TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS OF TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WILLIAM J. POTTER. *-4L BOSTON: Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street. l88q. Copyright, i88j, By William J. Potter. CONTENTS. PAGE Prefatory Letter v I. Apostolic Succession i II. The Soul's Rest 20 III. God in Nature « • • 3 2 IV. Mercy and Judgment 48 V. Self-sacrifice 56 VI. The Religion of the Affections .... 71 VII. Endurance . . . .- • 88 VIII. Childhood's Instinct and Manhood's Faith i°3 IX. Pure Religion 116 X. Christmas Legend and Fact 130 XI. The Eden of the Senses and the Eden of the Soul 143 XII. Thoughts and Conduct 158 XIII. Easter Truths and Traditions .... 171 XIV. Optimism 189 XV. Mutual Social Responsibility 204 XVI. Heart in Nature ' . . 224 i v CONTENTS XVII. Waiting for One's Self 240 XVIII. The Silent Revelation 256 XIX. The Religion of Humanity 271 XX. What do We Worship ? 288 XXI. God in Humanity 3°4 XXII. The Permanence of Morality . . . . 323 XXIII. The Practicality of Thought 340 XXIV. The Glorious God 355 XXV. A Twenty-five Years' Ministry .... 376 Appendix 4 01 PREFATORY LETTER. Dear Friends and Parishioners : For more than two years, I had cherished the thought that, if I should remain your minister twenty-five years, I would print a volume of dis- courses selected from those years, and have.it ready as a surprise gift to you on the twenty-fifth anniver- sary. But the pressure of ordinary work delayed my entering on the execution of this purpose until last summer's vacation ; and then I found that the task of preparing and getting through the press such a book was too great for the limited time at command. The anniversary came, and only a begin- ning had' been made. In an unguarded moment, I expressed to one of you my disappointment at not having completed this intention ; and thus I let out my secret. From that time, the purpose became yours ; and you now make the gift to yourselves. You asked and urged me to put the thought into action, and made it easier to do so ; and you, espe- cially, are responsible for the frontispiece and Ap- VI PREFATORY LETTER pendix to the volume, which formed no part of my plan. I have only selected and arranged for you the discourses and seen the book through the press. This book, therefore, has been made chiefly for your eyes. It may be regarded as, in a sense, a memorial record of our twenty-five years of parish life together. With this end in view, it contains the first and the last discourse of the quarter-century, and, with one exception, one from each of the suc- cessive years between, in chronological order. For one twelvemonth, though still your minister, my ministry was in soldiers' hospitals and near battle- fields. As that twelvemonth did not entirely syn- chronize with the calendar year, I might have found some sermon with the date 1864 attached to it ; but I came across nothing which it seemed worth while to print. I had left some of my physical vigor in Virginia, and it took several months to recover mental elasticity. This plan of selecting the ser- mons from the whole period of the twenty-five years is one, I am well aware, which involves a risk. Pos- sibly, it involves some moral risk to assume that anything I wrote in the earliest part of my ministry can be worthy of preservation. But there is also a risk that the plan may cause some misunderstanding in regard to my present intellectual beliefs. As explained in the anniversary discourse, — the last in the book, — my views have undergone considerable PREFATORY LETTER Vll change in this period. Hence there are among my earlier discourses many which I could not write in just the same way to-day ; and some of those chosen for this volume come, in a measure, under this class. I have chosen none, however, the main lesson of which I should not still stand by and hold impor- tant ; and, if certain incongruities in respect to sub- ordinate ideas and phraseology may appear between the earlier and later discourses, they are a part of the record of my ministry which I have no wish to con- ceal, and which may have, indeed, a certain interest and value. With one exception, I have allowed myself to change only verbal infelicities ; and that exception seems to me of sufficient importance specially to note. The discourse on "The Religion of the Af- fections," numbered VI., was quite recently repeated, and was included in the volume by the request of a number of persons who then heard it. At the repe- tition, I inserted a modifying, cautionary clause on introducing the argument from the doctrine of im- mortality ; and this I have permitted to stand in the sermon, which is otherwise printed substantially as first delivered in 1865. The discourses are, for the most part, dated at the time of their first or only delivery in our own church. In two or three cases, where they had been to a considerable extent rewrit- ten, the date when they were given in their new viii PREFATORY LETTER form is attached ; as, for instance, number XXI. was delivered in several places and several years before the date here assigned it, when it appeared in revised form. In the anniversary sermon, one quite important paragraph, accidentally omitted in the delivery, has been inserted. As you know, I have not in late years held to the custom of taking texts, either from the Hebrew and Christian Script- ures or elsewhere. My habit is to use a text, from whatever source, only when the text actually suggests the sermon. But sometimes I have writ- ten a quotation as a motto at the head of a sermon, without referring to it in the delivery ; and in a few instances, for the sake of uniformity, I have prefixed such mottoes to sermons chosen for the volume, where they were wanting. Had I been called to select a volume of discourses for the general public, I should have chosen such as would have a more logical connection on some one line of thought. But for you, as a memorial volume of these years during which we have lived and worked together, I have judged that a more miscel- laneous selection, as regards topics, would be more acceptable and useful. Selecting thus from the wide variety of subjects which have engaged our thoughts in the Sunday service, I have had, however, two leading aims : first, to choose those discourses that seemed to touch most closely the permanent PREFATORY LETTER IX problems of moral and religious life; and, second, to choose those that attempted to throw some light on the specially perplexing problems of modern religious thought. With the hope that these ser- mons, thus chosen, which, as a congregation, you have listened to from the pulpit, may now be a help to some of you in the nearer companionship of your homes, I respond to your kindly expressed wish, and put them into your hands. Sincerely your friend, Wm. J. Potter. New Bedford, May i, 1SS5. SURE the dumb earth hath memory, nor for naught Was Fancy given, on whose enchanted loom Present and Past commingle, fruit and bloom Of one fair bough, inseparably wrought Into the seamless tapestry of thought. So charmed, with undeluded eye we see In history's fragmentary tale t Bright clews of continuity, Learn that high natures over Time prevail, And feel ourselves a link in that entail That binds all ages past with all that are to be. James Russell Lowell. APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. " Other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors." — John iv., 38. " Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not." — II. Cor. iv., 1. As I recall the succession of able men who with eloquent lips and earnest hearts have ministered to the spiritual wants of this Society, in the privacy of your homes and from this desk, and into whose labors among you, responsive to your call, I this day enter, my heart trembles with conflicting emotions of fear and hope : of fear, lest I shall wear but un- worthily the pastoral mantle now fallen upon me from these past prophets and only demean offices hallowed to your hearts by so many memories ; of hope, when I think of the warm hands with which you have welcomed me here to begin my life's work, so near the scenes among which began my life. Ay, I am tremulous with joyous pride, when I re- member the nature of the work info whose lone; succession of laborers you have now admitted me, and see that this day the dream of my life is fulfilled. Confirmed by this realization of my child- hood's hopes, inspired by a conviction of the worthi- ness of the office before me, and reading in the 2 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS unanimity of your invitation and in the ready con- sent you have given to my requests for certain changes in some of your forms of service that you will freely and candidly listen to my thought, though it may not always agree with your own, and not be swift to censure deficiencies which must become apparent to you from a closer intercourse, I am emboldened to say with Paul, " Having therefore this ministry, as I have received mercy, I faint not." Into the lengthening succession of the ministry, then, I now enter, and to its holy offices, under the blessing of God, here consecrate my powers. And the thoughts which the occasion presses upon me group themselves naturally around this topic, — the true doctrine of Apostolic Succession. You know the old doctrine that goes by this name, which asserts that no ministry is valid unless it can be traced back, by the successive laying on of priestly hands, to the grace which Jesus himself communicated when he commissioned the first apos- tles. According to this view, the Holy Spirit can flow only through certain ecclesiastical channels, and spiritual validity is made dependent on physical manipulations. The minister does not go immedi- ately and for himself to the fountain of grace which gives worth and spiritual life to his ministrations ; but — standing at the end of this long conduit, reaching back through all the ramifications and dis- turbances of ecclesiastical history for eighteen hun- dred years — he is dependent for such supplies as tradition may have saved for him from a past age through the hands of pope and prelate. The Script- APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION ures, interpreted by the traditions and official voice of the Church, — this is the channel, and this only, through which his spirit may receive divine truth. And when we remember the worthless character of not a few of those who have stood in this priestly line of succession, and see through what gross and sordid hands this legacy of truth has sometimes had to pass ; and when we think with what rubbish and corruption the channel of ecclesiastical history has been clogged and befouled, — is it strange that those who trust to this resource for their supplies of grace should often find them both scanty and stale ? What wonder if they should sometimes discover that what they had taken for aqueducts of pure water should turn out to be offensive sewers, bringing down the filth and poison of effete centuries ! But this view, though its shadow linger yet in several of the Protestant sects, is distinctly declared and maintained as a dogma only by the Roman Catholics and the High Church party of the Epis- copal denomination, and need not detain us longer. The fact of the Reformation and the consequent springing up of new sects, and often under the lead- ership of teachers on whom no priestly hands had been laid in consecration, necessitated the abandon- ment of the doctrine that ministerial grace is trans- mitted from the first apostles through an unbroken chain of physical communication, and gave rise' to the second form of the doctrine of Apostolic Suc- cession, which, for sake of distinction, though not held very strictly by all the Protestant sects, yet found to some extent in all or nearly all, I shall call the Protestant view of the doctrine. 4 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS According to this view, it is not necessary, in order to validate the ministerial office, that the lay- ing on of priestly hands should have been maintained in unbroken succession from the first apostles. The impossibility of tracing such a genealogy through the confused history of the Middle Ages and the meagre annals of the first centuries of the Church, if there were no other objections, is deemed a suffi- cient argument against the claim. But the real suc- cession and validity, it is maintained, are spiritual ; and the laying on of hands is only emblematic of grace already possessed, or, at best, is only a form of giving ecclesiastical validity, not substantial and spiritual qualifications. And this were all clear and rational, if it were only the real doctrine held ; that is, if the doctrine, as it is really held, were what the plain sense of these words indicates. But, in point of fact, there is hardly a Protestant sect that does not practically reproduce, with more or less strict- ness, in its own limits the Roman Catholic idea of validity. It is not necessary, indeed, for the Prot- estant preacher's validity that he should have re- ceived grace through the unbroken priestly order of the Church from the original apostles ; but it is deemed necessary that he should have received it from hands of his own faith. The Calvinist minister needs not, in order to prove his legitimacy, to show that the hands which were laid upon him received grace from some prelate's hands, which were made gracious by some previous prelate's hands, and so on back to the original grace in Galilee; but he must show that the hands of Calvinists have been APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 5 laid upon him. Should it be said that this form is only emblematic of approbation and fellowship on points of doctrine, I reply that the fancied explana- tion points to the very root of the error and, instead of refuting my statement, proves it ; for it shows that the substantial and spiritual qualifications — of the possession of which, it is said, the form of ordination is only symbolic — must have come through certain channels and have a certain church stamp upon them. Whatever may be said of individual societies, there is no sect — no, not even the most liberal — ■ that dares to trust a minister freely with the Divine Spirit. He must have that Spirit, indeed ; but he cannot breathe it in like the free air of heaven by contact with his own lungs. He must have it meas- ured out for him by prescription of some theological authority, and inhale it artificially through the sponge of a creed. It is not the Divine Spirit coming to him and showing him truth, but that Spirit as it once came to Luther or Calvin or Swedenborg or Wesley or Fox ; and if, perchance, it should come to him with some word not told to them, and he should use his freedom to utter it, most likely he will be disfellowshipped and excommunicated there- for. And so essentially there is no difference be- tween the Catholic and the common Protestant doctrine of ministerial succession. The papal priest succeeds to apostolic grace and truth by hereditary descent from the first apostles. The Protestant minister succeeds to the apostolic inheritance by tradition from the founder, or founders, of his spe- cial sect. The only difference is that the Protestant 6 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS thinks that the line of hereditary descent from the first apostles has been broken, so that corruptions entered the Church, and that this failure has been mended by the truth having been reshown to the founders of his own sect. But both the Catholic and Protestant parties agree that of religious truth, at least for this world, there has been a final revela- tion ; and each of these two great bodies, as well as each of the numerous smaller Protestant sects, — with' hardly a complete exception, — claims that its own interpretation of that revelation is a finality, so that a new minister only succeeds to the old office of ex- pounding Scriptural truth according to the creed and commentaries of his own faith, travelling over the same road trodden by his predecessors for, it may be, hundreds of years ; while those who put themselves above the Scriptures, and claim the con- tinuance and efficacy of the same revealing Spirit which manifested itself in them, are denounced as heretics and infidels. The sect that still claims the present guidance of the Holy Spirit as above Scripture — that of the Society of Friends, or Quakers — makes, at least in its largest section, no proper exception to this judgment; for it practically neutralizes the doctrine by making the authenticity of the living spoken Word of to-day depend upon agreement with the literal written words of eighteen centuries ago. And so there is succession, but no advancement. Churches are built, decay, and are succeeded by others, generation after generation of priests passes away, and yet there is no progress, no going beyond the creed of the fathers, no getting out of the catechism. APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION J Notiee that I am here stating the principle on which the sects stand rather than actual facts with regard to them. As a matter of fact, not even the strictest sect, I believe, is able to resist the gen- eral current of progress, which is shown, however, rather by a prudent silence on some of their most discreditable articles of faith than by boldly expung- ing them from the creed. In principle, however, no progress can be admitted. The Orthodox must hold to Calvin or Edwards, the Methodist must not depart from Wesley, the Quaker cannot go beyond Fox and Barclay ; and even in our own free denomi- nation there are many who would draw lines each side of Channing, to pass over which in either direc- tion should be deemed sufficient cause for non- fellowship. So that, with the partial exception of Liberal Christians, whatever advancement the sects make in religious truth is made not in consequence but in spite of their principles. And this advance- ment of particular sects, in spite of their creeds and their own efforts, is the result of a general move- ment in the knowledge of truth by which the whole civilized world is going forward : which brings us to the third view under our topic, — the true and philo- sophic order of Apostolic Succession and ministerial validity. Let us distinguish the points carefully. i. That is a narrow conception of revelation, and, as I believe, unsupported both by enlightened views of the nature of God and by the history of the relig- ious development of man, which maintains that in religious truth there is no progress, — that the Chris- tian of to-day has no better ideas of God and man 8 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS and the relation between them than the Christian of eighteen centuries ago. It would indeed be strange if, while science and art and philosophy are pro- gressive, religion — which embraces them all,' the science, art, and philosophy of life — should stand still, and have no new word for eighteen hundred years. Nor does the history of Christianity bring us to any such singular result. So far as Chris- tianity is a revelation of God, it is so, not because it laid down a platform of doctrines and put a finality to all religious thought and inquiry, but because it entered the world as a vitalizing, organizing power, bringing truth gradually to light and building up society according to its dictates. Truth, indeed, is one, absolute, eternal, infinite. But, for this very reason, the revelation of religious truth, as of all other truth, to a finite, progressive being must be always gradual, partial, and progressive. The case would not be altered by the supposition that the revelation of religious truth is through supernatural means and at special seasons. For even though the Creator, by methods above the ordinary laws of spiritual influence, should have so acted upon a few minds, the writers of the Bible, that they saw and uttered truths which otherwise they would not have seen, yet the minds of other persons — that is, of the world at large — could not see and comprehend these truths until elevated to the same condition of seeing, which must occur either suddenly by supernatural agency or gradually by natural growth and develop- ment ; and, as the former process is not claimed by the hypothesis except in the case of those to whom APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 9 the truth was first shown, it follows that to the world at large the revelation must be gradual and progressive. And, moreover, this must be so from the very nature of the mind itself. Our powers are not given us in full maturity, but as germs to be developed, we know not to what destined end. To this law of growth, the religious faculty, including religious perception as well as sentiment, is certainly no exception : else, why all this organizing of means, of preaching and prayer and missions, to make men more rationally religious ? The elevation of the soul, the enlargement and quickening of the truth- seeing faculty within us, is, in fact, the test of the growth of character. And as not even Omnipo- tence can make the blind see without first^opening their eyes, so he cannot reveal truth to the soul unless the soul be first opened to receive it ; and as the soul, in the natural order, opens by gradual development, so the revelation must be gradual and progressive. What is true of the individual is also true of the race, since the race advances only through the progress of individuals. Religious truth, then, in process of revelation to the world, must be progressive. 2. What are the agencies through which this revelation is effected ? First and foremost is the Divine Spirit, the source or vital atmosphere of the truth itself which is to be revealed. This is the primary and permanent agency acting through and above all others. It is Infinite Being revealing itself, Absolute and Infinite Truth making its way into finite, individual consciousness. The Divine 10 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS Spirit is only a form of conception for God. It is God going forth, as it were, from himself, — the Eternal Word issuing from Absolute, Unchangeable Beins:, and seeking incarnation and articulation in finite, personal form. This Eternal Word carries truth with it, by virtue of its very nature ; for truth is its life and substance. This is that "Wisdom" which "in all ages, entering into holy souls, maketh them friends of God and prophets." In every finite soul, then, in which this Word comes to conscious- ness, and just in proportion to the extent of that consciousness, is truth revealed. And so the finite soul becomes a second and sub- agency in the revelation of truth. For though in every human being there is planted, as its vital organic principle, a germ of this eternal substance of the Divine Spirit, which will develop, as the faculties open, into religious principles and char- acter, yet, as in science and art and every department of knowledge there have always been individuals who have seen farther than the mass of men, and have therefore been special instructors in their respective branches of knowledge, so in all ages have men appeared in whom the religious conscious- ness has been so elevated that they have seen farther than mankind in general into the secrets of religious truth, and become its special revealers to the world. These are the Spirit's witnesses, through whom the higher truths of religion are confirmed, if not announced, to humanity at large. They stand along the course of history as the guides of the race, as the prophets of human destiny. Their souls are APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION I I the reflectors of divine truth, so placed that they throw the rays upon the common human heart, and start into life and organic form the germs of truth before lying latent there. Through these prophetic souls, the common religious consciousness of the race is quickened to greater activity and elevated to a higher point of vision and a more extended spiritual horizon. And, then, as out of this elevated religious consciousness a new generation is born, so the prophets of this newer generation — even if, their feet standing on this higher plane, they do not see farther into the mysteries of truth than their prede- cessors — will at least have a better vantage-ground from which, with the truth they do see, they can act practically upon the world. And thus the com- mon religious consciousness of the race is elevated to still higher reach ; and this elevation, in its turn, becomes a new stage by which succeeding prophets shali rise to yet larger vision, and make to the underlying world still broader* revelations of Infinite Wisdom. As scientific men take up their respec tive sciences where they were left by the preceding generation, and so go on from these results to fresh discoveries and new generalizations, so each gen- eration of religious teachers, standing on the ground won by the preceding age, should attain to broader views and help build to more perfect completion the temple of religious truth. And this is the true divine order of Apostolic Succession. 3. If we would follow the line of this succession, we must get above denominational distinctions and take a broad philosophic view of religious develop- 12 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS merit, not merely within the limits of sects, but in the production of sects. We shall then see that the true Apostolic Succession does not lie within de- nominational boundaries, but overleaps them, and that, in the race of true prophets, validity is proved rather by departure from than conformity to the established order of creeds and churches. Who does not see that Paul, though he had never seen Jesus in the flesh and was regarded with jealousy by the original apostles as an interloper and innovator of dangerous doctrines, was yet a truer apostle of Jesus than were they ? Paul, with his idea of the univer- sality of the gospel, embracing the Gentile world, was the really Christian apostle ; while the twelve were little more than partially reformed Jews. Again, Wiclif and Huss and Luther, Calvin and Zwingle, though trampling on the authority of the Church and introducing new doctrines and ecclesi- astical usages, were yet, by spiritual descent, more legitimately priests of Christianity than were the popes and bishops who excommunicated them. So, in England to-day, it is not the High Church party, trying to stand so straight by ecclesiastical tradition and the Thirty-nine Articles that it leans backward toward Rome, — it is not this party that is carrying out, by true succession, the principles of the Refor- mation, but rather the heresy-suspected leaders of the Broad Church party, — Jowett, Whately, Stanley, and the lamented Arnold and Robertson, or even the open dissenters. Fox and Wesley and Bunyan denounced Church and priest ; yet, by the laying on of spiritual hands, they were more legitimately APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION I 3 successors in God's line of priesthood than the Archbishops of York or Canterbury. So, if we were to look for the true successors of Fox and Penn, we might not find them in the sect that, from the effort to stand upon their protest against forms and ceremonies in religion, has become the most severely formal of all religious denominations. The cause of the persecuted Independents, who fled from the tyranny of the English Church to find an asylum in New England, is better upheld now by the liberal sects than by those who still subscribe to the Puritan creed. And to come still nearer home, when I read the sublime pleas of Channing for the fullest liberty of religious inquiry and the formation of religious opinions untrammelled by the authority of great names or ecclesiastical organizations, and when I remember his earnest protestations against imposing upon the convictions of a single soul the bondage of a creed or making articles of faith the test of religion, I can but ask whether those who call themselves " Channing Unitarians," because, forsooth, they adopt his beliefs, are, in reality, so truly his followers as those who, entering into his labors and adopting his methods of fearless inquiry and criticism, have taken up the results of his thought and advanced to still greater victories over the degrading errors of the popular theology and to still clearer visions of religious truth. It behooves us, at least, to inquire whether to stand where Chan- ning stood is to be his follower. None, I am sure, quicker than he would rebuke the attempt to build a sect upon his creed by cutting off all inquiry 14 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS beyond. To stop at his results, as though all truth were found, is not to honor, but to defame his memory. The only church that can be an honest monument to his name and truly claim him as its great apostle is that which, with the largest freedom of religious inquiry and indefinite progress in relig- ious truth, combines the utmost charity to oppo- nents in opinion and love to all men. Away, then, with that childishness that talks of there being " no more road in the direction we have been £roin2: " ! It is as ludicrously short-sighted as the opinion of the commissioners appointed, two hundred years ago, by the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, to lay out a public road into the wilderness ten miles west from Boston, who, in their final report, congratulated the General Court on the completion of the work, even at the great and unexpected cost, as there would never be need of a road any farther in that direc- tion ! Nay, it is worse than short-sightedness, this talk of turning our forces, fatigued with the long march, to seek repose in the dreamy sanctity of venerable ecclesiastic rites and a "mystic church organization." It is infidelity to our Protestant in- heritance, infidelity to the spirit of the age, infi- delity to the great trusts we have assumed for humanity by virtue of our position, infidelity to the guiding Providence of God, and a cowardly distrust of the powers he has committed to man.* We may see, then, from the foregoing illustra- *The references in the above sentences are to the then much discussed sermon of Dr. Bellows, on "The Suspense of Faith," given at Cambridge in the preceding summer, 1859. APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION I 5 tions, how the lineage of the true apostolic succes- sion runs ; that it is not identical nor parallel with ecclesiastical lineage, but crosses and denies its legitimacy ; that it is not to be found intact in any one church or sect, but breaks through churches and sects, and follows always the line of development in religious ideas ; that, finally, God's priesthood are not ordained by the laying on of ecclesiastic hands, but by the revelation of truth to the soul. And in this priestly succession stands many a one without mitre or surplice, unfrocked, and unconsecrated by ecclesiastic hand, — many a one who never stands in pulpit or speaks in the priestly name. So, too, there is many a surpliced or cassocked preacher, many a one whose ecclesiastic validity is amply authenti- cated by all the forms of the Church, and*who may speak from the pulpit every Sunday with priestly authority to the people, who yet has no part in this apostolic succession of God's priesthood and (to adopt with a little variation .Dr. Channing's phrase- ology) no validity of the Spirit's grace, though all the unctuous hands of Rome, Geneva,. Princeton, or Cambridge, have been laid upon him. But to whom- soever and wheresoever the truth is shown, if it be but uttered again, in public or in private speech, by pen or spoken word, there is a prophet of God ; one who stands by true commission in the eternal order of the Spirit's priesthood. And all they to whom the truth is shown, by whomsoever or wheresoever shown, and who strive faithfully to live thereby, whether in the limits or out of the limits of ecclesi- astic lines, constitute the true Broad Church, the 1 6 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS real Catholic Church, which breaks over all the partition walls of sect, and joins in one spiritual fellowship the true and holy souls of all nations, ages, and religions. My friends, I pray that it be into no merely eccle- siastical order of ministerial succession that I now enter among you. If I felt that I had no validity save what came to me through the churchly cere- monies of last week, severely simple though they were, I should not stand here to-day. I do not come among you to help build up a sect, or to fill your pews, or to perform merely the priestly office in your homes. I come to speak to you whatever of truth may by God's grace be shown to me. I ask only that you may listen by the same grace. I be- lieve that the mission of Unitarian Christianity is higher and larger than simply to make a new relig- ious sect or to open new places for Sunday worship or to fill old ones, — namely: to liberalize and spirit- ualize all sects, to make all society religious and all life worship ; and all ecclesiastical organizations, forms, rituals, ministers, missions, houses of worship, the very Church itself, are nothing, and worse than nothing, if they do not effect this. This morning's sun brought the birth of the eigh- teen hundred and sixtieth year of the Christian era. Eighteen hundred and sixty years since that Life appeared in Galilee, which seemed so divine a thing that it became the measure of time and named the civilized world ! In these years, what successions of priests have come forth in the name of Christ, and passed away ; how numberless the churches APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 1 7 dedicated to his memory ; what countless crowds of worshippers have knelt at his altars ; how various the sects claiming his authority for their doctrines and practices ; what conflicting systems of theology have been built upon his words ; what imposing pageantries of ritual and ceremony, what costly and complicated organizations, what a vast array of ecclesiastical machinery, what wealth and en- ginery of material and political forces, have gathered around that humbly born life in Nazareth! But what more ? Has that life been lived ? Do we dare to live it yet ? Does it appear in society, in government? Do we yet trust the principles of peace that this Prince of Peace proclaimed ? Count our armies. See our bristling forts. Look at Christian Europe in arms to-day. No : *we have no faith in Christ. We dare not trust the principles he uttered, till the whole world shall adopt them. Do we yet enact his precepts in our laws ? A slave woman comes to you, flying, for freedom, for purity, for life. You must violate your laws, if you will give her humane shelter. You must hang the men who go down to the tyrant's house, with chivalrous hearts, to set her free. Look into the world of business. Does Christ's life appear there ? Does the merchant always dare to follow the laws of justice and strict honesty, when they interfere with what he calls the laws of trade ? No : the Christian sects do not dare to live Christ's life yet. For cen- turies, now, the civilized world has borne his name. It has prayed to him and through him ; it has called him Son of God, nay, God himself ; it has invented 1 8 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS ingenious devices of theology by which he may save mankind ; men have preached him, read him, ad- mired him, worshipped him ; but who yet dares to live as he lived, with no authority but Truth, no law but Right, no master but God ? With all its massive and wide-spread organizations, with all this ecclesiastical machinery and power, — nay, with all its victories, for it has them, — how little, when we consider its resources, has Christianity done toward Christianizing society ! And, if we were to look for the cause of these small results, we should find it, I believe, to be chiefly that there has been too much organization, too much mechanism, too much Church. The power has been nearly spent in moving the machinery. It is an historical fact that, so far as Christian truth or the moral essence of Christianity has made prog- ress in society and appeared in the reform of laws and social institutions, it has done so, not through the organic action of the Church, but against it. And, at this very day, it is the most powerful and strongly organized Christian sects that most stand in the way of the progress of religious truth and social reforms. It is not the " organic, instituted, ritualized," imperial Church, with its mystic sanctity and symbols, with its sacred days and usages made venerable by centuries of repetition, that is to bring the kingdom of God ; nor yet is that kingdom to come through the priests of this Church, made such only by ecclesiastic grace. But wherever a single soul bows with more passionate devotion to truth, and resolves to follow the truth wheresoever it may APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 19 lead, through whatsoever road, and though losing all things else, even life itself, there is a member of God's Church and a true minister in the line of his priesthood. It is into the order of the holy priesthood of this inorganic, spiritual Church that I pray this day to enter. It is into the membership — yea, ministry — of this Church that I invite you. If I can lift any souls among you to more ennobling truth, to purer love, to stronger virtue, if I can quicken your spirit- ual vision and lead any of you to see more clearly the infinite beauty of a life proportioned to the laws of Eternal Rectitude, then will these New Year's vows of consecration be crowned indeed with bless- ing, being followed in due season by seed-time showers and hopes, maturing summer suns, and autumn harvests of ripened souls. January 1, r86o. II. THE SOUL'S REST. "Return unto thy rest, O my soul." — Psalm cxvi., 7. "There would seem," says a living writer and one of the greatest of living preachers,* "to be an incu- rable variance between the life which men covet for themselves and that which they admire in others ; nay, between the lot which they would choose beforehand and that in which they glory afterwards. In prospect, nothing appears so attractive as ease and licensed comfort ; in retrospect, nothing so de- lightful as toil and strenuous service." The truth of this remark is being repeatedly impressed upon us both by public and private cir- cumstance. It does seem as if Providence had con- ditioned us to a lot of labor and struggle, — nay, forced it upon us, — while our first aim is to smooth our path and prepare the way for an after happi- ness which consists in rest and passive pleasure. The Creator leaves no soul at ease. If inherited circumstances give you the perilous opportunity, you may try the problem of an inactive life, resist- less to any inclination or whim that the hour may give birth to ; but be assured that, for as many hours * James Martineau. THE SOUL S REST 21 thus spent, nature, which is the working of divine laws, will demand in payment an equal number of hours of weariness and disgust, of aching nerves and empty heart, — a gnawing consciousness of a destiny unfulfilled and of faculties craving a rest they have not yet attained. If inheritance, fortunately, has not put your life to such a hazard, then you are forced to an existence of toil, of body or mind, in order to keep that very existence. The earth will not yield you bread till you have ploughed and tilled ; and, in the furrow where you plant your seed, God grows weeds as well as corn, in order to task your energies still the more. You must fell the forests before they shelter you ; spin the cotton, weave the wool, before they clothe you ; build the ship and invent compass and chart before you can bring the ends of the earth to serve your needs. We are thrown upon a world of wild, half-savage material forces, which we must either tame and subdue to service or be destroyed by them. Yet all the time, throughout the struggle, we cry for respite and rest ; and the most prevailing motive that spurs on these toiling millions of men and women all around the globe is the hope that by and by toil will cease in competency, and struggle be rewarded with independent ease. Just so it is with our moral and spiritual condi- tion. We cannot get food for our intellects, we can- not clothe our souls in the virtues, we cannot orna- ment them with the graces of character, we cannot build up good society and good institutions around us, we cannot have good governments, good laws, 22 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS and good charitable organizations, we cannot be safe in our houses or in the street, we cannot do away with evil institutions, with crime and corruption and vices, — our own or those of the community, — we cannot, I say, have or do any of these things without labor and study and struggle and assiduous culture. We are thrown upon a world of wild, unregulated moral forces, which we must also tame and bring to service, or they, too, will work our destruction. Yet all the time, as in the physical, so in this moral struggle, we sigh for rest ; and the strongest incentive that urges us along the path of conflict is the hoped-for ease to come at the end. We are driven to the battle, not so much that the truth and the right may be victorious as for the sake of the peace that will follow. Wearied with the assaults of passion, we long for an untempted virtue. Our comfort invaded by the dust and din of contending forces, we yearn for the quiet of neutrality, and for the sake of ease are not infrequently tempted into dishonorable treaties with vices that ought to be recognized only to be exterminated. And so, generally, the moral condition which we covet is just the reverse of that to which we have been born. Born for contest, we ask for repose. We would skip, if possible, the drill and the disci- pline, and clutch at once the prizes of victory. How many of us go through life like complaining school-children, — doing our tasks, it may be, but longing for the time when books shall be put aside and all lessons come to an end ! Questions, it may be, besiege the intellect, demanding of it activity THE SOUL S REST and decision ; doubts, perhaps, of the old settlement of religious things in which we have been educated, — doubts and questionings and conflicts and search- ing inquiry, which are the providential order of removing error and bringing in the light of truth. Yet, tired of the intellectual struggle, appalled by the view that seems to keep man's reason in con- stant tension and humanity in continual march, we are often tempted to escape the responsibilities that our faculties impose upon us, and, suspending rea- son, to sink back on the soft cushions of ecclesias- tical authority. Thus it is that some struggling souls, shrinking from the conflict and from the inev- itable conclusions that the Protestant principle of individual inquiry forces upon them, seek for rest and try to lull all religious questionings to*sleep on the ready-made bed of the Church of Rome. Or it may be that it is a moral contest we have entered upon, — a contest with social evils around us or with the nearer evils in-our own breasts. But we find that the battle goes hard against us. So- ciety is slow to acknowledge its sins, and still slower to remove them. Public opinion frowns upon our efforts. Friends, even, regard our schemes as Uto- pian, and evidence only of amiable weakness. And the very classes of society we would help, not infre- quently suspect and resist the aid that we offer. With so much against us, it is not strange if we should often be sorely tempted to give over the battle, and let ourselves float smoothly along with the stronger current of popular opinion, leaving it to God (as we say, in phrase that sounds more pious 24 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS than it is), who has permitted evil, to take care of it. And this fallacious rest we often try, too, when the moral struggle is with ourselves. Our evil habits too strong for one encounter, our vices too deeply rooted to be washed out by mere tears of repentance, the passions — avarice, selfish ambition, carnal appe- tite — from continued indulgence grown inordinate in their demands, and all the forces of our being having fallen under the control of our lower nature, conscience, maimed and bleeding, is often tempted to retire from the hard contest on the high ground of moral law, to try the flattering repose offered by the code of social respectability. And hence it is that very many come to accept as the standard of their lives, not what the highest moral truth de- mands, but what the common decencies of society will allow ; while only a prayer is left that He who has made us with passions, and thrown this conflict with them upon us, will somehow grant us rest from their tyranny on a higher level hereafter. Religion, too, or much that passes in its name, not infre- quently fosters this easy faith, and, instead of nerv- ing us to strong encounter with evil, degenerates into plaintive whining over the ills of earth and sighing for the rest of heaven. But, notwithstanding the prevailing extent of this desire for repose and the fallacious arguments with which we attempt to cover our own delinquencies in the matter, human nature, in its inmost heart, is sound, and honors no repose which is not honorably achieved by contest and victory. Human nature is to be judged, not by the standard which individual THE SOUL'S REST 2$ men live by, or even set for themselves, but by that which they most admire in others ; and that must be regarded as the aim of humanity at large, which, though exhibited in the attainment of but a single individual, gathers about it the greatest number who applaud and revere it. What craven spirit was ever admired in history or in fiction ? Who but the brave, who but those who against all obstacles have contended manfully and unflinchingly and kept their integrity to the bitter end, have ever been adopted as the models or worshipped as the heroes of mankind ? How immeasurably more has the world admired the character of Socrates for refusing to avail himself of the plan of his jailer, who had been bribed to aid his escape ! And yet few are the per- sons in all history whose moral sense would not have been confused by such an offer. And, if the Athenian sage had faltered and used the proffered means of saving his life, we should have found, I will not say merely apologies for, but defences of the act even as a duty, — as, indeed, in thousands of similar cases has been done, and as most of us per- haps would be likely to do, if the case were to come home to ourselves to-day. But, such an example of unmoved integrity once set, humanity is true enough to recognize it as a higher order of virtue than flight, however guiltless, would have been, and to bow before it in admiring reverence, though few may have the courage to be its imitators. And when we come to that most admired character of all, the name highest and most beloved of history, what is it that has made Jesus to be regarded as the proto- 26 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS type of all human perfections, worshipped indeed as God himself, and the word " Christian " to be a syno- nyme of all that is most elevated in virtue and most amiable in character? What is it but that Jesus stood, like Divine Majesty itself, firm for the truth, unyielding before corruption and hypocrisy, gentle and forgiving, yet bearing faithfully the burdens of his mission, not flinching before violence nor swerv- ing for adulation, and meeting the cross with such a spirit of love and of triumph that he consecrated it as " a thing of beauty " forever ? And, moreover, we admire such character as this for its own sake, for a majesty and divineness in itself, and not for any after good it may issue in. Nay, our admiration would be sensibly diminished, if we could for a moment suppose such a character sustained only by the hope of some after blessing as a reward ; nor can we conceive that all these excel- lences were practically annihilated at the grave by the soul's then passing into a condition of absolute repose. These two points, then, seem to be clearly estab- lished : first, in the midst of the toil, trials, and struggles of our lot there is an instinctive craving within us for rest ; and yet, secondly, the standard of life which we also instinctively place the highest, and which, at the bottom of our hearts, we do most really admire, is that in which there is the least of rest. Solve this seeming paradox, and we shall answer the question of tvhat the soul's rest is. We crave for rest, it is true ; and the desire is so universal that it must be regarded as instinctive. THE SOUL S REST 2J But, like all our instincts, the desire is blind. In- stinct does not see and consciously choose its end, but gives only direction toward a certain satisfaction which human nature requires in order to fulfil its destiny. What is the extent and character of that satisfaction, not any one instinct or desire, but the whole nature, must determine. What, then, is the kind of rest which the human soul demands, and which alone can satisfy its desires ? Rest and motion, used in their primitive meaning, referring to material things, have both a relative and an absolute sense. A body is at absolute rest when it keeps the same position with regard to a fixed point in space ; in motion, when it departs from such a point. But two bodies, though both in motion, are relatively at rest when they keep the same posi- tion with regard to each other. Now, how can these terms, or more particularly the term " rest," be used of spirit, or of mental and moral life ? Not, I answer, in an absolute sense at all. - The very word spirit implies life, movement, energy, — the very opposite of inertia and passivity, which are the characteristics of matter. To spirit, then, there can be no such thing as absolute rest. It can have, evidently, only relative rest, — the rest that depends on unison of movement. And the rest, therefore, which our hu- man spirits crave, and which can alone satisfy their needs, is not the rest of inactivity and inertia, but the rest of harmony. But harmony with what ? Harmony with the Divine Spirit, — harmony with the Universal Spirit, — whose aim and movements we may know by its 2S TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS pulse-beats in our consciousness ; by our best affec- tions and aspirations and the voice of conscience, which, as they assert their supreme authority within us, lay down also the laws of our being's guidance. There can be no rest for us but in obedience to these laws of our being, which are the laws of God ; no rest for our bodies but in obeying the laws of health, — not overtasking, not undertasking our physical powers, but giving to each just the action that it needs to keep it in vigorous, healthy life. And very much, I am satisfied, of this plaintive, unmanly sighing for rest, which often passes for religious aspiration, is nothing but the jar and creak- ing of shattered nerves. Yet physical laws are subordinate, and must sometimes be broken, in order that higher laws may be obeyed. For, again, there can be no rest for our moral and spiritual natures, — no rest for our hearts, no rest for our minds, no rest for our aspirations and consciences, — unless we faithfully follow their highest bent and laws of action. Have we evil habits and vices ? There can be no rest but in meeting them, strug- gling with them, conquering them. Are there social evils around us for which by omission or commission we are in any way responsible ? There can be no rest but in entering the field of conflict against them. Are there miseries to be alleviated, broken spirits to be healed, wrongs and oppressions to be righted, poverty to be enriched with sympathy, igno- rance with instruction ? Then there can be no rest but in taking upon ourselves, in some form, the office of the comforter and savior. Is there any THE SOUL S REST* 29 wisdom and light in the heavens above us, not yet penetrated by our mental vision ? Then there is no rest for our intellects but in constant ascent, accord- ing to the laws of mental progress, through the successively ascending fields of infinite science. Finally, is there any ideal of life still above us, sometimes, perhaps, for a moment seized and then again floating away beyond our present reach, but radiant there in the clear sunshine, with heavenly beauty ? Then there can be no rest for our souls but in daily striving, aspiring, ascending, till we attain and realize it. The rest, then, that our natures crave is not the repose of passivity, of listlessness, of sleep, but the rest of healthy spiritual life, — of life in accordance with the laws of our being, which are laws* of pro- gressive activity, and, if obeyed, put us into harmony with the spirit and peace of God. The rest that we want is like the rest you may have in a railroad car, where, though you may be moving with immense rapidity, yet with respect to the whole train you are relatively in repose, because you are in harmony with it and the mighty force that takes it forward. Or, better, it is the rest of the heavenly bodies, which, though all may be in rapid and varied move- ment, are yet at peace with regard to each other, because moving according to the harmony of a divine law. And such rest as this we can have, though in the midst of labor and trial and conflict. It is the rest to which Jesus invited the "weary and heavy-laden " ; the rest, not of those who have thrown their burdens off or would impose them 30 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS upon others, but of those who have taken upon them the yoke of God's law, and find the " yoke easy" and the "burden light," because, through obedience to this law, a mighty strength and a mighty peace have come into their being. Such rest have martyrs had, while flames and tortures unspeakable destroyed with slow cruelty the body to let the spirit free. And such rest can every one of us possess, whatever our lot or toil or duty or trouble, who will bow unreservedly to the mission and the laws of the divine Spirit within us, and follow it by whatsoever path, through whatsoever conflicts, to whatsoever end it may lead. O ye " weary, heavy-laden " souls, return unto your rest! "Return" — the word is well chosen. This rest is yours by the demand of your natures. It is yours by the original endowment and laws of your being. It is yours by your place in creation's plan. It is yours by the dreams of your youth, by the prayers that went up from the homes of your childhood. Return to it, — to this rest prefigured in your natures, promised, by the Highest Giver, in your earliest hopes of what your life might be, and still longed for, with secret longings unutterable, in your inmost hearts. You have tried, it may be, the rest of ease and the rest of travel ; tried the comforts and the luxuries of wealth ; tried the tempting path of fame ; tried the ways of selfish pleasure ; ay, tried, perhaps, the lusts of appetite : but the vulgar enjoyment of the hour once past, the selfish excitement over, your real self with you alone again, and there comes back, week in, week out, this THE SOUL'S REST 3 1 same old weariness of heart, emptiness of aim, and crying for a rest that none of these things can give. Let go these husks, then, and return to the old home & love, to the dreams of your childhood, to the noble, heroic, faithful manly or womanly life that floated in ideal before the vision and won the ad- miration of your youth. Return to the highest demands of your natures, which are a revelation of God's demands upon you ; and, behold, the infinite peace of God shall flow without measure into your being, and give you the rest that is everlasting. January 20, 1S61. Note -This discourse was also preached in the Unitarian church in Washington, July 21, 1861, the day of the first battle of Bull Run. As the congregation came out of the church, the booming of cannon could be distinctly heard across the Potomac. III. GOD IN NATURE. " And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." — Gen. i., 2. " Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow."— Matt, vi., 28. I have coupled these texts together as a con- venient indication of the course of thought I wish to present this morning on the manifestation of God in Nature, or the Divinity of the Material Uni- verse. Whether we look into these old Jewish records or into the still older Hindu, into the fables of Gre- cian Hesiod or the Eddas of Scandinavia, we find everywhere that the earliest problem of human thought which language has preserved is the prob- lem of creation, — the Whence and How of the uni- verse. We open the latest issues of the modern printing-press, and behold, in book and review, the great question of the scientific world to-day is this same old problem of the origin of things. The problem is not, perhaps, strictly a religious one either in its old or its new shape ; that is, all the immediate obligations of morality and practical re- ligion are clear enough, and would remain the same whether the world was made in six days or in six GOD IN NATURE 33 thousand years, or is still in process of making. And the better it will be for us, the sooner we arrive at that mental state wherein, careful only for the truth, we shall become indifferent as to the effect upon religion whether this or that particular theory of the universe shall finally be established. Still, this problem of creation, though not directly connected with religious practice, has always been, and is neces- sarily, associated with religious thought ; and there is such an interdependence among our faculties that it may well be doubted whether truth in thought does not finally connect itself with truth in charac- ter, and whether any religious sect can long con- tinue to hold, for the sake of its theological creed, a scientific falsehood without corresponding narrow- ness appearing somewhere in its moral and spiritual life. That, indeed, is a very limited view of the practical in religion which looks only to the giving of homilies that can be converted at once into daily habits. The well-balanced religious life, though it must always include outward work, yet is vastly more than that. It is a life of intellectual as well as of moral and spiritual fidelity. The springs of religion lie deep and are wide-spread; and that is but a superficial religious culture which does not plough into the subsoil and develop the riches of every field of our complex natures. We may find, then, ample grounds on which to discuss, even from a practical stand-point of religious truth, the theme to which I ask your attention in this discourse. And, first, see what a change has been wrought, 34 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS by the progress of knowledge, in the popular view of this subject. Egypt, Greece, and Rome, which successively led the human race in civilization and enlightenment, all divided the administration of the material universe among many deified rulers. The earth, the air, the sea, and woods they peopled with unseen beings, by the immediate fiat of whose wills the various changes and operations of nature took place. Whether the sea raged or stood still, whether the wind blew from the north or from the south, whether the earth clothed itself in its spring garments of green or the autumn leaf fell sere to the ground, a god, a spirit, was believed to be there, immediately and consciously acting. But science has changed all this. Mother Ceres has been ban- ished from the earth, and her tender housewifely care of the spring buds, summer flowers, and autumn harvests is now only a beautiful myth. We have not yet traced the laws of the wind ; but we do not believe longer that any capricious ^Eolus locks them up in his cave, and lets them out at his pleas- ure. No Neptune lives for us in the sea, to com- mand its waves. No Aurora breaks for us each morning the gates of darkness, bringing light and life upon the earth. In place of these beautiful, poetic imaginings, we now have positive science ; for this simple faith, we now have demonstrated facts ; instead of these living, personal deities, we now have physical laws ; and, (may it not be added ?) instead of religion, we have — too often — only philosophy. Now, the advance of science is neither to be stayed nor deprecated. We must submit our theologies to GOD IN NATURE 35 its discoveries and analysis as well as all other de- partments of our knowledge and experience. We must modify and advance our theological views to conform to the assured conclusions of science, or else our religious faith must suffer detriment ; and, because this has not generally been done, we may well doubt whether Deity is to Christendom so real and vital a presence as to the devotees of these old religions whom we have been so forward to commis- erate and enlighten. The unity of God is a great truth ; but, if we cannot hold it without sacrificing the universality of God, then it may well be ques- tioned whether, in our entire view of the divine nature, we have made much advance upon the relig- ious beliefs of Greece and Rome. If we cannot maintain ourselves at the elevation of Jesus, where with clear vision we can gaze at the spiritual one- ness of Deity and at the same time feel that he who inhabiteth eternity and sitteth upon the arch of the heavens dwells also in the lowliest human soul and clothes the humblest lily of the field, then we may well go back to learn the preparatory les- sons that heathenism has for us. If we cannot believe in the unity of God without falling into those dreary theological systems which banish him from the earth and from the daily changes of nature to a distant throne in the remotest heavens, from which we must imagine him to rule and judge the universe with the cold, calculating reserve of a human sover- eign ; if we cannot hold the unity of God without giving him form, and circumscribing him in space, and picturing him with all the attributes of a finite 36 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS ruler, — then I am not sure that it would not be better for us to leave our Bibles for a while and take some lessons in the warmer faith of the old Pagan mythology. Better than this one cold, dis- tant, deified despotism the myriad human deities of Greece and Rome. Better let go the unity of God than his universality. But we need not take this backward step. Chris- tianity appears originally to have held the recogni- tion of both ideas. A fine statement of their unity was made in the apocryphal book called " The Wis- dom of Solomon," before the advent of Jesus. But the Christian Church and Christian theology have too often failed to comprehend this finely harmo- nized doctrine, which Jesus by virtue of his spiritual genius seems to have assumed, of universal and infinite unity, — of one spirit pervading the whole universe, of mind and matter, of nature and man. In order to prove one creator and governor of the world, Deity has been banished outside of the world. Incalculable harm, in one way, has been done to religion by such works as Paley's. You know the old argument, the analogy drawn from a watch : if a person should stumble suddenly upon a watch, and examine its mechanism, and see how exquisitely all its parts were adapted to each other and each to its office, he must necessarily conclude that it was the work of an intelligent contriver and maker. In like manner, as the argument runs, from studying the universe, — its adaptation of part to part and each part to its object, — we must conclude that it, too, is the work of an intelligent author. Now, the GOD IN NATURE 37 universe unquestionably discloses marks of nicest adaptation and the most consummate wisdom. But there is always danger, in using the argument from analogy, that we push it too far ; and this is pecul- iarly the danger when we reason from finite things to infinite. And so the majority of persons, I sup- pose, who adopt Paley's argument, follow it up till they have pictured to themselves the whole act and plan of creation, and creation and creator have be- come as definite conceptions to them as the making and maker of a watch. And, going so far, it is almost impossible that they shall not push the anal- ogy still farther ; and, since a watch, having once been made and its machinery set in motion, passes out of the maker's hands, to go henceforth by the forces brought together and shut up wiriiin it, so they conceive that the world, having been made and put into operation by its maker, was left hence- forth to go of itself, in accordance with certain forces and laws impressed upon it in the beginning. More- over, this analogical result seems to harmonize with the Mosaic account of creation ; and hence the Christian Church has very generally accepted it, and branded as heretics all who could not square their opinions on this intricate subject of cosmogony by the childish belief that the world was made like a watch. But, in the presence of modern science, how puerile all this is ! Let us suppose an omniscient, all-powerful Creator ; a Being infinite in wisdom, whose every impulse and every thought at every moment must be equally and absolutely perfect, and 38 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS no act of whom, on account of this infinite per- fection, could ever fall a hair-breadth short of its intent. Shall we think of such a Being as com- pelled, like imperfect, plodding man, to weigh means against results, to study effects, to sit down, as it were, to deliberate, to form a plan of the universe, and then mechanically to construct the universe thereby ? And when to the conception of such a Being the attribute of omnipresence is added, how can we think of him, the all-comprehending, the all-pervading spirit and energy, as shut out, by any mechanism external to himself, from any part of creation, from any atom of matter, from any point of space, from any manifestation of life ? Throw away, I beseech you, this god, that only comes in to round a syllogism or to flank an analogy. It is an idol, as much as the wooden or brazen images of heathen- dom. Confessedly, this whole analogical argument only proves an author of the universe : it does not reach the Infinite. Moreover, as an argument, it is irremediably vitiated by the fact that the watch itself, which is assumed as the known side of the analogy, involves all the mysteries which the anal- ogy is to explain. An intelligent mind must have put together all these wheels and cogs and bal- ances : that is true. But what is the secret power that holds those shining metallic atoms so solidly together ? What is that force we call the elasticity of the spring ? What gives hardness to the wheels, that they act and react upon each other with un- varying order? We must fathom all these secrets before we have found out the infinite God. And GOD IN NATURE 39 the question is not whether these various forces are not ultimately to be referred to an infinite Being as cause, but how they are related to such a Being now. Again, the popular conception of the relation between the universe and Deity meets another ob- jection. No sooner have people satisfied themselves of the harmony of what they call their natural and revealed ideas of God — that is, the harmony be- tween the conception of a Creator making the world by a specific act, as a man makes a watch, and the account in the first chapter of Genesis — than Sci- ence steps in and says, "With my divining-rod, I have read the secrets of the earth, — yea, the deep things of God that were written on the stones and in the great mountains ages before the Twelve Tables of Moses' Law were made or Adam became a living soul ; and I declare unto you that neither in six days nor in six thousand thousand was the earth created, and that by no specific, clearly defined acts, but through an almost infinite series of progressive stages of action, did it come to its present form." Nay, there is a theory of the universe, sometimes stigmatized as an attempt to account for creation without the hypothesis of a creator, which asserts that the whole universe is developed, under the operation of physical laws, from a condition of simple primordial atoms as germs, like a tree from a seed or a bird from an egg; and millions upon millions of years would not take us back to the beginning of the process. This theory may not yet be scientifically established, but how soon it may 40 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS be no one can tell. And no religious opinions and prejudices ought to stand, or can stand permanently, in the way of its establishment, if science can show it to be true. Clearly, then, we must be prepared to change our conception of the relation between the universe and Deity. Already, by the advanced positions which science has taken, we are driven to this dilemma : we must either abandon our old ana- logical idea of God as a creator and ruler of the universe, in the common acceptation of those words, — an idea of him formed from the nature of a finite being, — or else we shall be compelled to place him farther and farther from the universe, until he is banished to the remotest corner of conceivable space, and the period of his active power is pushed to the utmost limit of conceivable time, and he shall have become an infinitesimal rather than an infinite Being; and then will be fulfilled the prediction of a certain school of philosophy, that religion, as a childish superstition of our race, will, as the race matures, yield up her sovereignty, and finally disap- pear before the full light of science. That this fate will ever befall humanity at large I have no fears. For, although no fair deductions of science, however much they may conflict with our religious notions, can be denied, I should still main- tain that religion, properly conceived, represents the normal attitude of the human soul, and is not to be lost out of the world so long as human nature en- dures. Between science and true religion there can be no conflict : it is only our false religious ideas that science winnows away. The right adjustment GOD IN NATURE 41 will come at last. For the future of the race, then, I have no fears. But for ourselves in the midst of the present conflict between the old and the new, — how are we, as individuals, to keep our own faith in the ever-living presence of Deity fresh and active, notwithstanding the invincible batteries of modern science ? how save ourselves from the calamity of accepting an atheistic world ? How shall we receive the latest conclusions of scientific research, — ay, be ready to receive all possible future conclusions, — and still with the old Hebrew proclaim that "the earth was without form, and void," till "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," or, with Jesus' religious sensitiveness to natural beauty, see the hand of God in the gorgeous array of the lilies ? My answer to this question is that, contrary to what has been the prevailing teaching of Christian theology, we mast bring God back into the tmiverse. We must conceive of Deity as in nature, — not simply as at the beginning of it or as over it, but as in it ; as a power pervading its laws, energies, unfoldment, life. Science is no atheist. It has no conflict with the existence of Deity, — only with our analogical con- ception of him as creator of the world, according to a pre-arranged plan, in a definite period of time, and by a definite series of acts, as a great Machinist. Science finds everywhere gradation, development, progress from cause to effect, — a law of evolution instead of a miracle ; but it, none the less, every- where finds that incomprehensible power which re- ligion has named Deity. Wherever we find law, wherever we find order and system and beauty, there 42 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS we find elements in their very nature eternal, divine. In the orbits of the stars, in the budding and flower- ing of trees, in the upspringing grass and ripening fruit, in the strata of the mountain ranges, in the speechless sublimity of the Alps and the spoken sublimity of the ocean, — in short, wherever in nat- ure the imaginative or the scientific eye be cast, we are reading no past thought of a distant, historic Deity, but standing face to face with the vital po- tency of a present Omnipotence. Science opens a way into the universe, — not that God may go out, but that we may see him all the more clearly there. And, first, we are to bring God back into the uni- verse by asserting his immanence in matter. And by this I mean something more than that he is im- manent in the material universe. I do not mean that the universe is made, as it were, something apart from him, and that then he as Spirit flows in to dwell in it ; nor, again, that chaotic matter first exists as something apart from him, into which a vitalizing divine Spirit is afterwards infused. But I mean that matter is by its very nature penetrated and pos- sessed by a divine energy ; that it is not an absolute creation, not a beginning de novo, but a manifestation of, or issue from, the one eternal substance of Deity ; and that, could we get back behind all specific forms of matter to its primordial essence, we should find it an inherent, eternal part of the divine nature. It is impossible for our minds to conceive of the absolute creation or annihilation of matter. Every existing, every possible form of matter is subject to change, — to beginning and end. Decay, departure,. GOD IN NATURE 43 death, as also new forms of life, are all around us. The rock crumbles to pieces and is converted to soil, and by and by, in another form, its particles are drawn up to color the rose or to flavor our fruit ; mountains are reared and worn again to plains ; even the stars, our emblem of eternity, are sometimes lost from their courses. But, in all this round of endless change, not one atom of matter is ever lost ; nor can we conceive how even Omnipotence can destroy it or create. There seems, in fact, to be no reason, either analogical or ontological, or from the human consciousness, for supposing that matter in its es- sence is not equally eternal with spirit, or mind. Consciousness gives us no idea of the absolute cau- sation of matter, but only of mind acting upon matter already existing. The greatest a priori reasoners have affirmed the eternity of matter. Even though we were to accept the first chapter of Genesis as a literal account of the process of creation, we do not get beyond the creation of the existing world, — that is, the beginning of a certain order, or of determinate forms, of matter, and not the absolute origin of mat- ter itself ; while experience and analogy both go to show that matter — if, indeed, it be not necessary to the existence of spirit — is, at least to our human comprehension, necessary to its manifestation and expression. I would say, therefore, that spirit and matter are, in their essence, equally eternal, and equally ele- ments in the primal origin of things. We might call the one the active, the other the passive side of the divine nature. In absolute Being, or God, we 44 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS may conceive that the two coexist in perfect unity, making indeed one substance ; and, in any form of manifested being, the two must be wedded before spirit can come to personal consciousness or give any other utterance of itself. Without matter, spirit could never be organized into soul : without spirit, matter would remain forever "without form, and void." * Here, then, we have the key to the true process of creation, — still, for convenience, using the word " creation," though the idea be essentially changed ; and the first chapter of Genesis, childish consid- ered as science, becomes sublime, considered as a poetic representation of creative activity. "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Spirit is pictured as brooding over the chaotic mass of matter. It moves upon chaos ; and, behold, the chaotic mass takes shape, and separates into a myriad forms of life and beauty. The upper and the nether firmaments, stars and planets, land and seas, herb, grass, and tree, fish, bird, and beast, all come, through the slow gradation of ages, in their order ; and all in some sort prefigure, and prepare the way for, something higher, higher yet, till we come to man. Creation, beginning with the primal germ of being, is the action of spirit, or mental energy, upon matter, by which matter becomes organized into various forms of being, activity, and life. It is only, indeed, with regard to our human comprehension, ♦Infinite Being, as Spinoza maintained, may have many other attributes; but these two, mind and matter, are the only ones that come within human cognizance. GOD IN NATURE 45 that we speak of its having a beginning. With ref- erence to absolute Being and the whole infinity of things, creation can have no beginning and no end. It is only a term to mark a certain change of form, — a kind of change which is going on from everlast- ing to everlasting. Spirit, by its very nature, is an organizing, vitalizing force. By its own inherent impulse, it must ever seek to express itself in law, symmetry, order, and life. And the whole history of the material universe may be summed up as the effort of spirit to possess and vitalize matter, and so to organize itself in material forms. Hence, as a second means through which we are to keep our faith fresh in the presence of God in nature, we are to consider him as manifested in the laws of nature. Christian theology has laid so much stress upon the supernatural as the peculiar method of divine manifestation that it has tended to establish, has in fact directly inculcated, the doc- trine that the regular and ordinary operations of nature are less immediate revelations of the divine character ; that what we call natural physical laws were ordained, indeed, of God in the beginning, yet now only in a distant and secondary way execute his intent. But, in reality, when science has revealed to us a law or taught us to observe a method of nature, we have reached no past thought or plan of Deity, but his present action. What we name the plan of the universe is no fore-thought of God, but our after- thought. The laws of nature are no mould into which the past thought of the Almighty has been run, but the immediate outgoing of his present 46 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS energy, the divine purpose and thought in process of action at this very moment. Every new physical law discovered, instead of being another secondary cause and so removing the great First Cause still farther off, ushers us, in fact, into the more imme- diate presence of divine power. Science may speak of secondary causes, but to Religion there is no such thing. Where Science shrinks from naming it, Religion recognizes the omnipresent, all-pervading One, bows its head, and adores. And so, while we have escaped their errors, we may still have all the advantages of the old relig- ions. We may hold to the divine unity, and yet not lose the more practical doctrine of the divine uni- versality. Nature, though no longer peopled with divinities, is filled, inspired with Divinity. One om- nipresent Power pervades and energizes all things. We do not call him Neptune, but the same Deity still controls the tidal waves and rules the sea. The offices of Ceres and Aurora, of all benign, all fatherly and motherly providences, are henceforth combined in one great Love that streams forever through the universe. One power clothes the fields with sum- mer green and mantles them with winter snow ; brings the seasons in their order, and provides tender care for every great and every little thing ; moulds the great orbs of the stars ; paints no less the lily's leaf and the passing cloud. Do we ask at once for absolute perfection, — that all disorders, both from man and nature, be at once discarded ? We ask for an impossibility, for a finite and temporal infinity. Perfection is our aspiration : GOD IN NATURE 47 toward that, the whole universe is advancing; and infinite wisdom and infinite benevolence are justified so long as the aim and movement of things are upward. September 8, 1861. IV. MERCY AND JUDGMENT. "Their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." — Rom. ii., 15. The moral integrity of human society is kept, in great measure, by the reciprocal action of the two sentiments, justice and mercy. No individual, per- haps, can ever really forgive himself for any lapse in his own conduct from the strict line of rectitude ; but, with regard to one another's conduct, we are not only made judges, but have the power also of par- don. More than this : we are forbidden to judge, unless our judgment be tempered with mercy. This, I take it, is the meaning of what both Jesus and Paul say with reference to judging the character of others ; for, so long as we are endowed with a moral sense, — that is, so long as we are human, — it is im- possible that we should make absolutely no judgment of one another's conduct. We are so constituted by nature that we are necessarily judges of each other. It is, indeed, by this interaction of conscience upon conscience that the moral education of society pro- ceeds : only, it is provided that, as we are to judge one another, so we are to forgive one another ; as every man's conscience is to exact entire justice from every other man, so every man's heart is to be MERCY AND JUDGMENT 49 ready with pity and pardon for another's frailty. Judgment is necessary, but mercy is to "rejoice against judgment"; "for he shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy." In the common order of things in human society, we see continually how these two forces are made to balance and regulate each other. Justice and mercy, exaction and forgiveness, penalty and pardon, ac- cusation and excusation, the father's law, the mother's love, — between these two poles flow the moral life-currents of humanity. That action would be absolutely right which should be vitalized alike from both of these sources, — which should combine justice and mercy in such perfect proportions that they should flow into one sentiment and be undistin- guishable from each other; which should 1 be kind because it is just, and just because it is kind. In the last analysis of moral issues, the action which is conformed to the strictest equity is the highest be- nignity. With absolute Being, we can conceive no conflict between justice and tenderness. In a per- fect Being, justice would be but the impartial distri- bution of love. But, in man, these two sentiments are not yet brought to this perfect oneness. Both are present, and both are necessary to the well-being of society ; but the moral balance between them is preserved by their action and reaction upon each other. The exactions of justice become sometimes severe. Then mercy pleads, often with a mistaken tender- ness, — with blind excess of good will doing a wrong, which only a severer equity can set right again. 50 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS And so there is conflict, struggling of force with force : we accuse and yet excuse one another ; but, by and by, justice gets done, and mercy also triumphs. Society is most healthy when these two forces are most nearly balanced, — when mercy follows most swiftly upon severity, or, better, when the spirit of love goes along with the spirit of accusation. The scribes and Pharisees would have left the woman whom they accused of sin fallen and hopeless. Jesus lifted her up, and said unto her, " Go, and sin no more." Without looking with weak indulgence on the past, he yet opened to her the hopes of the future. In this act, he shows us the exquisite mean between the moral judgment that condemns the sin and the moral compassion that reclaims the sinner. But society has not yet learned to keep this golden mean. We are continually running between the two extremes of unjust severity and mistaken indul- gence; in one case exercising judgment without mercy, in the other showing mercy without judg- ment. First, we exercise judgment without mercy. Great, almost irreparable, is the wrong that is done by condemnation of the vicious without appeal. With the doors of our houses, we shut against them also, in many cases, the doors of repentance and ref- ormation. Keeping them from the paths of honest industry till they have established an honest charac- ter, we force them into courses of dishonor, and give them no chance to win a good name. In the sever- ity of our judgment upon their past lives, we con- demn them to sin as a punishment, and to a dark MERCY AND JUDGMENT 5 I future of misery and moral despair ; and with moral despair comes moral ruin. What worse fate can we conceive for a man who has run the ways of wicked- ness and learned their barrenness, and now desires sincerely to regain his virtue and his reputation, than to find all the avenues to virtuous associations barred against him ? Suppose that the prodigal son in the parable — when, weary of sin, the memory of the old home love and innocence had been revived within him, and he had resolved to return to his father's house — had found, instead of the welcome which he did receive, the father's heart hardened against him and the door closed, and no opportunity given him for expressing his contrition and making amends for the wrong he had done : would he have been saved? What burden could have been imposed upon him more fitted than such a repulse to crush out every reviving memory and desire of better things, — every aspiration for the old home virtue and pure domestic joys ? Yet this is what society — society, too, that is called Christian — is doing every day. Thousands of human beings are this moment kept in the degradation of vice, because no human ear will listen to their penitence and no hand is reached out to welcome and aid their returning footsteps. Nay, their own fathers and mothers often suffer their hearts to close against these their erring chil- dren. I doubt not there are those among the vi- cious and abandoned of this city who would this hour gladly go back to the pure homes of their childhood, if they could be sure that they would still find there a father's and a mother's heart. But they 52 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS feel that the house would be shut against them, that every honest mode of livelihood shrinks from them, that even this so-called house of God is not open for such as they ! God pity them, for they find few friends and little pity on earth ! On the other hand, though judgment without mercy is so ruinous, not less ruinous is mercy, or compassion, without moral judgment. The safe- guards of society are at once torn down and the whole fabric exposed to destruction, so soon as the vicious are allowed without question to stand on the same footing and receive the same honors with the virtuous. We can do no greater wrong to so- ciety than when, through a fiction of words, we call men moral by relaxing the severity of the moral law. Without elevating them in the least, we debase the moral standard of the whole community, and excuse them from all effort to elevate themselves. If men are thieves, let us call them so, no matter how high they stand in social position : only be sure they are thieves before we call them so. If men are drunk- ards and libertines, let us give them those names, though they be members of cabinets or churches : only be sure that the accusation is true before we repeat it. Nothing is so strong an indication of, as well as help to, the corruption of public morals as the prevalent disposition to cover up flagrant vices and crimes under an evasive phraseology. Let it be understood that a lie is a lie, and not merely "misrepresentation" or "evasion," — words that have a much less culpable sound. The hard word theft, which is as destructive of a man's pretences to mo- MERCY AND JUDGMENT 53 rality, if it hit him fairly, as a well-aimed cannon ball is fatal to his body, is too often softened into "embezzlement," "defalcation," "financial irregular- ity," — weak paper bullets which do little execu- tion. If a boy takes a loaf of bread from a baker's window, he is sent to jail as a thief. If a man steals .a railroad, he goes at large ; and a considerable portion of society look upon him with admiration for his financial ability. If a young man is given to inebriety and lust, we call him "a little wild " ; and younger men and boys are rather left with the impression that to be " a little wild " is the proper thing for a young man. Now, all such concealment •of vice under fine names is weakly to excuse it ; and weakly to excuse vice is to put a premium upon it. Let us not deaden the sting of a just accusation of guilt by words of velvet. Let us use the plain Anglo-Saxon terms : they are the words that, true and sharp as steel, carry home to a man the real ■meaning of his deeds. The courtly Latin has been used to tell lies and cover up crime from the begin- ning of the English language. We must make it understood that sin is sin, and not merely an inherited taint of the blood ; that evil is evil, and not merely a misfortune of circum- stances ; that guilt is guilt, — to be got rid of, not by finely worded confessions of piety and theories of substituted punishment, but by real pain and strug- gle and hearty honest work. Let us not by any feeble sentimentality weaken the force of the old law, that "the way of the transgressor is hard." There are times when the greatest unkindness you 54 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS could do a man would be to show him that you lightly excuse his vices. Many a mother smooths the road to ruin for her sons, because she overlooks too readily their childish faults. It isn't that she has too much love, too much heart, but that her love does not look through the far-seeing eye of moral judgment; her heart is not what Solomon calls "a wise and an understanding heart." No : let no mis- taken tenderness, public or private, blind us to the enormity of immoral deeds. For very self-preserva- tion, society must wear the ermine and sit in the seat of judgment. Let no man feel that the eye of the community is not upon him. Let no man feel that he can sin, and escape the court of public opin- ion. There may be forgiveness for him, but let him not feel that he is forgiven before he has been brought to trial. The accusation and the sentence must come before the pardon. If any will waste their substance in riotous living, let them know dis- tinctly that husks must be their food and the swine their company ; that only for such as return are the feasts and the joys of the Father's house. We see, then, that the moral judgment that condemns and punishes guilt, and the moral ten- derness that overlooks and pardons guilt, are equally injurious when they appear apart from each other. Many are the victims whom society has crushed apparently to moral death by the severity of a moral judgment, — just, perhaps, at first, but upon which no pardoning mercy followed. Equally many are the victims who have been surfeited to moral death by kindness, — who have been lured to their MERCY AND JUDGMENT 55 graves by friendly (so they were meant) excuses for their sins. The problem is to combine these two ; to be both just and kind at the same time ; to let the conscience pronounce with unflinching manly voice the word guilty, and execute with firm hand the punishment, while the heart trembles with its full motherly burden of healing and redeeming love. "Behold," exclaimed St. Paul, "the goodness and the severity of God ! " In that phrase, we have the wondrous unity we seek. In the divine laws, justice and mercy are brought into concord, are atoned. " On tJicm which fell [i.e., who sinned], severity ; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness : otherwise, thou also shalt be c:it off" — so severely kind are the great laws of God. Very pitilessly do they accuse us, if we violate them ; for a yielding pity would be our ruin. Very pitilessly do they condemn and punish us, if we continue in diso- bedience ; for the severity of our punishment is our salvation. And yet the same laws, if we will but turn to obedience, if we will 'continue in goodness, are our consolers and our healers. While we are scourged, we are blessed ; while we are accused, we are redeemed. Into the divine laws are infused equally the father's firmness and the mother's com- passion ; and, though they pronounce us sinful and condemn our sins, they yet fold strong arms of love around us to lift us up and save. March 16, 1862. SELF-SACRIFICE. "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it." — Luke xvii., 23. No one saying of Jesus seems to have been impressed so deeply on the memory of his disciples as this. Six times does it appear in the Gospels in nearly the same words, and as having been uttered on several different occasions ; while the same senti- ment appears in many other forms, and is the key- note of many discourses. Paradoxical as is the sentence in expression, its meaning is clear. The word life, as every one must immediately see, is used in two senses : first, for the material, temporal life ; and, secondly, for the spiritual and eternal life. Hence, dropping the form of paradox, we should read the text thus : Whosoever shall seek to save his material and temporal life shall lose the higher and eternal life of the spirit ; and whosoever subordi- nates and stands ready even to let go his material and temporal life shall find the higher and eternal spiritual life. In other words, one may seek only the pleasures and pursuits of this life of earth, be absorbed wholly in them ; but, if so, then this life of earth is his all. To say nothing of what is possible hereafter, here, at least, he loses the life of heaven, — SELF-SACRIFICE 5/ loses the life of those nobler principles, pursuits, and joys that properly belong to spiritual and moral beings. On the other hand, if one's life is entirely subordinated to, swallowed up, and lost in these high motives of the spirit, then, though he may lose what the world regards. as the necessities and triumphs of earthly success, he finds the fairer fortune, even here upon the earth, of that life which has no end. In my last discourse, I spoke of the sacrifice of Christ, — of the real efficacy of his blood toward the redemption of the world. Contrary to the customary theological teaching, I endeavored to show how his death, with its results, falls into natural harmony with the great providential laws of human progress ; and, explaining the doctrine of his sacri- fice thus, we saw how it culminated in this saying which I have taken for my text to-day, — " Whoso- ever is ready to lose his life shall find it." That is, the doctrine taught by the sacrifice of Christ is the doctrine of self-sacrifice, — rest not for salvation in the sacrifices made for yon, but in the sacrifices you make ; and it is to this subject, the true doctrine of self-sacrifice, that I wish to call your attention in the present discourse. Our thoughts at a time like this turn naturally, turn by necessity, to the topic of sacrifice. When every week is bringing us intelligence of battle-fields, with their marvellous tales of endurance and heroism, their horrors of carnage and blood, with a strange blending of a beautiful and divine tenderness there- with, we are led inevitably to the question, What is the meaning of all this destruction and agony and 58 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS blood? Is there not some universal law by which the world is spiritually redeemed through suffering and self-sacrifice? We can hardly, I think, however closely we may be cased in the old dogmas of atone- ment and redemption by blood, go through with the scenes of this national conflict without putting a more universal and rational idea into these doctrines ; while some of us, perhaps, will be brought to see a greater moral efficacy in the sacrifice of physical life than we have been wont heretofore to believe in. My own thoughts on this subject I find strikingly expressed by one * who went over the battle-field of Fort Donelson soon after that terrible contest ; and, though the printed sermon in which they are con- tained has doubtless been read by many of you, I will yet quote the exact words, because they have more vivacity coming from one who spoke of what he himself saw. "As I went over this battle-field," he says, " and thought on the dead heroes and of all they died for, I kept repeating over each one, ' He gave his life a ransom for many ' ; and I wondered, when I thought of how we had all gone astray as a people, and how inevitable this war had become, in consequence, as the final test of the two great antagonisms, whether it may not be true in our national affairs as in a more universal sense, — ' with out the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.' And so, by consequence, every true hero fallen in this struggle for the right is also a saviour to the nation and the race." And do we not all feel that there is a deep truth in this statement, and that ♦Robert Collyer, Unitarian Mo7ithly Journal, April, 1862. SELF-SACRIFICE 59 the language is as reverent as it is true and tender ? Not indeed that every soldier who falls for a right- eous cause is put on the same level with Jesus, but that both fall by the same law of redemption through sacrifice. The rudest stone thrown into the air falls to the earth by the same law that draws Jupiter through the infinite spaces of the heavens, but that is not to put the stone on the same grade of exist- ence with the planet. What is meant is that who- ever gives his life for the right enters by that act, according to the elevation of his motive, into the spirit of the sacrifice of Christ, and helps, in propor- tion to the worth of his life, to redeem the world from error and from sin. The more precious the life, the more valuable becomes the testimony, the greater the price ; and the greater also — for divine providence balances every account with perfect exactness —the moral value which the world receives in return : the costlier the blood, the greater the redemption. Yet we may be allowed to feel that not even the humblest and obscurest man who gives his life for the right falls in vain. And I speak not now of what will be attained by a victory of arms, but of the moral worth of the mere act of sacrifice. No sacrifice, not even the smallest, falls fruitless. The poorest woman, who with her tears sends forth her sons to battle, does something for the remission of our country's sins ; and the blood of the unnamed private soldiers, trickling unnoticed and neglected into the soil where they bravely fell, shall yet spring up a fountain of pure water, clear as crystal, to cleanse us from the foulest iniquities. 60 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS Paul somewhere teaches the doctrine that, by the death of Jesus, God's righteousness was made mani- fest ; that, by permitting so holy and perfect a being to suffer a cruel and ignominious death at the hands of evil men, God showed his love of goodness and his hatred of sin. In ordinary times, it seems a strange, dark doctrine ; and I remember when, on one occasion, our theological professor, by a lapsus linguae, reversed the phrases, and said, " Paul taught that God, by permitting the violent death of so holy a being as Christ, showed his love of sin and hatred of goodness," a member of the class exclaimed that that was a more logical statement than the one he meant to make. And so at first sight it seems. We are at least moved to exclaim : " If God had wished to manifest his righteousness, would he not have saved the righteous being, and brought the guilty to destruction ? How, pray, did he show his love of goodness by permitting goodness to be sacrificed, or his hatred of sin when he allowed sin to triumph ? " But the criticism, though natural, is superficial. Paul spoke out of a deep and extraor- dinary experience, and it is only when events call forth a deeper life than we commonly know in our own souls that we understand the transcendent truth of his thought. That truth, I think, is made clear to us now. God's righteousness is manifested by the greatness of the sacrifices which he demands shall be made for it. He shows his love of good- ness by infusing into human hearts a spirit which is willing and firm to endure the most cruel agony and death rather than to forswear the good and the SELF-SACRIFICE 6 1 true. He shows his abhorrence of evil by nerving human souls with a strength almost omnipotent, and capable of bearing tortures unspeakable rather than to yield to the seductions of evil. It is in morals as in material things : value is measured by the price paid. So, when God calls upon men to give for the truth, to give for righteousness, those things which are counted the dearest among earthly possessions, he shows that he counts truth and righteousness as dearer than all things else. Wealth is dear : men will toil early and late for it ; and, to a certain ex- tent, we are bid by the divine laws to seek it for the better comfort of our bodies and the higher re- finement of our minds. But the same divine laws tell us clearly that virtue is dearer, for you*must pay the whole price of your wealth rather than lose your virtue. Home and family are dear : what, indeed, is more precious than these little household struct- ures which your hearts have builded ? They are dearer than your wealth, for you seek wealth that you may adorn and elevate these ; and you instinc- tively call the man worse than mean who lets his dollars stand between him and his home. And yet you let go home and family, when you recognize a higher voice calling you to service in the broader household of your country or humanity. You tear yourself from the cradle of your own child that you may save the liberties of strangers' children. Wife, sister, father, mother, — you give them all up ; for it is better that you see them in want, or see them no more, than that all the households in the land should 02 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS be imperilled by the outbreak of national wickedness, or continue to stand under the traitorous protection of a flag stained with crime against domestic sanc- tity. Life is dear, — this life of the body on the earth. Instinctively, we cling to it. We let go everything that we have gained and toiled for a whole life long rather than let go the life itself. Of all temporal things, it is counted dearest ; and, as men advance in civilization, they grow into the opin- ion that life, of all things, is sacred and inviolable. We may, under certain conditions, take men's prop- erty, we may take them from their homes, we may take their liberties, but life is the last thing we can take ; and many there are who deny that the right ever comes to man to take it at all. Life, then, is held to be the most precious and inviolable of human possessions. But see what vast numbers there have been and are — the brave army of sol- diers and the still braver army of martyrs — who hesitate not to pay this highest price of all for the sake of truth. So is it shown that truth, that prin- ciples of right, are valued above all things, — above wealth, above home and family, above life. And thus it is that by the sacrifice of these things — by the sacrifices and sufferings and death of the righteous — the righteousness of God is made manifest. By the value of the things we are called upon, by our higher natures, to give rather than to yield the truth, or in order to ransom us from evil, does God show the price he sets upon goodness and his abhorrence of iniquity. " What shall a man give," exclaimed Jesus, "in exchange for his soul?" SELF-SACRIFICE 6$ No answer was needed, for every true man's heart answers that there is nothing costly enough to purchase that. The kingliest blood, the manliest form of flesh, cannot be weighed for a moment against the imperishable virtues and principles of the immortal spirit. Was the worth of Jesus' life inestimable ? How much more inestimable, then, the worth of that truth, of those principles, for the sake of which all the wealth and beauty of that life were given ! So we are learning now, through the severe lesson of tears and blood, how the ever- lasting righteousness of God may be manifested, not only by life, but by the sacrifice of life. We are learning, what perhaps in our ease and prosper- ity we were in danger of forgetting, that there are many things higher and holier than this life of flesh, and many things which we had better die rather than do or allow to be done. And we are learning also, through the costliness of the sacrifice, the infinite worth of those things for which the sacri- fice is made, — national justice and righteousness and purity. What, indeed, could better teach us the value that God sets upon these things than the greatness of the price we are now called to pay for them ? That the most precious blood of the race is being poured out in ransom ; that the bone and sinew of the nation are being laid upon its altar ; that lives of the richest promise, — the pride of our homes, the pride of our colleges, — lives rich in cult- ure, in virtue, of the noblest manhood and the saintli- est purity, — are being freely offered up in sacrifice, — herein, my friends, does God reveal to us the ines- 64 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS timable worth of that national purification and of those eternal principles of righteousness for which this most precious of all offerings is being made. By the value of the life given may we measure the value of that higher life which is to be obtained. If we were to state the reason, then, of the ra- tional Christian doctrine of self-sacrifice, it would be this : that no private life can be of so much impor- tance as the life of humanity ; no personal ends can stand in the way of universal ; no temporal, physical good is of any worth, which cannot be held consistently with eternal principles of right. The doctrine does not militate against the just claims of individuality. It enjoins no sacrifice of our personal being, no surrender of that sacred entity within us which we call our selfhood. Rather does it draw the line in our being between things temporal and things eternal, between material things and spiritual things, and bid us seek our life and ground our being in those things that are eternal and spiritual. Instead of demanding the sacrifice of our individu- ality, it bids us find it in a higher sphere. Letting go all merely private and selfish ends and aims, our being re-comes to us enlarged by universal relations and elevated into divine and everlasting proportions. Whether we continue to wear this body of flesh or whether it fall away, — in the body or out of the body, — it is of little moment. The personal exist- ence does not necessarily cease : the life goes on, only a certain manifestation of it vanishes. It is to be remembered, too, that goodness, man- hood, culture, are not sacrificed, only certain per- SELF-SACRIFICE 65 sonal and temporal manifestations thereof ; but the sublime qualities themselves are saved. Good men die, but goodness survives : good men die, that goodness may survive. Did holiness expire on the cross of Christ ? Did wickedness triumph in his death ? Nay, rather did holiness appear more holy. Jesus, lifted upon the cross, drew all men unto him ; while wickedness was stripped of its disguises and revealed in its real form, so odious that men shrank from it and could not help then but choose the truth. Are the virtues of your friends buried in their graves? Nay, rather does death transfigure to your vision their characters, so that the grave generously veils their faults, while it allows their virtues to spring up with a di- viner grace and beauty. Of our soldiers, too, who fall in battle for the redemption of the nation, we forget the evil, and remember only that they were patriots and heroes. Blest mode of death, by which a man's sins are washed from memory by his own blood, and only his virtues — his single virtue, perhaps — survive in remembrance to describe his character and give example to the world ! And, as it seems to our vision, so doubtless it is in reality. No man, however worthless and ignoble he may have been, can give his life for a great cause with- out feeling that with his body something of his low selfishness drops off from him ; while a higher life, from the cause he surfers for, is infused into his spirit. This, too, must be the experience, not only of those who fall in the terrible contest, but of those who, though ready to fall, are yet spared. 66 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS It is impossible but that something of the deeper and mysterious verities of life should have been re- vealed to them. The same observer whom I have already quoted says again : " I noticed one feature in this camp that I never saw before : the men do not swear and use profane words as they used to do. There is a little touch of seriousness about them. They have taken the Eternal Name for common purposes a thousand times; and we feel as if we could say with Paul, ' The times of this ignorance God passed by.' But on that fearful day, when judgment-fires were all aflame, a voice said, 'Be still, and know that I am God ' ; and they are still under the shadow of that awful name." Thus it is that by sacrifice of this life of earth, even by the agony and sweat and blood of the battle-field, the higher verities of God and eternity are revealed. This doctrine of self-sacrifice is not only the ■doctrine of Christianity, but the doctrine of human nature. There is within us all, if we will but heed it, the germ of a natural instinct — let us call it divine — which prompts us to give ourselves for others ; and, however far short most of us may fall of its requirements, there is yet, I think, no man sunk so low in selfishness who will not appreciate and applaud a pure act of self-sacrifice performed by another. Let a stranger — one entirely unknown to the whole community — rush into the street, exposing his own life in order to snatch a child from being trampled to death by a frenzied horse, and instantly you know that stranger has a noble manhood, and you wish to take him by the hand SELF-SACRIFICE 6j and call him brother ; and in all the crowd of by- standers is there one so mean, so insensible to every manly sentiment, as not instinctively to pray that he might have the same brave and self-forgetful spirit ? Human nature at its inmost heart is true, and teaches the same gospel as did Jesus, — " not to be ministered unto, but to minister"; not to save, but to give ourselves. See how friend will give himself for friend. See how, in every true marriage relation, the husband sacrifices himself for his wife and wife for husband. See how father and mother give themselves unweariedly for their children. What, indeed, will not a mother do to save her child? Her own life, mature and rich in wom- anly usefulness, is not so precious to her as that yet unfolded bud of life in her arms. The world outside might say, Better that the child be sacrificed than the mother. But she judges and acts by a diviner instinct, and knows that, though she loses her life, she finds a higher life in the action of that love that prompts the sacrifice ; and, the sacrifice once made, the world outside acknowledges also the higher divinity of the deed. The subject is far from being exhausted ; yet time remains only for one thought in conclusion, and that an important one. There must be some object for wliicJi sacrifice is made, some worthy object ; else the doctrine finds no valid justification. Sacrifice for the mere sake of sacrifice is neither morality nor religion. It is only a poor asceticism which nar- rows, worries, and wearies the soul more than it elevates. But sacrifice of self for the sake of some 68 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS object held dearer than self; sacrifice of self out of love for another, or love for the truth, or love for humanity, or love of country, — this it is that saves us ; for only this lifts us out of the circle of self, and gives our life a higher and more universal sweep. He who gives himself, not merely for the sake of self-discipline, but for the sake of love, finds a higher spirit of love pervading his whole being. He enters into a sphere of loftier affection, of holier action. He becomes one with those higher objects for which he gives himself, and so finds his life brought more into harmony with absolute and eternal aims. Who- ever dies for the truth dies that he may live more truthful ; whoever dies for humanity becomes more humane; whoever dies for God becomes more God- like. And, at this day, what our nation in its time of trial has needed, and still needs most of all, is the more openly avowed and inspiring purpose of a holy cause. Let our struggle be expressly for justice and humanity. As the armies of treason are gathered avowedly for the defence of a government founded on slavery, let the loyal men of the nation take up the challenge, and rally under the holier and more chivalrous title, " Defenders of liberty." Let the principles of our heroic fathers, — dead, but in their graves still speaking, — universally applied, even as they hoped and prophesied, inspire us. Not the Union alone, but " Liberty and Union, now and for- ever, one and inseparable," — let that be our aim ; and so let us rally to make this land actually in the future what it has been only ideally in the past, the SELF-SACRIFICE 69 home where the oppressed of every nation and race and people may lift themselves up to manhood, and be counted members of one family on earth as they are children of one Father in heaven. Not, I be- lieve, until we are ready to give ourselves for an object like this, shall we be strong enough for vic- tory or worthy to achieve it. Go forth in this faith, ye brave and freedom- loving hearts ! Your country calls you ; humanity needs you. And, though the human voices that summon you do not as yet all thrill with the stir- ring tones of freedom, yet go in faith. The notes of liberty, still somewhat muffled, shall yet ring clear throughout the land, and the world shall own you as the brave army of freedom's defenders. Meanwhile, rally to the summons that comes up from <the deep instincts of your hearts; rally to the cry of hu- manity crushed to the earth ; rally to the voice that comes down from the Lord God of justice in the heavens ! And for us who must remain at home, — let us not grow weary in upholding the great cause for which our country struggles ; let us stand firmly for the right; and, though the result we pray for comes not yet, though wickedness seems still to triumph and the counsels of weak men to prevail, yet let us still labor on, giving ourselves — our word, our deed, our treasure — to our country's life, confi- dent that the right must win at last, and our sacri- fices be blessed with a victory for humanity and a peace that shall be enduring. And, oh, may the Spirit of Infinite Compassion instil into all our hearts the gentler mercies and humanities that the JO TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS hour demands. Let the sick, the wounded, the suffering, the bereaved, have our constant sympathy, our constant care. Tender in heart, just and firm in aim, helpful in hand, so may we strive to do the duties of the time ; and so, over the ruin and waste, the shattered hearts and broken households of this conflict, may new life spring up, with fairer moralities and nobler societies and juster legisla- tion ! Though we go forth in weeping, yet, bearing precious seed, we shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing with us costly sheaves of God's harvested truths. Our brothers, lifted upon the cross of battle, shall draw all our hearts to greater reverence for the sacred principles which they have died to save. From these red fields of carnage, planted with the blood of our bravest and best, shall spring up richer crops of virtue, even trees of right- eousness whose leaves shall be for the healing of all nations ; and, over the desolation caused by the demon of war, we will rear new and fairer temples to the Prince of Peace. May 10, 1863. Note. — This sermon was first preached in April, 1S62, with the exception of the last two paragraphs. Besides its repetition at New Bedford, with these paragraphs added, it was given in fifteen other places in 1862 and 1863, where it was believed it might be of service in helping on the enlistment of soldiers for the national army. VI. THE RELIGION OF THE AFFECTIONS. " Then said Jesus, Let her alone : against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you ; but me ye have not always." — John xii., 7, 8. Human nature is many-sided ; and religion, which in its full sense is the perfect satisfaction of all human needs, must offer some truth and present some obligations for every side. The natural affec- tions of our hearts have therefore an appropriate place in the complete religious life. I wish «to speak to-day of the religion of the affections ; and the theme was well illustrated in the domestic scene in the house of Lazarus and his sisters as described in the Fourth Gospel, where Jesus, on being rebuked for allowing Mary to waste the precious ointment upon his person when it might have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor, rebuked in turn his critic, on the ground that, while the poor were always at hand and always to be cared for, there was also a legitimate place for the expression of personal affection, and that the legitimate time and manner of such expression, if allowed to pass, might never return. The poor are always with us : the demands for charity and general philanthropy are ever at hand. But our heart-friends do not remain always 72 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS where they can receive the demonstrations of our love. It has been very commonly represented that relig- ion denies, as some religions have denied, these natural affections of the human heart which bind persons together in families, in friendships, in social and kindred circles. It is said that religion includes love to God and love to man, — that is, a universal love for the whole race of mankind, — but that it does not embrace the special affections, such as the conjugal, filial, parental, friendly, fraternal, social, and the like. Therefore, the Roman Catholic Church considers it the highest grade of the religious life to forsake all ties made by such affections, and, in re- tirement from the affairs of the world and from all the joys and loves of a home, to devote one's self to works of so-called piety toward God and of general charity toward man. Its constant question of the world is, Why this waste of wealth on the selfish demands of the heart, when it might have been given to relieve the sufferings of the poor or to save souls from eternal torments ? Francis of Assisi, founder of the powerful order of Franciscan monks, renounced his father's rich inheritance, cut himself off from all ties of home and friendship, put on a robe of the coarsest cloth, and went through the country begging alms to build churches. He visited hospitals, and washed the feet and kissed the loath- some sores of lepers, left his bed empty and slept upon the ground, mixed his food with ashes to make it less palatable ; and for twenty years he travelled thus as a friendless beggar through many lands, THE RELIGION OF THE AFFECTIONS 73 doing, indeed, a vast missionary work and perform- ing acts of the most self-denying and self-mortifying charity, but all the time repelling and crucifying every natural affection and love of his heart. And this, says the Catholic Church, is the highest type of religion; and Francis of Assisi is made a saint. Elizabeth of Hungary abandoned her own children, dismissed her maids when she found herself loving them too well, and devoted herself to caring for the sick and giving alms to the children of the poor; and the Roman Catholic Church canonizes her there- for. There have been women who have wrought with equal patience, devotion, and self-sacrifice in their own homes, loving their own children and caring for their own households ; but the Church of Rome has "never made them saints, nor does it even regard their faithfully and heroically performed duties as religious. There have been men who, without renouncing the world or the natural life of the heart, have performed as great deeds of philan- thropy as Francis d' Assisi ; yet, in the eye of the Church of Rome, they have not made the first step toward saintship. Protestantism has denied, indeed, this extreme view of self-denial and self-mortification. Protes- tantism does not assert that the highest religious duty is to crucify the natural affections of the heart, nor that to indulge them is sinful or irreligious. It does not demand that a man or woman, in order to be holy and saintly, must withdraw from the world and from all social and domestic life. And yet Protestantism, as a general thing, has not ventured 74 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS to assert that religion embraces the natural affec- tions of the heart. Though it does not, like Ca- tholicism, call them irreligious and make war upon them, neither does it call them religious. It has regarded them, generally, as a neutral field between religion and irreligion ; as a fruitful source of temp- tations, idolatries, snares, delusions, and spiritual conflicts, — as belonging to "the things of the world," good in their places, but transient and perishable, and to be watched lest they usurp too great a place, and interfere with the claims of religious duty and the eternal interests of the soul. But Protestantism hardly more than Catholicism has dared to affirm that there can be any religion in the life of the natural affections themselves ; and Jesus, it is said, has shown us by his life how the natural affections of the heart for home and kindred and friends are to be denied, that one may live the more wholly to God and the truth. Even the liberal, learned, and brill- iant French biographer of Jesus, Renan, thinks that Jesus was in many things an ascetic, — that he "preached war against nature," voluntary "poverty" and "celibacy," and "total rupture with kin." Now, Jesus' own example cannot, I believe, be rightly drawn to the support of any ascetic view of religion. That certain sayings reported of him, torn from their connection and from the general spirit of his teaching and practice, are capable of such an interpretation, I admit ; and it would be strange if he should not have had some tinge of the asceticism that belonged to the purest religious sects of his time ; but the general moral and religious influence THE RELIGION OF THE AFFECTIONS 75 of his life and the aggregate weight of his teaching are decidedly the other way. On account of his freedom from ascetic practices, he was even stigma- tized as " a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber," an associate with "publicans and sinners." He does not appear to have practised self-denial for the mere sake of self-denial. He did not preach the abandon- ment of home and friends, of earthly goods and social ties, as a virtue in itself ; yet he was as ready as Francis d' Assisi to make these sacrifices when- ever the cause of truth and virtue demanded it. The distinction is here : ascetic religion seeks ways of self-denial and self-sacrifice for their own sake ; true religion accepts self-denial and self-sacrifice when self stands in the way of something greater than self. Francis of Assisi slept on t the bare ground, though there were beds all around him, for the mere sake of mortifying and deadening ^ the body: Jesus "had not where to lay his head," be- cause often, under the necessities of his mission, persecuted from town to town, the earth and sky were the only hospitality offered him. Nor is it true that Jesus abandoned all social and domestic ties, and denied himself the support of the love and sympathy of congenial hearts. It is proba- ble that his mission drew him away somewhat from his own family and kindred ; for they could not understand, more than his old neighbors, the source of this strange power that he possessed as a teacher, and the misunderstanding became a cause of partial alienation. But, though under the exigencies of his work, the home was in great measure lost, home joys 76 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS and ties and affections were not lost. His little band of disciples was his family. With them, he worked and travelled and lived. And, when his human love craved a warmer and more interior home, there were three disciples, Peter, James, and John, who seemed to form an inner circle within this little flock of followers, and to whom his heart went out in its deepest intimacies and most earnest cravings for sympathy. Nor was he without domes- tic shelter and hospitality and love. The house of Simon Peter, in the village of Capernaum, became his home while in Galilee, where he was cared for like an own son. He was a frequent guest at the house of Zebedee ; and, occasionally, some of the wealthier citizens invited him under their roofs and to their tables. There were devoted women, like Salome, Joanna, and the faithful Mary Magdalen, who followed him, bound by no merely technical religious tie, but held by the tie of gratitude and love and personal devotion. But the most beautiful of all these ties of private affection was that which bound him to the family at Bethany, — to Lazarus and his sisters. Here seems to have been his home during his work in Judea ; and his visits to this house, when the burdens of his toilsome service appear for a time to have been laid aside, while his nature refreshed itself with home affections and delights, are like bright oases in the midst of the stormy desert of his public life. Here, aside from faithful discipleship, was pure and exalted friend- ship. Here was not only religious fellowship, but love, sympathy, communion of hearts. Here not THE RELIGION OF THE AFFECTIONS J7 only stern duty, but the voice of affection was heard ; and Jesus was for the hour transformed from the public teacher and religious reformer into the cordial companion and, possibly, tender lover. In view of intimacies and friendships like these, it is a great error to suppose that Jesus lived and died in ascetic denial of the claims of the heart. If his own example is to be considered as settling the question, it is certain that, while he did not allow the natural affections of the heart to thwart or interfere with the ruling purpose of his career, he yet did not sacrifice them, but gave them a large and sacred place in the completed temple of his religious life. Again, Jesus draws some of his sublimest relig- ious lessons from these natural human affections. How does he illustrate the bond of religious disci- pleship but by the terms "brother," "sister," "mother"? How does he teach the perfect provi- dence of the Infinite Power but by the argument, " If ye then know how to give good gifts unto your children, shall not your Father in heaven give good things to them that ask him ? " How does he de- clare the quick, pardoning mercy of Heaven toward sinning men and women but by that exquisite por- trayal of a human father's forgiving love for a wan- dering child in the parable of the Prodigal Son? Where, in fact, did Jesus find the word that best and oftenest expressed his conception of the character and government of Deity, and is the key to the whole edifice of his religious ideas, but in the pa- rental relation of the human family ? In short, it is y8 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS in these intimate human relations, in these home affections, sympathies, and services that are often considered without the pale of religious duties, or even as standing in the way of religious duties, that Jesus found the most apt illustrations of the special religious truths he had to teach. He took these common, inborn affections of the heart that bind the human family together, lifted them up, as it were, into a higher and purer atmosphere, and showed how, both in their origin and in their issue, they are a type of our relations to infinite Being and infinite providence. Shall we, then, in the face of these teachings and habits of Jesus, dare to assert on the ground of his example that there is any- thing irreligious, or contrary to the spirit of relig- ion, in the natural affections of the heart ? " Let them alone," says this great teacher of duty : " re- strict not the heart, mutilate not its loves, forbid not the tender outflow of its sympathies, even though a merely careful prudence cries, ' Why this waste ? ' " And in human nature itself, in its origin, its needs, and its destiny, we find this claim of the natural affections justified. These fountains of do- mestic and friendly love are in the deepest places of our being. They spring up at the very root of our natures, among those eternal forces amid which our special natures stand, and from which they have in some way been educed. They appear in us as instincts. They are vital, therefore, with the very life of that mysterious energy which is behind and anterior to our being, and pulsate with a power that THE RELIGION OF THE AFFECTIONS 79 comes throbbing from the central purpose and heart of the universe itself. These energies of wedded and parental love, of fraternal and domestic affec- tion, whence come the ties of home and family, are so manifestly a pressure from the heart of nature, and are so essential to the ascending development of her life, that I know not why we may not call them the very power of God in the human soul. They are put, indeed, somewhat for direction and control under reason and conscience, and are amenable to the law of justice and general benefit that is the basis of social morality; but to deny them, to re- press their divine spontaneity, to smother and anni- hilate them, is to sin against the purpose and law of universal nature, and might well be defined as one form of the transgression which the New Testa- ment calls the sin against the Holy Ghost. It is the very life of eternal Being, seeking ever some higher and more favoring form of manifestation, that has organized these natural affections and sym- pathies within us. The power of God is in them as the very bond of the union. The dying Bunsen spoke not in metaphor, but only simple truth, when he said to his wife, bending over him, " In thy face, I have seen the Eternal." Tread reverently; for here is holy ground, here are shrines for daily wor- ship. In the pure loves of our hearts for wife, for husband, for child, for brother and sister, for father, mother, friend, the Infinite One is near us, — ay, lives within 7is. It is eternal love that binds us thus together in affectionate mutual service. Hold it sacred. Profane it not, deny it not, defile it not. 80 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS Kneel at the heart's shrines, and gratefully adore and serve. This inner circle of affection is needed, too, in order that the great outer work of life may be most effectually done, — in order that even the universal charities and philanthropies may be the better ac- complished. There are portions of life which can only be developed in this close intimacy of affection, — which are too sacred for public participation, — which, like some rare and delicate plants, only ap- pear under certain conditions of privacy as to shelter and temperature. Yet these portions are also nec- essary to the completeness of our lives and to the full performance of our duties ; and they are neces- sary, not merely for their own sake and the rounding of the life in that direction, but for the perfect rounding of the life in all other directions and the complete development and action of all its parts. The men who live solely in public, whether it be for ends of business, or philanthropy, or political or religious service, lose a certain refinement and ten- derness of nature and a certain moral and spiritual aroma, which are found only in the enclosed and sheltered gardens of private affection ; and by as much as this loss detracts from the full complete- ness of the life, by so much does it detract from its strength and usefulness in any public service. We touch here, indeed, upon a great general law, — the X law of culture. There must be a certain amount of general culture of our whole being before the best fruit of any special faculty can be produced. No man is a great statesman who is only a statesman. THE RELIGION OF THE AFFECTIONS 8 1 No man who is merely a business man has breadth enough for the greatest operations in business. A man who is so narrow as to be only a mechanician is too narrow — he lacks the necessary knowledge — for the highest achievements in mechanics ; and the man who is only a public philanthropist is not broad enough to achieve the grandest successes in philan- thropy. In accordance with this same law, the culture of the private and domestic affections is necessary to the fullest accomplishment of the pub- lic service that is required of us. These affections enlarge, elevate, and refine the whole nature, and better prepare it for its special work in any direc- tion. There is no love of universal humanity that can take the place of the heart's private loves ; and the broadest love of mankind may have a< kindlier flavor, if it yield its austere demands now and then to home affections and delights. The domestic af- fections are the inns along the rough highways of life, where Duty is refreshed and girds herself anew for the severe pilgrimage and stern tasks before her ; and as, without seasons of refreshment, the traveller must perish in the way, so, without these resting- places of the heart, conscience may be overstrained, and Duty sink down exhausted in her own severely appointed path. The lives that have been spent in attempts to show that it is possible to put away all earthly love, till the soul, intense with individual piety, shall seem a clear flame of spiritual devotion ascending to heaven, — these very lives have proved, by the fruitlessness of the effort or by some mon- strosity in the result, the absolute necessity and divineness of earthly love. 82 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS But not only are the natural claims of the heart to be acceded to for the perfect development of our present being, but also for the better accomplishment of our destiny as beings who may be immortal. I would speak of this point with caution, because it is a point on which positive knowledge fails us ; and we can only draw inferences from premises which rest on the basis of the strongest rational probability. Not arguing this question now, but assuming that some kind of continuance of existence for human beings, after these few years of earthly life are over, is the more rational alternative, I wish to make and emphasize the point that the culture of the personal affections is not simply probationary, not merely educational in the sense of preparing our natures for some great spiritual service in the world hereafter, but the affections themselves are immortal: they go with us and remain a part of us in the world here- after. If we are to preserve our personal identity after death, I see not how we can come to any other belief than this : the heart, with all its real loves, attach- ments, and sympathies, — with all its still folded ca- pacities, too, — remains with us. It is in this that the richest and best parts of our lives have been found here. It is this that is deepest in our being, this for which more than anything else we crave per- sonal continuance. I cannot conceive, therefore, any individual human existence hereafter in which the personal and social affections are not to fill an impor- tant place and contribute in a most important degree to the heavenly service and felicity. Nay, I believe THE RELIGION OF THE AFFECTIONS 83 that these affections must enter much more into our lives there than they have ever entered, or can enter, into our lives here. I do not picture the future life as simply the unimpeded intellectual discovery and reverence of truth, however high the dignity and large the satisfactions of such a career. I do not picture it as only moral adherence to the line of divine rectitude, though of necessity including that. I do not picture it as merely a higher field for the rigid, self-sacrificing services of charity and philan- thropy, but as that and more. Least of all do I picture it as a continuous discharge of technical religious duties, — a monotonous scene of adoration and worship, of praises and psalm-singing and shout- ings of hosannas around a celestial throne. Nor can I accept the more mystical interpretation of this latter view, and say with religious stoicism that the heavenly life is the rapturous adoration and worship of Infinite Being alone, — that it is to live with Him in such a way that all other personal relations, all other personal longings and regrets, are swallowed up and lost in the personal relation to Him. Not thus, O friends, do I read man's future. Not thus do I read it from his past or from his present, from his history or from his capacities and his yearnings. We may hope, indeed, in that world of more re- fined mentality, to gaze with ardor upon the new truth that will be revealed to us ; we may hope to walk with fonder obedience the path of rectitude, and to live as devoted helpers and lovers of our race ; we may hope to know and serve and live in more vital connection with the Eternal Power, in 84 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS some higher and larger way than anything our im- aginations can now conceive. But the crowning dis- tinction and glory of the future world must be, I believe, the unfolding, ever more and more, of the life of the human heart in its finite personal rela- tions ; the disclosure, ever more and more, of the mysterious depths of the riches, beauty, and power of these relations ; the development of our natures as persons into ever higher and more determinate, yet more complicated and co-related forms, as organ- isms of the infinite energy and life. This is nature's highway of development, — increasing forms of dif- ferentiation, and thereby constant ascent in individ- ual intelligence and power, and not reabsorption into the original mass of being. I see not how we could be nearer to God as a person in the future world than we are in this ; for "in him," even now, "we live and move and have our being." Indeed, I cannot con- ceive of God as a person, — as one whom we can approach and have relations with, as we approach and have relations with each other. That, to my thought, makes him finite. But, if we are to attribute person- ality to him at all, he is Person of persons ; or that which is the substratum in which finite personalities inhere, — the vital power through which they have found being and by which they are bound together in social relations and ties. And hence I conceive that our heaven will be the larger and freer unfolding and enriching of our personal being and finite per- sonal relations. We shall not be nearer, in any literal sense, to God, — we shall never look upon his face as the face of a man ; but we shall enclose more THE RELIGION OF THE AFFECTIONS 85 of his being in our being, and in him we shall draw nearer to each other, and look with clearer vision into each other's faces, and touch with fonder rapt- ure and more blissful communion each other's hearts. We shall admire Truth and Goodness and Beauty, — the accorded attributes of Infinite Being ; but we shall admire them mainly, and in ever-increasing measure, in their personal manifestations, and as they bind us by many a strong and sacred tie in social relationships. We shall worship, — less in form, but more in substance, — our worship becoming ever more and more the living "beauty of holiness," — love, fidelity, affectionate, just, and helpful service to each other. We know not, indeed, how these natural immortal affections are to build the heavenly homes < and cir- cles and societies ; but we know that they are strong enough to draw kindred hearts together here, and to build up homes, and to hold firmly the friendly circle. And so, with perfect assurance, we can trust them, in that freer and sihcerer life, to rear the mansions of eternal love, and to draw into them, and into friendly neighborhood, the hearts that really belong together. The mere earthly relations may fall away, — they are but educational, preliminary ; but the ties of the heart, the kinships of the soul, — these, if anything, must survive all changes of time and death and the grave. We do not know all, my friends ; but we know enough, — enough to cause us to put the culture of the domestic, personal, and social affections among the first of religious duties. Starve them not, sup- 86 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS press them not. Let them grow, and glow, and flame their genial warmth into all the cold places of life. And let them consume all the secret or toler- ated impurities that usurp their sacred name. Guard all your true friendships faithfully, sacredly : the heart of your friend joins yours, because some por- tion of divine power possesses you in common at that point. Let your kindly word and deed be felt in all your neighborhood and through all your friendly circle, — elevating, purifying, enlivening with innocent joy. And in your homes, — oh for a tongue inspired to speak of the holy affections and obliga- tions there ! We have not yet half learned the worth of the home. We have not yet learned what depths of religion lie beneath the affections on which it is based. Not wealth, nor social ambition, nor fash- ion should build it; not prudence, nor convenience, nor even conscience alone, should build it. But love should build it; and love — wise love — should reign in it. Let it build it so pure and beautiful and sincere that it shall be a foretaste and type of the heavenly dwelling. Let it make its realities so attractive that no frivolities nor illusions can draw son or daughter, husband or wife, into temptation elsewhere. Let it fill it so full of pure service, irra- diate it with such joy and peace, that no place in all the world shall seem so good, so divine. Let love — wise love — build it. Though it founds it on the earth, it will rear it to the heavens and open it into the celestial mansions ; and, though the members of the household must one after another depart, they may still not be far away : they may have only gone THE RELIGION OF THE AFFECTIONS to some higher room, where Love, faithful house- keeper shall find them, every one, and preside still with patient fidelity over the one family on earth and in heaven. April 2, 1865. VII. ENDURANCE. " Behold, we count them happy which endure." — Epistle of James. It is a well-known fact of physics that every re- sult in nature is achieved through the operation of two sets of forces, — the forces of impulsion and the forces of resistance. Or, to speak more precisely, physical force manifests itself in two ways, — by direct action and by reflex action ; and every move- ment, every growth, every evolution in nature, is the resultant of this double putting-forth of power. It is from the combination of these two exhibitions of force, harmoniously balanced, the first of which would impel in a direct line through endless space and the other bring to speedy rest, that the earth describes its symmetrical orbit, returning to it with precision every year. And thus, too, it is that all the heavenly bodies group themselves in families and systems, finding rest in their harmonious rela- tions with each other, at the same time that they have infinite motion and variety in their endless circles. Science even allows us through the infinite vista opened by this law of forces to catch a glimpse of the process by which chaos first began to divide into worlds ; and it is by this same balance of forces ENDURANCE 89 that all the physical phenomena of the worlds are continued. By this, stones get their structure, veg- etation is produced, our feet walk the earth, and the nail clasps the wood so that our houses stand. It is from the impulsion of the wind and the resist- ance of the waves that our ships sail the sea ; from the friction of the rail and the expansion of steam that the locomotive makes the circuit of the globe. There is the same double manifestation of force in things moral and spiritual, — the force positive and the force negative, the force active and the force passive, the force direct and the force reflex, the force of impulsion and the force of resistance ; and there must be the same harmonious combination and bal- ance of these two elements, in order to produce efficiency and grace of character. There must be not only the impulse to do, but the capacity to bear ; not only the incentive to move, but the ability to stand ; not only the motive to act, but the power to endure ; not only the will to say yes, but the will to say no ; not only the supple, extended hand with ready generosity to offer help, but the firm, arched elbow and the knotted muscles prepared to resist and defend. These two manifestations of force are equally necessary, and in about the same degree, for the highest achievements of moral and spiritual char- acter. It is, in fact, but one and the same force operating in different ways ; and, where there is any real, original strength of character, it operates in both directions with equal efficiency : it shows itself, according to opportunity, both as strength to do and as strength to bear. 90 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS It is of this latter element of character — the strength to endure, to bear, to resist, to suffer — that I wish to speak this morning. And this needs, perhaps, the more to be enforced by speech than the other, since, in the very nature of the case, it is a more silent and undemonstrative kind of power in itself. The strength that is shown in direct and positive deeds, the strength to dare and to do, tells its own merits and carves its own fame ; while the strength that simply endures and resists must of necessity remain very much in concealment, and, perchance, its achievements never be told to the public ear. One acts chiefly in public, but one must suffer in solitude. The heroic deed is done amid the cheers of crowding bystanders, and is lifted to the knowledge of the world upon the breath of their huzzas : the heroic suffering may be hidden in the sacred privacy of home, in the silence of some obscure chamber, or in the still deeper and more silent recess of some private heart, which bears a grief that no human being knoweth, and whose fame is carried only on the breath of that spirit which "bloweth where it listeth," but the sound of which comes to no human ear. Hence, to the majority of men there is more stimulus to do bravely than to bear bravely : the heroism of the former is seen and applauded, the heroism of the latter may be unrec- ognized and unknown. Indeed, there are many persons who would at first question whether heroism of character can ever be shown through the passive qualities of endurance and defence. Their idea of the hero is of one who ENDURANCE 9 1 -oes forth as an aggressor against the evils and ills of life ; who does not wait for the hour of defence, but averts the need of endurance by boldly advanc- ing to annihilate the cause that threatens the neces- sity of such a resort. He is one who courts difficul- ties and hardships; who delights in attacking wrong; who seeks obstacles that he may overcome them ; who penetrates with a supreme disregard of self to the very front of danger, and flings his life with Herculean force into the deadly assault, deter- mined if he must die, to demand for the sacrifice the utmost possible price. Such a character as this is indeed, admirable. It has our applause and our homa-e. The world will always need such heroes, and will gratefully find redemption and progress in following their footsteps. But is the whole pf hero- ism here? Are there no heroes save in the front ranks of battle ? Is it glorious to rush with open breast against danger, and not glorious, also, to stand in attitude of waiting, defiant composure to resist it? The soldiers who stormed the forts of Vicksburg were not braver, nor did they do a more valorous deed for their country, than they who stood behind the ramparts of Gettysburg to receive un- moved the deadly fire, but who were not allowed to go out to assault their foes in return. The scout and the advance guard are needed ; but so is the soldier that defends the citadel in the rear, and to him may come as rare opportunities for bravery as to his more active brothers in the front. The man that runs up to the cannon's mouth, and seizes the flag from the hand of his enemy, and carries it in triumph from 92 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS the field, is heroic. So is he that holds the flag se- cure against a hostile grasp ; and he, too, who, far away from the noise and excitement of the fray, unseen perchance by mortal eye, bears with uncom- plaining fortitude the pain of a shattered limb or the burden of a diseased and helpless body, — he, it may be, is the greatest hero of them all. Strength of character cannot be measured by publicity of deed. There are perilous courses of business which seem to invite into them only the bravest blood ; there are rare missions of philan- thropy in which those who engage must needs have peculiar courage ; there are sudden emergencies in life which sometimes call into public distinction that presence of mind, self-forgetfulness, and daring which specially mark the hero. And we are apt to think that it is only amid such surroundings that heroism can appear. But, perhaps, in your nearest neighbor's house you may find heroism just as true and triumphant, — in the silent submissiveness with which some great trial is borne ; in the patient fidel- ity with which some secret, humble duty is per- formed ; in the serene, cheerful resignation, telling no tale of disappointment and sacrifice, with which the heart has taken up some heavy cross, crushing its deepest impulses, at the command of conscience. Heroism ? You shall find it in the patient, faithful life of the woman who has seen joy after joy depart from her side ; who has buried the bright hopes of her youth ; whose dream-castles filled with luxury and indulgence have vanished before the realities of hardship, poverty, and neglect ; who pictures no ENDURANCE 93 longer any high mission or large place for the dis- play of her powers ; and who now gives her days with consecrated fidelity to some hard, obscure ser- vice of affection or of duty, finding the whole of life in domestic faithfulness and neighborly charity and kindness. Heroism ? You shall find it in the man who sacrifices position, friendship, wealth, pleasure, and what are commonly regarded as the dearest objects of life, that he may live true to some one overmastering obligation of principle or of honor which the world knows nothing of. Heroism ? You shall find it in the high resolve of youth to over- come passion, to defy temptation, to bear the ridi- cule and scoffing of companions, to struggle with unknown difficulties and obstacles, to let go the fondest personal desires, in order to keep with honor some private trust or to fulfil some pledge given to conscience, or given, perchance, to a mother's prayer. Heroism ? You shall find it, perhaps, in the humble, scantily clad service-girl you have just passed unnoticed in the street, whose thin, poor dress covers a heart rich in patient endurance and self-forgetfulness, as she goes day after, day to her wearing, half-paid toil to get the bread that shall keep her bedridden, widowed mother and her young brothers and sisters from the disgrace of the alms- house. No human eye has read her story ; yet, if it could be written in a book as Heaven's eye reads it, even the world of fashion would read it with admira- tion and homage, and count her among its heroines. But she, perchance, cannot write ; and so she only lives her heroism, and the great world knows noth- ing of it. 94 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS And, if we are to judge character by the standard of the world's purest and greatest teachers, which is, also, the standard of our own secret hearts, shall we not place such examples of brave, silent endurance in the common paths of life higher even than the great deed of valor that is blazoned round the world ? These are never seen of men. Their left hand knows not what their right hand does. They are encouraged by no applause. They are incited by no competition. They only whisper their secret in trust to God, and their only reward is the conscious- ness of his approval and their own faithfulness. Wonderful almost to the miraculous is the power of endurance which a single-eyed devotion to duty sometimes gives. Even the body, animated by a strong and serenely heroic soul, becomes less sensi- tive to fatigue and danger, and more able to resist privation and disease. I shall never forget an inci- dent, in illustration of this truth, that came to my knowledge from the career of a private soldier serv- ing in the army of the Potomac. In a Pennsylvania regiment was a young man who enlisted in March, 1864. Two months afterward, he was carried to the hospital, wounded in three places, one of the wounds depriving him of his right eye. In August, he again joined his regiment, just before an engagement, in which he was again wounded and carried insensible from the field. After another two months in the hospital, he was again in the field for service, and very soon was one of a body of men sent to make a demonstration against a rebel fort. Placed on the picket line, he was left there, exposed to capture, ENDURANCE 95 by the sudden withdrawal of the national troops without warning. Discovering his perilous position, he crept unobserved into a small ravine, hoping to make his escape during the night. But, before night, a rebel vidette was thrown out a few feet from where he lay, so that he could not change his loca- tion or even lift his body without being perceived. For six days and nights, he remained in the ravine, — the enemy's sentinel posted close beside him, — exposed to winds and rains and frosts, without food or drink, chewing for sustenance the leaves and roots that chanced to be in reach of his arm, and fearing almost to sleep lest he should attract atten- tion by some unconscious movement, but resolved not to surrender, though he might have done so with perfect personal safety at any moment. On the seventh night, the enemy having relaxed vigi- lance, he crawled on his hands and knees to our lines, bringing with him his musket and all his accoutrements. His feet and hands were frost- bitten, his stomach had almost lost its functions, and one day more of such narrow imprisonment and he must have surrendered to death. Yet he seemed not to think that he had done anything extraordi- nary, or more than any patriotic soldier would have done. For myself, I could not help repeating as I read the story, — and I believe I made no irreverent application of the words, — " He endured hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." I do not know that he was a "Christian," as that word is commonly denned, — I do not know that he made any claims to religion, — but he certainly showed a fortitude which 96 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS the highest martyrs and saints of the Church have not surpassed; and, whatever were his sins, — sins of weakness he could not have had, — they were surely forgiven him, since he was ready to give so much to his country. But such fortitude, it is said, noble as it is, is yet somewhat physical. It is, to a considerable extent, a matter of natural temperament. Another person, equally patriotic and brave, but of a different phys- ical organization, might not have been able to show this capacity of endurance. There are worse suffer- ings than those of physical pain. There are disap- pointments of the heart ; there are bereavements of affection ; there are wrongs of neglect, suspi- cion, and false accusation ; there are heart agonies deeper than any caused by Death's sharp blade. And to bear such trials with serenity is a higher test of strength than patient submissiveness to bodily torture. And here, too, my mind recurs to an example in a soldier's life that came under my own knowledge. In the "Deserters' Camp" — a camp for deserters from our own army — across the Potomac, a daily visit to which lay within the rounds of my duty during a part of the winter of 1864, I noticed, from day to day, a man whose strong, honest face, cleanly dress, and general manly appearance and bearing indicated a character quite different from most of those with whom he was there associ- ated. Finally, after a direct question to him, I learned his story ; for he never sought me to make known his complaints, as did the rest. He was a Maine farmer, and had served from the beginning of ENDURANCE 97 the war. He had fought in most of the battles of the Army of the Potomac, and bore then on his per- son the scar of a severe wound, proof of his valor at Gettysburg. In consequence of this, he had been transferred to the Invalid Corps ; and, while going to the post to which he was assigned for duty, having neglected some technical military regulation, he was arrested as a deserter and sent to the military prison in Georgetown. Nominally, he was a de- serter : really, he was no deserter ; and his case could have been righted at once, if the circumstances had been known to the proper authorities. But the proper authorities could not know of every case in the Georgetown prison. And so the unfortunate man remained there for weeks in a small apartment crowded with prisoners, with no opportunity for a hearing or prospect of release. This was his reward for three years of faithful soldierly service. After a while, he was sent with others out to the " Desert- ers' Camp," there to be kept for weeks longer with the worst class of soldiers and the vilest of men. It was nearly three months from his arrest before his release came. Yet, when he related the affair to me, and told of the hardships he had suffered in prison, and of the difficulty of getting his case brought to trial, and of the worse hardship of being charged with desertion from an army which he had been proud to fight with for three years and from a cause which he would give his life willingly for rather than it should fail ; and, though his eyes moistened when he said that his worst fear had been that he might die there, and his name then always 98 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS stand on the war records with that stigma of coward- ice or treason against it, — yet he showed no resent- ment and no bitterness, but, in the consciousness of his own fidelity, was lifted above all passion, and was as composed as if he had been promoted instead of being imprisoned. He knew, he said, it was all a mistake, no one meant to wrong him ; and then he added, with a brave philosophy, " It matters not how much the United States government may punish me, or what charges they may bring against me, they can never make a traitor of me ; and, when they release me, I shall fight for them again all the same." But does such fortitude as this seem too stoical, too coldly philosophical, to reach the religious stand- ard ? Does it have too little of the joy of sacrifice, too little of spiritual consolation and hope ? Go with me, then, again to another scene, and see this silent heroism of endurance transfigured as if with the very light of the opening heavens. See a man lying in a hospital, worn with wounds, marches, and disease, nearing every day his death and knowing that death is already looking him in the face ; see him there surrounded by no comforts, only with the rudest necessities of the sick-room, far away from home and friends, the fresh soldier hope, that pict- ured heroic adventure and romance and feats of brilliant contest and victory, turned into this pallor and feebleness, this emaciation and wasting corrup- tion of disease, — see him there, simply suffering, enduring, and waiting to die ; see death end the scene in peace, and his wasted body carried forth in ENDURANCE 99 its rude coffin to the soldier's burial, — and then turn back and read these verses on which the ink from his pen is still fresh : * — " I lay me down to sleep, With little thought or care Whether my waking find Me here or There ! " A bowing, burdened head, That only asks to rest Unquestioning upon A loving breast. " My good right hand forgets Its cunning now; To march the weary inarch I know not how. « " I am not eager, bold, Nor strong. All that is past. I am ready not to do, At last, at last. " My half-day's work is done, And this is all my part : I give a patient God My patient heart, " And grasp his banner still, Though all its blue be dim ; These stripes, no less than stars, Lead after Him." *This incident and the verses were found in William H. Reed's Hospital Life, then just published. The impression there given is that the verses were composed by the soldier just before his death. But the soldier may have only copied them; yet, though since published anonymously in many places, I am not aware that they have been claimed for any other author. IOO TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS What one of the saints ever left a more exquisite memorial of trust, submissiveness, and peace ! Here the deepest springs of life have been touched, and the eternal waters flow. If the imprisoned soldier, in his power to bear suffering and wrong, gave us only the type of a sublime stoicism, this dying sol- dier certainly, in the sweetness of his submission, shows us as fair a type as was ever claimed for Christian saintliness. But do I seem to mock you, friends, with these examples of character drawn from scenes far off and from opportunities now happily past ? Come with me, then, nearer home. Enter a dwelling in this city, which some in this congregation have entered many a time ; and there may be some here who know well of what I am about to speak, but to most it is all unknown. Go into the servants' apartment of that house. There, a few months ago, you might have seen, in the person of a serving colored woman, an example of patient, heroic suffering, in which the very strength and tranquillity of heaven seemed so to mingle that an influence went out of her chamber, pervading the whole house and blessing all who saw her. She who had only engaged to serve with her physical strength for wages became at last the gra- tuitous teacher of the highest moral and spiritual truths ; and, when her faithful hands failed in their office, she served even more truly than before, bring- ing gifts to her patrons on the wings of her spirit from the very gates of Paradise. And when, after months of pain thus bravely and cheerfully borne, it became expedient to try the last hope of recovery, ENDURANCE IQI and she went to the Massachusetts General Hospital to submit to a critical surgical operation, she showed there a fortitude and composure so extraordinary as to become a tradition of the place. So far from needing comfort, she seemed herself to be the sus- tainer and comforter. Virtue went out from her, to strengthen those around her better to do and to bear. Theywho went to wait upon her wants came away feeling that they had received more than they could give. ° Attendants, patients, surgeons, were awed by her marvellous strength, as if a supernatural pres- ence were with her; and this humble serving-woman became the Christ-like teacher of professors and learned physicians, of men and women far above her in culture and social rank, and of all the humble, suffering poor, lying on their weary beds around. She died. But the power that went out from such a life, the beautiful, beatific influence of such virtue, can never die. It stays still upon the earth to help us be strong and to mould new life into its likeness. These examples, then, of 'the strength and grace that may come to character from the simple quality of endurance are not far away ; nor are the occasions past. Is there any person here whose position is lowlier, whose name obscurer, than the name and lot of those from whom these illustrations are drawn ? And is there any here whose position is so high, or so well guarded by wealth and culture and all the facilities of external ease and comfort, that suffering and sorrow, infirmity and loss, cannot reach it? Such examples are all around us. No one of us is beyond the opportunities which call for this virtue 102 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS We admire it always in others : let us secure the possession of it for ourselves. Who of us does not love gentle Charles Lamb the more for his patient, long burdened, but unbroken and unmurmuring sub- missiveness to that fearful calamity which darkened his house, and for the heroic sacrifices he made because of it, all unknown at the time, to one tender obligation ? I pray we may not be led away by any arguments for the rightfulness and sanctity of all natural human impulses into a philosophy of self- gratification and self-indulgence. I also would pro- claim the purity and sanctity of all affections and sentiments that are genuinely natural to humanity. But, among these affections and sentiments, I find one which does pre-eminent homage to the virtue of self-denial and self-renunciation. I also would preach the doctrine of self-development as contain- ing the fundamental principle of religious growth and progress. But I see that the way to self-devel- opment is often the way of the cross, and that the character that is perfected to the highest grace and beauty is most frequently moulded by suffering and sacrifice. In this aspect of things, the lot that seems hardest may be most blessed. There is no lot so hard, no dwelling so humble nor so afflicted, but that heaven lies next to it ; and brave endurance no less than brave doing carries the key that will open the door to the highest of heaven's joys. September 30, 1866. VIII. CHILDHOOD'S INSTINCT AND MAN- HOOD'S FAITH. " Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." — Matt, xviii., 3. Thus did Jesus rebuke the petty jealousies and ambitions of his disciples. Holding a little child before them, he contrasted their selfish ( strivings and vanity with its guileless unconsciousness of self ; their anxiety about future emoluments and honors with its fulness of joy in its present life; their coldly scheming prudence and niggardliness of affection with its generous, instinctive trust and outgushing, uncalculating love. And, from this and one or two similar sayings of Jesus, it has come to be a common Christian inculcation that, to be re- ligious, one must become like a little child. But, often as this sentiment is repeated, I apprehend there is a very vague understanding of what it is to become as a child in spiritual things. Paul said that when he became a man he put away childish things. And this is felt to be quite as important a truth as the saying of Jesus, and more in accord with the natural facts of individual progress. Yet the heart 104 TWENTV-FIVE SERMONS of Christendom has doubtless been right in holding on to this precept of Jesus as containing an illustra- tion of some fine religious truth, though the under- standing of Christendom may not always have rightly interpreted the illustration. He whose eye was quick to detect in the lilies and the clouds, in the sparrow and the grass, a religious lesson, saw in the simple spontaneous life of childhood a natural revelation of the truth he wished to teach concern- ing the spiritual faith of manhood. Perhaps it was only the simple spontaneity and docility of the early childhood nature that impressed him. But the com- parison suggests a more interior analogy ; and it is not impossible that it was to this that his thought penetrated, — an analogy between the trusting in- stinctive confidence of childhood and the serene faith and repose of true manhood. At least, it is to the development of this thought that I ask more specially your attention in this discourse, — The Analogy between CJiildhoocTs Instinct and Manhood's Faith. The true point of the analogy lies deeper, I be- lieve, than we ordinarily fathom. Indeed, as the comparison is commonly drawn, it is in many re- spects false. It is superficial, and contains more sentiment than sound common sense. We observe, with something of envy, the freshness, the simplic- ity, the unartificial ways, the joyous innocence of children; and the wish often utters itself, — "Oh that we could have our blotted, tattered natures given back to us in their infantile purity again ! " The wish, of course, is all in vain ; but, for other rea- childhood's instinct, manhood's faith 105 sons, it is also irrational. It is but the old lamen- tation that ever puts the golden age in the past,— the crying for vanished pleasures when nobler are in hand or within reach. A man can no more return to the moral stature of his infancy than he can to the intellectual or the physical. He cannot have childhood's innocence again ; but he can have something higher, — manly integrity and strength, matured nobleness and power. Every stage of life has its appropriate virtues and graces ; and, while purity and kindness belong alike to all ages, ma- turity can no more put on those graces that are the peculiar charm of childhood than we can wear in adult years the clothes we wore as boys and girls. Besides, there is, I think we must confess, a good deal of romance in our talk of the children's inno- cence and happiness. They are innocent, *Heaven be thanked, of our artificial, hollow ways of life. They speak their hearts right out, and with one true, keen word often prick the wind out of many a family sham. They have not yet learned to hold their tongues to silent lies, nor politely to speak the thing they know is false. Go back far enough, and we shall find innocence, it is true ; but who shall say when or how early it is lost ? The moral nature seems to dawn simultaneously with the intellectual. And, with the unfolding of the moral nature, the dark side comes to the surface no less than the bright. The infant in arms displays anger and dis- obedience. The boy of four does wilful mischief, and attempts, perhaps, deceit. I was once present at the " christening " of a three-years-old child, from 106 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS whom, just at the moment when the clergyman read, " For of such is the kingdom of heaven," there burst a violent ebullition of temper not com monly associated with that kingdom. These first manifestations of childish wilfulness and error may indeed be slight, — mere peccadilloes, which with wisdom may be controlled ; but, none the less, they are not virtues that manhood needs to sigh for. And there is often greater disorder, bringing pos- itive and perilous wrong and unhappiness, — disordei that is inherited parentally, tendencies to vice born in the blood. As physical peculiarities, features, personal defects, are transmitted through long series of generations, so men and women of ages past — not more Adam than many a greater sinner since, nay, men and women living now — have sown the seeds of crimes which generations yet unborn shall reap. Your most pet and private weaknesses, se- crets you think in your breast alone, may stand revealed upon your children, to publish your faults years after you are dead. They, indeed, the little ones, poor sufferers though they are, are innocent of it all ; for we know not how many generations of sinning men and women have sent down the poison of their vices into these little frames. But inno- cence here is not purity, is not happiness. Though the accountability be in the past, the disorder is none the less real and present. We may give it a sweet name, but the thing is none the less foul. Such childish innocence may move our pity, but hardly our envy; and, though we may not adopt the hideous blasphemy of "total depravity," — of man- childhood's instinct, manhood's faith 107 kind born desperately wicked and fit only for eter- nal perdition — we may also avoid the deluded sentimentalism that talks of the moral graces of the cradle. The germs are there in the cradles,— germs of almost infinite moral possibilities; and even the germs by their tenderness and pliancy are adapted to appeal to all that is purest in our natures, and to put to shame that actual depravity into which the habits of our years may have hardened, by reminding us of what might have been. Yet, though infancy be thus lovely in its bud of possibili- ties, there must be germination and growth before the beauty of moral and spiritual life can appear. Such life is not born: it is character developing under the pressure of experience and of moral and social obligations. And, even if childish innocence were always inborn purity and joyousness,— as often, indeed, it is, even the flesh, as Emerson said, being "angels' flesh, all alive,"— yet it cannot pre- sent the moral stature which must be manhood's standard. No integrity is sure which has not met the seductions of avarice and ambition, and stood unmoved against them. There is no real chastity before the passions tempt ; no temperance and sim- plicity which have not proved their ability to exist in spite of worldly wickedness. Childish innocence may be lovely and fragrant, but it is only the blossom. Manly virtue is the matured, life-sustaining fruit. And ripened grain can as well go back to the time of bloom, or the scarred and weather-beaten soldier leave unused his hard-earned victories and content himself again with the paper cap, wooden sword, 108 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS and mimic battle-fields of his boyhood, as that the natural development of character can be reversed and manhood's virtue return to childhood's in- nocence. Look, again, at another phase of childhood, — that alleged unconsciousness of self, which gives to the child its most exquisite charm, and for which, bur- dened with that intense self-consciousness they would be gladly rid of, men and women are so apt to long. Examining more closely, we shall see that this un- consciousness of self is only apparent. By physi- ological and psychological law, early childhood is really and necessarily confined to a circle of selfish aims. The life at first is wholly so, consisting of sensations and instinctive efforts that go only to self-nourishment and self-protection ; and for several years self predominates. Feeling, thought, play, — all aim at self-advantage. Life is somewhat advanced before the humanities and charities appear. Nature's first object is to develop and guard the new individu- ality that has been born, and that afterwards is to be a voluntary instrument of her aims. The appear- ance of unconsciousness in childhood, if the paradox may be pardoned, comes from the fact that young children are conscious of so little but themselves; that is, they have not yet distinctly separated self from their environment, and so have not gained a distinct and well-defined individual existence. As this separation goes on under the experience of life, self-consciousness, indeed, for a time becomes more intense, though always diminishing its proportion to the whole momentum of life, till, by and by, self and CHILDHOOD S INSTINCT, MANHOOD'S FAITH IO9 the external universe come to be seen in their true relations. It is evident, therefore, that that forget- fulness of self which manhood yearns for and tends toward is not the unconsciousness of the child, who seems lost to self only because lost in his own joys; but the man, having discovered his relations to other beings and things, is to find his satisfaction largely in forgetting self in others' joys. And so self-denial, self-sacrifice, comes in, — the finding of life through losing it, — which is the very extreme of character- development from the first stage of childhood, and the highest reach of ethical life on earth. Not, then, in the external condition or external graces of childhood do we find the point of the analogy which we seek. We are to become as little children in some other way than by trying to deck ourselves in the children's virtues. For, however beautiful these are in their time and upon the chil- dren, yet true manhood and womanhood have virtues all their own, and quite as noble. We must strike deeper into childhood, into its -very constitution and essential relations, if we would find the analogy of the text justified. Looking, then, at the very beginning of human life, what are its earliest phases ? What is the essen- tial, peculiar nature of childhood ? We shall find the most distinguishing feature of infancy, whether we look at the subject metaphysically or as a simple matter of fact, to be instinctive trust in and reliance upon what is, with no questioning of its reality or of its ample capacity and purpose to meet all wants. The infantile life is divided between sensations and HO TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS instincts. Through the instincts, it is connected with the external world ; but only through its sensations are these instincts made known in the child's con- sciousness. The instincts and sensations are one to him. The infant, therefore, at first makes no sepa- ration between self and the external world. He is a perfect idealist. He knows of no world that is not found in his own consciousness. His wants are all supplied by some unerring power working through himself, and he is not conscious at first that this power is at all external to himself. The demand seems to bring the supply. His faculties of thought and of voluntary will-power all sleep as yet in embryo, and therefore in harmony. He has found, as yet, no contradiction as a gulf of separation be- tween himself and outward things. He lies in the great lap of nature, peaceful, bound to her by the delicate but strong tie of woman's tenderness ; in harmony as yet with the world into which he has come, and living on a mother's care and love in abso- lute, instinctive trust. And here in this perfect trust, this repose upon the power which has borne and still nourishes it, is the distinguishing feature of earliest childhood. We may call it a state of instinctive, undeveloped unity with nature and its laws. Now, it is something corresponding to this in- stinctive trust of earliest childhood that manhood needs, — not just that, but something like it; and it remains to say what this corresponding condition of manhood is and how it comes. This stage of implicit childish trust is very brief. childhood's instinct, manhood's FAITH III Indeed, no sooner does individual life begin its de- velopment than a separation begins between indi- vidual consciousness and the external world. The beginning of such a separation marks the genesis of personal life. The child's instinctive desires are thwarted ; and so the sense of a separate existence and of conflicting aims is born, and nature's conative energy, which has been acting through instinct, begins to shape itself into personal volition. Men- tal perception awakes through the same cause ; and by and by, through this new avenue, in gradual sequence, the external world, both of persons and things, is revealed. Other instincts also come in due order with the years,— tumultuous passions, appetites, ambitions, and all the practical desires and energies of the period of youth and of opening man- hood. But not these alone: a higher world of thought and virtue also comes to light. It flashes in upon the soul through perceptions of truth, goodness, beauty ; and conscience awakes to stand as sentinel at the opening ways of life, to declare the sovereignty of these higher ideas and aspirations over the self-seeking passions and ambitions. Thus, the human being becomes gradually equipped for all life's offices and work. And, through all these phases of development, the separation between self and the external world has become more distinctly marked. The object, indeed, at every step has been to develop a stronger and more powerful personality, out of the vague and chaotic conditions of infan- tile existence to bring forth a concentrated, compact, sinewy individual organism which should be a 112 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS new centre of beneficent activity and power in the universe. To this end, the struggles and conflicts, and all the fiery trials and baptisms of this earthly life, if rightly met, have been made subservient. The force and pressure of outward circumstances, the inevitable laws of nature, the infinite energies that both command and restrain the finite, have furnished the resisting medium which has solicited the efforts and developed the intelligent power and freedom of the individual soul. But by and by, in natural sequence, there comes another stage in this process of life-development. The individuality, the selfhood, is established. The faculty and power of a free, self-centred person- ality are achieved. The man is ready, and stands in full armor prepared for the work of life. The question comes, What shall he do ? Here, on one side, are the passions, the appetites, the ambitions, urgent and tumultuous, and all the self-sustaining and self-aggrandizing motives still actively pushing their claims. Shall this personal faculty, power, and freedom that have been achieved be put to the service of such masters ? Shall self-aggrandizement and self-enjoyment be continued as the object of human life ? Nay, that ideal of a higher, nobler life, which has been forming within the conscious- ness, starts up in protest and forbids such a con- summation. Not for this has nature been intent on producing this new and wonderful organism of the human personality. Itself offspring of and in some way still vitally connected with Eternal Being, it must own allegiance to the law and purposes of this childhood's instinct, manhood's faith 113 ancestral power, and live for them rather than for any transient objects and pleasures of its own. Not self-preservation, but the welfare of that which is infinitely greater than self, is the imperative com- mand that is laid upon the human soul by the moral instinct. Hence, as man stands equipped for ser- vice at the opening ways of life, he is conscious of an obligation, above all others, to serve high objects of truth, right, and goodness ; to exercise his power of personal sovereignty on the side of justice, integ- rity, beneficence ; to so live that his life shall tell for all that is healthful, helpful, and beautiful in the manifold relations of human society, and be a per- petually nourishing factor in the commonwealth of mankind. The birth-time of this obligation is the genuine awakening of the religious consciousness. It is the hour for consecration, which is 4 youth's natural act. This may not come, however, at a defi- nitely marked moment. It may advance by gradual increase of inward enlightenment, like the dawn of the morning. But it is a period which at some time r in some way, comes to every normally progressing soul. And whoever obediently follows this higher law of life becomes one of that happy company of souls who help to make a heaven on earth. Of such, in very truth, is the kingdom of heaven. They enter that kingdom not so much because heirs of its possessions as because ministers in its service. And to this service, in behalf of the eternal laws and purposes faithfully followed, there comes finally, as its natural fruit and consummation, a state of mental confidence and repose corresponding to that 114 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS implicit, instinctive trust which marks the earliest phases of childhood. This daily intimacy with and service of these divine laws beget reliance upon them. We come to rest in their embrace with the same unquestioning assurance which the child has in its mother's arms. As we lay then, ourselves helpless among forces that might in a moment have quenched our existence, yet secure against all hos- tility by the tie of motherhood, so we come to find a security as strong and as beneficent in the moral order of the universe. We lie restful in the lap of the infinite Bounty ; and though hostile storms may beat round us, and our hopes and endeavors may be shattered, and our joys may lie stricken at our feet, nevertheless we are at peace ; for, like the child, we then trust where we cannot see, and we still confide in the universal Bounty, arranged for the best welfare of all, though it deny this moment our special wish. Thus, at last, we find rest again, — rest even in the midst of life's struggles and con- flicts, and solace for its woes. We return to that harmony with nature which was the first stage of our earthly existence, when there was no conscious separation between self and the not-self, and our very instincts were the direct impress of the divine energy. Only, that was an undeveloped, uncon- scious unity without personal character ; while this is a developed and conscious unity, produced through the very organism of personal character, — the indi- vidual voluntarily accepting, trusting, and serving the Universal. In the place of instinct there is now moral intelligence and faith. The blind im- childhood's instinct, manhood's faith 115 pulse of nature has blossomed into conscious voli- tion • and what the child's instinct was as pledge of unquestioned security on its mother's bosom, that is manhood's perfect faith in the moral security of the world and in the rational acceptance of the facts and forces of the universe ; or, to use the religious words, in Providence, in God. And as, at first, the child makes no separation between himself and the external world, but finds himself led to the supplies for all his wants by some power working in and through his own desires, so the man or woman to whom this lofty mental and moral faith has come can no longer draw any line of demarcation between the human and the divine in the life of the soul. The idea of Deity as a distant, awe-enthroned sovereignty in the heavens has for them vanished. They know of no gulf of estrange- ment between God and man. In him, they live and move and have their being, and he in them. Then- very prayers are the pulsings of his life in their con- sciousness ; and the answer to them comes in a still loftier purpose and a larger measure of divine life in their own characters and acts. He worketh hitherto, and they work in and through his power. And when their action comes to the limit of human capacity, and their vision fails to fathom the inscrutable forces amid which they must needs live, they yet rest serenely on the all-controlling law of righteousness that is over all, and through all, and in us all. January 27, 1867. IX. PURE RELIGION. " Pure religion, and undefiled before God, the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep one's self unspotted from the world." — Epistle of James. Such is the definition of religion given by the Apostle James, brother of Jesus, first bishop of Jeru- salem, head of the apostolic succession, and, after Jesus, official head of the Christian Church. And yet, notwithstanding this weight of official authority, this definition has generally been considered a very loose and heretical one in Christendom from an early date down to the present day. The Roman Catho- lic Church never did, and does not to-day, accept this as a sufficient statement of what religion is. It excommunicates, and in times past has tried literally to exterminate, persons whose belief concerning re- ligion rests simply with this definition of the Apostle James. The Roman Catholic Church believes in works, in good works ; and great credit is to be given to that Church for the various works of mercy and institutions of charity, which, both in its corpo- rate capacity and through its individual members, it has inaugurated and cherished. But these are not what it specially calls religious works, and still less are they synonymous with its definition of religion. PURE RELIGION 1*7 In its view, "to fast" on certain prescribed days is a more specific religious service than to give bread to the hungry ; to crawl up the " sacred stairs " at Rome on one's hands and knees a more religious act than to help the lame or the inebriate to walk on their feet ; to make a pilgrimage of devotion to some holy shrine a better evidence of piety than to make a pilgrimage anywhere for the relief of suf- fering humanity. And to none of these works does it allow any religious merit without faith in the creed and traditions of the Holy Catholic Church. And Protestantism, as a general rule, still more than Catholicism has departed from the Apostle James' definition of pure religion, and declared it heretical. Luther did not hesitate to say that the Epistle of James was an "epistle of straw," and to doubt its genuineness because it did not contain his doctrine of " justification by faith." None of the large, predominating sects of Protestant Christen- dom has ever thought James' definition of religion to be sufficient and sound. Most of them have said, "It isn't religion at all: it's mere morality; it's a snare to. the soul rather than any security." Within the past year, I heard a learned doctor of divinity in a neighboring city declare from his pulpit that the merely moral men, those who are upright, pure, benevolent, full of kindness and good works, but who stop there, and make no doctrinal confession of religion,— that is, those who live precisely according to St. James' definition,— are a greater hindrance to Christianity, and do more harm to the world by their example, than do the openly wicked and criminal I I 8 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS classes of society. And there are comparatively few Christian churches to-day that would be satisfied to admit new members to their fellowship on the sim- ple statement of the Apostle James as an adequate conception of religious duty and covenant of belief. And the churches that would do this are commonly denied the Christian fellowship by the greater part of Christendom. Now, which is right in this matter, the Apostle James or the prevailing sects and history of Chris- tendom, — the first Christian bishop or all the bishops, popes, priests, and the great body of the Christian clergy and people since ? The weight of authority numerically is certainly against the first bishop. But, then, it is also a Christian tradition that the opinion of a single original apostle must outweigh any number of later authorities ; that the quality oi a witness is here of more account than num- bers. And so there seems to be but one course open to those who hold to the view of the majority of Christendom in this matter ; and that is the course taken by Luther, — namely, to discredit the quality of the witness by questioning the apostolic genuineness of his testimony. But this question is of comparatively little im- portance to us here, where we are accustomed to consider not so much who made this or that declara- tion as what was declared. Possibly, the Apostle James did not make this definition of religion ; — though, from what we know of him through other channels, there seems to be no reason why he should not have made it. Yet, possibly, he did not. Possi- PURE RELIGION I 19 bly, Luther and others were right in denying the apostolic origin of the Epistle. Still, the vastly more important question remains, Is this definition of religion true ? Is it complete ? Is it sufficient ? And this is the question to which our attention is specially called. It must be admitted that the definition is some- what lax in its terms. To those, especially, who are accustomed to the ordinary forms of church cove- nants, it must seem very latitudinarian. It does not require any confession of belief whatever, says nothing of belief in Christ or even in God : it speaks only of something to be done. It defines what " God, the Father," will accept as religion ; but, among the things required, even belief in his existence is not named. If this definition is to be accepted, religious fellowship does not stop at Christian limits, much less at the boundaries that separate one Christian sect from another. The definition includes in its limits the devout, moral, and benevolent non-Chris- tian people of the world no less than the same class of people in Christendom. It includes Epic- tetus and Socrates and Antonine no less than Paul and Augustine and Bernard, and would entitle the former saints as readily as the latter. It compre- hends the true and good in all religions ; presents the same test to the disciples of Christ and to the disciples of Buddha, and draws, without reference to any dividing lines of belief or forms of worship, all loving and truth-living souls into one religious fellowship. It says alike to Christians, to Moham- medans, to Jews, to Buddhists, " It is not anything 120 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS which gives these distinctive names that makes religion." You may be called Christian or Jew or Mohammedan or a disciple of Buddha, and yet not have a particle of religion. There may be a vast deal of difference in the respective merits of the religious systems which these names represent, yet it is not adherence to one name rather than another that gives you a right to be called a religious person. Religion is deeper and older than all these systems, — something below them all and more comprehen- sive than any of them. Find that, and the particu- lar religious name by which you shall be called is of little importance. Fail to find that, and the religious name by which you are known has no efficacy, though it be in itself the highest and best. Thus broad and comprehensive is this definition of religion made by the Apostle James : so lax in respect to doctrine that theological belief is not once hinted at ; so loose on the matter of a special reve- lation and of one chosen people of God that Paul and Socrates may be equally included in its terms, and may stand together as fellow-servants of God and fellow-members of one Church. But it is said that the definition is also unphilo- sophical, — that not only is it lax, judged by the com- mon standard of Christendom, but that it is incom- plete, insufficient, as a statement of the religious aspects of human nature, aside from any peculiar Christian beliefs or claims. It does not cover, it has been complained, all the spiritual facts, expe- riences, and relations to which, in the development of the human mind, the name of religion has been PURE RELIGION 121 given. It says nothing of the religious sentiment per se, only of the moral and benevolent sentiment. One might, it is said, do all that this definition re- quires on the principle of seeking the greatest hap- piness for one's self, with no purely religious emotion or aspiration, with no prayer or belief in prayer, with no recognition even of God or belief in a God, with no element whatever in his conduct springing dis tinctively from the religious sentiment ; and yet, according to the terms of the definition, he must be called religious. If he be only kind and just and virtuous, no matter from what motive, and even though he deny the very existence of God and de- clare religion to be nothing but a mass of supersti- tion, this definition would nevertheless call him a religious man. The definition, therefore, it is argued, is insufificient, absurd. It is a definition, not of re ligion, but of morality. And, if we were to consider the subject from a purely metaphysical stand-point, which was not the custom of the New Testament writers, it might be admitted that there is some justice in this criticism. As a strict philosophical statement, this definition may be faulty. To give it literal and logical com pleteness, it should include the expressed recogni tion of universal or divine law as the source of the conduct it commends. Making a free interpreta- tion, it might be said, perhaps, that this recognition passes over from the first part of the sentence to the definition itself. But for all practical purposes, which were the only purposes had in view by the writer, the definition is complete enough as it stands. 122 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS And I am ready even to go farther than this, and to say, so inseparable are true religion and true moral- ity, that whoever lives according to this definition, even though it be strictly speaking only a defini- tion of morality, will yet live, in the best sense, a religious life, and will have a religious nature. The morality, if any will have it so, of the life will dis- close the religiousness of the nature. I do not believe it is possible for a person to live consistently and thoroughly by this rule on the selfish principle that from such virtue the greatest happiness will accrue to his own life. No mere externally pre- scribed code of conduct for producing self-satisfac- tion, even though that satisfaction were of a moral order, could generate the spirit of the acts which this definition describes ; and it is the spirit which determines the real quality and efficiency of deeds. Two persons may perform what is outwardly the same deed of kindness, — may be equally generous of money, or time, or labor for some object of charity, may do literally what the text speaks of, visit and help the afflicted with equal assiduity ; yet, if one goes and does only from a sense of duty, especially if he undertakes the part of benevolence looking to a reward coming to himself, while the other does the same things, but in the spirit of a heartfelt love and sympathy which cannot help doing them, what a world-wide difference between the quality of their acts ! And how quickly is that difference detected by the persons who are the objects of them ! Who cannot tell, with regard to an act outwardly kind done toward himself, whether real kindness of feel- PURE RELIGION 123 ing was at the bottom of it or whether only con- science or custom or still other motive was the pro- ducing cause ? The very brute knows whether the hand that feeds it has love behind it or not. Much more does man know the spirit of the deed that suc- cors him. And, in considering this definition of religion, it is rightly to be assumed that the conduct described has its origin in the highest possible motive ; that it is real, inward benevolence and in- tegrity and purity. And, this being the assumption, I am ready to say that no person can live thoroughly and consistently according to the spirit of this rule, whatever his lips may profess of belief or other lips may assert of his non-belief, without being religious in his heart. For what are the essential elements in this defini tion of religion ? They are plain and easily stated. First, is good will, benevolence, sympathy, charity, love. The definition says, "To visit the widows and fatherless in their affliction, " — putting, for greatei practical effect, an illustration or single specimen of the principle in place of the principle itself. But the principle is plain. It is to have a heart and will ever ready to alleviate, help, comfort, restore, and bless mankind, in any of the manifold forms of mis- fortune and suffering to which they are subject. In other words, it is the entire spirit of that love which takes us out of self and merely selfish objects and relations, however pleasing and satisfying these may be, and bids us feel, think, and labor for others' wel- fare and happiness. It is that entire principle and law of our natures which puts us under obligation to 124 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS serve others' needs; which breaks up our selfish strivings, our merely selfish aims and ambitions ; which teaches disinterested devotion to human welfare, self-consecration to home and neighborly duty, self-denial and self-sacrifice ; which brings the thousand little daily acts of affectionate remem- brance and voluntary, unrequitable service that lift human life up above the plane of a mere traffic and barter, where each is seeking to get the highest price for all he gives, into a real communion and fel- lowship of heart and spirit ; which brings, therefore, to the human race the bond of brotherhood, and makes the rational tie of society possible in place of the gregarious instinct and savage conflicts of animal tribes. And what is this principle but the very genius of religion, — the important and chief thing which the great teachers of all the principal religions have em- phasized, the thing especially which Jesus empha- sized ? And, as it is one of my aims to-day to show how far historical Christianity has departed from Jesus' teachings, I confine myself to him as an illus- tration. What is the most prominent feature of religion, according to Jesus' teaching and practice, but this very love and service toward others, — the helping the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, the sick to health, the hungry to food, the imprisoned to liberty, the suffering to comfort, the erring to truth, the ignorant to knowledge, the vi- cious to virtue, the degraded and miserable to light and usefulness and peace ? What but this very kind of work filled his days and made the fruit of his relig- PURE RELIGION 125 ion ? What else did he mean by the coming of the kingdom of God but the advancement of these ob- jects of human love and service on the earth ? And, when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan, it is plain that he not only meant to inculcate that benevolence and pity are moral sentiments, but that they are religious also, and produce the very highest fruits of religion, when brought into exercise. The priest and the Levite, representing the formal, punc- tilious, ceremonial, much-professing religion of the Pharisaic Jews, went by on the other side. They were hastening perhaps to their formal worship, and had no word of cheer nor act of help for a suffering fellow-being. It was the despised, heretical, and, from the Jewish stand-point, irreligious Samaritan, that turned aside to proffer the needed sympathy and relief. And so, all through Jesus' life and teach- ing, it is not the outward deed, whether it be called religious or not, nor the profession of the lips, that he places foremost ; but it is this quality of love toward one's neighbor. And who is thy neighbor ? The reply comes, Whomsoever thou canst help. " By this shall all men know that ye are my disci- ples, if ye have love one to another." The second element of religion, according to the definition of the Apostle James, is signified in the words, "keep one's self unspotted from the world" ; that is, integrity, purity, sincerity, incorruptibility, successful resistance to all snares and influences of evil. It is not to keep one's self aloof from the world ; for that would be to violate the first princi- ple, just discussed, of sympathy and fraternal help 126 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS fulness. It is to live in the world to serve and aid it, and yet not to be stained by its vices, not to be swayed from the line of rectitude by its flatteries nor by its frowns. "To keep one's self unspotted from the world ! " Call it simple morality, if you will ; yet what a breadth and height of virtue, unattainable to how few, do the words include ! Though it be simple morality, it is no easy task, no every day phenom- enon, thus to keep the native integrity, the mental and moral independence, of one's being, — to be drawn from the true and the right by no promise of favors, by no fear or threat of evil. To keep sin- cerity amid the hypocrisies of the world; to keep healthful simplicity amid the enervating extrava- gances and luxuries of the world ; to keep purity of thought and chastity of act amid the world's moral uncleanness and licentiousness ; to keep honest in the midst of the world's knaveries ; to keep truthful in the midst of the world's falsehoods ; to keep tem- perate in the midst of the world's intemperance and debauchery ; to keep humility in the midst of empty, worldly ambitions ; to keep contentment with slow and honest gains in the midst of feverish haste of worldly men after riches at any cost ; to keep self- respect and self-reliance in the midst of cringing conformity to fashion everywhere found in the world ; to keep independence of thought and action in the midst of fawning subserviency to popular opinion; to keep one's convictions of truth and jus- tice, if need be, even to the bitter end of dying for them, in the midst of tempting bribes of all kinds offered by the world; to keep one's soul loyal to its PURE RELIGION \2J divine law and destiny, though the whole world and all the kingdoms thereof be offered in exchange for it, — all this and more is comprehended in that phrase, " to keep one's self unspotted from the world." "Unspotted," — without speck or stain or fleck of evil to mar the infinite beauty of the soul, as we might conceive it to exist in a condition of per- fect purity. " Mere morality ! " Yet it holds up before us a standard of perfection which none of us will dare to say he has yet reached, and which, like the horizon, goes before us as we advance; ever be- fore and upward, because it is a standard embodied in the conception of a Being who is infinitely per- fect. And this second element of the apostle's defini- tion of religion is another of the essential elements of religion, according to the original teaching of Jesus. What is the one burden of the Sermon on the Mount but that of sincerity, intellectual and moral integrity, the necessity of inward rectitude and purity, the uselessness of a mere religion of conformity to fashion and tradition, into which the heart does not go ? If there is one thing that Jesus teaches more than another, it is this : that men will be judged, not for what they believe, nor for what they say, nor even for what they do, but for what they really are in the dispositions and affections of their hearts. There is a mere religion, which, how- ever showy in its forms, however brilliant and costly in its appointments of worship, and however elo- quent in its professions of belief, is yet as empty and, for anything it will carry out of this world, as 128 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS unsubstantial, as the breath after it has pronounced the words. And, on the other hand, there is a mere morality, which, though it makes no pious confes- sions, though it goes to duty oftener than to prayer, and seldom takes the name of God on its lips, and does not dare to call itself religious, yet grows year by year in strength and beauty, ascending from beat- itude to beatitude, until it reaches the very holy of holies of the Divine Nature, and lives the eternal life. We decide, then, for this ancient definition of religion by the first bishop of Jerusalem against all the definitions made by bishops and popes, theolo- gians and church covenants since. It seems to us to cover the whole of human nature ; comprehend- ing, on the one hand, the duties each individual soul owes to itself, its obligation to keep its own integ- rity, purity, and independence, and, on the other, the obligations and duties that connect each individ- ual soul abroad to other souls, — to home and family, to neighborhood, to society, to one's country, to the whole brotherhood of man. On the one hand, we have the virtues of self-reliance, of moral courage, of loyalty to convictions of truth, of obedience to the inspirations of one's own soul ; on the other, we have the mutual kindness, good will, and regard for right that hold communities together, the affec- tions of home and friendship, the sweet charities that carry relief to every form of deprivation and suffering, the multiform humanities that seek to es- tablish justice and love between man and man, and to improve and elevate the condition of the human race. PURE RELIGION 120, If it be still questioned whether all this is religious work or an evidence of religion, I reply, in conclu- sion, that I know not what religion is, if it be not the 'practical allegiance of the human heart and life to the divine law of life ; if it be not to keep one's own soul clean and truthful, pure and upright, ac- cording to the highest consciousness of duty which is made alive within it, and to help other souls to cleanness and purity, to truth, uprightness, and peace, according to the inspirations of that love which flows through us to bind us in one fraternity with our fellow-men. Say not that the soul thus liv- ing, even though it uses few religious forms and utters few religious words, gives no recognition of religion. This very integrity which it has is the energy with which it adheres to the law of eternal rectitude. This very love which inspires its acts, impelling it to constant kindness and beneficence, is an animat- ing impulse from the very heart of Infinite Love. Let me have that integrity and that love, and I live day by day in serene communion with Eternal Being. My desires are prayers; my acts are worship; my kindnesses are sacraments ; my natural advance in virtuous effort and achievement is growth in grace ; and death, when it comes, is but a step, composedly and fearlessly taken, into the opening secrets of a life hidden with the spirit in God. January 12, 1868. X. CHRISTMAS LEGEND AND FACT. " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." — Luke ii., 14. The legend and poetry of religion are often as instructive and inspiring as its sober facts and actual history. Some of the most indestructible re- ligious truths owe their preservation and influence upon the popular mind to the imaginative and dra- matic form in which they have been clothed. And there is a large share of this poetic element inter- mingled with the early history of Christianity. It is only when it is claimed to be actual history that it offends our sense of truth. Regarded as poetry, we look for the truth beneath the imaginative dress ; and our sense of truth is no more disturbed than when we read Milton's Paradise Lost or Goethe's Faust. With the eye of historical criticism, I read the Gospels, and see much that, as historical narra- tive, must be rejected; much that, if claimed for fact, is as puerile and unworthy of belief as many of the mythical stories in the old histories of Greece and Rome. But, when I read the same Gospels with the eye of religious imagination, which looks below form for substance, it reconstructs the dis- membered narrative, and brings back, for their CHRISTMAS LEGEND AND FACT I 3 I inner ethical or spiritual significance, those rejected portions which, when considered as literal facts, only stood in the way of truth. Because I deny, both from the antecedent improbability and from the defective credibility of the testimony, that there was ever a man in Judea who could summon by a word the buried dead alive from their graves, or who, once dead, reappeared in his natural body from his own grave, I do not therefore deny that there was a man in Judea whose life was a wonderful ex- hibition of the supremacy of all true spiritual life over the powers and terrors of death, and who gave such a mighty impulse to true life in his fellow-men as to confirm them in a desire for and a belief in an immortal existence. And because I reject the account that this man was born and developed in any other than the natural way, or had any other than natural means of communication with God, I do not therefore deny that his character was a most marked and precious illustration of the way in which Divinity may normally become manifest in humanity. And, in like manner, though in common not merely with purely rationalistic critics, but with liberal critics generally (some of them believing in the miraculous elements in Jesus' career), I deny the historical authenticity of this narrative which purports to state things antecedent to and attending the birth of Jesus, I do not therefore throw the narrative away as worthless legend. Here, I see that the imaginative, poetic faculty of religion has been at work. But that faculty does not work upon I32 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS mere nothings, in Judea more than in Greece or Egypt. It may have some germ of historical fact upon which to work ; or, more likely, it has some vision of spiritual truth to express, and will take such shreds of history and tradition as it finds at hand for delineating and embodying the vision. In this legendary narrative of the birth of Jesus, I see the pious imagination of the early Christian Church endeavoring to construct for its already idealized Messiah a fitting dramatic entrance into the world. In other words, those primitive Christians found the sober garb of prose entirely inadequate to clothe the emotions of the new life, which had been be- gotten in their own bosoms, and the ordinary meth- ods of nature inadequate to account for that new life. Their very life was poetry, drama, — a sudden transition from the prosaic occupations of tax- gatherers and fishermen into discipleship to a wonderful religious teacher and prophet, whom they follow about, day after day and month after month, in town and country, over lake and hill, to catch his minutest words of instruction and learn of his loving wisdom ; whom they accept as the looked-for Mes- siah, and expect constantly to see elevated with royal pomp and authority to the Messianic throne, and themselves raised to corresponding positions of comfort and dignity ; whom, with bitter disappoint- ment, they see, however, after two or three years, executed as a malefactor, and their Messianic ex- pectations apparently brought to a tragic end ; but then, in some strange way, they find these expecta- CHRISTMAS LEGEND AND FACT 1 33 tions revived, triumphant over the grave and the cross, and themselves lifted up by a mighty spirit and sent forth as missionaries, to proclaim the ad- vent of the divine kingdom upon the earth. How is it possible that they should put the beliefs and emo- tions growing out of such life into logical proposi- tions and historical chronicles ? As the life was itself dramatic, so did it naturally take dramatic and poetic literary forms, in which to clothe its experi- ences ; and, just as the childlike, spiritual hope of the age painted a vision of the second coming of the Messiah in the clouds of heaven, attended by the angelic host, to close the old dispensation and usher in the millennial era, so did the religious imagination, combined with that primitive faith, throw itself backward and around the infancy of Jesus, which was mainly free from historioal data, picture scenes which were deemed befitting the advent of such a majestic and benignant life. There were, probably, shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem, tending their flocks, when Jesus was born. That would have been a perfectly natural fact. Very likely, too, these shepherds shared the common belief of their time and race, that the Messiah was soon to come. That, too, would have been natural. But are we to believe that an angel literally articulated to them that the Messiah was that day born in a manger in Bethlehem ? and that then the heavens opened, disclosing a multitude of the heavenly host, who literally sang in chorus, audible to the outward ear of the shepherds, " Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward 134 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS men " ? Shall we take all the poetry out of this exquisite legend, and lose its fine spiritual truth, by thus translating it into a bald statement of outward facts, against which historical criticism and science will forever protest, and which the common sense of men will suspect and disbelieve ? Let me read this as history, and I read it under continual protest from reason and the sense of historical veracity. Let me read it as religious poetry, as drama, and I see how the "opened heavens" were not the literal parting of the skies to the shepherds at Bethlehem, but the lifted and transfigured vision of the early Christian believers, a full generation and more after Jesus' birth. I see that the opened heavens were their own illuminated minds and hearts ; that the angelic presence was the courage and faith, the hope, charity, and peace, which had somehow come to them from the life and teachings of Jesus ; that the anthem, whose sublime notes still sound through the generations, " Glory to God in the high- est, and peace on earth, good will toward men," was the echo from their own bosoms of the Beatitudes and the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of the Prodigal Son. This chorus was the song of rejoicing, which sung itself out of the new life and inspiration and power which had come to all their faculties. It was the utterance of the new religious faith, which had been begotten in their own souls, and which thus early stamped itself on the primitive consciousness of the Christian believers. But, since they were not metaphysicians tracing conditions of mind to their natural causes, nor rigid historians CHRISTMAS LEGEND AND FACT 1 35 narrating events only for the sake of historical truth, but imaginative religious teachers, anxious to impress upon others in the most forcible way their own religious experience, the legendary and poetic faculty of the age readily seized upon this central truth of their experience, carried it back to the birth of Jesus as the most fitting time for its origin, and represented it, with all the dramatic accompani- ments of the story now found in the New Testa- ment, as proclaimed by angelic chorus from the skies. By this poetic mode of interpretation of what in itself is essentially poetic, we may preserve the truth, while we reject the form, of the old legends, myths, and quaint beliefs in Hebrew and Christian as well as in other religions. Poetry and music have an inner significance entirely apart /rom the form in which they are clothed, and that lasts after the form has become obsolete. It is thus that poems like Homer's, Dante's, and Milton's keep their place in the world. That the form is felt to be false does not affect the truth below the form. The great oratorios, like the "Creation" and the "Mes- siah," can never lose their impressive sublimity, though we reject the theological doctrines that cre- ated them, — that created rather their dress ; for the soul that is in them is older than they, and used temporary beliefs only to give itself a form. Their substance is something that speaks to the creative and redeeming spirit, everlasting in its nature, which exists in man himself. We may enjoy grand old tunes in familiar words which we no longer 136 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS believe, because we are not listening for the senti- ment of the words so much as for the sentiment of the tunes. And so, when this Christmas season comes around, though no one now can tell just when Jesus was born (the festival, in the earliest ages of the Church, was a movable one), and though we may not believe with those who instituted the festival that it com- memorates the advent of a miraculous personage upon the earth, still less the incarnation of the Supreme God in a single human form, yet the festival appeals to something within us, which never grows obsolete and never loses its power to stir and bless our hearts. And this is because it is not so much an historic as a poetic and dramatic com- memoration of Jesus ; not an attempt to revive his memory through some fixed ordinances and speeches on a set day so much as a putting, for a single day, of the kindness and good will, which are associated with his name, into the actual conduct and rela- tions of people with each other. That is, the com- memoration is through the actual emotions of the heart, and does not exist merely for its literal or historical significance ; and the heart puts into it all that itself feels. There is, certainly, an increasing disposition among all sects and all classes of people, religious or otherwise, to keep Christmas. This cannot be from an increasing sense of its being an actual historical commemoration, for historical investiga- tion and criticism lead the other way ; but it is because people of all sects, strict or liberal, and CHRISTMAS LEGEND AND FACT 1 37 of all classes, religious or irreligious, are beginning to feel the poetic significance of the season, without regard to its literal and historical basis. It is enough that it is a season of mutual good wishes and good deeds, of friendly remembrance, of family enjoyment and the strengthening of family bonds, of the children's glee, of neighborly greeting and fraternity ; enough that material and sordid enterprises for a moment remit their pressure, that the wrangling of parties, the strifes of politics, the selfish greed and ambitions of individual careers, are for a brief period laid aside, and that the hearts of people are open to gentle thoughts, tender affec- tions, and gracious charities, while they* take each other more warmly by the hand, and try for a little time each to make every other blest by his pres- ence. And all this is a most living commemoration of a religion whose nativity began with a song of "good will to men." For this is a vital part of that good will, keeping the religion alive because it is itself so fully alive with the essence of unconscious religion. These poetic associations of the Christmas season — its tender memories and joys, its fraternal congratulations and charities, its actual essays at living in the spirit of good will and peace — are to-day a stronger bulwark for Christianity than, are all the creeds of the churches. Even the mythical St. Nicholas is, for children, a better introducer to Christianity than the historical and dogmatical St. Paul ; and the loaded stocking on Christmas morn- ing, which has been mysteriously filled during the night with the treasures that appeal to a child's I38 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS heart, is a better teacher of religion than the cate- chism. As the little hands draw the bounty from those wondrous depths, a lesson is impressed of a religion of good will, of an exhaustless sheltering love and generosity, which not even the teaching of the catechisms and the false creeds and more wretchedly false practices of Christendom can ever quite obliterate. The child is actually living upon this religion of good will, though his consciousness is yet innocent of all theologies, and even of the word "religion"; and the glee that sings in his heart and utters itself all day long in his prattle and laughter is his rendering of that old anthem, " Peace an earth, good will toward men." This anthem, indeed, which was sung out of the glorified heart of the first Christian century, and is revived by an actual re-creation of its spirit every Christmas morning, expresses the purest key-note of Christianity at its origin, and embodies what has always given that religion its best power; for, so long as we do not say that Christianity is the only religion that has the sentiment of love, which is the essence of this song, we do no injustice to previous religions, but only state a fact of history, when we say that Christianity particularly emphasized and put into specific form this sentiment both of divine and human love. The Hebrews came to religion chiefly through the moral sense. Hence, their religion, to a great extent, became a mass of ethical laws and ceremonial precepts, — a list of commandments to do and not to do certain things. The Greeks came to religion CHRISTMAS LEGEND AND FACT 1 39 chiefly through the intellect. Hence, their religion, in the main, among the cultivated was a philosophy, — the result of the rational faculty, — and among the mass of the people a mythology, — the result of the imaginative part of the intellect. Christianity, which mingled the Hebrew and the Greek streams of religious thought in its own, partook of the char- acteristics of both, but also developed the higher characteristic of love. It took a germ which we find in both of those religions, and cultivated and cherished that as the chief thing. It made the heart the source and centre of religious faith and works, and declared that what neither conscience nor reason had been able to accomplish by its commands through the Jewish law or the Greek philosophy, — that the heart, through its own in- stinctive love and faith, could bring to pass : that duty and inclination, reason and affection, could be atoned. And it was this doctrine of love as the controlling principle of both divine and human government — this doctrine of love as "the fulfilling of the law" — which, put into the concrete and dramatic form that the Hebrew Messianic conception furnished, gave Christianity in its origin its great power to dissolve both Judaism and heathenism into itself. It was conscience and reason infusing themselves into the affections of the heart, and hence getting all the power of the heart for the accomplishment of their own ends. What a relief it must have been to peo- ple burdened with the ceremonials of a written com- mandment, and anxiously asking whether they had I4O TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS complied with all the perplexing details of a law which followed them into the minutest relations of daily life, or whether they were conforming then- conduct to the highest demands of reason and phi- losophy, to find themselves the subjects of an inward life and inspiration which swept all these anxieties and perplexities into its current, and bore them along toward perfect blessedness by its own spontaneous impulse ! What a joy to them to feel — not simply to know through their intellectual perception, but to feel in their inmost hearts — that God was not only the Law-giver, but the giver of every good and per- fect gift ; and that salvation was not something to be purchased through painstaking ceremonies and works to satisfy the conscience of the law, but the blessed boon of a life born of love and bringing forth the natural fruits of love as its saving works. What wonder if those to whom this inspiring faith had come felt that the millennial era was close at hand, and that the heavenly kingdom of divine peace and brotherhood was soon to be established on the earth ! And what wonder if their childlike imagi- nations pictured the heavens themselves opening and angelic choirs giving voice to this divine senti- ment which had been begotten in their hearts ! And, to-day, a new baptism in the spirit of love would atone for much that is irrational in the creeds, and cure much that is wrong in the practice of Christendom. Modern civilization has brought great opportunities both for individual and national ag- grandizement. Its material inventions and enter- prises, its manifold avenues to wealth, its wonderful CHRISTMAS LEGEND AND FACT I4I development of all the physical arts and sciences, and of the outward resources of human comfort, re- finement, and happiness, — all these bring not only great means for usefulness, but great temptations to selfishness. There is a corresponding urgent need, therefore, to arouse a spirit of benevolence, of devo- tion, of self-sacrifice, — a spirit that shall consecrate all these great opportunities, all this enterprise and comfort, wealth and knowledge, to the welfare of humanity, — to the service of a love that melts away all barriers between classes, nations, races, and re- ligions, and seeks to bring humanity within the veritable bonds of one brotherhood. Most especially does this Christmas season fail to impress upon us its highest lesson, if it does not carry dur thoughts and affections beyond the circles where self may still be predominant into those outlying regions of human want and woe, where the warmth, health, and cheer of social love are seldom felt. Not only must it bring refreshment and strength to the ties of family and friendship, but hospitality and impulse to all tender humanities and charities. It was an old belief among the Druids, from whom seems to have come the custom of decking dwellings and temples at this season with evergreens, that the gentle spirits of the groves and forests flocked to these green boughs in the houses, and so were preserved from the killing frosts and storms of winter, to resume with the coming of spring their re-creative offices in restoring life and beauty to the woods. So must we, if we would know the inner significance of this Christmas season, keep all the gentle charities alive I42 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS in the hospitable warmth of our homes and by the glowing fire of our hearts, in order that we may send them out thence into the cold and desolate places of the world to help on the regeneration of human society, and bring in the era of peace and good will among men. December 26, 1869. XI. THE EDEN OF THE SENSES AND THE EDEN OF THE SOUL. ' "Therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken."— Gen. iii., 23. The religious philosophy of the Jews represented this expulsion from Eden as a curse. ^But history and reason agree in pronouncing it a blessing. Here was no fall of man, but a rise. The impulse that drove the first human pair out of that dreamy and sensuous Paradise,— admitting for illustration temporarily the truth of' the tradition,— to make their way in the world through their own efforts and toil, was the first step in human civilization and progress ; the first step in the long series of con- quests by which mind has gradually asserted its power over matter, and the forces of nature have yielded themselves as aid and sustenance to man. Indeed, there is some intimation of this in the Hebrew story itself. Though the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge is represented as a sin which is punished by expulsion from the garden, yet the direct consequence of the partaking of that fruit is declared to be that the man and the woman have become like unto the gods, to know good and 144 TWENTY-FIVE SERM evil; that is, the act for which they were exp from the garden is represente is their first Godward. An I, n, it is said they « driven out, not only for what they had done, but from a fear on the >f Jehovah lest, having already, through eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, become . knowing good and evil, the next direct step would be to "take of the trc tnd eat, and live forever," becoming there! still more like Supreme Being. Now, of course, the motive attributed to Jehovah in this account — that of jealousy of the beings he i I to have created — terly unworthy of the infinite Being. A ord- ing to liter views of God, we should conceive •ne of bis supreme purposes and j reate beings who, lik«- himself, should live forever and grow forever into his likeness. Hut the Hebrews, least in the early stage of their history represented by the Hook of Genesis, and for some time after- ward, had not risen to this conception. Their :est picture of human happiness and destiny was that of the Eden from which they believed the first parents of mankind had been driven. Their highest aim was to recover this primal condition of life. Their prophetic vision was of goodly lands, planted with stately trees, showering their fruits spontane- ously for the sustenance of man, — lands filled with gold and precious stones, and all material things that the human heart can desire ; a land flowing with milk and honey, where everything that man- kind could need should be given to their hands without labor or effort ; in short, a Paradise regained THE TWO EDENS 145 on earth, — a life of perfect material satisfaction and content. Yet this Hebrew description of Eden, and of the causes which led to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden, is instructive by reason of the very contradiction which it contains. It shows that, while man's first conception of his destiny is that of innocent and peaceful enjoyment of sensuous nat- ure, — the finding all his wants, appetites, and in- stincts gratified and put to rest, without any mur- muring or unsatiated cry for something more or something different ; the living directly upon God's gifts, let down from the heavens or pushed up from the earth, clay by day, without any thought or care of his own, and with no anxiety for the morrow ; the existing with childlike content and happiness in a perfect material world, without toil, without trial, without pain, without any cloud of evil to interrupt the sunny days or check the warm, blissful flow of this serene atmosphere of material life, — while the traditional story of Eden shows this to have been the predominant primitive conception of human happiness and destiny, it shows, also, that, even in the earliest age, underneath this conception there lay the germ of another, — the dawning, namely, of a spirit that was not and could not be satisfied with these material conditions of life, however perfect and pleasant they might be to the material nature of man. This longing to taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which all the sensuous delights of the garden could not satisfy or lull, though the Hebrew represented it as temptation and its grati- 14'' TWENTY-FIVE SERlfi fication as sin, and which, when gratified, opened the understanding of the first parents to know between good and evil, — and to be, therefore, like the Creator himself, — what was this but the dawn of moral intelligence, the awakening of conscience, the springing to consciousness ol a principle in man which was not taken from the dust, whence his body came, and which could not therefore be satis- fied with mere material gratifications or find its iny in the conditions of a material life, however perfect? What was it but just what the writer in primitive simplicity, regardless of the logical con- fusion and contradiction of thought, intimated, — the awakening of a power within that material frame- work of bones and flesh, which could discern the eternal difference between good and evil, between right and wrong, between truth and error, — a power which could discern and weigh ideas, which was capable not merely of sensation and enjoyment, like the body, but of thought and aspiration and will, — a power which made man like unto God, because it was the stirring of a spirit within him which was akin to Eternal Spirit itself — nay, identical with it — and which made man a living soul? And the author of this primitive description was again right, when he intimated that the eating of the tree of knowledge by man, which was the dawning of the moral intelligence, would lead him to put forth his hand and take of the tree of life, and eat of that, and live forever. For the awakening of the moral intelligence, being the birth in man of eternal soirit, brings longings, aspirations, and capacities, THE TWO EDEXS 1 47 which only spiritual realities can nourish and feed, which only immortality can interpret and satisfy. And the Hebrew was right, again, when he represented man as driven out of Eden, that para- dise of the senses, because of this awakening within him of the ambitious desire to eat of the tree of life and be immortal like the gods ; right, too, in saying that it was the Divine Spirit that drove him forth ; only there was an illogical confusion, incident to the religious thought of the age, in respect to the reason and significance of the act. So far from being driven out of the garden as a punishment and curse upon them, these first ancestors of mankind went forth to be blessed, and to bless their race after them. Tne God that drove them out was no being in the heavens, ruling them as a retributive judge, but the God that had been awakened to consciousness within themselves. The impulse that led them forth from those scenes of enjoyment and peace into the world of toil and trial and care was the gesture of the Godlike spirit within their own souls ; and, when the gate of that earthly paradise opened to send them on their journey into the rough wilderness of the world, and was barred against their return, then began the march of humanity heavenward and Godward. Not a fall, then, but a rise, was the departure from Eden. It was the necessary result of man's coming to consciousness of his moral resources, of his spiritual relationship and destiny. It was simply impossible that a being created with mental and moral aspirations could remain content with the TWENTY-FH that Eden afforded. Let itbe,— though iv and an d igy will not confirm the proposil — yet let it be admitted that man was first in the hippy serenity and childlike perfection o\ innocence which the tradition re Let I that his dwelling-place was as full of beauty and : j possibl irth to be, — that there, as the story says, gr that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food"; that 1 and bdellium and the onyx," and every cious stone, were to he found there, without search and without labor; that the garden was plentifully watered with the most beautiful of rivers; that it was StOi ked with every kind of animal for or pleasure, all living together in harmony and mutual helpfulness; that it was darkened with no clouds, afflicted with no storms, marred by no noxious weed, absolutely impervious to any ph\ derangement or evil. What then ? Would this be the residence that a soul of immortal aspirations would choose ? These are all materi d delights, and nothing more. Had Adam remained content with these, he never would have been father of the human race, only of another, and perhaps a little higher, race of animals. Had Adam been content with these, his descendants, perhaps, might have re- mained in Eden and had Eden to this day. They would have had Eden, but nothing more. It was just that within him which made him man which made him also dissatisfied with Eden's limitations and with its serene, perfect life of material bliss. To the living soul, akin to infinite Soul, there THE TWO EDENS I49 can be no serenity, no satisfaction, no peace, no perfection, except in ascent toward infinite perfec- tion. Any stationary condition of things, however perfect in itself, can never give peace to a being whose sense of perfection is only to be met by constant endeavor and movement upward. Vain, therefore, the expectation that a being, in whom a vital intellectual and moral nature has been born, can be kept content within any earthly Eden's walls. Put all the treasures of all earth's gardens into one, and still it will not be the garden that can keep a being in whom the power of immortal thought has dawned. It was not Adam's sin, but his and humanity's salvation, when he aspired to taste of the fruit growing on the tree of knowledge, whose branches reached over Eden's walls into the great universe outside, and whose top pointed heavenward, into the infinite spaces ; for, thereby, he parted company with the type of animal races that had existed before him, left behind mere ma- terial satisfactions as no longer sufficient to nourish his nature, and began the career of a moral being. He left Eden to enter heaven. Does any one doubt this ? Shrink from accepting the world as it has been, with its roughness and hardness, with its physical and moral evils, with its struggles and failures, with its suffering, and its sorrow, its death and its graves, as better than that serene picture of life in Eden, where toil and struggle, death and suffering, were un- known ? Let him, then, compare the virtues which could flourish in the still atmosphere of that guarded I5O TWIN I \ -II enclosure with the virtues that he most ad mi in the history of mankind as it has actually been. Let him compare that passiveness with this constant activity; that calm content with what is with this intense joy of anticipating and seek ■r; that undisturbed, listles ment ol good possessed with this heroic endeavor to | something beyond present reach; that re of blessing with this effort t . that resting in the car.- of an 1 .1 will with this v. forth of native strength and energy; that in each day's delight with this I nth, and hope that are read) to attempt all things ; that serenity with tins endurance; that bliss of having with this bliss of doing; that childhood's innocence and grace with this manhood's proved integrity and power; that satisfaction with a world complete with this noble struggle and progress in the endi complete a world; that I tion with Unite ami material ends with these thoughts, aspirations, and purposes that only never rest, because drawn upward by a path that loses itself in the | finite intelligence. Humanity in Eden would have been scarcely above the " happy family " of animals which the showman has trained to live amicably together in his menagerie. But humanity driven out into the world, to live by the sweat of its brow in rough struggles with nature, has turned the wilderness into a garden, made a highway for its thought over mountain and sea, bended the elements to its service, and shaped the inhospitable earth to its needs ; and thereby it has disclosed and developed THE TWO EDEXS 15 I a power that is verily Godlike in its quality and purpose. So, too, the persons who have departed farthest from the conditions of life in Eden, who have had least rest and most service, who have even denied themselves all material and temporal satisfactions that they might eat the more freely of the pure knowledge of spiritual things, who have endured perils and tortures, and death even, in their conflict with the world, rather than go back to the Eden from which the divine discontent in their own souls had driven them, — these persons, the Socrates, the Pauls, the Buddhas, the Christs, are the heroes of this human march heavenward that most challenge our admiration and excite our enthusiasm to imitate. Yes : notwithstanding all the hardship, bitterness, and misery that burdened humanity has had to meet in its struggle with the rough conditions of exist- ence, remembering even the fearful errors and sins into which it has fallen in the uncertain chances of the conflict, our secret hearts do yet declare for the heaven which is to be won through labor and sacri- fice rather than for that which is given in the invol- untary gratification of natural instincts. And what is thus seen to be true with regard to the race historically is true also in individual expe- rience. Nature's inexorable rule is, — Pay for all you get : take bountifully, unceasingly, of her stores, but give faithfully and unsparingly the labor of muscle or brain or heart for every atom of her wealth. Every human achievement or pleasure has its price. Even virtue is not given, but must be toiled for, — must rned and purchased by constant resolution and sacrifice. And those possessions will soon slip from Us — are hardly, indeed, worth the holding — Eor which we have not paid the cost They are not really ours; and hence nature's laws, always hoi and sagacious, contrive quickly to strip us of the ownership. Even on the plane of matei , in spite of the apparent glaring exceptions, the law in general holds true. The rbial savin-, that a fortune which quickly conies qu •■ • i the common belief in the necessity of labor to give a sure title to ownership in material wealth. There is not a father here who does not know, whatever his practice is likely to be, that it is vastly better for ; life with only the wealth of strong hands, sound brains, and upright, courageous hearts, than, without an • of their own, to have a millionnaire's fortune poured into their laps as capital. For Strong hands. sound brains, and the pure, brave heart are not only able to buy the best esl I earth, but can pur- chase virtue, freedom, and heaven. Give your son wealth without the mental and moral qualities that can so use wealth as to pay back every cent of it into the treasury of the world's commonweal, and. though he ride in his carriage and revel in luxury, you curse him with a poverty worse than that which drives the beggar hungry and foot-sore through the streets. And the probability is that nature will soon set about to rectify your mistake, and will vindicate her law, — that there can be no ownership without pay- ing for the title ; will set about the task in paternal THE TWO EDEN'S 153 mercy, too, divesting the poor millionnaire of his unpaid goods, scattering his wealth, removing one by one his luxuries, and by and by driving him out of his Eden of rest and pleasure, to begin life empty- handed and to earn its blessings as he goes, — but thereby to save his soul. And, if this is so in material things, much more is it true in respect to moral and spiritual possessions ; for moral and spiritual possessions are not so much gifts or external acquirements as fruits, — fruits of steady endeavor and slowly accumulating experience. No knowledge, no achievement, no enjoyment, that can be given to any soul to-day, can be compared to the mental and moral power that grows, with the putting forth of effort, in the soul itself, and in which lie the germs of all future achievements and joys. And this power, which is the foundation of all human virtue and progress, can only be had at the price of toil and conflict with the world. It must be wrung out of the rough and stony condi- tions of this earthly existence, — out of its duties and obligations, its hardships and trials, its tempta- tions and griefs. It is found in no Eden of dreamy rest : it must be paid for by resolute purpose and effort, just as fabled Hercules won Olympus and the company of the gods through toil and sacrifice and gigantic labors. And the higher the virtue, the greater the price that it costs. Jesus paid his very life-blood for the virtue that is remembered to-day in hymn, discourse, and prayer all round the globe, and which is still a delicious spiritual fragrance in the worship of Chris- TWI.NTV-l I\ tendom. The G ige and moralist, after a life journey of ] iil and s icr 1 down his body, too, as the price of an integrity which the world delights still to honor. Read Plutarch's heroes; read the lives of saints dnd martyrs, — many a one, too, not canonized in any calendar of the Church; ay, read the martyrs and heroes, with whose glorious name air has not vet ceased to vibrate, and wh. shall yet immortalize souk- American Pli ' what is it in these heroi mmands our admiration but just that which they paid f<>r the ai hievementS which have won their immortal t : — the endurance, the toil, the courage, the patient efforl and suffering, the precious bio tion, and promise laid bravely on the altar of sacrifice to truth and duty 5 Such rare and enduring virtue can only be purchased at the costliest prii Bui even joys, to be truly d, must be won by just desert. They must be wages for service rendered, — the wages of love, of sympathy, of healthy and helpful cheer. It" there be any posses- sion that would seem to be exempt from this law oi payment, it is a gift from a friend. Vet have you not paid lor that by your affection ? It is your love, and only that, which gives the gift all its valu your eyes. Our commonest household joys, the children's love and presence, the daily domestic warmth and growing bond of intimacy and fellow- ship, and all the love, peace, mutual helpfulness, happiness, and sanctity we include under that word, home, — is there nothing to be paid for these ? Shall THE TWO BDENS 155 we expect such possessions and joys without labor, without cost ? Ah, friends, if so, they will not come. Generosity, kindness, helpfulness, disinterested love, self-forgetfulness, self-sacrifice,— only these, liberally and cheerfully paid, and with renewed payment every day. can buy the home. Only the recognition of constant obligations and the faithful performance of daily services can win so pure and holy a blessing. And so long as there is one atom of selfishness in our characters, kept back as a reserved fund for our own special enjoyment, there is to that extent a mortgage on our homes, which every day subtracts something from the income of our domestic wealth. Ay, the figure may be extended, to cover the whole breadth of the theme. As long as t.here is any capacity for a purely selfish enjoyment in our nat- ures, which has not yielded to the solvent of the higher joy that comes from helpful service to others or for serving truth and right, so long there is a mortgage on our earthly estate, which must be paid to the last farthing before we arc able to secure the full happiness of heaven. But the divine law, though thus stern in its de- mands, is wise and merciful in its intent and benig- nant in its operation ; and, if it exact strict payment for all the solid achievements and blessings of life, it does not do it without offering amply to our hands the means for meeting all its obligations. If it send us out into the world to purchase for ourselves the world's wealth of virtue and joy, it places at our feet, at everv step of the way, the precious metal of opportunity, from which the coin is to come that will TWENTY-FIVE 51 KM make the payment We have but to stoop, and, by invention of brain, work o! hands, and steady pur- of heart, take the rough ore from its bed and mould it into shapes for the commerce of truth. affei tion, and philanthropy, and we have the cum that will buy eternal posses « >i;t of the very roughness and hardness of OUT earthly lot, out of the very difficulties and i is that perplex ami some- times close Up our path, from the very tears of trial and sweat of toil that are wrung from us as we jour- ney on over the dusty, burdensome way, do we the virtue which is to open the doors for us of a fairer garden than was eve 1 behind Eden 1 none therefore despair, none drop weary by the way. Let us take up the duties and burdens of life with Eresh purpose, sure that thus we shall find its solid realities and everlasting delights. Its bitterest trials, its roughest and loneliest -a be converted into the purest valor and fortitude and saintliness of character. Its temptations, sue fully met and overcome, transfer their strength to the soul that has conquered them. Even its direst evil, sin, destroyed and with its corruption and tenness ploughed into the soil of character, shall make it productive of a fairer virtue ; and its direst sorrow, premature death, by removing the material and temporal veil from Kfe, may teach the lessons and disclose the realities of life's eternal natun that the thickening graves may become mounts of vision from which our opened eyes see farther into heaven. Thus, everywhere, we win our heavenly paradise, not by evading this world's obligations, but THE TWO EDENS l S7 by conquest of the difficulties, trials, and hardness of earth. Turning our backs upon the childish delights of sensuous Eden, we journey on to find the larger satisfactions of manhood and womanhood,— the Eden of the soul —fed day by day with the fruit of that growing knowledge of mental and moral laws which is the sustenance of celestial beings ; and thereby, in very truth, we become strong to "put forth our hands and take of the tree of life, and eat and live forever." November 20, 1870. XII. Tlh >UGH I - AND D >NDTJ •• \!l that we .ire Ls 1 B our thou The Roman emperor, Marcus Aureliu . "Such as arc thy habitual thoughts will he chara thy mind ; l"t>r the by the thoughts." not Ear from the same purport, runs, -i. thy heart with all dilig the issues of life to Luke, substantially the same thing in the utt "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil man out of 1 ire of his heart bringeth : that which is evil : for of the abundance his mouth speaketh." These different utterances, including that from the founder of Buddhism, indicate my .subject. 1 point to one of the universal and fundamental princi- ples of practical ethics and religion, — the principle, namely, that the springs of character and life are in the inward affections and dispositions ; that actions depend on motives, and motives have their origin in the feelings and thoughts of the mind ; that the THOUGHTS AND CONDUCT I 59 moral quality of a man's outward life will be deter- mined therefore by the moral quality of his prevail- ing thoughts and sentiments. But, as soon as it is said that the moral quality of conduct depends upon the thoughts and dispositions of the mind, a question of responsibility arises. How, it is asked, can one be held responsible for the thoughts that come into his mind or the affections that spring up in his heart? Are not the roots of them there by nature, and do they not originate spontaneously? Do they not come and go indepen- dent of any control by the human will? Since, in- deed, the human will itself must be determined to IE by motives, and these motives must h their origin in the sentiments and thoughts of the mind, would it not be a very patent instance of >ning in a circle to say that the will may control sentiments and thoughts? Is it not plain that the will is controlled by them, since it cannot act without their impulse, rather than that it has any control over them 5 The difficulty that SUggi these questions has led to those philosophical theo- ries which deny man's free agency, and declare him to be the creature of circumstances; and to those theological theories which also deny his freedom, and assert that he is absolutely dependent on a super- natural influence from Almighty Being to change his heart and make him capable of goodness and sal- vation. Now, I wish to show, if I may, that there is no necessity of resorting to these theories, — that we may hold to man's freedom and to the strictest sense of his moral responsibility, and yet maintain that the TWENTY-1 ivr SERMONS springs <»f character are in the inward thoughts and affections. I wish to show that these tl and •inns are not beyond the range oi human con- trol, but rather that it is over these inner sprin. conduct that the very centre of moral responsibility But, first, very much has to be conceded to the claim that, when we speak of the thoughts and dis- tions of men's hearts, we must take into account those predispositions and those primal elements or germs of thought which are inherited, and over which, as a moral outfit, to begin with, the indi- vidual p . of course, has no control ; and that we must also take into account the conditions and circumstances under which the first years, the edu- cating years, of life are spent, since these, undoubt- edly, though not determined by individual choice, are an important agency in moulding the mind and heart. I think no metaphysician or theologian will venture to maintain to-day that all human souls at birth are precisely alike in respect to moral quality, so that, if by any possibility all could be subjected alike to the same educational discipline and experi- ences, they would develop precisely the same type of moral character. They are all, of course, equally sinless, — equally innocent, so far as any moral re- sponsibility of their own is concerned ; but they are not all alike equally free from the inherited taint of moral evil, and do not start in the race of life all alike equipped with the same moral tendencies. While all are alike guiltless and cannot be held re- sponsible for anything they inherit, it is yet true that THOUGHTS AND CONDUCT l6l some are born heavily laden with the woful burden of ancestral vices, which will surely incline them to posi- tive moral transgression ; while others may be pre- disposed, by a more fortunate moral inheritance, to paths of virtue; and others, still, may begin their career with more neutral characteristics. The idea that all human minds at birth are like a sheet of white paper, equally ready to receive any impression that may be made upon them, equally pure in color and fine in texture, may be said to be exploded. Physiology and psychology both deny it. Mental and moral features are doubtless inherited, as well as physical. The truth is, and the better it will be for mankind the sooner this truth is known and acted upon, the elements of character begin before birth. It is not to be claimed that ideas are innate, nor that any moral impulses and affections are at birth in a developed condition. But every infantile mind is full of the germs of ideas, dispositions, impulses ; and these have all inherited some moral bias. Phys- iological science teaches that the very texture of the mind at birth, its quality of fineness or coarseness, its measure of strength, edge, power, its innermost substance and fibre, its capacity for one kind of ac- complishment rather than another, are largely deter- mined by ancestral antecedents. And, since the antecedents are very different, the stuff and texture of different minds at the outset are very different. Instead of all being like a sheet of white paper, they differ just as paper differs according to the material of which it is made. Some are pure white and of delicate fibre, others are coarse and dingy ; [6a TWEN 1 VI tVE 5ERMI some arc flexile, othei ' iblc, othei • I think, that characters do not all Btart alike ; il. innate differences of mental and moral tendc which must have much to do with determining the after thou id dispo which are to furnish the motives of conduct. So, too, it m litted that the Burroundii after birth, during the < dly, — surroundings for which the individual — will necessarily have great influence in , the th and dispositions which are to appear in th I life. It is to speak in the face of th ive noth with the creation ol that all from within. The evident trtain p of human life, that which is within d very much upon the er of that which is without The: ertain degraded dally in large cities, where poverl filth, disease, vice, and crime prevail to such a d< that you know it would be next to im a child who should be born and should grow up there, without knowing any other influences, to come to useful and virtuous manhood; or for one well-born, if taken into such scenes of life in infancy and kept there, to escape the contamination. The child of civilized parents, brought up from early life by savages, becomes degraded toward their condition. Yet the same child, if restored in youthful manhood to civilization again, would doubtless incline more THOUGHTS AND CONDUCT readily to the habits of civilized society than would the child of a savage. The original inherited blood would assert itself, proving that it cannot be wholly neutralized by the power of circumstances. On the other hand, a child born in the midst of those r t s of misery, vice, and crime which ought to put our civilization to shame, if rescued in early life from the degradation and placed in a refined and virtuous home, will most likely grow up to lead a moral life; though it may be that the original bad blood, the inherited predispositions, will sometimes appear, that, under a change of surroundings, they might re- art themselves with tremendous power. It due. seem, however, that virtuous surroundings, if per- sistently continued, generally get the better of bad ent and birth, — as witness the successful res of Children's Aidsocietii atact with living virt- uous character proves a stronger power than the evil which lurks in the bloo 1 from dead ancestors. But let us not think that hereby we have a rig! boast much over our ancestors. For, probably, the converse of this proposition is also true, — that the immediate influence of vicious character, living:, is a stronger power during the susceptible years of youth than the inherited virtue of ancestors who arc- dead. The rule works, unfortunately, both ways. It will have to be conceded, then, that to birth and education, to inherited mental and moral ten- dencies, and to the outward conditions amid which the growing years of life are spent, the mind owes in a great degree the quality of its thoughts and dispositions. And hence, since the predominating 1 ' ' \ nine character, it must be allowed that i r is largely dependent on birth and on circum But, because of this adrai left f >r individual responsibility and for indivi Be trials OUt of which our ch Li but ha such a rovided by nature's lav. given in a condil »t of our appointing, \ that destroy all our free in the matter? we do not or ight within our- selves all the dispositions and thoughts win spring the motives that determine conduct, have therefore, no a< induct? By no means does il from t: free- dom and accountability are destroyed, and that there is no room for individual volition and culture in the development of character. On the contrary, from what has just been said of the power of circum- stances and of the more direct appll if educa- tion over the quality of the inner thoughts and impulses, we may see just where the responsibility . and to what point the aid of moral volition may directed most successfully. We see that it is a fact that, to change the surroundings, to put virtuous influences in the place of vicious and care- ful culture in the place of neglect, is to change the current of the mind's thoughts, to transform the heart's impulses, and hence to develop good char- acter where most inevitably bad character would have appeared, if things had been left to their own course. Whether, then, every individual is responsi- THOUGHTS AND CONDUCT l6$ ble or not for the thoughts and impulses that are most active within him, it may be rightly said that every generation of mature men and women in civilized society is responsible in no small degree for the thoughts and impulses that shall animate the rising generation and help to shape its character and conduct. Nay, we may go farther than this. Remembering how potent are inherited tendencies, we may say that every generation of mature men and women is to a large extent responsible for the moral quality of the generation that is yet unborn. There would be little need of what theologians have called "regeneration," or "being born again," if human beings only came into existence at first through right conditions of generation and natural birth. Even then, if we were to assume that all the ele- ments of character are included under the two terms, inheritance and education, we should not get rid of the doctrine of moral accountability. The seat of accountability might be shifted somewhat, but the pressure of moral obligation which the word covers would be none the less strong. Men might be inclined to blame themselves less for what they are, but they would feel more accountable than they now do for the condition of society in general and for the generation coming after them. Why, the very foundation of all theories of education is that the natural dispositions and thoughts of the mind may be changed and improved by culture ; that they may be diverted from one channel into another; that they may be transferred from one TV. . nother ; that they m low pur] • i high ; that minds ma to act from good motives rather than bad. and to spend their energies in noble pursuits rather than ignoble. And people of all tinually acting upon thi it be claimed that individuals have no free trol over, and no responsibility for, their own thoughts and impulses, no fact is more patent than that society is constantly acki liability for the thought in 1 chai iming members, Parei I it toward their children, teachei their pupils, public speakers and write 1 their ind readers. Nay, the very individuals who may deny that they ha oect to their own dispositions and sentiments, or that I have any moral accountability f those dispositions and sentiments, arc continually trying to p other people into a cl sentiments and dispositions. Though professing they are not free to control their own minds, they evidently believe in their power I 1 the m of others. How is this, then? Can it be that we have power over the thoughts and lions of our neighbors, and none over our own ? The answer to this question must certainly be in the negative ; and it brings me to another point, and the culminating one, in our theme. That same kind of power which lies in education, in culture, in im- proved circumstances, in the presentment of higher ideals of action to change the dispositions and ten- THOUGHTS AND CONDUCT \6j dencies out of which character springs, we may exer- cise over ourselves. Character depends upon our habitual thoughts. The quality of the conduct and life will follow the quality of the prevailing disposi- tions of the heart, but our habitual thoughts and the prevailing dispositions of the heart are very much what we choose to make them. They are not forces rushing in upon us, and bearing us hither and thither, without any consent or action of our own. Man cannot, it is true, act without a motive. But he has power to choose between different motives or classes of motives. He can put himself under the sway of one set of motives rather than another. He can select the influences that mould his actions. He can change, to some extent, his circumstances, if them unfavorable to the right development of his character. lie can do with himself, in this respect, precisely what a wise educator would do with a pupil; that is, he can remove the conditions which excite the impulses and thoughts he would repress, and put in their place conditions that will stimulate the thoughts and impulses that need to be cultivated. For instance, a man finds himself growing more and more engrossed in business. That which was originally taken up simply as a means of gaining a livelihood has come to occupy all his thoughts, and energies. It absorbs him wholly. He lives in it all the hours of the day, and dreams it over at night. His affections are in danger of being dwarfed, his sympathies dried up, his interest in the great ques- tions that concern human welfare destroyed. He i •Town to love wealth, and to acquire h own sake, without thinking of its i when a man finds bin je in his business life, what can he do? He can n stop and take new I H '"I will take some hours e\ the culture of my mind and heart. I will more time to home Intercourse. Hi will read. Here i will visit I are ! and philanl . public and prii that need my interest and aid." Such a n lutely made and pursued will work the cha I [e is now a proof of the mazii Aurelius that the mind will take color and character according to the habitual thoughts. His tho have been given habitually to business, until his whole mind, heart, and soul are there; and he is in danger of becoming a mere business machine. But he may give a different kind of proof of the same maxim, by habituating his thoughts to other inter- ests and pursuits. I lis character will follow his new habits <A thought. Or suppose that one is addicted to sensual indul- gence. He, too, is an illustration of the maxim. His character follows the thoughts which he in- dulges. Let him, then, enter the conflict th< his thoughts. Let him put himself under influences that will lead his thoughts away from the intemper- ate demands of appetite. Let him avoid the pi scenes, companions, associations that excite these appetites, if he cannot otherwise keep his virtue. Let him hasten to strengthen the better desires and THOUGHTS AND CONDUCT 169 aspirations of his nature by re-enforcing them with the power that comes from virtuous companionship and from pure and cultivated circles of society. Let him put himself under the magic spell of a good book, which shall exorcise the demon of passion. Let him flee to the purifying influences of nature, which is often potent to cool the hot blood of animal desire. In some way, let him break up the train of his thoughts, and turn them in a pure direction. There is where the battle must be fought and won. Or suppose that one is given to any form of self- indulgence, — to luxurious ease, or indolence, or undue love of pleasure, or excessive delight in social display and in the excitements of fashionable life. Here, again, it is a question of bringing' the mind under a new set of influences, so that those impulses that lead to a merely frivolous and selfish life may be checked, and nobler desires maybe aroused to activity in their place ; that is, it is a question of governing one's thoughts, of turning them from one object to another. Let such a person seek the so- ciety of the benevolent, read the biographies of self- sacrificing and philanthropic men and women, — good biographies are among the best inspirers, — actively participate in some good work of charity, and the better current of thought will surely begin ; and, by persistent and patient effort to keep in this current, nobler motives of conduct will in time become ha- bitual. As the thoughts, so will the life become. And, even without this aid from external influ- ences, man has the power to break and turn the train of his thoughts, and so to call into exercise one "her. irer way to turn I of thought is to re-enforce tl iter influent tive I i I.- by internal power to • it by r 1>\ rotary me I that. And he has the h band the who can do I who kee] iwn mental housi . I think, something <>f thi ■ lerc ling of l i the hah:' I their v. duct ; and th he manly re able ' Up in tl come what may of evil m the influ- arround me <>r from ti. lurk in my brain, my will shall only by the inner forces of reason and i and that . . . so much the creature tor. And to this type of ;>ire, — a type of character wherein, though the texture of the outward life will necessarily conform to the qu of the inner thoughl i will be vants of the power of moral choice, which stands supreme over all. April 23, 187I. XIII. EASTER TRUTHS AND TRADITIONS. "Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited as, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our I way of peace." — I ■ [n this affectionate and poetic phrase doessumc early Christian believer record his impressions of the mission of Jesus. It seemed to him life the dawn of a new day, like the glory of a sunrise, like the shining of a light in the midst of darkness, like the springing of life out of the shadow of death and the mould i rave ' appreciate the tender gratitude of his words, the fine ideality of his thought, though not interpreting him literally. We must allow to the element of imagination large room and influence in the shaping of religious beliefs and movements. And this sentence, as a prophetic description of the mission of Jesus,— represented as prophetic, though written after the event, — seems especially consonant with the sentiment of Easter which has always been one of the poetic and dramatic days in the history of the Christian Church. To trace, indeed, the beliefs and practices that per- tain to this day through the eighteen centuries of Christian history would almost give us the history [72 TWENTY-] r. of Christian [propose, in thi to note Borne of the points in the 1. tions of the day, which may I i bring into • the truths an I trad llity and the poetry, that have woven then this Chi; • Jtival, know:. We shall that not in the li: inter • 'i of the ' ' be found, but that behind il arc ideal sources of belief and sentiment that are luminous with satisfying ev; t truth. In the first place, let us look at the primary be m whi h the eelebrat: began, course, to th arch Kilter commemorates one evei the ; tion of J.sus from the tomb. It was, we hi ty > iv with truth, from th belief in the resurrection Christianity Si irted That was the doctrine, more than any other, that was the burden of apostolic prea< hing. It is extremely doubtful, indeed, whether the disciples would have rallied from the bitti pointment and grief into which they had been plunged by the crucifixion of Jesus, — whether they would have found any standing-ground for the proclaiming of the new faith, — had not this belief in the resurrection of their master somehow come to them. But, however this may be, it is certain — the New Testament and tradition both put the fact beyond question — that it was their belief in his resurrection that bridged the gulf between the actual life of Jesus and historical Christianity. EASTER TRUTH? AND TRADITIONS 1 73 t, if we were asked to analyze that belief and state its cause, a rational, historical criticism would have to take issue, I think, with the popularly accepted answer of Christendom. A thorough ex- amination of the evidence, noting its discrepancies, noting, too, the way in which the Xew Testament records were formed, — their undoubtedly late origin and gradual growth after the events to which they refer took place, — such an examination, I believe, will most certainly fail to establish the fact of a physical resurrection of Jesus, or even that the first sties uniformly and definitely believed in the resurrection of his natural body. Paul's testimony, certainly the oldest and the most undisputed that we have to the fact that some kind of resurrection was believed in, favors the idea of a spiritual resur- rection rather than that of the rising of the physical body. For he argues from the resurrection of Jesus to the resurrection of all mankind, and yet distinctly disclaims believing, with reference to mankind in general, that the same body is raised that is buried. "Thou sowest not," he says, "that body which shall be; ... but Cod giveth it a body"— -that is, giveth to the soul a new body — "as it hath pleased him." The probability is that the more practical and mat- ter-of-fact of the primitive Christians believed in the material resurrection of Jesus, for they could not otherwise grasp the fact of his resurrection at all, or of his continued existence ; but that the more speculative and mystical among them, or the more intelligent we may say, those like Paul and Apollos (if he be the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews), believed simply in his spiritual resurrection, which had become manife ml, in The testimony itself that is presented in the I IWS that those who gave it had no clear comprehension of the phenomena, The testimony is conclu to the I in the resurrection of J lidering the eircum stances of the case and of the age in general, such a belief may easily h in without tl I an J bodily resurrection. To my mind, lookin the problem from every point of view, it seems infi- isier to account for the belief in the re a natural a stupendous miracl 3 would he tin- iring of a man who had been actually dead from tl And since the ] iblish so momentous an event, a rational ment will withhold as it. even if all the natural causes of the belief in it cannot now torily traced. In short, the aent St( r Jesus' resurrection must be remanded to the realm of Christian mythology. But because we may not believe in the phya resurrection of J we read as uncertain tradition and poetical legend the accounts of the rolling away of the stone from the door of the sepulchre and of the coming forth of Jesus there- from, and of the appearance of tl. 9 and of the resurrection interviews with the devoted women and the disciples, do we for this reason say that there is nothing to commemorate, that nothing hap- pened ? By no means. Such a movement as his- EASTER TRUTHS AND TRADITIONS 175 torical Christianity did not begin in a mistake, in a delusion, in a fancy of two or three women who may have been beside themselves with disappointment and grief. Much less did it begin with a deliberate imposture. It began in a great fact, but the fact was mental rather than material ; and the material form which it assumed in the legend of the physical resurrection was only the dress in which the fact clothed itself according to the fashion of the times, — the medium by which it became current with the common understanding of the age. And this fact the mental and spiritual transformation, by which the disciples of Jesus passed from the crush- ing sorrow and despair into which his crucifixion had suddenly thrown them, to the faith, hope, and courage which enabled them to take up the cause w hich at tned to have been buried irrecover- ably in his grave, and to carry it forward to triumph. They had fled from his cross; but, somehow, they had become strong now to face their own unflinch- ingly. They had slept when he met his agony in Gethsemane, apparently not believing it possible that he, their Messiah, could come to the ignominy of the crucifixion. Now, they were fully awake ; and no burden was too heavy for them to take up. The cross itself, that had been their shame, had become their glory. So long as Jesus was with them, they had been dull of understanding and had miscon- ceived continually what he had taught them of that heavenly kingdom which he had hoped to inaugu- rate. Now, in the sharpness of their pain at his departure, their vision seems to have been opened, so that t truly th work • was with them, the lildren. him •mm ind or •• induct Now, they wer< strong men and brave women, with opinions and Of their own. it in their own po« and prepared to act tor the they the tloek. humbly following, but shrinking and :. Now, they were the shepherds t flocks, and bol L Here, in this mental mation, was the tion. It would have been of litl lent 1 isus had actually I from the grai ming so charily and vanishing again SO But it was of the utmost moment that the iples should ri- their despondc grief to the faith and courage that comprehended and mastered the crisis. • someone will argue that the physical resur- on of Jesus was needed to produce this trans- formation and was really the cause of it. But have you not witnessed similar experience in the common history of human careers? Why resort to an out- ward miracle, to an abnormal phenomenon of flesh and blood, to explain a spiritual process the elements of which are the common property of humanity? What a disappointment and dismay fell upon these Northern States after the first inglorious defeat at Bull Run! Yet in that defeat was the nation's ultimate victory. Out of it came the first substan- tial realization of the work to be done, as well as the EASTER TRUTHS AND TRADITIONS \JJ heroic determination to do it. Had our army there triumphed and advanced to Richmond, and there, as was then hoped, put a quick end to the rebellion, slaves would have been still working under the lash in the South. Those first defeats of the war, bitter as they were to bear, were the cross by which the nation rose to the -lory of the proclamation of free- dom and of equal rights. You may see the same fact all through history. '• The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." a may see it also in private and personal experience. Who has not ob- served character developing unexpected strength and solidity, when outward props hive been taken away, and it has been thrown back upon its own centre? Women, who have seemed weak, clinging, invalid, seldom thinking or doing for themselves, becoming clear-minded, self-reliant, and roused to heroic action, when some great exigency of bereave- ment has come upon them ? Young men and young women, who have only been wont to lean on others, suddenly springing to maturity, and developing a power they were never suspected to possess, under the pressure of some severe external condition that forced responsibility upon them? Soldiers in the crisis of battle, nerved up to almost more than mortal strength, as the contest goes hard against them and they feel the cause slipping from their grasp, which one more mighty effort may redeem ? In all these and similar cases, the emergency seems naturally to develop the power that is required to meet it. The very need touches the springs of sup- ply. And in harmony with this general law came T\\ 1 \ 1 \ -1 II the transformation of mental condition by which the disciples of Jesus passe I out oi the sorrow and despondency I ittitude of resolution and faith. Moreover, to suppose that the miracle of an ward resurrection was n in them this is to di the influence of Je hings upon them Can we suppose that the gre I I his ch the heroism of his ■!-, had had so litl :r upon those with whom he had daily lived, that. gone, they would 1 tten and forsaken the <mum- to which he had a, unless be ed to them from the tomb? Is it not a more natural thought that the memory of what he had been to them, the iv n of his words, and the subtle influence of character that had from him to them, would he a strong incentive after lie had left them not to let his fail 'in their hands? To suppose an apparition of his body after death to be necessary to convince them <>i his M' anic mission is to suj ' wonder was of more moment than the truths he had Utl and the life he had lived ; that a bodily manif tion was a fact of more weight than spiritual inspira- tion and moral fidelity. Nor, again, was such an apparition required to enable them to believe in a future life. They believed that already ; and they believed in the general resurrection of the dead, though whether material or spiritual may be a question. The Jews generally, before the time of Jesus, as the New EASTER TRUTHS AND TRADITIONS I ~ i Testament itself bears witness, believed in these two doctrines. They had been familiar with these doctrines since the captivity in Babylon. Only the Sadducees, a cultivated but comparatively small sect, denied them. If we do not find them in the canon of the Old Testament, we find them explicitly stated in the Apocrypha. The resurrection of Jesus, therefore, was not needed to convince the disciples of his own or their continued existence after death. Yet the inestimable value of his life, the greatnr-^ of his virtue, the prophetic character that he pos- sessed, the Messianic character that was attributed to him, — all this intensified and vitalized with new power the old belief in a life beyond the present. Such a man as this, they felt, could not die. Had it not been written, " Righteousness is immortal " ; "The souls of the righteous are in the hand of I and there shall no torment touch them ; and, though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full <>f immortality"? How, then, should not such a righteous person as this survive, even though the cross had done its cruel work of destruction upon his body and the grave had claimed it for corruption? Thus must their grief have found refuge from its own despair. And since, because of his prophetic wisdom and nobility of character, they had accepted Jesus as Messiah, and since the Mes- siah they still believed him to be, this was an addi- tional reason why they could not believe him to have utterly vanished with his body. His promises — so their bereaved but still hoping hearts assured them — must yet be fulfilled, his work must go on, his TWENTY-FH lom must be id he hin away, would doubtless, in due time, n itre. It was natural that tl thus . i out of BU( h tl • 1 very likely with some subjective vision on the of the prim; to me, the •i in the and the erning it, tl and finally i What, then, is it th tin- rising of the i • but the ri ol" his crucified truth ; not his j but his spiritu.il tion ; not tl to the ' t the s iperiorit a no tl to all tormei I bonds of the grave. It commemorates the triumph •r erro; . r wron light over darkness, ,,f life springing Up out of the corruption of death, and converting death itself into elements of ice and beai That the early Christians themselves had no very definite d the phenomena of an outward resurrection is manifest from • | that the churches very early f '1 apart concerning the time when they would celebrate it. The Eastern churches, following, as they claimed, a tradition from John, the disciple, adopted the fourteenth of the month called Nisan as the day of the crucifixion, and the third day after that as resurrection day, on whatever clay of the week it might come. But the EASTER IKL'TILS AND TRADITIONS l8l churches in Europe, following, as they claimed, a tradition from Paul, adopted for the celebration the Sunday nearest to the full moon of that month, without regard to the day of the crucifixion or the alleged day of resurrection. This dispute lasted for two centuries, at times becoming very serious and bitter ; and it was not terminated until the time of Constantine and the Council of Nice, in the year 325, when the principle of the rule of the West- ern churches rattier than the Eastern prevailed, and Easter was made a movable festival. It seems likely that the simultaneous occurrence of some pagan festival in Southern Europe, which could be trail -formed into the Christian, helped to determine the day, as well as to impart some marked features to the celebration after this time. Popular sports and curious superstitions of various sorts came to Ik- mingled with the religious solemnities of the day. And these, probably of pagan ancestry, are still extant in countries where Catholicism has had most power. There arose very early, too, a difference of opinion on the very question we hive been considering, — whether Jesus rose or not in the same physical body that had been buried. Some of the most learned of the Christian Fathers contended that he rose only in a spiritual body. Ori^en, Chry- sostom, and Clement held this opinion. And this question never was settled by any decree of a council, so that it is maintained by some scholars that the orthodox theory in the Roman Catholic Church to-day is that the resurrection of Jesus was in his spiritual body, and not in the material. 1 • It we I the his; through the later centurii hall find it taking sha] an 1 characteristics. Amen- the Roma] espe< [ally in Rome, it i 1 with vast pomp and ceremoi Chri nt on tl ng the bom- Where Puritanism and Quakerism I memoration has I minimui i rnitioil or has been entire' . to th( the hilarity and play which had I d with in England seemed -1 to the n.u:\c of n ion, that could i bing the festival itself. 1 condemnation of th< : nearly obliteral uit chun n^w vie writ! I celebral ii But one of the most n with the history of 1 I 1 when CI line int Gei or received the tonic nations. It found there d in the i of ancient date, in honor of . or ( tet< ra, the goddess of spring. Thisfestival ommemorated the return of the sun to Northern clime- after its long • with the genii of winter, — with loud, storm, and death. It commemorated the revival of the forces of nature, the fresh hopes that came to man and beast, the promise of a new >e<- i-time and EASTER TRUTHS AND TRADITIONS 183 harvest. It was a thank-offering to the sun as the annual creator of the sustenance and beauty which the earth, at the touch of his fertilizing rays, pro- duced for man. It was a festival, therefore, of grate- ful reverence and piety. It was religious, but it was also a day of popular joyousness. This festival of Teutonic paganism Christianity did not abolish, but adopted and transformed, in its primary feature, into a celebration in honor of the resurrection of Jesus. The two celebrations, in fact, came together and graduallv adapted themselves to each other, until they coalesced finally into one, which retained some of the features of both. The very name of the in festival was retained, — Easter, from Eo — as were some of its popular out-door .spoils and traditions. The flowers — emblem of nature ivvi\ ing from her wintei of death — which have become such a feature of the day in modern Christian churches, also the eggs, traditionally associated with the day, and Symbol of life, are a reminiscence ol the old Teutonic celebration rather than of that which began in Judea. And vet they fit harmoniously to both. The two brations, before they coalesced, had so much in common that the conjunction was natural and e B th were on a day dedicated to the worship of the sun. The Christian festival had already imbibed some features of hilarity from paganism in Southern Europe. The fact, too, that Jesus was called the •'Sun of Righteousness," "the Light," "the Day- spring from on high," that his religion came from the East, the home of the sun and the land of the sunrise, made the transition not difficult from the TU l M to the Christian interpretation ol the I v:il. And, for one. I like to think that there il this atiment and tradition winch ha int.. the celebration of tins day,— that in it heathen as well as Christian memories mingle It is the same with the Christm ' ' think that the roots of be 1 practice- in modern Christendom run down '• not stopping eighteen centuries back, but I the a >' through tl mon soil of our humanity. I love to think that, in this Easter festival, kept in Europe and Ami v, there mingle traditions, though it unconscious'.;. time when our hardy fathers, independent bul at. gathered, not in temples made with hands, but in the primeval w and sacred -roves built by nature's architect, and gave utterance to their grateful praise to the Power that every year re-creates the earth, clothes it with beauty, and fills it with manifold forms of life and joy. Say you that they worshipped the sun' Rather was it the Power within or behind the sun, the sustaining providence of the universe, brin seed-time and harvest without fail in their season, and guiding this rb of light, heat, and li: daily and yearly beneficence to man. There was trust and gratitude in their worship,— grateful reli- ance upon the order of nature. Though not in Jerusalem nor on Mount Gerizim, they yet, in these stately temples of nature, which Christianity has but faintly copied in its Gothic cathedrals, worshipped in spirit and in truth. To find these evidences of EASTER TRUTHS AND TRADITIONS I 85 relationship among religions, to trace Christian cer- emonies and ideas beyond Christian and Hebrew lines into the vast common of natural religion, so far from disturbing my faith, gives me a new and beau- tiful testimony to the solidarity of the human race and to the actual natural brotherhood of mankind. Instead of undermining my faith, these discoveries give it a broader and deeper foundation. Instead of a past of eighteen or nineteen hundred years merely, running up to a written record whose authenticity may be assailed, ray feet stand upon a past that is coeval and coterminous with the entire history of man on this planet. I see the sects with hands raised every one against its neighbor, — the religions at war with the religions. I see that, in the grow- in.; light of reason, many of the doctrines and cere- monies that divide the warring zealots are vanishing away as superstitions. But, deep below all their differences, amid all vanishing of ancient doctrines, I trace the roots of the great beliefs, hopes, trusts, aspirations of mankind, down to certain primary impulses inherent in the very constitution of human nature, and which are what they are because they are vital with the creative energy which at that point passed over from the Supreme Source of all things to finite consciousness. And there they are sale. So long as human nature endures and keeps its identity, nothing can there disturb. them. They are beyond the region of doubt ; they are above the reach of literary and historical criticism. They may be reasoned about, but not reasoned away ; for they are involved in the very nature of the reasoning in- I U I.N 1 VI- 1 \ I -1 Rill e itself. Their I change, l>ut in substance they abide. And, among these central trusl religion, it is not difficult to '-hat the Easter fest '" in's inextinguishable hope and faith that lij M/r, , . \ — that the vital and i i- in nature is alwa) of decay and dissolution, and. after •turns in triumph to the field ; that there is that in the life of man which is more than the . which dise 'id deal more than the dust which the hold. 1'i. *e two 1 »rms of humanitj the abiding power of Life, the clothed in symbol and poetry, addressed to the popular imagination. Lr 'h, — that is the day 1 •<-*>' new in. Science, even, is tea bin , now that death is only a phase, e, in the continuing and abiding proo that there is never any absolute n of power, of vitality, but only change in its direction and form. But, before science came, man was learning tin tern school i rience, and through the deep instincts of his heart, — feeling after the truth, if haply he might find it. He saw nature every year threatened with destruc- tion. All the outward signs of life vanished from her. The winds and storms beat upon her, and her beauty fell. Farther and farther each day the warmth of the sun departed, and the world grew EASTER TRUTHS AND TRADITIONS 187 cold, drear, and desolate. Nature seemed dead. Snow and ice entombed her. And man must perish with her. But anon he saw the sun return. The old vital warmth was still there. Nature was not dead : she was only sleeping. Day by day, her burial shroud was loosened The icy barrier was removed from her sepulchre. And soon she reappeared in all her old beauty, promise, and power. The Life-power in nature stood revealed before his eyes Stronger than the Death-power. Man saw, too, his heart's affec- tions threatened with destruction. One by one, his friends and companions dropped from his side, and he saw them no more. His house became to him more cold, drear, and desolate than the winter of nature. But by and by there awoke in his heart the Ight that, if the life of outward material nature so dear to the Creative Power that it was thus carefully preserved through every semblance of death, much more must it be the purpose of the Creative Tower to preserve this inward human nature, this life of heart and mind, wherein man is superior to nature and through which come his chiefest joys. And so came the great hope and belief in immortality, — the faith that to the soul's vitality there could be no death. It is the most natural and axiomatic of all thoughts that, since Lift- is. Life must be an object to be cherished and preserved by the Creative Power whence it came. Life, not death, must be the pur- pose and aim of the all-pervading energy. Hut not material life alone, nor chiefly. Man has learned that great lesson, too, and learned it through the severe discipline of experience. It is not his [88 TWEHTY-Pn own material life that i to him. He will surrender his body to the powei rather than abandon a conviction oi his mind. He will face fire and sword rather than forswear a moral principle. He will I LSt his own body into the jaws of death for the sake of SJ m of his heart. There are grades of life, anil it is clearly the prov- idential intention that the lower grades should - the higher. When man shall learn to CO-operate perfectly with this intention, then physical death will come to him only as condition of resurrection to some higher form of life. Then he will live already in the domain of rational thought, in the wholesome atmosphere >d con in the puril his heart's 1 itions; and so with him the cor- ruptible will have already put on inCOJTUption, and the mortal will have put on immortality. March 31, 1S72. XIV. . OPTIMISM. " We know that all things work together for good to them that love God."— Rom. riii., 2S. I suppose that all people who have any thoughts about the matter want to believe in the proposition announced in this sentence of Paul. Perhaps most people have moments and seasons when they do believe it. And yet, I SU] , to most people there come frequent times when they are compelled Loubt it, — times, at least, when "things" seem so adverse to good, when the apparently untoward and evil circumstances that beset human life press so heavily, that it does not look SO certain that they irk together for good." Even it faith come to the rescue of the bewildered understanding with the assurance that, since infinite Goodness reigns, it must be so, nevertheless the question arises, and keeps urging itself, how it can be so. Though faith may be able to say, We believe that somehow, how- ever dark and difficult the problem may look, all the ills of life are wrought over into good, yet if reason do not see at all into the process, if the logical understanding get no clew toward a satisfying solu- tion, it is hard to keep back intruding questions and to hold that height of certainty wherein the mind with unshaken confiden "We know that all t hii for we know it ? 1 • c it must that ti oi the univei the question • than t i it. TI. ffled mind when, ha\ I i the limits of its know for ' la the w and d An 1 th • It we have proved the which we have been travelling to h the time may hav< many ai mrmount trust it t<> the end. It i> natural and i th.it we should accept the veracity of our b " and hopes. Until proved the contrary, we may timately accept their ti evident the real drift and tendency of things in the uni- verse. The writer of the 1 to the Hebrews . '• Faith is the su 1 i ■♦* things h the evidence of things not seen"; and there fine truth in this statement, a very full and ing truth. That ideal which the human soul es in its higher hopes and desires it instinctively trusts as the pledge of a future r< And reason, where it has no adequate grounds for denial, may well accept this natural mental bias to trust the future for bringing something better than the past, as an indication that the immanent energy, which is the central life of nature and of man, is moving in OPTIMI-M IQI the direction of good and is overruling evil for the promotion of good. Still, there arc few people who can in all circum- stances keep this high ground of faith. Hope is not knowledge. Aspiration is not certainty. A vision of the future may be trustworthy, but it is not to ordinary people so palpable a reality as a present fact. Faith may be good evidence for things not seen, but the thin-- see at hand and ■r so fully the field of vision that they are apt to shut out all sight «»f this evidence. And these things that .ire seen are sometimes so inscrutably evil, so impenetrably dark, that, even though the sonl may believe there is light beyond, yet it cannot trace one ray through the thicket, — cannot explain how all this evil is to be transmuted into the sub- stance of virtue, how it is to be surmounted and put to use in the pi of the world. Optimism — the belief that the world is tin- best possible, and that every event in it at any particular time is the • possible in view of all the circumstances and in reference to the ultimate good of the whole — may perhaps be a true theory; and it may be a comfort- ing theory to the theologian in his studies, to the philosopher in his speculations, to any person in moments of serenity, when individually free from the pressure of evil conditions. But I suspect that this belief docs not generally come to comfort those who stand most in need of comfort. When the iron enters one's own soul, it is not so easy to be an optimist. I can hardly conceive it possible that those classes of society who are crushed under some TWI.N1 V-I I. great oppression, who are ground down by poverty, •mis of inju 1 tyranny, who arc forced to live in daily companionship with and misery; or those upon whose hopes and car. lias fallen the blight o intment and failure, upon whose once fair auspices and happy home there has come, for instance, the wreck <>t fortune and love which persistent intemperance brings i those — and they may be in the most guarded and moral social circles — wl smitten by a sudden blow from some villany too black to name, — I can hardly that any persons in such condition ifort themselves with the thought that "all things arc the possible," can look up out of their misery, out of their sense of humiliation and wrong, and serenely, "Whatever is, is right." No: there are ills in our human lot too profound, too heavy, too bitter, for any who are under the burden of them to have the heart to say, "This is all as it should this is what I need; this h the best thing which could possiblv have been arranged for me." Could such a sentiment find utterance, it would seem, in- deed, but solemn mockery, and would betray a want of the very feeling from which must come the motive- power which is to resist the ills of life and triumph over them. If optimism is to be interpreted as meaning unconditionally, in the moral as in the material universe, that "whatever is, is right," as Pope put it in his oft-quoted aphorism, if it mean that everything in the world this moment is the best thing possible in the eye of infinite Goodness, and OPTIMISM 193 just as we might conceive infinite Goodness would approve and wish it to be, then, to my mind, opti- mism is most false both in theory and experience. And, thus understood, optimism not only seems to me groundless in reason but dangerous to morals. I cannot bring myself to say that even all things are the best possible, considered with reference to the after and ultimate good of all persons; that infinite Goodness, though looking to the future, were it to keep full control of human conditions and actions, would arrange everything, will everything, just as we find it to-day. Such a doctrine of optimism ap- pears to me to blaspheme infinite Goodness nearly as much as did the old dogma of predestinating a portion of the human race to eternal misery. To suppose that a Being of infinite purity could look with complacency upon the assassin's crime, the swindler's plot of lying and robbery, the profligate's infamous lust and treachery, the cruelties under which millions of human beings have been crushed by selfish power, because in the future his omni- scient eye sees that good will be the issue, — much more, to suppose that he has by his own free pur- pose and will arranged all these individual acts as the best way of producing this after good, — this is to violate the very idea of goodness, and to confound all valid distinction between right and wrong. The only sense in which I can conceive optimism to be acceptable to a rational and morally earnest mind, is that the world, as a whole, is the best possible, con- sidering that human beings are free, responsible actors in it, and help to make it what it at any mo- TWEN rY-FIVE SERMi in-lit is; that is, that the conditions of humai with regard to physical and moral evil have pro^; ild rationally be expected on the plan that man shall be a prime agent in impr<> his own condition. Why man was made a responsible in ar- ing his own lot and destiny, why he was made subject to evil and suffering instead of being neces- to a path of rectitude and happiness, is another question; and a question which it maybe ■ ■ nswer. i only say that he is not thus necessitated, — that the human I ir individually, has before it the tremen- k of w<> own way up and out from evil conditions, and by a rational and virtuous us its own ' i own destiny. And we ides, that tl higher order of being, even with all the liabilities and actualitie evil that attach to it, than would be a condition >>i existence in which there should be only a mechani- cal adherence to right At any rate, so thin and, however better it might seem, if we had all i made angels incapable of going astray, it is evident that, if we are ever to reach that state, it must be by our own effort and struggle. And very likely there can be no such thing as conscious a; h >od, no such thing as the full development of a vital, organic, moral personality, without this effort, — without the rational perception and choice of truth and right rather than their opposites. In his- tory, the fact that man by his own effort has been making his lot better, that human virtues have been OPTIMISM 195 continually blotting out the record of human crimes and woes, that truth and justice have triumphed over wrong, and right and love have been gradually winning supremacy over brute might and cruelty, — it is this fact that gives us a right to affirm that there is a supreme moral Order ruling in the affairs of men. Man has himself overruled his own evil doings. Whenever, therefore, it be said that "the world is the best possible," and that "all things in it are arranged in the best possible way for the ulti- mate good of all," we can justly use the optimistic assertion only in the sense that it was best that man should be left free, or should become responsible, to a great extent, for his own condition ; and that being left free, though he will bring many evils upon him- self, his moral intelligence can be trusted to over- come them, and ultimately to make " all things work together for good." But Heaven forbid that- we should suppose that, with reference to man's future good, all present things are alike available as material ; that one act is as good as another ; that a bad man is as good for the purpose as a good man ; that wickedness is as serviceable as virtue ; that all moral dis- tinctions vanish in the presence of some supreme transforming spirit that takes all our human con- ditions, — the ill and the good, the bitter and. the sweet, the vicious and the virtuous, — and, putting them all together into its crucible, straightway brings forth a product which has always the same wholesome qualities as a genuine elixir of life ! Heaven forbid that, in any absolute, unconditioned TWENTY-FIVE SERM< mould Bay, "Whatever is, is right,*' and that we should lose our horror of evil and crira . possibly, we may see .some way in which they may, by and by, ages hence perhaps, be converted ini I! All things do, indeed, work ther for good. Hut they do so, because human beings keep clear in their minds the distinction between things as they are and things as they OUgl ' and strive to make the "ought ' actual. They do so, because man sees the d a g i and evil, and knows horn daily observation and experience thai there are m things in the world that are not right and that will not be likely to come right or be transmuted into any form of goodness, unless human beings take hold and help to do it. "All things work together for good," — but not without man as a worker. And, if we recur to Paul's words, from which we out, we shall see that they also express es- sentially this condition. "All things work together for good to them that love Corf," — in other words, to paraphrase the conditional cl i them who look up rather than down ; to them who seek the truth. who espouse right, who strive to know and to do the good, who honor virtue, who love the ideal of infinite excellence, in which all truth, ri beauty, goodness, are conceived to harmonize as constituent parts, and who study constantly to copy that ideal into character and life. In a word, all things work together for good to those who love and aim at the good. The spirit of this aspiration and effort is the transmuting agency that converts the OPTIMISM 197 base elements of human error and wickedness into the pure coin of virtue. Those to whom this effort and aspiration are wanting, those whose look is downward, those whose career is only a yielding to the cravings of selfish passions, those who find their most alluring solicitations in the direction of sensual appetite, those who are bound in the chains of avarice and animalism, those who have given them- selves up to false and vicious propensities, and are making little or no struggle against them, — these have no right to hope that things will in any way work together for their good. The soliciting spirit of the eternal Goodness must find some co- operating response within the soul, or its effort is in vain. Not until that desire for goodne*ss, which we cannot suppose is ever wholly crushed out even of the worst of men, is somehow, somewhere, aroused into a positive purpose and endeavor, so that the soul looks and reaches up again, will a man find himself possessed of the faculty of making even the ills and sorrows of his lot steps in his ladder heavenward. If we apply these principles to the problems of life's evils, we shall find them as true in practice as in theory. Look at the history of the human race. Humanity has progressed in proportion to the activ- ity of its own rational and moral intelligence. The work of progress has not been carried on by some overruling Power outside and independent of the power that resides in the human faculties. It is through the human faculties themselves that the divine purpose is unfolded, and the destiny designed l.)S TWENTY-FH for man by the Creative Power is gradually achi< Henry Ward Beecher once said, "The elect are those who will, the non-elect are those who won't." That is the i interpretation of the Calvinistic doctrine of fore-ordination. And it is a true hint of the actual historical fact that the eternal Power works through human a and depends foi success, in no small measure, upon the co-operation of the human will. Humanity advances and achi its -rand triumphs, not through any spirit of fatalis- tic philosophy that would fold the hands an i piously to ( rod, hut through its own pr\ restie— energies. The Hindu Brahmins have taught that men get nearest to God when they renounce the world and its activities, and indulge in retired meditation, cultivating an artificial spiritual clair- vo) ince ; and this sentiment has r< ed to no little extent in the Christian Church. Hut nearer the truth was the old Creek legend which repre- sented Hercules as mounting to Olympus and be- coming a companion of tl mtic labors for the benefit of man on earth. It is true that, in the historical pro I the race, the doings of evil men are gradually overrule 1 for good, and the pernicious result ultimately eliminate .1 from the product that permanently remains. But this is be- cause there are always some people, many people, who are seeking and striving for just that end; Herculean hearts and wills seeing clearly the de- mands of truth and right, and setting themselv< the task of meeting them. And if, as Count de Gasparin has well said, " there are moments when OPTIMISM 199 certain causes rule so absolutely that everything serves them, war as well as peace, defeats as well as victories, obstacles as well as means," it is because of the vast momentum which a moral truth may have acquired through the consenting and co-operat- ing exertions of many rational wills to push it for- ward and give it supremacy. Without this, the great moments would never arrive. And the same thing is true in our individual ex- perience. We overcome personal trials and obsta- cles of every kind, we defeat evil both in its causes and in its results, when our hearts and wills lay hold upon goodness with their whole strength. In this alembic of a supreme moral purpose, all experiences arc dissolved, however hard they may be«to bear, — temptations, adversities, griefs, old transgressions, — and all are converted into materials of future char- acter. We then mount by the very obstacles that would seem to hinder us. We get visions of heaven through the very tears that sorrow wrings from our eyes. This is the mood in which all things work together for good, the working spirit being in the human soul ; and it is in this mood that we come to understand, with Paul, how " neither death nor life, principalities nor powers, height nor depth, things present nor things to come, shall be able to separate us from the love of God," — which, to Paul, was specially manifest in Christ, but which is equally manifest now and throughout the universe. Through this human mood of aspiration after goodness and active receptivity to it, light streams into the dark- est places of human experience. Often, we may see 200 TWENTY-FI\ how the evil actually passes into good, — how, under the hammer of temptation and trial, the soul may be tempered to a finer virtue. ' We >■ men ind women under great burden . who, in I sinking therein - , rise under the burden to h wonderful strength and serenity. We times sweetness and purity <>f character right out of the midst of foul corruption, tfa of sormw ((inverted in: ity of holiness," the thorns which passion and wrong may have pre ! the brows of their victi rture them. I soming into crowns of roses for their immortal glory. And with these principles, which seem to be thus confirmed both in the a • history of the i and in individual experience, we may even venture to ascend to the larger and more metaphysical ] lem of the existence of evil in the plan of creation. When we contemplate the unive whole, through all the ages and epochs of its i vellous history, whether we view it as believers in the theory of its gradual evolution or of its creation special acts, what a scene do we behold! | everywhere into the web of existence are Wi inextricably the opposing elements of good and evil ! Not only in our human life, but in the great world-experience of which our human life is a ; the light and the shade are even-where commingled. Light and darkness, virtue and vice, beauty and ugli- ness, joy and pain, right and might, hope and fear, order and violence, love and hate, creation and car- nage, life and death, reason and passion, justice and wrong, spiritual aspiration and animal appetite, the OPTIMISM 20I attraction of a mental ideal and the clog and weight of physical circumstance, — thus everywhere are the world elements matched in fierce and persistent con- tention. Verily, from the very beginning of motion in the first plastic form that matter assumed in the primal origin of things to the latest struggle with calamity or temptation that may be going on this moment in any human breast, it is a "struggle for existence," — a struggle for existence under that law which recent science, with a narrower application, has styled "the survival of the fittest." What won- der if, in viewing this struggle, theologians have felt themselves obliged to conceive of an incarnate prin- ciple of evil in some Satanic personage, or that phi- losophers have affirmed that the world is ruled by fate rather than by providence ! But science itself, even in this very phrase, "sur- vival of the fittest," is beginning to show us the mistake of both theologian and philosopher. For what means this "survival of the fittest"? It means, finally, the survival of the worthiest. True, in the brute stxuggle tor life, the word "fittest" has no moral import. Yet, even among brutes, it is not by any means always the strongest or the largest or the fiercest that survive. Whole species of animals, huger and mightier than any now existing on the earth, have become extinct. Intelligence comes in to help win the battle. And, among mankind, sav- age races, persistent, strong, and fierce in adhering to their savage ways, have yielded to the higher intelligence and milder manners of civilized men. And the crudest individual passion or most degrad- 202 TWENTY-FH ■ . though it be the accumulat hereditary force of many generations of vicious inch,' succumbed again and again to pleading voice of conscience and the refining influ- ences of goodness. "Survr : fittest m then, in : , the survival of the best It me that, in this long struggle for existen • among con- tending I »f which the universe is the scene. the victory is finally on the side of the true, the good, the beautiful, [tn I finally the better of might, justice triumph-, over wrc truth dis urn QtO beauty, and goodness is crowned, while vice is enslaved It means, therefore, that the struggle is not merely a blind conflict of blind .Ut that in it is an aim ; that it is not simply a battle, but a steady drift toward a goal ; not a test only, but a march. And this aim. this con - upw ml tendency and drift, this advance through the conflict, this progress in the process, mint have been Involved in the very fir ance of force from which all things have come, or in the primal sub- stance which was the seed of the universe. In that first act of creation or first step in evolution, not only was motion, activity, life, involved, but in it was a power that determined the direction of the motion and the life. In other words, in that first organific impulse, the true and the right were weighted with a power (a power inherent in their very nature) suffi- cient to enable them to overcome all obstacles, and to survive all possible exigencies of the struggle. Evil may be the condition of development, the pain OPTIMISM 203 incident to growth and birth. But good is the sub- stance of the developing power itself. More than condition or incident, it is that which gives to the process impulse, direction, and goal. And what is this but to say that there is a Provi- dence in the affairs of the world and in the affairs of men ? Literally, a pro-videns — a foreseeing of, and a general aiming toward, an end. Not a Providence merely vouched for by questionable tradition or rest- ing on proof-texts that vanish before rational inquiry, but a Providence the existence of which is proved by the irrefragable testimony of science. Not the kind of Providence which is supposed to intervene in the affairs of life in special emergencies, and to come at every pleading desire that man may lift to the skies for personal relief from some pain or peril, but a Providence immovably established in the very order, law, and life of the universe itself ; a Provi- dence, through all the ages and epochs of the past as in the present, ever educing good out of ill, and in the human world doing this by the successful incarnation of its purpose in the hearts and wills of human beings; a Providence that this moment is soliciting every man and woman among us, through the knowledge that our minds may gather, through the pressure of conscience, and through all the gentle sentiments of human sympathy and helpful- ness, to become willing instruments for working out its beneficent intent. November 23, 1S73. XV. MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. "Am I my brother's keeper?" — Gkn. iv., 9. •• 1 In.- narrow-minded a-k, [s thU <mi<.- ol our tribe, or is he a ition, the world is but one family." — Ahi ikm Hindu. A i.i MINED author* saws that "Cain, the first murderer, was also the first civilizer." And it is most probably true, as he ind others maintain, that the traditional story of the contest between Cain and Abel, resulting in the slaughter of the latter, instead of being a narrative of a personal strife between two brothers, is a relic of a larger contest between two elans or classes of men, the shepherds and the husbandmen, — between a nomadic tribe, subsisting upon flocks and herds, and claiming an unlimited right of pasturage, and an agricultural tribe, who had begun to till the -round, and who claimed, as against the wandering herdsmen, the right of property in the soil they had taken to cultivate. Of these tribes, Abel is the representa- tive of the herdsmen, Cain of the planters ; and the conflict, which may have been long, bitter, and bloody, was really between primitive barbarism and the first impulse to civilization, since civilization *Dr. F. H. Hedge, in the Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition. MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 205 begins with acquiring a right of possession to the soil. And, in this conflict, civilization, or the class of agriculturists represented by Cain, was the con- queror; and yet not wholly so, since Cain, though victorious in battle and putting Abel to death, is represented also as being compelled to flee into other lands to pursue his calling : which, it is claimed, signifies that the husbandmen, though worsting the herdsmen in battle, yet continued to be harassed by them, and finally emigrated beyond their reach to a new country. This interpretation of the old tradition clearly turns the tables in favor of Cain. Though not necessarily absolving him from guilt, it represents him as standing for the interests of civilization and progress, and so far relieves him somewhat of the stigma of a mere criminal which the tradition has always fastened to his name. Vet Cain, though representing historically a- better cause than Abel, may nevertheless have been guilty of gross injustice and cruelty in maintaining his cause, just as to-day the white settlers on the Western frontier of out- country, though they are agents in promoting civil- ization and are pioneers of a higher mode of society and life than the Indian barbarism which they dis- place, are yet, in their encroachments on the nomadic Indian possessions and habits, guilty of the greatest wrongs and outrages, such as must forever disgrace the civilization which they represent. We may therefore easily enough accept the new rendering of this ancient story, with the new dignity it gives to the character of Cain, without doing away entirely 206 TWENTY-FIVE M.K.M with that feature of the story which is i ert dnly most minent in the Hebrew narrative, — tl Cain's guilt. If the story he a mythical re; tion of a primitive contest in tween the elem barbarism and civilization, it none the contains a strong protest from the dawning in ma!! ami bloodshed. If il us a relic of a ne irrepressible n two different systems of society in the } of human existence, it discloses also that the mora] t>> predominate in man, since, though Cain may i ■. for the better as well as str< i !! rew sympathy, nevertheless, went toward Abel, his victim, ami Cain, though the "first civilizer," \* is handed down to history, not for glory, hut as the first man whose hands were with his brother' We especially may find a double significance, a philosophical as well ls moral, in thai portion "[ this old legend which contains Cain's reply to Jehovah, who is re ted as looking tor Abel. Cain . as if in proti '. .anst the question, "Am I my brothei's keeper?" If we look for it, we may find for this reply, in the light of history, a certain phil- osophical justification. We may conceive it to be an utterance of that primitive tendency to individual development — to self-assertion and self-maintenance and the exercise of personal faculty and power — which marks the first stage in the development of a race, just as a corresponding assertion of personal independence and will marks the first stage in the MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 207 unfolding of human character in a child. The child's first instinct is to look out for self: to care for others comes later. So, doubtless, the primitive in- stinct of the race was to provide for self, — to follow individual desires and get individual power, — Abel for himself, Cain for himself, each striving to the best of his ability for what he individually represents. And, looking at the matter from this point of view, it may be said that the question put into the mouth of Cain signifies this primitive individualism, — this necessary selfism, which first sets society in motion. It was as if Cain had said : " I am the keeper of my own principle, not of Abel's. It is a struggle for existence between two fundamental principles of society ; between different and irreconcilable modes of living; between nomadic habits, on the one hand, and the desire of a fixed habitation and recog- nized rights of property in the soil, on the other; between barbarism and civilization. And the strug- gle must go on till one or the other principle con- quers. If Abel's principle conquers, well : it will bring its own consequences. If mine is victorious, better, and better fruits. But the two principles can- not exchange places nor help each other." We may conceive that the alleged answer of Cain in vindica- tion of himself had some such philosophical basis as this, when we consider the legend as traditionally embodying clashing tribal tendencies, and not a mere personal quarrel. But this is not its deepest nor truest significance. No philosophy at the time could reason away the moral consciousness of guilt which the answer vainly TV. . attempts to cover over and [*he ••■■ dicate that primitive man had all and was capable of acting up »n another social principle than self-interest That single word brother i the germ of a new principle. It points to relations between man and man. whit their kin- dred blood. It anion inter -, and aims. It is an ind< origin and forward t<> a common < ; < etual reminder of comm >m it, we may unfold all the varied links which bind hu- man bei r in the t. The impulse to individual activity for individual though a mighty agent in civilization, would by il alone never bring ch the very bond oi iety would be Win d. It is when individ- ual enterprise and welfare are turned to the common jh the recognition of mutual and i obligations between man and man, that S ns. The central signii • is reciprocity, n sympathy . each for all and all for each, — the individual development and achievement harmonizing ; with the general advancement, and not being separated from it. Humanity is so linked her that, if one member suffer, all mus with it, or, if one member rejoice, all must re with it. And this is the moral significance of this feature of the story of Cain which we are now consider- ing. It discloses the principle of brotherhood as the most indispensable element of human society. Cain's MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 209 philosophy was utterly helpless to drive away the remorse that fell upon his conscience because of the (-rime he had committed against his brother. All the time another voice within him was declaring: "I am my brother's keeper. We were sent into this world to live together, to work together. And my brother's blood cries against me from the ground till I make atonement for the wroi The legend :>uts the assertion of brotherhood first into the mouth of Jehovah, but the God that spoke was the lordly voice of conscience in Cain's own breast If this old story contains under a mythical dress an historical relic of some primitive contest between barbarism and civilization, it surely contains no less the relic of a moral contest between the principle of selfish aggrandizement and passion and the dawning sentiments of justice and fraternity. Its grand les- son is that the principle of fraternity is at the foun- dation of human society, and that any violation of this principle, any injustice and sin of man against his fellow-man, tends to the nization destruction of society. Other ancient records be- ! ill.- Hebrew bring us the same sentiment as that which I quoted from India as a joint text, and which reads as a response to Cai' ion. But this lesson, though set so many thousands :ars ago, th c world has been very slow to learn ; and it needs to be reiterated as emphatically to-day as when it was first discovered. Let me repeat it. Fraternity, brotherhood, mutual justice and helpful- ness between man and man, is the bond of society ; and any sin committed against this sentiment of 210 rnity is not merel) a wrong to some Individual, but tends at once to < The human race is joined r in a partner- ship from which there is no i mil all the m iciety are jointly and severally responsible its moral condition. Wickedness may run a good i farther back foi the will and sions <>f its individual doer, just will not stop with I Yet the responsibility somewhere upon individual human hearts and wills, though it may be divided among many, and is n<>t to be explain, d away by any philosophy that would shift the cause off from man to circumstarj to fate, or to God. We h and all, our 3 : upon our acts, our charai ters, our sentiments and purposes depends, not only om welfare, but the well-bi all with whom OUT lives anywhere come in c Others also whom we may never meet, and who are even vet unborn. The threads of our lives, what- ever their texture, be they coarse or fine, strong or weak, beautiful or Ugly, are taken up and woven into the character of the human race. Whatevei or purity, or moral firmness and fidelity we have, whatever good act we do or habit of heroic virtue we cultivate, it goes to enhance the Strength and virtue of the whole. Whatever moral defect we have, whatever corruption, whatever vice, whatever un- tamed passion, whatever secret or open sin, it goes to make society poor, weak, flimsy, and introduces into it elements of disruption and decay. Every MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 211 human being, therefore, is in some sense his brother's keeper. Upon the measure of integrity possessed by each person depend the average con- science and purity of the race. And, now, I want to make these propositions clear by a few illustrations. Consider, first, the moral bearing of the physical unity of the race. The phys- ical ties that bind mankind together are very subtile, aching, and powerful. We ran see them in their effects, though we may understand little of their method of operation. Very literally is it true, as the old Hebrew writer of Exodus said, that "the iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation." Into what wretched conditions of existent e vast numbers of human beings are born! What :red tem- peraments and passions, what disease and imbecility, what predispositions to vice and crime, are entailed in the blood ! We are so connected by the physical tie of birth that we must necessarily suiter for one another, and not only for one another's sullen but for one another's sins. And, in the operation of this law, the innocent necessarily suffer with the guilty. The innocent babe, in whose little life is wrapped so many motherly hopes and joys, and in whom the moral consciousness has not yet dawned, may be cut off by an untimely death, because, through the laws of hereditary descent, it may have in its veins some drop of tainted blood, the virus of which has been handed down from the vices of some ancestor we know not how remote. Or, if it live and grow up to manhood, there may be suffering 212 TWENTY-FIVE SI .KM from weakness and disease, struggle with fierce temptations, and lapses into evil ways, because physical and mental constitution inherited from the same vicious source. A man, apparently well born, having fine abilities and a worthy ambition, finds himself, perhaps, iii early manhood taken captive by the demon of intemperance, and all his fair pros] blighted for life, becau ither indulged overmuch his grovelling sensual app< for alcoholic stimulus. So, again, the saintliest woman that walks the earth, dispensing charity, virtue, and moral healing wherever she goes, may ,f dread! generated in some haunt of filth and crime, of which her pure nature hardly dreams the existence. And thus it is throughout the world. The human race is imperfect, tainted, earthy, given largely to animalism, has a good deal of bad blood in its veil. . misery, jical and moral infirmity, premature death, men- tal atrophy and inertia — all the elements that tend to the dissolution of society — inhere in this general imperfection. What a terrible social fact — and a terribly damning fact against Christian civilization — is that which a physician in New York has recently brought to light from certain criminal statistics of the State, — the tragic story of a pauper girl who. some six generations ago, having been left unpro- tected to the mercies of society, and falling a victim to man's lust, became the ancestress of two hundred criminals and as many more idiots, drunkards, lu- natics, and paupers ! Verily, the iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the children with retributive MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 213 usury; nor does it stop at "the third and fourth generation." And, looking at considerations bearing on practi- cal motives of conduct, what is there that should be more calculated to arouse conscience to a sense of the terrific evil of moral transgression, of its mean- ness as well as its wickedness, than the knowledge that, long after we have passed away from earth, our sins will live on in our posterity to corrupt the very fountains of life, and to spread devastation, death, and sorrow among the innocent ? What father is there who, if he could certainly know that his vice is to slay his own son, would not by every moral effort in his power stay the malignant force? Yet his vice is most certainly to descend in retribu- tive woe upon somebody's child as innocent as his. Some life is somewhere to suffer and have its days shortened for his guilt. For the vices which any man or woman may harbor, under however respect- able an exterior, there must be somewhere at some time wretchedness, lamentation, disease, and death perhaps before the normal time. For every viola- tion of the moral law there must be retribution, atonement, — not before it is committed (that were impossible), but afterwards. And, in this atoning retribution, the innocent necessarily suffer with the guilty; not by any arbitrary decree, but because, through the law of physical relationship, we are all of one race, of one blood, and are so closely and variously bound together that no man can either live or die to himself alone. Yet, over against this dark picture, we can place 214 a brighte y ' • iraulative by litary descent, just tive, as \ ice Man is not necessarily the not • rily in hope! idage to hereditary evil. Again and again, by sheer inward mora! power has that chain been broken, the man. • hound, has lemons, and tab >n of the domain of his own nature. Even i 1 in life pei • • y and - • a — ha\ e broken the sway of confirmed evil !' uj> again in the dignity of manly power. This moral lit ; it may I hut it is not inr sihle. And what may be done by the more hopeful irly training and education in overcom- ing evil tendem ies inherent in bad birth and sur- rd. Tl that are removinj bond children from the sti into good homes furnish the proof. The lav. " selection," of which we are hearing so much in the realm of nature, may assuredly be made avail for the benefit of mankind through human volition. Bad blood may be improved. The virus of phys and moral di lay eventually be neutralized by generations of virtuous living, and pass out of the human stock. This is not conjecture, but a si ment that rests on solid fa< ts. And in the teaching of >uch facts is man's hope, here his unfailing in- centive to effort. The law by which moral evil accumulates upon itself its own natural retribution by corrupting the race operates equally for the pres- ervation and growth of virtue : with this important MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 215 addendum, that we may believe the primal and eter- nal Power to be on the side of virtue. Let us consider again this law of mutual social responsibility in another aspect more exclusively moral,— the joint responsibility of the individual members of society for the general moral condition and the moral public opinion of the community. We cannot justly visit the whole condemnation of vice and crime upon those who are publicly repro- bated as vicious and criminal. The crime which breaks out upon the surface of society, in the low haunts of degradation and ignorance, is but the ex- ternal appearance of a moral disease which extends far back and into very different grades of society. The poison shows itself at those weak spots which are unprotected by knowledge or unguarded by a sense of social respectability, and where the very atmosphere is foul with contagious vice; but it be- gins, and continues to be \a\, from a very different source. It begins with vicious, ungoverned propen- sities, wherever found. It is nourished from homes and characters that are outwardly reputable. Ii you would read my meaning more clearly, look at that cancerous spot in modern society called "the social evil" See the women of the class on whom Jesus looked with tender compassion, but against whom Christian civilization has pronounced the awful anathema "abandoned"; and who are abandoned of all self-respect, of all true love, of all womanly grace and purity, and who are almost abandoned by society itself. But are they the sole sharers in this social guilt, — they, and the vile creatures, male or 2l6 TWENTY-FIVE SERW female, who help them to ply their Infamous calling ? < >r is it, think you, the class of men who are socially low, poor, and id that support this \ Alas, no! The accountability does not stop the it hardly, indeed, begins with either of these I • poor and degrade 1 have not the iry finan- cial means nor the arts of fascination that the vice requires. It is men who have money and can bestow gifts, men who have social position and who are out- wardly decorous and reputable, that furnish the i hief susten mce of this great evil ; and it is because SS of men, nun who help to make public opinion and may even be law-makers, arc sharers in visibility for the evil, that it is made SO difficult for the civil law to reach the evil. No: it is not the poor creatures whom societ) "abandoned" who are the chief sinners in this sin. The evil has no such simple solution as that. But all that class <■! men whose ungoverned passions create and sustain these abandoned creatures are responsible sharers in the crime; and they may be men whom society, the "best society," is receiving with confidence to its bosom, and who are prou ! of their "good standing " in circles of culture and refinement. Well ha been called "the social evil," though the name seems to have been chosen delicately to veil the vice ; for it is the evil which more than any other, perhaps, spreads its roots underneath, and overshad- ows with its baleful branches, all grades of social condition, and for which society itself is jointly re- sponsible. Not infrequently does it break out into woful domestic tragedy and bloodshed. But think MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 217 you that the wretched hands that may hold the mur- derous weapon are alone guilty ? Ah ! the blood cries out against other hands,— hands that may seem to be clean ; hands that yours may take in the confidence of business every day, or that, kid-gloved, may be welcomed to your parlors. It cries out against the loose public opinion which permits to men, without great loss of repute, a license of pas- sion for which it condemns woman to perpetual in- famy. But, however lax be the law of public opin- ion, by the stern, unerring laws of nature, society is held accountable for this evil, and upon society falls the awful retribution for the guilt. One sex cannot suffer without the other sex suffering with it. No part of society can be victimized without other parts feeling the outrage and paying the penalty for it. And society never writes the word "abandoned" against the character of even one woman, but that nature's laws, and the Almighty Power that executes its will through them, brand the same word, or a still worse moral curse, upon some man's guilty brow. This silent partnership in social responsibility may be illustrated again by considering the necessary conditions of any nation's progress. Look, for in- stance, at the history of our own country with refer- ence to the institution of slavery and the condition of the negro race. It was shown by experience to be absolutely impossible for the country to develop its fundamental ideas of republican liberty and equal justice even for the white race, so long as these prin- ciples were violated in respect to the negro. The evil reacted upon the slave-owners, and made them T\VENTY-FI\ ponsible despots instead of republican citii It made itself felt throughout the whole country, and was an incubus upon the success of the repub- lic tO just the extent that it was I repub- lican principles. Finally, the righteous retribul culminated in the war of the rebel there was no sal pe for the n I by granting to the negro the long-denied i i lib- . and making him a re< rtner in the Struggle and in the victory. The same chain that bound his limbs as a slave fa tened him as a mill- stone t<» the nation's neck ; and the nat ion was forced to break that chain, in order to ; I from mor- tal peril. So it lias been since the war, and so it must continue to be for yeai le: the prosperity, peai le country, are inextricably bound up with the W mdition. However much any persons may wish it were not so, and may be inclined to rue, it' not to curse, the day which brought the black man into the country, here 1 four or five millions ■ . making ail element that will not permit itself to be forgotten nor overlooked among the forces that are shaping the natii tiny. In a hundred ways is the nation constantly warned that it cannot evade the responsibility of being the keeper of the black man's rights. His destiny is the country's destiny. Leave such a mass of population with only partial civil rights, unedu- cated, degraded, under the ban of social prejudice, with the ballot it may be, but with no knowli how to use it, and the nation is maimed, burdened, and hindered in its progress to just the extent of MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 2IO, their degradation. Nor is the evil confined to the South, but must be felt to some extent in every part of the body politic. The nation cannot go on, and leave any part of its citizenship behind. It will be held back to just the extent that it leaves any class with rights denied, with wrongs unatoned. It will be free for progress just in proportion as it guaran- tees justice, education, and a fair opportunity to all. The prosperity of the nation is the prosperity of its members. Any of the old countries of Europe might furnish us the same example. Look at England. When we consider only her aristocratic and educated classes, of what prosperity and social progress does she not seem capable ? All the resources of wealth, of culture, of science, of ancient national inheritance and noble blood, are in her hands to wield for social achieve- ment and advance. But, clinging to her skirts and fastened by tics that cannot be severed, are millions of poverty-stricken laborers, an ignorant mass of degradation, pauperism, intemperance, animalism ; and England, with all her riches, culture, and s< refinement, finds herself confronting social problems the very presentation of which seems to threaten the stability of her social order and upon the suc- cessful solution of which the perpetuity of her insti- tutions depends. It is clear that the nation has reached that point where it is decreed by the laws of social destiny that the aristocratic and educated class can advance no farther by itself, but can only progress by lifting up and carrying forward the mass of the people. All classes, however separated by 220 . i RMONS artificial lines of distinction, arc in reality welded together and to a common fate. The present angry conflict between capital and labor presents another illustration, which I cannot, however, unfold at this time. Suffice it to say that there can be no solution of this problem except by a just practical recognition on both sides of thi of mutual responsibility in industrial enterprise. And so it is throughout mankind. Across all lines of class separation — the lines that may be drawn by wealth, by culture, by occupation, by fam- ily pedigree and social rank, and even by vice ami crime — stretch living links of natural kinship and those deeper laws of social organization which hold firmly all classes together, and bind them to one ultimate destiny. By these strong though unseen ties, the solidarity of the race is established, and every man is made to some extent the keeper of every other man's happiness and virtue. Does it seem to inveigh Lgainst the goodness of providential law that there should be this general sharing of responsibility, and that ignorance, vice, and indolence should thus come as a burden upon the good, enlightened, and industrious, hindering their progress, and that the retribution of suffering for moral transgression should fall upon the inno- cent as well as the guilty ? Rather, let me say, as the concluding point of the theme, this method dis- closes the very pathway through which the great providential purpose works to benefit mankind. By this law of mutual responsibility or of a common imputation of many of the consequences of wrong- MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 221 doing to innocent and guilty alike,— this law by which all classes of society are so affiliated together that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself, — it is ordained and guaranteed that all parts of the human race shall hold together and advance to- gether in the path of amelioration and progress; that no portion, however favored, shall get so far ahead as to be incapable of leading the rest; and that no portion, however degraded and criminal, shall be left so far behind as to be incapable of being led. Hereby, the light, knowledge, virtue, science, culture, refinement, power, achieved by the best portions of the race, are put under tribute to the advantage of the poorest and lowest. Nature's laws are set solidly against monopolies. Even the seem- ingly harsh laws of contagion and disease, implicat- ing whole communities in torture and sorrow for one man's ignorance or vice, are ministers, stern but merciful, to awaken among those who have the knowledge and the power an active interest that shall set itself to the task of eradicating the error and the vice whence such miseries spring. Thus, it is irrevocably decreed by the very laws and forces of the social organism that the highest portions o\ the race shall raise up the lowest, the most advanced draw after them the weak and ignorant, and none be left hopelessly and helplessly in the rear to perish of their own imbecility. However high any may lift their heads into the light of mental and moral power and into the clear atmosphere of self-control, their feet are planted still on the old common earth whence the race has sprung, and where many indi- 222 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS vidua! souls and tribes are still grovelling in the degradation of ignorance and animal passion ; and from all around sordid hands, which cannot be turned aside, are stretched up, clutching for support and help. "Give us," they pray, "in our darkc of your light, in our despair of your hope, in our helplessness of your strong leadership. Hold us by the hand, that we sink not, but be lifted up with you." And the Divine Providence of nature, through these organic ties of the social bond, has decreed that those outstretched hands shall be held. And, if the hindrance and pain that thus cnsu> I the faithful seem hard, this fact is only the necessary reverse of the larger and brighter fact that the true and the strong are to give of their strength to the weak, and lead them along to the final blessing of all. Once, on a Western railroad, I saw a rapid passenger train, to which, for some temporary cause, a mixed train of emigrant and freight cars had been attached. There, in the advance, were the elegant palace cars, with their refined and comfortable com- pany of wealthy travellers ; then came a car or two of more ordinary pattern for the less luxuriously in- clined ; and then the miserable emigrant cars, with their freight of lowliness, poverty, and not a little squalor ; while a number of dingy coal-cars brought up the rear. Yet all were running together on the same track, drawn by the same powerful engine, bound for the same goal. So it is with mankind in the great world-journey that we are making. All classes, grades, and conditions of society are fas- tened together in one train, only with this differ- MUTUAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY 223 ence : that the coupling here is no accidental and transient circumstance, but is so insured in the very nature of the eternal laws that no part of the mixed train of humanity can ever be dissevered and left be- hind. And, if any of these life-travellers, complain- ing of the delays and accidents of the journey, shall presume to ask: "Why should my course be hin- dered and disturbed ? Am I my brother's keeper ? " the reply comes back from the providential purpose inherent in the eternal order of things, "Yes, O man, whosoever thou art, thou art thy brother's keeper; and wheresoever on this earth thou stand- est, and however proudly thou standest in thy power or in thy knowledge or in thy virtue, unless thou acknowledgest that primal obligation, the voice of thy brother's blood crieth against thee from the ground." May 3, 1874. XVI. HEART IN NATURE. " I look for the new Teacher, that shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul, shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Dutv, thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy." — K. W. I. mi RSON. A Chinese priest of philosophical temperament, who lived in the sixteenth centurv, in discussing the old and ever new problem of the creation of the world, represented the beginning of things as a crude, chaotic mass of nebulous matter, which, through a principle of self-generation, gradually ex- panded into the countless beautiful varieties of nature and into an infinite system of worlds ; but all these forms of nature and this whole infinite series of worlds he described as being included within one universally diffused and all-pervading, ethereal essence which he said was hard to name, but which might best be called "Heart." This man was a believer in the Buddhist religion ; a religion which, more than any other perhaps, has perceived and emphasized the evils of human exist- ence, and which has been characterized by some theological critics — critics, however, who have little appreciated the depth of its thought or the prac- tical benignity of its mission — as the organization HEART IN NATURE 225 of human despair. And yet this man, confronting this traditional picture of the lot of mankind which was the common property of his religious faith, and confronting the actual miseries of the men and women in the populous communities around him, could not complete his conception of the creative and sustaining forces of the universe without adding something which he could express only by using a word that covers the tenderest facts and relations of human life. Face to face with the whole vast cata- logue of human woes, face to face with his beliefs as to the necessary and inherent evil attending all finite existence, he yet could say that the universe had a heart, and that this quality of heart was the subtile essence or spirit of the whole, embracing, sur- rounding, intimately pervading all the parts. This attitude of the Chinese philosopher is not exceptional. It represents the Common attitude of humanity in the presence of humanity's ills ; and it is for this reason that I bring it here to indicate the subject of my discourse this morning, — Heart in Nature. Has the universe in the midst of its laws and forces any heart ? This is a question which many individual minds are asking of themselves openly or silently to-day. It is a question which humanity has hitherto answered in the affirmative. Whatever speculative theologians may have said, whatever doubts may have been raised by philos- ophy or by science, and however sceptical individual observers may have grown as they have watched the stern and often afflicting processes of nature, humanity as a whole, and through all the varying i \\ 1.NTV1 III lis of its history, has said confidently and said emphatically: "The universe has a heart Some- where within it, in spite of all existing evils and woes, are the elements of tenderness, of compassion, ii 1 1 will, of love." And I know of no more pathetic picture in human history than the persistency with which this belief in the good intentions of the universe has asserted itsell" against all the pri LCtS "l" evil to which man has been subject. See by what ills human beings have been buffeted ! They have Ik en assailed by floods, by storms, by pestilence, by famine, by earthquake, by destructive insects and venomous ts, by every type of disease, by every form and hue of suffering. They have been assailed in respect to their possessions, their lives, their affec- tions, their dearest hopes and endeavors. They have won their achievements by a dire struggle against conflicting and opposing forces : nay, only by constant and bitter struggle have they main- tained existence itself. They seem, indeed, to have been brought into existence just to contend for life and its possessions amid the rough and clashing forces of nature, which travel on their ways irre- spective of human desires, and deaf and pitiless to human entreaties. For more than half of mankind, the struggle is terminated by death before even the period of manhood is reached ; and over life at every age death ever hovers threatening, sparing no house- hold, no heart. Yet surrounded by this host of nat- ural and inevitable evils, and amid numerous others of personal wrong and wretchedness, arising from HEART IX NATURE 227 man's weakness or inability to cope successfully with the conditions of his existence, human nature has persisted in believing that all these ills are encompassed, penetrated, and overruled by elements of sympathy and goodness. Though again and again hope and desire may be disappointed, and again and again the cry for mercy find no answer, and though the inquiry that searches in the dark for the clew to the beneficent purpose continues to be baffled, yet the persistent faith remains that some- where that purpose clearly runs, to bring in some way fruition to all good hopes and desires. Even when man's heart has been wounded, he has pressed the gaping wound against the force that has aimed the blow, in mute appeals for sympathy, and has continued to comfort himself with the belief that behind the hand that struck was a heart that felt. My own wounded heart, he says, bleeding and suf- fering, bears witness to Heart within the universe. Examples of the persistency of this belief in the goodness of the universe press upon us from all sides. The Hebrews, in their captivity in Babylon, suffering persecution, and almost despairing of res- toration to their country and to the ancient purity of their faith, could yet sing of the "loving-kindness" and the "tender mercies" of Jehovah. Year after year was their hope deferred, until their heart was made sick. Their God did not lead them out of their bondage, and yet they steadfastly believed that he would ; and no postponement of the grand event could shake their confidence in his promise. The early Christians were in poverty and distress. They 228 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS were despised and maltreated, and could reckon little success for their cause ; yet they talked of the near coming of the kingdom of heaven, and called God their father. Their kingdom of heaven did not come; no God, the Father, descended to dwell among them on a renovated earth ; no Christ reappeared in the clouds to bring them deliverance. Yet they continued to believe and to hope. The beliefs and hopes changed their forms to suit successive dis- appointments, but the substance of them remained. If the good was not to be found here and now, it was to be found in heaven and hereafter. The hope of it was good against all failures as to time and place. The Asiatic Buddhists regarded life in all finite forms as necessarily evil ; yet never was there a more vigorous or more humane faith in the exist- ence of an ultimate good to be attained by human endeavor than these same Buddhists possessed. Over against the fact of finite ill, they placed the fact of infinite felicity, when the finite and the Infinite should become reconciled and be at peace. Epicte- t U s — and he may be taken as a type of the Greek and Roman moralists — had suffered slavery, was infirm and poor, knew little of life's outward joys, and possessed few of what are ordinarily called the bounties and blessings of heaven. Yet could he say to his God: "Whatever post or rank Thou shalt assign me, I will die a thousand times rather than desert it. ... If Thou shalt send me where I cannot live conformably to nature, I will not depart unbidden, but upon a recall, as it were sounded by Thee. Even then, I do not desert Thee. . . . Though HEART IN NATURE 229 Zeus set me before mankind poor, powerless, sick ; banish me, lead me to prison, — shall I think that he hates me? Heaven forbid! . . . Nor that he neglects me, for he neglects not one of the smallest things ; but to exercise me and to make use of me as a witness to others." Was there ever a finer ideal interpretation of evil facts ? Our old German ances- tors believed in a perpetual conflict between good and evil powers, not only on this earth, but extend- ing throughout the universe and beyond the veil of death ; yet their hearts cherished the vision of the final victory of good over evil, and of a new earth that should be the fair abode of virtue and peace. The Persians and other nations who have believed in a dualistic division of the powers of the universe into divine and satanic have clung to the same hope in the ultimate supremacy of the principle of good- ness. Even the Christian sects that have believed in the eternal perdition of the incorrigibly wicked have never put Satan on the supreme throne of the universe, and have deftly explained their dogma of eternal perdition as a manifestation, not of the wrath, not of the vengeance, but of the exceeding righteousness of God. None more than they, even with that dreadful belief in a bottomless pit of tor- ments opening at their feet, have been wont to praise the mercy of the Almighty. And, however shocking this belief might be to our sense of justice, there was, on another side, something sublime in it, when it rose to the height of a willingness to be forever damned so only God's ineffable justice and glory could be maintained. Here was the spirit of 23O TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS old Epictetus again : " I will never forsake Thee, never cease to believe in Thee and in Thy goodness, even though Thou sendest me far from Thee into exile and suffering." "Though Thou slay me, yet will I trust Thee." People who are even far lower in the scale of civili- zation than any I have thus far named, people barbar- ous and degraded and idolatrous, people that seem almost helpless amid the forces of nature and are on the plane of fetichism in religion, — even such peo- ple, however crushed they may seem under nature's inexorable sway and play of forces, yet manifest a faith that, against all appearances, there is a power in nature that is protective and benign. They be- lieve it is there, if they can only reach it ! And so by supplications, sacrifices, and gifts they hope to coax it out into light and activity, — turning to it after every disappointment and after every new blow from nature's malignant powers, with a faith that is doomed again probably to disappointment, and yet is so pathetically superior to all surface-evidence, to the facts of experience even, that it looks right away from these, though pressing so close upon it, and reaches out wistfully and still believingly for that which is "the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." Thus, everywhere and in all conditions has man asserted his belief in the essential goodness of the universe. He has kissed the rods that have scourged him, in faith that they would blossom into blessings. He has met every kind of misfortune ; and yet he has believed that the ruling powers meant to be kind, HEART IN NATURE 23 1 and would bring him good fortune at last. He has prayed for help in life's emergencies ; and, though the help he asked for has not been given, he never- theless continues to pray, and to believe that the help would be sent, if it were best that it should be. He has put up his appeal for mercy ; and, though the mercy has been delayed or has not come at all, he affirms his trust in it still, generously believing that it has been withheld for good reason. He has seen communities swept away by flood or earthquake or pestilence, and devout people, in all the agony of despair, on bended knees, beseeching heaven that the peril might be averted. The peril was not averted, the suffering and the destruction came ; and yet the afflicted and desolated survivors have not ceased to believe in the over-governing Goodness, — not ceased to believe in its pity or its power, nor to put up their prayers for its aid. He has seen the great fact of death, present everywhere on earth, among all nations, through all ages, from the begin- ning of human existence, mingling its shadows with the fact of life, breaking up at some time every home, desolating at some time every heart. He has seen human beings shrink and crouch before the coming terror with eager supplications that it be stayed. But it cannot be stayed. It is part of the universe of things, part of the drama of existence. But do they, therefore, say the universe has no pity, no heart ? Rather does this fact of death seem to have touched springs of tenderness as no other fact in human experience has done. It has drawn people together in common sympathy, and driven man to 232 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS rely on an infinite Love that shall flow into every vacancy where the fair form of a human love has been removed. Whence, then, this apparent solecism in human experience? — these hard facts of ill and the unan- swered desires and prayers that go with them ? these hard facts of calamity, of struggle, of suffering, frus- trating the highest aims and wishes of human hearts, while human hearts, through all, cling with unfalter- ing faith to a Power in the universe greater than our hearts, and still believed to be inspired with tender- ness and compassion ? The solution of this problem that depends upon the recognition of a miraculous revelation of Divine Goodness, overbalancing all possible forms of evil, I leave aside. The religious faith that rests on miracle has little standing-room in modern days. The miracle presents to the inquirer a greater obsta- cle than the faith itself. Nor shall we find the solu- tion completely in outward, material nature, — at least not in outward nature considered by itself. The old arguments of natural theology to prove the benevolence of the creating Deity from the objects and operations of nature have very much less force than they once had. Modern science allows little to the argument from design. The great phrase of modern science to express the history of nature is "struggle for existence, with survival of the fittest" ; and, to fit this formula, the argument from design must be stated entirely anew. The "design" is now seen to be general, not specific, — a broad, gen- eral drift and purpose, inclusive of broad and general HEART IN NATURE 233 results, and not the personal adaptation of force for the working out of this or that special end. And against nature, on any hypothesis, it is not difficult to marshal the facts in the light of modern science, so that they shall seem anything but evidence of benevolence. John Stuart Mill in his essays on Religion, posthumously published, brings against nature a most formidable indictment. He says : " Next to the greatness of these cosmic forces, the quality which most forcibly strikes every one who does not avert his eyes from it is their perfect and absolute recklessness. They go straight to their end, without regarding what or whom they crush on the road. ... In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for* doing to one another are nature's performances every day. Killing, the most criminal act recognized by human laws, nature does once to every being that lives ; and, in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow- creatures. . . . Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has a hundred of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domi- tian never surpassed. . . . She mows down those on whose existence hangs the well-being of a whole people, perhaps the prospects of the human race for 234 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS generations to come, with as little compunction as those whose death is a relief to themselves or a blessing to others. ... A single hurricane destroys the hopes of a season ; a flight of locusts or an in- undation desolates a district ; a trifling chemical change in an edible root starves a million of people. The waves of the sea, like banditti, seize and appro- priate the wealth of the rich and the little all of the poor, with the same accompaniments of stripping, wounding, and killing as their human antitypes. Everything, in short, which the worst men commit either against life or property is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents." We hold our breath at this bold and eloquent indictment, while we ask, Where is the Heart in such facts ? And the worst of it is, all of the alleged facts, taken by themselves, we must admit to be true. But this is literally and exactly the worst of it : that the facts, taken by themselves, are true. But this is worse than the case of actual nature ; for there such facts do not stand by them- selves, but are everywhere mingled with facts brighter and better. Such marshalling of the evil facts of nature may be legitimate in argument against the old school of theologians, who culled the good facts to prove benevolent design ; but it gives no truer picture of nature than did the more amiable theologians. The scientific truth lies some- where between the two. Nature does not show herself all heart, but she shows at least the germs of heart. We find in her no complete system of benevolence, and benevolence only ; but we find her HEART IN NATURE 235 forces moving toward benevolence, and benevolence all along mingling in their operations. Nature man- ifests, besides Mr. Mill's dark list of evil facts, facts of felicity, of delight, of satisfaction, of sunshine, growth, and blossoming, facts of successful fruition, of harmony, beauty, and gladness. And wherever exist gladness, beauty, harmony, healthful growth, successful achievement, and happiness, there must exist in the heart of them some elements of goodness. Moreover, the history of nature, traced in the grad- ually unfolding activity of the vast cosmic forces which seem so reckless and which are so inexorable to human entreaty, presents proofs that, amid all conflicts, struggles, and retrograding periods, there is a steady tendency and aim toward good ; and whence this tendency and aim but froVn the fact that the element of heart, or of goodness as well as intelligence, is inherently mixed in the very sub- stance and essence of things from the beginning? But, more than this, nature — outward, material nature — does not show. Whence, then, we have to ask again, does man get his faith, not merely in an element of heart min- gling its threads with the dark facts of human woe, but in a whole heart, all-comprehending and all- pervading, — in a goodness stronger than all the powers of evil, shining above all shadows, and infus- ing into all forms of decay, destruction, and death the mightier forces of life ? Whence does man get this faith in universal heart but from his own heart, from the human heart? The testimony from nature must be supplemented 236 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS with the testimony from man, when we ask the question, What does the universe teach ? Outward, material nature is only a part, and not the highest part, of universal nature. In a large sense and in a strictly scientific sense, nature includes man. The cosmic forces have evolved him no less than the earth upon which he dwells and the plants and ani- mals that help to sustain his existence. He is the culmination and crown of nature. Nature's tenden- cies and aims complete themselves in him. Her meanings in him stand revealed. By his own heart, man discovers that nature has a heart, — a heart that must be at least as large as his own, as large as the heart of all humanity, — nay, as large as the heart of all possible finite races of beings in all worlds. There can be nothing in the parts which is not in the whole, nothing in the heart of man which is not in the heart of Universal Nature. And so, when man reckons up the affections, the sympathies, the pities, the tendernesses, the charities, the loves, the philanthropies, all the emotions which make up that moral organ and function of his being which is called the Heart, he justly credits them all to the aim of Universal Nature. Because he finds them in himself, he knows that they must have been in the womb of nature before him, and must belong to that power which is the living essence and soul of nature, in-soul and over-soul of the world, — which escapes all analy- sis, all search, hovers always just beyond our finding out, but which we know must carry in itself the promise and potentiality of all that is. In fine, on the principle that whatever is in the HEART IN NATURE 237 effect must be potentially in the cause, that what- ever is in the stream must be somewhere in the fountains and sources whence the stream has come, it is by looking into his own heart that man attains and maintains his faith that there is heart among the forces, powers, and movements of Universal Nature. If there is heart here, there must be heart out there, and everywhere where life is. The col- ored sibyl, Sojourner Truth, put the whole logic of this thought into her simple, quaint prayer as she escaped from bondage : " O God, help me ! If I were you, I would help any one in distress." Man finds tenderness within. So he says and believes it must also be without, in the life of the universe. Has he compassion for weakness, sympathies for distresses and sorrows, pity for human frailties and sins ? Then he knows there must be founts of pity, sympathy, compassion, in that life-power, whence stream these qualities of mercy into and through his nature. Has he the spirit 'of helpfulness, generosity, charity, toward misfortune ? Then, by that token, he knows there must be a helpful activity in nature, which is working for his welfare and that of all man- kind. Does he find human sympathy, when it is at its best, patient, unwearying, inexhaustible, going out on errands of healing to all places of need, and going at the cost of self-denial and self-renunciation, that it may carry, if possible, redemption and com- fort ? Then, behold, he says, a higher than mere human love that is pouring itself through these channels of philanthropy. Does he know something of the watchful love of human fatherhood and moth- -j< TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS erhood ? Whence comes it, he says, but from the fact that there are fatherly and motherly attributes in the essence of infinite Life ? It is clear, then, why the Hebrews in their cap- tivity, why the early Christians in their distresses, why the Buddhists in their keen sense of the evils of existence, why our Teutonic forefathers in their beliefs in a deathly struggle between good and evil powers, why Epictetus and the Stoics in their face- to-face conflict with life's ills, why barbarian tribes, even when seemingly crushed as helpless victims under the reckless blows of nature's forces, why people everywhere and in all times, under the bur- den of the manifold ills that flesh is heir to, have yet looked up out of the ills, out of their distresses, and from beneath the weight of their burdens, and have caught glimpses, or freer vision, of a Power able and willing to protect and to save from them all, and have sung in faith of his loving-kindness and tender mercies, and have clung to him in trust, even when scourgings came instead of the hoped-for bounties, and have believed, in spite of all, in a coming felicity, virtue, and peace. The faith, the vision, the trust, the song, have come from the Divine Heart within their human hearts. And man's own effort to cherish the vision, and his faith and joy in following it, help to make the vision real. By faithful adherence to the unseen ideal, man gradually translates it into visible and tangible certainty. By his intelligence, he catches the clew to nature's intention, and by his skill can mitigate and even prevent many of the dire results HEART IN NATURE 239 of her blind activity. Man lends to nature eyes that she may see her goal, and in his thought and heart her own ideal aim is completed and fulfilled. " Life loveth life and good : then trust What most the spirit would, it must ; Deep wishes, in the heart that be, Are blossoms of Necessity. " A thread of Law runs through thy prayer, Stronger than iron cables are; And Love and Longing toward her goal Are pilots sweet to guide the Soul." November 28, 1875. XVII. WAITING FOR ONE'S SELF. is a long time that I have been wait:: So saip a Persian poet of the tenth century, and the sentence comes down to us freighted with the pathos of human disappointments and human ho Like all true poets, the writer spoke not so much for his own personal feeii for a sentiment common to human souls. Or, speaking for himself, spoke also for thousands of other souls, ol own and every time, and indicated an experi. which has lost none of the keenness of e by the lapse of the centuries since he wrote. His words do not fail to touch responsive chords of mutual understanding as they greet our ears to-day. Some of us, doubtless, will find a deeper meaning in them than others do ; but to no one of us can they be, I think, without significance. They will recall to us, from our own experience or observation, pict- ures of successive disappointments and failures, of a good aimed at just lost, of procrastinating pur- poses, of self-reproaches and self-dissatisfaction verg- ing toward despair, and yet companion pictures, also, of a patient and persistent self-confidence, hope, and courage, a pathetic trust still in often WAITING FOR ONE'S SELF 24I broken resolutions and defeated purposes, which are ever returning to the field of defeat, and are finally more than a match for all failures and despair. An anecdote is told of General Grant at the important battle of Pittsburg Landing, to this effect. The first day was very disastrous to the national army. General (then Colonel) McPherson, Grant's chief of staff, had been reporting all day one calamity aftet another ; and at the close of the day, in summing up the condition of things to the commanding general, — how our troops had been driven back several miles from the positions occupied in the morning, and our lines were everywhere broken and in confu- sion, and two-thirds of our artillery and great num- bers of our infantry had been captured, ancj our dead and wounded were left on the field in the hands of the enemy, — McPherson could not conceal his impa- tience at his chief's undisturbed serenity, expecting some orders for saving the rest of the army by a prudent retreat ; and, as he turned away from the unbroken silence, he threw back the excited question, " And what do you propose to do about it, sir ? " " I propose to re-form my lines, and attack the enemy at daybreak ; and will he not be astonished to find us doing it?" was General Grant's answer. And that night the lines were re-formed. At daybreak, the attack was made ; and the enemy was astonished. Our troops went forward to triumph, and not only regained all that had been lost the previous day, but won one of the most important victories of the war. There are many experiences in our human lives of which this anecdote may serve as a rough illus- 242 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS tration, — experiences of waiting through long sea- sons of discouraging disappointment, failure, and loss, until, by some happy combination of personal power and circumstances, the higher self is evol and takes the leadership, and the long-desired and long-sought-for object is gained. We often have to wait a very long time for ourselves ; but, if we patiently wait and faithfully wait, and keep our trust and hope in the coming and do well our own part toward the coming, the trusted self will surely come at last. The poet's doctrine, we may observe at first, points to an encumbered and divided self, — to a self that is compelled to wait and to a self that is waited for; to a self, therefore, that can be hindered, be- wildered, burdened, fettered, drawn away from its true aim, drawn down from the higher light that reveals its possible pathway, and to a self that is able to surmount all obstacles, thread successfully bewildering thickets, cast off burdens or grow the stronger and more erect for bearing them, break confining fetters, conquer all temptations, and in time reach the height of personal attainment the shining glory of which, however far off and long waited for, no cloud of discouragement has ever I dense enough wholly to hide. We may say, indeed, it is one self, but with two dominant impulses or at- tractions, — a higher and a lower, an upward and a downward, a spiritual and a carnal, a mental and a material ; one self, but two centres of variant forces acting upon it and determining its orbit. Yet it is significant that, though man, so long as he WAITING FOR ONE S SELF 243 has had a history, seems to have been cognizant of this duality of tendency in his own nature, he has yet been nearly unanimous in calling that part of his nature which is responsive to the higher attraction — that part of his nature which subordinates mate- rial appetite and passion to a mental aim and law — his real and true self. The other part, — the seat of temptation, hindrance, and failure, the source of scores of besetting sins that becloud his vision and drag back with such fatal energy upon his steps, — though he has been miserably conscious of its suprem- acy in his actual experience, he has yet, in char- acterizing his own nature, proudly put under his feet, and said, "Not this which holds me down to earth, but that toward which I lift my eyes, is my real self." It is there, in the best conception, of self of which any individual man is capable, and not in the poorest and lowest, that he places his goal. There is his aim, his standard, the enthronement of the law he owns as binding upon his conduct, the hope of what he means to be, — and there he confidently waits his own coming ; waits, though the iron of some bitter present experience may be pressing into his soul ; waits, perhaps, through years of weariness and hope deferred, through many wanderings in by- paths of illusions, through many stumblings and fallings and blinding storms, yet waits still in faith- ful expectancy. And this is essentially the same doctrine that the Apostle Paul teaches in those strong and memorable passages where he depicts the inner conflict between the two forces, — the force of good and the force of 244 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS evil. Though he finds "the evil" always "present with him," so that even "the good that he would, he does not, but the evil that he would not, that he does," yet he takes the high ground that this evil bias and impulse make no part of his true self. <l I delight," he says, "in the law of God after the inward man ; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my mem- bers. ... So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." And hence the great apostle, though the conflict was by no means over, though many harassed years were still before him, though disappointments and obstacles were still to be met and conquered, yet seemed not to count nor to see any of these things, but to look right through and beyond them to the time when he could cry, " I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness." And this Paul, singing this song of triumph at the goal reached, was the real Paul. He felt all the possibilities of achievement alive and throbbing in his being while yet he was toiling on the way. And so the song kept singing itself by anticipation in his heart, when he was down in the valleys, and under the clouds, and within prison walls. At the end of the long, devious, burdensome way, the battles over between the two laws, — the law of his mind and the law of the flesh, — he sees himself waiting for himself in triumph, here a struggling soldier on the field, there a conqueror crowned. WAITING FOR ONE'S SELF 245 The same kind of experience manifests itself in various ways in the manifold phases of human life. All faithful toilers for truth know what it is to wait long for the realization of their highest thought. Truth does not flash upon the world full mid-day at once ; but it comes by slow gradation of light, build- ing itself up ray by ray, like the glory of a sun- rise upon the gradually displaced darkness. How long the great discoverers and inventors, the great scholars, poets, artists, have had to wait and toil, and toil and wait again at their tasks, before they have been able to reap the fruit of their toil ! At first there comes to them a little gleam of light, — an idea, a thought, a kind of vision of some truth, — which at first may be very slight, and yet, impinges upon the mind with an intensity that so startles and holds attention that it will not move from its lodge- ment in the brain. By its very insistence, it creates belief in its genuineness, — as if it must needs be that what so urgently claims the recognition of an observing mind should be a part of the actual forces and relations that make the universe what it is. Thus, such an idea, thought, or vision of a truth becomes a part of the mental life of the person to whom it has come, — something to be cherished, culti- vated, followed. It becomes grafted upon the nature like a new self, and yet may be only a natural un- folding of the old self ; and, if it be large and grand enough, it will draw all the faculties and gifts of its possessor to its service, and shape for him a career and make a destiny. Yet there is hardly one who leaps to that destiny at a bound, or travels to the 24^ TWENTY-] [VE SERMONS goal of a career without severe toil and many dis pointments on the way. Even if truth has flashed upon some minds in an instant, it may have required long and arduous effort to find an adequate expres- sion for revealing it clearly to the world. Kepler seized in a sudden flash of thought the law of the planetary orbits, but had to wait years before he could work out a mathematical demonstration of it. The example of the men who make the great dis- coveries in the sciences and arts furnishes many moral and religious lessons. If we seek illustra- tions of enthusiasm, faith, persistency, patient labor, disinterested love of truth, heroic conquest of obstacles, splendid constancy to an ideal, we cannot find better specimens than are presented in this class of men. Here, we find many of the men who are the most trusting and patient waiters for self; men who believe so thoroughly in a thought that has come to them or a beneficent fact they have discovered, and in their power ultimately to make such thought or fact popularly accepted, that no difficulties can daunt them nor ridicule discoui nor opposition terrify. They may have to wait long, but they wait in faith that their claim shall yet be vindicated. When Columbus found America, he found the self he had long waited for at the same time. Bernard Palissy gave his whole life for six- teen years to the discovery of the decorative enam- elling that made his name illustrious. In spite of cost, hardship, repeated failure, scoffing from unbe- lievers, he toiled on. He reduced himself and family to poverty, came almost to the last crust of WAITING FOR ONE'S SELF 247 bread, and finally had to tear up the floor of his cottage to get fuel for his all-devouring furnace. But this last desperate step of sacrifice was the one that brought him to his expected discovery and to his long waiting self. So every ardent toiler for truth, believing in the reality of the truth sought as thoroughly as he believes in his own existence, comes so to identify truth with his own existence that, when he cries with Archimedes, " I have found it ! I have found it ! " he might also cry, " I have found myself." For the same thing may be said, substantially, of those whose interests and labors are directed more particularly to other spheres of truth, — philosophi- cal, aesthetic, moral, and religious. Imm^nucl Kant was nearly sixty years old before he wrote the famous book, the Critique of Pure Reason, which gave such a powerful stimulus to thought and made a new era in the world of philosophy. For eleven years he was writing and rewriting that work, hardly knowing during the earlier part of the time where he was coming out or at what he was aiming, but pressed by a dissatisfaction with all existing philosophical systems and feeling within him a power to clear a way through their labyrinth of errors, if he could only succeed in faithfully unfold- ing and following that clew of thought which had vaguely but deeply impressed itself upon his con- sciousness as holding the mystery. And so through all these years he studied and worked at this thought, wrote and rewrote it, went round and through it and into all its consequences, and thus TWENTY-FH felt his way slowly and patiently along, but < more confidently and dearly, until I w Philos- ophy stood in his mind and before the world in all its logical completeness, symmetry, ami strength. Nor, previous to this time, had he shown marked metaphysical ability, but only, as it v. the germ, struggling to unfold into the light but never quite succeeding, of metaphysical aspiration. He had tried theology, preaching, the physical QCes, mathematics, lecture 1 in his university anthropology, the theoi natural i oivsical geography, and various other themes, show- the versatility of his mind and the bre his knowledge, and i in preaching, where he failed, meeting with a reasonable and constantly ring success; yet. in all this work and through all these which was his deepest thoi and yearning was not Iced hardly touched, and he did not show himself for the gi man lie was. He had not yet found his real self. For that supreme hour he waited — waited at h work and small pay, never going in all his 1 than forty miles away from his native town — for nearly sixty years ; waited till the yearning within him grew into a passion, and the passion cleared the way for thought, and the thought clothed itself in masterly forms of logic and went forth to the world in books, — in books that revolutionized the philosophical thinking of Germany and will live in the mental life of mankind till the latest time. He waited long ; but the deep, trustworthy, genuine self came at last. WAITING FOR ONE'S SELF 249 Men of a different stamp of mind — poets, painters, sculptors, musical composers — are quite generally thought to do their work and to rise to their full measure of greatness by a sudden influx of power, by inspiration; and this is sometimes the case. Yet how often the moment of inspiration may have to be long waited for ! The soul that is gifted with artistic genius has many a dream before the thoughts that aspire and burn within are able to shape them- selves into solid artistic form. Not till the moment comes when the conditions of the sensitive inner organism and the conditions of outward circum- stance are both attuned in rhythmic unity with the striving creative spirit within is that spirit able to manifest itself in the reality of art. And this is a moment that may be long deferred,— a moment that does not occur in every hour nor even in every year, and that to some souls of even the finest gifts only comes in perfection once, twice, or thrice perhaps in a lifetime. Such souls, - therefore, though con- scious of the artist's power within them, may have to wait through long, arid, and laborious years for the hour when the inner chaos of aspiration, impulse, and thought can shape itself cosmically into "a thing of beauty." Milton proved himself to have a poet's genius in his early years, and even then had thoughts of some high epic theme which should fully test his strength. But the civil commotions, the revolutions and wars in England, intervened ; and for twenty years he was forced "to lay aside his singing robes," and appear as a champion of human liberty in political and social polemics and 25O TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS in practical offices for the State. He, too, was almost sixty years old before he found the poetic self so long waited for. Not till after many bitter expe- riences of calamity and pain, of political revolution and counter-revolution, of disappointment and blight to his affections, of assiduous and heroic labors in a hopeless cause, — not till after he had lived to see the political principles he had so openly and bravely espoused thoroughly defeated and rcpu Mated in Eng- land, and he himself was pursued with obloquy and no public service was permitted him, and blindness had closed his vision to all outward light, — not till then did the inward poetic vision of his earlier years come back and shape itself into the poem that has given him an immortality of fame. Michel Angelo left, perhaps, at death more unrivalled products of his genius than any other artist the world has known. Yet his unfinished works were more than his finished ; and some of the former show concep- tions with which his mind had labored and which had come to him, doubtless, in the highest moments of his thought, but which his hand had not found itself adequate to put into color or stone. Magnifi- cent as were his achievements and crowded with labor as was his long life, death found him at eighty- eight with a power still within him seemingly con- scious that it had not yet fully uttered itself and must wait for more facile organs for executing its behests. Or look at a very different kind of career, — at the life of any of the great religious teachers and reform- ers ; at that of Jesus, for instance, as most familiar WAITING FOR ONE'S SELF 25 1 to us. It is evident that we have in the New Testa- ment but a small part of the real biography of Jesus. We have a sketch — somewhat confused, and mixed, without doubt, to a considerable extent with legend, but more or less authentic — of the two or three years that constituted the public part of his life. Of all the thirty years that preceded the brief time of his public mission, we have only the fewest possible hints. But these hints indicate what we might nat- urally suppose would have been the case : that Jesus did not step at once, by the light of a sudden out- burst of revelation, upon his great public career, but that through many years the thought, the summons, had been lying hidden in his mind and he had been brooding upon it,— in the closet, at his. carpenter's bench, in the synagogue, and by his mother's side at home. It was there, in his young soul, when the boy drew apart from his father and mother and went back to ask questions of the rabbis in the temple. It was there, — this brooding question of his destiny, this haunting vision of what he might become and do for the good of his people, this consciousness of a possible spiritual messiahship which might in his person fulfil the expectations and yearnings of his race) — it was there when he went to be taught of John the Baptist and to be baptized by him ; there, too, when he went into the desert, apart from all human kind, after the manner of a hermit, — for self- communion, for it was the impulse that drove him thither ; and it was there through all the doubts, darkness, and tempting suggestions of that season of solitude, confidently abiding its time and awaiting 252 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS its triumph. It was not till after all these years of waiting, these trials and self-searchings, that even Jesus found himself and his mission. Now, the lives of these great workers — these prophets, seers, artists, sages, who make so large a part of human history — only present in larger and finer picture, in more effective grouping and richer beauty, elements of mental and moral life which are to some degree the possession of all of us. There is one law of growth, of progress, of accomplishment and power, that runs through the whole family of man- kind. " First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear," — that is the law for man as well as nature. And between the time when the blade first appears, a little streak of living green, above the ground, and the time when the full sheaves, ripened, are borne home, there may be long seasons of drouth or wet, of burning heat or killing frost, when the powers of life are tested to the utmost, and even hope is only kept alive bv faith in the great law which brings seed-time and harvest in their order and never fails. Whether a man possess one talent or ten, the law for use and increase is the same. There is the same slow process of unfolding, the same liableness to disappointed hopes, the same sub- jection to hindering conditions, the same waiting expectancy that the heart's deepest and most conse- crated purpose shall yet emerge from all impedi- ments, free and triumphant. We may even say that the highest thought or purpose of the universe itself did not reveal itself at once full-grown and full fruit, but ripened slowly. When we see through what in- WAITING FOR ONE'S SELF 253 calculably long processes of preparation the material world, with its vast variety of creatures, was passing, to make ready for the advent of man on this planet, — by what a devious pathway of struggle, of tentative efforts, of conflicts of force against force, nature passed before rtian emerged as the consummate prod- uct of the whole, — we may say indeed, and say it with all reverence, that even infinite Being waited long for himself ; waited long and wrought patiently for the coming of a finite form so organized that his own attributes and purpose might be self-manifest therein. And we are offspring of that Being; and as he worketh and waiteth for himself, reacheth not his sublimest forms of revelation at once, but weaveth by degrees the garment of glory by which he is seen, so must we work and wait for the highest rev- elation of ourselves, — expecting to see our cherished hope often deferred, but never to see it conquered ; doing our best with present conditions and opportu- nities, but — or therefore we might rather say — look- ing confidently to the future to bring us to some- thing better than any past or present has ever afforded. In one form or another, it is the destined lot of every human being to wait for himself. Our duty is /iere;aX the post of present responsibility, of present joy, sorrow, temptation, or trial ; and here, with various degrees of faithfulness or unfaithful- ness, we are doing or neglecting to do the require- ment of the hour. But, whether doing or neglecting to do, there is no one of us whose heart's ideal is not yonder, away ahead of us, awaiting our tardy coming. 254 TWENTY-FIVE SERMON'S The waiting ideal perhaps is mental, or perhaps it is moral. It may be a career of which we have had some youthful vision, but which, from outward cir- cumstance or inward infirmity of purpose, we have hitherto failed to attain. It may be some form of unsatisfied affections, leaving a vacancy and a yearn- ing not yet filled in the heart. It may be some beckoning path of philanthropy, once enchanting our eyes, but not yet offering the looked-for opportunity or summoning the needed self-consecration which makes opportunity. Or it may be some high attain- ment of character, some inward self-conquest, some decisive triumph over a strong and degrading temp- tation, — a triumph which will set our faculties free for the good service of which we are conscious they are capable, but a triumph which is yet delayed by our own halting purposes and treacherous passions. In whatever form the waiting, unattained ideal ap- pear, it presents the same pathos of contrast between a self that has failed and a self that still hopes ; be- tween purposes, visions, and aspirations which have hitherto been checked and frustrated and an inner sanctuary of faith, yearning, and courage which will not yield to despair nor death, but which look across the grave of every worsted and down-stricken reso- lution with eyes that behold another self, and that the real self, in the resurrection robes of victory. Even the most degraded victim of vicious courses does not lose all hope in a better fortune to come. He, too, has moments of some purer aspiration and thought, — moments when down into his darkness and wretchedness there streams a ray of the great WAITING FOR ONE'S SELF 255 Light which fills the heavens and overspreads the world, and toward which he can but lift his eyes in earnest longing. In that moment, " he comes to himself " ; and, in coming to himself, he turns again toward father and mother and home. In the very act of lifting his eyes to the Light, he greets his better self, and in the radiance of that upper glory sees himself as he yet may be. So with us all. Whatever may be our lot, what- ever the form of our longed-for ideal, whatever hindrances and delays may beset our course, and however long and burdensome may still seem the unfinished way before us, if we are but faithful to present light, to to-day's opportunity and duty, there is a better self waiting for us in triumph at the end. In that which waits there is. a Divinity that appeals invincibly to a divine purpose and hope in that which is waited for, and there is no power in the universe that can prevent the coming together of this cause and this consequence. The waiting may be long, the earthly pilgrimage may not end it ; but by and by, if not on earth, then in some celestial morning, the soul may wake to a surprise of felicity,— perhaps not that dreamed of, but something greater and better than that, like a clear, calm sunrise after a starless and tempestuous night. December 10, 1876. XVIII. THE SILENT REVELATION. " Does heaven speak ? The four seasons pursue their courses, and all things are being continually produced ; bat does heaven say anything?" — Confucius. " They have no speech nor language, and their voice is not heard ; yet their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."— Hebrew Psalm. These fine words, in their different ways, from Hebrew and Chinese Scripture, utter essentially the same thought, the Silentncss of Nature s Revelations ; and it is to this thought and its lessons that I wish to call attention this morning. Nature is ever active, ever at work, ever pro- ducing the grandest results ; yet she never utters a syllable of her purpose, never whispers in advance her intent to any curious ear. In silence are her tasks achieved. All her activities have a profound significance, yet not until those activities have brought forth their completed results is their mean- ing disclosed. She reveals herself, not in speech, but in deeds ; tells what she means to do only by what she has done ; assures us by the character of her achievements, not by the eloquence of her promises. True, her work goes on not in absolute silence. Sound of all kinds accompanies it. She THE SILENT REVELATION 257 shouts, she sings, she sighs. She thunders in the tempest, roars and moans in the ocean, whistles in the wind, chirps in the insect, becomes musical in the throat of the bird and the voice of man. She shrieks from pain and makes melody for joy. Yet she articulates nothing. She is dumb and silent, so far as revealing her thought and purpose by intelligible language is concerned. Though her sound has gone out to the ends of the world, yet she has no speech nor language, and her voice is not heard. The sounds are incidents of her work, but not conditions of revelation. They are them- selves a part of the mystery to be revealed, and are only understood when the whole intent is made evident in the finished product. The inanimate forces make their various noise, the brutes cry, man speaks ; but heaven is silent. The finite forms of earthly force utter their voice as if striving to phrase their meaning ; but heaven, the infinite Power, says nothing. In -silence it does its work, and leaves its work to speak for itself. The thing done is Nature's revelation, and its significance is disclosed only by the interpreting mind that has observed the process. The morning stars never sang together to reveal the harmonies of their movements ; but the song came from the musical soul of man, who watched these silent orbs of heaven until the order and rhythm of their movements were translated for him into melody. The seasons, as they come and go, say nothing of what they mean to do. It is only by what they have done, for years and generations and ages past, 2^8 ■ i N 1 IT-FIVE SERMi that we know what is in their heart to do this coming year. Look at the forces which, in any year, build up the glory of the summer. Not a word do they utter of their intent, not a syllable lisp of the mighty things they mean to do. The invisible powers, as they began to stir around us again spring, did not go to loudl; ting: "N 1 what -real things we will do! We will carpet the earth through all these northern zones with green ; we will dress the tre robes; we will bring flowers, rich with all hues, to plant and shrub; and fruit that shall follow in its turn, to bless man and beast." But in silence and md little by little, the minute, unseen forces went to their work, not uttering a boast or a word of what they were doing, until the glory and the beauty were spread all around us in a living revelation to and heart. No voice, no la \ yet has their line, indeed, gone out to all the earth. Had that , the first time that any human eves had g on such a phenomenon, it would have been to us a miracle. We should not have had the sligh idea of its purport or intended result, and in vain should we have pleaded with heaven to utter any word for interpreting the meaning of the miracle. Heaven would have been as silent as the forces themselves. But, though no miracle, the wonder of the phenomenon is none the less ; and the mean- ing of it has been revealed only by the silent faithfulness of the forces to their appointed tasks through many generations and ages of human experience. Only by what again and again they THE SILENT REVELATION 259 have done, do we have faith in what they are doing and will do at any present season. Or look back farther into Nature's laboratories. When the heavens were forming into firmaments and worlds ; when the chaotic masses of vapor were concentrating into fluids, and the fluids into solids ; when the processes were going on by which life gradually appeared on these worlds, and the life diverged into manifold species, and these species on our earth prefigured and prepared the way for man, — through all the vast processes, extending through periods of time which no mathematics can compute nor imagination grasp, — Nature uttered no prophetic voice to disclose her purpose. Her forces labored in silence at their great secret. ' Could any listening ear have been there, it would have detected not the faintest whisper of her meaning, Not from the heaven above or the earth beneath was anything said. There was only something doing. And it was not until the thing was done, not until man appeared, and not until he had been on the earth a hundred thousand years or more, — not, in truth, until this century in which we are living, when man has turned up the strata of the earth and learned the science of its creation, and studied the forces of the heavens through his telescope and the life of lands and seas through his microscope, — not until now has it been discovered that these silent forces all along carried the secret in their bosom. They carried the secret, but did not tell it. All along they meant something, and meant probably just that which has come to pass. But they did not tell what 260 TWENTY-FIVE SI. KM they meant until the thing appeared to speak for itself. But it is to be noted next that, though Nature has no voice and utters no articulate prophecies concerning her intentions, she yet does disclose her character, does reveal herself. As has already been said, she reveals herself in doing. Silent, she yet speaks. Could we suppose ourselves to meet her for the first time, to our bewildered and even agon- izing petitions for some word of light as to her future relations to us, she would be dumb. Only by a silent gesture would she bid us wait and see. But knowing her as we do by our own familiar experience of her actions, and by the aggregate inherited experience of unnumbered generations of our ancestors, she speaks to us through all that gathered knowledge. All her past actions, so dumb while they were in process of performance, now have tongues that speak to us clearly of her present intentions and her future results. We know her, and can trust her almost better than ourselves. No life-long friend, beloved, leaned upon at our side, is more thoroughly known or a surer reliance. Even the dependence on impartial parental love is not more sure than the confidence with which we cling to the hand of our silent mother Nature, — the mother who never spoke one word of promise to our ears, but whom we know by her faithfulness to all the generations of men. Through this accumu- lating experience, this aggregate knowledge of the human race, drawn from daily life with her, is Nature revealed. By what she did yesterday and THE SILENT REVELATION 26l the day before, and through all the yesterdays, do we read her intentions for to-day and to-morrow and the days and years thereafter. And, thus knowing her, we know her not only as power, but as power that works toward order, method, harmony, beauty, use. We know that her forces work with such con- stancy and with such regularity of tension toward a definite result that we call her operations laws. To them, we know that human law must bend and human power be subservient. And, if by any means any of her methods which we name laws can be evaded or abrogated, it is only by calling into ser- g vice some other of her forces that is for that time and place superior, or setting into operation another law. Nothing is more clearly known in the universe than that Nature is a law-abiding power,^- that she is moved by an impulse that is not reckless, not chance, not whim, not caprice, but an impulse that aims in a definite direction and for a definite result. Whatever apparent exceptions there may be, human experience has yet learned that her aims may be trusted, her forces confided in. The whole stability of society depends upon this trust, — that what Nat- ure has been and done she will continue to be and do. All this common experience teaches. But science shows more. Science shows that, along with this law-abidingness, this constancy, there is an order that means progress, advance, unity of plan, unfoldment of purpose, growth into ever finer symmetry of proportion and beauty of form. Deep within the beauty which all eyes see there is advance to a higher idea of beauty. Deep within T\\ INI V-! I\ the movement of forces which all minds can com- prehend there is the harmonious unfoldment vast cosmic plan which has become revealed only to the eye of scientific intelligence, by which these forces are seen t'> It self-improving and self-regen- erating forces : so that Mature, when we look upon her mighty periods of activity, has hem advarn upon her own work, making the bad good and the better, as if aimin Thus, though working in silence, does Nature make her revela- tions and win our trust. And now I want to draw into BOme simple and brief shape some of the moral and spiritual lessons of the theme. The first lesson that would naturally itself lies in the parallelism which might be drawn between this history of Nature and the history of the human race, illustrating how the great human exhibitions of power, how the gTi lis that have actually stood in history for the revelation of new principles, and how even tho hs that have been called special eras of religious revelation. have rather advanced by the unseen strength of silently operating forces than by any sudden inter- vention of marvellous power from the heavens or even noisy demonstration of human speech. Not until the epochs have come and actually made their mark is humanity able to read their full meaning. Jesus and his disciples little thought, I suppose, what was in the bosom of that one idea which they preached with such persistency, "the coming of the kingdom of God." Their business was to plant THE SILENT REVELATION" 2D3 the idea. But, concerning the forces by which it was to grow and spread and assimilate to itself other ideas and unfold from itself things which they never dreamed of being in it, they had no responsi- bility nor obligation. The speech was small, consid- ering the result that came, and does not account for it. The important sentences of the Sermon on the Mount can be found piecemeal in the sayings of Hebrew rabbis before Jesus. The doctrine of love to God and Man was the sum and substance of the Jewish religion. Jew and Persian alike had looked for a Messiah. Neo-Platonists and Platoniz- ing Jews were inculcating a doctrine of the Logos, or Divine Word, seed of a new dogma of incarna- tion, the development of which had such a mighty influence in shaping Christian theology. Thus, silently, in many directions and under many soils, were the seeds of the new era germinating; and the era had come and passed before people knew that it had come enough to name and to reckon back to it. The new revelation was rather the regate character of all that had been clone than any special speech. It was the new growth, the new life, of the manifold silent forces that were operating in the human communities that made up the Roman Empire eighteen and nineteen centu- ries ago. So, again, the first movers in the Protestant Reformation little dreamed of all that their acts meant. It is hard, indeed, to find the first movers, so inextinguishably does the religious movement shade off into an intellectual and political one. But TV. BNTY-1 IVE SERW not even did Luther and his brave see all that was to come from their doctrin* private judgment as against the voice ol tin- pi and the Church. Perhaps they would have shrunk from it, if they had. But it was not theirs to I nor to proclaim the result. It was theirs only duty of their own hour. Within their duty, concealed in the heart of their deeds, other forces were working in silence, with other meaning and for greater results. With the I lation of the meaning of the Protestant reform come; but this revelation could not be made not- understood then. It was not even outwardly proph- ■!, though Luther and his helpers were of the type of prophets. The genuine prophet, perl: never knows that he prophe 1'he prophecy is uttered through him more by his entire char, and attitude than by his spoken message, and only when the fulfilment of it :omes is its meaning revealed. Thus it was also in the birth and gr of our own nation. The pr that finally ulti- mated in a national consciousness and power among the American colonies were of long duration, and were silently operating through many minds that spoke no public word and little dreamed whither they were tending. Separation from Great Britain was a thought at first too daring to be broached. And so, in general, in human history as in the history of Nature : it is by the faithfulness of the unseen and silent forces to certain appointed tasks of the hour that the great advances are made, and the inner meaning of the forces that thus work THE SILENT R!'.\ ELATION 265 through nature and through man is revealed. Not so much by any uttered words in behalf of righteous- ness, though spoken never so eloquently by prophet or martyr, as by the silent grip with which the masses of civilized mankind adhere to truth and virtue, is the stability of society assured. There are principles of mental and moral intelligence which have come to have the same constancy in the world of mankind as the laws of physical force in the world of matter, and upon which we rely with the same security. They may never have been spoken from the heavens, they may not even have been intuitive endowments of the human mind when man first made his appearance on the earth ; but, as now seems most likely, they may have been gradu- ally and slowly evolved through the various disci- pline of human and ante-human experience, and may be mingled with human infirmity and error; yet deeper than aught else in man's nature they declare the purport and destiny of his being. They are the silent witnesses, which, growing clearer and clearer with man's historic advance, interpret for him all other revelations, and " Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing." One is tempted to inculcate as another lesson of the theme more reliance on the silent working of moral forces in the amelioration of human society. Certainly, when we regard the incessant speech- makin"- that is going on among men, the immeas- 266 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS urable quantity of words that, through the living voice or the printed page, one portion of mankind is uttering for the benefit or entertainment of another portion, and when we regard the tumult, tug, and tussle of it all, one may be pardoned if he sometimes longs for the mythical half-hour of silence that is said to have occurred in heaven at the opening of creation's drama. And, seriously, i: may be asked whether, in schemes of education and of social reform and philanthropy, we are not in danger of relying too much on talk, while we lose sisrht of the silent influence of character and the potency of quiet deeds. Whatever may be said of the power of words and of the influence exerted by a great master of speech, the men who do rather than the men who say are yet humanity's leaders. The resolute act is stronger than the eloquent speech. This, of course, is not to say that speech has not its proper place and service, nor that any great social work is likely to be clone without great and earnest words being somewhere spoken in its behalf. Much less is it to inculcate any fatal iist- lessness to calls for moral and philanthropic service, and a passive trust that the work will somehow be done without our aid. I have no sympathy with that merely dilettante interest in reform which professes to believe that things will somehow come right of themselves, while human beings lie back at ease, and look on. Rather is it to appeal for more aid by acts that I cast suspicion upon the easy mood of talk. Talk that has not originated in silent thought, and will not bear the test of silent thought, THE SILENT REVELATION 267 is worse than weak. And so I think that public talkers (and private, too) need often to recur to silent meditation to recruit their strength. If some of us never came out of the silence with public discourse, the world might be no loser. But in the silence of private meditation have the great thoughts been born that have moved the world. A master speaker may stir a listening mind to some heroic resolution. But the heroic resolution that is made under the mastering silence of a noble thought that has taken possession of the mind is more likely to remain as an abiding power in the life. " While I was mus- ing," says the Hebrew Psalm, "the fire burned." Meditation no less than speech may kindle zeal, and is necessary for sustenance to moral strength. Channing once said, "There is no eloquence like the deep silence of a crowd." I used to prize the silence of the Quaker meeting as often better than the speech that broke it. There may indeed bz an empty silence as there i-s empty speech ; but the empty silence, at least, does not invade others' rights, as the inane speaking does. Better the empty silence than the hollow words. But there is a silence that is felt like an inspiration. It is th • silence that is alive with emotion and thought. Such silence is vital with the seeds of mighty actions. It holds the secrets of many hearts, which shall one day be revealed in deeds. But I must hasten on to speak of one or two other lessons which may come closer to the individ- ual experience of us all. It is the lot of our human- ity that we are, not infrequently, cast into perplex- TWENTY-FIV] ing and painful straits of life, where we long for a word of revelation, which is not vouchsafed, to lead us out of our difficulties and show us our future. We often say, If we only knew whit the future is to bring to pass, how much more content we might be, and how much more wisely act in the prea What, we anxiously ask, is to be the our taking this course or that? What is to be the coming career of our children and of others we lo The young themselves are often troubled with anxi- eties about their future course in life If they only knew what they are best fitted for, what they can best succeed in, how easy would seem present duties! To-day, perhaps, nothii ms to open: what, then, will it be to-morrow 5 Sometimes we may be watching by a sick-bed, or watching with painful uncertainty our own health. Or, harder still, we may in dread suspense be watching the uncertain moral steps of one we love better than our own life. Oh, if we only knew! we say. And sometimes the questions so press upon us that in our helplessness and despair we are tempted to cry out for the heavens to be opened and a special revealing message to be sent to our aid. Hut to all these entreaties the heavens say nothing. To all such pleadings there only comes the answer of silence. Is heaven, then, dumb ? Does it deny all revelation ? No : not more surely does its shining canopy of blue embrace to-day the gladsome earth and nurse its waiting life than it broods with silent care over the human soul, and has given to it all the revelation that it needs. It is a fallacy to suppose THE SILENT REVELATION 269 that to know with certainty the future is to reveal present duty. For our duty is not so much con- cerned with consequences as with motives. Conse- quences may depend on many wills, on many con- current forces entirely beyond our control. But our duty concerns our present act alone. Moreover, to ask to know our future, or any future with which we have concern, is to ask an impossibility. That future is to depend to some extent upon what we do at this present time ; and it rightly so depends, by the great law of moral responsibility. And to ask that we may know the future so as to determine present action by it is to reverse this primal law of human development. We must ourselves, by our present faithfulness, help to make that firture. And it is seldom that the duty of the present moment, the duty that is the very next to be done, is not revealed. The necessary revelation has been vouch- safed in the silent working- of our own reason, in the light of conscience, in the natural influx of a love that binds us in ties of sympathy to our kind and makes us both strong and tender toward all human wants. In the faithful activity of these great facul- ties, — Reason, Conscience, disinterested Love, — the law of life is revealed. And if, even with these silent revealers of duty's path, the present opening for that path may seem to us closed and we see not where to apply our hand; if, having done all within our power, we seem to be called only to the post of passive submission and endurance, — let us remem- ber still that "they also serve who only stand and wait." 270 TWENTY-FIVE 51 Rid And there is another silent waiting imposed upon us, and wisely, by the necessary conditions of our knowledge, another waiting for a revelation which is made only in silence to the waiting heart. — the revelation of the kind of life that is to be after this life of earth. If human entreaties from the time mankind began their existence could have brought a disclosure of the futurity after death, all the mys- teries of heaven would now be open to our gaze. Hut not a syllable of the great mystery has yet been articulated that can permanently satisfy or that is worthy of the quest. The curtain hangs there, drawn by a silent hand ; and it hangs there wisely. Let us not profane its sanctity by hands that with too curious eagerness would lift it aside. Infinitely bitter is it to wait in the quietude of a patient hope. Yet is there no revelation made? The revelation of all future life is silently made in the life that now is, — in those deep qualities of life that draw their sus- tenance from eternal fountains, and so proclaim their own immortality ; in the wisdom and goodness which are adequate to all emergencies of our earthly life. and which we may trust to provide what is worthiest and best for the life hereafter. December 16, 1S77. XIX. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY. "No man is so great as mankind." — Theodore Parker. I propose to speak to you this morning on the topic suggested by the phrase "The Religion of Humanity." It is a phrase that has come into use somewhat in these latter years to indicate a type of religion that is growing up, mainly, outside of eccle- siastical lines and independent of the 'old claims of religious authority. In the history of religious thought, the phrase was first adopted by the French philosopher, Auguste Comte, who turned it to a certain philosophical use, to signify, in his hierarchy of the intellectual and social sciences, the place and service of religion. In his system of positive knowledge, or of science as based only on phe- nomena and their generalized laws, theology had no place. He declared that theology represented the obsolete and obsolescent child-mood of the human mind ; that it grew out of the disposition to refer to supernatural agencies things which the human under- standing could not account for by natural causes. But, though theology was not recognized by Comte as having any valid basis, and though he believed in no Deity as a first cause, nor in personal immor- 2^2 TWENTY-FIVE SERMi tality, nor in any special religious revelation as having a claim to authority over the human mind, yet he conceded the vast power and service of the religious sentiment; and upon it, newly directed, he mentally constructed and endeavored to put into practical operation a new system of religion, with a complete cultus and all the officers and equipments of an organized church. He called religion the crown of all the social sciences, the goal of sociol- He defined it as "the complete harmoi; human existence, individual and collective, or the universal unity of all existence in 01: I Being," whom lu- calls Humanity. Emancipated from the crude primitive forms of polytheistic worship and from the vague metaphysical conception of a s ; ' Deity in the skies, the religious sentiment, he claimed, would finally ripen into the personal di lion and self-sacrifice of individual being for the welfare of universal humanity. Hence the name, "Religion of Humanity." which the stringent dis- ciples of Comte still use as a title for their special jous beli In this usage, however, the phrase has a some- what technical, if not sectarian meaning. It must at least be said that Comte's plan of an organized church, however revolutionary his ideas, was mod- elled too closely after the Roman Catholic Church to gain much headway in the modern world. He adopted very much of the old ecclesiastical machin- ery and not a little of the papal idea of ecclesias- tical authority, from which he thought the com- mon people were not ripe for release. The saints' THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 273 days and festivals he changed into days of homage to the world's great religious and moral teachers of all faiths, — as Moses, Socrates, Zoroaster, Jesus, Mohammed, etc. He even projected a reform of the calendar, so as to name the months and days of the week after the names of distinguished benefactors of the human race. But, with all his wealth of learning and his wide grasp of intellect, Comte apparently ;loes not seem to have perceived that the people who were ready for emancipation from the old eccle- siastical authority, the people who were prepared to understand and welcome his revolutionary thought, would not be easily marshalled under the sway of a new external authority in matters of faith. And so his grand plan of a new church remains only a model — on paper. He made the mistake of think- ing that a religion, instead of being a natural growth, was an architectural structure to lie artificially built. But the phrase "Religion of Humanity" is s gestive ; and it suggests something more important for our notice than the French philosopher's elab- orate scheme of a new form of worship and a new church. It suggests certain tendencies and forces in modern society, certain lines and methods of thought, certain drifts of opinion and belief, by which old religious ideas and usages are being revolutionized, and, inside of churches and outside of churches, in the midst of dissolving creeds and worships, an essentially new form of religion is growing up. And it is chiefly these tendencies and movements that I have in mind in bringing the subject here. They are observable not only in 274 TWENTY-FIVE SERM Christendom, but in other religions, — in Judaism, in Buddhism, in Brahmanism, in Mohammedanism, in the little remnant of the Parsee faith that still survives. In every religion which has a constitu- ency respectably civilized there is a progressive , a section that feels the influence of modern ideas and is astir with the mental and moral li; modern times. This party, which is following the authority of reason rather than that of old eci al faiths, may still keep, perhaps, the old relig- ious names, only modifying them, it may be, by the prefix liberal, as Liberal Christian, Liberal Hebrew, Liberal Mohammedan. But the tendency, wherever found, is in the same direction ; the movement, what- ever its starting-point, is toward a common goal And, when the movement becomes more self-con- scious and self-centred, it will most likely find some new and common name for its now separate branches. In the first place, the phrase "Religion of Hu- manity" suggests an antithesis to the religion of supernaturalism. The prevailing idea concerning religion — of all religion commonly regarded as true and efficacious — is that it is of supernatural origin and is preserved by supernatural agencies. Its light is not believed to be the light of the common human reason, of natural conscience, of the aspiring human spirit, but a light miraculously revealed from the heavens. Its first promulgators are claimed to have been specially commissioned by the Almighty for their work, endowed with the power to perform mir- acles to attest their authority. Its Bibles were writ- ten, it is alleged, by supernaturally inspired men. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 275 Its doctrines could have never been discovered by the unassisted human mind, but were sent into the human mind directly from heaven. Its church was nized under specific divine commands, and has been directed by a special outpouring of the divine Spirit in no wise natural to humanity. The kind of faith that it inculcates may harmonize with human reason or it may conflict with it ; but, in any event, it is superior to human reason, being the direct gift of God. The kind of prayer that it inculcates is the risking of God for spiritual or temporal favors, in the belief that effectual prayer will bring from the Being addressed, by some supernatural process, the needed answer. Such are some of the main characteristics of supernatural religion. They are not specially Christian or Hebrew. They belong quite as much to other religions. The devotees of all the great religions of mankind have believed in the supernatu- ral origin and protection of their own special faith. To all these beliefs, the Religion of Humanity is opposed. Its primary principle is that religion is the natural product of the human mind, of the human race, — of the human mind aspiring indeed toward infinite Mind, searching after a First Cause, seeking to come into practical relations with that which gives life and law to all finite existences, but still the human mind. When ecclesiastical relig- ion says, " Religious truth came by revelation," the Religion of Humanity replies, Revelation is natural. It is the human mind unfolding by natural impulse to truth as a flower to the sun. When ecclesiastical religion says, " Special divine inspiration is necessary 276 TWENTY-FIVE SERMI to bring religion upon the earth," the Religion of Humanity answers, Inspiration is by natural law: it is "the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The Religion of Humanity knows no miracle greater than the laws of nature. It believes that the human mind, by natural relation- ship, is connected with the source of all that is, and by natural processes draws its life from that inexhaustible fountain. But, since the religions their origins on the human side of this relation- ship, and since they necessarily have their historical development within human conditions, the Reli of Humanity affirms that they are all subject to human limitations, to human error and infirmity; that they partake of the stii - of the people holding them, I to their phase of mental enlightenment and culture; and that none of them can legitimately claim infallibility. The Religion of Humanity consequently that the special religions are progressive ; that they arc evolutions, not outright creations; that none of them was given fully matured, with ritual and doc- trine and precept complete, but that all have grown and been shaped by the natural exigencies of all historical development ; that their doctrines have been wrought and rewrought in the chemistry of human thought ; that their rituals have been grad- ually moulded into form by the spiritual imagination of the people adopting them ; that even their moral impulses have taken direction, their very virtues been modified, and their character been transformed, by the conditions of the changing epochs through THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 277 which they have passed. There is found no such fixity in religion, no such unchangeablcness of doctrine or spirit or method in religious history, as the claim to supernatural origin and supernatural preservation would imply. The process of relig- ious development is traced in the ordinary grooves of human history. It is closely allied with the nat- ural development of human intelligence, of language, of literature, of nationalities, and is as easily ac- counted for on natural grounds as is any of these. To whatever spheres of truth, to whatever forces of vital power, beyond and above humanity, religion may be linked, — and that it is connected with such there is no denial, — this connection is by laws and processes perfectly natural. The outreaching, all- embracing sphere of truth comes naturally within human cognizance. The circle, however high it may arch, dips down to the natural vision of the human mind ; and the human mind, by natural attraction, follows the circle upward. Wherever the vital forces that sustain the universe may have their primal source, the well-springs by which humanity is to live and do its work are within the natural domain of the human mind, close to its daily tasks, and do not have to be opened by any miracle to be of avail. Therefore it is that this view of religion may be called the Religion of Humanity, — that is, it is religion conceived as having its historical beginning in the human mind, its development in the natural limits of human his- tory, its vital power all along as associated by the natural relationships of human faculty with what- 278 TV I ■ E SERM ever may be the ultimate Source and Unity ol all power, — in contradistinction from that view which refers the original existence of religion t<> super- natural revelation, and its continuance to supernat- ural preservation. From this primary principle, it follows, secondly, that to the Religion of Humanity the special ; ions are SO many different sects. Just as Christen- dom is divided into numerous se i ; 'ists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Unitarians, Quakers, and the like, just as Judaism and Buddhism and Mo- hammedanism have also had their contlictii; so these various religions, Judaism, Buddhism, Chris- tianity, Mohammedanism, et< .. make the larger - into which the religion of mankind is divided. And as each sect of a special religion thinks that it has the true faith or form of that religion, and that all the others are at some point or points in error, so the devotees of each of the world's great religions think that they have the true faith, and that all other forms of religion are erroneous. And hence be- tween the religions, just as between the sects of a particular religion, the sectarian spirit prevails, and sectarian controversies and conflicts exist. No con- troversies are so bitter as those which spring from sectarian animosities. No wars were ever so fierce or so bloody as those which have been declared in the name of religion. No armies were ever led against each other with such relentless and destruc- tive collision as those which have been marshalled under antagonistic banners of religious faith, each claimed to be the standard of the true God, and THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 279 therefore pledged to conquer. To the Religion of Humanity, this sectarian spirit between the relig- ions, as between the smaller sects of the same re- ligion, is all wrong. From it has come not only enormous and cruel destruction of human life, but immense waste of human power, — waste of in- tellectual energy, disastrous misdirection of moral and spiritual enthusiasm, self-consecrations arrayed against each other in fatal combat, and neutraliz- ing each other's aims, instead of combining their might for the welfare of mankind. There is no sadder sight in history than this sight, so com- mon, of religious enthusiasm battling against relig- ious enthusiasm ; than the spiritual consecration of one portion of mankind — this highest demon- stration of power of which man is capable — in deadly conflict with the spiritual consecration of another portion of mankind. Yet, so long as the religions of the world, in a sectarian spirit, lay ex- clusive claims to supernatural communications with divine truth, each arrogating to itself the privilege of having the only saving knowledge of God, this wasting, ruinous antagonism is inevitable. To the Religion of Humanity, it is morally and mentally wrong. Since, in its view, no religion is infallible, none supernaturally authenticated, none miracu- lously guaranteed to contain the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so this sectarian dispute and warfare among them are as irrational in logic as they are bitter in spirit and destructive in practice. * This rational theory of religion does not affirm, 280 TWENTY-FH I »NS indeed, that all of the special religioi alike in value. It does not claim that their contents are equal. It does not say that they arc all equally enlightened or equally spiritual or equally adapted to serve the needs of all nations alike to-day. All that it asserts is that the religions originated and grew by the same natural process; that no one of them can assume supremacy over the rest by reason of any difference in respect to birth or family. But that the religions should differ in the relative value of their contents is as natural as that literatures should differ, or th.it languages should differ, or that nations should differ in respect to civilization and culture, or that in- dividual persons, born of the same parents, should differ in intelligence and character. The Religion of Humanity, however, is not so much concerned to display these natural and readily conceded differ- ences, nor so eager to prove by detailed comparisons that this particular religion is superior to that, as it is desirous to discover and disclose the things that are good and true in all the religions, and to ac- knowledge that, in their time and place, they have- all rendered some good service to mankind. It finds in them all a moral standard bettor than the pre- vailing moral practice and a spiritual aspiration that shames the average grossness of daily living. It will not commit what has well been called the flagrant injustice of comparing the low-water mark of one religion with the high-water mark of a neighboring faith, — the present practical moral condition of India, for instance, with the ethical THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 251 standard of the Sermon on the Mount ; for this is a mode of comparison that might be turned end for end, and be made to strike quite as effectively in another direction. Christendom has had, for exam- ple, the Sermon on the Mount for eighteen hundred years ; and yet the average practical morality of the most enlightened Christian country to-day might be put to the blush by the side of many a chapter of moral precepts from the Scriptures of Asiatic Brah- manism and Buddhism. Nor, even comparing prac- tice with practice, can Christendom boast very loudly over non-Christian countries. Keshub Chunder Sen, the. native reformer of the Brahmanistic faith in British India, on his visit to England a few years since, was astonished and grieved at the moral condition of this leading nation of Christendom, — at the prevailing grossness in eating and drinking, the intemperance, the costly entertainments, and material extravagance of all sorts, the struggle after and worship of wealth, the' inequality between the rich and the poor, the degradation and criminal- ity of large sections of population, and the merci- less recklessness with which the upper strata of society, with few exceptions, push their interests, roughshod, over the bodies and souls of the lower. This was a heathen judgment on Christian England. But there is little profit in these comparisons, on the one side or the other, except as a means of rec- tifying partisan and sectarian judgments. More profitable is it for the devotees of the different re- ligions to seek out their agreements and identities ; to inquire how much ground they hold in common ; 282 TWENTY-FIVE SERMl to compare ideas ami theories in the spirit oi truth- seeking; to meet each other half-way across the dismantled walls that have hitherto divided them into hostile camps, and to ask each other how they can best put their forces together tor the ameliora- tion of the human degradation and distress around them. To the Religion of Humanity, it is not so vital a point to decide with precision by just how much one religion may be theoretically better than another as it is to bring out and make practically applicable what is good in them all. The intellect- ual and spiritual rank of the religions may be left t<> the rational judgment of the historian, of the jnti- quarian investigator, — to the ultimate conscientious judgment of mankind. Hut, in every one of the greal religions, even in those deemed the pooi there is enough of pure moral truth to save all their professed adherents, if they would only live up to it. Ami the question with the Religion of Humanity that presses before all others is how to make this truth of avail, and turn it into practical benefit. For, again, it is another characteristic of the Relig- ion of Humanity that it is more eager to improve the present condition of mankind than to settle any dis- puted question of theology or to discuss the relative merits of the many forms <>l~ ecclesiasticism. Th; deed, is its main object, — the improvement of man's moral, mental, and physical condition here in this present world, — in a word, the enlightenment and elevation of mankind. This object, to be a human- itarian religion, dominates all others, and might wed be regarded as giving to the rising m dern faith its THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 283 name. It would be a Religion of Humanity in deed as well as in word. Questions concerning man's origin and early history are not void of profit, — far from it. Not even are stories of Gardens of Eden, and of Golden Ages in the past, and of Deities visit- ing the earth, walking visibly among men, convers- ing with them, and writing books for the use of mankind, wholly without interest to historical inves- tigation. But it is a higher proof of moral and relig- ious purpose to strive to make a Garden of Eden and a Golden Age and a Divine Presence on earth to-day than to put faith in these traditions of by- gone times. This rationalistic, humane religion does not deny that there is a life hereafter, — some future world for man; but it affirms that man's chief and all-controlling duty is here and now in this present world, — that to perform well his part on the globe and in the sphere to which he is now allotted, and thus to show that he is able to manage wisely and well the world he now possesses, will he the best possible preparation for any world that is to be given to him hereafter. This view of religion does, indeed, in contradistinction from what has been the prevailing teaching of the Christian Church, lay more emphasis on the life that now is than on the future life. It arraigns, in fact, the popular Chris- tian theology for drawing man's thought too much away to the life hereafter, so that duties here are liable to be neglected in dreamings and visions of a future bliss. The Religion of Humanity says, Let the vision of the future remain a vision, a hope, a faith, if you can ; but let it not entice moral interest 284 TWENTY-] l\ 1 SERMl und energy away from the | sibilities and stern realities of the present time. IL;\\- out- place for the present, here our task, our charge, our mission. Let us insure the hoped-for felicity now, irth, right in the spot where lies our daily I by a faithful inquiry how we can best discharge Our as to our fellow-men and to ourselves, and 1 faithful obedience to our own highest idea! duty. Mr. Ruskin somewhere says that that is the true mother church where every man takes the hand of every other man helpfully. And to bring in this era of fraternity, of brotherhood, of mutual helpfulness, — to remove as far as possible the bur- dens that oppress men, to enlighten ignorance, les- sen misery, assuage suffering, prevent sin,— is the aim of the Religion of Humanity. Some of the old ecclesiastical types of religion, in their efforts to imprison the human mind, in their attempts to stifle human thought and fetter personal libertv, in their contemptuous and even malignant treatment of the human body, in their persistent struggles to bandage and bondage the human soul, and to keep it in a condition of mental and spiritual childhood, and in their threats of infinite torture in an eternal future by way of enforcing their teach- ings, may rightly be styled religions of Inhumanity. From all such bondage, from all such cruel terrors, the Religion of Humanity endeavors to emancipate the human soul. Its teaching is : Give free room for growth, for development, for culture ; give oppor- tunity, give liberty, give manhood, spread knowl- edge, inquire, gather facts, think. Human society THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 285 cannot be harmed, but only benefited, by thought. Let us have more thought, and better and truer thought. The Religion of Humanity would awaken the human mind from the nightmare of old super- stitions that press upon it. It would couch its vision, and bid it see the glories of the world which modern science reveals, instead of groping in the dim twilight of primeval faiths. It bids us be men and women, whole men, whole women, — not neces- sarily saints after the ecclesiastical pattern, not the cramped, lop-sided, long-faced, and bloodless speci- mens of humanity, expurgated editions of human kind, that passed for saints in mediaeval times, but it urges us to attain the highest ideals of manhood and womanhood possible to our highest vision. The Religion of Humanity gratefully accepts the work of prophets and apostles in olden time, — not those of one religion alone, but the sages and spokesmen of all faiths. Yet it does not believe that the spirit of wisdom - and power that spoke through them has gone so far away that it cannot reach the human mind to-day. It affirms that, to the willing car, to the open mind, the spirit of truth may yet come with all its ancient power. The Re- ligion of Humanity has its Bibles, — not only the good words of one faith, but of all faiths, — the best words of all literatures, past and present. And it would use all these external helps, past and present,— - the prophets, apostles, preachers, sacred words, illus- trious examples of consecrated and noble living, — not to overawe and overpower with their authority the present mental and moral life of mankind, but 286 n\ i rather to stimulate that life like self-reliance and to a nobler fidelity to those unseen inner laws that arc stamped Oil each soul, — the law of Re and the law of Duty. If it be objected that this R n of Humanity is to have very little to say of a Supreme Being, very little to inculcate in respect to forms of wor- ship, let me say, in conclusion, that it require subtler metaphysic than philosophy has yet given, a keener logical method thai ered, to draw the line in the human soul that shall separate there the divine elements from the human, and to say, On this side is man, on that, God. The Religion of Humanity, emphasizing chiefly the m »ral idea and aim, docs not, it is true, put into the articles of a creed any spe< illations concerning an infinite and confessedly incomprehensible Being alleged to sit upon a throne in the upper heavens and to govern the universe from that distant seat of supreme sovereignty; but it nevertheless recognizes the logical necessity of a Power more than commen- surate with humanity — commensurate with all pos- sible existence — in and through which all things have their law, their root of life, their present vitality and being: and special organizations and ser- vices may be of great use in practically strengthen- ing and enlarging this sense of vital relationship. But when man lives by his highest sense of duty, when he lives a life of strict integrity, of purity, of kindness, of love, of self-devotion to truth and right- eousness, though he may profess little faith in the conceptions of Deity presented to him in the creeds THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 287 of the churches, yet such a one carries within him the very presence and power of the Eternal. He does not need to seek without to find Deity : Deity has found him. The infinite power, the divine life, is coursing this moment through the natural arteries of his own mind and conscience. God dwells within him. And, though he go to worship neither at Jeru- salem nor on Mt. Gerizim, he carries ever within himself that daily worship which is in spirit and in truth. March 24, 1878. XX. WHAT DO WE W< >RSHIP? "This world Hindu. I would fain bring to you this morning, friei some vital central thought, which should concern not only our service here, but the 1 our daily lives. And ho r indicate such : Jit than by the question which I h tve ch for the subj- s hip f It were well, certainly, it' we shou sionally put this question to ourselves. 1: be anything more than a superstition, ii any- thing that at all c ids to the high claims which in all ages and it, then it is something of supreme moment, and, since it concerns man's highest interests, deserves his most serious attention. I said, " If worship be anything more than a superstition." But perhaps I shall be reminds ■ the outset that there are intelligent minds who qui 5- tion whether it be anything more ; that there are persons who affirm that all theology is mythology, and that all forms of worship are but modes of super- stition, which, with the advance of reason, necessarily become obsolescent ; and that, therefore, the first WHAT DO WE WORSHIP? 289 question to be settled is whether worship has any genuine and permanent reality, any rational and abiding basis. To this, I reply that I regard what is called worship as a specially organized expression and aid of religion ; and that I do not think that religion can be rightly considered as synonymous with, or necessarily dependent upon, any system of theology which the human mind has ever framed or believed. Rather does religion represent a faculty Mr function inherent in the constitution of human nature itself, and therefore necessarily existent so long as human nature exists and keeps its identity. It is the creator of theologies and worships, not their product. What becomes obsolete and passes away is theology ; that is, human beliefs about religion, — creeds, statements of faith, mental views and convictions concerning Supreme Being and man's relation thereto. These have been continually changing from the beginning of human existence, and are still subject to change as advances are made in knowledge and in the application of reason to matters of human experience. Many of these beliefs, indeed, must now be classed with superstitions : they belonged to man's childhood and immaturity, and have passed away as a manlier knowledge has been gained. And forms of worship that were founded upon such beliefs or necessarily implied them have passed away too, or are certainly doomed to the same obsolescence and oblivion. But, amid all such changes, religion itself has remained, surviving numerous sects and systems of theology. Religion is man's recognition — through the threefold form 290 TWENTV-rr. of feeling, thought, and act — of his own vital rela- tion to the infinite Power or powi rs of the universe . and it is difficult to sec how any sine mind to have some degi such a recognition. An so long as religion exists, changing i the progress of human reason, modifying it tions concerning the nature of infinil P wer — it is tional to affirm that it may not institute and Lin forms of worship which shall not be amen- able to the char superstition, but shall he in harmony with its own pn character, and ever a fitting and helpful expression of itself. And I wish specially to bring this question worship to our attention here, at this resumption of our Sunday services after several weeks oi sep- aration, because wc of this .society profess to hold the most rational and liberal views of religion. We desire and seek to let in the light of the fr son upon all religious doctrines and institutions; and hence some among us may be already asking whether such services as we hold here from Sunday to Sunday have any foundation in rational philos- ophy or in practical usefulness. The plain question is, — and it. is a searching question as well as a plain one, — Can this free human reason, which we profess to take for our guidance, consistently engage in any form of worship? We must answer this question before we can answer intelligently that other ques- tion, What, do we worship? But, first of all, I want to say that we should not allow ourselves to come to this question with any prejudice against the institution of worship derived WHAT DO WE WORSHIP? 2C)I from its irrational associations. If we think it better, as many liberal thinkers do, in order to save ourselves from being misunderstood, to abandon the use of the word worsJiip, because, like a good deal of ecclesiastical phraseology, it has become damaged by the superstitious practices and beliefs with which it has been so commonly connected, why, well and good. I, for one, do not insist on the word. Only let us not fall into the error of thinking also that that disposes of the essential thing which the word at its root signifies. The word in itself, in its gen- eral and etymological significance, is a good one. The English language has no better. In its prim- itive Anglo-Saxon origin, it means the condition or state of worthiness, or that quality in any* object or being which gives value, desirableness, excellence, and attracts admiration and homage ; and hence, secondarily, it came to be applied to the acts by which such admiration and homage were expressed by other beings, and then technically and specially to acts expressive of homage to Deity. Now, human conceptions of Deity have been attended, of course, with abundance of errors. Primitively, the power of the mighty forces that seemed to control the uni- verse was more felt than their wisdom or order or goodness, and man's ideas of that which constituted the highest excellence or worth were necessarily crude and low. Hence, the acts of homage toward Deity or Deities, or the rites of worship which were instituted, were often expressive of abject fear, and were accompanied by many childish and even degrad- ing and cruel practices. With the progress of en- 2Q- lightenment, these crude and man's conception of what constitutes the i est worthiness h is been acts of worship have t iken lore rational and spiritual form. Something, in the old barb • survive in the n id ceremonies even sections of civilizi I iety. Still, it must : that enl ; ; mankind i I have a much nobler conception of Divine B< 1 worship a ; ; higher order of than did their ancestors of the primeva And, even it may be claimed that, through the modern , the idea of individual lality and of personal providence will be eliminated from man's conception of Deity and he may i tify infinite Being with the supreme inner enei law, and life of the univi ill that kill the spirit and mood of worship, and need not kill the instituted practice of it. As this last is a point on which there is a good deal of questioning thought, let u at it a moment. My response to the question that might here arise would be that Science itself is a worship- per. It is a worshipper of truth. Truth is the supreme object of its homage and devotion. It has no self to set up in opposition to or apart from the truth. And is not homage to truth homage to the living spirit, or essence, or energy of the universe which religion has named Deity ? Look, too, at the dominant spirit and mode of life of the true scien- tific man. I sav the true man of science ; for there WHAT DO WE WORSHIP? 293 arc charlatans on the field of science as everywhere else. There are partisans and dogmatists among the class of scientific men as among theologians, — men who are bent upon advocating some pet theory, in which self-interest or self-pride is involved, rather than upon eliciting and establishing the pure truth. But take the true men of science (and, in taking these, we take really the great leaders in science, of whom Darwin, in our own day, may be cited as the most conspicuous example), — take these men, who have no other interest than the discovery and pro- motion of truth, who spend their abilities, their fort- unes, their lives, in this unselfish search, giving no heed to consequences, but concerned only to elicit from the dark realm of the unknown the pure and simple reality of things, — and I know not where we shall find another class of persons who manifest more habitually that disinterested homage and devo- tion to a supreme object, which is the very essence of worship. And many of this class of men exhibit in their work the genuine religious emotions. In the presence of their great discoveries, they are awed into speechless and sometimes spoken adora- tion before the mysterious Power, the wisdom and purpose of whose hitherto secret ways they have traced and revealed to the world. We cannot say, therefore, that science and scientific men are antago nistic to the spirit of worship. They may reform and purify worship, but they do not destroy it. They may not often be found in the public places of instituted worship, but this may be because the kind of worship in these places is not generally as yet of 294 TWENTY-FIVE SERM so high and enlightened an order as is their habitual mood of homage. They arc seekers and of truth. Truth is the lode-star of their lives,— their supremest attraction, their all-satisfying reward. How, then, can they be other, though they do name him, than and revealers of the Power that religion calls God ? Science, moreover, dis within the univ- to all our in the infinitely - md the infi- nitely little, new elements for Inciting our adoring wonder: a law, majesty, order, beauty, power, an omnipresent ceaseless activity and life, such as. in their inner purport and in their relation to the life and development of mankind, the ancients never dreamed of, when they bowed down in worship fore the outward ob;- nature. Science has, in . revealed so much in the material universe i' unfolded its heights and its depths, and lifted the curtain from so many of its wonderful energies, that, so far from the true spirit of worship being dead- ened in earnest and observant minds, there is rather almost cause for wonder that we do not to in adoration before the mystic energies that burn in the sun and nourish the earth, people the heavens with stars, and every year reclothe before our e the fields and woods with fresh life. Look, again, at the artist, — not at the charlatan in art more than at the charlatan in science ; not at the mere artist adventurer, who deals in tinsel and clap-trap to catch the popular superficial sense, but at the genuine artist wdiose imagination penetrates behind color and form and sensational sound to WHAT DO WE WORSHIP? 2Q5 the pure realities of things, and who would reproduce nature's highest ideal. What is he but a worshipper of beauty ? As the scientist gives his homage to truth, so the artist gives his homage to beauty. This is the aspect of nature that is his lode-star. It is his special gift and province to see the excel- lences, the wonders, that may be embodied in form, symmetry, harmonious sound, proportion, grace, color, light and shade ; and these attract and hold him. These excite his reverence, elicit his grateful joy and adoration, impel his devotion, and determine his career and service. He is a worshipper at the shrine of beauty. There is the worthiness which wins his special fealty. Again, there are those who render their chief homage to a moral idea, — to some external object of social reform or philanthropy. The) - may have nothing of the artist's capacity. They may know comparatively little of science, and have neither taste nor ability for its pursuit. ' Yet, no less than the artist and the man of science, they have their su- preme object of devotion. They would live for th : welfare of others, — for the righting of the wrongs of humanity, for the relief of the burdened, for the lifting up of the weak, for the opening of opportu- nities to the neglected and ignorant. Very likely this class of persons, too, may have little to do with the ordinary instituted forms of so-called worship. Many of this class of men and women in our time, seeing how little the churches in their organized capacity are doing for social reform and for causes of public philanthropy, are disposed to stand aloof TWENTY-FIVE SLUM from them altogether. They think that they can spend the hours of Sunday to better benefit for the world than joining in the customary church sen i Perhaps they are inclined to say that humanity • in its most enlightened portions, has outgrown the need of such services. Neverthi per- sons, though eschewing what is eccle Uy called worship, have in their special aim and work the es- sential spirit and mood of worship in its nificance. That which draws and holds their higl homage, and commands the self-sacrificing devotion of their lives, is the idea of benevolence to mankind. This idea is to them the essence of the highest conceivable excellence, or worthiness. This, it they were to put their conception of infinite Being into words at all, — this idea, raised to the infinite degree, would be their highest definition of God. As he is the active power of supreme benevolence working for the welfare of finite creatun . can they render the best and most acceptable service to him by the same kind of work for the well-being « f humanity. For this class of persons especially, the old Latin proverb seems to embody the id' worship: " Laborare est orare," — "To work is to worship." I have given these different illustrations for the sake of showing that, though we may discard what is technically called worship in the history of religion, we do not thereby free ourselves from the essential thing which the word ivorship in its general signifi- cance covers. Every true and earnest soul gives its homage somewhere ; has some supreme and over- WHAT DO WE WORSHIP ? 297 mastering attraction that makes a worthy aim in life ; has some conception of worthiness above all others that moulds and determines life. It may be an idea, it may be some aspect of nature or the universe, it may be the inspiring example and character of some great person, it may be some grand aim of philan- thropy, or it may be some grander, all-comprehend- ing conception of universal excellence. Whatever it be, this is practically for such soul its object of worship. This creates the shrines at which it bows in its sincerest and most effective devotions, sets for it the goal of life, shapes character and career, and determines destiny. It must be further said, too, that not only do the great, sincere, and earnest souls have such objects of worship, but little souls, and selfish souls, and souls that are full of vicious impulses and travel evil and pernicious courses, have also their wor- ships. That idea or attraction or wish, whatever it be, which gives the dominant impulse in their lives, is the object of their homage. It may be a very sor- did and degrading idea of life. It may be some vicious and criminal affection. It may be some poor, little, selfish aim that drags the soul down instead of lifting it up, — as the mere accumulation of money, luxurious self-indulgence, satisfactions of carnal ap- petite, ambition for personal power and distinction for their own sake. But, whatever it be, there is the god they actually worship. There is the shrine at which their hearts bow and their real vows are per- formed. Even if custom or policy take them to church on Sunday, and with decorous attitude and 298 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS pious mien they go through with all the outward worshipful forms of the place, it docs not follow- that their hearts will be in the words of praise that may be sun-', or of prayer that may be spoken : their actual worship may not be there. Wherever their strongest desires and affections may be, there will be their hearts, and there their real homage; per- chance in some place the very farthest in its atmos- phere and habits from a church, and amid scenes with which reverence, holiness, and purity could scarcely find a home. Their controlling aim in life, though itself unworthy, has become for them their idea of worthiness, and hence defines their worship. Such souls, indeed, are in the moral attitude oi saying to evil, "Be thou my good." The question, then, recurs, Will an organized public expression of religion, such as the ordinary Sunday service provides, be of any use in helping people to get away from this low plane of horn up to a higher, — away from sordid and harmful ser- vices to low aims and desires up to something more worthy and ennobling? Will, in other words, the technical institution of worship be an aid in purify- ing and elevating the actual worships of men and women in their daily living ? In order to answer this question aright, we must ask whether there is not some still nobler, at least some more comprehensive and universal aim in life, some grander and more commanding object of human homage, than any we have thus far noted. The scientific man, we said, is a worshipper of truth. The artist is a worshipper of beauty. The philan- WHAT DO WE WORSHIP ? 299 thropist gives his highest homage to the idea of active benevolence. And, on the other side of the moral line, the miser worships money. The ambi- tious demagogue worships power and popular ap- plause. The voluptuary worships carnal pleasure. That is, each soul makes a specialty of any impulse or aim that is all-dominant with it. But is there not some one aim or impulse which is, or may be, the possession of all souls, which is never quite lost out of human nature under any conditions, which at least always appears in human nature under good conditions, and which will unite all souls in a com- mon homage ? Most certainly there is. And that common impulse or aim is the moral ideal embodied in the highest conceivable excellent e of personal char- acter. Here is one object which should have the homage of all hearts ; one goal of attainment toward which all human beings need to set their faces, and strive toward, in order to complete their natures as human beings. Here is the central essence of all worthiness, and therefore of all genuine worship. However worthy and ennobling any special object of homage and devotion may be in itself, it may leave human character in some of its features quite undeveloped and incomplete. The man who is devoted to the truth of science may lead a most useful life and render vast benefit to his fellow-men ; and yet he may be morose, ungracious, and even criminally neglectful of social responsibilities and obligations which he has assumed, — a one-sided, imperfect character. The artist may be enraptured with beauty, and bring forth productions which shall 300 l \\ i:n l v-ii\ i. -i RM win the admiration and awaken the most reverent and noble feelings of all who behold or listen. > from the very delicacy of his ition, be peculiarly susceptible to those temptations which come through temperament; is open especially to personal suspicions and jealous 1 trom his mood of exaltation, when his spirit mingles in the closest worship with his supreme ide that whether in the body or out of the body he hardly knows, he is apt to be ast down into the depths of mental depression and despair. He needs, there- fore, the balance of sonic and more univ. principle to give him self-poise and serenity. And even in the philanthropist, noble as his work may be, we sometimes miss sadly some of those finer qualities of spirit that carry the charm of affection, courtesy, and good will into the personal relations of life. Thus, in general, the special aim and horn- need to be included in some larger I which shall balance, control, and complete the character on all sides; and only the moral ideal of the highest conceivable excellence, well-rounded and perfect at every point, can furnish the object of such homage. Xow, human nature at its highest has an entrain ing vision of such an ideal ; and human nature at its lowest has now and then a glimpse of such an ideal, — some little ray of light striking down from the shining glory even into its darkness. But we need all the helps possible to enable us to keep the vision full and bright ; or to increase the ray of light, if we only have a little glimpse of it, and to hold our steps WHAT DO WE WORSHIP? 301 firm and steady toward it. There is so much in the ordinary course of human life that is disheartening and depressing, the demands and necessities of the body are so importunate, we are all so liable to be absorbed in the petty and selfish interests of daily care, there are so many temptations dragging at our feet and luring us to this or that fancied satisfaction, that it is with the utmost difficulty that we keep our gaze steadily fixed and our feet moving steadily for- ward to the goal of our highest moral ideal. We need all the helps possible in this contest. And the Sunday service is one of these helps. For the world at large, it is a very important help. This organized public expression of religion ordi- narily called worship is designed to represent and enforce the moral ideal of life. It upholds the. standard of our highest faculties and aspirations against the rule of our passions and the sway of all lower tendencies. It upholds the standard of the spirit against the sovereignty of the flesh, of mental and moral satisfactions as more noble and enduring than material. It presents self-sacrificing devotion to a grand aim in life as nobler and more enriching than any possible form of self-indulgence. And it strives to keep before our eyes, amid the dissipating and illusive enticements of our every-day living, the attainment of a well-rounded, all-sided, perfect char- acter, — perfect in its moral integrity, in its affec- tional sympathy and helpfulness, and in its equipoise of aspiration and trust, — as the one absolutely worthy goal of human destiny for all classes and conditions of mankind. 302 I U ENTY-FIVE 5ERM( I know, indeed, how far the ecclesiastical us worship have fallen from a pen implishment of this, their true aim. But they have not faile far as to : tigned to instant disi truc- tion. I think we should all agree that even those forms of worship, in which there still mingle many superstitions and errors, may be better for those who really believe in them than no forms of religious ice at all. And have any of us outgrown the 1 of some form of public recognition of religion ? If the popular forms of religious m tons to fail of their highest useful] <• of the :ieons dogmas, irrational ceremi d secta- rian exclusiveness that accompany them, all the more is it incumbent upon us to do our part to sustain some kind of public institution of religion, where reason shall be left untrammelled and thought be encouraged in its loftiest ambitions; where sec- tarian walls are thrown down, and no ceremony nor doctrine nor letter of Scripture is allowed to Stand in the way of the free spirit of human fellow- ship on the basis of the moral ideal ; where, in fine, the main question to be asked is not, With what sect or under what name or by what creed or ritual do you worship? but What do you worship? What is the controlling aim, the supreme homage, of your life ? And we, friends, do profess to have some such idea as this in our Sunday assemblings here. Shall we not, then, as we come together again for another year of associated effort, come with renewed consecration of purpose, each to be faithful at his post, and, whatever his part may be, to perform it WHAT DO WE WORSHIP ? 303 well, at whatever cost to personal and self-indulgent desire? With such consecration carried into deeds, we may make this house a rich sanctuary of benefit to ourselves and our neighbors,— a veritable gate- way to heavenly integrity, strength, and peace for this community. September 14, 1879. XXI. GOD IN HUMANITY. "One God and Father of all. ibove all, and through all, and in you all."— N«W 1 BS1 IMBNT. -II- who inwardly rules the sun is the same immortal Spirit who inwardly rules thee."— Hrai ■ Man is a mortal god. He leaveth not the earth, and yet dwell- ed a b reat is the greatness of his nature."— Ancient There are doctrines in modern science which point to an identity between the power that exhibits itself as force and law in the material universe and the power that is manifest in human personality. Man seems to sum up in his own nature, under different and higher modes of activity, the various forms of energy and life that were anterior to him in the development of the world-forces. In him, the laws of material nature become perceptions and sen- sibilities. Instinct rises into intuition. Sensation opens into reflection. The blind physical attractions ascend to the height of conscious affections and moral choice. And thus the organizing energy of nature, as moral and intelligent being, is crowned with conscious power over matter. Now, if we fol- low out this thought,— the thought that the organ- izing energy, power, force, or formative and animat- ing principle in nature, reappears, in a new and GOD IN HUMANITY 305 higher form of activity, in the consciousness of man, — we have a richly suggestive theme, which might be named ''Man as the Highest Manifestation of the Power in Nature," or " Man as the Highest Worker in Nature," or, in more theological phrase, "God in Humanity." Perhaps, indeed, we shall have at some time a scientific doctrine of Incarnation. And it is interesting to note how this thought, which science is now beginning to unfold and elu- cidate, has found expression in various religions through the lips of ancient seers, as, for instance, in the passages placed at the head of this discourse. These and kindred passages which might be selected show that, while religion has generally inculcated, especially in the teaching accepted by the mas that man is under the rule of a Providence wholly external and supernatural to himself, there have yet not been wanting those who have had the insight to perceive the truth of the natural immanence of Deity in man, and to proclaim the corresponding truth, — that man, under the guidance of this imma- nent power in his own nature, was meant to be chiefly his own providence. The great mass of the people, under every form of religious faith, have been wont to look for some miraculous aid in the solution of life's perplexing problems. They have expected the heavens to open at their entreaties, and help to be despatched from a divine being believed to be enthroned in the upper world, — some Jehovah, or Jove, or Vishnu, or Krishna, or Christ, — to whose direct supernatural agency they have been accus- tomed to refer every good thing that has happened 306 TWENTY-FIVE SERMi to them and all right knowledge of religious th that they have ed. But the great religious teachers, though sometimes yiel these beliefs of the people, have tried to hint of another kin providential guidance, exclaiming with Jesu made me a judge "i" divider amoi ? Why judge ye not of you what is right?" or with lha, " Self is the '!':... with - subdued, a man finds mfind"; or with the G 'The gods have not given everything to man: it is man who has amel- iorated his own destiny " ; or with the nr I ndu, his own doings, one rises or tail-. . . . Thine own self is the holy stream, whose shrine is virtue. whos is truth, whose bank is character, whose waves are sympathy. There bathe, l > son of 1'andu ! Thy inward life is not by water made pure." " How can teaching help him who is without underst ing? Can a mirror help the blind t " Fort- une comes of he e lion-like man who A work prospers through cnu- not thro vows." If such shining truths as t uld become g eral, how they would revolutionize prevailing relig- ious beliefs and practices, not only among the pe< called heathen, but even in Christendom! For it has been and is to-day the dominant philosophy of the Christian Church that the divine Providence which cares for man acts through some channel of supernal influence exterior to him, and not through his own natural faculties ; that Deity is a being of wholly separate and distinct individuality from man, GOD IN HUMANITY 2>°7 necessarily communicating with him through some outward means of revelation ; that religion, to be genuine and trustworthy, must be something im- parted at the outset by such external revelation, and that its efficacy in any individual case must depend on the continued act of supernatural impartation from this foreign source to each individual soul ; that religion, therefore, with all the graces and virt- ues it includes, is a form of life to be grafted upon man's nature from without rather than a natural gmwth, blossoming, and fruiting of his own native perceptions and energies. I wish in this discourse to set forth the counter doctrine : that religion, with all its beliefs, institu- tions, history, is the natural product of tHe human mind; that the Deity that guides and saves the human soul is in the soul and works through the soul ; that the Providence that cares for humanity and acts specially for the good of humanity is in humanity, and acts chiefly through the human facul- ties. Yet let me remark at once, to prevent misun- derstanding, that this is by no means to say that there is no Deity outside of man and no power or providence above or beyond man. Deity is imma- nent in nature no less than in man, — immanent in the whole universe of being, not only in that which comes under our cognizance, but in the whole possible universe. Wherever there is any kind of existence, wherever there is natural law, wherever there is any manifestation of power, there is the presence of Deity and of providential purpose in- dicated. Within and behind all phenomena there TWENTY-FH is an organific eneq aim. A power that is organific does not pro< eed by Mind chance or capi There is a divinity and providence in the affairs oi the universe, in the affairs of nun. I do not dis- pute that pn •!. But the proposition I would maintain is this: that, wl immonly affirmed that man is connected with Divine Power in some external and supernatural way. man's rela- tion to this Power is really internal, and the Power providence to him by operating in a nat- ural way through his natural faculties. Man draws upon the resources of Eternal Being for his own life, hut he does this through the normal action oi his own normal energies. The first proof I would adduce in support of this proposition is the history of religion itself. All the more recent researches into the history of man's religious development go to show that religion has not come to man by supernal revelation, hut that he has slowly grown into it, and that it has gradually developed its character and power precisely accord- in- to his growing knowledge and intelligence in other matters. Defining religion as the expres of man's sense of his relation to a mysterious power or powers in the universe conceived as affecting in some way the destiny of human beings, we find that, historically, this expression has everywhere had its source in the smallest beginnings, fust appearing in acts and beliefs that seem to the cultivated relig- ious thought of a later time very crude and absurd. These beginnings of religion with primitive mankind are indeed almost lost in their obscurity, so slight GOD IN HUMANITY 309 are they, so little illuminated by rational intelligence, and so mixed with matters that seem entirely foreign to the devout moods of the modern mind. That is, religion in its origin corresponds with the mental condition of mankind in that primitive era. And, in the historical development of religion, this same correspondence has been preserved, disclosing every- where natural continuity and not supernatural inter- vention. When man was in a condition of mental childhood, or wherever he is in that condition to-day, his religion was and is that of a child. When the human race was a child mentally, it "spoke as a child, it understood as a child, it thought as a child," in religious things. Whenever and wherever man has been barbarian, his religion has partaken of bar- barous practices. Whenever and wherever man has been intellectually narrow, his religion has been nar- row, bigoted, severe, apt to fall into bitter propa- gandism and persecution. Whenever and wherever man has been intellectually imaginative, his religion has shown the characteristics of his imagination. With breadth of culture, wiser thought, increase of intercourse, and widening of acquaintance with the human family, and a deeper knowledge of human nature, has come a broader, profounder, and more charitable religion. Looking, therefore, at the his- torical development of humanity, it does not appear as if religion had ever been a gift to man direct and outright from the heavens, ready-made with its be- liefs and institutions for human use, but that it has come slowly and gradually as the natural product of the human intellect itself, under the natural con- ditions of mundane experience. Man ha his relij he has grown int<> everything else dI" value tha . belongs to him. Relij has been evolved from the inborn i and functions of his mind, growing with his growth, under the various disciplii strengthening with his strength. From it > small ii certain natural sentim I of the primitive human mind, enlarging iening with the mind's growing thought under the manifold tuition of outward circumsl Teeable contact with nature, oi spur oi inner and outer forces, it has thus gradually unfol liefs and institutions, its mighty power, ,s, but a.Ko its immortal hi and its sublime m inctities. itive powei b where else in the universe, to work its way up outward to self-manifestation b) a process oi slow 1 ition and -row: I human mind even, which ime to .tent the in ment of the divine on this planet, i. to be created by this slow process, and to be grad- ually adapted to its service by the training and strengthening of its faculties under the push and • s of the manifold f< which the earth has been the scene. And, if religion itself has come into human history through the natural action of man's natural faculties, then much more may we argue that the special aims of religion on which theology has laid stress, such as the providential guidance, education, and destiny GOD IN HUMANITY 3 1 1 of the human soul, will be accomplished in the same way ; namely, not by a supernatural, mysterious Power working outside and above the human fac- ulties, but by a providence which works in and through the human faculties themselves, and which I- none the less creative and divine because it is natural and human. Let us turn, then, to this more practical side of our theme, — to the question of Divine Providence in respect to the actual condition of humanity, individually and collectively, to-day. The way in which the popular theology has met this question — throwing, as it does, so much respon- sibility upon Almighty Tower for man's condition, so little upon man himself — has been, I do not hesi- to say, very demoralizing; though this demorali- zation has not shown itself practically to the extent that it would have done, for the reason that, when it comes to the practical matters of every-day life, people are quite apt to leave their creeds and betake themselves to the teachings of experience and com- mon sense. Their own observation and experience have, in fact, taught them a truer theology than that which they have learned in the churches in Sunday sermons or gathered from so-called religious books and newspapers. The Church has told them of an interposing Deity, working when and where he will, by an instantaneous personal volition not to be ac- counted for, not to be naturally anticipated nor its ways calculated, yet coming in response to zealous human prayer; but, in their daily life, they have learned of a Deity that is as regular as the sunrise and sunset, that comes like "the seasons in their j 12 TW1 N l V-l ivi. 3ERM order," and works everywhere through the ra< natural law, of a Deity, therefore, whose o be in be depended upon. The- ology has pictured to them a Deity wl would bear them up in their hands" and save them from destruction, though they should violate nat ; but life's experiei shown them that the angels that come to the rescue of man from the dire It of broken laws which are never annulled, either in the guise of human beings or ol ( me not at all. Th< ken factory -iris who threw themselves fron upper window of their burning mill found I to prevent their b< shed to death upon the ment. The tive intervention for their ue — which man's afterthought is now providing for such emergenci uld have been a perma- nent fire attached t«» the wall. Thus it is that the experi if common life and common rvation are conducii I tach a truer doctrine of divine help and guidance for man than has been commonly inculcated by the ecclesiastical theology hristendom. Peopl -.dually learning that the grand providential r< 3 for insuring human ; i ess and happiness are stored within the keep- ing of human beings themselves, — th i 1 sufficient of Deitv is naturally incarnate in humanity to endow humanity with the power of being a providence and a savior to itself. If it be necessary to support these propositions by arguments, we can hardly go amiss of the illus- trations in proof of them, to whatever part of human GOD IN HUMANITY 3 I 3 history or society we turn. Look at the progress of human society itself, — its progress in knowledge, in intellectual grasp and power, in natural science, in the arts, in political and social morality, in every- thing that concerns the well-being of man. How has it all been effected? Not certainly for man by a power outside of him, pouring into his nature, as if it were simply a passive receptacle, all these pos- sessions and achievements of knowledge, virtue, and civilization ; but they have all come by the laborious exertion of mail's own faculties, they are the grand result of his own putting forth of effort. They have not been given to him ; but he has acquired them, earned them. The human not have them at the start; but they are the wages of its toil, the achievements of its thought and enterprise through all the generations of its existence on the earth. And they are related to the great Tower that is the ultimate cause of all things- only by the fact that it was in the powers that produced them. The Deity that has made man what he is in civilized society to- day lias not been shaping and moulding him so much from the outside as from the inside. The Divine Power has been manifest in the human thirst for knowledge, in the mental effort to resist or control natural forces, in the long struggle of humanity, and in the impulse at the bottom of the struggle, out and up from material and barbarous conditions of existence into a life of mental enjoyment and of social justice and love. We may say that Deity has done it. Yes ; but it is Deity that had incarnated itself in the human race, that wrought in and I.} T\\ I.MV-I l\ through the very su of the human faculties, that assumed flesh and b man him Or look for illustr.ition.it some special poinl the history of human society. The time was when ly ailments and dis direct visitation upon man from Heaven, eil penalty for some sin m faith. ne thought of ti them and ! I ral law. ! them \\ ind in prayer, in faith, in the >me mystic. d spiritual virtue the touch of a holy pei ' rine of d taught in the Xev. ient. riser know'. to human and finil e md only the • • ernatural : cure. Tl is. indeed, even in minds b enlightened, that dise lly sent upon mankind for spiritual discipline; yet I have noticed that even such de\ I belie! do not shrink : resorting to the common human and finite remed instead of 1 of prayer and » ious penance, for ridding thei of the disorders and the discipline together, — a symptom that the old idea is fast vanishing. The modern mind finds the seeds of bodily disease and suffering in some violated law of nature, — violated either wilfully or ignorantly or unavoidably, — though not always vio- I personally by the sufferer : he may sutler for another's trai ion. It finds the cause in bad ventilation, defective drainage, unwholesome food, GOD IN" HUMANITY 3 I 5 in false fashions of dress, in intemperance, licen- tiousness, and other abuses of physical appetite, — in short, in the thousand ways of physical neglect and abuse by which human beings, consciously or unconsciously, violate sanitary laws. And as the human mind has found the cause of physical disease- within the finite conditions of existence, so it has found the remedy there. Since the cause is the violation of natural sanitary laws, the remedy, a preventive as well as cure, must be the knowledge and observance of those laws, with such temporary alleviation as medical science may be able to render by counteracting an evil already done. Here, then, is a plain case — and it is no small or trivial case, this whole vast region of human physical 'disease and — where it is now pretty generally admitted that man is his own providence, his own savior. To call upon an Almighty Power in the heavens to avert mess or to chan suits, to stay the ravages of a pestilence, to keep the cholera from a city, is beginning to be regarded by sensible and thinking pie everywhere as the relic of a superstition which must soon take its place with many other beliefs which the world has outgrown and left be- hind. It is beginning to be seen that the Power has not to be summoned from afar, but is already here; that it has first made its presence known by. the disorder and pain that have ensued on the infringe- ment of some law of nature ; that its presence is in that law, bruised and broken and indeed sinned against ; that it is also in the human knowledge that has detected the fracture and raises the wholesome lUIM',-1!. warning of obedience; in the science that Bends onaries into regions of contagion in the shape of disinfectants, and that has unfol led the moment- ous law of heredity and discovered antidotes sing the demon of poison from diseased blood ; in the public sentiment that establishes Sanitary Commissions and Boards ol He Ith, and demands that streets shall he sewered and swept, dun, premises be kept pure and sweet, and people be taught to obey the lav. eanliness. Hut not only in these channels flows the Power that is a providence for man in his Je with physical dis- We may find it also in more tender guise : in the faithful nursing and watchful care of human sympathy; in woman's gentle fidelity in the sick- room; in her instinctive tact and the magnetic virtue of her pi h ; in the unwearied, patient devotion of a wife' . or mother's love, which often, by its very unweariedncss and patience, saves the sick from the grasp of death. So that this is a view of Providence of which it cannot be said that it is all the cold operation of law: the great element ive comes into it, and is at the very bottom of it, — all the warmth and tenderness of the pui richest, human love, — of that love which is "the fulfilling of the law." And what has here been said of the way of Provi- dence in dealing with man's physical diseases and infirmities might, with a slight change of words, be applied with equal truth to man's moral con- dition and progress. The great law holds good here: that every violation of the principle of right, GOD IX HUMANITY 3 I 7 every departure from virtue, brings, in some shape, the retribution of pain, — brings moral disease and disorder. The disease and pain do not come by any arbitrary fiat of a distant Deity seated on a throne in the upper heavens, but they come as the natural consequence of the moral transgression : they are the direct effect of an evident cause; and the Deity, the divine principle and providence, is there on the spot in that pressure of natural en< which inherently impels a cause to its effect. The Providence is in the warning given by the moral pain, — in the remorse, the stricken conscience, the loss of self-respect and of others' approbation, — tn indicate that there has been moral disobedient e . a warning given, therefore, in mercy to turn the transgressor back to virtue and to moral safety. The husks, the hunger, the swine for company, the disappointment and disgust of the prodigal son in Jesus' immortal parable, were the natural result of the vicious prodigalism to which he had yielded; yet there was a providence in them, — a providence inherent in the very severity of their discipline, — since they drove him back "to him- self " and to the ways of righteousness. The Prov- idence is in the law by which "whatsoever a man sows that shall he reap," and whereby "the way of the transgressor is hard " ; and in the further law that, when man is warned by the hardness of his evil way, warned by penitence and remorse, of his transgressions, every effort which he then makes in virtue, every struggle against temptation, every step he takes in the returning way, will help TWENTY-FH to bring him back to moral health and ; power of help, like the power of retribution, 18 mysterious Being I through of some ti of atonement, but there right at the that first turns his heart homeward to virtue, in the aspiration and hope thai ■ ■■ him, in the very stren :•' which bringing him all this, ■ I? L »ve ? See, then, 'now this sam I ity in humanity. » love! See it in tl I of a mother's love, who, the true hui mother, nevi :es her him into wl vice he wander. ( I in the more general philan- thropy thai is seeking in all the dark and squ corn* ' human It >ivine Love that thus works in the for his fellow-man, — tha 1 crime, to carry, it sible, some comfort, to lift up, if pi raded human beings into a capacity for a pure enjoyment and into a place of moral health. It is Divine Love that is working through the efforts of benevolent men and women to put down intemper- ance, and to check the "social evil," and to emanci- pate human beings from every form of slavery, and to bring into human society the elements of justice and brotherhood. It is through this love of man for GOD IN HUMANITY 319 humanity that Universal Love manifests its provi- dential care, and gets its purposes for human welfare accomplished. Behold the same providential aim, again, in differ- ent phase, — in the love that founds the home and provides for the family and permeates the household with all pure affections ; in the love that shines out of the face of human friendship ; and in that, too, which draws neighbors together in intelligent, help- ful sympathy. What shall we say, also, of that pas- sion for the truth which often comes into the human heart, that devotion to the right, that fidelity to con- viction and conscience, whereby a man will endure il and torture, and go down to death before lie will swerve one jot from that which he believes to be the line of rectitude? What shall we say of the martyr souls of humanity, — those who face the dun- geon, the gallows, the cross, or all the promises frowns of the world, and still stand with manly up- rightness to sav or do the thing that seems to them right and true ? Or of that later type of martyr spirits, blossoming right out of the materialistic en- rises of this busincss-dL- ;e, — the railroad ,'meers, brakemen, sea-captains, who, with their train or ship rushing into the very jaws of destruc- tion, have stood unflinchingly at their posts of duty, and gone down to death with their hands still clinched to their tasks and their nerves serene with heroic self-command, — saving others by their calm courage and lofty presence of mind, while themselves they could not save ? What can we say of any such deeds but that they are an exhibition in humanity of the 320 that makes foi A . in fronl an approaching expn rounds a cui his whole strength into tngine, and brings 1 the ! a miraculous i ill in the virtui '•'. md in the alert- of the < the ski] of his arm. The in their . , while the hero wl '.ken from the train scalded nigh of steam by the •• ■ I ion. Illustrations like these, which might be ini nitely multi] that 1 manifests his power for Inn, and what is the main metho lence for man's guidance and protection. itar) and re- demptive resources, wh d or m orood. ai I within the human Eacult arc made effective through human activity, divine energies arc wielded through the human. They are involved in the very substance oi human thought and fo and skill; in human courage, bravery, virtue, and love; in man's power to learn nature's laws and to put himself, through science and art, into harmony with them. Divine Providence is human providence. The Eternal Power cares for man, protects him, insures his progress, holds him, we may even say in the old Hebrew phrase, "in the hollow of his hand," GOD IN HUMANITY 321 but does it through that portion of the Universal Energy and Love which is made active in the mind, heart, and hand of the human race. Does some one ask, then, Why say " Deity " at all ? Why not say at once, with the Positivists, that Humanity is our God ? Because, let me say in con- clusion, when man finds a firm basis for his knowl- ; when he adheres by an inward necessity to a conviction of truth ; when he stands up courageously to defend the right and to keep his virtue ; when, resisting temptations of selfish ease or pleasure, he shapes his actions by a pure impulse of love and charity ; when he plants his feet so solidly at the post of duty that no threats of peril nor bribes to ambition can move him from his rock of Conscience, — then he feels that he is acting with the strength of a power which, though it may manifest itself through his perception of truth and his individual adherence to right and goodness, is yet not of him- self nor limited by himself, but is at the very basis of the universe and coterminous with the realm oJ all existence; because he is conscious that he is the instrument of a purposive process, reaching out, in respect to its root and its goal, as far beyond any purpose that centres in himself as the vast universe of matter extends beyond his little body of flesh ; because he is conscious that his life, material, men- tal, moral, is but a part of the larger life of humanity, to which he is harmoniously or inharmoniously re- lated in proportion as he follows or does not follow this inward monitor of truth and duty ; because he is conscious that humanity itself, with all its achieve- -22 TWENTY-FIVE si KM ments, with all its capacities and possibilities, is but a little larger part of the vast grandeur of the stu- pendous system of the universe, which in all its parts is animated with one life, by one power; and use he must needs believe that beyond and above humanity there may be other races of finite beings, as above our earth there are other and innu- merable worlds, and that through all these infinite ranges of worlds and races there runs the unity of one vital energy. For these reasons, he says not Humanity, but Deity, when he would express the greatness, the everlastingness, the incomprehensi- bleness of this 1'ower which comes to manifestation in his being, and works in and through his faculties, and is the source of the wisdom and love that are the guiding providence and felicity of his individ- ual and social existence. Though Standing in the strength of his own natural resources and faculties, and relying for present and future welfare upon his perfected manhood, he yet perceives that this strength and this manhood are but the partial rev- elation of a Power older and mightier than himself, older and mightier than the human race. And hence, before the unifying Energy that is working through the inconceivable vastness of things, he lilts his eyes in adoring wonder, and exclaims, "O God, I too, a speck of conscious dust, am thrilled with life from Thee ! " October 10, 1SS0. XXII. THE PERMANENCE OF MORALITY. " Possessions vanish and opinions change, And passions hold a fluctuating seat; But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken And subject neither to eclipse nor wane, I >'■ TV exists." W. Wordsworth. "What Morality have we left?" is the title of a bright article in the Nortli American Review for the current month,* satirizing those modern ethical theories (and particularly the system of Herbert Spencer) which many persons think are destined to supplant the old theological theory of morality as the revealed law of God. My answer to the question would be : I admit to some extent the force of this satirical criticism, though wholly ready to maintain that morality must find some other than a theolog- ical basis, and yet we have all the morality left in the world that there ever was, and a still growing quantity of it. But morality and its foundations have been so implicated with certain theological creeds, the teach- ing has been so prevalent and dominant that the moral law is the directly revealed will of God, and is enforced by a supernaturally decreed system of re- *May, 1881. T\\ I.N I VII V 1. -1 RM Is and punishments extending through all el nitv, that it is not strange, when modern philosi ventures to pronounce these positions untenable and it is plain, on all sides, that the old theological creeds are nearing their downfall, if there should be anxiety and alarm lest the very bulwark morality are to be undermined, and public and pri- vate virtue are to collap.se. Nor should it sm; us it' there should ensue some actual evil on this mt, some temporary confusion ol moral id< some lapses from moral conduct on the part of people tor whom the old moral standard has been loosened by the loss of their old religious faith and who have not yet found any new standard either of religious or moral faith. It should not surprise us if some people should say — some are already saying it — that the moral law is just like religious belief: it is only this or that man's opinion ; it has no authority over others; it is only individual and relative ; there is nothing absolute and unchangeable in it ; at best, it is only tin- voice of the Strongest number of opinions ; as a late writer ex- presses it, it is only what "society " at this moment may happen to demand of me. And, when morality is believed to be nothing more than this, — required conformity to the voice of public opinion, — there arises, naturally, in the human breast a feeling of rebellion to it. Public opinion may be a tyranny. What right except that of might have the majority of opinions to rule the minority ? Why is not my opinion of what I may do as good as my neighbor's? Why should I act to please him, and not myself? THE PERMANENCE OF MORALITY 325 Why not make my own interests and happiness the law of my action? Of what concern is it toothers what I may do, so long as my action does them no harm ? Why may not a man do what he pleases morally as well as mentally, — make a fool of him- self, if he chooses, — if his conduct brings no injury toothers? This is reducing the law of morality to the doctrine of extreme individualism of liberty, and making liberty synonymous with individual license. Yet such questions and reasoning may be heard ; they even appear in print. And there is not a little of this confused, clouded, and practically pernicious view of the moral law among people for whom the old theological basis of morals is gone. Nor should it much surprise us to fincl the Nihil- ists in Russia, or a portion of them, crying out in the same breath against God and against the claim that there is any such thing as moral right. The one type of theological teaching which they have heard is that God has revealed his will as the law of right through the Church, and that the head of the Church — God's vicegerent on the earth, some- times even called God himself — is the emperor of all the Russias, the head of a government which they have never known otherwise than as a per- sonal despotism, whose will was the law for them to obey. What kind of a God and what kind .of a law of right has Russian absolute monarchy been teaching ? What wonder if, under such theological indoctrination, the Russian people, in large num- bers, have come to confound the very law of moral right with the will of the despotic government J20" T\» ENTY-1 IVI. 51 KM which has crushed them, and even the being with the tyranny they are struggling against I Thus incensed, they cry out: "Away with them all, — ernment, Church, God, the Moral Law! To us, they mean but one thing, — Despotism. And potism is mental and moral despair I " Nor need it surprise US that something similar has occurred in France, where, among 1. the working people, the revolt against religion has also been, to a large extent, a revolt against the moral order of society. For here, too, the morality that has : taught has been so implicated with a false theol and has often, too, found such poor exemplification in the daily lives of the priesthood, and the Church as a whole has really done or aimed to do so little lor the enlightenment and temporal improvement of the people, that it is difficult for the people to draw any clear line of distinction between what the Church has taught as theology and what it has taught as morality. They have a strong feeling that the Church, with its orders of priesthood, with its rich benefices, with its lavishly endowed monastic societies, has somehow flourished at their expense ; that it has neglected them, kept them poor and ignorant and miserable, — has, in short, been their oppressor and plunderer. And hence they have declared war against the Church and all that the Church stands for, without stopping to cull the evil from the good. They would sweep it all away, — theology, religion, Deity, the moral law, — level all to the ground, that they may begin anew with abso- lutely fresh materials on unencumbered premises. THE PERMANENCE OF MORALITY 327 And yet, in spite of these evidences of a moral collapse of society in consequence of a growing dis- belief in the old creeds of religion,— in spite, too, of clangers nearer home that I am ready to admit and would not wink out of sight,— to the question, "What morality have we left ?" I repeat my answer, " All that there ever was, and a still growing quan- tity of it." By this, I do not mean that there may not be a temporary relaxation of the moral energies of society and a temporary depression of moral standards, especially in certain classes of people and in certain countries that have been most dominated by the old theologies. There have been such de- pressions, such temporary deflections and retrograde periods, in regard to morality in the past* history of mankind. But the course of human history as a whole has been one of moral progress. The moral power at the heart of the race has always been equal to the emergency of overcoming and annulling any temporary aberrations from the line of healthy moral perception and conduct. And so I argue that this will be the case now : that there will be in human nature ample elasticity of the moral sentiment to insure recovery from any moral paralysis that may be caused by the decay and fall of the old theologi- cal basis of morality ; that morality will still survive all disasters, as it has hitherto, and still grow and progress. But I reach this conclusion not solely or chiefly by the argument of comparison with similar periods in the past. When I say that there is all the moral- ity in the world that there ever was, and that it is 328 T\\ I.N 1 Y-l I\ I. -I KM likely to advance and increase instead of being over- thrown, I mean that the source and vital elements of morality remain : I mean that the roots of il not destroyed, are not touched, by any wind, how- ever fierce, of theological scepticism which ma) an interval be shaking down violently some of its foliage and fruit: I mean that the foundations of morality continue the same and undisturbed, what- ever theological foundations may be undermined and whatever disturbances may ensue to those super- ficial ethical structures which have been confusedly built partly on theological and partly on moral b Genuine morality has always rested on a foundation ot its own. Implicated with certain theological beliefs by the popular religious teaching, it is yet in reality independent <>f all theological beliefs, appears in connection with them or apart from them, and runs down to a root vitally its own, — and that root an ineradicable part of human nature itself. Morality is the best part of religion, but it has not necessarily part or parcel in any theology. And when the confusing teaching which has so long sought to make people believe that the moral law is an essential adjunct of certain theological creeds and not safely to be separated from them shall have passed away, and people shall be trained to trace clearly in their thought the moral law to its own simple and ineradicable root, and to trace with the same clearness, in respect to actual conduct, the practical moral law as it lies plain to sight in that nexus of natural vital energy which binds unerringly moral cause to moral consequence, then shall we THE PERMANENCE OF MORALITY 329 have a revival of morality. That sovereignty which theological faith will have at last let go from its loosening grasp will be seized by moral faith. The standard of moral action will be lifted higher and held with firmer nerve for the guidance of the bewildered flocks that have lost their ecclesiastical shepherds. There will be fresh-voiced, clear-toned rallying-cries, summoning defenders for the right and the true ; an awakening resolution and energy in all the moral factors of society ; a movement forward of the now theologically divided armies in one morally united host against the forces of error and wrong. Then may we expect new triumphs of justice against long-entrenched usurpations and iniquities, and the acquisition for man of new in- dividual rights and of more equal opportunity in the name of human brotherhood. But I may be justly reminded that this is a proph- ecy of rhetoric, and that -what is wanted on this question is thought and logic. Let me try, then, to show what appears to me to be that abiding and indestructible root of morality and source of all moral power which will remain after theological systems may have vanished, and which may be all the more clear and the more powerful when they shall have ceased to obscure the knowledge of it and interfere with the right culture of it. First, I cannot accept as satisfactory substitutes for the theological theories of ethics those revivals of old philosophies which are now urgently advocated and with considerable apparent support from the scien- tific doctrine of evolution, whereby the moral law is 330 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS resolved into an inward impulsion to secure one's own greatest happiness or is explained on the altru- istic utilitarian ground of an obligation to secure the greatest good of the greatest number. I do not doubt that, when a person has reached a very high and refined condition of moral culture, — what we might call the celestial heights of morals, — his own greatest happiness would only be possible when he was making the utmost efforts for the true happi- ness of others. But there are multitudes of people who have not reached that height ; multitudes of people whose present and controlling idea of happi- ness is the satisfaction of self-interests, the gratifi- cation of certain personal desires and aims, the successful pursuit of pleasures of a merely material nature. With this large class of people, their ideas of happiness are so closely identified with the selfish enjoyments belonging to their low grade of life that they are incapable of even appreciating the motive, much less of acting upon it, of sacrificing their own present happiness for the sake of the higher happiness of making others happy. How are these people, who are living on the plane of this low idea of what happiness is, to be reached by an ethical theory which gauges moral obligation by an effort for personal happiness ? So, too, I do not doubt that the ultimate result of the highest moral conduct is the greatest good of the greatest number. But, as a practical test for ascertaining what course of conduct is morally required at any present moment, this utilitarian standard of morality is worthless. At the best, it can be only an approx- THE PERMANENCE OF MORALITY 33 1 imate test, never complete and absolute. For who would ever be able to trace all the results of his proposed action so as to be competent to say what kind of act would effect the greatest good for the greatest number of people who might in some way, at some time near or remote, be affected by it ? If we had to go through with such a calculation before moral action, our moral action would often cease altogether, and could never come with that prompt- ness of decision on which often its whole efficiency depends. And, even though the experiences of util- ity for successive generations may have come to be organized in mental action as intuitions, as is claimed, I yet fail to see how an analysis of the ideas of either utility or of happiness will yield the con- stituent elements of the moral sense as it has devel- oped in the history of mankind. The essential elements of the idea of moral law and the essential elements of the ideas of happiness and of utility are, in my judgment, totally distinct, so that the latter cannot beget the former. Where, then, shall we find the basis or root of the moral law ? I find it in the native intuitive fac- ulty of the human mind, though not in that devel- oped form which the intuitional philosophy usually claims. The root, the ever vital germ of morality, is intuitive: it belongs to the human mind as such, to intelligence per se ; but its development has been under the tuition of experience. Let us see how these statements may be substantiated. According to the now commonly accepted view of the condition of primitive man, there was a time 332 1 WENTY-] l\ I -I RMi when man could hardly be called a moral being. The moral germ or capacity must have been within him, but it was unmanifested. There was only a fierce Struggle for existence amid savage conditions of life. The deepest instinct was for life, — the in- stinct of self-preservation. Whatever thri peril to life was shunned : it was an evil. Whatever promised help to life was sought : it was a good. The primitive man, thus seeking instinctively to pre- serve his life, would begin to classify things as good or evil according as they aided or hindered this instinct for life. And, anon, he would classify per- sons in the same way. It another man attempted to interfere with his existence, to deprive him of it, or to take away the things he had gathered for sus- taining it, the intruder was an evil man, to be resisted. By the very necessity of such a condition of existence, the first reflective act of consciousness on the part of the primitive man must have been the instinctive feeling of a right to his existence, and the consequent right to defend that existence against any external assaults. Hut all this might have gone on without any active moral sense. It merely classified things (and persons) as good and not good. But as soon as the mental perception came to any individual of this primitive race that, if another individual had no right to attack his life or deprive him of anything he had gathered necessary to life, or harm his life in any way, so he had no right to attack that other's life or take away his sus- tenance or bring any harm upon him, then dawned the moral sense, then began the sovereignty of the THE PERMANENCE OF MORALITY 333 moral law. It began in the mental transference to another of the same kind of rights as were claimed for one's self ; it began in primitive man coming one day to think, and say to himself, " If I have a right to existence, then my neighbor-man there has a right to existence ; and, if he has no right to harm my existence, then I have no right to harm his existence." And this is a perception that must just as certainly have come, as soon as there was intelligence enough to understand the relation, as came the perception that two and two make four ; and in it is the germ of all morality. Generalized, it is the intuitive perception of the necessary equation of rights between man and man in their relations to each other. And this is my definition of the moral law. Its popular expression is the Golden Rule, which has appeared in substantially the same form in all the leading religions and nations of the globe ; and its most central ethical word is justice. This definition puts morality on a basis as absolute and unchangeable as that on which the science of math- ematics rests ; a basis independent of the variable phases of theological belief, and that will remain after all the systems of theology that have ever been devised may have passed away. The idea of justice depends on no ecclesiastical creed, nor is it imper- illed by any assaults upon religious faith ; and the intuitive idea of justice is the corner-stone of ethics. And, as we thus find the basis of the moral law in the eternal principle of equity, inevitably made manifest in the human consciousness when the mental perception came of the mutuality of social I w BNTY-FH i 51 relations among men. bo the enforcement <»f the mora] law is guaranteed, perpetually and eternally, in the logical sequence of cause and effeel R «rard for moral obedience, punishment for moral disobe- dience, an- no arbitrary fiat of a distant Deity, I for some - ar judgment-day at the opening of the future world, but they are principles or laws of physical, mental, and social life that are working right here in this world, and in all worlds where intelligent beings arc living and acting 'her. These laws are a part of the very machinery of human action. Right action produces some kind of g 1 fruit as its natural consequence; and wrong action produces BOmc kind of evil fruit as its natural conse juence. The good fruit is order, il health and power, mental and moral productiveness, in fine, all the natural results of obeying natural laws <,t' life, growth, and progress. The evil fruit is disorder, pain, misery, physical derangement, mental and moral incapacity and disaster, — or, in fine, all the natural disturb- ances, failures, and wrecks caused by a violation of the well-known laws of life, growth, and progress, in the largest sense of these words. Good action pro- duces ever better and larger life ; evil action is ever undermining the very forces of life, and tends toward its destruction. In the complicated relations and mixed activities of human beings under the conditions of modern society, of course we do not always see either moral obedience or moral transgression working simply by direct line to its appropriate, natural result. In the THE PERMANENCE OF MORALITY 335 confusion and contradiction of manifold actions there may be mutually neutralizing tendencies ; and yet the net product is the exact result of the really operative moral forces. And sometimes, too, there may be a superficial exterior action that may appear moral and may attain, yet also superficially, its moral rewards ; and this for a time may veil our eyes against discerning the real moral transgression of the actor, and also against detecting the moral degen- eration which is surely going on in his character and is the natural and unescapable result of his har- bored vices. But such successful concealment of the process does Dot prevent the operation of the law of cause and consequence. It is just as impossible for a man to continue to do evil, however secretly, and still keep his nature good, and so go on per- petually to receive the rewards of goodness, as it is for a thorn-bush to bring forth grapes or a bitter fountain to give sweet water. At some time, — though possibly not in this world, and yet most likely even here,— all these disguises must drop away, and the character stand alone in its naked- ness for just what it is, with no capacity for any companionships or enjoyments that are not in accordance with its own nature. But even if the disguises remain, though they conceal, they do not heal the moral disease nor stay the constant de- crease of moral power within. Xo disguise is thick enough to evade the piercing sharpness of that pun- ishment. Equally impossible is it for the character of genuine virtue to miss its highest rewards, how- ever outward appearances may seem to belie the 336 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS rule. It may be easy to take away from the deserv- ing some outward crown of happiness and to press a wreath of thorns in its place. But it is the lot of the most virtuous that they care the least for the outward crowns, — that they are simply content with virtue itself; and there is no force in the uni- verse that can rob them of that highest possible reward which can be accorded to any finite soul, — the growing power for virtue and diminishing sus- ceptibility to any kind of evil Influence. Here, in this natural system of moral reward and retribution as the necessarily distinct and legitimate consequences of certain contrary courses of action, shall we find all needed sanctions for the practical enforcement of the moral law. And, when the theo- logical theories of ethics, with their reliances upon methods of outward atonement for removal of moral guilt, with their decrial of personal righteousness as of less importance to salvation than mental faith, with their appeals to escape some indefinite curse and wretchedness in the world to come rather than a very palpable curse and wretchedness here and now as the result of violating laws of right, — when these theories shall have ceased to obscure and obstruct the natural moral vision of mankind, it will become, not as is sometimes said, more difficult, but really more easy, to appeal to moral motives in the conduct of life and to do it genuinely and effectively. Then will it be seen, as never before, that mankind is re- sponsible for its own condition ; that into the hands of human beings themselves, through their rational intuition of right in their relations with each other, THE PERMANENCE OF MORALITY 337 through their capacity for intelligent understanding of nature's laws and their obligations of reason and conscience to co-operate with them, have been com- mitted the progress, the happiness, the destiny of the human race. More than ever, perhaps it will be charged, does this philosophy reduce human sentiment and con- duct to "mere morality." It is a view of the moral law that does, indeed, detach morals from theology, but not necessarily from religion. Rather does morality, thus considered, blossom into relig- ion. The moral law is detached from the outward authority of Mount Sinai revelations, from the dogmas of miraculous births and Mount Calvary atonements; but it is not detached from, but rather more fully identified with, the supreme aim and movement of the universe. Here, therefore, the central thought of our theme opens toward a higher sweep and wider horizons. What is religion in its strictest yet most generic sense but this : inwardly, in each individual mind, the feeling of relation toward a Universal Power and Law ; out- wardly, individual conduct in the service of that higher Law rather than of selfish aims ? The moral law, in the dim primeval ages, had its prophetic germ in the instinctive feeling of the individual man that he had a right to life and whatever was necessary to life's preservation. When the mental sense perceived that others had equally the same right, then individual men found themselves in- wardly constrained to respect this right in one another. Thus, the germinal instinct of self-preser- 338 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS vation opened into conscience, — a common knowl- edge and confession that preservation was the equal right of all. But all this was on the lowest plane of life, — the plane of mere material life. That was what life first meant, — the perpetuation of physical existence and physical gratifications. But, as humanity progressed in development, higher and higher grades of life were discerned,— the life of the affections, sympathies, and charities, the life of thought, the life of inquiry and search after truth, the life of equity, justice, and rectitude ; in short, the affectional, mental, moral life. And then, too, it became evident that man attained his richest and most satisfying manhood when he lived not in and for the body merely, but for the preservation of this higher life of mind and heart and soul ; and that the lower forms of life must always be subordinated, often sacrificed, to the higher ; that sometimes even the existence of the body, or the individual physical life, must be yielded up, in order to save the higher life of the mind's integrity or the heart's purity. And, when this point is reached, it is but a step to the central seat of the most genuine religion, — to the conviction that it is not the individual in- terest, the individual life, that the great world- process is bent toward sustaining and preserving, but some universal interest and life which the in- dividual was meant to share and stand for and promote ; but a step to the spirit that cries to the Law of Truth and Righteousness, "Though thou slay me, yet will I trust thee"; but a step to the practical devotion which, in utter self-forgetfulness, THE PERMANENCE OF MORALITY 339 loses life to find it again in the finer, larger truth and in the bettered condition of humanity. And this is religion. May 22, 1 88 1. XXIII. THE PRACTICALITY OF THOUGHT. " A thinking man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have." — T. CARLYLE. Last Sunday, I gave you what all, I suppose, would acknowledge to be a " practical sermon." It was concerned directly and solely with conduct and those springs of conduct that exist in the impulses and affections of the heart. It had nothing to do with theories or speculations or intellectual beliefs, except by implication to condemn them as tests of conduct and character. To-day, I am to give a sermon which may seem to some persons, at first glance, to be inconsistent with the tenor of my teaching a week ago, — a sermon on the Practicality of Thought. I propose to defend thought as an ele- ment of religion, even when it is largely concerned with considering theories and determining intellect- ual beliefs. Yet there is no real inconsistency between the two positions. However strongly we may urge the conduct-side of religion, — so strongly that, when we hear a discourse with specially apt emphasis pre- senting that side, we are moved to exclaim : " That is all there is that is vitally practical about religion, all that is of any account ; let us have that, and we THE PRACTICALITY OF THOUGHT 34I may let all the beliefs and creeds and speculations concerning religion go," — I say, however strongly we may urge this view, and maintain (and maintain truly) that preaching should be directed to this end, yet it may also be maintained, and with equal truth, that behind this conduct-side of religion there must be a solid, substantial thought-side, to give the con- duct-side legitimacy. Conduct must have beneath it a logical basis of rationality, or else it lacks valid- ity. It may not be always necessary, and often it detracts from direct practical effectiveness, to point out in detail the separate layers of this groundwork of sound reasoning; and yet it is there, if the con- duct be true. It may have become so inwrought into the mental temperament as intuition and in- stinct that it may be appealed to more effectually in many cases without the construction of a logical syllogism ; and that kind of direct moral presenta- tion of the conduct-side of life is apt to be regarded as more practical, simply because it is more direct. But the thought-side is also practical. As an ele- ment in the progress of religion, even of what is called practical religion, thought is eminently the active power that effects the progress. Mankind would now be bowing down before idols of wood and stone as an act of religion, instead of doing right- eousness, had not rational thought come in to clear away the superstitions on which idol-worship rested. And even at this day there are many superstitious beliefs which, with vast multitudes of people, are standing in the way o*f their seeing that the purest practical religion is the doing of righteousness. 342 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS Only the dispelling of ignorance, only the enlighten- ment of thought, can do away with the worship of beads and Bibles, and bring in the higher worship that is in spirit and truth. The Practicality of Thought, — that, then, is our theme to-day. Religion in its completed wholeness is threefold. It is thought, it is sentiment, it is action. There may be a question whether it begins with thought or with sentiment, but there can be no question that its proper end is action. My own idea is that the elements of thought and sentiment appear together ; that, if what may be called senti- ment, or feeling, be excited in the beginning of religious development, whether in the race or in the individual, there must immediately arise some thought, some conception, of the object of the feel- ing, though it may be a very rude and very inade- quate conception. Or, if anything gives rise to some conception or thought of a mysterious power external to man, such as has usually been the object of religious contemplation, then of necessity some feeling immediately arises toward this power, — a feeling corresponding with the thought. If the thought be chiefly of a being of terrible majesty and might, then the feeling will be chiefly one of fear and awe ; but, if the thought be of a being of loving kindness and tender mercy as well as of power, then the feeling will partake largely of gratitude and love. So these two, sentiment and thought, go together. In the development of relig- ion, they are simultaneous and reciprocal in their operation ; and action, which comes after, is their THE PRACTICALITY OF THOUGHT 343 legitimate product. Unless they result in action, they are sterile, and their existence is in vain. In the perfection of religious development, the three elements are combined in harmonious proportions. In this harmonious combination, sentiment is the impulse, thought the guide, and action the goal. In this arrangement, it will be seen that thought is the specially important element. It is that which connects impulse, which in itself is blind, to its proper consequence in deed. Without this, impulse might rush unguided to some goal ; but it might be a goal having no validity in the truth of things or in human benefit. If sentiment prevail with exces- sive preponderance in religious experience, we have that superlative emotional demonstration which may be called the hysteria of religion, — the ecstasy, trance, " slaying power," of the revivalistic meeting, where, for the time, thought and reason and even physical self-control are dethroned, and the resulting action resembles more the incoherent ravings of an inebriated man or the convulsions of an epileptic than the conduct of a rational being. Or, if senti- ment does not preponderate to this excess, but still too largely dominates, there results a type of re- ligion which spends itself chiefly in emotional religious ceremonies, and is afraid of thought as irreligious, and does not connect religion very dis- tinctly with acts of daily life. But, again, it is pos- sible that thought may preponderate too much over sentiment; and then there results a type of religion that may be morally correct and philosophically true, and yet coldly moral and true, — a religion wanting 344 ' u EN l \ -FIVE -I RMI warmth, enthusiasm, and aspiration, and hence apt • connected with a bloodless and nerveless kind of morality. And, still again, thought and senti- ment may both he intensely active; hut it is narrow thought and uncultivated sentiment, — the most mis- chievous and practically pernicious of all the possible combinations of the constituent elements of religion. Hence come the bitter spirit and de< sectarian- ism, bigotry, persecution, wars for enthroning beliefs, imprisonment and slaughter of bodies tor the sake of saving souls. And the remedy is always a truer sentiment, that shall embrace humanity as well as imagined divinity, and a broader thought, that shall give a truer conception of divine being and divine law. And, yet again, what will seem, perhaps, most strange of all, and yet is a very common thing to happen, there may be religious action without thought or sentiment, — the result without the I au This is where religious activity has become merely traditional, formal, and ecclesiastical. The have existed in the past: the sentiment and the thought were vital in the minds of people genera- tions ago; and they produced certain institutions and habits of action which may go on acting of themselves and be participated in by men and women who no longer believe the thought nor feel the sen- timent. And there is a good deal of this kind of religious action in the world : it is the formalism and hypocrisy, the crying evil, of instituted religion. Such, then, is the general relation of these three elements of religion to each other and to the com- pleted fulness of religion, whether historically in a THE PRACTICALITY OF THOUGHT 345 whole people or in individual character. And now, on this general basis, I wish to show how practically necessary is thought in this combination ; how that element which seems in itself to be the most specu- lative is in fact the most practically beneficial in the result. And first, to this end, let us look at the province of thought in the general activity of human life and work. This age in which we are living is generally styled a practical, utilitarian age. It is an age of vast material enterprises and of intense devotion to the physical interests of the human race ; an age of commerce, trade, mining, farming, manufacturing ; an age of scientific discovery and invention, of mar- vellous progress in the useful arts, and of such suc- cessful appliances of inventive skill to supply the needs of mankind as even a hundred 1 years ago would have been declared simply miraculous. It is pre-eminently an age of activity, and of activity on what would have been called, in the religious phrase- ology of a half-century ago, the practical "worldly" side of human life. Of course, the age has other ac- tivities. But it is, by distinction, an age of practical affairs more than it is religious, more than it is liter- ary, more than it is philosophical, more than it is poetic or musical or aesthetic in any form ; more than it is military, frequent and bloody as its wars are ; more, even, than it is moral or philanthropic. It is a commercial, utilitarian, business-devoted, sci- ence-learning, and art-inventing age, — an age of ac- tion and practicality per se. But where is the root of this action ? It is in thought. It is in the human 34 r » TWI.M V-l I\ I SI RMONS mind. The activity is not blind, un guided move- ment. If it were, it would not hit the mark of complishment so generally and precisely as it does. The things achieved arc thoughts in somebody's brains before they are even begun. The practicality in all its phases, from the sailing <>f a ship t<> the dis- covery of a planet, is originated and directed by thought. Thought is applying itself to different problems than used to absorb the greatest thinkers, but it is thought none the less. Instead of brin_ out a system of theology like Calvin's Institute now brings out a steam engine. Instead of invent- ing a dogma for reconciling heaven and earth that were never estranged, it now invents a locomotive to go around the earth and bring into amit\ tranged nations. Thought is more dispersed than it used to be in earlier ages. It is not limited so much to the philosopher's brain or to the scholar's stud}-. It stands with the mechanic at his bench. It i active in the manufacturer's brain. It throbs in the energy of the great magnates of the world's trade. It appears in miners and engineers, in the discover- ers and inventors, and in a host of practical workers all through this busy world. If the great leaders of thought are fewer than once, it is because the number of thinkers is greater. The thought-army is made up of brigadiers. It was thought that tun- nelled the Alps, and brought the lines of excavation from the opposite sides within an inch of each other, under the mighty mass of the mountain above. It was thought that scaled the Rocky Mountains with a railroad ; thought that put a whispering wire under THE PRACTICALITY OF THOUGHT 347 the Atlantic, and girdled the globe with an electric language; thought that is making night like unto day by the electric light ; thought that has charted the ocean, and sails and steams across it ; thought that organized commerce, banking, and government ; in fine, it is thought that is the mainspring of all this bustling activity of the human world. It is thought that guides, controls, foresees, marks out the pathway, invents the machine, manages it when made, devises the instrumentality, and holds it to the purpose for which it was devised. It is thought applied to prac- tical problems, but it is none the less thought.. In- deed, it is one of the standing complaints of the churches that the thought of men is so much ab- sorbed in these utilitarian and materialistic interests of life that little of it is left for the service of relig- ion, so that church pews are empty and the old creeds go begging for believers. Now, if thought be so important and fundamental an element in the very domain of these practical affairs of life, much more must it hold this master >,sition in those departments of life which may be called mental, moral, and religious. The great thought-producers of the world have been the in- spires of human history and the sustainers of human action. Socrates, Plato, Kant, were mainly thinkers. They spent their lives in philosophy. Yet their thoughts have been, and still are, the sus- tenance of millions of minds. People who have never read a word that they said or wrote are yet mentally richer, and have had their own thoughts shaped and colored by the thoughts which such mas- ter think. ehind them. It while even for a master mind, thai itating hold on empyrean of the the : truths tific • The liea md the imagination have alii. that are immortal. The is not the poetry in which sentii tea, but that in which the thought ifl enti- ment. And, again, when must n< the mural law, thought is as much the : sentiment is. There ■ntimen' • this feeling can arise, thi mental | m ol siime truth that kindles it. Behind I Golden Rule, •• 1 >o unto "th. ill) unt<> you," lies the action, — the pel t which 1 demand from another as my right I right. 1 'h is » the very root «»f the . of justice; and upon it has been built, layer by x, story by story, the whole pr :n of md jurisprudence. It is but a thought ; but it is a thought that susl >vernment ol the universe, and all human governments, so far as they are stable and durable. And, in the moral problems that confront humanity to-day, nothin THE PRACTICALITY 01 THOUGHT 349 more necessary than clear and wise thought as a tical element in settling them. Humane senti- ment is good, and is needed ; but humane sentiment alone cannot effect a solution. Excessive amiability may be, indeed, a hindrance to moral reform, grant- ing indulgence where nature demands a retribution. uch social problems as poverty, intemper- ance, licentiousness, criminality, while love and com- ion may furnish the motive power, the utn wisdom of thought is require'! to supply the reme- dial instrumentality. When we come to religion, the practical powei thought is still more strongly illustrated. Behind all great religious movements there have been great thoughts. We greatly mistake, if we think that Christianity began mainly in a fresh development <>! religious sentiment, or that its dominant feature was a new kind of "external religious action without any is in thought. Jesus was not pre-eminently a thinker. lie produ ihical system of thought. Yet he was one in whom thought, senti- ment, and action we tbined in an exceptional >f harmony. And as, with reference to the existing religion of Judaism, his action was revolu- tionary, so was his thought. 1 le continually violated traditions and commandments, and taught men He distinctlyjproclaimed the abrogation of the Jewish law ; and, in place of its ceremonial act means of securing peace and blessedness, he incul- 1 the idea of the doing of righteousness. The Jewish Messianic conception he- adopted, but trans- formed it, so that it became almost unrecognizable, 350 TWENTY-FIVE SERW with thoughts of his own. In fine, it was from such ideas as these which Jesus preached, and which Paul and the other apostles worked over, with la additions, that there came that great dramatic tem of thought which was the strong motive power in the organization of primitive Christianity, — the scheme of a second coming of Christ in the clo of heaven, and of a new-made earth and ' ianic kingdom, in which Jesus was to reign personally over the living and risen saints. Here was a system of belief, a creed, which, though it proved to be I in form, held thoughts which had a mighty sway over the unlettered people of that time. Look at more recent history. The Protestant Reformation had its origin in the awakening of the human mind to a consciousness of its very right to think as against the authority of the Roman priest- hood. And, when Luther came, he rallied the re- formers around the idea of the Bible as the word oi God, and each man to read and interpret it for him- self, as against the idea that the priest, or even the pope voiced the word of God. Behind the Ri mation was this great central thought, — the Bible, and the Bible only, the rule of faith and practice, the individual reader of it being his own interpreter. It is a thought which later thought has had to correct ; yet, for the time, it was a great step for- ward in intellectual development, and held the seecl- sxain from which the great Protestant movement has grown and spread until it has passed beyond the limits of a religion to become a civilization. Cal- vinism, again, derived its power to shape intellects I HE PRACTICALITY OF THOUGHT 351 ally and morally the Protestant world, for two and a half centuries, from its thought,— not from the abso- lute truth of its thought, but because it had a defi- nite, clean-cut, logically welded system of thought, put into words that the common mind could under- stand. Accept its premises, and you went on irre- sistibly to its conclusions ; and it was not until within the present century that its premises were to any great extent denied within the limits of the Protestant Church. This system of thought, which became the staple doctrine of the pulpits and the mental and spiritual food of the pews, and which was meant to be accepted on its logical merits by the individual men and women who heard and read it, trained people to intellectual and moral robust- ness. Whatever may be said of its effect on the heart, it was a vigorous discipline of the mind and the conscience. By close alliance with the doctrine of civil liberty and political independence, it shaped the polity of States, settled New England, and be- came one of the strongest elements in practically moulding the political and social life of this North American continent. The practical power of thought has been shown again in the progress of Protestantism and in the overthrow of Calvinism. As Protestantism had its origin in the awakening consciousness within the human mind of its right to think, so nearly every new denomination or sect or religious movement that has come in the course of Protestant history has sprung out of and been rallied around some new thought. The thought sometimes has been poor and narrow; yet it has at least shown the indepen- e of the thinker, and 1 hi to win it lowers by appealing to their thii ce of Protestantism is mai es in the progi bt, — wta new statement of truth, some i old truth, some modification ol trine, has < hal- id the judgmenl of the old church, and, if not pted there, I ich. The I'nivers ilist and I (1 ( 'alvinism on inal poinl I ! with two new the new u mark to which then' the conflict did net then end. I ' of the new ; denomi* »ns that until t! mmunicat their own creeds. Unitarianism, in turn, after i; tion from ( Orthodoxy, 1" delusively ethical and formal. It seemed to have spent its spiritual energy in a and had n<> system I philosophy of its own. Complaint was made that its sermons wer< homilies enough on the plain, (•very-day duties of life, but arid and cold, without spiritual enthusiasm or sustenance. The Trans dental movement came with it> spiritual philosophy and fresh enthusiasm for humanity; and Unitarian- Ism at first fought it, persecuted its . not by the fagot and thumbscrew, but by ways that were effectual to remove some of them from their pulpits. Vet, in moving them from Unitarian pul- THE PRACTICALITY OF THOUGHT 353 pits, it lifted them — like Emerson and Parker — to become teachers of the world ; and Unitarianism, to a large extent, though not as yet very graciously, has finally accepted, to save itself from inanition and death, the very philosophy of religion which it had tried to cast out with these heretics. And, to-day, it is thought again that is newly mov- ing the religious world, — thought that has sprung from modern science and follows its method. The new religious philosophy, that is certainly coming in the old philosophy of supernaturalism in all its forms, is not yet definitely systematized. But it is in the air. Its power is felt, more or less, in all the churches. It is newly writing the creeds. It moulds the Biblical criticism of the Scotch Presby- terian, Robertson Smith; it revises the Bible in the Church of England and in the very heart of American Orthodoxy; it rewrites the Bible from the Stand-point of rational historical criticism in the Dutch school of theologians; it is remoulding the time-honored institutions of France; it is even felt by the pope in the Vatican, and keeps him on the eve ot flight from a rebellious populace. It appi in the secular journals and magazines as well as in the religious; in literature and in poetry quite as much as in the new treatises of theology. It .spe- cially is evident in science and in a broader social philosophy. It is in far-off India and Japan, and even in stable and stagnant China and in fatalistic Mohammedanism. Thus, everywhere the new relig- ious thought is in the mental atmosphere of the age, dispelling the darkness of superstitions, scattering 354 TWENTY-FIVE SERM old errors, bringing in the light of larger truths. And everywhere it is shaping the faith of the future, — a faith which, when it comes, will be the most practical of all faiths, lifting the human mind into a grander and surer trust, laying upon the human heart and conscience a deeper sense of responsibil- ity for the world's welfare, summoning States to a finer justice, trade to a stricter honesty, and welding society into a nobler bond of human brotherhood, in which, at last, human shall mean humane. January zz, \ XXIV. THE GLORIOUS GOD. " God's glory is a wondrous thing, Most strange in all its ways, And, of all things on earth, least like What men agree to praise." Tins little verse was the seed-text from which this discourse grew ; and I cannot, perhaps, better intro- duce my subject than by telling you just how the erowth started. The verse is one of five which stand together in our Hymn Book; but those five are selected from a much larger number, and the hymn to which they belong was written by the devout Roman Catholic, Faber. Though the gen- eral sentiment of the hymn is one to which our hearts might respond, there are in it certain ways of explaining religious truths (I refer more especially to the whole hymn as Faber wrote it) which would hardly accord with the thought of those of us who are accustomed to join in these Sunday services here. And, in looking over the pages of our book to select hymns for our weekly services, I have some- times passed by this fine hymn, which for its general sentiment I wanted to take, because this verse in particular seemed to be contrary to my customary teachings. We believe, do we not, in a rational, I \ 1 Y-l 1\ 1. -1 KM* »NS natural religion, immediately connected with the tical, intelligible, every-day duties ami dis] tions <>t' mankind, — a religion chief!) synonymous with plain, simple g ; with good efforts, a: with know'., of ami obedience to the natural laws that stamped upon, and the uplifting work within, the world of matter ami the world oi man; and sueh obedience, "ions and good deeds, which, in our wa) of thinking, are the best manifestation of divil r in human- ity, it appears to us, men in general d< ]. raise," when they clearly see and understand them. This verse, on the contrary, seems to inculcate the idea of religion as trange and foreign to man's natural experience imething to come by mysterious and spe • which the natural mi cannot be expected to comprehend nor even to praise. Its key-thought, apparently, is that old conception of Orthodoxy, that G 1 revelation of himself, not only in history, but to the individual soul, is miraculous, — an interposed visitation by the Holy Spirit for purposes of conversion, and in specially providential ways not to be tin I nor judged by human reason. And, very likely, some such thought as this was in Fabcr's mind when he wrote the verse. But Faber was a true poet. And in every true poet, religious or other, there is a pro- founder meaning than can be translated by any prose rendering. It is for this reason that many of the old hymns and anthems, which conform verbally to a theology which we discard, may yet do service THE GLORIOUS GOD 357 in the expression of a feeling that goes deeper than theology. And last Sunday, as I read this hymn to you to be sung, choosing it then as I had once or twice before with a silent protest against a portion of it, another possible meaning of this special verse came to me, and therewith the thought-kernel of this discourse, — which I bring you to-day, — over which I have ventured to write the words, "The Glorious God." And yet, after writing the words there, I shrink from the theme. Shall any one venture to sound the depths of that mystery of infinite being in which we, and this universe and all things in it, live and move and have our being? Shall any finite mind have the audacity to attempt to portray the ways, the attributes, the aims of Infinite Mind ? attempt to talk of an existence which, by the very fact that we call it infinite, we admit to be boundless, inca- pable of being described, incapable of being compre- hended ? Does not the old text meet us, to forbid the essay at the outset, — "Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out " ? We can understand how the believer in a miraculous revelation of Deity, the believer in a scheme of theology which is alleged to contain a celestially illuminated chart of God's entire nature and dealings with mankind, should venture to speak of his power and glory as some- thing which man can define and describe. But how can one to whose thought Deity is and must be, by the very necessity of the case, largely hidden, one to whom infinite Being means literally and actually unbounded and illimitable being, — and the unfathom- 358 TWENTY-FIVE SERMl able unknown must ever be more than the known, — how can such a one dare to attempt any expression of such a thought as the glory «»t" God? Hut, on the other hand, if we can retain, with the natural exercise of our faculty of reason, anything of Hie religious sentiment ; if w< to define ; ion as anything more than or different from morality, then it is necessary that there should remain some such thought as this; and, if the thought, then also some possible way of giving it utterance Words in. iv not utter it fully, — this thought of the possible divine glory : music may often sound its depths deeper than words. \Yt words may the interpretation, even though not able to make it complete. And at this day, when positive knowl- edge is our boast and the tendency is so stroi confine thought to the limits of the world of phe- nomena; at this day, when we go to the scien and the cyclopaedias to explain all the mysteries of the world-forces, and the theologies in which we were bred arc vanishing like the fairy stories of our childhood, and what we once read as history is turning into uncertain tradition and legend and myth; at this day, when the archaeologists and biologists are following back the trail of unbroken evolution in the history of man and the history of the planet he occupies, for vast ages back of the time where we used to put creation, and the words "he- redity " and " law " and " force " are applied as labels to whole regions of life formerly thought to be under the direct control of a personal deity ; at this day, too, when, on the other hand, what cannot be thus THE GLORIOUS GOD 359 studied and explained, mapped and labelled as posi- tive knowledge, is apt to be put aside as unworthy of consideration among practical men and women, — as a country not only unexplored, but unexplorable, not only unknown, but unknowable, — amid such ten- dencies of thought, there is some danger that not only much of the mystery, but much of the beauty, poetry, and power of uplifting sentiment, which have been associated with religious ideas, will also vanish. I think it very necessary, therefore, that those of us who accept the results of the new science and of the new methods of studying man's history on the earth should be ready to set forth, if we can, any truer and grander thought of Deity which may have come to us in lieu of the old theological conceptions which science has displaced. And we may say, in the first place, that our thought of the divine power and -lory meets the test of the verse that is our text in this, — that it is, of all things, "least like" what men in general, thinking of that power and glory, "agree to praise." What is the idea of God held by the vast majority of the people of Christendom ? It is the idea of an Almighty Being seated in majesty and magnificence on a throne above the skies, after the pattern of a human sovereign, touched with paternal benignity, but ruling the world from that distant heavenly throne by a double system of laws and special provi- dences. It is of a being who made this universe in the first place either out of his own nature, calling the very atoms of matter into existence, or out of material atoms existing co-eternally with himself, — 360 building it tl machine, and who then im| n it the I and ep it h peopled it with livinj his cclcsti.il \ tions of supernatural power. I' primitive irth in tl walked upon its surl mmanded them wh.it t ''MTU on this cart; human from Iki 1 then lived ' put t" death on a where he remains | | mankind as death shall .summon the the central conception by the great majority "t t populal the earth. Ami this, with lt-s vai creative and nificence, of arbitral ent mingled with 1 rial compassion, of almighty will and all-knowing Is what the mass of tin- in Chrisl Ltions ' • " in their worship. go into other religions, the mor- phic idea of God prevails. It powerful ruler, a king, at ' •■ lather; God, too. who once lived on the earth in the form of man, or perhaps even lives th lay dike the d Lama of Thibet), surrounded with power and arrayed in the habiliments of glory. i in: glorious GOD 361 But the divine glory that we would seek is, of all things on earth, least like what these people have in mind as God. We do not look for it in the god Jupiter, nor the god Jehovah, nor the god Osiris, nor the god Thor, nor the god Brahma, nor the Jesus. All these were honest and sincere but in- tual attempts to express the inexpressible, define the [indefinable, to personify an existence and power which in its essence must forever remain above all human conceptions of personality. They served their historic time ami purpose. They marked some aspect and direction of human thought in h to grapple with the problem of the ulti- mate cause of things. They were reaches after the Divine, approaches toward it, but none of them re- ed the fulness of its -lory. In all the religions, and in Christendom especially, people have been tOO much wont to glorify their own metaphysical specu- lations about Deity, their own mental 1 on< eptions of him ; to take tl 1 » 1,v the actual revelations of divine powe OH right around them. What a vast amount of religious en- and devotion, for instance, has been spent in rig forth the glory of the Divine nature and work ording to the purely metaphysical conception oi the triune personality of the Godhead ! The ; tion may be safely risked that no person ever suc- led in getting a logical, rational idea of this doc- trine. Indeed, the last resort of all argument upon it has always been that it is a doctrine not to be understood by reason, but to be accepted by faith. But the time has passed when any considerable num- TWENTY-FIVE 51 RMONS ber of thoughtful minds, awake to the thought of this new age in which we are living, can be content to look for the divine glory in these raetaphys creeds wherein men have put their own conceptions of Deity; or in any names, howi I and an- cient, which have survived' from man'- but futile effort to define ami personify the power in which and by which and amid which he telt that his own being was embosomed ami kept in existent "The glorious God," — where, then, shall man look for the living counterpart, if there be any, of this thought? Where hut in the universe — this universe of nature and man — which is the only sible presentation of divine power that comes within our knowledge? This universe is itself the shining garment by which the divine power is made visible. While people have been looking into the past and trying to keep hold of their belief in (~i>n\ by holding to the creeds and conceptions of him that were framed centurie md savin.:;' to themselves and repeating in their churches, " What a glory was then revealed to the world!'* lo, here is the same God, existing apparently as he has always existed, working as he has always worked, right in the famil- iar scenes of nature and human life, close around us every day. It is not because the divine glory is so far off that it is becoming dimmed, but we miss seeing it because it is so near. Let us lift two or three of the curtains from these hiding-places among the every-day facts of our lives, — just lifting a little the drapery of these very phenomena with which science deals, and in the knowledge of which we THE GLORIOUS GOD 363 have such an advantage over the ancients; and because of our knowledge of which it is sometimes boasted that we have no occasion for any God at all this side of that curtain of the absolutely unknow- able which can never be lifted at all. If I mis " take not, we shall find the glory, " wondrous " and " strange in all its ways," shining all around us, just behind and through the most known and familiar things. Every year, before the winter has loosed its icy grip upon the earth, you begin to see the animal wonder of a new spring-time. Under sheltering fences or the sunny side of your houses, and close up to the warm stones of your doorstep, which have been heated all day in the March sun, you may have .seen the grass springing up and putting on its dress of living green. It was the first streaks of the dawn of that coming glory of life and color, of leaf and flower and fruit, which in a tew months are spread over all this northern zone of earth. It comes so steadily and surely, ami we have heroine so accustomed to its coming year after year, that we do not see the wondrousness of it as we should, were our eyes to behold it for the first time. Could we see it for the first time, indeed, we should stand amazed, if not worshipful, before the spectacle of the awakening life and beauty. And you say, too, that you know the cause of it, — that the earth in its annual circuit round the sun turns at this season its northern hemisphere, by reason of the angle between its equator and the ecliptic, more directly to the sun's rays, and hence receives more of the sun's heat. TW] Hut the I s " none the less wonderful, th It is. to begin witl that that luminary in the miles mould be t! this What glory ? Hut the pro • or deities which the old myl or st . is thai ' ;> linked with the sun ? Met hani it wi thin nd throu stellar S] duct r of both light and heal mode of motion. In the sun, the constant mi >1 nstituenl motioi at — to the conti I the ether, which an to vibrating, and these hand it next, and th the next >n, until, cisely as motion is communicated through a whole row of marbles which .1 I one end, the I of the sun is communicated through the nil two millions of miles of the vibratory . I the samer web of ether, and strik< touches the dead-lookin I in th'- below it. And. when the sun's r ime suf- ficiently vertical to make this touch powerful enough, it starts that activity in the root which soon shows 1111. GLORIOUS GOD 3^5 in the green blade above and harbingers the spring. It sets an energy to work in those rootlets by which they seize from the earth and air just the chemical particles needed to build that green Leaf of grass ; and these particles then are sent upward in the sap by the principle of a suction pump, to be sted and separated by the leaf itself. 1 this is an epitome of what the sun is doing by its magic art at every spring-time over all the pause of the meadows and in every forest, every shrub and tree and bud, all round the globe. But more than this ; the sun lias been scientifically shown to be ily the annual renewer and pre- scrVl i ible life of the earth, but the source of all life, animal as well stable, and ol all physical power and beauty, that are anywhere man j this earth. It is Tyndall, remembering the law of the correlation i ■ thls immedial the sun's heat, who says : " The 8un the whole vegetal d, and through it the animal ; the lilies of the held are his workman- ship, the verdure of the meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. He forms the muscle, he urges the blood, he builds the brain. ... He builds the forest and hews it down, the power which raised the tree and which wields the axe being one and the same. The clover sprouts and blossoms, and the the of the mower swings, by the operation ol the ie force. The sun digs the ore from our mines; he rolls the iron; he rivets the plates ; he boils the water ; he draws the train. . . . There is not a ham- mer raised, a wheel turned, or a shuttle thrown, that 366 TWE.vn -I I VI. SERMONS i^ not raised and turned and thrown by the mid." Well may this enthusiastic devotee "t' science add : " Presented rightly to the mind, the discoveries and generalizations of modern science constitute a | more sublime than has ever yet been addressed to the intellect and imagin ition of man. The natural philosopher of to-day may dwell amid conceptions which beggar those of Milton." And to this I may add that, though Milton's conceptions were theo- logical and these are scientific, these are none the less concerned with Divine things. What is behind this glory of multitudinous life that marches over the earth with every spring? Have we reached its primal source in the sun ? Nay : the sun is hut the shadow of some power older and mightier still. The sun is hut one of many millions of suns, each with its family of planets, which it warms and lights and peoples with life, and arms with power. We should have to lift the whole curtain of the starry heavens to behold the revelation of the inconceiva- ble glory of which the sun is hut one ray. Let us lift aDOther of these curtains of phenom- enal facts in the domain of positive knowledge. Many of you, I hope, have read, some perhaps have heard, that incomparable sermon by our friend, William C. Gannett, on "The Treasures of the Snow," — one of the four miracles of the year, he calls it. You who have heard it, or you who have read it, know with what exquisite poetic touch he unlocks the snow-flake, and tells what may there be see minder the powerful microscope, or is scientifi- cally inferred from what the microscope discloses. THE GLORIOUS GOD 367 Yet, exquisite in poetic feeling and expression as is his description, the poetry, beauty, and wonder are all in the simple facts themselves. The dryest chronicles of science tell them all, — how every tiniest snow-flake is made up of crystals which are put together in upwards of a thousand different varieties of form : in prisms, three-sided and six- sided ; in pyramids, and in prisms capped with pyra- mids ; in star-shapes, the lines radiating from a centre of glory, star sometimes within star, and these within a third and a fourth ; in prisms capped with stars at both ends ; in fern shapes, with all the varieties that are found among ferns in the forests. But through all this mingling of different forms there is no disorder, no misfit. The lines, the joints, the angles, are all drawn with mathematical preci- sion. No deft fingers of the most skilled and patient workman in China can copy their exactness. And through all the variety there is identity, too. There is one mathematical law that pervades the whole structure. To quote now from my friend : " Snow- nature is bound by a law of sixes. The sides of every prism and pyramid meet at one angle, — that of sixty degrees or its multiples ; the rays of every star diverge at that one angle ; every vein upon those little fern leaves joins its stem at that one angle or its multiples. The snow-stars are all six- rayed or, rarely, twelve ; the centres all hexagonal. Watch the flakes of a whole winter's storms, climb Chimborazo, go to the pole, or make your mimic snow-storm for yourself inside a chemist's bottle, — never will you find a finished star with five rays or with seven, <>r with that law of th ken. The rays them are broken, but nei tive law. Bruised, shattered, huddled together, the snow-flak i us ; but, through all br shatter, thai upon the that they are born and live and Well may my friend add, " Is it not very im awe even, — these tnathem : led down t- I the microscopic measurements, ition <»t' the universe laid thus upon its invisi Surely, somt power has ii I only in the of the storm, hut in this single snow-flake th.a falls at our fee: or that i away unseen in the air. Shall we lift another curtain on a somewhat dii ent scene f Look, then, at the cell from which comes all animal life. In its riginal there is nothing aguish whether bird <>r : or man is to come from it What shall i ds on some hidden ton:. rinciple in il inherited from its ancestry, and upon the environ- ment to which it i- I d in its ment. Suppose it i> I me human. It then draws to itself in time, by a mechanism which man's inventive genius may wonder at, hut cannot im the materials for building that ni isummate of ad nature's structures, the human body. The animal, vegetable, and mineral worlds are drawn upon for tribute to build it. But, beyond all animal structures before it, this human body becomes a thinker. Its brain is not simply used instinctively to push its own fortunes in the struggle for a merely THE GLORIOUS GOD 369 animal existence, but it becomes an instrument of conscious reflection upon the very work and purpose of nature itself in bringing it into being. It dares even to assert — this human brain — that it sees nature's aim, understands the intelligence that is impressed on the snow-flake and planted in the seed and that struggles through all the graceful or un- couth forms of animal life; and it has the audacity — this human brain — to say further, " I can help to complete this plan : I see that mathematics in the snow-flake means the law of justice in mankind ; that order in the material universe means morality in human SO that the relation of mutual de- pendence and helpfulness evident between the forces of nature means brotherhood among men."' And thus this human brain, whose pedigree thirt) years before we could not distinguish in the cell nor whose future prophesy, becomes, under the laws and forces of its own existence. Dot only a thinker, but a doer of righteousness. Here it becomes a Plato, there a Washington, and there again a Jesus. And, in i of humbler men and women, it manifests itself in deeds of loving-kindness and tender mercies. It is a builder of states, a ruler of nations, a creator of the arts of civilization. It discovers the secrets of nature, learns the management of her forces, edu- cates and transmits its own power, organizes philan- thropy for the improvement and preservation of the race to which it belongs. The potent life-forces hidden in that tiny cell have unfolded into a power and glory that may well be called Godlike in their character. 370 TWENTY-FIVE si.kM Let us draw aside yet another veil in the v. scientific fact, and one behind which IS promised a near view — almost, indeed, a veritable revelation — of the central mystery of life itself in its mosl mental forces. A few . ientific jour- nals were thrilling with fresh interest over a new discovery. It seemed as if, at last, human research, through the agency of the microscope, were to be rewarded with a sight of the primordial substance in which all organic life had begun, and which is the necessary substratum of all continued vitality. Protoplasm was the word coined t«> name this won- derful and unique form of matter, which appe arry in itself the " promise and potency " of all modes of terrestrial life. Let us look for a moment at its nature and habits through the eyes of a man of science. Putting under the lenses of a powerful microscope a section of the leaf of an aquatic plant peculiarly adapted to disclose the protoplasmic lite- current, and supposing his readers to be g it with him, a scientific professor* says : "You be- hold a series of cells. Hut through the thin wall of any cell appears a flowing stream. ... A very river it seems as it rushes on, wave after wave, up from the depths below, across the field of vision and down again, over and over or round and round, in ceaseless rotation. Now, the current catches in its course this little particle, now that, hurling each along, now up, now clown, now over, now under, without weariness, without hindrance, hour after hour before us. And now, as the stream goes on so grandly, think, for a moment, what it is at which *Prof. T. H. McBride, in Popular Science Monthly, July, 1882. THE GLORIOUS GOD 371 we gaze. We call it protoplasm ; but it is the cur- rent of life, the ' physical basis of life,' — the com- mon bond which binds in one the whole kingdom of organic things. Think, too, of the antiquity of that stream, of its lineage. The brook that ' goes on for- ever ' is as nothing to it ; for here the stream has come flowing down through ages, which are to us an eternity, ever since life began on earth. The moun- tains have been hoary with years, and have dis- appeared beneath the level of the all-producing sea ; but this stream is older than they. Continents have mown old, worn out, and been renewed, rebuilt from the debris of this same stream, and life has again flooded those continents ; but this stream is older than they. ... [In the interminable past] the vast procession of life begins, rises before us, spreads away in variety, activity, in beauty, in wonderf ill- ness, incomprehensible." Verily, this seems like lifting the veil in the Hebrew temple, behind which was conceived to be imaged the Eternal I Am, — the Being that was, and is, and is to be, from everlasting to everlasting. And so we might go on, lifting the curtains from this familiar life all about us, and of which we are ourselves a part ; and on every side, from every nearest or remotest or obscurest corner, there would be revealed to us the same ineffable wonder of ac- tivity, of order, of arrangement, of beauty, of power, in the great and in the little. We need not go out- side of the sensible universe for the demonstration of a divine glory beyond anything and everything that the theological creeds have ever been able to give us in their conceptions of Almighty Being. TU 1 h we tl within the limit lible dei on, there is something within the revelation at every lifting of th< phe« nomena which the phenomena the explain, — something which the but do not account for. 1 unrepealed. We and awed before it. hut e is alw i\ s one quest ion una' I re where we will, up her i 3 and byways in wl shall find everywhere the • • . the glory ; hut behind all curtains that iwn aside there remains one inner curtain that is never lifted. shows us the wondrou taining within itself the pot for all formi inization and life, hat • sin- does nol dia e formative, guiding principle in every 1 organism ; hut whence and what the vital) has not yet explaine I Even I -he prove it I chemical force, that is hut a ck. She carries us hack to Force it a primordial ele- ment in the i rnal and imperishable, remaining one and the same amid all the changes and correlations of it in the manifold forces of the universe ; hut she has not told US how we are mceive of this mighty prin rgy, in and of what it consists, or what the philosophy of it- istence. She points us to the infinitesimal nerve- cells of the human brain where this wondrous prima] 'gy, after the civilizing discipline of millions of THE GLORIOUS GOD 373 generations of organic existence, sets up housed ing as a rational thinker and a doer of righteous- But how the connection has been established between the nerve-cell and the thought, and whether, with the dissolution of the house, the housekeeper also ceases existence, are problems which science his n«.t solved. She bids us look at the pi plasmic current in its - > 3 flux and reflux, and almost promises there to unlock for us the I mystery of the secret of life. Hut whence the lining, what the cause of the protoplasmic cur- rent, she has made no revelation. We may look in and see, .is behind a -e, how the work of life j on; but we see not the secret power that starts it and sustains it. If we touch with a.needle the wall of the current at which we have beei thinking to investig *er, instantly " the charm i.s broken, the mystic river c flow, the tiny particles settle into unbroken peai That cell, in fact, on which we gaze is then dead, while all the others remain alive; and so the curtain falls upon the secret unexplained. So, turn whichever way we will, back of the bound'' ry that we behold the mystery of a power unrevealed. Shall v. 'lien, that God is only in the hidden mystery ? That he is not revealed at all, bc« the very paths which are lighted for us by the lead us finally to barriers beyond which we (.inn-: pass nor see? That, because we cannot know him wholly, he is, therefore, wholly " the Unknowable " ? That he is in the infinity beyond that barrier, but not in the finite beauty, order, power, majesty, good- 574 TWENTY-FIVE SERM , love, whose source we have traced up to that line ? Nay : by the very discovery brought to us by science, that all force or energy is one ami self- persistent, however manifold its forms, our logical intellect may leap that barrier to unite the phenom- enal glories on the hither side and the sovereign substance of being unrevealed beyond in the insep- arable links of one all-pervading power and life. Life infinite and life finite are but one life. As one force, one law, bind together and penetrate this common earth which we daily tread and the heavens into whose star-populated depths we gaze, but which we can never wholly fathom, so is this whole uni- verse of our senses bound to and pervaded by the unfathomable sovereignty of being that escapes all tests which our senses can meet or our science devise. And an added glory comes into the universe of phenomena, because of this very mystery of sov- ereign being in which it is embosomed. Our world — this little earth — takes on dignity and majesty from the infinity of things, unseen as well as seen, of which it is a part. Imagination, reason, con- science, are alike spurred to finer achievement by the problem of the world's relation to the unseen Infinite ; while the heart may rest serenely upon the confidence, than which there can be none surer, that its destiny is linked with the forces which make the very integrity and stability of the universe itself. As to what is in the mystery behind him and in the mystery before him, man need have no fears. It is enough that this present circuit of life in which he shares, and which is flowing out of the mystery of THE GLORIOUS GOD 375 the past toward the mystery of the future, is glo- rious with intelligence and measured by advances in moral benefit. I have seen a child in its mother's lap gaze up with a sudden wonderment into the beaming benignity of the mother face and into the loving depths of the mother eyes, as if its infantile mind had just caught some new revelation there and was trying to comprehend the fulness of its meaning, — perhaps stopping in the midst of a frolic or of pain and crying, with this wondering, searching, upward look, and seeming to be impressed with a sense of a power manifest there that understood all and could do all and was full of good will ; then nestling down closer and in quiet into the mother's lap. So wc are children still in the lap of our mother Nature. And sometimes we are hushed into a tender awe, it may be in the midst of our pains, or it may be in the midst of our pleasures or our work, as if a mysteri- ous, mightiful power were bending over and holding us. We lift our gaze upward to see not only that we are held in the embrace of Law, but that through Law shines the glory of Love ; and, at that answer, our hearts are at rest. April 22, 18S3. Note. — This discourse was given first in March, 1882, but not in the completed form as here printed. At the date stated above, it was delivered, in its present form, before the " Free Religious So- ciety" in Providence, R.I. ; and was thus redelivered in New Bedford in 1884. XXV. A TWENTY FIVE YEARS' MINIST1 ::uth." •: D twenty-five ; o this day, and hour, I i be invested with the ofl ami minister to this society. Vh I eremonics of in- duction — tho member, for the frigid inclemency ol the weather wen the Bimple form common to the must lil ■ pleted the contr tt ment with the candi< whom it had beard and - and do questioi nis uir pi im this city and elsewhere, some of them having formerly hem cor with the ety, who conducted the services in i way that ed both the natural solemn di I the occasion and the spirit of cordial •ill and . wship that should exist between neighboring churches. Having thus been made your minister, I preached here my inaugural discourse the following Sunday, New Year's day of i860. T ■■ . then, we exactly complete a quarter of a century of lite together as people and pastor. A rWENTY-FIVE YEARS MINISTRY \TJ A quarter of a century's ministry, — what memo- ries press upon me as I write those words! Memo- ries that almost overwhelm the purpose which I have in mind to-day in this anniversary discourse. In these years, one generation has nearly gone, and another has come. Mingled with your faces as you sit here this mornii . I e another congregation, more numerous than that which usually occupies these seats, — the C tion of our risen dead. They take no room anion- us ; but, through my mem- ory's eve, I see the space between these walls alive with the faces of this benignant company of our de- parted membership. But into this field of reminis- e I can hardly trust myself to enter. Nor do I propose to-day to take up any time with the statistics the parish and of parish work. The numbei man id deaths in the society in these twenty- five years, the changes from year to year in its mem- hip, the condition of its benevolent agem the State of its Sunday-school, the advances which may 'nave been made in the external equipments of the society both with regard to its Sunday services and its benevolent and social objects, — all thes< matters of a certain personal and parochial interest, and it is usually expected that they will be brought forward in anniversary sermons. On previous anni- versary occasions, I have referred to these points, and at times somewhat in detail ; and to-day, tho we have no boasts to make, the external condition of our society might be presented in a way of which we should have no cause to be ashamed. But my thought presses in another direction at this time. }jS TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS One remark only will I make on those matters which concern our external prosperity as a society, touching merely the one point where our affairs are the least promising, — the fact, namely, that the in- crease in the population of our city brings little or no increase to our numbers here, and that it is even doubtful whether the gradual passing away of the old families, from which the strength of this society has been largely drawn for the past sixty years, is made good by their descendants. Even with regard to this one point, it may be said that, counting our morning and evening services together, it is doubt- less true that the services of this church during these twenty-five years have reached and are still reaching a larger number of persons in the com- munity than has been the case in any previous twenty-five years of its history. And so long as the society has this opportunity and can wisely use it, there is no pressing cause for anxiety concerning the future. Leaving, then, these externals, let me proceed to the purpose I have most at heart on this occasion, which is to trace, in a measure, the more interior development of my ministry among you, and to sum up, in pretty definite shape, the convictions — the articles of faith, I might say — which have been the substance of the teachings of this pulpit during this period. I say " the substance of its teachings " ; for there has been a development — a growth, I trust — in my own thought within this time, so that truth comes to me in somewhat different form from what it did when my ministry began ; though this change, A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MINISTRY 379 perhaps, is more marked in respect to the mode of statement than in respect to the substance of the matter stated. In some particulars, however, my beliefs have undergone a change,— so gradual that possibly it may not have been noticed by my hear- ers, yet a change nevertheless,— under the influence especially of the widening and deepening scientific thought of this modern era. But not to anticipate this point, to which I shall recur by and by, I now ask you to go back with me to the beginning of our work here together ; and if, talking on these matters that are so near our hearts, I make unusual use of the first personal pronoun, you will, I am sure, par- don the offence to-day. My ministry began near the opening pf a stirring- period in our national history. In that last week of December, 1859, when wc took here those mutual vows of trust and fidelity which bound us together as people and pastor, the country was flushed with the excitement caused by John Brown's memorable expedition into Virginia. That hero's life had just ended on a Virginia gallows by Virginia law. How- ever the act for which he died may be judged in the cold court of the prudent understanding, it was one of those deeds of chivalrous heroism which always win human hearts and kindle human consciences as with coals of fire from heaven. Even Virginia's governor was compelled, as he has confessed, to admire the character of the man, while he signed the warrant to hang him. And John Brown, dying on that Virginia gallows for daring to confront human law and human constitutions for the sake of 38O TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS the slave, became the sign in the sky, by which the two hostile and warring ideas in the nation, liberty and slavery, began to gather and align their respec- tive hosts for the coming conflict of arms. Before the first year of my ministry was finished, in the ex- piring months of Buchanan's administration, with the election of Abraham Lincoln as his successor to the Presidential chair, we heard the ominous rumblings of the earthquake which soon came in the terrific shock of civil war, with its vast armies of national brothers fighting against each other, and its four years of battles and carnage and sorrow. And then when peace came, with its triumphal decree of emancipation to the slave, there followed the still longer and more anxious period of reconstruction, culminating in the final triumph of the ballot and of equal rights of citizenship before the law to black and white alike. During these two eventful periods, my ministry was turned largely to national questions by an in- ward force, a moral compulsion, which I could no more have resisted than I could have resisted the sun in his course. From the first day to the last in that dreadful contest, this pulpit pronounced, with no uncertain sound, — and oftener than was agreeable, perhaps, to all the membership of the society, — not only for the national cause, but for the national cause as it meant, or should be made to mean, liberty and justice to the negro, — equality of rights to all the inhabitants of the land. And there is no part of my ministry to which I look back to-day with more satisfaction than to this. It is a special cause A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MINISTRY 38 1 of joy to me now to recall that I never from the first had the slightest question as to what were the prin- ciples which the pulpit should keep paramount in discussing the issues of the great conflict ; that, in the very first discourse I gave upon the matter, several months before the war actually broke out, I struck the key-note, which I never afterwards lost, that, as slavery was the cause of the nation's troubles and perils, so emancipation must be their remedy ; and that, again, when Fort Sumter was attacked, and President Lincoln called upon the loyal States for troops, and the northern section of the country was in that Pentecostal flood of enthusiasm for defending the dishonored flag, when many warmly patriotic souls thought it injudicious to risk disturbing the sentiment of loyalty to the Union by introducing the issue of slavery, — that even then I could not hesi- tate to declare that the one thing which imperilled the Union was slavery, and the one thing which could permanently save the Union, and the only thing which could give to our armies a cause worth dying for, was liberty with justice. I do not recall these things in any spirit of boast- ing. Far from it. I was by no means alone in such pulpit work ; nor did I have much to do, at the time, in determining my course by reasoning it out and nerving my will to it. All that had been previ- ously done for me in my education and moral tem- perament. Rather do I recall this part of my ministry in devout gratitude that the mighty moral forces which were then surging through this nation to lift it to a higher plane of righteousness found 382 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS and used me as their instrument. I recall it, too, that I may give due thanks to you of this society for the untrammelled freedom you gave me for such utterances. This work was not mine alone. We did it together. You gave me the freedom, and I used it. On no other terms than those of free expression, as ray deepest convictions compelled, could I have remained your minister. But, though my discourses on these themes may not always have been in accord with the judgments of all who were in the pews, never did I receive from you a hint or sign that you wished this pulpit to be other than free. Whatever it may have been able to do for our country's cause during this eventful period, you shared the work. I may here add that the freedom which I then used in speaking in this place on matters of vital political concern, I have continued to use whenever it seemed to me that, in pending political issues, questions of deep moral import were involved. The ordinary questions on which political parties are sep- arated have their appropriate discussion elsewhere, and do not properly belong to the pulpit ; though the minister as a citizen should have his views on such questions, and should be expected, like all good citizens, freely to act upon them in his personal ca- pacity. But, whenever political issues or party action distinctly involve ethical questions and come into the domain of practical morals, then the pulpit has a legitimate right to express itself on such issues and action, and will be very derelict to its duty, if it fail to do this. It is a very delicate and difficult duty A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MINISTRY ^3 with which the preacher is thus charged, calling for the faculty of strict mental justice and for entire freedom from the spirit of partisanship. He should be able to speak in such a way that his hearers, if they can listen with the like candor, will feel that it is the moral, and not the political message that is dominant in his mind. It is in this way and spirit that I have always endeavored to approach and treat such questions here, — with what success it is not for me to say. But, I think, I may safely say that the freedom of this pulpit for a wide range of topics has been established beyond recall. As wide as are the applications, to national, social, or individual con- duct of the fundamental principles of justice, hon- esty, purity, humanity, brotherhood, so wide at least must be the freedom of any pulpit which has any good reason for existence in this last quarter of the nineteenth century. On this ground, I have been wont to consider that not only political questions which involve moral principle, but all questions of social and moral reform, are fitting themes to be treated in this place. Temperance, justice and equal opportunity to woman, the treatment of crime and criminals, the national duty to the Indians, social purity, marriage and divorce, the seculariza- tion of government and of the public schools in this country as a matter of equal rights for all classes of citizens, the better reconciliation of the interests of labor and capital, — these and any other themes pertaining to the social amelioration and elevation of mankind, I have been accustomed from time to 384 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS time to bring to this pulpit, that we might view and weigh them here from the stand-point of religion. The religion, indeed, which I have tried through all these years to present to you in my preaching covers all these great themes and objects which are so vital to human happiness and progress. Yet there is a popular distinction between relig- ious themes and themes pertaining to social reform and philanthropy ; and, at this point, I turn to survey those beliefs underlying my ministry, which by this popular usage would be called religious beliefs. And here it is that the gradual development of thought, involving some changes of opinion, of which I just now spoke, is to be noted. When I first came among you, I could have said that my views accorded more nearly, perhaps, with the system of belief which had been preached by Theodore Parker than with the views of any other representative man. That is, I discarded the supernatural, the prodigious, the mirac- ulous, as evidence of religious truth or attestation of a special revelation from Deity, and accepted religion as only a natural revelation of moral and spiritual truths. Between the so-called revealed religions and natural religion there was, to my mind, no distinction. All religions were natural, — that is, were the natural unfoldment and ascension of the human mind in the discovery of ethical and spiritual truth ; and yet all religions so far as they possessed any truth were revealed, — that is, truth, wherever found and in whatever religion, was from Deity, being a part of his very nature. Jesus was an exceptionally great religious teacher and prophet,' but a natural, finite, A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MINISTRY 385 and therefore fallible human being. It was only his clear and extraordinary insight into truth that gave him authority, and not any special credentials, at- tested by miracle-working, which were given him from heaven. Christianity, historically, was a devel- opment and accretion of many beliefs and forces, some true, some false ; and it could only be called the absolute religion when reduced to the simple principles taught by Jesus, — love to God and man. Christianity might, however, be properly thus de- fined, and thus be accepted still by the rational mind as synonymous with absolute religion. And the three primary ideas of absolute religion — God, Duty, Immortality — were to be regarded as given by direct natural revelation in the human consciousness, and hence needed, and could have, no stronger attesta- tion of their truth through any kind of outward evidence addressed to the senses. This is a brief, imperfect schedule of the leading features of Theo- dore Parker's theological beliefs. And this, in substance, would pretty well describe the chief points of my theological views when my ministry began, except that I questioned whether the doctrine of immortality could be philosophically said to rest immediately on the testimony of human consciousness ; whether it was not rather a logical inference from certain facts of consciousness ; and except also that I was not so pronouncedly theis'tic in my conception of Deity. The very first sermon I ever wrote, and one of the earliest I gave in this pulpit, was criticised by our professor in the Theo- logical School as too strongly infused with Panthe- 386 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS ism. I had then, as I have always had since, a logi- cal difficulty in separating Deity from the living law and energies of the universe itself, as an individual, self-existing being, who might be conceived as exist- ing alone, in his own solitude, though there were no universe at all ; for, to my mind, the universe itself was infinite in its range and life and possibilities of power, and, hence, to conceive of God as a separate infinite entity apart from it required the logical impossibility of believing in two infinite beings. Therefore, my thought tended to identify Deity with the inmost powers, life, and development of the whole possible universe; as, in some sense, the soul, of which the universe was the body, though this comparison, drawn from our knowledge of finite organisms, could only very inadequately and imper- fectly express the actual relation between Deity and the natural universe. In his essence, Deity must, indeed, remain uncomprehended by the finite mind, though his existence and power must be necessarily assumed. With these exceptions, my thought at that time followed pretty nearly in the line of Mr. Parker's religious views, as they may be read in his books to-day. In brief, my religious philosophy was that of the New England Transcendentalists. I believed that man had by nature an intuitive faculty by which the great religious and moral truths were self-evident to him. These truths were a transcript in the human mind of the attributes of the divine mind, or they were the divine nature as mirrored in the individual human soul. And to this philosophy I was predisposed by the Quaker doctrine of the A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MINISTRY 387 Inner Light, to which I had been bred from child- hood, and which I may even say I possessed by heredity as well as by early training. And, now, as to the source and nature of the change which has come in these beliefs. In the year 1859, Darwin's Origin of Species was published, — that epoch-making book, as the Germans say. This book I read in the first year of my ministry. With the evolution theory of creation I was already acquainted, and in a general way accepted it as much more rational and credible than the popular belief in special creative acts. Several years before, I had read that little book, Vestiges of Creation, whose authorship was not discovered until last year, when William Chambers, the veteran * Edinburgh author and publisher, died. Then a friend, with whom the secret had been deposited, revealed to the world that William Chambers wrote Vestiges of Cre- ation. That publication for its time, though now displaced by later works on the same theme written from the vantage-ground of wider scientific investi- gation, was also for many minds an epoch-making- book. It was so to me. From that time, though I saw that there was not a little of hypothesis in the development theory, as it was styled in that work, I was an evolutionist, in the sense that this seemed to me much the more probable way in which the various organisms and species of life had come into existence ; while my mind was by no means shut against further evidence, nor was then conscious of all the logical implications of the evolution doctrine. The book opened to me, however, a new earth and TWENTY-FIV1 51 new heavens, and planted in my thought the seeds of a grander and more fruitful conception of Deity than any which I had found in the old tin Darwin's famous book brought the further evidence, gathered so carefully and from such wide fields of research and long-continued study. And it was all confirmatory of the development theory advanced in the older book. Other contributions, from various authors, rapidly followed on the same theme in its different branches. Soon, it became evident that here were truths of science, which would profoundly affect the intui- tional system of philosophy as it had been applied to religion. Here was science, not only going behind instinct in the animal to explain it, defining it as " inherited habit," — the habit of doing certain things having been formed through a long series of experi- ments in natural selection to find the conditions most favorable to life, — but here was science also going behind the social affections, sympathies, char- ities, and even conscience in the human soul, and confidently offering similar explanation of them. And, if this explanation were true, what would become of that idea of the intuitive philosophy that these human benevolent affections and the moral sense, or conscience, are a direct impression made by the divine mind upon the individual human mind? or of the more mvstical idea that, when these attributes exist in specially large measure in any human soul, it is because such soul is specially open and receptive to a direct incoming of divine power, as from a personal source of inspiration A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MINISTRY 389 and enlightenment apart from its own organism ? Through the pressure of questions like these, I was led to review the positions of the intuitional philoso- phy, especially in its application to religious truths, with the result of considerable modification in my views. I saw especially that the old idea, a favorite of the intuitional school of thought,— that the divine mind, as a present personal entity, impresses the in- dividual human mind with certain qualities of affec- tion, or inspires it with certain thoughts, or endows it outright at birth with certain mental gifts, — was no longer tenable. I saw that this idea of a commerce of finite minds with the infinite mind through the air, .as it were, without the medium of any organism, was really a relic of superstitious faith ; and that, under the figurative language of God's attributes being mir- rored in the human soul, or being impressed upon it from some entirely external source, as if God and man stood over against each other as two distinct personalities, was concealed the delusion of a false philosophy. But I was not long in reaching a new position, nor was there any serious conflict in my mind be- tween the new and old. I said science must be the criterion for testing our beliefs, for science dis- covers the facts of the universe ; but science, ob- serve you, only in its actual discoveries, — not sci- ence, merely in the domain of the material world and its forces, but science as it embraces the whole realm of facts in the world of the human intellect and heart, and in all phases of human history. A belief or a sentiment is not necessarily to be dis- 390 TWENTY-PH carded because science fails to it. I', will ime enough to disi ird it when rational kno has positively shown that it rests on error. The circulation of the blood went on by natural law in the human frame before Harve) :red the true theory of it. So there may be in man's mental ami moral organism the natural e rtain functions called spiritual or religious, which have hitherto performed their service t"i- human life in connection with theories of them wholly erron< Hut it does not follow that the functions themse are an illegitimate ami artificial excrescence upon human life. They may he as nei essary to tin- higher moral life of man as is the circulation of the blood to his physical life. If distinctly proved t<> he founded in and maintained by error, then, of course, they are to be abandoned. But, until then, they have a right to stay, with the presumption that they have a legiti- mate cause; and the true explanation of them may yet be found. With regard to the relation between man and Deity, these scientific truths which are involved in the doctrine of evolution only compelled me to recur more definitely to that pantheistic conception of Deity which the Cambridge professor had criticised, and to adjust all related beliefs and the language for expressing them to that central thought of the identity and oneness of Deity with the living law and energies of the universe itself. Instead of man being connected with Deity as one finite person with another, the two communicating in some mys- terious way through the intervening spaces, man is A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MINISTRY 391 connected with Deity through that natural organism of his own faculties, by which his life is woven in one piece with the life of the world-forces around him, and with the unfolding order of the forms of being and life anterior to him for countless ages. I have found no science which dispenses with the necessity of a causal and sustaining power whence all beings and things have come and continue ; nor have I found any science which does not acknowl- edge that man is in necessary vital relation with this power, whatever it may be. And this is the power which, in accordance with a strictly scientific phi- losophy, wells up in the human consciousness as thought and moral perception, as personal will and humane sympathies. Here, therefore, I' find ample ground, not only for a religious philosophy and for religious institutions, but also for all that was most valuable in the intuitional philosophy,— namely, its assertion of divine Power and Life as immanent in human life ; of the moral sense as the perception of an absolute distinction between right and wrong ; and of mind as the dominant element in the evolu- tion of the world-forces,— or of mind, instead of matter, as riding in the saddle of the powers that have evolved this world of nature and man which comes under our knowledge. Why should we imag- ine the divine Power to be brought any nearer to us or to be any more real to our thought, if we con- ceive it as in some way external to us and inspiring and impressing us by an afflatus from the skies, than if we conceive it as welling up within us as the vitalizing force of our mental and moral perceptions 39- ns i n lv- 1- p. and the very power thai tins us within to fol- low the true and to do the humane and the right ? this latter view, we are set, indeed, in the current of the divine energy. It is that which has created our mental, moral, affectional organism, and still supplies vitality to all their functions. The mighty Power sweeps in and through us, itself the light by which t the law of right- eousness which command., our service, itself the force of the truth and beauty which impels the ration of our intellects and lifts our lives to noble aspiration and purpose : only, in the exquisite struct- ure of this organism by which we live, we are, in a measure, free to ignore and resist this vital influx and upsurging of the Eternal Energy in which our being consists ; or, on the other hand, we may keep the natural channels of our faculties open to its ceaseless, benignant flow, and even in heir capacity, and thus work in and by its power to fulfil its purposive movement in the gre it world-process. Further study, also, of Christianity in its origin history, and by comparison with other religions, convinced me that it had no special claim to be considered as synonymous with absolute religion. I saw that just those things in it which are perma- nent and make it acceptable to the rational mind to- dav are the mental and moral perceptions which it holds in common with all the great religions of the world ; while those beliefs, and particularly that of the Messianic authority of Jesus, which especially mark it as a distinct religion, are the beliefs which the rational mind to-day questions and which are A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS MINISTRY 393 transient and perishable. The conclusion was forced upon me that it is presumption and arrogance to claim as " Christian " those ideas and those virtues and graces of character which may be equally found among enlightened believers in other religions than the Christian ; and I came to the conviction that the progress of humanity would now be greatly aided, if the barriers between the religions, which are kept up by their special claims and names, could be re- moved, and people from various faiths should be drawn into one fellowship on the basis of absolute liberty of thought, of pure aspirations, and of ear- nest endeavor to know and to keep the law of right- eousness, recognizing no other authority than that of truth itself. I believed that the time had come for distinctly inculcating these ideas ; and I have, therefore, during the larger part of my ministry given myself to this work, here and elsewhere, in connection with what has become known as the Free Religious movement. I have hoped that these ideas would gradually permeate the minds of people, in the churches and outside of churches, and in time organize religion on natural and rational grounds and in new and more effective forms for the benefit of humanity. And, now, let me briefly draw into serial form the leading articles into which these fundamental princi- ples of my religious faith naturally branch, stating them succinctly without argument, the argument having been given from time to time for these many years. The statement may be called my creed : mine, though not necessarily yours. }< |4 T\\ I.N 1 Jf-FIVE SERM i. I believe in God as the power eternal, immortal, invisible, omnipresent, within and behind all phe- nomena, unknown and yet known, working in and through nature, producer and sustainer of all forms of existence, vitalizer of all organisms and life, well- ing up as mental and moral energy in the conscious- ness of man, and striving in the development oi human history to establish righteousness as the of life for the individual and for the race, and as the surest, amplest providence for human guidance. 2. I believe in man as the highest consummation and expression of the eternal energy in that part of the universe which comes within our knowle Beginning on the level of animal existence, spring- ing from the lower forms of life that were anterior to him, I believe that in him the eternal energy has fashioned such an organism that he has been able to rise from the plane of animal life, through the vari- ous grades of savagery and barbarism, until he has reached the heights of civilization, enlightenment, and power, which he holds to-day. I believe that he has made this progress, and has capacity for in- definite progress in the future, through his natural faculties of reason, conscience, and affection, which are a manifestation in him, under finite limitations, of the eternal energy itself, and which may be so vitalized as to make man a secondary creator in co-operating with and carrying forward the eternal world-purpose. 3. I believe that the moral law, or conscience, is man's intuitive perception of the equation of rights between human beings in their relations to each A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MINISTRY 395 other. I believe that a certain stage of intelligence through the disciplines of experience had to be reached by primitive man before this perception be- came possible, just as a certain degree of intelli- gence was necessary for perceiving the relation of numbers in the multiplication-table ; but that, when this degree of intelligence was reached, the percep- tion of the equation of rights between man and man would follow as necessarily as the perception of the relation of numbers. I believe, therefore, that morality rests on as permanent and irrefragable a basis as does the science of mathematics. 4. I believe that religion is the expression of man's relation to the universe and its vital powers, or to its living, sustaining energy. From'connection with and dependence upon this energy, it is not possible for man to escape. The fact of this relation is established by science ; and science, in its broad sense, must be depended- upon to give the true theory of it. But, in all ages, man has been con- scious of it ; and his expression of the relation has threefold form,— through thought, through feeling, and through action. Through one or another or all of these forms of expression, he has sought to per- fect his relation to the universal forces and laws. I believe that from this fundamental idea have grown all the special religions, while their dis- tinguishing beliefs and ceremonies have been shaped by the intelligence of the people holding them. I believe, therefore, that all the religions have a natu- ral origin and a natural development ; that, by virtue of their common root, they are sects of one universal 396 TWENTY-FIVE SERMl religion ; and that, notwithstanding their differen es and antagonisms, resulting from their special doc- trines and claims, there arc among them certain underlying unities of belief, aspiration, and moral sentiment, by which they are bound together in one fellowship. 5. I believe that the sacred books of the various religions have the same natural source, — the human mind, in its effort to express its relation to the infi- nite Power. They are the religious literature of the race or people producing them. Various in merit, they all contain important truths ; and the truths in all of them are mingled with errors. As a transcript of what humanity has thought and felt, as it has struggled with the great problems of life, they are invaluable. But they are to be read to-day, not as infallible authority for truth, but with that discrim- ination which can separate truth from error, and find refreshing for the heart and moral stimulus for conduct instead of a creed to bind upon the in- tellect. 6. I believe that the founders and prophets of the religions were human beings, of superior intellectual endowments or moral insight ; holy men and seers, who became the natural leaders of the- people about them, and around whose lives, through the pious imagination of their followers, there afterwards gathered legends and myths, to express the people's wonder and admiration for their greatness and power. I believe that the lustre of the moral exam- ple of Jesus is not dimmed nor the power of his character for moral inspiration impaired by thus A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MINISTRY 397 placing him in the natural line of humanity, and in a group of kindred souls, who have lived, wrought, and died, and borne brave testimony to truth and right, for the guidance and healing of the nations. 7. I believe that reward and retribution for deeds done in the body are assured by the natural law that binds effect to cause ; that moral error, or wicked- ness, produces as its inevitable consequence pain and wretchedness; that, if continued, it is suicidal in its agency, and tends to the ultimate destruction of its own power ; that moral good, on the contrary, is self-perpetuating, and leads ever more and more to larger and higher life, to realms of purer happi- ness, and to ever greatening capacity for virtue and for virtue's service. « 8. I believe that, on the ground of the strongest and most rational probability, though it be beyond the realm of knowledge, man may entertain a con- fident hope — nay, a faith — in his own personal im- mortality ; that the eternal' energy, having achieved self-consciousness in the wonderful personality of human character, with its power of progressing upon its own nature, will not lightly throw away such a being and such an advantage after a few years of earthly life. I believe, however, that, while man may entertain this hope and hold this faith, his first of duties is not to dream of the life hereafter, but to work zealously for the amelioration of human society on earth ; to show himself less anxious about saving his own soul for eternal bliss than concerning the salvation of other souls around him from present ignorance, wrong, and wretchedness, so that they 398 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS may become capable of intellectual, moral, and spir- itual life. 9. I believe that, as God, the eternal living energy, is ever seeking and striving to embody his power more and more in man, soliciting him, by inward constraining impulse, to truth, goodness, and moral beauty, so also may man correspondingly seek and find God ; for " God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul, and the clod. And, thus looking within and around me, I ever renew (With that stoop of the soul which, in bending, upraises it too) The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete, As, by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet." 10. I believe, finally, that these lines of Browning aptly express religion's threefold form of manifesta- tion, through thought, emotion, and conduct. They hint a philosophy of Deity and man, and of the rela- tion between them, and they picture the emotional attitude of the human mind in all genuine worship and prayer ; as also the brave endeavor and deed that are necessary to bring human life and divine law into practical harmony. Thus, friends, have I given you my creed, not, of course, to impose it upon you, but as the substance of the religious philosophy which underlies my ministry. One doctrine implied in my creed is that every person is responsible for his own, — that free- dom of thought is both a right and a duty which all human beings should hold sacred. A TWENTY-FIVE YEARS MINISTRY 399 But higher than any creed is the deed. Better than any other kind of faith is the faith that takes shape in pure and upright character. This has been my constant theme through all the years of my ministry. It has sometimes seemed to me that, whatever the topic I treat, my sermons always come, in the practical application at the end, to this one goal, — cliaracter, true and beneficent character, — this above all things, this forever and evermore. But is not this the proper goal, — the end of all endeavor, of all aspiration, of all living ? What but this makes life worth living? What is nobler, what fairer, what more beautiful and entrancing than the life of a noble soul ? O friends, if my ministrations have led any of you in these years to see this ^truth more clearly, to feel it more deeply, and if my services have thus in any way inspired you to purer, truer living, I ask for no higher satisfaction. That, and that only, is the measure of my success. My first sermon to you as your minister, New Year's day, i860, closed with these words: "If I can lift any souls among you to more ennobling truth, to purer love, to stronger virtue, if I can quicken your spiritual vision, and lead any of you to see more clearly the infinite beauty of a life proportioned to the laws of eternal rectitude, then will these New Year's vows of consecration be crowned indeed with blessing, being followed in due season by seed-time showers and hopes, maturing summer suns, and autumn harvests of ripened souls." Dear friends, if my ministry has been in any measure instru- mental in doing for any of you such a service as I 400 TWENTY-FIVE SERMONS here pictured in my hope, or if I was permitted to do it for an}- of that congregation of our risen dead, our "cloud of witnesses," who have joined " the choir invisible, Whose music is the gladness of the world," then indeed will the young man's vow of consecra- tion, twenty-five years ago, have been lifted, to become to-day my manhood's crown of rejoicing. December 28, 1884. APPENDIX. LETTER TO MR. POTTER. Dear Mr. Potter, — Many friends desire the publication of a selection of your sermons, and they ask that the volume may contain such as you may choose from those you have given from our pulpit during the quarter of a century you have been settled over the First Congregational Society of New Bedford. They also ask that an engraved portrait of yourself with your autograph be bound in the volume, and that the account of the Reception on your twenty-fifth anniversary, including the addresses, as published in the papers of the day, be annexed. Your friends wish to make this volume a part of that celebration, and a permanent memorial of the value to them of your twenty-five years' service and of the gratitude they feel toward you as pastor and preacher. Will you kindly attend to the compiling of this volume, in such form as you may deem best, and thus gratify this general desire ? In behalf of these many friends, Cordially and faithfully yours, S. Griffitts Morgan. New Bedford, 1885. 402 APPENDIX In accordance with the suggestion in the foregoing let- ter (to which this book is the answer), the matter con- tained in this Appendix is added. A Parish Reception was given to Mr. Potter on the evening of Dec. 29, 1884, in celebration of his having completed on the previous day twenty-five years of service as minister of the First Congregational Society. At the opening of the Reception, the following hymn, written for the occasion by Mr. William G. Baker, of New York, a former member of the Society, was sung by the Sunday-school, accompanied by the presentation to the pastor of a basket of roses : — A sower went forth sowing In Eastern fields one day, And cast in lavish handfuls The seed along his way. But, ah ! the sun was burning, The weeds and thorns grew fast : 'Twas only in the " good ground " The seeds sprang up at last. Like seeds cast by the sower Through ev'ry passing year, Our teacher's words have fallen, That still we love to hear. Our hearts shall be the "good ground " Wherein the seeds shall spring, To blossom with the beauty Of these fresh flowers we bring. APPENDIX 403 After social greetings by the Society and guests, a colla- tion, and singing by the choir of the Society, assisted by a chorus, the assembly was called to order by T. M. Stetson, Esq., who spoke as follows : — ADDRESS OF THOMAS M. STETSON, ESQ. Ladies and Gentlemen, and Children and Grandchildren, — Do you know that in this Society there is a dread and awful power ? It wears the garb and aspect of a gracious lady, but its decrees are more imperious and absolute than those of the council of Venice. It has decided that in this, our festival — and nobody can organize a sym- posium better than Unitarian ladies — there shall be speeches instead of the walnuts and the wine. I told her it might have a disastrous and centrifugal effect upon the liables (for I cannot style them reliables) of the parish : that next time my Brother Crapo would have " Alabama claims " in Washington requiring immediate attention ; that Judge Prescott would drop his cane and fly off to Westford ; that Mr. Rotch, Mr. Clifford, the new mayor, and myself would vanish where no feminine com- mittee could find us. But it was of no use ; and I am ordered by our high priestess to bring Mr. Potter up here, because she says he needs to be spoken to,: — that this is no ordinary occasion, — and she says it will be only seventy-five years more for the completion of his centennial service with us, and he wants to know what reply we have to make for his twenty-five years of preach- 404 APPENDIX ing. This may be so. I once read a sermon of the greatest writer that ever lived. The clergy present will at once know that I mean the Rev. Mr. Tarbell, of Lin- coln, who left six thousand sermons, each equal to four- teen printed pages of the North American Review. He said that, after writing some four or five thousand of these, the saddest doubts came to him whether he had not survived his usefulness, and whether the earnest- ness and bloom and fire of his youth had not departed and left no substitute. Perhaps our pastor has his periods of doubt and depression ; and I presume he would like to know what record his ministry has made, not merely upon sermons docketed and filed in his desk, but in his parishioners' minds and hearts. Let us tell him to-night. How events have marched since you, sir, became our minister ! How you have been interwoven with the dearest associations of this people ! How many marriage ties you have consecrated ! Over how many strong men — men of business, of affairs, men of the world, men of the State and of the public — have you spoken the last benediction of faith and hope ! How many gentle women, too, have passed away, whose lives had filled their homes with joy; not of the world, knowing its ills and woes only through their sweet charities, living afar from its tides and tempests, and seeing in their stormy waves only the deep blue of heaven, and yet, oh, how useful in God's scheme for human welfare and felicity ! What tides of action and of thought, of peace and war, APPENDIX 405 have swept by since you, a youthful acolyte, stood at our temple's gate, with your priestly brethren, and the solemn invocation went up, — " Since thy servant now hath given Himself, his powers, his hopes, his youth To the great cause of truth and heaven, Be thou his guide, O God of truth ! " Our right hand of fellowship was given you then. It need not be given again, for it has never been with- drawn ; but, to-night, we are celebrating your silver wed- ding to this church. What a congregation it was when you undertook the cure of souls, and especially what predecessors you had to follow! — the sturdy old logicians and expounders, Samuel Hunt and Dr. West ; the masculine orators of the liberal faith, Dewey, Peabody, and others ; Weiss, a very Chrysostom of the modern pulpit. What a mantle fell upon you ! Nor was it an ordinary society, nor of that weak mental pliancy which can be easily moulded by any able divine. It contained people of strong and diverse thoughts and methods and views. What a history it had, too ! The Mercury, usually so accurate, erred this morning in attributing our birthday to the year 1795. Why, our first minister died over sixty years before that. Nor were we an offshoot of the meeting at Acushnet. We were the whole of it : we were the " Bedford pre- cinct " for nearly a hundred years before that date, and for thirty years after, too, till our name was changed 406 APPENDIX by law to "The First Congregational Society in New Bedford." Nothing happened in 1795 excepting the building of a new edifice. Ours is the oldest legal church organization in this part of the colony, and was estab- lished to be a bulwark of the Protestant faith here, and with legal powers and safeguards that would startle you to hear. It had legal control over all religious affairs here, and over all men, religious and irreligious ones, too. Its powers were enormous. Its taxes were laid on every man who lived in the precinct territory, — on his poll, his lands and estate, — and this was collected by force of law. Every stranger who came here was taxed in the same way, irrespective of his faith, unless he could get a certificate from the clerk that he belonged to some other church approved by the government. Just one hundred years ago this winter, a poor Baptist, who had but one cow, and that necessary for the support of his family, in an inclement winter, was jailed for nine solid months because he would not give up that cow to pay a minis- terial tax to our society. Those were the days when parish funds collected easily. The sheriff and the law did it, and it did not need the zeal and assiduity of any John R. Thornton of that century to keep the parish treasury full. And if the town or precinct, as the case might be, was negligent, and did not provide a minister, in such case of a " defective " town (mark that phrase : a town was " defective," if a minister was lacking), then the county court stepped in, selected a minister, and saw to his APPENDIX 4O7 installation and settlement. Fancy such an ordination as that, Mr. Potter ! Instead of an induction into our pulpit by the grave and reverend seniors who did it, fancy it done by the county sheriff and his mace ! And it was not safe in those elder days for any discon- tented subject to grumble and scold improperly about the quality of the preaching. For the first offence, he was "convented," — whatever that may be I don't know, but it sounds like something that might hurt. For the second offence, he had to stand on a block four feet high. Doubt- less, our sweet ancestors of Plymouth colony deemed a block four feet high conducive to devotional thoughts. No rival church was tolerated here in our early period. If any man set up such without the consent of the gov- ernment, he lost his vote in town meeting and had to receive such other punishment as the court should inflict ; and it was made the duty of the county court to purge out such as were " perniciously heterodox." The future of the church was also provided for by law. It was the legal duty of the selectmen of the town to see that children and servants were made to understand the grounds of Christianity, so far as " necessary to salva- tion." This was a grave task for a selectman of old Dartmouth on his dollar a day. The church was militant then. It had to be. The laws provided that every man should take his gun to meeting with him and at least three bullets. The same chapter also provided, however, that he should not shoot at any game except an Indian or a wolf. 408 APPENDIX These were halcyon days for the clergy. They had no rivals to fear and no grumblers, no loss of parishioners and no bother about salary. Before you came, Mr. Pot- ter, these, our lofty prerogatives, had one after the other vanished, and the voluntary system prevailed. That had some advantages, though I remember the experience of Rev. Dr. Barnes when it began. He heard that his flock were assembled in parish meeting, and were talking of increasing his salary from $300 to $400. He seized his hat, hurried to the meeting and begged they wouldn't ; for he said it was as much as he could do to collect $300 out of them. You came to us when these tremendous safeguards of the law had ended. Your relation to us and ours to you had to stand upon its merit alone. You came to a con- gregation of various views, habits, and culture. The elder ones were strongly attracted to the ancient faith and the ancient ways ; watchful and rather suspicious of all novelties, but not hostile to honest inquiry into the records of revelation, nor into the infinite and unrecorded revelations of the earth, the universe, and of man's own consciousness. There were others who had passed into more liberality of faith — possibly some might deem, had travelled too fast or too far. Observances differed too. Some, after a week of figures and finance on wharf or at counting-house, when the Sunday came hungered and thirsted after righteousness spoken ; and yet others, raised on three services a day, a Sunday-school, mid-week meeting, the " great and Thursday lecture," the perfunc- APPENDIX 409 tory morning and evening prayers at college, where prayers answer the purpose of the military reveille and tattoo, found when the Sunday came that physically and mentally they needed loneliness, and the silences of the forest and shore, and in the very stones found sermons. Yet, whatever our differences of ways, of observances, of creed too, your ministration has united us in a deep satisfaction when Sunday comes that you are at the helm and that our beautiful church is always open for its appointed work. All Unitarians have one thing in common. We do like and must have good preaching. We always have had it, — have it now and always will have it, — whether we hear it from you, or from Dr. Dexter, who has occupied our pul- pit, or from Mr. Julien and other gentlemen who will have an attentive and appreciative audience when they do come. Possibly some outsiders, knowing as little as outsiders ever do of an inside, have deemed you a crank, because, forsooth, you would not turn any accepted crank, and would not deem that all the truths of the infinite now and hereafter were known to the writers who have preceded us. You have promoted inquiry into all domains of re- ligious thought. You have aided thoughtful people in their gropings, questionings, doubts, and darkness, with an inquiry free but always reverential toward the faiths of the past, always deeply reverential toward the hero of our faith, than whom even the most expanded culture and incisive thought of the present never has produced, depicted, or imagined a diviner man. 4IO APPENDIX Yours has been a twenty-five years of progress ; and we wish to say now — not in mere cordial phrase of personal regard, but weighing our words — that the zeal and ear- nestness of your early service could not equal in interest to us the zeal and earnestness and widening scope and more comprehensive insight of your present. Yours has been a life of industry, fidelity, and growth. A soldier of the Church, you have never slumbered on your arms, nor shrunk behind any red-cross shield, but have met the ad- vance with unprotected breast. You have not taught us that religion is a mere means for personal advantage, however exalted, nor a private solace or balm of however lofty a nature. You have never based your instructions upon the selfishness of the entoderm, but have advocated reforms of every kind, and with all the care and prudence such preaching requires ; and by that I do not mean with faint heart or half speech, — but the treatment of every reform of old abuses requires a care commensurate with the limitless importance of success. Reforms are not altogether lovely. The serpent sheds not his old skin without pain. Reformers, too, are not always and alto- gether lovely. They are spinous. They bristle and sting. We have never found the unloveliness of the typical re- former in you. Your many sermons, in all ways and means for human improvement, have pervaded, imbued, and permeated us like the gentle dew of heaven. Yes, — to use the phrase of your own journal, — you may be our ectoderm to your heart's content, but you will never be an echinoderm. APPENDIX 4 11 How well it attests the value of your ministry here — in spite of the fact that our Society is by no means homogeneous, and includes various beliefs, methods of thought and culture — that there is now a sterling unity among us and universal assent to and devotion to every serious and honest inquiry into the mysteries of life and of Deity, and that we are one shepherd and one fold ! Our temple has been no place for discord. Too many prayers of tender hope have shed a perfume through the place. And now, with a united society and united hearts and with all signs gracious as rainbows, we welcome you to the second quarter-century of your ministry. « On closing, Mr. Stetson called upon Mr. Crapo for remarks. ADDRESS OF HON. "WILLIAM W. CRAPO. Ladies and Gentlemen : — Twenty-five years is not a long period in the lifetime of our church parish. Its organization dates back to the early days of the settlement of the town. It was an influential factor in the religious and moral development of the community prior to the Revolution. It has a his- tory, not remarkable simply for its longevity, but for the conspicuous and creditable service it has performed, and for the marked and distinguished men who have pre- sided over it and who have ministered to the spiritual needs of its people. 412 APPENDIX We will not discuss the wisdom or necessity of church organization. For the development of truth, in the effec- tive accomplishment of moral growth and spiritual cult- ure, it is requisite that there be co-operation and cohesion, unity of purpose and unity of action. Some go farther, and say there should be discipline, even if forced by compulsory rules and arbitrary regulations. They say that, as the contentious and disagreeing partner in busi- ness affairs, that as the impracticable and mugwump in political action, are elements of weakness, so in like manner the dissenters and come-outers, who break the ranks of established church organization and are strag- glers along the edges, impair the solidity and force of the assault when made against ignorance and error. I do not undertake to weigh in the balance the merits of adherence against the merits of independence. Our fathers, here in this locality, were never very submissive to church rule. They were free thinkers at the outset. They believed in regulating their religious exercises and in selecting their religious teachers according to their own notion, even if it defied an act of the General Court. I confess I have always had an admiration for the early settlers of this town when they defiantly declared, in the face of persecution, that they would have for themselves "perfect liberty in all matters of religious concernment." Our pastor was born in this town of Dartmouth,* where the principle was boldly asserted and successfully main- tained. This principle of freest thought and the freest * New Bedford was once a part of the original township of Dartmouth. APPENDIX 413 exercise of conscience was the inheritance confided to him, and with courage and fidelity he has endeavored to transmit it. Independence of thought and persistency in maintaining it were born with him. What more nat- ural or logical? If you plant an acorn, you must not expect that there will grow from it a bending, shrinking, shivering weeping willow or an aesthetic sunflower. But I am preaching a sermon, which is a very improper thing to do upon an occasion of festivity and congratula- tion. Let me, however, add one suggestion. When it is asserted that our church has swung away from the moor- ings of the true faith, when the indictment is presented against, us by the religious community that we have com- mitted or are committing heresy, and it is" charged our pastor is not according to the orthodox pattern, we will answer back with the same identical words which our fathers sent from the Dartmouth town-meeting, in 1705, to the quarter sessions at B'ristol : " We understand that our town is presented for want of a minister accord- ing to law. To which we answer that we have one qualified as the law directs, — an honest man, fearing God, conscientious, and a learned minister, able to dispense the word and gospel to us." Such a man, Mr. President, we have had as our min- ister during the past twenty-five ) T ears. The history of the First Congregational Society, which is our parish title, shows the remarkable concurrence and harmony which have existed between its pastors and congregation. In early times, Dr. Samuel West was its 414 APPENDIX religious teacher, occupying its pulpit from 1761 to 1803, forty-two years. It is said of him that he was a man of great learning and equal piety, a lover of disputation, and vigorous in theological argument. I do not doubt that he preached political sermons ; for he was an active partisan, and rendered zealous service in promoting the independence of his country. Within the last sixty-one years, we have had four pastors.* There was Dr. Dewey, who instructed this people with great stores of knowledge, and with profound, vigorous, and original thought. He was a ripe scholar, a wise teacher, and sound religious guide. Then came Ephraim Peabody, the warm-hearted, lov- able, companionable man, who, with great good sense and a strong mind, made piety to grow in the household as well as in the church. After him, John Weiss was for many years our min- ister, a man of marvellous brilliancy, with a genius and inspiration which seemed heaven-born. Bright, piercing, far-sighted, he fascinated and captivated us, and lifted us heavenward. These are the men who, in the past, have strengthened the faith of this people, and have guided them to a higher, purer, and better life. * Only the longest and leading pastorates were here named. But the society has had other faithful ministers in this period. The now venerable John H. Morison, D.D., was a colleague with Mr. Peabody for several years, the two having been settled together at the beginning of the latter's ministry. Dr. Morison is the only one of Mr. Potter's predecessors now living. Between Mr. Dewey and Mr. Peabody, Rev. Joseph Angier was settled as pastor for about two years; and Rev. Charles Lowe was settled as colleague with Mr. Weiss for one year. APPENDIX 415 We have met to-night to greet our friend, who is their successor. We can speak freely of those who have finished their record. But I find it difficult to express — or, rather, I find it difficult to refrain from expressing — the feelings and sentiments of this grateful, loving, and admiring audience, when speaking of our pastor in his presence. I know his hatred of adulation, his con- tempt for honeyed words, his scorn for fine-spoken, fulsome praises. He who so loves the truth will resent the truth, if spoken of himself. I will not affront him to-night by telling you in his hearing of his virtues, of the work he has done for us, and of the blessed services he has rendered, of the debt we owe him, and of the love we bear him. « Were he not here to-night, I could speak of his courage, — that intellectual and moral courage which dares to follow convictions wherever they may lead, that shrinks from no encounter with the -truth, and that boldly accepts the result. I could speak of his integrity of thought, which permits no evasion nor sophistry nor subterfuge, but which, with inflexible honesty and with even justice, seeks to find the pathway to eternal right. For twenty- five years, with high character and upright life, he has labored with us and for us. He has pleaded for recti- tude, for loftiness of purpose, for exalted purity, and for righteousness. We will not undertake to measure his usefulness. Mr. Potter, we have asked you here to-night that we may thank you for your modest, patient, faithful work. 416 APPENDIX We greet you with warm hearts. With cordial good will and fellowship, we declare our gratitude, our esteem, our affection. We congratulate you, not simply because your pastoral charge of twenty-five years remains unbroken, but because of its duties well performed. This festival is the token of the tenderness of our sympathy and the loyalty of our friendship. We wish you much happiness and long-continued usefulness. Mr. Potter's remarks in response were entirely extem- poraneous, and only a meagre report of them was made. On being summoned to the platform, he said that he had some difficulty in keeping a consciousness of his own identity amid such novel circumstances and facing the addresses to which he had just listened. After seeing, indeed, the morning paper, with its purported biograph- ical sketch, sounding so much like an obituary notice, he had had a feeling all day as if he ought not to be around hearing such things ; and perhaps it was for this reason that the few thoughts which had previously come to his mind as proper for him to say on this occasion, should there be any call, had slipped irrecoverably away. He could, however, if he still knew his own heart, say that he felt, felt deeply — far more than he could express — a most grateful appreciation of all the kindness which had been shown in these utterances and in all the arrange- ments of the occasion, as in the many other more private ways by which his friends had been revealing their hearts APPENDIX 417 to him during the last few days. But he wished, too, that this might not be wholly an occasion for mutual congratulations over the past, but that out of it might come new consecration and new strength for the duties of the future ; and he concluded with an earnest appeal to the Society, which he meant also for himself, that all should stand ready to seize and use any new opportunities for labor in behalf of the good of the community which might come to them as a Society, so that the light of this church of their fathers should not only continue to shine, but should shine with increasing clearness and brightness, for the blessing of the living, the honor of the dead, and the good of generations yet to come. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. Form L9-25m-8,'46 ( 9852 ) 444 33 Potter - 5t Twenty-five sermons of twenty-five years . BX 7233 P85t UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 832 521 9