"MEMBERS OF ONE BODY 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS 
 
 Preached at Unity Church, St. Paul, Minnesota 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 GEORGE H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET 
 1892 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 BY S. M. CROTHERS 
 
 I8 9 2 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THERE is a loyalty to one's creed whicn 
 is to be commended. The man who has 
 a reason for his own opinion, and who has 
 the courage always to declare it, is not to 
 be despised; and each church may well seek 
 to cultivate such loyalty on the part of its 
 members. But it has also a larger work 
 than this. It must teach loyalty to the 
 spirit which is behind all forms of thought 
 and worship. That religious culture is im- 
 perfect which does not enable one to inter- 
 pret sympathetically his neighbor's creed 
 and to see its spiritual significance. In 
 the following sermons I attempted to per- 
 form this service for my own congregation; 
 and they are now published with the hope 
 that they may be of some help to others. 
 
 In confining my attention to a few famil- 
 
 333912 
 
4 Introduction 
 
 iar phases of historic Christianity, I have 
 not meant to imply that here we may find 
 the limit to our religious sympathies. Be- 
 yond Christianity is humanity. He who be- 
 gins to ask, "Who is my neighbor?" will 
 not be satisfied with any answer which does 
 not include all the race. But, lest we lose 
 ourselves in barren generalizations, and, at- 
 tempting to include all, fail to come into 
 close sympathy with any, let us remember 
 that "neighbor" means always the "nigh- 
 dweller." We must begin with the form of 
 faith that is nearest us and that touches us. 
 When we come to understand that and see 
 in it something to love, we shall be pre- 
 pared to reach out and touch what is still 
 beyond. 
 
 ST. PAUL, MINN., May i, 1892. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. ROMAN CATHOLICISM 9 
 
 II. CALVINISM 29 
 
 III. METHODISM 51 
 
 IV. RATIONALISM 69 
 
 V. MYSTICISM 91 
 
 VI. THE UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM .... 109 
 
ROMAN CATHOLICISM 
 
I. 
 
 ROMAN CATHOLICISM 
 
 ONE cannot treat the Roman Catholic 
 Church as he would one of the little 
 sects into which Christendom is divided. 
 It is an institution august and historic. 
 One may recognize all its corruptions, and 
 yet still admire. Simply to have lived 
 through so many generations and to have 
 adapted itself to so many changing condi- 
 tions is to have done much. And, unlike 
 many Oriental religions, its life has not 
 been measured by mere duration, but has 
 been full of action. Not "cycles of 
 Cathay," but centuries of Europe and the 
 still more vital years of America, have 
 tested its quality. To attempt to sum up 
 its good and ill, and strike the balance be- 
 tween, would be presumptuous. It is the 
 church of Saint Francis and of the Borgias, 
 of Fdnelon and of Torquemada: it has 
 
IO "Members of One Body" 
 
 produced the " Imitation of Christ " and the 
 horrors of Saint Bartholomew's Eve. All 
 this is but to say that it has had a history. 
 It has touched the heights, and has not 
 been unacquainted with the depths of hu- 
 man nature. To judge it is to sit in judg- 
 ment on humanity. But, not venturing 
 upon this, we may, with profit to ourselves, 
 call to mind some of the good things for 
 which we are indebted to the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 And, first of all, we are indebted to it 
 for the emphasis which it places on the 
 historic element in religion. Engrossed 
 in the present or dreaming of the future, 
 we are apt to forget the past or to treat 
 it with contempt; and, in so doing, we 
 rob the present of its strength and the 
 future of its glory. For, when we would 
 paint the picture of religion, the canvas of 
 the present is too small, and that of the 
 future too unsubstantial, for the large, free 
 outlines. Centuries must pass before we 
 can discern the true proportions of great men 
 or trace the full effects of their thoughts and 
 deeds. As with secular, so with religious 
 
Roman Catholicism n 
 
 heroes : there is no substitute for the test of 
 time. The new sects of Protestantism suf- 
 fer greatly from the lack of historic per- 
 spective. The little great man of to-day is 
 admired out of all proportion to his worth, 
 and a mere eddy of thought is often mis- 
 taken for the main current. Religion is 
 vulgarized by being treated as if it were a 
 new invention, and it is taken for granted 
 that the latest fashion is the best. 
 
 The existence of the Roman Catholic 
 Church is a protest against all this. Chris- 
 tianity, it says, is a thing not of to-day, but 
 for all time. It is not merely for the com- 
 fort of the private soul, but it has some- 
 thing public and continuous. The grace of 
 which Holy Church is minister is perennial. 
 As there is a spirit of Christ which is im- 
 mortal, so there is also an ever-living 
 "Body of Christ." The communion of the 
 saints is no mere dogma. All the devout 
 genius of the Church has been enlisted in 
 the work of making it vivid and soul-en- 
 trancing. We say of some few famous men 
 that their names have become household 
 words; but the phrase is but faintly expres- 
 
12 "Members of One Body" 
 
 sive of the sacred familiarity of those 
 names which are repeated, generation after 
 generation, in the hours of prayer. Who 
 can estimate the power of the associations 
 that cluster around them? Modern reform- 
 ers talk much of the "solidarity of the 
 race"; the ancient Church has in a meas- 
 ure realized it. The individual entering 
 it is no more "a stranger and an exile, but 
 a fellow-citizen with the saints and of the 
 household of God." 
 
 The worship of the saints seems idola- 
 trous to the Protestant, but it readily yields 
 its finer meanings. For what is worship 
 but unbounded admiration, leading one to 
 devote himself absolutely to the service of 
 the loved one? When with stern icono- 
 clasm we have shattered the idols of 
 self-love, and ceased altogether from our 
 Mammon-worship, there will be time for us 
 to turn our zeal against the worship of the 
 saints; or perhaps then we may be pre- 
 pared for the worship of larger ideals of 
 manhood than have yet been received into 
 the calendar of the Church. And so, too, 
 the doctrine of apostolic succession needs 
 
Roman Catholicism 13 
 
 only to be enlarged to be made true. It is 
 a quaintly conventional expression of a uni- 
 versal law. There are channels of grace 
 which may be traced through the ages. 
 Tradition has its place as well as intuition. 
 The piety of to-day is the result of the 
 piety of the past, and the institutions of 
 religion are living links binding together 
 the generations. 
 
 Closely connected with the historic con- 
 tinuity of the Catholic Church is its power 
 of progress. We are indebted to it for its 
 illustration of a great church adapting itself 
 to ever changing conditions. When I speak 
 of Catholicism as a progressive institution, 
 both friends and foes may take exception to 
 my words. The unchangeableness of the 
 Church is a favorite thesis of many of its 
 most zealous defenders. Founded on a 
 rock, it resists, it is said, the surges of 
 time. In its doctrine and ritual it pro- 
 fesses to be always the same; and its bitter 
 adversaries seize upon its words, and accept 
 the superstition of immutability as some- 
 thing well established. Yes, they say, the 
 Roman Church is always the same. It 
 
14 ''Members of One Body" 
 
 hunted Giordano Bruno to the death; and it 
 would do the same with every man of sci- 
 ence to-day, if it had the power. The fagots 
 and thumb-screws are only laid aside for 
 the fit occasion, and the inquisitor lurks 
 behind the placid mask of the parish priest. 
 A Catholic prelate is supposed to be in- 
 capable of disinterested patriotism. Do we 
 not all know what Jesuitism is? The de- 
 crees of the popes are never revoked, they 
 are esteemed infallible. Therefore, the 
 Church to-day must be held strictly re- 
 sponsible for whatever it has at any time 
 proclaimed. And it is further said that 
 we need not go back to the past ages. See 
 what Catholicism to-day is in Spain or in 
 South America, and you will see what it 
 aspires to be in these United States. 
 
 You perceive the logic of this. No one 
 argues that the Presbyterian General As- 
 sembly would favor the burning of heretics 
 because the Calvinists of Geneva once did 
 so. Nor are the great missionary societies 
 accused of seeking to conform American 
 Christianity to the type which alone they 
 are able to propagate in the South Sea 
 Islands. 
 
Roman Catholicism 15 
 
 Catholicism is thus treated because of its 
 own ill-advised boast, but this boast has 
 no justification in fact. The Church sur- 
 vives because it is not immutable. It is a 
 power in the nineteenth century because it 
 is able to adapt itself to the thought and 
 aspiration of the nineteenth century. It 
 succeeds in America only in proportion as 
 it becomes American. It may never have 
 the courage to say, "I have been mistaken," 
 few churches have but it is continually 
 forgetting the things that are behind. An 
 infallible authority is precluded from ac- 
 knowledging a blunder. The only thing 
 left for it is to forget it. That is what 
 makes a progressive Catholic such a bad 
 historian. 
 
 I do not ignore the long warfare of the 
 Church against science or its continual col- 
 lisions with advancing thought. These 
 collisions only prove that the huge corpora- 
 tion has moved more slowly than the alert, 
 unencumbered minds of individuals; but 
 yet it has moved, and, in spite of much that 
 has been reactionary, the movement has 
 been, on the whole, an onward one. The 
 
16 "Members of One Body" 
 
 Catholic Church in its astronomy stands 
 to-day with Galileo rather than with the 
 Inquisition. If the controversy of the six- 
 teenth century were renewed, it would 
 scarcely uphold Tetzel. If it would not 
 favor the contention of Luther, it would at 
 least give heed to the moderate counsels of 
 Erasmus. The Protestant controversialist 
 is unjust when he pictures the Church of 
 Rome as so joined to its idols that reforma- 
 tion must always come from without. No 
 greater reformer ever lived than Gregory 
 VII. Many of the councils have dealt 
 unsparingly with old abuses. The founders 
 of the monastic orders were all daring inno- 
 vators in their day; yet they were not 
 burned, but canonized. The leaders of 
 the Church have been often quick to discern 
 the signs of the times and to face new 
 issues. Leo XIII. writes an encyclical let- 
 ter on the labor question. Fancy Leo X. 
 doing that : he did not know that there was 
 a labor question. But the significance of 
 the position of the Catholic Church lies 
 deeper than this. Its doctrine of revelation 
 contains a progressive element which is 
 
Roman Catholicism 1 7 
 
 absent from Protestant orthodoxy. The 
 Protestant in theory limits divine revela- 
 tion to the Scriptures, and in practice nar- 
 rows it still further to the summary of 
 Biblical truth contained in his creed. The 
 result is an unavoidable rigidity of thought. 
 No room being left for expansion, freedom 
 can only be obtained by a series of violent 
 explosions. The Catholic avoids this diffi- 
 culty; for he accepts the Church rather 
 than the Bible as the chief medium of rev- 
 elation. He thus may appeal to a living 
 authority. The Church is not the custodian 
 of a treasure which cannot be augmented, 
 but it is itself the organ of the religious 
 consciousness. There may be perpetual 
 evolution, with no loss of divine authority. 
 Those who give least credence to the 
 claims of the Catholic Church to infallibil- 
 ity find great suggestiveness in its underly- 
 ing philosophy. The Protestant theory of 
 authority in religion must either be ac- 
 cepted or rejected in its entirety. It can- 
 not be modified or enlarged without destroy- 
 ing its meaning, but the Catholic idea may 
 be expanded indefinitely. As the broad 
 
1 8 "Members of One Body" 
 
 study of sociology takes the place of eccle- 
 siastical history, the conception of human- 
 ity as a living body will grow familiar. Its 
 intuitive faiths, its unvarying moral laws, 
 its growing experience, will be accepted as 
 a part of the divine revelation, and given 
 the same obedience now rendered to the 
 decrees of councils and of popes. When 
 this comes to pass, the Catholic idea will 
 not be destroyed, but fulfilled. 
 
 This brings us to that characteristic of 
 the ancient Church which is its chief glory, 
 and which is embodied in its name, its 
 catholicity. It is interesting to observe 
 how the extremes of Christendom unite in 
 their ideals. On the one side are the 
 Catholics, and on the other the Liberal 
 Christians; and yet the words "liberal" 
 and "catholic" are synonymes. I turn to 
 the dictionary, and find "catholic" defined 
 as "universal, embracing all, wide extend- 
 ing, not narrow-minded, partial, or bigoted; 
 possessing a mind that appreciates all 
 truth; free from prejudice; liberal." 
 
 That this ideal of inclusiveness has been 
 fully realized by the Catholic Church I do 
 
Roman Catholicism 19 
 
 not believe. If it had been, there would 
 be no excuse for our remaining outside. 
 But it has been partly realized, and that in 
 a direction in which Protestant liberalism 
 has, for the most part, failed. In attending 
 a convention of avowed liberalists, who 
 were seeking a basis for religious union, I 
 was struck with the fact that all kinds of 
 ideas were represented, but only one kind 
 of people. All who took part in the proceed- 
 ings were persons who approached religion 
 from the intellectual side. The Catholic 
 Church has sometimes been inhospitable to 
 new ideas, but it has always offered a wide 
 welcome to all sorts of people. Its ideal is 
 in striking contrast to that of Puritanism. 
 To the Puritan the church is a little com- 
 pany of the elect separated from the rest of 
 the world. A standard is set up by which 
 each individual is to be tried. The smaller 
 the sect, the less the variation usually al- 
 lowed from the received type. This tem- 
 per survives the rationalizing process, and 
 is seen even in our so-called liberal 
 churches; and we find some of them still 
 taking pride in the thought that they are 
 
2O "Members of One Body" 
 
 composed exclusively of the "best people" 
 of their respective communities. This 
 " leaven of the Pharisees " appears in all 
 forms of sectarianism. Indeed, the word 
 " Pharisee " (separated) is but another name 
 for the self-absorbed sectarian. The Cath- 
 olic Church is broadly tolerant of human 
 nature. It has a place for its philosophers 
 and moralists; but it understands, also, the 
 needs of those to whom religion, if it comes 
 at all, must come, not through the intel- 
 lect, but through the emotions and the 
 senses. It has a message to the eye and 
 the ear as well as to the reason; it has 
 learned how to overawe the barbarian by its 
 pageantry; it challenges the admiration of 
 the soldier by its matchless discipline; it 
 appeals to the artistic temperament, for 
 Catholicism is, the poetry of Christianity, 
 as Protestantism is its prose; it captivates 
 the imagination of youth, and stimulates 
 the most romantic spiritual ambition; 
 and, when strength and earthly hope are 
 dead, it offers a refuge and a ministry of 
 consolation. It is pre-eminently the relig- 
 ion of the sorrowing, not teaching them to 
 
Roman Catholicism 21 
 
 underrate their sorrow or explain it away, 
 but investing it with divine meaning. Its 
 ritual is a drama unrivalled in its intensity, 
 leading the worshipper by slow, sad steps 
 through all the "stations of the cross," to 
 find at once the symbol of suffering and of 
 salvation. 
 
 It is characteristic of the Catholic 
 Church that its splendor does not drive 
 away the poor. A costly Protestant church 
 suggests a rich man's house; but the mag- 
 nificence of the cathedral suggests the glori- 
 ous vault of the sky, beneath which all are 
 equal. An Italian writer has well said, "It 
 is a place where the homeless and hungry, 
 driven from the rich man's table, may pray 
 amid marbles and gold, as in a kingdom 
 where he is not disdained, amid a pomp and 
 splendor that does not humiliate him, that 
 even honors and comforts his misery." 
 
 In like manner, the Roman hierarchy, 
 rising rank above rank, has done much for 
 the sentiment of equality and fraternity. 
 In ages when the nobly born felt that they 
 belonged almost to another race from the 
 common people, the Church offered an op- 
 
22 "Members of One Body" 
 
 portunity for the poor man to gain distinc- 
 tion. In the never-to-be-forgotten scene at 
 Canossa we may now see only an exhibi- 
 tion of priestly arrogance. But the heart 
 of many a mediaeval peasant must have beat 
 proudly as he heard the tale of how the em- 
 peror, clad as a penitent, shivered for three 
 wintry days before the door of Hildebrand, 
 the son of a village carpenter; and, when 
 Thomas a Becket and Wolsey met on equal 
 terms with the Plantagenets and the Tu- 
 dors, it was not forgotten that these great 
 churchmen were great commoners. 
 
 We Americans boast much over the fact 
 that there are no impassable barriers be- 
 tween the Presidency and the remotest coun- 
 try school-house. But in the darkest of the 
 feudal ages the aspiring peasant lad might 
 cherish still more dazzling ambitions. The 
 secular aristocracy was closed against him; 
 but there was a spiritual aristocracy, and 
 in that he might rise from rank to rank, 
 till at last he might look down on kings 
 and emperors. 
 
 With all its great services, however, the 
 Catholic Church made one mistake from 
 
Roman Catholicism 23 
 
 which it has not yet recovered. At a criti- 
 cal time in its history it proved false to 
 its own principle of Catholicity. In the 
 early years of the sixteenth century it had 
 no more devoted servant than Martin 
 Luther. 
 
 If the pope had been a wise man, he 
 would have called the German reformer to 
 Rome, and said : " Brother Martin, a new day 
 has dawned, and we must make ready for 
 its work. The dust and cobwebs of time 
 have gathered over the altar. The windows 
 of the Church are so begrimed that the 
 light of heaven can scarcely struggle 
 through. The Church must be thoroughly 
 cleansed; and you, with your burly 
 strength, are the man to do it. We have 
 had crusading orders and mendicant and 
 teaching orders. Now let us organize the 
 Order of the Holy Broom, which shall 
 sweep away all these old abuses." 
 
 But Leo X. was not a wise man; and so, 
 being disturbed in his private plans, he 
 drove Brother Martin out of the Church. 
 And Brother Martin, not being allowed to 
 work from within, did the only thing left 
 
24 "Members of One Body" 
 
 for him : he threw down the broom, and tak- 
 ing up the hammer began to batter down 
 the church walls; and so the great Refor- 
 mation culminated in the great schism. 
 
 From that day the Church ceased to be 
 truly Catholic, and became Roman Cath- 
 olic; but, though dismembered, it still 
 lives, and its ideal universality, though so 
 imperfectly realized, is its greatest charm. 
 Its relation to the modern world is like that 
 of the Holy Roman Empire to the Middle 
 Ages. It is at once the survival of a past 
 greatness and the prophecy of a larger 
 greatness in the future. When the world- 
 empire of the Coesars had been overthrown, 
 its idea still haunted the mind. Amid the 
 political chaos there was the vision of a 
 great power strong enough to compel order. 
 In its old form the empire was never to be 
 re-established; but the very name kept 
 alive the thought of universal law. The 
 dream of the world-empire may yet find its 
 fulfilment in a world federation. 
 
 And so the word "Catholic," narrowed 
 though it has been in its application, is a 
 power for good. It rebukes petty sectarian 
 
Roman Catholicism 25 
 
 zeal, and recalls the high ambition to build 
 a universal church. Looking at it in one 
 way, the Roman Catholic Church seems but 
 a shadow of its former self; but, from an- 
 other standpoint, it appears as "a shadow of 
 good things to come." It has nothing to 
 fear from sectarian animosity. Its con- 
 queror must have "its secret in his brain." 
 It will yield at last only to a catholicity 
 larger than its own. It stands like a 
 mountain, and sends forth the mountain's 
 challenge : 
 
 " Let him heed who can or will, 
 Enchantment fixed me here, 
 To stand the hurts of time until 
 In mightier chant I disappear." 
 
 Some day that mightier chant will be 
 heard, as worshippers of every name unite 
 in repeating, with fuller meaning, "We be- 
 lieve in the Holy Catholic Church." 
 
CALVINISM 
 
II. 
 
 CALVINISM 
 
 WHAT has Calvinism done for the 
 world? In order to answer the 
 question, we must first ask, What is Cal- 
 vinism? I might refer to. many ponderous 
 volumes in which theological definitions are 
 given; but, when you had read them all, 
 you might still be as far as ever from the 
 soul which once animated these "bodies of 
 divinity." Would you see Calvinism in 
 the flesh, turn to Bunyan: 
 
 "As I walked through the wilderness of 
 the world, ... I saw a man clothed with 
 rags, standing in a certain place, with his 
 face from his own house, a book in his hand 
 and a great burden upon his back. I 
 looked, and saw him open the book, and read 
 therein; and, as he read, he wept and 
 trembled. And, not being able longer to 
 contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, 
 saying, k What shall I do?'" 
 
3O "Members of One Body" 
 
 The world a wilderness; the man stand- 
 ing with his back to his own house, with a 
 great burden of sin weighing him down, and 
 yet with the infallible word of God in his 
 hands, we must understand what all these 
 things mean if we would understand what 
 Calvinism was when it was a living power. 
 How that "lamentable cry" rings in our 
 ears! It is the cry of a soul conscious of 
 its absolute depravity, brought face to face 
 with the transcendent vision of divine 
 purity. What is Calvinism? Perhaps it 
 would be better to use the past tense; for 
 that Calvinism which has been such a 
 mighty force has of late been so modified 
 as to lose many of its early characteristics. 
 Calvinism was the very sternest form which 
 Christianity has ever assumed, and in its 
 day the most candid. It was the belief that 
 the world is in ruins, that man is by nature 
 utterly depraved and destined to endless 
 torment, and that all this evil was decreed 
 in the councils of eternity. It was the be- 
 lief that against this, our frightful destiny, 
 we struggle in vain : our utmost endeavors 
 are powerless; some few God chooses, not 
 
Calvinism 31 
 
 for anything which they have done or are, 
 but for the mere pleasure of his own will, 
 for what he does, he deigns no other 
 answer than that it is for his own glory: 
 "The rest of mankind God was pleased, ac- 
 cording to the unsearchable counsel of his 
 own will, whereby he extendeth or with- 
 holdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory 
 of his sovereign power over his creatures, to 
 pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and 
 wrath for their sin, to the praise of his 
 glorious justice." 
 
 Can any good come from such a religion 
 as this? Come and see. Calvinism is like 
 that gloomy forest through which Dante 
 wandered, when he the straight way had 
 lost: "Even to think of it renews the fear: 
 death itself could scarcely be more bitter." 
 But we may imitate him: "To disclose the 
 good that there I found, I will tell what 
 else was mine to see." That some good 
 has come from Calvinism every one must 
 admit who is willing to use the New Testa- 
 ment test, "By their fruits ye shall know 
 them." 
 
 Reasoning upon general principles, we 
 
32 "Members of One Body" 
 
 might say that a religious system such as 
 I have described, based upon the doctrine 
 of arbitrary sovereignty, in which God was 
 conceived of as a despot seated on his 
 throne, and man was spoken of as a mere 
 "worm of the dust," would be one which 
 would naturally ally itself with all that was 
 reactionary and despotic in civilization. 
 As a matter of fact, this has not been so. 
 Calvinism has been everywhere the stern 
 nurse of human freedom. It came not from 
 despotic Rome, but had its birth in repub- 
 lican Geneva; and the same men who have 
 declared most unflinchingly the arbitrary 
 character of divine government have been 
 those who have fought most bravely for 
 human liberty. Follow the stream of Cal- 
 vinistic influence through the civilized 
 world, and what do we find? When France 
 was half Calvinist, France was half free. 
 Louis XIV. knew full well that the greatest 
 enemies to the unlimited despotism which 
 he would establish were the French Calvin- 
 ists, the fellow-believers as well as the 
 fellow-countrymen of Calvin. So he with- 
 drew the edict of toleration, and that which 
 
Calvinism 33 
 
 has been France's loss has been the gain of 
 the rest of Europe. Follow the struggle 
 since then in England and America, and 
 you will find in the very forefront of the 
 battle for constitutional liberty men with 
 French names. The descendants of the 
 Huguenots may have forgotten their fathers' 
 creed; but, wherever they have gone, they 
 have carried with them the instinctive love 
 of liberty and the hatred of all oppression. 
 Follow that Calvinistic race which we call 
 Scotch-Irish in their migrations to the New 
 World, carrying with them, as most of them 
 have, the Calvinistic creed, carrying, as all 
 of them have, the Calvinistic inheritance, 
 and you will find them, too, fighting always 
 on the side of civil and religious freedom. 
 For the brief space of time when England's 
 Westminster Hall was freed from the 
 shadow of royalty, one notable event hap- 
 pened. Then the Westminster Confession 
 of Faith was born, and not by an accident, 
 did it come in that moment of civil liberty. 
 We read those words of the old Calvinists 
 in which they declare that the will of man 
 is feeble, that the struggling of man can do 
 
34 "Members of One Body" 
 
 nothing, and that all comes by an arbitrary 
 decree to us, the worms of the dust; and 
 we say, as we read, "That is a fit creed for 
 slaves to accept and to follow." Turn to 
 the actual fact, and who were these men 
 who professed this creed and who spoke 
 thus disparagingly of themselves? Who 
 were these men that fought this battle of 
 Calvinism in Europe and America? Ad- 
 miral Coligny, William the Silent, John 
 Knox who never feared the face of man, 
 sturdy Miles Standish and Oliver Cromwell, 
 these were the Calvinists. What glorious 
 worms of the dust these were ! Would that 
 our thought of the dignity of humanity 
 could bring to the world such men, ready 
 to do all and to dare all! Would that, 
 when we speak of the freedom of the 
 will, we could nerve the will with such 
 divine courage as theirs! These men, 
 who talked a language we scarce can under- 
 stand, who looked at the world through 
 eyes other than ours, may have been worms 
 of the dust; but they made great mis- 
 takes who thought they were the kind 
 of worms that could be trodden on. They 
 
Calvinism 35 
 
 were the men everywhere who made this 
 free civilization of ours, and it is into 
 their blood-bought heritage that we enter. 
 We may disagree with them, we may say 
 they were mistaken; but we dare not de- 
 spise them or despise their thought. 
 
 The creed of Calvinism, as I read it, 
 seems to mean the captivity of the human 
 mind; and yet, as I recall the deeds of 
 these old Calvinists, the bold Hebrew 
 words come to me, "They have taken their 
 captivity captive." The very thoughts 
 which seem to us, not looking at their 
 deeds, to mean despotism meant the arms 
 by which freedom was achieved; and so I 
 come to the conclusion that there must be 
 something more in Calvinism than with a 
 superficial view we have seen, that there 
 must be a deeper meaning, a more abiding 
 spirit, in that which wrought such great 
 things for us all. I cannot believe the old 
 theosophic doctrine that our personalities 
 are not truly our own, but that life goes on 
 through successive reincarnations of the in- 
 dividual; but this much I do see: that ideas 
 are continually reincarnated, that now in 
 
36 "Members of One Body" 
 
 one form and now in another the great es- 
 sential powers of the human mind come 
 into play, their earlier life all but forgot- 
 ten, and, as a new birlh in the realm of 
 humanity, the old spirit reappears. So 
 life forces are continually reincarnated, 
 failing in the old religion, coming again in 
 the new form. And so manly courage and 
 sincerity are born anew in the religious 
 world. What we call Calvinism was the 
 old Roman Stoicism born again into Chris- 
 tianity. It was the bravest, most logical 
 and fearless form in which orthodox Chris- 
 tianity has ever been manifested. That 
 which seems to me the essential thing in 
 Calvinism, and that which is eternal, is the 
 intellectual sincerity which belonged to it 
 in its early days, and which gave it the in- 
 fluence it had over the strongest minds of 
 Christendom. It was this absolute devo- 
 tion to truth, as then it was seen, that gave 
 it power. 
 
 There have been many forms of religion 
 which have sought simply to find the beau- 
 tiful things and pleasant things in life, and, 
 taking them, to make them sacred, and, ac- 
 
Calvinism 37 
 
 cepting what was but half-truth, to make out 
 of that a beautiful faith. It is the faith of 
 tender sentiment. It is the faith of those 
 who are shielded from the world. It is 
 never the faith of strong men, never the 
 faith of warriors, never the faith of states- 
 men, who have to meet face to face the evil 
 as well as the good. This world of ours is 
 not altogether a pleasant place. Much as 
 we may believe that the heart of the world is 
 love, yet there are claws and teeth to nat- 
 ure. There is blood and strife and sorrow 
 here, and serious men know it; and, when 
 religion is serious, it faces the fact. Re- 
 ligion is not always serious, and not always 
 in the serious mood do men go to the place 
 of worship. And so we have beautiful rit- 
 ualisms and beautiful half rationalisms, and 
 so we have prophets who say smooth things, 
 and do not dare to face the ultimate conse- 
 quences of their own creeds; and so under 
 pomp of ceremony the harder facts of life 
 are simply put aside, and in the courts of 
 religion men come to say, All is well, even 
 though they know that the enemy is at the 
 gate. Even Luther himself, with all his 
 
38 "Members of One Body" 
 
 moral fearlessness, had not that intellectual 
 courage which the times demanded. Some 
 of his compromises were at the expense of 
 consistency. Calvin, the young lawyer of 
 France, brought his clear mind to bear on 
 the problems of theology; and this is what 
 he said in effect to the men of the sixteenth 
 century : 
 
 " Friends, let us be absolutely candid, let 
 us take our religion seriously. We have 
 broken away from the authority of church 
 tradition, and appealed to the Word of God. 
 Let us not be like children, choosing only 
 what pleases us; but let us face the whole 
 truth. On some things we agree. We be- 
 lieve, or say that we believe, that every 
 word of these Scriptures is infallible, and 
 that here we have the sole authority in re- 
 ligion. Let us then take it as it is, and 
 follow implicitly where it leads. This 
 Bible of ours has many beautiful things in 
 it. It speaks of the divine love, but just 
 as surely does it speak of the divine hate. 
 It says that God has hated some of his 
 creatures with such quenchless hatred that 
 he will follow them with burning torments 
 
Calvinism 39 
 
 for all eternity. Their lives will be pro- 
 longed infinitely, in order that his infinite 
 wrath may be manifested. 
 
 "We know, or think we know, the power 
 and freedom of our own wills; but back of 
 the human will is law, and back of law is 
 the higher will, the Eternal. You say that 
 God wills some to be saved and dwell in 
 light, and there are others who are not 
 saved. We all believe that. But God 
 does not will the destruction of any, you 
 say. Ah! seriously, now, is not that in- 
 volved in our doctrine? If there is that 
 eternal hell and there are those that shall 
 go thither, can you evade the thought that 
 God sent them there? God made them to 
 suffer. God created them for that. Hor- 
 rible thought, you say. Yes, to me, also; 
 for I am a man. To me, also, it is cause 
 for trembling, because I know not who are 
 those decreed. But it is written so. God 
 says so; and, if we are to obey, if we are to 
 believe, let us have no half-measures. Let 
 us face the ultimate reality, let us see the 
 worst. Man sins, man always has sinned: 
 do you say he can do differently? I tell 
 
40 "Members of One Body " 
 
 you that his life is just as much bound up 
 in the universal life as the movements of 
 the atoms and their attractions. Struggle 
 as he will, he cannot help it. And yet he 
 suffers, yet he is accounted guilty, yet he is 
 to be condemned eternally for that which he 
 cannot help. Unjust, you say? Yes. So 
 I feel, for I am a man; and yet this Word 
 says so. God says so. God made the 
 world, made us. Why did he do it? I do 
 not know. I only declare the fact. I only 
 speak to you as the man of science speaks 
 in bringing together the result of his study. 
 He says this is so. You ask him why: he 
 says, 'I do not know, no man knows why.' 
 And yet we know God is just, and base our 
 life on that. It is better to believe that 
 than to doubt it. So I believe that beneath 
 this great injustice, this apparent unreason- 
 ableness, there is the reason and justice 
 that is infinite." Such was the word of 
 Calvinism. Do you wonder that men who 
 believed that conquered half Europe? Do 
 you wonder that men who believed that 
 were not afraid of what King Philip and his 
 inquisition could do? They had already 
 
Calvinism 41 
 
 faced the very darkest side of things, and 
 yet they believed; and, though reason pro- 
 tested, though the heart bled, yet they 
 trusted God. Do you think it was an easy 
 thing for Jonathan Edwards to preach that 
 terrible sermon on "Sinners in the Hands 
 of an Angry God " ? You say, when you 
 read it, "What a hard-hearted man he was!" 
 I say rather what a brave man he was, who, 
 believing that, dared say it, and say it 
 simply because to him it was true. 
 
 Such was Calvinism when it was not a 
 creed to be coolly revised, but was received 
 as a statement of the ultimate realities of 
 existence. It was not a bugbear to fright 
 the ignorant, but a pitiless deduction from 
 universally accepted premises. The Cal- 
 vinist differed from other Christians of the 
 day only in that his logic was more inex- 
 orable. He saw and stated all that is 
 involved in the evangelical scheme of salva- 
 tion. As long as the fundamental assump- 
 tions of this scheme were unquestioned, 
 Calvinism ruled over the best minds of the 
 world. 
 
 Weak men and women would say, "Oh, 
 
42 "Members of One Body" 
 
 but it is not pleasant, it is not beautiful, it 
 is not popular." "We go with religion,'* 
 Bunyan's man of the world would say, 
 "when she walks in the sunshine in her sil- 
 ver slippers." "Nay," said Christian and 
 Hopeful, "we go with religion in all 
 weathers, and wait not for wind and tide." 
 These were the men who walked through 
 the Valley of Humiliation, and who found a 
 key th?t unlocked at last for them even the 
 dungeon of Giant Despair, who saw the 
 worst that human thought could give, who 
 faced that which made weaker men despair, 
 and yet found hope and courage even to the 
 end. 
 
 And this seriousness of Calvinism which 
 made it a power is seen in the kind of 
 questions which Calvinism asked. The 
 most characteristic work of Calvinism, and 
 that which remains longest, is the Shorter 
 Catechism of the Westminster divines. 
 Many of the answers to that catechism are 
 strangely obsolete now. They no longer 
 commend themselves to the kind of minds 
 that made that catechism, but commend 
 themselves rather to those who are blind to 
 
Calvinism 4 3 
 
 the facts of the present day. But the ques- 
 tions remain, and the questions have been 
 the power which have made Calvinism po- 
 tent among thinking men. It is not easy 
 to ask great questions; and much of church 
 religion has often consisted in evading 
 great questions rather than in asking them. 
 Not so with Calvinism. The questions of 
 the Westminster Catechism are the ques- 
 tions of the Sphinx. They voice the eter- 
 nal questionings of the soul of man : they 
 challenge the intellect of the ages. It is 
 because the questions were so great that the 
 answers no longer satisfy. "What is the 
 chief end of man? What is God? What 
 are the decrees of God? How doth God ex- 
 ecute his decrees? What is effectual call- 
 
 ing?" 
 
 Think what it meant for generations of 
 men to be confronted with such questions. 
 Other forms of religion may be uninflu- 
 enced by scientific discoveries, because they 
 do not occupy a field wherein they can come 
 in conflict with serious thought. But Cal- 
 vinism in its solemn truth-telling cannot 
 evade the issue which new truth brings. 
 
44 "Members of One Body" 
 
 The man who asks, "What is the chief end 
 of man ? " has asked the fundamental ques- 
 tion of ethics. He cannot but be influ- 
 enced by every step in ethical development. 
 He who to-day asks, " How doth God exe-,' 
 cute his decrees?" cannot be indifferent to 
 what natural science has to say on the sub- 
 ject. The great influence of Calvinism has 
 been to set men thinking. It has given 
 them the courage of their convictions. It 
 has exalted logic, and accustomed men to 
 use it in religion. We need not then be 
 surprised that, where Calvinism has been 
 most intense, the old Calvinistic creed has 
 at length broken down. It is the spirit 
 bursting the bonds of its forms. 'So Cal- 
 vin's Geneva has long been the seat of lib- 
 eralism, and the new theology gained its 
 first triumphs in Puritan Boston. Nothing 
 could be wider apart than the answers of 
 Emerson from those of the Westminster 
 divines ; but the questionings are the same. 
 Like a true child of the Calvinists, he is 
 still pondering 
 
 " The fate of the man-child, 
 The meaning of man." 
 
Calvinism 45 
 
 And, when the old answers do not satisfy, 
 he does not turn away, but waits in reverent 
 silence. 
 
 " Alway it asketh, asketh ; 
 And each answer is a lie. 
 
 Ask on, thou clothed eternity; 
 Time is the false reply." 
 
 As in Bunyan we have Calvinism in the 
 flesh, so in these lines we have Calvinism as 
 a disembodied spirit. The solid mass of 
 dogma has dissolved; but, in its place, we 
 recognize a certain spiritual attitude and 
 expectation. The soul of the old faith 
 remains. It has learned the meekness of 
 wisdom through its past disappointments, 
 but it has lost nothing of its serious pur- 
 pose. Baffled for the time in its attempts 
 to solve the mystery of its own destiny, 
 it loses nothing of heart or hope, but still 
 believes that eternity contains the answers 
 to the eternal questionings of the heart. 
 
 We may trace the influence of the austere 
 discipline of Calvinism upon all the great 
 religious leaders of our time. Its good is 
 "a good diffused." Here, rather than in 
 
46 "Members of One Body " 
 
 the professedly Calvinistic churches, we 
 may follow the line of spiritual succession; 
 for it would seem that the brave old spirit 
 has in our day almost forsaken its old tene- 
 ments. The recent attempts made to revise 
 the Westminster Confession are significant, 
 for they betray the full extent of the eccle- 
 siastical degeneracy. To soften here and 
 there a phrase, to conceal the full force of 
 an argument, to leave vague some harsh de- 
 duction from an admitted premise, to evade 
 a difficulty rather than to squarely meet it, 
 to seek plausibility rather than reality, 
 these are congenial tasks for Mr. By-ends 
 of Fair Speech and his good friends, Mr. 
 Smooth-man, Mr. Facing-both-ways, and 
 Mr. Anything. For compromise with prin- 
 ciple comes naturally to Mr. By-ends, as 
 he tells us, "My great-grandfather was a 
 waterman, looking one way and rowing an- 
 other; and I got most of my estate by the 
 same occupation." But this fits not the 
 temper of the man with the burden on his 
 back and the book in his hand. By sad ex- 
 perience, he has learned to distrust easy 
 solutions of great problems, and hastens on 
 
Calvinism 47 
 
 through the difficult to the true. "Then 
 Christian and Hopeful outwent them again, 
 and went on till they came to a delicate 
 plain called Ease, where they went through 
 with much content ; but that plain was but 
 narrow, so they were quickly got over it." 
 
 He who has caught the spirit of the old 
 Calvinism will not linger long on the "del- 
 icate plain," where churchmen are engaged 
 in smoothing down a creed which at heart 
 they have ceased to believe. The only 
 question for him is, Is it true? If it is, let 
 it be preached in its integrity, nor let its 
 sternest outlines be concealed. Let the 
 whole counsel of God be proclaimed with- 
 out equivocation. But, if it is not found 
 true, when subjected to the severest tests, 
 let us hasten onward, no matter what val- 
 leys of humiliation or hills of difficulty or 
 doubting castles may await us. 
 
 And all of us must catch this spirit if we 
 would enter into the heritage which the 
 men of old have left us. We may not 
 share their doctrines; but, if we would do 
 our part, we must share their sincerity and 
 earnestness. The old problems come to us 
 
48 "Members of One Body " 
 
 in different forms, and our answers must be 
 in different phraseology. But of one thing 
 we may be certain, and that is that only 
 when we face our problems with a courage 
 as indomitable as that of the early Calvin- 
 ists will any worthy answer be possible. 
 
 The world has yet work for men who, 
 facing the worst, yet believe in the best, 
 and who, looking up to the Eternal, can say, 
 " Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." 
 The world needs men who believe in their 
 own "effectual calling " to do God's work, 
 and who are willing to do it in obedience to 
 those great laws which are not of their own 
 making. The religion of the future will be 
 more humane, more tender, more rational, 
 than the old Calvinism; but it must not be 
 less earnest and devoted. 
 
METHODISM 
 
III. 
 
 METHODISM 
 
 THE inhabitants of the valleys of South- 
 ern California, when asked to tell us 
 the reason for their climatic blessedness, 
 give equal credit to the mountains and the 
 sea. The great ranges that lie behind, 
 they tell us, cut off the chilly breezes of 
 the north, and the warm ocean currents 
 temper the winter air. 
 
 We have already considered one of the 
 causes which have modified the religious 
 climate of our age. It is that rugged 
 mountain range that lies behind us, which 
 we call Calvinism. Let us now consider 
 what we owe to that warm ocean current 
 which is known as Methodism. 
 
 To understand Methodism, we must go 
 back to its beginning. Let us go into the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, and enter 
 the parish church of Epworth. The curate 
 
52 "Members of One Body" 
 
 is preaching on a very popular theme of 
 that day, "The Evils of Enthusiasm." As 
 the congregation goes out of the church, it 
 is whispered that the son of the former 
 minister, who, being suspected of the sin 
 of enthusiasm, is forbidden the use of his 
 father's pulpit, is to preach that evening in 
 the churchyard. 
 
 What follows let John Wesley himself 
 tell: "That evening at six o'clock I came 
 and found such a congregation as I believe 
 Epworth never saw before. I stood near 
 the east end of the church upon my father's 
 tombstone, and I cried aloud, 4 The king- 
 dom of God is not meat and drink, but 
 righteousness and peace and joy in the 
 Holy Ghost.' ... As I preached, on every 
 side as with one accord they lifted up their 
 voices and cried aloud. Several dropped 
 down as dead; but many soon lifted up 
 their heads with joy and broke into thanks- 
 giving, assured that now they had the de- 
 sire of their souls, even the forgiveness of 
 sins." A strange phenomenon that to the 
 good curate, and clearly against the peace 
 and dignity of the Church of England; for, 
 
Methodism 5 3 
 
 if the kingdom of heaven is not meat and 
 drink, or at least is not intended princi- 
 pally as a means of providing meat and 
 drink for the reverend clergy and their fam- 
 ilies, then there must be something wrong 
 with the Church of England, then the king- 
 dom of heaven must be something different 
 from the Church, an idea not to be allowed. 
 It was the age when Jonathan Swift was the 
 dean of St. Patrick's and when the Rev. 
 Laurence Sterne divided his time between 
 writing sermons and his " Sentimental Jour- 
 ney," and when Fielding found in too many 
 a country parish models for his earthly- 
 minded parson, Trulliber. It was, in 
 short, in the very middle of the great en- 
 lightened eighteenth century, a time when 
 it was understood that religion henceforth 
 was to be tolerated; but it was not to be 
 treated any longer as an elemental force, 
 but as an elegant though a somewhat tire- 
 some conventionality. 
 
 On one point all sensible men were 
 agreed, that there should be no enthusiasm 
 in religion. One great commandment over- 
 shadowed all else: "Let all things be done 
 
54 "Members of One Body" 
 
 decently and in order." Next to this was 
 another great commandment : " The Powers 
 that be are ordained of God." The Church 
 was the patient Griselda married to the 
 State, and she must have no will of her 
 own. The brave old text about the gospel 
 being "the power of God" was not often 
 quoted, nor was it much believed. 
 
 One of the popular sermons of the day, 
 published by a certain London doctor of 
 divinity, has this title: "The Nature, Folly, 
 Sin, and Danger of being Righteous Over- 
 much." The intellect of the Church was 
 then engaged largely in discussing the 
 "evidences of Christianity," but it is char- 
 acteristic of the time that these evidences 
 were all in the past. It never seemed to 
 enter the heads of these wise churchmen 
 that religion might possibly be self-evi- 
 dencing. The evidences were all docu- 
 mentary. Long ago miracles happened, it 
 was believed; and God spake to men, and 
 then ceased to speak. Now faith consists 
 in accepting the testimony of the Fathers as 
 it has been preserved for us in the Church. 
 Fielding tells us of the religion of Chaplain 
 
Methodism 55 
 
 Thwackum, and of his arguments with the 
 heretic, Square, and he says the clergyman 
 "decided everything by authority; but he 
 always used the Scriptures as the lawyer 
 doth his Coke upon Littleton, where the 
 comment is of equal authority with the text." 
 It was into this age that John Wes- 
 ley came, and with him the phenomenon of 
 Methodism. Beginning in a little band in 
 Oxford, it spread soon over the United 
 Kingdom and the world. Men were aston- 
 ished to find that in religion the age of mir- 
 acles had not passed, that still in lowliest 
 men and women there was something, call 
 it faith, call it what you will, which re- 
 sponded to the man speaking with that 
 greatest of all authority, the authority of 
 an inward conviction of the truth of his own 
 message. The one thing which was greatly 
 characteristic of Methodism, and which dif- 
 ferentiated it from the religion of the time, 
 was not its doctrine. Wesley had no new 
 doctrine to preach. Such doctrine as he 
 did preach was in many respects less ad- 
 vanced than the best thought of his time. 
 He believed in witches, and was sur- 
 
56 "Members of One Body" 
 
 rounded all the time by a supernatural at- 
 mosphere. His teachings were often nar- 
 row, and not adapted to the very finest 
 minds; but his power lay in this, that he 
 had grasped, and as no other man in Eng- 
 land had grasped, the idea that religion is 
 not a doctrine at all, not something to be 
 held apart from the man, but it is the 
 power of a personality consciously touched 
 by the Eternal. He preached the necessity 
 of a personal experience of religion. Ac- 
 cording to the scheme of Calvinism, the 
 destiny of the soul was determined in the 
 councils of eternity before the foundation 
 of the world; and the individual must wait 
 till the far judgment day before he can 
 surely know what his destiny is. To Wes- 
 ley the past and future eternities were 
 crowded into one decisive moment. In that 
 moment the man might choose God and 
 enjoy him. He need not wait for death 
 in order to enter heaven, nor for the judg- 
 ment day to be sure of his salvation. The 
 whole gospel is translated into the present 
 tense. All the divine promises may be 
 verified by an act of consciousness. 
 
Methodism $7 
 
 For its emphasis upon feeling Metho- 
 dism has been criticised, and to a certain 
 extent justly. Its introspection has some- 
 times been morbid, and its desire for per- 
 sonal salvation has sometimes been selfish. 
 
 But at heart Wesley was right. When 
 he came back from his ill-starred voyage to 
 America, whither he went to convert the 
 Indians, he said that the one result of it all 
 was to convince him that, whereas he had 
 gone forth to convert the Indians, he had 
 not been converted himself. Wesley was 
 right in thinking that no man can help 
 others any further than he has himself been 
 helped. No man can give to others any 
 higher religion than he has himself experi- 
 enced. He may talk about it, preach about 
 it, define it, but never can he help another 
 soul to any higher level than that on which 
 he himself stands; and, in seeing this, 
 Wesley differed from all the self-compla- 
 cent parsons of England, who imagined that 
 by preaching the articles of their Church 
 and living as they pleased they were doing 
 God's work, and were his ministers. 
 
 But, though it began in introspection, 
 
58 "Members of One Body" 
 
 Methodism has been eminently social in its 
 development. Wesley grasped the thought 
 that righteousness, peace, and joy in the 
 Holy Ghost might spread through a whole 
 nation as by contagion. The first thing 
 was to find some faithful souls who, 
 though they might not be able to define re- 
 ligion, had experienced it. These men he 
 commissioned; and they went up and down 
 through England, to the coal mines and the 
 furnaces, to all places where men were 
 herded together, and told what God had 
 done for them. And rude hearts were 
 touched, and vast multitudes responded to 
 the word of faith. This miracle happened 
 in England a century ago, and the influence 
 of that great revival has spread through all 
 the world. There is not a corner of the 
 civilized world that has not been touched 
 by this new manifestation of Christianity. 
 
 What do we owe to Methodism? That is 
 a hard question to answer. Much easier 
 would it be to answer the other question, 
 What do we not owe to Methodism? Meth- 
 odism in the churches which Wesley 
 founded, or rather which grew unintention- 
 
Methodism 59 
 
 ally out of those simple societies which he 
 established, is the most powerful ecclesias- 
 tical organization to-day in Protestantism, 
 the one most full of vitality. But these 
 Methodist societies are simply as the wire 
 along which the electric energy travels; but 
 the energy which charged that wire is too 
 great for it to carry, and so it has found 
 other conductors, and it has touched all 
 churches, all organizations of the religious 
 world. Even our Unitarian churches have 
 been astonished and transformed when it 
 has touched them with a new idea of what 
 liberal Christianity may be. New England 
 Unitarianism is simply a developed Calvin- 
 ism, coming from a people characterized by 
 the Calvinistic temper, seeking first for an 
 opinion, a clear statement, rather than an 
 experience. When we wish to broaden out, 
 we broaden out according to the Calvinistic 
 method, by trying to revise our statements. 
 We follow in our development of liberalism 
 intellectual lines. The text we love most 
 is, "The truth shall make you free." A 
 great text that; for the truth does make us 
 free, if we follow it far enough. But it is 
 
6o "Members of One Body" 
 
 a long way sometimes. A minister came 
 to the family of Jonathan Edwards. When 
 he went away, he said, "I suspect that Mrs. 
 Edwards has found a shorter way to heaven 
 than her husband." So I suspect that 
 Methodism finds a shorter way to true lib- 
 eralism than the intellectual way which the 
 Calvinist, by inheritance or by creed, must 
 of necessity follow. "The truth shall 
 make you free," is a great text; but here is 
 an equally great one: "Where the spirit of 
 the Lord is, there is liberty." There is 
 liberty without defining it. There is lib- 
 erty as a fact and as an experience. We 
 Unitarians hardly knew what the possibili- 
 ties of genial, warm-loving fellowship were 
 until the Methodist Robert Collyer came 
 among us. 
 
 The liberal ministers of Boston preached 
 long and well against intolerance, showing 
 how unscriptural and how unreasonable it 
 was. And at length the old dogmatism 
 burst its shell; but it was, like the opening 
 of the chestnut burr, accelerated by frost. 
 But the ejaculatory prayer of Father Tay- 
 lor, "Lord, save us from bigotry and bad 
 
Methodism 61 
 
 rum: thou knowest which is worse," was 
 more effective than all their arguments. 
 That was characteristic of Methodism. 
 The word of Wesley was, "Preach not 
 against opinions, but against sins." When 
 a Methodist comes to see that bigotry is a 
 sin, he fights against it in the same fervent, 
 whole-souled way in which he fights against 
 bad rum. 
 
 The influence of Methodism was powerful 
 in making the great political and social 
 revolution that was inevitable in England a 
 peaceful one. A writer in the early part of 
 this century laments the fact that Method- 
 ism taught the working classes the secret 
 of organized effort. Its class meetings 
 were training-schools for the trades-unions. 
 In this social education we now see a great 
 work for good. 
 
 The eighteenth century felt beneath all 
 its conventionality the incoming of a great 
 wave. In France, where religion had lost 
 its force, the wave came on, and broke in 
 terror on the land. 
 
 Go to England at that same time, and 
 you see many of the same conditions. The 
 
62 "Members of One Body" 
 
 working class has become conscious of it- 
 self. Great multitudes, thirty thousand 
 sometimes in one place, come together to 
 listen to the popular orators. But who are 
 the orators of the mob, and what are they 
 saying? They are men of faith; and they 
 are preaching not the rights of man, but the 
 duties of men. In the presence of these 
 great duties all social distinctions fade 
 away; and the sentiment of equality and 
 fraternity springs up of necessity. There 
 must be liberty, too; but these preachers 
 say it must come through the means of a 
 strict discipline, for it is freedom from sin 
 that is desired. It was strange doctrine 
 to preach to a mob, but it was believed. 
 "Be ye perfect as God is perfect." And it 
 was true doctrine; for only through perfect 
 manhood can perfect freedom come. The 
 age of the rights of man must come. 
 There must be Chartism and reform bills 
 and the long struggle for social privilege; 
 but was it not a great thing that so many 
 people grew into a consciousness of their 
 own rights through their new consciousness 
 of God? It is a great debt that we owe to 
 
Methodism 63 
 
 Methodism for its work in preparing the 
 way for the new government by the people. 
 There is not time to follow the ramifica- 
 tions of its influence. It has been influ- 
 ential in the abolition of slavery, in the 
 work of prison reform and of universal edu- 
 cation. It has been a power coming from 
 the masses of the people, and making not 
 only for larger rights, but for larger means 
 of grace. It has developed the true fellow- 
 ship, which is the actual grasping of the 
 brother's hand, and not the mere talking 
 about it. 
 
 As to Methodism as an organic fact, what 
 shall I say? Only this, that it is some- 
 thing which is so good that one cannot help 
 wondering why it is not better. It is a 
 great treasure which is in earthen vessels, 
 but the trouble is that people are apt to 
 value the vessels more than the treasure. 
 Wesley had all the defects of his qualities 
 and the limitations which belong to a pop- 
 ular leader. The Methodist discipline con- 
 tains much that is petty and irritating, and 
 which almost makes us forget how glorious 
 is the spirit behind it. With all his 
 
64 "Members of One Body " 
 
 abounding humanity, Wesley did not reach 
 all sorts and conditions of men. When he 
 went to Scotland, he found the people not 
 so easily influenced as the more ignorant 
 congregations in England. There is some- 
 thing pathetic in his lamentations in his 
 old age over what seemed to him the spirit- 
 ual decline of his societies. As people 
 grew well-to-do, they were less easily 
 moved than when they first listened to him 
 on the moors. After preaching to a certain 
 congregation, he says: "Many of them were 
 gay, genteel people. I was out of their 
 depth. Oh, how hard it is to be shallow 
 enough fora polite audience!" One feels 
 a certain truth in this; for he appealed to 
 the elemental forces, which lie deeper than 
 anything which the polite audience had 
 felt. Yet it reminds us of the naive con- 
 fession of the Hebrew chronicler: "And 
 the Lord was with Judah, and he drave out 
 the inhabitants of the hill country; and he 
 could not drive out the inhabitants of the 
 valleys, because they had chariots of iron." 
 The "gay, genteel people," shallow as 
 may be their habitual thoughts, have souls 
 
MetJiodism 65 
 
 also, as preachers like Savonarola have 
 found; and men of intellectual strength and 
 poise need the ministry of religion, also. 
 If Wesley did not reach them, it is to be 
 attributed, not to the depth of his religious 
 experience, but to the narrowness of his 
 religious philosophy. And so my praise of 
 Methodism must have some serious abate- 
 ments. Says Thomas Carlyle, "Is not se- 
 rene or complete religion the highest aspect 
 of human nature, as serene cant or complete 
 no-religion is the lowest and the miser- 
 ablest, between which two all manner of 
 earnest Methodisms, introspections, agon- 
 izing inquiries, never so morbid, play their 
 respective parts, not without approbation?" 
 
 But, while we give approbation to actual 
 Methodism, it is with something more than 
 approbation, with hearty faith and rever- 
 ence, that we speak of that ideal Methodism 
 that it foreshadows. 
 
 The new Methodism will cast aside what 
 was morbid in its old inquiries and what 
 was unreal in its experiences, but it will 
 not give up its idea of religion as an expe- 
 rience. It will cry aloud, "Ye must be 
 
66 "Members of One Body " 
 
 born again, and again, and again! " It will 
 still emphasize those great moments when 
 the light flashes in through "the east win- 
 dows of divine surprise." The experiences 
 of religion will be repeated till they be- 
 come as manifold as life itself. 
 
 And the new Methodism will so interpret 
 Wesley's doctrine of perfect sanctification 
 that it will come to mean nothing less than 
 the fulfilment of manhood. For Wesley's 
 emphasis was right. Before his time re- 
 ligious teachers had talked most about jus- 
 tification, which was the removal of the 
 penalties of sin. Wesley said that the main 
 thing was the removal of the sin itself. 
 The new Methodism will see that the per- 
 fect life is not to be found through the 
 magic of a single experience, but it will all 
 the more fervently preach that the one ob- 
 ject of all effort should be to obtain it. 
 And it will find no more inspiring words to 
 guide it than those of Wesley: "Finally, I 
 preach that, being justified by faith, we 
 taste of that heaven towards which we are 
 going; and we tread down sin and fear, and 
 sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." 
 
RATIONALISM 
 
IV. 
 
 RATIONALISM 
 
 THE types of Christianity which we have 
 thus far considered have been mani- 
 fested in certain historical organizations. 
 But there are two principles which are 
 found in all churches, rationalism and mys- 
 ticism. 
 
 By rationalism is here meant the princi- 
 ple of common sense, or, if you will, the 
 scientific method applied to religion. The 
 rationalist does not recognize the authority 
 of any book or church. He appeals to ob- 
 servation and experiment. He pleads for 
 perfect freedom of thought, and denies the 
 sinfulness of doubt. 
 
 To ask what rationalism, the trust in 
 human understanding, the method of exper- 
 iment and observation, has done for civil- 
 ization, would be asking altogether too great 
 a question to be answerd here. When Mr. 
 
70 "Members of One Body " 
 
 Lecky sought to write the history of ration- 
 alism in Europe, he found that in reality 
 he was writing the history of modern civil- 
 ization; for every step in the progress of 
 civilization has been a step made possible 
 by the method of science. One by one old 
 superstitions have faded away in this grow- 
 ing light. One by one the obstacles in the 
 path of freedom have been brushed aside. 
 To tell what rationalism has done for man 
 would be to tell how the dark nightmare of 
 persecution has passed away, how all the 
 horrid dreams of witchcraft have ceased, 
 and how out of the dark ages of mankind 
 has come the new age in which we live. 
 All free government is the result of the 
 determination of men to use bravely those 
 faculties with which they have been en- 
 dowed, to follow absolutely the necessary 
 laws of thought which they have discovered. 
 And so the old ecclesiastical authority 
 wanes, and the new authority of reason 
 takes its place. But what has rationalism 
 done for Christianity itself? Here we ask 
 a question where there may be a difference 
 in opinion. There are those who look 
 
Rationalism 71 
 
 upon this growth of the reasoning power in 
 religion as the death of Christianity, or, 
 at least, the prophecy of its swift decay. 
 Was not Christianity born in ignorance? 
 Was it not cradled in miracle? Has not 
 its whole course been through superstitions 
 which have faded away in a larger light? 
 And, when this power which has destroyed 
 so much has done its perfect work, shall 
 not Christianity itself become only a 
 memory ? 
 
 In order to answer the question what 
 rationalism has done for Christianity, one 
 must inquire further as to what this scien- 
 tific method of which we speak is capable 
 of doing, and what are its natural limita- 
 tions. When any new power comes into 
 play, it is apt to be looked upon with a 
 superstitious fear and a superstitious hope. 
 So it is with liberty, constitutional and re- 
 ligious. So it is with this power which 
 we call Science. We print it with capital 
 letters, and then we bow down and worship 
 it. And there are those who imagine that 
 the time is coming when the old religions 
 of the world will altogether cease; and I 
 
72 "Members of One Body" 
 
 hear it sometimes said that, if we are but 
 patient, we shall see the creation of a new 
 religion, which will be the religion of 
 science. 
 
 It is imagined that all that men have 
 experienced in the past may be looked upon 
 as a delusion, and the historic growths 
 of religion be brushed aside; and then that 
 through an act of pure reasoning, through 
 the exercise of scientific intelligence, we 
 may make for ourselves a new religion, 
 which shall be adequate to all our wants. 
 There are some who look forward with great 
 joy and hope to this new creation; and 
 there are others, followers of the old gods, 
 who look with terror upon the possibility. 
 It seems to me that both the hope and the 
 terror are alike unreasonable, almost ab- 
 surd. Science never created anything, has 
 no power to make anything. Nothing was 
 ever created by reasoning about it or com- 
 paring it with something else, or by classi- 
 fying it; and science is but a method of 
 classification, of comparison, of definition, 
 and, in the very nature of the case, a thing 
 must exist before it can be defined. What 
 
Rationalism 73 
 
 would you think of one who should say: 
 " Life thus far has been interesting enough, 
 but not complete. It has existed in very 
 poor forms, a struggling, weak thing, com- 
 ing upward by slow degrees through the 
 ages. By and by we shall be so advanced 
 that all this will be done away; and biol- 
 ogy will be so developed that we shall have 
 a biological life which will be superior to 
 anything we have seen before." You say 
 at once that the biologist claims nothing of 
 the sort. He simply sees life, tries to un- 
 derstand it, tries to trace its origin, and, if 
 possible, foretell its course. That is all. 
 He accepts the fact that is offered to him, 
 and so his science has its justification; but 
 no biologist could ever invent life or 
 create it. Long ago, when natural science, 
 like everything else, was enveloped in su- 
 perstition, a man would bring to his scien- 
 tific friend, the alchemist, a bit of base 
 metal, and would say "Here, good alche- 
 mist, is this which I bring, and now I ask 
 you to make me some gold." And the al- 
 chemist, the superstitious man of science, 
 would try to fulfil that impossible demand. 
 
74 "Members of One Body" 
 
 Not so does the miner to-day come to the 
 assayer. He brings his ore; and he says: 
 " Here is the ore which I have found in the 
 earth. Now I ask you to tell me how much 
 gold is in it." And the assayer, having the 
 fact presented to him, can give some esti- 
 mate as to its value. Now, in just such a 
 relation must religion stand to science. By 
 no possible reasoning could any man invent 
 it or create it. If there is such a thing as 
 a science of religion, it presupposes the fact 
 that religion, more or less perfect, already 
 exists. That which is presented to the 
 philosopher and the critic is a certain great 
 fact of experience. 
 
 It is a fact manifested in all human life, 
 manifested most of all, Jesus said, where 
 it was most unconscious. The kingdom of 
 heaven he found in the nature of a little 
 child. And so he placed the little child in 
 the midst of his disciples, and said: "This 
 is what I mean to teach you. There is a 
 secret hidden from the wise and the pru- 
 dent, but revealed in that child's nature. 
 Tell me what that child's nature means, 
 what is implied in it, what may be de- 
 
Rationalism 75 
 
 veloped from it, and then I will tell you 
 what I mean by the kingdom of heaven." 
 So in its very simplest forms religion 
 presents itself to us as a fact to be rec- 
 ognized and explained. It is a fact just 
 as much as any fact of natural science, 
 though infinitely more wonderful. It is a 
 fact that men in the midst of the meanest 
 surroundings and living the most imperfect 
 lives have yet looked up toward the heavens, 
 and wondered and worshipped. It is a fact 
 which we find in the earliest words of our 
 old Aryan languages. When two thoughts 
 were brought together, the thought of 
 that which was nearest and of that which is 
 vastest and most remote, the primitive 
 shepherds prayed to the Sky-father. They 
 somehow felt that the universe was their 
 Father's house. How did they come to 
 have that feeling? How did they come to 
 worship and to love, and at length bring 
 their worship and their love together? 
 How did the mystery of the world touch 
 them with hope and faith? Our knowl- 
 edge of the world, our actual science, may 
 do much. It divides between the things 
 
76 "Members of One Body " 
 
 we know and the things we do not know 
 beyond; but, when it has done that, it 
 has not created religion or accounted for 
 it. You tell me that we do not know so 
 much of that unseen world as our fathers 
 have dreamed of. Very well; but that is 
 not the question of religion. The question 
 is this : How comes it that before the un- 
 known men have stood and do stand to-day 
 in a religious attitude, that is, in an 
 attitude of hope and of reverence and in- 
 stinctive trust? You tell me that you will 
 wait till religion shall be placed, as we say, 
 upon a scientific basis, before you will be- 
 lieve in religion, when the very fact is that 
 that which challenges our science is just 
 this : that men have been so constituted as 
 to worship the invisible, and believe that 
 the things they do not see are even greater 
 than the things they know. What would 
 you say of one who, in the beginning of a 
 battle, should say: "I will not enter into 
 this fight until you place my courage upon 
 a scientific basis. I will act the coward 
 until you prove to me that the victory 
 is mine, and that I will come out un- 
 
Rationalism 77 
 
 scathed from the conflict?" Ah! you know 
 that courage is something more than that, 
 and something diviner. Courage means 
 that the man takes his chances, that he 
 gives himself to some high quest, that, 
 without waiting for an answer, he chal- 
 lenges the unknown, and goes to battle with 
 joy. That is the very essence of courage, 
 that it outruns the sober understanding ; and 
 that is the meaning of love. And that is 
 the meaning of hope, as Paul said, "Hope 
 that is seen is not hope." Hope that can be 
 scientifically verified is not that thing 
 which elevates the man above the beast. 
 It is that diviner power so full of signifi- 
 cance that no philosophy has ever fathomed 
 its meaning. Hope, love, trust, courage, 
 all that is divinest in the human soul, 
 these are the facts to which we refer. 
 These are facts which have appeared among 
 men before they began to reason about life 
 or about thought or about conscience. 
 These form part of that kingdom of heaven 
 which is in the heart of every child. 
 
 When one comes to think of religion as 
 being something which we find most divine 
 
78 "Members of One Body" 
 
 in human life, and the existence of which 
 is verified by universal experience, we 
 neither look for a new religion to be cre- 
 ated by some scientific process or to be 
 destroyed by it. We do look for the grow- 
 ing knowledge of man to more and more 
 separate that which is eternal and valuable, 
 that which is intrinsically religious, from 
 that which is untrue. We look to science 
 to do here what it does everywhere, not to 
 create, but to define and to classify the facts 
 which already exist. Now, I think we are 
 prepared somewhat to answer the question 
 as to what rationalism, the free use of our 
 reasoning faculties, has done and is doing 
 for Christianity. 
 
 Rationalism has helped Christianity by 
 purifying it, by taking away those things 
 which do not and never have in reality be- 
 longed to it, thus rendering it possible to 
 believe in it and to see what it really is. 
 And rationalism has done more than that. 
 It has invested Christianity with a dignity 
 and a meaning which it never had before. 
 Have you ever noticed that the least inter- 
 esting lives of any great religious teachers 
 
Rationalism 79 
 
 or saints have been those which have been 
 written by their intimate followers, their 
 uncritical disciples? I remember the de- 
 light with which I first read Mrs. Oli- 
 phant's "Life of Saint Francis." It was 
 written from a Protestant standpoint, and 
 yet brought a living picture of that beauti- 
 ful childlike spirit of the old time. It 
 kindled in my mind a desire to know more 
 about the saint, and I borrowed from a 
 Catholic friend one of the standard Catholic 
 lives, and I tried to read; but, alas! my 
 saint was not there, or shall I say he was 
 there, but cruelly concealed from me? In- 
 stead of that simple, beautiful life, I read 
 of all sorts of vulgar miracles and prodigies 
 attributed to him; and that which made me 
 love him most, that was the thing which his 
 disciple least saw. Is not that true in 
 regard to all religious history? Is not that 
 true in regard to the history of Jesus of 
 Nazareth himself? Even when we go to 
 those earliest Gospels, we find something 
 like that. We doubt whether those who 
 wrote those Gospels dwelt most with loving 
 emphasis on the story of the Master with 
 
80 "Members of One Body " 
 
 the little children in his arms, or whether 
 it might not have seemed still more divine 
 to them that this man was wonderful enough 
 to blast the fig-tree by a mere word or to 
 send the devils into the herd of swine. 
 We have to use our critical faculties at 
 every stage of the history before it yields 
 its spiritual meaning and beauty. When 
 Sir Edwin Arnold gave us "The Light of 
 Asia," we felt as if we would all like to be 
 Buddhists. This religion of India is so 
 beautiful, so tender, when we are allowed 
 to see its heart. But we are likely to be 
 disappointed when we go to the Buddhist 
 interpreters, for the pure light is hidden 
 under trivial commentaries. And, when 
 the poet turned from "The Light of Asia" 
 to "The Light of the World," did we not 
 feel that he helped us to understand Chris- 
 tianity, that that life of the Master in 
 Galilee was more beautiful than we had 
 thought, when we saw it through our theo- 
 logical preconceptions? And then you ask, 
 Why more beautiful? Not because he had 
 added something, but because he had simply 
 brushed away all those horrid thoughts of 
 
Rationalism 8 1 
 
 an angry God and the bloody atonement, 
 and introduced once more the Jesus of the 
 Beatitudes. That is the method not sim- 
 ply of poetry, but of rationalism. For 
 rationalism is the assertion of the right to 
 choose among the things handed down to 
 us those which commend themselves to our 
 understanding. 
 
 There is no way in which religion more 
 surely loses its ground than in the mistaken 
 attempt to shut out this rationalistic and 
 critical spirit from the teaching of religion. 
 Just after the Reformation the Jesuits 
 gained control of the education of the youth 
 in France. "Let us have the children and 
 youth," they said, "and we do not care 
 what becomes of the men." The result of 
 their method has been that the average 
 Frenchman at some time or other has come 
 under the influence of a narrow type of 
 Christianity; and then, as he becomes a 
 man, he grows beyond all that, and looks 
 upon it with the most supreme contempt. 
 Protestants are often doing the same thing 
 here in America. The careful religious 
 parent would have his son receive a liberal 
 
82 "Members of One Body " 
 
 education, but he would have him learn 
 nothing that shall in the least way enlarge 
 or alter his religious faith. And so he 
 founds his denominational college, where 
 there shall be liberal education on every 
 possible subject but religion. The result 
 you see in the wide-spread contempt of those 
 who graduate from institutions where this 
 policy prevails for all that belongs to re- 
 ligion. It is inevitable from the nature 
 of the mind. Here is the boy taught in 
 the home and in the Sunday-school that 
 religion, by which is meant his form of 
 religion, is the greatest thing in the world, 
 and because of that he worships. We 
 cannot worship anything but the greatest. 
 It is the heart's homage to the highest, the 
 broadest, and the truest. And then he goes 
 to school and to college, and he learns 
 many things. This world, which he has 
 been taught to despise, is much more won- 
 derful than he had imagined, so full of in- 
 terest, so rich in meaning. And in this 
 wonderful world everything is related to 
 every other thing, for there are great laws 
 running through all. He comes to feel the 
 
Rationalism 83 
 
 interest which every developed mind has in 
 every fact which is related to the life of the 
 universe. The veriest bit of stone has its 
 history. The blade of grass tells its story 
 of the past, and gives its prophecy of the 
 future. All of these things belong to one 
 great order, the great order of the uni- 
 verse. He comes to have little interest in 
 any unrelated fact, any fact that does not 
 tell of some law behind it. And he finds 
 no fact which has not such relations, except 
 the fact of his religion. This seems to 
 stand absolutely alone. It is no longer the 
 greatest thing in the world to him, when 
 he has learned of the wonders of natural 
 law, the miracles of which he is told do not 
 seem so incredible as trivial. All secular 
 history is a mighty unfolding. It strikes 
 awe into his soul. But the history of re- 
 ligion, as he has been taught it, seems alto- 
 gether finite, beginning a certain number 
 of many centuries ago, not like life it- 
 self, going clear back to the beginning and 
 involved in the necessity of things, nor like 
 physical power, inevitable and eternal. No 
 correlation of forces here, no comparison 
 
84 "Members of One Body " 
 
 with kindred forms, but something stem 
 and fixed and limited. He is told that re- 
 ligion consists in believing certain things 
 which are said to have happened, but for 
 which there is little proof. Its apostolic 
 succession is limited to some little line in 
 history, and is not a great stream flowing 
 from everlasting to everlasting. All is 
 so small and so inadequate. And, being 
 trained thus, he simply becomes indifferent 
 to religious thought. He does not take it 
 seriously any longer. 
 
 To such a mind rationalism brings salva- 
 tion. Rationalism teaches that religion is 
 not an isolated fact, not a fact of one nation 
 or of one simple stream of history, not some- 
 thing that is accidental or artificial, but is 
 just as inevitable as life. Indeed, it is 
 life, the life of the soul. It teaches that 
 this religion that he has learned at his 
 mother's knee was simply one ray from the 
 central sun, one throb of the pulse of the 
 world, one little glimpse of that which is 
 absolute and eternal. Always men have 
 been religious, always something within the 
 heart has been striving for better things; 
 
Rationalism 85 
 
 and the best religion is akin to the worst 
 religion, as the highest life is akin to the 
 lowest. The Christ himself but interprets 
 the heart of humanity, if he is the desire of 
 all nations. And rationalism not only 
 teaches this, but teaches that that which 
 most repelled him did not belong to the 
 essence of religion, but was the obstacle 
 which it must overcome as it grows toward 
 perfection. And so many a thing which 
 once seemed sacred to him he casts aside, 
 because the truth of things has grown more 
 sacred and more divine to him. 
 
 The very beauty and the sanctity of re- 
 ligion make it necessary for us always to 
 allow free play to that criticism which 
 alone keeps it pure. In one of his noblest 
 sonnets Shakspere tells us that it is the 
 most beautiful soul which needs to be most 
 watchful of itself, lest things foul and false 
 take shelter there. 
 
 " Oh, what a mansion have these vices got 
 
 Which for their habitation chose out thee, 
 Where beautie's veil doth cover every blot 
 
 And all things turn to fair that eyes can see ! 
 Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege." 
 
86 "Members of One Body" 
 
 So must we say to those Christian 
 churches whose history has been so glori- 
 ous, and which have been the custodians of 
 such rare grace. Because the beauty of 
 holiness has in such large measure been 
 there, we cannot bear to think that they 
 should afford refuge fora lie. "Take heed, 
 dear heart, of this large privilege." 
 
 The final effect of rationalism upon re- 
 ligion must be to make it more truly spirit- 
 ual. And how is that? you say. Do we 
 not talk of "cold rationalism"? I believe 
 it makes religion more spiritual simply for 
 this reason: that it demonstrates to us that 
 nothing but the spiritual element can abide. 
 Nothing but this will stand the test of the 
 severest examination. Paul writes of these 
 beautiful fruits of the spirit; and then he 
 says, "Against these there is no law." No 
 law of Moses of old, that was his thought, 
 no law of nature, no law of the mind, 
 can make these less or different from what 
 they are. 
 
 Rationalism, the religion of the under- 
 standing, is the John the Baptist preparing 
 the way for the religion of the free spirit. 
 
^ Rationalism 87 
 
 Its baptism is that of the clear water, wash- 
 ing away old errors. But it prophesies the 
 new baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire. 
 Jesus brings together two ideas, which 
 must be united before religion can gain 
 complete power, when he says that men 
 shall worship in spirit and in truth. When 
 we bring severest truth to our worship, it 
 becomes most spiritual. All else shall 
 fade, but here is something that abides. 
 The only faith that can stand the test of 
 reason is a faith that "works by love and 
 purifies the heart." 
 
MYSTICISM 
 
V. 
 MYSTICISM 
 
 IT is somewhat unfortunate that some of 
 the best words, which ought to have the 
 widest significance, are narrowed, accident- 
 ally, in their application. Such is the 
 case with the word which I would choose, 
 had it not otherwise been used, the word 
 "Spiritualist." In its large meaning, a 
 Spiritualist is a man who believes in the 
 things of the spirit, walks according to the 
 spirit, the man who feels the divineness of 
 his own soul, and that it is in touch with 
 the infinite soul of the universe. This 
 good word has been adopted by those who 
 believe in certain forms of intercourse be- 
 tween embodied and disembodied spirits. 
 The word " spiritist " would be the more 
 proper one for this type of thought, leaving 
 the other for the larger meaning. We 
 have, however, one word which has been 
 
92 "Members of One Body" 
 
 actually used to describe this kind of 
 thought and feeling, the word "mystic." 
 The mystic is one who appeals not pri- 
 marily as the source of his religion to a book 
 or a church, nor, as does the pure rational-j 
 ist, to certain arguments and logical proc-| 
 esses, but who makes the direct appeal to 
 his own heart. He believes that there is a 
 revelation from the Infinite, a revelation 
 vouchsafed to every soul in the degree of 
 its purity. And so he listens to hear the 
 voice of the eternal spirit speaking to him. 
 He believes that the great God who made 
 the heavens and the earth dwells within 
 himself, and that, when all is silent, when 
 self is forgotten, and all the passions that 
 disturb the mind are stilled, he becomes 
 conscious of the divine presence. There is 
 a light, he says, which lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the world. Most of us do 
 not see that light, still less do walk in it. 
 We love the garish day, and we forget this 
 holy light that might evermore be leading 
 us on. And the height of wisdom, this 
 man says, is not to accumulate vast stores 
 of knowledge, nor to be able to trace from 
 
Mysticism 93 
 
 their beginnings all the great laws and 
 forces of the external universe; but it is 
 the very simplest thing in the world. It is 
 simply the opening of our own eyes. He 
 also says the outward signs of deity are 
 not the strongest. There are intimations 
 which come to every one of us when we are 
 at our highest, which come without the 
 aid of priest or church or ritual, and 
 make us sure that the power from whence 
 we came is divine, is righteousness, is 
 love. Men who have thought thus have not 
 been confined to any one nation or time. 
 All religions have had them. All relig- 
 ions, we may say, began in just this kind 
 of thought, in the minds of men who be- 
 lieved first of all in the intuitions of their 
 own souls. But all religions have tended 
 to forget their origin, to make of this per- 
 sonal touch with the divine and sense of 
 the eternal, a miracle confined to one man, 
 a favorite of Deity, and afterwards to be 
 received on faith. Read the history of 
 Christianity as you find it in its begin- 
 ning, in the story of Jesus, and you find in 
 this man a pure mystic, a pure Spiritualist, 
 
94 "Members of One Body" 
 
 to whom these finer forces were all. Jesus 
 cared little for the tradition of the religion 
 of his own land. He was bold to say, 
 "Thus said Moses, but / say unto you 
 something far different." He cared little 
 for the outward forms of worship as they 
 were held in his day, and told those who 
 came to him that they need not have long 
 prayers, for God did not care for their much 
 speaking. The pure in heart saw God. 
 The little children, in their simplicity, 
 were the wise. As you follow his teach- 
 ings, you find that they appeal thus directly 
 to the inner light. If that light which is 
 within be darkness, Jesus had nothing more 
 to say. "He that hath ears to hear," he 
 said, "let him hear." "My sheep hear my 
 voice." He had no other proof, no 
 stronger miracle, than the response of heart 
 to heart. By and by Christianity became 
 something different from that pure spiritual 
 influence. The thought of a great church, 
 an external power, what Jesus called the 
 kingdom of this world, dawned upon the 
 minds of his followers. And how could 
 that be supported? How should men be- 
 
Mysticism 95 
 
 lieve when the teachers of Christianity 
 went about teaching doctrines that did not, 
 perhaps, awaken response in the soul? 
 Something external must take the place of 
 this pure spiritual light. And so came 
 systems of theology and of priestcraft, great 
 churches founded not at all upon the appeal 
 to the individual soul, but upon the appeal 
 to outward evidence, and at last to some 
 special miracle. That has been the general 
 history of Christianity, the making exter- 
 nal that which was at the beginning internal 
 and spiritual, the substitution of argument 
 for intuition, and at last the appeal to 
 mere custom and tradition in defence of 
 doctrines which both the heart and the 
 logical faculty reject. And yet, when 
 we thus read the history of Christianity, 
 we are seeing only upon one side. All 
 through these same ages another kind of 
 thought and of feeling has existed. There 
 have been men who have drawn aside from 
 the churches and from the schools, and 
 sought, as the very heart of all religion, the 
 answer to the question, How do I stand in 
 my relation to that great Power from 
 
96 "Members of One Body" 
 
 whence I came? And, then, How do I 
 stand in relation to these my fellow-men 
 about me? What duties do I owe to them? 
 And, then, What light may I see when all 
 about me grows dark? What may I hear 
 when all my friends stand aside and I face 
 the silence of eternity? Many of these 
 men have been looked upon with contempt 
 by the churchmen of their day. But, on 
 the other hand, some of them have been 
 recognized as the spiritual successors of 
 Jesus. They have been called saints, and 
 almost worshipped, these men who stood 
 alone, thinking their own thoughts. Men 
 have worshipped them, built new churches 
 to their memory, done everything but 
 understand them. These were the mystics, 
 the men of the spirit. All through the 
 dark ages these men abounded, sometimes 
 within the churches, sometimes without 
 them. They did not reject formally the 
 elaborate doctrines of the Catholic Church, 
 but simply ignored them. Seeing some- 
 thing far better, they had little use for the 
 subtleties of the Schoolmen and for the 
 ambitious schemes of ecclesiastics. Mysti- 
 
Mysticism 97 
 
 cal sects were formed whose very names 
 were significant. "The brethren of the 
 free spirit," some of them called them- 
 selves, "the brethren of the common life," 
 others, bringing the idea of something far 
 different from that which the Church of 
 their day was striving to effect. So the 
 mystics, Eckhart and Tauler, arose in Ger- 
 many; and out of that line of silent 
 thinkers and pure worshippers came at 
 length that great book of religion, The 
 "Imitation of Christ,"- a marvellous book, 
 when we think whence it came and when, a 
 book of religion written in the very midst 
 of those ages of scholastic subtlety, and yet 
 not a word of any of the doctrines which 
 the Church of that time esteemed most es- 
 sential. It may be read to-day by men of 
 every faith, and has been the constant com- 
 panion of many who have cast aside tradi- 
 tional Christianity. It breathes nothing 
 but the purest, tenderest sympathy for all, 
 and the finest hope for humanity. It 
 teaches a religion which seems fitted to be 
 universal. It is strange how many of 
 the doctrines which entangled the reason 
 
98 "Members of One Body" 
 
 of men were broken through so easily by 
 those men who lived in the spirit. That 
 great doctrine which has cast such darkness 
 over the universe, eternal punishment, 
 faded away before the clear vision of most 
 of the old mystics. It was something with 
 which they had nothing to do any longer, 
 now that they had learned that God is love. 
 In an age when the walls of churches 
 were covered with pictures showing the tor- 
 ments of the lost, we read of Heinrich 
 Suso, whom the people called "the minne- 
 singer of the love of God." When Master 
 Eckhart spoke of an endless hell, he said, 
 "It is the Nothingness that burns eter- 
 nally." To the scholastic teachers relig- 
 ion was a prim garden, well walled about; 
 but the mystics loved to picture it as a 
 sweet wilderness. "The spiritual life," 
 writes one of them, "may fitly be called a 
 wilderness by reason of the many sweet 
 flowers which spring up and flourish, when 
 they are not trodden under foot of men. In 
 this wilderness are the lilies of chastity and 
 the white roses of innocence, and there are 
 the red roses of sacrifice. In this wilder- 
 
Mysticism 99 
 
 ness, too, may we find the violets of 
 meekness, and many other fair flowers and 
 wholesome roots. In this wilderness shalt 
 thou choose thyself a pleasant spot wherein 
 to dwell." 
 
 The Reformation divided Christendom 
 along intellectual lines, but the spiritual 
 succession remained unbroken. In the 
 Catholic Church Molinos and Fenelon and 
 Madame Guyon added new chapters to the 
 "Imitation of Christ." On the other hand, 
 Luther was powerfully influenced by the 
 German mystics, as Wesley was afterwards. 
 A number of Protestant sects were formed 
 according to the mystical ideal of piety. 
 The Moravians sought to re-establish primi- 
 tive Christianity, with its quiet walk with 
 God and its blessing upon the peace- 
 makers, the sons of God. So the society of 
 Friends, casting aside all mere ecclesiasti- 
 cism, found a deep source of consolation 
 and strength in a life of simplicity and un- 
 selfishness. They sought to keep the soul 
 open to intimations from above; and, when 
 no words came, they learned to worship in 
 reverent silence. Another development of 
 
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 mystical Christianity is seen in the Church 
 of the New Jerusalem. Immanuel Sweden- 
 borg did not always distinguish between 
 the pure intuitions of humanity and the 
 pictures of his own imagination, yet he has 
 much for all those who would walk in the 
 spirit. 
 
 And modern liberalism, in the midst of 
 all its new doubts, has been saved from arid 
 denials by the infusion of the mystical ele- 
 ment. When old ideas of revelation have 
 failed, men have listened to the fresh reve- 
 lation in their own souls. In America the 
 spiritual possibilities of free thought were 
 illustrated in the Transcendental movement. 
 Though it was associated with a phase of 
 philosophy which was transitory, the deeper 
 influences of Transcendentalism remain as 
 permanent forces in our life. 
 
 In Emerson we find the mystical and ra- 
 tionalistic elements united. He was at 
 once a seer and a critic. In this perfect 
 union of the intuitive and logical faculties 
 lies the possibility of a free religion. He 
 himself says, "What one man is said to 
 learn by experience, a man of extraordinary 
 
Mysticism 101 
 
 sagacity is said without experience to di- 
 vine. The Arabians say that Abul Khain, 
 the mystic, and Abu Ali Seena, the philos- 
 opher, conferred together; and, on parting, 
 the philosopher said, 'All that he sees I 
 know,' and the mystic said, 1 A11 that he 
 knows I see.' ' When we ask what mysti- 
 cism has done for religion, we must answer 
 that it has given rise to all religions. The 
 fountain-head is always found in some pure 
 heart. The intuition comes before the 
 argument. Jesus interprets the silence of 
 eternity by his own love before Paul de- 
 velops his system of theology. Men are 
 born into the spiritual life before they 
 begin to discuss the theory of regener- 
 ation. It is not true, as Robert Burns 
 wrote, that "churches are built to please 
 the priests." Churches and priesthoods 
 come into existence to preserve the vision 
 which some saintly soul has seen. They 
 serve as a copy and shadow of the heav- 
 enly things, even as Moses is warned of 
 God, when he is about to make the taber- 
 nacle, " See that thou make it according to 
 the pattern shewed thee on the mount." 
 
102 "Members of One Body" 
 
 The temple and cathedral are meaning- 
 less piles of stone when the spirit that built 
 them has fled. 
 
 u It is not the wall of stone without 
 
 That makes the building small or great, 
 But the soul's light shining round about 
 And the faith that overcometh doubt 
 And the love that is stronger than hate." 
 
 And, as the purely spiritual element is 
 that which creates a religon, it is also that 
 which reforms it. The inner light flashes 
 upon the outward abuses, and shows their 
 real hideousness. As we read the journal 
 of that plain Quaker, John Woolman, we 
 are surprised to find how much he saw that 
 was hidden from the statesmen and divines 
 of his day. He had but one standard by 
 which to judge, that of universal righteous- 
 ness. The slaveholders quoted their texts, 
 and brought forward their special pleas. 
 But, before he would discuss the justice of 
 their cause, he must ask a more searching 
 question, "Do you desire nothing but jus- 
 tice? " And, when all motives of self-in- 
 terest were eliminated, it was seen that the 
 question was too plain for argument. 
 
Mysticism 103 
 
 This is the secret which the pure in 
 heart have learned: that the problems of 
 life may be easily solved if we are only 
 willing first to reduce them to their sim- 
 plest terms. Our practical mistakes come 
 largely from our own selfishness and love of 
 ease and lack of sympathy. Purified from 
 these, the mind becomes a mirror reflecting 
 back the truth of things. " He that is spir- 
 itual judgeth all things." There are voices 
 which speak out of the silence, and which 
 are not to be gainsaid. 
 
 " They send me challenges to right, 
 
 And loud rebuke my ill ; 
 They ring my bells of victory, 
 
 They breathe my * Peace, be still ! ' 
 They ever seem to say : My child, 
 
 Why seek me so all day ? 
 Now journey inward to thyself 
 
 And listen by the way." 
 
 It is a superficial view which sees in the 
 search for inner purity and peace only a self- 
 ish retreat from the hard conflict of life. 
 It is rather the way to gain strength for 
 that conflict. "For their sakes," said 
 Jesus, "I sanctify myself." When a great 
 
104 "Members of One Body" 
 
 wrong is to be righted, there is need for 
 that high courage which is born of spiritual 
 insight. In the battle there must be 
 some Sir Galahad who can say, 
 
 " My strength is as the strength of ten, 
 Because my heart is pure." 
 
 In our busy, self-confident age, when 
 there is a tendency to believe only in what 
 is external, we sadly need a revival of the 
 old pieties. We cannot get along without 
 those fruits of the spirit which grow in the 
 sheltered gardens of the interior life. To 
 be alert, eager, curious, this, we say, is 
 to be alive. Yet it is only part of life. 
 And many a man who prides himself on his 
 knowledge of the world is a stranger to 
 himself. He fears no foe but solitude. 
 With feverish haste, he undertakes new 
 works, reads, perhaps, many books, so that 
 he may not have time to think. Never in 
 all his life has he turned aside to learn 
 what the silence may have to teach him. 
 To such a man "knowledge comes, but wis- 
 dom lingers." 
 
 To most of us there comes a time as to 
 
Mysticism 105 
 
 George Eliot's Maggie Tulliver, when she 
 took up the book of Thomas a Kempis with 
 "a wide, hopeless yearning for something, 
 whatever it is, that is the greatest and best 
 thing in the world." 
 
 Let us give thanks for the lesson which 
 all the men of the spirit teach us: that 
 the greatest and best is also the near- 
 est, and that the way to find it is by the 
 path of simplicity. Simplicity of purpose 
 leads one to work with God for things that 
 are eternal. Simplicity of thought leads 
 one to seize directly the truths that are 
 most important. Simplicity of feeling 
 leaves no room for distracting jealousy or 
 envy. "Blessed are the simple-hearted," 
 says the old saint in his cloister; "for they 
 shall enjoy great peace." 
 
 And not in the cloister only, but by mul- 
 titudes amid the stress and strain of life, 
 has this beatitude been verified. Every- 
 where love finds love, and simple trust 
 lays hold on eternal truth. For indeed 
 "there is something in the soul above the 
 soul, divine, simple, not to be named." 
 
THE 
 UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
VI. 
 THE UNITY OF CHRISTENDOM 
 
 WE have considered some of the differ- 
 ent types of Christianity. The 
 time has now come for us to take our bear- 
 ings, and see to what point we have been 
 irresistibly led. One conclusion seems to 
 be forced upon us, and that is that the word 
 "Christian" has a larger significance than 
 most Christian people are willing to allow. 
 It has been the custom for each sect to 
 make its own definition, large enough to 
 include only itself, and to trace out the 
 channel along which the great stream of 
 Christian life and thought must of necessity 
 flow. These definitions have been very 
 much like the levees which they throw up 
 along the banks of the lower Mississippi: 
 they serve excellently well in low water, 
 but in the first freshet the great river 
 washes them away, and finds new channels 
 
no "Members of One Body" 
 
 for itself. And so it has been with every 
 great revival of Christianity. It has sur- 
 prised those who have made the definitions 
 of Christianity. The definitions of the 
 Schoolmen were well received in the 
 Middle Ages, and seemed to be final; but 
 they were futile obstacles to the rising tide 
 of the Reformation. All the properties of 
 the Church of England could not prevent 
 the revival under Wesley. Christianity 
 has often been defined as a system of eccle- 
 siasticism; but that has never prevented 
 fervent mystics from being born who have 
 seen in Christianity a direct access to God 
 without need of church or priest. Chris- 
 tianity meant a theory of atonement and of 
 trinity, but not to Channing. Chris- 
 tianity meant the belief in miracles and in 
 an infallible Bible, but not to Theodore 
 Parker. The Westminster Assembly of 
 divines declared gravely that the revelation 
 of God had ceased when the canon of Script- 
 ure was completed, and that henceforth 
 "nothing was to be added by any new reve- 
 lation of the spirit." But, when a man 
 feels in his own heart that a new revelation 
 
The Unity of Christendom ill 
 
 of the spirit has indeed come to him, what 
 can any assembly of divines do? The 
 strong man keepeth his house, but only 
 until the stronger than he has come. 
 
 In religion, as in love, "nice customs 
 curt'sy to great kings." When the king 
 has come to his own again, all the acts of 
 exclusion which were passed during the in- 
 terregnum are null and void. Said Jesus, 
 "The kingdom of heaven surfereth violence, 
 and the violent take it by force." The 
 temple stands unchanged for generations 
 till one comes so full of the spirit of wor- 
 ship that he is able to destroy the temple 
 and forthwith build it again. And the 
 old creeds, which have stood unchanged 
 through ages of chilling doubt, fall away 
 before the coming of a new age of faith, as 
 the leaves which cling all winter to the 
 oaks fall off at the fresh budding of the 
 spring. Traditional religion is always at 
 the mercy of personal religion. It holds 
 its own only by sufferance, and the memory 
 of what the spirit said in the past fades 
 away when once more the spirit speaks to 
 men in the present. 
 
112 "Members of One Body" 
 
 What does this all mean? It means 
 simply this: that religion is not a form, 
 but a life, and life is the one thing which 
 it is impossible for us to define; it is that 
 which mocks at all the forms it uses. Life 
 is the most persistent thing we know, and 
 yet the most susceptible to change. It 
 is the artist which is continually mould- 
 ing the world to its desire; and yet it is of 
 all things most plastic, and is influenced by 
 every touch. Could we have seen the first 
 germ of life that appeared upon our planet, 
 by what possibility could we have defined 
 it? What prophet could have foretold what 
 forms it must take ? And yet, if our wise 
 men speak truly, in that simple germ there 
 was the promise and the potency of all the 
 forms of vital existence. Could we have 
 stood and watched it with the eye of wis- 
 dom, what could we have said but this? 
 A new force has come into play, and hence- 
 forth this planet is to be the battle-field on 
 which is to be fought out its mighty 
 struggle for existence. At the beginning 
 it seems to be the weakest and the most 
 helpless of all things: it seems that all the 
 
The Unity of Christendom 113 
 
 odds are against the persistence of the vital 
 force. All the forces of nature seem hos- 
 tile, and are combining to destroy it; and 
 only after long ages have passed will these 
 forces become its servants. In the mean 
 time, how is life to escape its enemies? 
 There is only one way by which it can do 
 it, and that is by continually yielding to 
 them, by changing its forms as new dangers 
 approach. 
 
 Only through its myriad disguises has 
 life been able to survive. The old myths 
 are full of stories of metamorphosis, but 
 none so strange as that which sober science 
 tells. From form to form it maketh haste, 
 ever clothing itself in new colors and elud- 
 ing its old enemies. Each new circum- 
 stance which makes life seemingly impos- 
 sible, while it destroys the old form under 
 which it existed, is but the mould in which 
 some new type of life is cast. 
 
 What is true of life in general is true of 
 every form of life. It is true of religion: 
 it is true of that particular form of religion 
 which we call Christianity. Christianity 
 has existed through eighteen centuries be- 
 
114 "Members of One Body" 
 
 cause it has taken in turn the impress of 
 each century that has passed. When we go 
 back to the beginning, and ask ourselves 
 concerning primitive Christianity, we are 
 apt to be sadly disappointed; and the more 
 critical our study of its original documents, 
 the more meagre seem to be the results. 
 Each sect of Christendom claims to be the 
 direct descendant of this primitive form of 
 Christianity. These claims can neither be 
 proven nor disproven. What did Jesus 
 teach in regard to the Church, its min- 
 isters, its doctrines, and its ordinances? 
 What did he teach in regard to predesti- 
 nation, in regard to the trinity, in regard 
 to atonement, the apostolic succession, or 
 the second probation? What was the prac- 
 tice of the early Church and its theory in 
 regard to social questions? Was that com- 
 munity of goods of which we read only 
 something accidental, or were these early 
 Christians seeking to inaugurate a social- 
 istic commonwealth? He who wishes to 
 dogmatize on these subjects may do so with 
 impunity, but he who wishes to find the 
 ultimate facts must confess that the sources 
 
The Unity of Christendom 115 
 
 of information we have are not sufficient. 
 One thing we are safe in saying: that not 
 one of the existing sects of Christendom 
 is an exact reproduction of the earliest 
 type. 
 
 The origin of Christianity, like the 
 origin of most great historic movements, is 
 shrouded in obscurity. Even Paul did not 
 enter into the thought of the first circle of 
 the Galilean disciples. He boasts that he 
 received his gospel, not through them, but 
 by direct inspiration of his own; and, when 
 it pleased God to reveal his Son in him, he 
 went not up to Jerusalem to the other dis- 
 ciples, but he went into Arabia, and there 
 in solitude wrought out his thought. 
 
 The claim that some one type of Chris- 
 tianity represents exactly the first, and has 
 been miraculously preserved, so that it only 
 is to-day entitled to receive the name 
 "Christianity," is baseless. It is most 
 easily disproved when made by great his- 
 toric churches like the Catholic and the 
 Anglican, whose development and changes 
 have been wrought in the full light of 
 history. We know how much older some 
 
1 16 "Members of One Body " 
 
 of their rites and doctrines are than the early 
 Christianity, and how much newer are others. 
 To say that they are Christian no more 
 means that all of their characteristics can 
 be traced to a single source in the Gospels 
 than to say that the Mississippi River rises 
 in Lake Itasca means that every drop of 
 water which flows through the great river 
 into the gulf had its origin in Minnesota. 
 So Christianity to-day is a great historic 
 stream. We trace its course to the Gali- 
 lean hills, but it has had great tributaries 
 flowing into it. Roman, Grecian, Egyp- 
 tian, Persian, and Gothic streams have 
 joined it; and the waters have been long 
 intermingled. 
 
 What, then, was primitive Christianity, 
 or, rather, what shall we say Christianity 
 is in its essence? It is just what Jesus 
 said it was, a germ of spiritual life, 
 itself the result of countless causes in 
 the past and to be the cause of countless 
 effects in the future. "The kingdom of 
 heaven is like a grain of mustard-seed, 
 which, when it is sown upon the earth, is 
 less than all the seeds that are upon the 
 
The Unity of Christendom 117 
 
 earth, yet, when it is sown, groweth up and 
 becometh greater than all herbs, and putteth 
 out great branches." Christianity has put 
 forth many great branches in the past, and 
 is destined to put forth more in the future. 
 We cannot define it until it is finished, and 
 no religion is finished until it is dead. 
 Because we believe in the vitality of Chris- 
 tianity, we cannot limit it to this or that 
 form. 
 
 And so the sympathetic student of Chris- 
 tianity comes to different forms in which it 
 is manifested. He sees that one is better 
 than another, finer in its significance, and 
 stronger in its fibre; and yet he denies 
 to none of them the great Christian name. 
 He sees in all of them the historic develop- 
 ments of a single spiritual life. When 
 thus we come to look upon different forms 
 of Christianity, we may criticise all, but 
 we will despise none. The ignorant Catho- 
 lic looks upon Luther as the arch-enemy, 
 and sees in the Reformation of the sixteenth 
 century only a great outburst of hate against 
 the holy Mother Church. The enlightened 
 Catholic, though he may still regret the 
 
Ii8 "Members of One Body" 
 
 schism, sees that it was inevitable. And 
 so the ignorant Protestant looks upon the 
 Church of Rome as "the scarlet woman," 
 and he imagines that all the claims of papal 
 supremacy arose from the evil machinations 
 and impostures of priests. But go back 
 with me to the time when this supremacy of 
 Rome began. Ask what was the reason 
 that all Christendom looked there for help 
 and bowed down to this great power. As 
 we study the origin of it, we see the reason 
 of it. It was a time when the old Roman 
 Empire was tottering to its fall, and civil- 
 ization with it. Men, affrighted, were 
 looking toward Rome again for that power 
 which should save them from the impending 
 ruin. Who is there to give help ? The 
 emperors? A degenerate race, no longer 
 living in the cities of the Caesars, but 
 hiding in the marshes of Ravenna. The 
 senators? There was a time when their 
 very presence awed the barbarous Gauls, but 
 now they are mere sycophants, worthy only 
 of the scorn that is heaped upon them. 
 The people of Rome? Once the ambassa- 
 dors of Pyrrhus said that every one of them 
 
The Unity of Christendom 119 
 
 was a king, and now they are but slaves 
 rejoicing in their fetters. The Roman 
 legions ? Once they were the terror of the 
 world: now they are the mercenaries sell- 
 ing their swords to the highest bidder. 
 Who, then, shall save in this hour of bitter 
 need? There is but one man able to do 
 the deed, but one high office which has not 
 been bereft of majesty. Attila and his Huns 
 are at the gate of Italy. Who is it that goes 
 forth to meet them? It is Leo, the bishop, 
 who goes unarmed into their camp; and, 
 when he returns, Rome for the time is 
 saved. A spiritual might was his which 
 awed the barbarians. In all those panic- 
 stricken ages but one institution remained 
 strong, and that was the Church. In time 
 of need, it armed itself with new weapons 
 against the barbarians. With consummate 
 strategy it outflanked the enemy at every 
 point. Before the barbarians could reach 
 Italy missionaries of the cross, who were 
 the soldiers of civilization as well, had met 
 them, and conquered them in their own 
 dark forests. The Vikings sailed away on 
 their voyages to the south, and Christen- 
 
I2O "Members of One Body" 
 
 dom trembled; but, when they returned, it 
 was to find the cross planted at the head of 
 the fiord, and to hear tales how the White 
 Christ had come and conquered Odin in his 
 immemorial fastnesses. Do you wonder 
 that men who saw these things wondered 
 and worshipped? Do you wonder that 
 the men who did these things were re- 
 ceived with boundless adoration and con- 
 fidence by those whom they saved? Al- 
 ways it is the law of life that he that 
 overcometh shall have power over the na- 
 tions. The power of the Church of Rome 
 was nobly won. Alas that it has not al- 
 ways been so nobly used! And if, in that 
 great struggle with barbarism, the Church 
 itself suffered; if, in going down in that 
 hand-to-hand conflict with Paganism, it be- 
 came itself half paganized; if a thousand 
 dark superstitions clung to it, and if its 
 voice lost something of its old purity, let 
 us be sorrowful, but never scornful. Every 
 battle of the warrior is with confused noise 
 and with garments rolled in blood; yet the 
 warrior is not less worthy of our plaudits 
 because of the stains and the scars of the 
 battle. 
 
The Unity of Christendom 121 
 
 When Dante had won his way through 
 the darkness of hell, and at last in the 
 light of day began his ascent of the moun- 
 tain, his guide wet his hands with dew 
 and gently washed from his face the smoke 
 which had gathered on it. And so must 
 every true reformer feel toward the great 
 Church to which we owe so much. When 
 we see it emerging all darkened, but tri- 
 umphant, from the inferno of barbarism, 
 we should look upon it not with contempt, 
 but with love. The new day has dawned; 
 and, now that it stands in the morning 
 light, let it cleanse itself from the old 
 stains with the morning dew. 
 
 And so it is with the controversies be- 
 tween rationalist and traditionalist, radi- 
 cal and conservative, orthodox and liber- 
 alist. These controversies, of themselves, 
 do little; for the aim of the controversial- 
 ist is to find out the weak point of his 
 antagonist. But what profits this? Sup- 
 pose I can prove that, in regard to certain 
 things, my neighbor is only a fool, am 
 I wiser for my discovery? It is not his 
 weak point, but it is his strong point 
 
122 "Members of One Body" 
 
 which may help me. Suppose he is 
 frightened at a shadow, I want to know the 
 shadow of what. Suppose this doctrine of 
 his is only a fiction, still the important 
 question remains, On what fact is that fic- 
 tion founded, and how was it suggested? 
 Says Dr. Martineau, " Every fiction that has 
 ever laid strong hold of human belief is the 
 mistaken image of some great truth to 
 which reason will direct its search; while 
 half-reason is content with laughing at the 
 superstition, and unreason with believing 
 it." When we assume this attitude, we 
 begin to see through all its variations of 
 thought the essential unity of Christianity. 
 The most opposite types of Christianity, we 
 have seen, have points of kinship. How 
 far apart seem the Catholic and the so- 
 called liberal Christian! and yet in their 
 ultimate ideal they are one, for Catholicity 
 and liberality are synonymes. Each of 
 them is aiming to get beyond sectarian nar- 
 rowness, and to build a universal Church. 
 They agree as to their ideals : they disagree 
 as to their way of reaching them. Calvin- 
 ism and rationalism stand in antagonism 
 
The Unity of Christendom 123 
 
 to-day; but, when we go back to the six- 
 teenth century, we see that then Calvinism 
 was rationalism. It was the application of 
 the scientific method to the facts of relig- 
 ion as then understood. John Wesley had 
 many harsh things to say of the mystics, 
 whose influence he thought he had escaped; 
 and yet, in spite of this, his Methodism was 
 but a kind of mysticism, and his experi- 
 ences of religion were but the sudden flash- 
 ings of the inner light. There is a spir- 
 itual gravitation that holds us all. We 
 emphasize our differences, but the law of 
 the universe works steadily for unity. We 
 contradict what our neighbor says, but we 
 are silent when we find out what he means. 
 In the Middle Ages people laughed at the 
 idea of the antipodes : it was so unspeak- 
 ably absurd that people should walk with 
 their feet upward. But, when men trav- 
 elled to the antipodes, they found that they 
 very easily adapted themselves to the situa- 
 tion. You say you do not understand how 
 reasonable people can believe this or that 
 thing which offends you. You are severely 
 orthodox; and you cannot understand how 
 
124 "Members of One Body" 
 
 one can pretend to have any religion at all, 
 and not believe in the atonement and the 
 infallibility of the Bible. You have a fine 
 sense of propriety, and you don't under- 
 stand how people can go through the streets 
 beating tambourines for the glory of God 
 like the Salvation Army. You are ex- 
 tremely matter-of-fact, and believe only in 
 that which you can see and touch; and you 
 cannot understand how any one can be a 
 theosophist. You are a very advanced 
 thinker; and you like to have some new 
 thought every day, or something that seems 
 to you new. You do not understand how 
 the Churchman can take comfort in a lit- 
 urgy just because of its old associations. 
 Well, probably the fact is that you do not 
 understand. Did it never occur to you that 
 it might be a very excellent thing if you 
 were to try to understand? And perhaps, 
 in trying to understand your neighbor's re- 
 ligion, you, too, might be better able to 
 understand the real meaning of your own. 
 We build our Babel towers of spiritual 
 pride, that all the world may see us, and 
 come to us; and the result is only a sad 
 
The Unity of Christendom 125 
 
 confusion of tongues. We forget ourselves, 
 and go out and try to look at things through 
 our neighbor's eyes; and we find that there 
 is one language which never has been con- 
 fused, but which all understand. 
 
 In this slight study of the different types 
 of religion we have found something admi- 
 rable in each. We acknowledge our debt to 
 Roman Catholicism for its beauty and its 
 dignity, for its ideal universality and actual 
 grandeur; our debt to Calvinism for its 
 stern sincerity, its logical consistency, its 
 unbending rectitude; our debt to Metho- 
 dism for its warmth; to rationalism for its 
 searching light; to mysticism for its vision 
 of peace. But what is greater than any one 
 of these? All of them. Our very recogni- 
 tion of the truth which each contains makes 
 us realize how fragmentary each is. Mil- 
 ton compares the work of sectarianism to 
 that of Typhon in the Egyptian myth, who 
 cut in pieces the body of Osiris. So he 
 says : " They took the virgin Truth, hewed 
 her lovely form in a thousand pieces, and 
 scattered them to the four winds. From 
 that time ever since the sad friends of 
 
126 "Members of One Body" 
 
 Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the 
 careful search that Isis made for the 
 mangled body of Osiris, went up and down, 
 gathering limb by limb, as they could find 
 them. And we have not yet found them 
 all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do 
 so till her Master's second coming: he 
 shall bring together every joint and mem- 
 ber, and shall mould them into one immor- 
 tal feature of loveliness and perfection." 
 
 The partial truth which each sect illus- 
 trates but makes us long for the full truth 
 which would come, were all united. 
 
 We come through the study of the sects, 
 to the all-compelling ideal of the unity of 
 Christendom. The Church which will 
 satisfy us must be not in name, but in fact, 
 the Church of unity. The great things are 
 the things which make for unity. The 
 passion for righteousness, the love of truth, 
 the sense of need, the solemn awe in the 
 presence of the Infinite, the unconquerable 
 hope that looks on death and yet prophesies 
 life, what form of religion is so divine 
 that it does not find in these things the 
 spring of its power and the secret of its 
 
The Unity of Christendom 127 
 
 ineffable charm? And what form of relig- 
 ion is so poor that it does not to some de- 
 gree express these things? The earthen 
 vessels are various and grotesque; but the 
 treasure within is one, "for the excellency 
 of the glory is not of man, but of God." 
 
 But how may this unity be practically 
 realized? I have very little hope in any 
 external power that shall compel uniform- 
 ity. I think such external union under 
 present conditions neither desirable nor 
 practicable. When we read that different 
 competing firms have united their interests 
 in one great trust, we expect very soon after 
 to find a modest item in the papers to the 
 effect that this trust has taken measures 
 to limit production. And, were all the 
 churches of Christendom united in one 
 Church, the next movement would be to 
 repress the liberty of prophesying. If we 
 cannot have liberty and union, we must 
 cling ever to liberty. But I am one who 
 believes that through the most perfect lib- 
 erty will come at last the perfect unity. 
 
 You long for the communion of saints, 
 for the privilege of some large fellowship, 
 
128 "Members of One Body" 
 
 from which you imagine that you are shut 
 out by the different forms of ecclesiasticism. 
 But the problem of Christian unity can be 
 solved by each individual for himself. You 
 can have all the communion and all the 
 fellowship that you want if you are willing 
 to accept it in the way it comes. There is 
 no power in any sect or church that can 
 prevent that largeness of sympathy which 
 every man of true religion exercises. I 
 like that good old New England Puritan 
 who, when on account of some church quar- 
 rel he was excommunicated by the church, 
 refused to stay excommunicated. We read 
 that for twenty years the good man came 
 every communion Sunday, and brought with 
 him a bit of bread and bit of wine of his 
 own, and there, in the safety of his high 
 pew, communed with the church, in spite 
 of the deacons. When a man brings his 
 own communion with him, who can pre- 
 vent? Whether we shall enjoy the com- 
 munion of saints depends on ourselves. 
 The best that belongs to Calvinism and 
 the best that belongs to Romanism is mine, 
 if I seek it. This fellowship of the spirit, 
 
The Unity of Christendom 129 
 
 which is the only fellowship that one need 
 care to obtain, this fellowship is ours, if 
 we will. 
 
 I have said that religion is a life, and 
 life is that which brings unity. We come 
 into sympathy with each other just in pro- 
 portion as our life grows strong and full. 
 The problem of church relations must 
 always settle itself according to the de- 
 mands of one's own life. 
 
 What each one of us wants in religion is 
 a more abundant life, and the only question 
 is whether this form or that form gives it. 
 Does a certain form of religion satisfy your 
 deepest needs? Does it make life larger 
 and more radiant? Does it make the laws 
 of duty seem more absolute and divine? 
 Then that is your religion, though all the 
 world should scorn it; that is your word of 
 life, because, when you hear it, you live. 
 So long as it thus speaks to you, your work 
 is to leave all and follow it. 
 
 But has the time come when it ceases to 
 be this? Does it no longer speak to you in 
 a voice of divine authority, but has it begun 
 to apologize for its own existence? Does 
 
130 "Members of One Body" 
 
 it no longer bear you up as with great 
 wings, but has it become a dead weight 
 which you must carry? Does it seem most 
 doubtful to you when your mind is clearest, 
 least necessary to you when you are most in 
 need? Is your religion no longer some 
 bright ideal, but only a reminiscence of 
 the past? Does it no longer compel 
 the upward look and the onward step? 
 Then, though all men say that this is the 
 only religion of the world, flee from it 
 as from a graven idol. This is no longer 
 your religion: it is your superstition. 
 You are no longer in the great current of 
 religious life: you are only in 
 
 " Some dry river channel where the bulrushes tell 
 How the water was wont to go warbling so sweetly 
 and well." 
 
 But, though the water once flowed never 
 so sweetly along that channel, it is nothing 
 now to you. But the living waters are not 
 far away. Even now you hear their mur- 
 mur. 
 
 " From heart to heart, from creed to creed, 
 The hidden river runs." 
 
The Unity of Christendom 131 
 
 And, when you find what is indeed the 
 spring of your true inspiration, you will 
 find those waters again which shall satisfy 
 your thirst. 
 
 That which once was true you tell me is 
 true no longer; that which once you loved 
 with all your heart seems no longer worthy 
 of your devotion. But may it not be be- 
 cause some higher truth, some purer love, 
 is coming to you? Then the thing which 
 your heart at its best most purely loves, 
 that follow; that truth which your own 
 mind most clearly sees, that speak; and, 
 finding there the secret of the upbuilding 
 of your individual religious life, you come 
 upon the secret of religious unity as well, 
 for, "speaking the truth in love, we grow 
 up to Him who is the head." 
 
 Paul's glowing ideal still remains to 
 be fulfilled. It is the unity of religion 
 through the fulfilment of manhood. It is 
 not the artificial unity which comes when 
 individuality is suppressed, and all men are 
 reduced to a single pattern. It is the unity 
 which comes when "we are strong to appre- 
 hend with all the saints what is the breadth 
 
132 "Members of One Body" 
 
 and length and height and depth " of our 
 religion. It is the unity which comes 
 when we "walk worthily of the calling 
 wherewith we are called, with all lowliness 
 and meekness, with long suffering, forbear- 
 ing one another in love, giving diligence to 
 keep the unity of spirit in the bond of 
 peace." It is the unity which comes when 
 we recognize most clearly the varied gifts 
 of men, and how each is necessary to that 
 great body which grows by that "which 
 every joint supplieth, according to the 
 working in due measure of each several 
 part." It is the unity which cannot be 
 made perfect till manhood is made perfect, 
 "till we all come in the unity of faith unto 
 the full-grown man, unto the measure of 
 the stature of the fulness of Christ." 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY