LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 Class 
 
IMMORTALITY 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
IMMORTALITY 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES CARROLL EVERETT 
 
 Late Professor of Theology in Harvard University 
 
 AUTHOR OF " ESSAYS THEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY M 
 "POETRY, COMEDY, AND DUTY," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 1902 
 
Act 
 2&- 
 
 ep 
 
 H?RAL 
 
 Copyright 1902 
 American Unitarian Association 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 With rare exceptions, magazine articles 
 pass soon after their publication into a for- 
 getfulness from which even Poole's Index is 
 no sufficient deliverer. Yet old questions 
 remain unanswered, and in forgotten discus- 
 sions often lie precious intimations of truth. 
 Although never a prolific writer for current 
 reviews, Dr. Everett contributed, especially 
 to the regular publications of his own reli- 
 gious communion, articles which have seemed 
 worthy of preservation in collected form, not 
 only because of their intrinsic merit, — all 
 of Dr. Everett's thinking was so permeated 
 with what he was accustomed to call the 
 ideas of the reason that whatever he wrote 
 has elements of universal and eternal value, 
 — but also as trustworthy indications of the 
 spirit and tendency of religious thought in 
 America during the last half of the nine- 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 teenth century. Unrevised and unedited, 
 these essays, written to serve his generation 
 by one whose thought and life were deeply 
 of the Eternal, are here reprinted for the 
 Truth they contain, the Goodness they in- 
 spire, the Beauty they reveal. 
 
 W. W. FENN. 
 Cambridge, November 7, 1902. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Immortality 3 
 
 The Known and the Unknowable in Religion 27 
 
 Mysticism 55 
 
 Joseph Priestley: The Old Unitarianism and 
 
 the New 97 
 
 The Faith of Science and the Science of Faith 141 
 
 The Philosophy of the Sublime 173 
 
 Spencer's Reconciliation of Science and Reli- 
 gion 207 
 
 The Gain of History 239 
 
IMMORTALITY 
 
IMMORTALITY 
 
 AND OTHER ESSATS 
 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 We stand upon the earth, and see that the 
 same destiny has been appointed to all her 
 children. We see all the generations of 
 plants and animals pass away as the gene- 
 rations of men pass away. We know that 
 the bird which mounts with the gladdest 
 song to heaven will soon be voiceless and 
 motionless ; we know that the beast which 
 treads the forest with the lordliest step will 
 soon roam its depths no more ; just as we 
 know that the crowds of busy men that 
 throng our city streets will disappear, and 
 the places that now know them will know 
 them no more forever. And so we think 
 that the same shadow has fallen upon all the 
 children of the earth. 
 
 We find a certain sad consolation in this 
 common fellowship, in the thought that the 
 doom of mortality has fallen upon all alike ; 
 
4 IMMORTALITY 
 
 but we are wrong. Though all pass through 
 the valley of death, all do not feel the shadow 
 of it. Man stands alone in the conscious- 
 ness of mortality. To him alone the secret 
 has been whispered. He alone has gazed 
 down into the black gulf that waits for all. 
 The bird lives, so far as its consciousness 
 is concerned, an eternal life. It knows no 
 limit. Its moments are simply the moments 
 of eternity. It lives as if upon the crumbs 
 fallen from the eternal seats. So it is with 
 all the lower forms of the animal creation : 
 they all live as if in an eternal life. Death, 
 if they know anything about it, is the soli- 
 tary exception, not the rule. Though they 
 shrink from it, they do not know what it is. 
 You know the method sometimes taken to 
 break a horse. His throat is grasped till he 
 is almost dead. After that, his spirit is 
 broken : it is weak and submissive. Such 
 chill and terror has this shadow when it 
 rests, even for a moment, upon the lower 
 world of life. But man lives in this shadow. 
 The universality of death is one of the 
 earliest results of his generalization, as it is 
 one of the most certain. When the logics 
 would give the most common and simple 
 example of reasoning, one that will be un- 
 
IMMORTALITY 5 
 
 derstood and accepted by all, they give the 
 outline of an argument based upon the mor- 
 tality of all men. This one premise all 
 will accept without question — so simple, 
 so universal, is this first truth. 
 
 What does it mean, — this strange fact, 
 that to man alone, the highest of all, the 
 noblest of all, the terrible secret has been 
 revealed? that he stands amid the lower 
 tribes of unconscious and joyful creatures, as 
 a man might stand watching the unconscious 
 play of children in a ship which he knew 
 was slowly but certainly filling and sinking ? 
 What does it mean ? Does it mean that 
 the world is a mockery and a deceit? It 
 would mean this if it did not mean the 
 opposite. What it does mean is this, that 
 to man is revealed the finiteness of the 
 earthly life, because to him is revealed the 
 infiniteness of the eternal life. In life, 
 knowledge of limit comes only with the 
 power to pass the limit. The plant is fixed 
 to a single spot of earth. It has no power 
 of movement ; and it has no senses, and no. 
 impulses, that go beyond the point where 
 it is fixed. To the animal, this limitation 
 would be bondage. The animal has senses 
 that reach to other objects, the impulse to 
 
6 IMMORTALITY 
 
 move among them ; and, with the impulse, 
 it has the power of such movement. But 
 still all its thoughts, as well as its movements, 
 seem bound to the earth. Man goes a step 
 farther. To him are given thoughts and 
 senses which go beyond the visible things 
 of earth ; and with these he feels that there 
 has been given him a power of freer move- 
 ment, a life not dependent upon the earth. 
 Thus man alone is led to see the barrier 
 which is fixed before this earthly life, because 
 he alone sees over it and beyond it. 
 
 Unless these two revelations came together, 
 unless with the revelation of death came also 
 the revelation of life, the whole would end 
 in mockery ; but the two have come to- 
 gether. Whence the first whisper came that 
 promised a new and higher life, we do not 
 know ; but the whole world has heard it. 
 Hardly a tribe has sunk so low, that it has 
 not heard, in some distorted shape or other, 
 this whisper of hope. Geology, exposing 
 among the fossil memorials of ages long-past 
 the relics of funeral feasts, and indications 
 of offerings to the spirits of the dead, traces 
 back the belief in a future state to times 
 long anterior to history and tradition. 1 
 
 1 See Ly ell's "Antiquity of Man," p. 193. 
 
IMMORTALITY 7 
 
 As human life has advanced, this faith 
 has grown clearer. The race of man has 
 found, more and more, that its life was 
 not shut up within the things of time and 
 sense. Its thoughts, that wander through 
 eternity, make it know itself to be the child 
 of eternity. 
 
 The demonstration of the being of God 
 demonstrates the existence of a spiritual 
 realm unseen by bodily sight. And when 
 the spirit comes to know that it is in God 
 that it lives and moves, and has its being, it 
 knows, that, since its life is in him, it is not 
 dependent upon outward things and outward 
 changes. When you find in an acorn the 
 germ of an oak, you know something of the 
 duration which is appointed to the life of 
 which the acorn is the earliest form. The 
 thought of God in the human soul is the 
 germ of infinity. 
 
 Thus we overlook the barrier of death ; 
 thus we are prepared to receive whatever 
 comes to us with clear authentication as a rev- 
 elation from the unseen world. When the 
 love of Christ flashes back upon his disciples 
 from the midst of the unseen glories, we 
 rejoice in the light that comes to us ; when 
 the faces of the dying are visibly smitten 
 
8 IMMORTALITY 
 
 with a brightness from a source which is to 
 us invisible, we rejoice in the reflected radi- 
 ance ; and when, in those moments in which 
 the power of the flesh is weakest, familiar 
 forms and voices, to us unseen and unheard, 
 greet the departing saint, we rejoice, not 
 doubting in these manifestations of a higher 
 life. 
 
 If you ask for the details of this coming 
 life, for minute pictures of its relations and 
 its scenes, we must be silent. We can only 
 speak of an infinite hope that cheers us, and 
 supports us, and lures us on. 
 
 Does the Bible, does Christ himself, give 
 us more than this ? Christ utters certain 
 parables, the scene of which is laid in the 
 future life ; but the object of them is to 
 reveal to us the relations of this life, not to 
 picture to us the details of that. For the 
 most part, the New Testament throws us 
 back upon our ignorance ; but, just as we 
 are ready to despair of knowing anything, 
 there flashes upon our souls the glory of 
 this infinite hope. Thus we read, that 
 " Eye hath not seen, neither hath the ear 
 heard, neither have entered into the heart of 
 man, the things that God hath prepared for 
 them that love him ; " but, in the next 
 
IMMORTALITY 9 
 
 breath, we are told that God hath revealed 
 them unto us by his Spirit. And John says 
 to us, "It doth not yet appear what we 
 shall be ; " and then, just as we are begin- 
 ning to despair of knowing anything, 
 follows the great hope, that cannot be sup- 
 pressed : " but we know, that, when he shall 
 appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall 
 see him as he is." v 
 
 At this ignorance we cannot wonder. No 
 revelation can come before its time. Life 
 itself is the only revelation of life. Were we 
 taken bodily into the celestial realms, could 
 they be revealed to our bodily sight, we 
 could not discern their true nature. The 
 full and busy life of mature men and women 
 lies open to the child; but how little does 
 the child know of its meaning ! Even when 
 the child imitates the acts of manhood, what 
 does the mimic banker or preacher or poli- 
 tician know of the "anxiety, of the passionate 
 eagerness, of life ! We are but children : 
 how could the relations and the details of 
 the maturity that awaits us be revealed to 
 our comprehension ! Let a person who has 
 no ear for music be taken into a hall which 
 is filled with some grand harmony. He 
 hears the sounds, the very sounds, that con- 
 
io IMMORTALITY 
 
 vey to another almost the greatest joy which 
 he can know, that open to him the rapture 
 almost of heaven itself. To the first, the 
 tuning of the instruments conveyed as much. 
 Thus impossible is it for the spirit to re- 
 ceive any revelation, though it be poured 
 into its very ears, and pictured to its very 
 eyes, before it is ready to receive it. 
 
 But, though this ignorance of detail must 
 be accepted and insisted upon, none the less 
 are there certain large and general principles 
 that must guide our thought, and on which 
 we may place firm reliance. It is with our 
 thought of our future life something as it is 
 with our thought of some far-off planet. If 
 one should undertake to draw for us pictures 
 of the planet, to tell us " its rocks are like 
 this, and its flowers like this, and its inhabi- 
 tants like this ; " if he should give the de- 
 tail of family and state life, of government 
 and education, — we should listen to his 
 words- without an approach to confidence : 
 we should see in them only a pleasant fiction 
 or a moral lesson, or else look upon them as 
 idle babbling. But there are some things 
 which we do know in regard to this far-off 
 planet as certainly as if we had trodden its 
 continents, or sailed upon its seas. W( 
 
IMMORTALITY n 
 
 know that the law of gravitation is as mighty 
 there as it is here ; that the laws of chemical 
 action and composition are the same there 
 that they are here ; that all the fundamental 
 laws of material existence are the same there 
 that they are here. Of the same nature is 
 our knowledge of the life to come ; only, in 
 this case, we have to do with spiritual laws and 
 forces instead of with material. The funda- 
 mental principles of spiritual life are the same 
 under all circumstances, at all times, in time 
 and in eternityr The love of God — that 
 great fact which is in our religious thought 
 what the great law of gravitation is in our 
 thought of material things — always is and 
 always will be absolute. In regard to any 
 theory or picture of the future life, we may 
 ask, Does it absolutely and fundamentally 
 contradict our faith in the infinite love of 
 God ? If it do, we can dismiss it as false, 
 with the same confidence with which we 
 should dismiss as false any guess in regard 
 to the planet which I spoke of, that should 
 contradict the absoluteness of the law of 
 gravitation. 
 
 We may go even a little farther than this. 
 All spiritual laws and relationships must re- 
 main the same. We are like the children 
 
12 IMMORTALITY 
 
 of some family in the Old World, about to 
 emigrate to the New. What does the child 
 know, what can he guess, of the scenes that 
 will open before him ? Can he understand 
 from anything he has ever seen, of the 
 meaning of the words, " forest," " lake," 
 and " prairie " ? Perhaps the language will 
 be different from anything he has ever heard 
 before. Of all this the child knows nothing, 
 and can know nothing; but he does know 
 that father and mother, brother and sister, 
 will be with him, and, knowing this, he is 
 content. Where they are is home; and, 
 where home is, he is glad to be. So we 
 stand upon the brink of the dim ocean, and 
 let our thoughts stretch and strive to look 
 forward to the life that is beyond. The 
 whole is vague and shadowy to us. But we 
 know that the great Father of all souls will 
 be there ; we know that our brothers and 
 sisters will be there ; and, where these are, 
 our spirits may feel themselves at home. 
 
 To speak more definitely, we may say, 
 that, in death, the body dies, and that alone. 
 If we can determine what belongs to the 
 body, and what belongs to the spirit, then 
 we can understand what will die with the 
 body, and what will live on in spite of the 
 
 J 
 
IMMORTALITY 13 
 
 body's death. Let us apply this principle 
 to certain views that are more or less com- 
 monly held in regard to death. 
 
 There are views of death that make it the 
 one great, decisive moment of existence. 
 One of these is, that, when the body dies, 
 all possibility of sin dies with it ; that the 
 death of the body is and always must be the 
 regeneration of the soul. If sin were of 
 the body, the death of the body would be 
 the death of sin ; but though the saints of 
 all ages have striven with the body, have 
 tortured it and starved it, believing that the 
 sin was in it, and in it alone, yet sin is not 
 of the body, but of the spirit. If sin were 
 in the world, in the circumstances by which 
 the body is surrounded, then to die out of 
 the world would be to escape from sin. 
 Moralists and saints have disowned the world 
 as they have disowned the body ; they have 
 denounced the world ; they have sought to 
 flee from the world, thinking that thereby 
 they could flee from sin. We might think, 
 indeed, that, when the soul is free from the 
 temptations that are about it here, it might 
 be free from the sin that these have caused. 
 The miser, the defrauder, the sensualist, will 
 not be beset by the temptations that here 
 
i 4 IMMORTALITY 
 
 have wrought his ruin. All the circum- 
 stances of life will have been changed. But 
 sin is not in the circumstances about us. It 
 is not in the world any more than it is in 
 the body. There is not an object, as there 
 is not a power on the earth, which was not 
 meant for good. Money, which we call the 
 root of all evil, is the great instrument of 
 civilization. That wild passion which has 
 blasted so many a heart, and blackened so 
 many a life, was meant to kindle the pure 
 flame of the domestic hearthstone. That 
 ambition which has raged through so many 
 a land was meant to be an incentive to hon- 
 orable toil. No ! the sin is in the soul, not 
 in its surroundings ; and, though the very 
 forms and powers of heaven were about it, 
 the selfish soul would find some way to 
 make them serve its selfish ends ; or, if it 
 could not, it would torment itself with its 
 own failures, or heaven would be heaven no 
 longer. 
 
 If the death of the body is not the death 
 of the evil which is in the soul, still less can 
 it be the death of the good which is in the 
 soul. Perhaps the most common view of 
 the future life falls into both the errors which 
 I have just named. It draws a line which 
 
y 
 
 IMMORTALITY 15 
 
 separates the world of living men and 
 women into two classes. Those who stand 
 on one side of this line are good ; and, when 
 they die, all the evil that is in them perishes : 
 they become perfectly pure and holy, and 
 pass at once into a state of endless peace and 
 blessedness. Those who stand on the other 
 side of the line are evil ; and, when they die, 
 all the good that is in them perishes, — all 
 the kindliness and love, all the impulses of 
 a noble generosity, all the power of self- 
 sacrifice : they become wholly evil, and pass 
 at once into a state of hopeless and endless 
 misery. But who in this world of ours is 
 good, and who is evil ? How would it be 
 possible to draw such a line, which would 
 not cut through many a heart, nay, that 
 would not cut through every heart ? 
 
 And what is the bad, that its death should 
 accomplish a change like this ? If it were 
 the spirit that died, the body might be left 
 in this unchangeableness, 
 
 " Fixed in an eternal state.' * 
 
 But the very nature of the spirit is change : 
 its very life is progress. How shall the 
 death of the body thus transform it ? 
 
 No : death is a sleep and an awaking ; 
 
16 IMMORTALITY 
 
 and we must believe that the soul emerges 
 from the darkness of this sleep such as it 
 was when it entered into it. The spirit will 
 stand forth beautiful or deformed, pure or Jv 
 defiled, strong or weak, complete or imper- 
 fect, healthful or diseased, according to its 
 nature while it was living, half concealed, in 
 this tabernacle of flesh. But so far as the 
 consciousness of the spirit, and its appear- 
 ance are concerned, there is between the 
 two lives one immense difference. I have 
 said that sin is not of the body, but of 
 the soul. It is true, at the same time, 
 that much that we call sin is of the body. 
 Every wrong act committed leaves its 
 mark upon the brain. Habit, working 
 through the body, chains the spirit to its 
 past self, even when it would forsake its 
 past self. The faults or the sins or the 
 mistakes of parents leave their marks upon 
 their children, give them weights to carry 
 through life. The very weakness and dis- 
 order of the physical system, of brain and 
 nerves, make themselves felt in the life. 
 No person who strives after the highest 
 life is able to fulfil even his own highest 
 thought of life. How many persons do 
 we see struggling with some false tendency, 
 
IMMORTALITY 17 
 
 which is always tripping them up when 
 they would least have it so ! How many 
 drunkards struggle against their terrible 
 thirst, with a purpose and an aspiration that 
 would win them sainthood, were it not for 
 this terrible enemy! How many men and 
 women struggle against some infirmity of 
 temper that besets them, because their 
 nerves are all jangled, and out of tune ! 
 How many such struggles are carried on 
 in life we cannot know. They are fought 
 in the very secret places of the soul. 
 The brave struggler after peace and love 
 and purity, and a lofty faith, feels himself 
 often vanquished in the fight. There is 
 a law in his members, struggling against 
 the law in his spirit : so that what he 
 would he does not, and what he would 
 not that he does. Death, we may believe, 
 puts an end to this struggle : it unbinds 
 the soul. The spirit that has thus strug- 
 gled stands forth free, strong, erect, pure, 
 glad. It mounts with a sudden flight up 
 to the heights towards which it has been 
 struggling so long. It fulfils its own ideal. 
 Loftier heights will be yet before it ; grander 
 ideals will lure it on : but what it longed to 
 be, what it strove to be, it has become. 
 
1 8 IMMORTALITY 
 
 What a revelation of life it would be to us, 
 if we could see the spirits that thus emerge, 
 clean out of the mire of life, pure out of its 
 pollution, peaceful out of its strife, exalted 
 out of its degradation, victorious out of its 
 defeats ! 
 
 There is another side to the picture. If 
 some appear worse than they really are, 
 there are others who appear better than they 
 really are. The circumstances that drag 
 down the first buoy up these. With the 
 body death strips away all the outward cir- 
 cumstances of life. All the advantages of 
 birth, of outward dignity, of position in 
 society, — all these are stripped off from the 
 soul. It sees itself, and is seen, as it has 
 been all along in the sight of God, naked 
 and open in the presence of him with whom 
 it has to do. The restraints of life are re- 
 moved ; the soul can act itself. There is an 
 ideal of evil as well as an ideal of good ; 
 there is a looking-downward as well as a 
 looking-up ; there is a love of the low, of the 
 depraved, of the selfish. Death, we believe, 
 leaves the spirit free to follow its own gravi- 
 tation. He that has struggled after the 
 right and the good, whose heart has been 
 filled with the aspiration of love, — such an 
 
IMMORTALITY 19 
 
 humble, God-loving, and man-loving spirit 
 shall mount up into the realms of blessedness 
 and peace ; while those whose love has been 
 downwards, and not up, shall fall — whither 
 shall they fall ? We read that it is a fearful 
 thing to fall into the hands of the living God. 
 Would it not be a more fearful thing to fall 
 out of the hands of the living God ? It is 
 a fearful thing, the poor wounded soldier 
 feels, to pass into the hands of the surgeon ; 
 but yet he thanks God, even though with 
 fear and dread, for the surgeon's skill. It is 
 the wound that is dreadful : the care that 
 probes it, and binds it up, is blessed. 
 
 Sin is a fearful thing : it is the one dread- 
 ful thing in God's universe ; and blessed is 
 any discipline that shall free the spirit from 
 its power. We must not forget the funda- 
 mental law with which we started, — the law 
 of God's infinite love. The comet seems 
 to try to shoot from the warm and shining 
 centre of the system into the outer darkness : 
 can you draw the line that shall mark the 
 course and the limit of its wandering? We 
 only know that the great law of gravitation 
 does never let it go, that at last it draws it 
 back again into the light and warmth : so 
 we believe that the love of God follows the 
 
ao IMMORTALITY 
 
 sinner in his course. No soul can wander 
 beyond the reach of God's protecting hand. 
 The love of God is infinite ; and it shall yet 
 triumph over all things. We cannot under- 
 stand God's method ; we cannot anticipate 
 his ways. We know not what discipline, 
 what experience, may be demanded, what 
 paths may be the best. He knows, and he 
 has the power to choose. 
 
 We hear men speak, sometimes, of the 
 lost. There are spirits that seem lost ; but 
 did you ever see one that was wholly lost ? 
 You read of a single act of a man, and you 
 think his nature was wholly in that : if the 
 act was evil, you think of him as wholly 
 evil. But did you ever see a man that was 
 wholly evil ? that had not a single spark left 
 that could be kindled into a flame ? that was 
 utterly broken, so that there was no possi- 
 bility of an influx of strength ? Nay, among 
 those who are most the prey of the most 
 shameless vice, do you not often find a gen- 
 erosity, a free nobility, of soul that puts to 
 shame the calculating virtue of those who 
 would shrink from the very touch of these 
 polluted ones ? And shall He who does 
 not break the bruised reed, nor quench the 
 smoking flax, not find a way to save that 
 
IMMORTALITY 21 
 
 which is left, to breathe with his Spirit upon 
 the smoking embers, to bind up the bruised 
 reed ? Thus we stand by the side of every 
 grave in hope, we follow the course of every 
 spirit with trust. We believe that in the 
 Fathers house are many mansions ; that 
 every prodigal shall at some time leave his 
 pollution, and be welcomed home ; that at 
 last God's great family shall be complete. 
 
 Shall we seek to make real to our hearts 
 the joy and the promise of that waiting 
 home ? Consider, then, that all the truth, 
 all the joy, all the life, of this present world, 
 is of the spirit. You loved your friend. 
 What was it you loved in him ? It was his 
 love, his nobleness, his aspiration, his self- 
 forgetfulness. These were of the spirit. 
 The outward presence that you rejoiced in 
 was but the revelation of the spirit. It was 
 this that looked from the eyes, and smiled 
 through the lips, and uttered itself in the 
 voice. Thus, when this outward presence 
 perished, the friend remained, the love loved 
 on ; though the body's lips are hushed, 
 soul can still utter itself to soul. Nay, we 
 may believe, that, after the body's death, 
 there is often a closer union between soul 
 and soul than when each could only half 
 
22 IMMORTALITY 
 
 express itself through the poor medium of 
 the flesh. And what this outer presence was 
 to your friend, that is the universe to God : 
 it is his glory that flashes from the heavens ; 
 the strength of the hills is his strength ; the 
 beauty of the flower is his beauty ; the love 
 of all spirits is his love. What, then, that is 
 dear and precious to us will be lost, though 
 the heavens should be rolled together as a 
 scroll, and all the visible forms of things 
 should perish? This outward world is only 
 the hint of the spiritual world, — a veil that 
 half reveals, and half conceals, its glory. 
 Whatever is highest here, that is the truest. 
 Thus we look forward and upward, 
 
 " Knowing that what is excellent, 
 As God lives, is permanent/ ' 
 
 If we would form a picture of the heavenly 
 life, we have, then, only to take what is most 
 divine in the earthly life. The gladness of 
 thought, the communion of love, the bless- 
 edness of service, the ecstasy of worship, the 
 contemplation of the divine, — these are of 
 the spirit, and partake of its eternity. The 
 contemplation of the divine, — the words 
 may sound cold and meaningless ; but if it 
 be true, as was just affirmed, that whatever 
 
IMMORTALITY 23 
 
 thrills us in the grandeur and beauty of the 
 earth is only a hint of the presence of God, 
 what joy must come from the ever higher 
 and higher manifestation of his presence ! 
 
 Such is our belief in regard to the future 
 life. Well would it be for us if it were in- 
 deed the faith of our inmost hearts. What 
 darkness could gather on our way if we walked 
 ever in the light of this hope ! O spirit ! 
 weary with the burdens of life, O wanderer ! 
 lost amid its mazes, O sinner ! struggling 
 with some vice that wraps its folds ever 
 more closely about you, O mourner ! stretch- 
 ing forth eager arms after the loved and lost, 
 how blessed would ye be, how blessed 
 would we all be, if we could open our hearts 
 to the fulness of this promise, to the bright- 
 ness of this hope ! 
 
 And yet there is another lesson which the 
 great truth we have considered may bring 
 home to us. If we must take of the mate- 
 rials of our earthly life to form our thought 
 of heaven, does it not follow that we may take 
 our thought of heaven to shape our earthly 
 life ? Is not the material at hand ? Is not 
 love here? Is there not opportunity of 
 service ? Is not God here ? Let us not 
 forget that our eternal life has begun already ; 
 
24 IMMORTALITY 
 
 and while we look forward to a more com- 
 plete fulfilment, to new and higher possibili- 
 ties, let us take the present also in its fulness, 
 and, if we cannot reach the height of the 
 angelic joy, strive after that which is better 
 and nobler, — strive to enter, even here, 
 upon the angelic service. 
 
 \ 
 
 t V 
 
THE KNOWN AND THE UN- 
 KNOWABLE IN RELIGION 
 
THE KNOWN AND THE UN- 
 KNOWABLE IN RELIGION 
 
 We have a homelike feeling shut in as we 
 are by the incrustation of habit, otherwise 
 I do not know how we could escape the 
 constant sense of wonder and awe at the 
 mystery of the universe. The Englishman 
 on his little island forgets that his island is 
 not a continent. He almost forgets that 
 it is not the world. So we, on our little 
 island of the known, forget the mighty ocean 
 of the unknown and the unknowable that 
 stretches about us. Yet no one can always 
 escape the consciousness of this. Many 
 have some special riddle, some one point, 
 where they feel the impotence of their 
 knowledge, feel how little science or phi- 
 losophy or theology can do towards solving 
 the question that haunts them. We speak 
 of immortality as explaining the mystery of 
 life, but it simply postpones an explanation, 
 simply gives the possibility of such an ex- 
 planation. And then of the teeming life 
 
28 THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 about us, of the life of flower, of forest, of 
 beast, of the life of the geologic epochs, 
 of monster and reptile, of all this, the doc- 
 trine of immortality, at least as it is ordinarily 
 held, says nothing. Theodore Parker un- 
 derstood as well as any other the meaning 
 of suffering and the blessing of it. He un- 
 derstood it so well that it furnished the 
 ground of his wonder. The form in which 
 the mystery of the universe seems to have 
 met him is this : How to understand the 
 suffering of the lower animals and their 
 cruelty towards one another. Human suf- 
 fering, human cruelty, he could understand, 
 but the suffering of the beast without ap- 
 parent end or compensation, he could not 
 understand. Robertson understood as well 
 as any other the great law of duty and the 
 healthfulness of retribution for sin. But as 
 always the darkest mystery lies closest to 
 what is best understood, so the great form in 
 which the world's riddle presented itself to 
 him was this: Why should our heaviest 
 sufferings come commonly not from our 
 faults, but from our mistakes ? Why should 
 error cause more suffering than sin ? I knew 
 one man to whom the great riddle of the 
 world appeared to put itself in this form : 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 29 
 
 Why should we be encouraged and impelled 
 to cultivate and beautify the earth, to work 
 early and late to raise flower and fruit, while 
 insects were at the same time sent forth to 
 oppose us, meeting us, at every point, with 
 some special warfare of destruction, fitted 
 each by its special instinct and construction 
 to undo all our work. I say this was the 
 form in which the riddle seemed to present 
 itself to him, though doubtless this presenta- 
 tion was only the symbol of the blighted 
 hopes and baffled struggles of life. 
 
 And, after all, these special examples that 
 I have referred to are only varied forms of 
 one mystery, that of suffering and sorrow, 
 a mystery that every man must face sooner 
 or later. We may have an answer ready to 
 the questions that arise in regard to the 
 general suffering and sorrow of life. We 
 may have our theory at our tongues' end. 
 We may say there must be sorrow, for 
 through it alone come the highest spiritual 
 gains ; but when the form of sorrow enters 
 our own door, that form, in the shadow of 
 which the beauty and brightness of life seem 
 to wither and fade away, when the iron hand 
 of suffering seizes our own frame with a 
 grasp against which we vainly struggle, then 
 
3 o THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 the mystery which we had thought van- 
 quished and vanished comes back with new 
 vastness and power. Then, if not before, 
 the question presses, " Could not an omnipo- 
 tent and all-wise Creator have established a 
 different relation of things ? or are there in 
 the moral and spiritual world, as in the 
 arithmetical and geometrical world, relations 
 which even omnipotence must recognize, 
 which even it cannot set aside ? " 
 
 And this in its turn is only one form of 
 the great mystery of the universe. God is 
 infinite and man is finite; how then can the 
 finite comprehend the infinite ? If his ways 
 are not as our ways, his thoughts are not 
 as our thoughts, do not our most common 
 words lose their meaning, lose all meaning, 
 when applied to him ? 
 
 Thus we are like dwellers in the cottage 
 of a lighthouse, upon some solitary island. 
 We look each from his little window and 
 see mystery in that one direction. But 
 when we ascend the tower and look about 
 us we unite these scattered views, and see 
 that we are surrounded by the mighty ocean 
 of the unknown and unknowable. We 
 feel the presence of that infinite and incom- 
 prehensible power which is in all things 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 31 
 
 and through all things, which is under and 
 over all. 
 
 It is singular that, while theology has been 
 growing more and more comprehensible, 
 suiting itself to the tenderest capacities, 
 while what we call orthodox theology is 
 growing more and more simple and rational, 
 and liberal theology is priding itself upon 
 becoming wholly simple and rational, all at 
 once this sense of mystery should come back 
 and flood the whole, like an ocean exulting 
 over broken and buried dykes. In this age 
 of rationalism, Herbert Spencer, who repre- 
 sents the extreme of rationalism, who is 
 looked upon by many as the leader of the 
 liberal movement in England and America, 
 affirms that the religious sense is nothing 
 but the sense of mystery, that religion is 
 only the recognition of the incomprehen- 
 sibility which is at the heart of all things, 
 and the awe in the presence of this mystery. 
 And this form of speech is continually meet- 
 ing us. It is a formula adopted by many of 
 the leading thinkers of the time. 
 
 It is certain that in many forms of religion 
 this sense of mystery is very prominent. 
 In parts of the Hindoo literature it stands 
 out to the exclusion of everything besides. 
 
3 2 THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 In the book of Job, in the creeds and wor- 
 ship of the mediaeval church, we feel its 
 power. Indeed there is perhaps no deep 
 religious literature that does not sooner 01 
 later give utterance to it. Tertullian utterec 
 the principle of this form of thought wher 
 he cried, " It is credible because it is foolish 
 It is certain because it is impossible." H< 
 knew that human thought could not com 
 prehend the infinite. He knew that whei 
 the divine truth appeared to him it wouk 
 stretch before him vast and immeasurable 
 So when among the familiar facts of life 
 among the familiar truths of thought, then 
 arose one shadowy and huge, not to b< 
 defined, not to be taken in by the gaze o 
 the grandest soul, he felt that it was for tha 
 very reason divine, and he worshipped befor 
 it. Balboa and his brave followers, afte 
 their dreary and toilsome pilgrimage througl 
 the wilderness of the Isthmus, reached i 
 height from which an ocean different fron 
 the one that they had left behind them burs 
 upon their gaze. They shouted, in glac 
 surprise, " The sea ! the sea ! " and thei 
 leader, rearing the cross, poured out thei 
 common thanksgiving to God. How die 
 they know that it was the sea? Did the] 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 33 
 
 discern the navies of the world floating upon 
 it? Did they see the rich shores of Indira 
 skirting its farthest edge ? Did they see the 
 capitals of the world drawing tribute from 
 it? Did they see all this, and did they by 
 these marks know that it was the ocean ? 
 Nothing of all this they saw; only a hazy 
 stretch of water with no boundary line. They 
 believed that it was the ocean because they 
 could not see across it. In such a spirit 
 cried that reverent soul of whom I spoke. 
 cc It is credible because it is impossible." 
 
 Mystery, then, has its place in religion, 
 but, according to Herbert Spencer, religion 
 is all mystery. This involves two state- 
 ments. The first is that the only element 
 common to all religions is the sense of mys- 
 tery ; the second is that in this recognition 
 lie all the truth and power of religion. 
 
 The highest flight of religious ecstasy, 
 then, has been the recognition of the in- 
 soluble mystery ; the fullest praise to God, 
 in fact, as well as in theory, has been to say 
 to him, " We know nothing of thee or of 
 thy attributes." Strangely must one have 
 listened to the utterances of religious souls 
 through all the history of the world, to gain 
 from them an impression like this. The 
 3 
 
34 THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 prayers and hymns, in which the very life of 
 the purest and noblest souls has uttered 
 itself, have indeed recognized a mystery, but 
 they have been filled with a sense of some- 
 thing that was not mystery. Moreover, the 
 mystery in the presence of which these souls 
 have bowed themselves was not the cold 
 abstraction of mystery. It was not simply 
 the Unknowable. The mystery grew out 
 of and gathered about that which was known. 
 Men did not begin with the mystery, and 
 seek to bridge it over with fine words. They 
 began with what was known, with what was 
 simple and clear as the facts of daily life ; 
 but this stretched, as they gazed upon it, till 
 it assumed measureless proportions ; and 
 what was simple as a child's thought over- 
 awed them with its infinite vastness. So the 
 waves of the ocean ripple up the beach, and 
 the child may run races with them, or may 
 dig his little wells for them to fill ; but he 
 who launches on the ocean finds it stretching 
 before him and beneath him and about him 
 with a vastness that the imagination cannot 
 grasp. 
 
 To the religious thinker the mystery was 
 always a mystery of something. With Paul 
 it was love that furnished the mystery. He 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 3 $ 
 
 bade us know the love of Christ which 
 passeth knowledge. He knew what love 
 was well enough ; he had sung its praises as 
 no one else had done. It was only the 
 measurelessness of the love that he could 
 not comprehend. Sometimes it has been 
 the collision of two mighty principles that 
 caused the mystery, each of which was clear 
 enough, and each of which was felt to be 
 supreme by its own right; but the reign of 
 each seemed to dethrone the other, and the 
 awed soul could simply yield its allegiance to 
 each, and watch the strife in which it could 
 be neither neutral nor partisan. Sometimes 
 the mystery has arisen from the conflict of 
 truth with prejudice and mistake that claimed 
 the sanctity of truth. But, whatever has 
 been the source of the mystery, knowledge, 
 positive faith, has been its centre. The 
 strains that uttered the sense of mystery 
 have formed only a deep undertone to the 
 songs that chanted the real faith and aspira- 
 tion of the soul. 
 
 Herbert Spencer says, with a certain truth, 
 that it is as religion is developed that the 
 sense of mystery becomes more strong. A 
 better statement would be that it is as the 
 simple natural religious faith is beginning to 
 
36 THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 spend itself, is beginning to pass into specu- 
 lation, that this sense becomes marked. At 
 the birth of a religion, at the moment when 
 it is most religious, then it is most full of 
 confidence, and sees the horizon most clear 
 about it. Even when the reflective stage of 
 which I spoke begins, this simple confidence, 
 in most cases, still is prominent. David was 
 full of trust in the Lord who was his shep- 
 herd, who cared for him as he cared for his 
 flocks. Job, coming later, was filled with 
 the awe of the Unknown and the Unknow- 
 able; yet even Job cried with a confident 
 earnestness that the sweetest strains of our 
 modern song strive to echo for us, " I know 
 that my Redeemer liveth." I do not re- 
 member that Jesus, with whom religion 
 entered upon a new life, ever spoke of the 
 Unknowable. He lived like a child in the 
 sunlight of a father's smile. With Paul 
 the reflective stage had already begun ; yet 
 he could say, with a careful thoughtfulness 
 that added weight to his words, " Now I 
 know in part." Even when the simplicity 
 of religion became overlaid with questioning, 
 the old confidence was not lost. Augustine 
 did much to draw about the Christian spirit 
 the mists of speculation, to torment it with 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 37 
 
 insoluble riddles. Yet, when bewildered by 
 the mysteries of infinitude he had exclaimed, 
 "Who art thou, then, my God?" he could 
 answer, " What but the Lord God, . . . 
 most highest, most good, most potent, most 
 omnipotent ; most merciful, yet most just." 
 
 The same is true of other religions. The 
 Hindoo religion began with hymns full of 
 confidence in themselves and in their object. 
 The later hymns first began to utter the 
 voice of questioning and of awe before 
 the Unknown. It was centuries later that 
 the Unknowable was put in the place of 
 God ; and to be incomprehensible was felt 
 to be the proprium of divinity, so that it was 
 defined when it was called the undefinable. 
 This was the transformation of religion into 
 philosophy. It was not the development of 
 religion : it was its decay. But the religious 
 heart of the nation could not rest with this. 
 Religion again affirmed itself, — a religion 
 that had its darkness and its terror and its 
 mystery, but which had also its faith and 
 its promise. 
 
 Thus in all forms of religion the central 
 and essential thing has been something other 
 than mystery. The element that is the 
 common bond between all religions is not 
 
38 THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 negative, but positive. Men have believed 
 that there was a power about them or above 
 them, — a power distinct from and mightier 
 than the ordinary forces of nature, to which 
 they could trust. Sometimes, as with the 
 poor fetich-worshipper, it dwelt in the stocks 
 and stones of earth ; sometimes, as with the 
 polytheist, it was broken up into shining 
 points ; sometimes, as with the monotheist, 
 it was gathered about one luminous centre ; 
 sometimes, as with the Hebrew, it was a 
 power " that made for righteousness ; M 
 sometimes, as with John, it was love, or, as 
 with Jesus, it was spirit. One nation has 
 called it by one name and another by 
 another; one has perceived it more dimly, 
 another more clearly ; one has attached one 
 limitation to it, another has attached another ; 
 sometimes it has reflected more and some- 
 times less of our human imperfections, as 
 the deep midnight heaven reflects the glare 
 of a city's lamps, — but all have united in 
 this, that there was something that one could 
 trust to. Out from all limitations and con- 
 tradictions appeared this fact of a power 
 of helpfulness. So the tenderness and sym- 
 pathy of Buddha shone out from the black 
 despair that formed the background of his 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 
 
 39 
 
 teaching. So the love of Jesus shone out 
 from the dark mystery of the mediaeval 
 creeds. Men may pray to a mystery, but 
 they cannot praise it ; they may bring offer- 
 ings to it, but they cannot trust it; they 
 may seek in ways chosen at random to 
 soothe it, or win its favor, but they cannot 
 love it : and take out of religion praise and 
 trust and love, and not only its best beauty, 
 but its best reality, will be gone. 
 
 But though the element common to all 
 religions is knowledge rather than ignorance, 
 the known rather than the unknowable, per- 
 haps the other part of the statement of 
 Herbert Spencer is true. Perhaps all this 
 has been a mistake, and all the truth there 
 has been in religion has been that minor 
 part, namely, the sense of awe in the presence 
 of mystery. Here it may be helpful to 
 notice the sense in which the phrase that 
 speaks of the unknowable is used by those 
 who would make religion consist wholly in 
 the recognition of this. To state the propo- 
 sition in its most simple and general terms, 
 it is this : Take away all that we know from 
 any object and we should not know what 
 was left. To state the proposition in a 
 phrase that would be better recognized by 
 
4 o THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 those who use it, we are familiar with rela- 
 tions, but of that which is behind and within 
 relations, we know nothing. We do not 
 know what anything is in itself. We use 
 the word " force," but the thought we attach 
 to it involves contradictions. The word 
 stands for something that is unknown by us. 
 We do not even know our own souls. Spirit 
 is as unknowable as matter. I think that 
 if all this were fairly understood, the phrase 
 that speaks of religion as having to do merely 
 with the Unknowable would lose for many 
 much of its terror. If it were understood 
 that God is unknowable in the sense that 
 our own souls are unknowable, I think 
 that many would be content to leave the 
 matter so. 
 
 Here we meet a fact that may throw still 
 more light upon our theme. Herbert 
 Spencer, and those who agree with him, show 
 that the words "matter" and "force," and 
 kindred terms, stand simply for the Un- 
 knowable, and yet they continue to use 
 them. The reason for this is that the course 
 of things is the same as it would be if the 
 words stood for something known. They 
 are thus relatively, though not actually, true. 
 Your watch may be wholly wrong, and yet 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 41 
 
 relatively right. You cannot tell the time 
 by it, but you can measure off by it the 
 hours and minutes as they pass. After, 
 then, all this demonstration that science as 
 well as religion ends in a mystery, science 
 keeps on its old course as if nothing had 
 happened. It uses its old words. It talks 
 about time and space, and force and motion, 
 as if the words had a meaning and a true 
 one. Religion alone is expected to be 
 bound by the new order. If it ventures 
 to use its old words it is reproved for its 
 presumption. 
 
 But why, I would ask, may not religion, 
 as well as science, use its words, recognizing 
 the relative truth that is in them ? Few 
 thinking men, however strong their religious 
 faith, have, I think, used the terms of re- 
 ligion, accepting them as true in their gross 
 literalness. Here is the source of the contra- 
 diction which Herbert Spencer has pointed 
 out between the professions both of knowl- 
 edge and ignorance on the part of religious 
 thinkers. The knowledge was relative, but 
 yet practically real. God's ways are not as 
 our ways. Our love is but a symbol of his 
 love, our righteousness of his righteousness, 
 our spirituality of his nature. But though the 
 
42 THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 words are relative, they are relatively true. 
 The course of things is the same as if they 
 were true. If there is " a power not our- 
 selves that makes for righteousness/* if 
 without us, and yet more clearly within us, 
 it upholds the right and marks the evil with 
 its condemnation, why should we not call it 
 holy ? If it confers upon us all the blessings 
 of life, and when these outward goods are 
 lost, it bestows, often, a still greater blessing, 
 why should we not call it good? If it 
 chooses the best ways to reach its chosen 
 ends, if under its guidance all things fit 
 together to form a perfect whole, why should 
 we not call it wise ? if the soul feels it 
 nearer to it than itself, if it finds in it a ten- 
 der and sublime companionship, if there 
 flows from it a helpful sympathy in sorrow, 
 and in gladness a blessing sweeter than the 
 joy, why should it not ascribe to it the at- 
 tribute of love ? And when it has used in 
 regard to it the words " holiness/ ' "wis- 
 dom," and " love/' why need it hesitate to 
 use in regard to it the word " spirit " ? * We 
 
 1 Mr. Fiske, in his valuable work entitled " Outlines of 
 Cosmic Philosophy," says, "Provided we bear in mind the 
 symbolic character of our words, we may say that * God 
 is Spirit* " (vol. ii., p. 449). This is an important con- 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 43 
 
 use these words because they are the best 
 we have, and the truest because they are 
 the best. When we speak of God under 
 these terms, we speak with far more truth 
 than when we speak of him simply as a 
 power, or even as an unknowable power. 
 If we know that the terms of spirit represent 
 him more nearly than the terms of matter, 
 then we speak of him most truly when we 
 speak of him in the terms of spirit. When 
 we look through these symbols we are look- 
 ing towards him; when we approach him 
 through these we are drawing near him. 
 One who is lost in some vast cavern may 
 wander hopelessly till he sees in one direction 
 a gray glimmering that shows him in what 
 direction he must turn to reach the outer 
 light. This gray glimmering is not the day- 
 light, but it points towards the daylight ; 
 and the wanderer who follows it, pressing in 
 the direction where the darkness is least 
 dense, is pressing towards the light. Accord- 
 ing to the very terms of the system which 
 remands religion to the realm of the Un- 
 
 cession. I do not see, however, why reasoning similar to 
 that by which this result was reached would not justify, with 
 a like qualification, a like use of terms expressive of the 
 highest spiritual activity. 
 
44 THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 knowable, we may then have a practical 
 working knowledge of religious truth, just 
 as we have of scientific truth. 
 
 But I further claim for this knowledge 
 that it is something more than merely a 
 working formula. This may be illustrated, 
 first, by the fact that there is absolutely no 
 mystery without some knowledge. We 
 could not even speak of the Unknowable 
 without we had some knowledge of that 
 of which we speak. The unknown is abso- 
 lutely nothing till it is seen in connection 
 with the known, just as the known is worth 
 little till it is seen against the great back- 
 ground of the unknown. " Science," cries 
 the ancient philosopher, " is born of wonder." 
 " Nay," answers the modern, " wonder is 
 born of science," and both are right. I have 
 spoken of the mystery of the ocean, but I 
 think that one does not get the fullest sense 
 of this mystery and this sublimity when one 
 is far out at sea, floating upon the ocean, 
 shut in only by the circle of the horizon. 
 For myself, I have felt the vastness and the 
 infinitude of the ocean, much more while 
 standing upon the shore and looking out 
 upon its pathless waste, and seeing the waves 
 roll up, one after another, the sloping beach, 
 
f °r THE ' X 
 
 UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 45 
 
 or beat with the might of their gigantic 
 strength against some rocky barrier, than I 
 have when sailing on mid-ocean : for it is 
 where land and water meet that we feel the 
 sublimity of the land, which would bind the 
 ocean, and the sublimity of the ocean which 
 will not be bound ! Thus it is in religion 
 and in thought. The point of sublimity, 
 nay, the point of real knowledge, is the 
 point where the known and the unknown, the 
 plain and the incomprehensible, touch one 
 another. 
 
 There is, I repeat, no mystery without 
 knowledge ; and the more pressing the mys- 
 tery the sharper and clearer must be the 
 knowledge out of which it springs. The 
 brute recognizes no mystery because its 
 knowledge is insufficient. A single illustra- 
 tion will make this clear. I will suppose 
 that none of you have ever heard the word 
 " asymptote." When you hear the word 
 for the first time it suggests no mystery, 
 because it suggests no meaning. I explain 
 the word to you. I tell you that an asymp- 
 tote is a line which is continually approaching 
 a curved line, but that however long the 
 lines might be drawn they would never meet. 
 With this explanation you begin to see 
 
46 THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 something of the mystery that the word in- 
 volves. But still the mystery does not press 
 upon you, for my words in regard to it 
 sound foolish, and you attach little meaning 
 to them. But if you study mathematics for 
 yourself, if you study the mathematical form- 
 ular for this line, if you see it proved by 
 absolute demonstration that the one line is 
 always approaching the other but can never 
 reach it, then you will feel the full power of 
 the mystery, because you have at last reached 
 some full and definite knowledge. 
 
 Our knowledge, then, though partial, must 
 be real. This will appear more clearly, if in 
 the next place we examine more closely the 
 sense in which our knowledge is denied. 
 We know, it is said, things only in their 
 relations, and not as they are in themselves. 
 But things exist only in relations ; out of 
 these they are nothing. If we know them 
 out of these relations we should know them 
 falsely. We know of soul only that it thinks 
 and feels. Its very being is to think and feel ; 
 apart from thinking and feeling it is nothing. 
 If we know of anything only its relations to 
 ourselves, we know so much about it really 
 and truly. An object really is, even in the 
 slightest and weakest manifestations of itself, 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 47 
 
 just as the ocean is in every little wave that 
 ripples and breaks at your feet. When you 
 see these you see the ocean ; when you touch 
 them you touch the ocean. You are asked 
 what you know of your dearest friend in 
 himself; you know his smile, his form, his 
 voice, his love, his nobleness, but these, you 
 are told, are attributes only. But you know 
 that your friend is in those words and tones 
 and looks and acts that are so dear to you. 
 They are all manifestations and revelations 
 of him. 
 
 You do not know God in himself. Thank 
 him that you have no necessity to do this, 
 for the universe is full of his manifestation 
 of himself. 
 
 The simple fact that throws light on these 
 mixed questions and may solve our doubts is 
 this, that God is in the known as much and as 
 truly as he is in the unknown. If we could 
 fairly take this thought into our minds we 
 should have the truth of religion. If we 
 could take it into our hearts, we should have 
 the reality of religion. 
 
 Since all things proceed from God all 
 things must be full of him and must bear 
 some revelation of him. His presence is in 
 the world about us and the heavens over us, 
 
48 THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 in the past behind us, and in the future 
 before us. The little flower that opens at 
 our feet comes forth from this unseen power 
 that we call God, and brings its revelation. 
 The magnificent order of the universe, the 
 majestic regularity of the earth and the 
 heavens, are simply manifestations and reve- 
 lations of him. Some see God mainly in 
 this order and regularity. When they trace 
 out a law they feel that they have discovered 
 the footsteps of God. Others see him in 
 the uncomprehended and incomprehensible. 
 The grand truth is that God is in both. The 
 mother's love that watched over your child- 
 hood was a revelation of God. It was his 
 love that looked through her eyes and shel- 
 tered you in her arms. The love of Christ 
 was a revelation of God. Jesus was no 
 stranger and foreigner. He also came forth 
 from the great power which is within and 
 behind and above all things. Can you com- 
 prehend the height and the depth, the length 
 and the breadth of the love of God, which 
 was manifested in Jesus Christ, that which 
 Paul tells us passes knowledge ? Its height 
 is as high as heaven, its depth is as deep as 
 sin, its length is as long as eternity, its 
 breadth as broad as humanity. Thus Jesus 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 49 
 
 loved. His love stooped to the lowest sin- 
 ners, it stooped to those who mocked and 
 crucified him. It lifted them up with its 
 last prayer to God. This was the love of 
 God, for without God Jesus was nothing. 
 
 But is there not evil as well as good in the 
 universe, and does not this also manifest 
 God ? Did not Judas as well as Jesus come 
 forth from him ? 
 
 You go through the galleries of a sculptor. 
 You see works in every degree and stage of 
 completion. Here is a block of marble 
 where you can see, just hinted at, some form 
 of man. Here is one where the form has 
 half emerged. Here, one that as yet is only 
 pitted and disfigured by the master's blows. 
 Here, at last, you reach the perfect triumph 
 of his skill. It stands light, graceful, beau- 
 tiful, instinct with a life higher than human. 
 Do you doubt in which work the master 
 displays himself? Such an artist's gallery is 
 the world. Now the spirit is buried in the 
 sensual, now half revealed through it. Here 
 it stands in its unveiled splendor. Do you 
 doubt which best displays the spirit and 
 power of Him who is all in all ? He is in 
 all, but you cannot find him in all. You do 
 not know the method of his art. You do 
 
5 o THE KNOWN AND THE 
 
 not understand the blows, sharp and terrible 
 often, that are needed to evolve beauty out 
 of the formless. But though you know not 
 the method of his art, you recognize its end, 
 and you recognize the master in this end. 
 
 But God does not manifest himself out- 
 side of us alone, but within us also. His 
 life is in us, and in him we live. Our spirit 
 somehow answers to his spirit. The deeps 
 of our being answer to the deeps of his, as 
 the waters of the sheltered bay feel the draw- 
 ings of the tidal flow of the ocean. 
 
 Such is the relation between mystery and 
 knowledge, the known and the unknowable, 
 in religion. We need them both. 
 
 We need the sense of mystery to humble 
 our spirits, and to awaken them by its mighty 
 challenge. We need the simplicity of re- 
 ligion to be the light and comfort and 
 strength of our lives ; and with all the mys- 
 tery let us never forget the limitation of the 
 mystery. There is a sense in which love is 
 always love, and right is always right, and 
 reason always reason. There is a vast for- 
 mula of love that will take in the love of 
 God as well as the love of the child. We 
 may not comprehend this love, but we can 
 recognize it, and know something of what it 
 
UNKNOWABLE IN RELIGION 51 
 
 is. The child lies in its mother's arms. It 
 cannot comprehend the source and strength 
 and compass of her love. Yet it recognizes 
 that love. It rests in it, and is content. In 
 like manner may we rest peaceful and con- 
 tent, while we know that love that passeth 
 knowledge. 
 
MYSTICISM 
 
MYSTICISM 
 
 Herbert Spencer has affirmed that the 
 one essential principle of religion is the sense 
 of mystery. We have about us the visi- 
 ble world of things. Each of these things 
 stands in definite relations with the things 
 about it. These relations we can under- 
 stand ; or at least we can put them into form- 
 ulas which seem clear to the understanding. 
 But we feel that behind these visible things 
 and these finite relations there is a something 
 which we cannot see, which we cannot put 
 into formulas, and which, thus, we cannot 
 even pretend to understand. This unknow- 
 able something is a power present in all things, 
 manifesting itself in all things, the life of all 
 things ; but though it is always manifesting 
 itself, it can never make itself known ; though 
 so near us, it can never be grasped. It re- 
 mains ever the infinite, the unknown. The 
 consciousness of the reality of this unknow- 
 able power is, according to Spencer, the ele- 
 ment peculiar to all religions, the only element 
 that may properly be called religious. 
 
56 MYSTICISM 
 
 The definition of religion, as given by 
 Herbert Spencer, tells only half the story. 
 There is another element which is essential 
 to religion and which is common to all 
 religions. There is light in religion as well 
 as darkness. If God dwells in the darkness 
 He dwells also in the light, and the dark- 
 ness and the light are alike filled with His 
 presence. I refer, however, at this time to 
 the position of Herbert Spencer, not to crit- 
 icise it, not to attempt to supply its de- 
 ficiency, but to recognize its real though 
 partial truth. The sense of mystery is not 
 the only element of religion, but it is an 
 essential element of it ; an element too much 
 lost sight of in these days of brilliant, though 
 largely superficial thought. The religious 
 world owes a debt of gratitude to Herbert 
 Spencer for bringing back to its conscious- 
 ness so forcibly the great fact of this essen- 
 tial principle of mystery. We are apt to 
 forget that much as we need to know, just 
 so much do we need to feel the presence of 
 the unknowable. We are apt to look upon 
 the mountain of truth only as a ledge to 
 be quarried. We are so busied with our 
 machinery of one sort and another for drill- 
 ing and blowing, for raising and shaping 
 
MYSTICISM 
 
 57 
 
 and carrying, so pleased with the smoothly 
 hammered blocks which attest our labor 
 and our skill, that we forget to look up at 
 the sublime vastness of the mountain, at its 
 precipitous sides, at the clouds which veil 
 forever its snowy and inaccessible summit. 
 And yet the mountain in its wholeness may 
 be more helpful to us than in its fragments. 
 All the architecture in which these fragments 
 may be embodied are puny in comparison 
 with it. All the physical luxury to which 
 they may minister is as nothing compared 
 with the vigor which the sense of its sub- 
 limity may bring to the spirit. So, also, 
 our square-hewn truths, however fair, how- 
 ever wonderful, are as nothing to the infini- 
 tude of truth. The spirit of man needs to 
 feel its strength. It is well that among the 
 finite things about it, it should feel strong, 
 proud, and defiant ; that it should come to 
 the world as a conqueror to his realm ; but 
 it is well also that it should feel the presence 
 of a mightier than it. There are minds to 
 which the sense even of the sublimities of 
 earth would be a salvation. Nowhere does 
 the spirit show its greatness more than in 
 the sense of awe, in the presence of the 
 infinitudes of life and thought, and nowhere 
 
58 MYSTICISM 
 
 does it gain greater strength than in such 
 contemplation. Religion has at all times, 
 and among all nations, recognized this ele- 
 ment of the unknowable. " They best 
 know Thee who confess that they do not 
 know Thee," cried the Hindoo ; " Canst 
 thou know the Almighty to perfection ? " 
 exclaimed the Hebrew. And thus, wherever 
 there has been a religion worthy of the name, 
 there has been this solemn gladness, this 
 bowed exaltation, this mighty helplessness, 
 this blending of the deepest and loftiest of 
 man's nature, which comes from the sense 
 of knowing that which passes knowledge. 
 
 While religion has thus openly and tri- 
 umphantly recognized the element of mys- 
 tery as essential to its existence, it has, I 
 believe, covertly, recognized the same thing 
 in its ceremonies and creeds. I cannot un- 
 derstand how else many of these extrava- 
 gant and sometimes even absurd forms 
 and formulas should have taken such a 
 hold upon the hearts of men. Take, for 
 instance, some of the peculiarities of the 
 Roman Catholic service. It seems some- 
 times absurd to see an ignorant worshipper 
 taking part in a service conducted in a lan- 
 guage which he cannot understand. A poor 
 
MYSTICISM 59 
 
 Irish girl, for instance, worships through the 
 Latin tongue. At least, however, she feels 
 herself in the presence of a mystery behind 
 which is the Divine ; and if we take even 
 the loftiest terms that we use in our English 
 prayers, with realistic literalness, if we regard 
 them as simply and wholly true, perhaps our 
 worship may be more imperfect than hers. 
 A divinity that could be wrapt in any terms 
 however fair and sweet would be a living 
 divinity no longer. So also the dimness of 
 the Mediaeval church, its wondrous music 
 with its heights of joy and abysmal depths 
 of sorrow, its architecture with its soaring 
 arches and its gloomy crypts, all combined 
 to force home this sense of mystery upon 
 the soul. The creeds of the Mediaeval 
 church bringing together opposites in the 
 same breath, setting at defiance the most 
 fundamental laws of thought and reason, at 
 least brought men into the presence of the 
 unknown, and were doubtless helpful in this 
 respect. I have spoken thus of the Mediaeval 
 church, but all religions have had their mys- 
 teries. The mysteries of the Greek must have 
 brought a healthful spirit of awe and rever- 
 ence into the midst of much that was super- 
 ficial and frivolous in the Greek culture. 
 
60 MYSTICISM 
 
 It would be interesting to consider the 
 nature and the limit of this element of mys- 
 tery that underlies all religion, to examine 
 the forms under which it confronts us, and 
 the light that comes to us through and 
 around them. It would be interesting to 
 consider the mystery that waits upon the 
 finite soul, by reason of its very finiteness, 
 when it strives to" comprehend the infinite ; 
 or to examine that mystery which meets us 
 under every form of thought when we strive 
 to reconcile the freedom of man with inevit- 
 able and invariable law, or with the all- 
 embracing providence of God ; or it would 
 be interesting to drop our plummets farther 
 than sight could reach, down into the dark 
 depths of the mystery of suffering and sin. 
 
 My object in this essay is, however, to 
 consider one form of this mystery which 
 underlies all others, and which, so far as 
 the solution is possible, gives the only hint 
 towards the solution of any of them. I 
 mean that form of mystery which is in- 
 volved in what is called mysticism. 
 
 The word " mysticism " is often used in a 
 very vague manner. At first it is probable 
 that it had no very definite signification, 
 except as it referred to whatever was con- 
 
MYSTICISM 61 
 
 nected with mystery in general, or with the 
 so-called mysteries of religion in particular. 
 But as the nature of this mystery and of 
 these mysteries became more apparent, as 
 the vital element of all began to manifest 
 itself more distinctly from amid the hulls 
 that enveloped it, the words " mystic " and 
 " mysticism " assumed a very definite mean- 
 ing, and this meaning, in spite of much 
 vague and careless use, still belongs to them. 
 The word " mysticism," whenever properly 
 used, refers to the fact that all lives, how- 
 ever distinct they may appear, however 
 varied may be their conditions and their 
 ends, are at heart one ; that they are the 
 manifestations of a common element; that 
 they all open into this common element and 
 thus into one another. Merely philosophi- 
 cal mysticism calls this common element 
 by one name or another according to the 
 nature of the system. Religious mysticism 
 finds this common element in the life of 
 God. Mysticism, then, is the recognition 
 of the universal element in all individual 
 forms ; religious mysticism finds everywhere 
 the presence and power of the divine life. 
 
 Mysticism is so foreign to much of our 
 modern habit of thinking; it is so foreign 
 
62 MYSTICISM 
 
 to our habits of life ; it is so foreign to that 
 hard individualism which both our thinking, 
 and our living tend to nourish, that it may 
 not be easy for all to enter into the spirit 
 of it, or even to comprehend its meaning. 
 Moreover the word has been associated 
 with so much that is extravagant and absurd 
 that it has somewhat fallen into disrepute. 
 Those, most often, have been known as 
 mystics in whom mysticism has run riot. 
 But in spite of modern atomism and individ- 
 ualism, in spite of former extravagance and 
 fanaticism, mysticism expresses the pro- 
 foundest fact of our being. All the great- 
 est thinkers and seers of the world have 
 been more or less imbued with it. Modern 
 creed makers and creed holders may disown 
 it; but the religious founders, those on 
 whose mighty foundations the creed makers 
 rear their shapeless and unsubstantial fabrics, 
 wrought from the intuition and the inspira- 
 tion of the mystical view of life. 
 
 However distinct our little individual lives 
 may seem, these mighty thinkers and seers 
 have perceived that they had a common 
 root and a common substance. Within and 
 beneath all existences there is the being 
 from which all spring and in which they all 
 
MYSTICISM 63 
 
 exist. We ask the leaf, Are you complete 
 in yourself? and the leaf answers, No, my 
 life is in the branches. We ask the branch, 
 and the branch answers, No, my life is in the 
 trunk. We ask the trunk, and it answers, 
 No, my life is in the root. We ask the 
 root, and it answers, No, my life is in the 
 trunk and the branches and the leaves ; 
 keep the branches stripped of leaves and I 
 shall die. So is it with the great tree of 
 being. Nothing is completely and merely 
 individual. All are expressions, higher and 
 lower, of a common life. 
 
 Illustrations of this fact may be found in 
 the comparatively superficial relations of life 
 in those realms which seem intermediate 
 between the body and the mind. The rela- 
 tions of which I here speak are those which 
 connect one life with another. They show 
 a relation which is deeper than any that the 
 senses can account for, and thus manifest a 
 direct communication between one life and 
 another. We see this in the great pulses 
 of feeling which thrill through communities 
 and assemblies. On a large scale we see it 
 in the frenzy of a nation, a state of things 
 which has found its most striking exemplifi- 
 cation in the history of France ; on a smaller 
 
64 MYSTICISM 
 
 scale we see it in the enthusiasm or excite- 
 ment of any crowd. There are occasions 
 in which the calmest and most balanced 
 mind is drawn into the common whirl and 
 tumult of feeling, not from anything that 
 has been said or done, but because the depths 
 of the spirit are stirred by the mighty move- 
 ments in the life about it. Such a common 
 movement may be found, for instance, in 
 the enthusiasm of the camp-meeting, which 
 becomes filled with a common terror or 
 a common fervor ; and in the rout of some 
 great army when a strange and inexplicable 
 panic spreads from heart to heart. Such 
 mighty stirrings of the common life suggest 
 to us the movements of the sea. The fury 
 of the waves is felt in every cove and inlet, 
 however sheltered, that has a communication 
 open with the ocean. When a great tidal 
 wave sweeps over the sea the whole line 
 of coast feels its power, and all the rivers 
 that pour into it heave and swell with its 
 influx. So do lives thrill and stir with 
 the convulsions of the common life about 
 them. 
 
 We find examples of this direct relation 
 between life and life in individuals as well as 
 in masses. There are spiritual harmonies 
 
MYSTICISM 65 
 
 and discords from which result much of the 
 happiness or unhappiness of life. 
 
 There are individuals who possess what 
 is called magnetism. They attract or move 
 or govern, we can hardly tell why. We 
 can see that this is not mere association with 
 the past history of such persons, that the 
 effect does not arise merely because it is 
 expected to arise, by the fact that animals 
 are frequently affected in a similar way. 
 They become submissive to one whose 
 nature possesses this element ; they wait 
 upon his movements, they seem to live for 
 him. 
 
 We see further illustrations of this inner 
 relation between life and life in the com- 
 munication that seems sometimes to flow 
 from one life to another, in the case of 
 friends closely bound together. Especially 
 does this occur in the case of the death of 
 one. Cases of this kind are so common 
 that the German language has set apart a 
 word to stand for this sort of communica- 
 tion. Sometimes the living friend appears 
 to see the form of the one who has just died, 
 sometimes the effect is less striking though 
 not less real. This sort of connection be- 
 tween one life and another reaches its climax 
 5 
 
66 MYSTICISM 
 
 in what is known as animal magnetism. In 
 this the independent will and consciousness 
 of the one is entirely given up. The whole 
 nature is taken possession of by another. 
 The will, the thought, the emotions, and 
 the sensations of the one depend upon the 
 will of the other. In the same category 
 stand the phenomena of spiritualism. What- 
 ever view we may take of the reality of the 
 claims to spiritual manifestations, this at least 
 would appear to be true, that the life of 
 the medium is invaded by some external 
 personality, whether this external personal- 
 ity be that of an embodied or disembodied 
 spirit. 
 
 One of the strangest, we might even say 
 the most inexplicable exhibitions of this hid- 
 den interlacing of life with its surroundings, 
 is found in that foreshadowing which is 
 sometimes felt of the future. This yields 
 itself to our comprehension far less than 
 the other phenomena to which I have re- 
 ferred, because it appears to regard the future 
 as already existing, at least as fixed. Per- 
 haps we may find an example of this in the 
 history of our martyred president, Abraham 
 Lincoln. In Lamon's " Life of Lincoln," a 
 book which with all its faults is one of 
 
MYSTICISM 67 
 
 almost unparalleled interest, showing as it 
 does, in all its details, the growth of one of 
 the noblest, purest, and strongest natures of 
 which we have record, out of circumstances 
 which would seem to render such a devel- 
 opment impossible, — in this marvellous 
 story of a true life, we are told that for years 
 Lincoln was haunted by an impression that 
 he was set apart for the execution of some 
 great work, and that he should fall in the 
 accomplishment of it. This impression cast 
 a shadow over his life which he could not 
 shake off. Of course this impression may 
 have been the result of his ambition united 
 with his temperament. But when we con- 
 sider on the one side the morbid and some- 
 what abnormal elements of his nature, and, 
 on the other, the exceptional work to which 
 he was summoned and the no less excep- 
 tional end which was to befall it, it does not 
 seem strange that this nature should have 
 felt some foregleams of the glory and some 
 foreshadowings of the gloom. When I 
 think of this strong and patient, this tender 
 and heroic soul, pressing on its serene 
 course, unsoiled by pollution, never misled 
 by the sophistries of legal chicanery or polit- 
 ical corruption, never led a step beyond the 
 
68 MYSTICISM 
 
 true path by its mighty ambition, never 
 sinking beneath its burdens, never shrink- 
 ing from peril, seeing ever before it vaguely 
 in the darkness alike the glory and the ter- 
 ror, it seems to me one of the sublimest 
 figures of history. 
 
 Of course I know that the whole class of 
 facts to which I have referred are denied by 
 some ; of course, too, any individual case 
 may be doubtful ; yet I believe that this 
 class of phenomena is accepted by the un- 
 prejudiced among thinking men, by those 
 who do not let theory exclude fact. 
 
 The class of facts to which I have re- 
 ferred stand in a somewhat superficial rela- 
 tion to our theme, to which, however, they 
 may well serve to introduce us. I have 
 tarried among these outlying facts so long, 
 because there are some to whom an intro- 
 duction to the theme, the being brought 
 into its sphere, so as to feel the reality 
 and the power of it, is more difficult and 
 important than the elaboration of it. 
 
 Deeper than that class of facts to which 
 I have alluded, lies the sense of sympathy 
 with the lives and actions of others, how- 
 ever far we may be from the ability to repro- 
 duce them. This relation Emerson has 
 
MYSTICISM 69 
 
 happily expressed in the opening paragraph 
 of his essay on history. Though the words 
 are fortunately familiar, they are so apt to 
 our present needs that I will quote them : 
 "There is one mind, common to all in- 
 dividual men. Every man is an inlet to 
 the same and to all of the same. He that 
 is once admitted to the right of reason is 
 made a freeman of the whole estate. What 
 Plato has thought he may think ; what a 
 saint has felt, he may feel ; what at any 
 time has befallen any man, he can under- 
 stand. Who hath access to this universal 
 mind is a party to all that is or can be 
 done, for this is the only and sovereign 
 agent." 
 
 Somewhat similar to this is the sympa- 
 thy that we feel with nature. The sense of 
 beauty is at heart a sense of companionship. 
 We recognize in the nature about us a life 
 which is kindred to our own. We rejoice 
 to be wrapped in by this infinite life of 
 nature. The early peoples have loved to 
 speak of the earth as their mother. From 
 this feeling of relationship comes the sympa- 
 thy which we have with the outward world. 
 Sometimes nature reflects our mood. She 
 is glad or sorrowful according as we are 
 
70 MYSTICISM 
 
 glad or sorrowful. Sometimes she takes us 
 up into her lofty moods. Our spirits grow 
 strong with her strength, tender with her 
 tenderness, calm with her calmness. What- 
 ever form the effect may take it springs 
 from our sense of unity with the life about 
 us. 
 
 Still deeper lies the metaphysical and 
 religious sense of the unity of all being. 
 This is the principle that our modern 
 science fancies it has discovered while really 
 it is the principle upon which science itself 
 rests, and of which the scientific formulas 
 in regard to the uniformity of law form 
 only a partial expression. It is a principle 
 that the thought of man has always taken 
 for granted, and which finds its complete 
 expression alike in Greece and India, coun- 
 tries the types and habits of whose thought 
 are so largely antithetical to one another. 
 Philosophy takes it for granted. The relig- 
 ious element is not essential to it. Schopen- 
 hauer is as thorough a mystic as Madame 
 Guyon. Indeed, some of the fairest 
 thoughts of Madame Guyon have been 
 transplanted by Schopenhauer to the uncon- 
 genial soil of his system, where amid the 
 darkness and the chill they seem scarcely 
 
MYSTICISM 71 
 
 less at home than beneath the warm and 
 sunny heavens that before smiled about 
 them. It is indeed difficult to draw the 
 exact line where metaphysical passes into 
 religious mysticism. Men may differ, for 
 instance, as to the side of the line on which 
 Spinoza stands, or even in regard to the 
 location of much Hindoo thought, — may 
 doubt as to whether it shall be called meta- 
 physical or religious. It is, however, in 
 the sphere of religion that mysticism 
 reaches its fairest growth. The oriental 
 religions have given themselves up most 
 thoroughly to this principle. Indeed, it is 
 this that characterizes the central period in 
 the history of the Brahmins, while it is 
 powerfully manifested both in the earlier 
 and later periods of this history. It finds 
 its perfect expression in this Hindoo prayer : 
 " Thou art the sacrifice, the prayer of obla- 
 tion ; the sovereign of all creatures ; Thou 
 art all that is to be known or to be un- 
 known ; O universal soul, the whole world 
 consists of thee." Among the Sufis, whose 
 type of religion is a reaction against the 
 hard superficialness of Mohammedanism, 
 mysticism has found its most picturesque 
 and poetical expression. They tell us, for 
 
72 MYSTICISM 
 
 instance, that a saint knocked at the door 
 of Paradise. Who is there ? asked the Lord. 
 It is I, answered the saint. But the gate 
 remained fast closed against him. Again he 
 drew near and knocked, and when the Lord 
 asked, ^s before, Who is there ? the saint, 
 grown wiser, answered, Lord, it is Thou; 
 and the gates of Paradise flew open to grant 
 him prompt admittance. 
 
 But though this principle is associated in 
 our minds rather with the religions that I 
 have named than with Christianity, yet in 
 Christianity it is no less truly present. In 
 Him we live, and move, and have our being, 
 cried the clear-headed, active Paul, no less a 
 mystic than the contemplative John. All 
 through the Christian history have arisen 
 souls as purely mystical in feeling and in 
 thought as any to be found under warmer 
 skies. Their type of religion was excep- 
 tional in Christianity only in its degree. 
 The pious Fenelon could justify his mysti- 
 cal piety by unanswerable arguments drawn 
 from the church fathers. Indeed, no reli- 
 gion that has any soul to it can avoid the 
 touch of mysticism. It is the very life of 
 religion. Men may talk of an external 
 creation, may shut up each soul to a sharp 
 
MYSTICISM 
 
 73 
 
 and separate individuality, may set off the 
 infinite over against the finite, forgetting 
 that thereby they have two finites and no 
 infinite. But then comes the doctrine of 
 the Holy Spirit, which is that of the very 
 indwelling of God in the soul, and all these 
 finely drawn lines disappear, the hard dis- 
 tinctions become fluid ; men become par- 
 takers of the divine life, and God is all and 
 in all. Our tenderest hymns are full of a 
 beautiful mysticism. Thus we sing with 
 Furness, — in what I am sometimes tempted 
 to call the sweetest of hymns, — 
 
 " What is it ? and whither, whence, 
 This unsleeping, secret sense, 
 Longing for its rest and food 
 In some hidden, unknown good ? 
 
 " 'T is the soul — mysterious name ; 
 Him it seeks from whom it came : 
 While I muse I feel the fire 
 Burning on and mounting higher. 
 
 " Onward, upward to thy throne, 
 O thou Infinite, Unknown ! 
 Still it presseth, till it see 
 Thee in all, and all in Thee." 
 
 Mysticism is Protean in its shapes. It 
 possesses the key to all forms and all creeds. 
 
74 MYSTICISM 
 
 The smallest cell opens into God's infini- 
 tude. The harshest dogmas assume a ten- 
 derness, the most varied rites a meaning for 
 it. The mystic can take the sacred wafer 
 on his lips finding in it the real presence 
 of God, for is not God in all things ? He 
 can affirm the absolute divinity of Christ, 
 for is not all life divine, the highest and 
 fullest the most divine? He can affirm the 
 dogma of the Trinity, for does not this fur- 
 nish the formula that includes all the deep 
 and vast relations of the universe ? On the 
 other hand, the mystic, for like reasons, may 
 disown all forms and cast off all creeds. 
 Out of such mysticism, pure and tender, 
 sprang the sect of the Friends. He may 
 justify to himself at least the most extreme 
 and solitary individualism ; for am not I, 
 the soul may ask, one of the manifestations 
 of the eternal mind? If I have access to 
 the eternal mind what do I need of other 
 help and guidance ? 
 
 Not only does mysticism thus hold in 
 solution the forms of religion ; it brings to 
 the mysteries of religion a solution, so far as 
 any solution is possible. At least it absorbs 
 all other mysteries into itself. 
 
 Nothing has taxed the thought of men 
 
MYSTICISM 
 
 75 
 
 more than the relation between God's sov- 
 ereignty and man's free will. If man is free 
 how is it possible that the will of God 
 should be absolute in the moral no less than 
 in the physical world ? But if the life of 
 man is born out of the life of God, if so far 
 as man truly lives he lives in God and God 
 lives in him, then when man comes to him- 
 self, when he lives his true life, his will is 
 one with the will of God. The will of God 
 does not act upon him from without, sub- 
 duing him by external force. It acts from 
 within. It is indeed his own truest life. 
 
 Sin is the blackest mystery of the uni- 
 verse. We cannot understand how it should 
 have a place in the universe of God. Mys- 
 ticism teaches us that there is but one life, 
 and that is the divine life. Sin is the 
 absence of this life. It thus is death. If 
 we should mark the presence of this life by 
 light, the perfect man would be wholly 
 luminous, showing that every part is living; 
 the worst man would be seen to have only 
 a few intermittent sparks of brightness at 
 the heart of his being. Sin is nothing but 
 the absence of life, and that is the absence 
 of everything. With all its parade of pride 
 and pomp, sin is thus seen in its nothing- 
 
y6 MYSTICISM 
 
 ness. The leaf, as we have seen, has its life 
 only in the tree. When in the autumn it 
 begins to loosen its hold upon the tree, it 
 puts on the greatest appearance of glory. 
 Its gold and its purple fill the earth with 
 splendor. We rejoice in the beauty, but we 
 rejoice with a sense of sadness in our hearts, 
 for we know that what we see is the pomp 
 and glory of death. Such is the splendor 
 that springs from the pride and selfishness 
 of the world. The true man may, in his 
 humility, confront them with calm confi- 
 dence. They also spring from the separa- 
 tion of the individual from the universal 
 life. They also are the flaunting glories 
 of death. 
 
 So also does mysticism help to answer the 
 great question as to the possibility of know- 
 ing anything of God. Some thinkers, as 
 we have seen, love to resolve the thought 
 of God into that of an unknown force. But 
 if this power lives in us, if it thinks in us, 
 how shall we not have some revelation of 
 it in ourselves ? Indeed why should we 
 not know more of it than of anything be- 
 sides ? If in religion, then, we find the dark- 
 est mystery, in it we find also the clearest 
 light. We may doubt wholly in regard to 
 
MYSTICISM 77 
 
 the nature and even the reality of the things 
 which we see merely from the outside ; but 
 of that life that lives in us, that is the life 
 of our life, how can we wholly doubt ? 
 
 Thus does mysticism have the central, 
 the supreme place in the religious thought 
 and life ; but owing to this very supremacy 
 it is beset with perils. From this source 
 of life and strength and knowledge may 
 spring the blackest errors, the most fan- 
 tastic delusions. 
 
 The fundamental errors which have too 
 often marred the beauty of mysticism, and 
 which have made the very word so often a 
 reproach, are, in the first place, the belief, 
 natural enough in theory, that if the true 
 life be life in God, then to reach this true 
 life in its fulness the individual life must 
 be given up. The life must flow backward 
 and downward to become one with its 
 source. Thus in all nations men have 
 sought to find God by giving up all rela- 
 tion with the world, by shutting up the 
 avenues of sense, by giving up feeling and 
 thought. Thus the Hindoo mystic sits 
 with his eyes fixed upon a single point, 
 with measured or suspended breath, so far 
 as possible with no emotion in his heart and 
 
78 MYSTICISM 
 
 no thought in his brain, seeking thus, by- 
 entering into perfect inanity, to become one 
 with God. Christian mystics have resorted 
 to like measures, and marked out all the 
 steps that lead to the state which is at once 
 the absence and the fulness of life. They 
 have not seen that this fulness which they 
 seek is emptiness. The being they would 
 share is the negation of being. By this 
 process they do not become God, they be- 
 come nothing. It is as if the bud, know- 
 ing that its life is in the life of the parent 
 tree, should seek to become one with the 
 tree by withering and shrinking, and letting 
 its life ebb back into the common life. See- 
 ing it, we should not say, Behold how this 
 bud has become one with the tree ; we 
 should say, The bud is dead. 
 
 Errors, in the second place, somewhat 
 different from the one I have named, grow 
 out of a less extreme application of the 
 same theory. Instead of giving up the life 
 of thought and feeling, the mystic gives up 
 the control of thought and feeling. What- 
 ever comes to him, apparently, from the 
 depths of his own consciousness, he takes 
 it for granted comes from God. The exer- 
 cise of reason, of thought, reference to the 
 
MYSTICISM 79 
 
 results of other minds, would mar the free- 
 dom of the revelation of God. The favor- 
 ite motto of the mystic, which may be 
 applied to both forms that I have named, is 
 this: When man sleeps, God wakes. He 
 considers himself one of the beloved of 
 God to whom he giveth in their sleep. But 
 when men sleep, answers Hegel, they dream. 
 Hence in the writings of so many mystics 
 we have by the side of thoughts whose 
 depth and beauty thrill us with an inspira- 
 tion of fresh life, conceits the most fantastic 
 and absurd, multiplied till the reading be- 
 comes a weariness and a disgust. Such men 
 think that by this falling back into the 
 heart of things they can understand all the 
 phenomena of time and eternity ; some even 
 have believed that their life could thus 
 become so blended with the common life 
 that they could control the course of things 
 by a word. Thus we have growing out of 
 a grand and fundamental truth all the ex- 
 travagances of Theosophy and Theurgy. 
 In a more superficial and modern view we 
 have abnormal states of the nervous sys- 
 tem, or of the bodily life, prized more 
 highly than the normal. The state of the 
 mesmeric or other trance is considered by 
 
80 MYSTICISM 
 
 some higher than the state of consciousness. 
 Such do not realize that this is a falling back 
 and down, a losing of the real individual 
 life in the indistinguishable mass of being. 
 The individual ceases to be a person and be- 
 comes a thing acted upon by wills and forces 
 outside of itself. I do not say that such 
 a process may not, like that of sleep, be 
 sometimes useful. It may bring to light 
 facts in our nature otherwise unknowable. 
 Like sleep, however, it is not an exaltation, 
 but a lowering of the nature. 
 
 If the life of man is born out of the life 
 of God, if the divine life is to flow into and 
 fill out the human life, then the channels 
 for its entrance are those which God himself 
 has created ; and the most normal life is the 
 life which is most filled with his presence. 
 Very refreshing after the distorted theories 
 which we have been considering sounds the 
 cry of John, " God is love, and he that 
 dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in 
 him ; " and that of Paul, " The fruit of the 
 spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gen- 
 tleness, goodness, faith." This is the true 
 mysticism. It is the true identification of 
 the human with the divine. The bud is 
 most full of the life of the tree when it swells 
 
MYSTICISM 8 1 
 
 and bursts into the leaf or the flower. So 
 man is most full of the life of God when his 
 natural powers are most fully developed. 
 Not when he sleeps but when he is most 
 awake can he best see God. The form of 
 mysticism we first considered cries that God 
 is; it does not say what he is. It gives us 
 the copula without the predicate. The soul 
 gives up also its predicates and sinks back 
 into empty abstraction to find him. The 
 true mysticism adds the predicate. It tells 
 what God is. God is love, and he that 
 would live in God must not fall back but 
 press forward. He will find Him, not in 
 emptiness but in fulness. The life of God 
 visits the soul as the life of nature pours 
 itself into the tree, not to bring into it any- 
 thing strange, but to fill. out that which is 
 natural to it. The fruit of the spirit is 
 love, and joy, and peace, the simple, natural 
 flowering and fruitage of the soul. 
 
 I and my Father are one, said Jesus ; 
 he also said : My Father worketh hitherto, 
 and I work, making thus his union with the 
 Father to consist, not in passivity, but in 
 activity. Christianity, thus, while preserving 
 the great truth of mysticism, disentangles it 
 from the perversions which have too often 
 6 
 
82 MYSTICISM 
 
 corrupted it, and makes of it the incentive 
 to the noblest and fullest life. 
 
 Thus mysticism, rightly understood, 
 would increase our confidence in human 
 nature rather than destroy it. It would 
 increase our confidence in human thought. 
 It would teach us that this is akin to the 
 creative thought of God. He that should 
 stop thinking in order to find the truth, 
 would be like one who should close his eyes 
 that he might see. 
 
 But thought alone is partial and super- 
 ficial. There are depths in the nature of 
 man which thought alone can bring to light, 
 but which thought has only just begun to 
 sound. There are forces in human nature 
 which thought must accept as given. There 
 are spiritual growths of which thought can- 
 not lay bare the roots. Certain habits and 
 instincts spring out of experience. The 
 roots lie near the surface, and thought can un- 
 cover them and show their place and nature. 
 There are others that are not thus rooted in 
 any superficial experience. As we trace 
 them they stretch down through the drift 
 and debris of our past lives. They are 
 rooted only in the absolute life. They are 
 offshoots from the life of God. 
 
MYSTICISM 83 
 
 Of this nature pre-eminently is the moral 
 sense. I will dwell at some little length 
 upon the aspect of our theme, on account of 
 its practical importance ; and also that our 
 theme itself may be seen to be not merely a 
 matter of dreamy speculation, but bound up 
 in the most momentous issues of our times. 
 Kant was right in making the moral sense 
 pre-eminently the medium by which the 
 reality of the divine being is manifested to 
 us. He was wrong and inconsequent in 
 denying validity to the other fundamental 
 elements of our nature ; but the moral sense, 
 the practical reason, is so much more author- 
 itative, so much more clear and final in its 
 utterances than the rest, it brings us so into 
 the presence of the awfulness and sublimity, 
 as well as of the beauty of the divine holi- 
 ness, that we can forgive him that the sense 
 of it obscured everything beside. 
 
 Especially can we forgive him in the days 
 in which we live, in which the grandeur and 
 authority of morality are to such an extent 
 lost sight of. I think we do not enough 
 realize the terrible pressure against which 
 morality has to contend at this time. We 
 need not delay to speak much of external 
 causes of this pressure, though these are 
 
84 MYSTICISM 
 
 very powerful. The war, in spite of its 
 high purpose, left the legacy that all wars 
 leave, — a tendency to demoralization and 
 brutality. Much of the most popular and 
 plausible thought of the age tends in the 
 same direction. I will not here discuss nor 
 question the truth of the theory that human 
 life is a development out of animal life. 
 Least of all will I join in the outcry against 
 it. It is a theory which is compatible with 
 the highest faith ; which may, indeed, intro- 
 duce a new element of beauty and hopeful- 
 ness into our faith. But however readily 
 we may accept the theory, however clearly 
 we may see the high applications of it, it 
 is no less obvious that in the world at large 
 the first impression of it, the superficial 
 judgment in regard to it, would result in 
 a lowering of the dignity of human nature. 
 If it is accepted as truth by the scientific 
 world its tendency will in time be seen 
 to be no more anti-spiritual than that of 
 the fact that we have bodies ; but it will 
 be long before the popular mind will re- 
 cover from the shock of it. Its tendency 
 will be to put a burden upon many an 
 upward struggling soul, and to sink deeper 
 many a depraved one. It will seem to 
 
MYSTICISM 85 
 
 degrade human nature, to justify its bru- 
 talization. 
 
 This crisis is one that cannot and could 
 not be avoided ; but the crisis is rendered 
 more perilous to appearance from the fact 
 that the same process of thought which 
 brings man physically nearer to the brute 
 seeks to separate him spiritually from the 
 divine. While opening a gulf below, it 
 seeks to unclasp his hold upon the support 
 above. This is especially seen in the man- 
 ner in which this thought makes light of, or 
 seeks to take away the authority of the moral 
 sense. Bain, one of the foremost English 
 writers on psychology and morality, refers 
 to the old motto, Fiat justitia mat coelum y 
 Let justice be done though the heavens 
 should fall, only to stigmatize it as the 
 climax of sentimentalism. It is indeed a 
 motto which utilitarianism can have little 
 place for. It shows that to whatever extent 
 utilitarianism may be the guide of morality, 
 there comes at last a point where the two 
 part company. It is a motto which can be 
 used fanatically and foolishly ; but yet it is a 
 motto that has sustained and inspired many 
 a noble soul. The sentiment it expresses 
 has, in one and another form, done more to 
 
86 MYSTICISM 
 
 purify the moral atmosphere, to keep human 
 life strong and healthy, and society sweet 
 and clean, than all the treatises on morality 
 that could be piled together. How many 
 a man has it sustained in the performance 
 of an act of justice which would make of his 
 fortunes a mere wreck. The act has been 
 done ; his little heaven has fallen ; his little 
 world has collapsed. He has found indeed 
 a heaven within. The sense of justice done 
 has brought its own satisfaction to his soul ; 
 but if justice has no inner authority, no 
 inner life, the inner heaven would have 
 fallen with the outer. When John Stuart 
 Mill exclaimed that he would go to hell 
 rather than call that just in God which would 
 be unjust in man, what was that but a new 
 application of the old cry, Let justice be 
 done though heaven should fall? Acting 
 upon this principle the whole human race, 
 the whole community of finite spirits, would 
 leave heaven empty rather than countenance 
 injustice though it might be called divine. 
 If we dismiss the heroic motto with a sneer, 
 we shall find that not only our sentimental- 
 ism, but that the strength of our manhood, 
 has gone with it. 
 
 Bain is not the only writer whose theoriz- 
 
MYSTICISM 87 
 
 ing tends in the same direction. Herbert 
 Spencer seeks to solve the question why 
 men have attached special sanctity to the 
 dictates of morality, and he gives as reasons, 
 in effect, the selfish maxims of society and 
 the mistaken assumptions of theology, 
 repeated so often through countless gener- 
 ations as to produce a permanent effect on 
 human nature. I do not forget that he 
 elsewhere indicates a system of morality 
 which is not without inspiration. I here 
 consider the explanation which he gives of 
 the authority of morality itself. Now any 
 man who should accept this explanation as 
 all-sufficient, and who should find in his own 
 nature no moral principle that this could 
 not account for, would, I believe, hold him- 
 self free from any responsibility to the moral 
 principle. Schopenhauer approached the 
 theme in the same manner that Spencer 
 does. He states, distinctly, that he has not 
 to ask why men should obey the moral law, 
 but why they do obey it. Schopenhauer 
 was an atheist and a pessimist; but at the 
 same time he was a philosopher and a mys- 
 tic, and because he was a mystic, his explana- 
 tion of the moral sense is such that if you 
 and I accepted it, even though we could 
 
88 MYSTICISM 
 
 find within ourselves no moral instinct which 
 this could not account for, the principle 
 of morality would be stronger within us 
 than it was before ; because we should 
 see its real nature more clearly than we 
 did before. 
 
 Darwin also attempts the explanation of 
 the moral sense with morality left out. He 
 explains the power of conscience by the 
 simple fact of the prominence of the social 
 instincts and the comparative transientness 
 of the selfish impulses. No authority is 
 given to morality except the greater promi- 
 nence of the instincts on which it is based. 
 But the truth is that the regal dignity of 
 the moral law is never more strongly felt 
 than when it confronts the selfish impulses. 
 Even when it suffers violence at their hands, 
 it yet receives their homage. With the king 
 in Hamlet ambition was as permanent as the 
 sense of justice. Indeed it was only now 
 and then that the voice of justice made itself 
 heard in his heart. That wonderful solilo- 
 quy of his shows us the collision between 
 the two principles. It shows us the king 
 yielding to his selfish ambition, but, while 
 doing this, feeling himself ashamed in the 
 presence of the divinity of justice. Shak- 
 
MYSTICISM 89 
 
 speare knew less than Darwin does about 
 plants and animals, but he knew infinitely- 
 more about human nature ; and this single 
 passage, the single picture of this — 
 
 Limed soul, that struggling to be free 
 Was more engaged, 
 
 refutes by the simplicity of truth the flimsy 
 reasoning of the naturalist. 
 
 There is a story, happily familiar, that 
 Theodore Parker, when a boy, took up a 
 stone to throw at a tortoise in a pond ; but 
 something within him seemed to forbid the 
 act. He went home and asked his mother 
 what this something was. Suppose she had 
 given him any of the definitions to which 
 I have just referred. Suppose she had told 
 him, for instance, that it was the inherited 
 effects of the maxims of a self-interested 
 society and the assumptions of presumptu- 
 ous theologians. It was a turning point in 
 Parker's life. I think that if his mother 
 had told him this, and he had thoroughly 
 believed her, the next tortoise that he saw 
 would have been in peril. What his mother 
 really did tell him was this : That the some- 
 thing that bade him hold his hand was what 
 men commonly called conscience ; but she 
 
9 o MYSTICISM 
 
 preferred to call it the voice of God within 
 him. Parker himself tells us the power of 
 these words. His true life seemed to date 
 from them. The voice of conscience, in- 
 stead of being silenced by sophistry, was 
 recognized and listened to as the voice of 
 God. His conscience thus nurtured became 
 the conscience of the land. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this matter that we 
 might realize the odds against which the 
 moral principle has to contend amid the 
 superficial teaching of the time. Such teach- 
 ing is not shut up within books of science 
 that are sealed to the common thought. 
 Such theories spread more rapidly than the 
 books which contain them, and their effects 
 extend more rapidly than they. 
 
 I make here no complaint against the 
 science of the day. It is doing its work 
 bravely and well. I reverence the devotion 
 of its students and rejoice in their success. 
 But physical science has to do with only 
 one side of facts. There is another side 
 which is recognized by religion. Religion 
 and science are like two oarsmen on oppo- 
 site sides of one boat. Science is pulling 
 with all its strength. It does not do for 
 religion to drop its oar that it may wave 
 
MYSTICISM 91 
 
 applause to its comrade. Still less does it 
 do for it to wring its hands and cry with 
 terror that the strokes of science are swing- 
 ing the boat's head out of its course, that 
 it will be dashed against the rocks or swept 
 far out into the open sea. Rather let reli- 
 gion do what science is doing. Let it 
 also bend itself to the oar. While it re- 
 joices in the strength of its comrade's 
 stroke, let it make its stroke as strong, 
 and the boat will shoot along in its course 
 with a speed that it has never reached 
 before. 
 
 In other words, religion should emphasize 
 the spiritual facts of life, just as science 
 emphasizes the physical facts of life. While 
 science shows the relation of man to the 
 brute, religion should show his relation- 
 ship with God. This is to be done, not 
 by fulminations and anathemas, not by 
 ecclesiasticisms and external authority ; but 
 by making men feel the power of God 
 within them ; by bringing into conscious- 
 ness what I have called the mystical ele- 
 ment of life. 
 
 Mysticism and physical science recognize 
 the opposite poles of being. We need not 
 wait, then, for physical science to come to its 
 
92 MYSTICISM 
 
 aid. Physical science has to do with points, 
 with atoms ; mysticism has to do with 
 wholes. The results of mysticism, physical 
 science calls unthinkable ; but they are the 
 staple of our thoughts. Physical science 
 boasts of the clearness of her results ; but 
 these results, without the aid of mysticism, 
 are unthinkable. Physical science can see 
 in each man only a congeries of atoms 
 mingled in a mazy dance. Can you think 
 of yourself as simply a figure in the dance 
 of atoms ? Can you think of the friend 
 you love the most as such a whirl of atoms, 
 a whirl closer and more intricate than that 
 of the sand-column that sweeps across the 
 desert, the material more pliant, but the 
 nature of the two being otherwise alike ? 
 The only element of thought from which 
 we never can escape is personality. If phys- 
 ical science fails to give us this we see that 
 it needs its complement, if only that its own 
 results may be thinkable. The recognition 
 of personality, of the unity in the midst of 
 the variety of physical elements, is the begin- 
 ning of mysticism ; its culmination is the 
 recognition of a like unity amid all the 
 variety of the universe, the infinite person- 
 ality, of which we are a part, but which yet 
 
MYSTICISM 93 
 
 is distinct from us and from which we are 
 distinct; from which and in which is our 
 only life ; to which we must return, not by 
 the mere absorption of being, but by the 
 higher absorption of a joyful love. 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 THE OLD UNITARIANISM AND 
 THE NEW 
 
 The memory of Joseph Priestley has re- 
 ceived distinguished recognition. At his 
 death, most, if not all, of the learned acade- 
 mies of Europe paid honor to the service 
 that he had rendered in the advancement of 
 science. In Paris, it was Baron Cuvier who 
 pronounced his eulogy. In 1 874, on the cen- 
 tennial of his most important discovery, a 
 statue was raised to his memory in Birming- 
 ham, the city from which in his lifetime he 
 had been driven by a mob. At the unveil- 
 ing of this monument, Professor Huxley 
 pronounced the oration. In all these cases, 
 Priestley was honored simply as a man of 
 science. Baron Cuvier, indeed, spoke with a 
 certain horror of the boldness of his theologi- 
 cal speculations. Professor Huxley properly 
 recognized the fact that, in the commemora- 
 tion in which he bore a part, the theological 
 work of Priestley had no place. He did, 
 however, refer in noble words to one aspect 
 7 
 
98 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 of his position in the religious world. " His 
 statue," he said, " will do as good service as 
 the brazen image that was set upon a pole 
 before the Israelites, if those who have been 
 bitten by the fiery serpents of sectarian 
 hatred, which still haunt this wilderness of a 
 world, are made whole by looking upon the 
 image of a heretic who was yet saint." 
 
 While the interest which Priestley took in 
 scientific investigation was great, and while 
 he pursued the path of discovery with hearty 
 enthusiasm, yet his best love was given to 
 religion. He valued, as he tells us, his suc- 
 cess in the field of science chiefly because it 
 won for him a wider hearing as a Christian 
 teacher. Here, to-day, so far as I am aware, 
 for the first time, the memory of Priestley 
 is honored in a way which recognizes the 
 various activities of his life as he estimated 
 them, which sees his life in the perspective 
 according to which he viewed it. We honoT 
 him as one who helped to prepare the way 
 for the new science. We honor him as 
 one who worked for human freedom and 
 rejoiced in every indication of the coming 
 of a larger life for man. But we honor- 
 him to-day, chiefly, as one of the founders 
 of modern Unitarianism in England and in 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 99 
 
 this country and city. I do not know that 
 his modest spirit would not have shrunk 
 from the thought of any commemoration by 
 statue and eulogy ; but, if he would accept 
 any such tribute to his memory, I am sure 
 that what we offer to it here to-day would be 
 the most precious to him. 
 
 The story of Priestley's life has been so 
 recently and so well told in this place that I 
 have no excuse for dwelling on the attrac- 
 tive theme. I should, however, be false to 
 the occasion if I did not say a few words in 
 regard to his character and his work. 
 
 The mind of Priestley was active, sincere, 
 and transparent. As a worker, he was inde- 
 fatigable. He was happy in the time when 
 he lived. It was a time when men were just 
 beginning to feel the special intellectual life 
 which has marked these later years. The 
 intellectual field was, however, as yet so 
 narrow that one mind could be familiar with 
 it all. It was a time when Goethe could be 
 the first poet and the first man of letters of 
 the world, and could at the same time make 
 positive contributions to science. Thus it 
 was that Priestley could do important and 
 original work in various lines of thought. 
 In science, in political economy, in history, 
 
ioo JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 in exegesis, in theology, he made his power 
 felt. Dr. Martineau has said that a list of 
 his works reads like the prospectus of an 
 encyclopaedia. Every circumstance of his 
 life set his active brain to some new task. 
 If he was teaching, forthwith treatises on 
 grammar and plans of history flowed from 
 his pen. If he lived by the side of a 
 brewery, he was roused to the investigation 
 of gases. An acquaintance with Franklin 
 moved him to undertake a history of the 
 discoveries in electricity which threatened 
 to expand into a history of all science. 
 
 The world about him was as fresh as his 
 eager intellect. Investigation in any serious 
 sense seemed just beginning. Now, when 
 for so many years the microscope, the retort, 
 the telescope, the prism, and, most character- 
 istic of all, the balance, have been steadily 
 and systematically applied to every portion 
 of our environment, the work of the scientist 
 is very different. Now one who is to be a 
 discoverer must take his specialty. He must 
 carefully study, so far as he can, the minute 
 work of his predecessors in some special line 
 of research. Only when all this has been 
 accomplished can he, for the most part, hope 
 to attain original results. In California, in 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 101 
 
 the earlier days, gold, we are told, could be 
 had for the stooping. Now what apparatus 
 and what systematic toil are needed, if the 
 precious metal is to be secured ! So far as 
 the riches of science are concerned, Priestley 
 lived, we might almost say, at the time 
 when gold was to be had for the stooping. 
 This, however, must not be taken too liter- 
 ally. I suppose as much mental power was 
 needed to be an original worker then as now, 
 only there was needed less training and less 
 equipment. Thus one could pass from one 
 department to another in the intellectual 
 world, and do original work in each. 
 
 Priestley used to the full the opportuni- 
 ties which this condition of the intellectual 
 world gave him. His literary work was 
 simply immense. At one time, at the 
 height of his unpopularity, at a gathering 
 of clergymen, one exclaimed that he should 
 like to see Priestley mounted on a pile of 
 his own works, and that he would gladly set 
 fire to the whole. The grotesque humor of 
 the idea takes something from its brutality, 
 though Priestley, in whom the sense of 
 humor would seem to have been only 
 slightly, if at all, developed, saw only the 
 grimness of the jest. There are few men 
 
102 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 whose works are sufficiently numerous to 
 suggest the idea that they would serve for 
 the funeral pile of their author. What was 
 published would seem to have been only a 
 small part of what was written. At the 
 time of the destruction of Priestley's house, 
 it is said that the mob waded knee-deep in 
 the fragments of torn manuscript. 
 
 In all his work, Priestley was actuated 
 by the simplest love of truth. It never oc- 
 curred to him to conceal any conviction that 
 he had. He seemed to like to put his views 
 in the most offensive form, though probably 
 he did this simply because it was the most 
 natural way of utterance. He boldly pro- 
 claimed himself a materialist and a neces- 
 sarian, though, so far at least as one of 
 these terms is concerned, a less objection- 
 able word would have defined his position 
 just as well. 
 
 When he came to America, his sense of 
 loyalty to the country in which, as he once 
 said, he had found " neither protection nor 
 redress," was so great that he would not 
 become naturalized. He remained what 
 was known as " an alien," and, in the ex- 
 cited state of feeling of the time, was ex- 
 posed to some suspicion and hostility on 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 103 
 
 that account. But, though he made many 
 enemies, he made many friends also. In- 
 deed, the devotion of his friends is the 
 strongest testimony to the nobility of his 
 character. During his whole career, money 
 was collected, without any impulse from 
 him, to enable him to bear the expense of 
 his experiments. Toplady, whose hymns 
 have shown what tender warmth could glow 
 in the heart of the sternest theology, in a 
 letter to him, filled for the most part with 
 sharp argumentation, exclaims : " Give me 
 the person whom I can hold up, as I can a 
 piece of crystal, and see through him. For 
 this, among many other excellences, I regard 
 and admire Dr. Priestley. ,, And Franklin, 
 writing to Priestley in reference to one of 
 his triumphs, exclaimed that he enjoyed his 
 friend's fame as his own. 
 
 As the outcome of his multifarious labors, 
 Priestley is at present known chiefly in two 
 most widely different capacities, — as one 
 who helped to prepare the way for the new 
 chemistry, and as one who was largely in- 
 strumental in the establishment of Unitari- 
 anism in England and America. These two 
 services which he rendered to our modern 
 world, it would seem, should bring him very 
 
io 4 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 near to us. In spirit, they do ; but, as we 
 read his works, even in regard to these two 
 great offices, it is astonishing how far away 
 he often seems. We realize how the intel- 
 lectual world has changed in this brief 
 period. 
 
 In chemistry, the work of Lavoisier may 
 represent the barrier that separates him 
 from us. He ventured to deny the exist- 
 ence of phlogiston, — that Mrs. Harris of 
 chemistry, — for which he was burned in 
 effigy at Berlin. He also laid the founda- 
 tion of a system of chemical terminology, 
 so that henceforth the science spoke a new 
 and precise language. 
 
 In theology, among many influences that 
 might be named which make the old 
 thought so foreign to the new, perhaps that 
 of Coleridge may be considered as among 
 the most important. The work of Cole- 
 ridge in theology was precisely the opposite 
 of that which Lavoisier performed in chem- 
 istry. Lavoisier adopted a nomenclature 
 clear, sharp, and precise. Every term told 
 its definite story. The influence of Cole- 
 ridge was to break up the sharpness of theo- 
 logical terminology. With him came a 
 certain philosophical mysticism, by which 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 105 
 
 the sharp antagonisms of thought and 
 speech were somewhat solved ; and there 
 entered into theology a somewhat freer, 
 less dogmatic, and more sympathetic spirit. 
 However this may be, whatever may have 
 been the factors or the instruments of the 
 change, it is certain that the theological 
 utterances of these early Unitarians have 
 a somewhat far-away sound to us. It may 
 be well, then, on this occasion, to consider 
 the work which these early Unitarians ac- 
 complished, and to ask how their position 
 differed from the Unitarianism of to-day. 
 
 The early Unitarian movement was very 
 largely within the Presbyterian Church. 
 The English Presbyterians had been grow- 
 ing more and more liberal, until at last, 
 before they fairly knew to what they had 
 been tending, they found themselves to 
 have become Unitarian, and were ready to 
 accept the name. The two men who con- 
 tributed most to bring about this definite 
 result were, however, connected with other 
 bodies of Christians. Lindsey was a clergy- 
 man of the Church of England. Slowly and 
 sadly he brought himself to face the neces- 
 sity of a change of position and of church 
 allegiance. He felt himself very solitary ; 
 
106 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 for, though there were enough who agreed 
 with him, so far as his rejection of the 
 articles of faith was concerned, he found 
 himself almost alone in his sense of obliga- 
 tion to leave a church, the creed of which he 
 no longer believed, and the prayers of which 
 he could no longer conscientiously repeat. 
 
 Priestley had been brought up as an Inde- 
 pendent, and had begun his life in full 
 acceptance of the orthodox belief. 
 
 The movement in which he bore a part 
 was largely intellectual rather than emo- 
 tional. Dogmas were rejected, to a great 
 extent, because they were not, as these 
 searchers judged, taught in the Bible, rather 
 than on account of any protest of the heart. 
 Priestley, indeed, gave up the notion of any 
 responsibility for Adam's sin on account of 
 its unreasonableness. Earlier he had felt 
 himself to have sinned past forgiveness, 
 possibly in part because he found himself 
 unable to repent of the sin of Adam. He 
 commenced, however, in perfect good faith, 
 to study the doctrine of the Atonement as 
 taught in the New Testament. To his 
 great surprise, he found that the orthodox 
 dogma was not there. Belsham, being a 
 teacher, brought together the texts that 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 107 
 
 taught the doctrine of the Trinity. He did 
 this in order to strengthen the faith of his 
 pupils. To his surprise, the process weak- 
 ened his own. Every year as he went over 
 the ground, it seemed weaker to him, until 
 at last his faith in the doctrine was wholly 
 gone. So far, then, from starting, as is 
 sometimes supposed, with lax views of 
 Scripture, and reaching heretical views 
 through an unrestrained use of human 
 reason, they were driven to their heresies 
 very largely by the authority of Scripture. 
 Doubts as to the infallibility of the Bible 
 came, for the most part, after its judgment 
 had been rendered for the views called 
 heretical. Though the motives for the 
 change of faith were thus at first largely 
 intellectual, the change itself brought great 
 peace and joy to the hearts of these re- 
 formers. Let us see in what way the relief 
 and the satisfaction were accomplished. 
 
 The belief of these Unitarians can be 
 very simply told. It was faith in God as 
 the Father and in Christ as the Revealer. 
 In fact, these two articles were in essence 
 one. They believed in God as the Father, 
 because Christ had so revealed him. Before 
 the simplicity of this faith, the intricacies 
 
108 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 of the doctrine of the Trinity, the artificial- 
 ness of the doctrine of the Atonement, the 
 gloom which rested over man's eternal des- 
 tiny, passed suddenly away. Doctrinal sub- 
 til ties, theatrical effects, technical schemes, 
 gave place to a simple, childlike faith in the 
 loving Father of all. 
 
 Dr. Channing, in one of the most eloquent 
 of his sermons, pointed out the distracting 
 effect which the doctrine of the Trinity 
 must have upon the religious faith. Are 
 there three gods to whom we must give our 
 worship, or is there one only ? Indeed, the 
 doctrine in its actual development has 
 swung between these two extremes. I 
 doubt if it is possible for any mind, at any 
 single moment, to hit the precise mean in 
 which Unity and Trinity are seen, each in 
 its due relation to the other, simply be- 
 cause such due relation is itself impossible. 
 Professor Shedd, who in these days repro- 
 duces the older thought of the Church with 
 a clearness and richness of statement such as 
 we could hardly find elsewhere, insists that 
 the members of the Trinity have separate 
 experiences and separate consciousnesses, 
 and that the consciousness of the Trinity 
 itself is thus a collective consciousness. It 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 109 
 
 is hard, practically, to see in such a relation 
 anything more or less than three gods act- 
 ing in perfect harmony. 
 
 After all, however, the difficulties concern- 
 ing the doctrine of the Trinity are chiefly 
 intellectual. If one accepts it or if one 
 denies it, the Christian life is not much 
 affected. Even an open tritheism or poly- 
 theism might be held religiously. It is the 
 doctrines that have been associated with 
 that of the Trinity that have weighed upon 
 men's hearts. It was the relief from these 
 that filled the souls of these reformers with 
 joy. It was as if black and heavy clouds 
 had rolled away, and the blue heavens 
 stretched above them, and the clear sun- 
 shine gladdened their hearts. God was no 
 longer the stern judge, demanding the death 
 of the innocent before he could forgive the 
 guilty, if that can be called forgiveness 
 which has been purchased at such a price. 
 Christ was no longer the substituted victim 
 of the Father's wrath. Man was no longer 
 under the curse of God. These men saw 
 only the love of God reflected in the face of 
 Jesus. Man was the child of God, still fol- 
 lowed and ever to be followed by the Father's 
 love. 
 
no JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 Rarely has piety been manifested under 
 a more attractive form than that which it 
 assumed in the lives of these early Unita- 
 rians. It was simple and manly. It was 
 without cant and technicality. It was free 
 from anything that was morbid. It was as 
 natural as the trust which we place in the 
 laws of nature. Even what may seem to us 
 erroneous in the thought of Priestley con- 
 tributed its part to the pure and steady 
 light of this simple faith. His belief in 
 necessity was simply an intense form of 
 faith in God. Since everything was deter- 
 mined by God, what place is there for grief 
 or anxiety ? It was a marvel to his child- 
 like mind that Calvinism, starting as it does 
 from the thought of the sovereignty of God, 
 could reach results so terrible. The sover- 
 eignty of God meant to him the sovereignty 
 of a wise goodness. He believed that Cal- 
 vinism thus carried at its heart a principle 
 that would one day transform it into a sys- 
 tem of beauty. On the last day of his life, 
 he expressed his faith that the lives of all 
 men would be guided to the best issues. 
 " We shall all meet finally," he said. " We 
 only require different degrees of discipline, 
 suited to prepare us for final happiness." 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY m 
 
 The last evening of his life, when bidding 
 good-night to a little grandchild, he said, 
 " I am going to sleep as well as you ; for 
 death is only a good, long, sound sleep in 
 the grave, and we shall meet again." Such 
 was the simple, childlike faith of these 
 reformers. 
 
 Of course, these results were bought at a 
 price. Such a system as that which they 
 opposed could not pass away without carry- 
 ing with it much that had proved helpful 
 and precious to the souls of men. For gen- 
 erations, for centuries, in the special forms 
 of faith which these men opposed, sweet and 
 noble spirits had found rest and inspiration. 
 They must have been fitted to quicken 
 and satisfy the religious nature. These 
 forms* of faith, we must admit, had elements 
 of helpfulness which the new faith, with all 
 its beauty, did not possess, and for which it 
 had no direct substitute. 
 
 To look at the matter from without, there 
 was a picturesqueness in the older faith 
 that was lacking in the new. I have said, 
 in speaking of the change, that it was as if 
 dark and heavy clouds had been rolled 
 away. There is often a picturesqueness in 
 the cloud. How magnificent is the thunder- 
 
ii2 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 cloud, black and beetling or bronzed, it may 
 be, with a lurid light ! How magnificent 
 the flash of the lightning, even though we 
 shrink and grow pale before it ! How mag- 
 nificent the crash of the thunder, though it 
 seems to be uttering the doom of the world ! 
 One might, it would seem, sometimes tire of 
 an unclouded heaven, and long for the re- 
 freshment of a spectacle like this. Then 
 in the older faith there was a certain dra- 
 matic, even a tragic, interest. History had 
 a plot. There was the beauty of the early 
 paradise where our first parents lived with- 
 out care or sin, when the world brought 
 what was the fairest and laid it at their 
 feet, and in the garden, in the cool of the 
 evening, God himself walked. Then there 
 was the fall. Then came the centuries of 
 sin, brightened only now and then by a 
 prophetic light, that grew clearer as time 
 went on, until at last he that had been 
 prophesied and waited for so long appeared. 
 What scene could be conceived in which 
 should centre such stupendous magnificence, 
 such absorbing interest, as that on Calvary ? 
 Here God bore the penalty of human sin. 
 Here was the great sacrifice by which the 
 divine wrath was turned aside from the 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 113 
 
 chosen ones. Here the storm-cloud that 
 had hung over the world so long at last 
 burst. The bolt struck ; but man escaped. 
 It struck this willing victim of the wrath of 
 God. 
 
 All this was in the past ; but in the 
 future was to come a scene yet more august 
 and terrible. It was that of the final judg- 
 ment. This willing victim was to appear as 
 the world's judge, — a judge more awful be- 
 cause of the love which he had shown the 
 world. All peoples were to be gathered be- 
 fore him. The wicked were to depart to 
 their endless doom ; and the righteous were 
 to enter into endless blessedness. 
 
 It is idle to underrate the power of a faith 
 that could offer such interest as this. The 
 lives of most are commonplace. We love to 
 be thrilled even by the interest of the mimic 
 stage ; and what is all that the genius and 
 the art of man could offer compared with 
 this spectacle in which God and the devils 
 and the whole race of man had part ? 
 
 If to some this was a mere spectacle 
 which awed and exalted, to those who gave 
 themselves to the full power of this faith 
 it was a drama in which they themselves 
 had part. Men love not only the pictur- 
 
ii 4 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 esque, they love excitement also. There is 
 a fascination in a game that is played for 
 some tremendous stake. What a stake was 
 this for which these men were playing ! 
 The stake for each was his own soul. An 
 endless heaven was on the one side, an end- 
 less hell on the other. There was in every 
 case, for a time at least, the element of 
 uncertainty. Who could tell, until at last 
 the full, sweet assurance came, whether he 
 was or was not of the elect ? A young 
 preacher once told me that, if he did not 
 believe in the eternity of the punishment 
 of the unrepentant, he should not think it 
 worth his while to preach. After the ex- 
 citement of the game for such high stakes, 
 anything less stimulating seemed to him 
 insipid and commonplace. Even to-day we 
 find leaders in the Church doubting whether 
 men can be trusted to be sent as mission- 
 aries to the heathen, who do not believe 
 that the unconverted heathen are lost for- 
 ever. 
 
 More important than all this was the 
 rapture which the soul that recognized 
 itself as living in such relations sometimes 
 felt. After the dread and the terror came 
 the joy. You are at a house, let us suppose, 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 115 
 
 in which the son and the brother is exposed 
 to some great peril. He is accused of some 
 capital crime. The trial is progressing. 
 You find the family in the depth of anxiety 
 and grief. Suddenly he appears upon the 
 scene. The trial is ended. He has been 
 acquitted with honor. With what rapture 
 he is received ! With what tumultuous joy 
 is the dwelling filled ! You return to your 
 own pleasant home, where you receive a 
 glad but quiet greeting. What is this com- 
 pared with the exaltation which you have 
 just beheld ! 
 
 In this indication of the elements of 
 popular power possessed by the faith which 
 these Unitarians opposed, I have presented 
 these elements as they appear when they 
 reach their fullest and most definite results. 
 I wish to contrast the quietness of the Uni- 
 tarian faith with the more exciting quality 
 which may be assumed by the forms of 
 belief to which it is opposed. In the Church 
 of England, it must be admitted that these 
 elements existed in a more quiet state, the 
 more exciting experience to which I have 
 referred being found rather in the dissent- 
 ing churches. The Established Church rec- 
 ognized, however, those articles of belief 
 
n6 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 which in the more enthusiastic bodies aroused 
 such struggles in the heart. It had much of 
 the same picturesqueness in its faith, and 
 added to this the picturesqueness of its an- 
 cient liturgy and of its magnificent temples. 
 There was, however, one element of 
 power present in all these churches. The 
 aspects of faith to which I have referred 
 were important as arousing and keeping 
 alive the interest of men. That to which 
 I shall now refer had power to touch the 
 heart. The doctrine of the Incarnation, as 
 it has been held by Christendom, is one of 
 great power and tenderness. The thought 
 that God himself, out of love for man, did 
 really live upon the earth, that he walked 
 our streets and slept beneath our roofs, that 
 he took little children in his arms and blessed 
 them, that he everywhere brought sympathy 
 and consolation and forgiveness, that he died 
 for men ; that he, the God-man, now reigns 
 in heaven and still looks upon men with the 
 same sympathetic tenderness as of old, — all 
 this could but touch the heart of men. Pro- 
 fessor Shedd tells us distinctly that a God- 
 man is now the middle person of the Trinity. 
 How must this, to those who accept it, make 
 the thought of God a power of comfort and 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 117 
 
 of strength ! It is not strange that in these 
 days, when the older creed is slowly melt- 
 ing away, like an iceberg in the Southern 
 Seas, while one doctrine after another is 
 losing the sharpness of its outline and fad- 
 ing out, — it is not strange, I say, that to so 
 many this faith in the God-man enthroned 
 in the heavens should be the last to give 
 way; that, while all else is becoming vague 
 and dim, the face of Jesus, bearing in its 
 glory a touch of the old sadness that tells 
 of suffering and yet more of sympathy, 
 should still be seen to look down upon us 
 from on high. This human sympathy in 
 God, — this God who made himself a man, 
 — this is something that, so far as the 
 human heart is concerned, nothing can quite 
 replace. 
 
 I have thus contrasted with the beauty 
 of the Unitarian faith something of the 
 cost at which it was obtained. The cost 
 was real and great. But we must remem- 
 ber that all advance in human life has been 
 paid for by a like sacrifice. More tenderly 
 than the thought of the God-man appeals 
 to the Protestant does the gentle mother of 
 God appeal to the heart of the Catholic. 
 He can pour into her ear what he could not 
 
n8 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 utter to her Son. What special power over 
 the heart have the images of the Catholic 
 Church ! Through them a man can grasp 
 the feet of his Lord and look up into his 
 eyes, and feel that somehow, though it is an 
 image that he clasps, yet his Lord is really 
 there. There is a nearness of approach 
 that under other circumstances is not pos- 
 sible. After visiting a region like the 
 Tyrol, where the popular faith is yet strong, 
 where the shrine and the image meet you at 
 every turn, and everywhere there is recogni- 
 tion of them and devotion, the Protestant 
 faith, at its warmest, seems somewhat chill 
 and bare. 
 
 Consider, further, at what a cost Chris- 
 tianity itself was bought. Think of the fair 
 humanities of the elder faith, the grace of 
 nymph and dryad and the bright glory of 
 the gods. What a shadow fell across the 
 scene when the cross was lifted in the midst 
 of the world, and all these forms of loveli- 
 ness shrank away, chilled from its presence ! 
 Go back even before the classic faith. 
 Even Fetichism, in which the various ob- 
 jects of nature about us were themselves 
 divine, had a power, so at least Comte main- 
 tained, that no later religion has equalled. 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 119 
 
 Take, as the type of all, the life of the child. 
 At what cost are the buoyancy of youth and 
 the strength of manhood bought! As we 
 look back upon the hours of childhood, we 
 feel " that there has passed a glory from the 
 earth." With childhood, something was 
 lost that later years cannot restore. Thus 
 are the path of the race and the path of the 
 individual strewn with fallen flowers, which 
 in their full beauty shall never be seen 
 again. 
 
 Is it a sad truth that the better must 
 always be purchased by the loss of the good ? 
 It is a glad truth, rather. It shows the 
 wealth of life. It shows that at every stage 
 of development there is something worth the 
 having. Should you call that man happy 
 who, as he looked back to his childhood, saw 
 nothing to regret ? Should we not say that 
 the loss of this regret was the loss of one 
 of the great charms of life ? If the path 
 along which the individual or the race has 
 trodden is strewn with fallen and withered 
 flowers, it shows simply that flowers have 
 grown all along the way. 
 
 I bear, then, glad witness to the power 
 which was possessed by the forms of religion 
 against which Unitarianism was a protest. 
 
120 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 I pay a glad tribute of recognition to the 
 good which these forms of religion have 
 wrought in the world. Doubtless these 
 early reformers, who had felt within them- 
 selves something of this power, felt also 
 something of sadness at the change. Cer- 
 tainly, they felt the loss of sweet companion- 
 ship. They felt most keenly the suspicion 
 and the hate which they had roused against 
 themselves. But the time had come, so 
 far at least as they were concerned, for a 
 freer and larger faith. They felt the price 
 that they were paying, but they felt also* that 
 the gain was worth more than all its cost. 
 They rejoiced to follow their Master without 
 the camp, bearing his reproach. They felt 
 that it was better to stand with him beneath 
 the open heaven, and listen reverently while 
 he spoke to them of his Father and our 
 Father, of his God and our God, than it was 
 to bow before him and worship him as a 
 Divinity. The dreams of our childhood are 
 very sweet ; but who of us would go back to 
 his childhood ? In spite of the burdens of 
 life, there is a joy in manly freedom and 
 even in manly toil. Religion is something 
 better than picturesqueness. It has a nobler 
 form than that of scenic display. Moments 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 121 
 
 of ecstasy are not its best gift to man. 
 There is even a tenderness, as there is a 
 terror, that marks an incomplete develop- 
 ment of the religious thought. We are 
 summoned to the fulness of the stature of 
 Christ. We are summoned to a large, a free, 
 and a manly faith. These men had reached 
 the thought of a God that the heaven of 
 heavens cannot contain, that could not take 
 form in any one human personality, however 
 holy. In Christ they found a revelation of 
 God, a manifestation of his holiness and 
 love ; but the thought of God himself, of 
 the Infinite One, brought to their hearts a 
 peace, a strength, and a gladness that noth- 
 ing else could bring. The relation of God 
 to the world assumed a grandeur that was 
 more worthy of Him. Schemes of salvation, 
 legal expedients, disappeared, as clouds melt 
 in the summer sky. Their spirits found 
 themselves face to face with the Father. It 
 is as if they had heard the very words of 
 Jesus when he said, " I say not that I will 
 pray the Father for you, for the Father him- 
 self loveth you." 
 
 They found a power in this faith. I have 
 spoken of the power that there was in the 
 thought of the Incarnation, — the thought 
 
122 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 of the God-man upon the earth and of the 
 man-God in the heavens. But, after all, the 
 incarnation that has most moved the hearts 
 of men has been something closer and more 
 real than this. It has been the incarnation 
 of the spirit of Jesus in his followers. It 
 is related, I know not how truly, that, when 
 Pere Hyacinthe was in this country, one of 
 our foremost preachers remarked to him, in 
 a conversation, that it was the business of 
 the minister to point his hearers to Christ. 
 " No," answered the Frenchman, " it is his 
 business to be Christ to his people." It is 
 this incarnation, whether it be in Catholic 
 priest or Protestant minister, that has given 
 a large part of its power to Christianity. It 
 is this that has made the story of the incar- 
 nation in Jesus credible and real. This in- 
 carnation is as possible and has been as truly 
 accomplished by the Unitarian minister as 
 by any other. If it has failed, the fault has 
 been not with his doctrine, but with him. 
 
 However much the picturesque and the 
 theatrical may attract men, however much 
 the story of an incarnate God can move 
 them, it is a mistake to think that only 
 under these more or less extravagant forms 
 religion can touch the hearts even of the 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 123 
 
 humblest. We have in the gospel story 
 itself the proof to the contrary. When 
 Jesus, standing upon the Mount, saw the 
 people gathered about him, and opened his 
 mouth and taught them, he uttered the 
 truth of religion in its simplest form. In 
 what he said there was no hint of Trinity 
 or of a God-man or of "scheme." He told 
 the people simply of God, and of the beauty 
 of the life to which God called them. He 
 pointed them to no less an example than 
 their Father who is in heaven ; and, so far 
 as approach to Him was concerned, he told 
 them that the pure in heart should see Him, 
 and that the peacemakers should be called 
 His children. Too simple and bare all this, 
 it might appear, to touch the hearts of men ; 
 yet we are told that " the common people 
 heard him gladly." This is the gospel that 
 Unitarianism undertook to preach ; and, if 
 the preacher has caught anything of the 
 spirit of his Master, his words will not lack 
 power. Compared with the clear beauty of 
 this Sermon on the Mount, how do the dog- 
 mas at which we have glanced, while we 
 recognized their power, seem like feverish 
 dreams. In passing from them to this, we 
 feel that we have awakened from such 
 
i2 4 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 dreams to the light of a pure, sweet day. 
 Men may speak of the "pale negations" of 
 Unitarianism, but the child may be called 
 happy the peace of whose loving home is 
 not disturbed by anger or frantic terrors, 
 and one who has a religion of a like peace- 
 ful gladness is to be called still happier. 
 
 We have thus considered, in the most 
 general way, the relation of the faith of 
 these early Unitarians to that of their con- 
 temporaries and predecessors in the church 
 from which they felt compelled to separate. 
 It remains for us to look briefly at the rela- 
 tion in which those who to-day are called 
 Unitarians stand to these fathers of their 
 faith. 
 
 We have already noticed a certain re- 
 moteness that we find in their utterances. 
 This is doubtless to be explained in part by 
 the change that has taken place in literary 
 habits in general, and especially by the fact 
 that the religious teaching now stoops more 
 to the common facts of life than it was wont 
 to then. But there has been also a change 
 in the thought that is called Unitarian. I 
 have already referred to the necessarianism 
 and the so-called materialism of Priestley. 
 These do much to produce the effect of 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 125 
 
 which I speak. But, leaving these out of 
 the account, the Unitarianism which these 
 reformers taught was a germ in which were 
 possibilities of a large development. There 
 was a certain abstractness in it which ad- 
 mitted of being filled cut and made con- 
 crete. I have already spoken of the work 
 of Coleridge as marking an epoch in the 
 religious thought of the English-speaking 
 world. So far as the definite development 
 of the Unitarian thought is concerned, the 
 names which would best indicate certain 
 marked epochs are perhaps those of Chan- 
 ning and Parker. 
 
 The early Unitarianism looked chiefly 
 Godward. God was the Father in whose 
 love man may rejoice. In natural relation to 
 the fatherhood of God, Charming emphasized 
 the thought of the sonship of man. The 
 dignity of human nature is the great truth 
 which we specially associate with the thought 
 of Channing. It is a natural corollary of 
 the other truth, but it was one that needed 
 the emphasis which the magnificent enthu- 
 siasm of Channing gave to it. That man 
 was made in the image of God had been for 
 ages accepted as a truism. But to see in 
 every man something of the glory of this 
 
126 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 divine image — I say actually to see some- 
 thing of this glory in every man — was, so 
 far as I know, at least in these later days, 
 reserved for Channing. What a power did 
 this bring into religious faith ! Surely, it 
 was no " pale negation M now. I will not 
 claim for Unitarianism more than its share 
 in the philanthropic work of these later 
 years, but certainly the Unitarian view of 
 human nature is in a special manner fitted 
 to inspire such labor. 
 
 I have spoken of Parker as marking a 
 second stage in the development of Unitari- 
 anism. I refer to him not as though he 
 stood alone. Carlyle and Emerson and the 
 whole Transcendental movement, though 
 outside of Unitarianism, left their mark 
 upon it. Neither do I mean that Parker 
 may stand as the type of modern Unita- 
 rianism. He had affirmations and denials 
 peculiar to himself. He may stand, how- 
 ever, as the representative of one of the 
 most important developments of modern 
 Unitarianism. 
 
 Historically speaking, Unitarianism was 
 for the most part the product of Arianism. 
 I mean that the path to Unitarianism has 
 for the most part led through Arianism. 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 127 
 
 Arianism possessed a certain hardness. 
 God, Christ, and man stood each alone. 
 There was no community of being, .no mys- 
 tical interplay of life with life. Early Uni- 
 tarianism, as the descendant of Arianism, 
 possessed a little of its hardness. Priestley 
 was indeed, so far as his thought of Christ 
 was concerned, a true humanitarian. Against 
 the persuasions of his friends, he uttered 
 uncompromisingly his denial of the doc- 
 trine of the supernatural birth of Jesus. 
 Yet to him and to his fellows the thought 
 of the revelation that was in and through 
 Christ retained something of an artificial 
 character. It was upon this external revel- 
 ation that their faith largely, and in some 
 respects wholly, rested. Priestley affirms ab- 
 solutely that outside of this revelation there 
 exists no reason even for the hope of im- 
 mortality. The element of the artificial 
 which had marked so largely the creeds of 
 Christendom was reduced to a minimum. 
 There was the merest hint of the presence 
 of a scheme according to which men were 
 to be saved. In this artificial and external 
 view of revelation there was still, however, 
 the vestige of such a scheme. Priestley 
 treated, indeed, the New Testament with 
 
128 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 the greatest critical freedom ; but there yet 
 remained this inner kernel of the technical 
 and the artificial. I have named Parker as 
 the representative of that development in 
 Unitarian thought in which was attained 
 the recognition of the naturalness and uni- 
 versality of man's relation to God. In this, 
 the central principle of Unitarianism came 
 to its full consciousness. There was still 
 whatever there had been before. Men 
 might still have a place in their thought for 
 that which has been called miraculous. 
 Jesus may still stand as the foremost mani- 
 festation of God upon the earth. Men may, 
 and, if they see truly, must still, rec- 
 ognize the debt which they owe to him, — 
 a debt incalculable and unequalled. Parker 
 himself could sing : — 
 
 '< Yes : thou art still the life ; thou art the way 
 The holiest know, — Light, Life, and Way of heaven. 
 And they who dearest hope and deepest pray 
 Toil by the light, life, way, which thou hast given." 
 
 But the relation was simple and natural. 
 Christianity takes its place among the reli- 
 gions of the world. If it is supreme above 
 them, it is because of its greater complete- 
 ness. If it speaks with more authority, it 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 129 
 
 is because there is found in it more fulness 
 of the divine life. 
 
 Stated more profoundly, the thought which 
 marks this later development of the Unita- 
 rian faith, or at least that toward which this 
 development is tending, is that of the divine 
 immanence in the world. It is the thought 
 of the presence of God, not at certain points 
 of time or in certain places merely or chiefly, 
 but at all times and places. It is the thought 
 of the divine power, not acting upon the 
 world from without merely, but from within. 
 It finds in the world the presence of a 
 divine life. It echoes the words of Paul 
 that " in him we live and move and have our 
 being." It is this thought which has made 
 impossible any recognition of the special 
 and the artificial, which leaves no place for 
 the vestige of any "scheme " in the manage- 
 ment of the world. This thought changes 
 to some extent our vocabulary. It puts new 
 meaning into some words, and makes the 
 use of others impossible. " Do you make of 
 Christ a mere man ? " the Unitarian is some- 
 times asked. In the light of the truth that 
 we are considering, there is seen to be no 
 such thing as " a mere man." There is in 
 all men some germ of the divine life ; and, 
 9 
 
130 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 when we recognize even the faintest begin- 
 ning of this, there is no limit to be placed 
 upon its possible accomplishment. " Do you 
 leave man," it is asked, cc to struggle onward 
 and upward by himself? " No man and no 
 nation is left thus unaided. In the presence 
 of this thought, that which has passed for 
 belief in God's revelation and in God's sav- 
 ing help seems to have a touch of atheism ; 
 for, that he may be seen then or there, other 
 times and places seem to be left without his 
 presence. 
 
 The two great stages that have marked 
 the later development are, then, the recog- 
 nition of the dignity of man and of the im- 
 manence of God in the world. The early 
 Unitarianism recognized the fatherhood of 
 God. Those noble and emancipated souls 
 rejoiced in the unclouded light of his pres- 
 ence. The truth they saw was cheering and 
 life-giving. However precious it was in its 
 simplicity, it was yet more precious in the 
 fact that it was germinant, that there was 
 within it the power and the necessity of de- 
 velopment, that it could and must become 
 larger and more concrete, and absorb into 
 itself the manifold elements of human life 
 and experience. 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 131 
 
 What I have said of the development of 
 the Unitarian faith is, I rejoice to say, com- 
 mon to a greater or less extent to other 
 forms of Christian belief. It is found even 
 among those who bear names that would 
 ally them to the older creeds, to some even 
 who take these creeds upon their lips. I 
 claim no monopoly of the truth for Unita- 
 rians. The spirit that has been stirring in 
 them has been stirring also in other hearts. 
 Old names and old words are beginning to 
 lose their meaning, and an inner brother- 
 hood is beginning to make itself felt between 
 those that seemed most widely separated. 
 
 It is possible that every generation since 
 history fairly began has felt itself to some ex- 
 tent exceptional, has felt that in it a critical 
 moment in human destiny has been reached. 
 Certainly, our own age seems to us to form 
 one of the great turning-points in the world's 
 history, and especially in the history of reli- 
 gious thought. So far as the Bible is con- 
 cerned, criticism has made much that was 
 formerly held without a doubt impossible of 
 belief. Science has shown the facts of the 
 universe sometimes to be in sharp contrast 
 with those which revelation had been sup- 
 posed to teach. The theory of the develop- 
 
132 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 merit of the higher life out of the lower, 
 even of the higher life of man out of the 
 lower life of the world, has left scarcely any- 
 thing in our thought precisely what it was 
 before. It has been a period of overturning 
 and of upbuilding. No thinking man can 
 have passed through all this change un- 
 changed. Certainly, no church can pass 
 through it and come out precisely what it 
 was before. Forms of speech have changed, 
 and forms of thought have changed more 
 than forms of speech. The churches have 
 changed, and are changing still. The Uni- 
 tarian Church has changed, and is changing 
 still. What I claim is that the develop- 
 ment of the faith of the Unitarian Church 
 through these critical times has been in the 
 direction of the fulfilment of that which was 
 most positive in it, while the development of 
 the faith of most other Protestant Churches 
 has been found in the fading out of what was 
 most specific in them. 
 
 Such a statement could not be made in 
 regard to the Papal Church. Within two or 
 three years, a Catholic scientist of great and 
 well-won reputation has published papers 
 recognizing the results both of scientific 
 theory and of Biblical criticism, and claim- 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 133 
 
 ing that in all these there is nothing hostile 
 to the faith of the Papal Church. It was 
 understood that these utterances were made 
 with a certain authority ; and no condemna- 
 tion of them has been uttered by the Church. 
 The Church that was held to be an anach- 
 ronism in this nineteenth century has shown 
 thus a special readiness to accept its teach- 
 ing. Its faith, so far as it has changed, has 
 simply intensified what was most special 
 in it. In these later years, it has added 
 two articles to its creed, — one that of the 
 immaculate conception of the virgin, the 
 other that of the infallibility of the Pope. 
 We have, then, the Roman Church and 
 the so-called Liberal Church, each develop- 
 ing its faith by affirmations that are simply 
 the unfolding of its fundamental principle ; 
 while the churches that stand between the 
 two, so far as they have changed at all, have 
 been giving up much that was most charac- 
 teristic, or suffering much that was most 
 characteristic to fade into comparative insig- 
 nificance. I recall only one instance in which 
 the movement has been in the opposite di- 
 rection, in which one of the fundamental 
 doctrines of the Church has assumed a more 
 intense form. In what is sometimes known 
 
134 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 as the " new theology/ ' the necessity for 
 salvation, of a personal acceptance of Jesus, 
 receives an unwonted prominence. This, 
 however, has been purchased at the cost of 
 the equally fundamental doctrine of the fixed 
 condition of all souls after death, and is ac- 
 companied by a fading out of some other 
 doctrines no less important. What have 
 these two extremes of the Christian world — 
 the Papal Church and the Unitarian Church 
 — in common, so that in each that which is 
 most fundamental is being developed into 
 new intensity, while in so many churches the 
 change is in the fading out of what had 
 seemed most fundamental ? They do have 
 one other thing in common, whether it may 
 or may not help to explain that to which I 
 have referred : both recognize, as most other 
 branches of the Christian Church have in 
 the past failed to recognize, the present 
 authority of the Spirit of God. Other 
 Churches have claimed to rest on the au- 
 thority of the Bible. The Papal Church 
 claims that the Bible rests upon its author- 
 ity. Do you want the confirmation of 
 miracles ? It will work them for you to- 
 day. Do you want some direct utterance 
 from God ? Listen to what the Church says 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 135 
 
 to-day. The Papal Church is then, in its 
 way, the Church of this nineteenth century, 
 in that it is bound to no record of the past, 
 but stands the ever-fresh and ever-living in- 
 carnation of the Spirit of God. Thus it is 
 that it can meet the waves of thought, like 
 the ship that is its symbol, and keep serenely 
 on its appointed course. 
 
 The Liberal Church recognizes also as 
 supreme the authority of the present Spirit 
 of God. It finds this not embodied in a 
 single institution, like the Papal Church. It 
 seeks it not in trances, in ecstasies, and 
 special revelations, as so many enthusiasts 
 have done. It recognizes its power working 
 through the normal faculties of the human 
 soul, through the despised reason, through 
 the loving heart, through the heaven-seeking 
 aspirations of the spirit. It finds its reve- 
 lation in the magnificence of nature, in its 
 sublime order and harmony, in the grander 
 sublimity of the moral law, in the tender- 
 ness of human hearts and the heroism of 
 human lives. If it finds it most of all in 
 Jesus, it is because he stands as the repre- 
 sentative of what is loftiest and best in 
 faith and life, because he brought to light 
 new spiritual potencies in man, and thus 
 
i 3 6 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 
 
 a grander and tenderer thought of God. 
 Other forms of faith may accept the revela- 
 tions of our modern science. The liberal 
 faith rejoices in them, for they exhibit that 
 orderly progression in the history of the 
 world which its fundamental principles 
 would lead it to expect. So far as other 
 Protestant Churches are changing, they are 
 approaching a position like that which the 
 Liberal Church now occupies. It might not 
 be too extravagant a forecast if we conject- 
 ure that, in the no one can guess how remote 
 future, there shall be but two bodies in the 
 Christian Church, — one the Papal Church, 
 standing for faith in a narrow and super- 
 natural ecclesiasticism, and the other the 
 Liberal Church, whatever name it may bear 
 and whatever form it may assume, embody- 
 ing the faith in a spiritual and divine nat- 
 uralism. This prophecy I do not care to 
 make. I simply point you to the tendencies 
 in Christendom pointing in these opposite 
 directions, and to the massing of forces on 
 the one side and on the other that indicates 
 the possibility of a line of cleavage such as 
 that which I have supposed. 
 
 We have thus considered the beauty of 
 the faith which marked the beginning of 
 
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 137 
 
 our modern Unitarianism, and the fulness 
 into which its later thought has developed. 
 While we rejoice in this fulness, let us not 
 forget that these early Unitarians held all 
 that is essential to a calm, glad, and exalted 
 religious faith. Let us be grateful to them 
 for the peaceful revolution in religious be- 
 lief that they accomplished. Let us catch 
 some inspiration from their memory ; and 
 may our lives become as sweet, as sincere, 
 and as earnest as theirs, and may we feel 
 the power of a faith as devout and as up- 
 lifting as that by which their lives were 
 blessed ! 
 
THE FAITH OF SCIENCE AND THE 
 SCIENCE OF FAITH 
 
THE FAITH OF SCIENCE AND THE 
 SCIENCE OF FAITH 
 
 The words " faith " and " science " are often 
 used as if they stood to one another in a rela- 
 tion not merely of antithesis, but in one of op- 
 position and exclusion. We often speak of the 
 realm of faith and the realm of science, as if 
 each was a world by itself. As soon as an ob- 
 ject enters the realm of science, we are apt to 
 feel that it has left the realm of faith; and 
 so long as an object remains in the realm of 
 faith, it is felt to be, by that fact, excluded 
 from the realm of science. Many believe 
 that the realm of science is surely and 
 steadily encroaching upon that of faith ; and 
 many are looking, some with dread and some 
 with hope, to see the realm of faith becoming 
 smaller and smaller, until at last there will 
 be no place left for it, and science shall reign 
 supreme and alone. Indeed, this antagonism 
 between faith and science is felt by many to 
 constitute the great dramatic or even tragic 
 interest of the present age. 
 
 This whole view, however, is founded 
 upon error. There is no such thing as a 
 
i 4 2 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 realm of science apart from the realm of 
 faith. There is no exclusion or opposition 
 in the relation of science and faith. They 
 have to do with the same facts. They rep- 
 resent simply different sides of the same 
 knowledge. Faith, we may say, furnishes 
 the basis, and science the superstructure; or 
 we may say that faith furnishes the material, 
 and science elaborates this material into its 
 perfect form. Faith, we may say, is the 
 nebula, and science the completed world 
 which is developed out of it. Or, better 
 still, faith may be represented by the great 
 law of attraction in its varied forms, while 
 science is the solid-seeming world that is 
 bound together and upheld by this. Thus 
 there is no science that does not imply a 
 corresponding faith, and there is no faith 
 that is not capable of a scientific elaboration. 
 The only difference between what we call 
 the realm of science and what we call the 
 realm of faith is, that the realm of faith is 
 the broadest, »for the reason that the whole 
 extent of it has not yet been developed into 
 science. So far as science extends, its field 
 is identical with that of faith. The progress 
 of science neither encroaches upon nor limits 
 faith. It simply elaborates more and more 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 143 
 
 of the material of faith into its fitting and 
 true form. But the material is still as truly 
 that of faith, as it was in its simplest and 
 most unformed state. It is because I con- 
 sider this relation a vital one, that I have 
 selected, or rather accepted, it for my theme 
 on the present occasion. Our great theo- 
 logical necessity is felt to be that of giving to 
 our faith a scientific form ; but this work 
 cannot be approached, or its methods con- 
 sidered, without first taking note of the faith 
 which is the basis of what in our common 
 speech we term science. The study of the 
 faith of science is the essential introduction 
 to a comprehension of the nature of the 
 science of faith. 
 
 The faith on which the magnificent struc- 
 ture of our science rests is twofold, or rather 
 it acts in a manner which may be best con- 
 sidered under two distinct heads. In the 
 first place, it gives to science the real world 
 which is its field. I need not spend many 
 words to illustrate the fact, which is recog- 
 nized even by our most simple and primary 
 works on metaphysics, that we have only 
 certain sensations, which we organize into a 
 world. We cannot by any reasoning get 
 beyond these. Every man carries his own 
 
i 4 4 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 world in his own brain. The mountains, 
 the oceans, the stars, the cities, the men he 
 meets, the heroes that he honors, whether 
 of the past or the present, — these are all 
 the scenery and the inhabitants of his own 
 mind. It is only by faith that he gives to 
 these an outward reality. He does this for 
 no reason, but simply because he cannot help 
 it. Their objective reality can neither be 
 proved nor disproved. The belief in it is 
 above, or beneath, all proof. It is stronger 
 even than the instinct of life. I need not 
 illustrate this by reference to the fact, that 
 a man will die for one of these phantoms of 
 his brain. We need simply refer to the fact, 
 that the man believes himself, in any way 
 and to any degree, mortal. Because these 
 figures that flit across the inner world which 
 he carries with him pass at last and do not 
 return, he believes that he also shall pass and 
 shall not return. Because the figures that 
 take part in these tragic or comic scenes die, 
 the great stage and theatre shall also disap- 
 pear. In a word, the man puts himself, for 
 life or for death, upon a level with this popu- 
 lation of his own mind, with this creation 
 of his own thought. This unconscious con- 
 descension shows how strong is the faith 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 145 
 
 which gives to us the real world of things, 
 of persons and events, — which is a world of 
 faith, and of faith only. It may be remarked, 
 in passing, that the truth that has just been 
 referred to shows how impossible it is for 
 the mind ever to receive any proof from the 
 outward world that shall disturb its faith 
 in its own immortality; for 
 
 " The mind is like the sky, — 
 Than all it holds more deep, more high." 
 
 If the reality of the outward world, and 
 thus the very field and material of science, is 
 given by faith, no less does faith, in the 
 second place, furnish the methods of science. 
 Science is a constant progress from the seen 
 to the unseen. By the mighty instrumen- 
 tality of induction, it makes the little knowl- 
 edge that rests upon experience the basis of 
 a vaster knowledge, that stretches far beyond 
 the reach of any possible experience. From 
 a few cases it reasons to all similar cases. 
 From the past it reasons to the future. It is 
 as confident in regard to the future, as it is 
 in regard to the past; as confident in regard 
 to the facts it has not witnessed, as in regard 
 to those that are most familiar to its experi- 
 ence. By what right does it thus pass from the 
 
146 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 few to the many, from the seen to the unseen, 
 from the past to the future ? Hume affirmed 
 that the mind had no such right and power ; 
 yet the mind continually exercises this right 
 and this power. What, then, is the basis of 
 our faith in the inductions of science? It is 
 interesting to see how loath the human mind 
 is to give up belief in outward foundations 
 and supports, and the naive confidence with 
 which it assumes them. Nothing is more 
 natural than the Hindoo theory, that the 
 earth rests upon an elephant, and the ele- 
 phant upon a tortoise ; or than that of the 
 old lady who believed that the earth rested 
 upon a rock, and that upon another, and 
 that there were rocks all the way down. 
 The mind naturally assumes a foundation, 
 and it is long before the question forces 
 itself, " Upon what does this foundation 
 rest ? " So it lays rocks beneath the earth, 
 or places a patient elephant beneath it ; it 
 forms crystal spheres to support the stars, 
 and thinks that all is firmly based. We 
 can now hardly realize the importance of the 
 revolution by which the mind reaches the 
 conviction, that there is no outward support 
 for anything ; that there is no point of rest 
 in all the material universe ; that everything 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 147 
 
 floats, if that can be said to float that is not 
 even upheld by any medium; that sun and 
 moon and stars, and the earth itself, move 
 through the infinite space upheld by nothing; 
 that there is no arch for the stars, no pillars 
 for the earth ; that there is only vacancy 
 above and below everything. A revolution 
 similar to this has yet to be accomplished in 
 the world of the mind and the spirit. We 
 return to the question, On what rests our 
 faith in the inductions of science? John 
 Stuart Mill affirms, with naive simplicity 
 like that of the old lady who thought that 
 there were rocks all the way down, that faith 
 in induction rests upon induction ; in other 
 words, that there is induction all the way 
 down. He says this with some slight cir- 
 cumlocution indeed, but this is the condensed 
 substance of his statement. 1 I know not 
 
 1 His words are: " Whatever be the most proper mode 
 of expressing it, the proposition that the course of nature 
 is uniform is the fundamental principle, or general axiom, of 
 Induction. It would yet be a great error to offer this large 
 generalization as any explanation of the inductive process. 
 On the contrary, I hold it to be itself an instance of induction 
 by no means of the most obvious kind." — Logic, Book III. 
 chap, iii, i. 
 
 He further explains his meaning thus : " We arrive at 
 this universal law [of causation] by generalization from many 
 laws of inferior generality. The generalizing propensity, 
 
148 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 whether the view of such a mighty intellect, 
 resting so unquestioningly on such a baseless 
 series of foundations, should make us more 
 or less reliant upon the results of our own 
 thoughts. And there is nothing that shows 
 how natural it is for men to assume founda- 
 tions without asking what they rest upon, 
 than the fact that so many accept this state- 
 ment as all-sufficient ; that so many, in fact, 
 cannot be made to see why the statement, 
 that faith in induction rests upon induction, 
 does not explain everything completely. 
 
 The simple fact is, the mind has the in- 
 stinct of generalization. Just as it cannot 
 help looking through the eyes, and believing 
 what it sees ; so it cannot help generalizing, 
 and believing in the results of its generaliza- 
 tion. This instinct, then, and the unques- 
 tioning and often unconscious faith that we 
 have in it, is the only basis of the mighty 
 
 which, instinctive or not, is one of the most powerful prin- 
 ciples of our nature, does not indeed wait for the period when 
 such a generalization becomes strictly legitimate. The mere 
 unreasoning propensity to expect what has been often ex- 
 perienced, doubtless led men to believe that everything had 
 a cause, before they could have conclusive evidence of that 
 truth. But even this cannot be supposed to have happened 
 until many cases of causation, or, in other words, many 
 partial uniformities of sequence, had become familiar." — 
 lb. chap. xxi. x. 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 
 
 149 
 
 world of our modern science. But does not 
 our faith in this rest on our experience of its 
 reliability ? Yes ; but what is experience 
 but prolonged induction ? And why do we 
 trust to experience ? Or shall we say that it 
 is experience all the way down ? 
 
 There have been times when there was 
 much discussion in regard to innate truths. 
 Some affirmed them in almost unlimited pro- 
 fusion ; some denied them altogether. The 
 latter asked how they were packed away in 
 the mind; and why, if they were innate, 
 they were not present in the consciousness 
 from infancy. Each party was partially 
 right and partially wrong. Strictly speak- 
 ing, we have no innate truths. We have 
 instincts which come to consciousness at dif- 
 ferent periods of the spirit's growth. Each 
 of these instincts implies — if it be reliable 
 — a certain construction of the outer world, 
 and a certain relation to it of the individual. 
 The instinct being given, a competent mind 
 could deduce from it this group of circum- 
 stances and relations. Thus the faith that 
 we have in any instinct implies, when it is 
 fully developed into consciousness, faith in 
 a certain truth which is the basis and the end 
 of this instinct. Thus there is latent in 
 
ISO THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 every instinct, involved in it, implied by it, 
 an idea that may sooner or later reach its 
 consciousness. Thus, if we use the terms 
 "innate ideas," and are asked where they 
 were at first stored in the mind, we must say 
 that first they exist potentially in the form 
 of instincts, as the destined flower and fruit 
 exist potentially in the germ. The idea or 
 truth that is involved in the instinct of gen- 
 eralization is this, — that the world is a 
 systematic and organized whole. If this 
 were not so, the instinct of generalization 
 would only deceive us. As the plant slowly 
 but surely reaches its flowering, so does this 
 instinct slowly but surely attain to the full 
 consciousness of this idea. It is helped to 
 this by experience ; but yet it is itself the 
 implied, though not always recognized, basis 
 of faith in experience. And it is a most 
 marked and important fact in this connection, 
 that the first distinct utterance of this truth 
 was in defiance of experience. The Eleatics 
 affirmed the One. They did not seek to 
 reconcile the many with this — to find a 
 unity in the manifold. They simply de- 
 nied the many. They denied all the re- 
 sults of experience. There was no manifold. 
 There was no motion. The senses deceive. 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 151 
 
 There is only the One. Thus did the grand 
 truth of the absolute unity, in its first his- 
 toric utterance, set itself up against the con- 
 crete world of experience, and attempt to 
 sweep it utterly out of existence with a proud 
 denial. The task of philosophy and of 
 science ever since has been to reconcile this 
 unity and this diversity, to find unity in the 
 diversity, and to look upon the manifold 
 as one. The unity for which it has sought 
 is the unity of an organic wholeness. The 
 faith in the reality of this has been its life 
 and its inspiration. The faith in the reality 
 of this has gained clearness and strength by 
 all the magnificent triumphs of its inductive 
 methods; but, consciously or unconsciously 
 expressed or implied, it at first prompted 
 and gave authority to these methods. For 
 without the instinct of generalization, and 
 faith in this instinct, though every fact in 
 the universe of all past time were known, we 
 could not reason in regard to a single fact of 
 the future, any more than the duck could 
 swim even though you threw it into the 
 water, or the bird could fly though you 
 threw it into the air, unless each had the 
 fitting instinct and instrument. Rightly 
 looked upon, there is hardly anything in 
 
i 5 2 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 the whole reach of our knowledge sub- 
 limer than this faith, by means of which the 
 magnificent world of modern science floats 
 unsupported, and needing no support, self- 
 buoyed, self-poised, and self-sufficient. And 
 how ridiculous does this sublimity make that 
 arrogance appear which would boast of the 
 solid foundations of science, in opposition to 
 the baselessness of faith ! So one might — 
 mocking at the things that are invisible — 
 stamp his foot, and say that he would accept 
 nothing less solid, visible, and tangible than 
 this material world ; yet how foolish does he 
 look when we picture him to ourselves cling- 
 ing to the outside of this little spinning ball 
 of thinly crusted fire, whirling through space 
 with a swiftness that his thought cannot con- 
 ceive, with only the infinite depths of noth- 
 ingness beneath him, yet boasting of the 
 solid ground on which he stands. Truly 
 he has a solid support beneath him. But 
 his ultimate reliance is not on that which 
 is visible and tangible : it is on the mighty 
 though invisible forces that sustain this. So 
 foolish is the pride of one who might con- 
 temptuously compare faith with science. The 
 world of science is a world of faith. It rests 
 on no other foundation, is held together by 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 153 
 
 no other power. But therefore it is that its 
 foundation is so secure. Therefore it is that 
 it moves on its way with the unconscious 
 confidence of the round world itself. 
 
 The faith, then, which is the basis of 
 science, which at first exists unconsciously in 
 the simple instinct of generalization, and 
 which at last, by the aid of experience, though 
 always far in advance of experience, reaches 
 its full consciousness, is the faith that the 
 universe is a perfect and organic whole. 
 The faith which Is the basis of religion and 
 of theology is only the extension and com- 
 pletion of this. It is the faith, namely, that 
 this whole is animated and governed by a 
 power of good ; that everything is working 
 out some good end ; and that all things are 
 uniting, or will be made to unite, in the 
 accomplishment of this one purpose of good- 
 ness. Though this faith comes comparatively 
 slowly to its full consciousness, though it 
 struggles up at first like an untimely plant 
 struggling with bitter winds and biting frosts, 
 yet it has its root very deep in our original 
 nature. We find it implied in the earliest 
 and most fundamental instincts of the race. 
 Indeed the free, undoubting, glad obedience 
 to any natural instinct implies this faith. 
 
154 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 Still more is it implied by the more special 
 religious and moral instincts. The instinct 
 of worship ; the instinct of prayer ; the in- 
 stinct of trust ; the power of conscience, in 
 which the good asserts, by an undoubting 
 instinct, its supremacy, approving or con- 
 demning all things as a divinely appointed 
 judge, — all of these imply the supremacy 
 of goodness in the universe, and when fully 
 developed, assisted by experience, though 
 still far in advance of experience, unite and 
 culminate in a conscious faith in this su- 
 premacy. The development of this faith is 
 often hindered, and its purity marred, by 
 the mingling of other and lower sentiments 
 and instincts with these. Personal fear long 
 holds back this trusting confidence, refusing 
 to be wholly guided and comforted by it. 
 The sense of personal ill-desert shrinks from 
 faith in this infinite and all-ruling goodness, 
 which it feels must be just, because it is 
 good. The imperfection of the moral sense 
 blurs the beauty of the ideal of perfect good- 
 ness; for it knows not really what it shall 
 call wholly good, or what it shall seek in 
 seeking for it. In all this, religious faith 
 finds its parallel in what we have called the 
 faith of science; and indeed the history of 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 155 
 
 the one finds its analogon at every step in 
 the history of the other, with this difference, 
 — that the faith of science has reached a 
 point of development far in advance of that 
 which religious faith has yet reached. In- 
 deed, it is only yet reaching, and that very 
 slowly, the general recognition of its foun- 
 dation principle, — a principle which Jesus 
 announced eighteen hundred years ago, but 
 which became speedily hidden and lost, like 
 a little leaven buried in the mass, which is to 
 be transformed by it into its own likeness. 
 
 As the faith of science made its first utter- 
 ance of itself in the face of experience, and 
 as ever since it has been strongest in the 
 face of facts that seem most to oppose it, 
 apparent lawlessness only rousing it to seek, 
 with fresh confidence and zeal, the laws 
 which it knew must exist in spite of apparent 
 lawlessness, — so faith in the perfect good- 
 ness which arranged, and which guides, and 
 is present in, all things is often strongest 
 when all experience would seem to oppose it 
 most. As the Eleatics sweep away the uni- 
 verse that the One might exist in its absolute 
 unity, so theologians have swept goodness 
 out of the world, that the one good might 
 not have any connection with, and thus 
 
156 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 no stain or dishonor from, this world, that 
 has so much of evil in it ; and often, when 
 apparent evil presses most closely about the 
 soul, does it have most faith in the infinite 
 good. When the outward world satisfies, 
 the soul often rests content without the con- 
 scious impulse to look beyond, and to 
 explain the little evil that it may find : but 
 when in the outer world evil seems to over- 
 balance the good ; when the life, stripped by 
 loss and overshadowed by sorrow, seems to 
 have nothing left ; or when the outward life 
 itself, passed perhaps in weariness and sor- 
 row, has reached its extreme limit, and there 
 seems no outward hope possible, — then how 
 often does this faith in the perfect goodness 
 assert itself with a mighty recoil, and the soul 
 cry, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust 
 in him " ! 
 
 As the faith of science, drunken, we might 
 almost say, with its own self-confidence, has 
 constructed wild and baseless systems of 
 philosophy; as with more sober thought it 
 has constructed systems of the physical uni- 
 verse, of wheels within wheels, spheres upon 
 spheres, cycles and epicycles, in which sys- 
 tems of philosophy and systems of the 
 physical universe there was nothing true but 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 157 
 
 this, that the universe is a perfect and sys- 
 tematic whole, — so the faith in the absolute 
 Goodness has sought to realize itself in many 
 a strange and fantastic form. It has reeled 
 through wild creeds and systems and theolo- 
 gies ; it has devised hells of endless flame, 
 to burn up or burn forever the evil that 
 it found ; it has framed schemes compared 
 with which the scheme of the astronomers 
 with its dizzy cycles and epicycles were simp- 
 licity, that by means of them the perfect good 
 might be seen to accomplish itself in the 
 world : and when it could do no better, and 
 saw no other outlet or escape; when it had 
 found or established an infinite and endless 
 evil, — even then this faith could not be 
 quieted or repressed; and, seeing nothing 
 else left for it, it has bowed before the infinite 
 evil, and said, " Since this is supreme, it must 
 be good : let us worship it." 
 
 But though faith in the perfect goodness 
 slowly struggles into consciousness out of 
 darkness and uncertainty ; though, at first, 
 belief in this rests side by side with other 
 beliefs, to be discussed in connection with 
 these or apart from them, so that men may 
 assume the existence of God, and yet ques- 
 tion whether or not he is good, — yet by 
 
158 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 slow degrees it assumes the leading place : 
 until at last, as in science the faith in the 
 unity of the universe and the omnipresence 
 of law comes to be the one truth in which 
 all other truths find their place and their 
 support ; so in religion faith in the absolute- 
 ness and the supremacy of good comes to be 
 recognized as the one truth, in which all 
 others find their place and their support. 
 
 Few facts are more striking than the 
 manner in which men will use a word, con- 
 fident that it has a meaning, long before 
 they know clearly what its meaning is. Thus 
 men used the word "cause," divining its 
 meaning, although they could not tell what 
 it was, and although the clearest thinkers 
 denied that it had any meaning like that 
 which they supposed ; until, within a few 
 years, science, by the discovery of the con- 
 servation of force and the correlation of 
 forces, has showed us what is the real mean- 
 ing of the word " cause." So men used the 
 word " faith," with vague and varying mean- 
 ing; but so soon as we recognize the su- 
 premacy and absoluteness of goodness as the 
 one central and all-embracing religious truth, 
 we know what is the meaning of the word 
 " faith." Faith is confidence. We have 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 159 
 
 faith in that in which we have confidence. 
 You may believe that the bridge you are 
 crossing is not strong enough to support 
 you, yet you would not say you had faith in 
 the weakness of the bridge. If you have 
 any faith in it, it is in its strength. We see 
 this expressed in one of those Bible defini- 
 tions which we grow so slowly to compre- 
 hend, — "Faith is the substance of things 
 hoped for" Thus one may have faith in a 
 future in which every spirit shall have a lov- 
 ing providence still watching over it, guiding 
 its feet through whatever paths may lead it 
 soonest home ; but, though one may believe 
 in endless misery, it can never be an object 
 of faith. So one may have faith in the 
 integrity of human nature, but one cannot 
 have faith in its depravity. 
 
 Faith having this meaning, we understand 
 how there is one absolute religion. We 
 speak of religions as existing side by side, as 
 being true or false ; we reckon up the num- 
 ber of religions in the world: but there is 
 but one religion, and all forms of religion, 
 so called, are speculatively religious or irre- 
 ligious according to the degree in which they 
 express or fail to express this. So far as any 
 belief is faith in an all-ruling and an all-over- 
 
160 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 ruling goodness, so far it is religious. So 
 far as it throws doubt upon this or denies it, 
 so far it is irreligious. The religion of the 
 intellect is this recognition of goodness. 
 The irreligion of the intellect is the denial 
 of this. This denial, if it apes religious 
 forms, we call superstition ; and superstition 
 bears the same relation to religion that the 
 dreams of the alchemist do to science. To 
 one who has seen clearly that religion is this 
 faith in an absolute goodness, the nature of 
 religion can never again be a matter of doubt. 
 He may, perhaps, lose this faith : if he does, 
 he loses his religion. But the question as to 
 what religion teaches on this point, the 
 question between a true religion and a false 
 religion, can never again arise. 
 
 We thus see the possibility of the science 
 of religious faith, and also what must be the 
 nature of this science. As physical science 
 forms itself about faith in the absolute order, 
 so religious science gathers about faith in the 
 absolute goodness. Whatever must neces- 
 sarily result from this goodness, it affirms; 
 whatever absolutely contradicts this, it denies : 
 and it assumes without question whatever 
 must be assumed, in order to reconcile 
 known and finite facts with the belief in the 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 161 
 
 infinite goodness. Where it sees mystery, 
 it believes that this is only a veil concealing 
 the perfect goodness; as physical science 
 sees in any mystery only its own ignorance 
 of the law that rules there. And when this 
 science of faith doubts of its results, its only 
 doubt is whether the reality be not some- 
 thing better than it has dreamed. 
 
 The science of faith has vast and varied 
 content. It exalts itself to a sublime and 
 sweet mysticism. If the infinite good is 
 working over all and in all, then it must be 
 working over and in us. This infinite good 
 cannot be blind, cannot be cold; it cannot 
 be senseless. The very word implies, in 
 some vast sense, a purpose, a providence, a 
 love. Our very being must have its root in 
 this, and, so far as it is real, must be one of 
 its channels or manifestations. The truth 
 of immortality is found in it; for if we believe 
 
 "That nothing walks with aimless feet," 
 
 we cannot believe that the feet of loving, 
 aspiring, hoping, suffering, sorrowing mortals 
 tend only to the darkness and nothingness 
 of the grave; but as when, in wandering 
 through some unknown country, we see a 
 road beaten with much travel, leading down 
 
162 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 to the shore of a river, and into the river, 
 and lost there, we do not doubt that a road 
 emerges also from the other side, and that 
 between them, uniting them, is a ferry or 
 a ford, — so we know that the road which 
 leads to the river of death emerges on the 
 other side. And, again, if we believe 
 
 "That nothing walks with aimless feet," 
 
 still less can we believe that the feet of any 
 spirit are guided across the river of death 
 only to be led at last to the lake that burneth 
 forever. We see also how the science of 
 faith involves faith in human nature, faith in 
 the great movements of history, faith in the 
 struggles of human thought and of human 
 life. 
 
 I repeat that it must not be supposed that 
 we at first reach these special truths by 
 reasoning from this general faith in the 
 absolute goodness. As faith in the organic 
 unity and completeness of the world is in- 
 volved in, and evolved out of, the half- 
 conscious instinct of trust in the outer world, 
 of confidence in the teachings of experience, 
 or, in a word, the instinct of generalization ; 
 although at last this complete and conscious 
 faith gives to this original instinct a logical 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 163 
 
 basis, and clears it from much confusion, 
 and guides it in safe paths, — so the faith in 
 the absolute goodness is involved in, and 
 evolved out of, the instinct of trust, by which 
 man has in every age approached the outer 
 universe, confident that in some way its 
 nature is akin to- his nature, the instinct of 
 worship, the instinct of prayer, the instinct 
 that looks beyond the barrier of death, and 
 the instinct of conscience ; although at last 
 it rounds these into a whole, gives them a 
 logical foundation, frees them from dark- 
 ness and superstition, and leads them to 
 the perfect goal towards which in their 
 weakness and their blindness they were 
 tending. 
 
 But though, like the faith in the perfect 
 order and unity of the world, the faith in the 
 perfect goodness is in a sense self-supported, 
 yet like that it has many confirmations. It 
 is confirmed by the wise guidance of history, 
 in which it sees how evil in the long-run is 
 lost in the good, and has been indeed the 
 instrument of the good. It finds confirma- 
 tion in the secret history of many a life, in 
 which events that seemed the darkest and 
 saddest were yet transmuted into the best 
 blessings. Indeed, what soul cannot find 
 
i6 4 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 this confirmation in its own history, cannot 
 see where sorrow and failure and disappoint- 
 ment, those things which we call evil, were 
 really working out the best good for it ; or, 
 if they did not result in this, that it was 
 alone to blame. All such experience illus- 
 trates and confirms the faith, that it is the 
 inner nature of all things to be transformed 
 into blessing. 
 
 It finds confirmation in physical science. 
 While every instinct of plant or animal has 
 its correlative reality outside of it; while 
 every hunger has somewhere its appropriate 
 food; while every rootlet has somewhere its 
 appropriate soil ; while, if there should float 
 hither, from some other planet, a bit of 
 feather, you would not doubt that there was 
 an atmosphere there, — it cannot be 
 
 tf That every chick of every bird, 
 And weed and rock-moss, are preferred ; M 
 
 and that the most deeply rooted, the most 
 universal, and the sublimest instincts of man 
 were given him in vain ; that he has the 
 hungering after the infinite good, when there 
 is no good to satisfy it; that he "sits here 
 shaping wings to fly," when there is no space 
 and no atmosphere anywhere in which he 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 165 
 
 may use these wings. Indeed, the faith of 
 science and religious faith imply and com- 
 plete one another ; and though now we 
 have to take each to a certain extent by 
 itself, and compare the one with the other, 
 it will doubtless at some time be seen that 
 the two are really one ; that there is but one 
 faith and one science. 
 
 Religious faith finds also confirmation in 
 the faith and testimony of the truest and 
 best souls, in the fact that the loftier and 
 truer and more natural the soul, the more 
 clearly does it discern the perfect goodness 
 that is in and over all things; that Jesus, the 
 loftiest and the best, saw this the most 
 clearly ; nay, — and this will show us the 
 circle in which we are moving, and the self- 
 supporting nature of this faith — that we 
 recognize him as the loftiest and the best, 
 because he saw this the most clearly, and 
 lived more than any other in the conscious- 
 ness of it. 
 
 We see thus the relation of authority to 
 the science of faith. That voice has most 
 authority to the soul which calls forth the 
 fullest and strongest response from its best 
 instincts and impulses. This is what Jesus 
 meant when he said, " My sheep hear my 
 
166 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 voice." We often speak as if the Book of 
 Genesis related the story of the creation. It 
 does not profess to do this. It puts the fact 
 of the creation far back, "in the beginning/' 
 Its story begins when God said, " Let there 
 be light." Its story is not of creation, but 
 of formation. So many seem to believe that 
 Jesus created the world of our religious faith 
 and confidence, and that this rests suspended 
 only by the flat of his will ; but the spiritual 
 heaven and earth were also created in the 
 beginning. The gospel tells no story of 
 this first formation. But, though this world 
 had been created, it " was without form and 
 void, and darkness rested on the face of the 
 deep ; " and, though the spirit of God moved 
 over the face of the waters, it found no rest 
 or recognition. The darkness compre- 
 hended it not. But God, through the lips 
 of Jesus, said, " Let there be light ; and there 
 was light." The world rounded itself into 
 completeness, and clothed itself with beauti- 
 ful life. The clear heavens wrapped it in, 
 and the light of the sun glorified it. It is 
 no wonder that this should seem to us like 
 a creation. 
 
 I have compared in many points what, for 
 convenience, I have called physical science — 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 167 
 
 though the name does not properly include 
 all I would include in it — and the science 
 of religious faith. There is one point of 
 great difference. The former finds its 
 strength in the minuteness of its application. 
 The more thoroughly and definitely it can 
 explain every little fact, the more perfect is 
 it. The science of faith finds its strength in 
 the largeness of its application. It believes 
 that all is for the best. Experience, in many 
 ways, confirms this faith ; but when it at- 
 tempts to show, in regard to everything, 
 just how it is for the best, it falls into guesses 
 and dreams. Its scope, in regard to details, 
 is rather practical than theoretical. It is 
 safer when it urges that we should make the 
 best of this and that, than when it under- 
 takes to say precisely what God meant by 
 this or that; although, now and then, even 
 this last flashes into the light of certainty. 
 
 But though the science of faith is, like 
 physical science, confined within circum- 
 scribed limits, yet our outward life and our 
 inward life are both made up largely of what 
 is not strictly scientific. It is stated, I know 
 not with what truth, that the greatest natural- 
 ist of the country never makes a prophecy in 
 regard to the weather, for the reason that 
 
168 THE FAITH OF SCIENCE 
 
 the science of meteorology is not in a state 
 to justify such prophecy. In fact we have 
 no scientific right to predict a change of 
 weather ; yet much of our life is shaped and 
 guided by such foreknowledge. So, in our 
 spiritual life, we may admit much that is not 
 absolutely scientific, provided it does not 
 contradict the fundamental principles of the 
 science of faith. There is left space for 
 the play of imagination, for the dreams of 
 hope. One individual, or one class of in- 
 dividuals, will need and will use this privi- 
 lege more than another. One, for instance, 
 will look forward with a simple and quiet 
 faith into the future, content to know simply 
 that love is immortal and infinite; another 
 will love to shape a heaven, and fill it with 
 fair shapes of blessedness. Thus, while one 
 may be calm in the simplicity of his great 
 hope, the other may be buoyant and enthu- 
 siastic, fired by the prospect that stretches 
 in clear outline and coloring before him. 
 They are like an elder and a younger brother 
 approaching together the home they love. 
 One walks with quiet and sober tread ; the 
 other leaps and dances along his way. The 
 older seems to the younger cold and in- 
 different; the younger seems to the older 
 
AND SCIENCE OF FAITH 169 
 
 childish and uncontrolled. But they are 
 brothers. With equal love and equal long- 
 ing they are approaching the same home, 
 and the same love is waiting to greet them 
 both. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE 
 SUBLIME 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE 
 SUBLIME 
 
 As an introduction to the examination that 
 is before us let us, in imagination, start from 
 the mouth of the river Rhine, and follow 
 the stream up toward its source. The lower 
 Rhine in itself has little charm. There is, 
 indeed, always a beauty in water and shore, 
 in smiling meadows, and in the over-arching 
 sky. In the lower Rhine there is added to 
 such charm the quaintness of the frequent 
 windmills, and sometimes an interest of 
 architecture, as one passes through towns 
 and villages. But nothing of all this would 
 specially attract the traveller. At Cologne 
 begins what the world has known as the 
 beauty of the Rhine. Now the river winds 
 among picturesque hills covered with vines 
 or forests and crowned, often, by some 
 crumbling ruin. This beauty, indeed, is not 
 now what it was. The river has been pro- 
 tected, and at the same time humiliated, by 
 embankments. The forestjs have been cut 
 
174 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 away. Modern buildings stare upon us 
 more and more from the shores and the hill- 
 sides that had been sacred to the past. The 
 clay color of the water seems more fitted to 
 the present surroundings than it did to the 
 picturesqueness of the former times. I can 
 now almost remember it as yellow, which 
 I could not in earlier years, when memory 
 at least painted the water to make it corre- 
 spond with the beauty through which it 
 flowed. In spite of all this, the middle 
 Rhine is beautiful, and, if we criticise it, it is 
 only when we compare it with its former 
 self. Pressing upward we reach the region 
 of the Via Mala. Here the scene has 
 changed. The stream, white with the foam 
 of its haste, presses along the narrow channel 
 which it has formed for itself between pre- 
 cipitous walls of rock. We look down at 
 the river and it seems so far beneath us ! 
 We look up, and the steep rocky walls rise 
 above us towards the heavens. We look 
 around, and are shut in on every side as our 
 course, following that of the current so far 
 below, winds through this massive masonry 
 of nature. On the summit of the lofty 
 mountain which forms one side of the en- 
 trance to this chasm stand the ruins of the 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 
 
 *75 
 
 old castle of Rhetius, which from above looks 
 down upon the winding way, dominating it 
 from its height. 
 
 Lower down the stream we had simply 
 delight in watching the beauty through which 
 we passed, save now and then when some 
 sterner height and narrower passage gave to 
 our delight a touch of awe. Here there is 
 still gladness ; but the awe has become more 
 profound. Indeed, we call the scene awful 
 rather than beautiful. Beauty has passed 
 into sublimity. 
 
 Examples like this might lead to the 
 thought that sublimity is only an intenser 
 form of the beautiful, so that one passes 
 through beauty to reach sublimity. Other 
 examples, however, suggest different results. 
 Let us compare, for instance, Mount Vesu- 
 vius and Mont Blanc. Mont Blanc is an 
 example of sublimity developed out of 
 beauty. The mighty mass of rock and ice 
 and snow that overpowers us by its vastness 
 is largely made up of what on a smaller scale 
 is simply beautiful. Snow, so long as it pre- 
 serves its purity, is beautiful under whatever 
 relations it may be viewed. It is beautiful 
 when it clothes a stretch of hill and plain 
 with its whiteness. It is beautiful when it 
 
176 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 drapes the pines which bow beneath the 
 burden. It is beautiful when the separate 
 flakes, with their delicate crystalline forma- 
 tion, rest upon the sleeve. In the snow 
 mountain we have only another form of the 
 same beauty. But there is Mount Vesuvius 
 as well as Mont Blanc. If Mont Blanc 
 shows the sublimity to which beauty may 
 attain, Vesuvius shows that sublimity is pos- 
 sible when there is no touch of beauty. In 
 Mont Blanc we have the sublimity of light, 
 in Mount Vesuvius that of darkness. As 
 we reach the summit it is black and lifeless. 
 No bird finds its way through the sulphurous 
 air. In spite of, or through, this wildness 
 of desolation, we receive an impression of 
 sublimity equal at least to that which the 
 fairest snow mountain may furnish. If we 
 repeat the experiment which we tried in the 
 case of Mont Blanc, and reduce this upper 
 portion of Mount Vesuvius to the elements 
 of which it consists, and reduce these to the 
 dimensions under which we ordinarily meet 
 them, we should have before us nothing 
 more beautiful than an ash-heap. 
 
 There is, indeed, another way of reducing 
 the mountain till it loses its sublimity, and 
 that is by distance. As seen from Castella- 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 
 
 177 
 
 mare, across the Bay of Naples, its mighty 
 bulk made ethereal by the distance and by 
 the soft Italian atmosphere, its graceful shape, 
 surmounted by its flag of smoke, harmonizes 
 well with the general beauty of the scene. 
 It has, however, changed its character by 
 the process. The rudeness and desolateness 
 which gave to it its sublimity have been 
 refined away. 
 
 The sublime may thus be produced by 
 elements that in themselves are beautiful, and 
 by those that are the opposite of beautiful. 
 The relation between beauty and sublimity 
 might, then, seem to be wholly accidental. 
 Our common thought and speech, however, 
 contradict this assumption. The two are 
 spoken of together. We say " The beauti- 
 ful and the sublime." Our scientific thought 
 unites them precisely as our superficial 
 thought does. Our treatises on aesthetics 
 discuss sublimity as they discuss beauty. 
 The two are thus placed side by side, as 
 dividing the aesthetic world between them. 
 Even Kant, who distinguished them most 
 sharply from one another, making them as 
 antithetical to one another as subject and 
 object, spirit and matter, even he treats them 
 in the same connection ; and by their posi- 
 
 12 
 
178 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 tion in his discussion seems practically to 
 deny this heterogeneity. 
 
 The work of Kant has been so influential 
 in the development of modern thought upon 
 this theme, and brings out so emphatically 
 one view of sublimity which, whether we 
 accept it or not as true, we must admit to 
 be in itself sublime, that we shall do well to 
 give some consideration to it. 
 
 We are met first by the startling fact that 
 Kant, so far as his system was concerned, 
 recognized no outward object as sublime. 
 Here he makes that grand distinction between 
 beauty and sublimity to which I just referred. 
 The seat of beauty is in the outward world ; 
 that of sublimity is in the soul. The out- 
 ward object may be beautiful, but there is no 
 sublimity save in the spiritual world. The 
 sense of sublimity is awakened when the 
 soul, startled or stimulated by certain out- 
 ward objects, recoils upon itself, and feels 
 the grandeur of its own nature and the awe 
 which the spiritual world alone can produce. 
 
 Kant recognizes two forms of sublimity ; 
 one he calls mathematical, the other dynamic. 
 One is produced by the contemplation of 
 vastness, the other by that of power. An 
 object produces the effect of sublimity by its 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 
 
 79 
 
 vastness when the mind finds it impossible 
 to represent by the imagination the extent 
 which it recognizes as really existing. The 
 understanding finds some unit of measure- 
 ment which it applies successively, pressing 
 from point to point as it strives to compre- 
 hend the vastness which it studies. The 
 imagination tries to keep pace with it, repre- 
 senting its results under some form which 
 can be contemplated as a whole. Striving 
 to grasp the result of the advancing measure- 
 ments, however, it loses that already reached. 
 It can only put so much into its picture. 
 When it strives to do more it loses what it 
 has gained. It is thus bewildered and made 
 dizzy by the sweeping before it of what it 
 cannot apprehend. This practical immeas- 
 urableness of the object which is beheld, 
 this impotence of the imagination to keep 
 pace with the understanding, suggests the 
 idea of the infinite. The reason stretches 
 out after this idea of infinitude. It holds 
 the idea even if it can never fully grasp or 
 represent it. It feels not only that no im- 
 agination can picture it, and that no measure- 
 ment can exhaust it ; it feels that no object 
 in the external world can manifest it. The 
 soul has thus a sense of its exaltation over 
 
180 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 whatever the material universe contains. It 
 has an idea which would bankrupt the uni- 
 verse should this undertake to show it forth. 
 It is this sense of the loftiness of the spiritual 
 nature which constitutes, according to Kant, 
 the feeling of sublimity. We call the outer 
 object sublime, simply by the force of asso- 
 ciation, because in connection with it we 
 experience the power of sublimity. The 
 outer object, however, is not sublime. The 
 soul and the inconceivable powers which 
 manifest themselves in and through it are all 
 which can properly be spoken of as sublime. 
 The other form of the sublime recognized 
 by Kant is the dynamic. The sense of it 
 arises when we find ourselves in the presence 
 of the mighty forces of nature, and feel how 
 helpless we should be if exposed to their 
 power. Even, however, with the feeling of 
 this helplessness in the conflict thus repre- 
 sented by the imagination comes the sense 
 of something which these destructive forces 
 cannot reach. The spirit feels that by its 
 lofty nature and the relations in which it 
 stands to the infinite and the eternal it is 
 raised far above the forces of the material 
 world. Its real substance cannot be touched 
 by them. Thus, even in the defeat which 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 181 
 
 the imagination pictures as the outer man 
 is crushed by these relentless powers of 
 nature, comes a sense of victory in the feel- 
 ing that the real man cannot be touched 
 by them. 
 
 This relation to the outer world might 
 have been put more strongly than it is by 
 Kant. The peril, as he describes it, is 
 imaginary. There have been, however, those 
 who in a storm at sea have lost all sense of 
 danger in the exultation produced by the 
 play of the mighty forces in the midst of 
 which they stood. The ship was like a mere 
 cockleshell upon the waves, rolled and tossed 
 by them till it seemed almost impossible 
 that it should escape uncrushed. These 
 brave men, sometimes, indeed, brave women, 
 have remained in the midst of the peril, 
 lashed for safety to the mast, forgetful of 
 everything save the magnificence of the 
 scene. According to Kant, the joy that they 
 felt arose from the sense of their own exalta- 
 tion above the wildness of the wind and the 
 sea. The tempest-tossed ocean, according 
 to Kant, is simply horrible. No pleasure 
 can come from contemplating it. The sat- 
 isfaction that the scene brings is that of the 
 sublimity of the spirit that can survey it 
 
182 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 undismayed. This dignity is not of the 
 spirit in its mere individuality, but as it 
 represents the spiritual forces of the universe 
 to which it is akin. 
 
 This, freely stated, is Kant's theory of the 
 sublime. In reading it one has a sense 
 of sublimity, which, superficially considered, 
 might be regarded as a testimony to its truth. 
 If one recalls, however, one's own experience 
 in the matter, it will be found that this sub- 
 jective exaltation, resulting from a recoil 
 upon one's self and from a sense of spiritual 
 and moral realities, does not exhaust, and 
 does not always accompany, the manifesta- 
 tions of sublimity. In point of fact Kant 
 himself would seem to have forgotten his 
 theory when in the presence of the sublimi- 
 ties of nature, and to have felt emotions of 
 the sublime for which his theory hardly had 
 a place. There is a passage in his works 
 which is familiar to many to whom all else 
 he has written is a sealed book. It is one 
 of the very few passages in which he rises 
 into eloquence, and it is the most eloquent 
 of them all. It is interesting to see in it how 
 even his long and involved sentences can 
 catch a glow from the emotion that utters 
 itself through them, so that one forgets their 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 183 
 
 involution until one attempts to translate 
 them into an equivalent English speech. It 
 is the passage in which he speaks of the two 
 objects of sublimity which fill the soul with 
 a deeper awe the oftener that we contem- 
 plate them : one, the starry heavens above ; 
 the other, the moral law within. He pictures 
 the relations into which we are brought by 
 each. The contemplation of the starry 
 heavens makes us see ourselves in a vast 
 material universe, in which the world on 
 which we stand is but a point. The spirit 
 feels itself annihilated by the thought. The 
 moral law, on the other hand, brings the 
 spirit into relation in which every act has 
 infinite worth, compared with which the 
 external universe is as nothing. In this 
 passage it is noticeable that we have two 
 objects of sublimity, whereas according to 
 the theory of Kant there should be but one. 
 The external nature should have been sublime 
 because it arouses the sense of the grandeur 
 of the moral law; whereas, in the passage, 
 the starry heavens are in themselves sublime. 
 It may be said, indeed, that in this passage 
 Kant simply uses the common mode of 
 speech, as he does so often. There seems, 
 however, a genuineness and a passion in this 
 
i8 4 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 outburst of enthusiasm which makes it ap- 
 pear a naive expression of actual feeling and 
 not a mere "facon de parler" 
 
 It is a little singular that Kant, who ex- 
 perienced so intensely the sense of sublimity, 
 should have failed to perceive its real nature, 
 while Hegel, who stated somewhat more 
 truly the relation in which this sense stands 
 to the outer world, should appear to have 
 been utterly devoid of the actual experience 
 of it, so far, at least, as anything except 
 intellectual and spiritual realities are con- 
 cerned. The attempt to realize the endless- 
 ness of eternity by setting up one distant 
 limit after another, only to see that we are 
 no nearer the conception of eternity than we 
 were at the start, was to him simply tedious. 
 The worlds on worlds which astronomy re- 
 veals were not to him sublime. He found 
 sublimity only in the laws by which these 
 worlds are governed. 
 
 In his more formal treatment of the theme 
 Hegel found sublimity in the fact that the 
 objects which we call sublime suggest the 
 power which is manifesting itself in them and 
 in all things, but which they are utterly un- 
 able to fully show forth. We have thus a 
 suggestion of the Infinite. There is in this, 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 185 
 
 however, little that is characteristic of his 
 thought. 
 
 Hegel's real view of sublimity comes out 
 most clearly in his discussions in regard to 
 religion, and especially in regard to art. 
 It may be freely expressed as follows : In 
 the beautiful object form and content, the 
 expression and the thing to be expressed, 
 the universal and the individual are in com- 
 plete accord. The type is fulfilled in the 
 exemplar. In the sublime, on the contrary, 
 the universal meets us in its bare abstract- 
 ness. To put the thing more simply and 
 concretely, in beauty the elements and forces 
 of nature exhibit themselves in harmoni- 
 ous relations. The power that is in nature 
 comes near to us. It manifests itself in cer- 
 tain details, harmoniously related, so that 
 it is easy of apprehension. In sublimity 
 these elements and forces manifest them- 
 selves each for itself. We have fewer details 
 that lead us on to the easy apprehension of 
 their presence. A mountain that presents 
 itself with precipitous and barren sides affects 
 us as sublime ; while the same height which 
 should arise with gradual undulations, and 
 should be clothed with verdure, might strike 
 us as simply beautiful. The uninterrupted 
 
186 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 waste of the sea may be sublime ; but where 
 it is strewn with islands covered with grass 
 or foliage it may be beautiful. In sublimity 
 the face of nature meets us with blank stern- 
 ness ; in beauty it breaks into smiles. Thus, 
 among the followers of Hegel, Solger defines 
 sublimity as " Beauty in the making " ; and 
 Vischer affirms the sublime and the comic to 
 be the differentiated elements of which beauty 
 consists ; the one being the universal apart 
 from the individual ; the other the individual 
 emptied of the universal. 
 
 The theories of Kant and Hegel in regard 
 to the sublime are the most important and 
 interesting that have been offered on this 
 theme. They, however, by no means stand 
 alone. A multitude of others grow out 
 from them, or twine about them, or have 
 sprung up in their shadow. Dr. Arthur 
 Seidl has recently brought them together 
 in an interesting monograph. 1 They are 
 mostly, as Seidl intimates, formed to suit 
 the exigencies of some general system in 
 which they have their place. Even includ- 
 ing the theories of Kant and, to some extent, 
 that of Hegel, I confess that they seem to 
 
 1 Zur Geschichte des Erhabenkeitsbegriffes sett Kant. 
 Leipzig, 1889. 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 187 
 
 me for the most part creations of the study, 
 rather than open-air growths springing out 
 of the facts of experience. 
 
 I propose to consider certain assumptions 
 which are made in so many of these systems, 
 including those that we have examined, that 
 they seem to pass for commonplaces. 
 
 A position that is very generally taken is 
 that the sense of the sublime is produced by 
 a suggestion of the infinite. Even Seidl, the 
 latest writer upon this theme, insists upon 
 this. I confess I do not quite know what is 
 meant by this suggestion of the infinite of 
 which we hear so much in various relations. 
 Max Miiller and others insist that all re- 
 ligions, the lower as well as the higher, are 
 the results simply of a sense of the infinite. 
 So here the sublime involves the idea of the 
 infinite. In both cases the use of the term 
 needs explanation. If it means that in con- 
 nection with the sublime, or in religion, man 
 loses the sense of limit, whether this is true 
 or false, it is something different from a 
 positive sense of infinitude. The bird, the 
 beast, and the child have no sense of the 
 limit of life. The bird and the beast have 
 no knowledge of such a limit, and the child 
 has no thought of it and no belief in it. 
 
188 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 This, however, is very different from a con- 
 sciousness of infinitude. In point of fact, 
 the idea of infinitude would seem to be a 
 very late product of the human mind ; and 
 I conceive that there can be no sense of the 
 infinite before this idea has been more or 
 less consciously reached. Even after the 
 idea of the infinite has been reached, I con- 
 ceive that neither it nor the undefined sense 
 of it is often present to the soul, even in the 
 case of religion. The minds of men deal 
 with the concrete. They deal with the 
 undetermined, it is true. This may produce 
 the sense of a vague vastness, but this is not 
 the infinite. Even though one may be 
 shocked by the thought of a limit, it does 
 not follow that one has had the sense of the 
 unlimited. That the feeling and the thought 
 of the infinite may sometimes be suggested 
 by the sublime object cannot be doubted. 
 This may be, for instance, the case when the 
 limit of this object is beyond our vision as 
 well as beyond our apprehension. This is 
 the case sometimes in the vision of the ocean 
 or the sky. We see no boundary, and the 
 actual limit is too far away for our distinct 
 apprehension. The thought is thus tempted 
 to a quest that seems endless. 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 189 
 
 A misapprehension that is bound up with 
 the one just named is that the sense of 
 sublimity is, more than that of beauty, the 
 result of reflection. When it is produced 
 by the thought of the infinite it is obviously 
 the product of reflection. From this point 
 of view, a man's recognition of the sublime 
 will be limited only by his power of insight 
 and association. There is nothing so humble 
 that it may not become the expression of 
 sublimity. To Tennyson the "flower in 
 the crannied wall " is sublime, for it repre- 
 sents the universe. Wordsworth could 
 exclaim : — 
 
 *' To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 The effect of sublimity may, however, be as 
 direct as that of beauty. The sublime ob- 
 ject may check thought instead of inspiring 
 it. The very word " stupendous " illustrates 
 this aspect of the case. The spirit may rest 
 lost in the grandeur of the object of its 
 contemplation. 
 
 Another point in which there seems to me 
 to have been a frequent misapprehension is 
 the relation between sublimity and beauty. 
 It has been commonly assumed that when 
 
190 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 an object is sublime it is no longer beautiful. 
 Thus definitions have been sought that 
 should sharply discriminate the one from the 
 other. I conceive that the sublime object is 
 as often, perhaps more often, at the same 
 time beautiful. It may under certain cir- 
 cumstances be terrible as well as beautiful. 
 The tiger is none the less beautiful because 
 it is terrible. 
 
 To understand the relation between the 
 sublime and the beautiful we need to con- 
 sider for a moment what it is that constitutes 
 beauty. Without making an analysis of the 
 matter, it may be stated that beauty is the 
 manifestation of the ideal in the real. Thus 
 we have about us the general life of nature ; 
 we have this life as it concentrates itself in 
 individual forms ; we have the higher mani- 
 festation of it in spiritual ideals. Without 
 dwelling upon this matter, which cannot here 
 be adequately discussed, we need merely 
 notice that the manifestation of the forces 
 of nature which cause the sense of sublimity 
 belongs to this general scheme. 
 
 Beauty and sublimity may be classed to- 
 gether under both a general and a special 
 aspect. In the first place, they are both 
 forms of contemplation. In the second 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 191 
 
 place, this contemplation is accompanied by 
 a delight in which there is no reference to 
 self. In beauty self may be simply for- 
 gotten. In sublimity it may be set at naught. 
 In beauty we have such sympathy with 
 nature that we rejoice in its free life as if it 
 were our own. In sublimity we rejoice in 
 the might and vastness of the outward world 
 as if it were our own. I use here the term 
 outward world in its largest significance, and 
 include all objects of contemplation, the 
 spiritual as well as the material. 
 
 The common assumption that when an 
 object is sublime it cannot be beautiful rests 
 upon the notion that certain conditions are 
 essential to sublimity which are fatal to 
 beauty. These conditions are most often 
 expressed in the saying that beauty requires 
 form, while sublimity is best manifested in 
 the formless. According to Kant, chaos 
 would be the highest exhibition of the sub- 
 lime. The word " form " as used in this con- 
 nection has sometimes been misunderstood. 
 Even Vischer urges that everything has 
 form. " The hippopotamus has a form, but 
 what a form it is ! " By form is meant a 
 proportion among the various parts that per- 
 mits them to be taken together as a unity in 
 
i 9 2 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 which the ideal that the object represents is 
 distinctly manifested. The hippopotamus 
 is formless in the sense that in it the unity 
 of life is not distinctly manifested as in, for 
 instance, the antelope. The reason that the 
 formless has been regarded as the best 
 medium of sublimity is the fact that it is 
 difficult to realize the vastness of a structure, 
 all the parts of which are perfectly propor- 
 tioned to one another. Many have thus 
 expressed disappointment at the first im- 
 pression produced by the basilica of St. 
 Peter at Rome, and by Niagara Falls. So 
 far as the Basilica is concerned, many doubt- 
 less leave it with no real sense of its immen- 
 sity. When, however, by closer study one 
 has come to feel some sense of the actual 
 vastness of the pile, the perfection of its form 
 does not at all lessen the recognition of its 
 sublimity. In my first visit to Rome as a 
 youth I reached this impression in a manner 
 hardly compatible with the conventional 
 dignity of more mature years, namely, by 
 lying on my back on the pavement and 
 gazing up into the dome. As I gazed it 
 expanded and soared, till I had some real 
 sense, however imperfect, of its magnitude. 
 A yet more intense feeling of the same 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 193 
 
 kind has been doubtless produced in most 
 by lying and looking up into the sky. In 
 this case the effect is deepened, not merely 
 by the immeasurably greater breadth and 
 height of the object contemplated, but also 
 by the fact that the sky does not seem, like 
 the dome of the temple, a solid arch, but 
 it tempts the eye to penetrate it. 
 
 It is thus true that a certain formlessness 
 or disproportion makes the sense of sublimity 
 more easy to be reached. We see this in 
 the play of the mighty forces of nature. We 
 see it in abrupt and jagged precipices, and in 
 the terrible might of the tempest. The same 
 is true in life. It is easier to feel the power 
 that shows itself in destruction than that 
 which shows itself in construction. Men 
 stand more in awe of Julius Caesar who 
 raged through the earth, conquering every 
 foe that rose against him, than of Augustus, 
 who reared the magnificent structure of the 
 Roman Empire. Only by careful thought 
 and observation, like those which make us 
 feel the stupendous nature of St. Peter's, can 
 we realize that the career of Augustus Caesar 
 is one of the most sublime that the world 
 has seen. In like manner it is more easy to 
 feel the sublimity of a partial, than of a com- 
 13 
 
i 9 4 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 plete, nature ; of sin than of virtue. Byron 
 impresses the superficial imagination as nearer 
 sublimity than Wordsworth, the Satan of 
 Milton as more sublime than his Deity. 
 
 The same distinction meets us in literature. 
 In the " Paracelsus " of Browning we have 
 in Paracelsus and Aprile the two halves of 
 an ideal humanity. Paracelsus, who would 
 know and only know, looms vaster than 
 human through this very imperfection. In 
 the same poem we have vast and vague the 
 personification of the human race, as it grad- 
 ually awakens to full consciousness and 
 strength : — 
 
 " O long ago 
 The brow was twitched, the tremulous lids astir, 
 The peaceful mouth disturbed ; half uttered speech 
 Ruffled the lip, and then the teeth were set, 
 The breath drawn sharp, the strong right hand clenched 
 
 stronger, 
 As it would pluck a lion by the jaw ; 
 The glorious creature laughed out even in sleep ! 
 But when full roused, each giant-limb awake, 
 Each sinew strung, the great heart pulsing fast, 
 He shall start up and stand on his own earth, 
 Thence shall his being date, — thus wholly roused, 
 What he achieves shall be set down to him. ,, 
 
 The rude strength of Michael Angelo pro- 
 duces an effect of sublimity that could hardly 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 
 
 l 95 
 
 be reached by more delicately finished work. 
 Longfellow's poem on "The Lighthouse" 
 affords a striking example of the effect that 
 may be produced by a few strong touches 
 and the omission of all minor details, when 
 the object that is represented is in itself 
 sublime. Especially is this effect seen in 
 the second of the two following lines : — 
 
 " The sea-bird wheeling round it, with the din 
 Of wings and winds and solitary cries/' 
 
 We may thus understand the effect of 
 obscurity in heightening the sense of sub- 
 limity. In a vast cathedral, where all the 
 details are visible in the light of the morn- 
 ing, the effect of sublimity is much less felt 
 than in the dimness of the closing day, when 
 the arches seem to soar the loftier because 
 their outline shows itself apart from the 
 lighter ornamentation that somewhat lessens 
 their effect. The sea, also, seems sometimes 
 more sublime in the night, when we can only 
 hear the rote of the surf, than it did when it 
 stretched before us in the broad light of 
 day. When its wider expanse is hidden by 
 a mist, and we can see only the line of waves 
 breaking upon the beach, it seems often 
 more sublime than when the sight can follow 
 
196 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 it to the horizon's edge. The Jungfrau 
 mountain is never so sublime as when its 
 base and its flanks are wrapped with clouds, 
 and the summit alone is seen, looking down 
 upon us almost from the mid-heaven. 
 
 It will be noticed that while a certain 
 vagueness may sometimes make the sublime 
 easier of apprehension, this vagueness must 
 always exist in connection with something 
 clearly defined. The imagination always 
 needs a definite stimulus. It is sometimes 
 forgotten that there cannot be even mystery 
 without knowledge. The clearer the knowl- 
 edge the deeper the mystery which it sug- 
 gests. The same must be true of that 
 sublimity which springs from mystery. We 
 thus may understand something of the power 
 of music to aid in the production of sublime 
 effects. It is on the one side so sharply 
 defined, and on the other so vague and 
 boundless, that it may easily produce an 
 impression of sublimity. It is especially 
 fitted to assist in the production of a feeling 
 of the supernatural, of the presence of some- 
 thing which the imagination cannot picture. 
 In saying this I have had in mind its use in 
 one of Wagner's operas, for instance ; or in 
 any case where the supernatural content is 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 197 
 
 vaguely suggested. A like effect may, how- 
 ever, sometimes be produced by the music 
 itself with no suggestion from without, as 
 sometimes in a symphony. 
 
 I have wished thus to do justice to the 
 truth there is in the theories that make the 
 formless and the vague elements of the sub- 
 lime. Under certain circumstances they do 
 make the apprehension of the sublime more 
 easy. They are, however, not the essential 
 conditions of it ; and it is, I conceive, wholly 
 a mistake to find in these a distinction be- 
 tween beauty and sublimity. In the first 
 place, the beautiful may be as formless as 
 the sublime. How charming is some moun- 
 tain cataract with the spray blown into irregu- 
 lar and changing shapes at its feet ! How 
 wilfully the brook plays along its course! — 
 
 " I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance 
 Among my skimming swallows ; 
 I make the netted sunbeams dance 
 Against my sandy shallows.' ' 
 
 Thus does Tennyson interpret the music 
 of the brook ; and the very waywardness 
 and formlessness create its charm. 
 
 In the second place the sublime is often, 
 I am inclined to think most often, beautiful. 
 
198 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 We may take what examples we will, and we 
 find sublimity continually clothing itself in 
 beauty. What could be more sublime, and 
 what could be more beautiful, than the snow 
 mountains of Switzerland ? Shall we call 
 the Falls of Niagara sublime or beautiful? 
 Certainly they are both. If there is sub- 
 limity anywhere it is there ; and yet one 
 often feels the supreme beauty more than 
 the sublimity. Even when one stands at the 
 very foot of the falls by the Cave of the 
 Winds, and is lashed by their spray, and 
 deafened by their roar, even then one feels 
 no less their ethereal beauty ; and the circling 
 rainbow in the centre of which one stands 
 seems the natural interpreter of the whole. 
 Never did I feel the sublime to be more 
 beautiful than at my first vision of these 
 falls. It was in the evening, and guided 
 simply by their roar I found myself suddenly 
 looking down upon them. Below, the 
 depths were black in the night, except for 
 the glory of the whiteness and sparkle of the 
 descending waters, while over them hovered 
 a perfect lunar rainbow. In such a pres- 
 ence the beauty adds to the sublimity. The 
 plunging mass of white foam and spray seems 
 so ethereal in its loveliness that we feel all 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 
 
 99 
 
 the more the terrible might of the waters 
 thundering in their fall. 
 
 The sense of beauty, as we have seen, 
 springs from our delight in the freedom and 
 perfection of nature ; that of sublimity arises 
 from our joy in the freedom and perfection 
 of its strength. The double feeling, that of 
 pain and joy, united or following one another, 
 which is so generally referred to in the dis- 
 cussions of this theme, arises, when it exists, 
 from our sense of the contrast between our 
 insignificance and the strength and the vast- 
 ness with which we are surrounded. This 
 contrast is most strongly marked where there 
 is some sense of peril, where, as in the case 
 already referred to, one is upon a vessel that 
 seems but a mere shell among the waves 
 which are carrying on their wild sport about 
 it and beneath it. As the boat that seems 
 so little and fragile rises and sinks, rolls and 
 pitches, one may give way to terror. The 
 sense of beauty may, however, be stronger 
 than the terror. One may rejoice in the 
 joy of the elements. To one who has risen 
 above the sense of personal peril, the sea, 
 even at its wildest, is beautiful. It is only 
 our terror that speaks of the angry waters, 
 or can call them, as Kant does, horrible. 
 
200 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The strength of the sea, if giving up all 
 thought of danger and safety we put any- 
 human emotion into it, can be considered 
 only as a glad strength. In the exaltation 
 which the sense of sublimity brings we enter 
 into this joy. Similar to this is, in all other 
 cases, our relation to the sublime. It may 
 not be physical peril that moves us, the fear of 
 being actually lost and swallowed up among 
 the forces of nature. It may be the sense 
 more or less distinct of the insignificance 
 of our individuality in the presence of the 
 stupendousness of nature. The individual 
 shrinks to nothingness in the comparison. 
 This loss of self-importance naturally is often 
 accompanied by an inward protest. The 
 individual naturally may shrink from suffer- 
 ing himself to be thus lost in the vastness 
 of the universe. Some are unable to get 
 beyond this shrinking which may even 
 assume the form of a vague terror. Where 
 the sense of sublimity is truly felt, however, 
 this shrinking is overcome. It is replaced 
 or accompanied by a joy and an exaltation. 
 To some minds this joy comes without the 
 struggle, though even in this case there is 
 the sense, however little it may be developed 
 into consciousness, of the measureless dis- 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 201 
 
 parity of which I have spoken. This joy- 
 may arise from various aspects of the re- 
 lation. The sense of the infinite may be 
 aroused as the philosophers have so often 
 affirmed. There may come, according to 
 the opinion of Kant, a sense of spiritual 
 immensities to which the material immen- 
 sity is as nothing. Primarily, however, and 
 most simply it is, as it appears on its face, 
 a delight in the manifestation of nature, 
 especially when the measureless force that 
 awes us has clothed itself, as it so often does, 
 in the garment of beauty. We find a like 
 relation, which is easier to understand, in 
 the veneration which is felt towards some 
 noble character. In such veneration there is 
 also the element of awe, but this awe is itself 
 a pleasure, for it introduces us to the con- 
 templation of virtue or genius, delighting in 
 which we forget our own limitations ; or else 
 we feel that this superiority to ourselves is 
 the most natural thing in the world, and we 
 glory in this transcending excellence. The 
 philosophers have for the most part been un- 
 willing to believe that there could be any- 
 thing in nature to excite an awe like this. 
 Explain it as we will, or leave it unexplained, 
 nature does have this power over us. We 
 
202 THE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 may say, as I have said, that we have such 
 sympathy with nature that we rejoice in its 
 power and beauty as if they were our own. 
 We may say, perhaps more truly, that it 
 is a sense of the divine life in the world that 
 is about us. However we may explain it, it 
 is the giving up of ourselves to a larger life. 
 This may, indeed, take the form of cynicism, 
 as it does sometimes in the poems of Byron, 
 who seems to rejoice in the littleness of 
 human nature in its pitiful contrast with the 
 sublimities of the external world. In this 
 case, the spirit of the cynic has transcended 
 itself and made itself one with the stupen- 
 dousness of nature. More often, however, 
 it is the simple, natural, surrender of one's 
 self to that which is unspeakably vaster, and 
 more magnificent. In this mingled awe 
 and exaltation we have one of the most beau- 
 tiful manifestations of human nature. This 
 self-surrender is in the aesthetic world what 
 self-denial is in the moral world. The ex- 
 perience is in itself a healthful one. There 
 are persons so full of conceit or of self-con- 
 sciousness that a moment of self-forgetful ness 
 in the joy of what is infinitely above and 
 beyond them would bring, we can but think, 
 a new element of peace and strength into 
 their lives. 
 
OF THE SUBLIME 203 
 
 Goethe exclaims through the lips of 
 Faust, — 
 
 " Das Schaudern ist der Menscheit bestes Theil." 
 
 When Faust said these words he was on the 
 point of descending to the awful presence of 
 the " mothers," to the region of the formless 
 out from which all forms proceed. The 
 shudder that he felt was the awe of sublimity. 
 We may place the possibility of this at least 
 among the best elements of humanity. It 
 implies the possibility of a sense of that 
 which infinitely transcends our little human 
 lives, and a joy in this transcendence. It 
 implies the possibility of giving up our self- 
 importance and of a childlike delight in that 
 which is larger and stronger, or in any way 
 more worthy, than ourselves. 
 
SPENCER'S RECONCILIATION OF 
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION 
 
SPENCER'S RECONCILIATION OF 
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION 
 
 The works of Herbert Spencer exhibit the 
 latest form of the positive philosophy, and 
 foreshadow its future development. Rev- 
 erent and bold, — reverent for truth, though 
 not for the forms of truth, and not for much 
 that we hold true, — bold in the destruction 
 of error, though without that joy in de- 
 struction which often claims the name of 
 boldness, — these works are interesting in 
 themselves and in their relation to the earnest 
 thought of the time. They seem at the 
 first sight to form the turning-point in the 
 positive philosophy ; but closer examination 
 shows us that it is only a new and marked 
 stage in a regular growth. It is the positive 
 philosophy reaching the higher realities of 
 our being, and establishing what before it 
 ignored, because it had not reached, and by 
 ignoring seemed to destroy. This system 
 formerly excluded theology and pure psy- 
 chology. In the works of Spencer we have 
 the rudiments of a positive theology, and an 
 
2o8 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 immense step towards the perfection of the 
 science of psychology. 
 
 In witnessing the increasing violence of 
 any destructive power, it is hard to free 
 ourselves from a certain shrinking terror, 
 even if we know that there are barriers which 
 this power cannot pass. When the tempest 
 drives the flowing tide, with what seems 
 irresistible might, against the shore, it is 
 hard to keep wholly free from dread, even 
 though we know that the " Thus far and no 
 farther" has been written by the hand of 
 God on the eternal rocks. So, many clear 
 heads and trusting hearts felt a certain un- 
 acknowledged terror in the presence of that 
 philosophy which seemed sweeping away 
 what was dearest to their faith, even while 
 they knew the limits which bound it. 
 
 Before considering the relation which the 
 works of Spencer bear to our religious 
 thought, let us look for a moment at those 
 limitations which were imposed upon this 
 positive philosophy by its very nature. We 
 will not speak of the most obvious and real 
 of these, — the fact that it left out of the 
 account one whole department of our being, 
 for this would be to assume the whole 
 question. An argument drawn from this 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 209 
 
 would affect only the man of religious faith, 
 and it would affect him only so far as his 
 faith was strong ; that is, it would be strong- 
 est when it was least needed. The positive 
 philosophy, positive towards the sciences, 
 was merely negative towards theology. It 
 did not directly attack it. It only tried to 
 crowd it out. It attempted to do this in 
 two ways : first, historically ; secondly, dem- 
 onstratively. The historical method was 
 this. It showed how every science had 
 passed through the three stages of theologi- 
 cal, metaphysical, and positive. The first 
 of these stages was still further subdivided 
 into the periods of Fetichism, Polytheism, 
 and Monotheism. All the sciences had 
 passed through these forms except the new 
 and incomplete science of sociology. The 
 direct hand of God was acknowledged only 
 in our human life, and, as it had been ex- 
 cluded from every other sphere, the inference 
 was unavoidable that it would be from this. 
 But to make the inference from it valid, 
 these changes should have been complete 
 and radical. If it is seen that each of these 
 was only a matter of degree, that it was a 
 right principle too far extended, then the 
 inference is without logical foundation. Even 
 14 
 
210 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 Fetichism was only such an undue extension. 
 Fetichism was simply ascribing to all the 
 objects in nature what was due to some of 
 them, viz. consciousness and volition akin 
 to those of the beholder. The savage had 
 not drawn the line between the animate and 
 the inanimate. We still apply the principle 
 of Fetichism to men and to animals. Still 
 further, our most accurate science has hardly 
 yet drawn the line where Fetichism should 
 cease, that is, where animal life ends, and 
 vegetable begins. The principle, then, is 
 only modified and limited, not abandoned. 
 It is sufficient to show this in regard to the 
 first of this series of changes, to expose the 
 fallacy of the argument drawn from them. 
 Had we space, however, the process could 
 be continued in regard to the others. What 
 was essential in Polytheism is retained by 
 the monotheistic Trinitarianism, and no pro- 
 found Monotheism can long be free from 
 some form of Trinitarianism. Enough has 
 been shown, however, to prove that these 
 changes are merely limitations and modifi- 
 cations, and these can never pass into destruc- 
 tion and annihilation. Least of all could 
 this destruction be argued from them. 
 A similar fallacy is found in the other 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 211 
 
 method of crowding religion out of the 
 world. This method is, by showing the 
 presence of law everywhere, and the absence 
 of all arbitrariness, to leave no place for the 
 Divine will. But the same system, when it 
 comes to speak of the human will, makes 
 that regular and subject to law. If it seem 
 capricious, it is only because the circum- 
 stances about it change. If this be so, then 
 this regularity in the world is what we should 
 expect from the working of an absolute will, 
 which was master of its circumstances. The 
 account that the positive philosophy gives 
 of the world just fits the conception which it 
 gives of will, and gives us just such a world 
 as we should expect from a supreme will, as 
 it defines will. 
 
 Many persons conceive of fallacies in a 
 system as places to be attacked, just as a boy 
 imagines the eyes of the cocoa-nut to be 
 designed by nature as weak spots for the 
 insertion of his gimlet. Both overlook the 
 great principle of germination. 
 
 If any system have real vitality in it, its 
 points of weakness are its points of growth. 
 It cannot be destroyed from without; but 
 by the process of its own nature it will itself 
 break through its limitations, and transform 
 
212 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 itself into a more perfect form, or at least 
 into one that shall supply what it before 
 lacked. What we should expect from these 
 points of germination in the positive philoso- 
 phy would be, then, a theology so modified 
 as to be free from all arbitrariness and 
 caprice. In the works of Spencer we have 
 indications of the beginning of this process. 
 In the system of philosophy of which Mr. 
 Spencer has commenced the serial publica- 
 tion, we have first, under the heading of 
 " First Principles/' two divisions, viz. Part 
 First, " The Unknowable," and Part Second, 
 " Laws of the Knowable." It is with the 
 first of these parts that we concern ourselves 
 at present. In this he brings together the 
 ultimate facts of science and religion. He 
 takes up three forms of religious thought, 
 the atheistic, the pantheistic, and one form 
 of the theistic, and shows that each is incon- 
 ceivable, and therefore idle. He then takes 
 up, in like manner, the ultimate scientific 
 ideas, such as space, time, and force, and 
 shows that these are, in like manner, incon- 
 ceivable, and consequently unknowable. He 
 has thus shown that both religious thought 
 and scientific thought lose themselves, if we 
 trace them back far enough, in mystery. 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 213 
 
 And when at last he seeks a reconciliation 
 of the two, he finds it in this mystery, which 
 is common to both. The mysteriousness of 
 these ultimate facts is the one thing in com- 
 mon between all forms of religion, and 
 between these and science. Yet it is not all 
 mystery or uncertainty in either. The solid, 
 central ground is the certainty of one omni- 
 present and incomprehensible power. We 
 give the statement of this very important 
 result in the words of the author. 
 
 "We are obliged to regard every phenomenon 
 as a manifestation of some power, by which we 
 are acted upon ; phenomena being, so far as we 
 can ascertain, unlimited on their diffusion, we are 
 obliged to regard this power as omnipresent ; and 
 criticism teaches us that this power is wholly in- 
 comprehensible. In this consciousness of an in- 
 comprehensible, omnipresent power, we have just 
 the consciousness on which religion dwells. And 
 so we arrive at the point where religion and science 
 coalesce." 
 
 Such is a brief and meagre sketch of a 
 discussion which we would commend to be 
 followed in detail by every mind interested 
 in theological study. Herbert Spencer comes, 
 in good faith, from what has been so long a 
 
2i 4 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 hostile camp, bringing a flag of truce and 
 proposing terms of agreement meant to be 
 honorable to both parties. Let us give him 
 a candid hearing, and perhaps the terms he 
 offers, though we may not accept them in 
 their first and full form, may lead to a better 
 understanding, and open the way to a final 
 adjustment. In suggesting a few thoughts 
 designed to help forward this result, we shall 
 avoid all mere verbal criticism ; we shall 
 resist the temptation to expose inconsist- 
 encies inevitable to a transition state, and 
 shall confine ourselves to the broadest prin- 
 ciples involved in the discussion. 
 
 Our first criticism is, that Spencer looks 
 upon theology, or tries to do so, too much 
 from the theological standpoint. He con- 
 fuses the subject by bringing in discussions 
 which belong to theology, and with which 
 positivism has nothing to do. It is like 
 Lord Lyons interpreting the Constitution 
 of the United States to Mr. Seward. Even 
 with the distinctions of Atheism, Pantheism, 
 and Theism, the positivist, as such, has 
 nothing to do. He can, if we may be 
 allowed the paradox, conceive of Theism 
 only under the form of Atheism ; that is to 
 say, he must look at the whole circle of 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 21 j 
 
 being as complete in itself, with nothing 
 outside of it. If to this chain of causes 
 there be a first cause, this must be taken 
 with the rest as forming the sum of what is. 
 The existence of God does not explain ex- 
 istence. It presupposes it. Even if this 
 first cause be all-pervading and all-efficient, 
 if it be the working power in each subor- 
 dinate cause, — whether it be a part of the 
 whole, or whether it be the whole of which 
 the others are parts, — with them it makes 
 up the sum of that which is. And that 
 which is, a self-completing and self-sufficient 
 circle, with nothing outside of it, is that with 
 which the positivist has to do. The theology- 
 he has, if he have any, must be his own, and 
 reached in his own way. The giving up of 
 these cumbering remains of old discussions 
 will lighten the whole controversy. 
 
 Our next point of objection is, that the 
 terms of compromise he proposes are dis- 
 honorable to both parties, no less so to 
 science than to theology. They are so 
 because they do not involve the results 
 achieved by either. 
 
 To illustrate clearly the method of recon- 
 ciliation proposed, we will quote somewhat 
 in detail. 
 
216 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 " We have to discover some fundamental verity 
 which religion will assert, with all possible em- 
 phasis, in the absence of science, and which science, 
 with all possible emphasis, will assert in the absence 
 of religion, — some fundamental verity in the de- 
 fence of which each will find the other its ally. 
 
 " Or, changing the point of view, our aim must 
 be to co-ordinate the seemingly opposed convictions 
 which religion and science embody. From the 
 coalescence of antagonist ideas, each containing 
 its portion of truth, there always arises a higher 
 development. As in geology, when the igneous 
 and aqueous hypotheses were united, a rapid advance 
 took place; as in biology we are beginning to 
 progress through the fusion of the doctrine of types 
 with the doctrine of adaptation ; as in psychology 
 the arrested growth recommences, now that the 
 disciples of Kant and those of Locke have both 
 their views recognized in the theory that organ- 
 ized experiences produce forms of thought; as in 
 sociology now that it is beginning to assume a 
 positive character, we find a recognition of both 
 the party of progress and the party of order as each 
 holding a truth, which forms a needful complement 
 to that held by the other ; — so must it be, on a 
 grander scale, with religion and science. To un- 
 derstand how science and religion express opposite 
 sides of the same fact, — the one its near or visible 
 side, and the other its remote or invisible side, — 
 this is what we must attempt, and to achieve this 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 217 
 
 we must profoundly modify our general theory of 
 things. . . . 
 
 " We have found a priori reason for believing 
 that in all religions, even the rudest, there lies a 
 hidden, a fundamental verity. We have inferred 
 that this fundamental verity is that element com- 
 mon to all religions, which remains after their 
 discordant peculiarities have been mutually can- 
 celled. And we have further inferred, that this 
 element is almost certain to be more abstract than 
 any current religious doctrine. Now, it is manifest 
 that only in some highly abstract proposition can 
 religion and science find a common ground. Neither 
 such dogmas as those of the Trinitarian and 
 Unitarian, nor any such idea as that of propitiation, 
 common though it may be to all religions, can 
 serve as the desired basis of agreement; for sci- 
 ence cannot recognize beliefs like these : they lie 
 beyond its sphere. Hence we see, not only that, 
 judging by analogy, the essential truth contained 
 in religion is that most abstract element pervading 
 all its forms; but also that this most abstract 
 element is the only one in which religion is likely 
 to agree with science." 
 
 We can hardly understand how the por- 
 tion of our quotation which follows the dots 
 that take the place of an omitted paragraph 
 should have been written by the same hand 
 that wrote that which precedes them. Sup- 
 
218 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 pose the principle of compromise, suggested 
 in the close of our extract, be applied to the 
 controversies referred to at the beginning. 
 The abstract truth common to the igneous 
 and aqueous theories is, that the geological 
 structure of the world was produced some- 
 how. The truth held in common by the 
 disciples of Kant and those of Locke would 
 be that men had ideas. On the contrary, 
 each of the compromises referred to by him 
 were reached by the tenacity with which 
 each side maintained its own convictions to 
 the last. The Neptunian maintained the 
 action of water, the Vulcanian that of fire, 
 till the agency of both was at last admitted. 
 The disciple of Kant maintained that men 
 were born with certain forms of thought. 
 The disciples of Locke maintained that all 
 thoughts and all forms of thought were the 
 result of experience. The higher ground 
 referred to by Spencer is the ingenious 
 theory, that individual men are born with 
 forms of thought, the result of the accumu- 
 lated and embodied experience of the race. 
 Not what is most abstract, but what is most 
 concrete, in each of the opposing doctrines, 
 is the basis of the final and harmonious 
 adjustment. In like manner, if religion 
 
or THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 or 
 FORNAX 
 
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION 219 
 
 and science ever coalesce, this result will 
 be brought about by the steadfastness with 
 which each insists on what is most peculiar 
 to itself. Theology must maintain its high- 
 est intuitions ; science must maintain the 
 rigid accuracy of its own methods. Spencer, 
 in the result he has reached, does more to 
 help forward this adjustment than by the 
 basis he proposes. When he gives us, as 
 the infallible demonstration of science, that 
 all phenomena are the result of one absolute 
 and omnipresent power, we see the first step 
 in the process of reconciliation. Science will 
 demonstrate the fundamental truths of re- 
 ligion, while the extravagances of theology 
 will be corrected, and its confusion made 
 clear, by the same process. 
 
 Let us look more closely at the ground 
 thus reached. What is there in the results 
 of positive science that should lead to the 
 undoubting statement of Spencer, and that 
 should lead still further to the advance just 
 suggested? Positive science discloses the 
 unity and the development of the world. It 
 subordinates all laws to one law, and this one 
 law is seen more and more to be that of 
 development, of progress. The formula of 
 this development is found to be the same at 
 
220 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 every stage, namely, progression by differ- 
 entiation and integration. The result is the 
 same as when Newton found that the same 
 mathematical formula would express the 
 motion of the planets and that of an apple 
 falling to the earth. He saw, and the world 
 saw, that this common result must be pro- 
 duced by one and the same cause. This 
 was only one step in the demonstration by 
 which science has shown, and is showing, 
 the world and the universe to be a unity, 
 and if a unity, then the inference is unavoid- 
 able, that all its phenomena must be the 
 result of one and the same power. The 
 principle of progress or development by 
 itself explains nothing, but points unmistak- 
 ably in the same direction. Development is 
 a constant creation. If it is a creative act to 
 produce man out of the dust of the earth in 
 a moment, it is no less a creative act to pro- 
 duce him out of a nebulous mist, in myriads 
 of years. Nay, it is no less a creative act 
 to produce the human race, should it ever 
 be brought to this, out of the race of baboons. 
 For this would involve, unless our estimate 
 of humanity be exaggerated, the production 
 of faculties and powers which before had no 
 existence. We wish to commit ourselves to 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 221 
 
 no theory, but only to show that the most 
 extreme theories, so far as they affect the 
 theological argument at all, only make it 
 stronger. To trace back this grand pro- 
 cession to a nebulous mass, and call this its 
 cause, would be as if one should trace back 
 a bubble to a few drops of soap and water in 
 the bowl of a pipe, and call these its cause. 
 Trace the universe back, if you can, to this 
 nebulous mass ; then we see more clearly 
 than ever before that there is need of the 
 inspiring breath of God to give this shapeless 
 mass form and beauty, to breathe into it the 
 spirit of life, of understanding, and of love. 
 The formula according to which this develop- 
 ment takes place, the conditions under which 
 it takes place, cannot be its cause. Differ- 
 entiation and integration show the method, 
 but presuppose the power, of advance. To 
 attempt to explain this constant advance by 
 these alone would be to explain the passage 
 of water through a bed of clay by saying 
 that first the water softened the clay, and 
 then washed it off, then softened more, and 
 washed that away. This explains well enough 
 the method, but presupposes the force which 
 was urging the water on. This unity of the 
 world, presupposing unity in its cause, and this 
 
222 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 constant progress in the world, presuppos- 
 ing the constant action of this causing power, 
 were undoubtedly the facts which forced 
 Spencer, as they must, when they become 
 more clearly recognized, force all thinking 
 minds, to the recognition of the one absolute 
 and omnipresent power. But can the thought 
 rest here ? Do these constant effects give no 
 hint of the nature of the cause ? There are 
 further steps which must be taken. Spencer 
 himself gives some hint of, as well as makes 
 preparation for, the next. In speaking of 
 those who hold fast to the popular concep- 
 tion of God, he says, that they " make the 
 erroneous assumption that the choice is be- 
 tween personality and something lower than 
 personality; whereas the choice is rather 
 between personality and something higher. 
 Is it not just possible that there is a mode 
 of being as much transcending intelligence 
 and will as these transcend mechanical 
 motion ?" 
 
 If we compare the u ls it not possible" 
 of Spencer with the "must be" of Parker, 
 we shall see how near this Positivism is to a 
 positive Theism. The relation of the results 
 of Spencer to the religious sentiment may be 
 best seen by reading, in connection with his 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 223 
 
 works, Miss Hennell's very interesting and 
 earnest volume, entitled " Thoughts in Aid 
 of Faith." This book seems to have been 
 suggested by Spencer's writings. It certainly 
 occupies the same standpoint, and presents 
 the same results, under the form of senti- 
 ment. It shows how emotional religion fills 
 out every channel that is opened for it; 
 and how far such a channel is opened by 
 Positivism. 
 
 One of the greatest points of difference 
 between the modern philosophy and that 
 which came before it is, that the modern 
 places an impassable gulf between cause and 
 effect. The effect, it is maintained, gives no 
 idea of the cause. Mill, in his Logic, 
 ridicules the assumption that there can be 
 nothing in the effect which is not in the 
 cause, by the deduction that, if there be 
 pepper in the soup, the cook that made it 
 must have been peppery; which suggests, 
 and was probably suggested by, the familiar 
 parody, " Who drives fat oxen must himself 
 be fat." It is true that such reasoning may 
 be carried too far. An efficient cause, in 
 general, simply sets in motion the properties 
 of the object acted on, and its results are 
 varied by these properties. A spark is the 
 
224 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 same, whether it be produced by friction, 
 fire, or chemical action. On the other hand, 
 its effects vary, according as it falls on 
 powder, tinder, water, ice, or dough. But it 
 is also true, that the material of the effect 
 can be nothing but the material of that cause 
 which supplied the material. The causa 
 materialis is revealed by the effect. More- 
 over, when there is any final cause, this is 
 revealed in the effect. Leaving out of the 
 account all scholastic distinctions, and not 
 aiming at strict scientific accuracy, we may 
 say that causes are of two sorts, — those 
 which set in action the latent powers of 
 other substances, and those which furnish 
 themselves the substance of the new effect. 
 Physicians express this distinction very 
 simply when they speak of the exciting and 
 predisposing causes of disease. Now an 
 absolute cause furnishes everything. It is at 
 once the efficient, material, formal, and final 
 cause. Its action is not limited by other 
 substances, for there are no other. It is not 
 qualified by the material on which it works, 
 for it supplies this substance. We could 
 not say whether the form of its action is 
 imposed by itself from without, or whether 
 it results from the nature of the substance 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 225 
 
 acted upon, for subject and object are one. 
 Moreover, there being nothing to impede or 
 check, the end reached must be the end 
 proposed. Consequently, the results pro- 
 duced by an absolute cause must be in some 
 degree the revelation of the cause. 
 
 The same is true, notwithstanding the 
 admissions made above, of every cause, how- 
 ever limited. For how can a cause be de- 
 fined, except by its effects ? The nature of 
 a cause is to produce such and such effects. 
 It is the nature of fire to produce light, to 
 melt ice, to burn combustible matter. We 
 define a cause, then, when we say what it has 
 done, what it might do, and what it will do. 
 All that we know of anything is, that it is 
 the cause of certain effects, and the result of 
 certain causes. Of the absolute cause we 
 know, and can know, only the first. Of this 
 we know, that it produces thought, it sus- 
 tains thought, guides thought, and, by im- 
 pelling thought towards itself, makes itself 
 the end of thought. We know that it 
 causes love, maintains love, guides love, and, 
 by directing love towards itself, makes itself 
 the object of love. This the positivist must 
 affirm, and if he affirms this, it is, for prac- 
 tical purposes, very much as if he affirmed, 
 is 
 
226 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 with Jesus, that God is spirit, and with John, 
 that God is love. This same cause produces 
 also sorrow and suffering. But, so far as we 
 can see, we perceive these to be only means 
 for an end, which is the opposite of these. 
 And however it may be with these, it must 
 remain true that the most complete and 
 highest results of a cause are the truest reve- 
 lation of it. This is evident from what we 
 have said of the nature of the definition of a 
 cause. These highest results show most per- 
 fectly what it is the nature of the cause to 
 effect. If we wish to form a conception of 
 the force of attraction, we should not think 
 of reckoning the power that it takes to 
 draw a pebble to the earth, but that which is 
 needed to hold the universe together. The 
 universe is, so far as we know, unlimited. 
 If it were unlimited, we know that this power 
 of attraction would hold the whole together, 
 because each new world adds to this power. 
 Thus, to form an estimate of the power of 
 attraction, we should have to think of un- 
 limited, that is infinite force. This we can 
 do, and in this we can believe, though it be 
 inconceivable. In like manner, to form a 
 thought of the absolute cause of all, we must 
 take what we are forced to recognize as its 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 227 
 
 highest results, and make these our measure. 
 These results are spiritual. They are 
 Thought and Love, which are the highest 
 attributes of spirit. These, then, form the 
 best revelation that we have of the absolute 
 cause. These are imperfect, but not there- 
 fore false in their revelation. An absolute 
 cause must reveal itself, more or less, at 
 every step. At every step the highest re- 
 sult reached is the best revelation. Suppose, 
 at each stage in creation, the world to have 
 a certain consciousness, by which it knows 
 that it is the product of one power, and 
 seeks to discover from itself the nature of 
 that power. The bare and barren worlds of 
 unmeasured vastness, stretching through 
 immeasurable space, would find in them- 
 selves the revelation of might only, of the 
 vastness of the power that caused them. 
 Attraction is pure, unqualified power. The 
 world of plants, the result of the teeming 
 fertility of the primeval worlds, would recog- 
 nize life as the truest revelation of the first 
 cause, because life is the highest that had yet 
 been reached. In the same way, passing 
 over intermediate stages, we, in whom life 
 has become thought, love, spirit, recognize 
 these as the truest revelation. What further 
 
228 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 is to come we cannot say; but as, from our 
 own standpoint, we can see how the revela- 
 tion in worlds and in plants was true, though 
 imperfect, so the revelation in us, while it is 
 imperfect, is yet true. No one has done 
 more to illustrate this point than Herbert 
 Spencer, though what he has done has been 
 without this intention. By showing how all 
 forms of life, with all forms of thought, as 
 well as all forms of progress, may be summed 
 up under one formula, he shows how what 
 is true at one stage, though imperfect, must 
 be true at all stages, and must remain so 
 forever. 
 
 In the same manner he illustrates the 
 right that we have to accept as absolutely 
 real what is only relatively so. He says : — 
 
 "Thus we may resume with entire confidence 
 those realistic conceptions which philosophy at first 
 sight seems to dissipate. Though reality, under 
 the forms of our consciousness, is but a conditioned 
 effect of the absolute reality, yet this conditioned 
 effect, standing in indissoluble relation with its 
 unconditioned cause, and being equally persistent 
 with it, so long as the conditions persist, is, to the 
 consciousness supplying those conditions, equally 
 real. The persistent impressions, being the per- 
 sistent results of a persistent cause, are for practical 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 229 
 
 purposes the same to us as the cause itself, and 
 may be habitually dealt with as its equivalents. 
 Somewhat in the same way that our visual percep- 
 tions, though merely symbols, found to be the 
 equivalents of tactual perceptions, are yet so 
 identified with those tactual perceptions that we 
 actually appear to see the solidity and hardness 
 which we do but infer, and thus conceive as objects 
 what are only the signs of objects ; so, on a higher 
 stage, do we deal with those relative realities as 
 though they were absolutes instead of effects of the 
 absolute. And we may legitimately continue so to 
 deal with them as long as the conclusions to which 
 they help us are understood as relative realities, and 
 not absolute ones." 
 
 This he says of such realities as time, 
 space, motion, force, etc. The same remarks 
 would apply equally to higher realities. If 
 we find the presence of mind and thought in 
 the world, or the results of a power, which is 
 practically the same as mind and thought ; 
 if this always has been so, and always will be 
 so, we are right in regarding this power as 
 mind and thought, even though it should be 
 higher than, and in some respects different 
 from, and not at all to be measured by, our 
 mind and our thought. If the positive 
 philosophy affirms it in one case and not 
 
2 3 o RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 in the other, it is because this system is 
 thoroughly treating the lower realities, and 
 just approaching the higher. 
 
 In the reasoning which we have used, we 
 have constantly spoken of some realities and 
 results as higher than others. The end we 
 have reached depends upon this distinction. 
 This is a point where the positive philosophy 
 is apparently most at issue with the religious, 
 — which is here identical with the common 
 sense of mankind. Spencer thus writes, in 
 speaking of the correlation and equivalents 
 of forces in the fourth number of his work. 
 
 " Many who admit that, among physical phe- 
 nomena at least, the correlation of forces is now 
 established, will probably say that inquiry has not 
 yet gone far enough to enable us to predicate 
 equivalence. And in respect of the forces classed 
 as vital, mental, and social, the evidence assigned, 
 however little to be explained away, they will 
 consider by no means conclusive even of correla- 
 tion, much less of equivalence. To those who 
 think thus, it must now, however, be pointed out 
 that the universal truth above illustrated, under its 
 various aspects, is a necessary corollary from the 
 persistence of force. Setting out with the proposi- 
 tion that force can neither come into existence nor 
 cease to exist, the several foregoing conclusions 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 231 
 
 inevitably follow. . . . Either mental energies, as 
 well as bodily ones, are quantitively correlated to 
 certain energies expended in their production, and 
 to certain other energies which they initiate ; or 
 else nothing must become something, or something 
 must become nothing." 
 
 We here meet, though somewhat vaguely, 
 the great point of difference between the 
 merely scientific and the theological point of 
 view. The common and abiding sense of all 
 men is with the latter. Life and thought 
 are not mere equivalents of their material 
 conditions, unless so far as some power may 
 have been latent in the physical conditions 
 imparted to them from something behind 
 and higher than themselves. The life of 
 mere sensualism is lower than the intellectual 
 life. An evil life is lower than a moral life. 
 This the human sense always will maintain. 
 A man stands higher than a brute. The 
 further our knowledge advances, the more do 
 we feel the difference between the crime of 
 killing a man, and killing a brute, or thou- 
 sands of brutes. All the pre-Adamite beasts 
 and reptiles together were not the equivalent 
 of a single human being. Science cannot 
 persuade men out of this ; though we may 
 admit to science the possible presence of a 
 
232 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 latent, imparted force in the lower forms of 
 being. We may illustrate this by the familiar 
 experiment of the ivory balls. A blow 
 struck on the first reveals itself in the motion 
 of the last. The force is latent in the inter- 
 mediate ones ; so a human spirit may perhaps 
 be regarded as the last of a series, which 
 first reveals the power imparted to the whole. 
 A better illustration would be that of a child. 
 The child is not the equivalent of the man 
 it is to become, yet there is imparted to it, 
 from the parent, the impulse of growth, 
 which growth is carried on by means of 
 absorption from the outward world. The 
 man, not the child, is the true image of the 
 parent. So the universe may be regarded as 
 at first the unconscious child of the first 
 cause. This absolute cause stands to it 
 in the place both of parent and permanent 
 condition. It gives it the first impulse as 
 parent, and imparts to it, when it needs, new 
 life, as the constantly present condition of 
 its growth. It is thus both father and 
 mother, both imparting and sustaining this 
 growing life. Thus does the universe, the 
 child of God, grow from its first uncon- 
 sciousness up into the more and more perfect 
 image of its cause, until man comes, " made 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 233 
 
 in God's image/ ' and humanity by slow 
 degrees develops this godlikeness. 
 
 We have thus shown how science, proving 
 the unity that reigns through the universe, 
 demonstrates that it is the result of one power, 
 and further how this is only one step of a pro- 
 cess that cannot rest, by which the results of 
 this one power must be seen to be, in some 
 degree, the revelation of it. We will now 
 look, very briefly, at some of the results of 
 this demonstration. 
 
 The first result will be, that, as science 
 demonstrates, step by step, the truths of 
 religion, they will become universal and 
 undoubted. The results of science, when 
 they have become really established, are 
 always so. All men have powers and in- 
 tuitions by which they might discern God, 
 but these intuitions are obscured by lack of 
 culture and by sin. Men like undoubted, 
 unquestionable authority. The authority of 
 the Church is broken into manifold frag- 
 ments. In the times of the mediaeval 
 Church, there seems to have been little real 
 unbelief. The worst men seem to have been 
 superstitious. This was because the learned 
 united to uphold the fundamental doctrines 
 of the Church. Science is beginning a 
 
234 RECONCILIATION OF 
 
 demonstration that shall again make religious 
 truth as universal and as undoubted as the 
 fact that the earth moves round the sun. 
 We shall have the old unanimity, but it will 
 rest on a stronger basis. 
 
 The same scientific process will throw 
 light on many other points. Thus, we unite 
 in believing that religion teaches goodness. 
 What shall a man do to be good? Moral 
 science and political economy are sciences 
 exact as any other, and these will teach us, 
 as they are rightly understood, what objec- 
 tive goodness really is. We all agree in the 
 belief in God's justice and providence. But 
 how hard it is to reconcile justice and mercy ! 
 How hard to understand the connection be- 
 tween special and general providences ! The 
 science of history will show us God's actual 
 dealings with men, — what justice and provi- 
 dence mean in this world. The soul not 
 only needs light and knowledge, but it needs 
 also the awe of mystery. For mystery, the 
 Church gives us mysteries. For that great 
 mystery which fills the soul with awe, it 
 gives us riddles which we cannot guess. 
 Science gives us true mystery. There 
 cannot be true mystery except by the side 
 of knowledge. To the savage, nothing is 
 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION 235 
 
 mysterious, because nothing is known. Only 
 when one has begun to know, does one feel 
 the majesty and awe of the unknown. 
 Science takes man from his self-complacent 
 isolation, and lifts about him the shadow of 
 a mysterious nature. We know what awe 
 there is in seeing a man in the midst of a 
 forest, dwarfed by the giant trees ; or in some 
 vast cathedral, where he seems lost in the 
 presence of such sublimity. This does 
 science do when it places man in the shadow 
 of this great cathedral of nature, — in the 
 shadow of the ancient growths of the 
 primeval world. 
 
 Revelation has been the salvation of the 
 world, for it filled with light the hearts of 
 those that were ready for it, and quickened 
 the intuitions of the souls that were hunger- 
 ing for truth. But it forced no one into its 
 fold. Nay, it was itself at the mercy of its 
 believers. If it lifted them up, they dragged 
 it down. Science will demonstrate the fun- 
 damental truths of revelation, and will settle 
 the meaning of it. 
 
 The religious intuitions of the soul have 
 been the salvation of the world, but they 
 cannot long be its only rest. Faith in them 
 alone forms only a resting-place in the soul's 
 
236 SCIENCE AND RELIGION 
 
 march. They need outward guides. They 
 need some common force which shall control 
 individual eccentricity, and correct individual 
 inertia or prejudice. A man will not rest 
 long in the simple utterance, " It is true, 
 because I know it is true." He must go on 
 to demonstrate what he knows. And this 
 demonstration science is beginning. 
 
 If we are Christians we may, then, well be 
 hopeful and fearless ones. We may reckon 
 all things as ours, may know no enemy but 
 sin, and hail every result of earnest thought, 
 not as complete in itself, but as one of the 
 steps up which the aspiring race shall mount 
 to grander heights. 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 Wherein consists the gain of history ? The 
 question implies a larger one, to which 
 its answer alone will furnish a solution : 
 Does mankind advance? Do the changes 
 of history involve corresponding gains ? 
 This question suggests the thoughts to 
 which I will call your attention at this time. 
 The question is vast and vague. It is so 
 vast that I shall be able to touch only two 
 or three leading aspects of it, such as may 
 seem most suited to this occasion. It is 
 vague, because it may appear doubtful where 
 the history of the race begins. Scientific 
 speculation points us back through vistas 
 almost interminable, up through which has 
 pressed the life of which our human life is 
 only the culmination. It would make the 
 history of our life identical with the history 
 of all life upon this globe. I shall not ven- 
 ture upon the tempting fields that are thus 
 thrown open. I shall not ask whether the 
 lowly Ascidian, in whose little sack was con- 
 tained, as we are told, all the possibilities of 
 
2 4 o THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 earthly life, was or was not better off than 
 we, his remote descendants. The question, 
 whether the dreamless sleep of this lowly life 
 might be considered as in any way preferable 
 to the fully rounded consciousness of the 
 present, would flow into the larger question, 
 as to whether non-existence is not after all 
 better than existence ; for if to sleep is better 
 than to be awake, then not to be is better 
 than to sleep. 
 
 Neither will I compare civilization with 
 the barbarism from which, as we are told, it 
 sprang. The gulf that separates the two is 
 now so wide that it cannot be easily spanned, 
 even by the help of the imagination. Bar- 
 barism contains so much that is foreign to 
 us, so much that is repulsive to us, that we 
 cannot enter into the heart of it. Our 
 thought of it is apt to swing from a sickly 
 romanticism on the one side, to a superficial 
 literalism on the other ; and even could we 
 make the comparison fairly it would involve 
 questions larger and more fundamental than 
 I propose to raise to-day. 
 
 As we avoid complications with scientific 
 theories on the one side, so will we avoid 
 theological complications on the other. I 
 will not take you to the garden of Eden, 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 241 
 
 that we may judge whether the so-called fall 
 of man was really a fall or an elevation. The 
 great mystery of evil we will not attempt to 
 sound. 
 
 Avoiding then all matters of theory, we 
 will take history as it actually, or, at least, 
 as it openly, begins. We will take it at the 
 moment, at least, when it begins properly to 
 be called history. Such a moment was that 
 when the Chinese, some three thousand cen- 
 turies before Christ, under the inspiration of 
 their emperor Fo-hi, awoke to the con- 
 sciousness of the higher life, and found 
 themselves with the rudiments of a science, 
 a philosophy, a literature, and a religion. 
 Such a moment was that in which the 
 ancient Iranians, under the inspiration of 
 Zoroaster, awoke to the consciousness of 
 the great conflict between good and evil ; or 
 that in which the ancient Indian raised the 
 songs, sweet and lofty, many of them, which 
 we find embodied in the early Vedas. The 
 true moment for comparison would be, could 
 we reach it, that which our Aryan ancestors 
 occupied at the time of their dispersion. 
 The nature of their civilization we can 
 guess with some approximation to the truth 
 
 from inherited customs and from the testi- 
 16 
 
242 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 mony of language. We can, however, get 
 the fullest revelation from the Vedic liter- 
 ature to which I have just referred, the 
 product of the children who stood the near- 
 est to them, and who received from them 
 the fullest inheritance. These ancient Ar- 
 yans were, as I have said, our ancestors. We 
 can look back and see them, dimly, in their 
 ancient home, that home which we may call 
 ours also. We can catch some faint vision 
 of their civilization, we can hear the distant 
 echoes of their songs. We find them al- 
 ready surrounded with many of the comforts, 
 many of the luxuries of civilization, and not 
 wholly free, though more free than ourselves, 
 from the vices of civilization. The family 
 was there, with its sanctity and its mutual 
 helpfulness. In them the race had begun its 
 life of thought, of faith, of aspiration, its life 
 of questioning and struggle, its moral and its 
 aesthetic life. They were our fathers. We 
 look back upon them over these four thou- 
 sand years, if we may use so definite a num- 
 ber where all is so vague and uncertain. 
 The space that separates us includes all that 
 we know as to the history of the family of 
 nations to which we belong. It includes the 
 wanderings of our race, their battlings, their 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 243 
 
 triumphs. It includes the beauty of Greece, 
 the stateliness of Rome, the philosophy of 
 Germany, the practicality of England, the 
 liberty of America. It includes the hoary 
 traditions of what we call the old, the science 
 of what we call the new. It is worth while, 
 as we look back to where our fathers stood 
 at the very beginning of this mighty process, 
 to ask ourselves whether, or wherein, we are 
 better or better off than they. 
 
 In entering upon the discussion before 
 us, it may be well to ask what interest we 
 have in its decision. On which side would 
 the natural faith that all is for the best range 
 itself? We are naturally optimistic, and I 
 think that we are apt to assume that faith in 
 the progress of the race is demanded by any 
 form of optimism. We ask, Can all the 
 experience and struggles of these long ages 
 have been in vain ? This faith in the steady 
 advancement of the world is specially strong 
 in the period of youth. So long as the 
 individual is gaining every day in strength 
 and knowledge and mastery of himself and 
 of the world, so long does he feel that 
 humanity is also making constant gains. 
 Perhaps the first feelings that, after all, this 
 may not be so, that the race may be, if not 
 
244 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 absolutely degenerating, at least stationary, 
 marks the moment when the first impulse 
 of youth has spent itself, when the man has 
 reached the highest point in his ascent, and 
 pauses before taking the downward path. 
 In many cases, however, this faith maintains 
 itself during the whole life ; and this is 
 especially the case in the youth of a nation. 
 The nation's advance is felt to typify the 
 movement of the world. The individual 
 catches the spirit of his people and feels 
 possessed of a perpetual youth. The con- 
 verse of this may be seen in the fact that 
 when the Roman empire seemed sinking 
 into decay, falling through the rottenness of 
 its own corruption, the belief became wide- 
 spread that the world itself was hastening to 
 its end. In the midst of the active, trium- 
 phant life of to-day, anything that casts a 
 doubt over the faith that universal progress 
 is the manifest destiny of man seems to 
 build a wall about the horizon which stifles 
 us by its closeness. Whatever truth there 
 may be in this faith, perhaps it assumes too 
 much. The faith of optimism may be pre- 
 sented in another form. If the world is 
 the best possible, should it not be at every 
 stage the best possible ? Would not our 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 245 
 
 faith be better satisfied with the belief in a 
 system of compensations, by virtue of which 
 no one age can boast itself over another. 
 I think that we are apt to assume too hastily 
 that the earlier exists for the sake of the 
 later. We are apt to think of childhood 
 and youth as existing for the sake of matur- 
 ity : might we not as easily look upon 
 maturity as existing for the sake of child- 
 hood and youth ? Because we like fruit we 
 look upon the flowers of the peach and pear 
 as existing for its sake ; but because we like 
 roses and lilies we take it for granted that 
 the seed vessels exist that flowers may be 
 produced. Whatever interests us we take 
 to be the final cause. So we men in our 
 philosophies look upon childhood and youth 
 as merely transitional stages. But why 
 might not a less interested observer look 
 upon children as we do upon the flowers 
 of the woods or the garden ? So we look 
 upon the earlier civilization as merely a 
 preparation for the later. Spinoza had a 
 great thought in his mind when he denied 
 the principle of final causes. Every moment 
 and every thing he felt had its end in it- 
 self. He could conceive of nothing as 
 existing for the sake of something else. 
 
246 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 The thought seemed to him to degrade the 
 world. We may not, perhaps, accept this 
 position in its completeness, but I think we 
 may at least affirm that nothing exists merely 
 for something else ; that however much 
 each may contribute to that which comes 
 after, each has sufficient excuse for being 
 in itself. This view applied to history 
 would introduce a great repose into the 
 scenes which are pictured there. We should 
 feel that history did not exist merely for 
 its consummation. You hurry through a 
 novel to find that John and Susan were 
 married at the end. But the interest, the 
 substance of the story, does not consist in 
 this. You read as much in the marriage 
 column of every newspaper. When you 
 have reached that the story is finished. 
 The child in the theatre is hurried on in 
 breathless eagerness to the last act of the 
 tragedy which seems to him to cap the climax 
 to the whole. But this is the moment when 
 the old play-goer is apt to leave. The play 
 for him is already over. The histories of 
 philosophy give us in few words the result 
 of this system and of that ; the young stu- 
 dent studies it, and fancies that he has got 
 the gist of all. As he grows older he learns 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 247 
 
 that the value of each system consists less 
 in its result than in its unfolding. It is 
 so in history. We hurry on from point 
 to point to reach the end, but the history 
 is going on all the time. Each moment 
 has its own worth and beauty. Our preach- 
 ers and moralists are apt to point to the 
 slowness of God's working, to check by 
 the thought our restless impetuosity of pur- 
 suit. The moral is a good one, but it is for 
 the most part too superficial. God, we are 
 told, was so many myriad of centuries em- 
 ployed in fitting up the earth for man, and 
 so many more in leading man up to the 
 place he occupies to-day ; God's plans 
 move slowly, but they reach their issue 
 without fail. If God's only object had been 
 to create man, or even man of the nine- 
 teenth century, I think that the work would 
 have been more quickly done. If the work 
 moved slowly it was because each stage in it 
 was an end in itself. If love brooded over 
 all, each was in its turn beloved. The plan 
 was accomplished at every moment. 
 
 I had a friend who in travelling thought 
 that he had learned no city till he had so 
 identified himself with it as to have some 
 feeling as to what it would be to live there. 
 
248 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 If we would study history aright, we should 
 so identify ourselves with every epoch as to 
 feel that it was worthy to stand out by itself 
 from among the rest, and have all minister 
 to it. We should then understand better 
 why it was that, as we phrase it, God did 
 not hurry through his work. The assump- 
 tions of our conceit might be disturbed, but 
 we should be brought into a healthier rela- 
 tion with the world. 
 
 On the other hand, as Ruskin affirms that 
 no picture is complete that has not an open- 
 ing into the infinite, so it may be that no 
 age is complete without the possibility and 
 the fact of a progression towards something 
 better, and that progress is thus essential to 
 the optimistic view even of the earlier epochs 
 considered in themselves. But even this 
 fact would put the ages upon a certain 
 equality. The same infinitude of possibili- 
 ties would stretch before the latest as before 
 the earliest; and in the presence of this 
 great fact the later would hardly exult itself 
 overmuch in respect to the earlier. 
 
 Among the circumstances that may tend 
 to the exaggeration of the actual rate of 
 progress which society may be making, is 
 found the fact that we start in our estimate 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 249 
 
 from some comparatively recent period of 
 history. We look back, for instance, to the 
 period of persecution. Looking back upon 
 such points, we feel, truly, that we have 
 actually advanced. I need hardly remark 
 that the sweeping away of abuses that have 
 been produced in the course of history does 
 not imply that history itself is an advance. 
 A man who is rowing up a stream may, 
 through a moment of inadvertence, or 
 through the striking of some fierce rapid, 
 be whirled backward down the stream up 
 which he has advanced with so much diffi- 
 culty. When he recovers himself, and be- 
 gins again to ply the oar, he advances, 
 certainly, but would hardly consider himself 
 as making actual progress. We may illus- 
 trate the same thing by the triumphs of the 
 medical profession. This is continually 
 accomplishing wonders in the struggle 
 against death, yet death, in every individ- 
 ual case, wins the victory at last, and that 
 too, in almost every case, before the natural 
 term of life has been reached; and in spite 
 of all discovery and all improvement the 
 average length of life has not materially 
 increased. The profession finds enough to 
 do to enable the world to hold its own 
 
250 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 against the rapidly increasing strength and 
 hurry of the current. Much of the so- 
 called advance of our civilization is of this 
 nature. It enables us to hold, or to regain, 
 our own. Then, too, I think that we are 
 apt to look upon the past in the most 
 unfavorable light. Thus, for instance, we 
 think of the Roman empire as a period of 
 universal corruption. We forget the state- 
 ment of Gibbon, that the period between 
 the death of Domitian and the accession of 
 Commodus, a period of about ninety years, 
 was that in which the condition of the 
 human race was the most happy and 
 prosperous. 
 
 On the other hand, facts are often in- 
 sisted upon for the purpose of lowering our 
 pride, which, properly understood, would 
 increase it. Thus we are told how the 
 Chinese anticipated many of the discoveries 
 of which we boast ; that they discovered, 
 for instance, and applied the properties of 
 the magnetic needle in the twelfth century 
 before Christ; or that the Egyptians pos- 
 sessed mechanical appliances which sur- 
 passed anything with which we are ac- 
 quainted. A further question, however, 
 arises with respect to the relation of these 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 251 
 
 discoveries and inventions to the general 
 mass of knowledge, and the use that was 
 made of them. If I wished to exalt our 
 period I would take just such a fact as this 
 early discovery of the magnetic needle by 
 the Chinese. I would show that with them 
 it was a single fact, accidentally hit upon, 
 while with us it has its place in the great 
 organized body of scientific knowledge ; and 
 I would ask, What have the Chinese accom- 
 plished with the magnetic needle through 
 all these centuries ? Europe has by its aid 
 explored the ocean ; it has penetrated to the 
 Arctic seas ; it has discovered new worlds ; 
 what have the Chinese to show for its pos- 
 session ? This comparison makes clear that 
 what with them was an accident, with us is 
 an integral part of our civilization. Or what 
 has Egypt to show for its wonderful machi- 
 nery ? Its most characteristic work would 
 seem to be the pyramids, which are impos- 
 ing indeed, but which are simply symmetri- 
 cal piles of stone. 
 
 If, after having thus cleared away certain 
 prejudices, on the one side and the other, 
 we now look directly at the field before us, 
 our civilization divides itself into two ele- 
 ments : the one that of life, the other that of 
 
252 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 thought. The world that opens before us 
 is so vast and complex as to discourage all 
 attempt at presentation, but we shall seek to 
 distinguish only the most general tendencies. 
 These can perhaps be presented in few 
 words, and if the statement be true, its truth 
 will be obvious with very little proof or 
 illustration. And we shall pass with special 
 rapidity over the first of these elements, 
 dwelling chiefly upon the second, as more 
 in accordance with the character of this 
 occasion. 
 
 It is a universally admitted fact that the 
 tendency of our society is towards individ- 
 ualization. This tendency is based upon 
 what may be called the arithmetical view of 
 life ; the view, namely, that regards society 
 as made up of units, any one of which is 
 equal to any other. The early society we 
 may perhaps assume to be, under one form 
 or another, patriarchal. It was thus an 
 organization from which each individual 
 derived his worth, in which each had his 
 place, and in which, while true to his posi- 
 tion, each had his function and his support. 
 In time of scarcity all indeed suffered to- 
 gether, but the prosperity of the whole 
 involved the prosperity of each. There was 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 253 
 
 a lack of stimulus, but there was security ; 
 there was a lack of enterprise, but there were 
 the old-fashion virtues of fidelity and loyalty. 
 The so-called patriarchal institution of the 
 South was, in many respects, a mere travesty 
 of the normal condition of this form of life. 
 It was the creature of one age astray amid the 
 life of another. It was like a bird of night 
 bewildered amid the glare of day ; or it 
 was like a raft fitted for the smooth current 
 of the river, but soon dashed to pieces amid 
 the whirl of the ocean. Such was the patri- 
 archal institution, adapted to the repose of 
 earlier forms of society, but amid the inten- 
 sity, the change, the hurry, the turmoil of the 
 present, it was out of place and was thus 
 fruitful of evil. Thus the painful breaking 
 up and separation of families was a feature 
 of it hardly to be avoided in the circum- 
 stances of our present life. It was like the 
 breaking up of the river raft upon the ocean. 
 The new position of the individual is 
 more manly, more independent than the old, 
 but involves, in a multitude of cases, the 
 life-long, hand-to-hand battle with the wolf 
 at the door, of which the old knew nothing. 
 It leads labor and capital to be regarded as 
 opposed to one another, as having not 
 
254 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 merely different but antagonistic interests. 
 The strife between these two interests is 
 beginning to constitute one of the great fea- 
 tures of the time. Of course, organization 
 of some sort is the remedy ; but thus far 
 organization has taken chiefly the form of 
 trades-unions. These institutions are often 
 of the highest benefit, but in them the prin- 
 ciple of individualization has been carried to 
 its extreme. This involves a complete lev- 
 elling process, and the arithmetical view of 
 society reaches its extreme results. One 
 great object of the trades-unions should be 
 to render possible individual advancement 
 in any trade. The members of it should be 
 able to rise by means of it. But this would 
 break up the arithmetical equality of the 
 units, and the trades-unions seek to render 
 this impossible. 
 
 We are in the habit of defining progress 
 as the passage from simple to more complex 
 relations. If this be progress, and if the 
 individual exists for the sake of society, there 
 has certainly been advance; for our society 
 is infinitely more complex than it was once. 
 But if society exists for the sake of the in- 
 dividual, then our doubt returns ; for while 
 society has been growing complex, the life 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 255 
 
 of the individual has been, in many cases, 
 growing bare. The workman in a pistol 
 factory could once make a pistol; now he 
 knows about nothing except a minute part 
 of the pistol. In pin factories many men 
 pass their life in sharpening pins. Their 
 activity is literally reduced to a point. The 
 activity of teachers in our public schools is 
 becoming confined to the passing of scholars 
 over and over, not a single text-book merely, 
 but a few pages of a text-book. Thus indi- 
 vidual lives tend to become not mere units, 
 but unorganized units, mere points without 
 extension. Very much the same arithmeti- 
 cal principle is found in a democratic govern- 
 ment. It is a mistake to think that a de- 
 mocracy is specially unmanageable in a time 
 of crisis. Its great power is found in its 
 ability to meet crisis. In a crisis men are 
 valued not as mere units, but for what each 
 is worth ; and in a democracy the men hav- 
 ing most ability are soon pushed .forward 
 eagerly to the front. Under this changed 
 aspect of affairs the old virtues shine forth 
 in their old glory. But when the crisis is 
 over, we fall back upon the arithmetical 
 theory of life : one unit is worth as much as 
 another. No longer is the best man sought 
 
256 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 for the place of trust. The offices are to be 
 filled by the people, not for them. Hence 
 come the cries of Rotation in office, and To 
 the victors belong the spoils ; principles 
 which, carried out, would lead to the destruc- 
 tion of a nationality, as truly as the disinte- 
 gration of the stone would lead to the down- 
 fall of the building of which it was a part. 
 I do not forget the immense advantages of 
 a democracy. Perhaps the greatest of these 
 is that of reaction against abuse. No de- 
 mocracy, worthy of the name, can be long 
 oppressed even by itself. It is thus a pro- 
 tection against the accumulated evils of 
 society. Compared with former tyrannies, 
 even with present monarchies and aristocra- 
 cies, it is to be preferred. But these evils 
 against which it guards are the products of 
 history, and the removal of them by history 
 does not leave us its debtors. It is as if a 
 river should sweep away in one generation 
 a sand-bank which it had deposited in a 
 former. At best liberty is not progress. It 
 is a condition of progress. Its worth de- 
 pends upon its use. 
 
 I know that the process that we have 
 described leads to great wealth. It develops 
 the resources of a state. But wealth is not 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 257 
 
 an end in itself: like liberty, it is a means 
 to an end. Its value depends upon its use. 
 So far as it is used for the promotion of 
 knowledge, for the production, or the popu- 
 larization, of real beauty, or for the ends of 
 philanthropy and religion, so far it may be 
 an object of just pride ; but so far as it 
 renders society feeble or corrupt, so far as it 
 is absorbed in extravagant tastelessness, so 
 far as it makes life more difficult instead of 
 easier, so far it is not a blessing, but a curse. 
 The poorest home beautified by taste, which 
 is no mean form of genius, is richer than the 
 costliest one burdened by deformities of 
 upholstery that represent merely money. 
 Labor-saving machines that make work ; 
 help that hinders ; luxury that burdens ; 
 comforts that enervate, are like an over- 
 abundant currency that gives everybody the 
 sense of being rich while the cost of living 
 is so enhanced thereby that all but the very 
 rich are poor. 
 
 But it is of its knowledge that the age 
 makes its greatest boast. The achievements 
 of science we feel to be its greatest glory. 
 In this is found the fruit of the weary years 
 through which the generations have toiled 
 up and on to the proud position which we 
 17 
 
258 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 occupy to-day. But here also the question 
 with which we started presses upon us with 
 as much pertinence and pertinacity as ever. 
 
 We find voices, and voices too of author- 
 ity, not lacking to throw discredit upon the 
 fact of gain. Goethe was fortunate in that 
 the scientific as well as the aesthetic world was 
 thrown open to him. He represented the 
 science of his day as truly as he did its 
 literature. He indeed opened one of the 
 lines of thought which has led to the richest 
 results. His great work, the Faust, was 
 doubtless an outgrowth from his own life. 
 The poem begins with a wail of sorrow for 
 the absolute impossibility of knowing any- 
 thing. Faust had studied everything only 
 to find that we can know nothing. The 
 Faust has been called the saddest of poems. 
 The consciousness of this hopeless igno- 
 rance is one of the chief elements of this 
 sadness, and the poem is all the sadder 
 because it, in this, expresses the feeling 
 which so many share to-day. 
 
 Goethe was probably the last man able to 
 represent all science. In these days science 
 is too vast to be condensed into a single 
 focus. A single branch of one science, if it 
 be studied faithfully, is enough to occupy a 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 259 
 
 lifetime. Goethe was fortunate in standing 
 at the parting of the ways. Perhaps few, if 
 any, at the present day have such varied 
 knowledge as Herbert Spencer. Perhaps 
 thus he, as truly as any other, may be con- 
 sidered a representative man of the age. If 
 he cannot fill this place perfectly, it is be- 
 cause no man can fill it. It is interesting to 
 notice that he takes up the cry of Faust, 
 only more cheerfully. He begins his work 
 by pointing us down into the abyss of the 
 unknowable. Alpine travellers tell us that 
 sometimes a terrible abyss is bridged over 
 by a reach of hard, drifted snow, so solid 
 that one can walk over it, for the most part, 
 in security ; so thin that a stroke of the 
 Alpenstock will pierce it, leaving an opening 
 through which may be discerned the blue 
 vacancy beneath. Herbert Spencer drives 
 his staff through the thin stratum of drifted 
 words, of consolidated forms of thought, of 
 congealed tradition which we have felt to be 
 so solid beneath our feet, and bids us look 
 and see the fathomless depths of the un- 
 knowable above which we stand. The very 
 words in which we express our science, the 
 very ideas which form its substance, the ideas 
 of space and force and the rest, which to- 
 
i6o THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 gether make up our science, these dissolve 
 themselves into irreconcilable contradictions 
 at our touch, just as a bit of snow, when we 
 grasp it, melts and runs out through our 
 fingers, leaving our hand empty. He tells 
 us indeed that what we call our knowledge 
 bears a certain constant relation to reality, 
 so that practically we have enough to guide 
 us in our lives, and bids us be content with 
 this practical sufficiency. But does this sat- 
 isfy the great longing for knowledge, for 
 knowledge for its own sake, which has been 
 the inspiration of the race? The practical 
 results of knowledge have been so vast 
 because they have been incidental. The 
 Chinese have cared for no knowledge save 
 that which is practical, and therefore their 
 arts have accomplished so little. Herbert 
 Spencer himself is not satisfied with this. 
 His inspiration is the pursuit of knowledge 
 for the sake of knowing. What practical 
 concern have we with the method of the 
 origin of life upon the world? what with 
 the succession of geologic strata ? what with 
 the thin nebulous matter out of which the 
 globe may have been formed ? As matters 
 of knowledge these things stir our deepest 
 life, otherwise they concern us not; and it 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 261 
 
 is questions of this nature that most absorb 
 the interest of Herbert Spencer. 
 
 I am not asking whether the result of 
 which I have spoken be or be not true, but 
 whether it be a thing to exult over. When 
 we look back at the noble lives of men who 
 have toiled after knowledge, who have toiled 
 cheerfully, hopefully, through all hardship 
 and pain, and have died fancying with joy 
 that they had done something to increase the 
 sum of human knowledge, and then look 
 upon this as the end, and utter, as the result 
 of all, the words that consumed the heart of 
 Faust, " We find that we can know noth- 
 ing," I confess that the end seems hardly to 
 crown the work. We might almost envy 
 our Aryan fathers, as they pushed forth 
 from the strand, full of the enthusiasm of 
 discovery, if now the voyage is practically 
 ended, and we must turn our prows in other 
 directions for other gains, loading our ships 
 with merchandise instead of truth. 
 
 Let us now leave the extreme results of 
 Herbert Spencer, and glance at those who 
 take the world more in earnest. Perhaps 
 we should first meet Biichner and those who 
 on the whole agree with him. These reduce 
 the universe to matter and force. Here 
 
262 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 again I do not dispute the result, I ask 
 merely whether it is gain ; whether even if 
 it be true and worth the knowing, as all 
 truth is, it is a discovery to be boasted over. 
 It is a very singular fact that if this be the 
 result of our modern science, we have 
 reached substantially the position occupied 
 by the Chinese some three thousand years 
 before Christ. The earliest book of the 
 Chinese, so far as it can be comprehended, 
 represents the universe as made up of two 
 elements existing in every object in various 
 proportions. Of these two elements, one 
 was active, the other inert. We may call 
 them, therefore, force and matter. The 
 modern science understands better the laws 
 of force. It can calculate the transference 
 of force ; but its elements are lifeless in its 
 hands. The matter is dead matter, the force 
 is aimless force. We have merely super- 
 ficial and mechanical relations. With the 
 early Chinese the elements were living, were 
 divine ; at once the substance and the rulers 
 of the world. And when I look at the liv- 
 ing world about me, I confess that of the 
 two these seem nearer right. At least, I 
 do not feel inclined to exult greatly at our 
 gain. 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 263 
 
 The views that I have considered are 
 extreme. They mark rather tendencies than 
 accepted results of our science. The truest 
 science has less of theory. It concentrates 
 itself upon the business right before it. This 
 business is, under one form or another, 
 analysis. Nothing is more inspiring than 
 its triumphs in this work, but at the last it 
 gives us, as it is its business to do, elements 
 in the place of the wholes which we put into 
 its hands. Now let us have the elements by 
 all means, but not at the expense of the 
 wholes. Of the two, these are vastly more 
 important. The sense of the glory of the 
 heavens is worth more than the knowledge 
 of all that the physicist can tell us about 
 them. The sense of the beauty of the 
 flower, the sense of the life that embodies 
 itself in its sweet and delicate form, is worth 
 more than all that science can tell us about 
 it; just as the genius of Shakespeare, the 
 thought of Plato, and the soul of Jesus, are 
 worth more than all the chemist or the 
 physiologist could tell us about them. The 
 burial urn contains the ashes of the dead, 
 but that which made their life no urn can 
 hold. And everything that lives, nay, every- 
 thing that is, this measureless universe itself, 
 
264 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 has its reality in its wholeness, not in its 
 parts. 
 
 Our Aryan fathers, if we may judge, as 
 before, from those of their children who 
 were most closely united with them, stood 
 with glad awe in the presence of a living 
 universe. When the poet sings to-day, — 
 
 "The sun himself shines heartily, 
 And shares the joy he brings,' ' 
 
 the words hardly have a meaning. The 
 mechanical view of the world is so habitual 
 with us that we cannot share the fine insight 
 which the words express. To our fathers 
 they would have expressed a simple truth. 
 The fire on the hearth, the breeze that swept 
 across the earth, the lightning that flashed 
 in the heavens, the dawn that ushered in the 
 day, the deep expanse of the heaven above 
 us, the blue depths into which our gaze may 
 press only to lose itself in the illimitable 
 reaches of light, — all of these were living, 
 helpful, and glad. All shared the joy they 
 brought. 
 
 They were not only living, they were 
 divine. I remember one night in mid-ocean 
 when the sea was specially luminous. 
 Wherever the surface of the water was 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 265 
 
 broken the strange soft light gleamed forth. 
 The wake of the vessel, the track of the 
 black-fish, the crests of the waves far as the 
 eye could reach, seemed touched with flame. 
 It seemed as if we were sailing on a sea of 
 light just hidden by a thin veil of waters, 
 and wherever the veil was broken through 
 the light shone forth. Something like this 
 seems to have been the view which our 
 fathers took of the universe. It was divine, 
 and wherever the uniformity of its surface 
 was broken through the divinity shone forth. 
 
 I grant that this was an extreme view, 
 in its details hardly defensible to-day. All 
 that I would urge is that perhaps our bare, 
 mechanical theories are equally extreme. 
 
 But, it may be urged, if our physical theo- 
 ries are too materialistic, our religion is 
 spiritual enough to counterbalance them : in 
 this at least there has been only gain. But 
 here we must notice that a godless world 
 implies a worldless God. There may be a 
 spot where pure spirit has its home ; but 
 here, upon this earth, the body without the 
 spirit we call dead, and the spirit without 
 the body we call a ghost. Just so far as 
 our view of the world is materialistic is our 
 religion ghostly. To speak more techni- 
 
266 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 cally, we cannot place the infinite and the 
 finite over against one another. If we 
 attempt this, instead of the infinite and the 
 finite we have two finites only. 
 
 Perhaps I may seem to have erred in 
 speaking thus on an occasion like the pres- 
 ent, to have shown too little sympathy with 
 the results that, in many aspects of them, are 
 the glory of our present age. If I fully 
 accepted the negative results which we may 
 seem to have reached, I think I should have 
 taken an hour less genial to urge them. 
 But I am a believer in the present and in 
 the future; I believe in the great law of 
 progress in the world of life. I believe, 
 however, that the analysis which I have just 
 offered is in the main correct. The ele- 
 ments which we have examined are the 
 peculiar elements of the life of the present. 
 If then the world is really gaining, the con- 
 ditions of the gain are to be found in just 
 these elements. That it is gaining can be 
 proved only so far as it can be shown that 
 these elements furnish the conditions of 
 advance. 
 
 Approaching the subject from this point 
 of view, we find that in the comparison of 
 the present with the past we have placed 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 267 
 
 the present at some disadvantage by com- 
 paring fragments of this with the whole of 
 that. The religion of our fathers, their 
 science and their philosophy, their material- 
 ism and their idealism, were all one. With 
 us the elements of thought as well as of life 
 have become differentiated. Each receives 
 separate treatment, and thus when compared 
 with the undifferentiated whole, each lacks 
 something that is found in that. But each 
 has thus become developed into a fulness of 
 detail that was before impossible ; and there- 
 fore just so far as they can be recombined 
 into a unity similar to the old, do we have 
 a fulness and a grandeur of conception far 
 surpassing that. 
 
 I think that we may assume as the first 
 and most pressing need of the spirit is to 
 feel itself at home in the world, to feel itself 
 at one with it. The Brahmins in their for- 
 est meditations uttered this thought in a 
 form clearer than has often been given to it. 
 Fear, they urged, comes from a sense of 
 difference between the soul and its surround- 
 ings. At the slightest hint of such a differ- 
 ence fear enters. They thought to remove 
 this sense of disquietude by affirming the 
 absolute oneness of the soul of man with 
 
268 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 the soul of the universe. This, however, 
 was a mere abstract assertion, so abstract that 
 it repelled all detail by making the consum- 
 mation of this union accomplished in uncon- 
 sciousness ; but none the less it is an 
 abstraction that contains a mighty truth, and 
 the need which it was designed to meet is 
 one that has been the stimulus of thought 
 and life ever since. 
 
 The great object of thought and of life is 
 to produce this sense of the oneness of the 
 spirit with its surroundings. The spirit 
 studies that it may find itself in the outer 
 world; it acts that it may impress itself upon 
 the outward world. This statement may 
 be denied, and especially the first portion of 
 it. We study, it may be urged, to learn 
 facts. But men do not study to learn facts, 
 they study to learn the truth which the facts 
 represent. Facts are interesting as they lead 
 to truth. We study facts that we may put 
 them into a form in which we may think 
 them, and thus get at the truth that under- 
 lies them ; and the more thoroughly facts 
 can be thought, that is, the more thoroughly 
 the spirit can find itself in them, the more 
 thoroughly does it feel itself at home with 
 them. 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 269 
 
 The great difficulty that most who are 
 not absorbed by the joy of actual explora- 
 tion find with the physical theories, or 
 habits of looking upon the world, so preva- 
 lent at the present day, is that in them the 
 spirit feels itself surrounded by foreign ele- 
 ments. The mind does not fully recognize 
 itself in them. Already a solution of this 
 difficulty is sought by an elevation of our 
 notion of matter, by bringing matter into 
 harmony with the spirit. Thus Tyndall 
 urges that matter should be exalted in our 
 thought till it is looked upon as the other 
 side of the great mystery, and equally 
 worthy and wonderful. A solution has been 
 sought by others by making thought a 
 property of matter, developed by it under 
 certain circumstances ; which view, however, 
 must not be confounded with that of the 
 Stoics, who made intelligence an essential 
 property of matter. These attempts come 
 from the physical side. From the meta- 
 physical comes the attempt to reduce atoms 
 of matter to points of force ; and, as we are 
 directly conscious of force through will, 
 these points of force assume a higher sig- 
 nificance, and the material is sublimated 
 into the spiritual. 
 
270 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 All these attempts fail of their end, be- 
 cause the fundamental antithesis is not 
 between mind and matter, but between the 
 unities, the wholes amid which alone the 
 spirit feels at home, and the atoms or points 
 with which science has to do. To the physi- 
 cal view the world is broken up, is ground 
 down, into infinitesimal atoms of points, 
 connected merely externally, and the whole- 
 ness is found in the conjunction and the 
 correlated movement of these. Here is the 
 great antithesis. The mind cannot think 
 the world of science, taken merely as such ; 
 and science cannot formulate the world of 
 mind. 
 
 The real medium between the internal 
 and the external, between mind and matter, 
 is found in the world of ideas. The mind 
 is at home among ideas, and among these 
 only, and so far as it finds the ideal element 
 embodied in matter, so far does it feel itself 
 at home with that. Who feels a statue to 
 be a material presence ? Who is oppressed 
 by the mass of physical details in a cathe- 
 dral ? While matter divides and subdivides 
 itself till it is finally lost in the endlessness 
 of the process, the ideal is one and absorbs 
 the diversity of the material into itself. 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 271 
 
 This ideal element also manifests itself in the 
 natural world. Our joy in beauty springs 
 from the fact that in it we find ourselves 
 face to face with this ideal element. This 
 is the life of the individual, it is the moving 
 power of history. This is the unity of the 
 universe. In the thought of God, said 
 Spinoza, the universe exists as a single idea. 
 So far as this ideal element is perceived in 
 the outward world, so far does the spirit feel 
 at home with it. 
 
 This thought brings us face to face with a 
 word the most misused of any in the Eng- 
 lish lauguage, misused, first, by extravagant 
 use, and afterwards by extravagant abuse : 
 I mean the word " teleology." Its true 
 use is not to be found in that view which 
 would make anything exist merely for the 
 sake of something else, but in that which 
 would make each exist for its own sake, and 
 also for the sake of something else, and in- 
 deed for the sake of all the rest ; just as the 
 carved stone of a triumphal arch exists for 
 the sake of its own beauty, and also for the 
 completion of those next it, and for the 
 strength and beauty of the whole. Neither 
 is it necessarily found in that view which 
 sees a special act of final causation in every 
 
=7* THE GATO OF HISTORY 
 
 the bottling of? tV Pr ° duCe Corks fo 
 found rathfr i n the 'Tl ^f^ i: 
 adaptability and in J l^' ° mutuaJ 
 movement of the whole d ° nWard 
 
 4*2£*£?r reference t0 -* 
 
 «tting myse lf back i ^ai"" 1 t0 be 
 W1 U not attemnf f„ : r dark a & es - I 
 
 consideration f JSfcP" * ^^ 
 authority of HuxleyTwho ^" 1 Uote ** 
 Descartes, shows the W , CSSay u P on 
 
 scientific thought f^** 008 of P^ly 
 fading men of scie nce 1"°,; enUmerate the 
 Geology under ^ e J h ° W recogjuzed 
 s.mply shelter m _ se ,f™ °. r * n ° L th er. I will 
 one who, more Kf u'^ the name °f 
 atte m p tea rswe P e D 7 s ^ "* ° ther > "as 
 
 teIeolo P gicalcoT:; P ti rTrtfef; n H fe r 
 Spencer. He sav* nf ,u ° Herb ert 
 
 beliefs, thatthera're partofTh 0118 re%i ° US 
 order of things Li f the constituted 
 
 ^e direct XitfcHf ** he «**» 
 
 what would appear L I U ? knowab 'e for 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 273 
 
 tendency of the times. He tells his disci- 
 ple, who might hesitate to utter his highest 
 thought lest he should disturb the faith of 
 others, that it is not for nothing that he has 
 in him the sympathies with some principles 
 and repugnance to others ; that he, like 
 every other man, may properly consider 
 himself as one of the myriad agencies 
 through which works the Unknown Cause; 
 and adds ; " Not as adventitious, therefore, 
 will the wise man regard the faith that is in 
 him." " Not for nothing," — what do these 
 words imply on the lips of one who has 
 refused to recognize final causation either 
 under the form of a plan or a tendency ; 
 who has refused to recognize even the tend- 
 ency in the living body to assume a certain 
 form ? They imply, perhaps, that when he 
 thinks formally, he can keep himself within 
 the artificial limits he has fixed, but that 
 when he thinks really, his whole intellect 
 comes into play. " Not for nothing," I 
 welcome the words, but I think we can 
 hardly confine them to a single class of 
 cases. If, for instance, the Spencerian 
 philosophy was to be inspired by the Un- 
 known Cause, all the circumstances that, 
 working through all these ages, have at last 
 
274 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 made the Spencerian philosophy possible, 
 would not have been left to the action of 
 external causes. " Not for nothing " is the 
 great questioning which marks our time. 
 " Not for nothing " also are all the faiths 
 and aspirations of the nature. " Not for 
 nothing " is all that combination of facts and 
 relationship, the myriad delicacies of organi- 
 zation which furnish the background for 
 these faiths and aspirations. Science has 
 educated even our unscientific minds too far 
 to let us admit a Deus ex mackina y however 
 great the occasion; and if Spencer exclaims 
 "not for nothing" is this mighty impulse of 
 thought that marks the age, we can only 
 answer, " not for nothing " is anything. 
 
 I do not refer to the name of Spencer to 
 settle anything by his authority, but simply 
 to show that one may speak of teleology and 
 yet have a foothold in this nineteenth cen- 
 tury. As soon as we admit this, as soon as 
 we recognize the ideal element which is the 
 life of all things, so soon do we recognize 
 the possibility of reconciliation between 
 ancient and modern thought. The ideal 
 element, taking up into itself all the results 
 of our analyses, assumes a grandeur and a 
 glory that had never been possible to it 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 275 
 
 before. Of old, men recognized the ideal 
 element only when it forced itself upon their 
 notice ; now we can see it everywhere. The 
 savage or the child can enjoy the beauty of 
 the flower. To the scientist, who is merely 
 a scientist, who tears the plant to pieces and 
 sees only that which remains, sees only that 
 which is technical and mechanical, the flower 
 is no more beautiful than the root. To the 
 man of science, however, in whose heart the 
 child still lives, who still has the sense of 
 the unity, the beauty and the mystery of 
 life, the root becomes hardly less beautiful 
 than the flower. To the man who unites 
 this twofold life, the ideal element does not 
 manifest itself here and there only, but 
 everywhere. The universe becomes, not 
 here and there, but at every point, transpar- 
 ent and transfigured. The atoms or the 
 points show themselves in their discreteness 
 only to be lost again in the unity of the 
 whole, which has become richer and fuller 
 by the change. Thus the new does not 
 supplant the old, but completes it. And 
 herein we see the reality of the world's 
 advance. By the combination and utili- 
 zation of our results, a fulness of life was 
 possible that was never possible before. 
 
276 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 How this principle applies to the differ- 
 entiation in our modern society we cannot 
 here discuss. I would merely say that the 
 education of all may make each share some- 
 thing of the fulness of our modern life, how- 
 ever narrow his individual lot may be ; and 
 further, that this differentiation of society 
 calls for and makes possible the ideal ele- 
 ment in statesmanship, just as the analyses 
 of modern science give fresh space and 
 power to the ideal element of thought. 
 
 I have spoken with more or less abstract- 
 ness : concrete examples may make my 
 thought more clear. For these we have not 
 far to seek. Two of our number, who have 
 recently left us, force themselves, in this 
 connection, upon our thought. One of 
 them showed himself the child of this large 
 century by the very circumstances of his 
 life. The child of both hemispheres, his 
 mind was enriched by what each could fur- 
 nish. He was, not merely by profession, 
 but by all the strength and enthusiasm of 
 his nature, a student and a teacher of science. 
 Not only did he make the science of the age 
 his own. The wealth of the age showed 
 itself worthy of our pride by offering itself 
 to his use, and opening new realms to his 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY 277 
 
 unwearied search. He was a man of detail ; 
 no fact was too minute or trifling for his 
 observation. But in the midst of all this 
 ponderous accumulation of knowledge the 
 heart of the child, the heart of love, of won- 
 der, the ever fresh sense of the beauty of 
 the beautiful, still lived in him. The ideal- 
 izing faculty accepted all this detail and used 
 it for its ends. It was said that he shrank 
 overmuch from theory. I do not know how 
 this may have been, but what we all know 
 is that he saw everywhere, in all the diver- 
 sities of the universe, the presence of a plan. 
 Just as a musical theme unites all manifold- 
 ness of variation into one grand all-pervad- 
 ing movement, the divine plan met him 
 everywhere and glorified the whole. Thus 
 to the child's sense of beauty, and the child's 
 joy in it, was added the trained insight that 
 saw that the whole was beautiful. 
 
 As Agassiz carried the ideal element into 
 science, Sumner carried it into statesmanship. 
 As the one was cosmopolitan in space, owned 
 by two continents, the other was cosmopol- 
 itan in time. The history of the past was 
 familiar and real to him as the life of the 
 present. He did not go to the past as a 
 student merely. In him it lived afresh. 
 
278 THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 His lips caught eloquence from the orators 
 of old, and the experience of the past threw 
 light upon the present. Upon the confused 
 and warring elements of our life he brought 
 to bear the power of an idea. To this he 
 consecrated himself. It has been said that 
 his nature was marked by an over self-asser- 
 tion; if this be so it is fortunate that his 
 lesser self was so absorbed into that idea 
 which was his larger self, that his self-asser- 
 tion became the assertion of this idea. The 
 hardest and harshest elements of the life 
 about him became the servants of this idea. 
 He forgave the hand that was raised against 
 himself, then, which was much harder, the 
 hands that were raised against his country. 
 And when he died the memory of his con- 
 secration and of his forgiveness united to 
 give fresh power to the idea which had been 
 his being. 
 
 I have said that the real gain of history is 
 found in the fact that in this age life may be 
 larger and fuller than in an earlier age. In 
 illustration I point to Agassiz and Sumner. 
 You may have differed with them in many 
 things, you may have criticised some of their 
 methods and results ; but I ask, confident 
 of the answer, In what other age would these 
 lives, so large, so full, have been possible ? 
 
THE GAIN OF HISTORY a 79 
 
 I am in this comparison referring not to 
 the personalities of these men, but to their 
 opportunities. There have been students 
 as earnest and childlike ; but when has the 
 world been thrown open to the gaze of the 
 spirit as it is to-day ? There have been 
 statesmen as pure and strong; but when, 
 save in these later generations, do we find 
 examples of a successful statesmanship, which 
 has taken note of man as man, which has 
 united the lowest and the highest in one 
 view? 
 
 I do not refer to these men as represent- 
 ing the ideal element in its most perfect 
 form ; but in part as symbols of the true 
 use, the use which will one day be actually 
 made, of the material which the age is 
 accumulating. At present it is overbur- 
 dened by details. It is the novelty and 
 abundance of these details that give to it 
 the aspect of materialism. At each newly 
 discovered fact in regard to the relation of 
 mind and matter comes the cry of material- 
 ism. But no fact can be more materialistic 
 than the fact that we have bodies. No 
 theory of the origin of the human race can 
 be more materialistic than the fact of the 
 birth of the individual. So soon as the new 
 
2 8o THE GAIN OF HISTORY 
 
 facts are familiar as the old they will become 
 spiritualized like the old. For spiritual 
 facts, though for a moment lost sight of, are 
 as permanent as any others, and more real 
 than all others, and in the long run incor- 
 porate all others into themselves, and are the 
 larger and fresher through every gain. So 
 that while our Aryan fathers saw more or 
 less grotesque, more or less sublime forms 
 of divinity, looking out from the earth and 
 the heavens, and saw more truly than those 
 who see no divinity at all, when the want of 
 the present is completed, every detail of 
 science shall add to the glory of the ideal, 
 and the spiritual shall be seen to be first and 
 all pervading as well as last. 
 
 Meanwhile, though another age shall lead 
 our work to its full completeness, we have 
 the joy of the seeking and the finding, and 
 may be content. 
 
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