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Subscription price, for the season, $1.50; single copies, 5 cents. GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass. RELIGIOUS RECONSTRUCTION BY M. J. SAVAGE V 1 The thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." Tennyson BOSTON GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET 1888 IGHJ BY GJJORGE H. ELLIS To MY own self this book I dedicate, That self that shineth o'er me as a star, Still lifting, guiding, luring from afar, That self which, though all-glorious, is my mate ; That, though as high above my poor estate As o'er the earth the brooding heavens are, Still whispers that this distance is no bar To him who climbs th' ideal to create ! To this, God in me, of me, my life-love, That has inspired all my nobler past, To this all that I am I owe alone I My blessed counterpart, it shines above ; And since, as with God's hand, it holds me fast, It bids me know it shall be all my own ! 86129 PREFACE THIS book is an earnest attempt to answer earnest questions that have come to me from all over the land. These questions are " in the air," and are a product of the most serious life of the age. If they are flippantly asked by a few, they are devoutly and courageously asked by many more. Too many to be answered privately, they are also too much a matter of public concern to be hidJen in a corner. Believing, as I do, that religion is a permanent and the supreme interest of man, I also believe that "the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." People wish to be religious, but it is becoming more and more true that they are not willing to pay so high a price as their brains for what passes current under the name of religion. Along with the growth of knowledge, then, concerning the universe, God and man, there must go a parallel readjustment of the thought-side of the relig- ious life. And this means only that God is the God of truth as well as of devoutness. He, then, shows the deepest faith in God who fearlessly faces the truth, and lets it build the temple in which he will worship. CONTENTS I. PRESENT CONDITIONS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT . 9 II. RELIGION AND THEOLOGY 24 III. THE SCRIPTURES ' . 40 IV. COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY 57 V. IDEAS OF GOD, OLD AND NEW 72 VI. THE FALL OF MAN 87 VII. REDEMPTION OR EDUCATION? . 103 VIII. JESUS o . 120 IX. THE OLD CHURCH AND THE NEW ...... 136 X. THE END OF THE WORLD 151 XI. THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL 164 XII. IF YOU ARE RIGHT, How DOES IT HAPPEN THAT EVERY ONE DOES NOT AGREE WITH YOU? . 181 XIII. HERESY AND CONFORMITY 197 XIV. THE DUTY OF LIBERALS 215 XV. THE Loss AND GAIN OF RELIGIOUS RECONSTRUC- TION 231 Present Conditions of Religious Thought. HOWEVER far I may find myself to-day from agreeing with the statements of faith that were made by the fathers, I am glad and proud to be able to trace my spiritual lineage to the old Congregational churches of New England. They were grand, consistent men who founded those churches. They were men possessed of positive convictions. They dared to think clear thoughts. They were men who be- lieved from the crown of their heads to the soles of their feet. They were men who tried to live out their convictions, and to shape human life in accord with what they believed to be the will of God and the best interests of men. And if, sometimes, they were willing to persecute others in the inter- est of their own belief, they were also willing to endure hardships themselves for those same great faiths. They did both tinder the influence of that profound conviction which made them believe that they had no choice in the matter. This was God's truth as they understood it ; and, like Mar- tin Luther, and in that spirit which every man has who feels that he is the mouth-piece of the Eternal, they said : " Here I stand. God help me, I can no other.'* Who were these men? They were the picked men of England. Many of them were men of wealth, occupying high social positions, men who had proved that they were able to cope with and conquer the forces and conditions of this world and of the civilization of which they were a part. io Religious Reconstruction But they were men who would not stand any intermediaries between themselves and God. They refused to bow their necks to any human authority. They refused to submit their judgments, their consciences, the direction of their minds and lives, to any man-made institutions, any man-made rituals, any man-made dogmas, as they understood those terms. They were the rationalists, in the best sense of that word, of their time. They studied carefully the basis for their belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures. They used their reason freely, fearlessly, earnestly, in coming to the conclusion that those words were the inspired oracles of God. And, when they had reached that conviction, they refused to have anything between them and the word of God. They would come to it with their own minds unbi- assed, if they could, with the earnestness of seekers after truth. They would take the truth first-hand, not diluted, not perverted, not twisted from its meaning by the interpreta- tions of scholastics or under the bias of ecclesiastical insti- tutions. They were, as I said, rationalists ; and, when they had accepted the Bible as the word of God, they claimed the right to come to it, every man for himself, and in the light of the best scholarship of the time interpret its mean- ing. They claimed the right of free inquiry, freedom of research, the right of private judgment as to what God desired them to do. I claim, therefore, in no spirit of boasting, in no spirit of pretence, that I am doing to-day precisely the kind of work that they did in their time. They went out into the wilderness to found a new commonwealth of God, that they might be free to follow their convictions as to what was right. To-day, we, in their spirit, under the im- pulse of the same purpose, for the sake of reaching the same end which they had in view, go out into the wilderness of. intellectual thought and life, that we may found a new com- Present Conditions of Religious Thought 1 1 monwealth of God ; that we, like them, may listen for the spirit, unhindered by any authoritative interpretations of men. As then the fathers put aside the Church that claimed to interpret the Bible for them, so we put aside the creeds that claim to interpret the same Bible. We put aside the very theory of the Bible which they held, for what we conceive to be adequate reason. We will not have any man-made insti- tution or any man-made interpretation between our souls and the great Father of all. Now, what did these men believe ? They believed that this world was created at a definite point in time, that God lived outside the universe which he had made and of which he was the rightful dictator and governor. They believed that he created man in his own image, and placed him here upon the earth ; that man, in the exercise of his own free choice, rebelled against the rightful authority of heaven, and that, as the result of that, the whole human race lies under the wrath and curse of Almighty God;' that every soul is lost ; that every man, woman, and child on earth, that has ever been born, or is alive, or that is to be born, has been, is, or must be guilty of high treason against heaven, deserv- ing no mercy at the hands of Infinite Justice, lying helpless at the feet of the Infinite Mercy, to be disposed of by the Infinite Wisdom as he chooses. The scheme of doctrine which they deduced from these Scriptures, which they had accepted as the direct and infallible revelation of God, they believed to be in every part a transcript of the divine mind. It was God's plan for saving so many of the souls of his children as he in his infinite wisdom decided were to be saved. The whole scheme of doctrine that the fathers held sprang out of the supposed ruin of man ; and, from beginning to end, it was intended merely as a means of recovery. It was 12 Religious Reconstruction God's way of saving the lost. They believed this rationally and intelligently. They believed it with their whole souls ; and they tried to live in accordance with their belief. They tried to found here in New England a divine commonwealth, a theocracy, a government of God, in which there might be realized what to them were divine ideals of human life. I say they believed these things intelligently. There was no reason then, in the state of knowledge that prevailed at that time, why they should not hold these beliefs intelli- gently as rational, earnest, inquiring men. I suppose it is true and we need to note this truth, because of the dif- ferent use of language at the present time that the men who rebelled against those beliefs were not generally clear- headed, intelligent, earnest thinkers, who were ahead of their age. Sometimes they were, it is true; but the infidel in early New England life was generally the kind of rebel that the pulpits pictured him. He rebelled not against what he did not believe to be divine truth; but he rebelled in the interests of his own will against what, perhaps, he would have confessed in his own heart was a government of God. The pulpit in those times got to using the word " infidel " in that sense, and has kept it up ever since ; though the times are so changed that the man who is an infidel to-day is an entirely different person, intellectually, morally, and spirit- ually, from the one who first wore, and perhaps deserved, the epithet. Such, then, was the belief of the Church from which our liberalism has sprung; but several things have happened since then that have changed the intellectual atmosphere of the world, that have made us live in another spiritual and theological climate, that have made us, in all literalness, the inhabitants of another kind of universe. Let me indi- cate a few of these great changes that have passed over the civilized world. Present Conditions of Religious Thought 13 In the first place, there has been a revolution in physics, that passes under the general name of science, the revolu- tion in our thoughts about the universe, its age, its origin, and the method of its development. There has gone along with that, of necessity, a change in our conception of the nature of God, of the nature of his government of the uni- verse, of the relation in which he stands to his creatures. It does not fall within the limits of my purpose, this morn- ing, to outline very definitely what this great change is that has come about as the result of the growth of modern sci- ence ; neither is it necessary for the purpose we have in hand. I wish this morning merely to note the fact, and the conse- quences that have resulted from it. It will be a part of my plan to go more into detail later in this series. There has come, then, and this is a fact that we need to bear in mind, a revolution nothing less than that in our thought about the universe, that has carried with it, of necessity, a revolution in our thought about God, of his relation to the universe, which is his garment, the expression of his life. In the second place there has been a revolution in a nar- rower department of science, that which passes under the general name of biology, the science of life. There has been a complete change in our conception of the origin and nature of man. We have found out that this old world of ours is indeed very old, not a new creation, so old that all our methods of computing time seem vague and useless when we attempt to grasp the long reaches of the years. We have found out, also, that not only is this earth-home of man very old, but that the race itself is very old. We are no parvenus in the universe or on this planet. Instead of six thousand years, we must probably say sixty thousand, perhaps twice or thrice sixty thousand, years are the meas- 14 Religious Reconstruction ure of the existence of man in his earth-home. We have changed completely our conception of the origin of man. We think of him no longer as placed here suddenly by the fiat of the Almighty Power, complete and perfect in body, mind, and soul, and as capable, therefore, of a free choice that might justly decide his eternal destiny. It is no part of my purpose to detail the changes, this morning, that have passed over the universe. I merely note the fact that the educated and free minds of Europe and America no longer hold the old theory concerning the origin, the nature, and the character of man. This, of course, must change our conception of his relation to God, our conception of sin and evil, and the causes that have brought them into existence. A third change has come over the modern universe. There has been a revolution in criticism. There has arisen what our fathers did not dream of the existence of a science of historic criticism. We have studied the other re- ligions of the world as well as Christianity, and have ob- served the origin of these religions. We have traced their natural methods of growth. We have seen that, instead of coming down out of heaven completely made and finished, they have been the slow and gradual growth of the human heart, the reaching up of humanity towards heaven. They have been no less divine, mark you, no less the work of the spirit of God, because slow in their progress and incomplete, because unfinished and the product of earth instead of being of direct descent from heaven. And the conviction has forced itself upon the great body of intelligent minds that what is true of the other religions of the world may, at least, be true of Christianity, even if we are not ready to say must be. This historical criticism has applied itself, also, to the study of the Scriptures. We have found not one infalli- ble Bible, but many, each of them presenting claims to infal- Present Conditions of Religiotis TJwught 1 5 libility. We have studied the method by which sacred books have become sacred. We have seen how they have grown up as the natural product of the religious nature of man, which has surrounded them with reverence and lifted them up to a pedestal of sanctity, so that, in other religions as well as Christianity, men have come to stand in awe of the letter, and have feared to question it. Again, as the result of the civilization of the world, there has come what may rightly be called a revolution in the human heart, a revolution in our human sense as to the jus- tice and mercy and rightfulness of these old religious the- ories that have been pressed upon us as the work of God. This feeling in many hearts has been beautifully voiced by Whittier's " Eternal Goodness." I give two verses as illus- trating what I mean by the change that is passing over the sentiment of the world : " I trace your lines of argument, Your logic linked and strong ; I weigh as one who dreads dissent, And fears a doubt as wrong. " But still my human hands are wtak To hold your iron creeds : Against the words ye bid me speak, My heart within me pleads." In other words, the level of our human ideal of what is right and just has risen, so that we rebel against the old conception of God and of his dealing with men, and say: No matter for your proofs. It cannot be so. God cannot be as you have described him. He cannot so treat his chil- dren. It is not part of my purpose to-day to justify this feeling. I note it as a fact ; and it is a fact which weighs with thousands who would not attempt to justify by logic the feeling that they still assert must be true. 1 6 Religious Reconstruction These, then, are indications of the things that have hap- pened since the days of our fathers. I wish now to note a few results of these changes. I hold it no light thing for a man to disturb the settled religious convictions of his fellows. I have no word of sympathy for the flippancy that talks for ttne sake of talking or of tearing down old and sacredly held beliefs. Religious theories are sacred things. They have been baptized by the tears of thousands. They have been fused in the heat of human love and human aspiration. They have taken shape as the result of the best thought of some of the grandest men of the world. Touch them not carelessly or lightly, then ; for not only are they religious convictions, but generally the moral motives of most men are inextricably entwined with their religious theories, so that, if you touch these, they feel drifted from their moral moorings and know not which way to go. But there is sometimes less danger in reconstruction than there is in leaving things as they are. Who is responsible for these changes that have been going on ? Mr. Spencer, Mr. Darwin, Mr. Huxley, Mr. Matthew Arnold, Mr. Lecky ? These men ? I mention these only as specimens of the representatives of modern theology and modern thought. These men have not created the facts. They have simply reported. They are not the causes of this condition of things. They are the symptoms, the out- growth, the voices of it. The cause of this condition of things is a growing civilization under the impulse of the same God who has created all the past. If it be true that the world has been brought to its present condition accord- ing to the theory of evolution instead of by some other method, then certainly the man who has merely found it out is not responsible for it. The Eternal, of whom all truth is only a manifestation, he is responsible for the truth which "s Present Conditions of Keligious Thought 17 human eyes only see and which human hearts bow before. The time comes, then, when the only safety is in reconstruc- tion, in facing facts and recognizing things as they are. A man's storehouse that he has occupied may, in the process of years, become unsafe ; but he says, I do not like to disturb it, as it will interfere seriously with my business. But, if he waits long enough, the time comes when not dis- turbing it interferes with his business a good deal more seriously than that disturbance which means reconstruction and putting things in a condition of safety. So the time comes, under the increasing new light, the dawning of wider day, when men must face the new facts, when they must reconstruct their theories in accordance with them, or there will be greater religious and moral suffering, disintegration, and decay than any amount of doubt could have produced. What are, then, some of the things going on about us that intimate that these changes are in the air ? I wish to note a few as specimens. First, the American Board stands for one. What is the attitude of the American Board? It represents the churches ; and its late decision at Springfield means, simply, that the majority of the churches still hold the old theory of the universe, still hold that conception of God, still hold the old ideas of the condition and destiny of man. That is all. The majority vote came to its natural result in their councils ; and I have no sort of sympathy with the outcry made against the majority in the American Board. I have no sympathy with the flippancy of the daily press in its criticisms of the action of the American Board or with the editorials that have been written in criticism of it. The American Board simply stood by its flag, stood by its con- victions. It believes that the men in China and Japan and India, who are not converted to particular theological beliefs by particular methods, are lost. As honest men, what should 1 8 Religious Reconstruction they do, then, but stand by their guns ? Prof. Park said, two or three years ago, that this new dogma as to a second probation for those who had not a chance to hear the gospel in this world would " cut the nerve of missions " ; and he was wise and far-seeing in his statement. What was the result ? There was a deficiency, last year, of something like $200,000 in their receipts. If men believe that the heathen are to be lost unless saved by their scheme and plan of salvation, then farmers and hard-working men and women all over the land may well pinch and save their dollars, and even their pennies, that, if they cannot send a man, they may at least send a tract, to tell them of their danger. But the moment you make them believe that the danger is not quite so immi- nent, that it is even possible that the heathen may have another opportunity, then why should they pinch and save ? Why should they put themselves to inconvenience? Why should they neglect friends, families, neighbors ? Why should they take money which is needed at their doors, for the sake of carrying on the general work of civilization which will come by natural processes in its own time ? If all that the missionary work means, as is intimated by a good many of the criticisms, is bringing the nations of heath- endom to our system of education and our civilized ideas, why should they do anything special for them ? Commerce will take care of that. The general intercommunication of ideas that is going on so rapidly will take care of that, if that is all. There is, then, no need of the American Board ; and those who are anxious to have the American Board give up those old ideas are simply advising it to commit suicide. You will not misunderstand me. You know how glad I am of the change that is going on. I am only talking in the interest of consistency. As an indication of how rapid the change is, it is almost amusing or it would be, Present Conditions of Religious Thought 19 if the subject were not so serious to know that there are not more than one or two orthodox Congregational ministers in Boston to-day who could be appointed to preach the gospel to the heathen. They will do very well to preach in Boston ; but it would not be safe to trust them in other lands. As another indication, I need only speak the word An- dover. There is no sort of question that the creed which the Andover professors are obliged to sign every five years was framed with the express intent to prevent the precise thing that is going on. It was born in the days of the old Trinitarian controversy, and was founded as a bulwark against modern thought, a defence and fortress against Unitarianism. What right, then, have any set of men to divert a trust fund like that into the teaching of the very things it was arranged to prevent ? I have all sympathy with the professors at Andover. I love some of them as personal friends. I have no intellectual respect for their position. They signed a creed that they do not believe, and that they tell you they do not believe ; and they claim the right in some way to divert the purpose of the money which was used in its foundation to teaching that which the founder himself detested with his whole soul. It seems to me that the only honest thing is to do one of two things, either apply to the legal authorities of the Commonwealth to change the conditions of the trust, or else walk manfully out of the front door of the institution, and leave it to itself. I see not how honest, clear-headed men can help doing one or the other. But the change that I speak of has been going on, as you see, until it has infected these teachers, so that every man at Andover to-day is a heretic, in the light of the teach- ing of the fathers and the founders of that institution. Another indication of the change that is going on. You find in almost all the great churches of this country that 2O Religious Reconstruction there has been an insensible change passing over the minds of the men that sit in the pews. They do not like to hear any longer the old doctrines preached ; and this feel- ing has become so influential that the ministers in the pulpits are largely silent concerning them. Dr. Parker, of England, told us the other day, at Tremont Temple, that there was very little preaching of the old doctrines in London now; and yet, if those doctrines are true, there is nothing that ought to be preached so much, so often, with such intense and awful earnestness. If they be not true, then it is a pretence and a sham to have them in the cre.eds and to swear that you believe them. Not only are there many of these men that are so influenced, but you will find the great majority in many of the churches do not like the old statements of theological doctrine ; and, if they were preached consistently, they would leave the churches, and get beyond the possibility of hearing them. Then there is another body of men, who have gone out of the churches, who are no longer within the range of their influence, who have been taught that religion and the popu- lar theology were practically the same thing ; and, having become convinced that the popular theology is superstition, - they think religion is superstition, and they have given up being religious. They think there is no reason why an edu- cated, earnest man should pay attention to religion. They are beyond the reach of its influence. They need, if relig- ion be still a matter of importance, to be taught the new conception of the religious life, and that there is still basis in the nature of things for being religious, and deeply re- ligious. Then there is another class, a class that I come in con- tact with almost every day, men who, whether they attend the old churches or not, have, in some indefinable sort of Present Conditions of Religious Thought 21 way, come to feel that the old ideas no longer hold them with any earnest grip. If they say they believe them, they cannot tell why or define them. But they still go on, with father or mother or friend, or from habit, to the old churches, because they say : Suppose I give this up, which way shall I go ? What is there to take the place of them ? It seems to them like giving up everything, and going out-of-doors into an unsheltered religious life. They have a conviction that they get perhaps a little benefit, that there is something good in being religious and connected, even in the loosest way, with a church; and they do not like to surrender it. They will not go out until they have somewhere to go ; and they need light and guidance. These are indications of some of the conditions of relig- ious thought that seem to me to demand earnest and patient work in the way of religious reconstruction. We need to consider that one of two things is true. There is no such thing as the world's being "sort of" lost, "kind of" lost, almost lost, partly lost. One of two things is true ; and we need, and the modern world needs, to face it. Half- way Unitarians need to face it. So-called liberal orthodox people need to face it. And it is because of my con- viction of this great truth that I have taken the position that I have in reference to the American Board and to Andover. Either this world is lost and under the curse and wrath of God or it is not. One of the two is true. Either every man, woman, and child in it is doomed, and justly doomed, to endless misery, or they are not. They are not half-way doomed to endless misery, partly doomed, partly under God's wrath, partly lost, half one thing and half the other. Either this theory is true or it is not true. If it is true, and if these men to whom I have referred believe it is true, then they are consistent, honest, earnest 22 Religious Reconstruction men ; and I honor them. But, if it be not true, then the whole scheme of doctrine which constitutes the plan of sal- vation is something we no longer need. There is no one of the old doctrines of Orthodoxy that is not part of the plan for delivering man from the ruin that came upon him from the fall. Now, if there has been no fall, if man is not thus ruined, if God does not look on him this way and is not going to treat him in this fashion, then there is no reason why this doctrine should be still insisted on as necessary, nor that it should be indefinitely and half-way held. There is no necessity for it, unless the human race is fallen and ruined. What we need to do to-day is to turn square round and accept the other alternative, if we do not accept this. If this is a race that has been developing for thousands of years, beginning on the borders of the animal world and climbing slowly up to our present position; if, under the providence of God, we are going on in the process of edu- cation and development, that is one thing. If we believe it, let us give our money, our thought, our means, the lavish outpouring of our efforts, to the accomplishment of the kind of work that is needed. Only consider the loss of time, of money, of love, of effort, poured out into what are practically useless channels, provided that be not the condition of the human race. If all the ingenuity, all the thought, the money, and the work could be directed to facing the real facts of the condition of man and helping him upward in the pathway of progress towards the real God, who has led him to the present hour, think of the gain, the immense advance, that might be made ! Now, these men of the olden time believed that they had a theory which matched the facts. They did their best in the light of their age. They created theories of man and of his destiny. They Present Conditions of Religious Thought 23 thought that this great scheme was the counterpart of the reality. They fought for it, worked for it ; and they were grand in their earnestness and sincerity. Let us see what I believe to be the one necessity of the modern world, the need of having a working theory of life as real to us as theirs was to them. Let us have a living thought of God, a living thought of his universe, a living thought of the nature of man, his needs, and his destiny. Let us have something that shall satisfy the brain, so that we can respect ourselves intellectually ; that shall be motive for the heart, that we may feel there is something worth living for. Let us face the real facts of the universe con- sistently, earnestly, flinging away the old ideas, if we do not hold them any more. Let us front the new universe, and catch the first rays of God's new sunrise. Let us take hold of the work we are called upon to do to-day, and not content ourselves with criticising the fathers, while willing to be not half so grand, so consistent, so manly, so true as they. RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. " I LOVE flowers, but I hate botany ; I love religion, but I hate theology." These are not my words : I am quoting them. I quote, indeed, from memory ; but, whether they are verbally accurate or not, I am quite sure of the accuracy of the thought. They are words which are reported to have been uttered here by a popular evangelist within a year, and they undoubtedly express a very wide-spread popular feeling. And yet there is the most delicious absurdity underlying them. As though there could be the fair outline, the dainty tinting, the sweet fragrance, of the violet or the rose, except for the underlying plan, the fibrous framework, that supports it and enables it to be ! The other night, in Tremont Temple, the Rev. Joseph Parker, D.D., of London, spoke very earnestly against sci- entific theologians, going so far as to say, what I think he himself would admit to be a little exaggeration, that they had been guilty of more injury to religion than all the in- fidels. As though there could be rational religion religion that could appeal to men's brains, that they could hold with personal self-respect without careful, systematic, underlying thought ! Every little while, you will hear persons, particu- larly among the attendants at the old churches, expressing their rejoicing over the fact that their minister does not any longer preach theology. They will tell you that he gives them only practical, every-day sermons, sermons intended to Religion and Theology 25 help in daily life. As though a sermon could be practical and could be of any value as a help to any one, unless under- lying it there was a theory of life, unless it told which way to go and what to do, and unless it contained a reason as to why! And they will add sometimes, as an explanation, showing really what they are thinking, that their minister does, indeed, once in .a while, once a year, perhaps, bring out his old theology and give a theological sermon ; and then he will put it away again for another year. If, indeed, this be true, it is an insult both to the minister's brain and to his honesty. I speak of this, however, as indi- cating a popular type of thought, or what passes for thought, at the present time. It is a popular type of feeling, rather let me say. Now, let us face this matter for a few moments, and really see just what we mean. It requires only a little thought to convince us that theory underlies everything. Theory underlies practice in every department of human life. When people are talking about religion and theology, what do they mean precisely? If you press them a little closely, I sup- pose that they would concede it is something like this: religion covers, to their minds, the practical, every-day good- ness of human life. It is the way people feel ; it is the way they treat their neighbors j it is the way they conduct their business ; it is a question of honesty, of purity, of truth, of integrity; it is, in a general way, a question of goodness. Theology, these people think, is only theorizing, something that is in the air, that may very well be separated from this practical goodness. But, underlying all practical goodness that passes under the name of religion, everywhere and always, is theology ; for theology is nothing more nor less than the theory of religion, the theory of goodness, the theory of feeling and conduct that we cherish and practise. 26 Religious Reconstruction Theory, then, as I have said, underlies everything, as any man who has ever given two thoughts to it in his life will see. From the time he rises in the morning until he goes to sleep at night, in his business ; in his store, if he is a merchant ; in his lawyer's office, if he is a lawyer ; in his work as a mechanic, if he is a mechanic ; in his day labor, if he is to be a day laborer, wherever he may be and whatever engaged in, he is working on a theory, a theory as to how this particular thing can best be performed, though he may never have waked up to think of it as a theory. He may never have asked himself a question about it in his life. He may have inherited it, or borrowed it, or have come into possession of it in some unconscious way; but every step he takes, every word he speaks, every action he does, implies an underlying theory of life. Not only that, but the amount of success which he attains depends always, other things being equal, upon the general accuracy of his theory. If he succeeds without thinking anything about it, it is because he has stumbled, or blundered, into the possession of a theory sufficiently accurate to lead him to success. All the failure in the world comes from the single fact that men misconceive the actual realities of the universe about them, have false theories about them, and this leads them into false methods and ways of conduct. Take the farmer as an illustration. He may never have thought much about the matter of soil, of enriching it, or as to what crops he ought to plant in particular fields, or of the general methods of his work ; but even the stupidest farmer in all New England is working every year upon some- body's theory as to how the work on a farm ought to be carried on. Perhaps he has picked it up from his father where he left it, and has never attempted to improve it; but he is working out somebody's theory, and the measure Religion and Theology 27 of his success depends on the measure of the accuracy of the theory on which he is working, consciously or uncon- sciously. But, if he is ever to make any improvement in his farm, it will be done, in the first instance, by thought and study that will enable him to form a better theory as to how his work ought to be carried on. Let me give you one more illustration. We have been considerably exercised in Boston lately over the success of the famous yacht that has been designed and planned by a Boston man. We are proud of the fact that to-day we stand as champions of the world in this particular. But, if you will give it a little careful thought, you will arrive at the conclusion that it was not the hurrahing and waving of hand- kerchiefs and hats of the crowd on the day of the race that won it : it was not anything that occurred on that day which determined where the victory should lie. It was careful, patient, persistent study and thought in the quiet office of Mr. Burgess that won the race. It was theory, one theory beating another, a theory incarnated. It was because this particular yacht was built more perfectly in accordance with the eternal laws of God, as embodied in wave and wind ; and it was the man who studied these with the most accu- racy and embodied them in the most perfect theory that won the race. When the theory was devised, the race was won ; and that which occurred on a particular day in New York Harbor was only the carrying out of that which was pre- determined in the nature of things. Take, again, the case of the late war between France and Germany. It was not because the German soldiers, man for man, had more enthusiasm, bravery, daring, that they won the victory. It was because the grandest military theorist of the age fought out the campaign from beginning to end, thought out the methods of carrying on the warfare, the the- 28 Religious Reconstruction ories pertaining even to the kind of step which the soldier should take on his march, as well as the very implements gun and cannon that should be used in the campaign. It was Von Moltke, before a drum had been beaten, that humil- iated France. Suppose you have a sick child in the house, and call a physician, and say to him: "Doctor, I don't care anything about your theory, or anything about your studies. All I want is that you should cure my child." If the doctor is a wise man, he would say : " My dear sir " or " madam, it is my theory concerning the structure of the body, it is my theory concerning the nature of the disease, it is my theory as to the power of the elements and combinations that make up my medicines, and as to the way they work particular results, that makes me a physician, that enables me to act wisely, and that determines beforehand, before I have ad- ministered one single dose of medicine, whether I shall be able to heal or not." Theology is not quite so unpractical a thing as the popu- lar feeling of this age declares it to be. Consider for a moment the part that clear-cut, earnest, religious thought has played in the great epochs of the world. What was it that made Mr. Wesley's mighty power in England a hun- dred years ago ? What was it that created that great up- heaval or revival of religious feeling that swept over the kingdom? What was it that created that great movement which crossed the Atlantic, and has made one of the grandest popular churches of America to-day ? It was nothing more nor less than the new thought of John Wesley. It started in his brain, a new thought about God, a new thought about men, a new thought about the organization and function and work of the Church. It was this that kindled this new life, and produced all the magnificent results. It was the thought Religion and Theology 29 of Wyclif that so disturbed Rome, and made him the dan- gerous man he was to the Middle Age conception, that made him the morning star of the English Reformation. It was the new thought of John Huss that turned him into so dangerous an enemy of the old ideas that he had to be burned at the stake. It was the new thought of Savonarola that revolutionized Florence. It was the new thought of Servetus that made him so dangerous to Calvin that at any price he must be got out of the way. It was the new thought of Calvin himself that made him a dictator, and the dominant force that he has been for hundreds of years. It was the new thought of Martin Luther about the Bible and the method of salvation, as to the relation which God maintains towards his world, which kindled the fire of en- thusiasm which swept over half Europe, and burned up so many of the old superstitions, and prepared new fields for the growth of human civilization. It was the new thought of Jesus out of which Christianity itself was born. Jesus was no such man as these people who inveigh against creeds and against theology, and say all that we want is practical religion, have supposed him to be. It was the new thought of Jesus, expressed and implied in every throbbing word, that made him a leader of the new religious civiliza- tion. And it was the new thought that is connected with the name of Moses that created the religious grandeur and determined the career of Israel for four thousand years, and made them the guides of the world out of the wilderness of polytheism into the conception of the unity of the universe as ruled by one great power. Where was, later, the central idea of Channing and his work ? What differentiated him from the older movements of religious life in New England ? Out of what was our Unitarianism born ? Out of a new and grander thought of 3O Religious Reconstruction God and man. And, when Theodore Parker came, that which made him a leader of his time was that his thought had gone on far beyond that which had become too conserv- ative to receive or reflect anything better in the way of religious life. Why does Unitarianism exist to-day ? What is the meaning of the grand liberal movement in the relig- ious life of the modern world ? It means only that we claim to have a better theology. That is the root and meaning of it all. We have new light on these great prob- lems of human life. We have gained a clearer conception of God, we claim. We are nearer the truth in our theories about human nature, we claim. We are nearer to the truth concerning the methods by which men are to be brought into better relationship to God, we claim. If we do not believe that these claims are well founded, then we have no right to exist, because we are dividing the forces of Christendom. If we do believe that these claims are well founded, if we do believe that we have more light and higher, broader, deeper, better thought, then it is our duty to stand by this thought, to teach it, to help lift the light which has been intrusted to us, in order that men may know the way. That is what all light is for, to teach people the way. Knowing the way is of no account, unless people are willing to walk in it, of course ; but, on the other hand, being willing to walk is of no account, unless men know the way. The two must go together : the knowledge, the theory, the theology, must precede the taking of the very first step of practical activity. Here, then, is this feeling in regard to theology, this aversion, this liking for what is called practical religion, as though the two could be opposed to each other. From what has this feeling sprung ? When you find a wide-spread feeling on the part of the people, it is not to be treated Religion and Theology 31 lightly or as of no account. It means something; it has sprung out of something. What has this sprung out of ? In the first place, some small part of it has to be accounted for by the impatience of certain people at being troubled with anything like clear and consecutive thought. There is al- ways a part of the community to whom it is a pain to think. They do not care to be disturbed in this way. They would rather drift or go with the crowd, and be floated on by the strongest current. But I do not think that this is a very wide-spread reason ; for I believe that the number of persons who are unwilling to think is less than ever before. Cer- tainly, I do not believe there is much of this feeling on the part of those who come to hear me speak ; for I note the fact with joy, and as complimentary to you, that always, since I have been in this city, when I have asked the hardest things of you in the way of thinking, I have received the grandest and most enthusiastic response. There is another thing. Thousands of people have come to feel that theological discussion is valueless, that it amounts to nothing, that it leads nowhere, that it does not settle problems that are in debate, and that therefore it is not worth while. Now, we need to use just a little clear thought here, and draw a line of distinction. When two people sit down and dispute, to show the intellectual training which they possess, to prove what intellectual athletes they are, simply to show what they can do ; when their object is not to find the truth, but to beat their opponent, then dis- cussion of that sort, instead of leading to high thinking, is useless and worse than useless, because it frequently degen- erates, and leads to bad blood, dissension, and enmity. But when two people come together to talk concerning any great problem of importance that may be in debate, and when both of them are animated by an earnest desire to find the 32 Religious Reconstruction truth, then there is nothing so profitable as discussion and debate. It is just this discussion, this debate, this com- paring of views, this weighing of evidence on this side and that, that has settled every question that has ever been debated from the foundation of the world. If we are ear- nest in desiring to settle these great problems, then debate in this spirit not of winning the victory, but of finding the truth is of the utmost importance. But the principal reason, as I am convinced, why this feeling exists is a misconception of what is meant by theol- ogy. It is not theology which people dislike so much. It is the particular kind of theology that they have been accus- tomed to hear described under that name. This means, really, that the people are tired of the old theology, and wish to be rid of it. That is the common, the principal ex- planation of all this wide-spread feeling. Suppose I should attempt to preach to you to-day one of the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, who confessedly was one of the mightiest preachers the world has ever produced. If you listened at all, it would be with a dull indifference, or else with indig- nant protest against the views there presented. People, even in the most orthodox churches, would not bear the- preaching of Jonathan Edwards to-day. Why? They will say, because they do not like theological preaching. What they really mean is that they do not like the theology of Jonathan Edwards. They have outgrown and left it behind. It is no longer real : it is not alive to-day. But go back to that old church in Northampton, and to the time of Jona- than Edwards, and see how people listened then. It was the same kind of human nature in the people that sat in those pews, who believed with their whole heart and soul the theology of the universe that Jonathan Edwards held, and which made his sermons all on fire. Men listened while Religion and Theology 33 the tears ran down their faces, and they clutched the pews in front of them, as if to save them from sinking into the perdition that he opened under their feet ; and women r in hysterics, fell to the floor ; while excitement, such as is almost unknown in the modern churches, was produced by those sermons that seem to you now so dead. They were alive enough then ; and it is not because they were theolog- ical that you do not like them to-day. It is because the theology of Edwards's time is not alive to-day. Those the- ological sermons were most intensely practical at the time. They moulded the thought, they kindled the emotions, they determined the practice, of those who breathlessly heard. Study any religion that you will, Christianity or any other, or study the belief of any particular religious de- nomination, and you will find this to be universally true : that it is the theory, the underlying theology, which deter- mines what it shall be. What is the difference between Buddhism and Christianity ? It is not a difference of feel- ing, it is not a difference, chiefly, of practical living. There is something behind the practical living, something behind the feeling, something which determines the feeling, which moulds the practice. What is that ? The theology always : you cannot escape it. Sakya had a certain theory of the worlds, of the origin of evil, of human suffering, of the gods, of their relation to men, of their ability or their willingness to help them ; a certain theory as to his own origin, his own mission, what he was in the world for, what he might accom- plish. And Buddhism, in all its infinite ramifications, is nothing more nor less than the out-blossoming of this theory, this theology of Sakya. The theory determines whether peo- ple will have a lofty or degraded feeling about God. You will find, it is said, certain tribes in some parts of the world which never sacrifice to their deities. They only bring 34 Religious Reconstruction flowers, and lay them as an offering on the altar. They have a theory, a theology, of God, a thought about him, that makes them feel that he does not need to be placated, that he does not care for blood and groans and the death of his victims, and that he is to be worshipped by bringing offerings of fragrance and beauty. It is their theology that makes them worship in that way. If you could have visited Mexico in the times of Pizarro, and seen the hundreds of human victims slaughtered during those cruel years, and had asked why this sacrifice of life, you would have found, as you examined it, that these priests and the people of Mexico had a theory of God, a theology, of which this was the natural and necessary expression. They believed that their God, the God who sat in the heavens and controlled their destiny, wished from them this kind of sacrifice ; and they dared not neglect its performance. But are there no evils connected with theorizing, with theology? With certain kinds of theorizing and certain types of theology there are evils many and great. I wish to note some of them. The principal evil, to my mind, connected with the theol- ogy that needs reconstruction to-day is the conviction, which has been held in connection with almost all the religions of the past, that their theories are absolutely and finally true, that they are inspired in such a sense as to be infallible, that it is wicked to question or change or even talk about improving them. This is the principal evil, as I conceive it, connected with the theology of the past which needs to be done away. Think for a moment what some of the evils are that connect themselves with this idea of infallibility. In the first place, the result that meets us at the very threshold is the stagnation of religious thought. In the sphere of religion, no matter what may be true anywhere Religion and Theology 35 else, men have done thinking. There is no chance for im- provement. There is no question of a change. Here is the infallible revelation of God in its final form ; and woe be to any man who dares to touch or question it ! Yet the human mind in every other department goes on, asks questions, receives new answers, broadens and deepens, gaining ever a deeper view of the universe, while the popular theology be- longs to two or three thousand years ago. It is the religion of a Ptolemaic instead of a Copernican universe; and it has stayed where it was because of this theory of the infallibility connected with it. The next evil is that it turns men who would else be lov- ing, tender, and helpful, into bigots, and imbitters their hearts against their fellow-men; and no wonder. Suppose that you and I believed that we had a theory, the acceptance of which in its unchanged completeness was absolutely essen- tial to the salvation of the world, and that any man, woman, or child who did not accept it was doomed to eternal tor- ment. It would be our grandest duty to prevent any one questioning, touching, or changing it, so far as lay within our power. We inveigh against the horrors of the Inquisition, the atrocities of St. Bartholomew's Day ; but what were they compared with the eternal torment of millions and millions and millions of souls who might be ruined by those heretics, no matter how honest, that the Inquisition and St. Bartholo- mew's Day dealt with ? It would be mercy to wipe off the planet the inhabitants of a continent, even though they were tortured a thousand years in the process, rather than that they should be the means of eternal torment to the inhabi- tants of two continents through many generations. It is the theory of infallibility, then, that was responsible for St. Bartholomew and for the Inquisition. Another evil. It divides humanity into factions and 36 Religious Reconstruction schools. It splits up into warring divisions the grand army of humanity that ought to be marching sympathetically side by side in one united force against the opposition of evil. If a man thinks that I am wrong, and wrong in such a way that I am pernicious to my fellow-men, he cannot work with me. If I think another man is as honest as I am, I may hold to my conviction that my theory is right ; but so long as I do not believe that it is infallible, but am willing to admit that I may make a mistake, I can join hands with him in practical work and in the search for truth. So there can be this practical sympathy and union in spite of theoretical differences. Then there is one more evil, one connected with the first that I mentioned ; and that is that it chains the religious world to barbaric ideals of God, of worship, of religious ser- vice, and of religious life. The theory of infallibility has for a thousand years consecrated barbarism as divinity. It has taken the thought of the wild and cruel men of old, of the cave-men, of the cannibal, for the popular conception of God as connected with his treatment of the human race. It has adopted the cave-man's and the cannibal's theory of di- vinity. It is the way they would treat their enemies, there- fore that is the way their god is going to treat his. It takes this theory of the past, and makes it infallible. Men are afraid to question it ; and so you find whole masses of men to-day with their faces towards the past, and clinging to the hideous idols of the old world's barbarism. This prevents religious growth, religious civilization. It prevents clarifying and making grand our theory, our image of God that we must worship. Then there is another evil connected with this old theol- ogy, and with any theology, for that matter ; and that is an evil which is very common, the placing the means, the Religion and Theology 37 methods, of helping men above the welfare of the men them- selves. You will find people fighting over their theories, their theological doctrines, to the neglect of the men that the theories ought to be serving. Suppose there was a life-saving service at a certain point on the coast, and another three miles away, and that they were furnished with different appliances, that they were en- gaged in different methods of carrying on their work, meth- ods which the government was testing, to find out which was of more efficacy. Suppose the two start for a wreck, and the two crews are so set, so earnest, in the belief each that its own way is the best, that they fall to fighting on their way, while the wrecked men sink and drown. No method, no appliance, only a loving heart and a ready hand are better than all their appliances ; and yet that is nothing against the appliances. The appliances multiply their power fifty-fold: only they should be used not for their own sake, but for the sake of helping men. So it is nothing against theology that doctors of divinity fall foul of each other, and leave men to perish, while they battle over their own peculiar ideas. That is only something against the wisdom of the theologians, nothing against the value of clear thought as to the method by which men are to be saved. Now, a question arises, which we must face. Is it possible for us to have a clear and accurate theory of the universe, a theology so perfect that it will supersede all others ? Perhaps not yet. A perfect theory, a perfect theology, I take it, is to be found only in the mind of the Infinite himself. But some- thing of great importance is possible for us. It is possible for us to find something of the truth. It is possible for us to have a working theory of life that shall be a guide and help to us. And it is possible, as comparing one theory with another, for unbiassed and honest men to determine as to which of them is the more likely to be true. It is not possi- 38 Religious Reconstruction ble that there should be the same amount of evidence for two contradictory theories ; and, if men are more anxious for the truth than to support a special theory, it will be easy to decide on which side the evidence lies between different the- ories in any department of life, theology as elsewhere. And that theory is to be accepted which has the most proof. That is the only sane method for any sane man to follow. If there are, therefore, two theories, one of which has a good deal of proof and the other has none, then the one that has a good deal of proof, the one that has the most probability in its favor, is the one to adopt. Take that, and hold it till it be proved to be untrue. But we need here to say a word concerning the duty of the conservative and of the radical mind. I wish to defend the conservative and to attack it, to defend the radical and to attack it, all in a breath. The duty of both should be sim- ply to find God's truth. A man has no right to cling to a thing just because he has become accustomed to it and learned to love it. And the man who has found something new has no right to go to the man who is clinging to the old, and tear it away and force his new thought upon him, because he happens to like the new better than the old. The duty of both should be a reverent search for the truth. Test the old, but test also the new. Challenge any new thought, and do not admit it as right into the ranks of established conviction till it has proved its case. But give it an opportunity to prove it. Treat it not as an enemy, but as though it might be a friend. Treat it as though it might be a messenger from above, with new light for the guidance of men. Hold to that which has been proved to be good in the past. Remem- ber that this is an infinite universe, that nobody has fath- omed it as yet, and that it is absurd for us to suppose that there are no improvements to be made in our religious think- ing, feeling, and conduct. Remember that the very dearest Religion and Theology 39 of all our hopes is that we are to make progress day by day, coming ever nearer and nearer to God, nearer and nearer to the high and complete ideal of humanity and life. And this can only come through clearer thinking, through nobler feel- ing, and through more earnest action. Conservatism and radicalism, then, instead of fighting each other, should join hands, and fight for the discovery of God's truth. One more thought concerning the relation of theory to practice. Remember that it is clear-headed theological thinking that has laid out the new roadway for human prog- ress through the wilderness, that has built all the road, that has constructed and laid every rail of the track; that it is clear-thoughted theory that has invented and built the en- gine and every car in the train ; that it is clear-headed theorizing that takes charge of the engine as engineer, one who knows the theory of the road and of the train and how it is to be run. It is theology which is the head-light on the locomotive that shines out in the darkness, reveals the track, tells when there is any obstruction in the way, and when it is open and safe to follow. But all this were not enough, even though the theology were perfect; for it does not create the religious life. There must be emotion, the steam in the boiler, the heart of fire, the enthusiasm of humanity, the love for God, the desire to help our fellow-men. There must be all this, the steam power, the propulsive force, or else the theory is worse than nothing. If you have the grandest love for humanity in your heart, if you have this religious force mighty as a whirlwind, yet if the roadway be not made safe at every point, if the engine be not built according to the eternal laws of God, then all your propul- sive power simply means wreck and ruin. You need theol- ogy, clear thought, and knowledge of the way first, then the power to move men along that way into ever better and better fields of thought and human endeavor. THE SCRIPTURES. THE whole system of belief which constitutes the popular theology of the churches to-day springs out of a certain theory concerning the Scriptures and a certain method of their interpretation. The next step, then, for us to take, in the work of religious reconstruction, is to consider these Scriptures in the light of modern knowledge, and determine for ourselves whether the theory concerning them is justified and whether the scheme of theology which has been derived from them has a basis in the reality of things. Before proceeding to do that, however, I wish to say a word concerning the men and the times that gave birth to our popular system of theology. However we may differ from them to-day, we ought at any rate to estimate them correctly, to understand the grandeur of their character and the earnest, noble aim which animated them. There are two ways by which we may estimate any work that has been achieved. We may consider it in relation to its ability to meet the ends to-day for which it has been constructed, or we may consider it in the light of the time that gave it birth. To illustrate what I mean. The steam-engine of Watt and Stephenson would be a very poor contrivance to meet the wants of the nineteenth century ; but yet we rightly honor these men for what they did, even lifting them to a loftier pedestal of fame than we accord to their successors TJic Scriptures who have carried on the work which they invented to its present degree of perfection. So the men whose earnest brain and flaming hearts and noble aspirations wrought this theology, though we may differ from them now, are worthy of honor. They were, indeed, the rationalists of their time. They had got out of what they regarded, and what we regard, as a lower type of religious life. They stood then for the most radical reform. They took the next step which led the human race to where we are at the present time. They be- lieved that they were dealing with the actual facts of God's universe, and of human nature. They believed that they touched realities, and that they were moulding and shaping human life into accordance with the divine and eternal truth of things. And it was easy enough for them to hold those opinions then. We declare to-day that those views are irrational, that there is no reason for their existence, that they do not accord with the facts, that they are antiquated in the light of present knowledge. But, in estimating the men and their work, we need to remember how very modern our knowledge is, how recently we have come into posses- sion of what we regard as a more nearly accurate theory of the universe, how recently we have learned to look at God as we do to-day, how recent is all this new thought, this flood of light in which we gain a new conception of human nature. The popular theory of the universe to-day, the Co- pernican theory, the one that we believe to be substantially accurate, was not accepted by the majority of even learned men until so modern a time as may be indicated by the date of the foundation of our own city. Only two or three hun- dred years ago did men begin to live in what is our modern world ; and conceptions of God, of man, of God's dealings with man, which we lightly regard as unreasonable to-day, may have looked to those men as the perfection of divine 42 Religious Reconstruction reason. Greece had taken a few faltering steps towards the development of a scientific conception of the world ; but, when Christianity was born out of the brain and heart of Judaism, it brought with it, as an inheritance, which was un- questioningly accepted, the old Scriptures, as being an in- spired transcript of the divine mind. And these Scriptures taught a theory of the world, of its origin, of its construc- tion, which the Church unquestioningly accepted, as they believed on the divine authority itself. It followed, then, as a logical necessity, that whatever steps science had already taken became useless. They felt, concerning this outer knowledge, very much as the old Mohammedan caliph did concerning the wisdom stored up in the library at Alexan- dria, when he was giving his order to have it burned. It is reported that he said : If the teachings of these books agree with the Koran, then we do not need them. If they do not accord with the Koran, then they are pernicious and wrong, and ought to be destroyed. So the early Church felt that, if scientific speculation agreed with the Bible, they did not need it ; for they had the Bible already. If it differed from the Bible, it must of necessity be wrong. And this they de- cided in the light of the best reason that they had at the, time, for they accepted the Bible as the infallible word of God; and this was, therefore, a perfectly rational thing for them to do and say. We need to remember these things, in order that we may hold these great fathers of the Church, these early leaders of theology, in something like a true esti- mation. If we are as faithful to the light of our time, as earnest, as devoted as they, then we need not blush in their presence and they need not blush in ours. With so much of preliminary concerning these men, the times in which they worked, and the results which they achieved, we will turn to the Scriptures, which, as I have T/ic Scriptures 43 said, are the warrant which is offered us for the truth of the teachings which constituted the popular system of theology. Those doctrines spring out of a certain theory of the Scrip- tures, and a certain method of interpretation. But, before we begin this discussion, let me say one ear- nest word. Let no man who hears me dare to say that I utter one single syllable against the Bible. I am seeking, as all men ought to seek, the simple truth concerning the Bible. I criticise the theory, I discuss the method, what men have said about the Bible, what 'men have claimed concern- ing the system of truth which they have deduced from the Bible. These are the themes of my discussion; and I can- not understand how any man in the older churches or the new should desire anything except the simple truth. Why should a man desire to be deceived concerning this marvel- lous universe ? Why should a man desire to cling to opin- ions concerning his own nature which are false? Why should a man wish to hold inaccurate views concerning the relation in which he stands to God ? Why should a man be willing to be travelling the wrong road instead of desiring to find the right one ? I say frankly, I consider it my first duty to hold my mind as free and open as I am able to, unbiassed, desiring only the truth. If a man proved me wrong, I would thank him as one God-sent to lead me into a better way. In this spirit, all of us ought to consider these great prob- lems concerning human nature and human destiny. A theory of the Scriptures, a method of interpreting them, these are the bases of the popular theology. First, I shall speak of the method of interpreting the Bible. It is treated as one book from beginning to end; and, on that theory, the method of interpretation seems to me unim peach- ably correct. Two principles I need to notice. In trying to find out what the Bible teaches, very naturally the slightest 44 Religious Reconstruction hint, the faintest voice of utterance, counts as against no matter how impressive and prolonged a silence. Suppose there is a whole book, suppose there are a dozen books, in the Bible, that have nothing whatever to say con- cerning any one of the great doctrines of theology; and sup- pose there is half a line in some one of the books that gives some clear and explicit statement concerning one of these doctrines. Of course the silence counts for nothing. It is the faint voice or the distinct and definite utterance that shall be heard. For as Prof. Stuart, of Andover, one of the giants of modern theology, used to say, " One text is as good as a hundred." If you feel sure that God has said something definitely, though it be only half a line, the fact that he has not said it through whole tracts of the Bible is not to count against that feeblest and faintest utterance. The other principle of interpretation is that, where there are seemingly contradictory statements, that which is less ex- plicit and definite is to be interpreted in the light of that which is clear and more explicit. As an illustration of what I mean, suppose the doctrine of the fall of man appears in some parts of the Bible to be con- tradicted, or suppose the doctrine of eternal punishment- appears to be contradicted, as it certainly is in certain state- ments of Paul, for in many places he seems to teach uni- versal salvation, what is to be done in settling as to the real teachings of the Scriptures? If there be one explicit, definite statement to the effect that the doctrine of eternal punishment is true, a statement that can bear no other inter- pretation, that seems to be a perfectly clear and definite statement in that direction, the apparent contradictions of it are to be explained away, interpreted after some other fashion. I wish now, as illustrating this and to show what doctrines The Scriptures 45 have been deduced from the teachings of the Bible, to point out the bearing of this method of interpretation concerning two or three of these doctrines. Take the doctrine of the fall of man. That is clearly and definitely taught in the very opening book of the Bible. It is true that Jesus has nothing to say about it. He does not mention the fall or the signifi- cance of it. It seems very strange, on this supposition of the old theology, that Jesus, who is the second person in the Trinity, who is God himself, who has come into this fallen and lost world on purpose to save it, does not mention the fall. You would expect him most certainly to give some clear and definite statement of the condition of men, and how they came into this condition, and why it was necessary for him to come to this earth to save them. You would think that he would have at least alluded to so important a matter. Yet he says nothing about it. But, on the theory that has been held as to the nature of the Scriptures and the method of their interpretation, this objection fades utterly away. For, since every particle of this Bible is infallibly inspired from beginning to end, the silence of Jesus is to count for nothing as against the explicit statement of the first book of the Bible ; and we must believe that, since God is the speaker and the writers are only his various mouth- pieces, the utterance of any one of them is just as much the word of God as the utterance of any other. So the Book of Genesis, though its author is unknown, or the statement of Paul must be regarded as the words of God equally with the words which Jesus himself uttered. So concerning the doctrine of the total depravity of man. Jesus has said nothing about it, a large number of the writers both of the Old Testament and of the New have said nothing about it ; and yet there are certain texts which seem to teach it with the utmost clearness, and these texts 46 Religions Reconstruction are rightly, on this theory of the Scriptures, made the basis for this doctrine. If we hold this theory of the Scriptures, we cannot escape this conviction. Again, concerning the atonement, the incarnation, the suf- ferings and the death of Jesus as the necessary means of appeasing the wrath of God, satisfying the divine justice, and making it possible to forgive those who repent and for- sake their sins, Jesus does not teach this. But it is taught with a great deal of clearness in certain parts of the New Testament. And these direct and explicit teachings, on that theory of the Scriptures, must be held; and this doc- trine is rightly deduced from these passages of the New Testament. And so concerning the destiny of the lost. Jesus does appear very plainly in some passages to teach this. At least, it requires a good deal of interpretation to take away the force of the passages in which he is supposed to have taught it. And, since that is so, any teaching of uni- versal salvation which may be found in some other passages of the Bible is to go for nothing. They must have meant something else, for both doctrines cannot be true ; and, since the one is clearly and explicitly taught, the other passages must have meant something consistent with this teaching. I speak of this as illustrating the method of the theologians in their interpretation of the teachings of the Scriptures; and I must say in their justification that the method seems to me the method that any clear-headed and earnest man would apply to the interpretation of any document whatsoever. Now, then, we will pass to consider the theory which they held of the Scriptures themselves ; for the theological doc- trines must stand or fall by the truth of that theory. If the Scriptures are what has been claimed for them, if they are the infallible word of God from beginning to end, then we must put away all other sources of knowledge, and follow the The Scriptures 47 direct teaching of this one book. Those men are logical who to-day say concerning the speculations or definite dem- onstrations of science, " There must be something wrong about them, for here is the word of God ; and God himself certainly could not have been mistaken concerning his own universe." Let us then candidly, earnestly, for a little while consider these Scriptures, and see what we must think about them. In the first place, the question comes up as a very impor- tant one as to whether they are to be treated as one book. Here are sixty-six short treatises, making up the Old Testa- ment and the New, written by different men during a period of at least a thousand years, written in different countries, under different circumstances. Some of them are history, some laws, some letters written to a church or to a personal friend ; some are prophecies, some psalms, some philosophi- cal treatises. Is there any reason why we should consider all these various treatises as constituting one book? Of course, I must treat the points that I bring up with a great deal of brevity ; and for further consideration and for much of the proof of what I shall allege I shall be obliged to refer you to larger treatises that cover these themes. I can only give you results. I must frankly tell you, liowever t that I clo not know of any reason whatever why we should consider this one book at all, except that it has come to be found within the same covers. There is no proof, so far as I am aware, to be found in all the ages why we should not treat thi simply as a body of religious literature, a library instead of a volume. When we raise the question as to who wrote the books, we must answer that we do not know the authorship of more than a few with anything like ceitainty. If you ask me when they were written, concerning the most of them I must say 48 Religious Reconstruction again, nobody knows. If you ask where they were written, we do not know, except in the case of a very few. Suppose, now, that the author of one of these books claims to be infallible. I must say to you frankly that I do not recall a single place where any one of them does make such a claim. The claim to the infallibility of the Bible is not one put forth by the writers themselves, but one that has grown up in the course of centuries and become a tradition. We cannot offer for it anything in the nature of logical or substantial evidence that any rational man need accept to- day. But suppose some one of the writers should make this claim on his own behalf, what should we think of him? What should we think of a man who should make such a claim to-day ? Do you not know perfectly well that, if there should appear in Boston, in this nineteenth century, a man who claimed to be the infallible mouth-piece of God, we should simply treat him kindly as a visionary, or perhaps put him under treatment for insanity ? Nobody would think of accepting such a claim. Why, then, should we accept it concerning a man whose name we do not know, of whose country we are ignorant, who lived, nobody knows just when, hundreds or thousands of years ago ? Is there any rational ground for accepting such a claim ? If there is, I have never, in many years of careful study, been able to find it. But suppose one of these men should make the claim for himself, would that hold good for the rest? Suppose the author of John should claim that he was infallibly inspired : would that cover the inspiration of Luke and Matthew, or the author of one of the books of the Old Testament ? I do not see why, since we have concluded that this is a literature, not one book. If we discover the authorship of one book, that applies to him and him alone. But suppose we felt sure that all the books constituting The Scriptures 49 the present Bible were infallibly inspired in the beginning : are we at all certain that we have those books precisely as they were first written ? Consider a moment, and see. The oldest manuscript we have of any part of the Bible takes us back only to the fourth century. Then we have hundreds and thousands of manuscripts, some of the Old Testament, some of the New Testament, some of whole books, some of parts of books; and in these manuscripts we find hundreds yes, thousands of various readings. They are not all alike. The differences in these readings are, in the main, small, I grant you ; but sometimes they extend to half a chapter or to whole verses, so that these differences are, after all, con- siderable. It is frequently offered as a satisfactory answer to this objection that great care was taken in copying the Scriptures ; and they were probably as correctly transmitted as were the writings of Cicero. Probably more care was taken in copying the Bible than in copying the writings of the great Roman orator; but we have a right, concerning a book that claims to give us the infallible mind of the Almighty, to be more critical and careful as to the accuracy of the writing than we are concerning a merely secular writer of philosophy or a deliverer of orations. If any man should come to us with the claim that the destiny of the human race hung on the interpretation of a line of Cicero, then we should inquire with a little more care as to the accuracy of the transcript of his orations. We are not sure enough, then, of the precise accuracy of any single text in any one of the books of the Bible to give us warranty for asserting that the destiny of the human race hangs upon this verbal statement. And then again, as we open the Bible to examine it care- fully, what do we find ? We find that in the early part and all the way through it teaches, what we should naturally 5O Religious Reconstruction expect, the most inaccurate kind of science. It reflects the ideas of the people of the time in which it was written. Why should it not ? Only think for one moment. Suppose some one of the writers of the Bible, either of the Old Testament or of the New, had given us only one hint, one clew, to the Copernican theory of the universe. Think how incontest- ably it would have established its supernatural origin, that it was something more than human history. But we find nothing of the kind. The science of the Old Testament and of the New Testament is the science of the age which pro- duced the Bible. It is inaccurate in a hundred different ways. I cannot detail them to you or give you the evi- dence; but it is beyond question that the Bible reflects the scientific ideas of the times when these books were written. It is precisely what we should expect if it were a human production ; but it is far from being what we should expect of a Bible divinely inspired and infallible. It is full of historical inaccuracies ; and, more important still, its ethical teaching is anything but what we can heartily accept and indorse to-day. The morality of the Old Testament is the morality of the barbarous age in which it was written. It indorsed polygamy, it indorsed slavery. It represents God as not only condoning falsehood, but as practically instruct- ing one of his prophets to tell a lie for the purpose of deceiving and leading into destruction a king that he wished to get out of the way. It indorsed things too horrible to be mentioned in public, not merely gave a history of them, but represented them as the express command, or permis- sion at any rate, of the Almighty. When we come to the New Testament, we liberals are accustomed to say that the Old Testament ethics, of course, is behind the age ; but we are very careful and shy about even hinting a criticism of the New. But it seems to me that we must. We are com- The Scriptures 51 pelled, if we dare to express the results of modern thought, to utter our conviction that the New Testament itself is far from being ethically up to the standard of the best thought and the moral life of the nineteenth century. Jesus teaches theories of political economy which we regard as unwise, and which would result in moral disaster. Paul teaches a doctrine of morality, of the marriage relation, of woman, which is simply an offence to our noblest conception of womanhood, and which, if carried out, would be a degrada- tion of the family life. Prof. Toy, a man who was trained as a Baptist, and who has never, I believe, been turned out of the Baptist communion, one of the foremost scholars of the time, has told us frankly, in a recent article, that the ethics of the New Testament must be admitted to be below the highest level of the moral ideals of the present time. Then the books of the Bible, from beginning to end, tell different stories, contradict each other in a hundred differ- ent ways. I am aware that interpreters have twisted and turned them, and attempted to harmonize the different and apparently contradictory statements over and over and over again. Very likely, if you should make this statement, they would say, That is an old objection : it has been answered a thousand times. But I should reply by quoting the words of a man who seems to me to have hit upon the truth : " It is well for us to keep in mind that an objection is always young till it is satisfactorily answered." We cannot then, it seems to me, in the light of the science of the modern world, in the light of the historical criticism of the modern world, in the light of the study of compara- tive religions, in the light that has been thrown on the meth- ods by which Bibles come to be, we cannot any longer hold this old theory concerning the Scriptures. We are rationally permitted not only, but we are rationally 52 Religious Reconstruction compelled, to reconstruct completely our theory concerning these grand books ; for they are grand when we hold them as they are, and do not attempt to put them into a position that their writers never intended them to hold. I feel that, in this changed conception of the Bible, we are not losing the Scriptures : we are finding them for the first time for two thousand years. We are being able to take them for what they are. We are able to handle them rationally, to find out what there is in them, and to apply them to the daily uses of our daily lives. I, for one, shall consider it a great gain when I am able, in this pulpit, to read any part of this Bible and make use of it without the necessity of stopping to ex- plain that I think this or that about it, that I do not regard the story of a miracle as literally true. I should like to be able to read the story of Jesus turning water into wine, or the raising of Lazarus, or the feeding of the multitude with the five loaves and the two fishes, without stopping to explain that I do not believe that this is literal history. I should like to be able to read it for what it is, the grand literature of a grand people, the biography of a race ; for it is nothing more nor less than the religious biography of a great nation, invaluable to us to-day, if we know how to use it, as teaching us how it is that religious ideas spring up and grow, and how they are transformed, and to what they come as the result of centuries of progress. Rabbi Hirsch, one of the great Hebrew schol- ars of the country at the present time, has told us that this theory of the infallible inspiration of the Old Testament is something that the Jews never thought of holding. They believed, he says, that it was the people who were inspired, the great church in which the Holy Spirit lived, a people God-inspired and God-led, and that these books were simply the expression of their opinions at the time. They consid- ered themselves under the guidance of this living spirit of TJic Scriptures 53 God, but perfectly free at any time to modify or change. Mr. Baring-Gould, one of the leading scholars of the present time in the English Church, says the same in relation to the New Testament. He says it is the expression of the opinion of the early Church. It is the Church, in his theory, that is inspired ; and, under the guidance of God, it is competent to outgrow and to modify and change and leave behind any of the teachings of the New Testament, and substitute in their place the living truth of the living God to-day. I wish now to note a few of the advantages that accrue to us as the result of giving up the old and accepting this new theory of the Scriptures. In the first place, we are relieved from an enormous re- sponsibility. If we accept and continue to hold the old the- ory, then we must be perpetually apologizing for God. We must be always trying to explain how it was that he did not teach the truth concerning the origin and creation of the world. We must try to explain why he made such impossi- ble statements concerning the exodus of the Israelites, for instance. We are taught that a nation of about three mill- ion souls, with the old and the young, the sick and the well, with all their household furniture, their cattle, their flocks, with everything which they possessed that is, as many peo- ple as lived in the whole of this country at the time of the Revolution were able to go out in a body, and leave the land of Goshen, in one night. If we hold that theory, we must try to explain how the infallible spirit of God could ever have made such a statement. We must try to explain how it happened that God in those old times should have in- dorsed such immoralities as shock and revolt the hearts of men at the present time. It seems to me to be an immense gain to be able to treat this grand old book as just what it is, to treat it as the outcome of the heart and the thought 54 Religious Reconstruction and the life of its age ; to note how, as the world becomes more civilized, the level of thought, the level of its moral teaching, rises and rises, becoming higher and higher; how the light seems to increase toward the dawn of a better day that we trust is now before us. Then there is one other advantage. We gain something in this theory that seems to me grander than the Bible itself. We gain the conviction that this race of ours is made up of the kind of beings that make Bibles. Think of the changed conception of the spiritual nature of man ! Instead of look- ing upon him as abject and utterly lost, lying prostrate and helpless, with no power to lift himself out of that position, think of this marvellous race of ours blossoming and bearing truit like this out of its own brain and heart and spiritual life. It is grander than the Bible to think that man can make Bibles. Grander than any picture is the artist who is able to paint the picture. Then we begin to sympathize with the other nations of the world, these other Bible-makers of every land and of every age. We are not compelled to think of them as having been forgotten of God, left outside the pale of his mercy and care, blundering, stupid, walking and falling into the ditch or into- difficulties of every kind, only at last to take the final leap over the precipice into endless ruin. Instead of that, we see them also lifting up brain and heart, under the impulse of this spiritual aspiration, and blossoming out into these mar- vels, these literatures, these books consecrated as the Bibles of the world. We have one more grand gain. These old Bible writers, Paul, the authors of the Gospels, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the singers of those wondrous Psalms, these come back to us, no longer mere instruments that some inexplicable power used with which to write, hut men, our brothers, kindred ERSITY SCAUFO> The Scriptures 55 souls, whom we can love to associate with, whose words we love to listen to, as being human, loving, tender words of wisdom, words that touch us more deeply because they are not infallible. We feel their own hearts beat. We come into sympathy with the throbbing of their questioning brains. We see them looking out over this universe, and wondering over the same problems that we are still trying to solve ; and we take hold of their hands, and feel the kinship and brotherhood. And they become masters, teachers of those of us who are humble enough to accept their mighty sugges- tions of truth ; for, when some man, no matter if he be not infallible, who is intellectually so much taller than I am that it seems reasonable that his outlook over the world must be wider and of grander sweep, tells me that he sees something beyond my ken, it is at least rational for me to say that per- haps he does, and to be comforted, to be lifted up, to be inspired, by the thought that the grand vision which he says he sees may be true. When I am hidden in some low valley before the sun rises, and I catch the first faint gleam of light kindling a far-off summit, though I cannot see the sun, I know there is a sun ; and I know that it is rising, for there is the reflection of its presence. So, when some of these mountain souls are kindled with light, with suggestions of sunrise, while still invisible to me, it is rational for me to believe that that may be a shining from that country where the sun never goes down ; and comfort and cheer and new courage may come into my heart. And when we stand in this hopeful position, with all the Bibles of all the world before us, with all their grand writers, teachers, witnesses, as our brothers and friends, able to use all these and rejoice in them, we stand free to listen to the latest living utterance of the living God, in the sure con- fidence that the source of truth is not exhausted, that there 56 Religious Reconstruction is more light, as the old Pilgrim preacher, John Robinson, said, still to break out of God's holy word, more light to break out of his holy earth, more light to break out of his holy heavens, more light to break out of these consecrated human brains, more light to burst forth from these noble human hearts. And we stand free to listen and look and accept, and to take God's hand and let him lead us into ever new and better ways. COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. IN the opening sermon of this series, I referred to two or three very important revolutions in modern thought through which the world is passing to-day ; and I told you at that time that I should have occasion later on in this course to speak of some of these with more definiteness and particu- larity. The time for reviewing at least one of these great revolutions of thought has arrived this morning. I propose, therefore, to discuss with you the relation which exists be- tween our theories of the universe and our theological beliefs. I have three main points which I wish to make, three objects in view. In the first place, I wish to point out to you how intimate, how vital, is the relation between cosmology, or the theory of the world, and theology ; to show that theology roots itself in, springs out of, is adapted to, takes the shape of, the theory of the world which we happen to hold ; to show that the two inevitably go together ; and to intimate to you that, if there ever comes a radical change in our theory of the world, there must of necessity come a like radical change in our theological beliefs. Second, I wish to show you that the popular theology, the theology of the last thousand or fifteen hundred years, has sprung out of and is vitally related to the old cosmology, the old theory of the universe. Third, I wish to indicate to you the profound, sweeping, 58 Religious Reconstruction radical change that is passing over the thought of men con- cerning the nature of the universe, 'and to hint to you that this change is so radical, so profound, so far-reaching, that it will be found a simple impossibility for the old theology to continue permanently to live in the new universe. These are the three points to which I wish to call your earnest attention this morning. At the outset, however, I wish to raise a question which has been put to me a good many times, and which is a per- fectly natural and legitimate question, and the answer to which ought to throw a great deal of light on our thinking, as to why this great change in theological thought should come just now in the history of the world. Why did it not come five hundred years ago ? Why did it not wait for five hundred years from this time ? Why are we in the midst of these great changes, transitions, discussions, concerning the fundamental problems of the universe, of God, of man, and of destiny ? Why is this great unrest upon this particular generation ? And, another question, if the change is coining at all, why does it not come more rapidly ? Why does not every- body accept the results of these new ideas at once ? The answer to the first question, as to why just now this change is coming over the world, will lead me a long way, in consideration of the nature of human thought concerning the world in which we live. Suppose, for example, that man has inhabited this planet two hundred thousand years ; and that is an estimate which is a very rational one, in the light of modern science and of our knowledge of its origin and development. Up to within four hundred years, four hun- dred compared with two hundred thousand, substantially the same ideas have been held by all men, in all nations, under the teachings of all religions, everywhere, concerning Cosmology and TJteology 59 the nature of the universe and of the relations of God to it. Up to within four hundred years, I repeat, substantially the same fundamental principles have ruled human thought in this regard. In ancient Greece, a few promising steps were taken towards a rational scientific conception of the world. But Plato, by the weight of his great name as a philosophi- cal thinker, turned the philosophical world into ideal chan- nels and away from the scientific conception of the nature of things. Then speedily came Christianity, accepting the old Hebrew theories of the world as divinely revealed to man ; and it became from that time forth a sin to raise any question concerning the nature of things. It is only within a, few, say four or five hundred years, that there has beer, such freedom of thought in the world, such an accumula- tion of knowledge, such an observation of facts, as to en- able the human mind even to begin the formation of a theory that might claim for itself the warrant of facts. It is, therefore, only within these few hundred years that an attempt has been made in this direction. That is the reason why all the burden of this theological thought and change comes upon this generation, upon us of the modern world. Met* do not accept these ideas any more rapidly for a perfectly natural reason. We inherit our thoughts in this direction. Even the very substance of our brain is run in certain moulds, so that it takes generations for any wide- spread change in popular thought to take place. Men see new truth, and begin. to teach it; but it is generations before it is sifted down through the different strata of intellectual life until it becomes the property of everybody. As an illustration in this direction, where there was much less theological bitterness involved to act as a hindrance, take the change from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican sys- tem. It was two or three hundred years before the change 6o Religious Reconstruction was accepted by everybody or before people thought natu- rally in the midst of the new ideas. Traces of the old con- ception are still imbedded in our language, in our modes of expression. We still talk about the sun's rising and setting, though we know it does nothing of the kind. Lurking in the hidden corners of our brain are all sorts of remnants still of that old theory of things that has passed away from the minds of intelligent men. I wish, now, to give to you some idea, as briefly as I can, consistently with clearness, of the theory of the world that has been held from the beginning till this modern age, and to show you how naturally, how inevitably, the old theology springs out of it. I need not take your time by picturing the childish, the quaint, and sometimes the grotesque ideas which certain barbaric people have held as to the origin of things. If you are curious in that direction, you may find them pointed out in any work on popular mythology. I shall begin with that which was generally held by the Hebrew people at an early period of their history. It was popularly believed that the tabernacle which was set up in the wilderness was patterned after the plan of the universe, so that, by studying the structure of the tabernacle, we can get an idea of what they thought about the world. And we know from the writings, not only of the Jews them- selves, but from the writings of the early Christian geog- raphers, very clearly and definitely what those ideas were. They pictured the universe as an oblong square, a kind of three-story structure. In the middle was the flat earth, sur- rounded on all sides by the ocean. The world of the de- parted, when they began to believe in such a world, was a sort of underground cavern a cellar, as one might say in this universe house. Then overhead, just a little way above the stars, was heaven, where God sat on a throne, Cosmology and TJicology 6 1 surrounded by a court patterned after that of an Oriental king, with messengers at his right hand and his left. And from this throne he looked down over the world of men, sending his orders in this direction and that, as a king might send a courier to direct how this thing or that should be done in carrying out his will. This was the general con- ception of the world. And how very small it was it is extremely difficult for us now, accustomed as we are to think of the Infinite, even to conceive. Let me give you a hint of this by looking at the concep- tions of the universe that were held by Dante and Milton. Then I will say something concerning the relative size of that old universe and the present one. Dante lived in the thirteenth century, a little less than six hundred years ago. Think of that as compared with the immense time that man has been on this planet. He be- lieved indeed that the world was round, but that there was land only on the upper part of it, and that all the rest was water. Jerusalem was precisely in the centre of the earth. Underneath this land there was a funnel-shaped cavity reach- ing precisely to the centre of the earth. At this central point was Satan, imprisoned forever in solid ice ; and round him, in concentric circles, rising tier above tier, were the different gradations of hell, according to the degree of pun- ishment which was to be inflicted upon the offenders im- prisoned there. Upon the opposite side of the world from Jerusalem rose the mountain of Purgatory, where were the souls that had not committed sins that would keep them in hell forever, but where there were graded punishments which they must suffer till they had expiated their offences and could be received into Paradise. Outside of the world, which was stationary, there were nine spheres, solid, but crystal and transparent. I do not know how to give you a 62 Religions Reconstruction definite idea of it, unless I- ask you to think of nine globes like those that cover our gas jets, nine crystal globes, one outside of the other. To these were attached the moon, the sun, the planets, and the fixed stars beyond all the planets. Beyond that was another sphere, which was supposed to be in some way connected with the divine power, and to impart motion to all the rest. These spheres revolved, carrying the planets round with them. This was the only theory they could form for the explanation of the movement of the heavenly bodies five hundred years ago. Glance now at Milton's universe. It was a clear and defi- nite outline of the finest conception of the Ptolemaic theory. And Milton, remember, was writing Paradise Lost not far from the time when this our good city was founded, so that it is less than three hundred years ago. Milton believed that the world was spherical. He held substantially the same idea that Dante did, only he had his hell in another place. The world was one little spot at the centre of the universe. The whole universe might be represented by a great circle cut in two across the centre, within which the world was suspended. Two-thirds of the way down from the equatorial line was the upper dome of hell, that might be compared with the antarctic circle. Heaven was the upper half of the great circle. Round the earth were nine concen- tric spheres similar to those of Dante. How large was this universe of which Milton writes in his great poem ? He says when Satan was cast out of heaven that he was nine days in falling clear to the bottom of everything. Satan was nine days falling from heaven to the nadir. Now, light travels so fast that it takes but eight and a half minutes to come from the sun to the earth ; and yet, with that degree of rapidity, we know that it takes three and a half years for it to reach our next door neighbor after we leave our little Cosmology and Theology 63 solar system. And, when you are there, you are only on the threshold of the infinite universe. I speak of this to indi- cate to you the comparative size of the universe as men thought of it until within three hundred years. A little tiny play-house was the grandest conception of the universe that men held till modern science came and taught us what a magnificent home is this in which our Infinite Father lives and works. Now, I wish to outline for you some of the essential ideas connected with this conception of the universe, and with them the essential ideas of our popular theology, to show to you how the two go together, how they are inevitably, vitally, related to each other. If you get these once in your mind, you will no longer wonder that the old theology has existed so long, and you will have perceived more profound reasons than ever for believing that it cannot continue to exist after the great changes through which we are passing have been completed. i. According to this old theory of things, God was sup- posed to have lived in the universe from all eternity before creating the world. Suddenly he creates this system of things. He creates it as a being working on material that is outside of him, precisely as a carpenter might build a ship or a house. This God was supposed to be an indi- vidualized being situated in some far-off, definite point in space, and from that point sending out his orders. He creates man, making him suddenly, finished all at once. And for what purpose ? Church tradition tells us that there was war in heaven, and that one-third of all the inhabitants of heaven revolted against God and were cast out for that rebellion ; and it was to receive them, to become their prison-house, that hell was created. God then created man, intending to train this human race of ours so as to fill up 64 Religions Reconstruction this vacancy in heaven ; that is, develop these creatures so that they might behold his glory and abide with him and his angels forever in the celestial city. 2. When God had created man, he had, according to the .old ideas, a perfect right to do with him anything that he pleased. Paul argues at length that man stands in the same relation to God that the clay does to the potter. The potter does not ask the clay what sort of a vessel he shall make out of it, but he does what it pleases him : he makes one vessel to honor, and another to dishonor. And so the old theo- logians told us that God had a right to do with men as he pleased, illustrating through some his mercy and goodness, and through some his justice and power and wrath. That is the baldest expression of that idea which now all moral- ists repudiate with indignation. It is the theory that might makes right, and that he who has power is justified in using that power as he wills. We have come to think, in this modern world, on the other hand, that power, instead of conferring right, carries along with it the most tremendous of all responsibilities. 3. After God had created man, he issued certain commands. He told Adam, says the story, that he might eat of any tree in the garden save one particular tree. The point I wish to notice here is that this supposed command of Deity is appar- ently arbitrary. He is represented as ruling man as a despot rules his subjects. His will is law. Anything that he tells them that they must not do, they must not do under penalty. Anything that he tells them that they may do, they may do and be rewarded. And yet, so far as we can see, there is no natural, necessary distinction of right and wrong in these things at all. There is no reason that we can find why God should not have picked out some other tree than that precise one, and have forbidden them to eat of that. To us the Cosmology and TJieology command seems perfectly arbitrary. And here is the origin of the distinction that has gone through all theological thought, and from which we are but getting free to-day, a distinction between natural goodness and piety or religion. Piety, religion, was the doing of those things which God had arbitrarily commanded. He issues decrees, he passes laws. Those laws are not a part of the nature of things, not inher- ent in the world, in the structure of man, in the structure of society ; and, if they did not obey these laws, he had a right to punish them to any extent he pleased. There has always been this distinction between natural and religious goodness. When Mr. Moody was last in this city, he used that phrase that has been quoted so often that it is trite, but that is so intimately bound up with this distinction that I must repeat. He told us that morality did not touch the question of salva- tion. And he was perfectly consistent, perfectly right, ac- cording to the old theological ideas. Here were men who had broken these arbitrary laws of God ; and he had a right, according to those ideas, to do with them as he pleased, to punish them as he would for their disobedience. He need not ask the question whether they were kind in their families, whether they paid their debts, whether they stood in right relations to their neighbors. None of these things are of any importance as compared with the question how they were related to God. If a province of a kingdom is in re- bellion, or if a man has committed an overt act of treason, the question is never raised whether he loves his children, whether he is kind and honest towards his fellow-men. These virtues have nothing whatever to do with that other question, whether a pardon shall be granted. Man having then re- volted against this supreme power, God had a right to estab- lish any conditions of pardon that he chose. If a man has forfeited his life, he has no claim whatever on the supreme 66 Religions Reconstruction power. That power may use its discretion as to whether it will forgive him or not and on what conditions. 4. Then, under this old theory, you will notice that a miraculous government of the world does not seem at all incongruous. God is outside of this system of nature. He looks over the world as a thing external to himself ; and why should he not this little tiny universe such as they be- lieved it, why should he not interfere with it, for the sake of carrying out his plans of redeeming the elect ? Why should he not, in answer to prayer, interfere with one of these little laws, which could not be supposed to be of much importance, except as to the development of his church on earth ? Why not stop the movement of the little sun in the heavens, if he might answer the prayer of one of his famous saints or heroes ? All this was perfectly natural on that theory of the universe. 5. Then the old conception of the Bible is part of it. God's laws not being inherent in the nature of things, not the laws of the body and heart and mind and spirit, but external, arbitrary commands, there was need of a code of laws being published, so that his subjects might know what they were. And that is precisely the idea that underlies ail the old thoughts of the divine revelation. There was, no way by which people could be supposed to find out what God wanted of them, except as he published his commands. This is the idea underlying the whole scheme of revelation. 6. Then, again, under that theory, the church becomes so many of these men and women as have accepted the terms of pardon and have arrayed themselves on the Lord's side. They become God's army in the world, as they have been always called, " the church militant," to fight his enemies. It is their business to proclaim the terms of God's pardon, to get as many rebels as possible to lay down their arms Cosmology and Theology 67 and come over to the Lord's side. This is the purpose for which the church existed ; and it was perfectly natural under the old theory of the universe and of man. 7. The world and its inhabitants having been created to make good the loss of those who were cast out of heaven, it was natural that the system should be brought to an end when that end was accomplished ; and how more naturally than by a general judgment, an assize where men should be tested, a sort of competitive examination to find out who could fulfil the terms by which they could be admitted into heaven ? A general judgment was a necessary part of the scheme to wind up all mundane affairs. Those who were rejected had no right to make any complaints; for they had had an opportunity to accept the same terms with the rest, and had declined to do so. They had deliberately revolted against God, and could not complain if they must share the lot of his adversaries. So that heaven and hell were a nec- essary part of this plan as a natural close of the whole scheme. I wish you to note and it is for this purpose that I have gone over this point by point that every single one of the doctrines making up the old scheme of theology is a necessary part of that theory of the world. They root them- selves in it, and spring out of it. They take their shape from it, and adapt themselves to it. They are a vital and necessary part of it. But you will note, also, that, if there should come a radical change in this conception of the world, all the doctrines of theology springing out of that old theory must feel the change, and can find no place in a radically different con- ception of the world. Now has such a change come about? It is precisely this change that has been going on in men's minds concerning the nature of the universe which has com- 68 Religious Reconstruction pelled all this reconstruction, which has set the modern mind into a ferment, which has caused this religious unrest. Up to the time of Kepler, the discoverer of the three laws of planetary motion, men had never risen to a rational concep- tion of any way by which the planets could be kept in their spheres, and their motions in their orbits continued, except the idea, which Kepler himself held, that an angel was dele- gated to reside in each planet to control its movements. They knew of no natural explanation whatever. As late as the time of Newton, the first demonstration was made of any natural force or power that was able to explain the motion of the heavenly bodies. Here, then, in the discov- eries of Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, begins this great change concerning . the nature of the world that has been carried on by scientific students since their day, until at last we have discovered the antiquity of this earth and of man, the natural origin and development of the human race. And the work of change seems to be nearing its comple- tion. I ask you to note that this radical change is so far- reaching that it must compel complete reconstruction of all our thought. I will take your time only a few minutes in pointing out some of the essentials of that change. 1. What now do we think of the universe? Instead of its being a tiny affair created at a definite point in the his- tory of things, created by a power from without, we know that this physical universe is practically infinite. We can- not even dream of a limit in space. We not only think, we know that it is practically eternal in duration. We cannot even dream of a time when it did not exist. 2. And what of God? We no longer think of him as a being outside of things, working on them from without. We think of him as the spirit, the life, as, so to speak, the soul of the universe, as my soul inheres in my body. Where? Cosmology and Theology 69 I do not know. Is it located ? I do not know. It seems to be everywhere, animating every part of me from head to foot, my physical, mental, affectional, spiritual life. The soul is myself. And so God is in the universe, its spirit, its life. Where ? Everywhere. In the grass-blade as well as in the sun, in the life of human civilization, in the progress of man. 3. And now where are the laws of God? What are his laws ? They are no longer thought of as statutory enact- ments. They are not the expression of any arbitrary will. They are no longer written by inspiration in any book. The laws of God are only such laws as are inherent in the nature of things, the laws of his world, the laws illustrated in human life, human thought, human feeling, human aspiration. The laws of God are the essential constituting laws of the uni- verse and human life and growth. If these ever become written in any book, so far they are God's laws. If any other laws are written in all the books of the world, they are not God's laws, but the vain imaginings of man. The laws of God are the vital laws, the laws by which all things exist, by which all things grow, by which they reach on towards the higher and the better. 4. Under this conception of the universe, you see very easily that there is no place for miracle. The man .who has accepted the modern theory of things does not care to argue or question about miracle. It seems to him absurd on the face of it. It is ruled out as having no place in the universe. He believes that God is not outside of these laws, so that he can break them. They are God's habits of working, his methods of thought, the thrilling impulses of his very life, so that any miracle that should interfere with these would be a very contradiction of the methods of God's working. It would be as though God should interfere with one hand with what he is doing with the other. 7O Religious Reconstruction 5. Under this theory there is no possible room for forgive- ness, in the old sense of the word ; that is, such a forgiveness as releases a person from the results of his own thoughts, feelings, actions. This modern universe knows no such for- giveness as that. Under the inflexible laws of cause and effect, things move on to their accomplishment. This is no hopeless doctrine, but the most cheerful doctrine in all the world. For these forces of which we are a part, and which environ us on every hand, are not dominating us and making us their victims. Rather are we largely able to dominate them, to reshape and control them, so that a man may work himself out of all the evil results of his past, and turn these dead selves into stepping-stones by which to " climb to higher things." 6. And then as to the future. A man is good if he is in accord with these natural, necessary, divine laws of life. And, if he is good in this life and in this world, he is good in any world ; and, if he is bad in this world, he will be bad in any world, getting into heaven would not help him one whit. The only salvation is to get into accord with these divine laws that constitute the nature of things. And if a man be in accord with this nature of things, since there is one God, one force, one law, throughout the universe, if he be in harmonious accord with these laws, he must of necessity be in harmony with the entire universe in what- ever world he may some day find himself. These only as a hint of the kind of universe in which we find ourselves in the modern world. I need not argue it at any length. In this universe there is absolutely no place for the old theological beliefs. They are uncalled for. They have no mission to fulfil, no part to play. They are as antiquated and outgrown as are the astronomical devices for making the planets move in their orbits that the Ptole- Cosmology and Theology 71 raaic scientists dreamed of. Newton's law of gravity ex- plains the movements of all the heavenly bodies everywhere, so that those devices are as children's playthings that a man outgrows. So these conceptions of the modern world that are coming to be a part of the popular thought have anti- quated and left behind all the old theological makeshifts which were a part of the old theories, which have passed away from the minds of every free and intelligent man and woman. It will be long I know before the change will be completely recognized, frankly seen, and accepted by every- body, because it takes time for ideas that are so sweeping, so far-reaching, so universal in their scope, to become a part of the furnishing of the average brain. But the change is as inevitable as is the coming of day, when the first faint streak of light is seen in the east. It is a long while before the world is light. The highest hill-tops catch the flush first, while shadows cover the valleys. It is still dark as night in the lowest places of the earth. But the change is coming ; and, just as fast as the old world wheels over and turns its dark places to the sun, the light comes in and the shadows flee away. IDEAS OF GOD, OLD AND NEW. I PROPOSE to treat this great theme as comprehensively as I can in the time that is allowed me, under three different aspects, as to the nature of God, as to his character, and as to his relations to man. I shall first outline, as fairly as I know how, the thoughts about him that have been held in the old churches of the past, and that are still represented in their creeds, and then the new ideas that are forced upon us by the growth of humanity in knowledge and in moral ideals. It does not seem to me at all strange that in the progress of thought on this great subject there is a sense on the part of many of something in the way of bewilderment and loss. .Men have waked up to find themselves in a boundless uni- verse ; and, when they ask what God is or where, their question seems to be lost in the wide reaches of empty space. The universe is so immense that it is hard for us to find in it a resting-place for those old affections of the heart, hard to find a nest where we may be quiet and at peace. At first thought, it was certainly easier to feel that God was near to us when we held the old views. Go back for a moment to Rachel, when she was leaving her father's house. The gods that she trusted in, from which she de- rived comfort and peace, were certain small portable images or idols that she could carry with her. As she was leaving home, it is said that she stole them from her father and hid Ideas of God, Old and New 73 them in the furnishings of the camel on which she was rid- ing, thinking that thus she was carrying with her the pres- ence of these divine beings, who might insure her comfort, support, prosperity and peace. If our deities are such that we can see them, handle them, come into this sensible con- tact with them, carry them about with us, it is easy to have a sense of the divine nearness and presence. In any case, when the universe was so very small, when God was sup- posed to hold his court only a little way out of sight above the blue, whence he could despatch an angel messenger to be at our side almost before a prayer could die into an echo on our lips, it was very easy to think of God as close by, and of divine help as real and accessible. Even the great sys- tem of the universe, which bears the name of Ptolemy, and which was almost infinitely larger than the early dreams of the world, was still comparatively small. God was not far away. There was a place where he could be found. He abode at some particular spot. A prayer could reach him, a messenger could be sent from him to us. He was a tangi- ble being to the mind of man ; and so it was easy to think of him as near us. But to-day all these forms have faded ; and we stand tiny specks, self-conscious indeed, thinking, wondering, but knowing that we are in a limitless universe, and not able to picture to our thought one single spot where God is in any sense different from that in which he is in every spot and everywhere. And the first thought, I say, is naturally bewilderment and loss. I propose now to outline as clearly and as simply as pos- sible some of the old ideas, and then to outline some of the new, and to suggest the question whether God is really lost to us, really farther away, really less accessible than in the olden days. Some of the early Hebrew thinkers believed and taught 74 Religious Reconstruction that God was not only personal, but a personal being in the sense that we are ; that he was not only in a particular place, but that he had a body. And some of the old theologians of the Church held and taught precisely the same ideas, that God was a being embodied. The Old Testament hints the same idea in a great many places. When Moses went up into the mountain, he saw God; and the brightness was so dazzling that its reflection on the face of Moses was so radiant that the people could not look upon him after he descended. God wrote with his finger the commandments on the tables of stone. In many places there are represen- tations or, at least, glimpses or traces of his having been seen. Either, then, he was embodied or assumed form and shape for the time being, according to these Old Testament teachings. But it is only just for us to say that most of the Hebrew and most of the Christian theologians have taught in the most explicit way that God is pure spirit, without body, parts or passions. They taught it in as clear and grand a way, so far as that part of it is concerned, as we can teach it or think it to-day. Only I think it fair to say that throughout the entire history of the Church it has been taught that God was, in some special, particular way, located somewhere. Dante, in his poem of the " Paradiso," repre- sents that there is one special place, not where God can be literally seen, but where the outshining of his glory is such that he is hidden by excess of light. He in some special sense is there, but the glory is too bright for mortal senses to discern more than the outshining far away. Milton gives us substantially the same picture in his Para- dise Lost. There is a special place in heaven where God abides as he does nowhere else in the universe. Here is his throne, the seat and centre of his power, whence radiates all the wondrous working force of his might to the uttermost Ideas of God, Old and New 75 points of the universe. And you are perfectly well aware you who are acquainted with the staple of preaching on this subject that every little while there are speculative sermons preached on the subject, Where is the seat of God's power, where is heaven ? whether it is located in some special star or planet. I think Mr. Talmage, within two or three years, has taught that probably heaven and the throne of God and the seat of his power are to be found on some central star of all the universe round which everything else is supposed to be revolving. I speak of these to show that the old the- ology has not wholly outgrown as yet this attempt to locate God at some specific point in the universe. Now, as to the nature of God. I have already treated in part what I had in mind to say of their teaching of his being, of his power over the life of all things, of his being located at some specific point in the universe. Now, I wish to give you a definition of that curious speculation of the Church as to the interior structure, so to speak, of the nature of deity. I am going to impose on your patience to the extent of read- ing to you the definition of the Trinity, as embodied in the Athanasian Creed. I doubt if there be a single person in this house you will not think that I am impeaching your intelligence who can give a clear, explicit definition of the doctrine of the Trinity. Perhaps I ought to except one or two, when I make that statement. It is not strange, how- ever, that you are not able to do it, as you have not studied it especially. But it did seem to me strange about the time I was leaving the orthodox church, when my people were troubled as to whether I was sound or not on the doctrine of the Trinity, that after some weeks of inquiry I was not able to find a single one of my church members who could tell me what the doctrine of the Trinity was. Every time I asked the question, they gave it to me in some mutilated 76 Religious Reconstruction form that had been condemned as heresy in some council of the Church. I should like, then, to put the doctrine of the Trinity on record here, so that you may be able to refer to it, and know what it is : 1. Whosoever will be saved : before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith : 2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled : with- out doubt he shall perish everlastingly. 3. And the Catholic Faith is this; That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; 4. Neither confounding the Persons : nor dividing the Substance (Essence). 5. For there is one Person of the Father ; another of the Son ; and another of the Holy Ghost. 6. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. 7. Such as the Father is; such is the Son: and such is the Holy Ghost. 8. The Father uncreate (uncreated) : the Son uncreate (uncreated) : and the Holy Ghost uncreate (uncreated). 9. The Father incomprehensible (unlimited) : the Son incomprehen- sible (unlimited) : and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible (unlimited, or infinite). 10. The Father eternal : the Son eternal : and the Holy Ghost eternal. 11. And yet they are not three eternals : but one eternal. 12. As also they are not three uncreated: nor three incompre- hensibles (infinites), but one uncreated ; and one incomprehensible (infinite). 13. So likewise the Father is Almighty: the Son almighty: and the Holy Ghost almighty. 15. So the Father is God: the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God. 16. And yet they are not three Gods : but one God. 17. So likewise the Father is Lord : the Son is Lord : and the Holy Ghost Lord. 18. And yet not three Lords : but one Lord. 19. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity: to acknowl- edge every Person by himself to be God and Lord : Ideas of God, Old and New 77 20. So are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion : to say, There be (are) three Gods, or three Lords. 21. The Father is made of none : neither created, nor begotten. 22. The Son is of the Father alone : not made, nor created : but begotten. 23. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son : neither made, nor created, nor begotten : but proceeding. 24. So there is one Father, not three Fathers : one Son, not three Sons : one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. 25. And in this Trinity none is afore, or after another: none is greater, or less than another (there is nothing before, or after : nothing greater or less). 26. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal. 27. So that in all things, as afore-said : the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. 28. He therefore that will be saved, must (let him) thus think of the Trinity. So much, then, as to the nature of God as taught by the old faiths. I shall not take your time by entering upon any discussion of this mystery of the Trinity or any attempt to disprove it. I am simply outlining now this old teaching as to the nature of God. Now let me pass to the second point, the divine charac- ter as taught in the old creeds. The grandest words are used to tell us that God is everything perfect that we can conceive. That must be admitted in all simplicity and fair- ness. He is almighty in power, almighty in wisdom, al- mighty in goodness. All divine characteristics are ascribed to him; and yet there are traces of contradiction running all through these old ideas of him. It is not strange that this should be so. Men were confronted at the first with the dual nature of the universe. If there was light, there was also darkness. If there was warmth, there was also cold. If there was life, there was also death. If there was joy, there was also sorrow. If there was goodness, benevolence, gen- 78 Religious Reconstruction erosity, there was also evil of every kind and name. Men were confronted with the problem, How to reconcile these contradictions ? Some of the early religions did it through their multiplicity of gods. They had good gods and bad gods. The Persians, by the grandest thought in this specific direction that the world has seen, solved it by supposing that there were two equal deities in universal and perpetual con- flict, one good and one bad. They imagined some incom- prehensible destiny above these age-long conflicts, that was some time to solve and to bring out of the darkness and the evil good and joy. The early Christian Church was led into its controversy with the Manichaeans over this question. And who were the Manichasans ? They were simply those who maintained a sort of Persian dualism. They believed that there was a good infinite spirit and a bad spirit which was almost infinite. The Church, then, had this problem to solve ; and it has solved it, it seems to me, in an entirely unsatisfactory and inconsistent way, and it must be recon- structed in order to bring it into accord with the highest thought of the civilized world. For, while the Church has always taught that God was infinite goodness and wisdom and love and power, it has also taught that he created the world, and then either ordained, as it has been generally taught, or permitted the difference in morals is hardly per- ceptible the fall of man and his utter ruin through sin. This might be consistent with the goodness of God, if there were to be some redemption, some deliverance, from all this etil ; but the Church has taught that this was the final con- dition of things. This evil, this sin, this sorrow, were final, concerning the larger part of the race. It has taught that God has permitted, through all these ages, the greater part of the world to lie in ignorance and darkness concerning his very wishes and commands, thus showing him partial, as Ideas of God, Old and New 79 having selected only a few upon whom to bestow the grace of his guidance and his love. God, then, in the old doctrines seems to me to be thus a divided, impossible, inconsistent being ; for, as Tennyson in one of his poems passionately exclaims, "A God of love and of hell together it cannot be thought!" No man can think contradictions into unity. There is no bringing together the thought of infinite love, infinite sor- row, and endless pain. The teachings, then, of the old Church concerning the character of God seem to me utterly inconsistent and untenable ; for, while they ascribe to him all honor, glory, beauty, goodness, they have pictured him nay, they picture him to-day in their creeds as how shall I express myself? as a worse being than any man that ever lived. There is no character in human history, there is no character in human poetry, there is no character in fiction that men have ever dreamed, so utterly evil and cruel as is the character of God as depicted in the popular creeds of the world. This alongside of infinite goodness. So much, then, for the divine character in the old teaching. 3. Now, a word as to the relation in which he has been supposed to stand to man. Of course, he was Creator, he was Father. But, immediately after the fall of man, he is supposed to have withdrawn himself; and there is a gulf between the Father and his children. Instead of exercising love and kindness and tender mercy, he is angry with the wicked every day. Of course, he pours out upon the world the general mercies of sunshine and rain, the bestowal of the ordinary good things of life ; but he is supposed to be at enmity with his children. Hence arose the necessity of the doctrine of atonement, by which to bridge over this gulf of separation. The birth, life, teachings, suffering, and death 8o Religious Reconstruction of Jesus of Nazareth were devised to provide a mediator between the estranged and alienated children of God and his still fatherly heart, that is capable of being fatherly at least towards those children who repent. God grew to be an inexorable and far-away power ; and the human hearts of the world turned, in their love, their helplessness, their weakness, to the tenderness and pity of Jesus, thinking of him as an entirely separate being. It seems to me perfectly clear that, in spite of the definitions of the creed, Jesus has been looked upon as an entirely separate being, standing apart from God, in his presence, and showing his hands and the wound in his side, and pleading with the inexorable Father that for his sake he would be kind and tender to his children. But, in the course of theological development, Jesus him- self became withdrawn from the sympathies of man, and turned into the inexorable judge ; for it is Jesus who is to sit on the throne at the last day, and say, " Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." But the human heart still longed for tenderness and pity somewhere ; and hence arose the belief in the motherhood of Mary as being something divine, and so arose the belief in thousands of saints who could still feel the infirmities of their brethren, and on ac- count of their merits plead with God for mercy and help and sympathy for their brethren. So much, then, for the relation in which God has been supposed to stand to man. However much of comfort and of cheer may have seemed to go out of the world with the departure of these old-time thoughts of God, it seems to me very strange indeed when I hear any one lament the change. My experience with those who have held to these old beliefs is that the fear frequently, almost generally, predominates over the comfort. By as much as their consciences are tender, by so much do Ideas of God, Old and New 8 1 people stand in awe of this inexorable being, and wonder whether they have really complied with the conditions, so that they may look for pardon and peace. Let me speak now a little concerning the nature and character of God and his relation to man, as we are com- pelled to think of them in the modern world ? What is God's nature ? What shall we think of God ? In one way, we cannot think God. If we could define God, we should be atheists ; for what does definition mean ? It means draw- ing a line about anything. Can you draw a line about the infinite ? Any circle that can be drawn must of necessity exclude unspeakably more than it can include. We cannot, then, define deity. By as much as God is really God, infi- nite power, infinite wisdom, infinite love, he must forever exceed on every hand, so that we cannot grasp the divine. But we must think something. I think of God as the infi- nite spirit, life of all the universe. If you ask me where he is, I do not know how I can do better by way of illus- tration than to touch once more upon one that I used some time ago. Where is God in the modern world ? Where is he not? There is not one spot, I suppose, where we can think that he abides in any special or peculiar sense. But all his wisdom, all his power, all his love, are here, at any point in the universe, at any moment. Instead of there being an empty boundless space, God fills with his thrilling life all spaces and all worlds. Where is my soul, my life, whatever you choose to call it ? Is it in my head or my hand or my foot or my heart ? It is in them all. At any particular time, it is there where I concentrate my thought, my feeling, my action. When I am writing, I am at the point of my pen. When I am feel- ing love, I am in that feeling, all of me. When I am thinking, I am in that thought. I am as indivisible as God. 82 Religious Reconstruction It is as hard to locate me in my visible frame as it is to locate God in space. God, then, is the life, the power, the light of all things everywhere. Is he personal ? I think he is, with my definition of the word "person." One of the faults I have to find with the old doctrines is that they limit his personality to three differ- ent manifestations. Not only do I believe that God is tri- personal, I believe that he is multi-personal. For what does personal mean ? Person is a word that originally meant the mask of an actor. When he put on a mask representing a special character, he was that person for the time being. That was the origin of the term. When God manifests him- self with power, wisdom, goodness, in any one direction, there he is personally manifested in the old sense of the word. But is he personal in that other, grander sense in which we use the term ? Again, I believe he is, not as you are a person and I am a person. He was not born. He will not die. He is not limited, outlined, located, in space. The centre and essence of the idea of personality is con- sciousness. That which makes me a person is that I am able to say f, not that I am limited or outlined. I believe that God is personal in this sense not only, but that he-is unspeakably grander than personal. God is at least equal to all that is. Whatever there is in the universe is just in so far a manifestation of this infinite life that we call God. He is at least as much, then, as anything that is manifested. The stream cannot rise higher than its source. Nothing comes from nothing. God, then, is as much as whatever appears. Personality does appear. You are persons, I am a person. We are conscious. We think, we love, we feel the infinite life and power of the universe. He is at least as much, then, as these manifestations ; and it seems to me quite rational for us to take a step beyond that. It is Ideas of God, Old and New 83 a little presumptuous for us to think that we are measures of the universe, that there can never have been a higher kind of being than we are. There is no reason in the nature of things why we should not suppose that there may be in this universe a being as much above what we call personality and consciousness as we are above the vegetables. God, then, is as much as personal, as much as conscious, and I believe something that we cannot imagine, yet is unspeak- ably more than either of these. Now, what as to the character of God, as we think of him in the modern world ? All the old dualism is being elimi- nated from modern thought. We are getting into a position for solving the apparent contradiction between light and darkness, good and evil, so that I think we are able to con- ceive of a goodness that is perfect without any contradiction, without any shadow or stain. First, consider for a moment, in the light of the thought I have just been uttering, what we have a right to think about God's character. I said in regard to our nature as personal and conscious that we are entitled to think that God is, at least, as much as we are. On the other hand, are we not, by parity of reasoning, entitled to think that God is at least as good as we are ? All human goodness, human tender- ness, human compassion, human love, what are they ? Are they not simply phenomenal manifestations of God ? See a mother with her wayward, reckless son. He is doing all he can to break her heart. He repays all her love and tenderness with cruelty and neglect. He is false to all the nobilities of manhood. The mother does not cease to love him. She follows him with her prayers and entreaties night and day ; and, when at last she finds him a broken wreck in the hospital, she devotes herself night and day to saving the remnant of his miserable life, and buoying up his soul 84 Religions Reconstruction with her deathless hope as he goes out towards the darkness of an unknown future. God is at least as much as that mother's love. Picture any scene of heroism that the world has ever known. God is, at least, as much as that self-sacrifice, devotion. Whatever quality you most admire, that has been most finely and grandly illustrated by the life of any char- acter in human life or that human fiction ever dreamed, God is, at least, as much as these. We are, I think, in a position in this modern world to answer some of the great objections that have been brought against the Infinite Un- known with a better show of reason than they were able to in x the past. John Stuart Mill, who lived just before the doctrine of evolution had taken possession of the thought of the world, said that God was manifestly an imperfect being. He either lacked power or goodness, because the world was imperfect. If he did not wish to make it better, then he was not perfect goodness. If he did wish to and could not, he was not perfect in power. But the theory of evolution, which so many people have supposed was going to be the wreck and ruin of religion, makes that objection the objection of a child. Things are now simply in process. We are able to sing with our whole hearts and souls the old hymn that tells us " The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower." Things are evolving, and no one has a right to judge till they are complete. On the other hand, we are, in the light of this doctrine, to consider this life of ours as only a training school for souls. Then, all the evil, all the wrong, everything that has been a stumbling-block, that has troubled human souls in the past, Ideas of God y Old and New 85 cease to be a trouble. They trouble us no more than some hard lesson troubles us as to the wisdom or goodness of the teacher who has given it to the pupil who is crying over his book. Just one point more concerning the relation in which God stands to us. The old gulf that was supposed to exist, created by the fall of man and his sin, is no longer a part of intelligent, cultivated thought. There is no gulf ; and so there is no need of any mediator, any divine being to be appointed to stand between God and men for the work of reconciling them. Not that we are done with mediators, in one sense ; for in this universe, as we think of it now, all things are mediators. God comes to us through every mani- festation of life and power and beauty of which we can dream. He is so near to us that that is the reason why we have lost him. Suppose you should tell a little child that you would show him the cathedral of St. Peter's. You take him blindfolded into the cathedral, place him face to face with some one of the great pillars, and ask him to open his eyes and see. The cathedral is all around him, glorious, magnifi- cent ; but he may see only some little fragment of stone, and, while in it and overshadowed by it, be wondering all the time where the grand sight was which he was to see. So God in this modern world, under the conception which we are obliged to hold, is so near to us that we lose him. If a fish should ask to see the water by getting outside the sea, would it be a reasonable request ? If a bird should wish to fly beyond the limits of the atmosphere, so that it might see the air, would it be a reasonable request ? God is closer to us than the air we breathe, closer to us than the thoughts we think ; for he is the element in which we live and move and have our being. And if we are wise, instead of thinking of him as afar off, we shall bring him so near to us that 86 Religions Reconstruction we shall feel we are dealing with him first-hand, every day and every moment of our lives. He is the power that holds us up in his very arms at night while we sleep ; and, when the sun's rays come in at the eastern window and touch our eyelids, it is as though God himself came in, and laid his gentle hand upon his child and told him that it was day. All the commerce and business affairs of this world are carried on through immediate, first- hand dealing with the forces of God, not exerted at a dis- tance, but God present, pulsing, thrilling, throbbing through all this universe. If you learn a truth, it is as though God stood close to you, and whispered into your ear one of his words. All the sublimity and glory of the world are the presence and outshining of the divine. If you hold in your hand a rose and admire its fragrance, its tinting, its beauty, God looks out of it into your face ; and then you see that he is a being who loves the beauty and the joy of the world. And so we stand in this intimate, first-hand, closest con- ceivable relationship to God at every moment of our lives. And, instead of one mediator, all the universe, all its mill- ions of forms and manifestations, are just so many mediators between our souls and the divine. And he carries us in his heart as Father ; he gives us training as Teacher ; he comes to us to. deliver us out of our evils as Saviour. He is all and unspeakably more than the world has ever dreamed of him. The hate, the cloud, the shadow, these have fled away ; and the sky is all blue and sunny, and the blue and the sunshine are the smile of our Father in heaven. THE FALL OF MAN. MY theme this morning is the Fall of Man as the explana- tion which the popular theology presents to us for the exist- ence of sin and evil in the world. We are familiar with it; and wonders lose their character, as wonders do, through familiarity. But one of the most striking characteristics of man is his possession of the ideal, that man should be able to think, to dream, of something better than he ever saw or ever heard of. This, I say, is one of the most striking characteristics of man. If any of the lower animals should be discovered to be thinking about a better type of animal life than they represented, and we should find them restless in their desire to attain and to fulfil that type, we should straightway say that here was so striking a manifestation of another kind of life as to constitute them at once another species. It is not strange that the individual man should dream of something finer than he ever possessed, if he has heard of some other man as possessing it or if he has known that sometime, somewhere, it has existed ; but that all men from the very first should have dreamed of something better than they ever saw, that is a wonder. As early man roused himself to look out over the world, he observed everywhere suffering, disorder, wrong. The physi- cal world presented to his mind problems which he could not solve. He was the victim of what seemed to him evil forces, which he frequently embodied as demons of the cold, 88 Religions Reconstruction of the heat, of hunger, of disease, of pain, of pestilence, of earthquake, of death. Disorder and evil in a thousand forms faced him on every hand. At the same time, this ideal of his demanded something better than he saw; and, in the light of this ideal, he pronounced all these things evil. The prob- lem, then, that faced him was to reconcile the existence of these evils with any faith in a good power as ruling the world. How should he understand the fact that there could be wars, that there could be cruelty, that there could be oppression, that there could be all the forms of physical and moral evil, and at the same time that the power that gov- erned human affairs could be a good power ? And here comes in the wonder of the fact of the existence of the ideal to which I have referred. How did it happen that out of all these evils, in the midst of them, should spring this thought of the good, the better, the perfect ? Surely, there is some- thing in this strange human nature of ours that transcends the realities of that which we have so far attained. But here was the problem. How, then, did primitive man attempt to solve it ? At first, it was easy enough, in one way, so long as people believed in a multiplicity of gods ; for they could then sup- pose that there were good gods and bad gods, and that the bad gods were in conflict with the good ones, and that all the woes, evils, and sorrows were the result of these evil beings in conflict with the good. It is curious to see how long even some of the most civilized nations of antiquity were in outgrowing this sort of dualism. You are familiar with the Greek legend as to the origin of evil. Zeus him- self, the supreme god, was looked upon as at enmity with mankind. He did not love men. He had come, by the death of his father, like a king inheriting a throne, to the supreme rule of the world. But he did not love the inhabi- The Fall of Man 89 tants of this poor afflicted planet. Prometheus, a Titan, is represented as having championed men against the supreme power, and willingly, for the sake of that championship, en- during being chained to the mountains of Caucasus, while eagles devoured his vitals age after age. Then Zeus, as if in revenge upon Prometheus and to still further spite man- kind, sends Pandora to the brother of Prometheus, Epime- theus, as his wife, and with her, in a box, which her curi- osity leads her to open, all the ills that have since afflicted the world. Here, you see, the Greek had not outgrown that idea of the duality of the supreme power, one attempting to injure, the other attempting to help, mankind. But the Hebrews, at the time that we refer to, had risen to a conception of one God, and only one, as ruling the des- tinies of the earth. The problem faced them in a new form, presenting features of new difficulty, that the dualist and the polytheist did not have to consider. How was it possible, since there was one true, eternal, loving, just Power, who created and upheld all things, that under his rule such a condition of affairs "should be found? You will notice that even the Hebrews, although they asserted their faith in one God, had not quite escaped the dualistic conception of the world ; for their answer to these problems was the story of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. God had created this beautiful earth, everything was fair, no evil was any- where to be found, no death, no pain, no suffering, no sin; and more beautiful than any other part of it was Eden, where he had made a garden. Here he placed a perfect Adam and a perfect Eve. But there had long before this time been a revolt in heaven ; and he who had led that revolt now invades this scene of innocence and peace and beauty, and works devastation in that which God had pronounced fair and good. This, then, was the answer that the Hebrew mind 90 Religions Reconstruction gave to this question, how the existence of evil could consist with the goodness of the supreme God. The doctrine of the Fall of Man is not to be ridiculed ; it is not to be treated lightly, as of no moment. It was, when it came into the thought and heart of the world, a grand attempt to solve that which, even to-day, is still the greatest difficulty to one who wishes to believe in God. It was men seeking to do what Milton sought later in his wondrous poem of Paradise Lost, " to justify the ways of God to men." The Hebrew was able to say, My God is all justice, all truth, all goodness, all love : only this evil being, Satan, his enemy, who revolted without cause from his just rule in heaven, comes upon the scene, and mars the glory of this creation. This seemed at that time to leave the Creator spotless, and relieve him from the responsibility of the existence of evil. And it has been held to relieve him from this responsi- bility for ages. Not only in the history of the Hebrews, but through the Christian centuries, it has been put forward as the divinely-revealed explanation of the entrance of sin into the world, and with it suffering and death. Now, we must examine this a little, and see if, in the light of our modern thought, we can regard it as a satisfactory- explanation. I wish to treat it with all respect, with all earnestness, with all sincerity, as what I have already de- clared it to be, a noble effort of the human mind, perhaps the noblest possible in that stage of its growth. But we are brought face to face, the moment we study a question like this deeply, with this one great consideration. The moment we believe in one God, and one God only, one source of all that is, then reverently we must declare him to be responsi- ble for whatever exists throughout the scope of his wide creation and to the utmost limit of time. He is responsible. Nothing can relieve him of that responsibility, for all that The Fall of Man 91 has been, all that is, and all that shall be. If we say Satan revolted in heaven, entered the Garden of Eden, tempted and overthrew its occupants, what then ? Where did Satan come from ? How did he happen to be Satan ? Whence in his heart the thought of rebellion and the purpose to turn against his Creator? God must be held responsible for Satan, no matter whether he ordained him or permitted him: it makes no difference in morals. The ultimate Source and Ruler of all things is responsible for whatever comes to pass. But it is said I take up these different points as the argument shifts that Adam was created with perfect free- dom, and that he had the choice of good and evil freely placed before him, so that sufficient probation was granted him ; and he has no right to find any fault with the results. But there was no possible fairness about any such probation as the story tells us of. Before Adam could stand freely, fairly, and make a choice involving such issues, he must have been endowed with intellectual power almost divine. He must have been able to forecast all the results of that choice, both for good and for evil, not only to himself, not only to his immediate children, but to all the countless throngs of his descendants from the beginning through all the ages. He must have seen what it meant, what this choice involved, not only for himself, but for myriads of other souls, before he could be competent to choose whether he would go this way or that. Even granting there is no reason to suppose that he was such a being as this ; that he had such power of comprehension ; that the future of all time was spread before him, granting all that, even then there lies at the very threshold of this explanation an unan- swerable impeachment of the divine justice. What right had Adam to decide the destiny of countless millions of souls not yet in existence ? What right had God to confer 92 Religions Reconstruction upon him the right or the power ? I deny the right of any ancestor to decide my eternal destiny for me. Mark you, the point of the difficulty lies in this word "eternal." It may be consistent with justice that we should be so linked together, this human race of ours, that we should inherit nine-tenths or ninety-nine hundredths of what we are from our ancestors, provided that, through all this intricate inter- working of each upon other souls, some day we shall come out free, self-controlled, Godlike, and grand. That may be just; but that eternal evil for me should depend upon the choice of any man in any age of the past is hideous in its immorality. And the saying that God created me as so related to any ancestor does not take away the hideousness of the immorality. It only lays it at the foot of what can no longer be the great " white " throne. Another answer, or attempt at answer, that has often been made is that, though thousands and millions of souls will be lost as the result of the evil, yet the age is coming when the countless millions that are to be born will not be lost, so that the final summing up will show that the number of the lost, as compared with the number of the saved, will be so small as hardly to be worth taking into account. Men have thought they evaded the difficulty by presenting that idea. But consider one moment. There is no possible relation of justice between these two phases of the question, of balanc- ing the number of the saved and the number of the lost. How can the songs of the millions of souls in heaven bal- ance in the scales of justice the infinite pain of one other soul that is lost ? How can injustice to this one be balanced by unspeakable good to that ? There is no sort of relation between the two ideas : it is only confusion of thought that ever suggests such an attempt to evade the difficulty. Substantially the same argument lies again in another at- The Fall of Man 93 tempt. Elaborate works have been written in vindication of this idea : that possibly this one world of ours is the only one in the universe where evil exists. God, as it were, has built this earth as a stage ; and here a grand moral drama is being enacted. Uncounted myriads of inhabitants, in other worlds and other planets, are supposed to be looking on, or at any rate to get reports of what is going on here ; and in that way they are being taught the value of good and the infinite sin of that which is wrong. They are being taught this by what is going on here, so that they do not need to go through the process themselves. According to this idea, this human life of ours constitutes an eternal object lesson for the instruction of other worlds. Here, again, you will see precisely the same objection lies against this as against the other idea. What right have the inhabitants of other planets to learn the evil of sin and the blessedness of good by witnessing my soul torture and the horrors of my downward darkening destiny ? What right has infinite Goodness to set me up for an example to all the ages, me no more guilty, to say the least, than any other soul arbitrarily so chosen for the good of others ? And what can the goodness of others be who are willing so to be taught ? If there were in them anything of the spirit that was in Jesus when he walked this earth, they would come and drown out hell with a flood of tears, or even choose to enter it themselves, rather than learn the nature of evil by seeing the torture of another soul. Another explanation has been given, which, if possible, is more immoral than either of these ; and yet it is that which essentially lies at the bottom of Calvinism, the whole the- ory of foreordination. Some one asked the once famous Dr. Gardner Spring, of the Old Brick Church in New York, why he supposed it was that God did not save more souls than he did. Dr. Spring frankly replied that he presumed he 94 Religious Reconstruction saved precisely the number that he desired to save. That is Calvinism. God foreordained that a certain number should be saved, in illustration of his mercy, his kindness, his good- ness. He foreordained that a certain number should be lost, as an illustration of his infinite justice. That is, he is declared by Calvinism to be the infinite, incarnate selfishness of the universe, the pleasures and the pains of others only illustrating qualities of his own being. Turn it however we may, there is no possibility of evading the fact that the " Fall of Man " to-day, in the light of our present intelligence and of the development of our moral ideal, instead of removing the difficulty, only constitutes a fresh and a greater one. It is a greater moral difficulty than that which it attempts to explain for us. Furthermore, we have learned in this modern world that there is not a shred of reason for believing that anything of the kind ever happened anyway. It is curious to note that there are two parallel traditions running through the He- brew. One of them, and that the older, is given by the prophets who spoke and wrote before the exile, and who represent the oldest part of the Old Testament, that first written, and who say nothing whatever of any Fall. The^ golden age which they so longingly picture is always in the future. As a matter of fact, then, brought out as the result of the best modern criticism, there is hardly a question that the early Jews were ignorant of this story. They probably picked it up from the Persians during the exile, and en- grafted it upon their older and higher thought. And I have reminded you more than once that Jesus himself, though he must have been familiar with it, evidently did not regard it as being of any importance ; for he never makes the slightest allusion to it. He never speaks of man as being in a fallen state, in the theological sense of the word, or of his need of being saved, in the theological sense of the word. The Fall of Man 95 Not only is there no proof of the truth of the story, but there is demonstrative proof, springing out of our knowledge of the antiquity of the world and the origin and nature of man, of the precise contrary. If we are intelligent, we no longer talk about the Fall of Man. We talk rather of the rise of man. For, while there is no proof that he has ever fallen, there is a large amount of proof, amounting to practical dem- onstration, that he has been rising from the very beginning, and that he is rising still to-day. We turn the problem com- pletely round in the light of our modern knowledge ; and, instead of talking about the origin of evil, we talk about the origin of good, not how did evil, as though it were a thing, come into the world, but how, out of the primeval condition of things, did it come to be that man was developed into a moral being. That is the way we treat the problem to-day. Consider for a moment. At first, the whole world was only the scene of the gigantic play of physical forces. There was no life anywhere on the planet. Then from the ooze of the primeval ocean and on its shores appeared the lowest forms of life ; and age after age these forms developed, ever rising, till animal life covered all the earth, and bird life filled the sky. But there is nothing to be thought of as moral on the face of the earth. All this gigantic play of animal powers and passions ; what now, if it were visible on the part of man, would be called cruelty, that scene of rapine which Tenny- son speaks of when he talks of nature being " red in tooth and claw," all this existed, indeed; but we may not think that the world was all rapine. If we look dispassionately over the extent of the animal world to-day, we shall be com- pelled to treat cruelty and ferocity as merely incidental. The larger part of the life that flies in the air and swims in the sea and roams through the forest, if we are frank and 96 Religious Reconstruction honest, we must consider to be happy animal life, thrilling with all the enjoyment of which it possesses the capacity. If I had time, I think I could show you clearly that the process of suffering through which it passes on its way to death is less under the present condition of things than it might be under some other that has been fancied as an improvement on it. After the animal world there appears man, and with man for the first time the moral ideal, the existence of this dream of the better, this contrast of himself with his dream, and his condemnation of himself because he does not fulfil the dream. Morality, then, is born with man on this planet, out of this crude, pre-existing condition of things, born naturally as the companion of sin. There is a strange thing about this, and yet a perfectly rational thing, if we look at it with candor and care. Did you ever think that in a race of beings possessing no ideal, dreaming of nothing better than themselves, and with no capacity for progress, there could be no sin ? Sin means the gulf between the actual and the ideal. It means condemnation of ourselves as coming short of the dream. Take that away, and there could be no sin. The existence, then, of sin, the existence of man's consciousness of it, his desire to escape from it and rise up into better conditions, this is the grandest, the most hopeful fact in human nature. Instead, then, of the consciousness of sin being a sign of the Fall, it is a sign, on the other hand, the absolutely necessary accompaniment of the fact, of the possibility of rising. And by as much as man does rise higher and higher, so ever deeper and deeper grows his consciousness of sin. So ever does he become more sensitive to it, so ever does he bear it with less and less patience, so ever does he seek more ardently to escape from it. This deepening of the The Fall of Man consciousness of sin then, instead of its proving that man is all wrong, proves that he is all right. One grand testimony to the moral sanity and healthful- ness of this race lies in the fact that never, from the begin- ning of the world, has any man been canonized by the popular heart as a hero and helper to the world except he were, in the light of the best ideal that could be attained at the time, a good man. There are no evil saints. That which men have worshipped, that which they have conse- crated, that which they have bowed down to, that which they have loved, that which they have clasped to their hearts, has always been the good. And yet men talk about human nature being essentially evil, about men having no natural taste for goodness or tendency towards it. It has been the business of the old theologians for ages to prove to men over and over again how bad they were, in order that they might induce them to submit to their methods of being saved. The majority of men are not bad. The great masses of men the world over, in all time, according to the light they have had, have done so grandly well that I find myself, as I read history and study human progress, feeling like bowing down to them in reverence. The existence of sin, then, the existence of this consciousness of sin, the existence of this moral ideal that forever outruns us, is that which proves the divinity within us, that there is a possi- bility of rising towards that which has not yet been attained. Note, in ar other way, how this fact of sin springs out of the fact of human progress. There have been three stages, roughly speaking, in human advance. In the lower levels of human life, in the early, primitive ages of the world, brute force was dominant, the most important force there was. The man who was a muscular king was the mighti- est and most important, and might, for the time being, be 98 Religions Reconstruction the best man of his age. But, after a while, the force of evolution seems to pass by the physical. These physical forms of ours have not been evolved to so high an extent as have some of those that we speak of as belonging to the animal world. The force of evolution passed by our bodies, and there is not much probability of our being developed farther physically. It seized the brain, and is working towards the evolution of man's mental power. At first, it was merely the force of cunning, keenness, sharpness, out- witting the foes of those primitive times, surpassing them, not by superior muscular power, but by superior cunning. This made man inventive. With bare hands, possessing no claws, no weapons of self-defence, in process of time he tore the limb from the tree, sharpened it into a spear, invented the bow and arrow ; and so cunning and brain power be- came master of the world. The next step hastens on the development of man as a moral being. Until to-day, even in the politics of Europe, though the nations are armed to the teeth and face each other like thirsty tigers, ready to suck each other's blood, even here there is a dominant moral power, mightier than their armaments. There is no nation in Europe to-day that dares transgress, beyond certain limits, the moral laws of its relation to other nations, lest all the rest of the civilized world be on its back. The moral power is to-day supreme. Note what comes, then. As man progresses, as the human race goes on, it is like an army on the march. There is always a vanguard, always a main body, always the strag- glers and camp followers. That which was right enough on a lower physical plane becomes out of place and wrong on a higher intellectual plane ; and that which was right enough on the intellectual level becomes relatively wrong on the higher moral level of human nature. The Fall of Man 99 As an illustration of what I mean, war was right once. It was the best thing the people knew of at the time ; but war to-day is recognized as an evil, to be permitted only in case of absolute necessity, as a choice between two evils, one of which must be taken. Polygamy was once right. To-day, it is wrong. Slavery was once right, relatively to the time. To-day, the civilized sense of the world condemns it as, what John Wesley called it, " the sum of all villanies." Thus, as humanity rises, things which were relatively right on the lower plane become out of place and wrong on the higher plane, so that the very evils of our civilized world as we go on are actually created by our progress. There is no possi- bility of such a thing as sin or wrong in the world, in itself. The science of the world and the philosophy of the world used to be full of metaphysical entities. Electricity, for ex- ample, used to be supposed to be a thing. People still talk about the " electric fluid " or the " electric current." Heat was a thing ; and the old science had a great deal to say of phlogiston, a sort of principle or essence of heat. Light was another entity ; force was another. But now we are by all that. We know that heat, light, electricity, all these tremen- dous forces of the world, are only modes of motion, modes of activity. So good is not a thing. Evil is not a thing. There is no entity called sin that got into this world after it was created. Good, what is it ? It is that type of thought, feeling, action, which helps somebody. What is evil ? It is that type of thought, that type of feeling, that type of action, which injures, takes away from the sum total of the welfare and happiness of mankind. There is no such thing, then, as good or evil in itself. The only possible way by which men can do wrong is by one of these three ways. Evil must be the perversion of something which is right, the perverted use of any faculty IOO Religions Reconstruction or power which might as well be used in the right direction ; the excessive use of some power or faculty which in another use might be right ; or something which might be right some- where else, but which is misplaced. The daisy, for example, is a flower which all poets love. But, when it gets among the wheat, the farmers call it white- weed ; and it is one of the greatest nuisances for one who has to contend against it. A thousand things, beautiful and good in their places, become evil when misplaced, when perverted, or when carried to excess. I have in my hand a list of the seven deadly sins of the Catholic Church. They are pride, idleness, envy, murder, covetousness, lust, gluttony. There is not a single one of them that does not spring out of, or have its root in, some- thing which is not only innocent, but which may be grandly good. Pride is only a perverted and excessive self-respect. A right and manly pride belongs to any true manhood. Idleness whether it is right or wrong depends on circum- stances. Envy is only the admiration of something pos- sessed by another person, turned into spite against him be- cause he possesses it and we do not. Covetousness is what might be right otherwise, a desire to possess something held by another, perverted into a willingness to get it by harming him. Lust springs out of that which is the root of all the fairest and most beautiful things of human life. Gluttony is only an excess of that which is necessary to human ex- istence. And now let me give you still further illustrations of this threefold classification of wrong-doing that I have referred to. Take, as an illustration, the evils of things misplaced. Charity, I will say in passing, may be an evil, springing out of ever so generous a heart. If it is misplaced, it may The Fall of Man 101 only lead to the cultivation of mendicancy instead of dimin- ishing it. As a concrete illustration, take a figure like John L. Sulli- van, who is a magnificent animal. The only trouble with him is that he is wholly out of place. Put him back a few thousand years, and he has in him the stuff of which to make a hero, the subject of some epic. Suppose he had led a crusade for the recovery of the tomb of Jesus from the hands of the infidels : he might have figured to-day in the calendar of saints. This mighty physical prowess and power, in the days when muscle was at the front, would have made him a natural leader. The only difficulty is that there is now no legitimate call for this superfluity of muscle. Brain and moral power have superseded it. It is of no use. In war, he could not handle a rifle any better than a smaller man, and would only make a larger target for the enemy. He is a survival from a time when the animal was supreme ; and he now, as the poet says, " lags superfluous on the stage." Take a case like that of Daniel Webster, who sacrificed his moral ideal to his ambition. Ambition is right, though Milton calls fame "that last infirmity of noble mind." It belongs to noble minds ; and it is only evil when it is turned in the wrong direction or when one is willing to sacrifice something noble to attain it. Look at Napoleon as another instance. Take an illustration of that which is right in one way, but may be carried to excess. You know my opinion, that the accumulation of money and the aggregation of capital lie at the very root of our best civilization. Suppose a man, con- scious of that fact, devotes himself to money-making, turns all his powers in that direction, and succeeds. But he sacri- fices everything else to that ; and he carries it so far that he loses sight of the rights of others, loses sight of the wel- IO2 Religious Reconstruction fare of the poor, whom he grinds down by diminishing their wages that he may add to his own accumulation. He carries this quality, this power, which is absolutely necessary to the civilization of the world, to excess; and it becomes a tre- mendous evil, dwarfing his own soul and injuring thousands of victims. But the faculty is not only right, it is necessary to the growth of the world. And so, in all directions, evil is the sign of the growth, of the progress, of man ; and the only thing that we need to do, in order to " vindicate the ways of God to man," is to see, beyond this process of training through experience, where evil is necessary to the cultivation of a moral, self-possessed, self- controlled soul, to see that evil, at least in the case of every individual soul, is a transient phase of its development that it passes through and out of. Evil may exist forever, and be no impeachment of God's goodness. It may exist on this planet forever, as a school-house might exist forever, if you do not keep the pupils always in it. Only let them graduate when they are ready. Let individual souls pass through the curriculum, and emerge grandly developed and in the image of God. REDEMPTION OR EDUCATION? ALTHOUGH we have come to the conclusion, as the result of our previous studies, that man is not in a fallen condition, not under the curse and wrath of God, still we must assume that theory, or keep it in mind rather, for the purpose that we have in view this morning, at least during the opening part of our discussion. In order that we may understand the scheme of redemption that has been proposed as a means of delivering men from this condition, we must of course have this condition in mind. This plan of redemption has been held as a signal illustra- tion both of the love and of the wisdom of God ; and I shall ask you to look at it with me for a little while from these two points of view, first, as illustrating the supposed love of God for fallen men. You will need to note, what I have already pointed out and made clear to you, that, in order to make this view'in the least degree reasonable, we must assume a dualistic concep- tion of the governing force of this world. If God is not to be held responsible in any degree for the entrance of sin into the world; if he is not responsible for the fallen condition of the race ; if he is not responsible for the loss and for the hopeless destiny that overhang the larger part of all souls, then, indeed, we may reasonably talk about the love and grace that devised a plan by which at least some of them may be saved. But, in order that we may hold this view, we must IO4 Religions Reconstruction suppose that there existed some other power in the universe, some power, evil in nature and in purpose, that, in spite of God, wrought this ruin and devastation; and this means something besides a perfect, clear, consistent unity in the nature of God and his government of the world. For, if he be the one, only, sole source of all that ever has been, of all that is, and of all that ever shall be, then we must, as I have already told you, hold him responsible for the ruin as well as for the salvation. Let me intimate to you what I think of this theory of his love and mercy by one or two illustrations. Suppose a king should colonize an island a long way from the borders of his own kingdom; that he should send a cer- tain number of his subjects there, and leave them to develop and populate this island. Suppose he should know before- hand that in the course of years diseases of all sorts would rise and spread their devastation among these inhabitants, or that a great famine would come upon them, a famine that they would be powerless to oppose or escape, and that by its ravages the larger number of the people would in time be destroyed ; yet he should send them. Suppose that after this famine came he allowed months to pass, till great num- bers had perished, and then should organize an expedition of relief, sending ships to carry food to those that were perish- ing; that he should be willing to rescue those that desired to return, or should at least allow a certain number of them to be fed, to be saved, to be carried back to their homes once more, if they so desired. Suppose, on the other hand, that he should leave some in ignorance that any food or supplies had been sent, and should suffer them to die lingering and painful deaths one after another. Suppose he should select only a few to whom the offer of return might be made, and should leave the Redemption or Education ? 105 larger number of them in entire ignorance of any such scheme of deliverance having been devised. What would you say of such a thing as this ? How would you character- ize such a course of action, such a method of government, such a way of dealing with his subjects, on the part of a human king? Instead of praising him for his mercy to a few, instead of praising him for sending out his expedition of relief, for saving a few from dying of hunger, instead of praising him for offering that at least a few may return if they so choose, would you not say that his course of conduct from beginning to end, in spite of this temporary and local mercy, was unspeakably infamous ? If the island had been colonized by some other king, if these people had been no subjects of his, if he had been in no sense responsible for their being there or for the condition into which they had fallen, and then he had organized an expedition for their salvation, though he had succeeded in saving only a few, then we would exhaust the resources of language in praising him for his care, his loving-kindness, his tender mercy. But on the theory that has been offered us, the one that is supposed by all the terms of the scheme, the salvation that is still printed in the popular creeds of the churches, God is responsible from first to last. He created this world and its inhabitants, and placed them here and knew what was to be. Even by the terms of common law as we deal with our fellow-citizens in this world, and our standards are none too clear and none too high, we hold any man responsible for causes which he sets in motion, even though he do not intend the result. If a man chooses to set fire to his own house, we may question his moral right to do it, to destroy any property that is the result of the world's effort to deliver itself from want and suffering ; but he at least has a legal right to burn his own house to the ground, io6 Religious Reconstruction if he chooses. But if, as the result of this attempt, he burns his neighbor's, we hold him responsible, though he did not intend it. Shall we apply a less lofty standard of justice to God than we apply to our fellow-men ? May we not rever- ently ask in the words of Scripture, Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? It seems to me, then, that all this talk of mercy, tender- ness, loving-kindness, of self-sacrificing devotion to the wants, the sorrows, the sufferings of men, is entirely out of place. Rather must we feel our hearts burn within us with indigna- tion at such a conception of God as is offered to us. And, by as much as we are true and noble men, we shall find it not only impossible to worship such a being, but to believe that he exists. That he foreordained, created, intended all this it is impossible that we should believe. I remember one illustration bearing on this point that old Prof. Park, of Andover, used to offer as an attempt to relieve God from this sort of responsibility. He said : Suppose a man has hired a servant, and during some cold winter night some member of the family is suddenly taken ill. He wakes up this servant, and orders him to go for a physician ; but the servant, angry at being so disturbed and being called' upon to render such an unusual service, indulges in the wickedness of profanity and wrath. The professor used complacently to ask, Is the man who simply requires this duty, who demands this service, on the part of one who is bound to be his servant, is he responsible for the sin which the servant incidentally commits, because the service is dis- agreeable to him ? And I remember that one of the stu- dents, on a certain occasion, raised the question, which neither the professor nor any other has ever answered, and which cannot be answered : But suppose the man had cre- ated the servant, and had endowed him with such a nature Redemption or Education f 107 and disposition that he knew when he created him that, if he placed him in this peculiar circumstance, he would in- evitably commit this sin ; then what ? The old theologians told us that God did not foreordain the sin, but that he so created and so circumstanced man that he would inevitably fall when the temptation was presented to him. Can any one in morals draw a line of distinction, so that God shall be relieved of the responsibility in the one case any more than in the other? So much for the supposed love and mercy embodied in this scheme of redemption. Let us now look at its wisdom. I propose to outline a few of the many theories of the atonement that have been held, that you may see under what plan it is supposed God has arranged to redeem man from his lost and fallen condition. You are well aware that it is supposed to be the result of the birth and life and sufferings and death of Christ, who, on this supposition, is the second person in the eternal trinity. But how is this supposed to produce the result ? There have been a great many theories held. I shall only call your at- tention to three or four of the most important, and ask you to see if you can discern the wisdom or the justice supposed to be here displayed. At first, and for a great many years, for some centuries at least, the popular theory was something like this : Satan was supposed to have become the rightful ruler of humanity. He had incited man to rebellion, and had gained control of this earthly province of God's kingdom. According to the theories of government that used to be held, any king who was powerful enough to conquer and to hold another prov- ince was supposed to be its rightful possessor ; for might and right in those days were interchangeable terms. Under this theory of the atonement, Satan was the rightful owner and ruler of all human souls. It was supposed, then, that io8 Religious Reconstruction God entered into a sort of bargain with Satan, as though he were an adversary with whom he could treat, and offered him the sufferings and death of Jesus in exchange for so many of the souls of this earthly province as were thus to be saved. So that Jesus' death was simply a price paid to Satan for the deliverance of a certain number of his subjects. When Jesus descended into hell, after his crucifixion, it was sup- posed by Satan that he had gained eternal possession of this superior being, who used to be his old adversary in heaven. For on that theory the conflict in heaven, during the time of the rebellion there, was between Jesus, the leader on one side, and Satan, the leader on the other. Satan supposed that he had Jesus in his grasp, so that he could keep him ; and he was willing, for this dear revenge, to release a cer- tain number of the souls of men that had come into his pos- session. But Satan was deceived as to the nature of Jesus. He supposed him to be a created being. He did not know that he was divine. But since he was divine, was a part of the being of God himself, it was impossible, as the New Tes- tament says, " that he should be holden of death." It was impossible that any power of the adversary should keep him. So, at the end of the three days, he broke loose from the bondage in which he had been kept, and ascended on high, leading in his train a large number of those who had been kept in prison since their death, under the old dispensation. This is one theory. After this came the great theory that has been called the expiatory theory of the atonement. It was supposed that it was impossible for God to forgive unless there was a certain amount of suffering paid on the part of somebody, an equiva- lent for the suffering that would have been endured by the souls of men, supposing they had been lost through all eter- nity. God was regarded as a being who possessed an attri- Redemption or Education ? 109 bute called justice, that must in this way be satisfied before he could forgive anybody. Jesus, then, being infinite, a part of God himself, and capable therefore of infinite suffering, even in a limited time, was supposed to have gone through so much of pain and sorrow while he was in the lower regions as to precisely offset all the pain that all the lost would have suffered through eternity, that is, so many of them as God had decided to save. This is the theory that is still sung in Moody and Sankey meetings : " Jesus died and paid it all, all the debt I owe." But think for a moment : what kind of a conception of jus- tice could men hold who supposed that so much wrong could be measured or weighed against just so much pain, and that when somebody has suffered just this amount of pain, no matter whether it is the wrong-doer or not, he can be right- eously set free ? In the first place, to the enlightened conscience and clear thought there is no sort of relation between sin on the one hand and suffering on the other, even though it be the suf- fering of the guilty one. Suppose a man has committed a murder : does exacting so much pain from him take away the fact of the murder ? Does it relieve the broken hearts of the friends ? Does it change or lessen one iota of the guilt ? It does not touch it : it stands in no sort of rational or vital relation with it in any way whatever. But how much worse is the case when the pain is exacted from some one who has not committed the murder ! And what can one think of what is called the Supreme Justice of the universe being willing to take, as an equivalent for the sins of man, the suffering of anybody who will voluntarily bear it ? The next theory is what has been called the governmental theory of the atonement. This is the one that has been for years a part of our New England theology, that used to be no Religious Reconstruction taught at And over before the new movement there. It is the theory of Prof. Park. It holds that God, as moral governor of the world, cannot possibly overlook wrong-doing, that he must make an example of the sinner, that there is something more important even than saving any particular sinner ; and that is, letting the universe know that God's laws cannot be broken with impunity. The government of God is degraded by comparing it with our common human devices. If the authorities of the city of Boston should let criminals run loose without attempting to restrain them, anarchy and chaos would be the result. So they say that God is reduced to such methods as this, to maintain the supremacy of his own kingdom. One favorite illustration of Prof. Park as to the way in which God upheld his justice is this. He used to tell the story of a king who made a certain law, and said that, if anybody broke that law, both his eyes should be put out as a penalty. The first one to break the law was his own son. The king must maintain the supremacy of his own law, or his government would be held in contempt. But he did not like to make his own son totally blind. So he devised a method by which he could escape this penalty by having one of his son's eyes put out, and one of his own. So the law was supn posed to be upheld and justice to be maintained. But what kind of justice is that which, for the breach of a certain law, demands that two eyes shall be paid as a penalty, but that is not very particular as to whose they are, provided the number is maintained ? To such devices as this, that seem pitiful that seem intellectually contemptible, that seem morally infa- mous, has popular theology been reduced, in order to uphold this scheme for the redemption of mankind from sin. Another theory I must touch upon, because it shows such development on the part of the conscience of the world, such a growth of the tenderness of the human heart, such a shad- Redemption or Education ? 1 1 1 ing off towards that simple and pure naturalism which must come by and by. It goes by the name of Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford, Conn. He says that the sufferings and death of Christ are simply the manifestation of the love of God for his children and of his sense of the evil of wrong-doing, and are intended to impress the thought and heart of the world with these two ideas, and so lead people to forsake the wrong, and love and reverence that which is right. I am perfectly willing to admit the justice of this theory : only it gives up the whole question, because, if you admit that the only thing necessary to do is to touch the hearts of men and lift them out of evil into the love of right, then every man from the beginning of the world who has illustrated in his life and in his character devotion to that which is right, all the teachers, all the saviors, all the martyrs, have had their proportional share in working out the world's atonement for its sins, in bringing them into reconciliation with God, so that it is no longer peculiar to the work of Jesus, but is shared in by all those who have manifested a similar spirit of love for God and man, and devotion to the truth. I am now ready to ask you to turn squarely round, and face what seems to me to be the need of men. I do not believe he needs to be redeemed in the sense in which we have been speaking. What man needs is education. Do not misunderstand me. Do not confine your thought to that popular but most shallow idea of what education means, the simple imparting of information to people, the storing of their minds with facts, teaching them correct theories about themselves and the world. This is part of education ; but, while it is the first in order of time,*it is perhaps the least in order of importance. Man needs education in the sense that his faculties and powers need to be trained, de- veloped. He needs to be made, in other words, a complete 112 Religious Reconstruction man, complete in body, complete in brain, complete in heart, complete in spirit. He needs to be developed along those lines that the human race has been following from the first. We need to apply to man's present condition and to his future development just the same kind of intelligence, of choice, of direction, that we employ in hastening the nat- ural processes of development in any other department of life. There has been an enormous development since the beginning of the world in fruit trees, for example. The process of natural selection has been going on, poor spe- cies have been dying, and better taking their place. But the larger part of the development which has been attained has been the result of intelligent selection on the part of man, the result of purpose in the light of the knowledge of the forces at work and how they could be controlled and di- rected. The same intelligence, the same choice, the same purpose, need to be applied to human development; and if the world would only turn all its thought, its enthusiasm, its money, its time, its resources, in this direction, results might be attained in a hundred years that will take millen- niums to reach if we leave things to what we call the natural order of events, that is, the natural order, with human intelligence, human purpose and guidance left out. I wish to speak of this matter of education in three differ- ent directions. In the first place, the race needs to be edu- cated, to be taught the truth concerning itself. We need to know what sort of beings we are, what is our origin, what our nature, what the lines of our development up to the present time, what the possibilities of progress, what things help, what things hinder. The wisdom of that old Greek saying, " Know thyself," needs to be fathomed. For con- sider in the first place the immense waste of our present method, I was going to say : I must say, rather, our lack of Redemption or Education ? 113 method. Think of the immense waste of thought, of time, of money, of enthusiasm, of effort, of aspiration, of worship, from our present lack of system. I was reading only to-day in one of the morning papers something that recalled to me what I have long known con- cerning certain of the barbarous tribes of the world and their ideas of religion. They are fetich worshippers. They believe that everything that happens, especially anything that in- jures and that they call evil, is the work of some wizard, that some man or woman in the tribe is at the bottom of all the mischief that occurs. If there is a devastating storm, if one of their cabins is struck by lightning, if anything occurs of untoward significance, they try to find out what member of the tribe is responsible ; and there is no rest or peace until he is put to a cruel death. But all the time there is not one effort made to find out the real cause of the real evils under which they suffer. All the efforts of the tribe are misdirected by superstition towards some false cause in- stead of a true one. So there is no progress, no growth, except a development in cruelty and superstition. Then look all over the world : think of the temples, the altars, the shrines ; think of the prayers lifted up, think of the efforts that have been made ; think of the heartache, the longings, the tears, all directed towards some false conception of God, all distorted by some false theory of man, having no tendency to deliver the race from the real evils that are keep- ing it down, no real power to lift up and lead on towards some grander ideal of which man forever must dream. Think of the wasted efforts of all these Christian centuries in trying to placate a God that never existed, in trying to save a man that never was from a condition of evil into which he had never fallen. And then think where we might have been to-day, if intelligent guidance had been at work 1 1 4 Religions Reconstruction in trying to remove the real evils under which the world has been suffering. It seems to me that one lesson of all this ought to come home to the hearts of us who call ourselves intelligent Uni- tarians. I believe that the services, the books, the sermons, the pamphlets, the teachings, of all Unitarians ought to be forever rid of every shred of these old and utterly unfounded theories of God, of man, and of salvation. Half our churches are praying every Sunday as though this or something very like it were true. They are reading Scripture lessons that imply it. They are letting their choirs sing it. They are teaching it or admitting it by implication almost every Sun- clay in the year ; and yet, if you ask any one of them to think of this, if you put the question clearly and plainly, they will tell you they do not believe it. Then let us at least, who see the way, do what we can to help clear the path, so that the weak feet of the race may not stumble over imaginary obstacles. Let us rouse ourselves to face the real universe, the real God, whom we can so love and reverence and wor- ship. Let us face the real men and the real problems of destiny, and help men to a real deliverance. We need, then, first to learn what are the facts concerning ourselves and our constitution. The next point about which we need to be educated is concerning the development of our moral ideal, of our knowledge of morality. Our consciences need more and more to be quickened, to be made sensitive, but not to be made diseased, not to be distorted, not to be made to grieve over unrealities. The consciences of most men and women are like compasses, the needles of which are turned from the true north by being in relation with something that has power to draw them one side. We need to find out what are the real sins and the real virtues of the world. Redemption or Education ? 115 Let me give you one or two illustrations of what I mean. I think that at least half of the burdened consciences of men and women up to the present time, from the beginning of the world, have been burdened by a sense of sins which they never committed, things which were no sins. At the same time, they have been committing things which were really sins with no sense of having done wrong at all. People need to be educated out of the conventional distinctions of right and wrong, and taught what are the real and true dis- tinctions, so that they may avoid harming their fellow-men while they think they are serving God. For example, you will find a great many people whose consciences will not trouble them at all for driving Sunday afternoon, who would be conscience-burdened if they went to sail. In one case they are wearing out the strength of some animal, while in the other case they are not. If there is any distinction in ethics, it would certainly be in favor of sailing as against driving. Then how large a part of the world would be con- science-stricken and burdened by eating meat on Friday ! How many are there who would be troubled and think they had committed some great sin if they should eat certain kinds of meat on any day in the week ! How many persons will not ride in the horse-cars on Sunday, yet can be bitter and hard in their judgments concerning somebody who differs from them in opinion ! You will find that the greater part of the men and women of the world are so little educated morally as yet that they are perpetually making these false distinctions. They allow their consciences to be troubled over things that do not harm anybody ; while without one twinge of conscience they are lessening the amount of happi- ness, the true welfare, the real life and growth, of men and women. What is wrong ? What is right ? Anything is wrong, may n6 Religious Reconstruction be wrong to-day, may have been last year, may be wrong next year, and yet under certain conditions may not be, which at the time injures some other life, takes away from the sum total of his happiness, takes away from his welfare, makes it harder for that person to live and bear his burdens. Any- thing is wrong that injures mankind, and anything that does not is right. This is the real distinction. That which the human race has discovered by its long process of experience to be for the health, the happiness, and general welfare of the world, this is the thing to call right ; and anything which does not injure the world is at least innocent. The world needs then to be educated in regard to these distinctions so that its efforts may be turned in the right direction. And the sense of right and wrong needs to be made more tender, more sensitive, more delicate. And how shall this be brought about ? It cannot be by any direct means. You quicken any faculty only as you legit- imately use it. So you can quicken your conscience, develop your sense of right and wrong, only as you attempt to train it in such a way that it shall make for you clear and fine and real distinctions. One of the most important roots of conscience is sympathy. Thousands of people are cruel and hard, working wrong to their neighbors, neglecting that which they ought to do for their fellow-men, because they have no development of imaginative sympathy by which they are able to put themselves in the place of others, and think how they would feel and what they would desire under such and such conditions. We need then to develop this power of sympathy; and we need to learn that that which is for the welfare of all the world must in the long run be for the welfare of the individual, and that which is for the true welfare of the individual must in the long run be for the welfare of all. There is no contradiction in Redemption or Education ? 117 ethics. This race of ours is all bound together in one, so that we must perforce go up or down together. In one other direction our race needs to be educated. We need religious education. And what do I mean by that ? I mean that we need to be waked up to the fact, which is the essential fact of all life, that we are souls ; that we are children of the one, infinite Soul and Life of all, and that true life for all of us means sympathetic, vital relationship with this infinite Soul ; that our lives are hid in God, and that only there can we find them. But we need to learn that we are not to go out of our business or out of our common working affairs, out of our common relationships with each other, in order to find God. For this infinite Spirit and Life is manifested in every phase of the natural world about us and in the sum total of human life of which we are a part. Nothing is so wild an absurdity as that which has been the thought of most of the religions of the past, that which Jesus himself condemned so earnestly, that any man can ever be in right relation to God when he is not in right relation to his fellow-man. What do I mean by getting in right relation to God ? So far as he is manifested in the universe about us, it means recognizing the laws of the universe and coming into perfect harmony and accord with them ; and we know that this means health, peace, life, joy. It means, furthermore, so far as our relations to our fellows are concerned, recognizing that it is God's vital, throbbing presence into which we come, face to face, as we deal with our fellow-men, and that just in so far as we treat them justly, tenderly, reverently, lovingly, just in so far do we become like God, come into harmony with him, become reconciled to him. There is no other way. We are to learn that we love God, whether we call him by name or not, just in so far as we love that which is worthy of our love, Ii8 Religious Reconstruction no matter whether it be beneath or round or above us ; that we worship God whenever we appreciate and admire any- thing that is noble, uplifting, that is above us, and that tends to draw us into a higher thought of life ; that we serve God not necessarily by praying or Bible reading or church attendance, or anything that goes unde'r the name of religion, but that we serve him only as we become like him, and that this is the only service that can ever be accept- able in his sight. What, then, is the value of that which, up to the present time, has gone under the name of religion ? What is the value of the temple, the church, the altar, the sacrifice, the Bible, the prayer, the hymn, the ritual, the sacrament ? Have they no value ? That depends. If we substitute them for the true religion of life and thought and love every day in the week and in every relation of life, then they not only become useless, but pernicious, as standing in the way of that which they are intended to serve. If they do not help us, then they are of no use to us, though they may not harm. If they do help us, if church or Bible, prayer or hymn or sac- rament, anything that passes under the name of religious rite or ceremonial, if they quicken the conscience, if they fire the heart, if they lift the aspiration, if they bring us nearer to God, if they bring us in closer sympathetic relation to our fellow-men, if they help us to develop the real religious life, then they are grand, they are stepping-stones by which to climb. But let us never forget that this, and this alone, is what they are for. We should test them always by the power they have to help and to inspire. This, then, is what this race of ours needs. We have come up from the world below us. There are still in us, in body, in mind, .in heart, in spirit, remnants, traces, survivals, of that which is lowest clinging to us and hindering our % way. Redemption or Education ? 119 Our minds are clouded still with the shadows that used to be the deep night of all the world. Our instincts, our tastes, our hearts, are perverted ; and we need to be helped to outgrow that which is low, which is evil, in us. We need to come out into the light, and to become masters of ourselves, masters of our conditions, makers of our destiny, as free, loving children of God. Education, and not redemption, is what the world needs. JESUS. I WISH to begin by telling you that it is with a profound feeling of responsibility that I undertake the discussion of a question like this. Do not think that I utter any, even the least, word lightly. I appreciate, I think, to the full what it means to lay upon my soul the responsibility of shaping, moulding, possibly changing, the opinions of others concern- ing subjects which are regarded as of such vital import as this. I shall give you only the result of my most earnest conviction, of my most careful thought. If I mistake in any point, no one in all the world more wishes to be set right. And let me tell you in one word more the attitude of my own soul to-day towards Jesus of Nazareth. You know well that I do not think him God ; but never in all my life did I so reverence him, never in all my life did I so look up to him, never in all my life had I a feeling of such personal tender- ness and fellowship towards him as now. And this comes, as it seems to me, of the changed conception which has passed over my own mind concerning his origin, his nature, his character, and the service he has rendered men. I shall have to treat so great a theme as this in broad out- lines. It is impossible in the time allotted me that I should go into details. I shall very likely leave out many things that you would like to have treated, but I shall try to touch those points that seem to me most vital. I wish to consider Jesus under a threefold aspect, as to his history, his nature Jesus 1 2 1 and character, and what he has done for men ; and these three again in a twofold way, from the point of view of the old faith, and then from the stand-point which I occupy to- day. I say "I" advisedly, and not "we." For, while I be- lieve that the position I hold represents in the main that of the best and freest Unitarian thought, I do not wish to as- sume the responsibility of implicating any other single per- son in any position which I shall state as being mine. According to the orthodox belief, we cannot speak of the " origin " of Jesus ; for, being the second person in the divine and eternal Trinity, he had no origin. Some of the older theologians speak of the Trinity as existing before the worlds were made in such a way that, while it was only one God, there were still three personalities who could have relations with each other ; so that they refer sometimes to the mutual love, the fellowship, of these divine personalities, in the one God. They speak of the councils of this Trinity : how they planned the foundation of the world, the creation of man ; how they ordained man's fall ; how they laid out the scheme of redemption by which the elect were to be delivered from the results of that fall. According to this belief, in the ful- ness of time, at a specific point in the history of the world, this second person in the Trinity, having been prophesied for many centuries, having been heralded at last by angelic couriers, not only singing their song in the heavens at the time of his advent, but forewarning both father and mother that such a being was to be born, comes through the gate- way of a supernatural birth, with no human father, a divine wonder-child. Born, according to prophecy, in the little town of Bethlehem in Judea, he moved with his father to make his home in the hill country of Nazareth, towards the north in Galilee. We know nothing about his childhood, except the fact of his being presented according to Jewish custom at the 122 Religions Reconstruction temple at the age of twelve. When he is about thirty years of age, he makes his appearance to John the Baptist, who was baptizing in the Jordan and preaching the coming of the kingdom of heaven. He submits himself, as though he were a sinful man like the rest, to this sacred rite ; and then he starts out to preach the gospel of this kingdom. He works, according to the accounts in the New Testament, which differ, a year and a half according to one story, and according to others about three years, visiting Jerusalem once or twice or three times (it is impossible for us to tell just how often), performing wonders and prodigies, healing the sick, raising the dead, teaching the gospel of his king- dom, and at last fulfilling his mission by facing the crowd at Jerusalem at the time of the great feast, and being delivered up into the hands of the Roman authorities, that he might be put to an ignominious death. Between the time of his death and his resurrection, he goes down into the underworld, into the place of torment among the lost. On the third day he miraculously reappears, risen from the dead. He is with his disciples, appearing and disappearing, through a period of about forty days ; and at the end of that time, with those who were about him, he goes up into a mountain, and there/ after some farewell words, commissions them to go forth and preach the gospel that he had given among all nations. Then he rises visibly in the air until a cloud receives him out of their sight ; and from that day until this he has sat on the right hand of the throne of God, a mediator and inter- cessor, showing his hands, his side, his feet, as evidence of his suffering, and pleading with the Father for the forgive- ness of those whom he by his suffering and death had re- deemed. Such, in brief outline, is the life of this wonderful being, as told us by fhe older authorities. Such the life that he Jesus 123 lived here on earth and the work he has engaged in since his disappearance into the skies. As to his nature and character, a few words must suffice. As to his character, I need to say only one word : that, since he is regarded as God, of course his character is something not to be discussed or defined. We must simply say all- perfect, and leave it there. As to his nature, however, a few words of definition are required. It took a little while in the early councils of the church for them to decide definitely as to how they should look upon him in this regard. Some of them thought that he was simply God wearing a human body. Of course, there was only one nature. Some of them thought that he was only man divinely sent and guided. Here, again, there was only one nature ; and in this case of course, as in the other, he would have only one will, the divine will in the one case and a human will in the other. Then, when the doc- trine of the Trinity grew up, he was looked on as possessed of a double nature. In some mysterious way, he was God and man at once, so that one could say of him that he knew a thing as God which he did not know as man. In this way, the apologists have got over the difficulty of his own confes- sions of being ignorant of certain things. This ignorance was human ; he knew these things as God. He was, then, this mysterious dual being, God and man in wondrous com- bination. But, if he was God, the question then came up as to whether he had more than one will, and, if so, what those wills were. Did he have a divine will as a divine being, or did he have a human will as a human being? At last, they settled on what became the doctrine of the Catholic churches, that he was to be regarded as of two natures, but one will. So much as to the nature of this wondrous being. Now, as to the work that he wrought. I need not take 124 Religions Reconstruction much time in defining it on the orthodox theory, because I have had to anticipate more or less what I should say in this regard. The work that he wrought was the work of atone- ment, of expiation, a work that the Church has sometimes thought had chief regard to God according to its theories. Sometimes, it is thought that it had regard to man, influ- encing God on the one side, influencing man on the other. But, in either case, the work that he wrought was the making it possible for God to forgive, and leading man into a will- ingness to be forgiven, and so saved from the ruin which resulted from the fall. As to whether he was to save all or not, the Church has never been agreed. From the begin- ning there have been Universalists, those who believed that the atonement wrought was world-wide and pertained to all souls. Others believed that his atonement only covered a certain section of humanity, only the elect ; but that work was to save men. From the orthodox view, this is perfectly consistent ; and he is not rightly to be contrasted or com- pared with any of the other great men of the world. He did not come to teach science; he did not come to teach art; he did not come to produce a complex and growing civilization here on earth. That was not the work that he undertook to do. He left men to their own devices, their own inventions, so far as these were concerned. It was not his business to be a philanthropist in the sense of carrying on popular reform, to put an end to slavery and war. The world was to work out its own destiny, while he simply made a way by which people could be saved in another world. That was the one unique thing which he came to do. Now, I have a few things that I wish to say concerning this scheme as thus outlined to us. I have anticipated some of them; but, for the completeness of the treatment of my theme, I wish at least to put my finger on them as I pass Jesus 125 them, so that this subject may have a certain finish of its own. 1. In the first place, as we at any rate are fully persuaded, there was no need of any such life, any such suffering, any such death, any such work of atonement being wrought. We go back, and see that the history of humanity not only shows no need, but shows that the very need that has been supposed to have called for this kind of work does not exist. Man has never fallen ; and so there was no need of any plan for redeeming him from the results of the fall. 2. In the next place, there is simply no proof, in the human sense of the word, that any such wonderful, incom- prehensible being as this ever existed. What proof could there be in this nineteenth century that a being who lived in the first century combined in himself the double natures of God and man ? We know that similar beliefs to this were common in antiquity. There was no end of beings who had either a divine father or a divine mother, and so were sup- posed to partake of the nature of both. It was an easy thing for this belief to spring up in those old times. We know that it was easy, because many of them did spring up ; but how can there be any proof ? Suppose John, instead of hinting such a belief, should have left it on explicit record. Suppose he had made out an affidavit, and had had it signed by the proper legal authorities in Jerusalem, expressing his profound conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was one with the eternal God : of what probative force would such a state- ment be to us to-day ? It would be at most simply an expression of the judgment of a certain unknown person named John, of no more value than the judgment of any- body else, of no more value than the judgment of any man uttered to-day. It seems to me that in the nature of things a statement like that is simply incapable of being established as true. 126 Religions Reconstruction 3. The scheme that I have just outlined, we have found, does not commend itself either as being merciful or just. The entire scheme of redemption, if we take into account the origin of the world, its history, and the divine responsibility from the beginning to the end, we must pronounce as un- merciful and unjust, so that, if it could be established by proof, it would only push us farther away from God instead of drawing us nearer to him. 4. Then one other point. There does not seem to me to be any inspiration, any sense of companionship, any help, in the thought of a being of this double, mysterious, incompre- hensible nature. How can he be an example to me ? How can he be an inspiration to me ? On that theory, Jesus becomes only a theophany, a divine apparition, and the humanity must be lost to us. It seems to me that, in order to conceive him a real being at all, we must think of him either as God or man ; but, even though we think we do, we do not succeed in thinking of him as both. Suppose you talk about the sufferings of the God-man : what suffering is there for one who is conscious that he is Almighty God? To attempt to produce a dramatic effect on the world by portraying the possible sufferings of the Almighty God of the universe seems even absurd. Sup- pose he bore patiently the affronts of men : cannot a God be patient with a little human ignorance and evil ? Suppose he meets a difficulty : what is a difficulty to the Omnipotent ? Where can be the sense of patience, of endeavor, and then the ecstasy of triumph, to one who is divine ? How, then, can he be an' example to me in the midst of my burdens, my sorrows, my temptations, my struggles ? It would not com- fort me or make me feel any stronger to see a giant accom- plish something that was perfectly easy to him. What comforts me, what helps me, what inspires me, is to find Jesus 127 some one on my level who can feel the burdens I feel, who can face the temptations I face, who can understand the difficulties I understand, who can feel the brain perplexities, the problems he cannot solve any more than I can. To find such a one bravely taking the next step, though he cannot see his way any clearer than I can ; to see some one, who shares with me my full nature, braver than I am, more patient than I am, stronger than I am, that comforts, that makes me feel, Here is an example, here is an inspiration, here is something I can be and do ! 5. And, then, it is commonly told us that the death and res- urrection of Jesus, his resurrection especially, was assurance and warranty for our own belief in a future life. I cannot see how the statement touches the question. Because a God whose body has been dead for three days resumes that body again, what proof is that that I, who am not a God, and whose body must go back and mingle with the earthy elements out of which it came, perhaps for thousands of years, shall rise again ? It seems to me there is no parallel- ism, no assurance, no comfort here. But I must leave this side of my theme, and hasten to the other, and try to give you my conception of the life, the nature, the character, and the service of Jesus of Nazareth. I can speak of his origin. I believe not that he was born in Bethlehem, but that he was born four or five years before the beginning of our era, in> the little town of Nazareth in Galilee. The statement that he was born in Bethlehem is evidently the result of the supposed necessity of having the Messiah born there because there was a tradition that he was to be. And so years and years after his death, when his biography comes to be written, it is taken for granted that he must have been born in Bethlehem, because it was popu- larly believed that the Messiah was foreordained to be born 128 Religious Reconstruction there. There is no other reason that I know of for suppos- ing that he was born anywhere else than in Nazareth. He was born like any other human baby, and grew up in the midst of the simple influences of that quiet country village. We have no glimpse of his childhood except that one which is doubtless historic of his appearance in the temple, a boy of precocious development, of deep thought, of wonderful nature even then, but showing no traces of being more precocious than many another human boy has been. Nothing more is seen of him till he is about thirty years of age. Then comes his baptism ; and he starts out on his mission to reform the religious life of his people. He goes about doing good, showing sympathy, patience, tender- ness, trust ; bearing bravely hardship and toil, preaching what he believes to be the truth as revealed to him by the whisper of God to his soul, willing to bear anything for the sake of that truth, facing the obstacles that meet him at every turn, bearing what is harder than all other things for a re- former to bear, the suspicion, the distrust, and the desertion of his own friends, those whom he thought he could count on though all the rest of the world were against him. So he lives out his life bravely, and at last, in Jerusalem, faces the mob with his higher truth, rebuking the sins of the rulers and teachers of the people, though he knew he was laying himself liable to arrest and punishment. It is a question in my own mind whether he did riot expect divine interference to save him, and to establish the kingdom in which he had come so firmly to believe ; for there is no question that he regarded himself as the appointed Messiah, the leader of his people ; and naturally, in an age when miracle was supposed to be an every-day occurrence, he might expect that the strong hand of the Almighty would be put forth to help and save him, and thus establish the work in which God must Jesus 129 have himself been interested. There is an indication at the very last of this temporary disappointment of Jesus. When he hangs on the cross, just before he dies, he seems to have wondered for one wavering instant, a wavering that makes us feel unspeakably more tender towards him, because there is a touch of such simple humanity about it, a wavering that makes me feel as though I would take him in my arms and comfort him if I might, when he cries, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " Is there anything sublimer, more tenderly touching in all human history than that of a soul brave even unto death, in spite of the weakness that craves so to feel the touch of God's hand ? The nature and character of Jesus : I do not feel myself adequate to portray my dream of such a man, gentle until he seems womanly; with endurance such as martyrs are made of; with a boldness that shrunk not from the most monstrous of all earthly monsters, a howling, hooting mob ; a courage that could stand unflinching even in the shadow of the cross, a courage all the more courageous because of the shrinking. Does not your heart leap to meet the bravery of that officer I use this simply as a feeble illustration who, when the bullets were whistling about him, was addressed by a new comer, a young officer, who half-tauntingly said, "I judge from the blanching of your face that you are afraid." And he said, " Yes, I am afraid ; and, if you were only half as afraid as I am, you would run." That is courage that sees the danger, and does not run. That was the courage of Jesus of Nazareth, combined with a tenderness unsurpassed in that of any historic char- acter the world has ever seen, a compassion peculiarly divine, it seems to me, towards the frail and the fallen, and yet with a power of wrath that had the cut of the lightning stroke. But his wrath, mind you, was always for respectable 130 Religious Reconstruction sinners, for the hard, the grasping, the avaricious, the cruel, for those who ground down their fellows, those who coined the heart's blood of their fellows into money for their own gratification. His pity, his ineffable tenderness, all and always was for what we call the fleshly frailties, the infirm- ities, the weaknesses, of men and women. For them, never a hard word fell from his loving, sympathetic, helpful lips. He was human. When we say human, do not think of hu- manity at its lowest. Do not think we degrade Jesus as in those pitiful terms which speak of him as a " mere man." Do we know any grander word to apply to any being than to say, with the loftiest, deepest, widest significance that can attach to it, " He was a man " ? Can you say any- thing grander than that, a man in the highest reach of manliness ? Was he perfect ? Frankly, I must tell you that I do not know. There is no man in all history concerning whose personal biography we know less than we know of Jesus, only one glimpse of him for thirty years, when he was a boy of twelve ; all the rest a blank. We know not whether he was perfect up to his thirtieth year or not. All that we can do is to judge what those years must have been by the fruit- age that the life bears after that. I do not know whether he was a perfect man or not ; and reverently let me say it is not a question that even has interest for me. I do not care. It is not the most perfect men that have rendered the world the most service or helped it the most. He was nearly enough perfect. He was grand and high enough to be an inspiration, a helper, a leader to all the ages since his time. I believe that Jesus died like any other man, was buried like any other man. I have no confidence in the story of a physical resurrection. I do think, however, that it is quite Jesus 1 3 1 possible that his disciples saw him after his death ; for he was not in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Men like that are never buried. He lived, continued to live. This is the strongest faith of my soul. It does not seem to me impossi- ble that he might have been seen, that he might even have spoken with his disciples; and that is enough to account for the stories that were circulated concerning him in after years. Now, I turn from this outline, bald and meagre, to touch on what I conceive to be the services which he has rendered to the world. I told you the other day that the advocates of almost any great religion have always been accustomed to claim as the result of that religion all the good things that they have found in existence among the people who believe in it. There has been in the Christian Register recently in the Christmas number a symposium, contributed to by the leading Uni- tarians of the country, each one expressing his opinion as to what Jesus has done for the world. In that symposium, you find an illustration of this point that I have in mind. There is a certain class of Christians who are ready to claim that everything that distinguishes Christendom to-day above all the other people of the earth is due to the life, the teach- ings, and the work of Jesus of Nazareth. But here, again, I must say to you that it seems to me this question is impos- sible to answer. Are we to think of all the good things in the world, or in that section of the world covered by the name Christendom, as having been given to us as a direct result of the life and teachings and work of Jesus ? Con- sider a moment. Here is a great stream of humanity. Its origin is God. This, which we call humanity, this mighty river, we lose in the mists of antiquity. It emerges at last into light. Moses contributed something to it. Isaiah con- 132 Religions Reconstruction tributed something, and the whole host of Hebrew heroes. Socrates, Plato, and many a Greek philosopher, poet, and artist has poured his tribute into it. Roman writers Cicero, Seneca, Virgil have added their tributary streams. As it has come down the ages, all the great men of the world, Savonarola, Huss, Luther, Dante, the great group of artists at the time of the Renaissance, scholars, humanita- rians, all the leading thinkers, inventors, discoverers, writers, of the most civilized nations of the globe, have contributed their mite to humanity. Who shall untangle this mighty skein, and tell what threads lead directly back to Nazareth ? Here are all the differences constituted by the distinctions of nationality, of race. If Christianity produces the same effects on all nations, how, then, does it happen that certain Eastern, Oriental, nations that from the beginning have been Christian are among the most mean and contemptible people on the globe ? If Christianity makes everybody that it takes into its power equally great, where is the difference between Spain and Germany, between France and the Norse- men ? It seems to me that race these qualities that we derive from God himself must account for much. We can- not, then, undertake what seems to me the impossible task of saying how much precisely of that which constitutes the glory of Christendom has come from Jesus of Nazareth. One thing more seems unquestioned in regard to the direct teachings of Jesus. There is no man who ever lived whose teachings have influenced the world to any great extent who was really less original in the sense of being the first to utter a saying attributed to him than is Jesus of Nazareth. But there is something more than originality in Jesus, some- thing that seems to me mightier. Most of the sayings of the Sermon on the Mount can be traced in some shape or other to some earlier thinker. He did not even originate the Jesus 133 Golden Rule ; and Hillel, a teacher in Jerusalem during the century preceding Jesus, was the first who gave utterance to that thought of the whole law being comprised in love to God and man ; so that the most distinctive sayings of Jesus did not originate with him. Now turn to the positive side. How much is to be attrib- uted to Jesus and how much to race I may not venture to say ; but I believe that a great deal of it we do owe to this wondrous character. This Christendom of ours has come to be more and more, as ages have gone by, distinguished for what we may call the quality of humanity, for humane- ness, for the recognition of the value of men as men, as partakers of the divine nature without regard to race, with- out regard to caste, without regard to social condition, with- out regard to religion. It has been growing, this feeling of humanity. The mightiest power to-day perhaps in our civil- ization, that which has in it the most of promise for the future, has been the peculiarly fine, distinctive qualities that were characteristics of Jesus of Nazareth. From his day to this, though warring factions have been fighting with his name as a watchword on their lips, he has hung in the heavens over all the turmoil on earth, as the sun hangs above the stormy sea ; and, as the calm, bright, blue sky tends to soothe and quiet the storm, so at last his own perfect, light-giving image has been reflected back to the heavens. Then who shall measure another power, the power of the ideal humanity that has come to attach itself to the name of Jesus ? Jesus has for ages, whatever else he may have been, stood as an ideal man in the thought, the heart, the life of the world; and there is no power mightier to propagate this in their hearts and their lives than just this dream of the ideal. Men have forever been haunted by the 134 Religious Reconstruction thought of this possible human perfection, purity, tenderness, justice, truth ; and it has spoken to them so that they have been compelled to hear this still small voice above all the turmoil and clamor of life, and it has had power to repro- duce itself in millions of other lives. There is one other power that I wish to emphasize as dis- tinctively a peculiar and mighty power of Jesus, such as at- taches to no other historic character. If you have ever thought deeply, if you have studied the world, if you have observed life, if, in short, you have lived, you have learned this : that there are men and women who, the moment you go near them, seem to tap your vitality, to drain the life out of you. They are like a drizzly, sleety day, which, in spite of yourself, will depress you, weigh you down. You feel their presence as a sort of incubus ; and you are glad to escape, as one escapes out of a cave into daylight. Then there are others in whose presence you feel as a plant feels when the sun shines on it, when it is refreshed by the dew, when it is played upon by the life-giving air. You feel stronger in their presence, you feel kindled, inspired, lifted up. Your brain has more power, your heart more courage, your nerve is braced. You are a thousand times more a man. These are the ones who can explain it ? who have the power to impart life by contact. I do not believe that any one possesses that power who has an in- ferior brain ; but the brain part of it is not the chief part. So far as I can understand or describe it. it is soul power, the power of the divine in us. And, as one feels life thrilling from contact with God him- self, so we are made more alive when we come into the pres- ence of these souls, and are permitted to touch even the hem of their garments. I do not know of an historic man who possessed this life-giving quality to the same extent or Jesus 135 the same degree that Jesus possessed it. In his presence, we feel the touch of life, we are lifted, inspired, made strong. Jesus and souls like him help us in another way. We see them towering above us like mountains that catch the first rays of light, while we are in the dark. We are not tall enough to see, but we can believe that they see what they tell us they do. They can impart to us their faith, their trust; and it seems to me a purely rational thing. As a man on a mountain summit can see what I cannot in the valley, so, when some man that I recognize as having brain and heart and soul unspeakably above me assures me that he does see some great spiritual verity, I can at any rate feel that he probably does ; and so I gain a grander faith in that which I was disposed to doubt and let slip from my grasp. As my contribution to the symposium to which I have referred in the Christian Register, I expressed this thought in the following sonnet : As when the valleys all in shadow lie, And shadowy shapes of fear still haunt the night, Some mountain peak reflects the coming light, And waiting lips break forth with joyful cry For gladness that at last the day is nigh, So when some soul, that towers afar, is bright, The souls that sit in shadow, at the sight, Grow sudden glad to know 'tis light on high ! And when these mountain-towering men can say, " We see, though it be hidden from your eyes," We can believe in better things to be ! So, though the shadows still obscure our way, We see the light, reflected from the skies, That crowns thy brows, O Man of Galilee ! THE OLD CHURCH AND THE NEW. A VERY superficial examination of the conditions of the modern world reveals the fact that the church to-day has no such hold on the hearts, the minds, the fears, the consciences of the great masses of the people as it has had in the past. And yet I believe, with all my heart, that the church, or a similar organization under some other name, that shall be the church in essence, that shall stand for its purposes and accomplish its work, shall see a grander history in the future than it has ever known in the past. Those who still believe that the church is a miraculously established divine institution do recognize the fact because they cannot help it that there are fewer and fewer among the more highly civilized, the better educated, of the world who agree with it. The tendency is undoubtedly away from that old idea of the church. The tendency is to discredit its exclusive claims, and to feel that we can get along very comfortably without it, and to cast off all anticipation of any disastrous results in the future on account of its neglect. I say those who believe most strongly in the claims of the church do recognize this fact. They are afraid of it. They wonder whether it means a tendency downward to a deeper depravity on the part of the world, or whether it is only a temporary tendency, springing up as the result of modern science and of the enlargement of the secular life of the civil- ized world. But they recognize the fact; and that is the The Old Church and the New 137 point that I wish to emphasize. On the other hand, these more highly educated, better civilized, freer men and women are coming to feel more and more, in certain quarters at any rate, that the church is something that is going to die away, however long it may be about it. They believe that it is a thing of the past, and that the future is to see no church. They have identified these ecclesiastical organizations with certain theories concerning God, concerning men, concern- ing human destiny; and since they are thoroughly convinced that these theories are discredited, since they no longer hold them, they see no reason for supposing that the church is to continue. They believe that it will confine itself to the rep- resentation of these old and dying beliefs, and, when the last trace of these antique conceptions of the universe has passed out of sight, that the church will fade away with them. I wish, therefore, to ask you to join with me in consider- ing for a little while the origin of the church, some phases in the course of its development, and the tendency of things to-day, that we may come to some rational conclusion as to what the true church is, as to whether there is any per- manent basis for it, whether we, as manly men and womanly women, are to still continue our loyalty to it, whether it is something permanent as a part of the better and higher life of the world Some one I do not remember who has said, "No syn- agogue, no church ; " expressing in this terse phrase the fact that the church grew out of the Jewish synagogue. Un- doubtedly this was true ; but, if it means that there never would have been any Christian Church but for the Jewish synagogue, I must take exception to the statement, for I be- lieve that that which lies at the heart of this religious organi- zation which we call the church would have manifested itself in the course of human development whether there had been 138 Religious Reconstruction a synagogue or not. But, historically, it is true that the Christian Church did spring out of the Jewish synagogue. I wish, therefore, to note this synagogue for a moment, that we may see how naturally the church was evolved out of it ; and, as the church came from the synagogue, so we may believe that out of the church may be evolved something, under whatever name, which shall represent a still higher form of development. In the early history of the Jews there was only a taber- nacle besides certain holy places here and there, conse- crated spots where the people came together to offer sacri- fices. The synagogue sprang up as a manifestation of the later religious life. During the exile, when they could not go to the temple, after the written law came to be recog- nized as the guide and teacher of the people, then the syna- gogue grew up as a perfectly natural development, an ex- pression of the common need of the people to assemble together at some stated time for the study of this "law of God " which they recognized as the law of their lives. So we find that during the later life of the Jewish people, scattered all over the country, in every little town, were the syna- gogues ; and so many in Jerusalem that they were probably numbered by the hundred. It took at least ten men to con- stitute the organization which was the heart of the synagogue life and worship. The synagogue was usually built on some high place, some elevation in the town. It was the centre of the religious life of the people. As the people entered it and as they sat down to worship, they always faced towards the holy city. The one thing they did was to gather here to listen to the reading of the law and its exposition, that they might comprehend and so be in condition to obey the word of God as they understood it. The synagogue, then, was in vigorous, flourishing life when Jesus came ; but Jesus, The Old Church and the New 139 so far as any record is given, did not organize any church. Apparently, it did not occur to him to organize one. Neither, as I believe, did he appoint any sacraments or rites, such as baptism or the Supper, with any idea that they were to be- come a permanent part of such a growing civilization as the world has attained since his day. Let us see what Jesus did, and why. He came to this earth, and cast his seeds of divine truth into the midst of the society about him, and then was speedily cut off before he had time to organize anything, even if that had been his in- tention ; but, doubtless, it was not his intention. Beyond any rational question, as it seems to me, Jesus believed, for he most explicitly taught this, if he be correctly reported, that the end of the present order of things was to come before some of those with whom he was speaking should die. What call then, what need, what room, for any such organi- zation as the church ? There would be this general organi- zation of renewed humanity in what he called the kingdom of God, after his speedy reappearance ; but in the mean time there was no need of any church. And it seems to me that it lies clearly open on the very surface of the New Testa- ment that Jesus did not establish any such rites as baptism or the Lord's Supper with any idea of their being perma- nent elements in any church life. Jesus is reported, I know, as saying, among the very last things that he uttered to his disciples before he ascended into heaven, " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." It seems to me incredible that he could have used this language, because in a few years we find his disci- ples quarrelling over the question whether the gospel was to be preached to any one but the Jews. This would have been impossible if he had given an explicit command on the sub 140 Religions Reconstruction ject. In regard to the matter of baptism, we know that this formula about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit did not grow up for many years after the time of Jesus' death. We find Paul, in a letter to the church in Corinth, discussing some of the factions that had grown up, and expressing his gratifi- cation that he had baptized only two or three, lest some one should charge him with attempting to build up a church, an organization, around his own personality, lest they should say "he had baptized in his own name." If there had been a direct command from the leader of the church, from the very God of the universe himself, to baptize after a par- ticular and specific form, it is incredible that it should have entered the mind of the apostle that any one could baptize in any other name. Then, in regard to the Supper, the matter seems to me equally clear. Jesus broke bread, and askecl his disciples after his death to remember him when they met together to break bread, one of the simplest things in all the world : " Remember me every day when you meet together and break bread ; recall to mind the fact that I broke bread with you, and asked that you should thus recall my memory." But, since the whole existing order of things was to come to an end before that generation should pass away, it could not have entered his mind that this rite should ever assume any such proportions as it has in the history of the world. But, though he did not establish any church nor found, as I believe, any special sacraments, yet the growth of the church was perfectly natural. After he had passed away, those in sympathy met together to talk over their common hope, their common fears, their common duties. They met on the day which recalled the one when, as they believed, he had shown himself victor over death. They met together to talk over the words that he had left them, and the mission that 'Ihc Old Church and the New 141 he had committed to their care. Then, as they attempted to spread this gospel among their fellow-men, they would naturally have some meeting-place, some meeting-time, some specific form of gathering themselves together ; and so the church, which simply means a meeting, a coming together, would be as natural as the bursting of a bud in the spring. The church, then, was the simple, rational, human organ- ization of those in sympathy with each other in their com- mon hopes and purposes. But when the coming of Jesus had been long delayed, and the church had grown to such proportions that those who were its leaders and guides could see before them the tremendous and almost universal power over men which it would exercise, then it naturally changed the form of its organization, and became a closer body, with a hierarchy of officers, from the highest to the lowest. And as it claimed to stand as the very representative of God on earth, to speak his word and to exercise his power until the time of that second coming, it naturally took on that shape which it assumed along in the second, third, fourth, and fifth centuries, until it culminated at last in a mighty despot- ism during the Middle Ages. It was a natural transforma- tion, a perfectly natural growth. The church then came to be an organization that claimed to be the voice and the representative of God on earth. They put forth the claim that the spirit of God abode in this organization, that this was a body corporate, whose soul was the very spirit of the Almighty. He, therefore, who became a member of this body became a partaker of this divine life ; and he who was cut off from it was cut off from all human sympathy in this world and from all divine sympathy in the next. You can see, then, very easily, since this represented the majority belief of the civilized world, how naturally the church be- came the mightiest spiritual despotism that the world has 142 Religions Reconstruction ever seen. It claimed to dominate the entire life of human- ity. Kings were glad to kneel at the feet of the pope and recognize him as the present deputy of- God on earth, to go on his errands and to execute his will. So the church became a mighty power that grasped and moulded human life at will, that held in its hands this world and the next, such a power as no universal empire like that of ancient Rome could ever hope to rival in the magnificence of its ideas and the sweep of its power. But the church, drunk with power, arrogant, cruel, came at last to attempt to do such things as God himself never attempted, and, though he should attempt, could not accom- plish. The church, at last, shocked the moral sense of Europe. It became not only a burden on its physical and political life, but shocked its conscience, so that they began to question whether this could be the divine institution that it claimed. For it attempted to assert the power not only to forgive sins, but to dispense people beforehand from the necessity of righteousness, and to sell to them for money the privilege of committing sins. This the righteous sense of the noble men and women of the time could no longer en- dure. So there came the Protestant Reformation ; and the Bible was used as the centre and fountain of all authority instead of the church. I wish you to notice one thing in regard to this change : that it was a step towards rationalism, a step towards the supremacy of reason, a step towards the acceptance of the scientific method, the demand for proof, of belief only on the best evidence. The moment that the Bible was made the last court of appeal, there came up the question as to the interpretation of the Bible, and so a doorway opened for the use of reason as the supreme faculty of man ; and, though they claimed the Bible as supreme, in spite of that The Old CJiiircli and tJie Neiv 143 claim, it was reason and evidence that determined the nature of the Bible, its contents, and what it should be supposed to teach mankind in the name of God. So, though the church still claimed to represent God, though it still claimed to have in its hands the conditions of human salvation, though it still claimed that men must be members of it in order to cherish rightly an eternal hope, the moment reason was made the tinal court of appeal, and allowed to adjudicate concerning the claims of the Bible, modern rationalism was something that could not be prevented ; it was inevitable. The church, then, has inevitably split up into a hundred, almost a thou- sand sects ; and, in their mutual war upon each other, they have destroyed all possible claims to the infallibility of any one of them. At last, the mind of man is coming to be free. It has shaken off this spiritual despotism; and now each man for himself dares to think concerning God and concern- ing his own nature, and to assume the responsibility for his life in this world and in all worlds. Here, then, is the point to which the church has come, the point that is indicated in my opening words; and we are face to face with the question whether the church is to pass away with the passing away of these old ideas with which it has been so long identified or whether there is something in human nature that still demands this kind of expression for itself. I believe that, as the old Christian Church was evolved out of the Jewish synagogue, so we to-day are in the very midst of a process of evolution into a new and higher and better church than the old. I still use the word "church," because I love it, because in its clear meaning it is so simple, so human, so natural, and because I know of no better name. Let us look, then, and see whether there be any basis for the continued existence of the church. It seems to me that 144 Religions Reconstruction there is a basis as broad as the world and as eternal as human nature, and it is this : the permanently essential religious nature of man. Man is a religious animal. Above and beyond all other qualities and characteristics that dis- tinguish him he is religious. This is true now, and has been in all ages, and must continue to be. People who are interested in any one subject naturally organize themselves into some external expression of it. There are art associa- tions, scientific societies, philosophical societies. Business men organize for the carrying on of their plans. Wher- ever men have interests in common which they can attain better by common action, their organization is natural and inevitable ; and so I believe that as men are religious, always have been, always must be, and that as this, in spite of all considerations that may be adduced to the contrary, is the very highest interest of human life, so I believe that people will necessarily organize themselves in this way. It may call itself by a different name ; but in essence and to all intents and purposes it must and will be a church. Now let us consider for a moment what are some of the common ends and aims that necessitate this organization, that make it natural, human, rational. In the first place, a church attempts to express the fact that all men and women are dependent on God. They may not think of it under those terms ; but all men and all women, if they think at all, must recognize the fact that they do stand in dependent, vital relations to the Power that was here before them, that will be here after they have gone, that surrounds them like an atmosphere, a Power in which they live and move and have their being, that is above them, behind them, that touches them on the right hand and on the left, that they face at every moment, that they never can escape ; a Power to which the light and the darkness are both The Old Church and the New 145 alike , a Power, the laws of whose life are the conditions of all human life, physical, mental, moral, spiritual. They must recognize the fact that it is in the knowledge of this Power and the relations in which we stand to it that lies the secret of all happiness, all growth, all nobleness, all that we may hope for or attain. What has been more natural, more rational, more simple, more human, more divine, than an or- ganization that has for its aim and end the study of this Power, and the relation in which we stand to it, the study, in other words, of the very conditions of life itself ? Then that other quality in all noble natures, in all natures I will say, leaving out the word "noble," but more highly mani- fested in the noble, that tendency to worship, the feeling of awe, of reverence, of looking towards that which is above and beyond us. By as much as a man is noble, whether he thinks of it or not, whether he knows it or not, whether he calls it by that name or not, he is and he must be a wor- shipper; for worship means just this uplift and uplook of the soul towards the more beautiful, towards the truer, the higher, the nobler, towards the ever elusive ideal that haunts us, that we have not grasped as yet, that, ever following, we do come into the presence of something higher and better. What, then, more simple, what more rational, human, divine, than that people should meet together to help each other, to in- spire and stimulate each other in this religious, the highest and grandest, quality of the human soul ? Then the church, if it be a true one, represents that uni- versal human longing for an organization which the world has dreamed of, which poets have sung, whfch prophets have foretold, but which has never yet been realized except in part, the organization of that perfect democracy of human life in which men and women shall meet, if it be only for one hour a week, simply as men and women, in the pres- 146 Religious Reconstruction ence of the divine and the eternal, being shamed out of the pettinesses and the littlenesses of these trivial, passing hu- man distinctions that we count so great from the stand-point of our ordinary society. There is something in men and women deeper than their income, something deeper than the houses they live in, something deeper than the clothes they wear, something deeper than the culture they may have attained, than the books they have read, something deeper than their artistic tastes, something deeper than any of these things on which we found our distinctions of caste. There is that essential quality that makes us men and women, chil- dren of the one eternal, universal Spirit; and it is well that one hour a week, if no more, we should meet together in the consciousness of a presence in the light of which these things fade out, and we are men and women only. This finds expression better than anywhere else in a true church. If men forget themselves nowhere else, they will do it in the presence of that eternal Power which makes all these con- siderations vanity and folly. Then again, however strong we may be, owever self- contained, there are times when the child in us asserts itself, when we are weak, when our feet become weary and our hearts are discouraged, and the way of life is hard. Then we need the help, the comfort, the sympathy, of our fellow-men. There are times when, though perfectly well aware that a sympathetic word or a warm hand-clasp cannot take the burden off the heart, they do still help us to bear it. They make us stronger, they give us courage, they help our belief in the reality of that infinite and eternal tender- ness and care of which they are only glimpses and out- shinings. And we need an organization like this, where we can touch hands, feel the touch of each other's shoulders, as we stand side by side in the sympathy of a common pur- pose, common hopes, common aims. The Old Church and the Neiv 147 I have led you along, if you have followed my thought sympathetically, where you are ready to apprehend what I believe to be the truth, that a true church is not something to be apologized for, concerning which a man should be half-ashamed when he finds himself interested in it. I know men who, because of their interest in a special minister or some special cause which the church has at heart, have suddenly found themselves interested in the church itself; and they expect that, as they go along the street, some of their comrades will smile at them and wonder what it all means, showing thus how petty, how poor, how trivial, how one-sided the conception of the church and of church life has been in their own minds and in the minds of their comrades. What is a church ? What is its chief aim ? What is its nature ? A church is an organization of men and of women for the purpose of helping each other to live the divine that is, the noblest conceivable human life. The church is the only institution on the face of the earth that stands for the very highest thing of which we can dream. So grand, so high is it, as I estimate it, that all other human institutions, all other human organizations, all arts, all sci- ences, can only be its servants. Art may cultivate a certain side of man. We may call in the aid of art to decorate and beautify human life; but the church means human life itself. We may call in the aid of science to teach us the facts con- cerning the visible universe, the organization and care of our bodies, to teach us how to act, what to think, how to feel, how to live ; but science in its very highest manifestations can do no grander thing than serve the purposes for which a noble church exists. It is simply to minister to the idea that the church represents. Literature may help to express the life, to enrich the ritual, the service, of the church. It may 148 Religious Reconstruction help as a manifestation of the intellectual and emotional side of human nature ; but the church which is alive itself is for- ever beyond and includes all literature, and would simply use it as an aid to that grander thing for which it stands. And so music. The church may call on it to help it give inartic- ulate utterance to those feelings too subtle, too far beyond present experiences, to be expressed in definite terms ; but music is only a handmaid to human life, that thing which is at the very heart, which is the soul of the church. And so all other departments of human life and human activity are only fragments, parts of human life ; while the church, if it be rightly and nobly organized, is that one thing which helps men to live, using everything else, or subordinating them, to that one thing which is higher than them all. For something grander than art, than literature, than science, than music, than philanthropy, than anything the world ever dreamed of or can ever dream of, is the manhood which creates and uses all these. The true church is the organi zation of the highest manhood and womanhood for the sake of mutual help and growth towards still grander manhood and womanhood. What, now, is the relation in which those things which are ordinarily associated with religion stand to the church as thus conceived ? Has this church a bible ? Yes, all bibles. Every truth that bears on human life is a part of the bible of this church of which I am speaking. Will this church have a creed ? It cannot help it. It must of necessity. If it be clear in its thought, if it have certain definite conceptions of God, of man and destiny, these will constitute a creed, whether it ever be written or not ; but the place for the creed will be over the pulpit, as a statement to be studied, as an ideal to be approached as rapidly as possible, not as a gate at the entrance to be The Old Church and the New 149 locked in the faces of those who otherwise would be glad to enter. Will this church pray ? It cannot help it. For whether men and women utter it or not, breathe it or not, every de- sire, every upward aspiration, is a prayer. Will this church have a ritual ? It may or it may not, as happens. Any formula of service, any order, any ritual, any sacrament or rite of any kind, which any body of men and women find to be so vitally related to their condition that it can help them, may be naturally and freely used. I said, a moment ago, that the belief in the church as a divinely established institution was passing away. I meant that only in accordance with the terms as they have been used. If you will think for a moment that God is the source of all our human life, that it is God in us, in this religious nature of ours, that is lifting us towards himself, if you think for a moment that these natural tendencies of ours towards organization and mutual help is God present and working in and through us, then you will gain a glimpse of that grander thought which was attempted to be expressed, but was only partially expressed, in the past, the thought that the church, this natural, rational, human organization, is based eternally in the divine. And so the church, in this sense, is a divine institution, and, by way of emphasis, the divinest institution of which we can dream. Now, such a church as this has existed in potency, in promise, at least, in all ages. All men and all women in all the past who, according to the best light they had, have been feeling after God if haply they might find him, have been members of this church, no matter whether in Chris- tendom or out of it, no matter of what race or age. All the men and all the women who have consecrated themselves to the attainment of their highest ideals, who have sacri- 150 Religious Reconstruction ficed themselves for the service of their fellow-men, who have given themselves to this lift of the God within them which bears them on towards better things, all these have been members of this church. And this church, I believe, under some form or name, will go on increasing in power as humanity becomes higher and better, and will cease to exist only as it comes to full and perfect expression, dying in the attainment of that which needs no farther effort to attain. As voicing sweetly this universality of the genuine relig- ious life of the world, I want to read the following beautiful hymn by Samuel Longfellow: One holy Church of God appears Through every age and race, Unwasted by the lapse of years, Unchanged by changing place. From oldest time, on farthest shores, Beneath the pine or palm, One Unseen Presence she adores, With silence or with psalm. Her priests are all God's faithful sons, To serve the world raised up ; The pure in heart, her baptized ones ; Love, her communion-cup. The truth is her prophetic gift, The soul her sacred page ; And feet on mercy's errands swift Do make her pilgrimage. O living Church, thine errand speed; Fulfil thy task sublime ; With bread of life earth's hunger feedj Redeem the evil time 1 THE END OF THE WORLD. I SHALL have to engage during this morning hour not in argument to any great extent, not in appeal to your reason, not in attempt to move your emotions ; for the subject will not require it. The principal thing I have to do is rather descriptive and historical. And yet it is necessary that I cover this theme, in order to make the line of thought In which at present I am engaged more nearly complete. The reason why I shall not appeal to your reason or your emo- tions is not because the topics which I shall take up have not occupied a large place in the history of Christian thought, but because however large the place which they have occupied they are ceasing to be treated in a serious manner by the larger part, at least, of the pulpits of those churches that still cling, in the main, to the old ideas. I wish, under this general title of " The End of the World," to group together certain things that have no logical connection, but that belong to this period that the Church, until within the past few years, has looked forward to as certain to come. If the Church believed these things as it did five hundred years ago, I should need to treat each one of them at length, to argue and appeal concerning them; but they are fading out of the conscious thought, fading out of the vital belief of the world, and therefore I can group them all together, giving thus a general picture of what the Church once held, and what, indeed, a good many ministers still hold. 152 Religious Reconstruction The Jews were accustomed to divide all time into two great epochs, the one preceding and the one following the Messianic advent, this advent being to them the turning- point of time. They believed that death was not a part of the original plan of the Creator, that it came into the world as the result of a certain spiritual catastrophe that produced its effect not only upon the body of man, making that mortal which was immortal before, but on the entire face of the created world. They believed that, as the result of the fall of man, not only did man himself cease to possess his birthright of immortality, but that the earth was cursed for his sake, that thorns and briers sprang up where only flowers and fruits had been before, that animals which had been peaceable in their natures were changed into beasts of prey, so that there was discord throughout the whole earth. But they believed that when the Messiah came there was to be a transformation, that the world was to be made over into its former perfect likeness, the thorns and the briers were to disappear, the wolf and the lamb were to lie down together in peace, the lion was to lose his carnivorous nature and be changed even in physical structure, so that he would eat straw like an ox ; and all harmful things were to become innocent, and the earth was to be once more a scene of beauty and of peace. The coming of the Messiah was to be the complete recovery of all that had been lost. When the Christian Church came, inheriting a certain amount of the old thought of the old world, and adding to it much of its own, it still held to the idea not only of the birth of the Messiah, but of his second coming. I suppose that the early disciples of Jesus expected that, if he proved himself to be the true Messiah, then this wondrous transfor- mation was to take place then and there. Jerusalem was to become the centre and glory of the earth. All evil was to The End of the World 153 be done away. All peoples were to become subject to his sceptre of peace. We find expressions of disappointment on the part of the disciples after Jesus had been crucified. You remember the two who are represented as walking to- gether on one quiet evening towards the little town of Emmaus, discussing what had taken place ; and one of them said, " We trusted this had been he who was to have re- deemed Israel," as much as to say, We have been disap- pointed : we trusted ; but he who was to have been the conqueror is himself conquered, and our hopes were vain. They expected, then, this transformation of the world at the time of his advent. But after his crucifixion, after they had come to believe that he was alive again, and had only disappeared temporarily into the heavens, then sprang up the belief in the second advent. He was to come again, and come with power and great glory, accompanied by angels, preceded by trumpeting heralds. And these trumpet sounds were to reach even the "dull, cold ear of death"; for the dead were to listen, and the graves were to tremble and open and release their inhabitants. This, then, was the general belief, that Jesus was to come again, and that, at the second coming, this wonderful transformation was to take place, the transformation in which the Jews had afore- time had faith. This belief was general in the early church. It has left its finger-mark from beginning to end on the New Testament. I marvel how anybody can read it, and not see the traces plainly. I marvel how any one can read the sayings of Jesus himself, and not see his literal faith in this literal coming for the renewal of the world. It was to be a miraculous coining, and to have miraculous results. He was to come suddenly, as a thief in the night, and choose the elect from the four winds of heaven, gathering them to- 154 Religious Reconstruction gether as the wheat is selected from the chaff, so that it may be destroyed, and they gathered into the garner. And we find this belief emphasized by such side touches as this. Some one had evidently asked Paul the question, Since the delay of this reappearance, for we supposed it was coming before anybody died, but since the delay, since one after another of those who expected Christ has died, then what? Are not they to share in the glory of these thousand years* reign of perfect peace ? And Paul answers the question definitely. He says : Do not be troubled in regard to this matter. When Jesus appears in the heavens, those dead who have believed in him will be raised incorruptible ; and we who are alive will be changed in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump, and, being clothed upon with our celestial bodies, will be ready to enter into this perfect kingdom. This reign of Christ was to last a thousand years, and during that time nobody was to die. There were to be no tears, no sorrow, no pain ; and the whole earth was to be clothed with beauty and joy, in keeping with the gladness of the hearts of the redeemed. You see on what a small scale the world was gauged at that time. They believed that it had been in existence something like five or six thousand years, years of toil and struggle and sorrow and sin, corresponding to the six days of labor in the week ; and that was to be followed by a Sabbath of a thousand years, the millennium, a thousand years of peace and rest from all turmoil, from all that had disturbed the joy of human life. This belief was held so vividly by the early Church that, time and time again, there was panic over Christendom ; and everybody was in expecta- tion of the immediate opening of the heavens. And, when the year one thousand struck, there was wide-spread dismay ; for they believed that then, at any rate, the end was to be. The End of the World 155 It was only a few years ago that a great convention was held, in one of our large towns, of ministers who still cherish this belief. Prominent men from all the large cities of the country were present. This belief is held and taught by men like Mr. Moody ; and it is for this reason that he does not believe that we are to work for the general civilization of the world. He thinks that that is a hopeless thing, that what we are to do is to save as many men and women in- dividuals as we can, and get them ready to meet the Lord in the air. And this belief has ample justification; for the New Testament is full of it. And yet we, since we have learned the course of history, look upon it as a passing dream. We believe, indeed, in something quite as fine as the millennium with the forces now at work : that they will issue in a glorified humanity, in which brain and conscience and heart are supreme, when man shall be skilled in thought, efficient in hand and in all executive powers, so he will be able to control and shape the world at his will. So science looks forward to something more than a millennium, more than a thousand years of human conquest, over a globe recreated in the image of the highest thought and the highest beauty and the highest hope for all mankind. Passing now from this thought of the millennium for, as I warned you at the outset, I am to group together many of those things which made up the grand scenic display with which the world was to come to its consummation let me touch for a moment on the thoughts that have been held concerning the fact of death. I have told you what the Jews thought about it. I have only to repeat that in sub- stance to tell you what Christendom has thought. It was generally held that, in spite of the fact that he had a mate- rial body, man was immortal ; that the plan of God was that men and women should live here on this earth for a long 156 Religious Reconstruction period of time, a period perhaps figured by the report as to the ages of some of the old patriarchs, five, six, or seven hundred, or a thousand years. Then some marvellous and sudden change was to come over them, fitting them to be translated into that sphere that we speak of as spiritual. Death was a penalty, an afterthought of God. It came as a judgment upon men on account of their sins. But, as the world became more and more wicked with the process of years, the period of human life was shortened ; and men, lest they should develop into too great depravity, were permitted to live only three or four score years of labor and sorrow, which were soon cut off, and they vanished away. We know to-day that this is an unfounded view as to the origin and meaning of death. The Church was startled into another thought about it when geology discovered in the record of the rocks, where God's own hand had written it, that death has been on this old earth of ours for hundreds of thousands of years. And, that you may know that the change is not very ancient, I may say that I was taught by my professor in the theological seminary that this fact of death having existed before Adam was on account of God's pre-perception of the fact that man would sin. So he ordained death on the part of the lower creation, that it might be in harmony with that which should take place afterwards. By this inter- pretation, death still remained a penalty that was inflicted on even the animal world on account of the sin of Adam ; and the earth was cursed on his account, so that it might be a fitting scene for the display of those qualities of evil and wrong which were to be developed. The next point to which I wish to call your attention is one that has played a large part in the history of theological thought; i.e., the "intermediate state." The question came up naturally, since they believed in the resurrection of the The End of the World 157 body and the general judgment, as to what became of the soul between the time of the death of the body and the final consummation of all things. We are accustomed to-day to think those of us who believe in a future life at all that this life continues right on in spite of the apparent break which we call death. We are accustomed to think of it as no more than a night's sleep. We lie down at night, become unconscious, for what to us, no matter how long the sleep may be, is only a moment; and we wake again. There is no break : the night does not change us. We rise in the morn- ing what we were when we sank into unconscious slumber. So we think about the soul. It passes into its fitting con- dition, determined by the nature and the character of the soul itself. In other words, if a man believes to-day in heaven and in hell, he believes that the souls of the dead go at once, without waiting for anything else to happen, either to the one or to the other place, according to which their destiny points them. But are you aware how very modern all this thought is ? It is only within a few years that the Church has taught any such doctrine. The " intermediate state " played a very im- portant part throughout the larger portion of Christian his- tory. Let me lead to it by asking you to think for a moment of the condition of mind of the ancient world. In Greece, it never occurred to those who believed in the immortality of the soul to suppose that the dead, however virtuous they might be, went to live with the gods. When a man died, he did not go to Olympus. Jupiter and his celestial court, or some especial favorite whom he might have selected from among the great masses of mankind, were the inhabitants of the celestial sphere. He went to Hades, the bad and the good together. What was Hades ? It was a sort of under- ground cavern, a world of comparative twilight. It was 158 Religious Reconstruction going away from the blue sky, from the fair sun, from all the greenness and beauty of the world, going down into the shadow-world. But this shadow-world was not all alike. There was, in the first place, a sort of limbo, where people went who were neither very bad nor very good. Then there was the region of the blest, for those who had been conspic- uous for their goodness and the service they had rendered to mankind. Then there was Tartarus, the place of torment where those who had abused their manhood or their woman- hood, who had been false or traitorous to their fellow-men, who had been conspicuous by the evils they had done, met their doom. The Church inherited precisely this idea ; and, until comparatively modern times, there is no trace in Christian thought of the belief that the good who died went to heaven, as we say now. When Jesus forgave the penitent thief on the cross, and said to him, "This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise," he did not mean that the thief should be in heaven the moment he expired. Jesus himself, according to the popular idea, did not go to heaven. He went to Hades for the three days and nights preceding his resurrection. And so the Church believed almost universally in this underground abode of the dead. It was taught in the Middle Ages as such a realistic thing that some would-be astronomers, who were attempting to account for the move- ment of the earth,. went so far as to suppose that, as volcanic eruptions were caused by the attempt to turn over of a giant imprisoned under the mountain, so the very movements of the earth itself were caused by the struggles of the damned in hell, hell being at the centre of the terrestrial globe. It was believed then that good and bad together went to Hades immediately after death; and Hades was divided into Para- dise and Gehenna. You must remember that in the New The End of the World 159 Testament, in almost every instance where the word " hell " occurs, it is Hades in the Greek, and that it does not neces- sarily mean a place of torment. This penitent thief who was forgiven went to Hades, but to that part of it called "Paradise," where the blessed awaited the day when con- summate, perfect blessedness was to be theirs. There were certain sections of the Church that believed in the sleep of the soul ; and, that you may know that I am not troubling you with things that are too antique, I can remem- ber, in my childhood, with perfect distinctness hearing all these questions discussed, hearing one person express the belief that his friends who had fallen asleep would sleep until the resurrection, unconscious. Others thought that they were to be in a sort of partial blessedness until their final destiny was decided, one holding one view and an- other another. You will find these thoughts permeating nine-tenths of the churches of Christendom to-day. This, then, is another feature of that great group which sets forth to our thought what was to be at the end of the world. Though they believed that this planet was to come to an end at that time, yet the New Testament phrase does not refer so much to the destruction of this earth as it does to the end of a great cycle of time. In the Greek, it is the end of an aeon, the end of an age, the end of this general dis- pensation of affairs and the beginning of a new and grander cycle. Next, of course, after this matter of death and the inter- mediate state, we come to the question of the resurrection of the body. It seems perhaps to you a good deal like antiq- uity for me to spend any time in discussing a point like this. I do it, not in the way of argument so much as in the way of description ; and yet this is not entirely an outworn belief. Even where it is outgrown in the vital consciousness 160 Religions Reconstruction of the people of the time, it still stands on record in the creeds. One phrase of the Apostles' Creed, which is re- peated in so many of the churches of Christendom every Sunday by the whole congregation together, is, "I believe in the resurrection of the body." If you ask the minister of a church if he believes in the resurrection of the body, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, perhaps nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, he will tell you that he does not. He has learned to interpret the phrase, and make it stand simply for the continuance of life. He says that he does believe in the resurrection of the body; but, as a matter of fact, he believes in something else, and something that the phrase when it came into existence in the early history of Christianity never suggested. It was be- lieved thoroughly by the Jews that the Messianic advent was to be preceded not by the resurrection of everybody, but by the resurrection of all the good ; and this belief was carried so far that it was thought that persons living in a certain district of Palestine were to rise first. And as the Chinese, at the present time, no matter where they may die, wish their bones to repose in the holy land from which they came, so the devout Jew wished to have his body car- ried from any point of the earth where he had lived, that it might be buried in this sacred spot and be among those who should have part in the first resurrection. Mr. Spurgeon and men like him preach to-day Mr. Tal- mage does also this belief in the literal resurrection of the bodies that we wear here on earth. Some tell us that the body has shared in the sins of the soul, and therefore ought to share in its punishment. They tell us that the bodies of the saints and martyrs have shared in the sorrows, the struggles, the tears and heart-aches of the soul, and there- fore ought to share in the glory. So they teach that God, The End of the World 161 being omnipotent and omniscient, has both the power and the wisdom to bring this wondrous thing to pass; that he can trace all over the world the slightest dust particles that have entered into the body of the saint, and at the right moment bring them together again. Doubtless many of the martyrs have been burned, their ashes cast into some run- ning stream that took them down to the river, and the river to the sea, so that they have gone around the globe. Doubt- less Almighty Wisdom is able to trace each particle, and Almighty Power is able to collect them from the farthest end of the world. But even the arguing of a question like this before a modern audience seems out of place, and almost absurd; for our conception of what continued existence means is such to-day that these bodies that we have worn have no part in it. But, even though it were necessary to argue the point, it seems to me that one consideration alone would make it plain. It only calls for a simple question in arithmetic. Each one of us, if he has lived threescore years, has worn quite a number of distinct and separate bodies, as distinct and separate as the suits of clothes with which he has warmed and protected that body. One of these bodies may have shared with the soul some one of its sins. So, if the body must share the penalties of this wrong-doing with the soul, if the body has to share the glory of that soul that is redeemed, then all these separate bodies must be brought together and combined in some strange and mon- strous way into one. Then not only that, but we know that the particles which compose the bodies which we are wearing to-day, and with which, perchance, we may die, have entered into and been part of the bodies of other men and women. And who shall have these particles, to enter into the compo- sition of his resurrection-body ? Furthermore, we know that when we compute the number 1 62 Religious Reconstruction of people who have been born, who have lived and who have died here on this planet, it would take several worlds like this, although every particle of matter composing it were used, to furnish material for the manufacture of enough bodies to go around. The slightest consideration of a ques- tion like this disposes of it, except in the case of those who read a text and then abdicate their brains in favor of the meaning of that text, and say that, in spite of reason and fact, it must be true. We believe not in any resurrection, for resurrection means rising again. We believe rather in the rise of a soul at death, not in its going down and coming back again, but in its ascent, in its taking the next step forward and onward towards its final destiny. One point more, and the group of subjects which I wish to comprehend under this one general theme will be com- pleted; and that is the question of the last judgment. This, also, has been a part of both Jewish and of Christian thought. The Christian world has held it, preached it, sung it, from the very first. And it preaches and sings it to-day. At this second coming, the good and the bad are to be raised. If they have been in heaven, they are temporarily to leave the place of the blessed. If they have been -in hell, they are to have this moment's reprieve. A great white throne is to be set in the heavens. Christ, the tender, the blessed, having now put aside his tenderness, except for those who have believed in him, is to be the judge, sitting on that throne. All the people who have ever lived are to be gathered at this last great assize, and they are to stand before this bar. The books are to be opened. The long centuries' work of the recording angel, who is supposed to have made a record of every thought, every feeling, every word, every action of every man, woman, and child who ever