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Cornell University Library 
 
 3 1924 031 254 349 
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THE RISING 
 
 THE SETTING FAITH 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER DISCOURSES 
 
 BY 
 
 O. B. FROTHINGHAM 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 182 Fifth Avenue 
 
 1878 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 The Mission of the Radical Preacher, . . i 
 
 The Rising and the Setting Faith, . 23 
 
 The Unbelief of the Believers, ... 43 
 
 Why does the Popular Religion Prevail ? 67 
 
 Formal Religion and Life, . . . 89 
 
 The Sectarian Spirit iii 
 
 The Dogma of Hell, ... -139 
 
 The Higher Sentiments 153 
 
 Attitudes of Unbelief, . . . 185 
 
 The Office of Prayer, 207 
 
 The American Gentleman, .... 229 
 
 The American Lady, . . . . 251 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL 
 PREACHER. 
 
 I am to speak this morning on the mission of the 
 radical preacher. The first question is whether the 
 radical preacher has any mission ; for this is asserted 
 and challenged. One said to me lately, " Why do 
 you preach ? What right have you to preach ? You 
 have no creed ; you speak with no authority ; you 
 claim no revelation ; you stand in no apostolic suc- 
 cession ; you have no inspired word ; you claim to 
 have no special call ; you are where you are by no 
 supernatural invitation, by no unseen commission. 
 You are simply one whose opinion weighs for what 
 it is worth, whose words stand for the amount of 
 truth that lies behind them, whose assertion is for- 
 tified perhaps by character, possibly by intelligence, 
 peradventure by knowledge, but surely by these alone, 
 by nothing beyond or above these, and by these, no 
 more than they are possessed by any body else in 
 the community. Why then do you stand on Sun- 
 day in the sacred place and in the sacred fashion 
 
2 THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 
 
 and preach?" The argument springs from this 
 ground, that nothing remains but science, and that 
 the domain of science is bounded and limited by 
 the actual methods and procedures which have been 
 instituted so far ; and the objection pushed to its 
 limit would go to this extent, that there must be no 
 reading of ancient scripture, no spoken aspiration, 
 no outlook of faith or hope, no sentiment of trust ; 
 that the understanding alone, the intellect must be 
 the instrument that addresses whatever object is 
 addressed. 
 
 Let us consider this a moment. Is it so ? If it 
 is so then of course the radical must retire from his 
 platform and no longer assume the form of speech 
 which he does assume when he calls himself a 
 preacher. All our preaching, all the traditions of 
 christian preaching, in all denominations, in all sects, 
 come from the Hebrew prophets. The Hebrew 
 prophet was first and last foremost and always a 
 preacher. He was not a prophesyer ; he was not a 
 necromancer or a soothsayer. It was not his busi- 
 ness to foretell future events, to say what was likely 
 to come to pass at any day more or less distant ; he 
 did not bring a special message which any other 
 man who was illumined by righteousness could not 
 find. He inspected not the entrails of beasts ; he 
 studied not the motions of the stars ; he felt not 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 3 
 
 the force of planetary influences ; he was simply a 
 man who stood up as any other man was at liberty 
 to do and speak the words that came to his heart 
 and conscience to utter. An educated man he was, 
 would naturally be. A trained man he usually was, 
 — always was when he arrived at eminence. He 
 might be a politician, or a man of business, or a 
 teacher ; he might be a statesman ; he might be 
 even a priest, layman or ecclesiastic, it mattered not ; 
 what made him a prophet was his power to preach, 
 to utter the word out of his heart. 
 
 His word was very simple. It consisted of these 
 few articles r first, a belief in Jehovah the God of 
 Israel, a divine personal being, who sat and governed 
 the world from his throne, having about him his 
 messengers and armies, sending them hither and 
 thither to do his will or carry his message. Israel 
 was his chosen people ; the land and domain of 
 Israel was the chosen field of his operations. He 
 kept his eye on Israel, mapped out its destiny, 
 marked its fortunes, determined in his own mind to 
 raise it to the summit of power, of glory, of peace 
 and of felicity. He had promised that whosoever 
 should be faithful to his law as given on Sinaj 
 should be happy in worldly goods, in length of life, 
 in the health of himself, his family, his children ; 
 moreover, should inherit, one day when the Messiah 
 
4 THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PAEACHER. 
 
 should come, the glories of the kingdom which con^ 
 sisted in the restoration of Israel to the fulness of 
 its rights and privileges. On the other hand, whoso- 
 ever disobeyed the law of Jehovah, whoever was 
 indifferent to it, wandered away from it, turned his 
 back on it, disregarded it in large instances or in 
 small, would be punished by loss of fortune, by 
 shortness of days, diminution of happiness, the 
 crossing of his endeavors, loss of his children and 
 forfeiture of right in the great future when the 
 glorious coming of the kingdom should be revealed, 
 to the place that belonged to the, pious Israelites. 
 This was the whole creed ; these ^yere absolutely all 
 the articles. This ancient preacher of the Hebrews 
 moved upon no high transcendental plain ; his views 
 covered temporal things alone. He had no regard 
 to a celestial or a supernatural bliss, to a disembod- 
 ied felicity. It never entered his thought to predict 
 a time when men and women who lived in the world 
 should be transported to another sphere. He 
 believed the kingdom would come on earth, would 
 be an earthly reign, with a visible throne, a visible 
 king sitting upon it, with banners and men of war. 
 
 The peculiarity of the prophet was that he believed 
 this ; that he believed it with all his heart ; that he 
 was full of it ; that he lived in it ; that his whole 
 conscience and soul were bound up in it. He had 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 5 
 
 the gift of speech, fluent, kindling, eloquent, swift, 
 by which he could reach the hearts of others, could 
 teach their minds, and could recall them at any time 
 to their allegience. This was the creed of the He- 
 brew prophet, the only creed he hadj and this was 
 his only commission, — the commission of a believing 
 man to utter what he believed. 
 
 The prophet stood opposed to two classes in the 
 Hebrew community. On the one side were the 
 priests ; on the other side the men of letters. He 
 was opposed to the priests, because the priests 
 simply stood by the altar, offered sacrifices, received 
 offerings and passed up to the Lord the gifts that 
 his people brought. He was always there ; always 
 stationary and conservative. It was not his business 
 to speak. He was no preacher. He was a formalist. 
 He stood in the same place all the time and went 
 through the same ceremonies year after year. A 
 new 9rder of priests came in as the old order was 
 removed by death. There stood the temple ; there 
 was the altar. Year by year, age by age, sacrifices 
 of all kinds were brought ; blood was shed ; atone- 
 ment was made; sacraments were performed. That 
 was the priest's office. The priest was a conserva- 
 tive ; not a man of ideas, but a man of institutions. 
 The prophet was opposed to the priest, be- 
 cause the prophet was a reformer, a man of ideas. 
 
6 THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 
 
 feelings and purposes. He was an educator and 
 stimulator of the people ; fluent, elastic, open, he 
 received the word from the heart and let it pass 
 through him into the nation. The consequence was 
 that while he was a reformer pushing forward, 
 the priest was standing still and keeping things 
 backward. 
 
 On the other side, the men of letters, — the scribes, 
 as they were called, — dwelling altogether with books 
 and traditions, were spelling out the letters of the 
 scripture, interpreting the written word, having no 
 heart in it possibly, putting no soul into it, never 
 speaking except in the dry technical way of the 
 lecturer. They sat in the seat and doled out to men 
 the information that they were in search of. They 
 were learned men. They knew all that any body 
 knew at that time. They were nice critics and 
 could interpret to a hair the meaning of texts and 
 chapters, but there was no living soul in them. 
 They never kindled, they never inspired, an impulse ; 
 they never set the heart aflame. 
 
 There were thus in Israel, two institutions ; the 
 institution of the temple, the home of priesthood, 
 where stood the altar, where were observed the 
 great festivals and fast days, where were brought 
 the sacrifices ; on the other side the Synagogue, an 
 open place, corresponding in all respects to our 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 7 
 
 places of worship. They were places where the 
 teacher or preacher sat or stood. People came and 
 went ; anybody could speak who was able ; any body 
 who had a word to utter could utter it and was wel- 
 come. The Synagogue, free to all, kept alive and 
 glowing the traditions of the Hebrew faith. In the 
 time of Jesus, the Synagogue was the source of all 
 inspiring thought. Thus we read that when he was 
 ready to teach himself, he entered the Synagogue at 
 Nazareth— not the Temple. The Temple was the 
 priest's only. Nobody went into the Temple except 
 the priest who made the sacrifices; Jesus went into 
 the Synagogue which was free to anybody, and 
 opened the book which anybody had a right to open. 
 He was a new man. Nobody knew him except as 
 the carpenter's son. He was untaught in learning 
 of the schools. He belonged to no line of priests ; 
 but he had as much right there as any. He opened 
 the book at a prophetic passage, and said " This day 
 the word is fulfilled in your ears." Then he began 
 to utter the discourse which set the hearers aflame. 
 Christianity was born, not in the Temple among 
 the priests, but in the Synagogue. Paul, as he went 
 from city to city, went to the Synagogues where the 
 Jews met from Sabbath to Sabbath, to hear what- 
 ever word might by spoken, to listen to any man 
 who might have the right to speak it. The Syna- 
 
8 THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 
 
 gogues were planted all over the civilized world. 
 There was not a city in Asia Minor and scarcely a 
 city in Europe in which the Jews had not their 
 Synagogue. Paul went there, found them full, spoke 
 the word of his heart, was listened to ; the torch 
 was passed from Synagogue to Synagogue, from 
 congregation to congregation, gaining in power and 
 freshness as it went, until the new faith, that is the 
 new interpretation of the old faith, (for Christianity 
 is simply Judaism baptized anew — Judaism with a 
 soul put into it) until this new faith began to sway 
 the empire. It was through this preaching, it was 
 through the eloquent line of men who stood one 
 after another and delivered the word that was given 
 to them, the old word that was from everlasting to 
 everlasting, that the empire was finally conquered. 
 
 Come now to Romanism. Romanism is a priestly 
 system. Rome has the temples, built not for preach- 
 ing, but for the administration of rites, ceremonies, 
 and sacraments. There stands the Temple; there 
 are lofty arches ; there are spaces where the pomp of 
 procession can move freely and untrammelled. The 
 sermon is next to nothing. In a larger part of the 
 service there is no preaching ; you cannot hear the 
 sermon in a temple. You cannot hear a sermon in 
 any cathedral in Europe. They are too large, they 
 are not meant for the human voice. 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 9 
 
 When Protestantism first came in it was necessary 
 for Romanism to recall the believers to their alle- 
 giance. Then too, it sent out preachers. The 
 preaching order came up, and their business was 
 what ? Simply to reach the heart, to kindle the 
 soul, to influence the imagination and to revive in 
 the breasts of the believers the faith they were for- 
 getting. Lutheranism gained the day. Rome 
 became a priesthood once more. Protestantism 
 was identified with preaching. Protestantism began 
 with preaching, continued with preaching, had all its 
 power in preaching, owed its successes to preaching. 
 Luther came out of the temple ; Protestantism left 
 the cathedral, built smaller houses where the human 
 voice could be heard, where individual speech would 
 tell, took away the altar, remodeled the ecclesiastical 
 structure and made it suitable to this purpose of 
 gathering together freely great congregations of peo- 
 ple, to be waked up by a living word. The truth was 
 the same ; the ideas were the same. Luther's 
 thoughts were the old sacred thoughts. Luther's 
 doctrine scarcely differed in substance from the 
 Catholic doctrine, but it was a word in the heart. 
 It was made a matter of conscience and spirit, come 
 freshly to the soul of man ; this was his authority to 
 speak ; this was the authority of all Protestants to 
 speak. 
 
lO THE MISSION. OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 
 
 The Church of England is an ecclesiastical institu- 
 tion; Episcopacy is an ecclesiastical institution. 
 Outside of that is Congregationalism, Presbyterian, 
 ism, both of which believe in preaching. And the 
 power of Christendom, the real power of Christendom 
 to-day, is not in the priest who administers the sacra- 
 ment, performs the rites, but in the preacher who 
 stands up before the congregation and fills them, 
 not with himself, but with the glow and fire of the 
 everlasting truths which are jOnly represented by the 
 priest. 
 
 This being so, we see precisely where the preacher 
 always stands, what his commission always is, and 
 wherein consists the truth of the call that he receives. 
 
 Take away the imagination ; take away feeling, 
 impulse, fancy, earnestness, reduce every thing to 
 science, to the understanding, to pure intellect, and 
 what have we ? Education, knowledge, the lecture 
 room, the school, the art gallery; but are these 
 enough? The popular doctrine of to-day is that 
 education is enough ; that if we could educate every- 
 body, everybody would be good ; that if we could send 
 all the boys and girls to school, we should be sure of 
 justice in the state and kindness in society ; that there 
 would be at once an increase of purity, truth and earn- 
 estness throughout the community. The great thing, 
 we are told, is to teach ; to teach science, to com- 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. II 
 
 municate facts, to convey knowledge to mankind, to 
 overcome ignorance and superstition. These, we 
 are told perpetually, are the obstacles to all human 
 progress. Obstacles they are, most undoubtedly. 
 Are they the only obstacles ? Where is the connec- 
 tion between knowledge and earnestness ; between 
 scientific facts and moral enthusiasm ; between a 
 perfect familiarity with things as far as they can be 
 understood, and an appreciation of the great princi- 
 ples that sweep through communities and carry 
 multitudes lof men away ? Does it follow that be- 
 cause a man knows all about the history of the 
 planet he lives on that therefore he will be inter- 
 ested in the future of humanity on the planet? 
 Does it follow that because a man knows all about 
 social science, the conditions of life, the methods 
 and plans by which men are advanced in their 
 temporal welfare, that therefore he will devote 
 himself to advancing their welfare ? Does it follow 
 that a man who gives his strength to the acquisition 
 of facts in regard to the constitution of society, 
 will therefore be interested in the progress of society ? 
 The physician understands the human frame. He 
 is a master of physiology. We will suppose that 
 he knows all the connections of different parts of 
 the human system ; that he knows the offices of the 
 bones, the blood, the tissues, the nerves ; that he 
 
12 THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 
 
 knows what affects for better or for worse those 
 parts ; that he knows what pulls down and what 
 builds up. Is he of necessity true to his knowledge ? 
 Does the physician, of whatever school, of whatever 
 sect, abstain from all those practices or habits of 
 life that degrade the human system? Does he him- 
 self observe the laws of life ? Is he an enthusiast 
 for temperance, a champion of purity ? We know 
 very well that conspicious instances to the contrary 
 are to be found among eminent physicians. It 
 is a remarkable fact that bare knowledge, a mere 
 acquaintance with facts, does not imply moral ear- 
 nestness enthusiasm or zeal in social causes. There 
 is no connection between scientific schools and 
 moral enthusiasm, any more than there is between 
 the study of geometry and the health that one gets 
 at a gymnasium. Education is good, entirely good 
 in its place ; but it must be supplemented with 
 something more, or its place is not fulfilled. We are 
 confronted with statistics which show that crime and 
 ignorance go hand in hand together ; that where 
 ignorance exists crime abounds ; that the fullest 
 prisons, the most plethoric alms-house and asylums 
 are in the most untaught populations. Very true, 
 so far ; but is not this also true, that in close associ- 
 ation with crime is found not ignorance alone, but 
 filth, close atmosphere, bad ventilation, unclean linen ? 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 13 
 
 Why not say that crime is due to these as well as to 
 ignorance ? 
 
 Again, side by side with these facts which prove 
 that ignorance is the source of crime, stands another 
 class of facts which prove that knowledge is the 
 source of crime of a different kind and order. The 
 knowledge that merely sharpens the intellect, puts 
 the criminally-minded into possession of a larger 
 class of resources, opens to him new ways of escape, 
 makes his ingenuity greater and thus encourages 
 crime. The crime that outrages society most is not 
 the crime of the vulgar and illiterate ; it is the crime 
 of the wise, the trained, the wary, the astute, the 
 men who can travel without making tracks or who 
 cover them up when made, the men whom educa- 
 tion has supplied with the tools of iniquity. There 
 are such men. It is not true then, as a fact, that 
 education alone, mere instruction is enough to guar- 
 antee the goodness of any class of mankind. Her- 
 bert Spencer who is one of the prophets of the 
 modern world, the most eminent prophet perhaps, 
 in social science, is especially impassioned on 
 these points. He often leaves his usual even tone 
 of exposition and rises into eloquence when he de- 
 scribes the entire inadequacy of mere knowledge, 
 mere school education, mere instruction in the data 
 of life to enable men to live nobly and generously. 
 
14 THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 
 
 No, he says, you must have a new nature, a new 
 impulse, a fresh feeling ; you must have a tide of 
 enthusiasm set through you before you can do any- 
 thing great. Whence is to come this ? Not from 
 scientific schools, not from the lecture room, but 
 from the living heart, the awakened conscience, the 
 inflamed and inspired intelligence of the man of 
 ideas, of the preacher. 
 
 And does not the radical preacher have precisely 
 the same ideas, the same fundamental truths that 
 any preacher ever had ? I do not say the same inci- 
 dental details of doctrine ; I do not say the same 
 dogmas ; I do not say the same systems of opinion ; 
 I say the same ideas, the same kindling radical 
 principles that the old Hebrew prophets had? It 
 seems to me that he has. The Hebrew prophet had 
 as his cardinal and first idea that of Jehovah, the 
 personal God. The radical preacher has not that. 
 His idea of the creative power does not correspond 
 with the Hebrew definition of the Jehovah ; is not 
 the same with the triune God of the Christians, who 
 administers the affairs of a church on the earth ; 
 is not the same with the theist's God — the individual 
 personal conscience who sits aloft and listens to 
 prayers, and administers the affairs of the world 
 according to the movement of intelligent will. The 
 Radical has no definition ; he does not venture on a 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 15 
 
 written definition. He will not define or confine 
 the infinite. He has no interpretation which he can 
 accept or impose upon anybody else ; but the substance 
 of the idea he holds in a manner so transcendental, 
 grand, vast and beautiful that the others dwarf them- 
 selves into utter insignificance. The Hebrew Jeho- 
 vah seems to him a fanciful and fantastical idea ; 
 the Christian's triune deity is limited ; and the 
 theist's conception of the personal God is bounded. 
 The radical believes in the universal law, omnipotent 
 omnipresent, sweeping through the world, adminis- 
 tering the least things, controlling the greatest, 
 holding close relations between you and me, holding 
 in the hollow of its hand all the afTairs of all the 
 nations of the globe. This idea of law, material, 
 intellectual, spiritual, comprehends everything, all 
 the domain of reason, all the domain of hope, so 
 vast that no faith can scale its heights, so tender that 
 one can lie like a child on its bosom, so mighty and 
 majestic that nobody need be afraid that it cannot 
 overcome every obstacle in the way of the highest 
 and noblest advance. This idea of law, the radical 
 has it, — has it as nobody else has it ; has it supremely ; 
 has it every hour ; calls upon science to illuminate 
 it, to make it larger and more intelligible ; calls 
 upon men to deal with facts, to bring forward facts 
 upon facts, the more of them the better. We do 
 
l6 THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 
 
 not know enough, not a thousandth part as much as we 
 need to know abput the close, pliable, elastic move- 
 ment of this omnipresent spirit for which we have 
 no fitting name, which comprehends all definitions 
 of deity, which takes them all up and dismisses them 
 as the mere chaff and husk of dogma ; which will at 
 last reign supreme over them all, ever living, ever 
 quickening the inspiration of every great soul. The 
 radical preacher believes that to appreciate this idea, 
 to obey it, to submit to it, to take it heartily in, to 
 live by it, to make it the controlling influence over 
 all deeds and actions, is to be inspired, is to be lifted 
 out of ones-self. Therefore, having this conviction, 
 and feeling it in his heart, he speaks, and speaking, 
 he has the same authority precisely that the Hebrew 
 prophet had, the same that Jesus had, the same 
 that Paul had, the same that the long line of Apos- 
 tles has had, the same that the builders of the church 
 in the Roman Empire had, the same that preachers 
 to-day have who bring the living word. 
 
 The great preachers of to-day do not differ so 
 much in the radical idea as is often supposed. The 
 greatest preacher of the last generation in England 
 was Thomas Carlyle a man of unsurpassable elo- 
 quence, a man whose words made our hearts glow 
 and tingle three thonsand miles away ; a man whose 
 writings we read now with a kindling impulse, feel- 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 1 7 
 
 ing as we read them that we are more and better 
 than we supposed we were. Carlyle rejected the 
 Jewish system, rejected the Christian system, never 
 went to church, never offered a sacrifice, never 
 bowed his head to a priest ; but he had a profound 
 sense in him of this original creative force which 
 men have in past times tried to define but could not; 
 and it was out of that conviction that he wrote and 
 spoke his burning words. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson the greatest preacher in 
 America, left the pupit when very young but has 
 been in a larger pulpit ever since, has always been 
 preaching and has felt that the vocation of the 
 preacher was the greatest of vocations. Read his 
 writings and you will see how underneath his ap- 
 parently most radical utterances runs this system of 
 faith in the invisible and eternal. Every now and 
 then we come upon a passage which reminds us of 
 the old testament ; every now and then we come up- 
 on a passage which carries us still farther back into the 
 remote lands of the East and calls up inspiration 
 that the greatest spirits had under the mountains of 
 Himela5'a five or six thousand years ago. Hence 
 we perceive that the radical preacher of to-day, — 
 and there is no more radical preacher than Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, — has the same inspiration, coming 
 from the same cardinal ideas that lighted up the 
 
l8 THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 
 
 souls of the Hebrew prophets three thousand years 
 ago. 
 
 Another idea he has which is the same, — the idea 
 of the close connection between cause and effect, — 
 this old deep faith that things follow according to 
 certain fixed principles, not by, chance. If you do 
 wrong, according to the wrong you do will be the 
 calamity that will come upon you. If you cheat 
 you will be cheated ; if you steal you will lose just 
 as much as you steal ; if you lie you discredit yourself 
 just in the proportion in which you lie ; if you com- 
 mit an act of violence invisible hands strike a blow at 
 you, just as severe, just as strong as the one you dealt ; 
 if you trample upon your neighbor a crushing power 
 tramples you into the dust. Fastening the chains 
 around others is inviting invisible hands to fasten 
 the same chain around your own neck. You cannot 
 do a mischief, you cannot perpetrate a guilt that does 
 not return upon you. And by the very laws of 
 creation, if you do a good thing, speak a good word, 
 exchange a kind or gentle thought, that comes back 
 to you ; that performs its office and meets with its 
 reward. Nobody, as we understand the universe to- 
 day — nobody ever escapes the consequences of his 
 character. It used to be supposed that one could. 
 Now we know that one cannot. Feel this ; take 
 this to heart, and at once the infallible expression 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. I9 
 
 jumps to the lips ; and the men who can feel this, 
 who can keep people perpetually in mind of it, who 
 can warm their feelings so that they shall be conscious 
 of a new influence upon their practical life, have a 
 perfect right to do it. I say have a perfect right to 
 do it ; nay, more, I say have a call to do it. 
 
 One more thought : the radical preacher shares 
 with all the great preachers of the world this : that 
 men are more than they seem to be ; that human 
 creatures are in the germ, and that latent within'every 
 created being lie capacities and power undeveloped, 
 which may start into new existence. We know 
 what we are ; which of us knows what he may be- 
 come ? We know what we can do to-day ; which 
 of us knows what he may be able to do to-morrow ? 
 We are weak, trembling, ignorant, doubting, fearing ; 
 we seem to be creatures of chance and circumstance, 
 bound in the prison of fate, unable by any effort of 
 ours to move ; and yet, who knows at what moment 
 an impulse may drop into his mind from some 
 unseen quarter, that shall make him new entirely? 
 We are like islanders inhabiting a small precinct 
 that we can walk around and survey from end to 
 end ; all about us flows a vast ocean, dotted with 
 fleets of ships going this way and that. Perhaps 
 one of these passing vessels that we look out upon 
 as they go by, may bring us a message. It may be 
 
JO THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 
 
 a message of fear that shall chill the blood ; it may 
 be a message of joy that shall raise us in a moment 
 into ecstasy. No matter what it is ; it will be the 
 spark dropping inside of us which shall reveal to us 
 what we are. A keg of gunpowder is a black mass, 
 inert, foul, sooty ; what is it worth ? What can it 
 do ? Scatter it about, it is nothing ; it is no where. 
 Drench it with water, it is dead. Drop into it a 
 spark, the least spark, and at once the sky is filled 
 with ^ame. Houses are shaken at their basis ; the 
 noise travels over miles of territory, wakening peo- 
 ple from their midnight slumber. 
 
 The great ages of the world have always been 
 ages of impulse, enthusiasm, belief. The ages that 
 built the great cathedrals of Europe ; that carried 
 Europe into Asia, on the fiery columns of the cru- 
 sades, were ages of faith. It dies. We see the 
 monuments ; we do not understarid the power ; and 
 yet we to-day — we men and women — are all that 
 these men and women were. The minds that reared 
 the European cathedrals were as weak as ours. The 
 men that swept over Europe and deluged the plains 
 of Asia with their blood, and snatched the holy 
 sepulchre from the hands of the Turks, had only 
 human hearts within them. I am perpetually ex- 
 pectant of some great idea, force, impulse which 
 may light upon our communities and transfigurate 
 
THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 21 
 
 them. Who knows when it shall come to the mul- 
 titude or to anyone ? Not you ; not I. It is the 
 preacher's office, — the radical preacher's office, — to 
 keep men's minds and hearts and spirits in close 
 contact with this realm of ideas ; to make hope 
 pure ; to make life sweet, expectation noble, purpose 
 grand and human. That is his office — his single 
 solitary office ; this is the office of the radical preacher 
 as much as of the orthodox. 
 
 Some years ago I stood, before sunrise, upon the 
 summit of Mount Washington. The whole world 
 was wrapped in vapor. There was no world. We 
 could see nothing. It- was impossible to see the 
 friend who was a few feet away. We clung, each of 
 us, to a mass of rock, seeing that on which our 
 hands were laid, but nothing beside. The wind 
 howled around us, the dark mist drenched our 
 clothing. We stood there waiting for the day. 
 Suddenly up from chaos, out of the invisible, came 
 a great red orb, and the first beam fell like a glitter- 
 ing sword upon the ocean of mist. At once we 
 could see it disappear. The mountain tops, one 
 after another, came out. Green intervales were re- 
 vealed. The sunny slopes were picked out of chaos. 
 Birds began to sing in the air ; cattle began to low 
 on the plains ; the hills and vales were created. 
 Then for the first time, by the help of the glass, 
 
22 THE MISSION OF THE RADICAL PREACHER. 
 
 we 'could discern the little villages, the distant cities 
 below just coming to life. Our friends were no 
 longer specters, but living forms. The figures of the 
 horses that brought us thither came out of the 
 sh^de, and we heard their glad neigh as day dawned 
 upon them too. We all felt our manhood again. 
 We came to life. Our hearts were new born. Day 
 after day the sunbeam retouches and regenerates the 
 world. Like that, coming upon the human mind 
 drenched in the mists and vapors of ignorance, in- 
 difference, passion, idleness and superstition, may 
 come this warm ray of faith, hope, trust, love ; and 
 the human world,' thanks to -those who bring the 
 sunlight, awakens to a consciousness of its better 
 destiny. 
 
THE RISING 
 
 AND 
 
 THE SETTING FAITH 
 
 It is my custom on opening each new season of 
 Sunday services, to choose a theme which shall be, 
 as it were, the keynote of the services which are to 
 follow, — to lay a foundation, if I may so say, for the 
 principles of the subsequent teaching. It seems to 
 me that this morning I can do no better than to 
 speak of the new faith in its relation to the old, and 
 to contrast them as the rising and the setting faith. 
 This will seem to some an audacious classification ; 
 it will seem to a great many unreasonable. It will 
 seem to most, perhaps, fanciful and affected. For 
 by the setting faith, what do I mean but the pro- 
 fessed faith of Christendom, and by the rising faith, 
 what do I mean but the faith professed by a few 
 handfulls of people here and there in the chief cen- 
 tres of the civilized world ? By the setting faith I 
 mean the faith that' at present rules over the most 
 enlightened portion of the civilized world ; the faith 
 that is instituted and crowned, that controls unlimited 
 wealth, and brings to their knees the. fashionable 
 
24 THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 
 
 multitudes of the earth, — the faith that is in posses- 
 sion of a dogma that has lasted a thousand years, 
 and still in one form or another commands the as- 
 sent of the best minds ; the faith that numbers 
 temples by thousands, that plants and sustains vast 
 establishments of learning and of charity; the 
 faith that ordains ministers by dp tens of thousand, 
 that without the slightest misgiving or hesitation 
 erects its banner in waste lands and calls heathen of 
 all climes to submit to its Christ. This I presume 
 to call the setting faith, — the system that is passing 
 away. It may be a thousand years or more before 
 it shows to all eyes the unmistakable signs of decay. 
 But the sentence has gone forth, and the process of 
 decomposition has begun. 
 
 The inhabitants of a country house which stood in 
 the midst of trees, were startled from their beds at 
 the dead of night by a fearful crash of thunder which 
 followed instantaneously on a flash of lightning, so 
 vivid as to tear their eyes open and set their whole 
 world in flames. Springing from their beds, by a 
 single impulse, they met face to face in the central 
 hall and looked at each other in blank amazement, 
 with pale faces and shuddering eyes ! What does it 
 mean, they whispered ? is the house struck ? In a 
 ew minutes they had satisfied themselves that no 
 harm was done, and they retired to their rest. The 
 
THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 25 
 
 next morning an inquisition was made into the con- 
 dition of the barns and out-houses and the trees 
 about the house. Everything stood safe. Nothing 
 was injured. But, very early in the Autumn, before 
 another tree had shown a sign of decay, a lovely 
 maple that stood on the lawn displayed the red flag 
 of death on its highest peak. For this it was ad- 
 mired the more. It had anticipated the loveliness of 
 the Autumn. The favorite tree had seen afar off 
 the coming splendor of the Fall, and announced it 
 before any of its tall companions had made the dis- 
 covery. The glory was enhanced. The following 
 Spring, however, when the leaves of all other trees 
 were green, the leaves of the pretty maple were 
 thin, pale and backward. In the succeeding Autumn, 
 long before any other tree in the wood had thought 
 of decay, disease had eaten half way down ; and in 
 another year the tree had to be removed. The flash 
 of lightning that glared on that summer night had 
 penetrated the root and blasted one of the suckers 
 which fed its life. So it may be with a proud insti- 
 tution, a dogma, a group of dogmas, a system that 
 looks grand and stately. The smallest doubt, the 
 hidden fear, the discovered truth may be a worm 
 that eats into its very core. It may therefore be no 
 extravagance to speak of the old faith as the setting 
 faith. Though it still rules; though still it sends 
 
26 THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 
 
 out its missionaries and builds temples and conse- 
 crates churches and ordains pastors ; it is quite pos- 
 sible that the worm of decay may have penetrated 
 into its heart. 
 
 By the rising faith, let me repeat, I mean this little 
 babe in the manger, puny and feeble, its very life 
 seemingly precarious ; an infant yet, but that is to 
 be a man, who will carry the sword of the spirit in 
 his hand, and wear the helmet of salvation on his 
 head, and for many a day rule nations in life arid 
 in glory. 
 
 What is the characteristic of the old faith that is 
 passing away ? I will describe it in a single word ; 
 it is not necessary to enter into details of definitiofl. 
 All the sects of Protestantism agree substantially 
 with Romanism, and all Christendom is one in ac- 
 cepting a single article with innumerable variations 
 of definition and emphasis of incidental structure 
 and doctrinal grouping, each variation being the 
 peculiarity of a sect. There is one cardinal propos- 
 ition fundamental, primary and universal ; it is the 
 authority of the Christ as Lord and Savior. Debate 
 as they may on all the rest, here the sects come to- 
 gether ; here the many are one. Faith in the Christ ; 
 — -faith in the Christ as comer stone and pillar, — 
 this characterizes Christendom. What does that 
 faith imply ? What does it imply to depend on the 
 
THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 27 
 
 Christ for answers to life's questions, for relief in 
 life's difficulties, for refuge amid life's perplexity, 
 for redemption from life's sin ? What does it mean ? 
 It means helplessness, imbecility in man ; it means 
 the invalidity of human affection, the powerlessness 
 of natural conscience, the impotence of mortal will ; 
 it means that man is not master of his fate in this 
 world or in any other ; that he has no answer for the 
 question that presses nearest to his heart ; that he 
 cannot work his own way out of his perplexities, 
 can do nothing of deepest concern for himself, can 
 found no institution that will last, can build no 
 creeds that are to endure ; that he is a waif, wholly 
 astray on the ocean of existence, floating like a bit 
 of drift wood upon the tempest-tossed surface of life. 
 Faith in Christ implies that the world is all illusion, 
 that life is not intrinsically worth living ; that the in- 
 terests of mankind are not worthy to engage the inter- 
 est of immortal souls ; that the labors we endure bring 
 no satisfaction ; that the prizes we strive for, the aims 
 we have in view, the enemies we wrestle with are . 
 illusions, spectres, dreams ; that there is but one 
 thing worth seeking, salvation from hell in the world 
 to come ; that life is vanity ; its pursuits vexatious, 
 its pleasures cheats, its achievements vapid, its suc- 
 cesses disappointing ; that the more you have of the 
 world's goods the poorer you are. What is wealth ? 
 
28 THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 
 
 — What is power? — What is knowledge? — What is 
 grandeur? Nothing, possibly less than nothing. 
 The poorer you are, the richer ; the stupider you are, 
 the wiser; the weaker you are, the stronger; the 
 more impotent and imbecile you are, the more sure 
 of the crown and sceptre. This is the implication, 
 — the unavoidable implication, — because he that 
 absolutely depends on another thereby confesses his 
 inability to depend on himself; he that makes it his 
 life rule and principle to cast his burden upon an- 
 other, disowns, puts by, discards the qualities which 
 might help him bear his own burdens, fight his own 
 battles, take up his own cross. 
 
 Let me repeat my conviction that this faith in 
 Christ, this system which builds on the Christ, call 
 it by what name you will, call it Protestantism, call 
 it Romanism, call it Christianity, is passing away. 
 Here are some of the signs of its decay : 
 
 It has lost its hold on the cultivated classes of 
 modern society. The chief men of letters, the 
 widest scholars, the recognized leaders in science, 
 the chiefs of reform have quietly dropped it. The 
 men who occupy to-day the highest seats in philos- 
 ophy, reason about it, classify it, put it where they 
 think it belongs, render it the honor that belongs to 
 it as a phenomenon in history, and a significant 
 phase of the world's thought ; but they do not sub- 
 
THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 29 
 
 mit their minds to it. They may do something to up- 
 hold its institutions ; they may be members of the visi- 
 ble church ; they may devoutly recite the Pater-noster 
 and the creed ; but during the week, as they write 
 and think, as they study and read, as they grapple 
 with the problems of the intellectual and social 
 world, they make no reference to this old theolog- 
 ical system. They look elsewhere for the light that 
 is to be their guidance ; for the law that is to be 
 their strength. Philosophy is not with them synony- 
 mous with Christianity ; philosophy is synonymous 
 with science and the broad generalizations of reason 
 by which the departments of knowledge are grouped 
 together. Aquinas and Erigena are not christian 
 to-day. It is, therefore, no exageration to say that 
 the system which builds on Christ, has lost its influ- 
 ence over the leaders of mind in Europe, in Eng- 
 land and America. Count over the thinkers that 
 you know, the chief writers, the men that distin- 
 guish themselves most in modern literature, in med- 
 icine, in law, in science, in business, in reform, and you 
 will find that scarcely one in ten confesses himself 
 to be a hearty adherent of this system. It has rece- 
 ded from the upper levels of intelligence. The same 
 classes of people that fought for it aforetime, that 
 worked for it, lived and died for it, men of thought 
 and eainest conviction, are not believefs to-day. 
 
30 THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 
 
 Cast a glance at the other extreme of society; 
 look at the working classes, the artisans, the toilers 
 on land and sea; the men who are getting their 
 livelihood out of the bowels of the earth ; has the 
 system its ancient hold on them ? Take the strikers 
 of this last summer ; probably every man of them 
 was educated in the christian scheme ; some as 
 Catholics, others as Protestants, — Methodists, Bap- 
 tists, Presbyterians, — doubtless, on the Sabbath, 
 they are accustomed to pay a certain respect to the 
 usages of religion ; but what effect had the religion 
 upon them when, goaded by a sense of injustice and 
 wrong, ignorant if you will, impetuous, misled, 
 passionate, they rebelled against society? Did they 
 consult their religious teachers? Did they take 
 lessons of the Christ ? Did they submit themselves 
 to the authority of the New Testament, which bade 
 them give the coat to him who had taken the cloak ? 
 Did they seek first the " kingdom of heaven ? " 
 Did they rejoice in their persecutions, looking for 
 their reward in heaven ? They listened to the so- 
 cialists of the old world or of the new who had been 
 educated in ideas that the church disavows and de- 
 nounces. Six days in the week, the working men 
 of the world, living from hand to mouth, with their 
 minds unfed, clutch at such principles as they can lay 
 hold of, believe as they go along, but let the New 
 
THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 3 1 
 
 Testament lie unopened on the shelf, never going to 
 the priest unless to escape the taxes he imposes 
 because they do not duly make confession of sin. 
 
 Thus at the two extremes of society, the most 
 cultivated and the least cultivated, — those who are 
 leading the advance of the intellectual world and 
 those who have not yet entered upon it, — we see 
 that the ancient system, so rich, so powerful, has 
 lost its hold. 
 
 Another indication of decay is the decline of the- 
 ology, — a decline that is marked and universal, that 
 is even participated in and rejoiced in by believers 
 and teachers of the old faith. It is the fashion now 
 gmong orthodojf people too, to disparage theology. 
 *' Do not preach theology," is the charge given to 
 the young minister as he takes his ordination vows. 
 " It is barren, rootless and unfruitful. The people 
 do not care for it ; nobody knows anything about it. 
 It is a mass of dry bqijes ; a skeleton ; let it rest." 
 Mr. Beecher in Brooklyn, tells his congregation, so 
 the reporter says, tl^at they will hear little or no 
 theology from hin} ; that he has nothing to say about 
 the trinity, the deity of the Christ or the atonement ; 
 his ministry is practical. Mr. Moody th? revivalist, 
 — the most successful revivalist of the century — 
 keeps his theology in the back-ground. It is there, 
 ' — visibly there to discerning minds, — but he does 
 
32 THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 
 
 not choose to call attention to it. He addresses the 
 heart, not the head. He avoids controversy with 
 rationalists, enters on no argument with skeptics, 
 takes the dogmas for granted as admitted truths, 
 but keeps them in the back-ground and puts emo- 
 tion foremost. This indifference to speculative 
 theology and practical avoidance of it is commonly 
 regarded as a sign that genuine, religion is advanc- 
 ing ; is leaving the cloister and going into the camp ; 
 is dropping the rudiments of its childhood and going 
 on to perfection. Is the sign rightly construed? 
 Theology is the intellectual foundation of the relig- 
 ion. Without its theology, there would be no 
 foundation for it. The doctrine of the Trinity, of 
 the Christ, of the incarnation, of the atonement, are 
 absolutely necessary to the spiritual energy of the 
 faith ; to drop them out, to disparage them, to say 
 they are past and gone and are of small account, is 
 simply to say that the heart of the religion is eaten out. 
 that the bony structure of the system is paralyzed, 
 How long will a human being live with a dry rot in 
 his bones ? A confession of the weakness, the irrel- 
 evancy, the uselessness of theology is a confession 
 that the dry rot has touched the substance and 
 structure of the faith. 
 
 Notice again what everybody confesses, the fact 
 that our common life, our popular life, social, politi- 
 
THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 33 
 
 cal, scientific, commercial, is not run upon christian 
 principles. The merchant does not take his maxims 
 of business from the Sermon on the Mount ; the 
 statesman and the politician do not go to the clergy- 
 man to know how they are to organize a party or 
 construct a « policy. All the institutions of society 
 proceed upon different grounds, — upon grounds of 
 common wisdom and prudence, of human sagacity 
 and knowledge. The church does not meddle with 
 government or education. The suggestion that it 
 should would provoke rebellion. 
 
 Will you say that the religion is as vital now as it 
 has ever been ; that there never was a time when 
 men lived out Christianity ? Grant, simply for the 
 sake of argument, that there never was a time when 
 there was not a gulf which could not be bridged 
 over between the profession and the life, between 
 the creed and the conduct, still, it must be borne in 
 mind that those were times when the alliance be- 
 tween creed and conduct was less required than 
 now ; v;hen it was currently professed and generally 
 understood that the office of religion was not to 
 make life over, to organize society on sound, ra- 
 tional principles, to remould institutions, to recon- 
 struct governments ; that the office of religion was 
 to effect redemption, to save the individual soul from 
 the pains of hell, in the hereafter. Men might, within 
 
34 THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 
 
 certain wide limits, behave as they would ; if they 
 believed, their future was secure. That time has 
 gone by. Ours is an earnest age. If there is one 
 characteristic of our time beyond the times that 
 have gone before, it is sincerity. Men must live up 
 to what they believe. If you profess a faith, show 
 that you profess it ; do your business upon it. Are 
 you a statesman ? — let the statesmanship attest the 
 faith. Are you a politician? — show your faith by 
 the cast of your politics. Are you a merchant? — 
 let your type of honesty and integrity conform to 
 the principles that you profess. It will not do in 
 these days to divorce the Sunday from the week ; 
 it will not do to live one-seventh part of the time 
 in Jerusalem and the other six-sevenths in New 
 York. You must live all your life in one place. If 
 your life is modern so must your faith be. 
 
 A friend, two or three days ago, told me of one 
 he knew who was guilty,— openly guilty of vile and 
 deceitful practices ; who pursued them, being fully 
 aware of their character as estimated by the stand- 
 ard morals of the community. He was at last 
 arrested, convicted and punished by confinement in 
 the penitentiary ; but even then, he did not have 
 the conviction of his turpitude burned into his 
 heart. Yet this man was all the time a devout 
 professor of religion, impassioned and fluent in 
 
THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 35 
 
 prayer, easily melted to tears by religious consid- 
 erations, most eloquent in his outpourings of piety 
 to the " throne of grace." He did not see the in- 
 congruity between this overgush of emotion and 
 the daily life he was leading. But that is not the 
 rule to-day. Such people were more frequent 
 once than now. In these days they are reckoned 
 monsters. We expect an entire and close allegiance 
 between creed and conduct. Is that the case to-day 
 in Christendom? Why, look at the surface of 
 the Christian world, covered with pauperism and 
 crime ; see the vast military establishments ; con- 
 template the wars; wars of religion, in which the 
 Prince of Peace is called on to bless banners. 
 Think of all this and then read the New Testament ; 
 think of all this and then call up the sweet image of 
 the Christ. Can you put such opposite things to- 
 gether? The prevalence of this bitter fact in the 
 world shows that the old faith has lost its power. 
 
 Once more : another sign of decay is the growing 
 tendency to substitute humanity, kindness of heart, 
 charitableness, philanthropy, for faith. This too, is 
 regarded as a sign that religion is increasing in in- 
 tensity and power. To me, it is a sign that it is 
 losing its characteristic intensity and power; that 
 it is abandoning its supernatural ground. If the 
 humanity were christian in spirit, if the effort was 
 
36 THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 
 
 to organize society upon strictly christian principles, 
 then the substitution of works for faith would be a 
 sign of vitality. But the humanity means philan- 
 thropy ; and philanthropy means good nature, kind- 
 ness, sweetne.ss of heart, compassion ; it is a glorifi- 
 cation of those natural instincts which religion has 
 hitherto put under its foot in behalf of the Christ. 
 Hence the feeling prevailing through Christendom 
 in favor of practical benevolence and doing good, is 
 a concession on the part of faith to the natural 
 instiacts ; and is a return to the primitive heresy 
 which the " Apostle of the gentiles," the founder of 
 Protestantism, did his utmost to supplant. 
 
 To turn from the old faith to the new, it is true 
 to say that the characteristics of the new faith, — the 
 rising faith, — are as simple and definite as those of 
 tlie old Its first peculiarity is the absence of a 
 superhuman Christ. It has no incarnate God, no 
 Savior, no Redeemer. I do not mean to say that 
 the believer in the new faith may not profoundly 
 reverence, admire and love Jesus, the man Jesus ; 
 he may, but not as the Christ, he may, but only as he 
 loves other exalted leaders of the human race, — proph- 
 ets, saints, teachers, reformers ;— indeed we may say 
 that the new faith lavishes its praise ujDon those ; calls 
 out of obscurity some that have been thrust into ob- 
 livion ; challenges reverence for many who have been 
 
THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 37 
 
 scorned, and reinstates in honor many a noble soul, 
 whom the Christian church has consigned to the 
 outer darkness. The new faith finds its inspired men 
 not in Christendon alone, nor yet, alone in Judaism ; 
 but elsewhere and everywhere that mankind have en- 
 deavored to find the divine law and to lead the divine 
 life. The new faith follows the shining light, wel- 
 comes it, presses it to its heart ; but it has no 
 sacrificial, mediating Christ. It takes no individual 
 out of the race to crown him with immortal glory, 
 and set him up aloft as the Supreme judge and con- 
 troller of human destiny. It throws the charge of 
 his salvation upon man himself. It takes for granted 
 human ability as it exists, and says to man boldly 
 " You are in a world stored with knowledge : find it 
 and use it. You are in a world crowded with 
 beauty : discover it and rejoice in it. You are in a 
 world rich with elements of well being : make your 
 selves masters of them. You live in a world where 
 there is a cure for every human ill: discover it and 
 apply it for yourselves ; learn the nature of the 
 evil and the value of the remedy. In a word, the 
 new faith believes in man, — not as he is now, a half- 
 made, puny creature, struggling up out of bestiality, 
 — but as he may become, in the possible man, the 
 real man, the essential, fundamental ; in the soul of 
 humanity which is struggling with inertia and 
 
38 THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 
 
 poverty, in all hearts, and which has in it, if any- 
 thing has, all the resources necessary for reconstruct- 
 ing society and redeeming the world ; has power to 
 answer all questions that can be honestly asked, to 
 solve all problems that are fairly submitted, to van- 
 quish all enemies that immediately threaten ; power 
 to extract order and good will out of the rugged 
 world wherever it shows itself to be most stubborn. 
 The new faith believes in this, fixes its hope upon 
 it, never takes its eye off, sees in the little child in 
 the manger the possible man whose mature strength 
 shall redeem society. 
 
 Another characteristic of the rising faith is its 
 interpretation of the future, — its theory of the 
 hereafter. It does not discourage the belief in the 
 hereafter. So far from denying it or trying to over- 
 throw it, it welcomes all fine anticipations of it and 
 attempts incessantly to ennoble it. Every dearest 
 hope of a happy future for man it cherishes ; but it 
 sets the future in new relations to the present. The 
 old faith puts the hereafter by itself, makes it the 
 culminating centre, the rallying point, the one 
 scene of absorbing interest, the one event to be 
 looked forward to, an overshadowing contingency, 
 dwarfing this life, taking the vital interest out of it. 
 Salvation is there. Do you wish peace, justice, 
 happiness ? Seek them not here ; seek them beyond. 
 
THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 39 
 
 The gulf of death h'es dark and wide between the 
 two spheres. The new faith allows no such contrast. 
 Its believer looks to the hereafter as to a new open- 
 ing, a fresh scene ; welcomes it as another chance, 
 an added opportunity, an extention, supplement or 
 appendix to this world, not a different kind of life, 
 but simply more life ; not a contradictory life, but a 
 helping one ; not a life that is to substitute some- 
 thing else for what we have here, but a life that is to 
 carry out to further fulfilment the best things we 
 have here. You see then, that the new faith centres 
 its interest in this life ; that the interest which the 
 other life has for it consists in the hope that it may 
 illumine, consecrate, dignify and ennoble this, even 
 in the smallest details^ To deny immortality, there- 
 fore, in the thought of the new believer, is to limit 
 the range of life ; that is all. Such denial takes 
 from this life no essential quality ; it limits all its 
 qualities ; it sets a term for it which it may not pass 
 over. You see at once the entirely new aspect that 
 is given to the faith in the future ; you see at once 
 that the new believer in immortality is essentially 
 another person in the whole structure of his faith 
 from the old fashioned believer in salvation. 
 
 Think again of the unimpbi'tance to the new faith 
 of a belief in the supernatural. It does not rest on 
 the supernatural ; it does not believe in it ; it makes 
 
40 THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 
 
 no account of it ; it does not implore for gifts, for it 
 expects no answer to its petition. George Miiller, 
 who is at present lecturing in this neighborhood, 
 beheves that he sustains a large Orphan Asylum in 
 England purely by prayer. Of the dimensions of 
 the asylum there is no manner of doubt. There is 
 evidence enough of that. It is an immense estab' 
 lishment. Its founder declares that he never asked 
 a shilling, never sent round a subscription paper, 
 never made his wants known, directly or indirectly, 
 to an individual ; when he was in need he prayed, 
 and the needed supplies came. Does the money 
 give out? he prays and the coffers are filled ; are 
 his orphans unclothed or unfed, he drops on his 
 knees and clothing is left at the door, food is stored 
 in the larder. George Miiller is an honest, sincere,' 
 fervent, devoted man, — a man perfectly simple in 
 the whole cast of his mind and feeling. , He believes 
 this with all his heart. And who shall undertake to 
 prove that his belief is unfounded? How do we 
 know that the spirit of the Lord does not drop a 
 helping thought into the minds of charitable people 
 and suggest to them the sending of aid? I cannot 
 disprove it ; no one can disprove it. It may be true. 
 But the new faith cannot by any possibility believe 
 it to be true ; the new faith is quite inaccessible to 
 argument on this question. The new believer is 
 
THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 4I 
 
 perfectly certain that the Orphan Asylum sup- 
 ported by George Miiller is supported as all other 
 orphan asylums are, as all human institutions are, 
 by the good will of men and women who obey 
 humane impulses. They know of the institution by 
 report ; they are charitably disposed ; they believe 
 , that Miiller is engaged in a good work, and they 
 wish to help him. By such strange co-incidences 
 as may happen at any time, it frequently occurs that 
 help comes at the very moment it is needed ; but 
 that the means are purely natural — natural desires, 
 natural motives, natural benevolences, — the believer 
 in the new faith believes as he believes in his own 
 existence. ' 
 
 You will ask, does the rising faith undertake to do 
 the work of the setting faith ? Does the new faith 
 meet the needs which the old faith met ? No, this is 
 not claimed ; the need of a sufficient consolation 
 for every ill of life, the need of a divine answer for 
 every question we can raise, the need of absolute 
 certainty on every point whereof we are ignorant, the 
 need of a perfect guarantee of felicity in the here 
 after, the need of an omnipotent and omniscient 
 friend at our side in every moment of human expe 
 rience, — no, the new faith does not claim to be able 
 to give this. It meets the needs of to-day. It is 
 the child of to-day; and in to-d^y it lives. It 
 
42 THE RISING AND THE SETTING FAITH. 
 
 answers the questions of to-day, — not the questions 
 of a thousand years ago or a thousand years to 
 come. It grapples with the needs of to-day, and not 
 the needs of the last century. It ministers to the 
 sorrows of men and women now living and suffering, 
 not of the men and women who groaned and sor- 
 rowed a century or more in the past. 
 
 Every age has its own necessities ; every genera- 
 tion raises its own questions. Our doubts, if genu- 
 ine, are new ; our enemies, if urgent, are new ; let 
 us be satisfied to have a faith that serves our turn, 
 whether it will serve our neighbor's turn or not. 
 Let Christendom work its own system for its own 
 purpose ; let us work our system for our purpose ; and 
 let our purposes be those of earnest living men and 
 women. The music that we listen for is not the 
 song of angels, but the " still sad music of humanity." 
 The consolation that we have in view is not salva- 
 tion from mythological sin in a mythological 
 paradise ; it is salvation from doubt, and fear, and 
 dishonesty and dishonor, as we walk our crooked 
 and rugged pathway through this life, seeking th^ 
 better life which we all desire. ' 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS, 
 
 I invite you, this morning, to consider with me 
 the subject of belief and unbelief ; not in their 
 speculative relations or aspects, though these, too, 
 it may sometimes be profitable and even necessary 
 to consider, — for all questions that we entertain in 
 this place are vital questions, not speculative merely i 
 and if, perchance, speculative questions are enter, 
 tained, they are always considered in their vital 
 bearings. So this matter of belief and of i^nbelief 
 I would look upon to-day as of practical concern, 
 affecting intimately our daily life, Indeed, it makes 
 a great deal of difference to a irtan whether he 
 classes himself among believers or unbelievers; it 
 affects materially the whole attitude of the mind 
 and even the whole bent of the will, To consider 
 one's self an unbeliever, on whatever ground, or 
 according to whatever definition, is to put one's self 
 so far, out of sympathy with those who believe ; 
 and those who believe, say what we will, are tji^ 
 
44 UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 earnest people, — resolute men and women, — who, 
 whatever their opinions may be, are at work with a 
 purpose to make hfe better. The unbeliever, — the 
 one who puts himself avowedly among unbelievers, 
 — by that very act turns his back to the breaking 
 day, becomes critical, captious, doubting ; is disposed 
 to find the weak point in the faith of those who 
 believe, and the strong point in the faith of those 
 who believe not ; and consequently he goes through 
 the world asking, but never expecting an answer ; 
 seeking, but never hoping to find ; lifting his arms, 
 but never seeking an enemy that it is worth while to 
 strike ; fortifying himself to no purpose, because 
 life to him must be negative and vain ; yes, he may 
 go through life a skeptic, a doubter, a disbeliever, 
 all the time having unobserved, unnoted in his mind, 
 moral credence enough, if acted on or confessed, to 
 make him a hero and even a saint. If Voltaire and 
 Thomas Paine could, as they could not in their time 
 and with their calling, have put themselves bravely 
 on the ground of what they did believe, instead of 
 declaring what they did not believe ; if they could 
 have counted themselves as afifirmers instead of 
 deniers, not only would they have been grander men 
 personally, but their whole repute in the world would 
 have been other than it is. For men respect be- 
 lievers and do not respect unbelievers. Unbelief 
 
UNBEIilEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 45 
 
 has a bad atmosphere. BeUef when avowed and 
 maintained, however slight and tenuous it may be, 
 becomes magnificent. The Christian world, and not 
 the Christian world only, puts Voltaire and Paine 
 and the rest under the ban and keeps them there 
 because they avowed themselves deniers. Yet there 
 was enough in the belief even of Voltaire and Paine 
 to have lifted them into the foremost rank of intel- 
 ligent believers and doers ; yes, much as they did, — 
 and nobody yet has done full justice to the superb 
 things that Voltaire and Paine attempted, — even 
 those things would have dwindled into insignificance 
 beside the achievements they might have performed, 
 if they could have called themselves believers. The 
 church understands this. The church knows very 
 well that they who occ-upy the position of unbelief, 
 or who can be made to occupy it, are thereby put out 
 of the pale of common respect ; and it has been part 
 of the policy of established religions, in all times and 
 in all places, to count as unbelievers those who dis- 
 sent from their own dogmas. 
 
 Now it is timely to turn the tables. It is timely 
 for unbelievers to avow themselves believers and 
 retort upon the .so called believers the charge of un- 
 belief. It is timely I say. It is not only timely, 
 but it is incumbent on them to do so. It is our 
 privilege ; it is our right ; it is imposed on us as a 
 
46 UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 duty to stand upon what we do believ^ ; to put that 
 forward in its positiveness and breadth ; to do justice 
 to all its bearings ; to exhibit it in all its relations ; 
 and to say, " It is not we who limit ; it is not we 
 who question ; it is not we who clip and disfigure 
 truth! ; it is not we who reject ; rather it is you, who 
 have always put us and compelled us to stand in 
 the attitude of unbelief." 
 
 The case may be made very plain and without 
 dealing in over-subtleties and refinements, without 
 leading the mind into the perplexing ways of meta- 
 physics and the bewilderments of theology. It can 
 be made so plain that readers shall wonder any man 
 thought it worth while to say it. Let us see. 
 
 The belief in miracles is essential to the whole 
 popular system of religion. I say is essential, — ^not 
 incidental, not occasional, — it is the root of the 
 whole system. To disbelieve in miracles is to dis- 
 credit the entire scheme. Everything that we call 
 Christianity sinks ; the thing that we call Christendom 
 is annulled the moment the belief in miracles is 
 questioned. I repeat it, this is not an incidental 
 consideration ; it is not a debate on a question of 
 evidence for this or that scripture statement ; it is 
 not a question in regard to the integrity of the 
 bible. Old Testament or New. It is a conflict be- 
 tween those who believe and those who do not 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 47 
 
 believe in the violation of natural law. It is not 
 a little skirmish on the outer lines of the great 
 army ; but a battle between opposing hosts that 
 stand face to face with each other. It is a conflict 
 (i r outrance ; a struggle for life or death between 
 the central forces. I reiterate the statement; the 
 whole Christian system rests upon the faith in mir- 
 acles. It is the idea of God as a being outside of 
 the universe, — let the universe be as large as it may 
 be, — a living individual, personal, thinking, purpos- 
 ing, willing, even as a man thinks, purposes, and 
 wills ; who holds in his grasp the laws of nature, 
 suspends them, alters them, violates them, super- 
 sedes them at his pleasure ; a being to whom the 
 universe is a machine that he can dash to pieces by 
 a blow of his fist ; which he can cause to run in a 
 particular direction, or can force to move in the op- 
 posite course, or forbid to go at all ; a being who 
 can change death into life, nothing into something; 
 can neutralize the law of gravitation in a moment, 
 whenever he fancies it is worth his while to do so. 
 The whole christian system rests on this idea. But 
 this is an attitude of unbelief ; for to believe in a be- 
 ing who is outside of law, who does not recognize 
 law, to whom cause and effect are empty words, and 
 in whose sight the universe is not dovetailed and 
 riveted together, piece clinging to piece, sequence 
 
4^ UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 following sequence, absolutely and irresistably, — is 
 to believe in a being to whom the idea of law does 
 not occur. The believer in miracles is an unbeliever 
 in law. An unbeliever in law ? — -then an unbeliever 
 in the very constitution of the living world ; because 
 this fine thread of cause and effect, of sequence and 
 consequence, of beginnings, continuations and end- 
 ings, links together the parts of a wonderful system, 
 which the finest telescope has not yet fully disclosed 
 to us, and which the most keen-eyed microscope has 
 not revealed ; a world of wonder upon wonder, of 
 marvel upon marvel, of mystery upon mystery, — a 
 orld of atoms, stars, suns, — a world whose very 
 dust breaks into orbs that .sparkle like gems in the 
 night heaven ; a world whose lowest rudimental tend- 
 encies come creeping up into the organized brain of 
 man. This world, so vast, so complex, so closely 
 woven, is held together by law. 
 
 We live by law. Our daily life is ordered by it. 
 We do not build a house or a ship ; we do not sail a 
 vessel ; we do not make a bargain ; we do not drive 
 a piece of trade except on the presumption that 
 cause and effect hold good everywhere, on land and 
 on sea. We do not marry, or make homes, or rear 
 children, or nurture them, or lay plans of life, or 
 choose professions, or conduct a single day's affairs 
 on the lowest plane of activity, without assuming 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 49 
 
 cause and effect, sequence and consequence, the in- 
 violable and infallible integrity of the world. We 
 must assume it. If any man could suppose that, at 
 any moment, a certain divine power, good or evil, 
 outside of his world, could touch a spring, turn a 
 pivot, which might reverse his engine, throw his ma- 
 chine off the track, confound his enterprises, the 
 world, for that man, would be paralyzed ; for him 
 affairs would not go on for a single day. He would 
 not plant ; the harvest would not be gathered ; the 
 commercial marine would rot at the piers, — there 
 would de no commercial marine in fact ; all the op- 
 erations of the human mind would be brought to a 
 stand. 
 
 Does the believer protest that the operation of 
 miracles has been limited to a particular epoch of 
 time, — that the period when iron was made to swim, 
 when dead men came to life at the word of a 
 prophet, and living men died without disease, was 
 very remote and peculiar ; a time of special interpo- 
 sition ; that miracles are confined to the bible age, 
 to the eras of the Old Testament and New Testa- 
 ment, to the generation of the apostles, and that 
 Deity has gracefully permitted law to prevail ever 
 since, allowing us to take advantage of the firm es- 
 tablishment and the regular operation of cause and 
 effect ? Then we must enquire if cause and effect 
 
so UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 rest on allowance. What assurance have we, 
 what pledge, what guarantee, that the will or whim 
 which broke into the world two thousand or three 
 thousand years ago, may not break into it to-day, 
 and derange all our plans ? George Miiller believes 
 that'it does. The faithful Roman Catholic believes 
 that it does. The sincere Protestant must believe 
 that it does. Yet, that belief alone is unbelief of 
 the most radical description, — unbelief in the very 
 constitution of the universe itself. Nay, if it comes 
 to that, who is the living God? Who believes in the 
 living God ? The believer, so called, thinks of a 
 deity out side of th^ world, a deity that dips into it 
 occasionally, whenever it is to Him desirable. The 
 unbeliever has faith in a universe that is instinct 
 with a vital quality that bears the name of Deity ; 
 that is animated with order, harmony, continuous 
 energy ; that is full of purpose, meaning and tend- 
 ency. The unbeliever, therefore, is the believer in a 
 living God. He may call himself by definition an 
 atheist ; no matter : the world in which he lives is 
 saturated with the essence of Godhood. Here then 
 is a cardinal distinction, according to which the 
 believer is the unbeliever, and the unbeliever is the 
 greatest of believers. 
 
 The practical bearing of this appears in a casual 
 incident that will serve as an illustration. A few 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. SI 
 
 years ago, so it is reported, a committee from the 
 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 
 waited upon the Pope in Rome to ask his sanction 
 to the aims of the society. The Pope refused it, 
 saying " What has Christianity to do with animals ? 
 The work of the church is to save souls," Cattle 
 having no souls, Religion has nothing to do with 
 them. This was the attitude taken by the head of 
 Christendom, — the chief person in Chiistendom; 
 the chief person in civilization who believes in the 
 idea of God that I have been describing. His atti- 
 tude illustrates the attitude of the theory. See now. 
 by another case, the attitude of the other theory. 
 The Buddhists are commonly reputed atheists ; 
 they appear certainly to have no God " to speak of ; " 
 they have no Deity they have ever succeeded in de- 
 fining, and consequently rest under the ban of being 
 deniers of Deity altogether. Yet, the Buddhist 
 believes so intensely in Deity, his world is so satu- 
 rated with Deity, so full of piety, compassion, love, 
 kindness, towards all creatures, that he has asylums 
 for brute beasts. All created things are holy in his 
 eyes, for deity animates them all. The disbeliever 
 in the personal God of Revelation is the believer in 
 the real God of Law. The unbeliever who calls 
 himself Pantheist or Atheist, but yet is a high toned, 
 honest, honorable man, accepts the sanctity of the 
 
52 UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 world, the holiness of human relations, the precious- 
 ness of virtue, the sweetness of loving kindness, 
 even in those aspects and relations which the Chris- 
 tian does not see to be venerable at all. 
 
 Press the matter a little further. The central 
 doctrine of Christianity is the Incarnation. With- 
 out this there is no Christianity ; without this there 
 is no Christendom. The Incarnation^ — that is the 
 embodiment in a human form and person of a divine 
 being, the conjunction of a celestial and seraphic 
 nature with a human personality. This, let me say 
 again, is the centre of the Christian system. We 
 may go further and call it the centre of every insti- 
 tuted religion. Now let it be considered what an 
 amount of disbelief the belief in incarnation implies. 
 In the first place, there must be a miraculous birth, a 
 birth out of the order of natufe. That is to say, 
 before one can come at the belief in incarnation, 
 before one can begin the process of embodying the 
 angel, one must cast doubt and disrepute upon this 
 holiest of laws, according to which the race has from 
 the beginning perpetuated its existence on the 
 planet. For, to say that the God-man can only be 
 born when all the conditions under which other men 
 and women are born are neglected, are flounted, as 
 it were, is to say that the ordinances of nature, to 
 which the human race is submitted are inadequate to 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. S3 
 
 the production of the highest type of humanity ; that 
 the divine life cannot be transmitted through them. 
 What an unbelief is that! How deadly it is! If 
 there is one thing that the men and women of this 
 generation need to feel in every part of the civilized 
 world, it is the sanctity, — the sanctity, I repeat, of 
 the natural conditions by which the human race is 
 ' enabled to perpetuate itself on the earth. We are 
 perishing because we do not believe this ; we are 
 perishing because these natural laws are violated 
 and insulted. For this reason our society rots ; from 
 this cause men and women are lositig their sense of 
 responsibility, and playing fast and loose with the 
 most solemn and invisible relations of life. And 
 yet the popular belief in incarnation tends exactly 
 to that. 
 
 When Jesus was born, it is said that throughout 
 the Jewish race there was an anticipation of his 
 coming, — the coming of a Messiah. The hunger 
 and thirst of the people demanded this divine sup- 
 ply ; the Jewish woman as she became a mother, 
 and it was the desire of her heart' to become a 
 mother, looked forward to the possibility that her 
 son might be the promised deliverer. Such a hope 
 planted in the bosom of mothers sanctified them, 
 filled them with longing and peace ; delighted and 
 blessed their homes. In the period before the child 
 
54 UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 was born, the mothef was simple, sincere, holy and 
 pure ; after the child was born, he was nurtured, 
 cared for, and watched over, because the boy might 
 be, — who knew ? certainly she did not know, — the 
 deliverer of his people. Out of those natural laws, 
 yes, out of these simple human conditions, with the 
 grace of heaven, the grandeur of heaven and earth 
 might come. How is it now? Christians believe 
 that a solitary person gathers up into himself the 
 sanctity of the human race. There is no longer a 
 kindling hope, only a disheartening memory. There 
 is no Messiah to be expected now, no saint, no sage, 
 no leader. He has come ; he is in heaven. Wor- 
 ship him there ; bring gifts to him ; offer him sacri- 
 fices. Your boy is surely not to be the deliverer. 
 You will be wise to believe he is quite as likely to be 
 a plague and a nuisance. Thus persuaded, fathers 
 and mothers to-day are praying that they may not 
 have sons ; are resorting to shameful means of pre- 
 venting their coming ; and when they come, think 
 how they may cast them adrift, put them off upon 
 ignorant and stupid people, send them over the sea, 
 get rid of them, because they do not regard as sacred 
 this most natural of human relations. We do not 
 expect any hero, deliverer, or Messiah to come from 
 our blood ; therefore we count the blood to be un- 
 clean, and give over to the lowest desire, to animal 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 55 
 
 lust or mercantile arrangement, what should be the 
 holiest of all human things. 
 
 It seems to me, and I believe the record of history 
 will verify the opinion, that thfe belief in Incarnation, 
 involving, as it does, unbelief in the natural laws by 
 which the human race is perpetuated, has led in no 
 inconsiderable degree to this horrible state of practi- 
 cal unbelief, and to the consequent mischiefs and 
 degradations that we are struggling to recover from, 
 almost hopelessly, now. 
 
 The Messiah, we will suppose, becomes a man ; 
 the Incarnate God reaches maturity. See now the 
 deepening shadow of unbelief ; for, in this unbelief 
 is involved disbelief in the adult man and woman. 
 The great man, the divine man, is miraculous, is of 
 supernatural origin, is superhuman in quality. He 
 is not one of the family. He is of another race. 
 All great virtues come through some special grace 
 into the world. You are not to expect them, there- 
 fore ; you, common men and women, need not ex- 
 pect to be naturally good ; for you have not received 
 the supernatural grace. You need not suppose that 
 your weak hearts are entitled to illustrate the 
 purity that redeems and sustains mankind ; that 
 your simple human conscience is adequate to organ- 
 ize justice; that your merely human will can authen- 
 ticate a divine decree. You are but a man ; you 
 
56 UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 are but a woman. You cannot claim to be born of 
 God ; you have no title to be regarded as an incar- 
 nate angel ; you are under the law of nature and 
 must take your chances accordingly. Hence it 
 results, and has resulted, — the evidence comes to 
 us from the past, — that the belief in incarnation has 
 tended to bring into disrepute the attainments of 
 natural goodness. It cannot be denied that some- 
 thing that looks very much like goodness exists in 
 the world. There are men and women who seem 
 to be good, but it is only seeming. The natural 
 saint is not holy; the natural hero is not -heroic; 
 the natural philanthropist is not pitiful. Take him 
 to pieces. Virtue is only vice under another name, 
 varnished and veneered. Saintliness is nothing but 
 expediency in another form ; purity is common 
 prudence with a finer application. Vice, of course, 
 is what it seems to be. There is no soul of good in 
 things evil. Lying, killing, cheating are matters of 
 course. What better can you expect of human nature, 
 which must be corrupt, in so much that it has to be 
 redeemed, not by any natural power of its own, but 
 by an act of supernatural grace. 
 
 Hence it comes to pass that the believer in Incar- 
 nation, is an unbeliever in man and woman. Roche- 
 foucault and the skeptics of the French school, the 
 proverbial scoffers at human goodness, the avowed 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 57 
 
 disbelievers in the chastity of woman, in the virtue 
 of man, have simply expressed in worldly phrase 
 the thoughts of the saints in the Catholic and Pro- 
 testant churches ; haye simply voiced in other 
 language what the Christian theory has prompted. 
 Both assurhe the corruption of human nature ; both 
 assume, therefore, that men and women are by 
 nature good for nothing ; that nothing can be hoped 
 for out of such a mass of imbecility as that ; that 
 the world must be given over to lying and fraud 
 until it shall become converted to the Christ ; and 
 as conversion to the Christ is a theory that ordinary 
 people, except in their wildest dream, can never 
 anticipate, the doom of the race is sealed ; and the 
 believer becomes an unbeliever in the rescue of his 
 own species. 
 
 The unbeliever believes in the natural capacity of 
 man and woman ; believes in goodness as a legiti- 
 mate product of the heart ; believes that apparent 
 virtue may be real ; that seeming manliness may be 
 genuine ; that heroism may be true ; that saintliness 
 may be accepted in good faith ; he, in other words, 
 believes that out of the raw material of human 
 nature everything that human nature has need of 
 may be created. He will not abate a tithe of the 
 grandeur, of the beauty of the Christ. He has not 
 the least disposition to make Jesus less a personage 
 
58 UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 than he was. Allow him to be all that is claimed 
 for him in respect of virtue, goodness, nobleness, 
 sanctity ; all that we contend for is that he was no 
 superhuman being, but a being intensely human ; 
 the higher we place him in the scale of being, the 
 more we exalt the humanity out of which he grew ; 
 the more we exalt the indomitable power of human 
 nature which can throw up such Alpine peaks to 
 the sky. Has human nature given birth to a Shake- 
 speare who leads the world in poetic art ? Has hu- 
 man nature given birth to a Phidias who stands at 
 the head of sculpture ? Has it created a Raphael, 
 a Titian who distance all the artists in genius for 
 painting? By the same creative force this same 
 human nature is capable of producing a Christ. 
 Place him as high as you will. Grant to others the 
 same conditions, and the same result will follow. 
 
 Thus once again, it appears that the unbeliever is 
 in the attitude of one who accepts natural laws, and 
 plants his faith immoveably upon human nature. 
 He is not the skeptic ; he is not the denier ; he is 
 not the questioner. He afifirms, — he does nothing 
 but affirm. He takes the meanest germ of virtue 
 and says, " Be true, — be true to yourself. Believe 
 what is best in yourself; seek your noblest ideal, 
 and it will become real ; out of your dust the flowers 
 of Paradise will bloom." 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 59 
 
 Press the matter one point further. You will all 
 agree with me that the idea of revelation is cardinal 
 in Christianity. The doctrine is this, that there are 
 certain questions which human wit cannot answer ; 
 certain depths, certain problems which the human 
 mind cannot fathom. All our infomation respecting 
 the secret of life ; all our knowledge about the end 
 of creation must come, if it. comes at all, from above, 
 from outside of the human intelligence. It comes, 
 therefore, by revelation from God. This is the 
 current belief of every instituted system of religion. 
 It is the cardinal belief that makes all others second- 
 ary. We, who do not believe in supernatural revela- ' 
 tion, have no certainty; can claim no assurance. 
 But now, look at the reverse side of the statement. 
 The believer in revelation believes that there are 
 problems with which the mind cannot grapple ; 
 that there are questions it is idle for human intelli- 
 gence to raise, and, of course, vain for human 
 intelligence to seek to ■ answer ; that the essential 
 views, the indispensable thoughts, the vital beliefs, 
 can come only from a sphere outside of human 
 reason. What an imputation is here upon human 
 reason ! What a reproach upon the intelligence 
 that has created science upon science ; has built 
 philosophy upon philosophy ; has started and met 
 question after question ; has tried its skill on prob- 
 
6o UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 lem after problem ; has thrown down its answer, — 
 such answer as there was to give to the enquiring 
 minds of ages. The believer in revelation, therefore, 
 is no believer in the spiritual worth of literature. 
 He classes all secular books, — books of science, of 
 philosophy, of history, of art, among the books 
 that are not wholesome reading for anybody who 
 seeks more than casual entertainment or instruction. 
 If one desires saving knowledge, he must go to the 
 bible. It is profitless to the soul to take up Shake- 
 speare ; it is of no heavenly use to read the Novum 
 Organum of Bacon, or Cuvier, or Sir Thomas 
 Browne ; it is a waste of precious time to sit at the 
 feet of Thomas Huxley, or listen to the lectures of 
 John Tyndall. Go to the inspired Bible ; the Book 
 of Books : there is true knowledge ; there is the 
 final answer to life's questions. A reproach is cast 
 not upon Shakespeare especially, not upon Bacon, 
 nor yet upon Huxley or Tyndall ; the reproach is 
 cast upon the human mind of which these are 
 children ; upon the human mind which is fathomless 
 in capacity ; which throws out literature as the prim- 
 eval fire mist throws out stars. Is it belief that ex- 
 cludes from regard every thing that the human 
 mind has done? or is it unbelief? No man 
 who believes in revelation in the popular sense, 
 trusts his or any mind to grapple with problems 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 6 1 
 
 that are of vital concern to himself or his fellows. 
 
 This notion that certain problems must have 
 definite, final and conclusive answers, is a reflection 
 upon other problems, because no other questions 
 have definite, certain and conclusive answers. The 
 questions of business, of science, of philosophy, 
 are all open. We are forever seeking, searching, 
 exploring for more light. If, therefore, there are 
 any questions which must be finally and fully an- 
 swered and can be answered by revelation alone, 
 reproach is cast upon the process of finding truth 
 through question, search and experiment, upon which 
 all our knowledge depends. Thus again, the believer 
 in revelation is the actual skeptic. He doubts 
 where doubt is simply fatal not only to knowledge, 
 but to inquiry. 
 
 The argument might be pressed much further. 
 It might be illustrated by new instances. It might 
 be pressed in directions which are not commonly 
 contemplated ; but this is enough. I have stated 
 the case broadly, because I wished to exhibit the 
 strength of the main position ; I have treated it 
 pointedly, because I wished the chief considera- 
 tions to be felt as well as understood. 
 
 The whole question resolves itself into this, 
 whether our belief is to be an addition to our life or 
 not ; whether creed and conduct are to go together 
 
62 UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 • and cleave together. The creed of one generation 
 may influence life when the same creed in another 
 generation will be inoperative. The creed which, in 
 one age, has set men aflame, in another age, will 
 extinguish even the embers of vitality. The belief 
 in fatalism, for example, which in the ancient and far 
 off East, was a creative power of prodigious force, 
 kindling and impelling multitudes, giving moral 
 energy to a nation of people, now prostrates and 
 crushes the very race it animated. When this faith 
 in fatalism was native to the people, it was inspiring 
 and invigorating. It is native to the people no 
 longer. Consequently it has lost its hold and need 
 not be preached there any more. It was true 
 yesterday ; it is false to-day. The Turkish general, 
 beaten in battle by the Russians, says to the ques- 
 tioner, "I have done my best ; every thing was thought 
 of that could be thought of ; every thing has been 
 accomplished that valor and determination could 
 accomplish. We ought to have beaten ; we have 
 been defeated ; it is the will of God ! " Should we 
 say that ? Would an American speak so ? Would 
 an Englishman give that explanation of his discomfi- 
 ture ? Would any modern European fall back, even 
 at last, on predestination ? He would rather say, 
 " I have been beaten. The fault was with me. 
 Something was neglected ; the next time, nothing 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 63 
 
 shall be neglected. Our generals were unskilled ; 
 cfur commissariat was ill supplied ; our organization 
 was imperfect ; this shall not happen again. The 
 next time battle is joined the conditions of victory 
 shall be anticipated." 
 
 The strong belief of to-day is the belief that is na- 
 tural to the people of to-day. The native belief is 
 the belief that empowers. It may be speculatively 
 true or untrue. It is certain not to be wholly true. 
 No belief is absolutely true. No belief is true for 
 more than the generations that it affects ; and no 
 belief, however poor and flimsy it may seem, that 
 is native to a generation fails to inspire. The belief 
 that is the inspiration of to-day is faith in progress. 
 Define it as men will ; quarrel with it as men will ; 
 say that it has been carried to extremes, that it has 
 been misinterpreted, the fact stands that the belief in 
 progress is the belief that vitalizes the men and wo- 
 men of to-day. The statesman, the politician, the 
 poet, the philosopher, the teacher, the merchant, 
 the inventor, — the men and women of every degree 
 who do vigorous work, who think, feel, purpose, 
 act with the most resolution or valor, do it on the 
 strength of this belief. They do not know it, per- 
 haps ; possibly, they never heard the doctrine intel- 
 legibly stated, still the power of it is in their blood ; 
 it is bone of their bone ; it is soul of their soul ; it 
 
64 UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 
 
 is life of their life. It inspires those who have 
 never entertained it. It invigorates those who 
 know not whence their strength comes. 
 
 This belief in progress the so called believer 
 distrusts and often repudiates. When he is in the 
 attitude of belief, when he kneels in his church, 
 when he recites his creed, when he makes his con- 
 fession, he dismisses the thought of progress. 
 Progress implies the natural capacity, the inherent 
 ability of man. Christianity implies the natural 
 incapacity, the natural inability of man. Here 
 then, at the root, the believer is the unbeliever ; 
 and here the unbeliever is the believer, every day 
 he lives, in every act that he performs. Cling to 
 the belief in progress, ill defined and vague as it 
 may appear to be, — the belief that it is worth while 
 to do something, worth while to try for a better to- 
 morrow after to-day, a brighter day for the dark- 
 ened, a richer day for the poor, a restful day for 
 the troubled and afflicted, and that this day is 
 coming, — coming out of our effort, our endeavor, 
 our knowledge, our faith and aspiration, — this is 
 the faith that makes men to be men, and women to 
 be women, so far as they are men and women in 
 this generation. Assume this faith and the unbe- 
 liever becomes the grandest of all believers, — a 
 believer in something that is better than happiness, 
 
UNBELIEFS OF THE BELIEVERS. 65 
 
 — in goodness, greatness and justice ; in that lov- 
 ing kindness which is the sweetest name that is 
 named in heaven or on the earth. 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION 
 PREVAIL? 
 
 I ask you to listen this morning to some discuss- 
 ion of the causes of the power and prevalence of 
 the popular religion. By the popular religion, I 
 mean, of course, the religion of the people — the 
 prevailing religion-^-the religion that is called 
 Christianity. It includes all those who worship the 
 Christ, who have, as the centre of their belief, the 
 image of a Christ, who rely upon Christ as their 
 Saviour, who look forward to the future in the hope 
 of meeting their Christ and living in his smile — all 
 those who look to the Christ as the source of life, 
 of strength, of consolation, of peace. The popu- 
 lar religion embraces all those, whatever may be 
 their particular name, whether of the Greek, the Ro- 
 man,or the English Church — whether called Catholic 
 or Protestant, and Protestant of whatsoever name. It 
 includes Universalists, who call themselves a liberal 
 
68 WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 
 
 sect, yet still believe in the Christ ; it includes the 
 old school Unitarians who, calling themselves a lib- 
 eral sect, still, after a fashion of their own, believe 
 in the Christ. It does not include the Unitarians 
 of the new school, or the liberals of any class who 
 believe in education, in culture, in science, in 
 knowledge, in the pursuit of truth, in the illumin- 
 ation of the human faculties, in the intrinsic capac- 
 ity of man to answer the questions which have to 
 be answered, to meet life's needs and right life's 
 wrongs, and to lift man out of the dead level of 
 materialism and beastialism into the liberty and 
 nobleness of human creatures. The popular relig- 
 ion is the religion of all those who in any form or 
 degree disbelieve in man. It is not the religion of 
 any who, to whatever degree, believe in man. 
 
 That the popular religion prevails, need not be 
 argued. It is the only religion that passes for re- 
 ligion at all. It has the churches, it opens 
 the temples ; it observes the rites, it administers 
 the sacraments, it ordains the priests ; it sends out 
 the preachers and missionaries ; it keeps alive the 
 potent activities which sustain the life of Christ- 
 endom. 
 
 Now, the question is, why does this religion live ? 
 why is it mighty ? why does it prevail ? The multi- 
 tude will say, because it is true ; and truth, of 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 69 
 
 course, prevails. We cannot say that because, if we 
 should concede so much, we should not be here. 
 The only justification for our assembling, for my 
 speaking, the only thing that justifies our corporate 
 existence at all is the conviction that the popular relig- 
 ion is not true ; that it is a superstition ; that it is not 
 grounded on history, on knowledge, on science, on 
 fact, but that it is a fancy, an imagination, a tra- 
 dition. If the religion be true, then this vast per- 
 plexity is forced upon us : why does it not prevail 
 more? if it is true, if it has the support of miracles, 
 if it is backed by supernatural power, if it is a revel- 
 ation from Deity, if it is, in fact, a device of the 
 omniscient and omnipotent for the spread of truth 
 throughout the world, why does not the truth over- 
 come the world ? For nearly two thousand years this 
 particular system has been pushing against the world, 
 and it is at bay. How comes it that, in these times, 
 particularly these last days, when men know more 
 than they did, when the hunger and. thirst for 
 truth is more noticeable, when philosophy has its 
 priests and apostles, when science is fairly born, when 
 all the powers of civilized man are at the fullest 
 stretch of activity, why is it that now, precisely 
 now, the popular religion falls into more discredit 
 than ever ? why is it that, in the centres of the world's 
 life and- activity,. in Paris, in Berlin, in London, in 
 
70 WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 
 
 New York, it prevails less and less and gradually re- 
 cedes ? How comes it, if the system be true, that it 
 does not prevail more and more in proportion as the 
 intelligence of man is ready to receive it ? Do you 
 say it is because human nature is depraved, is essen- 
 tially degraded, and in proportion to the natural light 
 that it attains, it wanders further and further from 
 the truth ? you then fall into an abyss of scepticism 
 that is utterly fathomless ; then you doubt every- 
 thing ; you take the bottom out of the human mind ; 
 then you throw into utter darkness all natural ca- 
 pacity, all ability ; then you cast discredit upon the 
 power of man either to answer questions or to ask 
 questions ; then all his knowledge is vain ; his civil- 
 ization is an illusion, and the more you have of it 
 the worse off you are ; all our talk of progress, of 
 growth in knowledge, and human capacity, and 
 dignity, is the mearest dream, and the sooner we 
 dismiss it the better. Are we prepared for that ? 
 are we prepared to say that in order that we may 
 maintain this system as true, therefore the human 
 mind must be blotted out ? 
 
 Neither am I prepared to say that the system 
 prevails because it is false. I am not one of those 
 who believe or who can by any possibility be 
 brought to believe that the world is ruled by lies, 
 by hypocrisy, and fraud ; that mendacious prophets 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 7 1 
 
 can have a hearing for hundreds of years ; that 
 hypocrites and falsifiers can hold the attention and 
 ravish the hearts of generations of men and women. 
 That there is charlatanism, there can be no question. 
 Where the carcass is, there the eagles will gather to- 
 gether ; where the honey pots are, there will be flies. 
 There are, of course, false priests and false prophets, 
 — men who preach what they do not believe, men 
 who carry on machinery in which they have no 
 confidence ; but these are not the supporters of the 
 system. These are the men who are continually 
 eating at its heart, and dragging it down. Never 
 will I cast such an insult on the character or the 
 dignity or the intelligence of human nature as 
 to believe -that jugglers and charlatans, deceitful 
 priests and lying prophets can, generation after 
 generation, lead the world in the ways of error. 
 I do not believe it. The system prevails because 
 men are persuaded that it is true. 
 
 What then are the causes, — the legitimate and 
 real causes of the prevalence and power of the 
 popular religion ? The first, as I conceive, is a 
 reverence for antiquity. It is an exceedingly old 
 system, — older than the apostles, older than Jesus, 
 older than Moses. Its roots are far back in that 
 antique past which history can only conjecture, 
 but cannot see. Antiquity is always credited with 
 
72 WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 
 
 power. The thing that lasts is supposed to last 
 by virtue of inherent capacity to endure, to resist 
 pressure, to beat off the causes of death. An old 
 tree that has stood in a field for a thousand years, — 
 such trees as you will find in some parts of our con- 
 tinent, — that has breasted the storms of centuries ; 
 that has taken the heats of Summer and the tem- 
 pests of Winter and the blasts of all seiasons, and 
 still has grown, has not dwindled, or weakened, 
 or pined away, but has multiplied its branches and 
 struck its roots deeper and thrown out its boughs 
 with wider and more benignant spread, — such a 
 tree as that is noble in proportion to its years. 
 Thomas Carlyle said of the old house in Chelsea, 
 in which he had lived for many years, that the 
 house was built in times when men used honest 
 bricks arid good mortat, and that it would have to 
 be beaten down by main force because the elements 
 had no power over it. 
 
 But what is true of a tree or of a house is not 
 true of a man. It does not follow that an old man 
 has become old by virtue of any vitality. It may 
 have been by virtue of the very opposite thing. 
 He may be " in excellent preservation," as we say ; 
 he has taken the best possible care of himself; 
 he has never wasted power; he has never lost or 
 squandered force ; he has never felt a conviction of 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 73 
 
 duty; he has never allowed his sympathy to be dis- 
 sipated in caring for his fellow men ; he has nursed 
 himself. Selfishness has been the main princi- 
 ple of his life. — he has given nothing that he could 
 help giving ; he has become old ; yes, a shallow, 
 sad life, — that has preserved him. It is death. His 
 antiquity is the antiquity of the mold. 
 
 An old institution is not more venerable on 
 account of its age, because as it goes along it 
 gathers up the weaknesses, corruptions, mistakes, 
 frauds of the generations it has passed through. 
 It lives by virtue of having lived, as a habit, by force 
 of custom. Men cling to it because their great 
 grand-fathers, or their ancestors in distant lines 
 belonged to it. They do not question it; it is not 
 challenged; it is not analysed ; its history is never 
 burrowed into. It is taken on trust, as matter of 
 course ; hence the older it is the weaker it proves to 
 be when the historian, the man of science or the 
 man of knowledge brings his instruments to test it. 
 
 The antiquity of the bible is often alleged as an 
 evidence of the divine power of the book. The 
 question is, to what does the bible owe its preser- 
 vation ? To its essential force ? to its vital idea ? — 
 to its inherent and absolute virtue ? Not at all. 
 No book that ever issued from the press has been so 
 protected, nursed, followed after, covered up, de- 
 
74 WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 
 
 fended and guarded as this has been. All through 
 the earlier periods of Christendom, all through 
 the period of the Catholic church, the bible was 
 hidden. People were not allowed to read it. It was 
 a sin to doubt it. To question it to read it as any 
 other book is read, — was atheism. The church thun- 
 dered excommunication upon those who read the 
 bible with open eyes. There was no criticism in 
 those days ; there was no scholarship ; there was no 
 knowledge of letters or antiquities. The sciences 
 went in other directions. 
 
 When Protestantism came in, the bible was let 
 loose but guarded. Wherever it went it was at- 
 tended by a select train of theologians, priests, 
 scholars who were charged to see that the book 
 suffered no detriment. The infidels and heretics 
 were warned away; this is the first generation 
 when the book has been fairly read and spread 
 out like any other, with full liberty to criticism, and 
 the time for so much as this has hardly yet come. 
 
 The antiquity of the bible is due, not to its 
 inherent virtue, for its virtue has never been tried ; 
 not to its absolute essence, for its essence has never 
 been discovered ; it has been due to the excessive 
 care that has been taken that it should not be ex- 
 posed to harm. 
 
 Antiquity a guarantee of worth ! What are the 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 75 
 
 oldest things? Is there anything older than ig- 
 norance, credulity, superstition, brutality, crudeness 
 of mind and feeling ? One of the oldest beliefs in 
 the world, one of the most popular and wide-spread, 
 is the belief in demoniacal possession, in the infest- 
 ing of human beings by evil spirits. We find it 
 among the savage tribes of the American continent ; 
 we find it in the heart of Africa ; we find it in an- 
 cient Egypt. Go back as far as you can, you come 
 upon it, and the further you go back, the more 
 universal, the more wide-spread and deep-seated it is. 
 There are those, as you well know, living to-day, 
 who ascribe the manifestations of spiritualism to evil 
 demons. They say, " O, yes, the manifestations 
 occur; these things happen; but it is the devil." 
 That is the idea of the Catholic church and it rules 
 many other churches. It is not long since a spirit- 
 ual seance was held in a most respectable house, 
 the gentlemen and ladies present being people of 
 education, refinement and a certain amount of 
 culture. An Episcopal clergyman was there pos- 
 sessed by a severe conviction that all these things 
 were delusions of satan, and persuaded that by the 
 swift introduction at a particular moment of a charm, 
 the evil spirits would cease their operations. He 
 put a bible in his pocket and went there apparently 
 in good faith. At the height of the proceedings, he 
 
76 WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 
 
 produces the book. Instantly everything stops. 
 No medium mutters ; no table turns ; all the opera- 
 tions cease at tie moment. It is an old trick. It 
 13 no more respectable or decent for being old. The 
 Episcopal rector simply classed himself with the 
 native tribes of the American continent, with the 
 worshippers of Obi, with the priests of Baal '. in 
 Canaan, with the priests of Osiris and Apis in 
 Egypt. Nay, he might have gone still further back 
 if he desired that kind of company, and found him- 
 self one of the enormous brotherhood of people 
 who are always cringing and cowering beneath an 
 apprehension of the devil, supposing that by waving 
 a hand or making a mark of the cross or murmuring 
 a few cabalistic terms they can beat the infernal 
 regions back! Three years ago, the father of 
 Charley Ross, who was employing all the means at 
 his command to find his stolen boy, received letters 
 from every, part of the State of Pennsylvania, yes, 
 from every part of the country, telling him that it 
 was perfectly idle to resort to detectives, that charms 
 and incantations were much more effectual. This 
 sort of thing was done three or four years ago. It 
 is a well known prescription. You can read it in all 
 the books. It is the same thing precisely that was 
 done thousands of years ago by people, ignorant, 
 credulous, superstitious, who. believed in necromancy. 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? ']^ 
 
 and supposed that a trifling farce could blot out 
 the sun. 
 
 Is there anything older than the notion that cal- 
 amities of all sorts are sent by the express permis- 
 sion and decree of the Lord of heaven as a mark of 
 his displeasure ! If it was a famine, or a flood, or 
 a volcano, it was ascribed to the wrath of Deity. 
 This, you know, is one of the oldest superstitions of 
 the world. We laugh at it. We, in these days, 
 knowing something, say " What foolish people ; 
 what idle and credulous people to believe that." 
 
 Yet, last year, in the city of New York, in West 
 Sixteenth street, a Roman Catholic church broke 
 down and a number of people were killed. It was 
 due to a want of fidelity in the structure, to over 
 crowding, to carelessness, to deficiency of ingress 
 and egress, — something of the kind. It was due to 
 some p"erfectly simple natural cause. But what did 
 the priest say ? — for it was published in the papers. 
 On the funeral occasion when there was high mass 
 held, the priest distinctly told the congregation that 
 this thing and all things of the sort were directly 
 sent by God, who sometimes showed himself kind, 
 considerate and good, and sometimes he was deter- 
 mined that men and women should know what he 
 could do when he tried. Is the belief any more 
 beautiful for being old ? any more respectable ? Nay, 
 
78 WHY DOE,S THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 
 
 is it any less contemptible now than it was two 
 thousand years ago ? Is it any less absurd and des- 
 picable in New York, to-day, than it was in ancient 
 Thebes ? It seems to me not. 
 
 The newest thing is intelligence. Science was 
 born only yesterday. Philosophy is coming to its 
 maturity. In modern days we are beginning to 
 know something about the world. This, is new, and 
 the new experience is that error should pass away ; 
 that men should love truth ; should seek the light'; 
 should wish to widen the universe they live in ; 
 should question their own hearts and understand 
 the constitution of society. This is new. It is a 
 commendation of a thing to-day not that it is ancient, 
 but that it is modern ; that it belongs to the era of 
 knowledge, not to the age of ignorance ; to a world 
 of light and not to a world of darkness. 
 
 Another reason for the prevalence of the popular 
 religion is the persistency with which it is taught. 
 Week after week, almost day after day, year in and 
 year out, century upon century, this creed under 
 one form or another is communicated to mankind 
 by the best taught, the best educated, the most 
 learned and the most able men there are, — by the 
 best men there are, too, — by men of powerful char- 
 acter and consecrated life. " Is it possible," men 
 say, that that can be wrong which is thus inculcated ; 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL?. 79 
 
 that that can be error which the wisest of the wise 
 proclaim all the time? Can these be deceived, 
 those who outnumber the incredulous ten to one ? 
 
 It is forgotten that nobody knows everything ; 
 that all men are wiser than the wisest single man. 
 It is forgotten that no man looks far beyond his 
 own generation ; that even the wise men are wise 
 only within stated limits ; that even the greatest 
 minds are circumscribed ; that superior men, shut 
 up in their system, devoted to an 'institution, 
 masters of the laws pertaining to their profession, 
 yet may be ignorant as children of many another 
 thing that people who are not thus educated 
 or trained know familiarly. It is forgotten that 
 some of the ablest and wisest men who have 
 ever lived have had their superstitions ; that Lord 
 Bacon, one of the great intellects of the race had 
 superstitions which a school boy to-day would smile 
 at ; that Sir Thomas More, one of the greatest men 
 of all England, one of the grandest figures of the 
 reign of Henry VIII, a inan majestic in character, 
 marked of will, magnificent of intellect, believed 
 in transubstantiation as devotedly as the siraplest 
 Catholic you can pick up in the streets. It is for- 
 gotten that old Sam Johnson, a giant in intellect, 
 a man who in his day stood at the head of litera- 
 ture, a man whom, now, we take off our caps to, — 
 
8o WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL? 
 
 that old Sam Johnson was a frightened believer in 
 ghosts. t± e never brought the power of his mind to 
 bear on this point. The tremendous force of in" 
 tellect of Sir Thomas More was never expended 
 on the doctrine of transubstantiation ; that was 
 made over to the priests. It is forgotten that men 
 may be learned and surpassingly able in certain re- 
 gions and yet be only children in regions with 
 which they are unacquainted. 
 
 But I have not in my judgment touched the real 
 corner stone of the popular religion. It is the feel- 
 ing that it is a refuge for the poor ; a religion for the 
 weak, the down-trodden, the outcast, the defence- 
 less. It is familiarly called the religion of, sorrow. 
 It is this impression that gives the system the deep, 
 tenacious hold it has on the heart of mankind. 
 
 It has always claimed this. Christianity has from 
 the beginning been the religion of the poor ; it 
 started as the religion of sorrow. Jesus made it so. 
 Jesus took the position frankly and avowedly, that 
 his gospel was for the little ones. " Blessed are the 
 meek for they shall inherit the earth ; blessed are 
 the persecuted ; blessed are they that mourn, for 
 they shall be comforted. Blessed are ye poor, 
 for ye shall be rich. Blessed are ye that cry, for ye 
 shall laugh. But woe unto you who are rich, for ye 
 have received your consolation. Woe unto you 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 8l 
 
 that laugh, for ye shall weep. Woe unto you that 
 are full, for ye shall be empty." These are words 
 in the New Testament. Jesus spoke such words 
 all the time. " When you make a feast do not call 
 your friends, the rich, the cultivated, the elegant, 
 for they will invite you in return ; call the poor, the 
 halt, the maimed, the blind. Go into the highways 
 and byways and compel them to come in, and your re- 
 ward shall be great in heaven. They cannot recom- 
 pense you, but your recompense shall be in the' 
 resurrection of the just." 
 
 That was the tradition. Paul took up the word : 
 " Not many wise, not many mighty, not many great 
 after the order of this world ; God has chosen the 
 weak things of the world to confound the mighty, 
 and the simple things to confound the wise." The 
 earliest christians called themselves Ebionites — the 
 poor. They were known as the poor. They ac 
 cepted the title. It was theirs. It described them. 
 Their communities consisted of the poor, the down- 
 trodden, the simple, the comfortless. 
 
 This was the tradition of the Roman Church. 
 The great saint of the church is St. Francis d'Assisi 
 who beggared himself ; his gospel was the gospel of 
 poverty. The crowning virtue of the Roman 
 Church was to be^ poor. To be poor was to be saint- 
 ly. If you are rich make yourself poor. The 
 
82 WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 
 
 prpmise is to the little ones, to the hungry, the 
 thirsty, the naked, and generation after generation 
 the promise has been made to these little ones in 
 da<rk Europe, in starving Germany, in crushed Italy. 
 ' One day all this burden will be lifted off. The 
 world will come to an end, said the wretched ; 
 pomp and glory and power will cease. Then will 
 come our turn. Then we shall sit down at the 
 banquets. Then we shall wear the white raiment ; 
 have the golden crown on our heads, and carry palm 
 branches in our hands ; and upon us the angels will 
 wait.' That hope was the deepest hope of the mul- 
 titudes of Europe through the middle ages; — the 
 ages of want and suffering and woe unspeakable. 
 
 How is it now ? The strikers of last summer, un- 
 believers many of them in all religion, still uncon- 
 sciously accepted this tradition — The kingdom of 
 Heaven is for us ; for the toilers ; for the poor ; for 
 the unpaid — for those who have no opportunity 
 and no privilege. 
 
 Times have changed. The faith in the glory of 
 the hereafter is waning. The poor are impatient now 
 and will not wait for the hereafter. They must 
 have consolation in the present. Give us our op- 
 portunity to-day ; let us have our chance at the 
 wealth and power, at the glory and fashion of life. 
 It is our turn. For us the privilege ; for us the op- 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 83 
 
 portunity ! So, all over the land, rang out the com- 
 plaint of labor, a cry uttered in a name that was 
 never spoken, the name of Christ, who had promis- 
 ed the kingdom of Heaven to those that wept and 
 were hungry. Yes, as long as this deep seated woe 
 of the world lasts ; as long as the heart is hungering 
 and. thirsting for happiness, just so long will this 
 popular faith endure. In vain will criticism dash it- 
 self against it ; in vain will scholarship prove it 
 false ; the deep-seated craving of the heart will be 
 the strongest. 
 
 Are we not all ot the poor? Look at life. What 
 are the startling facts on the face of the world but 
 poverty, suffering, toil and disappointment, mortifi- 
 cation and sorrow and pain ? Do we not have to- 
 day, some of us, bitter hours when life seems good 
 for nothing, when everything is illusion and depres- 
 sion, when the theories we trust most and build upon 
 pass away like vapor ? In such hours we too, intellec- 
 tual men, it may be, strong and cultivated men, 
 reach out our hands and send up our little vain cry. 
 How many days will it be before the burden is 
 thrown upon the other side ; before the joy and 
 privilege and opportunity and glory of life are up- 
 permost and most apparent ? When it becomes so, 
 and in proportion as it becomes so, will the religion 
 of sorrow, the religion of pain, the gospel of the 
 
§4 WHY DOES- THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 
 
 jpbor, lose its potency and will decay. It is coming 
 to be so. The time is coming. Through the chinks 
 we can see the light. The condition of man be- 
 tomes more comfortable — more easy ; the hope of 
 man is more visible ; the endeavor of man is more 
 often crowned with success ; the attempt to solve 
 the darkest life problems is not so desperate as it 
 was. The reformer meets with fewer rebuffs ; the 
 philanthropist does not despair as he did. The light 
 IS dawning. The great teachers of knowledge mul- 
 tiply, bear their buirdens more and more steadi- 
 ly. ' The traditions of truth and knowledge are be- 
 coming established in the intellectual world. It is 
 so ; and those of us who have caught a vision of the 
 better times coming through reason, through knowl- 
 edge, through manly and womanly endeavor, have 
 caught a sight of a Christendom passing away, of a 
 i-eligion of sorrow declining, of a gospel preached 
 for the poor no longer useful to a world that is mas- 
 tering its own problems of poverty and lifting itself 
 but of disabling misery into wealth without angelic 
 assistance. 
 
 This is our consolation ; and while we admit, 
 clearly and frankly, the real power of the popular 
 faith, we also see the pillars on which a new faith 
 rests which shall be a faith not of sorrow but of joy; 
 
 This summary of the causes of the prevalence and 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL? 85 
 
 jjoteficy of the popular religion will be regarded as 
 imperfect if no reference is made to the promise 
 it holds out of atonement, of expiation and par- 
 don for sin. This indeed is held by many to be 
 the chief cause of its influence over the imagin- 
 ation of the common people, as in truth it seems to 
 be. For this is the burden of the pulpit teaching ; 
 this is the significance of the priesthood, the altar, 
 the sacram.pnts of penance, absolution, communion 
 and baptism. The power of the revivalist lies in his 
 skill to reach, penetrate, stir the feeling of contri- 
 tion, to awaken the desire for forgiveness, to create 
 the condition of peace. To judge by the crowds that 
 attend the ministrations of the " Evangelical " minis- 
 try who present most forcibly and pathetically this 
 aspect of the gospel, to judge of the emotion ex- 
 cited by their appeals, it might be concluded that 
 the sense of sin and the craving for pardon consti- 
 tuted the real source of attraction and satisfaction 
 for the adherents to the popular faith. And the con- 
 clusion would be just, if the sense of sin were a fact 
 of universal consciousness, an experience in the 
 natural consciousness of mankind. If sinners are 
 aware of their sinfulness, of their alienation from 
 God and their need of supernatural regeneratiori, 
 as they are aware of their poverty, loneliness, low- 
 liriess, disability and sorrow, as they are aware of 
 
86 WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 
 
 their -unhappiness and their lack of privilege ; if the 
 sense of their spiritual unwofthiness is as keen as 
 the sense of their personal and social deprivation, 
 then the title of the popular religion to reverent 
 allegiance on this account might be conceded. But 
 so much as this cannot be granted. A wide and fair 
 survey of the experience of mankind does not war- 
 rant the opinion that the human race or any portion 
 of it is oppressed by the burden of guilt or harrass- 
 ed by the uncertainty of pardon. The gospel that 
 addresses itself to the poor and weak, promising to 
 them a future dominion and glory, appeals to an 
 immense number of mankind. The gospel that has 
 a blessing for the mourners, and brings hope of con- 
 solation to the broken heart, will be welcomed by 
 vast numbers in every society, by some in every 
 class. But the gospel that holds out expectations of 
 forgiveness for sin and reconciliation with an offend- 
 ed deity could be sincerely hailed by those only in 
 whom it has succeeded in arousing the sentiment of 
 alienation. The sentiment in itself is not spontan- 
 eous or natural, but artificial and incidental. In 
 point of fact, the hardest task of the popular relig- 
 ion is that of creating the " conscience of sin." This 
 is the effort of the evangelical preacher. This is 
 the aim and endeavor of the revivalist. His suc- 
 cess, begins with the occupation of the "anxious 
 
WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 87 
 
 seats," and is complete when the occupants of the 
 anxious seat pass to the prayer meeting and to church 
 membership. The work is substantially done when 
 the soul is alarmed and softened. Were the sense of 
 sin natural and spontaneous, a sentiment inborn in the 
 human creature, a conviction latent but present in 
 every breast, easily stirred and eager for satisfaction, 
 how is it that the religion does not prevail more 
 than it does? How is it that periods of " revival " 
 are required ? How is it that they are no more suc- 
 cessful ? How is it that the effects of them pass away 
 so soon ? Outside of the " Evangelical " circles, 
 the sense of sin is not apparent ; inside it is not 
 vivid or constant or even general. But for the ef- 
 forts to create it by periodical excitement, it would 
 probably die out and disappear. Then the hold the 
 religion has on the soul stricken would be loosened, 
 and the promise of pardon would be addressed to 
 unheeding ears. 
 
 How then can the popular religion owe its power 
 or prevalence to its offer of atonement ? To those 
 who have adopted its theory of mediation and have 
 felt the pungency of its appeals, this may be, of 
 course this is an explanation of their allegiance and 
 passionate attachment. But these are few, and the 
 few are becoming fewer. The sigh of contrition is 
 becoming faint. The cry for pardon is almost in- 
 
88 WHY DOES THE POPULAR RELIGION PREVAIL ? 
 
 audible now. If the churches were frequented and 
 the gospel tents visited by those only who felt them- 
 selves to be " miserable sinners," the churches might 
 be closed and the tents struck. Many causes ac- 
 count for the maintenance of the religion in preced- 
 ence of this one. Indeed this one is scarcely to be 
 reckoned, except on those exceptional occasions of 
 excitement which from year to year become rarer, 
 and less exciting. 
 
 Of incidental causes, fashion, habit, tradition no 
 account must be made here. Universal causes alone 
 are to be considered. Universal causes there are 
 and will be for many a generation yet to come. But 
 they will lose their potency as time goes by. The 
 new faith, founded on man's consciousness of pow- 
 er, on his sense of personal dignity, on acquired 
 knowledge, confirmed experience and natural aspir- 
 ation, will emerge from its obscurity, and by force of 
 its reasonableness will prevail. 
 
FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 I hasten to lay emphasis on the word "Forrijal," 
 for on that the whole significance of my discourse 
 depends. Real religion cannot be a hinderance to 
 any good thing. Nobody holds that one can be the 
 worse for his reverence, or his hope, for his sense of 
 allegiance to fine principles, his loyalty to the high- 
 est ideas of rectitude, his faithfulness to noble stan- 
 dards, his homage of good men, or his constancy in 
 good deeds. No one was ever weakened or limited 
 by his kindness or sapped 'by his disinterestedness. 
 By " formal " religion I mean, what is usually meant 
 by the phrase, customary, habitual, traditional, in- 
 stituted religion ; the religion that is professed a,nd 
 practiced, as a matter of course, as part of the ac- 
 cepted routine of life. This has always been rec- 
 ognized as a hinderance to noble character,and in all 
 churches efforts have been made to break the dead- 
 
go FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 ening force of it, and to release people from the 
 thraldom it imposes. But the danger has not been 
 to any considerable degree, profoundly recognised or 
 deeply felt. The extent of it has not been survey- 
 ed. The radical character of it has not been appre- 
 ciated. Formal religion is taken to be a necessity, 
 though a perilous one ; and the attempts to escape 
 from its peril have in every instance been hampered 
 by the fear of going too far. The form must be 
 preserved ; the habit must not be loosened. The 
 life is certainly good, but the life must not be allow- 
 ed to become so strong as to abolish or impair the 
 instituted regulation. Hence it comes about that a 
 superstitious veneration attaches to the letter and 
 usage. Formal religion is pretty much all the re- 
 ligion there is. The stream freezes solid. It is all 
 ice from the surface to the bottom. There is no 
 possibility of breaking through. The heaviest vehi- 
 cle will not crack the crust ; if it does, there is not 
 Sufficient water below it to wet the wheels. 
 
 The impotence of formal religion to stimulate 
 life, to keep it fresh and flowing, to cleanse it of im- 
 purities, is painfully felt. The church has no visi- 
 ble power over the general conduct of men. It does 
 not create virtue ; it does not eradicate vice. The 
 most destructive evils go on in spite of it ; vices of 
 enormous magnitude, mischiefs of vast scope and 
 
FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 9I 
 
 dreadful import exist and flourish under the eye 
 and patronage of its members ; and the remedy pro- 
 posed is an increase of formal religion, an aggrava- 
 tion of the very cause of the demoralization. The 
 accepted religion has ceased to be an educator of 
 the public conscience. The intelligent, the inde- 
 pendent, the self-determined, the people of varied 
 interests, strong feelings, and active minds, regulate 
 their conduct on principles which instituted religion 
 disavows. The bible does not restrain them, the 
 sacraments do not sober them. Sermons and pray- 
 ers fail to guide or overcome them. They go their 
 own way, seek their own ends, pursue their own ob- 
 jects by their own methods, and if they hold them- 
 selves accountable at all, accept the current maxims 
 of the world as their standards. 
 
 This difficulty might perhaps be surmounted, but 
 a graver difficulty is behind. It is here. Formal 
 religion is actually a hinderance to conduct. It is 
 in the way of the action of those natural adjust- 
 ments on which human conduct relies for its reason- 
 ableness and steadiness. It offers a dangerous pre- 
 text and subterfuge ; allows men to seem to be 
 something when they are nothing ; permits them to 
 imagine they are doing something when they are 
 doing nothing ; cheats them with the notion that 
 they are complying with saving conditions when they 
 
92 FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 are not, and putting themselves in the way of 
 strengthening and redeeming influences where there 
 is nothing of the kind. It virtually therefore justi- 
 fies them in conduct they, ought to 'be ashamed of, 
 by persuading them that their outward and perfunc- 
 tory " service " in the temple on sabbath days, will 
 be accepted in discharge of serious obligations. It 
 squanders, in illusion and pretence, the force that is 
 needed to regulate properly the concerns of life. 
 
 To illustrate. The virtue of punctuality has been 
 inculcated by preachers and censors from time im- 
 memorial. The guilt of wasting the precious mo- 
 ments of existence has been dwelt on with eloquence, 
 not wholly, it may be hoped, without effect. But 
 the establishment of railroads has probably been 
 more efificacious in educating the masses of the com- 
 munity in the virtue of punctuality than all the pul- 
 pits. The train starts promptly on the instant, and 
 failure to be at the station on the instant, forfeits the 
 journey. Hence a daily discipline that overcomes 
 sloth, dilatoriness, indiscretion, a discipline never 
 suspended for a single period of twenty-four hours 
 in the week. 
 
 The army and navy are supplied with chaplains, 
 who conduct religious services, and, in their way, try 
 to make the men aware of their dependence on the 
 supreme law. But how little does army and navy 
 
FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 93 
 
 discipline owe to these functionaries ! The necessi- 
 ties of the service cornpel subordination, respect for 
 superiors, deference to authority. Sentiments of 
 loyalty, of personal honor, of comradeship, of cour- 
 age and even of high devotion to duty, belong to the 
 military organization. They are native to it. With- 
 out them, the organization would be impossible ; the 
 chaplain himself has his place and his work. 
 
 Every form of social organization and activity ed- 
 ucates in characteristic virtues of conduct. Farm- 
 ing educates in constancy, patience and toil. Busi- 
 ness educates in honesty. Commercial credit edu- 
 cates in honor. With the merchant integrity must 
 be the rule, otherwise mercantile life would be im- 
 possible. The man of business who consults most 
 carefully and closely all the conditions of success in 
 business is an honest man. The dishonest man of 
 business is one who does not consult carefully and 
 closely the conditions of success in business, but who 
 neglects perhaps the' better half of them, and trusts 
 to some lucky star, some magical charm, some prov- 
 idential interposition to secure him from the conse- 
 quences of his neglect. Perhaps he is a religious 
 man, a church member, a believer in the Christ and 
 his salvation, and persuades himself that his neiglect 
 of the conditions of honorable success in busijness 
 will be atoned for, excused, compensated by his 
 
94 FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 punctual observance of rules which have nothing to 
 do with business whatever. It would probably have 
 been better for any and all of the fraudulent church 
 members whose crimes have recently startled so- 
 ciety, if they had never heard the word " religion," 
 but had lived entirely within the natural sphere of 
 their occupations. Then their, minds would have 
 been undivided, and their undistracted will would or 
 might at least, have felt the full force of the motives 
 which organized affairs bring to bear on men. If 
 artificial relations did not give place to real ones, at 
 any rate artificial relations would not interfere with 
 real ones. The whole man would be under one rule 
 of discipline, and that a natural one. All the edu- 
 cation he receives would be normal, concrete, prac- 
 tical. 
 
 In the generation preceding ours, the practice of 
 family worship was, in New England, all but univer- 
 sal. There was morning and evening prayer ; the 
 reading of the bible was habitual ; grace before meat 
 was customary. There is an impression that in those 
 days family discipline was more thorough and do- 
 mestic peace more serene than in times like ours, 
 when religious usage in the household are disregard- 
 ed. And probably this impression is just. But was 
 this more orderly regulation of families due to the 
 formal practices of religion, or was it due to the ne- 
 
FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 95 
 
 cessity of subordination, order, mutual sympathy 
 and mutual co-operation, in communities very simply 
 constructed, small and close, and in times when the 
 virtues of frugality, obedience and plainness were 
 imperative? As the communities increased in size 
 and existence became complex, and interests outside 
 the house multiplied, and the mind was occupied 
 with a variety of pursuits, the practice of domestic 
 religion was discontinued. It was felt to be inoper- 
 ative. Nay, it was felt to be obtrusive and imperti- 
 nent. It furnished a pretext for neglecting the edu- 
 cation in principle that common relations were cal- 
 culated to give. The households in which family 
 worship was usual were no sweeter than others ; often 
 it would happen that they were not so sweet, for 
 the reason that religious obligation was supposed to 
 be discharged in the office of prayer. There is as 
 much gluttony and wine bibbing at meals before 
 which " grace " is said as there is at tables where no 
 blessing is asked. The murmured prayer has no ef- 
 fect on the appetite. There is much more gluttony 
 and wine bibbing at such tables than there is at 
 boards where reasonable people eat and drink to re- 
 pair their spent forces ; there is much more than 
 there is at boards where it is remembered that " there 
 are two to be fed, a body and a mind." Without 
 reference to Providence, or expression of gratitude 
 
g6 FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 for the good things of the world, a reasonable ■ con- 
 sideration for the needs of the human creature, will 
 lead to temperance and sobriety, and, as a rule, this 
 is the only thing that will. Let the attention be 
 withdrawn from the abstractions of deity and fixed 
 on the practical concerns immediately presented and 
 a decrease of dyspepsia would straightway follow 
 moderation in indulgence. Nature, well studied, 
 furnishes rule and discipline ; and the knowledge of 
 the simplest principles of physiology will be of more 
 service to the cause of temperance than bibles and 
 prayer meetings. The thunder of prophetic denun- 
 ciation against strong drink rolls through the gener- 
 ations. Abstinence from strong drink prevails 
 among that class of people who consult the economy 
 of nature, and who, instead of living to eat, eat to 
 live. The restoration of family life to its pristine, 
 to more than its pristine, dignity and beauty will be 
 brought about not by a revival of formal religion in 
 the household, but by the substitution for that; of 
 regard for the practical conditions on which family 
 life is naturally regulated. Nature has a self-adjust- 
 ing power, and will do everything when allowed! to 
 work without interference. At present, we are . so 
 hampered by traditions, so haunted by bible max- 
 ims and pulpit precepts, ; so preoccupied by views 
 implanted by religious teachers that a rational study 
 
FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 97 
 
 of family life is out of the question. None of us 
 can give reasonable consideration to it. Only here 
 and there one can touch it at some incidental point. 
 The whole problem is open. Formal religion is seen 
 to be inoperative; but it is not felt to be a hinder- 
 ance to rational views and consequently rational 
 views are not entertained. 
 
 The case may be made plainer and stronger by 
 reference to the matter of popular education. A 
 controversy is raging in several of the States, and is 
 likely to extend further and to increase in bitterness 
 as it extends, on the subject of religion in the pub- 
 lic schools. Both Catholics and Protestants engage 
 in it with equal heat ; the Catholic insisting on some 
 adaptation of his church theory to the system of 
 instruction ; the Protestant stiff in the opinion that 
 the bible shall be read there by appointment of pub- 
 lic law. Both seem to think that their peculiar eccles- 
 iastical or biblical attachment is necessary to preserve 
 the instruction given from harmful tendencies, to 
 make the education profitable and salutary to the 
 mind. Both appear to believe that there -is a virtue 
 in the peculiar form to sanctify the natural exercise 
 of the human intellect. Both belong to the order 
 of fetish worshipers, people who ascribe magical 
 properties to words and signs. Neither is awake to 
 the evident fact that the words and signs have no 
 
98 FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 visible efficacy whatever. Neither, it is clear, sus- 
 pects the fact that the words knd signs may be in 
 the way of the very acquirements, intellectual and 
 moral, which they are relied on to produce. That 
 the incidental intrusion of a pious exercise in the 
 morning has any efficacy on the intelligence of an 
 assembled school room of pupils, can hardly be be- 
 lieved. That the hurriedly mumbled prayer, or the 
 officially recited chapter leaves any hallowing im- 
 pression on the heart or the conscience of the inat- 
 tentive scholars, is a notion that only the enthusias- 
 tic can entertain. The probability is that they stand 
 in the way of the natural discipline which the school 
 requires. It is possible, to speak mildly, that the 
 burden of keeping up the moral elevation of the 
 school may be cast upon these exercises which con- 
 sume but a few moments, and do not then seriously 
 engage the feelings of the boys and the girls, who 
 are thinking of their lessons. It is possible, to say 
 the least, that the teacher as well as the classes, may 
 consider that the finer responsibilities of the re- 
 lation which those present sustain to each other, 
 are discharged when the religious services are end- 
 ed, and that the rest of the session may be occupied 
 withtthe mere business routine of instruction. This 
 would be a positive injury and evil, for it would be 
 an outright abandonment of the use of resources 
 
FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 99 
 
 that are close at hand. The conditions of a perfect 
 school lie within the constitution of the school it- 
 self. No school can be " godless " in which there is 
 devotion to knowledge on the part of the teacher, 
 and teachableness, obedience, hunger for knowledge 
 on the part of the scholars. The implied relations, 
 in their simplest form, are full of sweet and tender 
 sanctity. The place where mind meets mind in the 
 most impressive of all connections ; the place where 
 the scholar imparts what he has laboriously acquir- 
 ed, and where the immature reason is prepared for 
 its high duties, should be sacred, if such place ever 
 can be, and the endeavor should be to concentrate 
 the utmost of thought and feeling on the task of 
 drawing out the natural resources of the occasion. 
 It is true, sadly true, that such a view of education, 
 and of the place where it is conducted, will seem 
 sentimental and visionary to all but the very few. 
 But may not the fact that it does seem so be ex- 
 plained, in part at least, by the fact that education 
 has, through the christian centuries, been regarded 
 as a secular, that is, as an unsanctified thing, a thing 
 unreligious, if not irreligious, a thing to be watched 
 and suspected by the church ? Not till education be- 
 comes in the best sense of the word, secular ; not 
 till every vestige of formal religion is expelled from 
 the schools ; not till ecclesiastical and dogmatic sug- 
 
lOO FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 gestions are dropped entirely, will the capacities of 
 the institutions of learning be fully developed. 
 Thorough secular education, in which all the natural 
 resources are called in to make the schools all they 
 may be, will prove, in the best meaning of the term, 
 religious. 
 
 There is another point that is, so* far as I know, 
 overlooked in this discussion, but is yet a point of 
 first rate importance. The presence of formal re- 
 ligion in the schools is a hinderance to good practi- 
 cal education by rendering impossible the prepara- 
 tion of suitable text books. The Catholic complains 
 that the Protestant text books contain matter that 
 is offensive to Catholic minds. The Protestant com- 
 plains that the Catholic manuals contain matter that 
 is offensive to Protestant minds. And both Catho- 
 lics and Protestants make a point of keeping in the 
 schools books that represent their peculiar views. 
 Hence the schools are made the nurseries of sectar- 
 ianism. Sectarian views of history ; sectarian views 
 of churches, governments, people, popular move- 
 ments ; sectarian views of science are inculcated on 
 the young, who grow up with prejudices that are never 
 eradicated. The honest truthful study of men and 
 things is discouraged. Now if there is a need that 
 presses on this generation, it is that dogmatic preju- 
 dices of every kind shall be overcome. It is an out- 
 
^ FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. lOI 
 
 rage and a sin to perpetuate in school books the strife 
 and bitterness of by-gone generations. We Icnow 
 enough now to perceive that the largest division in the 
 church is a sect : that Protestantism, with its multi- 
 tude of sects is itself a sect ; that Romanism with 
 its bishoprics and archbishoprics, its ecclesiastical 
 dominions in many lands, is still a sect ; that the 
 Greek Church, which was old before the Latin Church 
 was born is merely a sect ; that Christianity itself 
 is but a sect cut off from universal religion, but one 
 of several religions with which it has essential traits 
 in common. This we know ; and to let the ancient, 
 obsolete opinion prevail in tejjt books which are put 
 into the hands of our children is one of those scan- 
 dals that attest the malignity of theological rancor. 
 It is full time that the spirit of trpth presided over 
 all the books that we put into our childrens' hands. 
 It is said that the truth cannot be discovered ; 
 that we must use such books as are prepared, that 
 these must be colored by the views of those who 
 prepare them, and in a christian country must be 
 christian, Protestant in a Protestant land, and Catho- 
 lic in a Catholic. It is sufficient reply that they should 
 be as free from doctrinal bias as they may be, that 
 the aim should be to make them strictly scientific ; 
 that the spirit of truth should preside over their 
 making. The introduction of that spirit will im- 
 
I02 FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 port a new and better temper into the literature of 
 education and will inaugurate a change, the benefi- 
 cent effects whereof will be felt through society. 
 The minds of our youth will be expanded ; their 
 heafts enlarged. The heat of controversy will be 
 allayed ; and the intelligence of growing men and 
 women will be in a condition to take possession of 
 its intellectual birthright. The school, private and 
 public, should aim at nothing but the cultivation of 
 the intellectual powers. Sadly do they need culti- 
 vation ; sadly do they need a field for culture that 
 shall be entirely free from all save rational occupants. 
 The case is stronger still when we consider the in- 
 fluence of formal religion on the more general inter- 
 ests of society, on what we call affairs of the State. 
 Most of you, most persons in the country, are well 
 aware that a movement is on foot to incorporate in 
 the Preamble of the United States Constitution a 
 declaration of faith in Christ. The intention of 
 such persons is to effect a closer union between for- 
 mal religion and the State, to make the government 
 christian, whereas now it has no especially religious 
 complexion ; is neither Christian, Jewish or Pagan. 
 Those who oppose the movement protest against 
 an innovation which is entirely against the genius of 
 American institutions. The argument of these last 
 is to my mind conclusive. Indeed to me the case is 
 
FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 103 
 
 too plain to be argued about at all. There is no 
 room for discussion. The proposition appears to 
 me too preposterous to be entertained by a rational 
 mind ; and that so many excellent people do enter- 
 tain it, is an evidence of the tenacious hold that for- 
 mal or ceremonial, in other words, instituted re- 
 ligion has on the common intelligence. 
 , The expectation, if there be any expectation of a 
 definite kind, is, must be, that the presence of such 
 declaration, in the fore front of the Constitution will 
 commit the nation to christian principles and prac- 
 tices, and will somehow secure to them in the admin- 
 istration of their national concerns, the especial 
 countenance of God, and the supernatural guidance 
 of Christ. Strange expectation ! That, a form of 
 words, solemnly adopted by Congress, ratified by 
 the representatives of the people in Washington, can 
 exert a magical influence on the heart, and actually 
 sway the conscience of many millions of men ! 
 Strange expectation ! that administrations will be 
 honorable, politicians pure, heads of departments 
 patriotic, agents honest ; that Whiskey Rings, In- 
 dian Rings, and all other nefarious combinations of 
 thieves will be broken ; that rogues will be kept out 
 of situations of trust ; that the civil service will be 
 reformed ; that party spirit will be quelled ; that order 
 will take the place of anarchy at the South ; that 
 
IC4 FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 the conflict between civilized men and savage will 
 cease on the frontier, simply because a form of 
 words is added to a public instrument ! Yet this, or 
 something equivalent to this, something like this, 
 must be the expectation. For to make the innova- 
 tion operative by any practical means, or in any 
 practical manner, it would be necessary to alter the 
 Constitution of nearly every State in the Union, 
 and to introduce new laws into all the statute books 
 of the people. It would be necessary, in a word, to 
 effect a revolution in the ideas and practices of the 
 whole American people, and to condemn the funda- 
 mental principles on which the Government was 
 founded. A visionary and insane notion, which it 
 is hard to believe that any sane men entertain, even 
 in nightmare. It is easier to believe that the super- 
 stitious veneration of words and signs, the wretched 
 idolatry of phrases, the uneradicated fetish worship 
 of the barbarian, still keeps its place in a corner of 
 the minds of men otherwise sensible. So obstinate 
 is this superstition that we never can be quite safe 
 against its influence, and must be continually on our 
 guard against its assaults. The mere existence of 
 the superstition acts seriously as a hinderance to the 
 practical administration of affairs, keeps the popular 
 mind in a condition of unhealthy excitement, fills 
 the imagination with wild illusions, and encourages 
 
FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. • I05 
 
 people in the habit of looking for heavenly interpo- 
 sitions, and superhuman assistance, when they should 
 be addressing themselves to the questions actually 
 before them. 
 
 The people of our free communities have no deep- 
 'er concern than the establishment of a thoroughly 
 secular administration of their public affairs, the 
 introduction of business principles \n\.o every depart- 
 ment of their general life, the final expulsion of re- 
 ligion in any of its instituted modes from the region 
 of political regulation. The prime requirement is 
 the discovery and the wise employment of the means 
 immediately about us, for adjusting the disorders 
 that embarrass, annoy and grieve us. Let formal 
 religion remove its hand, and leave to the several 
 estates of the Republic the duty of regulating their 
 concerns in their own way. Let it appoint no chap- 
 lains whose few words o( official prayer serve as a 
 scape-goat to carry off into the wilderness of the 
 inane the sins which legislatures should learn to cure 
 • by well ordered thought. Let it appoint no sabbaths, 
 constraining people by penalties to spend their da)^ 
 of rest in inaction and vice, or else in ways they are 
 disinclined to. Let it abstain from setting feast days 
 and fast days, or intimating how the people should 
 dispose of their play-time. Let it claim no exemp- 
 tion of its property from the burdens of taxation 
 
lo6 FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 that fall on every other possession of the citizen, 
 but retire from every species of interference with 
 secular affairs. 
 
 What a purely secular government might be, how 
 simple, equitable, just, how firm in basis, how smooth 
 in operation, we are unable to conceive. No such 
 thing has been tried or heard of. Some form of 
 union between Church and State has been adopted 
 wherever governments have been set up ; and 
 whether it was the Church that was supreme over 
 the State, or the State that was supreme over the 
 Church, the result was a confusion of ideas, and 
 a clashing of policies that was disastrous to the suc- 
 cessful working of affairs. Neither Church nor 
 State could do itself credit. Neither was left alone 
 with its own problems and its own devices. Neither 
 could work out, unembarrassed, its proper ends. 
 
 The immediate withdrawal of formal religion from 
 every department of public life would be felt as a 
 relief. No harm could possibly result, for no bene- 
 fit is, at present, conferred. Legislatures would be " 
 spared an awkward and impertinent pause in their 
 proceedings. Army and Navy would be delivered 
 from an incongruous adjunct to their organization. 
 The Sunday would be devoted to natural recrea- 
 tions, the higher cultivation of the mind, the study 
 of art, the pursuit of literature, the search for inno- 
 
FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. I07 
 
 cent amusements, the needed repose after labor, the 
 nurture and indulgence of the family affections. The 
 annual festivals, celebrated from time immemorial, 
 the festivals of seed time and harvest, would be ob- 
 served with varied cheerfulness without the intrusion 
 of gloomy or depressing ideas, each improving the 
 holiday in his own manner, and according to his own 
 conception of joy. A cloud of misty, but befog- 
 ging and misleading associations would be dispelled, 
 and in a hundred directions we should see clearly 
 where now we see darkly. Even cobwebs, if they are 
 thick enough, will impede advance. The graceful and 
 delicate tendrils of vines may form a matting that 
 will render a tract of territory impassable to an army ; 
 and so the filmy presence of formal religion in the 
 affairs of State proves disabling. We have very 
 nearly the least infusion of religion here, yet that 
 least is enough to impede the progress of practical 
 measures. Increase it, and it will seriously compro- 
 mise schemes of needed reform. Our experiment 
 demands a complete secularization of the State, in 
 all the branches of its activity, in order that this ac- 
 tivity may be augmented, and may be efficiently directr 
 ed. There is no reason to suppose that a closer con- 
 nection with formal, religion will add weight to the 
 moral influences of the community. There is every 
 reason to fear, from the results of long historical 
 
Io8 FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. 
 
 1 
 
 experiment, that a closer alliance with formal relig- 
 ion would weaken and cripple the energies on which 
 we must rely for our regeneration. 
 
 Of course it is in this discussion assumed that the- 
 mediatorial ofiSces of religion may at this epoch of 
 the world's experience, be dispensed with ; that we 
 are in no need of rescue from divine wrath in a here- 
 after. It is assumed that the proper conduct of our 
 every day human affairs is the only thing we have tOj 
 trouble ourselves about. To those who believe that 
 a lost race must be recovered, and united to an offend- 
 ed deity, and that religion is the agency by whicl^ 
 this restoration can alone be effected, I have noth- 
 ing to say. Conduct, Matthew Arnold says, is seven- 
 eighths of life. It is at least that ; and conduct is 
 best regulated on principles of its own. 
 
 Applications of the idea I am enforcing, occur 
 faster than they can be specified. That formal re- 
 ligion is a hinderance to satisfactory dealing witl^i 
 poverty and crime, by interposing sentimental con- 
 siderations when rational men would handle such 
 problems scientifically, all know who have given at- 
 tention to the subject. That formal religion hinders 
 the attempts to adjust the relations of marriage to 
 the requirements of modern society is also apparent 
 to those who have studied this complicated and per- 
 l exing matter. A dogma of the church, or a tex^ 
 
FORMAL RELIGION AND LIFE. I09 
 
 from the bible is mighty to overcome the force of 
 argument and of fact. But I cannot now push the 
 argument further. It is but an outline as it is ; and 
 the outline will become indistinct if too many illus- 
 trations are used. 
 
 The one thought I would present clearly, and put 
 so pointedly that it will adhere to the mind and con- 
 tinue, a process of healthy irritation there, is the 
 necessity of drawing from the current relations of 
 life the resources for their proper regulation ; to dis- 
 cover what those relations involve, and satisfy the 
 conditions of peace and prosperity as they arrive. 
 Tyndall declares that in his judgment, matter con- 
 tains the whole promise and potency of life. To 
 one who has never studied the constitution of mat- 
 ter, who has no conception what its potencies may 
 be, such a statement seems wildly extravagant. To 
 the naturalist it does not seem so. In like manner 
 the proposal to extract from the cheap materials of 
 every day existence the rules and motives for mak- 
 ing it wise and noble seems wild to those who have 
 been in the habit of calling on Hercules to lift their 
 cart wheels from the mire. But here as elsewhere 
 it will be found that human strength is better than 
 superhuman sentiment, that our valors are our best 
 ^-ods. 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 The subject of my discourse this morning is the 
 sectarian spirit. I wish you to carefully distinguish 
 between sectarianism and the spirit of sectarianism. 
 They are very different things. There is no special 
 harm, or need be none in sectarianism. Sectarianism 
 means merely a division of opinion upon subjects 
 where opinion is open. It comes with freedom of 
 thought. We find it in every department of phil- 
 osophy, in the region of science and of history. 
 There are schools of art, of painting, of sculpture, 
 of architecture. Those schools are properly sects, 
 aiming to educate people in the peculiar views of 
 culture which the men of the school represent. Sec- 
 tarianism, therefore, meaning simply difference of 
 opinion, difference in the interpretation of facts or 
 in the proportions of knowledge, does not necessar- 
 ily imply evil feeling or intention. Nay, the opin- 
 
112 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 ions may be warmly held and vigorously professed, 
 with the spirit of conviction, with very intense 
 emotion, and still no harm may exist. So long as 
 it is remembered that the object of pursuit is truth 
 and truth only ; so long as there is no conflict for 
 party triumph but simply a zeal for the prevalence 
 of knowledge, the sects may respect one another in 
 the attainment of a common object. 
 
 The sectarian spirit is another thing. This has 
 not ceased to prevail in philosophy, in science, even 
 in history ; and wherever it does prevail it is an un- 
 mixed evil ; for the sectarian spirit is the spirit of 
 strife, bitterness, partisan envy, and jealousy ; it is 
 the spirit of mutual conflict. It leads directly to 
 persecution, it ends usually in violence. Still, all 
 over the domain of human inquiry the sectarian 
 spirit is rapidly passing away. It is rebuked in the , 
 scientific world. It is under reprobation in the phi- 
 losophical world ; now, almost everywhere, men of 
 ability and character may pursue truth in the spirit 
 of truth, may hold their convictions with warmth of 
 feeling, may advocate them with intensity of ex- 
 pression, always remembering that their view is not 
 the only view, that however well founded and im- 
 portant it may seem to them, other views may seem 
 equally reasonable and essential to other people. 
 
 But in the department of religion, sectarianism 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. II3 
 
 Still holds its own and is always associated with the 
 sectarian spirit. Where sectarianism prevails, there 
 the evil of sectarianism prevails, over the extent of 
 the religious world, in Christendom and out of it ; 
 the saints fight each other. And it is this spirit of 
 contention, of antagonism deepening into hate which 
 drops the one bitter drop of gall into the cup of sec- 
 tarian division, and makes it a fatal poison. I say 
 everywhere, I say from first to last, from centre to 
 circumference, sectarianism and the sectarian spirit 
 go hand in hand with religion ; and the object that 
 honest and right minded men ought to have in view 
 is the separation of those two things, the exorcising 
 of the sectarian spirit from sectarianism. 
 
 It began very early. In the earliest period of the 
 christian church we see it ; in the quarrel, for that is 
 the only word that describes it, between Paul and 
 Peter which Paul describes in one of his letters, and 
 describes with so much heat^ with so much express- 
 ed and suppressed passion that we cannot doubt that 
 even then, between two men who were apostles, the 
 rancor of the sectarian spirit had struck root. For 
 what did these men dispute about ? Not about a 
 matter of opinion, but upon a matter in which, as 
 they thought, the veracity of God himself was im- 
 plicated. Peter took the ground that the revelation 
 of the kingdom, in which the divine promise was 
 
114 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT, 
 
 conveyed, was given to the Jews only, simply to the 
 family of Israel ; and to him it was an apostasy, a 
 fatal heresy, a flying in the face of the divine revel- 
 ation, to extend the truth to outlying people. Paul 
 took the opposite ground. To him the revelation 
 was an interior experience and not an outward fact. 
 Christ came to the soul and not to the person. It 
 mattered not to him that men had listened to the 
 voice of Christ. He had had spiritual communications 
 from the risen Messiah, and the voice of his own 
 private experience was as authoritative in his judg- 
 ment, as the spoken words of the Master. To him, 
 Peter's narrowness and exclusiveness was a frank de- 
 nial of the very essence of revelation. 
 
 At this point, therefore, the division of opinion 
 became a dispute, a bitter altercation which separated 
 the two apostles finally and fatally, and left its mark 
 upon the whole history of the church for a hundred 
 years. A spirit of rancor and quarrel I say. Paul 
 says, " When Peter came to Antioch I withstood him 
 to the face, because he was to blame." And of 
 John and James and others who called themselves 
 pillars of the church because they had known Christ 
 in the flesh, he speaks comtemptuously. Of those 
 people who claim to be something, he says, I know 
 nothing at all, they are nothing to me. So early as 
 this, then, back in the very beginning, the sectarian 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. H5 
 
 spirit declared itself, in the very circle of the apostles. 
 The first fact that is conspicuous in the history of 
 the early church, is the rise and prevalence of heresy. 
 Bossuet, two hundred years ago, published his great 
 work called " The Variations of Protestantism," the 
 argument of which rests upon the simple fact that 
 Protestantism was merely a group of sects, not 
 merely divided against each other in opinion, but 
 pitted against each other in war. To the mind of 
 Bossuet, to the mind of the Roman Catholic and of 
 a great many people who are not Roman Catholics, 
 the argument was conclusive. Here was a great re- 
 ligion split into feuds and factions. How is it to- 
 day ? According to the last authentic record, there 
 are in England, ninty-nine different persuasions ex- 
 clusive of twelve kinds of Baptists, and thirteen 
 kinds of Wesleyan Methodists ; making in all one 
 hundred and twenty-four sects, supporting among 
 them all twenty thousand places of worship, churches 
 and chapels. A minister of the free kirk in Scot- 
 land, is said to have offered the prayer that his peo- 
 ple might be baptised into "the gospel of disrup- 
 tion." Now, it is not, I repeat, merely because there 
 are so many schools of thought ; it is not merely 
 there are so many distinctions in criticism ; it 
 is not merely that, in studying the truth people come 
 to all these different classes of views, that such a 
 
Il6 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 picture is disagreeable. This is a matter of necessity. 
 People can not think at all without differing ; they 
 can not think earnestly without disputing. But can 
 not they differ without hating ? Can they not seek 
 the truth with the ardor of earnest minds without 
 detesting one another ? that is the question. 
 
 The evils of the sectarian spirit have always been 
 acknowledged ; they lie upon the surface. Consider 
 the costliness of it, the enormous expense of main- 
 taining a half-dozen ministers where one is enough ; 
 of building three or four churches where one suffices 
 and more than suffices to hold all who wish to wor- 
 ship ; of maintaining missionary boards, domestic 
 and foreign, sending out apostles, preachers, colpor- 
 ters with tracts for the purpose of converting peo- 
 ple into peculiarities of dogma. Think of the enor- 
 mous expense of covering a land with ecclesiastical 
 institutions which represent division, disagreement 
 and animosity. Consider again the waste in men and 
 in mind. Every sect at present maintains a great 
 many more preachers, missionaries and officials then 
 are required to do its work. Put the demand for 
 the clergy at the highest possible mark, and there 
 are about four times as many ministers in the mar- 
 ket as are needed to do the actual work of religion. 
 To support and fill the theological schools, to edu- 
 cate young men for the ministry, to encourage men 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. II 7 
 
 to enter the ministry, is simply subtracting from the 
 active brain of the community, men that are needed 
 for business, needed in the service of science, litera- 
 ture, philosophy and art. We withdraw them from 
 vital and vigorous uses and waste their time and 
 mind in a service that does not need to be done, 
 that had better not be performed. Consider the 
 waste of mind that is accomplished in all this. These 
 are living brains. These thin, bloodless, divinity 
 students might be dropped upon the world and be- 
 come men. You are simply subtracting from the 
 amount of brains there is in society, and. Heaven 
 knows there is little enough of it, at any rate, you 
 are simply abstracting from it the very quality that 
 is needed for doing the practical business of the 
 world. Can we afford this ? 
 
 See the evil effect of the sectarian spirit on edu- 
 cation. We are told on responsible authority that 
 in the United States there are three hundred and 
 sixty colleges, not one of them thoroughly accoutred 
 or equipped, all poorly officered, poorly provided 
 with the material of study, poorly organized ; when 
 the same amount of money would maintain one hun- 
 dred first-class universities in different parts of the 
 country for the thorough education of men and 
 women. Why this waste of money ? Why this 
 waste of brain ? Why this squandering of education- 
 
Il8 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 al force? Simply because the sectarian spirit de- 
 mands it. These three hundred and sixty colleges 
 are, each one of them, under the direction of some 
 sect. No other sect may come in. They are " feed- 
 ers " of a denomination, and they are made energetic 
 as possible and kept useless, simply, that the denomin- 
 ation may be able to point to them as nurseries for its 
 children. 
 
 And yet, these are superficial objections, hardly 
 worth speaking of. Of what moment the expendi- 
 ture of a few thousands of dollars more or less? 
 We can perhaps afford men, we can possibly afford 
 the men and the mind. But the sectarian spirit 
 drops the poison into the heart of truth itself, and 
 takes the passion for it away. The pursuit of truth, 
 the one fine inspiration of noble minds, the thing 
 that has become even fascinating to the best spirits, 
 that is pervading the community, that is possessing 
 men of science and philosophy, that is touching with 
 light and kindling with fire the best brains of the 
 modern world, is simply made impossible by the sec- 
 tarian spirit. How impossible ? Because, the moment 
 a man is wedded to an opinion, wedded to it as a sa- 
 cred treasure, the moment a man considers that his 
 belief is enjoined by sacred books, confirmed by mira- 
 cles, communicated by the Lord of Heaven, that 
 moment a wall is built about his intellect and he can 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. Iig 
 
 read no speculative books but such as defend his own 
 opinion. He cannot look over the fence to study 
 any outlying philosophies ; he cannot appreciate 
 any facts but those he considers himself to be facts, 
 fiats of the Eternal ; he cannot enjoy the book of 
 science ; chemistry is suspected and laid under the 
 bann, aye, even matters of meat aud drink are ad- 
 judged by the sectarian spirit and are pronounced 
 upon as by a divine authority ! It is simply impossi- 
 ble that the belief in a divine revelation as associa- 
 ted with any church, identified with any creed, made 
 cardinal with any religion, can exist in cordial com- 
 panionship with the liberal pursuit of knowledge, 
 because such belief sets tradition, conjecture, surmise 
 guess, above knowledge, and the word knowledge 
 has no intelligible significance. 
 
 Hence it is that an able bodied man, and such a 
 man I know personally, who bought books of science, 
 the treatises on modern philosophy, had them on his 
 shelves but never opened the covers. He was a 
 christian preacher. He was familiar with the books 
 of his sect ; he had the current theology on the 
 shelves of his library. Sickness compelled him 
 to leave his profession and he became a man at 
 once. The theological books became worthless and 
 were sent to the auctioneer. The scientific books were 
 kept and studied for the first time. Thus it appears 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 how fatal a disqualification this spirit must be to any 
 earnestness or persistency in the pursuit of knowl- 
 edge ; it has passed into a proverb, true in these days 
 if never before, that knowledge, and knowledge 
 alone is power. 
 
 These are grave accusations, but there is a more 
 serious and solemn, charge than this to be brought 
 against the sectarian spirit. It corrupts goodness ; 
 it abolishes charity ; it takes away the faith that 
 men should have in virtue ; and this too is from the 
 necessity of the case. For if the Christian believes 
 that he and he only has a divine revelation, that the 
 truth has come to him supremely if not exclusively, 
 that his books are the sacred books and all others 
 are profane, then he must believe that the man who 
 does not accept his belief does not accept the truth, 
 is in the bonds of error, is on the way to death. 
 And believing that truth and truth alone saves, he is 
 convinced that the unbeliever, the more sincere the, 
 more stubborn, is not in the way of salvation, and 
 must be- reclaimed from his delusions. Hence the 
 melancholy condition of the religious press all over 
 the country, a condition that is a reproach to intelli- 
 gence and a scandal to charity. I undertake to say 
 that I have never seen a religious paper of any de- 
 nomination whatever that had the conscience to be 
 fair to opponents, that ventured to be honest, that 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 12 1 
 
 could be just, that was able to give its due to any 
 form of hostile opinion; that could take a position 
 of even ordinary kindness towards the heretic. 
 
 The organs of the Roman Catholic church are 
 necessarily unjust to the representatives of Protest- 
 ant opinion. The organs of the different Protest- 
 ant sects are inevitably unjust towards the rational- 
 ist, are inimical towards the scholars, suspicious of 
 the enquirers, hard hearted towards the skeptics, 
 doubters, disbelievers and verbal atheists. They 
 are under a dispensation that bids them be unkind. 
 Disingenuousness is an element of their piety. De- 
 traction is an arrow in their quiver. Listen to the 
 speech in regard to rationalists, materialists, " infi- 
 dels " as they are called, unbelievers, misbelievers, 
 disbelievers, that is current in orthodox circles, not 
 in all orthodox circles, but in the more intense cen- 
 tres of the faith. I have heard myself from the lips 
 of an orthodox preacher, that by the necessity of 
 the case the disbeliever in a personal God must steal 
 and lie ; as if he were under a sort of moral compul- 
 sion to do it ! The speaker could not say anything 
 else, could not think otherwise than he spoke. 
 Of course he believed what he asserted. He 
 was honest and candid ; but what a spirit must 
 it be that can make an honest rpan conceive and uti- 
 ter a blasphemy like that ! For this was said not a 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 year ago in my own hearing, and said in the face of 
 the fact that there are disbelievers in a personal God 
 among ourselves, in our own community, in Eng- 
 land, France, Italy, Germany, bearing the highest 
 stamp of character, men of consecrated lives, who 
 devote themselves with the full capacity of their 
 conscience to the task of making the world better ; 
 men like Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Tyndall, who 
 cannot confess any definition of Deity, who are yet 
 irreproachable in their lives, and spotless in their 
 character. 
 
 Such a saying as that which I have quoted, is 
 stated in open presence of the fact that the " religion 
 of humanity," as it is called, which, makes a point 
 of excluding the belief in a supernatural world and 
 confines itself strictly to the social arrangements of 
 this world, is entertained by people who, having re- 
 jected Christianity altogether, are exerting a wonder- 
 ful power over the working classes, urging them to 
 be honest, faithful, loyal, economical, considerate of 
 their fellow-men. The " religion of humanity " claims 
 as its peculiarity, that it makes men simple, disinter- 
 ested, consecrated, and in the true sense, saintly. 
 The sectarian spirit compels this uncharitableness ; 
 and we never shall have done with it until the sec- 
 tarian spirit is forever abolished. 
 
 These faults have always been seen ; they have 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 1 23 
 
 always been acknowledged ; and efforts have, at all 
 times, been made to remove them. The earliest 
 efforts in the church were religious, prompted by the 
 feeling of communion with the Christ, the living 
 Head. The exquisite lyric on charity, in the 13th 
 chapter of Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, 
 was written to lay the evil spirit of sectarianism that 
 was working like a poison inside of his own 
 churches. " Now abide Faith, Hope, Charity, 
 these three. But the greatest of these is Charity." 
 " Have fervent Charity among ourselves." " Bear 
 one another's burdens." Remember that you have 
 one Lord, one faith, one baptism ; remember that 
 you are all baptised into one spirit, that a common 
 Christ is the Saviour of all ; that the deliverance from 
 sin is a common deliverance ; that the hereafter 
 opens its promise to all alike. In the same strain 
 other apostles speak — their words may be read in 
 all the epistles of the New Testament, to the effect 
 that men should forget , differences, should cease 
 to hate, should love each other, and should try to 
 bind themselves together by mutual consideration 
 and helpfulness. 
 
 Yet these earnest apostolical injunctions went no 
 further than the limits of the Christian church. 
 Paul's charity was applied only to Christians. They 
 were to love one another ; they were not bidden to 
 
124 THE SECTARIAN SPmiT. 
 
 love the heathen outside ; they were not charged 
 to love the Jew or the Greek, the Roman or the 
 barbarian ; they were brothers and sisters in Christ 
 together ; they were not brothers and sisters in 
 humanity, with all the rest of mankind. 
 
 The Roman Church had its own peculiar methods 
 of suppressing dissent, by burning it up. It would 
 drown it in its own blood; it would elevate it by 
 hanging it on the cross ; it would send it to heaven 
 in a chariot of flame. The Roman Church boasts of 
 its unity. What sort of unity ? A unity created 
 and established by the extinction of everything that 
 threatened to break it. One law, one scepter, one 
 dominion, — that is what it means. When Bossuet 
 wrote against the variations of Protestantism, none 
 so well knew as h^ that the same argument could be 
 brought with fatal force against Romanism, if 
 Romanism had allowed dissent to express itself. 
 Protestantism kept an open ear to the voices of dis- 
 sent. Romanism stifled the voices with dust. The 
 variations of Protestantism were due to fidelity to 
 the Spirit of Truth. The unity of Rome was due 
 to the neglect of it. But what did Protestantism do 
 here ? The method of Protestantism is a method 
 of arrangement. The apostolic method was the 
 method of love. The Roman Catholic method was 
 the method of extinction ; the Protestant method 
 is the method of diplomacy. 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 125 
 
 In 1846, the Evangelical Alliance was formed at 
 Edinburgh. In 1867 the American branch of the 
 Evangelical Alliance was established in New York. 
 In 1873, as we all remember, the Alliance held its 
 first grand convention in the United States. The 
 object of the Alliance was to overcome, within the 
 circle of Evangelical denominations, — comprising Bap- 
 tists, Methodists, Presbyterians of both schools — 
 the influence of the sectarian spirit. The aim 
 was to promote union among, " Evangelical" Chris- 
 tians. It was designed to unite them altogether in 
 closer bonds to the Christ. The founders promul- 
 gated no authoritative creed ; laid down no compul- 
 sary rule ; established no ecclesiastical dominion. 
 The spirit was intended to be entirely cordial, open, 
 fraternal, but within the limits of " Evangelical de- 
 nominations." They openly professed and pub- 
 lished their faith in the leading articles of the 
 Evangelical system of religion. The effect may 
 have been to extinguish the sectarian spirit within 
 the limits of these denominations. But did it ex- 
 tinguish the sectarian spirit towards those without ? 
 It deepened it ; it intensified it. The Evangelical 
 Alliance meant war against Romanism on the one 
 side, and against Rationalism on the other. The 
 Unitarians were excluded from the fellowship ; so 
 were the Universalists ; so were the Sweden- 
 
126 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 borgians. The Rationalists were of course ex- 
 cluded. Naturalism, under any of its definitions, 
 whatever its spirit, was put down. Materialism as 
 Christianity defines it, was cast out. Every opinion 
 was laid under the ban except Evangelical relig- 
 ious opinion. It follows, as a thing of course, that 
 this method of diplomacy as a part of the Evangeli- 
 cal Alliance, was exceedingly narrow, exceedingly 
 limited, — commendable enough in its spirit, as far 
 as it went, but confined to a small section even of 
 Christendom. Outside of that section the secta- 
 rian spirit raged furiously as ever. 
 
 Where then is our help? What are we to do 
 about it ? There is but one method of help and 
 that is to pronounce irrational and hurtful all be- 
 lief in special revelation ; to say there is no such 
 thing as exclusive possession of truth ; that if one 
 religion may claim a revelation the same 'right must 
 be conceded to others ; that all religions stand upon 
 one ground of authority by reason of their having 
 the same origin and sharing the same idea; that 
 revelation, if we still prefer that worn out phrase, 
 comes to all faiths alike, and that no form of faith 
 has the right to tyranize over another. This is the 
 position that we, in this generation, are able to take. 
 For the first time in history we are able to plant 
 ourselves on this ground. The attitude could not 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. I27 
 
 have been taken before ; it could not have been 
 taken even thirty years ago, because it is within the 
 last thirty years, aye within a much more recent 
 period than this that the study of what is called the 
 science of comparative religions has been instituted. 
 The greatest scholars of the century, in the East 
 and in the West, in Germany and in England, have 
 been devoting themselves in the spirit of real devo- 
 tion to the study of the different religious faiths 
 of the world. 
 
 The sacred books of these religions have been 
 brought to light, translated, and now, for the first 
 time the studious reader has before him, not the 
 Hebrew and Christian bibles only, but all the bibles 
 that there are — all the scriptures that have voiced 
 the religious sentiment of the race. At last we can 
 compare the religions together. On comparing 
 them, what do we see ? We see this, that all relig- 
 ions are of one family, that all are of common kin, 
 that all come of a common stock ; that all are born 
 of the self same impulse ; that they are all steps in 
 the intellectual development of mankind. All have 
 the same institutions and forms, the altar, the tem- 
 ple, the sacrifices, the priest-hood ; all have archi- 
 tecture, sculpture and painting. All have the same 
 essential doctrines ; all have the same definitions of 
 God ; all have similar conceptions of the hereafter ; 
 
128 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 all have one central thought, the human need of sal- 
 vation ; all teach a theory of mediatorial rescue ; all 
 ,rest on a principle of atonement which is essen- 
 tially the same in them all. Moreover, it is dis- 
 covered that the moralities of all religions are 
 essentially and often precisely alike. All teach jus- 
 tice, brotherly love, kindness, forgiveness, veracity ; 
 all exalt the cardinal virtues ; all recommend wor- 
 ship, devoutness, aspiration : all encourage the 
 seeking o'f man after the infinite. I could stand 
 here by the hour and read passages from other 
 bibles than the Christian or the Jewish — passages of 
 the most exquisite truth and tenderness, the most 
 delicate sense of divine things ; taken from books 
 that were written centuries before Christ was born, 
 and among heathens ; passages more delicious in 
 their moral aroma than anything you can find in 
 the New Testament. This we affirm ; it is not 
 matter of conjecture ; it is not matter of specula- 
 tion or of guess ; it is matter of simple knowledge. 
 We have but to use our eyes and the fact is before 
 us, that all the religions of the race are of one stuff. 
 Moreover, as we examine them we see that all 
 have some central person, some great prophet or 
 law giver, some great teacher or saint who is made 
 the centre of the system. In India they call him 
 Buddha ; in China they revere him as Confucius ; in 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 1 29 
 
 Persia his name is Zoroaster ; in Palestine he towers 
 up as Moses ; in Christendom he is worshipped as 
 Jesus. They are a line, a brotherhood of teachers.. 
 Each one is the soul of his own system ; the pivot 
 of his own faith. Each has the peculiarity of his 
 age and race about him. Each has his limitations, 
 national, temporal, personal. Each stands for him-' 
 self and for his idea. Each is venerated, beloved, 
 followed by those of his own race. This too we 
 know. 
 
 It is not said, or suggested in all this that the re- 
 ligions of men are equal, that one is no better than 
 another. You might as well say that the chemistry 
 of the middle ages was equal to the chemistry of 
 to-day ; that the botany of a thousand years ago 
 attained as beautiful a development as the botany 
 that is taught at Harvard or Columbia ; that the 
 telescope which was used by Galileo was equal to 
 the telescope that is used by Lord Rosse. It stands 
 to reason that everything improves with age. As 
 we go on our knowledge increases. 
 
 It is easy enough to grant that Christianity is 
 the queen of Faiths ; the most impressive, tender, 
 humane form of religion that is known to the world. 
 Why ? Because it is the last. It has the benefit of 
 all that went before. It is the residuary legatee of 
 the ancient religions of the race. It is the religion 
 
130 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 of the modern world and of the modern man. It 
 is the religion of the most intellectual, the most 
 persevering, the most humane epochs of history. 
 Of course it is the best. Its age is the age of art, 
 of philosophy, of science, of speculation and phi- 
 lanthropy. It has used its advantages. It has 
 improved by its opportunities. But it did not 
 create them. Christianity did not create Raphael ; 
 Christianity did not create Michael Angelo. These 
 men did more for the church than the church ever 
 did for them. The world has endowed Christianity 
 with its opulence, and that is the reason it is so 
 rich. 
 
 But, now, it is said that if the spirit of sectar- 
 ianism declines, religion itself will be abolished ; 
 there will be no seeking for truth ; no zeal for 
 opinion ; no effort to establish right above wrong. 
 The temples will be deserted, the systems of 
 thought will be abandoned and we shall lapse 
 into utter indifference and imbecility, if the sec- 
 tarian spirit ceases. It seems that the sectarian 
 spirit makes people earnest. It looks as if the sec- 
 tarian spirit kept the workers on their feet. 
 
 The objection reminds one of a vulgar objection 
 to civil service reform, an objection based on the 
 idea that politics in America are necessarily servile 
 and mercenary ; that if we take away the doctrine 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. I3I 
 
 that the spoils belong to the victor, there will 
 be no more victors and no more contestants 
 for spoils ; all interest in politics will under 
 these circumstances decline ; the interest in the 
 higher problems of government will cease, and there 
 will be nobody left to look after public affairs. 
 Then we reply, let politics cease. Let all the 
 zeal stop and stop at once, which drives into 
 political life the hirelings who fight for plunder. 
 Let us dispense, once for all, with the services of 
 men who take up the probleins of government and 
 assume the management of human affairs out of 
 greed, in the temper of the buccaneer hungry for 
 power, thirsty for wealth. Let them go. We shall 
 be better without them ; and let honorable men 
 come to the front. Let the men who really love 
 their country better than they love pelf, who have 
 not taken an interest in public affairs before because 
 they were in the hands of beggars, poltroons and 
 thieves ; let such as these have their chance. Let 
 them show a rational interest in government as it 
 should be, and we shall have politics managed in a 
 very different way from that usual hitherto. 
 
 This is our feeling in regard to religion. If relig- 
 ious institutions, creeds, and ideas depend for their 
 existence upon dogmatism, malice, uncharitable- 
 ness, then in humanity's name let us have done with 
 
132 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 them forever. Let us never build another church ; 
 let us never ordain another preacher ; let us never 
 collect another congregation ; because however much 
 it may be for the interest of men to support " the 
 gospel " it is of deeper interest, aye, of everlasting 
 concern to men that they should observe the condi- 
 tions of brotherly society. 
 
 It is permitted by thoughtful men to entertain a 
 vision of what might be and may be were the 
 sectarian spirit to be exorcised. Can we sup- 
 pose religious men not to hate each, other; can 
 we suppose them not to seek continually to drag 
 one another down and supplant one another, we 
 can dream of a kingdom of heaven. Did the 
 Turk and the Christian, off by the Black Sea, con- 
 tend, not as believers and unbelievers, but simply 
 as men, the Russian war might have been ended be- 
 fore this. Take the element of the sectarian spirit 
 out of the contest and the worst element of the 
 fury would be expelled. The Turk is a fanatic for 
 his faith ; the Christian is a fanatic for his. Let the 
 hatred of fanaticism die ; let the conflict be between 
 simply those who are waging war for the acquisition 
 of territory or the balance of power, and it could 
 not last. What gives bitterness in England to the 
 controversy over this very Russo-Turkish conflict ? 
 It is once more, the sectarian spirit. On the one 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 133 
 
 side, there are Christians who abhor the Turk, who 
 call on the Lord in their prayer and on their fellow 
 Christians in public meetings, endeavoring to create 
 a public spirit that will put the crescent down and 
 commit England to the work of suppressing Moslem- 
 ism in Europe. On the other side, — and here is 
 where the counter-current comes in, — the Christians 
 of the English church hate the Christians of the 
 Greek church, the church of Russia ; thus we find 
 Christians in England, taking the ground that Rus- 
 sia is in the wrong, and that Russia must be held in 
 check by an alliance of England with Turkey. Take 
 out this element of the sectarian spirit ; let the 
 Englishman judge of this conflict on rational histor- 
 ical, or philosophical grounds as he would judge 
 any other, and at once the convulsion that for the 
 past year has been rending the British communities 
 in twain would be quelled. 
 
 Take away the evil spirit of sectarianism and 
 there would be peace among the religions of the 
 world, among the sects of Christendom, among the 
 churches that are established among the people 
 without, — call them by whatever name you will. 
 
 Why does the American loathe the Chinaman ? 
 Partly, at least, because the Christian abhors the 
 Buddhist. Take away the abhorrence that the 
 Christian has for the pagan, and Chinaman, German, 
 
134 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 American, Frenchman, Englishman would fall into 
 line together, would tend to mingle, would work 
 cheerfully at the same trades, pursue the same in- 
 dustries. We might then dispense with legislation 
 and police force to protect the weak against the 
 strong. 
 
 What happened the other day in Texas? A 
 brutal mob seized one of the most respectable citi- 
 zens in town, an eminent physician, beguiled him 
 from his home on false pretence of charity, carried 
 him to a solitary place, bound him to a tree and 
 beat him nearly to death, because he was an infidel 
 according to their apprehension of the term ; then 
 they told him that if he repeated the offence of pro- 
 mulgating infidel opinions they would hang him, 
 and if anybody else presumed to preach infidelity 
 he must die the death, for they would put a stop to 
 disbelief. Would anything like that happen, even 
 in Texas, if the sectarian spirit could be quelled and 
 exorcised ? 
 
 Then again, think of the restoration of dignity to 
 the human mind by the elevation of its seat above 
 dogmatism. By the verdict of Christendom the hu- 
 man mind is impotent to find the truth. The 
 Christian looks back upon the religious develop- 
 ment of the past and finds it a series of frightful 
 mistakes and atrocious blunders ; a chaos of super- 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 13^ 
 
 stitions — a wild farrago of hideous dreams. These 
 monstrous idolatries show, in the judgment of 
 Christendom, what degradation the human mind 
 sinks into when left to itself. With what different 
 feelings the rationalist, clear minded and instructed, 
 looks at the same facts ! We are persuaded that 
 all religions come out of the human mind in the 
 process of the development ; that they are all effort^ 
 and earnest efforts on the part of men to understand 
 the conduct, and get at the secret of the universe. 
 Hence there is no credulity, however blind, nd 
 superstition, however dark, no error, however mis- 
 leading, no idolatry, however grotesque, no delu- 
 sion, however visionary, that does not represent a 
 phase in the effort of the human mind to gain more 
 light upon the problems that are flung down in it^ 
 path. The whole religious history of mankind is 
 one long testimony to the earnestness, the deter- 
 mined patience of the intellect of man. In all ages; 
 in all races, man has tried to lift himself above hi^ 
 lowest conditions, to understand himself and the 
 world in which he lives. What feelings of respect; 
 respect amounting almost to reverence, do we have 
 for even the most bewildering systems that have 
 been professed by human creatures, when we look 
 at them in this new light ! Of course the ancient 
 men, like the modern, make mistakes. The ques- 
 
■ 136 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. 
 
 tion is not whether we make mistakes but whether 
 we make mistakes in the honest pursuit of truth, 
 whether we are willing to drop them when wiser 
 thoughts come. This the elect portion of the hu- 
 man race has shown itself able and determined to 
 do ; in their view the human mind, instead of 
 stumbling and faltering, falling and groping in the 
 mire, lying supinely in the dust waiting for the 
 touch of some inspired teacher to communicate to 
 it a thrill of life, stands on its own feet, itself the; 
 creator of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual 
 world. The creeds are man thinking, the tem- 
 ples are man worshipping, the altars are man 
 sacrificing; the priesthoods are man striving to 
 establish harmony between the temporal and the 
 eternal ; the prophets are man voicing the edicts of 
 conscience. 
 
 Will the sectarian spirit ever die ? Never, so 
 long as Christianity exists, because it is the essence 
 of Christianity, as of every system that claims for 
 itself the sole possession of a divine revelation. 
 Every such system claims for itself an absolute 
 superiority over the speculative genius of man. As 
 long as Christianity endures it must entertain this 
 conviction. Therefore, as long as Christianity en- 
 dures, the poison of the sectarian spirit must drop 
 into the world. A sad outlook ; yes. But courage ! 
 
THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. I37 
 
 Religion is more than Ciiristianity. Christianity is 
 only one form of its expression, which has had its 
 birth, its growth, its culmination, and is now verging 
 towards its decline. The reason of man is more 
 than any church, more than any system, more than 
 all systems and churches ; man is more than apos- 
 tle or saint, more than law-giver or prophet. 
 
 The creative spirit of truth is at work most 
 diligently in our communities in modern times, re- 
 viving religious ideas, quickening religious senti- 
 ments in a way that few of us suspect. Here is 
 Spiritualism, a religion of itself, without priesthood, 
 or temple, without creed, or altar, believing in man, 
 consulting nature, trusting to the creative genius of 
 human intelligence, a religion that is subtly under- 
 mining Christianity in all established forms of its 
 expression. Here is "the Religion of Humanity," 
 counting thousands of adherents among men who 
 have left Christianity and every form of instituted 
 faith. Modern science leads directly to religion in 
 its disclosures of harmonious law. There is already 
 a religion suggested by the doctrine of Evolution. 
 The researches of Tyndall and Huxley, of Spencer 
 and Darwin are laying the ground work of a new 
 system of faith, full, rich, exuberant, with aspira- 
 tion, worship, brotherly kindness and earnest devo- 
 tion in all good works. 
 
138 THE SECTARIAN SPIRIT. * 
 
 Yes it is coming ! It is coming ! It is already 
 here. Some of us know it ; some of us live in the 
 . atmosphere of it every day. Hundreds, thousands, 
 enjoy the new faith, drink in its spirit, feed on its 
 nectar and ambrosia, and are made pure and noble 
 by its influence. We may hope that the time will 
 come for all men, when the spirit of jealousy, anti- 
 pathy, and contempt shall be expelled, when relig- 
 ion shall be as free as science or philosophy or 
 literature, and shall take its true place as the sweet- 
 est friend and mightiest inspirer of man. 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL, 
 
 Had I been told, six months ago, that I should 
 give a discourse on the subject of "hell," I should 
 have received the information with absolute incred- 
 ulity ; incredulity as deep and scornful as the hunter 
 would feel who was told that he should take his rifle 
 and go forth to hunt the iguanodon, ichthyosaurus 
 or other extinct monster of the pre-adamite epoch 
 of the planet. A thousand years ago, the doctrine 
 was alive and formidable. It stalked abroad, im- 
 mense in size, terrible in aspect. Now it is rarely 
 seen and when visible is but the shadow of its for- 
 mer self. It has left the world of philosophy and 
 science, of literature and art, even in the wilderness 
 of theology it is seldom met with. Its spectral 
 image lingers near the tabernacle where the revival 
 preacher endeavors to reproduce a system of relig- 
 ion that was natural in a departed era, but is un- 
 
I40 THE DOGMA OF HELL. 
 
 natural in the present age — but there too it is alter- 
 ed, sadly changed from its former estate, a mere si- 
 mulacrum, a ghost, which the people are allowed to 
 look at, as forms are seen behind gauze curtains, or 
 as "materialized" spirits are produced under " me- 
 diumistic " conditions. 
 
 All at once, this spectre becomes alive, is seen in 
 the midst of us, terrifies women and children in the 
 public places. We were mistaken in supposing the 
 monster belonged to the Silurian epoch ; or to speak 
 more exactly, we were mistaken in thinking that the 
 Silurian epoch was sunk beneath so many layers of 
 rock. The Silurian epoch persists. In central New 
 York, last summer, excellent persons were found 
 who professed to believe in the lake of fire, and were 
 surprised that any should be so audacious as to doubt 
 it. In New England an ecclesiastical council demur- 
 ed to the ordination of a minister, on the ground 
 that he held unorthodox opinions on this point. In 
 New York, an eminent divine and doctor of divini- 
 ty, rector of a wealthy and fashionable church, ex- 
 pressed contempt for the opinion of Canon Farrar 
 that no doctrine of everlasting suffering was taught 
 in the Scripture. The doctrine is evidently not ex- 
 tinct. The majority of Congregational clergymen 
 still maintain it, some in a qualified, others in an un- 
 qualified form. 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. 14I 
 
 How can such a surprising phenomenon as this be 
 explained ? We are forced to recognize the fact 
 that the tenet in question has, at present, no 
 substantial reason for being ; that people who do 
 not wish to belief e it need not, may discard it, or 
 let it alone. Those who cling to it, do so of their 
 own free will, because they choose to, not because 
 authority compels them, or evidence persuades. 
 The disbelievers are in the ascendant. The doubter 
 is in excellent company. He has the intelligence of 
 centuries on his side. 
 
 In theology men of the highest eminence have 
 repudiated the idea as inconsistent with the concep- 
 tion of a supreme justice. Origen in the third cen- 
 tury declared it incredible, cleared the scriptures of 
 it by resolving its language into allegory, and ac- 
 quitted Deity of responsibility for it, by maintain- 
 ing the evanescence of evil itself and teaching that 
 Satan would at last be reclaimed. In the ninth 
 century Scotus Erigena, one of ihe master minds of 
 the Church, a man of genius, an acute and enter- 
 prising intellect, the prince of the scholastic philos- 
 ophy advocated the same views with Origen, and 
 defended them with unsurpassed vigor and subtlety 
 of reasoning. Others, of less distinction might, if 
 they would, take courage from these, especially in 
 an age when no courage is needed, as it was in 
 
142 THE DOGMA OF HELL. 
 
 theirs. At present the courage is demanded of 
 those who maintain the doctrine, not of those who 
 reject it. The modern theologian is unwilling to 
 commit himself to an opinion that has against it 
 the suffrage of modern intelligence. 
 
 Philosophy suggested to theology its doubt. The 
 office of philosophy is to present the unity of the 
 world, to describe the universe as a whole, consis- 
 tent and harmonious in all its parts ; and in its at- 
 tempt to do this, it inevitably suggested misgivings 
 in regard to a doctrine so fatal to an intelligent 
 order of the world as this. In the last century, 
 Joseph Butler, "the most patient, original and can- 
 did of philosophic theologians," made a desperate 
 stand for the belief in future punishment, and de- 
 fended, or rather apologized for it, by arguing its 
 complete accordance with the system of Nature, 
 whose divine author inflicted unspeakable agonies on 
 beings to all appearances innocent. Such reasoning 
 may well be called desperate. That is indeed a 
 hopeless cause that can be maintained onlj'' at the 
 risk of atheism itself. To argue that God iriight be ex- 
 pected to punish people everlastingly in the future be- 
 cause, horribly and causelessly, he torments them in 
 the present, may and does provoke men to ask 
 whether it would not be better to deny the existence 
 of God entirely, or to give the name Devil to the 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. I43 
 
 being who governs the world. Had bishop Butler 
 deliberately gone to work to prove that the world 
 was under the dominion of Satan, he could, not 
 have argued more successfully. The only criticism 
 one feels disposed to make on such an argument is 
 that it lacks subtlety. It is not cunning enough to 
 persuade. It is barefaced. Origen and Scotus had 
 no such audacity. They appealed to the conception 
 of a supreme Being against what seemed to them a 
 horrible imputation upon him. They attempted to 
 relieve him from the guilt of inflicting/«/«r«' agonies 
 on innocent soiils. It never occurred to either of 
 them to defend the atrocity of hell by bringing up 
 the equally appalling atrocity of earth. It never 
 occurred to them to give people their choice between 
 atheism and diabolism. 
 
 The method of Butler has been repudiated by the 
 more rational philosophy of a later day. There are 
 now three alternatives presented to the philosophi- 
 cal mind. It may either accept the ancient theory 
 of Dualism which allots the universe to two oppos- 
 ing powers, one good and one evil,— the evil power 
 holding sway over the realm of anguish, whether 
 temporal or eternal, — on which supposition, pain, 
 death, hell are transferred ^rom the dominion of 
 Deity to the domain of Satan ; or, maintaining 
 the theory of Monism, which acknowledges but a 
 
144 THE DOGMA OF HELL. 
 
 single intelligent ruler of the universe, it may deny 
 the existence of one spirit or the other, declaring for 
 optimism with Leibnitz, and with him sustaining the 
 opinion that good is the substantial principle, and 
 evil the appearance, the apparition, the evanescent 
 shadow, or for pessimism with Schopenhauer who 
 contended that evil was the substantial principle 
 and, that good is the illusive semblance. Or again, 
 as a third alternative, declining to answer dogmatic- 
 ally the question of the world's original authorship 
 and essential control, it may hold to some form of 
 ' the development theory, which describes the uni- 
 verse as unfolding gradually from organic germs, 
 and as moving onward with or without the guidance 
 of an intelligent being. Either of these supposit- 
 ions variously tempered and modified, the philoso- 
 pher of our day may accept ; but the supposition of 
 an everlasting hell for human beings is not admissi- 
 ble. That idea the philosophic mind discards, and 
 they who seek the companionship of such minds 
 must abandon it. 
 
 Of the belief in " hell " science knows nothing. 
 As knowledge extends, the dominion of pure evil 
 shrinks. Satan retreats from one department of 
 Nature after another and leaves the high-ways and 
 by-ways of creation free to the passage of serene, 
 inexorable and regenerating law. Science discards 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. 145, 
 
 the conception of the Devil, and the dogma of per- 
 dition. The scientific men who entertain these 
 forms of opinion do so, not as men of science, but 
 as members of the church, whose doctrines they do 
 not presume to call in question. 
 
 The doctrine of future punishment as held by the 
 creeds of Christendom, has always been rejected 
 with abhorrence by the natural conscience of men, 
 as fundamentally inconsistent with rational notions 
 of justice. That men, even the worst men, could 
 in their short life-time commit offences deserving 
 everlasting punishment, the agonies of hell fire, for 
 an eternity, or even for a hundred years, nay, for a 
 single year, for a single day, is an idea that shocks 
 every sentiment of equity. That the Being who is 
 supremely, ideally, absolutely just, can inflict penal- 
 ties for misdoing, such as no human being would 
 lay on another, such as the most infernal cruelty 
 never, even when maddened to insanity, de- 
 vised, is a suggestion at which the natural conscience 
 stands, always did stand and always must stand 
 aghast. They who believed it when they could not 
 help themselves, when church authority cowed their 
 will, and silenced their protest, made this moral res- 
 ervation. The voice of conscience was hushed. The 
 moral sense was forbidden to assert itself. 
 
 That the human heart resents, repels with detes- 
 
146 THE DOGMA OF HELL. 
 
 tation the belief in future punishment, need not be 
 said. Of course it does. Of course it always did. 
 What pagan, what creature above the savage, ever 
 cordially entertained the belief that one whom he 
 loved, was howling in hell for deeds done in the 
 body, for sentiments entertained, or for dispositions 
 illustrated on earth ? It is easy enough to profess 
 doctrines in which one has no interest,^ with which 
 one associates no feeling; but when feeling becomes 
 enlisted, as, sooner or later it becomes, in a doctrine 
 like this, the reaction against it is instantaneous and 
 violent. There was a time when the heart dared 
 not express its feeling; That time is past ; now 
 heartlessness is condemned. The voice of the heart 
 is loud and imperative ; it requires courage to resist 
 it. 
 
 There remains the word of Scripture. Does this 
 compel those who accept its authority, to receive 
 the doctrine of future punishment against the pro- 
 test of the heart, the remonstrance of the conscience, 
 the reasoning of philosophy, the theologian's de- 
 mur? This is a question which lack of space forbids 
 my answering in full or arguing at length. To me, 
 with whom the word of Scripture has no more au- 
 thority than reason concedes to it, the discussion is 
 without interest. At present, it satisfies my pur- 
 pose to say that, in my honest and sober judgment, 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. I47 
 
 the language of Scripture does not warrant the 
 christian doctrine. If it did, my opinion of the 
 doctrine would be what it is. But honestly I think 
 that it does not. At least, the essential thought, the 
 true meaning of Scripture does not. More than 
 this, I am not prepared to allow. The Universalists 
 have not, in my judgment, fairly made out their case 
 from the Bible. From the Old Testament they can 
 easily, for to the Hebrew riiind the doctrine is re- 
 pugnant. But the New Testament contains expres- 
 sions that have never been purged from the taint of 
 the hideous thought. Language is put into the 
 mouth of Jesus that conveys to the imagination the 
 most horrible forebodings of doom. " Depart, ye 
 cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil 
 and his angels." It is hard for the grammarian to 
 get over that. 
 
 Universalism has however, done this much ; it has 
 cast a grave doubt on the supposed teachings of Scrip- 
 ture in this matter. It has made it possible to doubt 
 whether the Bible is chargeable with the belief in 
 question. It has even made it easy for people who be- 
 lieve in the inspired authority of Scripture and who 
 are distressed because it teaches this disheartening 
 dogma, to retain their faith in the Bible and at the 
 same time to indulge the sentiments which are native 
 to their hearts. This is much. Is it not as much as 
 
148 THE DOGMA OF HELL. 
 
 is demanded? Is it not, practically, everything? 
 None need entertain the dogma on the authority of 
 the Bible, who do not choose to. The doubter 
 has a valid excuse. 
 
 How then, to return to my original question, how 
 then can the revival of this monstrous doctrine be 
 explained? Since there are good reasons for discard 
 ing it, since the reasons that once supported it are 
 weakened if not wholly disposed of, since to reject 
 it is to be in the company of the best in repute, 
 since even Scripture permits merciful interpretations, 
 why is not the doctrine suffered to go unrestrained 
 to its final account ? The reply to the inquiry is 
 close at hand. 
 
 The doctrine is necessary to the integrity of the 
 christian scheme ; so necessary that its rejection 
 would bring the whole structure down. The chris- 
 tian scheme is a complete, logical system, compactly 
 fitted together. Its parts all cohere. The dislodge- 
 ment of one point endangers the security of the 
 structure. To deny the Trinity is to deny the deity 
 of the Christ. To deny the deity of the Christ is 
 to deny the sufificiency of his atonement. To deny 
 the atonement is to deny the desperate need of man. 
 To deny this, is to deny human depravity, is to deny 
 the necessity of Grace, is to vacate the ofifices of 
 th€ Church, and reduce to nothing the significance 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. 149 
 
 of Christendom. The dogma of future punishment 
 is essential to all the rest. It follows logically from 
 the dogmas of Depravity and Redemption. There 
 must be a doom in reserve for the unconverted. 
 There must be a place for the unregenerate. They 
 are by nature depraved, heirs of death, children of 
 wrath ; and their place must be the lowest and sad- 
 dest conceivable. Their doom might be simply 
 death, utter death, annihilation. But this doom 
 would be rather negative than positive. Death might 
 be welcome. Annihilation might be a boon. There 
 must be something more appalling to the vulgar 
 imagination than that. With the idea of death 
 must be coupled the idea of agony. Hence, as life* 
 meant felicity, death meant anguish. Hell was off- 
 set against Heaven. The two were required to com- 
 plete the series of conceptions which constituted the 
 " Plan of Redemption." The distruction of hell 
 would deprive the system of its motive power. The 
 good woman of Alexandria who went about with 
 her bucket of water in one hand and her torch in 
 the other — the water to extinguish hell, the torch to 
 burn up heaven — ^was set down as a maniac. Had 
 she succeeded, Christianity would have seen its last 
 day. For the fires of perdition were as indispensi- 
 ble to the religion as was the divine love she wished 
 to exalt. 
 
150 THE DOGMA OF HELL. 
 
 Thus the tenacity of Christians to their dogma is 
 accounted for. They may keep it in the background ; 
 they may conceal it beneath figures of speech ; they 
 may say little or nothing about it ; they may even 
 permit their neighbors to forget it. The revivalist 
 preacher may speak of it with extreme reserve and 
 reluctance, urging the persuasions of love instead 
 of the former exasperations of fear. Still the doc- 
 trine is there, in its place, and when touched by the 
 hand of criticism, it displays its vitality. They avow 
 it who dare not disavow. They assent who dare 
 not deny. Did the tenet stand by itself, alone, 
 apart from the general scheme, there can scarcely be 
 'a doubt of its all but universal rejection. As it is, 
 it is retained as a corner stone which the builders 
 see no way to reject. 
 
 The strength, the bulwark of this doctrine has ever 
 been the ecclesiastical spirit, the spirit of assumption 
 and mental oppression. It grew up with the priest- 
 hood ; and with the priesthood it prevailed, and 
 with the power of the priesthood it declined. 
 It never had much influence by reason of the 
 moral consciousness of men. It is a remarkable 
 fact that people have for the most part been 
 consigned to hell for offences against ecclesias- 
 tical rule. The inhabitants of hell have been chiefly 
 heretics sent there for the guilt of unbelief ; skep- 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. 151 
 
 tics who looked too deeply into the mysteries of 
 dogma, infidels who abandoned the traditions of 
 faith. A Parsee writing, it is said, describes a woman 
 in hell, " beaten with stone clubs by two demons 
 twelve miles high, and compelled to eat a basin of 
 offal because some of her hair, as she ccmbed it, fell 
 into the sacred fire." A Brahmanic text, says Alger, 
 tells of a man who for " neglecting to meditate 
 on the mystic monosyllable OM, before praying, was 
 thrown down on an iron floor in hell, and cloven with 
 an ax, then stirred in a caldron of molten lead till 
 coyered all over with foam sweat, like a igrain of 
 rice in an oven, and then fastened with head down- 
 wards and feet upwards to a chariot of fire, and 
 urged onward with a red hot goad." A general 
 council of the Church condemned Origen for teach- 
 ing that the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell 
 did not comport with the idea of the infinite good- 
 ness of God. An English cardinal, early in the 
 thirteenth century, wrote a book on the question : 
 Is Origen saved or damned ? In Bayles' Dictionary 
 is related the vision of a hermit who saw hell uncov- 
 ered, and in the midst of it, Origen in the company 
 of the damned, covered with flames and confusion.* 
 The pains of hell were reserved for offenders against 
 the Church, not for offenders against humanity. The 
 
 * See Delapierre's "Enfer," p. 33, note. 
 
152 THE DOGMA OF HELL. 
 
 hell of the Romanist is full of Protestants. The 
 hell of the Protestant is full of schismatics. Where 
 theological hatred does not exist, there is no hell, 
 for there are none to put into it except murderers, 
 thieves and liars, and none of these deserve its 
 frightful tortures. In the priests' eyes unbelief is 
 the soul of guilt. So will it be, so long as churches 
 claim special revelations of truth, so long as certain 
 texts are revered as the word of God, so long as ec- 
 clesiastical institutions and rites are held to be sa- 
 cred above human sanctities, so long as orders of 
 men called religious assume the right to dictate 
 thought and conduct to mankind. 
 
 It is vulgarly thought that the belief in future 
 punishment is important as a check on the inordi- 
 nate passions of men ; that it is valuable in keeping 
 society in order, men being more readily swayed by 
 fear than by any other motive. This impression is, 
 I am persuaded, quite mistaken. It is not probably 
 true that men are more powerfully affected by fear 
 than by love. The experiment has never been tried. 
 The assumption that fear is the only influence to 
 which human beings respond has been acted on from 
 time immemorial and has begotten an absolute skep- 
 ticism in regard to the efficacy of any other senti- 
 ment. That men should be influenced for good by 
 fear seems to be something like an absurdity. Fear 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. I53 
 
 can do no more for a moral nature, than darkness 
 can do for a plant, or lightning for a tree. Sunshine 
 alone quickens. Love alone warms. Violence may 
 stimulate, but how can it nourish f Fear may create 
 fear ; can it create trust ? Vitality is coincident with 
 passionate desire, but fear produces apathy and , re- 
 pulsion. The substitution of rewards for penalties 
 would probably be followed by a moral impulse to- 
 wards goodness such as Christendom never exper- 
 ienced. 
 
 I heard, a short time since, the touching story of 
 a drunkard. He had dragged himself and his wife 
 down from a respectable position into the deepest 
 pit of poverty and degradation. He was a beggar 
 and a brute, and she was a wretched, sick, crushed 
 creature, to whom existence was a burden. Re- 
 proaches had been rained upon his head for years ; 
 society had cast him into its outer darkness shut its 
 door upon him. The friend who told me the story 
 found these people in a garret, and by the aid of 
 some neighbors separated the husband from the 
 wife. She, after a time, recovered herself sufficient- 
 ly to do a little plain sewing ; and when she had 
 earned her first shilling, she placed half of it, six- 
 pence, in her benefactors hand saying, " When you 
 see my husband, give him this, with my love." He 
 did so. The wretched man took it, gazed at it, and 
 
154 THE DOGMA OF HELL. 
 
 broke into a sob of agony. " O God ! I could bear 
 threats, hunger and curses, but I cannot bear this. 
 That sixpence breaks my heart!" Is a woman's 
 love so powerful, and can the Supreme love be im- 
 potent ? 
 
 But let this pass. It is enough for the present to 
 know that the doctrine of future punishment has not 
 been, to any considerable degree, employed as an 
 agent in moral reformation. It has been used as an 
 engine for the suppression of heresy. The free 
 preachers who preceded Luther, did their best to 
 galvanize sinners into good behavior by describing 
 the terrors of hell. Very frightful their descriptions 
 were ; so grotesque and fantastical in their horror 
 as to betray their weakness. None but the stupid- 
 est, the most credulous, the most animal could have 
 been affected by threatenings so ludicrously violent. 
 The preachers, one would say, felt the impotence 
 of their method, and not being wise enough to change 
 it for a better, heaped up the agony till it was amus- 
 ing. It would be safe to say that the certainty of a 
 good whipping to be inflicted immediately on the 
 perpetration of the offence, would exert a more salu- 
 tary effect on conduct than the most lurid prospect 
 of imaginary flames. 
 
 The truth is that the threat of Hell even in its 
 most mitigated form is so vastly in excess of any 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. 155 
 
 consciousness of guilt as to be practically inoperative. 
 The flames might as well be painted, for any terror 
 they carry. It is impossible to bring such fantasies 
 home to the practical sense. They who have im- 
 agination to realize them are disgusted. They who 
 have not are confounded and stunned. Instead of 
 apprehending a decline of morality from the popu- 
 lar disbelief in the doctrine of hell torments, it 
 will be more reasonable to apprehend such decline 
 from its continued profession, and the more sincere 
 the profession, the graver the cause for apprehen- 
 sion. Whatever effect Christianity may have had 
 in softening the habits and sweetening the dispo- 
 sitions of men — and by all admission it has exerted 
 a great deal — it has produced by its graciousness, in 
 spite of this hideous doctrine. The benignant char- 
 acter of Jesus, the human teachings of the Sermon 
 on the Mount, the lovely lessons of parables like the 
 Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, the touching 
 suggestions of the Supper the Garden and the 
 Cross, the affecting mythology of the Atonement, 
 with its background of the Eternal Love and its ex- 
 pression of self-sacrificing devotion on the part of 
 the purest and gentlest of the sons of men, all these 
 combined were perpetually droppiiig refreshing dew 
 on the waste places of the human heart and warm- 
 ing into life the seeds of kindness and purity. For 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. I57 
 
 struments of torture used in the middle ages, the 
 wheels, rack, screws, pincers, were but material copies 
 of the instruments which the fiends were believed 
 to employ upon the damned in hell ; and the cold- 
 blooded ferocity with which the horrid enginery was 
 plied, nay, the satanic glee of the auto da fe, was 
 but such imitation as human creatures could make 
 of the devils who executed on the cursed the man- 
 dates of the divine wrath. " If," says Lecky, " you 
 make the detailed and exquisite torments of multi- 
 tudes the habitual object of the thoughts and imag- 
 inations of men, you will necessarily produce in 
 most of them a gradual indifference to human suf- 
 fering, and in some of them a disposition to regard 
 it with positive delight. If you further assure men 
 that these sufferings form an integral part of a rev- 
 elation which they are bound to regard as a message 
 of good tidings, you will induce them to stifle every 
 feeling of pity, and almost to encourage their insen- 
 sibility as a virtue. If you end your teachings by 
 telling them that the Being who is the ideal of their 
 lives confines His affections to the members of a 
 single church, that he will torture forever all who 
 are not found within its pale, and that His children 
 will forever contemplate those tortures in a state of 
 unalloyed felicity, you will prepare the way for every 
 form of persecution that can be directed against 
 those who are without." 
 
158 THE DOGMA OF HELL. 
 
 The bloody days are over. The instruments of 
 torture are exhibited as curiosities in the castle dun- 
 geons of Europe. May we not hope, may we not 
 reasonably expect that their diabolical counterparts 
 will also be remanded to the mythological curiosity 
 shop, to be marvelled at as the insane contrivances 
 of a diseased fancy ? Is it not melancholy, nay lu- 
 dicrous to think, that men who cry over an attack of 
 rheumatism, who will not permit a woman to be in- 
 jured, who remonstrate against the execution of a 
 criminal, who raise an outcry against the practice of 
 vivisection whereby surgeons make studies in anato- 
 •my by cutting up frogs and cats, are standing out vig- 
 orously for a doctrine that condemns millions of their 
 fellow creatures to agonies unspeakable and endless, 
 and are defending the opinion in the name of the 
 Supreme Goodness? Could there be a better illus- 
 tration of the ease with which people allow them- 
 selves to use words without meaning? Could there 
 be a better proof of hollowness and insincerity ? 
 Could there be a sharper admonition to the duty of 
 making beliefs correspond with feelings, and of sub- 
 stituting for the gaudy card houses of rhetoric, the 
 solid mansions of conviction ? To talk about eternal 
 torment is not difificult ; to profess belief in it may 
 be possible even for good natured people, but to 
 think it, to bring it home to reason or heart, is what 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. 159 
 
 the stoutest cannot do. It may be questioned 
 whether a single man, even a single priest, preacher 
 or churchman, ever fully " realized " the import of 
 the doctrine. We know the names of single men 
 whom the far off contemplation of it drove to the 
 madhouse. Nothing but dense ignorance, credulity, 
 mental and moral apathy, wrapping human sensibil- 
 ity about as with the hide of a rhinoceros, enabled 
 them to bear the suggestion of it, and still go on 
 their way believing, hoping and rejoicing. In pro- 
 portion as men become intelligent, conscientious and 
 sensitive, they throw the incubus off, though, with 
 it, they cast oyer creed, church, scripture, and all 
 the associations of religion. For Reason is worth 
 more than all. 
 
 That the doctrine of endless punishment will, be 
 fully, frankly, in every form discarded, while the pop- 
 ular religion — Christianity — survives, cannot be ex- 
 pected. For, as has been declared, the article is an 
 essential part of that religion, and will be maintain- 
 ed, literally and figuratively, by those who are in- 
 terested in keeping the system alive. But that it is 
 vanishing away before the brighter intelligence and 
 the better heart of the modern world, is very cer- 
 tain ; and equally certain is it that into the shadow of 
 oblivion will go the kindred tenets with which it is 
 associated. 
 
l6o THE DOGMA OF HELL. 
 
 It is not enough, however, that the intelligent 
 minds of a new age should reject the doctrine of 
 future punishment, as held by the Christian Church. 
 They must abandon the habit of associating any 
 idea of punishment with the divine administration of 
 the universe. Not the physical conception merely, 
 but the moral conception must be discarded. Neith- 
 er in the life after death, nor in the life before death, 
 is the thought of punishment, of retribution, of 
 vengeance to be entertained. It is the custom of 
 the " liberal " sects, so called, to spiritualize, as they 
 term it, the consequences of the divine wrath. 
 They transfer the pains from the body to the soul, 
 and imagine conscience as the agent in executing 
 the avenging decree. The^ too, paint pictures of 
 the torment of the damned which, they boast, are 
 more lurid and awful even than those set forth by 
 the calvinistic theology. They describe the agonies 
 of the awakened conscience, as Spurgeon might de- 
 scribe the agonies of the resurrected frame. It is 
 only another form of the old iniquity. It is but a 
 continuation of the evil habit they so bitterly con- 
 demn in their fellow believers. Their doctrine, 
 though less disgusting and revolting, is hardly more 
 rational than the ancient dogma, which they repu- 
 diate. 
 The only rational alternative is, the omission of 
 
THE DOGMA OF HELL. l6l 
 
 the word " punishment," from the vocabulary of re- 
 ligion. Speak of actions and their consequences ; 
 of conduct and its issues ; of character and its laws; 
 speak of moral cause and effect, and trace the con- 
 nection between deeds and destinies, a vital, organic 
 connection that cannot be broken or interrupted ; 
 but let the thought of retaliation be dropped. Then 
 will life be ordered on rational principles ; then will 
 hopes and fears be reasonable ; and then will our 
 conceptions of providence and deity be worthy of 
 intelligent beings. 
 
THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 I have something to say this morning on the prac- 
 tical value of the higher sentiments. The word sen- 
 timent is of vague significance. I use it in the best 
 accepted meaning, as expressing the loftier feelings 
 of the mind. A sentiment is not a dogma, a doc- 
 trine, a thought. Neither is it a mere feeling or 
 emotion. It is rather a mixture of the, two. We 
 may call it a thought saturated with feeling, or a 
 feeling based upon thought. The two elements, an 
 element of intellect and an elenient of feeling com- 
 bine in a sentiment. Thus we call adoration a sen- 
 timent ; the sense of the sublime is a sentiment. 
 Analyse any of these qualities and you find at the 
 bottom a basis of opinion ; but what makes them 
 especially beautiful, charming, fascinating in their 
 moral influence, is the aroma of feeling which is asso- 
 ciated with them. The sentiments hold the same 
 
164 THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 place in the conduct of life that flowers and pictures 
 do. Flowers are the fragrance of nature. They 
 express the genius of the material world — the fleet- 
 ing enchanting bloom on the face of things. The 
 value of a picture does not consist in the tex^ture of 
 the canvas, or the character of the pigment, in the 
 time it takes to paint it, or the character of its sub- 
 ject, but in the delicate communication of genius 
 which the artist out of his own fulness imparts 
 to those cheap commodities. The power of the ' 
 statue does not lie in the material of which it is com- 
 posed, whether it be marble, granite, or alabaster ; 
 but in the fine element of creative art which the 
 sculptor and the sculptor alone is able to impart to 
 whatever material he may see fit to use. The 
 higher feelings, the higher sentiments, do for our 
 practical life exactly what these lovely creations do 
 for the education of taste. 
 
 Of late years, it has been customary for the chem- 
 ist to take things to pieces, to resolve them, as we 
 say, " into their elements," to see what they are made 
 of. The chemist will take a flower, and show it to 
 you as a combination of gases, a whiff of vapor. 
 The same analyst will take a work of art, and reduce 
 it to a few common pigments. In the same way, 
 moral chemistry has been at work pulling to pieces 
 the moral sentiments and showing them to be com- 
 
THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 165 
 
 posed of very cheap, vulgar and even disreputable 
 stuff. For instance, Mr. Henry Thomas Buckle re- 
 solves the sentiment of reverence into wonder and 
 fear. We wonder, he says, because we are ignor- 
 ant ; we fear because we are weak ; as we outgrow 
 ignorance and fear, we outgrow veneration. In wild 
 and savage times the ignorance was dense, and the 
 weakness all but universal ; one man or a half dozen 
 men had all the knowledge there was ; a single per- 
 son held all the power ; the sceptre was carried in 
 an individual's hand ; the crown was placed 
 upon a king's head. Then reverence was at its 
 height. The priest taking advantage of his author- 
 ity, kept men down in abject spiritual submission. 
 The king, potentate, emperor, prince, taking advan- 
 tage of his superior rank, kept men down in abject 
 servility. As knowledge extends, as men become 
 masters of their circumstances, priest and potentate 
 disappear : the ministries of awe become obsolete. 
 Reverence, therefore, having no end to serve, de- 
 clines. 
 
 Submit any other sentiment to the same process, 
 the sentiment of thankfulness, for example. Grati- 
 tude in the last analysis, may be resolved into a 
 species of fine self-complacency. We are thankful 
 for what we especially have received ; for some sig- 
 nal favor bestowed upon us, and upon no one else ; 
 
l66 THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 because we are picked out from the rest, are select- 
 ed, set apart for the bestowment of some special 
 gift. The thankful are the glad, the happy, the 
 well-conditioned in some way ; and they are thank- 
 ful just in proportion as they feel they are well-con- 
 ditioned, while others are less favored. The feeling 
 of gratitude is thus associated with the quality of 
 self esteem, and is compatible even with essential 
 inhumanity. As we survey the world impartially, 
 and discover that the great giver of gifts whom we 
 worshipped, bestows what are no favors at all but 
 disfavors ; that pain accompanies pleasure ; that 
 sorrow keeps pace with joy ; that blight and bloom 
 are inseparable as light and shadow ; that disap- 
 pointment balances satisfaction ; that the wildest 
 despairs are scattered broadcast over the face of so- 
 ciety, the sentiment of thanksgiving begins to de- 
 cline. We even doubt whether there be any unmix- 
 ed good to be thankful for, or any being to whom 
 we should give thanks for anything. When, further- 
 more, reflection reveals the fact that the discipline 
 of life does not discipline, that sorrow does not 
 soften, that care does not educate, that disappoint- 
 ment does not train, chasten, sober or build up men 
 in spiritual graces — in other words, that the very 
 conditions of turning to best advantage either the 
 goods or the evils of life are withheld, that vigor. 
 
THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 167 
 
 capacity, intelligence, energy, buoyancy of tempera- 
 ment are not supplied at need, the sentiment of 
 thanksgiving declines more and more until, at last, 
 it gives out altogether ; and, in place of gratitude 
 we have but the grim determination to do our best 
 for Ourselves, to fight our way through the world as 
 well as we can, and to ask no favors of anybody. 
 
 Apply the same method of analysis to the senti- 
 ment of loyalty which has played so large, heroic and 
 beautiful a part in the education and progress of 
 mankind. Loyalty ! it is the soldier's fidelity to his 
 flag ; it is the patriot's fidelity to his country ; it is 
 the yeoman's fidelity to his prince ; it is the noble's 
 fidelity to his king or queen. It betrays, therefore, 
 a caste spirit. Loyalty ! It is the sentiment of fi- 
 delity that one has to some superior who grants fa- 
 vors — a narrow, exclusive thing, therefore, closely 
 associated with pride, egotism and self-conceit, nay, 
 to a certain extent, with servility. For why is the 
 noble loyal to his king except that he expects 
 honor? Why is the soldier loyal to the flag except 
 that he hopes for promotion ? Why is the patriot 
 loyal to his country except that he identifies his own 
 prosperity, happiness, dignity, with his country's 
 renown ? Loyalty, therefore, may be resolved by 
 this remorseless process into a very peculiar and 
 subtle kind of self-content which does not ennoble, 
 
1 68 THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 or dignify. As our ideas are expanded, and our 
 sympathies widened, humanity becomes more than 
 country, more than king or queen. The idea sup- 
 plants the symbol ; loyalty abates, and each man and 
 woman learns to stand on the human prerogative. 
 
 Honor — that prince of sentiments — what is it 
 but a more private and' personal kind of loyalty ? 
 Honor is man's pride in himself ; it may be a feeling 
 of self suiificiency. At the best it is the feeling that 
 makes one respect himself in view of conduct to- 
 wards a friend to whom he is attached, or a circle 
 with which he is bound up ; a cause or interest from 
 which he cannot dissociate himself. 
 
 Take even that delicate, lovely grace called mod- 
 esty, the sweetest, fairest, most aromatic of virtues, 
 that bloom almost too evanescent to be called a 
 quality, yet which possesses all the subtle force of a 
 quality — take Modesty to pieces, and what is it? 
 shyness, timidity, self-distrust, self-depreciation, 
 self-contempt possibly, a quality that frequently 
 marks those who do not estimate themselves at their 
 due worth, who can not assert their own dignity, 
 who are unable to stand upon their own virtue and 
 go timidly about, deferring to others, and meekly 
 waiting for some gift or commendation to be bestow- 
 ed by a recognized superior. 
 
 This analysis may be incontestably just. It is 
 
TH E HIGHER SENTIMENTS. l6g 
 
 quite possible that Buckle is right. It is quite pos- 
 sible that thanksgiving, loyalty, honor, adora- 
 tion, reverence, modesty may all start from some 
 such mean beginning. What of it? The pond 
 lily that floats in water in your parlor had its roots 
 in the mud. Go down into the slime from which it 
 grew and you find all manner of disgusting things. 
 Is the lily the less beautiful, its whiteness less love^ 
 ly, its aroma less sweet ? Is it any the less one of 
 the most charming creatures of nature ? Is the rose 
 which beauty wears on its bosom any the less ex- 
 quisite in color and fragrance because it has to be 
 diligently cultivated in the dirt of the garden, or 
 the confinement of an earthen pot ? Beauty does 
 not carry around the earthen pot wherever it carries 
 around the rose. The mud does not disgrace the 
 lily. 
 
 What if the work of art, a Transfiguration by 
 Raphael, an Assumption by Titian be nothing but 
 a few course pigments put on rough canvas ? Is the 
 picture less divine ? Does it any the less fascinate 
 generation after generation of beholders and fasci- 
 nate them more and more as the exquisiteness of the 
 beauty is appreciated ? 
 
 The visitor in the cathedral of Saint Peter at 
 Rome, standing on the marble floor looks up into 
 the dome which springs over head like the all cover- 
 
lyC THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 ing heaven. There in a glorious atmosphere of 
 blue are floating the forms of apostles, evangelists 
 and saints, angelic in their lightness and grace. To 
 the worshipper on the pavement rapt in wonder, the 
 heavens seem coming down .with these angelic forms. 
 Up, through a narrow winding stairway, he climbs 
 to the narrow balcony that surrounds the dome. 
 What are those forms made of ? Bits of charcoal ; 
 pieces of brick ; fragments of broken glass, which 
 the artist, calculating the effect from below, put in 
 their places, where each one would be most effective. 
 Who cares that the.iloating forms are composed of 
 such base materials picked up in the street? There 
 they are ; there they have been ever since the artist 
 placed them there. There they will stand as long as 
 the mighty edifice is allowed to remain on the globe. 
 It is of no consequence that lovely things have 
 ugly beginnings. The question is, are the things in 
 themselves beautiful? Take again this sentiment of 
 reverence. Its beginning we will say was in wonder 
 born of ignorance ; in fear born of weakness. Grant 
 that it is the parent of superstitions which have 
 crushed millions to the dust. Grant that kings and 
 priests have played upon it, and by means of it have 
 degraded mankind. Grant all this without discus- 
 sion ; certainly some of the most ugly things in his- 
 tory are traceable to that root. Yet reverence, when 
 
THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. l?! 
 
 cultivated and refined as it appears in noble spirits, 
 has a spiritual grace so exquisite that it deserves to 
 be called divine. Hear what Immanuel Kant said 
 about it : " Two things excite my veneration — the 
 starry heavens and the moral nature of man." 
 Who was Immanuel Kant ? Was his fear born of 
 weakness? Was his wonder born of ignorance? He 
 was the prince of modern philosophers, one of the 
 greatest mathematicians in his time; one of the 
 profoundest psychologists of all time. Immanuel 
 Kant foretold the existence of the planet Uranus 
 before Herschel discovered it. He was no more 
 aWe-struck before the heavens, believing the stars to 
 be living creatures, than the first of modern astrono- 
 niers is ; Immanuel Kant has earned an immortality 
 of fame by the patient skill with which he searched 
 the human mind and tracked out the process of its 
 development. Can we therefore not venerate where 
 the leader of thought in this modern age bowed head 
 and bent knee ? 
 
 Thanksgiving, it may be true, is a species of self- 
 complacency. It is associated, grant it, with a pro- 
 voking self-conceit. We are angry at times with the 
 complacent gratitude of people who, having every 
 thing they want, forget the myriads who have noth- 
 ing they want at all. Grant that it is maddening at 
 tiines to witness the gratefulness of people who in- 
 
172 THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 terpret their good fortune as a mark of divine affec- 
 tion, and cosset their vanity, with the feeling that 
 they are of the elect, picked out by Providence from 
 the rest of mankind. Yet, in a noble breast, what 
 is lovelier than the disposition to assume the attitude 
 of a recipient before nature, before man, before the 
 near friend, always occupying the position of a crea- 
 ture who does not possess everything and who there- 
 fore is not ashamed to say " thank you," to any who 
 will bestow a desirable gift. 
 
 The sentiment of loyalty is indeed associated with 
 some of the most repulsive things in history, with 
 cruelty, oppression, servility, narrowness, partisan- 
 ship, blind fanaticism, wild enthusiasm that has 
 scarcely anything but ignorance in it. And yet, 
 what is more kindling, what more transporting, than 
 ±0 see a man or woman faithful to principle, a re- 
 former clinging to his cause, a philanthropist pursu- 
 ing his idea of rectitude, a dreamer following his vis- 
 ion, and persisting in devotion to it in the face of 
 poverty, contempt, suffering, and shame. The sen- 
 timent in this form does ennoble, and it betokens a 
 noble person. 
 
 When the word honor is mentioned, everybody 
 thinks at once of duelling, and duelling is one of the 
 most absurd, one of the most futile, one of the most 
 senseless of human proceedings. The code of hon- 
 
THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 1 73 
 
 or is the code of the duellist. Grant it. Grant 
 that honor has been associated with brutality, cow- 
 ardice, servility, and cruelty. Nevertheless, the 
 sentiment of honor it. is which makes the common 
 man a gentleman. It gives the gentleman his quality 
 of gentleness. It takes the ordinary coarse stuff 
 that human nature is made of and transfigures it till 
 it becomes a fine ideal essence. It makes a man 
 ready to pledge his life rather than compromise the 
 fair purity of his character. 
 
 Modesty may be shyness, self-depreciation, self- 
 contempt. But suppose all women were immodest. 
 Suppose no man to depreciate himself, taking him- 
 self perhaps at somewhat less than he is worth. 
 What would become of society ? What would become 
 of humanity then? This loveliest flower of modesty, 
 so evanescent, so intangible, gives the blossom to 
 all our relationships. 
 
 We affirm the practical uses of the finest and sub- 
 tlest things. A few years ago people spoke of flow- 
 ers as if they were ornamental superfluities tossed 
 upon the surface of Nature, pretty things enough, 
 but of no use, signs of the overflow of the divine 
 benignity, the sport of creative genius, fanciful 
 creatures, thrown off in glee, for the pleasure of the 
 thing. But we know that the rose owes its bloom, and: 
 the lily its whiteness, and the heliotrope its frag- 
 
?74 THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 ranee to the necessity that each thing shQul4 do its 
 part in the working economies of nature. The colqr 
 of the bird's wing, the gloss on the dove's feather, 
 is actually necessary in a working world, is useful and 
 indispensable. There is not a line, a tint, a blending 
 of hues on the crest of a bird or the gauzy wing of 
 an insect, that has not its place assigned in the hus- 
 bandry of the world. It is there as anythiqg else 
 might be there, for a purpose. If the flowers were 
 destroyed, if the birds lost their beauty, something 
 more would vanish from the world than loveliness. 
 We should all breathe fouler air, and live in a pesti- 
 lential universe. We should all droop and die. 
 
 Thus I claim for the higher sentiments in their del- 
 icate, spiritual, transfigured form, a practical use in 
 the education of mankind ; I contend that, without 
 them, life would not long continue to be affluent or 
 desirable. The intellectual vigor, the moral force, 
 the spiritual impulse of the world would abate and 
 finally cease. 
 
 See how important these things are in the educa- 
 tion of personal character. Consider their use as 
 preventiv s of evil. Many years ago an enter- 
 prising man, who lived on a neck of land running 
 gut into the sea, his dwelling exposed to the rude 
 tjreath of the ocean, conceived the idea of raising 
 garden fruits on his soil. After much thought and 
 
THE HIGHEP. SENTIMENTS. 1^5 
 
 tp^?iy CQstly experirjieiits, he surrounded his doma^i; 
 with a fiqe fence pf lattice work, very light, app^fr 
 gptly very weak ; yet this fragile wall so sifted tl>e 
 air that blew upon it from the ocean, that the sajjpg 
 pi^rticles were strained out, the quality was softened 
 and the bitterness quite destroyed. On the outside 
 pf the fence was a thick incrustation of salt ; on the 
 gtl^er side, but a few inches away, flowers were 
 tuloottiing, peaches and pears were ripening, grapes 
 were hanging in clusters from the vines, plums were 
 glowing amid the leaves. The atrnosphere on one 
 side of the fence was cold, bleak and biting ; npth- 
 ing would grow there, not even a tree. On the 
 other side of the fence, it was genial summer. A 
 similar effect is found to be produced by trees and 
 shrubbery. We are assured that extensive tracts of 
 the globe have been wasted, devastated, made ut- 
 terly unproductive, made useless for human habita- 
 tion, by the cutting down of trees. It is equally 
 true that by planting trees, a line of shrubbery, a 
 belt of herbage, these disastrous, effects may be re- 
 moved and the desert be made to blossom like the 
 rose. The same effect that these fine agencies have 
 upon the luxuriance of nature and the terrestial 
 comfort of man, the moral sentiments will have upon 
 h^ijiijan character. 
 
 J be^rd a story the other day of the war. In oiie 
 
176 THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 of the southern camps the officers held revel ; they 
 were far away from home in a strange country. The 
 enemy were in front of them. They were reckless 
 and uncivilized. Their revel partook of the charac- 
 ter of their life. It was loud, boisterous and inde- 
 cent. Songs were sung, stories were told, jests were 
 made which no modest ear could listen to. In the 
 company sat a young man who went at the solicit- 
 ation of his comrades, his tastes not inclining him 
 to go ; for he was of New England parentage, care- 
 fully nurtured and well instructed. Silent he sat 
 amid the din, not joining in the mirth, making no 
 response to song or toast until late in the evening, 
 when he was observed sitting by himself and appar- 
 ently taking no interest in what was going on about 
 him. Then one after another flung gibes at him, taunt- 
 ed him upon his silence, reproached his stupidity. 
 When the revel had reached its height he was, in 
 turn, called on for a sentiment. He sat silent for a 
 few seconds, and then arose : " Gentlemen, I give 
 you ' Our Mothers;' " The effect was instantaneous. 
 There was an end of the revel. No more indecent 
 stories were told ; no more ribald songs were sung ; 
 no more unseemly jests were made. The humor of 
 the occasion began to ebb out. The animation was 
 gone ; one after another, the men went to their tents, 
 with something in their hearts that had not been 
 
THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 177 
 
 there before. That one sentiment, embodied in two 
 words, acted as the fringe of trees will act upon the 
 wilderness ; it restored the waste to bloom. 
 
 Consider what power of inspiration there may be 
 in any high sentiment — what power to quicken pur- 
 pose, to elevate thought, to nerve will. Some years 
 ago in the city of Dresden, wandering idly about the 
 town, I found myself in a dark and narrow street, 
 a cul de sac, or blind alley ; lifting up my eyes I saw, 
 high up, an open window and a pot of roses stand- 
 ing in it. Presently a woman came to the window. 
 Seeing a stranger in the street below looking up, 
 she went away and presently returned, bringing an- 
 other pot which she placed by the side of the first. 
 Then she seated herself at her sewing by the win- 
 dow. She was evidently a poor working woman, 
 else she would not have lived there, so high up, in 
 an out of the way street, in a large town. I imag- 
 ined her sewing day after day, week after week, year 
 in and year out, at her wearing toil, scarcely earning 
 money enough by all her labor to keep herself alive ; 
 and then I thought how much comfort, how much 
 real help, aye, how much inspiration, if that is not 
 too large a word, she owed to these little plants, and 
 to the care she took of them, to her daily minister- 
 ing towards them. That little flower carried her out 
 into the fields, associated her with their beauty, told 
 
178 THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 her of gardens where such things bloom all the year 
 round. Ay, did not they tell her of that wondrouis 
 nature whose chemistry extracts out of the sods 
 these loveliest of all created things ? Was not this 
 poor woman, simply by the ministrations of her pot 
 of 'Poses, brought into immediate communion with 
 thfe creative power of the world ; and was she not 
 thus assisted in her daily toil, by these weakest 
 creatures of nature ? 
 
 I love to think of that charming story of Haw- 
 thorne, "The Great Stone Face," where a youth of 
 the village seeing a face carved on the mountain 
 side, set it up as an ideal, strove to be in mind all 
 that seemed to be, and in the course of years built 
 himself up into a noble manhood, through contem- 
 plation of it. There was no face there. It was only 
 a heap of rocks piled grotfesquely together. Every- 
 thing depended on the point of view, whether one 
 stood in a particular spot, at a special hour, and 
 caught the light upon the rock at a peculiar angle. 
 The youth did so. The image was in his imagina- 
 tion. But this was enough. It is enough to have 
 an image in one's imagination, no matter whether it 
 exist in substance or not. The actual thing need 
 not exist. Dream of it, have a vision of it, catch 
 the imagination of it, and it will work upon the 
 mind with its fine chisel. Sculpture within you the 
 
THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 179 
 
 saint, madonna, hero, as Michael Angelo sculptured 
 the David out of what seemed to be a useless block 
 of stone. 
 
 The old problem is whether people can ever be- 
 come any better than they are ; whether they can 
 ever do anything for themselves ; whether they can 
 lift themselves up into any higher realm of enter- 
 prise or achievement. Some few can do so by dint 
 of hard work. Some few prosaic people ; some few 
 holy people without imagination or fancy, or illu- 
 sion, go to work, dig, delve, plant, sow, faithfully, 
 year in and year out, put one stone on the top of 
 another until the structure of goodness is erected. 
 But such are very rare. 
 
 Those who can do this are so very few, that their 
 examples count for not|jfing. Yet there is not one 
 of us who may not become transformed and il- 
 luminated by an idea, a thought, a vision, a senti- 
 ment. Learn to love a noble person ; learn to ad- 
 mire a heroic deed ; fall under the influence of some 
 man or woman who is the incarnation to your 
 imagination of dignity, grace, serenity and purity ; 
 no matter whether the qualities are there or not, if 
 you think they are there, they are there for you. 
 Cling to what you think is there. Worship your 
 ideal, though it be nothing but an idol. If you 
 give it attributes such as you admire, then yoa 
 
l8o THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 admire the attributes. Continue to admire the at- 
 tributes. Whether the idol is cast down or not ; 
 whether your form passes away or not, cling to 
 your idea ; worship your dream ; follow your vision, 
 and gradually you will find that your interior quali- 
 ties are undergoing change ; your life is becoming 
 ennobled, your purposes are becoming firm and 
 serene, and you yourself are gradually floating up to 
 higher regions of being. 
 
 Even in society, taken in a large and broad view, 
 these finest sentiments have their protecting power. 
 Ours is a utilitarian age ; by this I mean no dis- 
 paragement ; rather the reverse, for every great age 
 is utilitarian, and every age which is truly utilita- 
 rian must be great ; an age that is not a utilitarian 
 age, an age that does not study uses, that does not 
 aim at performance, that does not show what it can 
 do by actual achievements, that does not seek to 
 benefit the World in some way, is an age of hypoc- 
 risy, affectation, sentimentalism and pretense. The 
 mere fact that ours is a utilitarian age is not against 
 it ; this may be its honor. It is only when we use 
 the word utilitarin in the low sense, when we set up 
 a base standard of use, that we speak disparag- 
 ingly. Most of those who criticise our age as being 
 utilitarian condemn it because we subject every- 
 thing to the money-standard. What is the thing 
 
THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. l8l 
 
 good for ? Can you eat it ? Can you wear it ? Can 
 you drink it ? Does it help one along in his busi- 
 ness ? Does it assist him to make money ? This is 
 lowering the standard of utility. Utility in its 
 highest aspect is beautiful. What is use ? What is 
 the use of music, the finest expression of the mind ? 
 What is the use of poetry ? If a man has anything 
 to say, why does he not say it as plainly as possible, 
 in words that all can understand? Why make 
 anything but prose ? The critic forgets that poetry 
 is prose idealized ; is thought lifted up into the 
 realm of imagination, intellect associated with har- 
 mony and melody. The poet associates feeling 
 with thought, and in the rhythm and flow of his 
 verse he connects the meaning with melody, in a 
 way that enchants us, even when it is inarticulate. 
 Thus we say of these fine sentiments that they are 
 useful, simply because they communicate fragrance 
 and quicken sensibility in the mind. 
 
 What is the use of pictures ? They will not bring 
 as much as you paid for them. What is the use of 
 a statue ? It has cost a vast deal of money, and 
 after all it is so heavy it may break through the 
 floor. What is the use of the elegant rugs, the 
 charming tapestry, the exquisite porcelain that we 
 buy and put upon our shelves, hang upon our walls, 
 or spread upon our floors ? Yet what would life Ije 
 
l82 THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 without such things ? That is the question. True, 
 they cost money aiid they return none to us. They 
 take money out of our purses and put none in ; but 
 they put something into our minds, a sensibility, a 
 fineness of perception, a tact and touch which is 
 worth more than gold and silver to us. It is the 
 spirit that refines and sanctifies the world. 
 
 I have a criticism to make on our radical faith, 
 that it tends to become prosaic, that it forgets to 
 what a degree religion stands for these higher senti- 
 ments of the soul. In our endeavor to make every- 
 thing plain, to put away supersition, to dash idols, 
 to expose hypocrisy and fraud, to drag divine things 
 out of the dark and show precisely what they are, 
 to convict the priesthood of falsity, to show that 
 the altars are but common stone, in our endeavor 
 to do this — an endeavor which must be persevered 
 in to the very end, although the process be exceed- 
 ingly bitter, — are we not prone to forget that, after 
 all, the real influence of religion rriust turn upon its 
 power to keep hovering over the minds of men 
 these evanescent sentiments of awe, wonder, rever- 
 ence, aspiration, which should be at work all the 
 time, lifting up man above the the level of prosaic 
 life. Science is not religion; philosophy is not' rte- 
 ligion ; business is not religion ; morality is not re- 
 ligion. Religion is that fine quality which stimu- 
 
THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 183 
 
 lates when we are faint, consoles when we are un- 
 happy, steals into our minds when they are vacant 
 and distressed. This is the reason why no prosaic 
 form of religion has ever held its place in the world. 
 This is the reason why what is called Unitarianism 
 has never flourished, never will flourish, it is prose 
 and not poetry ; it is perfectly easy to understand, 
 and has no element for the soul. We want some- 
 thing that nobody can understand — not because it 
 is out of the reach of intelligence, but because 
 it is too subtle, like music, for the intelligence to 
 lay hold on — something to be caught on the wing, 
 something for the heart to love, something for the 
 soul to worship. And it is my hope, as it is my 
 endeavor in all my efforts to take the mask off 
 of religion and expose it for the sham that it so 
 often is, to show how behind all these symbols 
 and forms are lovely visions of beauty, sublimity, 
 and truth, which play sweetly on the surface of hu- 
 man sensibility. That much-boasted symbol of the 
 Christ, purely imaginary, a creation of the imagina- 
 tion, — take the mire of superstition off ; wipe away 
 the dust ; clear it of the heavy earth that clings 
 to it, show it as the dream of gentleness and 
 truth it is, exhibit it as a symbol which humanity 
 in its best movements has looked to, and hoped it 
 might realize. How lovely it is ! For one I never 
 
184 THE HIGHER SENTIMENTS. 
 
 can be quite reconciled to taking it entirely out of 
 the world. For if we did, then the world might 
 become harder with its toil and grief, and we might 
 ^mble along, creeping and crawling, instead of 
 leaping on jubilant feet. The new religion, the re- 
 ligion of the future, will be simply religion purified 
 and glorified, a religion able to communicate a 
 subtle transforming influence, which is the life of 
 our life, the soul of our soul. 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 My theme this morning is the characteristic atti- 
 tudes of unbelief. My purpose is to describe the 
 attitudes which unbelievers in religion hold towards 
 believers, and to indicate, if I may, what an unbe- 
 liever's attitude ought to be. So far as this address 
 may be entitled to be called a serfnon, it is preached 
 to unbelievers. If any are criticised they are criti- 
 cised. If rebuke falls upon any it must fall upon 
 them, and if any are to be exhorted to a nobler 
 performance, the unbeliever must receive the ex- 
 hortation. 
 
 Ours is loosely called an age of unbelief ; more so 
 than any other age ever has been ; and perhaps it 
 is. Unbelief is more widely spread now than it 
 ever was ; it is more general ; it comprehends more 
 classes of people ; it embraces more orders and 
 varieties of mind. It is more intelligent ; it is more 
 
l86 ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 resolute ; it is more earnest ; it is more serenely 
 content with itself ; it is less passionately aggres- 
 sive than it used to be, and it is far sweeter in its 
 spirit. There are no statistics to describe the nu- 
 merical or geographical extent of it. It is larger 
 than can be expressed in figures, more diversified 
 than can be described in words. The absentees 
 front the churches are not all unbelievers, and yet 
 a great many who are present in the churches are ; 
 consequently ecclesiastical connections are no evi- 
 dence. Equally difficult is it to describe the varie- . 
 ties of unbelief, for they are as many as the differ- 
 ences of mind. Unbelief is of all kinds. It is wise 
 and simple ; learned and igporant ; thoughtful and 
 loose ; philosophical and popular ; deep and shal- 
 low ; it is the unbelief of far-sighted men who see 
 behind the letter into the spirit, and it is the unbelief 
 of short-sighted men who simply stumble over the 
 letter ; it is the unbelief of those who worship and 
 believe more, and it is the unbelief of those who 
 worship and believe less ; it is refining, eloquent, 
 lofty, dignified ; it is coarse, vulgar, rude, violent 
 and mean. It carries itself like a king, stately and 
 calm, and it grovels in the dirt like a scullion. Who 
 shall describe the origin of it ? Some of it is born 
 of the investigations of science, some of it of the 
 reasonings of philosophy, some of it of intellectual 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 1 87 
 
 doubt, some of large, earnest and patient study into 
 the conditions of social progress ; but most of it 
 springs probably from unquestioning indifference 
 to ideal things, that is almost peculiar to our genera- 
 tion and our people. The " spirit of the age " is un- 
 believing. Ours is an age that has ceased in a re- 
 markable measure to search after divine things, and 
 is interested mainly in human and terrestial things ; 
 — ^an age when men seek after wealth, power, fame, 
 the felicities of an earthly condition ; where the dis- 
 tant future has become dreamy, and the present 
 with its glittering prizes and enticing pleasures alone 
 seems tangible and precious ; an age when men do 
 not send out the fine messengers of their hope and 
 faith to explore the invisible world, but put out 
 the strong hand after immediate possessions. We 
 cannot concede to the popular unbelief of the 
 generation the possession of a high philosophical 
 spirit ; but we may claim as much as this, that it has 
 the spirit of the age, the spirit of the times, the 
 spirit that will have its way in spite of institutions 
 and traditions, even in spite of learning and phil- 
 osophy. 
 
 Let me group together in two general classes the 
 unbelievers to whom I especially address myself 
 this morning. I will classify them as active aggres- 
 sors against the constituted religion of the commu- 
 
168 ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 nity, and as passive skeptics. And first, the active 
 aggressors. Naturally, as might be expected, these 
 are determined men, men of courage, who see more 
 or less clearly what they assail, and who strike hard 
 blows against what they do not understand or can- 
 not receive. They oppose the church as being the 
 enemy of progress ; they oppose creeds as being 
 mistakes in philosophy and illusions in faith ; they 
 oppose ecclesiastical institutions as being founded 
 upon mistake and delusion, sometimes on fraud ; 
 they criticise the bible as being a human book 
 containing fables and myths, errors in science, phil- 
 osophy, morals ; a book which is revered in propor- 
 tion as it is misunderstood, and followed to the in- 
 jury of its devotees. They assail instituted religion 
 on the ground that all religious institutions under 
 whatever form professed are superstitious, and that 
 it is useless to make nice distinctions between them ; 
 that it is merely a question of definition when we 
 come to the end. They are from honest and honor- 
 able motives anti-christian and anti-religious. 
 
 Let me say of these men that though some of 
 them are coarse, rude and blear-eyed, there are fewer 
 of this class than there have ever been in any preced- 
 ing generation. For the most part, as I personally 
 know them, they are honest, earnest and determined 
 men, — some of them men of great nobility of char- 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 189 
 
 acter, of singular guilelessness and purity of life, 
 men unselfish as far as anybody in this world can 
 be unselfish, men humane of purpose, generous of 
 aspiration, men who are determined to do what 
 they can in their short life, and with such powers 
 as are given to them, to emancipate the human 
 mind from error, to release the human affections 
 from the thraldom of dogmatism and superstition, 
 and to give the soul wings to fly far over the whole 
 intellectual realm. They are men often to be hon- 
 ored, usually to be respected, sometimes to be 
 deeply loved — men whom I willingly admit to be 
 my masters, and whom I would gladly be able to 
 serve ; still they have their limitations. 
 
 Their method as popularly presented is open to 
 criticism. They do not as a general jule touch the 
 centres of thought. The best philosophers, the 
 most exact scientists, the deep and accurate class 
 of thinkers, are as a rule, not with them. They 
 have but a feeble influence in the literary sphere ; 
 in the world of pure ideas they have next to none. 
 Stalwart champions they are, striding through the 
 world with drawn swords in their hands and iron 
 cuirasses on their breasts, ready to give, equally ready 
 to take. But of the fine and subtle processes by which, 
 in the maze of human speculation, one arrives at 
 the truth, the ordinary infidel knows little. 
 
190 ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 Several things he forgets. In the first place he 
 forgets that there is a soul of truth in things erro- 
 neous ; that things even when essentially mistaken 
 are not all mistakes ; that the human mind in des- 
 perately groping its way through darkness towards 
 light, has not gone altogether or hopelessly wrong ; 
 that though it has not received or reached the final 
 complete answer to its questions, it has received 
 some answer; that though it has not found all it 
 sought, it has found something worth having. 
 
 The people at large know nothing of this ; the 
 people at large see the letter but nothing behind it, 
 — see the word but miss the meaning. They spell 
 out chapter and phrase, the living soul out of which 
 chapter and phrase were born, they know nothing 
 and guess nothing of. Here and there is a fine sub- 
 tle, deeply-searching mind, who reads beneath chap- 
 ter and verse, and feels throbbing within them the 
 spirit of that earnest humanity which could find no 
 other expression but this, when it fain would have 
 found a better. Men of heart like Charles Kingsley, 
 men of intellect like Frederick W. Robertson, men 
 of soul like Frederick Denison Maurice, men of 
 scholarship like Benjamin Jowett, men of elegant 
 culture like dean Stanley, — discern a soul of truth 
 in the error of statement and form. They discard 
 the letter, they draw out the idea ; they endeavor 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. I9I 
 
 to make the truth burn and kindle in the minds of 
 their contemporaries. But in the mass of crude 
 unbelievers, they are not many who understand the 
 position of the intellectual heroes, or comprehend 
 the real work that they are doing; they are few 
 who give them credit for laboring with all their 
 might to bring into prominence the quickening 
 thought that is struggling to find expression in 
 these obsolete forms. 
 
 Another thing the passionately aggressive unbe- 
 liever forgets, namely, — that every superstition has 
 its day, its place and its commission. As the geolo- 
 gist can determine the age and original locality of 
 a boulder, as the naturalist can classify a new plant, 
 so the thinker to-day groups and arranges the errors 
 in speculation, the creeds, dogmas, superstitions of 
 the past and of the present, tells precisely where 
 they belong, out of what state of mind they proceed, 
 what place in the mental progress of the race they 
 once filled, what human needs they once satisfied, 
 how that and nothing else could have prevailed at 
 the particular epoch when it flourished. We must 
 not judge these spiritual phenomena by our present 
 standard of truth. Classify them, place them where 
 they belong, render full justice to the service they 
 were appointed or qualified to render. We need not 
 believe them ; we may heartily disbelieve them if 
 
192 ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 we please, but we must do them justice. The geolo- 
 gists describe a strange creature which they call a 
 pterodactyl, intermediate between the reptile and 
 the bird, found in the series of Mesozoic rocks. It 
 began by being a reptile, but soon thought better 
 of it and undertook to rise in the air ; yet on the 
 way this resolution gave out ; it halted midway be- 
 tween the two orders of creation, and ended with 
 being a cross between a reptile and bird, neither 
 one nor the other. It had the head of the bird, and 
 the neck of a bird, but the teeth were the teeth of 
 the crocodile ; it exhibited the body and tail of the 
 lizard, and the wings of a bat ; the fore-finger was 
 immensely elongated like the curved claws of a 
 bat. Thus qualified, it could climb a tree, walk on 
 the ground, or fly in the air. The enormous size of 
 the eye socket indicated an orb capable of nocturnal 
 vision. What will the conventional mind do with 
 the pterodactyl? No kingdom claims it. Yet it 
 had just as much right to live as you or I. It 
 doubtless enjoyed its life. It came at its appointed 
 hour, at Nature's bidding, in the line of organic de- 
 velopment. It could not have dropped a single one 
 of its sixty sharp teeth ; it could not have shed a sin- 
 gle one of its long hooked claws. Spreading out its 
 wings twenty feet in span, it darkened the air in 
 spite of itself. Ugly though it was, there may have 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 1 93 
 
 been creatures in its generation that thought it hand- 
 some. Shall we judge such a monster by the latest 
 standard of geological perfection? Will you try it 
 by the finest form of organized being that domestic 
 cultivation will furnish? Then you do yourself an 
 injustice, and it an injustice no less. 
 
 So it is with strange intellectual beliefs. The 
 horrid superstitions, the hideous rites, the ghastly 
 creeds that linger about in the purlieus of human 
 intellect — wild, futile, foolish, have their day and 
 fulfill their office. Put them away, but admit there 
 was a time when this and this only could give ex- 
 pression to some tendency of nature, to some 
 natural movement of the heart, to some predeter- 
 mined attempt of the mind to pass from lower to 
 higher conditions. As nature struggles on in the 
 course of evolution from lower to higher and thence 
 to the highest, so the mind of man, pressing on 
 towards its felicity in truth, stops by the way tired, 
 faint and sick, rests its head on a stone and calls 
 the stone a temple. 
 
 Let me speak of another matter which the crude 
 unbeliever is inclined to forget this, namely, — that 
 the realm of religion is the realm not of prose, but 
 of poetry; that it is the imagination, the feeling 
 subtle reason that feels its way into the divine mys- 
 teries, and not the critical understanding which 
 
194 ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 looks at questions on the outside. If we take up 
 religion as a thing to be pulled to pieces with the 
 scalpel, we do it a vast injustice. 
 
 The bible for example is a poetical book. The 
 truly religious parts of it belong to the higher de- 
 partment of poetry. It is idle to criticise them by 
 scientific or literary laws, to bring philosophical 
 tests to bear upon them. They open their secret 
 to the imagination. The story of the creation is 
 open to discussion ; here are the orthodox on the 
 one side claiming for it literal and precise truth ; 
 there are the scientific people on the other side bent 
 on proving it a foolish legend. And a legend it is, 
 though not of necessity a foolish one. No sensible 
 man can accept it as a record of what actually oc- 
 curred. The account of the creation in the book of 
 Genesis is not addressed to the modern expert in 
 science. Never will the scientific man be able to 
 prove that the record in the ancient books is true ; 
 never will the theologian be able to prove that it 
 will correspond with the account which Thomas 
 Huxley or John Tyndall give of the order of de- 
 velopment on the earth. Properly speaking, the 
 two records have nothing to do with each other. 
 They have nothing in common. The bible account 
 of the creation is to be regarded as a pictorial repre- 
 sentation addressed to the imagination ; it is appar- 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. I95 
 
 ently designed to impress upon the sensibilities of 
 mankind the majestic order, the persistent force 
 and harmonious, completeness of the creative pow- 
 er. Those who wrote it knew nothing, as we know, 
 about the earth, had no theory of successive evolu- 
 tions, possessed no clear conceptions of the order 
 of the universe. What they knew was what they 
 felt ; and what they felt was the tremendous 
 majesty of the originating power that created light 
 out of darkness, and compelled the chaos to burst 
 into beauty. Is not that enough ? Is it not all 
 that can be required to refresh and invigorate the 
 mind ? 
 
 Consider again the bible story of the flood. Sci- 
 ence pronounces it incredible ; declares that there 
 never was such a flood, and never could have been ; 
 that there never was such a vessel as the ark, and 
 never could have been. Omnipotence itself must 
 respect the conditions of space, and the conditions 
 of space forbid the packing of so many creatures 
 into so small a space as is described in the story. 
 The tale is evidently fabulous. Bring your arith- 
 metical objections against it as much as you please ; 
 prove it to be perfectly absurd in every incident ; it 
 is easy enough to do it. It needs no scholar like 
 Colenso to pick flaws in a narrative made of such fab- 
 ulous stuff. An intelligent child can do as much. 
 
196 ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 The question is, what does the story mean ? What 
 was it constructed for? What if it should mean that 
 evil eradicates the race^ that vice, crime and sin 
 demoralize mankind ; that the flood will come to 
 overwhelm guilty men ; that destruction will swoop 
 down and blot from the face of the earth people 
 who disobey the law on which the moral universe 
 rests. What if it should mean that the germ of 
 goodness, the seed of righteousness and vitality will 
 survive all floods ; is proof against all disasters ; 
 stands up in face of every calamity ; cannot be 
 wrecked or drowned, but though the whole earth 
 be covered with water, will live, will come to the 
 surface, will repeat and multiply itself, and start 
 new lives of creatures to regenerate the earth. 
 
 Read thoughtfully the delicious story of angels 
 coming to Abraham as he sat by the door of his 
 tent at the close of the day. Abraham meets them, 
 greets them, asks them in, gives them the best he 
 has, spreads his simple pastoral food for them. 
 They bless him, turn to go away, communicate to 
 him some secret of providential intention and van- 
 ish. The meaning of the story may be that the 
 faith'ful man who welcomes the good angels when 
 they come, in whatever guise, receives his guests 
 hospitably and ofTers them the best he has, will be 
 teiken into favor and initiated into divine mysteries. 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. I97 
 
 It is a biographical version of tlie proverb that to 
 him that knocketh it shall be opened. What a 
 caricature it is to take such a lovely story and main- 
 tain on the strength of it, that the Old Testament 
 describes Abraham as inviting Jehovah to his tent 
 and asking him to eat veal ! Such a parody expres- 
 ses the failure of a cross-grained unbelief to under- 
 stand the deep, subtle, spiritual truth, that must be 
 veiled in parable and myth in order to be under- 
 stood at all. 
 
 The cardinal aim and purpose of this generation 
 should be not to destroy. It is the mission — let 
 me say the sacred mission of the serious unbelief of 
 this generation to discriminate in order to preserve. 
 For the conflict is not between dogmas, it is not a 
 question whether we should believe in one God or 
 in many, whether we are to accept one kind of 
 definition of deity or another. It is not a question 
 of systems or churches. The religion which is pro- 
 fessed by the people is a part of the people's life. 
 It is twined in with all their sentiments, prejudices, 
 and habits. It is part of their mental constitution. 
 We cannot go beneath the surface of existence 
 anywhere, that we do not touch the substratum of 
 reverence. Questions of philanthropy, questions of 
 social reform, questions of business, questions of 
 art, of philosophy, of literature, are all impregnated 
 
198 ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 by it. We cannot root it out without rooting out 
 the popular consciousness. The point therefore is 
 to preserve that which is really good, the sweetness 
 of sentiment, the holiness of purpose, the tender- 
 ness of feeling-; let the husk and chaff go to the 
 winds ; throw the tares into the furnace, and see 
 them vanish in smoke ; but gather the wheat into 
 the barn ; throw not both wheat and tares into the 
 fire. 
 
 The great business of to-day is not to pull down, 
 but to build up. My friend, the architect, is always 
 careful to preserve for the use of his new building 
 whatever valuable material the old building fur- 
 nished. He will not discard what is useful ; he will 
 use what is available ; the rest he lets go. So it is 
 with these builders in the world of faith. They put 
 by that which they cannot use, but fondly cherish 
 and faithfully employ whatever will fill an import- 
 ant place. 
 
 This is the unbeliever's real difficulty, to discrimi- 
 nate between what is worthless and what is of value. 
 It is a task that no man can do whose fingers are 
 all thumbs. It is not a task for the dull, the coarse- 
 minded, the cross-grained ; it is a task for the dis- 
 cerning and careful, who add culture to feeling. 
 
 But what shall we say of the passive skeptics, 
 who are the greater number ? When the religion 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEf. I99 
 
 of the Roman Empire was falling to pieces from 
 inability to satisfy spiritual wants, there were two 
 classes of men, both unbelievers, both indifferent, 
 skeptical, careless, both cherishing no respect at 
 heart for the instituted religion of the Empire. The 
 one set was careful to frequent the temples ; went 
 punctually through the forms ; paid ostentatious 
 respect to the priests. It was one of this class who, 
 whenever he passed the statue of Jupiter, took off 
 his hat because he was never quite sure that Jupiter 
 would not have his turn again, and he wished to be 
 on the winning side. The other class was equally 
 skeptical, more .honest, but no more reputable. 
 They went their way, led luxurious lives, cared for 
 themselves, took their sensual or intellectual ease as 
 the case might be. Many of them were cultivated, 
 elegant, refined. They never went inside of a tem- 
 ple, never lent a hand to destroy a shrine, never 
 mutilated a statue and never erected one, never 
 lent their weight to the cause of truth, or helped to 
 build something worthy to live when the temple 
 passed away. — Idle, frivolous people, happy in them- 
 selves, they were for the most part vain of their 
 intellectuality, elated by their skepticism, proud of 
 their doubt and unbelief, boastful of their illumina- 
 tion, wit and scoffing; aristocrats, of course, exclu- 
 sives, fashionable people, gentry who could afford 
 
200 ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 to despise as poor and ignorant, the people who 
 bowed before the altar or brought sacrifices to the 
 God. 
 
 Have we not among ourselves classes of people 
 corresponding to these ? Are there not among the 
 multitudes of unbelievers, many who belong to each 
 of these groups? Go into any of the fashionable 
 churches, Romanist or Protestant, and you will see 
 there the familiar forms of your acquaintances, men 
 and women whom you well know to be unbelievers ; 
 whom you have heard express disbelief in the sys- 
 tem they are countenancing ; men who in private 
 will disavow and flout it. They patronize the pop- 
 ular religion because it is convenient to do so, or 
 because it is " the thing," or because their acquaint- 
 ances are to be met in the audience, or because the 
 temple is near their houses and is comfortable, or 
 because their wives are interested. What is the re- 
 sult ? Are such unbelievers doing justice to them- 
 selves ? Grant that they do something by their 
 indifference and skepticism to discredit the system 
 — do they not do vastly more by their conduct to 
 uphold it? Do they not do more by their pres- 
 ence, their tacit confession, their silent testimony, 
 than their private gibes correct? What avails the 
 sly wink in the corner, the shrug of the shoulder 
 when they hear the churches mentioned, if Sunday 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 20I 
 
 after Sunday they are seen there with reverend 
 form and solemn face ? To say the least of such is 
 to say that they are without earnestness, and they 
 cannot encourage earnestness. They neither be- 
 lieve nor disbelieve. They have no conviction one 
 way or another. If they set an example it is an 
 example of indifference, carelessness, heedlessness 
 and hypocrisy. The example they set is not that 
 of people who bear witness against what they have 
 discarded ; the example they set is that of people 
 who bear witness — the best witness that anybody 
 can bear, to a system they discredit' and repudiate. 
 They are contributing to the meanness, the base- 
 ness, the falsehood, the hoUowness that is under- 
 mining the foundations of sincerity on which, at 
 last, all institutions, religious, social, secular, must 
 repose. 
 
 And what shall we say of those other ladies and 
 gentlemen, elegant, graceful, refined, it may be, who 
 simply detach themselves from all religious connec- 
 tions, and give the whole matter of spiritual thought 
 the go-by ; who countenance no meeting for in- 
 struction or worship ; who smile compassionately 
 on those who do, whether they go to one church or 
 another; will have nothing to do with anything 
 so wild and visionary as what they call supersti- 
 tion ? If this world of ours were a world of idle 
 
202 ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 dilettanteism, careless and luxurious, where one 
 might decline to take a part in the work of moral 
 education ; if there were not a terrific battle going 
 on, not between dogmas opinions or creeds, but 
 between ideas and principles — ideas and principles 
 which riin down into the very centre of all public 
 and even private life, such an attitude as this 
 would be justifiable, if neither noble nor reasonable. 
 But the popular religion rests upon ideas — upon 
 certain intellectual assumptions, certain principles 
 of thought and sentiment which determine how 
 men and women are to live, privately with them- 
 selves, socially with their friends and their com- 
 panions ; how they are to live in a world that is 
 regulated by eternal law. On the one side stands 
 the assumption that man was placed a mature being 
 on the planet, put here purposely by providential 
 decree for a short time ; that he is made an object of 
 peculiar interest and special training which is con- 
 ducted by miraculous means ; that the highest truths 
 have been supernaturally revealed to him ; that he is 
 under the tutelage still of priests and prophets, must 
 read the bible on his knees, as an exceptional and 
 inspired book which contains all knowledge of 
 himself, his duty, his destiny. On the other side, is 
 the .conviction clear and strong that man is the last 
 product of creation, the final term of organic de- 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 203 
 
 velopment ; that in him are all the potencies and 
 powers of nature, and that his destiny depends on 
 the use he makes of them ; that progress, not re- 
 generation is the law of his life ; that knowledge, 
 not revelation is his teacher ; that he has his part 
 to perform, his work as a rational creature to do. 
 
 The battle is fairly joined between these opposite 
 ranks of ideas. View it in whatever aspect we will, 
 the aspect of political, social, philanthropic reform, 
 the aspect of humanity or brotherly kindness, the 
 aspect of philosophy, literature, art, education, the 
 absolute contradiction between the two positions is 
 apparent. On all these fields the battle is going 
 on. Shall we decline to join in it? Shall we say 
 the issue is of no consequence ? Shall we say there 
 is nothing really to fight about ? That it is merely 
 a sham fight between harlequins in different coats ? 
 
 There is everything to fight about. It seems to 
 me that the responsibility which rests on earnest 
 unbelievers in this generation, is greater than has 
 ever rested on unbelievers before — is greater than 
 rests on any class of people. For this is a matter 
 of practical utility, not less than of speculative in- 
 terest. It is a matter involving immediate duty 
 and work. We talk about interests ; are not these 
 interests, the just organization of society, the wise 
 conduct of reform, the smooth and systematic ar- 
 
204 AT'I'ITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 rangement of the individual life — are these not vital 
 concerns? It is for the unbeliever to come forward 
 like a man, stand at his post, choose his part in the 
 great struggle, bear his witness, give money if he 
 has it, thought, intellectual wealth ; courage, if 
 that is his characteristic ; influence if he carries 
 it ; time, if he can command it ; the pledge of his 
 gifts, whatever they may be. He must encourage 
 his opinions to become convictions, his convictions 
 to become deeds. It is of little consequence 
 whether one believes in trinity or in unity ; it is of 
 vast consequence that one should believe that he 
 is a man, and not a slave ; it is of vast conse- 
 quence that one should believe he is a man capa- 
 ble of thought and reason, endowed with trust- 
 worthy faculties, charged with the making of his 
 own lot, able to discover truth for himself in- 
 stead of being dependent on celestial messengers, 
 and expecting answers to his questions from super- 
 natural sources. The responsibility of the unbe- 
 liever goes to this extent, that he is to save every- 
 thing that is worth saving in thought and senti- 
 ment, is to make good whatever has thus far been 
 gained by the human effort of generations, and to 
 prove that unbelief, doubt, skepticism, denial, do not 
 pull down, but rather build up ; do not destroy, but 
 on the contrary fulfill ; do not make men weak and 
 
ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 205 
 
 impotent, but make them strong and capable ; do 
 not dry them up, but exalt and expand them ; do 
 not shut them in a prison, but open the prison- 
 doors and let the oppressed go free ; do not confine 
 them to a sphere of perishable material things, but 
 open to them all the windows that look into the 
 ideal world. It is a responsibility ; ay, it is a mis- 
 sion ; a solemn charge laid upon the unbeliever of 
 this generation to show what religion in its full 
 scope can do ; what its tendency really is, namely, 
 to exalt, refine, idealize human nature and human 
 life. 
 
 Of the three attitudes, that of toleration, that of 
 charity, and that of honorable warfare, the last 
 alone has dignity. To tolerate is to insult. Tolera- 
 tion implies superior authority on the part of him 
 that tolerates ; the possession of rights and powers 
 which he forbears to exercise ; the right to summon 
 a policeman ; the right to persecute. Toleration 
 is the compassion of a despot. 
 
 Charity easily degenerates into sentimental in- 
 difference, which srrioothes difficulties away till they 
 disappear from view. Charity soaks the creeds till 
 they have lost their color, and then throws them 
 away as being all of a dirty white. Dwelling on 
 the sympathies of religion it forgets their antipa- 
 thies ; listening for the harmonies it loses, the pow- 
 
2o6 ATTITUDES OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 er to detect the discord, and lapses into an indolent 
 complacency that is unseemly amid the clash of 
 spiritual arms. 
 
 The true attitude is that of honorable resistance 
 to what is honestly believed to be error. Manly 
 warfare against credulity, stupidity, ignorance, as- 
 sumption, dogmatism, a determination to secure 
 the victory, without impairing the nobleness or the 
 beauty of truth. 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 It has been for some years the custom with the 
 Evangelical people to observe the first week of the 
 year as a week of prayer. The origin of this ob- 
 servance was not certainly love of ceremony or of 
 formalism. It rather was a part of a new effort to 
 make Christianity a living and fresh force in society. 
 The observance of the week of prayer is not there- 
 fore an ecclesiastical arrangement external and cere- 
 monial. It is a real service, in the estimation of 
 those who perform it. It is done in earnest. Of 
 course those who keep the week of prayer believe 
 there is a Divine Power that hears and answers 
 prayer. But this belief may be held in a noble, as 
 well as in an ignoble, in a lofty and believing, as 
 well as in a narrow and superstitious spirit. The 
 churches that observe the week of prayer hold the 
 observance, we are ready to suppose, in a noble 
 
2o8 THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 fashion. The objects they pray for are worth hav- 
 ing: better schools, purer private Hfe, sweeter do- 
 mestic relations, more generous and equitable in- 
 stitutions, more humane laws, the diminuition of 
 crime, the extermination of vice, the general eleva- 
 tion of the human above the inhuman, of the 
 rational above the bestial. 
 
 It would be more than a mistake to say that 
 earnest christian people believe that the best things 
 or any good thing in fact, may be had merely for 
 the asking. It is nowhere the faith of Christendom 
 that a ceremonious petition of the lips by however 
 many people offered, will be prevailing with the 
 eternal mind. Against idle, even against formal 
 petitions they all protest. They expect nothing 
 from the vain mutterings of unhallowed desire. 
 
 The " pattering " of prayers, the telling of beads 
 they have no patience with. A recent number of 
 the Princeton Review, an orthodox periodical, con- 
 tains an article by one of the most eminent living 
 preachers of New York, on the conditions of pre- 
 vailing prayer. These conditions, as he lays them 
 down, are, — that the prayer shall be offered by 
 men who are in their lives and tempers consecrated ; 
 that they shall be offered for things that are truly 
 worth having by the individual, and are vitally 
 precious to society; and that the petition shall 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 209 
 
 have in view the dignity of the Supreme Being to 
 whom it is offered. The man who prays must be 
 consecrated, pure in life, simple, sincere and earnest, 
 willing and able to postpone his private desires to 
 the will of the holiest and best. His prayer must 
 be not for any outward perishable things, not for 
 any personal gift or private advantage, not for 
 wealth, fame, power, or temporal emolument ; it 
 must always be for something which may ennoble 
 and dignify a spiritual or rational man, always for 
 something which the human race holds dear. And 
 finally, the prayer must be offered in the spirit 
 of an extreme simplicity and sincerity, and in a 
 lowly trust that the being to whom it is addressed' 
 is infinitely wise, just and good — wise, just and 
 good enough to withhold the gift, should it be 
 harmful or unbecoming. 
 
 Now on these conditions, it is easy to understand' 
 why prayer should not be generally or frequently 
 answered. For, how many times in the whole, long 
 history of the world, has prayer been offered by 
 perfectly holy men and women, for gifts purely 
 spiritual, in a temper perfectly sincere and disinter- 
 ested, and in a spirit of utter submission to the will 
 of the holiest and best? How many petitions 
 offered during the past week of prayer were of that 
 character ? It is safe to say that nine hundred and 
 
2IO THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 ninety-nine prayers out of every thousand deserve 
 no response and, in truth, condemn the asker. 
 They are unanswered, as a matter of course. They 
 are but idle wind, fooHsh breath flung out into the 
 bleak and wintry air, which absorbs them. 
 
 Again, given these conditions, it is easy to under- 
 stand how genuine prayer should be answered. 
 When human beings in a spirit of perfect consecra- 
 tion, in mood entirely simple and sincere and dis- 
 interested, in the temper of lowly trust, of entire 
 submission, ask for some really good thing, for 
 health, knowledge, wisdom, serenity, patience, an 
 uplifted and devoted spirit — will not such supplica- 
 tion be granted ? Let any man pray with all his 
 heart and life, — pray all over, and all the time, for 
 goodness, intelligence, reasonableness, composure, 
 fortitude, power to forgive his enemies and bless his 
 friends, will not that prayer, from the nature of 
 things, be granted ? Let one pray in this manner 
 for wealth, not that he may live a selfish, idle or 
 luxurious life, but that he may bless the world in 
 which he lives ; — let him in this spirit pray for pow- 
 er, not that he may exalt himself above his fellows, 
 but that he may lift the lowliest to the level of 
 something higher than himself. Will not such 
 prayer be granted? Of course it will, not arbitrarily, 
 but in accordance with the conditions of nature. 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 211 
 
 But who prays thus, with no side views, with no 
 selfish regards, with no base motives? 
 
 So much we must affirm, whatever our speculative 
 belief, whatever our dogmatic opinions, that there is 
 an unsounded, an unfathomable abyss of power 
 lying outside of us all ; over and above all the 
 strength that is used, the mind that is put forth, 
 the will that is exerted, there are endless and bot- 
 tomless spaces of possibility, containing the pledge 
 of all performance, the promise of all the future. 
 We think of the earth as one day likely to be 
 clothed with beauty and verdure. The desert we 
 say, shall " blossom like the rose ; " harvests shall 
 be abundant and certain ; distribution of food and 
 every material good shall be equitable and univer- 
 sal. Drought shall no more distress; blight and 
 mildew shall be unknown ; the farmer shall go forth 
 to his work with confident anticipations of success 
 according to industry. But when this time shall 
 come, as in hundreds or thousands of years perhaps 
 it will, will it come by virtue of some added power 
 in the soil ? No ; the earth will be the same earth 
 that it is now. The elements will have the same 
 quality ; the sunshine, the air, the rain, will still 
 perform the same old offices, in obedience to the 
 same law. The gain will be in knowledge and ex- 
 perience of their use. We shall understand how to 
 
212 THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 employ them. The resources are now within reach 
 and at our disposal ; simply we are at a loss how to 
 appreciate and appropriate them. Do we not 
 dream of a time when the individual man shall be 
 more than he is at present, firmer in health, more 
 evenly and harmoniously developed, more sinewy 
 in frame, more complete in endowment, in feature, 
 form, accomplishment, more elastic, enduring, joy- 
 ous, less subject to disease, less liable to the pros- 
 trations of calamity, less fragile and tremulous 
 under the disturbances and disappointments of his 
 life ? Do we not look for a time when men may 
 live longer and more happily, when existence shall 
 be reckoned a privilege by average humanity ? If 
 that time ever comes, how will it come ? Not by 
 any supernatural gift of grace ; not by ^,ny fresh 
 endowment of the mortal frame, not by ^ny provi- 
 dential increase of organic capabilities. The physi- 
 cal structure will be essentially unaltered ; the tex- 
 ture of the muscles, the sensibility of the nerves and 
 tissues will still be identical in nature with what it 
 is now. Man's relations to the elements outside of 
 him will be precisely the same. In no cardinal re- 
 spect will man be different from what he is at pres- 
 ent ; simply he will be more fully, more normally 
 himself. He will understand himself better; he 
 will be more closely and intelligently related to the 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 213 
 
 organic world in which he lives, and of which he is 
 a constituent part. 
 
 The ancient Hebrews portrayed through their 
 prophets a future age of glory when the human race 
 would make for itself, under the guidance of Je- 
 hovah, a Paradise on the earth — a " kingdom of 
 Heaven," a reign of Messiah the prince of peace ; 
 when all suffering and sorrow should cease ; when 
 fear, and doubt, and calamity, should be at an end ; 
 when a divine benignity should prevail all over the 
 earth ; when the weapons of war should be laid 
 down, and men should love one another. Men have 
 dreamed ever since that time of a golden age in the 
 future. The poets of Christendom have taken up 
 the strain ; and in our best literature we have been 
 encouraged to look forward to an age when slavery, 
 and war, and hopeless poverty, and the manifold 
 calamities and crimes of men shall be at an end. 
 What do we think of when we anticipate such a 
 future? That there is to be a new race of men on 
 the planet? That the natural and social relations 
 of men are to be reconstructed ? Not at all. While 
 the world lasts the same economical laws will hold. 
 Sympathy will be of the same stuff, and the respon- 
 sibilities that men sustain to each other will be pre- 
 cisely the same that we recognize as noble and 
 binding to-day. But then, men will understand 
 
214 THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 them enough to submit to them, and the better 
 society, the reign of perfect love will come in by 
 force of our being what we ought to be, not by force 
 of our being something else. When man is truly 
 natural, when he is fairly himself ; when the latent 
 capabilities of his being are called forth ; then the 
 world will be regenerated. 
 
 Now let us advance the exposition one point fur- 
 ther. It is only as the individual strikes in with 
 this universal force, and uses these vast capabilities 
 of power that he succeeds. Take the familiar illus- 
 tration of the plant in a flower-pot. It dries up in 
 a few days, the leaves loose their lustre, the bloom 
 disappears unless an aperture be made in the bottom 
 of the earthen pot. Through that aperture, the 
 frail plant communicates with the central sun, with 
 the aerial currents, with the latent elements of force 
 in the ground, with the waves of electric energy 
 which are forever flowing through the world. Cut 
 off those and it perishes. In alliance with those, it 
 lives ; for through this tiny opening the vital cur- 
 rents come streaming in to strengthen and beautify. 
 
 We preach up now as the conditions of health, 
 food, raiment, exercise, air and light. What do we 
 mean by such teaching ? We mean simply this : in 
 order that the individual may attain the fulness of his 
 organic development, may enjoy a long happy use- 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 215 
 
 ful life, he must be in constant communication with 
 the world of outward forces. His food, dress, exer- 
 cise in the open air, ventilation and sunning of his 
 chamber are so many confessions on his part, that 
 he must not shut himself up, that he must not cut 
 himself off, that he must not consider himself a nar- 
 row, exclusive, self-cultured individual, but that he 
 must open the doors and windows just as far as he 
 can ; and put himself by all practical means in com- 
 munication with the strengthening gladdening power 
 that enriches his life. That is what is signified by 
 obedience to the laws of health. The practical 
 efificacy of these laws lies in this, and just as soon 
 as one is negligent, lives a narrow indolent and 
 slothful life, shuts himself up in the dark, he dies. 
 He has not earth enough to strike roots in, because 
 every living creature needs the universe to give ful- 
 ness of life. 
 
 What prodigious feats of power the feeblest indi- 
 vidual is able to perform when these, — supernatural 
 we will not call them, — these natural but endless pos- 
 sibilities of power come to him, under the pressure 
 of transient excitement — it may be of fear, or of love, 
 or of hope, stimulating the nervous system. The 
 weak woman will do what the strong man is un- 
 equal to on ordinary occasions. The frail invalid 
 will lift burdens that would task a carrier's strength. 
 
2l6 THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 The bed-ridden will start from the bed where he 
 has lain for months, and flee for his life from fire or 
 violence. When our civil war broke out it found us 
 a nation of business men, trading, speculating, selfish, 
 plotting, grasping. The higher sentiments seemed 
 extinct within us, so much so that, on the break- 
 ing out of the conflict, it was confidently predicted 
 that there was too little sympathy among the peo- 
 . pie, too little patriotism, public spirit or humanity 
 to rally the North against the aggressor. Yet, 
 what was the experience ? Suddenly, nobody knew 
 when, nobody knew how, a current of sympathetic 
 feeling ran from state to state throughout our 
 northern communities. Men, all at once, became 
 conscious of larger relations and breathed a more 
 universal life. Dull eyes sparkled, dumb lips be- 
 came eloquent, cold hearts throbbed ; feeble hands 
 were lifted ; the avaricious poured out their money ; 
 the affectionate sent their sons to the front ; those 
 who had lived alone in closets came out and volun- 
 teered their services for the campaign. It was a 
 strange sight to look on. We saw men who were 
 thought puny, meagre, cowardly, dry as dust, start 
 up into heroic proportions. The war over, the 
 strain relaxed, the excitement ended, the grand 
 forms shrunk to their former dimensions. The 
 heroes became speculators. The patriots repaired 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 21 7 
 
 in haste to the gold room. A spirit of greed, sharp- 
 visaged and eager, narrow and inhuman, took pos- 
 session of the very people who had burned like 
 seraphs for four years. The explanation lies on the 
 surface. The bond of communion with the soul of 
 progress, with the genius of the future, with the 
 creative spirit of the time was broken ; the individu- 
 als had fallen back within their limits, had lost 
 their connection with the overflowing springs of 
 life ; the resources of possibility had been shut off. 
 
 The prodigious phenomenon of the crusades in 
 the middle ages illustrates the same principle. 
 Europe lay supine. They were not inappropriately 
 called the " dark ages." — Poor, disabled, morally 
 blind and speechless, the populations clung to the 
 soil and perished there. All at once, the vision 
 broke upon them of a vast undeveloped Asia, held 
 by the Musselman and trodden by the infidel ; at 
 the call of Peter the Hermit, Europe started to its 
 feet and thousands on thousands of men straggled 
 across the continent, and fed the soil of Asia with 
 their carcasses under the glow of a wild enthusiasm. 
 
 How little, after all, is accomplished voluntarily 
 by distinct and proposed effort of the will ! How 
 little of the success that is achieved in the world, is 
 brought to pass by what we aim at and intend ! 
 How much is brought to pass by the silent invisible 
 
2l8 THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 laws which mass communities together, and set in 
 motion ocean waves of might ! 
 
 We hear a great deal in these days about uncon- 
 scious cerebration — in plain language, the working 
 of the brain when the intention to work is suspend- 
 ed. All know what this experience is. The think- 
 er has a problem that he is exercised to solve — a 
 problem in philosophy, in mathematics, in finance. 
 He labors at it until his conception is confused ; 
 the more he tries to solve it, the more perplexing 
 and hopeless it is. He gives it up and goes to 
 sleep. While physically exhausted, the latent force 
 of the brain stimulated by the efforts that have 
 been made in the day time, carries on the pro- 
 cess uninterrupted by outward disturbances. ; un- 
 embarrassed by the impertinence of the will, the 
 problem is solved. He wakes and the task is done, 
 as in the fairy tale, the poor girl after toiling and 
 crying over the pile of flax which she was command- 
 ed to spin, falls asleep over her labor, and wakes 
 to find that the kind fairies have finished her task 
 for her. The poet Coleridge wrote one of his most 
 imaginative pieces under similar circumstances ; 
 and many and many a time the men who have 
 worked at the hardest problems have , found that 
 reason could solve the difficulty when the intellect 
 desisted and retired. 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 219 
 
 In the morning, before going to their work, men 
 put themselves into communication with the crea- 
 tive powers of the world, by the food they eat. 
 They assimilate food : the vital organs, never ask- 
 ing whether they may or shall be permitted to act, 
 fall upon it and turn it into blood and tissue. The 
 lungs expand and contract, the arteries purify the 
 blood and pour it through the channels of the 
 venous system. The veins and capillaries take it 
 up, carry it to all the extremities of the skin. In 
 the strength of that food the workers go on for 
 hours laboring at mechanical tasks, doing miscella- 
 neous business, inventing, discovering, trafficking, 
 never bestowing a thought on the wonderful pro- 
 cesses which are going on inside of them ; and yet, 
 there is the central sun, and the laws of gravitation, 
 and the principles of mechanics, and all the proper- 
 ties of organic life busy until the resources of their 
 action have been expended, and the tired laborer 
 takes in more food. 
 
 The skipper sails his vessel out on the sea. The 
 winds are against him and the tide. The sailors 
 strain at the ropes. The captain shouts through 
 his trumpet. The rigging is torn to shreds. He 
 beats aimlessly about until he strikes the trade 
 winds, or the gulf stream ; then the work is done. 
 His vessel goes on and all he has to do is to let it 
 
220 THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 go. The men lie listlessly about the deck. The 
 captain plays cards, or reads novels, or examines his 
 charts in the cabin. He is sure that the trade wind, 
 that sweeps around the planet, will carry him to the 
 end of his course. 
 
 One of the most distinguished aeronauts of the 
 century holds the theory that a current of air 
 steadily sets around the globe, by which, if the bal- 
 loonist shall strike it, shall understand its laws and 
 comply with its conditions, he shall be carried with- 
 out fail from continent to continent ; for the current, 
 started and sustained as it is by the rotation of the 
 globe on its axis, never diminishes in force or 
 swerves in direction. 
 
 Have we never observed how, when any great 
 thing is done it is done by the sudden influx of this 
 unused potential force? Take any great move- 
 ment ; the movement in England for the abolition 
 of the slave trade ; the movement for the abrogation 
 of the corn laws ; the movement here for the exter- 
 mination of American slavery. Such movements 
 have a universal character. They are comprehen- 
 hensive and wide of sweep. No individual origin- 
 ates or controls them. No single man, no school 
 or party of men animate or propel them. They 
 express the need and impulse of a generation. 
 They are pulsations in the progress of mankind. 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 22 1 
 
 They are mile-stones on the high way of evolution. 
 The men whom they possess and inspire are called 
 " providential " men, men of the hour, sent of God. 
 The old problem perpetually comes up, does the 
 progress of the world depend on the energy of in- 
 dividuals or on the momentum of the multitude? 
 — Does the age make the man, or the man create 
 the age ? The proverbial phrase " the hour and 
 the man," suggests the problem and the answer. 
 Does the hour call into existence the leader, or does 
 the leader give providential character to the hour? 
 It seems at first as if individuals did every thing. 
 Colossal figures loom up from time to time at inter- 
 vals, along the expanse of history. Napoleon, 
 Elizabeth, Wycliffe, Huss, Savonarola, Luther, 
 Henry VIII., Mahomet, Pompilius, Zoroaster, Con- 
 fucius, Moses, — they stand up like gigantic monu- 
 ments in the desert, uttering oracles for all time. 
 There seems to radiate from each of them a power 
 that recreates the world of their day. So deeply 
 impaired is the faith in individual genius, in the 
 mission of providential men, in special revelations 
 made to individuals, that men build temples to 
 them, worship them, call them demigods, date 
 epochs of chronology from their birth, and ascribe 
 to them vast revolutions in civilization and religion. 
 Yet the science of history tells us, as we are able to 
 
222 THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 read it now, that such individuals would have been 
 nothing, would have done nothing, would have 
 been in fact unknown but for this mass of life about 
 them, but for the wave that swept through the cen- 
 tury to which they were assigned, as the freshet 
 bears on its bosom the rocks and trees that lie in 
 its range. It was the sunbeam that made the Men- 
 non sing. To us, history is science, as truly as 
 physiology or philology is ; the development of the 
 race is carried on by general laws ; a beautiful, yet 
 awful necessity runs through the ages, stringing the 
 generations of men on an iron thread. Modern 
 philosophy teaches that nothing comes by chance ; 
 that there is nothing accidental ; that the individual 
 can do but little of his personal will ; that the great- 
 est genius has a short tether ; that free will is lim- 
 ited by material and psychological conditions. The 
 greatest men have even confessed this. They call 
 themselves children of destiny — scourges, messen- 
 gers, avengers, prophets of God^ 
 
 For observe, that, wherever the individual has 
 pushed against the age, he has gone down. There 
 was probably no grander person living than John 
 Huss. A man of greater courage, purer life, more 
 devoted character, than he, it will on the whole be 
 hard to find. He stood almost alone in his genera- 
 tion. He had the ecclesiastical world against him. 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 223 
 
 Savonarola was to my apprehension one of the most 
 glorious souls that modern history can show ; a 
 greater man, in some respects, than Luther, a man 
 of more intellect, more consecration, larger human 
 sympathy, a man who was capable of entertaining 
 the idea of revolutionizing his age. Yet, Savanaro- 
 la with all his learning, his burning eloquence, his 
 consecrated heart, his devoted will, had against him 
 the powers of his time, an atheistic Pope, kings 
 who were worldly, people who were superstitious, 
 credulous and ignorant. He did his very best ; and 
 he gave his life. But to no end. He was burned 
 at the stake. His vessel was floating on a wild 
 ocean where there was nothing but head wind and 
 storm. The tempest descended upon him ; he was 
 drowned. 
 
 Luther came and found everything ready for him. 
 The great lights who had gone before had cleared 
 up the darkness. The power of the renaissance that 
 was regenerating Europe, by releasing it from Ro- 
 man Catholic thraldom, was felt throughout so- 
 ciety. Men were thinking, surmising, doubting, 
 studying, asking questions and answering them. 
 The great universities were full of heresy ; so that 
 when Luther appeared, instantly one-half of Europe 
 was on his side. The thirty years war showed that 
 a great portion of Europe was ready to take up 
 
224 THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 arms in his cause. The common printers of Ger- 
 many, poor men, men living on their daily toil, 
 hastened to issue his words ; the priests could not 
 induce them, could not bribe them, to print their 
 answers. This was the way that Luther succeeded. 
 It was not Luther that made the Reformation, it 
 was the age that bore him as a child in its bosom. 
 Luther was not burned ; he would have been, but 
 the burning power was in the minority. A king 
 was his friend. The castle was not shut against 
 him, but afforded him hospitality. His words ran 
 very swiftly, for the age in which he lived was full 
 of the protesting spirit. The unsounded possibili- 
 ties overruled opposition and gave silent aid. The 
 supreme and unused powers came to his rescue. 
 He was an instrument, a voice in the wilderness ; 
 but it was a wilderness whose very sands were 
 musical, whose very rocks had ears and voices. 
 
 So it always is. Put yourself in concurrence with 
 the best .spirit of the age ; put yourself in concur- 
 rence with the highest sentiments, with live princi- 
 ples ; make your own something that interests the 
 men with whom you live, and your success is cer- 
 tain. Go against the current, no matter how strong 
 you are, how bright your genius, how pure your 
 heart, how masterful your intellect, you are as 
 a weed on the surface of the ocean. You are 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 225 
 
 carried away as by a flood. You are as a sleep. 
 In this philosophy we have the secret of prayer. 
 The office of prayer is to put the individual in con- 
 currence with the universal ; to enable the person, 
 the separate man or woman to become receptive of 
 these awful powers, that are ready to shelter him 
 and to bear him on triumphantly. It is a necessity 
 with everyone who wishes to live a great life, with 
 everyone who wishes for happiness, power, success, 
 in any high measure that he should have faith, vital 
 faith in this unused capacity, in these universal 
 laws, in the realm of ideas, in the universe of princi- 
 ples. It is not necessary that he should confess 
 his faith in words. He need not insist on being 
 technically a religious man. He need not be, in the 
 cant phrase, a man of prayer, a church member, an 
 orthodox believer. It is not at all necessary that 
 he belong to a church, that he recite the catechism, 
 that he profess the article. But he must have, 
 whatever he calls himself, a faith that outside of 
 him is a realm of truth that he has never discovered, 
 of goodness he has never sought for, of love he has 
 never dreamed of ; and that here are the regenerat- 
 ing powers. Moreover, he must have faith that he 
 himself, by virtue of the vitality of his heart, the 
 earnestness of his will, the light of his intellect can 
 put himself in concurrence with this overwhelming 
 
226 THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 
 
 force. Call it what you will, — God, Providence, the 
 Unknown and Unknowable ; call it, as Matthew Ar- 
 nold does, the " power outside of us that works for 
 righteousness;" call it the "stream of tendency," 
 leaving out the word righteousness ; call it the realm 
 of possibility, call it what you will, it is there. Your 
 calling it God does not make it divine. Your de- 
 nying the definition or existence of God does not 
 take away its virtue. Be you theist or be you athe- 
 ist, be you trinitarian or unitarian, be you spiritual- 
 ist or materialist — there it is. It does not depend 
 upon your definition. It is there just as much for 
 the atheist as for the theist ; just as much for the 
 materialist as for the spiritualist ; just as much for 
 the Turk as for the Christian. It is the unused might 
 of possibility. The mistake that the materialist 
 makes, that the atheist makes, is in thinking that it 
 is not there, because his definition seems to exclude 
 it, and he does not seek it because he does not be- 
 lieve in it after the ecclesiastical fashion. Here I re- 
 peat, is the cardinal mistake of the rationalist, the 
 atheist, the materialist, the man of science, that 
 frightened by a definition, he does not put himself 
 deliberately and vitally into communication with the 
 eternal laws. I have as much right to pray, to as- 
 pire, to hunger, to dream of possibilities, to lift my- 
 self up by the help of fathomless intelligence as my 
 
THE OFFICE OF PRAYER. 227 
 
 orthodox neighbor has. The week of prayer is 
 nothing to me ; it is everything to him ; but the 
 power outside of me that takes me up, is light in 
 darkness, is strength in weakness, to me as it is to 
 him. 
 
 Let us all believe that there is this power, but let 
 us be mindful to believe that the conditions are the 
 same old conditions. No idle, no careless, heart- 
 less straggler or wanderer over existence has a 
 right to think that anything will come to him. If 
 he fails he earns his failure. If he is prostrated by 
 calamity he merits to be prostrated. If he starves 
 let him starve. There is food enough for all the 
 world if one will care to earn it. If one does not 
 care to earn it, then he must share the lot of those 
 who do not eat. The conditions are inexorable^ — 
 the same conditions that Dr. Taylor lays down for 
 the orthodox answer to prayer are the same we 
 must cling to. Only the earnest, the consecrated, 
 the devoted man can venture to ask anything of the 
 supreme power ; only the man who lays his private 
 passions by, forgets his heat, dismisses his anger, 
 forsakes his greed, asks nothing for himself, but 
 asks the things that everybody needs, can dare to 
 pray. And nobody can dare to aspire who is not 
 willing that the supreme will should be done with 
 him as well as with all the world. 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 I spoke last Sunday on the subject of humanity ; 
 what it was in its constituent- elements and what 
 the possession of it implied. This morning I pro- 
 pose to say something about the crowning, grace of 
 this humanity which is gentlemanliness. The gen- 
 tleman is the perfect man. 
 
 An old English dramatist of the 17th century, 
 Thomas Dekker, wrote these lines : 
 
 "The best of men 
 That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer ;, 
 A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, 
 The first true gentleman that ever breathed." 
 
 The allusion was to Jesus, fitly called gentleman 
 from his gentleness. The word " gentle " in old 
 English speech is equivalent to noble. It comes 
 from the Latin word gens, which means a family, a 
 tribe, a stock. The gentleman, therefore, to speak 
 strictly, is the man of family. 
 
 Something more than a year ago in the old city 
 of Worcester, in England, I paid a visit to the Royal 
 
230 THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Porcelain Works there, and as the superintendent 
 took me through the various rooms where the arti- 
 sans were at work at their several branches of 
 manufacture and decoration, modelling, molding, 
 designing, painting landscape, human beings, cattle, 
 ornamenting, gilding — he said " these gentlemen " 
 are doing this or that ; " these ladies " are doing 
 that or this. Note the immense distance between 
 these two conceptions of the gentleman. The old 
 dramatist, in monarchical England, by gentleness 
 means the highest quality that adorns humanity. 
 The gentleman is Saint and Savior. The superin- 
 tendent of the Royal Porcelain Works at Worcester, 
 in a democratic age, bestows the title on common 
 artisans whose simple distinction is that they have 
 the human form, thus erasing lines of difference in 
 character. 
 
 The word gentlemen is English, the idea too is 
 English. One of the most eminent and brilliant of 
 modern literary men, a Frenchman, tells us that, 
 out of England, there is nothing resembling the 
 type of the gentleman. In France there are nobles, 
 or rather there were ; men of exquisite refinement 
 and delicacy, elegant, polite, chivalrous, liberal, 
 brave, creatures of an aristocratic system, types of 
 a class once rich and powerful, now antiquated and 
 obsolete, ornamental parasites, curious as relics, but 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 23 1 
 
 without influence or significance in church, state, or 
 social life ; outside of the world of affairs, uninter- 
 ested in the questions of the age, only serving to 
 keep in remembrance a condition of things, the 
 very remembrance whereof is exasperating. They 
 assist progress by making the past odious. They 
 help the new order by showing the absurdity of the 
 old. In an age of thinkers and workers, the age of 
 Comte and the Commune, they are out of place. 
 The English gentlemen on the other hand, says 
 the writer above mentioned, Mr. Taine, " have 
 kept up their communication with the people, have 
 opened their ranks to men of talent, have taken re- 
 crqits from the untitled, have made themselves 
 persons of influence and command, potential in 
 church and state. They have been administrators, 
 patrons, promoters of reform, managers, enlightened, 
 independent, capable men, the most useful citizens 
 of the country." 
 
 Let us analize this conception of the Gentleman. 
 In the first place it implies in England what is 
 called a material basis. The gentleman may not be 
 himself wealthy. He may on the contrary be poor. 
 He may be an outcast from elegant society. He 
 may be an exile from his native land, of no account 
 in the world of affairs. He may be distinguished 
 by no outward badge of affluence or dignity. Yet, 
 
232 THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 if not wealthy himself, he has associations with 
 wealth. If not high in social position, he is able to 
 look back to ancestors who were. The blood of the 
 noble is in his veins. If not a present force in the 
 community, he has traditions of fore-fathers who 
 were eminent for conduct and character. He is pre- 
 sumed to be on a good understanding with circum- 
 stances, on good terms with the ruling powers. 
 He feels that he belongs to the best which the 
 material universe has to give. He has a feeling of 
 being at home among prosperous and controlling 
 people. When he sees a fine hoiise, extensive 
 lands, he feels that they belong some how to the 
 like of him ; and when he sees a person who has 
 mastered fate and fortune, he feels that he is the 
 brother of that person, kindred with him. Poor, he 
 may be ; yet he can never be abject. For the gen- 
 tleman always remembers that he is one of the 
 adopted sons of nature, that the world is his patri- 
 mony, whether he enjoys it, uses it, or not. This is 
 a cardinal element in the English idea of the gentle- 
 man. It is an element in his mental consti- 
 tution, in his moral sentiment. You never see a 
 gentleman, however poor he may be himself, who 
 will own that poverty is part or lot of his nature. 
 He does not class himself among the impotent. 
 This peculiarity is an inheritance from feudal insti- 
 tutions. 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 233 
 
 Again, to ascend to a higher and broader plane, 
 the gentleman is presumed to have mind — a quick, 
 active, aggressive intelligence. If not educated, he 
 has a live understanding. The dunce may come of 
 a gentlemanly lineage, but he cannot fill the part of 
 a gentleman. The idler who never asks a question, 
 and never cares about vital concerns or living inter- 
 ests, may wear the dress of a gentleman and imitate 
 the manners ; a gentleman of repute and of re- 
 spectability he cannot be. It goes first and last 
 with the character of a gentleman, that he is intelli- 
 gent, that he thinks, inquires, has a place in the 
 intellectual world. He may not be controlling or 
 eminent there ; he may not be successful in execu- 
 tive ways ; still his mind is alive on the issues that 
 interest thoughtful people. 
 
 Let me say further that he is a person, con- 
 scious of that grand fact of individuality which is 
 so weighty in character. He counts for one. He 
 is sensible of an interior, inviolate and invaluable 
 dignity. When he gives his hand, he gives the 
 hand of a mmi ; he gives himself ; he pledges him- 
 self; he pledges his character. With it goes his 
 heart. When he plights his word, he weights it 
 with all the sanctity of his conscience, There 
 needs no oath to fortify it. If he makes a promise, 
 he keeps it let it cost what it may, in money, incon- 
 
234 THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 venience, service. If he makes an engagement, he 
 keeps it to the spirit, as well as to the letter, bring- 
 ing along with his presence his full ability and 
 character. That holiest of all words in the English 
 language, " honor," belongs to him. He alone can 
 speak it, because, he alone knows the full measure 
 of its significance. Whether fortune has cast him 
 in one lot or another, whether one kind of condi- 
 tions or circumstances or another is appointed 
 for him, he is always himself. He cannot lie, he 
 cannot cheat ; he cannot steal ; he cannot de- 
 fraud. If he be a common artisan, a merchant, 
 an artist, a politician, a financier, no matter what, 
 where he is, he is, a man. He is the possessor and 
 the incarnation of an immortal dignity, of a power 
 that is not to be challenged by anyone less than 
 the Almighty. His chief concern lies between him- 
 self and his God. 
 
 There is one cardinal element more to be men- 
 tioned, — the element of HEART. The gentleman 
 is a man of heart. He has a clear, wide, cordial 
 human sympathy. He respects himself ; he respects 
 his kind ; he respects humanity in every man, in 
 every woman. He goes beneath the surface of the 
 lot, behind circumstance and condition, and discerns 
 the manliness the womanliness in the human crea- 
 ture. He confesses his accountability to mankind. 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 235 
 
 There are two stories that come to us out of 
 English history, which describe this quality 
 more beautifully and touchingly than any words 
 can do. In the fourteenth century Edward the 
 Black Prince, with an army of twelve thousand 
 men beat King John of France, with an army of 
 sixty thousand, at the famous battle of Poitiers. 
 The valor of the English soldiers and the heroic 
 leadership of their prince gained this astonishing, 
 this all but miraculous victory. Edward at once 
 went to the captive king, put himself at his dis- 
 posal, condoled with him on his misfortune, took 
 no credit for his victory to himself, but ascribed it 
 to that mysterious providence that orders human 
 affairs, offered the prostrate monarch every comfort 
 he could command, and when he rode with him in 
 triumph into London, placed his royal captive on a 
 splendid white steed and rode himself by his side 
 on a humble palfrey. None but an English gentle- 
 man could have done that. 
 
 At the battle of Zutphen, Sir Philip Sidney the 
 peerless knight, two horses having been slain under 
 him, when about to mount the third was shot in 
 the thigh. He was more than a mile from his 
 camp, and was obliged to limp that distance to 
 his tent. On reaching the tent, exhausted and in 
 agony, he feebly called for water. It was brought 
 
236 THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 to him. As he was about to put the flask to his 
 mouth, his eye fell upon a common soldier lying a 
 few yards off on the ground, his pale face and dying 
 eyes turned beseechingly towards the refreshing 
 draught. Sidney put it by untouched, and said, 
 " Give the water to him ; his necessities are greater 
 than mine." Sixteen days after that the noble 
 Sidney died, in the flower of his life, leaving a 
 name for heroic gentleness, for manly courage and 
 delicacy, that will live as long as the word gentle- 
 man preserves its signfficance. 
 
 Gentleness, therefore, you perceive, has a human 
 basis. It is built on human attributes. It implies 
 a human nature, a sincere recognition of the claims 
 of human kind. 
 
 I have described the English gentlemen. Now 
 we come to speak of the American gentleman. 
 To be intelligent here, we must take humanity as 
 it stands in the American estimate. Our human 
 basis must not be German, or French, or English, 
 but in the strictest sense American. The American 
 estimate of humanity is peculiar. Here there 
 are no orders, no class distinctions, no outward 
 badges of difference. There is but one law and 
 standard for all men, — a law that is as just, equit- 
 able, humane as society is at present able to make 
 it. One law, civil and moral, for the rich and for 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 237 
 
 the poor ; one law for the well-born and for the ill- 
 born. The only differences that are recognized, 
 theoretically at least, in America between men, are 
 differences in character, rank in attainment, emi- 
 nence in mind and quality, grades in the attributes 
 that men possess. In view of this fact, the Ameri- 
 can gentleman must be as much more than the 
 French or the English, as his basis of humanity is 
 broader and more comprehensive than theirs. He 
 must build not upon the humanity of a class, of an 
 order, a section, a clique, a family, but upon the hu- 
 manity that is common to all men of whatever 
 class or condition. 
 
 Here is a responsibility imposed upon the Ameri- 
 can gentleman, which never has been imposed in 
 the history of European or Asiatic. In the city of 
 Washington, to illustrate by a figure, there stands 
 a monument, or the beginning of a monument, des- 
 tined to commemorate the father of his country. 
 It is unfinished because it cannot be finished accord- 
 ing to any conventional design. Built upon a broad 
 basis suitable to the imagination and aspiration of 
 the American people, and to the grandeur of con- 
 ception in the founder of American institutions, it 
 cannot be completed according to any idea that the 
 old world can suggest. Would we carry it up as an 
 Egyptian obelisk ? Its point will be lost in the 
 
238 THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 clouds. Would we set upon the top of it, as it 
 stands now, the present structure being used as 
 pedestal, a colossal figure of Washington ? It must 
 be a hundred feet high in order to be in proportion. 
 Will you plant an equestrian statue there? You 
 must use a spy-glass to see the horse. If we insist 
 on building a monument upon a base so broad, 
 our whole design for the work must be new. 
 While we consult the old architectural principles 
 founded upon the cardinal basis of law which is 
 universal in the whole material creation, we must 
 build according to a conception which is adequate 
 to the case in hand. Therefore, pull down the 
 beginning of the monument, and make a new 
 erection on a new design, which shall be, not 
 Egyptian or Greek, not German, French or English, 
 but American, — original with ourselves. 
 
 So with this conception of the American gentle- 
 man. Build it on a basis as broad, as pure, as cardi- 
 nal, as the American idea. We must not be content 
 with a parlor ornament, with an elegant figure of 
 bronze or porcelain or parian which we can put on 
 a centre table, or set up to adorn a mantel ; we must 
 construct a character so stately in its proportions, 
 so harmonious, so firm and dignified and sweet, that 
 it shall justify its beginning. 
 
 What then are we to consider as being the essen- 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN, 239 
 
 tial elements in such a character ? What shall the 
 American gentleman be like ? Conceding that some 
 sort of material basis is necessary to the gentleman,' 
 under whatever aspect regarded, let us admit that 
 the American gentleman must have a material basis 
 also. But it need not be wealth or traditions of 
 wealth, associations with opulent people in the past. 
 In place of this, it is enough that there be sympathy 
 with that honest labor which is the creator of all 
 wealth. He will not be ashamed of toil, or of the 
 company of them that toil. His hands will not be 
 too fine to be put to the plow if necessary, to the 
 wheel or to the hammer. He respects the labor, 
 the sincere toil of hands, or head, of heart or will by 
 which wealth is created. He does not side with 
 capital against labor, for capital is nothing but ac- 
 cumulated labor ; and all the capital in this country 
 is liable to diminution and waste ; it changes 
 hands ; it passes away with shifting values ; it be- 
 comes divided and sub-divided among many heirs. 
 There is no inalienable wealth in landed estates. 
 There are no districts that can never be sequestra- 
 ted. But labor, that which creates wealth, which 
 has all wealth in possibility, that exists through all 
 days, is the common heritage, the universal 
 lot, doom or privilege, the equal dignity, of every 
 human creature. The gentleman cannot side with 
 
240 THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 labor against capital because labor is but the prom- 
 ise of capital — capital in the future. Labor is the 
 creature of capital as well as its creator. There can 
 be no controversy between the two. The gentle- 
 man stands with one foot on one and the other foot 
 on the other, reconciling them both, and feeling very 
 sure that labor, honest, sincere, faithful, unremitting 
 labor of whatever kind is essential to the preserva- 
 tion of all wealth whether one happens individually 
 to enjoy it or not. Is he capitalist he will not abuse 
 his power ; is he laborer he will not bewail his weak- 
 ness. 
 
 But more than this, the gentleman believes in the 
 substantial ends and uses of labor. He has no faith 
 in noise and fury, in the pounding of a hammer on 
 an idle anvil, in the fuss of the politician, in the vain 
 and futile hurrying to and fro of the man of busi- 
 ness who with much ado accomplishes nothing. He 
 believes that no labor is worth a straw that does not 
 accomplish an object, that does not make its con- 
 tribution to the permanent wealth of the commun- 
 ity, whether it be the toil of the artisan, the effort 
 of the thinker, the trained ability of the financier, 
 the politician, the statesman. The end and the end 
 alone, in his apprehension, sanctifies the means and 
 dignifies the use. Honesty is the basis of all his 
 respect. That labor should be paid for and in hon- 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 241 
 
 est measure of honest money, is his first affirmation, 
 his absolute, primary demand. Call the money gold, 
 call it silver, call it paper, what you may, the stamp 
 must carry value, a value that will hold its own all 
 over the civilized world ; which will be received by 
 Englishman, Frenchman, German, which will pass 
 current among men of all conditions, which the la- 
 borer can "thankfully take as his reward, which the 
 capitalist can honorably pay in wages. This, this 
 alone, this always, the gentleman respects and he 
 is no gentleman, he has not the first conception of 
 gentlemanliness, who will take less than this. 
 
 For the gentleman plants himself first and fore- 
 most upon regard for the welfare of mankind. He 
 is no sectionalist ; he is not pledged to the interest 
 of Pennsylvania on the one side, or of Colorado and 
 Nevada on the other, but to the concerns which are 
 precious to the hearts of the whole country, to the 
 essential welfare of mankind. Nothing that preju- 
 dices or impairs this, is, in his estimate, honorable at 
 all. Everything is honorable that advances this. 
 If a man contributes but a mite by the sweat of his 
 brow, by the vigor of his right arm, by the robust- 
 ness of his frame, he makes his contribution and it 
 is as valuable as any other if it is offered in the spirit 
 of simplicity and earnestness. But the self-seeker, 
 the man who, for any cause whatever tries to divert 
 
242 -THE AMERICAN GENIT-EMAN. 
 
 to himself, to his own particular interest or glory 
 whatever it be that belongs to the community at 
 large, and would pull down another's card house for 
 the sake of erecting his massive stone structure, 
 never can be entitled to that grandest designation, 
 the word gentleman. Pay your debts; pay them 
 in value that is universally recognized. Then will 
 you be held acquitted of obligation as far as one can 
 be. But if you pay in a depreciated coin, even the 
 most incidental and superficial debt, say nothing of 
 the sacred debts of honor, leave out of considera- 
 tion entirely debts which the nations honor is pledg- 
 ed, the infamy clings to everj' fibre of the man. 
 There is but one ground that a gentleman can take 
 and that is the ground of willingness to sacrifice 
 every personal comfort and convenience for the sake 
 of standing faithfully by his word. 
 
 One thing more ; the American gentleman must 
 have a live mind. He must think and enquire; he 
 must be interested in affairs. He must not be so 
 dainty that he cannot deal in politics, cannot go into 
 business, cannot be immersed in mercantile pursuits, 
 cannot, if necessity bids, handle pick and shovel. 
 He is constrained by the fact of his gentleness, 
 bound, not excused by that fact, to do his utmost to 
 make the ambitions of life honorable and virtuous. 
 He must have a live mind. He must be in some 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 243 
 
 sense a reformer. He must be interested in the pro- 
 jects which help on the welfare of the community in 
 which he happens to live. He must take an interest 
 in everything that is going forward, civil, social, per- 
 sonal, private. His mind must be alive to every 
 question and responsive to every call. Need I say 
 he must be a man of warm and wide, of deep and 
 cordial sympathies ? In a country like ours, in com- 
 munities like ours where everything is to be done, 
 where want utters its ceaseless cries and poverty 
 reaches out its hand, and sorrow makes audible its 
 bitter complaint, where there are old wrongs to be 
 righted and new ills to be averted, measures of in- 
 iquity to be undone, evils to be corrected, good 
 things to be vindicated, right principles to be de- 
 fended, can he afford to be indifferent to anything 
 that deeply concerns his fellow men ? An old Latin 
 poet, a Pagan said, " I am a man and nothing hu- 
 man is foreign to my sympathies." 
 
 There died but recently in our own community 
 one of those men who has stood for years, to my 
 thought, as perhaps the model American citizen, the 
 true American gentleman. I mean Theodore Roose- 
 velt. For one whole week, the charitable societies 
 that are working hardest in this community, met 
 together in succession to pass resolutions of praise 
 and honor to that simple citizen. 
 
244 THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 He held no public position. He wore no loud 
 sounding title. He claimed no preeminence. He 
 was a man of wealth who had regard for those who 
 had none. He was a man prominent in the social 
 world, who carried on his heart the humblest, mean- 
 est and poorest of his kind. He was a man in fash- 
 ionable society who gave every Sunday evening for 
 years to the newsboys in their lodging house. He 
 was a man of strong personal sympathy, generous, 
 exuberant, abundant, who gave his means freely 
 to the country in its time of need ; lavished money 
 for the soldiers in the civil war, befriended all in- 
 stitutions of charity in the city, and yet bethought 
 himself how he could do it most wisely, accomplish- 
 ing the least harm and conferring the utmost 
 benefit. This man, one of the largest givers in the 
 community, was by all acknowledgement, the wisest 
 giver in the community ; studying the scientific 
 . laws, devising means to save money, studying econo- 
 my in expenses, seeking to diminish the wear and tear 
 and friction of the benevolent machinery. It was 
 he who suggested the central bureau of charities 
 which failed by reason of the backwardness of or- 
 ganizations to enter into a common scheme. Sim- 
 ple in his manners, unpretending, mild, gentle, 
 brave as a lion, soft as a maiden, a man who never 
 spoke a rude word but could utter words on occa- 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 245 
 
 sion that fell like thunderbolts upon moral base- 
 ness, Theodore Roosevelt, a mere American citizen, 
 an American all over and through and through, 
 never boasting of what he did, always willing to 
 serve, going personally about the meanest ofifices of 
 philanthropy, fulfilled more than any individual I 
 have known, the idea of the American gentleman. 
 
 There is one more attribute of the American 
 gentleman which must be mentioned : the super- 
 iority to sectarian distinctions ; this is American. 
 He cannot be a dogmatist ; he cannot be limited in 
 his religious sympathies. The church that he be- 
 longs to must be really, in no mean sense of the 
 phrase, the church of humanity. He may call him- 
 self Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, 
 Baptist, what not ; he may go to any church, tem- 
 ple, shrine, or to none whatever; his convictions 
 may be clear, intense, so intense that he, for his 
 part, cannot understand how other convictions than 
 his own can be a ground-work of personal noble- 
 ness ; and yet, while holding his own convictions 
 thus clearly and intensely, while building upon 
 them all his private hopes, he must concede towards 
 others, any others, all others, the same right that 
 he claims for himself, to hold their convictions in 
 their own fashion. In Catholic countries the gen- 
 tleman must be a Catholic. In England it is hard 
 
246 THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 
 
 to believe that a dissenter can be a gentleman. 
 The gentleman must belong to the established 
 church, because the established church is identical 
 with the state; religion therefore in a manner is 
 synonymous with loyalty to the government ; it is 
 the sentimental aspect of the English constitution, 
 it is the spiritual side of the English character. 
 But here is no church. We are not, by the institu- 
 tion of government. Catholics or Protestants, or 
 Christians of any name. The same law spreads its 
 majestic wings over Romanist and Lutheran, over 
 churchman and dissenter, over believer in trinity, 
 and believer in unity, over theist and over athe- 
 ist ; and it rests with every man's conscience 
 whether he will profess one creed, hold one opinion, 
 avow one conviction or another, or indeed, whether 
 he will put the whole matter by. The gentleman 
 stands upon personal fidelity to himself; the law 
 recognizes this and this alone ; the gentleman 
 therefore plants himself upon this idea as the spirit- 
 ual basis of all manly character. He is superior to 
 sectarian envies, jealousness and oppositions. 
 
 When you see a dogmatist you see one who has 
 no conception of the significance of the gentleman. 
 When you see a bitter sectarian, you see one who 
 has no conception of the gentlemanly character. 
 It is of no consequence whether the person indi- 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 247 
 
 vidually belongs to one sect or another. It is of 
 absolute, vital, indestructible consequence that a 
 person of intelligence, conscience, heart, should 
 recognize his brother and sister, whatever belief 
 may be avowed or disavowed. The man is more 
 than the profession, though the profession be a pro- 
 fession of belief in God and the hereafter. 
 
 The phrase " Christian," usually accompanies the 
 phrase " gentleman," and the phrase " gentleman " 
 is almost always associated with the name of 
 " Christian." We speak of the " Christian gentle- 
 man." How shall we interpret the expression? 
 Do we really fancy that the gentleman and the 
 Christian are one because the Christian is a believer 
 in the trinity? Do we mean that the gentleman 
 must be a believer in total depravity, in an eternal 
 hell, that there is no gentleman unless there be be- 
 lief in the damnation of infants ? that the choicest 
 refinement of our humanity involves a faith in the 
 absolute destruction of nine-tenths of the human 
 family ? By no means'. When the term " Christ- 
 ian " and the term " gentleman " are associated to- 
 gether, the term " Christian " is taken in its largest, 
 not in its smallest sense. It means Christian in 
 principle and sentiment ; human in idea conception 
 and feeling. When the old dramatist, Thomas 
 Dekker, called Jesus " the first true gentleman that 
 
THE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. 249 
 
 to-day? How many of us dare to call ourselves 
 gentlemen after this majestic type ? Not one. 
 
 But there is not the meanest of us all who may 
 not think of this as the perfection of gentlemanliness. 
 There is not one of us who may not hold the 
 beautiful conception before him. Happy he who 
 so steadily keeps it in view and so steadfastly tries 
 to realize it that the light and beauty and glory of 
 it he may possess himself. • 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY 
 
 Having spoken in past addresses about human- 
 ity and its essential constitution, and of the type of 
 character which best adorns it, I have this morn- 
 ing to say something about that crowning grace of 
 all humanity, ladyhood. I choose as my subject 
 this morning the American lady ; not from any de- 
 sire certainly to make a sensation, not in the spirit 
 of eccentricity, but in order to illustrate what seems 
 to me the "most complete moral attainment of our 
 American nature. 
 
 The peculiarity of American life is visible on the 
 surface and strikes forcibly anyone that has ever 
 visited a foreign country. The American does not 
 perceive it, never having known the opposite. Ap- 
 parent to every observing eye is it that there is 
 here an external uniformity ; that there are no or- 
 ders or distinctions of rank, that all wear the same 
 dress, speak the same language, cultivate the same 
 manners, revere the same customs and hold the 
 same traditions. As we look over the surface o 
 
252 THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 American society, there is an air of monotony, a 
 sameness which is even oppressive, as if all distinct- 
 ions were obliterated, as if all men and women 
 were reduced to one uniform plane. A glance be- 
 neath the surface of American life reveals the fact 
 that this comes of the nature of our institutions and 
 cardinal principles. We see that there is one law, 
 in intention at least if not in practice, for all who 
 are entitled to call themselves citizens ; that there 
 is but one justice, one rule of equity, one standard 
 of conduct ; that all are nominally, at all events, 
 held to the same responsibility ; that all confess 
 the same obligation ; that all, therefore, place them- 
 selves openly in public presence, upon the same 
 level of human beings. 
 
 Look deeper than this and it becomes evident 
 that, in the popular apprehension, certain cardinal 
 distinctions are becoming neglected and even ob- 
 literated. An impression is abroad that at the 
 bottom all men and women are reducible to the 
 same material ; as the removal of dykes and dams 
 allows pieces of water to flow together ; as the re- 
 moval of fences and walls throws separate proper- 
 ties into common grounds ; so the destruction of 
 artificial barriers and class distinctions in America, 
 encourages a feeling of promiscuousness in which 
 moral distinctions are submerged. As the vulgar 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY. 253 
 
 saying is, " one is as good as another, and better 
 too." When the visible barriers have been for gen- 
 erations in existence, they may be removed and 
 their absence hardly be noticed, as I myself have 
 seen illustrated in England, that old aristocratic 
 country where gentry and commonalty have beert 
 kept apart for hundreds of years. There, one may 
 see them together at some rural festival, in com- 
 plete unconsciousness of social distinction, no super- 
 ciliousness on the one hand, no obsequiousness on 
 the other, all dressed simply and neatly, all moving 
 to and fro together, yet all quietly mindful of cer- 
 tain unseen but positive restrictions that had been 
 made ages on ages ago, and had become a part of 
 the national mind. The badges and imagery could 
 be dispensed with, because their uses had been ful- 
 filled. Nobody, it appeared, thought of question- 
 ing the fact that some were more intelligent, culti- 
 vated, refined, worshipful, more beautiful in man- 
 ners, more noble in conduct, more gentle in disposi- 
 tion than the rest. This was never brought in 
 question. It never occurred either to those who 
 were above or to those who were beneath, because 
 the distinctions were so ingrained that the removal 
 of the artificial signs of them was never felt. As 
 for many summers the ground bears the mark of 
 the ancient pile or hedge row, so society shows the 
 trace of discarded forms. 
 
2S4 THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 But, in a democratic society like ours, where so- 
 cial distinctions have never existed, where badges 
 never have been displayed, and class distinctions 
 are traditions of some obsolete condition of man- 
 kind, it soon comes to be thought that all men 
 are of the same constitution, that all women are 
 alike in dignity and consideration ; that there 
 should be one condition for all. And yet, the fact 
 is insuperable that there is no abolishing cardinal 
 distinctions, that destinies must follow character, 
 and that the conditions of character are fixed. Take 
 away fences if you will ; remove land-marks ; throw 
 signs and badges and symbols into the waste-basket ; 
 call all men gentlemen and all women ladies, still it 
 remains everlastingly a fundamental truth that the 
 difference in intellectual and moral development, in 
 the training of the dispositions in temper, culture,, 
 nobleness, magnanimity, in all the qualities that 
 make human beings is, enormous. The difference 
 between the balanced citizen and the outlaw ; the 
 difference between a man like Theodore Roosevelt 
 who held all he had and all he was at the disposi- 
 tion of society, and the man in the Tombs or in 
 Ludlow street jail who has plotted for a livelihood, 
 and made it the business of his years to filch from 
 society in order to enrich himself, never can be de- 
 scribed in sober language. _The plunge that the 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY. 255 
 
 waters of Niagara make from the turning point 
 over the cliff down into the abyss below, feebly de- 
 scribes the moral gulf between a Ralph Waldo Em- 
 erson on the one side, and a Quimbo Appo on the 
 other. God himself could not obliterate distinct- 
 ions like these. They are deeper than intellectual ; 
 they are moral ; they are spiritual ; they are in the 
 nature of things. If it were not so, then, alas, for 
 any future for humanity ! then farewell to hope, to 
 anticipation, to aspirations, farewell to the strenu- 
 ous effort which glorifies and sublimates mankind ! 
 The doctrine of " natural rights " looks, on analysis, 
 inconsistent with itself ; for the two words stand at 
 opposite extremes of thought. Rights imply du- 
 ties, and duties imply moral responsibility, reflect- 
 ion, purpose. We are reminded of the fact, every 
 day, that all men are not alike, that all women are 
 not on a level. Talk as much as we may about the 
 equality in which mankind are created, the observa- 
 tion of life tells another story. We know that this 
 is true only in the region of sentiment ; the world 
 of idea, hope, vision. The belief is transcendental, 
 spiritual. The glorious doctrine like the teaching 
 of the Sermon on the Mount may be true in the 
 millennium ; but in this world of experience and 
 effort it is not true without great qualification. 
 I divide men into three classes : males, men, and 
 
256 THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 gentlemen. By the same rule there are females, 
 women, and ladies. These are distinguished from 
 one another by inward characteristics more sharply 
 than by external signs ; and the abolition of the 
 external signs calls attention to the real distinction. 
 The distinction of a female is her sex, a discriminat- 
 ing fact in physiology ; but even that may be re- 
 duced to so shadowy a line that it can hardly be 
 distinguished. There is a town in the coal region 
 of Western England, where the women dress like 
 men for convenience of labor. The traveler pas- 
 sing through the place fails to distinguish the men 
 from the women. There are females among us 
 who, in voice, manner, temper, habits, use of 
 speech, general behavior, are in no wise to be dis- 
 tinguished from the lowest, coarsest, and most 
 brutal of men. Vice, in them, has a tinge of gross- 
 ness that male vice has not. Without cultivation 
 or a dream of what cultivation may be ; without 
 sympathy, compassion, pity, or gentleness ; without 
 fellow feeling for their own kind ; without tender- 
 ness for the young, the forsaken, the suffering, the 
 sorrowing ; women only in sex, in all other respects 
 scarcely human, they are the despair of the philan- 
 thropist. We see them as we walk ; we know who 
 they are by their gait, their manner, the tones of 
 their voice ; we meet them in the streets night and 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY. 257 
 
 day, and instinctively avoid them. Let us say no 
 more about these. It is too tragic a thought to 
 entertain. 
 
 Next we come to women. These are members 
 of the sex humanly considered but higher in the 
 rational scale. Here we rise to a plane above that 
 of sex. Here we reach the world of character, 
 warmth, feeling for truth and rectitude, tenderness 
 towards innocence, pity for suffering, sympathy 
 with sorrow, impulse to do something to alleviate 
 the miseries of mankind. There may not be culti- 
 vation, training, judgment, steadiness of aim, lofti- 
 ness of consecration, wisdom of purpose, or fineness 
 of perception. The sympathy maybe unintelligent 
 and vague ; still there is a broad feminine element, 
 an element of humane feeling running through the 
 nature from top to bottom, directing thoughts, in- 
 teresting feeling, and conferring a certain moral 
 dignity, even a kind of spiritual grace. 
 
 Where shall I borrow language to describe the 
 lady? She is hardly perhaps recognized by the 
 peculiarity of sex, that lies so far beneath the many 
 layers of disciplined refinement and cultivation. 
 Instead of prettiness of coloring and handsomeness 
 of feature, she has grace and beauty. For regular- 
 ity of countenance hers is loveliness of expression 
 that irradiates the face, shines in the eye, curves the 
 
258 THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 lines of the lips ; an atmosphere of serenity per- 
 vades her conduct. She is self-possessed and com- 
 posed. By a delicate and penetrating intuition, 
 she feels her way through the mazes of casuistry, 
 until she arrives at the essential truth. With a 
 wonderful combination of tact and ^ sympathy, qual- 
 ities which always go together and accompany her 
 wherever she is, she controls her establishment be 
 it small or large, important or unimportant without 
 the movement of a finger, without the raising of a 
 voice, without a frown or a threat. She does not 
 strive or cry, or lift up her voice. The bruised reed 
 she will not break. The smoking flax she will not 
 extinguish, hoping that even there may be smolder- 
 ing a lambent flame which should be encouraged. 
 Her very presence conveys influence. She touches 
 the centers of motion, acts on the springs of con- 
 duct, sways people when they do not feel the pres- 
 sure of authority, moves them without propelling, 
 guides them aud makes them glad to be guided. 
 Her days pass serenely on. The hours are counted 
 by the benediction she sheds by her voice and her 
 presence. Cares become blessed and labor light 
 and burdens not wearisome when she bestows her 
 smile, and life glides on so sweetly that its murmur 
 IS not heard. 
 
 The lady is the woman, trained and elaborated. 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY. 259 
 
 There are two roots of the English word " lady." 
 According to one derivation, it means the woman 
 who is lifted up above the ordinary level of her 
 kind, — the woman who is selected by a person of 
 quality, endowed, privileged, titled, personally and 
 socially eminent, to be his companion and help- 
 meet, the partner and joy of his existence. She is 
 distinguished from other women by implication, in- 
 wardly as well as outwardly, not only by wealth, 
 position, residence, dress, and decorations, by the 
 external style in which her lord allows her to live, 
 but by the qualities which these accompaniments 
 denote. In this sense, the word " lady " has but a 
 partial significance for us, for we have no lords who 
 can create ladies by marriage. No man is entitled 
 to raise a woman to his eminence, for no man has a 
 recognised eminence except as his character creates 
 one. It is true that the external position may be 
 counterfeited in America, but it is only a counter- 
 feit. Wealth, ostentation, display, sumptuousness 
 in dress, will imitate a situation which has no char- 
 acter or instituted basis to support it ; many a 
 woman will, by virtue, rather let me say by vice, of 
 material appendages which she can hang upon her 
 person, strut before the world and ape a nobility 
 which she has never deserved or comprehended ; it 
 is the foible of our civilization, the foreigner's dis- 
 
26o THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 gust. Walk through the streets of any American 
 city and you will see preposterous efforts to play 
 the lady by the help of millinery, on the part of 
 women, who never had the faintest conception of 
 what ladyhood means ; whose eminence of superior- 
 ity is the height of a wardrobe ; whose worth con* 
 sists in the ability to buy men and women ; whose 
 grandeur is a faculty for making others feel small. 
 
 A finer type of ladyhood, more dignified and 
 beautiful, is the delicate, refined, cultured woman, 
 who withdraws from society, lives in seclusion, ac- 
 complishes herself, enriches her mind with refined 
 and graceful studies, and makes perfection of char- 
 acter her chief aim. This type of ladyhood is often 
 exceedingly beautiful and fascinating, and yet it 
 falls far short in one cardinal respect, as it seems to 
 me, of the position which ladyhood in America 
 should hold. 
 
 The other definition of the word " lady " the 
 bread giver, is needed to complete the first. The 
 lady is the distributor of bread, that is, the mistress 
 of a household, the head of an establishment, a 
 source of bountifulness, plenty, grace, consolation 
 and help to as many as depend upon her. 
 
 Very charming are the pictures of ladies in the 
 olden times, in the bosoms of their households, giv- 
 ing nurture to their children, cultivating, useful arts. 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY. 2^1 
 
 presiding over their domestics, keeping accounts, 
 embroidering and spinning with their maids, recon- 
 ciling differences, mitigating troubles, exercising a 
 gentle restraint and influence over the unruly mem- 
 bers of the kitchen and stable, providing the graces 
 of hospitality, standing at the gate and distributing 
 food to the hungry, visiting the tenantry and carry- 
 ing the beauty of a sweet presence and the aid of a 
 copious bounty to dwellings that are without beauty 
 or humanity, to people who have nothing of their 
 own ; soothing the sick child, consoling the dying 
 mother, bringing money or medicine, or tender care, 
 or the ministration of the faithful nurse to the sick 
 and wretched. Many are the gracious figures that 
 we see in the course of history, gliding through a 
 bleak, barren world, laden with messages of good 
 will. 
 
 The American lady cannot follow literally this 
 example, for she has no tenantry ; she is not in a 
 position of affluence or privilege perhaps ; has no 
 outward advantage above her fellows. What she 
 has to distribute may be simply what she possesses 
 in herself, her earnestness, sympathy, courage, devo- 
 tion, sweetness of nature ; and she must distribute 
 these, not in the external or ceremonious way which 
 was imposed upon ladies of another social system, 
 but in the vital, quick, inspiriting way that belongs 
 
2.62 THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 to a republican community. For, in a society like 
 ours, where all are associated by interest and for- 
 tune, where all lead essentially the same lives from 
 day to day, where the currents of influence flow 
 through all classes, we must help each other. Each 
 must bestow actively her gift, whatever it be, 
 wealth, strength, character, the sentiment of justice, 
 courage, truth, tenderness, feeling that this is bread 
 of life. Whatever be the endowment, it is due to 
 the whole community that the possessor of it should 
 freely bestow it. It is, on this noble principle, not 
 permissible in a society like ours, that anyone pos- 
 sessing a grain of force should withhold it from the 
 common treasury of humanity. To live alone and 
 aloof may be elegant, beautiful, attractive. Is it 
 not something less than human ? 
 
 To distribute power, — How shall we do that? 
 This is the question. There are heated discussions 
 going on among us in regard to woman's opportuni- 
 ties for work. There is a demand that women 
 should be allowed to work. Well! certainly, they 
 should have the right if they wish to exercise it. 
 There is no reason in the nature of things why a 
 woman, simply from the fact of her being a woman, 
 should not do everything she can do. If she can 
 paint or play, or act, or sing, or teach ; if she can 
 write books, heal diseases, plead causes, or preach 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY. ^63 
 
 the gospel of peace and good will, in God's name 
 why should she not do it? If there be a gift, the 
 possession of the gift entitles to work for its exer- 
 cise ; nay, demands the room. If there be a talent, 
 where is the law that forbids the use of it, that de- 
 fines the limitations of genius in man or in woman ? 
 Genius acknowledges no sex. Talent knows no diff- 
 erence between male and female. The possession of 
 ability is a call from heaven to go forth and do what 
 the ability bids, whether it be to cheer a sick room 
 as nurse or physician, to stand before jurors and 
 plead for justice, or to occupy platforms and speak of 
 questions that concern society, the character of in- 
 dividuals, the interest of communities, the relation 
 of human beings to each other, or to invisible pow- 
 ers. A privilege? no, aright! A duty? yes. And 
 for my part, I never have been able to see that 
 there was room for discussion here. Since women 
 must live as well as men, they may claim the same 
 right which men have to earn a living. Where 
 there is the human power, there is the human obli- 
 gation. Work, with all it implies of labor and re- 
 ward, of discipline and honor, is woman's due. 
 
 Yet I must confess that, to me, it is a sad and on 
 the whole a deplorable fact, that woman is com- 
 pelled to work for a mere living. It is not unhappily, 
 a question as to whether she may. Toil is imposed 
 
264 THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 upon thousands. Women, in modern society are 
 subjected to the same necessity with men ; they 
 must work or starve. They must stand upon their 
 own feet; they must labor with their own hands, 
 abide the stern conditions of the market, pinch and 
 grind, strain every fibre, and turn to account every 
 atom of force they possess to put bread into their 
 own mouths, and perhaps into the mouths of others, 
 dependent upon them. It is not a matter of choice. 
 The amateur work-woman is not discouraged, is 
 rather commended ! Why should the real work- 
 woman be frowned upon ? Why should necessity 
 be a bar to service ? Who shall deny the plea that 
 woman makes when she is starving and penniless ? 
 But again I say it is to me a melancholy necessity ; 
 not a privilege, on the whole, but an infliction. 
 
 The old scripture speaks of labor as a curse. 
 There is a sense in which it is so ; yes, while there 
 is a noble aspect to work, an esthetic and beautiful 
 aspect to it, as well as a heroic and sublime aspect, 
 there is a side that is base, coarse and ignoble, and 
 that side in the world of toil and struggle is promin- 
 ent. Whoever is obliged to earn a livelihood by 
 hard, constant work, must, whether man or woman, 
 be exposed to numberless temptations to meanness, 
 fraudulence, covetousness, duplicity, which create 
 the mercenary character and inevitably endanger 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY. 265 
 
 the finest qualities of humanity. There is a coarse- 
 ning influence in all work done for pay. Even the 
 artist, living as far as one can live, in an atmosphere 
 of pure beauty, painting scenes from nature, study- 
 ing character in the countenances of men and 
 women, the moment it is a question of selling the 
 picture, the moment the thought of the market 
 comes in, leaves the artist's atmosphere, and be- 
 comes a trader, a mechanic; hence it is that so 
 many artists disappoint us when we come to know 
 them, by the poor mercenary spirit that taints their 
 best work. 
 
 The effort of the present age is to refine work, to 
 emancipate men from its drudgery, to deliver from 
 its thraldom. We would make over the rougher, 
 grosser, more degrading menial service to machin- 
 ery, putting it upon the natural forces, assigning it 
 to the beasts. We would reduce the hours of labor, 
 and thus make room in the upper spheres of intel- 
 lect for labor that shall bring into play the finer 
 sentiments, the more etherial capabilities of the 
 mind. This we are doing for workingmen. And 
 are we willing to plunge women into work that we 
 ourselves wish to escape from ? For my own part 
 I am always thankful when a woman of mind is 
 able to leave hireling work behind and to devote 
 herself to mental accomplishment, to pursuits of 
 
266 THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 refinement, to the cultivation of intellectual tastes, 
 to the enriching of her rational being, to the indul- 
 gence of her higher sensibilities, to the beautifying 
 of her own character. When the lady is immersed 
 in work as she must be so often, it will of course 
 be her aim not to lose her womanhood, but to 
 keep the delicate aroma of her nature from evapor- 
 ation, and to show those with whom she labors* 
 those who bear with her the same hard lot in life, 
 how possible it is for one to deal with the hard, 
 coarse problems of existence, and yet to preserve 
 the fine traits of character, and to make the ele- 
 ments of dignity and sweetness shine through the 
 lot. But the star is brightest when it has cleared 
 itself of the mist. 
 
 And what shall we say of that other claim which 
 is made for American women in these days, — the 
 claim to have an active share in political life? It 
 may be a noble ambition that asks for it, that de- 
 mands permission to take part in the gloomiest 
 scenes, that insists on the right to descend into the 
 arena, and fight with beasts. Again, let it be said, 
 if any claim the right, there is nothing in the genius 
 of American ideas or institutions to forbid. Why 
 not? Is not woman a person ? Is she not a holder 
 of property, assessed and taxed accordingly? Is it 
 no concern of hers how property is administered ? 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY. 267 
 
 Has she not a stake in the public law ? Is she not 
 interested in the efficiency and conduct of the insti- 
 tutions beneath which her own family are reared ? 
 Is she not entitled to have a voice in the practical 
 operations of the government which she in common 
 with man obeys ? Most assuredly she has. And, 
 if she chooses to do it, there is nothing in the 
 genius of America to say nay. But why should she 
 esteem this a privilege, an advancement ? If work 
 is coarsening, what shall we say of practical poli- 
 tics? When we see how hard it is for the firmest 
 men, the most massive in will, the most complete 
 in training, the most balanced in faculty, the most 
 self-contained, the most self-reliant, the best born 
 and nurtured in moral principle, — when we see how 
 hard it is for such as these to hold their own against 
 corruption, to preserve their courage, their frank- 
 ness, their sincerity, their personal dignity, even 
 their private honor, amid the complexities, the 
 deceits, the expediences, the meannesses to which 
 they are exposed, as soon as they step over the 
 threshold of private life to take any part in public 
 affairs, can we suppose that women will come off 
 unscathed from the degrading corroding influences 
 that play incessantly against character? Can we 
 believe that the causes of corruption which under- 
 mine men will not touch at all women, when they go 
 
268 THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 into the field ? Can we believe that politics will, 
 all at orice, become sublimated, purified and glori- 
 fied when women take part in them ? It seems to 
 me reasonable to surmise that the people who think 
 so never can have looked at the facts, never can 
 have considered how inevitable it must be that a 
 new form of danger will be introduced into political 
 life, danger most to be dreaded, danger to good 
 morals in every form, menacing deceit, trickery, 
 maneuvering such as now is not exemplified, even 
 in Washington. Who would vote for having more 
 females in party politics ? Who would approve of 
 an eruption into partisan ranks of tens of thousands 
 of women without character, sympathy, nobleness, 
 intelligence, without an idea of law, or a clear senti- 
 ment of justice, or a conception of what republican 
 civilization should be? Who would deliberately 
 sanction the introduction of such into the chicanery 
 and strife of the political world ? Would we have 
 more of the feminine elements, more feeling, more 
 emotion, more softness and pliability introduced 
 into a business where we need masculine virtue, 
 and more than we can get ? 
 
 But what place shall the lady have? She desires 
 to occupy and keep whatever place is hers. She 
 sees the danger of political life, and dreads it for 
 herself and others ; and yet, has she no responsi- 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY. 269 
 
 bility for the condition of public morals and decen- 
 cies? Can she decline taking an interest in the 
 concerns that are at stake ? Can she refuse to do 
 her part in purifying the institutions, elevating the 
 laws and refining the public sentiment which de- 
 cides the destiny of society ? 
 
 The influence of ladyhood in politics, as I read 
 history, has occasionally been most salutary. It 
 has stayed violence, mitigated wrath, restrained 
 fraud. There are instances in which, by their tact, 
 their serenity, their simplicity, their sense of truth, 
 their superiority to low aims, their swiftness of 
 moral apprehension, women have disarmed cruelty, 
 defeated wiles, and led unscrupulous rulers into 
 ways of benignity, peace and kindness. True wom- 
 en can do as much now; standing outside of the 
 dusty arena they can meet the combatants in hours 
 of peace, when the din of conflict is unheard, and 
 the voice of reason is audible ; when party passion 
 is still, when the sharp weapons are laid down, they 
 can exert over minds those soft and fine persuasions 
 which elevate and convince, but never wound. I 
 plead for these purely intellectual influences, these 
 gracious spiritual offices, in this American society 
 of ours. Not more women in politics, but more 
 true ladies out of politics, seems to be the demand 
 of the hour ; not more voices in the legislative halls. 
 
270 THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 but more hearts and consciences in homes and 
 drawing-rooms is the need ; more power above poH- 
 tics, to raise their character. Let the demand be 
 for the height of womanhood, where womanhood 
 holds conceded sway ; men will say " amen," to 
 this, and for this I plead. Let us discourage the 
 disposition to merge ladyhood in ordinary wom- 
 anhood, and womanhood in the female. Let us 
 encourage the culture of the best feminine quality, 
 striving more and more, with a most hearty resolve 
 to emancipate ladyhood and womanhood both from 
 the rudimental condition of sex. 
 
 How shall ladyhood be cultivated ? That is the 
 final question. In past times, religion has probably 
 done more for woman's spiritual refinement than all 
 other causes combined. No observant traveller in 
 the older parts of Europe, no visitor to' a Protestant 
 cathedral from which the symbols of superstition 
 have been abolished, seeing how the purest femin- 
 ine sentiments were appealed to, how the most 
 solemnizing influences were brought to bear on the 
 more sensitive parts of her spiritual nature, can fail 
 to appreciate the immense power that religion, sim- 
 ply as it was instituted, precisely as presented to 
 the eye in form and color, must have exerted on a 
 being such as she was. The lovely delineations of 
 the Heavenly Father, which were made most prom- 
 
THE AMERICAN LADY. 27 1 
 
 inent, the gracious form of the Christ, and especially 
 in Catholic churches, the exquisite image of ever- 
 lasting and celestial tenderness presented by the 
 Holy Virgin, who presided at her altar always ready 
 to listen to the voice of complaint, to dry the tear 
 of misery, to give ear to the call of suffering, and 
 intercede for guilt, could not fail to give effect to 
 the noblest attributes of woman. It is impossible 
 that women, coming as so many did, from the mean 
 tenements of their darkened existence into this 
 radiant atmosphere, should not be bathed at once 
 in the light of Deity. They could not despise them- 
 selves there. 
 
 What substitute have we for this ? God has be- 
 come the unknown, and the unknowable. Christ 
 is fading into mythology. The beautiful lady of 
 mercy is a fiction ; and yet, the old sweet principles 
 are always the same. There are the over-arching 
 heavens of sweet and lovely sentiment. In the 
 past there are gracious forms of men and women, 
 whom it is a benediction only to think of; and 
 around us are men and women at whose feet it is a 
 privilege to kneel, whose hands it is a dignity to 
 kiss. Look to these immortal ideals ! believe that 
 they exist. Come as near as you can to them, and 
 let the gracious inspiring influences of their souls be 
 a benediction and a power. Then as Beatrice drew 
 
^72 THE AMERICAN LADY. 
 
 with her loving eyes the bewildered Dante towards 
 Paradise, as Gretchen, glorified and forgiven, eman- 
 cipated her Faust, the eternal in womanhood will 
 lure us on.