me, that is seeking, 
 thwarting, leading me. This is the lower feeling. 
 When I am strong in faith and will to clasp the 
 Eight and make it mine, the separateness lessens, 
 till the sense even of dependence seems lost in 
 sense of loyalty, and I am one with the Strength I 
 lean on and obey. This is the higher feeling. 
 Eare the hours, perhaps, when we ascend to it. 
 But this mystic sense — at once dependence, loyalty,
 
 TJw Faith of Ethics. 128 
 
 unity — the right life daily deepens for us, if we 
 will. Law, Love, Life, these three; and it is the 
 righteous Life which unifies the other two in con- 
 sciousness. God-being, within our tiny limits, is 
 the imperious and blessed law of God-finding. 
 No peace or strength or inspiration like the feeling 
 that I mean. — But let this feeling once be felt, and 
 then the question, *' Is the Power, working thus 
 within us, 'Love,' or is it a 'Lover?'" seems 
 past the asking. It is Love we know, the Love 
 we realize, the Love we care about ; yet as our 
 minds can think Love only as a radiance of Lovers, 
 the Power shapes itself before thought as "the 
 Father." Thus to the conceiving mind; but in the 
 experience itself, when this Lover grows most real 
 he vanishes again into the Love. He vanishes ? or 
 is it ice who vanish? We only know the Great 
 Heart throbbing thorugh us, its Life translating 
 itself to "personality" in ours. Tell who can 
 whether it be His or ours! 
 
 But as to name, let none who feel that its inade- 
 quacy stabs truth say " Love," or " God," or 
 "Father." Let such keep silence; and let their 
 silence be revered as reverence by those who find 
 the very poverty of words less poor than 
 silence to voice their sense of the Mystery and 
 Blessedness. As reverently let those who choose 
 the silence bear with those who break it. Most 
 certainly the One that moves within the crys- 
 tallizing atoms as well as in the rhythms of 
 History, within the shining suns as well as in the
 
 124 The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 Light that lighteth every man, — most certainly this 
 Omnipresent, Moral Energy is not a mighty Pa- 
 triarch, is not the very tenderest Mother. But if 
 not these, it is because our best name cometh short. 
 Those names are only poems, emblems, symbols, — 
 "idols" to help the mind: even as the Incarnation 
 doctrine and Madonna Mary are idols still more 
 definite in outline, and by that sharper definition 
 more helpful still to myriads of minds trying to 
 realize Eternal Goodness. "Idol" — let the word 
 be spoken fearlessly; these names are all but 
 "idols" of the mind But know what "idol" 
 means, — an image making thought more visible to 
 consciousness. Man scarcely thinks except in images, 
 in idols: at every word we speak an image drops. 
 
 Be braver, all! Be fairer, too! Say "Father," 
 "Christ," "Madonna; " yet, saying these, beware! 
 We easily may make them idols in the hurtful 
 sense, mistaking form for substance. Or refuse to 
 say " Our Father," if truth to you forbid it; but be- 
 ware as much in that refusal ! For to fear idols for 
 oneself, or to rave at them in others, is still to fear and 
 rave at — idols. Mistake not thou the form for 
 substance. To put both warnings into one; beware 
 of thinking it eitherthe essence of religion, or the 
 essence of superstition, to say " God " and "Father." 
 To suppose it either is to judge by names, and that 
 is the superstition, that the sacrilege. 
 
 But since it is nothing but morality in us that 
 makes the God so real, so live, so near to us, we 
 ought to deeply thank these "Ethical Culture So-
 
 The Faith of Ethics. 125 
 
 cieties," now fepringiug up among us, for their sin- 
 gle emphasis. They seem sect-like in their insisted- 
 on use and disuse of certain names; they seem 
 dogmatic, — like many of ourselves. They are 
 Puritans whitewashing the cathedrals in the inter- 
 est of truth ; Pimtans denying poetry, because poe- 
 try is imagery and imagery so often means idola- 
 try. We need not follow them into any narrowness, 
 from which they may themselves escape in time. 
 Man has a birthright to poetry and symbolism, and 
 they will not be denied out of him. They are his chief 
 access to the higher realities, almost his only access 
 to the highest, and are the natural expression of his 
 thought concerning these realities. But our "Ethical 
 Culture" men have the very heart of "religion" 
 in them, names or no names : and what cares that 
 Real Presence which it be, — with name or without ? 
 They will deepen spiritual perception in us, who 
 
 reatly need to have it deepened. They are proph- 
 ets of the true God, — the God whose name they 
 are forbidding men. 
 
 Named or unnamed, to recognize and realize that 
 One, to he that One within our atom-range, is life, 
 — life kin to its own Eternal Life. To be simple 
 before the thought of it ; to be silent, if silence be 
 the true simplicity for us ; but if our feeling move 
 us so, to utter praise and thanksgiving and trust 
 in awed and childlike words; to take joy with a 
 thrill of gratitude to it; to do our work and spend 
 ourselves for men with an unfaltering sense that, in 
 the service of the right, the atoms and the great
 
 126 The Faith of Ethics. 
 
 Whole blend strength; in tragedies, to wrap our- 
 selves about with trust in goodness at the heart of 
 all that hurts; in soitow, to be quiet from convic- 
 tion that " no good thing is failure and no evil 
 thing success," and that " no evil can befall a good 
 man, whether he be alive or dead," — this is to " live 
 in God." 
 
 We all shall see it yet! Men will see it and re- 
 joice in it, — this larger, nearer thought of God! 
 Something akin to what has happened to that 
 thought as relative to " jVIiracles " and to "Crea- 
 tion " will result again. Now, we say, not miracle 
 but law ; not creation, but evolution. And God at 
 first seemed distanced, de-personalizedj and lost 
 thereby: " They have taken away my Lord, and I 
 know not where they have laid him." Then, as 
 our eyes got new focus for the thought, we began 
 to see the Presence nearer, greater than we ever 
 saw before, its Face closer to our face and more 
 awful in beneficence, its Hands more tremendous 
 in their hold! Far larger has the thought of God 
 become, far deeper is the faith in him becoming, by 
 the new conceptions of physical law that v\"e owe to 
 science. Even so, and more than so, will it be with 
 that thought, and faith, as we grow to see him in 
 the eihical law and to identify morals with religion: 
 He will become the Living God to us as never yet. 
 
 No God except the perfect of morality is worth 
 the worship. Drain off from infinite Power infinite 
 Right, and you have left a dummy God, and none
 
 The Faith of Ethics. 127 
 
 so poor to do him reverence: no vian^ at least, be- 
 cause man has in himself the moral element which 
 then that God would lack. Alas for the idea of 
 God, then, that is in any peril through extension of 
 the Faith of Ethics! That God is a dying God, — 
 Saturn ebbing before the new Jupiter, Jupiter ebb- 
 ing before the new Christ. In truth, all nick- 
 named gods — all gods to whom men deem their 
 name essential — have funerals as time runs on. 
 But never " alas! " for the God of whom I speak. 
 Of him, ''The Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth!" 
 and " Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the 
 Glory for Ever and Ever!" By extensions, by all 
 possible extensions of the Faith of Ethics, the God 
 whom all names mean and no names utter shall 
 grow and greaten on man's vision. And as with 
 all the other greatened meanings in religion, the 
 world will by and by be very glad. 
 
 So let me end with my refrain, worth chanting 
 in the memory' until, like great music, its meanijig 
 dawnsupon us: "Ethics," thought out, is "relig- 
 ious" thought; Ethics, feltott/, is religious feeling; 
 Ethics, lived out, is the religious life. Let the hor- 
 izons open!
 
 RELIGION FROM THE NEAR END. 
 
 JENKIN LLOYD JONES. 
 
 " Lord, it is good for us to be here." 
 Matthew xvii., 4. 
 
 I. 
 
 Take any definition of religion you please, only 
 so it be large enough. Be sure you put into it the 
 divinest fullness possible to the experience of man, 
 I prefer to interpret religion at its maximum rather 
 than its minimum,. Let it mean the greatest thought 
 of God, the tenderest trust in Providence, the clos- 
 est communion with Jesus, the most loving appre- 
 ciation of the Bible, an assuring hope of the eternal 
 life, and the loftiest habit of worship that the human 
 soul can know. No other definition answers my 
 purpose. 
 
 Then, I say religion thus defined is best realized 
 from the near end. Indeed, it can be realized in 
 its fullness only by him who seeks it fi'om this end 
 of the line; who discovers sanctities in near things. 
 Right here or nowhere is the gate of heaven for us 
 to-day. The best of mediatorial religion is a sec- 
 ond hand affair. It is a hearsay, a reminiscence. 
 He who finds more sacredness in distant than in near 
 things; for whom glory settles chiefly on remote 
 shores ; for whom morality is best enforced by texts 
 and events springing out of the experiences of others, 
 may in some sense be said to have "got religio-n," 
 
 129
 
 130 Eeligion from the Near End. 
 
 but religion has not got him. Religion is still to 
 him a possession, and not being. He may have 
 studied a paper diagram of the New Jerusalem, but 
 he has not yet entered within its gates. He may 
 profess the " Christian" name, but he has not yet 
 known the religion of Jesus. Jesus' religion, if it 
 was anything, was tj/imediatorial. His gospel was 
 rooted in common things. His Bible was the pages 
 of nature and the experience of peasant hearts. 
 His speech was redolent with the fragrance of the 
 roadside, and his principles were enforced by the 
 experiences of the fishing boat and the seashore. 
 Sparrows, lilies, weeds, a mustard plant and a 
 woman's dough-bowl disclosed to him the secrets of 
 the divine life. It was with such alphabet of earth 
 that he spelled out the lessons of heaven. 
 
 Let us see what can be done by beginning at 
 this end of the line. You may, if you like, drop all 
 disputed words, confess your doubts and plead 
 your ignorance ; omit the pretentious phrases, throw 
 away youi* sham beliefs, and even your "would- 
 believes." Stop aping the piety you do not feel, 
 and invoice among your spiritual possessions only 
 those things that are really yours as commodities 
 of soul. When your vocabulary is reduced to the 
 limits of your present possessions and the sincere 
 experiences of to-day, what have you out of which 
 to frame both religious thought and feeling ? Pres- 
 ent experience, its joy and beauty, the nearest and 
 humblest duty, the simplest act of devotion that 
 finds expression in the kiss you give to a babe, or in
 
 Religion from the Near End. 131 
 
 the delicate awe you feel in the presence of the 
 first flowers of spring. Just these and nothing 
 more. Count them, if you must, upon the fingers 
 of one hand, but make the most of them. Follow 
 any one of them out in thought, in feeling and in 
 life, and the essentials of religion are yours. Any 
 one of them will lead to the Mount of Transfigura- 
 tion, where, with Peter, you exclaim, "Lord, it is 
 good to be here! " 
 
 Take the simplest, coldest bit of science, work 
 it out from the near end, and you cannot leave it 
 without feeling that you are in league with 
 Eternity and that you are touching directly the 
 Infinite God. Sometimes your human certainties 
 are reduced veiy low, and you say, " I only know 
 that two and two make four." Very well, if you 
 are sure of that, let that be for the time your only 
 confession of faith. Not much of a creed, is it ? 
 Still, if you hold to it and live up to it, it is creed 
 enough to make a saint of you. "Two and 
 two make four," always, everywhere. They made 
 four when Zoroaster taught the law of right a 
 thousand years before Jesus, They made four 
 when the earliest shepherds began to count the 
 stars. They make four to the Esquimau in his 
 snow hut, to the Australian as he basks in his 
 nakedness under tropic palms. " Two and two 
 make four." This is the beginning of that arith- 
 metic that eventually foretells the eclipse, antici- 
 pates the movements of planets and weighs the 
 earth in its balances. Start from this end, and go
 
 182 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 only as far hb your science and your logic allow, and 
 your "two and two make four" will roll up into 
 the millions of measured miles, through the thou- 
 sands of counted worlds that form the vestibule to 
 the unmeasured star-studded depths of immensity. 
 It is indeed the near end of infinitude. " Two and 
 two make four " is a truth that touches that mystic 
 law that star-rays the snow-flake ; that polishes to 
 exactitude the facets of the angled spar; that 
 moves the procession of life in pairs; that ar- 
 ranges in perfect symmetry the petals of the 
 prairie flowers, places the million needles of the 
 pine tree according to the law of the spiral, and 
 shows us, as Emerson says, that " Nature loves the 
 number five." This fragment of the multiplica- 
 tion table is the beginning of that integrity that 
 makes commerce possible, trade legitimate and 
 thrift commendable. To believe it is to believe 
 that some things are settled in this world, and 
 that, too, by a power other than man's. It is to be- 
 lieve that we are law-engirdled; that we live in an 
 ordered universe; that purpose and method lie at 
 the root of things and spring out of the heart of 
 being. This is to believe in God, whose funda- 
 mental attributes are integrity, inflexibility, uni- 
 versality. If we do not prove infidel to this 
 inspiration, we shall find ourselves eventually 
 on our knees before the altar it rears. It is the 
 altar Beautiful as well as the altar Useful. 
 
 Take another fragment of science. Turn away, 
 if you must, from religion and its associate words,
 
 Religion from the Near End. 133 
 
 but make the most of a di'op of water. Note the 
 mystic wedlock of the paiticles of oxygen and 
 hydrogen. Trace the journey of that drop of 
 water from the unseen gases through lake, vapor, 
 cloud, rain, up again in the green leaf, pushing 
 into the bud of spring, bursting somehow into the 
 imponderable and once more unseen fragrance of 
 the arbutus, and you have once more climbed the 
 Mount of Transfiguration. Follow the drop of 
 water this way and it climbs to the star, that way 
 and it touches the nebulous fire-mists out of 
 which worlds were rolled; follow its backward 
 track and it will lead you to a Genesis millions of 
 years earlier than the earliest Adam; follow the 
 track forward and it conducts you to a wild world 
 tamed into a garden, to a wilderness transformed 
 into a harvest field. It gives rose gardens where 
 briers once grew, and makes the desert bloom with 
 lilies. Inevitably religion is the outcome of science, 
 if it is sought thus fx'om the near end of our lives. 
 But there are those who will say, " I've no head 
 and still less heart for science; ' two and two make 
 four ' and nothing more. To me nature is cold 
 and dead. I find no Infinite Spirit in your pro- 
 toplasm, no shaping Providence in your chaos of 
 atoms. The thought of evolving worlds, developing 
 planets, and aspiring organisms do not feed my 
 heart. Evolution to me is soulless and Godless." 
 Do not be discouraged. All roads lead to Thee, 
 thou Infinite and All Sufficient! Try beauty.
 
 134 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 " If you get simple beauty and naught else 
 You get about the best thing God invents," 
 
 says the old monk in the poem. In getting this 
 beauty what do you get ? Whence came the deli- 
 cate tint of the flower ? Who moulded its graceful 
 cup and fringed its golden lips? Compound 
 who can its yellow and green ; put all this on 
 the most Godless basis you can, try and blur 
 the marvel by the words "matter," "materialism," 
 "law," " evolution," anything but chance. These 
 words do not lessen one whit the loveliness 
 nor reduce the marvel. All the same have the teem- 
 ing ages groaned in the production of this beauty. 
 Nature and human nature are compounded in your 
 lily. In it are found the gardener's patience, wo- 
 man's devotion, the child's appreciation. Sever 
 who can this tendency of nature to ornamentation 
 from the thirst of the human soul for perfection. 
 Will you see beauty here and none in the pursing 
 lips of babyhood ? Grace in the flower, and none 
 in the hand that trained it? Fragrance in the 
 blossom that sets us at peace with nature, and no 
 helpfulness in the hand that gathered it for us, 
 setting us at peace with human nature ? 
 
 If in the flowers we discover a subtle power, 
 which in our timidity we may hesitate to name, shall 
 we not be impelled to strive to create a bit of beauty 
 somewhere on our own account, moved either to 
 copy or excel it? If you are so made that you 
 "love things first when you see them painted," 
 and are thus led by the Art road to a passion for
 
 Religion front, the Near End. 135 
 
 the beautiful; does not that road lead to piety? 
 Take the familiar story of Palissy's passion for the 
 enamel to beautify a coffee cup; that insatiable 
 hunger for the compound that in fervid heat would 
 yield the polish; that wild intoxication that tore 
 down the rafters of his house that the fire in the 
 kilns might not go out. Looking back of that 
 frenzy we find concentrated what stragglings of 
 human life that have gone before ! The power that 
 refined the barbarities of war, the navigator's cour- 
 age, the conqueror's triumph, the temple at Jeru- 
 salem, the Parthenon at Athens, the Forum at 
 Rome, psalm, prophet's word, poet's song, all were 
 related to that fiery soid that was mad for beauty. 
 Looking forward, the passion that burned in the 
 heart of the Huguenot potter was one of the many 
 seeds that ripened into the art, the refinement, and 
 culture of to-day. Palissy did not originate him- 
 self. No beauty began with him, none ended in 
 him. Each is related to all. The centuries gone 
 move in every human feeling. The generations 
 past have contributed to every thought. Yes, the 
 unity of history, the solidarity of the race, the kin- 
 ship of religions and the chorus of the prophet 
 souls of earth, are found in any human heart that 
 is fired with any love for the beautiful. Not sym- 
 bolized there, but there in fact. Given a soul sen- 
 sitive to color and form, susceptible to harmony and 
 symmetry, and there is that in a noble build- 
 ing, a pine tree, or m the melody of a chorus, that 
 will bring to him religious refinement, strength, and
 
 136 Religion frotn the Near End. 
 
 sanctity. We remember the story of the atheist 
 
 artist who, as he looked up into the waving branches 
 
 of a magnificent tree, found himself whispering 
 
 reverently for the first time " God." "When 
 
 " Beauty through my senses stole, 
 I yielded myself to the perfect whole." 
 
 But the gates of Beauty as well as the gates 
 previously mentioned may be closed to some. Not 
 finding religion on these lines, such would be in- 
 structed of Reason. They ask of Philosophy, 
 " Where is God?" On this road certainly religion 
 is found in fullest measure by those who seek it 
 from the near end. The older philosophies tried 
 to formulate the universe, to catalogue the attrib- 
 utes of God. The result has always been confu- 
 sion, distrust, dogmatism, and defeat, because the 
 universe is too big for the mind of man. "Canst 
 thou by searching find out God?" The fallible 
 mind cannot compass the boundless. The immor- 
 tality men can prove is not the eternal life, because 
 man's finiteness cannot hold the Infinite. The lesser 
 cannot contain the greater. After the long and 
 painful quest there is coming a philosophy that 
 recognizes the limitations of the mind; that ceases 
 from the attempt to solve the Infinite or to 
 compass the Almighty, and, instead is trying 
 to classify the few experiences of the finite, to 
 study God from the man-ward side. From the 
 known it travels toward the unknown. Beginning 
 at this end of the line, lo, every thought taps 
 at a temple door, every emotion lands the
 
 Religion from the Near End. 137 
 
 thinking maa on his knees, every sensation places 
 his hands upon altar rails. When man is perfectly 
 willing to confess his ignorance, then knowledge 
 illuminates his life with a sense that the unknown 
 is more real than the known, that every known fact 
 impinges upon our senses because there is behind 
 it a greater unknown verity. Thus it is that every 
 idea that passes through the brain, like every pulse 
 of beauty, compels us to bow before the invisible 
 but real God. Thought, pursued in this way from 
 the near end, brings the courage to many, aye, to 
 most, to use the words of religion which, under 
 the method that began at the farther end, they 
 were compelled to relinquish. Even though they 
 miss the words, they find the thing. 
 
 But should the lines of Reason blur before they 
 reach the Transfiguration Mount, there are yet 
 other roads that lead that way. Such a road is 
 Love. I do not mean at the outset what is com- 
 monly called the "love of God." If you must 
 frankly confess that you know not where or who 
 God is, it is still well if you love anything, — your 
 wife, child, pet dog or favorite flower. Be true to 
 the leadings of this love, however simple, and it 
 will mellow your life, interpret for you your neigh- 
 bor's better nature, reconcile you to your enemies, 
 put new beauty into the stars, re- animate the 
 world of pi'ophecy, and wreathe with hope and 
 resignation your graves. 
 
 "Tell the boys I've got Luck with me now," said 
 the rough miner in Bret Harte's story, as he drifted
 
 138 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 away on the shadowy river that flows forever into 
 the unknown sea, clinging to the body of the frail 
 babe whose advent had caused vines and flowers to 
 grow around the cabin doors and taught the miners 
 to wash themselves twice a day. 
 
 " Tennessee ain't pretty, I know, but she air 
 powerful peart," said Birt Dicey in Craddock's 
 story. The presence of the unkempt little sister 
 persuaded him that he "'couldn't afford to be a 
 scoundrel and sich." She followed him, blessing, 
 mellowing, ennobling his hard life all through the 
 story, lifting his awful drudgery into the sanctities 
 of worship. " One way of adoring God is to love 
 one's wife," says Victor Hugo. "In thy face have 
 I seen the Eternal," said the dying Baron Bunsen 
 to his wife. 
 
 Mr. Calthrop in the paper published elsewhere 
 in this volume describes the contents of one cubic 
 inch of space, midway between the Sun and Sirius. 
 In this inch he finds " the exactness of God, the 
 economy of God, and the love of God." If all 
 these are found in so material and external a unit, 
 how much more are they to be found in a unit of 
 heart life. Study, as this cubic inch of space is 
 studied, the confident kiss which a strange babe 
 gave me one day. Think of the ages of barbaric 
 struggle, the millions of crushed aspirations, the 
 unnumbered longings, the search of the savage 
 for safety, of the barbarian for shelter, of the pio- 
 neer for a lodgment in the inhospitable wilds, of 
 the statesman for an ordered commonwealth, the
 
 Religion from the Near End. 139 
 
 inventor for the amenities and refinements of home, 
 the physician for the condition of health, the edu- 
 cator for the expansion of mind, the moralist for 
 the purity of the soul, the religionist for the ten- 
 derness of the spirit, that have preceded the confid- 
 ing kiss of a child of civilized man. Heart-sick 
 women and passion- disciplined men march in files 
 ages long behind the kiss of a modern babe. In 
 receiving that kiss I was made heir of all the ages. 
 Not so complicated are the material activities in 
 an inch of space, as the spiritual complexity in 
 that baby's kiss. Looking back, it opens up such 
 a history of the human race as no infidel or atheist 
 can contemplate without religious awe and thanks- 
 giving, — except such infidels and atheists as are 
 made in the would-be homes of religion itself, by 
 the preachers who, beginning at the further end, 
 teach of an accursed world, of a child that is a 
 doomed fi-agment of a depraved humanity. From 
 that kiss we may look forward as well as backward. 
 How it reaches into lives that are to be! In it is 
 the beginning of home loves, generations of think- 
 ing, loving men and women. It is a deposit of 
 the human heart in the love store of humanity. 
 Forevermore will man be somewhat the richer for 
 that impulse toward kindness. God's kingdom is 
 more on the earth for it ! How religious are the 
 contents of that kiss ? 
 
 But should even this road fail; if love, simple 
 human love, like science, philosophy and art, should 
 prove a closed door, there still remains the East
 
 140 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 Gate of the Temple, that through which Jehovah 
 himself passed in the vision of Ezekiel, the gate of 
 Duty, the high portal of the sublime "I ought." 
 Do your simplest duty towards yoiu" nearest neigh- 
 bor, if it be the humblest of your dumb relations, 
 and somehow the bells of heaven will begin to ring 
 in your soul. When the boy withheld the stone 
 that he had raised against the turtle, sunning in 
 the pasture pond-hole, evermore did the voice of 
 God abide with him, making him indeed a " Theo- 
 dore," a "gift of God" to the world. "I don't 
 know how to teach my boy his duty towards God," 
 said a mother to me one day. "Very well. Teach 
 him his duty to the little bird in nesting time 
 and you have taught him to begin to adjust his 
 relation to the Infinite Father of all." Make a wo- 
 man ashamed of being a partner in the cruelty and 
 sacrilege that, in the name of beauty, deprives a 
 meadow-lark of its life that its dead wings may de- 
 file the grace of a woman's brow, and you have done 
 more towards giving that woman a religious love, a 
 soul sensitive to the sanctities of being, a heart 
 beset with a sense of divine nearness, than if 
 you had secured her signature to a creed in which 
 all the holy words are written, if they are written 
 there from the further end. For such a one would 
 be but a believer in a God that somebody else dis- 
 covered, one who relies upon an historical mediator, 
 and trusts in a traditional revelation. The times 
 are growing more religious because men are be- 
 ginning to find out that the clearest revelations of
 
 Religion from the Near End. 141 
 
 the Infinite come through the loyalty of the finite, 
 and that all the sanctuaries are shut save to those 
 who tread the ways of righteousness, yes and all of 
 them are ultimately opened to those who do walk 
 the highways of rectitude. All the shining ones of 
 history have found that the road of morality leads 
 to the mount of spirituality. 
 
 There was a time when right was synonymous 
 with might, and when religion was full of selfish 
 anxieties and the most tangible element in it was 
 fear. But under the law of evolution the growth 
 in morals brings ethics to religious altitudes, and 
 religion at last blooms into the decencies, ripens 
 into the moralities and yields the golden fruit 
 of character. I accept without argument the 
 formula, — 
 " Ethics thought out is religious thought." 
 " Ethics felt out is religious feeling." 
 "Ethics lived out is religious life." 
 
 To this I would add,— 
 
 Science thought out is religious thought. 
 
 Science felt out is religious feeling. 
 
 Science lived out is religious life. 
 
 And so again, — 
 
 Beauty thought out is religious thought. 
 
 Beauty felt out is religious feeling. 
 
 Beauty lived out is religious life. 
 
 In the same way Reason followed from the 
 nearer end lands us in religious thought, feeling, 
 and life. And is not the same true of Love, duty 
 and all of the great verities of the life that now is ?
 
 142 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 So difficult it is to follow love and righteousness 
 into that Divinity of love and righteousness that 
 pervades everything, to climb out of human loves 
 and human duties into a consciousness of that Infi- 
 nite love and power that is paternal, aye, more, ma- 
 ternal also ; that at the risk of marring the propor- 
 tions of this discourse and at the danger of repeti- 
 tion I venture to dwell longer upon these points. 
 The burden of Israel's prophets was that there was 
 a power at work that would ultimately heal the na- 
 tion of its disease and redeem it from its iniquities. 
 In their clearest moments they saw this power 
 working with no intermittent methods " Behold 
 I have loved thee with an everlasting love," said 
 the grim Jeremiah. The prophet's word has now 
 become Science. The accumulated experience of 
 mankind shows that there is a power working in 
 and through nature for the elevation and sanctifi.- 
 cation of souls; a power that is eliminating the bad, 
 conserving the good, weeding out the tares, gar- 
 nering the wheat, suppressing hatred, conserving 
 kindness, confounding and burydng wrong, re-en- 
 forcing and vitalizing good. I see the long centu- 
 ries filled with discord, contention, lust and ambi- 
 tion, and yet the ultimate generalization puts a race 
 accent upon the doctrine to which the Hebrew 
 prophet dared only place a national accent. That 
 "everlasting love" that brooded over Judea is 
 now found to be brooding over the world. The 
 accumulated testimony of the statistician goes to 
 show that the law which in the lower realms of nature
 
 Religion from the Near End. 143 
 
 grants Hurvival to the strongest, in the higher 
 realms of life secures the survival of the noblest. 
 The forces that in nature struggled for the upright 
 form of the human body are now transmuted into 
 a strain for the integrity of the human soul. Claws 
 give way to fingers spiritually as well as physically; 
 horns are supplanted by the temple domes of 
 thought, and smiles now defend where once the 
 clenched fist was needed. Herbert Spencer, guided 
 by the facts of history alone, shows how man has 
 slowly been led upward out of egoism into altru- 
 ism, that is, out of the narrow concern for self into 
 a broad concern for others. 
 
 Do you point despairingly at the great growths 
 of monopolies, the anaconda coils of corporations 
 that threaten to strangle entire communities ? I 
 over-match these with a like growth in the corpo- 
 rate interests of morality and religion. There is a 
 co-operation for the eternal things of love to-day 
 that is more than a match for the co-operation for 
 the infernal things of greed and hate. The com- 
 binations of disinterestedness are stronger than 
 are those of selfishness. 
 
 The monopolies of the Western Union Telegraph 
 Company, of the Erie or Pacific Railroads present 
 no such powers as do the school systems of Amer- 
 ica, the far-reaching helpfrJness of the Catholic 
 church, or the splendid aggressive power of Meth- 
 odism. Clara Barton, the founder of the Interna- 
 tional Order of the Red Cross, whose banners cross 
 with impunity the red line of battle in the name
 
 144 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 of love, has sent an influence farther than that of 
 Gould or Vanderbilt has ever gone. Her name will 
 be remembered when theirs have gone down into 
 everlasting oblivion. 
 
 But there are those who share this enthusiasm 
 for the good, who believe in the final triumph of 
 love, who will yet insist that this is but the progress 
 ihoihuman nature makes. They would say, "This 
 is the growth that the atheist gladly recognizes. 
 We see here no Divine love working for the redemp- 
 tion of mankind." I cannot so sever man from 
 the universe to which he belongs. The heart of that 
 Eternal out of which humanity has been projected 
 has given of its own life to man and put this 
 thirst for perfection into his heart. 
 
 He has written in the brain of the savage some 
 mystic lines that contain the secret of the beatific 
 life. The power that paints the plumage of the 
 bird of Paradise in Central Africa, that woos the 
 eidelweiss into being among Alpine glaciers and 
 causes the ungainly cacti to bloom on our western 
 deserts, caused David and Jeremiah to sing the 
 songs of trust in Judea, lifted the protecting aim 
 of Marcus Aurelius over the trembling captives of 
 the Roman legions, and opens the maternal instincts 
 of woman. There are in the human soul forces 
 that make for love and duty, which the soul's self 
 did not create, and these forces are akin to that 
 august power to which I give the highest word hu- 
 man lips have learned to lisp, and call this 
 power " God " — the Father of my Soul. I only
 
 Religion from the Near End. 145 
 
 regret the inevitable inadequacy of all words. Of 
 course my finiteness cannot comprehend or ex- 
 press the Infinite Being, and if there be any scru- 
 ples about personalizing this Being, it is be- 
 cause he is more and not less than personality. 
 This Being so real, omniscient, and omnipresent, 
 dwarfs all other being into fi'agments of the infinite 
 whole. Great as humanity is, high as are the 
 powers of the human soul, sacred as are the affec- 
 tions of the human heart, still that is gross idola- 
 try which teaches that there is nothing in the uni- 
 verse to challenge oiu- reverence but man, no sanc- 
 tities before which we are to bend the knee save 
 those of human thought and feeling. There is a 
 unity which covers the sun and the sun -worshiper. 
 The power that shines in the Pleiades is akin to 
 that which shines in the thinker's mind and glows 
 in the mother's heart. The power that " hides 
 within the lily " has put his " touch in the man." 
 
 " No leaf that dawns to petal 
 But hints the angel plan." 
 
 The poet is right when he teaches us that he who 
 weaves the shining garments of nature is a power 
 that has brightened the ages of humanity and 
 caused the race to cluster in blossoms of beauty in 
 what would otherwise remain the chaotic fields of 
 time. 
 
 But if we miss the Father's face and the pater- 
 nal arm in all the fields of nature we may still find 
 him within. If we only confess that we are a part
 
 146 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 of the great whole, we cannot deny that there is 
 that, not ourselves, that invests every righteous 
 endeavor with its becoming joy and strength, 
 every sinful deed with its warning pain. There is 
 that which gives what seem severe laws beatitude 
 qualities; punishment becomes persuasion, and 
 penalties revelations of God. 
 
 Upward-yearning, quivering hearts, beseeching 
 hands reaching through heaviest shame are evi- 
 dences of a Father's love, probing the wound that 
 it may be healed. Men talk with impious flippancy 
 of "outcasts," "lost souls," and "abandoned 
 classes," but there is that which does not abandon 
 those whom we forsake, there is that which teaches 
 him whom we call hopeless to love the good name 
 he tramples upon, that compels him to honor the 
 virtue he soils. In the lowest nature we see the 
 redeeming love of God showing itself in a move- 
 ment from "what is" to the better "what may be." 
 Follow the bitter experiences of life and they melt 
 into joy and strength. 
 
 " Yet, O well I can remember, 
 Once I called my pastures. Pain, 
 And their waters were a torrent 
 Sweeping through my life amain; 
 Now I call them Peace and Stillness, 
 Brightness of all Happy Thought." 
 
 So beneath all noble duties, I believe that the 
 soul that wisely reads its own experiences and 
 earnestly seeks to utilize the same, will find a God 
 of love as well as of law, a Father to trust because
 
 RelUjion from the Near End. 147 
 
 there is humanity to hope for. The travails as well 
 as the triumphs of the soul studied from the near 
 end lead us into the Infinite arms. These taught 
 the broken Tresham, in Browning's " Blot in the 
 'Scutcheon " to say, 
 
 " I saw througli 
 The troubled surface of his crime and yours 
 A depth of purity immovable. 
 Had I but glanced, where all seemed turbidest 
 Had gleamed some inlet to the calm beneath." 
 
 By the same road did the cinished Mildred reach 
 the revelations which enabled her to say, 
 
 " I dare approach that Heaven 
 Which has not made a living thing despair, 
 Which needs no code to keep its grace from stain, 
 But bids the vilest worm that turns on it 
 Desist and be forgiven." 
 
 Once more I remember the truth-loving spii-it 
 who may suspect me of begging the question, and 
 will say to me with the Astronomer-poet of Persia: 
 
 " I sent my Soul through the Invisible, 
 Some letter of that After-life to spell: 
 And by and by my Soul returned to me. 
 And answered, ' I Myself and Heaven and Hell.' 
 
 "Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire, 
 And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on fire. 
 Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, 
 So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire." 
 
 To such I answer, "Very well, give to your 
 short creed the dignity of integrity, be as honest 
 as old Omar Khayyam. If this is all you have, you
 
 148 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 have still left the love in your own heart. In you 
 there is pity if there be none in all the universe 
 elsewhere. You would wipe the tears from penitent 
 eyes, and you cannot be alone in this tenderness. 
 It is in the hearts of all men and women every- 
 where." Love is surely the highest part of the 
 human soul. Who dares say that humanity is the 
 largest, highest thing in this universe ? The rose 
 draws its fragrance from the ground and receives 
 its color from the sun. Whence comes this heav- 
 enly flame of kindliness to human cheeks ? 
 
 " Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line 
 Severing rightly liis from thine, 
 Which the human, which divine? " 
 
 That cannot be evolved which was not first in- 
 volved. I know not how to sever this love and 
 duty of the human heart from the soui'ce from 
 which they came. The fountain cannot rise higher 
 than its source. There are strange premoni- 
 tions of deeper depths still to be fathomed, kind- 
 lier floods of sympathy still to break out of and 
 upon the human soul. I dare not claim as mine the 
 love that comes without my bidding and goes with- 
 out my directing; that which blesses and is blessed 
 beyond my planning. The light comes not from 
 the fixture but from the illuminating fluid that 
 pours through it, so the kindly flame that burns in 
 the human eye is fed out of some retort, exhaust- 
 less and infinite. This is the everlastingr love to 
 which the heart reverently ascribes the words of 
 the universal ritual "Our Father."
 
 Religion from the Near End. 149 
 
 Let me not overreach my logic. Let me abide 
 by the severe limitations of my illustratioii. If 
 there be no light for us without the fixture, but if 
 we have found the redemptive cross in the human 
 heart itself, we have still found that which is the 
 "desire of all nations," "the fulfilling of all law," 
 we have found that deathless essence through which 
 we pray and through which all oui' aspirations 
 tend. 
 
 "To Mercy, Pity, Peace aud Love, 
 All pray in their distress, 
 And to these virtues of delight 
 Return their thankfulness. 
 
 " For Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love, 
 • Is God our Father dear; 
 
 And Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love 
 
 Is man, his child and care. 
 
 *' For Mercy has a human heart. 
 Pity, a human face; 
 And Love the human form divine; 
 And Peace, the human dress. 
 
 " Then every man of every clime, 
 That prays in his distress, 
 Prays to the human form divine, 
 Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. 
 
 " And all must love the human form, 
 In heathen, Turk or Jew ; 
 Where Mercy, Love and Pity dwell 
 There God is dwelling too." 
 
 Where Love, Mercy, Pity and Peace are there at 
 least is God. If these are centered in your soul 
 then religion forces you to " demean yourself in a
 
 150 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 God-like fashion, to administer ttiose powers as 
 becomes the Divine," to lend this love to 
 
 " Leaven earth with a feel of heaven." 
 
 Jesus said of the penitent woman, " Her sins are 
 forgiven, for she loved much.'" The loving soul 
 however enmeshed is so far a saved and a saving 
 soul. The sincerity and fervor of your life de- 
 termine your hold upon Divine things, your re- 
 lation to the eternal right. I mean no mystical 
 ecstasy incompatible with rational thought, no 
 vague projection of your affections towards any 
 being whose existence is open to theological discus- 
 sion and distrust, I mean the common loves of the 
 human heart, the homely duties of every-day life, 
 the tears that stain the quivering cheeks of earth. 
 It was because the soul of that woman went out in 
 great waves of love to that rustic from Galilee who, 
 without the training of the schools, or the pre- 
 sumption of the priests, could speak words of heal- 
 ing wisdom, in whose voice were floods of tender- 
 ness, whose eyes were beacon lights to sin- tossed 
 souls because they beamed with kindliness, that 
 she was lifted above her mistakes. Not by a mira- 
 cle but by a law of the universe were her blots and 
 stains, whatever they were, washed away by these 
 loving tears, and her soul again moved in accord 
 with the forces of the universe. Better a dutiful 
 Maa-dalene blessing the world with her love than a 
 spotless Pharisee freezing the world with his sel- 
 fishness. This paradox is of Jesus, not of me.
 
 Religion from the Near End. 151 
 
 Jesus himself has been the saving power in the 
 world and his cross the symbol of redeeming love 
 for nineteen centuries because his divine love was 
 human. I have no quarrel with the Christian cen- 
 turies for deifying that loving heart or clothing 
 with God-like dignity that kindly brow, I only dis- 
 sent from the conditions of deification. He was 
 divine because he was the son of man, born out of 
 the loins of Joseph and Mary. It may yet appear 
 that the greatest service the Catholic chui-ch has 
 rendered to the race is the elevation to divine hon- 
 ors of the mother-heart of peasant Mary. 
 
 Yes, if you can find God nowhere else, find him 
 on Calvary, or if the cross lifts the Man Jesus out 
 of reach, find God in the sobbing heart that lies at 
 the foot of the cross; and if she be too far away, 
 find him in the mother's love that cradled you, find 
 him in the encircling arms of the man or woman 
 whose protecting love you cannot doubt. Wherever 
 you touch love, be it in baby smile, or lover's kiss, 
 wherever you touch duty, be it in father's protec- 
 tion or mother's self-sacrifice, or yom' own effort to 
 be a Providence to the improvident, a God to the 
 Godless, you find the open gate that leads to the 
 Father's heart. 
 
 II. 
 
 There are two hostile ways of looking at this 
 tendency to seek religion from the near end of 
 things. One way is that of a patronizing pity. It
 
 152 Religion from the Near End, 
 
 is to regard it as a brave effort to make the best of 
 a "faithless" condition. There are those who 
 think " this is better than nothing," and to those 
 who work from the center outward they say, "If 
 you can't say God, please say Good." If you 
 have not faith enough to sign the Apostle's 
 creed, to accept the Bible as pre-eminent au- 
 thority, or to confess Jesus as your sole and peculiar 
 master, why, then get some religious comfort and 
 inspiration out of science, modern or ancient art, 
 domestic love and by doing your duty. If you can 
 not profess the Christian name or declare your the- 
 istic convictions, still try to lead the Christian life 
 and obey the divine laws; for that really is very 
 good. 
 
 Well, if the attitude must be an apologetic 
 one, I must still champion this position. If the 
 words of every-day life and of universal experience 
 are smaller words than the words of creeds and rit- 
 ual, and if souls from imbecility or any other rea 
 son cannot speak the words you deem the greater 
 yet do love to speak their modest equivalents — 
 souls that cannot start from your far end, but are 
 diligent in their search for the sanctities close by, 
 — I much prefer to work with and for these than 
 with those who shut them out. I choose to stand 
 alongside of the neglected, abused and unappreci- 
 ated souls, those who, like the Publican in the para- 
 ble, began the religious life by humbly confessing 
 their limitations. Christendom ofPers ample ac- 
 commodations and plenty of fellowship for those who
 
 Religion from the Near End 153 
 
 are willing to start from the farther end with the 
 assertions that end in dogmas. I prefer to stand 
 with what some may call the doctrinal imbeciles of 
 to-day, the non-exports in the creed business. Here 
 and hereafter I am willing to take my chances with 
 those who are seeking truth, even though they may 
 miss it; those who believe in righteousness, though 
 they may notlmow how to formulate it; those who 
 love the good, even though they dare not personify 
 it. My church is for the un-churched, and my 
 fellowship is for those to whom fellowship is de- 
 nied. 
 
 But is not this a truthless attitude to take to- 
 wards those who work religion from the near end ? 
 Shall we not rather say that they who work from 
 the near end lay hold of the big end, the faith end 
 of religion ? They reach for that without which 
 all words are worthless. The spirituality of religion 
 lies in the appreciation of near sanctity. God, 
 heaven, hell, immortality and revelation are in 
 the present tense, or else they are nowhere and 
 nothing. He who does not believe " two and two 
 make four" to be a part of the Infinite truth of 
 God, needs a creed to tell him that there is a God 
 at all. He who is not conscious of first-hand con- 
 tact with the divine, who does not feel the spirit of 
 the universe pulsing in his spirit, who does not find 
 every inch of space, every thought -throb, every 
 heart-beat, every love-longing and right-doing im- 
 pulse trembling with religious power, must need 
 the formal assurance of Conferences. He needs to
 
 154 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 legislate into use the words, " Christianity," " The- 
 ism," "God." Bnt he who does feel all this will 
 be glad to subordinate all words to the verities 
 words should stand for, because he believes in and 
 loves the verity. True religion has but little to 
 offer mankind if it is not eventually to teach that 
 the highest, not the lowest, way of spelling the Di- 
 vine name is with a double " O; " if it is not going 
 to make men ashamed to serve God ia a way that 
 will bruise man, to attempt to honor the Father by 
 injuring the child. 
 
 " Yes, write it in the rock," Saint Bernard said, 
 " Grave it on brass with adamantine pen! 
 'Tis God himself becomes apparent, when 
 God's wisdom and God's goodness are display'd, 
 
 For God of these his attributes is made." — 
 Well spake the impetuous Saint, and bore of men 
 The suffrage captive ; now, not one in ten 
 Recalls the obscure opposer he outweigh'd. 
 
 God's wisdom and God''s goodness ! — Ay, but fools 
 Mis-define these till God knows them no more. 
 Wisdom and goodness, they are Ood! — what schools 
 
 Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore? 
 This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules; 
 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore. 
 
 The rosary of the ultimate religion is not yet 
 formed, but, when it is, we may be sure the spring 
 bud, the drop of water, the painter's passion, the 
 musician's ecstasy, woman's love, baby's smile, the 
 hand that holds the plow or swings the hammer, 
 the conscience that does the right, will be beads in
 
 Religion from the Near End. 155 
 
 that rosary, and each bead will tell a prayer, and 
 every prayer will fertilize the spiritual life of men. 
 Let us attend now to another form of the objec- 
 tions raised against this position. There are those 
 that will admit that possibly the individual may 
 find his religious nature awakened and ripened by 
 living from the near end, but who question the 
 possibility of an organized, social, religious life 
 based on these near things. They tell us that 
 when we come to organize, we must use some of 
 the far-end words. " Men and women," we are 
 told, cannot be held together, or at least they can- 
 not make church life potent and coherent, by mak- 
 ing the nearer end the greater end, the seeming 
 small things the essentials. The universal experi- 
 ences of sufPering souls cannot, they say, be made 
 the ground of an inspired and inspiring fellow- 
 ship that will have in it missionary purposes and 
 efficiency. These objectors, like Peter on the 
 Mount, would fain build tabernacles for the figures 
 that float in the air, rather than for those that 
 stand upon the earth. Thus it is that chui'ches 
 have been organized to shield the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, to shelter the authority of the Bible, to 
 hold the dogmas of immersion and even the grim 
 terror of eternal punishment; hoping by the per- 
 petuation of those remoter words to serve and con- 
 serve religion in the world. Churches have been 
 founded upon a revelation that belongs to the past, 
 and a bliss that is to come, a Lord that spoke eight- 
 een hundred years ago, and a joy that awaits on
 
 156 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 the other side of death's gate. Their calendar of 
 saints is made up of dead folks, and, if we are to 
 believe the hymn book, their hearts are ever yearn- 
 ing for mansions beyond the skies. All this is an 
 attempt to organize religion from the farther end. 
 It has resulted in churches separated by a wide 
 chasm from many of the needs and realities of the 
 life that now is, churches removed from much of 
 the holy living and the holy yearnings of to-day- 
 Many of the healthiest impulses and the noblest 
 thoughts of current life are compelled by these to 
 go unchurched. They have no place in the costly 
 piles that are to be seen on our street corners, 
 
 " With spire and sad slate roof, aloof 
 From human fellowship so far; " — 
 
 piles that cast their chilly shadows athwart so- 
 ciety for six days in the week, with doors locked 
 against hungry hearts and vacant minds; churches 
 so elegant that they must not be soiled by the 
 grimy feet of earth's plodders, however necessary 
 the church may be, even to get the grime ofP the 
 feet* ; only he who can pronounce the shibboleth, or 
 properly accent the doctrine, has a right to a seat 
 of honor in them. The good missionary must not 
 go back to speak comforting words to the hungiy 
 heathen, if he have a little hope that a chance may 
 yet be given to the grandfather of his convert. The 
 
 *Miss Frances Willard says that the work of the W. C. 
 T. U. is not unfrequently interfered with by ladies' objec- 
 tions that Temperance meetings spoil the carpets in church 
 vestries and parlors.
 
 Religion from the Near End. 157 
 
 church must bo tested by its word and life, uot by 
 its life with or without its word. All this is or- 
 ganizing religion from its farther end, — from the 
 life that is not yet interpreted, in the interest's of 
 a world into which wo are not yet ushered, upon 
 doctrines which many dear and useful people can 
 not accept, upon creeds which another ago has 
 written, revelations vouchsafed to other souls. 
 
 I do not deny the possibility of finding religion 
 from the farther end, nor that utility and blessed- 
 ness may and does come from the same. Far bo it 
 from me to read small the great words or to try to 
 empty high phrases of their hopes and fur-reaching 
 yearnings. Full well I know how the heart of man 
 has been sustained and ordered in the home of 
 mystery, but I do insist that there is now greater 
 need of, and larger returns in store for, those who 
 undertake to organize religion from the nearer end 
 of life. 
 
 Let us see what can be done by beginning with 
 things close by. Let us admit, as I think we ought, 
 that thirty out of any thii'ty-nine articles that are 
 offered by the churches as the substance of doctrine 
 are beyond our comprehension and elude our proofs. 
 We may not know about Apostolic Successions, or 
 even about Theistic assertions, or Christian pre-emi- 
 nence ; but we do have great interest in the story of 
 the good Samaritan ; and the Golden Rule takes hold 
 upon us. The Beatitudes awe us and make us 
 ashamed of ourselves. The allusion to a " cup of 
 cold water " appeals to us. Pity for the hungry.
 
 158 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 compassion for the outcast and sympathy for the 
 desolate, — these things we do understand. We 
 know that there are homesick boys and tempted 
 girls in our cities; wayward young men and flip- 
 pant young women; husbands that are hard to 
 their wives, and wives that are selfish in their 
 homes ; children neglected though draped in silks. 
 Now can we not organize for the help of 
 these? Can we not unite men and women to- 
 gether as compactly upon a purjyose to help human- 
 ity, to say the least, as upon a conclusion about 
 God? Can we not find a bond of union in 
 needs as strong as in creeds f Is there not a 
 beauty of fellowship in diversity as in uni- 
 formity, and more helpful ? Religion organized 
 from the near end of life will undertake to serve 
 the life that now is. It will go in quest of truth, 
 it will be a pledge of righteousness, it will stand 
 for present sanctities. Organize religion from this 
 end and you will have a church of the Holy En- 
 deavor, a church of the Sacred Certainties, a school 
 of the Spirit, a primary department of the Celes- 
 tial University. I admit that this church is still an 
 unsolved problem, because it has as yet scarceh- 
 been tried. But I do profoundly believe that when 
 religion begins systematically to organize itself 
 upon the near verities and the present needs of 
 the human life that now is, then will come the 
 true Catholic church, that in the breadth of its 
 territory, the number of its communicants, and the 
 majesty of its history, may yet out-rival the church 
 of Rome.
 
 Religion from the Near End. 159 
 
 I believe this because suck u church will be 
 planted upou the most universal elements in human 
 nature, the head-hunger and heart-hunger of hu- 
 manity. Few have possessions, all have needs. 
 The Pharisee's prayer, — " God, I thank Thee that 
 I am not as the rest of men, I fast twice a week, I 
 give tithes of all that I get," necessarily belongs to 
 the liturgy of the few. God grant that they may 
 still become fewer. But the Piiblican's prayer, — 
 " God be merciful unto me a sinner," — is the 
 prayer "universal. It belongs to the ritual of hu- 
 manity. God grant that its soft murmurs may yet 
 be heard the round world over. 
 
 I believe this because of the great niimber who 
 already in spirit belong to this chui'ch. Perhaps 
 the largest, — and one is tempted to say, — the 
 noblest ch\irch in Christendom to-day is the un- 
 churched. It certainly contains, freely speaking, 
 the highest and the lowest in most communities. 
 The best and the wickedest are to-day found out- 
 side the pale of the conventional churches. The 
 man who does his own thinking, who is his own 
 missionary, administers his own charities, is seldom 
 the man who is very far inside the letter of the 
 church, nor very far outside the spirit of the church. 
 When such a man finds his neighbor in the spirit, 
 and these two find the third, and the third finds 
 the fourth, the church of the Beatitudes is begun, 
 and it will continue to increase until it includes all 
 those who have to give and those who have needs. 
 Of coiirse the church organized in the interests of
 
 160 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 religion from the near end must have its own 
 methods. Its members will not be tied together, 
 like a bundle of tacks, with a creed string however 
 fine or strong; but they will be drawn together 
 like the iron filings that cling to the magnet that 
 is drawn through them, yielding to the beautiful 
 law of polarity, held there by divine attractions, 
 the spiritual affinities of soul. This law is as per- 
 sistent and as safe as 'the chemical activity that 
 locks the atoms in each other's embrace. In the 
 east, the true shepherd country, the shepherd 
 always goes before, the sheep following. He ever 
 leads, he never drives the flock. It is left for the 
 clumsy and hasty men of the west to invent the 
 harsh and tiresome methods of driving the herd; 
 so the true spiritual shepherd that would fold souls 
 by organizing religion from the near end will ever 
 lead and never drive. 
 
 I believe in this possibility because of the great 
 amount of work already being done on these 
 lines. Why this modern complexity of humanita- 
 rian reform and fraternal organizations? What is 
 the meaning of the kitchen-garten and kindergarten 
 associations, temperance societies, white and red 
 cross leagues, prison congresses, women's clubs, 
 men's lodges, etc., with their wearisome waste of 
 human tissue in the way of presidents, secretaries, 
 by-laws and assessments ? We all know that from 
 fifty to seventy per cent, of the strength of such 
 organizations is necessarily used in overcoming the 
 friction of the machine, leaving but the thirty per
 
 Religion from the Near End. 161 
 
 cent, of energy to do the work for which the ma- 
 chine is created. But even at such a cost they 
 are indispensable at present; because they dare 
 undertake the work for which the churches should 
 exist, but which the churches of the land fail 
 to take up because they are not organized from 
 the near end. Witness the clumsy waste by the 
 churches of America. Millions of money are in- 
 vested in the buildings that dot otu- city, town and 
 cross-roads ; buildings dedicated to religion, but 
 sealed to seventy-five per cent, of the real work 
 which religion ought to do. It is this that neces- 
 sitates this tiresome set of instramentalities 
 in order to do the work which the churches 
 ought to do. More radical and perplexing 
 than the problems of labor and capital are the 
 problems of how to get the churches of the land to 
 meet the religious needs of the land; how to in- 
 duce them to do the work which alone justifies 
 churches, namely, the enlarging of the life of man 
 and adjusting it to its place in the universe. Men, 
 hard pressed through the week with the drudgery 
 of business and the intense routine of material 
 concerns, need the intellectual variety, the social 
 lift, the moral elevation and spiritual refinement, 
 which active, persistent, continuous co-operation 
 with a church, working from the near end, would 
 bring. In such co-operation they will find larger 
 returns for the time and money invested, than is 
 possible for them to find in their masculine clubs, 
 lodges and labor unions.
 
 162 Religion from the Near End, 
 
 One of the most alarming, as well as most hope- 
 ful, signs of the times, is this growing eagerness 
 of women to multiply feminine organizations for 
 especial objects of reform and culture. I do not 
 believe that these women's clubs, with their social 
 jealousies and easy honors, can do as much for 
 their members, intellectually or spiritually, as the 
 same amount of capital in time and money in- 
 vested in a church working from the near end, 
 where men and women combine for the enlarg- 
 ing of the boundaries of life in every direction. ^ 
 This tendency is alarming because it threatens 
 to withhold from the church the brain power 
 of women, and leave it continuously the victim 
 of woman's sweet heart-and-hand life, which, how- 
 ever sincere, will miss the larger blessing un- 
 less there go with it the woman's head life also. 
 One of the sad spectacles of the day is to find 
 women in the club, complacently denying or 
 counteracting the doctrines cf the church to which 
 they lend their Sunday presence, from which they 
 draw, or think they draw, their religious life. On 
 week day in their " study classes " they will 
 grapple with the masters of thought, the problems 
 of reform, and they call this "club work." On 
 Sunday they try to persuade their husbands to en- 
 dure preaching that the husbands do not believe 
 in and that the wives cannot justify. They will 
 sell tickets for parish entertainments, that have in 
 them but little dignity of intellect and still less 
 sincerity of spirit. They will knit fancy work for
 
 Religion from the Near End. 163 
 
 the " fair," and serve as shop girls at the " l>azaar," 
 and this they call " church work." May God for- 
 give them for the confusion. That other was 
 " church work," — this is too cheap to be called 
 "club work" even. This woman's activity is 
 a hopeful sign of the times, because it shows 
 woman rising into the full stature of womanhood, 
 the stature of a woman with a head as well as a 
 heart, who has thoughts as well as feelings, of a 
 woman who dares to think, and in her thinking 
 finds her spirituality growing, her tenderness and 
 helpfulness increasing. It is a hojieful sign, be- 
 cause one of these days woman will acquire that 
 self-reliance, that honesty and sincerity of the 
 intellectual life, that will enable her to convert her 
 husband, make her wise enough to find ways of 
 carrying into the church that which belongs more. 
 in the church than anywhere else,— her deepest 
 thoughts and most dignified purposes. Nothing 
 will save woman's mind from being " womanish " 
 except free and frequent contact with manly intel- 
 lects and hearts, on the highest sides of life ; and 
 nothing will saVe men's hearts from becoming 
 " mannish " (and mannishuess must be counted 
 something quite as uncomplimentary, to say 
 the least, as womanishness) except contact with 
 womanly grace and refinement in the interest of the 
 perennial things. I recognize the value of these 
 lodges, unions and clubs, within certain limits; but 
 I am saddened when I think of men who necessarily 
 spend eight or ten hours a day in close contact
 
 164 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 with men none too pure of speech or of breath, 
 and then continue to give many of their evening 
 hours and much of their spare energy to exclu- 
 sively masculine association; to the neglect of 
 those renewals which only come in mixed company, 
 where not only men and women, but old and 
 young, mingle their common life for the enlarge- 
 ment and enjoyment of all. Now this estrange- 
 ment and unnatui-al divorce is inevitable in the at- 
 mosphere of churches that seek to serve religion 
 from the far end of things. These say to growing 
 women, " You must not think too much on these 
 things," and to independent men, "You must be- 
 lieve, even though you do not understand." But 
 the church that is a holy quest for the deed, rather 
 than an iron pledge for the word, will change all 
 this. It will make again the church building the 
 center of the neighborhood life. However humble 
 in its exterior, it will again be the cathedral, the 
 one house with an open door to all conditions of 
 men, all the week around. Not a seventh -day but 
 a seven day movement is what is needed in our 
 churches. This coming church will remember that 
 wherever there is a search for the thoughts o^ Job, 
 Dante, Goethe, Browning or Emerson, wherever 
 there is an attempt to soften the hard life of 
 the poor, to elevate the ignorant, to train the 
 awkward fingers of little children, or to put beauty 
 into dreary homes, there is the legitimate 
 work of the church. For such work trustees 
 will neither begrudge gas nor coal. Women will
 
 Religion from the Near End. 165 
 
 not shield their carpets, and parishes will say to 
 their ministers, " See to it that you develop to the 
 maximum the intellectual, moral and spiritual re- 
 sources of your people, however it may be with 
 your sermons." Then the church will stand once 
 more for living faith, for high thought, for real 
 conviction. It will be the rallying point of the 
 community of which it is the center. It will be 
 the joyous home of thought, art and fraternity; 
 and because of all this it will be the better home 
 for worship ; prayer will bo more tender in it, psalm- 
 ody more lofty. Then religion will clothe itself 
 again with the pomp of ritual and the power of 
 symbolism. It will inspire painter, sculptor, archi- 
 tect and musician to make their contributions to 
 the church that represents the untrammeled gospel 
 of truth, righteousness, love and the aspirations 
 connected therewith. This church that makes 
 character pre-eminent will ever bud and blossom 
 into Deity's name. And these blossoms will be 
 impelled by an irresistible force to ripen into the 
 fruit that is both the thought and the love of God. 
 I am not dealing in impractical rhapsodies. Let 
 the churches of our city but dedicate the humblest 
 nook in their buildings as a shelter corner ever 
 open and lighted, warm in winter and cool in 
 summer, with the refreshments of books, papers 
 and innocent games, accessible to whoever may 
 come, — and they will wage a winning warfare with 
 the sins of the baneful saloons. And until they do 
 thus array themselves, they are in actual league
 
 166 Religion frvtn the Near End. 
 
 with the dram shop and its kindred degradations. 
 The traffickers in rum can afford to pay a generous 
 stipend to the minister for every night he keeps his 
 shop closed, because the guests he turns away will 
 find hearty welcome at the door of that dram shop, 
 which under existing circumstances is only half 
 devil's-door-way. The hearty welcome, the human 
 fellowship, the opportunity of man to meet man in 
 the companionship that lessens the solitude of life, 
 — so much of this as is free from greed and coarse- 
 ness, is God's own work, though it be found in a 
 beer saloon. Oh, what might the churches of 
 America not do, if they committed themselves 
 primarily to the gospel of the Golden Rule, if they 
 dedicated themselves to the high piety of character 
 instead of devoting so much time to the pinchbeck 
 sanctities of exclusiveness, sectarian rivalry, de- 
 nominational ambitions, and word- exacting, rather 
 than life-demanding, standards. 
 
 See what is already accomplished in this direc- 
 tion, where churches unanimously lead. The Chau- 
 tauqua study classes, superficial in their methods, 
 perhaps faulty in their systems, still do more to- 
 wards whetting the appetites of men and women for 
 the better things in literature and art, and in ele- 
 vating the public tastes of our communities, than 
 any college in the land. They are enabled to do 
 this work because in some clumsy fashion they 
 have gone into partnership with the churches of 
 our country. Plenty of fanaticism and zeal un- 
 guided by knowledge in the Y. M. C. A, movement
 
 Relvjion from the Near End. 167 
 
 of Christendom, yet in most communities their 
 rooms represent the center of the humanities, and 
 their work for and with the }'Oung men and women 
 (if America is immeasurable. Spite of similar limi- 
 tations, the greatest temperance force in this coun- 
 try to-day, I think, is that represented by the 
 Women's Christian Temperance Union. 
 
 The power of both of these movements is found 
 in the fact that they are in league with orgajiized 
 religion. They avail themselves of the machinery 
 of the churches. These attempts, however clumsy, 
 to begin at the near end to lift the world into man- 
 liness succeed so well that, many fears notwith- 
 standing, they are manifestly moving the world 
 towards Godliness also. If our churches did but 
 offer a drink of ice- water to every sun- parched boy 
 and tired laborer that passes by their door through 
 the summer months, they would so deepen their 
 piety, enlarge their spirituality, that they would 
 forget all about the Andover controversy, creed quar 
 rels and sect disputes, that now so dissipate ener- 
 gies that ought to be directed to diviner ends. 
 " Whosoever shall give one of these little ones a 
 cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, 
 verily, I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his 
 reward." 
 
 There is no real missionary work except home 
 missionary work. The potency of spirit ever ra- 
 diates from the possessor of spirit. That is a true 
 missionary center where the time missionary is. 
 The best location for a church is where the live man
 
 168 Religion from the Near End. 
 
 is. "Where MacGregor sits is the head of the 
 table." Potency is not in dollars, not in plans or 
 schemes of organizations, or wordy "bases of 
 union," but always in the living voice, the throb- 
 bing heart, the thinking brain and the helping 
 hand. The Holy Spirit cannot be communicated 
 through "Boards" and "Committees," any more 
 than it can through the finger-tips of surpliced 
 Bishops. But wherever a mother is comforted, 
 wherever a wavering father is stayed, wherever a 
 hungry soul is fed with the bread of life, wherever 
 hand clasps hand for a long pull, a hard pull and a 
 pull all together for the purpose of making the bad 
 a little less bad, and the good a little better, there is 
 the foundation of a church that will stand. The story 
 goes that one day the holy Buddha fainted from 
 weariness by the wayside and a shepherd lad stuck 
 a branch of the Lota tree into the ground to shelter 
 his face from the scorching sun. The branch took 
 root and became a great tree; and although the 
 prophet has been dead twenty-three hundred years 
 that tree is still green and growing. So this church 
 founded on these lowly ethical ends will broaden, 
 deepen, heighten in lines that end only where God 
 ends. Let it begin now and it will last as long as 
 time lasts. 
 
 I know not by what name this church will be 
 known in the future. I do not very much care. I 
 am more concerned that it should stand for religion 
 than for any name under religion. I prefer to 
 labor for the thing than to dispute about labels. If
 
 Religion from the Near End. 169 
 
 contention arise I will not even insist upon my 
 ritrht to wear my own favorite tag. I delight in the 
 triumphs of the Christian centuries and love the 
 Christian name, but I am not blind to the danger 
 still imminent, which Lossing foresaw. We must 
 resent the clamor for a name to the confusion of 
 the thing. 
 
 " Christianity, not manhood, is their pride. 
 E'en that which from their founder down has spiced 
 Their superstition with humanity, 
 'Tis not for its humanity they love it. 
 No ; but because Christ taught, Christ practiced it. 
 Happy for them he wiis so good a man! 
 Happy for them that they can trust his virtue! 
 His virtue? Not his virtue, but his name. 
 They say, shall spread abroad and shall devour 
 And put to shame the names of all good men. 
 The name, the name is all their pride. 
 
 The word "Unitarian " sanctified by the thought 
 of Channing, intensified by the heart of Theodore 
 Parker, humanized by the great philanthropic 
 movement of this century, conspicuously that 
 which wrought for the freedom of men, spiritual- 
 ized by the lofty teachings and serene faith of 
 Emerson, and holding, as it does, in its very com- 
 position the root word of modern thought and uni 
 versal religion, Ukity, may, if its friends are equal 
 to their opportvinity, become a word that will cover 
 much of the great religious movement that begins 
 at the near end of things. I believe its friends 
 have a right to so interpret it; that, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, it does represent the beginning of
 
 170 Religion from .''he Near End. 
 
 Biich a movement to-day. But if the Unitarian 
 chru'ch is to cry " halt," and if the majority of those 
 who wear the name should insist upon driving a 
 creed- peg somewhere or on wearing it as a badge 
 of doctrine, then so much the worse for the word, 
 so much the more the need of such a movement as 
 I have tried to sketch. So much the harder shall 
 we have to work for a church larger and broader 
 than any one word has ever yet stood for in his- 
 tory. 
 
 No, not the Name, but the Thing! If we start from 
 the near end, be true to i^ holy beginnings, work 
 outward and upward on all the lines of thought, 
 feeling, knowledge, aye, of shame, ignorance and 
 defeat, we shall find that all the paths lead to the 
 Mount of Transfiguration where the raiment of the 
 mortal becomes white with immortal light, and the 
 face of man shines with the radiance of God. 
 Then without Peter's limitations, wherever it may 
 be, the soul will be enabled to exclaim, ^^Lord, it is 
 good for us to be here!"