ASIA 
 
dlotnell Hntoetaitt} Slibratg 
 
 Jftifaia, SS'etn fmrk 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 COLLECTION 
 
 CHINA AND THE CHINESE 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 CLASS OF 1876 
 1918 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BL 85.B96 
 
 Universal beliefs, or. The great concens 
 
 3 1924 022 994 283 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924022994283 
 
%. 
 
 //. 
 
Universal Beliefs; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE GREAT CONSENSUS. 
 
 BY 
 
 OO 
 
 |Y. E. F. BURR, D. D., 
 
 UTHOR OF "ECCE CCELUM," ETC. 
 
 tones sunt jam usque ab heroicis ductse temporibus, 
 i Romani, et omnium gentium firmatae consensu. 
 
 CICERO. 
 
 Left Himself without a witness? 
 
 Who could dream so drear a thing 
 As that God, the Wise and Righteous, 
 
 Would the blind to judgment bring? 
 
 ANON. 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 
 

 \M ^%\L 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1887, 
 BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 
 
THE GREAT CONSENSUS 
 
 AS TO 
 
 I. Superhuman Beings ii 
 
 II. Supreme Deity 23 
 
 III. Earthly Providence 47 
 
 IV. Religious Worship 71 
 
 V. Efficacious Prayer 9' 
 
 VI. Infallible Oracles X13 
 
 VII. Immortal Souls — i53 
 
 VIII. Limited Probation 185 
 
 IX. Possible Salvation 217 
 
 X. Main Ethics 237 
 
 XI. Realization 289 
 
 11720 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 I. It is hoped fhat no reader of the following 
 pages will do as some have done — will infer from 
 the fact that all systems of religion have some 
 good in them that they are all equally good, or 
 even that it cannot reasonably be claimed that 
 while one is from above all the others are from 
 beneath. This certainly would be very poor logic. 
 A system may have some good elements, and yet 
 as a whole be very bad. Truth is not such a Mi- 
 das as to turn all it touches into gold. It may, 
 practically, be cancelled, and more than can- 
 celled, by errors closely bound up with it; just as 
 sundry excellent soldiers in an army may not pre- 
 vent it from being a terrible scourge; just as sun- 
 dry good traits in a citizen may not prevent his 
 becoming a public nuisance; and just as sundry 
 chemical elements, in themselves wholesome, may 
 not prevent the compound to which they belong 
 from acting as a deadly poison. The non-Chris- 
 tian religions are poisons, despite the good ele- 
 ments they contain. 
 
 II. It is also hoped that every reader of the 
 following pages will find in them a sufficient an- 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 swer to a common excuse for neglecting personal 
 religion. The neglecter points to the number of 
 Christian denominations. "How widely they 
 differ among themselves as to what is believed ! 
 With what confidence and zeal each sect defends 
 its own peculiarities! The very same passage of 
 Scripture has exactly opposite meanings in the 
 thought of different people, many of whom are 
 very intelligent and conscientious. ' ' 
 
 So the man professes himself perplexed. He 
 does not know what to think. How can a plain 
 man like himself see his way through such a fog 
 of religious notions! Is he not excusable for feel- 
 ing uncertain when beaten about by so many con- 
 flicting winds of doctrine ? 
 
 This is the way men sometimes talk when 
 urged towards personal religion by some Chris- 
 tian friend. What answer does he make? Of 
 course he does not pretend to deny that consider- 
 able differences of religious opinion exist among 
 even intelligent and good men, and that these 
 differences are often emphasized with no little 
 heat. Perhaps he inquires whether his friends 
 propose to have no opinion whatever in science 
 or art or education or politics because there is a 
 margin of debatable and debated ground about 
 each. But certainly he proceeds to point out that 
 the differences among the chief Christian denom- 
 
PREPACK. 7 
 
 inations relate mostly to secondary matters; that 
 in regard to matters of the most primary and fun- 
 damental character the sects are perfectly agreed. 
 Nay, on examination, he finds that he can go still 
 farther, and can call attention to the fact that not 
 only are all the great Christian sects agreed on 
 certain main points of religious belief, but that 
 the same is true of all the religions and nations of 
 the world. That there is a realm of superhuman 
 beings ; that at the head of this realm stands a 
 personal Being who is wonderfully above all oth- 
 ers; that this supreme Person is active in human 
 affairs; that worship, public and private, is to be 
 paid to Him ; that prayer may, in a large degree, 
 secure from him the particular blessings asked for; 
 that he has sent infallible messages to men ; that 
 men possess immortal souls; that such souls, 
 though exceedingly sinful, can be saved as to 
 both character and circumstances; and that the 
 opportunity for such salvation does not extend 
 beyond the present life — such doctrines are the 
 common possession of mankind. They are a kind 
 of universal currency. They are the heirlooms of 
 the race. They defy the tooth of time. They 
 survive all storms, all accidents, and even all 
 depravities. No political or social or religious 
 revolutions disturb them in the least. They un- 
 derlie all governments, speak in all tongues, and 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 flourish in all climates. They have unrelaxiag 
 grip on all grades of faculty and culture and social 
 position. In short, they seem as durable as human 
 nature itself, and subject to no greater modifica- 
 tions. 
 
 Does one feel that a doctrine must be uncer- 
 tain if it is respectably disputed ? Would it take 
 a stumbling-block out of his way to find a realm 
 of religious belief in which practically all men are 
 at home ? Here is such a realm. Here is a sea 
 on which one is not beaten about by conflicting 
 winds of doctrine. All the winds are blowing, but 
 they are all blowing in the same direction. Be- 
 hold the unanimity you long for. See that it is as 
 wide as the world. See that it relates to main 
 things. If you are disposed to allow weight to the 
 dissensus, should you not also allow weight to tlie 
 mightier consensus ? We are not now asking you 
 to accept matters in dispute between Christians ; 
 we are only asking you to accept and suitably act 
 on such doctrines as carry the faith not only of all 
 Christendom, but also of all heathendom and of 
 any other -dom under heaven. Believe with the 
 unspeakable majority. And do more than that 
 majority does— give us conduct to match. And 
 when you have gotten so far you are not very far 
 from Christ. 
 
 Lyme, Conn. 
 
I. SUPERHUMAN BEINGS. 
 
E«7i 6e ovTot ol Miv aXXo oio/icvoi e7vai J oi 
 
 dv Sivavrai anpi^ tow x^poi-'" ^a^eaBai. PLATO. 
 
 Those are profane who think that nothing exists save 
 what they can lay hold of with their hands. 
 
 Nihil in omni mundo melius esse quam se cogitare, de- 
 mentia est. CICERO. 
 
 It is madness to think that there is nothing in the whole 
 universe better than ourselves. 
 
 To an innumerable company of angels. paul. 
 
UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 I. SUPERHUMAN BEINGS. 
 
 Our Scriptures speak of a class of personal 
 beings called angels. They are described as su- 
 perior to men, very numerous, immortal, general- 
 ly invisible to us, exceedingly interested in human 
 affairs, sharply divided into the two classes of 
 good and bad. And the bad have a great chief, 
 one of whose names is Satan, and from whose 
 malice and activity men have much to fear. 
 
 The Mohammedan nations accept entire this 
 Bible teaching. ' ' The whole doctrine concern- 
 ing angels, Mohammed and his disciples have 
 borrowed from the Jews." Gabriel, Michael, 
 Azrael, and Israfil stand at the head of the good 
 angels, Eblis at the head of the bad. Both class- 
 es are very numerous. Beneath these are the 
 genii, who live on the earth, are mortal and sin- 
 ful like men, but are vastly stronger and wiser 
 and more ethereal than ourselves. Both genii and 
 angels are invisibly active in human affairs, and 
 give us great occasion both to hope and to fear. 
 
12 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 As to all the great polytheistic nations, they 
 have substantially the same views. Their many 
 gods are, in general, the equivalents of the Bibli- 
 cal angels and of the Moslem angels and genii. 
 Among the ancients, the Greeks and Romans sup- 
 posed the earth to be populous with superhuman 
 beings. The waters, the forests, the mountains, 
 the valleys, the air, the bowels of the earth, the 
 heavenly bodies, were thought to be occupied by 
 them in vast numbers. They were fauns, dryads, 
 satyrs, naiads, daemons, lares and penates, dii ma- 
 jores — a hundred names, standing for a realm of 
 personal beings quite superior to men, undying, 
 having large dealings with the world, though by 
 us unseen, some mischievous and others benevo- 
 lent. 
 
 And this is a fair specimen of how all known 
 nations have believed from the earliest times down 
 to the present. The popular imagination and 
 faith, everywhere and always, have been satura- 
 ted, not only with the idea of elves and fairies and 
 gnomes and peris and obis and manitous, but also 
 with the idea of a spiritual realm of far more dig- 
 nified beings commonly invisible to men and su- 
 perior to them — like Sorlish and Mord^d and 
 Beshter of the ancient Persians, or Al Ilihat of 
 the ancient Arabs. Says Prof. Tiele, a careful 
 modern inquirer, "No tribe or nation has yet 
 
SUPERHUMAN BEINGS. I3 
 
 been met with destitute of belief in any higher 
 beings, and travellers who asserted their existence 
 have been afterwards refuted by facts. ' ' Begin- 
 ning at the lowest class of living beings and as- 
 cending from terrace to terrace of dignity towards 
 man, we find no class at which it is safe to stop 
 and say, ' ' This is the last and highest. ' ' When 
 then we come, in the course of a long journey, to 
 man, why should we say it ? In the absence of 
 all evidence to the contrary, would it not be ra- 
 tional and scientific to conclude that further as- 
 cent would continue the long experience of the 
 past, and another still loftier terrace of life come 
 into view ? Will not the sun rise to-morrow, O 
 ye who have known seventy years of sun-risings ? 
 
 " But there is a break at man. After him the 
 sight which has so long served us discovers noth- 
 ing. No sense discovers anything. Man seems 
 the last mile-stone. Utter vacuity appears be- 
 yond him. If there were another plane of being 
 above us would it not appear?" 
 
 Certainly invisibility is no proof of non-exist- 
 ence. All the great natural forces are unseen. 
 Who ever saw gravity or magnetism or chemi- 
 cal afl&nity ? Also, no man versed in natural his- 
 tory doubts the existence of living beings so at- 
 tenuated and ethereal as to be beyond our sight 
 even when aided by the best instruments; just as 
 
14 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 no such man doubts the existence of living bodies 
 so small as to be beyond our most potential micro- 
 scopes. Probably as large a realm of life is un- 
 seen from the effect of attenuation as from that of 
 smallness. Plainly, vigor of life in no degree de- 
 pends on the density of its body. The man who 
 weighs the most per cubic inch is by no means the 
 most likely to have the vital forces in greatest 
 strength. These depend no more on density than 
 they do on size; and as a gnat may be as intense- 
 ly alive as an elephant, so a body tenuous to the 
 point of invisibility by our sight, however aided, 
 may be as thoroughly and powerfully living as 
 anything within our view. 
 
 As it is altogether credible that there is a realm 
 of life lying beyond our sense of sight, so it is al- 
 together credible that there is such a realm lying 
 beyond the sense of hearing, or any other sense; 
 in fact, beyond all our senses. Distance, if noth- 
 ing else, can defy and defeat them all. Things 
 which when near can easily be noted may be re- 
 moved so far from us into the endless abysses of 
 space as to disappear altogether from the sphere of 
 our observation. If it be a mote, a few inches of 
 removal will answer; if it be a world, some hun- 
 dreds of millions of miles may be necessary ; but 
 there is room enough out yonder to allow of the 
 annihilation, so far as our senses are concerned, 
 
SUPERHUMAN BEINGS. 15 
 
 of any object whatever. So the way is open for 
 us to receive any positive evidence that may exist 
 in favor of a realm of beings superior to man 
 which no present senses of ours can discover. 
 
 Though such beings may be naturally without 
 the range of our sense, they may be able to bring 
 themselves, on occasion, within that range. They 
 may be able to take on sensible forms; or, without 
 their doing this, our senses may be so quickened 
 and exalted as to pass their usual barriers and be- 
 come aware of a new world. That both of these 
 things have occurred, innumerable rumors, tra- 
 ditions, and seeming records testify. The air of 
 all known times and countries is alive with such 
 testimonies. Sometimes they are mere whispers — 
 subtile hints and suggestions of facts rather than 
 facts themselves — and sometimes they are loud 
 maeisterial voices that declare and that swear. 
 Thus the Bible tells us in the way of sober nar- 
 rative of many angelic appearances to men in 
 forms easily discernible by human senses in their 
 usual state, as well as of men whose eyes were 
 specially anointed to see things otherwise invis- 
 ible. The sacred books of other religions abound 
 in similar accounts. The accounts are so many 
 and so widely diffused, they come to us from so 
 many quarters besides magic and spiritualism, 
 and under so many forms and ways of verisimili- 
 
l6 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 tude, that we are moved to say, " Can it be that 
 nothing of this is historical ? Have we any his- 
 tory if we have not here at least some few shreds 
 of it?" 
 
 Such considerations gather weight as we no- 
 tice how they accord with the course of scientific 
 discovery. Strange forms of life, widely different 
 from us and from one another, and in some re- 
 spects greatly superior to us, have been continual- 
 ly coming to light. They are stronger or swifter 
 or hardier or keener-sighted than we are: some 
 one or more faculties are astonishingly greater 
 than ours. Why, then, should we be stumbled 
 at the idea of a realm of angels ? Why may not 
 a race of beings exist in which all these special 
 superiorities over us are combined ? The discov- 
 ery of such a race would be quite in the line of 
 discoveries already made, and hardly more won- 
 derful. We can well understand that if some day 
 a curtain should rise, not thicker than that which 
 once parted the later astronomy from our knowl- 
 edge, or this Western Hemisphere from the East- 
 tern, we should find ourselves face to face with 
 that great spiritual world which the masses in all 
 nations accept, which the Bible affirms, and with 
 the idea of which all literatures are saturated. 
 
 " My dwelling had been situate beside 
 The m.yriads of a vast metropolis : 
 
SUPERHUMAN BEINGS. 1 7 
 
 But now astonished I beheld, and lo ! 
 
 There were more spirits than men, more habitants 
 
 Of the thin air than of the solid ground : 
 
 The firmament was quick with life. As when 
 
 The prophet's servant looked from Dothan forth 
 
 On Syria's thronging multitudes, and saw 
 
 The squadrons of the sky around the seer 
 
 Encamping, thus in numbers numberless 
 
 The hosts of darkness and of light appeared." 
 
 But one does not need to die in order to dis- 
 cover a realm of superhuman beings. He has 
 only to lift instructed eyes to the evening firma- 
 ment. There glitter many worlds far brighter 
 and fairer than this, worlds which in size and 
 beauty and splendid surroundings are as much 
 beyond our earth as the most regal palace is be- 
 yond the most wretched hut. Now if mere na- 
 ture made man, as some venture to say, where 
 nature exists in her finer and riper forms we would 
 naturally expect to find her nobler products. The 
 nobler the parent the nobler the child ; the greater 
 the workman the greater the work. If a wise God 
 made men and the worlds, and if men are the high- 
 est of his creatures, he doubtless has placed them 
 in the noblest of the astronomical homes. It 
 would be an unfitness and unreasonableness to do 
 otherwise — to build a palace for a gnat and a hovel 
 for a man. But, as a matter of fact, we find man 
 occupying one of the humbler worlds. Hence we 
 infer that he is not the highest of God's creatures, 
 
 Fniveraal Beliers. 2 
 
l8 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 but that the more splendid homes in the distant 
 heavens are suitably allotted to the more splendid 
 population. So, whether mere blind nature or a 
 wise God is the author of the present scheme of 
 things, we are entitled to believe in a realm of 
 superhuman beings such as the Bible affirms, such 
 as mankind at large have always taken for grant- 
 ed, and such as the principle of induction and the 
 general course of scientific discovery suggest. As 
 beyond our unaided sight there are many worlds 
 much larger than our own, sweeping on grander 
 orbits, shining with a more magnificent beam, 
 and ruling with a more potential kingliness, so, 
 we may well believe, in common with all nations, 
 were our senses aided to pass a certain curtain, 
 we should discover not merely a vast intelligent 
 population, but multitudes of beings vastly supe- 
 rior to ourselves. 
 
 "Tell me," says Micromegas, an inhabitant 
 of one of the planets of the great Dog Star, to the 
 Secretary of the Academy of Sciences in the 
 planet Saturn, at which he had just arrived in a 
 journey through the heavens, "Tell me, how many 
 senses have the men on your globe ?" " We have 
 seven,ty-two senses," answered the academician, 
 ' ' and we are every day complaining of the small- 
 ness of the number. Our imagination goes far 
 beyond our wants. What are seventy-two senses ! 
 
SUPERHUMAN BEINGS. I9 
 
 and how pitiful a boundary, even for beings with 
 such limited perceptions, to be cooped up within 
 our ring and our eight moons ! In spite of our 
 curiosity, and in spite of as many passions as can 
 result from six dozen senses, we find our hours 
 hang very heavily on our hands and can always 
 find time for yawning. " "I can very well be- 
 lieve it," says Micromegas, "for in our globe we 
 have very near one thousand senses, and yet with 
 all these we feel continually a sort of listless in- 
 quietude and vague desire which are for ever tell- 
 ing us that we are nothing, and that there are be- 
 ings infinitely nearer perfection. I have travelled 
 a good deal in the universe. I have seen a good 
 many beings far beneath us and many as much 
 superior, but I have never had the good fortune 
 to find any who had not more desires than real 
 necessities to occupy their life. And, pray, how 
 long may you Saturnians live, with your few 
 senses?" continued the Sirian. "Ah, but a very 
 short time indeed, ' ' said the little man of Saturn, 
 with a sigh. "It is the same with us," said the 
 traveller; "we are for ever complaining of the 
 shortness of life. It must be a universal law of 
 nature." "Alas," said the Saturnian, " we live 
 only five hundred great revolutions of the sun 
 (about fifteen thousand years of our counting). 
 You see well that this is to die almost the mo- 
 
20 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ment one is born. Our existence is a point, our 
 duration an instant, our globe an atom. Scarcely 
 have we begun to pick up a little knowledge 
 when death rushes in upon us before we can have 
 acquired anything like experience. As for me, I 
 cannot venture even to think of any project. I 
 feel myself but like a drop of water in the ocean; 
 and especially now when I look to you and to 
 myself I really feel quite ashamed of the ridicu- 
 lous appearance which I make in the universe." 
 " If I did not know that you were a philosopher," 
 replied Micromegas, ' ' I should be afraid of dis- 
 tressing you when I tell you that our life is seven 
 hundred times longer than yours. But what is 
 even that ? And when we come to the last mo- 
 ment, to have lived a single day and to have lived 
 a whole eternity amounts to the very same thing. 
 I have been in countries where they live a thou- 
 sand times longer than with us, and I have always 
 found them murmuring, just as we do ourselves. 
 But you have seventy-two senses, and they must 
 have told you something about your globe. How 
 many properties has matter with you ?" "If you 
 mean essential properties," said the Saturnian, 
 ' ' without which our globe could not subsist, we 
 count three hundred — extension, impenetrability, 
 mobility, gravitation, divisibility, and so forth." 
 "That small number," replied the gigantic trav- 
 
SUPERHUMAN BEINGS. 21 
 
 eller, " may be sufl&cient for the views which the 
 Creator must have had with respect to your nar- 
 row habitation. Your globe is little; its inhabi- 
 tants are so too. You have few senses, your mat- 
 ter has few qualities, and your lives have few 
 years. In all this Providence has suited you most 
 happily to each other." The academician was 
 vastly astonished at what the traveller told him. 
 At length, after communicating to each other a 
 little of what they knew and a great deal of what 
 they knew not, and reasoning as well and as ill as 
 philosophers usually do, they resolved to set out 
 together on a little tour of the universe. In due 
 time they will doubtless arrive at the earth and 
 lift up both hands with astonishment to find how 
 inferior to themselves in the scale of being are 
 even our members of scientific academies. 
 
 So runs, substantially, a philosophic parable 
 of the last century. Voltaire, with all his bitter 
 prejudice against the supernatural, seems to have 
 had no such prejudice against the superhuman, 
 and to have seen how easy and natural it is to 
 believe that man is one of the least considerable 
 inhabitants of that great universe which has in it 
 so many grander homes than our own. 
 
 Alps rise o'er Alps till the remoter summits 
 are lost in clouds. Circles in the ocean go on wi- 
 dening out from the centre of disturbance till a 
 
22 UNIVERSAI^ EEUEPS. 
 
 wave appears that touches every shore with its 
 sublime round. Standing in the moonlight with- 
 in some roofless ancient amphitheatre, we see ter- 
 race after terrace rising above us in ever-expand- 
 ing sweeps till at la-st the sweep is among the 
 stars. So, from where we stand stretch upward 
 and away the terraces of personal being. Its sum- 
 mits go climbing up the heavens in long perspec- 
 tive. Amplitudes of faculty and position greater 
 than our own climb away from us in every direc- 
 tion towards the infinite. Is there not an Infi- 
 nite? 
 
II. SUPREME DEITY. 
 
Elf EffT* avToryeinjQ, hbc l/c/ova navra TirvKTol. 
 
 ORPHEUS. 
 
 There is one self-existent Being ; everything generated 
 has been produced by this one. 
 
 Summum Deum et philosophi et poetse, et denique qui 
 deos colunt, saepe fatentur. lactantius firmianus. 
 
 Both philosophers and poets, and indeed all who wor- 
 ship gods, often confess a supreme Deity. 
 
 This Lord your God is God of gods. moses. 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 35 
 
 II. SUPREME DEITY. 
 
 The doctrine of one infinite personal God be- 
 longs to Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans. 
 The doctrine of a supreme Person — of at least one 
 Person who is vastly superior to all others and 
 easily king over them all — belongs to humanity. 
 All the nations confess him, all the existing reli- 
 gions take him for granted. Individuals here and 
 there are atheistic; perhaps some small and rude 
 tribes may be found without gods of any sort; but 
 these make no figure on the broad face of the 
 world and in the presence of its overwhelming 
 majorities. 
 
 So it has always been, as far as history and 
 tradition throw light. ' ' All nations, as far back 
 as we can trace their existence, have a religion 
 and a God. During the present century the an- 
 cient records of Egypt, of Assyria, and the whole 
 of Mesopotamia have been disinterred and read; 
 researches in Persia have brought to light the 
 condition of all Iranian tribes prior to the refor- 
 mation of Zoroaster; while the Vedas, the reli- 
 gious poems of their kindred Indian Aryans, have 
 been translated ; and profound researches into the 
 
26 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ancient literature of China have unveiled the doc- 
 trine and worship before and since Confucius; and 
 the result of the whole is that we find religion in 
 these nations from the time of their existence as 
 separate communities." 
 
 ' ' Not a few learned and laborious inquirers 
 have for the last seventy years been engaged in 
 digging out the remains of old religions from amid 
 the debris of popular traditions, of sacred books in 
 forgotten languages, and of those languages them- 
 selves in which curious relics. of still older strata 
 have become imbedded. The Guzin, the Tripi- 
 taka, the Zendavesta, the Vedas, have been stud- 
 ied and analyzed. The hieroglyphics of Egypt, 
 the wedge-covered slabs and bricks of Nineveh 
 and Babylon, the rock-inscriptions of Persia and 
 India, have yielded up their secrets. The tradi- 
 tions of the Aztecs and Zulus, the wild ideas and 
 wilder practices of the Tartars, the Red Indians, 
 and even the Australian aborigines, have been 
 collated and compared. Mythologies — Greek, 
 Celtic, Scandinavian, Indian — ^have been drawn 
 together and have supplied much interesting in- 
 formation. The primitive Aryan culture has 
 been pieced out from the scattered elements of the 
 Aryan tongues, and attempts in the same direc- 
 tion have been made with the Semitic. And one 
 result is that a certain discussion, once fierce, is 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 27 
 
 now almost obsolete. It is plain that there is a 
 religion of some sort everywhere among men. ' ' 
 
 These testimonies from the Transactions of 
 a learned society mean a practically universal 
 recognition of deity, as one or many, through all 
 known ages. Many gods have been the rule ; but 
 always a gradation has been understood to exist 
 among them, and at the head of all has seemed 
 to stand One who is their wisest and mightiest 
 and kingliest. In the Valhalla or the Olympus 
 there is always one throne higher than any other. 
 Odin occupies it, or Zeus, or Baal, or Osiris, or 
 Mithra, or Brahma, or Ti, or Allah, or Yahveh, 
 (Jehovah.) 
 
 Diflferent views have been held as to the char- 
 acter and various attributes of this supreme Per- 
 son. Some have thought him more or less un- 
 righteous; some have imagined him, in both char- 
 acter and natural faculties, far inferior to the God 
 of the Bible; some have represented him by an 
 ugly caricature of the human form, or even by 
 brutes of the lowest type, some by the golden 
 sun, some by such graceful and shapely statues as 
 classic antiquity fashioned from marble and ivory 
 and gold; while Jews and Christians attribute to 
 him all conceivable and inconceivable perfections 
 which they think it profanity to attempt to ex- 
 press by any outward figure whatever. But under 
 
28 UNIVERSAL BEI.IEFS. 
 
 all these diflferences exists the common idea of a 
 Person greater than any other, vastly greater than 
 men, on whom men heavily depend and whom it 
 mightily concerns them to please. This great idea 
 dominates the whole world of mankind. Its co- 
 lossal shadow lies across all the ages, all the coun- 
 tries, and all the literatures; for, as will be admit- 
 ted, no account is to be made in so large a case of 
 individual atheists, whether called sages or sava- 
 ges, thinly scattered among such immense popu- 
 lations. 
 
 Some indeed say that the Buddhists are athe- 
 ists. It would be nearer the truth to say that 
 Buddha himself was an atheist. But to his fol- 
 lowers he himself has become a supreme deity, to 
 whom temples are built and worship is paid. 
 ' ' He who had left no place in the whole universq 
 for a divine Being was deified himself by the mul-. 
 titude, who wanted a Person whom they could 
 worship, a Being whose help they might invoke, 
 a Friend before whom they might pour out theii 
 most secret griefs," says Max Miiller. Grimm 
 says that the Scandinavian and Teutonic relio-ions 
 were originally the same; while Tacitus says that 
 the supreme God of the Germans was a Being 
 who is "master of the universe, to whom all 
 things are submissive." In all the Teutonic 
 tongues this Being was called God. 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 29 
 
 Until lately we were not as well prepared as 
 we now are to deny the charge of atheism as 
 against a considerable part of the American abo- 
 riginal tribes. An extensive inquiry recently 
 made into the traditional beliefs of the early pop- 
 ulations of both North and South America shows 
 that they generally, if not universally, held to a 
 realm of invisible beings in which there is a su- 
 preme Person far above all others in faculties and 
 rank. "The grand tradition of a supreme Being 
 traceable through Accadian, Assyrian, Persian, 
 Egyptian, Hindoo, Greek, Roman antiquities has 
 now been traced through the traditions of the un- 
 lettered Indian tribes of America. ' ' 
 
 But much more is true. It is now generally 
 allowed by students in the most'ancient literatures, 
 languages, traditions, and monuments that these 
 point to a time when all men held, not merely to 
 a supreme Person, but to only one God deserving 
 of worship. Dorner says, "There is scarcely a 
 religion in which relics or surmises of the unity of 
 God are not contained. Traces of this unity are: 
 among the Hindoos, Brahma or Dyaus; among 
 the Germans, Thio or Zio; among the Chinese, 
 Tien; among the Etruscans, Tina; among the Per- 
 sians, Ormuzd; among the Semites, Chon; among 
 the Chaldaeans and Greeks, Fate." Says Max 
 Muller, "There must be one Godj there must be 
 
30 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 one unchangeable Deity: this was the silent con- 
 viction of the human mind." And by no means 
 "was it always a silent conviction. It has man- 
 aged to speak loudly across the many centuries, 
 .through the pens of not a few scholars whose sym- 
 pathies were not with their testimony. Comte, 
 while asserting that men began as fetish-worship- 
 pers, confesses that India, China, and other coun- 
 tries — containing the majority of mankind — fur- 
 nish little or no support to the assertion. In fact, 
 they furnish a contradiction to it. Even Comte 
 himself affirms the monotheism of the ancient 
 Egyptians. I^ucian tells us that originally they 
 had no statues in their temples. The more ancient 
 the monuments the more free are they from signs 
 of polytheism ; and when we come to what seem the 
 most ancient all, as to the pyramid of Cheops and 
 the " Book of the Dead," these signs wholly dis- 
 appear. In a hymn contained in the 125th chap- 
 ter of the " Book of the Dead," and which is said 
 by Egyptian scholars to be the most ancient piece 
 of poetry in the literature of the world, the Deity 
 is described as the maker of heaven and earth, 
 and the natural forces as his instruments in the 
 government of nature. But all through the dark- 
 est periods the priests appear not to have shared 
 the polytheism of the masses, and to have reserved 
 to themselves and a few others a holy of holies in 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 31 
 
 religious opinion, over whose ark rested the glory 
 of one God. Says Jablonski, ' ' Those men most 
 distinguished for wisdom among the Egyptians 
 acknowledged God to be an eternal Spirit, prior 
 to all things which exist, who created, preserves, 
 and vivifies everything. ' ' 
 
 The same is true of that daughter of Egypt 
 whom we call Greece. She too had her arcane 
 theology in which one God sat enthroned. An 
 elect few of priests, philosophers, and princes were 
 initiated into what were known as Mysteries ; and 
 among these the greatest was the existence of one 
 eternal Spirit from whom all other things came. 
 The verses sung in the Eleusinian Mysteries 
 contained this passage: " Pursue thy path rightly 
 and contemplate the King of the world. He is 
 One, and of himself alone; and to that One all 
 things have owed their being. No mortal has 
 beheld him ; but he sees everything. ' ' As the" 
 sun sometimes appears dimly wading through 
 deeps of clouds and at other times shows his orb 
 in full splendor, so all through the Grecian his- 
 tory appears the great thought of the divine unity 
 in the teaching of such men as Plato and Socrates 
 and Pythagoras. But back of Pythagoras and 
 Thales, back of Homer and Hesiod, we seem to 
 come to a wiser time, when what became the 
 property of the few was yet the property of the 
 
33 UNIVERSAIv BELIEFS. 
 
 many — that wiser time when to the Hellenic 
 people at large the gods were not, but God was. 
 In one of the Orphic fragments, preserved by 
 Proclus, we find that "there is one Power, one 
 Deity, the great Governor of all things." And 
 Eusebius says that the Greeks were not worship- 
 pers of images before Cecrops. 
 
 Plutarch gives a like testimony as to the 
 earlier Romans. He says that they were forbid- 
 den by Numa to represent Deity under the form 
 of man or brute, and that for seventy years they 
 had neither statue nor picture of him in their 
 temples. 
 
 In the old Assyrian and Accadian hymns, 
 amid signs of "gods many and lords many," 
 there is still the echo of the fundamental thought 
 of One who alone deserves the divine name ; 
 sometimes even more than this, as in the hymn, _ 
 
 " The God, my Creator, may He stand by my side ! 
 In heaven who is great ? Thou alone art great ! 
 On earth who is great ? Thou alone art great ! 
 When thy voice resounds in heaven the gods fall prostrate ! 
 When thy voice resounds on earth the genii kiss the dust !" 
 
 Buddhism, which has prevailed so extensively 
 in Eastern Asia, was an offshoot from Brahminism; 
 Brahminism itself was a corrupt offshoot from a 
 still earlier religion, of which the most ancient of 
 the Vedas is the best surviving exponent. This 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 33 
 
 book, the Rig- Veda, declares that the names of 
 various gods are merely diflferent names of one 
 and the same Being: "That which is one the 
 sages speak of in many ways; they call it Agni, 
 Yama, Matarisvan, etc. ' ' If not practically mono- 
 theistic, as Max Miiller seems to think it, the 
 Rig- Veda is at least much nearer to monotheism 
 than more recent Hindoo Scriptures. Schlegel 
 says, ' ' It cannot be denied that early India pos- 
 sessed a knowledge of the true God. " As to the 
 aborigines of China, what the Chinese consider 
 the most ancient part of their sacred book, called 
 Shoo-king, speaks of only one Deity possessed of 
 all natural and moral perfections. 
 
 The object of the most ancient Norse worship 
 was the "Author of all things, the Eternal, the 
 living and awful Being, the Being that never 
 changes; the possessor of infinite power, bound- 
 less knowledge, and inflexible justice." 
 
 In short, L,archer is borne out by the latest 
 researches in declaring that the most ancient 
 nations were not worshippers of idols. And M. 
 Naville, the eminent Egyptologist, in his "The 
 Heavenly Father," writes thus: "One of our 
 fellow-countrymen who cultivates with equal 
 modesty and perseverance the study of religious 
 antiquities has procured the greater part of the 
 recent works published on this subject in France, 
 
 UniverBjil Beliera. "I 
 
34 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 Germany, and England. He has read them, pen 
 in hand, and, at my earnest request, he has kind- 
 ly allowed me to look over his notes, which have 
 been long accumulating. I find the following 
 sentence in the manuscripts which he has shown 
 me: 'The general impression of all the most dis- 
 tinguished mythologists of the present day is that 
 monotheism is at the foundation of all pagan 
 mythology.' " 
 
 Prof. Rawlinson concludes his examination of 
 the subject thus : ' ' Our historical survey has 
 shown us that in the early times, everywhere, or 
 almost everywhere, belief in the unity of God 
 existed ; barbarous nations possessed it as well as 
 civilized ones; it underlay the polytheism that 
 attempted to crush it, retained a hold on lan- 
 guage and thought, had from time to time its 
 special assertors who never professed to have dis- 
 covered it, and so lingered on, gradually becom- 
 ing more and more enfeebled, until a fresh rev- 
 elation of the unity was made by the gospel of 
 Christ." 
 
 To this consensus add another — that of experi- 
 ence. The experience of multitudes is to the 
 effect that prayer to such a Supreme Person as 
 the Bible describes often gets answered in such a 
 way as implies the existence of the Person ad- 
 dressed: also, that such a Being is needed to gfov- 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 35 
 
 ern the universe to the best possible issues and 
 away from the worst; also, that faith in such a 
 Being is needed for the best interests of the world ; 
 also, that great generic needs in nature always 
 have over ag'ainsi them the supplies for the needs. 
 
 Men, in cases innumerable, have called on 
 God for favors and have received answers so cir- 
 cumstantially related to their requests as to dem- 
 onstrate his existence. Many volumes of such 
 cases are before the public. The lifelong ex- 
 periences of George Miiller at Bristol, England, 
 are a monumental evidence of God— considerably 
 higher than the pyramids. 
 
 Such a God as the Bible declares is needed to 
 govern this great universe ; so to manage and 
 guide this great complex of forces as to secure 
 from it, on the whole, good issues. What other 
 power can do this ? What else than the All-mighty 
 and All -wise can guarantee this earth, to say 
 nothing of the whole broad astronomical heavens, 
 against summing up at last as an infinite disaster? 
 Such a ' ' madding crowd ' ' of gigantic potencies, 
 rushing and leaping in every direction and every 
 now and then storming away into outbreaks of 
 overthrow and desolation that appall us — I say, 
 what shall warrant us that they will not at last 
 bring all things to a universal hell? Not such 
 wisdom and power as men possess. A manifold 
 
36 -UNIVERSAI. BELIEFS. 
 
 experience in dealing even with this world is 
 enough to make it plain how utterly insufficient 
 are the human faculties to govern and shape the 
 destinies of even so limited a kingdom. Men can 
 govern men after a rude fashion; they can subdue 
 some brutes and bend to -their will to a certain 
 extent a few inanimate forces; but when it comes 
 to adjusting the sum total of the terrestrial forces 
 into a balanced unit, and guiding the whole 
 towards a definite end, we are as helpless as in- 
 fants — helpless even to see what the proper end 
 is, much more to see the way to it and to drive 
 the great world-chariot along that way when dis- 
 covered — much more helpless than Phaeton was 
 to guide well the chariot of the sun. Were the 
 reins trusted to us, we would, doubtless, drive to 
 destruction and, meanwhile, set the world on fire. 
 So unequal are we to guide the affairs of even 
 this little world to good issues, much more to the 
 very best. But what of the whole broad universe 
 of worlds? Certainly none but an infinite per- 
 sonal God can make it sure, or even probable, 
 that such a tremendous maelstrom of forces will 
 not at last sum up as an awful curse. He can do 
 it. He can make the cosmos a sublime blessino-. 
 He is needed in order that he may do it. 
 
 It is also the testimony of experience ihaX faith 
 in such a God is needed, as well as God himself 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 37 
 
 Multitudes of persons, if not all, need this faith to 
 restrain them from evil and to incite them to good. 
 The tide of good influences within us is found 
 rising as the idea of the Scriptural God draws 
 near and grows large and vivid to our faith, and 
 is found sinking as that removes and lessens and 
 dims. Experiences to this effect are innumera- 
 *ble. The world has also found out by sad' expe- 
 rience, and a plenty of it, that atheism endangers 
 the family and society at large in many ways. 
 Almost every intelligent father would regard 
 atheism among his children as a cloud on their 
 prospects ; most parents would think it a very 
 black cloud. If that family should become a na- 
 tion his views would not alter. Did ever states- 
 man say in his heart, " I see that the doctrine of 
 ' an infinite and righteous God is steadily gaining 
 ground in the country. This is alarming. I 
 tremble for the consequences. We will have to 
 whet up our laws, increase our police, make new 
 prisons, chains, and gibbets" ? Would any states- 
 man that deserves the name talk in this way? 
 This is just what he would say if he were to see 
 the land becoming atheistic. He would take the 
 fact as a threat at the morals and homes of the 
 nation, at its credit and business and order, at 
 property, authority, and personal safety. For 
 all experience goes to show that society in any 
 
38 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 desirable form could not long exist on a basis of 
 stark atheism among the masses. It is doubtful 
 whether it could long exist in any form. Nihil- 
 ism and atheism are twins; when one is present 
 the other is coming, or is already come, or has 
 in its pocket an invitation to come. Stormy out- 
 breaks of depravity and disorder in a godless peo- 
 ple may be delayed for a time by various influen- 
 ces, as volcanic fires may for a while be kept 
 down by heavy superincumbent strata ; but the 
 struggling demons will at last gather strength 
 enough to burst through everything. And then 
 Herculaneum and Pompeii and the French Revo- 
 lution ' ' with all its terrors. ' ' 
 
 Such are two great generic needs in nature to 
 which experience testifies, viz., the need of God 
 by all nature, and the need oi faith in him by all 
 men. But experience also testifies that every real 
 need of a natural class of beings has somewhere 
 over against it a supply for that need or the natu- 
 ral means of obtaining it — water for the fish, air 
 for the bird, grass for the cattle, light for eyes, 
 sounds for ears, odors for nostrils, beauty and 
 grandeur to meet our taste for such things ; ob- 
 jects to admire and love and trust to meet our 
 powers for admiring, loving, and trusting; and 
 so on all through nature, as far as our observation 
 has gone. So it comes to pass that wherever in 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 39 
 
 the natural world a scientist discovers a great 
 generic need, he feels authorized to assume that 
 somewhere a supply for it exists or is obtainable. 
 If nature has any vacuum incapable of being 
 filled, utters any cry for aid which does not in the 
 nature of things admit of being answered, grasps 
 at any object not to be had in the whole empire 
 of actual or possible, the fact has not yet been dis- 
 covered. The supply may not be within easy 
 reach of the need ; a gr-eat gulf even may part the 
 two ; but, given the existence of the one, nature 
 makes oath to the existence, actual or obtainable, 
 of the other. * 
 
 According to this, the need of God on the part 
 of entire nature proclaims a God somewhere to 
 match the need. And so the need oi faith in God 
 on the part of mankind proclaims at least the ex- 
 istence of reasonable natural means for securing 
 faith; that is, good evidence of his actual exist- 
 ence — not here nor there, perhaps, but somewhere. 
 
 To this add what I will call a consensus of 
 those sciences that deal with the structure and 
 functions of plants, animals, and worlds. As- 
 tronomy, even atheistic astronomy, concedes a 
 beginning of the worlds as such. Geology con- 
 cedes a beginning of the races of plants and ani- 
 mals on our planet. And all the sciences that 
 deal with organic being, whether living or fossil, 
 
40 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 present us a scene of which some crowded Patent 
 Office gives only a faint suggestion — show us 
 countless numbers and varieties of inventions, 
 contrivances, machines (so we would call them if 
 they were the work of man), far superior in ex- 
 quisiteness of adaptation to certain ends, and in 
 the beauty and wonderfulness of the results 
 achieved, to anything made by human ingenuity. 
 Indeed, man himself is one of these natural or- 
 ganic marvels — man, who, from the necessity of 
 the case, must be vastly superior to his own work. 
 Now, outside of the realm of natural organ- 
 isms, all the examples of organization that we see, 
 from the hexagonal cells of the bee to the glories 
 of the proudest palace or cathedral, v/e unhesita- 
 tingly and unanimously ascribe to electing and 
 shaping intelligence ; and the more elaborate the 
 structure and the more perfect the adaptation and 
 conspiracy of the parts to their end, the higher and 
 grander seems the intelligence it bespeaks in the 
 maker. We do not need to see the maker in the 
 process of making before our minds are made up. 
 It is enough that in all cases in which the origin 
 of such things has been noticed (and these cases 
 are innumerable) they have come from a choosing 
 and contriving workman. When, then, in course 
 of a long advance from the humblest to the high- 
 est among organisms other than plants and ani- 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 41 
 
 mals and worlds, during which we have found not 
 a single one among all their hosts not referable to 
 intelligent authorship, we come to organisms of 
 still higher grade which we know men did not 
 make, shall we come to a full stop, reverse our 
 logic completely, and proceed to doubt or deny 
 intelligent authorship as universally as we have 
 been affirming it? What right have we, who 
 have just pronounced a cathedral on which wc 
 have chanced, and in regard to which we as yet 
 know nothing but what we see, to have been 
 made by intelligent workmen — I say, what right 
 have we just at this point to face right about, 
 throw away our old principles of judgment, and 
 from like premises draw unlike conclusions as we 
 inquire for the origin of that greater cathedral — 
 man who made the cathedral? Bacon did not 
 advise such a method of philosophizing. Science 
 commands the contrary with the gesture and voice 
 of a dictator. The voice is as one, but it is really 
 a chorus and a great one. It comes from all points 
 of the compass, from the depth as well as from the 
 height. Nearly all the sciences that speak so 
 grandly in our time join in it, and say that such 
 an immensity of infinitely varied and exquisite 
 organizations which are surely known to have 
 been begun, and which, while so varied, have 
 such broad zones of unity connecting them with 
 
43 UNIVERSAI. BELIEF'S. 
 
 one another, must have had one practically infi- 
 nite personal Maker. An unsophisticated person 
 opening intelligent and astonished eyes on even 
 the single microcosm of the human body, to say 
 nothing of the human soul, does not feel it hard 
 to say with Paul, "For the invisible things of 
 Him from the creation of the world are clearly 
 seen, being understood from the things that are 
 made, even his eternal power and godhead, so 
 that they are without excuse. ' ' 
 
 But the concord of sciences is still broader. 
 Nature, especially as interpreted by the natural 
 sciences, shows us many points of positive har- 
 mony with the Bible doctrine of an infinite per- 
 sonal Maker of nature. In its vastness of extent; 
 in its prodigious dynamics; in its mingled love 
 and wrath, smiles and frowns; in its mysterious- 
 ness and unfathomableness ; in its relations to law 
 and time and motion, as suggesting a Power equal- 
 ly at home in the small and great, in the slow and 
 swift, in the momentary and the everlasting; as 
 well as in the multitude and variety and exquis- 
 iteness of its adaptation of means to ends, nature 
 is just what we should expect from the hands of 
 such a Maker as the Bible affirms. On the other 
 hand, to offset these harmonies, science has not 
 yet brought to light any provable discord. There 
 are mysteries in nature; but mystery, instead of 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 43 
 
 being a discord, is one of nature's harmonies with 
 Biblical Theism. If nature were not mysterious 
 it would not be like the God of the Bible. Hugh 
 Miller, speaking with geological lips, says that 
 the God of the Old Testament is the God of na- 
 ture : nature is not a gospel, but it nowhere for- 
 bids a gospel supplement. 
 
 Add to this a consensus of philosophic tests. 
 If, among several hypotheses to account for a fact, 
 one is found which, while amply sufficient and a 
 priori as credible as any, is vastly the simplest, the 
 surest, the safest, the snblimest, the most salutary, 
 and the most in accord with the convictions and 
 traditions of mankind, it would be accepted with- 
 out hesitation by all reasonable people. Now such 
 is the Theistic hypothesis to account for nature. 
 An infinite personal Power is at least as credible 
 as an infinite impersonal one — the only one now 
 put forth to compete with Jehovah for the honors 
 of Godhead. That an infinite Person is amply 
 sufficient to account for all natural wonders is not 
 open to question. As to the simplicity as well as 
 sureness of the Theistic hypothesis, the merest 
 child can understand it; while its only rival, the 
 scheme of evolution, is so complex and complica- 
 ted as to task the brains of philosophers ; and even 
 they, after wading through whole dreary volumes 
 of muddy explanation, generally conclude with 
 
44 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 saying No or Perhaps^ instead of Amen. As to 
 which hypothesis is the more salutary in its ten- 
 dency on society, is best fitted to restrain men at 
 large from evil and incite them to good — that 
 which ascribes nature to such a God as the Scrip- 
 tures teach, or that which makes it the child of 
 a blind force which, however great, can neither 
 note moral differences nor reward or punish ac- 
 cording to them — it is not easy to see how there 
 can be any honest difference of opinion; nor as 
 to whether it is safer for a man to conduct life on 
 the supposition of a God that can call him to ac- 
 count, or on the supposition of no God. By the 
 one course he risks nothing; by the other he risks 
 everything. We have seen how stand the convic- 
 tions and traditions of mankind, especially of the 
 more intelligent and well-deported masses. 
 
 That all these preeminences can be affirmed 
 with supreme confidence of the Theistic hypothe- 
 sis could hardly be plainer than it is to every toler- 
 ably well-informed person; nor could it be surer 
 than it is that in matters of business, or even sci- 
 ence, any hypothesis to account for a fact having 
 such advantages over all others would be unhesi- 
 tatingly accepted and acted on by all sensible 
 people. It ought to be. Such credentials are 
 imperative. They speak like a king to many 
 parts of human nature, but especially to reason 
 
SUPREME DEITY. 45 
 
 and the principle of self-preservation. In fact 
 they are the autograph and brbad seal of that king 
 whose name is Truth, and in the case before us 
 of that King whose name is God. They are large 
 enough to be descried and recognized from the 
 stars. So they bind the conscience. No man 
 can justify himself to science and philosophy, 
 much less to common sense and common pru- 
 dence, in refusing an hypothesis which he sees to 
 be vastly simpler, surer, safer, sublimer, and more . 
 salutary than any other. Doubtless these facts 
 have had much to do in promoting the general 
 Theism of mankind. When they have not been 
 distinctly conceived and expressed they have al- 
 ways been subtilly present in the air; as it were, 
 thin ghosts and shadows have flitted dimly to 
 and fro, looking in at our windows, stealing by 
 our side with the faintest suspicion of a footfall, 
 hovering over us with whispering wings, filtering 
 a liliputian speech through the coarser voices of 
 the world, and so gradually depositing faith in 
 God as nature does the dew, with no rattle and 
 outcry of machinery, but all silently and imper- 
 ceptfbly, even as the worlds above us steal on 
 their magnificent courses through the heavens. 
 
 " Ere the radiant sun 
 Sprang from the east, or 'mid the vault of night 
 The moon suspended her serener lamp — 
 
46 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 Ere mountains, woods, or streams adorned the globe 
 
 Or Wisdom taught the sons of men her love. 
 
 Then hved the Almighty One ; then, deep-retired 
 
 In his unfathomed essence, viewed the forms. 
 
 The forms eternal, of created things : 
 
 The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp. 
 
 The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe, 
 
 And Wisdom's mien celestial. 
 
 What he admired and loved his vital smile 
 
 Unfolded into being. Hence the breath 
 
 Of life informing each organic frame ; 
 
 Hence the green earth and wild-resounding waves ; 
 
 Hence light and shade alternate, warmth and cold. 
 
 And dear autumnal skies and vernal showers 
 
 And all the fair variety of things." 
 
111. EARTHLY PROVIDENCE 
 
Divosque, mortalesque turmas 
 
 Imperio regit unus sequo. Horace. 
 
 One governs with just sway both gods and mortals. 
 
 Nvv & lEKvofiaL iiEv. "Ev BeCi ye /lavTeyio;. pindar. 
 
 At present I am hoping. But the issue is in the hands of 
 God. 
 
 And He is governor among the nations. david. 
 
EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. 49 
 
 III. EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. 
 
 We can imagine the supreme Person utterly- 
 indifferent to what is going on among men and 
 taking in it no part whatever. A few philoso- 
 phers, so called, like Epicurus, have maintained 
 that this imaginable deity is actual. Multitudes 
 of people act as if Epicurus was right. Neverthe- 
 less, it is the theory of all the great creeds and 
 sacred books of the world and of the great masses 
 in all nations and ages that the Supreme is one 
 who is more or less conversant with the affairs of 
 this world, interested in its concerns, and actively 
 employed among them. This is the reason why- 
 men always and everywhere have endeavored to 
 propitiate him in many ways. They have feared 
 divine action against them, hoped for divine ac- 
 tion in their favor; so have set themselves to avert, 
 if possible, the one and to secure, if possible, the 
 other. The Jupiter of the Romans and Zeus of 
 the Greeks was a being supposed to play a large 
 part in the affairs of the world. So of the Egyp- 
 tian Osiris, the Persian Ormuzd, the Phoenician 
 and Chaldsean Baal, the Plindoo Brahma, the 
 Scandinavian Odin, and the Great Spirit of the 
 
 fniversil BiOie's. 4. 
 
,f04t« 
 
 53 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 American Indians. Oracles were given by. them, 
 messages sent, inspirations breathed, prayers an- 
 swered, incarnations made, things common and 
 things miraculous done; indeed, most natural phe- 
 nomena have been ascribed to the supernatural. 
 The oral and written traditions of all the chief 
 nations of ancient and modern times are full of 
 such things. In fact, the belief in the divine 
 activity in human affairs has generally been so 
 strong that men have been willing to put them- 
 selves to vast inconvenience and expense, and 
 even suffering, in order to secure its favorable 
 action in their affairs. Self-inflicted tortures, hu- 
 man sacrifices, exposures of children, as well as 
 prayers and oaths to an immense extent, have 
 testified to the sincerity of whole nations in think- 
 ing that deity is an active force among men. 
 Some have thought this force largely unjust and 
 malign; some have thought it at times hampered, 
 deceivable, defeated, forgetful, slumbering; while, 
 according to the faith of Christendom, it is the 
 onpcMigr of all these — a force whose activity is 
 WnsSnt, universal, benevolent, all-wise, and all- 
 mighty; a force brought to bear on every actual 
 t and.even on a host of harmful things which 
 would have become actual events. But 
 stands wholly aside from the world of 
 Iher cares nor does among them, is no 
 
EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. 5I 
 
 part of the world's faith and never has been, so far 
 as we know. On the contrary, the great creeds, 
 traditions, and catholic beliefs of mankind have 
 always invested all deities with an activity and 
 weight in human affairs proportioned to the power 
 they were supposed to possess. 
 
 Is there any consensus of nature, as far as 
 known to us by observation, experience, and the 
 sciences, to negative this consensus of nations and 
 traditions ? For example, does the observed reign 
 of law oppose it? Why should it be supposed to 
 oppose activity in God any more than it does ac- 
 tivity in man ? But no divine agency is visible, 
 and to some this present invisibility suggests un- 
 reality. But are there not many forces which act 
 powerfully and yet act unseen? Even personal 
 agents often do great things without manifesting 
 themselves. 
 
 "But the universe as now known to us is so 
 broad, man and his concerns are such an insignif- 
 icant part of the whole, there are so many wor- 
 thier fields for divine action than this, does it not 
 look as if Deity must overlook us, as if he must 
 scorn us, as if he would have neither ability nor 
 leisure nor motive to notice us and take a note- 
 worthy part in our affairs?" This consideration 
 might have weight as against Jupiter, but not as 
 against Jehovah. An infinite Being has no trou- 
 
52 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ble among the infinities, whether of space or num- 
 ber or duration. To him action here does not 
 mean inaction yonder. He is not obliged to neg- 
 lect the small that he may attend to the large, to 
 leave the earth without government that he may 
 reign in Sirius and Alcyone. Business does not 
 crowd him, cares do not worry him, details do not 
 exhaust his time and patience; maxima on the 
 one hand and minima on the other are equally 
 within his reach; there is no labor in either his 
 doing or knowing, though it bear on every point 
 in the whole astronomical heavens. To speak of 
 things as too great or too small or too many or too 
 remote for such a Being is too absurd. Consider- 
 ations of distance or magnitude or number or 
 duration have no meaning as related to either the 
 knowledge or the power of such a Being. 
 
 The doctrine of divine activity among men is 
 not only without discouragement from nature, but 
 is in positive harmony with all that we know of 
 it. Everything about us is constantly active on 
 man in a greater or less degree. Not even the 
 stones and dust of the highway are absolutely pas- 
 sive toward us for a moment. They are always 
 throbbing on us with their gravities, chemistries, 
 and latent fires. Not a star seen in our telescopes 
 so distant that it does not affect us by its light, its 
 attraction, its beauty, and its manifold suggestions. 
 
EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. 53 
 
 The natural sciences, taken together, show us a 
 universe of impersonal things, many of which 
 are wonderfully potent, and all of which are in- 
 cessantly active in their several spheres — spheres 
 that mutually touch and interlock and have all 
 vibrations in common, like the fancied heavens 
 of Ptolemy. Ascending to personal beings, 
 these too, as far as our observation has gone, are 
 ever-active powers, each within its sphere intelli- 
 gently and consciously and constantly bringing 
 itself to bear on its environment, which immedi- 
 ate environment transmits the impulses it receives 
 to a still wider horizon, and so on to the end, at 
 least of this world; each doing this to an extent 
 proportioned to its resources and opportunities. 
 Some persons of great natures are magnificent in 
 the extent to which they impress themselves on 
 the world. Rivers of influence, broader and 
 longer than the Amazon, flow away from their 
 lofty summits. What they are hourly doing goes 
 to shape nations and ages — it may be all the na- 
 tions to come. They may be, and often are, very 
 harmful things — devouring conflagrations, far- 
 sweeping pestilences, terrible storms that shake 
 whole ocea,ns and strew distant shores with 
 wrecks. But forces they are, ever-active forces, 
 acting through immense spheres, acting away to 
 remote horizons, and even the limits of the globe, 
 
54 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 with an energy proportioned to the greatness of 
 their natures and opportunities. 
 
 Thus, through the whole vast range of being 
 as far as known to our secular observation and 
 science, from a stone on the highway to some high 
 Mightiness on his throne, all things are found in- 
 cessantly active on man, and active according to 
 the riches of their endowment. Of course the 
 strong presumption is that, on ascending still far- 
 ther to the Supreme Person, we do not come to a 
 startling exception to the enormous and hitherto 
 unvarying rule, but rather to One whose in- 
 cessant activity among us is as supreme among 
 personal activities as is His nature among person- 
 al natures. 
 
 Geology shows that all organic beings on the 
 earth had a beginning. Of this beginning God is 
 the sufficient and simplest and therefore the most 
 scientific explanation. So he is the Maker and 
 Father of men. But it is contrary to the nature 
 and duty of a father not to care and do for his own 
 children, of a maker not to care and do for the 
 work of his own hands, so far as they may have 
 need; and that men do need a heavenly caring 
 and doing for them every day is terribly plain. 
 From what we know of ourselves we are sure that 
 God could not content Himself in the conscious- 
 ness of a vast thesaurus of unemployed faculties, 
 
EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. 55 
 
 especially in the presence of vast opportunities 
 and vast need for their exercise, a need, too, of 
 His own creatures and children. If we were 
 worth making we are worth preserving — guiding 
 and governing for the sake of preserving. 
 
 In brief: the Bible, as understood by all Jew- 
 ish and Christian denominations, teaches a Su- 
 preme Person who is alive to what is passing in 
 this world, deeply interested in its aflfairs, and per- 
 sonally and continually active in shaping events 
 among us to a vast extent. This teaching agrees 
 with that of all the other great creeds, traditions, 
 and catholic beliefs of the world, since these as- 
 cribe to all their deities, greater and lesser, an ac- 
 tivity and weight in human affairs proportioned 
 to the greatness of the faculties they are supposed 
 to possess. To this consensus of creeds and na- 
 tions and ages must be added another which these 
 ' ' scientific ' ' times are bound to make much of — 
 that of testimonies from all the sciences, as well 
 as from countless popular observations and experi- 
 ences, to the effect that all other beings known to 
 us, from the humblest to the highest, from miner- 
 als to men, are not only forces and ever-active 
 forces, but forces ever active on men and their be- 
 longings in proportion to the powers they possess, 
 and that consequently we are warranted in pre- 
 suming that the highest Being of all is no excep- 
 
56 UNIVERSAL^ BELIEFS. 
 
 tion to tlie otherwise universal rule, but acts in 
 the affairs of the world to an extent as much 
 grander than that belonging to any other agent 
 as his powers are greater than theirs. 
 
 This means, for such a God as the Bible shows, 
 a universal providence. Not a sparrow falls to the 
 ground without him ; not a hair of our heads fails 
 to be numbered. Every single thing that occurs 
 in the world occurs under his active supervision. 
 So it has been in all past time; so it will be in 
 all time to come; nothing ever transpires in which 
 his great hand is not busy; not an event, how- 
 ever small, but could say with the Hebrew Psalm- 
 ist, ' ' Thou compassest my path ; . . . thou hast beset 
 me behind and before and laid thine hand upon 
 me." Such power as his can do much for every 
 conceivable event; such wisdom as his knows 
 just what should be done and how to do it; such 
 goodness as his disposes him to do in all things 
 the best he can ; such a nature as his can put forth 
 an incessant and boundless activity without an 
 atom of weariness or worry. An absolutely uni- 
 versal providence would cost such a being noth- 
 ing, but would be an unspeakable advantage to 
 the world. So he is bound to give it. So he 
 actually gives it. 
 
 Many facts harmonize with this doctrine, and 
 none can be shown inconsistent with it. Not a 
 
EARTHI.Y PROVIDENCE. 57 
 
 few are of such a character that divine power 
 must have directly produced them, and so must 
 have determined their times, places, shapes, de- 
 grees, and other circumstances. Many other facts 
 are so plainly useful and admirable, so like what 
 we would naturally expect from a good being and 
 wise, that they plainly accord with the idea that 
 God is active in promoting them, if not in actually 
 producing them. As to the remainder, viz., those 
 facts that apparently are not desirable, but the 
 contrary — such as temptations, sins, errors, suflFer- 
 ings — it can be shown that they are not incon- 
 sistent with the doctrine of a divine activity in 
 con7iection with them, though some of them may 
 be inconsistent with a divine activity in producing 
 them. 
 
 Among the things in which God must have 
 been active, because they must have been directly 
 produced by him, are the following : worlds; 
 plants and animals as organisms; vegetable and 
 animal life ; terms of growth, stature, and life ; 
 human souls ; a multitude of historic miracles 
 scattered through the centuries — miracles the de- 
 nying of which unsettles all history. That the 
 origin of such things must be traced directly to 
 divine choice and power is conceded by all those 
 among us who concede a divine Person. And if 
 God originated habitable globes and organic spe- 
 
58 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 cies and mysterious life and still more mysterious 
 spirit, as well as the many signs and wonders and 
 answers to prayer which secondary causes cannot 
 explain, he must have regulated many particulars 
 as to each of these things. For example, in pro- 
 ducing a soul he determines when it shall appear, 
 where it shall appear, what shall be its general 
 calibre, what proportion to one another its various 
 faculties shall have, what its environment shall 
 be. In short, every such fact is extensively ma- 
 nipulated and governed. It enters the realm of 
 being at this angle or at that as God chooses. It 
 appears in the first century or in the nineteenth, 
 in Europe or in America, in a palace or in a cot- 
 tage, as seems to him good. Whether it is large 
 or small, whether dowered as a poet or as a phi- 
 losopher, depends on the purpose for which he 
 wants it. It is sphered about by the Ten Com- 
 mandments, and by a great many other com- 
 mandments not so easily neglected. 
 
 But there is another large class of facts, viz., 
 those of so pleasant and useful a character that 
 one can readily believe them protected and pro- 
 moted, if not produced, by divine agency. Such 
 are the family, civil government, literature and 
 science and art, virtues, victories of truth and 
 right, richly deserved calamities, the reign of 
 law. Were God to defend and further, or even 
 
EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. 59 
 
 originate, such things with all the forces of his 
 wisdom and power, he could not be thought to 
 do anything inconsistent with the account given 
 of him in the Bible, but, on the contrary, his 
 action would be considered in loving and musical 
 agreement with the same. The two notes chord 
 perfectly. Such things are what we should sup- 
 pose would come forth from Deity like outbreak- 
 ing waters. They are just the children to come 
 from such a parent, just the music to sound from 
 such lips, just the rays to shoot from such a sun. 
 Not discord but concord, not war but alliance, 
 not a pulling apart but a pulling together, are 
 the ideas suggested when we look at the doctrine 
 of a universal divine providence in connection 
 with such facts. Whatever may be said of certain 
 other things, such useful things as water and air 
 and light, as grass and flowers and fruits and grains 
 and forests, as many domestic animals and birds of 
 wondrous beauty and song, as happiness and vir- 
 tue and truth and the great ethnic institutions 
 which guard and foster these; the brilliant victo- 
 ries won in the name of science and humanity and 
 God — all of which began, and so are events — all 
 such bright and fair things face towards our doc- 
 trine, advance to meet it, take it cordially by the 
 hand and say. Welcome ! 
 
 There remains another class of facts, those 
 
6o UNIVERSAIv BELIEFS. 
 
 unpleasant and even pernicious ones which perplex 
 and stumble so many — temptations, sins, errors, suf- 
 ferings. Are these inconsistent with the doctrine 
 of a divine providence that is active in whatever 
 occurs? To show that they are so it would be 
 necessary to show that such natures as men have 
 (that is, natures capable of freely choosing- or re- ■ 
 fusing the right, and so capable of virtue, and so 
 capable of vice) are not indispensable to the best 
 system. To many they seem the noblest con- 
 ceivable natures. Beyond a doubt virtue is the 
 grandest and fairest thing that ever shone on 
 human or divine thought : in comparison with 
 it all material or even intellectual magnificence 
 and beauty are unworthy of notice. To dispense 
 with such a free nature as man's is to dispense 
 with the possibility of this incomparable jewel, 
 to dispense with all the glorious actual examples 
 of virtue which have illumined or will illumine 
 the earth. The Bible being witness, the scattered 
 stars of such examples now visible will gradually 
 multiply till at last they run together in one gen- 
 eral blaze of glory. Would it be well to give up 
 the possibility of such a luminous hereafter? 
 Who is Samson Agonistes enough to prove the 
 affirmative? Such a feat in dialectics seems im- 
 possible. It certainly has never yet been per- 
 formed. 
 
EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. 6l 
 
 Now such a moral nature is, by its very con- 
 stitution, open to temptations. It can be solicited 
 from all quarters. There is no compulsion to 
 either this or that. Election, as between the good 
 and bad, is perfectly free. Mettlesome steeds are 
 under our rein, but we can turn them in any di- 
 rection we please — into the desert or into paradise, 
 into vice or into virtue. There are drawings in 
 both directions, and must be. But drawings 
 towards the evil can be successfully resisted. 
 Successful resistance will build up a character 
 into robust goodness as nothing else can. A 
 habit of success will be formed which in time 
 will become invincible. To secure this invincible 
 habit, we will suppose, benevolent Deity brings 
 himself to bear on every temptation which he 
 cannot wisely prevent, to abate it, to shape it, to 
 make all the circumstances of time and place and 
 manner and motive as favorable as possible for 
 rejecting it. Not a case on which he does not 
 expend omniscience and omnipotence to make it 
 harmless and even serviceable. His sword turns 
 every way for this purpose. On each battlefield 
 all his forces are massed, and every temptation is 
 a battlefield. He would fain turn every tempta- 
 tion into a heavenly chariot for moral and reli- 
 gious progress. 
 
 But temptations too often issue in sin. Are 
 
62 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 sins inconsistent with a divine providence being 
 in them? Suppose this providence, instead of 
 producing or promoting the sin in any way, acts 
 wholly against it— to prevent it, to lessen it, to 
 defeat its natural issues — persuading, command- 
 ing, marshalling natural forces and laws, apply- 
 ing directly that divine force that made natural 
 forces and laws, doing the whole with a whole- 
 heartedness that uses every available resource in 
 heaven's treasury against the evil. Is such action 
 as this inconsistent with the goodness or justice 
 of God ? Our claim is not that God is the author 
 of sin or acts in its favor, which would be blas- 
 phemy; only that he acts in regard to it. If the 
 action is wholly adverse ; if he hates the sin, 
 strives against it, does all he can consistently to 
 cancel it or minimize its effects, then he does just 
 what the Scriptures say he does, and there is noth- 
 ing stumbling in the doing. 
 
 But errors occur as well as sins. Both are bad 
 things — poisons, serpents, wild beasts — and one 
 could wish that both had never come. But here 
 they are despite our wishes, frightful and fruitful 
 monsters, plainly come to stay. What shall we 
 say of that ugly twin sister of sin called error, es- 
 pecially religious error? That it is so ugly that God 
 could not have anything to do with it? Nay, but 
 that he could not favor it either in action or feel- 
 
EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. 63 
 
 ing. He surely may disfavor it, eliminate it as 
 far as possible, abate its evil effects; and to this 
 end may persuade, command, illuminate, hedge 
 up some ways and open others, bring to bear nat- 
 ural forces and supernatural. Some errors seem 
 inseparable from finite minds. Others seem in- 
 separable from sinfulness. If God prevents all 
 the mistakes that he wisely can, and narrows as 
 much as he can all that he cannot consistently 
 prevent, and does all he can to cancel their evil 
 effects, why, this is the very thing we would ex- 
 pect a good God to do. The occurrence of errors 
 is no proof that God is not active in regard to 
 them ; it is only proof that, whatever his activity 
 against them may be, it is limited by the nature 
 of things or by considerations of wisdom. 
 
 And what about the sufferings which so abound 
 in the world and which stumble so many — as if a 
 good God could not for a moment have anything 
 to do with such disagreeable things ! But some 
 sufferings seem suitably connected with sin as 
 cautions, chastisements, punishments. Others 
 may serve a useful purpose to sinners as a means 
 of moral discipline. So a considerable part of the 
 sufferings of the world are only blessings dressed 
 in black, and a benevolent being could consist- 
 ently promote or even produce them. How does 
 any one know that there are any other sufferings 
 
64 UNIVERSAL EEUEFS. 
 
 than these ? Can he prove that there are ? If God 
 dislikes suflFering in itself and prevents as much 
 of it as he wisely can, "never willingly grieving 
 nor afflicting the children of men;" if his eye is 
 ever on the alert to see and his hand ever on the 
 alert to use all wise opportunities of warning off 
 from the coast of being all temptations, sins, er- 
 rors, and sufferings, then this is just what we 
 should expect from a good God, and includes 
 just what our doctrine of a universal providence 
 afErms of him. For it affirms not that he acts/f?^ 
 every event, but that he acts in regard to it. It 
 may be for and it may be against. In the case of 
 temptations, sins, and errors it is but fair to think 
 that it is always against. God is always crowding 
 such things to the wall. Very much the same of 
 suffering. He uses it freely on occasion; he pro- 
 duces it, if need be, but he regards the necessity 
 as a thing to be deplored. So he lays himself out 
 to have just as little soitow in the world as possi- 
 ble. He hunts it down with unsparing and un- 
 ending vigilance. But it is not possible to dis- 
 pense with it altogether. The natural connection 
 between sin and suffering cannot and should not 
 be severed. There must be chastisements and 
 remorses and punishments for offenders. Moral 
 discipline must be looked after, and drossy char- 
 acter must pass through the fires. 
 
EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. 65 
 
 We find that the allotments of men in this 
 world are not always according to character. 
 "There be just men to whom it happeneth ac- 
 cording to the work of the wicked, and again 
 there be wicked men to whom it happeneth ac- 
 cording to the work of the righteous." The good 
 often become poor and the bad rich. The un- 
 worthy often rise to great honors and the worthy 
 sink to great dishonors. Righteous men often die 
 in their prime and the wicked grow old in their 
 wickedness. The best causes sometimes get de- 
 feated and the worst triumph. Among States, as 
 well as among individuals, ' ' the race is not al- 
 ways to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, 
 neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to 
 men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of 
 skill, but time and chance happen to them all." 
 Can this be and yet the providence of God extend 
 to every event ? 
 
 Suppose that the present life is probation- 
 ary ; that God's object here is not to treat men 
 according to their deserts, but according to the 
 way best fitted to form a good character ; that 
 apparent prosperity or adversity is not always 
 real for either an individual, a cause, or a com- 
 munity — grant a few such things (and why not ?), 
 and the facts just cited cease to be objections to 
 our doctrine. God has not prevented certain facts 
 
 UnlTereal Beile'H. C 
 
66 UNIVERSAL BEUEES. 
 
 which you regard as infelicities or as injustices. 
 Are you sure that your views of things are cor- 
 rect ? Are you sure that good men or good causes 
 are not sometimes benefited by head- winds and 
 stormy times and wrestlings and delays ? Are you 
 sure that it is always best that sentence against an 
 evil work should be executed speedily ; that none 
 for a time should be treated better than they de- 
 serve; that adversity never keeps the best school 
 for the best men? Are we sure that outward 
 prosperity is not often as much a mother of sun- 
 strokes as is a sultry summer day — outward ad- 
 versity not as much a mother of fruitful showers 
 as is yonder angry-looking cloud or as yonder 
 biting Arctic that ventilates the world ? We are 
 not sure. We have not a modest probability even. 
 On the contrary, everything looks in the opposite 
 direction, in the direction of thinking that divine 
 power and wisdom are active in every one of these 
 seemingly unequal allotments of worldly advan- 
 tage, directly producing and promoting some of 
 them, and so manipulating others in themselves 
 undesirable, but which cannot be wisely prevent- 
 ed by Deity, .as to minimize their evil issues. 
 For to say that the power of God is busy in any 
 event is not the same thing as saying that he ap- 
 proves of it or promotes it. It may be that he 
 fights against it, restrains it, pares it down, over- 
 
EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. (>'] 
 
 rules it, fends off or limits its evil consequences, 
 "rides and rules the storm" which he did not 
 evoke, encompasses the mischief as a brisk, sun- 
 ny, healthful atmosphere does the carrion which 
 it is busily engaged in carrying away and redis- 
 tributing in healthful combinations. 
 
 We see, then, in what sense the lives of all 
 men may be said to be ordered by God. If each 
 event, however small, powerfully feels the regu- 
 lating pressure of a divine Hand, it follows that 
 each life in all its details powerfully feels that 
 pressure and is a very different thing from what 
 it would have been without a divine providence. 
 This is what is meant when we say that every 
 man's life is divinely ordered. We do not mean 
 that God decrees and is responsible for all our 
 temptations and sins and ignorances and mistakes 
 and resulting misfortunes, that he produces or 
 promotes or favors them in any way; but simply 
 that the divine power and wisdom are dealing 
 with each life at every point in order to help it as 
 much as he can consistently with the general 
 good. The bush is aflame with a speaking divin- 
 ity for this purpose and for no other. Each life 
 represents the best that God can do under the cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 This is the sense in which every man's life is 
 ordered by God. But the ordering of a good 
 
68 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 man's life is a very different thing from the order- 
 ing of another man's, as one would naturally in- 
 fer from such passages as these: " The steps of a 
 good man are ordered by the lyord." "In all 
 thy ways acknowledge Him and he shall direct 
 thy paths." In the case of a loyal subject and 
 friend, God can properly do far more for his 
 advantage than he could do were the man dis- 
 loyal; he can reconcile with the general good a 
 far greater amount of good to the individual, just 
 as all human governments can. There is little 
 that such governments can do for law-breakers 
 and rebels, and yet conserve the public weal. But 
 in proportion as the subject is loyal and law-abi- 
 ding it becomes possible, in consistency with the 
 general good, for the government to shine out 
 upon him with full-orbed favor. So the divine 
 government can be, and is, specially favorable to 
 the interests of its loyal subject and friend; not 
 perhaps to what you and I may chance in our 
 short-sightedness to think his interests, but to his 
 real interests, namely, his character and happi- 
 ness in the long run. For such interests the di- 
 vine Ruler can make ' ' all things work together 
 for good. ' ' 
 
 An easy inference is that it is greatly worth 
 our while to be the loyal subjects and friends of 
 God. If we knew a man of such commanding 
 
EARTHLY PROVIDENCE. 69 
 
 influence that he could help or hinder our lives at 
 all points, so that any plan of ours stood not the 
 least chance of success without his consent and 
 every chance of success with it, we should think 
 it little short of madness to treat him with inso- 
 lence or neglect. No sensible person would do 
 such a thing. He would, on the contrary, make 
 all possible efforts to be on the best of terms with 
 one on whom his interests so thoroughly depend- 
 ed, especially if he knew that the possessor of such 
 power over his interests was disposed to use it. 
 He would carefully avoid giving him any ground 
 of offence. He would try to fulfil his wishes in 
 every particular. To this end he would put him- 
 self to large inconvenience and even great sac- 
 rifices. 
 
 Now God, it seems, is such a being infinitely 
 magnified. There is not a jot of our welfare 
 which is not completely in his hand, not a tittle 
 of our lives which his omniscience and omnipo- 
 tence do not grasp. We can get nothing when 
 he says. No; we can get everything when he says. 
 Yes. ' ' Except the Lord build the house, they 
 labor in vain that build it ; except the Lord keep 
 the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. ' ' He 
 knows every turn of our affairs, he is hard by at 
 every crisis; crisis or no crisis, he is hard by. 
 There is no pit of misfortune from which his hand 
 
70 UNIVERSAI. BELIEFS. 
 
 cannot lift us, no pinnacle of good fortune from 
 which his hand cannot hurl us. And it is not 
 merely a question of what he can do. The power 
 he has is the power he uses. He is fashioning our 
 lot at every point, at every moment, as the pot- 
 ter fashions the clay on his wheel. Not a sand- 
 grain on our shore, not a grass-blade on our farm, 
 not a leaf in our forest, not a word or even letter 
 in our book, but wears his harness and carries his 
 bit. Yes, it must be a great thing to have God 
 for a friend. It is wonderfully worth our while 
 to be his loyal. subjects, especially if to be loyal 
 to him is to be loyal to righteousness, if to win 
 and keep his favor we will not be obliged to stoop 
 to any meanness or unreasonableness, but may 
 keep to a path of manly uprightness as lofty as 
 the stars. Is not this possible ? Inquire and 
 see. It is written, "No good thing will he with- 
 hold from him that walketh uprightly. ' ' 
 
IV. RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 
 
XENOPHON. 
 
 It is believed that the gods have been worshipped by all 
 men from the first. 
 
 S£/3£tv rd Tuv Beuv KuTJuarav oljiat 7' avrb Kai ao^Cyrarov OvriTolaw 
 ctvai. EURIPIDES. 
 
 To worship the gods I think to be the fairest and wisest 
 thing for mortals. 
 
 Oh, come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel 
 before the Lord our Maker. david. 
 
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 73 
 
 IV. RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 
 
 All denominations of Christians, without a 
 dissenting voice, agree that worship is to be paid 
 to the supreme Person. Acts of reverence and 
 homage, such as prayer, praise, offerings of vari- 
 ous kinds, together with reverent looks and tones 
 and postures, are withheld from God in no section 
 of the Christian church. On the contrary, such 
 things are everywhere enjoined as indispensable 
 duties and high privileges. All the great Chris- 
 tian voices, are equally positive and imperative. 
 Forms of worship vary ; some wear hats before the 
 Lord, while others think it more reverent not to 
 wear them; some use a ritual, while others de- 
 cline it; some sit in prayer, while others stand or 
 kneel; some praise with the voice only, while 
 others add the music of artificial instruments; but 
 not a murmur of dissent as to the propriety and 
 obligation of either private or public worship can 
 be detected by the sharpest ear. More than this : 
 in no section of the Christian church can a man 
 who wholly neglects worship pass current as a 
 Christian man. If he has no sanctuary, no prayer- 
 meeting, no family altar, no grace at meals, no 
 
74 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 closet; if he never adores nor supplicates nor 
 gives thanks, never bows the head nor closes the 
 eye nor awes the voice nor bends the knee before 
 God, his character in the community is settled. 
 Whatever else he may be, he is not a Christian. 
 There is not a Christian denomination on earth 
 that will acknowledge such a man as a worthy 
 member. 
 
 A like agreement is found among all the re- 
 ligions. The Bible says, "Worship before Him, 
 all the earth. Oh, come, let us worship and bow 
 down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. 
 Bring an offering and come into his courts. I will 
 that men pray everywhere. Pray without ceasing. 
 In everything give thanks, for this is the will of 
 God in Christ Jesus concerning you." And so 
 on, in a great variety of modes, from Moses to 
 John. 
 
 What the Bible says is substantially said by 
 all the great sacred books and creeds now found 
 in the world. The Koran, the Avesta, the Vedas, 
 the Tripitaka, the pictured monuments of Egypt 
 and Phoenicia and Assyria, the still nobler and 
 more lasting monumental histories and poems in 
 which are preserved the religious creeds of Greece 
 and Rome, all cry out, Worship, with scarcely less 
 emphasis than the Bible itself. They all appoint 
 churches or synagogues or mosques or temples, 
 
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 75 
 
 all decree private as well as public devotions, 
 all have their prescribed rites and ceremonies in 
 honor of at least One who is considered the Su- 
 preme of beings. Whether he is called Jupiter 
 or Brahma or Buddha or Allah or something else, 
 certain outward acts of reverence and homage 
 must be paid to him. So say all the Gentile 
 bibles the world around. They echo our own 
 Bible, and that without any loss of sound. Like 
 our own Bible, they all insist on worship as a part 
 of the alphabet of religion. That it is a fitting 
 and necessary thing is an unquestioned and un- 
 questionable axiom with them all. Where is the 
 religion that does not even look with surprise and 
 wrath on the man who never pays anj' tokens of 
 honor to his God ? 
 
 To say that all religions agree in calling for 
 worship to the supreme Person is the same as 
 saying that all nations agree in it; for no nation 
 now known is without one or more religions for- 
 mally assented to by the great bulk of the people 
 or by that part which stamps the national char- 
 acter. It is claimed that a few small clans or 
 tribes are entirely without any form of religious 
 belief and worship, but even this is by no means 
 clear. On the other hand, it is perfectly clear and 
 conceded on all hands that, if some such small 
 religionless communities exist, they are among 
 
76 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 the most degraded of mankind and form an in- 
 considerable part of the race. 
 
 And it should be noted that the formal assent 
 given to worship by all nations, that is, by hu- 
 manity at large, is generally more than formal. 
 It expresses real conviction and shapes actual 
 conduct. As everybody knows, there is some- 
 times a wide difference between the actual views 
 and conduct of men and the precepts and tone of 
 their accepted sacred books and traditions. The 
 Jews were often a very unhandsome translation of 
 the Old Testament. Christendom is by no means 
 all the New Testament commands it to be, either 
 in its thinking or in its practice. The India of 
 to-day has diverged far from the doctrines and 
 practice of the Rig-Veda. The present Buddhist 
 does not fully appear in the Tripitaka, nor does 
 the present Moslem in the Koran nor the present 
 Parsee in the Avesta. But in the matter of wor- 
 ship the attitude of the nations generally is, both 
 theoretically and practically, that of their sacred 
 books and creeds. They thoroughly believe in 
 deity of some personal sort and offer him some 
 sorts of reverential recognition and tribute that 
 deserve to be called worship. These are often 
 ill-judged, and even discreditable, as to form and 
 method ; but then they are real attempts to honor 
 and propitiate supreme Deity. How small a 
 
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP, ']'] 
 
 percentage of the Asiatics neglect worship, even 
 at great cost ! How few, relatively, on any conti- 
 nent have never at any time sincerely invoked 
 supernatural aid or taken an attitude of reverence 
 and homage towards the Supreme, and would not 
 under like circumstances do the like again ! So 
 there is a consensus of nations in fact as well as 
 in form in favor of worship. 
 
 This is how the world stands at present. How 
 has it stood in the long past ? For aught we can 
 see (and we can see a long way), precisely as now. 
 More than 1,700 years ago Plutarch wrote, "If you 
 will take the pains to travel through the world 
 you may find towns and cities without walls, 
 without letters, without kings, without money, 
 without theatres and places of exercise; but there 
 never was seen, nor shall be seen by man, any city 
 without temples and gods or without making use 
 of prayers, divinations, and sacrifices for the ob- 
 taining of blessings and the averting of calamities 
 and curses. Nay, I am of the opinion that a city 
 might sooner be built without any ground to stand 
 on than a commonwealth be constituted altogether 
 void of any religion and opinion of the gods, or, 
 being constituted, be preserved." Lest this opin- 
 ion of Plutarch should be thought too antiquated 
 and unscientific, let Laplace speak: "I have 
 lived long enough to know what at one time I 
 
78 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 did not believe — that no society can be upheld 
 without the sentiment of religion." We have a 
 larger horizon than Plutarch or even the great 
 French scientist had, and our historic telescopes 
 pierce much more widely and remotely into the 
 dimness of the past than did theirs; but we are 
 obliged to tell the same story. Neither history 
 nor tradition carries us back to a time when men 
 as a race were not worshippers. Back through 
 ancient Britain and Gaul and Germany, through 
 still more ancient Rome and Greece, through still 
 more ancient Egypt and Phoenicia and Assyria, 
 travels our searching gaze (thanks to the time- 
 defying monuments and such men as Tacitus and 
 Herodotus and Manetho and Berosus and Moses) 
 till we seem almost to see the very cradle of the 
 race; and everywhere, among the most easily dis- 
 cerned of all objects, are altars and sacrifices and 
 clouds of incense and votive offerings and shrines 
 and bended knees and uplifted hands, in conse- 
 crated groves or tabernacles or temples. "It is 
 believed," said Xenophon, some 400 years before 
 Christ, "that the gods have been worshipped by 
 all men from the very beginning. ' ' There have 
 been, here and there, worshipless individuals (a 
 few freckles on the face of the world), but the 
 world as such has always been a worshipping 
 world. The worship of the true God has some- 
 
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 79 
 
 times almost disappeared, but worship of some 
 being supposed to be supreme has not failed for 
 an hour, nor failed to be almost universal. When 
 some Democritus or Epicurus or Lucretius has 
 ventured to speak against worship, either on the 
 ground that there is no God or that, if he is, he 
 does not concern himself with what men do, the 
 great bulk of people have looked on him as a 
 monster. ' ' Let the atheist drink the hemlock, ' ' 
 said the Athenian democracy. If the masses of 
 humanity in every age have not gone so far as 
 this, they have always gone so far as to look on a 
 worshipless man with wonder and horror. 
 
 So much stress have all visible past ages laid 
 on worship that they have, at almost boundless 
 expense, dedicated to it the choicest work of the 
 sculptor, the painter, the architect, the musician, 
 and the poet. I am thinking of such temples as 
 that of Belus at Babylon, of Isis at Memphis, of 
 Diana at Ephesus, of Minerva at Athens, of Je- 
 hovah at Jerusalem. I am thinking of such 
 cathedrals as those of Rome, Milan, Cologne and 
 Moscow — indeed, of a host of palaces of God be- 
 starring all Christendom with such wonders of 
 grand and beautiful architecture as seem but little 
 short of crystallized worship, and even tempt men 
 to almost worship the builders. To aid the wor-. 
 ship for which these costly structures have been 
 
8o UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 raised have been wrought the bravest works of 
 sculptors and painters, from Phidias and Apelles 
 to Angelo and Raphael. To aid the same wor- 
 ship have been prepared the noblest strains of 
 poetry and music that ever voiced human emo- 
 tion, from David and Asaph to MoJ;art and Han- 
 del. To-day, if the traveller in any country 
 wishes to see the best it has to offer in the way of 
 high art, he goes to its pagodas or mosques or 
 churches. All that the mere outward can do to 
 encourage and dignify worship seems to have been 
 done; and especially, if the reality of Christian 
 worship were now in proportion to its magnificent 
 symbols and conveniences, the kingdom of God 
 among us would not now be merely the kingdom 
 of the sun-rising. Some think that there has been 
 no little mistake just here; some of us object to 
 statues and pictures and ecclesiastical millinery, 
 and perhaps incline to think that even Christian 
 sanctuaries may be too grand and costly in view 
 of the vast needs of a still unevangelized world ; 
 but of this there can be no doubt, that the ex- 
 ceeding costliness of the equipment for worship 
 in all lands and times testifies loudly to the ex- 
 ceeding value of worship in 'the opinion of man- 
 kind. Men have not only taught and practised 
 worship almost universally, but their sense of its 
 importance has been such that on no other one 
 
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 8l 
 
 earthly thing, perhaps, have they made so large 
 an outlay of pains and genius and gold. 
 
 How came it that the worship of the supreme 
 Person is so widely believed in, practised, taught, 
 and emphasized ? Is it from a clear primeval rev- 
 elation ? Did God show his will to our first pa- 
 rents in some unmistakable manner; and did they, 
 as they diverged from the original centre, carry 
 with them, all over the globe and down through 
 all generations, the original law of worship? 
 Very likely, not to say certainly. But there is 
 another great force at work. Worship has in its 
 favor a consensus of revelation with nature in 
 many forms — with nature in man, in brute organ- 
 isms, and even in the inorganic world. Notice, 
 first, the consensus with the instincts, needs, and 
 laws of human nature and society. As the instinct 
 of a bird teaches it to fly, to build a nest, to pro- 
 vide suitable food for its young, so men are taught 
 by their instinct to worship. It acts in advance 
 of reason. It impels the child to reverence its 
 parents, the adult to uncover before the greatness 
 of kings, sages, heroes, and saints. It is natural 
 to men, as natural as it is to breathe, to hold in 
 honor great faculty, great knowledge, great power, 
 great goodness, or great position, in their fellow- 
 men; and equally natural to express this inward 
 honor by certain outward acts, as bowing, kneel- 
 
 Unlvarsal Bdivfi. 6 
 
82 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ing, deferential looks and tones. So such things 
 are required by an immemorial law of society, as 
 sure and imperative as the law of gravity. One 
 cannot transgress the law with impunity. Should 
 he refuse altogether acts of honor and reverence 
 in his dealings with men, however great, he would 
 not be tolerated. Is he a madman or a fool ? So 
 they cast him out — out of the synagogue of good 
 society, to herd with the boors and pariahs and 
 fellahs where he belongs. But, really, no one 
 ever succeeds in totally suppressing the instinct 
 which prompts to outward tokens of veneration 
 and homage, though' it often is successfully resist- 
 ed and confined. And this in presence of such 
 low forms of greatness as exist in men. How 
 much more in the presence of such wondrous 
 forms of greatness as unite in God! One has to 
 defy the promptings and instincts and laws of his 
 nature, if, on due presentation of the idea of God, 
 he does not feel powerfully stressed towards all 
 possible tokens of reverence, subordination, and 
 homage. Will not his stiff knees instinctively 
 begin to bend at first glimpse of such majesty ? 
 Will he not, ere he is aware, have bared his brow 
 and awed his voice and bowed his neck with its 
 iron sinew at the sight of such unparalleled pow- 
 er and knowledge and position and everything 
 that is gfreat ? 
 
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 83 
 
 Also, various needs of the individual and of so- 
 ciety require worship. Real prayer emphasizes 
 the sense of dependence on God — a sense that 
 needs to be emphasized, we are so prone to self- 
 sufficiency and forgetfulness of the Supreme, so 
 apt to look supremely at second causes, so given 
 to act independently of a higher will and wisdom 
 than our own, and so to incur innumerable dan- 
 gers and damages. Real thanksgiving emphasizes 
 our sense of obligation to the supreme Benefac- 
 tor — a sense the absence of whicli is shocking and 
 damnable and sure of punishment, and yet one to 
 which men tend with an almost irresistible gravity 
 and depravity. In short, every real act of rever- 
 ent homage paid to God calls him up distinctly 
 before the thought; and if the acts of worship are 
 frequent and habitual, they make him, as it were, 
 an abiding presence. The effect can hardly be 
 other than salutary in the highest degree. Con- 
 sider what God is. He is glorious company. All 
 that is low and unworthy naturally stands abashed 
 in His presence. All that is high and worthy nat- 
 urally lifts its head and blooms and rejoices as in 
 a glorious sunshine. If " he that walks with wise 
 men shall be wise," how much more he that 
 walks with God ! ' ' Into the same image, from 
 glory to glory," is the natural sequence of a di- 
 vine companionship, and so of a close companion- 
 
84 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ship with the divine idea vividly held. As "evil 
 communications corrupt good manners," so grand 
 and holy communications improve them. Here, 
 too, we have the outcome of a natural law, pro- 
 found and far-reaching, covering the whole veg- 
 etable and animal kingdoms, the general expres- 
 sion of which is that ' ' like begets like. ' ' The 
 solicitude of parents and others as to the company, 
 whether of persons or of books, which the young 
 keep roots itself finally in a conviction of the 
 truth and commanding character of this law, a 
 law which is so recognized in every department 
 of observation and science that deals with organic 
 nature that not to know and act upon it is un- 
 scientific. This law bids every man, as he values 
 the health of his soul and the moral success of his 
 life in this world, to worship God regularly and 
 often. The individual needs worship to meet the 
 instinct of worship, to satisfy the sesthetic nature, 
 to fulfil the sense of the "beautiful and fitting," 
 to quiet conscience, to restrain the bad and bring 
 forward the good within him; also, as most per- 
 sons think, to escape great penalties and secure 
 great rewards from One who said, "Those who 
 honor me I will honor, and those who despise me 
 shall be lightly esteemed." Society needs wor- 
 ship as fostering reverence for authority and law, 
 a spirit of just subordination, respect for the rights 
 
REUGIOUS WORSHIP. 85 
 
 of others, a sense of a higher government that can 
 deal with the springs of conduct in the thoughts 
 and feelings which no civil government can 
 reach — in short, as being the sworn foe of that 
 levelling spirit which under various names now 
 so gravely threatens the welfare, if not the very- 
 existence, of society. All these needs, bottom- 
 ing themselves in certain instincts and laws of 
 organic nature, make with revelation a consen- 
 sus in favor of worship which, no doubt, has had 
 much to do with making it practically univer- 
 sal, not only with all denominations of Chris- 
 tians and the chief religious and sacred books, 
 but also with all nations and ages of mankind as 
 far as known. 
 
 There is also another consensus, in which in- 
 organic nature joins with the organic. Plants, 
 brutes, and especially men, show a host of mar- 
 vellous contrivances which we know to have had 
 a beginning, and also know to be infinitely beyond 
 what man can make or even understand. Inor- 
 ganic nature makes a like showing. Light, heat, 
 gravity, electricity, air, water, soil, the various 
 chemical elements with their affinities and laws 
 of combination, all speak of a wisdom and power 
 quite unfathomable by us. And through both 
 organic and inorganic worlds runs a conspicuous 
 vein of unity that implies the unity of their Maker. 
 
86 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 This joint testimony of the two great kingdoms 
 of nature to the greatness of the one God is really 
 a joint testimony to his worshipfulness. It says, 
 as does the Bible, ' ' Oh, come, let us worship and 
 bow down; let us kneel before the I/Ord our 
 Maker." And it says it loudly, so loudly that 
 ' ' there is no speech nor language where their 
 voice is not heard: their line is gone out into all 
 the earth, and their words to the end of the 
 world, ' ' making even the heathen ' ' without ex- 
 cuse because that when they knew God they glori- 
 fied him not as God, neither were thankful. ' ' 
 
 As we have seen, the idea of a Being standing 
 on the summit of existence, and practically infinite 
 in faculty as compared with men, is held and has 
 always been held, so far as we can discover, with 
 unquestioning faith by the great bulk of mankind 
 as well as by its wisest and best. And now we see 
 that worship of this great Being is about as widely 
 accepted as is the Being himself. No denomina- 
 tion of Christians, no class of religionists, no sa- 
 cred writing, no nation the broad world over, no 
 age the broad historic and traditional past over, 
 but summons men to worship as the muezzin from 
 his minaret does the Moslem. That great com- 
 posite voice rolls round the world, and all the more 
 because there blends with it and lifts under it a 
 mighty ground-swell of sympathetic sound from 
 
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 87 
 
 all parts of great nature, both organic and inor- 
 ganic, but especially from the instincts and needs 
 and laws of human nature. 
 
 And yet there are those in Christian lands (far 
 more there than elsewhere) whose voices are not 
 heard in this great chorus. They never pray in 
 the closet. They never pray in the family. They 
 never offer that act of worship which consists in 
 reading the Scriptures. They are seldom, if ever, 
 found at prayer-meeting or sanctuary ; and if 
 found there it is not as genuine worshippers. 
 The form is hollow. As they go and as they 
 stay, there is in them no conscious sense of deal- 
 ing directly with God in an act of homage. When 
 the minister prays they do not join in the adora- 
 tion or supplication or thanksgiving, though, it 
 may be, they bow the head in deference to usage. 
 When the minister reads and expounds and en- 
 forces the Scriptures, the listening, more or less, 
 which they give is not as to the oracles of God, 
 but as to the words of a man. And yet these men 
 are not all atheists. Many of them admit that 
 there is a God and that he is as worshipful as the 
 Bible represents. 
 
 I^et these men consider how they stand. They 
 stand practically alone. Even their own selves do 
 not stand by them. Neither their instincts nor 
 their consciences nor their reasons give them any 
 
88 UNIVERSAL BELIEI^'S. 
 
 support iu the unworshipping attitude they hold. 
 In addition, they are vigorously attacked in it by 
 the example and the convictions of humanity at 
 large in all ages, and by the demands of every sys- 
 tem of religion that has undertaken to teach men. 
 Revelation is against them, and science itself is 
 against them, if science includes the laws of hu- 
 man nature (the laws on which human society 
 rests as to its welfare, if not its existence), and at 
 least two laws which are more general still, viz. : 
 like begets like, and, a wise man, shut up to one 
 of two courses, takes the more promising one of 
 the two. If the Bible is true, there is wrath in 
 store for the man who never prays or otherwise 
 puts forth acts of honor and homage towards the 
 heavens ; and, on the other hand, heaven is in 
 store for him who genuinely worships. So a wor- 
 shipless man sins against the law of self-preserva- 
 tion. He is disastrously singular and inconsistent 
 with himself. What, perhaps, he will think a 
 heavier charge, he is unscientific, in that he re- 
 fuses to be taught by an immense induction of 
 facts that worship has the suffrage of human na- 
 ture and is greatly rewarding, while it would be 
 hard to mention an evil or danger belonging to it. 
 He is unscientific, inasmuch as every science tes- 
 tifies to the infinite greatness and worthiness of 
 God, and so to the naturalness and obligation on 
 
RELIGIOrS WORSHIP. 89 
 
 our part of all possible acts of reverence and hom- 
 age. He is the scientific man who is Baconian 
 enough to be guided by an experimental philoso- 
 phy, that is, by the experience of mankind, which 
 is one with its logic in saying to us, Worship 
 God. 
 
V. EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. 
 
Kiix^f^Bcu- ravTcg 6e BeCiv xiTeova' avOpoiroi. 
 
 HOMER. 
 
 Pray, for all men require the aid of the gods. 
 
 Kai yap te Airai eim Aj6f Kovpai /isyuXoio : 
 Of /lev t' al&iceral Koipa; Aidf iiacov lovaa; 
 Tov 6e liey' aivrjaav Kal t' e/cAwon evxo/ievou). 
 
 HOMER. 
 
 Prayers are the daughters of great Zeus : whoever re- 
 veres them as they approach him, they greatly aid and listen 
 to his entreaties. 
 
 The supplication of a righteous man availeth much. 
 
 St. James. 
 
EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. 93 
 
 V. EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. 
 
 By efficacious prayer I mean prayer that has 
 influence with Deity to secure the things asked for. 
 
 I have shown a consensus of religions and 
 mankind in favor of worship. But there is also 
 an equal consensus in favor of the efficacy of that 
 part of worship which we call prayer. Not effi- 
 cacy for securing all the objects one chooses to 
 pray for, but for securing such of them as do not 
 conflict with the divine will. The world-feeling 
 has always been that many such things are grant- 
 ed in answer to prayer which would not be granted 
 without. 
 
 Some in Christian lands dissent. Perhaps 
 they quote an ancient parable, as follows: A cer- 
 tain man was on his death-bed. He called his 
 sons to him and said, "My dear children, I have 
 a treasure of great value hidden somewhere in my 
 fields: when I am gone dig for it and you will be 
 sure to find it." After the funeral the sons set to 
 work. With great diligence and perseverance 
 they dug the whole farm over. They found 
 neither gold nor jewels nor anything else they 
 had expected ; but as they dug they found appe- 
 
94 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 tite, strength, health, habits of industry ; more- 
 over, the land, so thoroughly broken up and ex- 
 posed to sun and air, gave magnificent crops. 
 Then they understood what treasure their wise 
 father meant. 
 
 "Such," say some, "is the experience of 
 those who pray for particular things. They do 
 not get the good they seek, but they do get a very 
 good substitute for it in the moral exercise and 
 culture which the praying involves. And this is 
 all that they get. The praying has no tendency 
 whatever to secure the thing prayed for. Noth- 
 ing is gained by application to Deity which would 
 not come without the application. He is immuta- 
 ble. He will do what seems to him good without 
 regard to our judgment' and wishes. And he ought 
 to do so if he is infinitely wiser and better than 
 we." 
 
 But this is not the doctrine of the Scriptures. On 
 the contrary, they attack it as with drawn swords. 
 "Elias was a man subject to like passions as we 
 are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not 
 rain, and it rained not on the earth by the space 
 of three years and six months. And he prayed 
 again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth 
 brought forth her fruit." "And this is the con- 
 fidence that we have in Him, that if we ask any- 
 thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if 
 
EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. 95 
 
 we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we 
 know that we have the petitions we desired of 
 him." " What nation hath God so nigh to them 
 as is the Lord our God in all things that we call 
 upon him for ?" " All things whatsoever ye shall 
 ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." " If 
 any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, and it 
 shall be given him. " " How much more shall 
 your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to 
 them who ask him!" And so on to almost any 
 extent. Whatever limitations of such compre- 
 hensive language may be required by common 
 sense and the nature of the case, they evidently 
 do not touch the doctrine of efficacious prayer 
 that vitally pervades the whole as blood does an 
 animal body. You cannot prick the body any- 
 where without finding blood. So many are the 
 examples of the granting of specific requests by 
 a prayer-hearing God to the Hannahs and Davids 
 and Hezekiahs and Elijahs of the Bible, so many 
 are its general encouragements to expect that in 
 many cases the exact things asked for will be 
 granted, that were we to cite them all we should 
 have an army, an army quite too large to be han- 
 dled on the small field at our disposal. But it is 
 not necessary. No intelligent beliei'er in the 
 Bible but believe^ in efficacious prayer. 
 
 Similar is the teaching of the Koran. Prayer, 
 
96 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 fasting, alms, and a pilgrimage to Mecca are the 
 four great points of Mohammedan duty. Five 
 times each day the minaret calls to prayer; five 
 times a day the faithful, wherever they may be 
 and however engaged, fall on their knees with 
 faces towards Mecca; for is it not written, "Prayer 
 is the pillar of religion and the key to Paradise"? 
 And though the Koran teaches that all things are 
 so fated that they cannot be otherwise than they 
 are, yet the faithful do not allow that this is at all 
 inconsistent with the efiicacy of prayer in procu- 
 ring the blessings prayed for. Accordingly, they 
 pray for all sorts of things, just as Christians of 
 every name are accustomed to do — for daily bread, 
 for success in their enterprises, for prolific fiocks 
 and herds, for protection in dangers, for guidance 
 in perplexities, for pardon of sin, for the spread of 
 their faith, "for final salvation — indeed, just as all 
 the polytheistic nations have been doing from at 
 least the beginning of our acquaintance with them. 
 They have asked their gods for whatever they 
 wanted, from a crust to a throne, from some feath- 
 er of a private convenience to a solar system of 
 national victories. The habits of the old Greeks 
 and Romans have long been known to general 
 scholars; but more lately the studies of antiqua- 
 ries, missionaries, and travellers have shown that 
 the same habits have prevailed among all the 
 
EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. 97 
 
 great nations, ancient and modern. They have 
 prayed, not as a mere decorous form, not because 
 of the culture-value of the exercise (of which they 
 knew nothing and cared as little) ; but because 
 they supposed that there was at least a possibility 
 of their getting by their prayers the particular 
 things they wanted. They were not sure. The 
 Deity might be propitious or he might not. He 
 might think it best to grant or he might not. At 
 any rate, prayer was worth the trying. That 
 prayers were often successful, that in almost any 
 given case they might be, that their general stress 
 is to procure from Deity the favors which they 
 aim at, so that one in the use of them would in 
 the long run make great gains not otherwise pro- 
 curable, has been universally held. The nations 
 have not been philosophers. They have not asked 
 for things because they thought the exercise of 
 praying would do them good as so much gymnas- 
 tics might do their bodies, but because they want- 
 ed certain things and thought that asking for 
 them was a likely, or at least a possible, means to 
 their end. This thought has really lain at the 
 bottom of all the bended knees and lifted hands 
 and outcries heavenward that have besought in 
 grove or pagoda or mosque or tabernacle or tem- 
 ple or synagogue or church or closet from remo- 
 test antiquity. Were men to understand that the 
 
 miver«al Bellers. 7 
 
98 UNIVERSAL EEUEFS, 
 
 prayerless are just as likely as the prayerful to get 
 what they want at the hands of the Supreme, 
 prayer would disappear from the face of the earth; 
 not at once perhaps, for old habits are powerful; 
 but as the dew disappears, or as the showers which 
 have drenched the ground gradually evaporate 
 until at last the fields are black with drought and 
 famine. 
 
 ^Efficacious prayer is what we have some a pri- 
 ori reason to expect. In the present absence of 
 miracles we seem to need some way of realizing to 
 ourselves the cojitinued presence and agency of 
 God in human affairs, some way within reach of 
 everybody. We are born and bred in the pres- 
 ence of the great works of nature. Day and night, 
 each day and all day, they meet us at every turn, 
 till they are as familiar as our own selves. The 
 familiarity does not breed contempt, but it does 
 breed inattention and insensibility. The wonder- 
 ful heavens and earth do not call out wonder. 
 They affect us no more than does the constant 
 ticking of the old family clock that from its cor- 
 ner looked down on our cradles. We have to 
 shake ourselves. We have to shout to our absent- 
 minded eyes and ears, "Wake up, man ! Look ! 
 Listen ! Will you allow all these great things to 
 be to you as if they were not?" And when by a 
 struggle we have managed to get into a wakeful 
 
EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. 99 
 
 state, even then we are only too apt to look on the 
 glorious constitution and course of nature as on 
 some ancient clock that was made and wound up 
 ages ago after a very enduring fashion, and con- 
 tinues to go on quite of itself. The adversary 
 tempts us. Does the Power that in some far-off 
 time set up the present system of things still abide 
 as an open-eyed and active agent within it ? Let 
 us make trial; let us pray. And so the prayers go 
 up; and every now and then, we will suppose, 
 fulfilments come down so circumstantially and 
 intrinsically agreeing with the prayers that no 
 theory of mere hap-hazard or of secondary causa- 
 tion can reasonably explain the agreement. The 
 Baconian starts. "Then, after all, God is not 
 dead; after all, he is not a mere antiquity; nor is 
 he an unhearing and unthinking force eternally 
 coursing through the veins and arteries of eternal 
 nature, mutually convertible with electricity and 
 gravity and what not, but a Person who to-day 
 and here and in my petty concerns has open eyes 
 and ears and ready-sceptred hands. ' ' And as ful- 
 filment after fulfilment rolls up evidence after evi- 
 dence till a mountain touches heaven and faith 
 practically becomes sight, he will come to ex- 
 claim, " Surely the Lord was in this place and I 
 knew it not; surely he is not far from any one of 
 us; but in him we live and move and have our 
 
lOO UNIVERSAL BEtlEFS. 
 
 being." Such a means of bringing God nigh to 
 every man seems exceedingly desirable. It is by 
 no means unlikely that such a God as the Bible 
 describes would provide what we need. It is a 
 thing to be looked for rather than otherwise. In- 
 stead of being surprised at some undeniable answer 
 to prayer, as one might be by the falling of rain 
 from a clear sky or by sunshine at midnight, one 
 should feel it to be so entirely accordant with 
 what he would naturally expect in the case as to 
 call for no surprise whatever, however much of 
 admiration and gratitude it may demand. It is 
 the natural corollary of a Biblical Theism, or in- 
 deed, for that matter, of any respectable Theism. 
 All the logic in the preliminaries of the case looks 
 towards efficacious prayer. 
 
 But the fulfilments just supposed are not mere 
 suppositions. The efficacy of prayer is matter of 
 experience — of so many experiences that the gath- 
 ering together of the waters makes seas, which add 
 a very loud voice indeed to that of the united reli- 
 gions, faiths, and practices of mankind. It is on 
 unimpeachable testimony that great numbers of 
 Christians have actually had their prayers for spe- 
 cific favors so minutely fulfilled that no explana- 
 tion of the fact other than that of divine inter- 
 ference for the purpose of fulfilling is scientifically 
 tolerable. Perhaps there are few Christians of 
 
EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. lOI 
 
 long standing who have not had one or more such 
 convincing answers. The elaborate likeness of 
 what they have received to what they asked for 
 is such as, all circumstances considered, no doc- 
 trine of chances or merely natural law can account 
 for. The fulfilment is a careful portrait of the 
 prayer. Do portraits kappett ? Are they ground 
 out by some blind grist-mill? Of course there are 
 many doubtful cases. Mere nature and the toss- 
 up and whirligig of circumstances will so suffice 
 for the explanation of some coincidences that we 
 cannot appeal to them as proving the efficacy of 
 prayer; but, after these have been set aside, enough 
 are left to set our doctrine on the broadest sort of 
 a scientific foundation, not to say on a throne. 
 There is just now a great outcry for facts, induc- 
 tions, and Bacons. We do not complain of it; 
 we join it rather. Let these outcrying people 
 read a few of the many books filled with detailed 
 narratives of prayer that went straight to heaven 
 and came back with just the things prayed for, 
 and, if considerate and frank, they will allow that, 
 though some of the narratives are not conclusive, 
 there are others, and many of them, which can- 
 not reasonably be explained save on the theory of 
 a prayer-hearing God. 
 
 Some neglecters of prayer give no reason for 
 their neglect; but others, and not a few in these 
 
I02 UNIVERSAI, BEUEFS. 
 
 days, put on airs of science and declare that the 
 reign of law warrants them in believing that prayer 
 can be of no use as a means of procuring bless- 
 ings. 
 
 They speak somewhat after this manner : " It 
 is now conceded that law reigns everywhere and 
 always. Absolutely nothing is free of its sceptre. 
 Politics, business, domestic aifairs, mind, • reli- 
 gion — one cannot mention a single thing, how- 
 ever small, whether in the material or spiritual 
 world, which is not as much subject to law as are 
 chemical atoms and revolving planets. And the 
 laws of nature are adamantine. They never give 
 way, nor even give, for a single moment. ' With- 
 out variableness or shadow of turning' describes 
 them as well as their reputed Author. The con- 
 stitution of things does not alter ; their modes of 
 acting and of being acted on do not change; every 
 event takes place under the stress of forces per- 
 fectly fixed in their natures and methods of work- 
 ing. Consequently the natural sequence of things 
 is never disturbed. What will happen to-morrow 
 or next year or a thousand years hence is foreor- 
 dained in the unchanging nature of things, and 
 is just as sure and settled a matter as any event 
 of yesterdaj'. It is necessary that it should be so. 
 There must be opportunity for science. Human 
 life must have something solid to depend upon. 
 
EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. IO3 
 
 The various parts of great nature are so grooved 
 and tongued, so mortised and dovetailed into one 
 another, that a break in one means a break in all. 
 When a full, swift river breaks through its banks, 
 or a train of cars leaps from the rails, we expect 
 disaster; so we must look for still greater disaster 
 if at any time the great forces of nature break 
 away from their tracks and channels. To sup- 
 pose that anything we can say will induce the 
 Creator to break up the order of nature which, for 
 wise reasons, he has himself established, is to sup- 
 pose that he can be brought to work for us not 
 only a miracle, but an unwise and self-stultifying 
 miracle. ' ' 
 
 Sufficient answer to this objection from the 
 reign of law is that it is equally good against the 
 efficacy of prayer as between man and man. Does 
 a man who grants me a favor which I have asked 
 him for necessarily violate a law of nature? From 
 the foundation of the world has any human being 
 interfered with the reign of law by conferring a 
 favor in answer to prayer? If successful petitions 
 mean the downbreak of law, then law lies in ruins 
 all over the world — indeed, can hardly be said to 
 have ever reigned on the planet within the human 
 period, the cases of successful petitions having 
 been so immensely numerous always and every- 
 where. 
 
I04 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 Children abound in successful petitions. 
 "May I have this?" "Will you let me go to 
 my play?" And so on. Though the answer 
 which the child gets is often a negative, it is also 
 often an afiSrmative. He gets what he asked. 
 Is the order of nature wrecked? Suppose our 
 philosopher should say to a child caught in the 
 act of begging a favor from his father, ' ' You fool- 
 ■ ish boy ! I am ashamed of you. Do you not 
 know that everything is settled in the bonds of 
 law from the foundation of the world, if not ear- 
 lier, and that, in order to gratify you, your father 
 will have to work a miracle ? How absurd in you 
 to ask him to do what he cannot do!" Do men 
 talk to children in this vein? And when the 
 children have gotten what they asked, are they 
 sadly told that they have gotten a disastrous mir- 
 acle? Why, then, are God's children talked to 
 in this way ? Is he the only father who cannot 
 say and do ' ' Yes ' ' to the prayers of his little ones 
 without upsetting the order of nature ? 
 
 In a school the pupils often bring requests to 
 their teacher — for explanations, for indulgences, 
 and so on. Suppose one of our philosophers 
 should say to one of these petitioning pupils, 
 ' ' My boy, I am disappointed in you. You are 
 old enough to know better. Do you not know 
 that educational matters, as well as all others, are 
 
EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. 105 
 
 held fast in the grip of unchangeable law ; that 
 law jealously guards the whole coast of being, 
 and allows none to land save her own children ; 
 that your teacher cannot grant what you ask with- 
 out working a miracle, and a bad one at that?" 
 Do men talk to man's pupils in this way? And 
 after the pupils have got what they asked, as they 
 so often do, are they told with affrighted faces that 
 great nature is out of joint almost or quite beyond 
 setting? Why, then, is this told to God's schol- 
 ars when they are found asking him for light and 
 guidance on dark subjects and in dark ways ? Is 
 he the only teacher who cannot say and do "Yes" 
 to the asking souls who are in course of training 
 under him without breaking down the reign of law? 
 Suppose the philosopher should say to the ten 
 thousand office-seekers who are asking positions 
 from princes and presidents and prosperous busi- 
 ness firms, "I never saw such unreasonable con- 
 duct. Stop all that, in the name of common 
 sense and accepted science ! Do you not know 
 that it is agreed on all hands among scientific men 
 that law reigns in politics and business as thor- 
 oughly as among planets and atoms ; that the as^ 
 signments of postoffices and clerkships, as well as 
 of places in the Cabinet, are all determined in the 
 very constitution of things from their very begin- 
 ning, if indeed they ever had a beginning? The 
 
I06 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 great machine, having a fixed nature and struc- 
 ture, can turn out certain products and no others. 
 Do you suppose that the President will or can 
 break up the constitution and course of nature for 
 you ?' ' Do men talk in this way to those who are 
 knocking at the doors of the White House as if 
 they would beat them down? And when they 
 find the applicant gaining what he applied for, 
 and becoming Mr. Secretary or Mr. Collector or 
 Mr. Commissioner, as very often happens, do these 
 enlightened objectors insist upon it that miracles 
 have been wrought and that all the foundations 
 of the earth are out of course? Why, then, do 
 they talk in this sage vein to their fellow-subjects 
 in God's kingdom who are found asking favors of 
 their King ? Is his the only government which 
 cannot say and do "Yes" to petitioning subjects 
 without breaking the sceptre and overturning the 
 throne of law ? 
 
 If it would be ridiculous for one to talk after 
 such a fashion in regard to the petitions that pass, 
 and successfully pass, in such profusion between 
 men, is it wise for him to talk in the same way 
 about God, as if He cannot grant a prayer without 
 throwing the universe into confusion and laying 
 violent hands on his own rules ? Is he the only 
 person who is so fettered that he cannot or must 
 not grant a petition ? 
 
EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. 107 
 
 In fact, neither man nor God is under the ne- 
 cessity of setting aside natural law in order to 
 answer prayer. Neither has to do more than I do 
 when I cast a stone upward. I overcome the 
 force of gravity by my superior force. And we 
 all bring about events every day by using natural 
 laws and forces — by guiding them, by combining 
 and resolving them; in short, by governing other 
 forces that were made to be governed by our su- 
 perior force. So God may do, only of course in 
 an infinitely greater degree. He can do it with- 
 out even suspending a single law for a single 
 moment. That he actually does so we are bound 
 to believe, unless we would defy the natural pre- 
 sumptions of the case, the manifold teachings of 
 the Bible, the science of Christian experience, and 
 the general voice of mankind in all times and 
 lands. 
 
 What is this doctrine of prayer that has in its 
 favor such a great consensus? Not that prayer 
 always secures its object, not that it can ever be 
 relied on to bring that object immediately, but 
 that, in addition to its general moral and religious 
 influence on the character of the petitioner, it 
 avails much to secure in some suitable time and 
 way the suitable specific things asked for. This 
 is the doctrine that deserves to be true and that 
 has the consent of all the sacred books and creeds 
 
Io8 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 and traditions; that is to say, of either human na- 
 ture itself, with all its outcrying instincts and 
 needs, or of that primeval revelation at the knee 
 of which the lisping infancy of our race was taught 
 to join its hands to pray. 
 
 And what says this doctrine to prayerless peo- 
 ple? There are some such in Christian lands. 
 They rise from their beds without prayer and 
 compose themselves to sleep without it. They 
 ask many things from earth, but never anything 
 from heaven. Days come and go, years melt into 
 years, enterprises are begun and prosecuted and 
 finished, perplexities, emergencies, prosperities, 
 and adversities succeed one another through all 
 the checkered scene, and yet not a single petition 
 Godward in behalf of this world or the next goes 
 up from their lips or hearts. I mistake; there is 
 an emergency that sometimes brings these people 
 to their knees. Let their boat upset or their car 
 go plunging down a precipice; in short, let them 
 be called to look death squarely and closely in the 
 eye, and they will be very apt to cry to God for 
 help, as did Volney on stormy Lake Erie. The 
 human nature within them cries out almost before 
 they are aware. But for the most part and for 
 years together their asking goes out only towards 
 men. Is there any God? To look at these men 
 one would hardly think it. 
 
EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. IO9 
 
 What shall be said to them ? That they are 
 in a minority? That they are in a wonderful 
 minority ? That they are in a minority so small 
 as to be practically inappreciable in both present 
 and historic times? In most things and with 
 men the general example counts for much. Fash- 
 ion is a dictator. Among Romans we are apt to 
 do as Romans do. In dress, in furniture, in man- 
 ners, in language, in opinions even, we are prone 
 to go with the tremendous majorities. What 
 everybody does everybody wants to do. But these 
 prayerless people stand against a world. They 
 say No where almost everybody says Yes. Why 
 is it? Is prayer one of the labors of Hercules? 
 Few things are easier. The feeblest and simplest 
 and busiest can pray. Neither genius nor learn- 
 ing nor wealth nor goodness is needed, only sin- 
 cerity. And then, while prayer cannot possibly 
 do any harm, it promises to do a world of good, 
 all mankind being its mouthpiece. Under such 
 circumstances prayerlessness seems inexcusable. 
 The presumptions are against it; the "sweet rea- 
 sonableness" is against it; an imperial Christian 
 experience is against it; the suffrages of humanity 
 are against it. In neglecting prayer a man neg- 
 lects to use in his own behalf what all the world 
 has always felt to be one of the greatest forces 
 open to man for accomplishing his ends, and very 
 
no UNIVERSAI, EELIEFS. 
 
 likely does it for a reason which in the case of 
 other great forces would not be allowed any 
 weight, namely, that it often does not when used 
 bring us what we want. The use of other forces, 
 say electricity or steam, involves danger. It may 
 even destroy us. But the force we call prayer is 
 sure to do no harm if it does no good. The Su- 
 preme is not likely to be angered by the compli- 
 ment of a devout recognition of his sovereignty 
 and power. But let us throw aside all the ijs and 
 declare in the strength of the great consensus that 
 such a recognition promises vast advantages which 
 no man can aflFord to miss. 
 
 But it is not the prayerless merely that need 
 to hearken to the consensus. Let certain praying 
 people cotisider their ways. They pray morning 
 and night without fail; for aught I know they 
 pray seven times a day; but their prayers do not 
 seem to them instruments for the accomplishment 
 of definite purposes. They feel that praying is a 
 thing to be done, that it is a necessary part of the 
 equipment of a Christian man, that it belongs to 
 the sacred routine which for some good reason has 
 been appointed them ; but as to any distinct idea 
 of getting by their asking what they ask for, they 
 are quite vacant of it. And, somehow, their na- 
 ture does not abhor the vacuum. They are quite 
 easy under it. They do not expect answers to 
 
EFFICACIOUS PRAYER. Ill 
 
 prayer that can be recognized as such. They 
 would be surprised to get them. Their praying 
 is all machine-work. They wound themselves 
 up for this sort of work some years ago, and they 
 continue to run, without any particular interest or 
 aim in the matter, as regular as a machine and 
 alm.ost as purposeless. 
 
 These persons should wake up. Such wooden 
 praying is not of the paying sort. It is not adapt- 
 ed to get specific answers because it does not thor~ 
 oughly mean what it says. If these praying- 
 machines would take to themselves soul, and would 
 ask God for favors as they do men — that is, with 
 a distinct aim and effort to get them by the ask- 
 ing — they would find it a very profitable way of 
 expending breath and time. As between man and 
 man, prayer is an instrument for getting what we 
 want. It is the same as between man and God. 
 That it is not always successful in gaining its 
 object should no more prevent its being used than 
 like failures should prevent our using ploughs 
 and harrows. Do these always bring a crop? 
 No; but they look and work in that direction; 
 and the man who uses them faithfully for years 
 finds that he has been prospered as he never 
 would have been if he had trusted to the sponta- 
 neous products of the soil. 
 
VI. INFALLIBLE ORACLES. 
 
 Fnlvereal Beliefs, 
 
Deity with his own right hand points out our way. 
 
 ARATUS. 
 
 The law of God has two divisions — the one written, the 
 other unwritten. diog. laert. 
 
 Believing all things written in the law and the prophets. 
 
 ST. PAUL. 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. II5 
 
 VI. INFALLIBLE ORACLES. 
 
 The Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, 
 and other ancient peoples who had no sacred 
 books nevertheless held that deity had sent mes- 
 sages to men by haruspices, priests, sybils; by 
 dreams, omens, supernatural voices, inspirations. 
 And the original message was always supposed to 
 represent perfectly the thought of the deity from 
 whom it came. It might be marred in passing 
 through second and third hands; but the message 
 at first hand, whether in this way or that, whether 
 by responses of oracles (as at Delphi and Dodona) 
 or by the teaching of priesthoods supposed to be 
 official custodians of sacred knowledge and mouth- 
 pieces of divinity, whether relating to fact or doc- 
 trine or practice, was accepted as, in every par- 
 ticular, as truthful and authoritative as the divin- 
 ity himself. 
 
 Similar to these are the views generally taken 
 of the sacred books now extant in the world by 
 those who accept them as sacred. They are 
 thought to be not only messages from the super- 
 natural, but also messages that are as infallible 
 on all matters of which they affirm as the super- 
 
Il6 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 natural itself. More especially is this thought of 
 the original documents. 
 
 Max Miiller writes of the Rig- Veda as follows: 
 "According to the orthodox views of Indian the- 
 ologians, not a single line of the Veda was the 
 work of human authors. The whole Veda is, in 
 some way or other, the work of deity; and even 
 those who received the revelation or, as they ex- 
 plain it, those who saw it, were not supposed to 
 be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the 
 level of ordinary humanity and less liable to error, 
 therefore, in the reception of revealed truth. The 
 views entertained of revelation by the orthodox 
 theologians of India are far more minute and 
 elaborate than those of the most extreme advo- 
 cates of verbal inspiration in Europe. The hu- 
 man element is driven out of every corner and 
 hiding-place; and, as the Veda is held to have 
 existed in the mind of the deity before the begin- 
 ning of time, every allusion to historical events, 
 of which there are not a few, is explained away 
 with a zeal and ingenuity worthy of a better 
 cause. If the laws of Manu, or any other work 
 of authority, can be proved on any point to be at 
 variance with a single passage of the Veda, their 
 authority is at once overruled." 
 
 The Koran is held by Mohammedans to have 
 descended entire from heaven on the "night of 
 
INPALUBLE ORACLES. 1 17 
 
 power, ' ' and to have been faithfully translated by 
 Mohammed with divine help. According to the 
 Mormons, the "Book of Mormon" was divinely 
 written (every word of it) on plates of gold, and 
 then the whole literally done into English with 
 absolutely perfect accuracy by Joseph Smith, 
 under a divine inspiration. 
 
 As to the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, the 
 Avesta of the Persians, the Kings of Confucius, 
 the Tao-te-King of the Taoists, the Sutras of the 
 Gains, the Granth of the Sikhs — they are all, like 
 the Veda and the Koran, reverenced by their 
 respective votaries as pure truth without the least 
 mixture of error. Whatever they assert is to be 
 taken without question, whatever it may seem to 
 contradict. Be the matter great or small, it makes 
 no difference. An infallible judge has spoken. 
 Nothing remains to be said. There is no higher 
 court of appeal. 
 
 It is well known that the Jews as a nation 
 have always held to a plenary inspiration of the 
 Old Testament. In their view, the writings of 
 Moses and of the other prophets, as they came 
 from the first hands, were altogether free from 
 mistakes. Not only each sentence, but each in- 
 dividual word — nay, each individual letter — was a 
 sacred thing to them. They largely wore Scrip- 
 ture verses as amulets on their foreheads and over 
 
Il8 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 fheir hearts. However poorly at times they have 
 practised their Bible, their theory in regard to it 
 has always been of the highest sort. Just as the 
 political motto of some nations is, ' ' The king can 
 do no wrong," so the national motto of Israel, 
 from time out of mind, has been that the I,aw 
 and the Prophets and the Psalms are the king of 
 books, and a king that never errs. ' ' How firmly, ' ' 
 says Josephus, ' ' we have given credit to those 
 books of our own nation is evident from what we 
 do ; for during so many ages as have already 
 passed no one has been so bold as either to add 
 anything to them, to take anything from them, 
 or to make any change in them." 
 
 Such, also, has been the view taken by Chris- 
 tians generally of both the Old and the New Tes- 
 tament. In every age of its history the Christian 
 church at large has not only accepted them as 
 containing an infallible divine message, but as 
 being such a message in its original documents. 
 No mistake whatever in any of their statements. 
 Just as soon as one has found out what Moses and 
 Matthew, Jeremiah and John, and the other Scrip- 
 ture writers actually wrote, the sole business be- 
 fore him is one of interpretation. The truth 
 without any mixture of error is before him. He 
 has only to unlock the gates of speech in order to 
 find it. Such has always been the view of the 
 
INFALUBLE ORACLES. II9 
 
 great body of Christians. To them the verdict of 
 genuine Scripture on any matter whatever has 
 been perfectly decisive. Whatever they could 
 prove by it was proved absolutely. Nothing re- 
 mained to be said. They hushed their contro- 
 versies. They bowed even to the ground before 
 the majesty of "Thus saith the Lord." They 
 counted the man a heretic, not to say a blas- 
 phemer, who could come near saying, ' ' Moses 
 spoke here only the myths of his time," or, "Mat- 
 thew doubtless was misled as to the facts in this 
 case by his vocation as a publican," or, "Paul's 
 reasonings at this point are inconclusive." Such 
 language has sometimes been ventured on by men 
 calling themselves Christians, especially in Ger- 
 many ; but it has always been heard with a shud- 
 der by the great Christian communions. 
 
 So the bulk of mankind have agreed in these 
 two things: first, that the world has a message 
 from the supernatural; and, second, that this mes- 
 sage as first delivered was in every particular as 
 reliable as the source from which it came. 
 
 "What means this great plebiscitum ? What 
 means this universal faith in an infallible mes- 
 sage from the supernatural, this chain of such 
 faiths stretching away back into the mists of his- 
 tory and even the adyta of primeval tradition, this 
 chain that never lessens or weakens as it passes 
 
120 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 through the more enlightened times and lands? 
 Have we not here the instinctive judgments of 
 mankind as to what sort of a divine message 
 mankind needs and is likely to receive? Have 
 we not here, perhaps, a divine testimony to the 
 fathers of the race, so emphatic and so agreeable 
 to what one would expect that it has followed the 
 race in all its dispersions and generations down to 
 the present time with unfailing constancy? 
 
 It cannot be denied that universal beliefs are 
 not always just. But they are very apt to be — so 
 apt that in practical life they are always accepted 
 as just, in the absence of all positive evidence to 
 the contrary. This point I have fully illustrated 
 elsewhere. Suffice it now to say that the fact or 
 the philosophy that is witnessed to by the general 
 voice of mankind confessedly deserves great re- 
 spect with logicians, and usually gets what it 
 deserves; occupies a vantage-ground from which 
 a considerable force will be required to dislodge 
 it — especially if the great world-voice does not 
 waver, but rather grows firmer as it issues from 
 the lips of the wiser and better peoples, and es- 
 pecially if it cannot be thought suggested by 
 superficial appearances, like the notion generally 
 held in the past that the heavens make a daily 
 circuit about the earth. And such is the voice 
 under consideration. Its vast chorus of testimony 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. 121 
 
 to a divine message at least as infallible as the 
 source from which it comes speaks forth a weighty 
 presumption. Of two things in all other respects 
 equal, that which has in its favor the suffrages of 
 mankind at large would be universally conceded 
 to have greatly the advantage of its fellow. In 
 the present case, since we have even more than 
 the lack of positive evidence that the wide suf- 
 frage comes from the weak and perverse in human 
 nature (from its ignorance and depravity), it is but 
 fair to think that it comes from the better ele- 
 ments ; that it comes from the pressure of the 
 actual fact as revealed, or as shining by its own 
 light in the universal, though sometimes dim, 
 sense of what man needs to receive and God needs 
 to give. 
 
 This general consent of the world as to the 
 degree of inspiration belonging to a divine mes- 
 sage is fortified, so far as our Scriptures are con- 
 cerned, by another consensus. 
 
 The general voice of the Christian church, of 
 which we have spoken, is entitled to great weight. 
 With insignificant exceptions. Christians have al- 
 ways held that, by means of a divine influence, 
 the original Scripture documents were secured 
 from error in all their teachings of whatever kind ; 
 so that their verdict on any matter was perfectly 
 authoritative and final. Has an undoubted can- 
 
123 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 onical passage pronounced upon it? Then it is 
 settled beyond dispute. Let no one open his 
 mouth further. No matter how trivial the sub- 
 ject may seem, no mattet what the topic, whether 
 fact or doctrine, whether sacred or secular, wheth- 
 er prose or poetry, whether chronology or history 
 or science or religion, all debate is cut off. All 
 heads bow silently to the judge that ends the 
 strife. Let no one presume to utter or think 
 against that verdict, distinguishing between great 
 and small, important and unimportant, religious 
 and secular. ' ' Such, ' ' says Rawlinson, ' ' has 
 been the teaching of the church of Christ from 
 the first." 
 
 A presumption (is it not a great deal more?) 
 that the original Scriptures were accurate in even 
 their smallest statements is given by the fact that 
 a multitude of minute and seemingly least im- 
 portant Biblical statements, even in our often 
 translated and copied Bible, have been verified by 
 the exploration of recent times; while in no case 
 has any undoubted Biblical statement been shown 
 to be incorrect — whether it be historical, topo- 
 graphical, ethnological, ethnographical, or scien- 
 tific ; for, strange as it may seem, there may be 
 very small scientific matters. 
 
 Perhaps the most satisfactory way, as it cer- 
 tainly is the most economical one as regards time 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. 123 
 
 and space, of substantiating this assertion is to 
 cite the testimony of one of the most illustrious, 
 learned, and conscientious of modern scholars as 
 found in Rawlinson's "Historical Evidences." 
 This work contains the following statements : 
 "My own studies, which have lain for the last 
 eight or nine years almost exclusively in the field 
 of ancient history, have convinced me more and 
 more of the thorough truthfulness and faithful 
 accuracy of the historical Scriptures. Circum- 
 stances have given me an intimate knowledge of 
 the whole course of recent cuneiform and (to some 
 extent) of hieroglyphical discovery ; and I have 
 been continually struck with the removal of diffi- 
 culties, the accession of light, the multiplication 
 of minute points of agreement between the sacred 
 and profane, resulting from the advances made in 
 deciphering the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, 
 and Egyptian records. 
 
 ' ' There is an argument of immense compass 
 deducible from the indirect and incidental points 
 of agreement between the Mosaic records and the 
 best profane authorities. And this is an argument 
 to which modern research is perpetually adding 
 fresh weight. Above all, the absence of any 
 counter-evidence, the fact that each accession to 
 our knowledge of the ancient times, whether his- 
 toric or geographic or ethnic, helps to remove 
 
124 UNIVERSAL BEUEPS. 
 
 difficulties and to produce a perpetual supply of 
 fresh illustrations of the Mosaic narrative, while 
 fresh difficulties are not at the same time brought 
 to light, all tends to show that we possess in the 
 Pentateuch not only the most authentic account 
 of ancient times that has come down to us, but a 
 history absolutely and in every respect true. 
 
 "It is not possible to produce from authentic 
 history any contradiction of this or any other 
 portion of the Hebrew records. When such a 
 contradiction has seemed to be found it has in- 
 variably happened that, in the progress of his- 
 torical inquiry, the author from whom it proceeds 
 has lost credit and finally come to be regarded as 
 an utterly untrustworthy authority. 
 
 " It is evident that the entire historical frame- 
 work in which the gospel is set is real ; that the 
 facts of the civil history, small and great, are 
 true. To suppose that there is this minute his- 
 torical accuracy in all the accessories of the story 
 and that the story itself is mythic is absurd. 
 
 ' ' A comparison of its secondary or incidental 
 facts with the civil history of the times as other- 
 wise known to us reveals an agreement so multi- 
 tudinous and so minute as to constitute, in the 
 eyes of all those who are capable of weighing his- 
 torical evidence, an overwhelming argument in 
 proof of the authenticity of the whole story." 
 
INFALtlBLE ORACLES. 125 
 
 Such are the testimonies. We have in them 
 the fruit of years of scholarly investigation con- 
 densed into a pemmican of honest statement. We 
 may safely say that it correctly represents the 
 facts. That minute accuracy, in even the most 
 assailed parts of the Scriptures, to which it testi- 
 fies, in regard to all the numerous points of the 
 past which modern researches have thus far been 
 able to uncover, is sufficient warrant for assuming 
 their accuracy at all other points. If Schliemann 
 digs up an old helmet at Mycene and, on cleaning 
 it at many of the least conspicuous points, finds 
 only pure gold, is he not warranted in thinking 
 he has a gold helmet? If one should find in 
 ancient Chaldaea or at Travancore a chart of the 
 heavens, and, on testing it by thousands of stars 
 of all sizes, taken at random from all parts of the 
 sky, should find them all correctly placed, would 
 he not feel entitled to assume the correctness of 
 the chart throughout ? It would be folly to re- 
 quire him to verify by actual measurement every 
 single stellar position. Not a star-chart in the 
 world has been verified in this way. And yet the 
 Berlin charts are built on confidently in every 
 observatory and nautical almanac in both hemi- 
 spheres. If it is scientific to do this, why is it not 
 scientific to allow a like broad induction of facts 
 to convince us of the accuracy of the entire orig- 
 
126 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 inal Scriptures on all matters of which they speak, 
 without regard to the science of magnitude ? 
 
 And, then, ^the Scriptures claim entire trust- 
 worthiness for themselves — claim it after the 
 broadest and most exacting fashion. 
 
 As to the New Testament. Its various books 
 were written by the immediate disciples of Christ. 
 This fact is on the face of most of the books and 
 has the support of uncounteracted tradition. To 
 deny it is practically to deny that we can know 
 who were the authors of any ancient books, or 
 even of very modern ones. So the New Testa- 
 ment was written by the immediate disciples of 
 Christ. 
 
 Now this Book testifies that Christ commis- 
 sioned his immediate disciples to become the reli- 
 gious teachers of mankind; that he promised the 
 Holy Spirit to thoroughly qualify them for their 
 work ; that on particular occasions (as when 
 brought before magistrates, and on that day of 
 Pentecost when they preached in tongues un- 
 known to themselves) the very words and syntax 
 of their message were divinely supplied to them ; 
 that, in short, they were so furnished for their 
 work that their Master could say to them, ' ' He 
 that heareth you heareth me," and, " It is not ye 
 that speak, but the Spirit of my leather that speak- 
 eth in you ;' ' and so that Paul could say, ' ' We 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. IC/ 
 
 speak not in the words which man's wisdom 
 teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." 
 While making such representations, the sacred 
 writers give no vague hint whatever that they 
 may be unreliable to some extent in minor mat- 
 ters ; not a word, even the slightest, that any 
 discount whatever should be made from their un- 
 qualified teachings, either oral or written, in the 
 exercise of their ministry. Under these circum- 
 stances the primitive Christians must have felt 
 bound to accept, without exception, whatever 
 these broadly-commissioned teachers gave them 
 as from the Master, especially in formal writings 
 designed to be a text-book of religion to all future 
 times. If anything from Christ's immediate dis- 
 ciples was ex cathedi'a, such a text-book was. To 
 reject a large part of it under color of a vague dis- 
 tinction between things primary and secondarj', 
 things more and less important, things religious 
 and semi-religious or secular, without any dis- 
 tinct boundary-line between the two, would have 
 been as unnatural as unwarrantable — in fact, 
 would logically have put their whole Scripture 
 under suspicion and shadow and set it a-trembling 
 like an aspen. As a matter of history, as we have 
 seen, the church has never received the New Tes- 
 tament after such a fractional, discounting, and 
 confusing a fashion. As far back as church opin- 
 
128 XJNIVERSAI. BELIEFS. 
 
 ion can be traced a plain Scripture on any point 
 whatever, great or small in seeming, has been 
 held absolutely decisive. It has had always the 
 prerogative of the last word. 
 
 As to the Old Testament. Its absolute and 
 entire trustworthiness has sufl&cient proof in the 
 attitude of Christ and the New Testament towards 
 it. Not only is it called the "Holy Scriptures," 
 the "Word of God," the "Oracles of God;" not 
 only are its writers spoken of as "holy men of 
 God who spake as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost," while no hint whatever is given that cer- 
 tain parts are to be taken ' ' cum grano salts, ' ' and 
 that the common Jewish opinion in regard to it 
 needed to be somewhat lowered ; not only does the 
 New Testament do this, but Paul says that he 
 believes "^// things written in the law and the 
 prophets;" while the Master himself declares that 
 "not one jot or tittle of the law (at least the five 
 books of Moses) shall fail," and that "whosoever 
 shall break one of these least commandments 
 (facts in the form of precepts), and shall teach 
 men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of 
 heaven." 
 
 Evidently the writers of the New Testament, 
 as well as their Master, in quoting from the Old 
 Testament, regarded a matter as settled when they 
 could bring to bear on it a clear passage from their 
 
INFALUBLE ORACLES. 1 29 
 
 Bible — this without regard to topic or seeming 
 magnitude. They did not think it necessary to 
 measure carefully its true dimensions, or esti- 
 mate its weight and quality to remote decimals, 
 before accepting the Bible deliverance concern- 
 ing it. 
 
 If the sacred writers had only a partial inspi- 
 ration, were open to mistake in a part of their 
 deliverances, they were bound in all honesty to 
 say as much and to put their readers on their 
 guard. They should have said for substance, 
 "We are inspired and secured from error as to 
 vtai7t things, but as to other matters we are like 
 other people." But, instead of this, their claim 
 to be received as bringing a divine message is en- 
 tirely unqualified. It is couched in the broadest 
 and most emphatic terms. Not a whisper, not a 
 gesture, not a look even, of warning comes to us 
 from any one of the sacred writers either in re- 
 gard to himself or to his brethren of the canon ; 
 but, on the contrary, such language and tone are 
 used as must have been understood to indorse com- 
 pletely the current opinion of the time, and indeed 
 of all times, as to sacred books. If a part of the 
 ground we have to travel over is morass and lia- 
 ble to let us through at every step, though there 
 are no surface indications of the fact, let the au- 
 thorities at least set up by the road some notifica- 
 
 UnlverBAl Beliefi- Q 
 
130 . UNIVERSAI, BELIEFS. 
 
 tion of danger, that we may be on the alert. Let 
 them put out somewhere a red light. 
 
 This is what Paul is supposed by some to have 
 done. In one or two instances he is thought to 
 express some hesitation as to whether, in regard 
 to certain matters, he has ' ' the mind of the Spir- 
 it." But his scrupulousness as to these specified 
 matters assures us that he felt sure as to the divine 
 authority of all his other statements, which re- 
 ceived no qualification whatever: assures us that 
 if any of them had been open to doubt he would 
 have given fair warning: in fact, assures us that 
 the other sacred writers, under similar circum- 
 stances, would have done as much. The fact that 
 they suggest no doubt whatever is proof that they 
 entertained none. 
 
 So much as to what the Scriptures claim for 
 themselves. Now let us see what consequences 
 are involved in adopting the alternative theory of 
 inspiration, viz., that the original Scriptures were 
 infallible only in main things. 
 
 This theory seems to open the door for nullify- 
 ing a large part of the Bible. Main things in a 
 book, as well as in everything else, are always in 
 a minority, a very small minority. The details 
 and circumstantials of a picture always occupy 
 the most space, by far the most. Besides, it is no 
 easy matter to decide where ' ' main ' ' things end 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. 131 
 
 and the secondary and subordinate begin. They 
 shade away into each other as day does into night. 
 Different men would draw the dividing line very 
 differently. There are those who regard the Deity 
 of Christ, his atonement, his mediation, regenera- 
 tion, a future state of rewards and punishments, 
 as anything but essential to a scheme of reasona- 
 ble religion. And, then, do not things seemingly 
 very small often turn out to have very important 
 connections — a little pivot proving essential to the 
 integrity and working of a great engine ? Ser- 
 mons, and even books, can be written on the im- 
 portance of little things. Whether or not the 
 cackling of geese once saved Rome, it is proverbial 
 that the weight of a feather sometimes decides a 
 hesitating balance or battle, and that a last straw 
 may break a camel's back. Such facts trouble us 
 when we are trying to distinguish between the 
 important and unimportant, the more important 
 and the less, in Scripture. It looks small ; but 
 then may it not be the small rudder that steers 
 some "tall admiral," and so a whole squadron of 
 dependent ships; or a small seed which in time 
 will wave harvests over half a continent? So a 
 cloud of uncertainty settles down on by far the 
 larger part of the Bible. We cannot accept a sin- 
 gle verse as infallible until we have proved it to 
 be highly important; and then what room for dif- 
 
132 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ferent views as to what is important! Almost ev- 
 erywhere the ground under our feet seems to be 
 on a tremble. What our fathers thought to be a 
 rock turns out to be a bog. Can it be that God 
 has given us such a revelation ? 
 
 If the contemporaries of the original Scripture 
 documents had found them unreliable in reeard 
 to the larger part of their statements, even though 
 these statements were of the circumstantial and 
 secondary sort, would they not have been reason- 
 ably stumbled as to the rest? Could they well 
 have been blamed for withholding confidence 
 from the entire thing? It would have been the 
 scientific thing to do. In similar circumstances 
 we moderns would feel compelled by universally 
 accepted laws of evidence to do it. 
 
 But the theory that the original Bible was in- 
 fallible only in main things contradicts the theory 
 on which Biblical scholars proceed in dealing 
 with the text of Scripture. The whole effort of 
 textual critics is to find out what the autographs 
 were. This is considered immensely important, 
 the great desideratum, deserving of almost unlim- 
 ited pains. And indeed so say all devout scholars 
 and the intelligent Christian public, for they feel 
 that the nearer they get to the autographs the 
 nearer they get to the exact truth. But all par- 
 ties are mistaken if only "the more important " 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. I33 
 
 Bible statements have a divine warrant. In that 
 case by far the larger part, say ninety-nine hun- 
 dredths of the whole Scripture, is not one whit 
 more trustworthy than the copies made from them ; 
 indeed less so, as being the product of a less criti- 
 cal and enlightened age. What is the use of 
 scholars worrying themselves about the genuine- 
 ness of secondary matters when, even if proved 
 genuine, they would be of no account as Scrip- 
 ture ? The latest variations are at least fully as 
 likely to be correct as the originals. As a whole 
 the Bible has sunk to the level of other books; 
 Samson and Milo are as other men. So far as 
 getting at the truth is concerned, the critics have 
 accomplished just nothing by all their labors. 
 They have wasted any amount of time, talent, 
 toil. Their rummagings in old monasteries, their 
 disinterment of codices, cursive and uncial, their 
 collations and recensions innumerable, their sci- 
 ence of textual criticism and cognates, elaborated 
 with infinite labor in closets and convocations and 
 revision committees, amount to nothing that the 
 general Christian public values one jot. Such a 
 public has little patience with this much ado 
 about nothing. Why do they spend money for 
 that which is not bread? "The game is not 
 worth the candle." Their true course would be 
 first to find (if that is possible) what are the main 
 
134 UNIVERSAI., BELIEFS. 
 
 or more important passages in our present Bibles, 
 and then confine inquiries to the question of their 
 genuineness. As these, from the nature of the 
 case, can be only a small fraction of the whole, 
 an immense saving of time and work would be 
 eifected. 
 
 But some prefer to speak of inspiration as be- 
 longing only to the ' ' moral and religious ' ' parts 
 of the Bible. We complain of the vagueness of 
 such language. What is meant by the words 
 "moral and religious"? Plainly, not everything 
 that can be made to yield moral and religious les- 
 sons, for that would include not only everything 
 found in the Bible, but also everything in every 
 other book and in the whole world of events. 
 From stars to stones, from the motions of armies 
 to those of atoms, religion may be argued into or 
 away from them all. Are duties, together with 
 their underlying doctrines, meant? In that case 
 it is plain that there is a vast amount of matter in 
 the Bible that cannot be clearly brought under 
 either of these heads. Duties depend largely on 
 facts and circumstances; if the latter are unrelia- 
 ble, the former are so also to the same extent. 
 Also, beyond a certain point it becomes doubtful 
 what doctrines underlie given duties. A field for 
 endless dispute opens. The entire Bible becomes 
 debatable ground, a sort of Terra del Fuego of 
 
INFALLIBI.E ORACLES. 135 
 
 fogs and clouds and desperate uninliabitableness 
 the whole miserable year round. 
 
 But what do they really have in their thought, 
 these men who speak of inspiration as belonging 
 solely to the moral and religious things of the 
 Bible? They certainly do not mean the whole 
 Bible; they mean liviitation. And we have only 
 to listen to them a little to see that they mean to 
 exclude from the area of infallible inspiration 
 matters of historic detail, of manners and customs, 
 of arts, sciences, and chronology; in general and 
 vaguely, all matters of the ' ' less important ' ' sort 
 that fill up the outlines of Scripture, that make 
 the flesh and blood and bloom that cover its skel- 
 eton and give it verisimilitude. But it is not alto- 
 gether easy to tell when one comes to the skele- 
 ton. And certainly what is outside of it would, 
 in the view of most people, include the greater 
 part of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament; 
 and rightly, for it is impossible to prove clearly, on 
 purely rational grounds (to which, of course, we 
 must be confined), that most of the Bible state- 
 ments have any closer connection with morals 
 and religion than have those in our common his- 
 tories, or those events in our daily lives which 
 yield moral and religious lessons to so few. A 
 few devout and ingenious minds will smite water 
 out of rock and command the very stones into 
 
■■J' 
 
 6 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 bread ; but to most people they will remain mere 
 stones. 
 
 So an open door is left for a man to exclude 
 from the inspired matter of the Bible whatever he 
 wishes. To some, God and religion appear in 
 everything; to others, they appear in almost noth- 
 ing. The great majority are slow to perceive the 
 spiritual and religious in what passes under their 
 observation. A few see sermons in stones; but 
 the most see stones in sermons. Who does not 
 know that God and religion are apt to remain 
 nnsuggested to most men even by his grandest 
 works and most signal providences? Such per- 
 sons would find in the Bible a minimum of the 
 moral and religious and a maximum of the other 
 sort. 
 
 Further, it seems clear that the theory that 
 the original Bible was infallible only in main 
 things, or, if you please, in things moral and re- 
 ligious, would, if fairly understood and adopted by 
 the people at large, completely destroy the authori- 
 ty of the Scriptures among them. Suppose a min- 
 ister should stand up in his pulpit, and holding up 
 a Bible should say to his congregation, "This 
 book originally contained here and there, at great 
 intervals, something that was divine and not open 
 to mistake; but men have never been able to say 
 with any confidence, save in a few instances, just 
 
IXFALUBLE ORACLES. I37 
 
 where these green spots are; and as for the rest 
 (by far the greater part of the whole), why, it is as 
 purely human and fallible as any common book. 
 Indeed, this book has a special drawback in being 
 the product of comparatively very uncritical and 
 unenlightened times." I say suppose our clergy 
 should talk after this fashion to their people. 
 What would come of it ? Doubtless at first a wide 
 opening of the eyes. ' ' We have heard strange 
 things to-day, things which neither we nor our 
 fathers have known. But one thing is clear, if 
 these ministers are right they no longer have a 
 vocation. A clear divine warrant for their func- 
 tion and support can no longer be pleaded. We 
 can dispense with them. That will be a very 
 considerable and acceptable economy. But are 
 these views correct?" Just as soon as the people 
 conclude to say Yes, how much weight will the 
 Bible have with them ? It will no longer be to 
 them a Bible at all. Its prestige is all gone. The 
 sceptre has fallen from its hand. It is wholly 
 without authority — its promises a mirage, its pen- 
 alties a bnitum fulmen. It may continue to inter- 
 est as an heirloom, a piece of antiquity, a literary 
 curiosity, a companion volume to the books of 
 Confucius and Zoroaster, a book with a somewhat 
 famous history; but as an authoritative rule of 
 faith and practice it will have no force whatever. 
 
138 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 The only sceptre left in the hand of Christ will be 
 a mocking reed. Such a book could not answer 
 the purpose of a divine message. It is not such a 
 revelation as the world needs. It is incredible 
 that God has given such a thing to the world un- 
 der a warrant of "signs and wonders." It would 
 not be worth the giving. 
 
 To the doctrine of the inerrancy of the original 
 Scriptures the following objections may be made: 
 
 I. Many trivialities, puerilities, and even some 
 indecencies are found in all copies of the Scrip- 
 tures, and so presumably belonged to the origi- 
 nals: can it be that the inspiration which did not 
 secure against such things secured against error 
 in even the smallest matters ? 
 
 We admit that there are things in the Bible 
 that seem^ at first view, to be all these — things the 
 use of which we do not see, and even things which 
 propriety, according to present usage, forbids to 
 be publicly read. But this is only what we ob- 
 serve in nature. Nature abounds in things that 
 seem trivial, and in some that will not bear pro- 
 miscuous exhibition. Every natural fact has a 
 setting of small particulars, and must be given in 
 more or less of its natural setting in order to veri- 
 similitude. Also, things seemingly very trifling 
 often turn out to be pivotal, like some of the small 
 and obscure but yet essential parts of a watch. 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. 139 
 
 Also, times and countries differ much in their 
 ideas of what is indelicate; and the expressions in 
 the Bible which are complained of are no worse 
 than the facts, and are really no more suggestive 
 of evil than the words "male and female," "for- 
 nication," "adultery," and many other such 
 words in current and unblamed use among us, and 
 which are indispensable in the fight against vice 
 and crime. It is. quite credible that certain physi- 
 ological facts which the young must learn sooner 
 or later had better be first learned in sacred con- 
 nections and as set amid the solemn sanctions and 
 menaces of religion. 
 
 2. What is the use of having the original 
 Scriptures more secured from error than the cop- 
 ies ? The copies are to a certain extent fallible. 
 This implies fallibility to a like extent in the 
 originals; for what is the use of having them more 
 accurate ? 
 
 We answer: It is the use of having a perfectly 
 solid foundation for a great edifice; of having a 
 perfectly pure fountain to supply the successive 
 reservoirs and pipes of a great city; of having a 
 perfect standard of weights or measures to which 
 to refer for verification; of having a final court of 
 appeals able to revise the proceedings of all other 
 courts, and decide cases righteously as well as 
 finally. 
 
140 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 We answer: It is the use of having a Bible 
 more reliable than merely human commentaries 
 on it or than the intelligent faculties of the read- 
 ers. If there is no use in having the original 
 documents less fallible than the copies, then, on 
 the same principle, there is no use in having the 
 copies less fallible than are its uninspired read- 
 ers and interpreters. As these are all fallible 
 according to our Protestant view, the Bible at 
 once sinks to the level of a fallible human pro- 
 duction. 
 
 We answer : It is the use of having a Bible 
 mainly secure from error, instead of a Bible 
 mainly open to error; the use of having a Bible 
 whose deliverances are unreliable only in an in- 
 finitesimal part of the whole, and that part prov- 
 identially indicated to us and guaranteed to be 
 inconsequential, instead of one whose deliverances 
 are unreliable in almost every part and on almost 
 every point. 
 
 If only the- copies are liable to error, then we 
 have to discount from the infallibility of the book 
 only at the points where the copies so differ among 
 themselves as to make it hard to choose between 
 them; but if the original Scriptures were them- 
 selves liable to error in all secondary matters, then 
 (as such matters make up by far the greater part 
 of every book, and it is no easy matter after a cer- 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. 141 
 
 tain point to distinguish between things primary 
 and secondary) the greater part of the Bible passes 
 under a cloud. 
 
 This, then, seems the proper doctrine. The 
 original Scriptures, as they came fresh from the 
 hands of the sacred penmen, were infallible in 
 all their statements of whatever sort. One asks 
 whether this doctrine implies a strictly verbal in- 
 spiration, a divine giving of each particular word 
 with its collocation. Not necessarily. If in any 
 case, there is only one best way of saying what 
 needs to be said, then that way must be secured 
 by a strictly verbal inspiration. But wherever 
 there are several such, ways, ways equally good of 
 saying the same thing (and this, it would seem, 
 must often happen), it is enough if the sacred 
 writer is kept to any one of these ways. Within 
 their range he is at liberty to choose his own 
 words and his own syntax. He is not limited to 
 specific individuals, only to a specific class. That 
 is, some divine direction as to words must always 
 exist, but in many cases this need not extend to 
 the dictation of individual words with their collo- 
 cation. As a traveller may have the choice of 
 several roads to a city instead of being shut up to 
 a single one ; as a planet may vary its orbit con- 
 siderably between fixed terms, instead of always 
 traversing exactly the same line ; as a prisoner 
 
143 UNIVERSAI, BELIEFS. 
 
 may have the range of an entire house or city or 
 province, instead of being confined to a single' 
 cell, so the sacred writers had a certain range of 
 literary expression within which they could not 
 go amiss or fall short of the best, instead of hav- 
 ing their feet fast in the stocks of a single for- 
 mula. They were not like the king around whom 
 a Roman ambassador drew closely a circle which 
 must not be crossed till an answer had been given, 
 but rather like that king as he would have been 
 if that circle had followed the whole round of the 
 city walls. 
 
 Our present Scriptures are^ practically^ faithful 
 copies of the originals. 
 
 In by far the greater part of the Scripture 
 text the copies agree with one another. This 
 larger part is therefore like the originals. So 
 we judge in the case of all other ancient books. 
 What all the copies of Herodotus conspire in say- 
 ing, Herodotus himself said. 
 
 At points where the copies disagree with one 
 another textual criticism can, in a great number 
 of cases, determine what was the original text 
 beyond all reasonable doubt. This is a modest 
 statement. No doubt extravagant claims have 
 often been made as to what the science of textual 
 criticism can do. "Never such a detective! It 
 can hunt down a rogue of an error through all the 
 
INFAI^LIBLE ORACLES. 143 
 
 centuries and find it under all disguises." But, 
 without going such lengths, without conceding 
 omniscience or infallibility to this or any other 
 class of scientists, we are bound to allow that 
 sound principles exist which enable scholars in a 
 multitude of cases satisfactorily to determine, 
 among rival readings, that which is genuine. So 
 we may make a large addition to the likeness be- 
 tween our present Bible and the original docu- 
 ments. 
 
 As to the residuum after the resources of criti- 
 cism for determining the genuine have been ex- 
 hausted, we find it to be exceedingly small, largely 
 inconsequential to all appearance, actually (as all 
 Christian scholars agree) bringing into doubt no 
 single item of doctrine or duty, and fully account- 
 ed for without supposing in our present Bibles any 
 whit of abatement from the authority and useful- 
 ness of the original Scriptures. 
 
 For, to preserve this authority and usefulness, 
 it is not necessary that every word or even every 
 construction of the original be preserved. In 
 many cases there are several equally good ways 
 of saying the same thing. An author is often at 
 a loss which to choose among the different modes 
 of expression that occur to him. He cannot see 
 but that one is just as clear and forcible as anoth- 
 er. And if his name is Thomas Chalmers, he 
 
144 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 may end his hesitation by using them all. Sev- 
 enteen reproductions of the same idea have been 
 counted in one of his paragraphs, each differing 
 from every other in language, and all just, forci- 
 ble, and brilliant. Just as the same person may 
 appear to equal advantage in several different 
 dresses, so a thought may not suffer in the least 
 from having one form of expression exchanged for 
 another. So Jesus and the writers of the New- 
 Testament evidently thought; for in their quota- 
 tions from the Old Testament they are not always 
 careful to use the exact words of even the Septua- 
 gint. They content themselves with giving what 
 they regard as equivalent expressions. So the 
 Decalogue as given in Deuteronomy differs ver- 
 bally somewhat from that given in Exodus. The 
 sense is the same ; the dress varies. Evidently 
 the sacred writers themselves were not in bond- 
 age to the letter. They certainly thought that in 
 some cases there were two or more equally good 
 ways of saying the same thing; even as the same 
 pure water may come to us in vessels of many 
 shapes and materials. If this is so, we can fully 
 account for a considerable part of the residual pas- 
 sages just spoken of without supposing that the 
 Bible has suffered in the slightest from our ina- 
 bility to reproduce exactly the originals. The 
 substitutes may be just as good as the primaries 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. 145 
 
 for all Scriptural purposes. Just as the substitute 
 whom a man sends into the army may do quite as 
 good service as himself, and the army be none the 
 worse for the exchange. 
 
 But the residuum does not consist entirely of 
 passages giving the same thought under different 
 forms. Some give different senses. But can it 
 be that it may be of no earthly consequence which 
 of these various senses is taken as the original ? 
 Bven so. All the facts of the original, as well as 
 all its words, may not need to be preserved from 
 mistake and doubt in order to its being preserved 
 from damage. Many facts may be stated merely 
 as the actual dress and circumstantials of other 
 facts, as the flesh and blood required to make the 
 skeleton of truth lifelike and presentable, as the 
 filling-in of the outlines of the picture for the pur- 
 pose of naturalness and verisimilitude. For this 
 purpose other facts of a similar order might serve 
 equally well. For example, 968 years as the age 
 of Methuselah might do as well as 969 years. It 
 is true that, for reasons already stated, it would 
 be a hard matter for tis to draw the line between 
 important and unimportant variations; but that 
 there may be unimportant ones is plain, and what 
 they are would be determined by what God allows 
 to take place. We do not have to draw the line. 
 He draws it for us. 
 
 Universal Belfefe. lO 
 
146 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 Besides facts which merely serve to give veri- 
 similitude, and which may be exchanged without 
 loss for others serving that purpose equally well, 
 there are others of which as much can be said. 
 Just as a fact may be useful to a person at one 
 time and not at another, so a fact may be useful 
 to one age of the world and not to another age. 
 It is outgrown. It is superannuated. From lapse 
 of time and change of circumstances the use has 
 fallen out of it. Or, if not so, its place has be- 
 come well supplied by something else. Why may 
 it not be so with some Scripture passages? For 
 example, some passages relating to some points in 
 the superseded Mosaic economy. If we find it 
 impossible to determine satisfactorily the original 
 sense of such a passage, why may we not suppose 
 that, though once of use to be known, it is so no 
 longer? It has had its day, or sufficient substi- 
 tutes exist in other parts of Scripture. It is easy 
 to see that no damage whatever might come to us 
 from not being able to settle a few points like 
 these. If we had to find them out for ourselves 
 we should be in straits. But the providence of 
 God steps in to help us. He marks for us the 
 passages whose original sense it will do us no 
 harm to be without. What he allows to be- 
 come indeterminate through various readings, or 
 whatever cause, he thereby certifies to be unim- 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. 147 
 
 portant for its, whatever it may have been for 
 other times. 
 
 This, then, is our theory. Words and syn- 
 taxes in Scripture, as elsewhere, may vary to a 
 certain extent without damage to the sense. 
 Without damage, also, the sense itself may vary 
 somewhat. But in no case has the varying been 
 suffered to go beyond this harmless extent without 
 detection. What this extent is is shown by those 
 passages in regard to which there remains a rea- 
 sonable doubt of their genuineness after the re- 
 sources of criticism have been exhausted upon 
 them. Providence does for us what we could not 
 do for ourselves. It becomes an omniscient de- 
 tective. It hunts down for us both the words and 
 the senses which can safely vary, puts its sign- 
 manual upon them, and then says, "This is what 
 you do not need to know, at least for the present." 
 So we hold that, for all practical purposes, the 
 present Bible is a faithful transcript of the orig- 
 inal documents. After doing our best to find the 
 words and thoughts of a passage as they stood in 
 the autographs, and doing it unsuccessfully, we 
 say to ourselves reasonably, "It is not of any 
 consequence, at least for the present, that we 
 should know. If it were, the Ivord would not 
 have suffered the text to fall into this helpless 
 doubt." 
 
148 UNIVERSAI^ BELIEFS. 
 
 This view is confirmed by the manner in 
 which Christ and his apostles treated the Bible of 
 their time. This was a translation and a copy — • 
 a copy of copies, the last survivor of many gen- 
 erations of copies, the last link in a long chain 
 that had come down through the glooms and 
 tossings of many troublous centuries. But Christ 
 treated it as if it were an autograph. Not a hint 
 but that it possessed all the reliability and author- 
 ity of the primitive parchments. Not one word 
 about a harmful uncertainty in a text that had 
 passed through so many hands. What explana- 
 tion of this so good as that no such harmful un- 
 certainty existed? He had no need to caution. 
 For all practical purposes the copy was as good 
 as the original while yet wet under the writers' 
 hands would have been. Divine Providence had 
 so watched over the book that, though in the 
 lapse of ages various changes in the text had 
 taken place, not one of these changes was of the 
 sort to vitiate in the slightest the book as a reli- 
 gious guide. So Christ, in speaking of the Sep- 
 tuagint Bible of his day, had no need to distin- 
 guish between it and the original autographs. 
 He did not so distinguish. He treated both as 
 being one and the same thing. He took it for 
 granted that the people about him were doing the 
 same. They were. Whatever rights belonged to 
 
INFAHIBtE ORACIvES. 149 
 
 the first king they allowed to his lineal successor 
 of their own day. 
 
 Of late years it has been given out that the 
 progress of Biblical study has made it necessary 
 to revise our theory of inspiration. It is said that 
 the high ground taken by our fathers cannot be 
 maintained. We have fallen on an age of careful 
 and well-equipped criticism. Germany has ex- 
 amined and spoken. The teachings of the West- 
 minster and other great confessions, of Gaussen 
 and Doddridge and Edwards and Knapp, were pre- 
 mature, ill-considered, and must be largely modi- 
 fied in the light of a riper scholarship and fuller 
 knowledge. In particular we are warned that we 
 cannot now insist on the inerrancy of the Scrip- 
 tures, even of the originals, as to historic and sci- 
 entific matters and the smaller details of all sorts; 
 that it is altogether safer and more in the line of 
 recent findings to speak of the Scriptures as con- 
 taining a divine message than as being such a mes- 
 sage. And so we are told, perhaps with bald out- 
 spokenness and perhaps under various disguises 
 of reverent and orthodox phrase, of the mistakes 
 of Moses and Matthew, of Peter and Paul, and 
 even of the I^ord Jesus himself Not a few are 
 reluctant to speak out. They prefer to put things 
 in a mild and unalarming way. "The old truth 
 must have restatement to adapt it to these times." 
 
153 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 But when we come to examine closely we find 
 that it is not the old truth at all, but rather an old 
 foe with a new face. What appears is a restate- 
 ment; what is behind it is a mild form of infidel- 
 ity, if there can be such a thing. And all in the 
 name of the (almost) twentieth century and new 
 light! 
 
 Pray, what are the new facts? What great 
 discoveries have made necessary this great change 
 of base? Has it just been discovered that our 
 copies of the Scriptures diSer somewhat among 
 themselves? Has it just come to the knowledge 
 of the public that quotations from the Old Testa- 
 ment by the Master and his disciples were not 
 always in the exact original words? Was it with- 
 in the present century or the last that the people 
 found out that every sacred penman has his pecu- 
 liarities of both thought and expression? Cer- 
 tainly such facts were as well known to the fathers 
 as they are to us. And yet those fathers stood up 
 for the entire infallibility of the original Scrip- 
 tures, also for the practical identity of the copies 
 in their possession with the originals. They saw 
 no inconsistency in doing so. 
 
 Nor do we. The ancient theory does not sup- 
 pose that the Bible has been kept from all changes, 
 but only from all harmful ones ; supposes that the 
 differences between copies are, all things consid- 
 
INFALLIBLE ORACLES. 151 
 
 ered, of no consequence whatever, bringing into 
 question not a single item of doctrine or duty. 
 The ancient theory does not suppose that there is 
 only one best way of saying the same thing; but, 
 on the contrary, supposes that there may be sev- 
 eral such ways, all equally forcible and desirable. 
 The ancient theory does not suppose that the in- 
 fallible God, who made men after so many differ- 
 ent patterns, is not able to express infallible truth 
 in as many different patterns of literature, each in 
 harmony with the natural characteristics of the 
 writer; but supposes, and has good reason to sup- 
 pose, the exact contrary. Indeed, it is by no 
 means the plainest thing in the world that the 
 facts on which the advocates of lax theories of 
 inspiration stumble, and which they put forward 
 as compelling to such theories, are inconsistent 
 with even that most exacting theory of verbal in- 
 spiration which regards the sacred writers as mere 
 amanuenses, setting down automatically ipsissima 
 verba as doled out to them by the irresistible 
 Spirit. 
 
VII. IMMORTAL SOULS. 
 
'Qare Koi aQdvarov n loixev r; ipvx^ eivai. PLATO. 
 So that the soul seems to be something immortal. 
 
 SuPREMUS ille dies non nobis extinctionem, sed commu- 
 tationem affert loci. cicero. 
 
 That last day does not bring us extinction, but change of 
 place. 
 
 Dies iste, quem tamquam extremum reformidas, seterni 
 natalis est. senega. 
 
 That day which you dread as if the last is the birthday 
 of eternity. 
 
 Who are able to kill the body, but are not able to kill the 
 
 soul. CHRIST. 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 1 55 
 
 VII. IMMORTAL SOULS. 
 
 The Bible teaches us that in every human 
 body dwells a spiritual being that thinks and feels 
 and chooses, and whose existence and operations 
 no more depend on the body which .it inhabits 
 than those of the tenant of a house do on the 
 house. When a house, from any cause, becomes 
 uninhabitable the tenant goes out, but goes out 
 with all his powers unimpaired. So when the 
 body from any cause becomes an unfit dwelling 
 for the soul, the two part company, and the soul 
 goes out into what we call the future state^ but 
 goes out with all its essential faculties unchanged. 
 It can think and reason and imagine and remem- 
 ber and anticipate; can fear and hope, enjoy and 
 suffer, love and hate; can consider and choose 
 and resolve and execute, just as it does now — 
 merely an evicted tenant. After the eviction the 
 soul continues to live indefinitely. Dispossession 
 does not mean extinction. Going out of sight 
 does not mean going out of being. It merely 
 means entering on a new and permanent phase of 
 life. It may be under the happiest conditions, it 
 may be under the most unhappy; but whether 
 
156 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 happy or miserable, the intelligent, conscious soul 
 will live on for ever; this, whether it is good or 
 bad, wise or foolish, great or small. God wilj 
 never extinguish the lamp which he has once 
 lighted. It will never go out from lack of fuel. 
 No stormy wind of painful circumstance will sud- 
 denly snuff it into darkness. 
 
 It is not necessary to cite passages in proof 
 that such is the Scripture teaching. It is so wo- 
 ven into the whole texture of both the Old and 
 the New Testament that it appears conspicuously 
 in all the great creeds of Christendom. The du- 
 ality of man as body and soul, the continued exist- 
 ence of the soul after the death of the body, the 
 absolute endlessness of such existence, is every- 
 where expressed or implied in all the great con- 
 fessions. A few individuals here and there main- 
 tain that the Bible teaches only the immortality 
 of the good: that, though the life of the bad may 
 be vastly prolonged, it will at last come to com- 
 plete goodness or to complete extinction ; but 
 these dissenters from the general view are rela- 
 tively too few to deserve notice. So they have 
 always been. In the history of the ancient church 
 they are represented by a single obscure man^ 
 Arnobius. 
 
 These practically universal Christian and Jew- 
 ish views are repeated in the Koran and held by 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 157 
 
 all Mohammedans. And they are held by all the 
 Eastern Asiatic nations with their hundreds of 
 millions. The doctrine of the transmigration of 
 souls prevails everywhere among them — a doc- 
 trine that assumes a separate spiritual agent in 
 every man which passes at death into another 
 body, and then into still another, and so on in 
 perhaps innumerable transfers, till it comes to a 
 fixed state. This fixed state is not generally sup- 
 posed to be absolute extinction of being, though 
 this was probably taught by Buddha under the 
 name of Nirvana. If so, the teaching is now 
 practically inoperative. ' ' Human nature, ' ' says 
 Max Miiller, ' ' could not be changed. Out of the 
 very nothing it made a new paradise," a state of 
 blissful absorption into the living divine essence 
 for such as pass their various transmigrations well. 
 But among other Orientals nothing is said of an 
 end coming to their separate conscious existence. 
 "In the Rig- Veda," says Max Miiller, "we find 
 a belief in immortality and in personal immor- 
 tality." 
 
 In the Transactions of the Philosophical Soci- 
 ety of Great Britain for 1885 we find the follow- 
 ing: "When we look at a graveyard on Puget 
 Sound and see there canoes, muskets, cloth, 
 clothes, dishes, looking-glasses, bows and arrows, 
 and almost everything that is valuable to an In- 
 
158 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 dian in this life, silently yet eloquently they say 
 one thing, that those who placed them there be- 
 lieved in the immortality of the soul; that, as 
 these articles decay, they will be carried by spir- 
 its away to the deceased in the next world, there 
 to be put together again and used. And what is 
 thus said there is also said all over America, from 
 the frozen regions of the North to Terra del Fue- 
 go on the South, and from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific, with, it is barely possible, a few excep- 
 tions, and it is not certain about these. ' ' 
 
 In the Old World, looking backward, we find 
 Cicero writing, ' ' That the souls of men survive 
 the dissolution of the body we may consider as a 
 truth sanctioned by the universal belief of all 
 nations. ' ' Actual examination more than verifies 
 these words. We find the old Celts and Germans 
 and Scandinavians holding, amid many follies 
 and errors, as firmly to a future state for man, and 
 an endless one, as Christians do. The Greeks 
 and Romans conceived of all human bodies as 
 occupied by spirits who at death went away to 
 places in the bowels of the earth, and there per- 
 manently remained — in Tartarus or the Elysian 
 Fields — as shades, but as full of active life as 
 ever. The tombs and other monuments of the 
 Egyptians and Assyrians are profuse with testi- 
 monies to a future state, and to one of which no 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 159 
 
 end was imagined. According to Herodotus, ' ' The 
 Egyptians were the first to maintain that the soul 
 of man is immortal." 
 
 Perhaps it seems to some that the actual lives 
 of men show that after all they do not really be- 
 lieve their creeds as to the soul. How do most 
 live ? Do they live as if fully assured that their 
 fellows, or even themselves, are of infinite value ? 
 Do they act as if their present life is of no conse- 
 quence as compared with the life to come ? We 
 think that, taking the world through, men act 
 very differently from what they would do if they 
 thought that life ends at death. At the same 
 time we have to allow that most people come far 
 short of that strain of living that would be reason- 
 able in immortal beings. How scornfully the 
 great are apt to treat the small! In what a petty, 
 short-sighted way do most people bear themselves! 
 Seemingly they live solely for the present life. 
 Seemingly they act as if there were no hereafter. 
 To look at them one would not dream that there 
 is anything for them beyond the grave, much less 
 an existence that uncoils itself through endless 
 ages. Is it possible that these people really be- 
 lieve that they are to live for ever? Yes, quite 
 possible. For, see how men live in view of the 
 death which they absolutely know to be certain as 
 to fact and uncertain as to time — how carelessly. 
 
l6o UNIVERSAI, BELIEFS. 
 
 how unwisely, how inconsistently ! They cannot 
 but grant you that they are sure to die soon and 
 may die to-morrow, and yet they act as if they 
 were to live here for ever. Strange! We can only 
 say. These men know, but they do not realise 
 what they know. And so we haye to say in the 
 other case. Men believe in a future state and an 
 immortal one; but realization is lacking. The 
 fact is seen, but is seen from afar. The fact is 
 seen, but is seen as a shadow and a dwarf. 
 
 Whence this general belief of men? Is it a 
 relic of a primitive revelation to the race so clear 
 and emphatic that its echoes have never died 
 away? Or is it a subtle consciousness, inherent 
 in all men, of an interior nature whose substance 
 lies altogether above the plane of bodily ills; 
 which, indeed, often actually rises superior to 
 all outward circumstances, and with sovereign 
 look and gesture defies accident and disease and 
 anguish in all their protean shapes, and even 
 grimmest death itself? Or is it a blind instinct 
 original in human nature, like the instinctive 
 knowledge of the ways and means of living with 
 which brutes are endowed from the outset? Or 
 is it an easy inference from certain facts that 
 gradually come to the knowledge of all — such as 
 the insufficiency of the present life to meet the 
 capacities, cravings, and needs of men as well as 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. l6l 
 
 the demands of divine justice? Or may there 
 not be a natural presentiment of life as well as of 
 death ; and, as coming events sometimes cast their 
 shadows before, and as morning and spring and 
 returning health send out forerunners to say, ' ' We 
 are coming," does not his Majesty, the Future 
 State, also have his avant-couriers and John Bap- 
 tists to prepare his way in the form of hints, pre- 
 monitions, presumptions, which separately are of 
 little account, but which collectively create an at- 
 mosphere in which unbelief cannot well breathe ? 
 Whichever of these suppositions we may choose, 
 the general belief in a future state points to 2. fact. 
 The belief is, because the hereafter is. The sub- 
 jective is crowded into being by the objective. 
 
 There is, indeed, another supposition possible. 
 It is that the general belief in another life is one 
 of the ancient superstitions of the world, cherished 
 and perhaps begun by priestcraft, and bound to 
 decay and finally disappear as knowledge advan- 
 ces — as other superstitions do. Yes, this is the 
 way real siiperstitions do. You have only to en- 
 large a man's knowledge and faculties to a certain 
 extent, and his superstitions will fall off from him 
 as fell Peter's chains at the touch of a luminous 
 angel. But it is not so v/ith belief in a future 
 state. Many a man has retained, and even en- 
 hanced it, amid the illumination of the largest 
 
 Univerflal DeHers. I I 
 
l62 UNIVERSAL BElrlEFS. 
 
 faculties and the widest knowledge. Newton was 
 not an ignoramus, nor was Blaise Pascal. No 
 doubt faith in a hereafter does sometimes retreat 
 as knowledge advances, but it is not because of 
 such advance. It is rather in spite of it. Dislike 
 to the truth, superficial examination, intellectual 
 dishonesty, prejudices of many sorts, hasty and 
 erratic thinking in the modes perhaps of science 
 and philosophy falsely so called — such things, 
 and sometimes downright wickedness, are by no 
 means unknown to men of talents and informa- 
 tion, and are enough to ' ' create a soul (of unbe- 
 lief) under the ribs of death." 
 
 Now let us see whether this wide consent of 
 creeds and nations and ages to a spiritual nature 
 in man, to a future state for it, and to its endless- 
 ness, is not supported by still another consensus. 
 
 I. As to the existence of the soul itself as a being 
 distinct from the body. 
 
 If thought, feeling, and choice are not due to 
 such a being, they must result from bodily organ- 
 ization. But mere combination and arrangement 
 of atoms, however elaborate, cannot generate es- 
 sentially new properties — can only modify such 
 as already exist. But among the properties be- 
 longing to material atoms our science has not yet 
 detected any save what differ in nature, toto orbe, 
 from the properties which we call spiritual. If 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 1 63 
 
 we know an5'thing, we know that intelligence, 
 purpose, sensibility, memory, consciousness, do 
 not belong in the slightest degree to atoms of mat- 
 ter, but are totally different in nature from such 
 qualities as we do know to characterize matter, 
 e. g. , gravitation, chemical affinity. 
 
 Further; if our mental operations are a prod- 
 uct of mere matter with its forces and laws, then 
 they are necessary; we cannot think, feel, or choose 
 differently from what we do. We are no more 
 responsible for our choices, and the actions that 
 flow from them, than a stone is for falling or a 
 planet for wheeling about the sun. This contra- 
 dicts our consciousness and the general voice of 
 mankind. We htow that our wills are free, and 
 that consequently we are blameworthy or praise- 
 worthy. The treatment of men by one another, 
 in all ages and countries, postulates this with a 
 unanimity that is absolutely universal and un- 
 questionable. We cannot admit a theory of our 
 mental operations that implies fatalism. It were 
 fatal to morals. It contradicts consciousness and 
 the practical verdict of all humanity. 
 
 If one says that the mental operations are usu- 
 ally found to sympathize with the state of the 
 body — to sicken as it sickens, to weaken as it 
 weakens, to disappear as it disappears — I answer. 
 Yes. But, then, this would be so if the body were 
 
164 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 merely the instrument used by the mind. Of 
 course, with a given agent, the worse the tool the 
 worse the work. But there are exceptions. In 
 cases not a few the mind seems at its best when 
 the body is at its worst. The one brightens and 
 strengthens as the other declines. When life is 
 almost gone the spiritual faculties will sometimes 
 blaze out into a vigor and splendor which they 
 have never before shown. 
 
 Says Prof. Peabody: " I have repeatedly stood 
 by the death-bed of one attenuated by long infir- 
 mity, every vital process clogged, the pulse inter- 
 mittent, the blood already becoming stagnant; 
 and I have seen the dying still in the full vigor 
 of his intellect, master of his position, clearer and 
 stronger in thought and judgment than any one 
 of the bystanders, addressing appropriate counsel 
 or consolation to each of the afflicted circle, dic- 
 tating messages of love to the absent, and leaving 
 no person or interest forgotten that had the re- 
 motest right to a place in his remembrance. I 
 have heard, too, in the hour and in the embrace 
 of death, not the feverish ecstasies of unreasoning 
 fanaticism, but the serene utterances of a mature 
 religious wisdom, of undoubting faith, of quiet 
 trust, of a foreseeing hope that had already crossed 
 the separating stream and passed within the gold- 
 en gates; and in the eye kindled with a purer, ho- 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 165 
 
 Her light than ever glows except in the Christian's 
 ascension-room, in the wan countenance radiant 
 with the foreshining of the heavenly day, in the 
 air of joyous expectancy with which the parting 
 moment is waited for and welcomed, the soul's 
 voice is, ' ' Death, I am not thine, and I defy thy 
 power. I am mightier than thou art. Thou art 
 but the doorkeeper of my house not made with 
 hands, my usher into the blessed society of the 
 unfallen and redeemed. ' ' 
 
 Such cases are numerous. And they seem to 
 show something more than that mind does not 
 result from bodily organization. They strongly 
 suggest that it can do without such organization 
 as an instrument altogether, and is on the eve of 
 doing it. The African missionary Adams, when 
 near death, was like a man who, long bound to 
 his room by the bonds of night and fatigue and 
 sleep, at last grows restless as the approaching 
 morning gradually relaxes his bonds, and gives 
 unmistakable signs that he will erelong greet 
 the full day with open eyes and outgoing feet 
 and busy, forceful hands that will mock at the 
 comparative indolence of the fettered state he has 
 just left. 
 
 If the mental powers were the result of the 
 general bodily organization, the most perfect and 
 healthy bodies would show us the finest specimens 
 
l66 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 of minds. How far this is from fact everybody 
 knows. Some feeble Pascal who has never known 
 a well day has the mightiest soul of his genera- 
 tion. Some mighty brute of a body, built like a 
 Hercules or an Apollo, is as puny in his wits as a 
 child. When was the discovery made that all 
 healthy and finely-proportioned people are pos- 
 sessed of superior abilities ? No experienced per- 
 son thinks it safe to infer a man's talents from the 
 way his body is gotten up. He has no occasion 
 to think of .^sop and Socrates and Julius Caesar. 
 The great grenadiers of Prussia were never heard 
 of for any other greatness than that of their 
 bodies. 
 
 If one supposes that mental excellence, instead 
 of depending on the ^^«^ra/ excellence of the body, 
 depends rather on that of some particular part, 
 say on the large size, fine quality, and delicate 
 organization of the brain, I answer that this may 
 be and yet the brain be merely an instrument of 
 the indwelling and distinct soul. Its manifesta- 
 tions, in that case, might be expected to vary 
 largely with the excellence of the tool employed. 
 But I answer, still further, that no part of the body 
 has less appearance of elaborate and delicate ma- 
 terial and structure than the brain ; that the cases 
 are many of Olympian heads with no mental forces 
 to match (the average Polynesian skull is more ca- 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 167 
 
 pacious than the average French) ; and that, how- 
 ever it may be with many individuals, corporeal 
 excellence in all other respects is generally asso- 
 ciated with that of the head. The various parts 
 tend to proportion and harmony with one another. 
 Nature abhors disproportion and schism as much 
 as she does a vacuum. " And whether one member 
 suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one mem- 
 ber be honored, all the members rejoice with it. " A 
 large and shapely trunk \^ill commonly have over 
 it a large and shapely head. Brobdignag shoul- 
 ders object to Liliputian brains. So that, in gen- 
 eral at least, if the materialistic theory of the soul 
 is true, the grade of our mental faculties should 
 be interpretable from the grade of our bodies — as 
 it plainly is not. 
 
 It seems, then, that while the notion that the 
 soul is not a distinct entity within the body, but, 
 on the contrary, a genetic result of the body, or of 
 some part of it, gets no support from the general 
 sympathy of the mind with the body in the decay 
 of its powers, it is negatived by the fact that the 
 mental operations are sometimes more vigorous 
 and brilliant than ever in the collapse of the 
 bodily powers — even as some sunsets are more 
 glorious than midday; also negatived by the fact 
 that neither the general excellence of the body 
 nor that of the head is any sute or even probable 
 
l68 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 guide as to the quality or compass of the mental 
 powers; also, and above all, negatived by the fact 
 that materialism means fatalism^ and so subverts 
 the whole foundation of morals and contradicts 
 the consciousness of freedom and responsibility 
 that is common to all mankind. 
 
 II. As to the existence of the soul after the death 
 of the body. 
 
 If the soul is indeed an entity distinct from 
 the body, not depending on the body for its char- 
 acteristic properties, using the body as a tenant 
 does his house or as a sailor does his ship or as a 
 mechanic does the tools of his trade, there is a pre- 
 sumption that it does not perish with the body. 
 Does the house-tenant of course perish when, from 
 any cause, the house is no longer habitable? Does 
 the sailor of course disappear from the seas when 
 his vessel is no longer seaworthy, or the farmer 
 from the fields when his ploughs and hoes are 
 worn out? And the strong presumption is that 
 the soul too will live on after its dwelling or 
 tool has become unfit for its use. There is noth- 
 ing in death, as known to us, that needs to harm 
 any spiritual faculty. Of course, God, the Maker 
 of the soul, could, if he should choose, make its 
 end to synchronize with that of the body; but 
 there is no evidence that he has so chosen, but, 
 on the contrary, evidence that he has not. 
 
IMMORTAL 'SOULS. 169 
 
 The present life is too brief to match the plans, 
 the powers, and the wishes of at least a large part 
 of mankind. At the close of life they are con- 
 scious of faculties for which as yet they have had 
 no adequate field and opportunity. They have 
 laid out broad plans, it may be, of noble service 
 to their fellow-men and are called to die before 
 they have had time to carry out their plans. 
 They crave continued life. They enjoy living 
 and working and accomplishing, and they look 
 with vast disfavor on the idea of stepping down 
 and out into black and everlasting nothingness. 
 By a law of nature as clear, original, and imper- 
 ative as that by which the planets cling to the 
 sun and refuse the cold and black vacuity of mid- 
 space, their whole nature revolts from the blas- 
 phemy of non-existence. This even in infirmest 
 old age. But many valuable lives are broken off 
 much earlier. Perhaps they have just finished a 
 long and expensive career of education. Their 
 powers are only just beginning to fledge. They 
 have only given one stroke on the arena of 
 achievement. Their plans are large, their hopes 
 are strong, and the great forces within them champ 
 and foam like blooded steeds under curb, waiting 
 for permission to spring away to the goal. But 
 the permission never comes. The young minister 
 hardly does more than preach his first sermon. 
 
170 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 The young lawyer hardly does more than make 
 his first plea. The young scientist hardly does 
 more than make first knocks at the door of the 
 unknown. Then the summons to leave all comes, 
 and he is laid away in the grave amid the tears 
 and disappointments of perhaps thousands. Alas 
 for the Spencers and Larneds ! ' ' Ostendunt ier- 
 ris hunc tantinn fata, neque ultra esse sinent.'''' 
 Worse than this. I^ittle children in great num- 
 bers, with talents and opportunities apparently as 
 good as the best, are cut down at the first shooting 
 of their tender blades above ground, are nipped 
 by the death frost in the first budding of their 
 fruit, are quenched in the first dawning of their 
 day. What do their lives here amount to? What 
 disproportion between such mere hints and sug- 
 gestions of life and the majestic spiritual energies 
 that lie coiled up in some of them ! Some of 
 them, if spared, could have sung as well as 
 Homer. Others could have reigned over assem- 
 blies with their sceptred voices as did Demos- 
 thenes or Chalmers. Still others could ha\'e 
 reigned still more widely across continents and 
 ages with their sceptred pens. What a waste if 
 death ends all ! What a host of abortive and 
 abandoned undertakings — incomplete, half fin- 
 ished, just begun — begun and then dropped for 
 ever ! Whole cities of houses in the first stages 
 
 /Ok 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 171 
 
 of building, and lo, all work finally suspended; 
 whole navies in the dock-yards with great keels 
 fairly laid, and then left to rot ! Who does such 
 things? Here and there a fickle, foolish, or im- 
 poverished man, but certainly not the all-wise and 
 all-mighty and steadfast God. He will fulfil all 
 his promises, whether of word or deed. His deed 
 in giving man so richly dowered a soul contains 
 a promise of some worthy field and opportunity 
 somewhere for all its powers. 
 
 Again, a future state is demanded by the jus- 
 tice of God. It is plain to the commonest sort of 
 observation that men in this life are not always 
 treated by divine Providence accurately according 
 to their deserts. The best men sometimes have 
 harder lots than the worst for a thousand miles 
 around. Saints ! Yes, but they are poor, sick, 
 uncomely, despised, hated, persecuted, perhaps 
 set up to burn as torches in Nero's gardens, while 
 the monster himself, clad in purple, lording it 
 over nations, looks down gleefully on the scene 
 from a window of his palace. This is an extreme 
 case, but past and present society are full of cases 
 essentially similar. All know that the character 
 of a man can never be inferred with any certainty 
 from his general outward condition during his 
 present life. He may live to the end full of 
 honors and wealth and health and still be a bad 
 
172 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 man. He may live to the end full of dishonors 
 and want and sickness and still be a good man. 
 The rags of I^azarus cover a man fit for Abraham's 
 bosom. The' purple of Dives covers a man fit 
 only for hell. Such facts for a time stumbled 
 David, as they have done many another man. It 
 did not for the moment occur to the Psalmist how 
 the divine justice could be sustained. His face 
 grew black. But then there shot into his painful 
 thought the idea of a future state. It was an 
 apocalypse. "Ah ! I see it now," he cried; "the 
 future state will set matters all right. So foolish 
 was I and ignorant; I was as a beast before thee !" 
 David was right. Job, as against his three 
 friends, was right. If there is a hereafter, there 
 is still an opportunity for God to be just. What 
 is to come may square accounts with the past, and 
 the retributions of joy and sorrow after death may 
 give all to see that God holds an even balance 
 and renders to every man according to his work. 
 Justice has only been delayed, never abandoned. 
 The present is a time of forbearance and proba- 
 tion; in the next state men will reap as they have 
 sown in this. But if there is no next state, if 
 what our present eyes cover is the entire total of 
 human existence and there is nothing for man 
 beyond this current chaos of undecipherable prov- 
 idences, why, then, we must say, though it be 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 1 73 
 
 with a look and gesture of despair, "God is not 
 the being that we thought him. His justice is 
 not a mystery merely ; it is a myth as well. ' ' 
 Such are the hard words to which, with lashes 
 and goads, the facts seem to compel us. 
 
 But we refuse the compulsion. We refuse to 
 give up the idea of divine justice. Our natures 
 revolt at the very idea of an Infinite Being who 
 is not governed by principles of equity. Neither 
 good nor bad men would know what to count on. 
 Would God have given us a nature that recoils 
 from himself? The very sentiment of justice 
 which he has imbedded in our constitutions and 
 to which he has given such lordly authority shows 
 what principles he loves, patronizes, and acts 
 under. The Being who has so made us that we 
 have to condemn and flagellate ourselves for in- 
 justice, and sometimes to fall into a very passion 
 of penitence, will not himself administer an unjust 
 government. He could have made us intelligent 
 beings, and so intelligent as to be able to perceive 
 the difference between the fit and unfit, the useful 
 and the harmful, the right and the wrong, and 
 yet not have put a self-acting scourge in the 
 hands of the soul to punish itself withal; for men 
 do sometimes manage to get rid of this scourge, 
 at least temporarily, and even of the faculty of 
 moral judgment itself. Sometimes they totally 
 
174 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 reverse the poles of morals — "calling evil good 
 and good evil, putting darkness for light and 
 light for darkness, putting bitter for sweet and 
 sweet for bitter" — nay, they come to be unable 
 to see that any radical distinction whatever exists 
 between right and wrong, and actively and loudly 
 deny the reality of such distinctions. The whole 
 field of morals has become to them not merely a 
 blur, but a blank, and a very black one at that. 
 
 What brutes do not possess, and man can sup- 
 press, does not belong essentially to an intelligent 
 nature, not even to one of the human grade, and 
 so could have been withheld from lis by our Ma- 
 ker. The fact that he has not done it shows 
 where he stands. And the fact that the throne of 
 judgment which he has set up in every bosom 
 does, until it has been overturned by long-contin- 
 ued and flagrant insurrection, chastise conscious 
 unrighteousness so severely and reward conscious 
 righteousness so superbly shows that his position 
 is exceedingly pronounced — that he "makes for 
 righteousness" with a feeling and determination 
 with which no man can afford to trifle. 
 
 Against these considerations some would allege 
 the absence of all communications to us from 
 spirits after the death of their bodies. "We 
 would naturally expect, ' ' say they, ' ' that such 
 spirits would wish to communicate with the 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 1 75 
 
 friends they have left, especially in times of dis- 
 tress and emergency. The fact that they do not, 
 that their world is always ' as silent as the grave ' 
 to us, let what will happen, is proof that it does 
 not exist." 
 
 Now it is by no means clear that a future 
 world is always "as silent as the grave" — has 
 never given any sort of token of itself to living 
 men. Tokens of it have sometimes seemed to 
 float out to meet dying men, just as strange plants 
 and birds and sounds floated out to meet Colum- 
 bus as he approached a new hemisphere. He was 
 encouraged. Was not India hard by? The sail- 
 ors with Paul deemed that they drew nigh to 
 some country. Did they see it through the pitchy 
 night? Could they bring any sense to bear di- 
 rectly upon it? Nay, -but there was an inde- 
 scribable something in the air, in the sounds that 
 came to them, in the very pulsations of the waves, 
 which, taken together, carried to them a vague 
 impression of land just at hand. The impression 
 was correct. Malta was just ahead in the dark- 
 ness. So it seems to be with some persons as they 
 approach death. " Coming events cast their 
 shadows before." Subtile pulsations, aromas, 
 temperatures, mites and filaments of character- 
 ization, seem to float out to them from the shores 
 of another life just before them. Individually 
 
176 UNIVERSAI. BEUEFS. 
 
 these motes have no appreciable weight, perhaps 
 do not admit of being specified; but collectively 
 they foot up to much, to presumptions, to pre- 
 sentiments, to convictions — as atoms of air singlj' 
 insignificant at last gather into a weight of fifteen 
 pounds to the square inch. A presentiment ! It 
 is often as if men saw the future state. They 
 cannot prove- it to us, but they feel it. Is this 
 disease or is it superstition ? Are not we some- 
 times aware of the presence of persons and dangers 
 which, from darkness or blindness, we cannot see? 
 Does not the night traveller sometimes divine that 
 he has a valley before him, though he sees noth- 
 ing and would find it hard to tell how his knowl- 
 edge comes ? Do we tell him that either his body 
 or mind is sick ? 
 
 But let ns for a moment consent to grant that 
 the future state is for the present silent to us. No 
 doubt it is so as a general fact. When our friends 
 die we do not expect to consciously hear from 
 them again while we are in the flesh. Is' there 
 any explanation of this fact consistent with the 
 actual existence in full force of all human souls 
 after bodily death ? The Bible explanation is 
 that all souls at death go to two other worlds — 
 one class as closely-confined criminals, and the 
 other as inhabitants of a distant heaven from 
 which they may indeed occasionally return to us 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 1 77 
 
 on benevolent ministries, but which ministries in 
 general must be performed in such ways as not to 
 attract the notice of the bodily senses. God does 
 not think it best that the future state and the 
 present should be in sensible communication with 
 each other. To walk by faith and not by sight is 
 the need of living men. Are we prepared to con- 
 tradict this ? We do not know enough to do it. 
 We can even see some reasons for thinking it 
 might be very undesirable to run together and 
 mix up on the same territory two worlds of such 
 very different conditions. Other reasons may exist. 
 Certainly we who find so much occasion for veils 
 and curtains and partitions and dead walls that 
 exclude both sight and sound, so much useful 
 occasion for quarantines and segregations and ne 
 plus ultras^ and who are so ready to allow that it 
 is well in general that the day and other circum- 
 stances of our death should be hidden from us — 
 certainly such persons should not think them- 
 selves qualified to affirm that no good reason can 
 exist for shutting off a world of spirits from all 
 sensible dealings with a world of bodies, a world 
 of probation from a world of retribution. 
 
 III. As to the immortality of the soul. 
 
 But granting that the soul continues to exist 
 after the death of the body, how long does it con- 
 tinue? The traditions, creeds, and current beliefs 
 
 TTnlvevRal BeHefs. 12 
 
178 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 of mankind say that it continues fot ever. Does 
 any one of our many forms of science say a word 
 against this ? On the contrary, is it not forcibly 
 spoken for by that principle, already illustrated, 
 that underlies so many of our natural sciences, 
 viz., the principle that every generic need has 
 somewhere over against it an adequate supply, 
 that what is needed to meet and satisfy and make 
 available a natural trait in great classes of objects 
 always exists or is obtainable ? 
 
 We are able to do what the brutes apparently 
 cannot — to conceive of an immortal life. Not 
 only have some preeminent scholars uncovered' 
 and measured vast stretches of duration that lay 
 hid in the astronomical heavens, but the rank 
 and file of the race have, to a man, taken in a 
 still grander idea — that of the everlasting, of al- 
 ways living. The idea has its metaphysical dif- 
 ficulties, but the word eternity stands for a real 
 something whose permanent existence all men 
 know with intuitive certainty. 
 
 And the permanent life which they can con- 
 ceive of they strongly desire for themselves. 
 Dread of extinction ; a craving for an endless life, 
 provided it be not miserable ; especially a craving 
 for an endless life that ever improves in beauty, 
 dignity, and enjoyment, belongs to human na- 
 ture. It is constitutional, universal, ineradicable. 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. I/g 
 
 The man does not live who would not leap with 
 passionate energy to meet the gift of such a life 
 as that, away from the black gulf of everlasting 
 nothingness. One can, with a plenty of time and 
 pains, pull up by the roots some forms of natural 
 aflFection, biit not this. It is thoroughly invinci- 
 ble. We had rather be extinguished than suffer 
 without end, but not rather than enjoy without 
 end. 
 
 We not only find in human nature a power to 
 conceive of an immortal life, and an unextin- 
 guishable thirst for such a life under favorable 
 conditions, but also a capacity to use such a life 
 to a vast extent. We are conscious of power to 
 use it for endless improvement in knowledge, vir- 
 tue, usefulness, and happiness. The horizon of 
 our knowledge, as well as our faculty of know- 
 ing, may be ever widening, the intensity of our 
 virtuous feeling and purpose may be ever deepen- 
 ing, the forms and measures of our usefulness may 
 be ever multiplying, and so the roots of our hap- 
 piness may be ever striking deeper and spreading 
 farther and laying hold on new sources of nour- 
 ishment. Such a nature is largely wasted unless 
 there is an immortality for it. What is the use of 
 our having the wings of an eagle if we are to lead 
 the life of a wren ? Why should our Maker fur- 
 nish us with the exchequer of a prince to meet 
 
l8o UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 the expenses of a peasant — give his travellers an 
 outfit large enough to carry them to a fixed star 
 when they are only going a single mile from 
 home? Able to conceive of a life without end, 
 hungering and thirsting for such a life, and con- 
 scious of faculties that cannot be fully fruited and 
 utilized in anything short of an immortality — 
 why, the very laws of nature, as well as the divine 
 character, warrant us in expecting an immortal- 
 ity. Even human workmen strive for congruity. 
 They are not in the habit of making men of war 
 to navigate creeks, nor a child's suit of clothes 
 large enough for Goliath of Gath. Neither does 
 God make human nature vastly larger than the 
 sphere it was meant to fill. He does not endow 
 us with capacities for which he provides no suit- 
 able field of action. This would be waste. This 
 would be folly. Nay, would not this be wicked- 
 ness ? For, would it not be trifling with our hap- 
 piness to give us a mighty longing and capacity 
 for a good we are never to have; to raise within 
 us, by the very greatness of our natures, delicious 
 hopes which are never to be gratified ? God for- 
 bid that we should think he would do what would 
 be cruel in a man. 
 
 " Say, why was man so eminently raised 
 Amid the vast creation, why ordained 
 Through life and death to dart his piercing eye. 
 
IMMORTAt SOULS. l8l 
 
 With thoughts beyond the limits of his frame, 
 
 But that the Omnipotent might send him forth, 
 
 In sight of mortal and immortal powers, 
 
 As on a boundless theatre, to run 
 
 The great career of justice, to exalt 
 
 His generous aim to all diviner deeds, 
 
 To hold his course unfaltering up the long ascent 
 
 Of endless life beneath the applauding smile 
 
 Of the Eternal Father ?" 
 
 And many scientific facts conspire to show that 
 what it would be cruel for God to do he has not 
 done. Through all the round of nature there 
 does not exist a class of beings, animate or inani- 
 mate, with a constitutional appetite and fitness 
 for what cannot be had. There is nowhere a class 
 of things whose needs do not, in the eye of science, 
 bespeak the existence or attainableness of that 
 which will meet the need. An anatomist in find- 
 ing a bone practically finds the entire animal to 
 which it belonged, also its environment when liv- 
 ing. On what principle ? On the observed prin- 
 ciple that it is the habit of nature to put within 
 reach of each great family belonging to her do- 
 main all the circumstances needed to utilize its 
 powers. It may not be easy in all cases to lay 
 hold of what is needed; individuals may suffer; 
 but that an entire class of beings should have 
 from age to age an tmconquerable and unabated 
 craving and fitness for what cannot be had is not 
 only incredible to one who believes in a wise God, 
 
l82 , UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 but also to one who. listens to the natural scien- 
 ces. These tell us that God is not one to throw 
 himself away; that he as well as man has his 
 economies and gathers up "the fragments, that 
 nothing be lost;" that even as trees capable of 
 bearing ripe fruit do not always stop at buds or 
 blossoms, so men capable of an endless career of 
 ever-improving intellectual and moral fruitfulness 
 do not always stop at such mere beginnings of 
 things as our present life only allows. Our sea^ 
 son here is too short to ripen us. Nothing short 
 of the An7ius Mirabilis of an immortality suffices 
 for that. And this, therefore, is what we shall 
 have. 
 
 We have seen that materialists, and all who 
 say that death ends all, are in a wonderfully small 
 minority. Nay, we have seen that all who, what- 
 ever they say, live as though death ends all, are 
 condemned by the voice of mankind. According 
 to that voice, this present life of ours is but an 
 insignificant part of our whole life; merely a be- 
 ginning of that which is wholly unmeasured and 
 immeasurable; merely a mathematical point in 
 the total outspread of infinite space. And yet, it 
 is plain to see, many human lives are not in har- 
 mony with these views. Such lives are by no 
 means fossils, dug up at great intervals from be- 
 neath the strata of long-departed ages, and won- 
 
IMMORTAL SOULS. 183 
 
 dered at in museums as specimens of a long extinct 
 species. They swarm all over the present surface 
 of the world. Open your eyes on society almost 
 anywhere and you will find them. Perhaps you 
 need not look farther than your own worldly and 
 careless self, O reader, to find a large specimen — 
 a large specimen of the many people who live as 
 if the time now passing, with its eating and drink- 
 ing, its money-getting and honor-getting, its busi- 
 ness and pleasures, its frivolities and fashions, is 
 their main chance, not to say their only one. 
 Are you not of that tremendous majority who con- 
 cede that there is an everlasting ftiture before you ? 
 Then why live so ? Why live self-condemned, 
 and condemned from zenith to nadir and from 
 east to west of all the religions and traditions and 
 nations ? 
 
 " Oh, what a patrimony this ! a being 
 Of such inherent strength and majesty 
 Not worlds possessed can raise it, worlds destroyed 
 Not injure, which holds on its glorious course 
 When thine, O nature, ends." 
 
VIM. LIMITED PROBATION. 
 
Ah (Se ijiri jtote alaBsaBat on opog kan aoi TTEpiytypa/ievog tov xpovov, 
 a, Euv eig to /it) dnaiBpuiaac XM^Vt olxiiasTai, Kol oixiiar;, Kat avQig am 
 f/^erai. MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 Thou must at last perceive that a term of life is allotted 
 to thee, which, if thou dost not use for clearing away the 
 clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou wilt go, and it will 
 not come again. 
 
 'On BavovTuv fihi ivBaS' avriii' iirdXafi evm ^peveg wowuf Inaav. 
 
 PINDAR. 
 
 That the guilty souls of those who die here at once suf- 
 fer punishment. 
 
 For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of 
 Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his 
 body, according to that he hath done. ST. paul. 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 1 8/ 
 
 VIII. LIMITED PROBATION. 
 
 The Bible teaches that men are praiseworthy 
 and blameworthy beings, and that, sooner or la- 
 ter, they are brought to account by God for their 
 characters and conduct. From Genesis to Reve- 
 lation this is the doctrine that underlies the Book. 
 God is indignant at certain styles of behavior, 
 denounces them, threatens them, chastises and 
 punishes them. On the other hand, he loves and 
 commends certain other ways of living, and en- 
 courages to them with promises and rewards. 
 While his sceptre is recognized as in some way 
 powerfully touching every event, the doctrine of 
 necessity and fatalism, as applied to the human 
 will, is everywhere quietly ignored or trampled on. 
 "Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and 
 swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and 
 walk after other gods whom ye know not, and 
 come and stand before me in this house which is 
 called by my name, and say. We are delivered to 
 do all these abominations ?" " Who will render to 
 every man according to his works — to them who 
 do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, 
 indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, 
 
i88 UNIVEE.SAI, BEWEFS. 
 
 upon every soul of man that doetli evil, of the 
 Jew first, and also of the Gentile; but glory, hon- 
 or, and peace to every man that worketh good, 
 to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile. For 
 there is no respect of persons with God. ' ' From 
 him who handles the sceptre to him who handles 
 the spade, from him who handles the Bible to 
 him who handles merely the law that is written 
 in his heart, "every man shall give account of 
 himself to God." , 
 
 So runs our Bible. And so, too, run all the 
 bibles of the world, without exception. Whether 
 Koran or Avesta or Veda or Tripitaka or The 
 Kings or the Book of Mormon, it tells of certain 
 things which men are bound to do, also of certain 
 things which they are bound not to do, and gives 
 notice of rewards and punishments in this life or 
 another according as men treat the sacred teach- 
 ing. These books differ greatly among them- 
 selves as to the things required or forbidden, but 
 there is not among them all one that does not rec- 
 ognize abundantly the reality of moral distinc- 
 tions — ^that some things are right and other things 
 wrong, some things praiseworthy and other things 
 blameworthy; and that men must expect to enjoy 
 or suffer, sooner or later, according as they be- 
 have. The old Egyptian ' ' Book of the Dead ' ' 
 summoned every man at death into the presence 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 189 
 
 of a divine judge to answer for his conduct in this 
 world. The Koran says that a strict "judgment- 
 day at the end of the world awaits all men ; every 
 action and word and thought will be weighed and 
 get its due. ' ' The Avesta also says that ' ' there 
 will be at the end of the world a general resurrec- 
 tion and judgment, and that a just retribution will 
 be rendered to men according to their works ; that 
 the angel of darkness, with his followers, will be 
 consigned to a place of everlasting darkness and 
 punishment, and the angel of light, with his fol- 
 lowers, introduced into a state of everlasting light 
 and happiness." And the Parsee of to-day, fol- 
 lowing the ancie'nt Zoroastrian faith, says, "I am 
 wholly without doubt in the coming of the resur- 
 rection, in the stepping over the bridge Chinvat, 
 in an invariable recompense of good deeds and 
 their reward and of bad deeds and their punish- 
 ment." As to Brahminism, "its sacred writings 
 represent the whole universe as an august theatre 
 for the probationary exertions of beings who are 
 supposed to be so many spirits degraded from high 
 places and condemned to ascend through various 
 gradations of toil and suffering to that exalted 
 sphere of perfection and happiness which they 
 enjoyed before their defection." The Buddhist 
 Bedagat and Tripitaka declare that "the condi- 
 tion of creatures on earth is regulated by works of 
 
igo UNIVERSAI, BELIEFS. 
 
 merit and demerit. The lowest state of existence 
 is in liell; the next is that in the form of brutes; 
 both these are states of punishment. The next 
 ascent is to that of man, which is probationary. 
 The next includes many degrees of honor and hap- 
 piness up to demigods and gods, which are states 
 of reward for works of merit. Merit consists in 
 avoiding sins and performing virtues, and the de- 
 gree of it is the sole hope of the Buddhist. " " The 
 Kings" of Confucius tells us that "Deity is of 
 such boundless goodness and justice that he can 
 let no virtue go unrewarded or vice unpunished." 
 As to those poems, oracles, traditions, and priestly 
 teachings which among the Greeks, Romans, As- 
 syrians, and others, have taken the place of sacred 
 books, they all tell of Elysian Fields in the next 
 life for the good men of this, and a Tartarus of 
 penalty for the bad, as well as of current divine 
 rewards and penalties. Park, after his extensive 
 travels in the interior of Africa, wrote, ' ' I have 
 conversed with all ranks and conditions on the 
 subject of their faith, and can pronounce, without 
 the smallest shade of doubt, that the belief of one 
 God and of a future state of rewards and punish- 
 ments is entire and universal among them." 
 
 It sometimes happens that the sacred books 
 and traditions of a nation do not harmonize with 
 its actual conduct and practical convictions. The 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. I9I 
 
 people and their canon have somehow drifted 
 apart. The lips say one thing and the hands do 
 another. The old words are still bowed down to, 
 but the old meanings have' fallen out of them. 
 Strange liberties of interpretation are taken; the- 
 ories of inspiration, elastic enough to accommo- 
 date the wishes and whims of everybody, are 
 adopted. Too often the bulk of what is called a 
 Christian nation neither think nor act like Chris- 
 tians. The flag aloft has a cross on it, but pirates 
 sail beneath. The uniform is all right, but the 
 soldier within is all wrong. Conduct is very apt 
 to belie theory. Bven profound convictions go 
 one way, the heart and life another. One may 
 believe in temperance with all his might and still 
 be a drunkard and a glutton.; may argue for the- 
 ism sincerely and powerfully and yet live as if 
 there were no God; may admire Abdiel and yet 
 act like Satan ; may stoutly deny the existence 
 of matter and yet flinch from a sword or a cannon 
 ball as quickly as other people. So the nations, 
 it is conceivable, might accept the doctrine of 
 their sacred books as to human responsibility and 
 yet their actual practice proceed on a different 
 principle. 
 
 But, as a matter of fact, it dees not. It al- 
 ways proceeds on the principle that men may 
 justly be held to account for their conduct. If 
 
193 TJNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 actions ever speak louder than words, they do just 
 here. Parents so speak in their treatment of their 
 children. Teachers so speak in their treatment of 
 their pupils. Public opinion so speaks when it 
 smiles on the conduct of one man and frowns on 
 that of another. The laws, judges, prisons, pen- 
 alties of many sorts of which no land beneath the 
 sun has ever had lack, all say with tremendous 
 vocal unity not merely that man may be justly 
 rewarded and punished, but that he will be and 
 must be. The well-being of society demands it. 
 Its very existence is staked upon it. So, from 
 prince to peasant and from philosopher to child, 
 every one treats his neighbor as praiseworthy or 
 blameworthy, and in one way or another, in one 
 degree or another, rewards or punishes him for his 
 conduct. But who shall bring the sceptre-bearers 
 themselves to account ? Who shall retribute both 
 autocrats and democrats for hidden things; nay, 
 for a whole world of moral thought and feeling 
 which human eyes cannot reach, but where lie 
 the seeds and roots and fountains and essence of 
 all outward virtues and vices, and where is the 
 most hopeful field for the workings of a sense of 
 responsibility? All nations have an answer ready. 
 They all bid us look to another life where are set 
 thrones of judgment higher than Kaiser's or 
 Czar's. Whether supposed to be located in the 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 193 
 
 bowels of the earth or in the regions of the air; 
 whether sculptured on the tombs of old Egypt or 
 on the still more enduring classics of Greece and 
 Rome, or, a:s the doctrine of metempsychosis, on 
 the creeds of Eastern Asia; whether occupied by 
 Minos, or by Osiris with his forty-two adjutants, 
 or by cuneiform Belus, or by good Ormuzd, or by 
 triple Brahm, or by Fate blindly equivalent to 
 deity, or by Mohammedan Allah, or by Hebrew 
 Yahveh, or by the Christian Son of God — these 
 thrones mean a judgment -day for the whole 
 world, in which all men shall find themselves 
 conditioned for the next life according to conduct 
 in this. 
 
 In no case have we yet found, in all our ob- 
 servation, any person who is not consciously in 
 the habit of praising and blaming himself as well 
 as other people; who does not feel driven to do so 
 by the sentiment of justice, by the laws of his 
 being, and by the very constitution and needs of 
 society. Evidently it has always been so, for we 
 not only find all the earliest books full of direct 
 and indirect acknowledgments of guilt, but we 
 find such acknowledgments freely sculptured on 
 the earliest Egyptian monuments and on the 
 Assyrian slabs in the British Museum with their 
 penitential psalms and hymns in primitive cunei- 
 form. Thus, 
 
 tTniverBftl BeMe'a. J -2 
 
194 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 " O my Lord ! my sins are many, my trespasses are great, 
 And the wrath of the gods has plagued me with disease. 
 O Lord, do not abandon thy servant; 
 The sins he has done turn thou to righteousness !" 
 
 Nor have we ever found a person who did not, 
 sooner or later, in one way or another, after one 
 measure or another, treat the people who come 
 within the range of his dealing according to his 
 view of their deserts. Especially we have never 
 yet met a person holding to those about him a re- 
 lation of superiority and independence, and so free 
 to act himself out, who did not hold them to ac- 
 count, rewarding them with more or less tokens 
 of his approbation or punishing them with more 
 or less tokens of his displeasure — all in proportion 
 to the degree of his superiority and right to con- 
 trol their conduct. If he is a father, especially if 
 he is a wise one, he treats his children somewhat 
 according as they behave, visiting transgressions 
 with the rod or its equivalent and marking his 
 approbation of good conduct by suitable favors. 
 If he is a teacher, he makes a visible discrimina- 
 tion, and feels that he must do so, between those 
 scholars who are diligent and orderly and those of 
 the opposite stamp; turning looks of pleasure on 
 the one class and of displeasure on the other, 
 speaking words of commendation and honor for 
 the one class and of reproof and dishonor for the 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 195 
 
 other, giving rewards of merit to the one class 
 and meting out deprivations and painful experi- 
 ences of various kinds to the other. If he is an 
 employer, his workmen will, in time, be sure to 
 find out from his way of treating them whether 
 he is satisfied or dissatisfied with them. Some will 
 get commended, trusted more and more, advanced 
 to higher wages and higher duties, while others 
 will get hard words, harder looks, and, perhaps 
 hardest of all, a final discharge without recom- 
 mendation. If he is a civil ruler, say an absolute 
 monarch, he will have to find out ways of making 
 himself feared by law-breakers and loved by law- 
 keepers or he will soon cease to be a monarch. 
 He must have arrests, trials, convictions, impris- 
 onments, and perhaps hangings on the one hand, 
 and, on the other, protections, immunities, encour- 
 agements, rewards, emoluments, ofiices, honors, 
 decorations for good citizens. In short, wher- 
 ever we find a superior, especially one of great 
 independence, there we find the inferiors belong- 
 ing to his sphere held by him to some account for 
 their conduct. He has, under milder names per- 
 haps, real penalties and rewards to signify his 
 pleasure and displeasure, to encourage and dis- 
 courage, to secure the things he wants and to pre- 
 vent the things he does not want. 
 
 Now God is such a superior. He is father, 
 
196 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 teacher, employer, monarch, all in one. He is 
 above all, beyond calculation above all — so far 
 above us as to be totally independent of us; free 
 to act himself out towards all points of the com- 
 pass without incurring damage or danger from 
 any quarter. We fall within his sphere, his range, 
 his beat; as all men confess in the worship they 
 pay to the supreme God, in the prayer they ad- 
 dress to him, in the message they think to have 
 come from him. We are his wards, his children, 
 his scholars, his employes, his subjects. He has 
 his preferences as to our conduct, has informed us 
 of them, will naturally take appropriate means to 
 secure conformity to them. What are such means 
 if not some form of reward or penalty ? Is God 
 the supreme, of all the superiors whom we happen 
 to know the only one who does not hold his sub- 
 ordinates to account? Why should we think him 
 a solitary exception ? When we have found a 
 throne of judgment set up in every other chief- 
 dom (a throne ever enlarging as the chiefdoms 
 enlarge), from the pettiest to the mightiest, shall, 
 we venture to say that it is scientific and reason- 
 able to allow no force to the induction, and expect 
 to find no great white throne whatever in that 
 mightiest chiefdom of all in which presides the 
 King eternal, immortal, invisible ? It is not cred- 
 ible. We ought rather to expect to find there a 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. I97 
 
 throne of judgment whose awards are as much 
 ampler for both merit and demerit as the empire 
 of God is ampler than the petty chiefdoms of this 
 world. For so runs the analogy. The greater 
 the sovereignty the greater its system of penalties 
 and rewards. 
 
 Not only do all nations consent to the reality 
 of moral distinctions, to the actual vast guilt of 
 the race, and to retribution for moral conduct, 
 sooner or later, by a divine Power; but they also 
 agree that, in respect to tetributions, the present 
 life is a probation for the next — that our state im- 
 mediately succeeding death is determined for good 
 or ill by our conduct in the present life. The 
 Oriental nations, believing in the transmigration 
 of souls, have immemorially held that one's posi- 
 tion in each of his many lives is determined by 
 his behavior in the life immediately preceding. 
 They have even held that his behavior here, 
 through heredity and other causes, may determine 
 his condition for weal or woe through many lives 
 and ages. But all the other large peoples best 
 known to us, especially the more advanced of 
 them, have regarded the present life not only as a 
 probation for the next, but as a probation for an 
 endless next. Thus sings an old Assyrian cylin- 
 der, as deciphered in Sayce's "Records of the 
 Past:" 
 
198 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 " After the life of these days 
 In the feasts of the silver mountain, 
 The abode of blessedness, 
 And in the light of the happy fields. 
 May he dwell a life eternal, holy, 
 In the presence of the gods !" 
 
 In no case is anything said about an end to 
 the state next after death, nor about an end to the 
 rewards and punishments that introduce it. They 
 are never spoken of as temporary; they are often 
 spoken of as everlasting. We never hear of re- 
 prieves for the bad nor of reverses for the good, 
 but we are often assured that we have passed into 
 the realm of perpetual congelation. The eschatol- 
 ogy everywhere contemplates permanency. The 
 whole great future spreads out before us as a 
 boundless petrifaction. Especially pronounced 
 were these views among the ancient Greeks and 
 Romans. Whether from the bright fields of Elys- 
 ium or from the gloomy shades of Tartarus, no 
 transfers were ever supposed to be made. As the 
 life of retribution begins,- so it continues ever- 
 more. Both destiny and character are fixed. Sisy- 
 phus rolls his stone eternally. Dido preserves the 
 ' ' eternal wound under her breast. ' ' To the best 
 part of the ancient world the future state seemed 
 like the head of Medusa; all persons coming into 
 its presence are turned into stone. 
 
 I^ike views on this subject have been drawn 
 
UMITED PROBATION. 1 99 
 
 from their sacred books by Mohammedans and 
 Christians. Rightly or wrongly, these have sup- 
 posed themselves taught of God that unless a man 
 does certain things in this life he will be undone 
 for ever. Creeds differ as to what these destruc- 
 tive things are. The Jews have their ideas. The 
 Moslems say that at least idolatry and unbelief 
 are fatal. Indeed, the crowded millions of the 
 remoter Bast (according to Sir Monier Williams, 
 Professor of Sanscrit in the University of Oxford 
 and one of the highest authorities in Oriental 
 matters) all say through their sacred books, 
 ' ' Multiply your prayers, your penances, your pil- 
 grimages, your ceremonies, your external rites of 
 all kinds, for nothing else can save you from eter- 
 nal ruin." As to Christians, by overwhelming 
 majorities they declare that final ruin will over- 
 take all who do not repent of their sins in this 
 life. All the great Churches, all the great denom- 
 inations and confessions, have one voice in the 
 matter; and this voice is but an echo of that 
 which has been resounding through all the Chris- 
 tian history. All the fathers, except two or three 
 in the Alexandrian school, held that probation 
 for all men permanently closes with this life. So 
 vdid the Waldenses. With scarcely an exception 
 so did Christians of every name down through 
 the Middle Ages. Dante expressed the practi- 
 
200 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 cally universal sentiment of his own and prece- 
 ding times when he wrote over the infernal gate, 
 " I,eave all hope behind, ye who enter here." 
 
 ' ' The modern church has accepted the tradi- 
 tional faith on this subject. In proportion as the 
 inspiration and infallibility of revelation have 
 been conceded, the doctrine of an absolute, and 
 therefore endless, punishment of sin has .main- 
 tained itself, it being impossible to eliminate the 
 tenet from the Christian Scriptures except by a 
 mutilation of the canon or a violently capricious 
 exegesis. The denial of the eternity of future 
 punishment in modern times has consequently 
 been a characteristic of parties and individuals 
 who have rejected, either partially or entirely, 
 the dogma of infallible inspiration." 
 
 All broad and impetuous Amazons are natu- 
 rally supposed to have abundant sources in high 
 places. We could almost be sure that the mighty 
 faith that comes down upon us with such volume 
 and force from the first Christian ages must be 
 very clearly and abundantly taught in the Bible. 
 And so it is, so clearly and abundantly that we 
 wonder that there should be any persons what- 
 ever, professing faith in the Bible, to claim that 
 our probation extends beyond the present life. A 
 judgment at the end of the world "according to 
 the deeds done in the body," the wicked going 
 
UMITED PROBATION. 201 
 
 away into a punishment as everlasting as the re- 
 wards of the righteous — such pictures backed by 
 such parables as that of Lazarus and the rich 
 man, with its impassable gulf, and supported on 
 either hand by an army of warnings to seek the 
 I^ord while he may be found, all thrown without 
 qualification in the midst of Jews and Gentiles 
 immemorially holding that our endless future is 
 decided by our present life, admit of but one inter- 
 pretation. The primitive Christian teachers must 
 have known perfectly well that they would be un- 
 derstood as indorsing the current belief, and must 
 have meant to be so understood. They meant to 
 say that mankind in every age had been right in 
 thinking that their only opportunity for securing 
 a happy immortality lies within the bounds of 
 the present life. So they have always been un- 
 derstood to mean by the great body of interpret- 
 ers. Men who believe in an infallible Scripture 
 will have to say that just as the wintry breath of 
 the Arctic circle stings instantaneously into mar- 
 ble all tears, whether of sorrow or joy, so all the 
 joyful and sorrowful retributions of the next state 
 at once congeal into permanency as soon as they 
 feel on them the icy breath of the Everlasting. 
 
 We do not suppose that this doctrine was orig- 
 inally built up in any part of the world on grounds 
 of mere reason. Nor do we think that it can 
 
202 UNIVERSAI. BELIEFS. 
 
 now be fully sustained on such grounds. It came 
 by revelation, and by revelation it stands. At the 
 same time there are not a few considerations that 
 agree in preparing the way for it. They face it, 
 they point towards it, they conduct in that direc- 
 tion, they ask, Why not ? Does one say that it is 
 not pleasant to think that our immortality may 
 be ruined by our misconduct for a few years? 
 Certainly not; but then, on the other hand, it is 
 pleasant to think that our immortality may be 
 saved by a right course for only a few years. 
 ' ' Keep up heart, O struggling good man ! It is 
 but a short struggle, and then all peril will be 
 over for ever. Canst thou not watch with me one 
 hourf But, were the doctrine all unpleasant- 
 ness, what has that to do with its credibility? 
 Are unpleasant things never true? Are bad 
 tidings always false? Death is actual. Sin is 
 actual. So are many other terrible disasters, pri- 
 vate and public, from that which desolates an 
 individual to that which desolates a world. Does 
 it seem to you that God could not consistently 
 with righteousness, much more with benevolence, 
 condition our whole wealthy future on our con- 
 duct during so brief a life as this ? To this we 
 answer: What if he should say that, much as he 
 could desire to avoid the peril to men of such an 
 order of things, he cannot do it? The nature of 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 203 
 
 tilings is such, and the exigencies of an infinite 
 administration are such, that he cannot wisely do 
 without such beings as men, or omit to give them 
 such a momentous probation. He would gladly 
 insure the endless goodness and felicity of all; for 
 this purpose he has done and will do all that wis- 
 dom and power can do; but the situation is such 
 that the final character and destiny of men must 
 be decided by themselves and decided in the body. 
 He will touch all possible springs, he will sum- 
 mon all possible influences, he will lay himself 
 cut to the utmost to bring about a favorable de- 
 cision. He will move heaven and earth to do it. 
 All the resources of a boundless compassion and 
 wisdom shall be put in requisition ; but, after 
 all, it must remain with men to determine by 
 their conduct here what their entire hereafter 
 shall be. This is really what the Bible says. 
 Is there a man beneath the canopy who knows 
 enough to say that this does not give the real state 
 of the case ? It would require an infinite knowl- 
 edge to say it, for we have to deal with an infinite 
 scheme of things and one that is infinitely com- 
 plicated — wheel within wheel in endless mazes. 
 
 And then notice what suggestions of the doc- 
 trine and, as it were, flights of steps towards it, in 
 the almost innumerable probations about us. See 
 the brief opportunities of advantage that never re- 
 
204 L'NIVERSAL EEUEFS. 
 
 turn. Within a few moments some Moses loses 
 finally the opportunity of entering the promised 
 land. Between two suns some Esau loses his 
 birthright and finds no place for repentance 
 though he seeks it carefully with tears. For 
 three days some Nineveh can avoid destruction; 
 after this nothing can prevent it. For a hundred 
 and twenty years, while some ark is being pre- 
 pared, the long-suffering of God waits on some 
 sinful people; then the door is shut and the flood 
 prevails. 
 
 So goes life throughout. When the poise of a 
 pillar or of a person is disturbed there is a certain 
 time during which the disturbance can be cor- 
 rected ; but after the leaning has gone on to a cer- 
 tain point it is sure to go on to prostration. For 
 a short time you can pull up the young tree at 
 pleasure ; but let it get well rooted, and ever after 
 it will defy all your tuggings. To-day you can 
 make a valuable friend: the man is at hand, an 
 influential introducer stands ready to do his part; 
 but if you let the opportunity slip it never comes 
 again. On a certain month if a man sows he will 
 be likely to get a harvest; if he fails to sow then, 
 he fails to reap ever. ' ' If the disease had been 
 taken in hand at the beginning it might have 
 been cured, but now it is too late" — how often do 
 we hear such talk as this in the case of a cancer 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 205 
 
 or consumption or fever! How long has he been 
 under the water ? If beyond a certain brief space, 
 it is useless to attempt resuscitation. A few mo- 
 ments ago something might have been done, but 
 now it is too late. Give over your efforts to make 
 the cold lungs play. Make ready for the burial. 
 In the turn of a tide, or of a hand even, many a 
 man has improved, or lost for ever, the opportu- 
 nity of making a fortune. We give you five min- 
 utes, not more, in which to catch the train, to 
 reach a shelter from the storm, to escape from the 
 burning house or sinking ship. 
 
 Such is life. Opportunities are perhaps sel- 
 dom boomerangs. Many only just touch us and 
 then disappear for ever. Some, like some com- 
 ets, just flash once across our system and are never 
 heard of again. We do not like this state of things, 
 we would fain not be treated so cavalierly, we 
 would be glad to have opportunities of all good 
 sorts dance attendance on our convenience with- 
 out limit; but we all know from abundant expe- 
 rience that they cannot be counted on to do it. 
 They are not our bond-servants. They are fierce- 
 ly independent. They insist on leaving us just 
 when they please. They will ask no permission 
 and will give no notice. In the twinkling of an 
 eye they may vanish without the formality of 
 leave-taking and never be seen again. Neither 
 
2o6 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 their coming nor their going is by the nautical 
 almanacs and observatories. Suddenly a great 
 business opportunity flashed up to a man. Had 
 he clutched it promptly he would have become 
 fabulously wealthy. He hesitated. In a moment 
 the yellow-winged angel darted away and never 
 returned. 
 
 Youth is a probation for mature life. If early 
 opportunities for education are neglected the 
 whole life will suffer. If our ways of looking and 
 speaking and walking, our ways of thinking and 
 feeling and willing, are early formed amiss, we 
 shall never fully recover from the mischief Phys- 
 ical, mental, and moral habits strengthen day by 
 day, root themselves more and more, go on to- 
 wards invincibility and sometimes seem to reach 
 it — who can say that the point towards which they 
 always tend, and which they sometimes seem to 
 reach, is never actually reached ? When the Bi- 
 ble and all bibles proceed to tell us that opportu- 
 nities of salvation are limited ; that character set- 
 tles to its final condition in the present life; that 
 the process of consolidation and crystallization 
 which we observe going on all about us in single 
 traits goes on in our spiritual being as a whole till 
 it reaches complete fixity at or before death ; that 
 even as childhood often decides the fortunes of 
 youth, youth the fortunes of manhood, and man- 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 207 
 
 hood the fortunes of age, so our present life de- 
 cides the fortunes of the endless next — we by no 
 means find ourselves treading on ground wholly 
 new. It is kindred with much that we have longf 
 been familiar with. The ground has been graded 
 and terraced for us up to that on which the Bible 
 stands. 
 
 In the face of this great consensus, and of the 
 consenting hints and prophecies of it to be found 
 in the existing order of the world, it seems plain 
 what a prudent man would do. The only safe 
 thing for him to do is to proceed to order his char- 
 acter and life on the assumption that he is now 
 having his only opportunity to secure a glorious 
 future after death. The Christian principles and 
 ways of living are in general abundantly more 
 reasonable and satisfactory than any other scheme 
 of religion known to him ; a practical acceptance 
 of them will surely do him no harm and may do 
 him incalculable good ; while a failure to so accept 
 them will, according to the general run of tradi- 
 tion and creed and popular belief the world over, 
 involve the direst conceivable disasters. Under 
 such circumstances there is but one course open 
 to a reasonable man. Let him put himself with- 
 out delay on the safe side. It is very safe to have 
 a righteous character, very safe to live conscien- 
 tiously and devoutly. It is very unsafe, awfully 
 
208 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 unsafe, to live as though all mankind have been 
 mistaken, as though there is no judgment-seat to 
 be confronted when we come to die, as though we 
 are sure of other opportunities beyond the grave 
 for setting ourselves right with heaven, and all 
 for the sake of living miserably a little while in 
 wickedness and wilfulness. 
 
 We see that the heathen who neglect to live 
 conscientiously according to the light of nature 
 do it with the full understanding that they are 
 thereby putting in jeopardy an immortality. Con- 
 sequently they are very guilty. One cannot neg- 
 lect what he considers to be the right way of liv- 
 ing, and do it against an infinite motive, without 
 great guilt. Do the heathen live according to the 
 light they have ? Are they in general trying to 
 live as they think they ought ? This question as 
 to a matter of fact must be settled by the testi- 
 mony of the men who knew them best, viz., the 
 Christian missionaries who have lived among 
 them for years. These testify a negative. They 
 tell us that the heathen are not the innocents 
 abroad that some would have us think. They 
 not only know vastly better than they do, but the 
 brunt of their character and living is in flagrant 
 defiance of their own convictions. Paul correctly 
 represents them in his Epistle to the Romans. 
 They are profoundly depraved ; they are deep 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 209 
 
 down in the mire of wilful sin ; in short, they are 
 religiously lost and need to have stretched down 
 to them in their profound pit a mighty uplifting 
 hand. 
 
 The heathen stand related to the law of nature 
 very much as men do in Christian lands to the 
 Christian law. If it is unjust to hold the one 
 class everlastingly responsible for not living in 
 this world conscientiously according to the light 
 they have, why is it not unjust to hold the other 
 class to a like responsibility for a like misbeha- 
 vior ? It would be hard to show, at least to the 
 satisfaction of the average sinner, that the Bible 
 stands out in a more clear and commanding light 
 to him than does the law of nature to most on 
 heathen ground ; hard to show that the tempta- 
 tions to transgress are less in the one case than in 
 the other. Multitudes in Christian lands are very 
 unhappily circumstanced for leading religious 
 lives. Heredity, training, example — in short, 
 both nature and its environment — could hardly 
 be worse. In our cities multitudes are born to as 
 vast an ignorance of true religion as afflicts any 
 heathen ; nay, they are born and bred to such pre- 
 judices and hatreds against it as seldom trouble 
 people outside of Christendom. There is no pov- 
 erty more abject, no fight for daily bread more 
 harassing, no misery of circumstances of any kind 
 
 ITniverBal Beliefs. XA 
 
2IO UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 more torturing, no temptations to all that is bad 
 in opinions and conduct more numerous, various, 
 and mighty than may be found any day ferment- 
 ing amid a very large part of the crowded popu- 
 lation of that colluvies gentium which we call New 
 York. It is very much so with the East Ends, 
 Water Streets, Faubourgs d'Antoirie of most large 
 cities in Christian lands in both hemispheres. 
 They swarm with children so neglected by all 
 good influences and so imbedded from their earli- 
 est years in the worst forms of wickedness and 
 wretchedness that it would be hard to find on the 
 planet, or even to conceive of, greater desperate- 
 ness of unfavorable religious conditions. The 
 Christianity that is only a few streets away sends 
 no more rays into the dense gloom than if oceans 
 rolled between ; sends no more sweetness from her 
 scented robes into the fetid air than if she were 
 still dwelling among the stars. 
 
 In some respects the influences adverse to re- 
 ligion in Christian lands are plainly greater than 
 in others. With us the gospel is an old story. 
 On the other hand, a world of secular things of 
 exceeding novelty and interest is ever pressing in 
 at all the doors and windows of thought. The 
 daily paper, that fetish which asks and gets the 
 morning devotions of such multitudes, unloads at 
 our breakfast-table news enough from all parts of 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 211 
 
 the world, on all sorts of subjects — from political 
 and financial revolutions to the vilest domestic 
 scandal — to keep us agog from morning to night. 
 Fashion, society, the various ambitions of civili- 
 zation, make great drafts on body and mind. The 
 tides of business and pleasure and opinion swell 
 and sweep about us with most distracting variety 
 and vehemence. Vast are the rush and push and 
 din and absorption of our hurrying lives. For to 
 us this present world, as distinguished from the 
 next, is a much fairer and grander thing than it 
 is to an average heathen. Its prizes are larger, 
 more various and numerous, and more within the 
 common reach. So the competition for them is far 
 more general and spirited. Innumerable painted 
 barks on painted oceans are crowding all sail 
 towards goals on the horizon that glitter and 
 promise like rising suns. No such exciting re- 
 gatta pictures the seas of heathendom and cries, 
 ' ' Up, and away to the chase, like everybody else !' ' 
 Nowhere but here do such crowds of novel and 
 engrossing secularities assail and capture the at- 
 tention of men and lock it up in the present and 
 material. 
 
 And then our intellectual temptations are pe- 
 culiar. Universalism is in the air. So are ma- 
 terialism and atheism to a great extent. The 
 infection is in the heights as well as in the depths. 
 
213 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 Not a few men, bestarred with accomplishments 
 and honors, are undertaking to deliver the world 
 from superstition by delivering it from Deity and 
 dogma. Nowhere out of Christendom is there 
 the thousandth part so much or so influential de- 
 nial of the supernatural. Science itself is over- 
 ruled to make religion difficult. The grossest 
 forms of radical unbelief and misbelief speciously 
 argue and object and scofi" on all sides. Meshes 
 of ingeryous sophistry, such as no pagan could 
 weave, encounter every man that ventures abroad. 
 In short, nowhere does mortal error dress so well 
 or wear such fine and taking manners as within 
 the pale of Christendom. 
 
 Here also sin as well as error gathers to itself 
 all the splendor and attractions of the ripest civ- 
 ilization. Hooks are richly baited; not seldom 
 are themselves of purest gold. Wealth, genius, 
 and art are laid out profusely in embellishing bad 
 courses. See how the gin-palace blazes out into 
 the night, and gorgeous theatres summon pla- 
 carded streets to sensualism by shows that have 
 laid under tribute the utmost of the fine arts, and 
 gambling bourses and ' ' hells ' ' shame the palaces 
 of kings ! The decorative art among us is not 
 confined to such things as buildings, but works 
 with great success to picture wickedness into 
 righteousness as well as falsehood into truth. 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 213 
 
 Satan is no longer a cannibal, wearing horns and 
 hoofs and spitting fire, but often behaves like a 
 civilized being, and, at his best, is presentable in 
 any company — the more 's the pity and the danger! 
 Ivondon and Paris furnish more temptations to 
 wickedness than ever did the Fiji Islands; better 
 know how to prepare opiates for uneasy con- 
 sciences; can apologize for sin with more silvery 
 voices and ape better the accent of truth as they 
 say to the sinner, ' ' Thou shalt not surely die. ' ' 
 
 But one needs not to go to our great cities, to 
 their crowded attics and cellars, to their pits and 
 dens of ignorance and degradation and shame, to 
 their evil-haunted streets and "omnipotent" 
 temptations, to see at what moral disadvantage 
 millions of our people are born and live. He only 
 needs to look at current literature — from the vi- 
 cious trash that tempts our boys and girls up 
 through the mass of morbid fiction that besets our 
 young men and women, to that most fictitious and 
 elaborate and dangerous trash of all that so often 
 in these days assails riper and more thoughtful 
 people under the prodigious misnomers of learn- 
 ing and philosophy and science — to find ample 
 ground for saying that Christian lands have their 
 peculiar elements of religious difficulty and dan- 
 ger and for doubting whether these disadvantages 
 in multitudes of cases are not fully as weighty as 
 
314 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 any in heathen lands. The heathen have no sci- 
 ence, falsely so called, to contend against. The 
 doctrine of evolution does not trouble them. They 
 have no Mills nor Huxley nor Spencer nor Tyn- 
 dall, no Paine nor Colenso nor Ingersoll. The 
 very foundations of all religious belief are not so 
 cunningly attacked in them — are not attacked at 
 all. It is only in highly civilized countries that 
 we find elaborate attempts to suppress or obscure 
 the very primary conceptions of faith and duty. 
 Dahomey never produced an agnostic. China 
 never denied human responsibility. Theoretical 
 communists, socialists, anarchists, nihilists, these 
 are the fungi of a tropical civilization, the repro- 
 bate silver of a land rich in the precious metals. 
 For laborious defences of all indefensible things 
 go to the cultured perverts of Germany, France, 
 England, and America. 
 
 So this is how the case stands. Though the 
 moral disadvantages in a Christian land are to 
 some extent not the same as elsewhere, they may 
 be just as formidable. They seem to be so in 
 cases not a few. For aught that can be shown to 
 the contrary, millions among us have quite as 
 much to contend with in obeying the Christian 
 law as the heathen have in obeying theirs. And 
 as to the laws themselves, it would be hard to 
 prove or to see that one has at all' the advantage 
 
LIMITED PROBATION. 215 
 
 of the other in respect to clearness and authority 
 with its subjects. Specially hard would it be to 
 prove it to a man who is judging his own case. 
 Criminals are full of excuses and extenuations for 
 themselves. Their own circumstances seem to 
 them peculiarly trying. They are always ready 
 at a moment's warning to file bills of exceptions 
 in their own favor. If anybody is to have the 
 benefit of reprieves, commutations, leniencies, they 
 are the persons. If a heathen should have his 
 probation continued beyond the present life, so 
 should they. If Menes or Cecrops or Romulus or 
 Wing Sing is at liberty to think his earthly pro- 
 bation insufiicient, so are they. This is what they 
 will think. And so, practically, the idea of a pro- 
 bation continued indefinitely beyond the present 
 life, under more favorable conditions than the 
 present, will get accepted for all. The idea has 
 Universalism in its womb. 
 
IX. POSSIBLE SALVATION. 
 
XleijrvKaai te airavreg kuI l&i(f koI irifioa'uf diiapravav. 
 
 THUCYDIDES. 
 
 All, both individuals and communities, are by nature 
 prone to sin. 
 
 Qeoas0ri (pCira Ke6va, Trpa^eiv. 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 My heart is confident that a god-fearing man will fare well.. 
 
 Merdvola KoTiAiaei tov reXoiif dijiavL^iyvaa rd ev 77 apxv o.yvo^Bsv, 
 
 DION. HALICAR. 
 
 Repentance causes the original wrong to disappear by 
 preventing its consequences. 
 
 Whoso confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall have mercy. 
 
 SOLOMON. 
 
POSSIBLE SALVATION. 219 
 
 IX. POSSIBLE SALVATION. 
 
 The Bible has much to say of salvation. An 
 apostle calls it "the common salvation." It is 
 common, not only in the sense of being designed 
 for all men and offered to all, but in the sense of 
 being believed in, as to main features, by mankind 
 at large. For example, they believe that the best 
 salvation for man means deliverance from both 
 sin and its penalty ; that such a salvation is greatly 
 needed; that it can be secured; that the conditions 
 of it are atonement and repentance; and that a di- 
 vine system of means for securing it exists in the 
 form of sacrifices, revelations, miracles, sacred 
 days and places, and priesthoods. They also be- 
 lieve this salvation to have substantially the same 
 historic setting. 
 
 According to the Bible, the whole human race 
 has come from a single pair whose home was in 
 Asia near the Euphrates. These first parents 
 were not a chance or natural product, whether 
 sudden or graduated from almost nothing through 
 almost infinite ages, but were due solely and di- 
 rectly to divine agency. They were not brutes ; 
 neither were they savages, though not acquainted 
 
220 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 with the arts and sciences and splendid furniture 
 of our modern civilization. But they were as 
 well equipped, physically and mentally, for work- 
 ing out these splendid things as the best modern 
 specimen of a man would be were he to quit com- 
 pletely his hold on the past and to begin the world 
 anew. Nay, better. Primeval man had angels 
 for companions and God himself for instructor. 
 His environment was tropical, fitted to bring 
 promptly into bloom and fruit all his powers. 
 His character was perfect and his surroundings 
 matched his character. He dwelt in a paradise. 
 It was a home fit for a creature made in the image 
 of God, wanting nothing that could contribute to 
 his happiness. And for a time his happiness was 
 complete. The gold was without dross. 
 
 But one hapless day the golden character fell, 
 and with it the golden happiness. Satan, the old 
 serpent, enticed the saint to become a sinner. 
 Then sank paradise. Then sank the golden age. 
 Then sank human nature itself; sank so far that 
 it became a lost nature, a moral wreck. New 
 generations came, but the old wickedness re- 
 mained and grew. It became awful. The heav- 
 ens blackened with wrath. The night deepened 
 into midnight. O Sun, where art thou? O Moon 
 and stars, where are ye? Gone quite from the 
 muttering sky. Now it thunders. Rain, rain, 
 
POSSIBLE SALVATION. 221 
 
 rain. Springs bursting out under every man's 
 foot. Brooks turning to rivers, rivers to seas, and 
 seas to oceans. See yonder last peak and, stand- 
 ing on it, the last man. The water touches his 
 feet, creeps up and up till his long hair lies along 
 the wave. Now he flings his arms aloft and is 
 gone. lyO, the Deluge has swallowed up every- 
 thing, everything save a single vessel containing 
 a single righteous family ! Heaven has drowned 
 the earth. 
 
 The single righteous family outrode the flood 
 and went forth from its ark to repeople the wasted 
 world. They grew into tribes, tribes grew into 
 nations — alas, into wicked and lost nations. But 
 God was placable. He could and would forgive 
 sin, provided certain conditions were met. An 
 expiation must be made. A victim must die in 
 the sinner's stead. If then the sinner would 
 confess and forsake his sin he should find mercy. 
 To help him to this God gave him revelations, 
 miracles. Sabbaths, sanctuaries, ministers of reli- 
 gion — to inform him of his duty, to persuade him 
 to do it, to keep him from lapses and to recover 
 him from them. 
 
 These Biblical accounts are well reflected in 
 the popular faith all over the world. Sacred 
 books and oral traditions are generally to the 
 efiect that the race is one in its original locality 
 
223 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 and parentage; also that the first human condi- 
 tion was exceedingly high and happy. Who has 
 not heard of the Golden Age with which the clas- 
 sical peoples prefaced every history — a time when 
 the gods dwelt with men and men themselves 
 were almost gods; when perpetual spring reigned, 
 the lands flowed with milk and honey, all useful 
 and beautiful things were produced spontaneous- 
 ly, weeds and thorns and diseases were unknown, 
 man was simple and innocent and "in league 
 with the stones of the field?" Other traditions, 
 found fragmentally imbedded in the faith and lit- 
 eratures of almost all countries, piece themselves 
 out easily into the main Biblical history, telling 
 of early godlike men, of their fall, of a Deluge 
 and ark-saved family, of a new seeding of the 
 earth with mankind, of another general corrup- 
 tion, of divine counteractions by seers and revela- 
 tions and miracles and priesthoods. 
 
 The great depravity of mankind at present is 
 recognized in the customs and institutions of all 
 lands. What means the immense array every- 
 where of laws and penalties, of magistrates and 
 police, of armies and navies and arsenals, of courts 
 and prisons and taxes ? They are the safeguard's 
 that society has set up against hjiman selfishness 
 and wickedness. They are monuments of what 
 the world thinks of its own moral condition. 
 
POSSIBLE SALVATION. 223 
 
 They have the gift of tongues to say among all 
 nations that men are so wicked that they can only 
 be kept in order, kept on living terms with one 
 another, kept from glaring mutual injustice, by 
 severe measures. Human legislation is of two 
 sorts — that which is itself wicked and that which 
 is against wickedness. Many laws are unjust, 
 oppressive, against the truth and general inter- 
 ests, for the few against the many. They are 
 themselves the streams that ilow from the wick- 
 edness of law-makers — from their greed, selfish- 
 ness, and cruelty. But even a wicked ruler feels 
 that he must defend society against the wicked- 
 ness of other men — against the tiger, the vulture, 
 the serpent, the swine, the brute that there is in 
 them. Hence in every land a great body of legal 
 provisions for securing exact justice between man 
 and man. The extent of this legislation and the 
 severity of it show how general and mighty is the 
 world's sense of the depravity against which it 
 contends; just as the great precautions taken in a 
 menagerie against the breaking forth of wild 
 beasts, or in Holland against the breaking in of 
 the ocean, show what men think of the dangers 
 of the situation. 
 
 So it has ever been. The literature and usa- 
 ges and laws and histories of all known countries 
 and times have always proclaimed it the sense of 
 
224 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 mankind that mankind is terribly wicked. I am 
 not now asserting that it is terribly wicked. As 
 to that judge for yourselves. But what is the 
 judgment of the world at large on the matter no 
 more admits of question than does the presence of 
 night and death in the world. 
 
 Of course this general sense of great sinfulness 
 carries with it a sense of condemnation and dan- 
 ger. The condemnable abuts hard on the con- 
 demned. One cannot well hold to the moral ruin 
 of the race without grave, though it may be vague, 
 apprehensions of the consequences — without some- 
 thing of that "fearful looking for of judgment" 
 of which the Scriptures speak. This fear ex- 
 presses itself all over the world in innumerable 
 supplications, rituals, austerities, expiations, pro- 
 pitiatory offerings. Such things are a trembling 
 before a judgment-seat. They are a language in 
 themselves, and when translated into English 
 they say, "We are afraid of the punishments we 
 deserve. Let us try to escape them." This is 
 the outcry of the old Vedic prayer: "Take from 
 me my sin, like a fetter, O Varuna; take far away 
 from me this terror, O Varuna ; do not strike us, 
 Varuna, with weapons which at thy will hurt the 
 evil-doer. Let us not go where the light has van- 
 ished." This is also the outcry of the old Baby- 
 lonian tablets: 
 
POSSIBLE SALVATION. 325 
 
 " May my sins be forgiven, blotted out my transgressions, 
 
 The ban upon me be broken, the chain loosed ; 
 
 May the seven winds bear my sighs away ! 
 
 I will tear my wickedness asunder; may the bird bear it up 
 
 to the sky ; 
 May the fish bear away my vexation, the stream bear it off; 
 May the beast of the field take it from me, the swift waters 
 
 of the stream wash me clean !" 
 
 But such efforts mean something more than a 
 sense of danger and of need of salvation. They 
 imply some degree of hope. They at least say, 
 ' ' Perhaps the retributive power is placable. Per- 
 haps it is possible to ward off penalties." Nay, 
 there is not a religion in the world, written or 
 unwritten, which does not hold out some positive 
 encouragement to an anxious sinner. They dif- 
 fer in the clearness and degree of the encourage- 
 ment they offer. Some are vague and bilingual in 
 some of the kind words they say; but not one of 
 them locks up its adherents in the dungeons of 
 despair and then flings the key away. The sun 
 shines, it may be through mists or even dense 
 clouds, but it shines nevertheless; it is by no 
 means night, with an opaque globe between the 
 eye and the luminary. So the nations bring offer- 
 ings; so they recite prayers; so they afflict their 
 bodies; so they slay victims at the altar, especially 
 the latter. Altars red with blood have been in 
 the foreground of all countries and times. While 
 
 Univeraal Bfiliors. I Z 
 
226 XJNIVERSAI, BEUEFS. 
 
 Moses — who is at least as good authority as San- 
 choniathon or Manetho or Berosus — makes them 
 coeval with the race, all other historians and tra- 
 ditionists find them as far back as they find any- 
 thing. When we first see the Druid in the sacred 
 groves of Gaul and Britain, the Norse folk amid 
 their primeval forests and snows, the Roman fa- 
 thers rough-hewing the Eternal City, the Greeks 
 fighting on the plain of Troy or sailing from 
 Egypt with Cadmus and Cecrops, the Egyptians 
 at work on their time-defying temples and pyra- 
 mids, the Phoenicians and Assyrians trading and 
 conquering from Sidon and Nineveh, the Hindoos 
 composing the Rig- Veda — in short, wherever we ■ 
 see first things peering out at us from the mists 
 of the past — there we see the victim dying as a 
 sacrifice for sin. All ages trickle with atoning 
 blood. The lintels and door-posts of all lands are 
 stained with heaven-appealing crimson. That 
 sinners could be saved from penal evils without 
 an atonement of some kind seems never to have 
 entered the thought of men at large. They have 
 thought, not only that an atonement must be, but 
 that it must be suffering in some form, and even 
 a mortal sufiering — have sometimes thought that 
 man himself must be the victim. 
 
 If with a bloody atonement the sinner should 
 couple a putting away of the oiFensive thing, 
 
POSSIBLE SALVATION. 22/ 
 
 his best chances of pardon were supposed to be 
 reached. Regret for the past, with an honest 
 purpose of a new life, would be just and reason- 
 able; this is what offending men would rely on to 
 set them right with their fellows if the thing were 
 at all possible; this is what they would be likely 
 to exact from persons oflFending them : so they 
 everywhere assume that such are the surest con- 
 ditions of acceptance with heaven — of salvation. 
 
 As aids to salvation mankind at large have 
 always held to a supernatural revelation, to mira- 
 cles or divine interventions in human affairs, to a 
 priesthood or class of men set apart to the care of 
 religious matters ; to special religious days and 
 celebrations, as Sabbaths and sacraments and pub- 
 lic worship; to places of special sanctity, as groves 
 and eminences and temples and synagogues and 
 churches. 
 
 Such are the views generally entertained in 
 the world as to the nature of salvation, its main 
 historic setting, the need of it, its conditions, and 
 the means for realizing these conditions. They 
 agree with the views derived from the Bible. 
 And the Bible views agree with those derived 
 from reason and the sciences. 
 
 The radiations of the science of language are 
 towards one original speech; the radiations of his- 
 tory, ethnology, and philology are towards the 
 
228 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 region of the Euphrates as being the site of the 
 parent language and the cradle of the human race. 
 This is conceded by the most eminent scholars in 
 such matters. But a common speech and a com- 
 mon cradle mean a common parentage — though 
 some do incredulously ask whether it is possible 
 that all the widely differing varieties of men 
 sprang from one stock. Could different climates, 
 modes of living, and other like things have given 
 us brethren so unlike one another as are the 
 blackest Nubian and the whitest Caucasian? 
 Yes, it is quite possible. Under the stress of such- 
 causes, to say nothing of the help given by an oc- 
 casional lusiis natures in which the child breaks 
 away widely from the parental type, communities 
 have been known to so change color and features 
 in the course of a few generations as to remove all 
 difficulty from the doctrine of a single original 
 parfentage. The books give abundant examples 
 of such changes. 
 
 Now, the single original pair must have been 
 a divine product; for natural development im- 
 plies many centres of origin in the course of ages. 
 It is infinitely improbable that innumerable lines 
 of organic development streaming upward in all 
 parts of the earth should have culminated in man 
 in only a single instance during so many ages. 
 But if God made the first human parents, it is rea- 
 
POSSIBI,E SALVATION. 229 
 
 sonable to suppose that he made them "very 
 good;" made them perfect in their kind both as 
 to body and soul; made them with no depraved 
 biases of constitution, but, on the contrary, with 
 all their moral tendencies in the right direction; 
 in a word, started them on their career with all 
 possible advantages for making it a success. This 
 is what we would naturally expect from a good 
 God. And, as we have seen, the great traditions 
 say that the race actually began in heroes, demi- 
 gods, and gods — that it was with man as we know 
 it to have been with the other animal tribes that 
 have come and gone through the geologic ages. 
 These generally began in their best specimens. 
 As Hugh Miller says, "In the procession of the 
 generations the magnates walk first. ' ' It would 
 be of a piece with the geologic story if the best 
 men, physically and mentally and morally, head- 
 ed the long procession of humanity. Also, the 
 high character of the most ancient languages and 
 monuments does not invite us to think of our first 
 parents as apes or savages. 
 
 That their Maker gave these first-class men 
 first-class surroundings follows from the fitness of 
 things. Flowers fit naturally to sunshine and not 
 to shadow. A rich jewel should not have a mean 
 setting, nor a common stone of the highway be 
 elaborately incased in the finest gold. Heaven is 
 
230 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 not a fit place for a bad man, nor hell a fit place 
 for a good one. So we naturally conceive of the 
 first ancestors, primates of the race and fresh from 
 the hands of God, as occupying, not a desert, but 
 a garden, as inhabiting, not an uninviting region 
 on which the eye cares not to linger, but one 
 whose charms appeal to every sense. That such 
 men, so happily circumstanced, should have been 
 healthy and long-lived, not to say immortal, is 
 easily believed. It is even believable that such 
 were the original physical soundness and stamina 
 that even sinful ways, though necessarily to the 
 prejudice of health, might require some genera- 
 tions in which to make very apparent their de- 
 structive work. Strong walls will stand consid- 
 erable battering without sensible damage. Strong 
 constitutions do not yield easily to first attacks. 
 
 Are lapses from virtue and high position un- 
 common in human experience? Solomon has 
 had many successors in falling. No doubt, also, 
 he had many predecessors; and why may not the 
 first man, with his free electing nature, have been 
 among them ? As a matter of fact, open to the 
 observation of the dullest, man is at present a 
 fallen being. This is not a mere plausible specu- 
 lation. We need no revelation from the highest 
 heaven to tell us of it. We have only to look 
 about us. Depraved tendencies and free sinning 
 
POSSIBL,:^ SALVATION. 231 
 
 meet our eyes on every hand. They are recog- 
 nized and provided against (alas, sometimes pro- 
 vided/^?-) in the whole structure of society. And 
 so it always has been, as far back as the eye can 
 penetrate. Where did the evident fall of human 
 nature occur ? The Bible says that it was in the 
 person of the first man. Know w^e aught to the 
 contrary? Why not in the first generation as 
 well as in any other? Surely the Bible account 
 . is not in discord with anything that we know. 
 
 Nor is its account of the extent of human sin- 
 fulness. We are plainly a ruined race. Man in 
 his natural state deserves to be called a "lost" 
 man. Some indeed descant vaguely on the inno- 
 cence of childhood and the grandeur of human 
 nature, so as to carry the impression that theology 
 has slandered it, and that even public convicts 
 and murderers are hardly more than unfortunates 
 to whom tender-hearted ladies should send delica- 
 cies and flowers and notes of condolence. But 
 such euphemists, such rose-colored and rose-giv- 
 ing people, are demonstrably Utopian. They 
 smite common sense and daily experience, as well 
 as blood -smeared and crime -haunted history, 
 squarely in the face. What nonsense ! An aver- 
 age daily experience roundly gives it the lie. 
 Closet theories ending in benedictions, and doxol- 
 ogies on glorious human nature get hard knocks 
 
233 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 just as soon as they go forth to mingle with the 
 ■world in nurseries and trafl&cs and politics, to say 
 nothing of steerages and East Ends and liquor- 
 saloons and penitentiaries. There are natural 
 amiabilities. Useful impulses exist in all men. 
 Above all, there are numbers of measurably re- 
 formed and upward-striving people. And yet the 
 moral state of mankind at large is such that the 
 boldest of us would tremble were restraints of all 
 sorts (legal, social, moral) suddenly taken off from 
 the people, all bonds and mortgages to good be- 
 havior cancelled, and every person turned loose 
 on society to do whatever he might please, with- 
 out fear of any sort of accountability. Ah, what 
 a scene ! One would like to transfer himself to 
 another planet. The lesson that every man in 
 practical life soon learns is that if he would act 
 prudently he must assume the justice of the Bible 
 views of the present state of human nature. 
 
 Who can say that it is at all unlikely that God 
 would show his displeasure at the great lapse of 
 man by smiting his body, shortening his life, and 
 driving him out of his paradise into a thornful and 
 disfigured world; or that, afterward, he would not 
 from time to time find occasion to let loose hia 
 hand in special judgments on specially presump- 
 tuous and audacious offenders ? Would it be un- 
 just? Is it plain that it would be inexpedient? 
 
POSSIBLE SALVATION. 233 
 
 Does the eternal fitness of things demand that a 
 fallen race should have unfallen surroundings, or 
 that a government should never make unmis- 
 takable and affrighting examples of ringleaders 
 in rebellion ? 
 
 Nevertheless it would not be surprising if the 
 Maker should pity his lapsed and wretched crea- 
 tures. As little would we wonder if, under the 
 impulse of this pity, he should devise some way in 
 which he could consistently offer to pardon them. 
 What more likely than that this way would in- 
 volve the regrets and amendments of repentance 
 on the part of offenders as well as some atonement 
 in their behalf? Atonements between men are 
 always in order. If a man has done wrong he is 
 not only bound to be sorry and to do so no more, 
 but he is also bound to make such reparation as 
 he can. If he himself can make none, but a friend 
 freely offers to make one for him, may he not 
 properly accept the offer? And may not the in- 
 jured party accept it? This is done in many cases 
 by civil governments. If the penalty for a given 
 offence is a fine and the offender has no money of 
 his own, a payment of the fine by a friend will be 
 accepted as a full settlement. This is really a 
 case of vicarious atonement, of substituted suffer- 
 ing. And it is an open question whether the prin- 
 ciple of substituted suffering, voluntarily under- 
 
234 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 taken, miglit not properly be used more exten- 
 sively than it is. Plainly, if the case is such that 
 the suffering of a voluntary substitute is fully 
 equivalent, so far as all governmental purposes 
 are concerned, to the penalty as borne by the 
 actual offender, it would be allowable to accept 
 the one instead of the other. Can any show that 
 such an atonement as the Christian claims to be — 
 the freely offered suffering of God manifest in the 
 flesh — is not of this sort? It looks to hungry eyes 
 as if it might be. It looks to multitudes of judicial 
 minds as if it would answer just as well in the 
 case of a penitent as would his personal enduring 
 of the penalty — answer just as well for expressing 
 the divine displeasure at sin and for upholding 
 the majesty of law. 
 
 Also, one should not be surprised if he should 
 find Deity providing some system of ways and 
 means for securing the necessary penitence, and 
 for ripening it into a permanently renovated char- 
 acter and life. Among such ways and means 
 why might not divine messages and miracles and 
 ministers serve a good purpose; why not Sabbaths 
 and sanctuaries and sacraments ? 
 
 The messages from God would show clearly 
 what ought to be done and would supply motive 
 to do it, would instruct, counsel, warn, encour- 
 age, after the wisest and most effective fashion. 
 
POSSIBLE SALVATION. 235 
 
 Miracles, in addition to other advantages, would 
 authenticate the messages. And, pray, how else 
 could they be authenticated? If men are to be 
 taught and persuaded and disciplined in religious 
 matters, it would seem exceedingly useful to have 
 an order of men specially devoted to this work, as 
 farmers and lawyers and physicians are devoted to 
 theirs. It is hard to imagine a means better fitted 
 to promote religion in the world than a body of 
 competent men giving chief and skilled attention 
 to its promotion. With learning and eloquence 
 and consecration, with mighty voices and mighty 
 pens, backed by a mighty example, what might 
 not the cause of righteousness hope from them ? 
 
 But, in order that such a class of men may do 
 their work to the best advantage, it seems desira- 
 ble to have sacred days and sacred places, Sab- 
 baths and sanctuaries, in which the people may 
 come together away from their secularities and 
 sit under the shaping influence of religious teach- 
 ers. The experience of the world seems to show 
 that without Sabbaths and sanctuaries religious 
 teachers would be without their best opportunity, 
 and that, without religious teachers to explain and 
 enforce the written revelation with the magnetic 
 force of living voices, it would fail to reach society 
 in the most economical and effective manner. 
 
 So institutions of this sort, common in one 
 
236 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 form or another to all religions, are by no means 
 unlikely to have come from God. Nay, should 
 he demand faith, as all religions agree that he 
 does, after having furnished great evidences and 
 oflfered any amount of spiritual aid to asking 
 souls — that is, should he demand that fairness of 
 mind and honesty of inquiry which if duly used 
 would be sure to lead to faith, the demand would 
 be anything but unreasonable, according to any 
 standard of reasonableness which common sense 
 and the world's business would not cry out against. 
 And, altogether, we have a consensus not only 
 of all religions and nations, but of many other ra- 
 tional witnesses, as to the nature and need and 
 conditions and means of salvation, also as to the 
 main historic framework in which the salvation 
 is set. 
 
X. MAIN ETHICS. 
 
Ite ipsi in vestrse penetralia mentis et intus 
 Incisos apices, et scripta volumina mentis 
 Inspicite, et genitam vobiscum agnoscite legem. 
 
 Anon. 
 
 Go into tiie recesses of your own mind and inspect the 
 characters written there, and, as it were, cut into the very 
 substance, and recognize the law born with you. 
 
 Who show the work of the law written in their hearts, 
 their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the 
 meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another. 
 
 ST. PAUL. 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 239 
 
 X. MAIN ETHICS. 
 
 "There is," says Cicero, "a true law, con- 
 formed to reason and nature, diffused over all, 
 invariable and eternal, which calls to the fulfil- 
 ment of duty. This law requires no commentator 
 to make it intelligible, nor is it different at Rome, 
 at Athens, now and in the ages before and after; 
 but in all ages and in all nations it is and has 
 been and will be one and everlasting — one as that 
 God, its great author and promulgator, who is the 
 common Sovereign of all mankind, is himself 
 one. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Cast your eyes, ' ' says Rousseau, ' ' over all 
 the nations of the world and all the histories of 
 nations. Amid so many inhuman and absurd 
 superstitions, amid that prodigious diversity of 
 manners and characters, you will find everywhere 
 the same principles and distinctions of moral good 
 and evil. The paganism of the ancient world pro- 
 duced, indeed, abominable gods who on earth 
 would have been shunned or punished as mon- 
 sters, and who offered as a picture of supreme 
 happiness only crimes to commit and passions to 
 satiate. But Vice, armed with this sacred author- 
 
240 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ity, descended in vain from the eternal abode ; 
 she found in the heart of man a moral instinct to 
 repel her. The continence of Xenocrates was 
 admired by those who celebrated the debauch- 
 eries of Jupiter. The chaste Lucretia adored the 
 unchaste Venus. The most intrepid Roman sac- 
 rificed to Fear. He invoked the god who de- 
 throned his father, and he died without a murmur 
 by the hand of his own. The most contemptible 
 divinities were served by the greatest men. The 
 holy voice of nature, stronger than that of the 
 gods, made itself heard and respected and obeyed 
 on earth, and seemed to banish, as it were, to the 
 confinement of heaven guilt and the guilty. ' ' 
 
 To-day we have a wider and far more exact 
 outlook on both the ancient and the modern world 
 than Cicero or even Rousseau had, and the result 
 of such an outlook is partly expressed by a recent 
 writer in the Transactions of the Philosophical 
 Society of Great Britain. "All races of people 
 look on murder, theft, impurity, and falsehood as 
 sins and actions to be avoided. ' ' 
 
 Prior to any inquiry into the actual facts we 
 should expect that such things (and several others 
 besides) would be found universally condemned 
 by the human conscience. Their badness seems 
 a matter of intuition. They are self-proclaimed 
 crimes. And then they are so plainly destructive 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 241 
 
 to society if fully allowed that one would think 
 that the rudest intelligence might See it — see it 
 without argument. The man who does not see it 
 without argument would hardly see it with. 
 
 There never has been a community where 
 some form of government has not existed. But 
 government means restraint from some things — 
 from the nature of the case means restraint, for at 
 least the mass of the people, from such things as 
 would, if freely practised, be inconsistent with 
 the existence of society in any tolerable condition. 
 Now it is easy to see (for anybody to see, even for 
 a savage) that a collection of human beings among 
 whom no respect whatever is paid to rights of 
 property, to domestic ties, to truthfulness and 
 promises and contracts, to what is just and equal 
 between man and man, to compassion and help- 
 fulness for the wretched, to even personal safety 
 and life — I say it is easy for the rudest to see that 
 such people could not long hold together. They 
 would naturally fly apart as if by dynamite and 
 all the centrifugals. Every man would be a por- 
 cupine, an Ishmaelite, a French Revolution to 
 every other. So, all over the world, government 
 has never failed to demand, at least from the 
 masses, conformity to all the leading moralities as 
 held by ourselves. Thus among the ancient Egyp- 
 tians calumniators received the punishment due 
 
 Cniversal Beliefs. 1 5 
 
243 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 to the crime with which they charged the inno- 
 cent. Falsehood was punished with loss of the 
 tongue, forgery with loss of the hands, adultery 
 with flogging. Perjury and murder were pun- 
 ished with death. 
 
 Of course we have to confess that the lives of 
 men in all lands are largely ungoverned by just 
 rules of living. But this is not because these 
 rules, at least the main ones, are generally un- 
 known or unapproved. All the leading principles 
 of morals, as taught in our Scriptures and accept- 
 ed among us and largely incorporated in the laws 
 of all Christian countries, will be found on actual 
 inquiry to be theoretically accepted in all lands 
 and times. They appear with diflerent degrees of 
 clearness in different places; they are more em- 
 phasized at some times than at others ; some that 
 are set in the front here occupy the background 
 there; but go where we will among the nations 
 and dates, we can, provided there is light enough 
 to see anything, discover them all. As vital air 
 can be found everywhere in the world, though 
 thinner and impurer and more disturbed in some 
 places than in others, so the main moral ideas as 
 we hold them are neither local nor national, but 
 terrestrial. They belong to all mankind. Shall 
 we take the trouble to except here and there some 
 exhausted receiver of a "philosopher" or a rep- 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 243 
 
 rebate who has managed to rid himself of all sense 
 of moral distinctions? The Bible does not do it 
 when, after instancing atheism, idolatry, sodomy, 
 fornication, covetousness, envy, malice, deceit, 
 murder, slander, disobedience to parents, covenant- 
 breaking, absence of natural aflfection, implaca- 
 bleness, unmercifulness, it proceeds to say of the 
 Gentiles, "Who, knowing that they who commit 
 such things are worthy of death, not only do the 
 same, but have pleasure in them that do them. ' ' 
 
 A Christian missionary in Japan, who fdr 
 many years has had large intercourse with its peo- 
 ple, tells us that he has never yet found among 
 them one not substantially consenting to the Dec- 
 alogue. L,ike testimony has been given in regard 
 to peoples in the interior of Africa. 
 
 Says a Chinese scholar, ' ' There is probably 
 not a single moral precept in the Christian Scrip- 
 tures which is not found for substance somewhere 
 in the Chinese classics" — found imbedded in 
 much rubbish, found disfigured and even contra- 
 dicted often by its context, but still easily found. 
 Says another, ' ' No nation in the world (heathen) 
 has displayed the same ability to see what was 
 individually, socially, and politically right." It 
 is well known that Confucius taught the Golden 
 Rule, which is really the whole scheme of Chris- 
 tian morals in shorthand. Whoever knows that 
 
244 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 he ought to do to others as he would that others 
 should do to him, knows that ingratitude, injus- 
 tice, impurity, selfishness, dishonoring of parents, 
 lying, stealing, cruelty, oppression, slander, un- 
 provoked hatred, and malice are wrong; for who 
 wants any of these practised against himself or 
 family? As against himself, he holds such things 
 to be odious and wicked. So at the bottom of his 
 heart he knows them to be odious and wicked as 
 against others. 
 
 The Buddhists, numbering not far from a 
 fourth of mankind, have a system of morals so 
 like the Christian that some have maintained that 
 one must have been taken directly from the other. 
 There is scarcely a thing forbidden or a thing 
 commanded in the Bible which is not also forbid- 
 den or commanded in the Tripitaka. The Buddh- 
 ists even have their formal Decalogue — forbidding 
 killing, theft, unchastity, lying, slander, swear- 
 ing, vain conversation, covetousness, skepticism, 
 the first four items of which are the same with 
 the last four of the Mosaic. So far as mere eth- 
 ics are concerned, Buddha Gautama deserves to 
 be called the light of Asia, though in other grave 
 respects and in his general influence he is little 
 better than darkness. His stars strugfgle through 
 banks of clouds, his gold is in close partnership 
 with a plenty of dross. 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 245 
 
 As to the Indian religions other than Buddh- 
 ism, among much that is unworthy and perni- 
 cious in their sacred books we find occasional 
 statements or implications of all the main ele- 
 ments of common morality. In the Vedic hymns, 
 the Laws of Manu, and the Institutes of Vishnu 
 are taught forgiveness of injuries, truth-telling, 
 reverence for parents and the aged, kindness to 
 the wretched, generosity, humility, chastity. The 
 Institutes forbid slander, robbery, dishonesty, giv- 
 ing false evidence, drinking spirituous liquors, 
 advancing one's interests by false statements, adul- 
 tery, atheism. The Laws of Manu condemn 
 wrongful gains, return of evil for good, slander, 
 intemperance, dealing in ardent spirits, false wit- 
 ness, unjust judgments and punishments, viola- 
 tions of pledges and trusts, conspiracies to raise 
 prices to the injury of laborers, gambling. Earth's 
 "Religions of India," with one eye shut on all 
 that is bad and the other open on all that is good, 
 says, "The religions of India have not only given 
 birth to Buddhism and produced to their own 
 credit a code of precepts which is not inferior to 
 any other, but in the poetry which they have in- 
 spired there is at times a delicacy and bloom of 
 moral sentiment which the Western world has 
 never seen outside of Christianity. One of the 
 men who have done most to promote an acquaint- 
 
246 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ance with the Hindoo religions, Sir John Muir, 
 has collected a certain number of their maxims 
 and thoughts in an exquisite anthology, which 
 must have gained many friends to India. And 
 yet what a gloomy side!" . . . Here the other 
 eye has opened on the vast mass of absurdities, 
 inconsistencies, and abominations in which the 
 golden grains are imbedded, on the wide deserts 
 in which the little oases of just ethics are found. 
 
 The Avesta of the Persians has, scattered 
 through it, like testimonies to the common prin- 
 ciples of morality, condensed in a certain place 
 into the following prayer : " I repent of pride, 
 covetousness, envy, sloth, repining against divine 
 Providence, unbelief, false witness, prayerlessness, 
 theft, unchastity ; of these vices repent I with 
 thoughts, words, and works." 
 
 L,ike testimonies have in late years been deci- 
 phered from the "Book of the Dead," the in- 
 scriptions on tombs, and the papyri of old Egypt. 
 From these we learn that the early Egyptian eth- 
 ics strongly resembled the Hebrew, and even the 
 higher requirements of the Christian religion. 
 "None of the Christian virtues," says M. Chabas, 
 "is forgotten in the Egyptian code— piety, char- 
 ity, gentleness, chastity, protection of the weak, 
 benevolence, respect of property in its minutest 
 details." The inscriptions on tombs represent 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 247 
 
 tlie dead as trying to justify themselves before 
 their judge Osiris in the following manner: "Not 
 a little child did I injure, not a widow did I op- 
 press ; there was no beggar in my days." "I 
 have taken pleasure in speaking the truth; though 
 great, I have acted as if I had been a little one." 
 "I was bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, 
 clothes to the naked, a refuge to him that was in 
 want; what I did to him the great God has done 
 to me." "I have not blasphemed, I have not 
 stolen, I have not been cruel, I have not stirred 
 up trouble, I have not been idle, I have not been 
 drunk, I have not slandered, I have not been en- 
 vious. ' ' One papyrus, held to have been written 
 long before Moses, inculcates the study of wis- 
 dom, the duty of honoring parents, of respecting 
 property, of being charitable and peaceable and 
 contented and humble and chaste and sober and 
 truthful and just. In the same strain run other 
 papyri. 
 
 Little is known of the views of the earlier 
 Arabians ; but, as the descendants of Abraham 
 they may fairly be presumed to have held to the 
 same elementary morals as the Hebrews. At the 
 time when Mohammed appeared Jews and Chris- 
 tians and disciples of the Avesta made a large 
 part of the population of Arabia. The remainder 
 were worshippers of stars and images, but they 
 
248 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 possessed and held as sacred the Old Testament 
 Psalms, from which one can gather a very clear 
 and extensive code of just morals. They had also 
 the " Book of Seth," "full of moral discourses," 
 which they held to be equally sacred with the 
 Psalms. Then came the Koran, and gave law 
 not only to Arabians, but to a large part of the 
 human race. Did it revoke the original "Data 
 of Ethics"? Turning to the index in Sale's 
 Koran and looking for such words as "crimes," 
 "punishments," "sins," "murder," "theft," 
 ' ' gaming, " " contracts, " " oaths, " " fornica- 
 tion," "adultery," "forgiveness of injuries," 
 "envy," "hypocrites," "slander," "bribery," 
 "charity," "chastity," "parents," we find our- 
 selves able to piece out a very large code of cor- 
 rect morals, one that follows closely in the steps 
 of Christianity itself. It is true that we find also 
 many inconsistencies and contradictions, much 
 that goes to make, and actually does make, the 
 excellent moral sentiments nugatory ; but it is 
 plain that amid the wide wastes of Moslem belief 
 flower many just notions, indeed all the more fun- 
 damental ones, of how men should conduct them- 
 selves. We should expect as much from a book 
 that acknowledges both Moses and Jesus. 
 
 The Greeks were taught by the Egyptians, 
 and the Romans by the Greeks. We should 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 249 
 
 therefore expect to find substantially the same 
 moral ideas prevailing among these three peoples. 
 We do find them. One could gather a glorious 
 anthology of maxims and precepts for the govern- 
 ment of life, not only from the pages of such sages 
 as Socrates and Plato and Epictetus and Cicero 
 and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, but 
 also from the whole range of classic authorship — 
 from Homer and Herodotus downward through 
 the list of poets and historians to the latest Ro- 
 man times; men who doubtless better expressed, 
 and did more to form, the average thought of the 
 people than did all the speculations of the schools 
 in Academy, Garden, Porch, and Tusculum. Much 
 of the testimony is incidental and indirect. Neith- 
 er poet nor historian nor biographer nor orator 
 lectures on ethics. And yet through the Iliad, 
 Odyssey, and ^neid; through the dramas of ^s- 
 chylus, Euripides, and Sophocles ; through the 
 fables of ^sop, the Lives of Plutarch, and the 
 histories of Herodotus and Thucydides and Xeno- 
 phon and I/ivy and Sallust and Tacitus and Cae- 
 sar, are scattered commendations of almost every 
 virtue and condemnations of almost every vice. 
 Indeed, those old classics, speaking out of the 
 tombs of dead languages, are more in harmony 
 with common morals than were the leading de- 
 istical writings of the last century, and on the 
 
250 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 whole more wholesome companions for the young 
 than an unexpurgated Pope or Dryden or Shakes- 
 peare or Goethe would be. Shame on these shame- 
 less children of Christian countries and unchris- 
 tian morals ! 
 
 It is not necessary for us to collect bits of di- 
 rect moral teaching from the broad fields of Greek 
 and Roman writings. The very fact that they 
 depict and praise so many illustrious characters 
 shows that the people at large, as well as the au- 
 thors, must have had sound ideas as to what men 
 should be and how they should behave. Such 
 simplicity of living, such government of the pas- 
 sions, such fidelity to supposed duty, such utter 
 truthfulness, such inflexible justice, such placa- 
 bleness and generosity and mercifulness, such self- 
 sacrifice for the public good, such greatness of 
 soul, such careful honesty in dealing with great 
 public trusts, such blamelessness as fathers, hus- 
 bands, sons, citizens, rulers, as Plutarch and oth- 
 ers have described and held up to admiration, at 
 least show that those old writers were not want- 
 ing themselves in just ideas of a noble manhood, 
 and that they felt warranted in assuming the ex- 
 istence of similar ideas in the people for whom 
 they wrote — show that the people at large had 
 among them from time to time, in addition to 
 their better sort of philosophers, the most impres- 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 251 
 
 sive and commanding of all moral teachers, viz. , 
 actual examples of the most shining sort of right- 
 living men. To conceive of such men as Socrates 
 and Phocion and Aristides, as the Catos and Scip- 
 ios and Antonines, was itself a liberal education 
 in ethics. 
 
 Hardly less was it to conceive of such moral 
 monsters as sometimes appeared. How the clas- 
 sic pens smote their memories! How the people 
 gazed with open-eyed horror and hatred on the 
 Neros and Caligulas of their time, and knew them 
 to be horrible and hateful! These wild beasts in 
 human form, too, were great instructors in mor- 
 als. The vices writ large are powerful teachers 
 of virtue. Depravity enlarged to the size of a 
 mountain can be seen from afar, and have all its 
 ugly scars and sores counted. Men blessed with 
 all the virtues scarcely speak out the Ten Com- 
 mandments more loudly than do men cursed with 
 all the vices. 
 
 But let us come more closely to particulars. 
 What are the views of mankind at large as to the 
 following items of character and conduct ? 
 
 I. AGNOSTICISM IN RELIGION. 
 
 Some persons here and there claim that man 
 does not know, and even that from the nature of 
 the case he cannot know, anything on religious 
 
253 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 subjects, cannot know even in the way of a rea- 
 sonable faith. But all the sacred books of the 
 world assume and teach the contrary. The great 
 masses of mankind in all known times have be- 
 lieved the contrary. For, as we have seen, they 
 have always insisted that men believe in a Su- 
 preme Deity, in worshipping and serving him, in 
 a future state for man, in his responsibility in that 
 state for his conduct here, and so on. Not only 
 so, but wherever they have found a man who 
 seemed to have no religious faith whatever (a very 
 rare case) they have counted him a fool, a mad- 
 man, or a heinous sinner worthy perhaps of mob- 
 violence or of the sword of the magistrate. They 
 have had no patience with such nonsense. Out- 
 side of Christendom, Comte would have been a so- 
 cial outcast, if not a victim to popular indigna- 
 tion. 
 
 What views the Bible takes of fundamental 
 ignorance in religious things it is not hard to dis- 
 cover. It nowhere allows that a man can inno- 
 cently be without religious faith, especially as to 
 such matters as have been mentioned. "With- 
 out faith it is impossible to please ' ' the God of 
 the Scriptures. He says that ' ' the unbelieving 
 shall have their part in the lake that burneth with 
 fire and brimstone. ' ' An influential faith in Christ 
 and his teaching is the formal condition of salva- 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 253 
 
 tion from permanent ruin. A neutral attitude is 
 hardly less offensive than a hostile one. Indeed, 
 neutrality is counted as hostility. ' ' He that is 
 not with Me is against me. ' ' The tabula rasa has 
 no favor in the courts of the Bible. 
 
 II. INDIFFERENCE TO RELIGION. 
 
 When men say, as they often do, that they feel 
 no interest in religious subjects, some of us won- 
 der at them. We do more ; we condemn them. 
 It seems to us that such men are unjustifiable be- 
 fore the tribunal of common sense, as well as be- 
 fore every other tribunal that claims jurisdiction 
 in such matters. That of the Bible, for example. 
 To care little or nothing for such matters as God, 
 the soul, responsibility, immortality, salvation, 
 duty — for such questions as. Whence came I ? 
 Whither am I going ? How can I best know and 
 please the Supreme, get pardon, recover from an 
 evil character, provide for an endless hereafter ? — 
 to feel no interest in such great questions and 
 themes is grossly against both spirit and letter of 
 New Testament and Old. How can reasonable 
 beings be so unreasonable? Are they stones, stone 
 dead ? Or are they merely asleep ? Awake, thou 
 that sleepest ! The Bible is throwing torches at 
 you, if perchance you may be set on fire — such 
 torches as these: "The knowledge of the Holy is 
 
254 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 understanding. " "If thou criest after knowledge 
 and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou 
 seekest her as silver and searchest for her as for 
 hidden treasures, then shalt thou find the knowl- 
 edge of God. ' ' And some men have been kindled 
 by such teachings. Nothing interests them so 
 much as religious topics. They study them day 
 and night. They are ' ' zealously afiected ' ' to- 
 wards them. "They do with their might" this 
 thing which their hand finds to do. To know the 
 main religious truths and to conform the char- 
 acter and life to them seems to be deserving of 
 more outlay of feeling and effort than anything 
 else whatever — than any secular learning, wealth, 
 honor, pleasure. These are the children of the 
 noble Bereans. But some of them have been 
 called the Pilgrim Fathers. 
 
 But the Bible is not alone in condemning in- 
 difference to religion. If we define religion to be 
 the great doctrines already considered, together 
 with conduct to match, then all sacred books and 
 practically all mankind do the same. For these 
 doctrines are taught in all systems of religion, and 
 not one of these systems tolerates indiSerence to 
 itself, especially as to its main things. The Mo- 
 hammedans have no patience with the man who 
 cares little or nothing for the teachings of Mo- 
 hammed, the Buddhists no patience with him 
 
 >jf 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 355 
 
 who cares nothing for the teachings of Buddha, 
 the Brahminical religionists no patience with him 
 who feels no interest in the teachings of their 
 Vedas and Shasters. On the contrary, the man 
 who is zealously interested in them, more zeal- 
 ously than in anything else, stands high above all 
 others on the roll of honor. This is everywhere 
 the theory, though sometimes sorely against the 
 practice. 
 
 III. HOSTILITY TO RELIGION. 
 
 If all the creeds and nations object to indiffer- 
 ence to religion as represented by those great 
 truths common to all of them, much more do they 
 object to that active hostility which is sometimes 
 displayed. 
 
 The fundamentals considered in foregoing 
 chapters, and which we will call Doctrines of Hu- 
 manity on account of their well-nigh universal 
 acceptance, have two classes of enemies — the se- 
 cret and the open. The secret enemy professes 
 friendship, sometimes loudly. You can hear the 
 lips of Judas when he kisses his Master. You can 
 hear the "God be with you " of Joab as he quietly 
 inserts his dagger under the fifth rib of Amasa. A 
 traitor? Yes, that is the word, though he does 
 not like it. But he likes still less the odium in- 
 curred by attacking openly the foundations of re- 
 
256 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ligion. So he works under cover. He insinuates 
 difficulties, lie hints disparagements, he weakens 
 old defences in the name of candid though reluct- 
 ant science, he demands a restatement of old 
 truths, he rejects the strong old-time arguments 
 that have been marching on for thousands of 
 years, and whose ' ' eyes are not yet dim nor nat- 
 ural force abated, ' ' in favor of another of his own 
 that halts on both feet and is blind. This is the 
 meanest and not the least dangerous enemy reli- 
 gion has to encounter. 
 
 Then there are the open enemies. Their bit- 
 terness or imprudence or, if you please, their hon- 
 esty, defies concealment. They declare war by 
 proclamation. They ridicule the doctrines of hu- 
 manity. They denounce them. They assert and 
 argue against them. They talk at street corners 
 and stores, they give lectures, they write books, 
 they capture newspapers and magazines and some- 
 times a college ; they especially seek the ears and 
 eyes of the young. Sometimes they affect the 
 calm, judicial, philosophical tone, and sometimes 
 they almost foam at the mouth and blaspheme. 
 Some are graduates of colleges; more are gradu- 
 ates of factories, liquor- saloons, and anarchist 
 clubs. Men of the Paine and Most sort stamp on 
 the gi-eat religious doctrines that are common to 
 all religions as they would on a serpent. 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 257 
 
 Such men, whetlier recognized as open or se- 
 cret assailants, assailing as they do what is com- 
 mon and fundamental to all religions, would of 
 course be frowned upon by all. From the nature 
 of the case, the world at large would regard them 
 as enemies of the human race as well as of heaven. 
 More than this, in many, if not most, countries 
 and times such people would not have been tol- 
 erated. They would have been boycotted. They 
 would have incurred personal danger. They 
 would have been mobbed or handed over to the 
 civil power as nuisances that ought to be abated. 
 Perhaps they would have been invited to drink 
 the hemlock by some Committee of Public Safety. 
 In some way they would have had focused upon 
 them a blaze of public indignation. 
 
 IV. PRACTICAL ATHEISM. 
 
 Men who do not attack religion in any way, 
 who even profess to believe in it and to haye con- 
 siderable intellectual interest in its problems, often 
 live in practical atheism. They do not worship 
 any deity, nor consult his will, nor make him 
 any offering, nor pray to him, nor visit his tem- 
 ple, nor do anything for his honor; they are not 
 kept back from anything they like by the fear of 
 him, nor persuaded to anything they do not like 
 by a regard to his approbation. They are practi- 
 
 UniTarBal BellefH. 17 
 
258 UNIVERSAI. BEUEFS. 
 
 cal atheists. Their lives are wholly vacant of 
 God. Whatever correct notions they may have- 
 about him are wholly uninfluential on their con- 
 duct. Their theory and practice are divorced 
 parties. The two are not on speaking terms with 
 each other. To all intents and purposes divinity 
 is to them nonentity. 
 
 Set a man of this stamp, with all his godless 
 ways fully open to view, in the midst of any 
 heathen or Moslem population, what would they 
 think of him ? Very unfavorable things, of course ; 
 for his ways run counter to the whole current of 
 their ideas, their usages, their traditions, and, if 
 they have them, their sacred books. It would 
 not much help his case with them for him to say 
 with his lips that he believes in a God while his 
 whole life besides is loudly discounting such a 
 Being. They would be apt to think that the 
 man has added hypocrisy to his other virtues; and 
 they would look askance at him. They would 
 persecute him with their thoughts if not with 
 their hands. If free to act themselves out, they 
 would soon make him feel something more than 
 want of harmony with his surroundings. Per- 
 haps it would be venturesome to insure his per- 
 sonal safety. Certainly it would not be venture- 
 some to insure his having very uncomfortable 
 neighbors. 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 259 
 
 But how would he fare in Christian lands? 
 Better, no doubt, so far as outward treatment is 
 concerned. We are getting used to such people, 
 and we believe in religious liberty, so we do not 
 persecute him. We disdain to proceed to such 
 uncivilized extremities. And yet, as many as be- 
 lieve the Bible, with its strong words about those 
 ' ' who say and do not, ' ' hold his attitude to be 
 utterly indefensible. Indeed, as many as believe 
 in acting reasonably and self-consistently refuse 
 to stand up for him. Nay, he does not stand up 
 for himself. As a sensible man he cannot but 
 allow that to build his life on the assumption that 
 there is no God, while actually believing or even 
 suspecting the contrary, is not the proper thing 
 to be done. Though multitudes in Christendom 
 act in this inconsistent way, not one of them 
 would think of setting himself to justify it, though 
 many might try to extenuate it. 
 
 V. TJNCONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 
 
 There are worse people than some practical 
 atheists, for these may have some regard to what 
 is right between man and man although com- 
 pletely ignoring God. I mean people who seem 
 to have no consciences. As far as one can see, 
 they are utterly regardless of all considerations of 
 right and wrong. They are restrained from some 
 
26o UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 things by the laws of the land or by public opin- 
 ion or by a regard to self-interest, but never by a 
 regard to what is right. Undisguised men of this 
 stamp are very rare; it costs too much in the way 
 of social standing for a man to wear on his fore- 
 head in capitals, "Utterly Unscrupuloujs. " 
 So the utterly unscrupulous men commonly re- 
 fuse to appear as such. But once in a while a 
 man is found so shameless and reckless as not 
 only to make no secret of the fact that he recog- 
 nizes no moral obligation whatever, but even to 
 glory in it. " Whatever else he may be, he is no 
 hypocrite." He offers to argue with you and to 
 prove from Hume and others that virtue and vice 
 are mere names — mere superstitions and priest- 
 craft. He has gradually come to this position by 
 abusing his conscience. And now he is a repro- 
 bate, his movements no more influenced by a 
 moral sense than are the waves of the sea. 
 
 How our Bible views such men — men "past 
 feeling," whose consciences are "seared with a 
 hot iron," whose very "mind and conscience are 
 defiled," who in morals "neither fear God nor 
 regard man, ' ' but have been ' ' given over to strong 
 delusion, to believe a lie" — lies on the surface; 
 hardly more so, however, than do the views of all 
 other so-called sacred books. Put a thoroughly 
 unscrupulous man under the gaze of any of the 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 261 
 
 Gentile bibles, ancient or modern, and not one 
 would approve him. They all recognize the re- 
 ality of moral obligation, declare its paramount 
 authority, take it for granted that few are so for- 
 saken of Deity and common sense as to think a 
 negative. They may mistake as to what is duty, 
 but as to there being such a thing as duty, there 
 is but one verdict among them ; only the one ver- 
 dict is in different languages. If any man, on 
 hearing it spoken in Arabic or Sanscrit or Cinga- 
 lese or Chinese, should begin to scoff, they would 
 threaten him with the wrath of heaven and 
 earth. 
 
 You could not place such a man, stripped of 
 all disguises, anywhere out of Christendom with- 
 out his being looked on as a monster — a monster 
 and curiosity. Not that there is not a plenty of 
 unconscientiousness about, but it is not, in general, 
 of the stark, undecorated, downright kind. The 
 bitter is sweetened somewhat; the ugly is painted 
 somewhat; the deformed has called to its aid the 
 great resources of dress. So the man "does not 
 know himself. But he knows that other man 
 who has been brought out under the eye of the 
 sun and peeled, coat after coat, till the core of 
 him is reached, and found disavowing all moral 
 principle — knows him to be a public danger. So 
 the public pronounces him. Everywhere he would 
 
262 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 be apt to get a treatment so uncomfortable as to 
 make him think it best to retire under cover from 
 the sharp-shooting into some pretence at least of 
 not being wholly without principle — into at least 
 some apparent respect to the universal ought and 
 ought not. A community may for a time so lapse 
 into the morbid and dreadful that it may be fash- 
 ionable to pretend to be without scruples of any 
 kind; but, from the necessity of the case, such a 
 state of things cannot last. Paris will not be long 
 in finding out that society itself does not last un- 
 der such circumstances. 
 
 VI. SELFISHNESS. 
 
 It is plain to the plainest understanding that 
 if every man should pursue his own objects with- 
 out any regard whatever to the interests of others, 
 the result would be endless antagonisms, embroil- 
 ments, and finally social disorganization. Ac- 
 cordingly there has never been a sacred book or 
 government that has not forbidden its subjects to 
 act under the law of unlimited selfishness. Every 
 man must remember that he is one of many. In 
 his eager pursuit of his own welfare he must be 
 careful not to ride down other people. Even the 
 steeple-chase, with the fox in full view, must 
 respect my harvest-field. So governments under- 
 take to stand at all crossings where the streams of 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 263 
 
 business and pleasure come together, and see to it 
 that no man, in hot pursuit of his own bubble, 
 tramples in the dust the persons and bubbles of 
 other people. This is their business. They must 
 at least pretend to be equitable, to do justice to 
 all; which means that the selfish greed or ambi- 
 tion or pleasure-seeking of one man shall not be 
 allowed to trench on the rights of others. 
 
 Did you ever see a wholly selfish man ? Per- 
 haps not. But you have seen a man who, in your 
 view, would stop at nothing safe to himself in 
 order to reach his object; who, if the comfort or 
 the property or the health or the morals or even 
 the life (not to say the soul) of his neighbor stood 
 in the way, would not visibly hesitate to trample 
 it down. He is bound to succeed at whatever 
 cost. He goes straight to his mark, let what will 
 suffer. Let all who are on his track look out for 
 the engine. It will neither stop nor swerve nor 
 ring a bell — the heartless thing. O rumseller, 
 will you not stop for the tears and groans and 
 hunger and rags and despair of the homes you are 
 crushing? No. O director, will you not refuse 
 to climb to fortune on the distresses and financial 
 ruin of the small stockholders that lie under your 
 feet ? No. O soldier, can we not persuade you 
 away from the throne which you can only reach 
 by wading through deeps of blood ? No. 
 
254 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 Set such a man, unmasked and undecorated 
 in any way, in full daylight among the rudest of 
 people. What do they think of him ? There is 
 not a savage so rude as not to see that such self- 
 ishness is monstrous, that a plenty of it let loose 
 on the world means endless injustice and misery. 
 Only let everybody be like that man, and drive 
 towards his own particular goal with the same 
 recklessness of consequences to all others, what 
 concussion and wrecks there would be ! How 
 much cultivation or goodness does it take to see 
 that! As little does it take to see that the unself- 
 ish principle which takes loving account of all 
 interests in proportion to their value, which re- 
 fuses to sacrifice the public to the individual, is 
 the child of reason, the mother of peace, the friend 
 of the world, and kin of heaven. 
 
 But have you ever seen a wholly unselfish per- 
 son? Certainly not. But I have seen many a man 
 in whom the principle of unselfishness was en- 
 throned; who looked with mighty aversion on the 
 opposite principle and fought all tendency to it in 
 himself with downright heartiness and scomful- 
 ness ; who, instead of being willing to sacrifice 
 others to himself, much preferred to sacrifice him- 
 self to others; to whom it was enough to condemn 
 any undertaking to know that, in order to succeed 
 in it, he must damage his neighbor one whit. To 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 265 
 
 be sure, liis anxiety to do no harm made his path 
 sotnewhat crooked. A straight line through a 
 crowd means that somebody will be hurt. So he 
 wound in and out, made all manner of detours, lest 
 he should hurt this man's feelings or that man's 
 property or the other man's conscience. Yes, 
 somewhat crooked; but then there is such a thing 
 as a blessed crookedness. The curve line is some- 
 times the line of beauty as well as of duty. So 
 he felt; and so he would go farther and fare worse 
 rather than follow any chase, however exciting, 
 across his neighbor's wheat-field. 
 
 Place such a man by the side of the other in 
 any age or nation, and the public would morally 
 choose between them in a flash of lightning. The 
 one would command universal approbation, the 
 other universal condemnation. There is not a 
 man between the poles who would not like to be 
 himself treated on benevolent principles rather 
 than on selfish, or who would fail to see the 
 beauty and righteousness of such treatment. If 
 given his choice as to whether he would have for 
 neighbors men who would have a sacred regard 
 to his welfare as well as to their own, and would 
 never allow the latter to override the former, or 
 men who would not hesitate to ride Bucephalus 
 over him rough-shod for the sake of every petty 
 convenience to themselves, they would not long 
 
265 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ' ' halt between two opinions " — hardly longer than 
 the Christian who has been taught to ' ' look not 
 only on his own things, but also on the things of 
 others. ' ' 
 
 VII. VOLUNTARY HARMFULNESS OR USELESSNESS. 
 
 There are misanthropes. There are mischief- 
 loving people who toss about "arrows, firebrands, 
 and death ' ' in sport. ' ' The poison of asps is under 
 their lips, their feet are swift to shed blood, de- 
 struction and misery are in their path, they can- 
 not sleep unless they have caused some to fall." 
 You may, if you please, call them nihilists, for 
 they deserve the name. They delight in seeing 
 the downfall of characters and properties and rep- 
 utations, and will assist the ruin if need be. They 
 circulate slanders. They set families by the ears. 
 They corrupt the young and set them on those 
 downward courses that end in perdition and the 
 breaking of parents' hearts. In short, they en- 
 courage in the community everything that is bad 
 and discourage everything that is good. The 
 morals, the business, the reputation of their place 
 are the worse for their living in it ; so that the 
 people are glad to have the nuisance abated, 
 whether by emigration or by death. For "they 
 are a smoke in the hose, a fire that burneth all the 
 day." 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 267 
 
 Such a man does not need to be at the heart 
 of Christian civilization in order to find general 
 condemnation. Men everywhere, whether named 
 after Mohammed or Confucius or Zoroaster or 
 Christ, instinctively count him a criminal. He 
 knows better than to live such a harmful life, and 
 all observers know that he knows better. Their 
 thoughts and eyes and lips accuse him. The tur- 
 ban condemns him in Turkey, the queue in Chi- 
 na, and the eagle's feather in the wilds of Oregon. 
 He is a Nero, a Robespierre — ^perhaps in a large 
 sphere, perhaps in a small one. It makes no dif- 
 ference whether he curses a kingdom or a kennel. 
 "One murder makes a villain, a thousand mur- 
 ders a hero," is only a grim sarcasm. 
 
 Said an eminent Scotch philosopher, ' ' We can 
 imagine vessels sent on voyages of benevolence, 
 to diffuse over the world the blessings of a pure 
 religion; we can imagine voyages of this kind to 
 diffuse the improvements of our sciences and arts. 
 !Put what should we think of a voyage of which 
 the sole object was to teach the world that those 
 who intentionally do good to society ought to be 
 objects of greater regard than he whose life has 
 been occupied in plans to injure it, or at least as 
 many individuals of it as his power could reach ? 
 What shore is there at which such a vessel could 
 arrive, however barren the soil and savage the 
 
268 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 inhabitants, where this simple doctrine which it 
 came to difiFuse would be regarded as giving any 
 instruction ? The half-naked animal that has no 
 hut in which to shelter himself, no provision be- 
 yond the precarious chase of the day, whose lan- 
 guage of numeration does not extend beyond three 
 or four, and who knows God only as something 
 which produces thunder and the whirlwind — even 
 this miserable creature would turn away from his 
 civilized instructors with contempt, as if he had 
 not heard anything of which he was not equally 
 aware before. The vessel which carried out that 
 simple primary essential truth of morals might 
 return as it went. It could not make a single 
 convert because there would not have been one 
 who had any doubts to be removed. ' ' 
 
 Even if a man stops short of being a public 
 nuisance and we can only say of him that he is a 
 useless fellow, he gets universal disapproval. Try 
 him. Plant him in any place, within Christen- 
 dom or out of it, and let it be understood that he 
 is one who, in the face of the woes and wants of 
 his fellows, is pure zero and does not care to be 
 otherwise; both the heads and hearts of all men 
 will shake thfemselves against him. They will, 
 as they look, instinctively feel that he is not what 
 he ought to be. He is a dry stick. There is no 
 sap nor use in him. He is not even serviceable as 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 269 
 
 ballast in the public ship. So the public feel, 
 andeven the men who are unconsciously like him 
 feel the same. And they feel it all the more if 
 the worthless fellow stands side by side with an- 
 other man of the opposite character, a man whose 
 whole life is a general benediction and meant to 
 be such, who cumbers no ground, who buries no 
 talent, who is all eye to see opportunities of being 
 of service and all hands to tise them. God bless 
 him! "That is the sort of man for me," says 
 everybody, whether he wants a neighbor, a ser- 
 vant, a son, a father, or a king. 
 
 In fact, the Bible and Christian morals, when 
 they hurl their stones of condemnation at the man 
 who ' ' cannot sleep except he has caused some to 
 fall," when they demand not merely that men be 
 "harmless as doves," but that they "do good to 
 all men as they have opportunity," only put their 
 indorsement on the law written in the human 
 heart everywhere. It is a very great indorsement — 
 worth far more, and far more legibly and boldly 
 written, than nature's signature; just as the name 
 on the back of a note may be vastly fairer and 
 weightier commercially than the name on its face. 
 And yet it is a mere indorsement, with a mighty 
 pen, of a law as old as humanity, and so written 
 into its substance that neither time nor sin has 
 been able to erase it. 
 
270 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 VIII. INGRATITUDE. 
 
 You have done him great favors, what he him- 
 self considers such. When he was hungry you fed 
 him; naked, you clothed him; sick and iu prison, 
 you visited him. Bankruptcy stared him in the 
 face: you indorsed for him. His good name was 
 attacked: you stood up for it. His crops were 
 suffering: neglecting your own, you came to the 
 rescue. His life was in danger: you perilled your 
 own life to pull him out of the water or the fire. 
 
 But the man is ungrateful. What he has re- 
 ceived he coolly takes as his right. He never says, 
 "Thank you," nor looks it nor feels it. Not a 
 ripple of tenderness goes out to the man to whom 
 he owes so much. Will he turn aside in the least 
 from his path to do his benefactor a service? No. 
 Will he give a penny for his need ? No. Will 
 he give a crust for his hunger? No. Will he 
 speak a word for him when others are speaking 
 against him ? No. It almost brings tears to our 
 eyes to think what, in your magnanimity of self- 
 denial, you have done for him. But he — his heart 
 is flint of the hardest sort. Could one break it 
 with a sledge ? 
 
 What does the world think of such an ingrate? 
 I say the worlds not that small part of it whose 
 consciences have been instructed by the Christian 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 271 
 
 religion. Put him fairly before the natives of 
 Dahomey and the savages would cry shame upon 
 him. He knows that if he himself were treated 
 in such a heartless manner, under like circum- 
 stances, he would feel wronged ; would feel it a 
 righteous thing if all his fetishes and gods should 
 break out in judgment on the thankless wretch, 
 especially if he should happen to see the man in 
 sharp contrast with the opposite character. We 
 need not go out of a Christian land to know how 
 the worst heathen would feel ; for a Christian land 
 always contains more or less of the worst speci- 
 mens of heathenism — men darkened with the 
 worst possible error and imbruted with the worst 
 possible vice. And never yet has the Bible - 
 reader, as he has explored the slums of our cities, 
 met with a man sunk so low as to stand up for the 
 innocence of ingratitude, unless he denies the 
 reality of moral distinctions altogether. Though 
 perhaps a thankless wretch himself, he would try 
 to hide under some cover. He dare not stand out 
 uncovered to meet the scornful wrath of mankind. 
 
 IX. RETURNING EVIL FOR GOOD. 
 
 A still stronger case than the last is that where 
 a man returns hate for your love, malediction for 
 your benediction, great harms for your great ben- 
 efits. He is not content with the monstrousness 
 
2/2 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 of ingratitude. He goes on to the greater mon- 
 strousness of returning evil for good. The class 
 to which he belongs is thus described by David: 
 ' ' When they were sick my clothing was sack- 
 cloth. I humbled my soul with fasting, I behaved 
 as though they had been my friends or brothers. 
 But in my adversity they rejoiced and gathered 
 themselves together _ against me." Perhaps he 
 dislikes your character, which is such a striking 
 contrast to his own. Perhaps he notices that this 
 character of yours draws to you an honor and af- 
 fection in the community which are not accorded 
 to himself. So envy and jealousy begin to work ; 
 and now it is hate and now it is malice prepense, 
 going out into acts of deliberate mischief. He 
 lies in wait for his friend. He smites his good 
 name. He appropriates or destroys his property. 
 He misleads his children. Not a harm comes to 
 the good man but he is glad, not a good but he is 
 sorry. So he gives a ' ' double and twisted ' ' de- 
 fiance to the Scripture that says, ' ' See that none 
 render evil for evil to any. ' ' 
 
 One need not be afraid to put such conduct as 
 that before the most heathenish tribunal in Cen- 
 tral Africa. He could be sure of a swift verdict 
 of Guilty. No need to consume days and nights 
 in weighing conflicting considerations; quick as 
 a flash would come the stern and righteous judg- 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 273 
 
 ment. Quick as a flash all men would see the 
 blackness of the man, as they see the blackness of 
 midnight when the lightning leaps athwart it. 
 Especially if they could have the help of lights 
 and shadows, could see the evil set over against a 
 shining specimen of the opposite good, viz., a 
 man returning good fot evil. Then the evil would 
 stand out. Then beholders would say, How black 
 it is ! And they would feel that a world thorough- 
 ly benighted with that sort of night would not 
 long find its way through the spaces. 
 
 X. CRUELTY. 
 
 Nero was cruel. To amuse himself he burned 
 Rome. To accommodate his arena with just the 
 right sort of sand he made all ships from Egypt 
 bring sand instead of grain to the starving city. 
 To glut his greed, princes became beggars; to glut 
 his sensuality, homes vanished like a wreath of 
 smoke when the caves of ^olus are emptied; to 
 glut his thirst for blood, poison and sword and 
 cross and wild beasts filled every dwelling in Rome 
 with a reign of terror. Multitudes of nameless 
 men and women, sewed up in sacks and smeared 
 with pitch, burned as torches in his gardens; or, 
 wrapped in the skins of wild animals, were torn in 
 pieces by dogs under his delighted eyes. With 
 awful impartiality he rioted on the tears and 
 
 Unh-enial BeliefH. 1 8 
 
274 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 groans of plebeians and patricians, of pagans and 
 Christians, of foreigners and Romans, of gladi- 
 ators and brutes, of enemies and friends. Trem- 
 ble, illustrious Fabii and Gracchi; tremble, teach- 
 ers Burrhus and Seneca; tremble, wife Octavia 
 and brother Britannicus and mother Agrippina, 
 and holy apostle Paul — this time not one of you 
 shall be "delivered out of the mouth of the lion." 
 Ah, what a wild beast! All the deserts could not 
 turn out his equal. "Would that Rome had but 
 one neck; then I could cut it in two at a blow." 
 "t'eople may hate me, if they only fear me." 
 With such words on his lips he did his best to 
 pave his short way with the miseries of mankind. 
 To say that Nero was inhuman is merely to 
 say that wanton cruelty has against itself the 
 voice of humanity. Is there a sane man in any 
 land or in any time who approves the Neronic 
 way of doing, dares to praise it and to call it so 
 much righteousness? Nay, is there one (repro- 
 bates and ' ' philosophers ' ' always excepted) who 
 does not positively condemn it as wicked with 
 the prompt uprising of his whole soul ? If there 
 is, he belongs to the museums. Some cases of 
 cruelty and oppression are so perplexed by con- 
 siderations of motive and circumstance that the 
 verdict of the observer on them becomes hesita- 
 ting; but, given a case of what he recognizes as 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 275 
 
 pure wanton cruelty, and everybody sends out 
 his verdict of Guilty with a strong breath. Es- 
 pecially if his eye can take in at once Nero and 
 Antoninus Pius; some Turkish pasha enrichino- 
 himself in the speediest manner by remorselessly 
 harrying his miserable province with bastinadoes, 
 prisons, and confiscations, and the pitiful, helpful 
 Jesus of Nazareth. Then the veriest savage, ga- 
 zing on that worse savage _ in imperial purple, 
 would say in his heart, '' wretch f gazing on 
 Jesus would say, " C divine ManP'' And the ver- 
 dict would be afiirmed all over the world. Every 
 one knows that he would deem it a wickedness 
 were he himself writhing under the heel of that 
 old Roman despot. And it is so easy to see that, 
 were all men thoroughly cruel and oppressive, no- 
 body kind and helpful and merciful to his fellow, 
 the world would be intolerable and society im- 
 possible! 
 
 XI. PROFANITY. 
 
 His mouth is habitually foul with oaths. He 
 desecrates the sanctuaries of religion. He is at 
 pains to pour contempt on sacred days and their 
 belongings, on prayer and praise and sacraments 
 and endeavors to promote a sense of religion in 
 the community. Perhaps he holds mock prayer- 
 meetings. Perhaps he ridicules the idea that 
 
376 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 anything is sacred, and defies heaven and earth 
 with extremities of blasphemy and sacrilege. 
 
 Of course our Bible declares against all irrev- 
 erence towards religious things. The name of 
 God must be hallowed, his sanctuaries reverenced, 
 his day kept holy, his Word honored above all 
 other books. Every form and degree of profaning 
 treatment of such things is disallowed: the gross- 
 er forms and degrees are denounced as character- 
 izing the last stages in wickedness of the man 
 whose throat is an open sepulchre, whose mouth 
 is full of cursing and bitterness, who clothes him- 
 self with cursing as with a garment. 
 
 But the man to whom nothing is sacred gets 
 no encouragement in his attitude from any of the 
 religious traditions and bibles. Heathendom and 
 Islam would, perhaps, tear him limb from limb — 
 that man who desecrates mosques and temples, 
 and spits on revelation and worship and Deity. 
 Christendom tolerates him till he proceeds to 
 actual violence and becomes a disturber of the 
 public peace; but she sets a brand upon him, and, 
 as much as possible in the complications of social 
 and business life, passes him by on the other side, 
 well to the windward. Practically, all mankind 
 believe, and have always believed, in sacred things 
 and in treating them with respect. The man who 
 reverences nothing pleases nobody, outrages the 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 277 
 
 common sentiment of the race, insults the instincts 
 and traditions of Jew and Gentile, of civilized and 
 savage, of Christian and Moslem and Pagan. 
 Has not somebody who knows said, "The very- 
 heathen would condemn the irreverent ways some- 
 times seen in Christian congregations ' ' ? 
 
 XII. FALSEHOOD. 
 
 As to the blameworthiness of particular instan- 
 ces of wilful falsehood, there would be different 
 judgments. The matter of motives and circum- 
 stances occasions perplexity. But as to the gen- 
 eral obligation to veracity, few people among us 
 would have any doubt. Show us a man whose 
 word can never be trusted under any circumstan- 
 ces; who plays "fast and loose" with all con- 
 tracts, oral or written; whose notes, bonds, and 
 oaths create no presumption that he will speak 
 the truth, and there are mighty few people who 
 would think well of him. A Patagonian who 
 never saw a missionary, nor wants to see one, 
 would condemn the outrageous liar about as swift- 
 ly as would a trading, banking, business-doing 
 Londoner. Once in a while such a man is actual- 
 ly found, and found out. Then nobody trusts 
 him. Nobody believes a word that he says because 
 he says it. His most solemn declarations go for 
 nothing. "Who says it?" "X says it." 
 
278 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 "Oh, X says it, does he!" and the people 
 
 shrug their shoulders and exchange' knowing 
 looks between themselves and quietly discount 
 the whole story. Who is willing to be called a 
 liar ? Give a man that name and you might as 
 well smite him in the face. He will find it hard 
 work to forgive you. He knows that everybody 
 despises the notorious liar. 
 
 "All liars shall have their part in the lake 
 that burneth with fire and brimstone," says the 
 Christian religion. So, substantially, say all the 
 religions. Lying is almost universal out of Chris- 
 tendom and quite too common within it, and yet 
 no heathen is heathen enough to stand up for it 
 in general, especially in the gross forms of slan- 
 der and perjury. A man calls heaven to witness 
 that he will speiak the truth, invokes its displeas- 
 ure if he does not, and then proceeds to — lie. Is 
 this right? Where is the sacred book that says 
 that ? Where the government that does not con- 
 demn and, if possible, punish perjury ? 
 
 An avalanche of untruthfulness affecting all 
 human intercourse, making human testimony al- 
 ways and everywhere wholly unreliable, would be 
 deprecated the wide world over. Unless truthful- 
 ness were accepted as the law, all deviations from 
 it would lose their seeming use. If lying itself 
 could get no credence, what would be the use of 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 279 
 
 lying? Its seeming use in certain cases comes 
 from a belief that it is not lying. Do not men 
 everywhere instinctively feel that it is better and 
 safer for society that men act on the rule of ' ' Let 
 every man speak the truth with his neighbor," 
 rather than on the opposite rule of "Let every 
 man speak falsehood to his neighbor as much as 
 may suit his convenience ' ' ? Suppose these two 
 rules embodied in the persons of two men set side 
 by side — one having no reverence at all for the 
 truth and never to be depended on to speak it, 
 and the other a man of utter veracity who always 
 means what he says, whose exactness of speech is 
 proverbial, who will not stoop to deceit, who 
 paints and distorts nothing, who would not know- 
 ingly for any consideration swerve one hair's 
 breadth from actual fact even in the heat of argu- 
 ment, to whom the exact truth is something sa- 
 cred, whose promise is sure performance, whose 
 word is better than most men's bonds, who hates 
 and scorns a lie, who "swears to his own hurt 
 and changes not" — in short, who after the man- 
 ner of Another is truth itself. Has the moral 
 sense any difficulty in choosing between these 
 two? The heart of humanity bows low before 
 that better and right manl^'^ man. " It is grand, 
 that way of his, ' ' says the universal conscience, 
 and rings out enthusiasm from all her belfries. 
 
28o UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 XIII. STEALING. 
 
 Leaving out of view all perplexed cases (as 
 when a man steals to satisfy his soul when hun- 
 gry) and considering only such as tower above all 
 fogs and clouds, what is the general verdict of 
 mankind on dishonesty in dealing with the prop- 
 erty of others ? Suppose a man whose habit is 
 thievery, who will on opportunity steal your 
 handkerchief, your pocket-book, or your railroad; 
 to whom the only question is, Can it be done 
 without too much risk ? and this being answered 
 affirmatively, he is ready to rob a henroost, to 
 turn highwayman, to swindle the bank or Gov- 
 ernment, to sweep the seas as a pirate. He has 
 no respect to, any rights of property save his own. 
 Nothing keeps his hands off his neighbor's lands 
 or store or strong-box but a selfish prudence. 
 There is no barrier between him and the utter 
 beggary of all the rest of mankind but distance 
 and the sense, of danger. What seems honesty 
 sometimes is merely regard to self-preservation. 
 Give him a safe opportunity and he will steal a 
 penny or a crown, rob a till or a sepulchre, as 
 may suit his convenience. Is such a man ever 
 actual ? No matter. He is at least possible. 
 
 Now set down such a man in any country and 
 confront him with its religion, however debased. 
 
MAIN i;thics. 281 
 
 Will lie find himself approved? Confront him 
 with its laws; have they nothing to say against 
 him? Confront him with its public opinion; will 
 that say to him, "Oh, excellent man!"? The 
 public consider him a public nuisance. He is a 
 standing threat to every man who has anything 
 to lose. People who can see anything can see 
 that if such a rogue is right, others have no rights; 
 that if every one is allowed to devote himself to 
 preying on the goods of his neighbors without re- 
 straint, society is resolved into a fighting chaos of 
 Ishmaelites. No ; that unprincipled thief would 
 get condemnation, and nothing but condemna- 
 tion, the world over. Especially if set in sharp 
 contrast with the opposite sort of a man: for ex- 
 ample, with a man who, if left alone in a mint, 
 would sooner take a live coal into his pocket than 
 a penny; who does not even allow himself to covet 
 what does not belong to him; who is so above 
 suspicion of dishonesty that were one to charge it 
 upon him the charge would fall flat as the walls 
 of Jericho, nay, would rebound on the accuser. 
 
 "Incredible!" say the people. "This is the 
 man who during a long life has kept his hands 
 clean as a babe's. Millions of public money and 
 trust funds have passed through them and not a 
 farthing has stuck. Widows and orphans have 
 left their little all with him and have felt and 
 
283 UNIVERSAL BEUEFS. 
 
 found it perfectly safe. The vagueness and tech- 
 nicalities of laws have given him many a chance 
 of enriching himself safely at the expense of oth- 
 ers, but the old Roman has never used one of 
 them, nor even thought of doing so. Several times 
 dictator, Fabricius is to-day driving his team 
 a-field poor as ever. So fearful has he been of 
 taking a single denarius that did not belong to 
 him that it has always been his practice in cases 
 of doubt to give his neighbor the benefit of the 
 doubt. The goods and chattels of other people 
 are as safe in his hands as if stored away on Olym- 
 pus — safer. Some Diogenes searching with his 
 lantern for an honest man has at last found him." 
 Stand this man by the side of his opposite in 
 any country or age and ask the consciences of 
 men to choose between them. Do any doubt what 
 the choice would be ? Not unless the judge be a 
 reprobate or a "philosopher." The common 
 man, even though a benighted heathen, would 
 speak like a flash, if not like thunder, in behalf 
 of the grand old-fashioned honesty. The voice 
 within him would echo the voice of the laws and 
 the voice of the religions. He knows whom he 
 would like to have for a neighbor. He knows 
 who would be the blessing and who the bane of 
 society. He knows that a world made up of un- 
 scrupulous thieves, highwaymen, defaulters, pi- 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 2S3 
 
 rates would be an intolerable institution. Dis- 
 honesty would grapple with dishonesty, thief 
 would clutch the throat of thief, pirate would 
 board and sack and murder pirate, and the old, 
 worn-out, tortured planet would boil and toss and 
 shriek for — annihilation. 
 
 XIV. SINS AGAINST THE FAMILY. 
 
 The Bible gives the family a divine warrant. 
 It appoints separate households, husbands and 
 wives bound together for life, parents and chil- 
 dren owing to one another certain specified du- 
 ties. Parents must be loving and faithful to each 
 other, and must love, support, and properly train 
 their children. The children must honor and 
 obey their parents ; must, as instinct prompts, be 
 specially tender and helpful to one another. Such 
 is the ideal towards which the members of a fam- 
 ily must strive, under the limitations of common 
 sense and of a paramount obligation to God. For- 
 nication and adultery are denounced. Promises 
 and curses press towards the fulfilment of marital, 
 parental, and filial duties. 
 
 The family is practically universal in the 
 world. Its bonds are looser in some places than 
 in others, but everywhere society is distributed 
 into those little social islands which we call fami- 
 lies. Everywhere the common law, and statute 
 
284 TJNIVERSAI. BELIEFS. 
 
 law also if such exists, demand marital fidelity. 
 Adultery is disgraceful and punishable — often 
 punished with the utmost severity. Both laws 
 and public opinion hold parents bound to cherish 
 and provide for their children till they are able to 
 care for themselves. On the other hand, children 
 are subjected to their parents, whom they are 
 bound to love and honor as well as obey. As we 
 gaze backward through the historic centuries we 
 find these fundamental laws existing in all bar- 
 barous as well as civilized countries. Sometimes 
 relaxations are made in favor of the powerful, 
 various modifications arise from the weakness or 
 depravity of the times; but through all the fog of 
 disturbing and distracting forces we see the deep- 
 est convictions of mankind trying to point in the 
 direction of family purity, family government, and 
 family love — as the needle, subject to various dis- 
 tractions, is always found struggling towards the 
 pole. Communism is plainly not the natural law 
 of mankind, if it is of the brutes. 
 
 Does the moral sense of mankind echo its 
 creeds, laws, and customs? It is not unnatural 
 to suppose that these grew out of the human con- 
 science, or, what practically comes to the same 
 thing, out of the easy perception on the part of all 
 men that society could not long stand the strain 
 of the opposite household principles. 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 285 
 
 But let US see how the individual would be af- 
 fected by showing him in the concrete, a full-blown 
 specimen of disregard of what we have called the 
 family duties. Here he is — a communist in the 
 grossest sense, a scoffer at the sanctity of all 
 family ties, from the beginning a disobedient 
 son, disrespectful, turbulent, rebellious, defiant, 
 a household tempest — all without provocation, and 
 even against a most wise and tender parentage. 
 Then, breaking away from the home which he has 
 made wretched, he gives himself up to the brute 
 within him. He turns seducer. He ruins inno- 
 cence as widely as he can. He descends to her 
 whose guests are in the depths of hell. There is 
 no paradise of purity and honor which he is not 
 ready to break into and desolate. At last he has 
 the effrontery to ask some woman to be his wife; 
 and, such is the supreme insanity of even some 
 good women, she consents. Poor creature! Can 
 the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his 
 spots? The spots grow larger on that spotted 
 man. Fornication is exchanged for adultery. 
 The new ties go the way of the old ones — into the 
 ditch. His home is drenched in tears and shame. 
 His children come into the world blotched and 
 scarred with his vices. Alas! 
 
 Now let us capture this brute with his whole 
 history, and carry him about the world for exhibi- 
 
286 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 tion as a showman might some monster. What 
 would the world say to him ? Where is the com- 
 munity, in this age or in any other, that would 
 want him for a citizen, where the family that 
 would want him for a member or a guest ? What 
 husband or father or brother whose secret heart 
 would not declare war against him ? As to such 
 a man being morally approved by any intelligent 
 person between the poles and this side of the 
 judgment (always excepting reprobates and "phi- 
 losophers "), the idea is preposterous. He sees at 
 a glance that if society should come to be made 
 up of such people it would not be " a little heaven 
 below. ' ' 
 
 The general condemnation would be empha- 
 sized if we could show by the side of that rotten 
 man his moral opposite. Well, here he is — taken 
 at random from thousands of Christian saints 
 whose names are not in the calendar. And we 
 beg pardon of the white-hearted and white-hand- 
 ed man for standing him up, though it be but 
 for comparison sake, by the side of such a thor- 
 ough-paced scoundrel of a Nubian. Now look at 
 these two men whose different habits and histo- 
 ries are written even in their faces — look, we say, 
 thou Hottentot, thou Patagonian, thou old Ac- 
 cadian or present Mormon! Nothing to choose 
 between them ? The one as praiseworthy as the 
 
MAIN ETHICS. 287 
 
 Other — that monster of which the world cannot 
 have too little, and this saint of which it cannot 
 have too much; that rotten man whose stench 
 perhaps crosses continents and oceans and centu- 
 ries, and this clean man, this healthy soul, this 
 incarnate sanitary commission whose breath 
 sweetens every breeze that passes him, this man 
 from whose eye chastity herself looks forth with 
 the majesty of a queen or a goddess, this man 
 whose very thoughts are whiter than snow! No, 
 human nature was too soundly built for that. 
 The space between Scipio the continent and Ap- 
 pius the decemvir was no trifle, and was easily 
 noted by the old Romans: that between our two 
 specimen men (neither of whom is an imaginary 
 character) is planetary, and visible by all man- 
 kind. For we make no account of a few repro- 
 bates and "philosophers." Mankind at large 
 can easily see that a world overrun with such men 
 as Sextus Tarquinius would be too unclean to be 
 inhabitable until swept with the besom of de- 
 struction. 
 
 XV. IMPENITENCE. 
 
 That one who has done wrong ought to be 
 sorry and to amend is a piece of knowledge uni- 
 versally possessed. The Bible demands repent- 
 ance as a condition of forgiveness. So do all re- 
 
238 trNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 ligions. Some count that to be sinful which oth- 
 ers do not; but they all agree that whatever is 
 sinful should be regretted and put away. For ex- 
 ample, those particulars of character and conduct 
 considered in this chapter. All creeds and na- 
 tions say that these things are wrong — which is 
 the same thing as saying that they ought to be 
 hated, regretted, and forsaken. Show them a 
 man practising them all, and yet looking back on 
 his practice with positive satisfaction, and forward 
 with a resolute determination to repeat the sins 
 with even greater force, and they would consider 
 him as adding a new sin to his list. Would not 
 any man consider an offence against himself as ag- 
 gravated by a like impenitent attitude? He might 
 feel able to pardon the penitent offender without 
 much difficulty; but if he saw the sinner to be 
 altogether without compunction and bent on re- 
 peating the injury without limit, he would find 
 the difl&culty greatly increased. 
 
XI. REALIZATION. 
 
 19 
 
Ov ravrhv euhg tficdverat ruv npayfjArov TrpoffoOev ovrav lyyiiOsv 
 S' hpufdvLAl. EURIPIDES. 
 
 The appearance of things is not tlie same when seen far 
 off and close at hand. 
 
 Heu miseri ! bona qui quserunt sibi semper et optant, 
 Divinam tamen banc communem et denique legem, 
 Nee spectare oculis, nee fando attendere curant. 
 
 CLEANTHES. 
 
 Wretched people ! who are always desiring and seeking 
 goods, but are at no pains to, as it were, see with their eyes 
 and hear with their ears that primary divine truth which is 
 common to all mankind. 
 
 For he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. 
 
 ST. PAUL. 
 
REALIZATION. 29I 
 
 XL REALIZATION. 
 
 Let us inquire what would happen if men 
 would duly ponder, and so come to realize to them- 
 selves, the great elementary religious truths com- 
 mon to all nations and ages and creeds. 
 
 Of course it would ennoble the whole strain 
 of their thoughts and feelings. Dealing with 
 great ideas tends to give breadth to our whole 
 spiritual nature. If a man wants to make him- 
 self little — his understanding, his will, his heart — 
 let him confine his attention to little objects; let 
 his thoughts travel over and over perpetually 
 some narrow round of trifling ideas and occupa- 
 tions. A Newton could become a child under 
 such a process. On the other hand, the child 
 tends to become a Newton under that process re- 
 versed. The great thoughts gradually crowd out- 
 ward the narrow boundaries of the understanding; 
 the great conceptions gradually expand the mind 
 in the direction of great resolves and great emo- 
 tions. So the frontiers are pushed abroad in every 
 direction, and the pigmy at last becomes, it may 
 be, a giant. 
 
 Now no man in his senses will deny the great- 
 
292 UNIVERSAI. BELIEFS. 
 
 ness and majesty of those primary religious ideas 
 which we have found to be practically universal 
 in the world. Take, for example, the idea of 
 human immortality. Is it a fact that we are im- 
 mortal beings — not some of us, but all of us; 
 not the worthiest and finest human natures only, 
 but the unworthiest and coarsest as well ? What 
 really make humanity — the souls that quicken 
 and reign in these countless man-forms the world 
 over — are started forth on a long, long career, 
 one so long that its end cannot be descried from 
 any summit that the universe contains. It sweeps 
 away beyond the traditional threescore and ten. 
 It sweeps away beyond the remotest hearse, fu- 
 neral, and sepulchre. It sweeps away beyond 
 centuries, beyond the lifetime of nations, beyond 
 the lifetime of dispensations and chronologies and 
 astronomies. It crosses the whole breadth of an 
 eternity to come. This is not a dream, vague 
 and illusory, that visits the couch of the restless 
 sleeper. It is not an idle fancy with which poets 
 and theorists have seen fit to embellish their 
 works. Among the many fables that have come 
 down to us under the name of history or philoso- 
 phy or science is not to be reckoned the world- 
 wide doctrine — man lives for evet. It \sfact. 
 
 And one of the greatest of facts. This living 
 for ever is no trifle. This outlasting the stars and 
 
REALIZATION. 293 
 
 abysmal time itself is nothing less than an as- 
 tounding thing. Especially does it look at us, 
 the actual heirs of this prodigious inheritance, 
 with a face of inexpressible grandeur. Open your 
 eyes widely, O friend ! Voti will never die — you 
 who will soon be sick and buried and seen no 
 more, and who will be universally said to be 
 dead — jyou will never die. The ages will come 
 and go without end ; but as they come and as they 
 go they will always see you somewhere; not you 
 in ruins, not your remains, but the same living 
 and conscious being that you now are, without a 
 single break in the continuity of your existence 
 from the first. Is not this something to think of? 
 Does it not profoundly concern you ? Might you 
 not reasonably be counted insane if you should 
 toss this great fact aside among the rubbish of 
 your thoughts and forget it ? 
 
 But the great fact of human immortality is 
 only one of a group of kindred facts consented to 
 by all mankind. Put the great things together 
 and we have a group which, if duly considered 
 and realized to our thought as facts, cannot but go 
 far to moderate our sensibility to merely temporal 
 conditions and experiences. The , philosophers 
 have long told us that we lay too much stress on 
 such matters. Religious people had told us the. 
 same thing before. And if it is a fact, as all 
 
294 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 creeds afnrm, that there is a God above us, that 
 we are on our way to his judgment-seat, and that 
 our condition for an immortality will depend on 
 the characters we form and -the way in which we 
 behave during this life — then it is absurd for us 
 to feel towards the pains and the pleasures, the 
 successes and reverses, of this transient scene as 
 we are apt to do. Why, O friend, are you so 
 much depressed at mere worldly ill-success or so 
 elated at worldly good-success ? Why do you make 
 so much of worldly hardships and pains on the 
 one hand, and so much of worldly conveniences 
 and pleasures on the other ? Why are you so daz- 
 zled by mere earthly greatness and so scornful of 
 mere earthly littleness ? Small occasion have you 
 for it — as you will feel if you will only face reali- 
 zingly that mighty for ever of yours that is now 
 in the process of being saved or lost. What mat- 
 ter the ups and downs of this brief world in the 
 presence of the interminable next ? Of what ac- 
 count is riches or poverty, a throne or a huckster's 
 stall, renown or obscurity, to one so tremendously 
 circumstanced? He has only to confront as a 
 sinner an endangered everlasting and his pyra- 
 mid dwindles to a single grain of sand. It is now 
 easy for him to be a stoic. The sensibility that 
 used to flame so fiercely after these momentary 
 advantages of the present is quieted. These are 
 
REALIZATION. 295 
 
 not main things. They are the smallest of things 
 to such a being as himself — why should he make 
 much ado about these nothings ? 
 
 The same vivid conception of the endless ex- 
 istence to which we are destined (especially as 
 shone upon by the other universal beliefs that 
 have been dwelt upon) which goes to moderate 
 our naturally undue interest in merely temporal 
 matters goes to enhance our interest in all matters 
 specially related to the soul and its preparation 
 for the future. No creed supposes that the fate 
 of men after death will be determined by their 
 worldly fortunes. One may have the highest 
 place here and the lowest place there. I^azarus 
 and Dives may exchange places in changing 
 worlds. It is what we are as spiritual beings; it 
 is how we behave in whatever conditions here 
 befall us, which is universally supposed to deter- 
 mine what will be the allotments after death. 
 Forgiveness of sin must be had; a certain style of 
 character must be won; some scheme of duty must 
 be conscientiously walked by. This has always 
 been understood to be the essential stepping-stone 
 to final happiness. Now if in some way this fact 
 becomes intensely real to us; if the supreme Law- 
 giver, his government, his will, his judgment- 
 seat, his awards of eternal life and death accord- 
 ing to deeds done in the body, come and stand 
 
296 UNIVERSAL EEWErS. 
 
 before us as large as life, and lay hand upon us 
 and look with all their might into our startled 
 eyes — is it not plain what will happen ? While 
 the body and its concerns will retreat, the immor- 
 tal soul and its concerns will come to the front. 
 Duty, the favor of the Supreme, the methods of 
 gaining and preserving that favor, all possible 
 helps to these ends and to a penitent, conscien- 
 tious life, will seem of first-class consequence. 
 Instead of seeming as they do to most men — as 
 things to be postponed to everything else, things 
 to be set aside and sacrificed to almost any petty 
 convenience and mood — they will seem first things 
 instead of last, primaries instead of satellites, the 
 very substance and marrow of our welfare instead 
 of its refuse outermost parings. As the miser 
 gloats on the gleam of his gold, as the ambitious 
 man kindles at a vision of fames and thrones, as 
 a mourner fastens greedy eyes on the sacred gifts 
 and other mementoes of the dear departed, as the 
 enthusiastic artist or poet devours with rapt and 
 glowing face some vision of beauty in stone or 
 canvas or song, so, after having looked our won- 
 derful and inalienable dower of immortality in 
 the eye till it has magnetized us into sympathy 
 with itself, and that mighty hereafter, with its 
 universally recognized prerequisites and awards, 
 has come to seem to us as real as our own breath- 
 
REALIZATION. 29/ 
 
 ing, living, conscious selves, we turn to look at 
 the soul that is to occupy and consume those eter- 
 nal years, and at the penitent, conscientious living 
 here which alone prepares for that majestic life-: 
 time, and at everything fitted to help us in this 
 great preparation, it is with eager and hungry 
 eyes that see in them an inestimable value. 
 
 But we do not stop here. Realization means 
 work. A vivid sense of the supreme value of the 
 soul's interests naturally carries with it such solid 
 eflforts in their behalf as are not put forth for any- 
 thing else — efforts to know duty, efforts to resist 
 temptation, efforts to carry out in practice the 
 law written in the heart and in whatever sacred 
 oracles, efforts to lead a life that will bear the 
 scrutiny of an honest conscience and of a search- 
 ing judgment -day that may come to-morrow, 
 efforts to utilize whatever helps may exist for se- 
 curing such a life. Is prayer one of these helps? 
 Then I will watch unto prayer. Is public wor- 
 ship a help ? Then I will be at pains not to for- 
 sake the assembling in sanctuaries. Are sacred 
 days and sacred books helps ? Then I will sa- 
 credly keep and study them. Are the prayers 
 and counsels of others helps; also my own inter- 
 cessory prayers and counsels that react on myself? 
 Then I will both bespeak them and give them. 
 I will be very busy in seeking first the kingdom 
 
298 UNIVERSAI, BELIEFS. 
 
 of God and his righteousness, according to my 
 honest understanding of these things. I will be a 
 day-laborer at this if at nothing else. Trifles 
 shall not daunt me. I will not be afraid of dis- 
 comforts and sacrifices. Whatever crosses lie in 
 the way to crowns I will take up. For I have 
 not only consented to certain things, but I have 
 pondered them and pondered them till they have 
 come to seem real. The shadows have become 
 substance. Faith is turned to sight. The reli- 
 gious facts affirmed by all nations glow on my eye 
 with all the hues of life, and I behold them as I do 
 the mountains and stars. Beholding what a great, 
 great hereafter- awaits my own soul and what per- 
 ils threaten it, I not only take kindly the exer- 
 tions of friends in my behalf, but I proceed to sec- 
 ond those exertions with my own. If I see any 
 strait gate to be entered, I strive to enter it. If 
 any way of working out my own salvation with 
 fear and trembling presents itself, I at once set 
 myself to work. Realizing that the same great 
 endangered hereafter which belongs to me belongs 
 to every member of my family, I am thankful for 
 all judicious efforts in their behalf from any quar- 
 ter, but must decline to content myself with them; 
 I must myself labor with both hands to yoke the 
 saved immortalities of my children with my own. 
 Having come to be profoundly alive to the fact 
 
REALIZATION. 299 
 
 that my neighbors and countrymen and foreigners 
 to the world's ends are responsible beings on their 
 brief way to judgment and its eternal awards, I 
 not only justify various enterprises to enlighten 
 and rouse and save them, but I feel impelled by 
 the humane instinct to join these philanthropic 
 laborers with such working forces as I possess. I 
 too will give and pray and speak. How can I do 
 otherwise, having before me the absolute death- 
 lessness of every human being and his limited pro- 
 bation — not as an hypothesis, a mythology, a spec- 
 ulation, an opinion, but as a solid and pictured 
 reality that knocks in thunder at the gate of every 
 sense ! So it would be with every man, on Chris- 
 tian or on heathen ground, who, accepting the 
 doctrines of natural religion, should proceed to 
 clothe them with the flesh and blood of realizing 
 thought. 
 
 And this is the same thing as saying that a 
 vivid realization of what men have universally 
 believed in morals and religion would reconstruct 
 the whole plan and tenor of life of most people; 
 for with most people the religious truths which 
 they intellectually accept are scarcely more than 
 a shadow. They accept a God, but their lives 
 proceed as if there were no God. They admit 
 the supreme importance of the soul, but they live 
 almost exclusively for the body. They confess 
 
300 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 that men are sinful and responsible and endan- 
 gered, but they do not trouble themselves on that 
 account. They say that man is immortal,- but, to 
 look at them, one would think that death ends all. 
 They tell us that the present life is of no account 
 compared with the future, but we can see with 
 half an eye that their thoughts and zeal are main- 
 ly expended on things that wholly belong this 
 side of the grave; can see that the narrow present, 
 with its food, its dress, its houses, its shops, its 
 acres, its honors, its pleasures, is completely vic- 
 torious over their doctrine of another and endless 
 life. What is the matter? Why are the beliefs 
 so inoperative ? Is it because they are not genu- 
 ine? We may not say that, for we find the same 
 incongruity in cases of absolute knowledge — as 
 when men know to a dead certainty that they 
 may die at any moment and yet act as if assured 
 of life for years to come. No, let us grant that 
 these self-contradicting men really believe what 
 they say; but the truths they possess occupy only 
 the remote corners and backgrounds of thought. 
 They are distant, they are shadowed. Other ob- 
 jects intervene and supervene. The Lazarus lies 
 strengthless in his tomb; but roll away the stone, 
 bid the dead man come forth, unbind him and 
 take away the hiding wraps. Now look at him, 
 all ye startled bystanders ! See, he is an alto- 
 
REALIZATION. 301 
 
 gether difierent thing from what he was ! The 
 dead is plainly alive. What fires of expression 
 and force in eye and features ! He who lately 
 could do nothing can now do much. Now he can 
 go abroad among men and act upon them. It 
 would not be strange if by reason of him many 
 should go away and believe on Jesus. 
 
 Revitalize the dead truths of natural religion ; 
 bring them to the front and set them in the full 
 blaze of the sun; fasten steady, if startled, eyes 
 on the unmuffled and gigantic forms until you 
 have fully drunk in their hugeness and majesty, 
 and lo, you are new men ! The old could not 
 stand the revelation. The great facts which you 
 have vitalized have in return vitalized you. They 
 have looked you in the eye, have spoken to you 
 with potential voices, have roughly shaken you 
 and said, Up and live while you may, you who are 
 to live for ever! And you obey. New forces start 
 into being, and the old wheel about a full semi- 
 circle. A new character and way of living begin. 
 You are born again. You have at last come to 
 REALIZE that there is a worshipful God above us 
 who marks our ways, who hears our prayers, who 
 reveals his will, who will call us to account, who 
 has dowered us with immortality, who will pardon 
 our sins if repented of in this world, otherwise 
 never; and so you have made up your minds to 
 
303 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 live as if all these things are true. A heathen, 
 so influenced, would do the same. 
 
 Another result of realizing these truths would 
 be a profound conviction of the guilt and inexcu- 
 sableness of even the heathen ; for we would real- 
 ize how much light they have and might have, 
 and how much they might make of it. We would 
 Bay, Surely God is far from having left himself 
 without a witness, even at the ends of the earth 
 and in the darkest times. The people who know 
 of supreme Deity and his activity in human afiairs, 
 who recognize the use and obligation of prayer and 
 other forms of worship, to whom the great facts of 
 human responsibility and immortality are alpha- 
 betical, who understand the probationary character 
 of our present life and the possibility of pardon 
 for sinners through repentance and expiation, and 
 who know also the sinfulness of such things as 
 hostility or indifference to all religion, practical 
 atheism, unconscientiousness, selfishness, useless- 
 ness, ingratitude, returning evil for good, cruelty, 
 profanity, lying, stealing, impurity, and other of- 
 fences against both God and man — such people 
 can hardly be said to be poorly furnished with 
 the principles and rules of good living. Nay, 
 they are richly furnished. Whether by a prim- 
 itive divine revelation or by native insight, or 
 by both — somehow essential religious truth has 
 
REALIZATION. 303 
 
 come to their souls somewhat after the free and 
 impartial fashion in which air and light have 
 come to their bodies. The Decalogue has been 
 written into their hearts more deeply than it ever 
 was into tables of stone. To have so many just 
 views, to know so well what are sins and to see 
 such great motives against them, is to have great 
 light. 
 
 Do they use the light? Do they avoid the 
 sins ? Do they repent of them when committed ? 
 This is an appeal to actual observation and his- 
 tory, and one that brings a very unsatisfactory 
 answer. The account given in our Scriptures of 
 the moral condition of the old Canaanites applies 
 substantially to all the historic heathen peoples. 
 Paul's testimony as to what the best of them were 
 in his day agrees perfectly with the picture of the 
 Roman world as given in excavated Pompeii and 
 Herculaneum, in the satires of Persius and Juve- 
 nal, in the epigrams of Martial, and in the histo- 
 ries of Tacitus and Suetonius and Dion Cassius. 
 As to what the heathen now are, respectable trav- 
 ellers and Christian missionaries are sadly agreed. 
 The picture is a revolting one — the picture one 
 end of whose mighty canvas touches us and the 
 other Adam. The whole world lieth in wicked- 
 ness. All the generations have fallen. With the 
 overwhelming majority their religious knowledge 
 
304 UXIVERSAI. BEI.IEFS. 
 
 is practically uuinfluential. They neither avoid 
 known sins nor repent of them when committed. 
 Their theory is vastly better than their practice. 
 So Paul condemns them. So their own creeds and 
 governments condemn them. So they are con- 
 demned by just heaven. Doubtless they are never 
 condemned for things which they neither know 
 nor can know to be wrong. But, as we have seen, 
 their darkness is so riddled by the shafts of light, 
 they hold so much "truth in unrighteousness," 
 that there must be many counts in the indictment 
 against them at a judgment-day which they are 
 all expecting. Doubtless that day will go hard 
 with them. Extenuations may be pleaded, but ' 
 nothing more. More could be pleaded had the 
 law within them been written with invisible ink, 
 and then for the first time brought out to view by 
 the "fire that tries every man's work, of what 
 sort it is. ' ' But, since from the very beginning 
 that imperative Writing has been fiaming out to 
 all observers in every language under heaven, alike 
 in tropic heat and Arctic cold, we can only sadly 
 say, as does the Bible, ' ' Without EXCUSE. ' ' 
 
 Indeed, it may well be claimed that they 
 would be without excuse if they possessed only a 
 small part of their present religious knowledge — 
 say, if you please, knowledge of only a single 
 point of duty. For, if they would conscientiously 
 
REALIZATION. 305 
 
 do that one duty, that very act, according to both 
 Bible and natural law, would open to them door 
 after door of religious knowledge and attainment. 
 Conscientiousness would beget conscientiousness. 
 Light well used would lead to light. And so at 
 last all the religious essentials would be reached. 
 
 That this is the natural order of things does 
 not admit of question. It is a law of nature that 
 finite faculties of all sorts, from those of the hum- 
 blest plant up to those of man, strengthen by suit- 
 able use. Even the mosses and seaweeds must 
 flourish in the exercise of such active powers as 
 they possess. The unused limbs of the Hindoo 
 devotee, that once grew in size and power as he 
 wrought and walked like other people, began to 
 faiPfrom the day he set himself up by the wayside 
 as a motionless pillar, and now they are hardly 
 , more than sticks. ' ' Use eyes aud have them, ' ' 
 says the old adage as well as the eyeless fishes in 
 the great Kentucky cave. Give any one of your 
 senses nothing to do, and it will not only do noth- 
 ing, but will in time lose the power to do any- 
 thing. Organs can even be extirpated in the 
 course of generations by lack of use, or improved 
 to almost any extent by a long course of judicious 
 practice. So of the mental powers. If we want 
 our memories to grow strong we must entrust 
 them with something to keep — give them sonie- 
 
 Uiilveraal Ut-He's. 20 
 
3o6 , UNlVERSA.Iv BRUEFS. 
 
 tiling to do. We must practice at reasoning if we 
 would be good reasoners, at judging if we would 
 be good judges, at studying Nature if we would be 
 good scientists. 
 
 And the same law holds in religious matters. 
 Our conscientiousness and ability to perceive 
 moral and religious truth improve by use and 
 weaken by neglect. Experience shows that there 
 is no way of getting new light so sure and fruitful 
 as that of using the light we already have — no 
 way so sure to harden conscience and weaken its 
 power to discern between good and evil as that 
 of neglecting to obey the moral sense so far as it 
 has clearly spoken to us. Yonder man now de- 
 nies the fundamental principle of morals; and he 
 acts accordingly, so far as it seems safe to do so. 
 Has he always been in these depths of darkness 
 and profligacy? By no means. He has sunk 
 gradually in the process of abusing the light with 
 which he started in life. As a child his views 
 and feelings were quite different from what they 
 now are. But one day he smote his moral sense 
 squarely in the face. He did it again and again. 
 As fast as he advanced in sin so fast he retreated 
 from the primary religious truths, till at last they 
 all disappeared in the distance like so many ex- 
 piring stars; and his ignorance and his wickedness 
 became complete together. 
 
REALIZATION. 307 
 
 Another man reverses this process. He begins 
 near where the other leaves off— that is to say, 
 with hardly more than a single ray of light; so 
 bad are his heredity and early surroundings. But 
 at length he made a conscientious start in the way 
 of using his single ray. This led to other rays 
 and a more robust conscientiousness. So finally 
 the little became much. His consciousness beingf 
 witness, this was how it happened. He was like 
 a man so far within a cave that only a feeble 
 glimmer betrayed where it opened into day; but 
 he set his face towards the spark, he began to 
 move towards it; as he moved the light grew and 
 his step became quicker and firmer, until at last 
 he stands at the cave's mouth and sees the sun. 
 
 This is the natural way of all religious advance, 
 whether in knowledge or goodness. It is a very 
 reasonable way. Experience being witness, it is a 
 very successful way. And certainly it is the way 
 taught in the Bible. The Book gives us to un- 
 derstand that God, if need be, will come to the 
 help of natural law, and will see to it that the 
 light that is used shall be the light that grows. 
 To him that hath shall be given. Two talents 
 well employed shall become five. It is not the 
 largeness of our stewardship, but our good beha- 
 vior in it, that draws divine favors. Even as some 
 wealthy human father who sees his son managing 
 
30S ■UXIVl'.RSAT, BKI.IKI'S. 
 
 well a small capital will gladly put more into his 
 hands, so will do the wealthy Heavenly Father. 
 This is what he is said to have done to Cornelius. 
 The centurion was devout and exemplary on the 
 basis of very scanty knowledge; so God gave him 
 ampler capital. And God will treat other heath- 
 en in the same large way if they will conscien- 
 tiously set about the single duty which, by suppo- 
 sition, they happen to know. Infancy is the state 
 that specially needs help. What should we think 
 of a father who should decline to do anything for 
 his child till he had ceased to be a child ? That 
 sort of kindness that stands ready to help one just 
 as soon as he no longer needs help (a very com- 
 mon sort among men) is not of the most magnifi- 
 cent sort, nor is it such as we are taught to expect 
 from God. He does not despise the day of small 
 things. Instead of breaking the bruised reed and 
 quenching the smoking flax, he does all he can to 
 strengthen and kindle. He does not stand aloof 
 till the moral infant has become the full-grown 
 man, till the whisper has broadened into thunder, 
 till the snail-pace has quickened into the pace of 
 a giant or a planet; but, as every true friend does, 
 he steps in with his help when help is most need- 
 ed — at the rough and struggling beginnings of a 
 new life. He will tenderly support those -first 
 feeble steps in the narrow way. Nay, he will 
 
REALI2ATIOX. 309 
 
 take the lambs in his arms and carry them in his 
 bosom. He will do the best he can to cherish the 
 spark into flame, the dawn into day, the almost 
 death into vigorous life. Does he not run to meet 
 returning prodigals ? — will he not meet them afar 
 off, as far as China and the Antarctic ? In every 
 nation he that feareth God and worketh risfhteous- 
 ness (such as is known to him) is accepted. In 
 every land to do God's will (as far as known) is to 
 know of the doctrine. All over the world honest 
 beginners in the right way shall have doors opened 
 before them which no man can shut, and shall go 
 from strength to strength. To the upright, on 
 however small a scale, light shall arise in their 
 darkness, and they that are faithful in that which 
 is least will have an opportunity to be faithful 
 also in much, and will improve the opportunity. 
 
 This, then, is what we can be sure of in the 
 case of any heathen. [Supposing him to know 
 but a single duty, if he would conscientiously set 
 himself to perform that duty he would receive 
 light on other points, and the same conscientious- • 
 ness that led him to do right at first would lead 
 him to do right again ; then there would be a still 
 further increase of light followed by a still further 
 enlargement of obedience. So,, step by step, he 
 might come to almost any stage of knowledge and 
 virtue. 
 
3IO rNIVERSAt BELIEFS. 
 
 • Just as by entering a house by any one door 
 all of its many rooms become accessible, and will 
 in course of time actually be entered if permanent 
 residence is proposed, so whoever enters the king- 
 dom of God at a single point of duty acquires the 
 freedom of the whole palace, and in time will lib- 
 erally use his freedom. 
 
 And here, too, we have Ariadne's thread. 
 However far one may be in the mazes of the 
 dreadful labyrinth of error and sin, he has only to 
 draw on some single thread of duty and follow its 
 leadings carefully in order to find his way out 
 into light and safety. Many a man has escaped 
 something worse than a Minotaur in this way. 
 
 What is this but the common way of mount- 
 ing to high places by a flight of steps ? One is at 
 the base of the tower; but he wants to be at the 
 summit where the air is pure, where the light is 
 strong, and where the prospect is glorious. He 
 does not hope to pass the whole intervening space 
 at a leap; but he can easily pass it by a succession 
 of small upward movements. He has only to 
 mount the first brief step, and then the second 
 equally brief, and so on till the ascent is comple- 
 ted and his horizon is wonderfully enlarged. All 
 that is needed is a starting with a clear purpose 
 to advance as the way opens. And this is the 
 case of the heathen. All that they need in order 
 
REALIZATION. 311 
 
 to rise to heights of grace and illumination is to 
 take a single conscientious step in duty with an 
 honest purpose to advance as the way may open. 
 Is not a man inexcusable who will not do as much 
 as this ? 
 
 It is night. From the dark country a man is 
 groping his way to his city home. At length he 
 descries a single light and makes his way to it. 
 High on its pillar blazes the first street lamp. By 
 its aid he reads the neighborhood, takes his bear- 
 ings, and is able to advance to another lamp. So 
 one lamp introduces another, until finally he gets 
 safely to his home — his brilliantly illuminated 
 home that is waiting to receive him to all manner 
 of comfort and rest. Under the circumstances his 
 success was assured from the moment he began to 
 guide his steps by that first lamp. Further ad^vance 
 was provided for by the city authorities that had 
 graded and paved the streets, set up guide-boards 
 at all corners, sent out on their beats watchmen 
 who must answer all reasonable questions ; above 
 all, set up that cordon of flaming lamps at just in- 
 tervals. Time would be needed, open eyes would 
 be needed, patient and perhaps tiresome walking 
 would be needed; but he was now fully within 
 the embrace of a great system of aids which, sup- 
 posing in him a real disposition to use them, would 
 surely bring him to his destination. So any heath- 
 
312 UNIVERSAL BELIEFS. 
 
 en, starting out on a conscientious • course at any 
 one point of duty, will be sure to be brought on 
 homeward towards the heart of the great city of 
 truth. It may be in part by natural law ; it is sure 
 to be in part by the immediate agency of Him who 
 has said of himself, "Good and upright is the 
 Lord; therefore will he teach sinners in the way." 
 But by this means or by that, or by both, he who 
 seeks shall find, and he who knocks shall find 
 an open door. Must he knock as if with a bat- 
 tering-ram ? Must he call with an earthquaking 
 voice, as only some broad-chested Christian saint 
 can call ? Do not believe it. Sincerity will set 
 earth and heaven in motion for his help. This 
 we may confidently expect from Him who willeth 
 not that any should perish, who is Father enough 
 to be glad of an opportunity to befriend his chil- 
 dren. 
 
 I ask" again, Is not the heathen without excuse 
 who, knowing only a single point of duty, de- 
 clines to make even a beginning in the way of 
 conscientious living ?