Mon and Life (■Impel Addresses given at the Mendville Theological School GIFT or v — ^ RELIGION AND LIFE RELIGION AND LIFE M CHAPEL ADDRESSES BY MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY OF THE MEADVILLE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL :*••!>• BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH &f COMPANY 1909 Copyright, 1909 Sherman, French &+ Company V PREFATORY NOTE This volume comprises addresses made by members of the teaching community of the Mead- ville Theological School. The authors are men who are exempt from every dogmatic constraint imposed by institutions and are accustomed to shape and to utter their convictions in the atmos- phere of a chartered freedom. They are con- tent with the natural and unforced unity which is born of a common purpose and a common method of considering the religious life. The methods and results of Biblical Criticism and of the critical historical study of all religions have become long since the law of their thinking. The volume is not designed to illustrate the negative tendencies of the critical spirit, but rather to give expression to the affirmative faith animating men habituated to such conditions of theological in- quiry and so to evidence the present tone and spirit of this school of devout study. The se- lection of these addresses has been guided there- fore not by the need of completeness in discus- sion, but by the practical desire to apply the religion of free inquirers to the hearts and lives of men. CONTENTS PAGE I. INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE .... 3 Nicholas Paine Gilman. II. A DEFINITION OF RELIGION ... 19 Walter C. Green. III. UNIVERSALITY OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 43 George L. Cary. IV. THE PRESENT GOD 57 Frank C. Doan. V. THE JOY OF RELIGION 69 Francis A. Christie. VI. THE PROPHET'S FUNCTION ... 81 Henry Preserved Smith. VII. JESUS' DOCTRINE OF SALVATION . 95 Francis A. Christie. VIII. THE TRUE ATONEMENT Ill William H. Fish. IX. THE FAMILY OF GOD 129 Clayton R. Bowen. X. A SOCIAL GOSPEL 149 Nicholas Paine Gilman. XI. JESUS THE FULFILMENT .... 167 Henry Preserved Smith. XII. PROMISE AND FULFILMENT ... 179 Henry H. Barber. CONTENTS PAGE XIII. THE INVISIBLE HUMANITY OF GOD 199 Frank C. Doan. XIV. THE SERVILE LIFE AND THE FIL- IAL LIFE 213 Clayton R. Bowen. XV. THE CHOICE OF A VOCATION ... 231 Franklin C. Southworth. XVI. RETRIBUTION HERE AND HERE- AFTER 261 William H. Fish. I INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE NICHOLAS PAINE GILMAN INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind." — Mark xii, 30. I have chosen these words from Jesus' state- ment of the two great commandments as a text from which to discourse this evening on Intel- lectual Virtue. This is a portion of indivisible human virtue to which, in its larger aspects, preachers do not often attend; but to it the teacher of a complete ethic of life is bound to give a high place. They who assign it too low a place in their scheme of morals are wont to call any discourse upon it from the pulpit a " lec- ture " rather than a sermon. Such persons take too narrow a view of religion if they hold that only to be a sermon and appropriate to the pul- pit which says, even to tedium, " Be good," and never informs us how to be good, more especially how to be good as intellectual beings. One may well retort to such criticism that much preaching would be better, i. e., more effective, more good for something, if it exhorted us more often to beware of evils largely mental in origin and char- acter, such, for instance, as prejudice, narrow- mindedness, bigotry and partisanship. These are diseases of thought which corrupt life and vitiate real goodness of heart. The wise writer of Jewish proverbs well said: 3 i RELIGION AND LIFE " As a man thinketh within himself so is he," good or bad, sound or unsound. Our New Testa- ment writers, however, differed not only from the philosophy (i. e., the "love of wisdom") of the Greek, but also from the Old Testament type of religion in having comparatively little to say about wisdom or knowledge, and the pursuit of it, as a religious duty. Many of the Old Testa- ment writers dwelt fondly upon " the wise man " and his excellences. They cannot speak too highly of him, and they employ very plain lan- guage about his opposite, the simple one, the unwise man, as they do not hesitate to call him frequently the " fool " — a man who may be very good in some moral ways, but is obviously, to the wise, not good for much, possibly almost good for nothing, because of his folly, his lack of in- tellectual worth, of thinking ability, of power to see straight, and reason clearly. But usually he can talk freely, however unwisely, and there- fore the Book of Proverbs is led to say of him: " Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar with a pestle, among bruised grain, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." Such plain- speaking, and there is much of it in the Old Testament about this undesirable person in so- ciety, is exceedingly wholesome for all of us, es- pecially for any who tend to identify goodness of heart with softness of brain. Yes, an occa- sional " lecture," if these persons will so name it, about the duty of having and being sound minds, INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE 5 and using our minds morally, will do us good. Though the New Testament says little about such virtues, they are more and more needful in our modern life, and the lack of them spoils much of the goodness of the sentimentally good. A lit- tle heathen philosophy even, as distinct from reli- gion, will serve to keep religion strong and pure: some bracing chapters from the Old Testament in praise of wisdom will greatly edify the Chris- tian who is closely confined to a diet of " love." Sermons of this complexion are surely Biblical, and they hold to a part of the Bible which shows a vigorous racial life, not yet outgrown or sup- planted. A capable modern writer has distinguished three main directions in which " intellectual vir- tue " may be exhibited — in the pursuit of truth — in the communication of it to others, and in the application of it to life. It was this last kind of intellectual virtue that the writers of the Old Testament had most in mind when they spoke in praise of prudence, as when the prudent house- wife is held up as an example, or the prudent man who foreseeth the evil and hideth himself, while the simple pass on and are punished. Higher in their estimation stood the wise man who knew many things, physical and social, and could therefore counsel sagely. No eulogy could be too high for the heavenly wisdom conversant with the many works of God, and able to advise us well how to lead our human life uprightly and 6 RELIGION AND LIFE nobly. The application of truth to life, the turning of truth of word and of thought into truth of action is, indeed, its greatest transfor- mation, its most needful use. The virtues shown in the communication of truth, such as truthful- ness (i. e., veracity), candor, proper reserve, and consideration for the feelings of others, are largely personal in their direction, and they are not very often slighted by the Christian preacher. On the other hand, some of the most important virtues to be shown in the pursuit of truth, such as impartiality, fair-mindedness, concentration, suspense of judgment in doubtful cases, non- partisanship and passion for reality find little favor in most of our churches, and often their plain opposites are actually encouraged, directly or indirectly. To be intensely sectarian is a form of zeal frequently fostered, as against sim- ple fairness of mind; to be partisan, not to be just, is many times thought the chief concern: to be dogmatic is held far better than to refuse to be positive where you do not know and have no facts before you. It is to such goodness of mind as we mean by thoughtfulness, studiousness, judicial fairness, concentration, accuracy, and discrimination that I invite your attention chiefly to-night. The virtues of the mind, then, I would emphatically say, are as important as the virtues of the heart so-called, or the virtues of conscience so-called. Intellectual virtue is inextricably in- terwoven with heart and conscience, so that a man INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE 7 cannot act justly without thinking wisely; he cannot be good without being sincere; he cannot be brave without concentration; he cannot be faithful without being accurate and single- minded. Turn these statements right about, and they will be just as correct. You cannot think wisely without acting justly; you cannot be sin- cere without being good; you cannot concentrate your powers without being brave; you cannot be accurate and single-minded without being faithful. To be virtuous, as the word itself shows, is to be manly, or, to use a word more free from any insinuation even of sex, it is to excel, to be better, i. e., more competent, more able, more useful than common. Virtue is excellence; it is not neces- sarily strength. But this is a mistake too com- monly made, and so the ordinary man, knowing that he has not a strong mind, is apt to disregard the fact that he ought to have a good mind so far as it goes, that he is bound at least to try to have a mind virtuous intellectually: that he should, in the first place, esteem intellectual vir- tue very highly and try hard to attain to it. He should not flatter himself that he can be a truly good man and think wretchedly and talk fool- ishly, from the standpoint of the really wise and sensible, and yet be just as good as they are. Our notions of virtue are apt to be very one-sided. If a man tells the truth, i. e., speaks what he sup- poses to be fact, the public is wont to call him a 8 RELIGION AND LIFE good man : but he may have taken no pains to find out the truth, especially if the case be one a little off the track of ordinary interests. He may be very unteachable, very unwilling to learn of other men. And if he declares that he is follow- ing his conscience in a certain act and that this is the " voice of God " to him, most men will easily consent to call him a righteous man. So it has been in past times too much. Nowadays, however, we are getting over such irrational con- ceptions of conscience, and such really unworthy views of God speaking to man. Taking the broadly social view of human nature, rather than the narrowly individual view, we inquire about the intelligence of this person who complacently thinks himself inspired from on high, and we dis- criminate the spirits that may, in fact, control him — we distinguish the spirit of ignorance from the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of con- ceit from the spirit of respect for proper author- ity, the spirit of raw immaturity from the spirit of long experience. To lump your private ig- norance, conceit and rawness, and call it the voice of God, is not religious but blasphemous, and the man of common-sense has the full right to name such a man a " fool " in the good Old Testa- ment use of the word, and to set down such a conscience, in Ruskin's phrase as " the conscience of an ass." Docility, is, in order of time, if not in order of importance, the first of the intellectual virtues, to care for true knowledge, to want to INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE 9 learn facts, to prize realities, and to respect those who appear to have found out the facts and to be in close touch with reality. Docility means a proper respect before those who know and before what they know — the humility of one who is well aware of the immensity of the universe, real- izes how impossible it is for one person to know it all, and is completely willing, therefore, to re- gard expert testimony, the voice and the opinion of those who have specialized, who have culti- vated their own garden intensively, and have made it bring forth fruit, many fold. But Indocility stands at the threshold of the temple of knowledge, and cries aloud that he has nothing to learn ; that what he knows is all that is worth knowing: that he cares neither for experi- ence nor for history. The typical democrat, many thinkers have said, is such a man; having a vote in his hand which counts for as much as any other vote, and flattered by the demagogue, he rejoices not to know, and not to follow those who do know far more than himself. But, while this may be a common tendency in a de- mocracy, human nature counts for more than any form of government, and human nature knows, in the long run, how to respect the strength of actual knowledge, to regard the real knowers and to follow the accomplished doers. It is an intellectual vice for a man, on the con- trary, to consider himself quite competent to get along without any help from experts or special- 10 RELIGION AND LIFE ists, and to respect his own opinion about a water supply for a town, for instance, or about vac- cination, or about " faith cure " more than the opinion of those who have long studied these matters, and have arrived at something that may well be called a scientific view of them. Consider the millions of people in this country who profess the faith of " New Thought," of " Christian Sci- ence," of " Spiritualism," and many another half- baked creed, and you will believe that it is chiefly a moral disease that affects them, a possession by the very contrary of the intellectual virtue of docility, the primary condition of intellectual sanity. Fortunately we have in every school of the higher knowledge a persistent enemy, a sure de- stroyer in the end of intellectual vice which dis- regards the right ways of seeing a God of Fact. The ways have been learned by the sons of men through the long discipline of many ages and through hard thinking. In such schools of sci- ence we learn also the value of one of the most difficult of all the intellectual virtues, what the logicians call " suspense of judgment," what the plain man calls " not making up your mind too soon," what the lawyer would style " waiting for the facts to come in before rendering your ver- dict." Such waiting is a most painful process for the common mind. We naturally prefer the possible injustice, or falsity, of a quick decision, on the basis of a few facts, and many prejudices, INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE 11 to the intellectual conscientiousness that waits for more light and the slower decision of a per- fectly sober judgment. In personal matters we perceive with comparative readiness what a gross wrong it may be to set down a person accused of any moral offense as really guilty until he is proved to be an offender. How hard and how trying the burden of keeping our minds free from almost criminal prejudice on the one hand, and yet allowing fair weight to the evidence that is in at the time! Mental blindness from a bias against another of whom we know little — how unspeakably common that is ; and how much less common, on the other hand, is prejudice in favor of one we know well, because of strong affection for him? Who can fail to see on slightest con- sideration how much this suspense of judgment is a matter of the fair intellect, of the mind con- sciously trying to work correctly, and to confine the feelings to their proper field of action in the sphere of proved reality! I would not under- rate the complexity of such situations. They demonstrate how little help we get in our tangled life from general rules and abstract propositions ; how very confused we often become before this or that particular case in concrete life. All such reflections go to convince us of the profound im- portance of suspense of judgment, where we have no right to decide, of the value of waiting, be- fore believing at all. Fairness of mind includes much more than this 12 RELIGION AND LIFE suspense of judgment. It means ruling out all personal bias in disputed cases, the separation of the individual from his plea, the turning one's back upon personal sympathies and antipathies, and concentration upon the real merits of the case. Example is always better than precept in this direction. Well, then, take as a great exam- ple of fairness of mind the most human of all Americans, the great man whose centenary we are observing this year, Abraham Lincoln. Speaking of his uniform kindliness towards his political opponents, one of the best of his biog- raphers says : " The absence of animosity and reproach as towards individuals found its root not so much in human charity as in fairness of thinking. Lincoln thought slowly, cautiously, profoundly, and with a most close accuracy, but above all else he thought fairly. This capacity far transcended, or more correctly, differed from, what is ordinarily called the judicial habit of mind. Many men can weigh arguments without letting prejudice get into either scale, but Lin- coln carried on the whole process of thinking not only with an equal clearness of perception, but also with an entire impartiality of liking or dis- liking for both sides. . . . He had per- fect confidence in the ultimate triumph of truth; he was always willing to tie fast to it, according as he could see it, and then to bide time with it." (Life of Lincoln, by John T. Morse, Jr., vol. I, p. 139.) INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE 13 Closely akin to the intellectual virtue of refus- ing to believe on very insufficient evidence is an- other trait of high value to sanity of mind. This is thorough respect for the limitations of the human mind. So astonishing have been the achievements of the mind of man in the last cen- tury of the world's life, that we might perhaps be pardoned for sometimes thinking that nothing is safe against its assault. But the problems of another life and the nature of God are very dif- ferent from those problems of Nature and His- tory which have had so much light thrown upon them in the latest generations. Admiration of the positive achievements of the human mind may not properly go on to virtual denial of any limits to its powers. Nothing, in fact, is more essential to a balanced mind than a perception of the truth that man is a limited being, who should respect the confines of human intelligence, and not waste his life upon the unknowable beyond these con- fines, while such a universe of the knowable and the profitable to know spreads its myriad invita- tions all around him. And nowhere else has proper humility been so lacking to men as in the persistent attempts of theologians and philoso- phers to discover the undiscoverable, to give a working plan of the infinite and the absolute, to sound the depths of the mysterious and to scale the heights of the inexplicable. But, wherever he goes, the superheated searcher leaves the marks of himself, not of some other reality, re- 14 RELIGION AND LIFE vealed. Everywhere he projects himself and ad- mires what he sees. " Man," said Goethe in one of his wisest moments, " never knows how an- thropomorphic he is." The most irrational even exalt their transient emotions to the very seat of Deity, and define Deity itself in pure terms of man. Such was not the way of Israel. As Mat- thew Arnold has said : " The spirit and tongue of Israel kept a propriety, a reserve, a sense of the inadequacy of language in conveying man's idea of God, which contrast strongly with the license of affirmation in our Western theology. Say what we can about God, say our best, we have yet, Israel knew, to add instantly: * Lo these are parts of his ways : but how little a portion is heard of him! . . . Canst thou by searching find out God, canst thou find out the perfection of the Almighty? It is more high than heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know? ' " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind. Thou shalt believe in Him as the High- est Reason with all the Reason which thou hast thyself. With no slightest word shalt thou cast a slur upon what is most god-like in man: too much wilt thou fear the Nemesis which ranks all opponents or despisers of Reason with the insane. Thou shalt love God as Reason with all the serv- ice thou canst perform, in sound thought, and wise speech and well-considered action. Con- stant exercise in being reasonable, perpetual INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE 15 strengthening of the power to reason well and clearly, steadfast submission to intellectual dis- cipline, and continuous rational achievement in the individual and in the social life — this is true service and inferior to no other service of the God out of whose mighty intelligence our minds came, and in whom they subsist. "Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou art mightier, Lord, than they ! " In their brief day, Almighty God of Perfect Reason, Great Mind of the Universe, let their dominant tone be Reverence and Humility; so shall we not altogether fail of loving Thee with all our mind! II A DEFINITION OF RELIGION WALTEB C. GREEN A DEFINITION OF RELIGION The subject of my sermon is Religion, and I take as a text a definition given by Harnack, " Religion is to live in time for eternity, under the eye and with the help of God." These words easily divide themselves into four parts. And the first part is to live. And what is it to live or what is life? We cannot easily define it or analyse it, but can simply say that it is something which we find here, and something which we did not and cannot create. We best know life in contrast with death. So perhaps we may have a better idea of what life is by asking what is the difference between the living and the dead? It is that a living thing can move itself while a dead thing cannot. The dead body of Daniel Clarke would have lain forever hidden from the curious eyes of neighbors if the living hands of Eugene Aram had not first touched it. That dead thing of its own accord would never have left the quiet pool of waters. This church building is a dead thing and would stay in this same spot and be the same a hundred years hence were it not for the snow and the sun, the rain and the wind. It is an easy division this, to divide the universe into the living and the dead. And of all forms of life the highest type to my mind is man. For I believe that in spite of his possible degeneration, his occasional degradation, 19 20 RELIGION AND LIFE and his unexpected reversions to type, man is at the summit of all created beings. Now what is the one quality that is denied to his little friends of the air, as Saint Francis of Assisi loved to call the birds, and to his two noble companions, the horse and the dog, that he enjoys? What one element has been put into his makeup but has been denied to the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air? I believe that is the soul. Some animals like the polar bear and the ele- phant may be stronger than man, some like the bloodhound, may be keener of scent, some like the gull may fly at an extremely fast rate, but none of these points of advantage can make up for the loss of a soul. For I believe that no animal has the mental power to grasp the idea of the ab- stract, or to think those thoughts that wander through eternity. You all remember the old saying, there is nothing great in the world but man, and that there is nothing great in man but mind, to which I would add, there is nothing great in mind but the moral and the religious life. You are all familiar with the remark of Kant, that the two things that impressed him most were the movements of the heavenly bodies and the moral law. And here let me tell what I believe to be the essence of the moral law. First, a man must know the difference between the right and the wrong. For there are persons who do not. The idiot is not a moral being because he has an A DEFINITION OF RELIGION 21 undeveloped mind. The insane person is not a moral being because he has lost for a time the power to control his thoughts. The man with senile dementia is not a moral being because he has lost his mind. The newborn babe is not a moral being because its mind is not yet developed at all. But in the lifetime of every boy or girl there comes that psychological moment when he or she first distinguishes between the right and the wrong, and so becomes then and there a moral being. Sooner or later he or she sees the differ- ence between the truth and the falsehood, between deceit and frankness. Your standard may be different from my standard, but let us ever bear in mind that we each have some standard of right and wrong and hence are moral beings. Secondly, each person must be free to choose either the right or the wrong. We should not blame but rather pity the drunkard who has lost all power to refuse a drink, and can only grieve at the sight of an opium fiend unable to deny himself the deadly but desired drug. The choice must be a real choice, whether it is that of some poor college to accept tainted money or not, whether it is that of some ruined girl, to commit suicide or to live on in a life of misery, or of some neighbor, to repeat a bit of slander or to keep quiet forever. For my part I believe that the moral life is of more importance than the material life. After a man has enough to eat and drink, a place in which 22 RELIGION AND LIFE to sleep, a few changes of clothing, then the claims of his moral nature must be satisfied. All artistic, business, domestic, intellectual and social questions must be considered after the moral side has been considered. If the choice come to the small tradesman, to make a profit of six per cent, by just a little bit of misrepresentation of his goods, or of only making five per cent., let him take his five per cent., but be an honest man. If the moral side of a question is not satisfied, then all considerations of art and ease, social position and money income must be put aside. Let us then take this word life, in its moral aspect, as we repeat the words of our text, " Religion is to live in time for eternity, under the eye and with the help of God." And what is the rule by which to carry out the moral law? The most simple yet the most per- fect, one easy to put into practice to-day and good ten years hence; the one that was workable for the old Jews and that is still as workable for the Americans of to-day, is the Golden Rule, to treat our neighbors as we would be treated by them. It is not needful that we should be rich, or know a great deal, or read many books, or live in a model town, or on a certain street, or to wear strange clothes, or for all persons to live in one large house. All we need is to do as we would be done by. It means that if we were poor, should we like to have our children work in ill- ventilated factories, and if we are well off, why A DEFINITION OF RELIGION 23 should we want the children of our poor friends to work in these unhealthy places? It means that if we want to be treated with kindness and courtesy and consideration and to have our feel- ings regarded, we should regard the feelings of others. In short, to do as we would be done by, means that we must make our acts and our words and our gestures, even our very looks, such as we want to see in our families and friends and neigh- bors and even strangers. The second part of our text is to live in time for eternity. What is the difference between liv- ing in time and living in eternity? May we not say that when we live in eternity that we live for a longer time and that we look further ahead? For instance, what would it mean if we were told by the Creator of the heavens and the earth, that every city built to-day would last for ten thou- sand years? Think of the result that would be made in the choice of building materials. For like good business men, we would ask what mate- rial would last the longest ; cement, granite, mar- ble or wood. We should then go to the pyramids of Egypt, or to the roads of Rome, or to the clay tablets of Assyria, for materials that would stand the ravages of time. What would be the result if every house and block and theater were built to last for hundreds of years? Should we not be careful to have no slums, to have abun- dance of light for every room in every tenement, to have plenty of parks and playgrounds, and to 24 RELIGION AND LIFE lay out the city so that it would be a thing of beauty and so that all the buildings would har- monize into one? We should want a city that would be well-paved, well-lighted, with streets suitable for all purposes and with a beautiful skyline. If the conviction that our cities are to live for- ever could make this great difference in our archi- tecture, what a greater difference would be made in our characters, should we once believe that we are to live forever. We may say that it gives a seriousness to life. We should be more careful what we did were we obliged to remember it as long as we are alive. Let each one feel that he is to live for one hundred years ! Should we not then lay up resources for our old age? Should we not ask whether the pleasures of the mind were more lasting than the pleasures of the body? Should we not see the folly of making enemies and of filling our minds with thoughts of unkind- ness and malice that would be unpleasant to look back upon in old age? The conviction that each man is to live for one hundred years would of it- self change the reading tastes of many persons and might even lead us to change our trades and professions and callings. For the great thing in old age is to have nothing to regret. The great Daniel Webster, when a happy boy at col- lege, if he had known that he would live to be old and well known, would have been more careful about his college life and so would have been A DEFINITION OF RELIGION 25 spared the mortification, when asked after he was famous, why he had left college, of simply say- ing, " It does not please me to remember." If the good people of Pennsylvania, had seriously thought how this state was going to go on for- ever, they would not have repudiated their debts, and would have spared the inhabitants of the present age the mortification that justly belongs to all who live in this state. There is something sad and pathetic in the story of Jacob, when he was asked by Pharaoh how old he was. For all that Jacob replied was, " Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life." There can be few things for old persons more pleasant than to be able to look over a life that is spent and to find nothing to regret. And so this conviction that we are to live through childhood, manhood, old age, will deepen in us the seriousness of life and make us more ready to adopt the principle of never doing anything that would make us ashamed in later years. And what shall we say when we ask about the life after death? I do not want to take the time to prove that there is or that there is not a life after death. I want to point out the advantage of believing that we shall live after death over the belief that we shall not live after death. And perhaps I can best express this advantage by saying that the belief in life after death gives a grandeur and a sweep and a breadth and a depth to our lives here, and the thought of which alone 26 RELIGION AND LIFE in itself is uplifting. It means that a genius like Mozart has many lifetimes in which to grow and to increase in genius. It was said that if to make the most of one's abilities was to make one happy, then the painter Rubens was a very happy man, because he had made the very most out of his natural gifts. So it is fine to think that we shall have years without end in which to make the most out of all of our natural gifts and abilities, and perhaps time in which to have new ones given to us. It gives a sweep to life such as nothing else can give, to feel that the zeal and the self-sac- rificing power of martyrs and philanthropists, and of preachers and of teachers is to continue. It gives us encouragement to believe that the zeal of John Howard for the reform of prisons, the power of a Wendell Phillips, and the persuasive power of a Phillips Brooks and the sweet influ- ence of a Horace Mann are so much solid force that, while no longer with us, is to continue under new conditions and to bring forth good. Just as Abraham Lincoln would have done had he lived in the time of George Washington, and as George Washington would have done had he lived in the time of the civil war ; so both of them and many others are doing good in the world in which they are now. We sometimes think of the ones gone before as being the same, as when we last saw them, and never changing, but surely they must live under the same law of spiritual growth as we do, for the A DEFINITION OF RELIGION 27 universe is one and governed alike. This gives a breadth to this life here and now, because this means that we shall meet those in the land to come who are enemies and rivals and bitter foes. For if we shall live in eternity, so must others, and if some, why not all, and if all, why not those who hate us and despise us and even injure us? To meet the hated and despised ones in that unknown land will be like our going forth into a fine ban- quet hall and being compelled to sit down in the presence of all, side by side with those hating us. If this be true, surely it were wise to make good friends of our enemies, and to make few, and better yet, none, in the days to come. And this same belief that we are to be the chil- dren of continuous time gives a depth to some of our earthly feelings and affections that no other belief can give. Few convictions need to be more carefully taught to children, need to be more per- sistently cherished, and can give greater satis- faction than this, that we are to mingle with those who have passed on. Unless we are to mingle with those who have solved the great mystery of life, the time will never come, of which the poet spoke, " Where the love that here we lavish, On the withering leaves of time, Shall have fadeless flowers to fix on, In an ever spring-bright clime. There we find the joy of loving, As we never loved before, 28 RELIGION AND LIFE Loving on, unchilled, unhindered, Loving once, and forever more." Religion has, I believe, lost some of its stirring power, because it does not lead men and women to feel that they are to live through years that have no limit, and because it has failed to insist that death is only a doorway between the living and the dead. Some of us once thought of the dead as living one kind of life and ourselves as living another. Rather let us grasp the idea of the hymn, written by Charles Wesley, " The saints on earth and those above, But one communion make, Joined to their Lord in bonds of love, All of his grace partake." What an inspiring thought that some time all the limitations of age and color and family and friendship and nationality and sex shall vanish, and that we all shall see each other and ourselves as we are now seen by the Creator of Space and the Source of Time! It means that the whole human race, past, present and future, is all one, and that death is but a gateway. One family we dwell in him, One church above, beneath, Though now divided by the stream, The narrow stream of death. One army of the living God, To his commands we bow, A DEFINITION OF RELIGION 29 Part of the host have crossed before, And part are crossing now. We know that we are all amounts of energy, and as we believe in the conservation of all en- ergy in the physical world, so the time is coming when we shall believe in the conservation of all energy, human and spiritual, physical and men- tal, angelical and divine. This belief in the con- tinued personal identity can alone explain why we have certain longings and aspirations which here can never reach their fulfilment, but require an endless opportunity. The belief in immortal- ity is an instinct deep rooted that will never die. In short, I believe that if the whole civilized world were to try to teach their children that there is no life beyond the grave, still this deepseated and divinely planted instinct would assert itself, and the coming generations would soon believe with all fervor and with an unshakable zeal that they were to live forever in time and forever in eternity. But some one may say, cannot the atheist live this same kind of a life? I am willing to admit that it is possible, but not so probable. Nay, I believe that it is harder for the atheist than for the believer in a god. In the same way, I believe that there cannot be any religion without a god. This is the next point to be covered in the defini- tion of Harnack, " Religion is to live in time for 30 RELIGION AND LIFE eternity, under the eye and with the help of God." Sooner or later every serious thinking person faces the question, Is there a God? and do I be- lieve in him? Some fortunate persons have been so brought up that they say without stopping, I do. But many others, less fortunate, have been moved by agnostic influences and atheistic tend- encies and are in doubt. Suffice for the present by the word God, we mean that power that is out- side of us, that is behind and within the world. We may believe that He is pure spirit, or, like the theologians of old, we may give Him the attri- butes of omnipresence, omnipotence and omnis- cience, or we may simply feel that He is the heavenly father, or a good shepherd, or a kind king, or the absolute judge, or the great forgiver. While I may admit that the atheist may be as kind a neighbor and as honest a business man as the believer in God, yet I do firmly believe, all things being taken into account, that there will be found more sweetness and kindness and love- ableness among those believing in God than among those who do not. The believer lives in a world of two dimensions, if we may use the term. He sees and feels and knows that above and be- hind and within and underneath this world is an- other mind, of the same kind as his own, though infinite in makeup. The atheist is like a moun- tain climber, cold and hungry and lonely and A DEFINITION OF RELIGION 31 tired, coming upon some house in which he can pass the night in peace and comfort. He would be a strange traveler who never asked who put the house there, and he would be also an ungracious traveler who did not leave it in fairly good shape for the next person who was cold and hungry and lonely and tired. To the atheist must it not seem strange that questions of why and whence and whither should daily arise, and must it not seem a queer thing that there is not a savage tribe but believes in some kind of a god, however low or degraded? To the atheist the feelings of reverence and adoration and awe and worship which he sees in others must seem queer and mean- ingless. I believe that were children left alone to themselves, like Paul and Virginia, they would soon come to feel that there was a larger life out- side of themselves and including themselves. Like the two children in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The New Adam and Eve, they would feel by in- stinct, without knowing why, what emotions a beautiful cathedral was built to express, or gaz- ing upon the storm at sea, would feel the gran- deur of the power behind the storm, or looking at the grand canons of Colorado, would have feel- ings of awe. What carpenter building a house for himself in some pioneer country does not feel at times that this earth is but a larger house built by some giant hand, or what mother, watching the daily growth of her first child, does not now and then feel that she herself is but a child of the / 32 RELIGION AND LIFE Infinite Mother ! Do we not feel that it is natu- ral for man to believe in a god and that he needs God as much as he needs air to breathe and water to eat? God and man are thus bound together, each needing the other and each lacking some- thing without the other. What a lonely world this would be if there were no God, and what a lonely being God would be were there no human beings of divine origin, human limitations, and great possibilities ! But after a man has said, I believe in God, the next and most important question comes up, In what kind of a god do I believe? Time does not permit us to examine all the attributes of deity, but let us look at the one suggested by this defini- tion of Harnack, " Religion is to live in time, un- der the eye and with the help of God." We may have heard these words so often and have read them so often that they have at first but little meaning for us. The eye of God! What sins would we not avoid were we to feel for one single second that the eye of God was upon us ! The start we give when we think we are alone, but find some one is with us, typifies in a slight degree the complete conversion that can come upon a man when he realizes that God sees everything that he does. How ashamed we should be if all at once all our thoughts and feel- ings were known to those who are about us. What emotions of hate and revenge and jealousy would at once go from our minds were they seen A DEFINITION OF RELIGION 33 by our friends ! What shudders come upon us at times in the lands of dreams when we have those frightful thoughts, which we dare not think again, which are the creatures of a fevered im- agination, which we feel in our better moments are not a part of ourselves and for which we will not feel responsible. And yet this feeling would be mild compared to those feelings if our friends and loved ones were to know our innermost thoughts and wishes. And yet God sees them all before they come. With God we must think of One to whom the past and present and future are all one and the same, and for whom Time does not exist when He reads the motives and wishes of His children. And if Time vanishes under the all-seeing eye of God, so must space. We may have some idea of what it means to live under the all-seeing eye of God, if we take the analogy of the Roman citi- zen banished from the Roman empire in the golden age of the Emperor Augustus. The whole civilized world was under Roman rule, and when once the unfortunate citizen was banished from the eternal city, he had to go out among the bar- barians of the north, or the uncivilized races of South Africa, or away among the unknown tribes of the east. We can believe that in some cases death was preferred to banishment. For if ever the man should try to return, the Roman centu- rion waited for him either at the Euphrates River, or at the Cataracts of the Nile, or at the 34 RELIGION AND LIFE borders of the Black Sea. So would it be were we to try to banish ourselves from the sight of God. For He is everywhere. He sees all things at once, both cause and effect, rest and motion, change and decay. Some of you may have read years ago that little old pamphlet called the Stars and the Uni- verse, wherein the author showed how in an in- finite lens all the rays of light crossed at one point and how all the images might shrink until the whole universe would be condensed into one minute point, and this one point, the smallest con- ceivable point, would still contain the universe, and thus the all-seeing eye of God would become a physical and literal possibility. It was a fine idea and well worked out, and showed how to the Infinite One both time and space were not necessary. Perhaps we of to-day would be more helped toward a belief in the physical all-seeing eye of the Ancient of Days by thinking of the X-rays. Surely if finite beings can look through a purse and see the coins inside of it, why should we hesitate to believe that the Infinite and Absolute One sees all things, hidden and open? But after all it is not the physical all-seeing eye of God that should interest us, but rather the spiritual all-seeing eye. For we must think that God sees all things as we see an image in the mind's eye. And what comfort there is in this conviction that all our thoughts are seen by Him A DEFINITION OF RELIGION 35 who inhabiteth eternity. What a steadiness of nerve and irresistible flood of moral enthusiasm this must have brought to the New England worker for the abolition of slavery, as he felt that he was right, and could cry out, " One with God is a majority." It was this conviction that she was under the all-seeing eye of God that enabled the Scottish maiden, fastened to the stake at low tide, to sing the praises of her Creator, as she felt the tide was coming in upon her. It was said that the secret of the success of the great Napo- leon was that he could make every soldier feel that he was carrying a marshal's baton in his knapsack, and that if he did his duty, the cross of the Legion of Honor was his, and fame and rank and glory were before him. So the true sol- dier of God feels that the eye of God is upon him, and that no task can be too great and that no temptation can be too hard to bear. These words, " under the eye of God," will of course suggest different things to different per- sons, according to the profession they follow. To the physician they may suggest that God is an infinite physician, to whom all diseases and sicknesses and the frame of man are perfectly known, and who alone can cure all ills of body and soul, head and heart, flesh and spirit. To the lover of knowledge, these few words suggest that God knows all languages, all tongues, all subjects, all books, even those yet to be written. To the scientist looking at the fishes in an aquarium, 36 RELIGION AND LIFE watching and studying their variety, both of color, size, shape and beauty and even ugliness, there would come the thought that to the Omnis- cient One all these things have a distinct purpose, and that to him there is no problem of origin of species and variations. To the astronomer looking upon the stars, millions upon millions, innumerable by numbers that have a name, there would come the conclusion that under the all- seeing eye of Him who is without variableness or shadow cast by turning these planets and stars and suns and universes at each and every mo- ment represent a distinct thought of God, even as the pages of the Bible tell of Elijah and Elisha. To the lawyer, the all-seeing eye of God would suggest, what is the hope and yet the unattainable aim of man, a perfect jury and a perfect judge. To some railroad engineer, these five words would suggest that each man was like a train, with records kept at some gigantic head- quarters, some infinite train-despatcher's office. There all is put down in black and white, there the man of industry is like the train always on time, the young man, ruining his life with drink, like the train wrecked and off the track, while the man with great gifts, which he has neglected, is like a train, snowbound, overcome and useless in the drifts of indolence and moral weakness. But in this analogy of the train, let us remem- ber that the engineer is not only under the eye of the train-despatcher, but that at any moment he A DEFINITION OF RELIGION 37 may receive warning of dangers, with orders to obey. So it is with us, and this leads us to the last part of this definition of religion, given by Harnack, " Religion is to live in time for eter- nity, under the eye and with the help of God." For this is the greatest possible conviction that can ever come to any human being — that he is living with the help of God. God not only sees the martyr Ridley, burning at the stake, but can help him bear those flames. God not only saw the Jesuit missionary being tortured by the North American Indians, but could cause him to rejoice in his tortures for the glory of God. And God alone can sustain a poor and lonely mother left with her children to support. God is some- thing more than an all-seeing eye to the moral reformers, wearing out body and soul, in almost hopeless struggle with the wrong, but with the conviction and a zeal that their fellow-perse- cutors might well envy. This conviction that we are to live with the help of God, is the crowning glory of religion, and leads us to answer the last question, how may God help us? I believe that God may help us in different ways. He may help us when He speaks through the voice of conscience, as when the mother of Theodore Parker said to him — " Some men call it conscience ; but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of man. If you listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer and al- 38 RELIGION AND LIFE ways guide you right ; but if you turn a deaf ear or disobey, then it will fade out little by little, and leave you all in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends on your heeding this little voice." God may help us when we insist upon speak- ing the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no matter what may happen, as in the case of the Persian — " Ottaya from his earliest youth, Was consecrated to the truth, And if the universe must die, Unless Ottaya told a lie, He would defy the fate's last crash And let all sink to one pale ash, Or ever from his truthful tongue One word of falsehood should be wrung." God helps us when we persist in obeying those deepseated feelings of innate goodness, and when we demand that what is imperfect in us must not be held to be perfect in Him. As the poet Whit- tier said : " Not mine to look where cherubim, And seraphs may not see, But nothing can be good in Him Which evil is in me. The wrong that pains my soul below I dare not throne above, I know not of His hate — I know His goodness and His love." A DEFINITION OF RELIGION 39 God helps us when we read inspiring passages in great books, like the gem of Saint Paul's writ- ings, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians — " Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal." The beauty and essence of this help from God is that it may be direct. The traveler ship- wrecked upon a lonely island, or the reformer in the Russian cell, can receive that help as quickly as a worshiper in some Gothic cathedral. The repentant woman, cast out by the world, alone and deserted, may receive that help as soon as her happier sister in the gay Easter service, and may even say, like Hagar of old, " Because the Lord hath heard my affliction." We need no priest nor minister, though they be saintly men, for each one of us may be his own priest, and at any moment, inside or outside of the church, may say in all sincerity that sim- plest prayer of all simple prayers, the shortest and yet the most acceptable^ " God be merciful to me, a sinner." There is no need of an elaborate ritual, for it may be that we shall be alone and in a strange land, when, like the Prodigal Son, we come to ourselves. And in answering this last question of all ques- tions, How God helps us, let us cast away all sec- tarian narrowness, all personal prejudice, and all denominational illusion, and see that God helps each one in a different way. As has been well said, 40 RELIGION AND LIFE no one church has a monopoly of the holy spirit. The saying of a beautiful and hallowed ritual may have an irresistible uplift for him who has been brought up within its traditions, while the jan- gling tune of a Salvation Army song may lead some tramp to seek light, who would be entirely unaffected by the most beautiful ritual that man may compose. And the words of the first hymn we learned in our innocent childhood days at our mother's knee may yet awaken in us the expul- sive power of a new affection. I believe in conclusion that the highest way in which God helps us is when He speaks to us through some personality. When we look at the self-sacrificing love of the one who bore us, or remember the upright life of him whose name we bear, or think of some noble friend who has helped us, or think of how our life is sweetened by the daily companionship of some unselfish lov- ing consort, or think of some elder brother, like the Man of Galilee, then do we receive the great- est help from God, and understand best what it means to live with Him. And then, remembering how we have received so great a gift from those who have gone before, our respect to them, and our thankfulness to God, demand that we trans- mit this gift of all gifts to others, not only un- tarnished, but made more inspiring to those yet to come. Ill UNIVERSALITY OF THE RE- LIGIOUS SENTIMENT GEOEGE L. CARY UNIVERSALITY OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT What we are so fond of saying, that no two men are alike, is no more true than its exact op- posite, that no two men are different. The like- ness both mental and physical between men is fundamental and permanent; the differences, however obtrusive they may be, are accidental and to a great extent shifting and transient. That a man is a man gives perfect assurance of his possessing every distinctive attribute of hu- manity. Completely lacking but one such char- acteristic, he would be either a brute or some- thing between brute and man; gaining but one altogether new power, he would be an angel of some degree. Once determine by an exact anal- ysis what are all the essentially different ways in which the mind of man can display its activity, and the sum of the powers thus manifested must be considered as constituting universal human nature. It is on this account, as well as others, and in a unique sense, that man can fitly be called a microcosm — a little universe, there being in every man all the possibilities of the race. But this homogeneity, this absolute oneness of constitution, is no special characteristic of humanity ; it is the law of all created things after their several kinds. Every particle of gold has all the essential qualities of every other particle; 43 44 RELIGION AND LIFE every ounce of water is always just so much hy- drogen and oxygen, never more nor less of these, and never, by any possibility, anything else; ev- ery form of animal and vegetable life has its own unvarying constitution, fixed forever by the law to which it owes its existence. This is, in brief, a universe of kinds, or, stated more con- cretely, of kinds of things, and not, primarily, of individuals infinitely diverse. Not other- wise than thus is it conceivable that a world of life and order could exist. Isolation is death, and the possibility of a human life such as we now live is dependent upon the actuality of a human nature which knows no variation except within the comparatively narrow limits of unes- sential forms. 1 If the essential principles of the doctrine which we are presenting are not universally ac- cepted, it is partly at least because of a failure to discriminate between what is actual and what only potential in man, or between a weak and unobtrusive and a full and strong manifestation of a power. Thus a man is often said to have no ear for music, who is merely unable to enjoy its more complex forms ; or to have no voice for singing, when he has never made any serious ef- fort to train the vocal powers which he has pos- sessed from infancy. Sometimes one denies to i Plato held that of every created thing there is an image or prototype or " idea " in the Divine mind, and that these are the only permanent realities. RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 45 others the possession of the ability which he him- self lacks or seems to lack ; as when a person who delights only in simple melodies declares that it shows affectation to