YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

DEPOSITED BY THE

LINONIAN AND BROTHERS LIBRARY

WHAT IS RELIGION?
AND
OTHER STUDENT QUESTIONS

DR. HENRY S. PRITCHETT.
(President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

WHAT IS RELIGION?
AND
OTHER STUDENT QUESTIONS
€aifcg to College ^tuoentg

By HENRY S. PRITCHETT
PRESIDENT MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
(fflfw RitiE^iue pngf, Cambribse
1906

COPYRIGHT I906 BY HENRY S. PRITCHETT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published February igot>

P933

To
The students whose friendship and
fellowship form the inspi
ration of a college
president's life

PREFACE
The enormous change which has taken
place during the last generation in the atti
tude of educated men toward the questions
of formal religious authority and tradition
is nowhere so evident as in the genera
tion now entering manhood. The college
student of to-day has not in most cases
had the formal religious training which his
father received. He lacks the intimate
knowledge of the Scriptures which all
well-trained boys of the -last generation
had; traditional authority means less to
him and he has grown up in an intel
lectual atmosphere in which the scientific
generalizations of the last fifty years form
a part of the every-day philosophy of life.
He is not less religious than his father
was at his age nor less ready to think of
service and of noble things ; but there are

PREFACE
fewer influences in his life to draw his
attention to those everlasting questions
which have to do with human aspira
tions and human destiny. His life is less
rich in the things which create a religious
sense. His danger is the same as that
which confronts the American in all busi
ness life : that the pressure of the com
monplace and the utilitarian may crowd
out the thought of the larger and deeper
questions of philosophy, of religion, and of
service. However narrow may have been
the theology of the last century, the reli
gious training which went with it brought
continually before men's minds the things
which are spiritual and eternal. In the ad
justment of men's thoughts to the changes
of the last half-century much has been done
to impair the influence of the religious
leadership which comes from systematic
teaching and formal church organization.
No one can be brought into close con
tact to-day with large bodies of students

PREFACE
— alert, clear-minded, enthusiastic young
men — without a deep sense of the lack in
their lives of spiritual and religious influ
ences. They are not less quick to respond
to such influences than their fathers; but
the old traditional voices of authority no
longer appeal to them, and in the hurry
of modern life the things which are tender
and deep and spiritual seem to have less
and less opportunity to be considered in
comparison with the pressing occupations
of the present. Men's souls are over
whelmed by the great current of the com
monplace, the material, the utilitarian,
and the student is in that current. If his
attention and his interest are to be drawn
to higher things it must be through a lead
ership which faces frankly the philosophy
of his time and which deals with the facts
of science and of religion in a spirit of in
tellectual sincerity. No cold and formal
rationalism will suffice, but a leadership
which shall be tender, hopeful, spiritual,
ix

PREFACE
and fearless ; in a word, a religious leader
ship, but one free of dogma. Whence
such a leadership is to come is one of the
difficult questions which to-day confronts
the church and humanity.
The addresses here brought together
arose out of questions coming to the front
in the day by day college life. They were
talks to different groups of students at
various times and places, sometimes before
a whole class, sometimes before smaller
bodies. There are throughout expressions
of a somewhat personal bearing, sentences
addressed ad hominem. These have been
left unchanged in the printed form, since
they serve to explain, in a measure, the
circumstances under which the talks were
given.
H. S. P.
December, 1905.

CONTENTS
I. What is Truth ?  i
II. What is Religion? .... 29
III. The Science of Religion . . 49
IV. The Significance of Prayer . 77
V. Ought a Religious Man to join
a Church?  95

I
WHAT IS TRUTH?

WHAT IS TRUTH?
" Truth is within ourselves : it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all
Where truth abides." Browning.
I welcome these meetings where, as mem
bers of a brotherhood, we discuss frankly
some of the larger philosophical ideas which
interest the whole world. And this not
simply for the reason that they bring me
into a face-to-face relation with you, but
also because these discussions serve to re
mind us that college life is a part of the
life of the world, and not a life isolated
from it.
To-day I wish to speak to you concern
ing the relations of citizens to each other
and concerning the guiding principle which
ought to govern men, in order that these
relations may be the best, not only for the
3

WHAT IS TRUTH?
individual, but for the State as well. And
in the outset I remind you again that col
lege education, if it be really an education,
ought to count in preparation for life, and
that the college and the life you lead in it
is a part of your life in the world.
You will find, both in college and in
that later life of which it is the beginning,
that with larger opportunity and larger
acquaintance you will be called upon to
deal in greater and greater measure with
questions which concern your social, polit
ical, and moral relations with other men.
In what way, may I ask, does your edu
cation in science help to the adjustment of
these relations, and is there in the study of
science that which serves to fix a guiding
principle of life and of conduct ?
I believe that there is such a principle
in the studies which you pursue. I go even
farther and say frankly that, if your scien
tific studies furnish you no suggestions in
these matters, if your education here does
4

WHAT IS TRUTH?
not connect itself with any philosophy of
life and of conduct, if it has not strength
ened your moral purpose and helped also
to clear your conception of truth and of
duty, then you have caught only the husks
of science, the grain has slipped through
your fingers ; you have acquired, not edu
cation, but training.
But in what way does scientific educa
tion minister to the right interpretation of
our duties in the social order in which we
find ourselves?
Let us consider for a moment how the
society which we know has come to exist,
and how the characteristics of the individ
uals who compose it have been formed.
For although, as Marcus Aurelius says,
man is a social animal, nevertheless he
became such only after a long and pain
ful history, and he brought into the so
cial order characteristics developed by
ages of experience under different condi
tions. 5

WHAT IS TRUTH?
Our knowledge of man goes back to a
period far distant, when he was a solitary
animal ; when he fought day by day with
other men and with the beasts of the field
for life itself. Gradually men became gre
garious, the family was merged into the
tribe and the tribe into the nation, until,
in the fullness of this twentieth century,
all civilized mankind are bound together
by ties of common interest and of com
mon sympathy.
Primitive man lived in complete free
dom. He concerned himself with no
thoughts of others. He recognized no
responsibility for others. But, as society
was slowly established, the individual ac
cepted certain limitations of his freedom
for the sake of the common good. He
assumed certain responsibilities which the
social order entailed. As time went on
the relations became more complex, and
the lines of influence between man and
man were enormously multiplied. Primi-
6

WHAT IS TRUTH?
tive man could be influenced at most by
the one or two fellow-savages whom he
met in his solitary wandering. The man
who influences you or me most strongly
may come from the other side of the world.
Modern life has become exceedingly com
plex. No man lives to himself. In one
way or another he may influence the lives
of a thousand men.
In a society so constituted, made up of
human beings who still retain the desire
of individual liberty, in whom the long
struggle for existence has implanted in
each the passion to do the best for himself,
how may the social order be maintained
and individual freedom and individual
efficiency be preserved? And in what
way does a study of science minister to
the maintenance of these relations?
My answer to the question is this:
The scientific method of study is charac
terized rather by a distinctive attitude of
mind toward truth than by any new ma-
7

WHAT IS TRUTH?
chinery for collecting facts. The scientific
method insists that the student approach a
problem with open mind, that he accept
the facts as they really exist, that he be
satisfied with no half-way solution, and
that, having found the truth, he follow it
whithersoever it leads.
To my thinking, the course which con
serves at once the social order and the
freedom of the individual is to be found
in a knowledge of the truth by the individ
ual citizen. And this knowledge of the
truth in our social relations is to be had by
use of the same method which we employ
in seeking for scientific truth. I believe
that the value of the citizen is measured
by his ability to know the truth and to
use it, and that his freedom is limited by
this same ability. I am convinced that
the process by which we acquire this abil
ity is the same whether the truth we seek
refer to questions of science or to questions
of morals. Science says to those who love
8

WHAT IS TRUTH?
her, Know truth and follow it. In so
doing you serve best your fellow-men and
yourself. But I can understand the questions which
such statements immediately raise in your
minds. In science, you say, one can know
the truth. In the chemical or in the phy
sical laboratory one can compare theory
with exact tests, and know whether his
results be true or not ; but one has no such
criterion for judgment in social and moral
questions. How is one to know the truth
in such matters in order that he may fol
low it?
In the days of the Roman emperors the
procurator of a certain conquered pro
vince in Asia Minor found before him two
parties, each of whom claimed to repre
sent the truth. On the one side were the
religious leaders of the province, earnest,
narrow, confident that they were the di
vinely appointed guardians of truth. On
the other side stood one accused by them
9

WHAT IS TRUTH?
of impiety, unbelief, and disregard of the
law. But when the accused spoke, his plea
for truth was so noble and so earnest that
it aroused the attention of even the care
less and reckless procurator; and, as he
looked in bewilderment from one to the
other, he asked, half helplessly, " What is
truth ? "
I can well imagine that many of you,
coming as you do from distant homes to a
strange city, taking up as you must new
duties amid new surroundings, find your
selves constantly in the presence of new
conceptions of duty concerning these mat
ters of every-day life. Some of the things
which you have been taught to look upon
as wrong you find done by those in whom
you have confidence. Some of the things
which you do are not in accord with the
views of your companions. And as you
observe this difference of opinion concern
ing those things which men consider right
in their relations with other men, I can well
10

WHAT IS TRUTH?
imagine you must now and then ask your
self the question, What is truth and where
am I to find it ?
Now, I do not pretend to be able to tell
you where the truth is. Perhaps my posi
tion is somewhat like that of the small
Swiss whom I met on top of the Gemmi
Pass, and of whom I asked the question,
" Where is Kandersteg ? " "I don't know,"
said he, " but there is the road to it." And
although each of us finds truth for himself,
if he find it at all, nevertheless I may be
able to point out some things which will
mark the way to it, whether you take one
path or another.
In order that a man may reach truth,
and having reached it make it effective, at
least two qualities are necessary. One is
what we call moral sense, earnestness of
purpose, desire to do that which is true.
The other is intellectual clearness, the
ability to think. And the result which a
man accomplishes is in large measure a
n

WHAT IS TRUTH?
function not of one but of both of these
qualities. You have in mechanics a formula for
the momentum of a moving body. This
momentum depends both upon the mass
of the body and upon its velocity, and is
equal to the product of the mass by the
velocity. The momentum of a man in
the social order in respect to truth is re
presented by a similar formula. His effi
ciency equals the moral purpose multiplied
into the ability to think straight.
The world's history is full of the story
of men who had one of these qualities
and who failed by lack of the other. It is
difficult to say which has done the greater
harm — blind devotion which would not
see, or intelligence which saw, but lacked
purpose and moral courage. Each has at
one time or another filled the world with
crime and suffering.
The scene to which I have just referred
furnishes an illustration of both these
12

WHAT IS TRUTH?
cases. The Jewish priests who clamored
for the death of the Nazarene were no
doubt in earnest in their belief that they
represented truth, but they lacked the
clearness of vision to recognize what truth
was. Pilate, on the other hand, educated
as a Roman knight, a man who knew the
world, intellectually alert, saw clearly that
this man who stood before him was no
criminal, that his words had extraordinary
depth and significance. In a weak way he
sought to turn aside the judgment of the
priests, but his lack of moral purpose
made this effort fruitless in the face of the
earnestness, perverted though it was, of
the scribes and the Pharisees.
And so, although no man can point out
to you the way of truth, although that
path is one which each one of you must
find by his own effort, to walk in this path
you will require not only moral earnest
ness, but intellectual clearness. One must
not only feel right, he must think straight ;
r3

WHAT IS TRUTH?
he must have not only sentiment, but
sense. But you will say that even those who
unite moral purpose with intellectual alert
ness, those who appeal both to conscience
and to intellect, even those men do not
agree in their attitude concerning what is
true in moral and in social questions.
These differences among honest, high-
minded, and intelligent seekers after truth
are discouraging and puzzling to the be
ginner. We have had in the daily press recently
an illustration of such difference of view
in a discussion concerning what is usually
called the drink question. Now, no ear
nest and no clear-headed man can fail to
recognize the misery and the crime which
go with the misuse of alcoholic liquors ;
but the discussion to which I refer brought
forward at least three distinctive opinions
as to the way in which this abuse should
be dealt with. 14

WHAT IS TRUTH?
One group of men believed that all
social drinking is wrong, and that such
drinking should be prohibited by law, as
other crimes are prohibited. A second
group held that, while wine-drinking is in
itself harmless, nevertheless the danger of
misuse is so great that all good men ought
to abstain from wine and discountenance
its use by others. A third group took the
ground that the question was one for each
individual to settle for himself; that truth
required the admission that a large num
ber of those who drink wine use it in a
rational way; that temperance and truth
lie along the same path; that the real
lesson which mankind has to learn is the
lesson of self-control and of rational living.
It is not my purpose to discuss any of
these views, all of which have been ear
nestly and conscientiously maintained. But
the point to which I wish to call your
attention is this. The question whether
you accept one or another of these views
15

WHAT IS TRUTH?
is of comparatively small importance ; but
it is of infinite importance to you that, in
these and in similar questions, you find
your own conception of the truth, as con
science and mind direct; and, having
reached a result, that you have the courage
to follow that conception whithersoever it
leads. It means little for you to accept my
view of truth or any other man's view of
truth. It means everything to you to deter
mine out of an open heart and an alert
mind your own conception of truth, and,
having done this, to keep the courage of
such conviction. And if your training in
science is to have any deeper meaning,
if it is to connect itself not only with the
problem of making a living, but also with
a real philosophy of life, then the habit
of open-mindedness which you have been
trained to use in science, this scientific
method, as it is called, is also the attitude
of mind in which you should approach all
questions. 16

WHAT IS TRUTH?
There is a feeling that too much truth
is not a good thing, at least for men be
tween the ages of nineteen and twenty-four.
And sometimes, when one's conceptions of
truth, particularly in social and moral ques
tions, lead directly across the conventional
and traditional lines, one is tempted to ask
whether, after all, it is not better to fall in
with the view of other men and travel their
road. All men of serious purpose, whether
their lives be passed in the public view or
not, face this question at one time or an
other ; for all men who have earnestness
and intelligence become leaders in greater
or less degree. In such a moment of hesi
tation there is one voice which speaks down
the centuries — the voice of one greater
than Marcus Aurelius, greater than philo
sopher or poet or priest, whose utterance is
so clear and so straightforward that it brings
courage to doubting souls and shows the
way for timid hearts. That voice says,
" Know the truth, and the truth shall make
i7

WHAT IS TRUTH?
you free." My brothers, there is no free
dom worth the having other than that free
dom which a man enters into when he
follows truth as his own heart and his own
mind enable him to see it. Know the truth,
and, as the Master says, it shall make you
free: free from discouragement and free
from fear. For the real dragons that de
stroy men's souls are not food and drink,
but the weakness which allows passion to
become the master, not the slave, of the
mind; the selfishness which sees only per
sonal interest and personal gain ; the men
tal lethargy which accepts error rather
than seek truth ; the lack of vision which
fails to recognize the truth; the lack of
moral purpose to follow the truth when it
is seen ; and the fear which turns aside or
renders powerless the noblest purpose and
the finest conception.
There is another quality of the mind
which ought also to enter into one's atti
tude toward truth, and which is character-
18

WHAT IS TRUTH?
istic of the scientific spirit and of the
scientific method ? This quality is toler
ance. For how strong soever one feels him
self to be in purpose, and how sure soever
he may consider his conception, other men
just as sincere, possibly as able, will discern
truth in a different direction and approach
it by another path. No man, no party, no
sect, and no religion has a divine monopoly
either of truth itself or of the ways by which
truth may be found. History is full of the
story of those who parted, the one from
the other, each to follow truth as he saw it,
to find that their divergent paths came, in
the end, to the same destination.
A steamer which sails from San Francisco
for Yokohama sets her course when she
leaves the Golden Gate to follow the arc
of a great circle, and plows her way sturdily,
straight on through storm or sunshine to
her destination. A sailing vessel setting out
from the same port will sail first on one tack
and then on another, and her path will be
l9

WHAT IS TRUTH?
determined by the winds and currents. Yet
each sails by the same compass and each
comes in the end to the same port.
It is in some such way that men with
different training and different equipment
arrive after all at the same truth by widely
different paths, and after different expendi
ture of time and labor. The personal equa
tion enters into our judgment of truth as
it does into all human thinking. It is no
part of the scientific teaching to deny to
another the same freedom in the search
for truth which he himself claims. The
scientific man of all others should be tol
erant. This does not mean that the scientific
method excuses a man for his failure to use
all the means in his power to come at the
truth. It does not forgive a man when he
seeks in a devious way that which he ought
to reach by a direct road. It does not hesi
tate to criticise a man who embarks on a
sailing vessel when he ought to go by
20

WHAT IS TRUTH?
steamer. And above all it boldly opposes
that which it conceives to be false.
The principle that free expression of
opinion is conceded to those who differ from
the recognized authorities is a lesson which
individuals and parties, societies and na
tions, have been slow to learn. This right, so
far as social, political, and religious questions
are concerned, is limited to-day by curious
social and geographic lines. It is the boast
of our Anglo-Saxon stock that political
and religious freedom has found its fairest
fruitage in Anglo-Saxon civilization. We
who live under a regime which guarantees
to each citizen freedom of thought and of
speech do well to recall now and then the
mistakes and the difficulties through which
our fathers came to learn this lesson. It is a
story full of the weaknesses and of the
strength of humanity; a story of progress
step by step, with many halts and back
ward steps ; a story of cruelty and of devo
tion, of the blindness of the many and of
21

WHAT IS TRUTH?
the clear vision of the few; but a story
always of human progress toward truth.
For the desire to compel other men to
accept one's own view of truth has been
confined to no class and to no age. It has
been a very human characteristic since the
days when men lived in caves and dressed
in skins. Kings and priests, having had
most power in their hands, have had most
opportunity to use the argument of force.
Mahomet found that the sword was the
surest argument to convert a stubborn con
vert, and doubtless he was thoroughly
honest in his belief. The priests who cru
cified Christ felt no doubt of their devotion
to truth. A few centuries later those who
called themselves followers of Christ found
in their hands the power to persecute men
for their opinions, and they did not hesi
tate to use it. As the Rev. John Cotton,
in his controversy with Roger Williams,
naively asserted, persecution is not wrong
in itself. "It is wicked," said he, "for
22

WHAT IS TRUTH?
falsehood to persecute truth, but it is the
sacred duty of truth to persecute falsehood,"
and that teaching bore strange fruit for
New England soil.
Boston Common, scarce a stone's throw
from this room, lies to-day white and fair
under last night's snowfall. As we look
upon it our memories go back to the days
of 1775, and to those later scenes which
preceded the Civil War. We think of
Boston Common as sacred to liberty and
to freedom and to the rights of man ; and
I believe there is no spot on earth more
truly dedicated to human freedom. Yet
it has beheld other scenes than gatherings
of indignant colonists or groups of patriot
citizens anxious for their country's future.
Our thoughts seldom go back to that
October morning in 1659, when William
Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and
Mary Dyer were led out on Boston Com
mon, to be hanged for teaching the doc
trines of the Quakers. It is not easy for us
23

WHAT IS TRUTH?
at this day to realize that men and women
could be hanged on that free soil for reject
ing the doctrine of original sin and of the
resurrection of the body, for denying the
efficacy of baptism, and for asserting the
absolute right of private judgment. And
I remind you of this scene, not to compare
our liberality with the narrowness of our
fathers, but to call your attention to the
fact that by their very earnestness of pur
pose and by their examination and discus
sion of religious questions the fathers found
the path to truth, though long and rough ;
persecution gave way to tolerance, and a
colony founded to perpetuate a special
view of divine truth became a State where
any man may follow truth as his own heart
and his own mind direct. And this ideal
is, after all, that toward which great souls
have labored in all ages. For this scientific
method is no new invention of the nine
teenth century. The men who have led
humanity have always been those who
24

WHAT IS TRUTH?
went forward with open hearts and with
clear minds. For literature and science and
politics and religion are not separate and
distinct things, but only different parts of
the same thing ; different paths by which
men have sought after beauty and truth
and righteousness — and these are one.
Therefore let me hope that your study
of science may mean something more to
you than the facts of chemistry and of
physics, which you learn in the laboratory.
And, if I may be remembered by you
when you have left these halls, I should
choose to be remembered as one who taught
you to approach the problems of your
duties and relations with men in the same
spirit in which you approach a problem in
the laboratory — to be content with no lie,
to rest in no evasion of the truth ; to work
out, with the help of a tender conscience
and an alert mind, your own conceptions
of truth, and having reached such concep
tions, to follow them. And this is the
25

WHAT IS TRUTH?
answer to my question. We know truth
when we reach it of our own effort and
make it our truth. The politics and the
religion which a man inherits, without
thinking and without effort, count little
toward his political and his spiritual de
velopment. Men differ, and will always
differ, as to what truth is in this or in that
matter, but that man finds truth who
seeks it ; he serves truth who follows it
fearlessly; he serves his fellow-men who
does all this with humility and with tol
erance. In the Church service of to-day is pre
served a short prayer : " Grant us in this
world knowledge of thy truth, and in the
world to come the life everlasting. " It has
come down to us from one of the heroes
of the early Church, him whom men called
the golden-tongued ; one who, after a life
of devotion and of courage and of toler
ance, died at the hands of ignorance and
jealousy. The words of this prayer, few
26

WHAT IS TRUTH?
and simple as they are, seem to me to ask
all that a human soul can ask — in this
world knowledge of God's truth, in the
world to come the life everlasting. The
educated man, the courageous man, the
tolerant man has no other prayer.

II
WHAT IS RELIGION?

WHAT IS RELIGION?
But this I confess unto thee, that after the way
which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my
fathers. — St. Paul.
The most significant thought in all the
universe is the idea of God and of our re
lation to Him. And yet I suppose there
is no other fact of fundamental importance
to which we bring so little of our individ
ual thinking. Most of us accept our con
ceptions of God and of this relation exactly
as our fathers handed them down to us;
and if we begin to think for ourselves about
them our very first feeling is one of unfaith
fulness and of disloyalty to the religion of
our fathers.
You have come from religious homes.
Some of you have come for the first time
to share the complexities of a city life.
You are being trained under a system of
31

WHAT IS RELIGION?
thinking whose fundamental condition is
intellectual sincerity. In your scientific
work you are taught to question any result
and to prove and test it. It is impossible
that this training should not have its influ
ence upon your religious ideals if you think
at all about such matters. A man said to
me, some time ago, " I send my boy to a
scientific school because I feel that here
neither his religion nor his politics will be
affected." I want to say to you that such
a school does not exist, or, if it does exist,
it ought not. A school whose intellec
tual current is so feeble that it does not set
an intelligent man to thinking about his
relations to God and to his country is no
place to stimulate a man to right think
ing in chemistry or in physics or in mathe
matics. So surely as you and I live you will go
from your work in college with your re
ligious conceptions changed by your life
here ; it may be quickened and deepened,
32

WHAT IS RELIGION?
with new visions of truth and tenderer real
ization of your relations to other men, it
may be with these conceptions repressed or
distorted. As your study here is to give
a new orientation with respect to truth, so
also will it give you a new orientation with
respect to that part of truth which has to
do with religion. Now my concern is that
in this inevitable search of your conceptions
of truth, in this orientation of yourself with
respect to all thinking, you should not lose
perspective. The mistake which many a
student makes is the conclusion that when
he begins to do his own thinking he is no
longer religious, no longer worshiping the
God of his fathers. So closely is our social
life interwoven with certain religious forms
and customs that to change the one seems
like breaking with all the rest. And yet it
is true to-day that a vast body, perhaps the
great majority, of college men worship the
God of their fathers after the way which
a generation ago was universally called
33

WHAT IS RELIGION?
heresy, and which is to-day considered by
many devout men and women, some of
them your fathers and your mothers, little
better than heresy. Into this company of
scientific men you have come. You are to
learn their methods of reasoning, which are
to become your methods. In the transfor
mation which this is sure to make in your
intellectual life there is not the slightest
danger to your religion or to religious truth.
But there is danger that you may mistake
for religion something which is not religion
at all. There is a strong probability that
you may think you no longer worship the
God of your fathers when in fact you are
worshiping Him more truthfully, more sin
cerely, more effectively than ever before.
My brothers, there is no fact in all your
life which is laden with such momentous
consequences to you as the fact of religion ;
therefore I have thought we could spend
a half-hour in no better way at the begin
ning of a school year, and the beginning
34

WHAT IS RELIGION?
for many of you of your college life, than
to ask ourselves frankly the question, What
is religion? For if one has once clearly
understood what religion is he has gone
far on the path which takes him out of the
region of doubts and apprehensions and
uncertainties as to his own future and his
relation to the religion of his fellow-men.
And what is Religion as the man of
science apprehends it? Stripped of all
forms of conventional language, laying
aside the imagery and the traditions which
cling about the very word itself, religion
presents itself to the man trained in science
as nothing other than the divine life in
the human soul, a life which manifests
itself as all life manifests itself, by the
growth which it brings forth, the divine
flowers of the human heart, unselfishness,
love, fearlessness, serenity, patience, ser
vice. I do not know that this brings to your
mind any clear notion of what I am trying
35

WHAT IS RELIGION?
to describe. Let us see if I can illustrate
what I mean by a comparison drawn from
one of the most common of scientific con
ceptions ; for we men are so close to the
relations and laws of matter that we are
constantly forced to illustrate our spiritual
conceptions by material processes.
To us men living on the earth there
is only one source of energy: the sun.
Darken the sun and all motion would stop,
all life would disappear, every engine
would cease to turn, for the coal whose
burning supplies the energy for the engine
is itself only stored energy of the sun.
And every mill, every engine, every dy
namo, every human body, merely trans
forms solar energy and turns it to the work
of the world.
Now according to the thinking of men
of science, behind all nature, behind all
life, behind all our visible forms of energy,
stands an infinite and eternal energy whom
we call God. Just as from the sun the
36

WHAT IS RELIGION?
energy of sunlight streams down upon the
earth and is transformed into all living
things, all forms of beauty, all flowers, all
motions and all the life of our planet, so
also the infinite and eternal energy radiates
into all the universe, the source of all
energy, whether of the body, of the mind,
or of the spirit. Into every human soul
this divine energy falls, just as the sun
light falls upon the flowers, and every
human soul becomes a transformer of that
energy. To receive this divine energy into
one's soul and to transform it effectively
into those spiritual forms which make for
justice, mercy, joy, unselfishness, serenity
of mind and of life, this is true religion.
If in your heart this divine transformation
is not going on day by day and year by
year you are not a religious man, no mat
ter what your denominational connections
or your formal professions may be. And
if, on the other hand, in the soil of your
heart these flowers are growing it matters
37

WHAT IS RELIGION?
very little whether you call yourself Catho
lic or Protestant, Episcopalian or Unita
rian, Methodist or Christian Scientist, or if
you belong to no religious organization
whatsoever. It is the life in your own soul
which determines whether you are a reli
gious man, not the things that you believe
or the name that you call yourself.
When the man of science who believes
himself a religious man expresses this view
of religion he finds himself confronted at
once by at least three questions which are
addressed to him by those who have ap
proached religion from the traditional
historical pathway, questions which are
accompanied oftentimes with uneasiness
and apprehensions. For there are few
human experiences more unsettling than
those which an earnest man is called upon
to undergo when he reviews the grounds
of his own faith and that of his fathers.
The questions are these : Does not
such a conception take from religion the
38

WHAT IS RELIGION?
idea of a personal God and our relations
as men with God our Father? Does it
not wipe out the distinction between reli
gious and irreligious men, between good
and wicked men, for as recipients of the
divine energy would not all men be reli
gious men ? And if this conception is true
what is the practical lesson which it brings
concerning the method by which a human
soul may become an efficient transformer
of the divine energy and therefore truly
religious? I shall try to answer these
questions as frankly as they can be asked,
and in the same spirit in which you are
taught to face the conclusions of scientific
truth in scientific problems.
That this conception of religion and of
God is inconsistent with the idea of a di
vine omnipotent person interfering directly
in the affairs of our lives and of our world
seems to me clear. The whole conception
of the universe as the man of science sees
it leads him to recognize the presence of
39

WHAT IS RELIGION?
God in the working of steadfast and un
changing laws. So far as his observations
go, and so far as his researches into the his
tory of mankind throw light upon the
question, no instance of such interference
has ever been known. On the other hand,
it is against his whole conception of the
orderly and just development of the uni
verse. But this does not mean that God has in
any way been changed by the change in
our conception. Nor does it follow that,
because we no longer think of Him as an
omnipotent person, our relations with Him
as the author and sustainer of the universe
have been changed. Whether we think of
God as the infinite and eternal energy
which is immanent in the universe, or
whether we think of Him as God our Fa
ther, it is still true that the way to know
Him is the same, and that He is not far
from every one of us. The method by
which we are to establish and freshen our
40

WHAT IS RELIGION?
acquaintance, and even our communion
with Him, is a matter in which each human
soul must seek its own way, just as each
human soul must be its own transformer of
the divine energy. Of what this commun
ion is I shall hope to speak to you again.
What I wish to say now is that the man
who finds that his reason leads him to accept
the scientific view of God does not truly
accept a spiritual relationship less rich, less
sincere, less helpful than he who thinks of
God as a Father and as governing directly
and arbitrarily the affairs of his own life
and of his own world. Do not for one mo
ment let yourself believe that, if you find
the traditional historical conception of re
ligion impossible, you have thereby ceased
to be a religious man. Millions of devout
souls have found Him, some with joy and
some with pain, in the older way, and mil
lions more are to find Him, it may be with
greater joy and less anguish of mind, with a
heartier optimism, in the newer way.
4i

WHAT IS RELIGION?
As to the second objection, that such a
conception wipes out the distinction be
tween religious men and those who are not
religious, my reply is that this distinction
ought to be wiped out. There is no such
dividing line amongst men. No greater
wrong has been done to human kind than
that by which a tradition has been gradu
ally built up, under which certain men are
recognized as religious because of belong
ing to an organization, while others are
counted as lacking religion because they
do not belong to an organization. Into all
human souls the divine energy is poured
freely and impartially; all men are religious
in greater or less degree, and no dividing
line separates one from another. We are all
God's creatures.
As the radiant light of the sun falls upon
our earth each plant takes up the waves of
vibrant energy after its own ability. In one
plant this energy is transformed into the
beauty of the rose, in another into the fruit-
42

WHAT IS RELIGION?
fulness of the corn, and in still another this
same energy is transmuted into the deadly
poison of the nightshade. In some such
way the spiritual energy radiated into each
human soul is there transformed into hu
man character and human action. In one
heart it is transmuted into justice and mercy
and truth, in another into selfishness and
greed and lust. Or, rather, in most human
hearts these flowers of love and hate, of ser
vice and greed, of mercy and cruelty, grow
side by side just as the rose and the strych-
nos in the same soil are transmuters of the
same sunlight. There is no human heart so
black but that some flower of religion will
grow there.
I remember many years ago, in trying
to find my way across a wild range of the
Rocky Mountains, coming suddenly, near
the summit, upon one of those singular
and dangerous quagmires which are some
times found in that region even at high
altitudes. The place seemed dry and safe
43

WHAT IS RELIGION?
enough to the eye, and presented the
only ready egress from a mass of fallen
timber. My horse hesitated to try it, for
the mountain horses have good reason to
dread those terrible black pits in which a
man or an animal is sometimes entirely
swallowed in an astonishingly brief time.
On my urging, however, he plunged for
ward, and at the first step the dangerous
nature of the bog was evident. In an
instant he had sunk to the shoulders, and
the treacherous character of the place could
be seen by the shaking of the whole mass
for yards around like a huge bowl of ugly
black jelly. How he got out I have never
quite known, but three minutes later we
stood on firm ground, gazing down at the
black muck of the pit from which we had
just escaped. As I looked I saw grow
ing out of the very heart of the ruck a
mountain flower, white, innocent, pure. It
was a type of the human heart. For there
is no human heart so black, so foul, so bar-
44

WHAT IS RELIGION?
ren, that in its soil some divine flower of
love or devotion does not grow. There is
no human soul which is so poor a trans
former that it does not convert into love
or service some of the spiritual energy
whose vibrations it receives. As we are all
God's creatures, so truly are we all religious
men. One word, finally, as to the practical in
fluence of this conception upon our indi
vidual lives. And here those who accept
the scientific conception of the universe
come back to join hands with those who
are seeking God in another way. For
whether one thinks of Him according to
the one conception or the other, whether
we think of Him as the infinite and eter
nal energy showing itself in all law, all
order, all nature, or whether we think of
Him as a Father, the way to Him is the,
same. There is no way to become a reli
gious man in the truest sense, there is no
way to become efficient transformers of the
45

WHAT IS RELIGION?
divine energy except to open our hearts to
those forces which make for righteousness,
just as the flower turns to the sunlight.
The scientific conception contains no new
formula, it simply strips away many useless
and obsolete ones. He who believes reli
gion to be the most profound interest for
him will seek more and more to transmute
the divine energy in which he shares into
the things which make for spiritual life, and
less of this energy into the things which are
material. Back of our race stands the long
story of the brute ancestry, from which we
sprang, with its inherited tendency to self
ishness, to savagery, to greed. Very slowly
has the spiritual energy, that which makes
for righteousness, overcome in the human
heart the ancestral tendencies. The best of
human souls are far from being efficient
transformers of the divine energy. Those
of you who are electrical engineers will re
call how imperfect is the transformation of
energy which is effected in the electric lamp.
46

WHAT IS RELIGION?
We burn coal to make steam, and the en
ergy thus generated by the heat is converted
into mechanical energy, and this into elec
trical energy, and this finally into the energy
of the light waves. But less than one per
cent, of the original mechanical energy
stored in the coal is reproduced in the en
ergy of the light rays. The rest has been
dissipated or used up in heat which does
no work. The transformation in our indi
vidual hearts is akin to this process. Each
human soul takes up the spiritual energy
which comes so generously to it and trans
forms the greater part of it into those things
which serve self-interest, passion, luxury,
the things of to-day. Only the remnant is
left for transmutation into those things
which are spiritual and eternal. And yet
slowly, century by century, the race has
risen in spiritual efficiency. And he who
knows best the story of this rise will face
with renewed courage the problem of his
own spiritual life. The practical problem
47

WHAT IS RELIGION?
to which you and I will address ourselves
is the problem of greater spiritual efficiency,
the problem of transforming more of the
divine energy into unselfish things, and less
into those things which are material. In
proportion as we do this we become reli
gious men. And in just such proportion as
we succeed, in just such proportion do we
realize that we are coming into relations
with that God whom our fathers worshiped,
even though we do this after the way
which they called heresy. And the man
who has come to a realization of this in his
own heart and soul has already ceased to
fear that he has lost his religion, or that he
ever can lose it.

Ill
THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
" I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of
Heaven and Earth." — The Apostles' Creed.
One of the singular facts in the history of
mankind is that the questions which have
divided men in religious matters have been
in nearly all cases questions about the
science of religion, about the formulae of
faith, about the authority of religious
organization, not questions about religion
itself. And even in our day it is contin
ually necessary to draw attention to the
difference between religion and the efforts
which men have made to formulate it.
Some time ago I passed through a
chemical laboratory where a teacher was
explaining to a class a common chemical
reaction. The reaction itself was going on
in a retort on the table, while on the black
board was written the conventional for-
51

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
mula which in the science of chemistry is
used to describe the reaction. It so hap
pened that the instructor had made a mis
take in writing the formula; instead of
CO„ he had written COs. But this made
not the slightest difference in the reaction
which was going on in the flask.
Now the science of religion, which we
call theology, has some such relation to
religion itself as the chemical formula has
to the actual chemical reaction ; some such
relation as the science of botany has to the
living flowers ; some such relation as the
science of astronomy has to the everlasting
stars. This science of religion is impor
tant. It is of tremendous significance to
the race and to the individual that we
should formulate clearly and fairly our
thinking with respect to God and the life
of man with Him, but this science is of
very small importance in comparison with
the life itself. And it is of the greatest
moment that you distinguish between
52

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
religion, which is the divine life in the
soul of man, and theology, which is merely
the attempt to formulate our thinking
with respect to that life. The great reli
gious quarrels which have rent the world
have come in most cases from the attempt
of men to impose upon other men, not
their religion, but their science of religion.
The student of science who concerns
himself with any thoughtful philosophy
of life will not only question himself as
to the religion in his own heart, but he
will desire to know the scientific form of
thinking with respect to religion. At the
beginning of any serious study of the
matter there arises a fundamental question.
Has the thinking of scholars so far crys
tallized as to give a fair groundwork of
scientific truth which expresses the experi
ence and observation of men in regard to
religion? Is theology a science, in other
words, in the sense in which we use that
word in speaking of other sciences ?
53

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
As one studies the history of the Chris
tian Church he finds that at various epochs
in its history and by various bodies of men
efforts have been made to reduce to defi
nite form the conclusions of men concern
ing religion. Amongst the most famous
of these are the Nicene and the Apostles'
Creeds, both of the fourth century, the
Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of
England in 1563, the Westminster Con
fession of Faith of 1647, the expression of
the belief of the Presbyterian Church, and
the Twenty-five Articles of the Methodist
Church. These are some of the formulae
which have been devised by men to ex
plain their religious thinking. They belong
to the science of religion.
The student of science is early brought
to understand that the term science is used
in widely different senses. Sometimes it is
qualified by the word exact, as indicating
a science in which the laws of the pheno
mena are so relatively simple and so easy
- 54 --

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
of mathematical demonstration that the
problems of the science may be solved
with certainty and exactness. For exam
ple, in the science of astronomy the laws
and the phenomena of planetary motion
are so completely known that they may
be made the subject of exact calculation,
and two astronomers with the same data
will eventually reach the same conclusion.
A man's results may be for the moment
unlike those of his fellow workers, but in
such cases differences of opinion are easily
adjusted. A renewed testing of observa
tions or of reasoning process will show
that somebody was in error.
Again we use the word science to indi
cate the collection and correlation of facts
with regard to a certain set of related phe
nomena when knowledge of their funda
mental laws is still wanting. Meteorology,
for instance, is hardly more than a vast
collection of undigested observations, from
which a few generalizations have been
55

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
drawn. The difficulty of exact prediction
here arises wholly from the extent and
complexity of the facts. The day is cer
tainly far distant when meteorology will
become a science in the same sense as
astronomy or chemistry, but in theory
there is no reason why that day should
not come.
Finally, the word science is used to cover
certain fields of study where the facts are
not only complicated but dependent upon
the individual point of view. Thus in the
study of politics all the data are affected
by the personal relations and prejudices of
those who furnish them.
Now it requires little consideration to
show that the science of religion is not an
exact science. The chemist, whether he be
English, Italian, or Russian, will describe
a chemical reaction by the same formula.
The theologians of England, of Italy, and
of Russia will use vastly different formulae
in their respective sciences of religion. The
56

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
science of religion can scarcely be com
pared to meteorology (which is a science
in the forming), because in religion the hu
man element enters so powerfully. It is
more akin to the group of sciences which
deal with the relations of men with each
other, the social and political sciences.
The formulation of thought in religious
science has gone on, at least until a very
recent day, under a pressure unknown in
any other science: that is, the pressure of
a belief on the part of nearly every worker
in the science that his own soul's salvation
was intimately connected with the formula
which he devised and advocated. The dis
coveries and the formulae of the great
scientists like Newton or Pasteur come to
us in a form in which any follower who
desires to do so may repeat and verify the
steps. The work of the great theologians
like Athanasius and Augustine has more
resemblance to that of the great artists :
visions of truth as seen by great souls, but
57

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
subjective, not such as may be tested and
proven by those who follow.
Let us consider for a moment the oldest
of these efforts to which I have referred,
the Apostles' Creed, which is to-day the
formula of Christendom.
The noble sentences of this creed have
been in the mouths of most of us from our
earliest recollections. It is interwoven with
our tenderest memories. And yet it is es
sentially a scientific rather than a religious
paper, for it undertakes to give in formal
specific terms the results of man's thinking
with respect to God and the relations of
men with Him. Perhaps there are few of
us who are equipped to examine this paper
as a scientific formula. We may at least
note that the fundamental conception con
tained in the first words of the creed is not
very far away from the scientific conception
of to-day. " I believe in God, the Father
Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth,"
is an expression of man's experience and
58

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
conviction which is not so very different
from Mr. Herbert Spencer's generalization
that " We are ever in the presence of an
infinite and eternal energy from which all
things proceed." It is true that in the first
expression God is referred to as a Father,
but the idea of an Almighty Father, the
Maker of the Universe, is scarcely less im
personal than that of the infinite source of
all our thoughts and energies. This gen
eralization that God exists and that in Him
we live and move and have our being is,
I believe, as truly the expression of the
scientific thought of to-day as it was of the
scientific thought of the fourth century.
Does the same statement hold of the
other articles of this creed ? Can the man
of science accept them as well ? If we
agree that religion is a divine life in the
human soul, is that life dependent upon
the acceptance of these beliefs ? Does our
adherence to the doctrine of the Trinity or
the remission of sins or the resurrection of
59

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
the body freshen that life and cause it to
blossom into the fruits of love and mercy
and service ? In a word, is an acceptance
of these doctrines of the creed a necessary
or important part of religion ?
All men who study and read will find
these questions at some time or another
lying squarely across the path of their in
tellectual growth. Some go around them,
some rush at them as if to sweep them
down, some answer them with searchings
of heart. There is the youth who means
as yet to evade moral issues. He has some
where heard that the doctrines of the church
have been entirely disposed of by some
body, and he welcomes an attack on the
conventional theology. He is ready to dis
miss all such questions as obsolete. There
is the serious man — he may be a scien
tific man, or at least a scientific man in the
making — who believes that much of the
older theology is out of date, but who feels
genuine uneasiness at the fear that there
60

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
may be a practical mistake in the modern
criticism or a real loss to the world by re
moving restraints which have made for
righteousness. And there is the man who
accepts more or less firmly the formula of
the creed, but who wishes to be fair. He
deplores modern unbelief, but recognizes
it as an apparently necessary danger of any
sort of higher education, and asks only
what the higher education has to offer in
return for the old faith. To him the scien
tific conception of God as the infinite and
eternal energy seems vague and shadowy
in comparison with his thought of God as
a Heavenly Father. The statement that
religion is to be lived by opening our
hearts to the divine energy seems to him a
very indistinct and hesitating voice along
side the words, " I believe in the Holy
Catholic Church, the forgiveness of sins,
and the life everlasting." Are we to throw
away, he asks, these definite beliefs of two
thousand years and receive in return only
61 ,

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
the vague conception of a power behind
nature and a still more indistinct direction
of the way by which we are to find Him ?
To these questionings and anxieties the
scientific seeker for truth can perhaps give
no answer which will be satisfactory to all.
The best he can do is to make clear his
own ground and to do this with full respect
for the faith of others and due regard to his
own limitations. He must recognize, too,
that notwithstanding the fact that the creed
is essentially a scientific paper prepared by
experts after long discussions and many
compromises, its significance as a scientific
formula was soon overshadowed by the
influence which it came to have over the
hearts of men. The place which it fills to
day has little to do with its scientific origin.
As we repeat the words it is not of their
scientific value or even of their truthfulness
that we concern ourselves. Not one in a
thousand of us has spent an hour's thought
on the doctrine of the Trinity or the remis-
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
sion of sins or the resurrection of the body.
The words are precious to us from their
associations with solemn and tender scenes
of our lives, from their suggestions of a
Saviour of the world and the hope and com
fort of a better life. Our hearts turn gladly
from the somewhat cold scientific words
of the first sentence to the intensely human
and sympathetic figure of Christ, and we
realize that it is through our emotions that
this venerated creed touches us. It is this
precious freightage of the traditions, the
hopes, the longings of twenty centuries
of which one must think if he is to sweep
away the dogmas of the church as non
essentials. It is this consideration which
makes the answers to the questions I have
proposed equally difficult for the religious
man who wishes to be fair-minded, whether
he adhere to the old faith or to the new,
whether his science be theology or physics.
Men's intellectual differences generally
come, not from differences in intellectual
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
capacity, but from difference in the point
of view ; and nothing is more difficult for
any of us than to get a fair perspective from
another man's viewpoint. The more sure
one is of his own view of truth the less
likely is he to estimate fairly the attempt
of another who is judging the same set of
facts from another point of observation.
And perhaps nowhere have good and true
men shown such disregard of other men's
intellectual and spiritual rights (if one may
use that term) as in their discussions con
cerning the formulae and philosophy of
religion ; for these discussions have rarely
been held regarding religion itself.
It is generally only by some chance ex
pression that we are brought to realize how
completely we neglect at times the stand
point of our friend in trying to impress
upon him our own view of truth. I shall
never forget the impression made upon me
by the words of a very intelligent oriental
in one of the East India islands, himself a
64

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
teacher, concerning an exposition of reli
gion which he had just heard from a Euro
pean. Speaking without bitterness but
with feeling he said, " You gentlemen from-
Europe and America invite us to accept
your religion, but you preface your invi
tation with the extraordinary condition
that we must first forget the long religious
history of our own race and the virtues
which we as a people have cultivated in
thousands of years of slow progress." " The
position which you assume toward us,"
said he, " is very like that taken by an aged
student of mine, for with us it is not un
common to find students who have passed
their threescore and ten. This man had
labored for many years over a theory of the
planetary motions, and had finally brought
his theory, as he thought, to perfection, and
felt it a duty to give it to the world. To
him it stood for truth. He began his ex
planation by this preliminary statement:
'Before you can understand my theory
65

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
you must divest yourself of all the con
ceptions which your mathematical train
ing has given you.' ' Alas,' said I, ' what
you ask is impossible, and beside, if I
should do this, how can I test the correct
ness of your theory ? ' Would it not be
possible for you Europeans to invite us
into your religious fellowship without ask
ing us to throw away all that we have
learned from centuries of slow tuition under
the same God who rules in Europe and
America ? " I never before realized what
it implied when one asks a man to aban
don the religion of his race to accept that
of another. The sincere believer in the
formulae of the older Christian faith doubt
less feels some such protest rising in his
heart, even if unexpressed, when he is
asked to think of religion as a simple life
of the soul, independent of all formulae and
all creeds and all organizations. The two
points of view are widely different. Let us
try briefly to state them. 66

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
Both the older science of theology and
the modern science of evolution recognize
back of nature a governing and controlling
power which makes for righteousness and
which we call God ; but the former repre
sented Him to men as a divine person
ruling the universe by arbitrary acts and
changing the circumstances of our lives at
the request or need of his children, while
the latter discerns in Him the sustainer
of the universe and the giver of all our
life, but ever working through steadfast
and unchangeable laws.
The philosophy of the old theology
looked upon man as a creature fallen from
a high estate, morally diseased and only to
be restored to companionship with God by
the fulfillment of a certain plan devised for
that purpose. The provisions of this plan
are contained in the creeds : the sacrifice
of the Saviour, his resurrection, his judg
ment, the Church, the remission of sins,
the life hereafter. It is true also that the
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
science of theology recognized what was
called natural religion, but only in a second
ary sense.
The philosophy of modern science con
templates the race from an entirely differ
ent point of view. It looks upon man as
occupying a place in nature to which he
has come by many ages of normal devel
opment. Behind him lie a brute ancestry,
ages of war for existence, centuries of slow
progress which have left their imprint in
his physical and moral constitution; but
his face is turned toward the light, and his
progress is upward.
" Man as yet is being made, and ere the crowning Age
of ages,
Shall not aeon after aeon pass and touch him into
shape ? "
With this effort to make clear the differ
ences in the points of view, I think the
attitude of the general body of scientific
men toward the formulae of the creed may
be expressed in some such words as these,
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
so far as one of limited scientific experience
may hope to voice them.
First of all, the man of science is en
gaged in no propaganda to uproot the
faith or the convictions of other men,
whether young or old. Looking upon
religion as a life in the individual soul, he
is happy to see that life made fruitful by
any means which the individual finds to
nourish it. For himself he must regard
that life as a very different thing from the
formula? which are intended to define it;
and, if he examine these formulae at all, he
must apply to them the same tests which
he would apply in any other study, and
he must be satisfied to go only so fast
and so far as he can be sure of the truth.
Though science has no specifics for man's
spiritual salvation, it looks with perfect
faith into the future, in the belief that the
progress of the race is sure. It does not
undertake to answer the questions of the
future which are beyond our ken, but it
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
points all men joyfully toward a life with
God as the normal life.
It is perhaps here that the religious man
of science parts company with the religious
man of creed, — in the different estimate
which he puts upon truth for its own sake.
The result which he is able to accept may
seem less definite, perhaps less comforting
to the hope, but his training leads him to
believe that nothing is worth while but the
truth, and that its pursuit and possession
form in the end their own exceeding great
reward. He has a faith quite as sincere,
quite as earnest, as any other believer,
that along this road of truth-seeking, of
open-mindedness, of modest study, lie that
sincerity, that discipline, that clear vision
which in the end lead to justice and mercy
and unselfishness ; which lead, in a word,
to the growth in the soul of that life which
is religion. It is a constructive, not a de
structive faith. To such a man there is in
finite comfort and steadying power in the
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
thought that the new faith, if it does not
see so far as the old, at least looks up to
God with clear eyes. Unable to read the
problems of the future fully, it undertakes
to give no doubtful solution, but trusts that
solution without fear to the power which
has brought us up out of the baser life and
set our faces toward the light. The man
of science is profoundly hopeful. He be
lieves in God, he believes also in man and
his destiny. His faith is that voiced by
Tennyson in the lines : —
"I stretch faint hands of faith and hope
And gather dust and chaff and call
To what I feel is Lord of All,
And faintly trust the larger hope."
One cannot overlook the fact that the
very definiteness of the formulae of the
older creeds of Christendom appeals to
something universal in human nature. A
clear statement will nearly always pass for
a true one. Men instinctively reach out
for specifics, and nowhere so eagerly as
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
in those things which pertain to health,
whether of the body or of the soul. Yet
there are few specifics in all nature, either
for bodily or spiritual health. The ordi
nary human being, to live in health, must
depend not upon specific medicines but
upon leading a normal life in accordance
with the laws of nature. He must open
his lungs to the fresh air, take into his
stomach wholesome food, and lead a ra
tional life. Health follows as a result of
the laws of physical being with which the
individual has put himself in accord ; and
yet the advice to lead wholesome lives, to
eat simple food, to breathe fresh air, seems
so indefinite that we generally fail to dis
cipline ourselves to undertake these things.
In the same way the invitation to spiritual
health, to open one's heart to the things
that make for righteousness, for unselfish
ness, for service, seems very indefinite. It
is far easier and simpler to discipline our
minds to the defense or even to the ac-
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
ceptance of some formula or of some
specific dogma.
In the case of both the physical and the
spiritual health-seeking it is a life to
which the man is called: a day by day
submission of his body and of his soul to
the laws of the universe in which he finds
himself, not a spasmodic, isolated effort.
It is at this point that we find it hard to
overcome the inertia of society, the inbred
selfishness of our race, the pleasure of the
hour. And it is always so much easier to
point the way to such a life than to lead
it ; so much easier to try a specific for dis
ease than to follow the laws of health ; so
much pleasanter to our self-complacency
to talk about the religious life than to
live it.
After all, the practical problem is the
same to every man, whatever his philo
sophy of life. The difficulties of natural
depravity are exactly the same as those of
the brute inheritance. The chemical reac-
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
tion in the retort is the same, whichever
formula is used. Whether one accept the
one hypothesis or the other, the problem
of the individual man is to adjust himself
to the world in which he lives, to lay hold
of the spiritual energy which is poured
out upon him, to find his own way to
God and to a life with Him.
And now in closing let me say one
word in the direction in which I began. I
have spoken to you in regard to the science
of religion, not because I thought you
were interested in theology, but because I
know from daily experience that you are
constantly mistaking theology for religion,
constantly confusing the science of reli
gion with the divine life in the human
soul, which is religion. It is as if a man
mistook the chemical formula for the
actual chemical reaction, the science of
botany for the flowers, the science of as
tronomy for the stars. I have spoken in
this way, not because I do not think a
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
science of religion is important; I believe
it is profoundly important, if it be a true
science; but because I think the science
is infinitely less important than the thing
itself. Now to know God in your own
soul and to develop from that knowledge
the fruits of the spirit is religion. If in
doing this you find comfort and strength
and joy in a belief in the formulae of any
body of Christians, in God's name use
these formulae and these beliefs to the ut
most. But if, on the other hand, you find
yourself stopped by the creeds or the tra
ditions of the body of religious men with
whom you are associated, do not for one
moment allow yourself to think that you
have lost your religion. These things be
long not to religion, but to the science of
religion, a science which was framed in
the early history of civilization and which
has never yet caught up with other sciences.
The one important thing for any human
being is to develop in his own soul,
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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
heartily, joyfully, sincerely, the life which
blossoms into forgetfulness of self and ser
vice of men, in courage and mercy and
patience and serenity of mind. For these
are the fruits of true religion. And when
we strive to do this we approximate ever
closer to the life of him our elder brother,
Jesus Christ.

76

IV
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF
PRAYER

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF
PRAYER
" Was die innere Stimme spricht,
Das taiischt die hoffende Seele nicht." Schiller.
From the earliest history of our race men
have prayed. Our oldest records concern
themselves with these efforts of men to
come in touch consciously with God. Dur
ing this last generation, when our concep
tions of the order and progress of the
universe have undergone great changes,
men have still prayed. In these prayers,
reaching from the earliest human history
until to-day, may be traced the gradual un
folding of our conception of God and our
relation to Him. The nature of a man's
prayer will inevitably depend on his con
ception of God. The scientifically trained
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
mind of the twentieth century, seeing in
the universe of to-day the evidences of a
slow and gradual progression in accordance
with unchangeable laws, and looking up to
God as an infinite and eternal power back
of all nature and all law, will have a different
conception of what prayer means from that
of the man whose spiritual training and ex
pression lead him to think of God as a di
vine person dealing as an omnipotent father
with his children and influenced by their
requests. In view of this changed concep
tion many devout souls ask anxiously, Is
not this scientific conception of God and
of nature inconsistent with the idea of per
sonal relation with Him? Granting the
new form of faith, may a man still pray,
and, if so, in what sense ?
Like other fundamental questions of hu
man experience, this one reaches back to
many long-distant causes and influences.
To answer it one must first know what
prayer is, and what it has meant to men of
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
older time as well as to those of our own
day. In no way have men shown their ideas
of our relation with the Infinite so clearly
as in their prayers. Marcus Aurelius An
toninus, a Roman Emperor and a Stoic
philosopher, and one of the greatest of
human souls, gives in these words his con
ception of prayer: A prayer of the Athe
nians — " Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, down
on the plowed fields of the Athenians and
on the plains." " In truth," writes Aure
lius, " we ought not to pray at all, or we
ought to pray in this simple and noble
fashion." A prayer of Jesus : " Father, all things
are possible unto thee; take away this cup
from me : nevertheless, not what I will, but
what thou wilt."
A prayer of St. Chrysostom, one of,
the Greek fathers of the fourth century :
" Grant us in this world knowledge of thy
truth, in the world to come life everlasting."
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
These three prayers indicate in the form
and character of their petitions three great
steps which humanity has taken in its ef
fort to know and to come in touch with God.
The first reflects the life and the intellec
tual attitude of the highest philosophy of
the ancient civilization, an attitude which
was calculated to show not so much the
goodness of the gods as the inherent dig
nity of man. The Stoic philosopher, noble,
dignified, just, appealed to the gods as
rulers of the world for that which he felt to
be justly due to men, but he endured the
things the gods sent with equal calmness,
whether they were good or ill. Such a
prayer argued a relation with the gods at
once personal and impersonal : personal in
the sense of the direct action of the gods
upon human affairs, impersonal in the ab
sence of any definite conviction of their
justice and mercy. Such a prayer bespoke
a soul which stood fearlessly before God,
conscious of its own rectitude and willing
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
to submit to the decrees of the divine
power, but neither asking nor expecting
the support and sustenance of that faith
which looks upon God as a kindly and
loving father.
That which is absent in the prayer of the
Stoic is found, as it is found nowhere else,
in the prayers of Jesus. Here speaks a soul
conscious of a life day by day and hour by
hour with a Heavenly Father. Every word
and act and hope is permeated by that con
scious relationship, and he prays to this
Father as one who cannot only sustain and
help, but also take upon himself the ad
justment of every human circumstance
which the complexities of life present. A
loving, all-powerful Heavenly Father, not
only immanent in the universe and in the
lives and acts of men, but ready also at the
prayer of His children to change these laws
and processes to compass their well-being :
these are the relations and the conceptions
called up by the prayer of the Son of Man.
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
The words of the Greek father suggest
a still different conception and a different
relation. He lived in a day when the
Christian faith had already in great mea
sure supplanted Greek and Roman philo
sophy in the hearts of men. A Roman
emperor had become a Christian and the
feeble organization which had started amid
such humble surroundings three hundred
years before had begun to lay its hands on
the government of Europe. But in the
very days of power doubts had come. Men
had begun to differ in their interpretations
of the complicated doctrine of salvation
which had been built up under the earlier
fathers. To be sure, the great Council of
Nice had been called together in order to
quiet these differences and to furnish a
definite creed of faith which should be uni
form and consistent for all Christians. But
this creed had been reached only after the
most bitter contest, and its very language
reflected the stress under which it was
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
framed. Learned and devout men held
widely divergent views concerning impor
tant matters of belief. In a word, the dif
ferences which present themselves when
different human intellects with varying abil
ities and varying prejudices study obscure
problems were pressing hard upon the
souls of men.
A condition of unrest, of questioning,
existed approximating that of to-day ; a
condition which was not to recur for many
centuries, for intellectual differences were
quickly crushed into uniformity under the
iron hand of authority. Into the prayer of
that day comes a questioning note. Not
earthly help or the intervention of the
Heavenly Father is asked, but knowledge
of God's truth. It is in some such way as
this that the scientific mind prays to-day :
it asks in this world knowledge of God's
truth, resting sure that with this knowledge
all other problems are resolved.
Does this conception of God as the in-
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
finite power in the universe, immanent in
all life and all nature but working through
law, not under the action of human-like
motives and purposes, make such a prayer
less possible, less helpful, less needful ?
These three prayers and all others which
are uttered in the privacy of a man's own
soul are efforts to come into conscious re
lations with God. He who really prays has
crossed the threshold of spiritual conscious
ness and come into a higher relation with
the Infinite. For, whether we look up to
God as a person or whether we regard Him
as the infinite source of life working through
everlasting laws, our touch with Him must
come through our own consciousness : and
it is through this higher spiritual conscious
ness that we reach Him. The great souls
of earth have all come to great spiritual
truth through entering into this higher con
sciousness of the soul. Socrates speaks of
it as the " daemon " (a spirit within one) ;
Jesus as " the kingdom within you ; " St.
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
Paul as the " inner man." In a word,
whether we have the one or the other
philosophy about God, whether we accept
the one view or the other of His relation to
us, we only enter into conscious relations
with Him when we cross the threshold of
our own spiritual consciousness. Men may
be religious, they may be happy, they may
be useful, and yet never rise into this spirit
ual consciousness, never pray in this sense.
Let us try to illustrate. For a long time
the world looked upon light as a substance
simple in its nature. We know now that
light is composite, and that it is the result
of vibrations from the source of all our phy
sical energy, the sun. These vibrations are
brought to us in the form of waves in the
ether which fills all space, and their effect
on our eyes will vary with the length of the
waves and the consequent rapidity with
which they reach our eyes. When the
ether waves are fifty thousand to the inch
they make upon our eyes the impression
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
of violet light; when they run about thirty
thousand to the inch they produce the im
pression of red light ; and all our sensa
tions of color lie between these two limits.
Waves slower than the red and faster than
the violet produce no effect on the eye.
And yet we know that there are vibrations
which lie below the red and above the vio
let which, falling upon the eye, give no
vision, and are yet full of energy. Some
such analogy holds in our minds. Our con
scious every-day relations lie within a lim
ited range. That which we see and recog
nize with our senses and which forms the
bulk of our every-day experiences does not
include all the spiritual energy of which
the soul is capable. Below the threshold
of our ordinary consciousness, as we well
know, lies a consciousness of another sort,
of which we know little, such as the con
sciousness of sleep, for example. Just so,
also, above the ordinary every-day con
sciousness lies a superlintral region of the
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
human soul, like the ultra-violet part of
the color spectrum. Into this higher spir
itual consciousness we rise only by that
supreme effort of the soul by which a man
may come to know his own soul's better
self and the best to which that soul may
aspire. In doing this he draws near to the
author and ruler of the universe, whether
his philosophy of life teaches him to look
upon that author and ruler in the personal
or the impersonal way. Whatever our phi
losophy of the universe, our way of know
ing God is the same : by the development
of a spiritual consciousness, by so training
our own hearts and minds as to raise up
within us a new man ; by fearlessly facing
our own souls and so knowing ourselves
as to grow into that spiritual power which
may bring us into contact with Him. To
do this is to pray in the highest sense.
This conception of the inner man, or,
as Schiller has called it, the inner voice, is
almost as old as our thinking. Socrates,
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
Jesus, St. Paul, Marcus Aurelius, all great
souls who have thought deeply on the
problems of religious development have
come back to it again and again. It con
tains the essence of any religion which is
to deal with the mind, the heart, and the
moral life. Does the scientific spirit tend
to develop this deeper consciousness, this
inner voice ?
I believe profoundly that it does. More
than this, I believe that, amid the rush of
our modern life, amid the distractions of
incessant occupation, in the confusion
of men's minds concerning right and
wrong, the spirit of scientific truth-seeking
is the very note which the inner voice
most needs to sound, and which we men
of to-day are prone to neglect.
We have become accustomed in these
last years to a measure of personal and
official dishonesty which is utterly de
moralizing. Well-meaning men go wrong
morally, in their intellectual judgments, in
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
practical matters, and they excuse them
selves for a refusal to listen to the inner
voice on the ground, " What I have done
is as nearly right as was necessary." These
moral compromises form the cogs in the
machinery which connect good men with
worse, and it is astonishing to find how
simple is the machinery and how few links
are needed to reach from the honest busi
ness man to the dishonest promoter, from
the high-minded public officer to the polit
ical grafter. Into this atmosphere of com
promises/ of shiftiness, of uncertainty, the
voice of science comes with the word,
"Nothing is worth while but the truth;
make no compromises with yourself, ac
cept no half-truth ; do not delude yourself
into thinking you are acting from one
motive when you are really prompted by
another ; do not lie to yourself; if you
are not strong enough to be righteous, at
least be intellectually sincere." If, among
the distractions of our lives, we are to give
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
any opportunity to the inner spirit to be
heard, this invariable, uncompromising
attitude to truth is an essential.
In bringing this message to the individ
ual soul the science of our day is sound
ing the highest ethical note of which men
are capable; and he who disciplines his
conscience to heed it is already giving
heed to the highest spiritual consciousness
into which it is his privilege to enter : he
is entering already into communion with
Him who is the author of his spiritual life.
And, whether communion with Him
means a direct communion with a personal
spirit or whether it means a communion
with our better selves, it comes in either
case through the medium of our personal
spiritual consciousness. He who will know
Him must first know himself, must first
face fearlessly and fairly the questions of
his own soul, must have so developed his
heart and mind to higher things that he
may have spiritual consciousness, and a
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAYER
communion with the spirit which is in
every man. It is the knowledge of this
inner spirit which shall lead us surely to
higher spiritual truth.
It seems, therefore, clear to me that, in
the sense in which I have used the words,
all serious men, whatever their intellectual
training, must pray, not, perhaps, for mate
rial help, not in expectation that the laws
of the universe shall be changed at their
request, not even primarily for strength
to live rightly and justly, but as the su
preme effort of the human soul to know
God. And whether that which we call
prayer be a direct communion with Him
as our Heavenly Father, or whether it be a
communion with our higher consciousness
which is in touch with Him, in either case
the time can never come when a human
soul will not rise from such communion
purified and strengthened, with new hope
and new patience, and with a more serene
view of his own duty and his own future.
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OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
TO JOIN A CHURCH?

OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
TO JOIN A CHURCH?
" One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all." — St. Paul.
The history of the Christian Church and
of the process by which it has come in our
day to be represented by almost countless
sects holding widely varying religious be
liefs is a part of the story of the rise and
progress of our race. Starting with a small
group of devoted and religious men who
represented no compact administration,
the church gradually assumed a complex
organization. With the conversion of Con
stantine in the fourth century Christianity
became the accepted religion of the most
powerful nation in the world. Gradually
the Christian Church drew into its fingers
the reins of civil government, and its
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OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
organization changed character to enable
it to deal with these new powers. For a
thousand years it ruled the civilized world.
Finally came a reaction. Men came back
to the idea of earlier Christianity that it
was the business of the church to concern
itself with religion, not with civil rule.
Out of the conflict which this reaction
brought were born other forms of religious
organization antagonistic to the power
and influence of the mother church. This
differentiation into sects has gone on until
to-day the Christian Church is represented
in the world by so many sects that it
would be difficult to name them. They
vary in creed from a strict and formal ad
herence to the authority of the church and
its dogma to an association of men and
women bound by no formal creed and
associated with the purpose of the advance
ment of religion by their common efforts.
In its most highly organized branches the
Christian Church to-day still claims the
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TO JOIN A CHURCH?
right to rule and govern the world. In its
youngest and most liberal divisions it does
not even ask the acceptance of a creed.
From amongst all these churches one may
perhaps find none which agrees wholly
with his own views, but he may certainly
find one which approximates to them, and
withal a very large liberty of belief and of
action. A religious man — one who be
lieves that religion is a life, not a profes
sion, one who seeks to nourish in his own
heart the things that make for truth and
justice and mercy — such a one will nat
urally be concerned as to whether he
ought to become a member of one of
these organizations. Will his spiritual life
be quickened thereby? Will it afford
him an atmosphere in which the energy
of the soul will be developed along true
lines? Will it help to bring his life in
touch with the religious life of other men
so that both they and he may be helped ?
Is it his duty to join a church ?
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OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
It is evident to any student of the his
tory of the church, or to any observer of
the organizations which exist among us to
day calling themselves churches, that they
have the advantages and the weaknesses
of other human organizations. Much of
what the churches do commends religion
to men; a large part of that which they
do has but little effect either for or against
religion ; and a considerable part of what
the churches do unfortunately discredits
religion. If religion is a life, it is a life springing
up in the individual soul. It belongs es
sentially and primarily to the individual.
There is perhaps no other form of human
development which lends itself less easily
to the purposes and the machinery of an
organization than that divine life in the
individual human soul which we call reli
gion. This life in the soul and its develop
ment is essentially individualistic. It may
be quickened or refreshed or repressed by
IOO

TO JOIN A CHURCH?
the contact with other individuals, but it
dpes not lend itself to organization; it
cannot be promoted by administration.
And this has always been one of the weak
nesses and the dangers of religious organi
zations : that the machinery of organiza
tions, once provided, has in nearly all cases
been turned to the advancement of some
thing other than religion. It is very diffi
cult to use the power of an organization
so as to develop in the hearts of the indi
viduals comprising it mercy and love and
reverence ; but it is very easy to put the
organization back of a dogma which
touches the imagination or the interest of
those concerned. From the very nature
of religion and from the qualities inherent
in human nature the organization called
the church has lent itself far more easily
to dogma than to love, far more readily
to theology than to religion, far more suc
cessfully to the upbuilding of the power
of the organization than to the advance-
IOI

OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
ment of truth. Individual religious life
was what Jesus sought to kindle. He
originated no organization; though he
criticised the church of his day, he never
left it. His mission was to lead men to
God so that they might lead their own
life with Him. It was inevitable, perhaps,
that amongst his followers should be de
veloped in course of time a compact, effec
tive organization. But this organization
could not take the place of the spiritual
leadership of a truly religious soul, and it
lent itself only too well to human ambi
tion and human vanity. To wrest from its
hands the power of civil government took
centuries of strife and cost countless lives.
This battle has been fought and settled in
most civilized countries. Where the ques
tion still survives it marks the recrudes
cence of a mediaeval conflict in the minds
of men : a conflict which will in the end
terminate only in one way. To-day, to
the great benefit of both the state and the
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TO JOIN A CHURCH?
church, our two most complex human
organizations, the latter no longer claims
the right to interfere in civil government.
To-day no man will think of the church,
at least in our United States of America,
except in its religious purpose.
That the church is not indispensable to
the perpetuation and progress of religion
seems clear. Its inefficiency as a religious
agency is the most evident part of its his
tory. It does not seem impossible that
religion among men may some day be
so developed that the church as a formal
organization may be transformed ; it may
come to occupy toward theology some
such attitude as the Chemical Society oc
cupies toward chemistry, or some other
agency may take its place.
Yet the imperfections and limitations
to which I have alluded make no an
swer to the questions which I have asked.
The fact that the church has been in many
respects cleared of the superstitions of a
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OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
thousand years, that it no longer claims, in
many of its branches at least, the obedience
of an absolute authority, that it admits mis
takes and weaknesses, is an evidence of
increasing sincerity and of a higher fitness.
Furthermore, when the man of scientific
training considers the organization of the
church as it stands to-day, he will, if he fol
low the scientific method, be less interested
in the historical consistency of the claims
of the church than he will in that which
the church at present represents. For ex
ample : it would be a difficult matter to
trace a logical connection between the sim
ple teaching of Jesus and the claims of the
Roman Pontiff to temporal sovereignty
over certain sections of Italy. Such an in
quiry is interesting and of value ; but it is
in a certain sense academic, and ought not
for a moment to blind the eyes of an intel
ligent man to the fact that the Roman
Catholic Church is to-day one of the great
organized moral forces which make for law
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TO JOIN A CHURCH?
and order and righteousness. One cannot
disregard, if he would, the place which the
church has come to play in our larger social
and political life. And this is a considera
tion which very young men are inclined to
place in altogether too small a perspective.
Few of us are commissioned to reorganize
society, or to recast its social, religious, or
political divisions. For most men the great
est usefulness lies, as does the greatest
happiness, in doing their work in the world
in harmony with the organizations which
society has slowly adopted, and in sup
porting through these such reforms as
commend themselves to their judgment.
That which we call Christianity to-day
means different things in its organized
form in different countries. It no longer
means, and has never meant since the
church became an organization, a true re
flection of the simple life and high spiritual
ideals of its founder. Christianity, even in
its organized form, is no longer a creed,
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OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
but the visible expression of the gradually
growing, gradually advancing conscience
of the race; and as such it is the product
of the labor of religious men both in and
out of the church. Darwin and Spencer
and Tyndall have helped to mould the
church of to-day no less truly than Luther
and Zwingle and Wesley. It is true that
the expression of the spiritual ideals of an
age through an organization will always
fall short of those ideals in the thoughts
of the great leaders. This inertia is charac
teristic of all organizations and need cause
no surprise or resentment. Organizations
never lead, men lead. Religious organiza
tions will always be slower than religious
leaders in their appreciation of truth, but
this does not in the least detract from the
fact that such organizations offer to us men,
with our complex human nature, the way
to a better fellowship and a deeper inspira
tion. There is one impression which is wide-
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spread among young men, and especially
among those who have been brought up
in Protestant homes, which has seemed to
me to work great harm in dealing with
this matter. That is the impression that
by remaining outside of formal church
connection a man in some way escapes a
certain religious and moral responsibility
which he incurs as a member of a church.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
All men are religious men in the sense that
the divine energy flows into all their hearts.
All men are under the same obligation to
turn this energy to the ends for which it is
meant : that is, to the growth in their hearts
of love and truth and mercy. All human
beings are members of that invisible church
which is sustained by Him in whom we
live and move and have our being. In
other words, all men are under the same
obligation to be religious. To excuse one's
self for doing certain things because one
is not a member of a church is the veriest
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OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
hypocrisy. The obligation to be chaste,
fair-minded, unselfish, generous, reverent,
helpful, is just the same for each one of
you whether you belong to a formal reli
gious organization or not. Do not hide be
hind any such weak lie as to suppose you
absolve yourself from your obligations or
your relations to the infinite Maker of the
universe, or that you can escape the inev
itable working of His laws by declining to
join an organization which your fellow-men
have set up for the study and development
of these relations. The obligations and the
opportunities of the religious life are upon
you by the very fact of your existence.
By joining a church you neither increase
nor diminish these obligations; but you
may affect profoundly thereby your ability
to respond to the obligations, to improve
the opportunities and to appreciate the joys.
There is, too, one side of religion to
which the church organization ministers
which the scientific man is inclined to over-
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TO JOIN A CHURCH?
look, or at least to rate below its true
value, and that is the church's ministry to
our emotional nature. However highly we
may value reason, however indispensable
it may be in our guidance through the
world, it is after all only a part of our being.
The best things of our civilization, religion,
literature, art, even philosophy, spring not
alone from our reason, but rise in large
measure from that deep undercurrent of
our being in whose sweep is carried along
our loves and our hates, our hopes and our
fears, our aspirations and our longings.
There are tender memories and associations
which cling about the offices and service
of the church and minister to the best that
is in us. The familiar text, the old hymn,
the noble words of Jesus carry with them
memories and longings which are tender
and true. These emotions are not religion,
and we go far astray when we mistake
them for it ; but none the less they form
a real and true part of religion, and their
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OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
drawings are toward those things which
make for the divine life. This is the im
mortal office of the Christian Church, that
it hands on these traditions, these hopes,
these aspirations, from generation to gen
eration. To lose this fellowship is to lose
much. On the other hand there are, I appre
hend, few men of scientific training who
can subscribe sincerely to belief in the
creed or in the articles of faith of what
are called the orthodox Christian churches.
Even the fact that this profession of faith
is becoming in the church itself less im
portant, that it is in fact practically ig
nored by a large proportion of the clergy
and laity, does not make the matter of
membership in the church easier to such
men. All their training in science is against
that attitude of mind which permits a man
or an organization to hold on to a creed or
to a formula in which they no longer be
lieve. The impression it makes upon their
no

TO JOIN A CHURCH?
minds is very much as if the astronomer
should try to fit the modern observations
to the Ptolemaic astronomy. Such a posi
tion is directly in contravention of that in
tellectual sincerity which is the basis of all
true scientific progress. To scientific men,
by the very nature of their education, belief
must go hand in hand with reason and
right thinking if belief is to be respected.
For this reason they find it clearly impos
sible to join a church if that act requires
the profession of a creed in which they do
not believe. Nor do they feel sufficiently
skilled in metaphysics to decide how far
the different churches may go in the nom
inal support of a creed in which they do
not fully believe. The whole idea of a
creed as a test of religious fellowship seems
to them indefensible and artificial. It is a
part of the science of religion — and for
them it seems generally a false science —
not a part of religion itself.
And yet, as one recalls his own life he
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OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
realizes that what the church has brought
to the world has been largely independent
of and apart from these personal tests. As
one looks back on the associations of his
life, as he reads the noble words of the
church service and of the church prayers,
he finds that his heart stirs with the mem
ory. There are few words in our language
so closely interwoven with the best human
aspirations, with the sincerest spiritual out
goings, as those services of the church
which we associate with the solemn acts
of life. What other words have brought
comfort to so many hearts as the triumph
ant passages of the service for the dead ?
How it binds all men together to believe
in one faith, one baptism, one hope. Shall
the man of science deny himself and his
children the joy and the comfort of this
fellowship because he cannot subscribe to
the creed which the church prescribes, a
creed which as time goes on sits more
and more lightly on the consciences of the
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TO JOIN A CHURCH?
leaders of the church ? It is this question
which the religious man of scientific train
ing and habits of thought finds it difficult
to answer, and the nature of the answer will
depend not alone on the intelligence and
intellectual honesty of the man, but also
on his general philosophy of life and the
part which his emotions play in that life.
Here is Louis Pasteur's answer: —
" There are two men in each one of us :
the scientist, he who starts with a clear
field and desires to rise to the knowledge
of nature through observation, experimen
tation, and reasoning, and the man of sen
timent, the man of belief, the man who
mourns his dead children and who cannot,
alas, prove that he will see them again,
but who hopes that he will, and lives in
that hope, the man who will not die like
a vibrio, but who feels that the force that
is within him cannot die. The two do
mains are distinct, and woe to him who
tries to let them trespass on each other in
"3

OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
the so imperfect state of human know
ledge." Science, he said, should not con
cern itself with the philosophical conse
quences of its discoveries. He calmly went
his way in the full liberty of science, and
yet living and dying in the comfort of
that faith which he had learned in boy
hood, and without those conflicts of the
soul through which so many of his scien
tific brethren had to go.
A very different attitude was that of
Thomas Huxley. To a mind of his quality
there could be no such separation between
the thinking of a man as a scientist and as
a religious man. The assumptions involved
in the dogmas of the church aroused not
only his suspicions but all his anger at
what seemed to him intellectual dishon
esty. "I will," said he, "be satisfied with
no half truth, I will believe no lie." And
he went out to fight what he believed to
be the falsehoods of religious creeds with
as dauntless a spirit as ever sent crusader
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TO JOIN A CHURCH?
against a Moslem lance. For him to have
accepted Pasteur's attitude would have
been treason to the best that was in him.
He died, as he had lived, outside a formal
church organization, although he always
gladly sought for his family and his chil
dren the associations which the church
offered. The examples of these two men are
worth our study, for both were great souls,
both thought deeply concerning the prob
lems of the universe. Each answered the
question of his religious fellowship and
his religious faith simply, sincerely, de
voutly. Both were, to my thinking, reli
gious men.
And this brings me back to the word
which I said at the beginning. Each man
must answer in his own way the question
of his religious fellowship. Faith is itself
a great spiritual experience. To believe
truly and sincerely in a man, in a princi
ple, in God, is alone a great inspiration.
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OUGHT A RELIGIOUS MAN
If you find in your religious faith that
which brings you comfort and help and
serenity of life, rejoice in it, whether you
find it in one church or another, whether
you be Protestant or Catholic, Episcopalian
or Unitarian, Baptist or Christian Scientist.
If you find your religious life quickened
by association with some body of profess
ing Christians, do not let any formal creed
stand in the way of your fellowship with
them. There are few men whose spiritual
senses will not be quickened, whose aspi
rations will not be raised, whose religious
ideals will not be ripened by the fellow
ship with his brethren which the Christian
Church offers. There are few men who are
not the better for a connection with the
church and for service in it. But in as
suming such connection do not imagine
that such membership constitutes religion ;
make it clear to yourself why you seek
and remain in such a relation, and be sure
that it means a gain in your religious life..
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TO JOIN A CHURCH ?
And be sure of one thing more : no man
is going to gain in his spiritual life by ig
noring the great problems of the universe
which lie before him, pr by professing to
believe that thing which in his own soul
he doubts. There are many paths by
which a human soul comes to a high reli
gious life. Some of them lead through
suffering, through service, through faith,
through doubt, through patience; but
there is none that leads through insincerity
and cowardice.

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