^^'J. ^^/%4M£- 3^ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Vrs.^.rjuerl-c Cornell University Library BR 148 .D66 Smoke and the flame: a study in the deve olin 3 1924 029 223 703 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/details/cu31924029223703 THE SMOKE AND THE FLAME The Smoke and the Flame ^ Stutg in tfte JBEfaElopment of JReligton CHARLES F. DOLE Author of "The Coming People," "The American Citizen," "The Religion of a Gentleman " "The Theology of Ci'vilixation,^^ etc. BOSTON AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 1902 Befefcation TO THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO LOVE THE NOBLEST TRA- DITIONS AND MEMORIES OF THE PAST, AND WHO THERE- FORE ALL THE MORE RESOLUTELY SET THEIR FACES TOWARD THE GRAND TASKS OF THE PRESENT AGE AND THE SHINING IDEALS OF THE FUTURE. CONTENTS. Chapter Page The Introduction .... ix I. A Bit of History i II. The Work of Jesus 12 III. The Early Church 28 IV. The Return of Paganism . . 42 V. The Latent Flame 62 VI. The Outcome of Protestantism 83 VII. From Channing to Huxley VIII. The Things Outgrown . . IX. The Great Shibboleth . . X. The Religion of To day . . XI. The Problem of the Modern Church XII. The Church of Humanity . 98 no 127 138 160 174 THE INTRODUCTION. I HAVE wished in this little book to present, in a simple and popular form, and at the same time with some sug- gestiveness, I trust, for thoughtful read- ers, a sketch of the process of the growth of religion. I have tried to answer the perplexing question how it can be that the one word " religion " has covered the most repulsive as well as the most in- spiring facts of history, the grossest superstitions as well as the most ra- tional and exalted idealism. The history of religion has been a wonderful development, like the history of art, of science, of government. We cannot understand the religion of our own time, much less know what we ought practically to do with it, and to which side, party, or church we belong. ^ The Introduction unless we know something of the long world-processes through which religion has passed into its various modern forms. The clew to the general line of my thought is everywhere suggested in nature. Any useful plant or tree, — the vine, for example, — when first found in its wild state, is apt to yield sour or bit- ter fruit. Though all the possibilities of the most luscious grapes are wrapped up in the wild stock, yet they wait dor- mant. The soil must fit them ; they must have centuries of culture ; fortu- nate experiments must bring to light new and sweeter varieties of the vine. A constant interaction goes on between the outward conditions, or environment, and the developing grape nature. Now the development of the life of religion follows this familiar analogy. Religion, like all vital things, depends upon the interaction of outward condi- tions and its own native life forces. The Introduction xi There is something of the nature of re- ligion, for example, in the heart of a sav- age people, like the American Indians. But the Indian is confronted with the external world in its sombre and terrible aspects. His world seems to be ten- anted by obscure and dangerous powers of darkness and evil. Its mystery over- powers his mind. He has no science to reduce its warring forces to unity. He is surrounded by other savage people with whom he lives in fear. The brute and cruel outward world of dread and darkness reacts upon the savage's relig- ion, and helps to give it a wild and bitter flavor. In general, no high form of religion can possibly live in the midst of igno- rance and barbarism, or, if it can live so for a time, it can be for only the few, like some rare species of bird which occasionally finds its way in the short summer into the arctic zone. The character of religion varies with~tHe~ xii The Introduction degree of the intellectual enlightenment and the civilization of the people among whom it is found. The vital quality of a religion also reacts upon the civiliza- tion of an age or a people, and modifies its character. Science, commerce, the arts, liberty and just institutions, the means of human welfare, popular educa- tion, large friendly intercourse among nations and the civilizing spirit of co- operation, — all these conditions foster the life of religion ; and under all these conditions, as I shall hope to show, the reactive force of vital religion is the essential stimulus, without which they could not continue. We have here the secret of the study of comparative religions. We have the key to understand the singular differ- ences of the types of religion which have gone under the Christian name. We can unfold the historic processes through which Christianity, like all other religions, has passed and is still The Introduction xiii passing. We can examine the various kinds of environment to which it has been subject, and learn what climates and soils have acted upon it to its hurt or even to its destruction, and what other climatic conditions have tended to bring out its characteristic quality. We may discover periods when, to all appearanceSj unfavorable conditions weighed upon it like a polar night ; and other periods again, when the vital nature of the plant asserted itself, and burst forth into blossom and fruitage. We ought surely to read the history of religious experience to some practical purpose. We ought to learn better than men ever could know before out of what sort of moral climate and soil the fine flavor of genuine religion best comes to perfection. It must be obvious that the meaning of religion has immensely expanded in the course of its development. What else could you expect ? The meanings xiv The Introduction of all human terms are growing larger. Man's thought of the universe cannot therefore remain as it was before Coper- nicus and Darwin, The most noticeable fact in the thought of religion, as civilized men conceive it, is the effacement of the lines which once separated the world of nature from the supernatural world. Religion is no longer in a border or twilight land. It is true that the known and the visible always lose them- selves in the unknown and the invisible, as the ocean passes over the horizon beyond our sight. But the unknown and invisible are here and within us, — in the atoms of matter, in the fact of force, in the mystery of love, in the miracle of consciousness and life. And so, like- wise, the things which we most solidly believe in as real — force, order, intelli- gence, beauty, goodness, everywhere rising into manifestation wherever we open our eyes — have no border or The Introduction xv limit. Beyond our sight as here, they are everywhere to be depended upon and trusted. As a friend's face and smile, his words and action, reveal the person behind them, so the one divine person stands everywhere revealed in his uni- verse, in smiles and tears, in all great words, in all the deeds of love, in the solemn but glorious march of history. God is not outside of his world : he is always in it, the life behind all things which move. I may seem to some to speak in the language of what is coming to be known as " the monistic faith." I do not under- stand that the recognition of a certain twofoldness in nature is in the least in- compatible with this monistic thought. There is an outward world of things which we see and weigh and measure, — the world of phenomena which physical science contemplates. There is an in- ward world, quite as real as the other, in which honor, justice, mercy, faith. xvi The Introduction hope, love, are the immeasurable facts. I see no two worlds here, as if the one realm of values were opposed to the other. I only see two aspects of the same universe. The visible world represents and incarnates, as it were, the invisible reality. All that I ask in the name of the unitary conception is what Brown- ing says of the man and his body, — " Nor soul helps flesh more now than flesh helps soul." I suppose this was what Paul meant when he wrote that "all things work together for good " to them that love God. The outward and the inward thus constitute together a divine uni- verse. I used the word '* faith " in a former paragraph. The fact is that all religion and civilization, and science too, proceed by the means of faith, that is, trust or confidence. This is not blind or unin- telligent faith. It is the crowning gift The Introduction xvii of intelligence. The reason is always making its splendid leaps and ventures from the things which it sees and weighs over the border to the new things upon which it grapples, in order to bring them also into the unity of truth. It springs from the falling apple to the conception of moving worlds, from fire on the earth to the flames of Sirius, from the observation of certain weights and proportions to ideal atoms and molecules. It is faith which conceives that the world is orderly through and through ; it is faith that you can con- struct a Panama canal ; it is faith that the world moves on the lines of progress and betterment; it is faith that popular government can be made to work ; it is faith that men are capable of education and civilization. This is all of a piece with the faith in God. Why should we believe in all kinds of splendid pos- sibilities, except upon^ the strength of a faith that the universe itself- is -pledged to bring them to pass ? xviii The Introduction I wish to make it quite clear that the religion of civilized men must be almost wholly different from most of the forms which religion has taken in the past. Most religions have been characterized by the egoism and selfishness of their worshippers. In other words, they have been the religions of childish natures, who used religion as a supernatural means for getting advantage for them- selves. Sometimes, indeed, they have sought highly refined and spiritual forms of gain ; they have prided themselves upon hours of devotional ecstasy, when they have seemed to meet God face to face. They have imagined themselves God's favorites on the ground of these exceptional states of vision and personal communion. The history of religion shows that there is nothing so subtle as spiritual egotism. We proclaim a kind of religion which almost wholly alters the old emphasis and changes the earlier values. Its em- The Introduction xix phasis is not on what a man can get for himself : it is on what he can get as the member of a family of brothers; it is even more on what he can give and contribute toward the welfare of the whole household. The man has not caught sight of what life is who does not see the ideal of the City of God, the society of mankind, which he is set here to do his part in establishing. Distrust any form of religious emotion which seems to make you God's favor- ite, or to mark those who enjoy their particular ecstasy as " a peculiar people. '^ Religion has, indeed, many forms ; but it comprehends all mankind, and offers its best gifts without exclusion or special privilege to all men on equal terms. Its law is one, as we shall see : give your life, that all others may have the more life. Whoever catches the meaning of this deep law has the veritable religion. In one sense all this is very old. The few have enunciated it. It gleams out XX The Introduction of the Hves of the ancient teachers. Nevertheless, it is still for the most part new and unfamiliar. You cannot iden- tify it with any historical form of relig- ion. Very few conceive this to be the substance of Christianity. Most Chris- tians would define their religion in other terms. No great church has ever yet been organized to proclaim this new religion. Meanwhile, no one can easily exag- gerate the magnitude of the changes which are taking place in the religious life of the world. It is as if " all the fountains of the great deep were broken up." There is every reason why this should be so. The thought of the thinkers, for at least a hundred years, has been diverging from the standards of the old creeds. These creeds reflected the conditions of a kind of society which is now passing away. The early Christianity hardly differed more widely from the fomis of faith The Introduction xxi which it superseded than the faith of niodern men is coming to differ from the forms of historic and dogmatic Christianity. The charge may be urged that I have made too optimistic a conclusion to my work. I have not been forgetful at all of the tremendous considerations which urge men in their weaker and specially in their egotistic moods to become pes- simists. I have no pleasure in hearing those who tell us that pain does not exist, and bid us make light of bereave- ment. I know what it is to feel " the burden of the weary world." Indeed, I am profoundly impressed with the con- viction that a solemn law of cost is in the warp and woof of the universe, and that in some true sense, " like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord piti- eth"; in other words, that in the in- finite life there is an element of sorrow, without the presence of which love itself could not be complete. May it not be xxii The Introduction that in all noble suffering, as in the flights of joy, we participate in the life of God! The question of optimism seems to me to be simply the question of the reality of God. " If," as Paul says, " God be for us, who can be against us ? " Either the theistic faith lies at the very foundation of the world, or else the whole structure of life breaks off into insignificance. Either science and civ- ilization follow the line of intelligible, purposeful movement, or they have less meaning than the motes in the air. Either human laws, liberties, ethics and humanities are founded in an eternal order of righteousness, or else they are like the bubbles which children blow for sport. I cannot believe that the reason, inspired as it is to discover everywhere order, unity, and signifi- cance, can ever rest in anything less than the faith in an infinite and eternal reason and goodness. This may be a The Introduction xxiii solemn and serious faith ; but it is in- stinct with hope, both for the individual and for mankind. This hope grows as the man who possesses it grows more unselfish and generous. I am not ashamed that the study, the experience, and the thought involved in this little book ensue in such an optimism. The Smoke and the Flame. Chapter I. A BIT OF HISTORY. Let us journey back upon the wings of the imagination through nineteen centuries and visit ancient Jerusalem, as a pilgrim might have seen it in the age of Jesus. We will crowd through one of the narrow gates of the great city wall, and go straight to the temple, shining with polished columns and brass and gold. Herod's gigantic work of rebuild- ing it is still going on. The great space of the temple area is divided into courts. There is an outer court, across the inner limit of which no Gentile, or foreigner, may venture to pass. There is a court 1 The Smoke and the Flame for the women, where they must stay by themselves. The court for the men is separated by another barrier from the region of the high altar where the priests are ministering, clothed in gorgeous robes. There was always something going on in the temple. Men who had vows to perform came there with their unkempt beards and long hair. Parents to whom children had been recently born came to make their sacrifices and to bring gifts to the priests. Let us imagine that we have come upon some high feast day. There is chanting and weird music. The temple is full of smoke and incense. Fire is on the altars. The sacred light shines out from the splendid candlesticks. Suppose it is the day when the high priest in the stately dress of his office passes within the inner shrine, the Holy of Holies, to hold converse with God. Who could have failed at such a moment to feel A Bit of Histon^ 3 something of the solemn awe of the time and place ? WTio would not have been swayed b)' the impulse which moved the crowd to throw themseUes upon the ground in worship ? On the other hand, there are sights and smells here in tlie gorgeous temple which shock and sicken us. The great altar of sacrince, with its bloodv offer- ings, reminds us of a slaughter-house. What are these pens, full of lambs and kids and young cattle, and these cages of doves ? All tliese creatures are wait- ing to be sold as \ictims for the terrible altars. So much for a hast}- \-iew of the tem- ple worship, as Jesus must have seen it, when he first came as a boy with his parents to Jerusalem. It was spectacu- lar and hiCThlv sensational. It consisted in outward rites and ceremonies. Its characteristic note was exclusion. It was for Hebrews alone. All others were thrust out as aliens. It was the 4 The Smoke and the Flame religion of a dreadful and distant God_. who could be propitiated only by blood._ Common men must stand away from his shrine. It was a religion of priest- craft, caste, and superstitions. The men of one tribe only could serve iri i4;s~ temple. And this temple was the one place in all the earth where the ritual of this religion could be celebrated. The religion of the temple was a local relig- ion. Its law forbade the erection of a temple elsewhere. We must now leave the temple, and descend through narrow streets into the town, and inquire our way to the near- est synagogue. It is nearly as plain as a modern Quaker meeting-house. If we come here on a Sabbath day, we shall find the simplest kind of religious service. There is no priest ; there is no altar nor sacrifice. Some one, not a priest, but a layman, will read from one of the precious rolls of the law. The people will join in the prayers. Any A Bit of History 5 one of suitable age and character may address the meeting. This synagogue is one of a considerable number in dif- ferent parts of the city. There are meeting places just like it in every town and village where Jews live throughout the Roman world. _ _ The fact is, the Hebrew people had done precisely what we should do, if by some strange law, we were forbidden to build more than a single church in the United States, and if the regular priests or ministers had to be always in attend- ance at that one central cathedral in New York or Washington. We should have to give up church-going except on special occasions, and we should have to furnish some other simpler arrangement to meet our religious needs. So these Hebrew people, mostly coming to Jeru- salem on great festal occasions, had built up for themselves what was prac- tically another kind of religion. Where- ever there were a handful of families, 6 The Smoke and the Flame they met on their Sabbath day, partly for the sake of good morals and instruc- tion in righteousness, partly because they felt deep religious needs which they wanted to express. They chose their own leaders, they appointed teachers, they sent their children to learn to read in the synagogue schools, they brought contributions for the sup- port of their synagogues, and they pro- vided for the poor. Thus it came to pass that two quite different kinds of religion were observed by the same people and within the same city. It was almost as if you imagined Quakers in Rome holding their meet- ings every Sunday and at the same time remaining good and regular mem- bers of the Roman Catholic Church, — on one day discussing the observance of the Golden Rule with their hats on in the meeting-house, and on the next day carrying presents to the priests at St. Peter's and hearing mass. No one A Bit of History 7 seems to have seen any incongruity between the aristocratic and sensational rites of the temple and the democratic and ethical teachings of the synagogue. In fact, every one in the synagogue was taught to obey the priests, to keep the feast days, and to perform the required rites. Even Jesus seems not to have cared to quarrel with the priestly relig- ion or ever to have withdrawn his own allegiance, as a good Jew, from the temple ritual. Moreover, these two types of religion had gone on side by side for many gen- erations. Read the stories in the Books of Kings, view the pictures that Ezekiel draws^ as Fate as the ^ginning of the captivity in Babylon, and you will catch some'dim sense of the hideous barbarity of the early priestly religion in Judea. Human sacrifices were offered at the altars. Disgraceful orgies were wit- nessed within the ancient temple area. The religion of the Hebrew temple 8 The Smoke and the Flame evidently went back to the same cruel and savage beginnings as the religions of Nineveh, of Sidon, of Mexico. Do_ we think the scenes of animal sacrifice brutal which Jesus and his disciples looked on ? But we forget what it had cost long before their time to pull down the time-honored Astarte poles on all the sacred hill-tops, to put a stop for- ever to human sacrifice, to clear the hideous idols from the temple, to se- cure purity of life on the part of the priests. The struggle for these ends had lasted through many centuries. The story of the civilizing of the He- brew religion is one of the most mem- orable incidents in human progress. We can only refer here to a single phase of it. In the eighth_ century before Christ there had arisen a group of men, among whom the names of Isaiah and Amos stand forever conspicuous, who practi- cally taught that the religion of the A Bit of History 9 priests and the temple was needless. What need had " the God of the whole earth " of burnt-offerincrs and sacrifices ? These great pioneers spoke in the lan- guage of a universal religion. They introduced the use of the word " Father " by which to name God. " Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth" (Ps. ciii. 13). " Have we not all one Father ? Hath not one God created us.''" (Mai. ii. 10.) They reduced the practice of religion to its simplest and most ethical terms. " What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mxcrcy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? '' (Mic. vi. 8.) This high ethical sense rose out of a marvellous spiritual insight, as in Ps. cxxxix. 7 : " Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? " Is it not clear that the men who had learned to use and repeat such teachings as these, while they might indeed continue to visit the temple and lo The Smoke and the Flame obediently bring their gifts for the priests, had ceased to feel any special need of priests or altars or temples ? The religion of the prophets — which is also the religion of the best of the Psalms, and which is found again in certain splendid passages in Ecclesias- ticus and The Wisdom of Solomon — not only worked to civilize the hitherto savage temple ritual, but it also made the synagogue possible. In a very real sense the earliest spiritual religion was perpetuated in the synagogue. It is true that the religion of the synagogue was often formal and lifeless. It fell into the hands of a very punctilious Pharisee class, " the respectables " of their day. But it was by all odds the highest type of organized religion that the world had ever seen. We must never forget that Jesus owed to it his own acquaintance with the loftiest teachings of the prophets. Its Pharisees were not all hypocrites. Hillel, Gama- A Bit of History 1 1 liel, Nicodemus,* Nathaniel, Paul him- self, were its genuine fruits. Christianity was its child. The movement which Jesus led was the natural outgrowth of tlie freeand democratic spirit in the old Judaism, bursting through the weakened shell of the aristocratic and pagan relig- ion of the temple. * If we take the names of Nicodemus and Nathaniel to represent only literary portraits, the fact remains that such ideal characters appear to have been drawn from the life of the times. Chapter II. THE WORK OF JESUS. What did Jesus do for the world r What was his specific work which after nearly two thousand years still justifies the gratitude and affection of mankind ? I can best answer this question by a homely illustration. Every one has seen a fire smouldering under green fuel. The fire itself is hardly visible through the dense, pitchy smoke that fills the air. But now, as you watch, you will see here and there little tongues of flame appear, more or less mingled with the smoke, and repeatedly drowned out by it, as if the smoke hated its own flame and were trying to subdue it. Wher- ever a tongue of flame is, there heat remains and tends to blaze again, and bright coals glow under the surface. The Work of Jesus 13 At last one sees somewhere in the pile a great clear, pure, white flame for the moment at least overcoming the black smoke and standing out in sharp con- trast against it. Here is our parable of the beginnings of religion in the world. The native, childish, barbarous human nature is the dense green fuel, which will not and cannot at once blaze. The fire is the divine heat in the soul of man. It is very little at first : it seems to struggle to find expression. Its early expression is like the smoke, — dark, chaotic, in- effective, even repulsive. The smoke is the religion of superstition, of priestcraft, idolatry, and base orgies. It goes off into spectacular show and sensualism. It is essentially selfish, and it lends itself to the use of tyranny. In short, the smoke in our figure stands for the as- pect of man's religion in the time of his barbarism. How could the religion of childish or savage or selfish men ever 14 The Smoke and the Flame have burned with the pure white light of good will and truth ? The tongues of flame which appear from time to time out of the smoke and then die away, are the good lives of early men into whose pure hearts the divine wisdom had entered, making them, in the words of the ancient writer, "friends of God and prophets." These men were in advance of their times, but they always blazed the way which after times should follow. Jesus' life is like the great clear flame which at last shone out to make plain to every one the real nature of fire. Henceforth it was certain that true fire was flame and not smoke, light and not blackness, beauti- ful and not dreadful, that its use was not to hurt or kill, but to bless men. As Amiel has well stated, it must forever remain impossible to reconstruct or write Jesus' life. No one can be quite certain just what things he said and did. It is inconceivable that more The Work of Jesus 15 or less should not have been added to the current stories about him, while they were in the formative period. No one can tell what or how much material may have been added. This fact in our age is no longer of any special impor- tance. No truth, in the modern man's thought, depends upon a precise answer to the question : Who first uttered this truth ? Nevertheless, it is not difficult to make a sketch of Jesus' personality, as of some noble figure seen at a dis- tance, and especially to discover quite clearly the emphasis of his teachings. The fact is, Jesus' great teachings, to which he gave his life, are astonishingly simple. He taught an age which still stood in fear of the unknown Powers that the essential nature of God was goodness. The truest of all the names for God was "the Father." He sur- charged this name, used by earlier men, with new meaning, never to be forgot- ten. He taught and practised the most 1 6 The Smoke and the Flame direct access to this good God. You needed no priest nor temple nor any- kind of mediation. God was as near to man in the privacy of his chamber as he was in the Holy of Holies. He was better pleased with the prayer of the humble publican than with the elaborate words of the conventional Pharisee. He did not indeed need that men should tell him what things they wanted. Was he not forever seeking the welfare of his children ? So far as we know, Jesus uttered no direct word against the elaborate ma- chinery of the temple sacrifices. But what he taught made priests useless. The sole thing that hindered any man from enjoying peace with God was his own wrong-doing. Let a man, then, cease to do wrong, and begin to do right. Let him quite put away anger or greed, and begin to show good will. The life of God was made perfect in The Work of Jesus 17 love, or, better, good will.* Let man, God's child, enter into the life of the father, and share his good will. The essence of all Jesus' teaching seems to have consisted in bringing men to an active and efficient sense of the com- mon humanity. To feel humanely toward men, and especially to act hu- manely, as if all were members of one family, was the heart of his religion. There were already gleams of this dem- ocratic conception of humanity in the prophetic religion. Thus we recall the beautiful story of the treatment of the Syrian army in 1 Kings vi., and also the remarkable teachings of mercy in the Book of Jonah. The parable of the Good Samaritan is all the more interesting for these foregleams which led the way to it. In Jesus' time, as now, men asked *I prefer the use of the words "goodwill" to "love." We canshow good will at all times and to all persons, but we cannot love at will. For love properly implies intimacy, approval, and warmth of a£fection. Love is good will in its highest form. It is better to keep the word for this more sacred use. 1 8 The Smoke and the Flame what happiness was. Most men imag- ined it to consist in all sorts of acquisi- tions and possessions, in having riches and servants, and honors and titles. Some one of Jesus' biographers, if not Jesus himself, happily gathered into " the beatitudes," as into a string of pearls, the wisdom of all the centuries. It would seem as if these words were Jesus' favorite quotations and thoughts. In this remarkable summary, happiness is riiade to consist in modesty and in gentleness ; that is, in a kind and friendly heart. Happiness is not with the warriors, but with the peacemakers. Happiness is with those who forgive their enemies ; that is, who have no ene- mies. Happiness is in a hunger and thirst to be true and just. The heights of happiness are for those who have known sorrow and suffering. Other men had said such things, and the world had forgotten. Jesus and his friends said them, so that henceforth The Work of Jesus 19 children should learn them at their mother's knees. They were the proph- ecy of a new order of humanity. In the common religion of Jesus' day as in the religion of multitudes novv? there were splendid ideals : men knew well enough what was right. You can- not find in literature more humane com- mandments than were embodied in the Hebrew books. There is no nobler form of the Golden Rule than that con- tained in the Book of Leviticus, xix. 18. The " lawyer " who questioned Jesus according to Luke's version summed up the substance of religion in the most masterly manner ever conceived in the two everlasting sentences concerning love to God and love to man. There was never any counsel of perfection more spiritual than the familiar tenth commandment. Whoever learned to obey that rule might be allowed to for- get all the others. Why was it that, while men knew these fine words, they 20 The Smoke and the Flame went on almost as if they had never heard them? The trouble was, first, that they did not see the relative values of things ; and, secondly, that they made no habitual connection between their ideals and their conduct. They had a sense that justice was good, but they were equally certain that money was good. They made a habit of seeking money, but they made no such habit of doing justice. Social purity had its value for them, but all sorts of pleasures also fas- cinated them. They knew that truth was good, but few of them knew how good it was. Men lacked the habit of following truth and telling the truth, as they habitually followed their pleasure. The values of the body and the senses were all compared together in their minds, indiscriminately, with moral or spiritual values, like so many bright coins in the hands of a child, who, if he chooses at all, is more likely to take the big bright copper than the smaller piece of gold. The Work of Jesus 21 Now Jesus was a Master in the science of values. He taught that the moral values — truth, the pure heart, righteousness, love — were not merely so many desirable things which one might take if they fell to him, or go without if they cost too much trouble, but these things were of an infinite worth. How precious is justice? No amount of wealth will cover its value. At what point does it cease to be prof- itable to remain true to one's nobler self, to one's friends or one's country.? He who asks this question does not know yet what love or truth is. With Jesus these things belonged in an in- finite realm, of which all visible values were merely symbols. Jesus believed that man has a divine or infinite nat- ure. You could assess the value of an ox or a sheep, but you could not possibly fix the value of a man's soul. Is not all hope of immortality — indeed, all rational ground of expecting human 22 The Smoke and the Flame progress in this world — profoundly involved in this faith which Jesus had in the infinite possibilities of growth and attainment wrapped up in the nature of man ? How much has Jesus' life been worth to mankind? The world has never been able to set a limit to its value.. But Jesus knew that whatever precious thing his life con- tained was also in the common nature which he shared. He was utterly democratic in his thought and life. Jesus' teaching culminated in the idea that the happy life is measured not by its income, but by its outgo. " It is more blessed " — that is, more happy, he says — " to give than to receive." I do not like to call this ' altruism," much less to think of it as a doctrine of sacrifice. What Jesus teaches here is not the necessity of the loss of life so much as a certain wonderful doc- trine about the nature, quality, and fulness of life. Whether consciously The Work of Jesus 23 or not, he had reached the most pro- found truth in philosophy. Life, in- deed, is in a ceaseless rhythm of income and outgo; but the ictus of this rhythm undoubtedly must be upon the outgo, or expression. The outgo is not for the sake of the income, but the income is for the sake of the outsro. We do not live to eat, but we eat to live. The greatest of all delights is to turn on and exercise power, skill, art, intelligence, and, most of all, good will or love. Jesus' thought of the love of God was like the sunshine which pours itself out everywhere and upon all. The life of man, God's child, must therefore likewise pour itself out. If, in man's case, the light is only got by reflection, man's joy still is, like God's, not to absorb it, but to make it shine. When a man sees this, he has the secret of life. When all men catch this thought you have perfect, efficient, and joyous human society. But to see this 24 The Smoke and the Flame and to do what this idea demands is not sacrifice : it is freedom. Or, if it ever seems to be sacrifice, it is the kind of sacrifice which the child learns who chooses on occasion to forego his play and to help his mother in her work. For the moment this seems to be sac- rifice, but it is presently discovered to be a peculiar and lasting form of gain. It has been said that the most char- acteristic thing in Christianity is the strange word that " whosoever would save his life must lose it." In other words, we must " die to live." But this is only an extreme form of the doctrine that human life belongs to the realm of the infinite and eternal, and has an in- finite value. The man of honor or in- tegrity knows what Jesus means; the patriot knows; the lover of truth, the real man of science, knows. Who of us is so mean as never to catch sight of the things for which, if ever the issue arose, we would willingly die ? No one knows The Work of Jesus 25 life at its best who does not carry a wiUing heart to face death. In a true sense we " die daily " ; that is, we spend constant physical cost to secure the things for which all physical terms are symbols or counters. Does not biology teach us that life itself proceeds by ever- lasting death and rebirth ? Jesus' death set the seal of genuineness to his faith in this solemn and yet majestic teaching. It is not important, as I have already suggested, to try to satisfy the question as to how far Jesus was original. The question is insoluble. There is not an item of thought which is not universal. In other words, just because it is true, men everywhere are capable of recog- nizing it. In fact, no man ever catches a truth who does not see it originally, that is, with his own mind, as each man sees a star with his own eyes, as if no one else had ever seen it. Jesus was like one who, climbing, had come to where he could see sun and sky and i6 The Smoke and the Flame stars. Come, he said, stand with me, and see for yourselves. His highest and most spiritual doctrine was there- fore thoroughly democratic. His most intimate friends were men whom the world called common. It was the se- cret of his originality that, with his great thoughts, he cared to talk with all kinds and conditions of men, and of women, too. He simply ignored the lines of caste and privilege. Jesus' relation to the older worship of the temple rather surprises us. It is hard to see what use he could have had for it. But he never broke with it nor antagonized it. He seems to have per- foiTned its prescribed rites as a good Jew. His attitude toward it was like that of the early reformers toward the Church of Rome. They were not im- mediately ready to say that the altars and the candles had better be abolished, and the priests set to more useful work in behalf of humanity.' So Jesus, who The Work of Jesus 27 could not bear to see cattle bought and sold within the temple, seems not to have been offended at seeing the same creatures slain as victims in the temple. Was he not approaching the point where, if they had not put him to death, he would have been obliged to take a stand against the whole time-honored system of superstition and priestcraft? Certain it is that Jesus' own religion, inward, spiritual, ethical, finding the presence of God on the sea and in the fields and among the mountains, seek- ing its expression in all beneficent and beautiful works of humanity, summing up its prayers in the words, " Thy will be done," was at least as different from the spectacular religion of Annas and Caiaphas as the religion of the Pilgrims at Plymouth differed from the religion of the mediaeval popes. Chapter III. THE EARLY CHURCH. There is no evidence that Jesus ex- pected to found a new religion. He undoubtedly had his face toward a new and more just order of human society. But aside from a few passages in the New Testament, which might easily have been added to the collection of his sayings after his death, there is nothing to prove that he instituted an organiza- tion with forms and rites. He used the synagogue as he used the temple. He taught, after the ancient fashion of the East, wherever people cared to listen, by the seashore or by the wayside, or as men sat at table after a feast. Even in the story of his trial no charge appears that he was setting up a new religion, so closely had his teaching followed in The Early Church 29 the lines of accepted and even familiar religious thought. Other rabbis knew these things. Jesus was ablaze with them. Others saw them and lost them again, very much as a dealer in old books might mislay certain of his most precious volumes through his ignorance of their value. But Jesus saw what things were central and essential, and kept them in the front. His religion must have seemed to him too simple, too practical, too open and popular, to need organiza- tion. Let every one tell it. Let every one practise it. What more could you ask } But Jesus' death precipitated a change. For one thing, it pressed Jesus' friends or disciples close together, and set them apart from others in a peculiar and tragic manner. People pointed to them as " those people who had been with Jesus." Moreover, the strange stories about Jesus' resurrection undoubtedly gave 30 The Smoke and the Flame to Jesus a new elevation in the eyes of those who credited them. It is not my purpose here to inquire into the possible origin of these stories. It is well known that the history of religion is full of the belief that from time to time the dead have reappeared as alive. Everything goes to show that the Jewish popular mind in Jesus' time was quite suscep- tible to this sort of faith. The sacred Hebrew books contained the account of various appearances from the realm of spirits. Jesus' contemporaries com- monly believed in the activities of both angelic and demoniac agencies. In fact, as regards the expectation of and belief in marvellous cures and other startling possibilities the history of Jesus' time strikingly reminds us of a whole range of alleged " psychic " facts and experi- ences reported by many persons to-day. A phase or sect of religion is growing up under our eyes based wholly on the faith in just such an order of things as The Early Church 31 constitute the miraculous features of the New Testament. No thoughtful person can consistently explain the one set of phenomena without throwing light upon the explanation of the other set. The same occurrences in both groups, which appear to certain minds highly impor- tant, seem to other minds somewhat un- spiritual, while to others still they only represent an underlying general law that religion in the best sense means health and fulness of life. The body tends to respond to a happy and restful state of mind or soul. Aside from theories and speculations, it is certain that the stories of Jesus' cures of the sick, of his quieting those " possessed with demons " (as the men of that time called the insane), and, finally, of his own reappearances after his death *' rapidly went toward the crystal- • It is to be remarked that there is nothing in the stories of Jesus' resurrection that can be construed to the modem mind strictly as evidence or demonstration. Thus it is only the friends of Jesus who profess to have seen him after his death. It is related in Matthew xxvii. 52, 53, that at the hour of his death " many bodies of the saints . . . were raised," who after .Jesus' resurrection appeared to many. Paul 32 The Smoke and the Flame lization of the new religion. Here was one, people said, who held the super- natural powers in his hands, and whom death could not subdue. There began at once to be a separation between those who credited these wonderful stories about Jesus and those who set them aside. More profoundly yet, Jesus' life had kindled the faith in God in common men's souls. His passion for righteous- ness, his sense of brotherhood, his high hope and enthusiasm, had lifted the temperature of the very ordinary human nature of the men who followed him — Peter, and John and the rest — to the point of flame. This is the quality of fire. It not only blazes, but it makes others blaze too. Presently, we have groups of people meeting together, partly for the commemoration of the naively claims that his vision of the risen Master, months after he had ascended to heaven, was quite as valid as the reports of those who were said to have eaten with him and even touched his body, while after his resurrection, he was with them in the fiesh. The Early Church 23 good master, partly for purely friendly and social purposes, partly in a glad new- hope of the coming kingdom of good- ness upon the earth. These little meet- ings were the beginning of what the world has known as the Christian Church. They did not even bear any distinctive name at first, and when a name was given them it seems to have been at first a word of contempt. They did not think of calling themselves by Jesus' name; but their opponents, who ridiculed the claim that the crucified Jesus was the expected Jewish Messiah or deliverer (in Greek, Christos), named them Christians, almost like the mod- ern word " Salvationists." The fact of bearing a somewhat odious name doubt- less served still further to separate the new party from their fellows. They spoke themselves of their faith as the " Way." Let us try in imagination to visit one of the early church gatherings. We 34 The Smoke and the Flame will go to the famous and rich commer- cial city of Corinth, where Paul has just collected a little congregation. We shall most likely find this church meeting in some upper room — perhaps in a sail- loft — in the poorest part of the town. If these early Christians could come into one of our modern churches, they might guess what it was ; they would probably say that it was a kind of synagogue. But we, entering their as- sembly, would not probably surmise what they were about. We should think that we had come to the meeting of a club, where we should find them quite possibly in the act of eating and drinking together. We know from Paul's letters to them that their meet- ings were sometimes disorderly, and that rude men became intoxicated. Some of these new Christians were Hebrews, who still scrupulously kept the Jewish Sabbaths and the other rites of their ancestral religion. Perhaps The Early Church 35 they continued to go to the synagogue, as a Methodist of Wesley's generation might have gone to his parish church. It is pretty certain that, if any of them had gone to Jerusalem, they would not have failed to worship in the temple, just as Paul himself did long after he had joined the Christians. The better educated among these Hebrew Chris- tians must have been rather shy of the company of the foreigners whom they met at their meetings, — people with whom a little while before they would not have associated. If you can imagine a free church gathered in a mining town in Alaska, you will get some idea of the curious mixture of nationalities who would have made up Paul's church in Corinth. There would have been tradesmen and working people and slaves. We may suppose that they came from their day's work to their weekly Sunday night meeting, just as to any other club in 36 The Smoke and the Flame Corinth. The common meal was the chief feature of the meeting, as in other clubs. Their Bible was as yet a very little one, perhaps merely one or two precious rolls of the Old Testament books. No book of the New Testament was yet written except certain letters of Paul's. No one called these letters a part of the Bible. They may have sung a hpnn or psalm before tliey parted. There was the same democratic oppor- tunity for members and friends to speak which we know prevailed in the syna- gogue. In fact, Paul was seriously annoyed by those who interrupted while others were speaking, or who spoke in a sort of hysterical ecstas)^ " in tongues," which no one present could understand. As one thinks of these heterogene- ous gatherings of " come-outers," with scarcely a single common tradition to guide them, without any salaried officials of any sort, taxed at the start to help their poor and even to send money as The Early Church 37 far as Jerusalem, with no prescribed ritual except the simple initiation rite of baptism of which Paul himself speaks almost slightingly and the brief me- morial of Jesus of which they partook at their suppers and perhaps at first whenever Christians broke bread to- gether, — one can only wonder that this new form of religion survived. Wherein did its life consist ? The answer to this question is to be found in the splendid thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Here was a simple organization which stood for pure brotherhood, good will, humanity, friendliness, — to use Paul's word, love. The love of man was really the love of God. The whole creation, Paul taught, had its consummation in the coming of the age of the sons of God. The new movement was inspired by a wonderful hope and enthusiasm. Over all was lifted the figure of a great human life, — the good master, who was 38 The Smoke and the Flame believed to be the conqueror of death. These new Christians in Corinth and Ephesus had never seen Jesus. Paul himself seems never to have known him in person. All the more subtle was the fascination of the story of the ideal life of the man of Galilee, who had loved the people and called God his father, and had at last died praying for his ene- mies. This was a new type of love in the world. And now, they fondly be- lieved, the master would soon come again. The world would be his, and no harm or loss could then ever befall his friends. Here was a faith to make martyrs, and it did make them. I said that Jesus' life and teachings were like the pure white flame which bursts out of the smouldering fire. The flame reveals the nature of fire, as light, heat, power, and beauty. So with the great thoughts of God and man which Jesus had translated into the form of simple parables. The little groups of The Early Church 39 "Christians," scattered through the Roman empire, had caught something of Jesus' flame, or fire. It showed itself in their love, their faith in God, their splendid hopefulness. It was in the purity of conduct which Jesus had taught and practised, in their faithful- ness, in their honesty, in their obedience to the laws, in their ideal of the family life, in their mercy and humanity, in their democratic equality. Here a relig- ion for all mankind was in the germ. Caste, priestcraft, exclusiveness, race prejudices, were ruled out here. The one God was the Father of all men. All were of one blood. So much for the beginning of the simple church of the first century. Its main purpose as yet was only "to be good and do good." This was before any creed had been framed or any lit- urgy recited, while Paul himself was looked upon as rather a dangerous in- novator by the more conservative men 40 The Smoke and the Flame at Jerusalem. For these men had act- ually known Jesus, while Paul had probably never seen him. One sometimes wonders what the his- tory of the world might have been if the friends and lovers of Jesus had actually kept the Church on the simple lines which were first laid down. Was it nec- essary that the smoke of the ancient paganism should so swallow up the pure flame of love to God and love to man that for hundreds of weary years men almost forgot the very existence of that democratic religion which Jesus had proclaimed and Paul had organized into a system ? Or must we believe that the world was not yet ready for the pure religion of brotherhood and good will ? Did average men still love dark- ness rather than light, their deeds being evil ? The history of mankind shows the extreme difficulty of keeping pure gold in circulation. Men mix alloys with the The Early Church 41 gold, and baser metals tend to drive the good gold out. We shall soon see that even from the first an alloy of super- naturalism and sensational expectancy entered into the thought of Jesus' dis- ciples. The aim of Christian writers has generally been to claim the gen- uineness of the alloy on the ground of the purity of the gold with which the alloy was mixed. The time has come frankly to separate the gold from the alloy and to put the latter aside. Chapter IV. THE RETURN OF PAGANISM. We have likened the early Church to a fire burning with a clear blaze. We have caught sight of the religion of good will gathering to itself little broth- erhoods of men who believe in a good God, and purpose to do the things which men always do when they catch Jesus' thought of God as "our Father." We must be on our guard, however, not to idealize the early Church and the " apostolic times." What right, indeed, have we to assume that Peter and John and the others had suddenly become free of the prejudices and superstitions of their age ? We may trace even in the New Testament the existence of certain elements which early threatened to obscure the pure flame of the relig- ion of good will. The Return of Paganism 43 Thus, for example, men generally ex- pected the speedy coming of a spectacu- lar judgment day and the end of the world. This thought was all abroad in Jesus' day. It may have helped to frighten men into the new religion, but it certainly hurt the purity of religion. True life is here and now, as God is here and now. " Where love is, there God is." You miss this ruling law as soon as you expect life to be somewhere else, and not here. Here, then, at the ver}- start was a tendency in the new Christianity to become a religion of '■ other-worldliness." The men of Paul's time thought of themselves as ship- wrecked sailors upon a raft. They lived in expectation of a miraculous deliverer who would sweep down and take them away from a wretched world. \\'hat was the use of exerting themselves to make such a world better ? A bo7ia fide religion of good wiU is normally trans- lated into all forms of practical activity 44 The Smoke and the Flame for furthering human welfare. How can men carry out such a religion who are looking for salvation by a miracle ? Moreover, there was a moral peril in the thought about the Mastership of Jesus, that presently possessed the minds of the new generation of his disciples. He began to be now con- ceived of as the coming judge, a rather terrible and supernatural being who should sentence the wicked to eternal torment. This idea soon beclouded the beautiful picture of the good shep- herd, the man of infinite good will. How should the disciples any longer forgive " until seventy times seven," when they had now come to conceive of Jesus as a Master of wrath, visiting merciless doom on his enemies ? The Book of Revelation is a tremendous il- lustration of the change of atmosphere from the genial remembrance of the man who forgave his murderers to a gloomy austerity gloating over the tor- The Return of Paganism 45 tures of the wicked in the lake of brim- stone. Was Christianity destined to be a world religion ? Then its essence was in the note of brotherhood and de- mocracy. Its God must be one who, as an earlier writer had said, " loveth all the things that are, and abhorreth noth- ing which he hath made." But the early Christianity presently began to be exclusive. It divided God from his creation. It filled space with demons, wholly evil and hated of God. It had its torture house, whither the very neighbors whom one met in the streets were sure to be sent. How could the Christians be asked to love those whom they believed their God hated ? The pure religion of peace on earth and good will toward men was incom- patible with these strange and cruel thoughts which survived from long ages of exclusiveness and barbarism. There was further mischief in the 46 The Smoke and the Flame early churches. It crops out every- where in Paul's letters. The ideal of a church was contained in the familiar words, "Each for all and all for each." But men were already in these churches for what they could get for themselves. There was ambition, rivalry, faction, jealousy. There was a party who called themselves after Paul, there were dis- ciples of Apollos, and there were simple " Christians." Men desired more than their share at the church suppers ; and, after a very modern form of human nature, they seem to have talked in meeting for the sake of hearing them- selves. This is merely to say that people in the church were still the same sort of men that they had been a little before in the synagogues or in the heathen temples. Many in the churches had not yet caught the essential idea of a church. Many did not understand the beatitudes at all or the life of the Golden The Return of Paganism 47 Rule. They were Hke the men in a modern labor union, honestly reaching out their hands toward closer fellowship, hopeful of coming good, swayed by a true breath of chivalrous devotion, cap- able of genuine sacrifice, while at the same time they were still liable to out- bursts of the primitive passions of ego- tism and selfishness. What would you have expected otherwise .'' How had there been time fairly to convert men to the splendid ideals of the religion of good will ? How could men by the mere taking of Jesus' name catch the ethical and spiritual secret of Jesus ? He had once said to his closest friends in one of their wrathful moments, " Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." We do not say that there was no beneficent flame in these early churches of Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome. We merely remark that much of the mate- rial for the fire was very green, and that 48 The Smoke and the Flame the fire already began to smoulder and smoke. How many Christians to-day are sure that they love men well enough to have enjoyed belonging to one of Paul's churches and associating with his converts ? Let us now leap the space of more than two centuries, and see what Chris- tianity has become in the time of Constantine, that is, in the beginning of the fourth century. The ripple of religious movement which at Paul's death could hardly have been noticed by any Roman historian as of the slightest political importance, which could not have counted more than a paltry few thousand adherents, and those chiefly from the servile classes, has now become one of the notable forces of the empire. A new religion has fairly come to birth. Men and women have gone cheerfully to the wild beasts for its sake. It has made its converts in palaces. Soldiers, judges, The Return of Paganism 49 and imperial counsellors have adopted it. It has its grand basilica, or church, in all cities. It has a hier- archy of officers and a mighty organ- ization. The crafty emperor has now found it prudent to make it the religion of the state. Sunday is at last con- stituted a holiday. No Christian slave need now be hindered from attending the worship of his church. What has this new religion done for the empire, that it should at last be clothed in the purple? At a time when old primitive religions were breaking up, and when strange and ridiculous superstitions were in the air, Christianity has offered men a serious and dignified faith ; it has es- tablished a sound moral basis for so- ciety and the state ; it has instituted a thoroughly popular mode of worship ; it has refreshed the sanctions of the family life with a new purity ; it has set forth before, the world the ideals of 50 The Smoke and the Flame justice and democracy which the ex- traordinary moral and religious genius of the Hebrew people had worked out through many costly centuries. These ideals, once seen in the vision of a few, are henceforth brought into the treas- ure gallery of mankind. We can see to-day how human the Bible is. But the old world had never possessed a book of such lofty morality or one which taught so authoritatively the tre- mendous contrasts of right and wrong. Moreover, in Constantine's time the doctrine of the one God is now fairly taking the place of the current gross polytheism. God is still terrible, but he is just and pure. There is also mercy in God. A divine person in human form, it is taught, has actually come from God with his message. Obey what this Christ said, or obey what the bishops say in his name in the churches, and the Son of God will open paradise for you. Something The Return of Paganism 5 1 like this seems to have been, in out- line, the thought about God which average men were beginning to enter- tain. We may be sure that average men had nowhere before possessed a religion with so much moral and spirit- ual reality. We have called the religion of Con- stantine's time " Christianity." What kind of Christianity was it ? Not the Christianity of the primitive Christians, least of all the religion of Jesus. Human institutions always grow, de- velop, change, and take on new forms. They adapt themselves to express the character of the people who in each age live under them. The institutions of religion follow the same laws of de- velopment as men's political institu- tions. We know that this was the case with the Christian Church. Let us imagine ourselves in attend- ance at one of the great church councils of Constantine's reign, — for example. 52 The Smoke and the Flame the famous Council at Nicaea. What are these excited churchmen discussing ? Matters of mercy, justice, and human welfare? On the contrary, they are engaged in an abstruse metaphysical controversy as to the precise nature of the second person of the Trinity ! We can hardly suppose Jesus to have un- derstood what the issue was, so for- eign does it seem to his manner of thought and his practical character. It was an issue fought out by wavering majorities, and finally forced to decision by courtly influence and through the intervention of the tyrannical emperor, with his threat of the degradation and banishment of those who voted in the opposition. /•