Ethi 
 
 F^ELIGION 
 
 W. /n, 5al,T!':k 
 
GIFT or 
 
 Professor O. R, Noyes 
 
(^ 
 
 i L^^-^ 
 
Ethical Religion. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MACKINTIRE SALTER. 
 
 r 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1889. 
 
-^^v^'^'^ 
 s^ 
 
 Copyright, 1889, 
 By William Mackintire Salter. 
 
 
 ovke^ 
 
 i'" 't * 1-^ t ,^ ^ ' < ' • • » V * t "1 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
<p/ 
 
 TO 
 FELIX ABLER, 
 
 GEORG VON GIZYCKI, AND EDWIN D. MEAD, 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
 M 5515 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IT is only fair to any one who may take up this 
 book, to say that it is made up of lectures 
 given, for the most part, before the Society for 
 Ethical Culture of Chicago. It is due to my col- 
 leagues in the Ethical Movement to say that they 
 are not responsible for the views here expressed, 
 that the book nowise claims to represent the Move- 
 ment, but simply reflects my own attitude of mind 
 upon the various topics treated. Even in discuss- 
 ing " The Basis of the Ethical Movement," I but 
 give my own interpretation of it. The bond of 
 union between the lecturers, as between the mem- 
 bers, of Ethical Societies is not a speculative but 
 a moral one. I must add, however, tliat my own 
 intellectual indebtedness to Professor Adler is so 
 great that it would be difficult to measure it. Many 
 of the thoughts in this volume — probably the best 
 ones — are really his thoughts ; he has given me, 
 or at least quickened in my mind, ideas that will 
 never go from me, that are a part of my better 
 self. As I have gone over the proof-sheets of 
 
11 PREFACE. 
 
 these pages, I have felt afresh how deep and con- 
 stant are my obligations to him. 
 
 An occasional criticism which a German trans- 
 lation of some of these lectures ^ received, leads 
 me at the outset to disclaim for this volume any 
 scientific pretensions. It is not even a connected 
 series of discourses ; there are repetitions in it. 
 These lectures were not written in the first place 
 for publication at all, but to quicken, if they might, 
 the thoughts and lives of those to whom they were 
 orally addressed. There is possibly one lecture, 
 " What is a Moral Action ?" which, as an attempt 
 to analyze and fix a conception, may be thought 
 to have some scientific worth. After writing it, 
 I was gratified to learn that Aristotle had made 
 a somewhat similar analysis, — though the master 
 says in a few words what I spread out in as many 
 pages.2 But had I attempted to write a philoso- 
 phical treatise, the whole method would have been 
 different. I should then perhaps have been able to 
 clear up some of the confusion and inconsistencies 
 with which my thoughts may seem to be involved. 
 For example, I should have attempted to explain 
 
 ^ Published under the title, " Die Religion der Moral," 
 translated by [Professor Dr.] Georg von Gizycki, Leipzig and 
 Berlin, Wilhelm Friedrich, 1885. A Dutch translation of 
 the same, by the hand of the Rev. P. H. Hugenholtz, Jr., 
 of Amsterdam, appeared in 1888 under the title, " Zedelijke 
 Religie," Amsterdam, Tj. van Holkema. 
 
 ^ See the Nicomachean Ethics, ii. 4, § 3. 
 
PREFACE. iii 
 
 my inability to assent either to theism on tlie one 
 hand or to positivism on the other ; I should have 
 sought to reconcile varying points of view in speak- 
 ing of religion, God, ethics, Christianity ; I should 
 have attempted particularly to develop my own 
 theory of ethics, which I cannot call either Utili- 
 tarian or Intuitional. I say " attempted," for I 
 do not assume that my intellectual positions are 
 necessarily final and complete ; speaking from my 
 own brief experience, the intellectual life is one of 
 change and progress, and it is possible that in at- 
 tempting to state my views philosophically, I should 
 be led somewhat to modify and enlarge them. 
 
 My purpose in allowing this book to come be- 
 fore the public is not intellectual, but practical and 
 moral. I do not ask scholars to read it, but men 
 and women who are in the midst of the stress of 
 life. My only fear is that it may be too scholastic 
 for the latter class, as I know it lacks too much in 
 thoroughness and precision to satisfy the former. 
 But if it should by chance refresh or invigorate, or 
 help to refine, the moral life of any one who reads 
 it ; if it should stir in any one a divine discontent 
 with himself and the state of society about him ; 
 if it should give any one courage to fight with the 
 evil and contend for the good in the world ; if it 
 should nourish any one's secret hope that there 
 is but one outcome of the course and evolution 
 of things, namely, the victory of the good, — if it 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 should thus make any one more gladly co-operate 
 with the Deep Tendency of Things, then I should 
 count myself happy indeed. 
 
 I wish to thank Mr. A. W. Stevens, of Cambridge, 
 for valuable counsels and assistance as the book 
 was passing through the press. 
 
 W. M. S. 
 Chicago, March, 1889. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 I. Ethical Religion 7 
 
 II. The Ideal Element in Morality ... 22 
 
 III. What is a Moral Action? 42 
 
 ly. Is THERE a Higher Law? 59 
 
 V. Is THERE Anything Absolute about Mo- 
 rality? 83 
 
 VI. Darwinism in Ethics 102 
 
 •* VII. The Social Ideal 121 
 
 VIII. The Rights of Labor 142 
 
 IX. Personal Morality 159 
 
 X. On some Features of the Ethics of Jesus 179 
 XI. Does the Ethics of Jesus satisfy the 
 
 Needs of our Time? 200 
 
 XII. Good Friday from a Modern Standpoint 227 
 
 XIII. The Success and the Failure of Prot- 
 
 estantism 244 
 
 XIV. Why Unitarianism fails to satisfy . . 266 
 XV. The Basis of the Ethical Movement . 287 
 
 XVI. The Supremacy of Ethics 304 
 
 XVII. The true Basis of Religious Union . . 319 
 
ETHICAL EELIGION. 
 
 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 THE moral nature is that by which we transcend 
 ourselves and enter into an ideal region. Sci- 
 ence, with its methods of observation and experiment, 
 is limited to the world as it is. Ethics is essentially 
 the thought of what ought to be. It is not an account 
 of man as he is, nor is it a transcript and summary 
 abstract of the facts of society ; it declares the law 
 after which man should act, and in obedience to which 
 society should be constituted. Ethics, in a word, holds 
 up the picture of our ideal selves, and gives us back 
 society transfigured. Eor man has two sides to his 
 nature, — one looking out on what is, the other on 
 the better that might be. It is a meritorious task to 
 analyze the body and brain and mind of man ; to ex- 
 plore conscientiously and classify systematically the 
 facts of human society. But psychology and sociol- 
 ogy do not take the place of ethics, nor even give its 
 indispensable foundation. In the strict sense of the 
 word, science — the science of man as truly as any 
 other — knows nothing of right and wrong, but only 
 of what is ; of facts, and the law of their connection. 
 
8 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 To the pure understanding, virtue and vice do not 
 exist. These notions arise in virtue of our judgment 
 upon facts ; and the organ of that judgment is other 
 than that by which we learn of and explain the facts 
 themselves ; men call it Conscience. It pronounces 
 . upon th6 wortli of facts ; for they may sometimes 
 seem as firm as the earth and as constant as day 
 aTJ.d ni,ght. 'ahd yet have no moral right to be. Such 
 are ' injustice, Unscrupulous self-assertion, wrong, — 
 though they may be continuoiis with the course of 
 history; and all the laws and institutions created 
 under their influence are without binding force or 
 obligation. 
 
 The safety and sanity of life consist in keeping in 
 mind the higher ends and laws of our existence. 
 For man is not only to know, but to do and to achieve. 
 Strange, is it not, that man should not be content 
 with what he sees ; that he should turn his back on 
 the known and familiar in search of something bet- 
 ter ; that he should stake his life sometimes on a hope 
 or dream of his mind ? Yet this, too, belongs to man : 
 it is the ideal ends of human life calling on him for 
 their accomplishment ; and he, simple and loyal, does 
 not fail to hear. 
 
 Ethical religion would turn men's thoughts this 
 way. It would inspire to a new confidence in ideas. 
 It would be essentially a practical religion, — not prac- 
 tical and ideal, but practical because ideal. It would 
 lay on men a burden, assign to them a task, — a bur- 
 den the only relief from which is in action ; a task 
 which is unescapable till it be accomplished. Like an 
 architect's plan, an idea means nothing in itself: it 
 proposes a new form of life, as the plan involves a new 
 
ETHICAL RELIGION. 9 
 
 structure. For as the artist, whose soul images some 
 form of the beautiful, seizes the brush or the chisel to 
 portray it ; as the thinker's burning thoughts drive him 
 to utterance, — so in the truly moral nature every idea 
 of the good becomes a necessity, every thought of the 
 higher a command ; all that we dream of and that 
 seems so far away becomes an end and goal for our 
 action and our life. Yet how rarely is the full prac- 
 tical significance of the ideal side of human nature 
 realized ! In what illusions do men permit them- 
 selves in thinking of the ideal ! 
 
 First, there is the a3Sthetic or sentimental mistake. 
 Men wander into an ideal region to luxuriate there. 
 The good is an object of delight ; they contemplate it, 
 love it, worship it, they say, — do everything but obey 
 it. Much of the religion of our day, orthodox and 
 other, is but a kind of spiritual revelling, wherein 
 men allow themselves the use of all kinds of fine sen- 
 timents and phrases, yet after which life is as flat as 
 ever. This is unpractical id«ealism, but only because 
 it is false idealism. That ideas are but the pattern 
 after which we are to fashion our lives is not realized ; 
 the element of respect for them is wanting. If a man 
 is not in the mood to act, if he will not become better, 
 let him not think the ideas of the better at all. It 
 is a kind of profaning of them to face them, and not 
 begin to act as they command. 
 
 Closely akin to this aesthetic or sentimental mistake 
 is the philosophical mistake of regarding the ideal as 
 another world alongside of the actual world. It is so 
 easy to those who are accustomed to deal with ideas 
 to think of them as real, substantial things. They 
 become so familiar with them that the natural order 
 
10 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 of human thought is inverted ; and the ideas are 
 spoken of as real, and the actual world as an appear- 
 ance. This seems to have been the Platonic view. 
 Goodness, justice, — moral ideas, as well as all others, 
 Plato looked at as self-existent, independent entities. 
 The ideal world was another literal world like our 
 own, only more perfect. If this were so, what should 
 we have to do but to lift our thoughts to that ideal 
 world, and there find the rest and peace that are 
 denied to us here ? 
 
 That might be one kind of religion ; but surely it 
 would not be a practical religion. And what is more, 
 it would be an illusory religion ; for there is no such 
 ideal world as Plato pictures. The Platonic world in 
 its moral aspect is nothing more than the world as we 
 should like to see it, the world as it ought to be. It 
 is in truth nothing but an ideal for our world ; and to 
 transform this actual order of our human life into an 
 image of it would be the task of a practical religion. 
 The truest word that could be addressed to us is, If 
 thou wilt ever see the perfect, thou must create it ; 
 till that time, thou rangest over the earth or through 
 the heavens in vain ! The idea only of perfection is 
 in us ; the perfect itself is to be. Men ask, Can we be 
 satisfied with such a view ; can we be content to regard 
 all that is higher and better only as a thought of our 
 minds ? But a noble mind does not first ask. What is 
 satisfactory ? but, What is true ? And I am sure that 
 one who has been caught up by the thought of the 
 higher, and felt that the burden and the glory of ac- 
 complishing it rested upon him, would feel the rich- 
 est satisfactions denied him if told that the higher 
 was already real, and he had only to open some 
 
ETHICAL RELIGION. 11 
 
 fancied spiritual eyes to discern it. What meaning, 
 what significance, would there be in our lives, with 
 grand thought and purpose stirred, to learn that that 
 which we were to do is already accomplished ? " Cer- 
 tainly, cousin," said the gallant Earl of Pembroke, on 
 coming up to the Earl of Derby before Auberoche, and 
 finding the battle already won, "you have neither 
 been courteous nor behaved honorably to fight my 
 enemies without waiting for me, seeing that you had 
 sent for me." That is an unsatisfactory view of life 
 which leaves us nothing to do, which fixes on us no 
 great responsibilities, which encircles us with no grand 
 trusts. In truth, in our heart of hearts, we want to 
 do, we want to dare ; we do not care even to be as- 
 sured of victory ; there is a profound something in us 
 which disdains the need of such assurances. 
 
 And as the philosophical mistake is to the highest 
 type of mind not only untrue and delusive, but un- 
 satisfactory rather than satisfactory, so is the theo- 
 logical mistake. Theology gathers all our thoughts 
 of the higher and better together, and conceives them 
 in the form of a perfect person who rules and guides 
 the world. There is a noble side to theology : I 
 mean, of course, not as savages or narrow bigots, but 
 as pure and lofty souls have conceived it. God is the 
 perfect ; there are no limitations, no failings there, — 
 measureless goodness, infinite justice, make up that 
 image of the mind. And if the only alternative were 
 between the world as it is, with no thought of any- 
 thing above it by which to try it, and this lofty ideal 
 of excellence which might be ever kept in mind, I do 
 not see how we could hesitate in pronouncing which 
 would be the better. We miLst look on all that is 
 
12 ETHICAL KELIGION. 
 
 from some ideal stand-point ; we must keep in our 
 minds some high and unfailing standard of excel- 
 lence ; and until provision is made for this in the 
 new order of things, the old belief will remain, and 
 deserve to remain. For man has these two sides to 
 his nature, of which I have spoken, and the most per- 
 fect knowledge of what is will not take the place of 
 the thought of what ought to be. But the noble side 
 of theology is easily disengaged from theology itself. 
 When one ceases to believe in God in the ordinary 
 sense, one does not need to drop flat to the world and 
 life as we see them and know them. All that made 
 that image admirable remains, — all those higher 
 qualities that we instinctively call divine and that 
 mankind instinctively worships, wherever any hint or 
 suggestion of them appears in human form, — good- 
 ness, pity, boundless charity, unfailing justice. 
 
 We do not find these in the world, we do not see 
 them in ourselves ; and so, foolish creatures that we 
 are, we jump to the conclusion that they are in an- 
 other world, that they belong to God. And here is 
 the ignoble side to theology ; for not only is the per- 
 sonal Deity of theology illusory, but by gathering the 
 divine qualities into a form outside of man, it allows 
 us to forget that they are qualities for man, and reli- 
 gion becomes the worship of something already exist- 
 ing, instead of the sense of a burden and a task. We 
 are to become divine : we are to make this world a 
 scene of justice. All that men have gathered into the 
 form of a God is but the image of our possible selves. 
 We make a myth of love and justice, when we say 
 that they are actually ruling in the world, as Chris- 
 tian believers hold; or as Emerson says, that "though 
 
ETHICAL RELIGION. 13 
 
 ministers of justice fail, justice never/' and that the 
 ethical laws are self-executing, instantaneous.^ Justice 
 is forever failing in the world. Whenever ministers 
 of justice fail, it fails ; for it acquires a real existence 
 only in those who execute it. Aside from them, it 
 is only what ought to be, nothing that is. There are 
 no self-executing, instantaneous, ethical laws; though 
 one might well, when one thinks of all the unrequited 
 wrong there is in the world, wish to heaven that there 
 w^ere. The laws are over us, but they wait for us to 
 execute them : they are shorn of their intent, as 
 our lives are of their significance, if we do not exe- 
 cute them. We can only say that the ethical laws 
 should rule in all our lives, that justice forever calls 
 for ministers ; and of love, not that it is supreme in 
 the world, but let love, as Buddha said, even the love 
 that fills the mother's heart as she watches over an 
 only child, animate all. For the ideal itself of the 
 old religions is not essentially different from that of 
 the new. The old however say. The ideal does rule : 
 the new will say. Let it rule ! The old religions ap- 
 pear to open to us the secrets of what lies behind the 
 veil : the new will take those august secrets, and make 
 them in all their grandeur the aim and the rule of hu- 
 man life. The old religions leave us on our knees in 
 rapt contemplation and worship : the new "will sum- 
 mon us to stand erect, and to believe that all that men 
 have worshipped, all that they have dreamed of, all 
 that has seemed so far above them and beyond them, 
 men and women in the future are to become and to 
 realize. 
 
 But why, if man's ideals do not reveal anything 
 1 The Preacher. 
 
14 ETHICAL EELIGION. 
 
 outside ourselves, but only indicate what we ourselves 
 should be and do, — why do we speak of devotion to 
 them as religion at all ? I do not covet that word, 
 and disbelieve in all the prevailing forms of religion. 
 I do not begin with any attempt to compromise with 
 them. And yet I am driven to speak of religion, — 
 not indeed in the common way, as of something ad- 
 ditional to morality, but of morality as religion. 
 
 This may be made evident in two ways. Eeligion 
 from the purely human side might be defined as man's 
 supreme interest : whoever has an absorbing concern 
 may be said to have a religion. We often hear per- 
 sons spoken of as religiously devoted to some object, 
 religiously faithful in some attention, some regard, 
 some affection. There are those who have memories 
 that are to them a religion, — statesmen to whom the 
 service of their country has been a religion, reformers 
 who give their lives and fortunes in religious devotion 
 to the service of some idea. Those who care for no 
 one thing more than another, who have no enthusiasm, 
 who are listless and cannot be conceived as rising to 
 any height of self-devotion, — these are properly the 
 irreligious people of any time. In vain would the 
 most perfect theory of life and the universe be called 
 a religion, if it could not stir the souls of men, if it 
 could not take hold of life and mould it into higher 
 forms. If morality then, — if the thought of the good 
 becomes supreme over all other thoughts in the minds 
 of any, if it enlists their feelings and masters their 
 life, it is their religion. I believe, indeed, that there 
 is no other thought that wins so instinctive a reverence 
 as this of the good ; that conceptions of the Deity and 
 plans for a truer society take deep hold of men only 
 
ETHICAL RELIGION. 15 
 
 as they in some sense image or embody it. The 
 question whether morality can become a religion for 
 men in general, is the question whether men in gen- 
 eral are capable of unselfish admiration ; whether 
 they can love the good unmoved by personal fears 
 and hopes, because it is the good, and has an intrin- 
 sic charm for them. I do not doubt it. I believe we 
 ordinarily think too meanly of man. The higher na- 
 ture is in us all : it is not often appealed to, and it 
 is perhaps for this very reason that human life re- 
 mains on so low a level. Let a new religion arise 
 which should dare to take man at his best, which 
 should summon him to justice and generosity and 
 all nobleness, solely because these are his true and 
 proper life, and I believe the world would be as- 
 tonished at the answer. 
 
 But religion may also be defined from the objective 
 side. In this aspect, it is man's relation with what is 
 ultimate and supreme in the world. The truest reli- 
 gion would be that one in which the supreme interest 
 gathers about that which is really supreme and ulti- 
 mate in the world. Now, morality, truly interpreted, 
 does bring man into contact with the final nature of 
 things. Whatever else I may doubt about, I cannot 
 doubt the law of duty, — that there is a right and a 
 wrong ; that the right obliges me, that I ought to do it. 
 It makes no difference that I have learned this law, that 
 others have learned it before, that I know little more 
 about it than I have received or been taught ; it makes 
 no difference that I do not know it now perfectly, that 
 I may err sometimes in my judgments about it. Still, 
 I am sure, as Pprothea in the story was,^ that there is 
 1 Middlerijarch. 
 
16 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 a perfect right if I could only find it. Sometimes I 
 wish to do the right ; and sometimes, again, it seems 
 hard, forbidding, and I do not wish to do it. But the 
 right itself does not change with my wishes and wants. 
 I might unlearn it ; I might, under the solicitations of 
 some desire or passion, juggle myself into the belief 
 that it no longer existed. Yet the right would not 
 itself cease because my thought of it ceased. I might 
 die and others take my place, yet the right would ex- 
 ist for them as truly as it had existed for me. When- 
 ever, wherever, two persons arise and look into each 
 other's faces, the law of mutual reverence and respect 
 — the law of justice we call it — obtains. If they do 
 not own it, it is the law all the same ; if they act con- 
 trary to it, and defy every prescription of it, it is the 
 law all the same. Plainly, men do not make this law, 
 but simply find it. If there are other rational beings 
 than men, it applies to them just as truly ; the law is 
 a universal law for all rational intelligence. As little 
 do the earth and the stars make the law of gravitation 
 which they obey, as does man or the combined host of 
 rational beings throughout the universe make the law 
 of duty. And though no God were, as God is ordi- 
 narily conceived, the law would not cease to be. It is 
 not made, and cannot be changed by God or man ; it 
 belongs to the nature of things. Yes, more truly than 
 the law of gravitation does it belong there. I can see 
 no necessity in the law of gravitation ; I can conceive 
 that there might be a different law than this according 
 to which bodies attract one another directly as their 
 mass and inversely as the square of their distance 
 from one another. But no other law is conceivable 
 for rational beings than that of justice, of mutual 
 
ETHICAL RELIGION. 17 
 
 reverence and respect ; never conceivably could it 
 become right to think lightly of another human 
 or any rational being. And yet men have failed in 
 reverence, in respect, for others ; have unblushingly 
 used others, are so failing and using them to-day. 
 How rarely has the law been obeyed ! The law is 
 over all, though it were never obeyed. 
 
 In this way morality becomes religion. He alone 
 does a genuinely moral act who does it because he 
 must, because the nature of things bears down upon 
 him to do it. For the crystal, religion would be to 
 become a crystal ; to own the pressure that would yield 
 the perfect form. For man, it can only be to be a man, 
 to perform the human part of the universal task. Mo- 
 rality is simply one form of the universal law ; and in 
 the yielding to its demands man is lifted out of him- 
 self, and as the tides of ocean throb " respondent to 
 the far-off orbs," so do his pulses beat in unison with 
 the movement of the universe. Yet how little is the 
 transcendent significance of morality realized in these 
 days ! How often are divine and eternal things con- 
 trasted with it ! Ethics cover simply the equities 
 and amenities of this world, it is sometimes said. But 
 there is no equity of this world : there is only equity, 
 as good, as commanding on any other shining planet 
 as on this. " Beyond and above the moral virtues 
 the soul needs a religious life, fed from above," — 
 so reads a Unitarian tract. Whence come then the 
 moral virtues ? From below, from prudence, from 
 the sense of decency, from long-sighted selfishness ? 
 They who think so never breathed the climate of mo- 
 rality. Channing, when a youth of nineteen, wrote : 
 "All my sentiments and affections have lately changed. 
 
 2 
 
18 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 I once considered mere moral attainments as the only 
 object I had to pursue. I have now solemnly given 
 myself up to God." This is an unmeaning antithesis, 
 a part of the falsehood of the old religious culture, 
 which he afterward himself detected ; for twenty years 
 later he wrote : ^' The love of God is but another name 
 for the love of essential benevolence and justice/^ and 
 the object of religion is, not to "raise us to some- 
 thing higher than morality, for that would be to raise 
 us above God himself, but to give us sublime ideas 
 of morality.'' Ethics is a pure concern of man with 
 man, it is often said ; it is religion that binds us to 
 a higher order of things. Yet ethics is nothing but 
 the response which man and man make to the higher 
 order of things ; for the reason of justice is, not that 
 another wants it and I choose to give it, but that he 
 ought to have it and I ought to give it. The duty is 
 absolute, not conditioned on our will or thought, but 
 given to us in and by the nature of things. Ethics 
 realized in its meaning is religion ; it is the only reli- 
 gion for the rational man. In my humblest human 
 service, I may be conscious of owning the call which a 
 higher — nay, the highest — makes upon me. Aspira- 
 tion, reverence, awe, all those sentiments so often 
 contrasted with morality, are but uncompleted mo- 
 rality ; and when the moral act is done, ecstasy is its 
 sign, — ecstasy, which is the grace heaven sets upon 
 the moment in which the soul weds itself to the 
 perfect good. 
 
 In speaking of an ethical, an essentially practical 
 religion, I have not in mind simply a few superficial 
 improvements on the old religions. I mean not simply 
 a little more " practical work," a little more attention 
 
ETHICAL RELIGION. 19 
 
 to the necessities of the poor^ a little better education 
 of the young among them^ a making of their life a lit- 
 tle cleaner, neater, healthier, more respectable. An 
 ethical religion would mean this, but because it meant 
 vastly more. It is nothing else than a changed thought 
 of the nature of religion which I have in mind ; name- 
 ly, that it can be no longer for rational men to-day to 
 worship or pray, but to have the sense of a task, the 
 sense of somewhat limitless to accomplish, and to ac- 
 complish it. The Christian Church sings in one of 
 its hymns, — 
 
 "Oh, where are kings and empires now, 
 Of old that went and came ? 
 But holy Church is praying yet, 
 A thousand years the same." 
 
 Might it not go on praying a thousand years more, 
 and no better result come of it ? If we must pray, let 
 us pray to men ; for there all the trouble lies. Could 
 you, Churches, but open the hearts of your worship- 
 pers, as you seek to move the heart of God, the need 
 for all other prayer would soon be gone. Eeligion is 
 not seeing the evil and wrong in the world, and trust- 
 ing that somehow in the counsels of God it is all for 
 the best, but in confidently attacking the evil and the 
 wrong, and in leading on the good, as John Stuart 
 Mill says, to its distant and yet not uncertain triumph. 
 Tiie truest revelation, the truest voice of the nature of 
 things, is not in what we see, but in our thoughts of 
 what ought to be. Trust thy dreams, E-eformer ! 
 thou comest never so nigh to the heart and spirit of 
 things as in them. This that thou seest, this that 
 seems so strong, so secure, so impregnable, will after a 
 
20 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 time vanish away ; and what thou thinkest of, what 
 thou art called visionary for daring to think of, will 
 then be the real ! 
 
 To the finest flower of Kew England culture, to 
 Emerson, was given the insight into the essential 
 identity between morals and religion.^ I scarcely 
 know what true thought of mine the reader will not 
 find, stripped of its imperfections of statement, in him. 
 It was he who long ago spoke of the consolation, the 
 hope, the grandeur that come alone out of the culture 
 of the moral nature.^ Theology was to him the rhet- 
 oric of morals.^ '' The mind of this age," he says, " has 
 fallen away from theology to morals. I conceive it to 
 be an advance." Unbelief to him was losing hold of 
 the moral intuitions.^ Religion was the practices, pri- 
 vate and social, in honor of the moral sentiment.^ The 
 commanding fact which he never lost sight of was the 
 sufficiency of this sentiment.^ He will not allow that 
 ethics do not satisfy affection,"^ or that they give only 
 a rule, and not the spirit by which the rule is ani- 
 mated.^ All the religion we have, he says, is the eth- 
 ics of one or another holy person.^ And whenever 
 the sublimities of character are incarnated in a man, 
 we may rely that awe and love and insatiable curiosity 
 will follow in his steps. ^*^ "No man," he says, "can 
 tell what religious revolutions await us in the next 
 
 1 The Sovereignty of Ethics (in Lectures and Biographical 
 Sketches). 
 
 2 Divinity School Address. 
 
 8 Character (in Lectures and Biographical Sketches). 
 
 * The Preacher. ^ Sovereignty of Ethics. 
 
 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 
 
 8 Character (in Lectures and Biographical Sketches). 
 
 9 Sovereignty of Ethics. ^^ Character. 
 
ETHICAL RELIGION. 21 
 
 years ; and the education in the divinity colleges may 
 well hesitate and vary. But the science of ethics has 
 no mutations ; and whoever feels any love or skill for 
 ethical studies may safely lay out all his strength and 
 genius in working that mine. The pulpit may shake, 
 but this platform will not. All the victories of re- 
 ligion belong to the moral sentiments." He has a 
 faith that America shall introduce a pure religion,^ 
 since a true nation loves its vernacular tongue, and 
 will not import its religion, as we have ours from 
 Judea.^ 
 
 It is a grand task, to attempt to translate the old 
 truths of the moral nature into the language of to-day. 
 Theology is not more, but less than the truth. Life in 
 the future shall not be less, but more freighted with 
 significance than ever before ; for no longer shall men 
 be wondering spectators of a divine task accomplish- 
 ing in the world, but themselves the accomplishers of 
 it, themselves the hands by which the eternal purpose 
 realizes itself. 
 
 1 Sovereignty of Ethics. 2 Character. 
 
II. 
 
 THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 
 
 THE current views of morality are low and con- 
 ventional. Even the churches, which should 
 inspire us with an ideal view of life, talk of "mere 
 morality." Morality is thought to be without mys- 
 tery ; ^ worship is contrasted with it.^ A celebrated 
 English preacher says, "Sometimes, losing sight of di- 
 vine and eternal things, Christianity becomes a moral 
 discipline without the inspiration of religious awe and 
 love and hope and fear." ^ Morality itself, then, is 
 not one of those divine and eternal things ; there is 
 nothing about it to touch the soul with love or awe, 
 with hope or fear ! Yes, it is often said that moral- 
 ity cannot live save as it is grounded in religion ; that 
 it is but a branch from the vigorous root of religion."* 
 
 1 Natural Religion, p. 132 ; cf . the passage on p. 133 : " At this 
 point it is, at this disappointing identification of religion with 
 morality, that the breach takes place. Can, then, religion mean 
 no more than that we should pay our debts, keep our engagements, 
 and not he too hard on our enemies 9" (The italics are ours.) This 
 is all then that morality means ! 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 184. 
 
 8 R. W. Dale, Contemporary Review, April, 1883. 
 
 4 So Channing said, in early life (Life, A. U. A. ed., p. 74) ; but 
 later he wrote, " To love God is to love morality in its most per- 
 fect form," and the office of religion is not to raise us " to some- 
 thing higher than morality," but to give us ''sublime ideas of 
 
THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 23 
 
 Now, in contrast with these conventional views I 
 wish to bring out the ideal meaning of morality. I 
 wish to show that it brings before us great thoughts, 
 and thoughts touching the deep places of the soul. I 
 wish to show that there is something in it which lays 
 hold of eternity ; that it may well, and does in all but 
 the coarsest natures, stir awe and love and hope and 
 fear. I wish to show that religion, the only true re- 
 ligion — though it nowhere exists now — is but the 
 blossoming out of morality ; that morality is its root, 
 instead of being a branch from the root of religion. 
 And I am particularly anxious to show this to the 
 satisfaction of those who are not accustomed to what 
 are called idealistic modes of thought. 
 
 Let me distinctly say at the outset that the ideal 
 view of morality with which I am now concerned does 
 not rest upon idealism in philosophy. There is no 
 reason why the philosophical materialist should not 
 join me in what I shall say of morality. As matter 
 of fact, there seems to be as much moral idealism 
 among those who call themselves materialists as 
 among any other class of people. Think for a mo- 
 ment of the revolutionists in Eussia, — most of them 
 young men and women, to whom, it is said, you could 
 not offer greater affront than to call them idealists.^ 
 They are materialists ; they do not believe in a God or 
 a future life ; the world of the senses is alone real to 
 
 moralitj^" (Life, pp. 230, 231). The conventional view is well 
 brought out in " Something above Morality ,'' by Rev. Richard 
 Metcalf, — a tract published by the American Unitarian Associa- 
 tion, Boston. 
 
 1 M. Leroy-Beaulieu in Lalor's Cyclopoedia of Political Sci- 
 ence, article "Nihilism." 
 
24 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 them. Yet where do they place their hope ? In 
 what they see, in what their senses can lay hold of, 
 in the actual order of social and political life that 
 forever confronts them ? No ; but in something they 
 do not see, in something that is not and never has 
 been in Eussia, — an era of freedom, an era of democ- 
 racy, an era of brotherhood. So long as this era is 
 not, it is but a possibility, an idea. And for that pos- 
 sibility, for that idea, they leave sometimes high rank 
 and station, become almost ascetics in their mode of 
 life, and are ready to go to Siberia or the scaffold. 
 Nothing, not life itself, is so dear to them as the idea, 
 the dream, of their imaginations and their hearts. 
 
 Nor is moral idealism inconsistent with the utilita- 
 rian theory of the origin and sanction of our moral 
 ideas. Utilitarianism says that our notions of right 
 and wrong do not come from some magical intuition or 
 revelation, but arise in the natural course of human 
 experience and development ; and that morality has 
 its ultimate sanction in its tendency to promote the 
 general good, the universal happiness. I am not con- 
 cerned with this or any other theory to-day, but with 
 the content of morality, the ideal nature of which is 
 often so faintly realized. As matter of fact, utilita- 
 rians are as often idealists, in the sense in which I 
 am now using the word, as the advocates of any other 
 theory of morality are. Jeremy Bentham is called 
 the father of modern utilitarianism ; yet what greater 
 reformer has England had during the last hundred 
 years in legislation, politics, prison discipline, and 
 education, than Bentham ? Of him and James Mill 
 it has been well said, that "believing that theory was 
 all-powerful, that no hard and fast line could be drawn 
 
THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 25 
 
 between the theoretically sound and the practically 
 feasible, and that every simple and intelligible system 
 only required energy and determination to convert it 
 at once into a body of maxims and motives, they set 
 to work in all directions with undaunted applications 
 of their brand new doctrines to the crude material of 
 fact." ^ This is the very spirit of idealism, as I am 
 concerned with it at this time. Reform is essentially 
 idealistic. Every reformer takes his stand not with 
 what is, but with what he conceives ought to be ; not 
 with the customs and traditions and institutions that 
 have come down from the past, but with the ideas 
 that he believes must rule in the future. Successful 
 reform means, indeed, conquering a fact by an idea. 
 
 Nor, in speaking of the ideal meaning of morality, 
 in trying to show that it calls us away from what we 
 see and know to what we can only think of, let me be 
 understood as endeavoring to transcend the realm of 
 the human mind. Shakspeare is involved in the same 
 apparent contradiction when he speaks of 
 
 "... thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls." 2 
 
 But moral ideas, however much they may contrast 
 with reality, are thoughts of the human mind. To 
 win them and to live in them is not to lose ourselves, 
 but to enlarge ourselves. We are not merely so much 
 space as is covered by our bodies, but minds that can 
 take in the past and the future, that can wander over 
 the earth and climb to the stars, that can muse on 
 what is and think of the better that might be. There 
 
 ^ G. S. Bower*s Hartley and James Mill, p. 227. See also 
 Maine's Ancient Law, p. 76. 
 2 Hamlet, act i. scene 4. 
 
26 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 is no outside to the mind ; the grandest, divinest, most 
 perfe.ct things are simply thoughts of what may be. 
 
 With these explanations let me proceed to my task. 
 What are more natural and commonplace experiences 
 with us than our wishes and wants *? But if we reflect 
 a moment, it is easy to see that they have an ideal sig- 
 nificance. We do not wish for what we have or for 
 what we are already ; we wish for what we have not 
 or are not, for what we are without, for what, in the 
 literal sense, we want. What is then the wished-for 
 object but a possibility or an idea ? If we stop to 
 think, we shall see that all our wishes and wants 
 go out to ideas. It may seem strange that we should 
 often set more store by what is not than by what is. 
 Why should we, it may be asked. We cannot answer 
 save by saying that it seems a part of our nature to 
 do so. As it belongs to us to hear and see, so it does 
 to think of what we do not hear or see, to be dis- 
 contented ; to reach out, to form ideals. Perhaps it 
 is a provision for progress, for life, for movement ; for 
 if one is conscious of no wants, if he has no wishes, 
 nor ideals, what is he practically but dead, without an 
 incentive to movement, without the possibility even of 
 becoming more than he is ? 
 
 Our ideas are, however, of two kinds. It is a long 
 way from a child's craving for a doll or a sled to a 
 young man's or a young woman's desire to lead a pure, 
 blameless life, or the mature person's craving to see 
 justice reflected in the general arrangements of society. 
 There is a difference, indeed, all through life between 
 our longings after what we may call happiness, com- 
 fort, prosperity, enjoyment, and those after goodness, 
 unselfishness, and purity. We cannot say we ought to 
 
THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 27 
 
 be happy, but only that we should like to be ; but we 
 do say that we ought to be good, and this even if we do 
 not wish to be, if our matter-of-fact desires chance at 
 any moment to be clean of a contrary sort. In a word, 
 the note of authority seems to go along with a certain 
 class of ideas. We live amid ideas to the extent that 
 we really live at all ; but some of the ideas we simply 
 crave, and others seem to bind us, — some we can make 
 a goal for our lives if we choose, and others seem 
 fixed for us, so that we cannot turn from them with- 
 out inwardly experiencing some kind of disgrace. 
 There is no necessary dishonor in not having a home 
 and a family, or in not entering on a business career. 
 But with a home, to be unfaithful to it, or in business 
 to forget the laws of truth and honor there, is morally 
 blameworthy. To read this or that book on a leisure 
 afternoon, or to leave our books altogether and take a 
 stroll, or, once out, to turn our steps along this street 
 or that, — there is nothing to bind us in any of these 
 alternatives ; it may be that no one is better than an- 
 other ; the only " better " may be to suit our mood, to 
 do according to our own sweet will. But often we 
 are in the face of alternatives, one of which has a dis- 
 tinct urgency about it ; we know it to be better, even 
 though we do not choose it ; it seems to have a claim 
 upon us whether we will or no, and our real task is not 
 to wait and see if our natural choice will not change, 
 but to change it, to choose ever the true and the good. 
 Now, those ideas (from out the countless number that 
 throng our minds) that have this urgency about them, 
 that are intrinsically better and seem to constrain us, 
 we call moral ideas ; the sum of them make what we 
 call morality. 
 
28 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 Morality is thus in essence ideal. It is not what 
 men do, but what they ought to do ; not what they 
 wish, but what they ought to wish. It is as with 
 truth. Truth is not what one happens to think ; it is 
 not this or that belief which one may cherish, but that 
 which corresponds to the fact of things. And so with 
 art : a picture or a statue is not a work of art because 
 the brush or the chisel has been used in producing 
 it, but because it reflects in some degree the ideal of 
 the beautiful. Let me use some very simple illustra- 
 tions of the ideal nature of morality. Happily, kind- 
 liness belongs by a gift of nature to most men ; it 
 finds a special field of operation in the home, where 
 others are brought so near to us, — how much sweeter 
 and more beautiful is the life of the family where 
 kindliness is the law! But suppose that in some 
 family this ceases to be the law ; that some member 
 of it forgets to show this spirit, easily loses his tem- 
 per, and grows irritable, surly, and cross; and that 
 this affects the life of the family, and the quiet, 
 genial kindliness that was wont to be there goes and 
 leaves faint traces of itself, — do we hesitate to say 
 that kindliness is still the true ideal for that family ; 
 that though it is no longer there, it ought to be there, 
 and all should be pervaded with its spirit ? ^ Because 
 the facts have come to be contrary to the ideal, have 
 we now doubt about the ideal itself? Surely not. 
 What difference does it make that mankind has come 
 from a time of unspeakable barbarism in the past, 
 when there was no kindliness and no ideal of it; that 
 men have learned the ideal, that many have still to 
 learn it ; that the practice of the best of us hardly cor- 
 responds to our ideal, that the ideal itself may grow 
 
THE IDEzVL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 29 
 
 completer and finer ? The only question is, is it not 
 a true ideal , could there have been progress in the 
 past in any other direction than toward it ; is it pos- 
 sible that there can be an}^ progress in the future that 
 is away from it ? No ; the family life of man may go 
 actually in one way or another, but it can only go one 
 way and go right. There is an ideal for it th3;t we 
 cannot conceive as changing. 
 
 Or take an illustration from the political life of 
 men. The prime concern of the State should be for 
 justice. I do not say this has been the case, or that 
 it is perfectly so now. The State has often stood sim- 
 ply for power ; the head of the State has often made 
 others his slaves, — men have held property, even life, 
 at his mercy. But does any one hesitate to say that 
 the State should stand for justice, that this makes an 
 ideal for it ; that there can be progress only in one di- 
 rection ; that if the State conies to be in the possession, 
 of men or classes of men, who rule for their own and 
 not for the general good, this would be retrogression ? 
 Suppose that any government now makes a distinction 
 between those who are equally men, but are of dif- 
 ferent color ; or that, in effect, it has one law for the 
 rich and another, or none, for the poor, — should we not 
 hear something within us calling and demanding that 
 this be changed ? Is there not something command- 
 ing, something imperative in the thought of universal 
 justice ? Justice, — it is a commonplace word ; but 
 is it even in our democratic republic a commonplace 
 thing ? What is it, then ? It is an idea, — and one 
 which though it were never realized, would not cease 
 to give the ideal, and the only ideal, for human gov- 
 ernment. Not all the tyrants of the past, and no will 
 
30 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 or combined will of the mightiest to-day, can change 
 it. The supreme political problem is to find it out 
 completely, and to establish it perfectly ; and if 
 human governments do not establish it, not the 
 idea, but they, will be humbled and cast down. He 
 who stands by justice — let him be aware of it — • 
 and who stands the firmer and speaks the louder 
 when justice seems to fail, stands by an idea. Let 
 him keep his faith though it does fail, for in truth 
 justice might never be on this earth, and yet not 
 lose one particle of its ideal worth and its ideal 
 authority. 
 
 Or take an illustration from business life. What 
 honorable man does not place truth before success in 
 business ? Who does not feel that he ought to be 
 truthful, whether it will be advantageous to him or 
 not ? Who does not feel that truth gives the ideal 
 for business life, and own it in his thoughts, if not in 
 his practice, — and want to know how business can be 
 arranged so that there will not be even the semblance 
 of a necessity for anything else ? What is many a 
 man's secret disturbance about the matter but a kind 
 of confession that the idea ought to rule, that some- 
 thing he catches a glimpse of within is in its nature 
 commanding and authoritative, and that with it he 
 must somehow make peace ? What matters it that 
 men once had little or no notion of truthfulness, that 
 they have learned it, that many have still to learn it, 
 that it is still an ideal, and in advance of the general 
 practice of men ? I only ask. Is our confidence in it 
 any less on these accounts ; is not progress only 
 towards it ; is not all departure from it retrogression ; 
 though men should cease to own it, even in the 
 
THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 31 
 
 scant measure they do now, would they not be cul- 
 pably, unmistakably in the wrong ? 
 
 And so with all the institutions of society and all 
 the relations of human life, — there is an ideal and a 
 law for them ; and for each and every separate one an 
 ideal and a law fitted to its particular nature and con- 
 stitution. For the family, for the State, for business, 
 in all their departments, there is a true and perfect 
 way of conducting them ; for every individual life 
 there is an ideal which it is to find and follow. For 
 even if we have not grasped the ideal, we believe that 
 it is there. We know that we do not make and can- 
 not change the conditions of bodily health, that we 
 have to learn them ; that there is indeed an ideal 
 method of living which would insure to every one who 
 would follow it perfect physical health and strength. 
 We believe that the conditions of social welfare and 
 prosperity, the sources of peace and satisfaction for 
 each individual soul, are equally fixed. There is some 
 form of society which would secure universal well- 
 being ; there is some ideal type of thinking, feeling, 
 and acting that would, when realized, make a perfect 
 human being. We know the law that makes this 
 marvel of order, this regularity, this punctuality, this 
 movement without jar which we see in the outward 
 world. How simple and yet how far-reaching is the 
 law of gravitation ! But the law that would turn this 
 chaos of human life into a cosmos, we do not know. 
 It differs from the law of gravitation very plainly, in 
 that it does not act necessarily : if it did, we should 
 have already an order here comparable to that we see 
 in the material world. But we have to discover it ; 
 and when we shall have discovered it, we shall have 
 
32 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 to give it the free consent of our wills. We have 
 . indeed already gained some notion of it. We know 
 to a certain extent what makes for order and peace 
 among men. What we call the moral ideal is so much 
 of it as we know. But how much more is there yet 
 to know ! Even the idea of justice, which is the best 
 part of our moral ideal, — who understands it, who 
 fathoms it, who sees all that it means and must mean 
 to the future ? 
 
 Ethics calls us away to these visions of the higher 
 and the better. It is a science of life, not as it is, but 
 as it ought to be, — as it would be if it were transfigured 
 with its idea. It means looking at life from the high- 
 est standpoint ; it means unhesitatingly taking our 
 stand there, and fearing not to criticise the actual life 
 of men according to the ideal standard. It may be no 
 welcome task to pass judgment on ourselves, yet if 
 we are real in the matter of moral culture, I do not 
 see how we can avoid doing so. If we have given way 
 to unworthy passion, if we have done an ungenerous 
 thing, if for selfish reasons we have broken a promise, 
 — if in any way we have followed the lower rather 
 than the higher reason, let us not treat the matter 
 as of no consequence, but remember it and judge our- 
 selves for it; yes, better in some w^ay to try to atone for 
 it than to pass it by with indifference. Still less wel- 
 come is it to pass judgment upon others. How easy to 
 excuse a friend where we would not excuse ourselves ! 
 How hard to have any one whom we love sink in our 
 estimation ! The question is, Which comes first, loy- 
 alty to a person or to truth ? I am sure that while there 
 is often not enough of charity in the world, there is 
 also much false charity ; and that while nothing is 
 
THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 33 
 
 more uncalled for than censoriousness, and the pre- 
 suming to be keeper of another's conscience; and that 
 at no time are we so called to purify ourselves of all 
 mere personal feeling as when we judge of another, — 
 yet when truth compels us, we should judge, remem- 
 bering that not out of any personal regard are we to 
 forget the requirements of the ideal standard. 
 
 Moreover, as we read history we are to take our 
 moral judgment with us. How great the temptation 
 will often be to abandon our moral convictions, so fre- 
 quently do the facts of history seem to do violence 
 to them ! 
 
 ** Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne," — 
 
 how does the sense of this make us almost doubt 
 at times whether there is any right or any wrong ; 
 whether our ideas of right, instead of unalterable laws 
 of human action, are not entirely relative and conven- 
 tional things, or even illusory ! These are the tempta- 
 tions of the moral idealist. Eefreshing are the words 
 of those who do not fail in their moral convictions, 
 however poorly these may be confirmed by the actual 
 course of history. Seneca, speaking of the Roman 
 Consul Sulla, called his fortune "the crime of the 
 gods." ^ I confess to an unbounded admiration for the 
 saying. Though it savors of impiety, it hides what is 
 to my mind the deepest and the only piety. For what 
 was the history, and particularly the end of that man, 
 — starting as he did w4th a fortune given him by a 
 courtesan, making his way by the help of it over thou- 
 sands of the wronged and slain to the arbitrary dicta- 
 torship of his city ; retiring from office in old age, with 
 
 1 Consolatio ad Mafciam, xii. 6. 
 3 
 
3J: ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 ambition sated, to his villa to practise again the vo- 
 luptuous habits of his youth ; and then finally dying 
 peacefully, his funeral attended by hundreds whom 
 he had captivated by his recklessness, and whose 
 minds he had debauched, — what is all this but a 
 satire on every sentiment of justice? "History alone 
 could have dared to tell us of a peaceful end to such a 
 life as his ; and history, again and again, repeats the 
 defiance to our moral sense." ^ Was it not natural for 
 Seneca, with the popular view of the gods as guiding 
 and ruling in the affairs of men, to say that this good 
 fortune of Sulla was the crime of the gods ? What 
 grand impiety, — what a measuring not only of men 
 but of gods by the standard of moral ideas ! For this 
 is ever the test of a true man, — will he yield up his 
 ideal conviction to any amount of contrary facts ; will 
 he take his stand and keep it contra mundum, and 
 though the ruling powers of the world, visible and 
 invisible, were opposed to him ? To lose the sense of 
 an ideal right, to yield it up before a show of might, — 
 that is the only infidelity, the only atheism we need 
 have any fear of. Then, indeed, a fairer world than 
 that we see about us — the world of moral truth and 
 moral beauty — would be shattered and broken, and 
 in the ruins it were hardly worth while to live. In 
 this feeling, though I would stand alone, I do not stand 
 alone, and have the company of men called utilitari- 
 ans and materialists as well as many others. 
 
 John Stuart Mill eloquently protested that he would 
 rather go to hell than do violence to his moral nature 
 by calling a Being good who bore no traces of the 
 
 1 Contemporary Review, February, 1881, article on **The Moral 
 Influence of George Eliot.'* 
 
THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 35 
 
 character designated by that word.^ A passage from 
 Huxley reveals the same noble holding of moral dis- 
 tinctions : 2 " For suppose theology established the 
 existence of an evil deity, — and some theologians, 
 even Christian ones, have come very near this, — is 
 the religious affection to be transferred from the 
 ethical ideal to any such omnipotent demon ? I trow- 
 not. Better a thousand times that the human race 
 should perish under his thunderbolts than it should 
 say, ^ Evil, be thou my good.' '^ 
 
 But with all the most discouraging facts in the 
 world, there is no evidence that the ultimate powers 
 of the world are evil. Only those who deny freedom 
 and responsibility to man, and affix all blame for what- 
 ever is wrong upon the ultimate nature of things, can 
 call that ultimate nature evil. Let responsibility for 
 wrong be fixed where it belongs, — on the human doers 
 of it, — and the sky is cleared of the hideous spectre of 
 an evil god, and the ideals of justice and of goodness 
 come naturally to be regarded as the voice of the ulti- 
 mate nature of things, and obedience to them and 
 working for them against whatever odds, against what- 
 ever show of might on the side of wrong and evil, as 
 the truest, the deepest, nay the only piety. The only 
 mistake would be in thinking that those ideals will 
 be accomplished by some power outside ourselves, in 
 thinking of a providential justice and goodness. In 
 truth, so far as we can see, there is no such providen- 
 tial justice and goodness, and the Christian belief is 
 as mythical as the old Eoman belief. There were no 
 such gods as Seneca pictured, and there is no such 
 
 1 Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, chap. vii. 
 
 2 Critiques and Addresses, p. 49, 
 
36 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 being as the Christian believes in. Justice and good- 
 ness have power not outside of us, but in our minds ; 
 they are to rule the world, if ever they do, as we sur- 
 render ourselves to them and make them rule. Yet 
 they are authoritative, they are binding, they are set 
 fast for us in the nature of things, and by the nature 
 of things ; and when all notions of a providential deity 
 are gone, they but shine clearer in their own light, 
 and evidence something in which they are rooted that 
 can never go, that is eternal and unchangeable. Some 
 time humanity will be so aroused to its own true place 
 and calling in the world that such a life and such 
 a death as Sulla's can never again happen ; society 
 will be so ordered, individuals will be so treated and 
 judged, that a man like Sulla will have no chance of 
 rising, or if he has, will die in universal contempt. 
 The fortune of Sulla was the crime of the Eoman 
 people. Society will always have such monsters of 
 iniquity till it purges itself ; and the task set for it, 
 the task from which it cannot escape (unless it too is 
 to rot and die), is to purge itself, — and religion, the 
 only religion the future can have, must be a voluntary 
 dedication on the part of society to that task. 
 
 Alphonso of Castile's words have a charm like those 
 of Seneca. " If he had been present at the creation, 
 he could have given some useful hints for the better 
 ordering of the universe." Ah, if Alphonso had only 
 realized that a part of creation was there in his 
 own power to refashion, if he would ! The respon- 
 sibility for the unequal order of society that prevailed 
 in the Middle Ages, when he lived, was not charge- 
 able on the creator, but on men themselves, — and 
 particularly on those lords and princes to the number 
 
THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 37 
 
 of which Alphonso belonged. He might easily have 
 given a better ordering to his little part of the uni- 
 verse, and set an example to the other princes about 
 him, whereby oppressions and robberies and all man- 
 ner of despoilings of the weak by the strong might 
 have in some measure ceased. 
 
 It is strange, when we bear in mind the ideal nature 
 of morality, to hear that morality must be based upon 
 facts. Morality is not really a question of facts, but 
 of the right of facts to be, of their correspondence 
 with a standard of the mind. For all scientific hy- 
 potheses we must look for a foundation in the world 
 as it is ; for they are nothing but attempted explana- 
 tions of the actual order of things, and we believe in 
 them more or less, as there is more or less evidence 
 from facts in their favor. But morality is in its na- 
 ture an ideal and a rule, and we can account for many 
 of the phenomena of history and of human life to-day 
 only on the supposition that morality was not and is 
 not heeded, and perhaps not even thought of. Base 
 morality on facts ? Which facts ? There are innu- 
 merable facts, an induction from which would only 
 give us immorality. The good facts, then ? But 
 plainly, this is moving in a circle. In truth, there 
 is nothing on which to base morality. We do not so 
 much find it, as demand it in the world.^ All the 
 separate moral rules may be resolved into the supreme 
 one, — to seek the general welfare, the universal good. 
 But who can give a reason for the supreme rule ? In- 
 
 1 Amiel, "the sweet-souled Genevan mystic," says: "It is not 
 history which teaches rigliteousness to the conscience ; it is con- 
 science which teaches righteousness to history. The actual is 
 corrupting; it is we who rectify it by loyalty to the ideal." 
 
38 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 deed, no serious man wants a reason. The supreme 
 command appeals immediately to the human mind; 
 it is an assertion of the human mind. No honest man 
 wants a reason why he should do right any more than 
 why he should allow the sun to be in the heavens. 
 The sun is there, and he sees it ; and joy and light 
 and warmth come, he knows, from living under its 
 influence. So with the idea of the universal good : to 
 know it is to love it ; to become simply aware of it is 
 to feel it to be the true sovereign law of our lives. 
 And not to own it, — not to own the several forms in 
 which it comes to us, — what is this but to make our- 
 selves wanderers and waifs on the earth ; yes, to con- 
 tradict the universal law of existence, since even the 
 atoms own their attractions, even the senseless rain 
 owns its bond to the sea whence it came ? Man be- 
 longs to the idea of the universal good ; he is only 
 himself as he acts from it and for it. 
 
 Does ethics, then, give us no great thoughts ? That 
 man can respond to a universal good ; that he can con- 
 nect himself with the fortune of those whom be has 
 never seen nor shall see ; that he can bless in spirit 
 unborn generations, and reach out to the world to 
 heal it and to lift it up, — is there nothing mystical, 
 nothing wondrous, nothing strange in all that ? In 
 truth, there is something limitless in human nature, 
 as there is in the good of which it conceives. Our 
 souls crave a perfect good, we feel the pull thither- 
 ward, we own the law that points in that direction. 
 Does this stir no awe, nor love, nor hope, nor fear ? I 
 know of but one thing in this world that may well ex- 
 cite awe : it is not any spectacle of Kature, not any 
 show of power or of beauty, but the thought of the 
 
THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 39 
 
 supreme law under which we live, of the ideals that 
 are unalterably set for us, of the perfect goal to which 
 our inmost being tends. We are, indeed, strangers 
 here amid these scenes, where so much meets the eye 
 that afflicts the soul ; we cannot avoid picturing our 
 home and proper country as far away, and ourselves 
 as travelling thitherward. What longings seize us as 
 we think of this ! — what love, what hope, what fear, 
 lest by any chance or carelessness we should lose our 
 way ! 
 
 What does religion add, then, to ethics ; what greater 
 thought does it give us than this of a law that forever 
 encompasses us ? Nothing that I can see ; and what 
 it attempts to add is, generally at least, Aherglauhe, 
 superstition. Eeligion conceives the good in the form 
 of a person, and asserts that he is ruling in the world. 
 But this is an illusion, and really a harmful one. 
 A true, sound, and wholly rational religion, — so, be- 
 cause containing no premises that could reasonably be 
 doubted, — would be simply a perfected ethics. Mo- 
 rality as custom, as public opinion, as law, has, I well 
 know, to be continually revised and enlarged ; and as 
 morality may have been identified with these things, 
 the larger ideas may refuse the name morality as tame 
 and commonplace. But morality is in truth a prin- 
 ciple, and the enlargement mentioned has always been 
 on the basis of the principles of morality, and has al- 
 ways issued in a larger, fuller moral ideal. Eeligion 
 seems also to add to morality the thought of heaven ; 
 but this, when purely conceived, is not something apart 
 from goodness, but the triumph of goodness. We too, 
 as believers in the good, look for its triumph. Not yet 
 is the end and issue of things, but far away ; though 
 
40 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 we know not whether these earthly selves shall ever 
 see the triumph, though we can only think of it and 
 know that there will be an outcome of our struggles 
 and pains there. 
 
 Eeligion in the future must not only disengage it- 
 self from the mythical elements of the old religions, 
 it must present a higher type of religion. The reli- 
 gions of the past have generally had a taint of selfish- 
 ness about them. They have held out the hope of 
 recompense ; they have not commanded and sum- 
 moned men in the name of the good and for its sake 
 alone ; they have not taken men out of themselves. 
 I see a new religion arising, basing itself on trust 
 in man ; calling to the hitherto unstirred depths of 
 loyalty in him, — believing that he can love the good 
 without thought of a reward, that he can rise superior 
 to the motives that ordinarily determine men, that 
 the heaven of principle can rule in the human breast. 
 Man's ignorance as to what will become of him after 
 he dies never disturbed a noble, a truly religious soul. 
 It may drive the timid, the fearful, — those so ankious 
 to know whether their poor self-centred selves are 
 going to live again, — to despair, or to the comfort, as 
 they call it, of the gospel and the church. Poor souls ! 
 let them have the comfort while they may. But they 
 might live on forever and never know what true 
 blessedness is. This they will not know till they 
 cease to think of themselves, — whether they are to 
 live or die, — and give themselves over to the good, 
 and live now in the supreme eternal moments. For 
 religion, if it means anything, binds us to a law above 
 us and raps us out of ourselves. The religious men 
 and women of the future will give themselves to all 
 
THE IDEAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY. 41 
 
 their dreams of the perfect without questioning or 
 concern ; they will know that they are in higher, 
 stronger keeping than any they can themselves de- 
 vise, — that the blessed Powers, which no man can 
 name, contain them and enfold them ; that if there is 
 anything of worth in them, that will live, and all else 
 they will themselves willingly let die. An ideal per- 
 fection is the only ultimate reason for existence. If 
 we do not turn our faces thitherward, our lives, how- 
 ever full of shows and business and plans and works 
 they may be, are without rational significance ; and if 
 we do, there are at bottom no more puzzles or cares 
 or anxieties for us, — in our heart of hearts there is 
 a peace and joy that no reverses or disappointments 
 can disturb or mar. 
 
III. 
 
 WHAT IS A MORAL ACTION? 
 
 WHAT is it that gives a moral quality to an 
 action, that lends it moral worth ? I do 
 not mean to contrast moral with immoral actions, — 
 but what of the multitude of our e very-day actions 
 against which nothing can be said from a conventional 
 stand-point, deserve to be singled out and have this 
 mark of honor attached to them ; namely, that they 
 are moral actions ? Most of our actions are probably 
 simply unmoT^L In our conduct, we do as others do 
 about us ; we think and act according to the prevail- 
 ing customs. There is not necessarily any hypocrisy 
 in this ; by a kind of natural gravitation we settle 
 into the grooves that are already prepared for us. 
 Not only is there nothing wrong about this, but rel- 
 atively speaking there may be something good. So- 
 ciety, perhaps, is scarcely possible (or was, in the 
 early ages of the world) without something of an 
 instinct of imitation among men, which holds in 
 check caprice and lawless individualism. Still the 
 mere following of custom and usage, however use- 
 ful to society, cannot be said to rise to the dignity 
 of morality. 
 
 A moral act must be our own act. It must spring 
 from conviction. A purely conventional life is with- 
 out moral significance. We begin really to live when 
 
WHAT IS A MORAL ACTION? 43 
 
 we wake out of this unconscious instinctive following 
 of precedents and customs, and know that we are our- 
 selves and have minds to use, and when we begin to 
 use them. What we do when we are awake, aroused ; 
 what expresses our individuality, — that has moral 
 worth, and that alone. This is entirely apart from 
 what particular thing we think or do, or whether we 
 even join the popular current again ; for though when 
 one thinks for himself, it is unlikely that he will 
 not vary somewhat from the hitherto prevailing cus- 
 tom, the trouble with the conventional life is not as 
 to its particular ideas and customs, but that it is con- 
 ventional, that it expresses no personal, genuine con- 
 viction. A moral action may be in entire accord with 
 what convention demands ; yet it will always be vastly 
 more than that. Morality is the assertion of ourselves. 
 How sad is his plight who has no sacred self ; who 
 never falls back on a conviction, as a believer on his 
 gods, because he has none ; who lives all out-of-doors ; 
 whose soul is the empty mirror of the world's passing 
 fashions and shows ! A man who once defied a world, 
 and yet lived to see the world come around to him, 
 and is one of the ideal figures in our country's histo- 
 ry, — Wendell Phillips, — said in addressing a mixed 
 assembly on the slavery question, "Till you judge 
 men and things on different principles, I do not care 
 much what you think of me ; I have outgrown that 
 interesting anxiety. '' ^ No man rises into the dig- 
 nity of moral individuality till he says the same. A 
 man should have no other ultimate anxiety than to 
 please the genius of his own bosom. " Whoso would 
 be a man must be a non-conformist,'^ said Emerson ; 
 1 Orations, Speeches, etc., p. 66. 
 
44 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 and it is true in spirit, if not always in form. Man 
 must act for himself, or he is lost. One looks abroad 
 and sees men and women blindly following the ruling 
 traditions in religion, society, politics, with scarcely 
 a serious, lonely thought crossing their minds : they 
 are all lost, and will be till they come home to them- 
 selves, and begin to live a real, inward, personal life. 
 The supreme profanation is not against church or 
 sacrament or Bible, but against the clearest, sanest 
 thought of your own mind. I will not say the lesson, 
 but the significance of morality is, independence of 
 public opinion, having the centre and rule of our life 
 not in the world without, but in a world within ; so 
 that even if we harmonize with the world without, if 
 we coincide with public opinion, it will be not as an 
 echo, but as a living factor in it. 
 
 If, however, a moral act must be our own act, not 
 one merely in accordance with conventional standards, 
 it goes almost without saying that it must be one 
 not merely followed by good results, but one in which 
 those results are intended. We must not only do 
 good, but mean to do good. Yes, the whole properly 
 moral significance of an action is in its intention. 
 Two actions may have exactly the same outward re- 
 sults, yet be separated by a heaven-wide distance in 
 moral worth, according as they are prompted by one 
 motive or another; and these motives are of course 
 only really known, because alone experienced, by those 
 doing th€ actions. The attempt is sometimes made 
 to divest ethics of all these inward and, as it is said, 
 mysterious elements, and to reduce it to a question 
 simply of results. Any action is to be counted moral 
 which has good results, or immoral which has evil, 
 
WHAT IS A MORAL ACTION? 45 
 
 quite apart from motives. It is perfectly true that 
 an action does not have good results simply because 
 they are intended, — just as a thought is not neces- 
 sarily true because it aims at the truth. Hell, it 
 has been said, is paved with good intentions, and at 
 any rate we know that the earth is well covered with 
 them, and that often they bring forth little sound or 
 lasting fruit. How many kind-hearted persons, for 
 example, give charity in such a way that it does more 
 harm than good ! The trouble is not with the kind- 
 heartedness or the charity, but with the lack of in- 
 telligence that is displayed ; and the real remedy is 
 not to depreciate charity, but to light it up with in- 
 telligence. An action really ceases to have a moral 
 quality if it does not take advantage of all the light 
 and knowledge by which it may be directed ; and 
 those who would turn ethics into a species of social 
 mechanics do not realize that automata would do as 
 well as men for these merely outward effects, per- 
 haps better. Indeed, Professor Huxley says that if 
 some great Power would agree to make him always 
 think what is true and do what is right, on condi- 
 tion of his allowing himself to be turned into a sort 
 of clock, and wound up every morning before he got 
 out of bed, he should instantly close with the offer.^ 
 What an infinite saving of pains and trouble such 
 an arrangement would be ! Yet I doubt if there 
 is one in a hundred or a thousand who would share 
 with Mr. Huxley in such a readiness ; who would not 
 rather say with Lessing, if God held out " truth *' in 
 one hand and " seek after truth " in another, that 
 in all humility he would take "seek after truth." 
 1 Lay Sermons, etc., p. 840. 
 
46 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 Why ? Because the other attitude would practically 
 deny the significance of our intellectual being; be- 
 cause we feel that if the truth is grand, the learning 
 and so knowing the truth is still grander. Any giv- 
 ing of our action over into the hands of another Power 
 is practically saying that our moral being has no sig- 
 nificance ; while we on the other hand are sure that 
 the glory of the moral universe is not alone in the 
 good, but in the willing of the good, in the conscious 
 voluntary practice of it, and would count it better to 
 struggle for and sometimes miss the good than that it 
 should never be learned by finite beings at all. But 
 whether this be true or not, any such mechanical 
 goodness as Professor Huxley supposes would have 
 no moral quality; even if the results were just the 
 same as those following a properly moral action, no 
 praise or blame would attach to such goodness any 
 more than to an operation of Nature. Alexander the 
 Great, for example, took the Greek language and Gre- 
 cian culture, art, and manners wherever he went in 
 his military conquests ; and what a benefit to the 
 world, was this spread of Greek civilization ! Yet if, 
 as is likely, the passion of Alexander was solely for 
 conquest and military power and renown ; if the bene- 
 fit to the world came simply as an unintended conse- 
 quence, an incident of his victories, — what moral credit 
 has he in the matter ? I have heard it argued that it 
 is impossible for a man to follow his own interests 
 without benefiting others ; that one, for example, can- 
 not build up a business without giving employment 
 and a livelihood to those who would perhaps other- 
 wise be in need ; yes, I have sometimes heard it urged 
 in extenuation of the great monopolies of our time, 
 
WHAT IS A MORAL ACTION? 47 
 
 that in the nature of the case they cannot exist and 
 maintain themselves save as they bring themselves 
 under the rule of service to others. This is all true 
 enough, perhaps, as matter of fact, but all delusion if 
 the facts are supposed to answer to the requirements 
 of morality. What is the business man or the mon- 
 opolist intent on ? — that is the question which de- 
 cides whether there is any moral worth in what he 
 does, or not. Are the benefits which come to others 
 something that he aims at, or only the necessary inci- 
 dents in the accomplishing of his own personal aims ? 
 I think, indeed, the introduction of higher motives 
 into business would more or less affect the manage- 
 ment and all the details of business ; but I can im- 
 agine two businesses externally almost exactly alike, 
 the management of one of which would be dominated 
 by a moral impulse, and the other would be without 
 any moral character whatever (which is far from say- 
 ing that it would have an immoral character). The 
 difference would be all in the thought. Man may 
 go astray many times in what he thinks to be good, 
 but on the other hand no action which is without the 
 prompting of the thought of what is good, no matter 
 how externally good and right it may be, can be called 
 a moral action ; and every time we sincerely, honestly 
 mean to do what is right, no matter how mistaken we 
 may turn out to be in our judgment, our action has a 
 moral worth. What we mean to do, what we want to 
 do, — that is all, from a moral stand-point. 
 
 Closely related with this, is another mark of a moral 
 action ; namely, it is an act that is freely done. What- 
 ever I do under compulsion, under constraint, has no 
 moral worth. Suppose, to take a homely illustration, 
 
48 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 I rise early in the morning because I am obliged to ; be- 
 cause if I am not at the store of my employer by a cer- 
 tain time, I shall lose my situation, — plainly there is 
 no morality in this ; but if I do so, not thus compelled, 
 but simply with the feeling that it is a good habit, 
 and that I ought to form it, I make a mastery of my 
 laziness that has some moral worth. Suppose I return 
 a book to the Public Library to escape a fine, or on the 
 other hand simply because I know that others want 
 the book, and I ought to consider them as well as my- 
 self, — would any one hesitate to say which action 
 alone had any virtue in it ? Suppose I live a sim- 
 ple unpretentious life because I have not the means 
 to live otherwise ; or because, though with abundant 
 means, I have a sense of how a man should live, so 
 long as there is so much want and misery in the world 
 about him, — one would not need to reflect long before 
 saying which manner of life, though they were so far as 
 the eye could see exactly alike, had any moral worth. 
 The economy that when necessitated has almost an air 
 of meanness, becomes divine when practised in obedi- 
 ence to an idea. Take again the case of an employer 
 who yields to his "striking" employees because he is 
 forced to, because they have so arranged matters that 
 if he will not give them an advanced rate of wages he 
 cannot find any workmen ; and then of another who 
 does not wait for a strike, and has no reason to fear 
 any, but pays the higher rate simply out of regard 
 for his workmen and with a thought of their needs 
 and ends as human beings and heads of families, — 
 that is, not because he is obliged to, but because he 
 "^ill^ — and can there be any hesitancy as to which one 
 of these men rises to the dignity of performing a moral 
 
WHAT IS A MORAL ACTION? 49 
 
 action ? Freedom, spontaneity, is the note, the very 
 mark, of a moral action. An action dictated by fear is 
 not really a free action, — as when King Eichard II. 
 of England sought to quell the angry revolt of the 
 peasants by granting them the reforms which they 
 wanted, and gave them letters sealed with his seal, 
 with all their demands formally acceded to ; and yet 
 later, when the danger was over, ordered under pains 
 of death that all those who had the King's letters 
 should deliver them up. A righteous act, do we say, 
 succeeded by an unrighteous one ? No, never a right- 
 eous act at all, but only the forms of righteousness 
 complied with through fear. What we do when no 
 pressure is upon us, when we simply have the thought 
 of what we ought to do, the free, willing expression 
 of the soul within us, — that alone is moral. 
 
 And a moral action, further, must have no motive 
 of self-interest behind it. This is not saying that 
 many interested actions are not natural, proper, and 
 necessary, as the world now is, but only that they do 
 not rise to the dignity of moral actions. How in- 
 stantly does an action drop to a lower plane in our 
 estimation when we discover that some self-regarding 
 motive lies behind it ! Suppose a man is honest, and 
 refrains from imposing on the ignorant who come into 
 his shop, simply because he knows that he will thereby 
 build up a reputation for honesty and increase his 
 chances of business success, — do we do more than 
 commend his sagacity ; do we think of him as rising 
 into the atmosphere of virtue ? Suppose a son devotes 
 himself to his parents, not in the spirit of filial duty, 
 but with the thought that some advantage will come 
 sometime to him from doing so, — that he will per- 
 
 4 
 
50 ETHICAL llELIGIOX. 
 
 haps be assisted in business, or be generously remem- 
 bered in his parents' will : do not such thoughts in 
 connection with those to whom, if to any one in this 
 wide world, we should be unselfishly attached, seem a 
 kind of profanation, and recall Shakspeare's words, — 
 
 " Love is not love, 
 When it is mingled with respects that stand 
 Aloof from the entire point/' 
 
 Suppose a man becomes a soldier, not out of unselfish 
 attachment to a cause, but for hire, — is not our estimate 
 of him all changed ? Who that has seen the magni- 
 ficent creation of Thorwaldsen, the lion carved in the 
 solid rock at Lucerne, in commemoration of the Swiss 
 Guard that fell defending the Tuileries in 1792, but 
 is pained when the thought comes over him that these 
 men after all had sold themselves for gold, and in aid 
 of a cause against which every instinct and tradition 
 of liberty in Switzerland would seem to have pro- 
 tested ? Suppose a man marries, I will not say for so 
 vulgar a motive as money, but only because he is tired 
 and wants a home, and the rest and comfort of it, — 
 what is he but a selfish creature after all, and without 
 any part in that experience in which a man, if ever, 
 is taken out of himself, and learns, if never before, 
 the disinterestedness which is the soul of morality ? 
 
 A moral act is one in which we rise superior to per- 
 sonal considerations ; there dare not be "mingled with 
 it respects that stand aloof from the entire point." 
 Morality does not descend to the low plane on which 
 we ordinarily live, and seek to influence us by show- 
 ing that we should be better off by adhering to it, 
 but takes for granted that we have a higher nature, 
 
WHAT IS A MORAL ACTION? 51 
 
 and appeals to us on the higher, the highest, ground. 
 In the old Antislaveiy times, calculating prudent 
 men used to seek to persuade the slaveholders that 
 it would be cheaper to pay wages than to own slaves ; 
 that their property would be safer ; that even those 
 indispensable luxuries ice-cream and vanilla would 
 cost less if the negroes were placed on a fair footing ; 
 and that the picturesque house-servants, with their 
 heavy Ethiopian manners, their silent obedience, their 
 hue of bronze and turbaned heads, would find it to 
 their interest to remain on the masters' estates even 
 if they were freed. I know not which to wonder at 
 most, that such foolish appeals should be made with 
 the slightest hope that they would be heeded, or on 
 the other hand that the citadel and seat of the evil 
 were not attacked, and it boldly said, not that the 
 slaveholders were not as far-sighted and business-like 
 as they might be, but that they were committing a 
 wrong. There are some matters, where it seems not 
 only unmoral, but almost immoral to appeal to any but 
 the highest motives. There are some things sacred 
 in this world. We are told that Jesus made a scourge 
 of small cords and drove the money-changers out of 
 the Temple, saying, "Make not my father's house a 
 house of merchandise ! " I have almost a similar in- 
 dignation when I hear the cause of human rights, the 
 cause of charity, treated from any other than the high- 
 est stand-point. These subjects ought to lift us imme- 
 diately to their level. I heard a man not long ago 
 advocate more systematic and effective charity, be- 
 cause, forsooth, if we thus took care of the poor we 
 should have less need to fear the spread of socialism. 
 It was not man then — man in want, man in sore dis- 
 
52 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 tress — that we were to consider, but this, that our 
 property become secure against the attacks of social- 
 ism ! Fie on it, making merchandise thus of charity ! 
 But he who urges the cause of humanity on any other 
 grounds than the highest, respects not the humanity 
 of those who are in need, nor the humanity in us, and 
 treats us as if we had no higher nature, and could not 
 transcend these considerations about the security and 
 safety of our property. 
 
 •* Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! " 
 
 Yes, man can rise above himself ; and in this higher 
 life, animated by more than personal affections and 
 aspirations, is his home. There he first knows himself ; 
 it is, as it were, his native element, as the stainless 
 azure is that of the king of birds. 
 
 Nor for considerations of comfort and personal hap- 
 piness in another world does man need to be con- 
 cerned. I hear it said that we must believe in a 
 future world, whether there is one or not, to preserve 
 us in paths of virtue here. I reject the imputation 
 on human nature. The fault with many churches is, 
 not that they are too religious, but that they are not 
 religious enough ; that they do not recognize the di- 
 vine element in man, — that they do not appeal to it 
 nor pay it reverence. What were the gain, moreover, 
 if men were made ^^ moral "' under the influence of the 
 hopes and fears of another world ? They would be 
 no better; whatever outward requirements of moral- 
 ity they might be led to comply with they would not 
 be really moral, the first step toward which is only 
 gained by a renunciation of fears and hopes of any 
 
WHAT IS A MORAL ACTION? 53 
 
 kind, and yielding without questioning or concern 
 to the voice of duty : they would still be their old 
 selfish selves, and immortality in their case would 
 be only a prolongation of such a type of existence. 
 What claims could such people have to such a des- 
 tiny, what good could be served, what higher purpose 
 of the universe worked out, by granting them a new 
 lease of life ? How pitiable is the view of a great 
 Christian authority, Paley, that prudence and duty 
 differ only in that in the one case we consider what 
 we shall gain or lose in the present world, and in the 
 other, also what we shall gain or lose in the world 
 to come ! How fittingly does he in proposing such a 
 view omit all moral declamation, as he calls it, about 
 the dignity and capacity of our nature, the superiority 
 of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal 
 part of our constitution,^ since in truth according to 
 him and the style of many Christian preachers there 
 is no dignity or divine capacity in our nature, and no 
 difference between the animal and the man, save that 
 man has a spy-glass, and the animal only his eyes to 
 see what is for his selfish interests. In how strik- 
 ing a contrast is the strain of another Christian, Saint 
 Francis Xavier, who passionately exclaims, — 
 
 *' Thou, O my Jesus I thou didst me 
 
 Upon the cross embrace ; 
 For me didst bear the nails and spear 
 
 And manifold disgrrace, 
 And griefs and torments numberless. 
 
 And sweat of agony, 
 E 'en deatli itself, — and all for one 
 
 Who was thine enemy ! 
 
 1 Moral Philosophy, book 1. chap. vi. 
 
64 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 Then why, blessed Jesus Christ, 
 
 Shall I not love thee well ? 
 Not for the sake of winning heaven, 
 
 Or of escaping hell ; 
 Not with the hope of gaining aught. 
 
 Not seeking a reward, — 
 But as thyself hast loved me, 
 
 O everlasting Lord ! " 
 
 And of Saint Theresa it is said that she wished to 
 have a torch in her right hand and a vessel of water 
 in her left, that with the one she might burn up the 
 glories of heaven and with the other extinguish the 
 flames of hell, that men might learn to serve God 
 from love alone. What a noble outburst ! what a sub- 
 lime impatience with the low views of man and reli- 
 gion that were current in her time, — that are current, 
 alas, still ! What an assertion of the moral nature, 
 as that in us by reason of which we can transcend 
 all personal hopes and fears, and serve the highest 
 from love alone ! How near does it come to Emer- 
 son's bold summons, "to turn our back on heaven," 
 and how is the spirit of it reflected to us in Matthew 
 Arnold's lines : — 
 
 " Hath man no second life ? Pitch this one high ! 
 Sits there no judge in heaven our sin to see ? 
 More strictly y then, the inward judge obey ! 
 Was Christ a man like us ? Ah! let us try 
 If we then J too, can be such men as he ! '' 
 
 The glow of moral health is in such lines ; let us 
 take them and be thankful for them, from whatever 
 source they come. 
 
 Still further, and perhaps only bringing out clearly 
 what has already been implied, a moral act must be 
 done on principle. If I merely give way to a chari- 
 
WHAT IS A MORAL ACTION? 55 
 
 table impulse, and charity is no principle with me, my 
 act is only an impulsive, not a moral one. If I am 
 truthful with a friend, and deceitful toward another 
 who is not a friend, even my truthfulness with my 
 friend has no moral value. To do according to my in- 
 clination, — that is not morality. Morality is acting 
 according to a rule, or (what is the same) a princixjle. 
 It is bringing all my chance inclinations, all my nat- 
 ural impulses that look in this way or that, into con- 
 formity with the rule, — putting thus order and stead- 
 fastness and reliability into my life. Of how many 
 persons is it not said, that if you find them at the 
 proper moment they will do the right thing ! But the 
 right thing is for always ; as it does not depend on our 
 moods for its rightness, so it ought not for its reali- 
 zation in action. The truly moral man is simply he 
 who says it shall not; to whom the right is a con- 
 stant, an abiding rule. I see not any way of escape 
 from a universal consecration to duty, — I mean to all 
 that is right. Most of us live broken, fragmentary 
 lives; we have our fits and starts of goodness, — they 
 do not come to stay ; and when we do one thing that 
 is good, we leave another undone. " Bursts of great 
 heart and slips in sensual mire,'' — how true is that of 
 many men ! How little of wholeness, of consistency, 
 of unity is there in our conduct ! Henry Clay, one of 
 the kindliest of men, open on almost every side to the 
 gentlest impulses, could yet sacrifice his convictions 
 and the welfare of millions, as Wendell Phillips re- 
 marks, to his ambition. Daniel Webster, with a great 
 intellect, and with a sense for the heroic and sublime 
 too, could make his 7th of March speech, and sell his 
 intellectual integrity for a price, which, thank fortune, 
 
56 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 he never got. Yet as there is no reason why we 
 should be just which does not hold at all times, or 
 why we should be true which does not hold in face of 
 all temptations, or humane which does not hold in 
 reference to all persons whom we meet, so there is no 
 reason why we should be just which is not equally 
 good for being true, and none for being true which is 
 not equally for being humane. There is no reason for 
 one virtue which does not hold for all virtue ; not this 
 or that, but all good is commanded to us. I suppose a 
 person only does a genuinely moral act when he does 
 it not because it happens to be justice or truth or any 
 particular form of duty, but because it is duty, and so 
 with the implication that he would do all duty. A 
 moral act has thus, in strict truth, a universal or in- 
 finite significance, and he who performs it has a worth 
 to which no limits can be assigned. It is as if there 
 were some mysterious forms of matter that could be 
 crystal or plant, or flower or tree, or sun or star, any- 
 thing in the whole material universe ; for it is ray 
 proud faith in man that hardened, stiffened, settled 
 as he may often seem to be in this or that type or 
 habit of life, he can become anything that is good; that 
 he is at heart plastic and not cast in any inevitable 
 mould ; that there are no unapproachable heights out- 
 side of and beyond him ; that hero, saint, martyr, if 
 need be, he can become. 
 
 We often hear, and I am sorry to say from reli- 
 gious teachers particularly, slighting and contemp- 
 tuous words about morality ; but if what I have said 
 is true, it is far from being a light or trifling or petty 
 thing to perform a genuinely moral action. The dig- 
 nity of man lies in his capacity for such action j for 
 
WHAT IS A MORAL ACTION? 57 
 
 such action means that man need not follow the 
 crowd, that his thoughts can determine him, that he 
 can freely will the good, that he can be absolutely 
 unselfish in so doing, that he can take captive his 
 wandering desires and impulses, and reflect the pure 
 heaven of principle in his life. And this were, it 
 seems to me, to be a man ; this were to be lifted 
 above anxieties, to be no longer the slave of fears 
 or hopes. The only hope could be to be more truly 
 this; the only fear to fall from such a thought and 
 such an aim, and become caught and entangled in any 
 of the lower concerns that are so easy, so natural, and 
 tempting to men. 
 
 There is an ideal aim for every child of man. It is 
 not in anything outside of ourselves ; it is not to please 
 some supernatural being in the skies ; it is not to fol- 
 low some far-away historical figure in the past. It is 
 closer to us than this ; it is in our own heart, it is given 
 to us in our very nature as moral beings. There is 
 nothing higher than to perform a moral action ; there 
 is nothing in which the full idea and significance of 
 our being comes so to expression as in that. It is the 
 victory of the divine in us, of a part of those elemen- 
 tal forces which in the wide ages of the past have been 
 turning chaos into order, and covering darkness with 
 light. Every moral action we perform is a new star in 
 the inner firmament ; and I sometimes think that once 
 gathered out of the unformed nebula of our wishes 
 and aspirations, these stars will in some sense shine 
 forever. I sometimes even dare to think that if the 
 stars of heaven should fall, these would not ; since 
 the stars of heaven would only fall if something more 
 perfect were to take their place, and anything more 
 
58 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 perfect than a moral action there cannot be. It could 
 grow more perfect only in itself, — only by becoming 
 clearer, fuller, ampler, more divinely radiant, not by 
 being resolved and changed into anything else. For 
 a moral action is not most truly any outward deed, or 
 any single partial act of the will within ; all so called 
 moral actions are after all parts of one action, and that 
 is the total purpose of the soul, the action of the life. 
 Notwithstanding all trifling variations, we are moving 
 in one direction or another. No single good thing we 
 do counts save as it is part of a purpose which sweeps 
 on beyond it ; and no purpose is adequate which does 
 not cover, in thought at least, the whole life and all 
 its possible future. The star which we are to set in 
 the firmament is the total act of our life ; after a time 
 we may cease to see it, but if there is any worth, any 
 foreshadowings of a perfect beauty in it, it will go on. 
 Nothing is so treacherous as memory ; nothing hangs 
 by so light a thread as personality, — the consciousness 
 that I am the same as I was twenty -five years ago ; the 
 consciousness, which some suppose they will have in 
 another life, that they are the same persons as they 
 were here. It is all an uncertain prop. Death ought 
 to bar and teach us the vanity of these personal crav- 
 ings ; but heedless creatures that we are, we fill up 
 those endless horizons of the future with the images 
 of our personal selves, and deem the goodness we have 
 won, the purity we have gained, and the unselfish- 
 ness that has triumphed in us too shadowy to stand 
 of themselves without the "I" to support them. Yet 
 which, Man, is shadowy, — the "I^^ or the good ? 
 Only the good in us is worthy to survive, and that 
 will. 
 
IV. 
 
 IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 
 
 WE are constantly pronouncing judgments upon 
 the worth of actions. Some satisfy us and 
 others do not ; some are right and some are wrong. 
 We do not mean by this that they are, or are not, of 
 advantage to us personally, — the satisfaction we de- 
 mand is in view of a standard quite apart from our per- 
 sonal interests. We have at heart certain ideals of 
 conduct which we like to see reflected in the actions 
 of men about us. Whether a falsehood or any wrong 
 done to another affects us or not, we may feel none the 
 less that it is wrong, that it should not have been. We 
 may understand the train of circumstances which led 
 to the act, we may have a tinge of sympathy for the 
 doer softening our condemnation of what he has done; 
 but it is wrong, nevertheless, and we know that we 
 should go too far with our sympathy if it led us to 
 forget this. We may be mistaken in our judgments 
 about particular cases ; motives change the character 
 of acts, and we do not always know the motives. We 
 only know that if there are such and such motives, the 
 act is morally right or wrong ; but supposing them to 
 exist, we pronounce confidently on its moral character. 
 The right is what should be ; it is an idea having this 
 altogether peculiar relation to the fact. Even if our 
 
60 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 circumstances should change, and our wishes come 
 somehow to be gratified or our personal interests 
 served by the wrong being done, it would be wrong 
 none the less, and we should, in a real moment, con- 
 demn ourselves for desiring it. The right is, indeed, 
 independent of our wishes or our interests. In ac- 
 cordance with these we can only say that we should 
 like to have something be ; we cannot say it ought 
 to be : we can only say that, as we rise into a higher 
 atmosphere, as we transcend personal considerations, 
 as we speak from the standpoint of reason. 
 
 The right is also independent of the wishes or 
 personal interests of another. Eight does not mean 
 giving up my wishes to your wishes, or sacrificing 
 my personal advantage to your personal advantage. 
 Your wishes must be right, must conform with an 
 impersonal standard, — your personal advantage must 
 be in harmony with the universal advantage, else I 
 cannot yield to it. Morality is not sympathy : in 
 many cases it may be that I ought to deny another 
 as well as myself. Sympathy is simply a natural in- 
 stinct, better indeed and nobler than selfishness, but 
 l^ble to lead us astray as truly as selfishness unless 
 guided and controlled by moral considerations. Sym- 
 pathy is personal ; morality is impersonal. Even if 
 it is your dearest friend who has done a wrong, it is 
 none the less wrong, and gravity must mingle with 
 your tenderness in thinking of it. 
 
 The right and wrong, we feel further, are independ- 
 ent of our changing opinions about them. When our 
 eyes are open, we see the sun ; when they are closed, 
 it is lost to us ; should we become blind, it would be 
 lost to us forever. In such a case vain would be any 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 61 
 
 one's effort to prove to us that it' still shone, if we 
 were obstinate, and insisted on the authority of pres- 
 ent experience alone to prove that it did ; but for 
 all that it would still be there, and if we were rea- 
 sonable and would call to mind our former experience, 
 we might be assured of it. So there are moments 
 in our moral experience which outweigh in authority- 
 all others. In such calm, clear moments we know, 
 we say, that we see the truth ; at other times, over- 
 borne by our passions or our prejudices, overawed by 
 the contrary customs and opinions of men, we may 
 almost be aware that we are losing sight of it, but 
 it is there all the same. If one asks why we do not 
 always see it if it is always there, the answer is that 
 we do not always try to see it, our concern being 
 often rather to justify our passions and our preju- 
 dices. If one asks why the customs and opinions of 
 men have often been so various and contradictory, I 
 answer that these customs and opinions have been, 
 in the main, formed by other than rational consid- 
 erations. Men have rarely sought, with a single eye, 
 for the right and wrong of things ; their customs and 
 opinions have at best simply a little morality mixed ^ 
 with them. The time is yet to come when men, di- 
 vesting themselves as best they may of personal con- 
 siderations, shall seek to reflect in their thought the 
 pure ideals of morality. Moral culture — I mean in 
 general the disinterested attempt to fashion human 
 life after the ideals of morality — is in its veriest 
 infancy; it is as science was before the birth of a 
 Bacon or a Darwin. Men had not sought the truth; 
 they studied Nature, if they studied it at all, to con- 
 firm certain old theories of cosmogony or theology. 
 
62 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 Where can you find now the disinterested student 
 of morality, — patient, painstaking, laborious, scrupu- 
 lous, ridding himself of attachment to mere custom 
 and opinion, and seeking only for the perfect right ? 
 When such students arise, and men become as eager 
 to explore the world of moral ideas as they are now 
 to explore the realms of Nature, there will gradually 
 arise, I believe, an increasing agreement as to moral 
 conceptions, as there is now coming to be an increas- 
 ing agreement among disinterested observers as to 
 scientific fact. The opinions of men are still various 
 as to matters of science; but we do not doubt that 
 some opinions are true though others are false, for 
 the test of truth is conformity to fact, — and fact is 
 not various, but one. Even though we do not know 
 what opinions are true and what are false, we know 
 that such a thing as truth or falsehood exists, and that 
 it is for us to find them out in each particular case. 
 So T grant that as to many things we may not know 
 clearly the right and the wrong; there may be various 
 and contradictory opinions about them ; and yet we 
 may feel that there is a right and wrong, and that it 
 is for us to find them out in each particular case. No 
 more than the facts of Nature are the ideals of mo- 
 rality dependent on our opinion of them ; there is a 
 true, a best, a wholly right way of doing everything. 
 It is not for us to make this, to try to create it ; we 
 cannot, indeed, make it or create it any more than 
 we can the sun in the heavens; we have simply to 
 discover it. 
 
 Granted, however, that there is a right independent 
 of our changing wishes and opinions, how, it may h^ 
 asked, can the right be spoken of as a law ? Laws we 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 68 
 
 know of in Nature, or in connection with the State. 
 Is not the right, it may be asked, simply an idea of 
 our minds ? But if we reflect a moment, we shall 
 realize that it enters into the very notion of right 
 to be a law. The good and the right are simply what 
 should he ; they are nothing of themselves, they have 
 no meaning or reality, save as ideals of action. They 
 have a sovereign relation to action, — they are laws 
 of action ; and I question if they are not more truly 
 laws than any of the State, or even of physical Na- 
 ture. The laws- of the State are not really laws unless 
 they are good laws ; they do not bind us. An im- 
 moral law, like the Fugitive-Slave Law, may be broken 
 every day; it may be affirmed by the judge and com- 
 manded by the commonwealth, and yet be no law at 
 all. That only is a law which binds me, to which I 
 must yield allegiance if I am to preserve my honor as 
 a rational being. It may be questioned whether the 
 laws of Nature — the law of gravitation, for example, 
 the law of cohesion, the law of chemical affinity — are 
 properly called laws at all ; they are simply state- 
 ments of facts, — regular, constant, invariable, if you 
 please, but only facts, — and a law is properly a pre- 
 scription of what facts ought to be. We may wholly 
 deceive ourselves if we think of the law of gravita- 
 tion as anything outside of the facts themselves, as 
 something which, as we say in common parlance, the 
 facts obey; the law may be but a statement of the 
 facts, simply summing them up in a convenient way. 
 It might be added that a law of morals is more truly 
 a law than the so-called laws of health or laws of busi- 
 ness. A law of health means that if we want a per- 
 fect physical condition we must live in a certain way, 
 
64 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 we must maintain certain habits ; but suppose we do 
 not aspire to such a perfect condition, what do the 
 laws of health signify ? The laws of business mean 
 that there are certain essential conditions of business 
 success : but if we are not ambitious in that direction, 
 or if we do not enter upon a business career at all, 
 what do these laws of business signify ? The laws 
 of health and the laws of business merely declare 
 that if we desire certain ends, we must use certain 
 means; but so far as their obligation upon us goes, 
 all depends upon whether we desire the ends. If I 
 wish to go to Europe, I must cross the ocean ; it is 
 the only possible way of getting there, — it might be 
 called the law of getting there ; but the law means 
 nothing if I do not wish to go. A law of morals is 
 totally different from this. It signifies not only that 
 there are certain means we must take to achieve our 
 ends, but that there are certain ends binding upon 
 us, which we must choose if we are to maintain 
 our character as rational beings. The laws of mor- 
 als are sometimes sought to be explained by show- 
 ing that they point the way which one must take to 
 secure the general welfare ; if one chooses the gen- 
 eral welfare as his end in life, he must act accord- 
 ing to these laws, for experience has proved that 
 they and they alone conduce to the general welfare. 
 But suppose that one says, " I do not choose the gen- 
 eral welfare," — if morality means nothing more than 
 the explanation just given, what possible obligation 
 has it upon him? 
 
 In fact, morality must mean more or it is nothing 
 at all, no more than the law of crossing the ocean. 
 Morality rises above our wishes and wants just as 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 65 
 
 truly in the determination of our ends as of the 
 means by which we must reach them. Morality is 
 nothing but reason uttering itself ; and there are ra- 
 tional ends just as truly as there are rational means 
 of attaining them. If a man does not choose the 
 general welfare, the laws of morality are none the 
 less binding upon him. Morality says, You ought to 
 choose the general welfare. It indeed covers all our 
 voluntary action ; it is in nowise dependent upon 
 what we do or what we fail to do, it is simply an 
 ideal for doing. It is co-extensive with the whole of 
 our active life ; not an act, nor a wish, nor a want, 
 nor a thought, nor a judgment, nor any utterance but 
 may be confronted with the question. Is it in har- 
 mony with the standard of right, which is sovereign 
 over all ? 
 
 Thus is a higher law unfolded to us in the very na- 
 ture of morality ; it is given to us in our very con- 
 stitution as rational beings. We call it a higher law 
 because it is independent of the standard to which 
 men ordinarily pay respect. How powerful is custom ! 
 how often does it almost lull to sleep the voice of 
 conscience ! Yet the question may always be raised, 
 Are the customs right; do they conform to the re- 
 quirements of the law that is above them ? How 
 easy it is to glide along with the current of popular 
 sentiment, to think and love and hate as people about 
 us do! Yet any popular sentiment can be brought 
 before a higher bar ; and from that bar a judgment 
 will go out as to whether such sentiment has a right 
 to be and we have a right to follow it, or whether 
 it is our duty to seek to reform it. The higher law 
 is independent of the requirements of statutes. We 
 
 6 
 
66 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 can only say, fortunate are the statutes if they reflect 
 the higher law, and so hold up an ideal for the peo- 
 ple ; for if they do not; if they contradict the higher 
 law, it and not they are to be obeyed. The whole 
 meaning of ethics is in the sense of an invisible au- 
 thority; to bow to custom, to public opinion, or to 
 law, is moral idolatry. 
 
 Whence comes the authority of this law that is 
 within and over us ? The ordinary answers seem to 
 me here entirely to fail. Many of our particular du- 
 ties may have their sanction in that they tend to the 
 general welfare. But what is the sanction for the su- 
 preme duty of seeking the general welfare ? Who can 
 give a reason for this ? The sources of the author- 
 ity of the laws of the statute book in our democratic 
 communities are in the will of the people. Civil 
 governments, we say, derive their just powers from 
 the consent of the governed. But there is no prac- 
 tical consent on the part of men generally to the 
 supremacy of the laws of morality. The practical 
 consent of most men is to the law of individual self- 
 interest ; but if men should consent to the laws of 
 morality, they would, if they were candid, consent to 
 them with the feeling that those laws had an inher- 
 ent right to rule, and the question would still remain, 
 Whence comes this right ? Plainly, morality — the 
 higher law — does not rest on our consent to it, nor 
 is the right determined by a majority or any kind 
 of vote. It is there, commanding us whether we con- 
 sent to it or not ; our business is to give our alle- 
 giance to it as a sovereign whom we have not placed 
 upon, and cannot displace from, his throne. Ethics 
 and politics are distinct in their methods of opera- 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 67 
 
 tion. The last basis for popular sovereignty itself is 
 not that the people have a right to do as they please, 
 but that the people are more likely to rule right than 
 any one man or class of men is. The ultimate au- 
 thority of the laws of the people, just as truly as 
 those of any king or lord, rests on their conformity 
 to a higher standard of justice and of right. Homer 
 speaks of — 
 
 " That worst of tyrants, an usurping crowd." ^ 
 
 Socrates knew that he was very much hated by many 
 persons ; that if condemned it would be owing to the 
 malice and the slander of the multitude. Democracy 
 does not mean any ceasing of the responsibility of the 
 educated and the intelligent, but is only a new oppor- 
 tunity for them, a new call upon them to spread their 
 light and intelligence among the people. It is the 
 ideal destiny of every human being to rule himself ; 
 this truth is the moral basis of democracy : but the 
 rule of one's self must be in accordance with the 
 thought of the highest and the best. 
 
 As little are the sanctions of the higher law to be 
 found in the Bible. It would be idle to speak of this 
 among serious-minded persons, were not a contrary 
 opinion so commonly expressed in the community. 
 "We should do right because the Bible commands 
 us,'' — how often do we hear this expression amtDng 
 Christian people ! I read only the other day of a 
 teacher in one of our theological seminaries, who said 
 he thought that conscience could not vary from the 
 Bible, — the consciousness of right being, as he de- 
 clared, derived from the Bible. Yet if this practical 
 1 Iliad, ii. 204. 
 
68 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 atheism, this absence of living moral conviction, mask- 
 ing itself under the guise of reverence for a book, — if 
 this is in the teaching of the leaders of our churches, 
 what have we reason to believe is the mental condi- 
 tion of the people themselves ? The Bible belongs 
 to the sacred literature of the world ; but it does so 
 belong, because it reflects the moral ideals and aspira- 
 tions of man, not because it has created them. There 
 are other Bibles than that containing the Hebrew and 
 Christian scriptures : every line that utters a thought 
 of the good and the just is a sacred line ; and out of 
 the heart of man, out of his prophetic soul, dream- 
 ing on things to come, will yet come grander Bibles 
 and more sacred literatures than any the past has 
 known. 
 
 More charity must we have for the view that the 
 authority of the right is in some way connected with 
 God. God is sometimes only a name for the invisible 
 right that is within and over us. When Socrates says, 
 " Athenians, I love and cherish you, but I shall obey 
 the gods rather than you ; " ^ when Peter and the 
 apostles answered the high-priest and his council, 
 " We must obey God rather than men ; ^' ^ when Wen- 
 dell Phillips took his stand with the right, as " that 
 absolute essence of things which lives in the sight of 
 the Eternal and Infinite ; " ^ when Antigone set the 
 unwritten, immovable laws of the gods ^ above the pro- 
 clamation of the king of Thebes, and paid the last 
 honors to her brother's corpse despite that proclama- 
 tion, — they, each and all, had essentially in mind the 
 highest thought in man, and they felt that it was 
 
 i Apoloory, § 29. 2 Acts, v. 29. 
 
 3 Speeches, p. 272. * Antigone, 455. 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 69 
 
 there to rule, that they were to brave anything rather 
 than be untrue to it. " God " is often, I suppose, 
 simply a name for that supreme sanctity which is in 
 every man's breast, would he but become aware of it. 
 Socrates says, "Wherever any one stations himself 
 because he thinks it right to be there, or is stationed 
 by his commander, there I think he ought to remain 
 and face danger, taking into account neither death nor 
 anything else in comparison with disgrace." ^ The 
 right, indeed, binds him ; it holds him as by a charm 
 to the spot where he is. The obligation to stay there 
 is ultimate ; we can only say it exists in the reason 
 and nature of things. And if by the term "God'^ was 
 meant simply the reason and nature of things, it might 
 perhaps be freely used; but the word means some- 
 thing else to most persons. If one should speak of 
 the reason and nature of things to many, they would 
 not understand him ; if, instead, he should use the 
 word " God," they would think they did. But in truth 
 they might not understand him any better in the one 
 case than in the other, for they would think that he 
 meant by " God " what they mean by it ; and as they 
 use the term it is, perhaps, to him Aherglmibe (extra- 
 belief). To them the Deity is a person; and what 
 perhaps was once a metaphor, a figure of speech, bor- 
 rowed from the shining sky above, they have hard- 
 ened into a dogma ; and they think that the laws of 
 morality are laws because he commands them, and 
 we are to obey them out of reverence for him. But, 
 in truth, if the Deity is something thus additional to 
 morality, if he is a person giving commands in the 
 literal sense, he gives no authority to his commands, 
 1 Apology, § 28. 
 
70 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 but rather they give authority to him. "No human or 
 divine will can make anything right that is not of 
 itself right. If this were possible, it would follow 
 that if that will commanded what was wrong, it would 
 cease to be wrong ; and hence there would be a total 
 subversion of moral distinctions. The noblest Chris- 
 tian theologians have held to a right independent of 
 the will of God, and made their best claims for a wor- 
 ship of the divine will in that it perfectly accords 
 with that right. Eobert Browning says, — 
 
 "... justice, good, and truth were still 
 Divine, if, by some demon's will, 
 Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed 
 Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.*' ^ 
 
 If this is true, the last answer to the question as to 
 the sources of the authority of the higher law fails as 
 truly as the first. In fact, there is no answer ; there 
 are no sources for that supreme authority. We cannot 
 go beyond the law of right; God is not more ultimate ; 
 human reason is but that in us which perceives it. It 
 indeed has no origin ; its source is not in the heavens 
 or the earth ; it is a final, irrevocable, uncreated law, — 
 I might say, the everlasting adamant on which the 
 moral universe is built. It is the same as the old 
 Stoic philosophers called the law of Nature, contrast- 
 ing, as it did, in so many ways with the law of nations ; 
 the same as the Eoman lawyers thought of as an ideal 
 after which to re-fashion the great mass of traditional 
 Eoman law. It is the same as that which in the eyes 
 of our forefathers gave the basis for the natural and 
 inalienable rights of man. It is the same as prompted 
 1 Christmas Eve, xvii. 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 71 
 
 the exclamation of Sophocles, " Oh that my lot might 
 lead me in the path of holy innocence of thought and 
 deed, the path which august laws ordain, — laws which 
 in the highest heaven had their birth, neither did the 
 race of mortal man beget them, nor shall oblivion ever 
 put them to sleep; the power of God is mighty in 
 them, and groweth not old ! " ^ It is the same as that 
 of which Cicero said that we can take nothing from it, 
 change nothing, abrogate nothing; that neither the 
 Senate nor the people have a right to free us from it. 
 It is the same as Kousseau had in mind when he said 
 that the eternal laws of ;^?ature and of order are still 
 in being, and supply the place of positive laws in the 
 eye of the man of discernment ; ^ as Voltaire, when he 
 said that the sentiment of justice is so natural, so uni- 
 versally felt by mankind, that it seems to be indepen- 
 dent of all law, all party, all religion. The higher 
 law is that indeed which gives mankind its goal ; it is 
 the foundation of States ; it is the basis for all the 
 worth and dignity of human life. 
 
 That this law is no mere fancy, but a reality and 
 a power in human history, is shown in this, — that 
 nothing which is not in accordance with it can last. I 
 have not defined this law ; I have taken for granted 
 that we all have some sense of it. Its practical mean- 
 ing may be discovered in the different virtues which 
 we all have as ideals in our minds. Precise scientific 
 statements are not always desirable, even if they are 
 possible, in treating of so great a theme. It satisfies 
 me in a general way to say that the higher law is 
 that which commands us to seek the universal good. 
 1 Oedipus Tyrannus, 863 ff. 2 :&miie. 
 
72 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 Another statement might be that every man has the 
 ends of a man, and is hence to be treated as sacred and 
 inviolable. My point now is, that if we do not so re- 
 spect every man, we offend the higher law ; and if there 
 are many in a community who have a similar disregard, 
 the fate of that community is sealed. Things are so 
 ordered that righteousness alone is stability and last- 
 ing order and permanent peace. We did not make 
 this so, and we cannot change it ; it is a part of the 
 nature of things, which overrides our will and makes 
 light of our intentions ; it signifies that we are in 
 other, stronger hands than our own. The prophets of 
 the old time were simply those who took the side of 
 the higher law, denounced the wickedness and the cor- 
 ruption that they saw about them, and prophesied the 
 disaster and ruin that would inevitably follow. Greek 
 tragedy is full of this thought ; it is religious, even as 
 the prophecies of the Old Testament are. The higher 
 laws are not dead, stupid, indifferent things, but quick 
 and alive, and know, so to speak, when they are of- 
 fended. You cannot escape the consequences of any 
 wrong you commit ; if you do not suffer, society will 
 suffer, your children will suffer : somehow the wrong 
 must be expiated. There is a moral order in the 
 world, holding up to us what we should do, and aveng- 
 ing itself upon us if we do not do it. History is but 
 an impressive lesson of this. The Greeks spoke of 
 the Furies that followed and would sooner or later 
 overtake the guilty man ; the Hebrews spoke of the 
 wrath of the Eternal against the doers of wickedness. 
 These metaphors, these figures of speech, are not more 
 but less than the fact. The injured majesty of justice 
 will avenge itself. "As the whirlwind passeth, so is 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 75 
 
 the wicked no more, but the righteous is an everlast- 
 ing foundation." ^ 
 
 Time may be necessary for the proving of this. 
 Our indignation at wrong and injustice often fails to 
 have immediate satisfaction ; but time brings it around 
 to us, — if not to us, then to those who inherit the sense 
 of indignation from us. For the spectacle of righteous 
 retribution is not made for our personal satisfaction, 
 it works itself out on its own account ; happy are 
 we, we may say, if we are privileged to see the con- 
 summation, but the consummation will come whether 
 we see it or not. The end and issue of present wrongs 
 are in the future, — they are hid from our eyes; but 
 the end and issue of past wrongs are plain before 
 us. What have become of Assyria, of Babylon, those 
 mighty empires that at their height of sway felt a 
 boding sense come on, — a sense that their huge frames 
 were not constructed right, — 
 
 " And drooped, and slowly died upon their throne." 2 
 
 They rested on violence, they were permeated with 
 immorality, they were doomed to fall. What has be- 
 come of Greece, whom her art and her literature and 
 her philosophy could not save ? — Greece, of whom 
 Matthew Arnold says that every educated man must 
 love her ? — Greece, who was the lifter up to the na- 
 tions of the banner of art and science, and yet brilliant 
 as she was, perished for lack of attention enough to 
 conduct, for want of conduct, steadiness, character.' 
 What has become of Home, stretching her empire so 
 grandly as she did over the western world, whom her 
 
 1 Proverbs, x 25. 2 Matthew Arnold : Poems. 
 
 8 Ibid., Literature and Dogma. 
 
74 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 Ciceros and Antonines, and schools of great jurists 
 failed to save ? Gone down because of luxury, because 
 of sensuality, because of the idleness of the higher 
 classes and the slavery of the lower ; because of the 
 contempt of human beings, because of great estates, 
 because of inequality. What was the French revolu- 
 tion, — I mean the horrors and the bloodshed of it, 
 that which made it, as some one has said, " a truth 
 clad in hell-fire," — what was it but a righteous judg- 
 ment upon a corrupt church, a corrupt monarchy, a 
 corrupt society, — a penalty visited upon France by 
 the offended justice of things ? 
 
 What was the late war in this country but the 
 natural and unescapable result of a wrong that was 
 permitted to fester in the vitals of the nation, and 
 came near to consuming it away ? The statesmen be- 
 fore the war thought to compromise with the wrong ; 
 they hid themselves under the forms of law and the 
 Constitution. But the compromises and the wrongs 
 permitted by the Constitution were part causes of 
 the war ; the war was a judgment on the country 
 for permitting such compromises, for having such a 
 Constitution. Wendell Phillips used to say that the 
 sentiment of justice was something ^^ against which 
 no throne is potent enough to stand, no constitution 
 sacred enough to endure ; " and he used to charge his 
 hearers, " Ee member this when you go to an anti- 
 slavery gathering in a schoolhouse, and know that 
 weighed against its solemn purpose, its terrible reso- 
 lution, its earnest thought, Webster himself, and all 
 huckstering statesmen in the opposite scale, shall kick 
 the beam.'' ^ The prophecy has come true, — the huck- 
 1 Speeches, p. 50. 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAWI 75 
 
 stering statesmen have kicked the beam, and now no 
 man wants to have it known that he or his father had 
 any sympathy with those statesmen. " How shall a 
 feeble minority," cried Phillips, " without weight or 
 influence in the country, with no jury of millions to 
 appeal to, denounced, vilified, and contemned, — how 
 shall we make way against the overwhelming weight 
 of some colossal reputation, if we do not turn from 
 the idolatrous present and appeal to the human race ? 
 Saying to your idols of to-day, ' Here we are, de- 
 feated; but we will write our judgment with the iron 
 pen of a century to come, and it shall never be for- 
 gotten, if we can help it, that you were false in your 
 generation to the claims of the slave.' '' ^ Well, brave 
 soul, it will never be forgotten ; your appeal to the 
 human race is already heard ; you were not defeated ; 
 the reputation which was so colossal in your day 
 weighs very lightly upon us now, and the man who 
 could speak contemptuously of the higher law, — 
 " some higher law," Webster said, " something exist- 
 ing somewhere between here and the third heaven, I 
 do not know where," — he lives in our national his- 
 tory in no small measure to be excused and apolo- 
 gized for. 
 
 What are the outrages now and then cropping out 
 in Ireland, the assassinations now and then taking 
 place in Russia, but the furies of an avenging justice ? 
 Sydney Smith said that at the mention of Ireland 
 " the English seem to bid adieu to common-sense, and 
 to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of 
 idiots ; " Byron called England's union with Ireland 
 *^the union of the shark with his prey;" Burke 
 * Speeches, p. 114. 
 
76 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 affirmed that Ireland ^^only got justice from England 
 when demanded at the sword's point ; " and Glad- 
 stone himself confesses that England never concedes 
 anything " except when moved to do so by fear." ^ 
 If this is true, is there not a call for avenging furies ? 
 And of Eussia, what description is better than that 
 made long ago, and repeated by Phillips, — "a despot- 
 ism tempered by assassination " ? Is Nihilism any- 
 thing more than as Phillips declared, " the last weapon 
 of victims, choked and manacled beyond all other re- 
 sistance " ? " God means," Phillips continued, and 
 that is only saying that justice demands, " that unjust 
 power be insecure ; and every move of the giant pros- 
 trate in chains, whether it be to lift a single dagger or 
 stir a city's revolt, is a lesson in justice." 
 
 All the unrest, all the disorder, all the strikes and 
 outbreaks in our country are simply proofs that the 
 equilibrium of justice is not reached. Men are for 
 peace, when the conditions of peace do not exist. Let 
 men do justice, let the State witness for it, let every 
 shop and factory and means of intercourse and trans- 
 portation be a scene of it, — and we shall have peace 
 fast enough. When " order reigns in Warsaw " there 
 is spiritual death. Disorder, confusion, uprisings are 
 signs of spiritual life, proofs that there are thoughts 
 stirring in the hearts of men, that they will not be con- 
 tent till they have a chance to become something like 
 what they ought to be. Justice will not let us have 
 rest till we have satisfied her claims ; society, as an- 
 other ideal voice in American history (Channing) has 
 said, will be shaken, and deserves to be shaken, till its 
 
 1 See Wendell Phillips's " The Scholar in the Republic," from 
 which I have taken these quotations. 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 77 
 
 solemn debt to the poor and ignorant is paid. So does 
 the higher law make itself known, not only directly 
 to the conscience, but in the course and development 
 of human history, and in the unrest and disquiet of 
 to-day. 
 
 The higher law is the solution of our social prob- 
 lems. It was but one minor political application of 
 it, that to slavery. There is demanded an applica- 
 tion wherever man is dishonored, whether civill}^ free 
 or not. The rule applies everywhere, Treat each man 
 with whom you are in contact as having the ends of a 
 man, and as far as in you lies help him to realize those 
 ends. What are the ends of man ? I need not at- 
 tempt any formal enumeration. What are the things 
 that we deem suitable and proper for ourselves ? 
 What is good for us, what is dear to us, is likely to 
 be good for others. May we not suppose that others 
 would like a living income, a decent home, some lei- 
 sure for thought, for the culture of the higher part of 
 their nature ? If I am told that in some cases they 
 do not care for these things, that they have no ambi- 
 tion for more than a hand-to-mouth existence, that 
 they live a stupid, brutalized life, and are content with 
 it, must we not ask, as Matthew Arnold said English- 
 men must when they think of the outpourings of Irish 
 Catholic resentment upon themselves. Whose fault is 
 it ? ^ Is it not society's fault, in part, that these men 
 have had to live a hand-to-mouth existence, and to 
 become content with it ? — because, forsooth, it was 
 almost vain for them when left to themselves to strive 
 for more, and they, as a rule, have been left to them- 
 1 God and the Bible, p. 45. 
 
78 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 selves. Have we the heart, when we think of this, to 
 talk so glibly of their brutalized life ? They will go 
 on living so, it is to be feared, till we become brothers 
 to them, till we carry to them, and keep ever in our- 
 selves, the thought of what they are ideally called to 
 be. If no law of business, no law of the State, com- 
 mands this, shall we not say that the higher law 
 commands it ? — that law which contemplates us all 
 as brothers, and gives us our duty as grounded in 
 that relation, and knows of no limits to our duty save 
 those inhering in a universal honor and love ? If 
 this is our true relation ; if, as Marcus Aurelius said,^ 
 we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like 
 eyelids ; if it is contrary to nature to be angry with 
 our kinsmen, or to hate them, or to be indifferent to 
 them, — then does so much that we waste on what is 
 superfluous belong to us to waste ; does so much of 
 the time that we devote to our selfish interests belong 
 to ourselves; is there not a call for humanity over- 
 leaping all conventional limits, a humanity that shall 
 assert practically in our daily lives our brotherhood 
 with the poorest and the least ? The higher law is, in 
 truth, still in advance of and above the ordinary prac- 
 tice and ordinary thoughts of men. Men do not dream 
 of the duties that really belong to them ; they are 
 content with the average standards of morality about 
 them. They would not countenance slavery, oh, no ! 
 but that which made slavery wrong makes anything 
 wrong which hinders or makes impossible a free pro- 
 gress of every individual to what is highest and best. 
 The higher law is inconsistent with the customary 
 law of wages; the higher law is inconsistent with 
 * Meditations, ii. 1 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 79 
 
 the subjection of women, with all that view of her 
 as a mere attendant and helpmeet for man ; it is 
 inconsistent with any home where one person exists 
 to serve and another to be served ; it calls for a 
 universal application of the rule of respect and honor 
 and love. 
 
 For the higher law is not a beautiful speculation to 
 indulge in ; it calls for a higher life. If we win a 
 thought in advance of the common practice of the day, 
 it is a summons to us to lift our life to a new level, 
 and contribute so much to the onward movement of 
 the world. If we are but vaguely ill at ease, as we 
 think of the present condition of society, it may be 
 that thereby the spirit of progress marks us out and 
 gives us the first presentiments of the work it has for 
 us to do. Discontent because our personal wants and 
 wishes are not gratified may be far from noble ; but 
 discontent with ourselves and our lives in view of the 
 suggestions of an idea that calls us up higher, — there 
 is something almost sacred about that. Every stirring 
 of this discontent signifies that we are not really at 
 home in the world as it is ; that in some sense we have 
 a better country, and belong to another order of things. 
 There are those who tell us it will not do to have our 
 ideals too high ; that this would unfit us for life as it 
 is. They forget that it is not necessarily our place 
 to accept life as it is, — that our duty may be to help 
 make it over. It is sometimes said, with reference 
 to our public life, that to act with entire honesty 
 and self-respect one needs always to live in a pure 
 atmosphere, and it is added that the atmosphere of 
 politics is impure. Is one, then, to accept his atmos- 
 phere, as if it were something given to him, and not 
 
80 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 to know that he may be himself a factor in creat- 
 ing it ? A man with a too keen sense of rectitude, 
 says Herbert Spencer, a too elevated standard of con- 
 duct, might find life intolerable and impossible.^ Im- 
 possible ? No, unless in those rare times when for 
 high reasons it were better not to live. Intolerable ? 
 Yes ; and the sense that it was so would prompt to 
 the necessary efforts to make life tolerable. Intoler- 
 able wrongs ? — then we will overthrow them. Intol- 
 erable circumstances ?— then we will revolt against 
 them. 
 
 " He either fears liis fate too much, 
 Or his deserts too small, 
 Wiio dares not put it to the touch, 
 To gain or lose it all." 2 
 
 But with a thought of some higher good, I, in real 
 truth, believe that we cannot lose or fail. The world 
 is meant to go that way, — it is in its make and na- 
 ture to do so ; and every effort, every thought, is sim- 
 ply a new beginning, a new impulse to that onward 
 movement. The only thing that fails in this world 
 is wrong, — fails, though it takes men and nations 
 with it, and involves them in ruin. The good is that 
 which preserves and keeps alive. I almost fancy at 
 times that if a perfectly just society should ever come 
 to be, it would never cease ; that the elements would 
 wax kind for it ; that the earth would put off its day 
 of final destruction to do it honor, — or if that dire 
 event should ever come, that the divine society would 
 then be transported to some happy isles, " ever fertile, 
 clear in atmosphere, and unvexed with storms,'' and 
 
 1 Education, p. 169. 
 
 2 Marquis of Montrose (1612-1660J. 
 
IS THERE A HIGHER LAW? 81 
 
 be dowered with immortality. But whether or no, we 
 belong to such a society. The higher law that sounds 
 within us is sign that we belong to another state 
 than that in which we live, to a divine commonwealth ; 
 and a man is to remember this higher citizenship as he 
 walks the streets of his earthly city, — it is to keep him 
 erect while he walks there, and from aught that is un- 
 becoming or mean or common. Lying is not the law 
 of that ideal commonwealth, and it is not for him to 
 lie ; honor is before gain there, and his first thought 
 should be to keep himself spotless here ; selfishness 
 is not neatly matched with selfishness there, and it is 
 for him to live in an element of disinterested love 
 now. The only thing he may have now that he will 
 find no room for there, is indignation at and resistance 
 to wrong; and even these cannot become settled habits 
 with him, for they exist only to the end of removing 
 all wrong ; and when that time shall come, should he 
 ever see it, delight and joy and thanksgiving will take 
 the place of all other emotions. To act now, not ac- 
 cording to our poor human statutes and conventions, 
 but according to the higher perfect law that we know 
 only within our own breast ; to live here as the citizen 
 of an ideal kingdom, — that, it seems to me, were the 
 proudest distinction a man could crave. That king- 
 dom is not yet; only the thought and the law of it are 
 in us, and the kingdom is to be. We are to make that 
 kingdom, and we know of its possibilities nowhere 
 else than here. A great creative responsibility rests 
 upon mankind and upon us for our measure of the 
 task. To be as good as our fathers, said Phillips, we 
 must be better. The duties of their day were new to 
 them ; let it not surprise us if there are duties for us 
 
 6 
 
82 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 and the future that have never dawned on mankind 
 before. Duty is like the truth, — we are ever discov- 
 ering it. The principles, the great laws, may be old : 
 their applications, their practical meaning in our lives, 
 are ever new. 
 
 "New occasions teach new duties, 
 
 Time makes ancient good uncouth ; 
 They must upward, still, and onward, 
 Who would keep abreast of truth ! " ^ 
 
 1 J. R. Lowell. 
 
IS THERE ANYTHING ABSOLUTE ABOUT 
 MORALITY? 
 
 IT is sometimes thought that morality is entirely a 
 matter of changing custom and opinion. One per- 
 son holds one thing to be right, another another, and 
 each, it is said, has an equal right to his opinion, — 
 both are equally near the truth, for there is no truth 
 in this case apart from what each one thinks. It is, 
 of course, impossible that there should be any strength 
 or ardor of moral conviction among those who habit- 
 uate themselves to such a view. Moreover, if it be 
 correct, it is difficult to see how there can be such a 
 thing as a science of morality. If morality is but the 
 varying opinions and practices of man from primitive 
 times down, we can indeed arrange and classify them, 
 and have as the result a sort of moral sociology, — but 
 we can no more have a science of morality than we 
 should have a science of astronomy by gathering and 
 arranging all the notions of men about the heavenly 
 bodies from Homer's time to the present. Science is 
 not an account of opinions, but of those opinions that 
 are believed to be true ; and if ethics is robbed of the 
 notion of truth (that is, harmony with an objective 
 standard), its scientific pretensions must be abandoned. 
 But it is easier to raise questions than to answer 
 them ; and if by morality is meant only the actual 
 conduct of men, we have plainly to negative our ques- 
 
84 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 tion, and say there is nothing absolute about moral- 
 ity, since the conduct of men has been after any but 
 a fixed, unvarying type. Human beings have yielded 
 to all the varied and contradictory passions of their 
 nature. They have hated and loved ; been cruel and 
 kind ; false and faithful ; and there is hardly a con- 
 ceivable vice or virtue that has not been illustrated in 
 their lives. If any one law has been followed, it is one 
 opposed to morality, rather than one exemplifying it ; 
 namely, the law according to which each one seeks his 
 own selfish interest and pleasure. Freeman tells us of 
 the old Frankish games, in which thousands of prison- 
 ers of war were given over to the jaws of wild beasts 
 in the amphitheatres.^ Gregory, the ecclesiastical his- 
 torian, gives an account of a certain Duke Eaukhing, 
 who amused himself by plucking out the hairs of a 
 serf, — the tears of the serf exciting transports of de- 
 light in his master. 2 There may be a uniform psycho- 
 logical law in accordance with which men have acted ; 
 namely, that each one does what he most desires to 
 do, or what it pleases him best to do, or, in a word, 
 according to his greatest pleasure. But this law has 
 no moral significance, since in equal consistency with 
 it both moral and immoral actions are performed.^ 
 No uniform moral law is discoverable in the actual 
 conduct of men. 
 
 But, strictly speaking, morality is not an account of 
 how men act, but of how they feel they ought to act. 
 
 1 Fortnightly Review, October, 1869. 
 
 2 History, v. 3. 
 
 2 Cf. some remarkably acute observations in Georg von Gizy- 
 cki's Grundziige der Moral, S. 33, ff. ; also his just published 
 Moralphilosophie, S. 92, ff. 
 
IS ANYTHING ABSOLUTE ABOUT MORALITY? 85 
 
 We must certainly distinguish between what men do, 
 and even delight in doing, and what they morally ap- 
 prove. When we think of Jengis Khan signalizing his 
 first victory by casting seventy prisoners into caldrons 
 of boiling water ; or of Timour massacring a hundred 
 thousand Indian prisoners, and erecting a pyramid of 
 ninety thousand human heads on the smoking ruins of 
 Bagdad ; or of Attila totally extirpating and erasing 
 seventy cities,^ — we are hardly to imagine that they 
 thought it right to do these monstrous deeds, nor, on 
 the other hand, that they were aware it was wrong; 
 they probably simply yielded to the barbarous im- 
 pulses of their natures, without conscience one way 
 or the other. Such outbursts of cruelty are probably 
 attended with as little moral feeling as an earthquake, 
 or an eruption of a volcano. So when we are told of 
 the Tonga Islanders, that theft, revenge, rape, and 
 murder are under many circumstances not held to be 
 crimes,^ this does not so much prove that conscience 
 sometimes points wrong, as that sometimes it does not 
 point at all, or rather that to this extent conscience 
 does not exist. 
 
 Conscience is certainly a growth, and there must 
 have been a time when there was no sense of right 
 or wrong at all ; but because a faculty says nothing 
 when it does not exist, is surely no proof or even 
 suggestion of its untrustworthiness when it arises. 
 Because a man born blind has no sense of colors, is no 
 reason for doubting that he may distinguish them 
 when he once gains his eyesight. And as travellers 
 
 ^ Spencer, Social Statics, Introduction, lemma i. § 2. 
 2 Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, p. 259. From this writer 
 most of the following instances of savage morals are taken. 
 
86 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 tell us of savage tribes without religion, so they tell 
 us of those without conscience. The Tasmanians are 
 entirely without any moral views or impressions. 
 The Australians have no sense of what is just or equi- 
 table in the abstract, — their only test of propriety 
 in many cases being whether they are numerically or 
 physically strong enough to brave the vengeance of 
 those whom they may provoke or injure. Conscience, 
 says Burton, does not exist in eastern Africa, and 
 repentance only expresses regret for missed opportu- 
 nities of mortal crime. The Tongans have no words 
 expressive of such ideas as virtue, justice, humanity ; 
 nor, on the contrary, of such ideas as vice, injustice, 
 cruelty. Lubbock says he does not remember a single 
 instance in which a savage is recorded to have shown 
 any symptoms of remorse. In the absence of moral 
 feeling, savages simply follow their instincts, or con- 
 sult their own interest or advantage. When Mr. Ellis, 
 a missionary, tells us that during the whole period of 
 his residence in the Tahiti Islands he does not recol- 
 lect having found a female attaining to motherhood 
 during the prevalence of idolatry, who had not im- 
 brued her hands in the blood of her offspring, it would 
 be foolish to imagine that any moral approval accom- 
 panied these acts ; and the motive with which the 
 murders were committed becomes plain when we learn 
 that girls were more often killed than boys, because 
 they were of less use in fishing and in war. So when 
 the ancient Spartans encouraged their young warri- 
 ors to waylay and assassinate helots for practice, this 
 is not so much evidence of a perverted conscience as 
 it is of the absence of all conscience in their feelings 
 toward their slaves, who were looked upon as having 
 
IS ANYTHING ABSOLUTE ABOUT MORALITY? 87 
 
 no more rights than animals. When the Sioux Indians 
 in their dances and at their feasts recite their deeds 
 of theft, pillage, and slaughter as precious things, and 
 it becomes the highest ambition of a young brave to 
 secure the feather (which is the sign of having mur- 
 dered some one), and after having secured the first 
 to add as many more as possible to his cap, the feel- 
 ing seems to be simply that of admiration for strength 
 and valor, — and strength and valor are admirable 
 things as contrasted with weakness and cowardice, 
 and this seems to have been the only contrast their 
 savage minds were capable of making. We do not 
 admire such strength and valor now, only because 
 we bear in mind still higher virtues, — respect for 
 human life, the sense of its sacredness, — and believe 
 that they give the superior rule of action. I doubt 
 if anything was ever admired by a savage that was 
 not, in just the aspect that excited his admiration, 
 admirable. I doubt if a savage ever admired pillage 
 as such : he admired the strength and the daring that 
 were implied in it. I doubt if he ever admired theft 
 as such : he admired the cleverness of it. Lubbock 
 says that he cannot believe that theft and murder 
 have ever been virtues in themselves, though in the 
 absence of moral feelings they were no doubt means 
 of distinction, and were regarded with no reprobation. 
 In a similar way it is possible to regard the piracy 
 which is said to have been " the exercise, the trade, 
 the glory, and the virtue of the Scandinavian youth.'' 
 The earliest form of virtue ivas strength or valor. 
 We may in this way even explain the reversal of 
 moral distinctions among those savage tribes who re- 
 garded theft as a virtue, and who punished the thief 
 
88 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 only when he allowed himself to be detected. From 
 the savage standpoint, the contrast was simply be- 
 tween cleverness and bungling stupidity ; and leav- 
 ing other considerations aside (or rather being un- 
 conscious of them, as these savage tribes may have 
 been), there can be no question which of the two is 
 the higher. The same may be said of the craft of 
 Ulysses, which was so highly admired in the early 
 days of Greece ; it' there was faint consciousness of 
 higher virtues, and the chief contrast familiar to 
 men's minds was between craft and the lack of it, 
 dexterity in compassing one's ends and inability to 
 do so, I do not see how we can refuse to allow that 
 Ulysses' craft was really admirable. 
 
 The absoluteness of morality does not mean that 
 man has always had a conscience, or that he has al- 
 ways approved the highest things ; if it did, there 
 would be nothing absolute about morality. Man has 
 grown into his knowledge of right and wrong ; there 
 must have been a time when he had no such knowl- 
 edge, — just as he has grown into a knowledge of the 
 world about him, and there was a time when he knew 
 nothing but what his imperfectly trained senses imme- 
 diately gave him. No truth of science is invalidated 
 because it was not always known, or because when 
 people first sought for truth they only imperfectly 
 grasped it; it is enough that they found it in some 
 measure when they sought for it, that the understand- 
 ing is not hopelessly involved in illusion. So it is 
 enough that when men have sought the right, they 
 have in some measure found it; and as for those 
 opinions and customs that were formed irrespective 
 of such an aim, I do not see that the defender of abso- 
 
IS ANYTHING ABSOLUTE ABOUT MORALITY? 89 
 
 lute morality need be anywise concerned about them. 
 I have only mentioned these instances from what 
 Professor Jowett has so happily called the ** ages be- 
 fore morality," or from savage life to-day, to bring out 
 what I do not mean by the absoluteness of morality ; 
 that is, to clear up the confusion and misunderstand- 
 ing that lie at the threshold of our subject. 
 
 Have men, with the supreme thought to do what 
 was right, ever approved what was wrong? — that is 
 the only question of significance to the defender of 
 absolute morality. Opinions that have grown up by 
 chance, or are simply due to passion or self-interest, 
 or even the interest of the family or tribe with which 
 any individual's interest may be inevitably bound up, 
 — these are not morality, and are of no concern to the 
 moral teacher. Morality is what we do under the 
 pressure of the thought of what we ought to do ; and 
 I doubt if there was ever an instance of a person's 
 rising into this higher zone of his being who did not, 
 in some measure, do what was right. 
 
 The cases of most difficulty are those in connec- 
 tion with religion. Eeligion seems to make sacred all 
 that it commands. The follower of any religion is 
 apt to take as his supreme law whatever that religion 
 enjoins upon him. Now, there certainly have been 
 instances where religions have commanded their fol- 
 lowers to do what was wrong, and the followers have 
 obeyed, with a feeling that they were doing (in this 
 sense) their duty. I have recounted so many barbar- 
 ous things that it is no pleasant task to add to their 
 number, but a few instances must be given. There 
 is a sect in India called Thugs, who regard assassina- 
 tion as a religious act. The Israelitish tribes, under 
 
90 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 the leadership of their battle-god Jahveh, enacted 
 numberless massacres among the tribes of Canaan ; 
 and sometimes a general like Moses, acting under a 
 commission from this god, would ask reproachfully, 
 after a barbarous victory, " Have ye .saved the women 
 alive ?" and then command all the wives and mothers 
 to be killed, and the remaining women to be divided 
 among the warriors.^ Jesus knew that the time would 
 come when those who should kill his disciples would 
 think they were doing God service ; ^ and Paul, be- 
 fore his conversion, verily thought that he ought 
 to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of 
 Nazareth.^ What need to rehearse the wrongs and 
 cruelties practised by the Christian Church itself on 
 heretics and unbelievers, all with the thought of doing 
 God service ? The Prankish King Clovis, after his 
 conversion, incited Sigibert's son to kill his father, 
 then had the son killed, and himself killed many 
 other kings, even some among his nearest relatives ; 
 and the Bishop Gregory writes of him : " Every day 
 God caused his enemies to fall into his hands and 
 augmented his kingdom, because he walked with an 
 upright heart before God, and did the things that 
 were pleasing in his sight."* What need to refer to 
 the massacre of the Albigenses, to the Inquisition ? 
 There is hardly a crime or an act of treachery that 
 has not been made sacred by the Church ; popes have 
 repeatedly said that there is no obligation to keep 
 faith with an infidel. 
 
 The question, however, arises in all these cases, 
 
 1 Numbers, xxxi. 15-18. 2 John, xvi. 2. 
 
 8 Acts, xxvi. 9. 
 
 4 Guizot's History of Civilization, i. 41, 42. 
 
IS ANYTHING ABSOLUTE ABOUT MORALITY? 91 
 
 What was the dominant thought ? Was it to do sim- 
 ply what was right, irrespective of any motive of in- 
 terest or fear or favor, or has it been to please some 
 person, to serve some private or class interest ? Or, 
 going deeper, we may ask. What is the origin of re- 
 ligion ? Was religion, at the start, simply man's 
 thought of what ought to be, idealized or personi- 
 fied, or was it an arrangement by which he hoped to 
 further his own interest? I think nothing can be 
 clearer to the student of the early history of man 
 than that religion and morality were altogether dis- 
 tinct in their origin ; and that religion was simply a 
 contrivance to ward off danger or win advantage for 
 one's self or for one's tribe. '^ It is very clear," says 
 Lubbock, " that religion, except in advanced races, has 
 no moral aspect or influence." The deities are often 
 evil rather than good beings ; religion is a means of 
 propitiating them and getting their favor, and what- 
 ever was necessary to that end believers inclined to 
 do. The Thugs probably believed that their deity 
 could be satisfied only with the murder of those who 
 did not worship him. The same feelings, doubtless, 
 inspired the tribes of Israel in their wars upon the 
 Canaanites, in conjunction with their natural hostility 
 to those in possession of the land which they coveted. 
 I doubt if Moses, or one of the heroes of Israelitish 
 legend, ever seriously asked himself. What is right ? 
 How ought I, regardless of any interests of my own, 
 to treat my fellow beings ? I doubt if they ever had 
 a thought of justice outside of tribal limits, or ever 
 sinned against that thought. In all likelihood they 
 simply had in mind the interests of their own people, 
 and by hook or crook, by all natural and all supernat- 
 
92 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 ural means, they were ready to further those inter- 
 ests. When Paul thought he ought to do many things 
 contrary to the name of Jesus, his thought was of 
 loyalty to that old tribal god, who had, it is true, been 
 enlarged and moralized to a certain extent under the 
 influence of the teaching of the prophets, but plain- 
 ly not moralized completely, since he sanctioned the 
 persecution of the followers of a new form of faith. 
 It is barely possible that the conversion of Paul was 
 ultimately due to a rising of his sense of right in 
 opposition to mere loyalty to a tribal religion. Can 
 you once imagine King Clovis, or the instigators of 
 the Inquisition, sitting down to ask themselves in a 
 calm and serious spirit, What ought we to do ? Do we 
 not know that in the one case it was simply passion 
 for power, and in the other case passion for the Church 
 and the God of the Church that dictated the action ? 
 If they did not persecute, they knew that they should 
 offend their God ; and if they offended their God there 
 would be, forsooth, no safety for themselves here or 
 hereafter. If ever the slumbering conscience of one 
 of those Catholic Inquisitors arose, it was probably 
 shown not in any justification he made of his conduct, 
 but in the simple fact of his attempting to justify it. 
 Many a time the only way a man's conscience shows 
 itself is not in anything that he does, but in a lurking 
 suspicion that he has done wrong, and in some kind 
 of an attempt to make it appear that he did right. 
 And sometimes, perhaps, a man's conscience never does 
 arise ; it is swallowed up in some enormous religious 
 or patriotic zeal. For a man's religion is often like 
 his patriotism : as the patriotic fanatic says "My coun- 
 try, right or wrong," so the religious fanatic, "My 
 
IS ANYTHING ABSOLUTE ABOUT MORALITY? 93 
 
 religion, right or wrong." Both are at an equal dis- 
 tance from that clear, calm, undisturbed, and undis- 
 tuibal»le condition of the mind, in which one only 
 asks what is right and what is wrong. How different 
 an ethical religion would be from religion as it is or- 
 dinarily understood ! Eeligion to most persons still 
 means getting the favor of God. Some religions, it 
 is true, happen to have been more or less affected by 
 morality, and so they give us a God worthy of rev- 
 erence. But an ethical religion would grow out of 
 a totally different motive ; the first thought in the 
 breast of every follower of it would be. What ought 
 I to do in accordance with the widest and most per- 
 fect right ? And its God, if the nameless Power that 
 *' infects the w^orld" should ever again receive that 
 particular designation, would simply be the ultimate 
 supreme Reality, in virtue of which man and all finite 
 things exist. 
 
 Hence I doubt if any of these instances from the 
 history of religion are really contrary to the opinion 
 I have advanced, that when a man sincerely asks. 
 What ought I to do, irrespective of the fear or favor 
 of God or man ? his answer is in some measure right. 
 Of course, if there has been no idea of a right, beyond 
 the tribe or the church or the God, the wrong-doers 
 we have mentioned were not really responsible for the 
 wrong they did ; nay, their duty was only to act ac- 
 cording to the highest standard of right they knew. 
 No man is bound to act against his conscience, even 
 if his conscience commands a murder; none the less 
 should we say that his conscience in such, a case was 
 not a true conscience, that it did not conform to that 
 perfect standard of right in harmony with which all 
 
94 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 consciences should be. But in very truth it is doubt- 
 ful whether any of the acts we have considered were 
 done under stress of conscience ; they were rather done 
 under the blind promptings of religious zeal, — and 
 religious zeal and conscience may be, as their whole 
 history shows, entirely different things. 
 
 Yet even if this view could not be maintained, if 
 there were instances in which not merely religious 
 feeling but the moral sense itself had unmistakably 
 gone wrong in the past, this would not necessarily 
 affect our confidence in the affirmations of the moral 
 sense now. No part of our nature seems to be guaran- 
 teed infallibility ; our senses and our understanding 
 sometimes deceive us, yet we have a perfect confidence 
 that in their normal exercise they are trustworthy. 
 We are not any the less certain now that the world is 
 round because men formerly supposed it was flat, even 
 if they had been willing to go to the stake for such a 
 conviction. I suppose we may say we are absolutely 
 certain that the world is round ; and even if we were 
 not absolutely certain, the fact itself would certainly 
 be one way or the other, — , it could not be both. So, 
 may we not be absolutely sure of certain moral prin- 
 ciples, while admitting fully that there has been de- 
 velopment in the knowledge of these principles, and 
 occasionally a falling away from the knowledge of 
 them even after it has been gained ? 
 
 The question of an absolute morality is, after all, not 
 whether man changes, but whether principles change. 
 The question is. Are there not unalterable principles 
 for human conduct, whether human conduct conforms 
 to them, and whether men have any adequate knowl- 
 edge of them, or not ? Take any principle that we 
 
IS ANYTHING ABSOLUTE ABOUT MORALITY? 95 
 
 are most sure of to-day, — of equality before the law, 
 for example, or of the right of each one to own his own 
 person, — and are we not sure that any departure from 
 it would be a departure from the true ideal for human 
 society ; that if the interests of order or civilization 
 should seem to demand the departure, such an order 
 or type of civilization would be false and vicious, and 
 would lead sooner or later to its own overthrow ? Even 
 if our selfish interests should come to blind our own 
 eyes, as was often the case with the Southern slave- 
 holders, and we defend and treat as sacred the wrongs 
 we have occasioned, would they any the less be wrongs 
 though we should cease to regard them as such, and 
 though no living man pronounced as to their real char- 
 acter ? I think we feel, in contemplating such an ex- 
 ample, that our moral sense does not make right and 
 wrong any more than our interests or our desires, but 
 simply finds them, — just as we open our eyes upon the 
 wondrous order of the world about us, and know that 
 not it, but we, are new comers on the scene. It is as* 
 with the conditions of health : does any one think that 
 he can change these at will, or that his thought of 
 them can make them one particle different from what 
 they would be altogether apart from his thought ? 
 The conditions of the universal good or welfare are 
 just as fixed and unalterable, so far as our will or our 
 thought are concerned ; and the universal good or 
 welfare is the highest aim of morality, — by every act 
 we do or leave undone we help or hinder its attain- 
 ment, and our moral task is, at each time and in every 
 act, to hinder the least and help the most. We do not 
 always know what to do : morality is often a problem 
 to us ; but the problem is, we feel, not to do as we like, 
 
96 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 trusting that it will turn out for the best, but to learn 
 the right thing to do, — and only that, we feel, will or 
 can turn out for the best. We do not make an act 
 one particle better by thinking it is good if it is not 
 really good, nor one particle less harmful by speciously 
 justifying or excusing it. Acts are good or bad just 
 in so far as they correspond with the requirements 
 of the nature of things, in so far as they advance or 
 retard the ends which Nature herself has at heart. 
 There is a way of living now for you and me, — per- 
 haps in a measure different for each according to 
 our circumstances and capacities, — that would tend 
 to bring nearer the time when the universal welfare 
 would be secured, when the ends of existence would 
 be realized in every child of man. I believe that 
 way is fixed, — fixed perhaps in one way for you and 
 in another for me, but equally fixed for both; and 
 we have, in the literal sense of the word, to find out 
 that way, as though it were something fixed by other 
 hands than our own, with which we have to bring 
 our thoughts and lives into harmony. This makes 
 the ideal for each one of us, and the supreme busi- 
 ness of our life is to discover it and faithfully follow 
 it. It is no alien thing. It aims at a good beyond 
 ourselves, namely, the good of all ; but it is for our- 
 selves, — our true good is in the good of all. It ap- 
 peals to us with no show of force or power, but only 
 by its own sweet reasonableness ; for it is indeed 
 our own proper nature, and we are astray, wander- 
 ers from our true selves, till we have found it and 
 become obedient to it. Does it hinder the freedom of 
 the tree, that it grows according to its own appointed 
 form ? Does it hinder the freedom of the bursting 
 
IS ANYTHING ABSOLUTE ABOUT MORALITY? 97 
 
 leaves of the spring-time, that they silently follow 
 an inward necessity of comeliness and beauty ? No, 
 their will is one with the law of their being. Alas ! 
 man's is not ; he does not know his true good, and 
 when he does, he often prefers an inferior good. Yet 
 man may have a glory that the leaves and the trees 
 and all things in Nature cannot have : he may give 
 himself the law that he shall follow ; he may, by his 
 own choice, adopt it into, make it sovereign in, his life. 
 Man can be the voluntary achiever of the purposes of 
 Nature, — and that the leaf on the tree is not ; he can 
 be at once free and the servant of a universal plan, 
 while all things in Nature seem to be servants with- 
 out freedom. Tennyson addresses what he conceives 
 to be an ideal of perfect excellence, when he says, — 
 
 " Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 
 Our wills are ours, to make them Thine." 
 
 And I should say that man's glory is that he has a 
 will of his own, and yet can make that will conform 
 with the requirements of a perfect law. That law 
 stretches beyond all that is written down in human 
 statutes ; it marks out for us a course of action, a 
 mode of life, and an order of society that would re- 
 sult in the accomplishment of a perfect good. I but 
 repeat in substance the language of a distinguished 
 political economist, M. de Laveleye, — who does not 
 forget, as so many do, the ideal aims of his science, — 
 when I say that at every moment of history and in 
 every society, conformably to the nature of mankind, 
 there is a social and political organization which an- 
 swers best to the rational requirements of man, and is 
 most favorable to his development. This order con- 
 
 7 
 
98 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 stitutes the empire of right. Science is called in to 
 discover it, and legislation to sanction it. Every law 
 which is conformable to this order is good and just; 
 every law which is opposed to it is bad and iniquitous. 
 This order is by no means always the existing one ; 
 else why should we desire change in the latter ? But it 
 is the order which ought to exist for the greatest good 
 of the human race.^ An absolute morality is only the 
 law of a social and political order in which the great- 
 est good of the human race would be secured ; and 
 they, it seems to me, would reach the loftiest moral 
 height who, without waiting for legislation to sanction 
 it or for other human beings to set them the example, 
 should, so far as possible, voluntarily make it the rule 
 of their lives now. 
 
 But if there are moral principles which do not de- 
 pend on our thought for their rightness, which in ac- 
 cordance with our varying conditions and capacities 
 give to each one of us the true ideal of life, and which 
 by no means conflict with our freedom, since only by 
 our freedom can they become realized in us, — if such 
 principles exist, what are they ? I believe they may 
 be stated as Justice and Love. It is sometimes said 
 that circumstances alter duties. Edmund Burke said 
 that the situation of a man was the preceptor of his 
 duty. But are there any circumstances which would 
 justify a man in practising injustice ? Is there any 
 situation in which it is permitted to us to hate ? I 
 believe not. I believe these laws are of unconditional, 
 universal validity. All particular duties change ; they 
 are but the application of these general laws to par- 
 ticular, varying circumstances. Justice may require 
 1 Primitive Property, pp. 346, 353. 
 
IS ANYTHING ABSOLUTE ABOUT MORALITY"? 99 
 
 US to reward one man and to punish another : to treat 
 them equally might even be injustice. Justice may 
 lead us to make war, or to maintain peace ; but to 
 make war recklessly, or to maintain peace at any 
 cost, would be contrary to justice. Justice may lead 
 us to stay by our families and support them, or to 
 leave them and enlist for the public defence ; but if 
 we should leave our families for selfish rather than 
 unselfish reasons, or to gratify passion and lust, the 
 same principle that before justified us would now ab- 
 solutely condemn us. The admission that varying cir- 
 cumstances change the character of our obligations is 
 not in the slightest degree inconsistent with the recog- 
 nition that there is an absolute obligation for each 
 particular set of circumstances. The admission that 
 duty may change with circumstances is, of course, lia- 
 ble to perversion, and the wicked man may take it to 
 mean that he may do whatever it pleases him to do ; 
 but the pure-minded man knows that duty itself still 
 remains, and has only changed its form. Equally may 
 love lead us to varying and opposite actions. Out of 
 love we may give alms to a poor man, or withhold 
 them, — in either case acting not according to our 
 caprice, but for the best good of the man himself. 
 Love may lead us to speak the truth, or to withhold 
 it ; to keep a promise, or to break one ; to strive to 
 preserve our health, or freely to sacrifice it. There 
 is nothing that is absolute — that is, fixed and unva- 
 rying — about these particular maxims. The only ab- 
 solute rule is that of love itself ; one may always act 
 under its inspiration. You may rebuke your child 
 in love ; a man may thwart his friends in love. It is 
 one of the touches of humanity, even in the Homeric 
 
100 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 poems, that now and then two brave foes exchange 
 presents at the conchision of a combat to prove that 
 not out of hate but for glory they have fought.^ In- 
 deed, if there is any act that can be done only in pure 
 hatred, it stands self-condemned. We may hate wick- 
 edness, but must always remember that a wicked man 
 is more than his wickedness. We may not hate even a 
 mortal enemy ; though we take his life in self-defence, 
 we are not allowed to take pleasure in doing so. 
 
 Because, then, there is no one particular act that is 
 always right, or no one particular maxim — like '^ Pre- 
 serve your health," or " Keep your promises '' — which 
 must always be obeyed, it does not follow that there 
 is nothing absolute whatever about morality. The 
 absoluteness of morality is in its supreme principles ; 
 they need never be transgressed, they dare never be 
 disobeyed. If I do not follow any one particular 
 maxim of duty, it must never be because I substitute 
 some interest or caprice of my own, but because I 
 seek to obey some broader maxim, some higher, more 
 perfect expression of the principle itself. And if an 
 air of uncertainty seems thus to be left about specific 
 duties, let me suggest a rule that, I think, will give 
 us practical guidance in a special emergency ; when 
 we find ourselves doubting about any particular duty, 
 let us ask ourselves searchingly the question, "Am 
 I doubting because I secretly desire to do differently, 
 or because a really higher duty seems to command 
 me ? " 
 
 It is a sign of the wonderful range of the human 
 mind, that it is able, so to speak, to transcend itself, 
 and to discover laws that would be just as true had 
 1 Iliad, vii. 800 fe. 
 
IS ANYTHING ABSOLUTE ABOUT MORALITY? 101 
 
 they not been discovered, — la^svs'^tliat^are d.dji^ than 
 the mind, and will go on, in their Jjncea?ing opera- 
 tion, after the mind has, to.SiiLapp^^ar3,n(;b, i-.t^-sed ho 
 be. Such are all the laws of Nature. It is certain- 
 ly good at times to escape out of ourselves, — these 
 lieeting, so quickly vanishing selves, — and feel the 
 pulses and recognize the laws of this unceasing and 
 eternal movement in the world around us. Matthew 
 Arnold suggests as a staying, consoling thought for 
 the dying man, that, though he is to perish, the world 
 does not perish with him, but eternally goes on.^ I 
 would, if I might, suggest the thought of other laws 
 and of another order of things than this physical 
 one with which we are surrounded. I would suggest 
 the thought of deathless principles to the dying man. 
 I would have him think that justice does not die be- 
 cause he dies ; that love does not cease to urge its 
 claims because his own heart's love seems about to 
 cease. I would have him think that though justice 
 and love had failed in all the past to get an entrance 
 into human hearts, they ought to have had an en- 
 trance, for they belong there, — their meaning was 
 there, — and that they are the unalterable pattern 
 after which, the life of men must be shaped in the 
 future. These laws, also, are stable ; they seem to 
 give something of their own firmness to those who 
 contemplate them ; they are witness that within, as 
 well as without, man is connected with an eternal 
 order of things. 
 
 1 Poems, — "A Wish." 
 
VI. 
 
 DARWINISM IN ETHICS. 
 
 IT is the high and noble thing to do what is good 
 and right of our own accord. We do not reach 
 the heights of morality till goodness is the free choice 
 of the soul. I believe that man, with his wonderful 
 gift of reason, can discern a highest good, and then, 
 unconstrained by all that is without him, can choose 
 it. It constitutes the incomparable dignity of man 
 that he need not be like a cloud driven before the 
 winds, but can, as George Eliot says, "elect his deeds, 
 and be the liege, not of his birth, but of that good 
 alone he has discerned and chosen."^ 
 
 Nevertheless, we have a curious and profound in- 
 terest in the question as to the tendency of things 
 apart from our own will. We know that we are not 
 masters of our own life ; there are conditions outside 
 of us to which we have to conform. To take one 
 of the simplest illustrations, — we know that if on 
 a cold winter day we are not sufficiently protected 
 against the weather, we shall perish. We must adjust 
 ourselves to our environment, to use a phrase that has 
 come into vogue ; we are compelled to, if we wish to 
 live. The tendency of things is thus to encourage 
 and develop prudence. Nature may be said to be on 
 1 Spanish Gypsy, book iii. 
 
DARWINISM IN ETHICS. 103 
 
 the side of those who are prudent, since those who 
 are not she does not permit to live. 
 
 The question is, Does Nature sustain any such re- 
 lation to morality, — does the force of things outside 
 of us incline the race to be moral ? Or is it, per- 
 chance, favorable to immorality; or is it indifferent, so 
 that good and bad men thrive equally well ? In other 
 words, is morality a private matter, about which a per- 
 son need have no more serious concern than about 
 any other question of individual inclination and taste ; 
 or is it something having, whether we will or no, is- 
 sues of life and death ? We naturally incline to take 
 the former view. When we transgress any of the 
 laws of morality, we like to say to ourselves that it 
 is our own affair; that nothing outside of us takes 
 cognizance of it, nor will any grave result follow. 
 
 It is at this point that the views of Darwin have a 
 wonderful interest. Darwin does not write as an eth- 
 ical philosopher, but as a naturalist. In his famous 
 chapters in the " Descent of Man " ^ his object is, not 
 to give us a theory of ethics, but to show the part 
 which morality has played in the development of the 
 race. Any one who thinks that morality is a pri- 
 vate matter, and that physical strength and mental ca- 
 pacity are the only things that Nature takes account 
 of, should read those chapters. Everywhere, according 
 to Darwin, among men as truly as among the lower 
 orders of being, there is a struggle to live ; and those 
 who are best fitted to the conditions of life succeed 
 and leave offspring behind them, and those who are 
 less fitted tend to extinction. Any casual variation, 
 by which an individual has an advantage over others, 
 ^ Part I. chap. iii. iv. and v. 
 
104 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 is seized upon, intensified by transmission, and perhaps 
 in time gives rise to a well-marked species. 
 
 Physically a man is no match for a bear or a buf- 
 falo ; in an actual tussle he would surely be worsted. 
 [None the less is he their superior by virtue of his 
 intelligence ; he invents a spear, a bow-and-arrow, or 
 a gun, and thereby outdoes them. So as between men 
 and races of men, — variations in the direction of 
 greater strength of body are of slight importance com- 
 pared with variations in the direction of higher mental 
 powers ; in war itself, it is not necessarily the most 
 numerous nation, or the one with the hardiest sol- 
 diers, but the one with the ablest generals and in pos- 
 session of the most ingenious methods of warfare that 
 gains the victory. But Darwin shows further, that 
 the possession of moral qualities is an advantage in 
 the struggle for existence ; that a race with strong 
 moral feelings would, other things being equal, win in 
 a contest with another race destitute of such feelings ; 
 in other words, that Nature is on the side of morality 
 as truly as on the side of the strongest arm or the 
 largest brain. Darwinism is often interpreted in a 
 different way ; it is often thought to sanction the 
 efforts of the stronger individual to push the weaker 
 to the wall. Let every man stand on his own feet ; 
 and those who cannot stand, let them fall, it is said. 
 To practically apply the doctrine : if a man can pro- 
 vide for himself an education, well and good ; if he 
 cannot, let him go without it, — never should he be 
 helped. If a woman has power to get her rights, 
 very well if not, let her go without them. If a per- 
 son is smart enough to defraud another, let him do 
 so ; if he is strong enough to do violence to another 
 
DARWINISM IN ETHICS. 105 
 
 with impunity, very well, — that is his right, as the 
 stronger. This is the creed of unmeasured individu- 
 alism, and was well expressed by Kob Roy in Words- 
 worth's poem, as the old rule, — 
 
 "That they sliould take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can." 
 
 But it is very crude Darwinism, — nay, it is opposed 
 to the teachings of Darwin; for according to him 
 our notions of what we should and should not do are 
 derived from the social instincts, and the social in- 
 stincts contradict such heartless indifference to the 
 welfare of others as the creed of extreme individual- 
 ism allows. Doubtless such social anarchy did exist 
 in the early ages of the world, in the " ages before 
 conscience ; " but the significant fact is that the prim- 
 itive races without conscience did not perpetuate 
 themselves ; that they had no strength, no stamina, 
 no cohesive power in the struggle with those superior 
 races in whom the social instincts were developed ; 
 that so far as they do survive to-day, they survive as 
 savages, and are on the border line between man and 
 the brute. 
 
 Let us observe now in detail how morality helps to 
 build man up, so that by his very love of life he is nat- 
 urally deterred from those courses of conduct that con- 
 science condemns. (1) A peaceful disposition is one 
 element of morality. I do not mean the disposition 
 weakly to submit to injuries, but the unwillingness to 
 inflict injuries ; I mean the contrary of a violent and 
 quarrelsome temper. At first sight it may seem as if 
 violent people injure others rather than themselves, 
 as if their violence gives them an advantage in the 
 
106 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 struggle to live. But turn the matter round, and ask, 
 as between peaceable men and quarrelsome men, 
 other things being equal, which are the more likely to 
 suffer violence in turn, and themselves come to an 
 untimely end ? I think there cannot be a doubt that 
 peaceful men are more likely to survive and rear off- 
 spring than violent men ; that violence is apt to be a 
 boomerang, striking at last the perpetrator of it ; that 
 the ways of violence, even in uncivilized societies, are 
 the ways of death, and the ways of peace are the ways 
 of life. (2) Temperate habits are another element of 
 morality. The intemperate man, who indulges his 
 appetite for intoxicating drinks, thinks it his own 
 affair, and that he will not greatly suffer ; but the laws 
 of life think diiferently, — they cut short his days. 
 It is a statistical fact that intemperate persons at the 
 age of thirty, in England, are not likely to live more 
 than thirteen or fourteen years longer, while the ex- 
 pectation of life of the average country laborer at 
 that age is forty years. (3) Another element of mo- 
 rality is respect for woman, and the sense of the 
 sanctity of the marriage relation. Does it make no 
 difference if men or women lead profligate lives ? So 
 profligate persons are apt to think ; they are rarely 
 serious about it. But Nature is opposed to profligacy, 
 for she will allow profligate women to have but few 
 if any children ; it is as if she had a distaste for their 
 breed, — wanted it stopped. In the natural course of 
 things, profligate men, as Darwin remarks, rarely mar- 
 ry ; on their side, too, the breed of those with ungov- 
 erned lusts tends to extinction. And if, in another 
 way, men or women sin against Nature's laws, and 
 in solitude and darkness practise the crimes that the 
 
DARWINISM IN ETHICS. 107 
 
 light of day would blush to look upon, does the darkness 
 hide them, and Nature take no cognizance ? Witness 
 the weakness that comes on, — the weakness of body 
 and weakness of mind, the loss of memory, the child- 
 ishness, yes, the sterility; ^tis as if Nature would 
 cover them with contempt. And in regard to the per- 
 sistent disuse of moral feeling generally, do we realize 
 what one of our highest scientific authorities, Mauds- 
 ley,^ tells us, that by it a man may succeed in manu- 
 facturing insanity in his progeny, and that insane 
 persons, if they are allowed to propagate, become at 
 last a race of sterile idiots ? 
 
 Look at the matter on a wider scale. Consider men 
 not as individuals, but as societies. If we think that 
 natural selection favors simply the strongest in body 
 or mind, consider the history of the family, the most 
 rudimentary of human societies. What would a fam- 
 ily be without some measure of unselfishness ? To 
 answer, we have to go to the lowest savages. Among 
 the Andamanese the husband cares for his wife until 
 the child that is born to them is weaned; then the 
 mother has to look out for herself and for her child, — 
 the father seeks another mate. Is Nature indifferent, 
 and do we imagine that this is a thriving tribe ? The 
 fact is that according to a recent reporter the An- 
 damanese are gradually dying out; he saw but one 
 woman who had as many as three children ; few 
 members of the tribe live beyond the age of forty. ^ 
 And now suppose the mothers had as little unselfish- 
 ness as the fathers ; that they let their offspring care 
 for themselves as soon as weaned, — the tribe would 
 
 1 Popular Science Monthly, September, 1870. 
 
 2 Spencer's Sociology, i. 668. 
 
108 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 probably in a generation or two become extinct. It is 
 some measure of unseltisli feeling that allows our race 
 to be perpetuated at all. Yes, Darwin shows that the 
 social instincts to some extent exist in the lower ani- 
 mal, so that there is no impassable chasm in that re- 
 spect between them and man ; timid birds will face 
 great danger to defend their young. If there were 
 no unselfishness, it is doubtful if we should have 
 anything in the world at all but the elements and 
 insensate plants, or perhaps the very lowest forms of 
 animal life, whose offspring need no care. All the 
 higher forms of animal life, as well as men, exist 
 because unselfishness has watched over the beginnings 
 of their existence ; and what mainly distinguishes 
 human beings from animals, along of course with 
 higher intelligence, is that the social instincts in men 
 are intenser, and cover longer periods, and have a 
 wider range. According to Darwin, human beings are 
 simply that portion of the animal creation in whom 
 variations in the direction of unselfishness and in- 
 telligence have been transmitted and perpetuated, by 
 which they have secured a firmer foothold and a more 
 commanding place on the earth. Think of it : if the 
 fishes of the sea, or the wild animals of the earth, 
 or even the birds of the air had the fellow-feeling 
 and the intelligence that men have, would they allow 
 themselves to be so easily caught or captured or shot ? 
 Would they not be a match for man ; and unless some 
 new variations, giving greater power on the one side 
 or the other, arose, would it not be a pitched battle 
 between them and man ? We are men because, along 
 with more of mind, we do care for one another ; they 
 are animals because they are to such an extent dis- 
 
DARWINISM IN ETHICS. 109 
 
 social rather tha-n social, and because in a contest each 
 ' one is left so generally to fight his own battle. 
 
 Consider next the community or the tribe. What 
 parental feeling is to the family, community or tribal 
 feeling is on the larger scale. Do we think it makes 
 no difference whether our unselfishness goes beyond 
 our families ; that all we have to do is to care for our- 
 selves and our children ; that patriotism and zeal for 
 the public welfare are idle sentiment ; and that obedi- 
 ence to the laws is necessary only so far as it is for 
 our own interest ? Darwin, and those who have writ- 
 ten in his spirit, do not think so ; and history proves 
 that they are in the right. In times of peace, as one 
 writer ^ remarks, sleek and prosperous selfishness may 
 give a certain element of strength to a society. But 
 these are not the times that test a society ; it is when 
 dangers arise, either from without or from within, — 
 it is in times of peril, that the real strength and cohe- 
 siveness of a community are tested. Can it put down 
 internal dissensions that threaten its life ? Can it 
 withstand a foreign foe ? For, as Darwin shows, not 
 only individuals struggle to live, but communities and 
 nations ; and natural selection tends to build up or to 
 destroy peoples with the same fatality with which it 
 determines the fate of individual lives. Who does not 
 see the truth of what Darwin points out, that even 
 
 1 Prof. Dr. C. C. Everett on "The New Ethics," in the Unita- 
 rian Review, October, 1878, — a most suggestive and often elo- 
 quent article, reprinted, it may be added, in the author's recent 
 volume, — •• Poetry, Comedy, and Duty." I am also indebted to 
 Prof. Georg von Gizycki's valuable article on " Ethics and the 
 Development Theory," in the Popular Science Monthly, July, 1885 
 (translated from the " Deutsche Rundschau"). 
 
110 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 in the case of animals who live in herds, and defend 
 themselves or attack their enemies in concert, they 
 must be in some degree faithful to one another, and 
 if they have a leader be obedient to him, else they 
 will likely be exterminated ? How much more truly 
 is this the case with men ! Suppose the members of 
 a tribe are given to murder, robbery, and treachery 
 among themselves, how long will they hold together, 
 even if they have no external foe ? And if they have, 
 how easily will they be subjugated ! The fact is, that 
 a tribe or community cannot live at all unless there 
 is more of morality than of immorality in it ; and the 
 great amount of wrong and crime that exists in some 
 savage communities seems so only in comparison with 
 the higher standards of morality that are recognized in 
 civilized communities, and does not interfere with the 
 fact that it is less than among savages who scarcely 
 live in communities at all, and have few, if any, fixed 
 customs or laws. It is as if Nature would force a 
 community, whether possessing any disinterested love 
 of virtue or not, to learn some semblance of it ; for 
 only those communities that do so learn — whose mem- 
 bers acquire some measure of self-control, of faithful- 
 ness, of public spirit, of obedience to law — survive, 
 and others, who fail to meet the conditions which 
 Nature fixes, perish. Darwin says in so many words, 
 " A tribe including many members who, from possess- 
 ing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, 
 obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready 
 to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the 
 common good, would be victorious over most other 
 tribes ; and this would be natural selection. At all 
 times, throughout the world, tribes have supplanted 
 
DARWINISM IN ETHICS. HI 
 
 other tribes; and as morality is one important ele- 
 ment in their success, the standard of morality and 
 the number of well-endowed men will thus every- 
 where tend to rise and increase." 
 
 All this holds good equally of civilized peoples. 
 The same things that lifted the social savage above 
 the unsocial savage or animal, and gave him the pre- 
 eminence, lift the civilized man out of the ranks of 
 savagery altogether, and give to civilized States right- 
 ful pre-eminence in the world. Crude interpreters 
 of Darwin's theory would have us eschew all philan- 
 thropy shut up our asylums and hospitals, abolish 
 poor laws, and let the weak and the helpless take care 
 of themselves, or die. But this would not be rising 
 to a higher stage of civilization, but would be relaps- 
 ,ing into barbarism, — copying after the Indians, who 
 leave their feeble comrades to perish on the plains ; 
 or the Fijians, who when their parents get old or fall 
 ill, bury them alive ; or those animals that expel a 
 wounded animal from the herd, or gore or worry it 
 to death. Nay, there are savages, and even animals, 
 who are superior in sentiment to these heartless Dar- 
 winians; for Darwin tells us of Indian crows that 
 fed two or three of their blind companions, and says 
 that he himself saw a dog who never passed a cat 
 that lay sick in a basket without giving her a few 
 licks with his tongue, — the surest sign of kind feel- 
 ing in a dog. Destroy the social instincts, dry up the 
 founts of sympathy and pity in man, and you strike 
 at the social bond itself ; society would be dissolved 
 into anarchy, and the long, slow, painful work of 
 building up the race of man would have to be taken 
 up again from the beginning. Let any community 
 
112 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 to-day try to organize itself on the extreme individ- 
 ualistic plan, with no charity, since each man looks 
 after himself alone, with justice for those who are 
 able to command it, the rest getting along without it 
 as best they can; and let it enter into competition 
 with other communities in whose midst the poor and 
 sick are wisely cared for, and justice is done to every 
 man, woman, and child, though there be some who 
 are totally unable to get it for themselves, — let the 
 struggle come to a clash of arms, and can any one 
 doubt what the result will be ? Selfishness, Professor 
 Everett says, will give its money, it will not give its 
 life, for the common cause. If the social spirit has 
 been weak in peace, it will not, by a miracle, become 
 suddenly strong in war. The unsocial community will 
 go down, as it deserves to go down, before the enthu- 
 siasm, the courage, the devotion of men who have been 
 bred in a social community to habits of sympathy and 
 public spirit. Yes, if the community whose principle 
 was " every man for himself " were by a bit of good 
 fortune to be isolated, and never called to enter into a 
 struggle with other communities, I believe in time it 
 would perish from dissensions within itself ; it would 
 disintegrate, like any organism of matter whose par- 
 ticles are no longer held together by any common at- 
 traction, and from which the animating breath of life 
 has fled. 
 
 The thing that builds up a community, a nation, is 
 not less but more sympathy and public spirit, — more 
 of all the virtues that spring from these sources. 
 Think for a moment simply of obedience, reverence 
 for law, whether the law is made by a chief or by a 
 people for itself, — what strength, what an almost 
 
DARWINISM IN ETHICS. 113 
 
 irresistible power, would a whole people trained to 
 such a habit, have ! The Spartans were not equal in 
 intellectual power to other Grecian States, but for a 
 short time they held the supremacy over all Greece ; 
 and when I think of the three hundred who defended 
 the pass at Thermopylae against the Persians, and held 
 it at such fearful odds until their last man had fallen, 
 and remember that according to their poet nothing 
 but obedience to the laws of Sparta kept them at their 
 post, I do not wonder that a country which bred such 
 a soldiery rose once to the very head of Greece ! 
 
 " Stranger, go, and to the Spartans tell 
 That here, obeying their commands, we fell," 
 
 stands graven on the rock as their memorial. 
 
 Socrates anticipated the thought of Darwin and of 
 Bagehot,^ one of the most fruitful thinkers who has 
 followed in Darwin's wake, when he said that State 
 in which the citizens pay most respect to the laws 
 is in the best condition in peace, and is invincible in 
 war; 2 and Socrates himself had such a sense of the 
 sanctity of the laws that he refused to flatter and 
 supplicate the judges at his trial (a practice which 
 the laws forbade), and although had he consented to 
 do anything of the kind he might easily have been 
 acquitted, as Xenophon says,^ he preferred to die abid- 
 ing by the laws, rather than transgressing them to 
 live. What could withstand, other things being equal, 
 a nation of men like Socrates ? I believe that the 
 things that tend to make a people strong, permanently 
 strong ; that tend to give it a lasting advantage in the 
 
 1 See his Physics and Politics. 
 
 2 Xenophou's Memorabilia, iv. 4, 15. ^ jbid , iv. 4, 4. 
 
 8 
 
114 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 struggle for existence ; that make it the fittest, and 
 always the fittest, to survive, — are good things, moral 
 things ; things that conscience, from its ideal stand- 
 point, would approve. This does not apply to tem- 
 porary victories, but to those that are held. Respice 
 finein, — look to the end and issue of all things. No 
 one can doubt that those great eastern empires that we 
 have glimpses of in connection with Hebrew history 
 and legend, — the Egyptian, the mighty Assyrian, the 
 Babylonian, the Persian, — perished in turn because 
 they were not fit to live. No one can doubt that 
 Greece fell a prey to Eome when she was no longer 
 worthy to rule herself. No one can doubt that impe- 
 rial Eome herself fell when it was best she should 
 fall ; and that it was owing to natural selection that 
 the barbarians of the North became then the leaders 
 of the world's progress, since out of their splendid 
 energy and purer stock the foremost nations of a new 
 world have come. It is difficult to speak of the pres- 
 ent and the future ; but the same laws will hold 
 good. Always, I believe, will the nations that have 
 anything like a permanent leadership in the world's 
 affairs be the best nations, — I mean, those that have 
 the largest amount of virtue and intelligence within 
 their borders. It may be, indeed, that no nations at 
 present existing will be permanent; this would not 
 be contrary to natural selection, but a proof of its 
 power. It may be that none of them have the con- 
 ditions of permanency ; for natural selection is, I 
 believe, as high in its demands, as severe, as unre- 
 lenting, as any ideal of the Deity that has ever been 
 conceived. Nations that are full of selfishness and 
 injustice cannot stand ; they will be turned and over- 
 
DARWINISM IN ETHICS. 115 
 
 turned; the great powers of Nature will not allow 
 them to last. Nations with ruling classes given up to 
 luxury, to effeminate habits, to wantonness, to "the 
 lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride 
 of life," and to contempt of the poor and the weak, 
 will not stand. "Behold, this was the iniquity of 
 Sodom, — pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of 
 idleness ; neither did she strengthen the hand of the 
 poor and needy. And they were haughty, and com- 
 mitted abomination before me ; therefore I took them 
 away as I saw good." ^ So speaks Natural Selection 
 to-day, and always will, for it is a power as dread, 
 as summary, and as almighty as Jahveh. Nations 
 full of violence toward weaker countries, eager with 
 yawning necks to swallow them up and digest them 
 for their own purposes, will not stand ; they who are 
 insolent, and know no right above the sword, shall 
 perish by the sword. The power of natural selection 
 is a moral power, and nothing, no success or triumph 
 conceived and begotten in injustice, shall stand. This 
 great Judge of all the earth holds np the balances, 
 and says to the nations. For every act of injustice 
 thou shalt pay! England, France, Germany, Amer- 
 ica, — each thinks it is dear to the heart of Destiny, 
 and cannot fail; and Destiny whispers through all 
 the experience of the past, " I care for none of you ; 
 you may go, have your little day, and pass away, as 
 Babylon and Greece and Eome have done before 
 you. I care for justice, for a State of virtuous citizens, 
 with pure homes and clean Jiearts and honest lips ; 
 men and women who put truth above life, and w^ould 
 rather their State should fall than that it should rest 
 1 Ezeklel, xvi. 49, 50. 
 
116 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 on injustice. I call for this. Give it to me, Sons of 
 men, and you shall be dear to me ; I shall cherish you, 
 and your work shall stand while the earth lasts ! " 
 
 This is my interpretation of the ethics of Darwin. 
 Darwin does not give us a theory of ethics, — or 
 rather, so far as he does, I should have something to 
 say in criticism of it ; but he does a greater service, I 
 almost think, than if he had given us a perfect the- 
 ory, — he shows how ethics work in the world. It is 
 a great and consoling belief that the powers of Na- 
 ture are on the side of man's struggles after justice 
 and a perfect good. The Mighty Power, hid from our 
 gaze by the thin screen of Nature and of Nature's 
 laws, is not in love with you or me, but it is with our 
 struggles after a perfect right, for to them it gives 
 fruition, — and they are the salt that keeps the earth 
 from spoiling, and their effect is undying, while all 
 else is being thwarted, cut short, and passes away. 
 Every brave act we do, and every true word we utter 
 helps to build up human life here on the earth, and 
 every mean act and false word tend to pull it down 
 and destroy it. I have spoken of peoples and nations, 
 — let us not think that these are things too large for 
 individual actions to count upon. The fate of a na- 
 tion depends at last, not on kings or parliaments or 
 legislatures, but on the lives and characters of the in- 
 dividual men and women who compose it. ^- The well- 
 being of the State depends upon the well-doing of its 
 individual members." ^ We think we are not respon- 
 sible for the evil and wrong there are in society, — we 
 are, to the extent that we submit to them. A great 
 
 1 Statement of Principles of Chicago Society for Ethical 
 Culture. 
 
DARWINISM IN ETHICS. 117 
 
 wrong cannot be done by a community unless there is 
 the spirit of wrong, or of tolerance for wrong, wide- 
 spread among its members. Each one of us, no mat- 
 ter how unimportant we seem, counts as a factor in 
 the public sentiment from which good things or bad 
 are born. Frederick W. Eobertson — that tender and 
 strenuous spirit too soon passed away from earth — 
 said : " There are current maxims in Church and in 
 State, in society, in trade, in law, to which we yield 
 obedience. For this obedience every one is respon- 
 sible. For instance, in trade and in the profession 
 of law every one is the servant of practices the rec- 
 titude of which his heart can only half approve; 
 every one complains of them, yet all are involved in 
 them. Now, when such sins reach their climax, as in 
 the case of national bankruptcy or an unjust acquittal, 
 there may be some who are in a special sense the 
 actors in the guilt; but evidently for the bankruptcy 
 each member of the community is responsible in that 
 degree and so far as he has himself acquiesced in the 
 duplicities of public dealing. Every careless juror, 
 every unrighteous judge, every false witness, has done 
 his part in the reduction of society to that state in 
 which the monster injustice has been perpetrated." ^ 
 Yes, you do count ; and the only difference is that 
 you may count in those influences that help to build 
 man up here on the earth, or in those that tend to 
 weaken and undo him. You may build on the sands, 
 and the floods will come and wash your work away ; 
 or on the rock, and your work will stand forever. 
 You may help to make a nation of money-getters, 
 close, hard, contemptuous of the weak, sacrificing 
 1 Bobertson's Sermons, Third Series, p. 147. 
 
118 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 honor and shame and the sense of humanity, even life 
 itself, for the sake of amassing riches, only, to see the 
 nation, if you could live on, crumble and disintegrate, 
 and its wealth in ruins ; or you may cast your lot 
 with those who would be lovers of their kind, who 
 would rather see justice done than amass riches, who 
 would be clean in life, and honor woman and protect 
 the defenceless ; and if you do not win the nation to 
 your side, you, or those who follow after you, will form 
 the saving remnant, by whom and through whom a 
 new and wiser nation may arise. Men trying to rear 
 States without justice in their hearts are like Sisy- 
 phus rolling his giant stones up hill, only to see them 
 pulled down again by natural gravity ; and when one 
 sees them anxious, striving, thinking with laws and 
 constitutions and courts and armies to buttress them- 
 selves about, laboring so with their destiny, one thinks 
 of poor Sisyphus in Homer's lines, heaving and strain- 
 ing, the sweat the while pouring down his limbs, and 
 the dust rising upward from his head. ^'Wash ye, 
 make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from 
 before mine eyes ; seek justice, relieve the oppressed,'' 
 is the voice of Natural Selection as well as of Israel's 
 God. Otherwise man's work is vanity, and all the 
 labor and pain of it are for nothing ; the great God of 
 the world will not allow it to stand. 
 
 I permit myself two remarks in closing. Think 
 of the Athenian race, whose average ability Francis 
 Galton, another writer who has followed in Darwin's 
 wake, says ^ was nearly two grades higher than our 
 own ; that is, as much as our race is above that of the 
 African negro. Why did this marvellously-gifted race 
 1 Hereditary Genius, p. 843. 
 
DARWINISM IN ETHICS. 119 
 
 decline? Galton says, because of social immorality; 
 because, in plain language, marriage became unfash- 
 ionable and was avoided, and courtesans held sway. 
 Now, ever}' man to-day, whether actually immoral or 
 not, who has light thoughts of woman, who is not in- 
 dignant when she is dishonored, who lets light jests 
 pass his lips or lewd thoughts linger in his mind, 
 helps to swell the tide of our social immorality, for 
 he helps to make the atmosphere in which it grows. 
 Acts do not come from nothing; they come from 
 thoughts and words, and what we hear others say, — 
 from a thousand and one nameless things that seem 
 in themselves to count for nothing. 
 
 On the other hand, let us not imagine that the 
 quiet homely virtues, the graces of the heart, count 
 for nothing with the great powers of Nature with 
 which we deal. Never let us think that physical 
 strength is everything; it is not everything, even 
 in the animal world. Professor Everett has beauti- 
 fully said, that to the powers of natural selection 
 "the delicate, the graceful, the tender, the beautiful 
 are as dear as the fierce and the strong. It was the 
 great law of natural selection itself that taught the 
 nightingale to sing, and that painted the humming- 
 bird with his changeful hues. It is this that whispers 
 to the timid hare to flee, and this that binds the 
 gentle sheep together in their harmless federation." 
 The gentler virtues all count in humanity's struggle 
 for existence. As there are no light thoughts of 
 human suffering that do not help to make men cruel, 
 so there are no sympathy and pity that do not help 
 to draw men nearer together, and make them stronger 
 in any time of danger or distress. Quiet fortitude in 
 
120 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 a mother makes brave sons and daughters. Love in 
 peace makes heroism in times of danger. Selfishness 
 disintegrates and disorganizes ; love builds up and 
 welds together. Xations stand not on dollars, not 
 on armies, not on police, but on righteousness ; and 
 if unrighteousness becomes rampant in a community, 
 not all its dollars or its police will save it. You and 
 I count, living quiet, inconspicuous lives as we do. 
 Oh, let us count for good, for purity, for unselfish- 
 ness, — for all that makes human life strong and 
 stable on the earth ! 
 
VII. 
 
 THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 
 
 IT is sometimes said that all morality involves social 
 relations. There can be no question that a large 
 part of it does. What is justice but a certain kind of 
 conduct or relation between man and man ? What is 
 love, what is kindness, what is generosity, what is 
 chivalry, save as there are objects to which these feel- 
 ings go out ? What is truth, if there is no one to 
 whom to be truthful? What are fidelity and loyalty 
 but ideal types of social relationship ? I need not 
 speak of patriotism, of public spirit, so patent are 
 their references. Even what are called personal vir- 
 tues, are they, after all, entirely personal ? Veracity 
 is sometimes called a personal virtue ; but plainly it 
 means keeping one's word with another. Chastity is 
 called a personal duty; but surely chastity is not a 
 denial of the relation of the sexes, but a pure rela- 
 tion of the sexes. Temperance is a personal duty ; 
 yet temperance is hardly an end, but a means to an 
 end, namely, the maintenance of the supremacy of the 
 rational and moral in us. The temperate man is so 
 much more a man ; but as a man his sphere and duty 
 are, in large measure, with men, and temperance is to 
 fit him to take his part well in the life and work of 
 humanity. 
 
122 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 Even when we assert some stricter truth, some nobler 
 strain of honor than ordinarily obtains among men, it 
 is not so much that we sever ourselves from society 
 as that we yield to the claims of an ideal society ; if 
 we see and will a higher justice than the State com- 
 mands, it is that we own ourselves members of a 
 higher State, which exists as yet only in idea. Every 
 rising above custom or written statute is an assertion 
 that the ideal is our true home ; it is but an espous- 
 ing of the ideal as over against the incompleteness of 
 the actual and the sensible. For it is not so much to 
 society as actually constituted, as to the social ideal 
 that we belong. 
 
 But though our life is properly in society, it is pos- 
 sible for us to live apart and according to our own 
 individual caprice, if we will. Such individualism is 
 the primal sin. Falsehood, unchastity, every form of 
 social wrong are but exalting personal caprice over 
 against the law of social well-being. Morality, in other 
 than its strictly personal form, consists in taking ac- 
 count at least of two, another with myself, in deter- 
 mining my action. And morality widens and embraces 
 new duties as the circles of relationship widen, and 
 as the law of each larger circle becomes in its turn the 
 law for me. As matter of history, so long as a man 
 was bent on self-preservation merely, he was hardly 
 more than an animal ; he began to be human, when 
 the thought of his family determined him, when he 
 owned himself a part of it and acted for it, to main- 
 tain and defend it. He became still more human, 
 when he was a member of a community, and felt 
 the welfare and the honor of the community to be 
 his own ; still more human was he when he won the 
 
THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 123 
 
 thought of humanity, and would tolerate no interests 
 of his own, nor action of his community, which tended 
 to hurt or injure or wrong any, even the humblest, 
 child of man. It is evident that the universality of 
 our social feeling is the measure of its real worth. 
 If I feel an insult to myself or my family, or the 
 community in Avhich I live, and yet have no sense of 
 wrong when some one outside these circles is similarly 
 affronted, plainly I do not value man as man, — that 
 is, am not really human, — but have simply a peculiar 
 feeling for those who are near me. Some sense of the 
 claims of every human being, though he be the lowest 
 and the worst, and that will not allow us to trample 
 upon him though he be fairly in the dust at our feet ; 
 some feeling of indescribable awe, even though it be 
 blended with pity, when any human form passes be- 
 fore our eye, — this is the measure and the test, yes, 
 the very significance, of morality. 
 
 It is this that determines the form of the social 
 ideal. And let me say, before proceeding farther, that 
 I do not attempt to describe, to picture, the social 
 ideal. This has been a pleasing and ennobling occu- 
 pation for many men, but I have neither the wit nor 
 the imagination requisite thereto. I can only in a 
 simple way indicate its principle. And this principle 
 is, in a word, that in the ideal order every man shall be 
 an end as well as a means. I need not point out that 
 this principle has not been generally recognized in the 
 past. Not only has slavery been almost universal, but 
 there have been elaborate justifications of slavery by 
 some of the greatest philosophers. We now hardly 
 know what a battle the Antislavery reformers before 
 our late war had to fight. The notion of the universal 
 
124 ETPIICAL RELIGION. 
 
 rights of man is a modern one. It is neither in the 
 Old Testament nor in the New. I doubt if it be in 
 the Scriptures of any of the religions of the world. 
 Plato took slavery for granted, and appears to have 
 justified it in remarking that the statesman should 
 reduce to that condition those who are ignorant and 
 base.^ Aristotle argued for slavery, that it was not 
 only a legal part of the economy of society, but that 
 it was grounded in nature, in the difference between 
 those endowed with bodily strength and those who 
 possessed mental power.^ In fact, against a very wide 
 experience and against the clever reasonings of some 
 of the thinkers of the race, our brave reformers had 
 but to plant themselves on the ideal ground of the 
 rights, the claims, of every human being, and say, 
 "What though these rights have been denied in al- 
 most all the past; what though the cries of outraged 
 human nature have been suppressed, and the slaves 
 become willing slaves, — do not the rights exist, shall 
 not the cries now be heard, and shall the slaves not 
 themselves be summoned to arise out of their deathly 
 sleep ? " How specious may you find the defences of 
 past slavery, made even now ! Only the other day I 
 was reading a writer who says, " Eefinement is only 
 possible where leisure is jjossible ; and slavery first 
 made it possible. It created a set of persons born 
 to work that others may not work, and not to think 
 that others may think. . . . The patriarchs Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob could not have had the steady calm 
 which marks them, if they had themselves been teased 
 
 1 Zeller's Philosophie der Griechen, ii. 1 (3 Aufl.), S. 755. Cf. 
 Plato's Statesman, 309. 
 
 2 Ibid., ii. 2, S. 690. Cf. Aristotle's Politics, i. 5. 
 
THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 125 
 
 and hurried about their flocks and herds." ^ One need 
 not deny that as matter ot* history there is some truth 
 in liiis ; none the less does morality say that it would 
 be better tiiat rehnement should not exist, than that 
 it should rest on so unrighteous a foundation. His- 
 tory tells us what was, not what might have been ; 
 and there are other ways in which an equal and a bet- 
 ter refinement might have come without any enslaving 
 of one human being by another. I do not think there 
 is any genuine refinement that does not consist with a 
 fine respect for the rights of others. Every deference, 
 every courtesy, every kindness that is not in some 
 degree shown to all with whom we come in contact, 
 indicates a hidden root of selfishness from which 
 they spring. 
 
 The form of the social ideal is then that of equality. 
 Not, indeed, similarity of place and function for every 
 one ; not that all should do the same work or get the 
 same returns for their work ; but simply that all should 
 be in turn ends as well as means, that no one should 
 dare make of another a mere instrument to his own 
 satisfactions, but should regard him as having an in- 
 dependent worth and dignity of his own. Ah, when 
 shall the time come when the name Man shall have 
 more honor in our eyes than any title of rank or 
 power ; when in every man we shall see the king that 
 
 1 Bagebot, Physics and Politics, chap. ii. § 3. Cf. Tylor (An- 
 thropology, p. 435) : " Though the civilized world has outgrown 
 the ancient institution [slavery], the benefits which early society 
 gained from it still renjain. It was through slave-labor that 
 agriculture and industry increased, that wealth accumulated, and 
 leisure was given to priests, scribes, poets, philosophers, to raise 
 the level of men's minds." 
 
126 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 is really there, though his crown be soiled and his gar- 
 ments tattered ; when our proudest thought shall be, 
 as we look back upon our own past, that in every rela- 
 tion of life we have owned and honored the man, that 
 we have remembered the ideal royal brotherhood to 
 which we all belong ? I believe it is possible not to 
 rest in our own thought till to the eye of the soul 
 that time shall have come ; till in vision we see human- 
 ity transfigured ; till the everlasting principles of jus- 
 tice are inwrought into every fibre of its life ; till one 
 tide of love and of joy sweep through it, and it is in- 
 deed lifted out of the realm of the things that como 
 and go, and becomes a partner in the eternity of the 
 purpose that created it. I see not how it is possible 
 to stop short of this. I see not how one can be con- 
 tent with aiming at slightly ameliorated earthly con- 
 ditions. I see not how the impulse that leads him 
 to go so far does not lead him to go farther. I see 
 no rest save in the thought of the perfect. I see no 
 satisfaction, no peace for the individual soul save in 
 losing itself in allegiance to that limitless idea, in 
 making it to move us, stir us, impel us, and give a 
 limitless sanctity to each particular act we do. 
 
 I believe in a " City of the Light ! " ^ It is the social 
 ideal ; and from the thought of it, from the consecra- 
 tion to it, and the ordering of our lives in accordance 
 with its demands, I look for a new birth of religion 
 in the world. We are builders of that city. There 
 are those who not in lightness, but in a sad sincerity, 
 abandon prayer. It is no longer possible to think of 
 the city as a boon coming down out of the heavens, — 
 
 1 The reference is to the beautiful lines under that title by 
 Professor Adier. See p. 277 of this volume. 
 
THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 127 
 
 to look for it from without. The burden is laid on 
 human beings ; honor calls us to bear it ; the very pur- 
 pose of our being is to bear it. A voice from out the 
 unseen itself seems to say : " Arise, O Man ! from thy 
 knees, and act. I call thee to be not a suppliant, but a 
 creator ; re-perform the primal magic now, and out of 
 the chaos and the darkness that thou seest within and 
 about thee bring thou order and bring thou light ! " 
 If prayers would bring the " Kingdom of God," should 
 we not think that eighteen centuries of Christian pray- 
 ing would have brought it ? And if they have not, if 
 the condition of the world, the selfishness of human 
 hearts, the injuries, the wrongs, the hardness and con- 
 tempt of the higher laws and commandments, yes, and 
 the low content and practical unbelief in the possibil- 
 ity of anything better that so widely prevail, are all 
 an open and patent contradiction of that ideal order 
 of things, — what is the lesson, what is the moral to 
 be drawn from the facts themselves, but that so long 
 as we look without and above the answer will never 
 come ; that religion, if it will be religion and no more 
 child's play, must radically change its attitude, and 
 set men themselves to the accomplishment of the task, 
 which they have so long intrusted to another ? 
 
 Having now considered the social ideal as regards 
 its principle, the element of perfection belonging to 
 it, and the true method for its accomplishment, let 
 us ask. What is its practical meaning for us to-day ; 
 what is its bearing upon our political institutions, and 
 the forms and habits of our social life ? First, in re- 
 gard to the State. In ancient times, ethics was almost 
 identical with politics ; a truly moral life was one 
 which subserved the interests of the State. Our ideal 
 
128 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 is wider. Aristotle would regard barbarians, — that 
 is, those who were not Greeks. — as little better than 
 animals, and justified war to the end of making them 
 slaves.^ To us, nations have rights over against na- 
 tions, as individuals over against individuals ; and it 
 is not permitted one nation to make another an in- 
 strument to its own ends merely. The social ideal 
 demands, in a word, a law of nations. It does not 
 forbid war, nor does it forbid conquest ; but it forbids 
 either of these for selfish aggrandizement. It makes 
 the holding of a dependency for commercial interests 
 and profit merely, without a conscious purpose of 
 educating and civilizing and fitting those who belong 
 to it for the duties of citizenship, a crime. It was 
 such a mere business dependency that Great Britain 
 wished to make of her colonies in America, and it 
 was this that roused their indignation and led the 
 embattled farmers at Concord stream to fire 
 
 ** . . . the shot heard round the world." 
 
 And though I grant that civilization has a perfect 
 right to dispossess barbarism of an exclusive and 
 profitless occupation of the soil, it is none the less a 
 crime and a heinous crime to do as our country has 
 done, — treat the dispossessed barbarians as if they 
 had no claims whatever upon us. The Indians are 
 human beings, they have the rights of human be- 
 ings ; and if they cannot defend those rights, all the 
 more shame on that government which will wantonly 
 trample upon them. The Indians might have been 
 elevated; they may still be elevated. It may be ques- 
 tioned whether there is a race of men on the earth 
 1 Politics, 1. 8. 
 
THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 129 
 
 which, if humanely and wisely treated, may not lose 
 its savagery and take a place in the ranks of civilized 
 peoples. Not all the interests of civilization justify 
 injustice. Rather is it the problem for the superior 
 race to lift the other with it, to use its superiority 
 and its strength for service and not for oppression. 
 
 The principle of the social ideal holds, further, in 
 the relations between the officers of any particular 
 State and its citizens. The time is gone by when any 
 king or emperor can lay claim to the unrequited service 
 of his subject. In equity the claim never did exist, 
 though it has existed often enough in fact. Nay, the 
 sting is half taken out of monarchy and the reproach 
 almost from despotism itself, when the aim of the 
 monarch and the despot comes to be to use his power 
 for securing and defending the rights of the citizens 
 as against one another or against any external power. ^ 
 One may be freer under a monarch than under the 
 rule of a class. It is not the name or form of gov- 
 ernment, but whether the interests of all its citizens 
 are made supreme, that is of highest moment in any 
 State. What are the holders of public office in our 
 own land ? Are they there for service, or are they 
 there for personal profit ? Are they seeking their 
 own ends merely, or are they respecting and securing 
 the ends of the general welfare ? I will not answer 
 the question. And, in truth, I am not so much con- 
 cerned for a particular answer as to bring out the 
 meaning of the principle of which I am treating; 
 and I ask. Is not the very notion of it faint and un- 
 
 1 This may be said to have been the significance of the 
 Absolute Monarchy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as 
 contrasted with the old Feudal monarchy. 
 
 9 
 
130 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 certain in the public mind ? Is it not almost for- 
 gotten that men in entering the public service do so 
 for public service ? Is it not deemed natural, that 
 once in the public employ they should reward them- 
 selves for their laborious exertions in getting there, 
 — yes, and their friends also, their faithful friends, 
 who helped them in the struggle ? What matters it 
 that in accordance with our democratic principles we 
 have rotation of office, if the effect is only, when a 
 change of parties or of " bosses " conies, to introduce 
 a new set of selfish men to office, and thus to distrib- 
 ute the corruption and make it wider and more general 
 in the community ? It is said that we want " busi- 
 ness principles " in our civil service ; and in the sense 
 in which the reformers use this phrase I entirely agree 
 with them, — in the sense of fitness, and of fitness de- 
 termined by no personal or partisan preferences on the 
 part of those who appoint. But in another sense of 
 the word " business," the very root and foundation of 
 the evil in the matter is the forgetting the essential 
 distinction between politics and business. Business ! 
 we all know what that means : it is for profit, and 
 not for any one or every one, but for ourselves. The 
 business impulse is to make that profit as. great as 
 possible : and with this idea and aim in politics what 
 other result could we expect than just that of which 
 we hear now general complaint ? I maintain on the 
 other hand that public life is not business ; that it is 
 a stage higher than business ; that a dignity attaches 
 to it that cannot attach to any undertakings on our 
 own account ; that it virtually means giving up private 
 aims, and adopting public ones ; that it means living 
 in the State and for the State; that the pecuniary 
 
THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 131 
 
 return which one receives is not reward or profit or 
 gain, but salary, given not so much /or, as to support 
 one in service. It is the idea of the " salaried service 
 of the State " that needs to be introduced ; and if our 
 office-holders do not have it, and our Congress has so 
 imperfectly grasped it, it is because the community 
 has not got it, — because well-nigh everything, for- 
 sooth, being with us a matter of business, religion 
 itself sometimes being no better, we do not distinctly 
 see why politics should be the sole exception. 
 
 Moreover, if the principle of the social ideal has 
 this application to the State, it has also another. The 
 social ideal commands that the stronger members of 
 society respect the weaker. The state of nature is 
 the reverse of this, and only as political communities 
 are formed is protection vouchsafed to the weak, and 
 a curb placed on the self-assertive passions of the 
 strong. What is the meaning of our courts of justice, 
 but to see that what many a man would like to do he 
 shall not do, or if he has done it, that he be punished ? 
 What would the civil rights of any of us to-day 
 amount to, if there were no government to guarantee 
 them ? In fact any civilized government at the pres- . 
 ent day is a partial realization of the social ideal, and 
 all such governments have an increasing part to play 
 in furthering it. For where shall the limit be set of 
 government interference in behalf of the weak as 
 against the strong ? Does government exist solely 
 to protect life and property ? But suppose the life 
 of many is barely worth the having, why may not 
 government interfere to make it better worth the 
 having ? Why do we have public education, why do 
 we have interference with the order of industrial life, 
 
132 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 and the prevention of the employment of children 
 under a certain age, or of women save under certain 
 conditions ? Men can live without education ; and 
 children and women can live, while they live, though 
 they go to work before they are ten years of age and 
 ^vork more than ten or twelve hours a day. The State 
 evidently recognizes by these its provisions that it is 
 not merely to protect life, but to make life tolerable. 
 Why may it not aim to make it more than tolera- 
 ble ? Why may it not strive to give opportunity at 
 least for every life to become a positive blessing, both 
 to itself and to others ? And as for property, why 
 may not the State aim, not merely at protecting it as 
 it stands, however it may have been won, but, without 
 arbitrarily disposing of it, at so legislating that prop- 
 erty may be more generally distributed ? Is the State 
 doing its duty when by the character of its legislation, 
 by its granting of privileges, it tends to assist the pro- 
 cess of the accumulation of property in the hands 
 of a few, and to widen the gap between the different 
 classes in the community ? I have no scheme to pro- 
 pose ; I am simply asking for the limits of the ap- 
 plication of a principle. And I do not believe that 
 there are any limits to be set, as the philosophers say, 
 a priori ; the limits are simply in what the State can 
 accomplish; and this depends in turn upon what those 
 think and want who compose the State. A revolution 
 of public sentiment, or an awakening of the public 
 thought, might lead to the enlargement of the sphere 
 of the State's action, so that it shouhi do for the less 
 favored portions of the community what now it does 
 not dream of doing. It is not any particular duty, 
 but the idea and mission of the State, that I now 
 
THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 133 
 
 urge; I urge that it stands for justice, for the com- 
 mon good ; that when men act defiantly of the common 
 good, they are to be brought to submission before it ; 
 that its goal is indeed no other than the goal of re- 
 ligion, — a perfect social state, — and that it ditfers 
 from religion only in the element of force which it 
 uses ; that a genuine religion and a genuine and far- 
 seeing politics would go hand in hand. The social 
 ideal is the goal of all our institutions. There ought 
 to be no merely secular politics. The statesman too 
 should be a priest, and while toiling, planning here 
 among the intricacies and difficulties and disorders of 
 public life, should have his eye on the heavens, and 
 be guided and sanctified by the principle that makes 
 heaven and earth one. 
 
 But the social ideal has closer applications to us. 
 We must all live, but we have not all equal control 
 of the means of subsistence, nor equal opportunities 
 to create them. We have not all first-hand access to 
 the soil ; and we are dependent not only on those 
 who cultivate it, but on those who, in whatever way, 
 get control of its products. We want not only food, 
 but clothing, shelter, means of comfort, even of lux- 
 ury ; for in the economical sense all is counted luxury 
 that delights the eye, that quickens the intelligence, 
 that develops the higher parts of our being. Every 
 man has in him the possibilities of a more than merely 
 material existence. Food, clothing, shelter, are after 
 all but a scaffolding, on which the nobler house of 
 the soul is to be reared. But owing to varying cir- 
 cumstances and varying natural abilities, one part of 
 the community comes to be dependent on the other for 
 the supply of its physical and higher necessities. In a 
 
134 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 word, there arises the relation of employer and em- 
 ployed. This is not the original relation, which was 
 rather that of master and slave, but it is that which 
 now well-nigh universally prevails in civilized coun- 
 tries. Can we hesitate to say that the principle of the 
 social ideal has an application here; that in industry, in 
 business of every kind, we should not use any man as 
 means to our ends merely, but should also regard him 
 as an end in himself ? I can see no reason for making 
 the exception. I know I may seem to contradict the 
 ordinary principles of business ; I know the maxim 
 is that every one must look out for himself. But I 
 must dissent from such a maxim ; for though in form 
 it is perfectly true, and every one must look out for 
 himself, the negative that lurks behind it is a lying 
 negative, for that I am not bound to look out for an- 
 other is false. It was a specious excuse for that sin 
 that had " the primal eldest curse upon it ; " it is a 
 denial of the social bond ; it hides that spirit which 
 if it had unrestricted course, and were not checked 
 by selfish prudence, would make an anarchy of social 
 life. Yet I would not have an air of harshness in 
 saying this. I would not speak in my own name ; but 
 I would rather call up the procession of weary, toil- 
 worn faces, of bowed forms, of stunted figures, start- 
 ing in the earliest beginnings of human history and 
 not failing down to the present day, who have toiled 
 and stitched and hammered and dug and delved and 
 sweat for man, and bid this long procession, this un- 
 broken array, plead for me. Ah ! their words, nay, 
 their speechless entreaties, their dumb and reproach- 
 ful looks are more moving, more eloquent, than can 
 possibly be any words of mine. They say, they mean, 
 
THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 135 
 
 though they could hardly distinctly explain to you, 
 that there was something in them which never had 
 a chance to grow ; that though now and then they 
 caught a glimpse of the light, and knew it by the joy 
 it gave them, the darkness was ever shutting down 
 upon them, till at last they did not know whether 
 there was any light more ; that their whole existence 
 was spent in getting the means for further existence ; 
 that they knew that what they produced went some- 
 where, but it was not to them, save to enable them to 
 continue the weary round ; that they knew that great 
 things were in the world, that great deeds were doing, 
 but that they had no part or share in them, and they 
 could only pray the gods to give them grace to bear, 
 for to enjoy was evidently not allowed them. 
 
 Ah! is there a sadder thought in the world than 
 that of the waste of the possibilities that are thrown 
 into it ? Happy is he who never had this reflection 
 in looking back upon his own life, but happier still 
 he who has never been the cause of such reflections 
 or of such a fact in another ! There is no need of 
 waste. I speak not, of course, of the order of Nature, 
 but of the order of human life, over which we have 
 control. It is not the gods who decree it, but we 
 who permit, nay, who cause it ; every failure to act 
 according to the principle of the ideal which we are 
 considering, is a permitting, a virtual causing, of such 
 a waste. I know the employer gives his workmen 
 wages ; but what determines the rate of wages that 
 he pays ? If his motive is profit, and he proceeds 
 according to business principles, he gives only so 
 much wages as he must give in order to gain that 
 profit. If the workmen simply want or demand more, 
 
136 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 he does not need to give more ; only when they are 
 in a situation virtually to force him to give more, 
 will he do so. In a word, he considers simply his 
 own ends, and uses others merely as means to those 
 ends. Of course, it is understood that in so speaking 
 I have not in mind any individual man or > men, but 
 simply men so far as actuated hy business motives. It 
 is a principle I have in mind, — a principle contradic- 
 tory to the principle of the social ideal. 
 
 Sometimes one may hear the commercial estimate 
 of workmen expressed in the most outspoken and un- 
 hesitating manner. " Will any business man,'' said 
 the president of a horse-car company, in Boston, a 
 few years ago, "tell me the difference between buy- 
 ing labor and buying hay, grain, horses, and other 
 supplies ? " And I think the answer must be given 
 that there is no diiference, from the purely business 
 standpoint. If the employer has only his own ends 
 in view, what difference can it make to him what the 
 means are by which the ends are reached ? A ma- 
 chine in a factory is just as good as a man, perhaps 
 as a dozen men, viewed merely as so much muscular 
 force and skill ; and the purely business manufacturer 
 will have machines just as fast as he can get them, 
 for in fact they require no wages at all. He may 
 use machines, and the finer and more ingenious they 
 are the better ; and he may treat them as he likes. 
 He may make fire, wind, steam, water, all the forces 
 of Nature, his servants. Yes, he may harness the 
 beasts of the field, and make them to do his bidding ; 
 for I join in that old sentiment of human dignity 
 which finds all that is not moral and rational to be 
 rightfully tributary to man. But when he touches 
 
THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 137 
 
 another human being this whole order of subordi- 
 nation ceases, and he dares not, — in the name of 
 the Highest Law, I say it, he dares not, — make him 
 a mere tool or servant for himself. Eather must he 
 say, " Together we stand, together we win whatever 
 recompense for our toil we do win ; and though I, 
 as the leader in the enterprise, have the right to the 
 leader's honor, and to the leader's share of the recom- 
 pense ; and though, as I undertake the task, you must 
 submit to my directions, and not I to yours, — you 
 are my fellow-soldier, and not a hireling; I am, at 
 best, your captain, not your master, in the march of 
 industry." 
 
 The solution of the industrial problem, — the aboli- 
 tion of all poverty that is not in itself dishonorable, 
 the lifting of the laboring classes to the full dignity 
 and worth of freemen, the granting to all at least the 
 means and the opportunity for true and noble lives, — 
 is after all a very simple thing: a simple thing, I say, 
 though it has not been achieved in the centuries of 
 the past, and though it should not be achieved, alas ! 
 for many centuries to come. It is not by combinations 
 of labor (though these are necessary and justifiable in 
 the present distress), for this is but matching selfish- 
 ness against selfishness, class against class ; it is not 
 by government assistance to labor, it is not by any 
 species of legislation, though these may both serve in 
 their way ; it is not by profuse charity, which often 
 injures those who receive, and by no means always 
 blesses those who give, as the very means for charity 
 are often won by headlong selfishness and wrong. It 
 is a much simpler and a much more radical remedy 
 than any of these. It is in the reception of a new 
 
138 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 principle into the hearts of men; it is in taking the 
 law of the social ideal and making it the law of busi- 
 ness itself ; it is in treating every man in our employ 
 not as a tool, but as a man, and giving him the means 
 to realize the ends of a man ; it is in knowing no 
 profit that we do not, in some measure, make common 
 with him. 
 
 There are still other and closer bearings of the 
 social ideal on our lives. I can only hint at them. 
 We stand in the relation to one another of husbands 
 and wives, of parents and children. Here, too, the 
 instincts of self-assertion have had free play in the 
 past ; and the notion is but dawning upon us that 
 the wife is not rightfully the servant of her husband, 
 nor are the children merely means for the parents' 
 ends. Though the sphere of the wife may be different, 
 it is an equal sphere to that of her husband. As has 
 been said,^ she is not a satellite, but a twin star with 
 him. And the children, — though their weakness 
 exposes them to mistreatment, all the more sacred is 
 the obligation to bear in mind the manhood and the 
 womanhood that are developing in them, to make 
 them independent ends of our action and our love. 
 But though the bearings of the principle here are 
 being increasingly recognized, are there no others in 
 our homes whom we still incline to regard as means 
 merely to our own ends ? Yes, there are those in our 
 houses, if not our homes, whom we distinctly indicate 
 by the title " servants." Do you say. Ah, but they are 
 not ours ; they are merely waiting on us ; we support 
 them, and we support them amply, and they are in- 
 deed incidentally getting a valuable training with us 
 1 By Professor Adler. 
 
THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 139 
 
 that will be of use to them in the future ? I grant all 
 this. I know they are not slaves ; I know they may 
 be kindly treated ; I know, on their side, they may be 
 satisfied with what they have and get. But I ask, 
 Are we satisfied ? Are they not human beings ; have 
 they not the ends of human beings, and can we rest 
 till we concede them these ends ? Can we rest short 
 of a universal application of this law of the social 
 ideal ? I confess that I want no one to be iny " ser- 
 vant," in the ordinary, one-sided use of that term. 
 The consciousness that any one is, does not at all elate 
 me. I like not these fawning airs, these humble 
 looks, this punctiliousness and obsequiousness. They 
 do not become man, or woman either ; they humble 
 me, as if I were guilty of them myself. I want no 
 service that I do not return. I feel that if I do not 
 honor another I do not honor myself, for I funda- 
 mentally am every other : it is one common nature, 
 wherein we all share. I am lifted with every honor, 
 and cast down with every shame, that comes to an- 
 other child of man. Am I asked, What, then, are to 
 be the forms of our domestic life ? I answer, I have 
 no thought of forms, I have no thought even of the 
 destruction of the present forms. I ask only for the 
 admission of a principle into men's hearts ; I only ask 
 that it be trusted, and allowed to modify and fashion, 
 or destroy and recreate, as it will. 
 
 Though I have traversed much ground, I have done 
 so only to illustrate the compass and sweep of a prin- 
 ciple. And though I have not sought to picture the 
 social ideal, but only to indicate its principle, and test 
 the present order of our life by it, yet if we can im- 
 
140 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 agine the State, and the intercourse of the States, 
 transfigured by it; if we can imagine business and 
 industry transformed under its hallowing influence ; 
 if we can see our homes, and our relationship to the 
 humblest, lit up and glorified by the free acceptance 
 of it, — we can, to the inward eye at least, dimly pre- 
 figure what the answering reality would be. I deem 
 it not too great a thought for the humblest man. The 
 humblest man has that in him which will respond to 
 it ; the loneliest man may yet cherish those feelings 
 and purposes which would fit him for membership in 
 the ideal society ; the poorest man may find existence 
 for a moment rich in the contemplation of it; the 
 sick man may find in it " medicine for sickness ; '' 
 the dying man may feel himself growing eternal in 
 the thought of it. For the issues of every individual 
 existence are there; our spirits live or die, as they 
 rise to its demands. It is, I believe, no merel}^ human 
 ideal, but a world-ideal, and the world-purpose is quick 
 to own those who cleave to it. 
 
 Eeligion has been described by Professor Adler as 
 the "homesickness of the soul." In truth, it is so. 
 There is something in us which tells us that we do 
 not belong to a realm of jarring discords, of clashing 
 interests, of selfish triumphs. We have another coun- 
 try. The home of the soul is — I know not where ; it 
 is not here. We belong to peace ; we belong to love; 
 we belong to all that is covered by the sacred name 
 of the Good. Where are those who will assert these 
 high belongings, and by their surrender to sovereign 
 principle, by the sanctity with which they envelop 
 every human being, by the new order of their lives 
 and the peace of their spirits, prove that even here on 
 
THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 141 
 
 the earth they are connected with " realms that know 
 not earthly day " ? 
 
 The trouble with the established religion is, that 
 it has ceased to stand for ideal convictions. The 
 churches are friends of the established order. Mo- 
 rality has become a tradition. Little is now said to 
 shame men, and to contradict their lives and the or- 
 der of society with an ideal of what these should be. 
 Who will once more lift up the standard of absolute 
 righteousness ? Who will strip morality of its con- 
 ventional expressions, and rebuke sins that now go 
 unrebuked, and make demands upon men that now 
 they do not dream of ? They who do, who see the 
 infinite element in morality, who identify religion with 
 justice, and make the law of the Highest the law for 
 all life, — they will be the heralds, the prophets, of the 
 Religion of the Future. 
 
VIII. 
 THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 
 
 NOTHING is plainer at the present day than that 
 the feelings of men are strongly stirred on the 
 Labor question. In the discussion of it there is apt 
 to be more heat than light. Those who do not range 
 themselves on one side or the other are liable to be 
 harshly handled. Men who cannot subscribe to the 
 orthodox political economy are berated as sentimental- 
 ists. On the other hand, I have heard it urged that 
 the time is gone by for discussion when men are suf- 
 fering, and women and children are starving; there 
 must be action, it was said, — and action was identi- 
 fied with using violence against capitalists and the 
 civil authorities ! There is no sane man who does 
 not believe in action in regard to this mf^tter ; but 
 the question is, how to act, — with reason or without 
 it ? One might better fold his arms and do nothing, 
 than to take such action as would make ten starving 
 men where there is now one. We need more reason, 
 more consideration, more humanity all around in deal- 
 ing with the great problems of society. We should try 
 to do equal justice to varying points of view. 
 
 I hardly know of a more striking instance of the 
 lack of this ethical spirit than the claim sometimes 
 made for workingmen that they are the producers of 
 all wealth, and hence that the wealth of the commu- 
 
THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 143 
 
 nity belongs to them. Aggressive as what is called 
 "capital" sometimes is, it never makes so sweeping a 
 claim as this for itself. Let me illustrate. Suppose 
 a workingman has saved enough to pay for the erec- 
 tion of a modest dwelling. He must himself continue 
 to work, however, and therefore he hires other per- 
 sons to excavate the cellar and lay the foundations 
 and build the house. Let us suppose that these hired 
 men do all the work, — that not a shovelful of earth 
 is thrown by the man himself, or a stone or brick 
 laid or a nail driven by him. The hired men build the 
 house : do they therefore own it ? I cannot imagine 
 any one seriously saying so. Yet it would be just as 
 true to say so as to say that because workingmen 
 have built the railroads of the country, therefore they 
 own them ; or because they have done all the physi- 
 cal work in manufacturing boots and shoes, or cotton 
 cloths, or reaping-machines, therefore the total pro- 
 duct is their rightful property. Any one who will re- 
 flect for a moment will see that in most cases there are 
 three factors in business enterprise : first, the labor ; 
 second, the direction and superintendence of the la- 
 bor; and third, the providing of the materials on which 
 the labor expends itself, and perhaps the shelter under 
 which the labor is performed, and the machinery or 
 tools by means of which it works. All these factors 
 may be united in the same hands. Labor may super- 
 intend itself, and find the market for its own products ; 
 it may own its own materials, its tools or machinery, 
 and the necessary shelter. This is the case in all 
 strictly co-operative enterprises. There is absolutely 
 nothing in our laws or customs, or in the accepted 
 teachings of political economy, to hinder all industry 
 
144 ETHICAL RELIGIONv 
 
 being organized in this manner, — thus doing away 
 with all necessity for separate employers and capi- 
 talists. Under such circumstances labor would have, 
 and would be entitled to have, the total value of its 
 product to itself. Not a cent of profits or of interest 
 would have to be paid ; all that is ordinarily called 
 profits and interest would then be a part of labor's 
 reward. Moreover, since profits, interest, and wages 
 would in such a case all go to the same persons, such 
 co-operative enterprises could afford to work for lower 
 profits and interest than can business enterprises as 
 ordinarily conducted at present, and could successful- 
 ly compete with them. Why, then, is industry not so 
 organized at present ? It is in a few cases : why not 
 in all ? The answer is apparent. The hindrances are 
 not external, but internal. Labor is not ordinarily 
 able to superintend itself, and to find the market for 
 its products. It does not ordinarily own the mate- 
 rials on which it must work, nor the machinery nor 
 the shelter it stands in need of. Some one else must 
 supply these desiderata. Instead of one person or 
 set of persons doing all, two, and often three, sets of 
 persons are necessary. The workman, the employer, 
 and the capitalist often join hands together and be- 
 come partners in a common enterprise. No one of 
 them would be employed unless he were needed ; and, 
 in simple equity, each one is entitled to some recom- 
 pense for his services. It is preposterous, it does 
 violence to every sentiment of right, to say that the 
 whole product belongs to the workmen, when the em- 
 ployer and the capitalist are equally necessary factors 
 in the enterprise. 
 
 The rights of labor do not, then, involve the ordi- 
 
THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 145 
 
 nary socialistic claim. The legitimate demand of labor 
 is simply that it shall have a fair share of what it 
 helps to produce. I do not say a fair share of what 
 it produces, for it is entitled to all it produces ; l)ut 
 in the complex system of modern industry labor is 
 but a factor, and so I say a fair share of what it 
 helps to produce. When a shoemaker makes a pair 
 of shoes in his own shop, out of his own material 
 and with his own tools, he is entitled to the whole 
 value of the shoes ; but when he works in a factory 
 which is not his, with leather and machinery that 
 some one else has provided, it would he simple rob- 
 bery for him to claim the entire value of the pair of 
 shoes for himself. A fair share of w^hat the work- 
 ingmen help to produce, — this is all that in equity 
 they can ask for. 
 
 But do they not have a fair share now ? I do not 
 think they do ; and here, to my mind, lies the real 
 gist of the labor question. T am far from wishing 
 to bring any railing accusations against employers or 
 against society. Every one as he grows in years, if 
 he gains new points of view at the same time, must 
 feel increasingly how deep and wide and many-sided 
 the labor question is. Almost always we incline to 
 leave some factor out of the account, not because w^e 
 mean to do so, but because our minds are not able to 
 take account of everything at once. I do not forget, 
 for example, that workingmen cannot have more out 
 of the wealth they help to create than that wealth 
 amounts to. Workingmen are all too apt to think 
 that if they are busy at work, money is being made 
 somewhere, and probably a great deal of it ; they are 
 apt to think that their employers, simply because 
 
 10 
 
146 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 they are employers, are making profits, and most like- 
 ly large profits. But this by no means follows. 'No 
 one goes into business for himself without the hope 
 of profits ; but that many do not realize this hope to 
 any great extent is shown by the fact that after a 
 time they go out of business no better oft", and per- 
 haps worse off, than when they went in. What does 
 the large per cent of failures in the business world 
 mean but that in these cases no profits at all have 
 been realized? Ninety per cent and more of busi- 
 ness enterprises, it is said, so fail. It is impossible 
 to speak of the rights of labor to higher remunera- 
 tion in a business that is barely paying its way, and 
 may at any time be obliged to suspend ; the enforced 
 claim to higher remuneration in such a case might 
 cause a suspension. Two years ago I read of a strike 
 for higher wages among the compositors of a New 
 Jersey newspaper. The paper was not a success, 
 and the proprietor showed his books to the working- 
 men ; he even offered to give the paper over into their 
 hands for three months, they to receive all the profits. 
 They refused the offer, and insisted on their terms, 
 and the second day the paper ceased to appear.^ It 
 is plain that the compositors had no idea of the em- 
 barrassments of their employer, and that they did 
 as much injury to themselves as to him by their fool- 
 ish conduct. I know a printer in Chicago who says 
 he w^ould be glad to make as much as his foreman. 
 It is difficult to get statistics bearing on this point, 
 but the Massachusetts Labor Bureau Report of 1883 
 showed that while some business enterprises in that 
 State were making large profits, thirty-two per cent 
 A See The Nation. May 6, 1886. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 147 
 
 out of 2440, in regard to which information was ob- 
 tained, made none at all, the value of the product 
 being only sufficient to meet the running expenses 
 and to pay the current rate of interest on the capital 
 invested. Where an employer is making no profits, 
 how can his workmen expect to have higher wages 
 than those they actually receive ? It is, in truth, a 
 superstition to suppose that wages can be raised to 
 any extent, provided the workingmen are only suffi- 
 ciently united and determined therefor. Wages must 
 stop considerably short of the value of the articles 
 produced, — that is, enough short to give fair compen- 
 sation to the employer for his oversight and direction, 
 and to the capitalist for the use of his capital. 
 
 But because there are limits beyond which the re- 
 turns to the workingmen cannot go, it by no means 
 follows that the ordinary returns to workingmen at 
 present are fair and just. What determines the rate 
 of wages ? At first sight it may seem as if it were 
 the worth of the service rendered. It is certainly true 
 that as a rule skilled labor is more highly paid than 
 unskilled ; but if we go a little deeper, and ask the 
 reason why, it is not hard to discover that skilled 
 labor is paid more highly, not because it is skilled, 
 but because it is rare. In what branch of work is 
 more mind required than in teaching in our schools ? 
 What service ranks higher in relation to the welfare 
 of the community ? Who exercise more power for 
 good or for ill than those who are giving the first 
 lessons in knowledge and virtue to our children and 
 youth ? Why, then, are our teachers so poorly re- 
 warded ? The only answer is, to put it bluntly, be- 
 cause there are so many of them, — at least, so many 
 
148 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 ready to be teachers. And why are teachers who are 
 women paid less than teachers who are men, though 
 they may be just as capable, though they may even 
 take the same places that men have occupied ? Be- 
 cause there are so many more women ready to be 
 teachers than there are men. In other words, it is 
 not the worth or dignity or intellectual character of 
 the services rendered, but the number of those who 
 are ready to render them, that determines their price. 
 In technical language, it is supply and demand. If 
 skilled labor, through trade-schools or the incorpora- 
 tion of manual training into the public schools, should 
 become more common than it now is, there is hardly 
 a doubt, other conditions remaining the same, that it 
 would command less high wages than it now does. I 
 say not a word against manual training, and believe 
 in it as much as any one can ; I simply note what I 
 think would be the fact. If skilled labor should be- 
 come as common as unskilled labor now is, its wages 
 would be just as low. When the value of a thing is 
 regulated by supply and demand, in proportion as it 
 is common it is cheap. 
 
 Now, there can be no objection to this so far as the 
 value of commodities in general is concerned. Air 
 is so free now, so cheap, that it costs nothing at all : 
 no one would wish it to be different. Water is al- 
 most as cheap ; and commodities in general — shoes, 
 hats, clothing of every description — can hardly be 
 too abundant and too cheap. But when we come to 
 human life, every one with a heart feels as by instinct 
 that the problem changes. All these commodities ex- 
 ist for man ; air, water, and the very earth we value 
 according to their power to serve him, and to con- 
 
THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 149 
 
 tribute to his happiness. Other things exist for man, 
 but man exists for himself ; we feel it to be a kind 
 of degradation, a kind of profanation of the highest 
 and holiest we know, to turn liim too into a commod- 
 ity, and treat him as we would a garment which one 
 wears or the food which one eats. Yet human labor 
 is indistinguishable from human life ; it is the means 
 by which in most cases life is supported. That labor 
 shall be cheap means that life shall be miserable. It 
 means less food and poorer ; it means scantier cloth- 
 ing ; it means less opportunities for the mind ; and 
 if not necessarily, yet all too naturally, it means in- 
 creased temptation to dissipation, to vice and shame. 
 
 We want commodities cheap for man's sake ; but 
 for whose sake, in Heaven's name, will you make man 
 himself cheap ? The fact is that man is never made 
 cheap save that some other man, who ought to be his 
 brother, may get rich off his labor. Man is never 
 made merchandise of save that somebody may make 
 money out of him. Oh, the shame of it, that we who 
 are brothers to one another, and should hold one an- 
 other in honor and seek one another's good, should not 
 hesitate to use one another and make profit out of one 
 another, and gain for ourselves by making our brother 
 lose, — yes, perhaps by beating hira down to the very 
 dust ! For this is what the law of suppl}'- and demand 
 often involves when men apply it in their dealings 
 with one another. It means that the many shall be 
 sacrificed to the few. It means that the few capable 
 of leading in business enterprises shall have great re- 
 turns for their services, — shall have great returns sim- 
 ply because they are few, — and that the many, who 
 perform the physical labor and are just as necessary 
 
150 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 as the few, shall have small and often pitiful returns. 
 It means that the few shall buy out the many ; and 
 because the many are many, and eacli must have bread 
 and covering for his back, they crowd against one 
 another, each in his anxiety making a lower bid than 
 the other, — and the result is that those who make the 
 lowest bid, other things being equal, succeed in get- 
 ting the employment, and wages as a rule tend to the 
 lowest point that men will consent to live upon. The 
 employers gain by this process, and perhaps also so- 
 ciety, so far as it is not made up of working-people ; 
 but the laborers, I hold, are wronged. It is this sense 
 of wrong, that gives rise to socialistic and anarchistic 
 agitation, though the wrong may often be exaggerated 
 and so give plausible occasion on the other side to a 
 denial that any wrongs exist. Any one is wronged 
 who has an honest service to render to society, which 
 society needs, and is yet beaten down by competi- 
 tion to take returns for it that will barely hold soul 
 and body together. Competition is good within lim- 
 its. There may be services that are held too high ; 
 competition is good to bring them down to something 
 normal and reasonable. There are many places in our 
 industrial system where not less, but more, competi- 
 tion is needed. But competition, when it pauperizes 
 people, when it leads men to struggle against one 
 another for the very chance to live, is worse than 
 useless, — it is a curse. Competition at the best can 
 never be more than a maxim, a rule of expediency ; 
 it can never be a principle in a true political econ- 
 omy. For principles we must look to morality, to 
 the sentiments of justice and equity, which are as 
 rightfully sovereign in industry as they are in law, 
 
THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 151 
 
 in government, in religion, in every department of 
 human life. 
 
 I have stated my conviction that labor as a rule 
 does not get a fair share of the wealth it helps to 
 produce ; further, why this must be the case so long 
 as Nature endows mankind more lavishly with mus- 
 cular than with mental force, and those with the supe- 
 rior capacity are not restrained in their dealings with 
 workingmen by moral principle. I hardly need cite 
 statistics and facts. Labor is slightly better off in 
 solid and successful business enterprises than it is in 
 those which are struggling to live ; but it is not, as 
 a rule, better off to anything like the extent to w^hich 
 the enterprises are successful. Successful enterprises 
 pay the market rate of wages and salaries about as 
 others do ; and, indeed, any other course would be 
 deemed unbusiness-like. To pay more than is neces- 
 sary to get a certain service done is deemed contrary 
 to business principles. The employer buys the cheap- 
 est labor (other things being equal) just as he buys the 
 cheapest raw material (provided it is equally good), 
 and just as he borrows capital at the lowest rates. 
 An industrial system of this sort is bound to create 
 poverty among the mass of men. Mr. Edward Atkin- 
 son has recently made an interesting analysis of the 
 cost of running an average New England cotton-mill.^ 
 His object is to show how slight a margin of profit 
 enters into the selling price of each yard of manufac- 
 tured cloth. The profit, he says, is only one third of 
 a cent in a yard' that sells for 6^ cents. The number 
 of working-people in the mill he puts at 950, working 
 on the average for $300 a year each. The largest 
 1 The Margin of Profits. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1887. 
 
152 .- ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 item in the expenses of the inilly next to that of the 
 raw cotton, is that of wages, — $285,000 in all. The 
 profit of the three mill-owners, over and above all ex- 
 penses, insurance, taxes, and a liberal allowance for 
 depreciation of the mill, he estimates at $60,000, or 
 $20,000 each. I have pondered much over these fig- 
 ures. Out of this $60,000 profits^ he supposes that 
 $22,000, or a little over a third, may be wasted " on 
 fast horses, champagne, fancy farms, and that sort 
 of thing." A good part of the remainder, he conjec- 
 tures, will be turned into fresh capital. Who will 
 say that this is a fair division of the product of the 
 mill among those who joined to produce it ? — a little 
 less than a quarter as much for the three owners as 
 for all the 950 men, women, and children employed 
 put together ! Or, to put it differently, one owner has 
 sixty-six times as much as one of his employees ! I 
 advocate no socialism ; I recognize the rights of the 
 owners ; I admit they do much more than any of 
 their employees, and are entitled to a much greater 
 reward ; but sixty-six times greater — it is impossi- 
 ble ! It ca.nnot be denied that the owners might have 
 made their employees partners in their prosperity, as 
 they were partners in the labor of production, with- 
 out any sensible loss to themselves. According to 
 Mr. Atkinson's supposition, the owners could scarcely 
 spend their income save by resorting to *-fast horses, 
 champagne, fancy farms, and that sort of thing." For 
 my part, I cannot rid myself of the feeling that of 
 a good part of this $22,000 spent in so questionable 
 
 1 The term is loosely used by Mr. Atkinson, no doubt; techni- 
 cally it would be divided into interest on capital, wages of super- 
 intendence, and "profits," strictly so called. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 153 
 
 a manner the workingmen and women and children 
 of the mill were despoiled ; that it was wrung from 
 them simply because they were not in a position to 
 demand it. I cannot rid myself of the feeling that 
 these owners were fattening on the toil and blood of 
 others as effectually as if they had been their slaves. 
 "It was written in the bond," do you say ? Oh, yes ! 
 the lives and liberties of slaves have been signed 
 away *'in the bond." But such bonds do not stand; 
 before the white bar of justice they have not the 
 weight of the paper they are written on, or of the 
 cubic inches of air consumed in consenting to them. 
 Free contract ? There is no free contract when on 
 the one side is ability to live at one's leisure, and 
 on the other no bread in the house unless work is 
 instantly obtained. 
 
 Speaking in a large way, and making full allowance 
 for the business enterprises that fail or that barely 
 make their way, it is doubtful if labor has its rights 
 in this country or in any other. Wherever self-interest 
 has had its way unhindered by higher scruples, labor 
 has almost always been imposed upon. In most ages of 
 the world labor has been enslaved and virtually denied 
 to have any rights which its owner was bound to re- 
 spect. Where not literally enslaved it has been treated 
 as an attachment to the soil, and sold as if a part of 
 it. And though the workingman in modern civilized 
 countries is rarely either a slave or a serf, he is at the 
 mercy of the market, and may sometimes be purchased 
 as cheaply as in the days of slavery or serfdom, if 
 not more so. The abolition of slavery, it is said, is no 
 longer regretted at the South ; and a remark made to 
 me not long ago by a Southern gentleman suggests a 
 
154 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 reason why. He said in substance that the free negro 
 was, after all, cheaper than the slave, since formerly 
 the master was obliged to care for his slave all the 
 year round, and to provide food and shelter for him in 
 old age, while now wages have only to be paid to the 
 negro while he is at work, and during slack times or 
 in old age he may be left to his own resources. 
 
 How little do we seem sometimes to have advanced 
 on the days of Homer, one thousand years before 
 Christ, when the type of the abjectest misery was not 
 the slave, but the free laborer ! ^ We have a better 
 thought of the laborer now, but we have not created 
 for him a much better condition; and it is the contrast 
 between our thoughts — which are coming to be his 
 thoughts too — and his condition wliich makes " the 
 rub," the sore and grievous problem of the present 
 time. The laborer feels himself a man, but he is still 
 treated like a thing, a commodity. He believes in 
 brotherhood, or at least he hears of it ; but he fails to 
 experience it. The only brotherhood he knows any- 
 thing of is that of the " Union," and the only thing 
 beyond that which is apt to seem practicable to him 
 is the brotherhood of all workers against the forces 
 arrayed to keep them down.^ 
 
 What can be done ? First, we can hold fast to our 
 thoughts as to how labor should be treated. This of 
 itself is a great thing, — not to succumb, not to give 
 
 1 Cf. Odyssey, xi. 489, and Gladstone's comment thereon in 
 " Studies on Homer," iii. 74. 
 
 2 Cf. Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, ii. 70) : "Masters are 
 always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uni- 
 form, combination not to raise the wages of labor above their 
 actual rate." 
 
THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 155 
 
 up our ideal, because the facts are the other way. It 
 is a great temptation to settle down to the idea that 
 as things are and have been so they must be. It in- 
 volves a strain, and is a positive virtue, to hold fast 
 to an ideal when the facts contradict it. There is 
 a fatality about our thoughts. If we think things 
 cannot be different from what they are, we but add so 
 much to the dead inertia of the world, which keeps 
 them as they are ; while if we will not succumb, we 
 may be part of the very forces that will help to make 
 things different. Let us keep our faith ; let us keep 
 our discontent and spread it in the community ; let 
 us never cease to ask that ethics become a principle 
 in business life, that the Golden Eule be made the 
 rule of industry, till the common remark that "busi- 
 ness is business," when applied to the remuneration 
 of human labor, shall be turned into a reproach and 
 a shame to those who use it. 
 
 Secondly, let us make our thoughts as clear as pos- 
 sible as to what constitutes a fair return to labor for 
 its services in the work of production. It is im- 
 possible to speak of what are just and unjust wages 
 in terms of money; the purchasing power of money 
 changes according as the cost of producing commod- 
 ities becomes greater or less. AVhat we have a right 
 to ask for the workingman, who year after year ren- 
 ders service to society, is that he shall have enough 
 in return to enable him (1) to run a fair chance of liv- 
 ing out the average term of human life ; (2) to have 
 a family of moderate size ; (3) to let his children go to 
 school till they are at least fifteen years of age ; (4) to 
 let his wife attend to the duties of a mother and a 
 housekeeper ; (o) with reasonable economy to lay aside 
 
156 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 something for his support in old age. These are the 
 wages, whatever their money equivalent may be, which 
 every one who works with his hands — I care not how 
 commonplace and rude his work may be, so that it 
 be necessary work to society — should receive. There 
 is not a day -laborer who works on our streets who 
 ought not to have so much. I advocate nothing at 
 all for those who will not work — not even charity ; 
 though for those who cannot work — for those whose 
 minds or whose bodies are too feeble — I ask the ten- 
 derest consideration and the amplest charity. But for 
 those who can and who do work, such remuneration 
 as I have described above I ask for as simple justice. 
 Competition may reduce wages below this point, — 
 nay, it does. There are plenty of skilled as well as 
 unskilled laborers who do not get such remuneration. 
 Employers, whether private or public, allow them to 
 bid against one another, and, to the end of putting 
 money into their own pockets or of reducing taxation, 
 allow them to work on terms that tend to cut short 
 their lives, to drive their children of tender years into 
 the factory or the street, to force their very wives to 
 work with them or in competition with them, and 
 to bring all sometime or other to misery, to want, 
 and perhaps the poor-house. It is all a monster ini- 
 quity. Below the point I have described, competition 
 should never be allowed to determine the wages of 
 the laborer. 
 
 Thirdly, we can do something by encouraging every 
 honest attempt of labor to get at least this minimum 
 of remuneration for itself. The Unions that work- 
 ingmen form and the "strikes" they enter upon are 
 not useless. The Unions may have many unjust and 
 
THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 157 
 
 foolish rules, their members may sometimes overreach 
 and go on false principles in entering upon " strikes." 
 To demand equal wages for all alike, whatever their 
 degree of skill and competence, is plainly unjust ; to 
 use violence against those who take their places when 
 they leave work is criminal ; to "strike" against an 
 employer who is barely making his way, or to take 
 advantage of his necessities, is as deserving of cen- 
 sure as for the employer to treat in a similar way his 
 men. But where a business is successful, where divi- 
 dends and profits are large, there, I conceive, it is 
 both allowable and just that workingmen should share 
 in the prosperity which they help to create, and the 
 public should encourage them in every effort to reach 
 at least that minimum of compensation which I have 
 described. 
 
 Fourthly, if we are in business ourselves, the mat- 
 ter comes home to us in a peculiar way. I am well 
 aware that a man starting in business cannot always 
 do as his heart prompts. He starts in a competitive 
 field. There may be employers ready to undersell 
 him and drive him out of the market. He has to 
 make himself a foothold in the midst of a stream that 
 would be glad to carry him away. He is perhaps 
 thence obliged to begin by paying the market rate of 
 wages to his workmen ; he has to appear to stand in 
 a purely commercial relation to his men. Meanwhile, 
 however, the higher thoughts may truly dwell in him. 
 He may still cherish the wish to establish a real 
 brotherhood with his employees, to run the race not 
 against them but with them, to treat them as his 
 co-workers and his partners ; and gradually, as his 
 enterprise succeeds, he may carry his thoughts into 
 
158 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 effect, — not with professions, but rather cautiously ; 
 not disappointed because his men do not at once be- 
 lieve in him, but determined by perseverance and 
 evident good-will to make them believe in him. In 
 technical language, he may either raise their wages, 
 or allowing their nominal wages to remain the same, 
 may make them share in his profits. This to my mind 
 would be, so far as present circumstances ordinarily 
 allow, the ideal form of industry. At any rate, it 
 would be ethics carried into business life ; it would 
 be the Golden Eule entering a realm where it is ordi- 
 narily thought to be inapplicable. Love is thought to 
 be a dream ; it is, in fact, the only thing that is prac- 
 tical. It so truly belongs to the world that there is 
 no harmony or security, or even peace, without it. 
 
IX. 
 
 PERSONAL MORALITY. 
 
 THERE is no more wonderful or more moving 
 thought than that of personal responsibility. 
 It seems to go straight to the centre of our being, 
 which is not the mind or the conscience or the heart, 
 but the will. A voice seems to say : " To thee, 
 individually, Man, is given a task. Thou art not 
 one of a mass merely ; thou countest by thyself. 
 Thou art what no one else in the world is. Thou 
 hast a duty that no one else in the world can do. 
 Sacred art thou in the plan of the world. Eevere 
 thyself, then, and fill out thy arc of the great circle 
 of duty. Without thee that circle must remain for- 
 ever incomplete ! " 
 
 The first lesson of personal ethics is self-reverence. 
 Morality is sometimes resolved into sympathy and 
 regard for others. But there is something due our- 
 selves as truly as to father or mother or wife or 
 sister or friend; the same reason that exists for re- 
 specting them exists for respecting ourselves. I want 
 no one to show signs of respect to me who does 
 not stand on his own ground, and in his bearing and 
 demeanor show that he has an equal sense of what 
 is due himself. I cannot conceive anything more 
 
160 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 lamentable than that one should think that obliga- 
 tion first arises when we consider the claims of others, 
 and that in his personal and private life he may do 
 this or that, and just as he pleases, because it con- 
 cerns himself alone. He who questions that there is 
 a duty to himself is liable to question, sooner or later, 
 whether there be any real duty to others ; for others 
 are only human beings like himself, and if he feels 
 no obligation to himself, why should he to them ? 
 The truth is, all are sacred, — others and himself. 
 To each one is given a task, — to each one particu- 
 larly and individually, as if no one else were in ex- 
 istence ; and the task must, to a certain extent, be 
 accomplished by each one separately and alone. 
 
 What are the things for which we are thus person- 
 ally responsible; what are the things over which 
 we ourselves have control ? First, certainly, our pri- 
 vate habits. These may be known by no one but 
 ourselves, yet we are as responsible for them as if 
 they were known to all the world. We are respon- 
 sible, not merely because of their effect upon others, 
 but because of their effect upon ourselves, — because 
 we ought to have pure habits, since these alone are 
 worthy of human beings. Every one should be watch- 
 ful of himself, should take an honest pride in ruling 
 his own impulses, in avoiding all temptations that 
 he knows may be too strong for him, in keeping his 
 body as well as his soul — what is unseen and what 
 is seen — sweet and clean. Tell me, if it w^ere pos- 
 sible, what a man's private and most solitary habits 
 are, and I will tell you whether he really respects him- 
 self, — whether whatever decency and respectability 
 he has are for show or are a part of his very fibre 
 
PERSONAL MORALITY. 161 
 
 and make-up as a man. I have read of some one 
 who, when alone, sat down to dinner with the same 
 regard for form and ceremony as if he were enter- 
 taining a company of friends. His instinct, at least, 
 was right; for whatever measure of form and cere- 
 mony is proper on such an occasion is so because 
 human beings sit down to the table, and not because 
 of their number. All our private habits should re- 
 veal our sense of what is due to the humanity in us. 
 Therefore we should not drink to excess or eat to 
 excess, for this is brutish ; therefore we should con- 
 trol all our appetites, — otherwise there is the abdi- 
 cation of the reason, which makes the truly human 
 part of us ; therefore the body should be treated 
 with reverence, because it is the abode and taberna- 
 cle of our humanity ; therefore neglect of the person 
 and slovenliness are disgusting, because they reveal 
 the lack of a sense of what is becoming to a man. 
 By every unchaste act, by every surrender of reason 
 to passion, by all excess and by all meanness in our 
 manner of life, by neglect of the body as well as 
 neglect of the soul, the fair humanity that is in us 
 and ought to be reflected in our person and behavior 
 is dishonored ; we sink to the level of the animal 
 instead of rising to the stature of the man. 
 
 Another field wherein we alone have control, is 
 that of our personal aims in life. An aim is nowise 
 set save by the person whose aim it is. An aim is 
 simply the direction of our own will. A good aim 
 cannot be given to a man save by himself. He may 
 hear of it, but it is not his own till he makes it so. 
 Our outward acts may be constrained, they may not 
 express us ; but the will is the centre and citadel of 
 
 11 
 
162 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 our personality, and no power in heaven or in earth 
 is master there but ourselves. With this magnificent 
 power we can choose higher or lower aims, we can 
 direct the channel of our life in this of that direction ; 
 or, if we will, we can refuse to aim at anything at 
 all, and simply drift, and become waifs and ignoble 
 wanderers on the earth. Now, any aim is better than 
 none ; but the highest aim is alone worthy of a man. 
 What is the highest aim ? I will venture to reply 
 that it is to contribute to an ideal order of human 
 life. The other answers commonly given are either 
 ignoble or unreal to us. To save one's soul, — who of 
 us can consider that the noblest aim we can have ? 
 To glorify God and enjoy him forever, — how far 
 away and unreal and unpractical does that seem to 
 us ! To seek the kingdom of God, — ah ! but what 
 is the kingdom of God ? To do the will of God, — 
 but who will tell us what the will of God means ? 
 for that sanction has, in the course of man's religious 
 history, covered almost every conceivable aim of man, 
 high and low, devilish and divine. But to contribute 
 to an ideal order of human life seems to me an aim 
 that man can lay hold of; and it is an exalted aim. 
 For we love this human life of ours, and wish to see 
 it lifted to its ideal. We love it most truly, not for 
 what it is, but for what it may be. We are in love 
 with its ideal. The aim I have proposed is legitimate 
 for the merchant, for the lawyer, for the physician, for 
 the mother, for the child, for the workingman. One 
 may accomplish little, yet he can have the aim ; and 
 the aim is that for which alone we are responsible, 
 and may give significance to our smallest actions and 
 a priceless value even to our ineffectual strivings. 
 
PERSONAL MORALITY. 163 
 
 Once in a while we need to turn back on these 
 busy lives of ours, and ask how far this aim is really 
 regulative of them. Are the actions we are doing, 
 the sort of lives we are leading, tending toward an 
 ideal form of human life ; are they such as, if they 
 were general in the community, would bring that 
 ideal form of life nearer to the earth ? Let the mer- 
 chant ask himself what are the customs, the maxims 
 of his trade; and if they are not what they should 
 be, is he by consenting to them helping to perpetuate 
 them, or is he striving to change them ? Let the 
 lawyer and the physician ask themselves as to the 
 morality of their professions, and whether the su- 
 preme aim is keeping them from aught that is dis- 
 honorable, and constraining them to seek to elevate 
 the tone and practice of their professions in every 
 possible way. Let the mother ask herself, " Am I 
 training my child so that it will be a new factor in 
 the world, or merely a perpetuator of old-time preju- 
 dices and hatreds and shams ? " Let the child too 
 have its solemn hour, when it shall nurse its grow- 
 ing soul on deeds of heroism and faithfulness, and 
 ask itself whether it too could venture for an idea, 
 and be patient under adversity and the world's con- 
 tempt. Let the workingman ask himself, "What is 
 my motive ; and would it if it were general tend to 
 an ideal form of life ? Do I work merely for hire, 
 or do I take pride in a piece of honest, thorough 
 work ? In my demand for changes, perhaps revolu- 
 tions, in the industrial world, am I actuated by the 
 spirit of malice and revenge or by the simple thought 
 of justice ? '^ Yes, even the unemployed workingman 
 may feel the pressure of that supreme aim upon him, 
 
164 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 and in his sorest misfortune may will to commit no 
 crime, and though he be insulted, not to insult again, 
 and to bear even to the death rather than do a wrong 
 to others. Everywhere does this supreme aim hold 
 good; everywhere may it take from the pride of 
 those who are great, and give dignity to those who 
 are humble. How quickly does it recall us from those 
 aims in which it is so easy to settle down ! To earn 
 a comfortable living, and provide for wife and chil- 
 dren, — how many seem to have this practically as 
 their aim in life! But there is nothing peculiarly 
 human about this ; beavers and the whole tribe of 
 animals do the same. Man has intelligence, has im- 
 agination, has a moral nature, has dreams of uni- 
 versal justice ; yet sometimes he forgets the dignity 
 and glory that belong to him, turns his back on his 
 dreams, perverts his conscience, loses his imagination, 
 and uses his godlike intelligence only so far as to 
 provide for himself a comfortable living, perhaps in 
 his selfishness and hardness leaving even wife and 
 children out. O Friend, lift up thy thoughts ! think 
 of what thou art called to be ! Light up thy heart, 
 thy imagination, and thy life with a great aim ! Do 
 it, because with all thy hoarding and saving thou art 
 wasting thyself, becoming little while thou shouldst 
 be becoming great, growing old while thou shouldst 
 be keeping ever young, turning life into a game of 
 profit and loss while it should be an opportunity for 
 all noble action and the service of all good causes ! 
 
 The old religion contains a subtle word, — " Thou 
 must be born again." Strange and unmeaning to us 
 as is the theological dogma that has been based upon 
 it, it hides a vital truth. 'T is not the mending of 
 
PERSONAL MORALITY. 165 
 
 our actions that is first needed ; 't is not the forming 
 of this or that habit; 'tis not any outward change. It 
 is the renovation of the fountains of our life; it is 
 the making victorious a new aim in life ; it is the 
 changing our thoughts and experiencing the trans- 
 forming power of a new purpose. This does not alone 
 help us in one particular, but in all : it involves an 
 advance along the whole line of duty. And the dif- 
 ference from the old religion is simply, that, while it 
 seems to say that such a purpose must come from 
 God, we say that it must be formed by ourselves. 
 We do not fall on our knees and pray : we arise, and 
 summon our energies, and resolve. And though the 
 old nature in us may not yield at once, though old 
 faults may persist and old habits be stubborn, yet we 
 can gradually win the victory over them ; and our 
 connection with that Supreme Power which upholds 
 the world and supports the human soul, is simply in 
 the belief that he is behind us and beneath us and 
 above us, and pours his all-mightiness into us, so that 
 we can ourselves do all that in our nature we are 
 summoned to do. 
 
 Not only the supreme dominant aim of our lives, 
 but our motives in all our actions, are under our con- 
 trol ; and for purifying them we are responsible. It 
 is here that the ethics based entirely on the results 
 of our actions altogether fails. An action may have 
 exactly the same results, yet at one time have moral 
 worth and at another have none. A dollar given to a 
 poor man w^ill go just so far, provide so much bread, 
 whether given to rid one's self of his presence or out 
 of love for the man. But an act of the former sort 
 is not a moral act at all. It is wonderful how com- 
 
166 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 pletely our moral value is hidden from all the world 
 but ourselves, and yet how in importance it tran- 
 scends all else we can think of. I would not ignore 
 the question of results in the theory of ethics. Our 
 acts must not only be moral, — they must be right, 
 they must correspond with an objective standard ; 
 and with the determination of that, the results of our 
 actions have a great deal to do. An action is right 
 which tends to the good of humanity, the results of 
 which are actually beneficial to humanity. A moral 
 action is one that, in addition, aims at the good of hu- 
 manity. It is not enough to be perfectly righteous, — 
 we must mea7i to be righteous ; and in our so mean- 
 ing, wanting, purposing, our whole moral worth con- 
 sists. The real life of man is not the seen, but the 
 unseen one ; what we see are but effects, — the causes 
 are hidden away. The world is satisfied with a cer- 
 tain decorousness, and we ourselves all too easily in- 
 cline to take the world's standard ; but in our graver 
 moments we know what a surface thing it is, and that 
 our unclean thoughts, our jealousies, our envies and 
 spites, and all our littlenesses and uncharitablenesses, 
 though no one else knows of them, are the things 
 that defile us. Oh for a clean heart ! Oh to be holy 
 within ! — to be as pure in our own eyes as we would 
 be in the eyes of the world without ! Oh to ban- 
 ish all selfishness, and to look on others only with 
 love ! — so that if we chide or are severe toward 
 them it shall not be in anger ; so that if they wrong 
 us we shall not hate them, and if we are injured, 
 we shall not injure again. The highest care, after 
 all, of each one should be for himself, and for that 
 which is most personal to himself. There, in that 
 
PERSONAL MORALITY. 167 
 
 inner realm, no one else can help him. Each morning, 
 I conceive, a man might well arise, and say, " This 
 day I welcome to my heart all good thoughts, and 
 will that they should prompt and guide all my ac- 
 tion. I banish hate, I banish spite, I banish all low 
 cunning and greed ; and I will not let a word escape 
 my lips, or an act be done, that truth and honor and 
 love cannot sanction ! " It is easier, I know, to con- 
 trol our actions than our motives. It takes great 
 watchfulness, it may involve a long discipline, and 
 mean many a struggle to be able to banish an un- 
 worthy thought as soon as it appears, to check an 
 unholy impulse as soon as it arises. It implies that 
 we have ourselves well in hand, that the will is strong. 
 Ah ! but this is our task, this is that to which we are 
 called. There were no honor in easy victories. To 
 contend against odds, to hold to the fight after defeat 
 once and twice, — yes, though the body js weak and 
 the heart is faint, to keep the purpose strong, — there 
 is glory in that ; and into the secrets of such a strife 
 the angels might well look with wonder and awe. 
 'T was Hesiod of old who said that before the temple 
 of virtue the immortal gods had placed labor, and the 
 way to it was long and steep. 'T is hard to know, 
 indeed, what good thing in life is to be had for the 
 asking. The whole significance of our being is that 
 we are madfe imperfect, and called to be perfect. 
 
 " And, nil, if Nature sinks, as oft she may, 
 *Neath long-lived pressure of obscure distress, 
 Still to he strenuous for the bright reward, 
 Still in the soul to admit of no decay, 
 Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness, — 
 Great is the glory, for the strife is hard." 
 
168 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 It is wonderful how every great religious move- 
 ment in the past has been marked by a new sense 
 of the need of personal righteousness. ^T was thus 
 when real religion arose among the ancient Hebrews, 
 and a cry went forth from the prophetic lips, " Create 
 in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within 
 me! " ^Twas so when Jesus called for a deeper right- 
 eousness than even the most religious of his own day 
 practised. ^T was so when Luther threw off the bond- 
 age of dead works, and wrote and spoke to the con- 
 science, and said that an act in itself good becomes 
 sinful if its motive is sinful. If I ever have a doubt 
 of the possibility of a religion arising out of Liberal- 
 ism to-day, it is because Liberalism speaks more of 
 the rights of men than of their duties ; because it 
 talks more of the reform of society than of the re- 
 form of ourselves ; because its ideal is philanthropy 
 rather than justice ; because it forgets that ^- society 
 gains nothing," as Emerson says, " while a man not 
 himself renovated attempts to renovate things about 
 him," or, as John C. Learned says, that those '^ who 
 are in the w^rong cannot cure evils." Let us pu- 
 rify ourselves, let us leave the world's standards be- 
 hind us, and ask what manner of men we ourselves 
 are ; and if we find ourselves unholy, unchaste, pas- 
 sionate, envious, ready to take advantage, petty in 
 spirit and narrow in sympathy, oh, let us leave 
 doctoring the ills of the world, and first cure our- 
 selves ! 
 
 But life is not all in doing. Duty is not all in 
 striving and battling, — it is sometimes in waiting, 
 in enduring, in bearing what we cannot remove. Per- 
 haps our sharpest battles are with our impatience, and 
 
PERSONAL MOKALITY. 169 
 
 with what seems a cruel fate that assigns us burdens 
 heavier than we can bear. Sympathy often we cannot 
 receive ; often, we cannot tell our griefs. The trage- 
 dies of our life are in secret, and this is what makes 
 them tragedies. 
 
 I allow myself to believe, however, that nothing is 
 given us in life greater than we can bear. It may 
 seem as if the adversity were too sore, but we can 
 endure it. We cannot always control our bodily 
 health, but we can our spirits. We can bear the 
 death of friends ; we can bear the ingratitude of 
 friends, or their unfaithfulness ; we can bear to have 
 our hopes defeated; we can bear to have light and joy 
 vanish out of our skies, — bear it without bitterness, 
 bear it with magnanimity. The deep purpose of our 
 being does not lie in anything that can be taken from 
 us. ^T is not in our prosperity, and it may be accom- 
 plished in spite of adversity ; 't is not in the rela- 
 tionships of home, in tender companionship with 
 friends, in public honor or regard. Thy worth, O 
 Fellow-man or woman, is in thyself, — in thy patient 
 soul, in thine incorruptible will, in thy readiness to 
 accept whatever post the universe assigns thee, in 
 thy quiet faithfulness there, whether amid sunshine 
 or the dark, amid joy or sorrow. We know not any 
 more than Socrates what we ought to wish for our- 
 selves ; we know not, in truth, what is best for us ; 
 we know not what will bring out that which is most 
 truly divine and godlike within us. The lamented 
 Garfield said we could no't know any one perfectly 
 well " while he was in perfect health ; and as the 
 ebb-tide discloses the real lines of the shore and the 
 bed of the sea, so feebleness, sickness, and pain bring 
 
170 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 out the real character of a man." Matthew Arnold 
 says of a friend : — 
 
 " I saw him sensitive in frame, 
 
 I knew his spirits low, 
 And wislied him health, success, and fame, — 
 
 I do not wish it now. 
 
 " For these are all their own reward, 
 
 And leave no good behind ; 
 They try us, — oftenest make us hard. 
 
 Less modest, pure, and kind." 
 
 Emerson even says, *^ Adversity is the prosperity 
 of the great ; " and if this seems strained, we do not 
 feel it so when we see some heroic man or woman 
 bearing up under great ills with godlike equanimity 
 and patience. Friend, think not thyself off the 
 track of destiny because things are awry, and fortune 
 does not smile upon thee, and thou hast not, perhaps, 
 a thing that thou cravest ! think not that the World 
 Spirit has not an}" path marked out for thee to follow! 
 The path of duty is still the predestined path ; and 
 though it be no longer to do, but to bear, bear but as 
 bravely as thou woiildst do, and never was there better 
 soldier of duty than thou ! 
 
 IL 
 
 The field of our thoughts is a wide one ; the field 
 of our actions is ordinarily a narrow one. Ethics 
 covers both. It asks that we have just thoughts, 
 true thoughts, everywhere; it gives the ideal also 
 for each day's smallest and, as it may seem, most 
 insignificant actions. The real world to most of us 
 is not at all large ; it is so near and commonplace 
 
PERSONAL MORALITY. 171 
 
 that we are apt to slight it. Our real world, that 
 which we daily see and are acting in the midst of 
 almost constantly, is made up of those in our own 
 household, of a few friends, and of a few more ac- 
 quaintances, and of ourselves. Yet it is here that our 
 actions tell, and here that our responsibility centres. 
 
 The home lies closest about us. How tender we 
 should be there ! What solace ought every member 
 of that intimate circle to find there ! If in the world 
 without we feel that we are misunderstood and mis- 
 judged, how should the fret and depression that come 
 from it vanish and dissipate as we return to that lov- 
 ing, genial atmosphere and to those generous hearts 
 who take us at our best, and by trusting us tend to 
 keep us so ! What opportunity equals that of parents 
 toward their children, that of elder brothers or sis- 
 ters toward the younger ? With what ample consid- 
 eration should we treat those who are not so strong 
 as others, not so bright in mind, or who have some 
 failing that causes the world to look down upon 
 them, and the sense of which brings to themselves 
 at times confusion and mortification ! How watchful 
 we should be about hurting them ! How we should 
 strive to keep in them something of that self-respect 
 which is the basis of all the virtues ! What is more 
 pitiable than a child ignored or contemptuously 
 treated at home ? Yet, strangely enough, those who 
 are brought nearest to us, and for whom we can do 
 most, we sometimes treat the most coolly and for 
 them do the least. Many a man who is courtesy 
 itself to other women, comes to show little to his 
 wife ; many a son who has great deference for men 
 in general, shows little before his own father ; many 
 
172 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 a young woman who has ample consideration for the 
 failings of her sex, is yet impatient and ungenerous 
 toward her own sisters. Oh that we might learn that 
 our nearest duties are the highest ; that we might 
 think more and more tenderly of those whom we 
 daily and perhaps hourly see ; that we might keep 
 our reverence for them ; that we might bear with 
 them, and always have the will to do them good ! 
 Father, mother, wife, child, brother, sister, — thou 
 wilt never know any as precious as these ; none who 
 have such a right to thy love ; none for whom thou 
 wilt ever have a right to do so much ! 
 
 Nothing more befits a man in his intercourse with 
 his acquaintances than magnanimity, — a certain 
 largeness of temper and soul. It might be almost 
 called the courtesy due to human nature as such to 
 be generous toward it. Men are so constituted that 
 if we think evil of them we are apt to find some 
 evil, and if we look for what is good we find the good 
 instead. 
 
 Magnanimity means looking for the good, expect- 
 ing it, not being willing to allow the contrary till we 
 are forced to. It means, where there are two inter- 
 pretations of a man's conduct possible, the being in- 
 clined to take the more generous one, — not out of 
 charity, but because of an instinct of breadth and lib- 
 erality. Magnanimity is ordinarily thought to consist 
 in overlooking injuries, but I should say it was more 
 truly shown in unwillingness to credit them. Some- 
 times we are like the boys who put chips on their 
 shoulders and dare some one to knock them off ; and 
 then injuries come to us that are never meant to be 
 injuries, that exist only in our active imagination and 
 
PERSONAL MORALITY. 173 
 
 our suspicious minds. "Trifles light as air," says 
 Sliakspeare, *' are to the jealous eontirmations strong as 
 proofs of holy writ ; " but to the magnanimous they 
 are like those discords of which George Eliot speaks, 
 that, " quenched by meeting harmonies, die in the large 
 and charitable air." I have seen misunderstandings 
 arise between persons who I am sure meant no ill 
 to one another, yet simply because each was jealous 
 of his own rights and suspicious that the other was 
 willing to wrong him, involved themselves in grave 
 and sad complications ; and I have thought that the 
 way out of the difficulty was not in finding how far 
 each was right and each was wrong, but in the gain- 
 ing by both of a larger and nobler temper. I see 
 no way to go along smoothly in the world without 
 an habitual large-mindedness. There are so many 
 "touchy" persons, to use a colloquial phrase, who are 
 making others uncomfortable all the time, and, what 
 is quite as bad, making themselves uncomfortable too. 
 They are on the watch, as it were, lest some one tres- 
 pass on their rights ; they constantly misinterpret 
 others, and come to wear often a gently injured air, 
 which would be amusing were it not so annoying. 
 All this is the opposite of magnanimity. A mag- 
 nanimous man never doubts that others will respect 
 him. He is impatient with those who magnify tri- 
 fles ; he is conscious of rectitude in himself, and be- 
 lieves in it in others in spite of a few appearances 
 to the contrary. 
 
 And what an occasion for magnanimity arises in 
 the little differences of opinion, in the discussions 
 between friends and acquaintances, that often arise ! 
 How profitless many of our discussions are, because 
 
174 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 we persist in keeping our own point of view, and do 
 not even try to understand what the other person 
 really means ! How we are apt to seize upon some 
 trifling mistake, to magnify some petty error, and 
 overlook the drift and tenor of the differing opinion 
 as a whole ! What a change it would be, if neglect- 
 ing these minor blemishes we seized upon the main 
 idea of the person with whom we are conversing, 
 and sought to do justice to it, and to understand it! 
 Surely, one has little confidence in the truth of his 
 own view who is not willing for a moment to enter- 
 tain a different one. A discussion never should de- 
 generate into a dispute ; if ill-will arises, there should 
 be an end of it. Bigotry can never be conquered by 
 bigotry. Bigotry can only be conquered by candor, and 
 by a noble breadth of view that will make even the 
 idea of the bigot swim in a sea of larger thought. Let 
 Liberals not harbor narrow prejudices against those of 
 Jewish or Christian faith. Let us be willing to con- 
 sider all the truth there is in the old religions, all the 
 services they have rendered mankind, all the uses to 
 which their nobler adherents are still putting them in 
 the world. And let us do this not grudgingly, or as if 
 we were conceding something, but with a truth-loving 
 spirit ; and this spirit will perchance pass to those 
 with whom we converse, and lead them to deal with 
 us in a fairer temper. The test of any set of views 
 is, after all, to what extent open, candid, truth-loving 
 minds can hold them. The best argument in our 
 favor lies in the noble temper we at all times show, 
 in our aversion to all the tricks by which the passions 
 and prejudices of men are stirred, in our magnanimity 
 to friend and foe alike. 
 
PERSONAL MORALITY. 175 
 
 Another disposition, upon which the smoothing 
 and sweetening of our daily life much depends, is 
 thoughtfulness about little things. There is much 
 conceit and nonsense about what makes the gentle- 
 man or lady. One essential mark of such persons, 
 I should say, is mindfulness of little attentions, the 
 habit of rendering little kindnesses of which the or- 
 dinary, grosser man or woman scarcely thinks. The 
 root of courtesy, after self-respect, is in a fine sym- 
 pathy with others. We widely err in thinking that 
 great things are necessary to make us happy. A wo- 
 man does not ask much from her husband; but she 
 asks his love, — and this shown in numberless, trifling 
 ways. You do not count on great favors from your 
 friend ; but a little, done with real friendship, goes a 
 long way with you. I verily believe that the happi- 
 ness of most of us, so far as others are concerned, 
 depends more on their manner, their look, their voice, 
 their evident friendliness for us, than upon anything 
 they can do for us. 1 believe that nothing so contri- 
 butes to the evenness and serenity and cheerfulness of 
 our own minds as the habit of saying pleasant words, 
 rendering little attentions, and doing little insignifi- 
 cant services which we should be ashamed to speak 
 of, after they are done. " Small service is true ser- 
 vice while it lasts,-' says Wordsworth : yes, if we put 
 love into it. It is these small services that bind 
 friends, that keep the love of lovers fresh. They are 
 the flower of courtesy : they go to make up what the 
 same poet calls 
 
 " That best portion of a good man's life, — 
 
 His little, namelesS; unremembered acts of kindness and of 
 love." 
 
176 ETHICAL EELIGION. 
 
 Many persons are oppressed with the littleness of 
 their lives ; they would like to be doing great things, 
 and the petty duties of each day take up all their 
 time. They do not recollect that faithfulness is the 
 first and highest thing required of us, that this may 
 be shown in little things as well as in great, and 
 that the commonest lot may be transfigured by the 
 love, the patience, and the sweetness we put into it. 
 What is, after all, wanted most in the world is not 
 great persons fitted for great occasions, or ordinary 
 ones fitted for the ordinary, but great persons who 
 will throw their greatness into the ordinary ; who 
 will show how much dignity, how much goodness, 
 how much sweetness may characterize the life of 
 every day ; whose minds are conversant with princi- 
 ples that their most private actions exemplify ; whose 
 very ^' good-morning " makes us glad,- and whose 
 " good-by " seems like a benediction ; whose daily 
 look mirrors a heaven of love, of self-renouncement, 
 and of peace. Ah, Friend, fight the battle in thy ob- 
 scure corner of life, — fight the battle with thyself, 
 thy restlessness, thy fears, and accept thy lot ! Thou 
 canst not choose thy task, perhaps, but thou canst 
 ^^ choose to do it well." Thou canst not do what 
 thou wouldst, yet thou canst do bravely what thou 
 must. Do it! for the deepest law of human life is 
 faithfulness, and by obeying it thou dost acquire a 
 worth that life itself cannot exhaust and death can- 
 not destroy. "He that is faithful in that which is 
 least is faithful also in much," said Jesus. A great 
 saying, for it upsets the measurements of the world 
 and of our worldly morality. It is enough to endear 
 him to the hearts of men ; for it shows that he looked 
 
PERSONAL MORALITY. 177 
 
 upon the heart, and judged men by what they were, 
 and not by what they could do. 
 
 Another virtue much needed in our daily inter- 
 course with others, is readiness to own a fault. 
 The whole virtue is in our readiness, — in being quick 
 to own we have been in the wrong. We do not like 
 of course to shame ourselves, not only before others, 
 but in our own eyes. Nothing is more unwelcome. 
 Therefore there are few more genuine moral experi- 
 ences than those of confessing a fault, provided it be 
 spontaneous, and we are not driven or compelled to it. 
 We separate ourselves in such an act from what we 
 ought to be, and feel the " ought to be '' as above us 
 and as it were condemning us. It is sensitiveness 
 we need to have. Most persons know when they do 
 wrong, but they do not rue it, they do not grieve 
 over it ; they do not confess it — if they confess at 
 all — until the feelings of contrition have lost their 
 warmth and the confession half its virtue. It is 
 an affecting passage of Scripture : " Let not the sun 
 go down upon your wrath." Each blessed day in 
 this life of ours makes a kind of whole, and no evil 
 should be done in it that is not repented of before 
 its close. For who will allow that confession is only 
 a childish virtue, — or, if it were, would not ask that 
 he might keep the child's heart and the child's habit, 
 and even if it be before some sainted spirit of the 
 dead, or before Jesus, or before some image of the 
 Highest, which seems to bend over and listen to him, 
 might pour out his sorrow and his shame rather than 
 not have any sorrow and shame at all ? But the 
 man's habit should differ from the child's only in that 
 while the child confesses to a father or mother, the 
 
 12 
 
178 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 man should confess to himself. The dignity of man 
 is that he is both the doer and the judge of his 
 actions. The child could not humble itself before 
 the parent, did not the parent voice the dormant con- 
 science of the child. The man only reaches the true 
 stature of a man when his conscience becomes awake 
 and alive. 
 
 " Sits there no judge in heaven, our sin to see ? 
 More strictly, then, the inward judge obey." 
 
 Is this impossible ? No ; an unwelcome, a difficult 
 task it may be to sit in judgment on ourselves, but 
 not impossible. I believe a man can be as vigilant 
 over himself as ever God or angel could be. I believe 
 he may be as impartial toward himself, as high in his 
 demands, and as sure in his condemnations. There is 
 a God in every man, and it is for us to let him speak, 
 and to hear him ; and not till we do this is the true 
 aim of our being carried out. 
 
X. 
 
 ON SOME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS. 
 
 THERE have been noble-minded men, like Schil- 
 ler and John Stuart Mill, who have been offended 
 with one aspect of the teaching of Jesus. The charge 
 is in substance that his teaching is sometimes mer- 
 cenary, — that he does not ask men to do right be- 
 cause it is right, but because they shall be rewarded 
 in a future state if they do, or punished if they do 
 not. There are certainly passages which lend them- 
 selves to this interpretation. Jesus unquestionably 
 believed in future rewards and punishments; and it 
 is a mistake to imagine him a mild, modern humani- 
 tarian, without a sense of law or of the just deserts of 
 men. But this is not saying that he appealed to the 
 self -regarding motives ivhen urging upon men moral 
 conduct. It is one thing to recognize that wickedness 
 will call down vengeance from heaven ; it is another 
 to seek to dissuade from wickedness solely or chiefly 
 for fear of that vengeance. 
 
 I cannot consider the sayings of Jesus in detail, but 
 a general key to their understanding seems to me to 
 lie in the distinction between the prophet and the mere 
 exhorter or preacher. Many Christian preachers have 
 used the ideas of heaven and hell as motives to deter- 
 
180 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 mine men in their conduct ; and Christian morality, as 
 commonly taught in the past, has been deeply tainted 
 with the mercenary spirit. But Jesus was not pri- 
 marily a preacher or exhorter ; he makes few appeals 
 to men. His frequent attitude is one all uncommon, 
 if not well-nigh unintelligible to us of the Western 
 world ; he stands for the Highest, and as a prophet 
 declares the law of the Highest to men. Who does 
 not at times crave a justification of the ways of the 
 Eternal ? Who has not at times had his soul stirred 
 within him as the course of things has seemed to 
 favor, if not to be in league with, the unjust man and 
 the oppressor, and to be coldly indifferent, if not hos- 
 tile, to the good ? Who has not cried out for judg- 
 ment, and asked : " Why standest thou afar off, O 
 Lord ? . . . Break thou the arm of the wicked and 
 the evil man ! '' A Hebrew psalmist once pictured the 
 righteous man as a lamb, graciously tended and pro- 
 tected by the shepherd, Jahveh. No one can fail 
 to see the beauty and the pathos of the picture ; but 
 how often is it true ? Yet we believe it ought to 
 be true, — that the deep nature of things must some- 
 how prefer the just to the unjust man, and that this 
 preference ought to be made manifest. The prophet 
 addresses himself to this problem, or rather brings an 
 answer to it ; and the answer which Jesus gave has 
 written itself into the hearts of myriads of men, and 
 has been the stay and consolation not only of actual 
 sufferers, but of those harassed with doubt, — of those 
 who but for it would have lost all intellectual satis- 
 faction with life. A great change was impending in 
 human affairs, he declared ; the power of evil and 
 wrong would soon come to an end ; the world would 
 
SOME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS. 181 
 
 show itself on the side of the poor and the merciful 
 and the pure in heart, and of those who love peace 
 and thirst for justice. For these a new day would 
 soon dawn ; the " kingdom of heaven " should greet 
 them, and mercy and blessedness and the vision of 
 the Highest should be theirs; while for the proud, 
 the contentious, the self-willed, and the wicked there 
 should be, as there ought to be, humiliation, shame, 
 gnashing of teeth, and the fire that is not quenched. 
 The "kingdom of heaven,'' so soon as Jesus thought to 
 be ushered in, was his answer to the great problem ; 
 it was his justification of the ways of the Eternal to 
 men ; it was to be the end of the strange mazes and 
 the solution of the riddle of human history. 
 
 Hence, when Jesus says, " There is no man that 
 hath left house or brethren or sisters . . . for my 
 sake and the gospel's sake, but he shall receive an 
 hundred-fold now in this time, . . . and in the world 
 to come life everlasting," I do not conceive that he is 
 making an appeal to or even consoling men so much 
 as declaring a law, uttering what to his mind, in the 
 moral nature of things, must be, and what the appar- 
 ent contradictions of experience put upon him a pas- 
 sionate necessity of declaring. At another time, when 
 Jesus violently drove the money-changers out of the 
 Temple, we are told that his disciples called to mind 
 a saying out of the Psalms, "The zeal of thine house 
 shall eat me up." If we in these secular days could 
 realize the meaning of such a passion, — if we could 
 enter into that " zeal for God " and for the vindica- 
 tion of a Divine order in the world which made, along 
 with a kind of tender pity for the wronged and baffled, 
 one of the leading motives of Jesus' life, — we should 
 
182 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 not find it so easy to call his morality mercenary, and 
 should reserve our impatience and indignation for 
 those who conceive no other uses for his words than 
 as allurements or as threats to keep men in the way 
 of righteousness. 
 
 An objection to another part of Jesus' moral teaching 
 is that it is extravagant a7id impracticable, *'How can 
 we," it is said, " resist not evil, turn the other cheek, 
 give away our cloak to one who takes our coat, and 
 freely lend to every one ? Are not law and economy 
 equally opposed to such precepts ? How long would 
 orderly society endure if they were obeyed ? Is it not 
 the teaching of the new charity that we are not to give 
 and not to lend save on some kind of business princi- 
 ple ?" I think a measure of confusion is betrayed in 
 questions of this sort. Jesus does not, if I understand 
 aright, condemn resistance for self-defence, but has in 
 mind the old precepts of "an eye for an eye, and a 
 tooth for a tooth," and the spirit of retaliation which 
 was at their basis. For self-defence, we may use vio- 
 lence to protect our person or our property or our 
 rights. For self-defence, one nation may rise against 
 another, or one class against another. If Jesus would 
 have condemned such self-defence, it was in connection 
 with a view of Providence which we of to-day can no 
 longer share. Eetaliation, however, is an entirely dif- 
 ferent matter. I know of no rule of equity according 
 to which we may return blow for blow or oppression 
 for oppression. This would not be righting a wrong, 
 but making a double wrong. Better than this would 
 be actually turning the other cheek and going the sec- 
 ond mile. 
 
 Nor do the new rules of charity now happily making 
 
SOME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS. 183 
 
 their way in our midst contradict the precepts of Jesus. 
 A business charity, in one sense of the word, would not 
 be charity at all. To give help to no one asking for 
 it, because of a rudely conceived principle that every 
 one ought to help himself, would not be to make an 
 advance upon Christian practice, but to go back to the 
 hardness of heathenism. It must not be because we 
 love less or are ready to do less that we give up the 
 old habit of almsgiving, but because we love more, be- 
 cause we wish to institute more radical means of relief, 
 and thereby not merely temporarily relieve distress, 
 but do something toward checking it at its sources. If 
 there is merely the economical or the business spirit in 
 the new charity, if the aim is chiefly to rid ourselves 
 of annoyances and banish unsightly objects from the 
 public gaze, depend upon it, no great results will come 
 from it, — no such results as came from that mighty 
 movement of pity and tenderness which streamed from 
 the heart of Jesus, and took the weak and unprotected 
 under its special care, which established beneficent 
 institutions,^ and made the relief of want or suffering 
 one of the primary virtues. No ; only a new birth of 
 love, a new enthusiasm for humanity, will effect any 
 radical revolution in human conditions ; only a new 
 wave of such tender feeling as was in Jesus him- 
 self, though it be in connection with our view of the 
 world and not with his, and guided in its manner 
 of expression by all the light that past experience 
 and scientific observation and experiment can give 
 us. The best machinery will after a time lie idle, 
 if there is not the force of human love to propel it. 
 
 1 The first general Council of the Church (at Nicaea, 325 a. d.) 
 ordered the erection of a hospital in every city. 
 
184 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 Nothing — not all knowledge or skill . — will take its 
 place. 
 
 Jesus told the rich young man to go and sell all 
 that he had and give to the poor. Let us very care- 
 fully discriminate, if we object to that saying. I might 
 almost say it is at our peril if we do so ; for the very 
 breath of it is the utterness of consecration it enjoins. 
 According to it, there is nothing which is to be cher- 
 ished as privately our own : what we have and all of it 
 is for common blessing. I have a deeper faith in man 
 than those economists and sophisters (and there are 
 some "ministers of religion" among them) who think 
 it necessary, in explaining this precept, to strip its ex- 
 actions of their grandeur, and trim and adjust them 
 to the levels of conventional benevolence. I believe 
 man at his deepest does not want to be left where he 
 is, but to be lifted higher. I believe that he can give 
 unselfishly, can give all he has, — his possessions, — 
 yes, not hesitating at his life, when some cause makes 
 transcendent claims upon him. Prudence is indeed 
 called for ; but there are two kinds of prudence, — the 
 one springing from selfishness, the other born of re- 
 ligion itself. The same outward acts may have mean- 
 ings at a heaven-wide distance from each other. Sup- 
 pose, for example, that I refuse alms to a beggar on 
 the street. I may do so because, having hardened my- 
 self into the idea that every man is himself entirely 
 responsible for his condition, I feel no promptings of 
 pity in my breast ; on the other hand, I may refuse 
 for very pity and bewilderment, knowing how little 
 such help would be, how much greater are his needs 
 than those I could thus cover, and with the thought 
 either to go with him to his home and learn well of 
 
SOME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS. 185 
 
 his misfortunes, or to send some one wiser and better 
 qualiJied than I to do this for me. This would be a 
 totally different prudence, and would be nowise con- 
 tradictory to the precept of Jesus himself: *^Give to 
 him that asketh thee, and from him that would bor- 
 row of thee turn not thou away." The indiscriminate 
 and unthinking giving of alms, which has been too 
 characteristic of the Christian Church, we may indeed 
 censure, — doubtless, it has done and still is doing 
 much harm ; but it must be because there is rising 
 within us a deeper and more serious sj^irit of hu- 
 manity than the Church has ordinarily exhibited in 
 the past. 
 
 Another objection to the moral teaching of Jesus 
 1 shall i3ass over lightly ; it is astonishing that an 
 earnest radical thinker should ever make it. It is 
 that Jesus slights the family relations. That he held 
 sacred the idea of the family and of the marriage 
 bond, which is at its basis, is shown by words so se- 
 vere and exalted that few of his followers nowadays 
 are able to bear them, — I mean those which declare 
 marriage indissoluble save for the single cause of adul- 
 tery. Only the Catholic Church, which along with 
 whatever additions and Aberglauhe seems yet most 
 faithfully to have preserved the primitive Christian 
 traditions, insists upon obedience to these words. But 
 it is at a practical slighting of family ties that the 
 objection is aimed. It is true that Jesus called upon 
 men to leave brothers and sisters and parents, and 
 follow him. He would not even suffer a disciple 
 to go and bury his father, rather rudely, as it may 
 seem, saying, "Let the dead bury their dead." He 
 said, not peace, but a sword, was he introducing 
 
186 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 into the world : he was come to set a man at vari- 
 ance against his father, and the daughter against her 
 mother, and to cause a man's foes to be those of 
 his own household. And when his own mother and 
 brothers wished to see him, we are told that with 
 no very decided show of affection he pointed to his 
 disciples, and said, ^* These are my mother and my 
 brethren." 
 
 Now, if morality has no other intent than to pre- 
 serve mankind in families as the families may hap- 
 pen to be constituted at any one time, then is Jesus 
 plainly at fault. But can this be admitted ? Is all 
 possible good already realized and incorporated in 
 social institutions? Is there no justice, and no call 
 for its execution, as wide as the human race, and 
 immeasurably in advance of that which our present 
 laws and social habits reflect ? In truth, those who 
 object to the divisions in family life which necessa- 
 rily followed in the wake of Christianity, deny the 
 logic by which all great forward movements in his- 
 tory are made : they go over into the ranks of the 
 conservatives. Any principle thrown into the fer- 
 ment of human thoughts and aspirations is a princi- 
 ple of division ; those who assent to it are parted 
 from those who do not. If it be indeed a sover- 
 eign principle, like that of justice, then no lower al- 
 legiances have a right to interfere with the supreme 
 allegiance due to it. Man must choose the highest ; 
 he has no peace or honor in his own eyes save as he 
 does. And consistently with this choice all his other 
 relations in life must be ordered ; they dare never 
 assert that it shall be modified and accommodated so 
 as to harmonize with them. 
 
SOME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS. 187 
 
 Jesus did set a man at variance against his father. 
 He was stern and exacting in his demand of absolute 
 allegiance to the cause he represented ; he did feel a 
 closer tie of kinship to those who heard his call and 
 obeyed it than to any earthly mother or brothers ; and 
 no cause has ever thrived in the world that has not 
 in a measure repeated these facts. No religion of 
 the future will be a worthy successor of the religion 
 of the past that does not introduce a similar division, 
 that does not have a similar attitude of exaction to 
 all wavering and double-minded persons, and does not 
 introduce a bond of union over and above, if not some- 
 times in contradiction to, the traditional bonds that 
 now hold men together. The pathway of that future 
 religion, of which we know so little and yet believe 
 so much, is strewed with flowers to many a prophetic 
 young heart of the present. I have no idea that it 
 will be so. I have no idea that there will be any less 
 call for self-denial, for stern faithfulness, for courage, 
 
 — yes, for daring for the right, — than there has been 
 in the past. Humanity has not gone one-tenth or one- 
 hundredth part of its journey. We compare ourselves 
 with the past, with pre-Christian or with mediaeval 
 times : it is for us rather to compare ourselves with 
 the idea of the perfect, to feel how great, how well- 
 nigh measureless is the distance yet to be travelled 
 over. The goal is still far aloft, and the way to it is 
 no easy one, but steep and winding, and perchance has 
 many a danger lurking by its side. Are we ready for 
 new toil, for more heroic aims, for severer duty, or will 
 we take our ease on the spot we have already reached, 
 
 — this is the question, answers to which will reveal 
 whether or not we are children of the coming time. 
 
188 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 II. 
 
 I turn now to some features of the ethics of Jesus 
 having such clear and positive merit that little ob- 
 jection is likely to be made to them. I essay no 
 comparison of him with Socrates or Sakya-mouni or 
 Confucius. This is a difficult and delicate task, which 
 should not be undertaken without an equipment of 
 historical knowledge and sympathy and imagination, 
 which few of those who so often and so lightly make 
 the attempt seem to me to have. I do not deny, in- 
 deed, that there may be no one idea in Jesus' teaching 
 that is not found in the teaching of others as well; 
 but I have rather in mind the prophet of Nazareth in 
 connection with the times in which he lived, and the 
 actual influence he has had upon men living in our 
 Western world. It cannot be claimed that we stand 
 in any such relation to Socrates or the Hindu prince 
 or Confucius, as to Jesus. Socrates has not been with- 
 out influence upon us, but it cannot be soberly called 
 a tithe of that which Jesus has had. Would that men 
 read the "Apology" oftener, — they would find meat 
 and drink in it, a tonic and an inspiration for their 
 lives ! But there is need for no such wish in relation 
 to the Gospels. Jesus is an ideal of goodness, all too 
 indistinct often, but hovering in the thought of well- 
 nigh every one of us. It is true that there is much 
 uncertainty relating not onl}'' to his life, but to his 
 teaching ; yet as there need be no doubt as to the 
 main tenor and events of his life, so there need be 
 none as to the commanding features of his teaching. 
 They make too largely consistent a whole, and be- 
 speak a mind of too much freshness and originality 
 
SOME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS. 189 
 
 and power, to allow us to think of them as coming in 
 an indeiinite way from an age otherwise so traditional, 
 so barren, and so prosaic. 
 
 First, we notice that he opposes the traditional mo- 
 rality of his time. And in this relation, what other 
 function, we may ask, is there for the prophet than to 
 purify and enlarge the moral ideal of men, to strip 
 righteousness of conventional expressions and reveal 
 its absolute and all-encompassing nature? To acquiesce 
 iu the moral requirements ordinarily allowed, to pro- 
 claim merely the old Mosaic law, so called, and insist 
 upon all tlie particularities of its observance, — what 
 need for Jesus to do that ? All this was being done 
 by the existing teachers of the nation, and especially 
 the Pharisees. The Pharisees were, no doubt, eminent 
 patriots, conservers of the national religious life and 
 its ancient traditions, and stood, as some one has re- 
 marked, to orthodox Judaism much as the Jesuits do 
 to the Catholic Church in its contiict with liberal ideas. 
 They had on their side, too, the majority of the law- 
 yers of the nation, — a class naturally inclined to con- 
 servatism, and whose function is somewhat obscured 
 to us by the title Scribe, which is usually given them 
 in the New Testament. As the Pharisees with this 
 legal following had a cause and an enthusiasm for it, 
 they were more influential and held in higher honor 
 by the mass of the people than the party of the Sad- 
 ducees, who, with their inclination to liberalism, and 
 their varnish of foreign ideas and manners, had lost a 
 measure of both religious and patriotic zeal. But it 
 was the mistake of the Pharisees to esteem as final 
 the moral code contained in their Scriptures. Chris- 
 tians affect to find this very strange in view of the 
 
190 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 added legislation of Jesus ; but that it is not strange 
 is shown by the very fact that they regard Christian 
 morality as final and incapable of being superseded. 
 It is, in fact, the part of a conservative temper the 
 world over to believe that things materially better 
 than the old cannot come. This is just as true now 
 as at any time. I find Liberals, even, who look with 
 a kind of disapproval, if not disbelief, upon any de- 
 parture from and advance upon their present religious 
 attitude. That which we know and are accustomed to 
 — the old wine — we all naturally think is best. But 
 Jesus did add to the old legislation ; he was, in fact, a 
 second '^ Moses " to those who accepted him. We will 
 not attempt to say how far his legislation was new, 
 and to what extent there were anticipations of it in 
 the old Law and Prophets. It is interesting to note 
 that almost always, when advances are made in the 
 world, — either intellectual or moral advances, — we 
 are all ready to accredit them, after they are accom- 
 plished, to the authorities whom we revere, though 
 when they were making, the authorities spoke to us 
 with no such clear voice, and our uncertainty may 
 have practically amounted to hostility. So, in the 
 future, it is possible that no reforms will ever be 
 accomplished for the human race that clever Chris- 
 tians will not claim, after they are accomplished, to 
 have been the natural expression of their own princi- 
 ples ; yet now it can hardly be said that their Master 
 speaks to them in such a way as to make them feel 
 that they must themselves accomplish the reforms. 
 
 One reformer always honors another, one prophet 
 always feels that he belongs to a succession. Each 
 knows well that it is not this or that particular cause, 
 
SOME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS- 191 
 
 as such, he is serving, but these as forms of one cause, 
 — demands of one principle, — which is itself absolute 
 though they all be relative, limitless though they all 
 be finite. Ever is it the triumph of the ideal good, the 
 victory of the just in the world. Only he is a genuine 
 reformer or prophet who serves his cause solely be- 
 cause of its Tightness, and gives to his special task the 
 form of this absolute consecration. It by no means fol- 
 lows, however, that each prophet honors the disciples of 
 another prophet, who perhaps cherish his words with- 
 out being aware of the animus and reach of thought 
 that lay behind them. Circumstances and conditions 
 change, and the eternal motive must prompt to new 
 words and new actions. As he would be no prophet to 
 us to-day who should merely repeat with skilful com- 
 mentary the message of eighteen hundred years ago, 
 so Jesus, had he but strikingly recast the words of 
 Moses or Isaiah, would have been a Scribe along with 
 the rest. One with them in fundamental thought he 
 was ; but he spoke from his own consciousness and 
 not from theirs. He vindicated the ideal to a gener- 
 ation in which idealism had become chiefly a tradition, 
 and convinced the most scrupulous followers of the old 
 law of sin, of righteousness, and of a judgment that, 
 to his rapt vision, hung over their nation. 
 
 Speaking more particularly, he gave the moral law 
 a more distinct inward application, saying that our 
 thoughts and words have a moral significance like that 
 of our actions. That we are not to act from wrong 
 motives is indeed a commonplace of morals ; but Jesus 
 virtually teaches that we are not to have the wrong 
 motives. Kepression has been the rule ordinarily laid 
 down. Jesus implies an exalted state of mind, in which 
 
192 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 there shall be no call for repression. Is it said that 
 this is impossible, — that our inward feelings are be- 
 yond our control, and that in any case we cannot be 
 held responsible for them, but only for the harm they 
 may lead us to do others ? Jesus will allow none of 
 these things. Nothing in the line of what is good is 
 impossible. If our inward feelings are wrong, we are 
 responsible for allowing them to exist, and can change 
 them ; and there is such a thing as harming ourselves 
 in a more serious sense than we can ever harm others. 
 Life is to become serious, to be held to a purpose, to 
 involve discipline, and the ideal on which we set our 
 hearts is not to be abandoned for numberless failures 
 to win it. What a profound — yes, I may say awful — 
 moral seriousness does Jesus reveal in his commands; 
 "If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it 
 out, and cast it from thee. ... If thy right hand caus- 
 eth thee to stumble, cue it off, and cast it from thee." 
 Yet the truth may be all with him, and none Avhat- 
 ever on the side of the easy conscientiousness that 
 makes the moral outfit of most of us. It may be that 
 there is no injury in life really to fear but a moral in- 
 jury ; that there is no comfort nor pleasure, no grace 
 of body or of mind, that can make up for the stains on 
 the moral nature that come from any species of ac- 
 tual or imagined sensuality. It may be that it would 
 be actually better to lose the e^^e or the hand than 
 to allow either to become an instrument of degrada- 
 tion to the spiritual nature. Is this asceticism ? No ; 
 but verily better, nobler, w^ould be asceticism of the 
 severest type than the torpor of conscience which al- 
 lows us to feel only passing reproaches, and no stings 
 and smarts, when unworthy acts or unworthy thoughts 
 
SOME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS. 193 
 
 are indulged in. There is no relaxing, to my mind, 
 of the command of absolute purity. Are we thereby 
 straining the possibilities of human nature ? Lecky 
 tells us that when the Eoman consul "Marius had 
 vanquished an army of the Teutons, their wives be- 
 sought the conqueror to permit them to become the 
 servants of the vestal virgins, in order that their honor, 
 at least, might be secure in slavery. Their request was 
 refused, and that night they all perished by their own 
 hands." ^ No ; if honor be a dream to many, in others 
 the tine impalpable thing is their very life. 
 
 Further, Jesus removes all barriers to the love we 
 owe our fellow-men. Brotherly and neighborly kind- 
 ness had indeed been granted before, and doubtless 
 the prophetic mind now and then caught glimpses of 
 a time of universal love and brotherhood. With Je- 
 sus, however, this love was to become the present and 
 abiding rule of life. Even our enemies are to be loved ; 
 no kind of malice or wish to injure is to be tolerated. 
 We are to forgive, not merely seven times, but sev- 
 enty times seven ; that is, forgiveness is an unlimited 
 Obligation. These are, it is true, commonplaces to-day, 
 though it be commonplaces of thought or speech rather 
 than of actual sentiment. But when Jesus uttered 
 them they were not even commonplaces of thought. 
 The humanity of the ancient world was, at best, a tri- 
 bal or a national rather than a universal humanity. 
 It may seem strange, and yet it is strictly true, that 
 the natural condition of mankind is one of mutual 
 enmity rather than affection, save in limited circles 
 of relationship : nay, with all our professions, and 
 with all our real advances in feeling, this is probably 
 
 1 History of Morals, ii. 361. 
 13 
 
194 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 to a great extent true to-day. It is true frequently of 
 nations, true of classes, true of corporations, true of 
 private individuals who are seeking the same prizes in 
 life. The reason is obvious : it is the instinct of self- 
 preservation, the desire to maintain ourselves and to 
 get the best places in life. Those, it is often said, can 
 love most who have least to do with the actual strug- 
 gle of life. They who are in the battle must assert 
 themselves ; they can have no fine scruples, but must 
 take advantage where they can, and may even injure 
 where they must. The battle, it is said, that science 
 has recently revealed to us as going on in the lower 
 world is going on equally in human society. Love and 
 brotherhood are hence for the idealist to talk of, pos- 
 sibly for the kingdom of heaven to realize somewhere ; 
 but in this world victory is for the strong. And per- 
 haps it is childish and sentimental, even if it is Chris- 
 tian, to care for so many weak and unprofitable mem- 
 bers of our species. Why not follow Nature, or rather 
 simply let Nature have her own way, and then only 
 the strong and the fit w^ould survive ? 
 
 In sober truth, I believe that all this is but the as- 
 sertion of the brute instincts in us, seeking indeed to 
 give a specious justification to themselves, taking on 
 the airs of science and human reasoning, but nowise 
 the utterance of what is strictly human in us. The 
 human is developed in us according as w^e act from 
 other motives than those of self-assertion, as we re- 
 member the ties that bind us to one another, and seek 
 only that good for ourselves which is consistent with 
 the good of all. It is the thought of humanity that 
 makes us human ; it is the bond linking us to and 
 making us a part of humanity — a bond which is no 
 
SOME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS. 195 
 
 natural force compelling us, but a fact in the ideal na- 
 ture of things, and constraining us only with an ideal 
 constraint — that makes our very dignity and glory. 
 Human brotherhood, as Jesus taught it, is an idea 
 which, if it took possession of human hearts, would 
 not allow some of the features of our present political 
 and social institutions to last a day. We act for the 
 most part from the lower motives, with slight modifica- 
 tions and a slight tempering of the conduct owing to 
 the influence of ideas from above. Eeligion demands 
 that the ideas have an absolute, an all-controlling 
 supremacy. In the " kingdom of heaven," of which 
 Jesus spoke, this demand was to be realized. None 
 should be members of it save those in whom love was 
 the absolute principle ; and this should be proved by 
 their having owned the claims of the lowest of their 
 brothers, — those who, in the bitterness of fate or in 
 return for their own sin, had come to nakedness or 
 famishing or the disgrace of prison walls. 
 
 There is this element of truth in Jesus' view, that 
 the " kingdom " is to come from above, and not in 
 the natural course of things ; namely, that it is not 
 to come, and cannot, from the onworking of man's 
 natural self-regarding impulses. It is the dogma of 
 a certain school of Liberal philosophers that if men 
 " are left free to act in accordance with their obvious 
 interests and their natural dispositions, their conduct 
 will tend to the benefit of the whole of mankind." 
 There is, to my mind, a grain of truth and a mass 
 of error in such a dogma. The Middle Age was a 
 time when the natural differences between men had 
 comparatively free play, when law and government 
 meant little but what those strong enough chose to 
 
196 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 make them. Did the differences happily supplement 
 one another, and the conduct of the strong and capa- 
 ble " tend to the benefit of the whole of mankind " ? 
 Instead of this, history discloses to us the strong, — 
 few in numberS; yet almost wanton in pride and 
 power ; princes, ecclesiastical as well as secular, — 
 "benefiting" men by making them their vassals and 
 slaves ; and a part of the significance of the rise of 
 the absolute monarchy in the fifteenth century con- 
 sisted in putting checks upon the unrestricted free- 
 dom of the strong, in preventing them in many an 
 instance from following their "obvious interests and 
 natural dispositions," — in a word, in diminishing the 
 inequalities which in a pure state of nature and free- 
 dom are always bound to show themselves. And ill 
 will it fare with any republic when its boasted free- 
 dom comes to mean simply the freedom of one class 
 of its citizens to appropriate to itself the services of 
 the remainder. The future will join with the past, 
 in my opinion, in showing it to be but a pleasing 
 dream that the selfishness of one man shall so neatly 
 adjust itself to the selfishness of another that they 
 will perforce live together as brothers. Brotherhood 
 means no such contrivance ; it is a thing of the heart, 
 and must come from the heart. It must crown our 
 selfish impulses ; it can never spring from them. It 
 will descend, if ever it does descend upon the earth, 
 out of an ideal region, and rule us, if it does rule 
 us, by the spell and might of its ideal beauty and its 
 ideal riglit. 
 
 Hence, the significance of that primary aim which 
 Jesus would set to human life, — namply, to seek the 
 " kingdom of God." How little of reality have those 
 
SOME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS. 197 
 
 words to us now ! — I mean, not merely to Liberals, 
 but, comparatively speaking, to the whole modern 
 Christian world. How we seek to turn the kingdom 
 into a metaphor, or to substitute for it all manner of 
 abstractions ! Or if we still hold to its concrete sub- 
 stance, how we put the divine city and fellowship afar 
 off in the clouds and to the end of time, inwardly say- 
 ing that it is well enough there, but cannot be seri- 
 ously thought of as giving the ideal and the rule for 
 this present life ! Accordingly, the present enthusi- 
 asms of men, so far as they have any, seem so meas- 
 ured and finite ; they do not lift us to any height, nor 
 do they touch our depths. Ah ! to have lived — who 
 does not at times wish it ? — when the measureless 
 good of the *' kingdom of God" seemed waiting for 
 men to enter into it; when human life was lit up with 
 the transcendent hope ; when heaven seemed about to 
 descend and touch and sanctify the earth ! There is 
 no wonder that the multitude of those early believers 
 were of one heart and soul ; that not one of them said 
 that aught of the things he possessed was his own, but 
 they had all things common. As they were not play- 
 ing with words, but believed in the "kingdom of God,'^ 
 how could they forbear to live in some measure then, 
 in their earthly lives, as they believed they should live 
 thereafter ? 
 
 The phrase "kingdom of God" is perhaps outworn 
 for those who would not, under a cloak and venerable 
 remnant of piety, hide the light that is in them ; but 
 the thought which lies at its. basis is of perennial 
 interest and worth. Of what is untrue and harmful 
 in the Christian conception of it, I may speak later. 
 The truth underlying it may be stated in a few words : 
 
198 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 It is that man belongs vitally to another order of 
 things than that of which he has experience. He can 
 see what is, and at the same time' form a conception 
 of what ought to be ; and in that conception he finds 
 the goal of what is and the end to which his thoughts 
 and energies rightfully turn. And as he forms this con- 
 ception in virtue of the rationality that is in him, all 
 rational beings can form it, and, as matter of fact, with 
 varying clearness do form it ; and the goal is thence 
 a goal for all rational beings. Moreover, the goal is 
 of nothing that is absolutely apart from those who 
 contemplate it, far beyond and above them as it is ; 
 it is a goal for rational beings, and is nothing more 
 nor less than that of a perfect society or community 
 of them. Anciently designated a kingdom, we now 
 may more naturally call it a republic, if we are not 
 thereby made to forget that the laws of it, though 
 in one sense of our own making, are in another sense 
 set for us in the ideal nature of things as unalter- 
 ably as the goal itself. For us, is really only the 
 creation of ourselves after the ideal pattern. But bet- 
 ter still, perhaps, we may call it a brotherhood, since 
 thereby the idea of association, of a common interest, 
 a common life, a common joy, are most effectually and 
 most touchingly suggested to us. There is a yearn- 
 ing in our human nature for brotherhood. We are 
 no more satisfied with the modern aim of self-culture 
 than with the older one of the salvation of our indi- 
 vidual souls. We want in our deeper moments to rise 
 above the self, the individual, and feel that we are 
 parts of some grander whole, some nobler society, and 
 that we have in it a more than private mission and 
 work. The very good and happiness we crave we do 
 
SOxME FEATURES OF THE ETHICS OF JESUS. 199 
 
 not wish to win for ourselves, but to have come in 
 consequence of our world-connections, to be a kind 
 of bounty and answering benediction from the whole. 
 This only is religion, when the law for me is the law 
 for all ; when the good for me is the good of all ; 
 when the tides and the gladness of universal being 
 sweep through me, and I know it is no longer this 
 poor finite self that lives, but the world-self that lives 
 in me, and the world-purpose that leads me on. 
 
 And so truly do I believe the " kingdom of God " 
 in its essential meaning' to be the central theme of 
 religion, that I regard some fresh apprehension of it, 
 some feeling of its truth so real and deep that all 
 uncertain and merely traditional language shall be 
 avoided in publishing it, and some clear, simple, un- 
 ambiguous statements of its practical meaning in con- 
 nection with to-day's habits of thought and life, to 
 be the indispensable preparation for a Keligion for 
 the Future. And in this sense we are still on the 
 foundation of the prophets, Jesus himself being the 
 corner-stone. 
 
XI. 
 
 DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY THE 
 NEEDS OF OUR TIME? 
 
 IT is impossible to forget the moral services which 
 Judaism and Christianity have rendered to the 
 world. To seek to relax the obligations wliich the 
 old religions have made us feel, to lower or anywise 
 abate from the loftiness of the ideals which they have 
 given to the world, would be to make not progress, 
 but retrogression. Who would ignore the moral in- 
 sight and heroism of an Amos or an Isaiah ? Who 
 would put out of his mind, or could if he would, the 
 lessons of gentleness, of humility, of purity of mind, 
 of charity, of brotherhood, which fell from the lips 
 and shone out in the life of the Prophet of Nazareth? 
 Surely, not by forgetting, but by treasuring all the 
 good the past has won, can we hope to advance in 
 the future. 
 
 None the less must the advance be made ; and in 
 truth all prophecy, Jevrish and Christian included, 
 has a temporary as well as a permanent element. 
 Jesus spoke to those of his time, and with the lan- 
 guage and the thought — and we may add with the 
 limitations — of his time. But the time and the 
 language and the thought of men change, and wider 
 horizons are opened to their minds. What is the 
 voice of prophecy for to-day ? is the question. All 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OE JESUS SATISFY? 201 
 
 in vain would it be for me to assume the prophetic 
 attitude. The prophet does not raise questions, — he 
 answers them. He has none of that hesitating, ten- 
 tative spirit and method which mark the thought of 
 even the best men of this transition age, and which 
 will only cease when the new age shall have come, 
 and the fire of irresistible convictions shall once more 
 burn in the human breast. I am but a questioner 
 along with the rest. I but seek to turn the attention 
 toward the needs and problems of the present, and to 
 show that they at least call for distinct answers and 
 solutions, such as we look for in vain in the teaching 
 of Jesus. For though I am far from denying, but 
 rather have asserted, that Jesus taught eternal prin- 
 ciples, I must add that we want more than this ; we 
 want the application of the principles to the issues 
 and questions of to-day, and in a form apprehensible 
 to the thought of to-day. Else, as has been said, the 
 principles may become as barren as they are old.^ 
 Nothing is so common in these days as seeming rever- 
 ence for the great rules of righteousness, along with 
 ignorance of or indifference to what they mean and 
 exact in the conduct of life. We want to make this 
 impossible, save with a distinct consciousness of hy- 
 pocrisy. Yes, sometimes those who themselves most 
 sincerely and impressively utter the great ideas are 
 unconscious of the full sweep of their application. 
 The personage in Terence's play who utters the 
 
 ^ Conscience, righteousness, what is there new in these ? Tlicir 
 maxims are as old as tlie hills. Truly, and as barren often as the 
 rocks. Tlie novelty of righteousness is not in itself, but in its 
 novel application to the particular unrighteousness of a particular 
 age. — Felix Adler : Creed and Deed, p. 164. 
 
202 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 famous sentiment, "Homo sum, humani nihil a me 
 alienum puto," has no horror at infanticide, and calls 
 it irrational to keep a child alive who is in danger of 
 growing up into a career of shame.-^ I do not cite it 
 as a parallel case ; but it is not to be forgotten that 
 Jesus who utters the Golden Kule, which adequately 
 interpreted would put an end perhaps to all the ills 
 of society, makes no condemnation of slavery ; and 
 this, though a party existed in his day which had 
 reached a height of moral development from which 
 it was condemned, — the Essenes. Hence, ** Chris- 
 tian ethics " could be of slight service in the late 
 Antislavery struggles in our land. There is nothing 
 in the New Testament inconsistent with the main- 
 tenance of slavery, if only masters are guilty of no 
 wilful oppression or inhumanity. It was only by 
 going back to principles of which Christian ethics 
 themselves are but a partial statement, and which 
 strangely enough have found modern expression in 
 that philosophy of human rights to which the Chris- 
 tian Church has as often taken an attitude of hos- 
 tility as of sympathy, that the way was prepared for 
 the abolition of slavery in this country. 
 
 What then, let us ask generally, though without 
 essaying any kind of formal completeness, are some 
 of the moral needs of our time ? 
 
 1. First, I will mention that of intellectual scrupu- 
 lousness and honesty. It ^vas an old Eoman saying 
 that "two augurs could never meet each other with- 
 out laughing." I doubt if there is any intellectual 
 vice to-day so flagrant or coarse as this. I have rather 
 in mind what may seem to many light faults, — for 
 1 Lecky, History of Morals, ii. 30, n. 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 203 
 
 example, putting interpretations on doctrines not in 
 accordance witli their natural meaning, conforming to 
 usages after the ideas at their basis have ceased to be 
 matters of conviction, staying in a church or denomi- 
 nation on sufferance and not because of a hearty 
 common belief with them. Doubtless this is often 
 done with good intentions, and some good may be 
 mingled with it as with all evil ; but it strikes at 
 what is of priceless value — I might say, rather, of 
 absolute necessity — to the religious teaclier ; namely, 
 the full heart and the consciousness of entire ve- 
 racity. Experience proves, too, that doctrines and 
 institutions which require this kind of support are 
 themselves on the downward road ; and the process 
 of decay can at the best be stayed, and may even at 
 times (as if in irony of our equivocal intentions) be 
 hastened, by the use of such means. Carlyle is said 
 to have pointed out Dean Stanley to a friend, and 
 remarked, "There goes our friend the Dean, boring 
 holes hi the bottom of the good ship Church of Eng- 
 land, — and does n't know it ! " ^ 
 
 Yet not of the uselessness of the compromising 
 spirit, but of the fact that it is contrary to a true 
 standard of intellectual honor, would I, speak. Not 
 a few have apparently yet to get the idea that the 
 intellect as well as the will and outward life is under 
 law ; that they are not at liberty to believe what they 
 like ; that conviction is only honorable as it is only 
 possible in any strength, when formed in obedience 
 to some kind of necessity. I do not wonder that with 
 such notions men deem ethics too small a thing to 
 
 1 The anecdote is related by G. W. S. in the New York 
 " Tribune " (semi-weekly), Feb. 25, 1881. 
 
204 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 become religion. It is too small, when so partially un- 
 derstood. But ethics really means whatever ought to 
 he, and hence is not without bearing on every part of 
 life ; it holds up an idea for the intellect as well as 
 the outward actions, and searches the most hidden 
 motives and processes of the soul of man. "Thou 
 shoLildst believe the truth," it says ; '' and thou mayst 
 not twist it to thy liking, or anywise play with it; and 
 the truth must be according to thine own reason, else 
 thou art guilty of profaning the holiest within thee." 
 And yet the evil is not one that can be met by any 
 precept. It is a secret spirit, and can only be met 
 by another spirit, which shall, as it were by magic, 
 put health and soundness into the whole intellectual 
 nature. It is the spirit of downrightness, of absolute 
 and utter sincerity. If such a spirit should get abroad 
 in the community, it would turn many a young man 
 from the easy, compromising course he is now con- 
 templating, and empty churches of not a few who 
 listen as well as of some who preach. 
 
 A new seriousness is needed in all our thinking. 
 Men play w^ith phrases, and think if they can use the 
 same words, differences of thought need not seriously 
 concern thenr. They build enormous conclusions on 
 the slenderest premises, and assume to know on the 
 ground of positive science, for example, what never 
 was so learned, materialism being often as assumptive 
 and headlong as the opposite way of thinking. Or 
 perhaps the ground of rational thought is. abandoned, 
 and by will or arbitrary faith, or for some species of 
 subjective interest, a settlement of philosophical prob- 
 lems is assumed to be reached. 
 
 What, now, have we in the ethics of Jesus that 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 205 
 
 can be distinctly felt by men to have a bearing upon 
 this lack of straightforwardness, this arbitrariness, 
 not to say dishonesty in matters of the intellect ? It 
 is hard to find anything. I do not mean that Jesus 
 positively slights the intellectual virtues, and I do 
 not agree with those who put this interpretation on 
 the first beatitude. It is simply that he does not 
 take any account of them ; that there is not a sin- 
 gle passage, to my recollection, in wdiich he makes 
 any emphatic statement concerning them ; and let it 
 be remembered it is such distinct utterance that the 
 moral haziness of the present time calls for. The rea- 
 son of. the silence of Jesus is not far to seek. The 
 duty of man was simpler in that day, because life itself 
 was simpler and the horizon of man narrower. More- 
 over, the supernatural order, it was conceived, would 
 soon break in upon the natural ; and only the primal 
 duties of the heart and life were emphasized. Science 
 and criticism were not as now breaking up an old 
 view of the world ; and so far as the time was transi- 
 tional, it was conceived to be simply toward the com- 
 pletion and practical realization of a view which had 
 long had currency. At the present time, our views 
 of Nature and of man are being in many ways radi- 
 cally recast ; nothing less than a new philosophy, a 
 new general view of the world, seems to be in process 
 of development, and never before was there such oc- 
 casion for the exercise of severe intellectual virtue. 
 As matter of fact the ethics of the intellect, instead 
 of being taught by the followers of Jesus, are most 
 impressively displayed by those whom Christian teach- 
 ers have generally thought it their duty to oppose 
 or rebuke : I mean the students and investigators in 
 
206 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 science and history. I am no believer in the all- 
 sufficingness of science, or in the finality of the les- 
 sons of history; yet the researches of students in 
 these departments have in many cases illustrated to 
 us an open-mindedness, an eagerness and reverence 
 for truth, and a simple faithfulness of utterance that 
 make a model for the conduct of all thinking. A 
 lesson in morals, in ideal scrupulousness, is conveyed 
 by every genuine scientific investigation, and by none 
 more notably than those of the revolutionizer of our 
 views of Nature, the foremost scientific figure of the 
 century, Charles Darwin. Let the same openness, the 
 same fearlessness of investigation, the same virility 
 of thought, and the same exact 'correspondence of 
 word to thought characterize our religious thinking, 
 and a revolution of equal consequence in this depart- 
 ment of human interest will be the result. 
 
 *2, T turn now to the need of higher political con- 
 ceptions and morality/. The State is not merely, as 
 some would have it, a necessary evil, but has a sacred, 
 I might almost say, a religious character and mission. 
 One of its functions is, indeed, to prevent violence, to 
 restrain passion, to act as society's police. As the 
 law of gravitation keeps the planets in their courses 
 and binds every atom to every other, so outwardly, at 
 least, the State is to maintain a similar order among 
 men. But, far more and higher than this, the State is 
 a Commonwealth, and is to secure the ends needful 
 for all. Each man has an individual sphere of action, 
 where he is responsible only to himself ; but when his 
 action touches the interest of another, he has another 
 responsibility, — namely, to the State. The State 
 must see that in matters and affairs where the ends 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 207 
 
 of the many are affected, those ends are not made 
 impossible of realization ; it cannot allow individuals 
 or combinations of individuals to win advantages at 
 the expense and to the loss of others. Particularly 
 in our own country, where ideas of equality are at 
 the basis of the political system, is such practical 
 injustice out of place. We have dispossessed kings 
 and priests of their rights over us ; we have a govern- 
 ment of the people. The question is. Shall it be a 
 government for the people ? I do not mean a class 
 called by that name, but for all. Shall the common, 
 the universal good be secured, and no individual free- 
 dom or rights be allowed which tend to the destruc- 
 tion of the freedom and rights of others ? These 
 questions must be answered, one way or another, in 
 the next century of our national existence ; and if 
 the choice were between a religion of the old sort and 
 a politics intent on giving them a righteous answer, 
 I see not how any generous-minded young man could 
 hesitate to choose the service of the State. There is 
 a touch of religion in all unselfish devotion to public 
 ends, and it is just such devotion that is the crying 
 political need of our time. The question of better 
 civil service is at bottom nothing else. 
 
 But what are the lessons which the Christian Gos- 
 pels read us in political morality ? The political 
 ideas of Jesus are a strange contrast to anything we 
 know of by experience. His land was a Eoman 
 province. There is no evidence that he did not love 
 it, and every reason to believe that his feeling for it 
 was strong and deep. But his method of political 
 redemption was one of which we in these days can 
 scarcely entertain the idea. It was not indeed politi- 
 
208 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 cal redemption, but rather deliverance at the hand of 
 one from whom emperors and empires derive their 
 powers, and who, though the Lord of the whole earth, 
 was in a special sense the God of Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob. Do we suppose that the nobler motive 
 which leads men into the service of the State, — the 
 passion for justice and the common weal, — was ab- 
 sent from the breast of Jesus ? Rather can our sense 
 of justice be nowhere better refreshed than by drink- 
 ing in his words ; nowhere has the tenderness for the 
 least among men been more strikingly shown than in 
 the memorials left us of his sacred life. If justice 
 w^as not to come from the State, it was, as he believed, 
 to come from a higher than the State ; if not through 
 blundering human instrumentalities, it w^as to come 
 through the heaven-sent " Son of Man,'^ before whom 
 and his angel ministers all mankind would soon be 
 gathered. Christian men and women lived on this 
 faith in the early time, and nothing is more pathetic 
 in history than the story of its gradually fading out 
 of human souls. Even now one will find it in the 
 creeds ; and a slight sense of the old awe and the old 
 triumph may perchance come over us as we listen to 
 the chanting of the Te Deiim, that chiefest of Chris- 
 tian hymns, and hear the words, "We believe that 
 thou shalt come to be our Judge ; ^^ but such confes- 
 sions are on the lips rather than in the hearts of the 
 worshippers. 
 
 Accordingly nothing is so lightly and even apologeti- 
 cally treated by liberal Christian critics and teachers 
 as this- primitive and alwaj's, at least, professed Chris- 
 tian belief. Yet it is no accident, no bit of Oriental 
 coloring, however much of this there may be in filling 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SxVTISFY? 2C9 
 
 out the details of the final scene, but the climax and 
 consummation of the Christian view of the world, — 
 an answer to that deep question of man's heart, which 
 is not merely what are the just and the good, but 
 hoiv are they to be accomplished ; how is an actual 
 end to be made of injustice and wrong. Religion 
 will dawn anew on the world when the old problem 
 again mightily engages us, and another and equally 
 wide-reaching answer is won. The problem is justice, 
 — the bringing to every one the means and opportu- 
 nity for the highest and best things. To every one, — 
 this is the very meaning of justice. The highest and 
 best things are not for you or for me, or for any sort 
 or class of men, but for all : they are the end, the 
 right, the ideal destiny of every human being. But if 
 this is the problem, Jesus' method of solving it is no 
 longer capable of belief. In simple honest}^, it must be 
 said to belong to the category of humanity's blighted 
 hopes. The " Son of Man," who was to come so soon, 
 has not come in all these centuries to bring the prom- 
 ised redemption : the very idea of his coming belongs 
 to a way of thinking now outgrown. 
 
 Since Jesus believed in the impossible, he outlined 
 for us no really practicable way of reaching the de- 
 sired end. He was not concerned with the State, 
 indicating neither ideal nor practical course for it to 
 follow. A similar indifference to and unbelief in what 
 is to us practicable is shown in the writings of the 
 Christian Fathers. Tertullian, early in the third cen- 
 tury, says that " nothing is more remote from his 
 interests than public affairs." ^ Lecky remarks of 
 
 ^ Ncc uUa res aliena rnagis quam publica. — Apology^ chap. 
 xxxviii. 
 
 14 
 
210 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 Saint Cyprian (who belongs a little later in the same 
 century) that ^^the conception of a converted empire 
 never appears to have flashed across the mind of the 
 saint : the only triumph he predicted for the Church 
 was that of another world." ^ Saint Augustine, a cen- 
 tury later, pathetically asks, " What difference can it 
 make to a man who is about to die whose government 
 he lives under, if only there is no compulsion to im- 
 piety and injustice ? " ^ His great work, from which 
 this quotation is made, was intended to show, accord- 
 ing to Lecky,* that the "city of God" was not to be 
 on earth, and that the downfall of the empire, under 
 barbarian invasions, need not trouble his fellow Chris- 
 tians. If we wish a worthy conception of the mission 
 of the State, we shall find it in the old heathen phi- 
 losophers and emperors and lawyers rather than in 
 Jesus or his followers. Marcus Aurelius, says Lecky, 
 "made it his aim to realize the conception of a free 
 State in which all citizens are equal, and of a royalty 
 which makes it its first duty to respect the liberty of 
 the citizens."* "Slavery," says the Eoman lawyer 
 Morentinus, is " a custom of the law of nations, by 
 which one man, contrary to the law of Nature, is sub- 
 jected to the dominion of another." " As far as 
 natural law is concerned," said another (Ulpian), " all 
 men are equal." "By natural law," again, "all men 
 are born free." 
 
 1 History of Morals, i. 485. 
 
 2 De Civitate Dei, v. 17, — "Quid interest sub cujus imperio 
 vivat homo moriturus, si illi qui imperant, ad impia et iniquia non 
 cogent." 
 
 3 Morals, i. 435. 
 
 * Morals, i. 264. Cf. M. Aureliu8*s Meditations, i. 14. 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 211 
 
 These conceptions, with all that they imply, were 
 never taken up by the Church ; and the work of giv- 
 ing them effect through the State is a far more diffi- 
 cult one than that of trusting and praying for the 
 *' kingdom of God," as the Church has done. We are 
 now coming to feel that if justice is to be done in 
 this world (and perhaps equally in any other), it is 
 we (that is, rational beings) who must do it, that pray- 
 ing for its accomplishment is but wasted energy ; that 
 its very sacredness commands that we cease all such 
 trifling with it as prayer has now come to be, and 
 give it a seat in our own hearts and an execution in 
 oar laws and institutions. Man is to inherit the 
 sanctity and the glory that were to invest the " Son 
 of Man," sitting on his judgment-seat. For, I take 
 it, the doing of justice is a sacred thing. There is a 
 divinity hedging about every king or judge or magis- 
 trate or private citizen who takes this task into his 
 hands. For though justice as a reality in human 
 conduct and government is a poor shifting thing, the 
 demand for it is eternal, and issues not from man, nor 
 from the earth, nor from the stars, but from somewhat 
 older than they ; and he who executes it acts in that 
 moment as the delegate of God. 
 
 A new reverence for the State we want, then, — 
 not the blind submission, not the passive obedience 
 which has so often been the attitude enjoined upon 
 Christians, but a reverence for the mission of the 
 State, for its idea ; a reverence which shall recognize 
 the dignity of the servants of the State, which shall 
 demand that all legislation and administration shall 
 in increasing measure fulfil the demands of the idea; 
 a reverence which shall thus be the source of prog- 
 
212 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 ress, and not the support of unreasoning conserva- 
 tism. A new patriotism we want, not as an append- 
 age, but as a part of ethics and religion. Here is 
 not merely where we eat and sleep and work and 
 travel, but this land is a field of duty ; here we are 
 stationed, hfere we have a task. We are linked to 
 a larger whole than our family or the circle of our 
 business interests. For public ends we are to live. 
 The public service must come to have a dignity and 
 honor in our eyes such as no work on private ac- 
 count can have ; and we shall enter it, if to this 
 we are called, as priests might enter a temple, and 
 with thoughts as religious as theirs. The more do 
 we need a new patriotism, since as men are now so 
 largely studying the past, considering what has been 
 rather than what may and ought to be, and learn- 
 ing that free institutions have so often failed, a kind 
 of scholarly scepticism is arising as to the future 
 of this land, if not, indeed, a distrust of our funda- 
 mental doctrine of the rights of man. It is a great 
 experiment, viewed from the standpoint of history, — 
 this giving of the sovereign power equally into the 
 hands of all citizens j and those who will have cer- 
 tain proof of success before they act must halt and 
 tremble, if not sigh for other times. But those who 
 have it in their blood to believe in the experiment 
 wdll, by their very belief, help to carry it on to tri- 
 umph. American patriotism is more than attachment 
 to this land of ours : it is attachment to an idea, it 
 is belief in a cause, — the cause of liberty and hu- 
 man rights ; and for the issue every one of us has a 
 measure of responsibility. 
 
 The State itself must also advance. It must assume 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 213 
 
 new duties, — new, that is, not to its mission, but to 
 its past performance. Freedom is good, but it must 
 be universal ; and if my freedom tends to the destruc- 
 tion of another's, mine must be limited. What makes 
 the right of the State to interfere and prevent domes- 
 tic slavery ? What but its very mission to secure 
 and maintain the personal rights of every one within 
 its borders ? Are there then no other encroachments 
 of the naturally stronger over the naturally weaker ? 
 I will not now undertake to answer this question 
 specifically ; but wherever there is a tendency of this 
 sort ; wherever one man or a set of men get property 
 in land or means of transportation or instruments of 
 production or the means of subsistence, to such an ex- 
 tent as to place others largely at their mercy, — there 
 the State should interfere, and, whether by legisla- 
 tion or actual administration in its own name, prevent 
 the mono[)oly, and act for the good of all. The State 
 with us is not, as it often was in old time, the rule of 
 the stronger over the weaker : if it were, it would 
 have no sanctity or defence ; if it should become so, 
 then revolution would be commanded. The State is 
 for justice, — to see to it that the strong do not rule 
 the weak, to break the force of the brute struggle for 
 existence. Most ominous of all would be the future of 
 that State wherein freedom should be ostensibly hon- 
 ored, and yet in the very name of freedom the bonds 
 of servitude be put on men, women, and children ; ^ 
 wherein freedom would thus mean a freedom from 
 law, from State examination and supervision, and be 
 
 1 Cf. John Stuart Mill (Political Economy, ii. 579): "Frecriom 
 of contract, in the case of children, is but another word for free- 
 dom of coercion." 
 
214 ^ ETHICAL RELIGIOK 
 
 only a specious cloak behind which men might pursue 
 their worst seltishness. 
 
 A very different spirit must animate the new re- 
 ligion from that which animated the old. The Stoic 
 maxim and not that implied in the teaching of Jesus 
 must furnish the rule for human life : " The wise 
 man must take part in public life/' — TroXiTeveo-Oat t6v 
 crocf^ov. For through the State rather than through 
 any mythical judgment in the clouds, the ends of 
 justice and right are in an important measure to 
 be worked out. 
 
 3. But if we have need of a new political morality, 
 very closely related thereto is our need of a new in- 
 dustrial ethics. While the State should to my mind 
 include economy to a certain extent, so that there 
 might be some meaning in the phrase '' ijolitical econ- 
 omy," — and hence the true tendency is toward the 
 assumption, or at least direction, by the State of such 
 properties and businesses as become large and public 
 in their influences, — the time is yet far distant when 
 a perfect and detailed and particular justice can be 
 prescribed or done by the State. In any case, indus- 
 try may, relatively speaking, be treated as a separate 
 topic. We live from day to day by our own industry 
 or by that of others ; for I mean by industry not all 
 kinds of pursuits, but those which aim to satisfy our 
 physical needs and provide for our material comfort. 
 Industrial concerns are those which touch us to the 
 quick : a disorder here means so much less bread for 
 some one to eat, so much of an increase in the death- 
 rate. Society has always been partially, I may say 
 largely, made up of those whose only means of com- 
 manding the necessaries, not to say the comforts, of 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 215 
 
 life lay in their hands and arms, either by way of 
 labor or of threatening. I say always, yet I do not 
 say necessarily ; and here is the whole point. There 
 are doubtless native inequalities among men, and there 
 always will be. But the true industrial order would 
 be one in which the inequalities would mutually sup- 
 plement one another, according to an ideal law of jus- 
 tice and humanity. This ideal order does not however 
 belong to history, but to the future, — society did not 
 fall from it, but is to rise to it ; and the call to rise to 
 it is felt to lie in the very nature and constitution of 
 humanity, whenever it sees through its muddy vesture 
 of brutality and selfishness, and becomes aware of the 
 beatings of its own heart. 
 
 The ideal order is, in a word, co-operation. It 
 means for those engaged in the production of any 
 means of subsistence or comfort that they seek no 
 more than a fair profit from the communit}^ which 
 they serve, and that they divide the profit fairly among 
 themselves. There is apparently little thought of 
 fairness and justice in the present industrial arrange- 
 ments. Services are doubtless done both to the com- 
 munity and by the employer to the employed, as by 
 the employed to the employer; but the simple fact 
 that business is ordinarily undertaken for " profit," or, 
 as is said, with " business motives," shows that fair- 
 ness or equitableness, not to say humanity, are not the 
 determining motives. 
 
 The upward limit of the employer's prices is not 
 ordinarily any thought of justice, but the knowledge 
 of what can or will be paid. And the wages he is 
 apt to pay go as high, not as considerations of jus- 
 tice would suggest, but as the demands of the labor- 
 
216 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 ers can make them go, and sink as low as men or 
 women — and perhaps children — can be found who 
 will take them. *' The very idea," says John Stuart 
 Mill, "'of distributive justice, or of any proportional- 
 ity between success and merit, or between success and 
 exertion, is in the present state of society so mani- 
 festly chimerical as to be relegated to the regions 
 of romance." ^ A reviewer naively remarks, " The at- 
 tempt of writers like Bastiat to show an exact har- 
 mony between the rules of political economy and the 
 demands of absolute justice involves, like the opposite 
 error of Mr. Froude, a confusion between economical 
 rules and moral precepts." ^ That is, in j)lain words, 
 economy is one thing, and ethics quite another ; and 
 by the '^ opposite error of Mr. Froude " was probably 
 meant a demand on his part that there be an infusion 
 of ethics into economy, which is at least more hon- 
 orable, and I believe more likely to succeed, than the 
 attempt of those who would defend and justify the 
 present industrial arrangements on the ground not 
 only that they are rooted '• in the nature of things," 
 but that they always mean "service for service."^ 
 Service for service ? In words, yes ; but what not only 
 of the intention, but of the equity of the exchange ? 
 Suppose that I succor a drowning man, and before 
 doing so, exact of him the greater part of his posses- 
 sions. That is undoubtedly service for service ; his 
 life he plainly values more than his possessions. But 
 
 ^ Chapters on Socialism. 
 
 2 Tiie Nation, Oct. 4, 1877, p. 216. 
 
 3 Cf. article on the identity of " Private Wenlth and Public 
 Welfare," by Hon. Edward Atkinson, in Unitarian Review, Decem- 
 ber, 1881. 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 217 
 
 what should you say of my exaction ? So there are 
 those who take the possessions of men to-day, often 
 the entire possessions, — for myriads possess little or 
 nothing but strength of hand and limb, — and in 
 return give them but the bare means of subsistence. 
 precious Equity ! 
 
 A new ethics of industry must arise ; or, I might 
 almost say, ethics must be now applied for the first 
 time in this department of human activity. What 
 does the ethics of Jesus give us in this direction ? 
 In truth, if we turn from the ideas of our time to 
 those of Jesus, it is almost like going from one world 
 into another. Did he not feel for poverty ? Yes ; his 
 sympathies were boundless. But his remedy for it, 
 aside from gifts of charity, indicates a notion of provi- 
 dence, of the relation between man and God, that 
 may at times adorn a poem or a tale, but has lost all 
 hold upon our sober belief. It was not so much even 
 individual toil and labor as trust, — belief that as we 
 are of more value than the sparrows, so we shall be 
 no less provided for than they. Consider the birds, 
 he said, that neither reap nor gather into barns ; the 
 lilies, that neither toil nor spin ! How strangely con- 
 trasted with this idyllic view of the world is that to 
 which we in recent years have become accustomed ! 
 The language of Darwin is here better than any para- 
 phrase : " We behold," he says, " the face of ^Nature 
 bright with gladness ; we often see superabundance 
 of food. We do not see, or we forget, that the birds 
 which ar^idly singing round us mostly live on insects 
 or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life ; or 
 we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, 
 or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts 
 
218 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 of prey. We do not always bear in mind that though 
 food may now be superabundant, it is not so at all 
 seasons of each year. ... I estimated/' he says again, 
 " chiefly from the greatly reduced number of nests 
 in the spring, that the winter of 1854-55 destroyed 
 four-fifths of the birds in my own grounds." ^ The 
 fact is that the "heavenly Father," of whom Jesus 
 spoke, probably denies food and protection to more of 
 his creatures than he actually provides for ; if he did 
 not, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny 
 of any single pair of them. Hence, there often arises 
 a struggle for existence, which for severity and piti- 
 lessness can hardly be surpassed by anything our im- 
 agination can conceive. Man also is involved in the 
 same process. Is he not often equally pressed with 
 the struggle, and as unconcernedly left to his fate by 
 the " heavenly Father " ? 
 
 Darwin would console us, in reference to the lower 
 orders of being, " with the belief that the war of Na- 
 ture- is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is 
 generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, 
 and the happy survive." Ah ! but man is not one of 
 the lower orders of being, and the consolation nowise 
 fits our grief for him. Man is an animal who thinks, 
 and does feel fear ; his death is often miserably drawn 
 out ; he survives often long after he or others can see 
 the use of living; and sometimes it is at last forgotten 
 that he is a man, and he becomes to many but a mass 
 of flesh or filth, cumbering the ground. Oh, if we 
 have a view of human nature that causes u» no shud- 
 der and no resentment when we think or know of 
 this ; if we do not say, O remorseless struggle, thou 
 ^ Origin of Species, pp. 49, 54. 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 219 
 
 Last no right or place in the circle of human rela- 
 tions, there only the law of respect and help and pity- 
 should have sway ! — then am I at loss to know how 
 to proceed. I can only address myself at the outset to 
 those who have a different estimate of human nature, 
 who respond to the thought of Jesus' words, if not to 
 the inference he draws from them, " Ye are of more 
 value than many sparrows ; " who believe that Ham- 
 let's words, ^' How noble in reason ! how infinite in 
 faculties ! in form and moving how express and admi- 
 rable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension 
 how like a god ! " — that these are none too good for 
 man, since though they flatter him as he often is, it 
 is with the portrait of what he may be. I can only 
 address those who see in man, in every man, some- 
 what of measureless possibilities, of priceless worth. 
 On those who think in this way a new burden is laid. 
 We can no longer, without hypocrisy, commend the 
 poor and unfortunate to the care of the "heavenly 
 Father ; " nor can we assent to the cool indifference 
 and practical materialism of laissez-faire doctrinaires, 
 though the facts of the economist and the thoughts 
 of man lying at the basis of the Christian confidence 
 have equally our acknowledgment. We have, in a 
 word, to cherish the thought and to change the facts. 
 For though the facts of external Nature — of rain 
 and the soil and its fruits — are not in our power, the 
 facts of human institution and custom and will are ; 
 and I believe there is no need that a single human 
 being in the limits of civilization should suffer or 
 want, or live any but a nobly human life, if society 
 would but awake and respond to the task laid upon 
 it. There is no trouble in the nature of things ; 
 
220 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 the nature of things even points and commands, and 
 in a single way. The trouble is with man, who will 
 not accept ideal guidance, but prefers each one to 
 take his own way, and to act without reference to the 
 good of all. 
 
 Hence, if the old religion centred in prayer to God, 
 the new must be an address to man, — and yet not as 
 if the word merely came from man, but in the name 
 of the Highest, and with the aim of connecting hu- 
 man life once more with a supreme sanctity. This 
 sanctity is that of justice. Jesus, as we have said, 
 taught the Golden Eule, which is a popular and ap- 
 prehensible, if somewhat rude, statement of justice ; 
 but he left no distinct and binding impression that 
 industrial life must be ordered thereby. With his 
 peculiar view of Providence and of the great change 
 impending in human affairs, the problem of life was 
 hardly serious enough to call for such distinct inculca- 
 tion. Hence, though for the little time that his spirit 
 was a fresh and powerful force in the minds of his 
 followers, his high demands were matched in the or- 
 der of their lives, and the earliest Christianity had 
 some of the features of a genuine brotherhood, when 
 discouragements came, there was felt to be no binding 
 obligation to continue these features ; and later on, 
 and through the centuries of Christian history, very 
 little was done to abolish the class separations into 
 which human society always naturally falls. The 
 practical working ideal of the Church has been, for 
 the most part, that of charity and pity and considera- 
 tion on the part of the higher classes in their treat- 
 ment of the lower, and of deference and submission 
 from the lower to the higher. Justice would make 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 221 
 
 charity, in great measure, unnecessary, and the airs 
 of self-humiliation an offence. Instead of *^ Christian 
 society," — including the poor and the rich, the alms- 
 giver and the beggar, — justice would give us a high 
 society of equals, wherein should be neither patron- 
 age nor obsequiousness, 1 but only a noble, mutual 
 courtesy and respect. 
 
 " One hour of justice," said an old Mahometan 
 precept, " is worth seventy years of prayer." Let us 
 say the same of charity. All these hospitals and 
 homes and asylums while in one way an honor, are 
 in another an indication of the disease of our civili- 
 zation. We do not strike at the root by raising up 
 more of them, though while the evils last this must 
 be done. Yet the Eeligion of the Future will only 
 come with those who do strike at the root, and who, 
 whether at the command of the State or in obedience 
 to the law in their own hearts, do no business and 
 engage in no industry in which ample justice is not 
 meted out to all who join them in it ; who will use 
 talents for leadership and initiatory enterprise, not 
 to give them mastery over others, but as Godin and 
 Leclaire in France have done, for the elevation of 
 others, and will feel in all they do, and in their most 
 material concerns as well, an o'er -mastering religious 
 constraint. For though religion by no means neces- 
 sarily includes a system of theological dogmas, or 
 prayer or worship in the customary senses, I have no 
 confidence that any great industrial reform will come 
 save as a product of religion. All man's natural self- 
 regarding impulses are against any reform. Those 
 
 1 The old social ideal is finely portrayed in Addison's " Sir 
 Roger de Coverley.'* 
 
222 ETHICAL KELIGION. 
 
 winning in the battle would rather have the battle go 
 on as it is ; and those who do not win, and who may 
 some time, instead of fighting for what they can only 
 most scantily get, turn and fight their successful com- 
 petitors who seem to be keeping them from getting 
 more, — they, even if they should triumph, would 
 only solve the problem for themselves and not for 
 humanity, and would perhaps in turn have to give 
 way to another inferior class who, stung by their op- 
 pression, would rise and overthrow them. The root 
 of the matter, the solution of the industrial problem, 
 is no more with the working classes than with their 
 employers. Both are equally striving for the mastery, 
 and I have heard it said by a manufacturer that no 
 foreman was so self-assertive and tyrannical as one 
 suddenly elevated from the rank of a common work- 
 man.^ The solution of the problem is only in an idea, 
 a principle, and in persons only as they are permeated 
 and actuated by the idea and principle. Moreover, 
 the acceptance of the idea under the stress of no 
 merely selfish desire or impulse, but because it is just 
 and commanding in itself, is religion, proving as it 
 does man's link with what is higher and the Highest, 
 and hinting to him as in a dream — 
 
 *' The hills where his life rose, 
 And the sea where it goes." 
 
 4. A fourth ethical need of our time is that of a 
 new statement of the end of human existence. There 
 is general dissatisfaction with the idea that this end 
 is for each one in the saving of his own soul. The 
 
 1 Cf. Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound, 36) : 
 " Who holds a power 
 But newly gained, is ever stern of mood.'* 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 223 
 
 early Christian idea of the " kingdom of heaven " was 
 much nobler, and has indeed a basic meaning of in- 
 estimable worth; yet the form and expectation with 
 which not only the early Church, but Jesus himself, 
 connected it have proved untrustworthy and delusive. 
 The righteous ordering of human life, which was to 
 come with the reappearance of the " Son of Man,'' 
 and to come so soon, has failed to come in all these 
 centuries. And the notions which are the survival of 
 that old conception, — of a heaven beyond the skies, 
 of a Deity who will be seen, a Son sitting on his 
 right hand, and of angels who are their ministers, — 
 belong rather to the realm of fairy-land than to that 
 of actual fact. There is, hence, a wide-spread ten- 
 dency to find the ends of existence in what is near, 
 palpable, of present, even of material, interest. 
 
 Now, though it is impossible not to sympathize 
 with this tendency, so far as it contrasts with the old 
 one of paying slight attention to human affairs and 
 interests, it too has its limitations ; and there are 
 deeper moments in our experience in which we dis- 
 tinctly feel them. There is something within us 
 which, at least in thought and .purpose, rises above . 
 all limits and seeks a measureless good. As that 
 something impels one to find a large share of his 
 happiness in that of others, so it makes it impossible 
 to find content in seeing others merely happy. One 
 feels that the merely happy have but learned the 
 alphabet of existence ; that the notion of perfection 
 includes the disposition of the heart, the worthiness 
 to be happy, the enlargement of the mind, the en- 
 nobling of the moral life, — these all carried on to 
 heights beyond our experience or even imagination ; 
 
224 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 and that nothing less than the perfect, and this shared 
 in by all, can be the end, the goal. It is character- 
 istic of religion to start from the idea of this limit- 
 less good, to discern the worth of all minor or partial 
 goods from their tendency to ultimate therein, to send 
 our aspirations to the very stars, and thus lend an 
 infinite sanctity to each particular act. Jesus struck 
 the note of religion when he counselled his disciples 
 to be content with no traditional rules of goodness, 
 but only with perfection (Matt. v. 48). His impas- 
 sioned apostle struck it when he wrote, " Whatsoever 
 things are true or honorable or just or pure or lovely, 
 think on these things " (Phil. iv. 8). Eeligion is the 
 passion of the soul for all good. 
 
 As there are means and ends in the world, — as 
 for example, matter is for form, and lower forms for 
 higher, inorganic for organic, insentient for sentient, 
 and the merely sentient for the rational, — so the 
 ends of rational existence are the ends of the world, 
 and perfection is not merely a human but a world 
 problem. On every act of virtue the stars shine ; 
 for every choice of the higher for the lower, for every 
 sacrifice of private to universal good, a mute sympa- 
 thy runs through universal nature. And no act of 
 ours born of that upward aim can fail of its issue. 
 There can be no destruction of what is truly good. 
 There is something we mortal men can do that is not 
 mortal ; that 
 
 ** Will last and shine transfigured 
 In the final reign of Right, 
 It will merge into the splendors 
 Of the City of the Light." i 
 
 1 Prof. Felix Adler, " The City of the Light." 
 
DOES THE ETHICS OF JESUS SATISFY? 225 
 
 It is no mere earthly paradise that is hinted at in 
 these lines, though to strive for a nobler social order 
 on the earth as a proximate form of the perfect is 
 necessary, but an end and outcome of human toil 
 and struggle unaffected by earthly changes or earthly 
 dissolution, — in truth, a world-city, wherein world- 
 issues are to be gathered up and a world-purpose con- 
 summated, and the thought of which is once more 
 to give dignity and the sense of permanence to life. 
 
 Do we survive with this good ; shall we know in 
 some other state of existence the good we have done 
 in this ; shall we meet those for whom we have done, 
 and recognize those whom we love ? I know not ; 
 and I hold it to be at the best a curious question, al- 
 beit one deeply touching these clinging affections that 
 make up so much of the sweetness of human life. 
 The ends of moral perfection are not for our personal 
 satisfaction, but we for them. He who loves not the 
 true and the good better than himself ; he who does 
 not put them above all personal attachments ; who 
 does not find in the dearest object of his love a re- 
 flection of somewhat above and higher, and not a 
 purely individual possession, — he, however else for- 
 tunate or gifted, has never found himself in an act 
 of religious veneration. For this is not man meeting 
 with man, but man bowing before the unalterable, the 
 eternal ideal nature of things ; not God, in the ordi- 
 nary sense of that term, but the God of gods, — some- 
 thing so secret and necessary that were it to cease, 
 the stars would vanish out of the sky, and were it 
 only to cease in human consciousness, human society 
 would relapse into barbaric chaos. Emerson said not 
 long ago: "I see that sensible men and conscientious 
 
 16 
 
226 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 men all over the world were of one religion, — the 
 religion of well-doing and daring, men of sturdy truth, 
 men of integrity, and of feeling for others. My infer- 
 ence is that there is a statement of religion possible 
 which makes all scepticism absurd/^ ^ It is such a 
 statement of religion that the time needs ; and I can 
 hardly believe that personal conceptions of God or 
 immortality will make a necessary part of it, — which 
 is far from saying that men shall be forbidden to 
 entertain them. The certainty and the sanctity of 
 religion lie, to my mind, in man's moral nature. Here 
 alone is, in addition to the may-he or the can-be, the 
 MUST, — the voice of command, the tone of authority, 
 without which, and without assent to which, religion 
 is but a playing with our opinions or our feelings. 
 We are under orders ; though we are free to obey or 
 not, honor and safety lie only in obedience. And 
 religion will come to us afresh when there is a new 
 perception of this fact, and a new recasting of life 
 and thought and all our human relations in obedi- 
 ence to it. 
 
 1 " The Preacher," in Lectures and Biographical Sketches. 
 
XII. 
 GOOD FRIDAY FROM A MODERN STANDPOINT. 
 
 GOOD FRIDAY commemorates one of the most 
 pathetic events in history. The orthodox idea 
 of the death of Jesus takes us back to the dim begin- 
 nings of Hebrew history, when Jahveh, the national 
 god, was conceived as the special source of thunder 
 and the storm, of plagues and pestilence, and when, 
 according to the legend, the fierce wrath with which 
 he smote the Egyptians, destroying the first-born in 
 every house, was only stayed as against the Hebrews 
 by the blood of lambs dashed upon the door-posts or 
 the lintels of the houses wherein they lived. The 
 sight of blood was thought, according to the legend, 
 to have softened the heart of the stern god, and in 
 his mercy he passed by the houses of the Israelites. 
 Thence, according to the Biblical account, arose the 
 festival of the Passover. Thousands of lambs were 
 slaughtered every spring in ancient Israel, to com- 
 memorate the god's favor in the past and to secure 
 his favor for the future. It happened that it was 
 during one of the Passover festivals that Jesus came 
 to his untimely end, and the coincidence could not 
 fail to affect the imagination of the early Christians. 
 Jesus was their Passover, they declared, — their lamb, 
 — and they had no need to sacrifice any other. Be- 
 hind him and his blood they could take shelter, and 
 
228 ETHICAL EELIGION. 
 
 the destroying hand that would soon be stretched out 
 in the dread day of judgment would pass them by. 
 The Gospel traditions even represent Jesus as taking 
 this view of his death. As the shadows of his coming 
 fate fell upon him he spoke mysteriously of giving 
 his life as a ransom, by which the destruction of many 
 should be averted ; and the night before the cruci- 
 fixion, at the last meal with his disciples, he identified 
 the bread and wine upon the table with his body and 
 blood, which were about to be offered up as a propitia- 
 tion to Israel's God. This is the meaning of the com- 
 munion which all Christian churches celebrate ; here 
 lies the significance of the Catholic mass : to Prot- 
 estants figuratively, to Catholics really, the bread and 
 the wine are the body and blood of that precious pas- 
 chal lamb whose life was taken eighteen centuries ago. 
 Unless God is appeased, unless blood is shed, there 
 is thought to be no favor from the unseen world for 
 man ; and to those who do not trust in this sacrifice 
 already made there is only, to use Scriptural language, 
 a certain fearful expectation of judgment and of fierce, 
 devouring fire.^ Here is one explanation of the power 
 which orthodox Christianity still has over the minds 
 of men. At bottom it is a religion of fear ; and before 
 the advent of science and its disclosures of an equable 
 reign of law, fear is more natural to men in contem- 
 plating Nature than any other feeling. There is noth- 
 ing men crave so much as to have their fears allayed ; 
 and so to ignorant, anxious men and women every- 
 where, — whether among the earliest Jewish converts, 
 or among the thronging multitudes of Eome, or among 
 the untutored barbarians of the north, or among the 
 1 Hebrews, x. 27. 
 
GOOD FRIDAY FROM A MODERN STANDPOINT. 229 
 
 uneducated masses in our great cities to-day, — Chris- 
 tianity has come as a boon, assuring them that if 
 they will trust in " the blood " that has been shed for 
 them, the unseen powers of the world will be kind and 
 gracious. 
 
 What occasion have those to whom this whole circle 
 of belief is illusory and pitifully erroneous to speak of 
 Good Friday ? I answer. Because the death of Jesus 
 may be looked at from a different standpoint. We may 
 ask ourselves. What led to it ; what does it show us as 
 to his character ; what is its meaning as an incident 
 in the moral progress of the race ; what value has it 
 still for us personally, when we look upon it simply 
 as the death of a great and heroic man ? We may 
 treat the death of Jesus as we would that of Socrates 
 or of Savonarola or of John Brown, — tragic deaths, 
 all of them ; deaths that have moved the hearts of 
 men and influenced the course of history, and still 
 have an inspiring power. The death of Jesus, it seems 
 to me, surpasses them all in pathos and in its influ- 
 ence on the fortunes of mankind. I think it not pre- 
 sumptuous to depart from Jesus' own estimate in this 
 matter. We human beings often fail to understand 
 ourselves. President Garfield said that "the lesson 
 of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.'' 
 We who are really living are too earnest about the 
 matter to sit down and form calm judgments ; time 
 and the perspective which time gives are necessary. 
 Jesus may have valued his death for one thing, — 
 history may value it for quite another. 
 
 How was it that Jesus died so soon ? Why did he 
 not live on to a ripe old age, like Socrates ? I answer, 
 essentially because he was not a philosopher, but a 
 
230 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 reformer, an agitator. For this reason his predeces- 
 sor, the ascetic Baptist, was cast into one of Herod's 
 dungeons, and came out only to be decapitated ; he had 
 spoken too boldly of social iniquity in the court. Jesus 
 had no ascetic ways about him. He did not love the 
 lonesome wilderness, — he frequented the towns and 
 cities where men were congregated, and was touched 
 by human sufferings and privations as well as human 
 wickedness. But he threw himself into the social agi- 
 tations of his day ; and the one agitating thought — 
 that with which all secretly sympathized, though few 
 dared to promulgate and hope anything immediately 
 from it — was that of an overthrowal of the hated Eo- 
 man power, and the inauguration of a new social and 
 political order, under the name of the " kingdom of 
 heaven." This was the Messianic dream of his people. 
 During his youth or early manhood there had been 
 actual uprisings and bloody resistance to the Koman 
 authority. Jesus had a horror of war, and looked not 
 to the hands of any soldiery to accomplish the great 
 revolution on which he, too, had set his heart. The 
 great god Jahveh, — he who had flashed fire out of 
 heaven in approval of his faithful prophets, who had 
 parted the waters of the Eed Sea to let his people 
 pass through and escape from their oppressors, — his 
 arm, Jesus thought, would be stretched out again ; 
 and it was necessary only that he be trusted, and 
 that the people be gathered out of Israel who should 
 be worthy to form the new and glorious kingdom. 
 By a bold leap, and yet no bolder than other Mes- 
 siahs took before and after him, Jesus assumed the 
 leadership of a new movement, gathered followers, 
 spoke with authority, foretold the coming change. 
 
GOOD FRIDAY FROM A MODERN STANDPOINT. 231 
 
 and made others feel, and believed himself, that when 
 the "kingdom of heaven" should come, he should 
 be at its head. "The old order will soon cease," 
 he said, "and a new one is coming; in the old is 
 oppression and cruel suffering and abject misery and 
 sensuality and all manner of evil ; in the new there 
 will be a recompense for every wrong, and comfort 
 for all who mourn ; in the new, the poor and the per- 
 secuted and the pure in heart, and those who love 
 others as they do themselves, will be the privileged 
 ones, while all who oppress, all who are sensual, all 
 who are hypocritical and for a pretence make long 
 prayers, shall be humbled and cast out." The heart 
 of the people responded to such fervid utterances. 
 Those in authority, on the other hand, — the props, 
 the pillars, the ornaments of the old order of things, 
 — looked askance at Jesus. It is the old story of 
 conflicting interests ; the Sadducean nobility, the zeal- 
 ous, punctilious Pharisees, the lawyer-scribes were in 
 a place of reverence, and it did not look as if in 
 the dream of the future which Jesus unfolded they 
 should have any place at all. On the other hand, 
 those who were oppressed and miserable had every- 
 thing to gain ; and that many of them were inspired 
 by no higher motives is shown by the fact that when 
 Jesus got into the clutches of the civil power they 
 made a very rabble against him. The Eoman author- 
 ities never seem to have troubled themselves at all 
 about Jesus ; so peaceful was his attitude and so ex- 
 clusively did he address himself to his own country- 
 men, that they scarcely knew of him ; and when he 
 was brought to trial before them they seem to have 
 regarded him as a harmless dreamer, and would never 
 
232 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 have consented to his death had they not been driven 
 to do so by the fierce and determined attitude of the 
 leaders of Jewish orthodoxy. But the conflict into 
 which Jesus had precipitated himself could have no 
 other issue. He did not trim his words, — he spoke as 
 conscience prompted him to speak. Sharper invective 
 than that he poured out against the false guides of his 
 people was perhaps never heard, — they would not en- 
 ter into the " kingdom of heaven/' nor would they let 
 others go in. It was but a question of time ; and when 
 one of his disciples, momentarily chagrined at a re- 
 buke his master had given him for his penuriousness, 
 or possibly with the thought of forcing him to take 
 his position as the nation's king, offered to put the 
 Jewish authorities in possession of him, the offer 
 was readily closed with; Jesus was made a prisoner, 
 and the next day, after being hurried through a judi- 
 cial trial, which was little better than a farce, he was 
 nailed to the cross. 
 
 Such were the causes that led to the event which 
 Good Friday celebrates, — so far as they can be gath- 
 ered into a few words. Jesus died the victim of a 
 great hope for his people and for the world. He 
 belongs to the company of those who cannot be pa- 
 tient with things as they see them, and who, because 
 they cannot, meet with suspicion and opposition and 
 hatred, and perhaps violence and death. His hope 
 was not free from illusion, — nay, in one sense it 
 was altogether illusion ; for wrong and oppression 
 will never cease in this world by the intervention of 
 divine power to judge and punish them, nor do men 
 return from the dead to do the work which they have 
 left undone on earth. But we have to distinguish 
 
GOOD FRIDAY FROM A MODERN STANDPOINT. 233 
 
 between one's aivi and the means by which one may 
 hope to see that aim accomplished ; and there is 
 more hope for the world from one Jesus than from a 
 dozen or a thousand men trained to scientific habits 
 of thought, yet without any transcendent aim and 
 passion for a reign of right. The aim of Jesus was 
 sound; it was perfect, it was unsurpassable. There 
 is no other supreme aim for man than that reign of 
 justice and of love upon which Jesus set his heart. 
 To-day, in the measure that we have that aim and 
 try to realize it there is order and safety and joy in 
 the community ; and that there is so much lawlessness 
 and defiant wickedness abroad is simply evidence to 
 how great an extent men have it not. We must seek 
 first, not wealth, not power, and not science nor art, 
 but the "kingdom of God," — there is perpetual in- 
 spiration for man in this lofty thought of Jesus. The 
 significance to us of the death of Jesus is simply that 
 he kept this aim, in the only form that was possible 
 to him, to the bitter end. We now can distinguish 
 the aim from the method by which it was to be real- 
 ized ; we can separate the form from the substance of 
 Jesus' thought. But Jesus was not a philosopher, — 
 his consciousness was one and indivisible ; and for 
 him to doubt that he was the Messiah would have 
 been to doubt that there was any Messianic reign 
 to be ; and to doubt that would have been to aban- 
 don his faith in Israel and in Israel's God ; and that 
 he could not abandon, — it was a part of him, in his 
 blood and in every fibre of his being. 
 
 For my own part, I can say that there are no events 
 in Jesus' life so touching as those toward the close. 
 At no time does he reveal so much character. To stand 
 
234 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 by our faith when all things go well with us, — there 
 is no great virtue in that ; to stand by it when it is 
 assailed, when we may suffer loss from our adhesion 
 to it, — that tests whatever manliness there is in us. 
 Jesus had no stoical feeling about death. It was not 
 a matter of indifference to him whether he lived or 
 died. He who loved the flowers of the field and the 
 birds of the air, the lakes and the hillsides of his na- 
 tive Galilee, and the proud city of Jerusalem, to which 
 he had made yearly pilgrimages from his boyhood up, 
 could not turn from all these without some rendings 
 of the heart and tears ; and sharper pang than all, 
 he who had counted on divine assistance, he who had 
 looked to being elevated to a divine throne, whence 
 he could execute the justice that was burning in his 
 heart, — how could he die like other men and leave 
 his great work undone ? In theory Jesus had as- 
 sented to his death : on his way from Galilee to Je- 
 rusalem for the last time, he surmised what the end 
 would be ; yes, on the night before his death, as we 
 have seen, he made a mournful comparison of him- 
 self to the paschal lamb. But afterward, when in 
 the darkness of the night the dread spectre of death 
 actually stood before him, his human shrinkings 
 were too strong; he fell on his face and prayed to 
 God that the cup might be removed from him, — 
 prayed three times, and sweat fell like blood from his 
 face. It was an almost mortal agony, so that to-day 
 we hold our breath as we read of it, — we feel the 
 wrestling as if it were our own, we hear the cry of 
 pain ; and then the cry ceases, and a more than mor- 
 tal calm passes through his breast, — he has jdelded 
 his strong love of life, he goes forth to the sacrifice. 
 
GOOD FRIDAY FROM A MODERN STANDPOINT. 235 
 
 Never was man serener than Jesus before his judges. 
 When idle charges were trumped up against him he 
 was silent, — he would not honor them even with a de- 
 nial. But when asked as to the central core of all his 
 faith, — whether he was the Messiah, — he promptly 
 answered, "I am," and took the oath administered to 
 him by the high-priest, though he had enjoined his 
 followers not to swear ; he pointed his persecutors 
 away to the time when he should sit on the right 
 hand of God, and come in majesty on the clouds 
 of heaven ; and when in return the priestly hirelings 
 spat in his face and cuffed him and jeered at him, 
 he held his peace. Before Pilate Jesus preserved 
 the same dignified attitude, affirming his royal rank, 
 but replying nothing to the charges urged by the 
 priests and elders. He submitted to the insults of 
 the brutal Roman soldiery : in cruel mockery they 
 put a red gown upon him, and placed a crown woven 
 of thorn-branches upon his head, and for a sceptre 
 put into his right hand a reed, and then filed before 
 him, kneeling in turn and saying, "Hail, King of the 
 Jews ! " and not a murmur escaped him. On his 
 way to the place of execution he had to bear his 
 own cross, until in his weakness he could carry it 
 no longer, when a passer-by was impressed into the 
 service. On arriving at the dreary hill-top he was 
 offered, "according to Jewish usage, a highly spiced 
 wine, an intoxicating drink, which from a sentiment 
 of pity was given to the sufferer to stupefy him." ^ He 
 touched the cup to his lips and put it from him. As 
 Renan says, "this sad solace of common criminals was 
 unsuited to his lofty nature ; " he would face death 
 1 Renan's Life of Jesus, ch. xxv. 
 
236 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 with mind unclouded. The physical horrors of that 
 death no one could describe ; nor shall I attempt to. 
 Crucifixion was reserved for slaves and the lowest 
 criminals ; it was a horrid torture, and ordinarily long 
 drawn out. But if we may trust the Gospel traditions, 
 no outcry escaped the lips of Jesus, unless it was once 
 when consumed with burning thirst. So magnanimous 
 was he, that he prayed God to forgive his executioners, 
 since they knew not what they were doing ; and though 
 for a moment his heart failed him, and he felt as one for- 
 saken, he reassured himself at the last, and trustfully 
 commended to the hands of God his parting spirit. 
 
 Where shall we read of a more tragic, a more noble 
 death than this ? Where is one that more stirs our 
 mingled feelings of indignation and pity and admira- 
 tion ? Do we wonder that by his death Jesus has won 
 a closer place in the hearts of men than he could ever 
 have by a most splendid and successful life ; that the 
 crucified one has been covered with honor and glory ; 
 that men have raised him to a height of praise equal 
 only to the depth of shame in which he was once 
 plunged ? Who would not like to be a believing Chris- 
 tian for a moment on Good Friday even more than on 
 Easter Day, since all the instincts of honor and pity 
 in a man incline us to take the side of one who was 
 once placed at such bitter disadvantage? — and we 
 should rather err with such an one than keep com- 
 pany with those who are coldly correct, and have not 
 hearts large enough for a noble mistake ! I for one 
 would cast my tribute of honor at the feet of Jesus. 
 There are Liberals who would ignore him, who would 
 bring up their children in ignorance of him, or per- 
 chance would ridicule him. I am not of their num- 
 
GOOD FRIDAY FROM A MODERN STANDPOINT. 237 
 
 ber. Jesus is no paragon to my mind, — no model 
 of spotless virtue or of infallible wisdom ; I do not 
 call myself his follower. But this he is to me, — 
 inspiration ! He touches my heart, he stirs my con- 
 science, he warms me with love of a noble ideal ; and 
 this is something which few philosophers. Liberal or 
 other, have done or are doing for men, — so that while 
 in certain lines they may give correct opinions, Jesus 
 'and a few others like him give that indefinable thing 
 we call life. I should rather have the impulses which 
 Jesus communicates and be left to form my own opin- 
 ions, than to have the opinions of our wisest philoso- 
 phers without that motion of the heart toward good- 
 ness and all unselfishness which is so naturally stirred 
 by the spectacle of the life and death of this son of 
 man. It is not knowledge that moves the world, but 
 character, love ; and outside of , the holy Buddha, where 
 is there a man who has so impressed himself upon the 
 world, and created and deepened so many channels of 
 pity and tenderness, as Jesus, whose opinions we may 
 outgrow, but whose heart never ? 
 
 The death of Jesus sets the last seal to his sincerity, 
 and to the reality of that wonderful love of man which 
 made him brave so much and count the cost so little. 
 A man of commoner mould would never have risked 
 so much ; a man Avith a heart less pure would never 
 have assumed so high a mission. We are compelled to 
 say, that if Israel and the world were to be redeemed 
 and purified and transformed according to the outlines 
 of his dream, he was worthy to be the instrument of 
 the Unseen in doing so ; for never was there one who 
 had less self-will, who more completely identified him- 
 self with the will of the Highest as he conceived it, — 
 
238 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 never one better qualified to sit at the right hand of 
 his Father, as he thought he one day should, and dis- 
 pense justice and merciful judgment to the assembled 
 nations of men. 
 
 As an incident in the moral progress of humanity 
 the death of Jesus may be said to have a threefold 
 significance : — 
 
 1. It is the consecration of sorrow, of suffering. Cast 
 over in your mind the gods of the Grecian and Roman* 
 pantheon, and where shall you find one with the down- 
 cast, sorrowful visage of the Son of Man ? where among 
 the fair goddesses shall you find a face so tenderly 
 beautiful as that which Christian imagination has given 
 to the Mater Dolorosa ? A suffering god — what an in- 
 congruous thing to a Greek or a Roman ! But a suf- 
 fering god, a suffering man whom his followers have 
 made a god, is the central figure in Christian worship. 
 This means an immense difference in the moral senti- 
 ments of men. It means a compassion strange to the 
 ancient world, — it means that the more men suffer 
 (other things being equal), the more they shall be 
 cared for ; while in Pagan civilization it was too apt 
 to be the case that the more men suffered, the more 
 they were neglected. No one can turn in reflection to 
 the cross of Jesus, or to any of the affecting incidents 
 of the last two days of his life, and not feel his heart 
 softened toward all the sufferings of his fellow-men, 
 and a double aversion to all the jeering spirit with 
 which one man sometimes makes light of another man's 
 distress. Such incidents as those at the trial and cru- 
 cifixion of Jesus would not be tolerated now, even in 
 the punishment of our worst criminals ; the dignity of 
 humanity, even in crime, is felt now, and a lynching 
 
GOOD FRIDAY FROM A MODERN STANDPOINT. 239 
 
 mob would hardly subject its victim to such indignities 
 as were heaped on Jesus. It is not by accident, then, 
 that we care for the sick now as never was the case 
 in the old world, that the poor have a love shown 
 to them that they never had in Greece or Eome ; it 
 was not by accident that in old Rome itself the glad- 
 iatorial shows were stopped when Christian influences 
 gained the upper hand in the State. Everywhere a 
 new humanity arose, a new pity for all the outcast 
 members of society ; for no one suffered shame and 
 loss without exciting the remembrance of him who was 
 in his day "despised and rejected of men," and who 
 asked no honor for himself save that of being remem- 
 bered in the form of the least and feeblest of those 
 who were his brethren. 
 
 2. The death of Jesus brings home to us in a vivid 
 way that sacrifice is a law of progress. It is not that 
 the unseen Spirit is angry and will not be favorable to 
 man until some offering of blood is made to him, but 
 that the conditions of things are such that progress 
 is only possible through effort and pain and sacrifice. 
 "What good thing have my brothers," exclaims the 
 Buddha, " but it came from search and strife and lov- 
 ing sacrifice ? " It is a beautiful ideal that each of 
 us should live a full and complete life, without any 
 marring of it, any cutting of it short for the sake of 
 others ; but it is the goal of evolution rather than an 
 always present possibility ; in the mean time we have 
 often to suffer injury to ourselves that good may come 
 to others. What mother, what devoted friend, what 
 leader of reform, what helper in any useful cause, does 
 not know that without willingness to part with some- 
 thing, — with time or means or strength or health, 
 
240 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 perhaps with life itself, — they are not fitted to the 
 tasks to which nature or their own hearts call them ? 
 And this is why the innocent ideal of pleasure, of 
 happiness for ourselves, falls so far short of the real 
 requirements of life. It is summer-weather philoso- 
 phy; and if we have cherished it, the first storm of 
 adversity, the first disappointment, may dispel it like a 
 dream from our minds, and is only too apt to leave us 
 bitter because we were so unprepared. For we are in 
 truth bound to one another, — we belong to humanity. 
 It is against our nature to seek a good for ourselves, 
 alone and apart ; it is according to our nature to find 
 our happiness in the common happiness, — to give, to 
 spend and be spent in the service of humanity. None 
 of the lower goods on which we so often set our hearts 
 are absolute. Health we should seek ; but we may dis- 
 regard it, and suffer, as George Eliot says, "glorious 
 harm " in some noble, disinterested service. " Who 
 would not rather be sick," says Eenan, " like Pascal, 
 than in good health like the multitude ? " Who would 
 not rather suffer, I would add, and bear his cross like 
 Jesus, and be buffeted and spit upon and made the 
 butt of cruel jests, and at last be crucified, than to 
 live to a good old age as the high-priest did who con- 
 demned him to death, and left children after him, so 
 that, as Josephus says, he was held to be one of the 
 most fortunate men of his century ? Let us not use 
 words lightly ; let us not rate ourselves too high. I do 
 not forget the truth of those lines of Newman, — 
 
 •* Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control 
 That o'er thee swell and throng ; 
 They will condense within thy soul, 
 And change to purpose strong. 
 
GOOD FRIDAY FROM A MODERN STANDPOINT. 241 
 
 " But he who lets his feelings run 
 In soft, luxurious flow, 
 Shrinks when hard service must be done, 
 And faints at every woe." 
 
 Ah ! we should shrink from the cross of Jesus. We 
 shrink from being ill-spoken of now ; we shrink from 
 all the little crosses that duty brings us from day to 
 day. Perhaps I should not say we should rather suf- 
 fer like Jesus ; but oh that we might be ready to ! 
 that we might school ourselves now by acts of self- 
 denial, by patience under suffering, by continuing to 
 love though there are those who hate us, by constantly 
 surrendering our self-will in face of the divine neces- 
 sities that surround us, — school ourselves so that we 
 shall be ready, should we be called upon, to render 
 the last sacrifice, and withhold not life itself from the 
 service of the world ! Death is a sorry fact ; there 
 is no beauty in it that we should desire it, — it is the 
 opposite of all we crave ; we do not like to think of 
 it, we turn from it when the mention of it is made. 
 O hard, ungracious visitor ! stern, repulsive visage ! 
 yet thou mayest be transfigured, thou mayest even 
 be made welcome. " Let death come straightway," 
 said Achilles, *^ after I have punished the wrong-doer, 
 so that I remain not here by the beaked ships, a 
 laughing-stock and a useless burden of the earth." 
 Jesus said, " Let death come." Death is almost made 
 sacred since Jesus and other heroic, generous souls 
 have died ; there have been impetuous spirits that have 
 even courted it, — that have been ready to throw the 
 world away that they might follow in the footsteps 
 of the great whom they revered. Do not fear death, 
 O Friend! but rather fear that thou mayest not die 
 
 16 
 
242 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 worthily, — selfish, fretful, bitter, rebellious, when thou 
 shouldst be full of love, and peaceful and thankful 
 and ready to yield, and even glad if in any way thy 
 death may contribute to the world's good. 
 
 3. There is another aspect of the death of Jesus. 
 It is impossible to put out of mind the element of 
 illusion in the hope to which he fell a martyr. The 
 world's progress is not all in a straight line. Those 
 who would benefit the world we remember the more 
 tenderly for their mistakes. The road to humanity's 
 perfect goal is not revealed to us by flashes from 
 heaven, — we have to find it out by experience ; and 
 incidental to humanity's experience are mistakes and 
 failures numberless. The hope of Jesus to come again 
 to the world in power and glory was illusory ; the 
 solemn prediction he made to the high-priest at his 
 trial was illusory. Had he had no illusions he would 
 not have died as he did, — he would not have endured 
 to be spit upon and mocked and tortured and cruci- 
 fied. But when I think of this aspect of the case I 
 call to mind George Eliot's words ; — 
 
 " Even our failures are a prophecy, 
 Even our yearnings and our bitter tears 
 After that fair and true we cannot grasp, — 
 As patriots who seem to die in vain 
 Make liberty more sacred by their pangs." 
 
 Jesus died in vain, as have others before him or 
 since his time ; but his cause is the dearer to us be- 
 cause he failed in it. I would we might write his 
 thought on our foreheads and in our hearts ; I would 
 we might make it the great sovereign aim of our lives to 
 bring that " kingdom of heaven " for which he sighed 
 
GOOD PRIDAY FROM A MODERN STANDPOINT. 243 
 
 and prayed and died, to pass in the world. What 
 are we living for ? What thought is topmost in our 
 souls ? Nothing is fitted to be there but the thought 
 which Jesus cherished. Let us purify it from all 
 that belonged merely to his time and race ; let it be 
 to us a hope for America and the world, instead of, as 
 it was to him, for Israel and the world ; let us strive 
 to build a true kingdom of justice, a city of the light; 
 let us hold to such an aim against our fears, against 
 the selfishness of men, against our own selfishness, 
 against all the odds that count on the other side ; and 
 then though we in turn make mistakes, others will 
 remember us the more tenderly for them, and press 
 the harder to find the way that is true and sure. 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE SUCCESS AND THE FAILURE OF 
 PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 WHAT is the significance of Protestantism ? In 
 what respect has it been successful ; in what 
 has it failed ? 
 
 Protestantism was successful in the first place, in 
 that it was a break with the Catholic Church, and 
 not a mere reform of it. Here Luther himself was 
 great, and not merely the logic of his doctrines. 
 Luther was indeed no violent despiser of tradition 
 and authority. In his very theses, nailed up on the 
 door of the church at Wittenberg, he did not, con- 
 trary to the common opinion, attack the Pope nor the 
 Pope's power to pardon sins. He said, "Cursed be 
 he who speaks against the indulgences of the Pope ; 
 but blessed be he who speaks against the foolish and 
 impudent language of the preachers of indulgence ! '' 
 To the second ambassador from the Pope Luther even 
 offered to be silent on the matter, and to let it die 
 away of itself, if only his opponents would be silent 
 on their part ; though he added, ominously, " if they 
 continue attacking me, a serious struggle will soon 
 arise out of a trifling quarrel." He declared that he 
 had made his protest against indulgences " as a faith- 
 ful son of the Church,'^ and offered to address the 
 public to that effect. And in this public explana- 
 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 245 
 
 tion he said that though everything was in a very 
 wretched state in the E-oman Church, "this is not a 
 sufficient reason for separating from it. On the con- 
 trary, the worse things are going on within it the 
 more should we cling to it ; for it is not by separa- 
 tion that we shall make it better." Luther was not, 
 then, spoiling for a fight ; in truth, he fought only be- 
 cause he had to. And I do not know of a sublimer 
 instance of the courage and the daring and the defi- 
 ance which a simple inward necessity may put into 
 a man. He took his stand because he must ; because, 
 as he said before the assembled princes at Worms, he 
 could not do otherwise. 
 
 I need not recount the steps by which Luther was 
 led to break with the Church. I need not recall his 
 lonely spiritual struggles in the monastery at Erfurt, 
 when he came to feel the futility of all mere outward 
 works, and that only by faith can man be justified, — 
 though this was the seed-thought of the Eeforma- 
 tion. I need not describe his disputations with Eck 
 at Leipsic, where he realized that his own views were 
 like those of Huss and Wyclif before him, and hence 
 if popes and councils had condemned them, that popes 
 and councils could not be infallible. I need not re- 
 count the stages of his rapid intellectual development 
 at about this time ; how his spirit seemed to rise at 
 the rumor of a papal Bull against him ; how he saw 
 that his cause was the cause of Germany, and hence 
 issued his address to the German nobility ; how in an 
 almost boyish exuberance of spirits he burned the 
 pope's Bull ; and how at last he took his world-historic 
 stand before the imperial diet at Worms, saying he 
 would not recant, knowing that to act against con- 
 
246 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 science, though a mighty church and a mighty empire 
 should approve, is neither right nor safe. 
 
 But though the man is great, the significance of the 
 scene is greater. That was the first act of the Prot- 
 estant revolution. Ill would it have fared with the 
 world had Erasmus stood there. He, in common with 
 other scholars of the day, was disaffected ; he wrote 
 satires on the monks and schoolmen, and in general 
 sympathized with Luther ; but he would stay in the 
 Church, would reform from within, and conciliate and 
 compromise at any cost. He continued his satires 
 and preached tolerance to the last ; but he could not 
 endure schism, proclaiming that "peaceful error was 
 better than tempestuous truth." It was as it is to- 
 day with the Broad Churchmen who stay in the Eng- 
 lish establishment, or the Liberals in general who feel 
 that they cannot stand on their own feet outside the 
 Church. Above every other fear is that of breaking 
 with the past, of a seeming disloyalty to the institu- 
 tions in which they have been nurtured. Luther knew 
 but one thing however, — loyalty to the convictions 
 that were in him ; if the Church did not give him 
 freedom to hold to and express them, he would do 
 so all the same. 
 
 We can hardly imagine to-day what an immense 
 fact resting on the past Luther had to face. To break 
 with orthodoxy or any form of Protestant Christianity 
 is an insignificant thing compared with putting one- 
 self out of the pale of that communion which held 
 the keys of earth almost as truly as it seemed to 
 those of heaven. For if the Catholic Church is com- 
 paratively harmless now, then it was an empire that 
 brooked no rival. The State was no more than a 
 
SUCCESS AND PAILUKE OF PROTESTANTISM. 247 
 
 body, with the Church for its soul. It was a univer- 
 sal empire, and knew no national distinctions ; it had 
 its system of taxation, like any other kingdom, — a 
 tenth part of the produce of the soil of Christendom 
 went to it ; it owned almost a third of the land of 
 Europe. The officers of this empire were not amena- 
 ble to the civil jurisdiction, — they could be tried only 
 in their own courts, and under the cover of this pro- 
 tection to themselves they could fleece their flocks 
 about as they liked ; they alone could marry people, 
 and they alone could grant divorces ; they had the 
 disposition of the property of deceased persons, — a 
 will had to be proved in their courts ; they alone 
 buried the dead, and could refuse Christian burial in 
 the churchyards. And this empire touching men in 
 almost every relation in life centred in Eome, and its 
 affairs, it was well known, were administered not for 
 the benefit of its subjects everywhere, but to heighten 
 the influence and pomp and power and to swell the 
 revenues of Koman popes and cardinals, — even as in 
 the old days of the Caesars, the masses of the people 
 scattered through the provinces were ruled by gover- 
 nors, not for their own but for the conqueror's good. 
 It was this empire over the souls and bodies of men ; 
 over life and death, and what was believed to come 
 after death ; over what Inen should think, and how 
 they should act, — and not in the name of truth and 
 the progressing knowledge of men, but of a view of the 
 world which almost every scientific discovery and al- 
 most every independent philosophical reflection tended 
 to undermine, — it was this old antiquated empire that 
 was broken, smitten on its crown and set to totter- 
 ing on its feet, when Luther lifted up his voice over 
 
248 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 three hundred and fifty years ago. All hail, valiant 
 man, for this first and mighty blow ! We breathe 
 freer now at the very thought of it. Other blows .will 
 follow after ; and notwithstanding all the reforms the 
 papal empire may undertake, notwithstanding all the 
 efforts it may make to show its harmony with mod- 
 ern thought and the principles of political freedom, 
 notwithstanding all its councils of Trent, and all its 
 Capels leading captive here and there a weak-minded 
 man or silly woman, it will never again have its old 
 supremacy. It is an outlived institution ; humanity 
 and the spirit of progress have passed it by. 
 
 This was the first success of Protestantism. A 
 second is closely related to it, and for this too we are 
 indebted to Luther himself. Goodness had become 
 an external, formal thing in the Catholic Church. It 
 always tends to become so. It first creates certain 
 forms and then loses itself in them ; and as men are 
 counted good citizens who pay their taxes, vote, and 
 hold ofiice, irrespective of their thought and motive 
 in so doing, so men were counted good Christians 
 who simply obeyed the rules of the empire I have 
 described, who said so many Aves or Pater-nosters, 
 did so much fasting or penance, gave so much money 
 or received of such and such sacraments. That is, 
 there was an external test of character, — and the 
 significance of Luther is that he proposed an internal 
 test. In one of his earliest discourses, two years be- 
 fore he published his theses, he strongly urged the 
 doctrine that piety consists not in outward works, 
 but in an inward principle ; that an act in itself good 
 even becomes sinful if the motive is sinful.^ Luther 
 1 Sears's Life of Luther, p. 169. 
 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 249 
 
 did not use philosophical language, and his thought 
 was cast entirely in theological moulds ; but the fun- 
 damental significance of his great doctrine of justifi- 
 cation by faith rather than by works seems to me to 
 have been this, — that the inward attitude alone deter- 
 mines the worth of a man ; so that though a man's 
 whole outward life were right, yet if the thought or 
 impulse that lay within and behind were merely sel- 
 fish, he would still be in the wrong. Luther did not 
 say works were of no account, nor does his principle 
 of justification involve of itself any contempt of the 
 rules and ritual of the Church ; he did say that works 
 or acts severed from their motive, and conformity to 
 rites and rules in themselves, were of no account, — yes, 
 that when viewed as themselves giving those who 
 practise them moral worth, they were harmful and an 
 offence. Only, Luther said " in the sight of God '' 
 where I have said " moral ;'^ and an offence to him 
 was not simply to an ideal law, but to a j)ersonal, 
 angry God. Protestantism thus sprang from a quick- 
 ening of the conscience and a deepening of the moral 
 life. Luther could find no rest in fastings and pen- 
 ances and almsgiving, — they humbled the body, they 
 did not purify the soul. It was at the centre of his 
 being that he wanted rest ; and he found it, while 
 still at the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, in the 
 suggestions of a passage of Scripture, " The just shall 
 live by faith ; '' and ever and anon it would ring in 
 his ears and send a strange peace over his soul, — 
 " The just shall live by faith." May I give a mod- 
 ern version of that old experience ? In the charming 
 Norwegian story of Arne, a simple peasant girl says, 
 " I often think there 's something that sings when all 
 
250 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 is still ; '' and she spoke in a voice so soft and low, 
 the narrative goes on, that her companion felt as 
 if he had heard it now for the first time. " It is 
 the good within our own souls," he answered. And 
 it is true that when a man, instead of seeking to do 
 this or that external thing which will commend him 
 before the world or give him a kind of vain-glory in 
 his own eyes, turns and gives himself over to the 
 good, forever to obey it, something does sing within ; 
 and whether we call it the good or God, whether we 
 say " the good sings " or " God is well pleased," it is 
 all the same ; the differences are differences of dialect, 
 not of fact. Protestantism is thus, so far as it is true 
 to the original Lutheran spirit, more inward, more 
 searching than Catholicism ; its religion is more per- 
 sonal ; it may make less show, but it has more sub- 
 stance ; it places men face to face with the central 
 truth of things, it brings them immediately before the 
 nameless Authority of which all else is shadow and 
 reflection. I do not say this of Protestantism every- 
 where. In England it was more a political affair, and 
 instead of heightening the moral life, it came into 
 being only with a lowering of it, in obedience to the 
 intrigues of Henry VIII. The Puritans were the first 
 true Protestants in England, as the Huguenots were 
 in Erance, and the followers of Zwingle and Calvin 
 in Switzerland. But in general Protestantism surely 
 brought a new moral seriousness into life. Compare 
 but for one moment Luther or Zwingle or Calvin with 
 Leo X., and see the difference in the type of man. 
 
 In another way, also. Protestantism has been a 
 success ; it has given us freedom of conscience. It 
 must be confessed that here Luther himself is not so 
 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 251 
 
 great as the logic of the movement which he started. 
 Luther was no advocate of freedom of conscience as 
 a principle ; he desired freedom simply for his own 
 conscience. But the logic of history does not rest 
 on any individuaFs partial interpretation of it. When 
 Luther said at Worms, " It is not safe nor right 
 to do anything against conscience ; here stand I, so 
 help me God," he virtually stood for every sincere re- 
 former since ; he spoke for every progressive move- 
 ment in thought and society down to our day. It is 
 not fair then, to my mind, to charge the narrowness 
 and bigotry of many Protestants, whether individuals 
 or churches, to their Protestantism ; it is to be charged 
 to them as men or as associations, for narrowness 
 and bigotry too easily attach themselves to men and 
 associations : it may sometimes be charged to them 
 as Christians and as Christian churches, but it can 
 only be due to the lack of real Protestantism. The 
 very meaning of Protestantism is freedom. Puri- 
 tanism was a characteristic Protestant movement, for 
 it was an assertion of conscientious scruples against 
 the laxness and formalism of the English church. 
 Unitarianism was another characteristic Protestant 
 movement, for it was a revolt of reason and con- 
 science against the dogmas of Orthodoxy. When any 
 one stands up for the private conviction of his soul 
 against whatever assembly of magnates or respecta- 
 bilities, he is in very essence a Protestant. If Luther 
 then persecuted Carlstadt, if Calvin burned Servetus, 
 if the Puritans banished Eoger Williams, they were 
 so far not Protestants ; and in the very name of the 
 principles by which they secured their own freedom, 
 they may be condemned. It takes a long while for 
 
252 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 a principle thrown into history to work out its conse- 
 quences, but sooner or later it will. This principle 
 of freedom of conscience is perhaps first realized in 
 any completeness in this country ; but it is a fruit of 
 Protestantism, — it was thrown in among the forces 
 of history, though he little knew all he was doing, by 
 the hand of Martin Luther. 
 
 As a fourth success of Protestantism, and as a re- 
 sult of this spirit of freedom working in connection 
 with the tendencies of modern thought, not only the 
 old church but the old religion is gradually break- 
 ing up. Christianity itself is dissolving and passing 
 away. Christianity was not half so much hurt in 
 the last century by Paine and Voltaire as it is in 
 the minds of the most serious and thoughtful men 
 to-day by the new indirect influences of science and 
 historical criticism. Men who never hear popular 
 liberal lectures, who have never read Paine or Vol- 
 taire, are getting a new view of the world in the 
 very intellectual atmosphere they breathe, and the 
 old ideas of miracle and prayer and Providence drop 
 away so silently that they do not know they have lost 
 them. The new thought is in literature, in poetry, 
 in science, in the daily newspaper. The differences 
 between cultivated men in all churches and in none 
 are really surprisingly small. If we do not ask for 
 particular opinions, much less attack them, but simply 
 note how they are reflected in a man's view of life, 
 society, trade, politics, — and this is the only real 
 test, — educated Presbyterians do not differ essen- 
 tially from educated Baptists or Methodists or Unita- 
 rians. Their particular denominational connections 
 are a matter of birth and tradition ; their religion 
 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 253 
 
 is, under a disguise of pious names and phrases, a 
 reverence for goodness and a confidence that the 
 universe is on that side ; their Christianity is much 
 like that of a friend who once said to me he was not 
 anxious for the name Christian, but if any one should 
 say he was not a Christian, he should resent it. The 
 special ideas that were at the foundation of the dif- 
 ferent denominations have little interest for any man 
 now, unless he be an antiquarian or a zealot. Indeed, 
 no other result could well follow from the Protestant 
 principle of freedom of conscience and private judg- 
 ment; for it could hardly be expected that private 
 judgment would rest with simply interpreting the 
 Bible, — sooner or later it must essay to judge of the 
 worth of the contents of the Bible. Luther helped 
 to strengthen the mind in the consciousness of its 
 own perceptions over against the authority of the 
 Church ; when the mind reaches perceptions incon- 
 sistent with the teachings of Scripture, the same logic 
 inspires to a similar confidence here. Nor can any 
 sacred person more than any sacred book be allowed 
 to remain an unquestioned authority over the mind; 
 yet when Jesus ceases to be an authority, Christian- 
 ity in any distinctive sense ceases to be. Thus fear- 
 lessly and relentlessly is the logic of Protestantism 
 conducting out of the very religion in which it was 
 born. Luther would have stood aghast at those who 
 no longer call themselves Christians, to whom Jesus 
 is no longer a Lord and Master ; yet no other result 
 could ultimately follow, and he is finally responsible 
 for it, and to the future this result will be counted as 
 one of the successes of Protestantism. For humanity 
 cannot wear forever its old garments ; as it casts off 
 
254 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 old churches, so it does old religions. The spirit of 
 the future calls upon it to do so; for the future is 
 rich with possibilities, and will yield grander things 
 than ever the past has known. 
 
 As I pass now to my fifth point, I am at loss to know 
 whether to rank it among the successes or failures 
 of Protestantism. It is that Protestantism has prac- 
 tically given us the Bible (for it was almost a sealed 
 book before), and particularly that it has brought 
 us face to face with Jesus and the apostles. The 
 common people in the time of Luther knew little 
 or nothing of the Bible ; Jesus and the apostles they 
 vaguely thought of as the founders and pillars of the 
 great empire that was everywhere about them, rather 
 than as living figures in history. And if the secular 
 renaissance is to be commended for reviving an in- 
 terest in the old Greek and Eoman literatures, irre- 
 spective of ecclesiastical commentary, so is the later 
 religious renaissance worthy to be praised for putting 
 the old Jewish and the early Christian literatures 
 into tongues in which every one could read them for 
 himself. Everywhere as a result of the Eeformation 
 the Bible came to be the property of the common 
 man, and Jesus and the apostles were seen somewhat 
 as they actually were. So far Protestantism was a 
 success. For I regard it as no part of a genuine radi- 
 calism to condemn the Bible indiscriminately, and to 
 wish that the world should know nothing of it. The 
 Bible has had its uses in history ; it testifies to and 
 is the product of some of the creative periods in his- 
 tory. Most of the prophetic writings, for example, of 
 the Old Testament, the narratives about Jesus and the 
 writings of his early followers in the New Testament, 
 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 255 
 
 came from real men, to whom religion was not a sham, 
 and whose minds were intent on the supreme thing 
 in life ; namely, the accomplishment of righteousness. 
 The very superstitious reverence for the Bible that so 
 many have had is a testimony to its power : Cicero 
 and Plato and Aristotle never touched the heart and 
 conscience deep enough to produce any superstitions 
 about themselves. Nevertheless, while in one way the 
 open Bible of Protestantism was one of its successes, 
 in another it has been and is coming more and more 
 to be seen to be one of its failures. The Bible glows 
 with the idea of righteousness as no other book does 
 that has become the property of our Western world, 
 and to those who have the wit to distinguish substance 
 from form it is still, and may always be, a means of 
 moral inspiration. But the whole intellectual setting 
 of this idea is no longer true to us. Eighteousness 
 gains nothing in authority to us by being regarded as 
 the will of a supernatural being ; our confidence in 
 its triumph in the world is nowise heightened by the 
 picture of a judgment which shall some time separate 
 the righteous and wicked as sheep and goats. The 
 open Bible was not even an altogether successful 
 defence against the Eoman Church. True, the Bible 
 said nothing of the Koman Church or the Pope, or 
 of councils or purgatory, or of the intercession of 
 the saints ; and this to many narrow-minded Prot- 
 estants may have been enough. But the Bible does 
 furnish premises from which some Catholic doctrines 
 are by no means illogical conclusions. If one man 
 spoke with infallible authority, is there any reason 
 in the nature of things why others should not speak 
 with the same authority ? If one man could forgive 
 
256 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 sins, it can hardly be denied that he might have left 
 this power to others who should come after him, — 
 as indeed he is reported to have done. If we may- 
 pray for those who are still on the earth and our 
 prayers may avail, why may we not for those who 
 have gone into the mysterious beyond ? If .the inter- 
 cession of righteous men now may avail before God, 
 why not much more truly the intercession of those 
 who have become saints in heaven ? Protestants af- 
 fect a great horror that Catholic priests should claim, 
 for example, to forgive sins ; the Pharisees manifested 
 a similar horror when Jesus claimed to, yet we read 
 that he gave the same power he had himself to his 
 apostles, saying, "Whosesoever sins ye remit they 
 are remitted, and whosesoever ye retain, they are re- 
 tained.'^ ^ Was there some peculiar reason why men 
 should be forgiven in the first century of the Christian 
 era that does not hold of the subsequent centuries ? 
 But however lame an instrument the Bible may be 
 against Catholicism, it can still less be a rule of faith 
 and practice for men to-day. Its idea of righteous- 
 ness is of perennial value, but the whole stage of cul- 
 ture in which it was written is now superseded by a 
 higher stage. We cannot think as the Bible would 
 have us think, we cannot believe or hope as Jesus and 
 the apostles would have us believe and hope, we can- 
 not live and act as they command us to act ; we are 
 separated from them not merely by eighteen centuries 
 of time, but by eighteen centuries of experience, of 
 knowledge, and of thought. Passing over minor dif- 
 ferences, what man in sympathy with the culture of 
 
 1 John XX. 23. If this Gospel be regarded as of doubtful au- 
 thority, a saying of similar tenor is found in Matthew xvi. 19. 
 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 257 
 
 to-day can believe in the kingdom of heaven as Jesus 
 believed in it ; what man can look out on the world 
 and trust in a personal Providence as Jesus trusted ; 
 what man can believe in miracle as Jesus believed, 
 or pray as Jesus prayed, or entertain the thought of 
 Jesus that Jesus had of himself ? Jesus is no longer 
 authority to us, the apostles are no longer authority 
 to us ; the whole Bible represents what the Germans 
 call an uherwundener Standpunkt (a point of view that 
 has become outgrown). Men only fancy the Bible is 
 authority to them, as they are not really acquainted 
 with it, as they have never taken the pains to look at 
 it in the light of the circumstances in which it was 
 written. Protestantism hoping to rule the world with 
 its open Bible is a failure. 
 
 Another failure of Protestantism is that it has not 
 given us any new faith, such as the world needs. 
 Protestants have for the most part simply clung to 
 certain remnants or shreds of an old garment; they 
 do not see that humanity cannot live on remnants, and 
 they have given to the world no positive new regen- 
 erative principle. The Catholic Church has all the 
 positive parts of the Protestant system of doctrine. 
 The Unitarians, for example, save themselves by 
 keeping the Christian name and professing disciple- 
 ship for Jesus ; but Catholics are all Christians and 
 all disciples of Jesus. Orthodox Christians believe 
 in the Divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the Atone- 
 ment ; but Catholics believe in all these doctrines and 
 many more. Episcopal churches have their priests 
 and bishops and ritual ; but all this the Catholic 
 Church has in much grander style. Por freedom of 
 conscience and thought is hardly a positive, but only 
 
 17 
 
258 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 a formal principle. It means standing by the truth, 
 as we see it ; or, at best, readiness for truth : it does 
 not mean new and positive truth itself, — and before 
 there can be a new faith, there must be new ideas. 
 Again, the holding of an internal as opposed to an 
 external test of character is not enough. The thought 
 alone gives dignity to the life ; but what shall be 
 the thought? Protestantism has developed no new 
 thought ; it has no new ideas of life and society ; it 
 has seemed to regard moral idealism as exhausted in 
 the statements of the Sermon on the Mount : it has 
 even no genuine understanding of these statements, 
 for if it had, it would take the hint they give, and elab- 
 orate an ideal of social righteousness for the world. 
 For this is wliat the world wants, — not the Bible, 
 nor revisions of it, nor a rational understanding of it ; 
 no, nor Jesus himself, nor a true estimate of his life 
 and work, but an era of social righteousness. This is 
 what Protestantism has not given us, what it has 
 apparently had no aim of giving us ; for its thought 
 of a perfect social order is nowise different from that 
 of Catholicism, as being something that has elsewhere 
 its accomplishment, something which is not of our 
 creation and has slight bearings on this actual order 
 in which we now live. Protestantism, as Christianity 
 generally, has given a kind of sanction to the order of 
 society that it finds, and feels slight impulse to create 
 a new one. Therefore a new religion must come, not 
 preaching acquiescence and submission, but holding 
 up a contrast to what we see about us, — saying that 
 in the idea alone is sacredness and authority, and that 
 contrary facts, though as secure as the earth and as 
 habitual as day and night, have no warrant before it. 
 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 259 
 
 The world needs no kind of an ecclesiastical religion, 
 with priests and prayers and holy books ; it needs a 
 religipn of justice. In the new religion, nothing will 
 count but clear thoughts and honest deeds. Prayer, 
 trust in an outside justice, all reliance on another 
 for what man must do himself, will be abandoned ; 
 man will have his connection with the Unseen in 
 the command which issues from it, "Thou must do 
 the justice that thou cravest," and in his answering 
 obedience. 
 
 Yes, Protestantism in the person of Luther cast the 
 weight of its influence against the era of social right- 
 eousness on which the hearts of the poor oppressed 
 German peasants were set. It must suffice to-day 
 to refer to this single instance of Protestant faith- 
 lessness. The German peasant wanted freedom, — he 
 wanted ecclesiastical and political freedom. The 
 Church and the feudal lord united in despoiling him ; 
 he had no rights worth mentioning against either. 
 He was bound to the soil, was obliged to render any 
 service the lord called for, and had lost his right to 
 the old common woods and fishing grounds and pas- 
 tures ; and to the Church he paid not only tithes, — 
 the tenth part of all his corn, grass, colts, calves, 
 lambs, pigs, geese and chickens, and even every tenth 
 egg, — but he paid money for every particular ser- 
 vice he got from the Church. A Catholic writer of 
 that period, brother to the secretary of the Emperor 
 Charles V., says : "We can hardly get anything from 
 Christian ministers without money ; at baptism, money ; 
 at bishoping, money ; at' marriage, money ; for con- 
 fession, money — no, not extreme unction without 
 money. They will ring no bells without money, no 
 
260 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 burial in the church without money ; so that it seemeth 
 that Paradise is shut upon them that have no money. 
 . . . The rich man may readily get indulgence^, but 
 the poor none, because he wanteth money to pay for 
 them." No wonder the peasants protested against 
 such a double tyranny. They drew up twelve arti- 
 cles, in which they stated their demands, — 
 
 1. The right to choose their own pastors. 2. They 
 would pay tithe of corn ; but small tithes, as every 
 tenth calf or pig or egg, they would not pay. 3. They 
 would be free, and no longer serfs and bondmen. 
 4. Wild game and fish to be free to all. 5. Woods 
 and forests to belong to all for fuel. 6. No services 
 of labor to be more than were required of their fore- 
 fathers. 7. If more service required, wages must be 
 paid for it. 8. Eent, when above the value of the 
 land, to be properly valued and lowered. 9. Punish- 
 ments for crime to be fixed. 10. Common land to 
 be again given up to common use. 11. Death gifts 
 (that is, the right of the lord to take the best chattel 
 of the deceased tenant) to be done away with. 12. 
 Any of these articles proved to be contrary to the 
 Scriptures or God's justice to be null and void. 
 
 What a chance in view of this for a religion that 
 meant to be of any use in this world, that meant to 
 vindicate the right and put down the wrong, to assert 
 itself ! By this time many of the princes had be- 
 come Protestant. Did their Protestantism mean any 
 increased sense of social justice ? What did Luther 
 himself say ? He was not indeed without sympathy 
 for the peasants, — he was too much of a man, to say 
 nothing of Christian, for that ; and he did not fail, 
 as a valiant man, to give the princes his opinion of 
 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 261 
 
 them. Even before the articles were published, he 
 said : " The common man, tried beyond all endurance, 
 overwhelmed with intolerable burdens, will not and 
 cannot any longer tamely submit ; and he has doubt- 
 less good reasons for striking with the flail and the 
 club, as he threatens to do/' Again, of the articles 
 he says to the princes that some of them "contain 
 demands so obviously just, that the mere circum- 
 stance of their requiring to be brought forward dis- 
 honors you before God and man ; '' and he reminds 
 them that " government was not instituted for its own 
 ends, nor to make use of the persons subject to it for 
 the accomplishment of its own caprices and evil pas- 
 sions, but for the interests and advantage of the peo- 
 ple. Now, the people have become fully impressed 
 with this fact, and will no longer tolerate your shame- 
 ful extortions. Of what benefit were it to a peasant 
 that his field should produce as many florins as it 
 •does grains of corn, if his master may despoil him 
 of the produce, and lavish like dirt the money he 
 has thus derived from his vassal in fine clothes, fine 
 castles, fine eating and drinking ? " But when the 
 princes refused to yield to his exhortations, when 
 the peasants began to make good their words by 
 their deeds, when they threatened to arise in revolt, 
 Luther himself yielded, and practically went over to 
 the other side. 
 
 It is not a pleasant task to quote Luther's language 
 against the peasants after they were once fairly started 
 on their violent career. It is not the man but the 
 churchman who speaks. His theory was, " Christians 
 must suffer rather than take up arms ; " they must 
 bear the cross, — " that is a Christian's right," he 
 
262 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 said, "he has no other." He spoke of Christians as 
 flocks of sheep, not to be tended but to be slaughtered, 
 one after the other, — "Nicht Weideschaf — Schlacht- 
 schaf ! nur so hin ; eins nach dem anderen ! " If they 
 rebelled against the civil power, there was but one 
 fate for them. As to the "murderous and robbing 
 hordes of peasants," as he styled them, he said to the 
 princes, " Let them be destroyed, strangled, stabbed, 
 secretly or publicly, by whomsoever is able to do it, 
 even as a mad dog is killed, right away !" I do not 
 believe that this was all due to cowardice and a de- 
 sire to side with princely authority, — though these 
 motives may have partly operated with Luther ; for 
 as he did not fail to commend clemency at the end of 
 the war, he did not during its continuance cease to 
 speak of the "mad tyranny" of princes and lords. 
 In my judgment, it was not Luther merely that failed 
 at this critical moment ; it was not merely Protes- 
 tantism that failed, — it was Christianity, and its 
 impracticable, unphilosophical, and untrue doctrine 
 of non-resistance. It was the Christian doctrine that 
 we are not to take justice into our own hands, but 
 must leave it to another, that was answerable for the 
 horrors of the Peasant's War. Luther had said this, 
 and quoted Scripture passages to this effect from the 
 very start. There was not so much a change in his 
 view or his sympathies, as in the circumstances to 
 which his view could apply. He said from the begin- 
 ning such things as these : " To revolt is to act like 
 heathen; the duty of the Christian is to be patient, 
 not to fight ; defensive justice is for God alone. No 
 one can be his own judge ; an attempt to be that is 
 something which God cannot endure, — it is against 
 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 263 
 
 God and God is against it." Such a view is to men* 
 to-day mythological ; but to Luther, following closely 
 after the teaching of his Master, it was sober truth. 
 But if Luther had been more of a heathen, he would 
 have stood before the world a truer man. Not on 
 the basis of such a view has progress been made in 
 the world. Had Christianity been the rule of life 
 for intelligent Frenchmen a hundred years ago, there 
 would have been no French Eevolution ; had the 
 thought that paralyzed the arm of Luther been the 
 conviction of our forefathers in 1776, this magnificent 
 republic might still have been a British province. 
 Progress is with those who know that justice is to be 
 done by them, who would not honor themselves did 
 they not defend themselves against those who out- 
 rage their rights. I do not answer for all that the 
 peasants did; many of them were as fanatical as 
 Luther, and they were as little disposed to mercy 
 as Luther charged the nobles to be to them. But 
 the question is, were they not right in their claims 
 at the outset ? 
 
 How mean an idea of the significance of this whole 
 matter many have ! D'Aubigne says that the people 
 were not ripe for the enjoyment of political reform, 
 that many unregenerate souls were not prepared for 
 liberty.^ The cant of it ! Fortunately for social or- 
 der, he says, the gospel preserved Luther ; for what 
 would have happened had he carried his extensive 
 influence into the camp of the peasants ? One can 
 conjecture what would have happened ; namely, the 
 victory of the peasants, assisted by the towns and 
 cities, which were almost equally hostile to the no- 
 1 History of the Reformation, ill. 181. 
 
264 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 bles, and perhaps a peaceable victory, the horrors of 
 massacre averted, and no two hundred added years 
 (as was actually the case) of miserable serfdom for 
 the peasantry and of pride and power for the lords. 
 Froude can only speak of the Peasants' War as the 
 "first scandal" to the Eeformation ; ^ in truth, had the 
 Reformation possessed the moral fibre which we de- 
 mand of a religion to-day, it would have been its first 
 golden opportunity. A biographer of Luther speaks 
 in this connection of the " dark clouds " that threat- 
 ened a new danger to the cause of the Reformation : ^ 
 what a cause, I am tempted to say, that did not find a 
 part of its very mission in meeting the danger ! Apol- 
 ogists who look at the question with the sympathies 
 of to-day can only say it was a religious reformation 
 that Luther had supremely at heart. But what is 
 religion ? Must not our very concern for truth and 
 justice lead us to disown religion as thus understood ? 
 The only religion a free man could care anything 
 about would involve taking up the cause which Lu- 
 ther practically deserted, and striving to usher in an 
 era of social righteousness on the earth, — doing so, 
 that is, with the feeling that we are bound to do so, 
 that the world and the invisible necessity of things 
 call us to the work. 
 
 Who are preparing the way for such a religion, 
 as much needed now as ever it was in the days of 
 feudal and ecclesiastical oppression ? If you doubt 
 it, listen to the bitter cry of the outcast poor in 
 Protestant London ; listen to the cry of the poor in 
 all our Protestant cities ; listen to the cry of the poor 
 
 1 Contemporary Review, August, 1883. 
 
 *^ Dr. William Rein's Life of Luther, p. 124. 
 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF PROTESTANTISM. 265 
 
 in Chicago. Not Protestants as such, not Christians 
 as such, not ministers and churches as such are pre- 
 paring the way for such a religion, — but they who 
 anywhere or under any name utter or listen to a call 
 of justice. Now and then a man dares lift up his 
 voice against unprincipled wealth and power; now 
 and then a man utters his belief that unselfishness 
 may be lived and not only dreamed of; now and 
 then a demand is heard that public ends be put above 
 private ends, in politics, business, everywhere j now 
 and then the community is appealed to, to regard no 
 slightest interest of its humblest member as outside 
 the realm of its rightful concern. Heard now and 
 then are these voices, — heard on the street, heard in 
 the secular newspaper, heard when companies of re- 
 formers come together ; and though they say not one 
 word of religion, they are the voices in our night 
 that tell of the coming day ; they are the witnesses 
 to an unbelieving age of an ideal truth and an ideal 
 authority; and that wherein Luther and Protestant- 
 ism and Christianity have failed, shall be their success 
 and their triumph. 
 
XIV. 
 
 WHY UNITARIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY.i 
 
 UNITAEIANS are not dogmatists ; they are per- 
 haps as a class exceptionally humane and 
 public-spirited, given to good works as freely with- 
 out as within ecclesiastical lines ; they have little 
 other-worldliness, and religion is perhaps with them 
 nearer to being a sentiment to cover and refine the 
 daily life than with any other body of Christians. 
 Why then do they not satisfy ? 
 
 In the first place, they ask too much in the way of 
 speculative beliefs. They have taken a step, indeed, 
 in the right direction. Other churches will not allow 
 the doubt that the Bible is the word of God, or that 
 Jesus is Divine. Unitarianism does not regard these 
 and many other doctrines as essential. It holds only 
 to the simplest postulates of Christian faith ; namely, 
 that men have a Father in heaven, that they will live 
 again after they die, and that Jesus meantime is our 
 Guide and Master. But the time has come when even 
 these postulates are under a shadow for some good 
 and earnest men. Not any moral unfaithfulness, not 
 any craving for novelties, but simply reflection, seri- 
 ous reflection, has led not a few to regard a personal 
 Deity and individual immortality as problems rather 
 than matters of faith, and to look on Jesus as too far 
 
 1 I beg not to be understood in this lecture as instituting any 
 comparison between Unitarianism and the Ethical Movement. I 
 speak altogether from an ideal standpoint. Whether the Ethical 
 Movement itself shall be true to its ideal inspirations remains to 
 be seen. 
 
WHY UNITARIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY. 267 
 
 removed from us, in his thought of the world and his 
 hope for humanity, to be our guide and master. This 
 attitude of mind is growing; and yet before it was 
 distinctly taken, before there was any break with his- 
 toric Christianity, and while there was only a vague 
 unwillingness to call Jesus by the title " Lord " and 
 ^•' Master,'' it was frowned upon, if not repudiated, by 
 the Unitarians in their National Conference. The 
 result was that those who manifested this unwilling- 
 ness felt obliged to leave the Unitarian fellowship. 
 The Free Eeligious Association which they formed 
 aimed at a fellowship limited by no confession. Chris- 
 tian or other, — a fellowship in the spirit. Since the 
 time of that Conference, the professions which Uni- 
 tarians sometimes make of allowing complete liberty 
 of thought, and of ranking the deed above the creed, 
 have an air of inconsequence. An individual Unita- 
 rian may, of course, speak in this way ; but Unitarian- 
 ism, so far as that word has any propriety, has spoken 
 differently. The Conference I have referred to had 
 the alternative distinctly before it, formally to avow 
 these broader principles or to confess "the Lord 
 Jesus Christ ; " and it chose the latter, " voting," as 
 Mr. E. E. Abbot has tersely said, " against freedom in 
 the name of its own Lord." ^ Unitarianism thereby 
 ranged itself among the Christian denominations, — 
 the freest indeed of them all, and allowing many vari- 
 eties of belief, but all within the fundamental Chris- 
 tian limitations, — and closed the door which was 
 opening out on the religion of the future. For such 
 
 ^ See a most instructive pamphlet, ** The Battle of Syracuse : 
 Two Essays by Rev. J. F. Clarke, D.D., and F. E. Abbot," 
 Boston, 1876. 
 
268 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 a forward-looking thought had been the inspiration 
 of many Unitarians. Channing prophesied a new 
 order of things, though he lamented toward the end 
 of his life that what he called a "Unitarian Ortho- 
 doxy"^ was taking the place of the old spirit of 
 progress. An Abbot, a Frothingham, a Potter joined 
 in such a high hope when they responded to the call 
 for that Conference of which I have spoken ; they did 
 not believe there would be a break, but an alliance 
 with the free spirit of the time, and that the future 
 would be a natural growth from the past. Sad men 
 they were at the result; Mr. Abbot writes that he 
 never went to rest with a sadder heart than after one 
 of those memorable days of fruitless struggle. But 
 in truth we may be sadder for Unitarianism than for 
 him and his companions, since it thereby cut itself off 
 from one of the most magnificent careers that ever 
 opened out to a religious body, while he and those 
 
 1 Life (one vol. ed.), p. 435. Recent Unitarian Orthodoxy is 
 perhaps fairly represented in the following from the Unitarian 
 Review (July, 1880, p. 83) : " There are Unitarians who believe 
 in God, and honor Jesus, and hope for the life everlasting, and to 
 whom this faith is the substance of their religious life, its procla- 
 mation their main work, its fellowship their main joy. The work 
 they seek to do for humanity finds in this faith its chief sanc- 
 tion and inspiration; and while they rejoice in all work done for 
 righteousness and humanity on whatever basis, and desire not to 
 be found backward in any fellowship of philanthropy, they will not 
 compromise in their religious fellowships the very basis of all religious 
 union, nor invite to the place of instruction in their churches those 
 who contradict and contemn the main agencies of religious cul- 
 ture and the fundamental postulates of Christian truth." (The 
 italics are ours.) The " basis of religious union " is still found in 
 belief in God, Jesus, and immortality. I need not point out how 
 far removed this is from a pure religion of righteousness. 
 
WHY UNITAKIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY. 269 
 
 with him have only to wait for the future to do them 
 adequate honor. XJnitarianism, as a body, has made 
 no progress worth mentioning since that day.^ 
 
 But there is another and deeper reason for dissatis- 
 faction with Unitarianism. Complete freedom for 
 the mind is good, and the modern world will have it ; 
 but there is something better, — a complete morality. 
 I have said Unitarianism demands too much of us on 
 the speculative side ; I will add, it demands too little 
 on the practical side. Unitarians manifest no great 
 discontent with the world about them ; they inaugu- 
 rate charities, but they do not go very deep with 
 them, and their thought hardly seems to go beyond 
 charity. Their conception of duty is pure, good as 
 far as it goes, but commonplace ; any great ranges 
 of duty, any mighty responsibility such as would 
 put enthusiasm into the souls of those who assume 
 it, they do not seem to be aware of. They responded 
 
 1 It should be stated, however, that the Free Religious spirit 
 has infected some of the Unitarian churches in the West, and that 
 under its influence the Western Unitarian Conference has recently 
 taken a remarkable step forward. The last remnant of a theo- 
 logical creed was dropped from its platform in 1886, and it now 
 boldly welcomes to its fellowship all who care for the cause of 
 truth, righteousness, and love in the world. The churches belong- 
 ing to the Western Conference — for those wishing to continue the 
 historic attitude of Unitarianism have formed a separate associa- 
 tion—have thereby placed themselves in the very vanguard of 
 progress. Why, however, one can hardly help asking, if the his- 
 torical meaning of Unitarianism is abandoned, is the Unitarian 
 name retained? Why is not union sought with those who have 
 been advocating and seeking to maintain an ethical basis of fel- 
 lowship for some time past? It is surely to be hoped that in the 
 near future all who believe in a religion of goodness, whatever 
 their historical ancestry, may join hands in one fellowship. 
 
270 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 but mildly to Dr. Channing's great-hearted plans for 
 the elevation of the poor in Boston,^ giving them but 
 slight support, and manifesting little of his kindling 
 emotion at the thought of great improvements in 
 human society. Too often has their thought been one 
 which, if it ever consoled, now benumbs the world ; 
 namely, that the varying lot of men is ordered by 
 Divine Providence, that the social order which exists 
 with its classes and distinctions has a divine sanction. 
 Let me make plain what I mean, by quoting the 
 actual language of one who became a leader, perhaps 
 the leader, of Unitarian opinion in later years : — 
 
 "The inequalities — wealth and poverty, knowledge and 
 ignorance — of our social condition must be felt to be the 
 allotment of Providence, a wise provision for the greatest 
 happiness of all, before the poor can be regarded with the 
 tenderness and respect they deserve. . . . The Saviour has 
 told us, ' The poor ye have always with you ; ' and the Chris- 
 tian would not have it otherwise. He learns too many 
 lessons of resignation and faith and hope from the poor ; he 
 enjoys too much satisfaction in ministering to their necessi- 
 ties; he receives too many admonitions to his pride and 
 self-indulgence; he is made to feel his own privileges too 
 gratefully, — to wish that poverty were no longer known on 
 the earth." 2 
 
 How such a view as this strikes at the root of 
 all deep reform ! How it lulls to rest, — I do not 
 mean to inactivity, but to a feeling that with a 
 little kindness and charity on our part all things 
 are well ! How slight a sense does it betray of a 
 
 1 Works (one vol. ed.) p. 98. 
 
 2 Sermon before the Boston Young Men's Benevolent Society, 
 by Rev. H. W. Bellows, Dec 9, 1838. 
 
WHY UNITARIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY. 271 
 
 great creative responsibility and task intrusted to hu- 
 man society ! Do we wonder that Dr. Channing tells 
 us that no sect took less interest than the Unitarian 
 in the slavery question, or was more inclined to con- 
 servatism ? ^ " Even in his own parish/' says a com- 
 petent witness, " his message was unheard save by 
 a few. When he asked that the doors of his church 
 might be open for a eulogy to be pronounced upon 
 his beloved friend Dr. Follen, a warm-hearted Aboli- 
 tionist, by another dear friend Rev. S. J. May, they 
 were rudely shut in his face.^'^ ^^ wonder that, 
 according to his biographer, such an occurrence led 
 him to question the usefulness of his whole ministry, 
 and to ask to what end had he poured out his soul all 
 those years, if this was the answering conduct on the 
 part of his people. John Quincy Adams even says 
 that Channing was " deserted by his followers," in the 
 later years of his life, and was actually driven from 
 his active pastorate on account of his Antislavery 
 
 1 Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 394. The passage (from a letter to J. 
 Blanco White) is not given in the one-volume edition published 
 by the American Unitarian Association. It is perhaps worth quot- 
 ing entire : " I wish I could look to Unitarianism with more hope. 
 But this system was, at its recent revival, a protest of the un- 
 derstanding against absurd dogmas, rather than the work of deep 
 religious principle, and was early paralyzed by the mixture of 
 a materialistic philosophy, and fell too much into the hands of 
 scholars and political reformers ; and the consequence is a lack 
 of vitality and force, which gives us little hope of its accomplish- 
 ing much under its present auspices or in its present form. When 
 I tell you that no sect in this country has taken less interest in 
 the slavery question, or is more inclined to conservatism than our 
 ^ody, you will judge what may be expected of it." 
 
 2 Oliver Johnson in Channing Centennial Volume, p. 61. Cf. 
 Channing's Life (one vol. ed.), p. 671. 
 
272 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 views. 1 I do not adduce these things in any spirit 
 of idle criticism or hostility, but simply as showing 
 that to whatever degree of perfection Unitarians may 
 have carried the conventional Christian virtues, — and 
 I believe they have carried them to a high degree, — 
 they have had no deep moral convictions, and have 
 been without a deep moral life. 
 
 In truth, this might be said of the churches in 
 general during the last hundred years. The highest 
 moral ideas have been conceived, the largest move- 
 ments of moral life have gone on, outside of them. 
 And the fact is not without connection with the fun- 
 damental Christian view of things. In the estimation 
 of the founders of Christianity a judgment was to 
 be accomplished and general justice done by another 
 Power than man ; human beings were to love one an- 
 other, to be kind and pitiful, and yet justice and the 
 reorganization of society -were too great, too difficult 
 tasks to be assumed by human hands. In its large 
 general features the world was accepted as it is, and 
 a perfect, an ideal order of things was thought to be 
 held in reserve for us. The noblest exercises of Chris- 
 tian piety have been in longing, praying, preparing 
 oneself for that future kingdom. The present age is 
 waking up to another thought. It is not inclined to 
 accept the order of human life as it is, but to try it 
 and test it by a thought of what it ought to be ; to 
 see whether it meets the wants, the rights of human 
 beings and of all human beings. It is mightily in- 
 clined to believe, too, that the satisfaction of these 
 wants and the doing justice to those rights need not 
 
 1 See Adams's published Diaries, and the comment thereon in 
 the Unitarian Review, August, 1881, p. 151. 
 
WHY UNITARIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY. 273 
 
 be delayed to a future world, but may be undertaken 
 here, and that by no other power than ourselves. 
 This thought was at the basis of the French Ee vo- 
 lution ; it lies at the heart of all the social unrest 
 of our time. I believe, indeed, that it makes a seed- 
 thought for a new religion : already we hear more 
 idealism, higher ethics, yes, more faith from the social 
 reformers of our time than from almost any other 
 class of men. The modern world is tired of hearing of 
 the " kingdom of heaven ; '' and if one insists on put- 
 ting any good thought he has under that old-time form, 
 it passes him by. What it wants is a plan of justice ; 
 what it wants is a searching and trying of all our in- 
 stitutions by that ideal standard ; what it wants is a 
 company of men who will make that plan an object of 
 religion, and vow loyalty to it for life and death. 
 
 I must say I see little of this spirit among Unita- 
 rians : there is much laudable effort to make things 
 a little better, but no surrender to principle, no incli- 
 nation to take life in hand and count it well spent 
 and lost in devotion to an idea. I cannot discover 
 that they have in mind any world-transforming princi- 
 ple or grand idea. Goodness, righteousness, brother- 
 hood are often enough on their lips, — I cannot see 
 that they mean much by them. For morality surely 
 is not simply what is left of the old religions, after 
 their dogmas are given up. To make morality the 
 basis of a religious movement does not mean that the 
 souls of men shall be fed with a few kind feelings 
 or good habits, adding perhaps, for the sake of nov- 
 elty, a philanthropy or two. No ! morality is nothing 
 save as it is vastly more than this ; and philanthropies 
 are nothing save as they are incidents of a thought 
 
 18 
 
274 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 that takes not this or that special good, but all good 
 in its grasp. What we want is a sight of principles ; 
 to aim not at the better, but at the best ; to fear not 
 to make the rule of a perfect life the rule of every 
 day ; to bring the glory and sanctity of heaven here 
 on the earth. How do our lives stand with the moral 
 law; how will our treatment of one another in our 
 business, our homes, bear the reflection of the white 
 searching light of truth and justice? Do we ever 
 take advantage of the weakness or the ignorance of 
 another ? Do we ever gain anything by another's 
 losing ? Do we ever profit by lies, by false represen- 
 tations ? Do we ever excuse ourselves by saying they 
 are necessary ? Has shame gone out of us when we 
 have done a wrong thing, an impure thing ? Do we 
 divert or amuse ourselves, when we might better be 
 doing penance ? Ah, think not that in acknowledg- 
 ing morality you are taking up with an easy master ! 
 It indeed nowise limits or offends our reason, but it 
 imposes no light or transient obligations on the will 
 and life. It has a grave face ; its joys are severe ; ^ 
 it makes no promises, and will not be served for ease, 
 pleasure, or any personal good. It may command the 
 renunciation of all these ; it may once more speak to 
 the world as it did through Jesus, and say that neither 
 father nor mother nor wife nor child, nor any station 
 or business or prosperity in life, shall be so dear as 
 itself. I know that it means order, that it involves 
 the general good, the universal happiness ; but it does 
 not mean the order of any particular stage of society, 
 nor a good or goods which one class of men share and 
 another do not, nor my happiness nor your happiness 
 1 " Res severa est verum gaudiura." 
 
WHY UNITARIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY. 275 
 
 save in so far as they are a part of the universal hap- 
 piness. Morality may destroy as well as build; it 
 may uproot as well as plant ; it may say with Chan- 
 ning of a social order which blesses a few and rests 
 on the depression of the many, Let it perish ! ^ Mo- 
 rality means the good of all ; moral questions are 
 largely social questions ; and there has scarcely been 
 a man, to my knowledge, among Unitarians who has 
 addressed himself in the spirit of Channing to the 
 social questions, or even repeated his words : nay, 
 they sometimes even have said that their great leader 
 was over-sensitive, and that he had an almost morbid 
 vision of moral evil.^ 
 
 When I say Unitarianism demands too little of us 
 on the practical side, I do not mean that it does not 
 undertake a few more charities, nor that it is not 
 benevolent, humane, philanthropic, as those words go, 
 but that it does not call on us to create a new heaven 
 and a new earth ; that it does not appeal to the infi- 
 nite side of human nature ; that its enthusiasm only 
 matches with the tasks it proposes, — for example, 
 putting churches in University towns, endowing theo- 
 logical schools, building denominational houses and 
 club-rooms, and supporting old churches whose natu- 
 ral lives seem to be already spent. 
 
 A great work comes only out of a great thought, and 
 I do not discover any such great thought in Unitari- 
 anism. Think of the growth of early Christianity, 
 of those first three centuries when the Church moved, 
 
 1 Works (one vol. ed.), p. 32. 
 
 2 Cf . Prof. J. H. Allen's " Our Liberal Movement in Theology " 
 (p. 61), — a book, it should be added, giving a remarkably candid 
 review of the history of Unitarianism. 
 
276 ETHICAL KELIGION. 
 
 as has been said,^ with the pace of a goddess, conquer- 
 ing and to conquer ! It was not force that was the 
 secret of her victory ; it was not schools, it was not 
 churches, nor bishops, nor bibles ; it was not even 
 the sweet tale of the life, nor the tragic story of the 
 death, of the man of Nazareth ; no, nor the innocent 
 myth of his triumphant resurrection and ascension : 
 it was something back of and above all this, — it was 
 the grand thought of the " kingdom of God." In the 
 larger proportions of that idea Jesus got his sanctity, 
 from it churches derived their strength, in it a long- 
 ing world found satisfaction and redemption. That 
 idea was nothing but a dream of the perfect : worship 
 went thither, love and tears mingled at the thought of 
 such a consummation, death itself was holy when be- 
 yond it men saw the eternal splendors. Do you won- 
 der when I say that no less great a thought than this 
 can produce another religion, — something encompass- 
 ing life and sanctifying death ; something making us 
 despise the world as we see it and long for a better ; 
 something awakening worship again, stirring love and 
 tears and song and joy ? Yet I believe it. Man can- 
 not thrive on petty plans. He must have something 
 before him as great as his grandest thought of the pos- 
 sible ; nothing but the perfect, nothing but a perfect 
 society, an ideal fellowship, a "City of the Light," 
 can satisfy him. It is not necessary that he hope act- 
 ually to witness the final triumph, — it is enough, I be- 
 lieve, that he can think of it ; that something of the 
 glory of it may descend upon him as he toils for it ; 
 that the labors of his hands have an eternal issue 
 there. " Though we die," said a recently condemned 
 1 John Henry Newman. 
 
WHY UNITARIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY. 277 
 
 Nihilist, " we have bright hopes." He did not ask to 
 see the nobler political and social order that he be- 
 lieved was to come ; it was enough for him that it 
 would come, and that he could give his life for it : nay, 
 in thought he could leap across the years that sep- 
 arated him from it, and cry, as if standing even then 
 in the midst of an emancipated fatherland, "Long 
 live the Eussian Kepublic!" Can we not so think 
 and speak of the grander republic, the Commonwealth 
 of Man, the universal society, wherein "the perfect 
 Eight doth reign," — which the heart and conscience 
 and reason unite in demanding as the end and con- 
 summation of the whole course of human history, the 
 outcome of the toils and struggles of all the genera- 
 tions of men ? What matters it if it is far on in the 
 distant future, — can our thought be prevented from 
 leaping out to it ? And can we not even now take 
 our stand in imagination with it, trying our actual 
 lives and institutions by it, and finding rest and con- 
 tentment only as we know that we and the world are 
 going on toward the perfect goal ? Not from Unita- 
 rianism, not from Christianity, has come the song 
 that best utters and almost chants this thought. It 
 is from Felix Adler, upon whom, I sometimes think, 
 more than upon any other man of our day, the mantle 
 and prophetic spirit of Channing have fallen, and whose 
 words, I almost believe, are those which Jesus him- 
 self would utter, should he come and put his solemn 
 thought and passion into the language of to-day : — 
 
 ** Have you heard the Golden City- 
 Mentioned in the legends old 1 
 Everlasting light shines o'er it, 
 Wondrous tales of it are told. 
 
278 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 Only righteous men and women 
 Dwell within its gleaming wall; 
 
 Wrong is banished from its borders, 
 Justice reigns supreme o'er all. 
 
 Do you ask, Where is that City, 
 
 Where the perfect Right doth reign ? 
 
 I must answer, I must tell you, 
 That you seek its site in vain. 
 
 You may roam o'er hill and valley. 
 You may pass o'er land and sea, 
 
 You may search the wide earth over, — 
 'T is a City yet to be ! 
 
 We are builders of that City, — 
 All our joys and all our groans 
 
 Help to rear its shining ramparts ; 
 All our lives are building- stones. 
 
 What that plan may be we know not. 
 
 How the seat of Justice high. 
 How the City of our vision 
 
 Will appear to mortal eye, — 
 
 That no mortal eye can picture, 
 That no mortal tongue can tell. 
 
 We can barely dream the glories 
 Of the Future's citadel. 
 
 But for it we still must labor. 
 For its sake bear pain and grief, 
 
 In it find the end of living 
 And the anchor of belief. 
 
 But a few brief years we labor. 
 Soon our earthly day is o'er ; 
 
 Other builders take our places, 
 And *' our place knows us no more." 
 
WHY UNITAKIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY. 279 
 
 Bnt the work that we have builded, 
 Oft with bleeding hands and tears, 
 
 And in error and in anguish, 
 Will not perish with our years. 
 
 It will be at last made perfect 
 
 In the universal plan ; 
 It will help to crown the labors 
 
 Of the toiling hosts of man. 
 
 It will last and shine transfigured 
 
 In the final reign of Right ; 
 It will merge into the splendors 
 
 Of the City of the Light ! " 
 
 Does not this cover life ; does it not sanctify death ; 
 does it not take hold of the deepest needs, the highest 
 longings of our nature ; are we not touched with un- 
 speakable awe to know that our humblest work, even 
 though done " in error, in anguish/' and " with bleed- 
 ing hands and tears/' cannot fail of its end, but helps 
 on to the ultimate consummation ? I am Reminded of 
 George Eliot's words, — 
 
 " Even our failures are a prophepy, ^^^/^ 
 
 Even our yearnings and our/oitter tears 
 After that fair and true ^^ cannot grasp, — 
 As patriots who seem pS die in vain 
 Make liberty more sacred by their pangs." ^ 
 
 Not a patriot, not a martyr, not an ideal reformer, has 
 ever said or can ever say his word or do his deed in 
 vain. They only live in vain who compromise with 
 their ideal convictions, who believe in no grand goal 
 for humanity, who would rather live well, comfortably 
 housed and honored in this present order of things, 
 than dare condemn it and help to create a better. 
 1 A Minor Prophet. 
 
280 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 I have said Unitarianism is unsatisfactory on its 
 practical side, because it lacks a great thought ; and 
 this thought is to my mind, — I utter it at the risk 
 of seeming extravagant, — that the perfect order of 
 things, which Omnipotence was to produce for us in 
 another world, we are ourselves to create here. I 
 believe there is a kind of omnipotence in human na- 
 ture : I do not mean, of course, as men ordinarily are, 
 eating, drinking, wrapped up in pleasure, business, 
 and personal interests, but as they might be, under 
 the influence of ideas. I might more properly say, I 
 believe in the omnipotence of ideas, and of men in so 
 far as they are possessed with them, — and men only 
 need to open their hearts to be so possessed. The 
 true atheist is he who does not believe that an ideal 
 justice and right can conquer in the world, that men 
 — all men — and universal human society and gov- 
 ernment cannot will and do the good, the perfect good. 
 There is no need of the miracle-working, heaven-creat- 
 ing God of the old theology ; nay, he is our enemy to 
 the extent that men are led to give to him the tasks 
 and trust him for the results which they should ac- 
 complish themselves. There is a miracle-working, a 
 heaven-creating power in ourselves. So long as we 
 pray, this divinity is dishonored. Until he awakes, 
 there is no salvation. 
 
 Unitarianism does not see this, and does not because 
 of what I must call — and this is my third point — its 
 general lack of seriousness in treating of the issues 
 of the day. Nowhere is this better shown than in 
 its attitude toward this subject of prayer. Prayer for 
 temporal things, for rain or fair weather, for food or 
 shelter, Unitarians do not make, except by a slip of the 
 
WHY UNITARIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY. 281 
 
 tongue ; but they pray for spiritual blessings, for the 
 kingdom of God. But are not these just the things 
 that need praying for the least, that are most within 
 our own power ? Eain or fair weather are very evi- 
 dently in some other control than our own ; but 
 purity, charity, truth, how can these ever come to us 
 save by our willing to have them ? A perfect order 
 of society, how can it ever dawn on the earth save as 
 man sets his heart upon it and determines that it 
 shall be ? Certainly these are the best things, and 
 if prayer would bring them, they would be the most 
 worth praying for ; but because they are the best, 
 ay, the most sacred things, therefore all the more 
 scrupulous should we be in laying hold of only the 
 true and effectual means for getting them. The dif- 
 ference between those who do not pray and those 
 who do, is not in any lessened value the former set 
 on these higher things, or in any diminished aspira- 
 tion or craving for them, but simply in the sense of 
 the law of cause and effect. Kain does not come save 
 as there are certain conditions in the atmosphere ; 
 truth, justice, and the reign of the right can no more 
 come save as there are certain conditions in the hu- 
 man soul, certain widespread dispositions in human 
 society. Prayer is a survival from an old uncritical, 
 unscientific habit of mind; it remains with men to- 
 day chiefly because it is a habit ; it remains above 
 all with Unitarians, who are rationalized in so many 
 ways, almost purely and solely because it is a habit. 
 And they do not see that it is a confusing habit, 
 to abandon which is not to give up a form or a few 
 words merely, but to recognize the change of view 
 that has come over the world in respect to the means 
 
282 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 of accomplishing the highest and dearest ends. Jesus 
 did not vaguely aspire for the kingdom of God ; nor 
 did his followers, when, after he had gone on high 
 as they imagined, they besought him to come again 
 quickly : they believed he would come, and he be- 
 lieved that the faith which might remove mountains 
 could also be answered by the establishment of the 
 Divine Kingdom. How vain then is it to repeat his 
 or their language, when the mighty belief that was in 
 it is no longer ours ! Let those who have a new belief 
 not dally with an old form. Let us appeal to men as 
 fervently and with as absolute a faith as ever of old 
 prompted prayer to God; and the slumbering divin- 
 ity that lies down deep in us all will arise, and, loosed 
 from his bonds, go forth to recreate the world. 
 
 There is a similar lack of seriousness in the Uni- 
 tarian attitude toward Jesus. As they pray without 
 any deep belief in prayer, so they own Jesus as Mas- 
 ter with scant sense of that supreme devotion, that 
 passionate love, which has inspired earnest Christian 
 men and women the world over. It is a venerable 
 and beautiful form of words, " our Lord and Master," 
 and Unitarians often seem to use it because they 
 can^ rather than because they must. Sometimes their 
 claim has been to represent primitive Christianity ; 
 but in simple truth it must be said they have made 
 little effort to understand primitive Christianity : 
 they have generally looked at it from nineteenth cen- 
 tury and not from first century eyes ; they have been 
 anxious to see what interpretation the Gospels would 
 hear, rather than what they really teach.^ And at 
 
 1 Rev. Dr. James Martineau — an English Unitarian who com- 
 bines in a remarkable manner ideal philosophy with the historical 
 
WHY UNITARIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY. 283 
 
 best, granting whatever formal resemblance there may 
 be in Unitarianism to primitive Christianity, it is as 
 much really like it as the framework of a building 
 that is falling to pieces is like a similar framework 
 around which a noble structure is going up. The 
 framework in both cases may be the same ; but in the 
 case of early Christianity the house was building, and 
 to-day it is falling in ruins. One cannot, I venture 
 to say, be a genuine, whole-hearted Christian after the 
 primitive type without being caught up by the spirit 
 of the movement, and becoming something more. 
 
 And even those Unitarians who do not own Jesus 
 as Master or claim to represent primitive Christianity, 
 incline to play fast and loose with the Christian name. 
 They rarely treat Christianity in a generous way as a 
 great historical movement, and only by an ungracious 
 minimizing of its essentials do they make out that 
 they have a right to be called Christians at all. Some- 
 times their' Christian faith is at so low an ebb, that 
 they claim the Christian name only because they are 
 of Christian descent or live under a Christian civili- 
 zation ; and if they actually give up the Christian 
 name, it is with so little heartiness that they bring 
 no enthusiasm to the cause of a new religion. 
 
 Yes, in the conception of religion itself Unitarians 
 sometimes manifest a lack of deep seriousness. Is 
 
 spirit — says : " No one who has once become familiar with the 
 definite images and ideas of the Messianic Christianity in any of 
 its forms can ever again give to its language the loose and large 
 interpretation which alone renders it available for the voice of 
 living piety. He knows it really means what he cannot mean ; 
 and if constrained to adopt it, he feels that his * Kingdom of 
 heaven suffereth violence.'" 
 
284 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 it not something to give oneself over to the right 
 in a covenant never to be broken ? Is that an easy 
 thing, a light thing ? Is the mood in which one does 
 it a mood that comports with the use of such adjec- 
 tives as " welcome, delicate, rare, and exquisite " ^ to 
 describe it ? Yet there is a great deal of this "deli- 
 cate, rare, and exquisite " religion among Unitarians. 
 Another writer says that "there is a grace of sen- 
 timent, a tenderness of feeling, that is as beautiful 
 as it is rare, which is more truthfully represented 
 by this word ' religion ' than by any other in our lan- 
 guage." ^ Did any great religious movement ever 
 start with such conceptions as these ? Does not real 
 religion try men, and set before them arduous tasks ? 
 Hear the words of the old prophets : " Wash you and 
 make you clean, and put away the evil of your do- 
 ings ! " Hear the words of Jesus : " Let the dead bury 
 their dead, but go thou and preach the Kingdom of 
 God ! " Hear Luther, hear Channing, and you will not 
 fail to realize that religion means higher and grander 
 thoughts of duty, stricter rules of life; and that it 
 must be a religion out of which strenuous convictions 
 are gone, and wherein only a few pretty flowers of 
 sentiment remain, that can bear to be described in 
 these "rare, delicate, and exquisite" terms. I said 
 in the early part of my discourse, that religion with 
 Unitarians was a sentiment to cover and refine the 
 daily life ; but religion must be more than this. A 
 new religion must call for a new daily life ; its in- 
 fluence must be not to make us pass our days serenely 
 as our fathers passed theirs, but to stir a divine un- 
 
 ^ Rev. Dr. H. W. Bellows, Boston Unitarian Anniversary, 1881. 
 
 2 Unity, Nov. 16, 1881, p. 342. 
 
WHY UNITARIANISM FAILS TO SATISFY. 285 
 
 rest for a higher life. The religion of Unitarians is 
 too near this world, — it offers too few contrasts with 
 it ; it does not rap our souls away into the vision of 
 an eternal beauty that lies beyond it. I have in mind 
 a picture, — I cannot tell whether I ever saw it, or 
 whether it is made up in imagination from hints 
 that I have somewhere found in reading, — of Saint 
 Augustine and his mother, sitting together, with eyes 
 turned upward and seeming to rest on some distant 
 transcendent glory. It is this attitude which I miss 
 in Unitarianism, and which I seem to find in the 
 touching song of a glorified humanity which I have 
 already quoted. To look away from this present or- 
 der of human life to an ideal order, to feel that our 
 true life and home are there, — this, whether the ideal 
 is conceived as another species of reality, only sepa- 
 rated from us in space and time, or the image and 
 form after which we are to shape and recreate pres- 
 ent reality, as I hold, — this is indeed the meaning 
 of Ethics, and must be the supreme attitude of an 
 Ethical religion. 
 
 I am aware that I have considered Unitarianism in 
 its actual character and history rather than in those 
 higher inspirations that have now and then visited it. 
 They were mostly before Unitarianism began an or- 
 ganized existence. Then were heard grand assertions 
 of the rights of the mind as over against external 
 authority, vindications of the moral and rational na- 
 ture of man ; then it was said that religion was not 
 in name or form or creed, but in lifting the soul to 
 the love and practice of goodness : almost prophetic 
 strains they were, which redeemed, and still redeem, 
 
286 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 as we read them, the dreary Biblical and theological 
 controversies of those early times. And the only 
 reason why Unitarianism cannot become the religion 
 of the future, is that when it came to publish its 
 word to the world it was not willing to take its stand 
 on that high ground, but felt it must, before all, keep 
 its standing in the Christian Church, and cling to its 
 small half-believed remnant of the Christian creed. 
 May the brave little company of ^^ Ethical" Unita- 
 rians in the West,i and other earnest individuals 
 here and there, yet reclaim the larger body to which 
 they belong, and lift it to the level of its highest 
 inspirations ! 
 
 1 See note to p. 269. 
 
XV. 
 
 THE BASIS OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 
 
 THE Ethical movement has a serious aim. It is 
 not a literary movement ; nor is it primarily a 
 philosophical movement. It does not aim at culture, 
 in the ordinary sense of the word. A wider knowl- 
 edge of man and of the best products of the human 
 spirit, — that is very desirable, but it does not make 
 our central aim. We want to touch the springs of 
 man's moral life, to influence character and conduct. 
 Our aim is moral culture ; and it is natural that I 
 should try to answer the question. On what basis 
 does such a movement rest ; what is our starting- 
 point, what is the unmovable rock on which we plant 
 our feet? 
 
 First, I must frankly say that the Ethical movement 
 does not find a sure basis in the great religions that 
 have come down to us, nor even in the rationalized 
 forms of them that are becoming more or less current. 
 There is no occasion for jeers and gibes at Judaism 
 and Christianity. They are not aliens, but in the 
 order of history, — the ancestry from which we have 
 sprung, the mother of us all. Taunts are sometimes 
 directed against them as if the human mind were not 
 responsible for them, as if they were imported from 
 without or had descended ready-made from heaven. 
 But this is a shallow view, and really proceeds from 
 
288 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 the standpoint of tLe religions themselves. The truth 
 is, that mankind has developed its own religious be- 
 liefs ; that neither God nor Devil revealed them ; and 
 hence that to ridicule them in a wholesale way is to 
 ridicule the human mind itself. None the less are 
 the old beliefs inadequate to our present light and 
 knowledge. Though it is simply one stage of human 
 culture succeeding another and lower stage, the tran- 
 sition is so great as to amount to a revolution. To 
 go straight to the heart of the matter, men have here- 
 tofore conceived of the Supreme Power of the world 
 as a personal being like themselves ; and they have 
 had so slight a notion of the order of Nature and the 
 fixity of Nature's laws, that they have thought they 
 might pray to him and ask him to do for them what 
 they could not do for themselves. Many to-day, on 
 the other hand, owing partially to the influence of 
 philosophical criticism and partly to that of positive 
 science, are constrained to regard the personality of 
 Deity as an open question, and prayer as a useless 
 expenditure of human energy. Personality is a con- 
 ception borrowed from our experience in connection 
 with human beings ; it may be questioned whether we 
 have a right to apply it to what is beyond all expe- 
 rience, unless it be by way of metaphor or figure of 
 speech, — as we may speak of the unknown mystery 
 as a sun, or as light or life. Theology is simply turn- 
 ing poetry into prose. That unseen Power by which 
 we live is greater than all our figures of speech, out- 
 shines our most brilliant metaphor, — is indeed light 
 unapproachable, unthinkable. Prayer seems almost 
 a belittling of that solemn mystery in the bosom of 
 which we and this wide world rest. Por it is not, 
 
THE BASIS OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 289 
 
 let me distinctly say, in the name of materialism or 
 phenomenalism, but because of a deeper sense of that 
 mystery, that I abandon prayer. At the same time 
 that we are less able to make dogmatic assertions re- 
 specting the unknown, we are learning, and are able 
 to assert, more and more in the field of the known. 
 A vision of law and order is dawning upon us ; the 
 sphere of caprice is diminishing and vanishing before 
 our eyes ; a conception of the universe is developing 
 which if it has less fascination for a childish mind, 
 has infinitely more and is unspeakably grander to the 
 thoughtful and mature. Arbitrary will, purposes that 
 change and bend, these may be in man, but they are 
 not in Nature ; they are not in that ultimate and total 
 order of things of which man and Nature are parts.. 
 We may pray to our fellow-men, we may appeal to 
 one another to respond to our varying wishes and 
 wants ; but prayer to the Unknown God involves a 
 double vice, — first, distrust of the beneficence of that 
 order through which he is already manifested, and 
 which holds fast whether we pray or not ; second, a 
 despair of our ability to act as proximate causes, and 
 to bring about the results we wish ourselves. 
 
 Such, very hastily expressed, are the results to 
 which modern thought is leading some reflecting and 
 earnest men at the present time. It is because the 
 rationalized forms of the old religions do not make 
 room for those who fearlessly and frankly accept these 
 results, that their fellowship is too narrow for me. 
 For with much of the work of Liberal Christianity 
 and reformed Judaism it is impossible not to sympa- 
 thize. They have battled with and left behind many 
 old and outworn notions and forms ; they have tried 
 
 19 
 
290 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 to reconcile reason with religion, and freedom with a 
 spiritual faith. But they have not gone far enough 
 with their rationalism. I find fault with them, not 
 for what they have done, but for what they now 
 seem unwilling to do. Liberal Christians, for exam- 
 ple, no longer believe in the three persons of the old 
 theology, but they seem to cling with no less energy 
 to the doctrine of one person. Judaism has from 
 the beginning tenaciously held to this doctrine. Do 
 we now and then, perhaps, hear that this must not 
 be taken literally and dogmatically ; that it is only 
 poetic personification that is had in mind; that the 
 term " God,^' as ordinarily used, is but a metaphor ? 
 But how much seriousness are we to attribute to 
 such explanations when the old forms, that have their 
 meaning only in connection with the old ideas, are 
 persisted in ? Is it child's play which I am witness- 
 ing, when after the concession that " God '' may be 
 but a metaphor, I hear a solemn address to him, or 
 a solemn benediction invoked from him upon the peo- 
 ple ? Which word, indeed, of the preacher or rabbi 
 shall I believe, which does he really mean ? Or is it 
 possible that religion — which is, one would suppose, 
 the sincere, the utterly truthful attitude of the soul 
 before what is highest and best to it — is ceasing to 
 be, and men are contenting themselves with shifts 
 and compromises and the use of words with double 
 meanings ? Hear, too, what is said and then done in 
 regard to prayer. He would be a foolish man now- 
 adays who would ignore or deny the reign of law 
 in the world; and the Liberal pulpit recognizes and 
 teaches it. The bearing of it upon prayer is also 
 shown, and we are told that prayer cannot change or 
 
THE BASIS OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 291 
 
 suspend the Divine laws, but only bring us into con- 
 formity with them ; and straightway we hear not only 
 an address to Deity, but an appeal that he will bless 
 our community and our families, that he will heal the 
 sick and defend the poor, — all which involve a prac- 
 tical denial of the view presented in the discourse. 
 Meanwhile the community continues unblessed, and 
 the sick are not healed, and the poor are defence- 
 less ; and in the name of truth, I ask would it not be 
 better for the pulpit to address its entreaties to the 
 men and women in the pews, and say that to them 
 is trusted the care of the community and the guar- 
 dianship of their families ; to them is the sacred task 
 committed of going out and healing the sick and rais- 
 ing up the unfortunate ; to theniy in their laws and in 
 their business, is the work given of establishing jus- 
 tice for the poor? Oh for a wave of seriousness to 
 sweep through the churches ! 
 
 Yes, for myself, not merely the rationalized forms 
 of Christianity and Judaism, but religion itself, as it 
 is popularly understood, does not give an absolutely 
 sure basis on which to stand. Eeligion, in the popu- 
 lar sense, hinges on faith in God, Prayer, and Immor- 
 tality. I do not indeed forget that there is a wider 
 sense of the word religion, — a sense that would give 
 a place to Buddhism, which at its inception was with- 
 out any of the beliefs already named, and would in- 
 clude any system which sets a supreme ideal before 
 the human mind and prescribes a rule for its attain- 
 ment; and further, I do not conceal my own faith 
 that out of a fresh sense of the demands of morality 
 upon us, out of a new contact with the higher ideal 
 tendeiioies of the world, tbero will dawn upon us and 
 
292 ETHICAL religion! 
 
 burn into us a new conviction as to life, its meaning 
 and its issue, a new sense of a world-purpose and 
 a world-goal. But now, and at the start, our word 
 is a simple one. We do not propound new views of 
 the universe. We wish rather a new sense of duty ; 
 we wish to throw ourselves into the stream of moral 
 progress. We need not ask how it is there ; we need 
 not peer down along its course to catch a glimpse of 
 the sea into which it flows. We want to throw our- 
 selves into it and bathe in it, because we know it is 
 good ; because when we have so much as touched our 
 feet or hands to it, we have experienced its sweet- 
 ness and felt the life and quickness of its waters : we 
 want to because we are parched and dry, and there is 
 only an arid waste around us. 
 
 But if not the current religious doctrines,^ is it per- 
 haps science, or that philosophic attitude of much of 
 modern science known as agnosticism, which is to fur- 
 nish a basis for the new movement ? This seems to 
 be the impression of many; we will accept nothing, 
 as they think, which we cannot scientifically demon- 
 strate. There is a certain amount of truth in this 
 impression. One should be hospitable to all the re- 
 sults of scientific demonstration ; one should cling to 
 no old-time belief against which there is a balance 
 of scientific evidence. I am myself in sympathy with 
 the methods of modern science, — and with agnosti- 
 cism, which instead of affirming positive knowledge 
 
 1 It must not be understood that we thereby propose a negative 
 dogmatism, and would exclude those who believe in the " current 
 religious doctrines ; " we differ from the churches simply in not 
 requiring assent to them, in not putting them at the basis of the 
 Ethical Movement. 
 
THE BASIS OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 293 
 
 is a confession of what we do not and cannot know. 
 Kant in the last century and Herbert Spencer in this 
 were perhaps the first to draw the line clearly be- 
 tween the realm of the known and knowable and that 
 of the unknowable. Knowledge is limited to expe- 
 rience : what is beyond experience may be guessed, 
 imagined, or thought about ; but in the nature of the 
 case no guess or imagination or thought can be veri- 
 fied, and thus converted into scientific knowledge. 
 This critical distinction has undermined the very 
 foundations of theological dogmatism, and has taught 
 to philosophers as well as theologians a long-needed 
 lesson of modesty and humility. 
 
 All this, however, is very different from regarding 
 agnosticism or positive science as the basis of our 
 movement. In the new and clear atmosphere of mod- 
 ern thought, many of us have seen the old "castles in 
 the air " vanish from our view ; one by one they have 
 seemed to lose their basis in this world of experi- 
 ence in which we live. But an atmosphere is hardly 
 a thing on which to build, — it is at best a trans- 
 parent medium through which and by the light of 
 which we may discover the real foundations. Agnos- 
 ticism is no more than a confession of the limita- 
 tions of our knowledge. But what we do not know is 
 hardly a basis for action. Simply because men no 
 longer believe in the old dogmas is no reason why 
 they should form an Ethical Society. There are 
 plenty of agnostics who have little sympathy with us, 
 whose unbelief may perhaps extend to the foundations 
 of morality as well as to those of theology, and who 
 may live simply lives of supercilious and refined ego- 
 tism. Agnosticism is but the dry light of the intel- 
 
294 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 lect, which may be used to the noblest ends, but may 
 also be perverted to the meanest. Nor is science, 
 teaching us positively what we do know, a sufficient 
 guide for us. I will yield to none in my admiration 
 and wonder before the world which science has re- 
 vealed to us. How has space widened and time 
 grown infinite, and how does one law seem to hold 
 in its grasp the mighty movements of systems and 
 the least tear that trickles down a child's face! It 
 is a wmverse, majestic, solemn, in the midst of which 
 we live, and it would seem to suggest to us great and 
 solemn thoughts as to what our own lives should be. 
 But when I turn from Nature to consider human life 
 and the order of human society, my reverence in one 
 way lessens rather than grows deeper. The science 
 that reports faithfully, philosophically, the varied 
 facts of our human existence is not altogether a plea- 
 sant page to read. History, which is one branch of 
 the science of man, tells of animalism, of brutal sel- 
 fishness, of towering wrongs, of slow-returning jus- 
 tice, often of a blind infuriated justice that punishes 
 the innocent and leaves the guilty free. And obser- 
 vation — statistics, which is nothing else than scien- 
 tific observation — reveals almost as many things that 
 ought not to be as things which should be. Statis- 
 tics of crime are just as much science as would be 
 statistics of peace and order, — statistics of prosti- 
 tution as truly scientific as those of family purity, of 
 poverty as truly as those of comfort and competence. 
 What science teaches must invariably be accepted as 
 fact, but it may none the less provoke moral repul- 
 sion and rebellion. We may say to some of the facts, 
 "You have no right to be!" Yes, the very end of 
 
THE BASIS OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 295 
 
 our scientific observation may sometimes be to render 
 such observation in the future impossible, — that is, 
 to destroy the facts. Plainly, then, science is not ul- 
 timate. It tells us simply what is ; it tells us noth- 
 ing of what ought to be. What ought to be, — that 
 is reported to us by a higher faculty than that of 
 scientific observation ; it is an assertion, a demand 
 of the conscience. 
 
 Here, then, is to my mind the true basis of our 
 movement, — not the old religions; not religion itself, 
 in the popular understanding of that term ; not ag- 
 nosticism, though as matter of fact some of us may 
 be agnostics ; not science, though the facts of science, 
 every one of them, should have our recognition. It 
 is something deeper and more ancient, I might say, 
 than any of these : it is the rock of conscience, the 
 eternal laws that announce themselves in man's moral 
 nature. Our knowledge may be limited to the senses ; 
 but conscience is not knowledge, — for knowledge is 
 of what is, and conscience is the thought of what 
 ought to be. It may be that our senses have never 
 revealed to us a perfectly just man ; that we have 
 never known or heard of an absolutely just govern- 
 ment. None the less does conscience say to every 
 man, " Thou oughtest to be just ! " And if it could 
 find voices clear and strong enough, it would publish 
 aloud to every community and every State to-day, 
 " There is no other law for you save that of absolute 
 justice, and in the measure that you fail therein, you 
 have no sanctity and no defence.'^ Conscience, in a 
 word, ushers us into an ideal realm. Genuine ethics 
 have in this respect more in common with art than 
 with science. For true art, I take it, is not minute 
 
296 ETHICAL KELIGION. 
 
 painstaking photography ; it does not consist in ren- 
 dering an object in the terms of the senses unillumin- 
 ated by the mind, but in catching the idea of the 
 object, so that in witnessing the picture or the statue 
 we seem to feel the flush of the artist's thought, and 
 are touched with the inspiration wherewith he con- 
 ceived and wrought. If the great master Shakspeare 
 said that the object of his art was simply "to hold 
 the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own fea- 
 ture, scorn her own image, and the very age and body 
 of the time his form and pressure," I must say that 
 ethics is an art of very different character. It holds 
 up the mirror, not of the actual, but of the ideal, — 
 that mirror whereby we feel vice to be vice, and know 
 virtue to be virtue, and by which we judge the age 
 and body of the time, and declare what its form and 
 pressure ought to be. It is ideal rather than realistic 
 art to which I would compare ethics, — the art re- 
 vealed in the matchless bearing of an Apollo, in the 
 divine grace of a Venus of Milo, in the majesty of an 
 Angelo's Moses, in the radiant freshness of a Eapha- 
 el's Madonna. These are human, and yet they are 
 more than human ; for the artist's thought of the per- 
 fect has worked in them, and we feel in looking at 
 them a reflection of that "light which never was on 
 land or sea." Art is the realization of the beautiful ; 
 ethics means the realization of the good. As we look 
 on men and women, we see the possibilities of the 
 perfect that are in them, — we think of what they 
 are meant to be, rather than of what they are. We 
 are to regard ourselves and society about us as plastic 
 material, in which the divine ideas of goodness have 
 begun to take form, but have never reached adequate 
 
THE BASIS OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 297 
 
 form, — and are so hemmed and hindered, that if we 
 judged with the senses alone we might doubt if they 
 existed, and yet to the eye of the soul are still there, 
 and need only to be seen and believed in to again 
 stir and move, and to shape human life to finer forms 
 and nobler issues. 
 
 Who as he looks on the face of human society can 
 be content with what he sees there ? Who does not 
 find his notions of justice, of humanity, of the brother- 
 hood in which men ought to live, contradicted ? Who 
 with a conscience or a heart has not felt that this sys- 
 tem of things, in which self-interest is not only the 
 impulse but the rule ; in which we consider not so 
 much the rights or claims of men as the extent to 
 which they may serve us and contribute to our own 
 gains ; in which any means, any oppression, any grind- 
 ing down that do not involve open violence or fraud 
 are viewed as legitimate, and something which any 
 one must practise because all do, — who, I say, has 
 not felt that this system of things, even though he 
 be a partner in it, is wrong, and longed, as a man in 
 thick darkness longs for light, for some other order of 
 things, in which he should not be compelled to beat 
 back the best and purest impulses of his nature ? 
 The social questions are the questions of the day. 
 And the social questions are fundamentally moral 
 questions ; they involve the relations of man to man, 
 — and morality is nothing but an ideal of what the 
 relation between man and man should be. Not the 
 smallest subject, or the merest detail of it, bearing on 
 the rights of human beings is out of the province of 
 a moral teacher. Morality is as wide as humanity ; 
 it has a bearing on the whole life of humanity ; it 
 
298 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 demands nothing less than that every man have at 
 least the means and opportunity for a truly human life. 
 Material interests have a sanctity if they are human 
 interests ; the question of wages has a moral bearing 
 if wages mean the substratum of food and drink and 
 clothing and shelter, on which a human being is to 
 build up his higher existence. Education has a moral 
 bearing : the devising and putting into operation a 
 rational and human scheme of education is one of the 
 moral problems of the time. Politics have a moral 
 bearing : the State has no other end than justice and 
 the general good, and justice and the general good are 
 a demand of morality. " Political " life should mean 
 public life, — the abandonment of private interests 
 or class interests, and the dedication of one's self to 
 public interests. I know not indeed on what depart- 
 ment or phase of life to cast a glance and find that 
 morality has no bearing there. Morality is not a 
 suppliant, a beggar asking for an entrance and protec- 
 tion in one corner of our existence ; it is a sovereign, 
 and though it be unheard and unnoticed, prescribes 
 the law and ideal for the whole. It has a bearing on 
 the intellect, and condemns the conscienceless inter- 
 pretations of great doctrines, the clever playing with 
 words not uncommon in some of our churches. It 
 has a bearing on our domestic life, forbidding that 
 any one should be a slave there. It has a bearing on 
 our pleasures, on our business, on the conduct of the 
 State. It is indeed an invisible companion cleaving 
 to us wherever we go, — rising, as a great English- 
 man^ has said, with us in the morning and going 
 to rest with us at night, and only leaving us as we 
 1 Gladstone, Vatican Decrees, § 4. 
 
THE BASIS OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 299 
 
 leave the light of life. A companion do I say ? Ah, 
 it is closer than any companion, for though it warns 
 us and commands us, it does so in that supreme act 
 in which we warn and command ourselves ; it is the 
 utterance of the God in us, of the '^ prophetic soul " 
 in which we all share, and signifies that we are part 
 and parcel of another order of things than that which 
 we can see and handle, and are rooted in somewhat 
 firmer than the earth, and more ancient, more vener- 
 able than the heavens. To get a new sense of this 
 inward monitor ; to feel that its demands are be- 
 yond any mere traditional rules of goodness, that it 
 means not this or that good thing, but all good ; to 
 have thus an infinite horizon open to our view, and 
 to feel that a path of ceaseless progress lies before 
 us, — this is to me the aim and significance of the 
 Ethical Movement. 
 
 I know the churches speak sometimes of "mere 
 morality,'' and ask if that can save a man. I answer 
 readily that a surface, mechanical morality, no matter 
 by whom practised, does not and cannot save a man. 
 But if so, the call in my judgment is not for some- 
 thing to take the place of morality, but for a larger, 
 a more perfect morality, — one covering the whole of 
 life, and allowing no nook or corner of it to lie outside 
 of the sacred sway of the just and the good. It is 
 a higher standard of righteousness which the world 
 needs, — one which shall convict even the religions of 
 the day of the lowness of their own standards ; which 
 shall awaken the slumbering consciences of men, and 
 regenerate life, private and social. If the churches 
 had the idea of morality as a principle, would they 
 dare to speak of it in this slighting way? No; by 
 
300 ETHICAL EELIGION. 
 
 morality they mean custom or tradition, or at best a 
 set of commands given by Moses or Jesus, and written 
 down in a book. That it is an independent idea and 
 ^ law of man's own mind, prior to all custom and tradi- 
 tion and books and persons, and so capable of super- 
 seding them all and making them antiquated, is hard- 
 ly imagined. But it is nothing else than this that 1 
 mean by proposing the pure dictates of conscience as 
 the basis of our movement. We assert the independ- 
 ence of morality. We do not rest on dogma, because 
 there is something in man closer and more constitu- 
 tional to him than dogma ; we do not rest on history, 
 because we believe that within man lie the springs 
 of history, and that history's grandest movements 
 started from no inspiration that we cannot draw on 
 equally well to-day. The modern world talks of pro- 
 gress : we believe in moral progress, that the ideas of 
 righteousness are not stationary, but capable of end- 
 less expansion ; that there can be no final statement 
 of ethics ; that men may get scruples in the future 
 that they have no thought of now ; that, for example, 
 a sense of justice may develop that will make our 
 present manner of conducting business and industry 
 a reproach and a shame. 
 
 It is a word of this sort which I should like to 
 throw out among men and women of to-day. It is a 
 new centre of interest, a new basis of union, that we 
 have to propose. The old religions, and Liberalism 
 in its present forms, rest on other issues. Judaism 
 is a race religion, — a pure, a lofty religion, but still 
 a race religion. Christianity is more universal, but 
 it is founded on and limited by Jesus of Nazareth ; 
 and though I will not be surpassed in genuine rev- 
 
THE BASIS OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 301 
 
 erence for that unique figure, that image of blended 
 majesty and gentleness which has cast a light down 
 the centuries, and has rarely been without influence, 
 even when Christians were maddest and most bigoted, 
 truth equally compels the admission that Jesus does 
 not furnish a basis broad enough and large enough 
 for the present and coming time. Yes, Jesus him- 
 self rests upon a deeper foundation in the reason 
 and conscience of man ; and on that bottom rock we 
 may stand to-day as truly as he stood, and may build 
 upon it as serenely, with as undaunted a faith and as 
 firm a hope, as ever he or his followers did eighteen 
 hundred years ago. No more satisfactory is ordinary 
 Liberalism. It is still largely critical ; it is often but 
 a wild and bitter attack on the old religions ; it is 
 at best a calm and clear perception that the old re- 
 ligions are no longer possible ta us ; it is not sel- 
 dom coupled with indifference to moral questions, and 
 where it is zealous, its zeal must often be confessed 
 to be on the wrong side. I believe the future is for 
 those who have cut loose from the old-time forms and 
 creeds, and who have no patience with them. But 
 their impatience must go further ; they must become 
 impatient with themselves and with the moral state 
 of the community ; they must turn a deaf and relent- 
 less ear to all the siren calls that would confound 
 liberty with license; they must rather own the call 
 of stricter rules, of higher ideals of duty, and feel 
 that with the old citadels of faith in ruins at their 
 feet their work has but begun. It is to earnest and 
 brave-hearted men and women who will turn their 
 faces in this direction, that the Ethical Movement 
 addresses itself. 
 
302 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 For let me make clear that tlie basis of our move- 
 ment is not a theory of morality, but morality itself. 
 The moral teacher is not primarily to give a metaphy- 
 sical philosophy of ethics, to propagate transcenden- 
 talism or utilitarianism, — though he may have views 
 ' of his own, and on occasion need not refrain from ex- 
 pressing them.^ He desires rather, if he can, to hold 
 up the idea of the good itself ; to make men love it 
 for its own sake, and own its beauty in the conduct, 
 in the beautiful order and beneficence of their lives. 
 There is but one theory of morals against which I 
 have any feeling, and this not because it is a theory, 
 but because it is subversive of morality itself. I 
 mean the view which we now and then hear advo- 
 cated, that morality is but a refined selfishness, a 
 long-sighted prudence ; that the end of life is and 
 can be nowhere else than in the accumulation of in- 
 dividual pleasures, and the avoidance of individual 
 pains. That man cannot go out of himself; that he 
 cannot love another equally with himself; that he 
 
 1 I may be permitted to quote the following notable words of 
 the late lamented Professor T. H. Green, of Oxford, which I have 
 come upon since writing the above : — 
 
 ** It is probable, indeed, that every movement of religious reform 
 has originated in some clearer conception of the ideal of human 
 conduct, arrived at by some person or persons, — a conception, 
 perhaps, toward which many men have been silently working, 
 but which finally finds in some one individual the character which 
 can give decisive practical expression to it. But in the initiation 
 of religious reforms, the new theory of the ideal, as a theory, 
 always holds a secondary place. It is not absent, but it is, so to 
 speak, absorbed in a character, — a character to which the specu- 
 lative completeness of the theory is of little interest ; and it is 
 this character which gives the new conception of the ideal its 
 power in the world." (Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 36L) 
 
THE BASIS OF THE ETHICAL MOVEMENT. 303 
 
 cannot find an end of his being in his family, in the 
 community, in the State ; that for all these he cannot 
 live, and cannot die rather than see them dishonored, 
 
 — this is what I call the real infidelity, and whether 
 uttered by priest or philosopher has and always shall 
 have my dissent and my rebuke. Morality is this 
 going out of one's self and living in, living for, some- 
 thing larger. Prudence, selfishness, — these are and 
 may well be the servants, the attendants on morality ; 
 they never dare take the place of masters. Aside from 
 this, which is not a theory but a statement of moral- 
 ity, a moral teacher need have little to say, at least at 
 the start, of the philosophy of ethics. It is something 
 far more primary and simple than philosophy, even 
 the truest, that must be our immediate concern. It 
 is the practically proving to the world that morality 
 is an adequate foundation for our lives ; it is the de- 
 monstrating that unselfishness can be by showing it ; 
 yes, it is, I sincerely hope and trust, proving that a 
 higher morality is possible than the world now allows, 
 
 — proving it by the stricter purity of our private 
 lives, by higher notions of honor in our business or 
 professional relations, by juster conduct to our em- 
 ployees ; yes, by a new wave of sympathy and human- 
 ity that shall take us out of ourselves and out of our 
 business, and make us bear the burdens of the sick 
 and the poor and the forlorn in our community as 
 they have never been borne before. 
 
XVI. 
 
 THE SUPREMACY OF ETHICS. 
 
 WHEN all else that tlie religious world holds 
 dear falls or becomes uncertain, confidence 
 in duty may remain unshaken. One may doubt all 
 the articles of the Christian creed, and have much 
 pain in doing so, yet never be confused, never have 
 shame ; but to doubt that love and truth and honor 
 are binding upon us is so unnatural that it can only 
 be accounted for on the supposition of some moral 
 obliquity. These moral laws of our being are so 
 close and constitutional to us, that the very existence 
 of virtue is bound up with a recognition of them. A 
 man is virtuous on principle, or he is not virtuous at 
 all, though he may conform to all the external re- 
 quirements of virtue; and if there is no principle, 
 no sovereign ought, constraining, commanding, and 
 forbidding, there is no morality. Morality is not 
 a matter of taste, of personal preference, or of tem- 
 perament ; it is obedience to a command, it is self- 
 surrender to the OUGHT that sounds within us, it is 
 the free choice of what we cannot avoid choosing 
 without shame and dishonor. 
 
 "If that fail, 
 The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
 And earth's base built on stubble." 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF ETHICS. 305 
 
 The Ethical Movement, as I understand it, plants 
 itself on this ultimate crowning fact of man's na- 
 ture. We start with a certainty. Human beings do 
 not choose the sovereign laws of duty and make them 
 laws those laws would be over us, did we not choose 
 them ; they rather choose us. Man no more creates 
 the moral world of obligation than he does the phy- 
 sical one of fact ; he has only to fit himself into it, 
 and let its sublimity make him sublime. Man is not 
 the summit of things : as the heavens bend over his 
 body and the stars unalterably shine, so the moral 
 law arches over the soul of man, and he is greatest as 
 he bends in lowly worship to it. Nobleness, magna- 
 nimity, great-hearted love, unswerving truth, — these 
 are not ours, but we are theirs, bound to them as the 
 iron to the magnet, as the needle to the star, as the 
 tides to the ^^ far-off orb" of heaven ; bound to them, 
 that is, in idea, and should be in fact. 
 
 Great and reassuring are the lessons of the moral 
 sentiment. It gives us a place whereon to plant our 
 feet. It casts out fear. See how it deals with the 
 fear of so many anxious minds that in face of modern 
 conditions not only Christianity, but religion itself 
 will pass away from the world. We live in an age 
 of transition, and all the way from the Catholic to the 
 Unitarian there are mutterings and tremblings, as if 
 in case this or that or the other creed loses its hold 
 on man the stays and consolations of human life will 
 be gone. Idle fears ! Religion, so far as it has not 
 been the outgrowth and blossoming of the moral sen- 
 timent, has been at best an expensive luxury to the 
 race, and has come near to being a curse. That man's 
 peace and happiness and safety depend upon beings 
 
 20 
 
306 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 whose favor must be gained by costly sacrifices and 
 prayers, — this belief, that made the basis of primi- 
 tive religion, and survives in all the great branches 
 of the Christian Church, has caused more distress of 
 mind, more false torments of conscience, more waste 
 of energy, moral and material, than we can ever cal- 
 culate or dream of. Eeligion — the thought of it in 
 the past, I mean — is only endurable to the free man 
 and earnest lover of his kind as moral elements have 
 been taken up into it and an end has been made of 
 sacrifices ; as the prayers have come to be prayers 
 for righteousness, — or else have ceased altogether 
 before the stern determination to be righteous at 
 whatever cost; as religion has come to mean right- 
 eousness, and the will of God has been identified with 
 the good of man. But the moral sentiment that has 
 played such a transforming and revolutionary part in 
 the field of religion in the past is still with us ; it 
 was never more alive than to-day. It is born into 
 the world with every child ; it is as fresh as if this 
 were creation's morn. It is that from which we can- 
 not get away, in regard to which scepticism is absurd, 
 and out of which, in conjunction with modern culture, 
 shall come, I believe, a nobler religion than the world 
 has ever known before. 
 
 The depths, not of fear, but of awe, were never 
 stirred in man till he felt the sublime promptings of 
 the OUGHT within him. The ancient gods or goddesses 
 were never truly reverend and august till they were 
 regarded as the authors of the pure and high com- 
 mands that give the law to man's life and conduct ; 
 and so far as they were interpreted in this way, they 
 must always be revered. The moral sentiment bios- 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF ETHICS. 307 
 
 soms as naturally into a religious faith as the buds 
 of spring open out into leaf or flower. A man may 
 give up all that passes current as religion, — give up 
 God and Immortality and Prayer (in the customary 
 senses), as well as the claims of the Church or of 
 Jesus, — yet if he keep his hold on morality, if he 
 bend before Truth and Justice and Love, if he feel 
 there is something sovereign within him which it 
 were better to die than to forget, he is on the open 
 highway that leads to those grand confidences and 
 trusts that are the imperishable part of religion. 
 
 For the sense of morality is the sense of somewhat 
 sacred, holy ; it is the sense of a law above all other 
 laws. There is not a law of Nature that may not con- 
 ceivably be altered or suspended, or that we may not 
 violate or defy, should duty command. We use Na- 
 ture every day, — her forces, her laws, we are forever 
 turning to account. We cannot worship Nature or the 
 sum of Nature's powers. That sovereign allegiance 
 and fealty we owe to what is absolutely inviolable, 
 to what we dare not use, to what exists for its own 
 sake, and we for it, — to Goodness, to Love, to eternal 
 Truth. The moral sentiment dwarfs Nature, it goes 
 out to that which is beyond Nature. What is reg- 
 nant in the universe is no fact, nor sum of facts ; 
 no law in the actual sense, nor sum of laws, — but a 
 commandment. And the deepest, the bottom thing in 
 the universe must be that which is capable of giving 
 a commandment : not matter, then, nor force, nor will, 
 but reason, or that ineffable reality of which human 
 reason is a poor and shadowy suggestion. Matter 
 is phenomenal ; our thoughts come and go, our acts 
 are ill-matched even with our thoughts; but that to 
 
308 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 which our thoughts aspire, and from which alas they 
 so often wander, does not change with our changing, 
 does not rise when we rise, or fall when we fall, — but 
 though we die, though the wide earth and the ever- 
 lasting hills fade away into insubstantial mist and 
 the heavens are rolled together as a scroll, lives for- 
 ever ! Without morality and the infinite suggestions 
 it makes, worship could not find an object, and the 
 word "adorable" would have to pass out of literature, 
 — and this, though so-called religious men at the pres- 
 ent day have such partial conceptions of morality that 
 they contrast religion with it, and speak of something 
 above morality, and in addition to ethics plead for de- 
 votional truths as well. Something above justice and 
 goodness ! — there is nothing above. Devotional truth 
 in addition to ethics ! — 't is the merest sentimental- 
 ity. Eeligion has had connected with it much besides 
 ethics in the past ; it has been weighted with blood 
 and with lust, and to-day it is weighted with unre- 
 ality and maudlin sentiment and cant. But so far 
 as it has had more, it has been a disturber and full 
 of harm to men ; and so far as it has more to-day, 
 being no longer taken seriously, it is at best a su- 
 perfluity, which self-respecting men and women are 
 apt to do without. Duty is ordinarily divided into 
 duties to man and duties to God. But there are 
 no duties to God in the sense implied, nor have we 
 reason to suppose that God as so conceived exists. 
 "God'' is the infinite element in all duty, its eternal 
 basis, without which duty and man and the world 
 would alike disappear. 
 
 And what an aim does ethics give to man ! With 
 what solemnity does it invest our life ! We are here 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF ETHICS. 309 
 
 to lift ourselves to the measure of perfect goodness ; 
 society exists to lift itself to perfect justice. Life 
 is not for living merely, but for living so that some- 
 what divine may be incorporated into it. How low 
 men's thoughts ordinarily are ! Eeligion itself some- 
 times takes sides with the world as it is, and dis- 
 trusts reform. How many in his Church to-day 
 would hear Jesus, should he come again enraptured 
 with his thought of a coming kingdom of God ? 
 Was ever socialist so wild and visionary as he ? Car- 
 lyle used to say there was properly no religion in 
 England. A stern saying, but when we remember 
 how stern a thing religion is (or it is nothing) ; when 
 we remember the fact of absolute obligation, which 
 is its essence, and ask ourselves how many men and 
 women in our own country live invisibly bound to 
 truth and honor and justice, — we cannot deny all 
 credence to the saying, and may ask ourselves. Are 
 we in America much better off ? Our own Emerson 
 spoke nearly fifty years ago of " the universal decay, 
 and now almost death, of faith in society.'^ The 
 Church, he declared, " had lost its grasp on the affec- 
 tion of the good and the fear of the bad." ^ It is as 
 if Christianity had at last got itself well lodged in 
 this world, and had forgotten its dreams of another. 
 Yet its dream of another, its vision of a perfect so- 
 ciety that should replace the present order based so 
 largely on selfishness and cruelty and wrong, was at 
 the beginning its very inspiration and life. Hence 
 its high demands, its seemingly impracticable pre- 
 cepts ; hence its enthusiasm, that swept through an 
 old decaying society like fire, destroying and recre- 
 1 Divinity School Address, 1838. 
 
310 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 ating. There is little of this enthusiasm now. You 
 cannot have enthusiasm and commonplace aims. En- 
 thusiasm is born of an idea, and idealism is at a low- 
 ebb among the churches. There is probably more 
 idealism outside the Church than within it; it is born 
 in mangers again, and makes its home in despised 
 social reformers, among men who cannot live and 
 see the world go on as it is. The trouble, on the 
 other hand, with our social reform is that it does not 
 start from within, that it is partial, that its aims are 
 not severe and grand enough ; and so its enthusi- 
 asm is finite, and does not reach the depths of man. 
 Not resentment and not wrath, but the moral senti- 
 ment must give anew the aim to human life. Once 
 more must the call go forth for a perfect life ; once 
 more must it be brought home to man that not food 
 nor raiment nor shelter, not comfort nor ease, not sci- 
 ence nor art, are the end of existence; but the " king- 
 dom of God ; " and that this is not only the end but 
 the beginning, since without justice and human sym- 
 pathy science and art may minister to vice as well 
 as virtue, and not even comfort or daily bread are 
 necessarily within the reach of all. Louise Michel, 
 predicting the outcome of the social revolution, says 
 that man, having at last attained his plenitude, being 
 no longer hungry nor cold, nor afflicted by any of the 
 miseries of the present time, will be good.^ I see not 
 one ray of hope for humanity in such a philosophy. 
 The tendency of the evolutionary doctrine is, to a 
 certain extent, to hold justice impracticable, save in 
 an ideal state of society. But justice is commanded, 
 and is the only thing that is practicable now or in 
 1 Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1885. 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF ETHICS. 311 
 
 any state of society. Goodness is the sovereign law 
 of life, first as well as last ; it is sovereign over life, as 
 even Patagonian Indians may feel, — three of whom, 
 Darwin tells us, once allowed themselves to be shot, 
 one after the other, rather than betray their com- 
 panions in war.^ I look for the social reformer who 
 shall appeal to the sublime in man ; who shall be 
 able to hold a savage, angry mob in check, and make 
 them more willing to die than to do wrong ; and who 
 shall pierce with the power of his convictions through 
 the lying and sophistical selfishness of the prosperous, 
 and make them own with trembling the law they now 
 defy, and by his persuasiveness entreat them and woo 
 them, so that with tears and penitent gladness they 
 will do tasks of love and tenderest good-will. Such 
 social reform will be religion once more on the face 
 of the earth ; such a reformer will be another Christ, 
 come with his solemn p.urity, his high faith, his un- 
 conquerable love, to shame and to heal the world. 
 
 What power, what omnipotence, will come in that 
 day to our poor old human nature, — poor now only 
 because it will not surrender itself to the moral senti- 
 ment, because it will not unlock its heart and receive 
 of the infinite riches of justice and love that lie for- 
 ever waiting and even knocking at the door ! The 
 moral sentiment is deliverance, — it is the open door to 
 infinite power. When, in answer to the inner impera- 
 tive, man obeys, he is rejuvenated, and feels the fresh- 
 ness of an eternal day in his heart and through all 
 the arteries of his being. There is no age to the 
 spirit that lives in high sentiments. " Always young 
 for liberty," exclaimed Dr. Channing. The faith born 
 1 Descent of Man, p. Ill, n. 
 
312 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 of ethics is that man can do the right. The impera- 
 tive itself brings the power to meet it. To say that 
 duty commands us but that we cannot obey, is to 
 suppose a lie in the nature of things. There is no 
 duty if I cannot perform it. And as duty exists and 
 charms and binds me, I know I can do it. The will is 
 not bound. Men say we are born selfish, avaricious, 
 lustful, and cannot be otherwise. You can be ; and 
 the first thing is to feel in your heart of hearts that 
 you ought to be, — and the iron weight of that ob- 
 ligation felt in your inmost soul will transform you 
 and give you its iron strength. Yet how the reli- 
 gion of the day travesties our nature ! Not only does 
 Orthodoxy teach the impotency of man, but Liberal 
 Christianity teaches the necessity of prayer, which 
 comes to the same thing, — saying that we poor crea- 
 tures are weak and must have help. But Emerson 
 answers, " Such as you are, the gods themselves could 
 not help you." Again, '^ The weight of the universe 
 is pressed down on the shoulders of each moral 
 agent to hold him to his task. The only path of 
 escape known in all the worlds of God is perform- 
 ance."^ There is a breath as of mountain air in 
 such words, — invigoration and re-invigoration for the 
 moral life of man, and the secret of regeneration for 
 religion, which, as Emerson says, now effeminates and 
 demoralizes. It is a sublime faith that whatever the 
 outward seeming, man is made for the good ; that, 
 starting imperfect, he is called to be perfect ; that 
 society and all the races of men have the way open 
 to an infinite goal, which they will fail to reach only 
 if they do not will to. What is wanting in us, what 
 1 " Worship," in Conduct of Life. 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF ETHICS. 313 
 
 is wanting in society, is not the power, but the wiH, 
 to do and dare and suffer. The wide earth might 
 be a scene of justice to-morrow, and every city of our 
 land transformed into a City of the Light, if men 
 and women would wake with to-morrow's sun to will 
 the good which now lies like a half -formed vision in 
 their minds. 
 
 It is thus that the moral sentiment gives a great 
 peace to the soul. Things often seem so bad about us 
 that we are tempted to think evil cleaves to the na- 
 ture of things. With all the boasted progress of the 
 modern world in industry and inventions, things seem 
 little better for the mass of men. The spectacle of 
 debasement and misery among large classes in the 
 very centres of our civilization and culture, is almost 
 maddening to a sensitive nature, and easily breeds 
 despair. If all this suffering and wrong are neces- 
 sary, there is no escape from the conclusion that this 
 is a black and cruel world we live in ; and the only 
 way to live and to have any contentment is to harden 
 one's heart and keep out of suffering one's self. But 
 suffering and wrong are not necessary ; they might 
 as well not be as be, — nay, they never would be if 
 men listened to the promptings from on high that 
 visit them. Suffering and wrong are foreign to the 
 nature of things, they are contradictory to it, they 
 exist despite it. The Heart of the world is sound ; 
 and would we but give way to it in our own hearts, 
 the face of society might be as fair as Nature is in 
 her most joyous moods. We have not to make the 
 world over, but only ourselves. In the midst of our 
 work we can adore, and pass into that central peace 
 which laps the world about, and which all our heat 
 
314 ETHICAL KELIGION. 
 
 and worry cannot disturb, nor man's extremest faith- 
 lessness mar. If man does not do the good, he can- 
 not have peace, — that is all. An ethical religion is 
 nowise concerned with the justification of the order 
 of society as it is ; it has little in common with the 
 weak optimism that sometimes passes current as re- 
 ligion ; it must oppose those canting economists who 
 say that there being no such thing as chance, the 
 Christian must regard present social conditions as 
 the best possible, else they would not be consistent 
 with the orderings of a wise Providence. If a man 
 is given a task, and is not faithful to it, the result 
 cannot be the best possible. The integrity and sanity 
 of things nowise requires a justification of the pres- 
 ent order of things. The high God commands to 
 almost all the mighty of this world, and to many 
 more besides, to do differently from what they do ; and 
 as long as they do not obey, they are off the track 
 appointed for them, and the integrity of things is 
 only concerned in forever bringing them to nought. 
 Where did Jesus find peace as he confronted the 
 order of society in his day ? In the thought of a 
 judgment that should destroy it. Oh, Friend, curse 
 thyself, curse thy neighbor and society about thee, 
 but not the fundamental arrangement of things ! — 
 bless that; thou canst not dream so high as it makes 
 possible. Heard already are the voices which if thou 
 and all wouldst hear, the dread chaos and anarchy 
 that now dishearten thee would pass away. 
 
 Out of all this high spirit of faith and obedience, 
 and as the issue of it all, is bred a great hope. Our 
 current doctrine of immortality is weak ; it has little 
 moral fibre in it. That august possibility for valor- 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF ETHICS. 315 
 
 ous and virtuous souls is made the property of all 
 alike ; and no drivelling saint or damnable sinner 
 but imagines he or she is going to live again, and 
 live forever. There was never such effrontery. We 
 have reason to believe there is another life, if there 
 are souls worthy of it. The mystery is that wicked, 
 frivolous, selfish men and women live out their nat- 
 ural term of life here ; the gods are surely gracious 
 and long-suffering to permit it ; and when death 
 brings to an end their vain career, 't would seem the 
 part of piety to let them rest in eternal forgetful- 
 ness. But for the good the heart conjectures a bet- 
 ter fate. The good are simply those who respond to 
 the demands which the invisible world makes upon 
 them. They only are good who are so because they 
 must be, because a divine necessity constrains them, 
 because they could not hold up their heads if they 
 were unfaithful, because in such a case they would feel 
 like traitors to the trust the universe had assigned 
 to them. The value of a faithful soul is beyond all 
 estimation. Duty is that by which we link ourselves 
 to absolute being, and by which absolute being links 
 itself in turn to us. Perishing man looks aloft and 
 sees the imperishable, and with every moral act the 
 imperishable becomes a part of him. JSTo atom, no 
 tree, no animal, no man incapable of self-surrender, 
 has this worth and incomparable dignity. The stars 
 in heaven are not so grand as man living in obedi- 
 ence to the moral sentiment, and dying when it is 
 " better not to live." Yet there is no caste in virtue. 
 In this lore, in this imperishable wealth, the great 
 of this world have no monopoly. The dignity that 
 dignifies the highest is within reach of the lowliest. 
 
316 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 The savage Patagonian, the obscure reformer, martyrs 
 and heroes who died in nooks and corners of the 
 world, and all who loved and did the right, are the 
 stars that shine in this firmament ; and all others 
 count for nothing. This world will pass away; the 
 generations of men are going, and sometime will all 
 be gone ; nothing in Nature or that belongs to Nature 
 stays ; there is nought permanent or everlasting out- 
 side the blessed Powers that are over all and in all. 
 Yet a high presentiment arises in the breast that out 
 of all the countless personalities that have been or 
 shall be born on " this bank and shoal of time," there 
 shall be some accounted worthy to share with these 
 blessed Powers their own eternity. Such a faith is 
 too great for demonstration ; it rests on the cumula- 
 tive suggestions and inspirations of the moral senti- 
 ment. But it is that kind of immortality which has 
 supreme interest for the morally serious man. That 
 we are inherently immortal I can discover very little 
 reason for supposing ; that any authority, whether of 
 holy book or holy church, could settle the question 
 for us seems like an offence to reason. Our personal 
 affections and desires of reunion do not appear to be 
 a solid foundation ; Jesus says not a word in their 
 favor, though he does speak of those who shall be 
 "accounted worthy to attain to that world and the 
 resurrection of the dead." ^ That science can ever 
 give us proof of immortality seems improbable, since 
 science, save in its purely formal aspects, deals with 
 the sensible (that is, with what may be observed or 
 experimented upon) ; and immortality is a truth, if it 
 be one, of the super-sensible. The doubtful vistas of 
 1 Luke XX. 35. 
 
THE SUPREMACY OF ETHICS. 317 
 
 Spiritualism make the other world but a poor faded 
 copy of this, .with immortal eats and dogs as well 
 as human beings, until that life seems more feeble 
 and ineffectual even than this. What reason for the 
 perpetuation of an old worn-out show ? For my part, 
 I would rather leave death begirt with all its solemn 
 and touching mystery, and simply trust that some- 
 how transcendent issues will be worked out through 
 it. There is no thought of reward for the good in 
 what I say. As the good are so for goodness' sake, 
 so their high destiny must come unbought and un- 
 sought. 
 
 Such are some of the lessons of the moral senti- 
 ment as they have made themselves felt in my own 
 miental experience, and such is something of what I 
 conceive would be the gist and scope of an Ethical 
 religion. Ethics is not a closed circle, so that when 
 one has forborne to cheat and paid his debts, he is 
 at the end of it. It starts with the lowest uses of 
 earth, but covers the highest and widest flights of 
 the spirit of man. To plant oneself on the funda- 
 mental verity, and then allow its natural suggestions 
 and implications to have an unhindered development 
 in one's mind and in one's life, seems to me one 
 of the most important and inspiring tasks of the 
 present day. 
 
 What a prospect is that which Emerson held out ! 
 "There will be a new church," he said, "founded on 
 moral science ; at first cold and naked, a babe in a 
 manger again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical 
 law, — the church of men to come, without shawms 
 or psaltery or sackbut. But it will have heaven and 
 
318 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 earth for its beams and rafters, ^ science for symbol 
 and illustration ; it will fast enough gather beauty, 
 music, picture, poetry. Was never stoicism so stern 
 and exigent as this shall be. It shall send man home 
 to his central solitude, shame these social supplicating 
 manners, and make him know that much of the time 
 he must have himself to his friend. He shall expect 
 no co-operation, he shall walk with no companion. 
 The nameless Thought, the nameless Power, the super- 
 personal Heart, — he shall repose alone on that. He 
 needs only his own verdict. No good fame can help, 
 no bad fame can hurt him. The Laws are his con- 
 solers ; the good Laws themselves are alive, — they 
 know if he have kept them, they animate him with 
 the leading of great duty and an endless horizon." ^ 
 
 1 *' Worship,-' in Conduct of Life. 
 
XVII. 
 THE TRUE BASIS OF RELIGIOUS UNION. 
 
 I HAVE had the privilege of expressing myself 
 with the utmost freedom in the preceding pages. 
 It is, however, one thing to express one's views 
 freely, and another to propose them as a basis of re- 
 ligious union. This I am distinctly unwilling to do. 
 All that one can ask at the present time is that he 
 shall be free to think and to express himself, that 
 he shall not be put under the ban because his views 
 do not accord wdth old-time standards ; but to pro- 
 pose any new set of views ^ as a part of the basis 
 of religious fellowship would be so far to revive the 
 intolerance of ancient orthodoxy. 
 
 I wish to ask now, not what is the truth with re- 
 spect to various doctrines, ancient and modern, but 
 what should make the fundamental terms of fellow- 
 ship in a religious body ? This is an entirely prac- 
 tical question, though I am aware that in trying to 
 answer it I may develop an ideal of religious fellow- 
 ship which has little or no relation to any existing 
 religious movement.^ 
 
 1 Mr. Prederic Harrison declares that the Positivist " bond of 
 union is a real, scientific, demonstrable conception of Nature and 
 of man " (Unitarian Review, March, 1888, p. 236). 
 
 2 The only bodies of which I have any knowledge, whose 
 platforms suggest such an ideal as I have in mind, are the Free 
 Religious Association, the Western Unitarian Conference, and the 
 
320 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 In general, I conceive that assent should not be re- 
 quired in a religious body to any truth about which 
 it is possible for a thoughtful and good man to doubt. 
 The basis of fellowship should be so broad that no 
 person striving for an ideal order of human life, no 
 one striving to live blamelessly before conscience, 
 should be perforce excluded from it. Hence, assent 
 to the doctrines of Catholic or Protestant Christianity, 
 or even of pure theism, should not be required. No 
 one will deny that serious and good men can, and in 
 some cases do, question these doctrines. Shall they, 
 therefore, be excluded from the most sacred of all 
 unions between man and man ? For my part, there 
 is no materialist or atheist who yet loves and pursues 
 the goodj^who feels that truth and honor bind him, 
 whom I do not wish to call in the deepest and most 
 sacred sense my brother. 
 
 The truth which it appears impossible to doubt is 
 that duty hinds a man. Not that we always know 
 our duty, and not that we need always be sensible 
 of its binding force. There may be — to quote from 
 Wordsworth's " Ode to Duty '' — 
 
 Union of the Societies for Ethical Culture. The Free Religious 
 Association aims " to promote the practical interests of pure reli- 
 gion, to increase fellowship in the spirit, and to encourage the 
 scientific study of man's religious nature and history." The West- 
 ern Unitarian Conference declares its " fellowship to he condi- 
 tioned on no doctrinal tests," and welcomes "all who wish to join 
 us to help establish truth and righteousness and love in the world." 
 Tlie aim of the Ethical Movement, as represented by the Union, 
 is ** to elevate the moral life of its members and that of the com- 
 munity ; and it cordially welcomes to its fellowship all persons 
 who sympathize with this aim, whatever may be their theological 
 or philosophical opinions." 
 
THE TRUE BASIS OF RELIGIOUS UNION. 321 
 
 " Glad hearts, without reproach or blot, 
 Who do thy work, and know it not ! " 
 
 For duty may become one with life, happiness, and 
 joy ; the antagonism between what we wish to do and 
 what we ought to do may pass away. Yet duty does 
 not cease to he binding because it is no longer felt 
 to be. We may sometimes be ignorant of duty ; but 
 when we learn what it is, we know thai! we are bound 
 by it. It is also true that men may differ in their 
 theories of the ultimate grounds of duty ; but the fact 
 of moral obligation and the broad outlines of personal 
 and social duty remain under any theory. The truth 
 is, that the thought of what ought to be is as elemen- 
 tal a part of man's being as the sense of what is. It 
 is even possible to be more clear as to what we ought 
 to do than as to what we actually have done or are 
 doing. We know we should be just : whether we are 
 so or not, may be often a difficult question to decide. 
 The thought of the right is indeed one that cannot be 
 outgrown, that has entered into every religion worthy 
 of our reverence, that even the savage has in some 
 half-conscious imperfect fashion, that man can lose 
 only as he loses his reason. One could easier drive 
 the sun from the heavens than banish the moral sen- 
 timent from the mind of man. \ can imagine our 
 living under other skies, in other spheres, and all the 
 dear familiar experiences of this earthly life no longer 
 known ; but without the moral sentiment we should 
 cease even on the earth to be men, and the sun and 
 all the stars would only shine on vacancy. We can 
 not say, however, that the propositions of the Atha- 
 nasian or even the Apostles' Creed are thus rooted in 
 the nature of man; neither can this be said of the 
 
 21 
 
322 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 theistic or perhaps any distinct speculative doctrine. 
 A true religious fellowship, then, would not oblige as- 
 sent to any of these doctrines ; it would require only 
 the recognition that duty hinds a man. 
 
 Positively speaking, the ideal religious body would 
 be a union of all those who owned the authority of 
 duty, and who sought to live as duty commands. The 
 fellowship aimed at would be that of all good men ; 
 that is, of all striving to be good and to advance the 
 cause of goodness in the world. For the omission of 
 a doctrinal basis does not mean a " mush of conces- 
 sion," or the drowning of conscience in sentimental- 
 ity. Not because one is a human being, but because 
 he strives to realize the ideal of humanity in his life, 
 and "to contribute to the establishment of an ideal 
 order of human life on the earth, should he be wel- 
 comed to the moral communion. Love cannot have 
 fellowship with those who hate ; just men cannot be 
 joined in sacred union with tyrants and oppressors; 
 men who are trying to lead pure lives cannot frater- 
 nize with those who are reckless and profligate. Con- 
 ditional for admission must be the desire to purify 
 oneself of all that is unworthy, to live according to 
 one's best ideals. But other conditions should be un- 
 known. One should not be obliged to confess himself 
 a Christian or to confess himself a Jew ; the antago- 
 nisms of Protestant and Catholic, of Evangelical and 
 Unitarian, should be forgotten ; all barriers should 
 pass away save those which conscience sets up. 
 
 I am aware that the realization of such an ideal 
 involves a great change in the habits and sentiments 
 of men. It argues a new object of central inter- 
 est, a new enthusiasm, a new magnanimity blended 
 
THE TRUE BASIS OF RELIGIOUS UNION. 323 
 
 with a new ardor. It is not uncommon to hear, even 
 in the most liberal of Christian denominations (the 
 Unitarian), that a religious body must, as a matter 
 of course, have religious doctrines.^ It seems to be 
 taken for granted that good and earnest men who 
 differ intellectually cannot belong to one fellowship, 
 that varying theological or philosophical views are 
 necessarily more potent to divide than moral aims 
 can be to unite. It is a sad and saddening opinion ; 
 yet I am afraid there is more in the religious history 
 of the race to confirm it than there is to encourage 
 the aim I cherish. Never has there been, to my 
 knowledge, such a fellowship as I crave. Men seem 
 always to have been ready to magnify their intel- 
 lectual agreements or disagreements, and to put a 
 slight on the good purpose and the pure heart. I 
 have come across, indeed, in Matthew Arnold's essay 
 on " Saint Paul and Protestantism," ^ an observation 
 of Epiphanius, one of the Christian Fathers, to the 
 effect that in the primitive period of the Church 
 wickedness was the only heresy ; that impious and 
 pious living divided the whole world into erroneous 
 and orthodox. I should like to believe that this 
 was so, and no doubt there was some approximation 
 to it ; but I am afraid that it was largely an ideal of 
 the bishop's mind, transferred to a time in regard 
 to which he had imperfect knowledge. In any case, 
 not much later than the time of Epiphanius, when a 
 bishop was charged in a Church council with unchas- 
 tity, the cry went up, " What do we care about his 
 chastity? Is he orthodox? — that is the question;'' 
 
 1 See " The Unitarian/' October, 1888, p. 442. 
 
 2 Page 120. 
 
324 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 and again, "Worse than a Sodomite is he who will 
 not call Mary mother of God ! '' ^ No, history does 
 not give much encouragement to such a fellowship as 
 I propose ; and as with morality in general, the dream 
 of a moral basis of religious union is an ideal of the 
 heart rather than anything else. Those who believe 
 in it will have to strive for it : it will not come of 
 itself. Yet it has on its side, I make bold to say, 
 the best instincts of not a few men to-day ; the larger 
 minds in almost all the historic Christian communions 
 are moving in this direction, though they may be far 
 from having a clear vision as yet of the goal. Any 
 one who is impatient with old walls of separation 
 between churches, and asks that all who love the 
 Lord Jesus Christ shall join hands for united war- 
 fare against sin and wrong, really works in this di- 
 rection ; any one who still more generously summons 
 all, whether Christians or not, to unite in the love 
 of God and the service of man, really works in this 
 direction. Yes, both are prophets, however uncon- 
 sciously, of that grander fellowship to come, which 
 shall include all who, whatever their differences in 
 the past and whatever their intellectual differences 
 still, are ready to work together to put down the evil 
 and to enthrone the good in the world. 
 
 Let me now state a little more distinctly what a 
 moral basis of fellowship would involve. 
 
 First, it would not necessitate the giving up of any 
 theological or philosophical beliefs which one might 
 hold dear. Because one's beliefs are not made a part 
 of the bond of union does not mean that one shall 
 
 1 See an article bj^ Rev. Dr. F. H. Hedge, in Tlie Unitarian 
 Review, January, 1884, p. 14. 
 
THE TRUE BASIS OF RELIGIOUS UNION. 325 
 
 not be free to hold them. If one found satisfaction in 
 the theistic theory of the universe, he should be free 
 to cherish it ; if one felt compelled to be an agnostic 
 as to the nature of Deity, or if one took materialistic 
 ground, he should be equally free. The aim of the 
 fellowship would not be to make theists or materi- 
 alists or agnostics, but to confirm the good purpose 
 in the soul, to make good citizens, good fathers and 
 mothers, to make lovers of justice and haters of all 
 wrong. If one wished to keep company only with 
 those of his own creed, he would of course not enter 
 the body ; but the body would not exclude him : he 
 would simply, by the narrow range of his sympathies, 
 exclude himself. One would not have to renounce 
 Christianity nor Judaism in entering the fellowship ; 
 his entering would simply involve a willingness to 
 live on terms of brotherhood with others w^ho might 
 not be Christians or Jews ; that is, he would give 
 up Christianity or Judaism as the basis of religious 
 fellowship. 
 
 Secondly, the free expression of theological or philo- 
 sophical opinions w^ould not be prevented any more 
 than the holding of them. It might even happen that 
 those who were drawn together by the affinity of in- 
 tellectual conviction would form subordinate groups, 
 just as those who were united in holding to certain 
 practical solutions of the problem of society might do 
 the same. Uniformity is not to be expected nor de- 
 sired ; uniformity is apt to be the high road to spirit- 
 ual death, while unity in variety means life. The 
 only necessity would be that no group should make 
 so much of its peculiar views and aims that it would 
 be in danger of losing sympathy and the sense of 
 
826 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 union with the body at large. One fellowship with 
 many branches, one body with many members, one 
 subtle life-blood running through the whole and mak- 
 ing every part kin to every other, — that would be 
 the ideal of a true religious fellowship. 
 
 Hence, thirdly, a new meaning would attach to 
 heresy in connection with such a fellowship. That 
 word, I well know, is no longer covered with oppro- 
 brium. Men who have stood faithful to the light 
 that was in them, and have refused for the sake of 
 life itself to be untrue to it, have made heresy almost 
 glorious. Apart, however, from its historical associa- 
 tions, the meaning of heresy is simply separation : a 
 heretic is one who is separated, or separates himself, 
 from a religious body. Whether heresy is honorable 
 or dishonorable depends, then, on the attitude of the 
 religious body in question. The Christian Church has 
 not allowed liberty of thought, save within compara- 
 tively narrow limits ; it has even decreed from time 
 to time that certain ideas were to be accepted on pain 
 of eternal damnation. The Church has thus become 
 to many minds a very emblem of intolerance. A 
 fundamental principle, however, of the ideal religious 
 fellowship I have in mind would be freedom of be- 
 lief; the body should neither decree nor prescribe, 
 nor in any way stand for, an}^ set of theological or 
 philosophical opinions. The query might arise, would 
 not heresy cease to have any meaning in connection 
 with such a body ? It certainly would, in the cus- 
 tomary sense of the word. There would be neither 
 necessity nor motive for any one to leave the body, 
 to the end of gaining liberty of thought or utterance. 
 But suppose that another set of motives should arise. 
 
THE TRUE BASIS OF RELIGIOUS UNION. 327 
 
 Suppose that the theistic members of the body should 
 say, "Our theism has become so precious to us that 
 we cannot hold out any longer the fraternal hand to 
 materialists or agnostics.'' Suppose that agnostics or 
 materialists should say, "We cannot have patience 
 with theism ; it is an antiquated, exploded doctrine, 
 and we must refuse to fraternize with those who cling 
 to it." Suppose a socialistic group should say, " Indi- 
 vidualists must necessarily be without heart or con- 
 science ; " or that individualists ^ should retort that 
 socialists must be bad men. In any of these cases, 
 the fundamental bond of union of the religious body 
 would be assailed ; each and every group which thus 
 withdrew and formed a new body would be, in the 
 literal sense of the word, heretical. Instead of stand- 
 ing for freedom, heresy would thus stand for the spirit 
 of intolerance. The heretic would be one who re- 
 fused to concede to others the same rights he claimed 
 for himself ; who said in effect. " I am determined 
 that all others shall think as I do, and if they do not, 
 I will have no part or lot with them." 
 
 No one has argued more finely against the secta- 
 rian, dissenting spirit than the late Matthew Arnold. 
 " The dissidence of dissent and the protestantism of 
 the Protestant religion" was the object of his deli- 
 cate and yet merciless satire. The various dissenting 
 bodies in England were for the most part " hole-and- 
 corner" churches, out of relation to the great common 
 religious life of the English nation. His argument 
 
 ^ I am aware that all these minor classifications are somewhat 
 arbitrary, and beg that they shall be taken simply as attempts to 
 illustrate the principle I am seeking to elucidate, not as necessary 
 implications of it. 
 
328 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 was only vitiated by the assumption that the Church 
 of England was representative of that nation's com- 
 mon religious life. He called it "a national associa- 
 tion for the promotion of goodness.'* It is in truth 
 not only that, but an association equally well for 
 the promotion of the ideas embodied in the Apos- 
 tles' and Nicene, not to say the Athanasian, creeds. 
 But though in judgment he was wrong, his ideal was 
 right. There should be an association in every na- 
 tion for the promotion of goodness, — one that would 
 gather to itself all the elements in the nation ready 
 to work for that high end : whether it should have 
 any official connection with the political organization 
 of the nation is another matter; I think not. And 
 when a genuine and all-inclusive society of this nature 
 does arise, whether in England or elsewhere, then all 
 that Mr. Arnold so eloquently said of the spirit of 
 dissent will hold good. Then the separate churches 
 that may be set up by the theistic or agnostic or so- 
 cialistic or individualistic sects will be justly called 
 "hole-and-corner" churches; but, I must add, not till 
 that day. Almost all the dissenting churches in Eng- 
 land, and almost all the separate denominations in 
 this country, have had an excuse for being ; they have 
 arisen, because freedom in the mother-churches from 
 which they separated was not allowed. Better dis- 
 order and confusion and an infinite number of "hole- 
 and-corner" churches than despotism and iron law. 
 When a better day shall dawn, however, and a reli- 
 gious order with liberty — making, indeed, a principle 
 of liberty — shall arise on the earth, then only could 
 narrowness and bigotry, the very spirit of schism and 
 odious heresy, lead to separation from it. 
 
THE TRUE BASIS OF RELIGIOUS UNION. 329 
 
 Fourthly, it would follow that through the entire 
 body, and in all its groups and local branches, more 
 should be made of the common aims and ideals of the 
 body than of anything else. A theistic branch which 
 made more of theism than of the love and practice of 
 goodness, would be forgetting its function as a branch 
 of the general body, and in danger of becoming sec- 
 tarian. A materialistic group which gave itself up to 
 expositions of materialistic philosophy, would be in 
 similar danger. Varying philosophical views or eco- 
 nomic aims could only make a kind of atmosphere in 
 each group or branch, but could not take the form of 
 a creed or binding statement. The basis of local fel- 
 lowship should be the same as the basis of the gen- 
 eral fellowship ; nothing should be required anywhere 
 which was not required everywhere. In other words, 
 the questions of personal and social morality should 
 have the first (I do not say, the only) claim on the 
 attention of every branch or local organization. If 
 from any meeting some one should not go away with 
 clearer light as to duty, or with some fresh impulse 
 toward the ideal life, the holding of that meeting 
 would be well-nigh vain. Duty is not a formula, it 
 is a life ; it is as full, as many-sided, as exhaustless 
 as life, — yes, it is often as perplexing as are many 
 of the situations of life. There are few men who 
 do not sometimes crave light, or help and inspira- 
 tion to follow the light they already have. Eight 
 living is in one sense the most natural thing to 
 man ; in another, it is at times a most difficult and 
 arduous thing, and seems to require almost super- 
 human watchfulness and strength. Those most hon- 
 est with themselves are the aptest to feel that the 
 
330 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 better part of them is not what they are, but what 
 they aspire to be. As for our actual selves, some 
 of us know we are self-conscious, anxious for notice, 
 tickled with applause, without seriousness, and good 
 only by impulse. Others know they are proud, glo- 
 rying in mastery and in having others obedient to 
 them. Others still are full of irrational aversions 
 and prejudices, and scarcely try to let the calm, puri- 
 fying light of reason penetrate their minds. Some 
 are sensual, and others are close and ungenerous. 
 Then in the realm of social morality, how we floun- 
 der ! We know that selfishness as a principle is dis- 
 organizing and anarchic, and yet our industrial order 
 is to a great extent founded on it, and we think it 
 is all right ! We call it in the abstract a devilish 
 maxim, that every one should look out for himself, 
 and woe betide the hindmost ; yet in our business re- 
 lations we are apt to act upon it, and there are those 
 who can scarcely imagine business being conducted on 
 any other basis. Ethics, the principles of justice and 
 love, are pooh-poohed, when they are sought to be 
 applied in this realm ; to advocate them is thought 
 to be sentimentalism or, at best, philanthropy. The 
 religious world is divided into theological camps, 
 when it ought to be a unit in devising a plan of 
 peace and brotherhood for the industrial life of soci- 
 ety. It is not enough to preach the Golden Rule; it 
 is necessary to say what the Golden Eule means. To 
 hold up more elevated ideals of personal and social 
 life, to create and to sustain an enthusiasm for them, 
 to lift life actually to higher levels, — this would 
 be the sovereign and the central mission of a true 
 religious body. 
 
THE TRUE BASIS OF RELIGIOUS UNION. 331 
 
 But is all this religion, it may be asked? Is it 
 not morality ? I answer, that for my own part it is 
 impossible to distinguish between them. Morality 
 is only true morality when it is given religious con- 
 secration, and religion is first a truly sacred thing 
 when it becomes an exalted moral enthusiasm. I am 
 aware that, historically, religion arose independently 
 of morality, — as, happily, morality arose indepen- 
 dently of religion. But the deepest thing, the root- 
 thing in religion was not so much any peculiar object 
 to which the religious sentiment went out, as the 
 feeling that the object was sacred. It is reverence 
 and awe that make the heart of religion. Whoever 
 holds to something as sacred, has a religion or the 
 elements of one. It is a mistake to bind up religion 
 with any special theory of the universe ; he who con- 
 sciously has no theory may yet be religious, if, as he 
 turns his mind this way and that, it falls sooner or 
 later on something that strikes him with indescriba- 
 ble awe and reverence. Duty — the thought of the 
 laws under which we live, of their inviolable nature, 
 of their supreme authority, in obedience to which is 
 safety and life and joy, and in departing from which 
 we stray into darkness and the night — may as truly 
 excite awe as did the phenomena of Nature, the 
 powers of earth and sky, which first enchained the 
 attention of the forefathers of the race. The reli- 
 gion of morality may be as real and as sacred as 
 the religion of Nature, of which almost all histori- 
 cal religions are varied forms. The most perfect re- 
 ligion, to my own mind, would be a blending of the 
 religion of morality and the religion of Nature into 
 an ideal unity. 
 
332 ETHICAL RELIGION. 
 
 But whether such a fellowship as I have sketched 
 the ideal of, would be colled religious or not is a 
 comparatively unimportant matter. It might not call 
 itself religious, conscious of the uncertainty and am- 
 biguity in the current use of that term ; and there 
 would be no harm in this. But what it should he^ 
 whether it was faithful to its ideal or not, — on this 
 everything would depend. 
 
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