UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 MRS.MATTIK H.MERRILL

 

 
 BELIEFS OF THE UNBELIEVERS 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER DISCOURSES 
 
 BY 
 
 OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM 
 
 NEW YORK 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE AND TWENTY-THIRD STREET. 
 1876.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 BELIEFS OF THE UNBELIEVERS. 
 THE THEIST'S FAITH. 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT GOD. 
 THE LIVING GOD. 
 ALLEGIANCE TO FAITH. 
 -THE DESPOTISM OF FAITH. 
 INTERESTS MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL 
 PHAKISEES. 
 
 THE CARDINAL'S BERKTTA. 
 THE GREAT HOPE. 
 CLOGS AND OPPORTUNITIES.
 
 BELIEFS OF THE UNBELIEVERS. 
 
 IN a Swedenborgian book, written thirty years ago, 
 on the Inspiration of the Bible, I find a description 
 of a i4 horrid desart " occupying hundreds of square 
 miles of the territory that lies between the Missis- 
 sippi river and the Rocky Mountains. In this " fright- 
 ful district," says the writer, " vegetation is mostly 
 confined to tufts of withered grass, prickly pears, 
 and those succulent and saline plants which can de- 
 rive subsistence out of the most arid, sandy, and 
 sterile soils. A species of cactus, known as the 
 Cactus ferox, reigns sole monarch over myriads of 
 acres of these desolate plains. Another species, call- 
 ed the Cactus cylindricus, grows singly and forms a 
 cluster by itself, increasing to such a size that, seen 
 from a distance, it is frequently mistaken for a bison. 
 Clouds of locusts fill the air, uttering shrill and 
 deafening cries ; while the Mississippi hawk, wheel-
 
 ing through their ranks, seems to enjoy his favorite 
 prey. Rattlesnakes of various kinds, and scolopen- 
 dras of enormous size, crawl over the naked surface ; 
 and immense black hairy spiders, like the bird-catch- 
 ing animal of South America, watch for prey at the 
 mouth of their subterranean habitations." 
 
 This bit of description, which the author by the 
 way, uses to illustrate the sympathy between fallen 
 nature and fallen man, was taken, he says, from the 
 report of a government expedition from Pittsburgh 
 to the Rocky Mountains, under the charge of Mr. 
 James. I do not mean to call in question the cor- 
 rectness of the description, or to suggest that Mr. 
 James saw with other eyes than those of his head, 
 used exaggerated language in the account he gave 
 of his travels in the then unexplored West, or con- 
 sulted artistic effects in the selection and arrange- 
 ment of his materials. It is sufficient for my pur- 
 pose to state that recent surveys feebly justify Mr. 
 James' description. The Pacific Railroad passes 
 directly through this dismal region, and we do not 
 hear that the passengers on the road are struck with 
 terror by the desolation they witness. A Western 
 gentleman of scientific acquirements, told me that, 
 while journeying to California last summer, he stood 
 at the end of the last car that composed the train, in 
 order that he might the better see this awful desert,
 
 but it was not there. On the contrary, what he saw 
 was a singularly hopeful country for agriculture and 
 dwellings a country not smooth yet, or smiling, 
 but full of the promise of gladness. 
 
 My own information on these matters is got at 
 second hand. But deeming the " Xew American 
 Cyclopedia" a good authority, I consulted it, and 
 therein read that the vast plain east of the Rocky 
 Mountains, including the great lakes and mighty 
 
 O O O i/ 
 
 livers, is the most fertile region of the continent. A 
 Mr. Frost, of Nebraska, stated some time ago, that 
 he had been searching ten years for the ' Great 
 American Desert," and had found a tract of country 
 that would support the millions of a future popula- 
 tion. If Mr. James reported correctly the superficial 
 aspect of the country, he did not do justice to the 
 geological character of the soil. 
 
 Similar accounts come to us of intellectual and 
 moral deserts great spaces of territory or of time, 
 covered with the prickly thorns of disbelief, cursed 
 with poisonous vegetable growths, infested by deadly 
 serpents, made hideous by unclean animals, and 
 awful by the dark flapping of demoniac wings. Such 
 a district the Roman empire is supposed to have been 
 previous to the coming of Christ. Most Christians, 
 taking the report of prejudiced explorers who have 
 skirted the region with Amides sworn to tell what
 
 their employers wished to hear, or who have arrived 
 at their knowledge through the powerful lenses of 
 an evangelical faith, think even now of that reach 
 of history as an utterly Godless tract of time, a land 
 of darkness as of darkness itself, and where the 
 light was as darkness. The wise know better. The 
 scholarship of our generation, using finer instruments 
 and possessing a more perfect method, has reclaimed 
 that once frightful domain of history. We know 
 that human nature exhibited there all its attributes, 
 its best as well as its worst ; that it hoped, trusted, 
 prayed, believed, endeavored, and attained ; that it 
 produced sages, reformers, and saints ; grew philoso- 
 phers by the dozen, noble men and women by the 
 score ; that it rectified laws, remedied abuses, re- 
 strained crime, rebuked vice, and in the usual way 
 pushed itself out into the light and atmosphere of 
 virtue. 
 
 Kenan's great chapter in the " Apostles," on the 
 condition- of the world about the middle of the second 
 century, makes it pretty clear that the period of time 
 so long regarded as given over to the devil, was 
 neither worse nor better than it ought to have been ; 
 that it lay directly in the track of historic progress, 
 contained the fruits of the ages that preceded, and 
 had in its bosom the seeds of the ages that were to 
 follow.
 
 Mr. Lecky, too, in his " European Morals," makes 
 it appear that the Roman empire neither experienced 
 conversion nor needed it ; that it was prepared to re- 
 ceive the best that Christianity had to give ; that in 
 fact it was in condition to improve Christianity in 
 some important details, and did, in some respects, 
 modify it for the better, while itself modified by it 
 for the worse. Thus, one by one, the deserts are re- 
 claimed, and shapes of moral grandeur are revealed 
 in spots where nothing was supposed able to exist. 
 
 It is my purpose, in this lecture, to make a short 
 excursion into the dreaded shadow-land of so-called 
 Infidelity, for the purpose of bringing thence fruits 
 of belief and hope. "Would that I might, partially 
 at least, recover to solid respect those ghostly regions, 
 give reassurance to timid travellers who venture near 
 them, and persuade the doubting that beneath the 
 bogs and the briars there is a layer of strong and 
 fertile soil. The region I explore is indefinite in ex- 
 tent and outline ; I have no intention of mapping it 
 out scientifically. The fruits I bring thence, though 
 not hastily snatched, are but specimens. You will 
 not find fault with me for bringing you the best I 
 could procure. With the worst side of " Infidelity " 
 I suppose you all to be familiar. You must have 
 read little and absented yourselves from church a 
 good deal if you are not. Candor requires that the
 
 8 
 
 better side should be shown. Though exaggeration 
 on the one part might excuse exaggeration on the 
 other, I will try not to exaggerate. Misrepresenta- 
 tion does not justify misrepresentation, nor does 
 falsehood warrant falsehood. The only thing worth 
 having is truth. I simply give you fair warning 
 that I shall present the attractive side of the truth. 
 You have had the shadow without the light. There 
 is no injustice in giving you the light without the 
 shadow. 
 
 In every age of Christendom there have been men 
 whom the Church named " infidels," and thrust down 
 into the abyss of moral reprobation. The oldest of 
 these are forgotten with the generations that gave them 
 birth. The only ones now actively anathematized 
 lived within the last' hundred years, and owe the 
 blackness of their reputation to the assaults they made 
 on superstitions that still are powerful, and dogmas 
 that are still supreme. The names of Chubb, Toland, 
 and Tindal, of Herbert of Cherbury, Shaftesbury, 
 and Bolingbroke, though seldom spoken now, are 
 mentioned, when they are mentioned, with bitterness. 
 The names of Voltaire and Rousseau recall at once 
 venomous verdicts that our own ears have heard. 
 The memory of Thomas Paine is still a stench in 
 modern nostrils, though he has been dead sixty years, 
 so deep a stamp of damnation has been fixed on his
 
 9 
 
 name. Even a man so well inteniioiied as Adam 
 Storey Farrar. author of a " Critical Jlistorv of Free 
 Thought." a book sterile and cold. l>ut admiralile in 
 the main for its candor, and written by a man \vlio 
 must have studied liis themes i'or himself, falls into 
 tlie vulgar tone of the pulpit when speaking of these 
 men who dared to reject the prevailing beliefs of 
 Christendom. It will be years before the grass will 
 be allowed to grow green on their graves. 
 
 Skeptics thev were I claim for them that honor. 
 It is. their title to immortality. Doubtless they were, 
 in many tilings, deiiiers, infidels." if yon will. 
 They made short work of creed and catechism, of 
 sacrament and priest, of tradition and formula. Mi- 
 raculous revelations, inspired ruble's, authoritative 
 dogmas, dying Gods and atoning Saviours, infallible 
 apostles and churches founded by the Holy Ghost, 
 ecclesiastical heavens and hells, with other fictions of 
 the sort, their minds could not harbor. They criticized 
 mercilessly the drama of Redemption, and spoke more 
 roughly than prudently of the great mysteries of the 
 Godhead. But. after their fashion, they were great be- 
 lievers. In the interest of faith they doubted, in the 
 interest of faith they denied. Their -Xay " was an 
 uncouth method of pronouncing Yea." They were 
 after the truth, and supposed themselves to be remov- 
 ing a rubbish pile to reach it. TOLAXD. whose 
 1*
 
 10 
 
 " Christianity not Mysterious " was presented by the 
 Grand Jury of Dublin and condemned to the flames 
 by the Irish Parliament, while the author fled from 
 government prosecution to England, professed him- 
 self sincerely attached to the pure religion of Jesus, 
 and anxious to exhibit it free from the corruptions 
 of aftertimes. THOMAS PAINE wrote his " Age of 
 Reason " as a check to the progress of French atheism, 
 fearing " lest, in the general wreck of superstition, of 
 false systems of government, and false theology, we 
 lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theo- 
 logy that is true." 
 
 One Edwards, in a savory book called " Gangrsena," 
 done in 1646, enumerates one hundred and eighty 
 " flagrant heresies " even then corroding the heart of 
 England. Here are a few of them taken from his 
 list: That the living Word is the Christ, not the 
 Scripture ; that we may walk with God as well as 
 the patriarchs ; that half the glory of God has not been 
 revealed, we must wait for the Spirit's disclosures to 
 our hearts ; that the spirit that moved the penmen 
 of Scripture was their own ; that right reason is the 
 rule of faith ; that there should be free toleration for 
 all consciences, and no punishment for blasphemy, 
 disbelief in the Bible, or denial of the existence of a 
 God ; that God is one, not three ; that Christ was 
 not by nature holier than we ; that Christ came to
 
 11 
 
 declare the love of God, not to purchase it ; that men 
 may be saved without Christ ; that all men will at 
 last be saved. There were some pestilent fellows at 
 that time it seems, who declared it to be the sin of 
 the kingdom " that the Jews were not allowed the 
 open profession and exercise of their religion." These 
 opinions are common-place now. Some of them have 
 quietly ensconced themselves in "orthodox " churches 
 and are welcomed as the latest disclosures of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 These devout unbeliefs were born of the spirit of 
 the age. It was an age rather let me call it a series 
 of ages in which great events occurred. There had 
 been a terrible shaking of thrones and altars. The 
 axe had fallen on the neck of a king, and the halberd 
 had smitten the images of many saints. Scarcely an 
 authority stood fast. Not one was unchallenged. 
 The brain of Bacon had discharged its force into the 
 intellectual world. Newton's torch was flinging its 
 beams to the confines of creation. The national 
 genius sparkled in constellations of brilliant men ; 
 continental literature was pouring into England ; 
 the speculative mind of Holland, the dramatic writing 
 and criticism of France. There was new thought 
 and fresh purpose, a determination to know and do 
 something, a sense of intellectual and moral power 
 that portended great changes in Church and State.
 
 12 
 
 The infidels were the men who felt this spirit first. 
 They were its children ; they gave it voice ; it gave 
 them strength. They trusted in it. Fidelity to its 
 call was their faith. They believed'in the sovereignty 
 of reason, the rights of the individual conscience, and 
 they cherished a generous confidence in the impulses 
 of an emancipated and ennobled humanity. They 
 had that faith in human nature which, indeed, is, and 
 ever has been, the faith of faiths. It is a faith hard to 
 hold. These infidels must have found it so in their 
 time. When shall we honor, at its due, the heroism 
 of protest, the valor of disbelief? When shall we 
 give to the martyrdom of Denial its glorious crown ? 
 
 If one thing be clear it is, that faith is large in 
 proportion as it dares to put things to the proof. 
 Fear and laziness can accept beliefs only trust and 
 courage will question them. To reject consecrated 
 opinions demands a consecrated mind. At all events, 
 the moving impulse to such rejection is faith ; faith 
 in reason ; faith in the mind's ability to attain truth ; 
 faith in the power of thought, in the priceless worth 
 of knowledge. The great skeptic must be a great 
 believer. None have so magnificently affirmed as 
 those who have audaciously denied ; none so devoutly 
 trusted as they who have sturdily protested. Not 
 willingly do good men undermine deep-planted be- 
 liefs, or throw precious hopes away. Small pleasure
 
 13 
 
 does it give to noble minds to pull down roofs beneath 
 which for ages people have found shelter. If they 
 are indifferent to others' sorrow, they mu*t have 
 some thought for themselves. Is there pleasure in 
 braving ill-will, hate, persecution, in order that we 
 may belittle the world and ourselves ? Is it sueh a 
 privilege to be without faith in the world, that men 
 are willing to lay down their lives for it ? Is it true, 
 as I read lately on a sarcastic page, that " the most 
 advanced thinker of our time takes an enlightened 
 pride in his father, the monkey ? That when he has 
 sunk his pedigree as man, and adopted as family tree 
 a procession of baboons, superior enlightment radiates 
 from his very person, and his place of honor is fixed 
 in the illuminated brotherhood ?" There are few who 
 profess such a creed, but if there be any such, what 
 martyrs so devoted as thev, who are willing to 
 
 / V ' O 
 
 abrogate humanity in the cause of knowledge, and to 
 immolate their immortal being on the altar of Creative 
 Law ! The great provers have dared to prove because 
 they were sure their proving must result in the 
 establishment of truth. They heated up their crucibles 
 and threw in their gems, because they expected to 
 find at the bottom the stone that turned everything 
 to gold. They asked questions, because they expected 
 answers. They doubted, because they knew there 
 was a solution. They said Xo to the assertions of
 
 14 
 
 men because they said AY to some far-off affirmation 
 of reason they had caught a whisper of. They put 
 off from shore because they were confident that 
 
 If their bark sank 'twas to another sea. 
 
 They drew the veil from before the Holy of Holies 
 because they wanted IT and not the curtain. No 
 men have held such fundamental beliefs as the men 
 who have promulgated the most audacious denials. 
 
 The beliefs of the unbelievers being fundamental 
 are few. The creed of the infidel is, of necessity, 
 short. The creed of the Mussulman is short " There 
 is no God but God, and Mahomet is His Prophet " 
 but it has one article to spare. Francis W. Newman's 
 creed is short "God is a righteous Governor, who 
 loves the righteous and answers prayers for righteous- 
 ness " but this is capable of being abbreviated by 
 omitting the last clause. Without attempting a sum- 
 mary statement, let me tell briefly what individual 
 unbelievers have believed: HERBERT OF CHER- 
 BURY believed in a universal religion, implanted in 
 the minds of all men, and evidenced to their intui- 
 tions of truth by its intrinsic character. The pillars 
 of this faith were : the existence of One Supreme 
 God ; the duty of worship ; the efficacy of repent- 
 ance ; a future life, with rewards and punishments. 
 CHARLES BLOUNT held to the belief in a God who
 
 15 
 
 was to be worshipped, not by sacrifice or mediation, 
 but by piety, and whose nature forbade him to punish 
 any hereafter. MATTHEW TINDAL asserted the im- 
 mutability of God, and the perfection of his law as 
 being the expression of eternal truth, and as binding 
 on rational creatures throughout the universe ; thus 
 abolishing the distinction between natural and re- 
 vealed religion, and making the first foremost. LORD 
 SHAFTESBURY opposed the sensational philosophy of 
 Locke, and maintained the existence of an immutable 
 principle of faith and duty in the breast as the only 
 secure foundation for moral and religious ideas. A 
 high authority no less an authority than SIR JAMES 
 MACKINTOSH declares that Shaftesbury's " Inquiry 
 Concerning Virtue " contains more original and im- 
 portant views on the theory of morals than, perhaps, 
 any preceding work of modern times. It was 
 Shaftesbury who broached the doctrine of unselfish 
 beneficence. It was he who defined goodness as dis- 
 interested love for the system of which we form -.a 
 part. It was he who introduced the theory of a 
 Moral Sense, which approves virtue for its own sake. 
 The delight of virtue and the agony of vice were 
 favorite topics of Shaftesbury's eloqikence. This 
 infidel taught that goodness was its own reward, and 
 badness its own punishment; that LOVE was the 
 keeping of the LAW. ANTHONY COLLINS, another
 
 16 
 
 terrible name, charged with fatalism and materialism, 
 received from the aged Locke a letter in which 
 occurs this sentence : " Believe it, my good friend, to 
 love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of 
 human perfection in this world, and the seed plot of 
 all other virtues ; and, if I mistake not, you have as 
 much of it as ever I met with in anybody." THOMAS 
 CHUBB referred Christianity, along with other relig- 
 ions, to the law written on the heart, and defined 
 virtue as simple conformity to the eternal rule of 
 righteousness which God has immutably fixed. He 
 expressed a hope that he might be " a sharer of the 
 divine favor in that peaceful and happy state which 
 God has prepared for the virtuous and faithful in 
 some other future world." 
 
 BOLINGBROKE the inspirer of " Pope's Essay on 
 Man," that poem whose brilliancy of statement would 
 alone give it fame taught belief in the existence of 
 a Supreme Being of infinite wisdom and power ; the 
 government of the world by general laws established 
 in the beginning and never suspended; a rule of 
 duty too clear to need light from revelation ; the 
 piety of gratitude and resignation ; the preciousness 
 of the pure religion of love taught by Jesus ; and the 
 needlessness of another life to reward goodness which 
 was its own reward, or to punish evil which brought 
 with it its own doom.
 
 17 
 
 In England, infidelity planted itself on reason and 
 common-sense, stood by the broad facts of the moral 
 nature, maintained the unity of God, the perfect 
 order of the world, and the final welfare of all crea- 
 tures in it. 
 
 French infidelity had another cast. The English 
 infidel was by privilege a philosopher. The French 
 infidel was by necessity a revolutionist. Eminent 
 Frenchmen of the last century went into ecstacies 
 over the intellectual freedom of England. " How I 
 love the boldness of the English ! " exclaimed Vol- 
 taire ; " How I love men who say what they think ! " 
 " The English," said Le Blanc, " are willing to have 
 a king, provided they are not obliged to obey him." 
 "Their system," said Montesquieu, "is a republic 
 disguised as a monarchy." Mably added, " The 
 Hanoverians are only able to reign in England be- 
 cause the people are free and believe they have a 
 right to dispose of the crown." " In England," said 
 Helvetius, " the people are respected. Every citizen 
 can take some part in the management of affairs, and 
 authors are allowed to enlighten the public respect- 
 ing its interests." Grosley exclaimed, in amazement : 
 " Property is in England a thing sacred even from 
 the king himself." 
 
 Well might they be astonished, poor men ! for 
 nothing of all this could be said of their own country.
 
 18 
 
 Buckle crowds ten pages of his first volume with in- 
 stances of brutal persecution of literary men by the 
 government. He questions whether one literary man 
 in fifty escaped punishment for purely literary of- 
 fences. Among the authors who suffered either con- 
 fiscation, or imprisonment, or fine, or exile, or the 
 suppression of their works, or the ignominy of being 
 forced to recant what they had written, he finds the 
 name of nearly every Frenchman whose writings 
 have survived the age in which they were produced. 
 On the bare suspicion of having composed a libel on 
 the dead king, Louis XIV., Voltaire, without trial 
 and without proof, was confined in the Bastile more 
 than a year. For demanding satisfaction from a 
 beastly noble who had outrageously insulted and 
 assailed him, he was again imprisoned there six 
 months. His history of Charles XII., was no sooner 
 printed than its circulation was forbidden. His 
 " Philosophic Letters " were on the most frivolous 
 pretext ordered to be burned by the common hang- 
 man, and their author was once more arrested. He 
 wished to communicate to his countrymen the dis- 
 coveries of Newton, but the authorities forbade it. 
 Rousseau was threatened with imprisonment, exiled, 
 and his works were publicly burned. The treatise 
 of Helvetius on the Mind was suppressed by order of 
 the Royal Council, and burned by the common hang-
 
 19 
 
 man ; the author was compelled to retract his opin- 
 ions. The first original work of Diderot, the "Pen- 
 see^ Philosophiques," was ordered to be publicly 
 burned by the common hangman.' For another work, 
 his " Letters on the Blind," in which some sagacious 
 hints were thrown out touching the effect of blind- 
 ness on mental development, the unhappy author was 
 arrested and confined in the Dungeons of Vincen- 
 nes. 
 
 Before the first revolution, France had neither free 
 press, free parliament, nor free debates. There were 
 no public meetings, no popular discussions. There 
 was no suffrage, no habeas corpus act, no trial by 
 jury. A government decree forbade the publication 
 of any work in which questions of government were 
 discussed. Another made it a capital offence to 
 write a book likely to excite the public mind. A 
 third denounced the punishment of death against any 
 one who spoke of matters of finance, or who attacked 
 religion. 
 
 The whole intellect of France thus threatened, 
 insulted, goaded to madness, rose in insurrection 
 against the government ; but the only hopeful way 
 of assailing the government was to assail the Church. 
 On the religious side the State was weak. Religion 
 had no such hold on the popular mind as royalty had. 
 Divinity hedged the king but not the priest. The
 
 20 
 
 Church was subordinate to the Crown. The clergy 
 had greatly degenerated in character and influence. 
 Not only did they fail to command reverence by their 
 virtues, they even forfeited respect by calling grossly 
 immoral men to places of ecclesiastical dignity. They 
 preached a morality they did not practice. " The 
 French Church," said De Tocqueville, in his " An- 
 cien Regime," though not more oppressive than the 
 civil power, was more detested ; for it interfered 
 against its vocation and nature. It often sanctioned 
 in its own members vices that it censured in those 
 outside, cloaking them with its garment of inviolabil- 
 ity, and apparently wishing to make them immortal 
 like itself." 
 
 More than this. It was through the Church that 
 the State irritated and rasped the intellect of the na- 
 tion. The supervision of thought and the censorship 
 of the press were in its hands. Thus in defense of 
 their personal rights, as well as of intellectual liberty 
 in general, the men of thought assailed religion. 
 Feeble at once, and odious, implicated in the iniqui- 
 ties of the government, yet sharing neither the 
 government's prestige nor power, hated for its despotic 
 will, despised for its servile temper, an object of 
 attack but not of veneration, vulnerable in creed 
 and rite, in the acts of its great officials and in the 
 private character of its subordinate clergy the
 
 21 
 
 Church of France offered the first point to the attack 
 of outraged genius. 
 
 Circumstances rendered the attack headlong and 
 furious. A change of circumstances brought reaction 
 and revenge. The return of imperialism brought a 
 return of ecclesiasticism. The Church regained its 
 power and piled infamy on the names of its enemies. 
 The disinfecting beams of knowledge are decomposing 
 that mass of ordure. We see now that these men 
 lived and died in the faith ; that their courage was 
 kindled at the upper, not the nether fires ; that they 
 spoke because they believed ; that the love of truth 
 and the love of humanity constrained them ; that 
 their foes were dogmatism and superstition those 
 demons of the pit that always succeed in blackening 
 and defaming those who. touch them. We see that 
 their allies were knowledge, intelligence, faith, and 
 hope. We have heard till we are sick of the destruc- 
 tion they brought on holy things. We are beginning 
 to hear of the magnificent work of regeneration 
 which they projected. The word given me to say is, 
 that these unbelievers believed ; these infidels had souls 
 of faith, 
 
 No justice is done to the faith of these men by a 
 bare enumeration of their religious opinions. It is 
 interesting to know that Voltaire believed in a per- 
 sonal God, and argued in favor of immortality. The
 
 22 
 
 inscription on his tomb, " He combatted the Athe- 
 ists," wears an impressive look. But Voltaire was 
 neither philosopher nor theologian, and spent no con- 
 siderable portion of his brain force on abstract prob- 
 lems. His faith was in live mind, and this faith came 
 out in his application of the scientific method to 
 sacred history and of the laws of reason to sacred 
 books, imperfect though that application may have 
 been, imperfect as it necessarily was. His faith in 
 divine justice and in human kindness appears in his 
 steady protest against the use of torture, the death 
 penalty, and the confiscation of property. It appears 
 in his incessant desire for prison reform, for repeal of 
 the laws against sacrilege, for absolute liberty of 
 conscience. It comes out again in his strenuous 
 opposition to slavery and serfdom, and the sacred 
 barbarism, of war. "We may count him," said 
 Condorcet, " among the very few men whose love 
 of humanity amounted to a passion." I read Vol- 
 taire's confessions of faith in such sentences as 
 these : 
 
 " As the law of gravitation, so the fundamental 
 moral law acts with equal force on all nations." 
 
 " The best government is that in which all condi- 
 tions are equally protected by the laws." 
 
 " If we paint justice with bandaged eyes, we should 
 put reason with her to guide her steps."
 
 23 
 
 * 
 " The God who is worthiest our adoration is the 
 
 Deity who can create rational beings." 
 
 "The sentiment of justice is so natural, so univer- 
 sally acquired by all mankind, that it seems to me 
 independent of all law, all party, all religion." 
 
 " You priests who would emulate Jesus, be nJartyrs, 
 and not butchers." 
 
 " Nature says to all men : You are born weak and 
 ignorant. Being weak, help yourselves; being igno- 
 rant, get knowledge. I have given you arms to cul- 
 tivate the soil, and a glimmer of reason to guide your 
 steps. And I have put in your hearts a germ of 
 sympathy, that you may help one another to support 
 life. Stifle not that germ, neither corrupt it ; know 
 that it is divine, and beware how for the voice of 
 nature you substitute the miserable janglings of the 
 school." 
 
 " The human race prefers struggle to dependence, 
 as horses prefer the wild plain to the stall." 
 
 Sentences like these, scattered all over his pages, 
 and written, most of them, in heart's blood, attest the 
 fact that this terrible infidel had a soul of faith great 
 enough Jo save him. It saved more beside, in his 
 own time and since. 
 
 But what can we say for Diderot, the Atheist ? 
 This at least, that in toiling as he did over the famous 
 Cylopadia, that renowned manifesto of infidelity, he
 
 24 
 
 > 
 sought to spread, deepen, and confirm the spirit of 
 
 justice and humanity that was promising so much for 
 the new age. His inspiration was the spirit of intel- 
 ligence, not the spirit of disbelief. It was Diderot who 
 replied to the friend who warned him of the dangers 
 that beset his path, and urged him to flee : " O Solon, 
 Solon ! what would life be worth to me if I must 
 preserve it at the price of all that makes it dear I 
 Every morning I wake in hope to find that the wicked . 
 have all been converted during the night, and that 
 the fanatics are no more." And it is of Diderot that 
 the following touching story is told : Walking one 
 day in the fields with a friend, the philosopher 
 plucked an ear of corn, and fell a-musing over it. 
 " What are you doing ? " asked the friend. " Listen- 
 ing," was the reply. " Who is speaking to you ? " 
 " God." " Well, what does he say ? " " He speaks 
 in Hebrew. The heart comprehends ; but the under- 
 standing is at fault." 
 
 This man's atheism, then, was the protest of a 
 glowing heart against a freezing divinity ; the cry 
 for a large God, instead of a small one ; the longing 
 for a God who could feel. " Madmen ! " he shouted 
 to the ecclesiastics; "tear down the walls that im- 
 prison your ideas ! Extend your Godhead ! Confess 
 that He is everywhere, or deny that He is at all." 
 
 But surely no good thing can be urged for materi-
 
 25 
 
 alists like Helvetius, or Baron d'Holbackh. Vainly 
 will you attempt to show us their faith, or count up 
 their beliefs. To be sure the articles are few. Bufc 
 that is the best reason for doing justice to them, such 
 as they are. These men rose in such wrath against 
 the Church, and struck at it so fiercely, that they 
 smote away the last vestige of religious opinion, leav- 
 ing neither conscious God nor personal immortality ; 
 neither intelligent soul nor spiritual substance. Man 
 was, in their view, an ingenious piece of mechanism, 
 worked by the spring of selfishness. They were 
 something of Napoleon's mind, that the heart had its 
 seat in the pit of the stomach, and hunger ruled the 
 world. Fear of pain, love of pleasure, there you have 
 their secret of human nature. Their universe was a 
 machine. Well, but it was a live machine and perfect^ 
 ruled and directed by natural laws, the observance ) 
 of which is happiness. Let priests and kings keep 
 off their hands. Abolish fanaticism; put away su- 
 perstition ; let men follow their instincts ; give place 
 to common sense ; find the natural laws, understand 
 them, obey them, and the prayer, " Thy will be done 
 on earth as it is in heaven," will be answered. Mr. 
 Beecher, announcing a lecture by Dr. Furness, re- 
 marked that some men will do more with a jack- 
 knife than others will with a complete chest of tools. 
 I have a friend who says, " There is one Grod ; and
 
 26 
 
 Helvetius is His prophet, and I know no more hope- 
 ful enthusiast than he. He affirms like a preacher, 
 proselytes like an apostle, and hopes like a saint. 
 His " natural laws " wear all the attributes of Deity ; 
 and the promise of fidelity to the organized divinity 
 sutshines that of the Messianic Millenium. 
 
 Sensible men have done talking of the infidelity 
 of Rousseau, the apostle of sentiment in religion, the 
 prophet of the conscience, the champion of the intui- 
 tions, the passionate eulogist of Jesus, the serious 
 enthusiast, with the fire-mist of faith in his heart, and 
 words of kindling eloquence on his lips. The senti- 
 mentalists are getting their glory now by repeating 
 this infidel's thoughts on the absolute goodness of 
 God and the large hospitality of heaven. Our repub- 
 lican state is not more indebted to him for its idea of 
 man, than is our liberal church for its idea of Deity. 
 
 Let us come now to Tom Paine (his name was 
 Thomas, but that name, being Christian, is not given 
 him yet by respectable people) Tom Paine, then 
 " The man of three countries, and disowned by all " 
 " English in his deism, American in his radicalism, 
 French in his temper of scoffing ; " the bugbear of the- 
 priest ; the Anti-Christ of the preacher. How many 
 of his accusers have ever read his writings ? How 
 many who calumniate his character have taken pains 
 to search his opinions ? How many who denounce
 
 27 
 
 his opinions have thought it worth their while to ex- 
 amine his life ? The ' Age of Reason '' opens with this 
 comprehensive statement : 
 
 " I believe in one God and no more ; and I hope 
 for happiness beyond this life. 
 
 " I believe the equality of man ; and I believe that 
 religions duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy 
 and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures hap- 
 
 py." 
 
 Further on we read : u The word of God is the 
 creation we behold. It is an existing original which 
 every man can read. It cannot be forged : it cannot 
 be counterfeited : it cannot be lo>t ; it cannot be al- 
 tered, it cannot be suppressed. It publishes itself 
 from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches 
 to all nations and to all worlds ; and this word reveals 
 to man all it is neccessary for him to know of God.'' 
 
 And again : " The true Deist has but one deity ; 
 and his religion consists in contemplating his power, 
 wisdom, and benignity, and in endeavoring to imitate 
 him in everything moral, scientific, and mechanical.'' 
 
 And once more : " I trouble myself no f about the 
 manner of future existence. I content myself with 
 believing, even to positive conviction, that the power 
 that gave me existence is able to continue it in any 
 form and manner he pleases, either with or without 
 this body ; and it appears more probable to me that
 
 28 
 
 I shall continue to exist hereafter, than that I should 
 have had existence, as I now have, before that exis- 
 tence began." 
 
 " The world, my country ; to do good, my religion" 
 was this unbeliever's motto. In 1797, Mr. Paine was 
 the cheif promoter of the society of " theophilanthro- 
 pists," whose object was the extinction of religious 
 prejudices, the maintenance of morality, and the dif- 
 fusion of faith in the one God. 
 
 " It is want of feeling," says this heartless blasphe- 
 mer, " to talk of priests and bells, while infants are 
 perishing in hospitals, and aged and infirm poor are 
 dying in the streets." 
 
 In his last will and testiment the old man declares : 
 
 " I have lived an honest and useful life to man- 
 kind ; my time has been spent in doing good ; and I 
 die in perfect composure and resignation to the will 
 of my creator, God." 
 
 To Paine we owe this exquisite definition : " Re- 
 ligion is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his 
 heart." It occurs in " The Rights of Man." The 
 author fancies the members of the great family bring- 
 ing their gifts ; a poem, an essay, a piece of art, an 
 invention of genius, a darling possession. They come, 
 some richly laden with treasures, and some with a 
 pretty flower, perhaps with nothing better than a 
 weed ; but all are equally welcome, the Great Fath-
 
 29 
 
 er being pleased with the variety of the offerings, and 
 caring more for the sincerity than for the gift. 
 
 This man may have been an unbeliever, but surely 
 he was something more. In these days we should 
 rank him in the same general class with our beloved 
 and honored Theodore Parker. He was one of the 
 precursors of that greatest of unbelievers whose ma- 
 jestic faith in the Soul shook the churches and made 
 dogmatism faint. 
 
 In speaking of the faith of the infidels, I do not 
 shrink from using that word in its high moral sense. 
 Character is the test of conviction. Unbelievers, as 
 well as believers, must be judged by their conduct as. 
 men. Saints are rare in any church. " He prayeth 
 best who loveth best." In the same spirit it may be 
 said, he believeth best who liveth best. I do not 
 shrink from submitting the infidels to this austere 
 standard. They were not saints, but men like the 
 rest of us, partaking the infirmities of our common 
 humanity, sharing the faults, sometimes the vices of 
 their time. Exposed as they were, one and all, to ex- 
 traordinary exasperations, crosses, and trials, it would 
 not have been surprising if they had betrayed more 
 than the ordinary amount of human infirmity. The 
 role of .innovator in religion is trying enough to the 
 temper. And when the innovator in religion is an 
 innovator in politics and ethics, the temptation to be
 
 30 
 
 unfaithful to goodness is very strong. Yet, in point 
 of character, these men will bear comparison with the 
 so-called " believers " of their age. All of them had 
 a certain nobility of soul. Some of them were 
 heroes. 
 
 Lord Barrington speaks of the "virtuous and seri- 
 ous deists " of his time. Taylor calls Herbert of 
 Cherbury "a man of religious mind." Sir James 
 Mackintosh describes Shaftesbury as " a man of many 
 excellent qualities ; temperate, chaste, honest, and a 
 lover of his country. In public affairs he co-oper- 
 ated earnestly with the friends of freedom ; but he 
 had the courage to oppose them when they would de- 
 prive those accused of treason (the Jacobins, namely) 
 of the privilege of defence by counsel. Like John 
 Adams, he was determined that even the enemies of 
 liberty should be protected by law. 
 
 Bolingbroke was a victim to the natural reaction 
 of a keen temperament against a severe puritanical 
 training. His libertinism was not so much the result 
 of his infidelity as of his mother's injudicious nurture. 
 The youth rebelled before the man doubted. 
 
 Collins is admitted to have been a man of great 
 private and social worth. He must indeed have had 
 noble qualities to secure the esteem of one sw clear- 
 sighted and upright as Locke. 
 
 Of Helvetius, the French materialist, Louis Blanc
 
 31 
 
 bids us remember "that lie had a generous soul, and 
 virtues which refuted his doctrine." A rich man, 
 living on his estates, he labored to improve the con- 
 dition of the peasantry, a virtue, the rarity of which 
 even among believers, should distinguish its pos- 
 sessor in better times than those in which Helvetius 
 lived. 
 
 There are few to speak a word in praise of Dide- 
 rot, whom unhappily, it is but too easy to cover with 
 reproaches. There were things in his life that did 
 no credit to him or to humanity. Judge them and 
 condemn them as they deserve. I enter here no 
 apology or extenuation. But Denis Diderot had a 
 heart that could be touched by mortal infirmities. It 
 is recorded of him that, returning one evening to his 
 hotel, tired, discouraged, and half-famished, and re- 
 ceiving from his compassionate landlady a bit of bread 
 dipped in wine, he vowed that if ever he had anything 
 to give, he would refuse no one in want, nor would 
 ever condemn a fellow-creature to a single day of such 
 misery as he had endured for weeks. " And never," 
 adds his daughter, " was oath more frequently or 
 more piously kept/' His study was a sort of sonsult- 
 iug office, where every one was welcome to good ad- 
 vice or more substantial aid. To the priest who 
 urged upon him that, by slightly modifying his re- 
 ligious opinions, his other writings would hav,e more
 
 32 
 
 influence on society, and bring him remuneration, 
 this Atheist replied : " That is quite possible; but 
 Monsieur Abbe, you must admit that it would be at 
 the cost of an impudent falsehood." For a few such 
 atheists as that the Christian world would be none 
 the worse. 
 
 Clergyman are not in the habit of dwelling on the 
 great qualities of Voltaire. They have counted his 
 little ones, multiplied them by ten, and then perfum- 
 ed them with assafcetida. The great ones were not 
 for their turn. But truth will hare its day, and that 
 day will come soon. Fair-minded historians, like 
 Schlosser, Campbell, Brougham, Lerminier, Buckle, 
 have been removing the odium which Christian ran- 
 cor and pious mendacity industriously, for half a cen- 
 tury, heaped on the brave reformer's grave : and when 
 his true life shall be written his fine traits of generosity 
 courage, justice, kindness, devotion to humanity 
 will shine like stars in the firmament. 
 
 " The principal traits in the character of Voltaire," 
 says Jules Barni, " were benevolence, tenderness to 
 the weak, hatred of wrong and oppression." And Gab- 
 erel, no impartial judge, is obliged to confess that 
 he made a noble use of his fortune, and his benefac- 
 tions with words and manners of the most exquisite 
 delicacy. 
 
 Voltaire's grand acts of heroism are known to all
 
 S3 
 
 who have read anything about him. On his ceno- 
 taph, in the vaults of the Pantheon, is this inscrip- 
 tion, significantly hidden by a screen : " II defendit 
 Galas, Sirven, De la Barre, et Mountbailly." Those 
 names recall noble services to mankind. JEAN GALAS 
 was an old man, a Protestant, whose son, Marc An- 
 toine, a morbid, passionate, vehement youth, inclined 
 to Romanism, committed suicide in a fit of depression. 
 The Protestant father was charged with the murder, 
 tortured, condemned, and executed. The family were 
 exiled or incarcerated. Voltaire, hearing of the 
 hideous wrong, sprang forward to redress it. For 
 three years he toiled ceaselessly writing, pleading, 
 interceding with the powerful, stimulating the zeal of 
 advocates, exciting the pity of generous hearts, and 
 in all that time he reproached himself for every smile 
 as if it were a guilt. He procured a reversal of judg- 
 ment. On his return to Paris, relates Condorcet, 
 when one day the crowd was surrounding him on the 
 Pont Royal, a stranger asked a women of the labor 
 ing class, who the man was that drew such a multi- 
 tude after him : "Do you not know," she replied, " the 
 saviour of Galas ? " The incident reached the ears- 
 of Voltaire, and touched him more than any other 
 token of the applause that was lavished on him. SIR- 
 VEX was also a Protestant, whose daughter, abducted 
 by priests for the purpose of making her a nun, escap-
 
 34 
 
 ed from them, and drowned herself to avoid falling 
 again into their hands. The priests tried to shield 
 themselves by laying her death at her father's door. 
 The father barely saved himself by fleeing with all 
 his family into Switzerland. He appealed to Vol- 
 taire, and he did not appeal in vain. The warm 
 heart took fire again, and flamed for nine years not 
 till the end of which was Sirven triumphantly ac- 
 quitted. The Chevalier DE LA BAKRE was a young 
 gentleman who was tortured and put to a horrible 
 death, on the charge of having mutilated a wooden cru- 
 cifix that stood on one of the bridges. To his rescue 
 Voltaire rushed forward. Failing to save the young 
 man, he toiled for twelve years to get his family rein- 
 st ted in their possessions toiled, too, against the 
 hope of success. His denunciations of the crime 
 rung through Europe. 
 
 MONTBAILLY was a poor gardener, who was bro- 
 ken on the wheel and burned alive, on a false accusa- 
 tion of parricide. Voltaire obtained a revision of the 
 trial, preserved his wife whose condition alone 
 saved her from being executed with her husband 
 and restored the unhappy man's civil name. Does it 
 require a very long mantle of charity to cover the 
 reputation of a man who did such deeds as these ? 
 
 But the straws show the set of the wind. The 
 loan of seven thousand five hundred and eighty
 
 35 
 
 francs to a laborer who was about to be imprisoned 
 for debt, and his reply when told that the man would 
 never be able to pay it back : u So much the better ; 
 one loses nothing who returns a father to his family, 
 a citizen to the vstate;" his kindness to the widow, 
 whose creditors he bought off; his goodness to the 
 villager, whose debt he forgave and whose lost cattle 
 he replaced ; his present of a thousand crowns to a 
 farmer ruined by an iniquitous law-suit ; his pay- 
 ment of fifteen thousand francs to save the estate 
 of a poor and worthy family from the greedy Jesuits, 
 who thought they could buy it for a quarter part of 
 its value, such things as these show the under-cur- 
 rent of nobility in this man. 
 
 Voltaire must have had a great soul, or he could 
 not have fought a great fight. Yanitv, meanness, 
 
 o o o \j 
 
 frivolity, spitefulness, never clothe men in such 
 armor as he wore ; never meditate such wars as he 
 undertook ; never secure such conquests as he gained. 
 His course finished, he could say, " I have fought a 
 good fight; I have kept the faith/' It is sweet to 
 know that the strong soldier kept his tender heart 
 to the end. In his last hour Voltaire dii not forget 
 the dear cause of humanity. In one of his intervals 
 of intelligence, hearing it said that the sentence of 
 of infamy pronounced on the name of the Chevalier 
 De la Barre had been reversed, he seized a pen and
 
 36 
 
 wrote to the son of the unfortunate man whom, 
 twelve years before, he had done his best to save : 
 " I die content. I see that the king loves justice." 
 These were the last words Voltaire wrote. 
 
 The new day-spring that is coming over the hills 
 has reached even the low grave of Thomas Paine* 
 and is covering it with flowers. The foul spectres 
 that gathered there no longer appear to those that 
 have eyes to see. Every true American should 
 know at least something of the great qualities of 
 Thomas Paine. Every true American should know 
 that it was he that struck the key-note of our Revo- 
 lution by his " Common Sense." Every true Ameri- 
 can should know that his " Crisis," written in an 
 hour of extreme discouragement, electrified the army, 
 put a soul into the country, and was worth to the 
 failing cause of Independence more than an army 
 with banners. Its first sentence, "These are the 
 times that try men's souls," is still the patriot's bat- 
 tle-cry in the last struggle. Every true American 
 should know and should love to remember, that 
 when these two publications were having an enor- 
 mous sale the demand for the former reaching not 
 less than one hundred thousand copies, and both 
 together offering to the author profits that would 
 have made him rich the author, a man poor and 
 overworked, refused a cent of remuneration for his
 
 37 
 
 toil, and, like a prince, nay, rather like a true 
 friend of man, freely gave the copy-right to every 
 State in the Union. Every true American should 
 know and delight to tell how Thomas Paine, in 
 his period of public favor and of intimate friend- 
 ship with the founders of the government, declined 
 to accept any place or office of emolument, saying, 
 " I must be in every thing as I have ever been, a 
 disinterested volunteer ; my proper sphere of action 
 is on the common floor of citizenship, and to honest 
 men I give my hand and my heart freely." Every 
 true American should know, and should not forget, 
 that when the State of Virginia made a large claim 
 on the General Government for lands, Thomas Paine 
 opposed the claim as unreasonable and unjust, though 
 at that very time there was a resolution before the 
 Legislature of Virginia to appropriate to him a hand- 
 some sum of money for services rendered. Not for 
 any private considerations would he hold back his 
 protest. Every true American will be glad to know 
 that Paine, though an Englishman, had such love for 
 republican institutions that he declared he would 
 rather see his horse, Button, eating the grass of 
 Bordentown or Morrisania, than see all the pomp 
 t and show of Europe. 
 
 No private character has been more foully calum- 
 niated in the name of God than that of Thomas 

 
 38 
 
 Paine. What mud-heaps pious Christian hands have 
 piled on the grave of the "liar," the "sot," the 
 "adulterer," the "common swearer," the "low 
 ribald," the "cowardly assailant of a faith to whose 
 disciples he was indebted for charity in his last 
 hours." Few persons now take interest in the 
 charges or their refutation. Paine has been dead 
 more than sixty years; too long for men to care 
 whether he was slandered or not. Some who hear 
 me will think that I am wasting these few words on 
 an obsolete issue. But history deems no words 
 wasted in efforts to rescue from oblivion or from 
 infamy the smallest human name. And were I 
 writing as a historian, I should feel justified in de- 
 manding attention to a fully detailed vindication of 
 this name so remarkable in our own annals. 
 
 I am not writing as a historian but as a Free Re- 
 ligionist. My object is to show that infidels have 
 their virtues as well as their beliefs ; that the territo- 
 ry occupied by the unbelievers is not a barren desert, 
 but a fruitful domain, where the humanities dwell 
 and the angels sing. In a question like this, all are 
 interested, whether they care for the truth of biog- 
 raphy or not. 
 
 And for my purpose it is enough that the charges 
 against Thomas Paine's character have in every in- 
 stance rebounded against his accusers. Grant Thor-
 
 30 
 
 burn borrowed, and for base ends reprinted, private 
 letters from William Carver, angry letters, more than 
 insinuating that Paine was a drunkard and a dirty 
 fellow. Carver himself denounced the proceeding. 
 regretted the intemperate language he had used, 
 disavowed the imputations, and asked the abused 
 Paine's forgiveness. 
 
 James Cheetham, who, in addition to other slan- 
 ders, accused Paine of improper intimacy with the 
 wife of a friend and benefactor; was prosecuted and 
 convicted by a jury in Philadelpha, where Paine 
 was extremely unpopular, for having published a 
 false and malicious libel. 
 
 Mary Hinsdale, the silly servant girl, who had 
 gossipped stupidly to the effect that Paine, in his 
 last illness, was in a pitiable condition for want of 
 the bare necessaries of life ; that the neighbors, out 
 of charity, supplied him with sustenance : that he re- 
 canted his opinions and became converted to Chris- 
 tianity, and much more of the like Mary Hinsdale? 
 whose unreliable word alone supports the burden of 
 calumny in which bigots most delight, had nothing 
 to say when cross-questioned, but shuffled, evaded, 
 equivocated, didn't understand, didn't remember and 
 finally declared she had no recollection of any per- 
 son or thing she saw in Thomas Paine's house. 
 
 The truth is, that Paine, though not rich, was in
 
 40 
 
 comfortable circumstances. He had considerable 
 property, which is specified in his will. His sick bed 
 was surrounded by friends who ministered to his 
 wants, witnessed the firmness and calmness of his 
 last hours, and attested the sincerity and sufficiency 
 of his convictions. Not even the impertinent intru- 
 siveness of the clergy disturbed the entire serenity 
 of his death. 
 
 It is certain that Paine was not a fine gentleman. 
 It is certain that he was not a man of delicate spirit- 
 ual refinement. It is certain that he was no saint ; 
 but it is equally certain that he was not a sinner 
 above all the rest who dwelt in Jerusalem. He 
 drank occasionally more brandy than was wise, more 
 than would now be deemed dignified ; but reputable 
 Christians of his time kept him countenance in this. 
 He was no dandy ; he went to dinner in a dressing 
 gown ; but when was foppery reckoned an apostolic 
 grace ? He used snuff; but is snuff-taking so much 
 more heinous than smoking, which is said to be a cler- 
 cal weakness, that it makes all the difference between 
 the believer and the infidel ? He lost his temper some- 
 times ; and what amount of orthodoxy will make it 
 sure that a good man in certain cases will not? 
 Stones like these must not be flying about promiscu- 
 ously. Had Paine been less of a hero he would have 
 enjoyed a better reputation with the leaders of fash-
 
 41 
 
 ion. Had he been more of an apostate, his name 
 might have been a sweet savor in the nostrils of pie- 
 ty. Had he loved liberty less intensely, he would 
 not have been rejected by the politicians. Had he 
 been a colder friend of humanity, he would not have 
 been anathematized by the priests. It was very mag- 
 nificent when, in the French Assembly, met to order 
 the execution of Louis XVI., Thomas Paine rose and 
 protested in the name of liberty against the deed. 
 "Destroy the king," he cried, "but save the man. 
 Strike the crown, but spare the heart !" The mem- 
 bers in a rage would not believe their ears. " These 
 are not the words of Thomas Paine," resounded from 
 every side of the chamber. " They are my words," 
 said the undaunted man. It was very magnificent, 
 but it cost the hero his reputation, and came near 
 costing him his life. He was twice sentenced. His 
 death warrant was signed, and, but for what in the 
 case of a Christian believer would have been consid- 
 ered a special Providence, he would have gone to 
 the scaffold. 
 
 Character and credence follow different laws, and it 
 is never safe to make one answerable for the other. 
 But if we are going to hold opinions responsible for 
 conduct, I would take my chance with the infidels 
 quite as soon as with the believers. The faults of 
 
 the infidel may be heat, rashness, audacity, a passion- 
 
 2*
 
 42 
 
 ate temper, a biting tofcngue. They are not cun- 
 ning, calculation, cant, or cruelty. 
 
 Ah ! what do we not owe to the few who have had 
 the courage to disbelieve ! What have not such 
 men given to us ! And how tenderly we should hold 
 them in mind ! The men who bore hard names through 
 life, and after death had harder names piled like 
 stones over their memories! The men who wore 
 themselves down with thought ! The men who 
 lived solitary and misunderstood, who were driven 
 by the Spirit into the wilderness, who were called 
 infidels because they believed more then their neigh- 
 bors, and heretics because they chose the painful 
 pursuit of truth in preference to the idle luxury of 
 traditional opinion, and Atheists because they rested 
 on a God so large that the vulgar could not see his 
 outline, and image breakers because they adored 
 the unseen Spirit, and deniers of the Christ because 
 they affirmed the Eternal World ! 
 
 What do we not owe them, who went about shak- 
 ing their heads and murmuring NO with their lips, 
 their hearts all the while saying YES to the immor- 
 tals ! They, after all, are the builders of our most 
 splendid beliefs. Almost all our rational faiths we 
 must thank them for, liberators that they were ! It 
 is they who have quenched the revengeful fires of 
 hell, and burned up the selfish chaff of heaven. It
 
 43 
 
 is they who have taken the discord out of the heart 
 of God, and made his countenance shine upon his 
 creatures. It is they who have hunted the old devil 
 from the highways and byways of creation. To 
 them we owe deliverance from witchcraft, priestcraft, 
 and the manifold shapes of superstition. They 
 have taught us to read the Jewish bible with 
 open eyes, and other bibles besides. They have in- 
 terpreted the sweet humanity of Jesus. Who but 
 they have practically taught us the preciou^ness 
 of the rational life, have rescued us from the tyr- 
 anny of establishments and creeds, and purchased 
 with their blood the soul freedom which is our native 
 birth-right ? 
 
 We will cry with Erasmus, " Holy Socrates, pray 
 for us." We will say with Schleiermacher, " Join 
 me in offering a lock of hair to the shades of the re- 
 jected saint Spinoza. Full of religion, was he, and 
 full of the Holy Ghost." And if there were a louder 
 voice calling on us to lay tears, vows, and purposes 
 on the graves of all faithful infidels and believing 
 unbelievers, we should say, amen and amen !
 
 THE THEIST'S FAITH. 
 
 IN a recent sermon on " The Living God " I 
 spoke of atheism as being in its deep sense, absence 
 of faith in a living intelligence will or sanctity that 
 transcended the human. This is not speculative 
 atheism. That is the failure of thought to find an in- 
 finite intelligence or will in the world of ideas. Spec- 
 ulative atheism need not trouble us much ; for few 
 persons entertain it with any consistency, and of those 
 who do, many, if not most, are of such force of intellect 
 and character that their lives obey laws deeper than 
 their intellects are able to grasp. It is the greatness 
 of their mental constitution that dwarfs the'scope of 
 their speculation. The best of these men live strong- 
 ly on practical planes ; their thoughts follow the lines 
 of intellect aw ; their energies take hold of vital 
 interests to such a degree that their views make 
 little or no impression on the sweep of their spirits.
 
 There is another atheism : the atheism of feelinsf, 
 
 O " 
 
 the atheism of the troubled or tormented heart, the 
 atheism born of sorrow at the misery, or indignation 
 at the wrong of society, that is more pathetic and 
 more crushing. It is doubtful if atheism of thought 
 is oil the increase ; but atheism of feeling probably 
 is. For with every year knowledge of society, con- 
 tinually extending, makes us better acquainted with 
 human guilt and sadness-; and with every year 
 human sensibility to suffering and evil becomes more 
 acute. A gloomy presentiment seizes the mind that 
 God is not in His heaven, that all is not right with 
 the world; and this misgiving eats into the sub- 
 stance of hope and corrodes the springs of will. 
 To feel that there is no God is more deplorable than 
 to think there is none; for one who thinks th< re is 
 none may, when he is not busy with thinking, but 
 is absorbed in action, live healthily in his affections 
 and determinations. But one who feels there is 
 none carries his skepticisms about like a poison in 
 the veins which unmans him for strenuous effort. 
 
 A great writer, not long ago deceased, a clear 
 and unremitting thinker, but an earnest and power- 
 ful person too, has put these misgivings of the moral 
 nature in a form that makes us shudder as at a grim 
 demonstration. Stated in a word, his argument is 
 that God must be either wanting in power or in
 
 goodness and wanting either, he fails to be God. 
 " How," he asks, " stands the fact ? That next to 
 the greatness of the cosmic forces, the quality which 
 most forcibly strikes every one who does not avert 
 his eyes from it, is their perfect and absolute reckless- 
 ness. They go straight to their end, without regard- 
 ing what or whom they crush on the road." " In 
 sober truth, nearly all the things which men are 
 imprisoned or hanged for doing to one another, are 
 Nature's every-day performances. Killing, the most 
 criminal act recognized by human laws, Nature does 
 once to every being that lives ; and in a large pro- 
 portion of cases, after protracted tortures such as 
 only the greatest monsters whom AVC read of ever 
 purposely inflicted on their living fellow creatures. 
 Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, 
 casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns 
 them to death, crushes them with stones, like the 
 first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, 
 freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick 
 or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds 
 of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the in- 
 
 % 
 
 genious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never 
 surpassed. All this Nature does with . the most 
 supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, 
 emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest indif- 
 ferently with the meanest and worst." After this
 
 fearful arraignment of Nature, made in much detail 
 and with deadly severity of logic, the writer asks : 
 Why should all this be permitted ? Is God willing 
 to prevent it, but unable ? Then he is not God, for 
 he is less than omnipotent. Is he able, but unwil- 
 ling? Then he is not God, for he is less than all 
 beneficent. Choose your alternative. Almighty 
 demon, or impuissant angel, which will you have ? 
 Select whichever you will ; but whichever being you 
 select he will not correspond to any sufficient con- 
 ception of deity. The being you call God is either 
 weak or wicked ; in neither case is he adorable. 
 Before a challenge like this the heart trembles. The 
 alleged facts cannot be disputed. The earth is 
 hideous with all this misery: the human race is 
 afflicted with all these woes. Must the soul then cease 
 to worship, must the heart cease to trust and love? 
 
 Without attempting a labored argument which, 
 were I competent to make it against a reasoner like 
 Stuart Mill, would occupy many discourses, let me 
 try to indicate the theist's answer to the charge. 
 
 I. The word " omnipotence " needs examination, 
 that the thought it stands for may be well defined. 
 Mr. Mill, speaking in another work of the word " In- 
 finite," says : " The conception of Infinite as that 
 which is greater than any given quantity, is a con- 
 ception we all possess, sufficient for all human pur-
 
 poses, and as genuine and good a positive concep- 
 tion as one need wish to have. It is not adequate ; 
 our conception of a reality never is. But it is posi- 
 tive ; and the assertion that there is nothing positive 
 in the idea of infinity can only be maintained by 
 leaving out and ignoring the very element which 
 constitutes the idea." " Put Absolute instead of In- 
 finite, and we come to the same result. If I talk of 
 a being who is absolute in wisdom and goodness, 
 that is, who knows everything, and at all times in- 
 tends what is best for every sentient creature, I un- 
 derstand perfectly what I mean ; and however much 
 the fact may transcend my conception, the short- 
 coming can only consist in my being ignorant of the 
 details of which the reality is composed." Now 
 why not apply the same reasoning to the conception 
 of Omnipotence ? An omnipotent being is one who 
 can do everything ; but what doing everything may 
 imply, will depend on our idea of what " everything " 
 may be. Now of what " everything " may be, we 
 have but the most inadequate conception. Can an 
 omnipotent being make a circle to be at the same 
 time a circle and a square ? Can he make a cube 
 to be at the same time a cube and a plane? Can 
 he make a black object to be at the same time black 
 and white ? A line to be at the same instant straight 
 and crooked ? A fact to be at the same moment a fact
 
 and a fiction ? An omnipotent being is powerful 
 within the laws of his own intelligence. The abso- 
 lute despot keeps somewhere within the bounds of 
 reason ; he does not do literally everything he likes. 
 Where there is intelligence, there are lines of deter- 
 mination, and power must respect these lines. An 
 intelligent being must have aims and ends of his 
 own, and his power must be exerted to reach these 
 aims, and fulfil these ends. He cannot do things 
 (^inconsistent with his own resolutions. He cannot 
 swerve from his own prescribed path. He cannot 
 falter in his own purposes. Whatever he may 
 seek, whether it be his own glory, as the Calvinist 
 supposes, or the perfection of humanity, as the 
 Theist believes, or the final happiness of all creatures 
 as the Universalist hopes, his omnipotence will work 
 towards that result. He cannot waver or turn 
 aside from it. He is fated by his own nature ; pre- 
 destinated, as it were, by the qualities which make 
 him what he is. There have been people who 
 believed that God predestinated the larger part of 
 mankind to everlasting misery. They held that he 
 was constrained to do it by the necessity imposed 
 by his own eternal decrees. They were good merc 
 who believed this ; tender hearted, devout, adoring 
 men, who ascribed all manner of perfection to God; 
 it never occurred to them to call in question the
 
 9 
 
 Divine Omnipotence to do whatever It would. 
 They were persuaded that Omnipotence itself was 
 powerless to do what he would not. In other words, 
 will being subservient to intelligence and character 
 is their vassal, not their lord. 
 
 YL Then there can be no harm in repeating the 
 old truism that the thoughts of a being much less 
 than absolute, cannot be as our thoughts ; nor can 
 his ways be as our ways. The sense of private 
 justice and injustice, of actual right and wrong, 
 even in the most enlightened minds and the no- 
 blest breasts cannot measure the sense of justice 
 and injustice, cannot criticise the actual ver- 
 dict of an archangel, or of any being of a 
 superior order. The value of a judgment depends 
 on completeness of information; and in the case 
 supposed, the information is desperately incomplete. 
 The child's foolish cdmplaint of the unkindness of - 
 its parent whose kindness is of a quality the child 
 has not the faintest conception of; the pupil's petu- 
 lant murmurings at the teacher, whose mind enter- 
 tains a comprehensive scheme of study, looking to 
 the future dignity of his disciple, present no parallel 
 to the preposterous waywardness of a human creature 
 who finds fault with the arrangements of a being 
 whose attributes in the nature of things, must be 
 .utterly beyond the reach of his apprehension.
 
 10 
 
 Language is not strong enough to express the ab- 
 surdity of such attempts at judgment, supposing a 
 G-od to exist. " As the heavens are high above the 
 earth, so are His thoughts higher than our thoughts, 
 and His ways than our ways." 
 
 Of course the human and the divine sense of 
 justice must run parallel as far as they go together. To 
 grant that there is anything in the world, in the 
 whole world, in the whole conceivable world, that 
 would seem unjust to one who knew all the circum- 
 stances, to grant that there is anything that to a 
 perfectly pure heart would seem wholly and absolute- 
 ly wrong, would be fatal to any plea in favor of a 
 righteous deity. But can any such thing be shown ? 
 Is there any uncaused, unrecompensed, unbalanced, 
 unproductive evil ? Is there any instance of divine 
 guilt ? 
 
 Miss Cobbe, in an argument for the necessity of 
 another life to mend the defects of this, mentions 
 the fate of Jesus as being one of those incidents, that 
 are irreconcilable with the idea of a righteous 
 governance of the world, and require another life for 
 justification. But the fate of Jesus was clearly 
 brought on by his own deliberate course of action ; 
 it was what he might and probably did anticipate ; 
 it was recompensed during his short lifetime, by 
 satisfactions and joys that were dearer to him than
 
 11 
 
 aught beside in the world ; and it earned for him a 
 crown of honor from his fellow-men such as never 
 fell before or since to the lot of a human being. So 
 far is this example from reflecting discredit on the 
 divine righteousness, that it would be hard to find 
 one that more completely illustrated the operation 
 of retributive and recompensing law. 
 
 Miss Cobbe further instances the cruel retributions 
 visited on women for offences against purity which 
 man shares with her, the greater guilt of which, per- 
 haps, belongs to man, yet which he perpetrates with 
 comparative impunity, while she suffers all that a hu- 
 man being can. To the untrained eye this does look 
 like a perverse departure from the plain rule of 
 equity ; a departure unjustified and, as far as appears, 
 unjustifiable by any considerations that lie on the 
 surface of thought. But when regard is had to the 
 relative gravity of consequences in the two cases, 
 to the sum of interests that society has at stake, to 
 the necessity of guarding the helplessness and pre- 
 serving the continuity of human life, enough is 
 evident to vindicate from essential injustice the order 
 of human progress. 
 
 The theist argues that evil is incidental; that in 
 particular cases it is even tributary to general good ; 
 that individual suffering is made necessary for the 
 welfare of the whole. To this Mill returns a scorn-
 
 12 
 
 ful reply. " Optimists," he says, " in their attempts 
 to prove that whatever is, is right, are obliged to 
 maintain, not that Nature ever turns aside from her 
 path to avoid trampling us into destruction, but that it 
 would be very unreasonable in us to expect that it 
 should. Pope's " Shall gravitation cease when you 
 go by?" may be a just rebuke to any one who should 
 be so silly as to expect common morality from 
 Nature. But if the question were between two men, 
 instead of between a man and a natural phenome- 
 non, that triumphant apostrophe would be thought 
 a rare piece of impudence. A man who should per- 
 sist in hurling stones or firing cannon when another 
 man " goes by," and having killed- him, should urge 
 a similar plea in exculpation, would, very deservedly, 
 be found guilty of murder. Most assuredly, because 
 it could not by any argument or representation be 
 made to appear that any good end was served or 
 contemplated by the action. It could not be im- 
 puted to aught but insanity or a spirit of reckless 
 mischief. No beneficence matches that of the law of 
 gravitation, which we know to be an important fea- 
 ture in the orderly administration of the universe. 
 For a man to imitate the proceedings of Nature 
 without thought of their intention, or knowledge of 
 their drift, or respect for their possible intention, 
 would be simply madness. Only a Deity can copy
 
 13 
 
 a Deity. Does the wasteful, ruinous, self-destroying, 
 and brutalizing drunkard imitate the example of the 
 self-controlled, prudent, self-respecting man, who, for 
 ends of health, cheerfulness, intellectual vigor, sips 
 daily his glass of light wine? They both do the 
 same thing, that is, both lift a cup to their lips ; but 
 the intention, the purpose, the character of the 
 action, how different ! 
 
 To copy an example without considering how 
 far it ought or ought not to be copied, is foolish and 
 wrong. Very true : " The order of Nature, in so far 
 as unmodified by man, is such as no being, whose 
 attributes are justice and benevolence, would have 
 made with the intention that his rational creatures 
 should follow it as an example." But if he never 
 designed that his rational creatures should follow it 
 as an example; if on the contrary he made his 
 rational creatures to be a part of his Universe, and 
 so endowed them that they might conspire and co- 
 operate with him to make the creation complete in 
 excellence ; nay, more, if he intended his rational 
 creatures to be in a manner his own representative 
 agents, his own incarnations, so to speak, in order 
 that through them, his attributes of wisdom and 
 goodness might be exhibited and acted out, then the 
 burden of his opprobrium may be lightened. These 
 .are obvious thoughts, but are they not just ones?
 
 14 
 
 They do not clear up the intricacies of speculation, 
 but do they not remove obstacles from the main 
 lines ? They are worthless, perhaps, as proof that God 
 exists, but presuming that he does exist, do they 
 not relieve the presumption of heavy incumbrances ? 
 III. The world of nature and of providence is not 
 wholly or prevailingly dark. There is horror but 
 there is more of glory. There is suffering, but there 
 is more of satisfaction. There is sorrow, but there is 
 more of joy. By looking at the evil side of things 
 one easily persuades himself that there is nothing but 
 evil. By looking at the good side of things one as 
 easily persuades himself that there is nothing but 
 good . By looking calmly at things one may persuade 
 himself that good and evil are mixed, but that good 
 has the upper hand of evil. The healthiest nature is 
 the fairest judge ; and the healthiest nature finds more 
 health than sickness in the world. The deepest intel- 
 ligence discovers the most intelligence; the sweetest 
 soul discerns the most sanctity. There is an im- 
 mense difference between the reports of the single 
 and of the evil eye. The German philosopher who 
 has earned his fame by the power with which he 
 brought into relief the ugly aspects of what he chose 
 to call the " worst possible world," was a morbid 
 and uncomfortable man, disorder d in system, a prey 
 to imaginary fears, as little of a hero as one is likely
 
 15 
 
 to find. The slave Epictetus, a pagan, living in the 
 midst of the horrors and turpitudes of imperial Rome, 
 breaks out thus : " I would be found at my last day 
 pondering how I might be able to say to God : 
 ' Have I transgressed Thy commands ? Have I 
 perverted the powers, senses, instincts, which Thou 
 hast given me ? Have I ever accused Thee or cen- 
 sured Thy dispensations ? I have, like others, been 
 sick, and patiently, for it was Thy pleasure ; I have 
 been poor, and contentedly, for it was Thy will. 
 Thou didst decree that I should occupy a humble 
 station, and power I have not desired. Hast Thou 
 ever seen me sad for these causes ? Have I not 
 always approached Thee with a cheerful counte- 
 nance, prepared to execute Thy commands and ac- 
 cept the intimations of Thy will ? Must I now 
 leave the world? I go. That Thou hast thought 
 me worthy of a place in it I thank Thee ; that 
 Thou hast allowed me to behold Thy \\orks and 
 join Thee in contemplating Thy administrator.' 
 While I am thinking, writing, reading such things 
 as these, let death overtake me." 
 
 Opening the other day the biography of Henry 
 Thoreau I came upon this passage in a letter: 
 " Again and again I congratulate myself on my so 
 called poverty. When I can sit in a cold chamber, 
 muffled in a cloak, warmed by my own thoughts,
 
 16 
 
 the world is not so much with me. When I have 
 only a rustling oak leaf, or the faint metallic cheep 
 of a tree sparrow for variety in my winter's walk, 
 my life becomes continent and sweet as the kernel 
 of a nut." -And again : " It is a significant fact 
 that though no man is quite well or healthy, yet 
 every one believes, practically, that health is the 
 rule, and disease the exception, and each invalid is 
 wont to think himself in a minority, and to postpone 
 somewhat of endeavor to another state of exist- 
 ence." One of the saddest of modern English poets 
 thus closes a poem entitled Consolation. 
 
 I The hour, whose happy 
 Unalloyed moments 
 
 I would eternalize, 
 
 
 Ten thousand mourners 
 
 Well pleased see end. 
 
 The bleak stern hour 
 Whose severe moments 
 I would annihilate, 
 Is passed by others 
 In warmth, light, joy. 
 
 * Time so complained of 
 Who to no one man 
 Shows partiality, 
 Brings round to all men 
 Some undimmed hours. 
 
 Whether, on the whole, existence is happier or more 
 unhappy, the outward world darker or brighter, the
 
 17 
 
 inward world more or less sorrowful, can never 
 be determined. The universal dread of death, or 
 unwillingness to leave the world, the universal 
 desire that life may be resumed in another world to 
 be revealed when death shall have done his work, 
 are testimonies that the world is on the whole beau- , 
 tiful ; that existence is on the whole dear. Tlje 
 prosperous are usually the complaining. The plea- 
 sure seekers are commonly the suicides. The pros- 
 perous complain because the world is conducted on 
 moral principles ; the pleasure seekers commit sui- 
 cide because they have never looked for solid satis- 
 factions, and such delights as they have create disgust 
 at a world made not for appetites, but for hearts and 
 consciences. To cultivate a habit of looking on the 
 bright side of the world, and a principle of living 
 close to real things, is the best antidote to such 
 atheistic fears as these. " The instincts teach," says 
 Emerson, "that the problem of essence must take 
 precedence of all others the question of Whence? 
 What? And Whither? And the solution of these 
 must be in a life, and not in a book." When the 
 life comes how easy the solution appears ! It is easy 
 to believe in a beautiful world when the sun rises in 
 June ; and in the presence of a persistently bright 
 spirit, bright not from felicity of temperament, but 
 from perseverance of faith, the chimeras of the un-
 
 18 
 
 believers vanish like the wild creatures that make 
 terrible the night by their cries. In presence of a 
 true man who does his duty, unbelief seems a thing 
 to be apologized for. The nearer one lives to the 
 daily realities of existence the less he feels like 
 doubting the health of the world. 
 
 A brilliant writer of England has made familiar 
 to us a definition of God which has the merit of sim- 
 plicity, as well as of originality. It is as little open to 
 criticism as a definition can be. God he calls " a 
 Power outside of us that works for Righteousness." 
 
 A Power outside of us, of the existence and 
 reality of that none can doubt. Many recognize 
 power outside of them and power only ; the play t)f 
 vast forces against which man has as much as he can 
 do to maintain himself. At moments we are unmind- 
 ful of it ; only at moments ; for no sooner do we re- 
 flect on any incident of existence than we become 
 aware that we are in the grasp of tremendous forces 
 before which our lives are as leaves in the Autumn 
 forest. No man ever truly lived who did not feel the 
 awful presence of these powers. Their vastriess and 
 comprehensiveness and irresistible strength make 
 the burden of the atheist's argument. For the word 
 "God" if it have any intelligible meaning, stands- 
 for order, harmony, beauty, goodness, and the ap- 
 parent recklessness, fury, pitilessness of this power
 
 19 
 
 outside of men ; its seeming indifference to human 
 happiness and welfare, make it for some easier to 
 deny the existence of God than to believe it. 
 
 On the other hand people of emotion and passion 
 are often led by the omnipotence of this power out- 
 side of men, to believe in too much God. Every- 
 thing to them is God ; there is a God for each stock 
 and stone and plant ; a God for everything they 
 have not made or done themselves. The larger part 
 of their life may be spent in efforts to keep this ter- 
 rible power at a distance, to propitiate it, elude it, 
 buy it off. Hence the ugly thing called superstition, 
 the worship of a power, capricious, wilful, immoral 
 that must be bribed or cajoled into harmlessness. The 
 openings into superstition in this direction are num- 
 berless still ; a few are closed, but enough remain un- 
 shut to admit people any day into its gloomy recesses. 
 In ordinary times men occupied with their own activi- 
 ties, and absorbed in their own achievements, scarcely 
 think of this outlying power. But ever and anon 
 something occurs which they cannot account for some- 
 thing they did not intentionally bring to pass, would 
 not have brought to pass on any account, would have 
 prevented had they foreseen it, would escape if they 
 were swift enough, would repel if they were wise or 
 strong enough, a famine, a flood, a commercial 
 crisis, a social uproar, a political revolution, the
 
 20 
 
 power outside of them shows a ghastly presence, 
 and at a signal from the priests they crowd the 
 churches, and put up prayers for deliverance. So 
 many things go on all the time that human beings 
 have no hand or voice in, so many things happen 
 occasionally that they have no control over, it is not 
 wonderful that awe deepening into trust, or rising 
 into terror, is excited by the demonstrations of force, 
 whether breaking out with the suddenness of 
 miracle, or rushing along with the terrible precision 
 of law. There is no probability that the demon- 
 strations of this power in any but usual forms will 
 for ages on ages to come, be so familiar to untutored 
 and unreflecting people that they will not be stag- 
 gered or startled by them ; it is not likely that it 
 will ever be entirely disarmed or disenchanted. It 
 is at present inconceivable that human knowledge, 
 however it may be increased, will so thoroughly 
 adopt into human activities the power outside of us 
 that no manifestations of it will excite surprise. 
 Indeed, as knowledge increases, wonder increases, 
 too ; science reveals more marvels than it disposes 
 of; and the power the savage cowers under, the 
 sage adores. 
 
 The question of questions is, therefore, does this 
 power work for righteousness ? If it does, the heart 
 of the Theist is satisfied. There may be a thousand
 
 things he cannot explain; a thousand things that 
 are an unfathomable mystery to him: problems he 
 cannot so much as begin to solve; questions he can- 
 not pretend to answer; doubts he can do nothing to 
 still. Notwithstanding all this, if on the whole, on 
 extended lines, in the history of nations, in the ex- 
 perience of ages, it can be made to appear, with a 
 brilliancy a good deal less than that of mid-day, 
 with a shaded and clouded clearness, that the power 
 outside of us, which works with stum unremitting 
 energy and such unflagging continuance, works for 
 righteousness, for righteousness of a general kind, 
 for righteousness of that description which none but 
 intellectual and morally cultivated people will be 
 able to recognize as righteousness, which undiscern- 
 ing and passionate people will reckon to be no 
 righteousness or lightness at all, but crookedness 
 and waywardness rather, if not cruelty and perver- 
 sity, with as -much as this the heart of the Theist 
 will be content. 
 
 To prove that the power outside of us does work 
 for righteousness is more than 1 shall undertake now, 
 is more than I would undertake at any time, if I 
 had leisure and space unlimited. For to establish 
 that would require a range of knowledge, an under 
 standing of processes and laws, a faculty of discern- 
 ment, a gift of reasoning such as no man who lives,
 
 22 
 
 no man who will live within half a thousand years can 
 pretend to. None but the extremely foolish under- 
 take to dogmatize about that; none but the witless 
 claim to know about it. Thus far we have material 
 for faith but nothing more ; faith that gives sub- 
 stance to things hoped for and evidence of things 
 not seen. Materials for faith are within reach of 
 any that care to possess them. 
 
 There are those who doubt if righteousness be on 
 the increase. But it seems to me that if they would 
 cease to make bitter assertions out of their cynicism, 
 and would lift up their eyes to see what actual 
 knowledge has disclosed, their tone must change. 
 For to deny the fact that the surface of the material 
 globe has gained in richness in the course of millions 
 of years ; that the animal creation has advanced in 
 beauty of form and excellence of endowment ; that 
 human life has become longer, safer, more comfort- 
 able, more privileged, more full of promise ; that 
 man is gradually getting the better of his enemies, 
 overcoming his vices, emerging from the condition of 
 the beast into the condition of the rational being ; 
 to deny that there has been progress in sciences and 
 arts, progress also in social arrangements and the 
 type of individual character, is in our day reckoned 
 nothing short of audacious. The doctrine of de- 
 velopment, under some form of statement, is ac-
 
 23 
 
 cepted by thinkers of every important school in our 
 generation, scientific and popular, liberal and or- 
 thodox. It is the watchword of the age. Now de- 
 velopment suggests progress, and progress suggests 
 advance, and advance suggests Tightness of direction. 
 Who or what is responsible for this advance? 
 Are men responsible for it ? Surely not ; not even 
 indirectly. With much of it the human race has had 
 nothing whatever to do, even indirectly ; with most 
 of it the human race has been associated merely as 
 agent and tool. As we reflect on the matter, the 
 proposed achievements of the human race, the de- 
 liberate resolutions and thoughtfully directed efforts 
 have been and are very few and almost insignificant. 
 In any age and country the men and women who 
 make it their business, or any great part of their 
 business, to improve the condition of society in any 
 particular are quite inconsiderable in number and 
 force. The band of reformers has never been large, 
 and they have seldom succeeded in accomplishing 
 the ends they had in view. When they have 
 succeeded, as in the case of the abolition "of slavery 
 in America, their success was due, and was by the 
 confession of the worthiest among them admitted to 
 be due, to the operation of vast moral and social 
 forces which embraced the whole civilized globe. 
 The abolitionists did not overthrow slavery : The
 
 '24 
 
 accumulated moral sense, the gathered experience, 
 the heaped up and massive indignation of mankind 
 abolished it. It was the same with the African slave 
 trade ; it was the same with the English corn laws. 
 There comes a time when the sea of moral being that 
 has been slumbering, wakes and deals a shuddering 
 blow at some ancient barrier; These agitations are 
 by some ascribed to changes in the moon, and the 
 people who are influenced by them are called luna- 
 tics ; but it is understood by the intelligent, that the 
 unconscious humanity which is deeper than the will, 
 is answerable for these agitations, and that obeys 
 laws that human discovery has never sounde'd. 
 
 How small is the number of people who endeavor 
 to improve themselves ! Yet the level of character is 
 continually on the rise. Most are absorbed in the 
 search after pleasure or profit, the amusement or the 
 benefit of the hour. And yet the moral level of all 
 is insensibly lifted. This fact surely encourages the 
 faith that the power that works outside of us does make 
 for righteousness. It is indeed exceedingly difficult 
 for individuals to cultivate themselves much beyond 
 the mark of the better portions of their generation. 
 None but the very few do it, or try to do it ; none but 
 rarely endowed persons have the motive or ambition 
 to do it, appreciate the importance of doing it, or 
 command the resources for doinsr it. The increase of
 
 moral sentiment, moral conviction, moral worth and v 
 principle in a community is one of the mysterious 
 things it is good bnt never quite satisfactory to con" 7 
 template. It makes us think of the powerlessness 
 of the collective will of man ; it makes us mindful oF 
 our dependence on something outside of ourselves >* 
 to which for want of a better word we give the name, 
 of God. 
 
 Is there any satisfaction to the heart in dwelling 
 on this name? The atheist says there is none, but 
 dissatisfaction rather; for it calls our thoughts away 
 from actual duties, substitutes contemplation for toil, 
 worship for work, faith and hope for conviction and 
 purpose. If this were true, then theism would be 
 a practical error, and the thought of the power out- 
 side of us, although making directly for righteousness, 
 would be disabling. Atheism, that awakens responsi- ' 
 bility, puts conscience on its mettle and stimulates hu- 
 man endeavor, is better than theism that lulls people 
 to sleep and encourages them to dream. 
 
 It is as supplying a background and support for 
 energy that Theism is precious to the men who hold 
 it in faith; that the workers may not feel that 
 they work alone, that the reformers may be embold- 
 ened and sustained by the action of powers all the 
 more trustworthy because inscrutable ; that the 
 champions may have the promise of victory before
 
 2f> 
 
 their eyes, and, undismayed by the hosts of their 
 enemies, unweakened by the sense of their own 
 impuissance, may fight on to the end, the theist 
 contends for his belief. To stand alone is hard ; 
 even when the loneliness is loneliness among men ; 
 but when it is that utter loneliness of the will that 
 
 V 
 
 finds no companionship in the invisible powers 
 which faith and hope bring near, only here and there 
 one can bear it. The creed of that one is no creed 
 for humanity. We may respect him, may admire and 
 honor him, may concede to him a certain moral 
 grandeur, but he must not expect mankind to feed 
 011 his mental foods. If the unthinking multitude 
 look at him askance, with a kind of horror, he must 
 not complain. 
 
 And if brave men need support in battle, 
 much more do sorrowful men need it for their weari- 
 ness. Think as cheerfully as we may of the world 
 we live in ; look as brightly as we may on the expe- 
 riences of life, it is still true that existence has its 
 melancholy side. Whether or no the sad days are 
 more than the joyous, the disappointments more 
 than the satisfactions, the bitter more than the sweet, 
 certain it is that the sad days come often, the disap- 
 pointments fall fast, the bitter cups are frequent - 
 and full. To this side of our human experience, 
 the faith of Theism comes with the holiest
 
 27 
 
 consolations. "It is indeed," says an eloquent 
 writer, "the greatest thing allowed to mankind, 
 the germ of every lesser greatness : and he 
 who can say 'I have faith in the Almighty,' 
 makes a higher boast than if he could declare ' the 
 Mediterranean is my garden, and mine is every 
 branch that waves upon its shores, from the cedars 
 of Lebanon to the pine upon the Alps !' How often 
 in the stifling heat and press of life, when trivial 
 cares rise with dry and dusty cloud to shut us in, 
 do we wholly lose our place in the great calm of 
 God, and fret as if there were no Infinite Reason 
 embracing the vortex of the world! In loneliness 
 and exhaustion, when the spirits are weak, and the 
 crush of circumstances is strong; when comrades 
 rest nd sleep, and we must toil and watch ; when 
 the love of friends grows cold, and the warm light 
 of youth is quenched, and the promises of years 
 seem broken, and hope has but one chapter more, 
 how little do we think, as the boughs drip sadly 
 with all this night rain, that we lodge in Eden 
 still, where the voice of the Lord God rustles in, the 
 trees, and bespeaks the blossom and the fruit that 
 can only spring from tears."
 
 THOUGHTS ABOUT GOD. 
 
 On successive Sundays we have discussed ques- 
 tions relating to the Existence and Providence of 
 God. There is one point, not touched in those dis- 
 cussions, a point of deep interest and even of funda- 
 mental concern, which I wish to bring up to-day : 
 This, namely, whether we have a right to discuss 
 such questions at all ; whether we are warranted in 
 assuming that the Being we term God has any such 
 resemblance to our thought of him that it is be- 
 coming or safe for us to reason about his mind and 
 will. The Hebrew Scriptures earnestly and repeat- 
 edly insist on the incapacity of the human mind to 
 comprehend or even apprehend the ways of the 
 Supreme Power ; they declare that his thoughts are 
 not as our thoughts; that his ways are past our 
 finding out. " Lo, He goeth by me and I see Him 
 not ; He passeth on, but I perceive Him not ; I go
 
 forward, but He is not there ; and backward, but 1 
 cannot perceive Him." " Thy way is on the sea, and 
 thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are 
 not known." Still, notwithstanding such frequent 
 declarations, the believers in the Scripture, perpetu- 
 ally speak as if they knew all about the Unknown, 
 understood perfectly the designs of the Inscrutable, 
 were in the secret confidence of the Hidden One ; 
 as if their thoughts of him were just, their descrip- 
 tions of him accurate, their expectations from him, 
 well grounded. They claim a closer acquaintance 
 with God than they would presume to claim with a 
 bo som friend, and predict his action in any special 
 case more forcibly than they venture to forecast the 
 future of the stock board or the caucus. 
 
 Now the one point I wish to press 'is this; that 
 our thoughts of God are all we have ; Whether they 
 be wise or foolish, deep or shallow, just or erring, 
 our thoughts are all we have. God we have not. 
 He has never been approached or seen, so as to be 
 described. From the nature of things, he is alto- 
 gether out of the reach of our faculties. Think 
 about him we may; but when the wisest have ex- 
 hausted their strength, it is still no more than a 
 thought. The picture framed by a human mind, is 
 inadequate of course, and subject to correction. The 
 Trinitarians think of God as three Persons in One;
 
 the Unitarians think of God as an undivided Unity; 
 the Theist thinks of God as a holy Being ; the Pan- 
 theist thinks of God as the Soul of the world ; but 
 each has only his thought ; neither has a superhuman 
 knowledge. The thought of one may be correct, the 
 thought of the other may be incorrect; but the 
 thought of neither is anything more than a thought. 
 
 In this, it is not implied that God does not exist 
 as a being, but only that we do not apprehend him 
 as a being. It is impossible for, me not to believe 
 that the universe is governed by an intelligent will ; 
 but it is equally impossible for me to imagine the 
 nature of the intelligence or to conjecture the move- 
 ments of the will. Believe in the Supreme Power, 
 trust it, repose on it as we may, it still is a reality 
 beyond our comprehension or our reach. This is a 
 point that cannot be seized too firmly. The stronger 
 my faith in God, the more modest my estimate of 
 such an idea of him as it is practicable for me to 
 form. The notion that he might be such a Being as 
 mind can conceive, no greater, no wiser, no nobler 
 would drive me into atheism. It is only by remem- 
 bering faithfully the utter inadequacy of my thought 
 that I can make him an object of adoration. 
 
 Is it urged on the part of some believer in reve- 
 lation, that all ^this is true, but is inapplicable to 
 him ; that while human thoughts of God are inade-
 
 quate, divine thoughts of him are not ; that the 
 thoughts of the Christian believer are not human but 
 divine, being communicated through special inspira- 
 ration, by God himself, and written plainly in the 
 Scriptures? Is it urged that the Scriptures expressly 
 declare " The natural man receiveth not the things of 
 the spirit of God for they are foolishness to him ; 
 that they are spiritually discerned; that no man 
 knoweth the mind of the Lord, but that the spiritual 
 who "have the mind of Christ" who is himself the 
 Lord, judge all things? 
 
 I reply, that this mind has not been com- 
 municated with such clearness or with such 
 authority that its divine character is self-evident to 
 all open minds : that the thoughts about God in 
 the Scriptures are many and conflicting; that no 
 one stands out with commanding prominence; and 
 that, when all is said that can be said, the believer's 
 conviction is still no more than his conviction ; his 
 conception of the revelation is his conception, his 
 thought of the divine thought is merely his thought. 
 He has not stepped beyond the limits of his own 
 mind. His thought does not change its character 
 because he ascribes it to God ; for that ascription may 
 be a mistake. What he calls a revelation may be 
 an illusion; it cannot be more than a persuasion. 
 
 Human thoughts about God are of every
 
 character of nobleness and ignobleness. They vary 
 with culture, civilization, phases of experience, moods 
 of feeling. The same person may, in different states 
 of mind, go to extremes of belief and unbelief; may 
 pass from materialism to spiritualism, from atheism 
 to pantheism. After reading some strong scientific 
 book, describing the physical constitution and devel- 
 opment of the world, the close connection of sequen- 
 ces and corlsequences, the slow growth of systems, 
 like flowers from seeds, the mind is baffled and be- 
 wildered ; force and law usurp the whole domain of 
 providence, and it is impossible to find a place for 
 creative thought or directing purpose. At another 
 time, when the conscience is roused by some moral 
 turpitude, or some palpable wrong it feels impelled 
 to resent and resist, a sense of responsibility leaps 
 into light from the dark, the. consciousness of moral 
 freedom and moral power is stimulated, the impulse 
 to dare and do is strong, land the Supreme Power 
 ceases to be a law and becomes a lawgiver a holy 
 God the hater of iniquity and the foe of wrong. 
 In another mood one is in the country or by the sea- 
 side ; the eternal beauty shines upon him from every 
 object,and steals in upon him through every sense ; the 
 whole world seems alive, the sky with stars, the 
 earth with flowers and verdure and fruits, the ocean 
 with waves, the woods with insects, flying and creep-
 
 ing things of every form and hue, the very rocks 
 with lichens and crawling plants ; the pulses of be- 
 ing are audibly throbbing; he can almost hear the 
 flow of the all-pervading life, and see the trailing 
 garments of the perpetual creator and recreator as he 
 passes from atom to atom ; then he feels rather than 
 thinks, it is born in upon him with an overwhelming 
 persuasion, that God is present in all things, living 
 and breathing in all, painting the lily* giving fra- 
 grance to the rose, sparkling in the dew drop, breath- 
 ing in the wind, blessing in the rain ; not an indi- 
 vidual but an energy ; not a conscious person but a 
 flowing life. Each mood may be genuine ; each im- 
 pression clear; each inference just in its place and 
 degree, but neither of course is complete or lasting. 
 In another phase of feeling, the same person, lapsing 
 into despondency, depressed by a sense of weakness, 
 crushed beneath the weight of self-reproach and 
 sorrow, in penitential grief or passion of shame will 
 think of God as frowning and angry ; will feel like 
 fleeing from him in terror or kneeling to him in con- 
 trition ; will wish to hide from his face ; will p'ray 
 that his face may be turned graciously towards him ; 
 will cry out for help ; will call for the Saviour, and 
 be in a frame to ask absolution from a priest. The 
 mood passes, the clouds roll away, the skies are 
 clear once more, the phantoms disappear, the
 
 9 
 
 Godhead clothes himself with light and glory. If 
 the mind rests long in one of these moods, the image 
 of deity becomes fixed and permanent ; a dogma of 
 Deity is created. If the mind is a true one and grow- 
 ing, the images vanish, and tha thought clears itself 
 more and more as the heavens clear themselves of 
 vapors. 
 
 Human thoughts about God harden into theolo- 
 gies by being retained and dwelt on. There is the 
 child's thought. It is conveyed in the lovely legend 
 of Eden. The child does not observe with the e} r e of 
 science ; does not compare ; does not reason ; has no 
 experience ; has acquired no rule for measuring 
 effects or proportions ; has no knowledge ; of fancies 
 is full. The mind is active, but unregulated; it 
 believes in miracle because it has no conception of 
 order and law, and makes no distinction between 
 probable and improbable, possible and impossible. 
 The rustling leaves on the ground are the footsteps 
 of the God who walks in the garden at the cool of the 
 evening ; the murmur in the tree-tops as thr wind 
 passes over them is the voice of God speaking to the 
 spirits or communing audibly with himself; he 
 makes the flowers and colors them ; he holds the 
 bird in his hands so that he need not fall from the 
 heights of the air ; he brings the baby in the night 
 to the parent's arms ; he provides food and clothing.
 
 10 
 
 The child asks God for a doll or a drum as simply as 
 it will ask its mother ; will go into the closet and 
 talk with him ; will tell what he has said ; will pour 
 out sorrows into his ear, and propound questions to 
 him with absolute confidence. The child's thought 
 is true for the child, and so long as it is quite natural 
 will do no harm ; it is only when the man forget- 
 ting that the man should put away childish things 
 makes the child's thought his own, fails to correct it 
 by knowledge and experience, and lives, a mature 
 mind in a baby world, that the thought becomes 
 unworthy and even debasing. 
 
 The rude man, violent and cruel, has his thought 
 of God. The ancient Hebrew, contending for the 
 Land of Promise, living in camp, passing his days in 
 battle and his nights in watch, worshipped above all 
 qualities swiftness and valor and annihilating might. 
 His God was strong in battle ; none other could be 
 his God. To order the extermination of the 
 Canaanites, saving only the women whom the sol- 
 diers wanted for wives ; to arrest the sun and moon 
 that rout and carnage might be complete ; to blow 
 stone walls down with the breath of his mouth ; to 
 blast armies by pestilence in a single night ; to 
 enable striplings to conquer giants, were God-like 
 performances. All natural and excusable enough in 
 savage people, so long as they remained savage ; the
 
 11 
 
 soldier's bloody but instinctive thought, but a 
 thought that should pass, be deplored and be for- 
 gotten. 
 
 The bigot has his thought of God ; we read this, 
 too, in the Old Testament. The wars of conquest 
 are nearly ended ; the tribes have become fixed in 
 their sections ; social order and law have become, 
 to a certain extent, established. A king has been 
 chosen ; a priesthood is instituted. Now the " man 
 of God" is recognized as being superior to the " man 
 of war." Saul returns from battle with the Amale- 
 kites, bringing their king captive. Soldier-like he 
 respects his royal prisoner and would spare his life. 
 But Samuel, the priestly judge, will not have it so. 
 It is " the Lord's will" that unbelievers should be 
 exterminated. He fiercely upbraids Saul for his 
 wicked leniency, threatens to pluck the crown from 
 his head and remand him to the low estate to which 
 he was born. Then, summoning before him Agag, 
 the captive king, in the presence of the host he hews 
 him in pieces. This is what the Lord is supposed to 
 approve of ; the Lord of the priest. Such a thought 
 was natural in the time of Samuel, but it would be 
 unnatural and unpardonable now. It was the 
 thought of a narrow minded age, and should have 
 been a passing thought, to be repented of and 
 dropped.
 
 12 
 
 Evil proceeds, not from the false idea, but from 
 the needlessly false idea ; from the idea that is out- 
 grown and should have been dismissed ; the idea 
 that no longer stands for a perfectly honest and sin- 
 cere state of mind. A great deal of indignation has 
 been bestowed on the false ideas of God. The indig- 
 nation would have been directed to better purpose if 
 it had been turned against the error of imagining 
 that the Being we name God corresponds with any 
 image we form of him in our minds. This is the 
 evil, the confounding of our thought about God with 
 God himself ; the reasoning from one to the other ; 
 the identification of our minds with the Infinite 
 Mind, of our intentions with the Absolute Will. 
 
 This evil let us try now to measure, as people 
 should who are impressed with its magnitude and 
 anxious to counteract its effects. There is no thought 
 so imperious as that of God ; none that takes such 
 hold on the imagination, is so associated with au- 
 thority, is so arbitrary in its claim. We must bear 
 all this in mind in order that our criticism may not 
 seem too severe. 
 
 1. In the first place it is very obvious that the 
 habit of associating our thoughts of God with him- 
 self is deeply injurious, if not fatal, to humility ; nor 
 can anything but presumption and arrogance be 
 engendered by such a process. The greatest sage,
 
 13 
 
 the deepest philosopher, the most eminent saint, so 
 long as he bears in mind the purely human and limited 
 nature of his thought retains his modesty, is teach- 
 able, willing to correct the mistakes and more than 
 willing to mend the defects of his intelligence. 
 Newton, one of the highest minds of the race, spoke 
 of himself as a little child picking up pebbles on the 
 shore of infinite being. Goethe, one of the few 
 intellects that deserve to be called " godlike," mur- 
 mured, as he was dying, a prayer for more light. Far 
 from such minds as these is the spirit of dogmatism 
 and intolerance, the spirit of bigotry and intellect- 
 ual tyranny. They are glad to know the thoughts 
 of others ; happy in feeling that while they think 
 others are thinking in new directions and by other 
 methods. But the smallest, darkest, narrowest mind 
 possessed by the insane fancy that its thought of 
 deity is ratified in heaven, that there is an infinite 
 being behind his crepuscular lucubration, that the 
 twinkle of his taper is the veritable " Sun of Right 
 eousness " in all its glory, erects itself like a king, 
 robes itself in the garments of a priest, affirms, 
 argues, judges, denounces, puts by the wisdom of 
 ages, remands Plato to a closet, and Socrates to a 
 corner, talks of " vain philosophy," the " emptyness 
 of human wisdom " and ramps about in the fields of 
 literature as if all there were weeds and rushes.
 
 14 
 
 Such a mind, fortified with this strange assurance, 
 will speak of its own wishes as God's intentions, its 
 own resolves as God's purposes, its own undertak- 
 ings as God's work, the results of its own perform- 
 ance as the evident interposition of God's hand. It 
 excites itself by the dream of its own inspiration, and 
 carries others away by the magnetism which such 
 dreamers always exercise over sensitive spirits, and 
 revels in the conviction that God is about some pro- 
 digious enterprise for the salvation of mankind, be- 
 cause its own faculties are at white heat. 
 
 The revival preacher is the victim of this singular 
 delusion. Could he realize that the thoughts he has 
 about God and Providence, however glowing, are still 
 simply his own ; that other people have their thoughts, 
 equally sincere and perhaps more enlightened; 
 that his thought is entitled to influence according to 
 its worth and no more, his whole movement would 
 be arrested. He might labor, conscientiously and in- 
 tently, but he would labor reasonably, more as a man 
 does who would persuade his fellows,less as a man does 
 who would bear and beat them down, A liberal 
 minister speaking of the revival of Calvinism at 
 present spreading over the country, remarked, and 
 in a spirit that has been commended as one of ex- 
 ceeding candor, that for his part he had not the 
 presumption to criticize it ; that it was not for him
 
 15 
 
 to tell God how he ought to proceed to awaken the 
 spiritual life of the country, nor could he pretend to 
 judge him when he saw him at work. But this is 
 conceding the very point in dispute. 2s G-od at 
 Work? That is the question. Certain Revivalists 
 are at work ; certain of the "' Evangelical '' clergy 
 and laity are at work, but that is a very different 
 thing from the working of the supreme intelligence 
 and power. It ma}* be useful and good work ; very 
 beneficent and necessary work ; work in the per- 
 formance whereof all earnest men and women may 
 take satisfaction. It is their work nevertheless; the 
 credit of it all belongs to them. It is no more en- 
 titled to be called God's work, because it is done in 
 the name of God, than the work of thtir opponents, 
 the work of scientific men, of honest journalists, of 
 worthy merchants, is entitled to be called God's work. 
 In a certain sense all good work is God's work, 
 because all good work is done in accordance with 
 established law. In another sense, none of it is God's 
 work, because it is done with the limited intelli- 
 gence, aim and intention of men. 
 
 No doubt this association of their thoughts with 
 God is a great assistance in their work. If it were 
 understood generally that the thoughts of the 
 " Evangelists " were their own and not God's, that 
 they were doing as they were impelled to do by
 
 16 
 
 their human motives, and not as they were driven to 
 do by the Holy Ghost, their audiences would greatly 
 fall off, their prayer-meetings would be less crowded, 
 their songs and exhortations would produce less 
 agitating effects. They might achieve something, and 
 what they achieved would be the fairly earned result 
 of their labor ; a result too that might last, and could 
 hardly be subject to the violent reactions that make 
 their actual achievements of doubtful value and un- 
 certain character. But they would not produce the 
 excitement they do n^w. 
 
 Does the excitement then, justify the method ? 
 It condemns it ; for the method being illegitimate, 
 the results must be illegitimate too. What if some 
 other class of workers, in another field, the social and 
 political reformers for instance, could persuade people 
 that the work they were doing was God's work ; sup- 
 pose that the antagonist parties in state or social 
 reform were to arrogate the infallibility of God for 
 their moral persuasions, as they might with equal 
 justice, would the excitement they created excuse the 
 dishonesty they practised ? Could it not be charged 
 upon them that they were pushing their cause by 
 false means and under false pretences ? 
 
 The mischief in the case of the " Evangelists " is 
 the greater, because the thoughts they entertain of 
 God are not their own, but are borrowed from people
 
 17 
 
 who lived in very different times and under very dif- 
 ferent conditions. The thoughts, therefore, have no 
 freshness, no living power. They stand for ideas that 
 do not belong to this generation, and perpetuate be- 
 liefs that should long ago have been outgrown. God 
 is called in to ratify and sustain what the intelligence 
 of his world has discarded. This is a great and prac- 
 tical evil ; for God is not only thus made responsible 
 for human thoughts, but is made responsible for un- 
 worthy, for dishonoring thoughts, such as no vital 
 mind furnished with the most recent information 
 would for the first time entertain. Old errors, mis- 
 conceptions, childish or coarse beliefs, are thus re- 
 vived and sanctioned, and the souls of men are dis- 
 honorably dealt by ; a mischief than which few greater 
 can be imagined. 
 
 2. It must be considered, too, that by associating 
 our thoughts of God 'with God himself, we make 
 them fixed and immutable dogmas, that abide from age 
 to age, and educate people in error through gener- 
 ations. God cannot change, and if our thoughts of 
 him are taken to be his thoughts, they will catch the 
 durability that belongs to him, and will become 
 institutions ; the human mind will not grow, but 
 will be arrested, and the religious character will be 
 arrested too. The childish beliefs will keep men 
 childish ; the savage beliefs will keep them savage ;
 
 18 
 
 the inhuman beliefs will keep them inhuman. It is 
 not creditable to the progress of the human mind 
 that the thoughts of the old Testament men should 
 still be entertained ; but while those thoughts are 
 sanctified and sanctioned by association with the 
 mind of the very Jehovah, this mishap is not 
 avoidable. If the story of Eden had not been 
 contained in the bible, its childish view of God 
 would have been discarded by all but children long 
 ere this ; but being written in the bible, and thus 
 authenticated as was supposed by inspiration, adult 
 minds feel obliged to think of God as the child 
 thinks, and in defiance of all knowledge and reason, 
 to picture Him as speaking in audible whispers 
 and appearing in visible shape. Are there none 
 who accepting Joshua's thought of God as equiva- 
 lent to God's thought of Joshua, think of the deity 
 as murderous and cruel, and justify murderousness 
 and cruelty in the name, not of Joshua, but of God, 
 resisting the pleadings of their hearts, and repress- 
 ing their sentiments of mercy as out of line with 
 the habits of the Eternal? The man who knows 
 better than to persecute such as hold different be- 
 liefs, and feels the beauty and excellence, of tolera- 
 tion, dare not show charity to the so called infidel, 
 lest he show himself faithless to the God of Samuel, 
 and displays therefore an ugly temper to his heret-
 
 19 
 ical neighbor, when, if it could te revealed to 
 
 
 
 him that the God of Samuel was merely Samuel's 
 narrow and intolerant thought of God, he would 
 honor the earnest seeker, respect his doubt, and, 
 instead of hewing him in pieces, restore him to his 
 place. But it becomes an impiety to tolerate 
 thoughts that God is suppose to hate, when to 
 encourage such thoughts simply as human thoughts, 
 products of hard and sincere brain work, would be 
 piety. 
 
 3. For God demands of men, in their opinion, what 
 their best thoughts never demand. God, or what is 
 held to be God, is imperious and exacting. No com- 
 promise can be made with him. "What he is supposed 
 to require must be given without hesitation. If he 
 calls for the offering on his altar of mind itself, with 
 all its contents and all its faculties, with all its earn- 
 ings and all its working ability, it must be ireely 
 brought. If he calls for the offering on his altar of 
 the heart's treasures, of sympathy, charity, kindness, 
 as he is believed to have done of Abraham, who, 
 identifying his thought of God with God's Being, 
 lifted the sacrificial knife over his only son, if he 
 calls for the offering of human love, these must not 
 be refused. 
 
 Our best and highest natural thoughts make no 
 such demand. They never stultify cripple or muti-
 
 20 
 
 late us ; they expand and strengthen, confirm all 
 nobleness, enhance all loveliness and grace. Whose 
 highest thought of beauty or truth or charity, whose 
 deepest thought of responsibility, duty, human or di- 
 vine affection, the order of society, the harmony of 
 men, ever suggested to him the necessity of contract- 
 ing sympathy, withholding pity, refusing aid, chilling 
 expressions of tenderness ? Who, in his moments of 
 sincere worship of what was to him the sweetest and 
 best, ever, on leaving his secrecy of meditation, felt 
 impelled to reduce the dimensions of his intellectual 
 or spiritual being ? What earnest worshipper ever 
 came out of this secrecy without wishing he were a 
 thousand times greater in every fine human quality? 
 But the idea of God, when associated, as it is in 
 the multitude of instances, with narrow and mean con- 
 ceptions, arrests the thought, drives it back upon the 
 mind, crowds it in among other and better thoughts, 
 expels them, and occupies their place. As we read the 
 history of human opinion, we are continually coming 
 across this dreary fact. We learn that people have 
 mutilated their bodies in supposed compliance with a 
 divine command, which was nothing else than a vain 
 imagination of their own consecrated by the awful 
 name of deity. Othe'rs have mangled their intellects, 
 lopping off their curiosity, starving their hunger for 
 certain kinds of knowledge, freezing their enthusiasm
 
 for certain literatures or arts, shortening the range of 
 their investigations and decrying the worth of their 
 discoveries, as they never would have done had they 
 been free to alter and enlarge their thoughts as the 
 growth of mini required. Are there no educated, 
 and so called intellectual people now, who literally 
 cannot do justice to opinions and views, cannot read 
 the books that convey them, cannot listen to the 
 teachers that communicate them, because God, as 
 they believe, is hostile to them ? Thus their finest 
 aspiration depresses them ; they are the smaller for 
 their worship ; in the very act of allegiance to what 
 they think the highest, they affront their actual 
 highest. The arrested idea blocks their own develop- 
 ment. So common a thing is this, and so deplorable 
 so disastrous a thing, that some very noble men would 
 abolish if they could the belief in a personal God, in 
 the hope that by so doing they could remove an ob- 
 stacle to faith, and open a free passage to the search 
 of the human min'l after truth and goodness. It 
 pains them to see fixed types of -thought, clothed with 
 divine authority reacting with such terrible force 
 upon the human mind, and making impossible the 
 advance towards worthier conceptions. Better in 
 their judgment no belief in God as a Being, than 
 a belief which obstructs the progress of man. Better 
 no belief in God than a belief that does not animate,
 
 22 
 
 encourage, inspire. The atheism that allows fine 
 aspirations towards an evergreatening glory is better 
 than a trinitarianism that crushes these aspirations, 
 and confines the spirit within the prison of older 
 and gloomier views. 
 
 4. Another thought comes up in this connection, 
 which is of profound significance and reach. The 
 ancient difficulty of reconciling the woe and anguish 
 of the world with the wisdom and goodness of 
 Providence, is greatly diminished and all but dis- 
 appears when we cease to identify our thoughts about 
 Providence with Providence itself, and to make deity 
 responsible for what is due simply to the limitations 
 of our own minds. The consideration that our 
 thoughts are simply our thoughts, that our blindness 
 is not God's light, that our perplexities are not God's 
 intentions, that our doubts spring, not from any 
 absolute ground in the problem itself, but merely 
 from the defects of our understandings, removes 
 at once the weight of a crushing misgiving. Mr. 
 Mill's argument, which was touched on last Sunday, 
 owes its force to the assumption that a personal Being, 
 such as we can picture in. our imagination, is directly 
 responsible for the suffering, sorrow, loss, ruin and 
 guilt that blacken and curse mankind. Take away 
 that assumption, admit frankly that there is no per- 
 sonal Being corresponding to our thoughts; that the
 
 23 
 
 Being \vho projected the universe into existence, and 
 is law and guidance and support to it, is a Being of 
 whom we have but the most shadowy outline, of 
 whose attributes we have no fair , conception what- 
 ever, and however mysterious the universe may be, 
 however insoluble, at present, its problem, we are 
 no longer concerned to reconcile the uglv facts that 
 
 O ' y * 
 
 we see with Almighty power, wisdom or love. 
 
 The agony that good hearts experience at sight 
 of the misery of the world is owing to the contrast 
 between ivhat they see and what they feel not be- 
 tween things as they are, and an infinite goodness : 
 for they do not see things as. they are, and of an in- 
 finite goodness they have not the faintest compre- 
 hension. Whether there be a contrast between 
 things as they really are and a perfect Being, is not, 
 and cannot be a question for any mortal. Thousands 
 and thousands of people, most people in fact, all 
 save the very few, are never disturbed by the ques- 
 tions that exercise the noble soul, for their souls are 
 not noble. There is no contrast between what they 
 see and what they feel, for they have no eyes for the 
 ugly phenomena of existence on the one hand, and 
 they have no feelings for justice, kindness or pity on 
 the other. They are neither observant nor sensitive; 
 doubt never crosses their mind ; the matters dis- 
 cussed so eagerly by divines and philosophers are 
 nothing to them.
 
 24 
 
 The suffering and sorrowful and woe-begone do 
 not as a rule, raise these fearful questions, because no 
 gulf is opened between their experience of evil and 
 their thought of good. Misgivings concerning the 
 governance of the world arise in sensitive, inquisi- 
 tive, generous minds, whose idea of the world as 
 it ought to be is daily confronted with the actual 
 facts of the world as they'see them. The world is 
 not as they would have it. They dream of Eden 
 and, opening their eyes, behold Gethsemane. But 
 there is no agony in Gethsemane to those who have 
 no dream of Eden. 
 
 From this contrast, painful and pathetic as it is, 
 no speculative atheism, no morbid unbelief usually 
 grows. It is only when the dream of Eden is sup- 
 posed to be a revelation of God, that the staggering, 
 stupefying doubt is awakened. Dispel the dream- 
 er's fancy, detach his thought from the eternal, and 
 instantly the domain of the infinite kindness is open 
 to faith again, and the tortured soul is at rest on the 
 Father's bosom. Hope and trust are restored to their 
 rights, and the assurance is recovered that was sup- 
 posed to be lost. The questions are not answered ; they 
 have simply ceased to be questions ; and the business 
 in hand is not to wonder why God allows the world to 
 be as it is, but to do what we can to make the world 
 more nearly what we think it ought to be. A
 
 25 
 
 wholesome duty is thus substituted for an unwhole- 
 some speculation, and instead of- torturing ourselves 
 into uselessness by doubts, we straighten ourselves 
 into rectitude by action. 
 
 Nor let any lightly consider this matter as of 
 small moment. It is indeed of the deepest moment. 
 When we take into account the dissipation of the 
 noblest spirits on these insoluble problems, spirits 
 whose energy the world of society most needs, it 
 com es home to us with solemn force that the matters 
 here dealt with are of living and instant concern. 
 For, at present, the best thoughts of the best men 
 are made instruments of torture to the faith they 
 should heal and uplift. Men seem to be the weaker 
 for their confidences, the poorer for their treasures, 
 the sadder for their worships. They spread their 
 wings to penetrate a bleak region of despair. They 
 are crushed beneath their aspirations. To put men 
 in full possession of their best thoughts, and give 
 them encouragement to make their best thoughts bet- 
 ter, should be the aim of all true well-wishers of 
 their kind. To keep the conception of God pure 
 and exalted is of prime importance ; and to do that we 
 must disencumber his image of the rubbish which 
 our own minds heap upon it. 
 
 It will be urged, in reply to all that has been 
 said, that mere thoughts, even the best thoughts,
 
 26 
 
 stand for little, as practical powers ; that men in 
 general are not influenced or moved by them ; that 
 men need not thoughts but realities. Yes: but what 
 if thoughts are all we have, or can have ! What 
 if realities are beyond our reach, except as thoughts 
 are themselves realities ! What if the most ardent 
 believer has nothing but thoughts ! We must accept 
 things as they are and not complain because we can- 
 not make fictions stand for facts. 
 
 Thoughts, it may be granted must have a back- 
 ground, something behind them, the support and 
 authority of Being. Is it justifiable then to put in 
 a false background, to set up a fictitious something, 
 to fabricate a Being for the purpose ? A background 
 indeed there is, a background of Being too. and so 
 much more vast than is vulgarly apprehended, that 
 there need be no fear of its giving way under our 
 pressure ; a background of solid reality that brings the 
 whole weight of omnipotence to sustain our thought 
 in as far as it is worthy. In proportion as a human 
 thought is true it lays hold on this reality and has 
 the pledge of its alliance. As the thought gains in 
 truth, the hold becomes firm, and the pledge authori- 
 tative. The truer the thought the deeper the 
 earnestness it commands. Ideals are inspirations. 
 The low ideal leaves the moral nature unstirred ; 
 the false ideal distorts the moral nature, and perverts
 
 27 
 
 its action ; the ideal that is at once lofty and true, 
 purifies and exalts the man. 
 
 " Glorious ideal," cries an earnest thinker, " light 
 of minds, lamp of hearts, art thou not the God 
 whom I seek ? Long have I looked for him, this 
 God whom I thought hidden ; on the faith of holy 
 books, I searched for him in imagination and 
 conscience ; I thought to find him in Nature and in 
 Humanity ; everywhere I have found idols. Hence- 
 forth my reason shall see in them only poetic fictions. 
 Thou alone art divine : for before thy face all beauty 
 is dim, virtue bends its head, power is humbled. The 
 universe is great ; thou alone art holy. For the 
 Infinite Being wonder and fear ; for thee alone love, 
 thou God of Beauty and Truth ! We will leave 
 thee in thy heaven with the pure aureole of thought. 
 To attempt to realize thee is to make thee an idol, a 
 vain thing, an idol for. the imagination, a thing of 
 abstractions, taken out of all related conditions. God 
 of my reason ! Long has the faith of mankind pur- 
 sued thee, held thee, contemplated and adored thee 
 in idols and abstractions ! But the day at last has 
 come to see thee as thou art in the glory of thy 
 essence, and to worship thee, as the apostle says, in 
 spirit and in truth."
 
 THE LIVING GOD. 
 
 THE believers and professed believers of our time 
 are greatly exercised with questions, touching the 
 being and the existence of God, are asking earnestly, 
 at all events importunately, whether there be a God, 
 and if there be, how he may be discovered and known. 
 Minds are singularly nimble about this problem. 
 The agility with which people prance and caracole 
 in the purlieus of the subject excites amazement. 
 Such acquaintance with the main lines of distinction ! 
 Such familiarity with the terms of definition ! Such 
 skill in dividing the hairs of argument ! Such 
 astuteness in detecting the traces of heresy, and ex- 
 posing the point at w r hich orthodoxy parts from in- 
 fidelity, and belief shades off into unbelief ! Never, 
 it would seem, was there so much interest in knowing 
 what constitutes the saving faith in deity. It is an 
 age of criticism, when the utmost adroitness in de-
 
 tecting the weak places in a neighbor's creed is 
 accompanied by the utmost complacency in laying 
 down the exact terms of one's own. If it were 
 only matter for definition, how neatly all things 
 would be arranged ! If talking and speculating 
 would only meet the exigency ! If God were only a 
 theological phrase, a dictionary word, a form of 
 speech, the debate could go on smoothly enough. 
 Every man might be a heretic in the eyes of his 
 neighbor, the consignments to theoretical perdition 
 might be large and frequent, and nobody could by 
 any possibility be hurt. 
 
 But there is a lingering feeling that the power to 
 which is given the name God is something more 
 than a theological term, and that no amount of chaf- 
 fering will satisfy its claim on the mind. The word 
 " Atheism " conveying the notion that there is no 
 God at all, has an ominous and dismal sound. Few 
 are willing to frankly avow themselves atheists. In 
 some sense the most skeptical will have it appear 
 that they are believers, amid the last refinements of 
 meaning holding fast to a germ of credence. The 
 multitude resent with horror the imputation of un- 
 belief in this supreme article, and regard with some- 
 thing like detestation those who rest under the sus- 
 picion of it. To be an atheist is regarded as 
 equivalent to being selfish, sordid, sensual, men-
 
 dacious, unscrupulous, and cruel, in short as being 
 in every just sense of the word inhuman. But why ! 
 If we are concerned with mere definitions, if specula- 
 tive theories of the universe alone are in question, if 
 it is simply an affair for philosophy to settle, it is 
 surely unnecessary to be so much disturbed. 
 Pantheism, atheism, deism, theism, bitheism, and 
 tritheism, so long as each may have something to say 
 for itself, why not be willing to listen to the plea and 
 decide coolly according to the evidence ? Why not 
 follow the determinations of the argument, and 
 repose calmly in the peace of whichever theory best 
 commends itself to the understanding ? Why should 
 one theory of the universe be presumed to implicate 
 character more than another ? 
 
 _J The true, deep reason, I apprehend, for the com- 
 mon abhorrence of atheism is to be found in the per- 
 suasion that God, or the power described by that 
 word, is something more than a theological term. 
 The real question is, whether or not this supreme 
 power define it and speculate about it as we will 
 think of it and reason about it as we may, is or is not 
 LIVING, a real power, of intelligence and will, or 
 nothing at all but a fiction of our minds. There is a 
 lurking conviction that the atheist is one who, what- 
 ever he may say, has no belief in living deity ; that 
 he does not stand with bended or uncovered head in
 
 presence of something that in grandeur, beauty, 
 nobleness, sacredness, loveliness, altogether tran- 
 scends himself in kind as well as in degree ; that he 
 neither trembles nor exults in presence of eternal 
 verities ; that aspiration, worship, trust, submission, 
 longing, hope are foreign to him whether as practices 
 or emotions ; that he is self-centred and self-circum- 
 ferenced, determined and bounded by his own indi- 
 viduality ; that he swings about in his own narrow 
 orbit, wholly unimpressed and unswayed by the 
 glorious orbs about him, and spins on his own pivot, 
 too much absorbed in his private affairs to heed 
 what goes on beneath him or above. Without humil- 
 iation or misgivings, without dissatisfaction or dis- 
 trust, thinking only of himself, his own importance, 
 happiness, comfort, he seems not to be aware that 
 aught above claims his reverence, that aught around 
 claims his devotion, that aught below claims his fear ; 
 a solitary, kindless, aweless, soulless being, who 
 whirls away in the dark, himself darkening continu- 
 ally with that inner darkness which is darkness 
 itself. 
 
 If atheism imports this, it is no wonder that men 
 abhor the name of it and employ their utmost inge- 
 nuity in escaping from its breath. 
 
 But how wild and whimsical their methods of 
 escape ! The efforts to find the living God, how
 
 misguided and ineffectual ! There are those, for ex- 
 ample, who search the records of the past for evidence 
 that God was alive at some remote period, arid 
 among some ancient people. Palestine, they say, 
 was the scene of the divine manifestations. There 
 the Deity visibly appeared, walked among men, 
 wrought wondrous and amazing miracles, audibly 
 spoke in words of teaching, warning, rebuke, prom- 
 ise ; there the heavens opened and answered the 
 earth ; mountains trembled and blazed ; hill tops 
 glowed with angelic forms ; sandy places blossomed ; 
 lilies and waves were pulpits : the lake surface re- 
 flected more than the visible skies ; graves gave up 
 their dead ; the very winds carried whispers of 
 heaven, as they swept over the face of the common 
 earth. But to verify this, even as history, is exceed- 
 ingly difficult ; and even if the difficulties could be 
 overcome, the result is only a tradition, a report, a lit- 
 erary record, a probabilit}- that there may have been 
 a revelation, a reflection in worldly texts of Deity ; 
 no living God, but merely a reminiscence of one. 
 
 "We go to the sacred spot, but no footprints are 
 visible; the earth is common earth: the lake of 
 Gennesareth does not compare in heavenliness of 
 beauty with Lake George ; the flowers and fruits on 
 its borders are over-matched by those of our own or- 
 chards and gardens ; the mountains are of the same ma-
 
 terial as the Berkshire hills ; the air is no sweeter on 
 their sides ; the view is no more transporting from 
 their summits. The people who live there are not con- 
 cious of dwelling on sacred soil ; their wretchedness 
 and ignorance rather betray an absence of suspicion 
 that their environment is especially privileged. Of 
 the people who lived at the period of the supposed 
 divine manifestation, the large majority were no more 
 alive than their successors are, to the fact of the 
 Deity's revival, and were looking back disconsolate 
 to some period, to them remote, when the silence 
 was indeed broken, and the blackness lighted up, 
 and the deathliness stirred by the manifest God. 
 
 But were all this otherwise, were the evidence of 
 the celestial theophanies or apparitions irresistible, 
 were the footprints of the God distinctly traceable 
 even yet from end to end of the Holy Land ; were 
 there all imaginable reasons for believing that the 
 Hebrews of the time of Moses, and the Jews of the 
 time of Jesus, were, every man woman and child of 
 them, dumb with amazement or wild with joy at the 
 familiar visitation of Deity ; were the present inhab- 
 itants of Palestine proudly and humbly sensible of 
 the honor vouchsafed to them through their ancestors ; 
 still all we have would be the assurance that God 
 lived once, not that He is alive now, and the practical 
 value of such an assurance cannot be estimated
 
 9 
 
 highly. For what is it after all, but an admission 
 that God is not alive at present, that at present he is 
 about the same as dead ? For a God who appeared and 
 then disappeared, is more hopelessly absent than a 
 God who never appeared. A God who never appear- 
 ed may be expected ; faith, and love, and hope, being 
 careless time-keepers, can wait long for the dis- 
 closure they have what to them are good reasons for 
 anticipating ; but if the Deity has been and gone, 
 the watchlights may as well be put out, and all the 
 virgins may be dismissed to their morning slumber. 
 A living God is a God who lives here and now, not 
 a God who lived there and then, and the more con- 
 clusive the evidence that He lived there and then, 
 the fainter the hope that He will live here and now. 
 For the same reason it is idle to seek to recover 
 faith in a living God, by imagining a time when he 
 will manifest himself. A deity who is to become visible 
 and audible, one of these days, in the hereafter, when 
 our human life is ended, and our. human concerns 
 have ceased, visible in his heavens, audible in his 
 judgments, certainly can by no stretch of language 
 be called a living deity. A God who comes to life, so 
 far as we are concerned at the termination of a cer- 
 tain number of years ! A God who becomes mani- 
 fest when our present sensibility to impressions is de- 
 stroyed, and our very thoughts have perished ! It
 
 10 
 
 will be enough to speak of such a living God when 
 we have come to where he is, when we have ceased 
 to be what we are, and have taken on the new senses 
 that are to make us cognizant of things belonging to 
 an entirely different sphere; but for men on the 
 earth to call this a living God would be an unpardon- 
 able misuse of terms. A God who lived once, or who 
 is to live by and by, is an absence, not a presence. 
 
 The Revivalists perceive the difficulty and meet 
 it by importing a Deity for the hour. They profess 
 to have means by which they can secure his presence 
 and have him, for the time being, within call. As 
 the medium hunters assemble in their chamber and 
 sing vociferously to tempt the spirits who have no 
 taste for the music of silence ; so the believers in a 
 moveable divinity think that if they combine and con- 
 spire, pray with sufficient fervor, sing with sufficient 
 pathos, exhort with sufficient fluency, they can induce 
 the Deity to " bow down his ear," to " pour out his 
 spirit," to " vouchsafe His blessing," to " visit and 
 refresh and comfort His people." The place is ap- 
 pointed ; the hour is fixed ; the precise moment is 
 announced ; an ordinary time- piece tells off the in- 
 stants of grace ; how long the Lord will stay is doubt- 
 ful ; " seek ye Him therefore, while He is to be found ; 
 call ye upon Him while He is near." The brief sea- 
 son passed, it may be too late ; the church door closed
 
 11 
 
 knocking may be in vain. But again the doubt 
 arises, if we have yet a living God, a God of moods 
 and caprices, yes, a God uncertain, eccentric, spas- 
 modical ; but a living God ? No : should we call him 
 a live man who had to be importuned before he 
 would show himself; whose periods of activity were 
 intermittent; who now and then dashed into affairs 
 with great noise and commotion, and vanished as 
 suddenly as he came leaving people to clear up the 
 ground after him as they could ? A live man is one 
 who runs his activities and his hours together, who 
 puts his energy into successive deeds, knitting day 
 to day and year to year by his purposes, and charg- 
 ing with his own vitality the incidents that await 
 him in his career ; the man who makes himself felt 
 in all the relations of home, business, politics, or 
 whatever else may engage him. Neither history nor 
 prophecy gives us the live man; experience gives 
 him to us always. An eminent writer, once a Ration- 
 alist, afterwards a Romanist, in a book written after 
 his conversion and to explain the process of it, de- 
 scribes enthusiastically his emotions on discovering 
 that God was free, free to come or go, to speak or be 
 silent, to run in the grooves of law or to depart from 
 them ; free to bestow His spirit on whom He would. 
 How little the man could have understood what a 
 Living God was ! What a poor conception of free-
 
 12 
 
 dom ! Had he tarried in the faith he abandoned long 
 enough to understand it, he would have escaped a 
 confession that does so little credit to his rational 
 powers. 
 
 The Living God : how shall we describe such a 
 being ? Him we may not seek to describe ; for by 
 the nature of the case He is indescribable ; but the 
 evidence of his being alive may at least be indicated. 
 The most luminous suggestions of the Living God 
 are given by the scientific men who tell us of the 
 processes of nature in the material world. The as- 
 tronomers who unroll before us the chart of the 
 heavens ; the geologists who decipher the rec- 
 ords of our own planet ; the naturalists who ex- 
 plain the construction of plants and animals ; the 
 anatomists and physiologists who take to pieces the 
 frame of man and show how fearfully and wonder- 
 fully it is made. The conviction is forced on us as 
 we listen to these men, that the Superior Power, 
 the creative mind, the shaping originating will, what- 
 ever it be, is as active to-day, in all ways as active 
 as it ever was since time began ; that there has been 
 no moment of suspended animation; that the same 
 things are produced, by the same agencies, through 
 the same methods, in the same order, under the same 
 conditions, and apparently on the same plan. The 
 properties of the material world, the properties of
 
 13 
 
 wood, iron, rock, water, arc in all respects the same 
 that they ever have been. Light and air conform to 
 precisely the same, laws; sunrise and sunset, rain-fall 
 and drought observe the regulations made at the start. 
 The creative forces are still busy, not slumbering for 
 an instant, absorbingly and eiigrossingly busy ; a thou- 
 sand times busier they seem to us than they could 
 have seemed to the men of Palestine; more active 
 in their daily operations than once the}' seemed to be 
 in their special and exceptional working; changing 
 water into wine and quickening death into life after 
 a manner never suspected in Judaea. With us it is 
 no matter for conjecture, but actual knowledge, 
 brought home to us in a thousand ways, and accepted 
 by all who have bestowed thought on the subject, 
 that the God of nature has never been more alive 
 than he is at this moment ; that creation is success- 
 ive, not single ; a process, not an act ; the work of 
 immeasurable ages closelv welded together, not of a 
 
 o , o 
 
 week or an interval ; that it is everlasting and con- 
 tinuous ; as constant, as subtle, as vast, as perma- 
 nent as it was in the imaginary week of Genesis. 
 The universe is conceded by earnest, believing, re- 
 ligious men, not materialists or skeptics, to be not so 
 much a complicated machine, which once made need 
 not even be superintended, as a living abode and ever 
 present manifestation of whatever being, spirit, 
 power it is that men call by the name of deity.
 
 14 
 
 So far, then, the conception of a living God is 
 given ; and how vivid that conception becomes, how 
 glowing and beautiful, how deep and vast, when 
 some illumined mind interprets to us meanings not 
 revealed to the outward eye ! When some poet like 
 Tennyson or Browning, some artist like Turner or 
 Millet, or men nearer home, bring out wonders of 
 beauty, intelligence, truth, from the blank as- 
 pects of material things ; open to us chambers of 
 imagery whereof we had not dreamed; disclose 
 reaches of possibility that seem simply inexhaustible, 
 and make us feel how near to the awakened mind, is 
 the never slumbering mind ! 
 
 So far, then, the conception of a Living God, is 
 made definite. No hint, it may be, is thrown out in 
 regard to the nature of infinite being ; we are as far 
 perhaps as ever from a knowledge of what God may 
 be in himself ; nay, the mystery of that may possibly 
 be deepened ; still that whatever Power there is, iC 
 alive, in every atom of space, in every instant of) 
 time, is put beyond controversy. : _ . 
 
 But nature, as commonly understood, gives us 
 only the ruder forms of this activity. The living 
 God is disclosed in the activities of the human mind 
 more impressively than in any material operation. 
 It does not become us to be overawed by distance 
 and bulk. An ounce of mind outweighs a million
 
 15 
 
 tons of matter. The leap of an affection distances 
 the spring of lightning. The thought of a Newton 
 goes out beyond the confines of the universe ; the 
 love of a Feneloii gives music to the morning stars ; 
 the winds of intelligence that ceme we know not 
 whence, and go we know not whither, but which are 
 always blowing where human minds are alert ; the 
 waves of feeling that rise and swell and advance and 
 make the ocean of existence sparkle with foam, are 
 better evidence of a living spirit abroad than the 
 stars that gem the night heavens, or the laws that 
 speed light from orb to orb. 
 
 J The living God is manifest in much higher form 
 in mind than in matter. The activity of conscience 
 is more exalted than the activity of mechanical force. 
 It is only of man that we predicate inspiration. 
 Stones and trees are not inspired. Genius cannot be 
 ascribed to muscle or nerve. The higher the style 
 of human energy the higher the exhibition of divine 
 energy. To the divine there is, literally, no limit. 
 No man has ever exhausted the infinite. On the 
 contrary, in proportion to the power of the draught 
 is the depth of the well. If the living God is seen in 
 the vast, mysterious forces that bear generations and 
 nations of men along over reaches of experience that 
 of their own wit and will, they could not see their 
 way over, as was the case in our late civil war,
 
 16 
 
 when whole States were carried on as it were in 
 spite of themselves towards issues they not only did 
 not desire, but could not foresee, much more clearly^ 
 is it seen in the astonishing power exerted by single 
 persons who, striking the current of some great prin- 
 ciple, are swept on as with the wings of a heavenly 
 host, full of confidence, and charged with irresistible 
 strength of persuasion and conviction. A celebrated 
 aeronaut believes that whenever he shall reach a cer- 
 tain altitude he will strike a steadily-moving current 
 of air that will carry him smoothly and steadily 
 round the globe. It is no conjecture that when a 
 man reaches a certain moral altitude he strikes a cur- 
 rent of moral power to whose expansion and swift- 
 ness there is no limit. Hear men speak of the living 
 God who have with unfaltering trust and unswerving 
 courage committed themselves to a humane principle. 
 These are the witnesses it is idle, to gainsay ; 
 they are of all times, and numerous enough to put 
 forever to flight the prejudice that God favors special 
 ages and peculiar tribes. Our own seer declares: 
 " There is a soul in the centre of nature and over the 
 will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the 
 universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment 
 into nature, that we prosper when we accept its ad- 
 vice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures, 
 our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our
 
 own breasts. The whole course of things goes to 
 teaeli us faith. We. need only obey. There is guid- 
 ance for eaeli of us, and by truly listening we shall 
 hear the right word. Place yourself in the middle 
 of the stream of power and wisdom which animates 
 all whom it iloats. and you are without effort impel- 
 led to truth, to right and a perfect contentment/' 
 
 This is the language of the highest and serenest 
 faith. I quote it that you may know how the purest 
 speak on this great theme. More modest speech be- 
 comes us. The truth I am insisting on, can be made 
 
 o 
 
 apparent to unspiritual minds. Where shall we 
 seek then for the working of the living God in our 
 own city and our own year? Do we discern it in the 
 stir that precedes the effort to produce a grand re- 
 vival of religion ? Is it evidenced by crowded rinks 
 and hippodromes, hymns sung by ten thousand voices, 
 a multitudinous out-pouring of prayer at morning 
 noon and night from churches and chapels innumer- 
 able ; in exhortations that make assemblies tremble, 
 in the ecstatic shouts of congregations assured of 
 their salvation, in the moans of anxious sinners griev- 
 ing lest they be lost, in the thronging towards places 
 where the Bible is read, and petitions are sent up that 
 the powers of the world may be converted to Christ? 
 I should look for it rather where men are struggling 
 in faith to unmask some gigantic iniquity, like the
 
 18 
 
 frauds of the Indian ring, or to throw off some enor- 
 mous corruption, like that which has obtained pos- 
 session of the canals. I should cast about to see where 
 effort was making to enthrone honest men in office in 
 place of knaves, to restore confidence to trade, to estab- 
 lish true instead of false values for money and the com- 
 modities that money buys; I should sharpen my 
 vision to discover the people who, by simplicity and 
 sincerity of life, were making head against affectation, 
 hypocrisy, and emptiness. Here we may be sure of 
 finding the footprints of the living God, here, and 
 surely not elsewhere. Is it said that all such seeking 
 will be vain ? that the men who seem to be bent on un- 
 masking iniquity are themselves iniquitous ? that the 
 " honest men " are knaves in disguise ? that the re- 
 formers themselves chiefly need reforming? that the 
 champions of honest government are simply schem- 
 ing to put themselves into places of emolument and 
 power? that, in a word, it is all illusion, this idea 
 that the living God manifests Himself in any such 
 vulgar utilitarian manner ? still, I should say " such 
 ways as these or none." Thus, or not at all, the 
 divine energy is displayed. If these men are not 
 honest, perhaps others are ; we will look for them till 
 we find them ; if we cannot find them we shall 
 believe that they are simply out of our sight, not 
 out of being. For it is plainly incredible that the
 
 19 
 
 human world should be absolutely deserted by honesty. 
 A certain amount of honorable purpose is necessary 
 to the sanity of mankind. It is the salt that pre- 
 serves things from putrefaction. If it does not exist 
 in one place it does in another. If it is not found in 
 conspicuous people it must be sought among the 
 inconspicuous. But wherever it is, there is the 
 power of regeneration; there is the living God. 
 Yes, though it be found with people who acknowl- 
 edge no God, who never worship, who make no con- 
 fession, its presence indicates the divine presence. 
 For whoever strikes the divine current shares the 
 divine life, and brings the divine revelation. Creeds 
 are of no moment here. Definitions have no signif- 
 icance. The avowed Atheist who accepts the con- 
 ditions, observes the laws, penetrates beneath the 
 surface to the forces that control incidents ; the 
 materialist who conforms to the principles of mat- 
 ter, receives a demonstration of the living God such 
 as is withheld entirely from the disobedient or heed- 
 less theist. The live man discovers the live God; I 
 and the wealth of the discovery is according to the 
 grade of the life. 
 
 It has been often observed that a fresh conviction 
 of the presence and power of the Living God is felt 
 in times of social depression. Revivals of religion 
 come in season of panic and general distress. The
 
 20 
 
 explanation is obvious. Men do not think of the 
 living laws when their minds are full of other inter- 
 ests. It is only when their minds are full of anxiety 
 and emptiness that in their helplessness they turn 
 to foreign aid. But they do it after an irrational and 
 superstitious manner, showing their inexperience and 
 utter ignorance of the celestial powers by the childish- 
 ness of their behavior. They resemble savages who 
 worship the mountain that has dropped a boulder 
 upon their village, or the child that thinks the wind 
 comes out of the tree tops. Like people suddenly 
 awakened from a deep slumber, they start, utter in- 
 articulate cries, glare, and fling their arms wildly 
 about as if they were beset by invisible foes. A 
 practical acquaintance with the Deity if so we call 
 it, that lives in the healing elements of matter and 
 mind, and operates daily and hourly to restore men 
 to vigorous health when folly has made them sick, 
 would save them the labor of calling in from some 
 remote quarter outside of the world, a being who is 
 only remembered because he had been so long away. 
 Times of distress, even like the present are indeed 
 provocative of thought on the existence and attributes 
 of a Living God. No time could be better for such 
 inquiry. For it is when life in us is low that the 
 fulness of the divine life is most clearly manifest. 
 But manifest where ? Where, if not here, in the
 
 91 
 
 stern, steadfast, ragged, unerring facts that stand out 
 gaunt and terrible, now that the winds of adversity 
 have swept away the flowering shrubbery that covered 
 them in the sunny prosperous weather. How the 
 living realities of God stand out in such years of 
 mental impoverishment ! With what steady rush 
 the eternal flood pours along ! No prayers or inter- 
 cessions stop the tide-. The stream will not desert 
 its channel, or swerve from its course, or abate the 
 rapidity of its overflow, because foolish people who 
 have planted their grain in unsafe places bewail the 
 fate of their poultry yards. A whole people, com- 
 prising the inhabitants of many states clamor for 
 renewed prosperity. There is not a man or woman 
 or child old enough to wonder why papa does not 
 buy new clothes, that does not wish that the mills 
 might be once more in full operation, business active, 
 industry employed, labor demanded and rewarded, 
 real estate restored to its just valuation. Hundreds 
 of brains are busy with expedients for bringing back 
 prosperity ; the lamentations of suffering and poverty 
 rise louder from day to day, but the living deity 
 shows no signs of relenting. Banks crumble, firms 
 totter, bringing down ruin on hundreds of helpless 
 people ; but the weather-cocks that indicate the 
 course of the etherial currents still point inexorably 
 in the same direction. Thousands must remain out
 
 22 
 
 of employment till they can -be honestly employed. 
 Business will continue dull till it can be conducted 
 on a solid basis of values. In the panic of 1857, a 
 sturdy man wrote " This general failure, both private 
 and public, is occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us 
 whom we have at the helm that justice is always 
 done. If our merchants did not most of them fail, and 
 the banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world 
 would be staggered. The statement that ninety-six 
 in a hundred doing such business surely break down, 
 is perhaps the sweetest fact that statistics have re- 
 vealed exhilarating as the fragrance of swallows in 
 spring. Does it not say some where 'The Lord reigneth, 
 let the earth rejoice?' If thousands are thrown out 
 of employment, it suggests that they were not well 
 employed. Why don't they take the hint? " If we 
 would but return to the God who lives in first prin- 
 ciples, cease from wild speculation, check over pro- 
 duction, incur no debts we cannot pay, and pay our 
 debts in solid values that all civilized men recognize, 
 the Living God would need no invitation to make his 
 blessings felt by high and low ; plenty would return, 
 and with plenty, gladness and praise. A revival of 
 faith in the simple, old fashioned, too familiar laws of 
 commercial honor and honesty between man and man 
 is the revival of religion we need. If half the zeal 
 expended in the endeavor to bring to bear supernat-
 
 23 
 
 ural aid were devoted to the task of begetting con- 
 formity with the rules of order and success that are 
 as familiar to us as our nursery speech, the desire of 
 every heart would be accomplished. God is not far 
 off; He is only too near. It is because He is the 
 Living God that we do not see Him. It is because 
 we think of him as a God dead or absentee, that we 
 clamor for His presence. 
 
 At the time of the recent accident from the broken 
 fire ladder by which brave men lost their lives and 
 families were plunged into misery, I was asked if I 
 saw the hand of Providence in all that. Not the hand 
 only, I replied, but the whole arm, the whole person, 
 the very soul of Providence. Had not Providence 
 been leading the way for untold centuries to the in- 
 vention and manufacture of that very fire ladder? 
 Had not thousands of ages been granted for the test- 
 ing of wood and iron? Had not the mechanical 
 forces, so called weight, tension, resistance, lever- 
 age, been tried by experiments innumerable ? Is it 
 not perfectly well known precisely how much strain 
 any machine" can bear? Are there not scores of 
 engineers and mechanics who must, every day of their 
 lives, declare, and declare positively, under oath as 
 it were, how many ounces or tons it will do to place 
 on a given column of stone, iron or wood, in a given 
 position ? Does any one pretend to say that Provi-
 
 24 
 
 dence has not kept its word in this particular in- 
 stance ? Is it so much as whispered that the ladder 
 would have given way and flung the men to the 
 ground, if the well known conditions had been com- 
 plied with, and the machine had been taxed no more 
 than its strength justified? It seems to me that Prov- 
 vidence has foreseen everything, has measured with 
 its eye every inch and atom, and made sure as fate 
 every contingency. ^But why did He not make so 
 sure that the catastrophe could not happen ? Because 
 to have done that would have been to retract the 
 declarations of ages, would have been to declare that 
 the method of experiment, apparently adopted ever 
 since man appeared on the planet, was a bare pretence 
 after all, a mere "fetch," not seriously intended ; that 
 the virtues of caution, prudence, forethought, fidelity 
 which had been under painful cultivation for a million 
 or so of years, were of no manner of account. A 
 greater improvidence than this could not be imagined. 
 A Providence that could to all seeming exert so much 
 prevision and take so much pains, and then allow 
 that the prevision was at fault and the ^pains wasted, 
 would be scouted and mocked at by the ordinary 
 housekeeper and nursery governess. A Deity who 
 could do that would simply deny His own existence^ 
 turn atheist on His own account, commit an eternal 
 suicide, not merely kill Himself, but abolish Himself
 
 25 
 
 by eradicating His very memory. He would be 
 deader than dead; He would flout the idea that He 
 had ever lived. 
 
 But might there not have been some expression 
 of regret over the catastrophe, some sign of pity for 
 the sufferers, some evidence of sorrow for the wretch- 
 edness of the widows and orphans ? Tenderness ! 
 Think of the tenderness expressed in the patient 
 education of the iron and wood for their sacred 
 functions ; in the tedious process of instructing men 
 in the knowledge most essential to their own happi- 
 ness ; in the training of mankind in fidelity to the 
 conditions of their own safety ! and after all this 
 gentle forbearance, and pitiful consideration, and 
 compassionate forecast, never for an instant inter- 
 mitted, and exhibited up to the last moment, is it 
 fair to ask for more ? To demand that providence 
 should shed tears over those who have flung its com- 
 passions to the winds ? Should express sorrow that 
 its own laws had been fulfilled, and its own predic- 
 tions had come to pass ? To me there is deeper sen- 
 timent of grief in the silence, unbroken by reproach, 
 that follows these wilful and foolhardy defiances of 
 the life of ages. If the compassionate Lord of life 
 could have been induced to utter any voice, it must, 
 one would think, have been a voice of indignant re- 
 monstance against the block-headed stupidity andbot-
 
 26 
 
 tomless folly that after centuries of demonstration 
 will coolly take it for granted that nothing has been 
 established, that God is not a living being after all, 
 but only a ghostly fiction. " Nature is pitiless ! " says 
 Victor Hugo : " she never withdraws her flowers, her 
 music, her joyousness, her sunlight from before human 
 cruelty or suffering. She overwhelms man by the con- 
 trast between social hideousness and divine beauty." 
 The Living God is the only God there is. He 
 does not come to life ; He lives. To think of Him as 
 absent, is to forget Him. We read the stately psalm 
 beginning " O Lord, thou hast searched me and 
 known me," and wonder how the writer of it was 
 able to strike so deep a chord. The wonder ceases 
 when we come to know that calamity and contempt 
 driving him back upon the simple realities of life, had 
 opened in his wilderness the springs that are never 
 exhausted. Coming to life himself he discovered, 
 that God was perennially alive. His was not so much 
 the language of inspiration as it was the language of 
 human faith and hope. As the drilling of an artesian 
 well brings water from the " footless mountains " 
 hundreds of leagues away, so, by drilling beneath the 
 surface into the depths of common human experience, 
 one brings the grace of the dew that falls on the 
 sightless hill tops of eternity.
 
 ALLEGIANCE TO FAITH. 
 
 THE subject of this address is the Radical's Alle- 
 giance to Faith. The purpose of it is to show the 
 ground of that allegiance, and to quicken the feeling 
 of it in liberal breasts. Faith may be defined as 
 reason's pledge to beliefs that transcend actual vision 
 and knowledge. Loyalty to faith has always ranked 
 high among virtues. To have no faith at all has in 
 all times been held as a sign that the mind lacked 
 spirituality and earnestness. To have a faith and 
 be disloyal to it is branded as apostasy, the most 
 heinous of guilt. The test of allegiance to faith is 
 the amount of ease, comfort, or other external good 
 that is sacrificed to it. 
 
 It is a general impression not among so-called 
 Orthodox alone, but among liberals also, that the 
 allegiance of the latter is slack, and the inference 
 drawn is that they have no faith that commands
 
 allegiance, that loyalty to faith is a thing unknown, 
 and that it is on the decrease in proportion as, becom- 
 ing " liberal," men lose their hold on positive ideas. 
 
 I will allow the alleged slackness to pass for the 
 moment unquestioned. Let us try to account for it, 
 and also to remove it. That the zeal of the so-called 
 Orthodox, as displayed in conspicuous works, the 
 expenditure of great sums of money and of vast 
 labor on religious effort of all kinds, is greatly in 
 advance of anything the liberals can show is an open 
 fact. Indeed if " works " be the accredited evidence 
 of faith, the faith of the liberals must be reckoned 
 exceedingly small, for their performances in the way 
 of sustaining and spreading their ideas bear no com- 
 parison with those of their " evangelical" neighbors. 
 This may be explained in part by the comparative 
 fewness of their numbers ; but it may be doubted if 
 the performance of radicals is in fair proportion to 
 their numbers, letting alone the consideration that 
 zeal makes little account of numbers. Numbers will 
 hardly explain zeal, neither will the greater amount 
 of wealth. As a rule Orthodoxy is richer than liberal- 
 ism. Conservatives as a class are richer than radicals. 
 It may be that wealth makes people conservative ; it 
 may be that the structure of the conservative mind 
 is better adapted to the acquisition of wealth. On 
 either supposition, men of liberal opinions have never
 
 been distinguished by the abundance of their worldly 
 possessions. 
 
 But here again, it must be remembered that in 
 all charities and operations wherein feeling predom- 
 inates, the poor give with far greater freedom than 
 the rich. Nearly all religious operations are carried 
 on by the multitudinous small offerings of the poor, 
 and where the poor are not numerous their contribu- 
 tions are usually out of all proportion to their means. 
 
 We come nearer to the point where we mention 
 the effect of Sectarianism in stimulating zeal. In 
 fact, zeal is nearly commensurate with Sectarianism. 
 Sectarianism multiplies parties, builds churches, 
 starts newspapers and magazines, ordains ministers, 
 founds colleges, libraries, lectureships, institutes, mis- 
 sion schools ; maintains ecclesiastical powers, sus- 
 tains missionary effort, stirs up the competition 
 and rivalry that keep religious people on the stretch 
 to outdo one another. The decrease of the Sectarian 
 spirit would leave many a cistern empty, and make 
 many a channel dry, and turn exulting and abound- 
 ing rivers of enthusiasm into . thin trickling stream- 
 lets of muddy and slow moving water. The Sec- 
 tarian spirit being the spirit of envy, distrust, rivalry, 
 deepening into bitterness and even hate, stirs 
 up the acrid and malignant temper that is unscrup- 
 ulous in the pursuit of its ends. The average man)
 
 spends more on his antipathy than on his sympathy, 
 sacrifices more to crush his enemies than to aid his 
 friends, will sooner give his life to gratify his rage 
 than give a small portion of his goods to prove his 
 loving kindness. More than one wears the crown of 
 the martyr who went to the stake to maintain a pre- 
 judice he would rather burn than yield. Now, in 
 the true liberal the Sectarian spirit is extinct. It is 
 against his profession ; it is abhorrent to his intellect- 
 ual nature. He makes its suppression a duty, taking 
 himself severely to task if he finds a vestige of it re- 
 maining in his mind. He can neither fight for a creed, 
 ^ nor spend for a creed. Such enthusiasm as he has 
 must be an enthusiasm for religion pure and unde- 
 filed, for the beauty and truth of ideas, for intellect- 
 ual principles freed from all alloy of private or class 
 prejudice ; his allegiance is to truth uncompromised 
 and unadorned. It must not be expected that an 
 enthusiasm like this will make any show beside the 
 noisy, hot, partisan fanaticism whose ambition is for 
 party triumph. 
 
 That the popular religion gains adherents through 
 the promise it holds out of worldly emolument and 
 success, need not be said. Orthodox allegiance cer- 
 tainly is more lucrative than allegiance to radical 
 views. " Evangelicalism " is rich and popular ; it 
 controls opinion ; it commands the avenues to power
 
 and place ; it has the key to social favor and dis- 
 tinction. But the allegiance of the self-seeking is 
 no help to any faith. They strengthen the side they 
 abandon, and pull down the institutions they patron- 
 ize. They are a plague of mice and locusts, devour- 
 ing the field they occupy. They are an army of 
 traitors, dangerous in proportion to the clashing of 
 their weapons and the vehemence of their " hurrah." 
 The apparent weakness of liberalism from the de- 
 sertion of the multitude who go where there is most 
 to be got, is a real strength. 
 
 No doubt the blandishments of worldliness will 
 account in large measure for the apparent overflow 
 of enthusiasm on the one side, and the apparent sub- 
 sidence of it on the other, for people will put 
 themselves forward when their interest requires them 
 to do so, and will make noisy demonstrations of zeal 
 when they would attract attention and secure the 
 patronage they look for. They who solicit favors 
 occupy front seats. Indeed, forwardness is a sign of ' 
 insincerity. But powerful as worldliness is as an ally 
 of any popular faith, other-worldliness, as it has been 
 happily called, is an ally much more powerful. 
 Orthodoxy offers the heaviest conceivable bribe to 
 cupidity in its promise of salvation from misery here- 
 after. Having on either hand the angels of terror 
 and of trust, pointing on one side to heaven and its
 
 8 
 
 deathless glories, on the other side to hell and its 
 endless agonies, and making loud profession . of its 
 ability to open the one door, and close the other 
 to mortal men, it plays on human hopes and 
 fears in a way that the multitude are wholly power- 
 less to resist. Fortified with the authority of ages, 
 bold in the support of traditions reaching far into 
 the depths of antiquity, backed by the witness of 
 learned and earnest men, eloquent with the lan- 
 guage of consecrated scriptures, having at its com- 
 mand all the arts of superstition, it is able to lash 
 into fury or to subdue into tenderness the tossing, 
 fluctuating emotions of mankind, extorting from them 
 treasures of gold and silver, costlier treasures of af- 
 fection thought and duty, the sacrifice of personal 
 will and being. It can move the soul to its depths, 
 and compel an allegiance made up of the heartiest 
 gratitude and utterly consecrated love. \ 
 
 It is no cause of wonder that a religion like this 
 gains devoted adherents. It were indeed strange 
 if it did not ; strange if the allegiance of its 
 multitude were wanting in any quality of pas- 
 sionate intensity. It is common among liberals 
 to say that the multitude are attracted to this religion 
 by selfish motives, and that their loyalty consequently 
 is lacking in every noble attribute. But is it fair to 
 bestow the ugly word " selfishness " on the honest
 
 desire for eternal felicity? Is there one of us who 
 would not give in his allegiance to the Orthodox 
 faith, if he admitted its claim to ensure painlessness, 
 and peace, and joy for so much as a century after 
 death? Truly there is nothing ignoble in love of 
 the soul, even though it were purely private and per- 
 sonal, supposing that love to wrong no fellow crea- 
 ture. To be indifferent to such tremendous issues as 
 Orthodoxy presents, granting its right to present 
 them, would indicate a degree of moral deadness 
 that might take one out of the category of humanity. 
 
 O O \.' *j 
 
 But it must be conceded that Orthodoxy does not 
 allow people to be satisfied with an assurance of per- 
 sonal and private safety in the hereafter. It cease- 
 lessly urges the duty of saving others from woe. Its 
 missionary efforts are untiring. In fact, its churches 
 are missionary societies, working in many ways at the 
 task of interesting mankind at large everywhere, of 
 
 O O t. 
 
 all conditions, in all latitudes and longitudes, breadths, 
 and depths of ignorance and depravity, in this one 
 concern the safety and felicity of their immortal 
 souls. The enthusiasm of religion discharges itself 
 in endeavors to fulfil this task. The zeal burns for 
 this ; for this, money flows in rivers, and men spend 
 themselves in armies ; for this, stations of prophec y 
 are planted on the islands of the sea and in the wil - 
 derness.
 
 10 
 
 Liberalism can make no such appeal. The claim 
 of Orthodoxy is to her a baseless assumption. She 
 accepts no such philosophy of the future existence ; 
 and if she did, she might question the title of any 
 Church to award to human beings the meed of their 
 destiny. Liberalism claims no loyalty or devotion 
 on the ground that she has a voice in deciding the 
 fate of human creatures after death. She neither 
 drives by the whip nor allures by the prize. She 
 neither terrifies by menace nor wins by promise. 
 The excitements of passion, whether of love or of 
 fear she discards. In her view the future, whatever and 
 wherever and how long soever it may be, is condi- 
 tioned on the present. The next life, according to 
 its notion, is the nearest life. However high into the 
 heavens the structure may lead, the foundation must 
 be laid in the terrestrial soil. 
 
 * But has not Liberalism, even here, at this very 
 point, a ground for making an earnest appeal to 
 reasonable men ? Letting go the region after death 
 as an undiscovered country, and confining regard 
 to men where they are, the task is to discover the 
 laws of character ; to ascertain the rules of wise, 
 just, healthful and noble living; to establish and re- 
 veal the conditions of goodness, and make them so 
 evident and attractive, that men and women shall wish 
 and purpose first of all to justify themselves to their
 
 11 
 
 own hearts, to their fellow-men, and to the princi- 
 ples of the ideal world ; to teach and urge them so 
 to live that the future shall be determined by their 
 character and be quietly allowed to take care of it- 
 self as a thing in any event provided for and so to be 
 dismissed from anxious consideration. This is the^ 
 aim and intent of Liberalism, and in the discharge of 
 this it may honestly feel an enthusiasm profound and 
 intense, even if serene and still. The liberal says 
 " Amen " to the declaration of the stout reformer 
 who being admonished by a friend of the danger lest 
 in his devotion to the cause of humanity, he might 
 forget the concern of his own soul, replied : " I have 
 t-not time to- think whether I have a soul ; " but his 
 applause is given to the implied sentiment that the 
 concern of the soul is best looked after by him 
 who is diligent to keep the soul strong and sweet in 
 the qualities of kindness, courage and faithfulness to 
 duty, inasmuch as these constitute the soul, and to be 
 destitute of these is to be nothing short of soulless. 
 
 This is Liberalism's first claim to the loyalty of 
 its adherents, and a very strong claim it is ; for 
 character does not come of itself; neither are the 
 laws and conditions of character so easy to discover 
 or so simple to understand that they need no inter- 
 pretation ; nor are the claims of character on the 
 love and service of mankind so evident that they
 
 12 
 
 require no earnest, eloquent and continuous pre- 
 sentation ; nor are the issues of character in conse- 
 quence so clear that none need feel called on to 
 unfold their grandeur or illustrate their splendor. 
 If the ordination of a separate ministry be justified 
 that people may have due regard for their welfare by 
 and by, a separate ministry is even more justified to 
 the end that people may have due regard to their 
 mental and moral welfare now ; for if there be any- ' 
 thing more difficult than another it is to see clearly 
 the way of noble living and to walk in it with un- 
 swerving and unfaltering steps. So long as the path 
 of wisdom is so crooked, narrow, thorny and cloudy 
 as it is ; so long as men are confused as they are now 
 by passion and prejudice, by whim and caprice, by 
 fascinations and enchantments innumerable, there 
 will be work enough for prophets and preachers, and 
 call enough for seasons of meditation and worship. 
 If all the appliances of Christendom now working so 
 industriously at the conversion of mankind, were 
 turned to the labor of making mankind clean, re- 
 spectable, honest and kind, it would be none too much. 
 We should not wish to dispense with an altar, a 
 priest or a symbol. And when Liberals shall see that 
 this is their calling they will rally to it with an alert- 
 ness that will effectually silence the accusation of 
 lukewarmness that has been heard so long.
 
 And let not the Liberal be touched by the insin- 
 uation that his lack of enthusiasm is simply what 
 might be expected in one who holds a negative sys- 
 tem. We have heard this story too long. Very true 
 it is that enthusiasm for a negative system is impos- 
 sible. Faith must be positive to awaken zeal and 
 command allegiance. Faith in negations is no 
 faith. And very true it is that in years gone by, in 
 the early stages of its development, Liberalism was 
 mainly a system of negations, and to the rigor of its 
 denials owed what strength and popularity it had. 
 To pull the old theology to pieces was its avowed 
 purpose ; to disprove the Trinity, undeify the 
 Christ, expose the logical and the moral weakness 
 of the doctrine of vicarious atonement, hold up 
 to denunciation and ridicule the belief in human 
 depravity,, pour wrath and scorn on the dogma 
 of everlasting perdition, detect the inconsistencies 
 and errors of Scripture, and prove the ground- 
 lessness of ecclesiastical and dogmatical assump- 
 tion. There are those who still pursue that old 
 method, taking the creeds literally, raking up hor- 
 rible doctrines that never had general acceptance 
 and fastening responsibility for them on Churches 
 that never entertained them, bringing to light ex- 
 pressions long obsolete and quoting them as declara- 
 tions of living faith. But these persons are few and
 
 14 
 
 they hold no important place in the Liberal school. 
 A new method has succeeded to the old one and sup- 
 planted it. The task undertaken at present by 
 thoughtful Liberals is the task of interpreting the. 
 beliefs their fathers protested against and discarded. 
 To understand what those ancient beliefs meant 
 when they were fashioned is the problem before the 
 Liberal of to-day. For surely they meant something ; 
 they were the creations of long, earnest, and consecra- 
 ted thought ; they voiced the deep convictions of 
 men profoundly moved. The meaning may be ac- 
 ceptable or otherwise, may be true, or untrue, may 
 be justified or not, by actual knowledge. But at all 
 events in the time of their formation they did mean 
 something, and something often very different from 
 what the words import to modern readers. Even 
 such doctrines as the essential depravity of human 
 nature, the imputation of sin, the substitution of the 
 innocent for the guilty, the destruction or damnation 
 of the unbelieving, the perdition of unbaptized in- 
 fants, had an interior meaning which it is necessary 
 to discover if we would render justice to the human 
 mind, or comprehend the unfoldings of thought in 
 humanity. To do this is no slight undertaking, 
 and no small service. To do it successfully would 
 be an achievement for which the reward of gratitude 
 would be richly due. It would clear up some
 
 16 
 
 of the darkest pasages in history, and straighten 
 out some of the crookedest by-ways of the mind. 
 It would reveal the surest and safest way of 
 combating superstition, and delivering men from 
 the snares of ignorance, and the pit-falls of credulity. 
 Liberal teachers are doing no more important work 
 than this. Already good has been accomplished in 
 unexpected measure. Mysteries have given up their 
 secret. Dogmas have disclosed an innocent and 
 even friendly intent beneath their prickly rind. 
 Ancient scriptures have become intelligible ; ghosts 
 have been laid ; and whole regions of thought have 
 been disenchanted. When now it is considered how 
 much this kind of investigation is needed, and how 
 far-reaching the results of it may be, there should be 
 no lack of interest in the movement that inaugur- 
 ated it and that presses it on. If Liberalism con- 
 fined itself to the business of doing this, it would 
 work positively in the cause of human enlighten- 
 ment and emancipation. 
 
 The burden of superstition is still heavy on the 
 breast of mankind. Ever and anon some astonishing 
 example of it comes to our knowledge, and makes 
 us all but despair of the education of the people. In 
 Catholic and Protestant Churches equally, in all 
 Churches, wherever the word religion is spoken, su- 
 perstition is an actual power. It is a power that
 
 16 
 
 must be disenchanted, for it is too strong to be over- 
 come, and the way to disenchant it is to let the 
 beams of a " kindly light " into the gloomy regions 
 where it has its birth. 
 
 This positive attitude Liberalism takes toward 
 the beliefs it used to assail as abominable errors. 
 The position is an interesting and commanding one. 
 And when the view taken of obnoxious Christian 
 dogmas is extended to the theologies of other reli- 
 gions the character it assumes is exceedingly grand. 
 Christianity ranked the deities of other religions 
 among demons. Orthodox Christianity to-day de- 
 nounces as evil, beliefs that are at variance with its 
 own. Liberalism more cordial because more believ- i. 
 ing, puts the most generous construction on all 
 faiths, studies them from within, gives them credit 
 for sincerity and for enlightenment in their day, ac- 
 cepts them as part of the intellectual history of man- 
 kind, inserts them as links in the spiritual chain 
 that binds the soul of generations together, is eager 
 to make them honorable witnesses to the noble striv- 
 ing of the race after truth. How inspiring such a 
 view of faith in comparison with the view of the 
 bigot who denounces, of the fanatic who persecutes, 
 or of the dogmatist who merely stands still and af- 
 firms ! If zeal can be enlisted in the maintenance and 
 defence of fixed opinions, how much more should it
 
 be enlisted in their resolution and illumination? 
 How cheering the summons to support a movement 
 which contemplates rendering full justice to the as- 
 pirations of mankind, bringing harmony out of the 
 discordant utterances of faith, demonstrating the 
 fraternity of earnest thinkers and deep feelers in all 
 time, and setting towards the light faces that for 
 centuries have been clouded with the shadow of 
 misapprehension ! This is the allegiance that Liber- 
 alism asks of its friends. 
 
 Liberalism asks for allegiance moreover on the 
 ground of the positive ideas it holds up to the gaze 
 of mankind, and of the new light it sheds on these 
 ideas. The words it uses are the old words of faith 
 that religion has always employed, and which still 
 stand better than any others for the great conceptions 
 that have awed and exhilarated and consoled human- 
 ity, the words God, Immortality. Duty, the Moral 
 Law. Fraught with rich meaning these words al- 
 ways are ; but how much deeper and richer the mean- 
 ing is with which Liberalism charges them ! 
 
 The word " God " for instance has been by no 
 religious system largely interpreted so as to cover 
 the accumulating facts in regard to the constitution 
 of nature, and the increasing knowledge in regard to 
 the laws of the outward and inward universe. One 
 of the oldest words in human speech, a word charged
 
 18 
 
 with the highest meanings the mind could entertain, 
 its significance was still limited by the limitations of 
 the mind. The word held no more than was put in- 
 to it, and as very little was put in, it contained very 
 little. Having narrow senses attached to it, it re- 
 mained narrow and definite in itself so that it be- 
 came a theological term instead of a term descriptive 
 of the deepest reverence and the broadest thought. 
 It is painfully surprising to consider the petty fancies, 
 the preposterous notions, the wild, rude, barbarous 
 fictions that have been fastened on the word ; to re- 
 flect how the word has been monopolized as it were 
 by sects and sections of sects; by local associations 
 of creed-mongers, by companies of logic choppers, 
 fabulists, mythologers, prodigy hunters, class leaders, 
 and wire-pulling revivalists; it is melancholy past 
 expression to remember how the great Name that 
 stands for the best we think and the grandest we 
 imagine has b< en used as a spell to conjure by, as a 
 catch word to rally a crusade against intellect, or a 
 watch cry against human nobility. A keen writer 
 has said with perfect truth that a complete knowl- 
 edge of God is the privilege of the utterly ignorant. 
 The ignorant have seized on the divine name and 
 have made it synonymous with every kind of stu- 
 pidity and foolishness. It sometimes seems as if 
 the word " God" was doomed and could not be res-
 
 19 
 
 cued from the hands of the idolaters. Yet it is worth 
 an effort to save it. For there is no other that speaks 
 to mind, heart, conscience, soul, as this does. No 
 other can or ever will be accepted. It is part of the 
 task of Liberalism to redeem it, to release it from the 
 thraldom of definitions, and make it voice the mind, 
 heart, conscience, soul of to-day. And what a task 
 that is he only can imagine who knows what bound- 
 less wealth of suggestion is contained in the terms 
 employed by science in its full range, and by philos- 
 ophy when it rises to its full height. If it could 
 overarch the greatest minds as it presses down upon 
 the smallest, it would consecrate a temple compared 
 with which our Churches are as mushrooms, springing 
 up in a night. Then what new and bright interpreta- 
 tions of Providence ! What fresh ideas and practices 
 of worship ! What sweet lessons of trust ! If Lib- 
 eralism aimed at nothing else than the justification 
 of this majestic word, it would have a claim on the 
 allegiance of the best minds. 
 
 But the service it renders to the conception of 
 God it renders, or would render, to other words 
 equally sublime of import and equally venerable from 
 association. The word " immortality," for example. 
 How grievously has not that been abused by the 
 system-makers in every period! To the Roman 
 Catholic it suggests an indefinite term of purgatory,
 
 20 
 
 ending at last in a fixed condition of blessedness or 
 misery. To the Protestant it suggests the waking 
 from a long sleep at the sound of the -trumpet, the 
 loud summons to the bar of the Supreme Judge, trial 
 before the Christ, the admission to a monotonous 
 blessedness, or the consignment to an equally mono- 
 tonous agony. To the Theist it suggests endless 
 effort, discipline, progression, and ultimate repose in 
 God. To the Pantheist absorption in the divine 
 beatitude. To the Spiritualist a renewal of the 
 satisfactions and joys of the present existence. But 
 these interpretations are all partial and insufficient. 
 None of them exjjaust or begin to exhaust the capa- 
 cities of the term. None of them can claim to do 
 more than throw out a hint of those capacities. All 
 confine the conception within limits of individu- 
 ality that render impossible the play of the full 
 personal power. All think more of pain and pleas- 
 ure than they do of elevation and influence. All 
 turn over the chances of having a good time, as if 
 that was the chief consideration, and do no justice to 
 the promise of perpetuating character and leaving a 
 trail of moral force behind to help on the work of 
 improving the world. Liberalism would fain fill out 
 the idea of immortality, so as to make it report all 
 that the noblest aspire to as well as all that the 
 ignoblest dread, and all that the sad and lonely sigh
 
 21 
 
 for. It would fain make the belief stand for some- 
 thing good and inspiring to people who have no faith 
 in continued personal existence, and no assurance or 
 desire of assurance, that they shall renew hereafter 
 the relations that perhaps have been none too blessed 
 on earth. It would increase the number of believers 
 in immortality, by multiplying the forms in which the 
 belief may be honestly and powerfully held ; it would 
 abolish the distrust which the several classes of believ- 
 ers feel towards each other, and encourage all of what- 
 ever school to conspire as fellow-believers in making 
 the dream of the hereafter encouraging and sweet. 
 Is not this an end worth hoping for and striving 
 after ? And should not all attempts to promote such 
 an end be welcomed and aided by all worthy means 
 at command? 
 
 Take another example, the Moral Law. Liber- 
 alism has an ambition to do for that conception the 
 same service it renders to the beliefs in immortality and 
 God, affirming it not on the strength of ancient and 
 world-wide tradition, but on the strength of univer- 
 sal and organic fact. It reverently reads the Deca- 
 logue ; it heeds with awe the magnificent consent of 
 nations in their declarations respecting the authority 
 of conscience, the doom of iniquity, and the bless- 
 edness of righteousness ; it weighs all that can be said 
 in favor of the moral intuitions of the human soul ;
 
 22 
 
 and then it fortifies all these testimonies by bringing 
 up the facts which prove that the atoms of the globe, 
 the particles of matter which compose the human 
 frame, the incidents of mortal existence, and even 
 the invisible thoughts, purposes, determinations and 
 deeds of men are strung on the iron thread of law. 
 In a word, Liberalism multiplies the sanctions of 
 rectitude, extends its dominion, gives certainty and 
 absoluteness to its sway. Letting the old readings 
 stand, it offers new readings in infinite variety, bring- 
 ing the awful verities home to all sorts and condi- 
 tions of men, to Bible readers and to such as never 
 open a sacred book, and making scorners feel that 
 there is no escape from the judgment that is decreed 
 to all deeds, good or evil. In doing this, Liberalism 
 makes new classifications of virtues and vices, new 
 definitions of good and evil. It erects natural 
 standards of judgment in place of conventional and 
 artificial ones, abolishes a host of technicalities, breaks 
 up the coverts where certain iniquities have been 
 hidden by priests from human eyes, and brings forth 
 into the light of approving day troops of scared 
 virtues that have been compelled to flee away and 
 hide themselves from the gaze of men. It abolishes 
 the monopoly that the priesthood has claimed to de- 
 cide what is good and what evil, and judges all actions 
 and principles by the same unvarying rule. A task
 
 23 
 
 tliis of the utmost delicacy and difficulty, not to be 
 entrusted to the lawless passions of men and women 
 who are merely determined to deliver themselves 
 from restraint and riot in the indulgence of instinctive 
 license, but to be taken in hand by thoughtful people 
 who clothe their minds with the sanctities of good- 
 ness. A task, if there be one. to be taken up by those 
 who still preserve the traditions of rectitude that the 
 holiest have honored. It is a task that Liberalism 
 takes up in the name of religion, and in performing 
 it, it calls for the sympathy and assistance of all who 
 have practical faith in efforts to promote the higher 
 culture of mankind. 
 
 There remains mimentioned yet one ground on 
 which liberalism puts forth a claim to the allegiance 
 of earnest men. It is the only system of religion that 
 frankly confesses that the realm of truth is still, to 
 practical intent, an unexplored tract, and that looks 
 for fresh accessions of knowledge on every important 
 subject from quarters at present all but unknown. 
 Everv other svstem of religion forecloses truth, claims 
 
 V . O 
 
 now to possess, if not actually all there is, yet the 
 best there is : all that is of prime importance, and the 
 secret of that which is unessential. Every system 
 makes bold to declare what is and what is not worth 
 having : every system has the effrontery to say how 
 much it is safe, and how much it is unsafe to enter-
 
 24 
 
 tain. Romanism arrogates infallibility for the Church. 
 Protestantism sets up a title of infallibility for the 
 bible. Both declare, with unflinching emphasis, that 
 revelation is closed, and that there is only danger in 
 straying beyond the distinctly marked lines of text 
 and doctrine. The walls of the Holy City bristle 
 with guns pointed at the men who would bring in 
 sheaves of corn gathered in other fields. The most 
 liberal of the Protestant sects adhere to certain sacred 
 landmarks of definition which must not be disturbed. 
 Liberalism alone keeps every question open, ex- 
 pecting more light to break, not from " God's Word," 
 the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 
 but from the word that is proclaimed in the visible 
 and invisible universe. It seeks the truth ; seeks it 
 by the aid of reason ; seeks it with the clue of knowl- 
 edge ; seeks it in every sphere where it may lie. It 
 attacks with courage the old problems, looking for 
 new solutions. It abates no jot of hope that it may 
 attain to something like knowledge on the matters 
 that have always attracted and fascinated the human 
 mind. Not doubting, but believing, it stands on the 
 watch with unsleeping eye, questioning the sentinels 
 on the hill-tops and the watchers in the valley, and 
 crying, with untiring importunity, "Watchman, what 
 of the night ? Watchman, what of the night ? " This 
 attitude of the earnest truth-seeker is extremely
 
 25 
 
 noble. It is an attitude that only the few perhaps 
 can take in perfect fidelity, but the few who do take 
 it are worthy of all recognition and honor. The pur- 
 suit of truth, simple and unalloyed, has engaged 
 the highest minds of the race, and has crowned them 
 with everlasting dignity. To love the truth, to hope 
 for it, pray for it, labor for it, serve it, is the mark 
 of the superior mind. To be indifferent to the truth, 
 to be a skeptic towards it, to wish to shut it up in 
 formulas, is the mark of the inferior mind. Great 
 men believe that truth is still to be found. None 
 but small men believe that they have found it. For 
 to believe that truth is yet to be found, implies im- 
 agination and aspiration, feeling for the grandeur of 
 the world, a sense of larger relations with unseen 
 things, that keep the mind up above the meaner 
 levels of experience. We are enriched less by what 
 we have than by what we hope to have what we 
 believe to be attainable. Even if the eternal prob- 
 lems of being are insoluble, it is ennobling to try 
 to solve them. Though there be questions that never 
 can be answered, to ask them is not otherwise than 
 exalting. To ask and never be answered, is more 
 honorable than never to ask. Liberalism asks, hop- 
 ing and expecting to be answered, and that its ask- 
 ing may be answered, it prays for the consenting 
 mind and purpose of emancipated men.
 
 PAYING DEBTS. 
 
 An apostle writing to a young man advises him 
 to practice together both godliness and honesty, say- 
 ing that the combination of the two was great gain. 
 The two virtues seem to be very far apart. Godli- 
 ness is godlikeness, the height of spiritual attainment ; 
 honesty is paying debts. The godly man is one who 
 lives in divine ideas ; the honest man is one who 
 lives in human relations. The godly man dwells in 
 soul above the world; the honest man dwells in 
 duties in the world. The godly man is the man of 
 devotion, of saintliness. The honest man is the man 
 of business. Godliness is supposed to be so much 
 more than honesty, that godly men sometimes ex- 
 cuse themselves from being honest ; and honesty is 
 supposed to be so much less than godliness, that 
 honest men frequently come short of being godly. 
 
 But at bottom the association of the words is 
 just. Tracing the word "honesty" to its root, we
 
 find that the quality it expresses does not fall so far 
 below the quality expressed by the word " godli- 
 ness " as most imagine. The word is Latin. Open 
 the Latin dictionary at " honestas " and you find 
 these definitions: "honorable character, honorable 
 feeling, dignity, goodness, virtue, high reputation, 
 beauty, ornament, grace." Now, open the English 
 dictionary at " honesty " and you will find strictly 
 analogous meanings given to .the word : " an up- 
 right disposition, to conform to justice and cor- 
 rect moral principle in all social transactions ; fair- 
 ness, candor, truth, sincerity." In English literature 
 the word bears these fine senses. It is a phrase of 
 nobility in Shakspeare. The honest woman is the 
 pure hearted woman ; the honest man is the clear 
 souled man. When Pope wrote the line 
 
 An honest man's the noblest work of God, 
 he had in view something more than the man who 
 paid his bills. 
 
 But as every age has its characteristic virtue, so 
 every age has its own characteristic interpretations 
 of virtue. Words take their significance from the 
 people that use them, bear the impress of the minds 
 that pass them from mouth to mouth. It was in a 
 social world very different from ours that the word 
 "honesty" bore the fine stamp we have seen put 
 upon it by the lexicographers ; it was a world of
 
 princes and nobles, 'of gentlemen and ladies ; a world 
 in which intelligence and breeding set the standard 
 of conduct for a small but select circle, in which 
 personal honor ranked high and loyalty was a qual- 
 ity of price ; a world of individual dignity and per- 
 sonal greatness more than ours is ; a world of aristo- 
 cratic pride and circumstance and ceremony, 
 wherein " the people " were of comparatively small 
 account, but wherein private self-respect touched a 
 loftier mark. 
 
 Ours is a commercial age and naturally puts com- 
 mercial interpretations on its words. They have, if 
 we may say so, a commercial value : they bear the 
 stamp of the exchange, the trade mark of the factory. 
 Articles of merchandise are called " goods." Prices 
 are styled " values." The question, " What is such 
 a man worth?" brings an answer concerning the 
 amount of his possessions. The " good man " is the 
 man whose means are sufficient, whose credit is 
 sound. So the fine old word "honesty" has come 
 to mean with us paying bills. The honest man is 
 the man who pays his bills when presented. He^nay 
 be in other respects, ignoble ; he may be in this re- 
 spect, close, reluctant, literal and legal, keeping within 
 the strictest lines of mercantile obligations, paying 
 only at the last moment, and paying not a cent more 
 than the statute requires, keeping ever on the safe
 
 side of fraud, but barely clearing the line that 
 divides knavery from integrity. Still if he does clear 
 that line, if he does keep on that safe side, if he does 
 stop short of cheating, if he does pay his bills when 
 he must, he passes for an honest man. We are some- 
 times tempted. to think that the honesty is ejihanced 
 in reputation by the severity that accompanies it, 
 taking an extra fineness of quality from the crabbed 
 reluctance which shows how much .it costs to pay. 
 The money that " comes hard " is thought to be 
 the " hardest money ; " to give it is a kind of mar- 
 tyrdom. Like the water struck from the rock that 
 otherwise blisters the air and promotes drought, it is 
 more precious than bubbling fountains and pouring 
 streams, that are sources of perennial verdure. 
 
 Let us look then at this matter of paying debts ; 
 let us see if it does not imply all that the old virtue 
 of honesty implied ; let us see if by weighing it care- 
 fully we cannot in it recover the noble lessons of a 
 nobler society. Let us take the subject on its low- 
 est plane. Even here prospects of magnificence 
 open ; Honesty, we say, is payment for value given, 
 or services rendered; payment in money. But what 
 is money? A symbol. A symbol of what ? Of in- 
 trinsic and essential value. Money represents labor, 
 toil, physical strength, acquired skill, natural capac- 
 ity, wealth of accumulated power, knowledge, self-
 
 command, fine tact, ingenuity, feeling, purpose, dis- 
 ciplined will. Iii a word, it represents life muscu- 
 lar, nervous, mental, moral, intellectual, spiritual, 
 life temporal, life eternal. The l\fe blood is in it. 
 It is a symbol of elevation, devotion, sacrifice, for 
 all these qualities are in the worth it stands for. The 
 rags of which the paper is made are the worn out, 
 toil-stained garments of poverty; the gold the mint 
 turns out so bright and sharply cut, is dug from 
 mountains that have been melted in fervent heat, and 
 have in their veins the redness of the original fire. 
 Mone}- stands for all that money will buy, luxuries, 
 comforts, necessities, food, clothing, shelter, cleanli- 
 ness, health, education, literature, art, society, the 
 glory of nature in summer, the advantages of civili- 
 zation in winter, the countless benefits of society, the 
 best physicians in sickness, the warmest consolation 
 in death, release from the heaviest of life's burdens, 
 the privilege of beneficence, the honor of mankind. 
 He that makes money, makes it first or last from these 
 substances* he that gives money, gives substantially 
 substances of no less price than these. 
 
 It is easy enough to pay debts when money is 
 easily earned, is plenty, and can be parted with, leav- 
 ing the usual resources undiminished ; when it carries 
 away with it no private indulgence or personal grati- 
 fication ; when, in a word, it is not missed. But
 
 8 
 
 when money is scarce and comes hard, when it is hot 
 and sweaty with toil, and is not dismissed from the 
 pocket without a pang of reflection that one must 
 have a smaller house, or forego the needed luxury of 
 warm clothing, or give up the country excursion, or 
 refuse some benefit the children are pining for, or 
 pass by the bookstore where lies a long coveted 
 treasure, or the library where a subscription is de- 
 manded, then to pay it away rises to the dignity of a 
 virtue. There are circumstances that render the 
 payment of debts noble and even sublime ; that as- 
 sociate it with valor, devotion and sacrifice ; such 
 valor as the soldier displays on a desperate field, such 
 devotion as the knight might have showed to his liege 
 lord, such sacrifice as a noble might have exhibited 
 in tKe cause of his king, or a saint in the service of 
 his God. When a man such a man as it has been 
 my privilege to know having failed in an enterprise 
 to which he had given all he possessed, withdrawing 
 from the scenes of his successes and the associations 
 of his happier days, lives in obscurity and discomfort, 
 and labors for years at the merest drudgery, till he 
 has saved enough to meet his full obligations, and 
 only emerges into social life when he can do so with 
 perfectly clean hands and a reputation unsoiled, a 
 deed is done as lofty as was ever performed by peer 
 or paladin. Such a man is a worthy successor of the
 
 knights that gathered about King Arthur's Round 
 Table. He has only paid his bills to be sure ; but he 
 has paid them with his life blood, with the homage 
 of his soul. In discharging that one class of obliga- 
 tions he has in spirit paid veneration to every class. 
 But by as much as honesty within such condi- 
 tions is noble, dishonesty within ordinary conditions 
 is ignoble. If the man who pays his debts when he 
 might plead inability is a hero, the man who does not 
 pay his debts wh'en he can plead no inability merits 
 the opposite name of poltroon. He is the soldier 
 who deserts his flag, the noble who abandons his 
 prince, the knight who turns traitor to his queen. 
 That such a one though in other respects amiable 
 and kindly, should lose his place in the commercial 
 world, should forfeit credit, confidence and esteem, 
 is but just ; that society should withdraw from him 
 its respect, should regard his word as so much breath, 
 his bond as so much waste paper, should cast him 
 out of its service, and refuse to him a share in the 
 transactions for and by which men live, is but fair. 
 For the offense is grave. The man takes life and 
 renders no return in kind ; he allows others to work 
 for him and be the poorer for doing it. He spends 
 on pleasure what others have earned with pain. He 
 squanders in idleness what others have amassed with 
 bitter toil. He takes food from the table of the hun-
 
 10 
 
 gry, clothing from the back of the naked, fire from 
 the hearthstones of the cold, shelter from the bodies 
 of the unprotected, and gayly tosses it all off in a 
 bumper of champagne pr blows it away in a cloud of 
 cigar smoke. He builds his house on the ruins of 
 good faith, and erects his pavilion on the ashes of 
 human hopes. He uses the heart-strings of human 
 beings as harp-strings for his gay songs, and revives 
 the tradition of the Roman emperor who amused 
 himself with his fiddle while the wealth of the impe- 
 rial city was consuming in flame, and her magnifi- 
 cences were dropping into dust. It is the habit of 
 certain people to make light of offenses against hon- 
 esty, as it is the habit of the same class of people to 
 make light of offenses against chastity or sobriety, as 
 if they were a pardonable infirmity to gay and ge- 
 nial natures. It is an evil habit, for it encourages 
 trifling with the gravest interests ; and it is none the 
 more innocent for being thoughtless, for thougtless- 
 ness undermines the intellectual basis of virtue, and 
 leaves nothing of enduring worth at last. 
 
 But debts cannot be paid in money unless the 
 money carries something of its deepest significance 
 with it ; and in this case it is not the coin or the 
 paper that pays, but the heart the payer gives with 
 the gold or the paper. And very few indeed are the 
 debts that can be paid without these. Are there any
 
 11 
 
 that can be? The people that actually serve us 
 from day to day in menial capacities, our domestics, 
 chore-men, household drudges, after their fashion 
 put life into their, service, give such hearts as they 
 have, and may rightfully claim a return of life. As 
 I think of what such do give, over and above the 
 labor of their handiwork how they give their wil- 
 lingness, their interest, often their zeal; as I think 
 of their limited lot, their restricted advantages, their 
 engrossed lives, their dim and doubtful career, their 
 scrimped and fore-shortened existence, I feel as if we 
 did not adequately pay them when we gave them, 
 ever so promptly, their monthly wages. I feel that 
 they have a claim on our hearts too, for kind and 
 gentle consideration, for sympathy and interest. 
 They that put conscience into their work have a 
 right to receive conscience in their pay, and they 
 that put grace into their work are entitled to receive 
 grace in their reward. The good servant is entitled 
 to service. Life for life is the rule. 
 
 And how much life is put into ordinary work ! 
 How few realize the extent of obligations that is in- 
 curred in the natural course of living ! The sim- 
 plest human relations, brought to this test, reveal 
 grand responsibilities. The relation of parent and 
 child, for instance, is one that, if met in the spirit of 
 plain honesty, becomes overcharged with indebted-
 
 12 
 
 ness. To parents who are in any wise faithful 
 and tender, children owe a debt they can never fully 
 repay. The above qualification is necessary, for pa- 
 rents are not universally faithful or tender. The ex- 
 istence such give to their children maybe no boon but 
 a curse. Few, probably, can think of their parents 
 with unmixed gratitude, for physical and moral in- 
 firmities come from them, diseases or tendencies to 
 disease, drawbacks and disqualifications which at 
 some time we remember painfully and with feelings 
 of reproach. But in ordinary circumstances the 
 child is indebted to the parent for a thousand things 
 that may, in some manner, be repaid, if not in food, 
 clothing, shelter, and other external support, still in 
 consideration, patience, care, tender solicitude. The 
 precept, " Honor thy father and thy mother," is one 
 of the oldest and most wide spread in the world. All 
 the Bibles lay emphasis on it, and regard the duty 
 they enjoin on children towards their fathers and 
 mothers as simple indebtedness for benefits bestowed. 
 The Hebrew Scriptures, of every age of the nation, 
 are particularly strong on this point. The Talmud 
 contains beautiful legends in illustration of it. We 
 read that the aged mother of Rabbi Tarphon came 
 down on the Sabbath to walk in her yard : the Rabbi 
 seeing her go out, rose, followed her, and put Jris 
 hands under her feet till she re-entered the house.
 
 13 
 
 On her sick bed she told of this to the wise men who 
 came to console her. Thereupon they said to her : 
 " If he had done for thee a thousand times more, he 
 had not done half what the Scriptures command." 
 If sons and daughters, when tempted to criticise 
 their parents for some fault, or to laugh at them for 
 some infirmity, would stop long enough to recall the 
 benefits they have conferred, the sacrifices they have 
 made, the life offerings they have brought again and 
 again, they would be ashamed of the dishonesty that 
 could repudiate such indebtedness. In multitudes 
 of cases, a complete devotion of means and ability 
 would be but a fair return for gifts bestowed. 
 
 But do parents owe nothing to their children? 
 That they do owe much, is confessed in the grief felt 
 at their loss ; in the unwillingness to part with them 
 on any terms, or for any cause, even when they are 
 an incumbrance and a trouble. The mere hope and 
 expectation of a child is often a joy so intense that 
 no pain or sorrow bears comparison with it. The 
 new prospects it awakens, the new emotions it stirs, 
 the new affections it develops, the new future it sug- 
 gests, the new heavens it opens, are <3f themselves an 
 inestimable boon. Already, before it is born, the 
 child has laid the parent under an obligation that 
 never can fully be discharged. Through children 
 the sweetest sentiments come, if they come at all :
 
 14 
 
 gratitude, joy, tenderness, thankfulness to Provi- 
 dence, trust in heaven. To how many they disclose 
 the wealth of the woman's heart, the power of fidelity 
 in the man's will ! As the child grows up, the hope 
 may fade ; the anticipation may be balked ; the pros- 
 pect may be clouded. But even then, the remem- 
 brance remains ; the original gift is not taken away ; 
 the flower of infancy is fadeless in the heart. In re- 
 turn for all this, honesty requires something besides 
 
 
 
 plum cake and sugar. It requires nurture, tender- 
 ness, respect, discipline, education, culture. What 
 dishonesty is more flagrant than negligence or 
 thoughtless indulgence? How parents cheat their 
 children when they use them as toys, or lavish on 
 them the wealth of their caprice, allow them to be 
 idle, ignorant and wilful, and spoil them for the ex- 
 istence to which they have introduced them ! The 
 precept : " children, honor your parents," should be 
 supplemented by another : " parents, honor your 
 children." As the debt is not all on one side, neither 
 is the duty. Parents and children might reasonably 
 vie with each other in offices of good-will. Of course 
 nothing could be worse than the establishment of 
 mercantile relations between parents and children ; 
 the least suggestion of such a relation would be fatal 
 to the spirit that should exist in the home. But 
 there surely can be no harm, there can be nothing
 
 15 
 
 but good in the remembrance of bounties conferred 
 mutually, and responsibilities mutually shared. If 
 each side will bear in mind its own indebtedness, 
 without dwelling on that of the other, the discharge 
 of it would be a joy, and the existence of a sordid 
 feeling would be impossible. 
 
 We hear a great deal about the debts we owe to 
 society, and nothing shows the shallowness of the 
 vulgar notion of accountability more clearly than the 
 tone of feeling in regard to these. People are flip- 
 pantly said to discharge their debts to society when 
 they return civilities by giving a certain number of 
 dinners parties or receptions, leaving a certain num- 
 ber of enamelled pieces of pasteboard' at front doors, 
 and completing a certain round of social visits, as if 
 society were an artificial clique or coterie. But so- 
 ciety lives by faith and charity. The protection of 
 life and character, by thousands of kind offices, 
 silently performed, is its boon to every man and 
 woman, and honesty consists in reciprocating this 
 kindness. Honesty demands the suppression of scan- 
 dal, the discouragement of evil tongues, forbearing 
 comments on conduct, and generous judgments of 
 character. Even along the surface of society trickles 
 the life blood that quickens all human beings. The 
 charity of each helps the welfare of all. No amount 
 of complaisance, no packs of cards, though piled miles
 
 16 
 
 high, no elaborate dinners and suppers, however 
 costly and frequent, will discharge the first items of 
 that vast debt which every civilized being incurs by 
 the simple fact of living on terms of civility with 
 fellow-men. When we analyze society, and consider 
 the separate sums that are due to the different orders 
 of men that compose it, the aggregate becomes start- 
 ling. Think of the debt that all orders of men, from 
 the highest to the lowest, from the proudest monarch 
 to the poorest subject in his dominions, owe to the 
 farmer ! Think of the debt that is incurred to the 
 mechanic by every, one that uses a weapon, a tool, a 
 utensil of the most ordinary kind! By what agony 
 and bloody sweat the smallest article of use has been 
 fashioned ! Does the fashionable woman ever pay 
 the seamstress for the stitches her weary fingers have 
 put into the ball dress ? Could she pay, except with 
 tears of compassion and manna from the heavenliest 
 part of her heart, for the anguish that Hood has but 
 feebly described? The truth is, it requires imagina- 
 tion and sensibility to fathom but the superficial 
 depths of all the indebtedness of people of luxury 
 who never knew a want, to the people of want who 
 never knew a luxury. To street sweepers and scav- 
 engers, and the wretched purveyors of garbage, the 
 dainty ladies and gentlemen of the metropolis are 
 indebted for the health that enables them to enjoy,
 
 17 
 
 and the beauty that enables them to shine. And to 
 meet the indebtedness how impossible, yet how easy ! 
 Impossible, for the remuneration in money might be 
 made excessive, without recompensing the service ; 
 easy, for kind feeling will satisfy all demands. A 
 recognition of the drudge's humanity would go far 
 to reconcile him to the bitterness of his lot. 
 
 " That is no true alms which the hand can hold ; 
 
 He gives nothing but worthless gold, 
 Who gives from a sense of duty. 
 
 But lie who gives a slender mite, 
 
 And gives to that which is out of sight, 
 That thread of the all-sustaining beauty 
 
 Which runs through all, and doth all unite 
 
 The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 
 The heart outstretches its eager palms, 
 
 For a God goes with it, and makes it store 
 
 To the soul that was starving in darkness before." 
 
 Less than a week ago, we went through the form 
 of confessing an indebtedness to Washington. But 
 what single item of that huge indebtedness was dis- 
 charged, or is discharged, or can be discharged, by 
 a people that systematically neglects every principle 
 that he perilled life and character to secure ? Modern 
 office-seekers, paying tribute of praise to the man 
 who would never accept an office except with the 
 purpose to fill it honorably, and never kept an office 
 a day after it became possible for him to lay it down ! 
 modern office-holders celebrating the man who would
 
 18 
 
 not take half his emoluments, and who refused a 
 trust to one perfectly qualified for it, because he was 
 his own nephew ! 
 
 The fashion of paying the heaviest debts in the 
 lightest words is of great antiquity, but it is no more 
 respectable for being old. It has always been the 
 custom to pay in this kind of coin the reformers and 
 regenerators of society, the men who have removed 
 popular abuses, abolished organized wrongs, extir- 
 pated long seated evils. The obligation due to such 
 as these is rarely acknowledged in their generation, 
 as is not strange, seeing that their work involves ap- 
 parently more loss than gain, and achieves more mis- 
 chief than benefit. But long after they are deac^, and 
 the worth of their deed is confessed, and the bitter 
 words of execration are exchanged for the sweet words 
 of eulogy, and the brass that has rattled and brayed 
 against them is changed into monuments over their 
 graves, the deep debt is neither admitted nor dis- 
 charged. The wrongs they fought against are com- 
 mitted in other forms, the evils they struck at are 
 cherished under other guises, the idols they at- 
 tempted to overthrow are worshipped under other 
 names. See how Christendom pays its debt to Jesus 
 a debt admitted to be of the most unquestionable 
 and enduring kind. He is credited with having 
 rendered to mankind services than which no greater
 
 19 
 
 or more essential can be conceived ; with having 
 brought a revelation of pure truth from the supreme 
 source of truth ; with having made an authoritative 
 declaration of God's purposes to the human race ; 
 with having reconciled the Deity with his creatures 
 by the sacrifice of Himself; with having abolished 
 the substantial evil in human nature ; with having 
 rescued all men from the danger of everlasting per- 
 dition, and opened to all men the prospect of ever- 
 lasting felicity ; with having brought the divine 
 sympathy close to mortal hearts in their sorrow. To 
 discharge an obligation like this would, of course, be 
 impossible ; it is such a debt as cannot, from the 
 nature of things, be paid in kind. But this much is 
 certain. They who acknowledge it do not pay it by 
 continually saying how large it is, by forever telling 
 him, as he sits on his cloudy throne, how impossible 
 it will be ever to pay it, by pleading poverty and 
 bankruptcy, by uttering honied language of praise 
 in prayer or hymn ; they certainly are not paying it 
 while they maintain the very institutions against 
 which he thundered rebuke, while they imitate the 
 very people who put him to death, while they adhere 
 to the ideas he combated and the rules he discarded. 
 There are services that cannot be returned to the 
 creditor, but must be repaid by kindred services to his 
 representatives. Jesus had this principle in mind
 
 20 
 
 when he said : " Inasmuch as ye have done it to one 
 of these little ones done for him what I have done 
 for you ye have done it unto me." 
 
 The disposition to repudiate obligations seems to 
 be innate in mankind at the present period of their 
 moral growth. " It is such a 'waste of money to pay 
 bills ! " said a witty woman one day to her friend. 
 Take what you can get, without paying for it ; if 
 you must pay, pay no more than you cannot help ; 
 to obtain the largest extension of credit, to reduce the 
 debt to the smallest sum, appears to be the accepted 
 rule among men. The commercial world fixes limits 
 to this kind of performance ; but the social world 
 assigns none. The debts that cannot be reduced to 
 precise money value are paid only so' far as they can 
 be so far reduced. Thus teachers never receive 
 their dues. They render to the community the 
 costliest of services ; they give the results of 
 
 study, thoug-kt, culture, fajth ; they remove ignor- 
 
 ** i 
 
 ance, dispel superstition, call into active exist- 
 ence the intellectual powers, put men and women 
 in possession of their rational faculties ; the higher 
 orders of them are illuminators, cheerers, comforters, 
 interpreters of providence, communicators of the 
 holy spirit of moral life. The value of these men 
 has been acknowledged by the discerning of all ages. 
 The Jewish Talmud says : " The world is saved by
 
 21 
 
 the breath of the school children ; " "A scholar is 
 greater than a prophet ; " " You should revere the 
 teacher even more than the father. The latter only 
 brought you into this world, the former indicates the 
 way to the next." " Even for the rebuilding of the 
 temple the schools must not be interrupted." " Je- 
 rusalem was destroyed because men neglected the 
 instruction of the young." And yet no class of 
 servants is so poorly paid as the teachers ; and in 
 proportion to the fineness of their work the pay de- 
 creases. The most ideal instructors are the most 
 scantily remunerated. The ideal nature of all obli- 
 gation is' yet far from being understood. 
 
 This is startlingly revealed to us in the treatment 
 of teachers who are women. Let it be admitted that 
 good reasons are assigned, in some cases at least, for 
 the lower scale of remuneration conceded to -women. 
 Let their physical infirmity be taken into account ; 
 the possibility of interruption by marriage, the blur- 
 ring of purpose and the unsteadiness of motive 
 under the greater or less expectancy of marriage ; 
 the diminished perfection of work from the same 
 causes, and the actual diminution of its market value 
 in consequence ; admit all this : still it remains true 
 that women work with more delicate organizations, 
 that work draws on them more exhaustively, tells on 
 them more severely, costs them more in pain of body
 
 22 
 
 and effort of will, more acutely tries their sensibilities, 
 hardens and coarsens them more quickly. When 
 they give it they give more with it than men do, and 
 therefore for work of the same quality, supposing it 
 to be of the same quality, should in justice be paid 
 more. 
 
 There is one class of teachers of whom delicacy 
 forbids me to speak. I mean teachers of philosophical 
 and ethical truth, teachers of religion as they are 
 called. Were I a layman, as virtually I am, having 
 few connections with members of my profession, 
 being entirely separated from the ecclesiastical and 
 dogmatical order of priests, and wholly outside of 
 the divinely commissioned order of pastors were I 
 a layman, with the knowledge I have of ministers, I 
 could plead earnestly in behalf of a class of men who 
 do a great deal more work than they have credit for, 
 and render to society more essential services than 
 are ever requited. But this, is a subject I must not 
 touch. My purpose has been merely to establish 
 and illustrate the principle that debts cannot be re- 
 duced to figures, that obligation is an ideal thing, 
 that life alone can pay for life. 
 
 Thus regarded, it would seem as if no obligation 
 could ever be paid at all. Nor could it if it must 
 be discharged literally and in kind. Fortunately the 
 soul of obligation is satisfied, perhaps not on easier
 
 23 
 
 terms, but certainly on terms less intricate and cum- 
 brous. A cordial disposition goes far to repay ser- 
 vice, when no other compensation can be offered. 
 A kind word, a friendly thought, even a sunny smile 
 have an appreciable value when they come from the 
 heart. Yes, a sincere purpose to be just and kind 
 in every relation wipes out the heaviest debts, and 
 cancels the weightiest obligations, To wish to be 
 even with mankind is a great thing ; indeed it is 
 everything, because even with mankind no one ever 
 was, or ever will be. To be grateful for service that 
 otherwise than by gratitude cannot be repaid, is 
 compensation of the most substantial kind. Is any- 
 thing more needed than a fine intellectual perception 
 of the indebtedness that exists between the various 
 classes and conditions of men, a frank and hearty re- 
 cognition of the fact that all are debtors, and all are 
 creditors ; that there is no such thing as a debtor and 
 a creditor class ; that mutual exchange, fair give and 
 take, is the rule ; that if an attempt were made to 
 balance accounts, to adjust and apportion merit, to 
 decide who gave most and who received most, what 
 contribution is of most value, and what of least, what 
 talent might be the better spared such an attempt 
 must of necessity fail, for the reason that every con- 
 tribution is needed, and that in some respects each 
 contribution has an indispensable quality of its own
 
 24 
 
 which no other can make compensation for ; is any- 
 thing more important for society at large, or in small, 
 than such a recognition as this ? Would it not do 
 much to reconcile feuds, allay enmities, draw op- 
 posing factions together, and fill the gulfs that yawn 
 between the so-called interests of parties and com- 
 munities? Every payment of a debt, even the most 
 trivial and incidental, implies a confession of the 
 general law of indebtedness. Let it be understood 
 that when no bill is presented, a debt may still re- 
 main uncancelled, and the spirit of humanity is 
 awakened, that will satisfy all claims. 
 
 Thus honesty, which is a rough and crude virtue, 
 as ordinarily interpreted, the mere rudiment of virtue, 
 flowers out in magnificent forms. The tree that is 
 planted in the soil of common integrity, overshadows 
 human homes, and spreads its branches in the skies.
 
 INTERESTS : 
 
 MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL. 
 
 MY theme this morning is the material and spirit- 
 ual side of what we call interests, or material and 
 spiritual interests, as it is more usual to speak. The 
 revival of religion with which so many are concerned 
 at present, has for its object the revival of interest in 
 spiritual things, in things unseen and eternal, in 
 states of mind and feeling. Rightly apprehended all 
 good people have an interest in high things and hold 
 them to be ever the supreme objects of interest. All 
 who think with any seriousness about human life ; all 
 who value character ; all who prize solid happiness, 
 people of mature experience, not " religious " people 
 in the technical sense, not moralists only, but teach- 
 ers, educators, friends of culture of every opinion and 
 falling, unite in maintaining the supremacy of these
 
 interests, however in detail they may differ in regard 
 to the forms they assume. The contrast between 
 things material and things spiritual is felt to be real, 
 though it be left indefinite. The materialist himself, 
 after his manner, admits it if he be a thinker ; for 
 the thinker believes in thought, and thought is im- 
 material : it can neither be weighed nor measured. 
 Good men, they who put goodness above intelligence, 
 deplore the lack of interest in spiritual things, that is, 
 in goodness, as the most distressing lack of all, and 
 work hard to supply it by changing the drift of de- 
 sire, by creating sympathy with objects of purely hu- 
 man concern, by increasing knowledge, the taste for 
 higher literature, love of art whether in form or color, 
 of music, of social affection, of social reform. To lift 
 people above the brute level is the aim of all educa- 
 tors. That is to interest them in spiritual things. 
 Human things, as distinct from personal, are spiritual 
 things ; human interests as distinct from private are 
 spiritual interests. 
 
 The managers of a religious revival do not how- 
 ever regard the matter in this light. Their concep- 
 tion of spiritual interests is something quite different, 
 and until we understand it precisely we cannot speak 
 intelligently on the subject. It is they who fix on 
 spiritual things their popular meaning ; it is they who 
 control the popular sentiment in respect to them ; we
 
 must meet them on their ground, before we can in- 
 vite any to join us on ours. 
 
 What is their ground ? What is their conception 
 of things spiritual? 
 
 Negatively, things spiritual are things not mate- 
 rial, like real estate, houses, equipage, furniture, bank 
 accounts, dress, food ; they are things that cannot be 
 taken to market in wagons, bought and sold or pass- 
 ed from hand to hand as merchandise ; things which 
 have no relations with time and space, that neither 
 grow old with years, nor shrink with age, nor suffer 
 from wear and tear ; things beyond the reach of ac- 
 cident from change of circumstances. 
 
 Positively speaking, things spiritual are things 
 supposed to be things " religious." To the church- 
 man, interest in spiritual things is the same as inter- 
 est in the sacraments, devotion to the rites and 
 ceremonies of ecclesiastical institution, observance of 
 feasts and fasts, passion for prayer books and pilgrim- 
 ages. With the " evangelical " protestant, interest 
 in spiritual things means interest in the salvation of 
 the soul from eternal misery. 
 
 To reach the meaning of this phrase, " The salva- 
 tion of the soul," we must probe deeper. The Soul ; 
 what is that supposed to be ? we get at it as quickly 
 and as closely as possible, when we say that the soul, 
 according to our " evangelical " friends, is that portion
 
 of the human being which puts him in immediate 
 concurrence with God, and is the organ by which he 
 appropriates divine influence. It is the medium of 
 communication between the creature and the Creator, 
 between the recipient and the dispenser of life ; the 
 appropriate! of heavenly grace. To it is given the 
 rest, the illumination, the guidance, the power of the 
 Supreme Being ; the assurance of His love, the pledge 
 of His constancy, the sense of His nearness. The dead 
 soul is, in the common apprehension, the soul with- 
 out perception of divine realities, or hold on celestial 
 truths. The live soul is one with God ; in a certain 
 sense it is God its life is " hid in God." Were this 
 all, we need not demur, for this may be interpreted 
 in a way to satisfy the most unecclesiastical and un- 
 theological mind. 
 
 But our " evangelical " friend goes further. He 
 says that the human soul has no natural union with 
 God, that such union has been fatally broken and 
 has become henceforth impossible of renewal, except 
 on condition of faith in Christ, the Redeemer, the 
 mediating soul between the human and the divine. 
 Interest in spiritual things means therefore interest 
 in Christ and his mediation, faith in his appoint- 
 ment, trust in his sufficiency, reliance on his word. 
 
 When it comes to this, we demur. The narrow- 
 ness of the definition limits the interest in spiritual
 
 things to a peculiar class of people and virtually ab- 
 solves from all duty to cherish such interests the great 
 number who neither belong to the church, nor accept 
 the creed. For instance, there are people who do not 
 believe, or who say they do not, in a God with whom 
 it is possible to hold private or personal relations. 
 Have spiritual interests no meaning to such as these? 
 can the so-called atheist have no interest in spiritual 
 things ? can they have none, whose God is infinite, 
 the unknown and the unknowable ? Would you say 
 of John Tyndal or Herbert Spencer, or even of 
 Ludwig Biichner that, for them, an intelligible in- 
 terest in spiritual things was something too absurd 
 to speak of? 
 
 There are many thousands of people, intelligent, 
 high toned, excellent, humane people too, who have 
 no faith in Christ as the redeemer, no faith in any 
 redeemer at all, no faith in any necessity for a re- 
 deemer, no belief in the human infirmity, imbecility, 
 sinfulness that calls for a divine redeemer; no such 
 sense of separation from the source of life, as makes 
 the office of a redeemer reasonable ; the Jews, for 
 instance the Mohammedans, the rationalists, are 
 all these excused from taking an interest in spiritual 
 things ? May they persuade themselves that spiritual 
 concerns are nothing to them, and may they be justi- 
 fied on their own ground, in devoting themselves
 
 entirely to things earthly and gross, to self-indul- 
 gence, self-aggrandisement, self-display? 
 
 Or, again, we are made aware often of the exist- 
 ence of people who have no faith in the peculiar 
 and overwhelming issues of the future life ; who do 
 not believe that the supreme concerns of humanity 
 are stored up there ; that death marks the dividing 
 boundary that separates the material from the spirit- 
 ual world ; that heaven and hell lie in vast compart- 
 ments, on the other side of the grave ; that essential 
 happiness or misery are allotted there ; in a word, 
 that spiritual interests are the interests of disem- 
 bodied beings. Are these people to be excused by 
 their opinions from all interest in spiritual things ? 
 Are spiritual concerns of no consequence to them ? 
 Nay, suppose one to be a disbeliever in any kind of 
 personal immortality, to be a complete skeptic in 
 regard to the future state of existence, to be a con- 
 vinced advocate of the doctrine of annihilation at 
 death. Can we say of him, that spiritual interests 
 are not of his concern and beyond his apprehension ? 
 Christian believers allow themselves to talk as if the 
 spiritual nature of man, and the spiritual meaning of 
 existence absolutely depended on the belief in a 
 future state of being. It looks sometimes as if in 
 their judgment, religion, with all its sanctity and 
 sweetness, would perish if the wall between this life
 
 y 
 
 and a future were broken down and both worlds 
 were thrown into one ; if their bottomless hell were 
 filled up, or its fires damped. We seem to be en- 
 couraged to think that the whole intellectual world 
 would tumble into chaos if the theological fiction of 
 perdition were discredited ; that saints would at 
 once be confounded with sinners, virtue with vice, 
 good with evil, the angel with the beast ; that Judas 
 would interchange parts with Jesus, if the black 
 river of death were spanned by natural bridges, or 
 made fordable by natural powers. Truly a most 
 perilous position ! A position that seems to justify 
 that stubborn indifference to spiritual things which 
 is so deplorable a feature in ordinary life. What is 
 more usual than to meet people who consider them- 
 selves absolved from all spiritual allegiance by the 
 mere circumstance of their not being "Christians" 
 in their religious opinion ; people who boast of their 
 sensuality, their luxury, their sloth, their coarseness 
 and brutality of taste, their indifference to culture, 
 their insusceptibility to ideal things, their moral 
 skepticism in regard to noble people and noble aims, 
 and all because they doubt the inspiration of the 
 Bible, the divinity of Jesus, the infallibility of the 
 apostles, or the divine institution of the church ! as 
 if these opinions had any vital bearing on the ques- 
 tion of the reality and worth of spiritual things !
 
 10 
 
 Not from any such doubtful and precarious posi- 
 tion do we survey this broad field of interest. Not 
 on any such technical grounds would we discuss the 
 relative worth of things material and things spiritual. 
 The distinction we draw is not local or incidental ; 
 the concerns we plead for are not conditioned in im- 
 portance on times and seasons. The values we assert 
 are not extrinsic but intrinsic. Let me see if I can 
 make this clear. 
 
 I. And first it is worth considering that all in- 
 terests have a spiritual that is, a purely intellectual 
 aspect, and that this aspect is the noblest. The 
 most solid human interest, or group of interests is, 
 undoubtedly, Government. It stands for force, do- 
 minion, wealth, power, patronage in the highest 
 human degree. It controls army and navy, treasury, 
 diplomacy, law, and execution of law. It employs 
 thousands of people, conducts immense enterprises, 
 gives opening to crowds of ambitious aspirants after 
 place and fame ; so attractive and imposing is its 
 material side, that the frailest connection with the 
 government is regarded by mercenary people as a 
 cable tether to the rock' of ages. But what would 
 a government be worth that existed for no other 
 object than to employ armies and navies, support 
 embassies, take money from the pockets of the many 
 to make the fortunes of a few, provide thousands of
 
 11 
 
 places in custom houses and post offices for people 
 who find that the most convenient way of support- 
 ing their families ? Would any government on earth 
 be tolerated on these terms? Government stands 
 for law as against anarch}', for peace as against vio- 
 lence, for order as against convulsion, for social organi- 
 zation under intelligence and equity as against the 
 reckless plunder of man by man. They who fill the 
 places of government are supposed to have deeply 
 at heart the interests of the community, the interests 
 of equal justice, fair dealing, harmonious adjust- 
 ments between glass and class. That they have 
 these things at heart is their sole justification for 
 taking office under government, as all men feel bit- 
 terly enough when politicians, looking at govern- 
 ment and its patronage on the material side alone, 
 use its trusts for their private purposes, obtain places 
 that they may fatten there in idleness, and get near 
 the treasury that they may steal from it. The con- 
 tempt for the ordinary politician is a confession that 
 politics is, after all, a great spiritual interest, and is 
 outraged when regarded otherwise. 
 
 Look at any department of government, the post 
 office for example. Not a few consider the post of- 
 fice as an institution for the benefit of commercial 
 bankrupts ; an infirmary for postmasters and clerks. 
 That is the material aspect ; others take into account
 
 12 
 
 the revenue that is to be collected from it for the 
 general operations of the government; the material 
 side again. Others affirm the function of the post 
 office to be the promotion, on the easiest terms, of in- 
 tercourse by letter between the different points in 
 any country and between the different countries of 
 the globe. They think of the friendly messages it 
 causes to flit to and fro, the greetings of sympathy, 
 the congratulations, the invitations, the business 
 facilities, the close communion of sentiment it estab- 
 lishes between the most remote parts of the earth, the 
 opening even to the poor and straitened in lot, of 
 channels of intercourse with their distant homes be- 
 yond the ocean, so that the Irish servant-girl in Amer- 
 ica may feel that she is not cut off from her kindred. 
 The post office is an organ of fraternity, an agency of 
 brotherhood, and as such it means sympathy, support, 
 help in difficulties, stmigth in temptation, dispersion 
 of darkness, scattering of war clouds, restoration of 
 good feeling, increase of the family spirit, happiness, 
 individual and general. Cheap postage on one side 
 touches the question of income, on the other the ques- 
 tion of amity ; and while the materialist thinks only 
 of the former, and is quite indifferent whether the rates 
 are high or low, provided the expenses are handsomely 
 covered, the spiritualist thinks of the latter, and is 
 anxious that the rates should be as low as possible
 
 13 
 
 in order that the benefit may be as generally as pos- 
 sible shared. 
 
 The interests of business are commonly regarded 
 as material interests, because business deals with 
 money and merchandise : its machinery is the ware- 
 house, the railroad, the ship, the factory, its results 
 are wealth; but who fails to see that business has its 
 spiritual as well as its material side? that it means 
 the distribution of the products of the globe, the de- 
 velopment of the earth's resources, the reclamation of 
 waste lands, the peopling of the wilderness, the ex- 
 termination or domestication of beasts, the subjuga- 
 tion or regeneration of inferior races, the elevation of 
 man, the extinction of national prejudices, the aboli- 
 tion of the antipathies of race, cessation of wars, the 
 prevention of famines, the peaceful alliance of the 
 rich and the poor, the strong and the feeble the 
 diminution of poverty, better clothing, better shelter. 
 better food for the people, multiplication of industries, 
 discipline of powers, augmented means of safety, 
 multiplied securities for health, more skilful physi- 
 cians, more efficient schools, wiser preaching, larger 
 provisions for the higher education, more leisure and 
 more resources for the improvement of leisure, more 
 social morality and consequently more respect for 
 character ? Surely these are spiritual interests, if any 
 such there be ; and there is not a business man whose
 
 14 
 
 daily occupation does not lie close to these noble 
 domains. Spirituality, for him, consists in keeping 
 before him the possibilities of his vocation, and letting 
 that contemplation subdue the inordinate greed that 
 suggests the monopoly of wealth for private gain. 
 
 Thus regarded, material things become the visible 
 emblems of things divine. The spiritual interest so 
 completely dominates that every other interest is 
 but a reflection of it. Things visible are the shadows, 
 things invisible are the substance ; as the marriage- 
 ring, which was at first the sign of bondage of the 
 woman to the man, the golden substitute for the chain, 
 becomes the symbol of union, the pledge of mutual 
 constancy, the bond of reciprocal love ; as the 
 national flag, which stood first for national force oi> 
 arms, stands now for national faith and honor, and 
 carries pride as once it carried terror, in its folds, so 
 the dollar is transfigured into the symbol of the pur- 
 est humanity. It means bread that is consumed, gar- 
 ments that wear out, draperies that fade, dwellings 
 that crumble. It means also education, art, elegance, 
 beautiful manners, the compassion that relieves 
 misery, the philanthropy that removes want, the provi- 
 dence that tries to meet the requirements of the uncer- 
 tain human lot, the heroic labor that toils at mending 
 the condition of the world. Spirituality has no more 
 touching symbol than the dollar of gold ; for the
 
 Id 
 
 metal it is made of as well as the purpose it serves 
 and the stamp it bears, is a testimony to the amount 
 of mind, the fulness of heart, the weight of con- 
 science that can be packed away within a small cir- 
 cumference. It is more significant than the altar ; yes, 
 it is more fragrant with high meanings than the 
 cross. It marks the priest in every costume and at- 
 titude ; it denotes legions of consecrated men. 
 
 It is easy to perceive how domestic life has its 
 spiritual side. It is not shown in family prayers or 
 grace before meat, or stated lessons from the cate- 
 chism, or committing to memory of Bible texts, or 
 instruction in religious opinions, but in the social 
 spirit as contrasted with the utilitarian. The mate- 
 rial side of home is always uppermost; the cloth- 
 ing, feeding, curing, teaching, training in decent 
 habits, arranging of hours and engagements, econo- 
 mies of fuel, gas, lights, administration of ser- 
 vice, and the thousand things that go to make up 
 material comfort. Add to these the artificial accom- 
 plishments, meant for display ; the society manners 
 cultivated for purposes of social influence; the 
 show of art and beauty necessary for the mainten- 
 ance of the proper social position ; you are not yet 
 out of the range of purely material interests. But 
 let the members of the household be helpful towards 
 one another, even in ordinary ways, like giving
 
 16 
 
 amusement or instruction, taking care, lending a 
 hand, and the spirituality comes in. It may be car- 
 ried to an unlimited point, reaching mutual consid- 
 erateness, forbearance, resignations and sacrifices 
 such as children will show towards parents, brothers 
 and sisters towards each other, the virtuous towards 
 the vicious ; such as Charles Lamb displayed to his 
 insane sister ; but it begins with the first act of 
 thoughtfulness which has no reference to self. "Par- 
 adise is at the feet of mothers," said Mahomet, mean- 
 ing the mothers who bestow on their children the 
 best they have, not that they may be popular, well 
 married, successful in the common sense, but that 
 they may be men and women, excellent as their gifts 
 allow. There is no higher type of spirituality than 
 this. There is no living for Heaven more dear and 
 positive than this. There is no changing of the cor- 
 ruptible into incorruption, no clothing of the mor- 
 tal with immortality, no putting on of the angel 
 more literal and visible. The very countenances 
 of those who live at home in this way become trans- 
 figured by the quality of goodness that irradiates 
 the heart, and reveal to all men that here are spirits 
 manifest in the flesh. Dickens has described it a 
 hundred times. This mode of spiritualizing home 
 was in fact the burden of his gospel ; and the mis- 
 sion of Dickens will be fully fulfilled only when the
 
 17 
 
 true meaning of this lesson shall be apprehended, 
 and a heartv union of families on earth in bonds of 
 dailv service and kindness, shall ab.-orb a portion of 
 the interest now felt in the future reunion of fami- 
 lies in heaven. There is something gros>ly material in 
 the longing for reunion on the other >ide of death. 
 on the part of people. \vho. on this side, have al- 
 lowed nvy. jealousy, rivalry and ill temper ot every 
 kind to make pandemonium of their households. No 
 casting off of the body will change such people into 
 spirits. 
 
 II. The degree of interest felt in spiritual things 
 appears in the distance of life's perspective, in the 
 nearness or remoteness of the personal ends sought. It 
 is a question between immediate enjoyment and dis- 
 tant satisfaction. The spirit uality deepens as the grat- 
 ification recedes, because then intelligence and hope 
 come in ; the mind shows itself capable of sustaining 
 a long flight. One of Krummacher's parables runs 
 in this way : A countryman brought home five of 
 the finest peaches that could be had. and. giving one 
 to his wife, gave the others to his four boys. The 
 next day he asked the children how they enjoyed 
 the fruit. "I ate mine up in a minute." cried the 
 voungest. "and mother q;ave me half of hers. ( >h ! 
 
 ^ O 
 
 how sweet it was!" That was the child's way. The 
 second said: "I sold my peach for money enough to
 
 IK 
 
 buy half a dozen very fair ones, and seeing my little 
 brother throw away the stone of his, I picked it up 
 and cracked it, and ate the kernel." The third be- 
 ing questioned, replied, " It was a delicious fruit ; 
 so delicious that after eating it, I saved the stone for 
 planting, and mean to grow a tree of such." That 
 is the answer of prudence and thrift, replied the 
 father : but now let us hear what our eldest son has 
 to say. " The fruit," said Edmund, " seemed too good 
 for me to eat ; and thinking of our sick neighbor, 
 all hot and dry with fever, I took it to him; and 
 when he refused to take it I put it on his bed and 
 went away." Who enjoyed his peach most? asked 
 the father, " Edmund," cried they all at once. He 
 enjoyed the fruit most keenly who tasted it with his 
 imagination. He most enjoyed it who made it minis- 
 ter to another's joy. 
 
 Must we drink the cup of satisfaction with our 
 lips, or can we trust our heart? Is the sense of 
 taste in our palate, or in our affection ? That is the 
 question. The spendthrift comes into a fortune, 
 and spends it all, interest and capital, as fast as his 
 hungry appetites can drain it down ; dinners and 
 suppers, horses and grooms, wine and women, the 
 turf and the gaming table, sucking it in as sand 
 sucks in water ; and when it is gone there is nothing 
 to show for it but a broken constitution and a ruined
 
 19 
 
 character. That is gross materialism. His cau- 
 tious, narrow-eyed brother allows himself few in- 
 dulgences, diminishes the number of his \vants, saves, 
 husbands, invests, turns his property over and over, 
 exulting in its accumulation, and feasting over the 
 prospect of future riches, of rank among the million- 
 aires of his time. Materialism of aim, less gross but 
 not less thorough. His cousin is a wise economist, 
 estimating his needs soberly, and managing his 
 affairs shrewdly with an eye to solid wealth ; but he 
 appreciates the civilizing power of money, has in 
 view the progress of society, and rejoices to see 
 his funds helping on enterprises of discovery, inven- 
 tion, public improvement, the development of new 
 industries, the opening of new advantages to the 
 multitude. He has a taste of the spiritual life; he 
 is beginning to live out of himself and in the commu- 
 nity ; he consults a large intelligence, and spreads 
 the wings of faith and sympathy ; the human in him 
 is getting the better of the bestial ; his selfhood is 
 expanding ; he is rising above the world of material 
 interests. But a kinsman of his takes a nobler flight 
 into the empyrean by committing himself at once to 
 the etherial element. He is a worker too, a money 
 maker, an economist, wasting nothing on luxuries, 
 keeping his appetites down, making his wants few 
 and simple, but holding his fortune as a trust com-
 
 20 
 
 mitted to him by humanity for humanity's use, and 
 choosing to see for himself that it bears good will 
 with it into the bosom of society. He will remove 
 particular obstacles, will open direct channels, will 
 provide for the satisfaction of obvious wants in his 
 society, will lend a hand to struggling merit, and 
 take care that minds striving for information and 
 intelligence shall be put in the way of obtaining it. 
 This man lives in his brotherhood; he feeds his 
 heart ; he gathers in treasures by his sympathy; his 
 best existence is in others ; he is spiritually minded ; 
 his being is taken up with spiritual things, though 
 his days are spent in an iron foundry or a glue 
 factory. If there be a heaven in store for him it 
 will be no happier than his earth. If angels are 
 hereafter to be his companions, they will be no 
 brighter than the thoughts that are familiar inhabit- 
 ants of his own heart. It is enough for him that he 
 anticipates the fruit of his labor in happier genera- 
 tions of people. 
 
 III. And this reminds us that the question of ma- 
 terial and spiritual interests is essentially a question 
 of lower or higher uses. There is no spirituality- at all 
 without use. Spirituality begins continues and cul- 
 minates in use. To be genuinely useful in any way 
 is to be so far, spiritual ; to be nobly, comprehensive- 
 ly, humanly useful is to be spiritual in a grand way.
 
 21 
 
 In old times men and women left society and went 
 into religious houses where they employed them- 
 selves in piously killing time. These people, meas- 
 ured by our standard, were as destitute of real spir- 
 ituality as it was easy for people to be ; for their 
 lives were of no actual benefit to anybody. The 
 poor fiddler who went about amusing children with 
 his tunes led a more spiritual life. Comte would 
 forbid the study of all subjects that had no direct 
 bearing on human welfare, even of scientific subjects 
 like astronomy, which draw away so much fine intel- 
 ligence from practical concerns. He felt that the oc- 
 cupation of the mind with visionary matters was no 
 proof of its transfiguration. But how stubborn 
 the persuasion is, that an idle minister is nearer 
 heaven than a square-dealing mechanic ; that to read 
 dreamy books of devotion shows a diviner bent of 
 disposition than to laugh and cry over Dickens' 
 novels ; that to go to sleep under a sermon is worthi- 
 er an etherial soul than waiting courteously on custo- 
 mers in a shop ! Epictetus says : " Remember that 
 at every meal that there are two to be fed, a body and 
 a mind." He that lives to eat is material : he that 
 eats to live is spiritual. The pleasure that only 
 causes the momentary thrill of a nerve is material ; 
 the pleasure that rests and refreshes the nerves is 
 spiritual. The opera and theatre have their spiritual
 
 uses ; churches and prayer meetings often have their 
 material uses. The dress that protects the body and 
 facilitates its motion, serves a spiritual end. The 
 dress that merely adorns the body, while it leaves 
 the sensitive parts exposed, and impedes its free ac- 
 tivities serves material ends, though it be made of 
 silk and velvet, and glitters with gems. The old 
 spiritual artists, Angelico and others, draped their 
 beautiful spirits in garments they could not possibly 
 walk in, and only by some supernatural machinery 
 could keep on ; and teachers have represented the 
 spiritual mind in costumes which made quite impos- 
 sible any participation in terrestrial uses. 
 
 The business of to-day is to find the sky in the 
 sods, the divinity in the dust. " Hitch your wagon 
 to a star," says Emerson. He might have added, 
 " Hitch your star to a wagon." The divine mind 
 lets nothing run to waste ; but puts into atoms of 
 water and grains of seed, thoughts that fill to over- 
 flowing minds like that of Shakespeare. The meaning 
 of the present, the present moment, the present con- 
 tingency, the present occasion, experience, gift, how 
 many comprehend it ? We are like the woman of 
 Samaria who, meeting the Son of Man at the well, 
 asked him to give her a Fortunatus' water pail that 
 should be always full ; like children in a garden 
 who will not stop to pluck the nearest flower be-
 
 23 
 
 cause a gaudier one tempts them at the end of the 
 path ; we are thinking so much on the felicity that 
 shall come when we are dead, that we cannot stop to 
 pluck the felicity of the day. I sometimes think it 
 would be well if people could for a season completely 
 lose the idea of a supersensual world, of any sphere 
 beyond this, of any being above man, of any state 
 superior to the state of ordinary human existence, 
 and be shut up within the circle of their daily duties 
 and affections. It is a recommendation of small 
 farming that it gets the utmost possible product out 
 of a small plot of ground. Surface tillage will not 
 answer, to tickle the soil with a hoe is not enough. 
 There must be top dressing and deep ploughing. 
 The farmer must study the alternation of crops, 
 must study drainage and irrigation, must adopt new 
 inventions of implements, in order to avail himself 
 of every atom of vitality the ground will furnish. 
 In this view the system of small proprietorship is 
 favored, as securing the largest returns to the smallest 
 capital. 
 
 So perhaps it would be in the larger experience 
 of life. Possibly if we had less world we should 
 make a better use of it. The dream of immortality 
 often involves a fearful waste of time. It cannot 
 be well to allow even heaven to dwarf and stultify 
 the earth. One may as easily have too much here-
 
 24 
 
 after as too little. The hope of another state of be- 
 ing is full of consolation and stimulus, but the stim- 
 ulus and consolation are healthy on one condition, 
 namely, that the other state of being shall grow 
 naturally out of this, shall be the oak from its 
 acorn, the flower from its seed, the fruit from its 
 bud ; that the corruptible shall put on incorruption ; 
 that the mortal shall put on immortality ; that the 
 spiritual t.hall unfold itself from the natural. Spirit- 
 uality is a quality not a circumstance. Rather than 
 have it regarded a> a circumstance, dependent on a 
 physical change incident to a removal to another 
 residence, it would be better to drop the idea of 
 spirituality entirely. What if we could just reverse 
 the old order of ideas and say, that so far from being 
 spiritual in proportion as one lives out of this world, 
 one is spiritual in proportion as he lives in it ; that 
 spirituality consists not in putting off the flesh, but 
 in handsomely putting it on, and discovering what a 
 wonderfully elastic and beautiful robe it is. The 
 good hymn says : 
 
 And while the world our hands employs, 
 
 Our hearts be Thine above. 
 
 A deeper piety will encourage a consecration to 
 the world of hearts as well as hands, keeping the 
 two close together in their quest of the divine spirit 
 that makes the world an opportunity, and life an 
 improvement of it.
 
 PHARISEES. 
 
 THE subject of this discourse is Pharisees ; not 
 the Pharisees, but Pharisees. The theme cannot be 
 approached until the fact is clearly recognized 
 that Pharisaism, is a universal and not a local phe- 
 nomenon. The word " Pharisee " is so closely asso- 
 ciated with the passages of the New Testament, in 
 which people bearing the name were denounced 
 in unmeasured language as formalists and hypo- 
 crites, that it is difficult to understand its true 
 meaning. Yet even a careless reading of the New 
 Testament should make it clear that all Pharisees 
 were not of the class who exposed themselves to the 
 invective of Jesus. Nicodemus, the eminent Pharisee, 
 whose love of truth and desire for fairness brought 
 him to Jesus, and who sought the interview by night, 
 when calmness and privacy could be better secured 
 than in the day, is certainly described as an exception. 
 The Gamaliel, who, according to the " Acts of the 
 Apostles " gave mild counsel 111 the case of Peter and
 
 his companions, and procured their liberation from 
 bonds, was a Pharisee, Joseph of Arimathea, " rich 
 man," " honorable counsellor," " good man and just," 
 "who also himself waited for the kingdom of God." 
 The " disciple of Jesus " who offered his new tomb as 
 a sepulchre for the young prophet, was in all proba- 
 bility, a Pharisee. Paul, the apostle of spiritual free- 
 dom, spoke of himself as a Pharisee of the Phari- 
 sees, and boasted of it. The people who asked if any 
 of the Pharisees believed in Jesus apparently referred 
 to them with respect as persons of consideration, 
 judgment, intelligence and piety; as good patriots 
 and good believers. Nay, if opinions are to be taken 
 in evidence, Jesus Himself may be classed among the 
 Pharisees, for His religious views were essentially 
 identical with theirs. Pharisees, it is plain, were not 
 all of the same kind, some were educated, others not ; 
 some were thoughtful, others not ; some werfc conser- 
 vative, others not; some were more earnest, some 
 more spiritually minded than others. 
 
 The Pharisees are commonty spoken of as a sect ; 
 they were not a sect ; they were not a party ; they 
 were not a faction. They were the " true Israel." 
 Their place in their time and country corresponded 
 very nearly with the place the Puritans held in Eng- 
 land, with the place th#t members of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association hold to day ; with this difference ;
 
 that the members of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation are concerned with religious matters alone, 
 while the Pharisees combined religion with politics. 
 This they did from the necessity of the situation. 
 Among the Hebrews of Palestine, Church and State 
 were so closely connected as to be identical. The 
 Church was the State and the State was the Church. 
 Patriotism and piety went together hand in hand. 
 Jehovah was sole King. He made the laws; He 
 appointed the officers ; He planted the institutions. 
 The fortune of the people in all respects, in every 
 estate, was supposed to be dependent on fidelity to 
 Jehovah's decree. Obedience to "the Lord" en- 
 sured prosperity and happiness. The prophet and 
 the politician were one. Priest and ruler were the 
 same person. 
 
 The people who saw this most clearly, appreciated it 
 most profoundly, felt it most earnestly, seized the spirit 
 of it most vigorously, and set themselves the task of 
 keeping the nation up to their fundamental ideas 
 were the Pharisees. Political and social exigencies 
 awoke the zeal of the more earnest Israelites who 
 found one another out, came to a general under- 
 standing together, combined force and influence, and 
 became known by their practical aims and purposes, 
 as representatives of certain ideas, leaders in certain 
 movements. They were called " pharisees," that is,
 
 6 
 
 " separatists," people who kept apart, exclusives, as 
 we should say. The term " puritan " was applied 
 to them, perhaps, in derision. They were spoken of 
 as " the elect." These names became fixed upon 
 them, and at last were accepted and borne in good 
 faith. They did claim to be distinguished by loyalty 
 to the Hebrew traditions, by devotion to the Hebrew 
 faith, by allegiance to the principles of the Hebrew 
 commonwealth. They did claim regard on the 
 ground that they were the true' servants of Jehovah, 
 and the true friends of His people. 
 
 Patriots they were and pietists ; both at once and 
 both in the same thought and act ; patriots and 
 pietists, by eminence above all others; judges of 
 patriotism and censors of piety. As patriots they 
 were narrow and intense, their narrowness running 
 into intolerance, their intensity running into fanati- 
 cism. They had but one idea, to preserve the sacred 
 integrity of the Hebrew state against foreign inter- 
 ference and internal change. They constituted the 
 " native Hebrew party." They detested the Roman 
 power as a usurpation. They abhorred the publicans 
 who collected taxes for its support. They had no 
 patience with the Sadducees who dabbled in pagan 
 politics and tried to introduce into Jerusalem the 
 culture of Alexandria and Corinth. They were 
 exceedingly jealous of all attempts to dictate and
 
 weaken the stern Jewish temper by introducing a 
 taste for foreign literature, art or elegance. As a class 
 they were not what we call "radical," that is, 
 extreme in their views of practical policy. It would 
 be truer to say that as a class they were moderate,* 
 averse to uproar and disturbance. The bulk of them 
 may have been conservatives of the existing order, 
 rather disposed to await the providential turn of 
 affairs than- to encourage revolution. But whether 
 conservative or radical, they were severely narrow in 
 their estimate of the qualities that constituted the 
 Hebrew patriot. 
 
 As professors of religion the Pharisees carried 
 their loyalty to the faith of their fathers, to fanat- 
 icism on the side of austerity. They were whole- 
 sale believers, who took the faith literally, and with 
 an ostrich-like digestion. All the scripture they 
 could get was not enough for them. They must 
 have tradition too and tradition on tradition, noth- 
 ing less than the whole counsel of the Lord would 
 satisfy them. They could not lose a thought or the 
 shadow of a thought, a promise or the ghost of 
 a promise. In their zeal to possess the whole truth 
 they turned scripture inside out, applied the micro- 
 scope to it, counted the chapters, the words ; tor- 
 tured phrases in order to drag out hidden confes- 
 sions ; refined upon texts and with inexhaustible sub-
 
 8 
 
 tlety endeavored to entrap the lurking whispers of 
 the Holy Ghost. In their determination to "fulfil 
 all righteousness " they were scrupulously exact in 
 the performance of every religious duty ; they omit- 
 ted no observance ; they slighted no occasion ; they 
 missed no ceremony. They tithed the smallest 
 things "mint, anise, cummin," they washed their 
 cups and platters according to the strictest regula- 
 tions ; they measured words, steps, actions. They 
 would do nothing on the Sabbath ; they became 
 formal and ceremonious to a degree that passed into 
 a proverb. The Talmud inveighed against this class 
 of men as bitterly as the New Testament did. It 
 speaks of the " plague of Pharisaism," " The dyed 
 ones " who do evil deeds like Simon, and require a 
 goodly reward like Phineas," "Who preach beau- 
 tifully and act vilely." That all Pharisees were 
 of this stamp must not be asserted nor thought. 
 The noblest men of the nation were Pharisees ; the 
 wisest counsellors, the purest characters, the most 
 upright and generous souls. But the men who set 
 spies on the movements of Jesus who hated Him 
 because he put the spirit before the letter and sacri- 
 ficed the former to the substance, making of prime 
 importance the intent and purpose of the law, the 
 men, who, for the same reason pursued Paul from 
 city to city, were Pharisees ; and the vices that Jesus
 
 charged against them were perfectly natural, 
 say, were unavoidable by ordinary minds. The 
 tendency of the Pharisee was to become a sectarian, 
 and a narrow one. There was nothing surprising in 
 his becoming a bigot and a hypocrite. No great 
 party long preserves its virtue. It must not be ex- 
 pected that numbers of men will, for generations, 
 live up to the level of a high purpose. The more 
 active they are, the closer is their dealing with prac- 
 tical affairs ; the more entire their devotion to imme- 
 diate ends, the greater is the danger that they will 
 compromise their principle and finally drop it or 
 pervert it. 
 
 The point I wish to insist on now is this : that 
 the worst qualities of the Pharisee, the formalism, 
 the bigotry, the hollo wness, the assumption of moral 
 and spiritual superiority, grew directly from the 
 cardinal idea with which they started, the idea 
 namely, that they were " set apart " for the purpose 
 of purifying and restoring Israel. This idea, how- 
 ever shadowy, however honorable and noble at the 
 beginning, soon made them a sect and gave them the 
 attributes of a sect. The "Separatists" were the 
 " elect " ; the " elect " claimed the privileges of their 
 " election " ; and among their privileges was that of! 
 looking down on their neighbors as less deserving of 
 regard than themselves. And this is the soul of 
 Pharisaism.
 
 10 
 
 That Pharisaism as a fact was not confined to the 
 Jews of any period, need not be said. Of course it 
 was not. It is a universal fact. Christian as well 
 as Jewish, modern as well as antique. It is a fact of 
 history ; it is a fact of human nature. Wherever 
 there is separation there is exclusiveness ; wherever 
 there is exclusiveness there is assumption ; wherever 
 there is assumption there is arrogance ; wherever 
 there is arrogance there is bitterness and contempt, 
 formalism and hypocrisy. The principle of ex- 
 clusiveness makes the Pharisee. 
 
 Pharisaism is not a phenomenon peculiar to re- 
 ligion. It is a phenomenon of society. All separat- 
 ists are in a degree Pharisees. There is the philo- 
 sophical Pharisee, puffed up with the conceit of his 
 intellectual supremacy. He fancies himself living in 
 the region of serene ideas, far above the stupidity 
 and illusions of the vulgar crowd. He comprehends 
 the meaning of things ; has an insight into the 
 secrets of the universe. He wraps the cloak of in- 
 fallibility about him, walks with stately step, and 
 looks down with lofty scorn on the simple souls that 
 grope in darkness, rarely condescending to cast the 
 pearls of his wisdom before the swine of average in- 
 telligence. There is the scientific Pharisee, proud of 
 his method, and of the results he has achieved by it. 
 Feeling that he, and he alone, is on the right path to
 
 11 
 
 knowledge, and that all others are widely and hope- 
 lessly astray ; regarding the theologian as an idle 
 speculator on subjects forever beyond his reach, and 
 the " philosopher " as an " idle seeker after mind," 
 he strikes a regal attitude in 'the intellectual world, 
 pronounces final judgments on systems and opinions, 
 and condemns to the limbo of discarded errors, ven- 
 erable beliefs that lie beyond the province of his own 
 investigations. There is the Pharisee of society, the 
 member of the privileged order, of the distinguished 
 class, of the fashionable circle, who holds himself 
 apart from those whom he considers the vulgar. 
 This species of Pharisee is very common in aristo- 
 cratic forms of society. In the days of American 
 slavery he made his presence felt wherever the slave- 
 owner appeared, claiming all the honor, chivalry, 
 disinterestedness, civility, elegance as the peculiarity 
 of his order, and sneering at the industry and thrift 
 of his neighbors as qualities wholly beneath his re- 
 spect. But Pharisaism survives the overthrow of 
 slavery. The Pharisee of the clique or " set " is as 
 lordly as the Pharisee of the order. His manners 
 are the perfect manners ; his morals are unexception- 
 able ; his sentiments are correct ; his politeness is 
 the standard. 
 
 Every race plays the Pharisee towards some other 
 race. Every religion towards other religions. The
 
 12 
 
 Englishman plays the Pharisee towards the East 
 Indian, the Chinaman, the African, even the French- 
 man. The Christian plays the Pharisee towards the 
 Israelite, the Mussulman, the Buddhist. To this 
 day, in the lower wards of New York, the Jew is 
 called " Christ killer " by roughs and rowdies, who, 
 because they bear the name without a single attri- 
 bute of the Christian, feel entitled to spit their 
 venom on people who, in every human quality are 
 their superiors. On his own ground the Mussulman 
 is a Pharisee towards the Christian. A traveller in 
 the- East expressing surprise because certain valuable 
 goods were left exposed all night in a frequented 
 quarter of a large town, was met by an answer that 
 expressed equal surprise at his surprise : " Why not ? 
 There is no danger, there are no thieves about ; there 
 is not a Christian within twenty miles." The Sec- 
 tarian is a Pharisee towards other sects. He has no 
 doubt that his particular slice of the religion con- 
 tains the gold ring, and that the rest is only sweet- 
 ened bread, spoiled for eating by being sweetened. 
 The early Christians called all deities but their own 
 evil demons or devils, painted them black or red, 
 gave them horns and tail and cloven hoof, represented 
 them as breathing flames and darting lightning from 
 their eyes. The later Christians content themselves 
 with verbal descriptions, less vivid in color, but in
 
 13 
 
 respect of quality not far removed from the repre- 
 sentations of the olden time. The air of self-satis- 
 faction which the Sectarian assumes, and the tone of 
 lofty superiority he takes on when speaking of his 
 neighbor's differing shade of opinion, calls up with 
 sufficient distinctness the typical Pharisee of the 
 New Testament. The race of Pharisees is not 
 extinct. 
 
 Every profession has its Pharisees. There are 
 Pharisees among lawyers, among physicians, among 
 clergymen. Perhaps no one profession has a pre- 
 eminence in the quality of its Pharisees above the 
 rest, though, for obvious reasons, the clerical profes- 
 sion seems to excel. The clerical spirit which is the 
 soul of the clerical profession, is generally thought 
 of as a spirit of arrogance. That it should be thought 
 so is not surprising ; that it should be so is not 
 strange. The clergyman has a peculiar education, 
 and a peculiar position. The studies he pursues are 
 such as few engage in, and remove him in large 
 measure from the intellectual sympathies of his 
 fellow-men. From of old they have been considered 
 sacred studies, that imparted a kind of sanctity to 
 the men that pursued them. This circumstance 
 alone was sufficient to remove the profession to a 
 holy seclusion, and raise its members to a pedestal of 
 peculiar distinction. The traditions of mankind
 
 14 
 
 have associated the calling with mystery. Privileges 
 have been accorded to it ; it has been protected by 
 law and custom. The person of the clergyman has 
 been guarded with special care, as if his life were 
 more valuable to the community than the life of 
 . another man. His property has been exempted from 
 taxation. Offences against him have been branded 
 with a special stigma, and punished with special 
 severity. The clergyman has been regarded as the 
 bearer of a divine message ; he has been consecrated 
 by the imposition of hands ; credited with more 
 than human wisdom, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. 
 His teachings were received as the teachings of reve- 
 lation. He was supposed to be endowed with a 
 supernatural power to discern and to impart truth. 
 In a word, he was listened to as an oracle with a 
 docility and reverence bestowed on no other instruc- 
 tor. In fact, he was not looked on as an instructor 
 at all, but rather as a prophet, bearing a commission 
 from the Lord. 
 
 That people after a time at least, hold themselves 
 at the estimate that others put upon them, is a fact 
 of general observation. That these men should 
 form no exception to the general experience, was to 
 be expected. The clerical profession became an 
 order, and took on all the peculiarities of an order : 
 the exclusiveness, the loftiness, the self-complacence,
 
 15 
 
 the assumption of superior wisdom and virtue, the 
 habit of speaking' as with authority on moral ques- 
 tions, and of judging men and manners by a standard 
 of its own. It did not teach, it enunciated ; it did 
 not instruct, it commanded ; it did not advise, it 
 laid down the law ; it did not reason, it asserted and 
 judged. Of course, in the profession there are, and 
 have always been, men who were quite above the 
 clerical spirit, who lamented it in others and earnestly 
 tried to eradicate it from their own bosoms. But 
 only superior minds have been able to do this. In 
 the body of the clergy the clerical spirit ran high 
 and prevailed. Other professions have loudly pro- 
 tested against its pretensions. Lawyers have resented 
 the sharp criticism on the ethics of their profession, 
 from men who had never made it a study or taken 
 pains to become acquainted with the conditions of 
 its practice. Merchants have been restless under 
 the frequent aspersions that were cast upon the 
 methods of business by men whose habits disqualified 
 them for forming a just opinion of the laws and exi- 
 gences of traffic. Politicians have asked by what 
 right men who were, from the necessity of the case, 
 unfamiliar with practical politics, sat in high judg- 
 ment on men whose whole lives were spent in the 
 management of state and municipal affairs, and could 
 tell as no others could, what any special exigency
 
 16 
 
 required. There was something exasperating in the 
 tone of infallibility which was used when argument 
 would have been, to say the least, more becoming. 
 But so long as any body of men are made the reposi- 
 tory of the Divine grace and the mouthpieces of an 
 absolute law, what other than this could be looked 
 for? 
 
 A good example of the Pharisaism of the clerical 
 spirit is given in the attitude of the clergy towards 
 the dramatic calling. We have here an exhibition 
 of pure Pharisaism. The profession of the actor is 
 denounced simply as a profession, without regard to 
 the personal character of the men or women who 
 engage in it. The average of this may, everywhere 
 and in all times, be lower than it ought to be, nay, 
 absolutely low. But this has not been the point 
 considered. In places and times when it has not 
 been so ; when the stage has been adorned by men 
 and women of culture, refinement and goodness, 
 the same anathema has been declared against it. No 
 private work was permitted to reflect credit on the 
 theatrical calling, or was fairly recognized at its 
 value by professors of religion. " Player and vaga- 
 bond " were used as synonymous terms. Macklin, 
 the London actor, having contributed generously to 
 a public charity, declined to give his profession with 
 his name, not choosing to be published as a vagrant.
 
 17 
 
 Macready, prominent in private purity and gentle- 
 manliness as he was in professional talent, bemoans 
 all through his diaries, the disrepute in which his 
 vocation was held. The older Churches of Rome and 
 of England were more tolerant. But the " evangeli- 
 cal" churches always and everywhere have looked 
 on the stage with abhorrence. No good influence 
 whatever was conceded to it ; no power for good was 
 admitted in it ; no allowance was made for the moral 
 improvements that. time brought about; for the 
 harmless accompaniments and associations of decent 
 periods. It was all bad. The revivalists of England, 
 enumerating the triumphs of the cross, dwell with 
 special emphasis on the conversions of actors. The 
 judgment is not human : it is official. The theatre 
 is counted one of the devices of Satan, and as such 
 is put under condemnation. Of the comparative vir- 
 tues and vices of the two professions, the clerical 
 dangers on the one hand, and the dramatic dangers 
 on the other, no account is made. It is assumed 
 that on the one side there is all virtue, on the other 
 side all is vice. The sins of the professors of religion 
 are overlooked or excused. The excellencies of the 
 professors of the histrionic art are overlooked or ex- 
 plained away. In the one calling all the conditions 
 are supposed to make for saintliness ; in the other all 
 the conditions are supposed to make for deviltry.
 
 18 
 
 It is "sheer Pharisaism which seems to say all the 
 time : " Stand aside ; I am holier than thou," with- 
 out any disposition to inquire whether it is holier or 
 not. 
 
 In saying this no claim is advanced in behalf of 
 the theatrical profession. It is freely granted that 
 actors and actresses are exposed to peculiar tempta- 
 tions in directions which the clergy know nothing 
 of and can only imagine. They, too, form a class 
 and an exclusive one. They live apart from society 
 in a world of their own, cut off from the world by 
 the condition of their calling, which makes demand 
 on the evening hours, and exacts their attention 
 during the most important part of every day. The 
 theatre is their world, the stage their public sphere : 
 the players are their companions. With these com- 
 panions they are thrown into very close intimacy in 
 public as well as in private. The plays they enact 
 are at once literature and life to them. They have 
 time to study little else and that study carries them 
 away into scenes remote from the existence around 
 them, into a world that is unreal and illusory. 
 Everything conspires to make them a class by tkem- 
 selves. As a class by themselves, they have habits, 
 manners, modes of dress, conversation, behavior that 
 are peculiar. Their views of life, cast of sentiment, 
 rules and standards of judgment are unlike those of
 
 19 
 
 other people. They have their pet notions, likes 
 and dislikes, attractions and aversions, prejudices 
 and bigotries. Their morality is the morality of a 
 class ; it is not pulpit morality, or New Testament 
 morality, or legal morality, or conventional morality ; 
 it is the morality of an order. In their way they are* 
 Pharisees. Their estimate of the clergy is, as a rule, 
 little if any higher than the clergy's estimate of 
 them. They can be severe, satirical, scornful. Their 
 self-sufficiency is not concealed. The Puritan finds 
 little mercy at their hands. The worfl " hypocrite " 
 jumps readily to their lips. 
 
 The Pharisee is of no class, but of every class. 
 He is an expression of the class spirit. The " Bohe- 
 mian " may be a Pharisee as lofty in his pretensions 
 as the Conventionalist. There is no Pharisee so 
 arrogant in assumption as the reformer or protestant 
 who denounces Pharisees. 
 
 One of the most mischievous effects of the ex- 
 clusive spirit is its complete arrest of national 
 morality. It constitutes so many small schools of 
 morality, each sufficient to itself, and so prevents the 
 attainment of any general principle of virtue that 
 shall have the same binding force on everybody. It 
 sets virtue against virtue, rule against rule, and 
 standard against standard, and so makes moral 
 appreciation and sympathy impossible. We have
 
 20 
 
 none but class ethics; no scientific, no human 
 ethics. There is a technical morality of the bar 
 which barristers alone are supposed competent to 
 understand. It is created by the relation between 
 the lawyer and the client, a technical relation which 
 imposes duties of a technical character, and implies 
 obligations or release from obligations, according to 
 a code which binds the initiated but none others. 
 The perfect reconciliation of this code with what is 
 called absolute morality has never been effected. 
 There is the technical morality of trade, fashioned 
 by the necessities of making money. The trader, as 
 a trader, apparently feels justified in adopting 
 maxims and pursuing courses of conduct that can 
 hardly be held consistent with fraternal dealings be- 
 tween man and man. Commissioners and agents in- 
 terpret the moral law often in a manner and practise 
 it after a most eccentric fashion. Exaggerating 
 favorable incidents, concealing inconvenient facts, 
 drawing loose contracts, taking advantage of ignor- 
 ance, weakness or necessity, all on the plea that 
 " business is business," and as business means profit, 
 whatever is necessarj^ to the increase of profit is 
 allowable. On this plea good " Christians " will 
 overcrowd tenement houses, neglect to provide fire 
 escapes, or proper sewerage, will rent their premises to 
 gamblers, prostitutes and dram-sellers, will " corner "
 
 21 
 
 gold or grain, or cotton, will " water " stocks and 
 weaken securities. The politician has his code 
 fashioned for the needs of men who trade in the 
 work of electing candidates to office. With us this 
 is a distinct profession, with secret rules and 
 mysteries, comprehended by none save the initi- 
 ated. 
 
 This is no fancied evil, but a grave mischief, 
 apart from the jealousies and bigotries, the rancors, 
 and feuds attending it. The scientific moralist, in 
 his efforts to lay the basis for moral rules that shall 
 bind all men alike, is thwarted at every turn by these 
 sectional barriers, that render mutual understanding 
 and co-operation impossible. The spirit of the clique 
 is fatal to the spirit of humanity. 
 
 If there is need of one thing more than another 
 in this world of practice and judgment, it is of 
 sympathy; not sentimental, but moral and intellec- 
 tual ; the purpose and endeavor, on the part of sects, 
 classes, orders, persons, to put themselves in their 
 neighbor's place; to interpret opposite views, es- 
 tablishments, parties from the inside, instead of the 
 outside. It is a task of imagination and reflection, 
 but of no more imagination and reflection than in- 
 telligent people in this age of the world ought to be 
 capable of, or ought to be ashamed of being incap- 
 abl of. Two points are worthy of being kept in
 
 22 
 
 steady remembrance, first, that the world is very 
 wide, and includes all sorts and conditions of men ; 
 second, that these sorts and conditions of men are 
 from the necessity of the case, fellow workers and 
 fellow dependents. These two points are simply 
 and practically true, and the consideration of them 
 is of the utmost moment. 
 
 Sentimentalism apart, the sentimentalism of 
 natural feeling, and the sentimentalism of religion, 
 which makes so much of the common nature of man- 
 kind, their common origin and destiny, the common 
 providence and common allotment, all go hard to 
 realize. Sentimentalism apart, it is true as daily, 
 practical experience, that men are, by the conditions 
 of their earthly existence, fellow workers and fellow 
 dependents. The tasks of life, the responsibilities of 
 life, the burdens of life, are distributed among them, 
 not so unequally as is usually imagined. No class 
 has all the knowledge. None has all the wisdom, or 
 all the prudence or all the goodness. No class is 
 entitled to insult or impose on, or browbeat another. 
 No class is entitled to plume itself on peculiar priv- 
 ileges, or to claim pre-eminence on the score of 
 special rank, dignity or value of service. We talk 
 about " privileged classes." Strictly speaking, there 
 are no privileged classes in the sense of classes set 
 apart from or above the rest, as demi-gods te* be
 
 23 
 
 worshipped, or princes to be served. The word 
 " privilege " is the aristocratic word for opportunity 
 and accountability. " He that is chief among you 
 shall be your servant." The use of a reservoir is to 
 feed the city, not to exhaust it. One has power to 
 make money, another has talent, another has personal 
 attraction; one can teach, another can influence, 
 another can stimulate, another can amuse. Let each 
 do his part rendering its full due to each of the 
 others. We cannot exchange gifts, or situations or 
 parts. In the work of society it would be difficult 
 to decide which class is most important or which 
 could most readily be spared. None can be spared : 
 all are important. In magnifying one's office there 
 is no particular harm, provided the office is better 
 administered so. In rivalry of parties there is no 
 harm, provided the rivalry do not become jealousy or 
 antipathy. 
 
 It is not enough that classes should be tolerant 
 of one another, they must appreciate one another ; 
 they must cordially recognize the fact of their mutual 
 dependence ; they must frankly admit that opposites 
 require opposites, that extremes demand extremes ; 
 that foes are friends in disguise that antagonists 
 are educators. The prince would die but x for the 
 peasant, the capitalist would starve but for the
 
 24 
 
 laborer. The poor need the rich, but what would 
 be the condition of the rich if there were no poor ? 
 The simple need the wise, but what would wisdom 
 be worth if there were none to teach, guide, instruct, 
 enlarge ? The grieving need the glad, but scarcely 
 more than the glad need the grieving, scarcely so 
 much. The vicious would perish but for the virtuous, 
 but the very virtue of the virtuous would decline if 
 it were not trained, educated, shaped, sharpened by 
 perpetual contact with the vicious. Sinners need 
 saints ; but without sinners saints would have no 
 vocation. Sinners ought to be perpetual admoni- 
 tions to saints ; saints ought to be perpetual en- 
 couragements to sinners. What would sick people 
 do without the strong and well to take care of 
 them ? What would the strong and well do without 
 the sick to take care of? I have seen able men and 
 women disconsolate when some poor bed-ridden inva- 
 lid had been taken from them by merciful death. They 
 were more dependent on the patient than the patient 
 was on them. 
 
 ^ Among those who call Jesus Master, there should 
 be no uncertainty in regard to the character of the 
 Pharisaian spirit, and no doubt as to its essential in- 
 humanity. 
 
 The Jew hated the Samaritan, but Jesus is de- 
 scribed as imparting his deepest thought to a Samar-
 
 itan woman. The Pliarisee hated the publican, Imt 
 Jesus is described as accepting hospitality in a publi- 
 can's house. The ordinary Pharisee hunted Jesus to 
 death as a revolutionist and a blasphemer ; but the in- 
 telligent Pharisee, like Nicodemus, seeks friendly rela- 
 tion with him and honestly tries to fathom his thought. 
 So should it be. All together, men are not strong 
 enough to waste vigor in envies, jealousies, hates and 
 divisions. We cannot afford to draw so heavily on 
 our very moderate stock of fraternity as Pharisaism 
 requires. All our combined energy is demanded to 
 discover truth and establish righteousness and insti- 
 tute brotherhood. For as a great teacher has said, 
 " it is the bond of sympathy that distinguishes the 
 social man from the savage : that renders society a 
 possible thing ; on its increased strength the future 
 ameliorations of man's estate mainly depend, and by 
 its ultimate supremacy human freedom and happiness 
 must be secured.
 
 THE CARDINAL'S BERRETTA. 
 
 THE ceremony by which the Cap of the Cardinal 
 was conferred on an archbishop of the Romish 
 Church deserves mention as one of those acts which 
 may mean much for religion in America. Whether it 
 means all that some think it does, may be doubted; 
 but at all events it means something, and something 
 to be pondered. An American citizen has been 
 made a Senator in the Pontifical Government, an 
 intimate counsellor of the Pope, a secular prince 
 only inferior in rank to a king. An American 
 bishop has been clothed with all but supreme juris- 
 diction in the western branch of his Church, has 
 been invested with power to grant dispensations, and 
 to lift up a potential voice in the general councils, 
 in which, according to some, the Church utters the 
 mind of the Almighty. 
 
 This honor, which the Pope alone can confer, 
 was bestowed in presence of a vast audience, some 
 attending from curiosity, others attracted by the
 
 s how, many drawn by sympathy with a great multi- 
 tude of people ; not a few exulting in the demon- 
 stration of power on the part of the ancient Church ; 
 more than a few wondering what the ceremony por- 
 tended. The badge of ecclesiastical royalty was 
 conferred avowedly as a mark of distinction, in ac- 
 knowledgment of the power and zeal of the Catholic 
 C hurch in America. It was als"o designed, it is fair 
 to suppose, to increase that power and zeal, to add 
 lustre to the Faith in the new world, to unite its pro- 
 fessors by fresh bonds of allegiance to the Head in 
 Rome, and to elevate the Church on this continent to 
 an equal rank with the Church in the old world. 
 They, perhaps, are not mistaken who see a political 
 design in the act, a purpose to infuse a despotic ele- 
 ment into our institutions. They certainly are not 
 mistaken who perceive a religious purpose in it, a 
 design to exalt, glorify and aggrandize the faith of 
 Rome. It will be timely, therefore, to consider how 
 far that faith, simply as a faith, without regard to 
 any political ideas or associations, merely as a form of 
 religion, should be welcomed by us. 
 
 It is common to make a wide distinction be- 
 tween the Church as a government, and the Church 
 as a religion ; and to eulogize it in its latter capacity, 
 while denouncing it in the former. As a .dominion 
 we hear it said, the Church of Rome is detestable :
 
 as a religion it is admirable. It is the worst despot- 
 ism and the best cultus on the face of the earth. 
 In secular affairs it shows itself the enemy of civil- 
 ization and the oppressor of mankind. In the spirit- 
 ual realm it is supreme in loveliness as it is in 
 majesty. I have heard liberals call it a perfect form 
 of religion, and express an entire willingness that it 
 should be extended as a Faith, provided it could be 
 detached from all connection with civil affairs. Is it 
 a perfect form of religion ? That is a question I in- 
 vite you to consider this morning. Taking it in its 
 best aspect, taking it at its own estimate, is it the 
 best form of religion ? Is it best for any class of 
 people ? Is it best for any stage of culture ? Is it 
 best for any purposes of society ? Is it so much better 
 than any other that, simply as a religion, without 
 reference to its affinities or affiliations in other re- 
 spects, we should feel like encouraging its growth, or 
 can even look with patience on its extension ? That 
 the religion has been of great service to humanity in 
 its day, preserving the pure quality of the heart from 
 pollution, and keeping the wings of aspijation steady 
 in a sky black with clouds and stormy with gusts of 
 wind, is not to the purpose. The day before yester- 
 day is not to-day ; and the issue before us is an 
 issue of to-day, and the years that shall succeed to-day. 
 The Catholic Religion is commended on several dis-
 
 tinct grounds ; not by Catholics only, but by Prot- 
 estants ; and not by these only, but by rationalists, 
 who look on religion as an affair of social police, at 
 best as an affair of public taste. It is on these 
 grounds that I should wish to try it. 
 
 I. It is commended as a system that brings the 
 moral and spiritual conceptions within the reach of 
 uneducated people, who, if they apprehend such 
 things at all, must apprehend them by the senses. 
 It is a sensuous faith, a religion of form, sound, color, 
 demonstration. Instead of an idea it gives an image ; 
 instead of a sentiment, it presents a symbol. Where 
 Protestantism preaches about the dying God and the 
 Atonement, Romanism sets up a crucifix by the way- 
 side. Where Protestantism dogmatizes about Christ, 
 Romanism paints a picture of him. Where Protes- 
 tantism appeals to conscience, Romanism opens a 
 confessional. Where Protestantism speculates on th*e 
 mystery of the Godhead, Romanism celebrates a Mass. 
 Where Protestantism describes virtues, Romanism 
 groups angels and saints,always embodying its thought 
 in visible sh$pe. Eyes, ears, fingers, lips are allowed 
 the privileges commonly presumed to be granted 
 only to intelligence. Put the best construction on 
 all this. Drop the charge of idolatry ; admit that 
 the image, picture, sign, ceremony, is only symboli- 
 cal ; that the thing is not an object of adoration,
 
 but only a sensible help to it. Pass by the obvious 
 danger that rude people will be unable to hold fast 
 the fine distinction between the image and the god 
 it represents ; we must still ask, does this system of 
 signs and symbols perform the duty of a religion? 
 The visitor in any European Cathedral will be 
 capable of answering the question ; and the answer 
 will be emphatic, the nearer the cathedral is to the 
 heart of the faith ; more emphatic in Italy than in 
 Germany ; more emphatic in Rome than in Florence. 
 The old proverb comes true everywhere, that 
 familiarity breeds contempt. They who can see or 
 touch their deities do not as a rule revere them. 
 How much veneration has the idolater who calls his 
 uncompliant God by hard names, beats him, hauls 
 him down from his pedestal, and drags him through 
 the streets, as punishment for not gratifying the 
 supplicant's desires, and then, on a change of fortune, 
 goes to him, picks him up from the dunghill, washes 
 him, gives him a fresh coat of paint, restores him to 
 his pedestal, makes apology for his rudeness, but 
 hopes he will be quicker with his favors in the 
 future ? To the uninstructed and unspiritual, the 
 symbol, instead of revealing the Divinity, obstructs 
 him. We are touched by the sight of the devotees 
 kneeling absorbed in devotion, on the floor of some 
 ancient church. But their faces are wholly devoid
 
 of expression. It is only in semblance that they 
 worship. They will suspend their prayer in a 
 moment to ask alms ; they are mendicants in the 
 guise of devotees. In countries where sensuous re- 
 ligions prevail, the religious sentiments, awe, rever- 
 ence, aspiration, humility, are very low; all senti- 
 ment is low. In the common people religious feeling 
 scarcely exists at all. The painted god does not ful- 
 fill the office or communicate the presence of the 
 living God. 
 
 Every fresh outbreak of religious faith has been 
 attended by the destruction of images. It was so in 
 Judea, as the prophetic writings tell; in Asia, in 
 Arabia, when Mahomet began his reform ; in Italy, 
 in Germany, in England, when Puritanism arose. 
 The advent of the living God into the mind, has ever 
 swept images away, as the fresh wind clears the air 
 of flies. It was by absolutely forbidding images 
 representing Divine things under any form that 
 Israel maintained its faith as it did in lands and ages 
 given over to idolatry. The faith of Israel has been 
 a more intellectual and spiritual faith in Europe 
 than Christianity ; and to-day it surpasses in these 
 prime respects the average religion even of Protes- 
 tant Christendom. The religion was from the be- 
 ginning a training to the mind. By making inces- 
 sant demands on thought, and conscience, by
 
 limiting the sway of fancy and sentiment, by re- 
 moving the sensible props, and compelling reason to 
 use its own eyes, grasp with its own fingers and 
 stand on its own feet, it roused a mental and moral 
 activity that have been invaluable in the experience 
 of the race. The education was a severe one ; the 
 . back-slidings were numerous ; the lapses into 
 seduction, idolatries, were frequent and deplorable, 
 the recovery from them was painful and slow ; but 
 the end reached was worth all the effort spent. 
 
 The supremacy of intelligence is of such vast 
 moment, the training of intelligence is of such in- 
 finite difficulty, that as soon as possible we take 
 away the child's picture books and substitute 
 thoughts for fancies. Shall we think it wise to 
 adopt a different method in religion ? To the asser- 
 tion that the religion of Rome is still the best re- 
 ligion for the childish mind, I feel like replying, it 
 is precisely for the childish mind or the mind thought 
 to be childish, the mind uneducated and immature, 
 that it is not the best. Cultivated minds can appre- 
 ciate symbols and use them safely ; uncultivated 
 minds cannot. The illusions that are harmless to 
 the enlightened, to the unenlightened may be fatally 
 bewildering and mischievous. The sign to them 
 soon becomes a divinity, and a divinity that does no t 
 help. Not helping, it is neglected, then discarded,
 
 10 
 
 and in place of a religion, the baffled, cheated man 
 has the opposite thing superstition, which is coarse 
 and degrading in proportion as the symbol has been 
 revered. With people of intelligence, refinement, 
 and sensibility, whose minds are occupied with solid 
 thoughts, whose hands are busy with useful work, 
 the religion of Rome may be harmless ; but for the . 
 crude and imaginative, who can only change its 
 poetry into vulgar prose, it is no more nourishing 
 than pearls are to swine. 
 
 II. The religion of Rome is commended as being 
 a religion of beauty. Artists esteem highly this 
 aspect of it. It has in truth stepped into a glorious 
 inheritance of architecture, painting, music, scenic 
 decoration, and display. The court of Rome is the 
 most splendid court in Europe, said an artist to me, 
 in a tone which implied that in his judgement the 
 splendor was compensation for other qualities not so 
 admirable. The daughter of a clergyman who had 
 given the years of a long and devoted life to the 
 preaching of a pure spiritual faith, gave as a reason 
 for attending the Catholic Church on her father's 
 decease, that the music was finer there than any 
 where else. Truth, or what commended itself to her 
 as truth, she found nowhere ; but here she found 
 what she found nowhere else beauty, which was 
 good wherever it grew. The prayers were in Latin,
 
 11 
 
 the sermons were short, the ceremony she paid no 
 attention to ; but the organ and choir enchanted her. 
 But for the sake of listening to fine music is it worth 
 while to support a faith whose doctrine one rejects, 
 whose spirit one repudiates, whose influence over 
 mankind is felt not to be ennobling? Beauty is 
 attractive, but there is such a thing as paying for it 
 more than it is worth. It were better to forego it 
 altogether than to enjoy it at the expense of sin- 
 cerity and truth. 
 
 The beauty that adorns the religion of Rome is but 
 partially her own creation. The best architecture, 
 sculpture, painting are products of that glorious pagan 
 world of which she was the successor and the heir. 
 Even her gorgeous ceremonies and displays of color 
 were borrowed from ancient faiths she has stripped 
 and repudiated. Our genuine admiration of these 
 should then be transferred to the people whose genius 
 created, whose taste shaped them. They should 
 carry the mind away to a world older than Christen- 
 dom, when thought was free and feeling fresh and 
 creative power in full vigor. There was the beauty 
 loving religion. And yet the beauty loving religion 
 did not elevate or sanctify. Beauty alone will not 
 make a religion. Who then, that has a religion or 
 esteems the character of religion, will sacrifice it to 
 beauty ? Get your religion first, then make it lovely
 
 12 
 
 as you can. But to take the loveliness without re- 
 gard to the religion it decorates and conceals is cer- 
 tainly not the part of thoughtful people. 
 
 And when we think of the beauty, shall we for- 
 get how much there is that is not beautiful at all, 
 but is inexpressibly hideous how much of the ar- 
 chitecture is marred by additions which the religion 
 is responsible for; how many cathedrals otherwise 
 glorious are disfigured by tawdry shrines, tinsel or- 
 naments, altars covered with pewter toys? Shall 
 we forget the revolting images, the horrible paint- 
 ings on canvass or ceiling, the grotesque carvings, 
 the dolorous chants which the religion has given 
 authorship to ? If all superstitions were beautiful 
 we might feel more tenderly towards them. But 
 very few are ; none are to minds uneducated to 
 beauty. All illusions are dangerous to people who 
 cannot see that they are illusions ; and the people 
 who can see are able to do without them. Would 
 that all religion were made more beautiful than it is, 
 by art and music, by form and color. Would that 
 our churches were handsomer than they are, with 
 pictures and statues and carvings in stone and wood. 
 But I would rather see them balder than the baldest 
 of them are, than have them richer at the cost of 
 that which is worth more than all grace and splen- 
 dor the Spirit of truth Sanctifyer and Comforter.
 
 III. ]>ut, it is urged again, this religion is ;i reli- 
 gion for tlie Heart, while Protestantism is ;i religion 
 of the Head. Perhaps it' Protestantism better de- 
 served to be called a religion of the head, there 
 would be less demand for a religion of the heart. 
 "I have at last found my mother !" said a noltle 
 lady whose eager sold tired of .speculation and worn 
 by disappointment, accepted at last the- thought of 
 rest as all soothing and sufficient. And this is a fre- 
 quent feeling. The thought of rest is so sweet, that 
 even those who do not need it think they do, and 
 dream tenderly of the ancient church that takes its 
 suffering lonely children in its arms, folds them in 
 its bosom, hushes their cries, stills their fears, allays 
 their apprehensions, and permits sorrow and remorse 
 to sleep. Sentimental people say : kl we want a 
 warm, loving religion ; not a religion that calls on 
 us to think, but a religion that is satisfied if we feel ; 
 that in short is content to make us feel, while it 
 does our thinking for us." 
 
 Do the people who deeply feel, make this com- 
 plaint of rational faith? Has it ever been found 
 that that discourages feeling, or would accept spec- 
 ulation in place of it? A religion of heart, by all 
 means ; all religion is religion of heart ; without 
 heart there is no religion. But what is meant by 
 heart? I always suspect when people talk of re-
 
 14 
 
 ligion for the heart, that they mean a religion that 
 relieves the heart of the necessity of feeling at all, in 
 any wholesome manner. I am haunted by a suspi- 
 cion that they want to surrender their heart, as a 
 troublesome thing they cannot manage and would 
 fain have cossetted and patted and sung to sleep. 
 The cry is for a mother with smiles and caresses, 
 sweet meats and soothing syrup, who will not 
 permit her darling to be grieved by the loss of 
 its pretty playthings. They repeat the delicious 
 text, "Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without 
 "your Father," but forget that the sparrow does fall, 
 nevertheless, with broken wing, a prey to stronger 
 plunderers of the air, A religion of the heart that 
 encourages the heart in childish weaknesses, is 
 rather a religion that starves the heart than a re- 
 ligion that feeds it. 
 
 A religion of heart should be a religion that 
 draws the heart, gives scope for its affections, sup- 
 plies objects for its love and fear, stimulates and ex- 
 pands its hope ; a religion that puts the heart in' 
 sweet and trusting relation with providence, teaches 
 it to say " Thy will be done, not mine ; here I am ; 
 take me ; use me ; do with me what Thou wilt : the 
 eternal law be law for me ; the Divine love be all 
 in all." 
 
 A warm human religion will be a religion of the
 
 15 
 
 heart; a religion that recognizes the force of the 
 saying : " He that loveth not his brother whom he 
 has seen, how can he love God whom he has not 
 seen." Romanism has been such a faith in its way. 
 Her ministrations to human misery are too many to 
 speak of, and too famous to praise. They are the 
 loveliest features in her life. But the spirit of her 
 Charity is weakening : for it is a spirit of pity and 
 compassion, that regards human beings as children 
 to be comforted, not as men and women to be stimu- 
 lated and reared. A true religion of the heart has 
 faith in the heart, and would open within it the 
 fountains of living water, that it need come to no 
 well to draw ; it will send the heart out in helpful- 
 ness, not compassion, to fellow creatures, to remove 
 disabilities, clear away obstacles, extend opportuni- 
 ties, communicate benefits and privileges, obliterate 
 lines of division, pardon the offending, reclaim the 
 wandering, lift up the fallen. In this respect 
 Protestantism has been more truly a religion of the 
 heart than Romanism, and Rationalism has deserved 
 the name more than either; for true Rationalism, 
 when regarded in its central idea, awakens the deepest 
 truth in the Divine Providence, and the most radical 
 kindness towards men. It is a religion of the heart, 
 because it calls on the heart to be worthy of itself, 
 to perform the offices of a heart. For the unde-
 
 16 
 
 veloped heart of the little child, so much, but so 
 vaguely and unintelligently eulogized, it would 
 substitute the live heart of the man or the woman, 
 who has, in a measure, outgrown the sense of de- 
 pendence, and come to know the delight of having 
 others depend on it. 
 
 The religion of Rome is often called the religion 
 of childhood and in a tone of commendation that 
 seems to imply a cordial justification of it on this 
 ground. But supposing the multitude of mankind 
 to be in the condition of childhood are we war- 
 ranted in thinking they must always remain there ? 
 Are we warranted in actively keeping them there, or 
 passively allowing them to continue ? Are we war- 
 ranted in praising the influences that prevent their 
 becoming adults ? Who was it that said, " When I 
 was a child I spake as a child ; but when I became a 
 man I put away childish things ? " To pass from 
 emotion to sentiment, from sentiment to feeling, from 
 feeling to intelligent conviction, from intelligent 
 conviction to reasonable conduct, is an advance not 
 a retreat. 
 
 The religion of Rome has pampered the heart 
 with consolations, has even forestalled its desires, 
 forcing its blandishments on men and women before 
 they craved them. Saints and angels, madonnas and 
 redeemers, priests and sacraments, so encompass the
 
 17 
 
 believer that there is no breathing space for natural 
 feeling. His feelings are artificial; his needs are 
 manufactured ; his tastes are acquired. Cast off the 
 leadings and let him grow. 
 
 IV. To others the religion of Rome commends 
 itself as being a religion of authority. There is here 
 no doubt, says its disciples, no endless questioning, 
 no tantalizing, torturing speculation, no everlasting 
 beating to and fro among problems that can never 
 be solved, no suspension between heaven and earth. 
 Here all possible questions are answered; all at- 
 tainable knowledge is given on an assurance that 
 sets at rest all cavil. "I am a Catholic, said an 
 able man, because as a Catholic I am not obliged 
 to vex myself with the vain search after truth. I 
 want to be let alone, and to feel that I am not re-, 
 sponsible for my opinions on divine things. The 
 Protestant Churches are honey-combed with dis- 
 belief; the Liberal Churches hold by a few shreds 
 of faith, and are fast losing them ; the Rationalists 
 have refined away the religious ideas till their sub- 
 stance is gone; philosophy is a series of random 
 systems, each of which has its say and disappears. 
 Science threatens to demolish all belief whatever, 
 and become an advocate of materialism. To the 
 human mind truth seems undiscoverable. The 
 Church of Rome relieves its children from the duty
 
 18 
 
 of trying to discover it, and so at once guards me 
 from error and the intellectual world from change." 
 
 But if one desires to stop thinking, why not stop 
 thinking where he is? Why not accept without 
 misgiving the faith of childhood? Why not take 
 as final the creed of Methodism, Presbyterianism, 
 Universalism, saying : This I hold to be infallible : 
 I will go no further. All the authority that any 
 Church has is the authority its members concede to it. 
 The claim to authority is nothing if the claim be not 
 allowed. That is infallible to you that you 
 clothe with infallibility. We can rest where 
 we are if we will. We are not compelled to read 
 philosophy, or study science, or make ourselves ac- 
 quainted with the quarrels of sects. It is possible 
 to remain quite unfamiliar with the speculations of 
 restless minds. One need not become a Roman 
 Catholic in order to be vacant-minded. Un- 
 fortunately it is only too easy to be vacant-minded 
 anywhere. 
 
 But when shall we outgrow the notion that cer- 
 tainty in regard to religions truths is indispensable, 
 or even desirable? We demand it of no other 
 truths. If certainty is needed anywhere, we 
 should expect it or seek it in matters that 
 concern us now not that may concern us here- 
 after. We would know definitely and uner-
 
 19 
 
 ringly, how our children may be saved from 
 untimely death, how our lives may be made safe 
 against pestilence, how our persons may be protected 
 from violence, our property from thieves, our moral 
 condition from vice, crime and sin. But we ask no 
 infallibility here. We are content to remain in 
 doubt of a thousand things of the most vital practical 
 concern to us. The proper treatment of our bodies ; 
 the best arrangements of our social existence ; the 
 best methods of dealing with poverty and crime. We 
 allow our civil and political, and even our sanitary 
 arrangements, in which happiness and life itself 
 the happiness and the life of our families nay, of 
 our children and grandchildren are involved, to be 
 left in the hands of tyros and dunces, not caring to 
 inquire often, though the knowledge may be obtained 
 for the asking : and yet it is thought necessary to 
 have conclusive and infallible knowledge respecting 
 the nature of the Creator, His designs in governing 
 the universe, His plans in guiding it, the future 
 destiny of all human beings ! Men are satis- 
 fied with any fool's advice in regard to matters of 
 tremendous moment to every portion of their earthly 
 existence, character included, and nothing less than 
 God's own word will content them when the ques- 
 tion is of their condition when they shall be dead ! 
 We resent all dictation in government ; we demand
 
 20 
 
 absolute authority in faith ! We are republicans in 
 asserting our right to control earthly affairs as we find 
 convenient ; we are monarchists in requiring that 
 our souls shall be submitted to an absolute king! 
 But it is precisely in the department of religious 
 belief that authority should be rejected. Why 
 should it be thought necessary for all people to con- 
 cern themselves with subjects so much beyond their 
 comprehension ? Or why, if it is necessary, should 
 they not be free to concern themselves, each in his 
 own way ? Seeing that the themes are so vague and 
 so vast, that they present themselves in such differ- 
 ent aspects, that they admit of so many differing 
 modes of treatment, that they engage so many dif- 
 ferent qualities of mind, why should any one view 
 or class of views be dogmatically taught ? Here, if 
 anywhere, speculation should be absolutely free, and 
 minds of all structures, methods of investigation in 
 every variety, should be invited to make their con- 
 tribution to the general result of knowledge. The 
 scientific method, the method of history, the method 
 of prophecy, are all in place. When all methods 
 have performed their utmost the result will be only 
 conjecture. But when none of them have had a 
 chance, but all have been put under subjection to 
 an arbitrary decree, not even conjecture can be 
 reached.
 
 21 
 
 Besides, the education of the mind goes for some- 
 thing : and this the profession of absolute knowledge 
 renders impossible. If all the high questions are 
 answered before they are asked, and answered by a 
 tribunal which admits no criticism and listens to 
 no appeal, the intellect, being pronounced a vagrant 
 and warned off the field, will become idle and vaga- 
 bond, will lie about under fences, or stand among 
 loungers, and lose its quality of energy altogether. 
 A complete apathy ending in inability will befall the 
 mind. There will be no active effort to understand 
 what is communicated, no positive grasp of any 
 truth. The intellectual power will be stricken with 
 paralysis, and the whole rational being will be out- 
 cast. Among the masses of people in countries 
 where the religion of Rome has prevailed this has 
 occurred. How different from Protestant lands ! 
 Where, through the small aperture allowed by tradi- 
 tion and the Bible, the mind of man, pushed on to the 
 wide realms of thought and revelled in the treatment 
 of the greatest themes, and became strong by grap- 
 pling with problems that called out the extreniest 
 endeavor of every faculty. Under Protestantism, 
 speculation on Divine things has trained the intel- 
 lectual powers of ordinary men and women, for their 
 exercise on matters of daily concern. The freedom 
 of thought that resolved dogmas into opinions, and
 
 22 
 
 opinions into conjectures, and destroyed some of the 
 cardinal beliefs of the Church, more than made 
 amends by the breadth of tone and firmness of fibre 
 it gave the mind from which all beliefs spring. 
 
 If authority have any realm of its own, it must 
 be the realm of conduct ; for conduct, being based 
 on experience, may be brought down to line and 
 measure. Even here it must be watched with 
 misgivings at every step. But in the realm of 
 thought, and of transcendental thought especially, 
 it is wholly out of place. There the only final 
 authority is reason. 
 
 V. One point remains to be considered, when we 
 are considering the claims of the religion of Rome on 
 our regard. That religion is commended as furnishing 
 the only stable compactly built bulwark against the 
 wave of secularism, or, in other words, of worldliness, 
 or materialism, as it is called, that is sweeping with 
 devastating flood over modern society. The concern 
 for this world, and for the interests of this world, is, 
 we are told, becoming exorbitant. The absorption 
 in business, the passion for wealth, the lust for place 
 distinction and power, the ambition for display, are 
 increasing everywhere in extent and degree; the 
 senses are claiming more than their share of honor, 
 and there is apparently nothing to counteract the 
 influence. The religion of Protestantism is split up
 
 into numerous parties, each of \vhieh is too nitu-li oc- 
 cupied with its own sectarian affairs to work for the 
 spiritual education of society. Singly they are power- 
 less ; and united they are not, and cannot lie. The 
 only thing of bulk that presents a compart mass of 
 moral power to the incoming Hood of worldliness is 
 this ancient church ; of recognized position among 
 the great historic powers of the modern world ; of 
 high repute among dominions and principalities : rich 
 with the tributes of believers in all lands, opulent in 
 learning of all tongues, perfectly equipped and or- 
 ganized for its peculiar work, with all the arts 
 engaged in its service, with institutions of every kind 
 ready made and admirably administered, master of 
 reverence and awe, setting forth under every form, 
 in teaching, symbol, rite, sacrament, perpetual cere- 
 mony and association, the realities of the eternal 
 world. Unassailable, because so immense: strength- 
 ened by the conflicts of centuries against the attacks 
 of foes without, and kept by its own impressive unity 
 from danger of insurrection from Avithin, this mighty 
 church, simply by maintaining its position, demon- 
 strates the existence and the living presence of powers 
 invisible and eternal ; is herself a symbol of the eter- 
 nity she points to behind her. 
 
 It is an impressive and touching imagination. 1 
 will not question the truth of it, by asking whether
 
 24 
 
 the church has performed this service in the past, or 
 is performing it to-day. Another question arises, 
 this: Whether precisely that is the service that 
 modern times and men demand. Is it especially de- 
 sirable now that, outside of and apart from the 
 world of affairs and secular interests, there should 
 exist such an enormous institution, holding such 
 boundless dominion, wielding such tremendous in- 
 fluence, gathering up in itself, and monopolizing, as 
 it were, the elements and forces of the spiritual world? 
 May it not be fairly asked if secular things and spir- 
 itual have not^ been separated too widely and too 
 long ; if the separation has not been injurious to both, 
 and is not likely to be more mischievous still as 
 society grows older ; if the time has not arrived when 
 efforts should be directed to the task of releasing spir- 
 itual power from the keeping of a great institution, 
 and incorporating it in the constitution of society as 
 it is ; if the processes of secularizing religion and of 
 spiritualizing life should not go forward together, 
 until the waters of both seas reach a level. The 
 divorce between the church and the world has 
 lasted long, and the change we should welcome 
 and congratulate ourselves on, is that which 
 substitutes natural laws and sanctions natural 
 bonds and affiliations, for the artificial methods 
 that have been made to do service in the
 
 25 
 
 olden times. Not to bring to bear upon life from 
 the outside a power to remold and regenerate but 
 to reveal a power within life itself, to build up and 
 renew; to disclose the vital laws of life, personal 
 and social, and make evident its power to determine 
 its own condition and attain its own ends, in a word 
 to divulge the essential value of earthly affairs and 
 conditions so that men and women will see as they 
 go along, by whom their paths were laid out and 
 whither they tend. To transfer sanctity from the 
 church to " the world," to recognize the sacredness 
 of all worthy performance, whether it be ministering 
 or teaching, or ruling, building, painting, editing, 
 Writing, buying, selling, investing, collecting, pre- 
 siding over a household or working at a trade, and 
 to weave principle into the texture of practice, such 
 is the work before this and the coming generations. 
 The spectacle of people living intelligently and 
 therefore worthily, finding divine principles in their 
 path and angels of terror and of truth by their side, 
 is more admirable than the spectacle of crowds flock- 
 ing to a cathedral to hear lessons from a priest, or 
 meekly receiving impressions of awe from official 
 hands. That a long time must elapse before such a 
 spectacle will be seen, that the approach of such a 
 time must be not only slow but painfully difficult is 
 no reason for our not desiring it, is the best of
 
 26 
 
 reasons why we should encourage and work for its 
 coming. In this aspect alone the increasing spread 
 of the catholic religion, the increasing spread of any 
 instituted religion is a thing to be rather deplored than 
 welcomed ; and the more attractive the form of the 
 religion is, the more is it to be deplored, for all such 
 increase but postpones the time when life itself shall 
 become religious by conforming to the laws of its 
 own structure. 
 
 Thus I have tried to indicate the objectionable 
 features in that ancient religion which has lately 
 been claiming so much of our attention. The points 
 have been barely touched on ; each of them might 
 be expanded by argument and illustration to the 
 dimensions of a treatise. I have wished to bring 
 them together in a group, that a single glance might 
 reveal our whole position. Take the religion at its 
 best, and practically no religion stands at its best, 
 take the religion at its best, and it is out of place in 
 modern society. Its boasted advantages are really 
 against it ; its symbolism is misleading ; its beauty 
 is illusory ; its sentiment is artificial ; its authority 
 is oppressive ; its pretensions to spiritual wealth are 
 earned at the expense of humanity. We shall not 
 clearly perceive all this till we come to ourselves, 
 and by experiment learn how much a working con- 
 science is better than a confessional, how much
 
 27 
 
 active kindness is better than participation at the 
 mass, how much a daily education in charity is 
 better than the representation of a dying Christ and 
 an atonement by foreign blood. 
 
 The attitude of the liberal towards the old 
 world religions should be understood. It is an 
 
 
 
 attitude of respect and appreciation, very different 
 from the suspicion and antipathy of the last gener- 
 ation. We have learned to do every possible justice 
 to all forms of faith ; to study them from the inside 
 through the minds of their devotees, to take them 
 at their best, to give them fullest credit for the good 
 they do or have done. But we have learned too 
 that each is good in its own time and place alone, 
 that the best religion for Southern Europe may be 
 the worst for Northerners, that a perfect faith for the 
 middle age may be a most defective faith for to-day. 
 We have learned to dread what once was worthy to 
 be loved. We have come to believe that the mind 
 is more than all the beliefs it has generated, that the 
 heart is more than all the altars it has consecrated, 
 that conscience is more than all the royalties it has 
 enthroned, that the soul can build more stately 
 temples than any it has reared even in the stateliest 
 past.
 
 THE GREAT HOPE. 
 
 IT was by no accident or arrangement that the 
 festival of Easter was appointed at the season of the 
 vernal equinox. It is the successor of an ancient 
 pagan festival that commemorated the resurrection 
 of nature from the grave of winter ; a festival of 
 joy in the dawning of a new hope for man. Spring is 
 the season of Hope. The promise comes with 
 summer ; the fulfilment in autumn. The- spring be- 
 stows nothing, pledges nothing ; it merely awakens 
 longing and anticipation. The early summer may 
 arrive, slowly, with rain and cold ; the late summer 
 may bring the drought that scorches, or the flood 
 that drowns and rots. The farmer may have to 
 contend against blight, mildew, the worm, the tem- 
 pest, untimely frost ; the peach crop, the grape crop, 
 the wheat crop may fail. Not until the year closes, is 
 it ever known what the year was destined to pro- 
 duce. The prophecies of feeling and of science are 
 alike vain. Yet in the face of all these uncertainties 
 the hopefulness of the spring is fresh and buoyant.
 
 We welcome the brightening skies, the softening air, 
 the bursting trees^ the loosening ground, as if each 
 time the year was renewed they guaranteed joy and 
 increase. The spring never fails to bring Hope. 
 
 The Easter festival is the festival of Hope. The 
 resurrection it celebrates is a resurrection anticipated, 
 not achieved. Foregleams of it are all that the 
 early believers were privileged to entertain. Even 
 Paul, the great preacher of the resurrection, seems 
 to have cherished a hope of it rather than what we 
 should dare to call an assurance. Though he speaks 
 so confidently of the risen Christ, dwells so particularly 
 on the fact of His having appeared to His disciples, 
 dwells so minutely on the vision cf Him at his own 
 conversion, alleges such repeated communications 
 from Him, and, on the strength of His resurrection, 
 proclaims so earnestly the doctrine of the resurrec- 
 tion to life of believers in Him, still he uses the 
 word " hope," in connection with the idea often er 
 than the word " knowledge." " Tribulation worketh 
 patience, patience experience, and experience HOPE." 
 " We are saved by hope ; but hope that is seen is 
 not hope ; for what a man seeth why doth he con- 
 tinue to hope for ? " '* That ye through patience 
 might have hope." " That ye may abound in hope." 
 " That ye may be partakers of his hope." " Seeing 
 we have such hope we use great plainness of speech."
 
 " We, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of 
 righteousness through faith." " The patience of 
 hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." " Our Lord Jesus 
 Christ and God, our Father who hath loved us and 
 given us everlasting consolation and good hope." 
 Other Apostles speak in a similar strain. Peter 
 says : " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, who hath begotten us unto a lively 
 hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
 dead." 
 
 The early believers, however certain of the 
 Christ's resurrection, could not feel quite certain of 
 their own. That depended on the closeness of their 
 interior sympathy with their Lord, the sincerity of 
 their belief, the wholeness of their consecration ; 
 and of these they could never be quite confident. 
 Their minds were often disturbed by misgivings 
 which the teachers tried, and not always success- 
 fully, to remove. Shadows of uncertainty occasion- 
 ally clouded the hearts of the teachers themselves. 
 The Lord "delayed His coming," and that fact 
 struck a chill to sanguine souls. 
 
 And the particular hope of the early believers 
 proved to be nothing more than a hope. The Lord 
 did not come. The disciples fell asleep, and have 
 had unbroken slumber since. The trumpet did not 
 sound ; the dead were not raised in glory ; the living
 
 were not changed. From that day to this no in- 
 stance has been recorded of the visible translation of 
 Saint or Prophet from earth to heaven ; no grave 
 has been emptied at the call of angels ; no believer 
 has passed to another sphere by any portal but the 
 portal of death. It is touching to think of a disap- 
 pointment so cruel. The trust had been so implicit, 
 the reliance so constant, the devotion so profound. 
 Was it all for nought, the toil, the agony, the martyr- 
 dom? Nay, these were splendid in themselves, 
 and but for the hope they would not have existed. 
 The hope, while it lasted, and it lasted till the end, 
 invigorated, consoled, gladdened, saved. 
 
 By the successors of the apostles the hope was 
 entertained substantially as it had been, but was de- 
 ferred to a later period. Since the first century, 
 Christian believers, Catholic and Protestant, have 
 persisted in the faith that their Lord had risen, that 
 He would appear in glory, that they should rise in 
 the body to meet Him, and should share His blessed- 
 ness. But they anticipated no such events on the 
 earth. Not till the earth had passed away, and the 
 terrestrial order had come to an end, and the 
 heavens had shrivelled like a scroll, would the 
 trumpet sound and the dead be summoned from the 
 ends of the world. Of so much they were confident, 
 but whether the immortal life was to be theirs was
 
 continually in doubt. To the last moment of life 
 there was anxiety on this point, and at the last 
 moment the anxiety often deepened into anguish. 
 Dared the individual believer entertain the hope ? 
 Was his faith of the true quality ? Had he shared 
 the experience ? Was he wholly Christ's ? Did his 
 heart pronounce him acceptable? The religious 
 books, of Protestants especially, reveal a painful 
 absence of assurance on these momentous points. 
 
 For it must be remembered that the Christian 
 hope has from the beginning been limited to Chris- 
 tian believers. The religion did not affirm the im- 
 mortality of the soul. The festival of Easter does 
 not celebrate the doctrine of the natural immortality 
 of man. It celebrates the resurrection of Christ and 
 the promise of resurrection to all who belong to 
 Christ. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
 shall all be made alive ; but every one in his own 
 order ; Christ the first fruits, afterward they that are 
 Christ's at His coming." " I am the resurrection and 
 the life; He that believeth in me though he were 
 dead, yet shall he live ; and whoso liveth and be- 
 lieveth in me shall never die." "If ye believe not that 
 lam He ye shall die in your sins." " Thou hast given 
 Him power over all flesh, that he should give 
 eternal life to as many as thou hast given him" 
 "Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood,
 
 hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last 
 day." " Every one that seeth the Son and believeth 
 on Him hath everlasting life ; and I will raise him 
 up at the last day." Language cannot be plainer 
 than this. And this is the language that is still 
 quoted as asserting the doctrine of immortality. 
 The doctrine it conveys is the personal resurrection 
 of believers. Is it said that the promise of blessed- 
 ness is for believers only ; that the resurrection is 
 for all, believers and unbelievers, but that the be- 
 liever only is promised the resurrection to life ? That 
 all continue to live, after a melancholy fashion, in 
 the shadowy under-world of ghosts, in the misery of 
 exile from the Divine presence, or in the agonies of 
 the damned ; that all are " raised " though all save 
 believers are cast down again ; and therefore Christ- 
 ianity does admit the natural immortality of men ? 
 True, but then the resurrection to life is the only 
 resurrection promised or hoped for; immortality 
 means felicity in the hereafter, or it means nothing. 
 Condemnation, destruction, torment, annihilation, 
 are not states of joyous anticipation. A belief in 
 immortality that is not happy would not be 
 cherished. The modern belief in the immortality of 
 the soul corresponds to the older belief in the 
 resurrection to life. 
 
 The Christian faith implies that the resurrection
 
 was a special gift conferred by the Divine grace on 
 believers ; not a human prerogative, not a human 
 achievement, but a boon made possible through com- 
 munion with the source of eternal life ; not a 
 natural, but a supernatural condition, therefore, 
 attained in the way of miracle. This was broadly 
 stated by Henry Dodwell, once a professor at 
 Oxford, who maintained from Scripture and the 
 early Fathers that the soul is by nature mortal, 
 but is made immortal by the will of God, for pur- 
 poses of doom or recompense ; that the capacity for 
 imnfortality is communicated at baptism by virtue 
 of the Divine Spirit there received. The doctrine 
 was received with a shock of surprise, even by 
 people who had always entertained it, but had 
 never fairly faced its consequences. By dissenters 
 it was fiercely assailed. At about the same time, 
 Dr. Samuel Clarke, in lectures delivered at Oxford, 
 attempted a demonstration of the natural immor- 
 tality. 
 
 Abandoning Scripture and tradition he argued the 
 question metaphysically, and offered what he called 
 " a rigorous philosophical demonstration of the im- 
 materiality and consequently the immortality of the 
 soul." This was early in the last century. The 
 book of Clarke made a great sensation and became 
 the main pillar of the new doctrine of the soul's
 
 10 
 
 natural immortality, a doctrine in fact not new at 
 all, but as old as Plato, and not " Christian " at all, 
 but Gentile, the fruit of unaided reason. 
 
 By this new doctrine the hope of immortality 
 was extended to the whole human race. But it was 
 still no more than a hope, and as a hope was made 
 thin and shadowy. In proportion as it was diffused 
 it was rendered insubstantial. All men have souls ; 
 all souls are immaterial ; whatever is immaterial is 
 immortal; therefore all men are immortal. The 
 argument is not massive. The immortality that is 
 suggested by immateriality is not suggestive of rich- 
 ness or fulness. It looks like a dusty and pulverized 
 condition, a continuance of infinitesimal particles, the 
 perpetuation of motes in the air, of sand in a desert, 
 varied perhaps by sirocco. Does immateriality im- 
 part intellectual and moral qualities that contain in 
 themselves a pledge or promise of future felicity? 
 That question arises. " The soul is immaterial ;" but 
 how much is included in the term " soul ?" Is affec- 
 tion included, so that the statement means that 
 heart's love will survive the shock of death? Is con- 
 science included, so that the statement means that 
 integrity and honor will last through the grave ? Is 
 intellect included, so that the statement affirms the 
 persistence of mind, with its native talent and 
 acquired accomplishment, its hunger for knowledge,
 
 11 
 
 its love of truth, its taste and perceptions ? That the 
 soul cannot be destroyed is not much. A grain of 
 sand cannot be destroyed. Can the soul, by its 
 natural force, live, enjoy, expand? Of this there 
 can be no assurance on general principles. Great 
 souls may have great hopes ; but what kind of hopes 
 can small souls entertain ? What kind of hopes 
 can they entertain who never knew or made known 
 that they had souls, but stupidly take this for granted 
 on the ground, that they are in form human beings ? 
 The records of opinion show that while Christians 
 have held to their special hope of resurrection 
 through Christ, unterrified by science, undaunted by 
 philosophy, the believers in the soul's natural im- 
 mortality have been conscious that their hope was 
 becoming fainter and was gradually slipping away. 
 The disbelief in immortality has become common in 
 all the philosophical schools. It has ceased with 
 multitudes to be so much as an opinion. The 
 grounds of even a promising anticipation are re- 
 moved. Materialism has got the better of imma- 
 terialism, and soul with body resolves itself into 
 dust. 
 
 And now Spiritualism comes in, maintaining the 
 natural immortality of the soul, and confronting the 
 philosophical and scientific misgivings, with evidence 
 addressed to the senses. Spiritualism claims that
 
 12 
 
 the immortality of the soul is demonstrated by such 
 palpable proof as even the man of science must re- 
 spect. Immortality, it declares, is no longer a hope, 
 spectral or living, but an assurance, which everybody 
 may have who will. But how far does the assur- 
 ance go ? Does it go further than the bare fact that 
 the dead live again, and not as shadows but as per- 
 sons, with all the elements of their personality about 
 them, with all of mind they had on earth, with 
 memory, affection, will, sympathy, capacity of enjoy- 
 ment and improvement, in short, with their whole 
 human nature? Does assurance go beyond that? 
 Does Spiritualism give assurance that all will 
 grow in wisdom and goodness; that all will find 
 themselves better off, will come to their senses, will 
 get rid of their imperfections, will be purged of their 
 guilt, will arrive at happiness at last? Spiritualism 
 teaches all this; but does it teach it as positive 
 knowledge or only as reasonable hope ? And if only 
 as reasonable hope, then is not the very pith of the 
 doctrine of immortality left still to sunny conjec- 
 ture ? To know that we are really to live again is 
 not much. Some of us are more concerned to know 
 how we are to live, in what condition, with what 
 prospect ? Mere conscious being is not attractive to 
 everybody. Many tell us that they should not re- 
 gret the loss of that. They hope, when they hope
 
 13 
 
 at all, for something more, and something different, 
 and of this Spiritualism gives them what it considers 
 a reasonable hope based on general considerations 
 which it calls a spiritualistic philosophy, which may 
 be sound or may not be. Thus Spiritualism ends in 
 hope, like all the rest : a hope wide, encouraging, 
 and sweet to men, still a hope and nothing more. 
 
 Nothing more ! But is not this enough? Is not 
 hope as good as anything, as good as assurance ? Is 
 it not on some accounts better? Paul makes hope 
 the last beautiful result when patience experience 
 and tribulation have done their work. It is the 
 highest peak of the mountain tipped with glory from 
 the sunbeam. There are no more inspiring offices 
 than those which hope performs for men. In many 
 things it is vastly more helpful than certainty. It 
 is better for most men that the future should be 
 veiled in mist, that they should not know what a day 
 may bring forth, that all should be dark beyond 
 the instant. Certainty would paralyze existence. 
 Who would provide for life that he knew could not 
 be continued ? Who would plant or sow in full 
 prospect of blight or worm, of drought or mildew ? 
 Who would navigate in defiance of impending ship- 
 wreck? Who would explore in view of certain 
 death from wild beast or savage? Who would 
 
 o 
 
 strive if either failure or success were announced
 
 14 
 
 with infallible precision? The element of uncer- 
 tainty, when uncertainty is colored by hope, gives 
 life to all enterprise. We endeavor to make certain, 
 because we do not know. The great working power 
 of the race is imagination, and what inspires the 
 imagination like hope? Hope keeps the mind on 
 the stretch and the heart busy at prophesying. To 
 peer into the future, to get glimpses of it, is an ex- 
 ercise that never wearies, a task that sharpens every 
 faculty, trains thought, quickens fancy, deepens 
 trust, and matures judgment. When we fall from 
 hope to assurance, we fall from poetry to prose. We 
 lose the sense of mystery and the education of senti- 
 ment that it brings with it, and dropping to the level 
 of calculation work out our sum of existence by 
 help of an account book. To investigate is the 
 noblest office of the reason, far nobler than that of 
 faith. There are those who make the uncertainty 
 of the future an excuse for not thinking of it at all, 
 an excuse for withdrawing within the lines of prac- 
 tical life and letting to-morrow bring what it will. 
 But they are exceptional minds. The majority of 
 men will take thought for the morrow, and the more 
 dimly veiled by doubtfulness it is, the more thought 
 they take, and by taking thought they develop the 
 powers of the mind. In one respect -knowledge and 
 ignorance have a similar effect on the will. Both
 
 15 
 
 arrest its movement, the former by dogma, the latter 
 by stupor. They that are certain they know every- 
 thing are as unwilling to go further, as they that 
 know not what it is to be certain of anything. 
 
 Hope is expansive and elastic ; it is many colored 
 and many voiced. A cardinal objection to the stereo- 
 typed representations of immortality is their mon- 
 otony. All are served alike; and where all are 
 served alike, many are served with what they do 
 not want. No single anticipation meets every mood. 
 There is nothing, however attractive, that any one of 
 us would do all the time. The pleasantest gardens 
 weary ; the sweetest bowers cloy ; the most exhilarat- 
 ing pursuits are oppressive ; the most tuneful harps 
 are discordant ; the brightest crowns make the head 
 ache. Every doctrine of immortality pinches some- 
 where. If it accords with the lower dispositions it 
 is disagreable to the higher. Orthodox Christianity 
 would seat us on golden stools, and set us to making 
 music without so much as allowing us to choose our 
 instrument. Spiritualism has too high an apprecia- 
 tion of summer and flowers. Rationalism is so en- 
 amored of progress that it covers the expanse of the 
 hereafter with ladders and parallel bars, and promises 
 the children of eternity an unceasing round of gym- 
 nastics. Swedenborg's visions of Heaven would 
 make some men pray for annihilation. Every posi-
 
 16 
 
 tive form is open to this criticism that it substitutes 
 an uncomely fact for a golden fancy, which like the 
 clouds of a sunset sky presents to the gazer, town or 
 castle, a string of camels, a herd of sheep, a river, a 
 palace, each continually changing into something 
 else. The mystery of the future is its charm. Its 
 castles are castles in the air, which we can build and 
 alter at pleasure. A doctrine will be challenged 
 and must be defended ; a belief must maintain itself 
 by arguments which provoke assault ; a theory 
 will be tested by hard questions which from the 
 nature of the case cannot be answered and will be 
 confronted with dilemmas from which extrication is 
 impossible. Hope is of all degrees, and the future 
 it creates is of all dimensions. Even the hope- 
 less, if there be any such, who ask for no future 
 and wish there were none, are not or need not be 
 vexed by being told that they must have something 
 they do not want. I desire that no one, though he 
 be the wisest and the saintliest, may fashion the 
 hereafter for me. For no picture can exhibit all the 
 hues of hope. Give a hope of immortality, and the 
 anticipation of it will be welcome to thousands whom 
 every description repels whether it be of orthodox 
 or unorthodox believers. The hope will be accepted 
 where the dogma would be rejected, because the 
 hope leaves full play to the imagination, while the 
 dogma forecloses imagination entirely.
 
 17 
 
 But, say some, the hope is as hard to get as the 
 belief. Whence shall it come to the hopeless ? Is 
 it then as hard to obtain hope as to obtain belief? It 
 seems to me that hope survives all belief, in hundreds 
 of cases, and is unavoidable when belief may be un- 
 attainable. Unbelief is sometimes utter. But is hope- 
 lessness ever so ? Is it probable that hope ever abso- 
 lutely perishes in the human breast ? What is signi- 
 fied by the phrase " hoping against hope " but this 
 very deathlessness of hope, this quality that hope 
 has of opening door after door, and leaping barrier 
 after barrier, of making bricks without straw and 
 even without clay, of dashing over chasms where 
 there is nothing but a rainbow for a bridge ? It is 
 scarcely possible to think of an utterly hopeless 
 being. The very suicide, in his desperation has a 
 hope that death will put an end to his despair, either 
 by introducing him to another realm of being where 
 misery will not reach him, or by granting him the 
 peace, the profound peace of the grave. And this 
 peace of the grave is it not after all, faintly con- 
 ceived as a half conscious state, a condition of repose 
 undisturbed except so far as disturbance* may be 
 necessary to reveal the depth of its tranquillity, as 
 in sleep we wish to wake now and then, just enough 
 to be aware how sweet the sleep is? Sleep itself 
 brings no enjoyment, for as far as consciousness is
 
 18 
 
 concerned it is annihilation. The blessedness is in 
 sinking to sleep, and being sure of sleep's refresh- 
 ment. The dreams that may come in health do not 
 " give us peace," but enhance the anticipation. So it 
 may be doubted whether they who voluntarily sink 
 into the sleep of death with the thought that from it 
 there will be no waking, do not after all dimly hope 
 for the luxury of knowing that they are annihilated, 
 and can suffer from the burden of existence no 
 longer. They would be alive sufficiently to enjoy 
 the satisfaction of knowing that they are dead. 
 There are many, I am aware, who say that they 
 do not hope for continued existence after death; 
 in whom neither love of life, nor love of friends, nor 
 love of knowledge, nor love of happiness, nor love of 
 their souls, rouses corresponding desire ; but even 
 these might, if the secret of their hearts could be 
 known, be found wishing for something too wild for 
 them to expect. Hope instead of being dead in them 
 may have retreated to its fountain because it would 
 not waste itself on the barren places that men 
 called " paradise." That the hope of immortality is 
 deeper and more universal than the belief in it, ap- 
 pears from the efforts men make to substitute some 
 other satisfaction for the lost one of faith. They 
 hope to leave some record after them when they have 
 gone ; to live in the memory of friends, to be associ-
 
 19 
 
 ated with clear places and objects, to be thought of 
 tenderly, indulgently, gratefully by people whose 
 love has been precious. The hope of an immortality 
 of some sort seems never to die ; it revives rather, 
 and increases as the faith in conscious continuance 
 in another state of being declines. 
 
 In saying this, it is not implied that hope is an in- 
 born principle, an implanted instinct which, with or 
 without justification, prophesies good in some indefi- 
 nite hereafter. That position is often taken, but 
 rashly, unadvisedly, and in the mood of feeling 
 rather than of thought. Hope must have some ground 
 to stand on, a basis of cloud, if nothing more solid, 
 a twig, if nothing more steadfast. And such ground 
 there is, firm enough for a magnificent hope, if for 
 nothing more. 
 
 I. In the first place there is the imperative 
 demand for justice, a demand, passionate, wild, 
 unreasonable, indefinite often, perhaps usually, still 
 at bottom earnest, and to all appearance justified. So 
 far as we can discern there is injustice in the present 
 arrangements of the world. When every allowance 
 has been made for mistake and misapprehension ; 
 when a keen revision has thrown out whole classes 
 of evidence ; when compensations of all kinds, re- 
 wards and retributions of every sort and degree have 
 been reckoned ; when the moral microscope has been
 
 20 . 
 
 employed to read between the lines of history, and 
 what seemed gigantic iniquities have been resolved 
 into harmless and even beneficent incidents ; 
 when even faith in the divine rule of the world 
 has been called in to fill out the explanations with 
 conjectured possibilities, there remain cases which 
 cannot thus be disposed of. Just persons, men and 
 women, have suffered, in every conceivable manner, 
 in mind, body, estate, reputation, character, through 
 no wilful or conscious fault of omission or commis- 
 sion, have suffered without the smallest visible com- 
 pensation, their wrong and misery being an unac- 
 countable thing to themselves and to others, a 
 mystery before which we stand dumb. On the 
 other hand, unjust people have committed wrongs, 
 in fraud, cruelty, lust, rapine, tyranny, baseness, for 
 which they have never been called to account in 
 their life time, for which they have offered no atone- 
 ment, made no apology, suffered no compunction, 
 been touched with no remorse ; in the perpetration 
 of which they have gratified themselves, in the 
 fruits of which they have enjoyed themselves, on 
 the memory of which they have felicitated them- 
 selves. Examples of this kind are supposed to 
 be numerous; granting that they are few, allowing 
 that only two or three can be found that resist all 
 attempts at an interpretation that is in accord
 
 21 
 
 with the divine equity still these require justi- 
 fication to the heart ; and so long as these are 
 not clearly set apart as exceptions to the general 
 order of providence, the impression of a pervading 
 injustice will last, and the mind will, in spite of re- 
 monstrance from cool reason, turn its gaze towards 
 another state of being where the inequality may be 
 explained or removed. It is possible, of course, that 
 at some future time, when the knowledge of the 
 constitution of the moral universe shall be more 
 complete than it is, all cases of seeming iniquity 
 will be explained in full consistency with absolute 
 wisdom and goodness ; but till that time arrives, so 
 long as iniquity, after we have done onr best, stand s 
 out blank and bold as iniquity, unredeemed or un- 
 softened, the feeling that there must be a balancing 
 of accounts in a hereafter, will be invincible. 
 
 That the argument may be pushed too far is 
 conceded ; that it is usually pushed too far is allowed ; 
 that it cannot fairly be made to sustain a structure 
 of belief in another stage of being, I for one, frankly 
 admit. But it is strong enough to support a hope. 
 The thoughtful man may not be prepared to say that 
 
 e 
 
 " either man is immortal or God is not just ; " but 
 the good man may breathe a hope that he may be 
 immortal in order that he may see that God is just. 
 Whether man be mortal or immortal, the justice of
 
 22 
 
 God is not to be called in question. The hope is that 
 we may be permitted to behold it. 
 
 2. Hope finds another justification in the incom- 
 pleteness of life. Of all who are born the number is 
 comparatively small who have opportunity to know 
 or prove what they are or might become. In our 
 cemeteries how many broken columns in memory of 
 people whose lives have been cut short on the thresh- 
 hold of promise ! As we consult observation and 
 recall memories, we are astonished at the number of 
 blighted existences and baffled careers. Years of 
 toil and privation and the possession of the promised 
 land denied, though the eye be not dimmed or the 
 natural force abated ; the organization of the brain 
 giving out, at the very moment the eager intellect 
 would make a crowning effort ; the dawning ambition 
 clouded if not lost in darkness before noon ; the budd- 
 ing promise of usefulness nipped by an untimely frost 
 on the edge of summer ; suns dropping from the firm- 
 ament they seemed about to fill with light ! These 
 sights meet us unceasingly, and whenever we see 
 them, the dream of some future fulfilment comes 
 unbidden to the heart. 
 
 The dream is very vivid indeed when those who are 
 thus prematurely blotted out are noble persons, who, 
 living for great ends, have died without seeing them 
 fulfilled, or, emulous of high attainment in goodness,
 
 23 
 
 have been prevented by death from achieving the 
 character they made the object of their endeavor 
 life for them ending, and all that rendered life dear 
 denied. The arrested development of soul is one of 
 the perplexing phenomena of experience. Perhaps we 
 have no right to expect anything else. Perhaps the 
 demand is extravagant that the individual should be 
 permitted to perfect himself in mind or in character ; 
 it looks like an expectation that the individual 
 members of the race shall attain a stature which the 
 whole race, in the course of ages, alone can reach. 
 Still the hope that wisdom and goodness may be 
 justified in their children, that summer and autumn 
 will, in due succession, crown every human spring- 
 time is so natural as to be with most people inevi- 
 table. And that hope can come to fruition only in 
 a hereafter. The summer means heaven ; the 
 autumn means eternity. 
 
 3. Then there is the heart's hope that its affec- 
 tions will be allowed to unfold themselves in full 
 strength and beauty, and reach the complete satis- 
 faction they long after. Love of parent, child, brother, 
 or sister, friend, become an organic part of the 
 nature, feels defrauded when the object is taken 
 away, cries out for reunion and will not be comfort- 
 ed with anything less than a hereafter of loving 
 opportunity. Yet more earnest and tremulous with
 
 24 
 
 passion, is the cry for satisfaction from those whose 
 affection has never found its object, or having found 
 it, is unable to bring it within reach, but is met on 
 
 * 
 
 every hand by impediments that cannot be removed. 
 Experiences of this kind are common, more common 
 than is generally believed, and they are often 
 heart-rending. Reason lends to such cries an 
 open ear. In calm moments we refuse to admit the 
 plea that love, any love, has by virtue of its strength 
 a claim on full fruition of joy. They who do 
 not feel the pangs of heart-hunger, regard as mere 
 sentimentalism the notion that lovers must find 
 lovers again and friends friends; that a heaven 
 must be provided in the future for those who have 
 missed heaven here, through their own fault perhaps ; 
 that eternal mansions must be prepared for homeless 
 hearts, where the separated shall be gathered to- 
 gether again and the lost shall be found. But when 
 the heart-hunger comes, as it does to almost every 
 body sooner or later, the sober judgment of the in- 
 tellect is repudiated, hope reigns supreme, and urges 
 its title to be considered one of the hopes that must 
 not be " put to shame." No doubt the hope, in the 
 great multitude of cases, is passionate and visionary ; 
 the affection will cool in a short time ; the desire will 
 slacken ; the hunger will subside without gratifica- 
 tion ; temporary consolations will meet the occasion
 
 25 
 
 of sorrow, and the hope will fold its wings far on 
 the hither side of immortality. But it is not always 
 so by any means. The longing is often life long, 
 and gains in depth as it loses in passionateness. 
 Many will never believe that 
 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all, 
 
 and will deem themselves wholly justified in feeling 
 that the awakening of love guaranties a full satis- 
 faction of all love's desires. And with these the 
 hope of an immortality is inappeasible. With them 
 hope is an inspired prophet, a divine oracle in the 
 heart, whose voice it is blasphemy to neglect. 
 
 Considerations like these may not have much 
 force as arguments ; but as persuasions they are not 
 without power. Practically, they have immense, 
 though imponderable value. If they do not sustain 
 conviction, they enrich and gladden sentiment, and 
 sentiment, with the multitude of mankind, carries a 
 mightier and wider sway than conviction. It is in 
 feeling that we live. The daily sunshine and atmo- 
 sphere of the heart are a joy .and habitual inspiration. 
 The beliefs we define and profess may be the best ac- 
 count we can give of our general condition of mind ; 
 but the poise of feeling decides our place in. the world 
 of imagination and faith. Beliefs may be feet to us, 
 but feet do not carry us far. Faith and hope are
 
 26 
 
 wings, by the aid of which we scale the barriers of 
 space, and flit across the barren reaches of time. 
 I The materials that hope is made of are more 
 precious than those of which belief is composed. 
 Belief is built up of arguments, reports, traditions, 
 imperfect observations of hastily collected phenom- 
 ena, but hope is the result of loving, trusting, serving, 
 obeying, being. These qualities of the person are the 
 most trustworthy prophets of the person's destiny. 
 Make them rich and they will not disappoint their 
 possessor. Happiness will follow goodness ; or if not 
 happiness, that which is far better, the trust that sur- 
 renders happiness and accepts the order of the divine 
 decree.
 
 CLOGS AXD OPPORTUNITIES. 
 
 I announce my subject this morning as Clogs and 
 Opportunities. 
 
 Let me endeavor in a few words to make clear the 
 line of my thought, and the drift of my argument. 
 The two words suggest opposite ideas ; the one, a 
 shut door, the other an open door; the one a fetter, 
 the other a sail ; the one a hindrance, the other a help ; 
 the one limitation, the other deliverance. Oppor- 
 tunity is supposed to be deliverance from clogs. 
 Clogs are supposed to be obstacles in the way of op- 
 portunity. The lament is incessant that clogs are so 
 numerous and so heavy, that opportunities are so 
 few, and so easily exhausted. There is a perpetual 
 moaning and murmuring over the burdensomeness of 
 fetters. All the congratulation there is celebrates 
 the abundance and facility of opportunities. It has 
 been for these hundreds of years the habit of people,
 
 and of the best people, the most thoughtful and 
 earnest people, to speak of the world as a scene of 
 sorrow, weariness and tribulation, of life as a long 
 and arduous battle, of experience as a series of afflic- 
 tions and humiliations. In fact, this may be called 
 the " Christian " way of looking at the world, and 
 the " Christian " way of speaking about the world. 
 The reason of it is that the accepted theory of the 
 world for a good deal more than two thousand years, 
 is based on the notion that there is a bitter and dead- 
 ly war, a war to the death, between Light and 
 Darkness, between Good and Evil. Good being a 
 beneficent principle, and Evil, a principle also, ma- 
 leficent. The resulting feeling was, therefore, that 
 this world is a place of exile, a dungeon, a desert; 
 that man is shut up in it, a spiritual being, fully en- 
 dowed with heavenly gifts and capabilities ; that the 
 effort of life is to emancipate himself from this thral- 
 dom; that experience is the friction, the rub, the 
 tribulation incident to being in the dungeon at all, and 
 that the only power that can emancipate is the 
 power of an angel; that deliverance must be sent 
 down to mankind from supernatural sources, in an- 
 swer to prayer and supplication, as a reward of 
 humiliation, and religious observance ; every effort, 
 in short, being made by which the finite mind can 
 come out of itself and find refuge in the infinite
 
 Being. From this theory all these accepted ideas 
 regarding the world and life proceed, and upon this 
 theory men are induced to speak as they do about 
 clogs arid opportunities. 
 
 Let us now sum up the opposite view, and con- 
 sider the version which the new religion gives, of the 
 world and life and experience. Say that the world is 
 not a dungeon, that life is not a battle, that experience 
 is not a series of tribulations and woes, that we need 
 not go out of ourselves for help to put the world under 
 our feet, that prayer, for the interposition of the Su- 
 preme Power to supplement the world that he himself 
 has made and endowed, and in which is his continual 
 presence, is unnecessary ; say that we gain strength 
 as we go along, that it is in the effort to remove ob- 
 stacles that we acquire power to remove them, that ob- 
 stacles are in this sense furtherances, and see atonce 
 how the entire view of things changes. Now we 
 perceive how clogs may be opportunities, perhaps the 
 best opportunities, possibly all the opportunities that 
 there are. 
 
 I do not content myself with saying, as men have 
 been in the habit of assuming for two or three thou- 
 sand years, that it is possible, with faith and saintli- 
 ness and holy will, for people richly endowed with 
 spiritual gifts to overcome obstacles, to put tempta- 
 tions under their feet ; I contend that as a simple
 
 fact in the experience of mankind, clogs not only can 
 be converted into opportunities, but are for all people 
 opportunities. In saying this, I strike the key note 
 of this morning's discussion. 
 
 My thought is simply this : that there is no such 
 violent contrast between foes and friends, obstacles 
 and furtherances, fetters and freedom, as is commonly 
 supposed ; that the whole world is a world of oppor- 
 tunities ; that life is a combination of advantages ; 
 that experience is simply the result of availing our- 
 selves of them. 
 
 Let me illustrate this simple thought. First, we 
 will take the clog of the body. You know the old 
 idea, the idea that is the keystone of Roman Catholic 
 and of Protestant Evangelical Christianity, that the 
 material body is the seat of evil. Hence our horror 
 of matter. Hence our dread of worldliness. Hence 
 our greatest loathing of whatever is animal. Hence in 
 the religious world the warring against natural desire, 
 the natural propensities, material wishes and hopes, 
 as if these were essentially vile and bad, and as such 
 to be repressed and extirpated. 
 
 This old doctrine, which is held by thousands of 
 people, which is held, in fact, though quite uncon- 
 sciously, by all evangelical Christians to-day, is, as 
 a simple matter of fact, pretty much outgrown. 
 There are, in any Christian country, comparatively
 
 few people who practically admit the theory that 
 their bodies are the seat of evil, that matter is 
 inherently base. On the contrary, you will find 
 people now, Christian people as well as others, so- 
 called Christian people at all events, living on the 
 supposition that it is a good thing to train the body, 
 to multiply phasant sensations, to gratify natural 
 tastes, to expand natural powers, to augment 
 strength, to increase natural desires and gifts. But 
 though the theory is virtually discarded, and practi- 
 cally has become obsolete, though the philosophy 
 rested on is not understood, is so completely forgotten 
 in fact, that the very people that profess it cannot be- 
 lieve it when stated bluntly to them ; still, there 
 exists a sentimental feeling in regard to the body as 
 a clog, which it is worth while to notice. 
 
 We hear people speaking thus : If it were not for 
 these bodies of ours, we could hear the songs of the 
 angels ; but the thickness of the ear prevents our hear- 
 ing any but the tones within certain scales, there being 
 infinite tones below, and infinite tones above, which 
 the organ does not report at all. We would like to 
 see invisible forms, but the curtain of the eye is 
 dropped before our vision. We should be glad to 
 touch and embrace shapes that are finer than any 
 mortal bodies, .but we are able to grasp only sub- 
 stantial things. We are eager to speed across the
 
 8 
 
 earth at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, and 
 at most we can walk three or four. 
 
 The body, that is the clog, the fetter, the draw- 
 back on the soul. One of these days, people say, 
 this encumbrance will be removed, for these earthly 
 elements will be discarded. Suppose they were ! 
 Can we conceive of a disembodied spirit? Have 
 we an idea what sort of a creature a disembodied 
 spirit may be ? A spirit, I mean, without organs, 
 form, dimensions, properties. We cannot imagine 
 such a thing ! In trying to think of the infinite, the 
 pure spirit, you think of him as having a human 
 form. The ancients spoke of God as being the soul 
 of the world. If God be the soul of the world, then 
 the world is the body of God ; and so they thought. 
 The body a clog ! The body is an organ, an oppor- 
 tunity, a bundle of opportunities, a system of oppor- 
 tunities. No living man ever yet knew, or guessed, 
 or imagined the wealth of opportunity that nature 
 shut up in that frame of his. 
 
 Only now and then some one person gives us a 
 glimpse in some particular direction, of this cor- 
 poreal capacity. The artist reveals the wealth of 
 capability that is stored away in the human eye, as 
 he discloses shades of color which mean nothing to 
 us, brings out effects of light that never struck us, 
 traces lines and proportions of which we have no
 
 9 
 
 understanding whatever, actually detects secrets in 
 natural things that are concealed from ordinary men 
 and women. 
 
 The leader of orchestra, who, while a hundred 
 instruments are playing in concert an overture by 
 Wagner or symphony of Beethoven, can detect the 
 error of a single note in one of the violins, reveals 
 the capacity of the human ear. 
 
 The fingers of the accomplished pianist, that 
 seem alive each one with a separate soul, so alive 
 that, without being watched or apparently guided, 
 streams of music drip like rain from their delicate 
 tips, show something of the power that is latent in 
 the human hand. This is what we see now and 
 then. 
 
 Suppose that every human being suddenty, at a mo- 
 ment's warning, were fully endowed with these 
 finished powers, the body actually being in every 
 faculty what it occasionally is in a single sense; 
 what could he do with the endowment ? Nothing. 
 Too much opportunity is as bad as none. He would 
 be baffled, bewildered and crazed by excess of ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 It is seldom that we meet healthy people who 
 appreciate their health. People whose bodies are 
 in the very best condition for effort, rarely use them 
 for the noblest effort. The history of beautiful
 
 10 
 
 women is a miserable history of vanity and frailty, 
 of reckless and ruinous passion. There are, indeed, 
 delightful exceptions, but exceptions they unhappily 
 are. History exhibits, now and then, the conspicuous 
 and glorious example of a woman endowed with 
 beauty and grace, gifted with fascination of manners 
 and voice, using her exquisite opportunity by sweetly 
 pleasing her fellow-creatures, making them happy, 
 winning them to goodness, bringing them around her 
 as the centre of an innocent and joyous society. But 
 for the most part, the gift of beauty is a fatal gift, 
 because it is too much for its possessor to control ; 
 it is more enginery than can be legitimately employ- 
 ed. The history of strong men, too, in large measure, 
 is a history of bruisers, prize-fighters, and bullies. It 
 is not invariably so. Now and then there is a conspic- 
 uous instance of a man of magnificent physique, 
 who uses it harmlessly for the welfare of his fellow- 
 creatures, under a serious sense of accountability to 
 the giver of his frame ; but this is very rare indeed. 
 For the most part, health is oppressive to people, 
 and overcomes them, as joy does when in excess. 
 The system must be crushed back, as it were, on 
 itself; windows must be closed, doors must be barred, 
 in order that a portion may be improved. 
 
 It is said that it is not the body, but the sick, the 
 diseased body, that is the clog. We should not com-
 
 11 
 
 plain of our bodies, the invalids cry, if they were 
 healthy. We complain because they are disordered. 
 But again, I say health as a rule does not minister' to 
 virtue. The dissipated, the abandoned, the licen- 
 tious, the inebriate, are all drawn from the class of the 
 healthy people. It is the overplus, the exuberance 
 of health, that is dangerous, being too much for men 
 to manage ; consequently, it ruins where it should 
 rescue. The truth seems to be that a certain 
 amount of infirmity is necessary to make people 
 appreciate use and enjoy the power they actually 
 possess. It is an ancient commonplace, that the 
 passive virtues of every quality, patience, resigna- 
 tion, humility, sweetness, care for others' welfare, 
 sympathy, the graces of saintliness are educated to 
 a large degree by sickness. The advantages of sick- 
 ness have been the theme of a great many pious ser- 
 mons. We have all heard the ministry of the sick- 
 room extolled ; nay, it is the confession of people who 
 have been sick themselves, that they are introduced 
 through that avenue into compassion with the suffer- 
 ing and sorrow of their fellow-creatures. All sick- 
 ness does not purchase that effect, of course. Sick- 
 ness often makes people nervous, querulous, and 
 generally distempered ; but a large portion of so 
 much passive virtue as there is in the world, is due 
 plainly to limitation of this kind, due, that is, to the
 
 12 
 
 obstacle, the stern confinement which sickness im- 
 poses. Is it not true that a great deal of the active 
 force of women, their sensitiveness, their power of 
 patience and compassion, has been due as a fact, to 
 the infirmity of their bodies, to the weakness they 
 complain of, the obstacles and repressions they re- 
 sent? 
 
 A generation since, we were all talking about 
 Laura Bridgeman, a poor girl in Massachusetts, who 
 was born deaf, dumb, and blind. These avenues being 
 barricaded, whatever strength there was in her, 
 rushed out of the only avenues that were left, her 
 fingers, her skin. It was wonderful indeed to see 
 what this poor limited girl did from the- pitiful ne- 
 cessity of the case. With these so often useless ap- 
 pendages of the human body, she could detect the 
 material of which garments were made ; she could even 
 feel colors. The sensibility of her skin enabled her 
 to perceive moral atmospheres and to penetrate the 
 secrets of character through the moral influences 
 they shed abroad upon the air. Laura Bridgeman was 
 not a remarkable person ; had she been endowed as 
 we are with a full complement of senses, we never 
 should have heard of her ; the fact that she was lim- 
 ited and circumscribed extorted from her the display 
 of these wonderful gifts, and made her the attractive 
 study she was to the scientific men of a generation.
 
 i:; 
 
 Not long 1 since there died in England an artist of 
 remarkable talent, lie had been a poor boy, badly 
 brought up. with scarcely a trace of nurture, a lazy, 
 idle, vagabond youth. One day as he was trying to 
 steal apples the bough of the tree broke and the lad 
 fell to the ground, receiving an injury to his spine 
 which effectually prevented performances of that 
 sort ever after. Shut up in his room, confined 
 to his bed, no longer in danger of the iail, the state's 
 
 O O J 
 
 prison, or the halter. u cabined, cribbed, confined," 
 whatever vitality there was in the youth came out 
 in his eye and touch. There he lay and thought, re- 
 viving impressions, recalling facts of observation. 
 In his plundering and marauding expeditions, he 
 had studied the character and habits of dogs. With 
 singular and marvelous skill he begins now to draw 
 the familiar animals, and with a success that won ' 
 his way to fame ; he is a fortunate man who can be- 
 come the possessor of one of this young man's draw- 
 ings. Infirmity transformed the vagabond into an 
 artist. The clog, the fetter, the limitation, perhaps 
 saved him from the gallows. 
 
 You have all heard of Blaise Pascal, one of the 
 most extraordinary men that ever lived : a man of 
 whom it has l>een said that his intellectual powers 
 were such as were seldom if ever bestowed on a human 
 creature. He was puny, sick, diseased, from his
 
 14 
 
 youth. Able to do next to nothing, shut up in his 
 study, delicate and tremulous, all the blood that was 
 in him ran to brain ; the feats that he performed, 
 he died before forty have astonished the world, and 
 astonish the world to-day. 
 
 It is a recorded biographical fact, that his greatest 
 mathematical discovery, and he made more than 
 one, was due to the spinal irritation that disease 
 produced which prevented sleeping. 
 
 Take as another instance Robert Hall, a Baptist 
 preacher of the last generation in England, the 
 greatest preacher of his time, a man of extraor- 
 dinary eloquence, wonderful reach of thought 
 and power of moral impression. He was an invalid 
 confirmed, a helpless invalid, confined to his bed the 
 greater part of the week in acute suffering. It has 
 been surmised that the irritation produced by the 
 suffering, the effort to overcome it, the rebellion 
 against it, stimulated the magnificent eloquence that 
 was a power and a glory in his day. 
 
 People say : If these men were so brilliant when 
 thus disabled, what might they not have become, 
 had they been blessed with full capacity ? Perhaps 
 nothing at all. We might never have heard of them. 
 The possibility is that the great Pascal, vexed with 
 many cares, never might have written his extraordi- 
 nary books, but for the disease that drove him back
 
 15 
 
 upon himself, and irritated to unnatural activity his 
 nervous system. 
 
 What is the inference for all this? That sick- 
 ness is better than health? Would it be well for us 
 
 if we all had disease of the spine, were all confined 
 
 
 
 to our chambers ? Not at all. It is not the limita- 
 tion in itself that is helpful, it is not the sickness that 
 works the miracle ; it is the effort to overcome it, it 
 is the necessity which the barrier imposes of pushing 
 through a narrow gorge into activity. Looking at 
 it closely we see how sickness furnishes the con- 
 dition under which we acquire knowledge of the laws 
 of health. In studying sickness, we study the con- 
 stitution of the human frame. In learning how to 
 avoid sickness we learn how to maintain the frame 
 in its norma,! condition. Not until we shall have 
 exhausted sickness, not until we shall have learned 
 at every point to meet and put it away, shall we en- 
 joy perfect health. Health is an acquired, not a nat- 
 ural possession ; an achievement, not a gift ; in order 
 that we may appreciate it we must earn it, thus win- 
 ning little by little the right to faculties whose 
 hardly conquered value will be too precious to waste. 
 Take another illustration, the clogs of circum- 
 stance, poverty, obscurity, the narrow lot, what 
 complaint we hear about these limitations ! If we 
 could only abplish poverty, if we could but snatch
 
 16 
 
 people out of the thraldoms which hedge them in, what 
 splendid developments of social life we should be- 
 hold! Should we? Is it then 'true, that those who 
 do not feel the pressure of circumstance, who are 
 neither poor, nor cramped, whoge lot is not circum- 
 scribed, whose field is ample, is it true that these 
 are noble, generous, great? Xay ; of these are the idle, 
 the improvident, the wasters of life, the, squander- 
 ers of opportunity ; these are the people who have 
 so much room that it stretches out into wilderness, so 
 much time that the hours run into one another, the 
 days are blurred, the years spread into morasses, and 
 life has no determination ; they have no time for 
 any useful things. The cry comes from thousands of 
 women, nurtured in luxurious homes, taught in the 
 best schools, favored with everything that wealth 
 and indulgence can bestow, their days unoccupied, 
 their existence without a ripple the bitter cry is 
 heard, a cry of weariness and almost of despair, 
 " Give us something to do ! Find us work or we 
 perish." They are pining away because they are not 
 under limits. Their field is too large for their 
 cultivation. One of the problems of society, one 
 of the sore problems just now, is to assign a limit- 
 ation, to set up an obstacle, to appoint a task for 
 precisely this class of people who at present have no 
 limitation, no task, nothing to resist. The people
 
 17 
 
 who complain that they have no time, are people 
 whose time slips away because there is nothing to 
 stop it. Do you want a thing done? go to the 
 busiest man'; never to the idlers. He has no leisure, 
 he never learned the art of detaining the moments. 
 With him it is " water, water everywhere, and not 
 a drop to drink." The man is drowned in the flood 
 of being, he is torn to pieces by his own dogs ; he 
 is rotted out by the amplitude of his circumstances. 
 Clog is opportunity, hinderance is help, obstacle is 
 furtherance. 
 
 It has been stated somewhere that for four gen- 
 erations in England, no man became eminent, as 
 lawyer or physician, who had inherited an income 
 of 200 a year. See what narrow and circum- 
 scribed conditions men. must be placed in. Not a 
 man in England whose desire raved against those 
 narrow boundaries ! So many cattle browse con- 
 tentedly in these little pastures. No impulse to over- 
 leap the walls of so close a sheep-fold ! So cramped 
 a space sufficient for their longest excursions ! It 
 speaks poorty for the development of human nature, 
 but there stands the fact, that until one comes 
 against a boundary, until one feels the pressure of a 
 wall, he is unconscious of the awakening of power 
 in himself. 
 
 
 
 The soldiers of Hannibal, the Carthagenian gen-
 
 18 
 
 eral, one of the greatest soldiers of history, had 
 crossed the Alps in mid-winter, had defeated the 
 Romans in battle after battle, had shown themselves 
 all but invincible, through their perfect valor and 
 discipline. They came to Capua, the most luxurious 
 city of Italy, and a single winter in that delicious 
 climate broke up their discipline and undermined 
 their strength. They were ruined by ease. Yet 
 they were the same men they had been ; they had 
 the same sinews ; they had the memory of their past 
 battles ; the lessons of their previous training were 
 fresh ; but the stimulus of necessity was wanting. 
 Had a foe sprung upon them they would have rushed 
 to their arms and proved themselves once more in- 
 vincible. No foe appeared, and the silken sinews of- 
 fered no combat to iron men. 
 
 The opportunitj' of Moses was the abject condi- 
 tion of his people, their ignorance pride and supersti- 
 tion, the necessity of keeping them forty years under 
 training in the wilderness before they were fit to en- 
 ter the promised land. But for that stern necessity 
 we might never have heard of Moses the law-giver. 
 
 The opportunity of David was the jealous perse- 
 cution of Saul. Had he stepped easily into his 
 throne, he would hardly have thrilled his nation 
 with the songs that make him immortal. 
 
 The opportunity of Jesus* was the exceedingly
 
 19 
 
 narrow circle of the national ideas ; the stubbornness 
 of prejudice and dogmatism that ruled the men of 
 his generation, drove him back upon himself and 
 made his thoughts gush like fountains from the re- 
 cesses of his heart. The bigotry of his people crys- 
 tallized his qualities into saintliness. Their contrac- 
 tion was the occasion of his grandeur. 
 
 The opportunity of Cromwell was the desperate 
 condition of England at the time when he lived, 
 and the absurd stupidity of King Charles. 
 
 The opportunity of Washington, was Valley 
 Forge ; the divisions among the people, scantiness 
 of war supplies, the unwillingness of the States to 
 send men. That great will made itself great, manu- 
 factured its greatness in the terrific laboratory of 
 his country's distress. Washington would never 
 have achieved his renown, might never as a charac- 
 ter have existed, but for that stern necessity ; the 
 man, the human being, never might have been, 
 but 'for these terrible oppressions, these stubborn 
 limitations, these grim opportunities that men call 
 dangers, which harrassed him on all sides, thrust him 
 back upon himself, shut him up as in a cell, and com- 
 pelled him to push out his possibilities or die. 
 
 The opportunity of Abraham Lincoln, was the 
 narrowness of his lot, his poverty and abjectness, 
 the miserable character of his associations, the dearth
 
 20 
 
 of society, and the necessity there was upon him, 
 being shut up in this small pen-fold, to get himself, 
 out. His next opportunity was the angry debate on 
 the question of slavery ; and last, the rebellion of the 
 slave power against the constitution. But for this. 
 Abraham Lincoln, never would have been devel- 
 oped, would never have lived as the man we know. 
 
 A generation ago, we were complaining of slavery 
 If we could only have this incubus off our breast 
 what a leap our nation would make towards its glory ! 
 To what heights of attainment we should at once 
 spring ! 
 
 We perceive now, that it was the incessant fret 
 and friction of slavery, its relentless pressure, its 
 stubborn determination that we should have no life 
 of our own, its unscrupulous crowding, that com- 
 pelled us to summon from the depths of our hearts 
 all the manhood that was in us ; educating the stern- 
 ness of our justice, maturing the vigor of our hope ; 
 compelling us to study the very root-principles of 
 our institutions. 
 
 What then? Are evils good things? Are or- 
 ganized wrongs beneficent ? Not in themselves. 
 They serve us simply because they compel us to re- 
 act against them, and only as they compel us to react 
 against them ; but, as they so compel us, they are 
 good. They are educators of power.
 
 21 
 
 Could the reformer's dream as By a miracle of 
 Providence, be realized to-day, the vision of the 
 lover of peace, the hope of the patriot, the aspi- 
 ration of the philanthropist ; could poverty, guilt, 
 crime, serfdom, war, be abolished at a stroke, should 
 we find ourselves at the end of our attainment? 
 Should we be as great as we should seem ? Nay, we 
 should relapse rather. We should simply be re- 
 manded back to Eden ; and what sort of a condition 
 for living men would that be ? A condition of un- 
 developed possibilities. Eden was but a baby-house. 
 Adam and Eve were children, and not very hopeful 
 children, either; without experience, conscience, 
 ambition, desire, sympathy, moral power, or moral 
 aspiration, children sporting in a garden, with 
 nothing to do, not even fruits to tend or vines to 
 train. Their sin, as it has been called, was the 
 evidence of their virtue. Their rebellion was the 
 reaction against their limits, which showed the pos- 
 sibilities of the man and woman; their sudden expul- 
 sion thrust them out into the privilege of their awful 
 opportunities. That expulsion from Eden with 
 the waving sword of the cherubim before the gates 
 was an angelic call to them to be man and woman ; 
 and that, from thenceforth they began to be. Would 
 you restore that paradise? Were the dream of the 
 reformer to be fulfilled this moment, it would be re- 
 stored.
 
 22 
 
 The vision of heaven as it has been entertained 
 by orthodox believers time out of mind, is a place 
 much like Eden, where there is nothing to do, no 
 more body, and no more business, no more tasks, 
 no more limitations, no more being. The task of 
 divines has been to find employment for the people 
 thus released into vacancy ; it was not easy ; being 
 unable to find useful occupation, they could think 
 of nothing but to sit on thrones and sing. 
 
 The popular heaven is a heaven of pure oppor- 
 tunity without a clog or a fetter ; no walls, no ob- 
 stacles, but then, no humanity. By carrying the here 
 into the hereafter we make the hereafter blessed. 
 
 Lastly, the clog of theology, the stumbling block. 
 of bigotry, the barricade of ''dogmatism ; fixed ideas, 
 fixed systems, bad beliefs, let us consider all this. 
 What complaint there is of the disability which 
 they impose on the human mind ! What sorrow to 
 endure them, what suffering to overcome them ; 
 what quenching of the spirit from their gloom ! What 
 fatal discouragement to timid thinkers and tender 
 hearts ! Yes, it is, indeed, true that bad theologies 
 have done fearful mischief in the world, in the way 
 of tormenting bodies, misleading minds and crucify- 
 ing souls, bad beliefs respecting God and the Future, 
 the soul ; its destiny and its experience, have pro- 
 duced their share of personal and social misery ;
 
 28 
 
 there is no telling the woe and sorrow, and calamity, 
 that they have caused. 
 
 But there is another side that is worth consider- 
 ing. False religions have had this use and value, 
 that they have educated the human mind in faith 
 and courage as sweeter beliefs never could have 
 done, hideous, barbarously cruel, as they have 
 been ; the more cruel, the more hideous and barbar- 
 ous, the sterner and more persistent has been the 
 reaction of the human heart against them. They 
 have thus been the compulsory salvation of man- 
 kind, an unwilling education in thought, and yet 
 more in endurance and heroism, in hope and moral 
 perceptions, in unselfish devotion to principle and 
 respect for man's nobler part. That we have souls 
 to call our own is due to the spiritual foes that 
 would have enslaved our spirits. We owe a debt to 
 the worst religions that have been on earth, that can 
 never be discharged, never fitly spoken of. 
 
 The theology of Ne\v England, as it was, explains 
 the moral growth of New England. Hard, acrid, 
 angular, how many tender bosoms have been bruis- 
 ed against it, how many delicate consciences and 
 sensitive souls have been wounded and struck to 
 death by its sharp points ! And yet, what a disci- 
 pline in thought it was ! For when men were hedged 
 round as with a line of fire by these tremendous
 
 24 
 
 dogmas of predestination, depravity, atonement, hell, 
 it was imperative that they should resist and react ; 
 reaction in favor of rational liberty of mind could 
 not be prevented. Somebody thinks, questions, 
 doubts, denies, a conflict is brought on between 
 spirit and letter, the result of which is, that we now 
 are able to meet here as we do from Sunday to Sun- 
 day, entertaining in peace our own sincere thoughts. 
 A frequent subject of complaint is the disadvantage 
 of having been trained under orthodox theories, the 
 drawback it was to have been nurtured in these grim 
 beliefs of the Puritans. In many cases it is undoubt- 
 edly a heavy incumbrance. In some cases it has been 
 a lifelong impediment to clear and inspiring beliefs. 
 The creed has been a strong sepulchre for the soul ; 
 the barrier has pressed too close, and the man has 
 been suffocated within the close cavern walls. But 
 again, in other cases, the theology has been a means 
 of intellectual training ; a cultivation of the religious 
 sentiments, an education in meekness, patience and 
 sincerity. The people who have gone through that 
 training, and have come out of it, who have grappled 
 with it and thought it out, who have inherited 
 it and outgrown it, whose root of character is there 
 while their branches spread out in the sunshine and 
 air of the newer thought, are among the sweetest, 
 truest, fairest people we know.
 
 Our mvn Knii-r^on. one of the lovelies! of living 
 men. noble in conscience. Lender i;i heart, illumi- 
 naieil in reason, broad and delicate in spiritual \ i.-i"ii. 
 liad behind him eight generations of devout orthodox 
 clergymen. It was the conscientious effort of those 
 pious, painful men. to lind out the truth within the 
 limits appointed to iliem. to grai'plc with the terrible 
 questions which their age propounded, and to answer 
 them as they could. People who are brought up 
 outside of the old theology, who were born into 
 Liberalism, without personal knowledge of the older 
 faith having no problems thrown down before 
 them, and consequently being discharged from the 
 duty of turning them over, are tempted never to ask. 
 and failing to ask. become loose Jlaeeid and indolent in 
 their minds. \Ve have to eon jure up for them new 
 questions, to bring forward new problems that will 
 take the place of the grim old provocatives their 
 fathers knew. 
 
 There is ground therefore for saying that the clog 
 is the opportunity. In selling forth such a doctrine 
 we are indulging in no paradox. It is from no wish 
 to entertain a curious intellectual speculation that 
 the position is taken. It is a grave and serious mat- 
 ter, involving one of the principles of the new relig- 
 ion, and conveying a practical hint of the future it 
 opens and the method it employs.
 
 20 
 
 For this new religion, which represents the world 
 as a system of opportunities, life as a process of de- 
 velopment, experience as a series of growths, which 
 teaches that difficulty creates energy, and energy im- 
 pels advance, and advance contains the future in 
 itself, would substitute for the complaint of life's 
 misery, congratulation upon life's occasions. Instead 
 of saying, " Oh, for the wings of a dove that we may 
 fly away and be at rest !" its devotees express a 
 warm and hearty sense of gratitude that they are 
 here, that theirs is the day, the freshly bestowed 
 morning, friendship, love, duty, hopeful tasks, and 
 happy achievements. The lesson of the new religion 
 is that all is opportunity. To learn that lesson well 
 is to learn, the lesson of the perfect faith. 
 
 \ 
 
 For life is good whose tidal flow 
 
 Tlie motions of God's will obeys ; 
 And death is good, that makes us know 
 
 The life divine which all things sways. 
 
 And good it is to bear the cross, 
 
 And so the perfect peace to win, 
 And naught is ill, nor brings us loss, 
 
 That brings the light of heaven in.
 
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