The ^e'lH/ion of the Future 
 
 By Charles W. Eliot 
 
 J 
 
 690 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Gift in memory of 
 
 MARY STEPHENS SHERMAN, '13 
 
 from 
 
 JOHN H. SHERMAN, '11 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BL390 .E42 
 
 Religion of the future / Charies W. Elio 
 
 gio 
 
 ll 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 121 221 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029121221 
 
Cije jaeltston of 
 tl^e Jfttture 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES W. KLIOT 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY 
 
 1909 
 
 
FROM 
 
 tEtie ilarbarb Cfjeological S^tbitia 
 
 OCTOBER, 1909 
 
 //<f 7/^^ 
 
A lecture delivered at the close of 
 
 the (Clebentf) Session of tltt 
 ^arbarH Summer Retool of 
 tCfjeoloBP, July 22, 1909 
 
As students in this Summer's 
 School of Theology you have 
 attended a series of lectures on 
 fluctuations in religious interest, on the 
 frequent occurrence of religious declines 
 followed soon by recoveries or regenera- 
 tions both within and without the 
 churches, on the frequent attempts to 
 bring the prevalent religious doctrines 
 into harmony with new tendencies in the 
 intellectual world, on the. constant 
 struggle between conservatism and lib- 
 eralism in existing churches and be- 
 tween idealism and materialism in so- 
 ciety at large, on the effects of popu- 
 I 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 lar education and the modern spirit of 
 inquiry on religious doctrines and or- 
 ganizations, on the changed views of 
 thinking people concerning the nature 
 of the world and of man, on the increase 
 of knowledge as afifecting religion, and 
 on the new ideas of God. You have also 
 listened to lectures on psychotherapy, a 
 new development of an ancient tendency 
 to mix religion with medicine, and on 
 the theory of evolution, a modern scien- 
 tific doctrine which within fifty years has 
 profoundly modified the religious con- 
 ceptions and expectations of many think- 
 ing people. You have heard, too, how 
 the new ideas of democracy and social 
 progress have modified and ought to 
 modify not only the actual work done by 
 
 2 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 the churches, but the whole conception 
 of the functions of churches. Again, 
 you have heard how many and how pro- 
 found are the religious implications in 
 contemporary philosophy. Your atten- 
 tion has been called to the most recent 
 views concerning the conservation of 
 energy in the universe, to the wonderful 
 phenomena of radio-activity, and to the 
 most recent definitions of atom, mole- 
 cule, ion, and electron — human imagin- 
 ings which have much to do with the 
 modern conceptions of matter and spirit. 
 The influence on popular religion of 
 modern scholarship applied to the New 
 Testament has also engaged your atten- 
 tion ; and, finally, you have heard an ex- 
 position of religious conditions and 
 
 3 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 practices in the United States which as- 
 sumed an intimate connection between 
 the advance of civilization and the 
 contemporaneous aspects of religions, 
 and illustrated from history the service 
 of religion — and practically of Chris- 
 tianity — to the progress of civilization 
 through its contributions to individual 
 freedom, intellectual culture, and social 
 co-operation. 
 
 The general impression you have re- 
 ceived from this comprehensive survey 
 must surely be that religion is not a fixed, 
 but a fluent thing. It is, therefore, whol- 
 ly natural and to be expected that the 
 conceptions of religion prevalent among 
 educated people should change from 
 century to century. Modern studies in 
 4 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 comparative religion and in the history 
 of religions demonstrate that such has 
 been the case in times past. Now the 
 nineteenth century immeasurably sur- 
 passed all preceding centuries in the in- 
 crease of knowledge, and in the spread 
 of the spirit of the scientific inquiry and 
 of the passion for truth-seeking. Hence 
 the changes in religious beliefs and prac- 
 tices, and in the relation of churches to 
 human society as a whole, were much 
 deeper and more extensive in that cen- 
 tury than ever before in the history of 
 the world; and the approach made to 
 the embodiment in the actual practices 
 of mankind of the doctrines of the great- 
 est religious teachers was more signifi- 
 cant and more rapid than ever before. 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 The religion of a multitude of humane 
 persons in the twentieth century may, 
 therefore, be called without inexcusable 
 exaggeration a "new religion," — not that 
 a single' one of its doctrines and practices 
 is really new in essence, but only that the 
 wider acceptance and better actual appli- 
 cation of truths familiar in the past at 
 many times and places, but never taken 
 to heart by the multitude or put in force 
 on a large scale, are new. I shall at- 
 tempt to state without reserve and in 
 simplest terms free from technicalities, 
 first, what the religion of the future 
 seems likely not to be, and secondly what 
 it may reasonably be expected to be. My 
 point of view is that of an American lay- 
 man, whose observing and thinking life 
 6 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 has covered the extraordinary period 
 since the Voyage of the Beagle was pub- 
 lished, anaesthesia and the telegraph 
 came into use, Herbert Spencer issued 
 his first series of papers on evolution, 
 Kuenen, Robertson Smith, and Wellhaus- 
 en developed and vindicated Biblical 
 criticism, J. S. Mill's Principles of Po- 
 litical Economy appeared, and the Unit- 
 ed States by going to war with Mexico 
 set in operation the forces which abol- 
 ished slavery on the American continent 
 — the period within which mechanical 
 power came to be widely distributed 
 through the explosive engine and the ap- 
 plications of electricity, and all the great 
 fundamental industries of civilized man- 
 kind were reconstructed. 
 
 7 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 ( I ) The religion of the future will not 
 be based on authority, either spiritual or 
 temporal. The decline of the reliance 
 upon absolute authority is one of the 
 most significant phenomena of the mod- 
 ern world. This decline is to be seen 
 ever3rwhere, — in government, in educa- 
 tion, in the church, in business, and in 
 the family. The present generation is 
 willing, and indeed often eager, to be 
 led ; but it is averse to being driven, and 
 it wants to understand the grounds and 
 sanctions of authoritative decisions. As 
 a rule, the Christian churches, Roman, 
 Greek, and Protestant, have heretofore 
 relied mainly upon the principle of 
 authority, the Reformation having sub- 
 stituted for an authoritative church an 
 8 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 authoritative book ; but it is evident that 
 the authority both of the most authori- 
 tative churches and of the Bible as a 
 verbally inspired guide is already greatly 
 impaired, and that the tendency towards 
 liberty is progressive, and among edu- 
 cated men irresistible. 
 
 (2) It is hardly necessary to say that in 
 the religion of the future there will be 
 no personifications of the primitive forces 
 of nature, such as light, fire, frost, wind, 
 storm, and earthquake, although primi- 
 tive religions and the actual religions of 
 barbarous or semi-civilized peoples 
 abound in such personifications. The 
 mountains, groves, volcanoes, and oceans 
 will no longer be inhabited by either 
 kindly or malevolent deities; although 
 9 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 man will still look to the hills for rest, 
 still find in the ocean a symbol of infinity, 
 and refreshment and delight in the for- 
 ests and the streams. The love of nature 
 mounts and spreads, while faith in fair- 
 ies, imps, nymphs, demons, and angels 
 declines and fades away. 
 
 (3) There will be in the religion of 
 the future no worship, express or im- 
 plied, of dead ancestors, teachers, or 
 rulers ; no more tribal, racial, or tutelary 
 gods ; no identification of any human be- 
 ing, however majestic in character, with 
 the Eternal Deity. In these respects the 
 religion of the future will not be essen- 
 tially new, for nineteen centuries ago 
 Jesus said, "Neither in this mountain, 
 nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the 
 10 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Father God is a Spirit and they 
 
 that worship him must worship in spirit 
 and truth." It should be recognized, 
 however, first, that Christianity was soon 
 deeply affected by the surrounding pag- 
 anism, and that some of these pagan in- 
 trusions have survived to this day; and 
 secondly, that the Hebrew religion, the 
 influence of which on the Christian has 
 been, and is, very potent, was in the high- 
 est degree a racial religion, and its Holy 
 of Holies was local. In war-times, that 
 is, in times when the brutal or savage 
 instincts remaining in humanity became 
 temporarily dominant^ and good-will is 
 limited to people of the same nation, the 
 survival of a tribal or national quality in 
 institutional Christanity comes out very 
 ill 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 plainly. The aid of the Lord of Hosts 
 is still invoked by both parties to inter- 
 national warfare, and each side praises 
 and thanks Him for its successes. In- 
 deed, the same spirit has often been ex- 
 hibited in civil v^^ars caused by religious 
 differences. 
 
 "Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from 
 
 whom all glories are! 
 And glory to our sovereign liege. King 
 Henry of Navatre!" ' 
 
 It is not many years since an Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury caused thanks to 
 be given in all Anglican churches that the 
 Lord of Hosts had been in the English 
 camp over against the Egyptians. Here- 
 tofore the great religions of the world 
 have held out hopes of direct interven- 
 
 12 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 tions of the deity, or some special deity, 
 in favor of his faithful worshippers. It 
 was the greatest Jewish prophet who told 
 King Hezekiah that the King of Assyr- 
 ia, who had approached Jerusalem with 
 a great army, should not come into the 
 city nor shoot an arrow there, and re- 
 ported the Lord as saying, "I will defend 
 this city to save it, for my own sake, and 
 for my servant David's sake." "And it 
 came to pass that night, that the angel of 
 the Lord went forth, and smote in the 
 camp of the Assyrians an hundred four- 
 score and five thousand; and when men 
 arose early in the morning, behold, they 
 were all dead corpses." The new relig- 
 ion cannot promise that sort of aid to 
 either nations or individuals in peril. 
 
 13 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 (4) In the religious life of the future 
 the primary object will not be the per- 
 sonal welfare or safety of the individual 
 in this world or any other. That safety, 
 that welfare or salvation, may be inci- 
 dentally secured, but it will not be the 
 prime object in view. The religious per- 
 son will not think of his own welfare or 
 security, but of service to others, and of 
 contributions to the common good. The 
 new religion will not teach that character 
 is likely to be suddenly changed, either in 
 this world or in any other, — although in 
 any world a sudden opportunity for im- 
 provement may present itself, and the 
 date of that opportunity may be a prec- 
 ious remembrance. The new religion 
 will not rely on either a sudden conver- 
 14 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 sion in this world or a sudden paradise 
 in the next, from out a sensual, selfish, or 
 dishonest life. It will teach that repen- 
 tance wipes out nothing in the past, and 
 is only the first step towards reformation, 
 and a sign of a better future. 
 
 (5) The religion of the future will not 
 be propitiatory, sacrificial, or expia- 
 tory. In primitive society fear of the su- 
 pernal powers, as represented in the aw- 
 ful forces of nature, was the root of re- 
 ligion. These dreadful powers must be 
 propitiated or placated, and they must 
 be propitiated by sacrifices in the most 
 literal sense; and the supposed offences 
 of man must be expiated by sufferings, 
 which were apt to be vicarious. Even 
 the Hebrews offered human sacrifices 
 
 IS 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 for generations ; and always a great part 
 of their religious rites consisted in sacri- 
 fices of animals. The Christian church 
 made a great step forward when it sub- 
 stituted the burning of incense for the 
 burning of bullocks and doves; but to 
 this day there survives not only in the 
 doctrines but in the practices of the 
 Christian chuch the principle of expia- 
 tory sacrifice. It will be an immense ad- 
 vance if the twentieth-century Christiani- 
 ty can be purified from all these survivals 
 of barbarous, or semi-barbarous, relig- 
 ious conceptions, because they imply such 
 an unworthy idea of God. 
 
 (6) The religion of the future will not 
 perpetuate the Hebrew anthropomorphic 
 representations of God, conceptions 
 i6 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 which were carried in a large measure 
 into institutional Christianity. It will not 
 think of God as an enlarged and glorified 
 man, who walks "in the garden in the cool 
 of the day," or as a judge deciding be- 
 tween human litigants, or as a king, 
 Pharaoh, or emperor, ruling arbitrarily 
 his subjects, or as the patriarch who, in 
 the early history of the race, ruled his 
 family absolutely. These human func- 
 tions will cease to represent adequately 
 the attributes of God. The nineteenth 
 century has made all these conceptions 
 of deity look archaic and crude. 
 
 (7) The religion of the future will not 
 be gloomy, ascetic, or maledictory. It 
 will not deal chiefly with sorrow and 
 death, but with joy and life. It will not 
 
 17 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 care so much to account for the evil and 
 the ugly in the world as to interpret the 
 good and the beautiful. It will believe 
 in no malignant powers — neither in Sa- 
 tan nor in witches, neither in the evil eye 
 nor in the malign suggestion. When 
 its disciple encounters a wrong or evil in 
 the world, his impulse will be to search 
 out its origin, source, or cause, that he 
 may attack it at its starting-point. He 
 may not speculate on the origin of evil 
 in general, but will surely try to discover 
 the best way to eradicate the particular 
 evil or wrong he has recognized. 
 
 Having thus considered what the re- 
 ligion of the future will not be, let us 
 now consider what its positive elements 
 will be. 
 
 i8 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 The new thought of God will be its 
 most characteristic element. This ideal 
 will comprehend the Jewish Jehovah, the 
 Christian Universal Father, the modern 
 physicist's omnipresent and exhaustless 
 Energy, and the biological conception of 
 a Vital Force. The Infinite Spirit per- 
 vades the universe, just as the spirit of a 
 man pervades his body, and acts, con- 
 ciously or unconsciously, in every atom 
 of it. The twentieth century will accept 
 literally and implicitly St. Paul's state- 
 ment, "In Him we live, and move, and 
 have our being," and God is that vital 
 atmosphere, or incessant inspiration. The 
 new religion is therefore thoroughly 
 monotheistic, its God being the one in- 
 19 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 finite force ; but this one God is not with- 
 drawn or removed, but indwelling, and 
 especially dwelling in every living creat- 
 ure. God is so absolutely immanent in 
 all things, animate and inanimate, that 
 no mediation is needed between him and 
 the least particle of his creation. In his 
 moral attributes, he is for every man the 
 multiplication to infinity of all the nob- 
 lest, tenderest, and most potent qualities 
 which that man has ever seen or imagined 
 in a human being. In this sense every 
 man makes his own picture of God. 
 Every age, barbarous or civilized, happy 
 or unhappy, improving or degenerating, 
 frames its own conception of God within 
 the ,limits of its own experiences and 
 imaginings. In this sense, too, a humane 
 20 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 religion has to wait for a humane gene- 
 ration. The central thought of the new 
 religion will therefore be a humane and 
 worthy idea of God, thoroughly consis- 
 tent with the nineteenth-century revela- 
 tions concerning man and nature, and 
 with all the tenderest and loveliest teach- 
 ings which have come down to us from 
 the past. 
 
 The scientific doctrine of one omni- 
 present, eternal Energy, informing and 
 inspiring the whole creation at every in- 
 stant of time and throughout the infinite 
 spaces, is fundamentally and completely 
 inconsistent with the dualistic conception 
 which sets spirit over against matter, 
 good over against evil, man's wickedness 
 against God's righteousness, and Satan 
 
 21 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 against Christ. The doctrine of God's 
 immanence is also inconsistent with the 
 conception that he once set the universe 
 a-going, and then withdrew, leaving the 
 universe to be operated under physical 
 laws, which were his vicegerents or sub- 
 stitutes. If God is thoroughly immanent 
 in the entire creation, there can be no 
 "secondary causes," in either the materi- 
 al or the spiritual universe. The new re- 
 ligion rejects absolutely the conception 
 that man is an alien in the world, or that 
 God is alienated from the world. It re- 
 jects also the entire conception of man as 
 a fallen being, hopelessly wicked, and 
 tending downward by nature; and it 
 makes this emphatic rejection of long- 
 accepted beliefs because it finds them all 
 
 22 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 inconsistent with a humane, civilized, or 
 worthy idea of God. 
 
 If, now, man discovers God through 
 self-conscious, or, in other words, if it 
 is the human soul through which God is 
 revealed the race has come to the know- 
 ledge of God through knowledge of it- 
 self; and the best knowledge of God 
 comes through knowledge of the best of 
 the race. Men have always attributed 
 to man a spirit distinct from his body, 
 though immanent in it. No one of us is 
 willing to identify himself with his body ; 
 but on the contrary every one now be- 
 lieves, and all men have believed, that 
 there is in a man an animating, ruling, 
 characteristic essence, or spirit, which is 
 himself. The spirit, dull or bright, petty 
 
 23 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 or grand, pure or foul, looks out of the 
 eyes, sounds in the voice, and appears in 
 the bearing and manners of each indi- 
 vidual. It is something just as real as the 
 body, and more characteristic. To every 
 influential person it gives far the greater 
 part of his power. It is what we call the 
 personality. This spirit, or soul, is the 
 most effective part of every human being, 
 and is recognized as such, and always has 
 been. It can use a fine body more effec- 
 tively than it can a poor body, but it can 
 do wonders through an inadequate body. 
 In the crisis of a losing battle, it is a hu- 
 man soul that rallies the flying troops. 
 It looks out of flashing eyes, and speaks 
 in ringing tones, but it appeals to other 
 souls, and not to other bodies. In the 
 24 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 midst of terrible natural catastrophes, — 
 earthquakes, storms, conflagrations, vol- 
 canic eruptions, — ^when men's best works 
 are being destroyed and thousands of 
 lives are ceasing suddenly and horribly, 
 it is not a few especially good human 
 bodies which steady the survivors, main- 
 tain order, and organize the forces of 
 rescue and relief. It is a few superior 
 souls. The leading men and women in 
 any society, savage or civilized, are the 
 strongest personalities, — the personality 
 being primarily spiritual, and only sec- 
 ondarily bodily. Recognizing to the 
 full these simple and obvious facts, the 
 future religion will pay homage to all 
 righteous and loving persons who in the 
 past have exemplified, and made in- 
 
 25 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 telligible to their contemporaries intrin- 
 sic goodness and effluent good-will. It 
 will be an all-saints religion. It will 
 treasure up all tales of human excellence 
 and virtue. It will reverence the dis- 
 coverers, teachers, martyrs, and apostles 
 of liberty, purity, and righteousness. It 
 will respect and honor all strong and 
 lovely human beings, — seeing in them in 
 finite measure qualities similar to those 
 which they adore in God. Recognizing 
 in every great and lovely human person 
 an individual will-power which is the es- 
 sence of the personality, it will naturally 
 and inevitably attribute to God a similar 
 individual will-power, the essence of his 
 infinite personality. In this simple and 
 natural faith there will be no place for 
 26 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 metaphysical complexities or magical 
 rites, much less for obscure dogmas, the 
 result of compromises in turbulent con- 
 ventions. It is anthropormorphic ; but 
 what else can a human view of God's 
 personality be? The finite can study 
 and describe the infinite only through 
 analogy, parallelism, and simile; but 
 that is a good way. The new religion 
 will animate and guide ordinary men 
 and women who are putting into prac- 
 tice religious conceptions which result 
 directly from their own observation and 
 precious experience of tenderness, sym- 
 pathy, trust, and solemn joy. It will be 
 most welcome to the men and women 
 who cherish and exhibit incessant, all- 
 comprehending good- will. These are 
 27 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 the "good" people. These are the only 
 genuinely civilized persons. 
 
 To the wretched, sick, and downtrod- 
 den of the earth, religion has in the past 
 held out hopes of future compensation. 
 When precious ties of affection have 
 been broken, religion has held out pros- 
 pects of immediate and eternal blessings 
 for the departed; and has promised hap- 
 py reunions in another and a better 
 w^orld. To a human soul, lodged in an 
 imperfect, feeble, or suffering body, 
 some of the older religions have held 
 out the expectation of deliverance by 
 death, and of entrance upon a rich, com- 
 petent, and happy life, — in short for 
 present human ills, however crushing, 
 the widely accepted religions have ofifered 
 28 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 either a second life, presumably immor- 
 tal, under the happiest conditions, or at 
 least peace, rest, and a happy oblivion. 
 Can the future religion promise that 
 sort of compensation for the ills of this 
 world, any more that it can promise mir- 
 aculous aid against threatened disaster? 
 A candid reply to this inquiry involves 
 the statement that in the future religion 
 there will be nothing "supernatural." 
 This does not mean that life will be 
 stripped of mystery or wonder, or that 
 the range of natural law has been finally 
 determined; but that religion, like all 
 else, must conform to natural law so 
 far as the range of law has been deter- 
 mined. In this sense the religion of the 
 future will be a natural religion. In 
 29 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 all its theory and all its practice it will 
 be completely natural. It will place no 
 reliance on any sort of magic, or miracle, 
 or other violation of, or exception to, the 
 laws of nature. It will perform no mag- 
 ical rites, use no occult processes, count 
 on no abnormal interventions of super- 
 nal powers, and admit no possession of 
 supernatural gifts, whether transmitted 
 or conferred, by any tribe, class, or 
 family of men. Its sacraments will be, 
 not invasions of law by miracle, but the 
 visible signs of a natural spiritual grace, 
 or of a natural hallowed custom. It 
 may preserve historical rites and 
 ceremonies, which, in times past, have 
 represented the expectation of magical 
 of miraculous effects ; but it will be con- 
 
 30 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 tent with natural interpretations of such 
 rites and ceremonies. Its priests will be 
 men especially interested in religious 
 thought, possessing unusual gifts of 
 speech on devotional subjects, and 
 trained in the best methods of improving 
 the social and industrial conditions of 
 human life. There will always be need 
 of such public teachers and spiritual 
 leaders, heralds, and prophets. It should 
 be observed, however, that many hap- 
 penings and processes which were for- 
 merly regarded as supernatural have, 
 with the increase of knowledge come 
 to be regarded as completely natural. 
 The line between the supposed natural 
 and the supposed supernatural is, there- 
 fore, not fixed but changeable. 
 
 31 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 It is obvious, therefore, that the com- 
 pletely natural quality of the future re- 
 ligion excludes from it many of the relig- 
 ious compensations and consolations of 
 the past. Twentieth-century soldiers, go- 
 ing into battle, will not be able to say to 
 each other, as Moslem soldiers did in the 
 tenth century, "If we are killed today, 
 we shall meet again tonight in Paradise." 
 Even now, the mother who loses her 
 babe, or the husband his wife, by a pre- 
 ventable disease, is seldom able to say, 
 simply, "It is the will of God! The babe 
 — or the woman — is better off in heaven 
 than on earth. I resign this dear object of 
 love and devotion, who has gone to a 
 happier world." The ordinary consola- 
 tions of institutional Christianity no 
 32 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 longer satisfy intelligent people whose 
 lives are broken by the sickness or pre- 
 mature death of those they love. The 
 new religion will not attempt to recon- 
 cile men and women to present ills by 
 promises of future blessedness, either 
 for themselves or for others. Such prom- 
 ises have done infinite mischief in the 
 world, by inducing men to be patient un- 
 der sufferings or deprivations against 
 which they should have incessantly 
 struggled. The advent of a just f reeddm 
 for the mass of mankind has been de- 
 layed for centuries by just this effect 
 of compensatory promises issued by 
 churches. 
 
 The religion of the future will ap- 
 proach the whole subject of evil from an- 
 other side, that of resistance and preven- 
 33 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 tion. The Breton sailor, who had had 
 his arm poisoned by a dirty fish hook 
 which had entered his finger, made a 
 votive offering at the shrine of the Vir- 
 gin Mary, and prayed for a cure. The 
 workman today, who gets cut or bruised 
 by a rough or dirty instrument, goes to 
 a surgeon, who applies an antiseptic 
 dressing to the wound, and prevents the 
 poisoning. That surgeon is one of the 
 ministers of the new religion. When 
 dwellers in a slum suffer the familiar 
 evils caused by overcrowding, impure 
 food, and cheerless labor, the modern 
 true believers contend against the sources 
 of such misery by providing public 
 baths, playgrounds, wider and cleaner 
 streets, better dwellings, and more effec- 
 tive schools, — that is, they attack the 
 
 34 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 sources of physical and moral evil. 
 The new religion cannot supply the old 
 sort of consolation; but it can diminish 
 the need of consolation, or reduce the 
 number of occasions for consolation. 
 
 A further change in religious think- 
 ing has already occurred on the subject 
 of human pain. Pain was generally re- 
 garded as a punishment for sin, or as a 
 means of moral training, or as an expia- 
 tion, vicarious or direct. Twentieth- 
 century religion, gradually perfected in 
 this respect during the last half of the 
 nineteenth century, regards human pain 
 as an evil to be relieved and prevented 
 by the promptest means possible, and by 
 any sort of available means, physical, 
 mental or moral ; and, thanks to the pro- 
 gress of biological and chemical science, 
 35 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 there is comparatively little physical pain 
 nowadays which cannot be prevented or 
 relieved. The invention of anaesthetics 
 has brought into contempt the expiatory, 
 or penal, view of human pain in this 
 world. The younger generations listen 
 with incredulous smiles to the objection 
 made only a little more than sixty years 
 ago by some divines of the Scottish 
 Presbyterian church to the employment 
 of chloroform in childbirth, namely, that 
 the physicians were interfering with 
 the execution of a curse pronounced by 
 the Almighty. Dr Weir Mitchell, a 
 physician who has seen much of mental 
 pain as well as of bodily, in his poem 
 read at the fiftieth anniversary of the 
 first public demonstation of surgical an- 
 aesthesia, said of pain: 
 36 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 "What purpose hath it? Nay, thy quest 
 is vain: 
 
 Earth hath no answer : If the baffled brain 
 
 Cries, 'Tis to warn, to punish, Ah, refrain! 
 
 When writhes the child, beneath the sur- 
 geon's hand. 
 
 What soul shall hope that pain to under- 
 stand? 
 
 Lo! Science falters o'er the hopeless task. 
 
 And Love and Faith in vain an answer ask." 
 
 A similar change is occuring in regard 
 to the conception of divine justice. The 
 evils in this world have been regarded as 
 penalties inflicted by a just God on hu- 
 man beings w^ho had violated his laws; 
 and the justice of God played a great 
 part in his imagined dealings with the 
 human race. A young graduate of And- 
 over Theological Seminary once told me 
 that when he had preached two or three 
 times in summer in a small Congrega- 
 tional church on Cape Cod, one of the 
 37 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 deacons of the church said to him at the 
 close of the service, "What sort of senti- 
 mental mush is this that they are teach- 
 ing you at Andover? You talk every 
 Sunday about the love of God ; we want 
 to hear about his justice." The future 
 religion will not undertake to describe, 
 or even imagine, the justice of God. We 
 are today so profoundly dissatisfied with 
 human justice, although it is the result 
 of centuries of experience of social good 
 and ill in this world, that we may well 
 distrust human capacity to conceive of 
 the justice of a morally perfect, infinite 
 being. The civilized nations now rec- 
 ognize the fact that legal punishments 
 usually fail of their objects, or cause 
 wrongs 'and evils greater than those for 
 38 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 which the punishments were inflicted; 
 so that penology, or the science of penal- 
 tie's, Jias' still to be created. It is only 
 very' lately that the most civilized com- 
 munities began to learn how to deal with 
 criminal tendencies in the young. In 
 the eyes of God human beings must all 
 seem very young. Since our ideas of 
 God's modes of thinking and acting are 
 necessarily based on the best human at- 
 tainments in similar directions, the new 
 religion jcannot pretend to understand 
 God's justice, inasmuch as there is no hu- 
 mattj experience of public justice fit to 
 serve !a^s~ the foundation for a true con- 
 ception of God's. The new religion 
 will magnify and laud God's love and 
 compassion, and will not venture to state 
 
 39 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 what the justice of God may, or may not, 
 require of himself, or of any of his finite 
 creatures. This will be one of the 
 great differences between the future re- 
 ligion and the past. Institutional Chris- 
 tianity as a rule condemned the mass 
 of mankind to eternal torment; partly 
 because the leaders of the churches 
 thought 'they understood completely the 
 justice of God, and partly because the 
 exclusive possession of means of deliver- 
 ance gave the churches some restraining 
 influence over even the boldest sinners, 
 and much over the timid. The new relig- 
 ion will make no such pretentions, and 
 will teach no such horrible and perverse 
 doctrines. 
 
 Do you ask what consolation for hu- 
 40 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 man ills the new religion will offer? I 
 answer, the consolation which often 
 comes to the sufferer from being more 
 serviceable to others than he was before 
 the loss or the suffering for which con- 
 solation is needed ; the consolation of be- 
 ing one's self wiser and tenderer than be- 
 fore, and therefore more able to be ser- 
 viceable to human kind in the best ways ; 
 the consolation through the memory, 
 which preserves the sweet fragrance of 
 characters and lives no longer in pres- 
 ence, recalls the joys and achievements 
 of those lives while still within mortal 
 view, and treasures up and multiplies 
 the good influences they exerted. More- 
 over, such a religion has no tendency to 
 41 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 diminish the force in this world, or any 
 other, of the best human imaginings con- 
 cerning the nature of the infinite Spirit 
 immanent in the universe. It urges its 
 disciples to believe that as the best and 
 happiest man is he who best loves and 
 serves, so the soul of the universe finds 
 its perfect bliss and efficiency in supreme 
 and universal love and service. It sees 
 evidence in the moral history of the hu- 
 man race that a loving God rules the uni- 
 verse. Trust in this supreme rule is 
 genuine consolation and support under 
 many human trials and sufferings. 
 Nevertheless, although brave and patient 
 endurance of evils is always admirable, 
 and generally happier than timid or im- 
 patient conduct under suffering or wrong, 
 42 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 it must be admitted that endurance or 
 constancy is not consolation, and that 
 there are many physical and mental disa- 
 bilities and injuries for which there is no 
 consolation in a literal sense. Human 
 skill may mitigate or palliate some of 
 them, human sympathy and kindness may 
 make them more bearable, but neither 
 religion nor philosophy offers any com- 
 plete consolation for them, or ever has. 
 
 In thus describing the consolations for 
 human woes and evils which such a re- 
 ligion can offer, its chief motives have 
 tbeen depicted. They are just those 
 which Jesus said summed up all the 
 commandments, love toward God and 
 brotherliness to man. It will teach a 
 universal good-will under the influence 
 
 43 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 of which men will do their duty, and at 
 the same time, promote their own happi- 
 ness. The devotees of a religion of ser- 
 vice will always be asking what they 
 dan contribute to the common good; 
 but their greatest service must always be 
 to increase the stock of good-will among 
 'men. One of the worst of chronic 
 hiiman evils is working for daily thread 
 without any interest in the work, and 
 with ill-will towards the institution or 
 person that provides the work. The 
 work of the world must be done; and 
 the great question is, shall it be done 
 happily or unhappily? Much of it is 
 today done unhappily. The new relig- 
 ion will contribute powerfully toward 
 the reduction of this mass of unneces- 
 44 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 saryi misery, and will do so chiefly by 
 promoting good-will among men. 
 
 A paganized Hebrew-Christianity has 
 unquestionably made much of personal 
 sacrifice ias a religious duty. The new 
 religion will greatly qualify the sup- 
 posed duty of sacrifice, and will re- 
 gard all /Sacrifices as unnecessary and in- 
 jurious, except those which love dictates 
 and justifies. "Greater love hath no 
 mdxi than this, that a man lay down his 
 life for his friends." Self-sacrifice is not 
 a good or a merit in itself; it must be 
 intelligent and loving to be meritorious, 
 and the object in view must be worth its 
 price. Giving up attractive pleasures or 
 labors in favor of some higher satisfac- 
 tion, or some engrossing work, is not 
 
 45 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 self-sacrilice. It is a renunciation of in- 
 ferior or irrelevant objects in favor of 
 one superior object; it is only the intelli- 
 gent inhibition of whatever distracts 
 from the main pursuit, or the worthiest 
 task. Here, again, the new religion will 
 teach that happiness goes with dutiful- 
 ness even in this world. 
 
 All the religions have been, to a great- 
 er or less extent, uplifting and inspiring, 
 in the sense that they raised men's 
 thoughts to some power above them, to 
 some being or beings, which had more 
 power and more duration than the wor- 
 shippers had. When kings or emperors 
 were deified, they were idealized, and so 
 lifted men's thoughts out of the daily 
 round of their ordinary lives. As the 
 46 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 objects of worship became nobler, purer, 
 and kinder with the progress of civiliza- 
 tion, the prevailing religion became more 
 stimulating to magnanimity and right- 
 eousness. Will the future religion be as 
 helpful to the spirit of man? Will it 
 touch his imagination as the anthropo- 
 morphism of Judaism, polytheism, Is- 
 lam, and paganized Christianity have 
 done? Can it be as moving to the hu- 
 man soul as the deified powers of nature, 
 the various gods, and goddesses that in- 
 habited sky, ocean, mountains, groves 
 and streams, or the numerous deities, re- 
 vered in the various Christian commun- 
 ions, — God the Father, the Son of God, 
 the Mother of God, the Holy Ghost, 
 and the host of tutelary saints? All 
 47 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 these objects of worship have greatly 
 moved the human soul, and have inspired 
 men to thoughts and deeds of beauty, 
 love, and duty. Will the new religion 
 do as much? It is reasonable to expect 
 that it will. The sentiments of awe and 
 reverence, and the love of beauty and 
 goodness, will remain, and will increase 
 in strength and influence. All the natu- 
 ral human affections will remain in full 
 force. The new religion will foster 
 powerfully a virtue which is compara- 
 tively new in the world — the love of 
 truth and the passion for seeking it, and 
 the truth will progressively make men 
 free; so that the coming generations will 
 be freer, and therefore more productive 
 and stronger than the preceding. The 
 48 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 new religionists will not worship their 
 ancestors; but they will have a stronger 
 sense of the descent of the present from 
 the past than men have ever had before, 
 and each generation will feel more 
 strongly than ever before its indebtedness 
 to the preceding. 
 
 The two sentiments which most inspire 
 men to good deeds are love and hope. 
 Religion should give freer and more 
 rational play to these two sentiments than 
 the world has heretofore witnessed; and 
 the love and hope will be thoroughly 
 grounded in and on efficient, serviceable, 
 visible, actual, and concrete deeds and 
 conduct. When a man works out a suc- 
 cessful treatment for cerebro-spinal men- 
 ingitis — a disease before which medicine 
 
 49 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 was absolutely helpless a dozen years ago 
 — ^by applying to the discovery of a rem- 
 edy ideas and processes invented or de- 
 veloped by other men studying other dis- 
 eases, he does a great work of love, pre- 
 vents for the future the breaking of in- 
 numerable ties of love, and establishes 
 good grounds for hope of many like bene- 
 fits for human generations to come. The 
 men who do such things in the present 
 world are ministers of the religion of the 
 future. The future religion will prove, 
 has proved, as effective as any of the 
 older ones in inspiring men to love and 
 serve their fellow-beings, — and that is 
 the true object and end of all philoso- 
 phies and all religions; for that is the 
 way to make men better and happier, 
 alike the servants and the served. 
 
 50 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 The future religion will have the at- 
 tributes of universality and of adapta- 
 bility to the rapidly increasing stores of 
 knowledge and power over nature ac- 
 quired by the human race. As the re- 
 ligion of a child is inevitably very differ- 
 ent from that of an adult, and must 
 grow up with the child, so the religion 
 of a race whose capacities are rapidly 
 enlarging must be capable of a corre- 
 sponding development. The religion of 
 any single individual ought to grow up 
 with him all the way from infancy to 
 age ; and the same is true of the religion 
 of a race. It is bad for any people to 
 stand still in their governmental concep- 
 tions and practices, or in the organiza- 
 51 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 tion of their industries, or in any of their 
 arts or trades, even in the oldest ; but it is 
 much worse for a people to stand still 
 in their religious conceptions and prac- 
 tices. Now, the new religion affords an 
 indefinite scope, or range, for progress 
 and development. It rejects all the limi- 
 tations of family, tribal, or national re- 
 ligion. It is not bound to any dogma, 
 creed, book, or institution. It has the 
 whole world for the field of the loving 
 labors of its disciples ; and its fundamen- 
 tal precept of serviceableness admits an 
 infinite variety and range in both time 
 and space. It is very simple, and there- 
 fore possesses an important element of 
 durability. It is the complicated things 
 that get out of order. Its symbols will 
 52 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 not relate to sacrifice or dogma; but it 
 will doubtless have symbols, which will 
 represent its love of liberty, truth, and 
 beauty. It will also have social rites and 
 reverent observances ; for it will wish to 
 commemmorate the good thoughts and 
 deeds which have come down from 
 former generations. It will have its 
 saints ; but its canonizations will be based 
 on grounds somewhat new. It will have 
 its heroes; but they must have shown a 
 loving, disinterested, or protective cour- 
 age. It will have its communions, with 
 the Great Spirit, with the spirits of the 
 departed, and with living fellow-men of 
 like minds. Working together will be 
 one of its fundamental ideas, — of men 
 with God, of men with prophets, leaders, 
 
 S3 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 and teachers, of men with one another, 
 of men's intelligence with the forces of 
 nature. It will teach only such uses of 
 authority as are necessary to secure the 
 co-operation of several or many people 
 to one end; and the discipline it will 
 advocate will be training in the develop- 
 ment of co-operative good-will. 
 
 Will such a religion as this make prog- 
 ress in the twentieth-century world? 
 You have heard in this Summer School 
 of Theology much about the conflict be- 
 tween materialism and religious ideal- 
 ism, the revolt against long-accepted dog- 
 mas, the frequent occurrence of waves of 
 reform, sweeping through and some- 
 times over the churches, the effect of 
 modern philosophy, ethical theories, soc- 
 
 54 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 ial hopes, and democratic principles on 
 the established churches, and the aban- 
 donment of churches altogether by a 
 large proportion of the population in 
 countries mainly Protestant. You know, 
 too, how other social organizations have, 
 in some considerable measure, taken the 
 place of churches. Millions of Ameri- 
 cans find in Masonic organizations, 
 lodges of Odd Fellows, benevolent and 
 fraternal societies, granges, and trades- 
 unions, at once their practical religion, 
 and the satisfaction of their social needs. 
 So far as these multifarious organizations 
 carry men and women out of their indi- 
 vidual selves and teach them mutual re- 
 gard and social and industrial co-opera- 
 tion, they approach the field and func- 
 
 55 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 tions of the religion of the future. The 
 Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, and 
 mental healers of all- sorts manifest a good 
 deal of ability to draw people away from 
 the traditional churches, and to discredit 
 traditional dogmas and formal creeds. 
 Nevertheless, the great mass of the peo- 
 ple remain attached to the traditional 
 churches, and are likely to remain so, — 
 partly because of their tender associa- 
 tions with churches in the grave crises 
 of life, and partly because their actual 
 mental condition still permits them to 
 accept the beliefs they have inherited or 
 been taught while young. The new relig- 
 ion will therefore make but slow prog- 
 ress, so far as outward organization goes. 
 It will, however, progressively modify 
 56 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 the creeds and religious practices of all 
 the existing churches, and change their 
 symbolism and their teachings concern 
 ing the conduct of life. Since its chief 
 doctrine is the doctrine of a sublime unity 
 of substance, force, and spirit, and its 
 chief precept is, Be serviceable, it will 
 exert a strong, united influence among 
 men. 
 
 Christian unity has always been longed 
 for by devout believers, but has been 
 sought in impossible ways. Authorita- 
 tive churches have tried to force every- 
 body within their range to hold the same 
 opinions and unite in the same observ- 
 ances, but they have won only temporary 
 and local successes. As freedom has in- 
 creased in the world, it has become more 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 and. more difficult Jo enforce even out- 
 ward conformity ; and in countries where 
 churcii and state have been separated, a 
 great diversity of religious opinions and 
 practices has been expressed in different 
 religious organizations, each of which 
 commands the effective devotion of a 
 fraction of the population. Since it is 
 certain that men are steadily gaining 
 more and more freedom in thought, 
 speech, and action, civilized society 
 might as well assume that it will be quite 
 impossible to unite all religiously-mind- 
 ed people through any dogma, creed, 
 ceremony, observance, or ritual. All 
 these are divisive, not uniting, wherever 
 a reasonable freedom exists. The new 
 religion proposes as a basis of unity, first, 
 S8 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 its doctrine of an immanent and loving 
 God, and secondly, its precept. Be ser- 
 viceable to fellow-men. Already there 
 are many signs in the free countries of 
 the world that different religious de- 
 nominations can unite in good work to 
 promote human welfare. The support 
 of hospitals, dispensaries, and asylums by 
 persons connected with all sorts of re- 
 ligious denominations, the union of all 
 denominations in carrying on Associated 
 Charities in large cities, the success of 
 the Young Men's Christian Associations, 
 and the numerous efforts to form fede- 
 rations of kindred churches for practical 
 purposes, all testify to the feasibility of 
 extensive co-operation in good works. 
 Again, the new religion cannot create 
 
 59 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 any caste, ecclesiastical class, or exclus- 
 ive sect founded on a rite. On these 
 grounds it is not unreasonable to 
 imagine that the new religion will prove 
 a unifying influence, and a strong rein- 
 forcement of democracy. 
 
 Whether it will prove as efficient to 
 deter men from doing wrong and to en- 
 courage them to do right as the prevail- 
 ing religions have been, is a question 
 which only experience can answer. In 
 these two respects neither the threats nor 
 the promises of the older religions have 
 been remarkably successful in society at 
 large. The fear of hell has not proved 
 effective to deter men from wrong-doing, 
 and heaven has never yet been described 
 in terms very attractive to the average 
 60 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 man or woman. Both are indeed un- 
 imaginable. The great geniuses, like 
 Dante and Swedenborg, have produced 
 only fantastic and incredible pictures of 
 either state. The modern man would 
 hardly feel any appreciable -loss of mo- 
 tive-power toward good or away from 
 evil if heaven were burnt and hell 
 quenched. The prevailing Christian 
 conceptions of heaven and hell have 
 hardly any more influence with educated 
 people in these days than Olympus and 
 Hades have. The modern mind craves 
 an immediate motive or leading, good 
 for today on this earth. The new relig- 
 ion builds on the actual experience of 
 men and women, and of human society 
 as a whole. The motive powers it relies 
 6i 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 on have been, and are, at work in in- 
 numerable human lives; and its beatific 
 visions and its hopes are better grounded 
 than those of traditional religion, and 
 finer, — because free from all selfishness, 
 and from the imagery of governments, 
 courts, social distinctions, and war. 
 
 Finally, this twentieth-century relig- 
 ion is not only to be in harmony with the 
 great secular movements of modern so- 
 ciety — democracy, individualism, social 
 idealism, the zeal for education, the 
 spirit of research, the modern tendency 
 to welcome the new, the fresh powers of 
 preventive medicine, and the recent 
 advances in business and industrial ethics 
 — but also in essential agreement with 
 the direct, personal teachings of Jesus, as 
 62 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 
 
 they are reported in the Gospels. The 
 revelation he gave to mankind thus be- 
 comes more wonderful than ever. 
 
 63